Baylor faculty member earns grant to study evidence-based practices in psychology

WACO, Texas (March 18, 2019)  Sara L. Dolan, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology and neuroscience in Baylor Universitys College of Arts & Sciences, has been awarded a five-year grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)  a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services  for a project aimed at improving clinical practice for children who have been victims of abuse and trauma.

The grant, which totals nearly $3 million, allows Dolan and her collaborators, including Stacy Ryan-Pettes, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, to develop and implement new training methods in assessment and diagnosis for counselors and social workers, ultimately leading to improved outcomes for their patients.

Grant awards of the magnitude awarded to Sara Dolan, Ph.D., and her colleagues are rare and attests to skillful leadership provided by these faculty that will have a huge impact on our R1 aspirations here at Baylor, said Lee Nordt, Ph.D., dean of the College of Arts & Sciences

Therapists and counselors commonly use evidence-based treatment (EBT) methods, which are interventions that have been validated through scientific studies to be effective for treating a particular disorder. The problem, Dolan said, is that therapists often deploy these treatments without first using evidence-based assessments (EBA), diagnostic methods that are grounded in the most current scientific knowledge.

Clinicians are pretty good about learning new treatments, but formal assessment is not a huge part of what they do in practice so theyre not following the literature in that area as closely, Dolan said. They are doing very informal assessments that let them start treatment right away.

These informal evaluation techniques, while faster and more cost-effective than formal, instrument-based assessments, can cause clinicians working with abused and traumatized children to overlook certain disorders in favor of other more obvious problems.

Oftentimes clinicians are leaping to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Dolan said, and they might miss other things like depression or other kinds of anxiety or suicidal behaviors. If theyre jumping right to PTSD, they are going to give PTSD treatments, which is fantastic, but that might not be the correct treatment.

Dr. Dolan is a highly respected colleague, said Charles Weaver, Ph.D., professor and chair of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor. As graduate program director of our Clinical Psychology program, she has provided strong and steady leadership. Her commitment to research is equally strong, and this grant will allow Dr. Dolan and her colleagues to do critically important work, while also raising the departments research profile. We look forward to her many years of continuing contributions to Baylor University.

Jeff Wherry, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry at University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler, is the co-investigator on the grant. Wherry is the subject matter expert on the project, Dolan said, owing to his extensive background in evaluation and assessment of evidence-based practices.

All of my research is assessment-focused and I have a strong interest in PTSD. [Wherry] has developed a lot of these assessments, and hes been using these assessments and doing trainings in this area for a long time, Dolan said. It was a really natural fit to work with him on this project.

The support for training afforded by this SAMHSA grant is exciting, Wherry said. We are now part of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN)  a group of 100 agencies and universities training clinicians and serving traumatized children. We will make training available to 66 community-based agencies serving children in the NCTSN and also will offer training to more than 850 childrens advocacy centers across the nation.

Over the course of five years, Wherry said they hope to train more than 800 clinicians and doctoral students in evidence-based assessment of abused and traumatized children.

When you consider the number of children served by these clinicians, the impact is exponential. Additionally, we will be training additional trainers, so that the impact continues beyond the funding of the grant, Wherry said

While the immediate goal of the grant-funded project is to evaluate the effectiveness of different methods of training providers, Dolan said the work represents one piece of a larger part of Baylors mission to impact lives positively through research.

This is a way that Baylor can influence scientifically based practice in our community. It is giving us an opportunity to have a really big impact and to have Baylors name on that impact, Dolan said.

The project is a great example of the goals articulated in the Universitys academic strategic plan, Illuminate, said Kevin Chambliss, Ph.D., interim vice provost for research at Baylor.

Research like Dr. Dolans helps us meet our aspiration of reaching R1 status and becoming one the nations top research institutions while strengthening and deepening our Christian commitment, Chambliss said.

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ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 16,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions.

ABOUT THE COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor Universitys oldest and largest academic division, consisting of 25 academic departments and seven academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. Faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines. Visit www.baylor.edu/artsandsciences.

ABOUT THE OFFICE OF THE VICE PROVOST FOR RESEARCH AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR) supports faculty members from all academic units in their research and scholarship. The office provides pre- and post-award services for grants and contracts, facilitates Industry partnerships and collaborative agreements with external entities, manages compliance oversight, provides assistance with intellectual property and technology transfer, and offers marketing and communication support for Baylor research.

The OVPR also manages and operates the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative (BRIC), a three-story, 330,000-square-foot facility focused on interdisciplinary/international research, industry/university collaborations, business incubation/acceleration/commercialization, advanced workforce training, and STEM educational research and outreach.

For more information, please visit www.baylor.edu/research or www.baylor.edu/bric.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: SA risks losing indigenous languages

South Africa runs the risk of losing its indigenous languages, says Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) Project Manager and head of Gauteng office, Dr Sally Maepa.

This has been attributed to the lack of the implementation of the Use of Official Languages Act 12 of 2012 (UOLA) by government department as well as citizens.

We need to ensure that our languages are promoted, developed and equally used so we must ensure that the departments are complying, Maepa said.

PanSALB on Tuesday released a Comprehensive Report on the Use of Official Languages Act 12 of 2012, during a media briefing that was held in Tshwane.

According to Maepa, almost all departments perceived UOLA and the multilingual language policy implementation as sheer provision of translation and interpreting services, rather than creating equitable space for the official language to grow and create value.

Most departments admitted to not having done anything about implementing UOLA. There appeared no inclination to allocate sufficient human and financial resources towards multilingual language policy development and implementation, she said.

Maepa said departments unequivocally displayed a strong preference to default to English on the assumption that it is easier, logical and common scenically the only language inherently able compared to others.

She said there is a lack of understanding of why the promotion of all 11 official languages and status elevation of previously marginalised official languages are important.

Recommendations

The government departments should construct acceptable multilingual language policy with time-framed implementation plan.

Both the language policy and its implementation plan should be strategically biased towards the development and creation of business space for the indigenous South African official languages, Maepa said.

She said the departments should in tandem make solid provision for sufficient resources to enable language policy implementation.

They should accord top priority to fully functioning language units with cogent executive standing within the departmental executive/management committee.

The language units should be a multilingual language policy implementation structure of the departments and shall therefore not be limited to translation, editing, proofreading and interpreting. They are meant to actively entrench multilingualism within the context of each departments business, to enhance service delivery, Maepa said.

She said the department should appoint professional and expert language practitioners well entrenched in multilingualism, language policy, language politics and related studies.

Each government department should be dutifully bound to develop its own specialized multilingual terminology lists and get them verified and authenticated accordingly, Maepa said.

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa recognises the historically diminished use and status of nine marginalised South African indigenous official languages.

There is an obligation on the state to take practical and positive measures to elevate the status, and advance the use of, these languages

These languages include Sesotho sa Leboa - Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu.

UOLA in essence fosters multilingualism within working spaces and beyond, in the spirit of social cohesion and nation building

In pursuance of its mandate, in 2017 the PanSALB, invited all national government departments as anchors of service delivery to all South African communities to give account of their observance of the constitutional language requirement and chiefly the prescripts of UOLA since its inception in 2013.

During the process, it was established that most National Department and Entities do not comply with the act; take the execution of the PanSALB language mandate seriously and they ignore its mandatory responsibility to monitor their compliance of the Use of Official Language Act

Maepa said 29% (12 out of 42) departments have complied with the submission of the monitoring tool.

Figures for departments that reviewed their languages policies since the public hearing in 2017 stood at 10% (4 out of 42).

Figures for departments that intend to review their language policies but no indication as to when were 10% (4 out of 42).

Figures for non-complying departments on the monitoring tool stood at 71% (30 out of 42).  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Atlanta, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Piedmont Office Realty Trust (NYSE: PDM) announced today that Donald A. Miller, CFA, who has served as the Companys Chief Executive Officer since 2007, will retire effective June 30, 2019 and that the Board of Directors has named C. Brent Smith, the Companys current President and Chief Investment Officer, as his successor. Mr. Smith was also appointed to the Board of Directors, effective immediately. Mr. Miller will stand for re-election to the Board of Directors for the 2019-20 term.

The entire Piedmont team has worked together diligently over the last several years to hone our competitive strategy, narrow our markets, and improve our portfolio of properties. During this time, Brent has provided valuable insight and leadership to the organization and been instrumental in the execution of each of the major transactions that have advanced this strategy, said Mr. Miller. We have been working with the Board on this management transition for a while and I am excited about Brent officially assuming leadership of Piedmont as we all endeavor to drive our business and strategy to build value for our stockholders.

Mr. Smith, 43, joined Piedmont in 2012 as Senior Vice President focused on acquisitions and dispositions. He became Executive Vice President of the Companys Northeast Region in 2015, while continuing his focus on strategic capital markets transactions. In 2016, his role was expanded to also serve as Chief Investment Officer for the Company and in November of 2018, he was additionally appointed President. As a result of Mr. Smiths appointment to President, Piedmont has merged its Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Regions together (now referred to as the Northeast Region) to be led by Robert K. Wiberg, Executive Vice President, who previously headed the Mid-Atlantic Region. Mr. Smith will retain the title of President in addition to his role as Chief Executive Officer, as well as, his role as Chief Investment Officer through the end of the current year.

Commenting on his appointment, Mr. Smith said, I am honored by the Boards confidence in me and am appreciative of the entire Piedmont teams support as I assume this new role. Having worked closely with Don and the Board for many years, I feel I have an in-depth understanding of Piedmonts culture and corporate objectives. I look forward to continuing to work with the Board, and the rest of the leadership team to drive the Piedmont platform and grow our business for stockholders

Commenting on the transition, Frank C. McDowell, Chairman of the Board of Directors, said, We are very appreciative of Dons service over the last twelve years; leading Piedmont through its transformation to a publicly-traded Company with a high quality portfolio focused upon select markets where Piedmont now has a dominant presence. While we will miss Dons daily leadership, we are confident in Brents ability to provide a smooth transition and to successfully lead us into the next chapter  his energy, enthusiasm, and extensive knowledge of virtually all aspects of our business will serve us well over the coming years.



About Piedmont Office Realty Trust:

Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: PDM) is an owner, manager, developer, and operator of high-quality, Class A office properties located in eight major cities in the eastern half of the U.S. The almost $5 billion portfolio is comprised of approximately 16 million square feet of office space. The Company is a fully-integrated, self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT) with local management offices in each of its major markets and is investment-grade rated by Standard & Poor's (BBB) and Moody's (Baa2). For more information, see www.piedmontreit.com.

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"). The Company intends for all such forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe-harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Exchange Act, as applicable. Such information is subject to certain risks and uncertainties, as well as known and unknown risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. Therefore, such statements are not intended to be a guarantee of the Company`s performance in future periods. Such forward-looking statements can generally be identified by our use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "believe," "continue" or similar words or phrases that are predictions of future events or trends and which do not relate solely to historical matters.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company cannot guarantee the accuracy of any such forward-looking statements contained in this press release, and the Company does not intend to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives Thursday in Rome he will not be short of compatriots to exchange pleasantries with in the short amount of sightseeing built into the schedule for his state visit, the first of three stops in Europe, which will take him to France and Monaco, too.

Italys "eternal city" has been a magnet for increasing Chinese tourism and regardless of season Romes Fiumicino airport is crowded with Chinese tourist groups clogging up security gates and the duty-free stores.

Tourism



The profitable year-round Chinese influx is welcomed by many Italians  the newcomers make up for a dip in tourist numbers since the 2008 global financial crash from the U.S. and Italys European neighbors.

But Chinese tourism is not, according to some analysts, all that it might seem.

Beijing is not shy of using tourism as a tool of statecraft to reward friends and punish critics, Stratfor, a U.S. based geopolitical intelligence company, warned recently. Beijing directs tourism flows by granting countries Approved Destination Status. This designation regulates where Chinese package tour groups are authorized to go and how tours are marketed in mainland China, says Stratfor.

And that can make a considerable trickle-or-flood difference in the numbers.

In 2017, Beijing managed to reduce by more than half the number of Chinese tourists traveling to South Korea to punish Seoul for deploying the U.S.-supplied Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system.

Investment opportunities



Tourism, though, is not at the top of Xi Jinpings agenda for his stop in Rome. Italy is considering joining Beijings global trade and infrastructure program, informally known as the New Silk Road and formally as The Belt and Road Initiative, BRI.

A giant trillion-dollar trade, investment and infrastructure project, the BRI is Xi Jinpings signature foreign policy and since 2013 Beijing has already invested nearly $700 billion into more than 60 countries.

Much of the investment is in the form of large-scale infrastructure loans to down-at-heel governments and the idea as outlined by the Chinese leader was to draw these countries closer to Beijing while boosting Chinese soft power abroad.

Some analysts see a parallel with tourism when it comes to the BRI. The enormous investment project can easily, they argue, be leveraged for political influence  much as China has done on a smaller scale with tourism.

In Rome this week, the cash-strapped Italian government is due to sign a memorandum of understanding to participate in Xis signature program, allowing Chinas interests into sectors like telecoms and ports. Italy would become the first G7 country to participate formally in the BRI.

And that is alarming both Washington and EU leaders, who are growing wary of Beijings burgeoning clout on a Continent allied to the U.S.

A dozen EU countries, including Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia, have already signed MoUs with Beijing.

On the surface, Romes official participation in Beijings trillion-dollar venture is purely an economic issue between the two nations. In reality, however, it is not that simple, according to Xuan Loc Doan, an analyst the Global Policy Institute, a London-based think tank on international affairs.

Some regard it as a strategic tool for Beijing to extend its sphere of influence. For others, instead of empowering participating countries, the scheme puts some of them under huge debt, he wrote in a commentary.

Expanding influence

In a recent summit on the New Silk Road, Helmut Scholz, a German member of the European Parliament, noted: The BRI is often compared to the Marshall Plan. However, the New Silk Road will mainly provide loans, and not grants, unlike the Marshall Plan. It means those loans will have to repaid. He worries that the BRI will lead countries that take loans into a debt trap, which can then be used for political leverage by Beijing.

The European Parliament in September warned that the infrastructure projects under Chinas massive program could create large debts for European countries that take BRI loans.

Chinese officials dispute the criticism, arguing that it is a project that can help solve some of the most daunting challenges faced by mankind. Chinas official news agency, Xinhua, says the initiative is a perfect example of China sharing its own wisdom and solutions for global growth and governance.

The Italian move to sign on for BRI has angered the European Commission, which earlier this month dubbed China an economic competitor in pursuit of technological leadership and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance.

That followed a warning from the National Security Council in the White House, which tweeted on March 9, Endorsing BRI lends legitimacy to Chinas predatory approach to investment and will bring no benefits to the Italian people.

Italys unruly populist coalition government has been divided about whether to sign a BRI agreement with Beijing. Much of the drive behind lies with Italys sputtering economy. The coalition leaders made many costly promises to voters in last years elections  promises they cannot keep, from improving state pensions to giving all Italians a living wage.

The countrys prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has endeavored to walk a middle way, telling the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that Italy remains firmly a good friend to the U.S., but he cannot see why that should stop the Italian government from signing an agreement with China. I think it can be an opportunity for our country, Conte said.

But trying to have it both ways may not work. Coalition leaders, right-wing populist Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the anti-establishment Five Star party, are ideological bedfellows of the Trump administration. However their willingness to cosy up to Beijing at the same time is adding to their reputation of being contradictory and unreliable, say U.S. officials.

The inevitable result will be a cooling of relations between Washington and Rome, predicts a U.S. diplomat based in Rome.
A Mexican man died in U.S. custody Monday, a day after border patrol agents detained him near El Paso, Texas.

Following a medical evaluation March 17, the same day he was apprehended for "illegal re-entry after a prior deportation," the 40-year-old man was taken to a hospital with "flu-like symptoms, liver failure and renal failure," according to a news release Tuesday from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The man died March 18. His name was not released. An office within CBP will conduct a review of the circumstances surrounding the death, as is the agency's protocol. His is the second in-custody death for CBP this year.

Border and immigration officials are under increased scrutiny over the emergency medical care of detainees following the deaths of two children in CBP custody at the end of 2018.

Last month, a 45-year-old Mexican man died at a hospital in McAllen, Texas.

After crossing the border on Feb. 2, he was also detained for illegal re-entry into the U.S. After requesting medical attention, he was hospitalized from Feb. 3 until his death on Feb. 18, according to CBP.

Though no official cause of death was immediately available, CBP officials said the man was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and congestive heart failure.

The stillbirth of a baby during her detention by CBP in February is not considered an "in-custody death," according to CBP. The agency nevertheless published details of a Honduran woman's premature labor last month "to be transparent with Congress, the media and the public," according to a news release from CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Deaths in immigration custody are rare, however the speed and quality of medical care available to detained travelers  especially those who are held after arduous desert crossings  earned attention from members of Congress and the media in recent months, prompting border visits by lawmakers, as well as the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.
Mozambique braced itself Tuesday for a mounting death toll and a host of humanitarian needs in the wake of Cyclone Idai, which hit the coastal city of Beira on Friday, before moving through Mozambique and on to Malawi and Zimbabwe.

The initial, official death toll in the country stood at 84, but Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi announced late Monday, after flying over the affected areas, that he estimated the number could be as high as 1,000.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement Monday the damage to Beira was "massive and horrifying," and estimated that 90 percent of the city, which is home to more than half a million people, was destroyed.

On Tuesday, Mozambique-based UNICEF spokesman Daniel Timme said the agency is still seeking information on the impact of the storm. Speaking to VOA via Skype from Maputo, the capital, he said "we still don't have the full picture of the situation" at the moment.

"But we agree with the assessment of the government that the disaster is of a dimension which is much, much bigger than we thought in the beginning," he added. "This is due to the fact that information was coming in very slowly, because the city of Beira had been been cut off of all communication lines and still is, and has also been cut off physically because the roads to Beira are destroyed."

Ndivhuwo Mabaya, spokesman for the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation, said members of the South African National Defense Force landed in Mozambique on Saturday to assist that nation's military in search and rescue efforts. South Africa will try to do more, he said.

"We have also called on South African companies to donate for humanitarian assistance and following this morning's assessment, we'll make a further announcement for how we'll assist going forward," he said Tuesday.

Timme said once the rescue operation is done, humanitarian agencies will still have serious work to do. To that end, UNICEF has appealed to donors for $20.3 million to support its response in all three affected countries.

"We are at the same time actually preparing to supply people with the most urgent things," he said. "What is very important in such situations is the supply of safe drinking water, so we will be supplying water purification pills."

On Tuesday, the European Union announced it would release an initial emergency aid package of nearly $4 million to assist all three countries. Mozambique will receive much of that money.
Residents of Christchurch, New Zealand, have returned to work and school, but the city of nearly 400,000 is still coming to grips with the tragic events that unfolded Friday, when a gunman entered two mosques and killed 50 people.

Throughout the city people continued Tuesday to flock to memorials to pay their respects to the members of their community who lost their lives, hoping to heal and ensure such events do not take place again.

Monday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, announced her Cabinet reached a consensus for in-principle agreements on changes to the nations gun laws.

Within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer, Ardern told reporters at a news conference Monday.

Ardern didnt provide details of what changes may be proposed, but altering the countrys gun laws was a topic of conversation Dr. Mohomad Anwar Sahib, chairman of the New Zealand Islamic Information Centre (NZIIC) and Imam of the centers Masjid at-Taqwa, had with several members of the community during his daylong visit to Christchurch from Auckland.

The issue of what to do, if anything, about New Zealands firearm regulations was one of the most important topics we discussed, Anwar said.

While some have called for an outright ban on guns, Anwar notes that New Zealand's legislative process doesnt enable the prime minister to make instant changes to laws.

This is a democratic country. She (Prime Minister Arden) can't say Stop the guns. It goes through so many channels before it can happen, he said.

Anwar likened the debate on gun control to a catch 22 situation saying, If you ban it, there are situations to it. If you allow it, there are issues with it.

Forever changed

The alleged perpetrator of the New Zealand mosque attacks distributed a more than 70-page document before the attack. Its content called foreign immigrants invaders, a signal to many that the man in police custody is a white supremacist.

I don't think its (white supremacy) any longer a fringe movement, it is certainly coming of age. It is being globalized at a very rapid pace, said Erroll Southers, a professor of national and homeland security at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Southers asserts one reason for increased white supremacist rhetoric hangs on immigration and a notion that there's a ticking clock down to the eventual what these extremists will call white genocide of their respective communities in nations around the world.

Another factor says Southers is the issue is one of believing that there's no longer a place for white people [in the world], and unfortunately this is an international threat that knows no borders and they believe that the only way to combat this is now violence.

And that is a concern for the Muslim community in New Zealand.

Anwar explains that violent speech tends to begin in other places and then gradually it comes down to Australia and by the time it arrives to New Zealand, it's quite far away (been diluted and is not as intense)... thats why what happened here is unprecedented.

While the history of New Zealand has changed after the attacks, said Anwar, That doesnt mean we, as a people, have changed. We stand united together as one, and we are supportive of each other.

But, he said, the fear will always be there. Once its happened, it can happen again.

Widespread government response continues

Sarah Stewart-Black, director of New Zealands Ministry of Civil Defense and Emergency Management, spent the first half of Tuesday visiting several locations throughout Christchurch to understand more about the governments response thus far.

It was important for me to come down and connect with people on the ground to see how everyone is doing and check on the pressure points, and [how] we government can work with the community to provide the right assistance, she said.

Stewart-Black also met with members of the Muslim community to better understand what their needs are and how they are changing, because, as time is moving on the needs of the families are changing and we want to be responsive to that.

Beyond addressing the immediate needs of the Muslim community, Katrina Casey from the Ministry of Education, noted that the ministrys traumatic incident teams are in constant contact and visiting priorities schools (a facility that has direct connections either to victims, and/or parents of victims, and/or staff, and/or the Muslim community).

The teams, she says are working to make sure schools and early childhood centers getting the right level of support throughout the nation.

This is not something where our support will be only this week, as support will remain as long as it's needed, and we think that will be for some time to come, Casey said.

The governments response has been appreciated says Anwar, which is why his organization is looking to collaborate with various emergency management organizations to effectively distribute the more than $5.6 million thats been raised online since Friday through various online donation platforms.

He says that with the funds collected, and by working with officials, there wont be anything missing in terms of providing assistance, not only to those directly affected by Fridays shooting, but to the larger community as a whole.

VOA's Ira Mellman contributed to this report.
NATO is to receive the first of five Northrop Grumman high-altitude drones in the third quarter after years of delays, giving the alliance its own spy drones for the first time, the German government told lawmakers.

Thomas Silberhorn, state secretary in the German Defense Ministry, said the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) drone would be delivered to an air base in Sigonella, Italy, followed by four additional systems, including drones and ground stations built by Airbus, later in the year.

NATO plans to use the aircraft, a derivative of Northrop's Global Hawk drone, to carry out missions ranging from protection of ground troops to border control and counter-terrorism. The drones will be able to fly for up to 30 hours at a time in all weather, providing near real-time surveillance data.

Northrop first won the contract for the AGS system from NATO in May, 2012, with delivery of the first aircraft slated for 52 months later. However, technical issues and flight test delays have delayed the program, Silberhorn said.

Andrej Hunko, a member of the radical Left opposition party, called for Germany to scrap its participation in the program, warning of spiraling costs and the risk that it could escalate the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

"The drones are closely linked to a new form of warfare," he said. "They stand for an arms race that will see existing surveillance and spy systems replaced with new platforms."

Silberhorn, in a previously unreported response to a parliamentary query from Hunko, said NATO had capped the cost of the program at 1.3 billion euros ($1.47 billion) in 2007.

Germany, which is funding about a third of system, scrapped plans to buy its own Global Hawk drones amid spiraling costs and certification problems, and is now negotiating with Northrop to buy several of its newer model Triton surveillance drones.

Fifteen NATO countries, led by the United States, will pay for the AGS system, but all 29 alliance nations are due to participate in its long-term support.

Germany has sent 76 soldiers to Sigonella to operate the surveillance system and analyze its findings, Silberhorn said.

He said a total of 132 German soldiers would eventually be assigned to AGS, of whom 122 would be stationed in Sigonella.

NATO officials had no immediate comment on the program's status or whether Northrop faced penalties for the delayed delivery.

No comment was available from Northrop.
Attacks last Friday on Muslims worshipping at their mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, have sent shock waves throughout the Muslim world. VOA Turkish and Urdu language service reporters visited Muslims in the Washington, D.C., area and report that their reactions range from fear and sadness to determination to stand up to terror. Mosques in the United States boosted their security during Friday prayers. VOA's Zlatica Hoke has more.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is urging lawmakers to join her in never uttering the name of the man accused of killing 50 worshippers at two Christchurch mosques last Friday.

During an emotional address before Parliament Tuesday, Prime Minister Ardern said the suspected gunman is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist, but he will, when I speak, be nameless.

I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost, rather than the name of the man who took them, Ardern said.

Authorities have accused 28-year-old Australian Brenton Harris Tarrant of committing the horrific attack. He is the only person in custody linked to the killings and has been charged with murder.

Tarrant has not yet entered a plea. Media reports say he has refused a lawyer and will represent himself in court proceedings. His next court appearance is April 5.

Prime Minister Ardern said her government will launch an inquiry into whether the countrys law enforcement and intelligence agencies missed any signs about Tarrant and his intentions.She also expressed her frustrations about U.S.-based social media giant Facebook for allowing Tarrant to livestream the attack, as well as the fact that the footage was still online four days later.

We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and what is said is not the responsibility of the place where they are published, Ardern said in her speech to parliament.They are the publisher, not just the postman. There cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility.



Facebook says it removed 1.5 million versions of the video of the massacre in during the first 24 hours after the attack.

Ardern has said she was one of more than 30 recipients of a 74-page white nationalist manifesto emailed by Tarrant nine minutes before his alleged attacks. In the manifesto, Tarrant allegedly denounced Muslims and called immigrants "invaders."

Meanwhile, relatives of the dead are anxiously for awaiting authorities to release their bodies so they can bury their loved ones.The prime minister said Monday the bodies of all 50 victims will be returned to their families by Wednesday for burial as soon as possible in accordance with Muslim tradition.

She said that six disaster victim identification experts have flown in from Australia to help in the identification process.

About 60 volunteers, some who have traveled from Australia, are helping with the ritual cleansing of the victims before burial.

The names of the victims have not been made public, although a preliminary list has been shared with relatives.

Thirty people remain hospitalized in the Christchurch hospital, nine of them in critical condition.A 4-year-old child in critical condition has been transferred to a hospital in Auckland for further treatment.

Prime Minister Ardern said Monday she will reveal the decisions her Cabinet members have reached about reforming New Zealands gun laws within the following days.

Mass shootings and violent crime are rare in New Zealand, a country of nearly five million people. Until Friday, the country's worst mass shooting was in 1990, when a gunman killed 13 people in the small town of Aramoana.
Nicaragua's government and opposition accused each other of undermining the latest round of political dialogue Monday, after police arrested more than 100 at a weekend protest.



The opposition Civic Alliance condemned the government's "violent repression" of Saturday's march, in which it said some 164 people were arrested. The group said in a statement that it was frustrated that the talks had not produced results, including the release of hundreds of people it considers political prisoners.



The government complained that opposition representatives participating in the negotiations were part of the march, which it labeled a "provocation." Protests against President Daniel Ortega's government have been effectively banned since September.



The government said opposition negotiators' participating in Saturday's protest was "inconceivable, contradictory and unbelievable." It said there were 107 arrests and the detainees were released hours later.



The sides had met Friday, and before Saturday's protest were expected to resume talks Monday.



Mario Arana, an economist participating in the dialogue as a representative of the private sector, said the talks were suspended for the time being. "The mediators have work to do," he said.



The Vatican's ambassador to Nicaragua, Waldemar Sommertag, who has mediated the talks, asked for patience Monday. Responding to criticism that he seemed to be siding with the government, Sommertag said he had no personal interest and was giving his all to brokering the talks.



Luis Rosadilla, representative of the Organization of American States, called on those involved to build a good atmosphere for dialogue. "The government must show the political will to overcome the crisis," he said.



According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, at least 325 people have died in protests or related violence since April 2018. Some 700 are believed to be in government custody.



Also Monday, Robert Palladino, a U.S. State Department spokesman, condemned the repression of Saturday's march and the arrests. In a statement, he called for the government to immediately release those who were "arbitrarily" detained, guarantee freedom of expression and assembly, and commit to holding early elections.
North Korea believes there are no legitimate reasons to maintain sanctions against the country since it has not conducted nuclear and missile testing for well over a year, a North Korean diplomat said Tuesday.

"The U.S. publicly recognized the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) had discontinued nuclear tests and rocket launches for the past 15 months" However, it does nothing to remove U.S. sanctions as corresponding measures, diplomat Ju Yong Chol said at the U.N.-sponsored Conference of Disarmament in Geneva.

Ju said disputes between the two countries should be resolved on a case-by-case basis in an effort to build trust but "Instead, they came up with the preposterous argument that sanctions relief is impossible prior to denuclearization."

Ju's remarks came in response to a senior U.S. arms control official who said the only way Pyongyang can achieve stability is to abandon its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. "Our stance is unwavering with regards to North Korea," Yleem Poblete, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, said in Geneva.

Poblete also called on countries to stop any weapons or military collaborations with North Korea, saying, "You are violating U.N. Security Council resolutions that explicitly prohibit such transfers," she said without identifying countries.

North Korea is mulling a suspension of negotiations with the U.S. and may reconsider a freeze on missile and nuclear tests unless the U.S. makes concessions, a senior Pyongyang diplomat said last week, according to news accounts from Pyongyang.

South Korea is seeking to end the impasse after last month's summit in Vietnam between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ended several hours early.

"We agree with the view that no deal is better than a bad deal ... However, in reality, it is difficult to achieve complete denuclearization at one stroke," Seoul's presidential Blue House said in a statement Monday. "I think we need to reconsider the so-called all or nothing strategy."

Trump said after the summit that North Korea had wanted "sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn't do that ... we had to walk away from it."

But Pyongyang disputed Trump's claim, with Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho maintaining North Korea made "realistic" suggestions in exchange for a partial lifting of sanctions."
Authorities in Afghanistan confirmed Monday that the Taliban captured 58 government forces during recent fighting in a northwestern district bordering Turkmenistan.

Another 58 Afghan soldiers who had taken refuge in the neighboring Central Asian country after fleeing the insurgent offensive in Bala Murghab have returned home, the Defense Ministry said. It added a search operation was underway in the border district to free the hostages.

The Afghan foreign ministry, in a separate statement, said it "appreciates the warm welcome extended to the citizens of Afghanistan and health care provided to them" by the Turkmenistan government.

The Taliban has kept the hotly contested Afghan district in the Badghis province under pressure for more than two weeks, killing dozens of government forces and reportedly capturing about 200 others.

While many parts and key security outposts are said to have fallen to insurgents, Afghan officials insist government forces are still holding the Bala Murghab district center.

The Taliban on Sunday released pictures on social media of 72 captured Afghan security forces, saying they "surrendered" to the insurgents in the fighting in Bala Murghab. It was not possible to independently verify the claims.

A major Taliban attack a week ago in the district eliminated an entire Afghan National Army company.

The insurgents claim they either control or have a strong presence in a majority of Badghis' six districts. It was not possible to independently verify the insurgents' claims.

The Taliban is ramping up battlefield attacks against Afghan forces ahead of announcing its so-called "spring offensive," due in coming weeks, when hostilities intensify.

Meanwhile, the insurgent group is also engaged in direct talks with the United States to negotiate a political settlement to the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Both sides noted at the end of their last round of discussions on March 12 that they have made significant progress toward ending the war. The dialogue is seeking the withdrawal of U.S.-led foreign forces from Afghanistan in return for Taliban's guarantee to prevent Afghan territory from becoming a hub for international terrorists.
CHICAGO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Amlan International, a global leader in the development of innovative products that improve intestinal health and productivity for livestock, announces the addition of Ms. Clare Mari Torralba as Regional Sales Director for the Asia-Pacific region (APEC). In her new role, Ms. Torralba will plan and execute Amlans sales strategy and manage the regional sales team to deliver products and services that ensure long-term customer value and profitability.



Ms.Torralba brings extensive sales leadership in the feed additive industry to Amlan. Her experience includes serving as Sales Manager, Regional Vice President and most recently as Head of Global Business for Evonik Industries. Her proven professional expertise is in P&L management of multi-cultural businesses.

We are extremely proud to welcome Ms. Torralba to the Amlan/Oil-Dri family, said Flemming L. Mahs, President of Amlan International, a Nevada corporation. Her elevated knowledge of sales, management and animal health makes her an ideal addition to the team.

I am thrilled to be a part of the growing team of accomplished animal health professionals, Torralba said. I look forward to building an empowered, customer-focused sales organization and driving the business of Amlan International to even greater levels of success.

For more information about Amlans product portfolio, visit amlan.com .

About Amlan International

Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE: ODC), a Delaware corporation doing business as Amlan International, has grown its product offering across the intestinal health and AGP-alternative market, driven largely by the research conducted at its laboratory campus in Vernon Hills, Illinois. In 2017, the company added the Richard M. Jaffee Laboratory for Applied Microbiology to the campus. In 2013, the companys global reach expanded with the establishment of its China subsidiary in Shenzhen.

Amlan International sells animal health products outside of the United States. Product-associated claims may differ based on government requirements and product availability may vary by country.

Reagan B. Culbertson

Media Contact

press@amlan.com





A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1076dcc8-8f04-4144-ad23-337837999677
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo headed to the Middle East Tuesday for regional security talks in Kuwait, Israel and Lebanon as Washington looks to draw new support in its opposition to Iranian aggression.

The top U.S. diplomat stops first in Kuwait City, where he said he plans to discuss U.S. strategic plans in the region and energy issues with Kuwaiti officials.

In Israel, his next stop on the five-day trip, Pompeo plans to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is headed to a tough April 9 re-election contest even as Netanyahu is embroiled in a corruption investigation and faces allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Pompeo, in comments to reporters en route to the Middle East, dismissed the suggestion that his meeting with Netanyahu could be seen as the U.S. intruding in the Israeli election in support of Netanyahu.

A senior State Department official said last week that Pompeo would not be meeting with Netanyahu's opponents, but Netanyahu alone as the current head of the Israeli government.

"So, there's always an election," Pompeo said. "We've got an election a year away. They've got one that's less than a month away. I'm going to Israel because of the important relationship we have. Our relationship is between the United States and Israel the same way that theirs is between Israel and the United States. Leaders will change in both countries over time. That relationship matters, no matter who the leaders are."

Netanyahu is visiting Washington next week for the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful Jewish lobbying group in the United States, and also could meet with President Donald Trump.Pompeo said the recent U.S. shift away from terminology describing the West Bank and Syria's Golan Heights as "Israeli-occupied" to that of "controlled" by the Jewish state was not accidental.

He said that the characterization in a recent State Department report on human rights around the world about Israeli control of the disputed territories "was a factual statement about how we observe the situation. And we think it's very accurate, and we stand behind it."

Pompeo said that on his third stop, in Beirut, "we'll spend a lot of time talking with the Lebanese government about how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hezbollah present to them. Financial, economic, all the assistance we have provided to the Lebanese Armed Forces, talk to them about those serious issues.And meet with some of the religious leadership of the country, as well."

The U.S. considers Hezbollah, a militant Islamist political group, as a pro-Iranian "terrorist" organization, even though it is represented in the coalition government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a U.S. ally.
Yogita has to fetch water up to six times a day - sometimes going out in the middle of the night - from a hand pump about half a kilometer from her house in India's Madhya Pradesh state, leaving her baby son with a neighbor.

In the summer, her husband cycles three kilometers to get the family's water, and shouts at the 25-year-old if she cannot prepare meals at the right time because she is out getting water.

"I haven't eaten anything all day as fetching water was the most important task at hand," she said in a report from international charity WaterAid showing the impact of global consumption on water-short communities worldwide.

Exports of crops - like coffee, rice, avocados and cotton - are important sources of income for many countries.

But large amounts of water are used to produce them, even as poor communities struggle to get enough for their basic needs, a situation made worse by climate change, WaterAid said in the report published on Tuesday.

The world must ensure "the push for economic development through exports of food and clothing does not imperil current and future generations' access to water", said WaterAid UK Chief Executive Tim Wainwright ahead of World Water Day on March 22.

India, for example, is the world's third largest exporter of groundwater, accounting for 12 percent of the global total.

Meanwhile, the rate of depletion of its groundwater jumped by 23 percent between 2000 and 2010, and as many as 1 billion of its people live in water-scarce areas, WaterAid said.

Under global development goals agreed in 2015, governments pledged to provide access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030.

But three in 10 people, or just over 2 billion, still do not have a "safely managed" service, meaning a water source on the premises - such as a piped supply or a well - free from fecal and chemical contamination.

In India, the government has done "reasonably well" in providing clean water close to people's homes, WaterAid India Chief Executive VK Madhavan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Yet three-quarters of households still do not have water on tap, and there is a major problem with contamination by arsenic, nitrates, fluoride and salt, he added.

Priorities for the Indian government are to improve water quality and expand a pilot project to provide piped water in villages from 115 districts to the whole country, he said.

Poor pay more

The 2019 U.N. World Water Development Report, also launched on Tuesday, said that while safe, clean drinking water and sanitation are human rights, the world is not on track to provide those things to everyone by 2030.

People who are poor or marginalized due to gender, age, ethnicity or religious identity are also more likely to have limited access to proper water and sanitation, the report noted.

It explores how to help three groups in that category: families living in urban slums, smallholder farmers in rural areas, and people uprooted by conflicts and disasters.

Editor-in-chief Rick Connor of UNESCO said that in cities, rich homes with piped water tended to pay far less per liter, while the poor in slums often had to buy water from trucks, kiosks and other vendors, shelling out 10 to 20 times more.

"The misperception is that they don't have water because they can't afford it - and that is completely wrong," with some spending up to 30 percent of their salaries on water, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Policies to ease that financial pressure include putting in stand-pipes shared by several households, and designing tariffs and giving rebates to make water more affordable.

In rural areas, one key solution is rainwater harvesting and storage systems to tide communities over in a drought and provide water to irrigate crops, such as a U.N.-backed program called "1 million cisterns for the Sahel" in West Africa.

For refugees, meanwhile, aid agencies are increasingly trying to provide water supplies and sanitation in ways that also benefit local people and avoid tensions, Connor said.

In northern Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp, for example, the government and agencies rehabilitated wells, and fixed up water and wastewater systems for Syrian refugees and communities nearby, easing pressure on limited resources, the report said.
Pope Francis refused to accept the resignation Tuesday of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who was convicted of failing to report sexual abuse allegations to police.

Barbarin said Tuesday he submitted his resignation at the Vatican on Monday but the pope "spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept" it.

Francis instead asked Barbarin, the most senior French cleric involved in the Catholic Church's worldwide pedophilia scandal, to do what Barbarin believes is is best for the Lyon archdiocese. The 68-year-old cardinal has decided to take a leave of absence and has asked his assistant to assume leadership of the archdiocese.

Barbarin was sentenced to a six-month suspended sentence earlier this month for failing to report a predator priest to authorities. The priest, Benard Preynat, allegedly sexually abused boy scouts in the 1980's and 1990's.

Barbarin plans to appeal his conviction, which was applauded by abuse victims as the beginning of a new era of accountability in the French Church.

The pope has previously defended Barbarin, saying in 2016 that his resignation before a trial would be "an error, imprudent."
China has released a lengthy white paper that analysts say seeks to justify its anti-terrorism fight and de-radicalization measures in the western region of Xinjiang, where up to 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are estimated to have been forced into detention in what Beijing calls vocational training centers.

The move, observers say, shows that China has already gone into overdrive to develop a counter-narrative and that it appears to be winning the propaganda war as many countries and Muslim organizations remain silent about the mass detention.

Still, while the paper could've been an opportunity to set the record straight China did not say how many are being held in the centers.

Estimates overseas are that more than a million have been caught up by the government extremism dragnet. The paper said that since 2014, nearly 13,000 "terrorists" have been arrested in Xinjiang.



Lengthy white paper



Of the 13,000, those who are assessed to still be socially dangerous would be relocated to the vocational training centers, or what rights groups called internment camps, after having served their time in jail.



Also, those who were exposed to extreme activism, but have not yet committed any crimes or are believed to be high risk of resorting to violent acts have been kept at the vocational training centers, according to the white paper.

The white paper concludes that Xinjiang is Chinas key battlefield to counter terrorism and asserts that its policies in the region have made a great contribution to the globes fight against terrorism.



Rights groups have voiced concern over China's emboldened stance, calling on international society to use sanctions against Beijing to counter its oppression of Muslims in Xinjiang.



The World Uighur Congress swiftly denounced the white paper, calling it a deliberate distortion of the truth, and arguing that Chinas forced detention of more than one million Uighurs is unlawful.



Accusations named in the white paper are hostile in nature and lack transparency. Uighurs suppressed and arrested by the local Chinese government there have never been legally convicted through due process before they are identified as terrorists, argued Dilxat Raxit, spokesman of the Germany-headquartered exile group.



Unlawful detention of Uighurs



Never has China provided any evidence to back up what it called a series of terrorist [acts], he said, adding that the accused have no way to defend or clear their names.



According to the report, extremists had carried out thousands of attacks in China between 1990 and 2016.



Raxit said Chinas counter-terrorism in Xinjiang represents its disguised efforts to carry out Sinification among the ethnic group.

We urge the international society not to be deceived by Chinas continued attempts, through diplomatic means or [international] propaganda, to cover up its true intention of building re-education concentration camps [in Xinjiang], he said, calling on international society to impose effective sanctions and stop Chinas rights violations.



He added that, if China has nothing to hide, it should immediately allow the United Nations to send an investigation team to Xinjiang  one of the recommendations Beijing flatly rejected during its five-year periodic review at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva last week.



On the sidelines of council meetings, Chinas Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng told reporters that Beijing may gradually ease back the scale of re-education facilities if Xinjiangs anti-terrorism fight shows signs of improving.



But he insisted that those human rights cases reported in the periodic review are not human rights issues, but issues related to Chinas judicial sovereignty and fairness.



Propaganda war



This shows Chinas attempt to defend their brutal measures in violating human rights principles. Therefore, those who persist in the truth should debunk Chinese officials narrative, Albert Ho, the chairperson of Hong Kong Alliance, responded in a press statement on Monday.

This is not some political or abstract issue, Oh, 1 to 3 million people are in the camp. There is a real human tragedy behind this, Rushan Abbas Executive director for Campaign for Uighurs, whose sister and aunt as well as other family members were taken to the camps, told VOA.

James Leibold, an associate professor in Chinese Politics and Asian Studies at La Trobe University, said that the latest report shows that every part of Chinas propaganda machine has kicked in to help disseminate its messages across a range of platforms be it social or state media with an aim to win the propaganda war on Xinjiang policies.



As far as I view it, it's an attempt to create a kind of credible and palatable counter-narrative that can be consumed and used by Chinas trading partners to disarm growing international criticism of the really severe human rights abuses that are occurring in Xinjiang today, Leibold said.



Leibold added that unfortunately, China at the present has the winning edge as few countries, other than the U.S. and some European countries, have come on strong on China.



In the Muslim world, Turkey is the only country that has been outspoken about Chinas treatment of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. In contrast, the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Kazakhstan have both sided with Chinas anti-terrorism stance.



'Thought crime'



The white paper also sheds light on China's broad definition of what it considers to be extremists. That includes not only those who have been legally convicted but also those who have committed thought crime, notes Hong-Kong based Shih Chienyu, secretary-general of the Central Asian Studies Association in Taiwan.

It means that any Xinjiang Muslim could be regarded as radicalized provided their words and deeds do not conform [with] official [the state's] interpretations and practices of Islamic teachings in China, Shih said in a recent report.



The manifestation of radicalism is almost all-embracing, including the ways and content of preaching, marriages and funerals, property inheritance, religious appearance and costumes, and the format of education. Everything in daily life could belong to a category that requires regulation, Shih added.



Shih, however, concluded that Chinas strategy in Xinjiang, which involves detention or limiting individual freedom, will turn out to be a counter-productive failure as such a large-scale detention is not only hard to sustain but also invokes resentment that will eventually be difficult to eliminate.

VOA's Mandarin Service reporter Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
Children born of rape in South Sudan's civil war must be integrated into their families and communities to ensure lasting peace in the country, aid worker Christine Ngbaazande said on Monday as she won a prestigious award.

Sometimes looked on as enemies, such children are often rejected not only by their communities but also by their mothers, said Ngbaazande, who works for global charity World Vision.

Ostracized, they grow up with few options, leaving them vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups which perpetuates the violence, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Yambio in the south of the country.

On Monday, Ngbaazande was named winner of the Bond Humanitarian Award, which recognizes hidden "superheroes" working in often dangerous environments.

Rape has been used as a weapon of war in South Sudan, where conflict has killed about 400,000 people and uprooted millions more since flaring up in 2013, two years after the country gained independence from Sudan.

Ngbaazande, a 41-year-old mother-of-three, works with faith, community and youth leaders, as well as women's groups, to counter the stigma faced by children born of rape.

"The girls cannot accept these children, and family members are not interested in supporting them," she said. "But these children are God's children ... and they are the future generation of the country."

One of the girls she has helped is a 13-year-old who was raped by armed men after becoming separated from her parents during violence. After giving birth, she left her baby at a church.

"After a lot of counseling she has accepted the child. She has a nice relationship now with him," Ngbaazande said.

'Important Work'

But changing attitudes is hard.

"It's not easy to change mindsets  especially with men.

It's not easy for them to accept what a woman is saying," said Ngbaazande, who, unusually for a woman, zips around Yambio on a motorbike.

She recalled one case where a father forced his 14-year-old daughter to marry a 65-year-old man, threatening to kill her if she refused. When the teenager fled to the bush she was raped and became pregnant.

The aid worker said the father eventually realized he had made a mistake and welcomed back the girl and her child.

Ngbaazande's passion for her work is partly spurred by her own experience as a refugee, having been forced to flee to the Democratic Republic of Congo as a teenager.

She said abandoned and stigmatized children were at risk of joining armed groups "because they think there is nothing else they can do in their life."

"My work is to ensure these children are integrated because the best place for a child to be is in a family," she added. "If we don't intervene and just leave these children ... it increases violence. That's why this work is very important. It creates peace (in) communities and in the country."

The conflict was triggered by a dispute between President Salva Kiir and his then deputy Riek Machar. The two men signed a peace deal in September.

Previous agreements have unraveled, but Ngbaazande says her country has turned a corner.

"I believe 100 percent we have a permanent peace," she said. "The challenge now is how to restore total peace to the minds of our vulnerable women and children who have experienced a lot of violence  and give them hope."

Bond, an umbrella group of international development organizations, announced the award at its annual conference in London.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren was walking down a street in the town of Cleveland in the rural Mississippi Delta on Monday when she stopped to examine a small home's sagging roof.

"You can be sure there's a lot of love in these homes. They just can't afford (to fix) it," state Senator Willie Simmons told Warren during the Democratic presidential candidate's three-day campaign swing through Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama.

Affordable housing is a chief concern for the senator from Massachusetts, who recently reintroduced a $500 billion housing plan she says will create millions of housing units and reduce rental costs by 10 percent.

But the trip to the deep South, the first extended tour of the region by any of the more than dozen Democrats vying for the party's 2020 White House nomination, also gave Warren an opportunity to try to set herself apart from the crowded and diverse field.

During meetings with housing advocates in Memphis, Tennessee, and walking tours of small Mississippi towns, Warren, who is white, tested and tailored her central message of combating income inequality to black voters, a critical Democratic voting bloc.

The trip outside the mostly white early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire that are drawing much of the early 2020 campaign focus signaled that Warren, 69, intends to make a play for support in other states that also could prove important to securing the nomination.

"I'm running to be president of all the people, and it's important to go around the country and have a chance to talk with people face to face," Warren told reporters after a town hall that drew about 500 people to a high school in Memphis.

Democrats will have to look beyond the traditional early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina for opportunities to pick up voters next year if an obvious front-runner does not immediately emerge.

Alabama and Tennessee are among the states holding their 2020 nominating primaries on the March 3 "Super Tuesday" following South Carolina's contest. Mississippi is set to host its primary in mid-March. All three states have sizeable black populations.

Being first to those states will not guarantee votes. But it could win local endorsements and help recruit volunteers for Warren, who lags in national 2020 Democratic presidential opinion polls behind Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris.

"Warren's biggest advantage in making this trip is that she will likely have the attention of a critical mass of African-American Democratic primary voters in a cycle where the black vote will drive the nomination process," said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, who managed African-American advertising for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.

'Visiting helps'

Clinton beat Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential nominating race in large part because his insurgent campaign failed to gain traction with black voters and flamed out when the contest moved to the South from the early voting states.

In the general election, Clinton's loss to Republican Donald Trump was partly due to the fact that the black turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

African-American turnout in 2016 dropped 7 points from four years earlier, when Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, was re-elected.

During her trip, Warren touted how her housing plan was aimed at closing the wealth and housing gap between white and black Americans. Her proposal would give first-time homebuyers who live in low-income, formerly segregated areas grants to use for down payments.

It is specifically tailored to benefit black families whose relatives faced discriminatory housing policies in the years leading up to the U.S. civil rights era.

Many residents said they appreciated Warren taking the time to come and focus on their issues. On Tuesday, she planned to tour historic sites in Selma, Alabama, where the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march marked a turning point in the civil rights movement.

"Visiting helps. It lets the people down here know that somebody in Washington does care about them," said the Rev. Alice Crenshaw, 75, whose church marked the start of Warren's walking tour in Cleveland.

The tour of Cleveland on Monday ended at Senator's Place, the restaurant owned by Simmons, the Mississippi Democratic state senator. Simmons has not endorsed Warren, but like others she spent time with during the campaign swing, he seemed warm to her candidacy.

Sandra Miller-Foster, 68, arrived at Senator's Place knowing there would be a special visitor but not who. She liked what she heard from Warren.

Asked to assess the Democratic field, which includes two black U.S. senators vying for the nomination, she said policy, not race, would earn her support.

"All people want is a decent job, to own their own home and be able to send their kids to school. We've got to know what you'll do for Mississippi," Miller-Foster said.
Spain this month marked the 15th anniversary of the 2004 train bombings that killed 193 people with calls to reopen investigations into the deadliest terrorist attack in the kingdom's history, amid allegations the government covered up links between jihadist bombers and the Basque separatist group, ETA.

Spain's highest jurisdictional court, the Audencia Nacional, announced last week it is instructing the attorney general to review classified information on the bombings and consider new evidence. Officials with the attorney general's office have said they are forming a task force with about 200 law enforcement officers to handle the extensive analysis and security work that may be required if the the politically-charged case is reopened.

At remembrance services in Madrid, conservative opposition leader Pablo Casado called on the government to "declassifiy any information that helps get to the truth, which," he warned, "someone may try to conceal or use in some way."

Jose Luis Avalos, a spokesman for the Socialist government, accused Casado of playing politics with the suffering of victims and said the conservative Popular Party had "built a great lie" around the terrorist attacks that took place when it was in power.

At the time of the bombings, Popular Party prime minister Jose Maria Aznar initially blamed ETA. Evidence later surfaced pointing to Islamic terrorists as the ones who put a total of ten explosive devices on commuter trains and at rail stations in various parts of Madrid, all going off within minutes of each other.

Bombings just before elections

The attacks took place just three days before scheduled general elections which the socialists won handily by campaigning on the Aznar government's failure to identify the perpetrators of one of the worst terror attacks to ever hit Europe.

Al-Qaida claimed the coordinated bombings were punishment for Spain's alliance with the United States and Britain for the invasion of Iraq in the second Gulf War. Immediately upon replacing Aznar, Socialist prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero withdrew the 5,000 troops that Spain had contributed to the U.S.-led multi-national force in Iraq.

An investigation conducted under the socialist government assigned full blame for the bombings to a group of about 20 mostly Moroccan-born suspects who had records as petty criminals and drug dealers and who authorities said had been recruited by al-Qaida in Spain.

Some analysts have since cast doubts on the investigation, which critics say fell short of explaining how the attacks were organized and ignored evidence pointing to possible involvement by the Basque separatist group.

"Zapatero did not allow the security services and the attorney general to weave the threads leading to ETA because it wouldn't fit his needle hole," charged investigative journalist Luis del Pino, who has written a book and made a documentary on the bombings.

Link to ETA

The head of the Islamic cell charged with conducting the train bombings, Jamal Ahmidan, operated for years as an underworld drug dealer and gunman in the Basque city San Sebastian, an ETA stronghold.

Suarez Trashorras, the supplier of stolen dynamite used in the attacks, told police that Ahmidan had said he knew two members of ETA who had been arrested while moving tons of explosives days before he picked up the dynamite, according to the newspaper El Mundo.

Ahmidan died along with the six other suspected train bombers when an explosion demolished their hideout during a siege by police.

But a forensic analysis that raised suspicions of possible ETA links was omitted from an official report on the bombings submitted to a Spanish judge leading the investigations in 2005 according to police officials. The same sources have told journalists that traces of boric acid found at an apartment rented by one of the bombers had been only been detected previously at an ETA safe house.

Missing information

The analysts said that it was a rare method used to preserve or conceal explosives from detection.

"This brings us to the possibility that the author (or) authors of these acts are related among each other and/or may have had the same type of formation and/or could be the same authors," according to the forensic report prepared by the police scientific unit that later turned up among documents requested by former interior minister Alfredo Rubalcaba.

Former National Police Director General Agustin Diaz de Mera has said that police officials who elaborated the official report left out the information due to "political pressures."
Spanish far-right party Vox has signed up three former generals to run for parliament in next month's general election, two of whom expressed support for the legacy of former right-wing dictator Francisco Franco by signing a petition last year.



The inclusion of openly pro-Franco candidates with senior military backgrounds underscores the ground that Vox has broken in a country that had largely shied away from far-right, militaristic politics since Franco's rule ended with his death in 1975.



Former Gens. Agustin Rosety and Alberto Asarta will run as parliamentary candidates for the provinces of Cadiz and Castellon, Vox said. Another former general, Manuel Mestre, is running in Alicante, according to the party. Vox had already enlisted another general to run for mayor in Palma de Mallorca.



Rosety and Asarta signed a manifesto last year in support of Franco's legacy, including the military uprising that ignited the 1936-39 Spanish civil war and resulted in his rule until 1975.



Asarta signed the manifesto last year, according to a copy of it, while Rosety has signed it subsequently, said local media.

The manifesto, which was has been signed by about 600 former members of the armed forces, was issued as a response to the Socialist government's plans to remove Franco's remains from a state mausoleum outside Madrid, according to the promoters. The mausoleum has long been seen by critics as a monument to fascism.



Latest opinion polls show support for Vox, which opposes gender equality laws and immigration and has a strong stance against independence for Spain's regions, as high as 12.1 percent. That could translate into 38 seats in the national parliament at the April 28 election.



Vox grabbed attention last year when it became the first far-right party in Spain in more than four decades to score an electoral victory, winning seats in a local election in Andalusia.



The Franco mausoleum at the Valley of the Fallen has long been a source of controversy. The Socialist government said last Friday that the dictator's body would be removed on June 10 and reburied in the family tomb at a state cemetery outside Madrid.
Thousands of students, university professors and health workers rallied in Algiers on Tuesday calling for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to quit, and a new group headed by activists and opposition figures told the army not to interfere.

In the first direct public message to the generals from leaders emerging from nearly a month of mass protests against Bouteflika, the National Coordination for Change said the military should play its constitutional role without interfering in the peoples choice.

Bouteflika, who has ruled for 20 years, bowed to the protesters last week by announcing he would not stand for another term. But he stopped short of stepping down and said he would stay in office until a new constitution is adopted, effectively extending his present term.

His moves have done nothing to halt demonstrations, which peaked on Friday with hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets of Algiers and have continued into this week.

We will not stop our pressure until he (Bouteflika) goes, said student Ali Adjimi, 23. The people want you to leave, read a banner. Others shouted the people and the army are one.

The 82-year-old president has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, and protesters say he is in no fit health to rule.

We are fed up with this system. It must disappear forever, said Djilali Bahi, a doctor at Tuesdays demonstration.

ARMY RESPONSIBILITY

So far, soldiers have stayed in their barracks during the protests. But on Monday, Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Ahmed Gaed Salah hinted at a more active role, saying the army should take responsibility for finding a quick solution to the crisis.

Generals have traditionally wielded power behind the scenes in Algeria and have publicly intervened during pivotal moments, including cancelling an election in the early 1990s that Islamists were poised to win, triggering a decade of civil war.

The protest leaders issued their statement titled Platform of Change late on Monday, demanding Bouteflika step down before his term ends on April 28 and the government resign immediately.

We belong to the people so we are against extending Bouteflikas fourth term, said Mohamed Yousfi, head of one of the doctors unions.

Bouteflikas newly appointed deputy prime minister, Ramtane Lamamra, has launched a tour of allied countries seeking support. State radio said Lamamras trip, which began on Tuesday in Moscow, is aimed at reassuring Algerias international partners.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia, long a close military ally of Algeria, was concerned by the protests: We see attempts to destabilise the situation, and speak out against any interference in this process, he said.

Lamamra defended the governments reform proposals. Bouteflika has agreed to hand over power to an elected president, and the opposition will be allowed to take part in the cabinet that will oversee elections, he said at a joint press conference with Lavrov.

One opposition leader, Ali Benflis, urged the government not to make Algerias developments international.

Protesters have been calling for a generation of new leaders to replace a ruling elite dominated by the military, businessmen and veterans of the 1954-1962 independence war against France.

Algerian authorities have long been adept at manipulating a weak and disorganised opposition. But the mass demonstrations have emboldened well-known figures to lead the reform drive.

Prominent members of the new group include lawyer and activist Mustapha Bouchachi, opposition leader Karim Tabou and former treasury minister Ali Benouari, as well as Mourad Dhina and Kamel Guemazi, who belong to an outlawed Islamist party.

Zoubida Assoul, leader of a small political party, is the only woman in the group so far.

Bouteflika just trampled on the constitution after he decided to extend his fourth term, said the National Coordination for Change.

With dark memories of the 1990s civil war which cost an estimated 200,000 lives, many Algerians have long placed a priority on stability.

Bouteflika survived the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that toppled other regional leaders, using oil and gas wealth to buy support and the security services to tamp down dissent. But with the economy souring and a younger generation less fearful of change, he has yet to formulate a strategy to placate Algerians.

A free and democratic Algeria, doctors chanted at the demonstrations.
The United States needs to target banks that facilitate illicit transactions for Pyongyang to increase sanction pressure on North Korea to the maximum, said experts.



The U.N. Panel of Experts on North Korea has released a report detailing how the country evades sanctions with tactics such as illegal ship-to-ship transfers of embargoed goods and the operation of front companies abroad by North Korean government agencies.



The report indicated foreign banks facilitate North Korea's financial transactions for "illegal ship-to-ship transfer of petroleum products and an increasing number of ship-to-ship coal transfers." The report said "financial sanctions remain some of the most poorly implemented and actively evaded measures."



The report was released last week, in the wake of the February breakdown of the Hanoi summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The two leaders failed to agree on a denuclearization deal, with Washington refusing to accept Pyongyang's demand for comprehensive sanctions relief and Pyongyang rejecting Washington's request for full denuclearization.

Greater effectiveness



And while experts told VOA Korean that sanctions are working on North Korea, they suggested that tougher, more targeted sanctions, properly enforced, could be more effective in pressuring North Korea to denuclearize.



Joshua Stanton, a Washington attorney who helped draft the North Korean Sanctions Enforcement Act in 2016, thinks sanctions are "not enough" and "not property targeted." He suggests the U.S. should specifically target Chinese banks that facilitate illicit transactions for North Korea.

"Where we're really falling short is on pressuring the banks that hold the slush fund for North Korea's various government agencies," said Stanton. "Until we get serious about that, we will not be at maximum pressure. I will know that we have reached maximum pressure when I see the Treasury Department begin to issue really significant civil penalties against Chinese and other third-country banks."



George Lopez, a former member of the U.N. Panel of Experts for monitoring and implementing U.N. sanctions on North Korea, said "[Kim] does feel the pressure, even as his evasions succeed for the moment.  This is why he insisted on removal of these U.N. sanctions at the Hanoi summit."



Lopez continued, "This is maximum pronouncement of sanctions with minimal action to implement and enforce sanctions."



The report noted detailed sightings in North Korea of a Rolls-Royce Phantom, Mercedes-Benz limousines and Lexus LX 570 all-wheel-drive luxury SUVs, all in violation of sanctions on luxury items, according to the U.N. report.



Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said, "The North Korean demand for comprehensive sanctions relief at the Hanoi summit suggests that Pyongyang believes the sanctions are indeed biting pretty hard." He continued, "Whether this will be enough [to induce denuclearization] is hard to say."

U.N. measure



A U.N. Security Council resolution passed in 2016 bans foreign financial institutions from having correspondent relationships with North Korean banks and North Korean bank representatives from operating on the territory of U.N. member states.



Stanton said Trump stopped the Treasury Department from issuing a package of designations just prior to his first summit with Kim in June 2018.



William Newcomb, a former U.S. Treasury official who was on the U.N. Security Council's Panel of Experts on North Korea, said, "U.S. maximum pressure is crucially important because secondary sanctions can be used to hold violators, evaders and enablers financially and criminally accountable."



According to Stanton, North Korean government agencies operate "very significant multimillion dollars' " worth of money-laundering networks, such as Glocom, using Chinese banks.



The U.N. report indicates Glocom, a front company for North Korea selling sanctioned military equipment, is run by the country's Reconnaissance General Bureau agents who use "an extensive network of individuals, companies and offshore bank accounts" to conduct illicit financial activities. The report stated that a previous panel recommended that member states of the U.N. freeze bank accounts associated with Glocom.



Troy Stangarone, senior director at the Korea Economic Institute, said although sanctioning Chinese banks might not be sufficient because North Korea also uses cryptocurrency digital assets to secure financial transactions, "if the United States began targeting Chinese banks that have facilitated North Korea's transactions, it would begin to close off their ability to move money."



Stanton said, "The front companies and the ship-to-ship transfers are enabled by the fact that the banks aren't doing their job, and they're not doing their job because they're not afraid of enforcement."

Stiff penalties



Civil penalties that can be imposed on banks that conduct illicit transactions for North Korea, according to Stanton, can be substantial, depending on whether they neglected to exercise due diligence as required by U.S. law or willfully laundered money  in which case, any assets involved in transactions can be seized and forfeited.



Financial penalties can go as high as $9 billion, which was the case in 2014 for BNP Paribas, France's largest bank. It was fined for transferring billions of dollars for countries such as Sudan that were blacklisted by the U.S.

Earlier this month, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, and Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, reintroduced the bipartisan Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea (BRINK) Act, named after the American college student who died shortly after he arrived in the U.S. after being detained in North Korea.



The legislation calls for the U.S. to impose mandatory sanctions on foreign banks that conduct illicit financial transactions for North Korea.



Lopez also emphasized that effective enforcement on illicit North Korean businesses operating abroad would prevent any banking transactions.



"Banks could not facilitate the illicit monies these partnerships produce if these ventures were shut down via more effective enforcement," said Lopez. "It is the economic activities that need bank transfers that the sanctions must halt."
Orlando, Fla., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CNL Healthcare Properties II, a non-traded real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on seniors housing and healthcare properties, announced today that it has reached an agreement with HCP Medical Office Buildings, LLC to sell its Mid-America Surgery Center property for $15.4 million. The sale is expected to close in the second quarter of 2019 pending customary closing conditions and third-party consents. CNL Healthcare Properties II expects to use the net proceeds to satisfy debt secured by the property. The remaining proceeds, pending board approval, are expected to be used to make a special distribution to shareholders or for other corporate purposes.

Earlier this year and following the close of its offering, CNL Healthcare Properties II announced it formed a special committee of its board, comprised solely of its independent directors, to begin exploring strategic alternatives to maximize value to its shareholders. The special committee has engaged SunTrust Robinson Humphrey Inc., an independent investment banking firm, to serve as a financial advisor as it begins to explore strategic alternatives. These alternatives could include selling the companys assets and the distribution of net sales proceeds to shareholders, or a potential business combination or transaction with an unrelated third party or an affiliated party of the companys sponsor. Given that the company is actively selling or evaluating the sale of its assets as a part of this process, the board of directors of CNL Healthcare Properties II has unanimously voted to suspend quarterly distributions effective April 1.

The company also announced that its board of directors unanimously approved a new estimated net asset valuation (NAV) per share of $9.92 as of Dec. 31, 2018. This compares with the previous NAV per share of $10.06 as of Dec. 31, 2017.

The most recent appraised value of CNL Healthcare Properties IIs three assets was $66.6 million, up from the estimated value of $38.9 million for two properties in the 2017 NAV. However, the 2018 estimated NAV calculation includes a deduction for transaction costs related to the potential future sale of the companys assets as part of the companys recently launched strategic alternatives process. Estimated transaction costs were not included in the 2017 NAV calculation. Furthermore, to more accurately reflect per share estimated value and an expected economic outcome for shareholders, restricted shares currently held by the companys advisor were not included in the calculation of the 2018 NAV per share.

This is a dynamic and transitional time for the company and our shareholders as we earnestly begin the process of studying and executing on strategic alternatives, said Stephen H. Mauldin, president and CEO of CNL Healthcare Properties II. The pending sale of our medical office building as well as the increased appraised value of our portfolio both underscore the quality of the assets we have acquired. While our NAV per share decreased this year, we remain optimistic relative to potential outcomes as we pursue opportunities to maximize value for our shareholders.

The valuation work was performed by Robert A. Stanger & Co. Inc. (Stanger), an independent third-party valuation firm, in accordance with the companys valuation policy and the guidelines set forth by the Institute for Portfolio Alternatives the leading industry trade association. Stanger provided CNL Healthcare Properties II with a NAV per share range of $9.40 to $10.49. The valuation committee, comprised exclusively of independent directors, recommended the midpoint of $9.92 as the estimated NAV per share, and the recommendation was unanimously adopted by the board of directors. Please refer to the Form 8-K filed on March 19, 2019, for more information on the companys 2018 NAV.

About CNL Healthcare Properties II

CNL Healthcare Properties II elected to be taxed as a real estate investment trust (REIT) for U.S. federal income tax purposes beginning with the year ending Dec. 31, 2017, and its intention is to be organized and operate in a manner that allows it to remain qualified as a REIT for federal income tax purposes. Based in Orlando, Florida, CNL Healthcare Properties II invested in the seniors housing and medical office sectors. For more information, visit cnlhealthcarepropertiesii.com .

About CNL Financial Group

CNL Financial Group (CNL) is a private investment management firm providing real estate and alternative investments. Since inception in 1973, CNL and/or its affiliates have formed or acquired companies with more than $34 billion in assets. CNL is headquartered in Orlando, Florida. For more information, visit cnl.com .

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Statements above that are not statements of historical or current fact may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. CNL Healthcare Properties II (the Company) intends that such forward-looking statements be subject to the safe harbor created by Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are statements that do not relate strictly to historical or current facts, but reflect managements current understandings, intentions, beliefs, plans, expectations, assumptions and/or predictions regarding the future of the Companys business and its performance, the economy, and other future conditions and forecasts of future events, and circumstances. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as believes, expects, anticipates, intends, estimates, plans, continues, pro forma, may, will, seeks, should and could, and words and terms of similar substance in connection with discussions of future operating or financial performance, business strategy and portfolios, projected growth prospects, cash flows, costs and financing needs, legal proceedings, amount and timing of anticipated future distributions, and/or other matters. The Companys forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. While the Companys management believes its forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements are inherently susceptible to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. As with any projection or forecast, forward-looking statements are necessarily dependent on assumptions, data and/or methods that may be incorrect or imprecise, and may not be realized. The Companys forward-looking statements are based on managements current expectations and a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the Companys ability to control or accurately predict. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, the Companys actual results could differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors. These risks include that CNL Healthcare Properties II has limited operating history and there is no assurance that it will be able to achieve its investment objectives; that the board of directors may amend or revise investment and other policies without stockholder consent; that it may have difficulty funding distributions with funds provided by cash flows from operating activities; and that market and business conditions may affect its success, including changes in general or local economic or market conditions and changing demographics. Given these uncertainties, the Company cautions you not to place undue reliance on such statements.

All written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary note. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, publicly release the results of any revisions to its forward-looking statements to reflect new information, changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated subsequent events or circumstances, or changes to future operating results over time, except as otherwise required by law.

###
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and U.S. President Donald Trump are expected to discuss boosting trade and diplomatic ties when they meet Tuesday at the White House.

A senior Trump administration official told reporters ahead of Bolsonaro's visit that the two countries have had extensive talks about agricultural issues, and that tangible outcomes from those discussions could be announced in a joint statement Tuesday.

Other topics of focus include bringing the U.S. and Brazilian business communities closer, and cooperating on energy and other infrastructure initiatives.

The senior administration official also noted mutual support for Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has been recognized as Venezuelas legitimate leader by most Western countries, including the United States and Brazil.

The official said the Brazilian military can play a role in the Venezuelan crisis through its own ties with its counterparts in Venezuela to help protect civilians.

Bolsonaro won election last year, and has struck a pro-U.S., pro-Trump stance.

The United States and Brazil have signed several agreements already, including one that opens the possibility for U.S. companies to launch satellites from Brazil's Alcantara space center, and another waiving visa requirements for visitors traveling from the United States to Brazil.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday called the husband of one of his top aides, Kellyanne Conway, "a total loser" after lawyer and Trump critic George Conway suggested that Trump is increasingly mentally impaired.

George Conway is without qualifications in psychology.

But on Sunday, as Trump vented his wrath at a variety of targets in a hail of Twitter comments, Conway cited the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to claim that the president embodies a grandiose sense of self-importance," is "pre-occupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance" and shows signs of "irritability and aggressiveness."

His condition is getting worse, said Conway, a Republican attorney who was considered for the job of solicitor general by the Trump administration but withdrew from consideration.

His wife, a fixture on U.S. news shows defending Trump and by now accustomed to her husband's months of taunts against the president, dismissed his armchair assessment of Trump's mental stability.

"No, I don't share those concerns," she said Monday.

But the feud between George Conway and the president escalated Tuesday when Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said on Twitter that Trump "turned down Mr. Kellyanne Conway for a job he desperately wanted. He barely worked @TheJusticeDept and was either fired/quit, didnt want the scrutiny?"

He added, "Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success," claiming that Trump "doesn't even know him!" The couple, however, has attended black tie events together at the White House.

Trump retweeted Parscale's disparaging assessment of George Conway, saying, "A total loser!"

Within minutes of Trump's comment, George Conway replied, "Congratulations! You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job!

The president's doctor, after examining Trump last month, said he is healthy although overweight.

I am happy to announce the president of the United States is in very good health and I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his presidency, and beyond, White House doctor Sean Conley said.

George Conway helped co-found Checks and Balances, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers who have attacked Trump for the way he has handled legal and political situations during his 26-month presidency.

After earlier attacks on him, Trump called him "Mr. Kellyanne Conway" and said, "He's just trying to get publicity for himself."

But Trump's assessment of his key aide's spouse was once decidedly more favorable.

The Washington Post published a 2006 letter, a decade before Trump ran for the presidency, in which Trump, then a real estate mogul, praised George Conway for his work representing him in a dispute with tenants at his Trump World Tower condominium in New York.

"I want to thank you for your wonderful assistance in ridding Trump World Tower of some very bad people," Trump wrote Conway. "What I was most impressed with was how quickly you were able to comprehend a very bad situation."

Conway, 55, and Kellyanne Conway, 52, married in 2001 and have four children together.

Conway told one interviewer last year that he knows his wife does not appreciate his barbed comments about her boss, the president.

"But I've told her, I don't like the administration, so it's even," he said.
Uganda's president is denying support for rebels opposed to Rwanda's government as tensions between the two East African neighbors persist, raising fears of a possible armed conflict.

In a letter to Rwandan President Paul Kagame published on Tuesday in government-controlled media, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said that "there is no question of Uganda supporting anti-Rwanda elements."



Both presidents have recently made remarks seen as threatening to each other, with the Ugandan leader warning that "those who try to destabilize our country do not know our capacity" and Rwanda's president countering that "nobody anywhere can bring me to my knees."



Rwanda's government has closed a busy border crossing with Uganda, and Rwanda's government has ordered its citizens not to travel to Uganda.



An official with the Ugandan presidency confirmed Museveni authored the private letter to Kagame in effort to assuage the Rwandan leader's concerns. Uganda has been accused of extending help to the Rwanda National Congress, an opposition group in exile that is led by former Rwandan army chief Kayumba Nyamwasa.

Nyamwasa, who lives in South Africa, has survived at least two assassination attempts he believes were ordered by Rwandan authorities. Rwanda, which denies targeting Nyamwasa, has outlawed his group and accuses it of operating rebel cells in eastern Congo.



In the letter published in the Ugandan newspaper The New Vision, Museveni acknowledged he recently met with a member of the Rwanda National Congress who spoke of "bad things" happening in Rwanda and who "wanted us to support them."



Museveni also met separately with an exiled Rwandan tycoon, Tribert Rujugiro, who is accused by Rwandan authorities of financing rebels opposed to Kagame, according to Museveni's letter to Kagame. Rujugiro's business in Uganda, notably a big tobacco processing plant, is one of the contentious issues, with Kagame demanding that Rujugiro divests out of Uganda.



It appeared Museveni would not move to forcibly shut down or sell Rujugiro's business.



"If, therefore, he is still a problem to Rwanda, the correct option is to use the courts of Uganda to prove the case of terrorism and then his assets can be frozen," Museveni wrote to Kagame on March 10, talking about Rujugiro.



Rujugiro himself denies supporting anti-Kagame groups.



"Kagame knows that if I opted to help the rebels fighting against him, it would take less than six months to defeat him," he said in an interview with the New Vision.



Tensions between Rwanda and Uganda, as well as between Rwanda and Burundi, "are reaching an alarming level" and "could lead to another proxy conflict in eastern [Congo]," according to analysis by the South Africa-based think tank Institute for Security Studies.



In recent years Rwanda also has sparred with Burundi over charges Burundian rebels are based across the border in Rwanda.



In the 1990s, the armies of Uganda and Rwanda went to war in eastern Congo where they backed rival rebel groups. Much of eastern Congo remain lawless, with many armed groups still operating there.



Kagame and Museveni, strong leaders who have ruled their countries for many years, have increasingly disagreed in recent years as Kagame, once an intelligence lieutenant for Museveni, asserts his authority at home and in the region.



Kagame, who grew up as a refugee in Uganda, was a Ugandan army major before he led the Uganda-backed rebels who took power in Rwanda at the end of the 1994 genocide.
Uganda and the United Nations World Food Program are investigating whether a food supplement used to fight malnutrition is responsible for hundreds of cases of suspected food poisoning. Three Ugandans have died after eating Super Cereal, a fortified porridge imported from Turkey.

Ugandas Ministry of Health said Tuesday that at least 262 people in the northern Karamoja region have shown mental confusion, vomiting, headaches, high fever and abdominal pain since March 12 after eating Super Cereal.

The food supplement, manufactured in Turkey, was distributed by the World Food Program to prevent malnutrition and stunted growth among children.

While most of the patients were discharged from hospitals after treatment, Health Minister Ruth Aceng said three deaths since Saturday set off alarm bells.

Samples of Super Cereal stocks and water were taken from the affected areas, including blood, vomitus and urine from patients, and are currently being analyzed at the Directorate of Government Analytical Laboratory and the Central Public Health Laboratory, Aceng said.



Investigators from the Ministry of Health and the WFP are mapping out where the illnesses occurred, looking for connections.

While Super Cereal cannot yet be blamed, investigators want to establish associated factors and possible causes of why so many Ugandans getting sick.

The health ministry has sent samples to Mombasa and Johannesburg for laboratory testing. Preliminary results are expected in seven days.

Meanwhile, WFP Country Director Elkhidir Daloum assured Ugandans that Super Cereal undergoes all required quality controls before distribution.

WFP has zero tolerance for poor quality or low quality of food. We have a rigorous system from production to consumers. When we tender, we have to tender and do complete due diligence about the supplier, Daloum said.

The WFP was distributing Super Cereal to 252 locations in Karamoja, including sites across 13 districts that host refugees.

As Ugandans wait for the test results, the WFP said it is difficult to say what could have caused possible contamination.

WFP Senior Regional Spokesperson Peter Smerdon said Super Cereal has only oil and sugar added before distribution.

So, its difficult to see where the contamination could have got in. Thats why we are so perplexed and thats why were really hoping laboratory tests will come out and say where it came in in the supply chain and what exactly it is, Smerdon said.

The WFP and Ugandan government ordered the immediate suspension of Super Cereal distribution on Friday as a precaution after illnesses were first reported.

Super Cereal stocks at all health centers and communities are also being seized until the cause of the food poisoning can be determined.
Some high school students are taking a new approach to college admissions by applying to dozens of schools at a time to shop among offers.

Kayla Willis of Westlake High School in Atlanta was accepted to 31 out of the 44 colleges and universities she applied to, receiving more than $1 million in scholarship offers.

After some prompting by her father, Willis tweeted her school portrait with a display of logos of the schools that offered her admission. The tweet was "liked" more than 150,000 times.

Jordan Nixon of Douglasville, Georgia was accepted to 39 schools and raked in $1.6 million in scholarship offers. Although she hasnt selected a school, Nixon said she knows she wants to study international business, according to local news reports.

Michael Love of Detroit was accepted to 41 schools. Dylan Chidick, whose family has been in and out of homelessness since moving to New Jersey from Trinidad, now has to pick from among the 17 colleges that offered him a spot.

These students and others are still outliers in the practice of applying to numerous colleges, but they may be part of a growing trend.

In 2016, 35 percent of first-time candidates applied to seven or more schools, compared with just 17 percent who applied in 2005 to that many institutions, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC).

Money a big factor



One reason for the increasing number of applications is the cost of education, and the need to shop for the best financial offer.

This is tied to the growing cost of college, the need to shop for financial aid awards and merit scholarships, larger economic uncertainties, said Nicholas Soodik, associate director of the college office at Pingree School in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. There are real reasons why kids are applying to more schools. Its not just the hunt for the most prestigious college.

Soodik noted that his high school seniors at Pingree applied to an average of six colleges and universities this year.

Debbie Prochnow, the college career information coordinator at Blake High School in Maryland, also said members of her class of 2019 applied on average to about six schools each.

We recommend that kids apply to six to eight and apply to a variety of schools based on selectivity, and include public colleges in Maryland for financial safeties, Prochnow said, adding that the number is about the same as last years.

Prochnow said that although a few of her students applied to 15 colleges, That is not the norm.

Soodik noted that, at least at his private school, the growth in the average number of applications fell mostly in the early action and early decision programs. Those are applications submitted to colleges in the fall for students who want a reply in December or January, rather than the typical April acceptances or rejections.

Kayla Willis says she will attend Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, after receiving a full scholarship.

College admissions advisers and students note that application fees to college are not cheap. While the average is $50 per submission, fees can go up to $200, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Willis noted she was diligent in applying for application fee waivers, something that many high school students may not know is available.

I did not spend a dime on anything! My application fees were waived, no transcript or SAT fees! she tweeted.
A senior U.S. official accuses Russia of breaching several arms control treaties considered critical for maintaining world peace. Assistant Secretary of State Yleem Poblete spoke at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament as the United States assumed the rotating presidency of the body.

Poblete made a blistering attack against what she called Russias aggressive, destabilizing activities. She cites Moscows invasion of neighboring countries, the annexation of Crimea and its failure to comply with arms control treaties as actions that threaten global stability.

She says there are many concerns regarding Russias observance of the Biological Weapons Convention. She says Russias use of a military-grade nerve agent in an assassination attempt in Britain, as well as its tolerance of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, are a clear violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

She says Russias development and fielding of a ground-launched cruise missile is in clear violation of the INF or Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The Russian Federations violation of the INF Treaty poses a direct threat to European, U.S., East Asian, and global security," Poblete said. "It is destabilizing and has a corrosive effect on arms control and disarmament.

The United States warns it will withdraw from the INF Treaty in August if Moscow does not live up to the terms of the accord. Poblete refers to Russia as a malign actor. She says Russia is not a responsible actor that intends to uphold its obligations under arms control and disarmament agreements.

The Russian representative at the meeting did not react to the accusations. He said his countrys foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, would respond to what he called Americas unfounded claims at a speech to the Conference on Disarmament Wednesday.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a challenge to a Hawaii court ruling against a woman who had turned away a lesbian couple from staying at her Honolulu bed and breakfast.



A Hawaii court ruled against Aloha Bed and Breakfast owner Phyllis Young, saying she'd violated the civil rights of an unmarried lesbian couple when she refused to rent them a room because it went against her Christian beliefs.



Young's attorney, James Hochberg, criticized the Supreme Court's refusal to hear her appeal Monday.



"The government went after Ms. Young's constitutionally protected freedom simply for adhering to her faith on her own property," he said. "This kind of governmental coercion should disturb every freedom-loving American, no matter where you stand on marriage."



Attorney Peter Renn of the gay rights group Lambda Legal said Monday, "The freedom of religion does not give businesses a right to violate nondiscrimination laws. The Supreme Court declined to consider carving out an exception from this basic principle when a business discriminates based on the sexual orientation of its customers."
A college Photo: Paul Giamou/Getty Images

Can you believe that just a week ago Operation Varsity Blues was just the first two items on your list of chill ways to spend a rainy Sunday and CW-1 was just what was written on a bottle of knockoff perfume your dad brought back for you from his business trip to Belarus? And then Special Agent Laura Smith filed the affidavit and everything we knew about college admissions and Felicity Huffman got turned upside down.

To mark the one-week anniversary, Vulture is hosting a live read, in which New Yorks most college educated comedians  George Civeris, Mary Houlihan, and Sam Taggart  will read from the affidavit live! Its all happening! Specifically, its all happening at Brooklyn Union Hall at 10 p.m. For more information and tickets head here! This is not T.J. Maxx or Marshalls or something like that. Its a comedy show.
OTTAWA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Convenience Industry Council of Canada (CICC) recognizes the importance of investing in the middle class, but calls on the government to support those small businesses that serve all Canadians. Initiatives aimed at improving regulatory competitiveness, addressing interprovincial trade barriers and transportation requirements are welcomed steps to closing the competitiveness gap in Canada.



Convenience stores are often taken for granted. Even though theyre in every community across the country, its not until your local store closes that seniors and young people alike realize how convenient it was having a small business nearby to walk to for groceries and snacks. Convenience stores and all small businesses need governments to recognize that undue regulatory burden impacts their ability to serve their communities, said CICC President, Anne Kothawala.

This interdependent supply chain gets bogged down when transportation requirements, internal trade barriers and slow downs at the border are not addressed. Our stores rely on their distributors to get their products to market in a timely and efficient manner. We are pleased to see that the government listened to our concerns and included measures that lead to a more user-friendly regulatory system, allow for innovation, reduce duplication, harmonize transportation requirements and remove federal barriers to the interprovincial trade of alcohol, added Kothawala. Our depanneurs in Quebec have been responsibly selling beverage alcohol for several decades and are a great place to feature local innovation. As more provinces look to allow the sale of beverage alcohol in convenience stores, this move will be welcome as an avenue to promote local breweries, wineries and distilleries.

Despite the positive measures to reduce red-tape, our small businesses are concerned about the impact of increased EI premiums to pay for the EI training support benefit. While we see that government is proposing a small business rebate, we need to better understand the impact on payroll costs. We support investing in training, as our industry is constantly changing and innovating, however, this needs to be balanced against increased costs for businesses, said Kothawala.

Retailers are disappointed to see no further action against the underground economy as a part of Budget 2019. Canada remains a safe-haven for the sale of illegal tobacco products, which continue to rise in Canadas biggest province (Ontario). The sale of contraband not only deprives governments of tax revenue, but more importantly, it has the potential to affect the health and safety of our communities. These concerns will only grow once the regulations relating to bill S-5 (the governments plain packaging legislation) come into force. Considering the government legalized marijuana partly to eliminate the black market, more resources invested into eradicating the black market would have been welcomed by small businesses, added Kothawala.

While the measures announced in todays budget will provide some relief, we continue to remain concerned about the excessive regulatory burden placed on Canadas convenience store retailers and distributors. This includes potential regulatory changes to Front-of-Pack food labelling, marketing of food products to children, and caffeinated energy drinks. We will continue to advocate to federal decision-makers that forthcoming regulatory changes should only be made after careful consideration for, and consultation with, small and independent retailers across Canada.

ABOUT THE CICC

The Convenience Industry Council of Canada is a new association that brings together retailers, distributors and manufacturers that sell a variety of products in convenience stores across the country. Our mission is to advance the interests of the convenience industry through effective advocacy and education. We are proud to represent an industry that contributes over $22 billion in taxes, employs over 250,000 Canadians and brings convenience to communities from coast to coast. We reflect the communities we serve and offer opportunity to new Canadians.
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LAVAL, Quebec, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Teamsters Canada President Francois Laporte released the following statement on the 2019 federal budget:



Our union finds the 2019 federal budget lacking. The compensation package for the dairy industry contains nothing for dairy workers at risk of losing their jobs. Moreover, the government is lacking ambition on issues like pharmacare and retraining.

If a government finds it is necessary to compensate an industry for harm caused by a trade deal, then they should also explicitly compensate workers. Todays compensation package was designed for farmers. Those funds will not trickle down to everyone else who depends on the dairy industry for their livelihoods. Workers in the dairy processing sector or in bulk milk transportation are getting nothing.

Generally speaking, the government needs to get more ambitious when it comes to retraining and life-long learning. A measly $250 annual credit to cover the cost of courses is simply not enough, considering that 42% of jobs in Canada are at high-risk of being automated in the next two decades.

Expanding our social safety net will help Canadians navigate the coming changes to our economy. The creation of the Canadian Drug Agency and the development of a national formulary are steps in the right direction, but Canada remains the only country in the world with a universal healthcare system that excludes prescription drugs.

Teamsters are pleased that the government is taking action to limit the tax credit on stock options. The write-off disproportionately benefits Canadas richest CEOs, who already earn close to 200 times the average workers salary. This was one of the points we raised following last years budget.

Our union welcomes todays investment in passenger rail service for remote communities, as it stands to benefit commuters and bring the country closer together.

We would have preferred to see even more infrastructure investments in the budget, as well as measures to expedite previously announced infrastructure spending. These investments create good jobs for Teamster members and working-class Canadians, while ensuring that supply chains remain efficient and competitive.

The budget recognizes the importance of Canadas pipeline infrastructure. It notes that the growing supply of crude oil from Western Canada has exceeded available export pipeline infrastructure. We are disappointed that no measures were taken to address that problem, considering the difficulties facing energy sector workers.

Teamsters represent close to 125,000 members in Canada in all industries, including 5,000 in the dairy industry and 16,000 in the rail industry. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, with which Teamsters Canada is affiliated, has 1.4 million members in North America.

Media requests:

Christopher Monette,

Director of Public Affairs

Teamsters Canada

Cell: 514-226-6002

cmonette@teamsters.ca

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a90825c4-3933-4dd6-8834-37695f607758
OTTAWA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Canadian Labour Congress welcomes new measures to lay the groundwork for national pharmacare, provide assistance for the neediest seniors, skills training, and a community-centred approach to carbon reduction, but says Canadians have a lot riding on the next election.



Canadian workers, their families and their communities will benefit from new budgetary measures that lay the groundwork for curbing exorbitant medicine prices, income inequality, and climate change, said CLC President Hassan Yussuff. We are pleased to see a budget that acknowledges some of the most pressing issues facing Canadians, because these are the issues that voters will be taking to the ballot box in the federal election.

Canadas unions have long advocated for the introduction of a universal, single-payer pharmacare plan to reduce drug prices, save billions for families and businesses, and provide vital medicines to the 3.6 million Canadians who cannot afford to fill their prescriptions. Todays federal budget delivers on a recommendation of the interim report of the federal Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare by announcing funding for a new federal drug agency to lead to the future development of a national formulary, as well as new funding for medicines for rare diseases.

Canadas unions continue to feel cautiously optimistic that a universal pharmacare plan is on the horizon. Todays budget clears important obstacles but waits on the governments pharmacare advisory council to prescribe the model for pharmacare delivery, said Yussuff. Experts all agree that Canadas patchwork approach to prescription drug coverage needs to be streamlined, but drug costs wont come down unless there is one plan and one buyer.

Todays federal budget also announced plans to introduce improvements to the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) by raising the $3,500 annual earnings exemption for employment income. Two million elderly Canadians, roughly one third of all seniors, receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement, which is targeted to the most vulnerable.

Allowing working seniors to keep more of their GIS benefit will reduce financial insecurity in old age and make a material difference in the lives of seniors, said Yussuff.

Budget 2019 announced the governments plan to prioritize skills and training, including the establishment of the Canada Training Benefit to assist with fees and provide income support for lifelong learning and skills development.

The commitments in todays budget signal that the government recognizes access to continuous learning must be a priority to ensure workers can adapt to technological change and emerging skill needs, said Yussuff. The success of todays commitments will depend on funding and training opportunities reaching those who need it most. The Canadian Labour Congress has concerns about the design of the benefit, but remains committed to promoting worker awareness of, and access to, these new training opportunities.

The CLC also welcomed Budget 2019s funding commitment to reform the Employment Insurance appeal process. Unemployed workers and Canadas unions have long urged the government to restore transparency, efficiency and fairness to the appeal process. We applaud this important funding commitment, said Yussuff.

Canadas unions are pleased to see the federal government announce measures to ensure a just transition as the government addresses climate change. The 2019 Budget pledges $150 million in infrastructure funding to directly assist resource-based municipalities in establishing new fiscal drivers.

I was proud to serve as Co-Chair for Canadas Just Transition Task Force, and to work together with government to put people and communities at the heart of climate policy. Todays budget commitment will help begin to ensure that communities are not left behind as Canada transitions away from coal-powered electricity by 2030, said Yussuff. Canadas unions are looking forward to working with the Minister of Natural Resources as the newly named lead minister, but are disappointed to see that the government has not addressed key Task Force recommendations to support workers, in terms of income, training and reemployment needs. Without this, workers will be left behind.

The Congress highlighted other positive announcements in todays federal budget, including:

Investments in stabilizing Phoenix in the short term, noting that more is needed for long-term planning and funding for a new system.

Funding to support a new anti-racism strategy, funding for LGBTQ2+ organizations and establishment of an LGBTQ2+ Secretariat, Gender Equality funding to expand the Womens Program and funds for Black Canadian communities.

Action on tax avoidance and restrictions on stock-option deductions, which overwhelmingly benefit a small number of high-income earners.

The Congress also noted several concerns over budgetary omissions, including:

A missed opportunity to immediately provide pension protection and address the injustice workers and pensioners face during employer bankruptcy.

A failure to expand the EI sickness benefit.

A lack of new investments in high quality, affordable, public early learning and childcare.

For more information, please contact:
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Galane Gold Ltd. (Galane Gold or the Company) (TSX-V: GG) is pleased to announce that it has completed the donation of 17% of the total issued share capital of Galaxy Gold Mining (Pty) Ltd (Galaxy) to the Phakamani Foundation NPC (Phakamani) as part of its empowerment requirements in South Africa(1)(2).



Phakamani is a development micro-finance institution that envisages South Africa as a country in which even the poorest entrepreneur can create a micro-enterprise and build a dream. Since inception in 2008, the Foundation has issued over US$32 million in loans to over 96,000 different women. Each client has been exposed to an integrated program of basic business training, group loans, and on-going support. Phakamanis end goal is to leads its clients towards a liveable income, savings, and hope for the next generation. Further information on Phakamani and its activities in South Africa can be found on their website http://phakamanifoundation.org/ .

Mark Tucker, CEO of Phakamani, commented: Phakamani cannot do this alone and we are delighted that Galaxy is partnering with us to enrich the development of the poorest people in South Africa.

Galane Gold CEO, Nick Brodie commented: We are delighted that Phakamani has agreed to partner with us and believe its aspirations to empower the poorest people within South Africa embodies Galaxys requirement to empower the historically disadvantaged.

In addition to the donation of the Galaxy shares to Phakamani, Galaxys subsidiary Galaxy Gold Reefs (Pty) Ltd (GGR and together with Galaxy, the Galaxy Companies) has donated 5% of its total issued share capital to a community based trust and 5% to a local employee share scheme(1)(2). With these three donations, Galaxy has fulfilled its obligations with regards to Black Economic Empowerment(1)(2)(3).

About Galane Gold

Galane Gold is an un-hedged gold producer and explorer with mining operations and exploration tenements in Botswana and South Africa. Galane Gold is a public company and its shares are quoted on the TSX Venture Exchange and the Botswana Stock Exchange under the symbol GG. Galane Golds management team is comprised of senior mining professionals with extensive experience in managing mining and processing operations and large-scale exploration programmes. Galane Gold is committed to operating at world-class standards and is focused on the safety of its employees, respecting the environment, and contributing to the communities in which it operates.

Notes:

In terms of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, 2004 (MPRDA) of the Republic of South Africa, together with the Broad-Based Socio-Economic Empowerment Charter for the Mining and Minerals Industry, 2018 (Mining Charter), the equity ownership of Galaxy, as the holder of existing gold mining rights, is required to comprise, directly or indirectly, of at least a 26% shareholding by historically disadvantaged persons (HDPs). An HDP is defined as any person, category of persons or community disadvantaged by unfair discrimination prior to the 1996 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa coming into effect, and include juristic and quasi-juristic entities such as companies, trusts, associations or the like which are directly or indirectly majority owned and managed by HDPs. In terms of the Mining Charter, HDPs are effectively limited to South African citizens of African, Coloured and Indian descent, defined as Black People in terms of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act, 2003 and the Codes of Good Practice promulgated thereunder.

The financial commitments of the community development and employee participation trusts to their respective beneficiaries will initially be supported with loan funding from the Galaxy Companies, until sufficient dividend income from the underlying GGR shares is achieved. The Galaxy shares held by the enterprise development entity are subject to a call option in favour of its parent company, Mupane Gold Mines Limited, at a pre-agreed strike price that takes into account any increase in the enterprise value of Galaxy. The call option is furthermore annually renewable at an agreed premium which will ensure that such shareholder receives in cash a minimum annual amount. Dividends will only become payable by the Galaxy Companies after having settled all applicable loan funding and external and inter-company debt.

As the relevant shares in the Galaxy Companies will be donated outright to the BEE shareholders, once the BEE transactions are fully implemented, GGRs mining rights should be recognised as achieving an effective 27% debt-free equity interest (or equity equivalent benefit) in HDPs that delivers tangible economic benefits to the HDPs and, accordingly, as fully compliant in these respects with the requirements of the MPRDA and the Mining Charter.

Cautionary Notes

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this press release, including, without limitation, those regarding the Companys future financial position and results of operations, strategy, proposed acquisitions, plans, objectives, goals and targets, and any statements preceded by, followed by or that include the words believe, expect, aim, intend, plan, continue, will, may, would, anticipate, estimate, forecast, predict, project, seek, should or similar expressions or the negative thereof, are forward-looking statements. These statements are not historical facts but instead represent only the Companys expectations, estimates and projections regarding future events. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual results may differ materially from what is expressed, implied or forecasted in such forward-looking statements.

Additional factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially include, but are not limited to: the Companys dependence on two mineral projects; gold price volatility; risks associated with the conduct of the Companys mining activities in Botswana and South Africa; regulatory, consent or permitting delays; risks relating to the Companys exploration, development and mining activities being situated in Botswana and South Africa; risks relating to reliance on the Companys management team and outside contractors; risks regarding mineral resources and reserves; the Companys inability to obtain insurance to cover all risks, on a commercially reasonable basis or at all; currency fluctuations; risks regarding the failure to generate sufficient cash flow from operations; risks relating to project financing and equity issuances; risks arising from the Companys fair value estimates with respect to the carrying amount of mineral interests; mining tax regimes; risks arising from holding derivative instruments; the Companys need to replace reserves depleted by production; risks and unknowns inherent in all mining projects, including the inaccuracy of reserves and resources, metallurgical recoveries and capital and operating costs of such projects; contests over title to properties, particularly title to undeveloped properties; laws and regulations governing the environment, health and safety; operating or technical difficulties in connection with mining or development activities; lack of infrastructure; employee relations, labour unrest or unavailability; health risks in Africa; the Companys interactions with surrounding communities and artisanal miners; risks related to changes in laws and regulations relating to holders of existing gold mining rights as they relate to HDPs; the Companys ability to successfully integrate acquired assets; risks related to restarting production; the speculative nature of exploration and development, including the risks of diminishing quantities or grades of reserves; development of the Companys exploration properties into commercially viable mines; stock market volatility; conflicts of interest among certain directors and officers; lack of liquidity for shareholders of the Company; risks related to the market perception of junior gold companies; and litigation risk. Management provides forward-looking statements because it believes they provide useful information to investors when considering their investment objectives and cautions investors not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Consequently, all of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein, and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, the Company. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect subsequent information, events or circumstances or otherwise, except as required by law.

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:

Nick Brodie

CEO, Galane Gold Ltd.

+ 44 7905089878

Nick.Brodie@GalaneGold.com

www.GalaneGold.com
China's Xi Jinping will be in Rome from 21-23 March.

Rome security chiefs will establish two "green zones" in the city during the visit of the president of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, from 21 to 23 March.

The "A zone" will see a large part of the historic centre off-limits, particularly in the areas around government buildings, while the "B zone" will be centred around the five-star Parco dei Principi hotel in the Parioli district, where the Chinese leader will be based for three days.

The visit will see Xi hold talks with Italy's president Sergio Mattarella and Italy's premier Giuseppe Conte, as well as parliamentary leaders, however China's foreign ministry says it is "unaware" of any plans for a meeting with Pope Francis.

The Colosseum and the surrounding area will be closed to visitors on the afternoon of 22 March to allow Xi and his entourage to take an exclusive tour of the ancient amphitheatre, led by the Colosseum director Alfonsina Russo.

Xi comes to Rome as part of a wider European visit to Monaco and France to seek support for China's global trade infrastructure programme, the $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as the New Silk Road.

Conte is expected to sign a non-binding memorandum of understanding with China, together with Xi, at Palazzo Madama on the morning of 23 March, before the Chinese leader departs Rome.

Other European countries have expressed reservations about the BRI, which seeks to connect China with Europe and Africa, however Conte described the deal on 19 March as risk-free and "totally legitimate."
We are fully taking all the steps we can to protect people from discrimination on our platform, Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, said in an interview. We believe this settlement goes not just to [the letter of] the law but beyond the law in taking very, very strong action to make sure any discrimination doesnt happen.
Now its possible that the two leaders will not meet until April or even later. Deadlines keep moving. Trump had originally given Chinese negotiators until March 1 to finalize the terms of the deal, or he threatened to raise tariffs on billions of dollars in imports. But he backed down from that threat several weeks ago, declaring that he thought there was progress and that more time was needed.
OTTAWA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Building on the 2018 Fall Economic Statement, the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) is encouraged by the Federal Governments 2019 Budget that includes measures aimed at helping Canadas mineral sector enhance its competitiveness and regain its global leadership position.



As an industry that operates across the countrygenerating significant economic and social benefits in northern communities, Indigenous communities, and cities across Canadait is imperative that the mineral sector has the means to responsibly capitalize on its natural resources, while also being able to compete globally, says PDAC President Felix Lee.

Federal Budget 2019 contains provisions that align with PDACs budget recommendations , including investments in Canadas Arctic and northern regions, skills development, training and apprenticeships, and for Indigenous Peoples to advance reconciliation.

As previously announced in the 2018 Fall Economic Statement, Budget 2019 also confirms tax measures including the Accelerated Investment Initiative and the much celebrated five-year extension of the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit (METC). The extension of the METC until March 31, 2024 is the first multi-year renewal of the METC since its inception in 2000, something PDAC has long championed.

The five-year renewal of the METC will help to provide greater certainty for the junior exploration sector and boost confidence for investors, says Lisa McDonald, PDAC Executive Director. It will help to catalyze investment in mineral exploration projects that lead to the discoveries that could become the mines of the future.

PDAC welcomes the following measures in Budget 2019:

An increase in the allocation of the National Trade Corridors Fund to northern regions by up to $400 million over eight years, starting in 202021, for a total of $800 million to support infrastructure development.

Enhanced funding to support planning by the Government of Northwest Territories for the proposed Taltson hydroelectricity expansion project.

Additional funding to the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency for its current economic development program.

Funding for northern and Arctic communities for education, economic development programming, etc.

Investments in initiatives to support universal high-speed internet in rural, remote and northern communities.

Funds for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to create the Northern Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program.

Initiatives aimed at supporting reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

Investments in Indigenous communities to work towards addressing gaps in socio-economic conditions and education.

Investments in skills training, apprenticeship programs for skilled trades and Indigenous education and training.

Canadas mineral exploration and mining industry generates significant economic and social benefits in remote communities, Indigenous communities, and cities, employing 634,000 workers and contributing $96.5 billion annually to GDP. It is the largest private-sector industrial employer on a proportional basis of Indigenous people in Canada.

About PDAC

PDAC is the leading voice of the mineral exploration and development community. With over 8,000 members around the world, PDACs work centres on supporting a competitive, responsible mineral sector. PDAC is known worldwide for its annual PDAC Conventionthe premier international event for the industrythat has attracted over 25,000 people from 135 countries in recent years and will next be held March 1-4, 2020 in Toronto. Please visit www.pdac.ca .
Thats because The Highwaymen, an excellent and entertainingly old-fashioned police procedural about the case, isnt really about Bonnie and Clyde at all. Rather, its the true story of the two men who hunted them down: Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, played by Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson as a kind of twangy Holmes and Watson, dogged in their pursuit of justice, and with the ability to identify a brand of tobacco simply by sniffing a cigarette butt. In that sense, the new movie offers a corrective to the older one, in which the character of Hamer (Denver Pyle) was almost the villain, a humorless curmudgeon who pursued what that movie presented as fun-loving bandits not out of a sense of right and wrong, but out of vengeance. In one famous scene, Bonnie and Clyde take Hamer hostage and humiliate him.
The outdoor escalators at a Taste of Urbanspace drop you off right near the Stomping Ground counter, the second shop from this Del Ray business, much beloved for its buttermilk biscuits. I would have loved my biscuit more if it had included the poached egg that I requested along with the housemade sausage and cheddar cheese. The biscuit itself is a large, flaky and fragile specimen, quick to crumble at the slightest pressure. Youll have to eat your biscuit sandwich with a knife and fork, which may make you feel like a prima donna, but only until the butter, salt and baking alchemy put you in a better place.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Treaty Commission acknowledges the federal government for eliminating outstanding treaty negotiations loans in the Budget 2019: Investing in the Middle Class to Grow Canadas Economy.



The Treaty Commission has long advocated for the elimination of loans in treaty negotiations. It is encouraging to see this issue finally being addressed and demonstrates real progress towards reconciliation, said Chief Commissioner Celeste Haldane.

Treaty loan elimination, contribution-only funding, Indigenous rights recognition, and implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People together make for an entirely new treaty negotiations process. These changes renew commitment to the made-in-BC treaty negotiations process as the best mechanism to advance reconciliation, Indigenous self-government, and self-determination. Modern treaty First Nations bring prosperity to regions throughout BC will benefit from loan elimination and repayment.

Negotiations support funding for treaty negotiations never should have been in the form of loans, said Chief Commissioner Haldane. This is a debt that never should have accumulated in a process of rights recognition.

The Treaty Commission looks forward to working with First Nations, the federal government, and the provincial government to facilitate this momentous commitment.

Quick Facts

In the 2018 budget, the federal government announced that going forward it would replace loans with non-repayable contribution funding for First Nations participating in modern treaty negotiations. This change commenced April 2018.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Odette Wilson / Communications Advisor / t: 604-482-9215 / c: 604-290-4059 / owilson@bctreaty.ca

Mark Smith / Director of Process / t: 604-482-9208 / msmith@bctreaty.ca

About the BC Treaty Commission

The Treaty Commission is the independent body responsible for overseeing treaty negotiations among the governments of Canada, BC and First Nations in BC. It has three roles: facilitation, funding, and public information and education.

Visit www.bctreaty.ca to learn more about the Treaty Commission.
Social media platforms are battling with governments to prove they can stop vulnerable users from being exposed to inappropriate content, with governments and educators warning about the harmful effect on teenagers and preteens.
This idea of delivering climate-change resolutions to Congress was born the same year as the 2017 Tubbs Fire raged through Northern California. That month, Park Guthrie  a California public school teacher in Sonoma County and father of three children  was on his way with his kids to talk to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors about climate change. They had to wear face masks, and the experience inspired Guthrie to co-found Schools for Climate Action.
Telannoyers, as some called them, were so endemic at the time that Congress passed laws restricting them, followed by the Do Not Call Registry in 2003. For a few years, it seemed like phone spam was contained. Then came the age of cellphones, international VoIP calls and offshore call centers that can mask their location to make it look like they are calling you from down the block. Then came the Trump administrations deregulatory zeal, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai celebrated a 2018 court ruling undoing Obama-era restrictions on autodialers.
It would be unprecedented; no member of the council has ever been recalled. Once the Board of Elections approved their petition, supporters would have 180 days to collect the necessary signatures. If the signatures were verified, the board would have 114 days to call a special recall election. If Evans was ousted, the board would have another 114 days to call a special election to fill the vacancy.
The program that Villanueva and Naim exploited was meant to help small businesses get on their feet; after 2010, the company would no longer qualify. So, Villanueva admitted, he persuaded his brother-in-law, Sam Caragan, to move to Virginia Beach and be the front for a new company. Villanueva used his official House of Delegates letterhead to write to the SBA in support of the new company  not disclosing that he was actually running it, with Naim.
The special-counsel regulations do not require Barr to release Muellers report, and in most circumstances the Justice Department does not make public information about those it investigates and does not charge. But the political pressure on the attorney general is expected to be enormous, and legal analysts say the Justice Department might be hard-pressed to resist lawmakers demands for transparency.
In his initial ruling in March 2018, Messitte found that Maryland and the District had sufficiently shown that the Trump hotel has had and almost certainly will continue to have an unlawful effect on competition. He specifically noted the local governments financial interests in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, which offer venues that may compete for some events.
Under a provision in the state constitution, bills submitted to the governor at least six days before the end of a legislative session become law after six days, unless the governor issues a veto. If there is a veto, the General Assembly can vote on whether to override before adjourning for the year.
Hogan, who is weighing a challenge to President Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, has a background in real estate and has made business development in the state one of his priorities. He said at a roundtable discussion Tuesday afternoon in Prince Georges County that he sees transforming economically depressed areas in the state as a core part of his mission.
Tony Miresse, president and general manager of Art's Cameras Plus, looks over the store's new camera inventory with sales associate Claire Kopperud. A national trade publication recently recognized the store as the camera and digital imaging retailer of the year. Kelly Smith/Special to Conley Media
Mr. Snyder, a McLean resident, was born in Trenton, N.J. He joined the White House communications staff in 1969 after 10 years as a CBS News producer and writer in New York. After leaving the White House, he was an executive with the U.S. Information Agency, a journalist at TV stations in Chicago and Cincinnati, and a senior fellow of the Annenberg Washington Program. He was the author of Warriors of Disinformation: How Lies, Videotape, and the USIA Won the Cold War (1995).
Within minutes, police said, Evans was shot. They said he drove to Route 7, crossed the road and crashed about 11:25 a.m. According to police, witnesses said someone described only as white and male ran across Route 7 and ran up to the truck after the crash.
Police said the man spoke only in Spanish. They said they are trying to identify him. He was described as Hispanic, about 5 feet 7, and thin. He reportedly had short hair on the top of his head, with both of the sides shaved. He wore a dark blue jacket over a white t-shirt, the police said.
They do a weekly swim out of here, and we start getting calls from people, like How safe is the river out here? And the truth is, there is no data. Theres no bacteria monitoring here. We just dont know, Naujoks said. There was very little data in D.C., there was almost no data south of D.C., and we just felt it was really important that the public know when theyre getting on tubes and water skis and paddle boards and falling in.
You got two airplanes of the same type that have experienced problems. So of course they are going to go back and look at the certification process. FAA is going to look at that themselves. And it also appears DOT is going to look at it, said John M. Cox, a former pilot and an airline safety consultant with the Washington-based aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems. They are going to look at everything.
Description

GIS - 19 March, 2019: Five books under the Presidents Fund for Creative (PFCW) were launched on 16 March 2019 at Le Voila Hotel, Bagatelle, by t he Minister of Arts and Culture, Mr Prithvirajsing Roopun, in presence of the Chairperson of the PFCW, Mrs Anita Aujayeb, and other personalities. Five books under the

The books are: Les ondulations des vagues by late Mr Rannoo, Les amours creoles de Jasmine et Roland by Mr Jean Louis, Survivre dans la brousse africaine by Mr Lallmohamed, Gehu ka beej by late Mr Chintamunee and Scales of fish by Mr Muthayen.

In his address, Minister Roopun congratulated the authors as well as the Chairperson and members of the Presidents Fund for their hard work and dedication in promoting local writings. He also stressed on the need for parents to encourage children to explore their imagination and to express them confidently, both orally and through creative writing. We must help them nurture the love for books as good reading and writing skills will help them progress in all other subjects, he said.

The Minister reiterated the commitment of his M inistry to bring a new dynamism to the creative sector. To that effect, he highlighted the v arious opportunities and incentives that are being provided by his Ministry, namely different grant schemes ranging from Rs 300 000 to Rs 800 000 under the National Art Fund; increase from Rs 30 000 to Rs 40 000 for production of audio CD; and general assistance of Rs 30 000 for book launch, exhibition and artistic/cultural programmes, amongst others.

Moreover, Minister Roopun spoke on the Arts and Culture National Award, introduced for the first time last year, and added that his Ministry intends to make it an annual event to encourage local creators. The National Award, he underlined, aims to honour Mauritian creators and performers for their outstanding contributions in the artistic and cultural fields such as cinema, visual arts, literature, theatre, music and dance produced and performed. For the year 2019, two new categories: the Promising talent for one artist of 16 26 years; and the Lifetime achievement for one artist have been introduced, he added.

The PFCW operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Arts and Culture . Its objectives are to finance schemes to encourage and assist deserving Mauritian writers wishing to have their creative writings published; promote creative writing in all languages written and spoken in Mauritius; set up a network among educational institutions in Mauritius in order to promote creative writing in all genres; and compile and publish regular anthologies.
A court in France ruled that Barbarin had an obligation to report the Rev. Bernard Preynat to civil authorities when he learned of the abuse. Preynat, scheduled to be tried on sexual violence charges next year, confessed to abusing Boy Scouts in the 1970s and 1980s. His victims accuse Barbarin and other church authorities of covering up for him.
Description

GIS  19 March, 2019: An exhibition on the theme Leaving No One Behind was launched this morning at the Conference Hall, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Tower, in Ebene, to mark World Water Day 2019. The exhibition, open to students and the public, is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities, the Central Water Authority (CWA) and several Ministries and departments.

The Acting Prime Minister and Minister of Energy and Public Utilities, Mr Ivan Collendavelloo, the Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, the Minister of Tourism, Mr Anil Gayan, and other personalities were present.

The exhibition also coincided with a half-day panel discussion which brought together stakeholders from the Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities as well as students from the University of Mauritius. The objectives were to raise awareness on the sustainable use of water and to reflect on the importance of water and water resources.

In his keynote address, the Acting Prime Minister recalled that in line with this years theme, Leaving no one behind, Government is giving, since 2015, free water access to those who use up to 6 000 litres of water monthly. Around 58 000 Mauritians at the bottom of the social ladder benefit from free water access, he highlighted.

Speaking about accessibility of water, Mr Collendavelloo pointed out that since 2015, 30 895 families have benefitted from an allocation of Rs 5 000 for the purchase of water tanks. Furthermore, Rs 150 million has been made available for the period 2018-2021 for the provision of water tanks to an additional 30 000 families.

As regards the CWAs pipe replacement project, the Acting Prime Minister highlighted that Government has invested Rs 2.1 billion for the replacement of 155 km of pipes and will provide an additional Rs 3.1 billion for the replacement of 214 km of pipes till 2020. He also urged the public to be careful of the over exploitation of water usage as 54 % of the water provided to the population comes from aquifers, which is dependent on rainfall.

In addition, Mr Collendavelloo made an appeal to the youth to take up their responsibilities as the future generation and to sensitise their elders about climate change and its consequences. The youth, he pointed out, has the responsibility to take initiatives to preserve and not waste resources and to impart this knowledge to their parents.

For her part, Minister Dookun-Luchoomun urged the population to use water, which is a precious resource, in a judicious manner. Many people, she highlighted, do not have access to water around the world, hence, the need to improve the water crisis situation and identify solutions to tackle the problem.

Speaking about accessibility of water , Minister Gayan recalled that in Mauritius, Government is investing heavily in proper water infrastructure so as to ensure easy access to water for the whole population. Around the world, due to poor infrastructure, one in three people do not have access to safe and clean water while in the United States, 2.1 trillion litres of clean water are lost each year, he said.

Activities to mark World Water Day 2019

Several activities are being organised by the Ministry of Energy and Public Utilities and the CWA to mark World Water Day 2019. A four-day event is being held at La Marie and Pailles Water Treatment plants from 18 to 21 March 2019.

A play/sketch competition has been launched as an activity for secondary school students who are invited to write and showcase a short play on the occasion of World Water Day 2019. A painting competition has also been launched as an activity for primary schools where students must create a unique painting for World Water Day 2019 in relation to the theme.

Exhibitions will also take place at the CWAs Sub Offices in Rose Belle, Flacq and Souillac, the Farmers Service Centre of Goodlands and the Social Welfare Centre of Bambous.

World Water Day

The United Nations General Assembly designated 22 March 1993 as the first World Water Day. Since then, the Day has been commemorated internationally as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

The 2019 theme -  Leaving No One Behind- is an adaptation of the central promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It is the 6th Sustainable Development Goal and aims to ensure availability and sustainable management of water for all by 2030, which, by definition means, leaving no one behind.
Catherine Rampell was only partly correct in holding President Trump responsible for the federal governments troubling fiscal outlook [Its only a budget in the loosest sense of the word, op-ed, March 12]. The much greater fault lies with Congress, which holds the power of the purse. Over the past decade, lawmakers have brazenly neglected normal budget practices or have deliberately abused them. They have employed budget procedures not to manage fiscal policy but mainly to ease the passage of high-profile, partisan initiatives: Obamacare adjustments, Obamacare repeal (which failed anyway), tax cuts. Successive Congresses have ignored the unsustainable growth of entitlements and have, step by step, abandoned the caps on annually appropriated spending adopted in 2011. This bipartisan negligence has brought the prospect of trillion-dollar annual deficits and publicly held debt approaching the size of the entire economy (trends that, by the way, were firmly in place before the 2017 tax law). Lawmakers have blamed these failures on a broken budget process, but they are the ones who broke it.
For Sanders, on the other hand, politics is cerebral. He has a set of ideas, and they light his every step. He entered the business as a civil rights organizer in the 1960s and carried the left-wing flame thenceforth. As mayor of small-town Burlington, Vt., he was perhaps the most prominent socialist of the Reagan 1980s. When he entered Congress as a representative in 1991, he often allied with the Democrats but refused to join their ranks, lest he sully his independence. His principal problem is with Democratic women who hold him partially responsible for the fate of Hillary Clinton, whose Wall Street ties he tirelessly denounced in 2016. But he can answer that he would have been just as righteously unforgiving of any male candidates compromises.
The majority of Virginians of all races continue to support Mr. Northam, whose long public record is evidence that he is not racist. He is not hiding out; he is dealing with the vast amount of legislation coming out of the recent legislative session. Make an attempt to understand Virginia, people.
CONGRESS IS on the verge of delivering another rebuke to President Trump, this time concerning the war in Yemen. Last week, the Senate passed a resolution that would mandate an end to U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in that troubled Arab state, which now suffers the worlds worst humanitarian crisis, with nearly 10 million people on the brink of starvation. If the House, which already voted for a similar measure, approves the Senate version, it would be the first successful use of the 1973 War Powers Act, which was intended to prevent presidents from waging wars without congressional approval.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. often said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. That is but one reason why the rise in bigotry shown to Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, blacks and others has been so discouraging in the age of Trump. Like those who believed these racists were relics from a bygone age, I had also convinced myself that my Republican colleagues were so repelled by racism that they would never support a leader who provided inspiration to neo-Nazis and white supremacists; the manifesto of the New Zealand killer and the words of David Duke after Charlottesville showed just how wrong I was.
After attacks by the Islamic State, there was no shortage of Western politicians and commentators blaming the most deplorable acts of terrorism on Islam and Muslims  people whose opinions are very much aligned with the Australian senator Fraser Anning. At the time, we objected to the association of our faith with terrorism, and pledged to disallow any attempt by terrorists to hijack our religion. Unfortunately, Islamophobia and xenophobia, among other practices incompatible with liberal values, were met with silence in Europe and other parts of the Western world. We cannot afford to allow this again. If the world wants to prevent future assaults similar to the one in New Zealand, it must start by establishing that what happened was the product of a coordinated smear campaign.
Well, he must have some accomplishments other than almost winning a Senate seat, right? Not really. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was flummoxed when asked what ORourke had accomplished in Congress, saying he brought a great deal of vitality to his work preserving our planet and protecting our people. (In fact, ORourke passed a single bill, H.R. 5873, which renamed a courthouse in his hometown of El Paso.) Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa was questioned by Ed Henry on Fox News, What would you say is Beto ORourkes top accomplishment that he brings to the table? Hinojosa could not name a single one. Im not even talking about Congress, Henry said. What has he done in his life? Your question is meaningless, Hinojosa replied.
The Clintons, of course, are not particularly instructive when it comes to figuring all of this out. They offered themselves as a package deal from the start. Buy one. Get one free, he quipped, setting off a national argument that saw her branded as the yuppie wife from hell and Lady Macbeth of Arkansas. When she twice ran for president, it was far from clear whether her husbands looming presence and occasional outbursts helped or hurt.
The shooting revealed serious shortcomings in how governments confront right-wing radicalism. In the United States, Islamist extremism, even when it is homegrown, is considered international terrorism  and law enforcement treats it that way. Right-wing radicalism, on the other hand, is called domestic terrorism if it is called terrorism at all. Sometimes, crimes motivated by the same set of values are instead classified as hate crimes or gang violence. Right-wing radicalism kills more Americans than Islamist extremism, and the government should pursue the threat with more vigor. Doing so will require grappling with its domestic and global dimensions alike.
On its release last week, President Trumps $4.7 trillion 2020 budget was pronounced dead on arrival, and was quickly lost in the cacophony of his presidency. The New York Times suggested it provides a declaration of Mr. Trumps reelection campaign priorities. In fact, its pages include not only the presidents campaign rhetoric but also an accounting of his actual values and priorities that reveal the scope of his betrayal of the working men and women who voted him into office. This is not A Budget for a Better America, as its title reads. It is a budget for a bitter betrayal.
Presidential leadership in this period of technological transition should focus on the future rather than the past. But Trump seems almost a technophobe. Axios reported this week that he thinks driverless cars are crazy. He tweeted March 12, after the crash of a high-tech Boeing jetliner: Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. . . . I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better.
In her March 13 op-ed, Some benefit of the doubt for Tucker Carlson, Kathleen Parker blithely characterized recently unearthed racist and sexist comments Tucker Carlson made to a syndicated radio show as shockingly jock-ish. To be clear, Mr. Carlson, now a Fox News host, said that Iraqis were semiliterate primitive monkeys who dont use forks or toilet paper, and he made sexual jokes about then-17-year-old Caitlin Upton, 2007 Miss South Carolina Teen USA, whom he characterized as so dumb . . . like a wounded gazelle, separated from the herd. Ms. Parkers defense of Mr. Carlson seemed to be that she knows him  she bought jewelry from his sister-in-law!  and hes actually a nice, if provocative, guy.
The rules were set by the Democratic Party less as a way to tap new funding sources than to ease frictions created by the 2016 nominating process, when supporters of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her campaign had an outsize role in setting the structure and timing of the debates. Democratic Party Chair Tom Perez has said he wants an open and transparent process that gives a bigger voice to the partys low-dollar donors.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), another 2020 candidate, has also recently spoken about having used marijuana, although his comments were not as widely reported as Harriss. Didnt do a whole lot for me. My recollection is I nearly coughed my brains out, so its not my cup of tea, Sanders said in an interview this month with the same radio program, The Breakfast Club.
In deciphering the intent of the Congress that wrote this statute, we must decide  in the face of what is, at worst, linguistic ambiguity  whether Congress intended that persons who have long since paid their debt to society would be deprived of their liberty for months or years without the possibility of bail, Breyer wrote.
The brutality of the Khashoggi killing and Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, as well as the continued detention of political prisoners, threaten not only Saudi Arabias regional role but also the future of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, the senators wrote in the letter to King Salman. We will continue to closely watch Saudi action  or inaction  on human rights as Congress considers measures related to the Middle East. Our shared interests must be underscored by support for basic values and freedoms, as anything else will not be sustainable.
Honda is promising more power, and Red Bull is determined to improve its chassis after the new works pairing impressed at the 2019 season opener in Melbourne.

Max Verstappen, finishing behind the two Mercedes, ensured that pre-season favourite Ferrari couldn't even be on the podium in Australia.

And Dr Helmut Marko says there is more to come.

"We hope that Mercedes' form was specific to Melbourne," the top team official told Auto Motor und Sport.

"We were ahead of Ferrari, but we want to be ahead of everyone," Marko added.

For that, he admitted that Red Bull has work to do.

"The best part of the package is the Honda engine," he said. "For our part we need to improve the chassis.

"We have too little downforce, but that's born of the philosophy of the last five years where we had to constantly compensate for the lack of performance."

He is talking about Red Bull's former supplier Renault, who according to Marko always produced too little engine power.

"That's why we didn't have any big wings in Melbourne," said Marko. "They don't exist in our imagination.

"We will try to solve this as quickly as we can put it through CFD development and production."

As for the engine, Marko said Honda is promising to close the 10-20 horse power gap to Mercedes.

"The board, which was in Melbourne, promised us that more power is coming soon," he confirmed.

"If the power increase is significant, we will not wait until the eighth race. We would in that case take a penalty for the start of the race," said Marko.

"It's then up to us to develop the chassis to catch up with the people ahead of us."

Verstappen, third in Melbourne, also has nothing but good things to say after Red Bull dropped Renault to switch to Honda.

"It's just a completely different engine, but I don't like comparing with what we had before," he told Ziggo Sport. "I don't want to upset anyone."

(GMM)
Trump has fixated on the health-care vote since it occurred. Amid a spate of tweets over the weekend, the president called it a stain on McCains record and later took another swipe at him, falsely asserting that he was last in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Last week, Ryan reportedly told a crowd during a lecture in Vero Beach, Fla., that the Democrat who defines the race as one about Trump and Trumps personality could beat him. But he quickly backtracked on Twitter to clarify that he believes Trump deserves to win.
Many of Sanderss supporters say they are frustrated that he does not talk more about his own role in the civil rights movement, since they say he has a good story to tell. As a young activist, Sanders attended the 1963 March on Washington, was a leader of the Congress of Racial Equality chapter at the University of Chicago, and got arrested at an anti-

segregation protest.
Hes shutting down the doors, Jammal said. We tried. We said: Regardless of what then-candidate Trump said, or regardless of what he says as president, regardless of our differences, wed love to meet with him, wed like to sit down and explain more about Muslim Americans, what we do, how much we have worked with previous administrations. We dont have to like each other, but we have to communicate. 
The move is intentional as the White House sees the requests from newly empowered Democrats as illegitimate, too expansive or infringing on presidential privilege, such as Trumps communications with his senior advisers or another head of state, according to two senior administration officials. Those officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss strategy, said the White House is intent on challenging most, if not all, House Democrats document requests.
WFP is starting food distributions in Dondo today outside Beira, said Deborah Nguyen, part of the WFP response in the port city. Communities stranded by floods in Buzi and surroundings are being rescued by helicopters to Beira for now, she added, referring to the area across the river from the port where thousands of people are believed to be stranded and which the United Nations has warned risks being submerged.
During nearly a month of large and peaceful protests in the capital of Algiers and other major cities, the military has stayed out of the fray  but Monday signaled its unease at the continuing demonstrations and suggested it could intervene. Army chief of staff Ahmed Gaid Salah, a member of Bouteflikas inner circle, called for a quick solution to what he termed a political crisis. Leaders of Algerias protest movement understood his statement to mean that the military is prepared to step in.
Im still afraid. I dont want to go out to a restaurant or anywhere, said Kevin Avisena, a 19-year-old student from Indonesia training in New Zealand to be a pilot. He was trampled in the crush to escape the Al Noor Mosque, where 42 people were killed, and said he was having difficulty getting over what he saw when he could finally stand up.
As comforting as fondue, with spice and sweetness youll crave. Photo: Scott Heins

At Haenyeo, a new corner restaurant in Park Slope, the menu description saucy and spicy rice cake fundido is intriguing, but it cannot entirely prepare a diner for the dish that will arrive: a deeply flavored bowl of ingredients topped with a bubbling sheath of cheese. Somehow, this shared appetizer manages to be Korean, Mexican, Spanish, Swiss, and maybe even a little Japanese, all at once.

The dish is the multicultural brainchild of chef Jenny Kwak, who spent much of her professional cooking career preparing hypertraditional Korean food at her mothers restaurants, Dok Suni and Do Hwa. (Though they are now closed, they gave many New Yorkers their first tastes of gochujang and kimchi away from the bustle of Koreatown.) Haenyeo is Kwaks first restaurant of her own, named for the female divers who have spent centuries catching and selling seafood on South Koreas Jeju Island. And, along with restaurants such Atoboy, Atomix, Hwaban, and o:n, Haenyeo is helping to shape the decidedly contemporary direction that Korean cuisine is taking in New York.

Yes, Kwaks food is rooted in Korean flavors  bibimbap and kalbi are both on the menu  but there are also oysters dabbed in seaweed butter and grilled, as is done in New Orleans, the hometown of Kwaks husband. A seafood stew, meanwhile, marries the classic onion and fennel aromas of bouillabaisse with simply steamed seafood. And then there are the rice cakes fundido, the most memorable dish on the menu and one with a surprisingly complex backstory.

The dish started out as tteok-bokki, a Korean staple of rice cakes stewed in a spicy sauce typically made with gochujang  a dish that Kwak had ideas for improving and updating. First, she thought about a starter that would have the homey, hearty feel of fondue, which Kwak tried in Zermatt, Switzerland, and now makes for her family every Christmas. Her next thought was queso fundido, the Mexican dish of melted cheese and chorizo. She had also recently visited her sister, who lives in Spain, and eaten a dish called cocido madrileno, in which pasta, shrimp, and chorizo are pressure-cooked, yielding a rich, flavorful broth. Rice cakes, she realized, are just like pasta, with their impressive ability to soak up sauces and flavors.

On paper, it might sound like a lot, but to Kwak, it all made perfect sense. When you go to Seoul, the food has evolved to be so playful, she says, noting that even melted cheese has become increasingly common at food stalls in Seoul, as a topping for dumplings, pork ribs, and plenty of other snacks.

Kwak also wanted to buck a frustrating trend: as Khushbu Shah noted in GQ in 2017, while white chefs tend to be rewarded for cooking other cuisines, when chefs of color have stepped outside of the foods of their own heritage, it has historically not been well-received. People are like, Why would you do something to Korean food when it is already great? she says. They are more critical, definitely.

Kwak doesnt mind the critics, though, and besides, she adds, This is my food now.

The rice cakes simmering in their sauce. Photo: Scott Heins

The dish itself starts out like traditional tteok-bokki, with a sauce of gochujang, gochugaru (a mild chili powder that acts as a thickener), soy sauce, garlic, and toasted sesame oil. Kwak hydrates rice cakes in beef broth, and mixes in the sauce.

Each dish gets a quick scattering of aromatics and cheese. Photo: Scott Heins. Each dish gets a quick scattering of aromatics and cheese. Photo: Scott Heins.

Then things get creative. Over the top go onions, jalapenos, and a healthy amount of Oaxaca cheese, which Kwak prefers because it tastes fattier than other melty cheeses like mozzarella, she says. The finishing touch is the crumbled chorizo, which Kwak gets from Mi Barrio Tortilleria, a local purveyor. We are their only Korean restaurant client, she says, with a laugh. The dish is then placed under the broiler until the top is golden and bubbling.

Hot and bubbling. Photo: Scott Heins

Kwak initially tried to serve the dish in a ttukbaegi, a Korean clay pot often used for bibimbap, but it was too deep. She instead uses a Japanese donabe, which is much shallower.

The all-important stretch factor. Photo: Scott Heins

The finished dish looks distinctly Mexican: bright-red sauce, crisped bits of chorizo, bubbling Oaxacan cheese. But when you dig into it, the rice cakes and the sweet, intense gochujang are undeniably Korean. The smoke and spice of the chorizo is a perfect compliment to sweet, spicy sauce, while the onions and jalapenos add some much-needed freshness and bite. Its the kind of deeply comforting dish thats impossible to stop eating  intensely crave-able, with a sauce that makes you want to lick the bowl. (If you ask nicely, the kitchen will also provide a bowl of rice for soaking up the saucy remnants.)

From the Japanese serving dish to the Mexican cheese to the Korean chili paste, Kwak admits her inspiration is kind of all over the place, but she wants to make it clear that she has evolved past her days of cooking strictly traditional Korean food. I have traveled more, she says. These are things that really change you as a person, and just as importantly, as a chef.

Chef Kwak. Photo: Scott Heins
The massacre has shocked the world not only because of its scale  the shooter continued his rampage for more than 30 minutes at a second mosque before he was arrested  but also for the brazenness in which it was live-streamed on Facebook. Dozens commented, cheering him on, while others watched horrified as social media giants struggled to prevent the 17-minute video from being downloaded and re-shared over and over again.
A Dutch court said Tuesday that Gokmen Tanis, the suspect, also faces rape charges over a July 2017 incident and that he had been sentenced this month for burglary and shoplifting. In 2014, he was convicted of illegal weapons possession and attempted theft, and acquitted of attempted manslaughter. Courts had allowed him to remain free despite the burglary and shoplifting convictions because he had not exhausted his appeals. He was on pretrial release in the rape case.
May huddled with her advisers for hours to try to devise a new strategy for getting lawmakers to sign on to the divorce deal before Britains scheduled departure from the E.U. on March 29. Her old plan  not that it appeared popular enough to succeed  was upended Monday by the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, when he said he would not permit a third vote on a divorce deal British lawmakers have already twice rejected.
The warrants show that federal agents sought information from Cohens Gmail account, as well as an account he set up for his legal and consulting work. An agent noted that Cohen also used a Trump Organization email account but indicated that as of the filing of the warrant request on April 8, 2018, the FBI had not been able to obtain the contents of that account. The agent did not indicate why the FBI did not have access to Cohens Trump Organization records.
It was not immediately clear whether the Trump administration, if the detainees suspected links to the attack bear out, would seek to bring the suspects to the United States for prosecution or further detention. The administration has said it would be open to putting new terrorism suspects in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but that move could pose legal and logistical challenges.
Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration at least 63 times over the past two years, an extraordinary record of legal defeat that has stymied large parts of the presidents agenda on the environment, immigration and other matters.

In case after case, judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance for shifting policy, including providing legitimate explanations supported by facts and, where required, public input.

Many of the cases are in early stages and subject to reversal. For example, the Supreme Court permitted a version of President Trumps ban on travelers from certain predominantly Muslim nations to take effect after lower-court judges blocked the travel ban as discriminatory.

But regardless of whether the administration ultimately prevails, the rulings so far paint a remarkable portrait of a government rushing to implement far-reaching changes in policy without regard for long-standing rules against arbitrary and capricious behavior.

What they have consistently been doing is short-circuiting the process, said Georgetown Law Schools William W. Buzbee, an expert on administrative law who has studied Trumps record. In the regulatory cases, Buzbee said, they dont even come close to explaining their actions, making it very easy for the courts to reject them because theyre not doing their homework.

Two-thirds of the cases accuse the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a nearly 73-year-old law that forms the primary bulwark against arbitrary rule. The normal win rate for the government in such cases is about 70 percent, according to analysts and studies. But as of mid-January, a database maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law shows Trumps win rate at about 6 percent.

Seth Jaffe, a Boston-based environmental lawyer who represents corporations and had been looking forward to deregulation, said the administration has failed to deliver.

Ive spent 30 years in the private sector complaining about the excesses of environmental regulation, Jaffe said, but this administration has given regulatory reform a bad name.

Some errors are so basic that Jaffe said he has to wonder whether agency officials are more interested in announcing policy shifts than in actually implementing them. Its not just that theyre losing. But theyre being so nuts about it, he said, adding that the losses in court have set regulatory reform back for a period of time.

Contributing to the losing record has been Trump himself. His reported comments about shithole countries, for example, helped convince U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen in San Francisco that the administrations decision to end temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Central America, Haiti and Sudan was motivated by racial and ethnic bias.

At least a dozen decisions have involved Trumps tweets or comments.

The Justice Department, which defends federal agencies in court, declined to comment. The White House also declined to comment.

Matthew Collette, who served as the deputy director of the Justice Departments Civil Division appellate staff until his departure in October, said that in his 30 years at the department, he had not seen so many losses for a presidential administration in such a short time. I dont think theres any doubt about that, he said.

'Virtually unexplained'

Trump has blamed his losses on Obama judges in the West Coast states that make up the 9th Circuit. While 29 setbacks have come from 9th Circuit judges, the trend is national, with 34 originating elsewhere, particularly in the District of Columbia Circuit, according to a count by The Washington Post.

Democratic appointees, many of them tapped by presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, are responsible for 45 decisions. Republican appointees dating back to President Ronald Reagan issued the other rulings. Magistrate judges, who are not appointed by presidents, made three of the decisions.

On major issues on which multiple judges have ruled, there has been little disagreement among them, no matter where the judges are located or who appointed them.

Four judges, for instance, have rejected the decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has protected from deportation nearly 700,000 people brought to the United States as children. All four judges said essentially the same thing: that the governments stated reason for ending DACA  that it was unlawful  was virtually unexplained, as U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush in Washington, said in an April opinion. A second explanation  that DACA creates a litigation risk  was derided by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in California as mere spin.

Three judges have invalidated the attempt to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census, the latest being U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco on March 6. All rejected as unbelievable Commerce Secretary Wilbur Rosss explanation that the move was intended to improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

The matter is pending before the Supreme Court. The Commerce Department declined to comment.

In the cases challenging termination of temporary protected status, the Department of Homeland Security claimed it was not actually changing policy and was therefore immune from review under the APA. But internal documents contradicted that claim, and Chen, an Obama appointee, blocked the shift in an Oct. 3 decision.

Michael Bars, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which handles determinations for temporary protected status, declined to comment on ongoing litigation. He added that the agency is committed to faithfully executing the law.

Every administration loses cases because of APA violations. Obamas most notable defeat came in 2015, when a Texas judge blocked his plan to protect from deportation illegal immigrants whose children are Americans or lawful permanent residents.

Still, administrations of both parties have historically won most of these cases, in part because judges tend to defer to the federal government, legal experts said  making Trumps record of failure virtually unprecedented.

The Trump administrations style of policymaking has led to some awkward moments in court. Take the many cases challenging the Department of Health and Human Services over its decision to end some $200 million in grants to 81 programs on preventing teen pregnancy.

The decision was taken  abruptly and without explanation  soon after the June 2017 appointment of Valerie Huber to serve as senior adviser to then-HHS Secretary Tom Price. Huber, a leader of the abstinence-only sex education movement  which she prefers to call sexual risk avoidance  had lobbied to eliminate funding for the programs, which in her view normalized teen sex.

The decision threatened to devastate the budgets of scores of teen-pregnancy programs across the nation, many of which quickly filed suit. In its defense, HHS argued that ending the grants did not represent a policy change and therefore required no explanation under the APA.

During a hearing in Washington last April, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed incredulity about the manner in which the agency had acted. Can an agency suddenly say too bad, so sad,  Jackson asked a lawyer for the government, and cut off money without cause? When the lawyer answered yes, the judge called the situation weird and ordered the grants restored.

In her ruling the following month, Jackson said HHSs unmistakable and inexplicable silence in cutting the money made her decision quite easy.

This much is clear: A federal agency that changes course abruptly without a well-reasoned explanation for its decision or that acts contrary to its own regulations is subject to having a federal court vacate its action as arbitrary [and] capricious,  she said in her ruling, quoting the APAs most recognizable incantation.

Judges in Maryland, New York, Oregon and Washington state arrived at similar conclusions in related cases.

In an email, HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley chalked the losses up to ambiguity in the grant rules.

A slowed agenda

Failure to follow the APA has dramatically slowed the administrations agenda on other fronts, particularly the push to roll back environmental regulations.

Last February, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers suspended an important clean-water rule without soliciting public comment or formally considering the implications, both requirements of the APA. When conservationists sued, the government argued that it was only delaying the rule, not eliminating it.

U.S. District Judge David C. Norton of South Carolina, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, gave the Trump administration a tongue lashing, calling its approach evasive, in addition to being arbitrary and capricious.

Certainly, different administrations may implement different regulatory priorities, Norton wrote in August. But the law  requires that the pivot from one administrations priorities to those of the next be accomplished with at least some fidelity to law and legal process. . . . The court cannot countenance such a state of affairs, he wrote.

If your goal is to change policy, the little extra time to explain is worth it, said Jonathan H. Adler, a Case Western Reserve University law professor who regards himself as a regulatory skeptic. Various administrations dont always like that lesson, he said, this administration more than most.

[The Trump administration keeps losing environmental court cases]

Some observers attributed the EPAs woes to its former administrator, Scott Pruitt, a skeptic of federal environmental policy who installed inexperienced officials and moved rapidly to roll back Obama-era regulations.

Jeffrey R. Holmstead, a Republican lawyer who headed the EPAs Office of Air and Radiation from 2001 to 2005, said he sensed a potential problem at the agency soon after Trumps election, during the transition before he took office.

This administration was different than any Ive seen in my lifetime, Holmstead said, noting that Trump didnt have anybody who had any kind of meaningful experience with the EPA.

Compounding the problem was the Trump teams complete distrust of the career staff at the EPA, Holmstead said  a professional corps that always gives you good advice, whether or not they agree with the presidents politics.

Pruitt resigned last summer amid a host of allegations of unethical conduct. He has since been replaced as EPA administrator by Andrew Wheeler, who has taken steps . . . to ensure the agency engages in well-reasoned, transparent and defensible decision-making, said EPA spokesman John Konkus.

Konkus added that only a handful of cases against the agency have reached the end of the judicial review process.

[How Wilbur Ross aggressively tried to alter the 2020 Census and conceal why, according to a federal judge]

As with the travel ban, the administration is pinning its hopes on the Supreme Court to overturn lower-court rulings and preserve its policy changes. Trump has appointed two of the nine justices, shifting the high court to the right.

Hopefully, we will get a fair shake in the Supreme Court, Trump said in February when he declared a state of emergency to build a wall along the nations southern border.

With a few exceptions, however, the high court has shown no inclination to rush to Trumps aid. Most cases never reach the Supreme Court. And while Trump has filled numerous vacancies in the lower courts, appointees of Democratic presidents still account for more than 55 percent of active federal judges, said John D. Graham, dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.

If the Trump administration wants to win future cases, Graham said, they must do a much better job of persuading judges appointed by Democratic presidents.
He was there first, so he was doing it first, said Aviv Bushinsky, a former chief of staff and media adviser for Netanyahu, describing the way he speaks to his political base. The ones who support Netanyahu from the right wing, they were the ones that felt discriminated against, that no one counted, and Netanyahu uses it to say, Look, they are doing it to us again. 
Legal experts are calling for compulsory business education for company directors in order to stop illegal phoenixing and complement proposed new criminal and civil penalties for poorly behaved company directors.

Submissions on the government's "Combating illegal phoenixing" bill argue phoenix behaviour will not stop without strong enforcement by the regulators. Law firm Maurice Blackburn says Australia needs to do more to ensure company directors are qualified before they can take the wheel of a business.

New phoenixing rules designed to help subcontractors, employees and creditors of collapsed companies have been welcomed. Credit:Erin Jonasson

"Whats lacking in the bill are proactive measures  measures that would stop everything falling apart," says Maurice Blackburn chief of employment and industrial law, Giri Sivaraman.

Illegal phoenix activity involves transferring business assets from one entity to another in a way that can prevent employees and creditors from accessing their entitlements in the event of a company collapse. It's estimated to cost the country more than $5 billion a year, according to work done by the national phoenix taskforce.
Climate change is already having a serious effect on Victorias environment, a landmark state government report leaked to The Age has warned, generating more extreme weather, less rainfall and snow cover, warmer sea surface temperatures, rising sea levels and the threat of greater bushfires.

Victoria's biodiversity is rapidly deteriorating in many parts of the state, with feral animals and plants on the march while native species are losing habitat and under increasing threat of extinction.

The latest State of the Environment Report for Victoria reveals that the local environment is being degraded at the hands of humans at a greater rate than it is being conserved elsewhere.

Meanwhile, "unprecedented population growth is adding further pressure on the natural realm.
A man accused of locking a young boy in a 'cage' at a Perth supermarket has pleaded not guilty to two charges in Armadale Court.

The accused did not speak to media outside court on Tuesday. Credit:Heather McNeill

Farivar Ronaghi, 41, was charged with deprivation of liberty and common assault after a December 30 incident at the Kelmscott IGA in which he allegedly injured a boy who reportedly tried to steal a bottle of Coke.

Mr Rongahi, from Karrinyup, is also alleged to have locked the boy in a storeroom at the supermarket.

He was bailed to reappear on May 28.
The operator of a website synonymous with alt-right subculture has labelled New Zealand a s---hole country and mocked the New Zealand police that contacted him seeking assistance on the Christchurch terror attack.

Police searching for evidence near the Al Noor Mosque. Credit:Jason South

Joshua Conner Moon, who administers the website Kiwi Farms, posted an aggressive response in which he also described New Zealand as a small, irrelevant island nation barely more recognisable than any other nameless pacific [sic] sovereignty.

I feel real bad for you guys, youve got a quiet nation and now this attack is going to be the first thing people think of for the next 10 years when they hear the name New Zealand, it states.

Tell your superiors theyre going to make the entire country and its government look like clowns by trying to censor the internet.




Fox White Nationalist Tucker Carlson's biggest worry about the slaughter last week in New Zealand-- by a confessed Trump supporter-- was worry that social media might curtail "free speech" by blocking further broadcasting of live gun massacres. Facebook can't seem to figure out how to prevent the live streaming of mass murders, another in a long list of problems for the tech giant, problems that are rankling the public and bringing the industry front and center politically.













Politico Sunday asking Nancy Scola did a piece forSunday asking how the Democrats running for president turned against tech -- a big change for the party. Scola sees evidence that "Democrats running for president see big tech companies as enemies of the progressive agenda, rather than the allies they once were. Warrens complaint last week that the social media giant 'has too much power' might have been a shock coming from a prominent Democrat just a few years ago, when Barack Obamas public appearances with CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Twitters Jack Dorsey were typical for a party seeking to boost its appeal to tech-savvy young voters.

The hard turn against the technology industry from prominent Democrats represents a major cultural change in the party-- and a real threat to Silicon Valleys political influence with liberals who may share tech workers' political sensibilities but are diverging from the industry on fundamental issues about privacy, business practices and taxes. For the industry, the danger is that the next president could espouse policies harmful to techs bottom line, from pushing for tougher antitrust action to restricting government contracts for companies unwilling to change their ways.



Klobuchar sounded the theme at the very start of her campaign, during the announcement speech in February where she stood in blowing snow in Minneapolis.



For too long the big tech companies have been telling you Dont worry! Weve got your back! while your identities are being stolen and your data is mined, the Minnesota senator said.



Even Cory Booker, a Stanford grad with close ties to Silicon Valley, used a recent NPR interview to lump tech in with other powerful lobbies that need to be reined in. "We need to make sure that whether it's Silicon Valley or the pharma industry or the big ag, we need to hold people accountable for their actions," he said.



...Warren has taken the hardest line of all, calling for the federal government to shrink and split up industry giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. To restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last, its time to break up our biggest tech companies," she wrote in a blog post this month.



The Massachusetts senator later singled out Facebook after Politico reported that the social media company had taken down Warren campaign ads calling for its breakup. Facebook soon restored the ads, but Warren said the episode only underscored the need for "a social media marketplace that isn't dominated by a single censor."



Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz publicly took Warrens side in that dispute-- a rare occurrence that underscores the bipartisan populist appeal of the tech backlash. A Morning Consult/Politico poll earlier this month found that near-identical pluralities of Democrats and Republicans agreed with the statement, "Technology companies have too much power and the federal government should step in to regulate more."

A few days ago, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich penned an article for Salon explaining why Warren is right about busting up big tech . It's all about monopolies. Did you know, for example, that:

 Nearly 90% of all internet searches now go through Google.

 Facebook and Google together account for 58% of all digital ads

 93% of Americans get their news online-- and Facebook and Google is where many of them go for it

 Amazon is now the first stop for a third of all American consumers seeking to buy anything.





Reich explains that "With such size comes the power to stifle innovation. Amazon wont let any business that sells through it sell any item at a lower price anywhere else. Its even using its control over book sales to give books published by Amazon priority over rival publishers. Google uses the worlds most widely used search engine to promote its own services and Google-generated content over those of competitors, like Yelp. Facebooks purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram killed off two potential rivals."

Such size also confers political power to get whatever these companies and their top executives want.



Amazon-- the richest corporation in America-- paid nothing in federal taxes last year. Meanwhile, its holding an auction to extort billions from states and cities eager to have its second headquarters.



It also forced Seattle, its home headquarters, to back down on a plan to tax big corporations like itself to pay for homeless shelters for a growing population that cant afford the sky-high rents caused in part by Amazon.



Facebook withheld evidence of Russian activity on its platform far longer than previously disclosed. When the news came to light, it employed a political opposition research firm to discredit critics.



Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, who holds the worlds speed record for falling from one of the most admired to the most reviled people on the planet, just unveiled a plan to encrypt personal information from all his platforms.



The new plan is likely to give Facebook even more comprehensive data about everyone. If you believe it will better guard privacy, you dont remember Zuckerbergs last seven promises to protect privacy.



Google forced the New America Foundation, an influential think tank it helped fund, to fire researchers who were urging antitrust officials to take on Google.



And its been quietly financed hundreds of university professors to write research papers justifying Googles market dominance.



What to do? Some argue the tech mammoths should be regulated like utilities or common carriers, but this would put government into the impossible position of policing content and overseeing new products and services.



A better alternative is to break them up. That way, information would be distributed through a large number of independent channels without a centralized platform giving all content apparent legitimacy and extraordinary reach. And more startups could flourish.



Like the robber barons of the first Gilded Age, those of the second have amassed fortunes because of their monopolies-- fortunes that give them unparalleled leverage over politicians and the economy.



The combined wealth of Zuckerberg ($62.3 billion), Bezos ($131 billion), Brin ($49.8 billion) and Page ($50.8 billion) is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the American population.



A wealth tax (also proposed by Warren) would help.



Some of the robber barons of the first Gilded Age were generous philanthropists, as are todays. That didnt excuse the damage they did to America.



Lets be clear: Monopolies arent good for anyone except for the monopolists.



In this new Gilded Age, we need to respond to them as forcefully as we did the first time around. Warrens ideas are a good start.





As we suggested earlier, a Bernie/Warren ticket would be a great idea to put up against Trump in 2020. One way Amazon, for example, has been able to exert influence over politicians is through substantial campaign contributions, substantial enough so that it's absolutely impossible to see them as anything other than bribes. Last year alone, Google and its executives poured $13,536,034 into electoral races (and that doesn't count the $27,400,000 they spent on lobbying in the last cycle). Amazon's biggest contribution-- by far-- went to the conservative-leaning With Honor Fund , which spent massively to elect Michael Waltz (R-FL), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Brian Mast (R-FL), Steve Watkins (R-KS), Donald Bacon (R-NE). They spent $1,744,822 on Waltz and $863,616 on Crenshaw, so we're not talking about nominal contributions here. The only Democrats who were elected with significant help from the PAC were Jared Golden (ME), Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ) and Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA). Amazon was their biggest contributor-- more than all other contributor combined-- and their second biggest was the Bezos Family Foundation ($2,004,324).





Amazon also gave significant money to the DCCC ($138,331), the DNC , the DSCC and the NRCC. As for individual campaigns, their dozen biggest contributions went to:

 Beto O'Rourke (New Dem-TX)- $75,751

 Kim Schrier (New Dem-WA)- $74,860

 Maria Cantwell (D-WA)- $59,970

 Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)- $44,037

 Lisa Brown (New Dem-WA)- $37,357

 Jacky Rosen (New Dem-NV)- $35,828

 Bob Casey (D-PA)- $33,615

 Cory Gardner (R-CO)- $31,950

 Claire McCaskill (D-MO)- $31,391

 Suzan DelBene (New Dem)- $29,500

 Doug Jones (D-AL)- $28,674

 Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- $23,814

That's a list of mostly conservative candidates, Lisa Brown being the only exception. On top of that was the money that flowed from the company PAC, in House races, $533,500 to Republicans and $475,500 to Democrats. There were 12 House candidates they maxed out to ($10,000 each):
(HedgeCo.Net) Fraud charges have been filed along with an asset freeze against the operators of a $25 million Ponzi scheme falsely promising high annual returns with minimal to no risk to investors in the Vietnamese community of Orange County, California.

The SEC alleges that Kent R.E. Whitney founded The Church for the Healthy Self three months after being released from federal prison for orchestrating a prior investment scheme involving commodities. According to the SEC, the Church for the Healthy Selfs investment program, CHS Trust, promised investors tax-deductible, guaranteed, and insured returns of at least 12%, through reinsurance investments and options trading. David Lee Parrish, who assisted Whitneys earlier fraud, joined his friend as a co-pastor of The Church for the Healthy Self and as the purported director of CHS Trust. Whitney and Parrish primarily targeted Vietnamese investors through extensive radio and television advertisements touting CHS Trust. Instead of generating the promised guaranteed profits, Whitney and Parrish stole millions of dollars of investor funds and paid returns through Ponzi payments. Earlier this month, the FBI obtained a criminal seizure of the funds in CHS Trusts main account, citing potential violations of federal wire fraud and money laundering statutes as the predicate for the seizure. Despite the FBI seizure, Whitney and Parrish continued to solicit investors.

The SEC alleges that the defendants violated the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. The SEC is seeking permanent injunctions, disgorgement, and civil penalties against the defendants.

On March 14, 2019, the Honorable Judge James V. Selna of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted the SECs request for a temporary restraining order and asset freeze.
European Healthtech Investment Forum was held for the third time in Helsinki, Finland on 13-14-March 2019. The forum which was organised by Techtour in collaboration with Business Finland in The Finlandia Hall brought together dozens of healthtech startups and investors for a two days compilation of presentations, competition and one-to-one meetings. Both startups and investors came from all around the world.

There is a lot happening in the E-health and Healthtech field which is still obscure to the public as the route from innovation to widespread use is long and specially for diagnostic or therapeutic innovation is also highly regulated. You may build an app for tracking womens menstrual period or migraine headaches and bring it to the Appstore right away, but a medical device or new methodology has to go through animal and clinical trials first and get CE, FDA and other approvals before it becomes available to hospitals or consumers.

For the 3rd annual EHIF forum, 40 startups were selected form among over 70 applicants to present their companies and ideas to investors. Most of the elected companies were in the verge of raising series A or B funding, meaning that they had already spent or as some investors hate to use; burnt their seed investments and some public funding.

Popit, a Finnish company with an innovative pill tracking device and app helps consumers keep track of their pills. The small device is attached to your blister pill sheet and records every pill taken and sends you a notification through the app if you miss one. Popit, which also used crowdfunding through Indigogo to raise money for developing the device, was seeking a 3-5 M round to accelerate sales and expand. The patented technology seems promising, but a price tag of USD 79 (50) each for the device may hinder sales.

Symptoma, a Dutch company established more than 10 years ago is not considered a startup by company age standards, but the service it is offering is an emerging field in E-health. Symptoma is in the crowded market of symptom checking, I.e. offering online diagnosis direct to consumers using a large database of medical texts and articles and machine learning. The idea is simple: The user types his or her symptoms into the search field on Symptoms site and the interface asks you more questions before giving you a range of possible diagnosis. The service is free of charge for users and is funded by advertisement. There are numerous companies in this filed with similar services with some like Babylon Health spending tens of millions of investment money into building an AI doctor, but symptom claims that its platform is the best. To prove this the company presents a chart based on British Medical Journalss (BMJ) F- Score Benchmark Plot which scores Symptomas diagnostic accuracy on the top place way above well known providers of similar service such as Webmed and Mayoclinic.

On the investor front Monita Mo, Founder and Partner at Ascend Capital Partners, stands out among a mainly VC and Pharma dominated crowd of participants. Monita, a self made woman from Hong Kong, now lives in Manhattan and invests in promising startups. In 2017, Ascend Capital Partners invested a total of 24 million in four Finnish companies in the healthcare and automotive industries.

Two of these companies are Aiforia, which is using logarithms for pathological image analysis and diagnosis and Grundium which has invented an automatic pathology slide scanning microscope. Having a relative in the filed of Pathology she was familiar with the challenges with the filed and shortage of pathologists worldwide and in specially in the growing market of China. Monita Mo prides herself in taking an active, hands on role in the companies she invests in. She has already had 3 exits and a 100% success rate with her investments.

Next big medical forum in Finland will be HIMSS & Health 2.0 European Conference, taking place on June 11-13 June.

Alexis Kouros - HT
The Finnish business-oriented newspaper reports that the meeting was attended by practically all key organisations involved in tourism marketing in Estonia, including the Estonian Tourism Board, Estonian Association of Travel Agencies, Estonian Hotel and Restaurant Association, and the Port of Tallinn.

AN EMERGENCY MEETING on Finns was held recently in Tallinn, Estonia, according to Kauppalehti.

The main item on the agenda was Finland.

With Finns becoming less and less interested in jumping on a cruise ship bound for Tallinn and, especially, spending a night in Estonia, the consensus among the attendees was that something has to be done  as soon as the reasons for the declining interest have been identified.

Mall Oja, a marketing co-ordinator at Visit Tallinn, told Kauppalehti that the most recent profile study of Finnish visitors was conducted in 2014.

The Finnish tourist has changed considerably. They buy a lot less in Tallinn, because the average age of tourists is dropping and young people dont really care for shopping. New things to see and experience are whats important for Finns in Tallinn, said Oja.

Statistics show that overnight stays by Finnish tourists fell by 10 per cent year-on-year in Tallinn in 2018. This year started on an even worse note, with the number of overnight visitors plunging by 19 per cent year-on-year in January.

The number of Finnish cruise visitors to the capital similarly fell by 37 per cent year-on-year during the summer months of 2018, according to Statistics Finland.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Source: Uusi Suomi
For Jim Tzepos, purchasing the former Seymour Trust Building was more than an investment  it was a chance to rekindle a legacy of investing in people.

They gave people chances to get started, and were doing the same thing with our tenants, he said, referring to the newly transformed bank building at 115 Main St. that now features office and retail space in downtown Seymour.

This time last year, Tzepos and his wife teamed up with Joe Ascione, Ed Drapatin and Matt Amoroso to purchase the 12,980-square-foot building for $440,000. Tzepos also owns Zois Pizza Palace down the street from the bank building at 48 Main St., but the two businesses are not connected.

Ascione, Trapatine and Amoroso own East Coast Pawn shop in Bridgeport on Fairfield and Glenwood.

The Seymour Trust building, which used to house Bank of America until 2017, is on roughly an acre of land next to the post office, train station and Route 8.

Tzepos and his partners at The Seymour Trust Co. unveiled the renovated office side of the building Monday.

The building was separated into two parts to feature a mix of tenants. The first phase of the project is in what used to be Bank of Americas training center.

We are just going to accommodate whoever with however many rooms they want, Tzepos said. We thought we were going to have 10 tenants, but right now it looks like we are going to have seven with the current situation.

There are four tenants occupying the building including Project Purple, a local nonprofit that supports and advocates for patients and families affected by pancreatic cancer. The nonprofit, which serves as the anchor tenant for the office side of the building, rented roughly 2,300 square feet of space for its new headquarters in April, when renovations first began, Tzepos said.

Project Purple is joined by KirklandSEARCH, A private counseling business, and CTL, a telecommunications equipment supplier. There are still three office spaces left at the site.

Members of the local area business community expressed excitement over the renovated building during the official unveiling.

This building has a new lease on life, said Bill Purcell, Director of the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce. Theyre all entrepreneurs here and I think its an interesting mix of tenants here in the building and more to come and we are excited for Jim breathing new life into this center of Seymour.

Construction of the basement is ongoing, according to Tzepos, who said there will be a freight elevator and an additional stairwell added to the space to accommodate a tenant interested in opening an eBay-type store

Tzepos also said he wants to attract a restaurant, brewery, distillery or venue tenant to the main bank portion of the building, which is still being refurbished.

That is what we are striving for on that side, he said.

Jordan.grice@hearstmedia.com
GREENWICH  Middle-school art students in Greenwich Public Schools invite community members to draw lines in the sand and stack rock sculptures while they bank at First Bank of Greenwich.

The tweens, members of the Curators Club at Eastern Middle School, set up their first out-of-school art exhibit at the bank last Wednesday, and their work will be on display through April 30. The tween curators chose the theme of a line in the sand, which allows visitors to interact with their artwork and come to realize, no matter their age, they will make some kind of impact on their surroundings.

Club President Abigail White wants her generation to hear and experience the message for themselves.

We all need a way of changing something, and this is a way for young people to see that, White said.

She and some friends established the Curators Club in 2018, and the group has led after-school art socials and curated in-school exhibitions. Their advisers helped them develop advertising and marketing strategies to raise awareness for the arts and the positivity it bring to their schools and community.

At this age, we need an expressive outlet, eighth-grader Victoria Sirito said. We are moody teens.

Founding and participating in the club taught White how to draw not just for the sake of drawing, but to show her emotions and state her opinions.

It taught me to make an impact in the best way I can, and it gives me an opportunity to feel more connected to myself and with my community, she said.

Some of the featured art was first produced on a field trip to Tods Point with SPURSE, a group of environmental artists who incorporate nature into their art and use their work to provoke people to imagine how they would treat nature if rivers, beaches and oceans had the same rights as humans.

On the trip, students drew lines in the sand, stacked rocks and launched fast-degrading paper airplanes filled with indigenous mulberry seeds into the Mianus River.

This art is about not making a huge environmental impact, said Eastern art teacher Stacey Cleary. Sometimes art materials can be toxic. The work of art here is the photograph, and the experience, and drawing lines in the sand, and about being aware that it gets washed away.

Visitors to the bank can experience their trip to Tods Point while looking at photographs from the field trip, stacking their own rocks and drawing lines on a printed map of the Mianus River that imagine the flight patterns of the paper airplanes.

A lot of people think art is expensive, or its painting on a canvas, secretary Emily Phillipps said. It can be anything.

The collaboration with SPURSE was made possible by a grant with the Greenwich Alliance for Education, written by Eastern art teachers Ben Quesnel and Michael Manning, and the state Department of Economic and Community Developments Office of the Art.

The money funds the Developing Artist Grant, which inspires future artists at all three Greenwich public middle-schools by bringing in emerging or established contemporary artists and students of graduate art programs to share their studio practices.

The art will be on display at the First Bank of Greenwich in Cos Cob until April 30.

jo.kroeker@hearstmediact.com
The governments of Canada and Alberta have signed a 10-year agreement that will fund community housing projects in the province.

Amarjeet Sohi, minister of Natural Resources, and Lori Sigurdson, minister of Seniors and Housing, announced on Friday that they had reached a bilateral agreement under the National Housing Strategy, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Starting on April 1, the agreement will invest $678 million to protect, renew and expand social and community housing, and support the provinces priorities related to housing construction, repair and affordability, cost-shared by the federal and provincial governments.

The two governments will also work together on the design and implementation of a new Canada housing benefit for the province to provide affordability support directly to families and individuals in housing need.

This new agreement means Alberta can continue our bold approach to address the housing needs of Albertans, Sigurdson said. We want to make sure that all Albertans have a safe place to call home, close to their families and communities.

Since November 2015, the federal government has invested almost $510 million in housing in the province.

"Our government will continue working in partnership with Alberta and other provinces and territories towards a 15% expansion in new affordable housing units and renewing 20% of existing community housing units across the country," Sohi said.
Closing date: Wednesday, 27 March 2019

Job no: 519407

Position type: Fixed Term Appointment

Location: Serbia

Division/Equivalent: CEE/CIS

School/Unit: Republic of Serbia

Department/Office: Belgrade, Serbia

Categories: Education, G-5

UNICEF Serbia seeks to establish a National Talent Group in the area of programmatic support, who could be contracted to perform Programme Assistant tasks.

During the course of 2019, employment opportunities (fixed-term appointment; temporary appointment; consultancy contracts) may be established for the anticipated period of 4-5 years, for the position level of Programme Assistant, GS-5.

Under the close supervision and guidance of the Programme Specialist, the programme assistant would support the respective section by carrying out a range of procedural, administrative and operational tasks in order to help develop, implement and monitor the country programme, ensuring timely and effective delivery that is consistent with UNICEF rules and regulations.

Summary of key functions and accountabilities:

Facilitating the processing of contracts for consultants, vendors and external partners that support the office in programme delivery. This includes preparing and filing documents, completing necessary forms and templates, uploading TORs in SAP, and making necessary logistical arrangements. Keeping vendor lists, partners, and consultant rosters up-to-date.

Collecting invoices and filing documents for approval and thereafter processing in SAP and Mycase.

Preparing and maintaining records, documents and control plans for the monitoring of project/programme implementation and financial expenditures.

Supporting the management of administrative supplies and office equipment.

Maintaining the office calendar and arranging meetings. Taking minutes of meetings and keeping the correspondence of the team well organized.

Providing travel assistance to staff members in the Education section for travel arrangements and entitlements based on the organizations rules and policies. Liaising with relevant travel focal points to ensure that the organization obtains the best service and price for all travel.

Maintaining and updating a system which monitors the absence of staff.

Preparing and maintaining records pertaining to programme planning and development for his/her respective section.

Carrying out transactions in SAP ensuring programme results, activities and programme coding are as per annual work plans (AWPs), and making amendments and alterations as per section revisions when necessary.

Supporting capacity development activities, meetings and conferences by making the logistical arrangements, through engaging with facilitators, caterers and hosts; arranging times through liaising with participants over availability; liaising with budget focal points and section over costs and needs; and preparing background materials for participants.

Minimum required qualifications:

Completion of secondary education is required, preferably supplemented by technical or university courses related to the work of an organization.

A minimum of five years of progressively responsible administrative or clerical work experience is required.

Experience with organizing trainings, events or meetings.

Fluency in English and Serbian.

Additional desired qualifications:

Training or courses in project management or financing/accounting.

Experience in supporting financial functions/aspects of project/projects/programmes.

Experience in ERP systems such as SAP is highly desirable.

Experience with working within the public sector in Serbia, especially in the education area.
Williamson, WV (25661)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. Thunder possible. Morning high of 68F with temps falling to near 50. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy later at night. Low 34F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.
(Special) - Now that the deadline for Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contributions for the 2018 tax year has come and gone, many Canadians may be tempted to forget about their retirement savings until the deadline for the 2019 tax year rolls around next February.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 19/3/2019 (997 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

(Special) - Now that the deadline for Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contributions for the 2018 tax year has come and gone, many Canadians may be tempted to forget about their retirement savings until the deadline for the 2019 tax year rolls around next February.

Recent studies have shown that Canadians generally are having a difficult time saving for their retirement.

When you're younger and just starting out in adult life and your career, saving is a low priority. You work, start to raise a family and maybe buy a house. You're inundated with demands for your money  rent, a mortgage, living expenses, a car.

Then as you age and the prospect of retirement begins to appear on the horizon, you start to think about saving for your older years. Many people don't start building their retirement assets until 10 or 15 years before they plan to retire.

As a result many Canadians are going into retirement without enough savings and income to fund the retirement they would like to enjoy.

The reality of the situation is that retirement saving and planning is a lifelong activity which should start early with a disciplined and structured process in place.

"A lot of people think they can manage their finances and retirement savings by themselves," Brian Burlacoff, a financial adviser with Sun Life Financial in Toronto, said in an interview. "At first glance it looks simple but with a lot of options like the RRSP, Tax Free Savings Account, Registered Retirement Income Fund and others, it's a lot more complicated than it may seem. That's why it's important to get a professional adviser involved early and start your financial and retirement planning early."

One of the most important advantages of early planning is what Burlacoff calls the "eighth wonder of the world"  the power of compounding interest.

Here's an example of compounding provided by Investopedia.

A 25-year-old who wishes to accumulate $1 million by age 60 would need to invest $880.21 each month assuming a constant annual rate of return of five per cent. A 35-year-old wishing to accumulate the same amount by age 60 would need to invest $1,679.23 each month using the same assumptions.

Ten years later, a 45-year-old would need to invest $3,741.27 each month to accumulate the same $1 million by age 60, almost four times the amount the 25-year old needs to invest.

When saving for retirement you can access the power of compounding and reap benefits later by starting early and putting aside money, even if only a little, regularly. This could include automatically withdrawing a certain amount from your paycheque into a separate account or, if you have one, into an employer sponsored pension plan, which may including matching contributions from the employer.

Many financial institutions offer RRSP loans at better rates to help people borrow to make contributions. If you get a tax refund you can use it to pay down the loan.

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Many people wait until the first 60 days of the year to make their contributions. However, by contributing throughout the year you can increase growth and compounding.

You also may continue to contribute to your RRSP longer than you think. You can contribute up to and including the end of the year in which you turn 71. Once you turn 71 you have until the end of that year to mature your RRSP.

Even though you may no longer be able to contribute to an RRSP yourself, you are entitled to the tax deduction for your contributions to your spousal RRSP. And if you still are working at age 71 you will still generate RRSP contribution room for the following year.

"An adviser can help you cut through all the noise in the market and clarify your objectives, goals and put together a plan to help you achieve them," Burlacoff says.

Talbot Boggs is a Toronto-based business communications professional who has worked with national news organizations, magazines and corporations in the finance, retail, manufacturing and other industrial sectors.

Copyright 2019 Talbot Boggs
MONTREAL - Despite low unemployment and a strong economy, Quebec continues to have problems generating wealth and its citizens have less money to save and spend compared with Canadians in every other province, says a new report by Universite de Montreal's business school.

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Despite low unemployment and a strong economy, Quebec continues to have problems generating wealth and its citizens have less money to save and spend compared with Canadians in every other province, says a new report by Universite de Montreal's business school. Quebec Minister of Economy Pierre Fitzgibbon announces a $41.3 million to support innovation in the aerospace industry as Bombardier president Alain Bellemare looks on in Montreal on Friday, February 22, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

MONTREAL - Despite low unemployment and a strong economy, Quebec continues to have problems generating wealth and its citizens have less money to save and spend compared with Canadians in every other province, says a new report by Universite de Montreal's business school.

One of the main reasons for the province's relative poverty lies in its low productivity, said Robert Gagne, co-author of "Productivity and Prosperity in Quebec," published Monday. His research indicates "one hour worked in Quebec generates less wealth than one hour worked elsewhere in Canada."

Quebec needs to better educate its workforce, stimulate private investment and encourage innovation to catch up with the rest of the country, Gagne said in an interview.

Conservative-leaning politicians across Canada, however, make another argument: Quebec suffers from its over reliance on equalization payments.

As the provincial election in resource-rich Alberta is set to begin and with a federal election a few months away, Quebecers are likely going to hear a lot more about how they are unduly benefiting from the wealth generated by higher-earning Canadians.

Just don't tell that to Gagne. "I don't know anyone who says, 'I won't make an effort, because either way, we'll get equalization.' It's not true," he said in an interview.

Under the federal government's equalization program, Ottawa redistributes part of the tax money it collects to poorer provinces to ensure citizens across the country are offered comparable services. Quebec is set to receive more than $13 billion in equalization payments this fiscal year, while Alberta will receive none.

One of the main policy proposals of Quebec MP Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada, is to make equalization "less generous." He argues Quebec refuses to develop its oil and shale gas potential and to take other measures to increase productivity because it can count on equalization.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, who represents a Calgary riding, tweeted over the weekend she was bringing a petition to the House of Commons containing thousands of signatures calling on the Liberal government to review the equalization formula. The petition states, in part, "the government of Canada discriminates against provinces that choose to develop their natural resources while rewarding those who rely on government transfers as opposed to diversifying their economies."

Jason Kenney, leader of Alberta's United Conservative Party, has singled out Quebec in arguing that the current equalization formula treats his province unfairly. In December he tweeted, "suffering Alberta continues to transfer wealth to a province blocking the source of our wealth," referring to Quebec's opposition to a new pipeline on its territory.

Quebec Economy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon said his government is taking steps to address the productivity gap, modifying the role of the province's investment agency so small and medium-sized business have capital to invest in manufacturing technologies.

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He also said his government wants to create a closer link between universities and the private sector in order to have graduates better trained for the needs of the market.

"I don't want to criticize the past," Fitzgibbon said in an interview Monday, but he added that small and medium-sized businesses in outlying regions are key to the Quebec economy. "And I think we have forgotten the regions. These people need programs, and I think it's there we need to help, and it's there we can make a difference," he said.

Premier Francois Legault will have the opportunity to address Quebec's low productivity with his government's first budget on Thursday. Despite its relative poverty, Quebec has had several back-to-back balanced budgets with billion-dollar surpluses.

Gagne said Canada is a large, decentralized country, and as such it needs a system to redistribute wealth.

"If we want Canadians to have comparable services, well then we need equalization," Gagne said. "The day we don't have equalization then there won't really be a reason to have a country. If we don't want to help each other out, then why should we stay together?"

 With files from Pierre Saint-Arnaud
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - The Latest on the public drunkenness arrest of Peru's former president (all times local):

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FILE - In this May 24, 2017, file photo, Peru's former President Alejandro Toledo addresses the New Economy Forum Globalization Dialogues at the United Nations in New York. U.S. authorities announced Monday, March 18, 2019 that Toledo, who Peruvian authorities have asked to be extradited for his alleged ties to Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, was released after a brief detention on suspicion of public intoxication in California. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - The Latest on the public drunkenness arrest of Peru's former president (all times local):

2:20 p.m.

Former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo brushed off questions about his arrest on suspicion of public drunkenness during a radio interview.

Toledo also declined to discuss his detention with Peru's RPP radio, saying "I'm not falling into that trap."

San Mateo County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Rosemerry Blankswade says Toledo was arrested at a San Francisco Bay Area restaurant Sunday and spent the night in jail before his release Monday morning.

Toledo was Peru's president from 2001 to 2006 and has lived in California in recent years. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford University in 2017.

He is wanted in his home country on accusations of taking $20 million in bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. He has denied wrongdoing.

While he was president, Toledo's presidential aircraft became known as the "party plane" after a government official was caught on camera drunkenly singing a popular Spanish-language tune called "Pass me the Bottle" during a flight to Europe.

___

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12:15 p.m.

Authorities say a former Peruvian president who is wanted in connection with Latin America's biggest graft scandal was arrested in California on suspicion of public intoxication over the weekend and was briefly detained.

San Mateo County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Rosemerry Blankswade said Monday that Alejandro Toledo was arrested Sunday night near a restaurant near the San Francisco Bay city of Menlo Park.

Toledo was released early Monday morning and the charge was dropped, as is routine for suspects arrested on suspicion of public drunkenness.

Peruvian authorities have offered a $30,000 reward for Toledo's capture. Blankswade says Interpol officials told jailers they had no interest in immediately extraditing or holding Toledo.

Prosecutors have accused Toledo of taking $20 million in bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. He has denied wrongdoing.
TORONTO - Unifor says it has suspended a media campaign against General Motors amid productive talks with the automaker on the future of the company's assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont.

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People who would be directly affected by the General Motors Oshawa plant closure stand in solidarity before Unifor National President Jerry Dias speaks during press conference asking for all Canadians and Americans to boycott all General Motors vehicles that are made in Mexico in Toronto on Friday, January 25, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

TORONTO - Unifor says it has suspended a media campaign against General Motors amid productive talks with the automaker on the future of the company's assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont.

The union says the company has been clear it won't extend vehicle manufacturing at the Oshawa plant beyond the end of the year, but that there is potential to transform operations to maintain some jobs.

Union president Jerry Dias, who sat down Tuesday with senior GM officials in Detroit, said a deal could be reached within weeks while declining to offer details.

"It's about maintaining a footprint, and it's about being in a position to build for the future. So I'm feeling more optimistic now than I have in a long time."

He said it's still unclear how the talks will end up, but that the plan is about more than maintaining empty buildings.

"We're having very aggressive conversations with General Motors about a short-term fix and a long-term plan."

The union said that in light of the positive talks that started Feb. 25, it had suspended its media campaign against the company. The union ran numerous ads, including a Super Bowl television spot in Canada, criticizing the company's lack of loyalty to Canadian workers and encouraging consumers to boycott GM vehicles built in Mexico.

It says the two sides have agreed to continue talks over the coming weeks.

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GM announced last November that it would end production at the Oshawa plant by the end of 2019, set to affect about 2,600 union workers at the assembly plant, as part of a wider restructuring that would also see four U.S. plants close.

The company has come under significant criticism for the move. U.S. President Donald Trump called GM out in a tweet Monday demanding that it keep open its plant in Lordstown, Ohio and close a plant in Mexico or China instead.

Dias said that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's discussions with GM CEO Mary Barra, including a call Trudeau tweeted about Monday, have helped in discussions.

"I think that his involvement helped in a significant way."

GM has noted that many workers at its Oshawa plant qualify for retirement, and it has committed to helping workers with job placements and retraining.

The company said Tuesday it continues to have discussions with Unifor "with regard to supporting our people in Oshawa."
Winnipegs 2019 homicide count rose to 10 over St. Patricks Day weekend after two men were killed in separate incidents, continuing a busy year for the investigators tasked with solving slayings in the city.

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Winnipegs 2019 homicide count rose to 10 over St. Patricks Day weekend after two men were killed in separate incidents, continuing a busy year for the investigators tasked with solving slayings in the city.

There have been five reported homicides this month alone, beginning with the shocking home invasion that took the life of a teenager on March 3 to a reported fatal stabbing at a rooming house Sunday night.

The five most recent homicides spanned the West End, North End, far West End, North End and Downtown.

By this time last year, there had only been four killings in the city, according to Winnipeg Police Service statistics.

"Its taxing to have this many homicides occurring so frequently in such a short amount of time. It really is consuming and difficult on the homicide unit. These incidents are happening late at night, early in the morning, officers are literally working around the clock," said WPS spokeswoman Const. Tammy Skrabek.

"The officers are going home, getting minimal sleep, just what they need to come back into work and try to finish the investigation."

Charges have been announced in seven of the 10 homicides. If the pace of killings continue, the Winnipeg Police Service might catch more cases this year than it did in 2011 when it dealt with a record 41 slayings.

Deadly start to the year: Winnipeg police have reported 10 homicide cases so far in 2019. Note: Locations are approximate. (Graeme Bruce / Winnipeg Free Press / OpenStreetMap)

The most recent homicide came Sunday when officers were called to the scene of a home in the 400 block of Langside Street. The victim, an adult male who has yet to be identified, was suffering from serious injuries. He was taken to hospital in unstable condition where he was pronounced dead.

Blood could be seen splattered on the snow in the front yard and two hypodermic needles were visible on the ground, next to other rubbish and debris scattered around the property.

The Free Press approached a man  who did not want to give his name  taking belongings out of the back of the house in bags Monday afternoon. He said the building serves as a rooming house where "four or five" people live.

"When I came in last night it (had) already happened. Apparently there was a disagreement upstairs and somebody got stabbed. That was that," the man said, adding he was unaware of whether police had anyone in custody.

Skrabek said the WPS identification unit was on scene Monday and homicide investigators interviewed people who were at the house at the time of the slaying.

"I know the homicide unit is speaking with people who were at the scene and some others who would be witnesses," she said.

On Saturday morning, the city experienced its ninth homicide of 2019 when a man was assaulted in the area of Selkirk Avenue and Salter Street. He later died of his injuries.

While police have yet to identify the victim, family and friends have posted online that it was 38-year-old John Gabriel who was reportedly walking to his apartment at the time of the assault.

FACEBOOK John Gabriel was the victim in the city's ninth homicide.

"Last year we only had four (homicides) at this time. So weve more than doubled the first quarter and March isnt even over. We cant predict homicides or violent crime, but we can try to look at the pace theyre happening at," Skrabek said.

"The cases in all of these homicides are very different. Youve got a random meth-fuelled attack. Youve got gang-on-gang violence. There is random street violence. I really dont have an answer in terms of what is fuelling it."

On Saturday, police laid charges against Ronald Bruce Chubb, 29, who is accused of killing 17-year-old Jaime Adao in a random, meth-fuelled home invasion on the 700 block of McGee Street. Chubb faces charges of second degree murder, attempted murder and breach of probation.

The slaying of Adao shocked both law enforcement, 911 operators and the citys tight-knit Filipino community.

Adao had been home with his grandmother when Chubb is alleged to have forced his way inside the home. The attack was captured on a 911 call from the time a man broke into the house and began assaulting Adao with a weapon to when officers arrived and at least one discharged their firearm several times.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The most recent homicide was on Sunday when officers were called to the scene of a home in the 400 block of Langside Street.

Chubb was taken to hospital in critical condition where he reportedly underwent multiple surgeries. Police confirmed Monday hes been released from the hospital and remanded into custody.

The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba  the provincial police watchdog  is investigating the decision by one or more officers to open fire to end the attack. Meanwhile, the WPS homicide unit retained the investigation into the slaying of Adao.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @rk_thorpe

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After weeks of silence, President Museveni has finally opened up on the bad relations with Rwanda, through a letter to his counterpart President Paul Kagame, denying claims that Uganda helps rebels opposed to Rwanda.

According to the letter, Museveni said he only recently came into contact with a lady Charlotte Mukankusi, who admitted to being a member of the Rwanda National Congress (RNC), an organisation that Kagame has said is hostile to Rwanda.

He says: Mukankusi told me that he husband Rutagarama had been killed by the agents of the Rwanda statethat she had been told by those very people [who killed her husband]. I then asked her what she wanted me to do about it because it was an internal matter. She told me she wanted me to know bad things that were happening in Rwanda. She told me she had joined RNC to resist Your Excellencys government. She wanted us to support them.

But Museveni told her he could not support her because the African Union is against countries interfering in the affairs of other countries.

She was disappointed with my reply and I told her that I will inform you in writing, he writes.

In the letter, Museveni also speaks about the Rwanda businessman Tribert Rujugiro, whom Kagame accuses of financially supporting rebels. Rwanda had demanded that the businessman be repatriated to Kigali for trial.

Mr Rujugiro..seems to be resisting the idea of selling his businesses which he had accepted to do before. He countered the idea of giving money to Kayumba [Nyamwasa] by saying that even if he sells the factories in Uganda, he still has more lucrative factories in Angola, Dr Congo..a total of eight of them. He can send money from those, Museveni writes.

He said if Rujugiro is still a problem to Rwanda, Uganda can use courts of law to try him on charges of terrorism and then his assets can be frozen.
OTTAWA  Opposition MPs are raising questions about a Liberal proposal to send border-crossing asylum-seekers back to the United States.

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OTTAWA  Opposition MPs are raising questions about a Liberal proposal to send border-crossing asylum-seekers back to the United States.

"Both countries must be realizing the current agreement isnt working," said Conservative MP Larry Maguire.

At Mondays House immigration committee, Maguire and his colleagues questioned bureaucrats about ongoing negotiations with the United States revealed by Border Security Minister Bill Blair.

Blair said hes making some headway in convincing American officials to revise the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement, which bars most people from making an asylum claim at either side of the border.

Under a loophole in the existing agreement, people who cross into Canada outside of a formal border station can evade prosecution if they immediately report to authorities and file an asylum claim.

Blairs idea would see officials gather such claimants, bring them to the formal border crossing and process them under the regular rules, which would mean sending most asylum claimants back to the United States.

"We think there are opportunities to approve and amend this agreement to modernize (it)," Blair told reporters Monday. He said he raised the issue over the past three weeks with U.S. senators and congressmen, as well as American federal officials.

Maguire noted the idea echoes what the federal Tories had proposed in summer 2017.

"Theyre coming up with the same solutions that we offered," he said. "I just cant believe it took them this long to figure this out."

Yet, NDP MP Daniel Blaikie panned the proposal as a way to incentivize illegal immigration, because people crossing near the Manitoba border community of Emerson would try evading the RCMP instead of following the requirement to immediately report to them.

He said that would put pressure on Winnipeg refugee-support groups to turn a blind eye on immigration status.

"What this so-called solution means is that people are going to be hiding from Canadian officials," he said, likening it to a never-ending American crackdown on people living without official status.

"We should not be duplicating the failed immigration policies of the United States."

Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel told the Free Press shes wondering if the Liberals are simply shifting their tone seven months before the federal election without actually changing policy.

"To me this feels like them trying to cauterize some of the public response," she said. "Their lack of action on this has really polarized the immigration debate in this country. So there's a cost to their inaction."

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Winnipeg immigration lawyer Alastair Clarke has called for Canada to suspend the agreement, noting it has not been formally revised despite a clause calling for a regular assessment of how each country upholds human rights.

He said the proposed change would likely be hard to enforce, and its unclear whether American officials would accept people Canada turns back, especially those with expired U.S. visas.

"The system is clearly broken and Ottawa is recognizing hat the status quo is neither serving national interests nor the interest of those refugee claimants who are fleeing the United States," he said.

He said Ottawa ought to instead focus on the backlog for asylum hearings. People who crossed at Emerson wait in Winnipeg for 12 to 18 months to learn whether theyll be able to stay in Canada.

"Theres a lot of anxiety in the community about the backlogs and the long wait times," he said.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Alleging theyre under attack online by Winnipeggers pretending to be them and sending hateful, threatening messages to members of the LGBTTQ* community, a gay immigrant couple is fighting back.

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Alleging theyre under attack online by Winnipeggers pretending to be them and sending hateful, threatening messages to members of the LGBTTQ* community, a gay immigrant couple is fighting back.

On Monday, Max Khanukayev and Denis Gorelov filed a statement of claim in Winnipegs Court of Queens Bench suing for damages and seeking a court order to stop the defamatory comments, permit a search of property and an injunction to prevent the defendants from deleting the defamatory information stored on their devices.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Max Khanukayev, right, and his husband Denis Gorelov filed a statement of claim in Winnipeg's Court of Queen's Bench alleging they're under attack online by Winnipeggers pretending to be them.

"Social media is very dangerous," said Khanukayev, who served in the Israeli army for three years then drove freight and passenger trains in Israel. In Manitoba, the 38-year-old drives trains full time for CN Rail and works part-time as the charismatic DJ Max at social functions and MCing events including Folkloramas Israel pavilion and the Jewish communitys Pride Parade float in 2017 and 2018.

"Its like a weapon," the Russian-born Khanukayev said in an interview with Gorelov, his husband, who immigrated with him from Israel in 2013.

The "weapon" was 35 social media accounts purporting to be DJ Max. They sent out transphobic messages, memes that encourage violence against women, comments disparaging Indigenous, Arab and African people as well as posts that fat-shamed individuals and ridiculed those with special needs. Victims of the online harassment began seeking legal protection from the fake online perpetrator.

An online petition citing the hateful messages called for Pride Winnipeg and the Rady Jewish Community Centre to cut ties with DJ Max. Messages were also sent to Khanukayevs employer.

The couple says theyve been catfished  the term used when a person creates a false online identity to defraud or steal a victims identity. Court documents allege the scheme began last May after Khanukayev and Gorelov broke off business ties with Robert Mulder-Kiesman and Less Mulder-Kiesman. The couples formed a business in 2017 called BeTLV with the purpose of planning and hosting high-energy, Tel Aviv-style parties in Winnipeg for the Jewish LGBTTQ* community.

The couple thought their leaving the business was amicable, with the Mulder-Kiesmans keeping the business name. They didnt find out about the catfishing until July when Khanukayev received a Facebook message from Garret Wipf  who is also named in the statement of claim with their former business partners and David John Kuivenhoven  threatening to call the police on Khanukayev for harassing, stalking and threatening him.

Khanukayev responded to Wipf saying he knew nothing about any of it. Then, the Rady Jewish Community Centre told Khanukayev that Folklorama had received a complaint asking that DJ Max be removed as MC of the Israel pavilion. Nightclubs such as Club 200 and, for a time, Fame told the couple they were banned.

"We were shocked," Gorelov told the Free Press. Khanukayev said that he tried contacting LGBTTQ* community members and groups but has been blocked by them on social media.

The couple hired investigators to find out what was going on and lawyers to take action.

"Weve spent all our savings for this," said Gorelov, 35, who studied law and mediation before coming to Canada. He now works for an immigration consulting firm.

Theyd hoped to have kids someday with the help of a surrogate but cant afford to now, Khanukayev said. Its also taken a toll on their mental and physical health, they said. Gorelov said his multiple sclerosis flare-ups have worsened.

"We thought of going back to Israel," said Gorelov, whose sister lives in Winnipeg. It was Gorelovs idea to immigrate to Canada, Khanukayev said.

"He said, Lets move to Canada. We can get married, buy a house and start a family." They bought a house and became Canadian citizens and are determined to stay.

Word of the lawsuit came as a surprise to the Mulder-Kiesmans and Wipf, who, in separate calls to the Free Press on Monday night said they had no knowledge of the court documents prior to reading about it online.

"Were caught off-guard. We havent talked to them since we ceased working with them in 2018," Robert Mulder-Kiesman said. "We have had no contact with these people."

Both Robert and Less Mulder-Kiesman expressed concern the allegations could damage their business and their reputations.

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"We are not responsible for this, as they claim. This entire case is built totally on assumptions," Less Mulder-Kiesman said, adding the couple has tried in the past to show they are not behind the alleged catfishing.

He said the couple will fight the allegations in court.

"We have offered our (electronic) devices, several times, including to the police, and were refused."

Wipf also said he was innocent of any alleged involvement: "It is completely false, I didnt have anything to do with this."

No statement of defence has yet been filed and the allegations havent been proven in court.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Recent heavy snows in the northern United States have caused the provincial government to upgrade the expected severity of this spring's flood along the Red River.

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Recent heavy snows in the northern United States have caused the provincial government to upgrade the expected severity of this spring's flood along the Red River.

On Monday, the Hydrologic Forecast Centre issued a bulletin saying it now forecasts a flood "of a magnitude higher than in 2009," with normal or average weather conditions.

The flood of 2009 was the fourth highest along the Red since 1826 and largest since 1997's Flood of the Century. In 2009, 1,000 square kilometres of land flooded in the Red River Valley between Winnipeg and Emerson. Highway 75 was closed at Morris for 37 days (April 7 to May 13).

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Barry Penner takes a boat into the town of Morris, MB. in 2009 because of flooding of the Red River. Morris was protected by a high ring dike causing Highway 75 to stay closed at Morris for 37 days

In its Feb. 28 flood forecast, the province predicted a flood along the Red comparable to 2011  which was best remembered for flooding along the Assiniboine River. Next to the 1997 and 2009 floods, however, 2011 was the third largest Red River flood in a half-century.

With favourable weather from here on out, the Red could still rise to 2011 levels. However, with unfavourable weather, water levels will be higher than 2009 levels by almost one foot at Emerson, by 1.5 feet at Ste. Agathe and reach 22 feet at James Avenue in Winnipeg.

The province said floodwater levels will depend on the rate of snow melt and the amount of precipitation in the coming weeks. It said it would issue a fully updated flood outlook in the coming days.

Monday's bulletin follows an updated flood forecast on Friday by the U.S. National Weather Service.

That forecast took into account large storms in the Red River watershed south of the border on March 9 and 14.

Greg Gust, warning co-ordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Forks, said the U.S. storms "undoubtedly" contributed to the revised Manitoba flood forecast.

"We've bumped up the flow projections on the Red River on the U.S. side of the border," he said by telephone Monday.

Currently, U.S. officials say there's a 50 per cent chance that the Red River at Pembina will be a quarter-foot above 2009 levels. That would still put it at a little more than two feet below the 1997 mark.

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JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES A house just north of Morris, Man. is isolated by floodwater in 2009. Heavy snowfall in the United States has raised the threat of flooding in Manitoba's Red River Valley this spring.

Future weather and the speed of the snow melt are expected to significantly affect the severity of the flood, Gust said. "This week is running pretty well for us (weather-wise)," he said, "but next week, there's a little bit more unsettled weather."

The Assiniboine River system will see "limited flooding," the province said Monday, so the focus, for now, is on the Red and its tributaries.

The province said it is working with municipalities on local preparations, including support for evacuations if needed. It said it is also working with Ottawa to ensure the safety of Indigenous communities in the Red River Valley.

The government said it's assembling teams to work with farmers to move livestock out of impacted areas.

And it's preparing for road closures and closures of community ring dikes. Community ring dikes and the majority of individual flood protection works along the Red are at 1997 water levels plus two feet (61cm).

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
When 15-year-old Tina Fontaine was trying to survive on Winnipeg streets in the summer of 2014, none of the city's Indigenous programs that focus on ending child sexual exploitation knew she was out there.

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When 15-year-old Tina Fontaine was trying to survive on Winnipeg streets in the summer of 2014, none of the city's Indigenous programs that focus on ending child sexual exploitation knew she was out there.

When Manitoba's Advocate for Children and Youth released its long-awaited investigation into the teen's life and death last week, none of those groups was consulted.

And as Canadians look to protect other teens and prevent similar deaths, they say the resulting recommendations don't address root causes and may do more harm than good.

Members of the Sexually Exploited Youth Community Coalition gathered around a boardroom table Monday afternoon in an "all hands on deck" effort to draw attention to the years of work they've done trying to stop sexually exploited girls from being locked up or jailed as a way to protect them from getting hurt.

They are raising concerns about the advocate's recommendation that Manitoba create "safe, secure, home-like settings for treatment and programming" when youths are in immediate danger. Recommending "secure care," the group worries, could lead to youths being involuntarily locked up.

"You don't put victims of violence in a locked facility," said Diane Redsky, executive director of Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre, one of several organizations involved in the coalition, along with the Winnipeg Outreach Network, Ka Ni Kanichihk Inc. and Little Sisters safe house.

"We are worried that at the end of the day, Manitobans will believe that secure care saves lives for sexually exploited youth, when it doesn't and, in fact, it goes against everything that the experts... have been saying for many, many years," Redsky said.

When she released the recommendations last week, Advocate Daphne Penrose said Manitoba is in "desperate need" of placements for young people who have serious addiction issues, are in danger and have nowhere else to go.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Diane Redsky, executive director of Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre: 'You don't put victims of violence in a locked facility'

"Safe and secure does not mean institutionalized," Penrose said in Sagkeeng First Nation last Tuesday. "It does not mean jail."

But addictions and exploitation often go hand-in-hand, said the coalition, formed about 15 years ago. Its members have studied how what they call "involuntary confinement" affects girls who have been sexually exploited.

Isabel Daniels doesn't need to go over the years of research  she learned first-hand.

When she was 14, she was arrested on a street corner and later convicted of living off of the avails of prostitution.

"Being put in a locked facility only further entrenched me in exploitation. It introduced me to gangs, then I started working for a gang and we were bought and sold," she said.

"The effects of locking up a young girl or boy or anybody exploited at that age  you're teaching them that they really  that, 'We don't matter, because we're not worth the counselling, we're not worth the effort that it actually takes to save our lives.'"

The 39-year-old now leads a subcommittee that is trying to build an around-the-clock shelter for sexually exploited adults. Like the rest of the coalition, she wants to see Manitoba focus on getting rid of the demand for child sexual exploitation.

The advocate's report made clear that Tina was being sexually exploited by adult men in the weeks before her death, and it's there the solution lies, Daniels said, along with preparing a toolkit for child-welfare agencies so they can teach young girls in their care about grooming behaviour and what to watch out for.

"It would have made a difference and I think it still could," Daniels said.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Isabel Daniels: 'Being put in a locked facility only further entrenched me in exploitation'

Redsky said the coalition plans to speak to the advocate's office about the recommendation for secure facilities and would like to instead see more resources dedicated to front-line outreach workers who already hit the streets at all hours to try to get through to vulnerable young people.

"Secure care is a quick fix for everybody else except the young person themselves. Those 15 minutes of feeling good because you saved somebody is really a lifetime of trauma for her life," Redsky said.

The advocate's report revealed a "disconnect" in communication with Indigenous-run programs that may have been able to help Tina, said Dodie Jordaan of Ka Ni Kanichihk.

Tina was in contact with police, five different CFS agencies, the province's Street Reach Program, two youth shelters and a detox program, yet other community programs weren't informed about her, or other high-risk youths.

The advocate's office has said its recommendation for secure placements is meant for drug-addicted youths, not necessarily exploited youths, who are in need of urgent care.

"There are valid concerns that need to be talked about, and this is not an option for everyone," said Ainsley Krone, deputy advocate for children and youth.

"It's not an option that all guardians or all parents are going to want to consider for their kids, but for the ones where the alternative is losing their child to their disease of addiction, it's an option. What we're hearing from community and family and from addiction experts, it's something that Manitoba at the very least needs to consider."

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay

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OTTAWA  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's pre-election budget outlined perks for almost every Canadian, using up Ottawa's wiggle room to spread cash across an array of vaguely defined programs.

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OTTAWA  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's pre-election budget outlined perks for almost every Canadian, using up Ottawa's wiggle room to spread cash across an array of vaguely defined programs.

Winnipeggers can expect to see a flurry of spending announcements leading up to the October vote, from transportation and flood relief to an air ambulance and Indigenous community centres.

Ottawa is also uncorking billions for urban infrastructure needs amid difficulties with provinces such as Manitoba, while promising some sort of an economic strategy for Western Canada.

After budgets focused on building infrastructure, the gender-pay gap and innovation, Finance Minister Bill Morneau tabled a more general spending plan that touches lightly on skills by giving employees a paid week off work each year to undertake training.

Morneau argued that strong job numbers and a lower debt than anticipated will justify his decision to increase government spending.

"I hope that Canadians will look at what we've done since the beginning, and say that these people that we elected promised to make investments into the success of me and my family," he told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

Economists have argued that gives Ottawa limited room to manoeuvre whenever the next recession hits, but Morneau contended that spending "in a fiscally responsible way" was better than making cuts that would have slowed economic growth.

Selkirk-area Conservative MP James Bezan slagged the new spending  amounting to $22.8 billion over the next six years  as historically high and "incredibly disappointing," given Trudeau's pledge to balance his final budget.

Budget contains numerous pledges OTTAWA  Tuesday's 450-page budget contains hundreds of funding commitments, some of which might resonate in the Prairies. The budget outlined funding to help identify and remove interprovincial trader barriers, and noted that the fledgling private-public "infrastructure bank" could help connect provinces' power grids, but it did not specifically cite helping Manitoba Hydro to link with Saskatchewan or Nunavut, which Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman Tory MP James Bezan called a missed opportunity. click to read more OTTAWA  Tuesday's 450-page budget contains hundreds of funding commitments, some of which might resonate in the Prairies. The budget outlined funding to help identify and remove interprovincial trader barriers, and noted that the fledgling private-public "infrastructure bank" could help connect provinces' power grids, but it did not specifically cite helping Manitoba Hydro to link with Saskatchewan or Nunavut, which Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman Tory MP James Bezan called a missed opportunity. Tuesday's budget revealed that Ottawa will launch consultations on whether Saskatchewan's carbon-quota regime for large emitters could operate under the federal carbon tax. Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister has long pushed for Ottawa to make some sort of accommodation in the carbon levy for his province's hydro glut; he claimed the Liberals refused to consider that idea. The budget also pledged first steps to have Canada negotiate drug prices as one country instead of various provincial groupings; that could eventually save $3 billion a year. Ottawa is now taking steps to harmonize which drugs provinces cover, something that could lead to further savings. The Liberals intend to wait for an early summer report on pharmacare before deciding their election pledge. The government also promised some sort of a bill to protect pensions, which unions have pushed for since Sears Canada declared bankruptcy and used a portion of pensions to pay off shareholders. It's unclear how likely such a bill would pass, given the few seating weeks that remain. Meanwhile, beefed-up support for first-time homebuyers will likely most help the Liberals in swing ridings around Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.  Dylan Robertson Close

Kevin Page, Canada's former parliamentary budget officer, said the spending seemed reasonable, but not enough to distract from the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

"What is this budget about? It's a modest amount of measures and a lot of money," he said. "You can't really focus on one thing."

Among the federal measures is a last-minute, $2.2-billion push to get infrastructure projects underway, by giving municipalities a one-time doubling of revenue from a levy that has been collected at gas pumps for years.

The Liberals have been stymied in trying to get shovels in the ground under their massive infrastructure plan. Critics say that's because of onerous paperwork and tight criteria, while the government insists it's because provinces aren't willing to pay a large enough share to get projects underway. Morneau listed Manitoba among four provinces where that's been a particular issue.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Finance Bill Morneau arrive in the Foyer of the House of Commons to table the Budget, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. (Justin Tang / The Canadian Press)

"We've not been able to get as many projects done in some places as we'd like. So we've put a municipal infrastructure pot up, to make sure that more of the projects get done," he said before taking a jab at those provinces.

"We're going to work with people that want to work with us, to make sure that that happens."

Page, who now heads the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy think-tank at the University of Ottawa, said remitting money to cities recognizes the fact that provinces and cities generally have unsustainable amounts of debt, and can't put out new spending as easily as the federal government.

Money for news: Few details OTTAWA  The federal Liberals have unveiled how they plan to subsidize the troubled news industry in Canada, though they still have no timeline for when most of the money would flow. The Liberals announced intentions to spend $595 million over five years to support Canada's news industry, which has seen frequent layoffs over the past decade. Tuesday's federal budget revealed hints at who will qualify. click to read more OTTAWA  The federal Liberals have unveiled how they plan to subsidize the troubled news industry in Canada, though they still have no timeline for when most of the money would flow. The Liberals announced intentions to spend $595 million over five years to support Canada's news industry, which has seen frequent layoffs over the past decade. Tuesday's federal budget revealed hints at who will qualify. The funding is divvied into three categories. It will allow journalism organizations to register as non-profits, in order to accept donations and issue income-tax receipts. A labour tax credit will lower newsrooms' tax bills based on how many journalists they employ. Meanwhile, a consumer tax credit will let people deduct their subscriptions to Canadian digital news. Bob Cox, the publisher of this newspaper, is chair of the News Media Canada, which has lobbied Ottawa to help fund the news industry. He argued the significant funding will strengthen communities across the country. This will make a difference in newsrooms across Canada, he wrote in a statement. We thank the government for recognizing the challenges faced by the industry and giving us a helping hand to create the newsrooms of the future. While Ottawa still has to form an arms-length panel to determine which agencies would be eligible, the budget makes it clear that the tax measures will only apply to organizations residing in Canada. News outlets must be registered as a corporation, partnership or trust and have at least 75 per cent of directors or shareholders be Canadian citizens. News organizations must employ two journalists who don't work in management and are primarily engaged in the production of original news content, defined as matters of general interest and reports of current events and not those specifically focused on industries, sports or arts. Close

"To transfer money into the pockets of municipalities can be one way to provide some breathing space," he said.

Bezan called the measure "one of very few positive items we're seeing in this budget; the rest of it is underwhelming." He said the Liberals have been "too concerned about corporate cronyism" in the SNC-Lavalin scandal to craft better, more specific pledges.

Meanwhile, Ottawa is putting up $1.7 billion over five years to enable Canadians to take a week off work each year to take certified courses, allowing them bank up to four weeks at a time and receive income through a mix of employment insurance and federal credits.

Hassan Yussuff, head of the Canadian Labour Congress, called it a watershed moment in how Ottawa provides support for skills, which currently happens only after someone loses their job.

"For the first time there's an acknowledgment that you have a right to go and get training," he said.

Ottawa will pass legislation that bars employers from punishing or firing workers who take on such training. The government will pay almost all costs involved, and said it plans to compensate small- and medium-size businesses to help them plan around such absences.

Yussuff pointed out that this will apply only to federally regulated workplaces, and that provinces will have to enact their own laws. He noted that the new federal cash will top up existing labour transfers to provinces.

FRED CHARTRAND / THE CANADIAN PRESS Copies of the 2019 budget booklet are stacked at a lockup session with experts and reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 19, 2019.

"There's no reason for them to oppose bringing forth legislation to protect people to go back to their job, because it costs them nothing," he said.

The measure may be one way to address stagnant wage growth. Although the Liberals have landed flattering employment and poverty numbers, economists are concerned that wages are not keeping up with rising living costs, especially for the middle class.

Ottawa is allotting $100 million to "develop a Western Canada Growth Strategy which will reflect the unique regional advantages of each province," which it hints involves attracting investors and getting "under-represented groups" working. Another $1 million will help co-ordinate how Prairie provinces prevent floods and respond to them.

Tuesday's budget allocated $65 million for STARS air ambulance across the Prairies. STARS said Tuesday that would be enough money for five of the nine helicopters it needs to be replaced, including one in Manitoba.

Just days after proposing to close a loophole that has seen thousands of asylum seekers cross into Canada from the United States, the Liberals are pledging $1.18 billion to beef up border patrols and help clear the years-long refugee-hearing backlog.

"They are trying to adjust their narrative to match what Canadians are actually expecting," Bezan said. "They have spent the last 3 1/2 years on the wrong side of this issue, based upon the public's view."

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
WINNIPEG - A pregnant woman who walked across the United States border into Manitoba was rescued after she became trapped in a snowbank and appeared to go into labour.

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Early Sunday morning, February 26, 2017, eight migrants from Somalia cross into Canada illegally from the United States by walking down this train track into the town of Emerson, Man., where they will seek asylum at Canada Border Services Agency. A pregnant woman who walked across the border was rescued after she became trapped in a snowbank and went into labour. Emerson-Franklin Reeve Dave Carlson says the woman called 911 around 5 a.m. Saturday morning after she walked from the Minnesota side of the United States-Canada border along the railway tracks and became stuck. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

WINNIPEG - A pregnant woman who walked across the United States border into Manitoba was rescued after she became trapped in a snowbank and appeared to go into labour.

Emerson-Franklin Reeve Dave Carlson said the 25-year-old woman, who was nine months pregnant, was very lucky firefighters located her quickly Saturday morning.

The woman called 911 after she walked from Minnesota across the border near Emerson. She had been following railway tracks, but ended up going off the path and wandered into deep snow along the rail bed.

"It's definitely dangerous," Carlson said in an interview on Tuesday. "You can get yourself in a bad situation quickly, especially someone in the condition she is in."

A recent snowfall had left the area covered, Carlson said, and temperatures dropped below -20 C over the weekend. Carlson said he wasn't sure how long the woman had been outside, but she had made it about 180 metres across the border when she got stuck.

The firefighters who responded to the call were able to get there in about 15 minutes.

"When our personnel showed up and found her, not only was she stuck in the snow, but she was apparently pregnant and going into labour."

Firefighters freed the woman and kept her warm until an ambulance arrived and took her to hospital.

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RCMP said she did not give birth, was placed under arrest for illegally entering the country and was later turned over to the Canada Border Services Agency.

On Christmas Eve in 2016, two men lost fingers to severe frostbite after crossing in the same area during a blizzard. The two men from Ghana were among the first wave of refugee claimants to walk across the border into Canada after the newly elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, made executive orders on immigration.

In June 2017, the body of a woman attempting to cross into Canada was found on the U.S. side of the border.

The number of people crossing into Manitoba has fallen sharply in the past two years. The federal government said two people were intercepted by RCMP crossing into Manitoba in the first two months of this year, compared to more than 160 in the first two months of 2017.

The reeve said this weekend's close call is a stark reminder of the dangers.

"We are really glad things worked out the way they did because it could have been a lot worse," he said. "If her cellphone hadn't worked for any reason, or if she didn't have a cellphone, it would have been a real double tragedy."
OAKBANK  Chilling parallels between the recent Christchurch mosque massacre and the Holocaust are on 17-year-old Katelyn Furgalas mind as she prepares for a class trip to visit the former Nazi death camps in Europe.

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OAKBANK  Chilling parallels between the recent Christchurch mosque massacre and the Holocaust are on 17-year-old Katelyn Furgalas mind as she prepares for a class trip to visit the former Nazi death camps in Europe.

Katelyn is one of 30 students from Springfield Collegiate Institute in Oakbank who are leaving Wednesday on a tour through Poland, Germany and the Netherlands.

Students have been learning about the Holocaust for this extracurricular trip since September. They are concerned massacres such as New Zealands mosque shootings last week (50 killed, 50 wounded) are a scary reality of what can happen when people arent educated and accepting of the worlds different cultures.

"I definitely see ties. It (the Holocaust) didnt just start out with exterminating all these people, killing them," Furgala said. "It started out small and then it grew bigger. Yes, these are smaller hate crimes now, but if we dont try to help these people or educate ourselves, it can  hopefully, it doesnt  but it can turn into what happened before."

Students will visit the sites of three concentration camps over the 12-day trip, including a six-hour guided tour through Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Preparing and properly educating students for the trip has been one of the biggest, but most rewarding challenges for Springfield Collegiate history teacher James Osler.

"Its a pretty homogeneous community out here (in Oakbank, east of Winnipeg)," he said. "Theres not a lot of kids with a Jewish background, so I wanted them to go out and experience that."

To prepare, Osler and colleague James Chagnon spent seven months bringing their students to Holocaust education conferences and introducing them to survivors.

Isaac Gotfried, author of Lucky to Survive, told his incredible story of survival to the students. Gotfried published the book in 2017, at the age of 92, detailing his time in labour and concentration camps as a teenager during the Second World War.

"This guy has an incredible story," Osler said. "Hes like four-foot-something, has a twinkle in his eye... He sat there with these kids and just told them his story."

Osler said the upcoming trip will be an opportunity for students to connect in a personal way with the loss of human life caused by the Holocaust and the Second World War.

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They will also meet Dutch high school students at Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands, to visit the memorial and talk about their experiences.

Grade 11 Oakbank student Emma Klos said experiencing education in a hands-on way is one of the benefits of the trip.

"Obviously, you grew up learning about this stuff in school, but I think its going to be really interesting to not just read it. To actually be there and experience it, be standing in the spot where people perished," Klos said. "Itll provide you with a deeper experience than what you would get from a book or in a classroom."

At each of the former concentration camps, five of the Oakbank students will take a moment to remember a Holocaust victim, reading aloud a memorial that will include the name of the dead person and some details of his or her life.

Osler and Chagnon have spent more than 100 hours of their time sifting through Holocaust victim files, aiding students in their research.

"Weve done a lot of stuff to prepare them and open their eyes," Osler said. "We want to make them aware of the kind of hatred that exists in the world and why it exists and (what) happens to its extreme."
Over the last month, the Canadian government has been embroiled in a political controversy, involving allegations that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put undue pressure on Jody Wilson-Raybould, the countrys former justice minister and attorney general, to negotiate a deferred prosecution agreement with Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin Group.

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Opinion

Over the last month, the Canadian government has been embroiled in a political controversy, involving allegations that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put undue pressure on Jody Wilson-Raybould, the countrys former justice minister and attorney general, to negotiate a deferred prosecution agreement with Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin Group.

In Canada, such agreements  which have already been adopted in the United Kingdom and the United States  empower the Director of Public Prosecutions to negotiate reduced sentences with companies whose officials have been accused of engaging in criminal acts.

In the midst of the saga, the prime ministers principal secretary and two senior members of his government  Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott  have resigned from cabinet, and the SNC-Lavalin affair shows no signs of abating.

So far, the vast majority of political and media commentary has focused on the appropriateness of the actions of the Prime Ministers Office and the economic impact of jeopardizing 9,000 jobs in Canada should SNC-Lavalin face criminal prosecution.

These arent inconsequential matters. But they are part of a much wider conversation that needs to be had about the economic and political consequences of allowing and condoning corrupt business practices outside of Canada.

Guarding against corruption

Promoting and protecting jobs in Canada is part of any governments political mandate. But so too is the responsibility of ensuring that Canadian businesses are not creating further costs for countries whose governments and populations are least able to bear the burden of endemic corruption.

What are some of these burdens?

First, bribery inflates the costs of undertaking infrastructure projects that have real and significant benefits for poor people in the developing world.

Take for instance the case of Bangladesh, a country in which SNC-Lavalin was accused of bribing officials in the construction of the Padma Bridge, a US$1.2 billion project that was being funded by the World Bank.

According to a recent World Bank study, road construction in Bangladesh is up to 10 times more expensive than it is in India and China, reflecting the costs of high-level corruption. Although the charges against SNC-Lavalin in Canada were ultimately dropped, the companys international subsidiary  SNC-Lavalin Inc.  was barred from bidding on all future World Bank infrastructure projects for a period of 10 years.

Second, bribery narrows the pool of possible applicants, reducing the quality of services and benefits. Tendering large infrastructure projects is a complex process, involving many officials, but shrinking the pool makes it difficult to ensure that contractors are meeting their targets and deadlines.

Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at building construction projects in more than 60 countries to connect Asia, Africa and Europe, has widened the field.

But its approach entails using debt to secure infrastructure contracts, producing work that has been described as sub-standard and incomplete.

Third, bribery puts money in the hands of a small and powerful elite, further undermining the prospects for democratic governance that are so strongly associated with improved living standards and economic performance.

An ethical foreign policy?

In the case of Libya, SNC-Lavalin stands accused of paying $48 million in bribes to public officials, including Saadi Gadhafi, the son of Libyas former dictator, for travel, hotels and escorts.

Beyond the obvious legal and ethical implications of this particular case, a major problem with corruption of this kind is that it hollows out the foundations for democratic governance that are absolutely essential for achieving long-term sustainable development.

Defenders argue that paying bribes is part of doing business, but doing so also undermines critical public institutions, such as the judiciary, the executive and the civil service. It diverts public and private investment away from employment and infrastructure (as well as education and health care) into the assets and foreign bank accounts of political elites.

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When the Liberals came to power in 2015, they promised to "refocus Canadas development assistance on helping the poorest and most vulnerable, and supporting fragile states."

With the case of SNC-Lavalin, the government now finds itself in the unenviable position of having to choose between supporting a company that has been accused of engaging in widespread corruption or sticking to the humanitarian principles that were part of its original mandate.

Its true the company employs more than 50,000 people in 50 countries around the world, but it must also be noted that SNC-Lavalins actions and those of the Prime Ministers Office  have implications for people living outside of Canada, including those in some of the worlds poorest and most unstable countries.

Although they dont vote in Canadian elections, and they probably dont hold shares in SNC-Lavalin, they are stakeholders too, and their interests should be part of the conversation. Such are the foundations of an ethical foreign policy.

Craig Anthony Johnson is a professor and director at the Guelph Institute of Development Studies, University of Guelph. Iftekharul Haque is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Ottawa.

This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday gave another spin to the revolving door of president of the Treasury Board  and in came Joyce Murray, the Vancouver MP who had understudied the role as parliamentary secretary. She becomes the fourth person in the big chair since mid-January. After all the shuffling, however, the government still lacks a powerful Indigenous voice.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday gave another spin to the revolving door of president of the Treasury Board  and in came Joyce Murray, the Vancouver MP who had understudied the role as parliamentary secretary. She becomes the fourth person in the big chair since mid-January. After all the shuffling, however, the government still lacks a powerful Indigenous voice.

Nova Scotian Scott Brison quit the Treasury Board post Jan. 14, saying it was for family reasons. Ontarios Jane Philpott took his place but quit seven weeks later because she couldnt stand Mr. Trudeaus treatment of his former justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould. Vancouverite Carla Qualtrough, who also does Public Services and Procurement, filled in as acting minister until the appointment of Ms. Murray. That makes four ministers in nine weeks, a head-spinning rate of churn.

The Treasury Board is a central agency of government, policing the work of all departments to ensure that spending is properly authorized and departmental action conforms to law, government policy and ethical standards. Since the cat has, in effect, been away since Mr. Brison announced his imminent departure in December, Ms. Murray may find that the departmental mice have been gleefully at play since the Christmas break.

With luck, Ms. Murray will stick around long enough to do the job. That should help get the machinery of government functioning smoothly. An important gap remains, however: Mr. Trudeaus government used to include a powerful Indigenous voice in Ms. Wilson-Raybould. Now, it has none.

Canada has been pursuing reconciliation with Indigenous people in a general way for 30 years and in a very focused way since Stephen Harpers government appointed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission under Judge Murray Sinclair 11 years ago as part of the settlement with residential school survivors. The commission reported in 2015, as Mr. Trudeaus Liberals were taking power. The appointment of Ms. Wilson-Raybould as justice minister was an important step toward reconciliation. She was both a B.C. Crown prosecutor and an important Indigenous leader.

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That appointment ended badly, with Ms. Wilson-Rayboulds removal from the justice post in January and her acrimonious departure from the cabinet in February. The rights and wrongs of her quarrel with Mr. Trudeau have been picked over ever since.

The government, however, needs a powerful Indigenous voice now as much as it did in 2015. The Wilson-Raybould saga so far seems to show that there is no place for a strong Indigenous leader at the top level of Canadas government.

Mr. Trudeau and the leaders of other parties should not leave it at that.

All the parties are currently nominating their candidates for a general election this year.

Mr. Trudeau and his party won in 2015 for many reasons, one of which was a wave of support from Indigenous voters who had stayed home in previous elections but turned out to vote Liberal that year. That election showed that a program of openness to reconciliation can attract important Indigenous candidates and win wide support from the public.

The governing Liberals should aim to maintain their former support in the Indigenous community. The opposition parties should match their efforts. All parties should be recruiting prominent Indigenous candidates. They should be showing Canadians that the Wilson-Raybould episode was a speed bump, not the end of a road.
MOSCOW - President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the only leader that independent Kazakhstan has ever known, abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday after three decades in power, raising uncertainty over the future course of the Central Asian country.

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FILE - In this Friday, Oct. 19, 2018 file photo, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev arrives for an EU-ASEM summit in Brussels. The president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the oil-rich ex-Soviet nation for nearly three decades, announced his resignation in a televised address to the nation on Tuesday March 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys, File)

MOSCOW - President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the only leader that independent Kazakhstan has ever known, abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday after three decades in power, raising uncertainty over the future course of the Central Asian country.

In a televised address to the oil-rich nation, the 78-year-old Nazarbayev said he has made the "difficult" decision to terminate his authority as president, effective Wednesday.

He did not give a specific reason for the surprise move, but noted that he would have marked 30 years on the job later this year and added that he sees his mission as securing a smooth transition of power.

"As the founder of the independent state of Kazakhstan, I see my future task in ensuring the ascent to power of a new generation of leaders, who will continue reforms," he said.

Nazarbayev will retain the honorary title of "Elbasy" or "Leader of the Nation" and continue to wield considerable political power. He said he will remain chairman of the nation's Security Council and the head of the ruling Nur Otan party.

"I will stay with you, as a citizen, a man who loves our country," he said. "I will serve you until the end of my days. "

He said that upper house speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will serve as interim head of state in line with the constitution until a new election can be held. Tokayev is a former prime minister and foreign minister who also served as director-general of the U.N. office in Geneva between 2011 and 2013.

FILE - In this file photo taken on Oct. 18, 2018, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev arrives for the ASEM 12 in Brussels. Nazarbayev, who has ruled the oil-rich ex-Soviet nation for nearly three decades, announced his resignation in a televised address to the nation on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)

Kazakhstan, despite having a population of only about 18 million, is the ninth-largest country in the world with an area of about 2.7 million square kilometres (1 million square miles). It borders Russia to the north and China to the east and has extensive oil reserves that make it strategically and economically important.

Nazarbayev took the helm in Kazakhstan as its Communist Party chief of the republic in 1989 when it was part of the Soviet Union, and he was first elected its president weeks before the 1991 Soviet collapse gave the country its independence.

In those days, Kazakhstan was a backwater region best known for prisons, nuclear testing sites and being the home of the launch facility of the Soviet space program, the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Nazarbayev has been widely praised for maintaining stability and ethnic peace in Kazakhstan but he also has faced criticism for marginalizing the political opposition and creating what is effectively a one-party state.

He has maintained a delicate balance between Russia and the West, leading Kazakhstan to join a Russia-dominated economic alliance of ex-Soviet nations, but cultivating close energy ties and other links with the West.

He was lauded abroad for modernizing the oil industry and his decision to give up the nuclear weapons that Kazakhstan had inherited from the Soviet Union.

In 1997, Nazarbayev moved the country's capital from Almaty to the remote northern city of Astana in what was widely considered a way to fuse the ethnic-Russian minority in the north to the new Kazakh state. The new city was filled with post-modern architecture including the soaring glass pyramid of the Palace of Peace and Accord, dedicated to harmony among religious and ethnic groups.

In 2010, Nazarbayev was awarded the title of "Leader of the Nation," which comes with lifelong immunity from prosecution and as-yet untested powers of veto over some government policies.

He departs at a time of rare open protest against the government.

He fired his prime minister and cabinet last month following a wave of protests by Kazakh women calling for more financial support for children and safer housing after a fire in which five children died. Soon after, he announced a program of more generous spending for large families.

Nazarbayev has extended his tenure by landslide victories in successive elections and plebiscites. He took nearly 98 per cent of the vote in the most recent election, in 2015, when elected for another five-year term.

Nazarbayev's resignation will set the stage for a potential battle between Russia and the United States for influence with the successor government.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin Putin had spoken with Nazarbayev by telephone earlier Tuesday but didn't say what they had discussed. He wouldn't say if the Kazakh leader had given Putin advance warning of his move.

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Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, said Nazarbayev will retain clout in Kazakhstan and "there will be no radical changes in foreign or home policies."

Nazarbayev was born into a poor rural labourer's family on July 6, 1940. As a young adult, he worked in harsh conditions at a steel plant's blast furnace and at age 22 he joined the Communist Party. He worked his way up in the party, went to university and became known for his comparatively candid assessments of the Soviet Union's shortcomings.

That turn of mind positioned him in the reformist camp that came to ascendancy when Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985.

Nazarbayev supported Russian President Boris Yeltsin during the failed coup attempt against Gorbachev by Communist hardliners. Nazarbayev opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union, but was forced to take Kazakhstan out of the union as it collapsed in December 1991.

Just as Yeltsin resigned as Russian president on Dec. 31, 1999, to make way for Putin, so Nazarbayev's resignation statement came two days before Kazakhstan celebrates the Nauryz holiday, a traditional New Year celebration at the spring equinox.

Nazarbayev was the last of Central Asia's former Communist Party bosses to remain in power after the deaths of Turkmenistan's Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006 and Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov in 2016. The president of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, is now the region's longest-serving head of state, having assumed power in 1992 during a civil war.
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 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research.
8 hours ago

U.S. government deficit down 17% from same period a year ago

WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. budget deficit totaled $356.4 billion in the first two months of the budget year, down 17% from the same period a year ago thanks to a sharp jump in government revenues that offset a smaller increase in spending. In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Friday that the government's deficit in October and November was $72.9 billion below the deficit in the same two months last year.

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

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Blackrock Silver Corp. engages in the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral properties located in the United States. It primarily explores for gold and silver deposits. The company's flagship property is the Tonopah West silver-gold project that consists of 97 patented and 17 unpatented claims covering an area of 4.5 square kilometers located in the Silver State of Nevada. It also holds interest in the Silver Cloud project that consists of 572 mining claims covering an area of approximately 45 square kilometers located in Nevada. The company was formerly known as Blackrock Gold Corp. and changed its name to Blackrock Silver Corp. in March 2021. Blackrock Silver Corp. was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Cummins: Anvl, Apollo FC Holdings Ltd., Atlantis Acquisitionco Canada Corporation, Atlantis Holdco UK Limited, Brammo, CIFC Worldwide Partner C.V., CMI Africa Holdings BV, CMI CGT Holdings LLC, CMI Canada Financing Ltd., CMI Canada LP, CMI Foreign Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings C.V., CMI Global Holdings B.V., CMI Global Partner 2 C.V., CMI Global Partners B.V., CMI Group Holdings B.V., CMI Group Holdings Cooperatief U.A., CMI International Finance Partner 1 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 2 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 3 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 4 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 5 LLC, CMI Mexico LLC, CMI Netherlands Holdings B.V., CMI PGI Holdings LLC, CMI PGI International Holdings LLC, CMI Turkish Holdings B.V., CMI UK Finance LP, CMI UK Financing LP, Cherry Island Renewable Energy LLC, Consolidated Diesel Company, Consolidated Diesel Inc., Consolidated Diesel of North Carolina Inc., Cummins (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Cummins (Xiangyang) Machining Co. Ltd., Cummins Africa Middle East (Pty) Ltd., Cummins Afrique de l'Ouest, Cummins Americas Inc., Cummins Angola Lda., Cummins Argentina-Servicios Mineros S.A., Cummins Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Cummins Aust Technologies Pty. Ltd., Cummins BLR LLC, Cummins Battery Systems North America LLC, Cummins Belgium N.V., Cummins Botswana (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins Brasil Ltda., Cummins Burkina Faso SARL, Cummins CDC Holding Inc., Cummins CV Member LLC, Cummins Canada ULC, Cummins Caribbean LLC, Cummins Center of Excellence Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Centroamerica Holding S.de R.L., Cummins Child Development Center Inc., Cummins Colombia S.A.S., Cummins Comercializadora S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Corporation, Cummins Cote d'Ivoire SARL, Cummins Czech Republic s.r.o., Cummins Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Diesel International Ltd., Cummins Distribution Holdco Inc., Cummins EMEA Holdings Limited, Cummins East Asia Research & Development Co. Ltd., Cummins Eastern Marine Inc., Cummins Electrified Power Europe Ltd., Cummins Electrified Power NA Inc., Cummins Emission Solutions (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Emission Solutions Inc., Cummins Empresas Filantropicas, Cummins Energetica Ltda., Cummins Engine (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Trading & Services Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine Holding Company Inc., Cummins Engine IP Inc., Cummins Engine Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Engine Venture Corporation, Cummins Enterprise LLC, Cummins Filtration (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtration GmbH, Cummins Filtration IP Inc., Cummins Filtration Inc., Cummins Filtration International Corp., Cummins Filtration Ltd., Cummins Filtration SARL, Cummins Filtration Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtros Ltda., Cummins Franchise Holdco LLC, Cummins Fuel Systems (Wuhan) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Americas Inc., Cummins Generator Technologies Germany GmbH, Cummins Generator Technologies India Private Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Italy SRL, Cummins Generator Technologies Limited, Cummins Generator Technologies Romania S.A., Cummins Generator Technologies Singapore Pte Ltd., Cummins Ghana Limited, Cummins Ghana Mining Limited, Cummins Global Financing LP, Cummins Global Technologies LLP, Cummins Grupo Comercial Y. de Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Grupo Industrial S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Holland B.V., Cummins Hong Kong Ltd., Cummins India Ltd., Cummins Intellectual Property Inc., Cummins International Finance LLC, Cummins International Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Cummins International Holdings LLC, Cummins Italia S.P.A., Cummins Japan Ltd., Cummins Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins LLC Member Inc., Cummins Ltd., Cummins Maroc SARL, Cummins Middle East FZE, Cummins Mining Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Mobility Services Inc., Cummins Mongolia Investment LLC, Cummins Mozambique Ltda., Cummins NV, Cummins Namibia Engine Sales and Service PTY LTD, Cummins Natural Gas Engines Inc., Cummins New Zealand Limited, Cummins Nigeria Ltd., Cummins Norte de Colombia S.A.S., Cummins North Africa Regional Office SARL, Cummins Norway AS, Cummins PGI Holdings Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (S) Pte. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (U.K.) Limited, Cummins Power Generation Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Power Generation Inc., Cummins Power Generation Limited, Cummins PowerGen IP Inc., Cummins Research and Technology India Private Ltd., Cummins Romania Srl, Cummins S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Sales and Service Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins Sales and Service Philippines Inc., Cummins Sales and Service Private Limited, Cummins Sales and Service Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Sales and Service Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Sinai ve Otomotiv Urunleri Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Cummins South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins South Pacific Pty. Limited, Cummins Southern Plains LLC, Cummins Spain S.L., Cummins Sweden AB, Cummins Technologies India, Cummins Trade Receivables LLC, Cummins Turbo Technologies Limited, Cummins Turkey Motor Guc Sistemleri Sats Servis Limited Sirketi, Cummins U.K. Holdings Ltd., Cummins U.K. Pension Plan Trustee Ltd., Cummins UK Global Holdings Ltd., Cummins UK Holdings LLC, Cummins Vendas e Servicos de Motores e Geradores Ltda., Cummins Venture Corporation, Cummins West Africa Limited, Cummins West Balkans d.o.o. Nova Pasova, Cummins XBorder Operations (Pty) Ltd, Cummins Zambia Ltd., Cummins Zimbabwe Pvt. Ltd., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Costa Rica S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica El Salvador S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Guatemala Ltda., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Honduras S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins S.A., Distribuidora Cummins Sucursal Paraguay SRL, Distribuidora Cummins de Panama S. de R.L., Dynamo Insurance Company Inc., Efficient Drivetrains, Efficient Drivetrains (Beijing) New Power Technology Co. Ltd., Efficient Drivetrains (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Hilite International, Hydrogenics, Hydrogenics Corporation, Hydrogenics Europe N.V., Hydrogenics GmbH, Hydrogenics Holding GmbH, Hydrogenics USA Inc., Markon Engineering Company Ltd., Nelson Burgess Ltd., Nelson Industries, Newage Engineers GmbH, Newage Ltd. (U.K.), Newage Machine Tools Ltd., OOO Cummins, Petbow Limited, Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) B.V., Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) Ltd., Power Group International Ltd., Quickstart Energy Projects SpA, Shanghai Cummins Trade Co. Ltd., TOO Cummins, Taiwan Cummins Sales & Services Co. Ltd., Worldwide Partner CV Member LLC, Wuxi Cummins Turbo Technologies Co. Ltd., Wuxi New Energy Automotive Technologies Co. Ltd., and ZED Connect Inc..
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..
Bunzl plc operates as a distribution and services company in the North America, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and internationally. The company offers food packaging, films, labels, counter-service packaging, foodservice disposables, take-out food packaging, first aid products, point of purchase displays, stationery, bags, and cleaning and hygiene supplies to grocery stores, supermarkets, retail chains, convenience stores, food wholesalers, ethnic grocers, and organic food outlets. It also provides food packaging, napkins, disposable tableware, food service disposables, guest amenities, light and heavy catering equipment, cleaning and hygiene products, and safety items to hotels, restaurants, caterers, the leisure sector, and food processors and packers; and footwear, gloves, safety helmets, workwear, harness equipment, tools, safety signs, traffic management, and ancillary site equipment, as well as ear, eye, respiratory, and face protection products to customers in the industrial and construction markets. In addition, the company offers cleaning systems, floorcare items, hand cleansing products, hygiene paper, janitorial products, cleaning machines, mops, polishes, and protective clothing and washroom chemicals to facilities management companies, contract cleaners, and other industrial and healthcare customers; and counter service packaging, point of purchase display items, stationery, and cleaning and hygiene products to department stores, boutiques, office supply companies, retail chains, and home improvement chains. Further, it provides gloves, aprons, bandages, facemasks, gowns, headwear, mattress covers, overshoes, procedure packs, tapes, wipes, incontinence products, and swabs to the healthcare sector, including hospitals, retirement and nursing homes, and doctors' surgeries and clinics; and various products to government and education establishments. Bunzl plc was founded in 1854 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

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 American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved.

326 E 8th St #105, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 | U.S. Based Support Team at contact@marketbeat.com | (844) 978-6257

MarketBeat does not provide personalized financial advice and does not issue recommendations or offers to buy stock or sell any security.



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 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research.
Berkshire DA: Propane Tanks Used to Set Fire in Sheffield Murder-Suicide

Flanked by members of her office and detectives from the State Police, District Attorney Andrea Harrington briefed the press on the incident Thursday evening.

SHEFFIELD, Mass.  The district attorney's office says there is "overwhelming evidence" suggesting that Luke Karpinski killed his wife and children before setting their Home Road residence on fire.

District Attorney Andrea Harrington said on Monday that Justine Wilbur, 41, was found dead on the first floor with signs of "a traumatic injury" that appears to have occurred prior to the start of the fire. Authorities also say they found an accelerant throughout the home, including two 20-pound propane tanks on the upper floors, used to start the blaze.

"This investigation is complex and ongoing, but we have uncovered overwhelming evidence suggesting that Luke Karpinski killed his wife and children prior to committing suicide," Harrington said.

The family of five were all found dead Wednesday morning after first-responders extinguished a fire at the home. Authorities found Wilbur on the first floor of the home and the other four upstairs.

Investigators say they did not find any firearms in the home but the autopsy results with the cause of deaths were not available Monday from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

The fire was reported at about 7:50 Wednesday morning.

Original Post: Berkshire DA: Sheffield Fire Being Investigated as Murder-Suicide

March 14, 2019, at 6:46 p.m



Numerous volunteer fire departments responded to the scene Wednesday morning. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  The District Attorney's office is investigating the fire that left a family of five dead as a murder-suicide.

First responders were called to 1343 Home Road shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday morning to a structure fire.

After it was extinguished, investigators found Justine Wilbur dead and later found the bodies of her husband, Luke Karpinski, and the family's three children, 7-year-old twins Alex and Zoe and Marek, age 3.

On Thursday, District Attorney Andrea Harrington said it appears as though Karpinski had killed his family.

"Five individuals including three young children died Wednesday morning that burned at 1343 Home Road in Sheffield. Among the deceased were Luke Karpinski, his wife Justine Wilbur, both 41, who lived in the home with their 3-year-old and 7-year-old twins," Harrington said.

"We are investigating this matter as a murder-suicide. At this time, the evidence indicates that Luke Karpinski was the assailant."

Harrington said little more but assured the public that "there is no reason to believe the public is in danger at this time." She would not reveal the cause of the deaths but said the bodies have been transferred to the chief medical examiner's office in Boston.

Harrington also would not reveal anything regarding weapons or whether the individuals had died before or during the fire.

The investigation into the circumstances around the incident are being investigated by the Massachusetts State Police and the Office of the State Fire Marshal. Volunteer fire companies from around the region responded to aid the Sheffield Fire Department: Great Barrington, New Marlborough, Richmond, Egremont and Monterey, and Connecticut companies of North Fork and Canaan.

The family had purchased the property in 2016 and had recently built the house on the thinly settled country road. Karpinski was a patent examiner for the federal government for more than a decade and Wilbur an attorney in patent law at Hoffman Warnick in Albany, N.Y., and held degrees in chemistry before earning her law degree.

Hoffman Warnick described Wilbur in a statement as "a talented attorney" who "was smart, knowledgeable, dedicated and hardworking."

"It is with grief and immeasurable sorrow that we learned of the death of our friend and colleague Justine M. Wilbur, who died with her family yesterday in Sheffield, Massachusetts," the firm stated.

Beth Regulbuto, superintendent of schools for the Southern Berkshire Regional School District, apprised the school community by email on Wednesday night that the crisis team would be meeting on Thursday morning "to discuss the best ways possible to provide support during school tomorrow." She said the district would have more counselors on hand and that faculty and staff would be providing "developmentally appropriate messages."




There is not enough analysis data for Eaton Vance California Municipal Bond Fund.

4.4 Community Rank

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Community Sentiment Eaton Vance California Municipal Bond Fund has received 65.55% outperform votes from our community.

MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Eaton Vance California Municipal Bond Fund and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe EVM will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe EVM will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days.

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First Data Corporation provides commerce enabled technology and solutions for merchants, financial institutions, and card issuers in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates through three segments: Global Business Solutions, Global Financial Solutions, and Network & Security Solutions. The Global Business Solutions segment provides solutions to merchants, such as retail point of sale merchant acquiring, e-commerce, and mobile payment services, as well as cloud based point of sale operating system that include a marketplace for proprietary and third party applications. The Global Finance Solutions segment provides technology solutions for bank and non-bank issuers, such as credit, retail private label, commercial card, and loan processing, as well as licensed financial software systems; suite of account services that include card personalization and embossing, customer communications, and professional services; and call center solutions and back office processing. The Network & Security Solutions segment offers EFT network, stored value network, and security and fraud solutions, as well as other value added solutions to its clients in GBS and GFS segments, smaller financial institutions, and other enterprise clients. First Data Corporation was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Invesco Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt ETF's stock was trading at $25.82 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, PCY shares have increased by 2.1% and is now trading at $26.35.

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Three Will Vie For Adams Selectmen Seats.

ADAMS, Mass.  Three people have returned nomination papers for the two open selectmen seats.

Incumbents Joseph Nowak and Richard Blanchard will look to defend their seats from former Selectman Donald Sommer.

Nowak and Blanchard were elected together in 2013 and have served on the board since. Each are running for a third three-year term.

Sommer served on the board from 2007 and 2010, including as chairman. He was one of five who ran for the two available seats last May but did not receive more votes than incumbent John Duval and newcomer James Bush.

The only other contest this year will be for treasurer/collector. Kelly Rice, who has held the position since 2014, will be challenged by the town's former treasurer, Paul Nowicki.

Rice was elected to finish the final two years of a two-year term and then won a three-year term in 2016. Nowicki had held the post for more than 17 years after first being elected in 1983 as one of the youngest treasurer/collectors in the state. He resigned in 2000 to take a job elsewhere but came back the area some years ago.

No one took out papers for an open Adams-Cheshire Regional School Committee seat to be vacated by current Chairman Paul Butler.

Jennifer Gageant, another Adams representative on the committee, returned papers and will run unopposed.

Longtime Planning Board member Barbara Ziemba did not return papers and former board member Michael Mach will run unopposed for her vacated seat.

Incumbents Board of Health Member Peter Hoyt, Assessor Lorraine Kalisz, Moderator Myra Wilk, Cemetery Commissioner James Taylor, McCann Technical School Committee member Joseph Allard, and Library Trustees Karen Kettles and Virginia Phelps Duval will all run unopposed.

The deadline to withdraw or object to nomination papers is April 3.

The deadline for filing initial campaign finance report is April 26 and the filing date for the final campaign finance report is June 5.

Nomination papers were due Monday at 5 p.m. The election is Monday, May 6, and the last day to register to vote is April 16.
Shares of iShares MSCI Japan ETF reverse split on the morning of Monday, November 7th 2016. The 1-4 reverse split was announced on Friday, October 14th 2016. The number of shares owned by shareholders was adjusted after the closing bell on Friday, November 4th 2016. An investor that had 100 shares of iShares MSCI Japan ETF stock prior to the reverse split would have 25 shares after the split.
The following companies are subsidiares of Johnson & Johnson: 3Dintegrated ApS, ALZA Corporation, AMO (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AMO (Shanghai) Medical Devices Trading Co. Ltd., AMO ASIA LIMITED, AMO Australia Pty Limited, AMO Canada Company, AMO Denmark ApS, AMO Development LLC, AMO France, AMO Germany GmbH, AMO Groningen B.V., AMO International Holdings, AMO Ireland, AMO Ireland Finance Unlimited Company, AMO Italy SRL, AMO Japan K.K., AMO Manufacturing Spain S.L., AMO Manufacturing USA LLC, AMO Netherlands BV, AMO Nominee Holdings LLC, AMO Norway AS, AMO Puerto Rico Manufacturing Inc., AMO Sales and Service Inc., AMO Singapore Pte. Ltd., AMO Spain Holdings LLC, AMO Switzerland GmbH, AMO U.K. Holdings LLC, AMO US Holdings Inc., AMO USA LLC, AMO USA Sales Holdings Inc., AMO United Kingdom Ltd., AMO Uppsala AB, APSIS, AUB Holdings LLC, Abott Medical Optics, Acclarent Inc., Actelion Ltd, Actelion Manufacturing GmbH, Actelion Pharmaceuticals, Actelion Pharmaceuticals Australia Pty. Limited, Actelion Pharmaceuticals Korea Ltd., Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Actelion Pharmaceuticals Mexico S.A. De C.V., Actelion Pharmaceuticals Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Actelion Pharmaceuticals UK Limited, Actelion Pharmaceuticals US Inc., Actelion Registration Limited, Actelion Treasury Unlimited Company, Akros Medical Inc., Albany Street LLC, Alios BioPharma, Alza Land Management Inc., Animas Diabetes Care LLC, Animas LLC, Animas Technologies LLC, AorTx Inc., Aragon Pharmaceuticals, Aragon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Asia Pacific Holdings LLC, Atrionix Inc., Auris Health, Auris Health Inc., Backsvalan 2 Aktiebolag, Backsvalan 6 Handelsbolag, Beijing Dabao Cosmetics Co. Ltd., BeneVir BioPharm Inc., Berna Rhein B.V., BioMedical Enterprises Inc., Biosense Webster (Israel) Ltd., Biosense Webster Inc., C Consumer Products Denmark ApS, CNA Development GmbH, CSATS Inc., Calibra Medical LLC, Campus-Foyer Apotheke GmbH, Carlo Erba OTC S.r.l., Centocor Biologics LLC, Centocor Research & Development Inc., ChromaGenics B.V., Ci:Labo Customer Marketing Co. Ltd., Ci:z Holdings, Ci:z. Labo Co. Ltd., Cilag AG, Cilag GmbH International, Cilag Holding AG, Cilag Holding Treasury Unlimited Company, Cilag-Biotech S.L., CoTherix Inc., Codman & Shurtleff Inc., Coherex Medical Inc., ColBar LifeScience Ltd., Company Store.com Inc., Conor MedSystems, Cordis International Corporation, Cordis de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Corimmun GmbH, DR. CI:LABO COMPANY LIMITED, Darlain Trading S.A., DePuy France, DePuy Hellas SA, DePuy International Limited, DePuy Ireland Unlimited Company, DePuy Mexico S.A. de C.V., DePuy Mitek LLC, DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., DePuy Products Inc., DePuy Spine LLC, DePuy Synthes Gorgan Limited, DePuy Synthes Inc., DePuy Synthes Institute LLC, DePuy Synthes Leto SARL, DePuy Synthes Products Inc., DePuy Synthes Sales Inc., Debs-Vogue Corporation (Proprietary) Limited, Dr. Ci:Labo Co. Ltd., Dutch Holding LLC, ECL7 LLC, EES Holdings de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., EES S.A. de C.V., EIT Emerging Implant Technologies GmbH, Ethicon Biosurgery Ireland, Ethicon Endo-Surgery (Europe) GmbH, Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc., Ethicon Endo-Surgery LLC, Ethicon Holding Sarl, Ethicon Inc., Ethicon Ireland Unlimited Company, Ethicon LLC, Ethicon PR Holdings Unlimited Company, Ethicon Sarl, Ethicon US LLC, Ethicon Women's Health & Urology Sarl, Ethnor (Proprietary) Limited, Ethnor Farmaceutica S.A., Ethnor Guatemala Sociedad Anomina, Ethnor del Istmo S.A., FMS Future Medical System SA, Finsbury (Development) Limited, Finsbury (Instruments) Limited, Finsbury Medical Limited, Finsbury Orthopaedics International Limited, Finsbury Orthopaedics Limited, GH Biotech Holdings Limited, GMED Healthcare BV, Global Investment Participation B.V., Guangzhou Bioseal Biotech Co. Ltd., Hansen Medical Deutschland GmbH, Hansen Medical Inc., Hansen Medical International Inc., Hansen Medical UK Limited, Healthcare Services (Shanghai) Ltd., I.D. Acquisition Corp., Innomedic Gesellschaft fur innovative Medizintechnik und Informatik mbH, Innovalens B.V., Innovative Surgical Solutions LLC, J & J Company West Africa Limited, J&J Pension Trustees Limited, J-C Health Care Ltd., J.C. General Services BV, JJ Surgical Vision Spain S.L., JJC Acquisition Company B.V., JJHC LLC, JJSV Belgium BV, JJSV Manufacturing Malaysia SDN. BHD., JJSV Norden AB, JJSV Produtos Oticos Ltda., JNJ Global Business Services s.r.o., JNJ Holding EMEA B.V., JNJ International Investment LLC, JNJ Irish Investments ULC, JOM Pharmaceutical Services Inc., Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy (Holding) Limited, Janssen BioPharma Inc., Janssen Biologics (Ireland) Limited, Janssen Biologics B.V., Janssen Biotech Inc., Janssen Cilag C.A., Janssen Cilag Farmaceutica S.A., Janssen Cilag S.p.A., Janssen Cilag SPA, Janssen Development Finance Unlimited Company, Janssen Diagnostics LLC, Janssen Egypt LLC, Janssen Farmaceutica Portugal Lda, Janssen Global Services LLC, Janssen Group Holdings Limited, Janssen Holding GmbH, Janssen Inc., Janssen Irish Finance Company UC, Janssen Korea Ltd., Janssen Oncology Inc., Janssen Ortho LLC, Janssen Pharmaceutica (Proprietary) Limited, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Janssen Pharmaceutica S.A., Janssen Pharmaceutical, Janssen Pharmaceutical K.K., Janssen Pharmaceutical Sciences Unlimited Company, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Janssen Products LP, Janssen R&D Ireland, Janssen Research & Development LLC, Janssen Sciences Ireland Unlimited Company, Janssen Scientific Affairs LLC, Janssen Supply Group LLC, Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V., Janssen Vaccines Corp., Janssen de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Janssen-Cilag, Janssen-Cilag (New Zealand) Limited, Janssen-Cilag A/S, Janssen-Cilag AG, Janssen-Cilag AS, Janssen-Cilag Aktiebolag, Janssen-Cilag B.V., Janssen-Cilag Farmaceutica Lda., Janssen-Cilag Farmaceutica Ltda., Janssen-Cilag GmbH, Janssen-Cilag International NV, Janssen-Cilag Kft., Janssen-Cilag Limited, Janssen-Cilag Manufacturing LLC, Janssen-Cilag NV, Janssen-Cilag OY, Janssen-Cilag Pharma GmbH, Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceutical S.A.C.I., Janssen-Cilag Polska Sp. z o.o., Janssen-Cilag Pty Ltd, Janssen-Cilag S.A., Janssen-Cilag S.A., Janssen-Cilag S.A. de C.V., Janssen-Cilag de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Janssen-Cilag s.r.o., Janssen-Pharma S.L., Jevco Holding Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Johnson & Johnson (Angola) Limitada, Johnson & Johnson (China) Investment Ltd., Johnson & Johnson (Egypt) S.A.E., Johnson & Johnson (Hong Kong) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Ireland) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Jamaica) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Kenya) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc., Johnson & Johnson (Mozambique) Limitada, Johnson & Johnson (Namibia) (Proprietary) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (New Zealand) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Philippines) Inc., Johnson & Johnson (Private) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Thailand) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson (Trinidad) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Vietnam) Co. Ltd, Johnson & Johnson - Societa' Per Azioni, Johnson & Johnson AB, Johnson & Johnson AG, Johnson & Johnson Belgium Finance Company BV, Johnson & Johnson Bulgaria EOOD, Johnson & Johnson China Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Consumer (Hong Kong) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer (Thailand) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer B.V., Johnson & Johnson Consumer Holdings France, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc., Johnson & Johnson Consumer NV, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Saudi Arabia Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Services EAME Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Del Paraguay S.A., Johnson & Johnson Dominicana S.A.S., Johnson & Johnson Enterprise Innovation Inc., Johnson & Johnson European Treasury Company, Johnson & Johnson Finance Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Finance Limited, Johnson & Johnson Financial Services GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Foundation Scotland (NON-PROFIT), Johnson & Johnson Gateway LLC, Johnson & Johnson Gesellschaft m.b.H., Johnson & Johnson GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Guatemala S.A., Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc., Johnson & Johnson Health and Wellness Solutions Inc., Johnson & Johnson Hellas Commercial and Industrial S.A., Johnson & Johnson Hellas Consumer Products Commercial Societe Anonyme, Johnson & Johnson Hemisferica S.A., Johnson & Johnson Holding GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Holdings K.K., Johnson & Johnson Inc., Johnson & Johnson Industrial Ltda., Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JJDC Inc., Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC, Johnson & Johnson Innovation Limited, Johnson & Johnson International, Johnson & Johnson International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Johnson & Johnson International Financial Services Company, Johnson & Johnson Japan Inc., Johnson & Johnson K.K., Johnson & Johnson Kft., Johnson & Johnson Korea Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Korea Selling & Distribution LLC, Johnson & Johnson LLC, Johnson & Johnson Limitada, Johnson & Johnson Limited, Johnson & Johnson Luxembourg Finance Company Sarl, Johnson & Johnson Management Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical (China) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical (Proprietary) Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Medical (Shanghai) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical (Suzhou) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical B.V., Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices & Diagnostics Group - Latin America L.L.C., Johnson & Johnson Medical GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Medical Korea Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical Mexico S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson Medical NV, Johnson & Johnson Medical Products GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Medical Pty Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Medical S.A., Johnson & Johnson Medical S.C.S., Johnson & Johnson Medical S.p.A., Johnson & Johnson Medical SAS, Johnson & Johnson Medical Saudi Arabia Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical Servicios Profesionales S. de R.L. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson Medical Taiwan Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medikal Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC, Johnson & Johnson Morocco Societe Anonyme, Johnson & Johnson Nordic AB, Johnson & Johnson Pacific Pty Limited, Johnson & Johnson Pakistan (Private) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Panama S.A., Johnson & Johnson Personal Care (Chile) S.A., Johnson & Johnson Poland Sp. z o.o., Johnson & Johnson Private Limited, Johnson & Johnson Pte. Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Pty. Limited, Johnson & Johnson Research Pty Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Romania S.R.L., Johnson & Johnson S.A., Johnson & Johnson S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson S.E. Inc., Johnson & Johnson S.E. d.o.o., Johnson & Johnson SDN. BHD., Johnson & Johnson Sante Beaute France, Johnson & Johnson Services Inc., Johnson & Johnson Servicios Corporativos S. de R.L. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson Surgical Vision Inc., Johnson & Johnson Surgical Vision India Private Limited, Johnson & Johnson Taiwan Ltd., Johnson & Johnson UK Treasury Company Limited, Johnson & Johnson Ukraine LLC, Johnson & Johnson Urban Renewal Associates, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (Shanghai) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc., Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Ireland Unlimited Company, Johnson & Johnson d.o.o., Johnson & Johnson de Argentina S.A.C. e. I., Johnson & Johnson de Chile Limitada, Johnson & Johnson de Chile S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Colombia S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Costa Rica S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson de Uruguay S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Venezuela S.A., Johnson & Johnson del Ecuador S.A., Johnson & Johnson del Peru S.A., Johnson & Johnson do Brasil Industria E Comercio de Produtos Para Saude Ltda., Johnson & Johnson for Export and Import LLC, Johnson & Johnson s.r.o., Johnson and Johnson (Proprietary) Limited, Johnson and Johnson Sihhi Malzeme Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, La Concha Land Investment Corporation, Latam International Investment Company Unlimited Company, LifeScan, MDS Co. Ltd., McNEIL MMP LLC, McNeil AB, McNeil Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co., McNeil Denmark ApS, McNeil Healthcare (Ireland) Limited, McNeil Healthcare (UK) Limited, McNeil Healthcare LLC, McNeil Iberica S.L.U., McNeil LA LLC, McNeil Nutritionals LLC, McNeil Panama LLC, McNeil Products Limited, McNeil Sweden AB, Medical Device Business Services Inc., Medical Devices & Diagnostics Global Services LLC, Medical Devices International LLC, Medical Industrial do Brasil Ltda., Medos International Sarl, Medos Sarl, MegaDyne Medical Products Inc., Menlo Care De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Mentor B.V., Mentor Deutschland GmbH, Mentor Medical Systems B.V., Mentor Partnership Holding Company I LLC, Mentor Texas GP LLC, Mentor Texas L.P., Mentor Worldwide LLC, Micrus Endovascular LLC, Middlesex Assurance Company Limited, Momenta Ireland Limited, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc., NeoStrata Company Inc., NeoStrata Company Inc., NeoStrata UG (haftungsbeschrankt), Netherlands Holding Company, NeuWave Medical Inc., Neuravi Inc., Neuravi Limited, Novira Therapeutics, Novira Therapeutics LLC, NuVera Medical Inc., OBTECH Medical Sarl, OGX Beauty AU Pty Ltd, OGX Beauty Limited, OMJ Holding GmbH, OMJ Ireland Unlimited Company, OMJ Pharmaceuticals Inc., Obtech Medical Mexico S.A. de C.V., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals Inc., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals Ltd., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals NV, Ortho Biologics LLC, Ortho Biotech Holding LLC, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical LLC, Orthotaxy, Orthotaxy, PMC Holdings G.K., PT Integrated Healthcare Indonesia, PT. Johnson & Johnson Indonesia, Patriot Pharmaceuticals LLC, Peninsula Pharmaceuticals LLC, Penta Pty. Limited, Percivia LLC, Perouse Plastie, Pharmadirect Ltd., Pharmedica Laboratories (Proprietary) Limited, Princeton Laboratories Inc., Productos de Cuidado Personal y de La Salud de Bolivia S.R.L., Proleader S.A., Pulsar Vascular Inc., Regency Urban Renewal Associates, RespiVert Ltd., RoC International, Rutan Realty LLC, SYNTHES Medical Immobilien GmbH, Scios LLC, Sedona Enterprise Co. Ltd., Sedona Singapore International Pte. Ltd., Sedona Thai International Co. Ltd., Serhum S.A. de C.V., Shanghai Elsker For Mother & Baby Co. Ltd, Shanghai Johnson & Johnson Ltd., Shanghai Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Sightbox LLC, Sodiac ESV, Spectrum Vision Limited Liability Company, Spectrum Vision Limited Liability Partnership, Spine Solutions GmbH, SterilMed, SterilMed Inc., Surgical Process Institute Deutschland GmbH, Synthes Costa Rica S.C.R. Limitada, Synthes GmbH, Synthes Holding AG, Synthes Holding Limited, Synthes Inc., Synthes Medical Surgical Equipment & Instruments Trading LLC, Synthes Produktions GmbH, Synthes Proprietary Limited, Synthes S.M.P. S. de R.L. de C.V., Synthes Tuttlingen GmbH, Synthes USA LLC, Synthes USA Products LLC, TARIS Biomedical, TARIS Biomedical LLC, TearScience Inc., The Anspach Effort LLC, The Vision Care Institute LLC, Tibotec LLC, Torax Medical Inc., TriStrata Incorporated, UAB "Johnson & Johnson", Vania Expansion, Verb Surgical, Verb Surgical Inc., Vision Care Finance Unlimited Company, Vogue International, Vogue International LLC, Vogue International Trading Inc., WH4110 Development Company L.L.C., XO1, XO1 Limited, Xian Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd., Zarbee's Inc., and Zarbee's Naturals.
The following companies are subsidiares of CVS Health: @Credentials Inc., ACS ACQCO CORP., ADMINCO Inc., AE Fourteen Incorporated, AHP Holdings Inc., AMC - Tennessee LLC, APS Acquisition LLC, ASCO HealthCare LLC, ASI Wings LLC, AUSHC Holdings Inc., Accendo Insurance Company, Accordant Health Services L.L.C., Active Health Management Inc., Administrative Enterprises Inc., AdvancePCS SpecialtyRx LLC, AdvanceRx.com L.L.C., Advanced Care Scripts Inc., Aetna, Aetna (Beijing) Enterprise Management Services Co. Ltd., Aetna (Shanghai) Enterprise Services Co. Ltd., Aetna ACO Holdings Inc., Aetna Asset Advisors LLC, Aetna Behavioral Health LLC, Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health of California Inc., Aetna Better Health of Florida Inc., Aetna Better Health of Kansas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Better Health of Missouri LLC, Aetna Better Health of Nevada Inc., Aetna Better Health of North Carolina Inc., Aetna Better Health of Oklahoma Inc., Aetna Better Health of Texas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Washington Inc., Aetna Capital Management LLC, Aetna Card Solutions LLC, Aetna Corporate Services LLC, Aetna Dental Inc., Aetna Dental of California Inc., Aetna Financial Holdings LLC, Aetna Florida Inc., Aetna Global Benefits (Asia Pacific) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bahamas) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bermuda) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Europe) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Middle East) LLC, Aetna Global Benefits (Singapore) PTE. LTD., Aetna Global Benefits (UK) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits Limited (DIFC UAE), Aetna Global Holdings Limited, Aetna Health Holdings LLC, Aetna Health Inc., Aetna Health Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Aetna Health Insurance Company, Aetna Health Insurance Company of Europe DAC, Aetna Health Management LLC, Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company, Aetna Health of California Inc., Aetna Health of Iowa Inc., Aetna Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Health of Ohio Inc., Aetna Health of Utah Inc., Aetna HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc., Aetna Holdco (UK) Limited, Aetna Holdings (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Inc., Aetna Insurance (Hong Kong) Limite, Aetna Insurance (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Aetna Insurance Company Limited, Aetna Integrated Informatics Inc., Aetna International Inc., Aetna Ireland Inc., Aetna Korea Ltd., Aetna Life & Casualty (Bermuda) Ltd., Aetna Life Assignment Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company, Aetna Medicaid Administrators LLC, Aetna Multi-Strategy 1099 Fund LLC, Aetna Network Services LLC, Aetna Partners Diversified Fund LLC, Aetna Pharmacy Management Services LLC, Aetna Resources LLC, Aetna Risk Assurance Company of Connecticut Inc., Aetna Rx Home Delivery LLC, Aetna Services (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Aetna Student Health Agency Inc., Aetna Ventures LLC, Aetna Workers Comp Access LLC, Alabama CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Alaska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, American Continental Insurance Company, American Drug Stores Delaware L.L.C., American Health Holding Inc., Arbor Drugs, Arizona CVS Stores L.L.C., Arkansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Badger Acquisition LLC, Badger Acquisition of Kentucky LLC, Badger Acquisition of Minnesota LLC, Badger Acquisition of Ohio LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Company, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Plan Inc., Beauty Holdings L.L.C., Best Care LTC Acquisition Company LLC, Busse CVS L.L.C., CCI Foreign S.a R.L. (R.C.S. Luxembourg), CCRx Holdings LLC, CCRx of North Carolina LLC, CHP Acquisition LLC, CP Acquisition LLC, CVS 2948 Henderson L.L.C., CVS 3268 Gilbert L.L.C., CVS 3745 Peoria L.L.C., CVS AL Distribution L.L.C., CVS AOC Corporation, CVS AOC Services L.L.C., CVS Albany L.L.C., CVS Bellmore Avenue L.L.C., CVS Care Concierge LLC, CVS Caremark Advanced Technology Pharmacy L.L.C., CVS Caremark Indemnity Ltd., CVS Caremark Part D Services L.L.C., CVS Caremark TN SUTA LLC, CVS Foreign Inc., CVS Gilbert 3272 L.L.C., CVS Health Solutions LLC, CVS Indiana L.L.C., CVS International L.L.C., CVS Kidney Care Advanced Technologies LLC, CVS Kidney Care Health Services LLC, CVS Kidney Care Home Dialysis LLC, CVS Kidney Care LLC, CVS Manchester NH L.L.C., CVS Media Exchange LLC, CVS Michigan L.L.C., CVS Orlando FL Distribution L.L.C., CVS PA Distribution L.L.C., CVS PR Center Inc., CVS Pharmacy Inc., CVS RS Arizona L.L.C., CVS Rx Services Inc., CVS SC Distribution L.L.C., CVS State Capital L.L.C., CVS TN Distribution L.L.C., CVS Transportation L.L.C., CVS Vero FL Distribution L.L.C., Campos Medical Pharmacy LLC, Canal Place LLC, Care Pharmaceutical Services LP, CareCenter Pharmacy L.L.C., Carefree Insurance Services Inc., Caremark Arizona Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Arizona Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark California Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Florida Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Florida Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Hawaii Mail Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Hawaii Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark IPA L.L.C., Caremark Illinois Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Illinois Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Irving Resource Center LLC, Caremark Kansas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark L.L.C., Caremark Logistics LLC, Caremark Louisiana Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Maryland Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Massachusetts Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Michigan Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Minnesota Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark New Jersey Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark North Carolina Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ohio Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Pennsylvania Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark PhC L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Redlands Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Repack LLC, Caremark Rx L.L.C., Caremark Tennessee Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ulysses Holding Corp., Caremark Washington Specialty Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Alabama Mail Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Health L.L.C., CaremarkPCS L.L.C., Central Rx Services LLC, Claims Administration Corp., Cofinity Inc., Compscript LLC, Connecticut CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Continental Life Insurance Company of Brentwood Tennessee, Continuing Care Rx LLC, Coram Alternate Site Services Inc., Coram Clinical Trials Inc., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Alabama, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater D.C., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater New York, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Indiana, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Massachusetts, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Mississippi, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Nevada, Coram Healthcare Corporation of North Texas, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Northern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Utah, Coram LLC, Coram Rx LLC, Coram Specialty Infusion, Coram Specialty Infusion Services L.L.C., Coventry Consumer Advantage Inc., Coventry Health Care National Accounts Inc., Coventry Health Care National Network Inc., Coventry Health Care Workers Compensation Inc., Coventry Health Care of Illinois Inc., Coventry Health Care of Kansas Inc., Coventry Health Care of Missouri Inc., Coventry Health Care of Nebraska Inc., Coventry Health Care of Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Care of West Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Plan of Florida Inc., Coventry Health and Life Insurance Company, Coventry HealthCare Management Corporation, Coventry Prescription Management Services Inc., Coventry Rehabilitation Services Inc., Coventry Transplant Network Inc., D & R Pharmaceutical Services LLC, D.A.W. LLC, Delaware CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Delaware Physicians Care Incorporated, Digital eHealth LLC, District of Columbia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., E.T.B. INC., Echo Merger Sub Inc., Eckerd Corporation of Florida Inc., Employee Assistance Services LLC, Enloe Drugs LLC, Enterprise Patient Safety Organization LLC, EntrustRX, Evergreen Pharmaceutical LLC, Evergreen Pharmaceutical of California Inc., Express Pharmacy Services of PA L.L.C., FOCUS HealthCare Management Inc., First Health Group Corp., First Health Life & Health Insurance Company, First Script Network Services Inc., Florida Health Plan Administrators LLC, Garfield Beach CVS L.L.C., Generation Health L.L.C., Geneva Woods Health Services LLC, Geneva Woods LTC Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Management LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Alaska LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Washington LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Wyoming LLC, Geneva Woods Retail Pharmacy LLC, Georgia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., German Dobson CVS L.L.C., Goodhealth Worldwide (Asia) Limited, Goodhealth Worldwide (Global) Limited, Goodyear CVS L.L.C., Grand St. Paul CVS L.L.C., Grandview Pharmacy LLC, Group Dental Service Inc., Group Dental Service of Maryland Inc., Health Care Management Co. Ltd., Health Data & Management Solutions Inc., Health Re Inc., Health and Human Resource Center Inc., HealthAssuance Pennsylvania Inc., Healthagen LLC, Highland Park CVS L.L.C., Holiday CVS L.L.C., Home Care Pharmacy LLC, Home Pharmacy Services LLC, Hook-SupeRx L.L.C., Horizon Behavioral Services LLC, Idaho CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., IlliniCare Health, Indian Health Organisation Private Limited, Innovation Health Holdings LLC, Innovation Health Insurance Company, Innovation Health Plan Inc., Interlock Pharmacy Systems LLC, Iowa CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., JHC Acquisition LLC, Kansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Kentucky CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., LCPS Acquisition LLC, Langsam Health Services LLC, Lo-Med Prescription Services LLC, Lobos Acquisition LLC, Longs Drug Stores, Longs Drug Stores California L.L.C., Louisiana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., MHHP Acquisition Company LLC, MHNet Life and Health Insurance Company, MHNet Specialty Services LLC, MHNet of Florida Inc., Managed Care Coordinators Inc., Managed Healthcare LLC, Martin Health Services LLC, Maryland CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Med World Acquisition Corp., Medical Arts Health Care LLC, Medical Examinations of New York P.C., Melville Realty Company Inc., MemberHealth LLC, Mental Health Associates Inc., Mental Health Network of New York IPA Inc., Meritain Health Inc., Merwin Long Term Care LLC, MetraComp Inc., Minor Health Enterprise Co Ltd., MinuteClinic, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Alabama L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Arizona LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Florida LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Georgia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Hawaii L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Illinois LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Kentucky L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Louisiana L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maine L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maryland LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Massachusetts LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Nebraska L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Hampshire L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Mexico L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Ohio LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oklahoma LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oregon LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Pennsylvania LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Rhode Island LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of South Carolina L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Texas LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Utah L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Virginia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Washington LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Wisconsin L.L.C., MinuteClinic L.L.C., MinuteClinic Online Diagnostic Services LLC, MinuteClinic Physician Practice of Texas, MinuteClinic Telehealth Services LLC, Mississippi CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Missouri CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Montana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NCS Healthcare LLC, NCS Healthcare of Illinois LLC, NCS Healthcare of Iowa LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kansas LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kentucky Inc. (Oh, NCS Healthcare of Montana LLC, NCS Healthcare of New Mexico LLC, NCS Healthcare of Ohio LLC, NCS Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, NCS Healthcare of Tennessee LLC, NCS Healthcare of Wisconsin LLC, NIV Acquisition LLC, Navarro Discount Pharmacy, Nebraska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NeighborCare Holdings Inc., NeighborCare Inc., NeighborCare Pharmacy Services Inc., NeighborCare Services Corporation, NeighborCare of Indiana LLC, NeighborCare of Virginia LLC, New Jersey CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Niagara Re Inc., North Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., North Shore Pharmacy Services LLC, NovoLogix LLC, OCR Services LLC, Ocean Acquisition Sub L.L.C., Ohio CVS Stores L.L.C., Oklahoma CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Omnicare, Omnicare Holding Company, Omnicare Inc., Omnicare Indiana Partnership Holding Company LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania East LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania West LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of the Great Plains Holding LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy and Supply Services LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of Tennessee LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of the Midwest LLC, Omnicare Property Management LLC, Omnicare of Nebraska LLC, Omnicare of Nevada LLC, Omnicare of New York LLC, Oregon CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., PE Holdings LLC, PHPSNE Parent Corporation, PP Acquisition Company LLC, PRN Pharmaceutical Services LP, PT Aetna Management Consulting, Pamplona Saude e Beleza LTDA, Part D Holding Company L.L.C., PayFlex Holdings Inc., PayFlex Systems USA Inc., Pennsylvania CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Performax Inc., Pharmacy Associates of Glenn Falls LLC, Pharmacy Consultants LLC, Phoenix Data Solutions LLC, Precision Benefit Services Inc., Prime Net Inc., ProCare Pharmacy Direct L.L.C., ProCare Pharmacy L.L.C., Prodigy Health Group Inc., Professional Risk Management Inc., Pt. Aetna Global Benefits Indonesia, Puerto Rico CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Red Oak Sourcing LLC, Resources for Living LLC, Rhode Island CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Roeschens Healthcare LLC, RxAmerica, Schaller Anderson Medical Administrators Incorporated, Scrip World LLC, Sheffield Avenue CVS L.L.C., Shore Pharmaceutical Providers LLC, Silverscript Insurance Company, Soma Intimates, South Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., South Wabash CVS L.L.C., Specialized Pharmacy Services LLC, Spinnaker Bidco Limited, Spinnaker Topco Limited, Stadtlander Drug Company, Stadtlander Pharmacy, Sterling Healthcare Services LLC, Superior Care Pharmacy LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Administrative Services LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, T2 Medical Inc., TCPI Acquisition LLC, TargetPharmacy, Tennessee CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Company, Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Texas Health + Aetna Health Plan Inc., The Vasquez Group Inc., Thomas Phoenix CVS L.L.C., Three Forks Apothecary LLC, U.S Healthcare Holdings LLC, U.S. Healthcare Properties Inc., UAC Holding Inc., UC Acquisition LLC, UNI-Care Health Services of Maine LLC, Universal American - Medicare Part D Business, Utah CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., VAPS Acquisition Company LLC, Value Health Care Services LLC, Vermont CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virtual Home Healthcare L.L.C., Warm Springs Road CVS L.L.C., Washington CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Washington Lamb CVS L.L.C., Weber Medical Systems LLC, Wellpartner LLC, West Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Westhaven Services Co LLC, Williamson Drug Company LLC, Wisconsin CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Woodward Detroit CVS L.L.C., Work and Family Benefits Inc., ZS Acquisition Company LLC, Zinc Health Services LLC, Zinc Health Ventures LLC, bSwift LLC, and iTriage LLC.
There is not enough analysis data for Miton Group.

4.8 Community Rank

Outperform Votes Miton Group has received 228 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

Underperform Votes Miton Group has received 87 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.)

Community Sentiment Miton Group has received 72.38% outperform votes from our community.

MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Miton Group and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe MGR will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe MGR will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days.

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He Fulfilled His Mission, Now Hes Fighting for His Life

The Fellowship | March 19, 2019

Yesterday, Stand for Israel told you about the two Israelis  one a young IDF soldier, the other a rabbi and father of 12  who were killed in a brutal terror attack on Sunday. But today, Ynet News Israel Moskowitz and Korin Elbaz Alush tell us about the other IDF soldier who was critically injured in the shooting. Alexander Dvorsky made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) and was fighting for his biblical homeland, but is now fighting for his life:

The Israeli soldier who was seriously wounded in a deadly West Bank attack on Sundayand is now fighting for his lifehas been praised by the teachers of his former school as well as the head of his hometown for braving the tough upbringing as an immigrant from Moldova who realised his mission of becoming an IDF fighter.

Alexander Dvorsky, 19, was shot Sunday morning by 20-year-old Omar Abu Lila, who also shot dead 19-year-old Staff Sergeant Gal Keidan and critically wounded 47-year-old Rabbi Achiad Ettinger. The father of 12 succumbed to his wounds in a hospital a day later. Dvorsky remains in a serious condition at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva.

A Zionist soldier who immigrated to Israel alone and whose family immigrated shortly after, a young boy who fulfilled his mission by enlisting in an IDF combat unit, said Eyal Betzer, the head of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council, where the soldier first arrived following his move from Moldova

The soldier, who is in a very serious condition, underwent surgery and had been moved to the intensive care unit, said Bellinson Hospital in a statement on Sunday.

President Reuven Rivlin and Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman visited Alexander in hospital.
The North West Company Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the retail of food and everyday products and services to rural communities and urban neighborhood markets in Canada, Alaska, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean. The company's Canadian operations comprise 118 Northern stores, which offers food, financial services, and general merchandise; 5 NorthMart stores that provides fresh foods, apparel, and health products and services; 25 Quickstop convenience stores that provides ready-to-eat foods, and fuel and related services; 5 Giant Tiger junior discount stores, which offers family fashion, household products, and food; 2 Valu Lots discount center and direct-to-customer food distribution outlet; 2 Pharmacy and Convenience stores; 1 Solo Market store for rural market; and 1 North West Company motorsports dealership offering sales, service, parts and accessories for Ski-doo, Honda, Can-am and other premier brands. The Canadian operations also provides contract tele-pharmacist services to rural hospitals and health centers; water and air-based transportation services; and produce and fresh meats to independent grocery stores. Its International operations include 27 Alaska Commercial Company stores that provides food and general merchandise to remote and rural regions; 12 Cost-U-Less mid-size warehouse stores, which offers discount food and general merchandise; 5 Quickstop convenience stores; 8 Riteway food markets; and 1 Cash and Carry store. The North West Company Inc. was founded in 1668 and is headquartered in Winnipeg, Canada.

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The following companies are subsidiares of PerkinElmer: Analytica of Branford, Applied Biosystems, Arnel Inc., ArtusLabs, Beijing Huaan Magnech Bio-Tech Co. Ltd., Beijing Longrun Bio-Tech Co. Ltd., Beijing Meizheng Bio-Tech Co. Ltd., Beijing Meizheng Testing Lab Co. Ltd., Beijing OUMENG Biotechnology Co. Ltd., Bio Evolution SAS, Bioo Scientific Corporation, Biosense Picolabs Inc., Biosense Technologies Pvt Ltd., Caliper Life Sciences, Caliper Life Sciences Inc., Cambridge Research & Instrumentation Inc., CambridgeSoft, Ceiba Solutions, Chengdu PerkinElmer Medical Laboratory Co. Ltd., Chromo G.A. SAS, CisBio US Inc., Cisbio Asia Pacific Ltd, Cisbio Bioassays SAS, Cisbio China Ltd., Cisbio Group SAS, Cisbio KK, Cisbio.com, DNA Laboratories Sdn. Bhd., Dani Analitica S.r.l., Dexela, EUROIMMUN (Hangzhou) Medical Laboratory Diagnostics Co. Ltd., EUROIMMUN (South East Asia) Pte Ltd., EUROIMMUN (Tianjin) Medical Diagnostic Technology Co. Ltd., EUROIMMUN AG, EUROIMMUN Brasil Medicina Diagnostica Ltda., EUROIMMUN Diagnostics Espana S.L.U., EUROIMMUN France SAS, EUROIMMUN Italia Diagnostica Medica S.r.l., EUROIMMUN Japan Co. Ltd., EUROIMMUN Medical Diagnostics (China) Co. Ltd., EUROIMMUN Medical Diagnostics Canada Inc., EUROIMMUN Medical Laboratory Diagnostics South Africa (Pty) Ltd., EUROIMMUN Medizinische Labordiagnostika AG, EUROIMMUN Polska Spolka z o.o., EUROIMMUN Portugal Unipessoal Lda., EUROIMMUN Schweiz AG, EUROIMMUN Turkey Tibbi Laboratuar Teshisleri A.S., EUROIMMUN UK Ltd., EUROIMMUN US Inc., EUROIMMUN US Real Estate LLC, Geospiza, Guangzhou EUROIMMUN Medical Diagnostic Products Co. Ltd., Hangzhou EUROIMMUN Medical Diagnostic Products Co. Ltd., Horizon Discovery, Immunodiagnostic Systems, Integromics S.L., Jiangsu Meizheng Bio-Tech Co. Ltd., LabMetrix Technologies, Labtronics, ManCell SAS, Nexcelom Bioscience, NovaScreen Biosciences Corporation, Opto Technology, Orchid Biomedical Systems Pvt Ltd., Oxford Immunotec, Pediatrix Medical Group - Newborn Metabolic Screening Business, Perkin Elmer Chile Ltda., Perkin Elmer Italia SpA, Perkin Elmer Sdn. Bhd., Perkin Elmer Yuhan Hoesa, Perkin Elmer de Mexico S.A., Perkin-Elmer Argentina S.R.L., Perkin-Elmer Instruments (Philippines) Corporation, PerkinElmer (Hong Kong) Ltd., PerkinElmer (India) Pvt Ltd., PerkinElmer (Ireland) Ltd., PerkinElmer (Schweiz) AG, PerkinElmer (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund L.P., PerkinElmer (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co. Ltd., PerkinElmer (UK) Holdings Ltd., PerkinElmer Analytical Solutions B.V., PerkinElmer Automotive Research Inc., PerkinElmer BVBA, PerkinElmer CV Holdings LLC, PerkinElmer Cellular Technologies Germany GmbH, PerkinElmer Danmark A/S, PerkinElmer Diagnostics Global Holdings S.a r.l., PerkinElmer Diagnostics Holdings Inc., PerkinElmer Espana S.L., PerkinElmer Finance Luxembourg S.a r.l., PerkinElmer Finland Oy, PerkinElmer Genetics Inc., PerkinElmer Germany Diagnostics GmbH, PerkinElmer Global Diagnostics S.a r.l., PerkinElmer Global Financing S.a r.l., PerkinElmer Global Holdings S.a r.l., PerkinElmer Health Sciences (Australia) Pty. Ltd., PerkinElmer Health Sciences B.V., PerkinElmer Health Sciences Canada Inc., PerkinElmer Health Sciences FZ-LLC, PerkinElmer Health Sciences Inc., PerkinElmer Health Sciences Pvt Ltd., PerkinElmer Healthcare Diagnostics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PerkinElmer Holding Luxembourg S.a r.l., PerkinElmer Holdings Inc., PerkinElmer Holdings Pty. Ltd., PerkinElmer IVD Pte Ltd., PerkinElmer Inc., PerkinElmer Informatics Inc., PerkinElmer Instruments (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PerkinElmer International C.V., PerkinElmer Investments Ky, PerkinElmer Israel Ltd., PerkinElmer Japan Co. Ltd., PerkinElmer LAS (Germany) GmbH, PerkinElmer LAS (UK) Ltd., PerkinElmer Life Sciences International Holdings, PerkinElmer Limited, PerkinElmer Ltd., PerkinElmer Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PerkinElmer Nederland B.V., PerkinElmer Norge AS, PerkinElmer Oy, PerkinElmer Polska Sp z o.o., PerkinElmer Pty. Ltd., PerkinElmer SAS, PerkinElmer Saglk ve Cevre Bilimleri Ltd., PerkinElmer Shared Services Sp z o.o., PerkinElmer Singapore Pte Ltd., PerkinElmer South Africa (Pty) Ltd., PerkinElmer Sverige AB, PerkinElmer Sweden Health Sciences Holdings AB, PerkinElmer Taiwan Corporation, PerkinElmer VertriebsgmbH, PerkinElmer chemagen Technologie GmbH, PerkinElmer do Brasil Ltda., Perten Instruments, Perten Instruments (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Perten Instruments AB, Perten Instruments France SASU, Perten Instruments GmbH, Perten Instruments Italia S.r.l., Perten Instruments of Australia Pty Ltd., RHS Ltd, RayAl Ltd., Shandong Meizheng Bio-Tech Co. Ltd., Shanghai Haoyuan Biotech Co. Ltd., Shanghai Spectrum Instruments Co. Ltd., Shanghai Spectrum Instruments Co. Ltd., Signature Genomic Laboratories, Solus Scientific Solutions Inc., Solus Scientific Solutions Ltd., Surendra Genetic Labs, Suzhou PerkinElmer Medical Laboratory Co. Ltd., Suzhou Sym-Bio LifeScience, Suzhou Sym-Bio Lifescience Co. Ltd., Tulip Diagnostics, Tulip Diagnostics Pvt Ltd., Vanadis Diagnostics, Vanadis Diagnostics AB, ViaCell, ViaCord LLC, VisEn Medical, VisEn Medical Inc., Wallac Oy, Wellesley B.V., Xenogen Corporation, ZeLab SAS, and chemagen Biopolymer-Technologie AG.
Invesco Quality Municipal Income Trust is a closed-ended fixed income mutual fund launched by Invesco Ltd. The fund is co-managed by Invesco Advisers, Inc., INVESCO Asset Management Deutschland GmbH, INVESCO Asset Management Limited, INVESCO Asset Management (Japan) Limited, Invesco Hong Kong Limited, INVESCO Senior Secured Management, Inc., and Invesco Canada Ltd. It invests in the fixed income markets of the United States. The fund primarily invests in investment grade municipal securities which include municipal bonds, municipal notes, and municipal commercial paper. It employs fundamental analysis with bottom-up security selection approach to create its portfolio. The fund was previously known as Morgan Stanley Quality Municipal Income Trust. Invesco Quality Municipal Income Trust was formed on September 29, 1992 and is domiciled in the United States.

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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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Allergan plc, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes branded pharmaceutical, device, biologic, surgical, and regenerative medicine products worldwide. The company operates in three segments: US Specialized Therapeutics, US General Medicine, and International. It offers a portfolio of products in various therapeutic areas, including medical aesthetics and dermatology, eye care, neuroscience, urology, gastrointestinal, women's health, and anti-infective therapeutic products. The company also offers breast implants and tissue expanders; and RM-131 (relamorelin), a peptide ghrelin agonist for the treatment of diabetic gastroparesis. In addition, it develops medical and cosmetic treatments; therapies for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and other liver diseases; inhibitor for the treatment of psoriasis and other autoimmune disorders; atopic dermatitis drug candidate; peri-ocular rings for extended drug delivery and reducing elevated intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients; and treatments for neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. Further, the company develops RST-001, a novel gene therapy for the treatment of retinitis pigmentosa; small molecule therapeutics for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases; topical medicines for fat reduction; and delivery system and botulinum toxin-based prescription products. It has collaboration, option, and license agreement with Lyndra, Inc.; and strategic alliance and option agreement with Editas Medicine, Inc. Allergan plc also has licensing agreements with Assembly Biosciences, Inc.; MedImmune; and Heptares Therapeutics, Ltd. The company was formerly known as Actavis plc and changed its name to Allergan plc in June 2015. Allergan plc was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Tesco: Adminstore Limited, Adsega Limited, Alfred Preedy & Sons (Trustees) Limited, Alfred Preedy & Sons Limited, Anthony Heagney Limited, Arena (Jersey) Management Limited, Armitage Finance Unlimited, Armitage Luxembourg s.? r.l., BLT Holdings 2010 Limited, Bath Upper Bristol Road Management, Bedminster Estates Limited, Beehythe Estates limited, Berry Lane Management Company Limited, Blinkbox Books Limited, BlinxBox, Booker Group, Brian Fords Discount Store Limited, Broadfields Management Limited, Brookmaker (GP) Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 1 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 2 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 3 Limited, Broughton Retail Park Nominee 4 Limited, Buckingham Road (Bletchley) Management Company Limited, Bugden Ltd, Buttoncable Limited, Buttoncase Limited, Canterbury Road Management Limited, Cardiff Cathays Terrace Management Company Limited, Careneed News Limited, Cheshunt Finance Unlimited, Cheshunt Holdings Guernsey Limited, Cheshunt Hungary Servicing Limited Liability Company, Cheshunt Luxembourg S.? r.l., Cheshunt Overseas LLP, China Property Holdings (HK) Limited, Chirac Limited, Cirrus Finance (2009) Limited, Cirrus Finance Limited, Cirrus Luxembourg s.? r.l., Clarepharm Limited, Clondalkin Properties Limited, Comar Limited, Commercial Investments Limited, Crazy Prices, Crest Ostrava a.s, Cullens Holdings Limited, Cullens Stores Limited, Daily Wrap Produce Limited, Day And Nite Stores Limited, Delamare Cards Holdco Limited, Delamare Cards MTN Issuer plc, Delamare Finance PLC, Delamare Group Holdings Limited, Delamare Holdings BV Netherlands, Delamare Luxembourg s.? r.l. Luxembourg, Delamare One Limited, Dunnhumby Ventures LLC, ELH Insurance Limited, Edinburgh Butterfly Farm Limited, Edson Investments Limited, Edson Properties Limited, Ek-Chai Distribution System Co. Ltd., Euphorium (London) Limited, Euphorium (North London) Limited, Euphorium Group Limited, Euphorium IP Limited, Europa Foods Limited, Faraday Properties Limited, Flitwick Pharmacies Limited, Food & Wine Lovers Limited, Forum Liberec s.r.o, Freds Food Construction Limited, Freehold and Leasehold Property Fund, Gain Land Limited, Genesis sp. z o.o., Gibbs News Limited, Gibbs Newsagents Limited, Gida Sanayi A.S., Giraffe, Giraffe Cafe Limited, Giraffe Concepts Limited, Golden Island Management Services Limited, HIT hypermarket Sp. z o. o., Halesworth SPV Limited, Harris and Hoole Holdings Limited, Harris and Hoole Limited, Harris and Hoole Nominees Limited, Homeplus, Hymall Co. Ltd., J E Properties Holdings Limited, Jasper Sp. z o. o. Poland, KSS Retail Limited, Kabaty Investments Tesco (Polska) Sp. z o. o. Sp.k, Kingsway Fresh Foods Ltd, Koxka Hungary Refrigeration LLC, Launchgrain Limited, Launchtable Limited, Laws Stores Limited, Lazada Group S.A., Lee (Southern) Limited, Lek?ren? Tesco Bansk? Bystrica k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Dunajsk? Streda k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Ko?ice k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Lama k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Nitra k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Petr?alka k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Pie?tany k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Pre?ov Vukov k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Senec k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Spi?sk? Nov? Ves k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Trenc??n s.r.o. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Zlat? Piesky k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Lek?ren? Tesco Zvolen k.s. Slovakia Limited Partnership, Linebush III Holdings Limited, Linebush III Limited, Linebush IV Limited, Linebush Limited, Linebush V Limited, London and Home Counties Superstores Limited, Lowfoods Limited, M & W Limited, Merrion Shopping Centre Ltd, Mills (East Midlands) Limited, Mills (West Midlands) Limited, Mills Group Holdings Limited, Mills Group Limited, Mobcast Services, Monread Developments Limited, Morgam Holdings Limited, Morgam News Limited, Motorcause Limited, NPL (Hardgate) Limited, Nabola Development Limited, NutriCentre Limited, OC FORUM Liberec Ltd., Oakwood Distribution Limited, Obchodn? dom Bratislava s.ro, Obchodn? dom Ko?ice s.ro., Obchodn? dom Nitra s.ro., Obchodn? dom Pre?ov s.ro., Old FEHC Inc., Old FEPC LLC, One Stop Community Stores Ltd, One Stop Convenience Stores Limited, One Stop Stores Limited, One Stop Stores Trustee Services Limited, Orpingford, Orpington (Station Road) Limited, Oxford Fox and Hounds Management Company Limited, PEJ Property Developments Limited, Paper Chain (East Anglia) Limited, Pharaway Properties Limited, Power Supermarkets Limited, Premier Garage (Worthing) Limited, Pulford Foods Limited, R.J.D. Holdings, Retail Property Co. Ltd, S Bottomley & Bros Limited, Sanders Supermarkets Limited, Sandtable Limited, Sarcon (No. 239) Limited, Seacroft Green Nominee 1 Limited, Seacroft Green Nominee 2 Limited, Shire Park Limited, Shuke Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Snowman Retail 1 Limited, Snowman Retail 2 Limited, Sociomantic AB, Sociomantic Labs B.V, Sociomantic Labs Inc, Sociomantic Labs Internet Hizmetleri Limited ?ireketi, Sociomantic Labs LLC, Sociomantic Labs Limited, Sociomantic Labs Private Limited, Sociomantic Labs Pte Ltd, Sociomantic Labs S.r.l, Sociomantic Labs SARL, Sociomantic Labs Servicos Web Ltda, Sociomantic Labs Sp.z.o.o., Sociomantic Labs s.r.o., Sociomantic S.L.U., Sociomantic labs GmbH, Spen Hill Developments (Holdings) Ltd, Spen Hill Developments (Portishead) Ltd, Spen Hill Developments (Tonbridge) Limited, Spen Hill Developments Limited, Spen Hill Management Limited, Spen Hill Properties (Holdings) plc, Spen Hill Properties (Southend) Limited, Spen Hill Regeneration Limited, Spen Hill Residential No 1 Limited, Spen Hill Residential No 2 Limited, Station House Welling Management Limited, Statusfloat Limited, Stewarts Supermarkets Limited, Streatham Management Company Limited, T & S Management Services Limited, T & S Properties Limited, T & S Stores Limited, TESCO (POLSKA) sp. z o.o., TESCO Akad?mia K?pz?si ?s Fejleszt?si Kor?tolt Felelss?g T?rsas?g, TESCO MOBILE POLSKA SP. Z O.O., TESCO STORES SR a.s., Tapesilver Limited, Teesport (GP) Limited, Teesport (Nominee) Limited, Telegraph Properties (Kirkby) Limited, Tesco (Foxtrot 1) Limited, Tesco (Foxtrot 2) Limited, Tesco (Fujian) Industry Limited, Tesco (Jersey) Limited, Tesco (Overseas) Ltd, Tesco (Yorkshire) Limited, Tesco Aqua (1LP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (3LP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (FinCo1) Limited, Tesco Aqua (FinCo2) Limited, Tesco Aqua (GP) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Aqua (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Atrato (1LP) Limited, Tesco Atrato (GP) Limited, Tesco Barbers Wood Limited, Tesco Bengaluru Private Limited, Tesco Blue (1LP) Limited, Tesco Blue (FinCo2) Limited, Tesco Blue (GP) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Blue (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Capital No. 1 Limited, Tesco Capital No. 2 Limited, Tesco Card Services Limited, Tesco Card Services Limited, Tesco Card Services Ltd., Tesco Chile Sourcing Limitada, Tesco Coral (GP) Limited, Tesco Corporate Treasury Services PLC, Tesco Depot Propco Limited, Tesco Distribution Holdings Limited, Tesco Distribution Limited, Tesco Dorney (1LP) Limited, Tesco Dorney (GP) Limited, Tesco Dystrybucja Sp. z.o.o., Tesco EU IT Services s.r.o., Tesco Employees Share Scheme Trustees Limited, Tesco Estates Limited, Tesco Europe B.V. Netherlands, Tesco Family Dining Limited, Tesco Food Sourcing Brazil Representa??o De Servi?os Ltda., Tesco Food Sourcing Limited, Tesco Foundation (Nadacia Tesco), Tesco Freetime Limited, Tesco Fuchsia (1LP) Limited, Tesco Fuel Limited, Tesco Global Employment Company Limited, Tesco Guangdong (HK) Co. Limited, Tesco High Beech Limited, Tesco Holdings BV, Tesco Holdings Limited, Tesco Home Shopping Limited, Tesco Hungary (Holdings) Limited, Tesco International Franchising s.r.o., Tesco International Internet Retailing Limited, Tesco International Services Limited, Tesco International Sourcing Limited, Tesco Ireland Holdings Limited, Tesco Ireland Limited, Tesco Ireland Pension Trustees Limited, Tesco Jade (GP) Limited, Tesco Joint Buying Service (Shanghai) Co Limited, Tesco Kipa Kitle Pazarlama Ticaret Lojistik ve, Tesco Kirkby (General Partner) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (LP) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Unitholder 1) Limited, Tesco Kirkby (Unitholder2) Limited, Tesco Lagoon GP Limited, Tesco Licences Limited, Tesco Lotus Retail Growth, Tesco Lotus Retail Growth Freehold and Leasehold Property Fund, Tesco Maintenance Limited, Tesco Mauritius Holdings Limited, Tesco Mobile (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Tesco Mobile CR s.r.o., Tesco Mobile Communications Limited, Tesco Mobile Ireland Limited, Tesco Mobile Ireland Limited, Tesco Mobile Limited, Tesco Mobile Services Limited, Tesco Mobile Slovakia s.r.o, Tesco Mobile Slovakia s.r.o., Tesco Mobile CR, Tesco Nanjing Zhongshan, Tesco Nanjing Zhongshan (HK) Co. Limited, Tesco Navona (1LP) Limited, Tesco Navona (GP) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Navona (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Navona PL Propco Limited, Tesco Opticians Limited, Tesco Overseas (Holdings) Limited, Tesco Overseas Investments Limited, Tesco Overseas ULC, Tesco Passaic (1LP) Limited, Tesco Passaic (GP) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee 1) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Passaic (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Passaic PL Propco Limited, Tesco Pension (Jade) Limited, Tesco Pension Investment Limited, Tesco Pension Trustees Limited, Tesco Personal Finance, Tesco Personal Finance Compare Limited, Tesco Personal Finance Group Limited, Tesco Property (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) (No.2) Limited, Tesco Property (Nominees) Limited, Tesco Property A.S., Tesco Property Finance 1 Holdco Limited, Tesco Property Finance 1 PLC, Tesco Property Holdings (No. 2) Limited, Tesco Property Holdings Limited, Tesco Property Limited, Tesco Property Nominees (No.5) Limited, Tesco Property Nominees (No.6) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (GP No.2) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (GP) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (No.1) Limited, Tesco Property Partner (No.2) Limited, Tesco Red (1LP) Limited, Tesco Red (GP) Limited, Tesco Red (Nominee 2) Limited, Tesco Red (Nominee Holdco) Limited, Tesco Sarum (1LP) Limited, Tesco Sarum (GP) Limited, Tesco Seacroft Limited, Tesco Secretaries Limited, Tesco Services Limited, Tesco Sourcing India Private Limited, Tesco Stores (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Tesco Stores (Thailand) Ltd, Tesco Stores CR a.s., Tesco Stores Limited, Tesco Technology Services HK Limited, Tesco Treasury Services PLC, Tesco Trustee Company of Ireland Limited, Tesco Underwriting Limited, Tesco Vin Plus SA, Tesco Worldwide Limited, Tesco for Thais Foundation, Tesco-Global Stores Privately Held Co. Ltd, Tesco.Com Limited, The Brookmaker Limited Partnership, The Teesport Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Aqua Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Atrato Limited Partnership, The Tesco Blue Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Coral Limited Partnership, The Tesco Dorney Limited Partnership, The Tesco Kirkby Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Navona Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Passaic Limited Partnership Limited Partnership, The Tesco Property (No.2) Limited Partnership, The Tesco Red Limited Partnership, The Tesco Sarum Limited Partnership, Trent Hypermarket Private Limited, Trigger Retail Ltd, Valiant Insurance Company DAC, Value House Properties Limited, Variable Preference, Ventnor High Street Management Company Limited, Verulam Properties (2001) Limited, Verulam Properties Limited, Victoria BB Sp z.o.o., WE7, WSC Properties Limited, Wanze Properties (Dundalk) Limited, Weymouth Avenue (Dorchester) Limited, Whitecastle Properties Limited, Wm. Low Supermarkets Limited, Woolwich Central Residents Management Company Limited, Worple Road Plc, Xiamen Firste Property Limited, Xiamen Firste Property Limited, aAcklam Management Company Limited, dunnhumby (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, dunnhumby (Thailand) Limited, dunnhumby Canada Limited, dunnhumby Consulting Services India Private Limited, dunnhumby Czech s.r.o., dunnhumby Employment Company Limited, dunnhumby Holding Limited, dunnhumby Hungary Kft, dunnhumby IT Services India Private Limited, dunnhumby Inc, dunnhumby International Limited, dunnhumby Ireland Limited, dunnhumby Italia Srl., dunnhumby Limited, dunnhumby Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., dunnhumby Netherlands B.V., dunnhumby Norge A.S., dunnhumby Overseas Limited, dunnhumby Poland Sp z.o.o, dunnhumby Slovakia s.r.o., dunnhumby South Africa (Pty) Ltd, dunnhumby Trustees Limited, and dunnuhumby.
The Boeing Co. is an aerospace company, which engages in the manufacture of commercial jetliners and defense, space and security systems. It operates through the following segments: Commercial Airplanes; Defense, Space and Security; Global Services; and Boeing Capital. The Commercial Airplanes segment includes the development, production, and market of commercial jet aircraft and provides fleet support services, principally to the commercial airline industry worldwide. The Defense, Space and Security segment refers to the research, development, production and modification of manned and unmanned military aircraft and weapons systems for global strike, including fighter and combat rotorcraft aircraft and missile systems; global mobility, including tanker, rotorcraft and tilt-rotor aircraft; and airborne surveillance and reconnaissance, including command and control, battle management and airborne anti-submarine aircraft. The Global Services segment provides services to commercial and defense customers. The Boeing Capital segment seeks to ensure that Boeing customers have the financing they need to buy and take delivery of their Boeing product and manages overall financing exposure. T

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Gildan Activewear Inc. manufactures and sells various apparel products in the United States, Canada, and internationally. It provides various activewear products, including T-shirts, fleece tops and bottoms, and sport shirts under the Gildan, Gildan Performance, Gildan Hammer, Comfort Colors, American Apparel, Anvil by Gildan, Alstyle, Prim + Preux, and GoldToe brands. The company also offers hosiery products comprising athletic; dress; and casual, liner, therapeutic, and workwear socks, as well as sheer panty hoses, tights, and leggings under the brands of Gildan, Under Armour, GoldToe, PowerSox, GT a GoldToe Brand, Silver Toe, Signature Gold by Goldtoe, Peds, MediPeds, Kushyfoot, Therapy Plus, All Pro, Secret, Silks, Secret Silky, and American Apparel. In addition, it provides men's and boys' underwear products, and ladies panties under the Gildan and Gildan Platinum brand names; and ladies' shapewear, intimates, and accessories under the Secret and Secret Silky brands. The company sells its products to wholesale distributors, screen printers, or embellishers, as well as to retailers and consumer brand companies. The company was formerly known as Textiles Gildan Inc. and changed its name to Gildan Activewear Inc. in March 1995. Gildan Activewear Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

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Don't freak out, but a historically large meteor exploded in Earth's atmosphere in December, with 10 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. No big deal! Here's what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door. (You can also get "5 Things You Need to Know Today" delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

1. Netherlands shooting

At least three people are dead and five injured after a shooting inside a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht. Police have arrested a 37-year-old, Turkish-born man, and they haven't ruled out terrorism. The shooting unfolded with the world still on edge from last week's Christchurch attack, and Dutch authorities elevated the terror threat rating in Utrecht to its highest level -- Level 5 -- for several hours as police searched for the suspect. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying the country was "in full solidarity" with the Dutch government, regardless of the shooter's motive.

2. Cyclone Idai

A powerful cyclone ripped through parts of southeastern Africa over the weekend, and we are just now getting an idea of the devastation and the dangers yet to come. Aid agency officials say Cyclone Idai destroyed 90% of the Mozambique city of Beira, home to about 500,000 people. At least 84 people have died, but Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi said he has reason to believe the death toll will climb above 1,000. If that holds true, Idai will be the deadliest recorded cyclone ever to hit the region. The cyclone also tore through parts of neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi. In addition to flooding and damage, the storm has left some roads impassable and some communities cut off from aid, making rescue and recovery a difficult and dangerous task.

3. Student loans

The Trump administration wants to put a cap on student loan borrowing in an effort to update the Higher Education Act and discourage colleges from driving up the price of loans. Currently, undergrads can borrow $57,500 from the government over their lifetime, but parents of undergrads and graduate students don't have a limit on how much they can borrow. The administration also proposed simplifying student loan repayment and expanding the Pell Grant program to low-income students who are enrolled in short-term career training programs. This is the first time the White House has outlined its priorities for an update of the higher education law, which was last reauthorized in 2008.

4. Florida massage parlor scandal

Some high-profile Democrats want a new FBI investigation into ties between President Trump and the former owner of the day spa where Patriots owner Robert Kraft allegedly solicited prostitution. Cindy Yang sold that particular spa in 2013, but her family reportedly still owns several other spas in the area. What does that have to do with Trump? According to reports and photos posted on social media, Yang is a frequent guest of the President. She watched the Super Bowl with him this February, has visited Mar-a-Lago several times and has been photographed alongside major Trump associates, including two of his sons and Kellyanne Conway. Democrats want to know if Yang illegally sought to leverage her connection with the President by selling access to Chinese clients. According to their request, Yang once used her website to offer "the opportunity to interact with the President."

5. MySpace

Bad news for MySpace enthusiasts: The former social media giant-turned-music sharing platform says it has lost 12 years' worth of music, photos and video files. The company says a "server migration" problem led to the mass wipeout, which may have deleted any content uploaded between 2003 and 2015. While this may be an act of divine mercy for those who used MySpace to unwisely chronicle their awkward teen years, the platform enjoyed several years as a music sharing site before being all but swallowed up by Facebook. Some big musical acts, like Calvin Harris and Arctic Monkeys, were discovered during MySpace's musical heyday. The mass deletion, one expert said, could amount to 50 million songs by more than 14 million artists.

BREAKFAST BROWSE

Video games are now a legitimate high school sport

Take THAT, chess club.

Apple releases new iPad mini and iPad Air

So, start planning your semi-annual bout of tech envy.

Chinese buyer bids $1.4 million for racing pigeon named Armando

That's it, that's the richest sentence we've ever read.

Spaceflight is activating herpes in astronauts

Wow, this Star Trek reboot is really weird.

Hilton Hotels recycles old bars of soap and turns them into new ones

The chain says the soap will be "sanitized" first, but it's still deeply troubling news for germaphobes.

TODAY'S NUMBER

$100,000

The amount President Trump recently donated to the Department of Homeland Security, according to one of his tweets. Since taking office, Trump has donated his $400,000 annual salary to federal agencies and efforts.

TODAY'S QUOTE

"America's elected representatives have a duty to regulate who comes in and when. In meeting this responsibility, it helps to remember that America's immigrant history made us who we are. Amid all the complications of policy, may we never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength."

Former President George W. Bush, at a naturalization ceremony yesterday in Dallas

TODAY'S WEATHER

AND FINALLY

I'm gonna spend today right here

Who else feels like a hedgehog in a sock this morning? That's OK, we'll get through it together! (Click here to view.)
DOLGEVILLE, N.Y. -- Students in Dolgeville are joining forces with kids across the state to kick butts  cigarette butts. But in the changing era of e-cigarettes, there's a new focus this year.

Students at Dolgeville Central School are penning letters to elected officials asking them to take a stand against "big tobacco."

In Washington, Kick Butts Day is Wednesday, where more than 1,000 events are planned nationwide.

And the focus this year is on kicking juul e-cigarettes, which health officials are now calling an epidemic among our youth.
UTICA, N.Y. -- Oneida County came in at the bottom half of the state listing when it comes to health rankings.

Oneida County is ranked number 37 out of 62 counties in the state for over health factors.

The findings are from the annual county health rankings by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

The data also shows the county's ranking based on health factors like health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic, and physical environment factors.

 Lewis County ranks at 45

 Herkimer County ranks at 44

 Otsego comes in at 15

No. 1 on the list is Nassau County.

To see the full list of county health rankings, head to their website.
ORISKANY, NY-- Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed to legalize recreational marijuana by April 1, which could force hundreds of K9 officers and deputies into early retirement.

But the Oneida County Sheriff's Office is prepared if the law goes into effect, with a new K9 deputy who is trained to detect drugs, but not marijuana.

"With the potential legalization of marijuana one of the things we looked at is we need to expand our drug dog unit," said Sheriff Robert Maciol. "Our current drug dog Natalie, who is certified in marijuana, cocaine and heroin... once marijuana becomes legal, if it does, the problem is Natalie won't be able to be utilized out on the street."

The department purchased Enzo, a German shepherd, from the country Hungary for $8,000. The money was taken from a forfeiture account, with no costs to taxpayers.

Enzo will be performing narcotics detection, building searches, and tracking. Jason Osika, a K9 deputy with the Oneida County Sheriff's office, is Enzo's handler.

"We're going to end up putting narcotic pseudo-fake narcotic inside of toys, because we don't want the dog to actually have the real stuff and we just play fetch with the dog," Osika said. "After a while the dog associates that toy with the drugs then we start hiding the toy and he starts using his nose to find it."

He and Enzo and take a five week course for training before Enzo can begin patrolling.

Osika said Enzo is different than having a family pet.

"You really can't treat him like a normal dogs, they are a tool," he said. "They can't have a lot of the things normal dogs can do. Normal dogs aren't supposed to jump up on furniture, on counters and tables that kind of stuff, we can't tell them not to do that because they may have to do that for an actual work."

Osika added that gives Enzo commands in another language so that he is the only person who can tell Enzo what to do and what not to do.

K9 Enzo is named in memory of Deputy Sheriff Anthony Calenzo, a member of the sheriff's office who served the community for over 29 years. Calenzo died in 2016.
HOLLAND PATENT, N.Y. -- The Oneida County Sheriff's Department is investigating an incident involving a BB gun at Holland Patent Elementary School.

According to Oneida County Sheriff Rob Maciol, it was reported that a juvenile had brought a BB gun into the school inside of a back pack.

He said the special patrol officer for the school was on scene at the time of the incident.

No one was injured.

The sheriff's department is working with the Holland Patent School District in the investigation.

Further details will be released once the investigation is complete.
UTICA, N.Y. -- Tuesday, people in the Mohawk Valley are celebrating St. Joseph's Day.

The feast of St. Joseph is marked by Catholics and celebrated widely by Italian-Americans.

Locally, Cafe Canole in New Hartford, Old School Bar and Grill in Utica, and Cafe Caruso are going all out with St. Josephs Day inspired menu items.

People start ordering their pole bean salad, pasta ceci, and a few others dishes and desserts weeks in advance.

It's also a day to honor fathers as people are honoring St. Joseph.

"He's a model of faith for us, he teaches, especially men, what it is to follow God and the wisdom of God's ways, so we honor him," said Father Joseph Salerno, of Our lady of Lourdes and Our Lady of the Rosary Churches, in Utica, as a statue of St. Joseph-Mary's husband-looks down from the altar. "He's the patron of the church in every part of the world and just like the care of Jesus was entrusted to him as a foster father, so the church universally sees Joseph as its protector and its patron."

One of the traditions of St. Joseph's Day is feeding of the poor. From this tenet, grew the tradition of a traditional St. Joseph's Day feast.

"We do, like, a pork braciole, we do pasta cecci, which is one of the traditional ones. We do a sfinge and a zeppole, some of the pastries," said Dean Nole, co-owner of Cafe Canole, in New Hartford. "When I was living in Palermo, my God, we started frying the pastries 4:30 in the morning and we didn't stop til night, but, we're trying to bring all these traditions back, we both went to Italy and so far so good, we've had a lot of great turnout, and, making people happy and full," said Nole.
SANGERFIELD, N.Y. -- A teen was rushed to the hospital after a crash in the town of Sangerfield.

Oneida County Sheriff's Office says the accident happened at the intersection of State Route 20 and State Route 12 in the town of Sangerfield a little before 7 p.m. Monday night.

They say 61-year-old Stephen Power, of Connecticut, was driving west on Route 20 and ran a red light.

He hit a vehicle driven by 19-year-old James Crandall, of Waterville.

Crandall's 18-year-old passenger, Hannah Nowak, was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital with injuries not considered to be life-threatening.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has thrown down the gauntlet on South Africa and warned that if Pretoria does not rein in its top officials to mend relations between the two counties, there is a risk of a further fallout that could also cause political instability in the Great Lakes region.

At the centre of the dirty diplomatic tussle are several issues: South Africa giving refuge to former Rwandan army chief General Kayumba Nyamwasa and other dissidents; the 2013 murder of former intelligence boss Colonel Patrick Karegeya in Sandton; the expulsion of diplomats from both countries in a tit-for-tat standoff; and a South African judiciary inquest into the murder of Karegeya.

The countries also recently traded verbal blows after Rwandan Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe was accused by Pretoria of calling International Relations Minister Lindiwe Sisulu a prostitute, a claim strongly dismissed by Kigali as a smear.

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Rwanda blames South Africa for the instability in Central and East Africa, where rebel activities are linked to Kagames political foes exiled in Pretoria, who were believed to come to the Great Lakes region via Uganda to recruits rebels, allegedly with the support of President Yoweri Musevenis government.

So tense are relations between the two East African neighbours that there was even talk of war and closing borders, which would cause further instability in the region.

But Kigali is adamant the genesis of the problem is in South Africa, recently voted into the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member and the only African country there.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Star in Kigali, a frustrated Kagame said although he seemed to enjoy cordial relations with President Cyril Ramaphosa, it appeared that top South African officials were using their control and influence in government systems to block efforts to fix the broken relations between the two countries.

The two leaders have met on the sidelines of events such as the AU summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the BRICS gathering in South Africa last year, where Kagame represented the AU as its then chairperson. They agreed to work together to fix the worsening relations.

The two also met in Cape Town two weeks ago, where Kagame was a guest at the Young Presidents Organisations event for young global chief executives, thought leaders and opinion makers.

But almost a year after they first agreed to address the fallout over South Africas 2010 decision to stop issuing visas to Rwandans on ordinary passports, nothing has been done, confirming Kagames fears that the South African system was frustrating the heads of states efforts to better relations between the countries, which both turn 25 next month.

We dont deny South Africans visas to travel to our country, but the reverse to South Africa is not the same, Kagame told The Star. These matters have come up and the president (Ramaphosa) was very open about it; it was public, he gave instructions. (But) nothing happened in the opposite direction somebody somewhere blocks it and doesnt want it to happen.

Kigali strongly believed the visa issue was used to punish Rwanda for its desire to see suspected dissidents brought home to face trial for alleged terrorist activities.

Kagame said South Africa chose his exiled opponents over a better relationship with Rwanda. Those individuals who live in South Africa, if you trace back how they came there, there is something wrong with what they were involved in. Under normal circumstances they wouldnt be welcome in South Africa, let alone be preferred in terms of relationship, said Kagame.

So here theres a bizarre situation. Someone in the government of South Africa would rather associate with those bad groups living in South Africa who have a bad history and have done terrible things which they should be held accountable for.

They prefer that, and use their authority to even go further to try to create problems for us.

What has angered Kigali in the latest diplomatic skirmish was a press conference where Sisulu was asked a question by a journalist on whether the dissidents were willing to come home and negotiate with Kagame.

You saw authorities of government saying they have met with those groups and that they are inclined to negotiate; they want to talk to us, coming out of nowhere. That was absolutely bizarre. If anyone finds that normal, I would be surprised, said Kagame.

He added that South Africa had not spoken to Rwanda about meeting them and the alleged bid to negotiate with Kigali until they saw it at the media briefing.

When we saw it, we were taken aback. And of course, at the same time, these individuals were busy in the media, making all sorts of statements.

It is as if they are energised by statements made by officials of the South African government. They are really hyped up.

And so I dont know where that leads us. But we are patient enough. We have been trained by our history and our problems to be very patient, almost inexhaustibly patient, so that we dont get diverted from doing what we want to do for ourselves and our country, and move on.

But Kagame felt that South Africa had not shown a keen interest in patching things up and that the attitude towards Kigali, especially coming from another liberation movement and with both countries sharing a history of a painful past, showed contempt for Rwanda.

We remain steadfast and calm and appreciative of what a good relationship should entail, and embrace it. The door is open when South Africa finds it more appealing to deal with us than with those groups.
Horrific video of the mosque massacre in Christchurch was viewed live fewer than 200 times on Facebook but that was enough to unleash it across the internet.

Now New Zealand, other governments and business leaders are calling for Facebook, Google and Twitter to do much more to rid their platforms of extremist content.

Vodafone and two other telecommunications operators, which provide internet access for most New Zealanders, said on Tuesday they want Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to take part in an 'urgent discussion' on how to keep harmful content off their platforms.

The three US tech companies have faced heavy criticism after they failed to identify and stop the spread of a video of Friday's attack in which 50 people at two mosques were killed.

The CEOs of Vodafone New Zealand, Spark and 2degrees said they had taken the unprecedented step of jointly identifying and suspending access to sites that were hosting video footage taken by the attacker. They called on authorities to require tech companies to take down terrorist-linked content within a specific period of time and fine them if they fail to do so.

'Although we recognize the speed with which social network companies sought to remove Friday's video once they were made aware of it, this was still a response to material that was rapidly spreading globally and should never have been made available online,' they said in an open letter published on their company websites.

Germany introduced a law in 2018 that gives authorities the power to fine social media platforms if they fail to quickly remove hate speech. And the European Commission is considering rules that would require platforms to remove terror content within an hour of it being flagged by authorities or risk fines up to 4% of global revenue.

'Publisher not postman'

More world leaders are demanding that the tech companies step up their game.

New Zealand Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern said Tuesday that her government will investigate the role social media played in the deadly attack.

'We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published,' Ardern said in a speech to parliament.

'They are the publisher. Not just the postman,' she said. 'There cannot be a case of all profit no responsibility.'

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday criticized the 'continuing and unrestricted role' played by internet technology in the New Zealand shooting and other terrorist attacks. He laid out his concerns in an open letter to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who this year holds the presidency of the G20, an organization that brings together the world's biggest economies.

'It is unacceptable to treat the internet as an ungoverned space,' Morrison said in the letter, calling for the issue to be discussed at the G20 summit in Osaka in June. Governments around the world need to ensure that tech firms filter out and remove content linked to terrorism, and are transparent about how they do so, he said.

Initial video viewed 4,000 times on Facebook

The tech companies are still scrambling to take down footage of the attack.

YouTube said Monday that it removed tens of thousands of videos and terminated hundreds of accounts 'created to promote or glorify the shooter.'

The volume of related videos was 'unprecedented both in scale and speed,' the Google-owned platform said in a statement.

YouTube said it took a number of steps including automatically rejecting footage of the violence and temporarily suspending the ability to filter searches by upload date.

Facebook said in a blog post Monday that the first user report of the violent livestream came 29 minutes after it had started, about 12 minutes after the live broadcast had ended. The video was viewed fewer than 200 times live, but it was viewed about 4,000 times before it was taken down.

That was enough for the graphic video to be copied and then re-uploaded millions of times to multiple platforms, including Facebook.

Twitter declined to provide details on steps it is taking to remove the video from its platform.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI)  The city of West Lafayette has to find a new way to fund its rental inspection unit.

The program has been a staple in the community for years, now Indiana Supreme Court leaders say it's unconstitutional.

12 years ago, West Lafayette Mayor John Dennis created a comprehensive rental inspection unit to protect the cities most frequent renters.

Parents of kids that were going to Purdue University, they would go online, they would look to rent a property for their kid to reside in when they went to school and all the pictures online were great, said Dennis. They would get here and they would come to the structure and it was horrible.

The rental inspection unit required property owners to have the city inspect their units and pay for it.

Indiana Supreme Court leaders ruled how the city charges these rental inspection fees unconstitutional.

We were charging rates for the inspections of these properties and there was a fairly fluctuating scale, it was fairly subjective, said Dennis.

The city based inspection cost on the size of the property and number of tenants. Indiana law requires inspection fees to cap no higher than $5 per unit despite those factors.

But in a college town with a higher number of renters, Mayor Dennis said $5 is not enough to sustain a much-needed inspection team.

If you look at a college community, you look at the flexibility of our population the fact that we get new people in every year, said Dennis. There's an entire population change with our student population about every four years. There's a significant market for rental properties.

Mayor Dennis said the current inspection team isn't going anywhere. The city will just have to find new ways to fund the program.

He said funding this program should not affect taxpayers. City leaders are planning a meeting to figure out what's next.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI)  Purdue's Muslim Student Association spent Monday night remembering the lives of the more than 50 people dead in the Christchurch mosque shooting.

It's now been three days since the shooting, which left 50 people dead and another 30 still in the hospital.

The accused attacker is a 28-year-old white supremacist who attacked during weekly prayers.

To stand in solidarity with the victims and their families, MSA held a prayer session and a candlelight vigil at the Islamic Center of Greater Lafayette.

Students, faculty and community members were invited to come out to spread love, light and hope to others.

Each victim was remembered with a bio and picture hanging up on the walls.

The outreach director said it was important to hold a group prayer and reflection.

She added this event helps strengthen bonds in the community.

"This event happened and it shakes you," said Khunshi Ahmed. "You are scared. You do not know what to think or what to believe. You want to believe there is good out in the world and the fact the community is coming together in this way really shows that."

There is one MSA member currently studying in Christchurch.

Ahmed said she called her to make sure she was okay.

She was not at Christchurch at the time of the shooting.
Gabon, or the Gabonese Republic, is home to almost two million people and is located in Central Africa. Gabon is bordered by the following nations: Equatorial Guinea to the North West, the Republic of the Congo from the south and east, and Cameroon to its north. Furthermore, because of its geographical location, Gabons coastline borders the Gulf of Guinea on its western side.

Equatorial Guinea

Ironically, the west central African country does not lie on the equator; the imaginary international line which separates the globe into northern and southern hemispheres. Instead, Equatorial Guinea lies at a latitude of between four degrees north and two degrees south. The entire country, apart from the island province of Annobon, is located in the Earths Northern hemisphere.

Formally known as the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, the nation covers a land area of approximately 10,830 square miles and is home to some 1,221,490 residents. In terms of ethnic groups which make up the countrys population, the majority (some 81%) of which are Fang who have deep roots in central Africa and can also be found in the neighboring nations of Gabon and southern areas of Cameroon. Other smaller ethnic groups who call Equatorial Guinea home include the Budi (native to the island of Bioko), Ndowe, Annobon, Bujeba, and Igbo (who are originally from Nigeria).

The country of Equatorial Guinea once served as a Spanish colony which explains why its national language is still Spanish. More specifically, the local dialect spoken by the nations residents is known as Equatoguinean Spanish. The African country officially gained its political independence on October 12, 1968 and now operates as a dominant-party presidential republic under a dictatorship. Current President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is Equatorial Guineas second president after seizing power from his uncle in 1979.

Republic of the Congo

This central African country is also known as Congo-Brazzaville or the Congo. Covering a land area of 132,000 square miles the nation is home to approximately 5,125,821 residents. The majority of people living in the Congo belong to various native African ethnic groups including members of the Kongo, Sangha, Teke (or Bateke), Mbochi, as well as a small portion of residents of European descent. Although the Republic of the Congos official language is French, other recognized languages include Kituba, Kikongo, and Lingala.

The Congo is a former French colony which gained its independence in 1960. In more recent years President Denis Sassou Nguesso, a member of the Congolese Labour Party, assumed the position of the countrys fifth head of state in 1997. Nguesso has had a long and complicated history in terms of his involvement in Congolese politics as he also served as president of the country from 1979 to 1992. Although the Congos official political system is that of a unitary semi-presidential republic Nguessos presidency and his government have long been plagued by claims of widespread political corruption and financial wrongdoings.

The capital and largest city of the Republic of the Congo is Brazzaville which has a population of approximately 1,373,382 residents and was founded in 1883 by Italian born explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza. Since 2006, Brazzas body (along with that of his wife and their 4 children) has been interred in the Brazzaville Mausoleum which was constructed using Italian marble. In 2013 Brazzaville earned the distinction of being named a UNESCO City of Music as well as later becoming a member of that international organizations Creative Cities Network which includes 180 cities in 72 countries.

Cameroon

Officially known as the Republic of Cameroon, this African nation is located in the western central region of the continent. Covering 183,569 square miles, Cameroon is home to a population of 23,439,189 residents. The ethnic groups living in the nation include Cameroon Highlanders, Equatorial and Northwestern Bantu, Kirdi, Fulani, Eastern Nigritic, as well as other Africans and a small percentage of inhabitants whose origins lie outside Africa.

The official languages of Cameroon are English and French with French being dominant with 80% of the nations population. According to the statistics from the 2016 World Factbook, the average life expectancy for residents of Cameroon is 56 years with almost 60% of the population under the age of twenty five and those over 65 years of age making up a mere 3.2% of the countrys total population.

Gulf of Guinea

The Gulf of Guinea is a body of water located in the north eastern portion of the tropical Atlantic Ocean. The imaginary geographical lines known as the equator (which is defined as zero degrees in latitude) and the Prime Meridian (zero degrees longitude) intersect in this gulf. Among the African rivers which empty into the Gulf of Guinea include the Volta (in Ghana) and the Niger (in west Africa). This body of water, which measures 910,000 square miles, is also home to a number of islands including Annobon (or Pagalu), Bioko, Corisco, Elobey Grande and Elobey Chico, all of which belong to Equatorial Guinea as well as Ghanas Bobowasi Island, and Sao Tome and Principe, two Portuguese-speaking island nations that gained independence from Portugal in 1975.
On Monday, federal prosecutors in Detroit charged former United Auto Workers Vice President Norwood Jewell with conspiring to violate the Labor Management Relations Act in connection with the sprawling investigation into the bribing of UAW officials by Fiat Chrysler (FCA) executives. To date, four other UAW officials and three company executives, including the former head of labor relations, have pleaded guilty in the corruption scandal.

The charges are the latest in a multi-year investigation into illegal payments funneled by corporate executives to union officials for the purpose of securing company-friendly agreements, i.e., ramming through concessions contracts over rank-and-file opposition. Jewell headed the UAW Chrysler Department from 2014 to 2016 and was the chief union negotiator for the 2015 national contract. He is the highest-level UAW official to have been charged thus far.

Workers contacted by the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter on Monday expressed bitterness, disgust and outrage. The indictment of Jewell confirmed their long-held suspicions about the corruption of UAW officials and increased their determination to reverse the losses imposed over many years by the union.

A worker for Chryslers Mopar parts department in Georgia told the Autoworker Newsletter that the 2015 contracts should be considered null and void. He added, There is no way they can keep defending them now.

Think of how many lives and families were ruined behind those unethical negotiations! We should wildcat just off of this. I wish there was some type of mass walkout.

I knew this day was coming sooner or later. It is a slap in the face of countless members from the early years who gave their lives for the betterment of workers.

Norwood Jewell looked us in the face and ferociously defended that the contract was negotiated in good faith, he continued. We all know now that this was a lie. The UAW and their duplicitous nature are on borrowed time! Workers all over the world are at our wits end!

A worker at the Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Michigan wrote in an email: I think Jewell should have gone to jail and every single person that was involved.

A worker at FCAs Belvidere Assembly Plant in northern Illinois said that workers want our money that we were robbed of, especially since the former UAW president [Dennis Williams] has not been charged and sits in his non-union-built Black Lake home with his expensive whiskeys. We wonder why he isnt being held accountable for it happening under his watch.

Last month, FCA announced the elimination of an entire shift at the Belvidere plant and the layoff of nearly 1,400 workers, about which the UAW has remained criminally silent. The layoffs will have a domino effect on jobs at parts suppliers and other dependent industries throughout the economically depressed Rockford area.

The worker said he thought the UAW had known about the job cuts in advance. Its all about money, corporate profits and taking care of the shareholders at the expense of the workers. Its a contract year, so yeah, they play these games with us. We at BAP get this every contract year, where theyll dangle a car coming to us if they get what they want. We get a short-lived job security guarantee while workers take concessions.

Speaking of the coming contract negotiations, he said, Tier two employees want the same pay as tier one, the same 401k and to be included in the pension... A majority of us want the same things. We also want COLA [cost-of-living raises] back.

Jewells indictment has implications far beyond just the 2015 Fiat Chrysler contract. As a retiree noted to the WSWS, Chrysler was the lead in the 2015 negotiations. So GM and Ford followed what they negotiated. Its called pattern bargaining. The entire UAW Big 3 was affected.

Kathy, a contract worker at GM, said, I had a feeling he was going to be indicted. It was just a question of when. It is past time. It was very strange in 2015 when they started the negotiations at Chrysler, even though it was the weakest one.

At our job, we dont have a pension or retirement benefits. They [the UAW] just tell us be happy you have a job. The UAW says the UAW and GM are one. They don't include the workers in that.

Referring to the call by the WSWS for workers to form rank-and-file organizations independent of the unions, she concluded, We need to get rank-and-file committees going now.

Im waiting for the day they all get caught, said a former Ford worker, one of many to suffer harassment and abuse at the Chicago Assembly Plant. They are ruining workers lives!! I feel severely stripped after toiling so hard for Ford Motor Company.

It is not only autoworkers who have suffered due to the UAWs corruption and treachery. Jewell oversaw the negotiation of sellout agreements at agriculture equipment manufacturer John Deere in 2015 and at heavy equipment maker Caterpillar in 2017.

The government and union have sold out the worker, said a veteran worker at Caterpillars soon-to-close plant in Aurora, Illinois. The contract forced through by Jewell and the UAW sanctioned the closure of the Aurora plant and the layoff of approximately 800 workers.

There were over 6,000 people working here in the late 1970s. Now theres about 150. By end of year it will be closed.

Big business works hand in hand with government, along with unions, he continued. If he is guilty, he needs to go to prison, and employees should get pay raises, better health care, pay less on premiums. Take away everything he has and give it to Salvation Army.

Angela, a veteran autoworker at FCAs Kokomo Transmission plants and a member of the Steering Committee of Rank-and-File Committees, told the WSWS: I met this guy in 2015. Im confident he DID get rewarded handsomely to sell us that contract. He was abrasive, rude, arrogant and infuriating!!! I hope they bury him under the jail cell, find all of his assets and liquidate them!! Of course it was FCA that paid the bribe... I wonder how that was distributed amongst the UAW bosses?

What [UAW President] Gary Jones said about waging a fight in 2019 is bluster. No matter what the UAW does or does not do, we are going to rely on ourselves. Its the same everywhere. Its capitalism.

Im looking forward to the WSWS leadership spelling out for all workers how to stand against this corruption and the specific steps necessary to prevent being victimized by corporate and union greed. When workers unite, we are the most powerful class!

The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter calls on workers to repudiate the corrupt, pro-company UAW and form their own organizations, rank-and-file committees, to carry out a struggle for workers interests in the coming contract negotiations. Learn more about how to join this effort by emailing us today at autoworkers@wsws.org.
On March 13, approximately 3,000 Bosch workers marched through the neighbourhood of Feuerbach in the city of Stuttgart to protest against impending job cuts. The Bosch company is using the introduction of electric-powered cars to press ahead with the biggest job cuts in its history.

The Bosch plant in Feuerbach-Stuttgart has been in operation since 1910 and is one of the worlds largest manufacturers of diesel components. Eight thousand workers build diesel motor products, including injection technology, ignition and exhaust gas filters. In total, more than 13,000 employees are employed at Bosch-Feuerbach.

After the criminal manipulation of Volkswagen diesel emissions tests was made public in September 2015, Bosch experienced a rapid decline in demand for its products. The Bosch plants in Feuerbach, Homburg (Saar) and Bamberg employ around 15,000 workers, while the company has a total workforce of 50,000 worldwide.

So far, the company has refused to provide information on how many workers will lose their jobs in the process of the transition to electric mobility. After the demonstration, the manager of Bosch, Uwe Gackstatter, spoke vaguely of a structural break and said: We will not be able to keep the current level of employment, due to the slump in orders for diesel engine components.

In January, 600 jobs were cut in Homburg and Bamberg, and it is feared all 15,000 workers could lose their jobs should all three plants close down. In Feuerbach, one worker told the WSWS that management was systematically preparing to cease production and shut down the entire Feuerbach plant, eliminating all 8,000 diesel component jobs.

In Homburg, a plant closure would affect 4,100 workers. Bosch produces solely diesel injection pumps at this site and refuses to invest in alternative products. Four hundred jobs have already been slashed.

In the tone of a company manager, Oliver Simon, the head of factory works council in Homburg, declared: So far, we have been able to compensate for the declining demand for passenger cars with a boom for commercial vehicles, but here, too, we are experiencing a massive slump.

The works council has already agreed that contractual holidays be used this year to extend weekends and that the Christmas holidays be extended. Shift workers can also choose additional holidays instead of a wage increase, in accordance to the last contract agreed by the IG Metall trade union. In both Homburg and Bamberg, workers are being told that using this alternative could prevent further job losses.

The chairman of IG Metall, Jorg Hofmann, has conducted secret talks behind closed doors with Bosch management for many years. Following a conversation with the Homburg management in September 2018, Hofmann told Deutschlandfunk that the company was evidently planning to phase out the plant in line with declining demand. Hofmann continued: In the long term such a closure is unacceptable. The issue is not making the closure socially acceptable, but rather providing perspectives for the plant.

In fact, the IG Metall-controlled works councils act as Boschs closest accomplices when it comes to enforcing the re-modelling of plants at the expense of the workforce. IG Metall works councils have been negotiating with management since October 2018 on restructuring. For its part, management has responded with job cuts and a proposal for a 30-hour week without compensation of wages.

On February 14, the works councils at all the Bosch plants issued their Bamberg Declaration in which they complain of managements attempt to play off plants against one another. Bosch, the declaration continues, had no perspective for the plants, nor are any investments in future products planned.

IG Metall is mainly concerned with ensuring that Bosch continues to make profits. The union has already accepted in principle that job cuts, plant closures and wage cuts are inevitable.

The Bamberg Declaration states, The challenges are huge, and the issues are very complex. There are no easy answers. But we are firmly convinced that there are possible solutions. Our goal is to secure industrial manufacturing and development in Germany.

No worker knows what concessions the IG Metall works councils have already made in the course of negotiations. When asked at a special works meeting that preceded the demonstration, several workers confirmed that no details had been reported about the negotiations. Instead, the works councils have only repeatedly appealed to management to put forward constructive solutions.

IG Metall organises protests such as the March 13 demo to allow workers to let off steam, while carrying out talks with management behind the backs of the workforce. Increasingly however, workers realise that the union does not represent their interests, and that, on the contrary, IG Metall constitutes a mechanism to control workers in the interests of the profit system and suppress any independent resistance.

Fewer and fewer workers are prepared to follow the calls for protest made by the union. It came as no surprise that IG Metall announced in a press release prior to the demonstration that it anticipated 5,000 participants but only around 3,000 workers showed up.

Nevertheless, the demonstration expressed the anger growing among thousands of workers in the auto supply industry. Last week, the Schaeffler auto parts company also announced a further 900 job cuts.

The billion-dollar investments of corporations in the development of electric vehicles will completely transform the auto industry. The future of many thousands of jobs is in danger. To defend their jobs, workers must organise independently of IG Metall and the trade unions and conduct their struggle on the basis of a socialist and international perspective.
Vigils and other commemorations for the victims of last Fridays fascist terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch have been attended by large and emotional audiences across New Zealand, as well as in Australia and numerous other countries.

The atrocity is the worst mass killing in New Zealands history, and one of the most savage acts of fascist terrorism internationally. Fifty people have lost their lives, while 31 remain in hospital with gunshot injuries, including nine still in intensive care. Many of those murdered were migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan and Palestine who had lived in New Zealand for decades. Others were refugees who had been forced to flee their home countries due to the US-led wars and proxy wars in the Middle East, waged on the false pretext of combating Islamist terror.

The solidarity events have witnessed an outpouring of impassioned opposition to anti-Muslim xenophobia and condemnation of the extreme right-wing, fascist conceptions of the man who has been charged with the terrorist act, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant.

More information is emerging to prove that Tarrant was not some lone wolf, let alone a madman. For a number of years, he has moved within, and been politically shaped by, the international fascist networks spawned by the almost universal stoking of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hatred by the political establishments and media in Australia and New Zealand, across Europe and in the United States.

Tarrant has travelled extensively across Europe since 2012, as well as visiting Turkey, Pakistan and even North Korea. He participated in extreme right-wing discussions on 8chan, as well as commenting on posts on Facebook and other media. He did not conceal his name or his views.

He claims in his manifesto to have decided to conduct an act of terrorist mass murder while in France and witnessing the defeat of the fascist National Front in the 2017 elections. From November 2018 to January 2019, as he planned Fridays attack, he toured Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Croatia, visiting sites of past battles against Muslim invaders.

The Australian and New Zealand governments continue to insist that Tarrant was off the radar of their intelligence agencies, whose size and resources have been vastly expanded since the war on terror began in 2001. While the Muslim communities of both countries have been subjected to 18 years of surveillance and numerous police actions, an individual interacting with organisations espousing fanatical right-wing views was purportedly ignoredeven after he applied for a gun license at the end of 2017 and this year joined a gun club in New Zealand when he returned to the country.

Tarrant, moreover, did not seek to hide his murderous intentions. Two days before the attack, he posted images on his Twitter account of his semi-automatic weapon with white supremacist slogans dubbed upon it. His fascist manifesto, which specifically named the two mosques he was going to attack, was sent out to dozens of government and media accounts some eight minutes before he initiated the massacre. If he had been under monitoring, the atrocity might have been entirely prevented.

While millions of working people have reacted with shock and anger, the official expression of horror by the political and media establishments in New Zealand, Australia and internationally is, frankly, a cover-up of their culpability in the development of fascist terrorism.

In Australia, successive Liberal-National Coalition and Labor Party governments have presided over 18 years of anti-Muslim hysteria and the enforcement of a brutal and racist policy of preventing predominantly Muslim refugees from claiming asylum in the country on the grounds they could be terrorists. The dominant figures within the current Coalition government, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, are among those most associated with these policies.

Decades of anti-immigrant xenophobia have given rise to not only racist parties such as One Nation, but myriad right-wing and neo-fascist groupings. This is the toxic political atmosphere in which Tarrant grew up in an Australian regional town, the kind of location where the extreme right has particularly concentrated its efforts to recruit support.

In New Zealand, the Labour Party-NZ First coalition government headed by Jacinda Ardern came to power on an explicit program of slashing immigration, on the false grounds it was responsible for housing and other social problems. NZ First leader Winston Peters, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister, is an open racist, on record as sowing xenophobia against Muslim, African and Chinese migrants. The extreme right elements in New Zealand praise Peters as their best spokesperson in parliament.

The reality is that anti-immigrant and nationalist demagogy has been used by the capitalist ruling class internationally to try to divide the working class and scapegoat migrants for the immense and ever-widening social inequality and dysfunction of essential services. The Trump administrations blatantly racist America First policies are just a particularly crude expression of a universal tendency. Ultra-right parties are now part of numerous governments in Europe or form the main official opposition, as in France and Germany.

Fascism is spawned by the crisis and failure of capitalism. Its fundamental role for the capitalist class is to block and break up an independent and unified socialist movement of the working class developing for revolutionary social and political change.

Tarrant spelt this out clearly in his manifesto, which is influenced by the views of an entire fascist milieu. He advocated provoking race-based violence across the United States, Europe and other countries, as it would provide the pretext for the establishment of military dictatorships and genocidal policies against socialists, immigrants and religious minorities such as Muslims and Jews.

Ardern in New Zealand and Morrison in Australia are now demanding that social media platforms do more to censor bulletin boards and postings, and impose stricter controls on the live-streaming of video. Such measures will not be primarily used to block fascist views, but to undermine the democratic rights and struggles of the working class against social inequality and war.

This was what followed the bloodiest fascist terrorist attack: the mass murder of 77 people, mainly left-wing youth, at a Norwegian Labour Party camp in 2011 by Anders Behring Breivik. This has been followed by the open promotion of extreme right-wing propaganda in the establishment media and at the highest levels of the state.

The official advocacy and support for far-right views is above all responsible for the crimes of figures such as Tarrant, and the decision by disorientated layers in various countries to join fascist parties. While such formations are not yet mass movements, the danger they pose should not be underestimated.

The great lesson of the 1920s and the 1930s is that struggle against fascism cannot be entrusted to any wing or party of the capitalist class. It can be successfully waged only by a politically independent movement of the international working class that is consciously fighting to end capitalism and its outmoded nation-state divisions and to establish socialism. The building of such a movement is the urgent task in New Zealand, Australia and around the world.
Several recently released studies have documented the accelerating changes to Earths oceans as a result of climate change, including a reduction in the oxygen content, which is threatening vast swaths of marine life. One of the most prominent is an article in the February 25 issue of Scientific American, headlined, The Ocean is Running Out of Breath, Scientists Warn.

The research analyzes data collected by oceanographers at Germanys Helmholtz Center for Research over the past 50 years, which show that ocean oxygen levels have fallen an average of 2 percent worldwide and up to 40 percent in certain regions, such as the tropics.

This, the scientists note, is the most pressing issue facing sea animals today. They specifically compare it to ocean acidification, the increase in ocean water acidity caused by global warming. It has been shown to wipe out coral reefs and have a profoundly negative impact on the lives and reproductive capacity of shell-based marine organisms such as crabs, oysters and mollusks. Oxygen loss in the oceans, the researchers argue, is more dangerous because it impacts every type of sea creature.

Oxygen is essential for the survival of all aquatic animals, just as it is for those on land. A human in an environment with 2 percent less oxygen than their body is used to might become light-headed or suffer altitude sickness. In an environment with 40 percent less oxygen, they will likely suffer hypoxia and possibly die.

While the changes in oceanic oxygen content have not been instant, and so the problems not as immediately drastic, they have been rapid enough to force species to migrate to more oxygen-rich areas, exposing them to new predators while disrupting the already existing ecosystem. Polar regions in recent years, for example, have suffered an invasion of species from lower latitudes seeking to escape increasingly inhospitable areas.

Earlier research also revealed that oxygen-poor waters make it more difficult for male fish to produce sperm and for those sperm to be as mobile as in normal waters. Alarmingly, this does not seem to reverse itself if oxygen levels increase, posing long-term threats to the sustainability of sea creature populations in areas with decreased oxygen content.

Another effect of oxygen deficiency includes impairing animals ability to see and hear, impeding their ability to find food and escape from predators.

One of the causes of oxygen depletion is the use of fertilizers that end up in the rivers like the Mississippi. The river carries these nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico where they fuel the growth of algae which, in turn, deplete the level of oxygen in the waters. This creates regions known as dead zones in which marine plants and animals cannot live, let alone reproduce.

The more important cause of oxygen depletion, however, is the ongoing warming of the worlds oceans. Warm water is unable to hold as much dissolved gas. Global warming also melts ice, which releases fresh water that rests on the surface of the more dense salt water generally found in oceans. This layer can keep water at the surface and in the oceans depths from mixing, which is the only way that the deeper parts of the ocean have their oxygen stores replenished.

The studies also indicate that oxygen deprivation is now moving into areas previously believed to be less vulnerable, the open oceans and at the poles, showing that current ocean models need to be more carefully crafted to account for the effects of climate change.

One of the major consequences of oxygen depletion is falling fish populations. The habitat of the tropical Atlantic tuna, for example, has declined by 15 percent between the years 1960 to 2010. As fish move into more oxygen-rich areas, they concentrate in these areas where fishermen find them. This has led to the illusion of abundance and to even more fish being harvested.

There has, as a result, been an overall decline in fish populations of 4.1 percent in the 38 different regions around the world studied by scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara. Their research, published in the March 1 issue of Science, titled, Impacts of historical warming on marine fisheries production, details this population loss in 124 species between 1930 and 2010. The areas most impacted by climate change and overfishing, they wrote, have lost up to 35 percent compared to their early 20th century levels. If this trend continues, the hundreds of millions of human beings who use fish as a primary source of food and make their livelihood from fishing will suffer.

The large amount of oxygen loss in the worlds oceans is also impacting plankton populations. These microorganisms are more sensitive than fish to any change in the oceans and play a key role in all life on Earth because of their unique position at the base of the aquatic food chain. As a result of global warming, not only have their populations declined, but they are also forced to swim into deeper waters to reproduce, in turn making it harder for creatures who live near the surface to use the plankton as food. As climate change continues unabated, the potential for a catastrophic loss of the ocean food chain, the basis for life on Earth, increases.

In an attempt to address the broader ocean deoxygenation problem, oceanographers organized an international conference in Kiel, Germany last September and drafted a resolution calling on world governments and the United Nations to Limit global warming by decisive climate change mitigation actions. They based themselves on the earlier Monaco Declaration of 2008, which raised the question of ocean acidification.

As has been demonstrated in the aftermath of the Monaco Declaration, however, appeals to the various nation-states of the world solve nothing. Global warming and the resultant ocean acidification have continued apace and to some degree accelerated in the past 11 years. Scientists must instead turn to the international working class, the planets only progressive and revolutionary social force, to undertake the necessary reorganization and scientific coordination of the worlds resources to preserve Earths oceans.
Workers at Colorado grocery chains King Soopers and City Market voted by 92 percent Friday to authorize a state-wide strike. United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 bargains for approximately 12,200 workers employed at the two chains locations throughout the state. Despite the overwhelming vote the union has yet to set a date for a possible strike.

The grocery chains have been owned by Ohio-based Kroger since 1983. Kroger is the second-largest general retailer and one of the largest grocery store chains in the United States, taking in more than $122 billion in revenue in 2018. Through its subsidiaries, Kroger controls the largest share of grocery sales in Colorado, operating over 150 stores in the state.

Workers at the King Soopers and City Market have been working without a contract since January 12. UFCW Local 7 and the companies have been in negotiations since the end of 2018. The companies negotiators reportedly walked out of bargaining sessions held on March 8.

Workers are demanding higher wages and better healthcare and time off benefits. A meat cutter at King Soopers in Greeley, Colorado who spoke to Radio KUNC told reporters that he makes just $20.40 per hour after 20 years of employment and must work another part-time job to cover necessary expenses. The same worker spoke of the abysmally low per-hour raises doled out by the Kroger corporation to its workers each year, dubbed the Kroger quarter, because it is the highest raise that any of its workers will ever see.

In contrast, in 2015 Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen was paid a total of $11.7 million, CFO J. Michael Schlotman was paid $5.9 million, and executive vice president of merchandising Michael J. Donnelly earned a total of $4.9 million off the backs of workers.

The current proposal put forth by the company at the two chains includes major concessions on wages and health benefits. Raises of about $14 per week are proposed for half of all full-time workers and $7 per week for part-time workers, and employee sick leave pay is granted only on the first day of illness after ten years of service.

The current price for employee health care under the union contract is a whopping $100 per month, which the company boasts as best in class. This is an extremely expensive sum for workers who are paid such pitifully low wages to be forced to cough up each month. Workers are concerned that further increases to their already expensive healthcare costs will eat up more than the meager wage increases proposed by the corporation, effectively amounting to a significant pay cut.

UFCW Local 7 representatives said in statement after the powerful strike authorization vote they hope King Soopers and City Market can return to the table with an offer that reflects the strong commitment to workers and customers that has made the company so successful for so many years, but if they dont we are prepared and ready to strike.

The union has made clear that it will do everything that it can to avoid a strike and will not take the vote of the rank-and-file membership seriously. Evan Yeats, spokesman for Local 7, told Radio KUNC that striking is a tough decision for everybody and we hope it doesnt come to that ... The vote just gives the bargaining committee the ability to call the strike when they need to.

Local 7 President Kim Cordova says that the union is seeking to reconvene negotiations on March 23. The union has not called a strike against the two chains for over 20 years, with the last strike in 1996 ending after 44 days.

Workers at the two supermarket chains in Colorado have a right to be outraged at the attacks that the corporation has planned on their living conditions. They are already part of one of the most heavily exploited and underpaid sections of workers in the United States and are being forced to accept even deeper cuts to their wages and benefits so that the millionaire executives at the top can increase their bloated wealth.

However, workers cannot trust the UFCW to carry out the kind of fight that will deal an effective blow to the capitalists who are collectively exploiting their labor for profit. While posturing as champions of the workers and feigning outrage at the corporate negotiators, the union has made it clear that it will not impede Krogers ability to continue to amass profits throughout any potential strike.

King Soopers has already begun to hire scabs, including in its meat and deli departments, in preparation for a strike. UFCW Local 7 has been silent about this and has done nothing to mobilize workers against this preemptive attack. Earlier this month the union distributed flyers to workers listing job fairs for those looking for a job to get through a potential strike, making clear that they will provide little to nothing in strike pay to support workers if they walk off the job.

Grocery workers in Colorado can learn from recent lessons of the strike authorization vote by UFCW workers at Stop & Shop in New England finalized one week prior to their own. Despite workers facing deep cuts to their living standards so that the company can bring their standard of living down to the level of exploitation faced by non-union Amazon, Walmart and Whole Foods workers, the union has refused to call a strike even after its 31,000 rank-and-file workers at Shop & Save stores voted for strike action after contracts expired February 23.

The union officials who are orchestrating the isolation and sellout of grocery workers across the country live in different worlds than the rank-and-file.

UFCW Local 7 President Cordova earns a total salary of more than $167,000 per year, not including other compensation in the form of allowances and other payments. In fact, the UFCW local paid 27 of its officials more than $100,000 in 2015. UFCW International President Anthony Perrone pulled in more than $340,000 from the union in 2015 between his salary, benefits and other compensation. These sums are vastly more than what even the highest-paid hourly grocery worker can ever hope to make in a year, and is paid for by union dues out of the pockets of some of the lowest-paid workers in the country.

For workers to carry their struggle forward, they must recognize that the union represents class interests opposed to their own. When the UFCW says that it hopes to avoid a strike and calls for the corporation to come to its senses, it is telling the workers that they should not fight for higher wages and benefits, but instead take whatever the millionaire executives will allow the workers to have while they continue to amass profits at the expense of their living standards and those of future generations.

There is a growing fear within both big business and its trade union partners that the class struggle could erupt on a massive scale. The UFCW, a part of the AFL-CIO union apparatus along with the teachers unions, is working to systematically isolate workers from each other by suppressing strikes and preventing the class struggle from expanding out of its control, as was seen with the teachers strike in Denver barely one month ago.

Workers at King Soopers and City Market should form rank-and-file committees independent of the unions and develop their own set of demands based on what the workers need, not what the company says that they can have. These should include but not be limited to an across-the-board 40 percent wage increase for all workers, free healthcare benefits, paid sick days and time off to spend with family and friends.

Workers can only fight for their interests on the basis of an anti-capitalist and socialist program. This means that the workers in Colorado must link up with other grocery and retail workers in the United States and around the world, and with workers in those industries tightly linked to grocery retail work, such as logistics, transportation, manufacturing, meatpacking and agricultural workers, and other important sections of workers such as teachers, mine workers and other service workers.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality PartySGP) was unanimously certified to participate in the European elections at a meeting of the Federal Electoral Commission in Berlin on Friday.

As a result, the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) will appear on the ballot throughout Germany in the May 26 election, giving 60.8 million registered voters the opportunity to vote for a socialist alternative to nationalism, war and austerity. The SGP is fielding 11 candidates. It submitted petitions with significantly more than the 4,000 valid signatures required to stand in the election.

Germany is entitled to 96 of the 705 seats in the European parliament, excluding Britain. Unlike a federal or state election, there is no percentage hurdle for representation in the European parliament.

The SGP will use the European elections to engage with broad sections of workers and youth and seek to win them to a socialist programme. The main demands of its campaign concern the struggle against militarism and rearmament, the rise of the far-right, and the assault on jobs, wages, social programmes and democratic rights.

The SGP insists that these demands can be secured only by the working class breaking with the old parties and trade unions, organizing itself independently and fighting for the overthrow of capitalism, which subordinates all social needs to the profit interests of a tiny layer of the super-rich.

The SGP opposes both the European Union, the reactionary character of which is becoming ever more clear, and the right-wing forces that seek to channel opposition to the EU in a nationalist and racist direction. It advocates the United Socialist States of Europe.

Although the party is standing in Germany, its election campaign is directed at workers and young people throughout Europe. The SGP collaborates closely with its sister parties in Britain and France, the Socialist Equality Party and parti de legalite socialiste, as well as with supporters in other European countries.

Of the 41 parties standing in the European elections, the SGP alone is advancing a socialist programme. It is the only party on the ballot with the word socialist in its name.

A total of 59 parties and associations submitted applications to participate in the elections, including five for individual German states. The electoral committee considered only whether the applications met legal ballot access requirements, not the content of their programmes. The committee rejected 15 applicants because they failed to submit a sufficient number of valid signatures or did not meet other requirements. Three other applications were withdrawn in advance, including the application from the Blue Party, led by former Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader Frauke Petry.

Most of the approved parties not currently represented in the European parliament focus on single issue topics such as the environment, pensions or democratic questions. Five parties referred to animal protection in their names.

Two Stalinist parties were accepted, the Maoist Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), which continues to this day to defend Stalin and the Moscow Trials, and the German Communist Party (DKP), which was founded in 1968 as the West German section of the state party in East Germany.

Several right-wing extremist parties will appear on the ballot. Alongside the AfD, which is already represented in the European parliament, they include The Right, Third Way and the National Democratic Party (NPD).

The AfD was represented on the electoral commission for the first time. Georg Pazderski, a former German army officer and leading AfD federal politician, was warmly welcomed by the federal elections coordinator and chairman of the committee, Georg Thiel. When the AfDs list was dealt with, several internal party matters were discussed that underscored grave deficiencies with regard to the selection of candidates. Thiel went to great lengths to downplay the significance of these deficiencies and asked the AfD representative if he was in agreement with his remarks.

The campaign of The Right features as its lead candidate the 89-year-old Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck, who has been convicted on numerous occasions of hate speech. Supporters of the party sat in the front row during the hearing, wearing T-shirts bearing Haverbecks picture and shouting loudly against other parties. The federal elections coordinator did not object to this. When a representative of another party expressed frustration with the antics of The Right, Thiel scolded that party, to the applause of The Right supporters, and threatened to eject the complaining party from the meeting.

The European elections take place in the context of a revival of the class struggle. Whether in France, Algeria, the US or China, workers are rebelling against the impact of decades of wage reductions and spending cuts. Tens of thousands participated in strikes during recent rounds of collective bargaining in the German public sector to protest the destruction of schools, unbearable working conditions and miserable pay. In the auto industry and other sectors, the largest wave of job cuts in decades is under way. At the same time, the ruling elites are preparing once again for war, investing billions in rearmament.

The SGP is the only party that is advancing a perspective to take forward the struggles of the working class, making its election campaign immensely important for the future of working people in Germany and internationally. During the collection of signatures, the party won strong support among workers and young people.

Marianne Arens, one of the SGP candidates, told the World Socialist Web Site, This is not the first time we have stood in elections and had to gather signatures to do so. But there was a noticeable change this time. We collected many more signatures at the factories than in the past. One can sense that the anger in the factories is boiling over. In the face of low wages and never-ending social spending cuts, many workers feel outrage toward all of the parties in parliament and the trade unions.

SGP candidate Marianne Arens in discussion with striking security workers at Frankfurt airport

Our reports on strikes and mass protests in other countries, and our perspective of international cooperation against capitalism and the dictatorship of the banks and corporations met with considerable interest. In and around the auto factories and supplier plants in Stuttgart, we collected over 1,000 signatures.

SGP leader Ulrich Rippert, who is also a candidate, told the WSWS that the struggle against far-right and fascist parties would play a central role in the SGPs election campaign. Without the decisive support of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Left Party, the Greens and the trade unions, the return of German militarism and the strengthening of right-wing extremist forces would not have been possible, he said.

Rippert went on to explain that the SPD is a right-wing party of the state, which represents the interests of the banks, the major corporations, the intelligence agencies and the military. Due to its militarist policies and Agenda 2010 social welfare cuts, the party is deeply despised. The SPD is responding to the rapid decline in its vote by shifting ever further to the right and supporting the AfD.

With the certification of the partys candidacy, the next stage of the SGP election campaign begins. Candidates will explain and discuss the partys programme at meetings across Germany and in other European countries.

The SGP will use social media and other channels to circulate its programme. For this, the party requires the active support and financial assistance of all of those no longer prepared to tolerate the return of war, dictatorship and renewed social spending cuts, and those who support a socialist alternative.

The next important meeting will take place on Saturday, 23 March at the Leipzig Book Fair. Christoph Vandreier, the deputy leader of the SGP, will present his book Why are They Back?, which deals with the rise of the far-right, and WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North will discuss the new edition of his history of the Fourth International, The Heritage We Defend.
While more than one million people were marching to demand action on climate change on Friday, the Trump administration was finalizing plans to greatly expand the leasing of public lands for oil, gas and coal extraction, as well as hinting that oil drilling off the Atlantic Coast is the next goal in its drive to promote fossil fuels.

The Department of the Interior chose Friday, March 16, during the Youth Climate Strikeinternational protests over climate changeto announce that it was lifting protections for the greater sage grouse, a bird native only to the United States, on nearly 9 million acres in the western states, in order to expand leasing of land to the oil, gas and mining industries.

Since Trump took office, the Interior Department has offered some 16.8 million acres of federal land for oil and gas leasing, with 2.3 million acres leased and an auction set for an additional 1.3 million acres in the spring. The total made available is larger than the state of West Virginia.

Of the estimated 160 million acres in 11 states that are native habitat for the sage grouse, 67 million acres were designated for protection in 2015 under a plan to stave off the birds placement on the endangered species list. The Trump administration has now relaxed protections on three-quarters of the area originally set aside.

The expanded oil, gas and mining lease plan was announced by the acting interior secretary, David Bernhardt, the former oil industry lobbyist who replaced Ryan Zinke after a series of corruption scandals involving the former congressman, who resigned in December.

The decision was denounced by environmental advocates as a giveaway to big polluters and the fossil fuel industry. The Natural Resources Defense Council issued a statement declaring that the interior secretary is unraveling a painstakingly crafted conservation plan and putting massive swaths of land, hundreds of species and precious wildlife habitat at risk. The NRDC added, This shameless giveaway to the oil and gas industry has no basis in science.

Brian Rutledge, director of Audubon Societys Sagebrush Ecosystem Initiative, said in a statement, What earned its place as the most hopeful conservation success story in American history has suffered a grave setback that threatens not only the greater sage grouse, but also the entire sagebrush ecosystem.

Also benefiting from the lifting of restrictions are big ranching interests throughout the western states, including Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada and Northeastern California. In Oregon, for example, 13 areas set aside by the Bureau of Land Management to provide habitat for the sage grouse will now be open for cattle grazing.

At least one prominent Democrat, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, hailed the Trump administration action, saying the Interior Department had worked to address the concerns of state officials. The multi-millionaire business executive, one of the richest men in Congress before his election as governor last November, said, Our focus now turns to implementation and creating successful outcomes on the ground.

Under the now-disgraced Zinke, the Interior Department began rolling back the protection plan for the greater sage grouse early in 2017, beginning with changes on the website of the Bureau of Land Management, deleting information on the sage grouse and even pages describing what various states were doing to promote its habitat and ensure the birds long-term survival.

More than 40,000 people and organizations have submitted objections to the Department of the Interior over the efforts to downgrade and ultimately abandon protection of the sage grouse.

Last June, 20 scientists sent a letter to then-Secretary Zinke warning that The sage-grouse is an indicator species for health of the interior Wests sagebrush steppe ecosystem and healthy sagebrush habitats not only support over 350 plant and animal species, including some of Americas most iconic species of wildlife, but are essential for economic sustainability of human communities in the western US. Today, sage grouse are present in just over half their historical range, the number of males counted each spring for the majority of populations across the range of the species has declined since the 1960s

These concerns have been brushed aside in the effort to boost the profits of the big oil, gas and coal mining companies.

Another pro-oil decision is coming soon, according to the Interior Departments assistant secretary for land and minerals management, Joe Balash, who told an oil industry conference in Houston last month that the Trump administration would likely open portions of the Atlantic coastal shelf to oil and gas drilling, over the opposition of the states involved.

He told the International Association of Geophysical Contractors that the proposal would probably come through in the second quarter of 2019. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is currently reviewing permit applications for seismic testing in nine areas from Delaware to Florida. Seismic testing is a first step in locating recoverable oil and gas deposits.

During a question and answer session after his remarks, he told the contractors, I will tell you, we wouldnt work really, really hard to get seismic permits out if that area wasnt going to be available.
Knowing it has the bipartisan backing of the Labor Party, Australias Liberal-National Coalition government last week launched the full force of a new foreign agent registration scheme by leveling unsubstantiated accusations against China-linked institutes and political figures.

Entities and individuals with alleged connections to Beijing are the initial, and most vulnerable targets, of the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS), because of the deepening US-China conflict. But the registration regime is a direct, and far wider, threat to basic democratic rights, including free speech.

Attorney-General Christian Porter told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that more than 700 political parties, universities, lobbying firms, media companies and politicians had been warned they could face serious legal consequences if they failed to register.

Porter said officials were ready to chase down people who chose to run the gauntlet. He declared: They would be very, very unwise indeed if they engaged in lobbying or influencing activity with government and determined not to register themselves.

Porter singled out the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the institutes director, former Foreign Minister Bob Carr.

Nine Network outlets, such as the Sydney Morning Herald, reported that 13 university-based Confucius Institute cultural and language education centres had received warning letters from the Attorney-Generals Department.

A government source said Confucius Institutes were among the logical first targets. The department would request further information from them, and they could face severe penalties for failing to comply with the legislation.

As of Monday, a three-month grace period expired for registration under the foreign interference laws that were pushed through parliament last year with the Labor Partys support.

The FITS Act requires registration by anyone deemed to have an arrangement with overseas entities in a political activity. There is up to five years jail for those who fail to register or comply with complex and ongoing reporting requirements.

Anyone who fails to register can be compelled to do so by a transparency notice issued by the Attorney-Generals Department. The registers secretary can require any information or documents. It is a criminal offence not to comply, or to provide false or misleading information.

This affects the essential political, legal and democratic rights of millions of Australians, especially members or supporters of political parties, lobby groups or other organisations opposing official policies, including the US-led drive to war against China and other designated threats to US global hegemony.

The FITS Act and its companion, the Espionage and Foreign Interference (EFI) Act, constitute the most extensive, anti-democratic legislation in Australia since World War II, when governments ruled by wartime regulations.

For failing to register under the FITS Act, organisations and individuals also could be prosecuted under the EFI Act, which contains unprecedented foreign interference offences. One offence, punishable by up to 20 years jail, is covertly collaborating with an overseas group or individual to seek political change.

The EFI Act contains a further array of criminal offences, with penalties up to life imprisonment, ranging from treason to advocating mutiny, sabotage and dealing with leaked information that harms Australian national security.

Porter boasted that the register was already changing behaviour and contractual arrangements between individuals in the Australian political system. As an example, he accused Carr of resigning from the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) to avoid registration, a claim that Carr vehemently denied.

A spokesman for UTS also refuted Porters charge, saying the university does not consider any of its activities, including those of ACRI, to be registrable under the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, but will continue to monitor this over time.

As of last Friday, the FITS registration list contained only 23 names, but its breadth gave a glimpse of the far-reaching and reactionary implications. The Australian Academy of Science, a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to facilitate access to global science and technology, felt obliged to register for general political lobbying because it has agreements with 10 fellow bodies in other countries, including China, to promote bilateral, regional and global research collaborations.

Prominent on the FITS list, alongside some oil companies and corporate lobbyists, are two interconnected entities funded by the US State Departmentthe US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Perth USAsia Centre at the University of Western Australiato conduct activities to support the military alliance with the US.

According to the register, the US Studies Centres contract requires it to host a conference this year on Indo-Pacific Strategic Futures. Its aims include to promote support for the rules-based order and a commitment to countering malign influence. These are code words for supporting the US economic and military offensive against China.

The conference is meant to create a small but well-informed cohort of next generation leaders who will amplify the lessons learned from the conference and become leading voices within the [US military] alliance and partner network.

The US State Department is acutely aware of the mounting discontent globally over social inequality and the drive to war. In Australia, as elsewhere, this disaffection has been compounded by the barbaric US-led wars in the Middle East and the exposures provided by Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden of US and allied war atrocities, political plots and mass surveillance.

By supposedly laying out some of the most overt US political interference in Australia, these registrations are evidently intended to clear the way for ramping up the witch hunt against alleged Chinese meddling.

In reality, the passage of the foreign interference legislation itself was demanded by Washington, and that marks an escalation of decades of US intervention to ensure there is not the slightest deviation from the Australian political establishments commitment to the US alliance.

To reinforce that message, on his first day in the job, the newly-arrived US ambassador to Australia, Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., launched an extraordinary public broadside against China, accusing Beijing of conducting payday-loan diplomacy to trap South Pacific countries in debt.

Addressing the media after presenting his credentials to Australias governor-general, Culvahouse was asked about US Vice President Mike Pences denunciation of Chinas loans to Pacific nations as debt trap diplomacy. Fresh from White House briefings, Culvahouse went further, saying: I would use stronger language.

The US ambassador conveyed an implied threat that Australian capitalisms lucrative export markets in China could be sacrificed in the intensifying US economic war against China unless Washington was satisfied. He said he had his fingers crossed that the White House considered the interests of its allies when finalising a trade deal with China.

Culvahouse is a highly-connected member of the US political-intelligence establishment, with a long record of involvement in the secretive machinations of governments, from Richard Nixons Watergate crisis to the Iran-Contra affair under Ronald Reagan and the upgrading of nuclear weaponry under Vice President Dick Cheney.

Culvahouse noted that he had arrived just in time for a federal election, due by May. The election is being engulfed by political turmoil, rooted in the deep-going popular discontent.

Previous US ambassadors have played a central role in Australian political crises, including the 1975 Canberra Coup, in which the Whitlam Labor government was dismissed after it began to lose control over the industrial and social movement in the working class.

In mid-2010, Labor and trade union powerbrokers who were protected sources of the US embassy ousted Kevin Rudd as prime minister in favour of Julia Gillard. Rudd had suggested that the Obama administration should make some accommodation to Chinas rise. Gillard and her backers, including the current Labor leader Bill Shorten, quickly committed to the US pivot to the Indo-Pacific to combat China, including the stationing of US marines in Darwin.

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Australias foreign influence register will attack basic democratic rights

[20 July 2018]

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[17 July 2018]
Hungary is currently being hit by a wave of strikes. On Thursday, nearly 10,000 public sector employees went on strike. Following Januarys strike at the Audi plant in Gyor, which ended with workers achieving an 18 percent wage increase, thousands of workers in the supply industry have now gone on strike as well.

Workers are responding to their poverty wages and the right-wing policies of the Orban government. The main demand in the public sector is for an increase in basic salaries, which have stagnated for 11 years. Lower income workers sometimes receive less than 800 per month for working full-time.

The public sector unions are known for their close collaboration with governments of all stripes. Now they see themselves forced to demand a minimum wage for public sector employees. However, union representatives have yet to announce what this minimum wage demand will be.

Added to this is workers anger over the so-called slave law. Above all, the Orban government has used this law to respond to the needs of the auto industry. The law raises the number of possible overtime hours from 250 to 400 a year. For public sector employees, it means an increase in daily working hours from 8 to 9 hours and a reduction of five days leave per year.

The strikers held a rally in front of the parliament in Budapest and called for a demonstration on May 1. They were supported by numerous workers and young people. According to media reports, the strike met with great popular sympathy.

Audi workers in Gyor in western Hungary have partially achieved their demand for an increase in wages. When production in several European locations was threatened, the carmaker agreed to an 18 percent increase in wages and the Audi internal union AHFSZ broke off the strike. Previously, workers at the Daimler plant in Kecskemet had won an increase in wages of over 20 percent. The stoppages by Hungarian workers are part of a growing strike movement throughout Eastern Europe. In recent years, auto workers in Romania, Serbia and Slovakia have also been on strike.

On Tuesday, workers at Korean tire manufacturer Hankook in Dunaujvaros, where 3,400 workers are employed, went on strike. In the face of extremely low wages and onerous working conditions, they are demanding an 18 percent salary increase, an extra months salary and additional bonuses. Last week they held a two-hour protest strike. As a result, management offered a low wage increase, which was rejected. Hankook has been producing tyres in Hungary since 2007.

Other automotive suppliers are also affected by strikes. At Westcast in Oroszlany, 1,500 workers held a two-hour protest strike calling for a wage increase of 18 percent. They threatened to shut down operations if management failed to meet their demands.

Workers at German auto parts supplier Conti in Veszprem also supported their demand for more wages by holding a protest strike. At a Bosch Group plant in Miskolc, the ETMOSz union organized a protest strike with more than 500 participants. They are demanding a 12 percent salary increase and other salary components that are usual for workers at the company in other countries.

Other plants are also threatened with strikes. As a result, carmaker Suzuki has already announced that it will not apply the governments new labour code, to avoid protests. Previously, the Esztergommassiv factory came under criticism after a worker who tried to build a union in the factory was fired.

The strikes must be seen in the context of the increasing social crisis in Hungary. Despite official claims of full employment, the country is one of the poorest in the EU. The differences between the city and the countryside are enormous. In villages, 40 percent of people live below the subsistence level, and the average net wage is just under 700.

The health and education systems face collapse. Well-educated young people are moving abroad in search of a future, for example to Austria or Germany. In the meantime, there are huge campaigns in industry to recruit workers from the Balkans or Ukraine.

At the same time, the government promises to further improve business conditions by keeping wages and taxes low. According to statistics agency Eurostat, in 2017 an average working hour in Hungary cost around 9; by comparison, the rate in Germany was 34.

For example, automotive supplier Bosch recently announced plans to massively expand its plant in the northeastern city of Hatvan. According to Die Zeit, electronic components will be produced there from 2020. With a total investment of around 30 million, the government in Budapest is investing just under 4 million. Hungary offers the lowest corporate taxes EU-wide, said Foreign and Foreign Trade Minister Peter Szijjarto at a press conference with Bosch management.

The Munich-based carmaker BMW also announced last year it planned to open a new plant in the eastern part of Debrecen. The total investment there is around 1 billion. This project, too, is being supported by the Hungarian state and local authorities, which want to spend more than 500 million on the necessary expansion of road infrastructure and similar projects. As the napi.hu web site reports, the government plans to invest more than 400 million over the next few years to this end.

As workers become more and more involved in struggles, the unions are trying to stop a broad movement at all costs. Especially the MKKSZ, which has called for the strikes in the public sector, is known for its subservience to the government. Union representatives had earlier stated that a general strike in Hungary was not possible. After tens of thousands took to the streets at the end of last year against the government and the labour code, the unions are now not calling for further protests.

Instead, they are openly revealing how far to the right they really stand. On the Hungarian national holiday, opposition parties and unions jointly demonstrated against the Orban government on Friday in central Budapest. Significantly, the campaign commemorating the 1848-49 revolution was organised under the motto, National Unity. Representatives of the ultra-right Jobbik party, the Social Democrats and the unions sang the national anthem together.
The English-language edition of Why Are They Back? Historical Falsification, Political Conspiracy and the Return of Fascism in Germany was launched at Londons Foyles bookshop on Sunday. An audience of 150 heard presentations by the books author Christoph Vandreier, deputy chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (Germany), and David North, chairperson of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board.

Opening the meeting, Socialist Equality Party (UK) national secretary Chris Marsden said that Fridays tragic slaughter of 50 Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand, underscores the importance of the discussion we are having today.

Marsden explained that Australian citizen Brenton Tarrant was radicalised in Europe. His manifestos title, The Great Replacement, was drawn from French right-wing intellectual Renaud Camus and he spoke of Marine Le Pens defeat by Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 French presidential election as a tipping point.

David North addresses the audience at the book launch

Tarrant was part of an international network of far-right organisations, said Marsden. His manifesto praised Norwegian fascist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway on July 22, 2011, including 69 participants at a Workers Youth League summer camp. Tarrant also hailed as a hero Darren Osborne, imprisoned in 2017 after driving a van into worshippers outside Finsbury Park mosque in north London. Like Tarrant, Osborne had planned to assassinate London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was physically assaulted only last month at the same mosques Muslim Welfare Centre.

In Britain, the Brexit referendum had been accompanied by a deluge of nationalism. In June 2016, on the eve of the referendum, fascist Thomas Mair had shot and stabbed Labour MP Jo Cox to death. Tarrant had himself written in support of Brexit, that it was the British people firing back at mass immigration, cultural displacement and globalism, and thats a great and wonderful thing.

These are all expressions of the toxic climate whipped up by the ruling class, giving succour to the likes of Osborne, Mair and Tarrant, said Marsden.

Christoph Vandreier speaking at the book launch

In his remarks, Christoph Vandreier stressed that the publication of Why Are They Back? was the outcome of a politically unified struggle by the sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Europe and the United States. It sought to draw the attention of the international working class to political events of far-reaching significance: In Germany, for the first time since the end of the Nazi regime a far-right party [Alternative for GermanyAfD] has 90 deputies in the federal parliament.

Why Are They Back? is about how this shift to the right was politically and ideologically prepared.

He explained, In June 1986, the right-wing historian Ernst Nolte published an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he argued that the Holocaust was an understandable response to the violence of the Soviet Union.

Many intellectuals at that time understood the political implications of this historical revanchism and opposed it with dozens of articles. This struggle was known as the Historikerstreit and ended in a decisive defeat of the revisionists. With the reunification of Germany and the return of German militarism, the right made a number of attempts to reverse the Historikerstreits outcome.

These attempts came to a head in 2014, at a time when high ranking German politicians announced the end of military restraint by Germany.

In February of that year, the biggest German news journal Der Spiegel published an article demanding a rewriting of German history. Defending Nolte in this piece was a professor from Berlins Humboldt University, Jorg Baberowski. Not only did Baberowski say that Nolte was correct, but, He adds by way of a justification, Hitler was no psychopath, and he wasnt vicious. He didnt want people to talk about the extermination of the Jews at his table.

Baberowski became a hero of the extreme right and was often quoted and hailed by pages like Breitbart News and the Daily Stormer.

Vandreier continued, The policy of the ruling class is no longer compatible with democratic rights. That is why the ruling elite in every country is using more and more authoritarian methods and why fascism is being promoted.

The only movement which opposed this, winning the support of many students and workers, was the Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality:

The fascists are not a mass movement but are a hated minority. However, the ruling elite is once again promoting fascism and right-wing ideology in order to suppress opposition to its militarism and worsening social inequality That is why an independent movement of the working class is the only way to fight this danger.

In this context, Vandreier emphasised the re-emergence of the class struggle internationally with workers protesting in growing numbers in Algeria, the United States, Mexico, France and many other countries.

In Germany there are growing strikes in the auto industry and the public sector, and in our fight at Humboldt University we could see massive support from students throughout Germany and especially from workers.

David North

Recommending Why Are They Back? David North noted, It is extraordinary that what has been taking place in Germany has gone almost completely unreported in the European and American press. The fact that the most politically influential party in Germany todaythe official opposition party, the AfDis a party led by out-and-out pro-Nazis, apologists for Hitler, has been largely ignored, as if its a non-event.

North recounted how the SEP in Germany first became aware of Baberowski in 2014, after the Humboldt professor sponsored a lecture by prominent British historian Robert Service whose recent biography of Leon Trotsky had been widely discredited. The American Historical Review had publicly sided with Norths detailed reply to Service, describing Services Trotsky biography as hack work due to its many falsifications and distortions. Confronted with Baberowskis defence of Service and his suppression of the critique provided by the SEP and IYSSE at Humboldt University, North had predicted, If theyre lying about Trotsky today, theyll be lying about Hitler tomorrow.

The history of fascism in Germany had left a legacy of trauma in every family. The sentiment Nie wieder (Never again!) expressed the deep hostility toward fascism in the German population. The importance of Christophs book... is that he makes clear that what has taken place in Germany is a concerted political conspiracy involving the highest levels of the state, with the complicity of an academic community indifferent to the resurgence of neo-Nazi forces.

North reviewed the history of the 1930s, explaining that Hitler would not have taken power without two essential factors: the complete collapse of working class leadership, both the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Communist Party (KPD); and secondly, the active decision by elements in the German political elite to bring Hitler to power.

We alone have been paying serious attention to the growth of fascism and the dangers it poses to the working class, North stated. He recalled a lecture he had given in Wellington, New Zealand, in December 2018, in which he had warned in this placid and beautiful city that fascism was a danger all over the world.

The horrific attack by Brenton Tarrant against Muslim worshippers had exposed the true ideology of fascism. Turning to Tarrants manifesto, North noted his statement that for once the person that will be called a fascist, is an actual fascist.

Tarrant had nominated British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley as the person closest to my beliefs. North responded, Here in England theres been a great deal of discussion about anti-Semitism. The issue has been raised in the context of an unending series of diatribes against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour Party. The claim is that they are anti-Semites and that the Labour Party is a hotbed of anti-Semitism. All of you know that we have no truck with Jeremy Corbyn. The manner in which he has repliedor failed to replyto these slanders goes to the heart of many of our criticisms.

But what is involved in this attack on Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour Party entails such a vicious falsification of history and such a distortion of reality, that it has served to undermine the ability to conduct a struggle against fascism and anti-Semitism where it really exists.

North briefly reviewed the career of Oswald Mosley, which illustrated what anti-Semitism in Britain really represented historically. He referenced the work of British historians who had demonstrated that anti-Semitism was central to the outlook of British fascism. Which, by the way, had great support within broad sections of the Tory party.

The campaign that has been conducted in the media by the political right and by the right-wing in the Labour Party, and by so many academics who have gone along with this, serves to completely undermine any historical understanding of what fascism really is, what anti-Semitism really is and its implications for the working class.

Christoph Vandreier and David North during the Q&A session

During a question and answer session, audience members asked why fascism had been allowed to grow again after the horrors of World War II and whether this was due to popular complacency and why there had been no response within academia in Germany and internationally to efforts to rehabilitate Hitler.

Vandreier explained, The question of war is back. A major imperialist war by the United States against China and Russia or even among the imperialist powers is possible because of the deep crisis of capitalism. For German imperialism to assert itself globally as a major military power demands the rewriting of history. It wasnt just the case that the newspapers and academics didnt answer these positions by Baberowski. They defended him and attacked the IYSSE and the SEP.

North said that efforts to attribute the re-emergence of fascism to individual failings were false. Humans beings act upon the world not as individuals, but through politics, through political action and political activity

The one central element in the history of the 20th century was that it was an era of unprecedented social struggle, of revolutionary struggle. There were other revolutionary centuries but what distinguished the 20th century was that it was characterized by the conscious effort of great masses of people to end the capitalist system they acted with a high level of understanding of their class identity.

Christoph Vandreier signs copy of Why Are They Back?

The supreme product of that struggle was the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, which was the only time when a political leadership existed that was able to meet up to the historic task posed before the international working class. Faced with the nationalist counter-revolution of Stalinism and the defeats imposed on the working class internationally, a demoralized response developedepitomised by the Frankfurt School.

In the absence of a firm and clear understanding of historical processes, of the political issues, easier answers were found in explanations blaming the supposedly inherent failings of human beings.

People queue to buy literature at Mehring Books stall

Social consciousness can shift very rapidly, North continued. In America, Bernie Sanders is more and more seen as an apologist for the Democratic Party. People are looking for serious answers and I think youll see that the political mood begins to change. The discussions become more intelligent, more thoughtfuland also more optimistic. To the extent that people begin to understand, they also feel that the possibilities of fighting and defeating political reaction are there.

North concluded, Great social changes are not immediately comprehended. They are complex. It takes time for people to assimilate the essential political lessons. That process of assimilation finds its most conscious expression within the Marxist movement The experiences of the 1930s demonstrated the decisive role of political leadership. That is why Trotsky said, in the Transitional Programme, when he speaks of the alternatives of fascism or socialism, that the crisis of mankind presents itself as the crisis of revolutionary leadership.

Following the Q&A, many of those present queued at the Mehring Books stall and to have their copy of Why Are They Back? signed by Vandreier. Around 1,500 of literature was sold, including 71 copies of Why are they Back? and 18 copies of the newly released Agents: The FBI and GPU Infiltration of the Trotskyist Movement.

Why are They Back? is available for pre-order at Mehring Books.
Dutch officials announced at 6:30 p.m. last night that police had arrested 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis, the principal suspect in a shooting yesterday morning in the city of Utrecht that left three people dead and another five injured.

At the time of writing, little is known about either the event itself or the motivations of the shooter. The shooting occurred on a tram in Utrecht at approximately 10:45 a.m. Witness statements indicate that a single male shooter was targeting a specific woman, rather than firing indiscriminately at all nearby passengers.

A 21-year-old witness, Niels, who was on the tram at the time, told De Gelderlader that the perpetrator focused on a particular person, and then aimed at the people who tried to help that woman. He said that he saw a woman crawl out of the tram, and as people tried to help her, a gunman went round behind her and began firing at them.

Another witness told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that he helped an injured woman after the tram had stopped. I looked behind me and saw someone lying there behind the tram. People got out of their cars  and they started to lift her up. I helped to pull her out and then I saw a gunman run towards us, with his gun raised, he said. I heard people yell: Shooter! Shooter! And I started to run. Of the five people injured, three are reported to be in critical condition.

The Turkish state-owned news agency Anadolu reported that the shooter was targeting a relative in a tram due to a family dispute, citing unnamed relatives. Tanis is reportedly of Turkish origin.

NOS reported that acquaintances told the media that there was a family issue, and that Tanis had serious psychological problems. The French-language Internaute website reported that multiple witnesses described Tanis as an unstable individual, in particular since a separation one or two years ago.

Police have also confirmed that Tanis was known to them and had a criminal record. He reportedly attended pre-trial hearings two weeks ago on rape charges dating from July 2017, and faced trial in 2013 on attempted homicide charges relating to a shooting in a flat in Kanaleneiland, near where yesterdays shooting took place. NOS reported that he had also faced court action for a number of petty offences, including burglary in 2012, shoplifting and driving under the influence of alcohol in 2014, and damage to property in 2015.

A local businessman told BBC Turkish that Tanis had fought in the Russian republic of Chechnya. He was arrested because of his connections with [IS] but released later, the businessman claimed.

More substantive information making clear the character of the shooting will doubtless come to light as the investigation proceeds. Well before it was clear what had occurred, however, the Dutch and other European governments yesterday were already whipping up an atmosphere of national emergency and issuing thinly-veiled references to terrorism and religious extremism.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the head of the Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy, spoke at a press conference in the afternoon. Rutte declared that a terrorist motive has not been ruled out, adding, An act of terror is an attack on our civilization, on our open and tolerant society.

If it was confirmed as a terrorist act, he said, the only answer was that our society, our democracy, is stronger than fanaticism and violence. We will not yield to intolerance. The references to our civilization and an open and tolerant society are typical dog-whistle references used for xenophobic attacks on immigrants and Muslims.

Rutte was joined by French President Emmanuel Macron, who tweeted, We are at your side in grief and determination to fight against those who wish to impose terror.

These statements were made as police announced that the gunman had fled the scene of the shooting and that a manhunt was underway. The government raised the national threat rating to the highest level for Utrecht, advising all residents in the city to remain indoors. Videos on social media show heavily-armed police conducting building-by-building searches for Tanis.

In recent years, the entire political establishment in the Netherlands has shifted ever further to the right and more and more openly adopted anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies. Both the Peoples Party and the Socialist Party have increasingly adopted the policies of Geert Wilderss neo-fascistic Party for Freedom (PVV).

In the run-up to the last elections in March 2017, Ruttes government blocked two Turkish ministers from speaking at events in the Netherlands to campaign for a yes vote among Turks on Erdogans constitutional referendum to transfer far-reaching powers to the presidency. Ruttes decision was praised by Wilders as a victory for the PVV, declaring: We do not want more but less Islam. So Turkey, stay away from us. You are not welcome here.

The Socialist Party supported Ruttes ban. The lead candidate Emile Roemer declared that there was no place in the Netherlands for the propaganda circus of sultan Erdogan. Yesterdays shooting took place in the lead-up to nationwide provincial elections scheduled for March 20.

The promotion of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim chauvinism by the Dutch political establishment is part of an international shift to the right within the ruling class and the deliberate promotion of extreme-right forces by the state and their elevation into positions of power, in response to growing struggles of the working class against inequality and growing interest in socialism.
Over the weekend President Donald Trump exchanged a flurry of tweets with both the United Auto Workers (UAW) and General Motors calling on the union and the company to come up with a deal to reopen the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant, which shut down March 6 after 53 years of operation.

The closure of the factory is another blow to an area that has been devastated by decades of deindustrialization. The Warren-Youngstown region in northeastern Ohio where the plant is located has been hard hit by the opioid crisis, reflecting the desperate conditions of wide sections of the working class. The final closure put 1,700 out of work with many facing a choice of unemployment or a gut-wrenching relocation to distant plants. Another 8,000 jobs at supplier plants are also threatened.

Trump is a bitter enemy of the working class. However, the right-wing evolution of both the unions and the Democratic Party, which have overseen decades of attacks on the jobs and living standards of the working class, has permitted the billionaire president to posture as a champion of the working class with calls for the revival of manufacturing in the US. Left largely unsaid, but already revealed by the realities of the record corporate profits and stock market rise celebrated by Trump, is the understanding that the supposed manufacturing revival will be accomplished by a drastic further lowering of workers living standards, along with trade war and militarism.

The feigned concern by real-estate tycoon Trump for the fate of Lordstown is at least in part motivated by electoral calculations. Trump was able to eke out an Electoral College win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by carrying industrial states that had historically voted Democratic by claiming he would bring back manufacturing jobs.

The UAW has not lifted a finger to defend the plants threatened with closure by GM. Union officials say that the fate of the plants will be discussed during the upcoming 2019 contract negotiations. Translated, this means the UAW will offer further concessions to GM in exchange for another round of worthless promises to keep plants open.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted, Because the economy is so good, General Motors must get their Lordstown, Ohio plant open, maybe in a different form or with a new owner, FAST! He went on to compare GM unfavorably with Toyota, which he said is investing $13.5 billion in the US.

The next day Trump tweeted, Democrat [Lordstown] Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce. G.M. let our country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the US in droves.

The call by Trump to re-open the Lordstown GM plant with a new owner should be taken as a warning. A takeover of a former GM stamping plant in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 2010 under new management resulted in demands, backed by the UAW, for a 50 percent pay cut.

Trump and Vice President Mike Pence also engineered the phony deal to save the Carrier heating furnace plant in Indianapolis, Indiana. After the state government handed the company massive tax cuts, it laid off half of the workers, and with the assistance of the United Steelworkers, forced remaining workers to labor 60 hours a week with mandatory overtime.

The UAW and Local 1112 President David Green hardly need any encouragement to ram through concessions. The local has long been a model of corporatist labor-management collusion, imposing national and local concessions to save jobs even as the workforce was reduced from 13,000 to 1,700 and then to zero.

In response to Trumps tweets, the international UAW issued a groveling message declaring, Thank you for fighting alongside the UAW against GM. We will leave no stone unturned to keep the plants open!

GM executives brushed aside Trumps denunciations, defending their corporatist relationship with the UAW. To be clear, under the terms of the UAW-GM National Agreement, the ultimate future of the unallocated plants will be resolved between GM and the UAW. Management went on to tout its supposed concern for the affected workers, who the company has been slotting into jobs at other GM plants hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Trump replied early Monday, tweeting, General Motors and the UAW are going to start 'talks in September/October, Why wait, start them now!

In an interview Monday, Green continued to grovel before Trump, stating, Were doing everything we can ... to convince General Motors CEO Mary Barra to reinvest in GM Lordstown.

Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown rushed to the defense of the UAW, criticizing Trump for his disgraceful attempt to ridicule Local 1112 President Green, while Brown promoted his American Cars, American Jobs Act, basically a taxpayer subsidy of US auto manufacturers.

Later Trump tweeted, Close a plant in China or Mexico, where you invested so heavily pre-Trump, and Bring jobs home!

Here Trump, Democrats and the UAW all line up behind the filthy lie that it is foreign workers, not the capitalist profit system and the insatiable appetite of the Wall Street investors behind GM, that are responsible for the destruction of jobs and living standards. But GMs job cuts are part of a restructuring of the global auto industry, which is affecting workers throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. Last Friday, Ford announced it was cutting at least 5,000 jobs in Germany and the UK, just days after VW announced the elimination of 7,000 jobs.

The rebellion of auto parts workers in Matamoros, Mexico, along with recent strikes by autoworkers in China, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Brazil, the UK and Canada, show the possibility for developing a globally coordinated response to these attacks.

Since the 2016 election, the UAW has thrown its full support behind Trumps America First nationalism and trade war measures aimed at the foreign rivals of US capitalism. At the same time it is desperately seeking to demonstrate its continued usefulness to the corporations by suppressing the boiling opposition of workers while handing round after round of concessions to management.

The policies of both the UAW and Trump, based on the unconditional defense of capitalism, are aimed at slashing the wages and benefits of American workers to boost the profits of the automakers while diverting workers anger and opposition by pointing the finger at workers in Mexico and China who are supposedly stealing jobs.

However, the UAW is widely despised in the auto plants for its total subservience to the corporations, highlighted by the ongoing federal corruption investigation that this week netted Norwood Jewell, the lead UAW negotiator for the 2015 Fiat Chrysler contract. He was involved in a scheme to funnel millions of dollars in management bribes to UAW officials to obtain favorable contract terms. Lacking a popular base, the UAW apparatus is dependent for its continued existence on the patronage of the corporations and the government.

From the very first day of the announcement of GMs plant closing plans, the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter have been at the forefront of the fight to defend jobs. A December meeting in Detroit elected a steering committee of autoworkers that helped organize a February 9 demonstration outside GM headquarters in Detroit. Against the nationalism of the UAW, demonstrators called for the international unity of the working class in a common fight to defend jobs and oppose concessions. It advanced the call for the mobilization of the working class independent of the pro-company UAW through the construction of rank-and-file factory committees in every plant.

Preparations for the contract fight this summer must be made now through the formation of such factory committees in every location, and building the momentum for a national strike and cross-border strikes to restore the concessions handed over by the UAW, halt the plant closings and rehire all laid off and victimized workers at full pay and benefits.

No amount of appeals to the corporate owners can defend jobs. The fight against plant closures requires a direct assault on private ownership of giant industries and banks and placing the auto companies and other big corporations under democratic public ownership and the control of the working class, which produces societys wealth.

This requires a break with both the Democratic and Republican defenders of big business and the development of an independent political movement of the working class for socialism.
In his statement last week to the Senate Armed Services Committee, acting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan identified China as the countrys top threat and urged support for a massive $718 billion military budget for the coming year.

Shortly after replacing James Mattis as defence secretary in January, Shanahan used his first full day in office to emphasise the dangers of Great Power competition and to stress to Pentagon staff, Remember: China, China, China.

In his Senate testimony, Shanahan again lashed out at China, declaring it was aggressively modernising its military, systematically stealing science and technology, undermining the rules-based international order, and building an international network of coercion.

What lies behind such tirades is the determination of US imperialism to maintain and extend its global hegemony. Having become the worlds second largest economy, China threatens to undercut the rules-based international order, that is the post-World War II order in which the US dominated and set the rules in order to advance its own economic and strategic interests.

Shanahans focus on China as the chief threat is part and parcel of the Trump administrations trade war measures against China, which are aimed at ensuring the continued economic dominance of American capitalism. Trumps targeting of China is a continuation of the Obama administrations pivot to Asia that sought to undermine China diplomatically, economically and militarily.

Shanahans statement is riddled with hypocrisy. While accusing China of expanding its military, he argued for a military budget that is more than four times that of China and, in fact, is larger than the defence budgets of the next nine countries combined.

While pointing to the threat posed by Chinas nuclear arsenal, which is tiny by comparison to that of the US, Shanahan called for another $14 billion to upgrade the Pentagons nuclear missiles and nuclear capable warplanes and submarines. An additional $13.6 billion will be spent on anti-ballistic missile systems that are integral to the militarys plans for fighting a nuclear war.

The budget also calls for huge spending to expand and upgrade US military capacities across space and cyber warfare as well as more traditional areas of the air force, army and navy. More than $7 billion will be spent on military research focused on the high-end fightthat is, wars against large countries such as China and Russia. The stated aim is to ensure that the US has the most lethal military in the world.

Shanahans accusation that China is systematically stealing US and allied technology parallels the demands being made by the Trump administration as part of a trade deal with China. Unsubstantiated allegations of spying and theft, in which all countries including the US are engaged, are simply the pretext for the US to insist that China dismantle programs, such as Made in China 2025, that threaten to challenge US technological dominance.

As for building an international network of coercion, the US has been continuously engaged in wars for the past quarter century to prosecute its interests using its long-established alliances and military partnerships. Accusations that Beijing is using loans and economic incentives to extend its military reach pale into insignificance in comparison to Washingtons worldwide network of military bases.

Moreover, under Obama and now Trump, the US has been systematically strengthening alliances throughout Asia to effectively encircle China in preparation for war. Starting in the Indo-Pacific, our priority theater, Shanahan declared, we continue to pursue many belts and many roads by keeping our decades-old alliances strong and fostering growing partnerships. He boasted that the US took historic strides in 2018 in relation to Vietnam with a first US aircraft carrier visit, and India with inaugural top-level strategic talks.

The strengthening of alliances has gone hand in hand with a US military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific region. By next year, the Pentagon plans to have 60 percent of its air and naval assets positioned in Asia. Large existing military bases in Japan, South Korea and Guam have been supplemented by various basing agreements throughout the region, including in Australia, the Philippines, India and Singapore.

The US also has stepped up its provocative freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to directly challenge Chinese maritime claims in the strategic waters. Earlier this month, Admiral Philip Davidson, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, declared the US resolve to remain an enduring Pacific power in the face of expanding Chinese military activity in the South China Sea. He alleged that this constituted a hazard to trade flows and commercial activity in the region.

In fact, the Obama administration transformed the South China Sea into a dangerous flashpoint. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the US had a national interest in what had been low-key regional territorial disputes. Since then, the US has boosted its military activity in the South China Sea and conducted naval and air operations that directly intrude into waters and airspace claimed by China.

The US military build-up and activities in the South China Sea pose a direct military threat to China, which depends on its shipping lanes for its huge imports of energy and raw materials from the Middle East and Africa. The seas waters are directly adjacent to major military bases in southern China, in particular naval bases on Hainan Island.

Just last week, the US Air Force flew two B-52H strategic bombers over the South China Sea, only 10 days after another routine training mission involving two B-52s off the Chinese mainland. An Air Force spokesperson refused to confirm or deny whether the nuclear-capable bombers carried nuclear payloads.

If China conducted a similar training exercise in international airspace off the Californian coast close to sensitive US military bases, the response in Washington would be furious denunciations and threats of retaliation.

There is nothing benign about the American military build-up and provocations in Asia against China. The US, which is already waging trade war against China, is actively preparing for a high-end war against a nuclear-armed power in order to stem its historic decline and shore up its global dominance.
The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature.

Latin America

Striking Salta, Argentina teachers mobilize against their union

Thousands of striking teachers mobilized last week in the streets of Salta in northwestern Argentina in repudiation of their union representatives. The teachers demand that the education authorities negotiate directly with them.

The strike began nearly two weeks ago, after an assembly of teachers rejected a wage deal between the government and their union, negotiated behind their backs. The agreement would have raised teachers wages by 35 percent; with government bonds of 5,000 pesos in two payments.

Instead, the strikers demand a first payment of a thirty percent raise in one payment plus two payments of 19 percent.

Bolivia: San Cristobal miners demand 12 years of unpaid Sundays

On March 12, 800 miners, members of the Bolivian Federation of Miners (FSTMB), rallied in La Paz, Bolivia, demanding that the Transnational Sumitomo Corporation pay up on 12 years of unpaid Sunday work. Sumitomo owns the San Cristobal mine. The protesters condemned Cesar Navarro, the mining minister, for being an accomplice with Sumitomo.

Bolivian labor law mandates that workers that labor on Sundays be paid triple their hourly wage. San Cristobal and Sumitomo have refused to obey since 2007. Government officials are calling for arbitration and asking miners to refrain from further protests.

University workers protest in Mexico City

On March 15, hundreds of striking university workers marched in Mexico City accompanied by teachers and other supporters. The issue is wages. The government has not responded to their demands. The public universities on strike are the Metropolitan Autonomous University, the Chapingo Autonomous University, the Postgraduate College, and the Mexico City Autonomous University. The marchers rallied at Mexico Citys central and historic Three Cultures Square.

Sao Paulo, Brazil Metro workers slow-down strike

Contract workers at the Sao Paulo Metro, employed by the Lideranza subcontractor as ticket sellers, are on a slowdown strike against punitive wage discounts. The workers also demand better working conditions. The workers have been on a slow-down all last week. In addition to paying hunger wages (906 reais, or 237 US dollars), the company gives itself the right to illegally discount from wages any alleged and unproven discrepancy in passenger receipts.

The workers also point out that ticket booths are unsafe, in disrepair and very easy to break into and complained about the fact that they are represented by a company union.

Demonstrations in Buenos Aires against the high cost of food

Last Thursday supporters of an alliance of three neighborhood groups (the San Cayetano triumvirate) blocked the Pueyrredon Bridge that connects the industrial zone of Avellaneda with downtown Buenos Aires. Other groups rallied at the Obelisk in central Buenos Aires, and then marched and rallied again at the Department of Social Economics. Other groups rallied at supermarkets and set up soup-kitchens.

At the Pueyrredon Bridge the protesters defied police and blocked all lanes of traffic, except for one. A similar incident, with identical demands, resulted in 2002 after the police assassination of Maximiliano Kosteki and Dario Santillan, two unemployed youth.

The demonstrators demand an increase in welfare measures to make up for the extraordinary increase in food prices in Buenos Aires. Februarys prices are 40 percent higher than last Februarys; food prices alone are up 60 percent.

The United States

Office workers at SEIU national headquarters threaten to strike over job security

Unionized staff workers at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Washington, DC, voted by a 92 percent margin to strike over job security and other issues. The Office of Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 2, which represents administrative staff, researchers, communications specialists and pension analysts, accused the SEIU of being hypocritical and practicing union busting.

David Hoskins, one of the SEIU workers, told CSBN, The truth is that what they preach publicly ... is very different from what they do internally. The SEIU staff has shrunk from 171 workers in 2005 to 84 and workers charge the SEIU with outsourcing work to non-union contractors. Workers cite the public relations firm BerlinRosen, hired by the SEIU, as an instigator in the campaign.

During negotiations SEIU has been seeking to remove layoff protection for new hires. Under the old agreement, a worker with five or more years seniority who is slated to have his position eliminated had the right to transfer to another position. They want to make unionized workers less secure and give them less job security, said Hoskins.

California hotel workers carry out one-day strike over arrest of union organizer

Workers at the Hyatt Andaz hotel in West Hollywood, California carried out a one-day strike March 12 to protest the arrest of a union representative who was legally meeting with union members in the cafeteria. Nerexda Soto, a union organizer for Unite Here, was discussing the on-going contract negotiations with workers on March 6 when four deputies from the Los Angeles sheriffs department entered the cafeteria and handcuffed her.

The hotels recently installed general manager has agreed to comply with labor law and allow Unite Here Local 11 to have access to the hotels employees. Unite Here is currently negotiating with a number of hotel chains over wages, pensions, healthcare, safety and protection for immigrant workers.

Canada

Foreign service workers in bargaining impasse

Workers employed in Canadas diplomatic corps have filed for arbitration after nine months of negotiations failed to produce a new agreement with the federal government.

The 1,600 members of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO) have been working without a contract since last July and union negotiators cite a range of outstanding issues including health and safety and delayed payments arising from the disastrous Phoenix pay system. The union also says that the government has been intransigent in negotiations and government negotiators say they will abide by any decision made by the Labour Relations board.

In 2013 PAFSO went on strike for nearly 6 months after working without a contract for nearly two years.

Nova Scotia college strike ends with no deal

After less than two weeks on the picket line, teachers and librarians at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NASCAD) in Halifax, Nova Scotia are returning to work after their union agreed to allow a mediator to settle outstanding issues.

More than 90 full-time and part-time staff, members of the Faculty Association of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (FUNSCAD), have been working without a contract since June of last year. The strike was called over wage and workload issues, which the union says they have not been able to improve in past contracts due to the financial difficulties of the school.

The school remained open during the strike with the use of non-union teaching staff, but many students refused to cross the picket line.
By Christopher Black

March 19, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - The American war on Venezuela continues to escalate with the sabotage of its electricity grid, the most serious action of all so far, which was not only an act of terrorism against the entire civilian population but also an attempt to shut down exports of Venezuelan oil.

This is part of the American hybrid war strategy. Hybrid warfare is warfare that uses all domains of life and society to hurt and damage the targeted nation. It was best defined by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiansui, two senior colonels of the Peoples Liberation Army in their famous book titled, Unrestricted Warfare, published in 1999 which proposed strategies and tactics that could be used by developing countries to compensate for their military inferiority vis a vis the United States during a high tech war.

Published prior to the American cruise missile attack on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, the book drew a lot of attention in the west for its proposition that a multitude of means, military and non-military could be used to strike at the United States in a conflict; hacking into websites, targeting financial institutions, terrorism, using the media, urban warfare, sabotage, crippling infrastructure, subversion, all the methods of what the Americans term hybrid warfare.

The Chinese colonels stated that the first rule of this type of warfare is that there are no rules, nothing is forbidden. But they made a fundamental error when they also stated that strong countries would not use the same approach against weak countries because strong countries make the rule while rising one break them and, though admitting that the US breaks the rules of international law and makes up its own law when it suits their interests stated that it has to observe its own rules or the world wont trust it.

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Well, the colonels seem to have ignored the long history of the United States using exactly these types of methods against all its enemies weak or strong, of using unrestricted warfare, without limitations, in effect, total war on nations and peoples they target. They did not seem to understand that the Americans dont give a damn what anyone else in the world thinks or whether anyone trusts them, which makes them all the more dangerous because peaceful settlement of disputes with them on an equitable basis is next to impossible. They are currently using these methods against Russia, Iran, China, Syria, DPRK, and of course Venezuela.

All these tactics are, of course, elements of a war of aggression, which is the fundamental war crime, and now a crime at the ICC for which they could, in theory, be prosecuted. Yet, the ICC prosecutor sits at her desk, as his her custom, drinking tea while collecting a large salary and instead of stating that the US and its allies are committing crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Venezuelan people entertains a Canadian request on behalf of the Lima Group to investigate the Venezuelan government for crimes against humanity. We have to suppose for not giving all its oil to the Americans.

Though Venezuela is a Party to the Treaty of Rome and so falls within their jurisdiction, for the Prosecutor to begin an investigation she has to be supplied with credible and reliable information deserving of investigation that crimes have been committed and crimes which the Venezuelan government is systematically ignoring or is part of. They have supplied no such information in their requests. All they have sent to the Prosecutor are unsubstantiated claims, bald statements echoing their political rhetoric. So there are no legal grounds on which the Prosecutor can act.

However, there is overwhelming evidence and outright confessions, bragging in fact by the US, Canadian and some EU leaders that they are committing crimes against humanity against the people of Venezuela with their economic warfare, that they call sanctions which are illegal under international law, and for supporting an internal coup attempt, for their conspiracy to commit aggression and lately the sabotage of civilian infrastructure, the electricity grid.

Canada, with the US, and European nations, such as Germany Spain France and Britain, have imposed illegal sanctions, economic warfare on the people of Venezuela in order to force them to turn against their government by making them suffer. The sanctions are illegal because they violate the UN Charter. Only the Security Council has the authority to impose sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. They are also crimes against humanity because they amount to siege warfare, that is, causing the deliberate suffering of civilians in an attempt to overthrow a government. Venezuela to protect itself, is building support among the nations such as Russia China, India, Cuba, Turkey, Iran and many other nations that have just formed a group to restore the UN Charter as the heart of international law and in recent days we have seen both Russia and China promising assistance and telling the Americans to back off.

Venezuela can also play the ICC game. It can request the ICC to lay charges against the countries attacking it and can file a claim against the USA and its gang for damages in the International Court of Justice and request an order from that court to the US gang stop their aggression against Venezuela. Venezuela can also use war without rules on its attackers and President Maduro hinted as much in a recent speech warning the Americans that they will not be immune from the consequences of their actions.

In some way it appears as if the United States, its influence weakening in other areas of the world, is attempting to re-establish its one time dominance in North and South America. Canada has been long brought to heel and is just a whimpering poodle in the lap of the American state to the dismay of most Canadians who have no real say in anything. Mexico was once in their pocket but already there are signs of trying to undermine and slap down the new Mexican President Obrador whose social democracy is too left for the far right that controls the US machinery of power.

John Bolton even stated that the Monroe Doctrine was the foundation of their policy to explain the US approach against Venezuela. The statement was a clear insult to all the countries of Latin America, the Lima Group included but it has no basis in international law.

The Monroe Doctrine is not accepted as part of international law and never has been. It is a very simple statement that the Americans issued in 1823 just after most of Latin America freed itself from Spanish and Portuguese rule, proclaiming that the western hemisphere was an American region of interest and that any European intrusions into the area would be considered a hostile act. To resurrect it today as Bolton tries to do is an insult to all Latin American countries, and even Canada, since it means that the Americans view those nations as so many provinces of their empire. However there is a contradiction because the Americans now rely on assistance from the very European countries that the Monroe Doctrine was aimed against; Spain, Britain, France, Germany in order to advance their war against Venezuela. So its resurrection at this time shows American weakness, by relying on help from the same nations that the Monroe Doctrine claims to exclude from the region.

Indeed, they heavily relied on these European interlopers to help them get their American puppet back into the country after he had left to try to stage a propaganda stunt at the Colombia-Venezuela border, a stunt that backfired and made them look like fools. On his return to Venezuela on March 4, Guaido was met at the airport, likely preventing his deserved arrest, by some European ambassadors from Spain, France, and Germany, in particular. The US ambassador was not there.

In any case that action by the foreign ambassadors was a violation of the Vienna Convention and a hostile act. Article 5 of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations sets out the permitted normal activities of consuls in a receiving state. But subsection (m) states:

(m) performing any other functions entrusted to a consular post by the sending State which are not prohibited by the laws and regulations of the receiving State or to which no objection is taken by the receiving State or which are referred to in the international agreements in force between the sending State and the receiving State.

This means that supporting the conspirators in an attempted coup against the receiving state, Venezuela is clearly prohibited and is regarded under customary international law as a hostile act and Venezuela has the right to immediately expel the consular officials involved or the entire consulate. The German ambassador who seemed to be most vocal has now been expelled.

Part of the hybrid warfare is the use of propaganda of course and an important element of the US propaganda is the resort to a claim that there exists a legal doctrine of responsibility to protect in international law. This doctrine does not exist in international law. It is purely an invention of the United States and its allies to justify their wars of aggression and violations of the UN Charter. Since they cannot obtain the support of the Security Council for their wars, because they are in violation of the obligation to keep the peace, and violations of the rights of every nation to its sovereignty and independence, the right not to be attacked in any way by other nations, they invented this phrase to justify the unjustifiable, It is nothing less than a pretext for wars of aggression and people should put it out of their minds as an argument for these wars. It is a bogus doctrine, a doctrine invented by fascists.

Worse they base the resort to this false doctrine on false facts because the UN Human Rights Council sent a Special Rapporteur to investigate the conditions in Venezuela and the cause of them. The man assigned dutifully went there, investigated and dutifully filed his report which because it did not accord with what they had hoped he would report was suppressed and we only know about it through an interview he gave to the press. Mr. Alfred de Zeyas reported to the UN that it was the illegal economic sanctions imposed by the US, Canada and their other allies that are the principal cause of the hardships being created in Venezuela and that they are illegal and should be ended and that the countries imposing them should be charged for committing crimes against humanity, I could quote him at length but I think the reader deserves to read this interview in full as much as de Zeyas deserves to he heard. We can only hope that the ICC Prosecutor will read his report and act on it. But I wont hold my breath waiting.

The people of the world must protest this war, protest against these criminals who control the machinery of state in their nations for the crimes we see them commit against peoples in foreign lands so openly are the very crimes they are committing against us at home. We are all targets. No one is immune. The war on the people of Venezuela, and now, for good measure, Cuba and other socialist countries, against any form of socialism everywhere, is a war against us all.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook.

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Peace and joy
By Ashe Schow

March 19, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - The former boss of the ex-British spy who produced the uncorroborated, salacious dossier on President Donald Trumps alleged Russian collusion says the document is overrated, and wouldnt comment on the character of the man who wrote it.

Sir John Scarlett, who was the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 2004 to 2009, said after a recent national security panel in Washington, D.C. that the dossier Christopher Steele, who ran MI6s Russia desk from 2006 to 2009, wrote was overrated and could never be corroborated.

Scarlett had just finished speaking at the Jamestown Foundations 12th annual terrorism conference on a panel titled 2018 in Review and the Prospects for Terrorism in 2019. Retired U.S. Marine Corps General John R. Allen was also on the panel moderated by Georgetown University professor Dr. Bruce Hoffman.

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When the panel concluded, journalist Nicholas Ballasy asked Scarlett about his former employee, Steele, and the dossier that helped launched the collusion theory that Trump colluded with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. Ballasy asked Scarlett, in a recording released just last week, what the former MI6 chief thought of the dossier and if he believed what was written in it.

Well, no, Scarlett said, I looked at it and I thought these are commercial intelligence reports; I don't know about the sources -- they might be right, they might be wrong and they'll probably be overrated and they've been overrated.

Ballasy then asked if Scarlett thought the dossier could ever be verified, to which Steeles former boss responded: No.

Scarlett was then asked if he was surprised that Steele would put forth the unverified information contained in the dossier.

Well, they were commercial intelligence reports and they were visibly that so there's a question of why they were there and where they came from and who commissioned them and so on, Scarlett answered. So, I've tended to see them in that context and never quite of political significance for obvious reasons and actually if you think about it, people have talked about them in a really big way a year or so ago and they haven't really made that much of a difference.

As I said, I suspect, all I can say, is they are overrated, he added.

Finally, Ballasy asked what Steel was like to work with. Scarlett answered: Im not going to comment and walked away.

Scarletts final response is odd, considering the situation surrounding Steeles departure from MI6 is not well known. Steele was considered to be a patriot and a reliable source to the FBI in the United States, but if he was good at his job, why wouldnt Scarlett just say so? If he wasnt, his credibility could be in question. Further, if Steele left MI6 to create Orbis Business Intelligence in 2009 at the height of his MI6 career, was he a patriot or someone looking to make himself wealthy, and if so, how did that affect what he included in the dossier?

Steele has kept a low profile in recent years. In 2017, he disappeared from his London mansion for two months after being named as the author of the uncorroborated Trump dossier. He said he would be returning to work on supporting the broader interests of Orbis and wouldnt be making any further statements or comments at this time, he told the Press Association. He also posed for pictures at the time.

Newly unsealed legal documents from a lawsuit in which Steele was deposed reveal he used unverified information from internet searches and an article from a random person who posted to CNNs old citizen journalism initiative to back up parts of his dossier, according to CNN.

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Terrorism has No Religion

By Scott Poynting

 and death shall have no dominion  Dylan Thomas

March 19, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - The only way to begin, is by joining in sorrow with those bereaved in Christchurch on 15 March, and remembering and respecting the fellow humanity of those who, so painfully recently, were also living. Of course, we must find a way to comfort those made fearful by this terror: especially since such fear-making was its major purpose.

There are some crimes of such moment that we always remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is one such that is often named; September 11th is another. The latter was a terrorist attack that was made for showing on television; I heard it on the radio and obstinately refused to watch TV for two days. The Christchurch massacres were made for propagating the terror and ideology via the internet. I am not yet clear about what this means, but it is obvious that it is significant, and that the jumbled ravings of the killer were put together with gleanings from the Web. He says so, in his pre-murder manifesto. Police and politicians cautioned us not to watch the video footage. Indeed I had no stomach to do so. Yet I spent the night reading the weird manifesto, which was easy enough to get hold of early on.

When I heard the appalling news  somewhat late  I was sitting at my desk, trying to write about Islamophobia. Ironically, the last sentence that I had written, was: There is nothing intrinsically Islamic about these old enemies vanquished (eventually, for a time) by the empire; Islam was just part of the package of the otherness, along with non-Whiteness / non-Europeanness, of these brown or black non-Christians who stood in opposition to the empire. I was harking back to how the crazed jingoists of the white settlement colony of New South Wales had sent troops to Sudan in 1885 to avenge General Gordons ill fate in Khartoum  and it was an immensely popular gesture  invoking, in their recruitment and fundraising campaign, Englands and all Christendoms old enemies, the Saracens. The anti-Muslim racism was bound up in empire, I was arguing.

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It is a sort of white (European) supremacism, anti-immigration and ethnic cleansing that pervade the 74 incoherent pages of the Christchurch murderers diatribe. Islam is almost incidental to him, although a mish-mash of obsessions alludes to Saracens, crusader imagery, Knights Templar, the Turk, the siege of Vienna and so on and on. Yet also Valhalla, just to emphasise that its about race: the killer proudly owns to fascism and racism and does not baulk at neo-nazism, though he regrets that there are no real nazis any more. The vipers nests must be burned, and non-European children who are in our lands must be killed, without hindrance of sentiment. The killer is fixated upon the non-white others out-breeding us, and effecting white genocide  a by now standard Islamophobic trope and one similarly colouring the manifesto of that other mass killer, Anders Breivik, to whose motivations and crimes the Christchurch mass murderers have already been widely compared.

The nonsense of this irruption of irrationality should not lead us to the error of believing that individual madness is the cause, or that the motivations are unshared. In the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Oslo massacres, when we were all Norwegians, George Morgan and I wrote (in Global Islamophobia, 2012: 1) that the mass murder displayed the clear imprint of a revanchist nationalist politics that has gained popularity in many parts of the contemporary West.  While rightwing political organisations have scurried to denounce Breivik and the murders  it is clear that he drew on their (tortured) political logic to rationalise his actions. Australias right-wing racist Senator, Fraser Anning, who has remarked that migration was behind the Christchurch massacre, and recently called even more despicably for a final solution to the Muslim Question, is in the same camp. Breivik credited the likes of Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders and the English Defence League for his inspiration. This perpetrators manifesto played on exactly the same sorts of themes: mass immigration, Muslim birth rates, white genocide, and all the rest. It is not only his insignias that are fascist. It is exterminist, and we have seen it before.

New Zealand rightwing extremist blogger Cameron Slater, having in 2015 just quoted Golda Meir as condemning Arabs as not loving their children, wrote of Islam:  religion of peace? No way, it is a death cult and we should kill them before they kill us. Well, the message got across on 15 March in Christchurch. Slater, Fraser Anning and their ilk all sell the same sort of product. Will they own it now?

What hate crime and terrorism have in common  and this crime was both  is that they victimise communities beyond those directly targeted, in order to send a message. A bright young academic, and our recent co-author on Islamophobia, exclaimed to our collaborator in her grief, They keep killing us!. The perpetrators warped and wicked testimonial, The Great Replacement, with its obsession about ethnic cleansing, makes clear that the armies of his allies (yes, he sees himself as a courageous soldier, repelling invaders by killing unarmed civilians including children) will keep doing so until they go back to their own lands. He wants to reinforce a they and us  and we must not let him.

Others will have commented more than enough about the irony of this (white Australian) immigrant railing against immigration and appointing himself as the defender of our land  which he conceives of as a little finger of Europe. While obsessed with race, he does not mention, in 74 pages, Indigenous people in either the land of his birth or the land of his recent residence. His white supremacism harks back mythically to a racially pure/purified Europe. It is different from the US white supremacism excused (embraced!) by Trump, which disparages Black Americans or Hispanic peoples; rather it regards the United States (and indeed Brazil) as hopelessly degenerate and irredeemable. (The manifesto looks forward to guns and war sorting all that decadence out, with the white race emerging victorious.) This racist gunman is no more concerned with the race legacy in the Americas of chattel slavery than he is with that of settler colonialism and the dispossession of indigenous peoples. Its a strangely Europe-centred racism, cobbled together with memes from the internet: no less effective, for all that.

I feel strangely soiled, having immersed myself in this excrement. And deeply disturbed. But I am committed to the methodological principle of taking this sort of testimonial seriously, for explanations of the crime. Also, to finding ways of countering this sort of ideology. There are many such violent racists out there on the internet, and recruiting and proselytising in our communities  and he boasts of this. He addresses them, instructs them.

One of the first public comments that I read about the massacre was Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khans observation that terrorism does not belong to any religion. He has a global political point to make, and he is correct in doing so. Before his election to political office, when people in Pakistans north-west were systematically terrorised by murderous US-alliance drones in the name of western counter-terrorism, Imran Khan campaigned in a principled way against this. He has to deal with Indian nationalist terrorism on the other side, along with plenty of the home-grown terrorism. Empire and nationalism may be inflected by religion, but they are by no means reducible to it.

I later watched with unexpected admiration as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke, movingly and with dignity, of compassion and indeed the duty to give shelter to those in need of it, as crucial, unifying New Zealand values. How different from bullying mateship purveyed as national values on the other (my) side of the Tasman. She did seem to have trouble mentioning the M-word, but then the murderer declared that he selected his victims as immigrants and non-Europeans rather than as Muslims. In two mosques, at Friday prayer time, mind you.

Some of the media commentary noted the kiwi black humour bandied for comfort among the traumatised people anxiously gathering outside the mosques (these others are capable of such kiwiness!). In that vein, and as we will all be New Zealanders for the while, I might observe that the killer began his legacy rant with a complete rendition of Dylan Thomass Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night. One dear literature-loving Muslim colleague of mine commented that the man had added one more (minor) crime  of plagiarism  to his record. The rant is pretentious and pseudo-erudite, with sprinklings from literature and worldly-travelled posturing as well as potty-mouthed locker room macho menace.

In laying claim to inheriting  and safeguarding  all of European civilisation, the killer declares his English, Scots and Irish heritage. No Welsh: some small comfort for Dylan Thomas. As the epigraph at the top of this present piece suggests, perhaps we should take Dylan Thomas back.

This article was originally published by " Criminology Collective " -

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By Sharmine Narwani

March 19, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - It took a country-wide power outage in Venezuela, whispers of a cyberattack, and smug tweets from US officials to make me suddenly recall the cloak-and-dagger story of a close Iranian-American friend nine years ago.

My friend, an engineer  who I will not name for obvious reasons and who I will call Kourosh for the purpose of this article  revealed to me in 2010 that he was approached by two State Department employees who offered him $250,000 to do something very simple during his upcoming trip to Tehran.

Kourosh was freaking out because he didnt know how these guys knew he was going to Iran in the first place, and how they knew he was cash-strapped, in the second.

He wasnt a particularly political person, though he had participated in some DC protests in the aftermath of the hotly contested 2009 presidential elections. He was just one of thousands of Iranian-American engineers in the Washington-Maryland-Virginia technology belt looking to make a decent living.

Kourosh told the US officials that he was not interested, that if Iran needed to make changes, Iranians inside the country were the only ones who should do it.

I begged him to let me write this story, but he was very nervous and declined. Over the next year or two, I pushed some more and he gave me further information, but wouldnt budge on its publication. Heres what he revealed:

The State Department guys had since approached him a second time. They offered him further details about the job. They wanted him to disable Tehrans power grid in exchange for the $250k. They needed someone with technical skills, but said the job was a simple one. He would have to go to a specific location in the Tehran area with a laptop or similar communication device and punch in a code.

Kourosh even told me the code. Said he had memorized it and could recite it in his sleep. Here it is: 32-B6-B1040-E (symbol for epsilon)

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Okay, thats not the actual code, but it looks exactly like that  same format, same sequence and amount of numbers and letters. I dont feel comfortable publishing the code in case it is still relevant  sorry.

If anyone knows what this code could be, please comment below. A colleague with an engineering background has this to say about it: This could be a password for power grids or any equipment that is governed by an electronic or computer system. Manufacturers have codes they use for de-bugging or resetting a system. Control systems are all electronic and sometimes for any reason (like an earthquake) something is triggered and the system goes off. And then you reset it within the vicinity of the system usually and feed in the new code. You dont have to physically be there if you can hack into it, but thats of course harder. If they (the Americans) needed to have someone physically there during the sabotage attempt, it probably means they didnt have remote access to the system.

I dont actually know why Kourosh received that level of detail unless he was willing to go through with this act of sabotage on behalf of the US government, but he assured me he would never consider it  that he was just curious during the second meeting. No way, he told me. Imagine it I did it and someones grandmother or father died because their life support machine switched off.

I remember these details because I discussed it with a number of people in and around 2010, without disclosing Kouroshs name. Today, I dug up the old Facebook message I sent to Iranian-American author and activist Trita Parsi of the DC-based National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a fellow Huffington Post blogger at the time. Trita gave me permission to post screenshots here:

Disclosure: My Iranian-American husband and I ran an internet company in the telecommunications industry in Washington years ago and I was a founding member of the Iranian-American Technology Council, so I knew a lot of engineers and technology folks from that very background.

I recall writing to Trita precisely because he was so keyed into the political heart of this community. It would be extremely dangerous for myself and colleagues in my industry if the US government was recruiting Iranian-American civilian engineers as saboteurs in third countries.

This deep-dive by investigative journalist Whitney Webb into Venezuelas power outage reveals some interesting details about a Bush administration cyberattack plan against Iran. Exposed by the New York Times in 2016, the Nitro Zeus plan  which involved the US Cyber Command  would, among other things, target crucial parts of Irans electricity grid.

Take note, however, that US officials asked Kourosh to sabotage Tehrans power grid during the Obama administration. Obviously aspects of the Nitro Zeus plan remained on the table despite a switch in government, political parties and policies.

Back to Venezuela

Its been a grueling week for Venezuelans dealing with the nationwide blackout that has brought the country to a standstill. Last Thursday an accident at the Guri Dam power plant in Bolivar state  which generates around 80% of the countrys electricity  left at least 20 out of 23 Venezuelan states without electricity.

As power started to flood back to central states, a second cyber attack on Saturday plunged the country back into darkness. Government authorities have charged US officials with launching the attack on Venezuelas electricity infrastructure and say they will present evidence of this to the United Nations and other international organizations.

The US has countered, blaming the power outage on corruption and infrastructure neglect by the government of President Nicolas Maduro  against whom Washington has been staging a rather unsuccessful coup effort these past months.

But in the midst of this to-and-fro between longtime adversaries, insightful news reports and analysis are starting to emerge, suggesting that a US cyberattack against Venezuelas power grid is actually a very possible  even likely  scenario. Says Forbes Magazines Kalev Leetaru:

In the case of Venezuela, the idea of a government like the United States remotely interfering with its power grid is actually quite realistic. Remote cyber operations rarely require a significant ground presence, making them the ideal deniable influence operation.

Widespread power and connectivity outages like the one Venezuela experienced last week are also straight from the modern cyber playbook. Cutting power at rush hour, ensuring maximal impact on civilian society and plenty of mediagenic post-apocalyptic imagery, fits squarely into the mold of a traditional influence operation, he continues.

For those of us who have spent years covering US irregular warfare in the Middle East, infrastructure targets are part and parcel of these wars  sometimes via direct strikes, other times via proxies and sabotage operations.

Im not just talking about cyberattacks like the US/Israeli-made Stuxnet virus that destroyed hundreds of centrifuges at Iranian nuclear facilities.

In Syria, for instance, the US military specifically targeted major economic infrastructure under the guise of fighting ISIS. These include but are not limited to oilfields, wells and facilities, electrical transformer stations, gas plants, bridges, canals, a number of vital dams and reservoirs in the countrys northern agricultural belt  and power generation facilities.

And US-backed proxies  part of the Pentagon and CIAs irregular army in Syria  targeted bread factories, wheat silos and flour mills to deprive a population of basic food staples.

As opposed to conventional wars, US irregular warfare seeks to covertly use influence ops to turn the largest part of a countrys population, the uncommitted middle, into supporting regime-change. Destroying infrastructure, creating shortages, unleashing political violence, propaganda dissemination  these are all steps outlined in the US militarys Special Forces Unconventional Warfare manual to create a disgruntled population that will turn on its government.

And cyber warfare is the newest theater of engagement for the Pentagon, which is now openly ramping up its investment in lethal cyber weapons, regardless of the civilian casualties these attacks will leave in their wake.

So far in Venezuela around 20 people are reported dead due to the blackouts, though Ive seen some opposition sources place that number north of 70.

Is Venezuelas blackout part of US cyber warfare against a Latin American adversary? Has the US engaged in cyber warfare against Iranian infrastructure?

Does a duck quack?

Follow Sharmine on Twitter and Facebook if you like. All her work is archived on at Mideast Shuffle.
EU dilemma: how to deal with China

March 19, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - Facing Chinas irresistible rise all across the chessboard, and under relentless US pressure, the not exactly democratic EU leadership is on a backbreaking exercise to position itself between a geopolitical/geoeconomic rock and a hard place.

The 28-member EU holds a crucial meeting next week in Brussels where it may adopt a 10-point action plan detailing, in a thesis, the terms of an equitable economic relationship with China going forward.

This will happen as Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Italy and then France  ahead of the very important, annual China-EU summit in Brussels on April 9, to be co-chaired by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

Thats the crucial context under which the European Commission (EC) has recommended what it describes as 10 concrete actions to the EU Heads of State for their debate at the European Council in March 21 and 22.

The full report, EU-China  A Strategic Outlook, is here.

The EC shows how in 2017  the latest available figures  the EU was Chinas largest partner with a share of 13% of imports of goods in China and a share of 16% of exports of goods from China. At the same time, the EC stresses that China is an economic competitor and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance.

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Yet the ECs contribution to the European Council debate next week is far from confrontational. It is a balancing act couched in Eurocratic terminology attempting to shape common resolve among the 28 member-states.

Predictable real problem

Coming from the EC/EU, support for effective multilateralism with the United Nations at its core is the norm  with China fully integrated.

Beijing is praised for its support for the Iran nuclear deal, its role in the denuclearization of North Korea, its upcoming role in the peace process in Afghanistan and tackling the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. The real problem, predictably, is Chinas maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Virtually no one apart from Brussels Eurocrats knows about the existence of an EU Strategy on Connecting Europe and Asia. Thats one of those joint communiques that no one reads, issued late last year, enabling the Union to seek synergies between the EU and third countries, including China, in transport, energy and digital connectivity, on the basis of international norms and standards.

Curiously, in the EC report, theres no mention whatsoever of the New Silk Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)  which happens to be Chinas synergy masterplan for the whole of Eurasia. We could define it as Globalization 3.0.

On the other hand, Made in China 2025 is duly referenced  and not demonized, Trump administration-style.

From the EU perspective, the key problem remains lack of reciprocal market access. The EU wants greater access for European companies, less Chinese subsidies for Chinese companies and curtailment of technology transfer from European firms to their state-owned joint venture partners in China.

All this should be part of a deal on investment rules to be clinched by 2020.

Action 9 in the EC report is quite revealing: To safeguard against potential serious security implications for critical digital infrastructure, a common EU approach to the security of 5G networks is needed. To deal with it, the EC will issue  what else  another recommendation.

A hefty degree of Eurocratic puzzlement seems to be in the cards; one cannot disassociate BRI from Made in China, 5G and Huawei technology; its all part of the same package. Yet the EU is under heavy pressure from Washington to ban Huawei and forget about joining BRI, even as nearly 20 EU member-states are already linked or interested in linking to BRI, and a majority are also interested in Chinese 5G technology.

Brussels diplomats confirmed to Asia Times that the EC report was basically authored by Berlin and Paris. And yes, they had to deal with heavy Washington pressure.

The report harbors a subtle, inbuilt element of Chinese threat  perhaps not as overtly as in a Pentagon report. This stance is how the Franco-German alliance believes it may influence recalcitrants such as the 16+1 group of Central and Eastern European nations doing business with China, as well as soon to be BRI-linked Italy.

Yet thats already a done deal  as I detailed in the case of Italy.

Existential threat

Beijing is accomplishing, little by little, something that is unbearable for the Beltway; extending its influence not only inside the EU but inside the NATO space.

The US Deep State may have lumped BRI  along with Made in China 2025 and Huaweis 5G  as part of an existential threat; but thats not the case for most EU latitudes, from Greece and Portugal to German industrialists and the new Lega/Five Stars administration in Rome.

Brussels very well knows that Washington will punish any ally who gets too close to Beijing. Its never enough to be reminded that the list of economic threats to the US features, in that order, China, Russia and Germany. And Italy is now caught in the crossfire  because it is committed to good economic relations with both China and Russia.

Rome has already sent a clear message to Brussels; beyond any EU common resolve facing China, what matters is the Italian national economic interest in, for instance, linking the ports of Venice, Trieste and Genoa to the New Silk Road. Alarmed Atlanticists are essentially warning that Italians cannot cross a red line; they need to ask permission to act independently. Thats not going to happen  whatever the EC decides to recommend.
Flaring requests increase

CASPER (WNE)  The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission green lit another flaring request last week, albeit a narrower one than usual, due to a packed docket of hearings.

Navigation Powder River, LLC, an oil and gas exploration and production company, sought an exemption to Wyomings limitations on flaring gas at a new well. A pipeline that is currently con...
When it comes to museums, Budapest has all the usual big hitters  a grandiose national history museum, a fine arts museum thats stunning inside and out, and the sobering Terror Museum, which documents the horrors of Budapests fascist and communist regimes.

The more intrepid explorers amongst you, however, might be seeking smaller or more unusual spots  and were happy to report that Budapest has plenty, covering a wide variety of subjects.



Located in the ever-charming Obuda district, this museum is a must-see for anyone whos interested in op art and one of the genres Hungarian founders, Victor Vasarely. Housed in the beautiful and newly-renovated Zichy Palace, its a great place to spend an afternoon.

Op art  also known as optical art  makes art out of optical illusions. In his museum, youll find some of his best works, as well as insights into the life of a man who remained rather obscure by art-world standards.

Address: 1033 Budapest, Szentlelek ter 6.

Blink as you hurry down Kazinczy Street and youll probably miss the entrance to Budapests Electrotechnical Museum. That would be a shame though, because if youre keen to see all manner of old-fashioned machines with lights, wires, and transformers, then this place will scratch your itch.

The fun starts as soon as you enter the courtyard of its Bauhaus building  which is surrounded by old neon signs that are illuminated on special occasions.

Inside, its interesting enough to just wander the room looking at the exhibits but, depending on when you visit, you might be lucky enough to be treated to a demonstration from a visiting scientist.

Address: 1075 Budapest, Kazinczy u. 21.

Also known as the Hungarian House of Photography, this cute museum on Nagymezo Street is home to a variety of local, foreign, historical, and contemporary photography exhibits.

Anyone with an interest for the lens is sure to find something to indulge in here, and the building also houses a bookshop where youre free to browse a fantastic collection of photo books.

Or, you could head up to the third floor to the Pecsi Jozsef Library of Photography where youll find a wealth of photo albums, magazines, lexicons, encyclopedias, and bibliographies- a celebration of the great Hungarian photographers and their international contemporaries.

Address: 1065 Budapest, Nagymezo u. 20.

Houdini was Budapest-born didnt you know, and this museum, while small, manages to pack in a whole lot of stuff that will let you know more about the mans life and work.

As well as the expected locks, keys and other devices that formed parts of his mesmerizing illusions, youll find some furniture and other bits and pieces from his home.

And, as if gawking at all this cool stuff wasnt enough of a reason to visit, in the museums theatre, at the end of your look around, youll be treated to a little show for the in-house illusionist  a nice little touch.

Address: 1014 Budapest, Disz ter 11.

Roth Miksa is the man we can thank for decorating most of Budapests most beautiful art nouveau houses with stunning stained glass windows and mosaics.

And, thankfully, you can today visit his workshop to get some insight into how his masterpieces were lovingly crafted as well as get a look at the humble life he led  3 of the rooms in his house have been displayed exactly as they would have been during his lifetime.

His house is small, yet beautiful, and located on the peaceful Nefelejcs Street. A visit here is a chance to escape the chaos of the city for a while and enjoy some beauty.

Address: 1078 Budapest, Nefelejcs utca 26.



Photos courtesy of the venues.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban has written to members of the European Peoples Party that initiated the expulsion of his ruling Fidesz from the centre-right bloc, apologising for offensive language, but maintaining his political positions.

Leading Fidesz politicians have said in recent days that the party would make no compromises on fundamental political issues in its dispute with the EPP.

In his latest interview with Hungarian public radio, Orban said no compromise was possible when it came to migration and protecting Christian culture, but we can talk about everything else.

According to a copy of the prime ministers letter obtained by Reuters, Orban asked the leader of the Flemish Christian Democrats, Wouter Beke, to reconsider his proposal to expel Fidesz.

Bertalan Havasi, the PMs press chief, confirmed the letters authenticity to MTI along with Reuters report that similar letters have been sent to all the EPP members that joined the proposal to expel Fidesz from the grouping.

Zoltan Kovacs, the state secretary for international communications, said as long as there is a chance to change the pro-migration tendency in the EPP, we will do everything we can.

They are open to reasonable compromise on every issue except for stopping migration and protecting Europes borders and its Christian culture, Kovacs said.



MTI Photo: Szigetvary Zsolt




Sadly, today's corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about the poverty and inequality that drove the famine than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants





By Bill Bigelow

March 19, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - Wear green on St. Patricks Day or get pinched. That pretty much sums up the Irish-American curriculum that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.

Sadly, todays high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom. In my own high school social studies classes, I begin with Sinead OConnors haunting rendition of Skibbereen, which includes the verse:

 Oh its well I do remember, that bleak

December day,

The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive

Us all away

They set my roof on fire, with their cursed

English spleen

And thats another reason why I left old

Skibbereen.

By contrast, Holt McDougals U.S. history textbook The Americans, devotes a flat two sentences to The Great Potato Famine. Prentice Halls America: Pathways to the Present fails to offer a single quote from the time. The text calls the famine a horrible disaster, as if it were a natural calamity like an earthquake. And in an awful single paragraph, Houghton Mifflins The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People blames the ravages of famine simply on a blight, and the only contemporaneous quote comes, inappropriately, from a landlord, who describes the surviving tenants as famished and ghastly skeletons. Uniformly, social studies textbooks fail to allow the Irish to speak for themselves, to narrate their own horror.

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These timid slivers of knowledge not only deprive students of rich lessons in Irish-American history, they exemplify much of what is wrong with todays curricular reliance on corporate-produced textbooks.

First, does anyone really think that students will remember anything from the books dull and lifeless paragraphs? Todays textbooks contain no stories of actual people. We meet no one, learn nothing of anyones life, encounter no injustice, no resistance. This is a curriculum bound for boredom. As someone who spent almost 30 years teaching high school social studies, I can testify that students will be unlikely to seek to learn more about events so emptied of drama, emotion, and humanity.

Nor do these texts raise any critical questions for students to consider. For example, its important for students to learn that the crop failure in Ireland affected only the potato  during the worst famine years, other food production was robust. Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire, Irelands was surely the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly. But if only this one variety of potato, the Lumper, failed, and other crops thrived, why did people starve?

Thomas Gallagher points out in Paddys Lament, that during the first winter of famine, 1846-47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultry  food that could have prevented those deaths. Throughout the famine, as Gallagher notes, there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.

The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.

More than a century and a half after the Great Famine, we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions. Raj Patel opens his book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the Worlds Food System: Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.

Patels book sets out to account for the rot at the core of the modern food system. This is a curricular journey that our students should also be on  reflecting on patterns of poverty, power, and inequality that stretch from 19th century Ireland to 21st century Africa, India, Appalachia, and Oakland; that explore what happens when food and land are regarded purely as commodities in a global system of profit.

But todays corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about this inequality than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants. Take Pearson, the global publishing giant. At its website, the corporation announces (redundantly) that we measure our progress against three key measures: earnings, cash and return on invested capital. The Pearson empire had 2017 worldwide profits of $801 million. Multinationals like Pearson have no interest in promoting critical thinking about an economic system whose profit-first premises they embrace with gusto.

As mentioned, there is no absence of teaching materials on the Irish famine that can touch head and heart. In a role play, Hunger on Trial, that I wrote and taught to my own students in Portland, Oregon  included at the Zinn Education Project website  students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? The economic system, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?

These are rich and troubling ethical questions. They are exactly the kind of issues that fire students to life and allow them to see that history is not simply a chronology of dead facts stretching through time.

So go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains. But lets honor the Irish with our curiosity. Lets make sure that our schools show some respect, by studying the social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irish  and that are starving and uprooting people today.

Note: This piece, which originally appeared on the Zinn Education Project website here, is an updated version of a piece that ZEP and Common Dreams have run in years past.

This article was originally published by " Common Dreams " -

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Peace and joy
The total fertility rate in Hungary was 1.54 live births per woman in 2017, slightly under the EU average of 1.59, according to recently published data by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Among 5.075 million births in the EU, 45% concerned a first child, 36% a second child, and 19% a third or subsequent child. On average, women who gave birth to their first child in 2017 were 29.1 years old, according to the statistics.

The highest total fertility rate was measured in France (1.9 births per woman), with the lowest in Malta (1.26 births per woman).

The highest share of births of a first child to a teenage mother was recorded in Romania (13.9% of total births of first child in 2017) and Bulgaria (13.8%), ahead of Hungary (9.9%), Slovakia (9.5%), Latvia (6.7%), and the United Kingdom (6.1%).

Across the EU, the highest share of mothers giving birth to their fourth or subsequent children was recorded in Finland (10.3%), followed by Ireland (9%), the United Kingdom (8.8%), Slovakia (8.1%), and Belgium (8%).
Hungarys ruling Fidesz party has called on Gyorgy Gemesi, the Mayor of Godollo, north-east of Budapest, to reveal what kind of immigration pacts he is keeping from local residents.

Gemesis party rejects the charge of entering into a secret pact on migration. Fidesz MP Laszlo Vecsey (pictured on top) accused the mayor of forming an alliance with one of Europes most extreme pro-migration political groups.

Reports say that Gemesis party, Uj Kezdet, in February joined the European Democratic Party. Vecsey said the party sits in the European Parliament with an extreme liberal group that fights for the introduction of the migrant quota.

He accused Gemesi of being openly opposed to the will of the city, insisting that 98% of local residents objected to the quota system for relocating migrants.

Uj Kezdet said in a statement that it categorically rejected reports in Magyar Nemzet and Echo TV that it had joined Guy Verhofstadts liberal ALDE group in the EP.

Whereas the EDP and ALDE form a group in the EP, they are nonetheless two separate parties whose views differ on many issues, the statement said. Uj Kezdet is not associated with ALDE and will not be in the future either, the statement added.

The party promotes the EUs efforts to handle the migration crisis at its source, thereby reducing migration, he said, adding that several parties within the EDP are pushing for decisive action to halt migration.

The media outlets in question did not seek a comment from Uj Kezdet, which regards the reports to be misleading, the statement said.



MTI Photo: Balogh Zoltan
The lineup for the Cannes Film Festival wont be officially unveiled until April 18, but early indications suggest that Elton John biopic Rocketman, Quentin Tarantinos Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Kristen Stewart thriller Against All Enemies will all make their world premieres on the Croisette in May.

If Cannes director Thierry Fremaux is able to snag those three films, the French festival will already be looking at a starrier and potentially more glamorous edition than last year, when a combination of factors  a royal wedding, an industry-led embargo on Netflix movies, and the perception that fall festivals serve as better launchpads for Oscar hopefuls  led to one of the most underwhelming Cannes competition slates in years. The program itself wasnt bad, but light on English-language fare and established directors, meaning that for the majority of American press, there literally wasnt much to write home about.

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Three months later, the Venice Film Festival reaped the benefit, dramatically upstaging Cannes with a lineup that included A Star Is Born, Roma, The Favourite, First Man and new work from such previously Cannes-blessed auteurs as Mike Leigh, Jacques Audiard, Olivier Assayas, the Coen brothers, and Carlos Reygadas. A second year like that could be disastrous for Cannes ability to command first dibs, which means Fremaux is highly motivated to prove that his festival hasnt lost its mojo (it helps that Spike Lees BlacKkKlansman, which premiered at Cannes, went on to Oscar glory).

Right now, the frontrunner for opening night appears to be The Truth, a French-language film from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters), which would mark a triumphant return for the 2018 Palme dOr winner. The film, which stars French icons Juliette Binoche and Catherine Deneuve, is racing to get finished in time for the coveted slot.

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Fremaux wants Dexter Fletchers Rocketman, although placement and timing will depend on Johns busy farewell tour schedule. Rumor has it Fremaux was such an admirer of Australian director Benedict Andrews Against All Enemies, which focuses on how the F.B.I. kept an eye on Jean Seberg (played by Stewart) when she stood up for civil rights during her time in Los Angeles, that he lobbied the studio to forgo a fall release and launch at Cannes.

A handful of Palme winners are also expected, which would potentially make for a dynamic competition slate. A quarter-century after Pulp Fiction took the fests top prize, Tarantinos Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is set in 1969 Los Angeles around the time of the Charles Manson murders and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie, is reportedly holding out for a competition slot. American director James Gray (who has competed four times before) has a Pitt movie of his own  an ambitious sci-fi picture called Ad Astra  due out in May, though the Disney-Fox merger may determine whether the in-flux studio would send the film.

After a string of poorly received star-squandering doodles, Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life) allegedly wants to return to the Croisette with his German-language World War II drama Radegund, about an Austrian conscientious objector who refuses to serve alongside the Nazis. In the works for several years, the film stars August Diehl and features some of the final performances by Bruno Ganz and Michael Nyqvist, both now deceased.

Two-time Palme winner Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake) will likely be invited to screen Sorry We Missed You, another contemporary portrait of working-class strife, this one about a man who tries to provide for his family amid the economic downturn by becoming a delivery driver. Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta) have also won twice before and appear poised to return with their latest, Ahmed, which grapples with religious fundamentalism in modern Europe.

The ongoing feud between the French industry and Netflix seriously crimps Cannes style, meaning that Martin Scorseses The Irishman; Steven Soderberghs The Laundromat; David Michods The King; and the Safdie brothers Uncut Gems must all look to other festivals to launch later in the year.

That said, other directors with competition experience who appear positioned to return include Jim Jarmusch, reteaming with Adam Driver on the highly secretive zombie movie The Dead Dont Die; South Koreas Bong Joon-ho (Okja), whose Parasite is ready to go and reportedly competition-bound; local auteur Arnaud Desplechin, retelling a true-crime story from his hometown in Oh Mercy; and Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman (Divine Intervention), whose It Must Be Heaven marks his first feature in a decade.

Canadian director Xavier Dolan, who swore off Cannes after the press was unkind to him there, found the Toronto film fest to be equally unforgiving with The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. Dolan now hopes to return to Cannes, and has evidently submitted his latest, Matthias & Maxime, for consideration. Fellow Canadian Atom Egoyan (whose Exotica lost to Pulp Fiction in 1994) is also keen to return, submitting Guest of Honour for consideration.

Italys Marco Bellocchio, who first competed for the Palme in 1980, could be back with Traitor if he finishes post-production in time. One of the few directors to have been coming longer is Frances Claude LeLouch (A Man and a Woman), who will likely weigh whether to bring his latest, Les plus belles annees dune vie (with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee), against what slot Cannes offers.

Blue Is the Warmest Color winner Abdellatif Kechiches Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno the first half of a two-part portrait of a Franco-Tunisian youths amorous pursuits  wasnt ready in time for Cannes 2017, debuting at Venice instead. Notoriously slow with editing, Kechiche appears to have finally finished his followup, Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due, which would likely catch Fremauxs eye.

Pedro Almodovars presumably self-reflective Pain & Glory  centered on a film director  opens this week in Spain, where its receiving strong reviews. Cannes has hosted the international premiere of many of his previous films (most recently Julieta) and seems likely to follow suit with this one, which stars Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas.

Romanians Cristi Puiu and Corneliu Porumboiu, both previously featured in Un Certain Regard, are waiting to hear from Cannes. Although Puiu (Aurura) isnt expected to deliver Hora Staccato until 2020, he has evidently finished another film, Malmkrog, shot mostly in French, which could play in Cannes. Meanwhile, Porumboius The Whistlers is supposedly also among the titles Fremaux is considering.

Hailing from Down Under, Macbeth director Justin Kurzel resurrects notorious Aussie outlaw Ned Kelly (played by George Mackay) in The True History of the Kelly Gang. Brazilian helmer Kleber Mendonca Filho (Aquarius) tries his hand at genre filmmaking with Nighthawk (formerly Bacurau), a The Most Dangerous Game-like man-hunting thriller co-directed with Juliano Dornelles.

If these predictions seem light on female talent  an area in which Fremaux has been criticized quite a bit lately  rest assured that Cannes does have options in that department. The two most likely are Kelly Reichardt, nearing completion on First Cow, and Celine Sciamma, whose lesbian-themed period piece Portrait of a Lady on Fire looks like a competition contender.

On the French side, Augustine director Alice Winocour is making her English-language debut with Proxima, about a female astronaut, while Justine Triet, who could potentially graduate from Critics Week (where her debut, Victoria, screened) to Un Certain Regard with Sybil.

Fellow French director Rebecca Zlotowski (Grand Central) put the post-production of her latest, An Easy Girl, on hold to shoot a TV series, but might race to finish the film if Fremaux sees promise in the version they submit. Actress-cum-director Valerie Donzelli, mercilessly ridiculed for her 2015 selection Marguerite & Julien, could be back with Notre Dame. Still French, yet more diverse in their backgrounds, Maimouna Doucoure has a film called Cuties (or Mignonnes in French) under consideration, and Algeria-born Mounia Meddours Papicha takes place during the Algerian Civil War.

Mia Hansen-Lve is making her English-language debut with Mia Wasikowska starrer Bergman Island, though the film doesnt sound like it will be done in time. Farther along are Little Joe, a sci-fi movie from Lourdes director Jessica Hausner, and The Orphanage, the latest by Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat, who won Directors Fortnight with Wolf and Sheep.

Actress Isabelle Huppert has a pair of projects being considered. The first, directed by former Sundance winner Ira Sachs (Forty Shades of Blue), features the Oscar-nominated star in the title role of Frankie. The film, produced by Said Ben Said and Michel Merkt (collaborators on Elle), is finishing post-production in Paris with the hope of making deadline. Huppert also made a film called Luz with Chinese director Flora Lau (last seen in Cannes with Bends).

Other Asian options include Berlin film fest winner Yinan Diao (Black Coal, Thin Ice), who has spun a crime thriller about biker gangs in The Wild Good Lake. Shanghai-born Lou Ye has competed three times before, potentially returning with Saturday Fiction, starring Gong Li as a spy who gets wind of plans to attack Pearl Harbor, and Harmonium director Koji Fukada could potentially be back in Cannes with A Girl Missing.

Thailands Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, left home to make his first film abroad, casting Tilda Swinton as a Scottish woman having a strange experience in Colombia in Memoria.

From South America itself, Argentine Weasels, from Oscar winner Juan Jose Campanella (The Secret of Their Eyes), is in post-production, as is 4 x 4, the first solo feature from countryman Mariano Cohn (The Distinguished Citizen), which was a work-in-progress standout at Decembers Ventana Sur showcase.

The most promising of Mexicos offerings is actor Gael Garcia Bernals second feature as a director, Chicuarotes, a dark comedy set in the town of San Gregorio Atlapulco. Another Mexican option is David Zonanas Labor (aka Mano de obra), produced by director  and Cannes regular  Michel Franco (Aprils Daughter).

John Hopewell Nick Vivarelli, Patrick Frater, Leo Barraclough, and Richard Kuipers contributed to this report.

(Pictured: Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.)

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The sleepy Japanese town of Minamata was the scene of one of the worlds greatest environmental disasters when it was poisoned by mercury in the 1970s. It was also the setting for a groundbreaking international treaty designed to control use of the deadly metal.

U.K. sales agent HanWay Films will use its platform at FilMart to unveil updates on Minamata, its drama-thriller about the celebrated photographer W. Eugene Smith. His images from the toxic town gave the eco-disaster a heartbreaking human dimension, and put reckless big business on front pages around the world.

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Johnny Depp stars as Smith, a colorful character who was a celebrated WWII photographer and later became close to jazz great Thelonious Monk. Smith ventured to Minamata near the end of his life, accompanied by his Japanese wife Aileen Mioko Smith.

At that point, Gene [Smith] was about to give up. He wasnt sure it was worth it, but when he got to Minamata, not only did he find a story to tell, he was able to help. It was redemptive, a late life reawakening, said director Andrew Levitas.

Smith is a unique protagonist. He had a unique way of looking at the world, he was someone who could edit and art direct his own universe, even when walking down the street  he carried everything with him, and while in Minamata embedded himself completely in their world.

Smiths exceptional professional abilities, and his chameleon-like personality, may have been what drew Depp to the story. The project was developed by Depps Infinitum Nihil company, before selecting artist and filmmaker Levitas (Lullaby), to direct.

We see the world through his lens, but Smith is not the only hero. Minamata is also a tale of people fighting for their rights and for their children, said Levitas. Depp has a powerful supporting cast that includes leading Japanese actors Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Ryo Kase, Jun Kunimura and Bill Nighy.

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Because of his health, Gene knew it would be his last project. But it was my first, Aileen Smith told Variety. They had been together only four months as a couple before traveling to Minamata. Smiths pictures were initially published as a photo essay by Life magazine, and three years later as the book Minamata, from which David K. Kessler (A Hard Days Day) adapted the screenplay, was published.

The hidden story is that Gene was a wonderful teacher. Everyone around him blossomed. Id already seen that in New York. [In Japan] he showed incredible passion, integrity and commitment to photography and journalism, Aileen Smith said.

She said that over the past two decades she has fielded multiple offers to adapt the book, but she said the issue of industrial mercury poisoning was given new visibility by the previous U.S. administration, as then-U.S. President Barack Obama was said to have been moved by one of Smiths photos from Minamata that he saw while a child.

The film is currently shooting in Belgrade, before relocating to Japan. Delivery is expected in 2020. This uplifting, emotional story will be a definitive illustration of triumph over adversity, said Janina Vilsmaier, sales manager at Hanway. We are excited to be able to share some exclusive updates with distributors we are meeting at FilMart in Hong Kong.

Depp produces along with Infinitum Nihils Sam Sarkar, Levitas under his Metalwork Pictures banner and Gabrielle Tana (Philomena). Jason Forman, Stephen Deuters, Peter Watson, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross, Gabrielle Stewart, Stephen Spence, Peter Touche, Norman Merry and Peter Hampden will executive produce. Heads of department include celebrated cinematographer Benoit Delhomme (The Theory of Everything,), production designer Tom Foden (Mirror Mirror) and line and executive producer Kevan Van Thompson (Jojo Rabbit).

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Parents of missing girl Madeleine McCann, Kate (L) and Gerry McCann (R) pose with an artist's impression of how their daughter might look now at the age of nine ahead of a press conference in central London on May 2, 2012 five years after Madeleine's disappearance while on a family holiday in Portugal. Aged three at the time, the artist's impression depicts how Madeleine may now look, based on family photos of her, along with childhood images of her parents. AFP PHOTO / LEON NEAL (Photo credit should read LEON NEAL/AFP/GettyImages)

The Madeleine McCann disappearance case has intrigued people across the world for more than a decade. When the 3-year-old girl disappeared while on a family vacation in Portugal, her family was immediately thrust into the spotlight. Madeleine's case is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, and is one of many true crime stories being highlighted in today's true crime boom, which is drawing attention back to her parents as well.

Madeleine McCann's parents are Kate and Gerry McCann, who both were doctors, according to Country Living. Kate also became an author in the years following her daughter's disappearance, writing a 2011 memoir about their experience entitled Madeleine: Our Daughter's Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her. At the time of Madeleine's disappearance in 2007, the couple were both in their late 30s.

Four months after Madeleine's disappearance, news outlets around the world reported that Kate was named a suspect in Madeleine's disappearance. Officials reportedly offered her a plea deal of two years or less in prison if she admitted to accidentally poisoning her daughter with an overdose of sedatives. She was released without charges, and police attention then shifted to focus on Gerry, who was also interviewed and released without charges. Much of the suspicion surrounding the McCanns was based on DNA evidence found in their car, which was inconclusive but was misinterpreted and subsequently misreported and sensationalized in the press. By 2008, Portuguese authorities declared that there was no evidence found to implicate the McCanns, as the Telegraph reported, and their status as suspects was dropped.

However, theories that the McCanns were involved persisted. One of the former police officers who investigated their case, Goncalo Amaral, wrote a book in 2008 that claimed Madeleine had died accidentally and that the McCanns had faked the abduction case to cover it up. The McCanns sued Amaral for libel, and in 2015, the BBC reported that they won damages of 358,000.

When the Netflix filmmakers began working on their documentary, they reached out to the McCanns, who declined to participate. They issued a statement on their website explaining their decision:
This is Kristofer Hivju and Kristoffer Metcalfes show, the series that actor Hivju, Game of Thrones Wildlings leader Tormund Giantsbane, and Metcalfe Cupids Balls), developed together for near 15 years.

But Hivju is nowhere to be seen in the lovely opening scene where two late teens, identical twins, drive a battered caravan over a hill, whose dramatic back granite cliffs suddenly give way to a bay, with a sandy beach, the sea boiling with white water.

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The joy haunts them for the rest of their life, and their pride at founding a local surfing community, which puts the icy cold water bay on the surfing map.

15 years later, the twins, Erik and Adam, are struggling to remain local heroes. Erik still lives in the even-more battered trailer, still parked on the beach, a classic surfing bum and semi figure-of-fun going on 40 but behaving as if hes 15, as Adam puts it.

Adam has moved down the coast, to an extraordinary, but highly bourgeois, fjord island of Sakrisy, become an entrepreneur, tempting tourists to experience traditional Norwegian living, bungalows and fishing, with mark-ups for mod cons. But hes a stranger to his own family of doting wife Ingrid and two kids.

Then tragedy strikes. Eric loses everything he has, driving the trailer off a cliff into the sea. He reaches out to Adam, who totally rejects him. A quarrel breaks out; Erik and Ingrid, Adams wife, accidentally kill Adam. When Adams body is discovered, his corpse is taken to be Eriks. To cover the crime, and to save his brothers family, Erik takes on Adams identity, and has the chance to come of age himself, not as Adam but an ultimately more happy Erik.

This is an upbeat second-chance thriller in which the authors ask whether identity can be far more fluid, shaped by the individual not role models, in a far more fluid world. Variety talked to Metcalfe on the eve of Series Mania, where Twin screens in competition.

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Twin looks from its early stretches like an identity thriller, about how men try to be local heroes, become trapped in cliche: Erik, the surfing wild man, Adam, the entrepreneur pillar of the local establishment. Ingrid, likewise, is trapped, trying to be the perfect mother/wife.

Well, back in the days, the idea for Twin was even to have a Western, the twin brothers as a criminal and a priest, and the criminal taking the priests gown when he was killed. But in time it got more interesting to use this identity-switch story to tell something about my own life as a father and family man. I could explore more universal existential storylines by using it in simpler, identifiable human everyday conflicts.

The biggest challenge for the characters is getting away with murder, but they are also challenged by the more relatable question of how far we are willing to go to preserve a sense of normality in our lives.

In line with much top recent European drama,Twin mixes a trinity of a thriller narrative, character-driven drama and broader social themes. How did you keep all those balls in the air when writing?

With all writing you need clear guidelines with kind of roadmaps and rules for yourself. For Twin its been important to always ask ourselves: Could this scene or sequence work in any other family-drama  even without having the identity switch? And if so, then ask: How can we twist and push these familiar situations beyond what we normally would? Its also been important to never play along with the absurdity in some of the situations we end up with, but rather focus on portraying and emphasizing the naturalism, however hard it often proved.

Twins

Twin doesnt invite any obvious directorial style, so what were your guidelines when directing.

My directorial vision for Twin was to not allow the feel of assertion or to let the storytelling be in front. We were never allowed to show off. For instance, when the photographers wanted to use nice camera movements, I would ask: How do you know how the camera would react in this situation, when the characters dont? The same with working with the actors  I encouraged impulsiveness; they were never allowed be ahead of the situation  and never jump to conclusions.

This is a passion project, yours and Kristoffer Hivjus. How did you and Hivju develop the figure of Erik and how did you direct Kristofer on a series hes been so involved in over 15 years?

Me and Hivju can talk straight from the guts to each other: This is bad writing, he says. But, thats bad acting, I respond, and then we always find ways to something great together! And, as the main character, Erik, is a representation of a huge part of who we both still are; a searcher, an irresponsible boy-child trying to figure out what he wants to be, I most of the time just have to remind Hivju of that part of us, and then he finds his way

The scenery is to die for. How much is digital? How much does it cost to say at a hotel on Adams island?

I know, and I really hope Lofoten will work in an emotional way for the audience, helping it to feel the dramatic inner life of the characters. For me the mountains and the weather constantly create a feeling of imprisonment. And, no, nothing is digital, its just the way it looks up there. And its not as expensive to stay at Sakrisy, as Adam would like you to believe.

The production is backed by some of the key big players on the Nordic production scene: NRK, which has produced Occupied, State of Happiness, now Atlantic Crossing; Nordisk, which produces and also sells; the Nordisk Film & TV Fund. These players help shape Nordisk drama. What kind of notes did they give you?

The support from NRK and Nordisk Film has been priceless throughout development and production. They have given me a trust and confidence I feel honored by. I believe we are benefitting from the Nordic players sense of self-esteem these past few years. They have believed in a story and a vision not easily contained in safe boxes. I also need to emphasize the collaboration with NRK producer and Emmy winner Vegard Stenberg-Eriksen, the way he has challenged me and my crew to go further, where we believed we never could, has made the series as unique as I hope it will be perceived.

Kristoffer-Metcalfe-@Lars-Olav-Dybvig

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"I just need to go back to my own self for a minute," Patricia Arquette jokes, leaning over the side of a low-set leather couch at a hotel bar in Pasadena, California, in early February.

The 50-year-old actress is promoting her new true-crime anthology series, Hulu's The Act, just two days after filming on the eight-episode series wrapped in Georgia. Arquette plays Dee Dee Blanchard in the drama series, a woman with Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Dee Dee's teenage daughter, Gypsy Rose (The Kissing Booth's Joey King), helped murder Dee Dee -- with the help of a boyfriend -- after learning that her mother had been convincing the world that she was wheelchair-bound and suffered from a variety of illnesses.

Its an intense story, and a physically, emotionally draining role for Arquette, who had just finished playing another real-life woman, Joyce "Tilly" Mitchell, on Showtimes Escape at Dannemora, for which she won a Golden Globe in January.

"You don't usually get that interesting [of a] part as a woman, that complicated. So I think that's part of it," the actress tells ET of why she jumped so quickly into another "crazy woman" role after Dannemora. Arquette is quick to note she can be a bit of a "crazy woman" too. "If you saw my packrat piles, you would question my scruples," she says, laughing at the thought.

"There were moments where I started as Dee Dee during rehearsal, and, Oh, there's a little Tilly face coming out of my face. 'Stop it, Tilly. Go back!'" Arquette recalls, painting a picture of how characters can live inside her head. "I was having these weird conversations with these [characters]."

Brownie Harris/Hulu

Arquette can't help but demonstrate, giving a mini lesson in The Patricia Arquette Method. "There's three different phases of Dee Dee," she explains, smoothing out her vibrant red dress over her knees as she goes through her approach to each part. "She doesn't feel like she has enough value as a person to be worthy of existing if not as this maternal archetype, this kind of martyr type."

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Even though I, Patricia, know what this other person is saying or what they mean, I made a decision that my character is hearing this whole other thing and perceiving this whole other thing from what they're saying. And that's triggering something else in me," Arquette reveals, describing how a piece of dialogue can turn into a "four-way scene," even though there is no one else in the room.

She's delighted by the mixture of awe and confusion shes created. "It's insane. Its really a lot!" Arquette squeaks out before bursting into laughter so loud that others in the intimate bar peer over, curious as to whats going on in the Arquette corner.

"Trust me, its like playing chess or something. I'm 12 moves ahead," she now sort-of-whispers, only because she's laughing so hard that words barely come. "Think about that, oh my god! You're sinking your own battleship all the time!"

Still, Arquette remains 100 percent fascinated by and committed to Dee Dee and Gypsy's story. Minutes earlier, Arquette's 19-year-old co-star, King, was singing her praises, confessing that she felt working with the veteran actress had made her "a better actor."

"I'm so unbelievably lucky to have someone like Patricia," King told ET, jokingly calling Arquette "queen." Really, the young actress says, Arquette's like "family." "It was so helpful to have someone so generous, with not only their performance, but just as a human being. She's just one of the kindest people I've ever met I feel like my life has changed after meeting her."

Corey Nickols/Getty Images

Despite the smile emerging on her face, hearing what King had said about her doesnt seem to faze Arquette much.

"We just really had this chemistry right away," Arquette says matter-of-factly. "There's just a lot of things that clicked and were familiar with one another. When [Joey] would get sick, I'd make her chicken soup and send it to the set. I'd do mommy things for her."

Arquette giggles at a question about what exactly she put in said soup. "I didn't poison her! I didn't poison her!" she insists through her chuckles. "I draw the line at poisoning people."

___

Like other true-crime tales, interest in Dee Dee and Gypsy has risen exponentially in the last few years. There was the HBO documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest, in May 2017. (Journalist Michelle Dean, who covered the case and appeared in the HBO film, serves as an executive producer on The Act). And in January, Lifetime's two-hour film, Love You to Death, starring Marcia Gay Harden, was loosely inspired by Dee Dee and Gypsy's ordeal.

"I don't think it's fair to [compare the stories]," says Arquette, adding that she hasn't seen the Lifetime movie but "loves" Harden. "We have eight hours to tell it, so you can really go much more in depth of the pressure cooker of this relationship, you know?"

She would know. Arquette's award-winning work has spanned over three decades in TV and film. Shes won a slew of awards, including an Oscar (for 2014's Boyhood), two Golden Globes and an Emmy (for Medium). This year, Arquette has been recognized for her stunning performance in Escape at Dannemora, taking home a Critics' Choice Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

"[TV] is the future and the past [for women]," she declares, crediting the success of such groundbreaking programs as Cagney & Lacey, Maude and The Golden Girls as paving the way. "I still don't think it's like that in film, really. I guess it's slowly moving towards that a little bit but the stories are getting richer now in television."

Arquette also notes that TV, right now, is "paying better." "I made The Indian Runner 28 years ago for [a budget of] $8 million. I'm getting offers now, 28 years later, for movies that have a $1 million budget all the time," she reveals, leaning forward in the leather set, but not lowering her voice. Money talk isnt something she shies away from. "A lot of actors can't afford to do these tiny movies and the movie business... movie theaters have closed, people want to watch things on cable. Pirating is decimating people's work. That part of the business hasn't worked itself out right now. So you'll see more and more people moving into TV."

Brownie Harris/Hulu

The veteran actress has become somewhat synonymous with advocating for equality in Hollywood, having used her awards acceptance speeches in recent years to draw attention to larger, systemic issues like the treatment of women in the industry and politics and granular problems like production companies shorting actors on their timecards.

"When I said that at the Oscars, I knew there were going to be eyeballs on it. So yeah, I did want to call attention to equal rights and equal pay and what the hell is going on," Arquette explains. "These other things like SAG this is an award for actors, by actors. I felt the most responsible thing I could do is say to my fellow actors, 'Hey, something bad is going on, and we need to be careful here and make sure you're getting paid all your money.' And maybe put the industry on notice to stop doing that."

But as passionate as Arquette is about the business side of Hollywood, the creative is where she feels most fulfilled. Though she has her own ideas on Dee Dee Blanchard, she wants viewers of The Act to come to their own conclusions.

"When people set out to make an audience feel something, it feels really manipulative. Just tell each character's truth and let them have conversations about it," she says. "Even after making it, there were different perspectives on [Dee Dee and Gypsy's] relationship."

Arquette sits back in her chair, with the wheels turning in her mind the way she believes they did for Dee Dee. "I have two kids. I understand this maternal bond and concern about my child and mothering my child, and sometimes even over-mothering my child. But to this level, this distorted maternal relationship, how does that work?" she asks.

"We're still talking about these people, so I don't know [how Im going to let go of it]," Arquette jokes, making herself laugh again. "But I want to do yoga, breathe, swim, eat vegetables! I want to do things I want to do for a little while."

The Act premieres Wednesday on Hulu.

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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle joined a small group of royals at the private christening of Mike and Zara Tindall's second daughter, Lena Elizabeth Tindall, on March 17. Zara is Princess Anne's daughter, and she and her brother Peter have always been close to Harry and his older brother William, so it should come as no surprise that Harry was reportedly named godfather to Lena during the ceremony, only a few weeks before he becomes a father for real.

Zara is godmother to Prince George, and though she and Mike never revealed the godparents of their 5-year-old daughter Mia, Prince William was in attendance at her christening, which may suggest he was given the honor for the couple's older child. This time around, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge didn't attend the ceremony, which had only a handful of guests, leaving Harry and Meghan to represent their branch of the family. Queen Elizabeth II was also there to see her seventh great-grandchild baptized into the Church of England.
On The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Colbert offered condolences to the people of New Zealand and spoke about a trip to film the show there planned for later this week that had been kept a secret until now. Last September, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appeared on The Late Show and invited Colbert to New Zealand where the J.R.R. Tolkien super fan would be made an honorary citizen of Hobbiton, the movie set used in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies. But following a terrorist attack by a white nationalist at two mosques in Christchurch that left 50 people dead, Colbert felt compelled to postpone the trip. We didnt ever tell anybody, we were gonna make it a surprise, but we were actually supposed to go down Wednesday. We were going to go down there for a week to shoot in New Zealand because it had been such a lovely invitation and I just love that country, Colbert said. He later added, Obviously were not going to go down now, but we hope to go down in the future. And again, we just want to say to everybody down there how sad, how heartbroken we are for what that country is going through. Colbert, who first traveled to New Zealand to make a cameo in 2013s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, also lamented the spread of white supremacy there. Its this wonderful, isolated country so far away from the problems that we take for granted here north of the equator, and now this particular brand of evil has infected that country, like a ghost or something you wouldnt imagine, Colbert said. Truly like an evil creature has arrived on that island. Following the attack, Ardern promised to strengthen gun laws, which are already much stricter than the laws in America, and Colbert hopes that New Zealands government is able to do what the American government has not. I pray with all my heart that they take the action down there, Colbert said, and have the courage to take action that we seem to lack up here in the United States.
Its been more than 10 years since 3-year-old Madeleine McCann went missing from her familys villa in the holiday resort of Praia da Luz, Portugal. Though the ongoing case has been the subject of intense media scrutiny for a long period of time now, the arrival of new Netflix documentary The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann has revived public curiosity around what happened to Kate and Gerry McCanns daughter all those years ago.

The eight-part series takes us on a lengthy journey, rehashing facts and theories that are likely very familiar to many of us by now. But one line of thought with which you might be a little less familiar is the 'Pact Of Silence'.

As intriguing and plot-twisty as it sounds, 'Pact of Silence' (which is also the name given to the third episode of the documentary) was originally the headline of a controversial article co-written by Portuguese journalists Margarida Davim and Felicia Cabrita. In it, they suggested that there was an agreement among the McCanns and their friends to not talk about what really happened on the night of May 3 evening of 2007. In short, they implied that the group was hiding something crucial to understanding the truth behind Madeleines disappearance.

So what do we know actually happened? Kate and Gerry had taken Madeleine and their twin babies on holiday to the Ocean Club resort with a group of friends: David and Fiona Payne, Fionas mum Dianne, Matthew and Rachael Oldfield, Russell OBrien and partner Jane Tanner. They had eight young children between them who, on the night Madeleine went missing, had all been put to bed before the adults went out for dinner at the resort's tapas restaurant. All of the children were left unattended but the group say that one member of the party would leave the table every 30 minutes or so to check on their respective children. When it was Kate's turn to check on hers, she discovered that Madeleine was gone.

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Journalist Felicia found it odd that in the weeks after Madeleine vanished, the investigating police seemed to be focusing only on the suspected kidnapping and not the family involved. "We know that in most cases, the culprit is someone who is close to the child," Felicia explains in the documentary. She goes on to tell the story of a visit she made to the restaurant where the McCann group ate on the night of the incident. She sat at the same table as them and found that despite Gerry McCann's claim that the table had a "line of sight to the apartment"  which they say was a factor in deciding where to eat that evening  there was limited visibility. This was the first contradiction she found in the parents' statement to police.

"From the position I was in, it was completely impossible to see the apartment or the room where they had left the children to sleep," Felicia adds. "As an investigative journalist, I have to ask, why? Why would you lie about such a simple thing?"

Her colleague Margarida says that they had a feeling something was off with the timeline and that the McCanns' version of events doesnt match that of the employees who served them in the hotel. Further doubt was driven by inconsistencies in Gerry's statements about which door he entered the apartment through and whether or not it was locked. There's also her understanding that the McCann group gathered to work out their timeline and then revise it 24 hours later. Goncalo Amaral, former Chief Investigating Coordinator with the Portuguese police, says that statements by Jane Tanner, who claimed to have seen a man carrying a child in pajamas away from the resort, seemed to evolve as time went on.

And then there are all the questions that remained unanswered. Why leave the kids alone? Why not use the babysitting service that was available at the hotel? And why weren't the friends of the McCanns who had dinner with them on the night willing to say more? The journalists felt that things didn't add up.

"The word that we ended up using in the title  pact  came from David Payne when he said that they had agreed with Gerry not to talk about what happened," Margarida explains. Goncalo also notes in the documentary that it wasn't just Kate and Gerry; the entire party had left their children alone that night and so "there seems to be an alliance between everyone to protect someone." After a few months with little progress in the investigation and no success finding Madeleine, it's unsurprising that the McCanns and their friends eventually came under scrutiny. However, as we know, the suspicion around them has not materialized into any significant evidence.

The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann is available on Netflix now.

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US Duplicity over Golan Demolishes Posturing on Crimea

By Finian Cunningham

March 19, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - In a controversial snub to international law, the United States signaled last week that it is moving to officially recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israeli territory. If the US does so, then it forfeits any moral authority to sanction Russia over allegations of annexing Crimea.

In its annual US State Department report, the section dealing with the Golan Heights reportedly refers to the contested area as Israeli-controlled, not Israeli-occupied. The change in wording deviates from United Nations resolutions and international norm which use the term Israeli-occupied to designate the land Israel annexed from Syria following the 1967 Six Day War.

Israel has occupied the western part of the Golan since 1967 as a spoil from that war. In 1981, Tel Aviv formally annexed the Syrian territory. However, the UN Security Council in 1981, including the US, unanimously condemned the annexation as illegal. The resolution mandates Israel to return the land to Syria which has historical claim to the entire Golan. The area of 1,800 square kilometers is a strategic elevation overlooking the northern Jordan Valley.

If Washington confirms its recent indications of recognizing the Golan as officially part of Israel, the development would mark an egregious flouting of international law.

But whats more, such a move totally prohibits Washington from posturing with presumed principle over the issue of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which since 2014 voluntarily became part of Russia.

Just last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated accusations against Russia of annexing Crimea. Pompeo insisted that US sanctions against Moscow would be maintained until Russia returns Crimea to Ukraine.

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The world has not forgotten the cynical lies Russia employed to justify its aggression and mask its attempted annexation of Ukrainian territory, he said. The United States will maintain respective sanctions against Russia until the Russian government returns control of Crimea to Ukraine.

Last year, Pompeos State Department issued a Crimea Declaration in which it was stated that, Russia undermines a bedrock of international principle shared by democratic states: that no country can change the borders of another by force.

Claims by Washington and the European Union of illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia are the central basis for five years of economic sanctions imposed on Moscow. Those sanctions have contributed to ever-worsening tensions with Russia and the build-up of NATO forces along Russias borders.

Those claims are, however, highly contestable. The people of Crimea voted in a legally constituted referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and to join the Russian Federation. That referendum followed an illegal coup in Kiev in February 2014 backed by the US and Europe against a legally elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. Historically, Crimea has centuries of shared cultural heritage with Russia. Its erstwhile position within the state of Ukraine was arguably an anomaly of the Cold War and subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union.

In any case, there is scant comparison between the Golan Heights and Crimea, save, that is, for the latest hypocrisy in Washington. While Crimea and its people are arguably historically part of Russia, the Golan Heights are indisputably a sovereign part of Syria which was forcibly annexed by Israeli military occupation.

The illegality of Israels occupation of Golan is a matter of record under international law as stipulated in UNSC Resolution 497.

There is no such international mandate concerning Crimea. Claims of Russias annexation are simply a matter of dubious political assertion made by Washington and its European allies.

The latest move by Washington towards recognizing Golan as part of Israel  in defiance of international law  comes on the back of several other recent developments.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham made a tour of Israeli-occupied Golan last week in the company of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pointedly transported by an IDF military helicopter. Graham said following his tour that he would recommend the Trump administration to officially recognize the area as under Israeli sovereignty.

Currently, there is legislation going through both the US Senate and House of Representatives which is aimed at declaring the entire Golan as Israeli territory.

The stark shift in pro-Israeli bias in Washington under the Trump administration is consistent with the White House declaring at the end of 2017 that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Again, that move by President Trump overturned international consensus and UN resolutions which have stipulated Jerusalem to be a shared capital between Israel and a future Palestinian state, to be worked out by (defunct) peace negotiations.

Why Washington has taken up the Golan issue as a prize for Israel at this time is not precisely clear. It could be seen as the Trump administration giving a political boost to Netanyahu for next months elections.

There has been previous speculation that Trump is doing the bidding for a US-based oil company, Genie Oil, which is linked to his administration through his son-in-law Jared Kushners family investments. The New Jersey company has a subsidiary in Israel, is tied to the Netanyahu government, and has long been aiming to drill the Golan for its abundant oil resources.

The Golan move could also be retribution meted out to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over his countrys historic defeat of the US-backed covert war for regime change. The nearly eight-year war was also covertly backed by Israel which sponsored jihadist militia operating out of the Golan against the Syrian army. Having vanquished the US regime-change plot, thanks to crucial military support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the payback could be Washington stepping up Israeli claims to annex the Golan.

But whatever the background explanation is, the initiative by Washington to legalize the annexation of Golan by Israel is a brazen violation of international law. In doing so, the US is officially sponsoring war crimes and theft of Syrias sovereign territory. Or as the Crimea Declaration would put it: changing the borders of another country by force  supposedly a bedrock principle that Washington continually sermonizes about to Russia.

Crimea and Golan are different issues of territorial dispute, as noted already. Nevertheless, the duplicity of Washington over Golan makes its posturing on Crimea null and void. If the Europeans meekly go along with the US move on Golan, then they too should shut their mouths and their moralizing sanctions over Crimea.

This article was originally published by " Strategic Culture Foundation " -

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Peace and joy
On Monday night, presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren appeared in Mississippi for a lengthy CNN town hall, fielding questions from both Jake Tapper and the audience. The Massachusetts senator has frequently pushed big, ambitious ideas, including her own sweeping anti-corruption bill last year and a universal child care program she proposed as part of her 2020 campaign.

Rukia Lumumba, the sister and former campaign manager for the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, Chokwe Lumumba, asked Warren about voting rights, specifically how the senator would promote and expand voting rights for ex-felons, online voting registration, and enact early voting. Warren didn't directly address Lumumba's question, but she did use it as an opportunity to launch one of her more radical ideas so far in the campaign: the elimination of the Electoral College.

Come a general election, presidential candidates dont come to places like Mississippi, they also dont come to places like California or Massachusetts, because were not the battleground states," she said, adding, "My view is that every vote matters. And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral Collegeand every vote counts."

Warren didn't expound on how she would pursue the massive task of upending the Electoral College. It would require nothing short of a constitutional convention and the majority of state legislatures are Republican-controlled. And any move she would make as president to fight voter suppression laws would be met with fierce opposition from congressional Republicans, who have admitted that they fear high voter turnout is a threat to their minority rule. But she did get pretty riotous applause for the idea, and as a relatively high-profile candidate even in a crowded field, it's significant that she's calling for something as ambitious the abolition of one of the most anti-democratic election systems in the world.

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There's a pervasive myth about the Electoral College that it's meant to "protect" people in less populous states from the whims of people living in places like New York, California, and Texas. But that's a very recent argument that we've retroactively applied: the Electoral College was designed to protect slave-holding states' political power. During the Constitutional Convention, the Northern and Southern delegations fought over representation. At the time, citizenswhite male landownerswere more concentrated in the north, and any election that only counted the number of votes cast would be a win for that region. Southerners wanted to count enslaved blackswho could not votein their representation; Northerners argued they were property. The "three-fifths compromise" was the dehumanizing and imperfect fix in the drafting the Constitution. In 1865, we did away with the three-fifths compromise, with the Thirteenth Amendment, but we're still stuck with its other ugly outcome, the Electoral College.

The modern-day defense of the Electoral College is also nonsense on its face. The current system awards extra weight to votes cast in smaller states, and the broadly used winner-take-all policy means that a landslide vote in South Carolina is worth the same amount of electoral votes (nine) as a narrow win in Colorado. It also exacerbates the chaos that a third-party candidate can cause. Claims that the Electoral College somehow protects the stability or integrity of the country only make sense if you accept the premise that voters are the biggest threat to election integrity. Long-shot presidential candidate Andrew Yang recently tweeted that the Electoral College was necessary to keep politicians from only campaigning in densely populated urban areas, claiming that currently they're obligated to campaign "in each state." This is either trolling or flat-out ignorance since pretty much every presidential election in recent memory has come down to a handful of battleground states like Ohio and Florida while less populated, presumably locked-in places like Mississippi and Louisiana are fully ignored.

The actual reason politicians go to the mat to defend the Electoral College is because it so disproportionately favors Republicans. The last two Republican presidents both won their first election despite getting fewer votes than their opponent, and in Trump's case it was a difference of millions. There's no serious, pro-democracy argument for its continued existence, and Republican leaders are well aware of that fact.
Photo credit: Alex Bramall

From Harper's BAZAAR

When Lady Kitty Spencer arrived at St. Georges Chapel in Windsor for the marriage of her cousin Prince Harry to Meghan Markle this past May, she sparked a sensation. Despite the attendance of George and Amal Clooney, Victoria and David Beckham, Priyanka Chopra, and Serena Williams, it was the lesser-known relative of the groom, in an emerald green hand-painted Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda dress with a Philip Treacy fascinator and jewelry from the Bulgari Heritage Collection, who captured the worlds attention. WHO IS LADY KITTY SPENCER? the tabloids screamed, while exhaustive listicles picked apart Everything You Need to Know About Princess Dianas Niece.

It would be easy to assume the 28-year-old model, a first cousin to the second in line to the throne (her father, Charles, the ninth Earl Spencer, is Princess Dianas brother and William and Harrys uncle), is accustomed to the public adoration and scrutiny that comes with being a member of the British aristocracy. But for Lady Kitty, the sudden influx of attention was unnerving. It was definitely unexpected, she admits, draped across a sofa in a dressing gown at Cliveden House, a historic stately home and hotel in Berkshire, England, where her BAZAAR.com cover shoot has just wrapped. [My Instagram followers] went from 17,000 to half a million in one night. I thought I had someone elses phone when I woke up the next morning. I had to turn my notifications off because my phone was going to die. Never one to share many personal details on social media-her feed mostly features modeling work along with a few photos of siblings and friends-she now worries if her posts should be more considered. Can I still FaceTime my cat and put it on my Stories? she asks, only half-joking.



Photo credit: Alex Bramall

Simone Rocha dress, Mary Katrantzou x Jimmy Choo boots

Followers will know that Kitty is devoted to her cat, Baby D, who only eats people food and lives with her mother, Victoria Aitken (nee Lockwood), a former model, in South Africa where she grew up. She has been based in London since signing with Storm Management four years ago, the modeling agency that launched the careers of Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne, and made her runway debut for Dolce & Gabbana in 2017. But it was the royal wedding that kicked her profile into high gear. Within a week Kitty was made a Bulgari ambassador, and since then, her feet have barely touched the ground, with work in New York, Moscow, Dubai, Beijing and Mexico City, as well as trips to Australia and Italy for events and runway shows, and a return to South Africa for the holidays with her family. Ive spent only three nights in England since November, she says.

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Unlike models who may be jaded after a few years of constant hopping on and off planes, Kitty talks with an infectious excitement, describing her encounter with Stevie Wonder backstage at Dolce & Gabbanas Milan Fashion Week show in September as one of the coolest moments of last year. Still, it wasnt until she hit the runway that she became really star-struck. I got to walk with Monica Bellucci, Carla Bruni, Isabella Rossellini, Helena Christensen, Naomi Campbell-it was insane, she says. We were all standing on the stage, and I was at the back. And when the curtains opened, they were going to shine the spotlight and everyone had to stand in their pose, but I was so busy being in awe of these goddesses, I just stood there staring at everyone. I completely forgot to stand in any way that was photogenic or photographable.

Photo credit: Alex Bramall

JW Anderson top and shorts

Kitty is unquestionably beautiful, and holds her own among the Supers, but shes modest about her contribution compared with that of her fellow models and even suffers from a degree of imposter syndrome. I do feel like I sort of snuck through the back door and no ones noticed yet. Thats the feeling I get, especially at shows, she says. Nor does Kitty expect her modeling career to have the kind of longevity as Naomi, et al.-though its something she hopes for. I keep thinking that this is potentially short term and a really exciting moment, so Im trying to embrace it for what it is. And then when it does end, just being grateful because it was something I never imagined in the first place.

Perhaps this is where her professionalism comes from. In the two days I spent with her during this shoot, she put in the hours, intensely focused on getting each shot right, but not so earnest that she cant crack a self-deprecating joke when she makes a gaffe. This ones a personal growth experience, she laughs as she insists on an extra take for the introduction of her Day in the Life video. If I mumble, please tell me.

Photo credit: Alex Bramall

Phillip Treacy hat

The shoot at Cliveden, photographed by Alex Bramall (who also photographed Princess Eugenie's wedding), paid homage to Kittys role within the fabric of the British aristocracy and her aunts impact on the world of fashion. The aesthetic took a creative lead from the legacy of Alexander McQueen and his legendary runway shows, while celebrating Londons design heroes of today: Mary Katrantzou, Jonathan Anderson, Simone Rocha, and Richard Quinn. It was a long day. As sets were built and taken down around her, and as she was whisked through the hotel and up and down stairs for each outfit change, Kitty remained remarkably unassuming, despite being surrounded by dozens of people being paid to make her look good, and exuded a genuine warmth.



She is organized too. As she discusses plans for an upcoming trip to Rome with her agent in the back of a car, an uninformed listener might wonder who was briefing whom. Kitty knows better than most how to breeze through an airport efficiently: Her parents divorced when she was six, and she and her siblings-twins Amelia and Eliza, 26, and brother Louis, 24-have been jetting between their mother in Cape Town and their fathers homes in England on a regular basis ever since.

Though their marriage wasnt to last, Kittys parents were united in the decision to raise their children as far as possible from the glare of the British tabloid press, so they relocated to South Africa on her fifth birthday in 1995. To this day, Kitty has limited interest in the media, and mostly absorbs news via background TV. I dont sort of sit down to, like, focus, she says of avoiding current events. I kind of keep up with whats going on from talking to people.

Kitty attended the Reddam House private school in Cape Town and picked up a South Africaninflected accent, spending vacations with her father in London and at Althorp, the family estate in Northamptonshire, which the Spencers have owned since 1508. Im really glad I had a childhood in South Africa, Kitty says of her upbringing. There are not many places in the world where you can actually have something thats so free, just natural and relaxed. I was lucky to have a childhood there. That sense of freedom is a luxury that wasnt afforded her royal cousins, who, incidentally, Kitty refuses to discuss with the media out of respect-a policy she doesnt waver on in this interview.



It was an idyllic upbringing, marred only by the familys brutal annus horribilis in 1997. It was the year, of course, that her aunt Diana was tragically killed in a car crash with her partner, Dodi Al Fayed, during a paparazzi chase in Paris; and the year that Kittys parents separated. Charles went on to marry Caroline Freud in 2001, with whom he had a daughter, Lara, and a son, Edmund. He then became a father a seventh time to daughter Charlotte, after he married his current wife, Canadian philanthropist Karen Gordon. Victoria, meanwhile, married Jonathan Aitken, with whom she had a second son, Samuel, now 15, before divorcing in 2009. Kitty attributes her easygoing attitude to this large family, with whom shes evidently close, especially the twins, who are just 18 months younger than she and occasionally appear on her Instagram: I think being one of lots of children, you kind of learn to go with the flow a bit. You become adaptable.



Photo credit: Alex Bramall

Mary Katrantzou dress, Phillip Treacy hat

Kitty was only six when Diana died, but the comparisons have remained a constant. Both blonde with similar smiles and wide blue eyes, Kitty has captivated the fashion world in much the same way. For the legendary makeup artist Mary Greenwell, who regularly did Dianas makeup in the 1980s and 90s, and created Kittys look for her BAZAAR.com shoot, it was a welcome dose of nostalgia. To have Kitty with me in the makeup chair. It just took me back in time, says Greenwell, who also worked with Kittys mother back in the day, as well as Meghan Markle and Pippa Middleton in recent years.

Kitty is clearly close with Victoria-she tried (unsuccessfully) to call her via FaceTime while Greenwell was doing her makeup-but she stops short of comparing herself. We are so different, we look so different, we just did a similar thing at different times, Kitty says. And while her mother is the first person shed ask for advice, Victoria doesnt volunteer it. Shes never said, You should or You shouldnt. She doesnt feel the need to force her opinions or her perspective on me.

Its that laissez faire attitude to life that unites the three women, according to Greenwell. Diana was so willing and open-as is Victoria, and as is Kitty, she says. Just sort of free-theres a sense of freedom with all of them. I think the sense of freedom is actually very important, that then they didnt feel stifled by their upbringing and their circumstances.



Kitty also shares Dianas compassion, investing her time in philanthropic work, particularly as an ambassador for U.K. youth homelessness charity Centrepoint-Diana was patron of the organization, a role now held by Prince William-and a trustee and patron for the U.K. military-family charity Give Us Time. Both she and William have taken part in Centrepoints Sleep Out, a series of events in which high-profile figures join fundraisers in sleeping on the street for a night to raise awareness about homelessness.

The warmth with which Kitty greets Orla Constant, relationship director at Centrepoint, when we arrive at the nonprofits headquarters in London, makes it clear that she is invested in this cause-these are people with whom she spends quality, personal time. Kitty says she has always felt compelled to give back but has learned that one must do more than turn up to fundraising parties in order to have an impact. Youve got to really choose carefully and put your weight behind a few things that really matter to you, rather than spread yourself so thinly, because its easy to do that, she admits.



Photo credit: Alex Bramall

Christopher Kane dress, Tamara Mellon boots

Kitty's combination of title, pedigree, and philanthropic endeavors have, at times, had her unfairly pegged as something of a Chelsea socialite by the media, but that frothy stereotype belies an old-soul maturity and introspection that simply doesnt come from an expensive education-though Kitty is certainly well-educated. She studied psychology, politics, and English literature at the University of Cape Town before moving to Florence, Italy, to study art history and Italian. She then earned a masters degree in luxury brand management from the European Business School at Regents University in London, which gave her a unique insight into the operation of the brands she works with today, though she never imagined that it would be in this capacity. I suppose I always thought I would go into [fashion] from a more creative angle, maybe a collaboration or having a luxury brand of my own. Is a Lady Kitty collection on the horizon? Maybe thats further down the line, she muses.

The knowledge she gleaned about the luxury business has served her well as a model, and is likely one of the reasons shes working with brands in long-term ambassadorial roles, though she believes the industry as a whole-and brands expectations of models-are going through a shift; evolving away from the physical to, as she calls it, having some substance. I think the word 'model' has changed, she explains. Its so great that youre not just a face- youre an extension of the brand, and they care that you have philanthropic interests and that you have, perhaps, another talent or something to talk about.



Photo credit: .

A sensible approach to mental health and body image is important to her. Diana suffered from bulimia, and Victoria has spoken honestly in the past about her struggles with anorexia, and her battles with drug and alcohol addiction. Rather than deterring Kitty from modeling, these experiences made her realize the importance of healthy wellbeing. When in London, shell do Spinning or barre classes, balanced by brunch at Granger with her girlfriends; she destresses with reruns of comfort TV such as Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, and Friends. During her video shoot, she grabs a Pret A Manger sandwich for lunch with the rest of the team and gushes about her favorite truffle pizza, found in Monaco, at Avenue 31. Its all just melted cheese-its heaven, she rhapsodizes, adding that she appreciates body shapes are diverse, and that hers is no exception.

I guess Im doing these things on my own terms, she says. I dont think its my job to starve to fit into an outfit. If Ive agreed to do something for a brand or whatever, I look after myself but Im not obsessive or unhealthy. If a brand wants to work with me, and think their designs look good on me, then they can give them to me in my size.





Photo credit: Alex Bramall

Sid Neigum dress

And they do. Kitty was so overwhelmed by the grandeur of her gown during a fitting for the Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda show in July, set against the backdrop of Italy's Lake Como, that she found herself wiping away tears. She shared the video on Instagram, writing it was a dream I had never dared to have. Recently, the brand's outspoken founders, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, have been caught up in a string of controversies, most notably in China, where an online campaign featuring a Chinese model attempting to eat Italian food with chopsticks sparked widespread accusations of racism, ultimately forcing the cancellation of a runway show in Shanghai. Though Kitty doesn't touch upon these controversies, she is effusive about working with the brand, describing it as a family, and shares how she often talks to Domenico and Stefano about their upbringing and what inspired them and how they got to where they are.



Kittys personal style is significantly more understated than those Alta Moda showstoppers-her go-to is an Eric Bompard cashmere turtleneck (I've got this in 10 different colors), Frame leather trousers, and Aquazzura boots-though she says she does love dressing up. Im definitely always overdressed, but thats okay, she says. The rest of my family is very jeans and T-shirts.

She hates shopping (My idea of a nightmare would be a shopping mall, she admits), but has amassed a significant shoe collection regardless: Its worrying, she says when I ask her how many pairs she owns. Maybe, about a hundred? Is that a lot or a little? Theyre mostly heels, as well as some sneakers for the gym, but not for the street. Those dad trainer things everyones wearing, I dont know why thats happening, she says of the trend. Also, those really tiny sunglasses. Instead, she leans toward the 1950s aesthetic of Sophia Loren and Grace Kelly, the screen idols whose biographies she devours. She doesnt shop for vintage garments, though she enthuses about the vintage look. I love Old Hollywood glamour, she says. I love the classically feminine and properly tailored and celebrating any shape.

She carries a Bulgari handbag, but also treasures her mothers vintage Chanel purses. On her hand is a ring gifted to her by Bulgari when she first started working with the brand. Kittys affinity for all things Italian extends beyond Bulgari and Dolce & Gabbana-brands she loves for being bold, and out there-it began when she lived in Florence for school, and it remains one of her favorite cities in the world. I always crave going back, she says. I like to be on my own there. I like anywhere thats as lovely to be alone in as it is to be with someone.



Richard Quinn coat, Jimmy Choo booties, Phillip Treacy hat

She wont reveal if shes single or not, nor will she discuss her exes specifically, though she split from 47-year-old real estate developer Niccolo Barattieri di San Pietro after three years in 2017. Ive been really lucky. Ive always had really lovely, straightforward boyfriends, she says, revealing that shes still friends with all of them. Whenever anything exciting happens in my life, or sad, the serious boyfriends Ive had will be the first to get in touch and the first to be supportive. She has no tolerance for game-players and describes herself as a romantic. I dont see the appeal of going for anyone whos too complicated or not trustworthy, she says. I just like people who are kind. Kindness, she says, is an underrated quality. If you havent got kindness you havent really got much. The men that Ive been with have been kind and still are. And its lovely because its like a greater form of friendship in a way.



These values are critical when families are involved. Niccolo had three children with his ex-wife, and its important to Kitty that anyone she dates gets on with her family too. I like it when they have a lovely family that I can spend Sundays with. And while shes soaking up every minute of her success right now, it is this kind of future that she craves. I just want a happy family, and I want to be married with children, she says matter-of-factly. But for now, at least, as she prepares to jet to Rome for her next engagement, fashion wants a lot more from Kitty. And shes only just getting started.



Photo credit: Alex Bramall

Photographer: Alex Bramall, Stylist: Cassie Anderson, Fashion Director: Kerry Pieri, Hair: Peter Lux at The Wall Group, Makeup: Mary Greenwell at The Wall Group, Manicure: Kelly Shents using Nail Inc Pro, Prop Stylist: Matthew Duguid, Produced by Nicholas Forbes Watson, Special thanks to the Cliveden House, UK

Video DP, Director: Robert Dume, AC: Alex Neaves, Colorist: Erica Dillman, Motion Design: Hayeon Kim, Digital Design: Perri Tomkiewicz





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Photo credit: CPBRI/MEGA

From Delish

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you a breaking news alert. While on a 12-day Caribbean tour with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles hit the beach in Barbados donning some surprisingly on-trend muted floral trunks. And were just getting word-*checks earpiece*-yes, folks, this is just in: His bod is cracking. You heard it here first. The bod? Its cracking.

We now take you live to the Marie Claire newsroom for more on this important story. Charles, 70, despite his classic British paleness in the photos first reported by TMZ, is definitely rocking those trunks. Several eyewitness reports even indicate that he can, in fact, still get it.

With the aim of providing our readers with the most up-to-the-minute information possible on this breaking item, our News Team has thoroughly searched the Google results for Prince Charles shirtless and can now exclusively reveal that this is not the first time Charles has been photographed without a top. Further, a perusal of said results suggests that the Prince has gotten better with age, as evidenced by this 1984 photograph:

Photo credit: Anwar Hussein - Getty Images

God save the Queen. And after a deeper dive into the archives-again, purely for the sake of our readers, who rely on us for up-to-date and credible data for stories of such international importance-we can also present a photo from 1970 that shows conclusively that the Prince has always been a smokeshow:

Photo credit: David Cairns - Getty Images

Good show, old chap. At the risk of editorializing, stories like this are why many of us in the Marie Claire newsroom got into journalism.

Goodnight and good luck.

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Charles Melton had the deck stacked against him when he joined the cast of Riverdale in its second season as perennial bad boy/Archie Andrews rival Reggie Mantle after original actor Ross Butler departed. Seamlessly integrating into one of the hottest, most madcap teen dramas in recent memory is no easy featbut it's one Melton has done capably, bringing a new sensitivity to Reggie's character in the show's in-progress third season.

It's a versatility that's serving him wellthis summer, we'll see him play a romantic lead as Daniel Bae in the film adaptation of the hit novel The Sun Is Also a Star, and he's currently proving his action-hero mettle on the set of Bad Boys for Life with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, currently set for a 2020 release.

Recently, GQ spoke to Melton about his increasingly bright career, vulnerable masculinity, and being a mixed-race star on one of the biggest names in teen drama.

GQ: You're having a hell of a year!

Charles Melton: A lot's been happening, it's been very exciting. This past year doing The Sun Is Also a Star was a passion project. And coming back to Riverdale, which is such a fantastic show to be a part of, to shooting Bad Boys 3 with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. I feel crazy, man, saying these names out loud!

Tell me a little about The Sun Is Also a Star.

It's a beautiful romance, it takes place in New York. Two people, different lives, whose parents are immigrants who came to America to make a different life for them. They meet each other, they have 24 hoursit's a story where they experience fate, destiny, love, and hope.

Yeah, and the big heartbreaking thing at the middle is the immigrant experience, right?

Yeah, my mother is an immigrant. I'm an army bratso I grew up traveling every two to four years. My father met my mother in Korea, and I remember being 12 years old and my mom was in the process of getting her American citizenship. I remember the questionsshe had me and my sister quiz her, every day. Man, I'm telling youevery day.

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The process is extremely demanding, right? They ask you about things most citizens don't have to know.

It's crazy. At that time, my dad was traveling a lot with my mother, moving to Tennessee and to Texas, so they're asking questions like Who's the governor of Texas? Who's the mayor of this city? They had so many questions about the history of America, and the recent history, which I think a lot of people aren't aware of.

Watch:

10 Things Charles Melton Can't Live Without

This is also your first romantic filmwhat's your favorite part of being in a love story?

I'm a firm believer in love and falling in love. There's something about being very vulnerable playing this role, without any sort of judgment. It's great to be a part of a romance. It installs hope. Being an Asian lead of a studio film is very humbling, and it's very exciting to be a part of that story, an interracial story, which represents a true America, I believe.

Do you have a favorite rom-com or romantic film?

I love Before Sunrise. Have you seen Before Sunrise?

Oh yeah, it's excellent.

The whole aspect of it taking place in one day is very similar to The Sun Is Also a Star. It's a little bit more real. Things happen quickly, you don't have the span of six months, or three weeks, or a year, or five years like you do in normal romance dramas. So to be part of something that was so timely and happening in real time was so exciting and very unique and different.

On Riverdale, you've been getting the chance to show off new sides of Reggie Mantle outside of just, like, the antagonist jock he started out as, right? What's that been like?

It's always fun to layer a character, to make the character a little bit more dynamic than it is on paper. Joining the show's second seasoneveryone on the show's been my family, the cast is all very close with each other; they welcomed me with open arms. Riverdale has played a very big role in my career, and I'm very grateful for that. It's exciting to play a character who's traditionally Caucasian and is considered the jock, bad boy of the crew.

You've mentioned vulnerability a few times. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that? How important is that to you?

I think there is this idea of masculinity where you hold your feelings in, you don't really say how you're feeling and truly express how you feel, especially when it comes to love and being vulnerable and feeling insecure about something. I always want to grow, and playing the role of Daniel in The Sun Is Also a Star, there's this vulnerability, this sense of hope, love, and wearing my heart on my sleeve and not being afraid to be hurt. It's how you can truly connect with someone or something, and I strive for that as an actor.

I think it's better for men to be more open about their feelings and to express how they feel instead of trying to hold everything together and acting like everything is okay, and to be macho and to be strong. There is strength in being vulnerable. There is strength in being honest with your feelings.

What's it been like dealing with the Riverdale fandom?

I'll tell you one thingwhen I was flying from L.A. to Atlanta last week, I was going through security. This man who is about my dad's age came up to me and said "Hey, you're Charles, you play Reggie, you're that guy from Riverdale" and I go yeah, and he's like "May I get a picture" and I'm like "Sure."

I go through security and I see that he is with his wife and his sonhis wife is a Filipino woman and this was a Caucasian man. And his son Justice was 10 years old, and his wife looks at Justice, looks at me, and says "See, he looks like you, you look like him" and I'll tell you what, man, that was a very beautiful moment for me.

It was a very nice experience for me, man, being an Asian-American. I'm proud of my heritage, right? I'm proud of being American and I'm proud of being Korean and I'm also proud of being mixed race where I can represent two cultures  essentially the culture of what "American" is. Growing up, I never saw anybody that looked like me on TV, and to be part of that change that is happening right now in this industry isI don't take that lightly. You said your parents are immigrants as well, you're first-generation?

Second. My grandparents are Guatemalan on my mom's side.

One of my best friends is Guatemalan!

Oh that's awesome. I don't know a lot of Guatemalan people, it sucks, man.

I feel you, man. Imagine being Korean in Kansas!

What was that like? You went to college there too, right?

Yeah, I moved to Kansas after my freshman year in Germany. I always had this unique idea of what America was because my only idea of what America was [came from] living on military bases all over the world and watching movies. Then when I went to military schools overseas where the minority was white people, the majority of the population was mixed. All these children in the military, it was a very unique experience.

Can you tell me a little bit about your experience on Bad Boys for Life? It's your first time doing a big action movie!

It's a lot of work, man, a lot of training. I do all my own stunts so I take pride in that. There's so many moving pieces! It's been [fun] going from playing a 17 year old on Riverdale, to playing this insecure, vulnerable, [character] who wears his heart on his sleeve, to playing this badass, tatted up, former DEA agent in an action movie. I'm smiling from ear to ear right now. It's been crazy.

Is it starting to get funny how young your character is on Riverdale?

[Laughing] Yeah, all my buddies back home are like married and have kids now, and they give me a hard time, but it's all out of love. They're like "Yeah you're still in high school." It's funny. My sister is in college, my baby sister, who I still see to be in 3rd grade. And the character I'm playing on Riverdale is younger than her, actually. It's kinda funny to think about.

Do you have friends and family you had to explain the show to?

Oh yeah, I mean everyone in my family knows the Archie comics. They grew up with the Archie Comicsif there is anyone I'm explaining the show to, it's everyone on my moms side who's Korean. They're not aware of the Archie comics. They just think I'm like Brad Pitt or something like that. [Laughs]

That's amazing.

[Laughing] Right? Yeah they think I'm living in a mansion, or something like that, but I'm like "Nope, still living out of a suitcase working." It's pretty funny but it's all love, you know? They love me the same.

There's a scene in The Sun Is Also a Star where your character sings karaoke. Is Reggie going to sing in Riverdale?

We have the musical episode coming up and yes, you're going to hear me sing.

Before we go, I wanted to ask you about Luke Perry, whose passing was a shock to us all. Did you get to work with him or spend any time with him at all?

I filmed two scenes with Luke and I yeah  that guy is just full of love and life, man. We're all here getting through everything that's going on together.

Watch:

Charles Melton Tries On This Seasons Freshest New Menswear

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Photographs by Holly Andres

Styled by Lucy Armstrong

Grooming by Johnny Hernandez for Fierro Agency
Photo credit: Courtesy

From Women's Health

The true story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard is stranger than fiction, which is why it makes a fascinating basis for the upcoming Hulu show The Act, premiering on March 20. The show stars "The Kissing Booth's" Joey King as Gypsy, and "Boyhood's" Patricia Arquette as her mom Dee Dee, who was murdered by Gypsys boyfriend in 2015, after years of physically and mentally abusing Gypsy. But thats just the surface of this story.

Dee Dee started lying about Gypsys health when she was a baby.

Dee Dee had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition that causes people to make up or induce illnesses in people they care for, like a child or elderly parent, in order to get sympathy and attention. Dee Dee told people that Gypsy had leukemia, asthma, muscular dystrophy, seizures, brain damage and learning disabilities.

She forced her to use a wheelchair and feeding tube when she needed neither. Dee Dee lied about Gypsys symptoms, leading to unnecessary surgeries and medication. She home-schooled her because she said Gypsy couldnt keep up in regular school. No one knew that Gypsy was actually a healthy child.

Dee Dee profited off of Gypsys fake illnesses.

As a single mom raising an extremely ill child, Dee Dee got a lot of sympathy. The family received donations and free trips regularly from organizations like Make-A-Wish and Ronald McDonald House. The trailer for "The Act" hints at this.

Habitat for Humanity provided Dee Dee and Gypsy with a house (complete with a wheelchair ramp and hot tub for Gypsys muscle pain) when they lost theirs during Hurricane Katrina. Thats when the family moved from Louisiana to Springfield, Missouri, where they stayed until Dee Dees murder.

Gypsy discovered that her health issues were a lie, but felt she couldnt escape her mom.

As Gypsy got older and realized what her mother was doing, she tried to fight back. When she wouldnt use her walking aids, Dee Dee would beat her. In a 20/20 interview last year, she said she tried to escape, only to be chained to her bed. Her mom would never leave her side, and Gypsy felt she had to go along with the lies. Late at night, when Dee Dee was asleep, she would escape online and eventually met a boyfriend on the site ChristianSingles.com, Nick Godejohn.

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Gypsy confided in Nick Godejohn, and they made a plan to kill Dee Dee.

Gypsy told Nick about what her mom was doing and how she wanted to get away, and Nick was willing to murder Dee Dee to make that happen. In 2015, when Gypsy was 23, Nick stabbed Dee Dee to death in their Springfield home. He and Gypsy then fled to Wisconsin, where Nick lived. Dee Dee was found dead days later after a series a strange Facebook messages appeared on her page that caused police to investigate. At first, it was thought that Gypsy had been kidnapped, but when police found her with Nick, they were shocked to see she wanted to be there-and she was healthy.

Gypsy is currently in prison for the murder of Dee Dee.

Both Gypsy and Nick were arrested-Gypsy was sentenced to 10 years at Chillicothe Correctional Center in Missouri after pleading guilty to second-degree murder, which you can see in the video below.

Nick was convicted of first-degree murder in November 2018, and sentenced to life in prison without parole in February 2019. In 2023, when Gypsy is 32, shell be eligible for parole. She's opened up about the fact that she feels she didn't deserve a 10-year sentence, but understands that her involvement in the murder was still wrong, which you can see in the Dr. Phil clip below. Gypsy is nearly unrecognizable from the time she was living with Dee Dee.

You can learn more about Gypsy's story in the 2017 HBO documentary, "Mommy Dead and Dearest."

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On Monday morning, White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News to perform her regular ritual: the provision of alternative facts. This time, Conway's spin was directed towards last week's horrific shootings at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques, which together killed 50 people in the nation's deadliest-ever deadliest terrorist attack.

The problem she addressed? In a 74-page manifesto, one of the alleged terrorists prominently name-checked Donald Trump, praising him as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose," if not a good "policy maker and leader." In an odd defense, Conway encouraged every single American to read the terrorist's manifesto in its entirety, noting that it contains but one reference to the president, which is sort of like saying that Jesus's appearance in but four of the Bible's 66 books makes him, at most, an interesting bit player in its narrative arc. (Conway also assures viewers that the shooter's writings indicate that "he's not a conservative, and he's not a Nazi"an interesting choice of concepts to juxtapose without being asked.)

Conway was just one in a cavalcade of Trump allies who struggled to at once denounce the shooting while downplaying the shooter's open admiration for the President of the United States. On the Sunday talk-show circuit, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney pooh-poohed attempts to link the two as "absurd," while U.S. ambassador to New Zealand Scott Brown asserted that there wasn't "any credibility" to the obvious connection. I dont think anybody could say that the president is anti-Muslim, Mulvaney added, referring to a person who campaigned on the explicit promise to ban Muslim immigration until the country "can figure out what the hell is going on."

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Trump, meanwhile, followed up with a typically tone-deaf condolence tweet, extending his "warmest sympathies" to New Zealand and then dismissing white supremacy as an emerging global threat shortly thereafter. "I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess," he opined. This morning, he blamed the Fake News Media for its reporting on a piece of evidence that suggests the opposite.

The shooter's praise for the president is only the latest expression of enthusiasm for his administration from the white-supremacist sector. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump," former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke proclaimed at 2017's Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. "Thats why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said hes going to take our country back. Both locally and globally, white nationalists like Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, Canada's Faith Goldy, and any number of MAGA red hat-wearing attendees at the Unite the Right rally have also found much to celebrate in Trump's gleeful anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Correlation is not causation, and hate is older than any one presidency. But it is hard not to notice how quickly hordes of polo-clad, torch-bearing white supremacists screaming "JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US" felt sufficiently emboldened to march in the streets after this one took office. His response to the clash, equating the murderous pro-Nazi and anti-racist demonstrators as "very fine people," proved that once-shunned ideas had become acceptable elements of public discourse. So, too, does each additional instance of a Trump-adjacent figure winking slyly at the extremists who support him, from Mike Pence declining to call Duke "deplorable" all the way to president's strident defense of Jeanine Pirro, whom Fox News suspended this weekend for questioning whether Minnesota congressman Ilhan Omar's hijab renders her incapable of loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.

The rise of far-right hate groups is one of the most dangerous trends in America right now, as 71 percent of extremism-related fatalities between 2008 and 2017 were attributable to right-wing violence, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Last month, law enforcement officials arrested Christopher Hasson, a 49-year-old Coast Guard lieutenant stockpiling weapons in the hope of establishing a "white homeland" in the United States. Days before killing 11 congregants at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue, Robert Bowers wrote online that Trump did not go far enough to promote Bowers's preferred anti-Semitic agenda. In December, a gang of Aryan Brotherhood members felt comfortable enough to beat a black DJ at a Seattle-area bar, all for his crime of not getting to their requests for heavy metal as quickly as they would have liked.

Donald Trump's rise has provided renewed hope to white supremacistsin the U.S. and abroadthat the future for which they hope is attainable, perhaps more so than they once thought. And with increasing frequency, those same people feel empowered to resort to acts they hope will elicit that future, secure in the knowledge that although he might repudiate the violence, he cannot fully repudiate the sentiments that motivate it. Those who profit from bigotry have a powerful incentive to pretend bigotry isn't as much of a problem as everyone else seems to think.
By Lamine Chikhi and Hamid Ould Ahmed ALGIERS (Reuters) - Thousands of students, university professors and health workers rallied in Algiers on Tuesday calling for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to quit, and a new group headed by activists and opposition figures told the army not to interfere. In the first direct public message to the generals from leaders emerging from nearly a month of mass protests against Bouteflika, the National Coordination for Change said the military should "play its constitutional role without interfering in the people's choice". Bouteflika, who has ruled for 20 years, bowed to the protesters last week by announcing he would not stand for another term. But he stopped short of stepping down and said he would stay in office until a new constitution is adopted, effectively extending his present term. His moves have done nothing to halt demonstrations, which peaked on Friday with hundreds of thousands of protesters on the streets of Algiers and have continued into this week. "We will not stop our pressure until he (Bouteflika) goes," said student Ali Adjimi, 23. "The people want you to leave", read a banner. Others shouted "the people and the army are one." The 82-year-old president has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, and protesters say he is too old and frail to rule. "We are fed up with this system. It must disappear forever," said Djilali Bahi, a doctor at Tuesday's demonstration. ARMY "RESPONSIBILITY" So far, soldiers have stayed in their barracks during the protests. But on Monday, Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Ahmed Gaed Salah hinted at a more active role, saying the army should take responsibility for finding a quick solution to the crisis. Generals have traditionally wielded power behind the scenes in Algeria but have publicly intervened during pivotal moments, including cancelling an election in the early 1990s that Islamists were poised to win, triggering a decade of civil war. The protest leaders issued their statement titled "Platform of Change" late on Monday, demanding Bouteflika step down when his term ends on April 28 and the government resign immediately. "We belong to the people so we are against extending Bouteflikas fourth term," said Mohamed Yousfi, head of one of the doctors unions. Bouteflika's newly appointed deputy prime minister, Ramtane Lamamra, has launched a tour of allied countries seeking support. He visited Moscow on Tuesday, where Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia, a close military ally of Algeria, was concerned about attempts to destabilize the situation. Lamamra defended the government's reform proposals. Bouteflika has agreed to hand over power to an elected president, and the opposition will be allowed to take part in the cabinet that will oversee elections, he said. POWERFUL BROTHER For years, rumors have swirled about potential successors to Bouteflika, but no one credible has emerged who has the backing of the army and elite and is not in their 70s or 80s. Protesters have been calling for a generation of new leaders to replace a ruling elite dominated by the military, businessmen and veterans of the 1954-1962 independence war against France. In their statement, the protest leaders made veiled references to two figures: Bouteflika's powerful younger brother Said, and the president's friend Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran Algerian U.N. diplomat named by Bouteflika to chair a conference to develop a new political landscape. "The Algerian people will not accept any approach that will tend to extend the current system, whether from the 'brother' entourage or the 'friend'," the protest leaders said. Algerian authorities have long been adept at manipulating a weak and disorganized opposition. But the mass demonstrations have emboldened well-known figures to lead the reform drive. Prominent members of the new group include lawyer and activist Mustapha Bouchachi, opposition leader Karim Tabou and former treasury minister Ali Benouari. They also include Mourad Dhina and Kamel Guemazi, former members of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the Islamist party whose annulled election victory led to the 1990s insurgency. A possible role for Islamists in any future government is one of the issues that could divide the public and potentially provoke the military to intervene. Hardline Islamists have largely been excluded from public life since the war. More moderate Islamist groups are active but ideologically divided. Zoubida Assoul, leader of a small political party, is the only woman in the group so far. "Bouteflika just trampled on the constitution after he decided to extend his fourth term," said the National Coordination for Change. With memories of the 1990s civil war which cost an estimated 200,000 lives, many Algerians have long prioritized stability. Bouteflika survived the 2011 "Arab Spring" that toppled other Arab leaders. But with the economy souring and the youth less fearful of change, he has struggled to placate Algerians. (Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Peter Graff, William Maclean)
Algiers (AFP) - Tens of thousands of students again took to the streets of the Algerian capital on Tuesday, just hours after long-time leader President Abdelaziz Bouteflika confirmed he plans to stay in power after his mandate expires next month.

"Students are committed, the system must go!" they shouted, as students from several campuses in Algiers massed in the city centre.

They were joined by university professors and medical professionals for the rally on the day which marks the anniversary of Algeria's victory in its war of independence.

"March 19, 1962: end of the Algerian war... March 19, 2019: beginning of a system change," read one sign -- referring to the Evian accords that brought an end to French colonial rule 57 years ago.

But Bouteflika, who has ruled Algeria for 20 years, again defied demands that he should quit, and confirmed on Monday that he will stay on beyond the end of his term of office next month.

After weeks of protests, he announced on March 11 he was withdrawing from his bid for a fifth term in planned April elections.

His comments initially sparked elation among protesters before they realised he intended to remain in office regardless.

The ailing 82-year-old also scrapped the election set for April 18 and announced he was rolling out reforms through a "national conference".

Rarely seen in public since a 2013 stroke, Bouteflika issued a fresh statement on Monday which confirmed his new plan would see him stay in power after his term ends on April 28.

"(I hope) that Algeria experiences, in the near future, a harmonious transition and assists handing over the reins to a new generation," he said in the statement.

"This is the ultimate goal that I have committed to making a reality before the end of my presidential journey, at your side and at your service," added Bouteflika.

Algerian Deputy Prime Minister Ramtane Lamamra on Tuesday promised "open and transparent" steps to resolve the political crisis, during a visit to Russia.

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He said Bouteflika was "ready to fully transfer his powers" to a new president.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow, a longtime ally of Algiers, was behind the Algerian government's efforts and hit out at "attempts to destabilise the situation from the outside".

"I am convinced... that the people of Algeria can solve their own problems, resolve their own internal affairs," he said.

- 'Make like the dinosaurs' -

While Bouteflika has given no timetable for his national conference, he said the shake-up of Algeria's "political, economic and social systems" would start "in the very near future".

A constitutional review would be put before a referendum, he said, which would be "a prelude to a new electoral process that will see the election of a new president."

Protests initially erupted last month after Bouteflika announced his intention to stand for a fifth term, bringing tens of thousands to the streets in the north African country.

Last week, for a fourth consecutive Friday, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched across the country stepping up demands for Bouteflika to go.

Despite the president's reform pledges, Algerians have continued marching in huge numbers, many clutching humorous banners and waving their country's flags amid a festival atmosphere.

"Make like the dinosaurs, and disappear!" read one banner on Tuesday, or "Geologists are hoping for the mass extinction of the government."

The Algerian press also gave short shrift to Bouteflika's latest letter to the people.

"It's more than just stubbornness, it's dangerous irresponsibility," said one opinion writer in the French-language daily Liberte.

"Bouteflika has not met the demands of the people," added the Arabic daily El Khabar.

New Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui, named on March 11 to replace the unpopular Ahmed Ouyahia, Tuesday continued talks to form a new government which he has promised will be younger and made up of technocrats.

But his approaches have been largely shunned by the opposition parties and union leaders.

In his latest message, Bouteflika appealed to Algerians to "offer your support to your army to protect Algeria from external dangers."

His comments came after the army chief promised the military would remain "the bastion of the people and the nation."
Yong Suk Lee is leaving the CIA to work for Google. (Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, C-Span, Getty Images)

A senior official at the CIAs Korea Mission Center is leaving the agency to work for Google in Asia, according to two sources directly familiar with the matter, marking the second high-ranking employee to leave the division amid high-level talks between U.S. and North Korean officials on denuclearization.

Yong Suk Lee, the deputy assistant director of the Korea Mission Center, is highly respected within the Korea-watchers community as well as the intelligence community. Lee is an institution and his departure will be a huge loss, said one former CIA officer familiar with his work.

There was no indication Lee was leaving because of any tensions or problems with ongoing negotiations. But the former official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said Lee is the latest in a string of departures from the agency toward technology companies.

Yong is excited to move to Singapore to work for Google Asia, said a second person familiar with his new role.

Andy Kim, the former director of the center, retired in November and recently joined Stanford University as a visiting scholar. Kim declined an interview request, according to Stanford.

John Fleming, a career CIA officer, has taken over as head of the Korea Mission Center, according to the CIA.

John Fleming has nearly three decades of CIA experience and shaped the Korea Mission Center  working with Andy Kim  since its inception in 2017, wrote CIA spokesperson Tim Barrett in an email to Yahoo News. In addition to his years on the North Korea issue, he also worked on CIAs support to previous high-stakes negotiations in other regions.

Google declined to comment.

Since the CIA established the Korea Mission Center in May 2017 to focus on addressing the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea, it has been supplying frequent intelligence updates to President Trump  who has vacillated between fire and fury and love toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At the most recent summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, Trump left early after negotiations stalled.

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North Koreas isolation, geography and lack of internet connectivity has made it one of intelligence communitys most difficult targets. The United States does not have an official diplomatic presence in Pyongyang, making the CIA even more critical in assessing the regimes intentions.

Lee, famous at the agency for his bow ties, appeared in public to provide remarks in October 2017 at George Washington Universitys annual Ethos and Profession of Intelligence conference. Lee, the current deputy assistant director of the Korea Mission Center and a top analyst, told the audience that the CIA does not believe Kim is a madman and rather has a clarity of purpose in his behavior.

President Trump shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February before a meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

The last person who wants conflict in the region is actually Kim Jong Un, said Lee, who has studied North Korea for more than 25 years.

The intelligence community has for several years now had to compete with tech giants, which offer significantly higher salaries than the government and the chance to step out of the shadows. Increasingly, private companies are able to compete with the government in satellite imagery analysis and threat intelligence work in ways previously considered impossible due to resource constraints and availability of advanced technology.

The former official familiar with Lees departure suggested its possible the departing agency official was eager to work with a former colleague who is already at Google: Deborah Wituski, the former director of analytic resources in the CIAs Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis.

Top intelligence officials in recent years have stressed the importance of technology companies working closely with the intelligence community, and allowing a flow of talent between the two sectors. Sue Gordon, the principal deputy director of national intelligence and the person who came up with the idea for In-Q-Tel, the CIAs venture capital arm, has spoken about the topic frequently.

Kim, the former head of the center, was often seen on the sidelines of talks with North Korean officials, traveling with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. While the intelligence community is typically further in the background for high-level diplomatic talks, the decision to more openly include them at the table is not unprecedented.

As CIA director, George Tenet was deeply engaged in the security side of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during his tenure, for example, according to his account of events in his book, At the Center of the Storm.

A second former agency official told Yahoo News that Lees departure was likely a matter of time. Reaching that level of policy involvement is usually an indicator youre about done, the official said.

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Bashiru Dawodu, the newly elected House of Representatives member for Oshodi/ Isolo Federal Constituency 1 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress has presented his certificate of return to MC Oluomo, a chieftain of the Nigerian Union of Road Transporter Worker (NURTW) and a member of APC.

APC member visited MC Oluomo at his residence to thank him for the role he played in his victory.

See pictures below;
Damascus (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met with Russia's defence minister Tuesday, stressing the importance of coordination between the two countries in the fight against "terrorism", state media said.

The meeting came one day after the military chiefs of staff of Syria, Iraq and Iran met in Damascus to discuss coordination between their forces.

It also came as US-backed forces in eastern Syria cornered holdout Islamic State group fighters in a tiny patch of land near the Euphrates River in the village of Baghouz.

During the meeting, Assad said coordination between Moscow and Damascus was a key factor behind victories over IS and Al-Qaeda-linked groups, the official SANA news agency reported.

For his part, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said his country would continue to support efforts to regain the Syrian government's control of all the country, SANA added.

Russia has been a key player in the Syrian conflict since launching a military intervention in 2015 in support of Assad's regime.

Eight years into a war that has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions, Syrian government forces control almost two-thirds of the country.

Just two areas remain beyond their control: the jihadist-held northwestern region of Idlib, and the third of the country under the control of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

Assad and Shoigu discussed the situation in areas east of the Euphrates River, where the SDF is battling IS, as well as Idlib, the news agency said.

They agreed on the need to restore stability and counter foreign influence in the two areas, it added.

Earlier on Monday, Syrian Defence Minister Ali Abdullah Ayoub said both Idlib and areas controlled by the SDF would be recaptured by the government.

The Idlib region borders Turkey and is dominated by an alliance led by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

It has been protected from a massive regime offensive since September, thanks to a buffer zone deal agreed by Damascus's ally Russia and rebel-backer Turkey.

But it has been hit by sporadic government shelling.

Syria's regime has insisted the buffer zone deal is temporary and that Idlib will eventually revert to government control.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Iranian state TV says careless loading of cargo has capsized a ship in the southern port of Bandar Abbas, sending port workers scrambling to retrieve any of the 153 containers that were suddenly submerged.

The report says only one Indian seaman aboard the Comoros-owned LS Star was injured in the foot in the incident on Monday.

Mehdi Haghshenas, deputy chief of Iran's Ports and Maritime Organization, told the TV the ship was not being loaded properly and that there was "poor coordination between the ship's first officer and the crane operator" lifting the containers on board.

He says the ship has a 14-member crew, all from India.

There were no further details and there was no immediate estimate of damages.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Syrian government said on Monday areas held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) would be brought back under its control through military force or the kind of "reconciliation agreements". "The only card remaining in the hands of the Americans and their allies is the SDF, and it will be dealt with through the two methods used by the Syrian state: national reconciliation or the liberation of the areas that they control through force," Syrian Defence Minister General Ali Abdullah Ayoub said. "The Americans must leave and will leave," he said. Large areas of Syria have been brought back under government control through "reconciliation agreements" that have typically been concluded after the military defeat of rebel forces. (Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Alison Williams)
Emergency services responded to the scene of a shooting in Utrecht in the Netherlands on March 18 that left multiple people injured.

Police in Utrecht said that they were looking for a 37-year-old man of Turkish origin, named Gokmen Tanis, in connection with a shooting in or around a tram in the city in what they described as a possible terrorist attack. Credit: Lilian Bruigom via Storyful
Utrecht (Netherlands) (AFP) - Dutch police said they were investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack, as they arrested a new suspect on Tuesday over the deadly shooting.

Authorities said they had found a suspicious letter in a getaway car used by Turkish-born main suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, which made them "seriously" consider terrorism might have been involved in Monday's rampage in which three people were killed and seven injured.

Armed counter-terrorism officers meanwhile arrested one new suspect, aged 40, in Utrecht who was "suspected of being involved in the shooting incident", prosecutors said, adding that his "role was being further investigated."

Two other men who were arrested Monday in connection with the shooting had been released, prosecutors added.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earlier in the day laid flowers for the victims at the scene of the attack and said he was "still filled with horror" by the bloodshed.

"So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," Dutch police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.

Apparently ruling out reports that the shooting was due to a family dispute, the statement added: "Our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims."

The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, south of Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said.

Armed police captured Tanis after an eight-hour manhunt that virtually shut down the Netherlands' fourth largest city and saw security stepped up at airports and key sites across the country.

- 'Filled with horror' -

Police said they found a red Renault Clio that the suspect had carjacked before the attack and used as a getaway car afterwards. They had also found a firearm after his arrest.

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Tanis is expected to appear before a judge later this week in a closed-door hearing after which he most likely will be remanded in custody.

A stream of mourners laid flowers on Tuesday at the site of the attack near the 24 Oktoberplein square.

"One of the victims was my friend's girlfriend. So coming here today was the least I could do," Marco van Rooijen, 43, told AFP.

The attack raised security fears ahead of Wednesday's provincial elections in the Netherlands. Populist and far-right parties have seized on the attack to push their agenda for the polls but Rutte has remained restrained.

"A day later, I am still filled with horror," Rutte told parliament.

"There are still many questions about the motive, and the police and prosecutors still have to do a lot of work. But there is no doubt that the impact was huge."

Flags were flying half-mast on many buildings around the Netherlands and on foreign embassies.

Public transport was running again after forensic police finished their investigations at the scene and removed the tram on which the shooting erupted.

- 'Completely mad' -

But there was also growing anger after it emerged that the suspect had only been freed from jail in a rape case two weeks ago.

Tanis was originally arrested in 2017 then released from pre-trial detention, before being taken back into custody when he breached his bail conditions, the central Netherlands district court said.

He was freed again at the start of March.

In 2014, he was also convicted of "illegal possession of weapons" and attempted theft but acquitted of attempted manslaughter. He was also convicted in recent months for shoplifting and burglary.

Broadcaster NOS meanwhile said some of his relatives had links to fundamentalist Islamic groups, but also that he was known for unstable behaviour after divorcing his wife two years ago.

A woman involved in the rape case told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper: "He is completely mad and uses drugs. I have previously warned the police against him. He's not a terrorist but a psychopath."

Support for the Netherlands poured in from around the world, including the United States, the EU and Russia.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: "America stands with you. We will continue to do all we can to help you in this terrible time of tragedy."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's intelligence agency was "looking into" the attack.

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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called for ending the Electoral College during a town hall Monday night.

Warren was taking questions in Jackson, Miss., on CNN when an audience member asked her about voter disenfranchisement. The senator proposed a constitutional amendment that would ensure the right to vote for every American citizen, rolling back voter suppression laws at the state level, and essentially restoring the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court gutted in 2013. She then moved onto discussing the Electoral College.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, speaks to supporters in Memphis. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht/Reuters)

Come a general election, presidential candidates dont come to places like Mississippi, said Warren. They also dont come to places like California or Massachusetts because were not the battleground states. Well, my view is that every vote matters, and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College and every vote counts.

Warrens response received an extended ovation in the room.

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, another Democrat running in the presidential primary, in January called for the elimination of the Electoral College.

Weve got to repair our democracy. The Electoral College needs to go, because its made our society less and less democratic," Buttigieg said during an interview with CBS News.

Democrats have floated the idea of abolishing the Electoral College in the wake of the 2016 election, where Hillary Clinton received nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump but lost the Electoral College. In 2000, Al Gore received over 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush but also failed to win the presidency.

A number of traditionally Democratic states have pushed a plan to institute a national popular vote at the state level.

Last Friday, Colorado joined 11 states and the District of Columbia in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which pledges Electoral College votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote. The bill, which needs states representing at least 270 Electoral College votes to sign on in order to take effect, has 181. The state legislature of New Mexico, which has five electoral votes, approved the measure and sent it to the Democratic governors desk earlier this month.

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By Nick Carey and Ben Klayman TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) - General Motors Co built the final Chevrolet Cruze small car at its Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant on March 6, despite demands from President Donald Trump, Ohio political leaders and the United Auto Workers union not to close the plant and leave nearly 1,500 workers laid off. Dina Mays, a 14-year veteran of Lordstown Assembly, was not at the plant for its last day. She had already moved on to her new workplace, GM's Toledo transmission plant, where the automaker builds 10-speed transmissions for popular pickup trucks. The U.S. auto industry is heading into a new cycle of plant closings and job cuts. Sales in the world's second-largest vehicle market are projected to fall. Consumers shifting away from traditional sedans such as the Cruze have left GM with more workers assigned to building cars than the market can support. But GM has the reverse problem with trucks - for now, it cannot build them fast enough. That is helping GM find new jobs for displaced sedan plant workers, and blunt attacks from the UAW and politicians. The automaker recently announced it will add 1,000 jobs at a plant in Flint, Michigan, to build a new generation of GM's largest pickups. A GM spokeswoman said last week that 538 workers from a Detroit plant slated to close in 2020 and nearly 100 from Lordstown have already signed on in Flint to fill those jobs. That and other job opportunities could cushion the blow for most of the 1,450 workers currently laid off at Lordstown. The Ohio plant is one of five North American GM plants slated to close by January 2020. GM Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra has said the automaker expects to have 2,700 job openings by early 2020 at other thriving plants, enough to absorb nearly all of those displaced in plants in Maryland, Ohio and Michigan willing or able to uproot for work hundreds of miles away. GM said another 1,200 affected hourly workers are eligible for early retirement. Based on a plant-by-plant count provided by GM, if every worker displaced or soon to be displaced volunteers for or accepts a new job - and those eligible to retire do so - that would potentially leave up to 500 GM workers jobless, far fewer than the thousands decried by the UAW and Trump. Ohio is a key state for Trump's 2020 re-election chances. In July 2017 he vowed in Youngstown, Ohio, near GM's Lordstown plant, that those auto jobs were "all coming back." "Don't move," he told residents. "Don't sell your house." On Sunday, Trump tweeted that he had spoken with Barra to demand she "do something quickly" to keep the Lordstown plant running. GM responded, "Our main focus remains on our employees and offering them jobs in our plants where we have growth opportunities. We have opportunities available for virtually all impacted employees." The company said the ultimate fate of the plant will be decided in contract negotiations with the UAW this fall. NOMADIC LIFESTYLE Mays and other veteran GM factory workers have been pushed into nomadic lives before. Mays is on her third GM factory in 15 years. In 2005, she moved to Lordstown in northeastern Ohio after being laid off at a GM plant in Baltimore, Maryland. "I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's rough," Mays said. Her eldest son is at college and a 12-year-old son remains with relatives near Lordstown. "But I have to be able to support myself and my kids." After 25 years with GM, she has five years until retirement, so transferring "was the best decision I could make." For those who move, GM offers a $30,000 cash package to offset costs. If the company has jobs for laid-off workers elsewhere and they refuse them, they lose their supplemental pay and are eligible to hire on again only at their "home plant" - in this case, Lordstown. SCANT OPTIONS For Joe Stanton, 55, transferring 160 miles (260 km) to Toledo from Lordstown made sense. With 25 years at GM, he also has five years to go before he can retire. He rents an apartment with Mays just outside Toledo to cut costs. He moved from Pittsburgh to Lordstown in 2006 when his GM plant there closed. He owns two homes, one near Lordstown and one in Pennsylvania. Stanton misses his adult son in Pittsburgh and girlfriend near Lordstown but said he is lucky not to have small children or sick parents to care for so he could move to Toledo. If the UAW renegotiates a new product for Lordstown, retooling the plant would take years, Stanton said. "That's a gamble I wasn't willing to take," he said. For those left behind, the outlook is bleak. Tod Porter, chair of Youngstown State University's economics department, estimated Lordstown's closure could cost more than 8,000 jobs including at auto suppliers and service providers, in an area still affected by steel mill closures decades ago. Dave Green, president of UAW Local 1112, which represents workers at Lordstown, said he is fighting for the plant to reopen but added unemployed GM workers have scant options. "If you don't want a job flipping burgers for minimum wage, you got to get the hell out of here," he said. (Reporting by Nick Carey and Ben Klayman in Toledo, Ohio; Editing by Joe White and Matthew Lewis)
Jerusalem (AFP) - A new ad with an elegantly dressed minister using "fascist" perfume drew online outrage Tuesday, the latest in a social media war ahead of an Israeli election that has also featured a flatulent hippo.

Israeli law prevents political ads from being aired on television until two weeks before the April 9 election, so parties have flooded social media with clips instead.

The elections are expected to be close and social media is playing a part in the campaign as never before.

Messaging tool WhatsApp is particularly popular among Israelis and makes sharing clips easy, though Facebook and Twitter are also unavoidable in the self-proclaimed "start-up nation," known for its hi-tech prowess.

"There's very heavy use of the internet in campaigning, but it's a wild west," said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler of the Israel Democracy Institute think-tank. "There's no regulation."

In keeping with Israel's seldom subtle political scene, many clips have been over the top, and the one released late on Monday featuring Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked pushed lots of buttons.

The ad, viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media, tries to play on accusations from her critics that Shaked has pursued a fascist-like agenda and argues that her policies are in fact more democratic.

Supporters registered approval, but many comments judged the ad, which mimics an advert for a pricey perfume, as a failure that could be mistaken for an endorsement of fascism.

"For anyone who doesn't know that the left often accuses Shaked of fascism, this ad will sound like she's endorsing fascism and calling it democracy," Eylon Levy of Israel's i24 news channel posted on Twitter.

Opinion polls show Shaked's far-right New Right party not performing as well in the election as had earlier been projected, and the aim seemed to be to recapture the public's attention.

It certainly succeeded in doing so, though it perhaps backfired.

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As dramatic piano music plays, Shaked saunters and poses while a narrator lists the virtues of a perfume called "Fascism".

The qualities listed include Shaked's stated goals such as reducing what she calls judges' activism.

After spraying herself with "Fascism," Shaked turns her gaze to the camera and says: "Smells like democracy to me."

- 'Shoot him' -

Political parties are trying to break through the noise with eye-catching videos and hard-hitting claims about their opponents.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud have been among them, creating an online television channel and churning out regular videos denouncing his main opponent, former military chief Benny Gantz.

Gantz's Blue and White alliance has responded in kind.

Smaller parties have sought to differentiate themselves.

Particularly shocking was a clip posted on Facebook by Oren Hazan, a Likud lawmaker in the outgoing parliament known for provocative comments and behaviour.

Hazan, now running independently after failing to get a Likud slot for the April election, is seen playing a scene in a classic western movie where from his bathtub he shoots an intruder with the face of Arab MP Jamal Zahalka.

The post is titled "The Good the Bad and Zahalka."

Zahalka is chairman of the Raam-Balad party, which is fiercely critical of Israeli policies, particularly the occupation of Palestinian territory.

A spokeswoman told AFP he had filed a police complaint accusing Hazan of incitement to murder.

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon's centre-right Kulanu, which is struggling in opinion polls, last week released a video designed as a trailer for a movie.

It featured a fish climbing a tree and a flatulent hippopotamus, with the message being that only Kahlon, the "sane right", cares about social issues.

The animals were meant to symbolise all the distractions from real issues Israeli voters are facing in the campaign.

The extreme-right Jewish Power party, which many Israelis view as racist, has distributed a video showing a soldier hesitating to shoot a Palestinian attacker out of fear of prosecution.

One of the party's leaders, Itamar Ben-Gvir, emerges and tells the soldier to "shoot him, its self-defence!"

The head of the party, Michael Ben-Ari, has since been disqualified from the election by the supreme court for statements that the attorney general called incitement to racism.

Netanyahu and Gantz have been duking it out over who is best-suited to guarantee Israel's security.

One video from Gantz's campaign boasted of the number of Palestinian militants killed and targets destroyed under his command in a 2014 war with Gaza's Islamist rulers, Hamas.

Not to be outdone, one from Likud warned against voting for Gantz because it would lead to "more violence," and included images of sites of attacks against Israelis as well as a shot of a military cemetery.

After widespread criticism over it, Netanyahu said the video had been a mistake.
BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government must ensure any support provided by a U.S. military base in Germany for U.S. drone strikes in Yemen complies with international law, a German court ruled on Tuesday, handing a partial victory to critics of such strikes. An administrative appeals court in Muenster upheld an earlier ruling that had rejected a request by relatives of Yemenis killed in drone strikes that Germany ban participation by Ramstein Air Base in any drone strikes in Yemen. But the appeals court said Germany had a responsibility to ensure that use of a Ramstein relay station for satellite data to the drones did not violate international law, and said Germany should monitor the activities closely. The court said Germany had an obligation to protect the lives of the plaintiffs, who brought their case in Germany after losing relatives to U.S. drone strikes in 2012. A U.S. court had rejected a similar complaint. U.S. forces have repeatedly carried out drone and air strikes targeting al Qaeda militants holding parts of south Yemen, and some civilians have been killed. The court said Germany was obliged to do what it could to protect the plaintiffs even if they lived abroad, "as (they) legitimately fear a danger for their lives and safety from U.S. drone strikes violating international law by using infrastructure at the Ramstein air base". The German government's finding "that there were no indications of violations of German or international law by the U.S. caused by their activities in Germany is based on an insufficient assessment of the facts and is not legally sustainable," the court said in its ruling. If necessary, Berlin needed to call on fellow NATO ally Washington to ensure international law is being respected, the court said, without detailing which specific measures Berlin would need to take. The court added that the ruling could still be challenged through an appeal. The German Foreign Ministry said it would study the court ruling carefully, adding that it was in regular and confidential talks with Washington about Ramstein's role supporting the U.S. military's use of unmanned aircraft. A spokesman for U.S. Air Forces in Europe, said the U.S. military was in close dialogue with German officials about all matters related to U.S. military bases in Germany. "The U.S. Air Force does not launch or operate remotely piloted aircraft from Germany as part of our counter terrorism activities," he said, adding that troops based at Ramstein carried out operational planning, monitoring and assessment of military missions throughout Europe and Africa. The German Defense Ministry, which represented Berlin before the court, said it would wait to study the full ruling before deciding about a possible appeal. The United States and Germany are allies in NATO and Washington has had a military base at Ramstein since 1948. (Reporting by Tassilo Hummel and Andrea Shalal Editing by Mark Heinrich, Editing by William Maclean)
During Senate plenary on Tuesday, the 8th Nigerian Senate recorded a landmark achievement has it approved N30, 000 as minimum wage for workers in Nigeria.

The national minimum wage bill will become functional when president Muhammadu Buhari, assents to it.

The new chairman of the ad-hoc committee set up to review the bill, Francis Alimikhena, presented a report on Tuesday. In the committees report, it was recommended that N30, 000 be approved as minimum wage for Nigerian workers.

It was also recommended that the federal government put in place a procedure to review revenue sharing formula to enhance state capabilities towards implementation of the new wage.

The committee also recommended N75,000 as a penalty for not keeping records of employees.

The Senate President, Bukola Saraki commended the efforts of the committee in ensuring that the Nigerian Labour Congress did not go on strike before the lawmakers did the needful.
Tehran (AFP) - Iran's Mahan Air has been forced to cancel its Paris flights over "sanctions", its customer services team said Tuesday weeks after Germany banned the airline.

"We have been told that (flights to France) have been cancelled... as of the first of April," an operator at the airline's office in Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport told AFP.

The Paris schedule will be scrapped "because of sanctions" by the French, the source said by phone without elaborating.

Two of the airline's French customers in Iran were notified by email that their flights booked for next month were cancelled.

Mahan, the Islamic republic's second-largest carrier after Iran Air, flies up to four services a week between Tehran and Paris.

Germany imposed a ban on Mahan in January, which the foreign ministry said was necessary to protect Berlin's "foreign and security policy interests".

That decision came amid broader sanctions adopted by the European Union against Tehran over attacks on opponents in the bloc.

Iran has denied any involvement in the alleged plots and described Germany's move as "hasty and unjustifiable."

Mahan Air was blacklisted by the US in 2011, as Washington said the carrier was providing technical and material support to an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards known as the Quds Force.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Kansas' solicitor general on Monday called on a federal appeals court to reinstate the state's law requiring people to provide proof of citizenship before they can register to vote, saying problems with how it was enforced during the three years it was in place are fixable.

During a hearing before a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Salt Lake City in a case with national implications for voting rights, Judge Jerome Holmes questioned attorneys for the state and for plaintiffs who succeeded in getting a lower court to overturn the law, which was in effect from 2013 until 2016. He pointed to evidence that it kept more than 30,000 people from registering to vote even though nearly all of them were citizens.

Solicitor General Toby Crouse said there were problems with the way the law was implemented, but he argued that the state should be able to ensure that ballots are cast legally and called on the court to resurrect the law.

"The rollout is problematic and concerning and should be improved, but that's not a reason to undermine the law and strike it down as unconstitutional," he said.

Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project, disagreed. He said cases where people can't find their birth certificate or afford a new one are inevitable, and the Kansas law contains few fail-safes to ensure citizens can cast a ballot.

"The difficulties of implementing a law like this, which is unique in the country, are baked into the statute," he said.

The judges didn't indicate when they might rule.

The legal fight has drawn national attention as Republicans pursue voter ID laws aimed at preventing in-person voter fraud, including by people who are in the country illegally. Many experts say such voter fraud is extremely rare, and critics contend that the Republican-led efforts are actually meant to suppress turnout from groups who tend to back Democrats, including racial minorities and college students.

Story continues

The law was championed by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who led President Donald Trump's now-defunct voter fraud commission and was a leading source for Trump's unsubstantiated claim that millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally may have voted in the 2016 election.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, supported the legislation when she was a state senator but opposes resurrecting it. Kobach, who is an attorney, personally defended the statute in the courts while he was secretary of state. Kansas' Republican attorney general, Derek Schmidt, has taken up its defense during the appeal, saying in an emailed statement that the law was passed by large bipartisan majorities in the Legislature.

"The Legislature is free to repeal the statute if it is no longer favored, but as long as the law requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote remains on the books, we think it, like other duly enacted state laws, deserves a full and vigorous legal defense," Schmidt said.

Kansas argued in court filings that it has a compelling interest in preventing voter fraud. It contended its proof-of-citizenship requirement is not a significant burden and protects the integrity of elections and the accuracy of voter rolls.

Critics countered that the documentary proof-of-citizenship law was "a disastrous experiment" that damaged the state's voter rolls, disenfranchised tens of thousands and eroded confidence in the state's elections.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has counted 35 states that have laws requiring some form of identification at the polls, but the Kansas voter registration statute at issue goes further by requiring people to provide documents such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport or naturalization papers before they can even register to vote. Arizona is the only other state with a similar law in effect, but it is far more lenient and allows people to satisfy it by writing their driver's license number on the voter registration form. Proof-of-citizenship laws in Alabama and Georgia are not currently being enforced.

Judge Robinson found that between 1999 and 2013 a total of 39 noncitizens living in Kansas successfully registered, mostly due to applicant confusion or administrative error. That is .002 percent of the more than 1.76 million registered voters in Kansas as of Jan. 1, 2013. Eleven of those 39 noncitizens voted.

The registration law took effect in January 2013. In the three years before the appellate court put it on hold, more than 30,732 Kansans were not allowed to register to vote because they did not submit proof of citizenship. That figure represented about 12 percent of voter registration applications.

__

Associated Press writer Roxana Hegeman in Wichita, Kansas, contributed to this report.
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP)  The Latest on the mosque shootings in New Zealand (all times local):

5:25 p.m.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush says he believes police officers stopped the gunman who killed 50 people at two mosques on his way to another attack.

Bush says they believe they know where the gunman was going but won't say more because it's an active investigation.

In a 74-page manifesto he released before the attack, accused Australian gunman Brenton Tarrant said he was going to attack mosques in Christchurch and Linwood, and then one in the town of Ashburton if he made it that far.

Bush also revised his timeline, saying officers rammed the suspect off the road and arrested him 21 minutes after the first emergency call rather than 36 minutes.

Bush says FBI agents have traveled to New Zealand to help with the investigation.

___

4 p.m.

Australia's prime minister says he has asked the Turkish president to withdraw his accusation of an anti-Islam motive behind Australia and New Zealand sending troops to Turkey in the World War I Gallipoli campaign.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was denouncing Islamophobia after an Australian was arrested in the killings of 50 worshippers in two mosques in New Zealand.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said "all options are on the table" if Erdogan does not withdraw his comments.

Turkish ambassador Korhan Karakoc said he had a "frank" conversation with Morrison when the envoy was summoned to Parliament House on Wednesday.

Thousands of Australian and New Zealand citizens gather at the Gallipoli peninsula on April 25 each year to commemorate the start of the failed British-led campaign in 1915 to open a new front in the war against Germany.

___

3:10 p.m.

A man accused of sharing video of a massacre in New Zealand has been jailed by a judge until his next court appearance in mid-April.

Philip Arps, 44, appeared in a Christchurch court Wednesday on two charges of distributing the killer's livestream video of last week's attack on Al Noor mosque, a violation of the country's objectionable publications law. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

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Arps, heavily tattooed and dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants, hasn't entered a plea. He remained expressionless during the hearing, his hands clasped behind his back.

Judge Stephen O'Driscoll denied him bail.

Charging documents accuse Arps of distributing the video on Saturday, one day after the massacre.

___

1:15 p.m.

The first two people to be buried after last week's mosque attacks that killed 50 people are a father and his son.

Khalid Mustafa was 44 and Hamza Mustafa was 15. The teen was a student at Cashmere High School and was compassionate and hard-working, according to the principal Mark Wilson.

Hamza was an excellent horse rider who aspired to be a veterinarian, Wilson says.

Hamza's younger brother Zaed, 13, suffered gunshot wounds to the leg in the attack.

Mourners on Wednesday carried the bodies to a freshly dug gravesite, where hundreds gathered around to watch. Some were invited to scoop handfuls of dirt on top of the bodies.

Authorities spent four days constructing a special grave at a city cemetery that is designated for Muslim burials.

___

12:50 p.m.

New Zealand police have officially released the first names of the 50 people killed in last week's shootings at two New Zealand mosques.

Police said the five people they have named were all male and died at the Al Noor mosque.

Hati Mohemmed Doud Nabi, 71, of New Zealand.

Mohsen Mohammed Al Harbi, 63, of New Zealand.

Kamel Moh'd Kamal Kamel Darwish, 38, of Jordan.

Junaid Ismail, 36, of New Zealand.

Mucaad Ibrahim, 3, of New Zealand.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush said police have now formally identified and released the bodies of 21 people to family members.

He said they hope to finish formally identifying most victims by the end of the day although some will take longer.

___

12:35 p.m.

The first funeral for two of 50 victims of last week's shootings at two mosques in New Zealand has begun.

Hundreds of people are at the services in Christchurch.

The identity of the victims was not immediately known. Authorities spent four days constructing a special grave at a city cemetery that is designated for the Muslim burials.

An Australian white supremacist killed 50 worshippers in two mosques last Friday.

___

11:50 a.m.

Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he will protest to the Turkish ambassador on Wednesday against the Turkish president's accusation of an anti-Islam motive behind Australia and New Zealand sending troops to Turkey in the World War I Gallipoli campaign.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was denouncing Islamophobia after an Australian white supremacist killed 50 worshippers in two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch.

Morrison said the comments were not helpful.

Thousands of Australian and New Zealand citizens gather at the Gallipoli peninsula on April 25 each year to commemorate the start of the failed British-led campaign in 1915 to open a new front in the war against Germany.

___

11:30 a.m.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has visited a school where two boys killed in last week's mosque attacks were students.

In a speech at Cashmere High School, Ardern renewed her call for people to focus on the victims rather than the perpetrator.

She says there will be interest in the terrorist but asked the students not to say his name or dwell on him.

The Cashmere High students killed were 14-year-old Sayyad Milne and 15-year-old Hamza Mustafa. A third Cashmere student, Mustafa's 13-year-old brother Zaed, is recovering from gunshot wounds to his leg.

___

10:45 a.m. Wednesday

New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush says police have now formally identified and released the bodies of 21 people out of the 50 who were killed in last week's mosque attacks.

Bush said that releasing the bodies was a priority for family reasons, compassionate reasons and cultural reasons.

Islamic law says that people should be buried as soon as possible after death, preferably within 24 hours.

Bush's comments came after it was announced that the first two burials of the victims are scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.

He says they hope to finish formally identifying most victims by the end of the day although some will take longer.

___

10 a.m.

The first two burials of the victims from last week's mosque shootings in New Zealand are scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.

Christchurch City Council spokeswoman Jocelyn Ritchie says the Muslim burial ceremony for the two of the 50 people killed will take place at 11 a.m. She said she did not know the identities of the two bodies to be buried first.

Authorities spent four days constructing a special grave at a city cemetery that is designated for Muslim burials.

It's uncertain how many of the victims will be buried there. Officials have received some requests to send bodies to the native countries of those killed.

The alleged Australian gunman who opened fire inside the mosques last week was a self-proclaimed racist.

About 60 men in Muslim attire held meetings at the grave site ahead of the burials to survey the area.

___

12:30 a.m.

A group of big internet companies says it has added more than 800 different versions of the New Zealand mosque shooting video to a shared database used to block violent terrorist images and videos.

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism said Monday that it added "digital fingerprints" for the visually distinct videos to its list.

The group, led by Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter, was responding to attempts by internet users to share the video by editing or repackaging versions with different digital fingerprints to avoid detection.

The forum said in a brief statement that the "incident highlights the importance of industry cooperation regarding the range of terrorists and violent extremists operating online."

The group formed in 2017 in response to official pressure to do more to fight online extremism.

___

12:30 a.m.

Ignoring widespread criticism, Turkey's president has again shown excerpts of a video taken by the attacker who killed 50 people in mosques in New Zealand.

Speaking at a campaign rally in the northern town of Eregli, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on New Zealand to amend its laws to ensure that the attacker is severely punished.

Erdogan said, "If New Zealand fails to hold the attacker accountable, one way or another we will hold him to account."

He went on to criticize New Zealand and Australia for sending troops to Turkey in the World War I Gallipoli campaign, claiming their motive was anti-Islam-oriented.

Erdogan has been using clips from Friday's attack to denounce Islamophobia ahead of March 31 local elections as he tries to stoke nationalist and religious sentiments.

___

11:25 p.m. Tuesday

Facebook says it received no reports of the video of the Christchurch mosque attacks while it was being livestreamed by the gunman.

Chris Sonderby, vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, says "no users reported the video during the live broadcast," which was viewed fewer than 200 times.

Sonderby says in a blog post that Facebook removed the video "within minutes'" of being contacted by police, and it was watched about 4,000 times in total before being taken down. He says Facebook removed 1.5 million videos of the attacks in the 24 hours after the event.

Social media companies rely on the public to report objectionable comment. Facebook has come under fire after video of the shootings spread rapidly on the internet.

___

10:10 p.m.

Police in New Zealand say they have completed autopsies on all 50 victims of last week's mosque shootings, and have formally identified 12 of them. Six of the identified victims have been returned to their families.

Four days after the attack, relatives were anxiously waiting Tuesday for word on when they can bury their loved ones.

Islamic tradition calls for bodies to be cleansed and buried as soon as possible after death, usually within 24 hours. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said authorities hope to release all the bodies by Wednesday, and police have said authorities are working with pathologists and coroners to complete the task as soon as they can.

Police said in a statement that their "absolute priority is to get this right and ensure that no mistakes are made."
The Daily Beast

Bridgeport Police DepartmentThe remains of a Connecticut man were discovered buried five feet under a garage more than eight years after he vanished, and now the local landlord who led detectives to his body faces murder charges.Bridgeport police said on Thursday that strong evidence suggests the two men arrested in connection with the murder of 24-year-old Aryndel Castro had beaten and choked him to death on the night of Sept. 22, 2013. After murdering Castro, Shawn Gibson, 45, and Terrance B
MAPUTO/HARARE (Reuters) - The number of people killed in a powerful cyclone and flooding in Mozambique has risen above 200, more than doubling the country's death toll from a storm that could rank as one of the worst weather-related disasters in the southern hemisphere. Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi said in a televised statement following a cabinet meeting on the disaster on Tuesday that the death toll after Cylone Idai now stood at more than 200, up from 84. Winds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) and flooding swept across southeastern Africa, including Zimbabwe and Mozambique, affecting more than 2.6 million people, United Nations officials said on Tuesday. Rescue crews were still struggling to reach victims five days later, while aid groups said many survivors were trapped in remote areas, surrounded by wrecked roads, flattened buildings and submerged villages. The Red Cross said at least 400,000 people had been made homeless in central Mozambique alone. "This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's history," said Jamie LeSueur, who is leading rescue efforts in Beira for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The organization said large areas to the west of the port city of Beira were severely flooded, and in places close to the Buzi and Pungwe rivers flood waters are meters deep, completely submerging homes, telephone poles and trees. LeSueur had said earlier on Tuesday, when the death toll was 84, that the full human impact of the disaster remained unclear, and that the figure was likely to rise. While the official count has increased, it remains well below the 1,000 deaths Nyusi had estimated after flying over some of the worst-hit zones, witnessing submerged villages and bodies floating in the water. The cyclone hit land near Beira on Thursday and moved inland throughout the weekend, leaving heavy rains in its trail on Tuesday. More rural areas remained unaccessible. Studies of satellite images suggested 1.7 million people were in the path of the cyclone in Mozambique and another 920,000 affected in Malawi, said Herve Verhoosel, senior spokesman at the U.N World Food Programme. He gave no figures for Zimbabwe. In Maputo, Mozambique's capital, people worried about missing relatives. Telma fa Gloria, a street vendor, said she had not heard from her mother, who she usually speaks to every day, or her siblings, for days. Her mother's neighborhood was in one of the worst-hit areas. "I'm stitched up, with nothing to do," she said, adding she was thinking of going to Beira to find out what had happened. "I don't have the strength to get the news I don't want to hear, and I don't wish anyone to hear." WORST FEARS Heavy rains preceded the cyclone, compounding the problems. "If the worst fears are realized ... then we can say that it is one of the worst weather-related disasters, tropical-cyclone-related disasters in the southern hemisphere," said Clare Nullis of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization. Droughts are classed as climate-related not weather-related. In Beira, a low-lying coastal city of 500,000 people, Nullis said the water had nowhere to drain. "This is not going to go away quickly," she said. Mark Ellul, a 31-year-old British doctor from Manchester who was working at the Beira hospital when the storm hit the city on Thursday, was trapped in a hotel room. He said the hospital suffered significant damage. "It was pretty terrifying during the storm, extremely noisy, frightening and you can hear the flying debris outside," Ellul said. "It felt like the windows were going to break, like the storm was going to come into the room." Beira is also home to Mozambique's second largest port, which serves as a gateway to landlocked countries in the region. The control room of a pipeline that runs from Beira to Zimbabwe and supplies the majority of that country's fuel has been damaged, Zimbabwe's Energy Minister Jorum Gumbo told state-owned Herald newspaper on Tuesday. "We, however, have enough stocks in the country and I am told the repairs at Beira may take a week," he was quoted as saying. AID ON THE WAY The European Union announced on Tuesday an initial emergency aid package of 3.5 million euros ($3.97 million) to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe for logistical support to reach affected people, emergency shelters, hygiene, sanitation and health care. Britain has pledged up to 6 million pounds ($7.96 million) in aid. Citizens in Zimbabwe are mobilizing donations, including cash, food and clothes to help thousands of families whose homes were wrecked by the cyclone. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who visited Chimanimani on Tuesday, told reporters that Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates were also sending donations while neighbors, including South Africa, Botswana and Angola, would also help. (Reporting Manuel Mucari in Maputo and Macdonald Dzirutwe in Harare; Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva, Catarina Demony in Lisbon and Mfuneko Toyana and Emma Rumney in Johannesburg; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Ed Osmond and Richard Chang)
Astana (Kazakhstan) (AFP) - Nursultan Nazarbayev ruled Kazakhstan for almost 30 years and turned the Central Asian country into an energy powerhouse while governing with little tolerance for opposition.

A close ally of Russia's Vladimir Putin, the 78-year-old also counts former British prime minister Tony Blair among his admirers.

Coming to power in 1989, peasant-born Nazarbayev was the last leader of an ex-Soviet Republic whose rule began during the USSR.

Kazakhstan's gleaming futuristic new capital Astana, built in the years since independence, symbolises Nazarbayev's drive to put the country on the map.

But in recent years, the oil-rich country has seen growing social discontent, with an economy still recovering from an oil price plunge in 2014.

This year, Nazarbayev sacked his government for what he said was a failure to fix the economy.

- A shepherd's son -

The son of a shepherd, Nazarbayev trained as an engineer before rising through the ranks of the Kazakh Communist Party to head it and the country in 1989.

He was elected to the new role of president on the eve of the Soviet breakup in 1991.

Since then, his power has become absolute, with resounding, but internationally-criticised election victories in 1999, 2005, 2011 and 2015.

In the most recent poll in the largely Muslim country, which still has a significant ethnic Russian minority, he won more than 97 percent of the vote.

His term was due to end in 2020.

But rights activists say that Nazarbayev's support was the result of propaganda, reinforced by crackdowns on the press and the internet.

- Praise from Putin, Blair -

The longtime leader projected himself as a guarantor of stability at home.

He strived for a similar image abroad, remaining a close partner to Russia while engaging with the West and accommodating the growing economic interests of China in the region.

Nazarbayev offered his country as a site for talks over the Ukraine crisis and hosted international talks aimed to bring peace in Syria.

Story continues

Putin has called Nazarbayev "the most prudent" leader in the post-Soviet space, while Blair, who has acted as a paid advisor to the country's government, credited Nazarbayev with "subtlety and ingenuity" in a promotional video that aired in 2012.

The economic success story of Kazakhstan in the early 2000s and Nazarbayev has not been without other murky subplots.

In 2015, the president's former son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev apparently committed suicide in an Austrian jail.

Aliyev was married to Nazarbayev's eldest daughter Dariga until 2007, but he publicly fell out with the Kazakh supremo that year and went on to author a tell-all book on the ruling family.

He was found dead in his cell while awaiting trial in Austria for the murder of two Kazakh bankers.

He had been convicted in absentia on multiple counts in Kazakhstan, including plotting to overthrow the government.

- Nation's 'father' -

Nazarbayev, who bears the honorary title "Elbasi," or "father of the nation", is ubiquitous on state television and billboards across the country.

He has embraced grandiose projects, transforming Astana from a sleepy provincial town into a glitzy metropolis with buildings designed by internationally-renowned architects.

Ahead of the 2015 election, Nazarbayev hinted that he had considered stepping down.

"I have received thousands of letters asking me to put forward my candidacy," he mused, before adding: "Perhaps it is time for a scene-change?"

He later announced he had decided to stand again to tackle the economic challenges.

Nazarbayev married his wife Sara in the early 1960s.

Of their three daughters, Dariga, 55, is an MP and is considered the most politically influential.

The husband of his middle daughter Dinara, oil baron Timur Kulibayev, had previously been mentioned as a potential successor.
Michael Cohen. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM











Federal prosecutors in New York released hundreds of pages of search warrant applications and supporting material Tuesday tied to the search of Michael Cohens offices and home last April.



The partially redacted documents were ordered released by U.S. District Judge William Pauley III on Monday after news organizations asked for the documents to be made public.



The documents show Special Counsel Robert Muellers office was investigating Cohen only a few months after President Donald Trump was sworn in. The special counsel's review of Cohens emails began in July 2017 and revealed information that appears to have been shared with Manhattan prosecutors.



One of the most substantially redacted sections shows prosecutors supporting information for campaign finance violations Cohen would later plead guilty to. Prosecutors made clear Trump himself was involved in the campaign finance violation scheme. The entire section  more than 19 pages  in the search warrant application appears redacted.



Read the Doc:
































The national publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Yekini Nabena has described the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar as jokers.

This was in reaction to a statement by the PDP that it has lined up 400 witnesses and 20 Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs in its petition filed against the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC in the February 23rd presidential election at the election tribunal.

Nabena in his reaction described as a joke, the line up of just 400 witness by the opposition PDP, to determine the outcome of 27 millions voters in over 120,000 polling units.

His words: Atiku legal team says it has lined up more than 400 witnesses that are going to testify to show that the presidential election was full of irregularities.

400 witnesses would determine the outcome of 27 million Voters in more than 120k polling units.

PDP are JOKERS, he said.
DHAKA (Reuters) - Hundreds of Bangladeshi students blocked roads and set a bus ablaze in Dhaka on Tuesday in protest over the death of a student who was run over by a bus, police and witnesses said, putting the spotlight again on the city's dangerous traffic. Last August a series of massive student protests, sparked by the death of two teenagers mowed down by a speeding bus in the capital, led to street battles and the use of tear gas and rubber bullets by police. The protest forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government to approve raising the maximum prison time to five years from three for causing death by rash driving. In Bangladesh most bus drivers do not get paid monthly salaries but earn commissions based on the number of passengers picked up, leading them to race each other for increased business. Atiqul Islam, mayor of the Dhaka North City Corporation, told students on Tuesday he would take all possible steps to help curb accidents and ensure their safety. Police have arrested the bus driver who was involved in Tuesday's death and he would now face charges, said Abu Bakar Siddique, a senior police official. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir; Editing by Martin Howell and Frances Kerry)
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump stepped up claims of political bias by Big Tech firms Tuesday in a fresh assault on Silicon Valley after one of his key congressional allies sued Twitter claiming it discriminates against conservatives.

The latest diatribe from the president comes with online platforms facing heightened scrutiny on how they filter and amplify content -- but with the industry fiercely defending itself against claims of political bias.

Trump renewed his attacks after retweeting news of a lawsuit filed by Republican Representative Devin Nunes seeking $250 million in damages from Twitter.

"Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats," Trump tweeted.

Hours later, he went further when asked about social media at a joint press briefing with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.

"It seems to be if they are conservative, if they are Republicans, in a certain group, there is discrimination. I see it on Twitter and Facebook," Trump said.

- Blocked for spam activity -

In a separate tweet, the president pointed to an incident in which his social media director Dan Scavino was temporarily blocked on Facebook.

"I will be looking into this!" Trump wrote, adding the hashtag #StopTheBias.

Facebook said Scavino, who claimed he was merely responding to comments, was briefly blocked as a result of activity detected as spam, not for any political reason, and added that it had apologized to him.

Nunes alleged in his lawsuit filed in a Virginia state court that Twitter "shadow bans" conservatives, making their messages less visible.

He also claimed Twitter was negligent for failing to crack down on parody accounts such as "Devin Nunes' Mom" and "Devin Nunes' cow" which accused him of obstructing investigations into the president.

Nunes, the former Republican leader of the House probe into Russian interference in the US election, stepped aside in 2017 after being criticized for compromising the probe in visits to the White House.

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Nunes, then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, had sought to turn the investigation away from Russia and toward allegations that the previous Obama administration abused its powers by spying on Trump and his advisors.

- 'Political agenda' -

Rancor over Nunes sharing top secret intelligence reports with Trump -- but not members of his own committee -- had driven the committee's probe to a halt.

The suit echoes accusations from Trump that major internet platforms discriminate against conservatives, even though he himself has more than 59 million followers on Twitter.

Twitter declined to comment on the lawsuit, but has in the past vigorously denied claims that its platform is politically biased.

Legal analysts have largely maintained that internet platforms such as Twitter are not liable for most content posted by third parties, but the Nunes lawsuit claims Twitter was negligent and failed to enforce its own terms of service.

"Twitter let it happen because Twitter had (and has) a political agenda and motive," the lawsuit said.

The complaint included many of the insulting tweets, including one from the Devin Nunes' Mom account stating: "Are you trying to obstruct a federal investigation again? You come home right this instant or no more Minecraft!"

Other tweets accused the lawmaker of having white supremacist friends and distributing "disturbing inflammatory racial propaganda."

Separately, the president's son Donald Trump Jr. wrote in the news outlet The Hill that tech firms are using a variety of tools to silence conservatives.

"Facebook appears to have deliberately tailored its algorithm to recognize the syntax and style popular among conservatives in order to 'deboost' that content," he wrote.

Internet firms have consistently maintained there is no attempt to impose bias on their platforms and that conservative have large followings on social platforms.

"Tech firms do not, and it would be foolish for them to make conscious decisions to discriminate on political grounds," said Ed Black, head of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents major firms including Facebook and Google.

Black called the recent attacks an effort "to bully them into an attempt to do it in a direction favorable to the attackers."
By Tom Balmforth MOSCOW (Reuters) - A prominent U.S. investor being held in Russia on embezzlement charges has asked U.S. diplomats not to defend him because he is worried about his case becoming politicized, a prison monitor who visited him in custody said on Tuesday. The detention last month of Michael Calvey, founder of the Baring Vostok private equity group, has strained U.S.-Russia ties and stoked talk of a possible U.S. boycott of an annual economic forum in June attended by President Vladimir Putin. Calvey was detained along with three other executives from Baring Vostok after investigators accused them of stealing 2.5 billion roubles ($38.09 million), a charge he denies. Ivan Melnikov, a member of a public body that monitors prisons, visited Calvey in custody on Monday and said the investor told him a U.S. diplomat had visited him and that Calvey had asked them not to play up his case publicly. "He has asked (the U.S. diplomat) not to get actively involved in his defense because he is worried about the case becoming politicized," Melnikov said. Ties between Russia and the United States are at post-Cold War lows, strained by issues such as Moscow's annexation of Crimea, the war in Syria, and espionage cases. Calvey's arrest has rattled some foreign investors who are worried about the business climate and some prominent Russian businessmen have called for him to be released from pre-trial detention on bail, saying his treatment has been too harsh. The Kremlin has said Vladimir Putin does not plan to intervene in the case and that investigators should be allowed to do their job. Melnikov said the U.S. investor was having problems receiving correspondence, but was in satisfactory condition. "Calvey said he plans to continue with his projects in Russia when he gets out of pre-trial detention," Melnikov said. "He hopes they'll get to the bottom of this case soon." (Editing by Andrew Osborn)
By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) - West Virginia officials sued the state's Roman Catholic diocese on Tuesday, accusing the church of knowingly employing priests and lay people in schools, parishes and camps who admitted to sexually assaulting children.

The lawsuit alleges the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston violated consumer protection laws by failing to disclose possible unsafe conditions at schools, parishes and camps caused by the employment of people who had records of child sexual assault. It seeks unspecified financial damages.

The diocese denied the lawsuit's allegations and said it used mandatory screening, background checks and training for all employees and volunteers who worked with children.

The lawsuit, which follows an investigation by the state, marks the latest move by U.S. officials to take on long-running patterns of sex abuse, which have driven down church attendance and undercut its leaders' moral authority around the world in recent years.

"The Wheeling-Charleston Diocese engaged in a pattern of denial and cover-up when it discovered its priests were sexually abusing children, particularly in schools and camps run by the Catholic Church and funded through tuition paid by West Virginia consumers," West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said at a news conference.

The diocese said some of the allegations of misconduct in the complaint happened over 50 years ago and that some were not accurately described, although it did not say in what way or give any further details.

"The diocese strongly and unconditionally rejects the complaint's assertion that the diocese is not wholly committed to the protection of children," it said in a statement.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the world's biggest support group for people hurt by religious and institutional authorities, said it was grateful to Morrisey for undertaking the investigation and "bringing these egregious oversights into the light."

Story continues

The Roman Catholic Church's abuse crisis exploded onto the international stage in 2002 when the Boston Globe newspaper revealed that priests had sexually abused children for decades and church leaders had tried to cover it up.

Dozens of U.S. dioceses have released names of priests accused of abuse, prompting states to open investigations.

Pope Francis vowed to root out sexual abuse in the church but has been criticized by survivors of sex assault for offering few new concrete proposals.

West Virginia accused church leaders of failing to conduct sufficient background checks of employees who had been accused and sometimes convicted of abusing children and failing to disclose their criminal histories to law enforcement and parents.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Rigby)
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday that she plans to announce stricter gun laws within the next few days, just days after a white nationalist gunman opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch during Friday prayers, killing 50 people and injuring dozens of others.

"Within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer," Ardern said in a news conference.

She did not give specifics, but said she supports a ban on semiautomatic, military-style weapons, which she has discussed with her cabinet. Unlike the U.K. or Australia, but like the U.S., New Zealand doesn't have a ban on semiautomatic weapons, although they do require a special license.

In contrast with the U.S., which managed not to pass any federal gun laws even after children were gunned down in the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, New Zealand, Australia, and the U.K. have acted fast after shootings of this magnitude. New Zealand, similar to the States, makes it very easy to buy guns without registration and has a powerful gun lobby  though not as powerful as the National Rifle Association (NRA).

"It is heartening to see Jacinda Ardern's incredible leadership and how quickly her administration is acting in the wake of this horrific mass shooting," Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, the grassroots arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, told Refinery29. "We've had at least 200 mass shootings in America since 2009...and yet our leaders have done very little. There's a key difference between New Zealand and the U.S., and that's that we have a gun lobby that uses its power and money to persuade some lawmakers to stand in the way of laws that are proven by data and research to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people."

There's a key difference between New Zealand and the U.S., and that's that we have a gun lobby that uses its power and money to persuade some lawmakers to stand in the way of laws that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

Story continues

Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, explained to the Washington Post that while New Zealand's gun lobby and the NRA share a lot of common goals, the U.S. system of representation and the way congressional districts are drawn gives a disproportionate amount of power to rural voters, who are more likely to oppose restrictions on guns. This (and its money) is why the NRA has so much influence with certain politicians, despite the majority of the population supporting common-sense gun reform. New Zealand's voting system is designed so that small interest groups don't have disproportionate influence.

"Our form of government, with a Senate that gives extraordinary power to rural states over urban states and is deferential to states' rights, makes it difficult to advance relatively modest gun-control measures, much less more sweeping measures," Webster told the Washington Post. "The gun lobby has been very influential in convincing people the [second amendment prohibits any] form of gun control, which affects the politics over even modest measures."

New Zealand is determined not to follow in the U.S.' footsteps. Some gun owners have already voluntarily given up their weapons. "Until today I was one of the New Zealanders who owned a semiautomatic rifle. On the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn't outweigh the risk of misuse. We don't need these in our country," tweeted John Hart.

The online marketplace Trade Me Group said it would stop selling semiautomatic weapons after Friday's attack.

Philip Alpers of GunPolicy.org, which is hosted by the University of Sydney, told the New York Times that there are still big loopholes in the country's gun laws. "New Zealand is almost alone with the United States in not registering 96% of its firearms, and those are its most common firearms, the ones most used in crimes," he said. "There are huge gaps in New Zealand law even if some of its laws are strong."

New Zealand has a relatively low murder rate, but guns are common and very easy to obtain online and through newspaper ads. According to the Small Arms Survey, there were 1.2 million registered firearms in 2017, which makes gun ownership in the country higher than Australia's, but still far lower than the U.S., where there is more than one gun per person in a population of 327 million. After a mass shooting in 1990 in Aramoana, in which a man killed 13 people, including two children, New Zealand tightened its restrictions on semiautomatic weapons.

David Tipple, the owner of the Gun City superstore in Christchurch, said at a news conference that the suspected gunman legally bought four weapons and ammunition online from his shop between December 2017 and March 2018 and had them delivered by mail, but that he did not purchase the semiautomatic weapon he used in the attack there.

"The clear lesson from history around the world is that to make our community safer, the time to act is now," Ardern said. "I strongly believe that the vast majority of gun owners in New Zealand will agree with the sentiment that change needs to occur."

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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has suspended the collation of results in Bauchi State.

This decision is coming on the back of an order halting the process from a Federal High Court in Abuja.

INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner in Bauchi State, Ibrahim Abdullahi, while addressing newsmen, disclosed that the collation was temporarily suspended in compliance with the court order. Hence, the supplementary election will hold in other affected local governments except for Tafawa Balewa local government.

Information Nigeria had earlier in the day reported the ruling of a Federal High Court in Abuja ordering INEC to suspend the collectthe of tbe result in Tafawa Balewa Local Government.

Also read: https://www.informationng.com/2019/03/2019election-victory-for-apc-court-stops-inec.html/amp
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Both past and present students of the University of Benin, have taken to Twitter to relieve experiences from the school, that may live with them for a long time, if not forever.

Ekosodin is a village which shares its borders with UNIBEN, and hosts many students, who dont wish to stay in the school hostels or didnt get hostel bed space.

Depending on where in Ekosodin you live, Uniben back gate is almost a stone thrown away, making it an easy choice for students opting to live off campus.

The some of the experiences shared are so hilarious, that youd almost skip the message.

See how some Alumni and students relieved their Ekosodin experience

#Ekosodin taught me everything I know T taught me to be humble, respectful, never underrate anyone, be observant, be cautious, keep your friends close but your enemies closer Living in #Ekosodin was frightening and fun The fun that comes with living on the edge  Zaddy Dee (@dannyberry_) March 19, 2019

I run under a shelter from d rain. SM joins too. He greets: how far? Othrs rspnd: I dey. Oversabi me rspnds: I bam. Turns to me Who tell u say u bam? Infact who bam u? I heard myself say Sorry bros, run back in d rain. Better be drenched by rain dan wit slaps. #Ekosodin  Collins Aziken (@Ogbuefi_Collins) March 19, 2019

The first day I entered #ekosodin I saw a sign like this in front of Edo streat pic.twitter.com/09thilqzr5  Linus Alexis (@AlexisLinus) March 19, 2019

https://twitter.com/cyrilemeka/status/1108039338800107521?s=19

https://twitter.com/that_blacc_girl/status/1108022307690295297?s=19

In #ekosodin,

You pass without greeting, guy show!

You greet with wrong words, guy show! Wrong greetings:

Bros I hail  I senior you? Show!

Chairman I hail  who be your chairman? Show!

Chief I hail  why you call me chief? Show!

Una weldone o  which work you give us?

Na die!!  Engr. Jayboi Usikpo (@UsiJayboi06) March 19, 2019

There was a period our pumping machine got spoilt, so we had to get water from another hostel, a neighbour was carrying 25ltrs on both hands filled with water, another neighbor jokingly calls him STRONG MAN, he got 3 slaps cause a strong man was passing and heard it. #ekosodin  uwakwe chimobi (@UwakweChimobi) March 19, 2019

https://twitter.com/Emmanue16228742/status/1108008637698662400?s=19
United Nations war crimes investigators called on Israel on Monday to stop its snipers using lethal force against protesters on the border with Gaza, as the anniversary approached of the start of the March of Return demonstrations there last year in which 189 Palestinians were killed.

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The most important thing for the government of Israel is to review the rules of engagement immediately and to ensure that the rules of engagement are according to accepted international law standards, the commissions chairman Santiago Canton told the UN Human Rights Council.

Israel has repeatedly lambasted alleged bias against it by the 47-member Human Rights Council. The Jewish state is the only country in the world whose rights record comes up for discussion at every HRC session, under "Item 7" on the agenda. Item 7 on "Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories" has been part of the council's regular business almost as long as it has existed.

The Commission of Inquiry said Israel should investigate the shooting of more than 6,000 people. So far, it has announced criminal inquiries into 11 killings.

March of Return protests along Gaza border

Israel boycotted the day-long debate, while hundreds of Israel supporters rallied outside the United Nations in Geneva, including senior US officials.

The moment has come to say loud and clear - @UNHumanRights @UN_HRC are complicit to the Hamas terror campaign against Israel, its foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a tweet.

The moment has come to say loud and clear - @UNHumanRights @UN_HRC are complicit to the Hamas terror campaign against Israel . Thank you @HillelNeuer @AmbRazShechter @DrDoreGold @RichardGrenell @Ostrov_A and many many more friends of truth and justice for saying this strongly pic.twitter.com/nV9C525eK1  Emmanuel Nahshon (@EmmanuelNahshon) March 18, 2019

Israel last month hit back furiously at the report, which it branded "hostile, false and biased." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the report reflected the HRC's "obsessive hatred" of Israel.

"The UN Human Rights Council is setting new records of hypocrisy and lies stemming from its obsessive hatred toward Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. Hamas is the one firing missiles at Israeli civilians, throwing explosive devices and carrying terrorist activity during demonstrations on the Gaza border," Netanyahu said.

International Criminal Court (Photo: Shutterstock)

Canton said Israels Supreme Court should review the confidential rules governing lethal force after the panel found it had been in the majority of cases authorized unlawfully.

In a situation of crowd control, which is the way we see these demonstrations, rubber bullets could have been used, Canton told reporters, rather than high velocity bullets and long-range sniper rifles equipped with sophisticated optical aiming devices.

Large crowds were expected to mark the anniversary of the start of the Gaza demonstrations on March 30, he said.

The protesters were demanding that Israel ease its blockade of Gaza and recognize their right to return to lands their families lost when Israel was founded in 1948. Both Israel and Egypt have

Israel has said its forces opened fire to protect the border from incursions and attacks by armed militants.

Pro-Israel rally

Canton said the independent experts were sending their confidential list of suspected perpetrators to UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, for forwarding to the International Criminal Court, which opened a preliminary examination of alleged Israeli abuses in 2015.

Israels main ally, the United States, quit the 47-member UN Human Rights Council last year, also accusing it of an anti-Israel slant.

To pass resolution after resolution on Israel while frequently ignoring China, Cuba, or Russia, is a horrendous hypocrisy, US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell told the crowd of Israel supporters gathered outside the UN in Geneva.

Applying one standard to the State of Israel and not applying the same standard to others is anti-Semitic, he said.

Rarely saw as many people demonstrating on Place des Nations, in front of @UNGeneva! #EnoughIsEnough, it is time to #EndItem7 at the @UNHumanRights Council and stop the bias against #Israel at the #UN. pic.twitter.com/rZxLd1vqpW  Israel in UN/Geneva (@IsraelinGeneva) March 18, 2019

Earlier, a UN human rights investigator said Israel was depriving millions of Palestinians of access to regular clean water supplies and stripping the land of minerals in an apparent act of pillage.

UN special rapporteur Michael Lynk said Israel continues full-steam with settlement expansion in the West Bank, which the United Nations and many countries deem illegal. There were 20,000-25,000 new settlers a year, he said.

In his latest farcical report, Mr. Lynk stoops to a new low and (accuses) the Jewish State of stealing, Israels mission in Geneva said in a statement to Reuters, calling Lynk a known Palestinian advocate.
Israeli soldier, Alexander Dvorsky, who was seriously wounded after being shot by a Palestinian gunman in an attack at Ariel Junction in the West Bank, has regained full consciousness and is communicating with the medical staff, the hospital said Tuesday.

Doctors at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, where he is hospitalized, say although his condition is still serious, there is no longer an immediate risk to his life.
A manhunt for 20-year-old Omar Abu Lila, who carried out the deadly attack at Ariel Junction in the West Bank two days ago, continued overnight Monday.

As part of the pursuit for the suspect, the security forces detained 15 Palestinians suspected of being involved in terror activity. They were taken for further questioning.
The IDF says Israel will impose a full closure on the West Bank and seal the crossings into the Gaza Strip during the Purim festival, which begins Wednesday.

The closure will come into effect at midnight Tuesday/Wednesday and last until midnight Saturday/Sunday.

The decision was made in accordance with security considerations, in light of Sunday's deadly terror attack in the West Bank and the ongoing clashes on the Israel-Gaza border.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit says that the closure will only be eased for humanitarian, medical and exceptional circumstances.
The condition of Israeli soldier who was seriously wounded in a deadly West Bank attack two days ago has significantly improved and there is no longer an immediate risk to his life, the hospital said Tuesday.

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Alexander Dvorsky, 19, has apparently regained full consciousness and is communicating with the medical staff at the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, where the soldier has been hospitalized since the attack on Sunday. Dvorsky condition has been upgraded from serious to moderate-serious.

Dvorsky was shot Sunday morning by 20-year-old Omar Abu Lila, who also shot dead 19-year-old Staff Sergeant Gal Keidan and critically wounded 47-year-old Rabbi Achiad Ettinger. The father of 12 succumbed to his wounds in a hospital a day later.

Alexander Dvorsky

The 19-year-old immigrated to Israel from Moldova alone several years ago before being joined by his mother and grandmother. The soldier's family now lives in the northern city of Nazareth Illit in the Galilee.

The Sunday's incident apparently began when the 20-year-old suspect stabbed Keidan at the Ariel Junction and then stole his rifle and shot him. The assailant used the weapon to fire at three vehicles, hitting Rabbi Ettinger and then hijacking a car, which he drove to another junction nearby where he shot Dvorsky before continuing on to a nearby Palestinian village, said the military.

In the meantime, a manhunt for the suspect who fled the scene with the soldiers M-16 rifle continues, as Israeli security forces raided the terrorists hometownthe village of Az-Zawiyaas well as the area of the Ephraim Regional Brigade, early Tuesday morning.

Manhunt for Palestinian suspect (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

As part of the pursuit for the suspect, the security forces detained 15 Palestinians suspected of being involved in terror activity. They were taken for further questioning.

The manhunt is being conducted mainly in Palestinian villages adjacent to the area of Sundays attack. In addition, the security officials continue the intelligence efforts in order to locate perpetrator and the stolen weapon he might use to commit further attacks.

In order to avoid similar incidents in the future, the defense establishment ordered to reinforce the areas in the West Bank where soldiers are stationed, including the Ariel Junction. Large concrete blocks have already been put up in some locations to ensure safer conditions for the troops.
LONDON -- The European Union's presidency thinks a series of developments over recent days have made it more difficult to predict what might happen at this week's summit of EU leaders, at which British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to request a delay to Britain's departure date from the bloc.

Romania's European affairs minister, George Ciamba, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said "the biggest issue right now is that it's getting more foggy."

His comments come a day after John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons, ruled out a new vote on May's Brexit deal unless there are substantive changes. May was trying to win support from opponents who have voted against her deal on two occasions previously.

Ciamba said "we need to have more clarity from London. Clearly, there is no clarity."

EU leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday to weigh whether to grant Britain an extension on beyond March 29, and if so, for how long.
His grandfather is one of the most famous people in world history, who inspired freedom and civil rights movements across the world. Dr. Arun Gandhi followed in his grandfathers footsteps by advocating the concept of non-violence, sometimes perhaps crossing the line of what is seemingly acceptable, by suggesting that Israelis talk too much about the Holocaust.

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The book, written by the 84-year-old sociopolitical activist, describing his time living with his grandfather in India for two years between the years 1946-48, has recently been translated into Hebrew, bringing Dr. Ghandi for a visit to the Jewish state for the first time in his life. The book talks about 11 most important lessons of his life, intertwined with personal stories about his time with his revered grandfather.

In an exclusive interview to Ynetnews ahead of his lecture at Habima Theater in Tel Aviv, Dr. Gandhi does not attempt to distance himself from any of his controversial comments, but rather tries to provide an explanation as to what guided him to make the controversial remarks.

He believes that focusing on the Holocaust prevents the Jewish people from moving forward and there are no cultures in the world worth sharing.

Dr. Arun Gandhi (Photo: AFP)

What draws you to Israel? This is your first time here, what impressions have you formed so far?

I am drawn to any country by the people. If they invite me, I go, because I feel I have an important legacy that has made a difference in my life and when people invite me I assume they are interested in learning about that legacy.

So I go wherever I am invited to plant the seeds of harmony and non-violence. I am not interested in a country as a country only in people as fellow human beings.

Your book about your relationship with your grandfather has just been translated into Hebrew. What message do you want your Israeli readers to take away from the book?

I wrote the book reluctantly because I did not think anyone would be interested in my childhood lessons. But obviously I was wrong because it has been translated into more than 30 languages.

It means people have found something that resonates with them. As a writer, I would want readers to absorb every lesson that I have shared, but readers have their own minds and they absorb what they find important to them.

Some may not find anything worthwhile and regret having spent the money to buy the book. I understand everyone has a right to their beliefs and values.

Arun and Mohandas Gandhi (Photo: Courtesy)

You have previously taken a pro-Palestinian stance on the Middle East conflict and been very critical of Israel. Why should Israelis take your message to heart when you appear to be starting from a biased perspective?

I would like to answer this with a true story. For 75 years I lived in rented apartments and felt free to move around at will. I did not have a home that rooted me to any particular place. So, home was wherever I was.

Then, the capitalist system forced me to buy a home, that led to me being rooted, I finally have a home that I have to protect and preserve. Every day when I come home, I feel happy because it is a peaceful neighborhood, everyone is friendly and supportive.

I have no fear and no one who hates me. It is not because of who I am, but because 170 other families in the neighborhood live with the same feeling of peace and fearlessness.

This has happened only because all of us know it is our individual and collective responsibility to create the right atmosphere where we can all be happy. If this is true of neighborhoods, it is true of nations too. History shows that Palestinians and Israelis lived happily together on the same piece of land. So why not now?

I believe the Old Testament says: what you gain by the sword, you have to retain by the sword (I am paraphrasing here). History of the past 70-odd years shows that the conflict has only become more and more vicious.

So, peace is not going to come to the region by killing each other but by speaking to each other with respect, understanding, acceptance and appreciation. Who takes the initiative in this process depends on who considers him or herself to be progressive, peace-loving and civilized.

Arun Gandhi with then-UN chief Ban Ki-moon

You also once said that Israelis talk too much about the Holocaust. What led you to make this statement and have you changed your stance since then?

Let me use another analogy to explain this issue. If one drives a car with eyes fixed on the rear view mirror, it is going to lead to a catastrophic crash. Similarly, if a nation is obsessed with what has happened in history they cannot create a future.

History of the human race is replete with incidents of atrocities, wars and killings and we are not able to create a civilization of human dignity. We have created rich countries and we mistake material wealth with civilization. Ideally, a civilization is where humanity is appreciated, dignity is preserved and harmony is ensured.

What could India learn from Israel in terms of culture and industry, and vice versa?

Except for industrial progress and materialism, there is nothing any country can teach the other.

Where basic harmony, unity, respect, understanding, appreciation and compassion have become irrelevant there is no culture worth sharing.

Because of our narrow nationalism generating hate and prejudice for each other, the only culture we believe in is the culture of violence. Which we proudly share with each other anyway. It makes us powerful, arrogant and disrespectful.

How does your message of peace impact on your life on a daily basis?

In the present milieu in the world the life of a peace-maker is like the life of a person locked up in a room full of bees.

Move and you will be stung to death; remain motionless and your existence becomes ineffective.
Israel's exports of computer chips to China soared last year as Chinese companies bought more semiconductors made at Intel's Kiryat Gat plant.

An official at the Israel Export Institute told Reuters that new data showed semiconductor exports to China jumped 80 percent last year to $2.6 billion. An industry source said that Intel Israel accounted for at least 80 percent of those sales.





Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Chinese President Xi Jinping (Photo: AFP)

The data will be welcome news for the government as it pushes for deeper ties with China and because semiconductors accounted for $3.9 billion of overall goods exports in 2018, according to the institute, a government agency.

The two countries have started negotiating a trade deal and technology is expected to be a major part of the discussions. Overall exports of Israeli goods to China, excluding diamonds, rose 50 percent to $4.7 billion, statistics.

Intel announced a $5 billion investment to expand capacity in its Kiryat Gat plant in southern Israel in 2017, which makes some of the smallest and fastest chips in the world.

That year it also bought Israeli auto-focused chip and technology firm Mobileye for $15 billion. It said this year it would invest $11 billion in a new Israeli plant.

A spokesman for Intel said the firm exported $3.9 billion worth of goods from Israel last year, up from $3.6 billion in 2017. He declined to give further details of Intel's operations in Israel.





The Intel plant in Kiryat Gat

Chinese officials have said they are looking to develop a domestic chip market because Chinese companies import $270 billion of semiconductors each year. Israel has a reputation for exporting high-end chips.

Israel's export institute also said sales to China of inspection equipment for semiconductor manufacturing jumped 64 percent to $450 million last year.

That equipment is used to control and inspect manufacturing processes in semiconductor plants and is useful for China as its domestic chip manufacturing increases.

Companies in Israel making such equipment include Orbotech, which was just acquired by fellow semiconductor equipment maker KLA-Tencor of California for about $3.4 billion.

That deal was announced a year ago but was held up by Chinese regulators, who only gave their approval in February.

Pivot to Asia

China is now Israel's second largest export market for goods after the United States, having overtaken Britain last year.

Sales of semiconductors to the United States slipped 20 percent to $860 million, contributing to a 3 percent drop in goods exports. But at $10.9 billion, overall goods exports still dwarf those to China.

Israel has been pivoting its economy toward Asia in the past few years both because of perceived political hostility in some European countries and the fact that Asian markets are growing rapidly.

In recent years, Chinese-based airlines have started direct flights to Tel Aviv, the two countries signed a visa agreement and are working on the trade deal. Israel is also in talks for free trade agreements with Vietnam and South Korea.





Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a technology conference in Beijing (Photo: Reuters)

Some analysts in China expect the ties to get stronger due to the tit-for-tat trade war between the United States, a major chip producer, and China.

"Because of the trade war, China and Israel's cooperation is closer than it has been before," said Gu Wenjun, chief analyst at ICWise, a semiconductor consultancy in Shanghai.

"Israel has the technology and China has the market a the space for cooperation is big."

Eyal Waldman, founder and CEO of Israeli chipmaker Mellanox, said his company was benefiting from China's policies.

Chip production at Intel Israel

"In China they prefer to use Chinese silicon and then after that non-U.S. silicon and only if they don't have that then U.S. silicon, so we are benefiting from that," he told Reuters. "We are seeing better growth in China."

Mellanox agreed this week to sell itself to California-based chipmaker Nvidia Corp for almost $7 billion. Intel lost the bidding war to Nvidia.

Russell Ellwanger, the CEO of another major chip manufacturer TowerJazz, said his company's growth in China "is very, very strong".
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a condolence visit on Tuesday to the family of Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, who was murdered in a terror attack at the Ariel Junction two days ago.

Netanyahu talked about the need to adopt a death penalty against Palestinian terrorists.
Dutch prosecutors on Tuesday said they were investigating a possible terrorist motive behind the shooting on a tram in the city of Utrecht in which three people were killed and five wounded.

A Turkish-born man, 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis, was arrested after a seven-hour manhunt on Monday by security forces and remained in custody.

Prosecutors said he is suspected of three fatal shootings, possibly with terrorist intent. Two other suspects were also in custody, police said, but their role was unclear.

"Up to this point, a terrorist motive is seriously being considered," prosecutors said in a statement, citing "the nature of the shooting and a letter found in the getaway car."
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on New Zealand to restore the death penalty for the gunman who killed 50 people at two Christchurch mosques, warning that Turkey would make the attacker pay for his act if New Zealand did not.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after a lone gunman opened fire at the two mosques during Muslim Friday prayers.

"You heinously killed 50 of our siblings. You will pay for this. If New Zealand doesn't make you, we know how to make you pay one way or another," Erdogan told an election rally of thousands in northern Turkey. He did not elaborate.
Egypt's top media regulator has put into effect tighter restrictions that allow the state to block websites and even social media accounts with over 5,000 followers if they are deemed a threat to national security.

The move is the latest step by the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to suppress dissent. In recent years, Egypt has launched an unprecedented crackdown on reporters and the media, imprisoning dozens and occasionally expelling some foreign journalists.

The new regulations, published in the official gazette late Monday, allow the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block websites and accounts for "fake news," and impose stiff penalties of up to 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,400), all without having to obtain a court order.
This last weekend was not the first time that an Egyptian delegation was in Gaza while a rocket barrage was fired at Israel. It has actually happened twice in the not-too-distant past, the most famous of which was in October 2018, when rockets were fired at a Be'er Sheva home.

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President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the Egyptians are walking the line - on one hand, they are trying to broker an agreement between Israel and Hamas; on the other, they have not forgotten Hamas' ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which Sissi despises.

This time, however, real progress is being made. An Egyptian military-intelligence delegation visited Israel, according to the Saudi news outlet Independent Arabia, and later met with Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman in Cairo. "We had 70 percent of it (the agreement) in the bag," one of the members of the Egyptian delegation told me. But then came news of two missiles fired at the Tel Aviv area from Gaza, catching the Egyptians by surprise.

Benjamin Netanyahu on a visit to Nitzana area, where southern Israel meets the Gazan and Egyptian borders. (Photo: AP)

Hamas, Egypt and Israel decided to accept that the launch  of rockets that have a range of 70 kilometers and that are only in the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad - was carried out "by mistake." No one is really buying it, and in Gaza it has been known that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar intends to try the two who launched the rockets, to save face with the Egyptians. In Israel, the consensus is that at best he will send them to jail only to be released a few days later.

The rocket fire came at a bad time for Hamas, for Egypt and for Israel. The only ones to benefit from this entire incident were Hamas's main political rivals, Fatah, who are based in the West Bank. Palestinian President Mamhoud Abbas, who heads Fatah, has kept mum, but one of his people even leaked a somewhat spurious claim that Argaman had direct talks with Hamas deputy politburo chief Mousa Abu Marzook when he went to Cairo, mediated by the Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.

Palestinian President Mahmous Abbas with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (Photo: AFP)

It's hard to believe that this happened, given Israel's policy that its officials do not sit in the same room as Hamas  or even on the same floor of a hotel for that matter. Furthermore, the report was published only in the Independent Arabia by a reporter whom no one knows, which raises the suspicion that this was "fake news" from Ramallah.

And now, it is as if no rockets were ever fired on Thursday night. The security cabinet met in Tel Aviv to decide that they would continue indirect negotiations with Gaza. A message was sent to Egypt, whose delegation is going back to Gaza to pass on the Israeli demands for calm. The Egyptians also have to deal with the demands from Hamas, which include, among other things, an increase in aid from $15 million to $30 million per month and an increase in the supply of electricity.

The requests are reasonable, but they do leave a sour taste in the mouth. Israel must ensure that this financial aid does not end up in the pockets of Hamas and its associates. It also knows that if it says "no" to everything, the Iranians will step in, with the help of their Gazan friends in Islamic Jihad. They are just waiting for the opportunity.

Protests in Gaza against Hamas

Hamas also has to deal with the fallout from a series of massive handouts from Qatar. For when the citizens of the Gaza Strip saw that the money was going the Hamas leadership, who were also enjoying a fine supply of electricity to their own houses, they took to the streets in protest  and this time it was not Israel that was the focus of their anger.

But Hamas is still the sovereign power in the Gaza Strip, and for now it appears to have no viable replacement. This means that Israel must continue with efforts to reach an agreement with the terror group.

And here is the irony. With Egyptian help, Israel can reach understandings for calm with Gaza, despite the lack of a direct channel with Hamas. In the West Bank, where the purportedly friendlier Fatah is in charge, it is more complicated, at least until the 83-year-old Abbas is replaced.
Brazil's new president, who has been dubbed the "Trump of the Tropics," has arrived at the White House for meetings with President Donald Trump.

Trump greeted the hard-right Jair Bolsonaro shortly after noon. Bolsonaro arrived with a large entourage that filed into the West Wing after him.

The leaders will be sitting down for meetings and participating in a working lunch before holding a joint press conference.

During his campaign, Bolsonaro pledged to build closer ties with the U.S. and mimicked Trump's "America First" catch phrase, pledging to put "Brazil First."
American Federal authorities sought warrants to investigate Michael Cohen's email accounts in July 2017, nine months before the office and hotel room of U.S. President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer were raided, according to documents made public on Tuesday.

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Emails were sought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office, which is probing Russia's role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as by the FBI, dating back as far as June 2015, according to the documents.

Poster calling Cohen a liar during his testimony against Trump in Washington in February (Photo: Reuters)

The nearly 900 pages of documents provide new insights into the investigations into Cohen, who had been Trump's personal lawyer and self-described fixer for more than a decade, and more detailed accounts of his financial dealings.

They were released after U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to make redacted versions public, in response to requests by various news media organizations.

Cohen began cooperating with federal investigators soon after the April 2018 raids on his office and hotel room.

He eventually pleaded guilty to multiple crimes, including campaign finance violations in connection with payments of hush money to silence two women who claimed to have had sexual relationships with Trump.

Cohen arriving for his testimony in Washington (Photo: Reuters)

The women included Stormy Daniels, a porn actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, who later sued Trump unsuccessfully to end her hush money agreement.

Cohen was sentenced in December to serve three years in prison. Since pleading guilty, he has publicly turned on Trump, telling a U.S. House of Representatives committee last month that his former boss was a "con man" and "cheat."

Trump has denied having sexual relationships with the women, and said his campaign did not collude with Russia. Moscow has denied meddling in the 2016 election.

The filings showed how the FBI made extensive use of its access to Cohen's Apple iCloud account, which allowed him to coordinate his work across several devices including an iPhone, iPad Mini and laptop.

They detailed how investigators believed money going to Cohen, including to his firm Essential Consultants, was for political consulting, including from international clients with issues pending before the Trump administration.

Among the payments Cohen was believed to have received was $600,000 from AT&T Inc for consulting about "political issues, including net neutrality, the merger between AT&T and Time Warner and tax reform," and $583,333 from an investment firm controlled by Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg.

FBI agents said they were able to locate where Cohen was staying by using internet protocol, or IP, addresses attached to those devices.

Much of the discussion about campaign finance issues was redacted.
Cyclone winds and floods that swept across southeastern Africa affected more than 2.6 million people and could rank as one of the worst weather-related disasters recorded in the southern hemisphere, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.

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Rescue crews are still struggling to reach victims five days after Cyclone Idai raced in at speeds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) from the Indian Ocean into Mozambique, then its inland neighbours Zimbabwe and Malawi.

People are escorted to safety by aid workers at the airport of the coastal city of Beira in central Mozambique on March 19, 2019, after the area was hit by the Cyclone Idai. (Photo: AFP)

Aid groups said many survivors were trapped in remote areas, surrounded by wrecked roads, flattened buildings and submerged villages, while the Red Cross said at least 400,000 people had been made homeless in central Mozambique alone.

"This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's history," said Jamie LeSueur, who is leading rescue efforts in Beira for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The organisation said large areas to the west of the port city of Beira were severely flooded, and in places close to the Buzi and Pungwe rivers flood waters are metres deep, completely submerging homes, telephone poles and trees.

A handout photo made available by CARE, an international humanitarian agency shows a local resident walking among the ruins after cyclone Idai (Photo: EPA)

"The scale of suffering and loss is still not clear, and we expect that the number of people affected as well as the number of people who have lost their lives may rise," LeSueur said.

The official death count in Mozambique stands at 84 - but its president Filipe Nyusi said on Monday he had flown over some of the worst-hit zones, seen bodies floating in rivers and now estimated more than 1,000 people may have died.

The cyclone hit land near Beira on Thursday and moved inland throughout the weekend, leaving heavy rains in its trail on Tuesday.

Studies of satellite images suggested 1.7 million people were in the path of the cyclone in Mozambique and another 920,000 affected in Malawi, Herve Verhoosel, senior spokesman at the U.N World Food Programme said. It gave no figures for Zimbabwe.

In Maputo, Mozambique's capital, people were worried about relatives they had not heard from.

People carry coffins as mourners attend multiple burials at the Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe (Photo: TNS)

Telma fa Gloria, a street vendor, told Reuters she had not heard from her mother, who she usually speaks to every day, or her siblings, for days. Her mother's neighbourhood was in one of the worst-hit areas.

"I'm stitched up, with nothing to do," she said, adding she was thinking of going to Beira to find out what had happened.

"I don't have the strength to get the news I don't want to hear, and I don't wish anyone to hear."

Worst fears

Heavy rains preceded the cyclone, compounding the problems.

aIf the worst fears are realised ... then we can say that it is one of the worst weather-related disasters, tropical-cyclone-related disasters in the southern hemisphere," said Clare Nullis of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization.

Droughts are classed as climate-related not weather-related.

In Beira, a low-lying coastal city of 500,000 people, Nullis said the water had nowhere to drain.

"This is not going to go away quickly," she said.

Inhabitants of Chiluvi, a village in central Mozambique, walk along a flooded and muddy street after Cyclone Idai and Floods (Photo: EPA)

"It was pretty terrifying during the storm, extremely noisy, frightening and you can hear the flying debris outside," Ellul said.

"It felt like the windows were going to break, like the storm was going to come into the room."

Beira is also home to Mozambique's second largest port, which serves as a gateway to landlocked countries in the region.

The control room of a pipeline that runs from Beira to Zimbabwe and supplies the majority of that country's fuel has been damaged, Zimbabwe's Energy Minister Jorum Gumbo told state-owned Herald newspaper on Tuesday.

"We, however, have enough stocks in the country and I am told the repairs at Beira may take a week," he was quoted as saying.

Aid on the way

The European Union announced on Tuesday an initial emergency aid package of 3.5 million euros ($3.97 million) to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe for logistical support to reach affected people, emergency shelters, hygiene, sanitation and health care.

A man stands next to the wreckage a vehicles washed away in the Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe

Britain has pledged up to 6 million pounds ($7.96 million) in aid.

Citizens in Zimbabwe are mobilising donations, including cash, food and clothes to help thousands of families whose homes were wrecked by the cyclone.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who visited Chimanimani on Tuesday, told reporters that Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates were also sending donations while neighbours, including South Africa, Botswana and Angola, would also help. ($1 = 62.3000 meticais) ($1 = 0.8805 euros)
U.S. President Donald Trump praised Brazil's new far-right leader Tuesday as he welcomed him to the White House, saying the man who's been described as the "Trump of the Tropics" has done "a very outstanding job."

Trump said President Jair Bolsonaro had run "one of the incredible campaigns," saying he was "honored" it had drawn comparisons with his own 2016 victory. And he predicted the two would have a "fantastic working relationship," telling reporters as he opened a joint press conference that they have "many views" in common.
Gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram members have taken over Michika Local Government Area of Adamawa.

Report from the area says the insurgents invaded the town killing scores of people. The entire local govt has been deserted as sporadic gunshots continue unabated.

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Source: Vanguard Nigeria
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday during a meeting with leaders of West Bank settlement communities that he will oppose any form of settlements evacuation or dividing of Jerusalem if U.S. President Donald Trumps peace place entails such moves.

During the meeting the prime minister told his listeners that Benny Gantz, if elected, will have 80,000 settlers evacuated.
State's witness Miki Ganor in the case 3000, the investigation into Israel's acquisition of submarines and patrol boats from the German conglomerate ThyssenKrupp, told the police Tuesday that he wishes to change the version he gave the about the ordeal during his interrogation.

Ganor, who served as ThyssenKrupp's representative in Israel, has been giving testimony to the police for months, incriminating the other suspects in the case. He has also revealed the alleged methods he used to personally gain from the military acquisition deals.

The Israel Police is still looking into why Ganor wants to change his version about the events, and whether this would cause his states witness status to be canceled.
Hamas published an announcement Tuesday blaming the Palestinian Authority and Fatah forthe recent wave of protest against their movement in the Gaza Strip.

In its announcement, the terror organization expressed its sorrow for the people that were hurt during clashes between protesters and Hamas forces, and for damages to property that were caused.
IDF troops on Tuesday killed the suspected gunman who shot dead an Israeli soldier and a rabbi in a terror attack in the West Bank on Sunday.

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Omar Abu-Laila, 19, was killed in a shootout in the West Bank village of Abwein, near Ramallah. IDF forces surrounded the house and when the suspect opened fire, he was shot dead by the Israeli troops.

Omar Abu-Laila, the terrorist who killed two and wounded one in the Ariel Junction shooting attack

Palestinian sources reported earlier Wednesday that IDF forces were raiding a house in a village near the city of Ramallah during their hunt for Abu-Laila. According to the sources, shots were fired at the Israeli troops and the villages power had been cut off.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commended the security forces for the successful operation. Israels long reach will touch anyone who tries to hurt its civilians and soldiers, he said.

Sunday's attack began when Abu-Laila stabbed Staff Sgt. Gal Keidan at Ariel Junction in the northern West Bank, stole his rifle and then shot and fatally wounded the 19-year-old soldier.

The house where Abu-Laila was hiding in the West Bank village of Abwein

Abu-Lila used the weapon to fire at three vehicles at the junction, including that of Rabbi Ettinger, a 47-year-old father of 12. According to the family, the rabbi realized he was caught up in a terror attack and opened fire on the terrorist before he himself was shot.

The terrorist then hijacked a car and drove to another nearby junction, where he shot a third person before fleeing into a nearby Palestinian village, the military said.

The rabbi was critically wounded and while doctors at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva fought for almost 24 hours to save his life, he ultimately succumbed to his wounds.
By P.J. GLISSON

[email protected]

Bessemer  The Bessemer City Council received good news Monday regarding the stretch of U.S. Hwy. 2 that goes through town.

City manager Charly Loper told council members that the Gogebic County Road Commission is beginning to patch the numerous potholes existing in all four lanes of the highway.

The road wont be perfect, but itll be a little better, said Loper regarding the holes that stretch from about Steigers Home Center on the east to the Housing Project on the west.

We all know what were going through in Bessemer with the potholes, said council member Rob Coleman, who asked for the subject to be added to Monday nights agenda. In my lifetime, Ive never seen it this bad.

When Loper announced the efforts at remediation, Coleman said he hadnt heard better news in a long time.

The city is not responsible for U.S. 2, said Loper, explaining that while the road commission is responsible for highway maintenance, the Michigan Department of Transportation is responsible for replacing the highway when the time comes.

Marijuana zoning ordinance

In other news, council members voted to accept the first reading of Ordinance No. 372, which intends to amend the current zoning ordinance to prohibit recreational marijuana establishments in the city.

The ordinance reads, in part, No use that constitutes or purports to be a marihuana grower, marihuana safety compliance facility, marihuana processor, marihuana microbusiness, marihuana retailer, marihuana secure transporter or any other type of marihuana-related business authorized by the Act, that was engaged in prior to the enactment of this Ordinance, shall be deemed to have been a legally established use under the provisions of the City Ordinances; that use shall not be entitled to claim legal nonconforming status.

The Michigan legal community typically spells marijuana with an h instead of a j.

Loper said Mondays ordinance vote is the second step in the process of prohibiting marijuana business. Council members already voted at a previous meeting to prohibit marijuana enterprise, but have been advised by legal experts to back that up with the pending zoning ordinance.

The councils vote included the intention to offer a related public hearing at the time of the ordinances second reading. A final council vote then will take place.

FEMA funds

The council also learned from Loper that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has confirmed it will provide the city with $47,000 to repair damage that occurred during the 2018 Fathers Day storm.

Thatll fix up a lot of the issues weve had, said Loper.

The city council will meet next on March 27 at 6 p.m. for a budget workshop. The session will take place in the council room of the City Hall, and the public is welcome.
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) has announced that it will offer interest-only loans for up to 10 years to property investors, to boost business amid weakening economic conditions, according to Reuters.

This decision will be effective starting April 25, and the bank will extend the period of interest-only loans  which do not require principal repayments  to property investors by five years to a decade. In addition, the size of the loans is going to be increased to up to 90% of the propertys value.

On recent review, we have made a decision to increase our focus on the investor market. The upcoming changes demonstrate our continued appetite in the investor market, whilst ensuring we remain in line with our APRA requirements, ANZ said in a statement.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) refused to comment on ANZs recent move.

In 2018, APRA lifted strict caps on investor and interest-only lending, which were implemented to avoid a property bubble. The shift resulted in an 8% drop home values across the country since September 2017.

The regulator also warned that the re-emergence of the rapid growth in interest-only lending at an industry-wide level would raise systemic concerns. Hence, APRA said it would keep an eye on changes in lending standards by the banks.

In such a scenario, APRA would consider the need to apply industry-wide measures in response, APRA said.

Credit growth in Australia decreased to a record low of 4.2% in the 12 months to December, as lending tightening by banks and a sharp fall in housing prices dampened demand.

Home lending to investors by ANZ, likewise, slid by 3.8% to $3.2 billion over the period, while overall growth in the system was 1%.
Nearly half of all new units in Sydney and Melbourne that settled last month were priced lower than their original value, according to a report from the Australian.

Data from CoreLogic showed that 45% of new apartments that settled in Sydney had valuations below their off-the-plan purchase price up from 18% in 2018. Melbourne, meanwhile, recorded that 46% of its new apartments that were sold for values less than their initial price. The number was double the level reported at the same time last year.

The trend was brought about by the drastic change in the condition of the countrys two largest markets, according to Tim Lawless, head of research at CoreLogic.

For units that were bought off the plan two years ago, so much has happened. There are fewer investors, fewer foreign investors and its harder to get finance, he told the Australian.

Business Insider Australia reported that unit prices in Sydney have dropped by 7.8% in the previous year, while Melbournes median prices have fallen by 3.7% over the same period.

In the latter part of 2018, CoreLogic cautioned that the record new unit supply in these markets, together with tightened financing conditions and declining prices, might result in heightened risks for those looking to settle on their property purchase.

Off-the-plan buyers who find their valuation comes in lower than the contract price at the time of settlement could be in for a rude shock. Lenders will generally be looking for a loan-to-valuation ratio of at least 90%, more often closer to 80%, meaning their deposit will need to be at least 10% and potentially closer to 20% of the property value. If the valuation comes in lower than expected, the buyer may need to top up their deposit in order to meet the lenders loan-to-valuation criteria, Lawless said.

Lawless also predicted that a peak in settlement activity would happen over the next two years after the completion of construction. Currently, there is a large number of units under construction in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as Canberra and Adelaide.

Policymakers at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) also acknowledged the risks.

Tighter lending standards could amplify the downturn in apartment markets if some buyers of off-the-plan apartments are unable to obtain finance. This could lead to an increase in settlement failures, further price falls and even tighter financing conditions for developers, RBA Deputy Governor Guy Debelle said in a speech last year.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - Arizona Western College and Northern Arizona University-Yuma are hosting their third annual Startup Weekend from April 12-14, as a way to help aspiring entrepreneurs launch new business ideas.

Participants will take giant leaps in learning the skills needed to create a business, work on a startup team, and connect with people and resources all while experiencing the highs, lows, fun, and pressure that can come along with a startup business.



Attendees do not need to have a business idea to participate in a group. For those that are coming in with an idea in mind, it cannot be a venture that youve previously worked on. All disciplines of work and educational backgrounds are encouraged to attend.



The registration fee for Startup Weekend is $40, which includes seven meals throughout the weekend; benefits and discounts from global partners; one-on-one time with industry mentors; and a new network of developers, designers, and entrepreneurs. People can visit http://communities.techstars.com/usa/yuma/startup-weekend/13321 to register and to learn more about the event.



AWC & NAU-Yuma are actively seeking donations and additional volunteers from the community to mentor the participants. To make a charitable donation for the event, visit https://foundation.azwestern.edu/give-online and type Startup Weekend in the Scholarship/Program field. People can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for additional questions.



The weekend will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, April 12, in the Schoening Conference Room at the AWC Yuma Campus, 2020 S. Ave. 8E. Participants will pitch their startup on Friday, work to develop a business plan on Saturday, and present in front of local entrepreneurial leaders on Sunday.



Startup Weekend is part of the ongoing efforts of the AWC Matador Business Incubator and the NAU Yuma Business Innovation Accelerator to promote entrepreneurship and economic development in the southwestern region of Arizona.
Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business.
The Nigerian Senate has just approved the Report by the Ad-hoc Committee on the National Minimum Wage setting it at N30,000.

Speaking on the passage of the Bill, which was laid and presented by Senator Francis Alimikhena, the senate president Bukola Saraki said:

Let me join our colleagues to commend the efforts of the committee. More importantly, let me commend the patience of Nigerian workers and the leadership of the Labour Union, who have over the years been calling for this minimum wage and have carried their efforts responsibly.

I want to commend the leaders of the organisations of the union. Let me also state that as government, we should ensure that at times like these, we should not wait for there to be strikes to do what is truly deserving for our workers.

I hope that with this minimum wage our workers will double their efforts to increase their productivity, so that we can also improve the general productivity of the country. It is my hope that the implementation of this will start immediately.
Ghana's Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) has been maintained at 'B' by rating agency, Fitch.

The latest grading, published on its website on Monday, 18 March 2018, puts Ghana two levels below investment grade.

The global rating agency took into consideration a strong medium-term growth potential and strong governance indicators relative to peers.

Ghana's Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta. Source: Classfmonline.com

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Owusu Bempah fails to honour police invitation over Radio XYZ saga

Other indicators cited include balance against worsening external liquidity, a weak banking sector and high debt levels.

According to Fitch, Ghana has been unable to significantly raise domestic revenue through tax administration reforms and adjustments.

It added that the country's record of sizeable fiscal slippages in the election years of 2012 and 2016, implies there are downside risks ahead of the 2020 general elections.

The US firm also forecasts that the government debt will fall in 2019, to 58% of GDP, but high debt servicing costs and currency depreciation will keep debt above 50% of GDP in the medium term.

Meanwhile, Standards and Poor's (S&P) Global, another rating agency, also maintained its 'B/B' long- and short-term foreign and local sovereign credit ratings for Ghana.

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The Ghana government recently acquired a US$3 billion Eurobond to shore up revenue for budget expenditure.

The bond is also meant for the payment of maturing notes which the government intends to use to salvage the depreciating cedi.

Ghana Nti: I Can't think far about the capacity of Ghana's police service | #Yencomgh

READ ALSO: Mahama administration didn't divert 100 Mahindra vehicles - Minister-designate backtracks

Have national and human interest issues to discuss? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: Yen.com.gh
I had begun the new year by discussing how smaller parties were going to be more important in this election season in India. Following the sad and premature demise of Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and the tumultuous politics in the state in the aftermath, I am tempted to add one more thing: the Goa model of fractious, fluid coalition governments is set to spread over a larger swathe of India as democracy takes roots and interest group politics and local issues begin to override deeper issues of ideology, national-level posturing or big party organisations.

You only have to go state by state to understand how politics has entered the phase that the Indian economy did in the aftermath of reforms that kicked off in 1991. With the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a slew of regional parties across the country, it is not just that coalitions have become mainstream.

Within each party, workers and lobbies have become more demanding - much like restless software employees who smelt opportunities in a world where employers including Infosys, Wipro, IBM, Accenture and a host of others competed for talent.

Goa is a small state and it took the charisma of Parrikar to keep his flock together. His successor Pramod Sawant was sworn in after the Congress tried valiantly to form a rival government on the strength of being the single largest party in the state assembly. Sawant now has a tough task ahead in emulating Parrikar in a state where Hindutva politics has limited utility because of the rooted presence of regional outfits and 25% Christian voters.

A key point, as one analyst observed in a TV discussion, is that defecting leaders get re-elected from their constituencies, suggesting that their confidence and their abilities can overpower the might, the ideology or the symbol of a big party. Or, for that matter, the stigma that one used to attach to defections. I think this phenomenon is spreading across India. I hope to discuss specifics some other time, but there is a general pattern that needs to be noted.

Today's slogging party worker is tomorrow's neta. Imagine. Mamata Banerjee was just a humble Congress worker on the streets of what was then Calcutta. In today's Kolkata, she rules over the state with her own Trinamool Congress that has managed to take on both the CPM and her mothership, the Indian National Congress. Modi himself has risen in the BJP from his humble worker origins in Gujarat and has successfully sidelined stalwarts like Lal Krishna Advani.

The naive idealism of the Independence movement and the Emergency era have given way to hard-as-nuts ambitions and strategies. Mastery of local issues, goodwill, oratory, lobbying and media savvy are now explicitly recognised as key political skills.

If the "high command" of any party is not willing to recognise a worker, breakaway formations and audacious defections offer them a way out. All major Indian political parties with the exception of the communist groups no longer care enough about ideology or the mood of grassroots workers enough to discourage defectors from coming in.

There may be an unwritten recognition: a so-called loyal worker is just a not-so-competent chamcha. In such a context, parties prefer a smart defector to a dubious loyalist. Or a useful defector, as we found out last week when Tom Vadakkan, a long-time Congress spokesman considered close to Sonia Gandhi, simply jumped ship to the BJP. The Kerala leader's ostensible reason (Congress disregard for the Army) and timing for the jump were so flimsy, that it looked more comic than grandiose. Vadakkan after decades sitting literally 100 metres from 10 Janpath at the Congress head office suddenly realised the party practises dynastic politics. Excuse me?

Vadakkan is not a major leader but the BJP holding a news conference to announce his entry was certainly a significant indicator of where Indian politics is going.

Caste, community and tribe still remain important political currencies in India. To top this, we may add an increasing localisation of politics. Local netas who care about the neighbourhood hospital, road or school and are/or more available to meet voters to address their various concerns build up goodwill that escapes the attention of the national media. But they do not escape the hawk eye of the high commands of parties. We have a virtual stock exchange for "winnable" politicians based on ground reports.

The scene is not much different from the technology sector, where Amazon, Microsoft and Google may love to poach each other's employees based on their CVs and industry intelligence. Talent, work, skills and energy matter more than loyalty. If the people in question are mission critical (Read: key to winning seats or forming governments), the netas matter more.

What is happening this month across political parties are just like annual appraisals and job interviews in top companies every March, prior to the start of a new financial year. Some employees get thumbs-down signals and they look for other opportunities. Smart ones feel bad when smarter ones get the chance or a new boss moves in with his/her own ideas and confidants.

In a sense, such defections and group shifts have been part of Indian history and culture. Only, generals and soldiers who used to capture territories for kings have given way to netas and chamchas who capture votes for parties.

In such a context, the stylish reference to "winnability" in political parties is an indirect admission of the harsh reality of grassroots politics: Parties don't really win on the basis of their ideals; they increasingly put their brand names on those they think are likely to win, while keeping their trademarks alive with tall talk and big spending.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL.)
New Delhi: Finally, after years of wait, superstar Salman Khan and maverick filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali have joined forces for 'Inshallah'. Alia Bhatt will be seen playing the leading lady in this movie.

The superstar took to Twitter and ended days of speculation regarding the project. He wrote: Its been 20 years but I am glad Sanjay and I are finally back in his next film, Inshallah. Looking forward to work with Alia and inshallah we will all be blessed on this journey. #Inshallah #SLB @aliaa08 @bhansali_produc @SKFilmsOfficial

Its been 20 years but I am glad Sanjay and I are finally back in his next film, Inshallah. Looking forward to work with Alia and inshallah we will all be blessed on this journey.#Inshallah #SLB @aliaa08 @bhansali_produc @SKFilmsOfficial  Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) March 19, 2019

Dream with your eyes wide open they say & I did. Sanjay Sir and Salman Khan are magical together & I can't wait to join them on this beautiful journey called Inshallah #Inshallah #SLB @BeingSalmanKhan @bhansali_produc @SKFilmsOfficial @prerna982  Alia Bhatt (@aliaa08) March 19, 2019

The announcement created a flutter on social media with fans rejoining this union and also the fresh on-screen pairing being hailed as the best one. Salman and Bhansali last worked together in 1999 romantic drama 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam' and the actor did a cameo in 2007 release 'Saawariya'.

Amid all of this hullaballoo, netizens found a throwback picture of Salman with Alia where the latter is a little fangirl posing for a click with the actor. Check out the picture and some of the Twitter reactions:

Who would've thought they will work together as a lead pair. #Inshallah pic.twitter.com/nTw6DlHuTw  Sky! (@being_Akash_) March 19, 2019

Sanjay Leela Bhansali made one of the biggest budgeted grand films like #BajiraoMastani & #Padmaavat with actor like RanveerSingh then imagine what will he do with THE SALMAN KHAN. It is guaranteed 2020s biggest movie. You simply can't question SLB's potential. #Inshallah pic.twitter.com/xVxfvh4AX2  . (@BeingRohan_) March 19, 2019

My morning just got ten trillion times better hearing this news cant keep my happiness intact super happy just bring it on#Inshallah pic.twitter.com/uROG8srFQE  Slasher (@iBeingUmer) March 19, 2019

Next, Salman is gearing up for the release of 'Bharat' opposite Katrina Kaif in the lead. The movie is helmed by Ali Abbas Zafar and will hit the screens on Eid, June 5, 2019.

Bhansali's 'Inshallah' will be Salman's first film with Alia.
New Delhi: Amidst debt-ridden Jet Airways massively cancelling flights and grounding most of its fleet, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday held an emergency meeting with the cash-strapped airlines asking it to immediately address passengers' woes.

DGCA said that it has instructed Jet to comply with the relevant provisions of the applicable CARs for facilitation of passengers regarding timely communication, compensation, refunds and providing alternate flights wherever applicable.

The data will be constantly by DGCA on regular basis, it said.

The meeting comes after Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu's direction to his ministry's secretary to hold an emergency meeting Jet Airways cancelling massive number of flights. He tweeted:

Directed Secretary, @MoCA_GoI to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, Advance bookings, Cancellation, Refunds and Safety issues, if any. Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA. @jayantsinha  Chowkidar Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) March 19, 2019

DGCA has also reviewed the performance of Jet on operational, airworthiness and passenger facilitation.

Current Jet's 41 fleets in operation, scheduled for 603 domestic flights and 382 international flights has been drawn. However, there may be further attrition in next coming weeks.

DGCA said that it is ensuring that all aircraft in the fleet whether in operation or on ground are maintained in accordance with Approved Maintenance Programme (AMP).

It has also directed Jet to ensure that no Pilots, cabin crew, AMEs be rostered on duty who had reported stress of any nature. Additionally, all such staff should be current with all mandatory training requirements.

DGCA further added that said that is continuously monitoring the overall situation and will take appropriate steps by the end of the month, depending on the turn of events.
New Delhi: Hyundai Motor Group and on Monday announced that it is entering into a strategic partnership with ride-hailing platform Ola under which Hyundai and Kia Motors will invest a total of USD 300 million in Ola.

Hyundai said that this will make their biggest combined investment to date, as part the Groups continued efforts to become a Smart Mobility Solutions Provider.

The agreement will see the three companies extensively collaborate on developing unique fleet and mobility solutions; building India-specific electric vehicles and infrastructure; as well as nurturing best in class opportunities and offerings for aspiring driver partners with customized vehicles, on the Ola platform, a company statement said.

As part of the strategic collaboration, the companies have agreed to co-create solutions to operate and manage fleet vehicles, marking the Groups first foray into the industry, as they expand operations from automobile manufacturing and sales to total fleet solutions.

The partnership will offer Ola drivers various financial services, including lease and instalment payments, while vehicle maintenance and repair services are expected to enhance customer satisfaction.

Hyundai, Kia and Ola have also agreed to coordinate efforts to develop cars and specifications that reflect the needs of the ride hailing market (both users and drivers). Data accumulated during service operation will allow the companies to make constant vehicle improvements to better meet local needs and specifications.
New Delhi: Consequent to SpiceJet grounding all its Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft as per the instructions of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), in the aftermath of Ethiopian air crash, the budget-airline on Monday said that Jet Airways has approached it to offer fleets.

Spicejet confirmed that Jet Airways lessors have offered 50 new generation Boeing 737 aircraft to the company. The cash-strapped airline is ready to offer the aircraft on short-term leases for a period of up to three years, Zee Media has learnt.

Spicejet sources told Zee Media that after the recent grounding of Boeing 737 MAX , airline needs 10-12 more aircraft to meet the demand and expansion plans. SpiceJet has around 12 B737 Max 8 aircraft in its fleet which it has completely grounded.

India has joined countries like the UK, France, Germany, Malaysia, China, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and South Africa in banning the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft.

The move comes after two crashes in less than six months involving planes of this make, the latest being Ethiopian Airline B737 Max 8 aircraft ET-AV crash on March 10, that killed 157 people including 4 Indians.

In October last year, Lion Air, of the same make, crashed killing over 180 people in Indonesia.

Meanwhile, DGCA had recently assured that it will monitor fares on dail basis and airlines have also agreed to check on predatory pricing following the last moment cancellation of several flights due to grounding of B737 Max 8 aircraft.
New Delhi: Robbers fled with an entire ATM machine which contained around Rs 30 lakh near the Nawada metro station in Robbers flee with entire ATM machine in Dwarka, police said on Tuesday.

Police said the incident took place on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday. The robbers covered the CCTV cameras with grease.

The manger of the Corporation Bank filed a complaint on Tuesday in which he said the bank operates from 9 am to 9 pm and after which, the security guard on duty pulls the shutters down on both- the bank and the ATM.

On Monday, the guard forgot to pull the shutter down of the ATM, a senior police officer said.

In the complaint, he said when the staff came to the bank on Tuesday, the ATM machine was missing, the officer said.

The bank has a software which enables the CCTV cameras placed inside the room with the ATM to go on sleep mode till next morning, police said.

Police officials said they are not ruling out the involvement of the bank staff in the incident. There is suspicion on the guard as how he forgot to pull the shutter. It will be clear once the investigation is completed, police said.

Initial investigation revealed that the accused, suspected to be two robbers, cut the wire of the CCTV which was placed outside the machine after covering its lens with grease. After that they removed the machine, the officer said.

Police said they have got some clues about the accused persons after checking the footage of the CCTV, the officer said, adding two men have been suspected who visited the ATM before the robbery took place.

The manager said they had put Rs 16 lakh in the ATM on Monday at around 3.30 pm and the total amount in the machine was Rs 30 lakh, police said.

"A case has been registered under section 380 (Theft ) and 457 (Trespass) of the Indian Penal Code and investigation has been initiated. Police have formed two teams to nab the accused persons," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Dwarka) Anto Alphonse said.
New Delhi: The government Monday warned against fake websites claiming to be registration portal for Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (KUSUM) scheme.

It has been noticed that few websites have cropped up claiming to be registration portal for KUSUM Scheme. Such websites are potentially duping general public and misusing data captured through fake registration portal, an official statement said.

In this regard, MNRE hereby advises all potential beneficiaries and general public to avoid depositing any registration fee or share their data on such websites. They may contact their DISCOMs / State Renewable Energy Nodal Agencies for any information in this regard. Any suspected fraudulent website if noticed by anyone may be reported to MNRE. For Guidelines and scheme implementation procedure, official portal of the Ministry: www.mnre.gov.in may be visited, it added.

Administrative Approval for the scheme was been issued by the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) on March this year.

The MNRE said that DISCOMs and State Nodal agencies shall be implementing this scheme for which the detailed guidelines will be issued shortly.

The proposal on KUSUM Scheme provides for installation of grid-connected solar power plants each of Capacity up to 2 MW in the rural areas; installation of standalone off-grid solar water pumps to fulfil irrigation needs of farmers not connected to grid; and solarisation of existing grid-connected agriculture pumps to make farmers independent of grid supply and also enable them to sell surplus solar power generated to DISCOM and get extra income.
Los Angeles: Filmmaker Francis Lee has been accused of fabricating a lesbian storyline in his next directorial "Ammonite".

The film, a biographical drama about paleontologist Mary Anning, features Oscar winner Kate Winslet and actor Saoirse Ronan in the lead.

The story follows the life of noted British palaeontologist Anning (Winslet) who begins a relationship with Frances Bell, her nursemaid (Ronan).

A report in The Telegraph, however, questioned the film's storyline, with Anning's real-life descendants claiming that her sexuality was never confirmed.

"Do the film-makers have to resort to using unconfirmed aspects to somebody's sexuality to make an already remarkable story sensational?" Barbara Anning said.

"Imagine the shame and embarrassment this woman would be feeling right now to actually have her private sex life discussed and played out on screen. This adds nothing to her story," she added.

Lorraine Anning, another relative of the paleontologist, believes the decision to create a gay relationship involving Anning was taken so as to make the film more attractive to the audiences.

Lee, best known for 2017 gay drama "God's Own Country", defended the film on Twitter.

"A Sunday thread: It has come to my attention there is huge speculation about my new film and the 'controversial' flames that have been fanned on a slow 'news' story day by newspapers and columnists who haven't read my script or know anything about my film," he wrote.

The director said the LGBTQ history has often been "straightened" in the culture and asked, "given a historical figure where there is no evidence whatsoever of a heterosexual relationship, is it not permissible to view that person within another context?"

"As a working class, queer filmmaker, I continually explore the themes of class, gender, sexuality within my work, treating my truthful characters with utter respect and I hope giving them authentic respectful lives and relationships they deserve," Lee said.

"Perhaps it would be better to wait until that work actually exists before assuming, presuming or critiquing what that work is and how it depicts its subjects and world," he added.
Beijing: China played a 'constructive role' in reducing tension between India and Pakistan, the foreign ministry said, after the nuclear-armed rivals almost came to blows last month following a terror attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy in Jammu and Kashmir.

The sparring threatened to spiral out of control and only interventions by US officials, including National Security Adviser John Bolton, headed off a bigger conflict, five sources familiar with the events have told Reuters.

A Pakistani minister said China and the United Arab Emirates also intervened to lessen tension between the south Asian neighbours.

In a faxed statement to Reuters late on Monday, responding to a question on China`s role in reining in the crisis, its foreign ministry said peaceful coexistence between Pakistan and India was in everyone`s interest.

"As a friendly neighbour of both India and Pakistan, China pro-actively promoted peace talks and played a constructive role in easing the tense situation," it said.

"Some other countries also made positive efforts in this regard," the ministry added.

China is willing to work with the international community to continue to encourage the neighbours to meet each other halfway and use dialogue and peaceful means to resolve differences, it said, without elaborating.

The Chinese government`s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, is set to meet Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Beijing later on Tuesday.

The February 14 attack that killed at least 40 security personnel was one of the deadliest in Jammu and Kashmir, rescalating tension between the neighbours.

China and Pakistan call each other "all-weather" friends, but China has also been trying to improve ties with New Delhi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping had held an informal summit in China last year agreeing to reset relations, and Xi is expected to visit India sometime this year, diplomatic sources say.
As the formation for the 9th Senate begins to take shape, calls are increasing for the South-East to produce the next Senate president.

A Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abia, Mr Austin Meregini, a.ka Ugolee, opines that it will be bad if the south-easterners are denied the position of Senate President in the 9th National Assembly. Meregini, also contested during the March 9 house of assembly elections as the APC Candidate for Umuahia East Constituency seat in the Abia State.

He made the assertion while speaking with Newsmen on Tuesday in Lagos. Meregini listed Chief Orju Uzor Kalu as the most qualified candidate to fill the position. Although accepting the fact that Kalu is a first time senator, he believes that Kalu having served in the house of representatives and as governor has the required qualities to lead the ninth Senate.

Meregini also believes that ceeding the senate president seat to the South-East will douse tension of marginalisation.
NEW DELHI: In a major blow for Syed Salahuddin, the chief of the globally banned terror group Hizbul Mujahideen, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday said it has attached 13 properties worth Rs 1.22 crore in Jammu and Kashmir in a terror funding case against Pakistan-based terrorist.

A provisional order has been issued by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach these properties, PTI reported.

According to the ED, the attached properties belonged to Bandipora resident Mohammad Shafi Shah and six other Kashmiris, who are accused of working for Hizbul Mujahideen.

A criminal case of money laundering was filed by the central agency after it took cognisance of a charge sheet filed by National Investigating Agency (NIA) against Salahuddin, Shah and others under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Action (UAPA) and other sections of the Indian Penal Code.

"Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the most active terror outfit in Kashmir, has been responsible for funding terrorist and secessionist activities in Jammu and Kashmir. Headed by Syed Salahuddin, its self-styled commander based out of Rawalpindi in Pakistan, it funds terrorism on Indian soil through monies organised by a trust called JKART (Jammu and Kashmir Affectees Relief Trust) in alleged connivance with the ISI and other Pakistan-based entities," the ED said in a statement.

The ED said a thorough probe was conducted in this matter and it was found that money meant to fund terror activities on Indian soil was sent to India through the hawala network. "The funds are illegally distributed to the next of kin of Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists, active and dead," it said.

Hizbul Mujahideen was designated a 'foreign terrorist organisation' in August, 2017 by the US government. Salahuddin is also the chairman of the United Jehad Council (UJC), a conglomerate of terror groups active in Jammu and Kashmir.

In 2017, Salahuddin's son Syed Shahid Yousuf was arrested by the NIA in connection with this case. Yousuf was working Jammu and Kashmir agriculture department but he was suspended from service after arrest. Shah and three others are currently behind bars at Tihar jail in New Delhi.

(with PTI inputs)
NEW DELHI: Days after China had put a hold on the listing of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist under the United Nations, the discussion has started in the European Union regarding decalration of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief as a global terrorist.

Confirming the development, Germany embassy spokesperson Hans Christian Winkler in Delhi told WION, "There are discussions for the listing of Masood Masood Azhar by European Union. Germany as part of EU member state is also taking part in the discussion"

On March 15, France had announced it will be putting a freeze on the assets of Azhar and will raise the issue with European Union.

A joint release by French Foreign, Interior and Finance ministry said, "We will raise this issue with our European partners with a view to including Masood Azhar on the European Union list of persons, groups and entities involved in terrorist acts, based on this decree."

Barring China, all UNSC members had agreed to list Masood Azhar as a terrorist under the UN terror list. The proposal was moved by USA, France and UK and supported by 14 of the 15 UN Security Council Members. Australia, Bangladesh, Italy and Japan co-sponsored the move.

China had put a hold on the listing of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist in 2009, 2016 and 2017 as well. The hold this time continues for 9 months before which Beijing has to take a final decision on listing of Azhar.

Jaish is a UN-listed Pakistan-based terror group responsible for February 14 Pulwama terror attack, which resulted in the martyrdom of 40 CRPF personnel.
Raipur: The annual meet connections of Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan chapters Indian Institute of Mass Communication Alumni Association (IIMCAA) were organised in Raipur and Jaipur. IIMCAA, which is the largest mass media training institute in the country, is organising alumni meet for its students in 21 different cities in India and abroad.

The Raipur meet was chaired by vice-chancellor Santosh Kumar. Mrigendra Pandey managed the stage. IIMCAA president Prasad Sanyal while addressing the meet, highlighted the importance of networking among the former students of the institute. He also discussed in details about new initiatives - IIMCAA Medical Assistance Fund and IIMCAA Scholarships.

Madhya Pradesh chapter president Anil Saumitra hailed the decision of expansion of the institute and said that representatives of one state visiting other are an important step.

Giving details about the year-to-year expansion of the institute, organisation secretary Ritesh Varma said that this year, connections will be organised in at least 21 cities.

The meetings were addressed by senior journalist Prakash Chandra Hota, professor Rajendra Mohanti, Vindo Kumar, Dadan Vishwakarma, Jasim-ul-Haq among others.

The Jaipur meet was addressed by chapter president Amrita Maurya. In the meet, the new executive committee of the Rajasthan chapter was formed in which Amrita Maurya was re-elected as the president. In the newly-formed executive, Sachin Saini was elected as the vice-president, Madhav Sharma as general secretary, Ankit Dhaka as secretary and Gunjan Jain as the treasurer.

On the occasion, institute president Sanyal discussed a plan of the assistance of up to Rs 20,000 to the IIMCAA Medical Assistance Fund. IIMCAA professor Anand Pradhan said that the institute is preparing a report on female journalists working in the media industry so as to know the details related to their working environment. In the event, several Divyang kids from the NGA 'Angle At Work' also took part.

After the inaugural event on February 17th, at the IIMC Delhi headquarters, Connections 2019 spanning across 20 cities in and outside India, will put curtains down on April 13th in Dhaka at the Bangladesh Chapter meeting of the association.
Known for making controversial remarks by the dozen, Sanjay Nirupam on Tuesday morning stoked the hornet's nest once again by questioning the timing of choosing Goa's CM after the death of Manohar Parrikar.

Pramod Sawant took oath as Goa CM at around 0200hrs on Tuesday morning, a day after Parrikar was cremated with full state honours. While there was some tussle over the post, Sawant was eventually chosen as the CM. While Congress had staked claim to form the government, the party's efforts came to a nought and Nirupam - the Mumbai Congress Committee president - attempted to slam BJP for being insensitive. "Found it odd that the CM took oath at 1.30 am in Goa. It felt like BJP was waiting for Parrikar ji to breathe his last," he tweeted. "At least they could have waited till his ashes were immersed."

While Nirupam may have purported that BJP rushed with the process of naming a new CM, he made no reference to his own party in Goa making desperate moves all of Monday to gain political control here.

In a letter to Goa Governor Mridula Sinha, Congress had written that while it regrets the demise of Parrikar, BJP has lost its allies here. The Congress further staked claim to form the government, basing their argument on the claim that BJP allies had come together on the condition that Parrikar would be the CM. Congress - the single-largest party here - said BJP, therefore, had no allies after Parrikar's death.

A Congress delegation even met Governor Sinha even as thousands had gathered to pay their final respects to Parrikar at the BJP office in Panaji.

Ironically, Nirupam chose to ignore his own party's political posturing while launching an attack on BJP that has been called out on social media for being extremely insensitive.

In the past, Nirupam has been widely condemned for a host of controversial remarks - from comparing the Karnataka Governor to dogs, and insulting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to questioning the surgical strike after the Uri terror attack.
Gurgaon: NSA Ajit Doval said Tuesday the leadership of the country is fully capable to deal with any act of terror and against those who abet it.

Addressing the 80th raising day of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) here, Doval also said India has not forgotten and will not forget the terror attack in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir, where 40 CRPF jawans were killed on February 14.

"I can assure you that the country's leadership is very capable to effectively respond to such acts (Pulwama) of terrorism and those who aide it," he said.

Doval, a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is believed to be the person behind the planning of the air strike on the camp of Jaish-e-Mohammad in Balakot in Pakistan, carried out by the Indian Air Force in retaliation to the Pulwama terror attack, one of the worst on security personnel in Kashmir in three decades.

"What should we do? What should be our way, our aim and our response and time to respond? The country's leadership is both capable and courageous to (do) that. The country will tackle all such challenges and we have the courage to do this," he said.

The national security advisor paid tributes to the 40 jawans killed in Pulwama, and said it was a "very sad accident" and said the country will always be indebted to the personnel and their families.

Doval asked the CRPF to not look back or worry about the past but enhance its professionalism, credibility training and physical strength.

"If your morale is high then country's future is safe," he said.

Doval said world history is replete with examples of constitutional crises and government collapsing when the internal security of a nation is threatened.

The CRPF, he said, has to take a lead role in ensuring peace and law and order. "As the lead internal security force of the country, the CRPF has an onerous task on its shoulders to render the duties."

The CRPF, a three-lakh-personnel force, was raised in 1939 as Crown Representatives Police during the British rule and was granted the President's colour this day in 1950 by first home minister of the country, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

It is the highest honour bestowed on a force in recognition of exceptional service rendered by it to the nation, both during war and peace.
NEW DELHI: A technical meet of officials from India and Pakistan took place at the proposed zero points of Kartarpur corridor on Tuesday and it was decided that experts would be doing the survey of the site and discuss the alignment of the corridor.

Along with this both sides would also discuss the coordinates and engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points in future meetings.

Zero point is the point at which the Indian side of the corridor and the Pakistani side of the corridor will converge. India had shared the coordinates with point with Pakistan earlier this year but the Pakistani side gave alternate points.

The meeting was attended by engineers and surveyors from India and Pakistan. New Delhi had been seeking this meeting for a long time and had suggested the meet to happen on February 15 but the meeting got delayed as Islamabad had linked it with the draft agreement.

On February 9, WION had reported that India had proposed engineers meet on February 15.

The outcomes of Tuesday's site visit would be further discussed at the meeting on April 2 during the second round of talks between Indian and Pakistani officials in Wagah, Pakistan. The first round of talks was held on March 14 on the Indian side of the Attari-Wagah border.

It is to be noted that India has proposed that the corridor should be open to Indian citizens and Indian diaspora with 5000 people allowed very day, Pakistan has said that they can allow only 700 people that too only Indian citizens on designated days with a paid permit.
New Delhi: India and Pakistan on Tuesday held a meeting of technical experts to discuss issues related to the Kartarpur corridor, including its alignment, coordinates, and other engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points, sources said.

The meeting comes days after the two countries held talks to finalise the modalities for the corridor linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in the Pakistani town of Kartarpur with the Gurdaspur district in Punjab.

The technical meeting at the level of experts, including engineers and surveyors, was held at "proposed zero points" in the follow up to the decision reached on the March 14 meeting, the sources said.

India has been seeking this meeting for long time and had even suggested to hold it on February 15, 2019. Pakistan, however, had linked it to the meeting on the draft agreement.

The experts discussed the alignment of the corridor, the coordinates, and the engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points, the sources said.

The outcomes from Tuesday's site visit and survey would be further discussed at a meeting on April 2, they said.

Zero point is the point at which the Indian side of the corridor and the Pakistani side of the corridor will be meeting. India had shared the coordinates with Pakistan earlier this year but the Pakistani side gave alternate coordinates.

A joint statement issued after the meeting on March 14 at the Indian side of the Attari-Wagah border had said both sides held detailed and constructive discussions on various aspects and provisions of the project and agreed to work towards expeditiously operationalising the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor (KSC).

The meeting had come amid heightened tensions between the two neighbours following India's air strike on a terrorist training camp of the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Pakistan's subsequent retaliation.

Last November, India and Pakistan agreed to set up the border crossing linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, the final resting place of Sikh faith's founder Guru Nanak Dev, to Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Gurdaspur district.

Kartarpur Sahib is located in Pakistan's Narowal district across the river Ravi, about four km from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had on November 26 last year laid the foundation stone of the Kartarpur corridor in Gurdaspur district.

Two days later, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan laid the foundation stone of the corridor in Narowal, 125 km from Lahore..
CBI sources on Tuesday said that the extradition process of billionaire diamantaire Nirav Modi is underway and the agency is doing everything to bring him back to India and face justice. Sources, however, stressed that the extradition process will take time.

"Nirav Modi's extradition process is underway, we are doing everything, it will take time," CBI sources told ANI.

CBI Sources: Nirav Modi's extradition process is underway, we are doing everything, it will take time. (file pic) pic.twitter.com/ESrGg7owev  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

On Monday, London's Westminster Court had issued an arrest warrant against Nirav Modi based on Enforcement Directorate's request for his extradition to India. The move is seen as a big diplomatic win for Indian government as the arrest warrant was issued just days after the wanted businessman was spotted in London sporting a handlebar moustache and wearing a costly jacket. Top government officials said that Nirav Modi, who is accused of defrauding Punjab National Bank to the tune of over Rs 13,000 crore has been asked to appear before the court on March 25.

It is expected that London police would arrest Nirav Modi in the coming days. He can, however, apply for bail and it is expected that Modi would escape jail term by getting conditional bail.

The extradition process against Modi was started by the ED in August 2018 and it was certified by UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid on March 9. PTI reported that Modi, 48, is currently living in a three-bedroom flat at landmark Centre Point tower block in London. The area is one of the poshest in London as the rent in this area cost around 17,000 pounds a month. Modi is also running a new diamond business in London, sources said.

Nirav Modi's bank accounts are already frozen by Indian authorities and an Interpol red notice has also been issued against him for his arrest. The Indian government has also attached his assets worth Rs 1,873.08 crore under the PMLA and has seized assets linked to him and his family worth Rs 489.75 crore.

Besides Nirav Modi, his uncle Mehul Choksi and some other members of his family are facing investigation from the ED and the CBI for alleged money laundering and corruption. The scam came out in open in February last year.
SRINAGAR: A defence spokesman said that Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Ranbir Singh on Tuesday visited forward posts in Siachen Glacier in order to review operational preparedness in the sector, deemed as the world's toughest to guard.

"Lt Gen Singh visited the forward posts in Siachen Glacier today and reviewed the operational preparedness maintained in the sector," Srinagar-based defence spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kali said.

General Ranbir Singh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Northern Command visited forward posts in Siachen Glacier today and reviewed operational preparedness being maintained in the sector. pic.twitter.com/EMpxE9NDaI  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

The spokesman told PTI that Lt Gen Y K Joshi, the General Officer Commanding of Fire & Fury Corps also accompanied the Northern Army Commander during his visit to the Siachen glacier.

"Lt Gen Singh interacted with troops deployed at the forwards posts and complimented them for their high morale. He appreciated the tenacity and high standard of professionalism displayed by all ranks of 'Siachen Warriors' Brigade, despite the extreme challenges posed by the highest battlefield in the world," he said.

During his interaction with the soldiers stationed at Siachen Glacier, Lt Gen Singh hailed thier courage and urged them to continue to uphold the highest standards of professionalism, which is the hallmark of the Indian Army. He also visited the Siachen War Memorial to pay homage to the martyrs of Operation MEGHDOOT.

Earlier on March 5, Lt Gen YK Joshi had visited forward locations in the Siachen sector to review the security situation. He was briefed on the operational preparedness being maintained in the sector during his visit.
New Delhi: Almost two weeks after the IAF air strike on Balakot training camps of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Pakistan has decided to increase the deployment of a new squadron of F-16 fighter plane across the border areas with India. According to Air Force sources, Pakistan has built a new squadron of the F16 fighter plane, which has been built in Mushaf air base. The report added that the squadron has been named 'Aggressor' and it will be known as number 29 in Pakistan.

According to Indian Air Force sources, the squadron 29 includes a total of eight F-16 fighter planes, which will be charged to take immediate action against its neighbouring country India, in case of an emergency.

The sources said that Squadron 9 of Mushaf airbase of Pakistan Air Force is already equipped with F-16 fighter planes. And now, with another F-16 squadron in the base, Pakistan has bee aggressively strengthening its capabilities along border areas with India.

Pakistan's Mushaf airbase, which is the oldest airbase of the country, was previously known as Sargodha airbase. At present, Pakistan has 30 squadrons whereas Indian Air Force has a total of 34 squadrons. In fact, when the Indian army will phase out its old MiG 21 and MiG 27, then the number of squadrons will be reduced to 33.

The sources said that the Indian Air Force needs at least 42 squadrons and then they can compete with Pakistan and China. It is to be noted that the central air command centre of Pakistan Air Force is in Sargodha. And in 2003, Pakistan had changed its name to Mushaf airbase.
Following the declaration by President Muhammadu Buhari through his Spokesman, Garba Shehu, yesterday that he would not influence the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) to favour APC candidates in the forthcoming supplementary election, the main opposition, Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) has asserted that Buhari rigged the Presidential poll.

This was made known by PDP spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, who described Buharis comment as a subterfuge to divert public attention from APCs rigging plots ahead of the rerun.

See his reasons:
New Delhi: In the aftermath of the growing international pressure on Pakistan to rein in Islamist groups active on its soil, China has decided to come in support of its 'all-weather ally'. As per a report, China will sell long-range technically-advanced drones 'Rainbow' to Pakistan.

Rattled by the surgical strike carried out by Indian Air Force on terrorist training camps in Balakot, Pakistan has decided to procure Chinese unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Rainbow CH-4 and CH5.

According to the intelligence agency's report, Pakistan has decided to increase the number of drones in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir so that they can increase the surveillance on the international border including the Line of Control.

The CH-4 can carry up to 400 kilograms of explosives and can stay in the air for 40 hours. It can cover a range of up to 5,000 kilometres. On the other hand, Rainbow CH-5 can carry up to 1,000 kilograms of explosives and stay in the air up to 60 hours.

The drone can fly up to 17,000 feet height in the air.

According to an official from Defence Ministry, Pakistan, with the help of these drones, can invade the air space in India and hit a target,

In February, the Defence Ministry had approved 54 Israeli HAROP attack drones for Indian Air Force which can crash into high-value enemy military targets to destroy them completely. The IAF has an inventory of around 110 of such drones which have been renamed as P-4. But Pakistan did not have any long-range combatting drone until now.
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday said that he will not celebrate the festival of Holi this year in the light of the terrorist attack on CRPF troopers in Pulwama.

At least 40 CRPF personnel were killed and many were injured on February 14 in one of the deadliest terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir when a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle carrying over 100 kg of explosives into their bus in Pulwama district. Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad took the responsibility of the attack, just hours after the incident.

The suicide bomber was identified as 20-year-old Adil Ahmad Dar, also known as Adil Ahmad Gaadi Takranewala, was a resident of Gundibagh village of Pulwama district of south Kashmir and a JeM member.

Earlier, on March 1st, Rajnath had said that India was getting the cooperation of Islamic countries in its fight against terrorism. "All countries are coming on one platform to fight terror. There should be a decisive war against terror," he was quoted as saying by IANS while inaugurating the office and a residential complex of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) here.

He noted that the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) had for the first time invited India`s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj as a guest of honour for its meeting.

The Home Minister said terrorism had nothing to do with caste, creed or religion. "Some people link terrorism with religion which is not proper." He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had taken a tough stand to eliminate terrorism from Indian soil.
NEW DELHI: In a major boost to the firepower of Special Forces of Indian Army, sources said that the government has decided to buy assault rifles, ammunition, parachutes and several other specialised equipments from the US.

"Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is going to chair an important meeting where the proposal to buy the equipment worth over Rs 1,000 crore from the American Department of Defence is expected to be discussed," sources told ANI.

Sources added that during the meeting the Defence Minister will hold discussions over several types of equipments including assault rifles, ammunition and combat free fall parachutes for the Special Forces units of the Parachute Regiment of the Army.

"If the proposal goes through, the equipment would be acquired from the United States in a government-to-government deal under the Foreign Military Sales route," they said.

The Indian Army already has American M4A1 assault rifles, which are used extensively by security forces in counter-terrorism operations. It is learnt that the government is also planning to equip the Special Forces of Army with more carbines. These carbines will be like the Belgian rifles which are used by the Special Protection Group (SPG) guarding the Prime Minister.

In February, the Defence Ministry had inked a deal to procure 72,400 7.6mm Sig Sauer assault rifles under fast-track procedures. PTI had reported that the deal worth Rs 700 crore is aimed at modernising the infantry.

The Sig Sauer assault rifles are already being used by armed forces in the US and several European countries. Sources told PTI that the Defence Ministry has asked the US firm to deliver the rifles within a year. The Indian Army will receive a bulk - 66,400 - of the assault rifles, while the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy will get 4,000 and 2,000 rifles respectively.

The assault rifles could play an important role in boosting the firepower of troops in areas on the border with Pakistan and China. The Sig Sauer assault rifles are renowned for their firepower as well as reliability in extreme weather conditions.

(With ANI inputs)
SRINAGAR: Pakistan violated ceasefire in Akhnoor and Sunderbani sectors along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir on late Monday night.

Pakistani troopers resorted to shelling with mortars and firing of small arms at around 10:45 pm. The Indian Army is retaliating back, an Army official tolf nes agency ANI.

The ceasefire violation continued till Tuesday morning.

This comes a day after an army jawan was killed in Pakistan's ceasefire violation along the LoC in Sunderbani sector of J&K's Rajouri district. The firing which began at about 5:30 a.m stopped at about 7:15 am. Indian Army retaliated effectively.
Bengaluru: Soon after an under-construction building collapsed in Karnataka's Dharwad, Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy on Tuesday instructed the Chief Secretary to supervise rescue operations.

Expressing shock over the mishap, Kumaraswamy added that he has also directed him to send additional resources and expert rescuers to the spot by a special flight.

"Shocked to learn about the collapse of an under-construction building in Dharwad. I have instructed the Chief Secretary to supervise rescue operations. I have also directed the CS to send additional resources and expert rescuers by a special flight to #Dharwad," Kumaraswamy tweeted.

Shocked to learn about the collapse of an under-construction building in Dharwad. I have instructed the Chief Secretary to supervise rescue operations. I have also directed the CS to send additional resources and expert rescuers by a special flight to #Dharwad .  H D Kumaraswamy (@hd_kumaraswamy) March 19, 2019

An under-construction building in Kumareshwar Nagar, Dharwad in Karnataka collapsed earlier in the day, killing at least one and injuring six others. As many as 15 injured have been admitted to Dharwad civil hospital.

A rescue operation has been initiated as 40 people are still feared trapped under the debris.
New Delhi: In a major decision, the BJP Tuesday announced it will drop its all 10 incumbent MPs from Chhattisgarh and replace them with new faces in the Lok Sabha polls, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in the recent assembly elections.

BJP general secretary Anil Jain, also the party affairs incharge for the state, made the announcement as the BJP's Central Election Committee, which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders, met here to deliberate over its candidates for the polls.

"We have decided to fight the elections with new candidates and new zeal," Jain told reporters.

The party decision means that Union minister Vishnu Deo Sai and seven times Lok Sabha member and former Union minister Ramesh Bais will not be fielded in the polls.

The announcement underscores the BJP's bid to wrest its lost territory back from the Congress, which handed it a massive defeat in the assembly polls last year.

The Congress had won 68 seats, reducing the tally of the BJP, which was in power in the state for 15 years, to a mere 15. The difference in the vote share of the two parties was a huge 10 per cent.

The BJP is also considering not fielding any family member of these sitting MPs, sources said. If the party indeed adopts this criterion, the likely candidature of former chief minister Raman Singh, whose son Abhishek Singh is a sitting Member of Parliament, will also be in question.
PATNA: The deadlock over seat sharing in Bihar's mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) has finally been solved, sources told Zee News.

The RJD will contest on 20 seats and Congress on nine seats, added sources. Upendra Kushwaha-led Rashtriya Lok Samata Party will contest on four seats, Jitan Ram Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha from three seats, Loktantrik Janata Dal from two seats and Vikassheel Insan Party on one.

A formal announcement of the same is expected to be made in a joint press conference at 11:30 am on Wednesday.

Party-wise seat-sharing

RJD: 20 seats

Congress: 9 seats

RLSP: 4

HAM: 3

LJD: 2

VIP: 1

Speculations were rife that the deadlock was caused over RJD and Congress refusing to compromise on the number of seats.

The Grand Alliance comprises old allies like the Congress and the RJD, and new entrants such as the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), the Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) and the Vikashsheel Insaan Party (VIP).

RLSP chief and former Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha, HAM chief and former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi and VIP President Mukesh Sahani, have returned from New Delhi after completing talks on seat-sharing.

Akhilesh Prasad Singh, the Bihar Congress campaign committee Chairman had earlier announced that the party would contest 11 of the 40 seats in Bihar.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had on Sunday announced the list of candidates and their respective seats to be contested by its three constituents-- the BJP, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) and Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP.

As per the announcement, the BJP and the JD(U) will contest 17 seats each and six seats were allotted to the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).
Seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi may well have exposed the simmering differences within the Congress party. Is bringing down arch rival BJP a reward worth the price of aligning with nemesis Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) here - that is a question that several party leaders are reportedly divided on.

Reports suggest that while several national leaders of Congress are in favour of an alliance with AAP in Delhi ahead of the crucial Lok Sabha election, the party's leadership in Delhi would rather steer clear. Sources told news agency ANI that Delhi Congress committee chief Sheila Dikshit has written to party chief Rahul Gandhi and warned him against the harm aligning with AAP would do in the long run. It is reported that Dikshit and working presidents Haroon Yusuf, Devender Yadav and, Rajesh Lilothia are not willing to shake hands with AAP even though the party high command may be seriously considering a proverbial political hug.

Senior party leader PC Chacko said on Tuesday that a decision in this regard can be expected by the end of this week. "Our president Rahul Gandhi will take a decision in few days time. The policy of our party, as decided by the working committee, is to go for an alliance with parties who are opposed to BJP. I hope Delhi leaders will also follow this policy decision of the Congress," he said.

Meanwhile, the AAP has claimed that it is capable of winning all Lok Sabha seats in Delhi on his own merit. "We are not in talks with Congress for any alliance," Delhi CM and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal was quoted as saying by news agency PTI last week. "We are hearing statements from Congress that it would not enter into alliance with AAP. But according to our internal surveys, AAP will be winning with a heavy majority on all seven seats and there are four reasons for it." (Read full report here)

Political analysts feel that the confusion over whether Congress will enter into an alliance with AAP in Delhi could work in favour of BJP.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Delhi will vote in the sixth phase - on May 12.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) issued a show cause notice to BJP leader Babul Supriyo for poll code violation on Tuesday.

The additional Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Basu said, We are keeping a close watch on media and through the surveillance, we came to know of the election campaign song of Babul Supriyo. The All India Trinamool Congress has also registered a complaint against the song with us. We investigated the complaint and it seems that he (Babul Supriyo) promoted the song without media certification in the electronic media, social sites.

He added, This is a violation of the Model Code of Conduct. We have issued a show cause notice to Babul Supriyo. He has to reply the show cause notice within 48 hours. As far as the content is concerned, we have received another complaint from the All India Trinamool Congress.

Supriyo, on the other hand, claimed that he had not created the music video, rather media houses had covered it during the recording of the song. I will definitely reply to the show cause notice. The song will be sent to the media certification department and will be released in a proper manner from the BJP party office. I have not released the song on the social site also. During the recording, I had shared it with the party members and it seems that they have circulated it. I will abide by all the rules and regulations of the Election Commission, said Supriyo.

Earlier in the day, an FIR was lodged against Supriyo at the Asansol South Police Station for the song slamming the ruling party in the state  Trinamool Congress.

On the same day, a high-level delegation of the Trinamool congress, comprising party leaders Derek O'Brien, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray and Dr Chandan Mitra, met the officials of Election Commission of India in Delhi on a range of issues.
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India will meet representatives of several social media firms on Tuesday following the implementation of Model Code of Conduct ahead of Lok Sabha 2019 election.

According to reports, intermediaries of Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and other platforms are expected to meet members of the poll panel to update on steps taken by them in the poll atmosphere.

The meeting comes a day after the EC told the Bombay High Court that its new directions imposing several prohibitions on political advertisements and other advertisements concerned with "national interest" will be finalised and implemented, reported news agency PTI. It will further issue directions prohibiting all social media platforms from displaying political advertisements not pre-verified by it.

The model code of conduct for Lok Sabha election 2019 came into force on Sunday, March 10, after the Election Commission (EC) announced the dates for General Election.

The same day, the EC announced that social media platforms will deploy "appropriate fact checkers" to scan fake news and tackle the use of abusive language. Briefing the media, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said the social media companies have created a system to accept only pre-certified political ads during the poll process and will share the expenditure incurred in this regard with election authorities.

"(The) platforms are already taking action against fake accounts, spam by deploying fact checkers," he said.

All social media platforms have also agreed to establish quick response priority channels for the EC, along with appointing grievance officers for the election.

Indian national election 2019 is scheduled to be held in seven phases from April 11 to May 19. The results will be announced on May 23
Kolkata: After Congress announced names of 11 candidates in West Bengal for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, the Left Front on Tuesday gave the grand old party a window of 24 hours to respond to the seat-sharing plan.

"We are giving 24 hours to Congress for seat sharing, we will wait till Wednesday at 4:30 pm. Only after that Left will say whether the talks on seat sharing can continue or not," Left Front chairman Biman Bose said.

Congress released its first list of 11 candidates on Monday night. The list showed that the party fielded candidates in two seats - Raigunj and Murshidabad where the CPI(M) has sitting MPs. CPI(M)'s Md Salim is the sitting MP from Raigunj and Badrudozza Khan is the sitting MP from Murshidabad.

According to the earlier talks between the two parties, Left Front had demanded that the Congress should not field candidates in the two seats where the party has sitting MPs. In return, the Left will not field candidates in four seats where the Congress had sitting MPs - Malda Uttar, Malda Dakshin, Jangipur and Berhampore.

Congress, however, wanted to field candidates in all 42 seats in the state.

On Tuesday, the Left Front announced names of 38 candidates and left out the four seats where the Congress had sitting MPs. However, if the party cannot reach a point of the solution on seat sharing, the Left will field their own candidates in the four seats.

"If Congress does not withdraw candidates on the two seats - Raigunj and Murshidabad and communicate to us of their decision on seat sharing, then we will field candidates in the four seats," added Bose.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, out of the total 42 seats in the state, Trinamool Congress had won 34 seats, Congress had bagged four seats while the Left had won two seats and BJP had bagged the two remaining seats.
The Left Front on Tuesday announced the names of candidates for 38 seats of the total 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. The Left Front has decided to not field any candidates in Malda Uttar, Malda Dakshin, Jangipur and Berhampore as Congress had won these seats in 2014 Lok Sabha poll.

The Left Front is an alliance of Communist Party of India (Marxist), All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), the Marxist Forward Bloc, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Revolutionary Communist Party of India and the Biplabi Bangla Congress.

Out of 38 seats, CPI (M) will field its candidates from 29 seats, AIFB from three seats, RSP from three seats and CPI from three seats.

Earlier, it was reported that Left and the Congress were holding talks to fight the Lok Sabha poll together in the alliance but the seat-sharing talks between the two parties failed after Congress announced that it will fight the poll alone.

Meanwhile, Left Front on Tuesday said that it is still open to hold seat-sharing talks with the Congress and will wait for Congress' decision till 4:30pm on Wednesday. Left Front leaders said that if Congress decides against withdrawing its candidates on the two seats - Raigunj and Murshidabad, then Left will also field its candidates from the four seats which it has left for the Congress.

On Monday, Congress had announced the candidature of ex-union minister Deepa Dasmunsi and Abu Hena from Raiganj and Murshidabad constituencies respectively.

Dasmunsi is the widow of Congress stalwart late PR Dasmunsi and she will fight against sitting CPI(M) member Mohd. Salim, while Hena will contest against Badarudozza Khan. The party also announced that Abhijit Mukherjee, the son of former President Pranab Mukherjee, will contest from Jangipur, while former West Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary will fight the Lok Sabha poll from Berhampore.
Telegu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu launched a scathing attack on Prashant Kishor on Monday, calling him 'Bihari dacoit who has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh.' A day later, the reaction from the noted poll strategist and Janata Dal (United) National vice president was equally ferocious.

Speaking at a rally in Ongole, Chandrababu had trained his guns on Kishor while taking on K Chandrashekhar Rao. "KCR is doing criminal politics. He is grabbing the MLAs of Congress and TDP. Bihari dacoit Prasant Kishore has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh," he had said.

Not someone to take a punch lying down, Kishor took to Twitter to slam the Andhra CM. "An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So Im not surprised with the baseless utterances," he tweeted. "Sirji rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice and malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again."

An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So Im not surprised with the baseless utterances of @ncbn Sirji rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice & malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again. https://t.co/CYSJNRJ43W  Prashant Kishor (@PrashantKishor) March 19, 2019

Kishor is seen as someone who played a key role in Narendra Modi's election campaign before the 2012 Gujarat Assembly election and the 2014 Lok Sabha election. He would go on to help JD(U) before the Bihar Assembly election in 2015 before formally joining the party last year.

Naidu, however, sees no merit in Kishor's credentials and has, instead, accused him of giving 'criminal advice' to YSRCP and of attempting to destabilise TDP.
MUMBAI: Hours after the SP and the BSP announced that the two parties will contest the Lok Sabha poll together in Maharashtra and field their candidates on all 48 seats in the state, the Nationalist Congress Party hit back at the SP-BSP alliance saying that the two parties will fail to hamper the electoral prospects of the Congress-NCP combine.

Talking to PTI, NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik also downplayed Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar's decision to contest all Lok Sabha seats alone and not joining the Congress-NCP alliance.

"Just like the Shiv Sena and the BJP, the alliance between the Congress and the NCP is sealed. Smaller outfits like the PWP and those believing in the ideology of Mahatma Phule and B R Ambedkar have joined hands with us," he said.

Malik also took at the BJP-led NDA, saying leaders like Vinayak Mete and Ramdas Athavale too are unhappy with the BJP as the party had failed to take them into confidence while finalising seat-sharing agreement with Shiv Sena.

"Sharad Pawar has already said there will be state-specific alliances, and in Maharashtra, the alliance between the Congress and the NCP is already in place," he told PTI. Malik added that Ambedkar, and SP and BSP have never contested in Maharashtra with the Congress-NCP combine.

Malik said the Congress-NCP front is set to expand in the coming days as some smaller parties are in talks to be a part of the coalition. He remarked that an announcement in this regard will be made at appropriate time.

Meanwhile, Congress spokesman Sachin Sawant slammed Ambedkar for not entering into an alliance with the Congress-NCP and said that Ambedkar's only motive is to help the BJP by dividing the secular votes. "But people are not interested in entertaining any 'vote katuas'. Leave aside his party, Ambedkar himself will be defeated by a huge margin," Sawant said.

(with PTI inputs)
AMARAVATI: Actor-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan on Tuesday announced that he will contest the April 11 Assembly election in Andhra Pradesh from Gajuwaka and Bhimavaram constituencies.

It is to be noted that Pawan Kalyan - a well-known Telugu star - launched his own party Jana Sena few years ago and he has decided to jump into the electoral fray from Gajuwaka and Bhimavaram after an intensive survey in various constituencies. Gajuwaka is in Visakhapatnam district and Bhimavaram in West Godavari.

Jana Sena has decided to contest the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party, CPI and CPI(M). As part of the seat-sharing agreement, Jana Sena will field its candidates from 140 Assembly and 18 Lok Sabha seats.

The party has already announced its candidates for 77 Assembly and nine parliamentary seats. The BSP has decided to contest from three Lok Sabha and 21 seats while the two Left parties will field its candidates from seven Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats.

On March 17, Pawan Kalyan had said that he wished to see BSP chief Mayawati as the Prime Minister of India because the country needs a strong leader like her.

It is learnt that Mayawati is scheduled to visit Amalapuram on April 3 and Tirupati the next day before going to Hyderabad. The alliance between Jana Sena and BSP would also extend to Lok Sabha elections in Telangana but the two parties are yet to finalise the seat-sharing arrangement.

In January, while addressing a massive rally in Amaravati, Pawan Kalyan had expressed confidence that his party will form the next government in Andhra Pradesh because it has the support of weaker and backward sections of the society. The Jana Sena supremo had said that main aim is to politically empower all sections of the society and he has not decided to enter the political arena for money and position.
New Delhi: Chinese handset maker Xiaomi on Tuesday launched its cheapest smartphone ever the Redmi Go.

Priced at Rs 4,499, the phone will go on fits sale at 12 noon on 22nd March. It will be available exclusively mi.com, Flipkart and Mi Home. The phone will be available in Blue and black colour options.

The 5 inch HD display phone has an 8MP Rear camera with LED Flash and a 5MP Selfie camera. Under the hood the phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor.

The Phone runs Android Oreo (Go Edition) OS that Xiaomi says, supports the lite versions of many popular games and apps. It houses a 3000mAh Battery.

Featuring 20+ regional languages, a 2+1 card slot, Google assistant in Hindi & dedicated expandable storage, the Redmi Go is tailor-made for India, Xiaomi said.

Last month Xiaomi expanded the Redmi Note line-up by launching Redmi Note 7 Pro and Redmi Note 7. Both phones were launched in the affordable segment with the Redmi Note 7 Pro priced at Rs 13,999 and Rs 16,999 for the 6GB+128GB variant while the Redmi Note 7 has been priced at for Rs 9,999 for the 3GB+32GB variant and Rs 11,999 for the 4GB+64GB variant.
Mumbai: The Central Railway to dismantle foot overbridges (FOBs) at Bhandup, Kurla, Vikhroli, Diva and Kalyan Junction stations in Mumbai. The Central Railway had earlier floated tender to dismantle the foot-over-bridges.

This comes a week after the foot overbridge collapse in Mumbai which claimed lives of at least six people. The mishap also left 34 people injured that took place on March 14 evening.

Officially known as 'Himalaya' foot overbridge, the foot overbridge collapsed at around 7.30 pm. The bridge was constructed in 1980 and is said to be almost 39 years old.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has, meanwhile, announced compensation of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of those who lost their lives and an ex-gratia of Rs 50,000 each for those who were injured in the accident.

The bridge connected the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus railway station with the Azad Maidan Police Station.
New Delhi: Structural auditor Neeraj Desai, who was arrested by the Mumbai Police on Monday in connection with Foot over-bridge collapse last week, has been remanded to police custody till March 25. At least six people died and at least 34 were injured in the bridge collapse incident that took place on March 14 evening.

Desai's firm DD Desai's Associated Engineering Consultant and Analysts Private Ltd had conducted an audit of the bridge and had declared it safe for use. However, it has then suggested a few minor repair work on the bridge.

The bridge linked the area near the BMC building with the iconic Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus railway station in south Mumbai. It is also called the 'Kasab bridge' as 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab had crossed the bridge during the Mumbai terror attack in 2008.

On Monday, DCP told PTI that it was found during the interrogation that the structural auditor was aware of the condition of the foot overbridge but he chose to neglect it. Section 304-part II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder of the Indian Penal Code has been imposed against Neeraj Desai, police said.

Earlier, the Mumbai police had booked officials of Mumbai civic body, which were responsible for its maintenance and the Central Railway in connection with the bridge tragedy. However, it retracted its move later.
New Delhi: Bollywood actress Karisma Kapoor along with her father Randhir Kapoor paid a visit to ailing Rishi Kapoor, who is battling an undisclosed illness in New York.

Sharing the picture on Instagram, Neetu Kapoor wrote, "The bestest brothers ever their conversation is only food though #family #bond #forever."

As per sources, Randhir intends to spend some quality time with his brother and sister, Ritu Nanda, who is also getting treated in the same city.

A few days ago, Neetu hinted that they would be returning to Mumbai soon.

The actress posted a picture of herself with Rishi, Ritu Nanda and Rima and niece Nitasha Nanda on Instagram and wrote, "One of the Quintet leaves !! Will miss you @rimosky will soon be on the same flight back."

Neetu has been keeping her fans updated about Rishi's health. Although they have not spoken about Rishi's illness, in one of her posts Neetu had hinted that he is suffering from cancer.

Apart from Rishi's siblings, some Bollywood A-listers like Priyanka Chopra, Sonali Bendre, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Alia Bhatt among others have also visited Rishi in New York.
The Income Tax Department will attach several properties belonging to Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati's close aide Netram. The raids, held last week, were conducted across 20 properties Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Noida.

It was discovered that the valuation of the properties is lower than their actual purchase value.

During raids conducted over last week, IT dept found the valuation of these properties in the books at around Rs 100 cr. while the actual purchase value of these 20 properties is around Rs 225 cr. IT department will attach these properties under section 132(9) of IT Act, IT officials told news agency ANI.

Raids on properties belong to Mayawati's former secretary also resulted in the disclosure of 30 shell companie

His in-laws expressed complete ignorance about such companies. Children of the assessee are authorized persons to operate bank accounts of shell companies.

"Accommodation entries of about 95 crore from Kolkata based entry operators, acquired 6 properties out of bogus share capital of 95 crore. Two properties in Delhi, One in Mumbai and three in Kolkata," the sources told ANI.

Rs 18 lakh in cash was recovered from Netram`s Lucknow house, Rs 86 lakh from Delhi house and additional Rs 60 lakh cash was seized, which was linked to other person.
BAGHOUZ: US-backed fighters said they had taken positions in Islamic State`s last enclave in eastern Syria and air strikes pounded the tiny patch of land beside the Euphrates River early on Monday, a Reuters journalist said.

Smoke rose over the tiny enclave as warplanes and artillery bombarded it. Another witness said the jihadists had earlier mounted a counter attack.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia said in an update on Monday that tens of militants had been killed during what it called fierce clashes, and one SDF fighter had been injured. It said Islamic State had sent four suicide bombers to points close to SDF fighters.

Late on Sunday, an SDF spokesman, Mustafa Bali, said on Twitter that several enemy positions had been captured and an ammunition storage area had been blown up.

The enclave resembles an encampment, filled with stationary vehicles and rough shelters with blankets or tarpaulins that could be seen flapping in the wind during a lull in fighting as people walked among them.

An Islamic State spokesman said on Monday the displacement of "the weak and poor" from Syria`s Baghouz would not weaken the group.

"Do you think the displacement of the weak and poor out of Baghouz will weaken the Islamic State? No," Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer said in a recording distributed by Al Furqan, a media organisation linked to Islamic State. He added "the Islamic State will return, God willing, to the regions it left whether it takes a long or a short time."

In the recording al-Muhajer also said Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urged the group to avoid using telecommunications devices as they had brought harm, and to take caution.

Backed by air power and special forces from a U.S.-led coalition, the SDF has pushed Islamic State from almost the entire northeastern corner of Syria, defeating it in Raqqa in 2017 and driving it to its last enclave at Baghouz last year.

Late on Sunday, the Kurdish Ronahi TV station aired footage showing a renewed assault on the enclave, with fires seen to be raging inside and tracer fire and rockets zooming into the tiny area.

The SDF has waged a staggered assault on the enclave, pausing for long periods over recent weeks to allow mostly women and children who are families of suspected fighters to pour out.

Women and children leaving have spoken of harsh conditions inside, under coalition bombardment and with food supplies so scarce some resorted to eating grass.

Former residents also say hundreds of civilians have been killed in months of heavy aerial bombing by the coalition that have razed many of the hamlets in the area along the Iraqi border.

The coalition says it take great care to avoid killing civilians and investigates reports that it has done so.

Last month, the SDF said it had found a mass grave in an area it captured. Former residents say those buried were victims of coalition air strikes.

The SDF and the coalition say the Islamic State fighters inside Baghouz are among the group`s most hardened foreign fighters, although Western countries believe its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has left the area. The group issued a propaganda film from inside the enclave last week calling on its supporters to keep faith.

While Islamic State`s defeat at Baghouz will end its control of inhabited land in the third of Syria and Iraq that it captured in 2014, the group will remain a threat, regional and Western officials say.
Firefighters work near the wrecks of two vehicles involved in a collision near Otavi, northern Namibia, on March 17, 2019. Namibian President Hage Geingob on Monday extended his condolences after 13 passengers were burned to death during a collision between two mini-buses along the country's B1 highway. According to a statement issued by Namibia Police Force (Nampol) on Monday, the accident happened on March 17 approximately 3 km from Otavi to Tsumeb on the B1 Road. (Xinhua/NAMPA)

WINDHOEK, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Namibian President Hage Geingob on Monday extended his condolences after 13 passengers were burned to death during a collision between two mini-buses along the country's B1 highway.

"The president of the Republic of Namibia, Hage G. Geingob has learned with profound sadness of yesterday's fatal accident, involving two mini-buses on the B1 road between Otavi and Tsumeb, leading to the tragic death of 13 passengers," read a statement issued by the Namibian presidency.

"For the law to take its course and in honor of victims of yet another needless accidents, a proper investigation should be speedily carried out," he said.

Geingob also appealed to law-enforcement agencies to patrol roads and enforce speed limits, asking drivers to adhere to safe driving in order to prevent loss of lives.

"Drivers carrying passengers must drive safely, respect rules, and adhere to speed limits in order to avoid fatalities. Innocent passengers should not lose their lives due to negligent drivers," the president said.

According to a statement issued by Namibia Police Force (Nampol) on Monday, the accident happened at about 3 p.m. local time approximately 3 km from Otavi to Tsumeb on the B1 Road.

"It is alleged that an Iveco bus was traveling from north while another lveco bus was traveling from south when they collided head on and both vehicles caught fire and burned completely out. As a result, 13 people perished (8 female and 5 male), burned beyond recognition. 18 passengers (13 adults and 5 children) and a driver were transported to various hospitals at Otavi, Otjiwarongo and Tsumeb," the statement read.

According to Nampol, all remains will be transported to the capital Windhoek for DNA processing.

3

1

[ Editor: Zhang Zhou ]
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LOS ANGELES, March 18 (Xinhua) -- NASA's New Horizons mission team on Monday unraveled mysteries of the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) nicknamed Ultima Thule, the most distant object ever explored by mankind.

New Horizons performed the farthest flyby in history at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) on New Year's Day, as it approached Ultima Thule within 2,200 miles (about 3,540 km) of the surface at a velocity of 31,500 miles (about 50,694 km) per hour.

Analyzing the data New Horizons has been sending home since the flyby, mission scientists are learning more about the formation, geology and composition of this ancient relic of solar system formation, said a NASA release.

Ultima Thule is the first unquestionably primordial contact binary ever explored, said the mission team. Approach pictures of Ultima Thule hinted at a strange, snowman-like shape for the binary, but further analysis of images taken near st approach uncovered the object's unusual shape.

Ultima Thule consists of a large and flat lobe (nicknamed "Ultima") connected to a smaller and rounder lobe (nicknamed "Thule").

"We've never seen anything like this anywhere in the solar system," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. "It is sending the planetary science community back to the drawing board to understand how planetesimals - the building blocks of the planets - form."

Scientists believe Ultima Thule's two lobes once orbited each other, like many so-called binary worlds in the Kuiper Belt, until something brought them together in a "gentle" merger.

The "neck" connecting Ultima and Thule is bent, and could indicate shearing as the lobes combined, said Kirby Runyon, a New Horizons science team member.

In terms of color and composition, Ultima Thule is very red - redder even than Pluto, which New Horizons flew past on the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt in 2015, and about the same color as many other so-called "cold classical" KBOs, said the team.

New Horizons scientists have also seen evidence for methanol, water ice and organic molecules on the surface.

Currently the New Horizons spacecraft is 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth, operating normally and speeding deeper into the Kuiper Belt at nearly 33,000 miles (53,000 kilometers) per hour.

[ Editor: WPY ]
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The consensus was reached during talks between Gen. Luong Cuong, Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Standing Member of the Central Military Commission and Director of the Vietnam Peoples Army (VPA) General Department of Politics, and visiting Lieut. Gen. Thongloy Silivong, member of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) Central Committee, Deputy Defence Minister and Director of the Lao Peoples Army (LPA) General Department of Politics, in Hanoi, on March 19.

Addressing the talks, Gen. Luong Cuong affirmed that Silivongs visit, which took place shortly after the official friendly visit to Laos made by Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong, will contribute to concretising and implementing the high-level agreements reached by the two countries, as well as further deepening the traditional friendly ties, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two Parties, States and armies.

Both sides agreed that the cooperation between the VPA General Department of Politics and the LPA General Department of Politics has been implemented in a comprehensive, extensive, pragmatic and effective manner over the past few years, especially in sharing experience across the areas of information, communication and education about traditions, training officers, exchanging all-level delegations and searching and repatriating the remains of Vietnamese voluntary soldiers and experts in Laos.

A general view of the talks between the high-ranking political delegations of the VPA and the LPA.



The collaboration between the two armies has now become a pillar in the Vietnam-Laos relations, contributing to promoting sustainable and stable development in other areas of bilateral cooperation, they stated.

Lieut. Gen. Thongloy Silivong said he believed that the fine relations between the two countries armies will strengthen the trust and comprehensive cooperation between the two Parties, States, peoples and armies of the two countries, while ensuring the maintenance of political security and stability in each country, thereby contributing to maintaining peace, stability and development in both countries.

Regarding cooperation orientations for the time ahead, the two sides agreed to accelerate the progress of searching and repatriating the remains of Vietnamese voluntary soldiers and experts who laid down their lives in Laos, in addition to boosting the exchange of delegations and cultural and sport exchanges, and twinning their respective units.

As part of their working trip to Vietnam, the high-ranking political delegation of the LPA, led by Lieut. Gen. Thongloy Silivong, paid courtesy calls to Gen. Ngo Xuan Lich, Politburo member, Vice Secretary of the Central Military Commission and Minister of Defence, and Tran Quoc Vuong, Politburo member and permanent member of the PCCs Secretariat. The guests also made working visits to the Military Zone 7 and the Military Zone 9.




British rock band Queen will soon hold concerts in South Korea, after "Bohemian Rhapsody," a biographical film about the iconic group, reignited the group's popularity worldwide and especially here, organizers said Tuesday.







"Queen is going to perform in South Korea sooner or later. We'll soon release the exact date and place of the event," a PR official with AIM told Yonhap News Agency by phone.







On Monday, the concert agency uploaded a promotional video for the upcoming concert with the message "World Tour in Korea Coming Soon" on its Facebook and Instagram accounts.







Considering that the band is set to have a North American tour in July and August, the Korea visit is expected to fall shortly before or after that.







The band's lead guitarist, Brian May, said in a video uploaded to a Universal Music social media account on Feb. 19 that he will meet his Korean fans soon.







If realized, it would be the band's first performance in Korea since their participation in the Super Sonic music festival in 2014.







The film "Bohemian Rhapsody" has attracted an audience of more than 9.94 million people in South Korea. (Yonhap)






South Korea's dependence on key products for exports was nearly double that of major exporters in 2018 due mainly to its prowess in the chip industry, a report said Tuesday.







The country's "product concentration of exports" stood at a 20-year high of 137.2 last year, 1.8 times the average of 77.9 for the world's 10 largest exporting countries, according to the report by the Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI).







The index measures how a country's overseas shipments are concentrated on a small number of items, according to KERI, which is affiliated with the Federation of Korean Industries, the lobby for family-controlled conglomerates.







France posted the lowest figure of 50.2. Comparable figures were 112.7 for China and 118.1 for Japan.







KERI attributed South Korea's high concentration to the country's chip technology superiority, its failure to nurture new growth engines and the sluggishness of other manufacturing industries.







"South Korea's export product concentration has grown over the past two years due to a spike in semiconductor exports," the report said.







It also expressed concerns over the impact of slumping chip exports, which stem from weaker demand and tumbling prices, on the South Korean economy.







In a recent report, the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization projected the global chip market to contract 3.3 percent on-year in 2019, with the memory chip segment likely to suffer a 14.2 percent tumble.







South Korea is home to top global memory chip maker Samsung Electronics Co. and No. 2 industry player SK hynix Inc.







"There is a high possibility of the WSTS forecast becoming a reality in light of tumbles in South Korea's chip exports," said Lee Tae-gyu, a KERI researcher.







A 10 percent contraction in growth of the memory chip sector could lead to a drop of up to 20 trillion won (US$17.7 billion) in induced production and an employment loss of more than 50,000, Lee added.







In February, South Korea's chip exports tumbled 24.8 percent on-year to $6.7 billion. The country shipped $7.42 billion worth of chips in January, down 23.3 percent from a year earlier.







Noting that high product concentration can increase the risk of falling exports, the report called for efforts to boost the competitiveness of key export industries and secure new growth engines. (Yonhap)


Dartmouth's Marcelo Gleiser wins 2019 Templeton Prize

HANOVER, N.H. - March 19, 2019 - Marcelo Gleiser, the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth, has been awarded the 2019 Templeton Prize.

The award, among the world's richest annual prizes for an individual, honors Gleiser for blending hard science and deep spirituality in his work as a researcher, professor and public intellectual.

Gleiser is the 49th recipient of the award, joining a list that also includes Mother Teresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama. This year's prize is valued at 1.1 million British pounds (about $1.4 million).

The award was announced online today by the John Templeton Foundation.

Gleiser, a theoretical physicist, specializes in cosmology, high-energy physics, complexity theory, and astrobiology. He has also authored books on topics ranging from the origin of the universe to how science engages with spirituality.

"I am deeply honored and humbled to receive this prize," said Gleiser. "To see my work of so many years celebrated at this level is profoundly gratifying and inspiring. This prize is not the end, but a new beginning. I will work harder than ever to spread my message of global unity and planetary awareness to a wider audience, as we prepare to face this century's daunting social, technological, and environmental challenges."

The Templeton Prize is presented to honor "a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works," according to the foundation.

Gleiser joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth in 1991. He is known at Dartmouth for blending his research and teaching with deep thinking on the nature of spirituality.

"Professor Gleiser embodies the values that inspired my grandfather to establish the Templeton Prize and to create the John Templeton Foundation," said Heather Templeton Dill, the foundation's president. "Two values which were especially important for him, and the focus of various foundation grants, are the pursuit of joy in all aspects of life, and the profound human experience of awe."

Gleiser studies the interface between what he calls the "physics of the very large" and "the physics of the very small" to reconstruct the beginnings of the universe. He also researches the origin of life on Earth and the possibility of life beyond the planet.

Gleiser's early-career research includes a paper on the application of superstring theory to Big Bang cosmology, which was one of the first studies in this field. In 1994, Gleiser co-discovered oscillons--small, long-lived energy "lumps" made of sub-atomic particles--opening up a new avenue of research and inspiring research groups around the world. He is also recognized for his work on phase transitions in cosmology and the origin of matter.

Gleiser's most recent research uses information theory to study the life and death of stars and other physical objects. In addition to his research, Gleiser teaches an undergraduate physics course and mentors graduate and post-doctoral candidates at Dartmouth.

"This is an extraordinary first for Dartmouth, and we could not be prouder of Marcelo, whose work goes to the heart of humanity's place in the cosmos and explores the biggest questions about our existence," said Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon. "This award acknowledges his place among the scientists, theologians, writers, and others who have transformed the way we view the world."

The Templeton Prize was established in 1972 by the late global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton to promote discoveries relating to the "deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind" on "subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and emergence to creativity, forgiveness, and free will."

Gleiser, a native of Brazil, is the first Latin American to win the award. He is also the first scientist to be presented the Templeton Prize since theoretical astrophysicist Martin Rees in 2011. Gleiser joins a list of eminent scientists that have been honored, including Freeman Dyson, who was a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth in 1994.

"The prize celebrates the work of many wonderful individuals, including some of the great physicists and scientists of our time whose research explored questions of meaning and value beyond the traditional confines of their disciplines. To think that I'd one day be included in this distinguished group, being an immigrant from Brazil, is unbelievable," said Gleiser.

Gleiser received his undergraduate degree from Brazil's Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He received his master's degree from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and his PhD from King's College in London. He is a Fellow and past General Councilor of the American Physical Society as well as a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Faculty Fellows Award.

At Dartmouth, Gleiser directs the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement (ICE), which was founded through a separate grant from the Templeton Foundation. ICE supports a fellows program, public dialogues, and online courses as part of the DartmouthX series of massive open online courses featured on EdX.

"I thank Dartmouth from the bottom of my heart, my home for the past 27 years, for allowing me to pursue my ideas both in physics and in science and spirituality. It serves to prove that passion and dedication can indeed open many doors in life, even those that you never planned to open," Gleiser said.

Gleiser works to advance the public understanding of science. He has published five books in the United States and numerous others in his native Brazil. Gleiser also co-founded the long-running 13.7: Cosmos and Culture blog for National Public Radio with fellow astrophysicist Adam Frank. The blog now appears as 13.8 at ORBITER Magazine. His online course "Question Reality!" has reached thousands of students from more than 120 countries, and was the first bilingual offering from EdX.

The award will be presented at a ceremony in New York City on Wednesday, May 29.

###

Follow the Templeton Prize on Twitter: @TempletonPrize and #TempletonPrize2019

Follow Marcelo Gleiser on Twitter: @MGleiser

Follow Dartmouth College on Twitter: @Dartmouth

About Dartmouth

Founded in 1769, Dartmouth is a member of the Ivy League and offers the world's premier liberal arts education, combining its deep commitment to outstanding undergraduate and graduate teaching with distinguished research and scholarship in the arts and sciences and its leading professional schools: the Geisel School of Medicine, the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, Thayer School of Engineering, and Tuck School of Business.

About the Templeton Prize

The Templeton Prize each year honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works. Established in 1972 by the late global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, the Prize is a cornerstone of the John Templeton Foundation's international efforts to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind. The Foundation supports research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and emergence to creativity, forgiveness, and free will. The monetary value of the Prize is set always to exceed the Nobel Prizes to underscore Templeton's belief that benefits from discoveries that illuminate spiritual questions can be quantifiably more vast than those from other worthy human endeavors. Everyone is a potential nominator for the Templeton Prize.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Nearly 200 valuable photos and documents on the friendly visit made by the Vietnamese parliamentarians to France from April 16 to May 23, 1946, which are kept at the National Archives Centre No. 2, are on display at the exhibition.

The exhibits are arranged in chronological order of the visit, starting from the Vietnamese NA delegations departure for Paris to their activities during the visit.

Made at the invitation of the French Republics National Assembly, the trip was the first overseas diplomatic activity of the first legislature of the then Democratic Republic of Vietnam (now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam).

Led by then deputy head of the NA Standing Committee Pham Van Dong, the visit illustrated the strong will and aspiration for peace of the nation, Party and Government.

The exhibition, co-organised by the Vietnam State Archives and Records Department under the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Information Department under the NA Office, will run until March 24 on Nguyen Van Binh street, Ben Nghe ward, district 1.

Selected photos on display at the exhibition:
Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Yong-byoung

By Jhoo Dong-chan



Major financial group heads are set to conduct investor relations (IR) meetings abroad next month to provide investors with an accurate account of their company affairs and attract further investment to boost their share sluggish prices on the Seoul bourse.



According to KB Financial Group, the second largest by net profit, Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo will visit Hong Kong to head the company's first overseas IR meeting next month.



Thanks to it being the densest financial cluster in Asia, Hong Kong has been the most popular destination for company CEOs who want to attract global institutional investors.





KB Financial Group Chairman Yoon Jong-kyoo

Reflecting the city's importance, Yoon has visited Hong Kong every year.



After Hong Kong, the chairman is expected to visit Australia, which has one of the most advanced pension-fund countries in the world, next month.



"Chairman Yoon is scheduled to visit Hong Kong and Australia next month, but the decision has yet to be fully confirmed. First things first. We have a general shareholders' meeting at the end of this month," said a KB Financial Group official.



"If the meeting is concluded without any radical decisions, he will go on the tour as planned."





Woori Financial Group Chairman Sohn Tae-seung

Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Cho Young-Byoung, who was the most active financial group head last year visiting Dubai, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia, is likely to visit North America soon to conduct IR meetings. He is also reviewing a plan to visit Europe to meet global investors.



Woori Financial Group Chairman Sohn Tae-seung, who visited the U.K. and Sweden last year, is expected to visit Europe once again to meet major investors there. North America is also one of his possible tour destinations.



Hana Financial Group Chairman Kim Jung-tai is also likely to carry out IR meetings abroad after the group's general shareholders' meeting this month.



Market observers say weak share prices are the reason behind group chairmen's IR tour, citing these are one of the most important criteria in evaluating their performance as CEO.



Hana Financial Group Chairman Kim Jung-tai
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., March 15. EPA



Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that the United States and North Korea are trying to get the "sequencing" right in talks to end the regime's nuclear weapons program and open a brighter future for the country.



Pompeo made the remark in an interview with KCMO, a radio station based in Mission, Kansas, his home state, in the wake of North Korea's threat to abandon the talks.



Pompeo has rarely spoken of "sequencing," although he appeared to refer to the Trump administration's insistence that North Korea give up its nuclear arsenal upfront.



The North has called for a step-by-step dismantlement of its nuclear program in exchange for U.S. concessions, including sanctions relief.



"I can't say much about the details of the negotiation as those are important private conversations," the top U.S. diplomat said, when asked about the failure to produce an agreement at last month's summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. "But it's clearly a range of issues around timing and sequencing and how it is we achieve this."



He said Trump's commitment to a brighter future for the North Korean people is "very, very real."





Moon may send special envoy to North Korea next month US asked to reconsider 'all-or-nothing' approach S. Korea preparing for inter-Korean projects 'within framework of sanctions' "But it must follow  it has to follow the verified denuclearization of North Korea," he said. "And getting that sequencing right and getting it laid out in a way that each of the parties can agree to and take down the tension level along the North and South Korean border, it matters to the people of Japan and South Korea, our important partners, and it matters to the whole world."



Trump and Kim met in Hanoi, Vietnam, Feb. 27 and 28 to flesh out an agreement they reached at their first summit in Singapore in June.



The agreement committed the North to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S.



The second summit ended with no deal due to disagreements over the extent of North Korea's denuclearization and U.S. sanctions relief.



In a press conference in Pyongyang last week, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui said the regime is reviewing whether to continue the talks and maintain its self-imposed moratorium on missile and nuclear tests.



"We believe we're still moving forward. It's certainly difficult  we knew it would be," Pompeo said in an interview with Kansas radio station B98 FM.



"We made a little bit more progress in Hanoi, now three weeks back, when President Trump traveled there to meet with Chairman Kim. We'll re-engage with him," he said.



In an interview with Kansas radio station KQAM, he admitted, "we still haven't made the progress we need to make on denuclearization."




Chef Oh Seong-geun prepares Mongolian barbecue at the now-closed Navy Club on Yongsan Garrison. / Courtesy of Yongsan Legacy





By Kyung Lee



As chef at the now-defunct Navy Club in the U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Yongsan, Oh Seong-geun held dear his flavor memories from each overseas locale he visited, and applied them in tandem with Korean and American cuisines suitable for U.S. military personnel, their families and other guests.



Buried deep in concocting sauces that originated from different cultures all under the roof of Building 1657  with methods emphasizing fusion but with each original flavor still preserved  Oh, along with other Korean chefs was confident he could satisfy the taste buds of U.S. Navy sailors with a mixture of ingredients harvested from both land and sea.



A sous-chef by trade, Oh is also proud to say he lives and breathes Jeolla-type cuisine learned through apprenticeship with his maternal family  Oh said he poured his intuition and effort into making any guest feel the Navy Club as a home away from home when he was preparing dishes.



Be it a Philly cheesesteak with onions and kimchi, Vietnamese pho noodles with a broth that deserved equal or more credit than the ones boiling in Vietnam, Oh expended his talents and creativity to the fullest in his nearly 20 years manning the Navy Club kitchen until its closure in 2015. His salad pizza in particular drew inspiration among prospective Korean restaurateurs who emulated nearly every topping he had used.

"Scouts from other clubs were looking to recruit me," he said. "Serving up a kind of fusion of exceptional flavors, you couldn't have this kind of food at the Dragon Hill Lodge or anywhere else on base."



Introducing dishes that were to die for among all ranks of U.S. service members stationed in Yongsan Garrison as well as from the Korean Augmentation to the United States Army (KATUSA), Oh said that personnel from other U.S. military bases like Camp Carroll and Casey flocked to the Navy Club to pick at one of the menu's signature dishes, Mongolian barbecue, which consisted of an assortment of spicy meats, calamari and vegetables, mixed in 10 different sauces he had made all from scratch.



"Including Korean chili paste and soy sauce," he added.



With word-of-mouth raves pouring in, as well as from official broadcast channels of the American Forces Korean Network (AFKN), the customizable stir-fried dish  with ingredients sauteed on a round and rotating cast-iron griddle  became the weekend occasion that trumped expectations compared to other specials offered at Hartell House, Dragon Hill Lodge and other kitchens run on base.



Oh said the Mongolian barbecue "saved the restaurant's image as a joint that had always wanted to preserve traditional flavors for sailors who craved meats other than seafood."



By both adapting and applying his strengths  diverse sauce-making into a menu actively collaborated on with his kitchen supervisors  Oh added that his distinguished guests of navy sailors, officers, and high-ranking personnel would sometimes find the time to thank him and his colleagues for making the Navy Club a "legend."



"One group left a $1,000 tip after feasting on Korean pig skin; you have no idea how good that felt to us," he said. "If an officer requested our audience for a handshake and compliment, it meant they haven't tasted anything like this before."



Following the Navy Club closing its doors for good, Oh immediately took his talents to the DFAC-Talon Cafe located at USAG Humphreys in Pyeongtaek.



However, he said he had to readjust his methods to simpler cooking, combined with a management system that restricts a philosophy that had been successful only in Yongsan.



"You can also get Mongolian barbecue in Pyeongtaek, but it's just not the same, it lacks flavor," he said. "They don't pay enough attention to it, but if I had done it, everything changes."



Oh Seong-geun first entered Yongsan Garrison as a gate security guard while operating his own restaurants in Sinchon and Hongdae from 1991 to 1999. In 1997, he applied for a full-time position as chef at the Navy Club, but was assigned to the role of dishwasher for three years prior to working in the kitchen. Since 2015, Oh has worked at the DFAC-Talon Cafe located in Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek. Apart from his work on base, Oh makes weekend trips to Seoul to appear at restaurants as a guest sous-chef.






By Jon Dunbar







is coming to

near Hongik University.







"We're stoked to be able to meet new faces and have a blast playing the music that got us there in the first place," guitarist/vocalist Nathan Stocker said in an email interview with The Korea Times. They also said they are, "Looking forward to eating amazing food, and seeing the city."







Seoul is the second stop on a 34-city leg of their worldwide tour, which starts in Thailand before returning to North America for the remaining shows in the U.S. and Canada. They have already toured Europe and Australia.







The band is signed to Grand Jury Records in the U.S. and Transgressive Records in the U.K. They has performed at SXSW, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Summerfest, and Reading and Leeds Festivals, as well as appearing on "Conan." NPR Music named the band one of its favorite new artists of 2017. And they have a following over here too.







"We've received a lot of love from Korean fans over the years and it seemed like the right time to finally pay a visit," Stocker said. "We're grateful for the support and excited to be in Seoul for the very first time."









The tour is in support of their

released last September. "With the release of our new record, we wanted to play shows in places we hadn't been able to go to yet," Stocker explained.







The album gets its name from the aunt of vocalist/guitarist Jake Luppen.







"Jake's aunt has a cabin in Wisconsin and we've written a lot of our music there over the years, and recorded a healthy portion of this latest record as well. Her name is Bambi and we couldn't really get away from that title or come up with anything that fit as well as it did at the time."















The album features their brand of dreamy indie rock delivered with delicate guitar lines, drum machines and synth, with emotionally delivered lyrics that reveal a sense of vulnerability. Lyrical content touches on feelings of anxiety, mental health and trying to embolden oneself to keep going. They say their music is made as an antidote to these troubling times.







"Lyrically, compositionally, and as performers, we never want to provide false advertising," Stocker said. "We wear our hearts on our sleeves, because we value the human experience as an honest one. True blue genuine interaction."







As for the name Hippo Campus, the band explains it comes from a high school psychology lesson.







"Serving as a primary source for long-term memory, it seemed like a clever way to make people recognize that if they remembered our band name they would be utilizing the band name," Stocker said. "We were desperate for finding meaning in everything."









Tickets cost 55,000 won in advance or 66,000 won at the door. The show starts at 6 p.m. and the opening band is

.


Jimmy Carr cancels Asia tour





U.K. comedian Jimmy Carr, set to perform in Seoul March 31, has canceled his Asia tour. Event co-organizer, A Comic Soul, cited delays in visa issuances for some countries. Due to his busy schedule, the tour could not be rescheduled. Refunds are available at the point of purchase.





"Jimmy is very disappointed in not being able to come to Seoul but hopes he will be able to return with his brand new show in the future as part of his next world tour," a representative of A Comic Soul said.





Meanwhile, U.S. comedian Jim Gaffigan's Seoul April 2 appearance still seems to be set.











SAKorNet hosts braai in HBC





"The Workshop" in Seoul's Haebangchon (HBC) hosts a braai this Saturday. A braai is a South African style barbecue. The event organizer, the South Africans in Korea Network (SAKorNet), said the event is a warm-up to Freedom Day on April 27 and the general election on May 8.





SAKorNet is a volunteer organization that connects South Africans in Korea. It works closely with the South African Embassy to Korea but has no official association with the day-to-day duties of the embassy.





Join fb.com/groups/SAKORNET or visit

for more information.


Former Vice Justice Minister Kim Hak-ui / Korea Times file



President Moon Jae-in's special ordering of a thorough reinvestigation this week has cast a fresh spotlight on a 2013 sex scandal possibly involving influential figures from government, politics and business circles.



The scandal is centered on former Vice Justice Minister Kim Hak-ui, who retired from public service in March 2013 amid allegations that he attended a sex party hosted by local contractor Yoon Jung-cheon at his villa in Wonju, 120 km east of Seoul.



The scandal became known to the public after a video clip that was leaked during an adultery probe against Yoon showed a drunken orgy at the remote Wonju villa in which a group of men, including one believed to be Kim, were having a sex party with about 30 women.



Kim was forced to resign only six days after he was appointed to the No. 2 post at the Ministry of Justice, as police and prosecutors launched their investigations into the scandal.



Yoon was suspected of seeking business favors by providing officials and other influential figures sex services, and investigators also suspected illegal substances may have been used by those who frequented the estate.



Yoon probably used the sexual favors as "leverage" to advance his business and even blackmail those involved so he would not be charged by authorities for breaking the law. Yoon was previously implicated in criminal frauds, unauthorized recording of sexual acts and possible possession of illegal substances.






A Bugatti Veyron, the model once owned by an imprisoned stock analyst whose parents were recently murdered. From Bugatti.com



By Oh Young-jin



The 500 million won or $442,000 stolen during the murder of the parents of imprisoned infamous stock dealer Lee Hee-jin was part of 1.5 billion won that Lee's younger brother received for the sale of a Bugatti Veyron that belonged to Lee's fleet of supercars, reports said Tuesday.



The French luxury car comes in three models ranging in price from $1.7 million to $3 million.



Police also were looking for two more accomplices  Koreans  as well as three Chinese.





The primary suspect in the murders is taken in for questioning, Monday. Korea Times



The younger brother Hee-mun handed over the sum in cash and checks to his parents, who were ambushed by the main suspect, identified as Kim, and the three accomplices.



The bag containing the money  checks, each worth 1 million won, and bundles of banknotes of 50,000 won  were taken before the parents were killed.



Kim was with three Chinese accomplices, recruited for security jobs via the internet. The Chinese all left immediately for Qiangdao, China. Police are working with Interpol and plan to ask China to have them extradited.











The apartment building where the murders took place. Korea Times
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a press conference at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., Friday. / Xinhua-Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



The United States has reaffirmed its determination to continue holding dialogue with North Korea under the precondition that the regime moves first with steps for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday (local time).



The ranking U.S. diplomat also said that President Donald Trump's promise of a brighter future for the North was "very, very real," but this can be realized only after the regime takes more verifiable measures for complete denuclearization.



"It has to follow the verified denuclearization of North Korea," Pompeo said in a local media interview.



"And getting that sequencing right and getting it laid out in a way that each of the parties can agree to and take down the tension level along the North and South Korean border, it matters to the people of Japan and South Korea, our important partners, and it matters to the whole world."



The remark came weeks after the breakdown of the second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi last month.






This infographic shows the result of a recent survey of 1,000 South Koreans where 58.2 percent of the respondents said they are optimistic about the prospects for the denuclearization talks between the U.S. and North Korea. Courtesy of the National Unification Advisory Council



By Jung Da-min



More than half of South Koreans are optimistic about the prospects for the denuclearization talks between the U.S. and North Korea, according to a survey released Tuesday.



In the survey of 1,000 adults conducted by the National Unification Advisory Council from March 15 to 16, 58.1 percent of the respondents said they expect the negotiations between the two sides to resume.



Among them, 51.2 percent said they were "somewhat positive" and the remaining 6.9 percent "very positive."








Lee Seung-chan





The economic success of South Korea has become synonymous to to a miracle, or more specifically, the "Miracle of the Han River". Devastated by both colonial rule and the Korean War, South Korea in the 1950s resembled a dystopian nightmare - cities completely ravaged and families broken apart.



People greeted each other not with a "How are you," but with "Have you eaten today?" Recovery seemed impossible; the damage seemed permanent.



And yet, South Korea now proudly stands as the 11th largest economy by nominal GDP between the western giants of Canada and Russia. Seoul alone has the fourth highest GDP of any city in the world, only topped by New York, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. The towering glass skyscrapers to the bustling public transportation system all provide ample evidence of South Korea's economic prosperity.



The country has become the role model for developing countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia as well as well-established countries like Taiwan for its synergistic institutions and policies. Even president Obama praised, albeit misguidedly, the South Korean education system saying that "South Koreans consistently rank at the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment survey results in reading, mathematics and science."



However, in recent years, the South Korean economy has hit a dead end. Despite the seeming revival from the 2008 economic crisis, the facile policies implemented by the previous administrations proved to be only temporary solutions at best. Now, South Korea is facing numerous challenges: balancing heavy reliance on exports with the budding domestic sectors, mitigating the effects of increased economic inequality, and versatilizing the inflexible labor markets.



Now, the question arises: is Korea going into its own "lost decade" of economic stagnation? The Japanese economic market, which doubled its size between the years of 1985 and 1987, collapsed due to its unstable window guidance policies. The too-big-to-fail companies survived only on bailout funds, breathing through a hole in their necks.



The sluggish South Korean economy coupled with the lack of growth drivers is hauntingly similar to Japan's economy in the 1990s. The shrinking population, high unemployment rate, and the adoption of trickle down economics are all red flags for the end of the Miracle of the Han River and the beginning of the Japanization of our financial system.



Whether the current economic recession is a temporary one or a permanent one, it is clear that we need to take drastic measures. We have seen a record high unemployment rate at the start of this year. It would be advisable to look at the Japanese economic model to learn from their mistakes.





Lee Seung-chan (s2lee2021@chadwickschool.org) is a sophomore at Chadwick International School.


* Tightening New Zealand's gun laws is at the top of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's agenda as she meets with her cabinet on March 18 for the first time since the mass shooting in Christchurch that killed dozens of Muslim worshippers.

* Australian police have searched two homes in towns on the New South Wales (NSW) mid-north coast linked to the investigation into Friday (March 16)'s mass shootings at mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch.

* French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to take "strong decisions" to prevent weekly "Yellow Vest" protests from turning violent after rioters ran amok across Paris on March 16.

* The idea of British people taking part in the European Elections in May hardly bears thinking about, Prime Minister Theresa May said on March 17 in her latest bid to win support for her Brexit deal. MPs are set to return to Westminster on March 18 to learn whether they will have the chance on March 19 or March 20 to vote for the third time on May's deal.

* Both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States did not want to go back to the past confrontation and tension, Republic of Korea (RoK)'s presidential Blue House said on March 17.

* Britain's Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall Camilla kicked off their Caribbean tour on March 17 during which they will become the first British royals to visit Cuba. The royal couple will visit 10 Caribbean islands, including Saint Lucia, Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Grenada.

* Cyclone Idai has killed at least 64 people in eastern Zimbabwe and destroyed homes, bridges and roads, making rescue efforts difficult, a government minister said on March 17.

* Algeria's newly-appointed prime minister has started talks to form a new government, state media reported on March 17, in a move designed to placate protesters demanding President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika and his inner circle step down.

* Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said on March 17 that the Syrian constitution is a sovereign Syrian matter decided by the Syrian people without foreign interference, according to the state news agency SANA.

* Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Mohammad Baqeri arrived in Syria on March 17 to hold counter-terror talks with Syrian and Iraqi military officials, local reports said.

* Libya's eastern-based army said it freed hostages in southern Libya while killing and capturing a number of militants on March 17.

* Malaysian authorities have completed the clean-up efforts in the 1.5 km stretch of a river which had been polluted with hazardous chemicals, officials said on March 17.

* Ethiopia said on March 17 the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that killed 157 people had "clear similarities" with October's Lion Air crash, revealed by initial analysis of the black boxes recovered from the wreckage of the March 10 disaster.


By James M. Dorsey



Last week's attack on two mosques in New Zealand reflects a paradigm shift: the erosion of liberal values and the rise of civilizationalism at the expense of the nation state.



So do broader phenomena like widespread Islamophobia with the crackdown on Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang as its extreme, and growing ant-Semitism. These phenomena are fueled by increasing intolerance and racism enabled by the far right and world leaders as well as ultra-conservatives and jihadists.



These world leaders and far right ideologues couch their policies and views in terms of defending a civilization rather than exclusively a nation state defined by its citizenry and borders.



As a result, men like China's Xi Jingping, India's Narendra Modi, Hungary's Victor Orban and U.S. President Donald Trump as well as ideologues such as Steve Bannon, Trump's former strategy adviser, shape an environment that legitimizes violence against the other.



By further enabling abuse of human, minority and refugee rights, they facilitate the erosion of the norms of debate and mainstream hate speech.



Blunt and crude language employed by leaders, politicians, some media and some people of the cloth helps shape an environment in which concepts of civility and mutual respect are lost.



Consequently, the likes of Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the attacks on the Christchurch mosque in which 49 people died, or Andreas Breivik, the Norwegian far-right militant who in 2011 killed 78 people in attacks on government buildings and a youth summer camp, are not simply products of prejudice.



Prejudice, often only latent, is a fact of life. It's inculcated in whatever culture as well as education in schools and homes irrespective of political, religious, liberal, conservative and societal environment.



Men like Tarrant and Breivik emerge when prejudice is weaponized by a political and/or social environment that legitimizes it. They are emboldened when prejudice fuses with politically and/or religiously manufactured fear, the undermining of principles of relativity, increased currency of absolutism, and the hollowing out of pluralism.



Their world is powered by the progressive abandonment of the notion of a world that is populated by a multitude of equally valid faiths, worldviews and belief systems.



The rise of civilizationalism allows men like Tarrant and Breivik, white Christian supremacists, to justify their acts of violence in civilizational terms. They believe their civilization is under attack as a result of pluralism, diversity and migration.



The same is true for jihadists who aim to brutally establish their vision of Islamic rule at the expense not only of non-Muslim minorities but also Muslims they deem no different than infidels.



Civilizationalism provides the justification for men like Hungary's Orban to adopt militant anti-migration policies and launch attacks laced with anti-Semitism on liberals like financier and philanthropist George Soros.



It also fuels China's crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, an attempt to Sinicize Islam and the most frontal assault on the Islamic faith in recent memory.



Similarly, civilizationalism validates Modi's notions of India as a Hindu civilizational state and Trump's anti-Muslim and anti-migrant policies and his continued vacillation between lending racism and white supremacism legitimacy and condemning far-right exclusivism.



Civilizationalism poses a threat not only to the world we live in today but to the outcome of the geopolitical struggle of what will be the new world order. The threat goes beyond the battle for spheres of influence or competition of political systems.



Civilizationalism creates the glue for like-minded thinking, if not a tacit understanding, between men like Xi, Orban, Modi and Trump, on the values that should undergird a new world order.



These men couch their policies as much in civilizationalism as in terms of defense of national interest and security.



Their embrace of civilizationalism benefits from the fact that 21st century autocracy and authoritarianism vests survival not only in repression of dissent and denial of freedom of expression but also maintaining at least some of the trappings of pluralism.



Those trappings can include representational bodies with no or severely limited powers, toothless opposition groups, government-controlled nongovernmental organizations, and some degree of accountability.



The rise of civilizationalism is further facilitated by a failure to realize that the crisis of democracy and the revival of authoritarianism did not emerge recently but dates back to the first half of 1990s.



Political scientists Anna Luhrmann and Staffan I. Lindberg concluded in a just-published study that some 75 countries have embraced elements of autocracy since the mid-1990s. Key countries among them have also adopted aspects of civilizationalism.



The scholars, nonetheless, struck an optimistic tone. "While this is a cause for concern, the historical perspectiveshows that panic is not warranted: the current declines are relatively mild and the global share of democratic countries remains close to its all-time high," they said.



Last week's attack in Christchurch is one of multiple civilizational writings on the wall.



So are the killings committed by Breivik; multiple jihadist attacks, the recasting of political strife in Syria and Bahrain in sectarian terms; the increasing precarity of minorities whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish; rising Buddhist nationalism, and the lack of humanitarianism and compassion toward refugees fleeing war and persecution.



These alarm bells coupled with the tacit civilizationalism-based understanding between some of the world's most powerful men brushes aside the lessons of genocide in recent decades.



Ignoring the lessons of Nazi Germany, Hutu Rwanda, the Serbian siege of Srebrenica or the Islamic State's Yazidis poses the foremost threat to a world that is based on principles of humanitarianism, compassion, live-and-let-live, and human and minority rights.



Framing the challenge, Financial Times columnist Gideon Rahman noted that Trump's "predecessors confidently proclaimed that American values were 'universal' and were destined to triumph across the world. And it was the global power of Western ideas that has made the nation-state the international norm for political organization. The rise of Asian powers such as China and India may create new models: step forward, the 'civilization state.'"



Rahman argues that a civilizational state rejects human rights, propagates exclusivism and institutions that are rooted in a unique culture rather than principles of equality and universalism, and distrusts minorities and migrants because they are not part of a core civilization.



In short, a breeding ground for strife and conflict that can only be kept in check by increasingly harsh repression and/or attempts at mass re-education and homogenization of the other  ultimately a recipe for instability rather than stability and equitable progress.





Dr. James M. Dorsey (jmdorsey@questfze.com) is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Wurzburg's Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.










By Abdelkader Zerougui





Brenton Tarrant was described by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison as an "extremist, right-wing, violent terrorist," who went on a killing spree in Christchurch, New Zealand, that took the lives of 50 Muslim worshipers as young as three, with dozens more inured, some in critical condition.



This terrorist act needs to be examined in the realm of the growing danger of white supremacist ideology, so policymakers need to address it before fear will tear apart modern nation-states.



Tarrant posted his so-called manifesto, the "Great Replacement," to explain his motivation, beliefs and why he decided to commit these atrocities. The title of his manifesto is taken from a book written by French writer Renaud Camus in 2011, who popularized the myth that European populations are being supplanted by immigrants.



What is worth examining is how Tarrant refers to people who shaped his thinking and influenced him, and whom he considers as heroes. President Donald Trump is cited as being "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose."



He cites Candace Owens, an American conservative commentator known for her pro-Trump stance and her criticism of the Democratic Party for being "a plantation," and sees Trump as a "savior" of Western civilization.



Tarrant states that her views "pushed him further into the belief of violence over meekness." His idols are known racists and terrorists such as Oswald Mosley, who in 1932 established the British Union of Fascists and later the Union Movement in England, after his visit to Mussolini.



Another of his heroes is Anders Breivik, a Norwegian far-right terrorist who killed 77 people in a 2011 attack. Tarrant equipped himself with camera, and the streams were broadcasted online.



His distorted views about the world go against the Turks, and he states "We are coming for Constantinople and we will destroy every mosque and minaret in the city. The Hagia Sophia will be free from the minarets, and Constantinople will be rightfully Christian."



Tarrant is not a psycho or a person with mental illness. He is a deliberate right-wing supremacist who believed the only problem with this world is "Muslims" who need to be purged from the planet.



You don't need an expert in forensics and psychology to join the dots. "The mule" is often the executioner, a marginalized man with no prospects as he stated. "I had little interest in education during my schooling, barely achieving a passing grade." He stated that his job is "Kebab removalist."



The expression is a memetic euphemism for ethnic cleansing directed against Bosnian Turks specifically (kebab is a regional food) and adherents of Islam generally.



It will be very simplistic to state that this is a deranged person. The mass-murderer who planned for this terrorist act was basically executing the ideas of people who inspired him.



The growing white supremacist ideology, if left unchecked, will devour first Muslim immigrants because they are a weak and easy target. Later, it will escalate to other groups that are for some reason "not white."



This ideology of hate does not stop  it needs to be constantly fueled to spread and grow. When it devours the so-called "non-whites," then it will turn to a pure Nazi propaganda that will seek to test every white DNA, to see how much "white" they are. Like "hell" white supremacists will end up consuming themselves after destroying the world around them.



The world is in disarray. White supremacists are becoming larger and deadlier. Their agenda is global. Allowing and tolerating these ideologies is irresponsible.



This is even more disturbing when it comes from political leaders, such as the comments made by Fraser Anning, an Australian senator, who stated that "The real cause of bloodshed in New Zealandis the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place."





Abdelkader Zerougui (zerouguiabdelkader@yahoo.com) is an adjunct professor at American University.




By Robert Skidelsky





LONDON  The United Kingdom's protracted attempt to leave the European Union has upended the two illusions by which the world has lived since the end of the Cold War: national sovereignty and economic integration, the twin end points of history, according to Francis Fukuyama's celebrated 1989 essay.



Juridically, the world consists of 191 sovereign states, which freely enter into treaties, agreements, and associations to order their relations with one another. The U.K. is one of them. Its failure to make a meaningful exit from the EU would be the first time in modern history that a major sovereign state was forced to remain in a voluntary union because, while legally free to leave, doing so would be too costly.



Coercion must be understood as a continuum of pressure, ranging from the use of force at one end to mild economic and cultural sanctions at the other, with a country's sovereignty measured by its vulnerability to the various forms of compulsion to which it can be subjected.



On this criterion, very few of the world's 191 states are truly sovereign, in the sense that only military force can compel them to change their policies and systems of government: certainly the United States, China, and Russia, and possibly Japan and India. Britain has been painfully discovering the limits of its own sovereignty.



The outcome of the simple binary choice given to U.K. voters in the June 2016 Brexit referendum has proved almost impossible to implement. The main obstacle is not the complications of negotiating new treaties, but rather the judgment by those in charge of Britain's political life that the costs of an emphatic withdrawal are too great.



All of Prime Minister Theresa May's efforts for the past 30-odd months have been devoted to respecting the popular vote to leave in name but not in fact. This strategy is enabled by the fact that it has never been completely clear what Britain was leaving. The EU and its overlapping subordinate economic regimes resemble a jellyfish more than a political and economic union.



For Britain's political class, the test of national sovereignty is not the ability to leave the EU. It is the ability to leave with as little disruption as possible to business as usual, that is, the U.K.'s economic integration with EU countries. But then what about those who voted for an emphatic disruption of Britain's ties with the EU?



This brings me to the second illusion: the blind belief in the supreme virtue of economic integration across borders, with its corollary that national frontiers are obstacles to the more perfect integration of markets. From this point of view, the nation-state's only function is to ensure that national policy is market conforming, a view which regards countries simply as branches of government.



But as Harvard economist Dani Rodrik has powerfully pointed out, this view of nation-states as mere vehicles for global integration ignores the fact that modern governments are in general accountable to their own people for their decisions. It may be that economic integration benefits everyone in the long run; but in the short run, it is highly disruptive economically and culturally. That is why a conflict between economic integration and democratic politics has arisen.



The architects of the EU have seen its member nation-states mainly as juridical instruments for establishing the four freedoms of the single market: free movement of goods, capital, services, and labor. But governments in the EU are accountable to their voters. They cannot ignore the costs of economic integration in the cavalier way their 19th-century predecessors, possessed of small electorates and large empires, were able to do.



All thoughtful Europeanists have long been aware of the problem of the EU's democratic deficit, but very little has been done about it. Unlike economies, politics have not migrated significantly beyond national borders. Quite logically, therefore, convinced Europeanists like the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis have called for a United States of Europe. Only a genuine parliament holding an elected president to account can render the single market democratically legitimate.



But a United States of Europe is beyond practical politics. One cannot make a democracy legitimate just by writing a new constitution. Voters have to internalize a sense of possession over their politics, and this sentiment of ownership and obligation grows organically, not prescriptively.



So, despite all the extra information we now have about the costs and complications of leaving, the debate over Brexit has not really advanced from the summer of 2016. The British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, a Leaver, wrote in the Daily Telegraph on June 13, 2016, of the U.K.'s "elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense."



Rodrik agreed that "the EU rules needed to underpin a single European market have extended significantly beyond [the reach of] what can be supported by democratic legitimacy," but remained optimistic that a single European polity might evolve to underpin the single market.



The question is whether the U.K. can any longer choose meaningful self-rule. It seems to be stuck in a web from which there is no escape. If this predicament is ever felt more widely across the EU voting public, it will spell the end of European liberal democracy. And the return of the Demons  the further rise of illiberal democracy, if not worse  cannot be far off.





Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University. Copyright belongs to Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).




By Sandip Kumar Mishra





On March 11, U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun told in a conference at the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace that the U.S. is "not going to do (North Korea's) denuclearization incrementally."



He emphasized a "total solution" of North Korea's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons (actually the issue of chemical and biological weapons have not been on the table, as per all the reports about the current process of talks between the U.S. and North Korea) in exchange for ending all the sanctions against North Korea.



North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui responded March 15 that "North Korea has no intention to yield to the U.S. demands in any types for concession." She further said "North Korea would soon decide whether it should continue talking with the U.S. or maintain a self-moratorium on its nuclear and missile tests."



Stephen Biegun made an appeal to the UNSC members to be united in pressurizing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.



These developments after the Hanoi summit appear to be obvious drift and derailment of the U.S.-North Korea engagement on the North's denuclearization issue. It's still too early to say how things are going to move forward in the future.



But it's important to underline the point that the current deadlock is basically the product of the U.S. mistaken premise that the policy of "maximum pressure" had decisively crippled the Kim Jong-un regime and North Korea has come to the negotiating table because of its desperation and it would not be able to refuse any demands of the U.S.



Actually, the argument for maximum pressure was persuasively put forth to refute the assessment that Kim Jong-un agreed to denuclearization talks because of primarily two reasons. One, North Korea in 2016 and 2017 made dramatic and exponential gains in its nuclear and missile capabilities (in the years maximum pressure was being operationalized) and crossed the threshold level.



After relatively being equipped with nuclear capability and long-range missiles, Kim Jong-un intended to deal with North Korea's economic and diplomatic isolations (the second leg of its byongjin policy). Thus, rather than a response to maximum pressure, North Korea was working according to its own strategic calculus.



Two, North Korea also changed its course in early 2018 because the South Korean administration under President Moon Jae-in was operationalizing its engagement policy visa-a-vis North Korea and Kim Jong-un sensed some trust in the antecedent of Moon's policy and offers. But the argument for maximum pressure does recognize significance of both factors and considers how to change North Korea's behavior.



Actually, there are a few basic flaws in the logic of the maximum pressure policy which must be understood carefully. First, the policy assumes it's possible to have perfect or complete water-tight isolation of North Korea. It's simply a wrong assumption. In the complex inter-state relations of modern times, it's not possible to fully isolate a country.



There would be a few countries that would overtly or covertly provide some holes or breathing space to any such state in accordance to their subjective national interests. It's possible to question and condemn such "traitors" but the fact is that all the holes could not be blocked.



Second, the proponents of maximum pressure make a modified argument that other policy options would also have desired results in changing North Korean behavior. In this modified argument the assumption is that even if the isolation is imperfect, economic and other hardships of Pyongyang would cripple North Korea substantially and force a behavioral change in it. The problem with this argument is that it comes out of a lack of understanding of North Korea.



North Korea is already an isolated country. Its overall external trade is less than $10 billion and roughly 85 percent of it is with China alone. Sanctions and isolation work on a country that is connected to the outside world and North Korea does not appear to be so.



Moreover, North Korea is a totalitarian country and even though biting sanctions are strictly implemented through cooperation of China, these are largely going to affect common North Koreans. Political and military elites of North Korea and Kim Jong-un are not going to be much affected by such sanctions or isolations and thus, a change of behavior is improbable.



Third, maximum pressure and aggressiveness of the U.S. was not fully supported by many of its allies and friends. When the U.S. demanded support for its policy, the response was either lukewarm or overt disagreement. The cases of India and South Korea could be cited in this regard. Thus, maximum pressure not only isolates North Korea but also risks isolating the U.S. on the North Korean issue.



Thus, it's important for the U.S. to correct its misunderstanding about its maximum pressure tactics, if it doesn't want return to the days of "fire and fury." The Trump administration should work for a quid-pro-quo deal through a step-by-step approach and by seeking mutual trust with North Korea.



It is important to underline that undoubtedly maximum pressure is one of the factors that affect North Korea's response. But making it a blind faith and ignoring its limitation would not help the U.S. arrive at a resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue.





The author (sandipmisra10@gmail.com) is associate professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.


Ruling party slammed for undermining foreign press



Criticism is mounting against the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) for its thoughtless reaction to the labeling of President Moon Jae-in as "chief spokesman for Kim Jong-un" by the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) floor leader Rep. Na Kyung-won.



Rep. Na made the remark during a speech at the National Assembly, March 12, sparking a clash with the ruling party. A Realmeter survey published after her remark showed 50.3 percent of the people thought it was inappropriate, while 39.1 percent agreed with it. Even though a considerable number of people sympathized with the statement, it was still wrong for a lawmaker to shame the President by using such extreme language during a speech in the National Assembly.



The LKP floor leader later explained that she was quoting a foreign media report. Rep. Na was apparently referring to a Bloomberg article that described Moon as "Kim Jong-un's top spokesman at U.N." in September 2018. Moon was in New York to take part in the U.N. General Assembly at the time and during his visit there, the South Korean leader made some favorable remarks about Kim to underline the trust they had built during their multiple summits and convince the international community of Kim's sincerity toward denuclearization.



After Na recycled "top spokesman" in her own speech, the DPK issued a statement slamming Na and her party for mocking the President. But there are grave problems with the DPK's reaction that showed its lack of respect toward the media and complete lack of understanding of the foreign media, not to mention an infringement on freedom of speech.



In a statement released March 13, the DPK called the Bloomberg article "notorious," while making unnecessary comments about the reporter who wrote the article. There was no reason for the DPK to disclose the name and other personal information of the writer. It even accused the reporter of "betraying the country" by insulting the head of state in a U.S.-based news outlet.



In another statement released the next day, the DPK criticized a New York Times article by a Korean correspondent that was quoted by new LKP chairman Hwang Kyo-ahn in his defense of his party's floor leader. The DPK even used the term "black-haired foreign reporters," referring to Koreans who work for the foreign press.



Both statements carry inexcusable offenses to foreign news outlets and reporters. But they are still shown on the DPK's website. The Seoul Foreign Correspondents Club and the Asian American Journalists Association issued statements condemning the ruling party for targeting the reporters who work for the foreign press.



The ruling party should swiftly retract all statements carrying discriminatory content on foreign media and apologize to the reporters mentioned in the statements.






Korea International Trade Association (KITA) Chairman Kim Young-ju speaks during the association's forum on the new order of Korean Peninsula and economic cooperation between the two Koreas at KITA headquarters in Samseong-dong, Seoul, Tuesday. Kim said inter-Korean economic cooperation has huge potential but is faced with difficult challenges, requiring an objective study on its feasibility and thorough preparations. Courtesy of KITA


By Jun Ji-hye



Companies in Korea and the United States are engaged in a cutthroat competition for the title of the world's first fifth-generation (5G) networks services provider.



The competition has become fiercer after U.S.-based telecommunications company Verizon said March 13 that it was going to launch its 5G networks on April 11 in several cities including Chicago.



Korean mobile carriers were originally planning to fully commercialize the world's first 5G network services by the end of March, but the plan has hit a snag due to a delay in the launch of 5G smartphones and approval of subscriber plans.



The delay raised the possibility that Korea's plan could be postponed until sometime in April, but following the U.S. firm's announcement, Korean companies and the government appear to be rushing to launch the services no later than April 10 in order to grab the title of the "world's first 5G service provider."



Officials at telecom companies here said the key to the plan is the on-time launch of 5G smartphones.



"We have finished preparations for the launch of 5G services as we sent the first 5G signal on Dec. 1," an official from a telecom company said, asking not to be named.



Samsung Electronics was originally expected to launch the Galaxy S10 5G model later this month, but this has been postponed, with industry sources saying the firm seems to need more time for testing.



Amid growing concerns over missing the title, Samsung Galaxy S10 5G model has recently acquired a certification for electromagnetic wave testing by the National Radio Research Agency.



It is essential for communication device manufactures to achieve such a certification to launch products on the domestic market.



As the tech company acquired the certification, it is expected to deliver 5G smartphones to mobile carriers at the earliest possible date.



Some vernacular newspapers reported Samsung planned to officially launch the Galaxy S10 5G model, April 5.



But there are still variables as the Ministry of Science and ICT has yet to approve SK Telecom's (SKT) pricing plan for 5G services. The nation's top mobile carrier needs to receive approval from the government to introduce new payment systems.



On March 5, the ministry said it did not approve SKT's pricing plan as the firm designed expensive fee systems only for those using massive data.



SKT is currently adjusting its pricing plan to again seek government approval again.



Two other mobile carriers, KT and LG Uplus, may have no choice but to wait for SKT to get approval, before designing their own fee systems, which is raising uncertainty about the schedule.



An official from the ministry said, "The government has been keenly cooperating with mobile carriers and smartphone makers based on the belief that it is most important to offer the highest level of 5G services for a successful launch."



He noted the government will continue to push the launch of the world's first commercial 5G service.


Hyundai Motor Group Executive Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun, right, shakes hands with Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal after their meeting at the group's headquarters in Yangjae-dong, Seoul, last month. The group said Tuesday it will invest $300 million into the Indian ride-hailing firm. Courtesy of Hyundai Motor Group



By Nam Hyun-woo



Hyundai Motor Group will invest a combined $300 million in Ola, India's largest ride-hailing service provider, the automotive group said Tuesday.



Hyundai Motor Group said its units Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors will each spend $240 million and $60 million as part of their partnership with Ola. This will mark the two Korean carmakers' biggest combined investment so far.



The partnership will cover developing customized cars for fleet sales and fleet management, and building India-specific electric vehicles and infrastructure, the group said.



"India is the centerpiece of Hyundai Motor Group's strategy to gain leadership in the global mobility market and our partnership with Ola will accelerate our efforts to transform into a smart mobility provider," the group's Executive Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun said in an English statement. "Hyundai will proactively respond to market changes and persistently innovate to deliver greater value to our customers."



The group said the investment decision was made after Chung and Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal had a meeting last month at Hyundai Motor Group's headquarters in Yangjae-dong, Seoul. The group refused to disclose the exact date of the meeting.



Under the partnership, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors will supply Ola with vehicles customized for ride-hailing services, and Ola will provide financial services or leases to its drivers.



Data accumulated during Ola's service operation will allow the companies to make more vehicle improvements toward local needs.



This is the two carmakers' first foray into the Indian car-hailing service market. Hyundai Motor Group invested in another Indian car-sharing firm, Revv, last year, but this is the first time for the group to cover the whole process of ride-hailing, the group said.



Also, the three companies will jointly develop India-specific electric vehicles and infrastructure, to meet the Indian government's initiative to electrify all new vehicles sold by 2030.



For that, Hyundai and Kia will provide technical support to Ola's bid to use electric vehicles in its car-hailing service.



Founded in 2011 as an app-based ride-hailing service, Ola currently covers more than 125 cities across India, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., connecting more than 1.3 million drivers with a diverse range of vehicles.



Ola made global headlines recently as it received investments from global big names including Mahindra, SoftBank and Tencent.



"As Ola progresses to build cutting-edge mobility for 1 billion people, the three companies will bring to market a new generation of mobility, as we constantly expand our range of offerings for our consumers," Ola CEO Aggarwal said.



"This partnership will also significantly benefit drivers on our platform, as we collaborate with Hyundai to build vehicles and systems that enable sustainable earnings for millions of them, in the time to come."



The Indian ride-hailing market is emerging as a core market of the global car-sharing industry.



According to the group, the number of India's daily ride-hailing calls stood at 1 million in 2015 but grew more than threefold to reach 3.5 million last year.



The partnership is the latest of Hyundai Motor Group's series of aggressive investments in ride-hailing and car-sharing services worldwide. Before the agreement with Ola, the group's largest outside investment was $275 million in Grab, a Singapore-based ride-hailing firm, last year.



Along with Ola, Grab and Revv, the group has invested in last-mile logistics platform Mesh Korea, U.S. mobility service provider Migo, China's e-scooter maker Immotor and Australia's peer-to-peer car-sharing firm Car Next Door.



"The group seeks to accelerate its transition from a car manufacturer into a smart mobility systems provider, as the partnerships will allow it to engage in all aspects across the entire mobility value chain  including vehicle production, fleet operation and mobility services," a group official said.








By Kwak Yeon-soo





Korea Railroad Corp. logo / Korea Times file

Korea Railroad Corp. (KORAIL) will host the 34th meeting of the Organization for Cooperation between Railways (OSJD) General Directors from April 8 to 12 at Lotte Hotel Seoul, the state-run railway operator said Monday.



Established in 1956, the OSJD is an international organization built around 29 member countries in the European and Asian region, including Poland, Russia, China, Vietnam and the two Koreas.



The combined length of OSJD members' railways surpasses 280,000 kilometers and more than 2 million freight trains transport goods on those tracks.



The organization makes decisions upon and establishes international transport standards with regard to the passengers and freight transportation of international railways such as the Trans-Siberian Railroad and Trans-China Railway.



Under the slogan "Toward the Future of Peace and Prosperity," the OSJD's leaders will share 2018's accomplishments and discuss way to improve use and operation of railways in Eurasia and seek cooperation opportunities to invest in infrastructure and connecting railroads.





A poster image of the 34th conference of General Directors of OSJD Railways / Courtesy of KORAIL
Shareholders criticize 'high' wages for executives, low dividend payments



By Nam Hyun-woo





Hyundai Home Shopping CEO Chung Kyo-sun
A girl of Miao ethnic group tastes grilled fish in Baixiu Village, Miao Autonomous County of Rongshui, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Feb. 10, 2018. China's food and beverage (F&B) industry posted a record high of 4.27 trillion yuan (636 billion U.S. dollars) in revenue in 2018, the China Cuisine Association said Sunday. The F&B industry revenue accounted for 11.2 percent of the total volume of retail sales last year, up 0.4 percentage points from 2017, said Jiang Junxian, president of the association. The F&B industry also contributed 20.9 percent to consumption growth in 2018, he said. (Xinhua/Huang Xiaobang)

TIANJIN, March 17 (Xinhua) -- China's food and beverage (F&B) industry posted a record high of 4.27 trillion yuan (636 billion U.S. dollars) in revenue in 2018, the China Cuisine Association said Sunday.

The F&B industry revenue accounted for 11.2 percent of the total volume of retail sales last year, up 0.4 percentage points from 2017, said Jiang Junxian, president of the association.

The F&B industry also contributed 20.9 percent to consumption growth in 2018, he said.

"The F&B industry has played an important role in stimulating consumption and boosting the economy," he said.

Shandong, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Hebei and Henan provinces saw an F&B industry revenue of more than 300 billion yuan last year, with Shandong ranking first.

China's F&B industry will see a revenue of 4.6 trillion yuan, the association predicted.

"Chinese consumers are attaching more importance to food safety, nutrition and health, and have more diversified requirements for food, so high quality food will be what the industry is heading for in 2019," he said.
Candles lay in a heart shape across the road from the Masjid Al Noor mosque on March 19, 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand, where worshipers were gunned down three days ago. New Zealand will tighten gun laws in the wake of its worst modern-day massacre, the government said, as it emerged that the white supremacist accused of carrying out the killings at two mosques will represent himself in court. AFP



A wheelchair-using worshipper who survived the slaughter at Christchurch's Al Noor mosque, but whose wife was killed, has offered an olive branch to the gunman, saying he would like to meet him and telling him" I still love you."



Fifty people died at two mosques in the South Island city on Friday when a gunman burst in, spraying bullets at his victims while they prayed in a city now consumed by grief and sadness.



"I want to give the message to the person who did this, or if he has any friends who also think like this: I still love you," Farhid Ahmed, 59, told Reuters in an interview at his house, as mourners arrived to offer condolences for his wife, Husna.



"I don't agree with what you did  you took a wrong decision, a wrong direction, but I want to believe in you. That you have great potential in your heart," he said.



Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged on Saturday with murder over the killings, New Zealand's worst mass shooting. Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5where police said he was likely to face more charges.



Ahmed, who uses a wheelchair after being hit by a car, was in the Al Noor mosque when the shooter burst in. He was praying not where he usually does, in the main room, but in an ante-chamber with a friend.



"As that moment I realised two things. One, definitely it was gunshots, and two, this is my last day," he said. "Because in that situation, with a wheelchair, it was impossible to get out."



But the killer did not enter that chamber, and Ahmed was able to escape to the car park where he watched the massacre unfold from behind a car, on the opposite side of the mosque to where his wife was gunned down outside.



"People were screaming and rushing to come out ... as they were coming, they were panicking, I saw some people had blood, some people were limping," he said.



After the gunman left to continue his rampage at another mosque, Ahmed went back inside the building.



"It was unbelievable," he said. "On the right hand side, usually where I pray, so many dead bodies."



The wounded were screaming. He comforted them until police arrived, who then took him back outside.



"At that time I did not know that my wife's dead body was (at) the other gate."



In the aftermath of the shootings, bewilderment has been a common refrain, as the city comes to grips with the scale of the tragedy.



Voices are barely raised beyond a murmur as office workers, and school children have come to lay flowers near the mosques and at makeshift shrines through the city.



But there has also been a sense of generosity and solidarity, led by victims such as Ahmed, who has preached at the mosque and advocates forgiveness.



"If there is any chance I get, I want to meet you," he said of the gunman. "I want to hug you and I want to tell him in face that I am talking from my heart. I have no grudge against you, In ever hated you, I will never hate you," Ahmed said.



"I want to hug him and say: 'I have forgiven him'. I want to tell him, if he has any mother, I want to hug her too and I want to tell her that I'll treat you exactly like my aunty ... I want to give that message." (Reuters)


19th March 2019

Runtime 16:48





Hayden Locke, the CEO of Emmerson plc spoke to London South East about the Khemisset Potash project in Northern Morocco.

Potash is the name used to describe agricultural fertiliser with a high concentration of potassium in it, with most produced in Canada, Russia and Belarus.

The main markets are what you might expect: China, who have their own mines, the US, Brazil and Western Europe. Morocco imports fertilizer currently and its needs are growing. If you take Brazil for example, the delivered to the market price is $360 per tonne. According to Hayden, very few potash mines are developed from scratch as the capital costs can be very high - as much as $4 billion.

At a projected cost of just $400 million CAPEX he says this makes Khemisset a snip and much lower cost than its peers. And there are only 2 listed potash miners on the Junior market for you to invest in. When taking the delivered to market costs Khemisset is in the bottom quartile of costs, so potentially very competitive and close to its end markets of Brazil, North West Europe, the US, SA and Morocco.

Hayden says the business already has between $3-4 million dollars on its balance sheet and needs say $5M to get them to the point of raising the larger sum through a mix of debt, equity and industry funding.
Where will Brexit go after Parliament Speaker rules out third vote of May's deal

LONDON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- With 11 days to go before Britain's planned exit from the Europe Union (EU), Prime Minister Theresa May was dealt a blow on Monday in her quest for a deal with Brussels.

In what one government official described as a constitutional crisis, the Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow ruled that May's Brexit deal could not have a third vote in Parliament.

Citing parliamentary convention going back centuries, Bercow said only a substantially changed deal could be presented to the members of parliament (MPs).

Despite facing challenges from a number of MPs, Bercow's ruling sticks.

May had hoped to be able to put her deal forward Tuesday or Wednesday of this week ahead of the European Council meeting of leaders of EU member states on Thursday.

A plan had been mapped out that if the deal finally got through the House of Commons after two rejections, she would ask the EU for an extension of the March 29 departure date until June 30 to enable legal processes to be completed.

If MPs had voted against, MPs would have faced the prospect of Britain seeking an extension of possibly several years.

Bercow said a third vote on a Brexit deal would require renegotiation at EU level, and the test of whether May's motion to parliament had substantially changed would be if changes to the deal were made in agreement with Brussels.

The Daily Telegraph in London said the Speaker's intervention was likely to infuriate Downing Street, but in the Commons, his ruling has been welcomed by both sides of the Brexit divide for very different reasons.

"Whilst Remainers believe his decision increases the likelihood of a second referendum, Brexiteers think it brings the UK r to a no deal exit," said the Daily Telegraph.

In one of the first responses to Bercow's ruling, Robert Buckland, the solicitor general, said Britain is in a constitutional crisis.

Buckland said Bercow's ruling would have huge reverberations for the Brexit process, including the possibility of asking Queen Elizabeth to end the parliamentary session.

"Frankly we could have done without this but it is something we are going to have to negotiate and deal with. This actually places an onus on the European Council to come up with some potential solutions that allows the Government to put a new motion down which addresses the concerns expressed," he noted.

Stephen Laws, a former draftsman of parliamentary legislation, has said the Speaker of the Commons speculated that May's government could work around the problem by putting down a new motion insisting on a vote on the deal "notwithstanding the practice of the House (of Commons)."

There had been growing doubt that May would put forward a vote on her deal this week in any case.

Her senior ministers had spent the weekend on a charm offensive to seek support from Conservative MPs and the crucial support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to change their minds.

Senior ministers, including Chancellor Philip Hammond, said there would only be a third vote on the deal unless the government was reasonably certain of success.

On its first outing in the commons, the deal was rejected by 230 votes, the biggest defeat in British political history. In the second vote last week it was beaten by a smaller margin of 149 votes.

May is due to take part in the European Council meeting on Thursday when she plans to ask for Brexit to be delayed.

May is now expected to write to European Council President Donald Tusk seeking an extension of Article 50, the process that set Britain's original departure date of March 29.
US Stock Markets Price Anomaly Setup Continues

This research post highlights what we believe to be a unique price anomaly setup in many of the US major markets this week. Our research

suggests that April 21, or near this date, will be an important price inflection point base level for the US stock markets. We believe a unique price base will begin to form near this date and a bigger price move in May/June 2019 will unfold.

Our Advanced Dynamic Learning (ADL) price modeling system is suggesting the rotation in the US stock market may stay somewhat muted before this move on April 21 begins. The ADL predictive modeling system is one of our proprietary price modeling utilities that our research uses to identify key levels of future support and resistance as well as to watch for price anomalies that setup. Price anomalies are where the current price level of any symbol is greatly diverted from the ADL predictive price level. When this happens, the price will usually revert back to near the ADL levels at some point in the immediate future  sometimes setting up a great trading opportunity.

This Daily YM chart shows a current price anomaly in the YM of about 1000 points. This is a pretty big range for skilled traders that are capable of identifying the right trade. The ADL system is suggesting that YM will rotate lower between now and the end of April by at least 800~1000 pts.

The next, Weekly, YM chart showing the ADL price modeling system is confirming the Daily ADL chart. Both are showing a lower price rotation over the next few weeks. Additionally, the Weekly ADL chart is showing a deep price low near May 1, 2019. This aligns perfectly with our earlier analysis that May/June would start a bigger price rotation in the US stock market, global equities markets and precious metals. More on precious metals forecast in this video clip on TradingView.com

As we continue to move closer to these important dates, well keep our followers informed of our research and our proprietary trading tools, yet the real opportunity exists by knowing how to trade these moves and how to take advantage of the total scope of these market. Be prepared for a fairly large downside price swing in the YM over the next 5~7 weeks as the 24,800~25,000 attempts to set up support and a momentum base.

Please take a minute to visit www.TheTechnicalTraders.com to learn more about what we do and how we can help you stay ahead of these market moves. Visit www.TheTechnicalTraders.com/FreeResearch/ to read all of our recent research posts. We take great pride in our ability to provide our members and followers with the highest level of research, trading signals, daily video content and more. Find our why our hundreds of members continue to believe in the opportunity we provide them each and every day. Isnt it time you invested in your future success  today?

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.

Chris Vermeulen Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




The Economics of Happiness

It always strikes me as odd that the happiest countries tend to be in cold-as-hell places like Scandinavia and Canada. Its kind of similar stateside, too.



This weekend I saw a recent study by WalletHub that shows that the happiest states in the U.S. tend to be in the upper Midwest region  you know, where the Arctic vortex comes on through! In order of happiness, we have Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.



Those in the less-frigid-but-still-cold Northeast are also generally happier. Were also talking just south of there: Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. And of course, the west coast is largely happy, except Oregon. The Rockies also, except Wyoming. And then there is the Southwest Well, except for New Mexico.



The unhappiest states mostly fall in the inland Southeast and lower Midwest. West Virginia is ranked as the least happy state in the nation. Note the whitish and very light blue shadings.So, whats going on here and what economic significance does the data seem to carry?Well, two of the tangible common denominators from the individual categories are, not surprisingly, rising incomes and low crime/safety. The upper Midwest states have steadily growing shale jobs, which makes for a happier population. The Southeast and lower Midwest have been the hardest hit from our steady loss of manufacturing jobs.There is also the fact that upper Midwest states have much more ethnic/cultural homogeneity, while the inland Southeast is very high on ethnic diversity. As a general rule, birds of a feather tend to get along better, a reality that became all-too-stark since my Geopolitical Cycle turned negative in 2001, with 9/11 sparking a tense 16 years filled with terrorist events, civil wars, mass shootings, protests, Brexit, Trump, and a resurgence of isolationist and nationalistic viewsBesides the cycle involved in this phenomenon, theres a demographic element as wellRecently I was watching Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Fareed Zakarias CNN show GPS. If you watch one show on geopolitics, his is definitely the most objective and factualGupta noticed that the rising unhappiness is largely found in one particular sect of our economy: white, working-class males, especially between the ages of 45 and 54.Theyre faring worse in a declining economy brought on by their own declining numbers. Immigration, automation, and foreign competition, especially in manufacturing jobs, has made their experiences so much worse.The U.S. has 5% of the world population and 80% of the opioid prescription abuse. Guess which generation dominates that epidemic! And guess where these people are concentrated: in the Southeast and Midwest surprise, surprise.These are the voters who went overwhelmingly for Trump and helped elect him, against all expectations and odds. These are the voters who are the most anti-immigrant, anti-foreign workers, and anti-Muslim.All of this is to show you that my Geopolitical cycle has been dead on.Like I said earlier, this cycle turned negative around the time of 9/11, with radical Islamic terrorist attacks in the U.S. and Europe.But in recent years, 70% of such terrorist attacks have been from white supremacists. The devastating mass murder in New Zealand last Friday is just the latest example and thats in a country thats peaceful and pro-immigration/diversity.New Zealands Prime Minister immediately declared that they would change their gun laws. (The U.S. has only succeeded in theorizing on such change, like a broken record, after each of our mass slayings.) That is a sign of progress and that this cycle is coming to an end soon, as originally forecast around 2020.But there is much more to come from this populist backlash against globalization.The simple truth is that its the global and domestic people that have fallen behind in the massive job and technological revolution of the past decades that are the most unhappy and fighting back. In Zero Hour, I warn of a broader political revolution on a 250-year and 84-year cycle that is just coming to a head and from which well see more changes in the years ahead.The disenfranchised in the West have reacted against the radical Muslim and foreign worker threats. Now more of us are reacting against the white supremacists who are reacting with terror against that. Most of us are sick of both sides.My view has always been that we will have to realign our political structures around more common cultures within countries and within global regions. Countries like Iraq and Syria, with strong Sunni and Shia populations. just cant get along. Thats increasingly true of the blue versus red states in this country and in the northern versus southern regions of Europe. Unhappy people cause political and social revolutions its that simple. And there are plenty of them to be found around the world today. And my proven cycles saw it coming well ahead.

Harry

http://economyandmarkets.com

Follow me on Twitter @HarryDentjr

P.S. Another way to stay ahead is by reading the 27 simple stock secrets that our Seven-Figure Trader says are worth $588,221. Youll find the details here.

Harry studied economics in college in the 70s, but found it vague and inconclusive. He became so disillusioned by the state of the profession that he turned his back on it. Instead, he threw himself into the burgeoning New Science of Finance, which married economic research and market research and encompassed identifying and studying demographic trends, business cycles, consumers purchasing power and many, many other trends that empowered him to forecast economic and market changes.

Copyright  2019 Harry Dent- All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

Harry Dent Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




The barbaric attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand by a far-right fascist terrorist  indiscriminately shooting men, women and children, killing 50 and injuring many more, live streaming his bloody actions as he carried them out  comes at a time of deepening economic crisis and heightened social and political tensions around the world. All decent human beings are rightly condemning the attack, but we have to ask ourselves: why are such acts of terrorism taking place, and what can be done to end this barbarism?

The terrorist who carried out the attack, Brenton Tarrant, is a 28-year-old Australian white supremacist fascist. Just before the attack, he uploaded a delirious 73-page manifesto on Twitter in which he claimed to be fighting for the future of white people and expressed his intention to "create an atmosphere of fear" to "incite violence" against Muslims in general. The whole attack was designed as promotion for far-right, white supremacist ideology. There is in fact a small, but growing minority fascist fringe, which is becoming more active. These are the people applauding the attack in Christchurch.

Who is influencing the thinking of these crazed fascists? In response to his own question, "Is there a particular person that radicalised you the most?", Tarrant replies, "Yes, the person that has influenced me above all was Candace Owens [a very right-wing reactionary US commentator]. He added that, Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over meekness." Owens made a name for herself recently when she said, You know, he [Hitler] was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine The problem is that he wanted  he had dreams outside of Germany." Owens has a leading position in a conservative advocacy group, Turning Point USA (TPUSA), which promotes an openly reactionary agenda.

Fanning the flames of bigotry

Tarrant had, in fact, a history of posting far-right propaganda on social media and was strongly influenced by politicians and bourgeois commentators who have been pushing the anti-immigrant, Islamophobic line. He admires Trump, referring to him as symbol of renewed white identity. Trump has complained that some have been blaming him for the attack. It would be ridiculous, of course, to claim that Trump is directly responsible, but it is true that, with his anti-immigration rhetoric, his talk of needing a wall to protect the US, his measures to stop arrivals from a series of Muslim countries, etc., has helped to stoke Islamophobic prejudice. It is in this environment that the likes of Tarrant feel encouraged to act.

In fact, many Western politicians and the mass media have been raising a hue and cry over Islamic fundamentalism, while white supremacist terror has in fact been on the rise. In the US in 2017 for instance, out of 65 terrorist attacks, 36 were right-wing-related, 10 were left-wing-related and 7 related to Islamist terrorism. But while this in no way indicates the rise of a mass fascist movement, it does reveal a process that is taking place throughout the West, with right-wing politicians, helped by the media, increasingly blaming Muslims for the declining living conditions of the working class.

Brenton Tarrant is from Australia, where a hostile environment towards immigrants has been fomented over the recent period. As the Guardian pointed out last year, commenting on the situation in Australia:

Publicly, the debate about migration rarely remains within the narrow confines of the number or origin of new people seeking to come to Australia to live. Rather it spills, with increasing vituperativeness, into all areas of public debate: to arguments about road congestion and house prices, to the availability of resources such as land and water, to social debates about integration, religion, and English as Australias primary spoken language. (Guardian, 23 March 2018)

Thus, everything is blamed on immigrants in general, and Muslims in particular. Immigrants are treated with contempt by the authorities. Asylum seekers are shipped off to live on islands without access to basic necessities. At each stage, they are harassed, kept in bad living conditions and pushed into low-paying and often casualised jobs. Sanctions are imposed on them and justified by their own supposed lack of willingness to integrate, etc. Such behaviour is not confined to Australia, but can be seen all around the world, where there are large influxes of immigrants. The newcomers can be easily scapegoated for the shortages suffered by the longer-standing population as a result of the crisis of capitalism and the policies of austerity imposed by the ruling class. All the better, when the newcomers can be more easily identified because of the colour of their skin, by the style of clothes they wear or by the religion they profess.

Right-wing politicians and the mass media have been whipping up Islamophobia, which emboldens far-right terrorists / Image: fair use

An example of this is Australian senator, Fraser Anning, demanding a referendum last year to allow the Australian people to decide whether they want a wholesale ban on non-English speaking immigrants from the third world, and particularly whether they want any Muslims. He has made many speeches saying that migrants should be sent back to their countries of origin, claiming that they live off benefits, and cost Australian taxpayers a lot of money. Anning used to be a member of the far-right One Nation party, after which he joined Katters Australia Party, from which he was later expelled. Earlier this year, he attended a St. Kilda rally, which saw the participation of neo-Nazi sympathisers. He was clearly associating himself with extreme right-wing and openly racist views.

It is in this environment that openly fascist and Nazi groups are getting an echo. They feel encouraged and emboldened by the fact that high-ranking politicians  from Trump in the USA, to the right-wing Brexiteers in the UK, to Salvini in Italy and Le Pen in France  are expressing racist and xenophobic points of view. Thus, they carry out attacks on immigrants, feeling they have the backing of these politicians. They are like wild dogs being unleashed by their masters.

What is particularly disgusting about Fraser Anning is what he said shortly after last weeks attack: what it highlights is the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand, of the increasing Muslim presence, then adding, The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration programme which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place. And as if this were not enough, he also claimed that while Muslims may have been the victims today, usually they are the perpetrators. This amounts to an apology for a barbaric crime and is an open invitation for far-right fanatics to carry out similar attacks.

At the same time, the mass media acts as a faithful amplifier of these poisonous ideas. While they carry all the racist propaganda more or less uncritically, they hypocritically censor and mute anyone speaking against on the grounds of the right wings right to freedom of speech.

The far right, and the bourgeois politicians who echo their thinking, shift the blame for the present crisis away from the capitalist system  which is based on profit for the few and poverty for the many  and point the finger at immigrants. In this context, Islamic fundamentalism is being used as a means of fomenting Islamophobia, with some  see Anning in Australia  going as far as even blaming Muslims for the attacks like the Christchurch massacre last week. It goes without saying that Islamic fundamentalism is reactionary, but we should not forget who sponsored and promoted it these past few decades.

Mayhem and murder keeps workers divided

We have written on this question in far more detail in other articles. Suffice it to say that the Taliban in Afghanistan emerged from the reactionary forces that the US backed in their effort to pull that country away from the Soviet sphere of influence. Groups like Hamas were promoted when the state of Israel and US imperialism saw in the PLO the main threat.

Thus, while in the countries where Islam is the dominant religion, fundamentalists are being used in the present crisis to cut across working-class militancy and offer their reactionary alternative, in the advanced capitalist countries, far-right politicians are using the fundamentalists to whip up a mood of Islamophobia. What we have here are two equally reactionary ideologies, fascism and Islamic fundamentalism, both at the service of the ruling classes.

The capitalist class has an interest in using any means necessary to keep the workers divided. The workers of the world, on the other hand, desire a decent and safe world for all / Image: AJ Plus

The danger exists of tit-for-tat killings that will be used in an attempt to whip up anti-Muslim feelings. The far-right racists and fascist neo-Nazis use Islamic fundamentalist terrorism to depict all Muslims as potential terrorists. On this basis, attacks such as that on a mosque in Quebec City in January 2017, where six people were killed and 19 others injured, or this latest attack in Christchurch are presented as being part of a just war to defend white culture.

The way the media reports such events also contributes to whipping up Islamophobic hysteria. When an attack is carried out by Muslims it is immediately reported as terrorism, which of course it is. However, when an attack such as the one in Christchurch takes place there is a reluctance by the media to use the word terrorism. This reveals there is an agenda to portray terrorism as always being Islamic, thus helping to foment Islamophobia.

What we have here is barbarism on both sides, and those that suffer are ordinary Muslims and non-Muslims, Christian workers, Jewish workers, Hindu workers and so on, all trying to go about their daily lives. On this road there is no solution for the workers of all countries. The working class must rise above these divisions and realise itself as a class. It must fight against any alien forces that try to foment divisions among working people. The mottos divided we fall, united we stand and an injury to one is an injury to all must be emblazoned on the banners of the labour movement.

The capitalist class has an interest in using any means necessary to keep the workers divided. If this means scenes of mayhem and bloodshed, they will not flinch from promoting, or at least tolerating, such developments. The workers of the world, of all colours and all creeds, on the other hand, desire a world where they can bring their children up in a healthy and safe environment.

How is this to be achieved? Certainly not with these barbaric methods! Such methods will only benefit the ruling class by creating divisions among workers. And when workers are divided they are weakened and rendered powerless in the face of attacks on their living standards by the bosses. The capitalist class always benefits from such divisions. What is required is a society that caters for the basic needs of all with decent housing, clothing, food, education and healthcare for all. This can only be achieved through the socialist transformation of society, where the workers who produce the wealth will have control over the resources and how they are to be used. When poverty and want are eradicated, so too will be the material basis for ethnic and religious conflicts.

Working class unity against racist division!

Only on this basis can these conflicts be brought to an end. It is not Muslim workers, Muslim peasants or Muslim youth who are to blame for declining living standards. They, like all other workers, are simply struggling to make a living, to earn enough money to feed themselves and their children. In turn, it is not the workers and youth of Britain, or the United States, or Australia or New Zealand, that are to blame for the suffering of the peoples of the Middle East. Those who must take the blame for this are the capitalists of these countries, who exploit their own workers at home, while carrying out an imperialist policy abroad.

In their quest for profits, they scour the world for markets and spheres of influence. To promote their interests, they foment divisions; they invade and bomb countries with the ultimate aim of guaranteeing trade routes and sources of raw materials. They talk about democracy, but where revolution raises its head they dont hesitate to unleash barbarism. This was evident in Syria and Libya. In Yemen they allow their friends in the Saudi regime to proceed to starve a whole people into submission, while in Somalia they have promoted utter barbarism. Meanwhile, at home in the advanced capitalist countries, they whip up racism as a useful tool to cut across the rising class struggle.

In the past, when faced with a severe economic crisis in Germany, anti-Semitism was whipped up as a useful tool to distract attention away from the real culprits, the capitalists. Today they have found in Islamophobia an equally useful tool. It is a means by which they hope to remain in power as they proceed to attack the working class, cutting back on wages, education, healthcare Thus all workers suffer, Muslim and non-Muslim.

The only force that can really put an end to all this is the organised working class. Workers of different countries and ethnic roots discover they have a common interest in the process of fighting back against the onslaught on their living conditions. Events like last weeks massacre also bring out the natural solidarity among ordinary working people. In New Zealand, we have seen an outpouring of such solidarity across all communities with the victims of the massacre, while more than NZ$6m has been raised on appeal websites. School pupils gathered in large numbers across Christchurch to perform the Haka in tribute to those killed in the attacks. These examples reveal the genuine solidarity of ordinary working people.

The fact is that resources to provide jobs, houses, decent wages, hospitals and education for all already exist. The problem is that those same resources are in the hands of a small minority of super-rich capitalists, who use their wealth for the few and not the many. To be able to use those resources requires the removal of the capitalist class, the class that is destroying the very basis of the civilisation we have and pushing us towards barbarism.

Unity of the working class means unity against the real enemy: the capitalist ruling classes of all countries who profit while those below are pitted against each other. It means unity of all workers, irrespective of their religious beliefs, of their language, of their colour of skin, against the system that is based on maximising profit for the few.
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An efficient air-to-ground reconnaissance tool: experts

Soldiers assigned to a radar station with the air force under the PLA Southern Theater Command checks the radar system after a heavy snow on December 20, 2018. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Xu Hangchuan)

Chinese arms companies recently made multiple terahertz radiation radar systems with a technology seen by experts as an efficient air-to-ground reconnaissance tool and a potential counter to stealth aircraft.

A prototype terahertz radiation radar was successfully developed by a China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) team led by scientist Li Yuanji, and a second-generation prototype is already in development, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Sunday, citing a statement released by CETC.

The development of terahertz radiation radar is a global challenge, according to the CETC statement.

The CCTV report said that terahertz radiation has wavelengths between those of infrared rays and microwaves, a wide spectrum that would render current stealth technologies obsolete, making the radar able to detect stealth aircraft.

Stealth aircraft usually use composite materials and radar wave-absorbing coatings, so normal radars cannot effectively detect them, Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military analyst, told the Global Times on Monday.

Terahertz radiation, on the other hand, could penetrate those materials and expose metallic parts within the aircraft, lifting its cover, Wei said.

He also noted that a terahertz radiation radar could also clearly trace the outline of an object, making it possible to even tell what type of object it is.

Experts said the terahertz radiation decays very fast in the air, meaning, the effective range of the radar is likely low and not sufficient for detecting an advanced stealth fighter jet in time before it launches attacks from beyond visual range.

While the anti-stealth aspect of the technology still needs time to be ironed out, the technology can be used for air-to-ground reconnaissance at great efficiency, Wei noted.

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) successfully developed China's first terahertz radiation video synthetic aperture radar, Beijing-based newspaper Science and Technology Daily reported in December 2018.

The CASIC radar uses terahertz radiation to see through complicated environments like smoke, smog and dim lights, and can efficiently detect ground infantry targets in camouflage and disguise, the newspaper said, noting it has a stronger penetration capability than infrared vision devices.

When placed on an aircraft or a drone, the radar would allow operators to clearly see battlefield situations and deliver precision strikes on targets that would be otherwise difficult to detect, Wei said.

Targets will have nowhere to hide, said the newspaper.
Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng (C, back), also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, presides over a symposium during an inspection at the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development in Beijing, capital of China, March 18, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng on Monday demanded solid efforts to promote stable and healthy development of the housing market.

Han, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks at a symposium during an inspection at the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

Currently, the housing market is generally stable with more rational market expectations, he said, adding that policies should be adjusted to local conditions to resolve specific problems.

Han urged upholding the principle of "housing is for living in, not for speculation" and establishing a long-term mechanism for stable and healthy development of the market.

Steady progress should be made in advancing pilot programs of the mechanism, and the establishment of a big data-based national property market monitor system should be accelerated, Han said.

Local governments should shoulder primary responsibilities in regulating the market, while provincial-level authorities should fulfill their duties in monitoring and guiding the development, he said.
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Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, presides over a meeting of the Leading Party Members' Group of the NPC Standing Committee to study the important remarks made by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, during the second session of the 13th NPC, in Beijing, capital of China, March 18, 2019. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

BEIJING, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The Leading Party Members' Group of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee met Monday to study the important remarks made by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, during the second session of the 13th NPC.

Monday's meeting, presided over by Li Zhanshu, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, also stressed studying the spirit of the annual legislative session that concluded last week.

The historic achievements and shifts made in the cause of the Party and the country since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012 fundamentally lies in upholding the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, safeguarding Xi's status as the core of the CPC Central Committee and the whole Party, as well as the authority and centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee, according to the meeting.

The meeting stressed further study, research, publicity and implementation of Xi's thought on adhering to and improving the people's congress system.

Efforts should be made to formulate and review important laws, carry out supervision over pollution control and poverty relief, and comb through suggestions raised by NPC deputies and transfer them to relevant state organs and organizations.

The meeting also called for strengthened learning and training, as well as inspection in legislative organs at various levels.
[March 19, 2019] Smarsh Introduces Data-Loss-Prevention Solution for Microsoft Teams Smarsh, helping customers get ahead - and stay ahead - of the risk within their electronic communications, today at Enterprise Connect (News - Alert) introduced the latest version of Control for Microsoft Teams. The data-loss prevention (DLP) solution enables customers to enforce internal policies, and to block and delete content within Teams, strengthening compliance, risk and security efforts. "Teams is the fastest growing application from Microsoft (News - Alert), and as a featured component of Microsoft Office 365, it is fundamentally changing how organizations communicate and collaborate," said Anthony West, Smarsh Chief Technical Officer. "Many organizations, including those with rigorous FINRA or SEC (News - Alert) regulatory obligations, are strategically investing in Office 365 to reap the productivity benefits. When deploying a rich, dynamic tool like Microsoft Teams, they require a demonstrable layer of risk protection with proactive compliance capabilities that enhance their mandated capture, retention and supervision efforts." Teams conversations (one-to-one, multi-party and channel chats, with emojis, GIFs, files, links and bots) are monitored in real-time using DLP policies implemented within Control. When policy violation are detected, Control performs DLP actions (such as delete and challenge) that end users see in near-real-time within the native Teams application. All Teams content, as well as full fidelity metadata and contextual data (i.e. images, participants, chat room names), is captured in its native format and available for ingestion into the Smarsh Connected Archive or a customer's existing archiving solution, in support of regulatory compliance, e-discovery and/or recordkeeping initiatives. "Our mutual customers benefit from the security of Microsoft Teams, combined with data-loss prevention from Smarsh. Smarsh has a history of helping Microsoft customers meet rigorous compliance and governance requirements, and leveraging our APIs with applications like Control for Teams provides even more options," said Levon Esibov, partner pm director, information protection, Microsoft Teams at Microsoft. Control for Microsoft Teams is available now via on-premise deployment for customers using DLP-enabled Office 365 SKUs. Smarsh Control offerings are available for a growing number of social, communication and collaboration channels, including Skype (News - Alert) for Business (on-premise). The application provides a single engine for enforcing compliance policies across all applicable channels. About Smarsh Smarsh helps organizations get ahead - and stay ahead - of the risk within their electronic communications. With innovative capture, archiving and monitoring solutions that extend across the industry's widest breadth of channels, customers can leverage the productivity benefits of email, social media, mobile/text messaging, instant messaging/collaboration, websites and voice while efficiently strengthening their compliance and e-discovery initiatives. A global client base, including the top 10 banks in the United States and the largest banks in Europe, Canada and Asia, manages billions of conversations each month with the Smarsh Connected Suite. Government agencies in 40 of the 50 U.S. states also rely on Smarsh to help meet their recordkeeping and e-discovery requirements. The company is headquartered in Portland, Ore. with nine offices worldwide, including locations in Silicon Valley, New York, London and Bangalore, India. For more information, visit www.smarsh.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005167/en/

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Birthing parents and babies do not have the best odds on their side in Detroit.

The 2018 Kids Count in Michigan Data Book puts the city's infant mortality rate at 13.5 per thousand, almost double the rate of Michigan (6.9 per thousand). The figure for less-than-adequate prenatal care is nearly 47 percent, also higher than the statewide statistics.

So why the poor outlook when there are a number of pregnancy, birthing, and postpartum supports available for parents in the city? It would appear many young families are not taking advantage of them.

Thats what the five founders of Detroit Pop-up Midwifery Clinic hope to change. Jahmanna Selassie, Heather Robinson, Athena Hall, Nicole Marie White, and Elon Geffrard are bringing education and resources right into Detroit neighborhoods so parents and parents-to-be can learn about options for maternity care, giving birth, and caring for newborns.

"We want to talk about choices and knowing your rights. So if you go into the hospital, you know that you can ask for help and ask for more time," says Nicole White. "And we want to talk about nutrition and breastfeeding and just let folks know about all the incredible things that are happening in this city, like Black Mothers' Breastfeeding Association and other initiatives like Detroit Mama Hub that can be resources."

The group chose locations for their first four pop-up clinics by identifying neighborhoods with the highest infant mortality rates, some with rates up to 24 per thousand.

In the case of Detroit Pop-up Midwifery, "clinic" does not mean that clinical and diagnostic care is provided to women, but, rather, the clinic will educate women on how their medical experiences can be better, how they can be more equipped to enter their pregnancies not completely dependent on the medical system, and why they should have a say in their care.

The founders want the community to drive the discussions and content presented in each neighborhood.

"Since this is our first iteration and this is a pilot process, we want to go into communities and ask folks what they want," says White. "We don't want to make assumptions that people want us [as midwives, doulas and community educators] to do clinical care, but we want to hear where the gaps are."

As they discover what is missing from peoples pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care, they are looking to uncover what they can do as midwives on the ground to help support parents visions.

"We all do home birth, and that's not for everybody, but we do think that midwives are the answer, and that's regardless of setting," says White. They would like to see more midwives attending to births in hospitals, at birthing centers, and in homes.

While the use of midwives is a driving force behind the clinics mission, its not just any midwife.

"We are ramping up visualization of midwives of color because oftentimes people want their care providers to have some kind of similar background, maybe even look like them, so there's more of a connection," says Heather Robinson.

The community-based midwifery approach aims to impact the disparities that exist in maternal health across the United States that impact black families and people of color. U.S. infant mortality rates for non-Hispanic blacks are higher than for other races, and neonatal mortality (deaths that occur less than 28 days after birth) for that group is twice the rate of whites.

Detroit Midwifery plans to use current networks for outreach and to spread the word about the pop-ups. Organizations like Metro Detroit Midwives of Color, SisterFriends Detroit, Black Mothers Breastfeeding Association, Michigan Midwives Association, and the community host sites will help build awareness. Over time, the founders believe word of mouth will also be key.

The clinic will be popping up in different neighborhoods each month, with once-a-week sessions taking place three DPMC plans on hosting workshops like this in neighborhoods around Detroit. weeks in a row. In March, Mama Hub (northwest Detroit) will host a visit by Detroit Pop-up Midwifery Clinic. Future locations include Matrix Human Services (Osborn neighborhood in northeast Detroit) in April; FREC (Ford Resource and Engagement Center) on Bagley in southwest Detroit in May; and Crowell Recreation Center (Brightmoor neighborhood in northwest Detroit) in June.

The founders believe that each meeting's content and traction will depend on whos in the room on any given day. "I think that's what's essential," says White. It's going to be led by the community, and the midwives are there just to hold space and to help facilitate whatever the group wants."

What's most important, says Robinson, is that women and families know that different kinds of care exist so they can seek out what it is that they need for themselves. "Because, by default, many people just receive what they think is the only option for them, or the only doctor's office, or the only hospital. And there are many options," says Robinson.

That doesnt mean the clinic midwives are pushing natural birthing methods; they understand some people want to have their baby in a hospital with an epidural. "And that's fine," says Robinson. "We just want folks being empowered with education and choices and opportunities to really make those decisions for themselves."

Its also not about turning people into consumers of midwifery care, because a family member can be a midwife. "Its a way in which you care for someone," says Robinson. The approach is about building relationships beyond brief doctor visits, caring for both mom and baby, and fostering a feeling of accountability for birthing parents in how they care for themselves.

This empowering philosophy has the potential to improve outcomes for babies and young families in

Detroit  and thats what Detroit Pop-up Midwifery Clinic is all about.

Update 3/20/19: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed infant mortality rates as percents, when it should have listed them per thousand. That oversight has been corrected.

This article is part of "Detroit Innovation," a series highlighting community-led projects that are improving the vitality of neighborhoods in Detroit, while recognizing the potential of residents to work with partners to solve the most pressing challenges facing their communities.

Photos by Nick Hagen.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) shakes hands with Federica Mogherini, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy during the ninth round of the China-EU high-level strategic dialogue in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Cheng)

BRUSSELS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The ninth round of the China-EU High-level Strategic Dialogue on Monday in Brussels underlined the need to strengthen the bilateral partnership.

The dialogue was co-chaired by Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini.

Wang said that China and the European Union are comprehensive strategic partners. Facing the turbulent international situation, the two sides have developed fruitful communication and cooperation, playing the role of "stabilizer".

China and Europe, as two major powers in the world, should take this responsibility. The level and scale of bilateral cooperation are at a historic high, and there is still great potential, said Wang.

The two sides should continue cooperation, adopt problem-solving orientation, explore new methods, new areas and new impetus in the partnerships regarding peace, growth, reform and civilization, and further the enhancement of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the EU.

Wang underlined three points. Firstly, cooperative partnership is the nature of China-EU relations. The common ground is to appreciate the development of bilateral relations, although the two have differences on some issues.

Wang believed there is no essential conflict of interest between China and the EU. The two can seek common ground while reserving differences, but also consolidate the common ground while resolving differences, maximizing the common interest and perception.

Secondly, the goal of China-EU cooperation is to achieve mutual benefit and win-win outcome, said Wang, hoping that Europe will stand to benefit from the new round of Chinese reform and opening-up. He welcomed Europe to participate in the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, and expected to see the Europe-Asia connectivity plan to complement the Belt and Road Initiative.

Thirdly, Wang said the respect of each other's core interest is the trademark of the trust between China and the EU, and he hoped the EU could be discreet in words and deeds. China is willing to work with the EU to maintain a sound development of bilateral relations, benefit the people of the two sides, and contribute more to the world's peace and development.

Mogherini said the EU-China relations have reached a new high in the past five years in terms of their depth and extent. The two share common stance and goal against unilateralism and protectionism, and both support the international order established around the United Nations.

For the first time, the Chinese foreign minister met the foreign ministers of the 28 EU members on Monday, and they discussed about strengthening the EU-China cooperation. The EU regards China as its important strategic partner, not only economically but also politically, Mogherini noted.

The EU's new document on policy towards China published last week will not replace the current EU strategic cooperation with China, she said. The EU has no intention to impede the development of China, and it is impossible to do it. The EU wants to see a bigger leading role played by China on global issues.

The EU has differences with China in a number of issues, but has always looked upon the bilateral strategic partnership from the perspective of common prosperity. The EU will continue sticking to the one-China policy without any change, she added.

Mogherini noted that the EU, along with China, will push for the implementation of multilateral agreements, and work closely on issues like the Paris agreement, Iran nuclear agreement, sustainable development goals, African development and so on.

The EU is willing to enhance the connectivity and communication with Asia, explore the complementarities with the Belt and Road Initiative, and vigorously carry out third-party cooperation. The EU hopes to strengthen the security and defense cooperation with China, which is not targeting any third parties. The two sides can cooperate in cyber-security, safeguard the openness, safety and stability of the internet, and establish an order of the digital world based on rules, noted Mogherini.

The two sides also exchanged opinions on the current international situation, the respective relations with major powers, and global and regional hot issues.
Education

Montgomery County Community College will present the spring installment of the interview/talk show program Issues and Insights April 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Science Center room 214, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The programs will be simulcast to the Colleges West Campus in South Hall room 216, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Dr. Kolsky will offer a humorous presentation, Carrots, Sticks and Politics: A State of the Nation and the World Message. In this speech, he will provide his interpretation of domestic and international politics and then welcome questions from the audience for discussion. Issues and Insights, is free and open to the public. For information, contact Dr. Thomas Kolsky, professor of political science, at 215-641-6380 or tkolsky@mc3.edu.

Montgomery County Community Colleges STEM Scholars Program will host a STEM Jam! open house April 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center at the Colleges Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The drop-in event is designed for students interested in learning more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities will include STEM program information and career advising, STEM speakers throughout the day from industry and academia, micro-helicopter and robotics competitive obstacle courses and demonstrations and static models of STEM student and faculty work. For more information about STEM Jam! or STEM programs at MCCC, contact William Brownlowe at wbrownlowe@mc3.edu or 215-641-6644, or Robin Zuhlke at 215-619-7440 or rzuhlke@mc3.edu.

Temple Ambler, located at 580 Meetinghouse Road, presents the following events:

International Club Global Bazaar April 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. The Ambler Campus International Club invites all students, faculty, staff and the community to celebrate a multitude of diverse cultures, which will be showcased at the organizations Global Bazaar. This family friendly event will highlight cultural traditions and celebrations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South American, North America and Africa through music, entertainment, food and informative displays developed and presented by students at the Ambler Campus. Young visitors will be provided with passports, which they may get stamped at each country they visit. Prizes will be awarded to world travelers who talk to cultural representatives, answer questions about the countries theyve visited and take part in fun-filled activities designed to help them learn about the rich diversity of cultures found throughout the world. Refreshments will be served. The event is free. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail tuc36466@temple.edu.

EarthFest 2011 April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than 75 exhibitors, including the Philadelphia Zoo, The Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo and the Insectarium, will take part in EarthFest 2011. School students of all ages are invited to attend and develop displays of their own. EarthFest partner the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society also offers its Kids Grow Expo, featuring the Junior Flower Show, as part of the event. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail duffyj@temple.edu.

Annual Spring Plant Sale May 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The plant sale  an Ambler Campus tradition dating back to the early 1900s  will feature woody plants and perennials in portable sizes, hardy trees, shrubs, and vines, native plants that are attractive to wildlife, herbs, and hanging baskets. There will also be numerous special plants for sale to highlight Amblers special anniversary year. Garden books and garden tools will also be available for sale. Students, staff, and volunteers from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and the Ambler Arboretum Advisory Committee will be available to answer questions. All proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale will support the Ambler Arboretum Fund and the Pi Alpha Xi National Honor Society. Information: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

June Homecoming/Louise Bush-Brown Garden Dedication June 5 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (June Homecoming), Bright Hall Lounge; 2 p.m. (Garden Dedication), Ambler Campus Formal Perennial Gardens. Tickets  June Homecoming: Participant  $18 per person; Sustainer  $25 per person; Benefactor  $40 per person. The 2011 June Homecoming, sponsored by the School of Environmental Design Alumni Association, will include the Alumni Association annual meeting and luncheon. June Homecoming will be followed by the formal dedication of Temple University Amblers Formal Perennial Gardens as the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Gardens. During this 100th anniversary of the campus, Temple University Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum of the Temple University is honoring Louise Bush-Browns many contributions to the history of the campus by formally dedicating the gardens in her honor. During the program, campus Executive William Parshall will welcome guests, Ambler Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey will speak about the Bush-Browns and the history of the garden, and an official ribbon cutting will be held for the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Garden. Following the ribbon cutting, guests are invited to take a tour of the gardens, which will wend their way to the Campus Greenhouse for the School of Environmental Designs annual Plant Auction. Information (Garden Dedication): 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Information (June Homecoming): 215-482-0722. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

Northview Garden Tour and Fundraiser for the Ambler Arboretum June 12 from noon to 5 p.m. Call for reservations. Tickets: $15 per person or $20 at the door. In addition to the gardens of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey has a garden oasis all her own right in Ambler  Northview. Visitors will have the opportunity to take self-guided tours throughout the many gardens, where garden experts will be available to answer questions about the various designs. The Ambler Keystone Chapter of the Womans National Farm and Garden Association will also provide tea and refreshments. All proceeds from the tours will support the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. Information or to register: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

The Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, 536 George Street, Norristown, will hold the following events:

SAAC Adult Day Care, an alternative to Nursing Home Care is available  for information call 610-275-1960

Volunteers are needed for Meals on Wheels Program (call the number above)

SAACs Fifth Avenue Boutique opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Exercise with Theresa will be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 p.m.

Dance class is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Tai Chi is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Yoga is held every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.

Line Dancing is held every Thursday at 10:30 a.m.

Dancing with Joan is held every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.

Sculpture Class is held Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30 p.m.

Why Should I Learn Spanish? will be held Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m.

Generations On-Line computer classes for seniors will be held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.  4 p.m.  computers are available during those hours.

Health Living will be held every Tuesday at 1 p.m.

Boomer U will hold the following events. Boomer U is located at 45 Forest Avenue, Ambler. Registration & payment is required for all events: 215-619-8863.

Pilates Class is held Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. First class is free; please bring a mat. For information call 610-291-5376.

Blue Bell School of Dance, 921 Penllyn Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, hosts Argentine Tango Classes and a Milonga dance party every Friday evening. Lessons start at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at 9:30 p.m. Andrew Conway, master Argentine Tango dancer, instructor and performer and his partner Linda Chase will instruct. All levels welcome and no partner is needed. Refreshments will be served. Fee is $12 per person and includes lesson and dancing. Information: 215-634-1101 or www.amoretango.com.

The Montgomery Hospital Medical Center will offer the following classes:

Childbirth Education Class- all parents are invited to participate, including those who are delivering at

other hospitals. For more information on maternity services or classes, call 610-270-2020.

CPR and First Aid Courses are offered for beginners to experiences health care providers. Call 610-270-2313.

The Ambler SAAC (Senior Adult Activities Center), located at 45 Forest Ave in Ambler will hold the following events:

Tai Chi every Monday and Thursday at 11 a.m.

Yoga is every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m.

Strength and balance training every Wednesday at 10 a.m.

Armchair Aerobics is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Gourmet Weight Wise every Thursday at 12:30.

Fitness Center and Pool Room open daily 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

The Diabetes Education Center will offer day and evening classes each month. Health insurance pays for diabetes education classes. Preregistration is required. Call 610-270-2301.

For Kids & Families

The Ambler Kiwanis Club will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt April 26 at 10 a.m. in Ambler Borough Park, located just off of the intersection of Hendricks Street and Valley Brook Road. Members of the Wissahickon Key Club will assist Kiwanians in hiding thousands of wrapped chocolate eggs in a designated area of the park. Also hidden will be plastic colored eggs, which are redeemed for prizes. Elementary school children are separated by age.

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation will hold its 21st annual Storybook Egg-Stravaganza April 15 fom 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Upper Dublin Township Building. Toddlers and preschoolers love this annual event where photo opportunities with favorite friends abound! Treasures are collected from UDP&Rs assortment of lifesize cutouts of favorite cartoon characters from Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and other well-known animation. Children can have their picture taken with Bugsy OHare; bring your own camera. And dont forget a basket for goodies! $7 for UD residents; $12 for non-residents. Pre-register at 215-643-1600 ext. 3443.

Splash Week is a free week-long program that teaches children and families basic swimming skills and water safety practices. All YMCA branches will host multiple classes each day from April 11 to 15. For more information, contact the Ambler Area YMCA at 215-628-9950.

Healthy Kids Day is April 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The day is filled with fun, engaging and artistic activities that cultivate healthy living as part of the YMCAs larger efforts to help more kids and families become physically active. All activities are free and open to the community. For more information, contact the Ambler YMCA at 215-628-9950. No reservation is required.

The Ambler Area YMCA has added several new programs for area youngsters. Classes are held late afternoons or evenings on various weekdays. For more information, visit philaymca.org or call 215-628-9950.

Basic Beading: Ages: 10+. Wednesdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. This class will teach you the fundamentals of wiring and stringing along with how color can be used to create unique and vibrant beadwork design. You will create various jewelry including earrings, bracelets, charm pendants and much more! Supplies will be provided. Bringing your own jewelry pliers or tools would be a plus.

Messin with the Masters: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. Learn about some of the worlds greatest artists. You will be inspired to create your own Starry Night with oil pastels and tempera paints, a tissue paper painted Monet garden, a Picasso head using scraps of paper, a Georgia OKeeffe clay flower bowl and a Rousseau jungle collage.

Super Scientist: Ages: 5-7. Mondays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Well be concocting chemistry experiments such as making slime, mixing potions and having fun with magnet magic. Your budding little scientist will enhance his/her creative thinking and motor skills and to top it off will learn that science can be serious fun.

Wacky Junk Art: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 6 to 6:45 p.m. Why throw it away! Instead join us to make household junk into aliens from outer space, wacky specs, crazy hats, body masks or a recycled train.

Globe Trotters: Ages: 4-6. Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Youre never too young to start thinking globally. Each week, we explore a new country through crafts, games, music, stories and even some taste-testing. A perfect introduction to our great big world!

Crazy about Crafts: Ages: 5-7, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Let your childs creative juices flow with our fun arts and crafts projects each week. Fine motor skills and creative thinking skills will be enhanced with this crafty class.

Come out and join the Ambler Area YMCAs Teen and Junior Leaders Club. Participants are given the freedom to plan community service projects year round and truly make a difference in the lives of people in need. Those in Teen and Junior Leaders also attend leadership retreats all along the East Coast three times a year and meet other leaders who are doing the same great work in their respective areas. Dont miss out on this inspiring opportunity. Teen Leaders, ages 13-17, meet every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Junior Leaders, ages 10-12, will begin in the spring and will meet every Monday. For more information, contact Mike Miles, Teen Director, 215- 628-9950 x 1540 or mmiles@philaymca.org.

Did you know that the new Ambler Area YMCA holds childrens birthday parties at its site for members and non members as well. The Ambler Y does all the work from start to finish and birthday parties include a personalized cake, ice cream, beverage and paper products. Parties are held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and include two party hosts to lead activities, set-up, clean-up and assist with serving. You can have a Splash Party for children ages six to 12 in the new zero depth entry pool with water slide and spray fountains. Up to 25 children have exclusive use of the pool area with 30 minutes in the party room. Sports Parties are offered for kids ages four to 12 with age appropriate activities and games, and sports such as floor hockey, soccer, basketball or dodge ball. Children ages three to five years of age will enjoy parties in the Family Active Center with use of the Moon Bounce and organized activities, such as parachute play and songs. For information, 215-628-9950 ext. 1583.

Community Events at the Ambler Y:

-YAchievers YMCA Achievers is a developmentally based, extracurricular, educational and team mentoring program designed to help students in grades five through 12 prepare for fulfilled livelihoods in college and beyond. Participation is free and all students in this program receive a free YMCA membership. Registration for the 2009 program begins now. You do not need to be a YMCA member to utilize these special services. Call 215-628-9950 to register.

Greater Norristown Art Leagues Childrens Weeklong Summer Art Camps will be held at 800 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the summer. The cost per session is $125 per student for ages 6 and up. Jo Ann Cooksey Bono teaches an introduction to basic drawing skills and techniques from 10 a.m. until the lunch break each day. In the afternoon sessions, Mary Vogel Lozinak involves the students in hands on projects such as collage, papermaking, T-shirt printing, 3D design and sculpy clay. Fridays Graduation Day includes an art show, awards ceremony and reception for parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. All supplies are included. Students provide their own lunch. A refrigerator is available and the building is air-conditioned. This is the 15th year to run this successful program. Both instructors are professional artists with State Police and Child Abuse Clearances. To register, call Jo Ann at 610-279-1008, or register on-line at www.gnal.org.

Health

Dresher Physical Therapy is hosting an interactive seminar discussing its Golf Assessment Progam April 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Dresher Physical Therapy, 1075 Virginia Drive, Suite 200, Fort Washington. Physical therapist Chris Miller, certified through the Titleist Performance Institute, will discuss why your body may be the most important piece of golf equipment you invest in and how this can drastically improve your game. $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Call 215-619-4545 to reserve your spot.

The Chestnut Hill Center for Enrichment, Center on the Hill and Chestnut Hill Hospital will host a Senior Health and Resource Fair April 14 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, 8855 Germantown Ave. The event is free. For more information, call 215-248-0180 or e-mail chseniors@cavtel.net.

The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is hosting Help Yourself to Health, a new six-week workshop for older adults with ongoing health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease and others. The free workshop will take place at the Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center, 45 Forest Ave. on six Thursdays, May 12 through June 16 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Although there is no charge to participate, registration is required. To register, call 215-619-8863.

The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is sponsoring an eight-week program called A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls. Presented by the Montgomery County Health Department, this workshop will be held on Tuesdays, May 3 to June 21 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ambler Center, 45 Forest Ave. If you pre-register by April 27, the fee is only $5! Registration at the first class is $10. (Checks should be payable to SAAC and will benefit our Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound seniors.) A workbook will be provided and refreshments will be served. Call 215-619-8863 to register or for more information.

Fort Washington Wellness Center classes are ongoing. There are several offered during lunch or right after work, for your convenience: Boot Camp from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday; Zumba is MWF from 11 a.m. to noon and Friday at 4 p.m.; there are 25 cycling classes; Ashtanga and Vinyasana Yoga and Pilates; and a group Womens Strength Training class M-F from 10 to 11 a.m. Questions, call Cathy DeMarco at 215-641-1245.

Following the success of other local area programs, Impact Sports and Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation are delighted to team up again to offer a spring program for the 2011 season! Upper Dublin area children ages 3-5 years old can attend a Sports Program featuring their favorite sports games; soccer, rugby, hockey, track and field, basketball, and more. The program will start on April 27 and run through June 1. Cost for the program is $85 for the six weeks. The classes will be running 12- 1 p.m.; 1- 2 p.m.; 2- 3 p.m. For more info or to register, call Upper Dublin Township on 215 643 1600 or visit their website a http://www.upperdublin.net.

Spring Aquatic Programs  UDHS Pool:

-Summer is just around the corner  Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool can help get you into shape! Programs begin in March; preregistration is required.

 Shallow Water Aerobics  Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 8-8:45 p.m., $40R/$50NR.

 Adult Swim Instructions  Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 7-8 p.m., $50R/$60NR

-Open Rec Swims are fun for the whole family! Come out on Fridays from 7-9 p.m. or Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. and enjoy use of the pool and diving area. Fridays are offered through June 17; Saturdays are offered March 12-May 21.

-Join a growing group of adult lap swimmers and water walkers. Lanes are set aside evenings and weekends for use; lanes are shared. Monday  Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m.; Fridays from 7-9 p.m. and Saturdays (March 12-May 21) from 1-4 p.m.

-Private Swimming & Diving Lessons for ages 3-adult are offered at the UDHS Pool through a partnership with the Upper Dublin Aquatic Club (UDAC). Visit the UDAC website for more information, www.udac.us, and click the link to UDHS Private Lessons.

-Looking for local programs for US Masters Swimming (adults) or Water Polo (all ages)? UDAC and UDSD are working together to develop programs that will be offered at the UDHS Pool. Add your name to Interest Lists by emailing slohoefer@upperdublin.net. emails will be sent about clinics and program start dates.

Questions about Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool, group use of the pool or pool rental? Contact Susan Lohoefer, Facility & Community Affairs Manager at slohoefer@upperdublin.net or call 215-643-8800 x8994.

SilverSneakers Fitness Program. The Healthyways SilverSneakers Fitness Program is a result-oriented program that enables older adults to take charge of their health. The program is an innovative blend of physical activity, healthy lifestyle and socially oriented programing. Members of the program are eligible for a free YMCA membership, with use of the pool and exercise equipment, along with customized classes designed for older adults who want to improve their strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you are a subscriber to Independence Blue Cross (Personal Choice 65 PPO) or Keystone 65 HMO, Bravo Health, or Health Options Programs (HOP), call the Ambler Area YMCA, 215-628-9950 or Hatboro Area YMCA, 215-674-4545. You can also visit www.silversneakers.com.

Zumba Fitness offers Zumba dance/fitness classes at Academy of Dance and Music/BBAD Studio located at 1524 DeKalb Pike in Blue Bell (behind Sherwin Williams). Classes are offered three times a week: Tuesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 a.m. For a free trial pass for your first class, email us at info@danceandmusic.biz or call 610-277-2557. For more info, visit our site at www.academyofdanceandmusic.org.

Chestnut Hill Health Systems presents the following Health Education Programs:

FITNESS CLASSES

Golden Yoga: A Breathing, Stretching and Relaxation Class. Fridays, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lea Auditorium, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. Registration for four classes at a time required. Golden Yoga is Classical Yoga, adapted by the SKY Foundation, to accommodate those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. The program includes postures, breathing, relaxation and meditation techniques, all performed while sitting in a chair and standing. Registration required. Call 215-247-3029. Cost: $20 for 4 classes per month.

Tai Chi: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30  9:30 a.m. Springfield Residence, 8601 Stenton Ave. Classes, for the novice or beginner/intermediate student, are designed to improve balance, power, posture, coordination, flexibility and mental focus. Slow, gentle movements are modified to most everyones abilities. For more information or to sign up for a free introductory class, call 215-882-2804. Cost: $8 per class/paid monthly.

SUPPORT GROUPS

Weight Loss Surgery Support Group: Fourth Wednesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. Join us for a monthly get-together where well share information for those interested in weight loss surgery, learn from guest speakers discussing current news on issues including lifestyle modification, nutrition and exercise and provide ongoing support for those who have completed surgery. Registration required. Call 215-753-2000.

Breast Cancer Networking Group: Fourth Tuesday of the month 5:30  7 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. A free, confidential support group for women living with a diagnosis of breast cancer designed to provide a forum for sharing information, feelings and concerns associated with breast cancer. Facilitated by Tish Wakefield, LCSW, Oncology Social Worker. Registration required. To register or for more information, call 215-248-8047.

New Moms Support Groups Tuesdays 10:30 a.m.  12 p.m.; contact Jeanine ORourke, MSW or 2:30  4 p.m.; contact Susan Schack, Ph.D Volunteer Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. The Center for Postpartum Depression at Chestnut Hill Hospital is pleased to offer two new support groups to support new moms. Both groups will be run by experienced mental health professionals who really get it when it comes to new motherhood and juggling relationships, extended family, work/family balance and self-care. If you are experiencing new mom challenges that often heighten anxiety and involve hormonally driven depression, join us for an informative and supportive forum to connect with other moms. Infants are welcome. $30 per session (flexible based on need). Registration is required. Call Dr. Schack, 646-265-2484, or Ms. ORourke, 215-206-2931.

Man to Man Prostate Cancer Support Group Third Thursday of the month 8-9 a.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. A networking group for men diagnosed with prostate cancer designed to provide education, support and encouragement. Spouses and partners welcome. Harry M. Baer, MD, Chief, Urology Division, will host Ask the Doctor. Registration required. Call 215-248-8325.

Contact the Senior Center by phone 215-248-0180 or email (chseniors@cavtel.net) with your questions about these programs or any of our on-going activities and classes.

Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Hospice seeks compassionate and emotionally mature volunteers to provide support to local hospice patients and their families in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. Volunteers may also assist with pet therapy and administrative work within the hospice department and are requested to have daytime availability. Hospice patient care volunteers visit with patients in their homes or nursing facilities once a week for two to three hours. They provide emotional support and companionship to patients and family members, assist with errands or provide respite for caregivers. Bereavement volunteers support the families of hospice patients following the loss of a loved one, while administrative volunteers assist with typing, mailings and/or filing. Hospice care workers provide a great service to families and loved ones of hospice patients. Many volunteers also report a great deal of personal satisfaction as a result of their services. Patient care and bereavement volunteers complete an application and attend an 18-hour volunteer training program that covers the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of hospice volunteering. Day and evening training programs are offered. To sign up for volunteer opportunities in Pennsylvania, contact Holy Redeemer Volunteer Coordinator Jean Francis at 215-698-3737 or email jfrancis@holyredeemer.com.

Librarytalk

Upper Dublin Public Library, 805 Loch Alsh Avenue, Ft. Washington, 215-628-8744

www.upperdublinlibrary.org

APRIL CHILDRENS PROGRAMS:

Storytimes: Please register in the library.

o Wee Ones: 0 to 23 months Thursdays and Fridays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m.

o Tiny Tots: age 2. Wednesdays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. and Fridays 11 to 11:20 a.m.

o Jr. Book Lovers: ages 3 to 6. Tuesdays 10:30 to 11 a.m.

o Bedtime Storytimes: 7 to 7:30 p.m. April 20 and 27. Wear your jammies, bring your teddy & hear Miss Barbara read bedtime stories! For ages 3 to 6.

APRIL TEEN PROGRAMS:

North Hills Library Teens April 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. Movie Matinee

APRIL UDPL ADULT PROGRAMS:

NEW! ESL Conversation Group. Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Interested in practicing your English in a safe and caring environment? Come to our conversation group and improve your skills! Please register with Kay Klocko at 215-628-8744 or kklocko@mclinc.org.

One-on-One Computer Mentoring. Get personalized assistance from experienced computer volunteers! Sign-up for a one-hour session. Limit one session per month. Please register  contact info above.

Book Groups Please register with Kay Klocko 215-628-8744.

o Daytimers: April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Tired of book groups where you all read the same book? Read any fiction or non-fiction book on this months theme: Explorers. Please register.

Meetings:

Annual Meeting of the Friends of UDPL: April 14 at 1 p.m.

Board of Directors: April 20 at 7 p.m.

Blue Bell Library www.wvpl.org Upcoming Events: The Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 650 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is diagonally across from the Blue Bell Inn. Call 215-643-1320 or visit their website at www.wvpl.org.

For children and teens at Blue Bell:

* Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian.

* Mondays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages.

* Fridays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Family Movies, new releases, second Saturdays of the month at 1:30 p.m.

* May 14  Despicable Me

* June 11  Alpha and Omega

* Special Events

* April  watch for date of spring/Easter events

* April 14 at 4:30 p.m.  Junior Lego Club for children ages 3 through 5. Parents and caregivers need to stay with children.

* April 14 at 7 p.m.  Jeopardy for ages 11 to 18. Test your book and library knowledge for prizes. Sign up to be a contestant. No sign up to be in the audience. Snacks provided.

* April 16 at 1 p.m.  Adult Mystery Book Group discussing The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King.

* April 16 at 1:30 p.m.  Childrens event for One Book, Every Young Child celebration. Story and craft for book Whose Shoes?

* April 19 at 7 p.m. and April 26 at 1:30 p.m.- Adult book group discusses The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Group led by Adam Button.

* April 30 through May 3  Friends book sale with about 10,000 items for sale for children, teens and adults.

* May  sign up for Science in the Summer

* June  sign up for Enrichment Programs for Elementary-Age children

* June  sign up for Summer Reading, all ages

For adults at Blue Bell:

* Daytime Book Discussion Group  fourth Tuesday, Jan  April at 1:30 p.m.

* April 26  The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

* Night-time Book Discussion Group  third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m.

o April 19  The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

* Art Series with Dr. Sheldon Weintraub, docent at The Barnes and speaker at local colleges

o April 27 at 2 p.m. The Art of Looking at Art-Is She Nude or Is She Naked?

*Mystery Book Discussion Group, third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m.; new mystery theme each month; www.wvpl.org/programs

* Yoga on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop-in class.

* Tai Chi on Mondays at 3 p.m. with Dr. Kurt Findeisen. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop in class.

* Philadelphia Museum of Art presents class on their Marc Chagall exhibit, April 13 at 2 p.m.

* Giant Book Sale, April 29  May 3

o Starts with almost 10,000 items for children and adults!

o Held during library hours.

o Preview for members of the Friends of the Library, April 28 at 7 p.m.

o Join the Friends and attend the preview sale. Modest fee to join.

* Blooms at Blue Bell Gardening Series

o May 11 at 1 p.m.  Summer Bulbs by PA Horticultural Society

* Knitting group Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Work on your project or observe and learn. The groups continue year-round in the community room.

* Socrates Cafe discussion group every Monday at 7 p.m. You pick the topic to discuss each week. No sign-up, nothing to read.

* Bridge every Friday at 12:30 p.m. New players welcome.

* Mah Jong every Wednesday at 1 p.m. New players welcome.

*Chess every Wednesday at 7p.m. for adults and teens 14 and older.

* Movie Matinee showing recent releases every Thursday at 2 p.m. April 14: Maos Last Dancer; April 21: Welcome to the Rileys; April 28: Conviction; May 5: Inception; May 12: Inside Job; May 19 The Kings Speech; May 26 The Fighter; June 2 Rabbit Hole; June 9 Black Swan; June 16 127 Hours

* Ongoing like-new, year-round book sale for adults & children during library hours

* Library opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday!

Ambler Library, a branch of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 209 Race St., 215-646-1072. www.wvpl.org. All the following events occur at the Ambler Library.

* Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian.

* Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages.

* For adults:

* Beading Group meets the first and third Monday of every month at 1 p.m. Work on your own projects or come to watch and learn.

* Free Family History Lookup with Connie Briggs. Email Connie for an appointment at the Ambler Library. conniebriggs@comcast.net

* Special Events:

* April 14 at 1:30 p.m.  Book Group discusses Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian.

* April 19 at 7 p.m.  Travel to Paris with world traveler Harry Balin. Tea and scones at 6:30 p.m.

* April 21 at 7 p.m.  Art with Sara for children in fourth through seventh grades.

*May 2 at 6:30 p.m.  Discuss the movie Lone Star with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time.

*May 10  Robert Capucci discusses Art into Fashion. Tea and scones served at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m.

*May 12 at 1:30p.m.  Book Group discusses The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.

*May 17  Tour the gardens of Devon and Southwest England with Lois McMullen. Tea and Scones at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m.

*June 13 at 6:30 p.m.  Discuss the movie Blade Runner with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time.

Meetings and Lectures

The Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group will meet in the Church on the Mall in the Plymouth Meeting Mall April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Kathy Sacket Young, director/trainer with the North Penn YMCA, will speak on Keeping Fit in Retirement. For more information, contact Membership Committee Chairperson Jerry Feldscher at 610-275-3538 or President Al Rollin at 215-368-4833.

The next FWBA meeting will be April 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Networking begins at 11:30 a.m.; meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Leon Singletary, Principal, First Contact HR and FWBA Executive Board, will present: Social Media: How to Use It To Get More Business. Lunch is provided courtesy of the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Members are welcome to bring a guest. An RSVP is requested by return email or 215-628-0313.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA is hosting a information sessions over the next few weeks on how to become a Big Brother. The information sessions will take place: April 16 at noon, April 19 at 8 a.m. and April 28 at 6 p.m. All sessions will be held at the groups Norristown Office,t 530 DeKalb St., Norristown. For more information, call 610-277-2200.

The North Penn Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) normally meets on the third Tuesday of each month from now until May. Meetings are held at the William Penn Inn on Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd, PA. Social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner is served at 6:30 p.m., and the technical program begins at 7 p.m. Cost with reservation is $28 for members. Members without reservations and guests pay $30. Students with reservations pay $15. Reservations may be made by noon on the Monday preceding the meeting by phoning 215-371-1854 or emailing the reservation to northpennima@yahoo.com northpennima@yahoo.com. Information about the North Penn Chapter is available at http://northpenn.imanet.org/.

LeTip, a professional organization of men and women who are dedicated to the highest standards of competence and service meets every Tuesday at Cedar Brook Country Club, 180 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell at 7 a.m. -meeting officially starts at 7:16 a.m. and ends at 8:31 a.m. Our purpose is the exchange of business tips, leads, and referrals. Each business category is represented by one member and conflicts of interest are disallowed. Guests are welcome to visit any of our breakfast meetings.

Every third Thursday of month, Sunrise Assisted Living of Blue Bell (795 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, 215-619-2777) serves as a satellite site to 148th Legislative district PA congressman Mike Gerber from 10 a.m. to noon. Stop by for help needed with things such as disability placards and license plates, vehicle registration, utilities issues, birth/death certificates,property tax/rent rebates, etc. Notary services arranged by appointment.

The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is an action-oriented organization dedicated to promoting its members and the economic health of eastern Montgomery county. The Chamber is committed to serving as a catalyst by uniting business, community agencies, government and education to make our county a great place to live and work. For information, call 215-887-5122 or visit www.emccc.org.

Do you have a fear of public speaking? Blue Bell Toastmasters Club can help. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesday at the Marriott Courtyard, located on Route 202, directly across from the Montgomeryville Mall. Learn how to improve communication and leadership skills in a friendly and supportive environment. Guests are welcome. Admission fee: $5. For more info, visit www.bbtoast.org.

The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will hold the following meetings (for reservations to any of the following, email info@PennSuburban.org)

-Breakfast News Network, 7:30-8:45 a.m. at Normandy Farm Hotel (1401 Morris Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422) $15 members, includes full buffet breakfast. Join us for a networking program at Normandy Farm Hotel every Thursday morning for breakfast, business news, informative speakers, and plenty of networking. The cost includes a full breakfast buffet. Copies of the business cards will be made available to those who would like them.

The BNI, Fort Washington Chapter meets every Monday at The Hilton Garden Inn, 520 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Washington for a networking meeting. Meetings are from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Visitors are welcome. The only cost to attend is the cost of your meal. For information or a reservation to attend, please call Luanne Cram at 215-947-7784, or visit our Internet site at: http://www.BNIDVR.Com and click on the menu item Find a Chapter.

For the past seven years, people have enjoyed participating in WVWAs Adopt-a-Tree program. Individuals can support the Association in its reforestation efforts by purchasing native trees to be planted. Supporters can plant their adopted tree or have WVWA volunteers will plant it. Trees cost $30 each. If you would like to volunteer or purchase a tree(s), please contact: Bob Adams at Bob@wvwa.org or call: 215-646-8866 for more information. Check www.WVWA.org for directions and maps.

Sustainable Upper Dublin, http://sustainableupperdublin.org, meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., at the Upper Dublin Township Building, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington, PA 19034. Please send any questions to suec@sustainableupperdublin.org or call 610-996-6316. To learn more about Sustainable Upper Dublin, view or join the discussion at http://googlegroups.com/group/sustainableupperdublin.

Special Events

The Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard will hold its first nutrition class April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Community Cupboard, 150 N. Main St., Ambler. Lynne Sinclair, a nutritionist from Abington Memorial Hospital specializing in diabetic nutrition, will conduct the class. Topics will include healthy eating, beneficial foods, recipes, making meals with every day foods, and how to use unfamiliar produce. A healthy snack will be provided.The class is is open to all residents in Montgomery County.

The Historical Society of Fort Washington presents The History of Conshohocken April 19 at 8 p.m. at the Clifton House, 473 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington. Jack Coll will present an illustrated program on the history of the Borough of Conshohocken. Coll is a longtime resident of Conshohocken and a member of the Conshohocken Historical Society. He is co-author with his son, Brian, of the Arcadia Then and Now Series book Conshohocken. He has also done books Conshohocken and West Conshohocken Sports and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Italian Feast. He has taken many photos for the Conshohocken Record and the Norristown Times Herald. This program is free. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 215-646-6065.

Taste of the White House Soiree featuring former White House Chef Walter Scheib will take place April 29 at 6 p.m. at Manufacturers Golf & Country Club in Fort Washington to celebrate HealthLinks 10th anniversary and honor its founders, the Eugene Jackson Family. The evening will heat up with a Chef Meet & Greet, followed by a specially selected presidential menu. Gala tickets are $150 per person. Proceeds benefit HealthLink, a free clinic providing compassionate, quality medical and dental care to uninsured, working adults in Bucks and Montgomery counties who fall in between the health care cracks. Go to http://tasteofthewhitehouse.charityhappenings.org to make reservations online or lend support through sponsorship. For event information, call 267-699-0124 or email jmarushak@healthlinkmedical.org.

The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association will hold an open house at the Evans-Mumbower Mill April 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Mill is at the corner of Swedesford and Township Line Roads in Upper Gwynedd. The open house is free but donations are welcome. For more information, call 215-646-8866 o email info@wvwa.org.

The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce will host Breakfast With Your County Commissioners and State Representatives April 21 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Fort Washington, 432 W. Pennasylvania Ave. Commissioners: James R. Matthews (Chairman), Joseph M. Hoeffel (Vice Chair), State Representatives: Todd Stephens (District 151) and Josh Shapiro (District 153). Register onlineat www.emccc.org. $10 for EMCCC member; $20 for non-members.

Upper Dublins Districtwide Allied Art Show will be held April 27 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in the Upper Dublin High School Athletic Complex.

The Rev. Alfred Muli, chaplain at Fort Washington Estates, will be the featured speaker at the Kiwanis sponsored breakfast observing the National Day of Prayer May 5 at 7 a.m. at the William Penn Inn. The breakfast is open to the public ($15). Reservations can be made by calling 215-646-4356 or by emailing georgesaurman@Juno.com.

The Upper Dublin Shade Tree Commission invites people to participate in its spring bare root planting events, sponsored in part by Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Friends of Robbins Park. On April 9, zix trees will be planted at the Evelyn B. Wright Park & Community Pool, 401 Logan Ave., North Hills, at 9 a.m., followed by the planting of 10 trees at Sheeleigh Park, Loch Alsh Avenue and Douglas Street, Ambler, at 10:15 a.m. On April 29, students from Upper Dublin High School will join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to plant 16 trees in Robbins Park, Butler Pike and Meetinghouse Road, Ambler, to help launch the societys Million Trees campaign. This event will occur in conjunction with Temple Amblers EarthFest. Experienced tree-tenders are sought to assist the students. For more information,contact Ron Ayres at 215-653-0421 or 215-483-4348.

The Friends of the Wissahickon and the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association are teaming up once again to clean the Wissahickon Creek from top to bottom April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon. This spring marks the 41st anniversary of Wissahickon Valley Watershed Associations annual Creek Clean Up, and the second year that FOW has teamed up with WVWA. Volunteers of all ages will clean the creek, the surrounding trails and the many tributaries of the Wissahickon Creek. Armed with bags, volunteers will be assigned to sections of the creek. Following the clean up, all volunteers are invited to WVWAs Talkin Trash picnic in Fort Washington State Park, with food provided by Whole Foods Market of North Wales. The pavilion is located on Mill Road in Flourtown. To help out in Montgomery County, all volunteers must be pre-assigned a section of the Wissahickon Creek to clean. Please contact Bob Adams, WVWA director of stewardship, at 215-646-8866 ext. 14 or bob@wvwa.org. To work with the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, meet at the pavilion along Forbidden Drive, a short distance south of the intersection of Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Limited parking is available along Northwestern Avenue and other nearby streets. Volunteers are encouraged to bike or carpool to the event. To participate, register at www.fow.org. Contact Kevin Groves with questions at 215-247-0417 ext. 105 or groves@fow.org.

Montgomery County Community Colleges International Club invites the community to the second annual International Festival April 20 from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The rain date is April 26. The International Club will transform the outside quad area into multicultural celebration with various performances by dancers, singers and musicians. Artists will share their artwork at various display tables. Activities include games, raffles, Easter egg decorating and henna tattoos. Students will have samples of international cuisine at tables representing different countries and will serve food from various local ethnic restaurants. Throughout the evening, volunteers will accept donations and will raffle gift baskets and prizes to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. Donations of food, international clothes and prizes are needed. Volunteers, including artists and performers, are welcome. For more information or to sponsor an activity, contact Gillian Nel, International Club president, at gnel9277@students.mc3.edu or 267-974-0163.

The Arts and Humanities Division at Montgomery County Community College is partnering with the Philadelphia Writers Conference to host Memoirs Matter: How Life Stories (Including Yours) Can Transform Your Relationship to Literature April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Advanced Technology Center room 101, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The event is free and open to the public. In the first part of this two-hour seminar, professor and author Robert Waxler will explain how writing his two memoirs affected his life as well as his relationship to literature. In the second part, blogger and workshop leader Jerry Waxler will present a sequence of steps to help writers find their own story. For information, contact Dana Resente at dresente@mc3.edu.

The Maple Glen Garden Club will hold its fourth annual Plant Sale on May 7 from 8 to 11 a.m. Perennials, shrubs, vegetables and native plants grown by the club members will be sold. The club uses the plant sale proceeds to fund community projects, a college scholarship and community plantings. The sale will be held in the 500 block of Coach Road, Horsham, as part of a neighborhood garage sale. Plants will be sold at bargain prices. For more information, email MapleGlenGardenClub@gmail.com.

The Relay for Life Craft Show is looking for local crafters to participate in show, which will be May 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Wissahickon High School track, 521 Houston Road, Ambler. There is a $10 entry fee, and 20 percent of sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. Participants will receive a 6-foot table under a tent. For information, contact Joanne at joannescoles@comcast.net or Mindy at mcamsilver@comcast.net.

Spring House Estates is hosting its annual book fair on April 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. and April 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included will be hardback and paperback used books. Spring House Estates is located at 728 Norristown Road, Lower Gwynedd.

The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will present the Penn Suburban/Hatfield Joint Business Card Exchange April 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Univest Bank Lansdale Area Financial Service Center, 120 Forty Foot Road, Hatfield. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. Join Univest National Bank and Trust Co. for a spring-inspired Business Card Exchange at its newest office in the Hatfield Pointe Shopping Center. Come out and meet members of Univests executive management team while enjoying fine food and beverages.

13th Annual Community Reading Day Kick-off Breakfast Get Together April 26 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the North Wales Area Library, 233 Swartley St., North Wales. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. For more information, contact the chamber office at 215-362-9200 or info@pennsuburban.org. Join presenting sponsor Verizon, chamber staff and fellow members for the Community Reading Day volunteer get together. The Community Reading Day program allows volunteers to read a designated book to second-grade students throughout 38 area public and private schools and present the book as a gift to each class. Even if you are not a volunteer, you are cordially invited to stop by to network, enjoy coffee and pastries.

Ambler Mennonite Church is hosting a Spring Craft Show and Flea Market May 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rain date will be May 28. The community is invited to shop the great craft booths, find some gifts and deals, as well as enjoy home baked goods and tasty lunch specials. Childrens activities are planned. All vendors are encouraged to contact the church at 215-643-4876 or AmblerMennonite@verizon.net. Advertising, signage, customer parking and a shuttle to auxiliary parking at nearby lots for vendors will be provided. 10 foot by 10 foot spaces can be rented for $5 each and tables for an additional $5 each. All proceeds from space and table rentals go toward school kits for children around the world. The church is located at the corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and North Spring Garden Street, Ambler.

The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association presents The Life & Times of Aquatic Insects in the Wissahickon Creek April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Join WVWA for a hands-on program. RSVP required: www.wvwa.org or 215-646-8866. WVWA member fee: $5 per person / $15 per family. Non-WVWA member fee: $10 per person / $20 per family.

The photography exhibition Natures Palette by photo-artist Judy Miller will run March 18 to May 19 at the Art in the Storefront gallery, 41 E. Butler Pike, Ambler.

JPRN  Networking For People in Transition & People Who Can Help Them  Unemployment remains high. JPRN, the Jarrettown Professional Relationship Network can help. Are you trying to network your way to a new job? Do you have expertise or contacts that can help people in transition? Is your company or organization looking for people in the area? This is a free outreach program to support those seeking work, involve people with contacts and networking know how, and involve local companies. Meetings held monthly at Jarrettown United Methodist Church, Limekiln Pike.

Pennsylvanias Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) grant program is now open for the 2010-11 heating season. Grants are based on income, family size, type of heating fuel and region. Additional information, such as specific income limits, and applications for LIHEAP grants are available online via the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Access to Social Services (COMPASS) website at www.compass.state.pa.us. Applications are available at most public officals district offices, county assistance offices, local utility companies and community service agencies, such as Area Agencies on Aging or community action agencies.

Begin your holiday shopping at Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation! Entertainment books for 2011, Philadelphia North, are now on sale at $30 each. Regal/United Artists movie tickets are on sale for just $7.50 each, and tickets to the Adventure Aquarium, Baltimore Aquarium, and the Philadelphia Zoo are also available. Discounted ski vouchers to area mountains will be arriving in December; call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

RSVP of Montgomery County and the Wissahickon Valley Public Library have partnered again to offer the public their popular free mock interview sessions. The mock interviews are conducted by RSVP volunteers who are retired professionals, some of whom were in hiring positions themselves. Packets of information which include a sample employment application and interviewing tips with mock interview questions are available at the library to pick up prior to a scheduled mock interview or will be sent via email once the interview is scheduled. To schedule your interview, please contact Janis Glusman at RSVP 610-834-1040, ext. 16. The library is also offering a free resume review service. Bring in your current resume and the professional reference staff will assist you with hints and tips on capturing your work history accurately.

Registration for Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation summer playgrounds, Camp B.I.G. and Small Folks, X-Zone, and sports camps has began. Register online at www.upperdublin.net/store, or at the UDP&R office, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington. Call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information.

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Danielles Espresso Cafe presents Mornings at Mondaug Bark Park April 16 and May 21 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Meet fellow dog lovers. These events include complimentary coffee, treats for people and pups and raffles/giveaways.

Upper Dublins Annual Spring Flea Market will be held June 4 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reserve a table, or come and shop. Tables are $15 for UD residents, $20 for non-residents. This successful event occurs rain or shine. Refreshments available. Call 215-643-1600 ext. 3443 to register for a table.

Regal movie tickets available for purchase at Upper Dublin Township Parks & Recreation. Reduced rate: $7.50 per ticket. Some restrictions apply. Call 215-643-1600 x3443.

Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation movie tickets $7.50 Regal Cinemas, United Artist & Edwards Cinemas on sale throughout the year Monday  Friday from 9 a.m.  4 p.m.

Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation Camp Sign-ups for Stony Creek Day Camp  Stony Creek Tracers and Park n Tots. Register on-line at www.whitpaintownship.org OrCome to Township Building with check or Visa MasterCard Monday  Friday from 9 a.m.  4 p.m. For additional information call 610.277-2400 ext. 374

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation offers exciting new programs for the fall:

-Returning favorites include UK Elite Petite Soccer, Tiny Dancers, Kiddie Tennis, Fun-nastics, Messy Playtime, Little Chefs, and more. Babysitters Training will be offered in November and December. Continuing Adult Fitness Classes include Cardio Circuit, Core & More, Yoga, Boxing, and Adult G.Y.M. For more information call 215-643-1600 x3443. Register for programs online at www.upperdublin.net/store.

Music and Theater

The community is invited to a Cantors Concert April 16 at 8 p.m. Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen. Listen and hum-along to the Yiddish, pop tunes and classical music performed by Congregation Beth Ors own Cantor David Green and his special guest, Cantor Irvin Bell, from Temple Beth Israel in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The cantors will be accompanied by Mark Sobol and his Klezmer musicians. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. RSVP with payment to Barb Murtha, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA 19002, or call 215-646-5806 ext. 220.

Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse will host the Jameson Sisters May 14. Doors open at 7:30 pm, performance at 8:00 pm. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse is located at the corner of Rte. 202 & Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd. $5 suggested donation. Light refreshment available at a modest cost. For further information, call 215-393-9576 or visit gwyneddmeeting.org/coffeehouse.html.

Celebrate patriotism through song with Gwynedd-Mercy Colleges choir, the Voices of Gwynedd, as it presents Hear America Singing April 15 at 8 p.m. The choir will perform song selections from all over the country, including Georgia on My Mind, New York State of Mind, and a medley including Philadelphia Freedom and Allentown. The performance will end with When the Saints Go Marching In to acknowledge the choirs upcoming tour in New Orleans. Hear America Singing will take place in the Julia Ball Auditorium, located in St. Bernard Hall. Parking is available in lots A, C and D. Admission is free.

The Choristers will present Anton Dvoraks Stabat Mater April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler. The choir will be accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens, $10 for students and children are free. Tickets will be sold in advance or at the door. For more information, call 215-542-7871 or visit TheChoristers.org

Religious News

The Staircase Gallery at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington will feature the work of Emily Ennuat-Lustine. The artist will be showing paintings and graphics inspired by her own personal spiritual journey and quest for meaning. Some of the works to be shown have been inspired by Biblical Psalms and writings. Her work has been shown at Abington Art Center, Cheltenham Arts Center and Old City Gallery of Jewish Art among others. The exhibition is open Friday evenings starting Feb. 18 after Shabbat services. Gallery hours are: Mondays through Thursdays 10-4:30, Fridays 10-3 and following Shabbat Services and Sundays 10-1. The synagogue is located at 190 Camp Hill Road in Fort Washington. For additional information contact the synagogue office at 215-283-0276.

Reunions

St. Matthews High School Conshohocken Class of 1961 is looking for classmates. For details, contact Greg Marincola at 215-646-2239, 215-740-1296 or gregcola@comcast.net.

Olney High School Class of 1971 is Lloking for classmates for a 40th reunion Oct. 28. For details, contact Judy at ohsclassof71@yahoo.com or 215-870-7572.

Abington High School Class of 1961 is seeking classmates for a 50-year reunion to be held Oct. 14-15, 2011.Visit the website, www.abington61.com, for details or call 215-947-1779.

Overbrook High School class of January 1956 is having a 55 year reunion on May 22, 2011 at the Bala Golf Club in Philadelphia. For information please contact overbrookreunion56@comcast.net

Germantown High School Class Of January 1961 is looking for classmates for 50th year reunion to take place in May of 2011. Please contact: 215-362-9148, 856-577-0659 or samdelcomo@comcast.net

The June 1961 class of Germantown High School is holding their 50th reunion on May 15, which will be a brunch. For further details please contact Linda Dorfman Alten at lindaalten@yahoo.com or call 215-441-8411.

Support

New Life Presbyterian Church in Dresher, will host GriefShare, a special seminar and support group which will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., from March 7 through June 6. At each meeting there will be a DVD about the grief process, discussion and reference to a grief workbook. Preregistration is required to secure a place in the group and to purchase a GriefShare notebook (for a one-time fee of $15). The notebook goes along with the 13-week schedule covering such topics as: living with grief, the effects of grief, and stuck in grief. For more information or to register, call: Sandy Elder at 215-884-5149.

PUPS (People Understanding Parkinsons) A self-help group for those adjusting to a new diagnosis or dealing with the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. Meets fourth Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at Abington Health Center, Schilling Campus, Willowood Building, 2510 Maryland Road, Suite 251, Willow Grove. For more information or to RSVP, contact Lorna at 215-542-2931.

The North Penn Visiting Nurse Associations Meals on Wheels program is looking for volunteers to pack or deliver meals to the elderly and infirmed. Meals are packed and delivered mornings, Monday through Friday. You can volunteer for as many days per week or month as you would like. Packaging meals requires approximately 2-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves making sandwiches, packaging food into individual serving containers and packing coolers with the meals. Delivering meals requires approximately 1-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves loading coolers into your car and delivering a route of approximately 10 to 15 stops. The Meals on Wheels program is also in need of emergency, winter-weather volunteers to pack and deliver meals in bad weather. North Penn VNA is located at 51 Medical Campus Drive in Lansdale and delivers meals in the Lansdale, North Wales and Blue Bell areas. For more information or to volunteer, please call Bridget, North Penn VNA Meals on Wheels coordinator at 215-855-8296.

Elkins Park Area CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) meets the first Tuesday of every month, 7- 8:30 p.m., at Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital in Elkins Park. For information on CHADD or ADHD, please see our website www.chadd.net/249 or call Claire Noyes at: 215-779-6656.

Center for Loss and Bereavement, 3847 Skippack Pike, Skippack (610-222-4110) www.bereavementcenter.org Offers professional counseling for individuals, couples, children and families dealing with issues of loss and bereavement. Six-week adult support groups: Newly forming young adult grief support group  every other Wednesday, 7  8:15 p.m. (free of charge); Monthly loss of child support  second Mondays, 7-8:15 p.m.; Six-week young loss of spouse/partner  Thursdays, 10-11:15 a.m.; Other groups scheduled as interest is shown for suicide loss support, adult loss of parent, motherless daughters, adult loss of sibling, coping with chronic illness and disability and mens loss of spouse. Nellos Corner Family Bereavement program offers peer grief support groups for ages 4 through teen and their caregivers  Every other Tuesday or Wednesday (free of charge) Local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children also meets at the Center. Registration required. Call for further information.

CHADD is a national organization for children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, providing education, advocacy and support for individuals and their families with AD/HD. Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital, 60 Township Line Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027, will host children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder on the First Tuesday of each month 7  8:30 p.m. Free, no childcare provided.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Kehillah of Old York Road is sponsoring a free Caregiver Support Group for individuals who care for an elderly person with cognitive and/or physical impairments. The group meets at SarahCare Adult Day Care Center, 101 Washington Lane, Suite G-6, Jenkintown, Pa., on the first Wednesday of each month. Patty Rich,
Care and Share donates to Shop with a Cop
Europe and China can and should work together to enhance connectivity between Asia and Europe. Implementing BRI and connectivity therefore requires Asia-Europe cooperation.

Aerial photo taken on Feb. 1, 2019 shows the container terminal of Port of Lianyungang. Photo: Peoples Daily

The story of the Silk Road has intrigued me since childhood. The magic of faraway lands, traders bringing soft silk and exotic spices to countries across the long and winding road, the thrill of cultures and peoples meeting each other across the centuries.

Through the years it has been fascinating to see how different countries have tried to resurrect that dream of an inter-connected Eurasia, with varying degrees of success. The Chinese version of the ancient Silk Road, spanning many nations, regions and peoples, is gaining traction across the world.

That's a good thing. The world needs more investments in infrastructure and connectivity to boost growth and development. However, to succeed and live up to its potential, today's new Silk Road requires a collaborative effort.

By the time Beijing hosted the BRI Forum in July 2017, knowledge of the Chinese initiative had increased. The turnout of heads of state and government, foreign ministers, business leaders and academics was impressive. The focus was on how to make the blueprint work - and how BRI was going to improve global connectivity.

Two years on, and it's clear that many countries are actively engaged in BRI and that there is no dearth of projects eligible for BRI funding.

Here in Europe, EU reaction has gone through different phases, starting off with confusion and caution. Recently, the EU has stated that there could be some form of cooperation - provided certain key principles are respected by all those involved in the projects.

Such synergies are discussed within the context of the EU-China Connectivity Platform. European businesses, regions and academics are spending more time, effort and energy in trying to understand the various facets of the BRI.

The first freight train from Fuzhou to Hamburg starts from Fuzhou North railway station, central China's Jiangxi Province, Aug. 16, 2018. Photo: Peoples Daily

Our first discussion on BRI was in China in 2014 at a round-table attended by leading Chinese and European scholars. The discussion was quite basic: we were all interested but had many questions.

Since then, the topic has been discussed in all our EU-China meetings. We recognize that while the focus of international discussions is on infrastructure, BRI is also about transport, energy, digital economy and people-to-people contacts.

The new EU connectivity strategy was unveiled in autumn last year and we believe that China and the EU can work together in connectivity and develop the common standards for connectivity projects.

We think that efforts should be made to multilateralize ongoing national and regional discussions on connectivity. Europe and China can and should work together to enhance sustainable connectivity between Asia and Europe. No country or organization can undertake such an immense challenge on its own.

(Shada Islam is Director of Europe and Geopolitics at Friends of Europe)
China completed its 3rd UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process on March 15. Le Yucheng, head of the Chinese delegation, described the process as smooth and successful.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng takes questions from the media after the adoption of the 3rd UPR Outcome Report on China by the UNHRC on Mar. 15, 2019. (Photo/Official website of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Le, who is also the Chinese vice Foreign Minister, delivered a keynote speech titled Meeting People's Aspiration for a Better Life through Continued Progress on Human Rights in China at the conference.

In the speech, Le elaborated on the profound concern for human rights in the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era while presenting Chinas achievements in promoting human rights since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.

He noted that the key to Chinas great transformation and the historic progress which were never seen before in the countrys human rights development since the founding of the PRC is Chinas strong commitment to socialism with Chinese characteristics and to the path of human rights development with Chinese characteristics, one that takes the national conditions as the foundation, the people as the center, development as the priority, the rule of law as the criterion and openness as the driving force.

We are happy to accept all recommendations that are consistent with Chinas conditions and conducive to our human rights development, Le said in the speech, announcing that China has decided to accept the 284 recommendations raised by various parties.

Both the number and proportion (82 percent) of recommendations accepted by China were among the highest in major countries, according to Le, who also responded to issues concerned by various parties in his keynote speech, including issues relating to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Delegates of countries including Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan and the Philippines spoke at the conference, making positive comments on Chinas accomplishments in human rights development and praising the country for taking part in the UPR in an open, confident, and honest manner.

China is welcome to give earnest and responsible feedback on the recommendations put forward by various parties, said the foreign delegates, expressing their support to the UN Human Rights Council in adopting the 3rd UPR Outcome Report on China.

In his remarks, Le refuted sternly the recent accusations made by some countries and non-governmental organizations against the vocational education and training centers in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, saying the accusations were groundless.

China firmly opposes any acts of interfering in the countrys internal affairs and damaging the nations sovereignty and territorial integrity under the disguise of human rights, stressed Le, who reiterated Chinas great determination to adhere to the path of human rights development with Chinese characteristics, and to protect and promote human rights.

At the end of the conference, warm applause filled the venue, while delegates of many countries congratulated the Chinese delegation on the formal adoption of the 3rd UPR Outcome Report on China.

The final report on Chinas 3rd UPR was adopted and widely recognized by the UN Human Rights Council, according to Le. Wide recognitions of Chinas achievements in human rights development, Chinas path of human rights development, and Chinas determination to promote human rights were witnessed at the conference, expressed Le.

Delegates of northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, southwest Chinas Tibet Autonomous Region, Chinas Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and Macao SAR were present at the conference.

The conference was chaired by Coly Seck, President of the UN Human Rights Council and Permanent Representative of Senegal to the UN Office at Geneva. Yu Jianhua, Permanent Representative of China to the UN Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Switzerland attended the conference.

Representatives of relevant Chinese government agencies including the Office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Leading Group for Reform of the Judicial System and the United Front Work Department of CPC Central Committee were also present at the conference.
Cint Names New Chief Financial Officer

In Stockholm, Sweden, panel exchange and management firm Cint has appointed Lottie Saks as Chief Financial Officer, replacing Dag Magni who has moved into the position of Senior Advisor for the firm.



Saks (pictured) joins with more than 25 years' financial management experience in healthcare, medical and fintech. Most recently, she worked for healthcare consultancy OneMed Group as CFO, having previously held the same job title at IoT company Telenor Connexion and healthcare provider Capio. Earlier, she served as Finance Director at Johnson & Johnson.



In her new role, Saks is responsible for financial projections, growth preparations and advancing the financial growth of the company; helping Cint continue to grow into new geographies and industries. Magni, whom she replaces, had held the role since 2016.



CEO Tom Buehlmann comments: 'Lottie's experience with global organizations and transformational brands is integral to Cint's next phase of growth'.



Web site: www.cint.com .




South Africa: President calls on responsible campaigning ahead of general elections

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on public representatives to campaign in a responsible manner as the country gets ready to hold its national and provincial elections in May.

He said this when he, together with the presiding offers of Parliament, unveiled the inscriptions depicting the values of the Constitution at both the houses of Parliament on Tuesday.

As we hold our 6th democratic elections, let us do everything within our power to ensure that the will of the people prevails, and  beyond the election  to ensure that the process of governance is defined by openness, transparency and accountability.

I call on all of us as leaders and representatives of our people  as we embark on elections work and campaign for our different parties  to continue to observe these values and do or say nothing that will cause disunity among South Africans.

Let us all campaign responsibly and do our part to ensure free, fair and credible elections, he said.

The constitutional values and what they mean

The President said citizens, and their representatives, who pass through the doors of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces, will be reminded of the fundamental principles upon which society is founded.

Freedom and democracy, equality and diversity, unity and reconciliation are among several values that were written in bold letters on the steps of the National Council of Provinces as the President unveiled them just after midday.

He said that each one of us will need to reflect on whether, through their daily actions, they advance or betray the cause of freedom and democracy.

He said public representatives need to ask themselves whether they contribute, in their own way, to forging a society characterised by equality and diversity, unity and reconciliation.

Are we building institutions that promote openness and participation, oversight and accountability?

Are we pursuing a national programme that advances reconstruction and development?

These are the principles for which many in our country fought and for which many lost their lives.

The values that underwrite these inscriptions are reflected in the Freedom Charter, adopted in Kliptown in 1955, he said.

The President said the values contained in the inscriptions have universal appeal in that they are consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and find resonance with the rest of progressive humanity.

These principles therefore not only bind us together as a nation, but they bind us to the peoples of the world.

It is significant that these principles are being inscribed on the steps of Parliament as we celebrate 25 years of a free and democratic South Africa.

The values contained in the inscriptions were best embodied by former President Nelson Mandela and struggle icon Mama Albertina Sisulu, and they did so with consistency and integrity, said the President.

They were fearless champions of equality, understanding that South Africa would never be free until the rights, opportunities and material conditions of its people would no longer be determined by their race.

They understood the other ways in which inequality was manifested.

How Parliament has fared, affirmed democratic values

Earlier, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete said Parliament has, since the advent of democracy, made defining decisions.

This includes the passing of about 2 000 bills as part of building a new nation from the ashes of apartheid, to passing budgets worth trillions of rands that have shifted human development  from increased life expectancy, improved access to education and tripling higher education enrolments, to millions benefiting from housing, access to electricity, water and literacy programmes.

Parliaments lows were reflected on. A lot of introspection was done. Parliamentary inquiries into incidents of State capture, corruption and serious maladministration were exposed.

Parliament held public processes towards appointments to State institutions such as the NYDA, the Public Protector and the SABC Board, to mention but a few, Mbete said.

She said Parliament has sharpened its oversight, including playing a key role in section 100 interventions.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Chinas top legislature on March 15 passed a highly anticipated new foreign investment law, paving the way for an overhaul of the countrys regulatory system for foreign investment that would offer investors greater access and better protection.

The 13th National Peoples Congress (NPC) voted to adopt the draft foreign investment law, in one of the most important legislative achievements from this years NPC annual session, which concluded on March 15.

On the afternoon of March 10, the Shanghai delegation held a group meeting to review the draft foreign investment law during the two sessions. (Photo: Peoples Daily Online)

Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a presidential decree to promulgate the law.

The new law would replace three existing laws on various types of foreign investment and become the first unified legal standard for foreign investment activities in the country.

The law enjoyed overwhelming support at the NPC, with 2,929 deputies voting for the passage of the law, eight against and eight abstentions. The law will come into effect on 1 January 2020.

After deliberation on the draft law, lawmakers made seven amendments, including adding a clause to prohibit administrative agencies and their employees from revealing commercial secretes, according to the Beijing News.

The amendments also included stronger language on protecting foreign firms intellectual property rights (IPR), replacing a phrase about encouraging technology cooperation based on a volunteering principle and commercial rules, with one about taking strict legal actions against IPR infringement.

Consisting of 41 articles in 6 different parts, the law provides legal basis for various aspects of foreign investments from classification to management. Overall the law offers foreign investors equal treatment, greater access, and better legal protection.

[The law] provides more comprehensive and equal treatment to foreign companies and is very modernized and also fitting for our country's development, Wong Yuk-shan, an NPC deputy and president of the Opening University of Hong Kong who voted for the law, told the Global Times on March 15.

The law would improve the transparency in all aspects for foreign companies and will attract more [foreign investors] to China, said Ian Fok Chun-wan, an NPC deputy from Hong Kong and CEO of the Fok Ying Tung Group.

Actions to follow

That is expected to be followed by amended rules and regulations from the State Council, Chinas cabinet, for implementation of the new law, said Kong Qingjiang, vice dean of the School of International Law at China University of Political Science and Law.

It is basic, which means it is not very specific and would likely require the State Council to set whats known as the administrative regulations, he said.

The State Council will introduce a series of matching regulations and normative documents to protect foreign companies rights and interests under the new law, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said at a press conference on March 15, after the conclusion of the NPC session.

The State Council will release a shortened negative list for foreign investments, which means more sectors will be open to foreign companies, and propose revisions to laws governing IPR and set up a punitive mechanism to better protect foreign firms IPR.

In a word, China will further open up and Chinas opening-up measures will not come on one time basis but will be introduced over time, Li said.

Among the regulations, the State Council would likely draft new rules regarding the national security review of foreign investments and a negative list for foreign investors, Kong said.

On the afternoon of March 10, the Shanghai delegation held a group meeting to review the draft foreign investment law during the two sessions. (Photo: Peoples Daily Online)

The new changes made to the draft law also included a part that gives the State Council the power to draft specific rules for the implementation of the new law to ensure a proper transition period for foreign companies already operating in the country, according to the Beijing News.

But, Kong said, all the rules and regulations must be in line with the new law, which also underscored equal opportunity for foreign companies to government procurement and better services from all levels of governments to help foreign companies.

New amendments to the draft law further clarified those parts by adding services to government procurement of foreign goods, and adding streamlining administrative process and improving efficiency, to improve better services for foreign investors.
National

TDPs richest politician quits party; likely to join TRS

Hyderabad, Mar 19 (AGENCIES) | Publish Date: 3/19/2019 12:09:23 PM IST

Industrialist-turned-politician Nama Nageshwar Rao on Tuesday resigned from Telugu Desam Party. The former MP from Telangana and TDP politburo member is one of the richest politicians in the country with declared assets worth over Rs 113 crore.

Nageshwar Rao represented Khammam parliamentary constituency between 2009 and 2014. He had been associated with the TDP for the last 15 years and served as leader of TDP parliamentary party during his stint in Lok Sabha.

The former MP, who promoted Madhucon Projects Limited, a leading infrastructure company in the country, unsuccessfully contested the recent assembly elections in Telangana from Khammam assembly constituency and lost to Puvvada Ajay Kumar of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). Since then, Rao has been keeping away from the TDP activities and skipped the partys politburo meeting held at Amaravati on Sunday. On Monday evening, he met TRS president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao at the latters farm house in Erravelli in Siddipet district.

Nageshwar Rao is expected to join the TRS soon and is likely to be fielded as party candidate for the Lok Sabha elections from Khammam, in place of sitting MP Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy.

Interestingly, the Congress high command has also been trying to bring Rao into the party and reserved the party ticket for Khammam for him. However, the former MP is understood to have preferred TRS to Congress. During his stint as an MP from 2009 to 2014, Rao was one of the richest MPs in the country at the time. In 2014 general elections, he declared assets worth Rs 338 crore. In 2018 assembly elections, however, he declared assets worth Rs 113 crore.

Last week, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) authorities conducted raids on Raos Madhucon Projects on the charges of diversion of funds to the extent of Rs 264 crore in the construction of Ranchi-Rargoan-Jamshedpur four-lane national highway project (NH-33) worth Rs 1,151 crore.
On the worst days, no one expected to get through it alive. A despair set in among members of the battalion that the older ones, the veterans of two other wars, had never seen before. The bestselling book, "Dispatches," a 260-page memoir by war correspondent Michael Herr, includes this up-close perspective of the soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War.

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By Express News Service

CHENNAI: The Indian arm of Denmark-based pump manufacturer Grundfos is keen to expand its presence in Bangladesh and northeast regions in the next couple of years. We are focussing on investment opportunities in Bangladesh, said Ranganath N K, managing director, Grundfos India, adding that this plan would be its shortcut to foray into the bigger market in northeast.

Ruling out plans to set up production units in other states other than Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, he said, We already possess 15 acres of land near Chennai and may soon establish our second unit in Tamil Nadu. Currently, the firm has two production units, in Chennai and Ahmedabad, which make intelligent and energy-efficient pumps for domestic, commercial and industrial use.

Over the next three years, the Indian subsidiary of the company plans to invest about `125 crore, of which `20 crore has been set aside as capex for FY19, towards a preliminary study for the new plant, set up a core team and new products that focus on sustainability.

We are looking if we could embed sustainability into our business. We are still discussing. India and Africa are the areas we would like to experiment with because we feel that impact would be the highest (there), he added. While Chennai plant caters to the south, the Gujarat plant caters to business in the north and the west. Besides, components worth `30- 40 crore are exported to African nations from Gujarat.
By PTI

MUMBAI: With the clouds of uncertainty darkening over the survival of his 25-year-old airline, Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal Monday sought to reassure the 16,000-strong staff of the efforts to restore the "much-needed stability" in its operations at the earliest.

Since a larger number of it's over 100-fleet are grounded leading to drastically curtailed operations, the airline is struggling to prevent a nose-dive somehow.

Goyal, in a communication to employees Monday evening also said talks with the airline's strategic partner Etihad Airways and SBI-led lenders are going on.

The UAE carrier owns 24 per cent in the airline.

"Once again I assure you that I am personally committed to have the resolution process completed as soon as possible and restore the much-needed stability to our operations at the earliest," Goyal said in a letter to the staff who are apprehensive of their future with the airline.

ALSO READ: Have no money to pay interest to debenture-holders on Tuesday: Jet Airways

The airline is sitting on a debt pile of over Rs 8,200 crore and has defaulted thrice since January, including on some forex debt.

On 14 February, its board had approved a bank-led- resolution plan, whereby the SBI-consortium of lenders will become the largest shareholders in the airline and Goyal would exit the management as the chairman and board member.

If the resolution plans go through, banks would convert a part of their debt into 11.4 crore shares for a consideration of Re 1 as per the RBI norms.

Last week, SBI sounded hopeful of reaching an early solution by this week.

ALSO READ: Jet Airways grounds four more planes for non-payment of lease rentals

"I personally want you to know that the situation, though complex, has my personal non-stop attention towards an early resolution. The complexity of the process though has led to some delays and will require further time to conclude," he said without offering a timeline.

While discussions with the lessors continue, Goyal said as a responsible airline, Jet has "consciously" and "proactively" decided to curtail its schedule according to the number of aircraft it is currently operating.

"This will ensure the sanctity of our schedule while keeping the regulatory authorities briefed," he said.

For the past few weeks, its passengers have been venting their ire on social media as its flight cancellations have increased gradually due to a rising number of planes getting grounded.

On the non-payment of salaries to pilots along with senior management and engineers, Goyal said he is fully committed to ensure that their dues are cleared on priority once all parties sign on the resolution plan.

The pilots with other senior staff are to get their full salaries of January and February besides 87.5 per cent of the December pay.
Arshad Khan By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The woes for crisis-hit Jet Airways are far from over. While the airline has already grounded two-third of its fleet cancelling hundreds of flights every day, a trade union has given it an ultimatum to come up with a rescue plan by March 31. The pilots of Jet Airways have threatened to stop flying from April 1, if the airline fails to clear their dues.

In a meeting held on Tuesday between the airline executives and aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Jet informed DGCA, current availability of aircraft in the fleet for operation is 41 and accordingly, a schedule for 603 domestic flights and 382 international flights has been drawn.Aviation minister Suresh Prabhu had directed DGCA officials to review the grounding of planes by Jet Airways, advance bookings, cancellations, refund and safety issues.

Earlier, in a letter to the DGCA, the Jet Airways aircraft maintenance engineers association wrote that it has been arduous to meet financial requirements, which has adversely affected the psychological condition of Aircraft Engineers and therefore the safety of public transport airplanes being flown by Jet Airways across India and the world is at risk.

Jet in a statement said that its planes are safe to fly and are being maintained at the highest level of safety.

Prabhu has also directed DGCA to maintain airworthiness of aircraft being used and avoid last minute cancellations or change in the schedule in order to minimise passenger inconvenience.On Tuesday, the airline said it has grounded six more planes due to non-payment of lease rentals. On Monday, the airline said that an additional six aircraft (include one of Jet Lite) have been grounded.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: With Larsen & Toubro (L&T) in the final stages of acquiring a 20.4 per cent stake in IT firm Mindtree from Cafe Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha, the company is all set to witness a boardroom battle for control. Reports note that once L&T completes the acquisition of Siddharthas shares, it may look at acquiring a controlling stake in Mindtree through an open offer. L&T already has two publicly listed IT firms under its umbrella  Larsen and Toubro Infotech (LTI) and L&T Technology Services (LTTS). L&T might be looking to merge Mindtree, if it succeeds in acquiring the firm with LTI.

Meanwhile, Mindtrees promoters and co-founders have scrambled to stave off the hostile takeover. The four remaining founders  Subroto Bagchi, N S Parthasarathy, Krishnakumar Natarajan, and Rostow Ravanan  own about 13.3 per cent stake in the company. Mindtree was co-founded by a team of nine members who left Wipro. Siddhartha, who left the board of Mindtree, last year was trying to monetise his holdings in the firm to reduce CCDs debt.

On Sunday, Bagchi quit his job as the head of Odishas Skill Development Authority to return to Bengaluru, saying the imminent threat of a hostile takeover... has made me resign from the government to able to go, save the company. I must protect the tree from people who have arrived with bulldozers and chainsaws so that in its place, they can build a shopping mall. However, experts note that there is nothing wrong in a takeover since it is permitted by law and there is no need for any boardroom battle for control.

L&T is buying the stake from Sidhartha for a premium and if they pay that amount they might look for a controlling stake. If L&T acquires majority stake by a way which is permitted by the law there is no question of governance, said Shriram Subramanian of independent corporate governance and advisory firm Ingovern.

Mindtree, however, is using the tools it has under its disposal to block such a move, proposing a buyback on Friday in what is seen as an effort to counter L&Ts expected open offer. Mindtree employees have also begun protesting against a takeover on social media, saying that Mindtrees unique culture will be ruined by a takeover. Amidst the buzz, Mindtree shares closed Monday at `962.50 up 1.74 per cent and LTI fell by 3.33 per cent at `1,573.30.

MAKING AN OFFER

Larsen & Toubro is in the final stages of acquiring a 20.4 per cent stake in IT firm Mindtree from Cafe

Coffee Day founder VG Siddhartha L&T on Monday made an offer to buy 31 per cent stake in IT

Services company Mindtree for J980 per share aggregating toJ5,030 crore

The four remaining founders of Mindtree own about 13.3 per cent stake in the company
By Online Desk

NEW DELHI: India is trying to extradite fugitive businessman Nirav Modi and the process is underway, sources in CBI said on Tuesday.

"The extradition process of Nirav Modi is on, we are doing everything as per the law. It takes its own time. The process is legalistic from their side also," sources in Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said. "When we issue a Red Corner Notice (RCN), it is an (international) warrant against the person to whom it is issued," the sources said.

Earlier on Monday, a Westminster Court in London had issued an arrest warrant against the fugitive Indian businessman, who is wanted in India for loan default, according to ED sources.

Meanwhile, the fugitive trader was spotted for the second time in London by the media. Like previous time, this time also he responsed saying, "no comments". The diamond merchant was spotted at an eatery near his Centre Point home in London.

The development comes days after the fugitive was tracked down to a 33-storey Centre Point Apartment complex in London's Theatre District. The tower was an office complex and was converted into luxury residences with prices ranging from 2 million pound to 55 million all with superb views over the city of London.

Modi is believed to be living in a property worth 8 million apartments in the tower, the rent for a similar apartment in the tower comes to approximately 17,000 a month, stated the Daily Telegraph.

One of the prime accused in the PNB scam in India, Modi is the subject of an extradition request by India, along with an Interpol Red Corner Notice being issued against him. Modi is the prime accused in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB fraud, along with his uncle Mehul Choksi.

Choksi was granted citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda on January 15, 2018, while Modi is in London. Both Modi and Choksi left India in January last year before the PNB scam came out in the public. The duo has not returned to India despite repeated summons from probe agencies and courts.

(With inputs from ANI)
Preeja Prasad By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Going back to 2012, Bengalureans remember a dark day for the Northeast India community in the city where several panic-stricken Northeasterners fled to other safer cities, not paying heed to the appeals to stay put in Bengaluru. The rumours of violence against their community flying thick and fast spread commotion among them. Railway stations and trains were unable to accommodate them in such large numbers. The unfortunate episode is now referred to as an exodus.

Northeast Solidarity, a helpline pertaining to the woes of the community, identified 14 different issues faced by them based on a report finalised by Rini Ralte, president of Northeast solidarity. The report states that the majority of the victims are between the age group of 20-25, followed by those below 20-year-old. The most reported offences under crisis intervention are cheating/ extortion/threat with 218 victims. In addition to this, out of 787 victims, 232 are students while 181 victims are nurses.

One of the biggest incidents of the violence faced by the community is the 2017 gang-rape in Anekal district, where a 26-year-old woman from Nepal was gang-raped in an abandoned building in Avadadevanahalli village. Though a year-and-a-half has passed, Suma (name changed) is yet to receive compensation from the Nirbhaya fund. So far, she has received only `2,00,000 from the Victim Compensation Fund of the state government.

Most of the cases have not been successful. For example, under non-payment of wages, only one case was successful where the victim received the money. There is no proper action taken by the police either. However, one of the major issues is awareness within the community. They get into jobs without signing a contract on their salary and work hours. Once they get into trouble, they realise their mistake. Racism also plays a part in this, said Ralte.
Meera Bhardwaj By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: It is a little over a week since the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) kicked off with BBMP claiming that they have cleared 80% of all political posters, pictures and flexes around the city. However, social activists say most propaganda material has not been cleared across the 198 wards.

Complaints are pouring to the Election Commission (EC) and the district election officers about MCC violations, but there is neither staff nor funds to take up the clearance works.

With posters of national leaders adorning many state and central projects in Bengaluru, complaints were submitted on cVigil citing a host of violations. Activists are a disappointed lot as they say cVigil is not compatible with all mobile formats and it has been difficult to register complaints on this app.

Activists further question if photos of soldiers cannot be used for campaigning as per EC, and statues of elephants and Jayalalithas posters could be removed from Amma canteens after DMK protests, why cannot the same be done for Indira canteens where photos of Indira Gandhi are plastered all over.

BR Chandru, social activist, says, The Indira Canteens in Jogupalaya and Shivajinagar have a big display of Indira Gandhi on their front entrance, and even food vans have prominent display of Indiras

pictures. I have complained to the EC but they have not taken any action.

However, BBMP senior official L Suresh says the clearance drive started from March 10 night itself. He said, As per EC guidelines, pictures of late political leaders are permitted, be it Indira Gandhi or Vajpayee. The guidelines only state that photos of present politicians should be pulled down. Displaying Indiras pictures is not a violation. However, if a political party uses Indira Canteen for campaigning purpose, this will not be allowed.

Suresh adds, We have managed to clear 80% of all publicity materials of political leaders across all wards. However, if there are specific complaints in any ward, it should be brought to the notice of district election officers with all details and address. The issue will be addressed immediately.

Ratnakar Joshi, political analyst says, Look at most wards, all banners are still in place. The staff hired for clearance have not been paid any money. The commissioners along with his deputies are not aware of what is happening on the ground level. The Indira Canteen is a flagship programme of the state government and the ruling party will definitely try to take advantage of this programme.

Guidelines for Political Parties

The Model Code of Conduct has laid down clear-cut rules for political parties to follow. In fact, the first code came into effect during state assembly elections in Kerala in 1960 and later the Election Commission introduced it in 1979 to regulate the ruling party from taking undue advantage. The code has developed over a period of time and is a strong tool used by the ECI to keep the process of elections free and fair.
Dia Rekhi By

Express News Service

CHENNAI : It was a weekend of conversation and camaraderie at the first International conference on Photography titled Light Writing  The Photographic Image Reloaded, held as part of the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) 2019 at the Museum Theatre in Egmore. Curated by the artistic director of the Biennale, Pushpamala N, the line-up of speakers included curators, critics, and scholars from different parts of the world who presented papers and discussed the current state of photography.

The conference was a platform created to question. We are questioning the practice in its past, present and future forms, prodding one to think and join the dialogue around photography  Does the photograph stand as a witness or does it spread fake news? Is the photograph evidence? Is the photograph a document or is it somehow a strange and surreal version of our world? Why are photographers getting arrested and killed? asked Pushpamala.

Themes that were explored at the conference were contemporary, interesting and relevant. The audience listened in rapt attention as the day progressed with one illustrious speaker after another.My photography skills are very limited but looking at the topics that were being explored and the speakers, I knew I had to attend the conference, said R Jaya, who attended the conference on Saturday. Such events make art more accessible and since it is using public spaces, people stumble upon art which is lovely, she added.

Everything from Anthropocene, land, environment, photography and the body, celebrity culture, the digital age, social media and surveillance, human rights and citizenship photography as a witness, forensic architecture, photography as memory, the archive as resistance, activism and politics; artificial intelligence to non-human photography were discussed.

Some of the speakers who addressed the audience included Ashwini Asokan (India), Diwas Raja (Nepal), Emeka Okereke (Nigeria), Kristoffer Gansing (Germany), and Zhuang Wubin (Singapore).

There were stunning installations at the Egmore Museum campus that people could see and enjoy. One set of photographs were taken by city schoolchildren who had been selected and trained by experts. The pictures brought out the beauty of the beach and the entire ecosystem that depends on the Marina. The others were taken by Manjunath Kamath.

Eight-year-old Shriram, who was at the museum with his parents to see the exhibition, said, These pictures make me want to go to the beach. My father said these pictures were taken by people my age so now I also want to learn how to take pictures like this. He said I should try first on his phone so that is what I am going to do. The second edition of Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB), will conclude on March 24, 2019 with large-scale exhibitions in different public spaces.

Photography reloaded

Everything from Anthropocene, land, environment, photography and the body, celebrity culture, the digital age, social media and surveillance, human rights and citizenship photography as a witness, forensic architecture, photography as memory, the archive as resistance, activism and politics; artificial intelligence to non-human photography were discussed.
Harish Murali By

Express News Service

CHENNAI : A retired drug controller and his wife, also a retired government official, were sentenced to two years in jail on charges of amassing wealth as much as 90 per cent above their known sources of income. A CBI special court delivered the verdict on Monday, bringing the trial to an end 12 years after the CBI arrested the couple on charges of corruption.

According to the prosecution, R Arivudainambi (64) worked as the deputy drug controller in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, for over a decade. During this period, he was required to deal with different types of proposals of different pharmaceutical companies of the country, relating to new drugs in the market, including manufacturing of new drugs, import of raw material, etc.

He was also required to accord approval to such proposals submitted by the pharmaceutical companies and was allegedly taking bribe from these companies.

Along with R Arivudainambi, his wife Sathayvani (62), who was working in the State government at the secretariat, was also arrested under the Prevention of Corruption Act, by the CBI in 2007. She is alleged to have helped her husband in amassing the ill-gotten wealth.The CBI filed a case under section 13 (2) Prevention of Corruption Act, on charges of criminal misconduct. The CBI, after investigations, accused the couple of amassing wealth 90 percent above their known sources of income and the case was tried in the CBI special court.

The trial court judge, S Muruganantham, in the verdict on Monday said that the prosecution has proved the charges against the couple beyond doubt. The couple were sentenced to two year of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of `1 lakh each. After the court pronounced the verdict on Sunday, the couple were released

on bail to enable them to appeal against it.

1 more held for financial fraud Chennai: the bank fraud wing of Chennai police CCB on Sunday arrested one more suspect named P Manikandan, taking the total number of arrests to 13 in a case related to the gang that was running fake BPOs offering insurance and loan services in the city. The police made the initial arrest in the second week of February.

Manikandan (31), of KK Nagar, was allegedly running a company named InfoeZee Pvt Ltd which was receiving money from a lot of customers in the guise of providing loans and insurance and transferring the same to main suspect Gopikrishnan after taking 20 per cent commission. So far, 13 people, including Gopikrishnan, who was hiding in Sri Lanka, have been arrested. After receiving the money through Infoezee Pvt Ltd, registered with a particular payment bank/digital wallet, the money was transferred to various accounts of Fortune Enterprises, Ultra Trendz Enterprises, Bhaarath Business Centre, Hariharan Management, Tritech Associates, Tech Process Pvt Ltd, and Feather lite Tech, which all belonged to the main suspect, police sources said.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: The Cochin Corporation opposition councillors walked out of the council meeting alleging apathy in implementing the e-governance system and alleging corruption in the payout.

As per the agreement it (Corporation) had with TCS, the project had to be implemented within 54 weeks. Though the agreement was signed in 2011, the project is still in the cold storage after eight years. Interestingly, the Corporation has paid nearly `4.94 crore to TCS so far.

How can the Corporation transfer half of the project cost without completing the whole project? The Mayor is not qualified to sit on the position, said K J Antony, Opposition leader while raising the issue before the council on Monday.

Demanding a comprehensive probe, the opposition councillors said the e-governance services of the civic body like birth, death and marriage certificates and building permit were an utter failure. There are 22 modules to be completed by TCS as per the agreement. But they failed to implement it. Even though the council had extended the agreement term with TCS in February 2017 and in March 2018 for additional one year, they failed to implement it, said V P Chandran.

The Corporation secretary, meanwhile, termed the allegations baseless and informed the council that the service had been restored. But the Opposition led by Benedict Fernandes informed the council after inspecting the Janasevanakendram at Corporation that the online service was not up. The secretary said TCS had backed out from the project citing since the Corporation didnt sign the annual maintenance contract.

Meanwhile, Mayor Soumini Jain while replying to the council said the online service has been restored. We admit there are some issues pertaining to the online service. Since we dont have an IT expert, its not possible to quantify the works carried out by TCS so far. An IT officer needs to be appointed. Since there is election code of conduct is existing we will plan to outsource it, said Mayor. Mayor also turned down the proposal to hand the whole project to the Information Kerala Mission citing it will incur additional expenses for the Corporation.

Corp confident of Padmasarovaram project clearance

Kochi: Kochi Corporation is confident of getting the necessary approvals for the Padmasarovaram project along the Chilavannoor back waters. The District Collector had issued a Stop memo to the project citing serious CRZ rule violations. The H9.3 crore project initiated by the civic body proposes construction of a cycle track and walkway across Chilavannoor backwaters.

The project was implemented after it got approval from the State Level Technical Committee and State Level High Power Committee, the Mayor said. The bund constructed across the backwaters is temporary which will be demolished after the construction of the elevated structure. Though the Chilavannoor Samrakshana Samithi earlier raised apprehensions over the project, they were convinced of the details of the project. The civic body has submitted an application to the KCZMA for CRZ clearance. The Authority is checking whether the project comes under the purview of the CRZ norms, the Mayor said.
Shevlin Sebastian By

Express News Service

KOCHI: One morning, when Santy Sajan was seven years old, she was taken to the Medical College Hospital in Kozhikode. Her father was unwell. When she saw him, his head was covered with a beige bandage. Santy was lifted up and placed on the bed. Her father started caressing her face. I understood that my father could not see me, says Santy, the chief executive officer at Aster MIMS-Calicut, while on a recent visit to Kochi.

After a while, her father started checking her nails, to see whether it had grown. Then he said, I will cut your nails later.George Mathew Komath was a loving father. I remember Chachan giving me a bath, says Santy. He would comb my hair and dress me. And, however late he came, after his work as a farmer, the family would pray together. Chachan would also tell me stories. One day he told me he wanted to send me to the best school.

A few days later, at their home, in the village of Chakkittapara relatives carried a cot and placed it in the living room. And then I saw Chachan covered in white, says Santy. I went and hugged him. But his body was cold. But I thought, Chachan is smiling, and his eyes are partially open.But it was only when the body was taken to the cemetery, placed in a coffin and then put in the ground that Santy finally understood that her father had died. George was only 28 when he passed away because of a brain tumour. It would be a turning point in her life.

As the eldest of four siblings, two brothers and a sister, Santy developed a drive very early on. My mother and grandmother constantly spoke to me about the importance of education and the need to get a job, says Santy.

Later, Santy did her BSc nursing at the SNDT Womens University at Mumbai, and worked briefly in the Hinduja hospital as a staff nurse. The chief of nursing was a Janet Walker from the UK. During a meeting, she began talking about our mission, says Santy. And I wondered how long would it take me to get to Janets position. What are my strengths and weaknesses? So I always had goals.

From Mumbai, Santy moved to the Sulaimania Childrens Hospital in Riyadh where she worked for six years. Following that, she did another stint of six years at the Sultan Qaboos University Hospital in Oman. But her thirst for education remained strong. She returned to India in 2000 and did her MSc in nursing from Manipal University. Thereafter she joined Columbia Asia Hospital in Bengaluru as the head of nursing. After only 14 months, she went to the US. While there, she did a PhD from the Catholic University of America. Her thesis was on pain management of extreme pre-term babies. Thereafter, she did her MBA--Business of Medicine from the Carey Business School, John Hopkins University as well as a Masters in Health Informatics from the University of Maryland (2007-10).

Santy is a rare mix of the intellect and the heart. And over the course of her career, she developed a deep love for the health profession. Its about taking care of people with love and compassion, she says. I see myself in their shoes. When they come to a hospital, they are at their most vulnerable. So I, as well as the team members, try to make them feel as much at home as possible.

But, unknowingly, Santy also felt the tug of home herself. Despite a highly successful career abroad, she never felt that she truly belonged. Wherever I worked, I always felt that I was living in a foreign society, even though it was inclusive and I had the best job, says Santy. I just felt I could be my true self only in my own country.

Santy returned to India in 2013 and became General Manager, Columbia Asia Hospital in Bengaluru. After three-and-a-half years, she moved to Kochi where she became the chief operating officer of Aster Medcity, Kochi. I am extremely grateful to Dr Azad Moopen, the chairman and managing director of Aster DM Healthcare who saw the potential in me, she says. And from January 2018, Santy has been stationed at Kozhikode. The Aster unit is a 535-bed hospital with 2,100 employees. It is the best in North Kerala and we want to retain that position, says Santy.

On the personal front, Santy feels at peace. I love the mud, rains, jackfruit, as well as my own language, she says. My roots have finally pulled me back.And she has somebody to share her joy with: her husband Sajan. She met him in Class 10 at the St Georges High School at Kulathuvayal, and fell in love immediately. Subsequently, they got married on May 8, 1994. Sajan, who has a health business, has been my pillar of strength through all these years, says Santy, who has a son who is studying in Class 12. Without them both, I would not have been able to achieve all that I have done so far. But her fathers influence remains undiminished. I pray to him every day, says Santy. And Chachan has protected me throughout.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: The city of Kochi may soon be transformed into a metropolis under complete surveillance -10,000 plus CCTV cameras, with its possible inclusion under the Secure Our City campaign. This opportunity comes under the heels of a United Arab Emirates-based security surveillance and IT solutions provider- Secure Cam IT Solutions setting up shop in Kochi, which has earmarked Rs 200 crore for the implementation of this project in India.

As part of the $1.5 billion worldwide campaign that was announced last October, Secure Cam has committed to install about 10,000 cameras for free in one city across 150 countries by 2025. The first phase of the campaign will be rolled out across 13 countries, starting with India.

"We are now fully prepared to kickstart the India programme," says Emil Jose, the COO of Secure Cam. 'Secure Our City' will be launched in India across five cities in a phased manner.

"The name of the first city will be unveiled in June. Anybody who is interested to participate in the registration can do so by visiting securecam.org. The city with the largest number of registrations will be given preference," says Emil.

The campaign aims to demonstrate that the world can be a secure place with the deployment of the latest tech solutions and that a secure environment will naturally fuel economic development. "One of the hurdles for economic growth within an urban area is its crime scene. Thats where the United Arab Emirates has shown a way, where the law enforcement agencies, powered by technology, have created wonders in maintaining law and order. The UAE example was one of the inspirations for us to launch this campaign," says Ahmed Sarour Al Marar, a UAE national and MD of Secure Cam.

The unit includes an 8-channel HD IP camera system with 30-days recording capacity. Secure Cam is also offering installation, a two-year warranty and one-year service for free as part of the campaign. "Our aim is to secure a city in every country as a starting point to prove that it is possible to leverage the available technology to bring peace of mind to residents, says Rijoy Thomas, Chairman and CEO, Secure Cam.

The market for security systems is expected to exceed Rs 20,000 crore in India, said Rijoy and when it came to expansion, Kochi was the first natural choice. "To start with, we would be focusing on South India even as we expand our business across the rest of the country, says Rijoy. He added India as the country offers a fast-growing market within the IT sector. "The surveillance camera industry in itself is expected to experience a double-digit growth of about 15 to 20 per cent in the next three years and we want to ensure that we are at the forefront of the growth story," said Rijoy. Apart from Kochi, the company has also opened an office in Bengaluru.
K Krishnachand By

Express News Service

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The recent brutal murders of three youths in brawls with drugs as the main culprit in the capital indicated a strong undercurrent of the drug mafia.

Though the city police has brought out various initiatives to curb the drug menace, repeated incidents and drug seizures have concreted the fact that such 'initiatives' are futile. For instance, 'Anti- Narcotic Clubs' were established in all educational institutions to generate awareness among students to stay away from drug abuse. However, the cases registered in various police stations reveal students under the age of 20 falling prey to the dangerous 'lifestyle'.

Recent statistics point out that the quantity of manufactured psychotropic drugs circulated in the city is twice more than ganja, hashish and heroin. Minors fall prey to criminal activities to obtain money for drugs. A primary matter of concern is the increase in the number of teenagers in the district admitted to various de-addiction centres.

City police has already initiated a crackdown on the peddlers. LSD, pethidine and cocaine comprise the drugs easily available in the city. According to A Santhosh Kumar, assistant commissioner of police, Narcotic cell, Thiruvananthapuram, the city has seen a huge influx of high-end psychotropic recreational drugs. He said drugs are easy to conceal and cant be detected during an ordinary inspection. Peddlers even conceal it in their undergarments. This factor has turned favourable for those smuggling drugs. They prefer drugs over ganja. In fact, the supply of ganja has seen a dip in the city, Santhosh said. He feels drug abuse can be lowered if the demand reduces.

"Proper awareness is the need of the hour. Parents must be conscious about the behavioural change in their adolescent children. Police along with the excise department are making efforts to reduce the demand for drugs," he said.

Despite denial from college authorities, drug abuse is a rising occurrence among students.

City-based rehabilitation centres and counsellors unanimously agree that the youth abuse a wide variety of drugs instead of the usual charas-ganja. Psychiatrists cite curiosity, peer pressure and adventurism as the driving factor. "It has been observed that most patients come from broken families where communication is a huge issue between parents and children. It is indeed a matter of concern that today's teenagers are rather frustrated. Peddlers market drugs to such groups. This aggravates the frustration to criminal activities. Films too play a role in influencing youngsters, " said Dr C J John, psychiatrist.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the elections, about 70 organisations from across India have come together to reach out to voters and campaign in 50 cities, highlighting the "failures" of the Narendra Modi government in creating employment, its leaders said Monday.

Young India National Coordination Committee, the platform comprising mostly of left-backed outfits, will start its campaign from Badaun in Uttar Pradesh in the first week of April, they said.

The first phase of Lok Sabha elections is scheduled to be held on April 11.

"The YINCC marched on February 7 against the government, where the youth of the nation raised questions on why the promises of quality education and employment were not fulfilled. The YINCC has now decided that it will campaign against Modi during the elections and ask people to not vote them," said N Sai Balaji of students' outfit AISA.

The campaign will start from Badaun because Najeeb Ahmed, the Jawaharlal Nehru University student who has been missing since October 2016, is from there, he said.

"Modi had promised that his government will give 2 crore jobs every year. They are not even providing 2,000 jobs. Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal will urge people to vote against this government in the upcoming elections," Nisar Ahmed of Samajwadi Yuvajan Sabha said.

Echoing Ahmed, Gopal Tiwari, who led the SSC movement, said time has come for the youth of the country to "teach the prime minister a lesson".

Ashish, a leader of the All India Railway Apprentices, said, "Modi has done drama in Allahabad by cleaning feet of sanitation workers. If he is concerned about them, then generate employment for them."

"The health sector was the most neglected area where the government did not do anything. The pathetic condition of government hospitals has forced patients to opt for private hospitals. This government has made poor people feel like second class citizens," said Harjit Singh Bhatti, former president of AIIMS' Resident Doctors' Association.

SFI leader Dipshita Dhat claimed that they are not against Modi but will fight the "RSS ideology on which the current government is running".
By PTI

PANAJI: BJP MLA Pramod Sawant was sworn in as the new Chief Minister of Goa just before 2 am Tuesday, capping a day of hectic parleys between the saffron party and its allies to put a new government in place in the state.

After multiple postponements of the oath ceremony on Monday, the day when his predecessor Manohar Parrikar was cremated with state honours, Sawant was sworn in by Goa governor Mridula Sinha at Raj Bhavan at 1.50 am.

Sinha administered the oath of office and secrecy to the 46-year-old legislator from Sankhalim in North Goa.

The Governor also administered an oath to 11 other ministers, including those from BJP's allies MGP and the GFP.

Interestingly, all the ministers who were part of erstwhile Manohar Parrikar-led Cabinet were sworn in by the Governor.

MGP's two MLAs Sudin Dhavalikar and Manohar Ajgaonkar were sworn-in, while Goa Forward party MLAs Vijai Sardesai, Vinod Palekar and Jayesh Salgaonkar also took the oath.

ALSO READ: Pramod Sawant, a Parrikar loyalist and RSS man, rises to top

BJP MLAs Mauvin Godinho, Vishwajit Rane, Milind Naik and Nilesh Cabral also found a place in the Sawant-led Cabinet.

Independent MLAs Rohan Khaunte and Govind Gawade were also sworn in by Governor.

As per the power-sharing arrangement reached with allies, an MLA each from two small parties backing the BJP in the coastal state will be made deputy chief minister, party sources said.

They are Goa Forward Party chief Vijai Sardesai and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party MLA Sudin Dhavalikar.

Senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari, the party's Goa in- charge, was present at the oath-taking ceremony.

The new government was sworn-in with the support of 20 MLAs, including 11 from the BJP and three each from GFP, MGP and Independents.

All the MLAs supporting the coalition were present at the swearing-in ceremony.

Before taking oath as the CM, Sawant resigned from the post of Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly.

Deputy Speaker Michael Lobo would be officiating as Speaker till election for the post was held.

Goa witnessed hectic political activity after Parrikar died Sunday, following a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Gadkari, who began a series of meetings with BJP's coalition partners since Sunday, finally managed to have a consensus over the leadership of Sawant.

Sawant will now have to prove his majority in the Assembly.

The oath ceremony, held at a cramped Raj Bhavan, was to take place at 11 pm Monday but was delayed due to inexplicable reasons.

Sawant said his party BJP has given him a big responsibility.

Talking to reporters, Sawant credited Parrikar for bringing him into politics.

There were a series of meetings involving the Goa Forward Party and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party's three MLAs each, an equal number of Independents, and BJP legislators since late Sunday night to reach a consensus on Parrikar's successor.

Union minister Nitin Gadkari had flown into the state early Monday to lead the discussions.

BJP chief Shah, who was also in Goa, is learnt to have supervised the party's bid to garner the numbers to stake claim to form the government.

Parrikar was heading a coalition government comprising the BJP, three MLAs each of the Goa Forward Party (GFP), the MGP and three independents.

Congress is currently the single largest party in the state with 14 MLAs.

The BJP has 12 legislators in the 40-member Assembly, whose strength now is 36 after Parrikar's death.

The strength of the House has reduced due to the demise of BJP MLA Francis D'Souza earlier this year, and Parrikar on Sunday, and resignations of two Congress MLAs Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte last year.

All the state Congress MLAs met Governor Mridula Sinha on Monday and staked claim to form a government in the coastal state.

The MLAs, led by Leader of the Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar, went to Raj Bhawan and handed over a letter to Sinha, saying it was the single largest party in the Assembly and should be allowed to form the government.

"We are saddened by the chief minister's demise, but before his final rites are performed, a new government has to be formed. The governor acknowledged that the Congress is the single largest party and she said she will get back to us," Kavlekar told reporters.

Parrikar was cremated with state honours here Monday, with thousands bidding the affable politician a fond farewell.

BJP president Amit Shah, some Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP-ruled states attended the funeral at Miramar.

Parrikar's eldest son Utpal lit the funeral pyre.

The funeral procession started from the Kala Academy where thousands, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, paid their last respects to the former defence minister.

The mortal remains of the 63-year-old senior BJP leader were kept in a flower-decked hearse which left for the Miramar beach, where the last rites were performed.

The affection and popularity Parrikar enjoyed among ordinary Goans was on display as hundreds of common folks, and his party workers lined up to pay tributes to the chief minister, who died on Sunday after a prolonged illness.
China's first Great Wall restoration center will be established in Beijing, combining academic research, restoration and protection of the ancient wall.

The center will have archaeologists, designers and craftspersons working together to make targeted plans for the restoration of the Jiankou section of the Great Wall, which is located in the northern Huairou District of Beijing, according to Beijing Daily.

"The new method will effectively tackle unpredictability in excavation and protection of the Great Wall," Zhang Tong, an official at the cultural relics administration of Huairou, was quoted as saying.

The center will also regularly check the conditions of the Great Wall for preventive conservation. It will keep records of the restoration for future use, the newspaper said.

With a total length of 7,952 meters, the Jiankou Great Wall was built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It was once neglected and became damaged over time.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The BJP has got election commission approval for its 23 requests for putting out advertisements in the electronic media while the Congress submitted its first application Monday, officials said.

The Aam Aadmi Party is yet to make an application, they said. The model code of conduct is in place since March 10, when the Election Commission of India announced the schedule for the Lok Sabha polls.

When the MCC is on, political advertisements have to be certified by the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) within 24 hours of submission. In case the MCMC finds something objectionable in the proposed advertisement, it sends it back to the party and asks them to submit it again with modifications within 24 hours.

The officials said the MCMC approved 23 applications of the BJP for advertisements in electronic media and the party made two fresh requests on Monday. Any application might contain several cases which may pertain to radio spots, advertisements on social media and television.

Some of the applications of the ruling party has had as many as 11 cases, the officials said.

The Congress made its first application to the Chief Electoral Office of Delhi for approval on Monday and its was under consideration, they said.

The MCMC has the job of certifying content and see whether it is fit for being aired in conformity with the guidelines set by the Election Commission Of India.

The Commission has engaged the services of social media company Becil, a public sector undertaking, to monitor social media and create voter awareness through Facebook and Twitter.
By Bloomberg

Prime Minister Narendra Modis party has spearheaded moves to loosen campaign finance laws in India, generating criticism that businessesand foreignerscould potentially wield unprecedented influence over the election starting next month.

The new rules let corporations, including those partly owned by foreign entities, fund elections anonymously. They also permit businesses to bankroll political parties through opaque instruments called electoral bonds and enable shell companies to be conduits for election funding.

The changes, which Modis party has said were designed to at least partially account for undocumented cash long used during Indias elections, may actually make it easierand legalfor anonymous donors to support political parties. Spending on the election ending May 23 is set to rise 40 per cent to 500 billion rupees ($7 billion), according to the New Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies.

It wont be an exaggeration to say our elections will never be the same again, said N. Bhaskara Rao, the groups chairman, who has advised previous Indian governments. What is this if not the auctioning of our democracy to the highest-paying corporation?

Modi swept to power in 2014 promising a business-friendly administration that would transform Indias image on the world stage. He remains the favorite for many investors, despite more recently introducing populist policies to boost support in rural India and tightening rules against corporate defaulters.

The biggest innovation in Indias campaign finance laws is the anonymous electoral bond. Despite the name, they bear little resemblance to the promissory notes investors are familiar with: Buyers arent paid any interest.

Anyone can buy an electoral bond at the government-owned State Bank of India in denominations ranging from 1,000 rupees to 10 million rupees ($14 to $140,000). Afterward, they are delivered to a political party, which can exchange them for cash. They dont carry the name of the donor and are exempt from tax.

Electoral bonds have made political parties completely beholden to unaccounted money, which could even be foreign money or money from dubious sources, said Jagdeep Chhokar, the former head of Indias top business school and the founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms, a group that researches elections. Corporate agendas can run the show.

FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who first announced plans for the electoral bonds in 2017, argued last year that they actually help improve transparency because they are banking instruments and every political party has to disclose how much it received. If full transparency is required, donors would go back to cash, he wrote in a January 2018 Facebook post.

For those in India worried about anonymous money in politics, the process for changing the laws has offered little reassurance that the new measures are an improvement.

System Overhaul

Indias campaign finance overhaul began in 2017, when parliament approved an amendment that made it easier for companies to donate to campaigns, including removing a cap on corporate donations (the maximum used to be 7.5 per cent of a companys average net profits over three years). Now new firms can also donate to political parties, opening the door for shell companies to be set up expressly for the purpose.

Also eliminated were requirements for companies to disclose how much they donated and to which party.

The changes were introduced in parliament via a money bill, a measure that only needs to be passed by the lower house controlled by Modis ruling coalition and not the opposition-led upper house.

A similar tactic was used to pass with little debate rules that changed the definition of a foreign company. Previously, all subsidiaries of international entities were treated as overseas donors and not allowed to make political contributions. Now if a foreign firm has a stake of less than 50 percent in a company operating in India, that unit can fund Indian elections.

While several lawmakers protested the moves, analysts said the amendments will benefit both Modis Bharatiya Janata Party as well as the main opposition Congress party.

Nobody from the opposition spoke up, Rao said. Maybe everybody realizes they stand to gain if they come to power?

In 2014, the Delhi High Court found both major parties guilty of violating foreign-exchange laws when they accepted a donation from London-based commodities giant Vedanta Resources Plc.

(The suit, filed by a former top bureaucrat and the Association for Democratic Reforms, was against the political entities and Vedanta wasnt a party. The company didnt respond to request for comment. The BJP and Congress argued the donations werent foreign because the Vedanta units that channelled the money were registered under Indian law.)

The law passed last year changed the definition of a foreign company all the way back to 1976, effectively nullifying the courts verdict because Vedantas overseas parent owned less than 50 percent of the Indian unit.

The government has defended the revisions, saying they were intended to align the definition of foreign source with the nations foreign direct investment policies, and other laws bar political funding from abroad. GVL Narasimha Rao and Nalin Kohli, representatives of Modis BJP, didnt respond to requests for comment.

The latest official data show that Modis ruling party won the bulk of financing in the year ended March 2018, both through corporate donations and electoral bonds.

In 2018, electoral bonds worth about 10.6 billion rupees ($150 million) were purchased, according to data obtained under Indias Right to Information Act by Factly, a data journalism portal in India. About 90 per cent were of the highest denomination available, which is out of reach for the average citizen.

Indias rules governing political contributions are looser than other major democracies. In the U.K., companies arent directly allowed to make donations to political parties. The U.S. allows unlimited funding through political action committees called super PACs on federal election campaigns but requires them to disclose the names of donors. Milan Vaishnav, the Washington-based senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, whos edited a book on Indian political funding, said he hasnt seen an instrument like electoral bonds in any other country.

In most advanced democracies, transparency is a core principle, Vaishnav said. Few advanced democracies legitimize opacity in the way India has done.
By Express News Service

MUMBAI: In a big blow to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in its bastion of Western Maharashtra, son of NCPs sitting Lok Sabha MP from Madha Vijaysinh Mohite-Patils son and partys youth leader Ranjitsinh Mohite-Patil is all set to join the BJP.

The decision in this regard was made at a meeting of Mohite-Patil loyalists at Akluj in Solapur district on Tuesday. The Mohite-Patil junior will join BJP at a special ceremony at Wankhede Stadium at 12.30 tomorrow, said a communique.

Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil, who had kept the bastion even in the Modi wave of 2014, was unhappy with the way he was kept out of the party loop this time. Initially, party president Sharad Pawar himself had indicated that he would contest from the seat. However, Mohite-Patil couldn't find his or his sons name in the two lists of the party even after Pawar made clear his intentions not to contest the seat. This led him to take the extreme decision, said one of his supporters.

According to Mohite-Patils supporters, former Maharashtra deputy Chief Minister and Sharad Pawars nephew Ajit Pawar had always viewed Ranjitsinh as a potential threat and had left no stone unturned to drive him out of the political arena. As a result, Ranjitsinh was sidelined by the NCP leaders for nearly a decade.

Ranjitsinh had met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and BJP leader Girish Mahajan in Mumbai late Monday. He had held negotiation meetings with Mahajan earlier as well, on the day Dr Sujay Vikhe-Patil, the son of the leader of the opposition and Congressman Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, had joined the BJP.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who interacted briefly with media at state party headquarters on Tuesday, while referring to the development, said that many more leaders in Maharashtra would be joining the BJP very soon and the build-up of the Modi wave this time would be bigger than that of 2014.

We shall make a new record of winning seats, he said.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Ten months after being kidnapped in Afghanistan's Baghlan province, one of the seven Indians has returned to India, the External Affairs Ministry said Monday.

It said India continued to work closely with the Afghan government for safe and early return of the remaining six Indian nationals.

The seven Indian engineers were kidnapped by Taliban militants in the restive northern Baghlan province on May 6 last year.

India has been requesting the Afghan government to secure the release of the Indians.

"One of the seven Indian nationals, who was kidnapped in Baghlan province of Afghanistan in May 2018, has safely returned to India," the MEA said.

"We are grateful to the Government of Afghanistan for their support in securing the release and repatriation of the Indian national," it said.

The Indian engineers were working on a project for the construction of a power sub-station and they were kidnapped by Taliban militants from the vicinity of Cheshma-e-Sher area.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had taken up the issue with the Afghan government on multiple occasions.

India has been carrying reconstruction activities in the war-torn country.

It has already provided at least USD 2 billion aid to Afghanistan.
Sumi Sukanya Dutta By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The pass percentage of foreign medical graduates, who return to India willing to serve as doctors, has been abysmally poor in last five years after a marginal improvement between 2010-13, response to a Right to Information query has revealed.

The figures shared by the Medical Council of Indias Board of Governors show that in 2018, only about 15% of the students who took the Foreign Medical Graduate Examination made the cut.

All medical graduates, except those, who get their degrees in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, are required to qualify the FMGE and do a mandatory one-year internship in a recognised Indian medical college before they can get their registration in the country.

In 2017, it was just 11% and in the previous year, less than 10% of the students who took the test cleared it.

In contrast, between 2010-2013, over 20% of students who appeared in the test, qualified.

Officials in the regulator maintained that the poor pass percentage of such students is due to the inferior quality of medical education in countries like China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Georgia.

Students and medical education activists said the reason for this abysmal show was unusually tough screening test that was designed to fail more students.

The regulator, in a bid to help private medical colleges in India, has traditionally kept the pass percentage low in the FMGE, since its inception in 2003, said a third-year medical who had filed the RTI query.

Why doesnt the MCI introduce a similar screening test for graduates from private colleges who get admission despite poor scores in the National Entrance cum Eligibility Entrance Test? he asked.

Ved Prakash Mishra, former chairman of the undergraduate committee in the MCI who headed a panel to introduce reforms in the FMGE, however, said that the test should remain as it is to ensure that compromised medical graduates are not allowed to practice as doctors.
Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: On a day when Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra hit her 'karma bhoomi' in eastern UP and launched her party's campaign on an emotional note from her ancestral home - Swaraj Bhawan - in Allahabad on Monday, her party came under sharp attack from SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati who rejected Congress's generosity of leaving seven seats for alliance in UP in 2019 Lok Sabha election.

While both alliance partners dubbed the Congress's gesture as an attempt to create confusion of having an 'understanding' with alliance among voters and cadres alike, Priyanka, who embarked on 'Ganga Yatra' taking river route across four districts of eastern UP, tried to play the alliance onslaught down by saying that it did not affect her as her party and the SP-BSP alliance had a common agenda and a common enemy -- to defeat the BJP-- in the ensuing polls.

FOLLOW OUR ELECTION COVERAGE HERE

The Congress has so far named 33 candidates for Uttar Pradesh. Priyanka, tasked to revive her party's fortune in eastern UP which accounts for 53 per cent of total 80 Lok Sabah seats from UP, started off her day by offering prayers at Bade Hanuman temple at Sangam and worshipping the holy river in Prayagraj.

Dressed in a pistachio green saree with a magenta border, Priyanka, in her usual simple persona, presented the perfect imagery of a traditional devout Hindu woman at the Hanuman temple while offering puja before 140-kilometre Ganga Yatra on a steamer boat from Manaiya Ghat in Karchana tehsil of trans-Yamuna area of Prayagraj.

Her last stop will be at Assi Ghat in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency of Varanasi via Bhadohi and Mirzapur, the carpet belt of eastern UP on Wednesday.

To counter PM Modi's 'Man Ki Baat', Congress had planned 'Sanchi baat' for Priyanka to reach out the various caste and communities residing along the bank of Holy Ganga between Prayaraj and Varanasi. While addressing small gatherings on her way, she launched a scathing attack on Centre accusing it of "hoodwinking" people and undermining all existing institutions in the country.

The Congress leader claimed that all sections --- women, youth, farmer, deprived - were being muzzled in Modi rule.

"You are not being heard by anyone. No one is there to share your pain and plight in the present regime," she said at a nukkad meeting at Dumduma Ghat in Prayagraj. Priyanka repeated Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's charge that the present government was being run by four or five people who thought that they could do anything they want.

"The government is just focussing on industrialists and the chowkidar has become a part of them," she said.

She said nobody owns India as she appealed people to 'jago aur desh ko bachao' or wake up and save the country.

ALSO READ: 'Priyanka campaigned earlier too,' Yogi says she will make no difference to BJP poll prospects

Having an indirect had a jibe at PM Modi's latest 'Main bhi Chowkidaar' campaign, Priyanka said: "A farmer told me that only the rich have watchmen, farmer are their own watchmen," she said. She appealed people to vote for Congress as her brother was a man of words and deeds.

"What Rahulji promises he keeps it. Congress government in Madhya Pradesh exempted farmers' loans as promised within ten days of coming to power," she claimed, cautioning people against believing in 'jumlas'.

She also held 'Nav pe Charcha' with several groups of students and women in Prayagraj. Accompanied by a battery of Congress leaders, Priyanka was sitting on the roof of a boat which was imported from Varanasi.

Decorated with flowers and the colours of Congress flag, the boat was a customised, fitted with all upmarket facilities including air conditioner, bed and sofa on the lower floor. Congress workers, including women, had been waiting for her since early morning singing bhajans and patriotic songs.

They also shouted slogans like 'Priyanka nahi yeh andhi hain, Doosri Indira Gandhi hain' (She is not just Priyanka but a storm, she is the second Indira Gandhi) and 'UP mein badlav ki andhi, Priyanka Gandhi Priyanka Gandhi' (Storm of change in UP, Priyanka Gandhi Priyanka Gandhi').

Waving to the crowd mainly comprising Congress workers along the banks in villages on her trail, Priyanka stopped at a few locations, connected with people of all age in her own inimitable style and addressed a few small public meetings.

The Congress leader had a night stay at Sitamarhi in Bhadohi.

However, a night before, she had shared her memories by a nostalgic tweet: "While sitting in the courtyard of Swaraj Bhawan, I can see the room where my grandma was born. While putting me to sleep every night, she used to tell me the tale of Joan of Arc. Her words are still alive in my heart that be fearless and rest all will be well."
Harpreet Bajwa By

Express News Service

CHANDIGARH: It was decided in the meeting of the technical teams of both Indian and Pakistan that took place at the proposed zero line of Kartarpur corridor in Dera Baba Nanak today that the technical experts will be doing the survey of the site and will then discuss the alignment of the proposed corridor.

Sources said that in the seven-hour meeting of both the technical teams besides discussing the road alignment of the proposed corridor it was also decided that they will again meet to discuss the coordinates and engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points.

ALSO READ | Pakistan response on India's demands on Kartarpur Corridor inadequate: Capt Amarinder Singh

The designs of the corridor, roads and other technical aspects were discussed. Also, the proposed Integrated Check Post (ICP) which is to be built on the Indian side its drawings were reportedly shown.

The technical teams completed pointing the corridor. Both the sides have installed barbed wires on their sides dividing the corridor.

The Indian side that had a fourteen-member technical team with officials of PWD officials of both state and central government, officials of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), Land Port Authority of India, other experts and surveyors.

While Pakistan had a twenty member team. Zero point is the point at which the Indian side of the corridor and the Pakistani side of the corridor will be meeting. India had shared the coordinates with Pakistan earlier this year but the Pakistani side gave alternate points.

It is learnt that all the technical discussion which took place today the technical experts of each country will now send their reports to their respective governments and their outcome would be further discussed in the second round of talks between diplomats of both countries which are proposed to be held on April 2 at Wagah in Pakistan.

The binocular sighting of Darbar Sahib gurdwara in Kartarpur Sahib from here was withheld today due to the meeting.

Sources pointed out that the construction work on the integrated check post to be built here started yesterday. The ICP will have a unique design in line with other check posts in the country. It will be constructed on 50 acres and the work will be completed before the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak.

While India has proposed that the corridor should be open to Indian citizens and Indian diaspora with 5000 people allowed every day, Pakistan had said that they can allow only 500 people that too only Indian citizens on designated days.
By Express News Service

LUCKNOW: As Lok Sabha elections are inching closer, political discourse and statements are getting more and more personal and incendiary in nature, the latest being a video featuring Union Minister Mahesh Sharma seen targeting Congress leadership using language which cannot be music to any ear.

Sharma was addressing a political meeting in Bulandshahr's Sikandrabad held on Saturday. The Union Culture and Tourism minister threw cultural values to smithereens while referring to Congress president Rahul Gandhi as "Pappu" and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as "Pappu ki Pappi" during a poll campaign, drawing widespread condemnation from the opposition party.

ALSO READ | Priyanka's boat is directionless, carrying party without any support base: BJP

In the purported video doing rounds on social media platforms, the minister is seen sneering at Gandhi family, BSP supremo Mayawati, TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and SP president Akhilesh Yadav.

"Pappu kehta hai main prime minister banunga' Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Pappu.. aur ab 'Pappu ki Pappi' bhi aa gayi hai. Wo Priyanka kya pehle hamare desh ki beti nahi thi kya, Congress ki beti nahi thi kya, aage nahi rahegi kya? kya naya leke aayi hai? (Pappu says he wants to become prime minister. Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Pappu... and now 'Pappu's Pappi' has also arrived. Wasn't Priyanka already a daughter of this nation, a daughter of the Congress. And would she not remain so in future? What new has she brought in?)," he told a crowd of his supporters during his speech delivered on March 16.

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Similarly, regional politicians like West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee or her Karnataka counterpart HD Kumaraswamy would make no difference to the local people even if they were "to come dance or sing" here, Sharma said.

"If Mamata Banerjee dances Kathak (a classical dance form) here, Kumaraswamy, the CM of Karnataka, comes and sings a song here, who is going to listen to them? They have just 72 seats (in Lok Sabha). How will they get 200 more (for a simple majority)?" the minister said.

While Congress National Secretary and UP West co-in charge Dheeraj Gurjar slammed the minister saying what he thought so did he speak.

"Being on such a responsible post, Sharma ji has made such a remark against a woman. It is condemnable,-" Gurjar said.

However, the minister neither confirmed nor denied his statement. He tried to explain himself by claiming that his culture did not allow him to launch personal attacks on anyone but pushed a subtle blame to media saying: "I don't deny the claim. There are situations and political atmosphere. Then, media too twists facts."

Calling it an insult inflicted on country's women, senior Congress leader Pramod Tiwari attributed it to BJP's desperation having sensed its defeat in polls.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Dr Kafeel Khan, whose name surfaced in the death case of 63 children at Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College, launched a campaign on Tuesday along with health activists from across the country to pursue political parties to give priority to health issues in their manifestos for the Lok Sabha elections.

Khan said he will be meeting all political parties with health policy proposals and will support the party which would promise to work for those.

The campaign, 'Health For All', focusses on access to good quality healthcare services without anyone having to face financial hardship irrespective of age, caste, religion, region, gender, disability or economic status, he said.

"The government should provide affordable, adequate health services that are new and acceptable for its citizens. These services include free consultation, drugs, diagnostics and free emergency care services in all public hospitals. Public health expenditure should be increased to 3 per cent of the GDP. The total health budget should be doubled to Rs 1.5 lakh crore every year for the next five years," he said.

The other demands include filling up the 1.5 lakh existing vacancies in the healthcare and creation of new jobs every year.

Khan is one of the nine accused in the case involving the death of 63 children within four days due to disruption in the supply of oxygen at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur in August 2017.

He was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police in September 2017. He had recently filed an RTI on the BRD Medial College incident and he claimed the UP government, in its response, accepted "there was shortage of liquid oxygen for 54 hours in BRD medical college on August 10, 11, 12, 2017 and Dr Kafeel Khan indeed arranged jumbo oxygen cylinders to save dying kids".

Another RTI filed by him revealed that he was the junior most doctor.

"I joined as a lecturer by permanent commission only on August 8, 2016 and neither was I heading the encephalitis ward nor was I the vice principal," he said, quoting the RTI response.

He demanded a CBI probe into the tragedy which claimed the lives of 63 children and to transfer the case out of Uttar Pradesh as those responsible for the "massacre are still at helm and they only are heading the current inquiry".

He said he will either approach the High Court with a review petition about his case or the Supreme Court against his suspension. The Allahabad High Court had granted him bail in April last year.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Eleven students, including Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union vice president Sarika Chaudhary, have gone on a hunger strike to protest against the varsity's decision to hold online entrance exams and several other issues.

The JNU said the registration for the online entrance exams is progressing rapidly with thousands of students registering within a few days of the portal being made public.

Demanding the vice-chancellor to take cognisance of the issues being raised by them, the students, including the JNUSU vice-president and former JNUSU president Geeta Kumari, started their indefinite hunger strike on Tuesday.

"We also hope that the Visitor of the university, the honourable President of India, urgently intervenes in the matter and calls the elected members of the JNUSU for a dialogue," the srtudents' union said.

The decision to impose online examination to all courses, including MPhil and PhD, disregarding the opinions of the teachers and students who pointed to the problems of accessibility and pedagogical limits in having such an admission process is one of the issues the students' union wants a discussion on.

The other issues include the decision to delink the integrated MPhil-PhD program without any deliberation or discussion in the academic council meeting and the decision to do away with BA second year admission. The JNUSU also demanded that VC M Jagadesh Kumar be removed.
Photo taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on March 18 shows the Haiwen Bridge, formerly known as Puqian Bridge.

Chinas first cross-sea bridge built over seismic faults in southern Chinas Hainan province opened to traffic Monday. The 5,597-meter-long bridge is expected to cut the drive time between Yanfeng town in Haikou, the capital city of the island province of Hainan, and Puqian town in Wenchang City of Hainan from an hour and a half down to just 20 minutes. (Photo/Xinhua)
Atanu Biswas By

The 1992 Hollywood thriller Sneakers foretold a world in which a computer could decode massive amounts of encrypted information. Cryptography systems are based on mathematical problems so complex that they cannot be solved without a key, says Irwin Whistler Emery, a character in that movie, while a mathematician named Gunter Janek programs a chip inside a small box, disguised as an answering machine, to decode all the computerised classified data in the world.

In the 1980s, physicists like Richard Feynman and David Deutsch pointed out the possibility of very fast quantum computing. In 1981, Feynman famously quipped: Nature isnt classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, youd better make it quantum mechanical. Two years after Sneakers broke into the theatres, MIT mathematician Peter Shor in 1994 derived the math that makes cryptography vulnerable to quantum computers. This stimulated subsequent research on the feasibility of constructing quantum computers. A quarter of a century on, quantum computing isnow one of the hottest topics in both quantum physics and computer science. Suppose wed like to find the Jack of Hearts from a pack of cards. An ordinary computer uses bits, which assigns everything 0 or 1.

The computer may mark the required card 1, and each of the other 51 cards 0. A search operation goes on checking every cardwhether it is 1 or 0, and this takes 26.5 operations on an average. However, a 6 qubit (quantum bit) quantum computer, if possible, having 26 (i.e., 2x2x2x2x2x2) parallel bits, will be able to identify the required card at one shot. Such is the magic of quantum computing! A quantum computer with N coupled qubits has computing power equivalent to a classical computer with 2N parallel bits. It could be interesting to see how quickly 2N diverges with N.

Suppose grains of wheat are placed in the squares of a chessboard in such a way that one grain is placed on the first square, and from the second square onwards, we put twice the number of grains of the previous square in each squarethis would result in 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 grains in thegrains in the 64th square. Eventually there will be only 255 grains in total in the first row, nearly 4.3 million grains in the first half of the board, a n d a t o t a l o f 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (yes, 20 digits!) grains would be on the chessboard, an unbelievable number! This is about 1,645 times the global yearly production of wheat.

A bit in an ordinary computer takes either 1 or 0; however, in a quantum computer, the qubit can take 1 or 0 or both at the same time. A bit specifies only two poles of a sphere, whereas a qubit may correspond to points on the sphere; such is the scope of quantum computing. With two large prime numbers p and q, we can easily multiply them and find M = pxq.

Conversely, it is easy to factor a small number, say 21, which is the product of two prime numbers, 3 and 7. However, it becomes extremely difficult to find the two prime factors if M contains several hundred digits; it might take billions of years and require the use of several hundred supercomputers. This difficulty, the factoring problem, is the basis of many encryption schemes forprotecting credit cards, state secrets, military and other confidential data. Sneakers thought standard encryption was so safe, and they were silly.

Gunter Janek, in the film Sneakers, mentions an intriguing possibility for a far more elegant approach to factoring large numbers. We can see that a quantum computer with moderate qubits might be able to find the prime factors in a few seconds, by using hundreds of atoms, essentially in parallel, to quickly factor huge numbers. How far away are quantum computers? In November 2017, IBM announced it had built a 50-qubit quantum computer, far from stable though, as the system could only hold its quantum microstate for 90 microseconds, much less than the times needed to make quantum computing practically viable. In early 2018, Google announced it had a quantum processor with 72 qubits.

It might not be a distant future when stable quantum computers with reasonable qubits would be commercially available. In India, the Department of Science & Technology has set up a programme called Quantum- Enabled Science & Technology (QuEST), and will invest `80 crore in the next three years to facilitate research on quantum computers. And after three years, the effort would be to push QuEST to the next phase to ensure that Indias quantum computing programme matches international standards.

The first-ever meeting for the QuEST programme was held in early January 2019 at IIIT-Hyderabad where a roadmap was discussed that would help in laying the groundwork for building quantum computers in India. When quantum computers are fully functional even in the modest range of qubits, the exponential speedup could solve many currently unsolvable computational problems including decryption, quantum chemistry, and combinatorial optimisation.

The quest for finding a prime number with a billion digits might be over in no time. However, this would invariably render most of the modern cryptography useless; security based on standard cryptography could be broken immediately, and the dystopian story of Sneakers might become a reality!
T V Mohandas Pai By

The recent Supreme Court decision on creating a mediation group headed by a former apex court judge to resolve the vexed Ayodhya matter is welcome. The SC seems to have understood the real nature of the disputethat the birthplace of Lord Rama is an undeniably vital matter of faith for the Hindu community. The SC also understands that the matter has to be handled in such a way that both the communities feel they have not compromised on their core principles.

This dispute is complicated by the involvement of all political partiesthose who want to prove to the Hindus that they are their champions and others who want to protect their Muslim vote bank by creating paranoia about the future. Both sides have been at an impasse, with courts seemingly unwilling to touch the case due to its sensitive nature.

What is most interesting is the inclusion of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as a part of this group. Obviously, the SC would have pondered deeply on the constitution of the group. That they chose to request him to be a member speaks very highly of his global accomplishments. Many commentators are surprised that a spiritual leader, that too from the Hindu community, was included. What most do not know is that he has been exceptionally adept at tackling global conflicts for some time.

Sri Sri has set up his Art of Living centres in over 150 countries, an exceptional track record and possibly the largest global network for anybody from India. With a huge following all over the world, he is widely respected in all countries. In the Middle East, he is welcomed by rulers and requested to address their subjects in large stadiums. His message of universal peace and brotherhood, focusing on making individuals stress-free and calm, is received readily by his audience. His view that societal stress is the result of the stress we feel by living in hyper-competitive and conflict-ridden societies resonates with all. Nowhere does the question of any religion come up, as individual well-being is a universal principle.

Sri Sri also has an exceptional track record of solving conflicts. He made numerous journeys to Colombia to bring peace between the government and the violent insurgents who had been fighting for over 50 years. The key was his acceptance by all sections of society there because people saw in him a compassionate leader interested in their future and well-being. Focusing as he did on individuals, he was able to widen their perspective until they realised the futility of violence and the need for reconciliation. It was a difficult issue in which both sides climbed down from their hardened positions, made compromises for the larger public good, with honour and dignity, and ultimately agreed to work together. Sri Sri put his personal credibility and goodwill at stake to make this happen.

In Kosovo, Sri Lanka and other parts of the world, he has been able to deliver results. It is not easy to change human behaviour in large groups but his approach seems to have worked. Of course it has taken time, continuous work and innumerable meetings. Sri Sri has worked hard to bring peace in Kashmir too, getting many militants to come to his ashram to attend courses and be transformed. Most have given up militancy, but a larger and more widespread effort is needed there.

Of course the Ayodhya issue is differentit is highly politicised with hardened positions on both sides. The SC has given the mediation group a very short period to arrive at a settlement, with the ultimate outcome of a judicial decision possibly to bring in rapprochement so that resolution becomes possible. It will test the inherently effective mettle of Sri Sri. But one must not forget that for many years, he has been working with various groups to bring them together and solve the issue by mediation. During his meetings, he has been able to understand the emotions, the hopes and fears of all protagonists, and the implication of any decision on our society. On many occasions, he seems to have come close to an acceptable solution only to have the political parties stymie his efforts as most want to keep this dispute alive for political reasons.

But now, with the SC putting its weight behind mediation, the chances of an acceptable solution is certainly brighter. It is understood that the alternative is a court decision which both sides have promised to accept; yet both will feel the pinch of political repercussions if it goes against their interests. A technical solution, as tried by the Allahabad HC, may not find acceptance as it may attempt to please both sides and yet do neither. However, dispelling the fear of all parties, reducing the points of conflict and enlarging the scope of the compromises needed is certainly an area in which Sri Sri has excelled globally.

In the past, Sri Sri has expressed the results of his earlier efforts at an acceptable solution. He has also expressed his views on possible solutions, but without the backing of the SC or the option of an ultimate court decision. The SC is clearly gearing up for a verdict should the mediation fail. But mediation is the best option and having Sri Sri, with his rich global experiences, networks, credibility, and deep understanding of conflicts, as one of the mediators is a positive development. We now live in hope of an amicable solution without the necessity of a court decision knowing well that a great Indian and a globally respected spiritual master is part of the effort.

T V Mohandas Pai

Chairman, Aarin Capital

Tweets @TVMohandasPai
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA/GUNTUR/ONGOLE/NELLORE: TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu continued his broadside against YSRC party chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and accused him of bringing Bihar style politics with the help of his advisor Prashant Kishor. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are helping Jagan with ulterior motives, he alleged.



Addressing party workers in Vijayawada, Guntur, Ongole, and Nellore, Naidu cautioned people against Jagan and his party contending that voting for the YSRC would create chaos in the State. He dwelt at length on the criminal mindset of the Opposition leader and his partymen.

His own uncle was murdered and evidence was erased. He blames me and my son for the murder and shamelessly stages a drama that has full of suspense and twists putting to shame even a detective novel for political gains, he alleged and maintained that Jagan was asking for CBI, confident of escaping with the help of chowkidar Narendra Modi.

Describing YSRC as party of conspiracy and deception, he said that its chief could best be described as a repository of crime. Do you know what would happen if you vote for such people? Will you be safe and secure? Create awareness among people about the havoc a vote to that party can create, he told his supporters.

Not sparing YSRC advisor Prashant Kishor and his Bihar-like political strategies, Naidu squarely blamed him for deletion of genuine votes by submitted Form 7 applications and theft of partys valuable data. TDP will never resort to such cheap politics and strongly believes in democracy and ballot, he asserted.

ALSO READ: We dont have to dabble, AP people will send Naidu home

Referring to KCRs statement that he insulted him 3,000 times, the TDP chief sought to know who spoke abusive language and who called Andhra people thieves.

With such people, who belittle our self-respect, Jagan Mohan Reddy joins hand only to loot the State.

Claiming that Telangana owed Andhra Pradesh `1 lakh crore, Naidu said TRS was now even creating hurdles to Polavaram project, the lifeline of the State by filing a writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking its stopping. With such people, Jagan joins hands, he pointed out.

Naidu alleged that the YSRC auctioned MP and MLA seats to the highest bidder, while the TDP selected candidates in a systematic manner after considering public feedback.

In Nellore, he lashed out at turncoat Adala Prabhakar Reddy and asked people to teach him a fitting lesson. In Ongole, he promised to complete Veligonda and other irrigation projects and create more employment through Ramayapatnam port development.

In Guntur, he unveiled a vision of futuristic capital and said works in that direction already commenced. It reminds me of the time Hyderabad started transforming into an IT hub, he said.

In Vijayawada, he said his party was the first to give MLA seat to Muslim minority women.

If not for TDP government completing Pattiseema and interlinking of rivers, Krishna delta would have faced drought, he said and asked people of Krishna to vote for his party.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Over 10,500 SSLC students have lost one year due to shortage of attendance. They ignored repeated warnings by their respective schools to maintain required attendance, and will not be allowed to appear for the Secondary School Leaving Certificate Examinations (SSLC) scheduled to begin on March 21.

As per the list released by the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB), 10,572 students are not being allowed to write the exams. Their admission tickets have been returned by the head teachers of the respective schools.

However, when compared with last year, the number of students having short attendance has significantly decreased this time. The corresponding figure last year was 16,811. Most of these students had recorded less than 60 percent attendance, as opposed to the 75 percent attendance made mandatory by the Supreme Court direction.

The activities of students, especially when the children have been irregular to classes, have been updated to the parents from time to time. The list of students was also put up on the notice boards. But despite that, these students ignored attending the classes regularly, said a senior KSEEB official.

Now these students will have to get themselves enrolled as fresh students next year, attend classes regularly, and maintain the required attendance to be eligible to take the exams.

The students with attendance shortage will not be allowed to write the supplementary either. They should enrol as fresh candidates for next year, the official added.

8 lakh students to take SSLC exams

This year, 8,41,666 students are expected to write the SSLC examinations, which are scheduled to be held from March 21 to April 4 at 2,847 examination centres across the state. The highest number of students registered are from Bengaluru South, totalling 65,451, followed by Bengaluru North at 49,336. Kodagu, with 7,240 students, has the lowest number of candidates, followed by Sirsi (9,736) and Uttara Kannada (9,766). As many as 4,651 students are specially-abled children, who have been given relaxation in choosing a subject. In some cases, instead of mathematics and sciences, another subject has been given as an option.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: The State Health Department is planning to terminate the services of doctors on unauthorised leave from government service. We have identified 267 doctors who are on unauthorised leave, for as long as three months to seven years, says Director of Medical Education Dr. A Edwin Joe. We will be sending them show cause notices. If they fail to respond, we will terminate their service and fill those vacancies.

As per government rules, all service doctors must execute a bond for a sum of `20 lakh for admission to PG diploma courses and `40 lakh for PG degree courses, apart from submitting signatures of three sureties, of which one is a parent or spouse, and giving an undertaking that they will serve the government till superannuation. Many doctors, however, disappear without informing the government as they do not want to pay the penalty amount.

There are many doctors who even go and practice abroad. So far the government has not taken any action. If it had taken timely action and filled up all vacancies, poor people going to government hospitals wouldnt suffer, says a service doctor on the condition of anonymity.

Edwin Joe said: Earlier also, we sent notices to the doctors. But it was a slow process. However, this time, we will speed up the process and take action for sure. We are also thinking about constituting a separate committee for this process. Last week the Madras High Court asked the government to constitute a monitoring committee to supervise the attendance of doctors.

Short of specialists

There is a shortage of doctors at super-speciality and speciality levels. Govt should address the issue, says Dr G Ravindranath, General Secretary of Doctors Association for Social Equality
By Online Desk

Tibetan spiritual leader The Dalai Lama on Monday said it was quite possible that his successor could be found in India following his death, a media report said.

"In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in a free country, one is chosen by Chinese, then nobody will trust, nobody will respect (the one chosen by China). So that's an additional problem for the Chinese. It's possible, it can happen," the 83-year-old monk said.

During an interview to a news agency, the Dalai Lama warned that Tibetans will not respect his a successor chosen by China would not be respected. The Buddhist spiritual leader spoke Reuters a day after Tibetans in Himachal Pradeshs Dharamshala observed the anniversary of the Dalai Lamas escape from Tibets capital of Lhasa in 1959.

Reacting to the interview, the Chinese foreign ministry said the reincarnation of Dalai Lama should follow China's laws and regulations and religious rituals.

"I knew you were going to ask this question. Well, here is the answer. Reincarnation is a unique way of Tibetan Buddhism. It has fixed rituals and systems. The Chinese government has a policy of freedom of religious beliefs. We have the regulation of religious affairs and regulations on the reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhism. We respect and protect such ways of Tibetan Buddhism," Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said.

"The reincarnation system has been there for hundreds of years. The 14th Dalai also was recognised in the religious rituals and was approved by the Central government. So the reincarnation of Dalai Lama should be following the national laws and regulations and the religious rituals," he added.

India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetans, many of who fled Tibet along with the Dalai Lama.
By PTI

BEIJING: In a rare acknowledgement, China Monday described the 2008 Mumbai attacks carried out by Pakistan-based LeT terror outfit as one of "the most notorious terrorist attacks".

In a white paper on its massive crackdown against militants in the restive Xianjiang province, China said the global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years had inflicted agony on humanity.

The paper described the Mumbai terror attacks as one of "the most notorious terrorist attacks", adding that the "global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years has inflicted agony on humanity".

The release of the paper titled "The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang", interestingly coincided with Pakistan Foreign Minister's Shah Mehmood Qureshi's visit to China.

Throughout the world, terrorism and extremism gravely threaten peace and development, and endanger the life and property of individuals, said the white paper released by China's State Council Information Office.

The paper came days after China for the fourth time blocked a bid in the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to designate Pakistan-based chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror group Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist" by putting a technical hold on the proposal, a move India termed as disappointing.

The JeM has claimed responsibility for the February 14 Pulwama attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead and escalated tensions between India and Pakistan.

"Striking aggressively at terrorism and furthering the de-radicalisation effort is the common responsibility of the international community and essential to the protection of human rights," it said.

China opposes all forms of terrorism and extremism, and opposes double standards on fighting terrorism, said the white paper, adding that Beijing opposes linking terrorism and extremism with specific countries, ethnic groups or religions.

China advocates comprehensive measures to address both the symptoms and the root causes, with the dual purposes of striking at terrorist activities and eliminating poverty, so that there will be no room for terrorism to breed, it said.

In one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country's history, 166 people, including Americans, were killed and over 300 injured as 10 heavily-armed terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) created mayhem in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.

Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after handed down death sentence by an Indian court.

Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Speed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan.

The US has offered a USD 10 million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice.
By PTI

KARACHI: Opposition leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday demand the sacking of three ministers in the Imran Khan-led Pakistan government who he said backed "banned outfits" and their training camps, even as the ruling PTI accused him of portraying the country in a "negative light".

Bilawal, Chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has been pressing the government of Prime Minister Khan to dismiss the ministers who backed terror outfits amidst intense international pressure on Pakistan to rein in the militant outfits operating in the country after the Pulwama terror strike.

Bilawal said he had been declared "anti-state" over his demand to sack the three ministers, whom he said, were associated with the banned outfits. The 30-year-old opposition leader has not yet named the three ministers.

The government has responded to my demand to sack ministers associated with banned outfits by declaring me anti-state, issueing death threats & NAB notices. None of this deters us from our principle stand; form joint NSC parliamentary committee & act against banned outfits.  BilawalBhuttoZardari (@BBhuttoZardari) March 19, 2019

"I demand a joint parliamentary committee for implementation of National Action Plan and removal of all three federal ministers for their connection with the extremist organisations. If our demands are not met we would not support the government over any move," said Bilawal.

"The three federal ministers are "hands-in-glove" with the terrorists. I don't want to disclose their names, but will do so if the government fails to take action against them," he said last Thursday. During the weekend, Bilawal raised the issue while addressing the PPP's Sindh leaders while chairing the party's provincial council meeting.

He demanded the removal of three federal ministers for their alleged connections with the banned outfits and accused Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) of winning general elections in 2018 with the help of proscribed organisations.

He warned the government that it will not get any support from the PPP on any move if it did not take serious action against such elements within its ranks and implement the National Action Plan (NAP) with true spirit. On Tuesday, PTI leaders hit back at Bilawal after he again demanded sacking of the ministers who he claimed were associated with the banned outfits.

PTI Senator Faisal Javed, reacting to the allegations, said Bilawal was "busy in portraying Pakistan in a negative light". "Bilawal should be ashamed of trying to please anti-Pakistan elements. He should tell the nation whose language he has been speaking. Pakistan has emerged as a symbol of peace for the world," Javed claimed.

Finance Minister Asad Umar, when asked by a reporter what he thought of the allegations, said that the parties that supported him during election campaigns "have themselves been victims of terrorism as well." "There has been a policy of making excuses for a long time now. If he [Bilawal] doesn't believe in this policy then he should change it," the close aide of Prime Minister Khan was quoted as saying by Geo News.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Germany has initiated a move at the European Union to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, days after China blocked a bid at the United Nations to ban him, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

They said Germany was in touch with several member nations of the European Union for listing Azhar as a terrorist which will result in his travel ban as well as the freezing of his assets in the 28 countries of the bloc.

ALSO READ | Masood Azhar travelled to UK, Gulf, Africa to collect funds for Kashmiri militants

Germany has floated a proposal to ban Azhar by the European Union, but no resolution on the issue has been moved yet, diplomatic sources said.

They said all 28 member countries of the European Union (EU) will have to support the move to ban the Pakistan-based terrorist as the bloc decides on such issues under the principle of consensus.

On March 15, France imposed financial sanctions on Azhar and said it will work with its European partners for putting the JeM chief's name on the EU list of persons and entities involved in terrorist acts.

The decision by France came two days after China put a hold on a fresh move to designate Azhar as a global terrorist by the Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

The proposal to designate Azhar under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UNSC was moved by France, the UK and the US, in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed.

JeM had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack. Fourteen out of the 15 members of the UN Security Council supported the proposal, but China was the only country which did not go with the move.
(Photo/Red Star News)

A young couple in Yibin, southwest Chinas Sichuan Province, recently caught widespread attention on their wedding day, as instead of picking out fancy cars to drive to the wedding ceremony, they opted to run there instead, Red Star News reported on March 17.

On the morning of March 17, more than 40 runners gathered in Baixi Town, Xuzhou District of Yibin City, to escort the couple on their special day.

The groom, Liu Zhouzhou, ran with the group to meet his bride Ma Ting at her parents house, and then escorted her to the wedding on foot.

It is a traditional Chinese custom for the groom to lead a group of friends and family to meet the bride at her parents house, and then escort the bride, together with her friends and family, to the wedding venue. However, Liu and Ma decided that they should do it differently.

We got to know each other and fall in love through running. To commemorate our special journey of love, we came up with this idea of running instead of driving to our wedding ceremony. Its both environmentally friendly and special, said Ma, noting that they are both running enthusiasts.

(Photo/Red Star News)

Ma has enjoyed running for a long time and has been a member of a local running club for a number of years. Later, Liu joined the club and started to run with Ma, and then asked her to exercise at the weekends too. From there, love blossomed.

The round trip Liu and his group took to meet his bride and escort her to the wedding was 13.14 km in length, as the numbers 1,3,1, and 4 sound like the phrase in all ones life in Chinese, according to the couple.

Friends and family on the bride's side ran 5.20 km, as the numbers 5,2, and 0 sound like the Chinese phrase I love you when pronounced one by one.

(Photo/Red Star News)

All the runners who took part were friends that the couple had made in running groups.

We all love long-distance running, and we have run many times with the new couple. Environmental protection has always been a subject we want to raise awareness of," said one of the runners.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Windy with scattered thunderstorms, especially late. A few storms may be severe. Low near 35F. Winds SW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Windy with scattered thunderstorms, especially late. A few storms may be severe. Low near 35F. Winds SW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
The countdown to the 70th birthday of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has begun, as an official video showcasing the Navy's historical development was released on March 16.

The aircraft carrier Liaoning battle group steam on the sea. (Photo/eng.chinamil.com.cn)

China will host a multinational naval activity on April 23 in Qingdao, east Chinas Shandong province, to honor the event, said Ren Guoqiang, spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense.

Ren said that detailed information about the activity would be published at a later date.

Observers have speculated that the celebration is likely to include a massive sea parade of major Navy ships, submarines and aircraft, along with vessels from other countries.

The official video shows the Navys first aircraft carrier CNS Liaoning and the Type 055 destroyer, demonstrating Chinas naval prowess.

More importantly, the video reveals the Navys joint military exercises, ocean escorts, friendly visits and humanitarian medical services around the world, displaying the Navys positive image as well as exchanges and cooperation with other countries.




THE countrys largest cement producer, Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) Zimbabwe is feeling the heat from imports and has called on Government to promulgate protectionist laws to promote local production.





Government lifted a two- year import ban on some basic commodities including cement last October as a measure to deal with rampant shortages that drove public into panic buying.





PPC Zimbabwe managing director, Mr Kelibone Masiyane, has said their competitiveness has largely been affected by the opening of borders. Cement was among the products in short supply despite insistence of adequate capacity by local producers.PPC Zimbabwe managing director, Mr Kelibone Masiyane, has said their competitiveness has largely been affected by the opening of borders.





What really has rendered us uncompetitive initially was the opening of the flood gates and then pricing became another issue.





Definitely the price of imported cement is much lower than ours and we cannot compete because of high cost of production, he said.





At the PPC Zimbabwe factory in Bulawayo, a minimum of 100 bags of cement are being sold at RTGS$30 each or US$7,50.





A snap survey carried out by Business Chronicle in Bulawayo has shown that most of the hardware shops do not have imported cement but locally produced cement, which is selling for between RTGS$28 and RTGS$36 per 50kg.





The price in US$ ranges between US$6,50 and US$8 or R120. We are coming from a point where we arent looking for a complete ban but what we are saying is we want to get to a level playing field so that people can choose cement type depending on quality. We believe we have got the best quality and we believe that is how we should be competing, he said.





Mr Masiyane briefed Industry and Commerce Minister Nqobizitha Ndlovu about the issue during a recent tour of the companys factory in Bulawayo.





He told the minister that at present his company has more than enough stocks of cement at its warehouses. In his response Minister Ndlovu said:





I want to agree with you and leave a challenge, which l left with you the other time. At this point it wont make much sense for me to push for protection unless we are satisfied that you can supply the market.





Im still not convinced and am told by people that they are failing to buy cement because it is in short supply. I am sure you know it.





Minister Ndlovu said he was quite concerned about the cement sector and wanted it protected because the country was moving towards infrastructure development.





Against this background, he said protection of the cement sector has to lead to tangible results and, thus, Government and manufacturers needed to agree on strategies that need to be adopted to improve competitiveness locally produced cement.





Minister Ndlovu said he was pleased to note that PPC Zimbabwe as a leading cement manufacturer, had dealt with issues of packaging and also clinker, which was being transported from Colleen Bawn in Matabeleland South province to the Bulawayo plant.





All these issues and power supply are tangible programmes meant to improve competitiveness and also as Government you need to tell us where we should consider adjustments, he said.





On the pricing issue, he said this would not be addressed unless and until the supply constraint in the market was addressed adding that there were people who wanted to take advantage of the situation and benefit from arbitrage opportunities.





Minister Ndlovu said in Plumtree where he hails from, people were not able to buy cement in local currency.





Mr Masiyane said there were special prices for border towns meant to discourage imports.








Nelson Chamisas tour of the cyclone-hit Manicaland region was cut short after police barred him from proceeding to Chipinge.





MDC officials said a roadblock had been hurriedly set up at Tanganda Junction to stop his entourage which had more than $20 000 worth of goods for cyclone victims  including clothes and some basic commodities.





Chamisa was accompanied by his deputy Elias Mudzuri, secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora, spokesperson Jacob Mafume, MDC youth leader Happymore Chidziwa and the Manicaland provincial executive, among other people.





The barring of the convoy almost sparked a melee, after a Zanu PF vehicle also arrived at the roadblock  with local people also demanding that it also be barred from proceeding.

Speaking earlier while he was inspecting the washed away Tanganda Halt bridge, Chamisa implored Zimbabweans to foster national unity.





We need to rise above party politics and unite for the national interest in a time like this, he said.





Meanwhile Zimbabweans are slowly coming to full terms with the horrific scale of devastation that Cyclone Idai wreaked in the country  amid confirmation late yesterday that torrential rains and landfalls had claimed the lives of at least 98 people over the past few days, the Daily News can report.





And as the weather began to clear somewhat yesterday, authorities stepped up their rescue efforts, particularly in the hard-hit Chimanimani and Chipinge districts of Manicaland, where traumatised villagers described the cyclone as the biggest natural disaster to have hit the area in living memory.





There, flood storms, mudslides and winds of up to 170 km per hour swept away homes, schools, roads, bridges and other key infrastructure  forcing thousands of people to seek shelter and to sleep in mountains since last Friday night.





Ive lived all my life here and Ive never seen anything like this, not even close. It was so bad that it was like the end of the world. My family is alive only because God is good, a 63-year-old Chipinge North villager told the Daily News last night.





The government said apart from the 98 deaths 217 people were missing while 102 were injured and 42 marooned. The government said apart from the 98 deaths217 people were missing while 102 were injured and 42 marooned.





It said yesterday that it would use $50 million raised from its two cents per dollar transaction tax to help victims of Cyclone Idai and to repair badly-damaged roads  as the country began to count the costs of the devastating storms. It said yesterday that it would use $50 million raised from its two cents per dollar transaction tax to help victims of Cyclone Idai and to repair badly-damaged roads  as the country began to count the costs of the devastating storms.





This came as the death toll had risen to at least 98 by yesterday  with hundreds more injured and scores others still missing  following the ongoing rescue operations in Manicaland, Masvingo and Mashonaland East. This came as the death toll had risen to at least 98 by yesterday  with hundreds more injured and scores others still missing  following the ongoing rescue operations in Manicaland, Masvingo and Mashonaland East.





of emergency funds by Treasury to provide relief to thousands of affected and displaced villagers. Authorities said the cost of human loss, injuries and infrastructure damage was of epic proportions, necessitating the releaseof emergency funds by Treasury to provide relief to thousands of affected and displaced villagers.





This is a tragedy of epic proportions. The government is going to fall back on the funds realised from the two percent tax to provide aid to the affected.





However, any help will be very much appreciated, the permanent secretary in the Information ministry, Nick Mangwana, told the Daily News yesterday.





He also said that the army had rescued 197 students who were stranded at the Roman Catholic Church-run St Charles Lwanga School  who were marooned at the school when a dormitory was buried in a mudslide. He also said that the army had rescued 197 students who were stranded at the Roman Catholic Church-run St Charles Lwanga School  who were marooned at the school when a dormitory was buried in a mudslide.





While rescue missions continued to scour flooded villages for missing people, the government said most roads to Chimanimani had been badly damaged, hampering the delivery of much-needed relief aid.





Police also warned motorists not to visit the affected areas as this was contributing to congestion, which was making it difficult for relief workers to distribute foodstuffs and other essentials such as water and blankets.





The worst-affected roads were the Chipinge-Chimanimani thoroughfare, the Wengezi-Chimanimani road and the Mt Selinda-Birchenough Bridge highway. The worst-affected roads were the Chipinge-Chimanimani thoroughfare, the Wengezi-Chimanimani road and the Mt Selinda-Birchenough Bridge highway.





On its part, the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society said it had mobilised significant emergency essentials for affected villagers in the region, working closely with the Civil Protection Unit to deliver these. On its part, the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society said it had mobilised significant emergency essentials for affected villagers in the region, working closely with the Civil Protection Unit to deliver these.





Among other things, it had delivered 500 blankets, 500 tarpaulins for temporary shelter, 20 boxes of soap, mosquito nets, 300 buckets, 115 compressible jerry cans and clothes by the end of day yesterday.





At the same time, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) also announced that the cyclone had cut off water supplies to thousands of people in Manicaland and Masvingo provinces. At the same time, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) also announced that the cyclone had cut off water supplies to thousands of people in Manicaland and Masvingo provinces.





Stations that have been affected are mostly in the Save catchment area, which covers mostly Manicaland Province, as well as Runde Catchment in Masvingo Province.





Stations that stand affected in the Save Catchment are Murambinda, Checheche, Birchenough Bridge, Nyanyadzi, Chakohwa, Chibuwe, Matendeudze, Biriwiri, Murambinda, Buhera, Nyanga, Tanganda, Zimunya and Mutasa.





Also affected are Gutu, Zaka, Mutimurefu and Ngundu water supply stations in Runde Catchment, Zinwa communcations manager, Marjorie Munyonga, said.





Meanwhile, the recently constructed Marowanyati Dam in Murambinda is now full and spilling as a result of the heavy rains received in its catchment due to the cyclone.





The spilling of the dam raises the water levels in Mwerahari River and communities along that river are advised to be on high alert, Munyonga added.





Meanwhile, United Nations (UN) secretary-general Antonio Guterres says he is deeply troubled by the loss of life in Zimbabwe after Cyclone Idai killed 98 people and injured scores others in the country. Meanwhile, United Nations (UN) secretary-general Antonio Guterres says he is deeply troubled by the loss of life in Zimbabwe after Cyclone Idai killed 98 people and injured scores others in the country.





The secretary-general extends his condolences to the families of the victims and to people and government of Zimbabwe.





The UN expresses its solidarity with the Zimbabwe authorities and stands ready to work with them as they respond to the humanitarian needs resulting from this disaster, Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for the secretary-general said yesterday. Daily News








Also look at the amount we are buying the church stands, very exorbitant. The requirements that a church should have $30 000 in the account before they apply for a stand was prohibitive. In fact, let me say this, most indigenous churches are finding it hard to raise such kind of money. Can council
(Newser)  On Sunday, the New York Daily News and other outlets posted a story on what surely must've felt like a victory of sorts for the NYPD, and justice for one of their own: the capture of a fugitive who was said to have killed an off-duty cop in the Bronx nearly two decades ago. Lester Pearson, 43aka rapper Monsta Kodi, who also went by the alias of Michael Daviswas nabbed in Jacksonville, Fla., last Friday, 19 years after skipping bail for the Dec. 29, 1999, shooting of then-27-year-old police officer Vincent Ling. Pearson had reportedly dated Ling's sister, and the two men were embroiled in a longtime feud when the shooting took place. Ling, an undercover narcotics officer, was reportedly paralyzed in the shooting, and then said to have died. A homicide warrant was issued for Pearson in 2009.

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Even NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill, in a now-deleted tweet on Sunday, mentioned Ling as being deceased. Except ... he's not, per the New York Post. "Retired Police Officer Ling, who was shot in 1999, is alive," an NYPD spokeswoman said on Monday. "A misreading of the attempted-murder charge on Pearson's arrest warrant led to the confusion about his death." Ling, now 47, reportedly lives in the Bronx. "He's very much alive," Ling's uncle tells the Daily News. "I saw him last year." As for Pearson, who's had a string of arrests since the 1999 shooting, Action News Jax reports he's being held in Duval County Jail in Florida on $40,000 bond, awaiting extradition to New York. It's still unclear what the charges against him will be, though it looks like it won't be for Ling's murder. (Read more NYPD stories.)
(Newser)  Republican Rep. Devin Nunes is tired of being insulted by Twitter accounts like Devin Nunes' Cow, which calls him a "lil' treasonous cowpoke," and the now-suspended Devin Nunes' Mom. In a $250 million lawsuit against the website and some of its users, including the "Cow" and "Mom" accounts, the California lawmaker accuses Twitter of ignoring complaints about defamatory material, the Verge reports. He accuses the website of censoring conservative viewpoints and "shadow-banning conservatives" by causing their names to not appear as auto-suggestions. Engadget reports that Nunes blames Twitter for making his 2018 re-election closer than it should have been.

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The complaint filed in a Virginia court Monday accused Twitter of failing to act when the Devin Nunes' Mom, among other things, "falsely accused Nunes of putting up a 'Fake News MAGA' sign outside a Texas Holocaust museum ... disparagingly called him a 'presidential fluffer and swamp rat" and "falsely stated that Nunes had brought 'shame' to his family," Fox reports. The lawsuit argues that Twitter is so important to current affairs that it needs to do more to remove defamatory content. "Access to Twitter is essential for meaningful participation in modern-day American democracy," states the lawsuit, which seeks compensatory and punitive damages as well as an order for Twitter to reveal the names of the people behind the accounts that insulted Nunes. (Read more Devin Nunes stories.)
(Newser)  For a man accused of gunning down a mob boss, Anthony Comello doesn't seem much interested in keeping a low profile. During a court hearing Monday in New Jersey, the 24-year-old made a point to flash an open palm at reporters, and that palm was covered in hand-written messages, reports NJ.com. Some were illegible, but the AP deciphered apparent nods to President Trump: "MAGA Forever," "United We Stand MAGA," and "Patriots In Charge." Comello also drew a circle in the center of his palm, its meaning unclear.

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Why the messages? His lawyer gave no explanation. Asked what Comello had on his hand, attorney Brian Neary said only, "Handcuffs." Comello is accused of killing reputed Gambino crime boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali last week in Staten Island, but the best guess at the moment is that the shooting in front of Cali's home had nothing to do with the mafia. Preliminary evidence suggests Comello was ticked that Cali wouldn't let him see a woman in Cali's family. Comello is now headed back to New York City to face trial. (Read more Mafia stories.)
(Newser)  Vladimir Putin has signed bills banning what the state calls "fake news," although the Russian president's critics see the legislation as a thinly disguised crackdown on real newsand criticism of the authorities. The new laws introduce punishments for anybody who "exhibits blatant disrespect for the society, government, official government symbols, constitution or governmental bodies of Russia," including Putin, the Moscow Times reports. The punishments include possible fines or prison time for online news outlets or users who insult authorities or spread what authorities deem to be "fake news." The fines go up to around $23,000 for repeat offenders.

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The new laws make it much easier for authorities to crack down on online speech, which was the last place where "full diversity of opinion and free expression" on political subjects was generally permitted, Matthew Rojansky of the Wilson Centers Kennan Institute tells the Washington Post. "Now its much more straightforward: If the state considers any online speech extremist, it can block it, and it can severely punish the speaker," he says. "One consequence may be to make it nearly impossible for individuals or groups to call for public protest activity against any action taken by the state." Authorities will also have the power to block any website considered to hold offending material. (Read more Vladimir Putin stories.)
More population to have electricity in Tibet

LHASA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The State Grid's Tibet branch announced that 25,000 more people in the plateau region will be covered by the main power grid by the end of this year.

In 2019, Tibet plans to build 140 electric substations of 35 kilovolts and above and 7,000 km of power transmission lines as the region continues to expand and upgrade its electricity infrastructure.

By the end of 2018, 2.76 million people in 63 counties, or over 80 percent of Tibet's population, were covered by the main power grid, thanks to an investment of 8.89 billion yuan (about 1.3 billion U.S. dollars) in the year.

If the plan goes well, the figure will rise to 66 counties by the end of 2019.

A 16.2-billion-yuan power interconnection project was put into operation in Tibet last November, linking the region with the national grid network for the first time.
(Newser)  A former Pennsylvania pediatrician was sentenced Monday to at least 79 years in prison for sexually assaulting 31 children, most of them patients, as his now-adult victims blasted not only their abuser but the system that let him get away with it for so long. Dr. Johnnie Barto of Johnstown was sentenced on dozens of criminal counts, including aggravated indecent assault and child endangerment, the AP reports. Prosecutors said Barto, 71, spent decades abusing children in the exam room at his pediatric practice in western Pennsylvania and at local hospitals, having opted to become a pediatrician so he'd have a ready supply of victims. He typically abused prepubescent girls. One was an infant. He was handed a sentence of 79 to 158 years, meaning he will die in prison.

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"I grieve for the little girl I should have been, for the childhood I should've had. ... I grieve for all the children you hurt," Erika Brosig, who was sexually abused at age 13, said at Barto's sentencing. Brosig and 18 other people gave victim impact statements Monday, both in person and through a prosecutor, describing their pain and hurt. Barto's wife, Linda Barto, was among them. "He has been lying to me about everything for all of the 52 years I have known him," she said. Authorities had a chance to stop Barto in 2000, when he appeared before the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine on administrative charges that he molested two young girls in the 1990s. But regulators threw out the case and allowed him to keep practicing medicine, saying the allegations were "incongruous to his reputation."

(Read more sexual abuse stories.)
(Newser)  Hawaii would be the first state in the US to ban most plastics at restaurants under legislation that aims to cut down on waste that pollutes the ocean. Dozens of cities across the country have banned plastic foam containers, but Hawaii's measure would make it the first to do so statewide, the AP reports. The liberal state has a history of prioritizing the environmentit has mandated renewable energy use and prohibited sunscreen ingredients that harm coral. A second, more ambitious proposal would go even further and prohibit fast-food and full-service restaurants from distributing and using plastic drink bottles, utensils, stirring sticks, bags, and straws.

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The Hawaii efforts would be stricter than in California, which last year became the first state to ban full-service restaurants from automatically giving out plastic straws, and broader than in Seattle, San Francisco, and other cities that have banned some single-use plastics. Activists believe the foam container measure has a better chance of passing in Hawaii. "We have this reputation of setting the example for the world to follow, and that's what we're trying to do here," state Sen. Mike Gabbard, lead author of the more ambitious measure, said to the Senate. "Our state can once again take the lead in protecting our environment." Industry groups like the Hawaii Restaurant Association, however, argue that lawmakers are trying to do "too much too fast."

(Read more Hawaii stories.)
(Newser)  The odds of Brexit happening as scheduled on March 29 became even slimmer Monday when Parliament's "referee" got involved. John Bercow, the nonpartisan speaker of the House of Commons, dashed Prime Minister Theresa May's hopes of submitting her European Union exit plan for a third vote this week by ruling that she can't bring it back without "substantial" changes. May's government appeared blindsided by the ruling, the Washington Post reports. "The speaker did not forewarn us of the content of his statement or the fact that he was making one," the prime minister's spokeswoman told reporters.

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In his statement Monday, Bercow cited a rule dating from 1604 which states that a defeated motion can't be brought back in the same form for another vote during a parliamentary session, the BBC reports. Lawmakers have suggested looking for a way around the rulingpossibly by ignoring the 1604 ruleor by ending the current session of Parliament early in a process called prorogation. Solicitor General Robert Buckland said Monday that the country is now in a "major constitutional crisis," Reuters reports. The Guardian reports that the ruling means May is likely to have to request a long extension to the Brexit process when she heads to Brussels for a summit Thursday. (In a nonbinding vote last week, the House of Commons approved asking for a Brexit delay.)
(Newser)  California's Flintstone House is on the verge of becoming much less Flintstone-esque. The colorful house in the shape of boulders has irritated neighbors in Hillsborough for years. But attorneys for the town have now filed a lawsuit, painting the owner's latest additions as the last straw, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Since purchasing the property for $2.8 million in 2017, media mogul Florence Fang has erected a sign reading "Yabba Dabba Doo" and added a statued menagerie of prehistoric animals, including dinosaurs up to 15 feet tall. That the property perched on a hillside above Interstate 280 is now a "highly visible eyesore" is just part of the town's problem, per the Los Angeles Times. Arguing that the proper permits weren't obtained, attorneys say the property is also a hazard to visitors. They don't want to turn the place to rubble, but say Fang's decorations must go.

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Indeed, the former publisher of the San Francisco Examiner may have no other choice. Attorneys say Fang didn't challenge an October order to remove the decorations by December, and even paid a $200 fine, meaning it's now set in stone. Hillsborough's Administrative Hearing Panel had then ruled the decorations were "designed to be very intrusive, resulting in the owners vision for her property being imposed on many other properties and views." It wasn't the first Fang had heard of the town's displeasure. From December 2017 through August, she was sent three notices to stop altering the property. Officials say she'd been granted a permit to build a 2-foot-high retaining wall but went well beyond those parameters, also constructing a deck and parking area. A relative says Fang "will fight to save the Flintstone House," per Sky News. (Read more California stories.)
(Newser)  This might be the best Brexit story of the year, though Britain's Theresa May won't be laughing. France's minister for European affairs got in a memorable shot at the UK's seeming inability to figure out how, or if, to proceed on leaving the European Union. Nathalie Loiseau told Le Journal du Dimanche that she named her cat "Brexit" because he whines to go out, then refuses to leave. The translation, via the Local France:

"He wakes me up every morning meowing to death because he wants to go out, and then when I open the door he stays in the middle, undecided, and then gives me evil looks when I put him out."

(Read more Brexit stories.)
(Newser)  Elizabeth Warren conducted a town hall meeting in Mississippi on Monday night, and one big takeaway is her call to eliminate the Electoral College. The Massachusetts senator complained that candidates often skip states such as Mississippi, her own home state, and larger ones such as California because they're not battleground states. "My view is that every vote matters," she said, per USA Today. "And the way we can make that happen is we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College." The line drew big applause.

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Warren isn't the only 2020 candidate suggesting the idea. Bernie Sanders thinks the system should at least be reassessed, and long-shot candidate Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, also has called for its abolition, reports the Hill. During the forum, Warren also expressed support for the idea of Medicare-for-all, though she said "a lot of different pathways" need to be explored on that, per CNN. She also briefly addressed the controversy over her claims of Native American ancestry, saying she had initially repeated what she "learned about my family from my family." Both CNN and USA Today have more key points from the forum. (This op-ed also made the case to ditch the electoral college.)
(Newser)  Robert Mueller began investigating Michael Cohen at least nine months before FBI agents in New York raided his home and office, according to documents released Tuesday, per the AP. The series of heavily redacted search warrant applications and other documents revealed new details about the timing and depth of the probe into Cohen, who ultimately pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress. The records show the inquiry into President Trump's former attorney had been going on since July 2017far longer than previously knownand illustrate just how "quickly and quietly" Cohen's investigation was moving, per the Washington Post. A big part of its focus was Cohen's taxi businesses and misrepresentations he made to banks as part of a scheme to shed $22 million in debt he owed on taxi medallion loans.

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Prosecutors were also interested in money that was flowing into Cohen's bank accounts from consulting contracts he'd signed after Trump won office. Some of those payments were from companies with strong foreign ties, including a Korean aerospace company and Columbus Nova, an investment management firm affiliated with Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. Cohen was ultimately not charged with failing to register as a foreign agent. Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, said the release of the search warrant "furthers his interest in continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump organization to law enforcement and Congress." (Cohen thinks Trump still owes him money.)
(Newser)  Too bad his costume didn't come equipped with wings. Police in Maryland have arrested a man accused of robbing a Baldwin convenience store while disguised as a pink and white unicorn. Per the Baltimore Sun, 28-year-old Jacob Rogge was wearing the full-body costume when he allegedly used a crowbar to smash a cash register around 5am Saturday. Police say he took cash and cigarettes before dropping the costume in bushes and jumping in a car. This is where the wings would've come in handy.

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As police passed the silver Hyundai Elantra, the car crossed into the opposite lane, hitting mailboxes, a roadside pole, and a boulder, investigators say, per WBAL. It then flew back across the road and hit a tree, police say. Rogge and the suspected driver, 27-year-old Joseph Svezzese, were taken to hospitals with serious injuries. Both men face charges of armed robbery, robbery, and theft. The lone suspect remaining in hospital, Rogge is also charged with first- and second-degree assault and destruction of property. (It took cops 4 hours to chase down this "unicorn.")
(Newser)  Parents entrusted their children to West Virginia's Wheeling-Charleston Diocese schools and campsnot knowing who their children were potentially being exposed to. The West Virginia attorney general has filed a lawsuit against the diocese accusing it of not conducting adequate background checks for its employees, including priests, and not warning parents of the danger, WTRF reports. What it boils down to: The diocese "knowingly employed pedophiles," according to the suit. The suit claims even admitted child molesters were put in posts that routinely brought them into contact with children, Philly.com reports. The diocese's former bishop, Michael Bransfield, is named in the suit and accused of harboring the accused and admitted abusers within the diocese; Bransfield himself has been accused of sexually harassing adults, and was suspended from all priestly ministries last week when a separate church-led investigation ended.

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Among other things, the lawsuit says that the diocese ordained Victor Forbas as a priest even though it knew there was a credible sex abuse accusation against him; he ended up the director of one of the diocese's camps. Accusations were made against him at that camp, the suit says, but after receiving treatment he worked at Wheeling Central Catholic High School. He later pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children in Missouri and went to prison before dying in 1993. "This morning, I filed a civil action against the Wheeling/Charleston Diocese and former Bishop Bransfield for deceiving consumers and claiming their schools were safe when they were employing credibly accused pedophiles," West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey tweeted. He added in a statement, "Parents who pay and entrust the ... diocese and its schools to educate and care for their children deserve full transparency." (Read more Catholic Church stories.)
(Newser)  Few people watched the live broadcast of helmet cam footage showing the Friday shooting at one of two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, according to Facebook. The 17-minute livestream had fewer than 200 views at its end, and no one reported it during that time. Facebook says the first user report came in 12 minutes later, by which time the stream had about 4,000 views. But though it was deleted by Facebook within minutes, copies quickly spread, reports USA Today. Within 24 hours, Facebook had removed 300,000 videos and blocked another 1.2 million at upload. YouTube was in a similar boat. A team of "incident commanders" worked through Friday night removing tens of thousands of videos with original shooting footage as they were uploaded sometimes as quickly as "one per second," reports the Washington Post.

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Many of the videos were altered visually and in length "to defeat YouTube's ability to detect" them so that "for many hours, video of the attack could be easily found using such simple basic terms as 'New Zealand,'" per the Post. "This incident has shown that, especially in the case of more viral videos like this one, there's more work to be done," says YouTube's chief product officer, Neal Mohan. "We continue to work around the clock to prevent this content from appearing on our site, using a combination of technology and people," adds Facebook VP Chris Sonderby. That's apparently not good enough for some advertisers. The New Zealand Herald reports major New Zealand brands including Burger King are set to pull their ads from Facebook and Google. (The role of social media in the attack will be investigated.)
SHANGHAI, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Starbucks said Monday it did not sell its VIA instant coffee in supermarkets on the Chinese mainland, responding to claims about "fake Starbucks" found in cities like Beijing and Nanjing.

Media reports have surfaced about "Starbucks VIA instant coffee" found in a number of high-end supermarkets in Chinese cities, with labels describing their distributor as "Guangzhou Baiyi Foods Trade Co., Ltd."

Starbucks China told Xinhua that its "Starbucks VIA" instant coffee is only sold at its outlets and its Tmall store. Tmall is a popular online shopping platform in China.

The company said it will take legal actions against any counterfeited Starbucks products.

A survey in several Nanjing supermarkets by Xinhua reporters found the "Starbucks VIA" in question have almost the same design as those sold at Starbucks outlets, even complete with an "anti-forgery label."

The fake VIA coffee is also marked with a shelf life of 18 months, longer than the eight months on authentic ones.

Starbucks currently has more than 3,600 stores in over 150 cities in China, which has become the fastest-growing overseas market for the U.S. coffee brand.
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Occasional snow showers. Low 3F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snowfall around one inch..

Tonight

Occasional snow showers. Low 3F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snowfall around one inch.
2019-03-19 21:56:00

THE WHOLE WORLD watched with shock the terrorist attacks of fanatical Islamists in London [7th July, 2005], which brought death and disaster to the unsuspecting citizens on that morning in July.



From beneath the ashes and tears, a particular voice made an impression on us. It was the voice of the Greek driver of the fated bus, George Psaradakes. He was an experienced driver for Londons Urban Transport. On that morning he began his shift. He set out on his usual route on bus 30, just as he had been doing so many years. Suddenly he heard an explosion!



When he looked back, he realized that he was the only one on the bus who had not been injured. His passengers were either killed or seriously injured. The sight was horrible and indescribable. He, however, came out unhurt.



As soon as he recovered from the immediate shock, he spoke to the reporters. Then he revealed his secret to them: I was saved by a miracle! I always carry an icon of the Theotokos the Directress on me. I also had it with me on that Thursday morning. The Panagia saved me. I thank her.



  

paraklisi



 
Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested four male employees of a hostess club in Adachi Ward over the alleged assault of a fifth male employee, who later died, reports the Sankei Shimbun

At around 7:00 p.m. on March 16, Tatsuya Kawaguchi, the 24-year manager of the club, Tomoya Tachikawa, 20, and the other two employees, both aged 17, allegedly beat Rei Shigeyama, 20, inside the club, located inside an apartment in the Ayase area.

Thereafter, the victim was brought to his residence in Katsushika Ward. At around 9:30 p.m., one of the 17-year-old co-workers found him to not be breathing and alerted emergency services. He was later confirmed dead at the scene.

According to police, the incident took place after the victim got into a dispute with the employees over his failure to come to work the day before.

Kawaguchi, who has been accused of inflicting injury, admits to the allegations. aI kicked him in the face and side, thereas no doubt,a the suspect was quoted. The other three suspects deny the allegations, saying Kawaguchi carried out the assault. aWe couldnat stop Kawaguchi,a one of the youths was quoted.

Upon receiving the results of an autopsy, police will decide whether to change the charges against the suspects to manslaughter.
It is boom time for Chinese language learning across the world, not only because of Chinas higher profile in the global community, but also because of the increasing economic and cultural connections between China and other countries.

As one of the latest countries to welcome Chinese language lecturers, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to open Chinese language courses in some 200 public primary and secondary schools, and experienced Chinese teachers are eagerly needed.

The UAEs Ministry of Education will provide a competitive salary  about $4,500 monthly that is exempt from tax, according to the Confucius Institute, which has reached the cooperation agreement with the UAE.

The recruitment advertising went viral on Chinese social platforms. Some netizens were excited to see further popularization of Chinese language and culture, and others commented that more Chinese courses opening across world show Chinas increasing influence and the huge demand of Chinese-speaking talents.

In March, Russia included Mandarin as an elective foreign language in the countrys college entrance exam. Following English, German, French, and Spanish, Mandarin has become the fifth elective test item for the exam, according to Sergey Kravtsov, deputy minister of Russias Ministry of Education and Science.

Thanks to Chinas increasing influence in the global community, talents with fluent Chinese language skills are welcomed in the labor market.

Spain, for example, has more than 40,000 people learning Chinese, and last year some 8,000 have taken the Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK) exam, ranking first among the member states of the European Union, according to Xinhua News Agency.

In the US, Chinese fever has been thriving for a number of years and is now a popular choice for American children, especially those who are born in elite families. These children are exposed to the language at an early age as their parents believe mastering Chinese will help them build successful international careers, Guangming Online reported.
Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has filed a petition before the presidential election tr...





reelection. Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has filed a petition before the presidential election tribunal to challenge President Muhammadu Buharisreelection.





Atiku filed the petition before the tribunal in Abuja on Monday, asking it to declare him authentic winner of the election or order that a fresh poll should be conducted.





The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Buhari as winner but the PDP candidate rejected the result, alleging widespread irregularities.





Addressing journalists, Emmanuel Enoidem, PDP national legal adviser, said: We asked that our candidate who won the election massively across the country be declared the winner.





In the alternative, we also asked that the election be set aside on the ground of irregularity which was apparent across the country.





He also said Atiku and the PDP have in their team 20 senior advocates of Nigeria (SAN) so we are confident.





We have also lined up more than 400 witnesses that are going to testify in this petition, he said.





Segun Sowunmi, spokesman of the Atiku Campaign Organisation, also told TheCable that the development is the first step to getting Nigeria working again.





He said: The judiciary should do what is right; examine the issues and deliver to Nigerians the kind of judgement that represent the fundamental operating principle of why we are in democracy and why the judiciary is the last hope of the common man.





ATIKUS GRIEVIANCES





The PDP presidential candidate had described the election as the worst in Nigerias history.





He had alleged there were irregularities on the part of INEC staff as well as heavy militarisation of the electoral process.





Atiku had also alleged the disruption of voting in strongholds of the PDP in Lagos, Akwa-Ibom, Rivers and diverse other states, with the authorities doing little or nothing and in some cases facilitating these unfortunate situations.





He was defeated by Buhari with over three million votes but his party claimed it has the real results from the polling units across the country.




The Senate, on Tuesday, passed the 2019 budget estimates of N8.83 trillion for second reading. The passing of the budget for seco...

The Senate, on Tuesday, passed the 2019 budget estimates of N8.83 trillion for second reading.









The passing of the budget for second reading followed an exhaustive debate on the money bill with senators contributing to the debate.









Senators had, on Wednesday last week, commenced the debate on the budget with some of them expressing fears about the high level of debt the country was getting into.









Some of the senators had expressed reservations about the plans by the Executive arm to borrow from both internal and domestic sources to fund the 2019 budget.









The senators said, should Nigeria continue to borrow money to fund the deficits in her annual budgets, the country would be hugely indebted in the end without any means to repay.








An FCT High Court in Maitama has granted leave to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to amend the fraud charge against ...

An FCT High Court in Maitama has granted leave to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to amend the fraud charge against former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal and three others.









Lawal was arraigned on a 10-count charge bothering on conspiracy and fraud to the tune of N544million along with Hamidu David Lawal, Suleiman Abubakar, Apeh John Monday and two companies, Rholavision Engineering Ltd and Josmon Technologies Ltd.









They had all pleaded not guilty and were admitted to bail in the sum of N50 million each.









However, at the resumed hearing yesterday, EFCC counsel, Ufom Uket applied to the court for leave to add the company, Josmon Technologies Limited, in count 6, 9 and 10.









The trial judge, Justice Jude Okeke, while granting the leave, informed the EFCC counsel that in accordance with the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) he must file a fresh charge.









He also ordered that the defendants should continue on the existing bail conditions.








Femi Fani-Kayode, former minister of Aviation, on Tuesday, disclosed that a prominent PDP leader from the Northern part of the country...





Femi Fani-Kayode, former minister of Aviation, on Tuesday, disclosed that a prominent PDP leader from the Northern part of the country has warned him not to criticise President Muhammadu Buhari again.





According to Fani-Kayode, the PDP leader, also told him that only Northerners should criticise Buhari so as not to upset the North.





The former minister, however, didnt mention the name of the PDP leader who warned him.





In a tweet, Fani-Kayode wrote: A prominent PDP leader from the NC told me that southerners should not attack or criticise Buhari.

He said only northerners should attack Buhari so as not to upset the north. No wonder Buhari trounced him in his state.




A Nigerian woman, Chiaka Thelma welcomed six babies at the Womans Hospital of Texas over the weekend. According to the hospital, on it...

pic.twitter.com/x9QCEhpHiO Did you know that the odds of having #sextuplets are estimated at one in 4.7 billion? We were honored to welcome Thelma Chiaka's four sons and two daughters early this morning! https://t.co/7RL7V3FOBk March 15, 2019

According to the hospital, on its Twitter handle, the odds of having sextuplets are estimated to be one in 4.7 billion.The hospital said the six babies were made up of four boys and two girls.The hospital went on to reveal that the babies were born between 4:50 a.m. and 4:59 a.m.The babies were born at weights ranging from 1 pound (0.4kg), 12 ounces (0.3kg) to 2 pounds (0.9kg), and 14 ounces (0.39kg).They are in stable condition and will continue to receive care in the hospitals advanced neonatal intensive care unit, according to the release.Already the new mum has named her daughters, Zina and Zuriel while still thinking of the names for the four boys.See tweet:
The Federal High Court in Lagos on Tuesday discharged former Minister of State for Defence Senator Musiliu Obanikoro as a witness in the...

The Federal High Court in Lagos on Tuesday discharged former Minister of State for Defence Senator Musiliu Obanikoro as a witness in the trial of former Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose.





Obanikoro testified as the fifth witness of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).





Under cross examination by counsel for Spotless Limited, Fayoses co-accused, Mr Olalekan Ojo (SAN), Obanikoro said there was no documentary evidence to back up all he said in court.





Ojo asked him: Did you produce any evidence to back any of your assertions before this court?





Obanikoro answered: No.





Ojo asked the former minister about his late personal assistant Justin Erukaa, whose statement made during investigation was earlier admitted in evidence.





The witness said: Erukaa left Lagos a day before Salah about two years ago.





The Police called one of my special assistants saying the owner of the phone died on the spot in a motor accident. My PA immediately called me.





After Ojo said he had no further questions for Obanikoro, prosecuting counsel Rotimi Jacobs (SAN) called the sixth prosecuting witness (PW6), Mr. Olugboyega Omotayo Falae, a banker.





The EFCC had alleged Fayose acquired a property on 44, Osun Crescent, Maitama, Abuja in the name of his elder sister, Moji Oladeji, with N200million.





Falae, who works with Ecobank Nigeria, said he was a staff of Skye Bank (now Polaris Bank) when the transaction occurred.





He said as head of the estate support department, he knew about how the property came to be sold.





According to him, the bank occasionally disposes of some properties that are in excess of its requirements.





He said the Osun Crescent property was one of those the bank decided to dispose of.





Falae said once the banks management gave approval, a list of properties was given to agents who would source for buyers.





He said the bank got offers, including one from one Mrs. Titiloye Orebiyi.





Eventually we agreed on N200million for the property. The documents of the transaction were submitted to the EFCC.





On April 20, 2015, we wrote an internal memo and a letter of acceptance to the Managing Director of Signature Integrated Ltd (Mrs Orebiyi) accepting their N200million offer and indicating which bank account to pay to, he said.





The court admitted some of the transaction documents in evidence.





Fayose is on trial for allegedly receiving and keeping N1.2billion and $5million allegedly stolen from the Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA) contrary to the Money Laundering Act.





He pleaded not guilty when he was arraigned on an 11-count charge last October 22.





EFCC said Fayose and Biodun Agbele, who is facing a different charge, allegedly took possession of N1, 219,000, 000 on June 17, 2014 to fund the former governors 2014 gubernatorial campaign.





The commission said Fayose reasonably ought to have known that the money formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: criminal breach of trust/stealing.





EFCC said Fayose, on the same day, received cash payment of $5million from Obanikoro, without going through a financial institution, the sum having exceeded the amount authorised by law.





Fayose pleaded not guilty.




The ice breaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, moored at Shanghai on Mar. 12 after finishing a series of scientific experiments, one month earlier than scheduled due to a collision with an iceberg around the Chinese Lunar New Year.

Such an intense moment, however, was nothing new in Chinas Antarctic expeditions, which celebrated its 35th anniversary this year. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of Zhongshan Station, the 10th anniversary of Kunlun Station, and fifth anniversary of Taishan Station.

When recalling the challenge of establishing Changcheng Station in the 1980s, Yan Qide, first leader of the station, said he still feels excited. Owing to the limited resources, members in the first expedition team had to jump into the extremely cold sea to finish their work.

Some 98% of the Antarctica is covered by snow and ice and the inland surface is dubbed a forbidden zone and white desert, where the average annual temperature of Kunlun Station is minus 58.4 degrees Celsius, which is the lowest on the continent.

When we first started unloading equipment, a snowmobile cracked the ice and fell into the sea, nearly killing the mechanic, recalled Li Yuansheng, first leader of Kunlun Station.

Li recalled that his fleet drove dozen of hours non-stop carrying 500 tonnes of equipment for construction of the station, covering 1,300 kilometers across the plateau, which sits at an altitude of 4,100 meters. The construction was demanding, as all must work had to be done under extreme weather conditions.

However, Li still recalls the proud moment when Kunlun Station was completed. The Chinese people built a scientific expedition station at the highest point of the Antarctica, he said.

Passing on this spirit of patriotism, truth-seeking, innovation, and hard work, generations of Chinese scientists continue to carry out challenging Antarctic expeditions.

In the past three decades, Chinese scientists have built several stations. In 1985, the first station of Changcheng Station was launched on King George Island. In 1989, Zhongshan Station began to carry out observational studies. In 2009, Kunlun Station was set up to converge multiple fields of study, such as astronomy and glacier geophysics.

Today, China has established an Antarctic observation network for air, shore, ship, sea, ice, and seabed-based observations with the ice breaker Xuelong and scientific research vessels like Haiyang-6 and the polar plane Xueying 601.

Now, China is planning for the future. For instance, the Xuelong 2 is going to be delivered this year and will add to the nations scientific study power.
Troops repelled Boko Haram at Michika in Adamawa on Monday and inflicted heavy casualty on them. A statement by the army spokesman...

Troops repelled Boko Haram at Michika in Adamawa on Monday and inflicted heavy casualty on them.









A statement by the army spokesman, Col. Sagir Musa said the terrorists attempted to infiltrate the town at about 7.20 p.m. but troops blocked and engaged them on two fronts.









Musa said many of the insurgents were neutralised, while others fled in disarray due to superior firepower.









He said they hastily evacuated most of their corpses (dead colleagues) under the cover of darkness.









The army spokesman, however, said the entire area had been dominated by troops, adding the situation was now under control.









He said items captured from them terrorists included one Ford vehicle, two Toyota Starlet vehicles loaded with foodstuffs, one motorcycle and one tyre inflating machine.









According to him, further exploitation is to be conducted this morning.









He said calm had been restored in the town and urged the people to go about their businesses but report strange persons in their localities to security agencies.












The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the military intervened in the governorship and house of assembly elections ...





The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the military intervened in the governorship and house of assembly elections in Rivers state but it could not say if the involvement was to rig.





INEC had suspended the process because of widespread violence.





While fielding questions on Channels TV on Monday, Festus Okoye, INECs director of information and voter education, said the commission went on a fact-finding mission to the state based on what it discovered.





The fact finding mission that we sent to Rivers established the fact that the military intervened in some places, he said.

We saw them in INEC office and they agreed that they were at some collation centres on election day.





We did not go out to establish the fact about who rigged elections or who did not rig. What we want to ensure is that we complete collation of results in Rivers.





We made a determination that the army got involved in the electoral process but whether their involvement in the process was to rig the elections, I am not in a position to make a determination on that.





Earlier, INEC had said collation centres were invaded by some soldiers and armed gangs resulting in the intimidation and unlawful arrest of election officials.





Recall that we had also reported how soldiers and policemen clashed at the head office of the INEC in Rivers state.





The argument broke out over who should be in charge of security at the office which served as the state collation center.





The commission has said results of 17 LGAs were intact and that it would announce the next line of action on Wednesday.




Shareholders of Zenith Bank have approved the proposal of the board to pay a final dividend of N2.50k per share as dividends for the 201...

Shareholders of Zenith Bank have approved the proposal of the board to pay a final dividend of N2.50k per share as dividends for the 2018 financial year.









The shareholders gave the approval at the 28th Annual General Meeting of the bank in Lagos.









The directors proposed a final dividend of N2.50 per share in addition to the N0.30 per share paid as interim dividend amounting to N2.80 per share, as against the N2.70 per share in 2017.









The bank earmarked N87.91 billion for the total dividend payment to shareholders for 2018 financial year as against N84.77 billion paid in 2017.









The Chairman of the bank, Mr Jim Ovia, said that the bank remained committed to delivering superior returns to its much-valued shareholders by ensuring that a good chunk of its profits was set aside for shareholders.









In a clear demonstration of this, we had declared and paid an interim dividend of 30 kobo per share in the course of the 2018 financial year.









We hereby propose a final dividend of 250 kobo per share. If approved, this will bring the total dividend for the year ended Dec. 31, 2018, to 280 kobo per share as against 270 kobo per share that was paid in the previous year.









Speaking further on the financial results, Ovia said that 2018 was a challenging year for all operators in the Nigerian banking industry.









He said the bank was able to fully exploit the opportunities within the environment to record a performance that attested to its durability and resilience as a brand.









Clearly, the results are once again, a reflection of the exceptional financial health of the bank and the group.









For the bank, the total deposit was N2.82 trillion for the year ended December 31, 2018, representing a 2.9 per cent increase over the previous years figure of N2.74 trillion.









Profit Before Tax rose by 13.6 per cent from N169 billion in 2017 to N192 billion in 2018.









Profit-After- Tax similarly rose by 7.8 per cent from N153 billion in 2017 to N165 billion in 2018.









During the same period, total assets of the bank grew by 2.7 per cent from N4.83 trillion to N4.96 trillion, while shareholders fund declined by 3 3 per cent from N698 billion to N675 billion.









Gross earnings similarly declined by 0.2 per cent from N674 billion in the year 2017 to N538 billion in 2018.









Also as a group, Ovia said that the performance indices were no less remarkable.









According to him, the Groups profit before tax grew by 16.6 per cent from N199 billion in the year 2017 to N232 billion in 2018.









Profit-after-tax grew by 10.9 per cent during the period from N174 billion in 2017 to N193 billion in 2018 while customer customers deposit grew by 7.3 per cent during the same period from N3.44 trillion to an3.69 trillion.









Group shareholders fund grew by 0.5 per cent from N812 billion in 2017 to N816 billion in 2018, gross earnings dropped by 15.4 per cent from N745 billion in 2017 to N630 billion in 2018, he said.









The Zenith Bank Managing Director, Mr Peter Amangbo, said the banks drive toward entrenching sustainable principle in its business operations gained further momentum in the year under review.









Amangbo said the bank would continue to place a high premium on developing a robust risk management framework which had helped in promoting the soundness of the financial institution in protecting its assets and ensuring its growth.








Karen Uhlenbeck awarded 2019 Abel Prize

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the 2019 Abel Prize to Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck whose affiliation with the Institute for Advanced Study spans four decades, as a current Visitor in the School of Mathematics and a former Member and Visiting Professor in the School. Professor Emerita of Mathematics and Sid W. Richardson Regents Chair at the University of Texas at Austin, Uhlenbeck was cited by the Abel Committee "for her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics."

"The Institute is thrilled that Karen Uhlenbeck has been recognized with the 2019 Abel Prize, for her transformative work across various mathematical disciplines, from minimal surfaces to gauge theory, and for her foundational contributions to the field of geometric analysis," said Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor. "A leading mathematician of our time and a member of the IAS community since 1979, Karen has played a leading role in advancing mathematics research, championing diversity, and inspiring the next generation of women to become leaders in the field."

"Quite frankly: it is about time. Karen has had a tremendous impact on the development of modern geometric analysis, particularly the calculus of variations. Her contributions to minimal surface theory and Yang-Mills theory have changed the subjects and started some of the most exciting developments in mathematics," said Helmut Hofer, IAS Professor in the School of Mathematics. "Karen has had a long affiliation with IAS, and we are very happy that after retiring from the University of Texas at Austin she continues to contribute to the vibrancy of IAS as a Visitor. Besides her scientific impact, Karen has been an extraordinarily good citizen, making numerous contributions to the mathematical profession at large. She is a role model for all of us."

The Abel Prize is an international award that acknowledges outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics and comes with a monetary award equivalent to about $700,000. The Prize will be given to Uhlenbeck by H.M. King Harald V at an award ceremony in Oslo on May 21. Since the Abel Prize was first bestowed in 2003, 18 of the 20 recipients have been affiliated with the Institute as Faculty or Members, including the 2018 honoree, Robert Langlands, Professor Emeritus in the School of Mathematics.

Uhlenbeck, the first woman to receive the Abel Prize, initially came to the Institute as a Member in the School of Mathematics in 1979. She returned as a Member in 1995, served as a Visiting Professor in 1997-98 and 2012, and has been a Visitor since 2014. She is a founder of the Institute's Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI), a summer program that brings together mathematicians and math teachers to study and exchange ideas, providing immersive educational and professional development opportunities. Uhlenbeck also cofounded the IAS Women and Mathematics program (WAM) with fellow IAS Member Chuu-Lian Terng in 1993 as part of PCMI, and then established the program on the Institute's campus in 1994. The purpose of WAM is to address gender imbalance and success rates among women in the mathematics field. Both Uhlenbeck and Terng have mentored hundreds of young women mathematicians through the program they founded, resulting in a powerful network of nearly 1,500 participants to date.

Uhlenbeck was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1942. Her father, Arnold Keskulla, was an engineer, and her mother, Carolyn Windeler Keskulla, an artist and school teacher. Having a curious mind, she developed a lifelong love of the outdoors, read incessantly, and dreamed of becoming a research scientist. Planning to major in physics, she enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she discovered the intellectual challenge of pure mathematics, guiding her future academic path. Graduating in 1964, she went on to study at Brandeis University, earning her Master's degree in 1966 and Ph.D. in 1968.

In 1990, in Kyoto, Japan, Uhlenbeck became the second woman to give a Plenary Lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians, the largest and most important gathering of mathematicians in the world. The first woman to deliver the lecture was Emmy Noether in 1932; the following year, Noether joined the Institute's School of Mathematics as a Visitor from 1933-35. In 2016, a series of lectures at the Institute celebrated the life and work of Noether, during which Uhlenbeck explored Noether's fundamental insight into the conservation law in modern theoretical physics.

Uhlenbeck has held academic positions at the University of Texas at Austin; Institute Des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques; the University of Chicago; Max-Planck-Institut fur Mathematik; Harvard University; University of California, Berkeley; University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Uhlenbeck is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, the National Association of Mathematicians, and the Association for Women in Mathematics. Her honors include the Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society (2007); the National Medal of Science (2001); the Noether Lecture award from the Association for Women in Mathematics (1988); and a MacArthur Prize Fellowship (1983-88).

###

About the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters:

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters was founded in 1857. It is a nongovernmental, nationwide body that embraces all fields of science and scholarship. The Academy has Norwegian and foreign members, as well as honorary members. The members are divided into two sections: Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and Humanities and Social Sciences. In addition to the Abel Prize, the Academy awards the Kavli Prize in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience.

About the IAS Women and Mathematics Program:

The Women and Mathematics Program (WAM) at the Institute for Advanced Study is an annual program with the mission to recruit and empower women to lead in mathematics research at all stages of their academic careers. WAM encourages female mathematicians to form collaborative research relationships and mentoring networks that provide ongoing support and guidance. WAM brings together scholars from early- to late-stage careers to maximize opportunities for growth and exchange. WAM is funded by the National Science Foundation as well as a generous grant from Lisa Simonyi.

About the Institute:

The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities--the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.

The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 8,000 former Members have held positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates, 42 out of 60 Fields Medalists, and 18 of the 20 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Treasures from the Palace Museum showcased in Moscow

Russian guests attend the opening ceremony of the Palace Museums Flourishing 18th Century of Chinaexhibition in Moscow. [Photo/people.com.cn]

Exhibition Treasures from the Palace Museum - The Flourishing of China in the 18th Century opened to visitors at the Kremlin Museum in Moscow on Friday.

The exhibition showcases more than 100 relics from the Palace Museum in Beijing, bringing to life the era of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) under Emperor Qianlong's reign (1736-1796). It includes dragon robes, ornaments, portraits, palace paintings and calligraphic works, memorials, and treasures such as birthday gifts, imperial instruments, musical instruments and sacrificial instruments.

Ji Tianbin, Palace Museum vice-president, introduced the exhibition's historical background, explaining that China during the Qing Dynasty enjoyed a stable society and prosperous economy.
From the city of Geneva, the home of the Emile Chouriet manufacture, towering alpine mountain peaks fill the blue horizon as far as the eye can see. These mountains have long been a source of intrigue and inspiration for those with a courageous sense of adventure.

The Emile Chouriet Challenger Cliff celebrates both the natural wonders around us as well as the brave spirits who explore. After last year's green and blue models, Emile Chouriet unveils today a stainless steel version coated with black PVD. Robustly built with a sporty yet streamlined design, the new Challenger Ice Blacks 40mm stainless steel case, which is water resistant to 50 meters, and its integrated steel bracelet are finished with a black PVD coating, recalling the jagged rocks of the Swiss mountainous landscape.

Challenger Cliff Black  Emile Chouriet

Like the vast blue skies high above the clouds at the summit of a mountain, the blue dial with its gradient effect is decorated with a chapter ring featuring a three-dimensional visual effect evoking the cragged rocks a climber would encounter on his daring ascent to the mountaintop. Its applied Roman numerals and uniquely shaped hands are filled with luminescent pigments to provide unwavering legibility in any situation.

The automatic mechanical EC9316 caliber displays the hours, minutes, seconds and the date at 3 o'clock, and provides a power reserve of 38 hours when fully wound.

A perfect companion for all adventures  whether ascending a windswept mountaintop or exploring a bustling modern metropolis - the Challenger Cliff Black is available for a reasonable 1350 CHF (VAT and Taxes not included).
Ugandan authorities released on Monday 14 Egyptian expats who had been arrested for several charges, according to Assistant Foreign Minister for Consular Affairs and Egyptians Abroad Yasser Mahmoud Hashim.

The release came as a result of efforts exerted by Egypt's ambassador in Kampala Tarek Sallam, Hashim said.

The expats were accused of overstaying their residence periods and practicing unlicensed commercial activities, among other charges.

The Ugandan authorities were highly cooperative, said Hashim, who urged Egyptian expats to abide by visa-related laws and regulations in other countries.

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The first two meetings on Wednesday and Thursday will see representatives of universities, religious institutions and the media

The Egyptian parliament's legislative and constitutional affairs committee will begin holding national dialogue meetings on proposed amendments to the country's 2014 constitution on Wednesday.

Sources said the dialogue was scheduled to begin on Monday and Tuesday, but it was postponed to Wednesday and Thursday as parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal and a number of leading MPs were attending the Arab-African Youth Forum in Aswan this week.

On Wednesday, heads of a number of Egyptian universities and members of its teaching boards, as well as representatives of student unions, are expected to join the national dialogue's first hearing session. As many as 60 participants are invited.

In addition, as many as 30 clerics from Al-Azhar institution and the Coptic Church, as well as 30 participants representing the National Media Organisation, national press organisations (heads of boards and editors-in-chief), and radio and television channels (prominent hosts and anchors from private and public channels).

"In total, 120 participants are expected to attend the first national dialogue meeting on the proposed constitutional amendments on Wednesday," said an informed source.

On Thursday, representatives of cabinet ministries and provincial governorates (80 participants) are invited to join the second meeting. Besides, delegations from the National Council for Women, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, the National Council for the Physically Challenged, the National Council for Human Rights, the National Bank of Egypt, the Public Authority for Financial Control, the Central Auditing Agency, and the Administrative Control Authority are also expected to attend (40 participants).

The national dialogue meetings on the proposed constitutional amendments will continue next week, including Saturday (23 March), Sunday (24 March), Monday (25 March), and Thursday (28 March).

"In total, there will be six hearing sessions over a span of two weeks," said Ahmed Helmi El-Sherif, the deputy head of the legislative and constitutional affairs committee.

On Saturday, the minister of justice and representatives of judicial authorities, the Armed Forces and the higher council for the police (120 participants) are invited to join the third session.

On Sunday, representatives of professional syndicates, private sector companies, leading banking officials, and the Federation of Egyptian Industries and Chambers of Commerce (120 participants) are also scheduled to attend.

The fifth and sixth hearing sessions will be the most important. These will see 120 officials representing most political parties coming to the Monday meeting (25 March).

In a concluding meeting on 28 March, a long list of public figures, constitutional law professors, and representatives of NGOs and civil society organisations (120 participants) are expected to attend.

The list of public figures includes Fathi Sorour, the former long-standing speaker of the Mubarak-era's parliaments; Mostafa El-Feki, head of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina; Magdi El-Agati, the former minister of parliamentary affairs; Fathi El-Masry, head of the Court of Cassation; Mohamed Abdel-Wahab El-Eissawi, deputy head of the State Cases Authority; Abdel-Raouf Moussa; head of the Administrative Control Authority; Gaber El-Maraghi, head of Cairo's Appeals Court; Hassan Farid, head of the High State Security Court; Mohamed Yasser Aboul-Fotouh, head of the Committee in charge of freezing and sequestrating the funds of terrorist organisations; and Mohamed Abdel-Aziz El-Shennawi, a former deputy head of the Supreme Constitutional Court.

The list also includes prominent constitutional law professors such as Salah Fawzi (Mansoura University), Sabri El-Senossi (dean of Cairo University's Faculty of Law), Hesham Okasha (deputy head of Beni Suef University's Faculty of Law), Amal Othman (a former minister of Social Affairs and a professor at Cairo's Faculty of Law), Hesham El-Badri ( a professor of public law), and Mohamed Eid Mahgoub (deputy minister of justice).

The list does notably exclude Amr Moussa, Egypt's former foreign minister and the man who chaired the 50-member constituent assembly which drafted Egypt's current constitution in 2014.

The dialogue is being held after 485 MPs provisionally approved the proposed amendments in a plenary session on 14 February.

The amendments, submitted by the parliamentary majority Support Egypt coalition on 11 February, involve changes to 11 articles of Egypt's 2014 constitution: articles 102, 140, 160, 189, 190, 193, 200, 204, 234, 243 and 244. The coalition also proposed that eight new articles be added to the constitution.

According to speaker Ali Abdel-Aal, the amendments have six objectives: to give a greater quota of parliamentary seats (25 percent) to women; create a second house (the Senate); increase the presidential term from four to six years; reinstate the post of the vice president; regulate the system for selecting the heads of judicial authorities; and re-define the role of the army in defending the country.

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Three Egyptian workers in Kuwait were killed when the ceiling of an under-construction mosque collapsed late on Monday, a Kuwaiti interior ministry official told Egypt's state news agency MENA.

The Egyptian consulate in Kuwait is liaising with Kuwaiti authorities to return the bodies to Egypt.

The consulate is in contact with the company where the three victims had worked to guarantee their families obtain their full rights.

Two other workers were injured in the incident, according to a statement by Kuwaiti authorities, but their nationalities remain to be announced.

Kuwaiti Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Fahad Al-Shualah has urged a prompt investigation into the incident and vowed to hold accountable anyone found to be negligent.

Around 500,000 Egyptian nationals work in Kuwait, according to figures issued by the Egyptian Ministry of Manpower in August 2018.

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19/03/2019 - Many people in OECD countries believe public services and social benefits are inadequate and hard to reach. More than half say they do not receive their fair share of benefits given the taxes they pay, and two-thirds believe others get more than they deserve. Nearly three out of four people say they want their government to do more to protect their social and economic security.





These are among the findings of a new OECD survey, Risks that Matter, which asked over 22,000 people aged 18 to 70 years old in 21 countries about their worries and concerns and how well they think their government helps them tackle social and economic risks.





This nationally representative survey finds that falling ill and not being able to make ends meet are often at the top of peoples lists of immediate concerns. Making ends meet is a particularly common worry for those on low incomes and in countries that were hit hard by the financial crisis. Older people are most often worried about their health, while younger people are frequently concerned with securing adequate housing. When asked about the longer-term, across all countries, getting by in old age is the most commonly cited worry.





The survey reveals a dissatisfaction with current social policy. Only a minority are satisfied with access to services like health care, housing, and long-term care. Many believe the government would not be able to provide a proper safety net if they lost their income due to job loss, illness or old age. More than half think they would not be able to easily access public benefits if they needed them.





This is a wake-up call for policy makers, said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria. OECD countries have some of the most advanced and generous social protection systems in the world. They spend, on average, more than one-fifth of their GDP on social policies. Yet, too many people feel they cannot count fully on their government when they need help. A better understanding of the factors driving this perception and why people feel they are struggling is essential to making social protection more effective and efficient. We must restore trust and confidence in government, and promote equality of opportunity.





In every country surveyed except Canada, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, most people say that their government does not incorporate the views of people like them when designing social policy. In a number of countries, including Greece, Israel, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia, this share rises to more than two-thirds of respondents. This sense of not being part of the policy debate increases at higher levels of education and income, while feelings of injustice are stronger among those from high-income households.





Public perceptions of fairness are worrying. More than half of respondents say they do not receive their fair share of benefits given the taxes they pay, a share that rises to three quarters or more in Chile, Greece, Israel and Mexico. At the same time, people are calling for more help from government. In almost all countries, more than half of respondents say they want the government to do more for their economic and social security. This is especially the case for older respondents and those on low incomes.





Across countries, people are worried about financial security in old age, and most are willing to pay more to support public pension systems. An average of almost 40% say they would be willing to pay an extra 2% of their own income in taxes for better health care and pensions. Respondents in Ireland are the most likely to say they would be happy to pay more in tax for better health care (51%), followed by Portugal (49%), Greece and Chile (both 48%). Respondents in Israel (49%), Chile (51%) and Lithuania (53%) are the most likely to say they would be prepared to pay an extra 2% more in tax for better pensions.





In every country surveyed, more than half of respondents say the government should tax the rich more than they currently do, in order to support the poor. In Greece, Germany, Portugal and Slovenia, the share rises to 75% or more.





The survey also asked people about their views on education, housing, job security and long-term care.





Download the report and country notes.

For comment, journalists should contact Stefano Scarpetta (tel. +33 45 24 19 88) or Monika Queisser (tel. +33 45 24 96 34) of the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs or the OECD Media Office (tel. + 33 1 45 24 97 00). For more information on the survey data and methods, please contact Valerie Frey (tel. + 33 1 45 24 91 90) or Chris Clarke (tel. + 33 1 45 24 84 50) of the OECDs Social Policy division.

* Countries involved were Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and the United States.

Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

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Egypt has reached an initial deal with Japan's Nissan Motor to produce vehicles in Egypt with the aim of exporting, Public Enterprise Minister Hesham Tawfik said on Tuesday.

The deal, signed in partnership with the government's Nasr Co for vehicle manufacturing, aims to produce 100,000 vehicles annually, increase the percentage of locally manufactured components and export to other countries, Tawfik said.

The final deal is expected to be signed in three months.

The minister announced the deal during a business forum titled Portfolio Egypt Conference 2019 in Cairo.

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An Italian fighting alongside Kurdish forces in Syria against the Islamic State (IS) group has been killed, media reported Tuesday, citing the jihadists and his family.

"We have killed the Italian crusader", IS said in a statement released along with a photograph of Lorenzo Orsetti, 33, a former waiter and chef from Florence, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Orsetti's father Alessandro told the daily he and his wife were "very proud" of their son.

Orsetti had initially travelled to Syria in September 2017 as an observer but felt "increasingly involved", his father said.

His body "is apparently still in a combat zone. We hope to be able to recover it as quickly as possible," he said.

"Lorenzo once told us he'd love to be buried in Syria. We don't know what we'll do yet, but I think we'll respect his wishes".

Orsetti had left a "last testament" cited by La Stampa daily and other media.

"I have no regrets. I died doing what I believed was right, defending the weak," it read.

According to the Corriere della Sera, some 25 Italians have travelled to Syria since 2015 to fight alongside Kurdish forces.

Three men and two women are still there, it said.

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North Korea said on Tuesday that there was "no justification" for maintaining full sanctions on Pyongyang given that it has halted nuclear and missile testing for the past 15 months.

Ju Yong Chol, a North Korean diplomat responding to a speech by a senior U.S. arms control official at the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, said that issues between the two countries should be addressed one-by-one so as to build trust.

Instead, at the Hanoi summit last month between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, the United States "came up with the preposterous argument that sanction relief is impossible prior to denuclearisation", Ju said.

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An air strike near the Somalian town of Afgoye has killed four people, a relative of one of the victims told Reuters on Tuesday.

Abdiqadir Nur, an employee of telecommunications company Hormuud Telecom, and three others died at around 01:30 GMT as they drove through the village of Laanta Buuro in the country's southwestern Lower Shabelle region, about 45km (28 miles) from the capital Mogadishu.

"Nur and three others died on the spot. His brother Mahad Nur is totally burnt," Nur's cousin Abdullahi Ali said.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the strike. The U.S. frequently carries out such attacks in the Horn of Africa country.

The attacks are to support Somalia's U.N.-backed central government which has been battling Islamist group Al Shabaab for years.

The militants were pushed out of Mogadishu in 2011, but retain a strong presence in southern and central parts of the country.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Al Shabaab says relatives of those killed in air strikes are often motivated to join the militant group, which wants to impose strict Islamic law in Somalia.

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President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on New Zealand to restore the death penalty for the gunman who killed 50 people at two Christchurch mosques, warning that Turkey would make the attacker pay for his act if New Zealand did not.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after a lone gunman opened fire at the two mosques during Muslim Friday prayers.

"You heinously killed 50 of our siblings. You will pay for this. If New Zealand doesn't make you, we know how to make you pay one way or another," Erdogan told an election rally of thousands in northern Turkey. He did not elaborate.

He said Turkey was wrong to have abolished the death penalty 15 years ago, and added that New Zealand should make legal arrangements so that the Christchurch gunman could face capital punishment.

"If the New Zealand parliament doesn't make this decision I will continue to argue this with them constantly. The necessary action needs to be taken," he said.

Erdogan is seeking to drum up support for his Islamist-rooted AK Party in March 31 local elections. At weekend election rallies he showed video footage of the shootings which the gunman had broadcast on Facebook, as well as extracts from a "manifesto" posted by the attacker and later taken down.

That earned a rebuke from New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who said he told Turkey's foreign minister and vice president that showing the video could endanger New Zealanders abroad.

Despite Peters' intervention, an extract from the manifesto was flashed up on a screen at Erdogan's rally again on Tuesday, as well as brief footage of the gunman entering one of the mosques and shooting as he approached the door.

Erdogan has said the gunman issued threats against Turkey and the president himself, and wanted to drive Turks from Turkey's northwestern, European region. Majority Muslim Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, is split between an Asian part east of the Bosphorus, and a European half to the west.

Erdogan's AK Party, which has dominated Turkish politics for more than 16 years, is battling for votes as the economy tips into recession after years of strong growth. Erdogan has cast the local elections as a "matter of survival" in the face of threats including Kurdish militants, Islamophobia and incidents such as the New Zealand shootings.

A senior Turkish security source said Tarrant entered Turkey twice in 2016 - for a week in March and for more than a month in September. Turkish authorities have begun investigating everything from hotel records to camera footage to try to ascertain the reason for his visits, the source said.

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Hong Kong: $624b estimated for Lantau plan

Secretary for Development Michael Wong today announced a ballpark estimate of $624 billion for building the Kau Yi Chau Artificial Islands and related key projects under the Lantau Tomorrow Vision plan.

Announcing the details at a press conference, Mr Wong said the cost for the construction of Kau Yi Chau Artificial Islands, reclamation at Sunny Bay and Lung Kwu Tan, and the Tuen Mun coastal area development is estimated to be $351 billion in September 2018 prices.

The cost for building the priority transport network would be $273 billion.

Mr Wong said: This is a preliminary estimate. Weve explained why. The detailed estimate will be subject to the coming studies, so it can be revised upwards or downwards.

He said the projects will bring benefits to Hong Kong including direct economic contributions and social benefits.

According to the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, the ballpark estimate on the land sale revenue of private residential and commercial developments on the Kau Yi Chau Artificial Islands is about $974 billion to $1.14 trillion.

With hopes the projects will provide land for Hong Kongs third core business district, Mr Wong said about 200,000 jobs will be created.

He estimated the islands will be capable of providing 150,000 to 260,000 flats, 70% of which will be public housing.

We will continue to communicate with the public as to why this is worth our while. This is a good investment, this is good for Hong Kong, this resolves many of our problems, Mr Wong said.

He added the Government will seek funding approval from the Legislative Council for related studies as soon as possible.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Twitter and other social media are discriminating against conservatives, US President Donald Trump charged on Tuesday.

"It seems to be if they are conservative, if they are Republicans, in a certain group, there is discrimination. I see it on Twitter and Facebook," Trump said at a joint press briefing with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.

Earlier in the day Trump expressed similar complaints on Twitter where, despite his allegations of bias, he himself has 59 million followers.

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Theodore Pellerin is just waking up. It's an early, snowy morning in Montreal when the 21-year-old Quebecois actor picks up the phone for our chat. For five years, the young actor has woven together an impressive tapestry of roles, culminating in an electrifying, uncomfortable turn as Vincent in the Montreal crime drama, Family First.



Under the directorial lens of Sophie Dupuis, Pellerin's character  a lanky limbed teenager with a penchant for headbutting strangers at parties and bouncing off the walls  is the film's scene-stealing revelation. A temperamental hurricane of a case study in what happens when coiled, chaotic energy is released in bursts of violence and love, it's no wonder that the role landed Pellerin a nomination for Actor in a leading role at this year's Canadian Film Awards and an award for Revelation of the Year at the Prix Iris.

"It felt like a gift. Although he's violent and sadistic, he has such a joy and a desire to make people laugh. To lighten the mood of his family," he explained of the unnerving character. For Pellerin, violence is an almost universal character trait in his career thus far. From an involuntarily celibate college student planning a massacre after being rejected by women in Incel to a brooding teen caught between raising his physically violent little brother and falling for a girl given telekinetic powers by aliens in At First Light, Pellerin's become a master class in brooding characters facing physical, emotional, and structural violence.

That isn't to say Pellerin is on a mission to become Hollywood and Quebec's go-to baby faced brooder. It's just that these characters appeal to him and, at 21-years-old, they were the parts that came towards him and that he fought to play. "There is some violence in almost every part I've played, but the complexity of the character is interesting," he explains. "A character who's in the middle of a crisis is a very rich character to explore."

"A character who's in the middle of a crisis is a very rich character to explore."

It may be his role in last year's conversion therapy film, Boy Erased, that serves as the most illuminating point of reference for his off-screen upbringing. In his brief role of helping Lucas Hedges discover being gay is A-OK in the film, Pellerin plays the soothing, sensitive painter Xavier. In a movie stuffed full of violence and crises, he plays the one person who seems to be completely at ease with themselves.

Born to a painter father and choreographer mother, Pellerin grew up in a creative home and experiencing life on tour. It was there, as he watched dancers stretching backstage and sat in theaters soaking in their performances, that he felt the first spark to pursue performing. "Sitting in the theater, not really understanding what was happening on the stage, I was just enjoying the whole feeling of it. The atmosphere of the theater and of the silence of the crowd. The sense of rehearsal. All of it."

You'd imagine that with this proximity to dance, Pellerin would've wanted to be a dancer as child, but his heart was set on another career track that might help explain his penchant for playing characters with an affinity for fighting. "I wanted to be a ninja," he recalls. "I did Taekwondo and kung fu and ninjutsu. I was really big on samurai swords." Luckily for audiences, this obsession with becoming a kung fu fighter didn't last, and as he entered his teens the acting bug bit as he discovered the magic of movies. Specifically, the work of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood ("a revelation"), Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice, and Juliette Binoche in Three Colours: Blue were early influences.

"These are the ones that really hit me  it was the first time I really saw people live on screen. That's what I was attracted to. It was this incredible ability to become someone else and live onscreen." It was an attraction that ignited a yearning to "understand what they understood" for Pellerin. "That's the quest. Great performances still make me so excited and happy. I can't believe it when I see a great performance."

It's at this point in our conversation that I have to remind the actor that now it's his performances that are being critically lauded (an assertion he quickly brushes off). For Pellerin, the idea that he's becoming one of Canada's most promising young actors is met with shy embarrassment. There is no mistaking the cinematic spark he brings to every role. We're still days away from finding out if he'll win the Best Actor award at the Canadian Film Awards on March 31, but it's hard to imagine a win or loss mattering in the grand scheme of his career.

Like his desire to have the superpower of flight in order to "go in outer space and have a look on the world from very far [away]," it's best to view his trajectory from a macro lens. It was only three years ago that he learned to speak English for a role in Kathleen Hepburn's Never Steady, Never Still and now, he's set for what could become a one-two punch of breakout roles. Later this year, he'll star opposite Kirsten Dunst on the 90s-set YouTube dark comedy series On Becoming a God in Central Florida before joining Love Simon stars Nick Robinson and Keiynan Lonsdale in a film adaptation of the cult 1980s novel Weetzie Bat.

With these high-profile projects in the pipeline and a steady stream of critically-acclaimed roles under Theodore Pellerin's belt, it may be time for us, rather than him, to wake up.

Photo by Maude Chauvin


Coming to Egypt within the 7th edition of India by the Nile (5-17 March), the world renowned percussionist will perform in Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said

Thetakudi Harihara Vinayakram (known as Vikku Vinayakram), India's well known and a Grammy award winning percussionist, will give three concerts in Egypt: on Tuesday 12 March in Alexandria, Friday 15 March in Port Said, and Saturday 16 March in Cairo.

The concerts are part of the 7th edition of India by the Nile, an annual event taking place in March and bringing a variety of Indian arts and culture to the Egyptian audience.

Vinayakram comes to Egypt with a project dubbed 3G, or Three Generations of Percussions "Vikku Vinayakram & V Selvaganesh," an ensemble which he formed and which consists of three generations of musicians, Vinayakram's two sons Selvaganesh and Umashankar, and his grandson Swaminathan.

An ardent representative of Carnatic music (South of India), the concert will feature ghattam (an earthen pot), an instrument popularised by Vinayakram.

In his book "A Southern Music - The Karnatik Story," T.M. Krishna points that though ghattam gained prominence in the late 19th century with the pioneers such as Umuyalpuram Narayana Ayyar and Pazhani Krishna Ayyar, it is not a new instrument. Ghattam, also known as ghata, "has evolved from the ancient kadamuzha, and must have been used in local music traditions, including temple music." he writes.

And speaking of the unique musical tradition that Vinayakram represents, in the same book T.M. Krishna describes Carnatic music as very spontaneous and "based on improvisational abstraction; it necessitates a fresh and unrehearsed frame of mind."

On stage Vinayakram will perform ghattam alongside Umashankar on the same instrument, Selvaganesh on hand-drums, A. Ganesh on morsing, and Swaminathan on the kanjeera.

Vinayakram was awarded several India national recognitions including the Padma Shri (2002), Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship (2012), the highest honour in the performing arts conferred by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama; as well as the Padma Bhushan (2014).

He was also conferred the Hafiz Ali Khan Award for "unmatched contribution in the field of music" (2000) and became first South Indian musician to be awarded the Grammy for Best World Music Album for his participation in Mickey Hart's Planet Drum.

This is not the first time that the organisers of India by the Nile bring the creme-of-the-creme of Indian musicians, equally recognised internationally.

In the festival's 6th edition (2018), India by the Nile hosted Amjad Ali Khan, who was credited with reinventing sarod technique, nominated to a Grammy award and a Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum.

The festival's 5th edition (2017) hosted violinist Dr. Lakshminarayana Subramaniam, reciepient of dozens Indian and international awards, whose education and experience fuses Carnatic and Western European influences and knowledge. He is often refer to as the Paganini of Indian classical music, and the God of Indian violin.

Vikku Vinayakram's concerts in Egypt are undeniably among the 7th India by the Nile festival's highlights.

Programme:



Tuesday 12 March, 8pm

Sayed Darwish Theatre, Alexandria

Friday 15 March, 6.30pm

Port Said Cultural Palace, Port Said

Saturday 16 March, 8pm

El Gomhoureya Theatre, Cairo

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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Sotoudeh's Case Is Iran's Own Goal

03/19/19

by Eldar Mamedov (source: LobeLog)

Last week, the European Parliament joined the international outcry over the sentencing of Iranian human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh to a long prison term by voting overwhelmingly for a resolution calling for her release.

The European Parliament is particularly sensitive to the fate of Sotoudeh. It awarded her the Sakharov Prize in 2012, the EU's highest human rights award, in recognition of her outstanding work in this area. It is only politically and morally consistent for the Parliament to express public dismay over her persecution.

The resolution was quite comprehensive in its scope, encompassing also the cases of environmentalists, trade unionists, women's rights activists, EU-Iranian dual nationals, and others deemed to be wrongfully imprisoned following trials alleged to have lacked due process. European MPs criticized the sentences as "state-sponsored smear campaigns against the imprisoned individuals" based on "vaguely-defined national security and espionage charges."

The resolution also acknowledges some positive steps taken recently in Iran, such as amendments to the drug trafficking law, which already reduced the imposition of capital punishment. It also calls on Iran to reform Article 48 of the Criminal Procedure Law to "ensure that all defendants have the right to be represented by a lawyer of their choice, and to a fair trial in line with Iran's commitments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," to which Iran is a party.

There are some flaws in the text too. No conversation on the topic is complete without acknowledging the devastating effects of U.S. economic sanctions, imposed in violation of the UN Security Council-endorsed resolution on the nuclear pact with Iran, on Iranian human rights. The UN recognizes access to medicines, for example, as a fundamental element of the right to health, yet it is severely impaired by U.S. pressure on banks worldwide to cut ties with Iranian entities. Since the EU opposes these sanctions, and indeed enacted a special trading mechanism to bypass them, it should have condemned them for exacerbating the human rights situation in Iran.

The document would have also benefited from somewhat more nuance on the criticisms of Iran's treatment of different ethnic and religious minorities. It states that "members of Baha'i, Azeri, Kurdish, Arab and Baloch communities, Sunni Muslims and Christians face discrimination in employment, education, freedom of worship and political activities." Although there is some evidence supporting this claim, not all listed forms of discrimination are applicable to all of these groups. The Baha'i certainly suffer from widespread discrimination. But it's difficult to argue that Azeris' freedom of worship and employment possibilities are somehow restricted considering that they are Shia Muslims and numerous members of Iran's elite, including the Supreme Leader, are of Azeri origin.

As to the Christians, it is the converts from Islam who face discrimination in Iran. Often, they happen to be evangelical Protestants, their cases picked up by well-endowed and aggressive evangelical groups outside Iran.

Persecuting people for conversion violates their freedom of religion and belief. However, the Christian experience in Iran is broader than that: the rights of the country's ancient Armenian and Assyrian communities are reasonably well protected both in law and practice, especially by regional standards. Consider Tehran's warm welcome to the prime minister of Armenia during his recent visit to the country, including extensive mingling with local Armenians.

Despite these flaws, the resolution is fair-minded overall and judges the situation in Iran on its own merits. It is not infected, for example, by the lobbying of exiled pro-regime-change groups, such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq. Among other names, it mentions Farhad Meysami, a jailed male activist of women's rights, who publicly refused to be instrumentalized by the U.S. government in its campaign against Iran.

Nor can it be argued that the resolution unfairly singles out Iran in a region where some countries' human rights records are arguably worse. In fact, over the last years, the European Parliament adopted more condemnatory resolutions on Saudi Arabia and Bahrain than this one on Iran.

The resolution comes at a time when Iran-subjected to "maximum pressure" from the United States, with the help of its regional allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates-needs all the friends it can get, including in Europe. In this sense, the imprisonment of Nasrin Sotoudeh is a perfect own goal. The hardliners in the judiciary who are responsible for this and other human rights abuses may not see it this way. Indeed, the severity of Sotoudeh's punishment may be intended to send a message that they are firmly in control, as opposed to the moderate administration of President Hassan Rouhani. And Rouhani's room for maneuver to take on the hardliners shrank since the escalation of Trump's campaign against the country. Besides, Rouhani still hopes he can become the next supreme leader, or at least have a say over who will become one. He can't afford to alienate the hardliners too much.

In Europe, the reactions to Sotoudeh's sentencing were understandably of shock and disbelief, especially among those European politicians who invested political capital in engaging Iran. By contrast, it gave a perfect excuse to the opponents of dialogue to argue for a closer alignment with Trump's policies on Iran. If Iran truly wants a closer relationship with Europe, it shouldn't give ammunition to European opponents of engagement. Releasing wrongfully imprisoned human rights defenders would be a critically important step in that direction.

This article reflects the personal views of the author and not necessarily the opinions of the S&D Group and the European Parliament.
Turkish President Claims Iran Joins Military Offensive Against Kurdish Separatists

03/19/19

Source: RFE/RL

Turkey has repeated its claim that it and Iran are jointly carrying out a military operation against Kurdish separatists, although semiofficial Iranian media quoted the military as denying it was involved.



Kurdish inhabited areas in the Middle East

(map by CIA, 1992)

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on March 18 said the operation was targeting militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), adding it was the first of its kind and that he hoped further missions would follow.



Turkish TRT channel quoted Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu as saying, "Today, at 8 a.m., Turkey, together with Iran, carried out our first joint operation."



It was not clear where the operation was happening.



Millions of ethnic Kurds live in the mountainous region along the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Some have links to Turkey's militant PKK, which has for decades fought for an independent homeland.



Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency reported that the army denied involvement in the operation.



"The Turkish Army carried out the operation against the militant group PKK, but Iran's armed forces were not part of the operation," Fars quoted an Iranian military source as saying.



"Iran's armed forces will severely counter any group that intends to create insecurity in our country," the source added.



Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the past has clashed with Kurdish rebel groups in the northern part of the country near the Turkish border and across the border in Iraq.



The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) occasionally carries out attacks inside Iran from its bases in Iraq and is listed as a terrorist group by Tehran. Several of its leaders have been killed in attacks the group has blamed on Tehran.



The group is an militant leftist party made up of ethnic Kurds from Iran. It has been based in northern Iraq since it was banned in Iran.

With reporting by Reuters, Fars, and TASS
The countrys cocoa production is under threat because policies by various governments on cocoa production and protection are not consistent.



Dr Francis E. Awortwi, the Acting Head of Department of Environmental Science at the University College of Agriculture and Environmental Science (UCAES), Bunso, said: Many governments dont pay serious attention to the cocoa sector and rather tend to play politics with it.



He, therefore, called on government and all stakeholders to work together to save the cocoa industry adding that drastic measures were needed to revive the sector; the backbone of the countrys economy.



Dr Awortwi was addressing farmers and key stakeholders in the cocoa sector at the Third Cocoa Dialogue held at Bunso in the Eastern Region.



It was organised on the theme: Cocoa is the Backbone of our Country and its Sustainability Is Key.



The programme was under the auspices of the Ghana Agricultural and Rural Development Journalists Association (GARDJA).



Nana Oboadie Boateng Bonsu, the President of the Concerned Farmers Association of Ghana (CFAG), called on government to intervene and put a stop to the cutting down of cocoa trees and replacing them with rubber plantation and mining activities.



He said he was not against people investing in rubber farms, however, we shouldnt destroy cocoa trees that the Government and farmers have invested huge monies in.



Mr Richmond Frimpong, the President of GARDJA, called on government and all stakeholders in the cocoa industry to add value to the beans to earn more foreign exchange for the country.



He said the country should be looking at investing in other by- products of cocoa such as the husk, which research had proven that it could be used to generate cheaper electricity through biomass.



Mr Humphrey Ayisi, the National Chairman of the World Cocoa Farmers Organisation, called on policy makers to actively involve cocoa farmers in such programmes to make its implementation holistic.

Source: GNA









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Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has expressed its determination to do all it can under the laws and employ innovative strategies to ensure that all taxable entities pay their appropriate taxes to support the countrys development.



Mr Paul Kwesi Ahiakpor, Assistant Commissioner, Customs Division of GRA in the Northern Region, who expressed the determination at a media soiree in Tamale, therefore called on taxable entities to voluntarily comply with tax laws to avoid sanctions.



The media soiree was organised by GRA in Tamale as part of efforts to deepen relations with the media in the region to help in ensuring tax collection.



The 2018 performance of GRA in the region showed increased tax collection as the Customs Division collected GHc167 million as against a target of 68.40 million, the Tamale Small Tax Office (STO) collected GHc27.6 million as against a target of 26.6 million while the Tamale Medium Tax Office (MTO) collected GHc41.2 million as against 39.1 million it collected in 2017.



For this year, the Customs Division of GRA in the region, Tamale MTO, and Tamale STO have been tasked to collect GHc78.03 million, GHc60.6 million, and GHc37 million in that order.



Mr Ebenezer Mensah, Acting Assistant Commissioner of GRA at the Tamale MTO said the GRA in the region was intensifying tax education to ensure a well-informed taxpayer population amongst other strategies to help meet the target for the year.



Mr Cephas Nelson Agoro, Manager of Tamale STO said steps had been taken to streamline Tax Identification Number registration to help broaden the tax net as well as the payment of taxes.



Alhaji Abdul Razak Saani, Northern Regional Director of National Commission for Civic Education charged the media to lead the crusade to educate the citizenry on the need to pay taxes as no country could develop without taxes.



Alhaji Saani also urged the media to hold duty-bearers accountable in terms of how they spent tax revenues to encourage the citizenry to be committed to paying taxes.

Source: GNA`









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Petersfield & Rey Group Limited and CASA de Ropa, two companies operating under governments One-District-One- Factory (1D1F) initiative, have commenced production.



The two companies are operating from two different districts.



While Petersfield & Rey Group Limited is operating from Ataabadze in the Komenda-Edna-Eguafo-Abirem (KEEA) Municipality and producing Reydrops natural mineral water, soft drinks and pure natural fruits (pineapple, watermelon and mixed fruits with ginger), CASA de Ropa is operating from Gomoa Bewadze in the Gomoa West District of the Central Region.



CASA de Ropa uses sweet potato as its raw material to produce sugar-free nutritious bread and other mouth-watering tasty pastries.



This came to the fore when the National Coordinator for 1D1F, Gifty Ohene-Konadu, on Wednesday toured the two companies to assess the level of progress of the companies and the challenges confronting them.



At Petersfield & Rey Group Limited, Mrs. Ohene-Konadu was taken round the production site where a bottled water producing plant and another producing soft drinks and pure natural fruit juice were operational.



She also inspected another facility that produces sachet water.



Petersfield & Rey Group, which entered the local market with Reydrops natural mineral water, is currently doing test runs on its soft drinks and pure natural fruit juice production line.



She was confident by end of March, 2019, Ghanaians will start enjoying pure natural fruit juice from the company.



The company has its own farmlands of about 206 acres.



She recounted some support the government under the 1D1F initiative has been giving to the company.



Key among them are GH6.75million loan facility secured from the EXIM Bank and the release of extension officers by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to train the farmers on best agronomic practices and the types of seedlings to plant.



At Gomoa Bewadze, Mrs. Ohene-Konadu was taken round the production site of CASA de Ropa by its Chief Executive Officer, Ebenezer Obeng Baffoe, the Technical Manager, Tony Dawson-Amoah and Programs & Innovation Manager, Joseph Okyere.



The company has two facilities  a test-run center which is currently producing in smaller quantities and the main production site which is about 85% complete and only awaiting to be roofed and get connected to the national grid.



Installation of its plant machinery is also yet to be done but officials of the company say all the machinery needed to run the company have been procured and warehoused.



Mrs. Ohene-Konadu was also taken round the companys 760-acre farmland which is being developed with modern irrigation facilities and three dams to harvest rain water.



The company currently employs 154 people and hopes to engage about 1004 people when it goes into full production.



It has also engaged 450 farmers who are cultivating the land to produce the raw materials to feed the company.



Mr. Baffoe thanked government for assisting his outfit to secure a loan facility worth GH14 million from the EXIM Bank to enable them put up the GH20 million facility.

Source: Daily Guide









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The founder and leader of the Glorious Word and Power Ministry, Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah has explained that he went to the studios of Accra based Radio XYZ to make peace and not to attack its staff.



Rev. Owusu Bempah in the company of four bodyguards stormed the premises of the radio station on Friday to threaten one of the stations presenters for allegedly saying bad things about him on radio.



Salifu Maase, aka Mugabe, has been criticising the controversial Rev Owusu Bempah for some days over his pronouncements that former President John Mahama was allegedly planning with some other people to kill a number of top officials of government, including Vice President Mahamadu Bawumia.



But according to the man of God, he went there to warn the presenter for always insulting him and threatening him that he and his likes would be chased out of Ghana.



In a Facebook live interview, Owusu Bempah reiterated that he wanted to know why Mugabe keeps using abusive words at him.



Rev Bempah further explained that a video in which Mugabe was insulting him was sent to him, adding that because he is on good terms with the management of the radio station, he decided to go there for a peaceful talk.



He also debunked claims that he went to the radio station with officers of the national security. I didnt go to radio XYZ to fight neither did I go there with the national security. The said radio station is even in the same area I stay and I am on very good terms with them. However, I was there one day when someone called to ask if I have a problem with Mugabe because he kept insulting me.



He however said when he got to the radio station, he was received in peace by the receptionist until staff at the radio station attacked him demanding he vacates the premises.



Initially, I decided to report it to the East Legon police but as the Bible says, when your brother wrongs you, go to him and even if he doesnt listen, go with someone and if he fails to listen again, then you can do whatever you want to do. So as a man of God, I decided to go there in peace to speak to the manager to tell Mugabe to desist from insulting me, he explained.





Source: Graphic.com.gh









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The Colombian Ambassador to Ghana, Her Excellency Claudia Turbay Quintero, has said Colombia and Ghana share similar values and story in terms of their path towards development.



In this regard she said Colombia is committed to deepening its relation with Ghana for the mutual benefit of both countries.



Colombia established diplomatic relation with Ghana in 1988 but opened its mission in Ghana in 2013.



Her Excellency Claudia Turbay Quintero made the comment when she paid a Courtesy call on the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of Parliament, Hon Frank Annoh-Dompreh to brief him about the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Fac group of Colombia.



She said the Colombian government has proposed a review of some 6 articles of the peace agreement to ensure real Justice for the victims of the Colombian conflict .



Her Excellency Claudia Turbay Quintero said Colombia has high respect for Ghana for its democratic credentials.



The Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of Parliament and MP for Nsawam Adoagyiri, Hon Frank Annoh- Dompreh commended Her Excellency Claudia Turbay Quintero for her visit and said Ghana will do its best within international law to help Colombia realise a smooth review of the peace agreement between the government and the Fac group.



He said Ghana and Colombia are friends in the same struggle and commended Colombia for its efforts to deepen peace and democracy in Colombia.



Hon Annoh-Dompreh said there are many areas that Ghana and Colombia can deepen their collaboration such as education, narcotics and malaria control as well as herbal medication.





Source: Emmanuel Akorli/ Peace FM Parliamentary Correspondent









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Audio Attachment: Click to listen to Charles Bissue on Peace FM

A Presidential Staffer, Mr Charles Cromwell Bissue, who has been accused of working against governments efforts of fighting illegal mining popularly known as galamsey still insists he is innocent.



Mr. Bissue stepped aside recently as Secretary to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) after ace investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas aired a documentary in which he was caught allegedly taking a bribe of GHC35,000 to allow a company carry out mining activities during the ban on all small scale mining activities in Ghana.



After the documentary was aired, Mr Bissue wrote a statement saying I have taken notice of the contents of the latest documentary by Tiger Eye P.I., titled Galamsey Fraud. I would like to state, at the very outset, that I am innocent of the allegations levelled against me in the documentary, as I was not and have not been engaged in any acts of corruption, criminality or misconduct.



Meanwhile, Mr. Bissue on Monday confirmed on his Facebook Wall that he responded to an invitation from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).



I have subjected myself to the laws of Ghana, and since no one is above the law, I urge Tiger Eye PI and Anas to provide the CID with the raw, unedited footages, so that the good people of Ghana can have the benefit of knowing the truth, he wrote.



On Tuesday, Mr. Bissue spoke to Kwami Sefa Kayi in an interview on Peace FM's Kokrokoo programme and reiterated his innocence.



According to him, the money he was receiving captured in the video was coming from the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi.



I have not collected anybodys money in the course of my duties, and I will continue to insist on that. Chairman Wontumi gave the money to his P.A (Personal Assistant) to be given to me . . .



I know that I will prevail after this . . . I have not collected any money, he added.



Seeking Redress



Mr. Bissue intends to go to court after the investigation on the matter is concluded. He wants the court to determine the basis on which a situation can be termed as engaging in bribery and corruption.



"I have subjected myself to the laws of Ghana . . . the wheels of justice grinds slowly and so what I am trying to do is subject myself to an investigation; when the conclusion of the investigation is reached; on the basis of that I will proceed to court," he told Kwami Sefa Kayi in response to a question as to why he will not sue the investigator for defamation.



Fear for sick mother



When the video was aired, Charles Bissues fear was for her mother not to hear the news since she can suffer from a heart attack.



My fear was for my mother; we took the radio away from her (to prevent her from listening to the news) and then later, I went to her to explain and she understood because she trained me wellmy mother could have died from a heart attack, he bemoaned.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Nigeria's minister of education has warned that parents who refuse to send their children to school will be prosecuted.



Adamu Adamu said criminalising parents would help reduce the number of children not in education.



Many parents complain they lack the money to send their children school and instead send them onto the streets and into markets to hawk items.



The BBC's Jimeh Saleh says failure in the education system in recent years is due to a lack of government funding.



The United Nations children's agency, Unicef, says Nigeria is one of the world's worst countries for out-of-school children.



About 10.5 million of the countrys children aged 5-14 years are not in school, and only 61% of 6 to 11-year-olds regularly attend primary school, the body says.



Unicef estimates that 60% of Nigerian children not attending school live in the north of the country, parts of which have been wracked by Islamist insurgency.

Source: BBC









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Players in the pharmaceutical industry are considering the establishment of an enclave to provide a one-stop avenue for the manufacturing and processing of pharmaceutical drugs in Ghana.



To be known as the Pharma-Industry Park, the initiative is intended to address various obstacles drug manufacturers encounter in their business.



The Chairman of the Executive Council of the Chamber of Pharmacy Ghana, Mr Harrison Abutiate made this known when he paid a courtesy call on Ghanas Ambassador to Ethiopia, H.E Amma Twum-Amoah at her office in Addis Ababa.



Mr Abutiate said he was in the East African nation to under-study a similar project by the Ethiopian Pharmaceutical industry.



According to him, the scattered nature of state regulatory agencies coupled with bureaucracy has created drawbacks for business people within the pharmaceutical sector, hence the decision by the Chamber to go the Ethiopian way.



He said the Chamber has secured a large stretch of land within the Appolonia City on the Dodowa Road in the Greater Accra Region for the construction of the multipurpose, state-of-the-art Park.



Upon completion, the facility will ensure easy and speedy processes including business registration, manufacturing, branding, marketing and packaging to facilitate the production of essential drugs.



When packaging materials, labels, importations, storage and marketing are standardized, the cost of production is reduced and the burden on both the manufacturer and the patient buying the drugs is lessened, he told Journalists.



A former President of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana ( CIMG), Mr. Abutiate said a tour of the Ethiopian project and subsequent discussions with Ethiopian Pharmacists and medicine producers showed that greater efficiency and speed is guaranteed in facilities like the proposed industrial park.



Ghana is said to have some 38 drug manufacturing companies, locally based and are responsible for the production of 30 percent of the countrys pharmaceutical needs.



In terms of quality of products, drugs or medicines from Ghana are among the best on the continent and we are currently seeking special bank facilities to enable the competitiveness. We may even export knowledge and expertise to other places on the continent, Mr Abutiate said.



Additionally, Ghana produces 300 Pharmacists every year.



Ambassador Amma Twum-Amoah commended the role of the pharmacists and medicine producers and importers in safeguarding the countrys healthcare system and pledged the continuous support of government to support initiatives of the Chamber.





Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Deputy Information Minister, Pius Enam Hadzide, has laughed-off what he describes as "deliberate" attempts by some opposition party elements to rope-in President Nana Akufo-Addo in the alleged De-Eye militia group saga.



National Chairman of the People's National Convention (PNC), Bernard Mornah, recently described the posture of President Nana Akufo-Addo in the combat against vigilantism as chameleonic.



According to him, until Joy News documentary came out, whenever Nana Akufo-Addo spoke on the issue of vigilantism, he (President) behaved as if he was worried about it; crying and doing everything to show that he abhors the existence of such group, not knowing that at the presidency, is a group that is training as a militia and they have taken strategic position at international and national conferences.



In an earlier interview on Okay FMs Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, Bernard Mornah said he recalled seeing a lot of De-Eye Group members at the launch of Dombo Foundation, but then he mistakenly took them to be law students.



I saw a lot of them and I thought that they were students of law because they were seated to my left side. I didnt know these were a group of militia after being trained at the presidency and so when the President is shedding crocodile tears and letting everybody to know that the happenings in Ghana is terrible, then suddenly it turned out that the President has actually knowledge of the existence of the group and he is actually nurturing them; it is disturbing.



The PNC leader asserted that this act is leading to weaponization of our democracy which we all know that a semblance of this was exhibited at Ayawaso West Wuogon and so we have issued a statement that this nation deserves better, this nation deserves peace and President Akufo-Addo must ensure that there is peace.



Reacting on the same platform, the Deputy Minister of Information said First of all, I want Chairman Mornah to understand that it is not true when he says there is training of militia group at the seat of government. I want to now if he knows where the Presidency is? If he does not know, then he should know henceforth that the Osu Castle is not the Presidency, he chided.



He wondered why the PNC Chairman Mornah is insisting to classify those members of De-Eye Group who acted as imposters at the Osu Castle as militia.



There is an issue at stake, instead of being honest with the truth people are persistently trying hard to drag the President into and denigrate him; that will not wash because Chairman Bernard Mornah, you have to understand that there have been many Presidents before of this country including your friend Mr. Mahama but when election violence arose in their time, they could not do anything about it, he slammed.



If indeed, De-Eye Group is a vigilante group, how come we have not heard of them in any election violence or any form of violence in the country before? When the Hawks was recently formed and we said it is vigilante group, they proved us right and killed someone in Kumasi, but that cannot be said of De-Eye Group. We have also heard of the Invincible, Delta Forces, Azoka Boys and Kandahar Boys.



So you will see a desperate attempt by the NDC and its allies to drag Nana Akufo-Addo into it that is why something which has happened at a place considered as part of the Museum and Monuments Board, my own friend Bernard Mornah says it is not true but it is at the Presidency, he jabbed.





Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com/[email protected]









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Former Member of Parliament for Nanton Constituency, Hon. Murtala Ibrahim Mohammed says it simply does not make sense for the Akufo-Addo government to spend Ghc18 billion just to collapse banks.



According to him, if the Akufo-Addo government had extended that Ghc18 billion bailout to those banks as support, they would have been in a better position to transact business.



How can you spend about Ghc18 billion to collapse banks? It simply does not make sense. You are spending Ghc18 billion to collapse banks. Does it make sense? Now the question is, that Ghc18 billion, if you had extended it to those banks, if you had given those Ghc18 billion as support to those banks would they have been in a better position that would be considered acceptable by government? My answer is yes, he averred.



Contributing to a panel discussion on Radio Golds 'Alhaji and Alhaji' flagship program, Hon. Murtala Mohammed pointed out that "collapsing of the banks is not in circinatus to the challenges that we are confronted with in the banking sector as a government but if you had provided the facility and the money to those banks, the people, hundreds if not thousands who have lost their livelihood as a result of this insensitive decision, those people would have still been on their jobs.



Wondering why government will spend billions of Ghana cedis while it is still indebted to road contractors, the former NDC MP further alleged that over 7000 people have lost their jobs in the banking sector as a result of the reforms that led to the collapse of these indigenous banks.



He also accused the Governor of the Central Bank, Dr Ernest Addison of dabbling in partisan politics instead of focusing on his priorities as BoG head.



"Multiply that 7000 by three, just say that they each have an average of two dependants, multiply the 7000 by 3, we are talking about 21,000 Ghanaians who indeed would have lost their jobs and after that we had other banks that were collapsed; we had businesses that were collapsed as a result of the collapse of those banks," he added.



The Governor of Bank of Ghana talks too much and it is true, when the Governor of Bank of Ghana sneezes, the entire banking sector and the entire economy catches cold and that is what happen. You have a Governor of Bank of Ghana who does politics than even operating as a Governor of a bank such as the Bank of Ghana; so that is the issue, he chided.

Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com/[email protected]









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Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress [NDC], Peter Boamah Otokunor, has asked the ruling NPP to show more commitment towards the disbandment of vigilante groups as proposed by their leader, President Akufo-Addo.



According to him details of the letter written to his party by the NPP of which they have had primarily discussions on but waiting to take a concrete decision on as a party depict a motive which to him if maintained cannot disband vigilante groups due to the omission of the multi-stakeholder involvement.



What they have written to us is not a multi-stakeholder meeting that is why they have left the vacuum for us to choose the venue and suggest other things. The NPP must show much commitment that they are ruling this country whereas their leader who is the president of this country is close to the authority of state to even uproot or eliminate this menace without calling for a meeting, he said.



In an interview on Joy FM, Peter Boamah Otokunor stated that the NPP is unable to fulfill the kind of commitment expected of them by Ghanaians.



Clearly, details of the letter declare that the NPP are still unable to show the kind of commitment the people of Ghana is expecting from them with respect to this matter. We are going to have a meeting with them to discuss the roadmap as to which stakeholders should be involved in the discussion.



 . . Luckily for us we already have in our country the stakeholders we believe should be part of such a public interest discussion. I dont think starting with the National Peace Council is a bad idea. It appears that the NPP in their operations are exhibiting some level of bad faith that will not help make a smooth discussion or course, he indicated.



Peter Otokunor in his submission stressed that the NPP has intentionally granted them the opportunity to choose a venue in the letter because they know their request of meeting them alone without any of the stakeholders present is not a procedure they are happy about.



They have done that because they know the NDC is requesting for a multi-stakeholder meeting and what the NPP is requesting from us this week is not a multi-stakeholder meeting, if they were committed and really want to show to the people of this country that they see the urgency in the elimination and uprooting of militia groups they would have set the place for the meeting and as well take into consideration other needed materials, he added.





Source: Elizabeth Semiheva Bedi/Peacefmonline.com









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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has performed creditably well in his first two-years in power and will therefore not allow any individual or group of persons to derail his onward march to make Ghana iconic.



He will also not allow anybody to blackmail him as he has already chosen the path of growth and development for Ghanaians.



Mr Dennis Amfo-Sefa, Tema West constituency Chairman of the ruling New Patriotic Party stated this in an exclusive interview with the Ghana News Agency when he outlined the performance of the party in the first 27 months in power.



He said so far President had fulfilled his promises of free Senior High Education, creation of six new regions and was progressing well in the one District, one factory and one Village one dam in the northern sector of the country.



On violence through vigilantism, Mr Amfo-Sefa popularly known as Nana Boakye said the President had so far shown commitment to fighting the canker as he had extended an invitation to the National Democratic Congress for a dialogue to find lasting solutions.



He said the setting up of the Emile Short Commission of Inquiry to investigate the circumstances that led to the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election was an indication of his peaceful nature and commitment to finding lasting solutions to the canker.



He dismissed calls by Mr Akwasi Addae Odike, Leader of UFP on Ghanaians to vote against President Akufo-Addo in 2020 saying the public rant by Odike was nothing, but an attempt to blackmail the President into throwing some spoil of power on his way.



Odike appears to believe that he can blackmail President Akufo-Addo the same way that he blackmailed former President Mahama. well, the bad news is that, President Akufo-Addo cannot be blackmailed. Simple! Nana Boakye said.



According to him, the President could not be blackmailed because it was his outstanding performance in office that had already anchored a repeat victory for Nana Akufo-Addo in 2020.



The NPP chairman said: How can you call President Akufo-Addo a violent man behind vigilantism when he is the one who has shown commitment more than anyone else to solve it; Is Odike the only stranger in Ghana; has he not heard that President Akufo-Addo has asked the Attorney General to come up with a law to ban vigilantism forever? How can the man you are blaming for a problem, be the same one pursuing a solution? Nana Boakye asked rhetorically.



The UFP Leader, who in the recent past was an admirer of President Akufo-Addo, suddenly turned a detractor of the President, publicly calling on Ghanaians to vote against him in 2020 for failing to meet the expectations of the people and for nurturing political vigilantism.



Mr Amfo-Sefa gave the assurance that President Akufo-Addo would win the 2020 elections not because of public flatters or detractions, but his performance that had caught up with the people.

Source: GNA









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Bennu is now one of about a dozen active asteroids that share at least some characteristics with comets. The OSIRIS-REx team doesn't know what's causing Bennu particles to suddenly jump off of the surface. The first step in understanding the process is to trace the flying particles paths back to their sources.

The discovery was a surprise because these ejection events werent detected from Earth, though there was at least some speculation ahead of OSIRIS-REx's arrival that Bennu might be an active asteroid. Upon learning that Bennu was active, NASA performed an analysis using orbital debris models for Earth orbit to see if the particles posed any danger to OSIRIS-REx, and determined the spacecraft was safe.

Another interesting bit of trivia is that the particle ejections could, in theory, be associated with an annual meteor shower here on Earth; such a shower would happen in September, in the southern hemisphere.

Rotation rate

One of the mission's major goals was to measure the Yarkovsky effect, a force caused by the asteroid's continual absorption of solar radiation and re-radiation of heat as it rotates in and out of sunlight. The Yarkovsky effect is one part of a larger effect called YORP that can alter an asteroid's trajectory, which is important for tracking potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids.

Bennu's rotation rate has been increasing since 1999, and now, OSIRIS-REx observations have concluded that this increase is caused by the YORP effect. Just how much of an impact does this force have on Bennu? Every 1.5 million years, its rotation rate will double! Scientists believe YORP can eventually spin asteroids fast enough to break them apart, and it could be a contributing factor behind Bennu's particle ejections, though Lauretta cautioned it's too early to tell.

Sample collection

As we've previously noted, Bennu is much more rugged than expected. Ground-based radio astronomy led the OSIRIS-REx team to believe the surface was mostly covered in centimeter-size particles, which informed the design of TAGSAM sample collector. The team now knows Bennu is covered in boulders, 200 of which have been found to have diameters greater than 10 meters.
Hungary PM Orban holds talks with U.S. legislators

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Hungarys Prime Minister Viktor Orban has had talks with U.S. senators in Budapest on Tuesday about bilateral security policy and economic co-operation and the energy supply of Hungary and the Central European region. The visiting bi-party delegation of the United States Congress comprised four senators and two representatives of Congress.

Members of the delegation, including Senators John Barrasso, Mike Crapo and John Kennedy and congressional representatives Russell Fulcher and Debbie Wasserman, enquired about the latest challenges of the Central and Eastern European region, the Hungarian perception of the crisis in Ukraine, and U.S. investments in Hungary.



The parties concluded that, against the background of excellent economic and defence co-operation between Hungary and the United States, recently political relations have also improved significantly.



On Tuesday the delegation members will meet with Finance Minister Mihaly Varga, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Levente Magyar, and Defence State Secretary Istvan Szabo, local newswire MTI reported.
Dearborn Public Schools Supt. Glenn Maleyko received another important honor on Friday when the Dearborn Area Chamber of Commerce presented him with the Business Leader of the Year Award.

In presenting the award, the Chamber noted that during Maleykos tenure, the district has had two schools named national Blue Ribbon Schools and achieved a 95 percent high school graduation rate. The district was among 45 named as Districts of Distinction by District Administrator Magazine last year. Also, five labor union contracts passed with large margins of approval.

Maleykos long tenure in Dearborn Schools was also noted during the award ceremony, from his beginning in 1995 as a substitute at Oakman and Maples elementary schools to his job as a teacher at Salina and then up to assistant principal, principal, human resources director and then superintendent in 2015.

Peoples capacity to achieve is greatly influenced by their leaders ability to empower. Nowhere is that more true than in the Dearborn Public Schools, thanks to Superintendent Dr. Glenn Maleyko, said an introductory video for Maleyko.

His infectious approach to education and passion for the district have earned him high marks for his leadership style, which has translated into noticeable results, the video added.

During an onstage interview after receiving the award, Maleyko attributed the Districts success to the teamwork and dedication of all the staff, students, families and community members.

Asked what he saw as the biggest change in his years in the district, Maleyko said social media. He started in Dearborn Schools before the Internet had really taken root. Now students and parents expect instant communication from the district, he said.

Maleyko received the award during the annual Chamber Choice Awards and Expo presented by Ford Land and held at The Henry on March 15. Other award recipients included KLA Laboratories as Business of the Year, John Zadikian Multimedia as Small Business of the Year, Ford Land for the Impact Award and Zee the Cook for the Startup Award.

The Chamber award is just the latest accolade for Maleyko. In February, he received the Superintendent of the Year Award from the Michigan Association of Superintendents and Administrators.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





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Old Lyme, CT -- (ReleaseWire) -- 03/19/2019 --Ballerup, Denmark, March 18th, 2019  Global audio specialist Sennheiser releases the new premium wired Century ANC headset at Enterprise Connect, Orlando, USA, March 18-21, 2019. The new variant, Century SC 660 ANC USB, is designed for customer-centric workers who need a durable wired headset with outstanding sound quality, effective call handling and excellent comfort. The ANC can be switched on and off via the in-line call control and the proximity sensor technology makes it possible to answer a call, put it on hold and resume the call simply by taking the headset on and off. The headset features thick leatherette ear pads which not only ensure a high level of comfort and passive noise damping but also improve the audio music performance. Sennheiser Voice Clarity and the ultra noise-cancelling microphone provide a natural listening experience and perfect speech output. The Century ANC variant is UC optimized and Skype for Business Certified.



Sennheiser's new premium Century ANC headset is for office professionals who spend all day on calls in open office environments and contact centers. "This ANC headset has outstanding sound performance, intuitive call handling and enhances noise reduction which all helps to improve both comfort and productivity in noisy office workplaces," says Theis Mork, Vice President of Product Management Enterprise Solutions at Sennheiser.



Quality is the key

"It is crucial to businesses that employees can focus and work efficiently even in busy and noisy office environments," says Theis Mork, Vice President of Product Management Enterprise Solutions at Sennheiser. "When using a headset for calls all day, high quality is the keyword. Our new Century ANC headset lives up to a high standard of quality when it comes to both sound, craftmanship and user experience. With this headset, people can stay focused on calls and ensure effective conversations with customers," explains Theis Mork.



Two new Century Mobile variants with USB-C available

At Enterprise Connect, Sennheiser also releases two additional wired Century Mobile headset variants: SC 635 USB-C (single-sided) & SC 665 USB-C (double-sided). These new headsets offer both USB-C and 3.5 mm jack connectivity, providing added flexibility for office workers who need to switch between different devices and locations without compromising productivity and clarity of communication. Both headsets are UC optimized and Certified for Skype for Business.



Visit Sennheiser at Enterprise Connect, March 18-21, 2019

Sennheiser will exhibit the new Century ANC and Century Mobile USB-C headsets at booth number 707.



Availability and price

Product availability:

CenturyANC: SC 660 ANC USB: March 18th, 2019

Century Mobile USB-C: SC 635 USB-C & SC 665 USB-C: March 26th, 2019

The Century Series costs between $ 179 and $ 249



About Sennheiser Communications

The company is a powerful joint venture between the German electro acoustics specialist Sennheiser Electronic GmbH & Co. KG and internationally renowned Danish hearing healthcare company William Demant Holding Group. The joint venture draws on the experience of the two parent companies, both of whom are global technology leaders in their respective fields.



Established in 2003, Sennheiser Communications A/S has been developing award winning headsets for business professionals and the gaming community from its headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. The success builds on more than 150 years of combined sound heritage, the very latest technologies, and most of all, on our team of committed experts and professionals.



Sennheiser Communications specializes in combining high-end audio and sound reproduction quality with leading hearing aid and advanced digital signal processing technologies for state-of-the-art communication products for call centers, office applications, as well as headsets for gaming and mobile devices.



Find more information about Sennheiser Communications at www.senncom.com.
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President hails Saada residents' patriotic stances in foiling aggression conspiracies

[19/March/2019]

p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;direction:ltr;unicode-bidi:embed">SANAA, March.19 (Saba) - President of the Supreme Political Council Mahdi al-Mashat praised on Tuesday the patriotic stances of residents of Saada province in confronting the Saudi aggression and its conspiracies on Yemen.

During his meeting with Saada governor Mohammad Jaber Awad, the president discussed a situation in the governorate in light of the aggression's military escalation, which destroyed the service and vital facilities, as well as the citizens' private property.

The officials touched upon the aspects related to the ongoing mobilization to back the fronts with fighters and money to thwart the aggression and its plans.

The meeting stressed the importance of improving necessary services and projects needed the province to alleviate the suffering of the citizens.

Ali Ahsan

saba
A court in London has issued an arrest warrant against fugitive Indian diamantaire Nirav Modi, accused in the Rs 12,700 crore bank, confirmed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday.

According to the ED, the Westminster Court issued the arrest warrant against Nirav Modi on March 13.





The Indian government had moved an extradition request for Modi, who is currently in London, ED sources said in Delhi.
Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has been shifted to a hospital in Dubai after suffering a reaction from a rare disease for which he is already under treatment, the media reported.

The former leader was rushed to the hospital as an "emergency" on Saturday night after his condition suddenly worsened, All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) Secretary-General Mehrene Adam Malik said.



APML Overseas President Afzaal Siddiqui told Dawn news that Musharraf had suffered a reaction from amyloidosis, a rare condition for which the former President has been receiving medical care.



According to the party, Musharraf has been advised complete bed rest by doctors till his full recovery.



Siddiqui had disclosed Musharraf's illness in October 2018, saying it had "weakened his nervous system".





At the time, he was being treated for the condition in London.



The APML official had then said that Musharraf's treatment could continue for up to five or six months.



Upon his full recovery, Siddiqui had said, Musharraf intends to return to Pakistan.



On March 31, 2014, Musharraf was indicted for suspending the Constitution on November 3, 2007.



He, however, left the country in March 2016 for Dubai to "seek medical treatment" and hasn't returned since.
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Feb-24-2019 00:26 TweetFollow @OregonNews Bill to Provide Greater Access for Virginia Medical Cannabis Patients Succeeds The Governor's Action Deadline for signature is Midnight, March 25, 2019.

Virginia NORML members meet with Senator Dave Marsden

Photo: NORML

(RICHMOND, Va.) - Virginia Senator David Marsdens SB1719 has passed unanimously through both the House of Delegates and the Senate, and is headed to the governors desk for signature. SB1719 allows registered agents for those patients physically unable to pick up or receive delivery of their medical cannabis, like those in hospice, assisted living facilities, and those who rely on home healthcare providers. This law will ensure that patients who may be physically incapable of picking up these life-changing medicines on their own will have access to them from throughout the Commonwealth, said Senator Marsden, of Fairfax County. It is patients like Tamara Lyn Netzel, a teacher from Alexandria who suffers from multiple sclerosis, who stand to benefit from this legislation. Multiple sclerosis is a degenerative disease with severe symptoms that come and go, so Ive accepted at some point I may not be able to drive a car safely or leave my home, said Netzel. It is comforting to know I will still be able to send my husband to get the medicine I need. SB1719, which passed unanimously through both the House of Delegates and Virginia Senate, will also allow Virginias licensed pharmaceutical processors to transfer products between the five state-authorized facilities, ensuring that patients have access to a wider range of products. It will also prevent the limited availability of products that could result should a provider experience crop failure. Allowing the exchange of various products between licensed processors will create better product selections for patients, depending on their need, regardless of their location in Virginia, said Senator Marsden. I am proud to be part of this effort. SB1719 ensures that patients will greater access to the medicines they need, a key element of continuity needed for the success of any health system. Patient access is critical to the success of Virginias medical cannabis program, said Jenn Michelle Pedini, executive director of Virginia NORML. These bills help ensure that all patients are able to obtain and use the necessary therapeutic doses of their cannabis medicines regardless of location or physical ability. Other medical cannabis-related bills are still making their way through the legislature. Senator Siobhan Dunnavants SB1557 expands Virginias medical cannabis program, adding nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and allowing a wide range of full therapeutic-strength formulations to be dispensed. Delegate Chris L. Hursts HB1720 and Senator Glen Sturtevants SB1632 would authorize school nurses to administer and registered student patients to use Virginia-approved medical cannabis products at school. Weve received emails and calls from concerned parents throughout the Commonwealth who are worried their children could be expelled for using their doctor-recommended medical cannabis oil at school, said Jenn Michelle Pedini, executive director of Virginia NORML. Delegate Hursts and Senator Sturtevants bills would provide a much-needed solution for these families. The Governor's Action Deadline for signature is Midnight, March 25, 2019. Track this and all marijuana-related legislation on Virginia NORMLs 2019 legislation monitoring page. Source: Jenn Michelle Pedini, NORML Development Director; Originally posted on the Virginia NORML Blog #legislation #medicalcannabis #medicalmarijuana #NORML #VirginiaNORML #ACTIVISM #CitizenLobbyists #Virginia _________________________________________

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Santa Anitas controversial plan to reduce the amount of Lasix a horse can have on race day received a rebuke on Tuesday from the North American Assn. of Racetrack Veterinarians.

Under its plans to reopen the track for racing on March 29 after the deaths of 22 horses at the site, the Stronach Group is changing medication rules pending approval of the California Horse Racing Board. That approval is expected March 28. While most of the proposals have received widespread approval, the one where Lasix would be eventually eliminated on race day has been met with much criticism.

The proposal would reduce race-day Lasix from 10 cubic centimeters to 5 cubic centimeters for horses that are currently racing. However, next years crop of 2-year-olds would not be allowed Lasix on race day. This would eventually lead to horses not allowed any Lasix to be racing against horses who can have Lasix, because their status has been grandfathered in.

Lasix is a medicine that is used to ease exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging (EIPH), or bleeding from the lungs. It makes it easier for horses to breathe. Extensive medical research has found no links between Lasix and breakdowns.

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However there is abundant evidence that reduction and elimination of furosemide (Lasix) administration will lead to increasing levels of EIPH and subsequent pulmonary disease in our horses, the NAARV said in a news release.

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The statement went on to say: The result is that it has been decided that appeasement of specific sectors of our society as well as a minority of stakeholders in our industry is more important than prevention of [EIPH] in our horses.

While not mentioned by name, its likely that members of the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are the specific sectors that the NAARV was referring to. In PETAs latest statement, it referred to owners and trainers as Lasix addicts, and concluded with: If one more horse dies, there will be blood on the owners hands and hell to pay.

Neither Del Mar nor Los Alamitos plan to adopt the Santa Anita Lasix rules and will still allow 10 cc of the medicine on race day.

Click here to sign up for our free horse racing newsletter.

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As medical science proliferates with technologies, what is left for the doctor to do?

For medical humanist Dr. Abraham Verghese, the answer is simple: Spend more time getting to know your patients as people. Take the time to read a poem and other literature. Do your part to bridge the gap between the two cultures of science and the humanities.

Verghese delivered the closing speech at last weeks Future of Individualized Medicine conference in La Jolla. His talk was meant to put into perspective the meaning of the technologies that otherwise dominated the conference, like genomics, microbiomics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

It takes a doctor who is attuned to a patients life history to make the best use of these tools, Verghese said. And that means having insight into human character.

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Verghese said machines have eclipsed human beings in their capacity to care for the patient, that is, in diagnosing illnesses and indicating the best available therapies.

But doctors can evoke the human spirit, the knowledge of human beings and their motivations, that can pull together a life picture of a patient and understand them as more than a collection of symptoms.

Case history: A 64-year-old man admitted to the hospital after repeated falls, pains, and the loss of two teeth that just fell out, with no apparent cause.

What was wrong? Was it his medications, which could have caused abnormally low blood pressure? Was it alcohol abuse? A nutritional deficiency?

The man rapidly improved after being hospitalized. It turned out he had bachelor scurvy, a nutritional deficiency known to occur in older men who live alone.

He was surviving on no fruits or veggies, just alcohol and processed meats, I would guess, Verghese said.

My point here is that this diagnosis, as clever as it was, also might have been made much, much earlier had we had a good relationship with this patient and had some sense of who that person was, as an individual.

What would it mean for that man to have lost his wife? How would that change his entire circumstance of living? These are the kinds of things that shouldnt be neglected in the pursuit of ever-greater technical efficiency, Verghese said.

I would actually say its a two-way street, he said. Those of you involved in making these machines and doing these wonderful things for us probably need to embrace the humanities in order to make the things you do meaningful for those of use who are using them.

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

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The fatal crashes of two Boeing Co. 737 Max jets and the fleets worldwide grounding have triggered a complicated scramble regarding legal liability involving the manufacturer, airlines and the victims families.

Boeings risks might be rising after a report in the Seattle Times that the companys safety analysis for the airliners new flight control system had crucial flaws. Much of the legal liability depends on the findings of investigators, as well as the contracts Boeing has with airlines that purchased the planes.

But one thing so far appears clear: The families of passengers who perished in the crashes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 and Lion Air Flight 610 in October will have strong claims for damages. Questions remain, however, about whether some of those legal cases will be heard in the U.S. or abroad.

They are in a sense the innocent participants in the whole thing, and its really a function of when and how much the families receive in damages  and not if, said Mark A. Dombroff, an attorney with law firm LeClairRyan in Alexandria, Va., who often represents airlines.

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Robert L. Rabin, a Stanford law professor and expert on accident law, said there were a variety of types of legal claims possible against Boeing. They include product liability for defects in the airplane or its flight control system and negligence for not training pilots on the changes to the system and not taking steps to fix any problems after the first crash.

If U.S. law is applicable, he said, the case for liability, from what we know now, would be pretty strong.

Several lawsuits already have been filed against Boeing by families of victims of the Lion Air crash, which killed all 189 passengers and crew on board when it plunged into the Java Sea minutes after takeoff from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.

More lawsuits are expected after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which killed all 157 on board. Both flights involved Boeing 737 Max airliners. Regulators have grounded the jets because of similarities between the crashes, and Boeing is working on a fix to the flight-control software.

Families of victims of the second crash could have stronger legal claims because there was already the fatal October crash involving the 737 Max, Rabin said.

Boeing declined to comment Monday on its potential liability, with a spokesman saying the Chicago company does not respond to or comment on questions concerning legal matters, whether internal, litigation, or governmental inquiries.

Federal prosecutors and the Department of Transportations inspector general reportedly are investigating the design certification process for the 737 Max.

The chief executive of Norwegian Air said last week the European airline would send a bill to Boeing for the costs of the lost flights. Boeing 737 Max planes account for 18 of Norwegian Airs 160 aircraft.

But Boeing could avoid payments related to the grounding.

Aviation insurance covers such losses. Boeing and the airlines may have that coverage, Dombroff said.

There also are warranties and other provisions in contracts between Boeing and the airlines that govern claims. Boeing might only be required to fix the problems with the jets, and any other disputes could be required to go to private arbitration, Dombroff said.

The first thing everybody undoubtedly is looking at is the contracts, the warranties and limitations of liabilities, he said.

Airlines usually are hesitant to file lawsuits against manufacturers, particularly because Boeing is one of only two major jet makers in the world, along with Airbus, Dombroff said.

Does the airline want to get into a public dispute with the manufacturer whose airplanes theyre flying? he said. How does that impact the future relationship between the manufacturer and the airline?

Southwest Airlines has 34 737 Max jets, the most of any U.S. airline, and said it would not disclose the specifics of its Boeing contracts.

As you would expect, we are in constant contact with Boeing following the Ethiopian Air accident and subsequent 737 Max 8 grounding, said Chris Mainz, a Southwest spokesman.

We are Boeings largest customer of the 737, and we have a long history of working together with Boeing, and this is no different, he said. But we wont be reporting out on the details of those ongoing conversations.

Boeings bigger legal liability worries come from the fatal crashes.

Families of the crash victims can seek compensation from the airlines and the manufacturer of the jets. Complex international rules govern where lawsuits against airlines can be filed. Under an international treaty, damages from airlines for the families of victims of crashes of international flights are capped at about $170,000.

Airlines often resolve such lawsuits with passengers, then seek compensation from the manufacturer if the crash involves equipment failures and not pilot error, Dombroff said.

But there is no cap on damages in lawsuits from passengers against a jet maker. And theres an advantage for foreign passengers to file those lawsuits in the U.S., where courts are more likely to award significant damages, Dombroff said.

Lawsuits against Boeing by U.S. victims of the crashes would have to be tried here. But Boeing is likely to push to have lawsuits by victims from other countries adjudicated in the nation where the airline resides, Dombroff said.

Several lawsuits already have been filed in Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois by families or the estates of crash victims. Boeings corporate headquarters are there, and the court has a reputation for being friendly to plaintiffs, Dombroff said.

Boeings lawyers have used a legal right to move some of those cases to the federal U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, court records show.

Companies involved in air crashes and other disasters usually are eager to settle wrongful-death lawsuits to get the incident and negative publicity behind them, Rabin said.

There would be strong incentives, I think, for Boeing to enter into settlements of the wrongful-death cases, he said.
Qualcomm has long aimed to diversify its business beyond smartphones, and it took a step in that direction Tuesday by unveiling a new series of audio processors designed for smart speakers and the connected home markets.

The San Diego wireless technology firm rolled out the QCS400  a series of integrated system-on-a-chip processors targeting the next generation of smart speakers, soundbars, home assistants and audio visual receivers.

Qualcomm claims its technology delivers higher sound quality, improved voice control via artificial intelligence, lower power consumption and wide-ranging connectivity for smart speaker/smart home gadget makers.

We are really driving the future of audio -- whole home audio -- to be more intelligent, to be more immersive and to be more integrated, said Gary Brotman, a senior director of product management at Qualcomm, at an event Tuesday.

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For Qualcomm, audio technology is part of the larger Internet of Things market -- where voice-controlled smart speakers are linked to connected TVs, smart lights and appliances, security systems and other gear.

The key feature to the companys smart speaker chips is an artificial intelligence engine that helps filter out background noise and enable more accurate speech recognition.

For example, smart speakers using the machine learning capabilities could process certain words on the device without linking to the Internet cloud  resulting in faster responses and fewer mistakes.

This will help manufacturers more easily overcome significant technical challenges and build smarter speakers and assistants with more intuitive voice user interfaces, connected user experiences and exceptional sound quality, said Rahul Patel, a senior vice president of Qualcomm.

The popularity of smart speakers and voice assistants such as Amazon Echo/Alexa and Google Home clearly has gotten Qualcomms attention. The global smart speaker market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 23 percent over the next six years to reach $23 billion in sales by 2025, according to Allied Market Research.

Since smart speaker users often stream music through their speakers, Qualcomm teamed with Dolby Atmos to deliver high quality, low latency sound via its new chip.

In addition, the chip supports connectivity through mesh Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee  the key wireless technologies now used to the connected home market. So Qualcomm customers can design voice-controlled smart speakers that serve as hubs to control myriad devices throughout the home.

The chips also include enough processing horsepower to run algorithms to improve security and other functions on the device.

In addition to the new processors targeting smart speakers, Qualcomm also rolled out a single chip amplifier technology to boost sound quality and improve battery life for portable speakers and sound bars.

It makes the integration of complex, premium amp technology more commercially viable for the first time in small form factor speakers, sound bars and amplifiers, said Rob Saunders, a director of product marketing at Qualcomm.

The company said products with its new audio chips are expected to be available to this holiday season.

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mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;

Twitter:@TechDiego

760-529-4973
After nine years of proceedings, Qualcomm received a bit of good news last week in its global fight with antitrust regulators.

The Japan Fair Trade Commission on Thursday reversed a 2010 ruling that certain parts of Qualcomms patent licensing business practices violated Japanese anti-monopoly laws.

The move revokes a cease and desist order previously issued by the commission, which Qualcomm challenged in Tokyo High Court.

The court delayed the order and required the commission to hear more evidence. After 37 hearings, the commission changed course and found that Qualcomms cross-licensing provisions did not have a tendency to hinder fair competition and therefore didnt violate the Japan Anti-Monopoly Act.

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Qualcomm filed a notice of the Japan reversal with the federal court in San Jose, where a bench trial wrapped up in January in the U.S. Federal Trade Commissions lawsuit accusing Qualcomm of violating anti-monopoly laws.

A federal judge has yet to issue a ruling in the case.

Over the past few years, Qualcomm has been fighting a sprawling legal war with regulators and Apple over the way it licenses patents to its cellular inventions.

Last weeks reversal in Japan marks the second time that a regulatory agency has stepped back from a decision against Qualcomm. Last year, Taiwans Fair Trade Commission settled with the San Diego company and that dramatically lowered a previously imposed fine.

Qualcomm is still appealing judgments in South Korea and the European Union. A trial in Qualcomms legal battle with Apple  which includes many of the same issues raised by regulators  is expected to begin April 15 in San Diego federal court.

The Japan Fair Trade Commission objected to Qualcomms practice of requiring smartphone makers to cross-license their own patents royalty-free as part of getting access to Qualcomms intellectual property.

According to Qualcomm, cross-licensing protects both parties from potential infringement lawsuits.

We are very gratified to learn that after years of considering the evidence and applicable legal authority, the Japan Fair Trade Commission has concluded there was nothing improper about Qualcomms cross-licensing program, said Don Rosenberg, Qualcomms general counsel, in a statement.

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mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;

Twitter:@TechDiego

760-529-4973
When Leslie Borns first child was born in September 2014, the medical team quickly realized something wasnt right. Her newborn son had low muscle tone, feeding challenges and developmental delays. But what was the cause?

This diagnostic mystery led to a month-long stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), several inconclusive genetic tests and numerous follow-up visits.

It took nearly a year before geneticists finally arrived at a diagnosis: a rare disorder called Schaaf-Yang Syndrome. At the time, her son was the 17th case diagnosed in the world, and the only one in San Diego.

I have yet to meet a doctor who has heard of my sons condition before Ive told them about it, Born said. You go to the doctor to seek answers. But a lot of the times were the ones with answers for the doctors.

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While their sons syndrome is uncommon, the Born family of Poway is not alone. According to 2015 data from a U.S. Census Bureau survey, approximately 18,000 children in the county have a major disability.

The technologies have gotten so much better that children are actually are surviving and living longer than they ever have been before, said Dr. Bretten Pickering. He is the medical director for the Rady Childrens Hospital Special Needs Clinic and clinical professor of pediatrics at UCSD School of Medicine.

For the last 25 years, Pickerings medical practice has focused on children with the highest level of medical complexity. Many of his patients are dependent on wheelchairs, feeding tubes, breathing devices and round-the-clock nursing care.

The stress level for these families is very high, Pickering said. There is also significant medical and financial stress because of all of the needs that their children have which are not covered by insurance.

Carlos Flores is executive director of the San Diego Regional Center which serves nearly 30,000 adults and children with disabilities in the county.

He said in many families where both parents were working, one will decide to quit to care for their child with the developmental disability. Statistics show approximately 40 percent of primary parents will leave the workforce.

In some cases, it just changes the family dynamic, Flores said. There is a large amount of care.

Four-year-old Nathan Born (Julie Favis/PHOTOS)

Five months into her sons life, Born became a full-time caregiver. The number of therapies and appointments her infant son required were incompatible with her full-time work schedule.

Medically fragile children are also more likely to require unexpected hospitalizations which may pull their parents out of work.

While there is little statistical evidence that parents of children with special needs have overall higher divorce rates, both Pickering and Flores anecdotally state they can see the enormous pressures caregiving can place on the marriage.

We see a lot of families breaking up because of the stress, Flores said.

Deborah Setzer of Jamul has two grown children and an adolescent daughter on the autism spectrum.

When your whole life becomes consumed by a special needs child it becomes pretty much all you (and your spouse) have in common, Setzer said. Its hard to break away from that when you have a chance to be a couple.

Her special needs journey began when her youngest daughter was born deaf. She received a cochlear implant when she was 3 years old. Her autism diagnosis came at age 5. Now 17, her daughter has difficulties behaving socially, practicing hygiene, and communicating. Currently, she is at risk of engaging in self-injurious behavior, such as banging her head against hard surfaces.

Our daughter is going to need caregiving the rest of her life, Setzer said. She doesnt have a sense of danger. Its constant care. We dont even leave her in the house to go to the store which is 50 feet away.

Setzer and her husband are retired from careers in law enforcement. They have one paid caregiver that they can rely on occasionally to help but find it difficult to get a much-needed time away. Were tired, were exhausted, Setzer said.

A lack of qualified homecare nurses in the state can make it hard to get support, even when a family is eligible for respite care. In San Diego County, there is a lack of nurses, so there are inadequate nursing respite services, Flores said.

RegisteredNursing.org has predicted that this trend will continue and Californias nursing shortage will be the countrys highest by 2030.

In Pickerings practice, helping his patients thrive often requires looking at the family as a whole. You have to put down the keyboard and sit and talk and find out a little about the family. What is their day like?

For the Born household, which now includes two young children and a third on the way, every day is hectic. While 4-year-old Nathan is thriving, the time and skill required to care for him are significant. He is fed exclusively by a feeding tube and relies on a walker and a wheelchair to get around. Between special needs school, therapies, and medical appointments, his schedule is jam-packed.

There are a lot of unspoken responsibilities you dont realize that come with special-needs kids, Born said. You kind of get thrown into being a superhero.

Born also found much to love about being his mother. My son cant talk, he cant walk, and he cant feed himself. So we a have all of those struggles, she said. But he is the sweetest child. Hes just happy all of the time.

Despite the challenges of autism, Setzer has also found taking care of her youngest daughter tremendously rewarding. She remembered one incident was particularly meaningful. I tucked her in at night and, for the first time, she said I love you, momma. It makes it worth everything.

Her caregiving experience has made Setzer more appreciative of the sacrifices of others like her.

There are heroes walking around us every day, she said. Quiet heroes who are taking care of a special person. They never say anything. They give their life up to take care of them.

Amialya Durairaj is a health-writing consultant at Little Octopus and co-creator of Mindful Returns Balancing Career with a Special Needs Baby program. She lives in San Diego with her husband and twin daughters.
La Mesa customers will likely see hikes in their sewer bills this year and through 2021.

The City Council last week approved city staffs plan to send out an official notice of a public hearing at which sewer service charges will be discussed.

The public hearing is set for 6 p.m. May 14 at La Mesa City Hall.

The notice will let customers know they can object to the rate hike by writing to La Mesa. If enough written protests are received by the city from a majority of property owners, the adjustments will not be made.

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At least four of five City Council members will need to approve the rate hike at the May meeting.

A rate increase is needed to keep up with anticipated sewer operation and maintenance costs, the cost of wastewater transportation and treatment, capital improvements, program administration and debts to the state as well as helping the city maintain its sewer fund reserve.

The city has over 155 miles of sewer mains, some of which are in need of replacement or upgrade, according to a report from Richard Leja, director of Public Works and City Engineer.

Current rates for La Mesa residents through July of this year are $34.16 every other month for the average single-family customer using 15 units of water. One unit of water is equal to 748 gallons.

If passed by the City Council, the average single-family customer will be charged $35.36 bi-monthly starting in July of this year through mid-2020, and $37.54 starting in July 2020 through 2021.

Other jurisdictions proposing to raise sewer rates soon, according to Lejas report, include the County of San Diego, National City, Solana Beach, Del Mar and Poway.

Although the city of La Mesa operates the sewer collection system within city limits, the San Diego Metropolitan Sewer Treatment system is charged with treating the water. La Mesa pays fees for that treatment on a quarterly basis.

La Mesa sewer charges are collected by the County of San Diego with property taxes. A letter is mailed to La Mesa sewer customers each year in July with the amount of a propertys sewer charges for the next fiscal year.

Sewer charges are based on the amount of water used on a property during the months of November through April. Water consumption information is kept by the Helix Water District, the citys water provider.

Some of the higher costs in 2020 and 2021 will be to offset charges La Mesa anticipates will be associated with the city of San Diegos Pure Water program, including capital construction expenses.

La Mesa plans to invest in the Pure Water program being run out of the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. The process out of Point Loma involves sending sewage water through an intense filtration system to ultimately kill contaminants.

Pure Water is a multi-year capital construction program for San Diego County that will, when it is built out in 2035, convert 83 million gallons a day of wastewater to potable drinking water.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
A citizens group of growth-control advocates will not be permitted to intervene in two housing-related lawsuits against the city of Encinitas that were filed two years ago, a Superior Court judge has ruled.

Allowing the Preserve Proposition A group to have a voice in the court process now as an official intervener would unnecessarily delay litigation that finally is headed toward resolution, Judge Robert Dahlquist wrote Friday as he rejected the groups recent request to participate.

Group members and their attorney could have made their request back when the first lawsuit was filed, but they elected to sit on the sidelines and watch as the lawsuit has unfolded, he wrote.

Now, after the merits of the lawsuit have been fully adjudicated, (the group) wants to jump into the fray and re-litigate the case all over again. There is no good reason for the court to allow this to happen, and there are very compelling reasons not to allow it to happen.

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One key compelling reason, the judge wrote, is that Encinitas has been out of compliance for years with state housing law and needs to resolve this situation immediately.

Encinitas is the only city in San Diego County that lacks a valid Housing Element, a state-mandated planning document that spells out how a city proposes to handle its future growth, particularly the housing needs of low-income people.

The city is currently being sued by the both the Building Industry Association of San Diego and San Diego Tenants United over its lack of compliance with state law.

In order to meet the state planning requirement, Encinitas must agree to designate a group of properties as spots for additional housing and increase those properties zoning so that denser projects, particularly lower-cost, multi-family apartment complexes can be built. Building higher-density housing in town has been very controversial and thats been a problem because the city has to obtain voter approval for the proposed zoning changes.

Because of the provisions of the Prop. A growth-control measure, Encinitas needs voter approval for any proposed increases in housing density or building height. Voters have turned down two of the citys proposed housing plans, including the Measure U plan which was rejected in November.

After that plan failed to win voter approval, the judge overseeing the two court cases ordered the city to submit a housing plan to the state within 120 days and said Encinitas would be allowed to temporarily exempt itself from the voter requirements of Prop. A to get its planning project done.

It was this court directive that led the Prop. A group to file its intervener request, Everett DeLano, the groups attorney, said Monday. Prior to that point, Prop. A supporters believed the city was following Prop. As voter approval requirements.

Up until that moment, they were doing their duty, he said, calling the new directive a sea change.

DeLano added that he found Dahlquists decision to reject Preserve Proposition As new intervener request interesting reading, saying the judge essentially told his group that it shouldnt intervene now, but could file its own lawsuit later if the citys housing plan isnt acceptable.

Essentially, the judge is saying you have your rights .... bring a case against the city, he said, adding that group members havent yet decided what steps theyll take next.

The latest housing plan proposal thats working its way through the review process is a modified version of the Measure U plan that voters rejected in November. The new plan contains slightly higher building height limits and some changes to the way building density is calculated. The City Council gave its initial stamp of approval to this plan earlier this month, and it is scheduled to be sent to the state for its review before an April 11, court-ordered deadline.
Although 100 years of life may have weakened his body and hearing, Pearl Harbor veteran Joe Walsh said his memory is still razor-sharp about the two hours of terror and pure adrenaline he experienced the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

You dont forget something like that, Walsh said in an interview at his 100th birthday party on Sunday, the day before his actual centennial.

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Joe Walsh photographed in Guam in 1945, during World War II. On March 18, the Vista resident turned 100 years old. (Courtesy photo)

Walsh, then a Marine in the 3rd Defense Battalion, was at a color guard ceremony in the Navy Yard near the mouth of Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attack began. He and his fellow Marines manned three 50-inch anti-aircraft guns, trying to shoot down the invading planes before they could sink the American battleships near the harbors entrance.

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I didnt have time to get scared, he recalled on Sunday. You dont think about it. You did what you were told to do. You manned your gun and tried to get anyone you could.

More than 2,400 Americans died in the unprovoked attack that ushered America into World War II. For decades, Walsh didnt talk much about his war experiences with his wife, Bea, or their six children.

But that changed in the mid-1980s, when he helped organize, and then served as the longtime president of, the North County chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

At its peak, Chapter 31 had 130 members, but Walsh is now the last surviving member, following the Feb. 15 death of Navy veteran John Quier of Fallbrook.

Walsh said Sunday that it was important to him to help start the chapter and to host its annual Dec. 7 commemoration ceremony at the small-craft fishing pier at Oceanside Harbor. Walsh and Quier also successfully campaigned in 2006 to have the city install a Pearl Harbor memorial monument by the pier.

The guys who were over there who didnt make it back deserved to be remembered, Walsh said. We didnt want to forget any of them.

Pearl Harbor veteran Joe Walsh, right, chats with a family member at his birthday party on Sunday. (Pam Kragen/San Diego Union-Tribune)

Sundays birthday celebration was held at Pacifica Senior Living, a retirement community in Vista where Walsh moved two years ago with his 95-year-old wife, LaVonne, who goes by the nickname Bea. She is also a Marine veteran, having served in the Aviation Womens Reserve Squadron 21 at Brown Field in Quantico, Va. She was one of just 23,000 women who enlisted during World War II.

Sitting in side-by-side wheelchairs, the Walshes were the guests of honor at a party that drew nearly 50 visitors, including five of their six children, cousins, nieces, nephews and former neighbors, as well as family members of Chapter 31 members who have died.

The Walshes enjoyed slices from a sheet cake decorated with the words A Prince of a Fellow, a childhood nickname that stuck with him because he was so well-regarded by others, said daughter Joanie Culver of Fallbrook.

A native of East Orange, N.J., Walsh joined the Marines in 1938 not for the adventure but for the steady income it would provide. It was the Great Depression and jobs were scarce, he said.

Culver said her dad earned $19 a week in the Marines and sent $10 from every paycheck home to his mom, who had raised him and his siblings alone after his father abandoned the family when Joe was 5.

U.S. Rep. Mike Levin holds the congressional record recognizing married Marine veterans LaVonne Bea Walsh, 95, and Joe Walsh, 100, at Pacifica Senior Living in Vista on Saturday. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Drake Nickels)

Walsh served in the Marines for nine years, retiring at the rank of gunnery sergeant. Later, he worked in the book publishing industry, according to local World War II historian Linda Dudik, who wrote the Walshes biography for her website The World War II Experience at wwiiexperience.com.

None of his sons followed Walsh into the military, and if they did I wouldve broken their legs, he joked on Sunday.

Although he was proud to have served his country, Walsh said his war experiences were challenging and often harsh, especially a period of severe deprivation stationed at Johnston Atoll, an air base in the Pacific.

It was pretty rough, he said. All I could think of was how to get the hell out.

On Saturday, the Walshes were recognized for their service by Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, who visited them at their retirement community and read them the congressional minutes from when he honored them for their patriotism.

On Sunday, partygoers took turns kneeling or sitting down next to Walsh to offer good wishes and share memories. Attired in a green blazer, tie and felt bowler hat in honor of St. Patricks Day, Walsh said he was delighted with all of the hoopla.

Im a man with a lot of riches, he said.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
San Diego City Council voted Monday to enforce nighttime curfews at five city parks, which residents say are a breeding ground for drugs, vandalism and other illegal activity.

Four parks will now be closed from midnight to 6 a.m.:

North Park Community Park, between Howard Avenue and Lincoln Avenue in North Park

Montclair Neighborhood Park, north of Boundary and Maple Streets in North Park

Cedar Ridge Mini Park, at the end of Pentuckett Ave in North Park

The future North Park Mini Park, which is expected to open in early 2020 behind The Observatory n North Park

City Heights Square Mini Park, near Polk and Van Dyke Avenues, will be closed from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.

All curfews will take effect in June.

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The unanimous vote comes after years of complaints of illegal activity, including drug use, drug sales, prostitution, vandalism, gang activity and violence. At the council meeting, more than a dozen North Park and City Heights residents and community leaders expressed concerns about the nighttime activities in and around the public areas.

(City Heights Square Mini Park) is filthy and damaged by graffiti and vandalism, said Paula Buckley, a City Heights resident who lives in an apartment near the park. Residents are forced to listen to screaming rants  I watched a man beating a woman from my window.

Through a translator, Delia Contreras, a resident and community leader in city heights, said she was initially excited when the City Heights Square Mini Park opened near her home. She said she used to go to the park often with her grandchildren but doesnt feel safe there anymore.

Kids and families should be protected and have the opportunity to grow in a safe environment, Contreras said. 

Unfortunately many of these parks are full of delinquency  are unsafe and dirty  and full of gang activity.

More than 67 percent of residents reported that they dont use the mini park in City Heights, according to a survey given to residents in the surrounding area. About 64 percent said they dont feel safe in the area and listed safety, cleanliness and noise as the parks main issues.

District 3 City Council member Chris Ward, who represents areas of North Park, said the illegal activity in parks is unacceptable but expressed concern about the curfew being used to unfairly penalize the homeless population.



This is about trying to address legitimate public safety concerns, Ward said. Not to criminalize homelessness.

Ward added that curfews have worked well in other areas of the city.

Contact Lauryn Schroeder via Twitter or Email.
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan released a list of military construction projects Monday that could lose funding to help pay for a wall on the U.S. southern border.

The list of vulnerable projects includes a number of projects previously reported by the Union-Tribune, including proposed infrastructure for Osprey aircraft at Naval Air Station North Island, new landing pads for F-35B at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and a replacement pier at Naval Base San Diego.

President Donald Trump in In February declared a national emergency, after a month-long government shutdown that began when Congress refused to fund his proposed border wall. The emergency declaration authorizes him to divert funds from military construction to national security infrastructure, in this case at the border.

He has called for up to $3.6 billion to be diverted, but its still unclear exactly which projects will be slashed or delayed.

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The Defense Department said in a statement that its list of possible projects to cut includes all military construction projects in which contracts had not yet been awarded as of Dec. 31, 2018.

That list emcompasses $12.9 billion in planned construction nationwide, including more than $1 billion in projects in California, including almost $600 million in the San Diego area.

Some projects up for possible diversion include a $47 million potable water project and a $15 million fire emergency response station, which are part of about $175 million in projects slated for Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

Also listed is almost $170 million in projects connected to the new Navy SEAL complex in Coronado.

Military housing and barracks projects would not be impacted, the department said.

The Pentagons list provides greater clarity than a similar list released last month by the House Armed Services Committee.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate had voted to block the emergency declaration, but Trump vetoed their resolution Friday.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, admonished the Trump administration in a statement Monday.

What President Trump is doing is a slap in the face to our military that makes our border and the country less secure, Reed said. He is planning to take funds from real, effective operational priorities and needed projects and divert them to his vanity wall.

In a statement Friday on his first presidential veto, Trump said the situation at the border has reached a breaking point and that it demanded immediate action.

The current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency, Trump said in a statement.

Contact Andrew Dyer via email or Twitter.
The concertina wire installed under the Trump administration to reinforce the U.S.-Mexico border is now being stolen and used to protect Tijuana residences as the city grapples with a surge in crime, officials confirmed Monday.

Thieves are stealing and selling the same concertina wire installed in November along the border by the Department of Homeland Security, and 15 to 20 arrests have already been made, city officials said.

Contractors were seen Monday at a border fence on the U.S. side of the Colonia Libertad neighborhood of Tijuana, replacing some of the stolen wire.

Some homes in the same area had identical wire installed in front of their homes, as an added layer of protection to their property lines and fences, but residents declined to comment about how they obtained the material.

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I dont actually live here in this house, so I have no idea how that wire got here, said one woman who declined to give her name in Colonia Libertad at a house where the razor wire was visible in front.

Tijuana was the most violent city in the world in 2018, according a new report by the Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. Homicides rose to historic levels in recent years while local Tijuana gangs battled over a lucrative domestic drug market, averaging about seven killings per day, the report said.

The concertina wire  or razor wire  was installed to address fears that large crowds of Central American migrants would force their way into the country, according to a Nov. 19 statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Contractors directed by the National Guard trimmed the border fence along the southwestern end of the United States with 18-foot thickets of the military-grade concertina wire.

Thieves are now stealing that same material at night and using it in their homes or selling the razor wire to Tijuana residents who are using it as an extra layer of home security around their residences, the citys secretary of public safety confirmed Monday.

We have detected that the barbed wire that was installed in the border area is no longer there. We know about the stealing of the concertina (wire) from United States authorities who have asked us for help through the liaison staff, said Marco Antonio Sotomayor Amezcua, the secretary of public safety in Tijuana.

Sotomayor said the material is distinctive and differs from anything sold in stores in Tijuana. Razor wire is stronger, sharper and more likely to cause injury than regular barbed wire, which can be found in any home improvement store, he said.

Director Reynaldo Gonzalez Mora, who leads Tijuanas border liaison unit, said police arrested about 15 to 20 people in the last week for allegedly stealing the material from the border fence.

The people arrested were mainly Mexican (citizens), and most were people who have been deported from the United States, and people who have problems with drug addiction and live mostly on the street, Gonzalez said.

Trump touted the additional layer of border security in a tweet saying, in part, no climbers anymore under our Administration!

A CBP official said the concertina wire is made of galvanized steel.

Wire isnt the only construction material used in the neighborhood. Abandoned tires are a common sight, typically refashioned and used for everything from retaining walls to the foundations of peoples homes.
The concertina wire installed under the Trump administration to reinforce the U.S.-Mexico border is now being stolen and used to protect Tijuana residences as the city grapples with a surge in crime, officials said Monday.

Thieves are stealing and selling the same concertina wire installed in November along the border by the Department of Homeland Security, and 15 to 20 arrests have been made, city officials said.

Contractors were at a border fence on the U.S. side of the Colonia Libertad neighborhood of Tijuana on Monday, replacing some of the stolen wire.

Some homes in the same area had identical wire installed in front of their homes, as an added layer of protection to their property lines and fences, but residents declined to comment about how they obtained the material.

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I dont actually live here in this house, so I have no idea how that wire got here, said one woman who declined to give her name at a house where the razor wire was visible in front.

Tijuana was the most violent city in the world in 2018, according a new report by the Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. Homicides rose to historic levels in recent years while Tijuana gangs battled over a lucrative domestic drug market, averaging about seven killings per day, the report said.

The concertina wire  or razor wire  was installed to address fears that large crowds of Central American migrants would force their way into the country, according to a Nov. 19 statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Contractors directed by the National Guard trimmed the border fence along the southwestern end of the United States with 18-foot thickets of the military-grade concertina wire.

We have detected that the barbed wire that was installed in the border area is no longer there. We know about the stealing of the concertina [wire] from United States authorities who have asked us for help through the liaison staff, said Marco Antonio Sotomayor Amezcua, the secretary of public safety in Tijuana.

Sotomayor said the material is distinctive and differs from anything sold in stores in Tijuana. Razor wire is stronger, sharper and more likely to cause injury than regular barbed wire, which can be found in any home improvement store, he said.

Director Reynaldo Gonzalez Mora, who leads Tijuanas border liaison unit, said police arrested about 15 to 20 people in the last week on suspicion of stealing the material from the border fence.

The people arrested were mainly Mexican [citizens], and most were people who have been deported from the United States, and people who have problems with drug addiction and live mostly on the street, Gonzalez said.

Trump touted the additional layer of border security in a tweet saying, in part, no climbers anymore under our Administration!

A CBP official said the concertina wire is made of galvanized steel.

Wire isnt the only construction material used in the neighborhood. Abandoned tires are a common sight, typically refashioned and used for everything from retaining walls to the foundations of peoples homes.

Fry writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Tim Baudler was taught that God doesnt love gay people.

When he was about 10, he realized he liked other boys. So Baudler, who grew up in a conservative church in Iowa, made himself a promise: If he made it to 20 and still felt the same way, he was going to kill himself.

At 15, he was found to have a malignant brain tumor and was given days to live. He was relieved. God, he thought, was taking care of everything. He wouldnt have to commit suicide, and he wouldnt have to be gay.

But he made it to 20. Then 30. His family shunned him. He moved to California, where he found Hollywood United Methodist Church. The Rev. Kathy Cooper Ledesma told him, Were your family now.

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I had to be rewired to learn that God does love me, and he saved my life for me to show love to other people, said Baudler, 49, lead usher at Hollywood UMC.

But like so many gay Methodists, Baudler now feels betrayed by the United Methodist Church, which is fighting a civil war over homosexuality so acrimonious that it could split the denomination.

At a gathering last month in St. Louis, the General Conference, the churchs top policy-making body, voted to tighten its ban on gay clergy and same-sex marriage and to increase the punishment for violations.

Comprising some 800 clergy and lay people from around the world, the General Conference voted 53% to 47% to affirm current church policy declaring the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.

The decision laid bare stark regional differences in the increasingly global denomination and served as a blow to more socially liberal churches, particularly on the West Coast, that have been pushing for full inclusion of LGBTQ people.

Although forbidden by the churchs Book of Discipline, which contains the denominations laws and doctrines, many pastors  particularly in the Western Jurisdiction, which includes California  officiate same-sex weddings. There also are numerous openly gay members of the clergy. In 2016, the Western Jurisdiction elected the denominations first openly lesbian bishop.

Shortly after the General Conference vote, Bishop Grant Hagiya of the California-Pacific Annual Conference wrote in a statement that he was deeply conflicted.

The question is, Can I stay in a repressive and oppressive church with integrity? he wrote. After a sleepless night, I came to a new resolve. I believe I must stay in the UMC and lead our people within the geographical context we find ourselves in the West.

Protesters at the United Methodist Churchs special session of the General Conference in St. Louis on Tuesday, Feb. 26. (Sid Hastings / Associated Press)

At the General Conference, delegates chose between multiple plans for how the church should proceed. An option called the One Church Plan would have allowed local ministers to choose their own stance on homosexuality.

We have essentially been operating with a One Church ethos here in the West, Hagiya told The Times. Mostly, it is dont ask, dont tell, or live and let live.

The General Conference instead chose what was called the Traditional Plan  punishing ministers who perform same-sex marriages with a one-year, unpaid suspension on the first offense and termination on the second.

The vote was supported by a vocal, well-funded alliance of conservative American churches and the denominations increasingly influential African bloc. Church membership is growing in Africa, where, in dozens of nations, homosexuality is a crime. African delegates made up 32% of the General Conference.

The Rev. Jerry Kulah of Liberia told the conference that the church in Africa is growing by leaps and bounds because we are committed to biblical Christianity. If United Methodists become more permissive of homosexuality, he said, the church in Africa would cease to exist.

On Thursday, the church announced that it was investigating voting irregularities at the General Conference. The church said it appears some delegates who were correctly denied credentials to vote later obtained them.

Membership in the U.S. has been declining for years, but with some 7 million followers, the United Methodist Church is the nations second-largest Protestant denomination, behind the Southern Baptist Convention. It is also one of the countrys oldest religious populations, with a median age of 57.

Progressives fear the churchs stance on sexuality will drive away young people. Conservatives believe the acceptance of same-sex marriage will only accelerate declining attendance.

The Wesleyan Covenant Assn., an Ohio-based alliance of some 1,500 theologically conservative congregations, led the charge against same-sex marriage and said it had planned to leave the denomination if the Traditional Plan were struck down.

It all comes down to sexual ethics, said the Rev. Keith Boyette, the groups president, explaining that a pastor should have sex only if he or she is in a heterosexual marriage. A gay person, he said, could be ordained  but could never get married or have sex.

Its not just the issue of human sexuality that divides the church, Boyette said. Were divided on the authority and interpretation of Scripture  were divided on what constitutes sin.

About half of the United Methodists support legal same-sex marriage, according to the Pew Research Centers 2014 religious survey, and views have shifted even further in favor of it since then, researchers said. Some 49% of Methodists supported gay marriage then, 43% opposed it, and 8% were unsure. Some 60% of church members believed homosexuality should be accepted by society.

Along with the Traditional Plan, the General Conference passed so-called disaffiliation legislation that would make it easier for churches to leave the denomination.

The Rev. Anne Burkholder, associate dean of Methodist studies at Emory University in Atlanta, said the denomination in America has dealt with schisms in the past, notably its 1844 geographic split over slavery. A series of mergers led to the 1968 creation of the United Methodist Church.

In modern times, Burkholder said, the issue of LGBTQ rights has been uniquely discordant, especially along the rural and urban divide. Various factions of the church, both liberal and conservative, are weighing their options, but a denominational split would have enormous consequences  including questions over property rights, clergy pensions and the churchs constitution.

I think over the next 10 years were going to see some major realignment of Methodism in the U.S., Burkholder said. But Im not, at this point, willing to predict what thats going to look like.

Husbands Ricky and Dillon Woodard of Oklahoma City, bottom right, walk in for a service at Hollywood United Methodist Church. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Many California congregations long have operated in open defiance of the churchs stance on homosexuality.

The Rev. Frank Wulf is the openly gay pastor of Echo Park United Methodist Church. Founded in 1906, the parish has tried to keep pace with the demographic and cultural changes of a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Wulf fears the General Conference decision will impede the growth of his congregation, which has 86 members.

We have to put it out in a very public way that LGBT people are welcome in this place. We cant just whisper it in the corners, he said.

As a seminary student in Southern California in the 1970s  when the church added its restrictive language about homosexuality to the Book of Discipline  Wulf agonized over being gay. It was something he couldnt change, despite years of prayer.

Eventually he moved to New York, went back to school to become a professor, and fell in love.

His partner, Tom, had AIDS. When his illness progressed, the couple moved to California so Tom could be with family. Wulf went back to work in the Methodist Church, where he was still closeted.

Tom died on a Friday in 1992. Wulf had to preach on Sunday as if nothing had happened.

In his grief, Wulf wrote a coming-out letter to his bishop and was asked to surrender his credentials. The church investigated him for a year and a half, and Wulf was able to remain ordained because of a technicality: At the time, the Book of Discipline forbade self-avowed practicing homosexuals from becoming ordained ministers but did not define the term. (It was later defined.)

Churchgoers Henry Fries, left, and his husband, Richard Lopez, at Hollywood United Methodist Church on March 3, 2019. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Perhaps no United Methodist Church in California has championed making gay rights central to its mission more than Hollywood United Methodist.

In 1993, in the midst of the AIDS crisis, the church put an enormous red ribbon on its English Gothic-style bell tower to support the afflicted. The congregation became largely LGBTQ, and church attendance in recent years has thrived.

On a recent Sunday, a rainbow flag was draped over the altar. Cooper Ledesma told worshipers that our denomination  is going to need to repent. Its going to need to address our complicity, our overly indulgent patience with the structural homophobia  that has been codified in the Book of Discipline.

The congregation cheered when Cooper Ledesma declared: I will continue to marry church members of the same gender in this sanctuary. Amen?

In the pews were Ricky and Dillon Woodard of Oklahoma City, who married in December  but not in their own United Methodist church. Their associate pastor wept when she told them she couldnt preside over their ceremony. Ricky said it was surreal hearing Cooper Ledesma say she would perform weddings.

That fear is not, fortunately, hanging over her, he said.

Many unknowns remain. The churchs supreme court, the Judicial Council, has already ruled that several hard-line portions of the originally proposed Traditional Plan  including a provision that would have let the church search potential ministers social media for evidence of homosexuality  are unconstitutional. The Judicial Council will review the Traditional Plan and disaffiliation legislation next month. If approved, they will go into effect in January.

Tim Baudler, left, listens to April Anderson, right, speak during Spirit Pub, a ministry of Hollywood United Methodist Church that meets at a West Hollywood gay bar named Mickys. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Gathered on a recent Tuesday around margaritas and chips at Mickys, a West Hollywood gay bar, LGBTQ members of Hollywood United Methodist recounted the weeks blessings and disappointments.

Leading the weekly gathering was the Rev. Denyse Barnes, the churchs associate pastor, an out lesbian with bright purple hair. Although she was devastated by the recent vote, she joked about the Book of Disciplines restrictions against self-avowed practicing homosexuals.

Im not practicing, she said. Im really good at it.

April Anderson, the churchs finance chair, who identifies as queer, suggested people who thought Jesus wouldnt love gay people should think back to what they learned in Sunday school.

Feel free to point out to me where Jesus talks about gays and how they are unworthy, she said. Ill wait.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

Twitter: @haileybranson
Sunny skies that warmed up the Southland over the weekend and helped thaw out Angelenos from their long winter chill have disappeared, as the region braces for a round of spring showers.

Temperatures that peaked just slightly above normal will abruptly drop this week into the low 60s  5 to 10 degrees below normal  as the first of two back-to-back storms arrive, said Tom Fisher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

The warm weather provided a welcome respite for Southern Californians amid what has been a cold and wet winter for the entire state. Record-breaking rainfall doused some areas this year and kept temperatures in downtown Los Angeles under 70 degrees for the entire month of February.

We were just above normal for a couple of days, but we were below normal for so long that it felt like a heat wave, Fisher said of the temperatures on Saturday and Sunday.

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The rain has also helped pull California out of drought conditions and spurred a spectacular super bloom of wildflowers that has attracted overwhelming crowds.

The first storm, which is set to arrive Tuesday night, is expected to drop between a tenth to a quarter of an inch of rain across much of Los Angeles County.

The majority of the rain will hit the area Wednesday  first day of spring  although showers will linger into Thursday morning. Cooler temperatures accompanying the storm are expected to drop snow levels as low as 5,000 feet through much of the week.

Light scattered showers are expected to return late Friday into Saturday, but are expected to clear by Sunday, Fisher said.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @Hannahnfry
A man climbed down from atop a crane in Koreatown after members of the Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team persuaded him to leave his post.

The man, thought to be in his early 20s, spent more than three hours on top of the crane in the 3000 block of West 8th Street.

Tony Im, an LAPD spokesman, said officers were checking the mans mental status to determine what they would do next.

Were going to get him the help he deserves, Im said.

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The call came into the Los Angeles Police Department at 4:39 p.m. The man left the crane, which was about 80 feet high, about 7:45 p.m., Im said.

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifelines toll-free number, (800) 273-8255. Callers are connected with a certified crisis center near where the call is placed.
A longtime Los Angeles County sheriffs official who came back from retirement to serve as Sheriff Alex Villanuevas second-in-command  and was seen as a steadying hand in a fledgling administration that has already grappled with controversies  is leaving a little more than three months into the new sheriffs term, he said.

Ray Leyva said Villanueva told him in a brief meeting Monday morning that he wanted a sworn officer in Leyvas position and thanked him for his service. Leyva had been working as a civilian after returning to the department from a medical retirement and was planning to serve for at least the first five or six months of Villanuevas tenure.

Leyva said he thanked Villanueva for the opportunity to work for him, wished him well, took his belongings and left the building.

Obviously Im disappointed. I wanted good things to happen for the department, and I wanted to be part of that, he said.

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Assistant Sheriff Tim Murakami will replace Leyva immediately as undersheriff, department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida said. Villanueva could not be reached for comment.

Many in the department had seen Leyva as an experienced, stabilizing force for Villanueva, who had never served in the upper ranks before scoring an upset over his predecessor, Jim McDonnell, in the race for sheriff last year. Villanueva previously served as a lieutenant.

The move is not the first time Villanueva has abruptly removed staff members. Promising a maverick approach and a rethinking of many departmental policies, the sheriff replaced nearly the entire executive team upon taking office Dec. 3 and demanded that hundreds of other senior department managers reapply for their positions.

The personnel change marks a stunning rise for Murakami, who had been captain at the City of Industry station before Villanueva promoted him three ranks to assistant sheriff. He will now ascend another rank.

Murakami was one of three senior Sheriffs Department executives Villanueva appointed to reevaluate the disciplinary case of Caren Carl Mandoyan, a deputy whom McDonnell fired in connection with allegations of domestic abuse and stalking.

The truth and reconciliation panel concluded that Mandoyan had been punished unfairly, paving the way for his reinstatement, according to the panels report reviewed by The Times.

The rehiring of Mandoyan, who volunteered on Villanuevas campaign, has been a source of controversy during the new sheriffs term, setting off a legal dispute with the county Board of Supervisors.

Leyva, who rose to the rank of commander during his previous career with the Sheriffs Department, took a medical retirement in 2016 because of back and wrist issues. The arrangement meant his rehiring by the county would last 120 business days. But such contracts are often renewed.

Im excited about coming back because I get to work with some great people again. Im pretty humbled that Alex asked me to come back, Leyva said in November. He said he had known Villanueva since the late 1980s when they worked at the East Los Angeles station.

Leyva, who ran for sheriff in 2006, was supportive of Villanuevas campaign, contributing a total of $3,000 and attending two of his election events.

maya.lau@latimes.com

Twitter: @mayalau
In the summer of 2010, a French street artist who uses the name Invader (because his pixel-style mosaic figures were inspired by the 1978 Space Invaders arcade game) installed artwork on the facades of some downtown San Diego buildings.

He was one of 10 urban artists, including the controversial Banksy, taking part in a massive indoor/outdoor Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition called Viva La Revolucion: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape. Much of the art was removed when the exhibit closed.

But nearly a decade later, a large piece by Invader still remains  for now.

Called The Mothership, the boxy black-and-white spaceship, comprised of square ceramic tiles, is perched on the upper facade of what until recently was the San Diego Art Center at Park Boulevard and G Street.

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The historic building was sold in 2017 to the Paragon Real Estate Fund. Last fall, it was renamed The Ratner building but still houses the NewSchoolof Architecture & Design and artist studios.

The problem is that the building is being remodeled and the mural must go. That is why, even though its still attached to the facade, its among artworks in an April 25 live auction by Juliens auction house in Los Angeles.

Joining The Mothership in the sale catalog are two of Banksys more important works. (You may recall a piece by Banksy that self-shredded on cue when auctioned for more than $1 million by Sothebys in London last Oct. 5). Other artists include Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Mr. Brainwash and Pablo Picasso.

Ann Berchtold, Paragons marketing rep, explained that the artwork was created specifically for that site. While technically belonging to the artist, the exhibition agreement gave building owners permission to remove the pieces at the close of the show.

After contacting the Museum of Contemporary Art, Paragon reached out to the artists representatives and offered The Mothership back to Invader at his removal expense. They responded that Invader wasnt interested and they could keep it, Berchtold said. They were given permission to re-sell the art but warned that, once it was removed from the space for which it was designed, the artist could no longer authenticate it.

Nevertheless, the auction house placed an estimated value of $60,000 to $80,000 on the Invader piece  not bad for street art. But theres a catch. The buyer must remove the artwork from the building within 90 days of the sale at his or her own expense.

A contractor has been consulted and provided an estimate of approximately $7,000, said Mozell Miley-Bailey of Juliens Auctions.

Actor Val Kilmer checks out the candy emporium, called the Sugar Factory, on the entry level of the Theatre Box at 701 Fifth Ave. in the Gaslamp Quarter. (Courtesy photo)

Hollywood South: Forget the poetic saying, ...never the twain shall meet. Some San Diegans met Mark Twain, in the persona of actor Val Kilmer, last week. He appeared at the Gaslamp Quarters Theatre Box for a screening of his play-turned-movie, Cinema Twain. Kilmer, who stars in the show, walked the red carpet and stuck around for a meet-and-greet in the Chocolate Lounge.

Also on hand: actor Jason Weaver,of Smart Guy sitcom fame, and professional surfer Damien Hobgood.

diane.bell@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1518

Twitter: @dianebellSD

Facebook: dianebell.news
San Diego Unified School Board Trustee Kevin Beiser said Tuesday there is no truth to the allegations of sexual assault and harassment against him.

Beiser issued the written statement after a lawsuit filed Monday accused him of rape and sexual harassment of a political consultant who used to work for him.

The statement followed a Voice of San Diego story that listed other allegations of sexual misconduct levied by three other men who were active in San Diego politics.

Meanwhile, some of San Diegos political leaders, including top Democrats, are calling for Beiser to resign.

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The lawsuit claims Beiser sexually assaulted and harassed a former campaign consultant over a period of five years. The lawsuit was filed against Beiser and his domestic partner, Dan Mock.

Beiser said in a statement Tuesday evening: There is no truth to these allegations. We believe they are politically motivated and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves.

The lawsuit said Beiser allegedly used his political influence and status to coerce the consultant into sexually abusive situations.

The consultant is referred to in the lawsuit as John Doe. The Union-Tribune is not identifying him because he said he is a victim of sexual assault.

Mock is named as a defendant in the lawsuit because he shares the home with Beiser where the alleged abuse and harassment occurred, said Dan Gilleon, Does lawyer.

Mock did not respond to a request for comment.

Beiser said that he first learned about the allegations against him on Monday. However, Doe said in an interview that he told Beiser in January that he believed Beiser had assaulted him.

Beiser has been on the San Diego Unified School Board since 2010 and recently served as board president. He has indicated he might run for city council in 2020.

In addition to the allegations made by Does lawsuit, three other men spoke to the Voice about San Diego about what they said were troubling interactions with Beiser. One, Luke Pakter, also told the Union-Tribune about an incident he said happened in May 2017.

Pakter said he was 19, going to college and working for a political action committee he was starting with a friend, when he went to Beisers house to pick up a check Beiser had agreed to write to the PAC.

Pakter said Beiser was overly flirtatious during the meeting. When Pakter was about to leave, Pakter said Beiser hugged him and touched him inappropriately.

When he pulled away, Pakter said Beiser began massaging his shoulders and suggesting Pakter return some time. Pakter said Beiser suggested he could pay him $100 or $200 to give Beiser a massage.

Pakter said he felt he couldnt confront Beiser about the alleged inappropriate behavior.

I couldnt do it because I was in this situation of him giving me money that I needed, Pakter said.

The lawsuit alleges that Beiser first met Doe when Doe was a college student interested in pursuing a career in politics. It alleges that Beiser gave Doe jobs and helped him fundraise.

Does lawsuit said he believed the help and opportunities Beiser gave him were contingent on him submitting to Beisers sexual conduct. The lawsuit claims that Beiser assaulted Doe, made unwanted advances and fired Doe after an incident in which he rebuffed Beiser.

Beiser in his statement denied the allegations of misconduct.

Later Tuesday night, the San Diego County Democratic Partys central committee voted 58 to four to ask for Beisers resignation from the school board.

It sends a strong statement that the San Diego County Democratic Party does not tolerate this type of behavior, said President Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, whether its sexual harassment, assault or abuse. And we will take swift action against any public official who uses their position or their power to abuse other people.

Rodriguez-Kennedy noted that Beiser will have a chance to make his case in court.

We are not a judicial body; what we are is a political body, he said. This is a statement of our values. We believe that someone who is accused of this will not have the faith of the public to execute their duties and . therefore should step down and address this and have their day in court.

The chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego County earlier in the day called for a full and immediate investigation of the allegations.

The sheer number of, and graphic details in, the accusations against Kevin Beiser are shocking, Chairman Tony Krvaric said in a statement.

If any of these allegations are remotely true, Kevin Beiser is not fit to serve as a San Diego Unified School Board Trustee and should resign immediately.

San Diego Democrats for Equality, which also is led by Rodriguez-Kennedy, said it plans to bring forth an emergency resolution calling for Beiser to step down. It is the largest membership-based Democratic club in the county and it advocates for LGBTQ issues.

The San Diego Unified School Board has not commented on the allegations. School Board President Sharon Whitehurst-Payne did not respond to phone messages and the board did not release a statement.

School Board Trustee John Lee Evans, who said he was speaking as an individual and not on behalf of the board, said he did not know if the allegations are true.

But if it ever turned out that any school board member engaged in such behavior, resignation would be the only appropriate response, he wrote in an email. We all need to be held to a high standard and must stand up against all forms of sexual abuse.

The San Diego Unified School District declined to comment on the lawsuit because it is pending litigation.

The Sweetwater Union High School District, where Beiser is a teacher at Castle Park Middle School, said it will defer to the legal process.

Our focus, first and foremost, is on the students at Castle Park Middle School and throughout the entire Sweetwater Union High School District, Sweetwater spokesman Manny Rubio said in an email. We respect the legal process and must allow it to move forward.

Kisha Borden, president of the San Diego Unified teachers union, which endorsed Beiser for school board, said she wants the board to investigate the very serious and troubling allegations.

We know that these claims have to be taken seriously and we know that it has to be investigated, she said.

UPDATES:

1:05 p.m.: This article was updated with reactions from school district officials.

2:00 p.m.: This article was updated with reactions from additional political organizations.

6:50 p.m.: This article was updated with a statement from Beiser.

This article was originally published at 10:40 a.m.
A political consultant who helped Kevin Beiser get elected to the San Diego Unified School Board filed suit against Beiser Monday, alleging sexual assault and sexual harassment.

The lawsuit claims Beiser, a middle school teacher who has served on the board of the states second-largest school district for more than eight years, exploited his political power and status to coerce the consultant into sexually abusive situations over the course of five years.

Beiser, 50, could not be reached Monday evening for comment. He did not respond to telephone messages, emails or a doorbell ring at his home.

The consultant is referred to as John Doe in the lawsuit. The San Diego Union-Tribune is not identifying Doe because he said he is a victim of sexual assault.

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The lawsuit alleges that when he first met Beiser, Doe was a college student who wanted to get into politics.

He saw Beiser as someone with political clout who could help him build his career. Beiser gave him jobs and helped him fundraise, the lawsuit said.

Doe soon came to believe that was all contingent on him submitting to Beisers sexual conduct, the lawsuit said.

Beiser has served on the San Diego Unified School Board since 2010 and was re-elected for a third term in November. His current term will expire in 2022. Last year, he was the school board president.

According to his biography on the district website, Beiser had a career in management with a Fortune 500 company before becoming an educator. The site notes that he was named San Diego Math Teacher of the Year and received a Distinguished Service Award for work with the Gifted and Talented Education Program.

Beiser also intends to run for San Diego City Council next year, according to city records. He teaches at Castle Park Middle School in the Sweetwater Union High School District, according to the schools website.

Doe said he filed suit to prevent others from being abused.

I have nothing to gain from this, he said in an interview. So for me, I just want him  I want it to stop.

The suit seeks unspecified damages.

The lawsuit alleges the abuse began after Doe met Beiser in 2013 in Washington, D.C. Doe was a San Diego State University student interning in the capital, according to the lawsuit.

Beiser offered Doe a job working on his school board campaign, then invited him to a bar in D.C., saying he would be there with some friends, the lawsuit claimed.

Doe went to the bar hoping to expand his political connections and clams he soon found himself alone with Beiser.

Beiser allegedly bought several alcoholic drinks for Doe, who became drunk, the lawsuit said. Then Beiser took Doe to a hotel and sexually assaulted him, the lawsuit said.

Afterward, Doe told Beiser he felt shame and regret about what happened, according to the lawsuit. Beiser allegedly responded with more sexual advances, the suit said.

Beiser eventually offered Doe a job working on his 2014 school board campaign. According to the lawsuit, Doe told Beiser he was not sexually interested in him, and Beiser said he would keep their relationship professional.

Over the course of several months while working on the campaign, Beiser created a sexually offensive and hostile work environment for Doe, the lawsuit claimed.

The lawsuit alleges that Beiser solicited sex from Doe and touched him inappropriately, among other claims.

According to the lawsuit, this occurred at Beisers home, which served as the campaigns headquarters.

After Beiser was re-elected to the school board in 2014, Doe avoided contact with him until 2016, when Doe sought Beisers fundraising help for his own bid for City Council.

The lawsuit alleges that Beiser continued to harass Doe and suggested that since he no longer worked for him, Doe was free to engage in sexual contact with him. Doe objected but Beiser allegedly continued the abuse, the lawsuit said.

In May 2016, according to the lawsuit, Doe and his girlfriend confronted Beiser and told him not to touch him sexually again.

Doe lost the City Council election.

In 2017, Doe asked for Beisers help to fundraise for a political action committee he had created, according to the lawsuit. Doe still believed Beiser was a rising star and a fundraising powerhouse on the political scene, according to the lawsuit, and he naively held hope for a business relationship with Beiser.

In January 2018, Beiser hired Doe as a consultant for his latest school board campaign.

According to the lawsuit, a month later, after Doe told Beiser that he was in a pretty weird headspace, Beiser allegedly offered the use of his hot tub and suggested that Doe get a massage. Doe said he responded, Dont come on to me.

Beiser fired Doe two months later, the lawsuit said. Doe said Beiser told him he didnt need his services anymore.

Doe said he believes he was fired because he rejected Beiser.

When Doe came to Beisers home to get his paycheck in April, Beiser assaulted him again, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said he suffered lost income, medical and psychological expenses and emotional distress.

Kristen Taketa

Email: kristen.taketa@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @Kristen_Taketa
UC San Diego Police are investigating three generalized threats of violence against the university that were written on restroom doors in Geisel Library, according to Jeff Gattas, chief of staff to Chancellor Pradeep Khosla.

The threats come during final exams for the winter quarter, one of the busiest periods of the year for the library.

Yesterday evening and this afternoon, UCSD Police were investigating threats written on the inside of three womens restroom doors, Gatass said. The University takes every threat extremely seriously and UCSD Police have responded and are investigating.

The postings are generalized and not specific. UCSD has interviewed potential witnesses and is reviewing video in an attempt to identify the person or persons responsible. Once found, the university will seek prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

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People with information should contact UCSD Police at 858-534-4357 or e-mail detective@ucsd.edu.
Climate activists in San Diego staged a sit-in at Rep. Susan Davis office in University Heights Tuesday morning, calling on the congresswoman to support the Green New Deal resolution now in congress.

Several dozen organizers and volunteers with SanDiego350 and the Sunrise Movement showed up for the rally at 2700 Adams Ave., blowing whistles and using other sound makers to raise the alarm on climate change.

Several protesters occupied the congresswomans office and refused to leave for nearly two hours, as uniformed police officers stood by prepared to make arrests. Outside, activists carrying signs chanted, Susan Davis, step up or step aside.

Masada Disenhouse, co-founder of SanDiego350 sits in the doorway of Rep. Susan Davis San Diego office on Adams Avenue. She and other demonstrators held a sit-in as well as demonstrating outside the office demanding Davis support the Green New Deal. (Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

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We would specifically like her to sign on the Green New Deal, and to take a pledge with 100 other congress people not to take fossil fuel money, said Michael Smith, a 60-year-old La Jolla resident and volunteer with SanDiego350.

Im concerned that our political representatives arent taking the climate crisis seriously enough, he added. As a result, I have real fears that my kids and grand kids are not going to have a habitable planet to live on.

In response to the protesters, Davis released this statement: The Green New Deal is an excellent aspirational piece, but it is not legislation. I look forward to working with the community and my colleagues in Congress to look at all the elements of the Green New Deal as climate change legislation progresses.

The resolution, spearheaded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calls for, among other things, pumping federal funding into renewable energy and creating new jobs. The overarching goal of the deal is to phase out fossil fuels while reducing economic inequality.

I have real fears that my kids and grand kids are not going to have a habitable planet to live on. Michael Smith, a 60-year-old La Jolla resident and volunteer with SanDiego350

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has set up a vote on the Green New Deal later this month. While the Republican-dominated Senate isnt expected to pass the resolution, the vote could serve to draw battle lines within the Democratic Party between moderates and its more progressive wing.

Climate activists across the country have held up the resolution as a major test for lawmakers, ramping up pressure in recent months on members of congress who have supported action on climate change but have stopped short of endorsing the resolution, such as San Diego-based representatives Davis and Scott Peters.

Representatives Juan Vargas and Mike Levin, both representing parts of the San Diego region, have voiced strong support for the Green New Deal.

The issue is shaping up to be a significant talking point in the 2020 presidential election. While Democratic hopefuls have seen it as a way to brandish their liberal credentials. Republicans have tried to brand the call to action as a socialist takeover.

If Green New Deal legislation eventually emerges, it will likely raise many tricky issues, such as whether to embrace nuclear power and how to address the economic fate of workers currently employed in the fossil fuel industry.

Twitter: @jemersmith

Phone: (619) 293-2234

Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com
In 1901 a cornerstone was laid for the citys first public library building at Eighth Avenue and E Street downtown. The $60,000 building  made possible by a grant from industrialist Andrew Carnegie  lasted 50 years before it was demolished in June 1952.

From The Evening Tribune,Tuesday, March 19, 1901:

THE CORNER STONE LAID

Impressive Exercises at Library Building

THOUSANDS OF SPECTATORS

Grand Master J.A. Forshay Conducts the Ceremonies in Behalf of the Grand Lodge of Masons  Philip Morse President of the Day  Judge M.A. Luce Grand Orator  Addresses by Mrs. Lydia M. Horton  Music by Church Choir  Andrew Carnegies Gift Extolled

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Several thousand people gathered this morning at the northeast corner of Tenth and E streets to witness the impressive ceremonies attendant upon laying the corner stone of the Carnegie public library building under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of Masons. The exercises began at ten oclock and a few minutes before that hour some two hundred members of the Grand Lodge and members of the local lodges marched to the library site from their Temple on H street. The procession was led by Grand Master J.A. Foshay of San Francisco, and Grand Standard Bearer E.J. Louis, the former having charge of the exercises in behalf of the Grand Lodge. The platform from where the exercises were conducted was close to the southwest corner of the building where the corner stone was put in position and close by on a raised platform was the choir under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. T.E. Rowan which rendered the following musical numbers as the exercises progressed. The Heavens Are Declaring; Hail,Masonry; Corn, Wine and Oil Weve Poured Upon Our Brethrens Hopethe Corner Stone; Place We Now the Corner Stone.

Philip Morse officiated as president of the day, and as an opening to the exercises read the following dispatch: Cordial congratulations to the City of San Diego. Signed Andrew Carnegie. On the invitation of President Morse, Mrs. Lydia M. Horton then delivered an address with is published in full later in this article.

MRS HORTONS ADDRESS

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak to you my friends and neighbors, with whom and for whom it has been my pleasure to work in forwarding this library movement, which has so far developed that we are ready today to lay the corner stone of our building, carrying out an old custom which is full of significance.

Let us hope that it will bind not only the walls of our building together, but unite us as a people in the unselfish desire for the common good and our realization of the common need. It is this desire, this realization, which prompts Mr. Carnegies splendid gifts to humanity, believing as he does, with Lowell, that the best part of a mans education is that which he gives himself. This is the opportunity our public libraries furnish, the means for self education, tracing for the footprints of the migratory races who swarmed over Europe and the last review of the civilization of the twentieth century; the earliest thought in the history of science, and the latest theories of Spencer, Marconi and Edison, the folk-songs of the beginnings of literature and the poems of Kipling.

The desire for education is constantly growing. This is the age of books. We are seeking the best methods of study; the most modern appliances, we want to have our libraries properly housed, for safety, convenient handling and quiet perusal...

Historical photos and articles from The San Diego Union-Tribune archives are compiled by merrie.monteagudo@sduniontribune.com. Search the U-T historic archives at NewsLibrary.com/sites/sdub.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the only leader that independent Kazakhstan has ever known, abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday after three decades in power, raising uncertainty over the future course of the Central Asian country.

In a televised address to the oil-rich nation, the 78-year-old Nazarbayev said he has made the difficult decision to terminate his authority as president, effective Wednesday.

He did not give a specific reason for the surprise move, but noted that he would have marked 30 years on the job later this year and added that he sees his mission as securing a smooth transition of power.

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As the founder of the independent state of Kazakhstan, I see my future task in ensuring the ascent to power of a new generation of leaders, who will continue reforms, he said.

Nazarbayev will retain the honorary title of Elbasy or Leader of the Nation and continue to wield considerable political power. He said he will remain chairman of the nations Security Council and the head of the ruling Nur Otan party.

I will stay with you, as a citizen, a man who loves our country, he said. I will serve you until the end of my days. 

He said that upper house speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will serve as interim head of state in line with the constitution until a new election can be held. Tokayev is a former prime minister and foreign minister who also served as director-general of the U.N. office in Geneva between 2011 and 2013.

Kazakhstan, despite having a population of only about 18 million, is the ninth-largest country in the world with an area of about 2.7 million square kilometers (1 million square miles). It borders Russia to the north and China to the east and has extensive oil reserves that make it strategically and economically important.

Nazarbayev took the helm in Kazakhstan as its Communist Party chief of the republic in 1989 when it was part of the Soviet Union, and he was first elected its president weeks before the 1991 Soviet collapse gave the country its independence.

In those days, Kazakhstan was a backwater region best known for prisons, nuclear testing sites and being the home of the launch facility of the Soviet space program, the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Nazarbayev has been widely praised for maintaining stability and ethnic peace in Kazakhstan but he also has faced criticism for marginalizing the political opposition and creating what is effectively a one-party state.

He has maintained a delicate balance between Russia and the West, leading Kazakhstan to join a Russia-dominated economic alliance of ex-Soviet nations, but cultivating close energy ties and other links with the West.

He was lauded abroad for modernizing the oil industry and his decision to give up the nuclear weapons that Kazakhstan had inherited from the Soviet Union.

In 1997, Nazarbayev moved the countrys capital from Almaty to the remote northern city of Astana in what was widely considered a way to fuse the ethnic-Russian minority in the north to the new Kazakh state. The new city was filled with post-modern architecture including the soaring glass pyramid of the Palace of Peace and Accord, dedicated to harmony among religious and ethnic groups.

In 2010, Nazarbayev was awarded the title of Leader of the Nation, which comes with lifelong immunity from prosecution and as-yet untested powers of veto over some government policies.

He departs at a time of rare open protest against the government.

He fired his prime minister and cabinet last month following a wave of protests by Kazakh women calling for more financial support for children and safer housing after a fire in which five children died. Soon after, he announced a program of more generous spending for large families.

Nazarbayev has extended his tenure by landslide victories in successive elections and plebiscites. He took nearly 98 percent of the vote in the most recent election, in 2015, when elected for another five-year term.

Nazarbayevs resignation will set the stage for a potential battle between Russia and the United States for influence with the successor government.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin Putin had spoken with Nazarbayev by telephone earlier Tuesday but didnt say what they had discussed. He wouldnt say if the Kazakh leader had given Putin advance warning of his move.

Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, said Nazarbayev will retain clout in Kazakhstan and there will be no radical changes in foreign or home policies.

Nazarbayev was born into a poor rural laborers family on July 6, 1940. As a young adult, he worked in harsh conditions at a steel plants blast furnace and at age 22 he joined the Communist Party. He worked his way up in the party, went to university and became known for his comparatively candid assessments of the Soviet Unions shortcomings.

That turn of mind positioned him in the reformist camp that came to ascendancy when Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985.

Nazarbayev supported Russian President Boris Yeltsin during the failed coup attempt against Gorbachev by Communist hardliners. Nazarbayev opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union, but was forced to take Kazakhstan out of the union as it collapsed in December 1991.

Just as Yeltsin resigned as Russian president on Dec. 31, 1999, to make way for Putin, so Nazarbayevs resignation statement came two days before Kazakhstan celebrates the Nauryz holiday, a traditional New Year celebration at the spring equinox.

Nazarbayev was the last of Central Asias former Communist Party bosses to remain in power after the deaths of Turkmenistans Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006 and Uzbekistans Islam Karimov in 2016. The president of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, is now the regions longest-serving head of state, having assumed power in 1992 during a civil war.
The USB drive was black and red, and its white label seemed inscrutable  Tracking #: 180208140208.

But on Feb. 8, 2018, the tiny digital storage device helped change history when special counsel Robert S. Mueller III gave it to the U.S. attorneys office in Manhattan.

The drive contained Michael Cohens emails, and it linked the Mueller-led Russia probe, which is nearing an end, and an ongoing investigation into an illegal hush money scheme that prosecutors said was directed by President Trump.

Cohen, who served as a Trump Organization executive and as Trumps personal lawyer, is due to begin a three-year prison sentence on May 6 for his role in that scheme and a variety of other crimes.

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New details about the investigation were revealed Tuesday when lengthy search warrants used to seize evidence from Cohen last year were released in New York. The nearly 900 pages disclosed that Mueller began secretly collecting Cohens emails in July 2017, two months after he was named special counsel.

After Mueller handed over the thumb drive, federal agents in New York collected more of Cohens communications and used electronic surveillance to pinpoint the location of his cellphones, the warrants show.

The inquiry exploded into public view last April 9 when teams of FBI agents raided Cohens home, office, hotel room and safety deposit box in Manhattan.

The brash lawyer later broke with Trump and began cooperating with prosecutors, ultimately pleading guilty to nine felonies, including campaign finance violations involving the hush money payments to two women who alleged affairs with Trump.

Nearly 20 pages on the illegal campaign contribution scheme were redacted in the documents released Tuesday, and U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III indicated that was done because the investigation was still underway.

At this stage, wholesale disclosure of the materials would reveal the scope and direction of the governments ongoing investigation, Pauley wrote in a Feb. 7 decision.

Many details about the hush money payments have already become public.

Cohen arranged for the National Enquirers publisher to pay $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate. He also paid $130,000 to Daniels, a porn star, out of his own pocket. The money was intended to keep them from speaking out before election day.

Prosecutors have said Trump himself directed the scheme. The president has denied the affairs and any wrongdoing, saying he had trusted his lawyer to handle things the right way. He tweeted this month that there were no violations of the campaign finance laws by me.

RELATED: Michael Cohen sues Trump Organization, says it owes him nearly $2 million 

Some of Trumps allies view the New York investigation as a greater potential threat to Trump than the special counsels office because he was directly implicated in a federal crime in the hush money scheme. Prosecutors in Manhattan are also probing the presidents inaugural committee.

Lanny Davis, Cohens lawyer, said the warrants release only furthers [Cohens] interest in continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump Organization to law enforcement and Congress.

The warrants showed that prosecutors pursued some charges against Cohen that they ultimately did not file.

Investigators told a judge they had probable cause to believe a search through Cohens emails would reveal evidence of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States, for example. The documents also suggest Cohen may have acted as an unregistered foreign lobbyist.

The search warrants included extensive discussion of Cohens work as a corporate consultant after Trump won the presidency and business leaders sought an inside track with the new administration.

Cohen collected consulting fees through Essential Consultants LLC, the same company he used to pay Daniels.

Cohen told First Republic bank that Essential Consultants was a real estate consulting company and all of his clients would be domestic individuals, neither of which was true.

His clients included pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG, telecommunications conglomerate AT&T, a South Korean aerospace company, a Kazakhstani bank and an investment firm tied to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

He was paid $3 million in the year after Trumps inauguration, short of the $5 million to $6 million that he had hoped to draw annually as a consultant, according to the search warrant.

Prosecutors did not file any charges against Cohen for his consulting work.

Since publicly breaking with Trump, Cohen has met extensively with federal and state investigators probing the president, his finances and his businesses. Cohen told a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Feb. 27 that he remained in constant contact with the U.S. attorneys office in Manhattan.

He also called Trump a racist, a con man and a cheat.

Republicans repeatedly attacked Cohens credibility and accused him of lying in his testimony, especially his claim that he never sought a pardon from President Trump.

Cohens lawyer Michael Monico later told Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who chairs the oversight committee, that Cohen could have been clearer in his testimony.

Monico wrote that Trump publicly dangled the possibility of pardons after the April raids and Cohen directed his attorney at the time to discuss the issue with a lawyer for the president.

Nothing ever happened, Monico wrote.

In addition to the New York investigation, Cohen pleaded guilty in the Russia probe. He admitted lying to Congress about pursuing a Trump Tower Moscow during the presidential campaign, a lucrative proposal that could have earned Trump hundreds of millions of dollars while he was proposing closer ties with Russia.

Cohen is one of 34 people who have faced charges from Mueller. The special counsels investigation is widely expected to be winding down, and Justice Department officials have been preparing for him to file a report.
Sen. Bernie Sanders will hold a rally in San Diego Friday evening, marking his first local visit during his second presidential campaign.

Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who identifies as a Democratic Socialist, launched his presidential candidacy late last month.

His rally will be held at 5:30 p.m. at Waterfront Park in Downtown San Diego although people are expected to begin arriving at 4 p.m., according to the events Facebook page. By early Monday afternoon the event had drawn the interest of more than 3,000 people online.

He also will host an event in San Francisco later this week.

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Sanders must distinguish himself in an increasingly crowded Democratic field, in a state expected to wield increased political importance.

Since moving its primary to an earlier date, March 3, 2020, California and the San Diego region are expected to see a more pronounced presence of Democratic presidential hopefuls.

More than two dozen candidates may end up entering the Democratic field, observers predicted, and several prominent Democrats already have announced, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, former U.S Rep. Beto ORourke, and Californias own Sen. Kamala Harris.

Sanders last visited San Diego County in October, just ahead of the midterms. He rallied with striking hotel workers downtown and then in Oceanside with Democratic Rep. Mike Levin, who at the time was a first-time congressional candidate.

In 2016, during Sanders first presidential run, he came to San Diego twice. He attracted an estimated 10,000 people to a rally in National City and held a smaller rally in Vista.
San Diego City Council President Georgette Gomez and Councilmember Monica Montgomery on Monday called for an independent investigation into the death of a woman who went into medical distress after her arrest last year in La Jolla and died in San Diego police custody.

District Attorney Summer Stephan announced Friday that her office had investigated the incident and determined the officer involved was not criminally liable in the death of Aleah Mariah Jenkins, a 24-year-old mother of three from El Cajon.

Jenkins was arrested Nov. 27 when she was a passenger in a vehicle police pulled over on La Jolla Village Drive. Investigators believe she may have swallowed or inserted drugs into her body as police stopped the car.

Jenkins went into medical distress while being driven in evening rush-hour traffic to downtown San Diego police headquarters by Officer Lawrence Durbin, who has been with the department six years. She became unresponsive at police headquarters that evening, and died Dec. 6 at a hospital.

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Stephans office on Friday released body-camera footage and other video from the incident.

Footage shown Friday during a news conference shows an officer perform CPR on Aleah Jenkins, 24, who fell into medical distress during an arrest on Nov. 27. She died Dec. 6 at a hospital. The officer involved will not be held criminally liable, the District Attorney said Friday. (Alex Riggins/SDUT)

It was very heart-wrenching to hear Ms. Jenkins asking for help and water for over an hour after vomiting and no assistance was rendered, Montgomery said in a statement Monday. The treatment displayed in the video further supports the need to reform our policing policies.

In the joint statement, Gomez added she was deeply troubled by the way Jenkins was treated while in custody.

Montgomery and Gomez said they will formally request that the state Attorney Generals Office conduct an independent investigation.

A spokeswoman for Montgomery said a formal letter is going out Monday to request the investigation from Xavier Becerras office.

Stephans office declined to comment, but said at a Friday news conference: As always, we welcome any additional reviews by the Attorney General or the U.S. Attorney.

In an emailed statement, Council President Pro Tem Barbara Bry  in whose district Jenkins was arrested  said, I support the request by ... Gomez and ... Montgomery for the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation.

Montgomery and Gomez also called on the San Diego Police Department to revise its Paramedic and Emergency Treatment Policy.

The policy reads in part that, Officers transporting persons in need of emergency medical treatment shall take them to the nearest primary emergency facility.

There are several other Police Department policies that also discuss medical care for people in custody. One says paramedics are not generally needed when an individual is suffering from minor illnesses or injuries.

A different policy on jail booking procedures says arrestees who require immediate medical treatment should be taken to the closest hospital that has an emergency room.

But none of the policies spell out which conditions are minor and which require immediate treatment. The booking procedures policy seems to suggest that the determination is made by officers.

Officers may use discretion in determining the best course of action for the particular situation, without consideration of medical costs, it reads.

An autopsy found Jenkins death was caused by two things: the death of brain tissues because of a lack of oxygen due to the CPR performed on her while in custody, and acute methamphetamine toxicity.

The county Medical Examiners Office ruled her death an accident. Stephan attributed Jenkins death to a methamphetamine overdose.

Twitter: @Alex_Riggins

(619) 293-1710

alex.riggins@sduniontribune.com
Authorities have publicly identified a 54-year-old man who was killed when the big rig he was driving crashed and overturned on a winding rural road a few miles southwest of Palomar Mountain State Park.

Nelson Cedeno Dominguez of Indio was driving a Peterbilt flatbed tractor-trailer at a high speed heading west on state Route 76 in Pauma Valley shortly after 8:10 a.m. Thursday, according to information from the California Highway Patrol and the county Medical Examiners Office.

The vehicle, which was hauling bags of landscaping mulch, toppled over and slid into a roadside ditch near Rincon Ranch Road, leaving Dominguez and a man riding in the front passenger seat trapped inside.

Emergency crews freed the 55-year-old passenger from the wreckage and airlifted him to Palomar Medical Center in Escondido for treatment of minor injuries, the CHP said.

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Cedeno was pronounced dead at the scene, the Medical Examiners Office reported.
Authorities on Monday identified a 58-year-old Fallbrook man who died in an early-morning motorcycle crash over the weekend in Oceanside.

Anthony Robert Duarte lost control of his motorcycle and struck a concrete sign about 2 a.m. Saturday, according to Oceanside police and the county Medical Examiners Office.

When he crashed, he was riding north on El Camino Real near the Camino Town and Country Shopping Center, a little north of state Route 76, authorities said.

Duarte was thrown onto the road, where officers and medics found him with severe trauma, police said Saturday. Despite emergency responders performing CPR, Duarte was pronounced dead at the scene.

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He died of multiple blunt force injuries at 2:16 a.m., according to the Medical Examiners Office.

Police said Saturday an ongoing investigation had not determined whether alcohol was a factor in the collision. No other vehicles were involved in the crash.

Twitter: @Alex_Riggins

(619) 293-1710

alex.riggins@sduniontribune.com
A 35-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of stabbing his 17-year-old son and the familys pit bull in Vista Monday night, a sheriffs official said.

The assault was reported just before 11:10 p.m. on Calle Jules, a dead-end road surrounded by apartment complexes south of East Bobier Drive, according to San Diego County Sheriffs Lt. Dave Perkins.

Deputies found the teen suffering from at least two stab wounds. He was taken to a hospital with injuries not believed to be life-threatening.

The pit bull suffered three stab wounds, a sheriffs official said. Animal services workers with the San Diego Humane Society were called to help treat the dog.

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Investigators believe the stabbing happened when the son intervened in his fathers attempt to discipline the dog, a sheriffs official said.

The suspect, later identified as Primitivo Alvarez, was being held on suspicion of child cruelty, cruelty to animals and being under the influence of a controlled substance.

City News Service contributed to this report.

Twitter: @Alex_Riggins

(619) 293-1710

alex.riggins@sduniontribune.com

UPDATES:

7:10 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details.

This article was originally published at 12:10 a.m.
Authorities evacuated five Vista downtown-area businesses and a nearby mobile home park Tuesday morning after a construction backhoe accidentally broke open a natural gas pipeline.

The gas line broke shortly before 8 a.m. at Pala Vista Drive and Mercantile Street, roughly a block west of the heavily traveled intersection of Civic Center Drive an South Santa Fe Avenue.

A backhoe was excavating when it hit a 4-inch, high-pressure gas line, Vista Deputy Fire Chief Ned Vander Pol said. Natural gas whooshed through the hole.

You can hear it, Vander Pol said. It sounds like a jet engine.

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The natural gas is odorless but highly flammable.

Vander Pol said construction operations stopped while San Diego Gas & Electric crews work to stop the leak.

City of Vista spokeswoman Andrea McCullough said that, due to the complexity of the gas grid, more SDG&E crews are arriving with specialized equipment to resolve the issue. The work is expected to take several more hours.

Five businesses were evacuated, as was a mobile home park at the intersection of Pala Vista and Mercantile, and the road is closed.

Mercantile runs parallel to South Santa Fe, a main thoroughfare in Vista. Vander Pol said South Santa Fe was not closed as crews repair the break.

The construction was related to the citys Paseo Santa Fe project, a $30 million overhaul of the South Santa Fe through the downtown corridor.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
Hong Kong: MTR to probe train collision

The Government is deeply concerned about the Mass Transit Railway train collision and the MTR Corporation has to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident.

Secretary for Transport & Housing Frank Chan made the statement after attending an urgent board meeting of the corporation today to discuss the incident.

Two MTR trains collided during the testing of a new signalling system on the Tsuen Wan Line yesterday.

Mr Chan said: We have asked the MTRCL to investigate with due diligence with a view to ironing out the exact details and the reasons of the incident.

He added an investigation is being conducted by the Electrical & Mechanical Services Department and it covers the design, operation and the integration of the hardware and software of the signalling system.

Mr Chan said the Transport Department has been working closely with the public transport sector to enhance the frequency of franchised buses and ferry services to ease travelling difficulties for commuters.

In the days to come, before the service is resumed, our Transport (Department) colleagues would continue to work with these public service operators to provide the same or enhanced services, he added.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
On Wednesday, St. Pauls Cathedral will host the second of six weekly programs on Islam. Steve Slocum, who had organized the entire series, already knew this weeks theme.

We were just going to do a talk about the Palestinian-Israel issue. said Slocum, a local writer and founder of Salaam, a nonprofit that seeks to build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims..

Then Slocum heard last Fridays news: 50 people had been massacred in two Muslim temples in New Zealand. Before the attack, the suspect issued an anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant manifesto.

For Slocum, this far-off catastrophe required a local response. He scrapped the presentation he had already planned and called Imam Taha Hassane of the Islamic Center of San Diego.

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We decided to do a Friendship Vigil instead, he said.

The event at the Episcopal cathedral will begin at 6 p.m. with dinner and a discussion about the meaning of Muslim prayers. At 6:50, prayer rugs will be unfurled in the cathedral and people will be invited to participate in a guided session of Maghrib, the traditional prayer offered just after sunset.

This will be followed by talks about interfaith friendships.

Salaam is a relatively new organization  it was founded in 2018  but its roots extend back 27 years. In 1992, Slocum and his family arrived in Kazakhstan as non-denominational Christian missionaries. During the five years the family spent in this central European republic, Slocum grew to appreciate the primarily-Muslim society.

They treated me and my family with nothing but respect and hospitality, he said.

The experience changed his thinking about the Islamic faith. He shares his insights in an upcoming book, Why Do They Hate Us?: Making Peace with the Muslim World, which is scheduled to be published this summer.

The title comes from a question President George W. Bush asked after 9/11. Slocum believes that Bushs answer  They hate our freedoms  stoked Americas fear of all Muslims. The vast majority, he said, practice a peaceful faith that has nothing to do with radical terrorism.

Ive transitioned from converting Muslims to making peace with Muslims, Slocum said.

A $10 donation is requested for the meal. The cathedral is located at 2728 6th Ave., San Diego.
Carrying a bitter personal feud beyond the grave, President Donald Trump escalated his attacks on the late Sen. John McCain on Tuesday, declaring he will never be a fan of the Vietnam war hero and longtime Republican lawmaker who died last year of brain cancer.

I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The fresh vitriol followed Trumps weekend tweets insulting the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, with whom he long had a fractious relationship. He repeated some of those attacks, complaining about McCains vote against repealing President Barack Obamas health care law.

He campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years and then it got to a vote and he said thumbs down, Trump said, adding  without citing evidence  that the repeal would have saved a trillion dollars.

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Over the weekend, Trump attacked McCain on Twitter. Among his barbs was that the longtime Arizona senator had been last in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy. But while McCain famously racked up demerits and earned poor grades, he ultimately graduated fifth from the bottom of his 1958 class.

Those attacks drew retaliatory fire from McCains daughter, Meghan McCain.

He spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he knows it and I know it and all of you know it  he will never be a great man, said Meghan McCain, on ABCs The View, which she co-hosts.

Trump targeted McCain during his presidential campaign, saying in 2015 that the former prisoner-of-war was not a hero, because he was captured. Trump received a series of deferments to avoid serving in Vietnam, including one attained with a physicians letter stating that he suffered from bone spurs in his feet.
Meghan McCain said Monday that President Donald Trump is leading a pathetic life as she escalated her pushback against Trumps weekend attacks on Twitter against her late father.

He spends his weekend obsessing over great men, because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it, he will never be a great man, McCain, a co-host of ABCs The View, said of Trump during Mondays episode.

She remembered how before his death nearly seven months ago from brain cancer, John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, would spend time with her and others in the family cooking, hiking and fishing on the weekends.

Upon seeing derogatory tweets about her father over the weekend, Meghan McCain said she thought your life is spent on your weekends not with your family, not with your friends, but obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to.

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That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now, she added. I genuinely feel bad for his family. I cant imagine having a father that does this on the weekends.

.@MeghanMcCain addresses Pres. Trumps Saturday tweet criticizing her father Sen. John McCain: He spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he knows it and I know it and all of you know it  he will never be a great man.https://t.co/p6oiZYUr74 pic.twitter.com/8HSpllAcEz  The View (@TheView) March 18, 2019

In a tweet on Saturday, Trump quoted former independent counsel Ken Starr, who criticized John McCain on a recent Fox News show. In the segment, Starr referred to reports that a McCain ally had shared with the media parts of a dossier that allegedly included information linking Trump to the Russian government.

Trump piled on in his Saturday night tweet, criticizing McCain - as he has repeatedly done on the campaign trail and in interviews - for his vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2017.

On Sunday, Trump took another swipe at McCain on Twitter, including a false assertion that he was last in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Later that day, Trump retweeted a tweet from a supporter who wrote that millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain.

That tweet was in response to an earlier tweet from Meghan McCain that was directed at Trump. No one will ever love you the way they loved my father, it said.

First published in The Washington Post.
Former House speaker Paul Ryan has landed his first post-Congress job as a board member for Fox, the new parent company of Fox News.

Fox spun off from the larger 21st Century Fox, which Rupert Murdoch sold to Walt Disney Co.

Ryan, R-Wis., who retired from Congress last year citing his desire to spend more time with his family, was named to the board Tuesday. A Fox news release credited him for leading efforts to revise the federal tax code, rebuild the national defense, expand domestic energy production, combat the opioid epidemic, and reform the criminal justice system.

The once rising star of the Republican Party has kept a relatively low profile since leaving Congress, his legacy forever intertwined with the rise of Donald Trump and Ryans reluctance to challenge Trump.

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Last week, Ryan reportedly told a crowd during a lecture in Vero Beach, Florida, that the Democrat who defines the race as one about Trump and Trumps personality could beat him. But he quickly backtracked on Twitter to clarify that he believes Trump deserves to win.

To be clear, GOP wins elections when theyre about ideas not when theyre personality contests like Dems & media want. Were clearly better off because of @RealDonaldTrump, Ryan tweeted. His record of accomplishment is why hell win re-election especially when compared to Dems leftward lurch.

Ryan will serve on the board along with Murdoch, Foxs founder, and his son, Lachlan Murdoch, Foxs chairman and chief executive.

First published by the Washington Post.
Winning a Republican seat in Orange County is hard enough for a Democrat. Holding it is a whole different matter.

For the record: An earlier version of this article identified Rep. Gil Cisneros district as the 38th. He represents the 39th District.

And the four Democratic freshmen who won seats in the historically Republican county in 2018 are already staking out starkly different routes to hold onto their jobs after 2020.

Reps. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) and Mike Levin (D-

San Juan Capistrano) joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus, aligning themselves with an energized, vocal group of liberal newcomers clamoring to change Washington.

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O.C.'s blue wave: A periodic look at the six Democrats in Congress now representing the former GOP stronghold. 

Laguna Beach Rep. Harley Rouda, a former Republican, is taking the opposite approach, joining the centrist New Democrat Coalition and positioning himself as a moderate who wants to ensure liberal programs make economic sense.

Yorba Linda Rep. Gil Cisneros seems to be trying to cover all bases with a combination of both strategies, joining the Progressive Caucus and the New Democrat Coalition. They both reflect parts of who I am, Cisneros said.

There are risks and rewards for each approach. Can unabashed progressives like Porter and Levin survive in districts that remain heavily Republican? Will Roudas centrist platform anger the O.C. Democratic activists who propelled him into office? How long can Cisneros straddle the partys divide?

Across the country, dozens of Democrats who won Republican-leaning seats are making the same calculation: how to connect with voters back home who may not share their political ideals, while still making their mark in Washington.

The Orange County Democrats will be under particular scrutiny. The area was a Republican bastion for decades and the GOP wants it back.

Keeping Orange County blue is not impossible, according to Harvard University professor Theda Skocpol. For starters, Trump is very unpopular in the county and hell likely be on the 2020 ballot. The rest will depend largely on how the four define themselves to their constituents.

There are plenty of cases where someone considered to the left or right of their district continues to be reelected because there is a sense they are connected, she said.

Levin and Porter arent running away from their progressive positions.

I think youve got to be authentic, Levin said. Im going to do my very best to listen to constituents and to people in our district. But ultimately, I think that voters will reward someone who stands on their values, and so Im willing to let the chips fall.

Levin, a former environmental attorney, has made climate change his signature issue, a risky gambit in a district where Republicans still hold a 3.38-percentage-point registration advantage. He was one of just three freshman Democrats appointed to the new select panel to study climate change, and he was one of the first freshmen to endorse the Green New Deal.

Levin is chairman of the Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, an unusual opportunity for a freshman  thanks largely to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who has ensured that each of the four new O.C. Democrats are getting a platform to prove themselves.

He has also made a nod to the activists who supported him by hiring local organizer Ellen Montanari to run his monthly town halls. Montanari led the Tuesday morning protests outside Rep. Darrell Issas office that contributed to the representative deciding not to run for reelection in the 49th District.

Porter is a protege of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and a consumer-protection law and banking expert. Her position on the House Financial Services Committee allows her to be a leading voice on Wall Street and the American banking system.

Porter has grown close to high-profile progressives, like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

Though she hasnt received the public attention they have, Porter had some standout moments in committee hearings, including asking Equifaxs chief executive to disclose his Social Security number, birth date and address in a public, televised hearing. He refused, prompting Porter to question why the companys lawyers argued in federal court in January that there was no injury caused by a 2017 data breach where hackers got the personal identifying information of 147 million people.

Some questioned during the campaign if Porter was too liberal for the 45th District, where Republicans hold a 5.28-point voter registration advantage. She said she wants to hear from a variety of constituents, but ultimately must vote her conscience.

You should always be questioning why you hold the positions that you have, but I dont think that you can adequately advocate for Orange County if youre not willing to ultimately take the votes that you think are going to be the best for Orange County families. And sometimes those votes will be hard, Porter said.

Because of their positions, Porter and Levin are likely the most vulnerable to GOP efforts to label O.C. Democrats as too far left.

Were going to hold these socialist Democrats accountable for everything they say, everything they do, and everything their socialist-leaning party does, said National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Torunn Sinclair, referring to all four new O.C. Democrats.

Rouda is taking a route of moderate pragmatism.

While Im a Democrat, and I support many of the progressive issues that were working on, they also have to be based on an economic foundation, said the real estate magnate.

Rouda is the Oversight and Government Reform Committees Environment Subcommittee chairman and also serves on the House Transportation Committee.

The 48th District is the most Republican-leaning in Orange County, and even though Rouda won with nearly 54% of the vote, the GOP still has an 8.11-point voter registration advantage there. Rouda, a Republican until registering as decline to state 20 years ago and then as a Democrat in 2017, said he represents how the partisan makeup of his district has changed.

I got elected because I was a mainstream candidate. I was a candidate that appealed to Democrats and Republicans and independents. Perhaps maybe not the extremists, but the vast majority of voters who tend to be between the 20-yard lines, he said.

Even so, local Democratic activists who played a major role in his defeat of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher say they will be watching Rouda closely.

Aaron McCall, head of the local chapter of Indivisible, said the activist group will issue report cards on how Rouda votes and interacts with the community. But McCall said he understands the balancing act Rouda must play.

If you are comparing him to Ocasio-Cortez, a lot of people would say hes not progressive, McCall said. Hes extremely progressive compared to Dana Rohrabacher.

Cisneros has taken a different route, keeping a lower profile, avoiding picking sides in the partys political divide and focusing largely on local issues.

There were opportunities where I could have been a subcommittee chair, or something like that. But to me its more important right now... to put my emphasis and my time and dedication really towards the district, Cisneros said.

In November, Cisneros joined a handful of rebel Democrats pledging in an open letter to oppose Pelosi for speaker. But he changed his mind after Pelosi agreed to limit how long she would serve.

The 39th District has been trending blue for some time  Republicans just lost their voter registration advantage there to Democrats by nearly a percentage point  which could be part of why its long-serving Republican Rep. Ed Royce decided not to run for reelection in 2018.

Cisneros, a former Republican who became a Democrat four years ago, serves on the Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees, which feeds into his Navy background and his campaign promise to work on veterans issues.

He may also be more focused on the ethnic split in the district, which is a third Latino, a third white and a third Asian. Cisneros won with just 51.6% of the vote, beating former state Assemblywoman Young Kim.

Retired UC San Diego political scientist Gary Jacobson said hedging to the center is smart, but warned that politics have become so partisan that Cisneros might find it difficult to align with both progressives and moderates for long.

Party lines are firmer. There are no liberal Republicans. There are no conservative Democrats left, Jacobson said. Its much more difficult to present yourself as someone who resides outside those partisan boxes.

Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), a second-term lawmaker who represents one of the other Orange County districts, said focusing on district priorities and constituents  rather than the glamour of Washington  is key for a first-term member seeking reelection.

My advice is go with your gut, Correa said. But hopefully your gut tells you youve got to be in your district.

The latest from Washington 

More stories from Sarah D. Wire 
A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday bolstered the Trump administrations power to arrest and indefinitely jail legal immigrants who committed past crimes that could trigger deportation, including those who completed their sentences years ago or were convicted of minor drug offenses.

The courts five conservatives pointed to a mandatory detention rule in a 1996 immigration law that said federal agents shall take into custody immigrants who have been convicted of certain crimes that would lead to deportation.

Tuesdays high court decision is the third in the last two years that strengthens Trumps authority under the immigration laws. While the ruling interprets a 1996 law, it takes on added significance because the administration has been more aggressive in arresting and jailing immigrants.

The justices in the majority said Congress feared it would be too risky to let terrorists or dangerous criminals go free while deportation was pending. But their opinion conceded the law is so broad it also sweeps in nonviolent drug offenders and tax cheats.

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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acting on an American Civil Liberties Union class-action suit in California, ruled in 2016 that these immigrants were not subject to mandatory detention if they were not promptly taken into custody after their release from a local jail or state prison. This spared those who had lived and worked legally in California, some for over a decade.

But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., speaking for the 5-4 majority, called this argument hard to swallow since local officials in so-called sanctuary cities do not alert federal agents when an immigrant is released.

In the case, Nielsen vs. Preap, he said the law calls for mandatory detention of the immigrants without exception and regardless of when they are taken into custody.

Last June, a 5-4 majority upheld the travel ban and said the president could deny entry to immigrants and visitors from several Muslim-majority nations. A few months earlier, the court ruled the government could hold immigrants for months or years without offering them a bail hearing. That decision, in Jennings vs. Rodriquez, was an offshoot of the case decided Tuesday.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, speaking for the courts four liberals, read his dissent in the courtroom. The greater importance of the case lies in the power that the majoritys interpretation grants to the government. It is a power to detain persons who committed a minor crime many years before, he said. And it is a power to hold those persons, perhaps for many months, without any opportunity to obtain bail.

He said the Constitution gave all people the right to a hearing if they were held by the government. I would have thought that Congress intended to adhere to these values and did not intend to allow the government to apprehend persons years after their release from prison and hold them indefinitely without a bail hearing, Breyer said. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed.

Joining Alito in the majority were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh. In a separate opinion, Thomas and Gorsuch said they would have thrown out the suit on the grounds the courts have no authority to review class-action suits challenging immigration enforcement.

ACLU Deputy Legal Director Cecillia Wang, who argued the case, criticized the ruling. For two terms in a row now, the Supreme Court has endorsed the most extreme interpretation of immigration detention statutes, she said, allowing mass incarceration of people without any hearing, simply because they are defending themselves against a deportation charge. We will continue to fight the gross overuse of detention in the immigration system.

Eduardo Padilla, one of the named plaintiffs, came to the United States in 1966 as an infant and became a lawful permanent resident in the Sacramento area. He has five children and six grandchildren, all of whom are U.S. citizens. Padilla had two convictions for drug possession, in 1997 and 1999, and served 90 days in jail in 2002 for having an unloaded pistol in a shed.

In 2013, federal agents rearrested him over those crimes and held him for deportation. But he went free after the 9th Circuit ruled the mandatory detention provision did not apply to immigrants such as Padilla. He was released on a $1,500 bond because a judge decided he did not present a danger and was not likely to flee.

The lead plaintiff in the case, Mony Preap, came from Cambodia as a child and had been a lawful U.S. resident since 1981. He was taken into custody over two convictions for possessing marijuana in 2006, but an immigration judge later canceled his deportation and he was released.

The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento welcomed the ruling. Kent Scheidegger, its legal director, said the 9th Circuits ruling had misinterpreted the law in order to allow alien criminals in sanctuary cities to avoid detention and deportation under federal law. Congress required mandatory detention for those convicted of aggravated felonies for good reason.

The high court heard arguments on the case in mid-October, the same week that Kavanaugh took his seat. He spoke up in defense of the Trump administrations view that the law was intended to authorize federal agents to arrest and hold immigrants with crimes on their records regardless of when they were released. He questioned whether we should be putting in a time limit on taking immigrants into custody.

In a short concurring opinion on Tuesday, Kavanaugh said the issue before the court was narrow. It did not involve who will be deported or how long they will be held. It would be odd, in my view, he added, to read the law as exempting certain noncitizens from mandatory detention simply because the government failed to immediately detain them upon their release.

The latest from Washington 

More stories from David G. Savage 
Could the death of Aleah Mariah Jenkins, 24, after her arrest last year by San Diego police, have been avoided if police Officer Lawrence Durbin had acted faster to alleviate her medical distress while she was in custody? District Attorney Summer Stephan concluded Friday that Durbin is not criminally liable in the death of the El Cajon mother of three. Stephan said a toxicology report showed Jenkins ingested as much as 17 times a lethal dose of methamphetamine while apparently seeking to hide evidence from police when she and two other people were pulled over by officers in La Jolla on Nov. 27. She died Dec. 6.

Nonetheless, after viewing video of Jenkins following her arrest, Councilwoman Monica Montgomery made a powerful point when she said, It was very heart-wrenching to hear Ms. Jenkins asking for help and water for over an hour after vomiting and no assistance was rendered. Montgomery and City Council President Georgette Gomez have requested the state Attorney Generals Office conduct an independent investigation of the tragedy.

Police officers have an extremely difficult job and are subject to a level of second-guessing encountered by few if any other professionals. But the Jenkins case needs to be evaluated not just on the basis of whether Durbin did something wrong but with consideration of whether police procedures need refining and improving. Montgomery and Gomezs request is appropriate and necessary.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

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Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion
All presidents should reveal tax returns

Re Presidents tax returns telling, even if unseen (March 16): I recently had a discussion with my CPA regarding the disclosure of Trumps tax returns, and he pointed out that tax returns alone would not necessarily reveal what we all need to see.

They wont tell us exactly who the customers, debtors and creditors are of the businesses owned by Trump and his family. And they wont tell us who Trump and his family personally owe money to, and who owes them money. And they wont necessarily tell us who the equity partners are of the businesses owned by Trump and his family. Or who the key employees of their businesses are.

In other words, theres a lot of information that isnt in Trumps tax returns. All of this should be required in addition to Trumps personal returns and those of all the businesses he owns, partially or in full. And this should be the minimum standard for all future candidates for president.

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Mike Allen

San Diego

Trump is smart to keep his tax returns secret

President Trump would be an idiot to release his income tax returns to the public. He has everything to lose and nothing to gain. I remember what Democrats did to Mitt Romney when he released his returns. The IRS, the organization with the expertise and credentials to review and approve tax returns, does so every year in Trumps case.

The Democrats would have a field day mischaracterizing and misconstruing almost everything in his returns for their political gain. Why would the president allow an inexperienced public and Congress to review his very complicated tax returns when he is not required to do so?

Cliff Lindroth

San Diego

Letters and commentary policy

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Beachgoers, beware! That especially goes for you spring breakers who dont usually spend time in the ocean or around stingrays.

Posting to Facebook on Sunday, the Lifeguards of San Diego page shared that the stingrays are out in full force and shared a photo of three people soaking their feet in buckets. Dana Vanos, president of the San Diego Lifesaving Association, said stingrays are out on the beaches all year, but that the recent warm weather brought more people to the beach, resulting in more stings.

A warning from San Diego lifeguards is as good a reason as any to review not only why stingrays are dangerous, but how to avoid them and what to do if you get stung.

Here are some quick reminders to keep in mind about stingrays as you head to the beach this spring and summer.

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What is a stingray?

Heres what youre looking for: Stingrays, also referred to simply as rays, are flattened or winged sharks whose pectoral fins expand forward and are fused to the sides of the head over the gill openings, which are on the underside of the head, according to David A. Eberts Sharks, Rays and Chimaeras of California, published by the Regents of the University of California.

The stingrays seen around San Diego are usually round rays. They can be found all the way from Humboldt Bay in northern California down to Panama City, Panama, but are most often found in southern California and northern Baja California, Mexico, according to the Aquarium of the Pacific.

The aquarium, which houses round stingrays at its Long Beach location, says the animals can be as long as 22.9 inches but most commonly are about 10 inches in diameter or less. They are a variety of brown, gray or tan colors.

Why are they so dangerous?

These stingrays come pretty close to the shore and hide in the sand as they look for food.

Stingrays are not aggressive, but if you follow one too closely, you run the risk of catching the business end of the stingrays sharp, painful stinger, the National Ocean Service says.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, reports that stingrays are the most common group of fish that sting humans and their sharp spines contain poisonous venom.

Inside the barb of the stingrays tail is a venom that causes severe pain, said Richard Clark, Director of Toxicology at UC San Diego.  It doesnt really cause a lot of tissue damage or what we would call systemic affects like heart attack or stroke, it mainly causes severe pain in the site where its injected.

What should you do if you get stung?

Seek medical help as soon as youre stung, experts recommend, by notifying the nearest lifeguard or calling poison control at 1-800-222-1222.

The best treatment is to initially stop the bleeding and then seek out lifeguard help if youre in the proximity to do so, said Vanos.

The next step is soaking the wound area in hot water. That breaks down the toxin so the punctured area can be treated as a regular wound.

Vanos said the pain can vary depending on the severity of a sting, a persons pain tolerance, the wound and the amount of venom injected. The pain can shoot into a persons groin and the pain from the resulting wound can last from one to two days to as long as one week.

If the stingrays barb or a piece of the barb breaks off in the wound, people may need additional treatment from a doctor or an emergency room visit, but such infections arent very common.

Our lifeguards are so good at treating people here that I dont see many people in the emergency room, Clark said of stingray stings.

How can you avoid being stung?

As silly as it sounds, the so-called stingray shuffle is recommended by lifeguards to stay safe from a sting.

Thats very effective, Vanos said. You keep your feet firmly on the ocean floor and just shuffle your feet like you would on the carpet trying to get static on your socks.

The injuries seen at San Diego County beaches are most commonly seen on peoples feet.

The key is not to take your feet off the sand because that will give you a chance to actually step on them, Vanos said.

For more information on the warning from local lifeguards, check out the post below or these resources:

Aquarium of the Pacific

U.S. National Library of Medicine

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

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The Conversation with Abby & Luis is a podcast that slows down the news cycle to make sense of issues and stories that matter to listeners in San Diego and beyond. We talk to news makers, experts and others to offer interesting, in-depth conversations that will keep you up to date and informed.

Check out some of our most recent episodes below, or subscribe on Apple or Stitcher.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

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Marcus Maedl, owner of Gen819 Courtesy

Gen819 has been around since 2008 when owner Marcus Maedl realized that solar roofing was an expanding industry where his services would always be in demand. After working for several years for some of the biggest renewable energy companies in the world, he decided to launch his own business, initially focusing only on solar. But, Maedl realized, It became more and more obvious that roofing and solar must go hand in hand. So in 2011 we started hiring experienced roofers and had them teach installers as much as possible about properly flashing solar mounting points on roofs.

Later, in 2014, Maedls company officially merged with SDF Roofing and started offering commercial and residential roofing services, with or without solar. As of 2019, the company became an employee-owned business and its name was changed to Gen819, Inc.

Why 819? Maedl answers succinctly, It takes 8 minutes and 19 seconds for sunlight to reach the earth. Generation is a double-take on generating power and a new generation of people.

Black synthetic shake tile roof on Encinitas home. Courtesy

Maedl grew up in Germany as the son of an American mother and a German father and therefore has dual citizenship, so hes worked in both countries. He started in silicon-wafer process engineering, then did ERP software implementation, IT consulting and fiber optics on his way to switching solely to solar and roofing in 2003.

This is where I feel at home and where I see a unique opportunity to build a successful, long-term, employee-owned company over the next decade or two, Maedl said.

What sets Gen819 apart from other roofing or solar companies is that it employs a unique set of industry experts in both solar and roofing, and offers them regular training and education sessions.

As a result, Maedl explains, we are rewarded with one of the lowest turnover rates in the industry. On a technical level, we dont take short-cuts and only use the best materials. Our price point is typically somewhat higher, but so is the satisfaction of our clients.

The company takes a more holistic approach unlike most other similar companies  looking at roofing materials in combination with solar PV and energy storage combinations. Gen819 guarantees its work by giving residential clients a lifetime warranty against roof leaks.

Synthetic wood shake tile roof on Del Mar home. Courtesy

Maedl notes that, to his surprise, no large company in renewable energy has been able to stay in business in the U.S., in his opinion. He says only small-to-midsize companies seem to have the flexibility to adjust to ever-changing market conditions. Solar has seen very few changes in product technology, but enormous cost reduction due to the economy of scale effects in expanded manufacturing. And he points out that the newest trend in solar roofing is to couple it with battery storage as a back-up system to make it sustainable over a long period of time, as the solar can recharge the batteries during the daytime. That way, longer grid outages can be bridged.

2019 is a critical year for those considering solar roofing. Its the last year where a full 30 percent income-tax credit can be claimed against the cost of installing solar tiles, so Marcus encourages homeowners considering solar roofing to do it now to get the 30 percent discount. Another big change coming next year  solar will be mandatory in new construction, so Maedl hopes to see his business expand as the laws change.

To contact Gen819 Roofing and Solar, go to www.gen819.com or call 760-420-0166.
UNITED NATIONS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Monday urged the international community to help the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with its security capacity-building.

"The current focus should be put on helping the DRC to enhance its security capacity-building, supporting the effort of the DRC government to maintain peace and stability," Wu Haitao, the charge d'affaires of China's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, told the Security Council meeting on the situation in the DRC.

The international community should "fully respect the sovereignty and independence and territorial integrity of the DRC," Wu said, adding that it should also "fully respect the ownership and leadership of the DRC government in handling its own affairs, strengthen communication with the DRC government, and help the DRC to resolve its challenges in humanitarian, security, development and other fields."

The Chinese envoy also called on the world to continue supporting regional and sub-regional organizations in playing their roles to facilitate and strengthen interactions between the parties within the DRC government to advance the implementation of the peace security and cooperation framework for the DRC and the Great Lakes Region, so as to jointly contribute to the realization of peace and stability in the DRC and a wider region.

"International partners should help with the DRC's effort to make sure that armed groups in the DRC to abandon the military solution and instead resolve the issues through dialogue and consultation," he added.

Wu also said that efforts must be made to "continue providing necessary humanitarian assistance and economic support to the DRC government."

"International partners should focus on increasing input in education, healthcare, infrastructure and other areas, help the DRC to increase employment, improve people's life, and restore economic and social development," he said.

"We hope bodies such as UN Development Programme and UN Environment Programme can play a bigger role," he added.

"The international community should continue actively responding to the DRC's humanitarian assistance appeal, support the activities of the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross and help contain the Ebola outbreak.

Noting that MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, is "indispensable" to peace and stability in the country, Wu said that China supports the extension of its mandate.

"We hope MONUSCO can continue its activities according to its mandate to help the DRC realize peace stability and development," he said.

"In the meantime, we hope the (UN) Secretariat, the DRC government and the troop-contributing countries can engage in communication, and in view of the development, conduct timely review and put forward proposals of adjustment to MONUSCO mandate, so as to ensure a step-by-step and orderly handover of security responsibilities from MONUSCO to the DRC security forces," said the envoy.

China is ready to work with the wider international community to continue contributing to the DRC's efforts to achieve early peace, stability and development, Wu noted.

Leila Zerrougui, the UN secretary-general's special representative for the DRC, briefed the Security Council on the situation in the DRC.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Feb. 15 submitted to the President of the Security Council an update on the situation in the DRC.

The update, which covers developments in the DRC from Jan. 1 to 31, was submitted pursuant to Resolution 2409 (2018), in which the Security Council requested the secretary-general to provide a written update every 30 days on political and technical progress towards the holding of elections in the DRC and on obstacles to the implementation of the political agreement of Dec. 31, 2016.
Pune, India -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- According to a new market research study titled 'Perfusion Systems Market - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Type, and Component. The global perfusion systems market is expected to reach US$ 1,442.28 Mn in 2027 from US$ 1,044.75 Mn in 2018. The market is estimated to grow with a CAGR of 3.8% from 2019-2027.



The report highlights the trends prevalent in the global perfusion systems market and the factors driving the market along with those that act as deterrents to its growth. The market is expected to grow due to the rising prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, significant growth of pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, rising need for the organ transplantation, and rising cell based research activities. However, expensive organ transplant surgeries, and limited numbers of donors for organ transplant surgeries are likely to pose a negative impact on the market growth.



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Global perfusion systems market, based on component was segmented into oxygenators, heart-lung machines, perfusion pumps, monitoring systems, cannulas, and others. The oxygenators segment is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 4.4% during the forecast period. The increasing number of the cardiovascular surgeries, liver transplantation and kidney transplantation across the world is likely to contribute to the growth and dominance of the segment. The oxygenators segment is also expected to exhibit highest growth witnessing a robust CAGR over the forecast years.

Some of the major primary and secondary sources for perfusion systems included in the report are Australasian Board of Cardiovascular Perfusion, Board of Cardiovascular Perfusion India, China Food & Drug Administration, contract research organizations, Food and Drug Administration, New Mexico Asthma Control Program and among others.



In 2018, the perfusion systems with bioreactor segment held a largest market share of 44.3% of the perfusion systems market, by type. This segment is also expected to dominate the market in 2027 owing to the increasing production by the biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical and its advantages including, high quality of product, product stability, scalability. Moreover, the microfluidic perfusion systems segment is anticipated to also witness the significant growth rate of 3.9% during the forecast period, 2019 to 2027 owing to provide application at point of care.



The report segments the global Perfusion Systems Market as follows:



Global Perfusion Systems Market  By Type

- Microfluidic Perfusion Systems

- Small-Mammal Organ Perfusion Systems

- Bioreactor Perfusion Systems

- Gravity or Pressure-Driven Perfusion Systems



Global Perfusion Systems Market  By Component

- Perfusion Pumps

- Oxygenators

- Heart-Lung Machines

- Monitoring Systems

- Cannulas

- Others



Global Perfusion Systems Market - By Geography



- North America

- U.S.

- Canada

- Mexico



Europe

- France

- Germany

- Italy

- Spain

- U.K

- Rest of Europe



Asia Pacific (APAC)

- Japan

- China

- India

- Australia

- Rest of APAC



Middle East & Africa (MEA)

- Saudi Arabia

- U.A.E.

- South Africa

- Rest of MEA



South America (SAM)

- Brazil



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Sellbyville, DE -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- Air Source Heat Pump Market size is set to surpass USD 50 billion by 2024; as reported in the latest study by Global Market Insights, Inc.



Stringent regulatory measures toward reduction of carbon emissions by promoting the applications of various sustainable technologies will foster the air source heat pump market. The government of UK has introduced Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme with an aim to encourage utilization of renewable technologies in businesses, homes and local communities. Increasing disposable income in developing countries along with growing demand for high-level comfort will further propel the industry growth.



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Lower cost, ease of installation, less maintenance requirement and energy efficiency are some of the eminent features which will propel the global air source heat pump market size. It is a product alternative for various space cooling and heating technologies owing to its additional features when compared with conventional systems. An ASHP has the Coefficient of Performance (COP) value of around 2.8 which can result into reduction in running cost of 3.5% when compared with a gas boiler.



China air source heat pump market size will witness strong growth on account of various promotion schemes to accelerate the usage of low-carbon energy. Flourishing real estate industry have led to high construction activities owing to rapid urbanization will further encourage the product adoption. As per the World Economic Forum, in China, up to 2 billion square meters of buildings are constructed every year.



Energy consumption reduction targets along with renovation of existing buildings will embellish the France air source heat pump market growth. The country has targeted 38% reduction of energy consumption through buildings by 2020 and 400 thousand dwellings every year to be energy renovated from 2013. Extreme climatic conditions resulting into unfavorable working environment across the European countries will further expand the industry growth over the forecast period.



Growing investments toward clean air projects to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels will positively impact the air source heat pump market size. In 2016, World bank approved USD 500 million loan for Beijing clean-air projects to help control air pollution in China. Increasing electricity bills owing to rise in operating cost along with increase in fuel prices will further complement the business outlook.



Industrial applications are anticipated to expand over 4% owing to significant rise in the manufacturing facilities across Asia Pacific and Latin America region. Reduced environmental impact and energy consumption are some of the prominent features which will further stimulate the air source heat pump market size.



Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @ https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/2393



Less operating cost and zero expenses requirement for ground works along with its ability to be used as a standalone system will positively influence the air to air heat pump market share. Technological advancement across the industry to meet the rising product demand of customers will further complement the business growth.

Major participants in the air source heat pump market include Johnson Controls, Daikin Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, Carrier, NIBE, Fujitsu General, Bosch Thermotechnik, BDR Thermea Group, Dimplex, Colmac, Panasonic, Climaveneta, A.O. Smith, LG Electronics, Danfoss, and Vaillant.



Report Content

Chapter 1 Methodology

1.1 Methodology

1.2 Market definitions

1.3 Market estimation & forecast parameters

1.4 Abbreviations

1.5 Data Sources

1.5.1 Primary

1.5.2 Secondary

1.5.2.1Paid Sources

1.5.2.2 Public Sources



Browse key industry insights spread across 630 pages with 1130 market data tables & 49 figures & charts from the report @ https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/air-source-heat-pump-market



Chapter 2 Executive Summary

2.1 Air source heat pump market 3600 synopsis, 2013  2024

2.1.1 Business trends

2.1.2 Product trends

2.1.3 Application trends

2.1.4 Region trends
San Jose, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- Animals on whom pathological and biological studies are performed and tested are referred to as animal models. Animal models are utilized on the back of their functional resemblance to human bodies. Various guidelines have been offered that have to be followed when animal models are used for experiments.



Government Intervention in Research Institutions is rising for Developing Standard Protocols related to Animal Models



Essential requirement for animal research for achieving progress in healthcare and medical science is well proven, which in turn has gained support from researchers. Rapid advancements in novel technologies have made animal models easy and constructive. Significant incidence rate of diseases, along with adverse effects of drugs have driven the adoption of animal models for ensuring the safety of humans. In addition, increasing government intervention in research institutes for the development of standard protocols associated with animal models will fuel expansion of the market. Researchers utilize animal models for basic research such as developing new therapeutic strategies to treat human diseases, for drug discovery which includes target identification & validation, drug screening & lead optimization, and toxicity & safety screening, and in preclinical analyses of drug safety & efficacy.

global animal model market



Although animal models have been deemed less effective for human disease research, where only 5% of drugs derived are suitable for humans, the market for animal models is huge. Majority of animals used as models are bred for research purposes, albeit they are obtained from various other sources. For instance, surplus dogs from Austria used in the greyhound racing industry are being used in research labs. However there is a rising concern for animal welfare, which in turn has compelled research organizations to seek measures for reducing number of vertebrate animals in research. Additionally, there is surging requirement for organizations and researchers to encourage open engagement with policy makers and the public regarding promotion of animal research's value and discussion about animal welfare issues.



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Global animal models market has been estimated by Market Insights' new report to exhibit an impressive expansion over the forecast period (2017-2026). Revenues from the market are estimated to exceed US$ 2,000 Mn by 2026-end.



North America to Remain Most Lucrative Market for Animal Model



Significant investments are being made in animal model research in North America, along with relevant policies being reformed by the government to spur the funding plans related to animal model research. Several leading players in North America are expected to make huge investments in biogenic researches in the near future. North America will continue to be the most lucrative market for animal model. Asia-Pacific and Europe are also expected to be lucrative for expansion of animal model market.



Rats are anticipated to remain the dominant species used in animal models, with revenues projected to account for more than one-third market share during the forecast period. Mice will continue to be the second most lucrative species used in animal models. Revenues from use of dogs and pigs as animal models will account for nearly equal market share by 2026-end.



Key Research Findings from FMI's Report on Animal Model Market



Academic and research institutions are expected to remain the largest end users of animal models, trailed by pharmaceutical companies

Animal models will find the largest application in drug discovery/development

Competition Tracking



Key market participants identified by the report include Charles River Laboratories International, Inc., Horizon Discovery Group plc, The Jackson Laboratory, Trans Genic Inc, Taconic Biosciences, Inc., Genoway SA, Eurofins Scientific SE, Crown Bioscience, Inc., Envigo CRS SA, and Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc.



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Harrisburg, NC -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the Asset Performance Management (APM) market and contains qualitative and quantitative insights, historical and forecasted data, competitor and regional analysis from 2014 to 2025. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types and applications.



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The report covers the profiles of major players in the global Asset Performance Management (APM) market such as: GE(US), Schneider Electric(France), ARC Advisory Group(US), Bentley Systems(US), AspenTech(US), ABB(Switzerland), Nexus Global(US), SAP(Germany).



Asset Performance Management (APM) Market, by Types:

Parts Type

System Type



Asset Performance Management (APM) Market, by Applications:

Aerospace & Defense

Automotive & Transportation

Machine Manufacturing

Energy & Utilities

Others



Geographically, this report studies the top producers and consumers, focuses on product capacity, production, value, consumption, market share and growth opportunity in these key regions, covering North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East & Africa.



Several important Key questions answer covered in this Asset Performance Management (APM) market research report:

- What is status of Asset Performance Management (APM) Market? -This Overview Includes Analysis of Scope, Prospect, Growth trend, Sales by regions, manufacturers, types and applications.

- What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?

- What is Asset Performance Management (APM) Market forecasts (2019-2025)?  Considering Sales, Revenue, Growth rate, Price and Trends for Regions, Types and Applications?

- Who Are Asset Performance Management (APM) Market Key Manufacturers?

- What will be the market size and the growth rate in 2025? -What are the key factors driving the global Asset Performance Management (APM) market?

- What are the key outcomes of the distinct analysis of the world Asset Performance Management (APM) Market-Analysis done by considering prime elements?



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The research includes historic data from 2014 to 2018 and forecasts until 2025 which makes the reports an invaluable resource for industry executives, marketing, sales and product managers, consultants, analysts, and other people looking for key industry data in readily accessible documents with clearly presented tables and graphs.



The study comprises a mix of data pertaining to the key restraints, drivers, competitive landscape, regulatory forces, key strategies implemented by the key players, and opportunities, expected to have a profound impact on the scope of growth of the market. A detailed analysis of these factors allows the report to present a reliable forecast regarding the future growth dynamics of the Asset Performance Management (APM) market.



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Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- In an automobile internal combustion engine, the engine bearing is usually a journal or a plain bearing on which the crankshaft rotates. The function of a bearing is to hold the crankshaft in place and to prevent the dislodging of connecting rod from the crankshaft. The engine bearing also plays a vital role in prevention of the force created by the piston and its transmission to the crankshaft, instead using the forces for the conversion of the reciprocating movements into rotation. The bearing is considered as one of the most important components of the engine assembly and its proper functioning is necessary to maintain the overall efficiency of the automobile. Research and development is going on in the field of automotive engine bearings in order to innovate the best suitable bearings for longer life and improved performance of the engine.



The automobile engine parts and components have high wear and tear rate owing to its continuous operation to power the vehicle. The robust operation of the engine bearings is achieved if the material of construction possesses the properties such as high strength (wear resistance, cavitation resistance and load capacity) and softness (conformability, compatibility and embeddability).



Global Automotive Engine Bearings Market: Dynamics



The market for automotive engine bearings exhibits a huge potential to grow, owing to the development and growth in the overall automotive sector. Moreover, in developed nations, high standard of living and rising disposable incomes have enabled consumers to use vehicles, which have all the aftermarket products fitted for the effective use of automobiles. Furthermore, growth in production of automobiles, is in turn, expected to fuel the growth of the automotive engine bearings market over the forecast period. The development in technology and research & development to produce more strong materials, which can sustain more load is also estimated to bolster the automotive engine bearings market growth. The replacement rate of the automotive engine bearings is high and thus automotive aftermarket holds a significant share in the automotive engine bearings market.



Global Automotive Engine Bearings Market: Segmentation



The automotive engine bearings market can be segmented on the basis of product type, sales channel and vehicle type.



By product type, the global automotive engine bearings market can be segmented as:



Ball Bearings



Roller Bearings



Plain Bearings



Others



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By sales channel,the global automotive engine bearings market can be segmented as:



Original Equipment Manufacturers



Independent Suppliers



By vehicle type, the global automotive engine bearings market can be segmented as:



Passenger Cars



Light Commercial Vehicles



Heavy Commercial Vehicles



Two Wheelers



Global Automotive Engine Bearings Market: Regional Outlook



Asia Pacific and North America hold major shares in global automotive engine bearings market owing to the large number of automobiles present in these regions. Consumers tend to equip their vehicles with durable and robust parts so that their vehicle is in good condition and also to avoid breakdown of engines. These conditions are expected to act as catalysts for the growth of the overall automotive engine bearings market over the forecast period. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations, which are the target markets of the automobile manufacturers will contribute significantly to the growth of the overall automotive engine bearings market over the forecast period. The automotive engine bearings market is projected to grow with a noteworthy CAGR owing to the increasing adoption of these systems in motorcycles and bikes globally.



Global Automotive Engine Bearings Market: Market Participants



Examples of some of the market participants in the global Automotive Engine Bearingsmarket identified across the value chain include:



ORS Bearings



Nachi Fujikoshi Corp.



MAHLE Aftermarket Inc.



Minebea Co., Ltd.



SNL Bearings Ltd.



CW Bearing



NSK Ltd. King Engine Bearings, Inc.



RBC Bearings



Svenska Kullagerfabriken AB



Schaeffler AG.



Iljin Bearing Co., Ltd.



RKB Bearings



Jtekt Corporation



Timken Company



Wafangdian Bearing Group Corp



C&U Bearing NTN Corporation



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Tempe, AZ -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- AutohausAZ has been a trusted source for authentic auto replacement parts at discount prices since 1979, and as 2019 gets underway, the company is excited to celebrate its 40th anniversary.



What started as Autohaus Phoenix, a local shop serving a few hundred customers in the nearby area, has grown into one of the largest online auto parts warehouses in the world. In fact, over four decades, AutohausAZ has become a leading provider of the highest quality auto parts at the lowest prices on the market and is widely known for its unrivaled customer service.



AutohausAZ is proud to serve car enthusiasts all over the globe, helping the most discriminating automobile aficionados maintain and repair their luxury vehicles while staying within budget. The company carries original equipment manufacturer parts for a wide variety of popular makes and models, from BMW to Mercedes to Jaguar to Porsche to Volkswagen and much more.



The customer experience is of the utmost importance to the AutohausAZ team, as evidenced by a three-year, or 36-month, warranty for all auto parts purchases and an accommodating returns policy. AutohausAZ also offers free standard shipping (on orders over $48) for customers in the Continental U.S. and discounted international shipping to reach customers everywhere in the world.



"The standards for service time to customers has changed. The biggest challenge in recent years has not been how we treat our customers or price our parts, but rather how to accommodate the immediate needs of our loyal following. Through dropshipping with our second-to-none supply chain, and coordinating the most efficient logistics infrastructure, we're able to deliver Amazonian speed. We continue to improve for our customers whether in Arizona or Angola, because they need us to. We listen well." Stephan Lefebvre, CEO.



AutohausAZ is grateful for its customer base and looks forward to serving the global community of car enthusiasts in the coming years. To experience the vast selection and exceptional service that's made AutohausAZ a staple of the auto replacement parts industry over the past 40 years, contact the company today at 1-800-240-4620.



About AutohausAZ

AutohausAZ has been supplying the highest-quality auto replacement parts since the company's founding in 1979. As one of the largest auto parts warehouses online, AutohausAZ serves customers across the globe with an extensive range of auto parts and excellent customer service. With everyday prices well below retail and wholesale rates, customers always save when shopping at AutohausAZ.



To learn more, please visit https://www.autohausaz.com/.
Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- 'Green Development' is the first priority for large scale industries around the world, with the purpose of reducing their carbon footprint. The aviation industry contributes 2% in the emission of greenhouse gases, which may rise to 3% in coming future. Air transport, being a fast growing transport medium that carries around two billion people and employs 30 million people, plays a crucial role in accounting for carbon emission. It is thus important for the aviation industry to incline towards green development and switch to biofuels.



The aviation biofuel market offers second generation sustainable biofuel as first generation biofuel could not meet cost expectations. The aviation biofuel market offers an alternative for current traditional jet fuel, and it is produced from natural feedstock and plant material, such as algae, jatropha and halophytes without acquiring agricultural land or fresh water resources. Thus, the aviation biofuel market is expected to dominate the aviation market throughout the forecast period, owing to its stability in operational cost and the reduced carbon emission advantage.



Initiatives taken by the European Commission and by aviation industries involved in aviation biofuel production have introduced advancement in aviation biofuel in the European region, in order to achieve consumption of 2 million tonnes of biofuel in the European Civil Aviation sector over the forecast period. With the availability of sustainable raw materials at low prices, it is expected that the supply of aviation biofuel will be accessible across the Europe and on an international platform by 2030. Thus, aviation biofuel is projected to gain remarkable opportunities over the forecast period.



Aviation Biofuel Market: Drivers and Restraints



In the aviation sector, traditional jet fuel is used, which is extracted from the kerosene fraction of crude oil under stringent regulations. Air transportation accounts for more than 10% in energy consumption on a global level. Among gaseous biofuels, electrification, and liquid biofuels, the most advanced substitute for the aviation sector is liquid biofuel, owing to its high specific energy content. With the objective of reduction in CO2 gas emission, the aviation biofuel market is expected to witness robust growth over the forecast period. The rising demand for bio jet fuel, with increasing international trade are expected to drive the aviation market globally, where hydrogenated esters and fatty acids (HEFA) is expected to become a promising alternative to supple ample amount of biofuel in the aviation biofuel market.



European airlines, such as British Airways, Air France and Lufthansa, in co-ordination with Airbus and European aviation biofuel producers have initiated the endorsement of aviation biofuel in Europe. Also, the U.S. Federal government is evolving as an active promoter and buyer of aviation biofuel. An interagency biofuel partnership has been made between the Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Energy in order to avail biofuel for the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.



However, strict regulations to maintain standard specifications in producing aviation biofuel may affect growth of the aviation biofuel market. This challenge can be overcome with innovative technologies over the forecast period.



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Aviation Biofuel Market: Segmentation



The aviation biofuel market can be segmented based on the certified production technology:



Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (HVO)



Fischer-Tropsch (FT)



The aviation biofuel market can be segmented based on the feedstock:



Sugarcane



Cassava



Grasses



Industrial and Municipal Waste



Jatropha



Algae



Sweet Sorghum



Aviation Biofuel Market: Region-Wise Outlook



Based on geography, the aviation biofuel market is expected to remain predominant in the U.S. over the forecast period. Being a fast growing region in the aviation market, the U.S. civil aviation sector is estimated to account for a significant value share in the aviation biofuel market over the forecast period. The strategic expansion of aviation biofuel producing industries, along with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are expected to increase the consumption of biofuel by 1 Bn gal/Yr of sustainable aviation biofuel by 2018. Followed by the U.S., European nations are expected to witness robust growth in the aviation biofuel market in the coming decade.



Oslo city, Norway has become world's first airport to deliver jet biofuel, offering it on-tap to all airlines. Such a trend, of swapping into 'bioport' to supply aviation biofuel is anticipated to boost the aviation biofuel market in this region over the forecast period. Other countries, such as Australia are taking initiatives to study the novel concept of bioport. Developing nations in Asia-Pacific region, such as India and China are expected to gain significant opportunities in the supply chain for providing feedstock to produce aviation biofuel in near future. Also, the target of attaining 7.5 billion gallons per year of aviation biofuel promoted by China is expected to offer significant opportunities for the aviation biofuel market in the coming future.



Aviation Biofuel Market: Market Participants



Examples of some of the market participants in the aviation biofuel market are listed below:



Honeywell International Inc.



Red Rock Biofuels



Targray Technology International Inc.



Vega Biofuels



Argent Energy



GEVO



KFS Biodiesel GmbH & Co. KG



PetroSun, Inc.



Shirke Energy



Archer Daniels Midland Company



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Tokyo, Japan -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- The research report, Core Human Resource (HR) Software provides important information and statistics about the global Core Human Resource Software market. The growth drivers, limitations, and future prospects of this market have been discussed in the report, along with the prevalent trends this market is offering.



Core Human Resource Software encompasses basic processes and information about the employees in an organization. It embraces personal information like birth dates, employee address, and social security numbers. Moreover, it also comprises compliances with government or organizational rules, enrollment in benefits like dental and vision, health, organizational structures, employee portal, self-service and payroll.



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Top Key Vendors:

Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Ceridian HCM, Inc., CoreHR, EmployWise, International Business Machine (IBM) Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Paychex, Inc., Paycom Software, Inc., SAP SE, SumTotal Systems, LLC. (A Skillsoft Company), Ultimate Software, and Workday, Inc.



The information obtained from the Core Human Resource Software like number of employees, job titles of the employees and their salaries are important for effective human resource management. For instance, in a workforce planning, a precise head count is required for projecting requirement of labor in coming years. Core human resource software is often referred to as human resource management systems for managing back end administrative human resource tasks and few elements that are essential to the regular business operation.



Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, and market attractiveness analysis have been used in the research to present a comprehensive study of the market for Core HR Software across the globe. The key participants of the Core HR Software market have been profiled in this report in order to determine the existing hierarchy in the market and to understand the key strategies to help market players, consultants, and stakeholders to expand their businesses.



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Comprehensive analysis of factors that will change the market growth



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Table of Content:

Chapter 1 Industry Overview of Core HR Software

Chapter 2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Core HR Software

Chapter 3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Core HR Software

Chapter 4 Global Core HR Software Overall Market Overview

Chapter 5 Core HR Software Regional Market Analysis

Chapter 6 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Core HR Software

Chapter 7 Development Trend of Analysis of Core HR Software Market

Chapter 8 Core HR Software Marketing Type Analysis

Chapter 9 Conclusion of the Global Core HR Software Market Professional Survey Report 2019

Chapter 10 Continue.
ADDIS ABABA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- An Exhibition showing the Chinese People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) practices and achievements in safeguarding the world peace and advancing common developments was launched on Monday at the African Union (AU) Headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

Organized by Chinese authorities, the five-day exhibition features mainly pictures that depict PLA's commitment to promoting global peace and advancing common developments.

The exhibition showcases to the world that China firmly upholds the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the core role of the UN in international affairs, and actively builds a community of shared future for mankind among others.

In his opening speech, Chen Xufeng, Charge d'Affaires of the Chinese Mission to African Union, reiterated that the Chinese PLA has always been a steadfast force in maintaining world peace, which portrays China's commitment to global peace, common development, and international order.

Emphasizing China's role in safeguarding international peace and security, Mao Naiguo, head of PLA's international communication delegation, said in past decades, China and Africa have worked for common development and embarked upon the distinctive partnership of win-win cooperation.

The Chinese military is also actively participating in international disaster relief and humanitarian aid," Mao added.

According to oganizers, over the years, the PLA has participated in 24 UN peacekeeping missions, 16 of which are in Africa.

Speaking on his part, Admore Kambudzi, acting director for AU Peace and Security, commended China for its multifarious support to Africa.

Commending China for its support to Africa in various areas, Kambudzi said the partnership between China and the AU continues to grow from height to height.

China is proven to be a valuable partner for Africa over the past two decades, Kambudzi said.

Some of the attendees told Xinhua during the opening of the exhibition that China has played a significant role in promoting peace and security on the African continent.

Mamane Souley, Dean of Millitary Attache Association in Addis Ababa, hailed China's contribution to Africa's peace and security as "very good friend" of the continent.

"I would like to congratulate China, we all know that China is a very big friend of Africa. As a military expert, we can witness what China is doing in matter of peace and security, helping our continent bring and maintain peace," he said.

Attending the event, Terje Thomesen, military attache at Norway embassy, told Xinhua that China is very important partner of Africa in peace and security.

Recalling that he had once worked with the Chinese officers at UNMISS (UN Mission in South Sudan), Thomesen said the Chinese officers are professional and good.
Northbrook, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- According to a new market research report "Cloud Computing Market by Service Model (Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS)), Deployment Model (Public, Private, and Hybrid), Organization Size, Workload, Vertical, and Region - Global Forecast to 2023", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global cloud computing market size is expected to grow from USD 272.0 billion in 2018 to USD 623.3 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.0% during the forecast period. Increased automation and agility, need for delivering enhanced customer experience, and increased cost savings and return on investment are major growth factors for the cloud computing market.



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68  Tables

41 - Figures

149 - Pages



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Growth of IaaS to be driven by increasing need of enterprises to shift enterprise workloads to cloud



The key features of IaaS include automated administrative tasks, dynamic scaling, platform virtualization, and network connectivity. The ever-changing business environment and customer demands encourage enterprises to increase their focus on their core business operations. IaaS enables enterprises to leverage their IT infrastructure without paying for the construction of the physical infrastructure. Moreover, it provides flexibility, mobility, easy, and scalable access to applications, and enhanced collaboration to help enterprises focus on their core businesses.



Lower cost and increased security capabilities result in rising popularity of public cloud



The services offered over the public deployment model are either free or offered under a subscription model. The advantages of using the public cloud include simplicity and ease of deployment. Moreover, the initial investment required for the deployment is minimum, and there are no responsibilities involved in managing the infrastructure



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North America to dominate the global cloud computing market in 2018



North America is a mature market in terms of cloud computing services adoption, owing to a large presence of enterprises with advanced IT infrastructure and the availability of technical expertise. BFSI, IT and telecommunications, and government and public sector verticals majorly adopt cloud computing services. As the benefits of adopting cloud computing services are becoming more evident, more companies are expected to implement cloud computing services. The US and Canada are the top countries contributing to the growth of cloud computing market in North America.



The report also studies various growth strategies, such as mergers and acquisitions, partnerships and collaborations, and developments, adopted by the major players to expand their presence in the global cloud computing market. Major vendors in the global cloud computing market include AWS (US), Microsoft (US), Google (US), Alibaba (China), SAP (Germany), IBM (US), Oracle (US), VMware (US), Rackspace (US), Salesforce (US), Adobe (US), Verizon (US), CenturyLink (US), Fujitsu (Japan), and NTT Communications (Japan).



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MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.



Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.



MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledgestore" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- Transparency Market Research delivers the key insights on the container glass market in its published report, titled "Container Glass Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 20182026".



In terms of revenue, the global container glass market is estimated to expand at a CAGR of 5.0% during the forecast period, owing to numerous factors, about which TMR offers thorough insights and forecast in this report.



The large pharmaceutical industry of the U.S. to drive the demand for container glass in the country



The U.S. is not only the largest market for pharmaceuticals and leading in terms of pharmaceutical research & development expenditure, but also one of the leading producer of pharmaceuticals in the world.



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As container glass is highly preferred for packaging of pharmaceuticals, the large pharmaceutical industry of the U.S. is one of the primary drivers of container glass market in the North America region. The research & development on pharmaceuticals has also led to a large variety of container glass materials and packaging solutions.



The alcoholic beverage industry of Africa to propel the container glass market in the MEA region



Sub-Sahara African countries in the MEA region are estimated to account for around 40% of the MEA container glass market in terms of volume in 2018. This is prominently due to the large production of beer and other alcoholic beverages in the region which is further projected to witness a rise during the forecast period.



Moreover, the pharmaceutical industry of GCC countries is rapidly growing. Among individual countries of the MEA region, South Africa is estimated to hold the highest market share, followed by Turkey. The significant presence of packaging companies in South Africa is majorly responsible for its dominance in the MEA region.



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Europe is estimated to be the leader in the global container glass market in terms of value, while the Asia Pacific is estimated to hold the highest share in the global container glass market by volume



The cost of manufacturing of container glass in Europe is relatively high, primarily due to high labour costs in the region. On the other hand, the manufacturing cost of container glass is significantly low in the Asia Pacific region.



The Asia Pacific region accounts for the highest demand for packaging in the world, which lead to the highest demand for container glass in the region in terms of volume. Thus, the Asia Pacific region is dominating the global container glass market in terms of volume, while the economic availability of container glass in the region has resulted into a low container glass market volume share as compared to that of the Europe region.



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Majority of the demand for container glass in the Asia Pacific region is served by the relatively unorganised manufacturing industry established in the region which provides container glass at economic prices to compete with the global container glass market leaders operating in the region and target low out-put end-users.



Europe was the largest exporter of container glass in 2017, as well as the importer, in terms of value. The Asia Pacific was the largest net exporter of container glass, while Latin America is also one of the net exporters of container glass. On the other hand, MEA and North America geographic segments were the net importers of container glass in 2017, and North America was the largest net importer in terms of value.



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Gradually developing demand for beverages attracting leading beverage brands to operate in the Latin America region and create a significant opportunity for the container glass market



Although the overall manufacturing sector of the Latin America region has shown almost no growth in the last few years, the beverage industry in the region is developing at a significant pace. This is due to the increasing demand for packaged beverages, alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic, among the consumers in the emerging countries of the geography.



Globally, leading beverage companies such as Coca-Cola Company are making efforts to expand business in the region, in turn, creating a lucrative opportunity for the container glass market.
Rockville, MD -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- Though the drone technology has been around for a few years, their capabilities are yet to be fully utilized. The use of drone technology has not merely been confined to defense organizations as the benefits of the unmanned aerial vehicle extends beyond this sector. Drones have begun to play a bigger role in framing a holistic picture built from number of data sources which is anticipated to continue in 2019. Unsurprisingly, companies are harnessing drone technology for commercial use across industries.



The use of drones in fight against terrorism and military targets soared ever since the infamous 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Terrorism has plagued the world for decades killing millions of people. Given drones are comparatively cheaper than traditional aircraft and it does not require human cargo on board of the plane which becomes financially viable and negates pilot deaths, countries such as the U.S., U.K, and Israel have embraced drone to combat terrorism.



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Military UseBomb Detection & Surveillance and Air Strikes



Given the efficacious cameras and small size of the drones, it has been effective for bomb detection. The defense sector of any country regularly conducts surveys to ensure the protection of its people, place and protect its sovereignty.



The use of drones for air strikes has been monumental as once, the then President of America, Barack Obama confirmed the use of drones to attack militants and amorphous terrorist outfits in Pakistan's tribal regions.



Non-Military UseShipping & Delivery, Filming & Journalism, Agriculture



Though the use of drones in shipping is at nascent stage, the idea could be revolutionary through reducing human labor and delivery time.



Several movies are being shot with the help of drones giving the film industry a new look. Meanwhile, the drones have leveraged reporters to reach unimaginable places. Besides, aerial footage for live feed has become prevalent.



Drones have found its use in the field of agriculture, especially for large scale farmers who witnessed considerable improvements in crop yields with the use of drones. Aerial monitoring of agriculture lands can offer farmers with actionable insights of crop performance. Moreover, with the help of infrared sensors, farmers can assess the health of the crops.



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These is not the exhaustive list as the uses of drones expand to disaster management, geographic mapping, wildlife monitoring, safety instruction, namely. As such, these offer a lucrative opportunity for players in drone market.



Drone Market: Overview



The report offers a thorough analysis on the drone market with the aid of quantitative and qualitative analysis. The report focuses on the major drivers, trends, opportunities and restraints that have significant influence in the growth of the drone market. In order to provide readers with the holistic picture of the drone, the market has been segmented.



The report includes executive summary which gives insights on market overview and market analysis. The report also includes macro-economic factors, opportunity analysis and global economic outlook. The report further gives delineates value chain analysis and forecast factors, the former offering suppliers' end users, profit margins while the latter gives insights on relevance and impact. The report also incorporates pricing analysis and market volume projections. The report delves into consumer behavior analysis and major distributors' lists and at the same time gives insights on insurance coverage in drone products.



The information in the report is backed up by primary research, incorporating interactions in person, a reliable and authentic views of seasoned analyst, surveys, interviews and actionable insights of experts. Besides, the report is underpinned by secondary research encompassing resourceful database, trade journals and verified paid sources. The report is furthered by absolute dollar opportunity analysis which is an instrumental aspect in determining the growth of the drone market.



Drone Market: Competitive Landscape



The report also offers analysis on competition scenario, including competition dashboard and deep dive and also actionable insights on mergers and acquisitions. The report delineates overview, production footprint, product portfolio, sales footprint, channel footprint and strategy overview.



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Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- There is a continuous thrust on renewable power production across the globe, in the wake of global warming and a sustained need to protect the environment. Regions such as North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are engaged in the production of renewable power through alternate sources such as solar energy. The governments of several countries across the world are encouraging private players to create sustainable, green power through solar and other forms of renewable energy and are also offering tax and other incentives to promote the generation of solar power. This has led to a sudden increase in the number of solar plants and projects globally, thereby driving the production of solar panels. This is set to fuel the demand for dry vacuum pumps, according to a recent market intelligence outlook published by Future Market Insights (FMI).



In this new report on the global dry vacuum pumps market, FMI predicts revenue from the sales of dry vacuum pumps to reach US$ 1,680.8 Mn by the end of 2018 and this is expected to increase to US$ 3,070.1 Mn towards the close of 2028. The global dry vacuum pumps market is slated to register a growth rate of 6.2% during the decade 2018 to 2028.



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Steady and Growing Demand from the Electronics and Semiconductor Sectors to Augur Well for the Dry Vacuum Pumps Market



Growing infrastructural activities across the globe are directly favouring the demand for pumps. The electronics and semiconductor industries have witnessed rapid revenue growth over the last few years, with an increasing focus on the manufacturing of semiconductor and electronic components and equipment. This has led to an increase in demand for dry vacuum pumps from these industries, especially in the production of micro-electronics and chips. Manufacturers of semiconductor and electronic components such as Panasonic, Samsung, Meiko Electronics, Saigon Semiconductor Technology, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. are setting up production plants in developing regions to benefit from cost competitiveness. Local governments across several developing countries such as Brazil, India, and ASEAN countries are focused on increasing foreign direct investments in the manufacturing sector. This is expected to boost sales of dry vacuum pumps in the coming years.



Opportunity Assessment of the Dry Vacuum Pumps Market



Future Market Insights has conducted an extensive opportunity assessment of the global dry vacuum pumps market for the 10 year period 2018 to 2028. One of the key opportunity areas in the global market for dry vacuum pumps lies in the strategic investments being made globally across the pharmaceutical industry. Demand for dry vacuum pumps is steadily increasing from the pharmaceutical industry in developing countries such as Indonesia, India, Brazil, and China. Further, there is a lack of local manufacturers of dry vacuum pumps in developing economies, with the top manufacturers based in Japan, U.S, Germany, and certain other European countries. This scenario presents lucrative growth opportunities for global manufacturers of dry vacuum pumps to establish production facilities in developing economies. Setting up bases in developing regions will help manufacturers benefit from better economies of scale, given the low production and labour costs in developing countries.



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Low-cost Chinese Products and Lack of Skilled Labour in Developing Regions to Restrict Revenue Growth of the Global Dry Vacuum Pumps Market



The global market for dry vacuum pumps is disrupted by several players from China who offer products at very low prices. Owing to the increasing price pressure from these companies, leading global players are striving to offer high-quality dry vacuum pumps that are more reliable and efficient at highly competitive prices. This price sensitive nature of the global market is expected to restrain revenue growth in the coming years. The dry vacuum pumps markets in the Latin America and SEA regions suffer from a very high dependency on imports from other regional markets, owing to a lack to talented and experienced local vacuum technology professionals. This is leading to a stagnancy in revenue growth of the global dry vacuum pumps market to a certain extent.
Tokyo, Japan -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- Expense Reports help users analyze and document the costs incurred by employees during business activity. This is a feature accompanied by multiple software types, but the most common product type containing expense reporting tools is expense management software. Expense reports can be used by a variety of employee types such as salesmen, event coordinators, and IT departments purchasing software. For the most part, these reports are funnelled through corporate hierarchies, eventually reaching accounting departments. These tools analyze overall expenses, identify cost saving opportunities, and control excessive spending.



Major Key Players in Global Expense Report Software Market are: Replicon Software, Zoho Corporation, SAP Concur, Xero, FreshBooks, Rydoo, Streebo, Expensify, Certify, Fyle, Deltek, The Neat Company, Nexonia. The key opportunity areas in the market and the top trends impacting the development of the Expense Report Software market have also been presented through this report. The current growth and development patterns of this market have also been encapsulated in this study. The competitive background section of the report covers the key vendors and throws light on the strategies being adopted by them for better penetration into the market.



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The report takes a close and analytical look at the various companies that strive for a higher share of the global Expense Report Software market. Data on the leading and fastest-growing segments along with what drives them has been given. This report implements a balanced mix of primary and secondary research methodologies for its analysis. The market is segmented on the basis of key criteria. For this purpose, a section dedicated to company profiles has been included in the report.



A major chunk of the report talks about the technologies that are and will influence the growth of the Expense Report Software market. Forecasts for these technology sectors are presented in the report. Integration is the key to advancement in technology in the global Expense Report Software market. Companies that offers the latest integrated technologies at an affordable cost are expected to thrive in the Expense Report Software market. The dominating technologies in the Expense Report Software market along with the upcoming technologies that are expected to revolutionize the market are explained in the report



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North America, Latin America, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Europe have been examined to study the global Expense Report Software market. Additionally, it gives a detailed analysis of most demanding countries in terms of production and consumption. The global Expense Report Software market regions are holding the highest revenue generation presently. Key industries are also analyzed to get business profiles of leading key players.



Further, the key geographical segments of the global Expense Report Software market have been deliberated in the research study. The key factors that are enhancing the growth of the key segments have been offered in the study. A thorough study of the competitive landscape of the global Expense Report Software market have been given, presenting insights into the company profiles, financial status, recent developments, mergers and acquisitions, and the SWOT analysis. This research will give a clear idea to the readers about the overall market scenario to further decide on this market project.



Table of Contents:



Global Expense Report Software Market Research Report

Expense Report Software Market Overview

Global Economic Impact

Competition by Manufacturers

Production, Revenue (Value) by Region

Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions

Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type

Analysis by Application

Manufacturing Cost Analysis

Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers

Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders

Market Effect Factors Analysis

Market Forecast

Appendix



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- Globalization of markets or free trade resulted in to increased global population mobilization and communication through mail market or postal market. Today many countries liberalized their postal market E.g., Sweden, Estonia. In this scenario the packaging for ecommerce and postal or mail market is increasing its speed of growth. Packaging of letters and lightweight parcels in ecommerce and mail market, envelopes are extensively used. Security envelopes are a category of envelopes which are used for mailing confidential lightweight packages of individuals, banks & financial organizations, business, government, defense, crime investigation & secret agencies and other organizations. Security envelopes market is playing the key role in supporting efficient and safe delivery of lightweight ecommerce and postal packages.



Security envelopes are made of plastic, paper and other materials. They come with many key features such as water proof, tear proof, opaque to maintain secrecy of documents inside, writable with ball point or permanent marker pen, 100% recyclable, can be serially numbered with barcode for record keeping and termite proof. They are available in wide variety of colors, material mix, shape and designs. Majorly polypropylene is used as raw material in production of security envelopes, because of its tamper evident and water proof characteristics. An attempt to tamper this type of envelope leaves irreversible mark or void message on envelope. Woven line polypropylene tamper evident envelopes, self-seal envelopes with barcodes and unique identification numbers, self-seal bubble envelopes, self-seal tear proof business envelopes, poly net paper envelopes with cloth coating are extensively used security envelopes in ecommerce and mail market.



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Security Envelopes: Market Dynamics



Growing threats of safety, tampering, pilferage and other concerns in mail and ecommerce market poses the need for high safety security envelopes. Free trade, growth in supply chain and logistics and ecommerce sector stimulating the growth of security envelopes market. Because of these above mentioned economic factors, global population mobilization is rising exponentially. Small and medium scale businesses are expanding their footprint globally to capture the markets. These all factors influencing the growth of communication between individuals, customer to business and business to business as never before. Growth in direct marketing of goods is largely influencing the growth of security envelopes market. Security envelopes are playing a pivotal role in collecting and transferring crime scene evidences by crime investigation authorities. New developments are happening in technology, innovations and explorations of new raw material, packaging design of envelopes.



Postal or mail market is not the only available channel of communication, there are more advanced communication channels like media and TV, internet, telephone and advertising. These other channels are posing a tough competition for growth of mail market. Availability of advanced and sophisticated safety technologies in internet and telecom sector hampering the growth of mail market hence the growth of security envelope market too. Consumer to consumer mail market is declining but business to customer and business to business mail or postal market is growing. Some countries have strict postal regulations on size, shape, material and distribution of mails. These regulations are a threat for the growth of security envelopes market. Growing environment safety concern and government regulations influences manufacturers to use recyclable materials. Varying government regulations across different countries pose a difficult challenge to manufacturers.



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Security Envelopes: Market Segmentation



The security envelopes market is segmented on the basis of material and application. On the basis of material type, the global securities envelopes market is segmented into plastic, paper and others. On the basis of application, the global security envelopes market is segmented into government and defense, crime investigation and secret agencies, financial services, e-commerce and others. Demand for security envelopes from application segments such as financial services and ecommerce is anticipated to offer lucrative opportunities to the global securities envelopes market growth.



Security Envelopes Market: Regional outlook



Security envelopes market has been segmented on the basis of region into North America, Latin America Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Japan. Matured logistics, ecommerce, industrial sectors and population mobilization drives the security envelopes demand growth in North America, Japan, Eastern and Western Europe. APEJ and South America are expected to represent a moderate demand for security envelopes. The reason for this is, in some countries of this region, the postal or mail market is not yet matured and logistics and ecommerce sector is still in growth phase. Developing and developed countries in APEJ and South America are driving the regional demand for security envelopes, because of their rapid growth in logistics, ecommerce and industrial growth.



Security Envelopes Market: Key players



Some of the players in the global Security Envelopes market are WestRock Company, Blake Envelopes Company, PAC National, Inc. Dynaflex Private Limited, Plaslope (PTY) Ltd., Dhwani Polyprints Pvt. Ltd., Ethical Polypaper Pvt. Ltd., JohnPac, Inc., and International Plastics, Inc.



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MRR.BIZ has been compiled in-depth market research data in the report after exhaustive primary and secondary research. Our team of able, experienced in-house analysts has collated the information through personal interviews and study of industry databases, journals, and reputable paid sources.



The report provides the following information:



- Tailwinds and headwinds molding the market's trajectory

- Market segments based on products, technology, and applications

- Prospects of each segment

- Overall current and possible future size of the market

- Growth pace of the market

- Competitive landscape and key players' strategies



The main aim of the report is to:



- Enable key stakeholder's in the market bet right on it

- Understand the opportunities and pitfalls awaiting them

- Assess the overall growth scope in the near term

- Strategize effectively with respect to production and distribution



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Rockville, MD -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- Steel tubes and steel pipes are among the most commonly used components in a wide range of industrial sectors, such as construction, mining, oil & gas, and manufacturing industries. Steel tubes are used in various industrial processes, such as carrying high temperature fluids and gases, which is triggering its demand. Steel tube manufacturers are adopting advanced processes to improve performance characteristics of steel tubes and preventing them from oxidation and rusting.



Steel Tubes Market Dynamics



Rapidly Expanding Steel Industry Provides an Impetus to the Steel Tubes Market Growth



According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the global steel industry has recovered fast since 2015 as steel consumption and production across the world. The world crude steel production increased by 5.2% in 2017, which reflects in the availability of raw materials in the steel tubes market. Incremental growth prospects of the world steel market is expected to augur well for the growth of the steel tubes market in the upcoming years.



Incremental Growth of the End-user Industries Trigger Demand for Steel Tubes



Steel tubes find copious applications in a wide range of industrial verticals owing to its extraordinary operational features, such as strength and longevity. The oil & gas industry is likely to witness substantial growth across the world with the increasing energy needs, and this is likely to remain one of the primary drivers for the growth of the steel tubes market. Furthermore, industrial infrastructures are undergoing developments, which is expected to boost demand for steel tubes across the world. Thereby, rapidly expanding industrial sectors worldwide is expected to boost demand for steel tubes in the upcoming years.



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Oligopolistic Competition in the Steel Tubes Market Creates a Barrier to Entry for Small Market Players



The extraordinarily lucrative growth opportunities in the steel tubes market have attracted a mounting number of players to enter the market. However, the tier I manufacturers in the steel tubes market have established a stronger presence across the globe, thereby, holding a large revenue share in the steel tubes market. In addition, a majority of leading players are also adopting inorganic growth strategies to move up in the competition in the steel tubes market, which further creates challenges for smaller players to gain a competitive edge in the market.



Availability of Cheaper Alternatives to Steel May Impede the Steel Tubes Market Growth



Despite the increased use of steel tubes in residential as well as industrial sectors, end-users are constantly looking for cheaper and more efficient alternatives for steel tubes. Growing availability of iron and plastic is leading to the emergence of iron and plastic tubes in the end-user industries, which are much cheaper than steel tubes. Furthermore, modern designs and characteristics of plastic tubes provide more efficiency in several end-use applications. This may lead to replacing steel tubes with plastic or iron tubes, thereby impeding growth of the steel tubes market in the upcoming years.



Steel Tubes Market: Competitive Landscape



In order to improve the finishing and other qualitative features of their steel tubes, an American steel production company  Nucor Corporation recently purchased a minority equity position in the parent of Trion Coatings to benefit from its environmentally friendly chrome plating technology. By incorporating the chrome plating technology, the company aims to improve the finishing of steel products, including steel tubes, without harming the environment.



A Japanese manufacturer in the steel tubes market  Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation (NSSMC) recently announced that it has agreed to integrate and reorganize its steel pipe & steel tube business with other Japanese manufacturers such as Nisshin Steel Co., Ltd., Nippon Steel & Sumikin Stainless Steel Pipe Co., Ltd. (NSSP), Nisshin Stainless Steel Tubing Co., Ltd., and Nippon Steel & Sumikin Pipe Co., Ltd. (NSPC).



Arcelor Mittal, a Luxemburg-based steel company, recently announced that it has completed the acquisition of Ilva S.p.A. ('Ilva'), Italian steelworks company to add to its quality assets and expand its presence in the European steel tubes market.



The Fact.MR report profiles leading players in the steel tubes market to analyze competitive environment in the market. The report provides critical information about the each market player to help readers to understand the recent developments in the steel tubes market.



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The key steel tubes market players featured in the report are



Borusan Mannesmann Boru Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S.

NSSMC

JFE steel

Nucor Corporation

Arcelor Mittal

Jindal SAW Ltd.

American SpiralWeld Pipe Company, LLC

Gerdau

POSCO

Tata Steel

Ansteel

Bao Pipes and Tubes

Liaoyang Steel Tube Co., Ltd

Shagang Group

Hebei Iron and steel

United States Steel (USSC)

AK Pipes and Tubes

Steel Tubes Market: Regional Outlook



The burgeoning growth of the steel industry worldwide is providing a boost to growth of the steel tubes market. North America and Europe are likely to exhibit promising growth opportunities for stakeholders in the steel tubes market on account of the significant rise in steel production in these regions. Furthermore, recent developments in the end-use industrial sectors in developing countries in the Asia Pacific region is expected to trigger demand for steel tubes in the region. In addition, favorable regulatory framework is welcoming hefty investments by manufacturers in the steel tubes market in the Asia Pacific region.



Steel tubes market research report offers detailed analysis of the market as well as consists of thoughtful facts and insights along with historical data, which holds market data that is industry-evaluated and statistically backed up. The report comprises of projections that are generated with the help of suitable methodologies and a set of hypotheses. In addition, the research report delivers information and study based on market classifications such as industry, end-use and region.



Extensive Analysis of Steel Tubes Market Research Report Covers:



Segmentation of steel tubes market

Dynamics of steel tubes market

Global market sizing

Demand and sale

Modern trends and challenges

Competitors and related competition

Technological advances

Value chain

Geographical Data Analysis of Steel Tubes Market Research Report is Based On:



North America Steel Tubes Market including (Canada and U.S.)

Latin America Steel Tubes Market including (Brazil and Mexico)

Eastern Europe Steel Tubes Market including (Russia and Poland)

Western Europe Steel Tubes Market including (Spain, U.K., France, Italy and Germany)

Asia Pacific Steel Tubes Market including (New Zealand, Australia, ASEAN, India and China)

Japan Steel Tubes Market

Middle East and Africa Steel Tubes Market including (North Africa, South Africa and GCC Countries)

Steel tubes market research report has been incorporated with first-hand information along with comprehensive analysis based on quality and quantity with the help of industry analysts. Inputs from participants and experts in the industry has also been integrated in the global report. Governing, micro and macro-economic aspects relating to parent market has been identified in the global report. Market attractiveness based on regions and segments along with qualitative impacts has also been included in the steel tubes market research report.



Notable Topics in Steel Tubes Market Research Report Includes:



Outlook on parent market

Shifting market factors in industry

Wide-ranging market segmentation

Forecasted, on-going and past market sizing in terms of value and volume

Current industry improvements and trends

Competitive landscape

Product offerings and strategic plans of key players

Regions and segments indicating promising growth

Neutral viewpoint on the global market performance

Lucrative information for global market participants for business expansion



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Sellbyville, DE -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- North America leads the global smart bullets market due to increasing focus of the U.S. administration towards the integration of technologically improved weapons into its defense list. Moreover, the U.S. government is even a crucial customer in North America as well on a global level.



Asia Pacific is expected to witness fastest industry growth by 2024 owing to increase in investments by various countries for advanced weaponry. Additionally, continuous conflicts in countries including China, India, Ukraine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan is another major factor positively impacting the demand as well as the growth of the global smart bullets market.



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Smart Bullets Market size is anticipated to witness a surge in demand due to growing security concerns resulted by the rise in terrorist organizations and events. In the recent years, arms race has been observed among several countries including India, Pakistan and China that is further projected to boost industry demand.



Company profiled in this report based on Business overview, Financial data, Product landscape, Strategic outlook & SWOT analysis:

- Raytheon

- Lockheed Martin

- Dassault Aviation

- BAE Systems

- Taser International

- General Dynamics

- Northrop Grumman

- Textron Defense Systems

- Thales Group

- Harris Corporation

- Boeing Corporation



Smart weapons are missiles and bombs that are known for their accuracy and are directed by lasers and other prominent means. Given the need of these weapons in warfare, product demand is anticipated to increase over the forecast period. In addition, high demand for the weapons is attributable to the competitive advantages providing accurate, reliable first short and quick hit capability coupled with overall reduction in the logistics carrying cost.



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As per Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the U.S., China, India, Saudi Arabia and Russia are the key countries having maximum expenditure in the overall smart bullets market. In 2017, the U.S. government boosted their defense system by spending over USD 611.2 billion, in order to help the law enforcement to keep the terrorists out of the country. Even the Indian government announced to increase their defense budget over 6.2%. This budget comprises the purchase of new weapons, aircrafts, equipment, naval warships and army vehicles.



Increasing demand for powerful striking power and efficient defense system along with enhanced efficiency of weapon navigation technologies will foster product penetration. Moreover, stringent government protocols aimed at reducing global arms transfer and to maintaining peace are key driving factors for the global smart bullets market growth.



Key restraint associated with smart bullets market is the soaring prices of advanced weapons. However, technological advancement along with growing product demand is projected to reduce the cost of smart weaponries during the forecast timeframe.



On the basis of product types, self-guided products are increasing becoming well recognized in the global defense industry. Superior features including tracking the target path, changes in the speed, automatic data transfer are key factors supporting product penetration. Furthermore, the product come with various advantages including improved fatality with aim point range. They are even active against moving targets. Thus, boosting the overall smart bullets market growth.



Based on the end user, airborne is the fastest growing segment in the overall smart bullets market amongst other classifications including land and naval defense. This steady growth of the segment is credited to the emergence of latest weaponry technologies including Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAVs). The technology is becoming an innovative and low-cost alternative to conventional airborne attack platforms, fueling the expansion of global smart bullets market.



Military agencies and missile suppliers are heavily investing in improving the capabilities of small bombs that are fired from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) owing to shifting conventional approaches for carrying out air-to-surface missile attacks. Development of small missiles that is supported by the miniaturization of improved guidance technology will encourage several organizations to invest in the procurement of these missiles. Thereby, subsequently fueling the growth of the smart bullets market size.



Global smart bullets market is a highly consolidated market as majority of the top players held together over 60% of the market share in 2016. Several players are gradually focusing on product innovation and technological upgradation in the current offerings to enhance their business foothold. High competition within the industry is expected to strengthen further over the forecast timeframe.



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Some of the dominating smart bullets market players include Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Dassault Aviation, BAE Systems, Taser International and General Dynamics. Other prominent players are Northrop Grumman, Textron Defense Systems, Thales Group, Harris Corporation and Boeing Corporation.



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Sellbyville, DE -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- UK fuel cell market is set to witness growth owing to growing investment toward development of hydrogen infrastructure along with favourable government regulations to reduce carbon emissions. Growing demand for development and deployment of the renewable energy technologies will further complement the business landscape. The Government of UK announced to inaugurate 1,150 hydrogen refuelling station by 2030.



Fuel Cell Market is set to exceed USD 6 billion by 2024.Government measures to promote the development of sustainable technologies coupled with escalating demand for FCEV's will drive the industry growth. Growing spending by government organizations and private institutions including Credit Suisse, DOE and DAG Ventures toward innovation and technological advancement will further complement the industry landscape. In 2015, Credit Suisse invested USD 130 million for development of SOFC technology in the U.S.



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Increasing demand for space heating across residential and commercial sector along with growing investment toward development of hydrogen refuelling station will stimulate the fuel cell industry. Growing installation of portable charging sources on account of increasing recreation activities will positively impact the business outlook. In 2017, government of UK funded over USD 30 million to promote the development of hydrogen infrastructure and vehicle.



Company profiled in this report based on Business overview, Financial data, Product landscape, Strategic outlook & SWOT analysis:



- Hydrogenics Corporation

- Ballard Power Systems, Inc.

- Nedstack Fuel Cell Technology

- Bloom Energy

- Panasonic

- Plug Power

- SFC Energy AG

- Toshiba

- Doosan Fuel Cell America

- Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd.

- Arcola Energy

- Ceres Power Holding

- Nuvera Fuel Cells

- Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies

- HES Energy Systems

- AFC Energy PLC

- Fuel Cell Energy

- Fuji Electric



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Japan fuel cell market is predicted to exceed 70 MW by 2024. Increasing government expenditure toward development of hydrogen infrastructure coupled with extensive research and development projects will fuel the business growth. Rising energy security concern coupled with favourable measures to promote the adoption of renewable energy technologies will further complement the industry outlook.



Fuel cell market from transport segment is set to witness growth owing to its ongoing deployment in commercial vehicles, UAVs and e- bikes. Increasing cell demand from two & three wheelers, trams, small boats, FCEV's, light vehicles, ferries, goods handling vehicles and forklift trucks will further complement the business growth. In 2016, the FCV sales growth increase from 400 units in 2015 to 5000 units.



SOFC fuel cell market share is predicted to witness growth owing to growing demand for fuel cell across large and small stationary power generation systems. Ability to possess over 60% efficiency and operate at high temperate ranges from 8000C to 1,0000C over other alternates make its adoption preferable over other alternates. Cost effectiveness, low emissions, stability, fuel flexibility and high efficiency are some of key parameters which will impede the fuel cell market.



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Major participants across fuel cell market includes Hydrogenics Corporation, Horizon, FuelCell Energy, Toshiba, UTC Power, Panasonic, Ceres Power, Plug Power, AFC Energy, Doosan, SFC, Arcola, Bloom Energy and Ballard. The industry has witnessed several M&A to expand its regional presence.



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Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.
MOSCOW, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Black Sea Fleet expects to get 13 combat ships this year, some of which will be equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, TASS news agency quoted senior Russian military officials as saying Monday.

The list will include small missile ships, patrol ships and the most advanced mine-sweeping ship, the report quoted Black Sea Fleet Commander Alexander Moiseyev as saying.

The new vessels are part of a fleet renewal program that started in 2014. By the year 2020, 70 percent of modern warships, aircraft and land and coastal defense troops' armament would have been modernized, he added.

TASS quoted the commander of Russia's Southern Military District, Alexander Dvornikov, as saying that the fleet will shortly receive a patrol ship, a high-speed transport assault boat, and a sea tug, all of which are currently undergoing tests.

The Black Sea Fleet is a large operational strategic command of the Russian Navy, operating in the Mediterranean, Black and Azov Seas.

Its official primary headquarters and facilities are located in the city of Sevastopol in Crimea, while the remainder of the fleet's facilities are based in various locations on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Northbrook, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- According to a new market research report "Law Enforcement Software Market by Component, Solution (Computer-Aided Dispatch, Case Management, and Incident Response), Service (Implementation, Consulting, and Training and Support), Deployment Type, and Region - Global Forecast to 2023", published by MarketsandMarkets, the law enforcement software market size is expected to grow from USD 11.64 billion in 2018 to USD 18.13 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.3% during the forecast period. An increased focus on community-oriented policing and increasing adoption of social media platforms for law enforcement are the factors driving the growth of law enforcement software market.



The major objective of this report is to define, describe, and forecast the law enforcement software market by component, solution, service, deployment type, organization size, and region. The report provides detailed information related to the major factors (drivers, restraints, opportunities, and industry-specific challenges), influencing the market growth.



Browse and in-depth TOC on "Law Enforcement Software Market"

48  Tables

38 - Figures

133 - Pages



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Solutions segment to account for the largest market size during the forecast period



Law enforcement software solutions help agencies to identify, prevent, respond, and prepare for criminal incidents. Law enforcement solutions enable law enforcement organizations to manage crucial information, such as crime database and records, for crime analysis. Through these technologically advanced law enforcement solutions, law enforcers can access the information anytime and from anywhere. Moreover, they help improve the operational performance of law enforcement agencies by automating the overall investigation processes and reducing the data entry efforts through workflow automation. They allow law enforcers to upload criminal data and exchange the information with other departments or agencies digitally. Modern law enforcement software solutions are integrated with safety devices and advanced technologies, which help law enforcement agencies to manage criminal activities or emergencies in real-time based on the evidence captured by digital devices, such as surveillance cameras and location tracking devices.



On-premises deployment type to account for a larger market size during the forecast period



On-premises solutions are delivered on a one-time license fee, along with a service agreement. As this type of deployment requires huge infrastructure and a personal data center, only those organizations that can afford the costs usually deploy on-premises solutions. Usually, large enterprises prefer the on-premises deployment type, due to the availability of adequate capital and good infrastructure. Furthermore, large enterprises can expand their IT resources for the management of on-premises solutions. The on-premises deployment type helps in securing the sensitive data of the organizations and provides real-time access to documents.



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North America to account for the largest market size during the forecast period



North America is expected to be the largest contributor to the law enforcement software market in terms of regional revenue. This region comprises developed countries: the US and Canada. North America is an early adopter and a host to innovative initiatives for advanced security solutions and practices. Many agencies are adopting various law enforcement solutions in North America, due to an increased focus on public safety.



Major vendors in the law enforcement software market include IBM (US), Accenture (Ireland), Oracle (US), Motorola Solutions (US), Axon (US), CyberTech (India), Nuance Communications (US), Esri (US), Palantir Technologies (US), eFORCE Software (US), Wynyard Group (US), DFLABS (Italy), ARMS (US), PTS Solutions (US), Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure (US), CODY Systems (US), Column Technologies (US), Cyrun (US), Incident Response Technologies (US), Numerica Corporation (US), Diverse Computing (US), Omnigo Software (US), Alert Public Safety Solutions (US), CAPERS (US), and BlueLine Grid (US).



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MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.



Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.



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London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- The new research from Ameco Research on Global LiDAR Market Report for 2023 intends to offer target audience with the fresh outlook on market and fill in the knowledge gaps with the help of processed information and opinions from industry experts. The information in the research report is well-processed and a report is accumulated by industry professionals and seasoned experts in the field to ensure of the quality of research.



The research is backed by extensive and in-depth secondary research which involves reference to various statistical databases, national government documents, relevant patent and regulatory databases, news articles, press releases, company annual reports, webcasts, financial reports, and a number of internal and external proprietary databases. This estimated data is cross-checked with industry experts from various leading companies in the market. After the entire authentication process, these reports are shared with subject matter experts (SMEs) for adding further value and to gain their insightful opinion on the research. With such robust process of data extraction, verification, and finalization, we firmly endorse the quality of our research. With such extensive and in-depth research and comprehensive coverage of information, it is always a possibility of clients finding their desired information in the report with enclosure of key components and valuable statistics in all regards.



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Light detection and ranging (LiDAR), is a remote sensing method that utilizes laser light in the form of a pulse to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth. These light pulses are combined with other data recorded by the airborne system and develop a precise, three-dimensional mapping of the surface of the earth and analysis the surface characteristics. LiDAR typically uses a low-power, eye-safe, pulsing laser working in conjunction with a camera.



The global LiDAR market is expected to reach approximately USD 4158.8 million by 2023, registering a CAGR of 14.14% during the forecast period.



The market has been divided into various segments based on product type, technology, component, functional areas, and region.

By product type, the market has been segmented into airborne LiDAR, terrestrial LiDAR, and others. In 2017, airborne LiDAR was the leading segment in the LiDAR market, as they are able to cover a large geographical area and produce accurate data in a short span; the terrestrial LiDAR segment is expected to be the fastest growing one. Terrestrial LiDAR systems can gather significant amounts of data with highly accurate points, which enables the precise identification of objects. The others segment includes Topographic LiDAR, Bathymetric LiDAR, mobile, and static LiDAR. These LiDAR are forms of Airborne and Terrestrial segment. These LiDAR systems have a number of functions, for instance, Topographic LIDAR systems are used to extract surface models for applications such as forestry, hydrology, geomorphology, urban planning, landscape ecology, and coastal engineering. The bathymetric LiDAR systems are used to gather elevated and water depth simultaneously, which offers an airborne LiDAR survey of the land-water interface.



By technology, the market has been classified into 1D, 2D, and 3D LiDAR sensors. 1 Dimensional (1D) LiDAR sensors are rarely utilized in the LiDAR sensors market and are used at a smaller scale and are used in processing techniques for preprocessing waveforms obtained in airborne laser bathymetry. 2D LiDAR sensors are generally used to operate and perform detection and ranging tasks on land surfaces. 2D LiDAR sensors are also operated with consistent reliability and accuracy in terms of the angle of inclination. 3D LiDAR sensors are widely used in the automotive sector, ideally for collision protection or the scanning of objects in self-driven vehicles.



By component, the market has been divided into laser scanners, navigation & positioning systems, and others. These components enable the user to measure the range of a target with the help of a laser beam. The LiDAR system is one of the remote sensing methods used to map structure including vegetation height, density, and other characteristics across an area. LiDAR uses shorter wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly in the ultraviolet, visible, or near-infrared range and provide accurate results, whereas, its traditional counterpart, radar, uses electromagnetic waves to detect the location and distance of an object.

By functional areas, the market has been divided into engineering, corridor mapping, environment, ADAS & driverless car, urban planning, cartography, and meteorology. In automotive applications, LiDAR systems are installed in an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) and driverless cars. Other applications of these systems include corridor mapping and urban planning.



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Key Players



The key players of LIDAR Market include Trimble Inc. (US), Faro Technologies Inc. (US), Teledyne Technologies, Inc. (US), Hexagon AB(Sweden), Beike Tianhui Technology Co., Ltd (China), Quantum Spatial (US), RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems GmbH (Austria), YellowScan (France) and Geokno India Pvt. Ltd (India).



Global LIDAR Market Analysis & Forecast, from 2017 to 2023



- To provide a detailed analysis of the market structure along with a forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the LIDAR market

- To provide insights into the factors affecting market growth

- To analyze the LIDAR market based on Porter's five force analysis

- To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countriesNorth America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the rest of the world

- To provide country-level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future perspective

- To provide country-level analysis of the market for a segment on the basis of product type, technology, component, functional areas, and region

- To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market

- To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the LIDAR market

Target Audience

- Raw Material and Manufacturing Equipment Suppliers

- Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)

- ODMs and OEMs for Semiconductor Technology Equipment

- Research Organizations

- Organizations, Forums, Alliances, and Associations Based on Technology Standards

- Technology Investors

- Governments, Financial Institutions, and Investment Communities



Key Findings



- The global LIDAR market is expected to reach USD 4158.8 million by 2023.

- By product type, the airborne LiDAR segment dominated the market, generating the highest revenue of USD 722.7 million in 2017, and is expected to grow at 11.76% CAGR during the forecast period. Additionally, the terrestrial LiDAR market segment was valued with USD 701.0 million in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 1693.4 million with 15.99% CAGR by 2023.

- By technology, the 2D segment dominated the market, generating the highest revenue of USD 761.4 million in 2017 and is expected to grow at a significantly, exhibiting a 14.63% CAGR.

- By component, the laser scanner segment dominated the Global LiDAR market with a market share of 38% in 2017 and is expected to grow at USD 1,678.1 million with CAGR of 15.06% from 2018 to 2023. Additionally, the navigation & positioning market segment was valued at USD 682.9 million in 2017 and is anticipated to reach the market value USD 1,514.9 million with CAGR of 14.31% by 2023.

- By functional areas, the corridor mapping segment is dominated Global LiDAR market, with a market share of 24% in 2017, and is expected to grow at USD 973.7 million with CAGR of 13.43% from 2018 to 2023. Additionally, the ADAS & driverless segment was valued at USD 300.5 million in 2017 and is anticipated to reach the market value USD 764.6 million with CAGR of 16.98% by 2023.

- Geographically, North America has been projected to hold the largest market share in the global LiDAR Market, followed by Asia-Pacific.



Regional and Country Analysis of LIDAR Market Estimation and Forecast



Geographically, North America is dominating the LiDAR market due to the rising demand for 3D imaging technology in the US, Canada, and Mexico for research and development purposes. Also, the increased adoption of LiDAR in government agencies is further expected to fuel market growth. Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing market, accounting for a 17.06% share of the overall market where major contribution is witnessed from China, Japan, and South Korea which are the largest electronics manufacturing economies.



The report on the global LiDAR Market also covers the following country-level analysis:



- North America

o US

o Canada

o Mexico



- Europe

o Germany

o UK

o France

o Rest of Europe



- Asia-Pacific

o China

o Japan

o South Korea

o Taiwan

o India

o Rest of Asia-Pacific



- Rest of the World

o Latin America

o Middle East & Africa



Available customization:



With the given market information, Ameco research offers customization's in line with the company's specific wishes. The following customization choices unit of measurement accessible for the report:

Regional and country-level analysis of the Global LiDAR Market, by end-use.

Detailed analysis and profiles of additional market players.



Table of Contents



Global LiDAR Market Research Report, by Product-Type, by Technology, by Component, by Functional Areas, and Region - Forecast to 2023



1 Executive Summary



2 Market Introduction

2.1 Definition

2.2 Scope of the Study

2.3 List of Assumptions

2.4 Market Structure



3 Market Insights



4 Research Methodology

4.1 Research Process

4.2 Primary Research

4.3 Secondary Research

4.4 Market Size Estimation

4.5 Forecast Model



5 Market Dynamics

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Drivers

5.2.1 Rising demand for the 3D imaging technology

5.2.2 Increased adoption of LiDAR in government agencies

5.2.3 Drivers Impact Analysis

5.3 Restraints

5.3.1 High Installation costs for LiDAR systems

5.3.2 Restraints Impact Analysis

5.3.3 Opportunity

5.3.3.1 Integrating of Solid-State LiDAR to Self-Driving Cars



6 Market Factor Analysis

6.1 Value Chain Analysis

6.1.1 Component Manufacturer

6.1.2 System integrators & Assemblers

6.1.3 End-users

6.2 Porters Five Forces Model

6.2.1 Threat of New Entrants

6.2.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers

6.2.3 Bargaining Power of Buyers

6.2.4 Threat of Substitutes

6.2.5 Intensity of Rivalry



7 Global LiDAR Market, by Product-type

7.1 Overview

7.1.1 Airborne LiDAR

7.1.2 Terrestrial LiDAR

7.1.3 Others



8 Global LiDAR Market, by Technology

8.1 Overview

8.1.1 1D

8.1.2 2D

8.1.3 3D



9 Global LiDAR Market, by Component

9.1 Overview

9.1.1 Laser Scanner

9.1.2 Navigation & Positioning Systems

9.1.3 Other Component



10 Global LiDAR Market, by Functional Areas

10.1 Overview

10.1.1 Engineering

10.1.2 Corridor Mapping

10.1.3 Environment

10.1.4 ADAS & Driverless Car

10.1.5 Urban Planning

10.1.6 Cartography

10.1.7 Meteorology



11 Global LiDAR Market, by Region

11.1 Introduction

11.2 North America

11.2.1 US

11.2.2 Canada

11.2.3 Mexico

11.3 Europe

11.3.1 Germany

11.3.2 UK

11.3.3 France

11.3.4 Rest of Europe

11.4 Asia Pacific

11.4.1 China

11.4.2 Japan

11.4.3 India

11.4.4 Rest of Asia Pacific

11.5 Rest of the World

11.5.1 Middle East & Africa

11.5.2 Latin America



12 Competitive Landscape

12.1 Competitive Landscape



13 Company Profiles

13.1 Trimble Inc.

13.1.1 Company Overview

13.1.2 Financial Performance

13.1.3 Product Offerings

13.1.4 Key Developments

13.1.5 SWOT Analysis

13.1.6 Key Strategy

13.2 Faro Technologies Inc.

13.2.1 Company Overview

13.2.2 Financial Performance

13.2.3 Products/Services/Solutions Offerings

13.2.4 Key Developments

13.2.5 SWOT Analysis

13.2.6 Key Strategy

13.3 Teledyne Technologies, Inc (Teledyne Optech Incorporated)

13.3.1 Company Overview

13.3.2 Financial Performance

13.3.3 Products/Services/Solutions Offerings

13.3.4 Key Developments

13.3.5 SWOT Analysis

13.3.6 Key Strategy

13.4 Hexagon AB (Leica Geosystems)

13.4.1 Company Overview

13.4.2 Financial Performance

13.4.3 Products/Services/Solutions Offerings

13.4.4 Key Developments

13.4.5 SWOT Analysis

13.4.6 Key Strategy

13.5 Beike Tianhui Technology Co., Ltd (Beijing Surestar Technology Co. Ltd)

13.5.1 Company Overview

13.5.2 Products/Services/Solutions Offerings

13.5.3 Key Developments

13.6 Quantum Spatial

13.6.1 Company Overview

13.6.2 Products/Services/Solutions Offerings

13.6.3 Key Developments

13.6.4 Key Strategy

13.7 RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems GmbH

13.7.1 Company Overview

13.7.2 Products/Services/Solutions Offerings

13.7.3 Key Developments

13.7.4 SWOT Analysis

13.7.5 Key Strategy

13.8 YellowScan

13.8.1 Company Overview

13.8.2 Products/Services/Solutions Offerings

13.8.3 Key Developments

13.8.4 Key Strategy

13.9 Geokno India Pvt. Ltd

13.9.1 Company Overview

13.9.2 Products/Services/Solutions Offerings

13.9.3 Key Strategy



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Harrisburg, NC -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- GLOBAL LIPSTICK MARKET INSIGHTS, FORECAST TO 2025

This Report proposes compelling details of Lipstick market size, market share, contemporary trends, upcoming investment opportunities, and other primary segments. The Lipstick analysis centers over numerous vital elements that influences global Lipstick industry along with the international economy. Historic overview, present market status, and futuristic projections of Lipstick industry are discussed in this study report.



The report presents the market competitive landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the major vendor/key players in the market.

Top Companies in the Global Lipstick Market: - LOreal Group, PG, Estee Lauder, Relvon, LVMH, Shiseido, Chanel, ROHTO, Beiersdorf, DHC, Johnson& Johnson, Avon, Jahwa, JALA and Others.



In 2017, the global Lipstick market size was 6600 million US$ and is forecast to 12300 million US in 2025, growing at a CAGR of 8.1% from 2018.



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GLOBAL LIPSTICK MARKET SEGMENT BY TYPE:-

Matte

Shimmer

Gloss

Lip stain

Sheer

Others



GLOBAL LIPSTICK MARKET SEGMENT BY APPLICATIONS:-

10~20

20~30

30~40

40~50

Above 50



MARKET SEGMENT BY REGIONS:-

For comprehensive understanding of market dynamics, the Global Lipstick Market is analyzed across key geographies namely: United States, China, Europe, Japan, South-east Asia, India and others. Each of these regions is analyzed on basis of market findings across major countries in these regions for a macro-level understanding of the market.



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THERE ARE 15 CHAPTERS TO DEEPLY DISPLAY THE GLOBAL LIPSTICK MARKET.

Chapter 1: to describe Lipstick Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;

Chapter 2: to analyze the top manufacturers of Lipstick, with sales, revenue, and price of Lipstick, in 2017 and 2018;

Chapter 3: to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2017 and 2018;

Chapter 4: to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Lipstick, for each region, from 2014 to 2018;

Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9: to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;

Chapter 10 and 11: to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2014 to 2018;

Chapter 12: Lipstick market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2018 to 2025;

Chapter 13, 14 and 15: to describe Lipstick sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix and Data source.



The report has 150 tables and figures browse the report description and TOC:

https://www.marketinsightsreports.com/reports/1008905849/global-lipstick-market-insights-forecast-to-2025?source=releasewire&Mode=18



INFLUENCE OF THE LIPSTICK MARKET REPORT:

-Comprehensive assessment of all opportunities and risk in the Lipstick market.

-Lipstick market recent innovations and major events.

-Detailed study of business strategies for growth of the Lipstick market-leading players.

-Conclusive study about the growth plot of Lipstick market for forthcoming years.

-In-depth understanding of Lipstick market-particular drivers, constraints and major micro markets.

-Favourable impression inside vital technological and market latest trends striking the Lipstick market.



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- A lithotripter is a device used for crushing stones present in the kidneys, bile, or pancreatic ducts. A mechanical lithotripter is a type of lithotripter most widely used for breaking bile stones. Mechanical lithotripters mainly consist of a metal sheath, wire basket, and handle to provide retraction of basket into the metal sheath. The baskets used in mechanical lithotripters are strong and large and enable the trapping of stones. Mechanical lithotripters come in two types of designs: integrated devices and salvage devices. Integrated devices consist of all components such as metal sheath, wire basket, and handles, whereas salvage devices mainly consist of metal sheaths and handles. Integrated lithotripters are used for stones present anywhere within the duct. Salvage and integrated devices require more time to operate than standard stone extraction devices. Mechanical lithotripters are relatively less expensive compared with other lithotripsy devices.



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Increase in the prevalence of kidney stones and bile stones are likely to drive the global mechanical lithotripters market. Additionally, an increase in the cases of thyroid disease, renal tubular acidosis, Crohn's diseases are anticipated to drive the global mechanical lithotripters market. Moreover, an increase in the prevalence of urolithiasis is estimated to propel the global mechanical lithotripter market. According to the National Kidney Foundation, approximately 10% of the world's population is affected by chronic kidney diseases. According to the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, the prevalence of upper urinary tract stones was high in children as well as adults. Adoption of minimally invasive procedures such as endoscopy and ureteroscopy is estimated to drive demand for mechanical lithotripters in the near future. Affordability of mechanical lithotripters and their lower adverse effects compared to shockwave lithotripsy devices are anticipated to augment the mechanical lithotripters market.



The global mechanical lithotripters market can be segmented based on type, application, and region. In terms of type, the mechanical lithotripters market can be divided into intraductal lithotripter, electrohydraulic lithotripter, and laser lithotripter. The growth of the electrohydraulic lithotripter segment can be attributed due to an increase in the prevalence of bile duct and pancreatic stones. Based on application, the mechanical lithotripters market can be divided into bile duct, gallbladder, and kidney stones. Rise in the prevalence of kidney stones due to renal tubular acidosis is anticipated to drive the kidney stone segment.



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In terms of region, the global mechanical lithotripters market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America dominated the global market. The mechanical lithotripters market in the region is driven by various factors such as the presence of key players and rise in the incidence of kidney stone diseases. According to an article published in the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, 10% to 25 % of adults were suffering from gall bladder stones in 2015 in the U.S.. Approximately 13% of men and 7% of women in the U.S. are diagnosed with kidney stones once during their life.



The mechanical lithotripters market in Europe is projected to expand at a rapid pace during the forecast period, due to an increase in the prevalence of kidney stones. In Germany, approximately 1% to 2% of people suffer from kidney stones each year. According to the British Association of Urological Surgeons, from January 2014 to December 2014, there were 2,042 procedures were estimated to be conducted in the U.K.. The market in Asia Pacific is driven by an increase in the prevalence of bile duct stones and kidney stones. According to the Southern Cross, in New Zealand, 10% to 15% of the population was affected by kidney stones once in the lifetime.



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The global mechanical lithotripters market is highly fragmented, due to the presence of a large number of players. Key players operating in the global mechanical lithotripters market are ENDO-FLEX GmbH, Cook, Boston Scientific Corporation, Olympus America, Medi-Globe GmbH, Endo-Med Technologies Pvt. Ltd., and others.



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- Movable imaging display or mobile c arm is a medical imaging device based on X-ray technology and are used for a vast number of diagnostic imaging and minimally invasive procedures. Mobile imaging systems are an important part of hospital infrastructure. Specialists in fields of surgery, cardiology, orthopedics, traumatology, vascular surgery make use of C-arms for intraoperative imaging.



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The devices offer high-resolution X-ray images in real time, which allows physician to monitor progress at any point during the operation so that they can immediately make corrections that may be required. Subsequently, the treatment results are better and patients recover more quickly. Mobile imaging displays are increasingly becoming popular due to rising demand for minimally invasive surgical procedures and the advent of hybrid and integrated operating rooms.



The global movable imaging displays market is segmented on the basis of technology, application, end user and region. On the basis of technology, the movable imaging displays market can be segmented into LED and OLED. In terms of application, the movable imaging displays market can be divided into radiology, mammography, surgery, digital pathology and others. On the basis of end user, the movable imaging displays market can be segregated into hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, diagnostic centers and others. In terms of region, the global movable imaging displays market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.



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The movable imaging displays market is likely to experience strong growth during the forecast period despite the slow acceptance rate of these products in developing countries. Developed markets (the U.S. and some countries in Western Europe) are increasingly adopting these movable imaging displays due to the advent of integrated and hybrid operating rooms. Technological advancements have led to the development of high tech booms that have centralized control and helped physicians control lights and other equipment from a single location. These additional benefits are anticipated to drive demand in high tech hospitals and clinics, not only in the developed nations, but across the world in the near future.



In terms of region, North America accounts for a leading share of the global movable imaging displays market, in terms of revenue. Technological advancements, developed healthcare infrastructure, high disposable income and presence of major movable imaging displays market players in the region can be attributed to the high market share of the region during the forecast period. Availability of private and public funding for the purchase of movable imaging systems is a major driver of the market in North America. Moreover, regional governments have taken the initiative to modernize hospitals in their respective regions.



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This has resulted in increase in demand for movable imaging systems such as C-arms in the region. Europe is projected to be the second largest market in terms of revenue. Factors such as continued technical advances in operating room equipment leading to development of integrated operating room suites, large geriatric population, and rising number of surgical procedures owing to increasing incidence of diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Moreover, rising demand for minimally invasive surgical techniques has also contributed to the growth of the movable imaging displays market in the region.



The movable imaging displays market in Asia Pacific is expected to expand at a significant pace due to increasing penetration of market players operating in the medical device industry in emerging countries, such as China and India. Moreover, significant investments in health care by government agencies in developing countries and rising geriatric population in China, India, and South Korea are fueling market growth. In India, multispecialty hospitals such as Apollo Hospitals, Wockhardt Hospitals, and Fortis Healthcare drive demand for mobile imaging displays by aggressively adopting hybrid operating rooms and increasing the number of facilities across the country. Rapidly evolving medical tourism industry in countries such as India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and South Korea is encouraging major health care providers to equip themselves with the latest technology. Other regions, such as Middle East & Africa and Latin America, are expected to be lucrative markets for movable imaging displays in the near future due to the high rate of adoption of advanced medical devices, coupled with the rapidly developing health care industry in these regions.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- The latest report Oil Mist Separator Market discusses everything a business owner needs to know about the Oil Mist Separator market for the forecast period, 2019 to 2026. The document offers an insight into what the target customer's needs and wants. Industry experts have extracted data from various sources on size, share, growth rate, production volume, production capacity, import and export status, distribution channels and more and have analysed it thoroughly. By properly assessing the competitors and their offerings the study aims at empowering business owners to step ahead.



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- Medium-scale Oil Mist Separator

- Large-scale Oil Mist Separator



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There are 14 Chapters to deeply display the global Oil Mist Separator market.

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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- The Top key vendors in Resilient Vinyl Flooring Market include are Tarkett ,Forbo ,Amtico ,Beaulieu ,Mohawk ,Armstrong ,Mannington Mills ,NOX Corporation ,LG Hausys ,Congoleum ,Gerflor ,RiL ,Metroflor ,Milliken ,Polyflor ,Karndean,Parterre ,Snmo LVT ,Hailide New Material



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Apart from this, the valuable document weighs upon the performance of the industry on the basis of a product service, end-use, geography and end customer.



The industry experts have left no stone unturned to identify the major factors influencing the development rate of the Resilient Vinyl Flooring industry including various opportunities and gaps. A thorough analysis of the micro markets with regards to the growth trends in each category makes the overall study interesting. When studying the micro markets the researchers also dig deep into their future prospect and contribution to the Resilient Vinyl Flooring industry.



A high focus is maintained on factors such as demand and supply, production capacity, supply chain management, distribution channel, product application and performance across different countries. The report not only offers hard to find facts about the trends and innovation driving the current and future of Resilient Vinyl Flooring business, but also provides insights into competitive development such as acquisition and mergers, joint ventures, product launches and technology advancements.



A quick look at the industry trends and opportunities



The researchers find out why sales of Resilient Vinyl Flooring are projected to surge in the coming years. The study covers the trends that will strongly favor the industry during the forecast period, 2019 to 2025. Besides this, the study uncovers important facts associated with lucrative growth and opportunities that lie ahead for the Resilient Vinyl Flooring industry.



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On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, and market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into

- Vinyl Composition Flooring

- Solid Vinyl Flooring

- Luxury Vinyl Flooring



On the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, including

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Region wise performance of the Resilient Vinyl Flooring industry



This report studies the global Resilient Vinyl Flooring Market status and forecast, categorizes the global Resilient Vinyl Flooring Market size (value & volume) by key players, type, application, and region. This report focuses on the top players in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia India and Other regions (Middle East & Africa, Central & South America).



Key points from TOC



7 Global Resilient Vinyl Flooring Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis



7.1 Tarkett

7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors

7.1.2 Resilient Vinyl Flooring Product Category, Application and Specification

7.1.2.1 Product A

7.1.2.2 Product B

7.1.3 Tarkett Resilient Vinyl Flooring Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)

7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview



7.2 Forbo

7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors

7.2.2 Resilient Vinyl Flooring Product Category, Application and Specification

7.2.2.1 Product A

7.2.2.2 Product B

7.2.3 Forbo Resilient Vinyl Flooring Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)

7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview



7.3 Amtico

7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors

7.3.2 Resilient Vinyl Flooring Product Category, Application and Specification

7.3.2.1 Product A

7.3.2.2 Product B

7.3.3 Amtico Resilient Vinyl Flooring Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)

7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview



7.4 Beaulieu

7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors

7.4.2 Resilient Vinyl Flooring Product Category, Application and Specification

7.4.2.1 Product A

7.4.2.2 Product B

7.4.3 Beaulieu Resilient Vinyl Flooring Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)

7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview



Continue..



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- Which countries are expected to grow at the fastest rate?



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Selbyville, DE -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- The smart display is a portable LCD display with a touch screen that ACTS as a PC thin client through a wi-fi connection. The research study on the Smart Displays market projects this industry to garner substantial proceeds by the end of the projected duration, with a commendable growth rate liable to be registered over the estimated timeframe. Elucidating a pivotal overview of this business space, the report includes information pertaining to the remuneration presently held by this industry, in tandem with a meticulous illustration of the Smart Displays market segmentation and the growth opportunities prevailing across this vertical.



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A brief run-through of the industry segmentation encompassed in the Smart Displays market report:



Competitive landscape:



Companies involved: Samsung, LG Electronics, Sony, Sharp, Philips, Hisense, Skyworth, Epson, NEC, ACER, Panasonic, TCL, Changhong and Konka



Vital pointers enumerated:



Sales area

Distribution

Company profile

Company overview

Products manufactured

Price patterns

Revenue procured

Gross margins

Product sales

The Smart Displays market report provides an outline of the vendor landscape that includes companies such as Samsung, LG Electronics, Sony, Sharp, Philips, Hisense, Skyworth, Epson, NEC, ACER, Panasonic, TCL, Changhong and Konka. Parameters such as the distribution and sales area, alongside other pivotal details such as the firm profiling and overview have also been mentioned.



The study mentions the products manufactured by these esteemed companies as well the product price prototypes, profit margins, valuation accrued, and product sales.



Geographical landscape:



Regions involved: USA, Europe, Japan, China, India, South East Asia



Vital pointers enumerated:



Product consumption patterns

Valuation that each of these regions account for in the industry

Market share which every region holds

Consumption market share across the geographies

Product consumption growth rate

Geographical consumption rate

Segmented into USA, Europe, Japan, China, India, South East Asia, as per the regional spectrum, the Smart Displays market apparently covers most of the pivotal geographies, claims the report, which compiles a highly comprehensive analysis of the geographical arena, including details about the product consumption patterns, revenue procured, as well as the market share that each zone holds.



The study presents details regrading the consumption market share and product consumption growth rate of the regions in question, in tandem with the geographical consumption rate with regards to the products and the applications.



Product landscape



Product types involved: LCD Type, LED Type and Other



Vital pointers enumerated:



Market share held by the product

Projected valuation of each type

Individual product consumption as per value and growth rate

Sales value

The Smart Displays market report enumerates information with respect to every product type among Samsung, LG Electronics, Sony, Sharp, Philips, Hisense, Skyworth, Epson, NEC, ACER, Panasonic, TCL, Changhong and Konka, elaborating on the market share accrued, projected remuneration of each type, and the consumption rate of each product.



Application landscape:



Application sectors involved: Smart TV, Smartphone, Pad Product, PC Display and Other



Vital pointers enumerated:



Market share held by each application segment

Forecast valuation of each application

Consumption patterns

The Smart Displays market report, with respect to the application spectrum, splits the industry into Smart TV, Smartphone, Pad Product, PC Display and Other, while enumerating details regarding the market share held by each application and the projected value of every segment by the end of the forecast duration.



The Smart Displays market report also includes substantial information about the driving forces impacting the commercialization landscape of the industry as well as the latest trends prevailing in the market. Also included in the study is a list of the challenges that this industry will portray over the forecast period.



Other parameters like the market concentration ratio, enumerated with reference to numerous concentration classes over the projected timeline, have been presented as well, in the report.



In addition, this report discusses the key drivers influencing market growth, opportunities, the challenges and the risks faced by key manufacturers and the market as a whole. It also analyzes key emerging trends and their impact on present and future development.



Research objectives



To study and analyze the global Smart Displays consumption (value & volume) by key regions/countries, product type and application, history data from 2014 to 2018, and forecast to 2024.



To understand the structure of Smart Displays market by identifying its various subsegments.



Focuses on the key global Smart Displays manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the sales volume, value, market share, market competition landscape, SWOT analysis and development plans in next few years.



To analyze the Smart Displays with respect to individual growth trends, future prospects, and their contribution to the total market.



To share detailed information about the key factors influencing the growth of the market (growth potential, opportunities, drivers, industry-specific challenges and risks).



To project the consumption of Smart Displays submarkets, with respect to key regions (along with their respective key countries).



To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.



To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.



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Global Cellular Communication Routers Market Growth 2019-2024



Cellular communication router allows users to easily establish connectivity between isolated networks, giving greater flexibility for building secure applications. According to this study, over the next five years the Cellular Communication Routers market will register a xx% CAGR in terms of revenue, the global market size will reach US$ xx million by 2024, from US$ xx million in 2019. In particular, this report presents the global market share (sales and revenue) of key companies in Cellular Communication Routers business, shared in Chapter 3.



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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- North America sales of recreational vehicle are projected to reach US$ 26.19 Bn by 2024 end, expanding at a CAGR of over 7%. In terms of consumption volume, recreational vehicles will possibly exceed 465,000 units within the first half of the assessed period i.e. by 2020 end.



In a recently published market outlook titled "Recreational Vehicle Market: North America Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016 to 2024," Persistence Market Research delivers key insights into the critical factors expected to impact the market growth over the next few years. The report also provides country-wise and segmental analysis estimated for an eight-year forecast period, 2016-2024.



"Revenue sales of recreational vehicle across North America will be highly impacted by demographics, consumer behavior, and purchasing power. Eco-friendly and lightweight recreational vehicle highlight a current growing trend, whereas hybrid/battery-operated recreational vehicles have recently emerged as a promising trend. Rental market for recreational vehicle is witnessing significant growth. Growing preference for online shopping will also benefit RV promotion and sales," Persistence Market Research comments on the most influential trends in North America's recreational vehicle market.



Drivers, Trends, and Opportunity Insights



Rising consumer inclination toward entertaining outdoors and adventure travel will remain the key drivers to North America market for recreational vehicles. Recent style and design innovations fuel the market growth further.



Developing outdoor recreational infrastructure and growing preference for sustainable tourism against mass tourism will collectively create revenue generation channels for RV manufacturers.



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Baby Boomers have always been the largest consumer cluster for recreational vehicle. However, several manufacturers are increasingly targeting young consumers through emphasis on new, cost-effective product launches based on advanced technology. Thor Industries recently (2016) introduced smaller Class C and Class A motorhomes, specifically targeting younger generation consumers.



Country-wise Market Insights



U.S. based manufactures are likely to encounter with attractive opportunities in developing Asian countries, including Japan, China, and South Korea. For existing network expansion, various small manufacturers are consolidating with established players. Vendors are also offering multiple financing options on RV purchase.



A few more factors that will continue to favor the growth of recreational vehicle market include initiatives by governments. States' rising investments in specialized roadways specifically designed for recreational vehicle prompt at lucrative opportunities in near future.



Geographical analysis of North America recreational vehicle market bifurcates the market into the U.S. and Canada. While the U.S. is anticipated to take a leap over US$ 22 Bn by 2024 end, Canada market will possibly represent a total incremental opportunity of US$ 1,552.2 Mn between 2016 and 2024.



U.S. currently accounts for over 87% share of the North American market; however, Canada is identified to be a growing market driven by relatively higher growth opportunities.



Segment Insights



By exterior construction material, North America's recreational vehicle market is classified as 



Wood

Aluminum

Fiberglass

Steel

Others



Aluminum segment, with roughly 40% value share, currently leads the market. Persistence Market Research expected this segment to surpass US$ 10 Bn in 2024, closely followed by fiberglass. The latter is likely to demonstrate the highest growth at a CAGR of over 9%, gaining around 320 BPS over the next eight years. This growth is due to surging demand for eco-friendly, lightweight vehicles.



By type, the recreational vehicle market in North America is segmented into 



Motorhomes

Class A Motor Homes

Class B Motor Homes

Class C Motor Homes



Travel Trailer & Campers

Conventional Travel Trailers

Fifth-wheel Travel Trailer



Camping Trailers

Folding Camping Trailer

Truck Camper



Although large motorhomes, especially those equipped with solar and wireless technologies are experiencing higher traction, travel trailers and campers will remain dominant throughout the forecast period. Travel trailers and campers segment currently holds a dominant share of nearly 61%, followed by motor homes segment with around 37% share of the entire market revenues. Over the forecast period, travel trailers and campers segment will reach US$ 14.59 Bn gaining around 570 BPS.



Class A and class B motorhome segments reflect higher growth potential, attributed to affordability and user-friendliness. Class A vehicle will continue to represent the largest motorhomes sub-segment, followed by class C. Whereas, motor homes segment will witness the fastest growth at over 9% CAGR over 2016-2024.



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Key Vendor Insights



Some of the most dominant players active in North America recreational vehicle market, include Thor Industries, Inc., Forest River, Inc., Winnebago Industries, Inc., Tiffin Motorhomes, Inc., REV Group, Inc., Triple E Recreational Vehicle, and Winnebago Industries, Inc. A majority vendors are strengthening their market positions through new product launches, while others are focusing on strategic acquisitions.
Huntingdon Valley, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- The Joseph Bograd Real Estate Team is pleased to offer a stunning array of homes for sale this spring season in Bucks County, PA. From Newtown to New Hope, The Joseph Bograd Real Estate Team is the ultimate resource for exclusive homes for sale in Bucks County. Whether someone is looking for a charming, secluded hideaway, or a sprawling, exquisite estate, this company is the real estate phenom of Bucks and Montgomery County, PA, and its roster is full of gems for the busy spring selling season.



The company boasts some of the most seasoned, professional realtors in the business. Loretta Starck, Vladimir Bograd, Alena Stolyar, Missy Ottinger, Christy Price, and of course Joseph Bograd himself are all great to work with, as well as the company's Realtor Office Administrator, Judy Varian. It's a dream team of home buying expertise with dedication and reliability at the forefront.



Individuals can browse the company's website to get a peek inside the illustrious world of refined real estate properties presented with an unsurpassable personal touch. The homes are incredible examples of living the dream to the fullest and cover every nook and cranny of beautiful Bucks and Montgomery Counties in Pennsylvania, as well as Philadelphia. The website is a trusted resource to find the best of the best properties, whether a person is in search of a sophisticated Rittenhouse Square unit or a unique utopia surrounded by breathtaking views.



Contact The Joseph Bograd Real Estate Team for Bucks County houses for sale at 267-282-1721 or visit https://www.josephbograd.com/.



About Joseph Bograd

A realtor for RE/MAX, Joseph Bograd has been serving Philadelphia, Bucks, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties for over 15 years, helping residents find an affordable home or rental property. He takes customer service very seriously and is dedicated to exceeding expectations. As a reputable realtor in the area, he is available to communicate with and assist in any issue his clients are dealing with.



For more information, or to get in touch with Joseph Bograd or his team, please visit https://www.josephbograd.com.


File photo: Major General Wang Weixing.

On March 18, Major General Wang Weixing from the Academy of Military Sciences of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) published an article to call Taiwan military personnel, as an integral part of the Chinese military, to firmly oppose "Taiwan independence".

He said that every military member in every barrack in Taiwan should support the policy of 'one country, two systems', which is essentially to protect their vital interests.

As a renowned expert on Taiwan question, Maj. Gen. Wang Weixing is the current chief expert of the Chinese PLA's Academy of Military Sciences. Recently, he also expressed that "Today's Taiwan should conduct a thorough ideological emancipation."

Wang said in an article titled Taiwan military should support the policy of one country, two systems that the militaries of Chinese mainland and Taiwan are integral parts of the Chinese military. Any individual or political party attempting to split the motherland would be the scum of the Chinese nation and the common enemy of the Chinese military. The defense departments across the Taiwan Straits must improve communication, not counteract each other, and joint hands to evade provocation and estrangement by other countries.

He believes that Taiwan military personnel should become the practitioners who actively oppose "Taiwan independence" and the backbone for supporting "peaceful reunification" and one country, two systems.

Meanwhile, Taiwan military personnel must understand that one country, two systems is the best solution for reunification that takes into account the actual conditions of Taiwan, he noted.

Born in Lintong in China's Shaanxi Province in 1958, Maj. Gen. Wang Weixing previously served as Deputy Political Commissar of Chinese PLAs Academy of Military Sciences, and currently is a chief expert at the Academy of Military Sciences.

He has worked in various military units at various troop levels. In 1979, he participated in the Self-Defensive Counter-attack against Vietnam. In 1996, he began to work at Chinese PLAs Academy of Military Sciences.

He led delegations to visit Germany, Iran, Denmark, and other countries. His academic works include Chinese Military Arts, Vernacular Chinese Art of War, and The Essentials of Chinese Ancient Strategic Theories.

In addition to being proficient in military theories, Maj. Gen. Wang Weixing is also a well-known expert on Taiwan question and academic consultant of the Cross-straits Relations Research Center.

He published an article in December in 2007 entitled The Common Duties of militaries across the Taiwan Straits on Outlook Weekly, which aroused strong echoes both at home and abroad, especially in Taiwan.

Such sentence as "Its better to clink wine glasses with everyone at the dinner table than to target each other with guns on the battlefield" and " As long as the Taiwan military does not support "Taiwan independence," it is essentially securing and maintaining peace across the Taiwan Straits caused much wiggles and waves in Taiwan Island.

As a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Maj. Gen. Wang said in an interview on the eve of Chinas Two Sessions (NPC and CPPCC) this year that the policy of "one country, two systems" has been "stigmatized" within Taiwan Island for a long time.

Taiwanese should understand the connotation of the One Country, Two Systems. In addition, he pointed out that Taiwan also needs a thorough ideological emancipation which is laying aside the illusion of relying on foreign forces to elevate its own status and abandoning all myths about "Taiwan independence", he added.
Tokyo, Japan -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- The report presents an overview of the historical growth trail along with the present situation and future progress of Outsourcing As-a-Service. It further guesstimates the volume and revenue growth of the global market. The study also evaluates the key competitors in the market and their shares, strategies, and products. To offer a clear understanding of the Global Outsourcing As-a-Service Market, the study thoroughly analyzes the competitive landscape.



With competition, there is an immense demand for the streamlining of operations in order to keep profitability high. The pressure to improve efficiency and keep costs at low level is precisely why there is advent of outsourcing as a formal business strategy. The resulting benefits bring about a reduction of risks and boosts innovation.



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Top Key Vendors:

Genpact, aegis limited, WNS Global Services, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, HCL, Mastek, Hexaware Technologies, EXL Services, vCustomer, kpit technologies



The primary motivation behind outsourcing is to economise back-office functions and enhance overall business flexibility. By outsourcing back-office functions, businesses can focus their resources in their core competencies, dedicating and investing their key resources in activities that are more integral to their commercial success. Moreover, by utilizing the specialized skills of BPO service providers, organizations can increase and improve the speed and efficiency of their output enabling them to grow at a much faster pace. The resulting cost and profit benefits speak for themselves.



Players in the Global Outsourcing As-a-Service Market are consistently taking a stab at modernization. Innovation is being looked for after both in the engineering procedure and in terms of product features. The market is dynamic in nature and this is rousing testing prerequisites and additionally the development of superior hardware, promoting the development prospects of the market.

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Reasons to purchase this research report:

This analytical report offers a comprehensive analysis of the global market scenario

It offers better perceptions of the global market by profiling leading key players in the global market

It also offers several applicable sales methodologies for achieving the economic outcomes

In-depth segmentation of the global market

It provides detailed elaboration on global market dynamics such as market drivers, restraints and opportunities

It offers a holistic view of the global competitive landscape

Researchers throw light on deep dive analysis of the latest market trends and market growth influencing factors

It helps to identify the global as well as potential customers

Analyze the global competitors

Comprehensive analysis of factors that will change the market growth



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Table of Content:

Chapter 1 Industry Overview of Outsourcing As-a-Service

Chapter 2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Outsourcing As-a-Service

Chapter 3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Outsourcing As-a-Service

Chapter 4 Global Outsourcing As-a-Service Overall Market Overview

Chapter 5 Outsourcing As-a-Service Regional Market Analysis

Chapter 6 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Outsourcing As-a-Service

Chapter 7 Development Trend of Analysis of Outsourcing As-a-Service Market

Chapter 8 Outsourcing As-a-Service Marketing Type Analysis

Chapter 9 Conclusion of the Global Outsourcing As-a-Service Market Professional Survey Report 2019

Chapter 10 Continue.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/18/2019 -- Cancer is a disease characterized by abnormal cell grow in a way that they invade other normal cells of the body. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 200 types of cancer are prevalent globally, resulting in over 14.1 million new cases of cancer every year. Breast cancer is the second most prevalent type of cancer across the world. Genetic factors, obesity, lack of physical exercise, alcohol consumption, old age, hormone replacement therapy during menopause, exposure to radiation, early age of menstruation, and having children at a late age or not at all are some of the common risk factors for breast cancer. Breast cancer usually originates from the inner lining of milk ducts or lobules responsible for supplying the milk. This is a malignant type of tumor that can spread to other cells in the body. The type of cancer which starts in lobules is referred as lobular carcinoma, while the other that develops from milk ducts is called ductal carcinoma. Breast cancer is the most common type of invasive cancer affecting women globally.



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Trastuzumab is a monoclonal antibody, which is one of the best option to treat breast cancer. It is especially used for breast cancer that is human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) positive. It can be used alone or in combination with other chemotherapy agents. Trastuzumab is administered by slow injection just below the skin or injection into a vein. Common side effects include infection, fever, cough, trouble sleeping, headache, and rash. Other severe side effects include allergic reactions, heart failure, and lung disease. Usage of trastuzumab during pregnancy could harm the baby. Trastuzumab works by binding to the HER2 receptor and slowing down cell duplication.



Trastuzumab is sold under the brand name Herceptin and manufactured by F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 1998 and by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in August 2000. It is included in the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the safe and effective medicines needed in a health system. Patents on Herceptin expired in Europe in July 2014 and will expire in the U.S. in June 2019.



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The global trastuzumab market is expected to grow at a rapid pace due to high incidence rate and rise in prevalence of breast cancer. These factors have encouraged a large number of market players to undertake research and development activities. Therefore, the current pipeline of breast cancer drugs is strong and equipped with a large number of promising drugs. This is projected to boost the growth of the global trastuzumab market. However, high cost of the treatment is expected to hamper market growth.



The global trastuzumab market can be segmented based on distribution channel and region. In terms of distribution channel, the market can be classified into hospital pharmacies, retail pharmacies, and online sales. Geographically, the global trastuzumab market can be segmented into North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Each region can be sub-divided into specific countries such as the U.S., Canada, Germany, the U.K., Brazil, China, India, Japan, and GCC Countries. North America dominated the global trastuzumab market due to rise in incidence of breast cancer and early launch of new pharmaceutical products in this region. Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the most attractive market for trastuzumab during the forecast period due to presence of large patient pool and various control programs by governments in the region.



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Key players in the global trastuzumab market include F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Pfizer, Inc., Samsung Bioepis, Celltrion Healthcare, Biocon Limited, and Amgen, Inc. These players have adopted various growth strategies such as collaborations, new product launches partnerships, and agreements to gain competitive advantage in the market.



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Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMR's syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.



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London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- The "Global Travel and Business Bags Market" is an in depth study analyzing the current state and forecast 2018-2025. It provides brief overview of the market focusing on definitions, market segmentation, end-use applications and industry chain analysis. The study on Global Travel and Business Bags Market provides analysis of market covering the industry trends, recent developments in the market and competitive landscape. Competitive analysis includes competitive information of leading players in market, their company profiles, product portfolio, capacity, production, and company financials. In addition, report also provides upstream raw material analysis and downstream demand analysis along with the key development trends and sales channel analysis. Research study on Global Travel and Business Bags Market discusses the opportunity areas for investors.



The report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.



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The global bag market is primarily classified into casual bags, travel bags, and business bags. These bags play a big part in people daily life. Additionally, there are variety of material of bags such as soft side, hard side and hybrid. Overall, people can benefit a lot from different kinds of bags.



Owing to an increase in travel and tourism activities and the rising number of business travelers in the country. The surge in travel traffic has increased the sales of the travel and business bags. Rapid urbanization has also contributed to improved standard of living, resulting in consumers increasingly opting for stylish, and large bags for their travels. The changing political, economic, and social environment, and the rising e-commerce sector will propel growth in Russia, making it a recognized market globally.



This report focuses on Travel and Business Bags volume and value at global level, regional level and company level. From a global perspective, this report represents overall Travel and Business Bags market size by analyzing historical data and future prospect. Regionally, this report focuses on several key regions: North America, Europe, China and Japan.



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At company level, this report focuses on the production capacity, ex-factory price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer covered in this report.



The following manufacturers are covered:

Antler

Delsey

Rimowa

Samsonite

VF Corp

...



Segment by Regions

North America

Europe

China

Japan



Segment by Type

Duffle Bags

Trolley Bags

Suitcases

Backpacks

Business Bags



Segment by Application

Online Retail

Offline Retail



Available customization:



With the given market information, Ameco research offers customization's in line with the company's specific wishes. The following customization choices unit of measurement accessible for the report:

Regional and country-level analysis of the Global Travel and Business Bags Market, by end-use.

Detailed analysis and profiles of additional market players.



Table of Contents



Global Travel and Business Bags Market - Industry Size, Share, Trends and Forecast 2018 - 2025



1 Travel and Business Bags Market Overview

1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Travel and Business Bags

1.2 Travel and Business Bags Segment by Type

1.2.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Production Growth Rate Comparison by Type (2014-2025)

1.2.2 Duffle Bags

1.2.3 Trolley Bags

1.2.4 Suitcases

1.2.5 Backpacks

1.2.6 Business Bags

1.3 Travel and Business Bags Segment by Application

1.3.1 Travel and Business Bags Consumption Comparison by Application (2014-2025)

1.3.2 Online Retail

1.3.3 Offline Retail

1.4 Global Travel and Business Bags Market by Region

1.4.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Market Size Region

1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2014-2025)

1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2014-2025)

1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2014-2025)

1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2014-2025)

1.5 Global Travel and Business Bags Market Size

1.5.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Revenue (2014-2025)

1.5.2 Global Travel and Business Bags Production (2014-2025)



2 Global Travel and Business Bags Market Competition by Manufacturers

2.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Production Market Share by Manufacturers (2014-2019)

2.2 Global Travel and Business Bags Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2014-2019)

2.3 Global Travel and Business Bags Average Price by Manufacturers (2014-2019)

2.4 Manufacturers Travel and Business Bags Production Sites, Area Served, Product Types

2.5 Travel and Business Bags Market Competitive Situation and Trends

2.5.1 Travel and Business Bags Market Concentration Rate

2.5.2 Travel and Business Bags Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers

2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion



3 Global Travel and Business Bags Production Market Share by Regions

3.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Production Market Share by Regions

3.2 Global Travel and Business Bags Revenue Market Share by Regions (2014-2019)

3.3 Global Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

3.4 North America Travel and Business Bags Production

3.4.1 North America Travel and Business Bags Production Growth Rate (2014-2019)

3.4.2 North America Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

3.5 Europe Travel and Business Bags Production

3.5.1 Europe Travel and Business Bags Production Growth Rate (2014-2019)

3.5.2 Europe Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

3.6 China Travel and Business Bags Production (2014-2019)

3.6.1 China Travel and Business Bags Production Growth Rate (2014-2019)

3.6.2 China Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

3.7 Japan Travel and Business Bags Production (2014-2019)

3.7.1 Japan Travel and Business Bags Production Growth Rate (2014-2019)

3.7.2 Japan Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)



4 Global Travel and Business Bags Consumption by Regions

4.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Consumption by Regions

4.2 North America Travel and Business Bags Consumption (2014-2019)

4.3 Europe Travel and Business Bags Consumption (2014-2019)

4.4 China Travel and Business Bags Consumption (2014-2019)

4.5 Japan Travel and Business Bags Consumption (2014-2019)



5 Global Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price Trend by Type

5.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Production Market Share by Type (2014-2019)

5.2 Global Travel and Business Bags Revenue Market Share by Type (2014-2019)

5.3 Global Travel and Business Bags Price by Type (2014-2019)

5.4 Global Travel and Business Bags Production Growth by Type (2014-2019)



6 Global Travel and Business Bags Market Analysis by Applications

6.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Consumption Market Share by Application (2014-2019)

6.2 Global Travel and Business Bags Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2014-2019)



7 Company Profiles and Key Figures in Travel and Business Bags Business

7.1 Antler

7.1.1 Antler Travel and Business Bags Production Sites and Area Served

7.1.2 Travel and Business Bags Product Introduction, Application and Specification

7.1.3 Antler Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

7.1.4 Main Business and Markets Served

7.2 Delsey

7.2.1 Delsey Travel and Business Bags Production Sites and Area Served

7.2.2 Travel and Business Bags Product Introduction, Application and Specification

7.2.3 Delsey Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

7.2.4 Main Business and Markets Served

7.3 Rimowa

7.3.1 Rimowa Travel and Business Bags Production Sites and Area Served

7.3.2 Travel and Business Bags Product Introduction, Application and Specification

7.3.3 Rimowa Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

7.3.4 Main Business and Markets Served

7.4 Samsonite

7.4.1 Samsonite Travel and Business Bags Production Sites and Area Served

7.4.2 Travel and Business Bags Product Introduction, Application and Specification

7.4.3 Samsonite Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

7.4.4 Main Business and Markets Served

7.5 VF Corp

7.5.1 VF Corp Travel and Business Bags Production Sites and Area Served

7.5.2 Travel and Business Bags Product Introduction, Application and Specification

7.5.3 VF Corp Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2014-2019)

7.5.4 Main Business and Markets Served



8 Travel and Business Bags Manufacturing Cost Analysis

8.1 Travel and Business Bags Key Raw Materials Analysis

8.1.1 Key Raw Materials

8.1.2 Price Trend of Key Raw Materials

8.1.3 Key Suppliers of Raw Materials

8.2 Proportion of Manufacturing Cost Structure

8.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Travel and Business Bags

8.4 Travel and Business Bags Industrial Chain Analysis



9 Marketing Channel, Distributors and Customers

9.1 Marketing Channel

9.1.1 Direct Marketing

9.1.2 Indirect Marketing

9.2 Travel and Business Bags Distributors List

9.3 Travel and Business Bags Customers



10 Market Dynamics

10.1 Market Trends

10.2 Opportunities

10.3 Market Drivers

10.4 Challenges

10.5 Influence Factors



11 Global Travel and Business Bags Market Forecast

11.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue Forecast

11.1.1 Global Travel and Business Bags Production Growth Rate Forecast (2019-2025)

11.1.2 Global Travel and Business Bags Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2019-2025)

11.1.3 Global Travel and Business Bags Price and Trend Forecast (2019-2025)

11.2 Global Travel and Business Bags Production Forecast by Regions (2019-2025)

11.2.1 North America Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue Forecast (2019-2025)

11.2.2 Europe Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue Forecast (2019-2025)

11.2.3 China Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue Forecast (2019-2025)

11.2.4 Japan Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue Forecast (2019-2025)

11.3 Global Travel and Business Bags Consumption Forecast by Regions (2019-2025)

11.3.1 North America Travel and Business Bags Consumption Forecast (2019-2025)

11.3.2 Europe Travel and Business Bags Consumption Forecast (2019-2025)

11.3.3 China Travel and Business Bags Consumption Forecast (2019-2025)

11.3.4 Japan Travel and Business Bags Consumption Forecast (2019-2025)

11.4 Global Travel and Business Bags Production, Revenue and Price Forecast by Type (2019-2025)

11.5 Global Travel and Business Bags Consumption Forecast by Application (2019-2025)



12 Research Findings and Conclusion



13 Methodology and Data Source

13.1 Methodology/Research Approach

13.1.1 Research Programs/Design

13.1.2 Market Size Estimation

13.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation

13.2 Data Source

13.2.1 Secondary Sources

13.2.2 Primary Sources

13.3 Author List

13.4 Disclaimer



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/19/2019 -- Sailing ships have improved drastically since the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution made possible the usage of new materials and designs that developed and altered shipbuilding techniques. A windlass in utilized in order to move heavy ships from one location to another. A windlass allows cost-effective and efficient customized systems to be built to suit the marine vessel's deck requirements and layout. Shipbuilding has, therefore, become a lucrative industry in several developing and developed countries.



Windlass market for marine industry can be segmented based on type, power type, end-user, application, and region. Based on type, the windlass market for marine industry can be segregated into vertical and horizontal. Vertical windlass is also called capstan windlass. It is the most widely preferred windlass, as it requires less deck space in shipbuilding. A horizontal windlass requires less fall than a vertical windlass. A horizontal windlass is placed behind the windlass deck on the ship behind to support the anchor line. In terms of power type, the windlass market for marine industry can be further classified into manual windlass, electric windlass, and hydraulic windlass. Manual windlasses are utilized for shipbuilding as they are easy to install and potentially less risky. Electric windlasses employ a remote control or foot buttons while steering and motoring up the anchor.



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Electric windlasses are widely preferred as they offer power control for dropping the anchor with an electric brake to stop them. Hydraulic windlasses utilize pressurized hydraulic oil to operate large yachts and ships. In terms of end-user, the windlass market for marine industry can be segmented into offshore support vessels, defense vessels, cruises, large & small ships, and yachts. Based on application, the windlass market for marine industry can be segregated into oil & gas industry. Windlass is utilized to carry heavy offshore support vehicles for crude oil transportation. Based on application, the market can be further segmented into maritime security. Windlasses are employed on defense vessels for patrolling and monitoring marine activities in order to maintain maritime security. Moreover, the market is further classified into tourism industry, based on application. The tourism industry employs cruises, yachts, and small boats, which require windlasses, in order to promote and develop tourism.



A major drivers of the windlass market for marine industry is its cost-effectiveness. An electric windlass is widely utilized due to its quick and easy installation. New technologies are being developed in order to reduce windlass production costs and to ensure better safety. A key restraint of the windlass market for marine industry is its high cost. A windlass needs to be affordable for small boat manufacturers. Furthermore, high maintenance cost needs to be reduced.



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In terms of geography, the windlass market for marine industry in Asia Pacific region is expanding due to the consistent rise in maritime activities in the region. This has boosted the demand for windlass due to the increase in oil exploration and tourism activities. Marine activities in Asia Pacific region are primarily witnessed in countries such as Australia, China, the Maldives, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and New Zealand which is forecasted to increase in demand for windlass. In North America, the market for windlass for marine industry is anticipated to expand due to the increase in oil & gas exploration activities in offshore areas of the region. In Europe, countries such as Germany, Norway, France and the U.K. are witnessing an increasing demand for windlass market for marine industry due to the significant growth in marine activities. The countries in Latin America are anticipated to witness an increase in demand for windlasses in the near future.



Key players operating in the windlass market for marine industry are Maxwell, Lewmar, Ideal, Rolce Royce Plc., and Nautic Expo.
A unique leaded-gunmetal disk with iconic Portuguese markings recovered from the Sodre shipwreck site in Al Hallaniyah, Oman, has been identified as an early mariners astrolabe, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. Accurate digital measurements of regular scale marks on the limb of the artifacts upper right quadrant show them to be graded at close to 5-degree intervals, thus confirming the identity of the disk as a mariners astrolabe and the earliest known example discovered to date.

Mariners astrolabes are considered to be the rarest and most prized of artifacts to be found on ancient shipwrecks and only 104 examples are known to exist in the world.

These instruments are intimately associated with the earliest maritime explorations by the principal seaborne powers of Europe.

They were first used at sea on a Portuguese voyage down the west coast of Africa in 1481. Thereafter, they were relied on for navigation during the most important explorations of the late 15th century, including those led by Bartolomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama.

Their extreme rarity, before divers greatly increased the total number recovered from shipwrecks, was such that each surviving specimen was added to a central register that recorded their vital measurements and characteristics and kept track of their location.

The astrolabe register was started by the UKs National Maritime Museum at Greenwich by David Waters, the curator of navigation and astronomy, who produced the first published lists in 1957 and in 1966.

The Sodre astrolabe was found in 2014 during archaeological excavations at the wreck site of a Portuguese Armada Ship that was part of Vasco da Gamas second voyage to India in 1502-1503.

The 17.5-cm (7-inch) diameter disk weighing 344 grams was made between 1496 and 1501 and is unique in comparison to all other mariners astrolabes.

The artifact is the only solid disk type astrolabe with a verifiable provenance and the only specimen decorated with a national symbol: the royal coat of arms of Portugal.

As the earliest verifiable mariners astrolabe it fills a chronological gap in the development of these iconic instruments and is believed to be a transitional instrument between the classic planispheric astrolabe and the open-wheel type astrolabe that came into use sometime before 1517.

The Sodre astrolabe was analyzed by a team from WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group) at the University of Warwick who traveled to Muscat, Oman in November 2016 to collect laser scans of a selection of the most important artifacts recovered from the wreck site.

Using a portable laser scanner, a 3D virtual model of the astrolabe was created.

An analysis of the results revealed a series of 18 scale marks spaced at uniform intervals along the limb of the disk.

Further analysis showed that the spacing of the scale marks was equivalent to 5-degree intervals. This was critical evidence that allowed the researchers to include the disk in their global inventory as the earliest known mariners astrolabe discovered to date.

_____

David L. Mearns et al. An Early Portuguese Mariners Astrolabe from the Sodre Wreck-site, Al Hallaniyah, Oman. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, published online March 16, 2019; doi: 10.1111/1095-9270.12353
Blackpoll warblers (Setophaga striata) that breed in western North America migrate up to 12,400 miles (20,000 km) roundtrip each year, some crossing the entire North American continent before making a nonstop trans-ocean flight of up to four days to South America. A new study, published in the journal Ecology, confirms the epic migration journey that ornithologists had long suspected but not yet proved.

In 2015, University of Guelph biologist Ryan Norris and colleagues were the first to show that 12-g blackpoll warblers breeding in the Maritimes and New England complete a non-stop transoceanic flight of up to three days and 1,721 miles (2,770 km) along the eastern coast of the United States.

For the new study, the team looked at the full migration of birds from central and western breeding populations.

Its amazing. A bird weighing a couple of loonies travels from the western edge of North America all the way to the Amazon basin  and, in between, traverses the Atlantic Ocean, Dr. Norris said.

For the study, Dr. Norris and co-authors tracked birds outfitted with tiny geolocators, weighing 0.5 g and with a 12-month battery life, from four boreal forest sites: Churchill, Manitoba; Whitehorse, Yukon Territory; Denali National Park and Nome, both in Alaska.

Total southward migration took about 60 days on average over distances ranging from 4,287 miles (6,900 km) for birds breeding in Churchill to 6,650 miles (10,700 km) for populations on the western edge of the continent in Nome.

Blackpoll warblers from Nome took 18 days to fly across North America to the Atlantic coast of the Carolinas.

There, the birds spent almost a month fattening up to double their body weight before a non-stop, 2.5-day flight across open water to overwintering grounds in northern Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil. They covered between 1,400 miles (2,250 km) and 2,113 miles (3,400 km) for that transoceanic hop.

It was fascinating to witness the schedule of this migration. Birds that bred further west had to depart the breeding and wintering grounds much earlier in order to arrive at their destinations on time, said study first author Dr. Bill DeLuca, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

We had long believed that blackpoll warblers followed the great circle route. Few of the birds have ever been found in the central or western States during fall migration, Dr. Norris said.

Population numbers have fallen in recent years, perhaps caused by habitat loss and declines in insect prey related to climate change.

To understand whats causing the decline, we need to know their full annual cycle.

Acquiring a better understanding of the full annual cycle for blackpoll warblers is critically important to ecologists, Dr. DeLuca added.

Not only is it one of the fastest declining songbirds in North America, but its also one we probably know least about.

The data collected in this new study helps fill in the migratory network of the species, said study co-author Stuart McKenzie, from Bird Studies Canada.

As a conservation scientist, what strikes me most is that in a single year a blackpoll warbler has to navigate 12,400 miles across land and ocean, facing risks of cat predation, storms and collisions with buildings and vehicles, all while trying to find islands of habitat to rest and refuel in our human-dominated landscapes, said study co-author Dr. Hilary Cooke, a conservation scientist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.

In comparison, the boreal region of northern Canada provides safe and high-quality breeding habitat for this declining species. Protecting Canadas boreal forest is critical to saving this amazing songbird.

_____

William V. DeLuca et al. A boreal songbirds 20,000 km migration across North America and the Atlantic Ocean. Ecology, published online March 19, 2019; doi: 10.1002/ecy.2651
An international team of neuroscientists and geoscientists from Caltech, the University of Tokyo, Princeton University and Tokyo Institute of Technology has discovered that the human brain can detect Earth-strength magnetic fields.

The Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field, generated by the movement of the planets liquid core. At the planetary surface, this magnetic field is fairly weak, about 100 times weaker than that of a refrigerator magnet.

Many migratory (such as birds, turtles, eels and lobsters) and non-migratory (fruit flies, cockroaches, honeybees) animals are equipped with a special sense called magnetoreception that allows them to detect this field to perceive direction, altitude or location.

Although magnetoreception has been well-studied in these creatures, scientists have not yet been able to determine whether humans share this ability.

Dr. Joseph Kirschvink, a geoscientist from Caltech and Tokyo Institute of Technology, Caltech neuroscientist Dr. Shin Shimojo and their colleagues set out to address this long-standing question using electroencephalography (EEG) to record adult participants brain activity during magnetic field manipulations.

Magnetoreception, the perception of the geomagnetic field, is a sensory modality well-established across all major groups of vertebrates and some invertebrates, they said.

Many past attempts have been made to test for the presence of human magnetoreception using behavioral assays, but the results were inconclusive.

To avoid the cognitive and behavioral artifacts, we decided to use EEG techniques to see directly whether or not the human brain has passive responses to magnetic field changes.

EEG, which records brain electrical activity and reflects information processing in many interconnected neurons, is an ideal tool to study subconscious processes in which physical stimuli are picked up by the brain but do not enter conscious awareness. This happens with all sorts of sensory stimuli, which can influence our cognition and behavior without us ever knowing that we saw, heard, or felt anything new.

We thought that geomagnetic stimuli might be processed this way, so we looked at human brain waves for any signs that we have a magnetic sense, the scientists said.

They asked 34 adult volunteers (24 male, 12 female) simply to sit in a testing chamber while they directly recorded electrical activity in their brains with EEG.

In our experiment, the participant relaxes in an extremely comfortable chair inside a radiofrequency shielded test chamber, they said.

Inside the chamber is a set of large square coils, setup along three different directions (up/down, E/W, N/S) through which electric current flows to generate an Earth-strength magnetic field within. The field can point in any direction, whether up, down, N, S, or anywhere in between, and can simulate the local magnetic field in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.

We can vary the magnetic field direction or intensity over short time intervals of 100 milliseconds while recording EEG to see if brain activity changes in response to a changing magnetic field.

While our human participants sat doing nothing with their eyes closed for about 7 minutes, we changed the direction of the magnetic field at irregular intervals, up to 100 times throughout the experiment. Each time, the field rotated clockwise or counterclockwise, analogous to turning your head left or right but without actually moving. The whole time, the field pointed steeply downwards (60-75 degrees from horizontal) like the Earths field in mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, where most of participants were born and raised.

By comparing brain waves following field rotations with brain waves in control trials when the field didnt change, we can spot an EEG difference indicating that the brain is processing geomagnetic stimuli.

After a downwards magnetic field rotated counterclockwise, some volunteers responded with a large drop in amplitude of their EEG alpha waves, up to a 60% decrease from pre-stimulus levels.

Alpha waves are EEG oscillations that go up and down at a frequency around 10 Hz, the researchers said.

They dominate the EEG signal when we are awake with our eyes closed, and arise from the spontaneous, synchronized activity of millions of neurons. Their function is not well-understood, but they may reflect a relaxed mind with nothing in particular to focus on and no particular task to do.

When a stimulus suddenly appears and is processed, neurons fall out of synchrony with each other, the alpha rhythm is disrupted, and alpha waves get smaller as a result.

This phenomenon is called alpha event-related desynchronization (alpha-ERD).

In our experiment, alpha-ERD shows that the human brain can detect Earth-strength magnetic fields, demonstrating that we have a sensory system that processes the geomagnetic field all around us, the authors said.

Potentially, we and/or our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors could use a magnetic sense to navigate and survive.

Future studies of magnetoreception in diverse human populations may provide new clues into the evolution and individual variation of this ancient sensory system.

The findings were published in the journal eNeuro.

_____

Connie X. Wang et al. Transduction of the Geomagnetic Field as Evidenced from Alpha-band Activity in the Human Brain. eNeuro, published online March 18, 2019; doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0483-18.2019
By Wang Weixing

At this crucial time for safeguarding the peaceful development of Cross-Straits relations and pushing forward the peaceful reunification of China, Tsai Ing-wen put forward the so-called Taiwan solution to counter the policy of One Country, Two Systems, which evidences her nature as a Taiwan separatist.

The public in Taiwan, especially the military, must keep a clear mind and realize that the Taiwan independence separatist activities are against the tide of our times and cannot stop the peaceful development of Cross-Straits relations and the peaceful reunification of China, so as to avoid making misjudgment and being deceived.

Although political disagreements still exist between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits and China has yet to be unified, the countrys national territory has never been split. Both the mainland and Taiwan belong to the same China, which has been a fact since ancient times and wont change in the future.

The relationship across the Taiwan Straits is internal relationship, never international relationship. From the perspective of current laws and regulations of both sides, military developments in the mainland and Taiwan are both integral parts of Chinas national defense system. The armed forces of both sides should all be regarded as the guardians of Chinas national security and national defense constructions.

The military members of both sides are all Chinese troops. Any individual or political party attempting to split the motherland would be the traitor of the Chinese nation, that is, the common enemy of the Chinese military.

Therefore, every officer and soldier in every barrack in Taiwan should support One Country, Two Systems. By so doing, they are actually defending the concrete interests of the Taiwan military. Defending the peaceful development across the Taiwan Straits, in essence, is safeguarding their own life and property.

Safeguarding the legacies of ancestors of the Chinese nation is the shared responsibility of troops of both sides across the Taiwan Straits. The Chinese army stationed in Taiwan has a glorious history of patriotic tradition and practice. Over decades, Chinese armies of both the mainland and Taiwan have collaborated to oppose separatism and supported each other in opposing the US proposal for separated administration across the Straits and defending Xisha, Nansha and Diaoyu Islands.

Today, both armies station troops on islands and reefs in the South China Sea to protect the legacies left by ancestors of the Chinese nation. Such efforts have never ceased, and should not slack off in the future. To safeguard the legacies left by Chinese ancestors, defense departments of both the mainland and Taiwan must strengthen communication, instead of undermining each other, and work together to evade provocation and estrangement by others.

Ultimately, the purpose of making clear who we are and what duties we take is to truly understand the important historic missions on our shoulders. It is the common destiny to share the future of the nation and the glory of the motherland. Despite seven decades of political confrontation, the Taiwan military has never betrayed and separated the history of our common motherland.

However, the later the reunification of China is achieved, the more suffering Taiwan soldiers and officers will endure. At a crucial time to determine the fate of our nation, we need to depend on the prosperity of our own country, instead of any Western country.

Only when the Taiwan military supports national reunification, safeguard the territorial integrity and national interests of the motherland and make contributions to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, could they retain the glory that has been handed down from generation to generation since the nationalist revolution of China.

The Chinese mainland has always advocated the principle that affairs concerning the interests of the people in a specific region should be solved through extensive consultations among the people in the region, and affairs concerning the interests of a specific group of people should be solved through extensive consultations among this group of people. As for the military arrangement of Taiwan under the framework of One Country, Two Systems, the Chinese mainland has been eager to hear the voice of the Taiwan military and is willing to listen to sincere suggestions from Taiwan compatriots. Based on joint discussion and research, appropriate ideas and suggestions will be included in the final Taiwan solution of the One Country, Two Systems policy.

In highly dangerous period, the Taiwan military is likely to fall victim to some politicians with ulterior motives. To defend their own interest, Taiwan soldiers and officers, as part of the Chinese military, must firmly oppose Taiwan independence. In peacetime, the Taiwan military will be the direct beneficiary of the reunification of China. Therefore, they should take the initiative in opposing Taiwan independence and become the core force to support peaceful reunification, through the implementation of One Country, Two Systems.

For this reason, the Taiwan military should stay vigilant toward rumors and distortions on One Country, Two Systems and take the initiative to defuse misconceptions. They need to realize that the policy of One Country, Two Systems is the best solution for reunification that takes into account the actual conditions of Taiwan, recognize the importance of peaceful reunification through implementing One Country, Two Systems in maintaining peace in the Taiwan Straits and safeguarding the wellbeing of Taiwan compatriots, and take an active part in exploring the Taiwan solution for realizing One Country, Two Systems through mutual consultations.

(The author, Major General Wang Weixing, is a chief expert at Chinese PLAs Academy of Military Sciences and an academic consultant of the Cross-straits Relations Research Center.)
Chinese netizens paid their respects to two People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy pilots who died in a training accident, as new details showed the two chose not to eject from their jet to steer their plane away from civilians on the ground.

The remains of Ren Yongtao, 37, one of the pilots, have been returned to his hometown in Xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, local newspaper Xi'an Evening News reported on Monday.

When something went wrong with his aircraft, Ren made the ultimate sacrifice by giving up the chance to eject and parachute to safety, opting instead to attempt a forced landing away from populated areas, the report said.

No civilian casualties were caused by the crash in Ledong county, South China's Hainan Province, the PLA Daily reported in March 12.

Video taken by local residents shows the wreckage not far from buildings. A primary school was a mere 20 meters away, reports said.

The remains of Nian Jinxin, 27, the co-pilot, were also returned to his hometown in Laiyang, East China's Shandong Province on Monday, reads a Tuesday statement on the website of Laiyang government.

No information was made available about the type of aircraft or the cause of the crash as of press time.

Chinese netizens paid their respect to the pilots and grieved the loss of the two heroes. Hashtag "Naval pilots sacrificed themselves in forced landing" was posted 9,000 times and read 91 million times on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform, as of press time.

"Choosing to protect the lives of ordinary people over their own, Chinese soldiers and officers are the people's true guardians," "I really wish they could have ejected at the last second  Rest in Peace," read typical comments.

Military casualties caused by accidents are unfortunately inevitable, especially during intensive training exercises, experts said.

In April 2016, Zhang Chao, a pilot who was training to fly aircraft from China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was killed due to an electronic control system failure during an attempt to land his aircraft carrier-based J-15 fighter jet.

Yu Xu, a J-10 fighter jet pilot, was killed in a failed parachute jump in November 2016.

The same dangers exist for military personnel around the world.

Between 2015 and 2017, 44 US military personnel died in combat, while 185 were killed in non-combat accidents, the Washington Post reported in 2017.
New Zealand's prime minister said Monday that her cabinet has made decisions about the reform of gun laws, following Friday's massacre at two mosques in Christchurch.

"I intend to give further details of these decisions to the media and the public before cabinet meets again next Monday," Jacinda Ardern said. "This ultimately means that within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism, we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer."

"We have made a decision as as cabinet," the prime minister said. "We are unified."
Korea's arms exports have nearly doubled over the past five years, making the country the world's 11th-largest exporter of weaponry.

According to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Korea's total weapons exports for 2014 to 2018 rose 94 percent over the period from 2009 to 2013. Korea now accounts for almost 2 percent of the world's total arms exports. The top two exporters are the U.S. and Russia.

Meanwhile, Korea's weapons imports were down by 9 percent, making the country the ninth-largest arms importer. The largest importers are Saudi Arabia, India and Egypt.
During this time Radiance of the Seas will operate more than 20 cruises and inject more than A$20m into Queenslands economy in passenger spend alone.

Multi-million dollar makeover

She will arrive in Queensland fresh from a multi-million dollar makeover following a dry-dock in 2020.

Port of Brisbane ceo Roy Cummins said the new terminal at Luggage Point, which is due for completion in the second quarter of 2020, opens up a whole new world of opportunities for cruising in Queensland.

More investment, more jobs

Providing capacity for mega cruise liners like Radiance of the Seas means more investment in the region and more jobs, Cummins said.

RCIs decision to homeport Radiance in Brisbane is a wonderful vote of confidence in our brand new facility and we look forward to working with them further into the future.

RCIs Queensland growth plans

Susan Bonner, md of Royal Caribbean International in Australia and New Zealand, said that returning to Brisbane is a central component of the companys Queensland growth plans, which includes increasing calls to the state by 20% in the 2020/21 local summer cruise season.

Radiance of the Seas returned to Australia for the ninth time in October last year for the 2018/19 season.
Quijano made the announcement during a signing ceremony inducting the waterway into the GIA at the Panama Maritime World Conference and Exhibition, where IMO secretary-general Kitack Lim was in attendance.

IMO sec-gen Lim was in Panama to inaugurate the conference-exhibition known as Panama Maritime XIV. Lim in his address insisted that the [IMO2020] target will not be met using fossil fuels. It needs technical co-operation and capacity of [its] members.

Support to the important initiative 2020 is all about beneficial effort for the environment and health of all countries and wellbeing of the planet, he added. Deadline is fast approaching.

The Panama Canal will become the first Latin American organisation to join the GIA.

Given our roots in sustainability and innovation, this partnership [with the GIA] reaffirms the Canals commitment to leading our industry to a cleaner and more efficient future, said Quijano.

Sign up now to hear more from Panama Canal administrator Jorge Quijano at the Sea Asia 2019 Conference in Singapore

The GIA now has 18 members, including leading shipowners and operators, classification societies, engine and technology builders and suppliers, big data providers, oil companies and ports. The Panama Canal Authority and AP Moller  Maersk are the latest entities to join the IMO-supported organisation.

The new members signed up to the GIA during the fifth meeting of the GIA Taskforce on March 15 at IMO Headquarters in London, UK.

The Taskforce also formalised the extension of the GIA until 31 December 2019 and agreed to develop a White Paper outlining a vision and potential priority areas for the GIA.

The GIA is an innovative public-private partnership initiative of the IMO, under the framework of the GEF-UNDP-IMO Global Maritime Energy Efficiency Partnerships (GloMEEP) Project that aims to bring together maritime industry leaders to support an energy efficient and low carbon maritime transport system.
Press Release

March 19, 2019 Angara wants authority to increase bed capacity in gov't hospitals delegated to DOH TACLOBAN CITY-Reelectionist Senator Sonny Angara underscored the need to upgrade the facilities and increase the bed capacity of government hospitals under the Department of Health (DOH) in anticipation of the influx of patients due to the impending implementation of the landmark universal health care (UHC) law. "To accommodate more patients, government hospitals would need additional beds for increased admissions with the expected influx of new people into the health care system as a result of the UHC law," said Angara, one of the authors of Republic Act 11223, which grants health coverage for all Filipinos. Angara said the gap in hospital bed requirement could be addressed if the DOH will be given the authority to increase the bed capacity of all government hospitals under its supervision, as proposed in Senate Bill 1682 he had filed. Under the present set-up, the department can only increase the bed capacity of DOH hospitals and upgrade their service capability through legislation, and this worries Angara because it limits access to medical and health services that every Filipino patient rightfully deserves. "The DOH has the capacity and expertise to assess gaps in service delivery," Angara pointed out. "By putting these government hospitals under the jurisdiction of the DOH, which manages these hospitals in the first place, shall increase the efficiency in the delivery of health services to sustain the increasing demands of patients." Angara made the proposal while in Leyte province, which is home to the Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center (EVRMC), a 500-bed capacity Level III DOH hospital. There is a pending bill in the House of Representatives seeking to upgrade EVRMC, rename it to Eastern Visayas Medical Center, hire more medical staff, improve its services and facilities, and increase its bed capacity to 1,500. Currently there are 70 DOH-retained public hospitals nationwide, of which 53 are general hospitals, 14 specialty hospitals, two infirmaries and one psychiatric facility which complement the devolved district, provincial and private hospitals in providing health care services. Angara, however, lamented the low bed capacity, citing numbers in 2016 which showed the average bed occupancy rate of all DOH hospitals was 136 percent and 61 percent of these hospitals had bed occupancy higher than the authorized bed capacity. "The mismatch in bed occupancy, compounded by lack of sufficient manpower and health services, hinders the quality health care for patients and makes it difficult to sustain the growing health needs of the population," Angara said. To illustrate the maldistribution of hospital beds as well as limited and dilapidated facilities particularly in poor areas, Angara cited data gathered by the Philippine National Statistics Authority in 2015 which showed that six out of 10 deaths were not medically attended. Citing a 2013 National Demographic and Health Survey, Angara said only one in every nine Filipinos visited a health facility or sought advice or treatment. "Unfortunately, with the increase in population, it is common for residents from far-flung provinces to travel for medical treatment purposes because of limited health services in their areas. The influx of patients leads to longer waiting time due to lack of available space in the hospital thus delaying the treatment," he lamented.
Sales at duty-free stores set a new monthly record of W1.74 trillion last month, the Korea Duty-Free Shops Association said on Monday (US$1=W1,133).

The figure broke the previous record of W1.71 trillion set in January.

Although February has fewer days than other months and there were some 1.32 million foreign shoppers, down from 1.45 million a month earlier, their purchases amounted to W1.40 trillion, up from W1.36 trillion in January.
Legarda endorses Angara's reelection bid

Senator Loren Legarda, a topnother in at least two senatorial elections, has endorsed the reelection bid of Senator Sonny Angara in a video message in which she praised him for pushing numerous laws proved beneficial to every member of the Filipino family.

Legarda, who is now running as congressional representative of the lone district of Antique, said Angara authored more than 180 laws, including the Free College Education Law, Free Kindergarten Law, and the Universal Health Care (UHC) Act.

"Layunin niya na siguraduhing alaga ang bawat miyembro ng pamilyang Pilipino," Legarda said in the video message. "Kailangan natin sa Senado ang 'Alagang Angara' ni Senator Sonny Angara."

Angara is seeking another six-year term in the upper chamber, with the promise of continuing the legacy of his father, the late Senate President Edgardo Angara, anchored on education, health, job creation, social pension for senior citizens, and stronger local government units and barangays.

Legarda, who topped the 1998 and 2007 senatorial polls and placed second in the 2013 midterm elections, noted that while the father was the author of the law creating PhilHealth, it was the son who moved for the inclusion of free checkup, laboratory test and medicines in the UHC law.

"Nagbigay din si Senator Sonny Angara ng benepisyo sa ating mga senior citizen gaya ng seniors discount, VAT exemption at social pension," she added.

With Legarda's endorsement, six senators are now publicly supporting Angara's candidacy, including the top three leaders of the Senate.

Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto, Majority Leader Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri, and Senators Joel Villanueva and Sherwin Gatchalian have earlier expressed their full support to Angara.

Angara is also being endorsed by Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HnP), the influential regional political party led by presidential daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, and PDP-Laban, the political party of President Rodrigo Duterte.

His candidacy is also supported by several organizations, political parties and cause-oriented groups, such as One Batangas, Confederation of Sugar Producers Associations Inc.; Filipinos for Peace, Justice and Progress Movement or FPJPM; Coalition of Services of the Elderly Inc.; Coop-NATCCO Party-list; and Davao-based District III Women Federation Inc.
Press Release

March 19, 2019 Senate probe on water shortage

Nancy: 'Tiyak may sasabunin, walang banlawan' Senator Nancy Binay welcomed the Senate's probe on the current water crisis affecting residents in Metro Manila and Rizal, saying it was an opportunity to thresh out the truth from conflicting statements so the people could be enlightened on what is really happening. "Tiyak may sasabunin, walang banlawan," the senator said. Binay earlier chided water-related agencies and the metro's concessionaires for their conflicting explanations on what had triggered the crisis. "Lahat tayo ngayon ay nakararanas ng water shortage, at kung anu-anong dahilan na ang ating napakinggan mula sa mga ahensya ng gobyerno at concessionaires. But I'm sorry to say, their statements do not hold water," said Binay. "The public is aghast at the response to the current crisis, and no explanation can wash the apparent neglect and inefficiency of those who have committed to provide us with clean water," she added. She reiterated her call for a "clear policy on maintaining water security whenever water supply goes bad." The National Water Resources Board should also have a holistic and comprehensive water resource plan as well as an effective water allocation and reuse policy, she said. The lawmaker also deplored the irony that the Philippines is celebrating Water Week (March 15-22) while many Filipinos are deprived of water access. "Water is a basic need and it is unacceptable that we are depriving our people of basic services they deserve," Binay said. She also called to task the government for failing to construct rainwater collector systems (RWCs) that should have been installed within the premises of public markets, public schools, farms and barangays with no existing water supply or where the source of water is scarce or limited. According to Binay, 100,000 water wells, cisterns and other types of rainwater harvesting facilities and catchment systems should have been installed as early as 1991 in 42,000 barangays in the country in compliance with Republic Act 6716. She urged the Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Interior and Local Government, and Local Water Utilities Administration to compile an inventory and audit of all RWCs to check how many barangays have complied with the law.
Press Release

March 19, 2019 De Lima urges accountability for water shortage Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has called for accountability among concerned government agencies and private water concessionaires for their failure to provide uninterrupted and affordable access to potable water in some parts of Metro Manila. De Lima, a human rights and social justice champion, filed Senate Resolution 1029 seeking for an inquiry by the appropriate Senate committees to inquire into the ongoing water shortage precipitated by the depletion of the La Mesa's watershed's reserves. "As the dreaded El Nino season progresses, the last thing we Filipinos need is a water shortage - be it artificial or not. Access to water is a basic human right and not a privilege to be enjoyed by the wealthy few," she said. "The concerned government agencies and private concessionaires charged with the responsibility to provide access to clean, safe, and potable water should be held accountable for not only the shortage but even more so the lack of providing ample warning for a crisis that could have easily been mitigated or avoided," she added. Last March 7, water supply services were abruptly cut off, affecting mostly the customers of Manila Water responsible for providing water to the cities of Marikina, Pasig, Pateros, San Juan, Taguig, most of Quezon City, and some parts of Manila. Manila Water attributed the water supply shortage to the increasing demand of water consumers versus to the decreasing water reserve level of La Mesa Dam which experts claimed could no longer reach the gates of its aqueducts. As of March 12, La Mesa Dam had substantially dropped to 68.85 meters - significantly below its normal high water level of 80.15 meters - to adequately serve around 52,000 households under the service agreement of Manila Water. Due to the water crisis, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominquez and Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) Administrator Reynaldo Velasco opined that the water crisis could be mitigated with the P12-billion construction of the Kaliwa Dam. Kaliwa Dam is set to be largely funded by China and was recently awarded to Beijing-run China Energy Engineering Corp. If the construction push through this year, it is expected to be completed in 2023. De Lima, who chairs the Senate Committee on Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development, however noted that the Kaliwa Dam construction project is vehemently opposed by various environmental groups. "This drastic turn of events could further tighten China's grip on Philippine socio-economic affairs as some critics have declared the Chinese ODA (official development assistance) for the Kaliwa Dam as a 'debt trap'," she pointed out. "Such a move may cripple our financial flexibility in the long-run and compromise the job security of Filipino workers in addition to undermining our sovereignty and national security," she added. The lady Senator from Bicol also said the impending congressional inquiries should also determine the liabilities of MWSS and Manila Water to notify affected residents and provide pre-emptive mitigating measures. According to her, she also wanted to find out the general program of the Duterte administration - or lack of it - to maintain a steady supply and distribution of clean and safe potable water not only in Metro Manila but also for the rest of the country. De Lima also said the government needs to ensure that any government solutions to the water crisis should not lead to long-term detriment of affected indigenous people, the degradation of their environment, and the subjugation of the country's sovereignty.
Press Release

March 19, 2019 Election debates important to expose lies and fake credentials - De Lima Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has urged the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to reconsider its decision refusing to organize a debate among senatorial candidates in fulfilment of its constitutional mandate to educate the Filipino electorate. De Lima, a known election lawyer, said she believes that the Comelec is fully capable of organizing senatorial debates even with two months left before the May 13 national and local elections. "Contrary to its own pronouncement, it is not impossible for the Comelec to come up with the energy and the resources to organize senatorial debates at this point," she said in her recent Dispatch from Crame No. 482. "The constitutional body is composed of hard-working and competent officials and rank-and-file employees who do not usually shirk from the challenges and demands of running nationwide elections," she added. The Comelec recently denied Otso Diretso's request for a televised public debate between them and the Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP) senatorial candidates, citing time constraints as among the reasons for the said rejection. Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez claimed that "it would be practically impossible, logistically, to conduct meaningful debates involving all 62 candidates, without risking allegations of preferential treatment." De Lima said she hopes that Comelec would soon realize that organized debates among national candidates are important to expose the lies being peddled in social media by unscrupulous candidates, whom she did not name. "The Comelec should realize that now, more than ever, organized debates among national candidates are important to expose the lies and fake credentials being peddled in social media by unscrupulous candidates," she said. "In the age of fake news and historical revisionism, those with a record of dishonesty, corruption or incompetence, and who have come to rely on the short memories of the Filipinos to forget, should not be allowed to succeed," she added. According to the Senator, candidates who lie and fake their credentials should "be exposed, opposed and rejected," and not be allowed to deceive the Filipino electorate with their skills in singing and dancing, or in making the public laugh. They must be brought before the people on a national stage, not to sing and dance or act like clowns, but to defend their track records and platforms of government. Each one of them should pass through the proverbial eye of the needle in a competition of integrity and intelligence," she added. In facilitating debates among national candidates, the lady Senator from Bicol said Comelec would prevent mass media advertisements and propaganda of the individual candidates from solely dictating the decision of the voting public. "Such forms of campaigning do not substantially contribute to the education of the voters insofar as the track record, platform, and program of government of the candidates are concerned," she said. If the debate pushes through, the opposition senatorial ticket earlier confirmed that it will cover some pressing issues in the country - from the TRAIN law, to the unresolved murders in the country under the Duterte administration's war on drugs, to the foreign incursions in the Philippine waters.
Press Release

March 19, 2019 New Motorcyle Law to deter riding-in-tandem killers - Gordon Senator Richard J. Gordon has expressed confidence that shooting incidents by riding-in-tandems will now go down with the enactment of Republic Act 11235 or the Motorcycle Crime Prevention Act. Gordon said that with the new law, riding-in-tandem assassins would no longer be able to kill with impunity. Records from the Philippine National Police showed that an average of four people is killed each day by riding-in-tandem shooters. "Criminals on board motorcycles have really become so bold and fearless. They kill with impunity even in broad daylight and even along very busy thoroughfares such as EDSA! This is because they have always gone away, usually scot-free, because no one usually takes note of the plate number because they are so small and thus, unreadable, or there is no plate number at all. Pag tatanungin mo ang mga witnesses, hindi nila nakita ang plate number," the chairman of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights noted. "Dito sa batas na ito, madali nang makita ang plate number kaya magkakaroon ngayon ng lead ang mga pulis. Kapag bumyahe naman ng walang plate number ang motorsiko, papahintuin ito at huhulihin ang sakay, kakasuhan, pati ang may-ari ng motor kung ang motor ay ninakaw at hindi ito inireport within three days huhulihin agad ito," he added. The same PNP records showed that of the total of 28,409 motorcycle riding crimes or incidents reported from 2010 to 2017, 13,062 or 46% of which were shooting incidents. And out of over 4,000 motorcycle riding crimes or incidents in 2016, only eight cases (0.18%) were solved. Gordon is the principal author and sponsor of Senate Bill No. 1397 that President Rodrigo R. Duterte signed into law last March 8, 2019 which aims to impose bigger, readable and color-coded number plates to deter, if not totally stop, riding-in-tandem crimes. Readable plates will also be placed on the front part of the motorcycle. It also proposes to sanction owners of motorcycles used in the perpetration of crimes with fines and jail terms. Should a motorcycle, used in committing a crime, turn out to be stolen or owned by another person other than the perpetrator of the crime and the owner failed to report the loss within three days. Motorcycles travelling without plate numbers will also be flagged down, with the rider slapped with charges
Press Release

March 19, 2019 Hontiveros to Manila Water: Sorry not enough, compensate consumers affected by water shortage A day after Manila Water publicly apologized for the water shortage that affected 1.2 million households in Metro Manila, Akbayan Senator Risa Hontiveros called on the water company to compensate all its consumers affected by the water supply crisis. Hontiveros, who is Vice-chair of the Senate Committee on Health, said that all those exposed to health risks as a result of Manila Water's failure to meet its service obligation should be fairly reimbursed. She cited as an example the National Kidney Transplant Institute (NKTI) which was forced to cut the number of its dialysis patients during the height of the water shortage. She also said that Manila Water must compensate all affected households and businesses for lost time, gross inconvenience and loss of profit. "While Manila Water's public apology and act to hold itself responsible for the water shortage are recognized, a fair and just compensation to the consumers is in order. It is one of the best ways to demonstrate its firm commitment to public accountability and restore consumer trust and confidence," Hontiveros said. "Hindi naman maaaring sorry na lang at mag-move on na agad. Kailangan may pananagutan din. Ang ordinaryong consumer nga na huli sa pagbabayad sa tubig, kahit ilang beses mag-sorry, puputulan pa rin. Tapos sila, sorry lang, okay na? With over a million households deprived of access to clean water and exposed to numerous health risks, any apology without compensation is hollow and meaningless," Hontiveros stressed. "MWSS has power to penalize water concessionaires" Hontiveros also countered the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System's (MWSS) statement that it has no power to hold water concessionaires accountable because the concession agreements do not authorize it to impose fines for unmet service obligations. "Manila Water's concession agreement clearly stipulates that the regulatory office can impose financial penalties on the concessionaire if its failure to meet its service obligation adversely affects public health or welfare. In fact, all penalties received by the regulatory body will be rebated to affected consumers," Hontiveros explained. Article 10, Section 10.4 of the concession agreement states: "A failure by the Concessionaire to meet any Service Obligation which continues for more than 60 days (or 15 days in cases where the failure could adversely affect public health or welfare) after written notice thereof from the Regulatory Office to the Concessionaire shall constitute a basis for the Regulatory Office to assess financial penalties against the Concessionaire. All penalties received by the Regulatory Office pursuant to this Section 10.4 shall be rebated to Customers affected by the Concessionaire's failure to meet Service.
Press Release

March 19, 2019 Poe wants rebate for consumers, compensation for barangays affected by water crisis Sen. Grace Poe is recommending a refund for consumers and pushing for compensation for local government units that experienced Metro Manila's worst water crisis in recent years. In an interview after she led a Senate inquiry on water supply shortage in the capital and parts of Rizal province on Tuesday, March 19, Poe supported calls by her fellow senators to demand an immediate refund and impose penalties against Manila Water for failure to deliver water 24/7. "Imposibleng walang kompensasyon sa konsumer dahil tayo'y nangungunsumi sa ngayon. Pati ang local government ang laki na ng gastos nila... para mabigyan sila ng suporta habang walang tubig," Poe, chair of the public services committee, said. Poe added the private concessionaire may even consider a "two-month amnesty" on water bills as large swaths of the capital suffered from unannounced water shortage that earned the anger and frustration of residents. In Mandaluyong City, one of the hardest hit areas, people are lining up for water rations, with some chasing and even blocking firetrucks for them just to get water, said Carlito Cernal, barangay chairman of Addition Hills, the city's largest barangay that still has no water up to now. Mandaluyong Mayor Carmelita "Menchie" Abalos said water supply in the city is not yet normal as three out of 27 barangays are still without water. "In the meantime, ang pwedeng gawin ng Manila Water ay tulungan ang mga barangay na hanggang ngayon ay wala pa ring tubig. Dalas-dalasan nila ang pagdala ng water tanks," said Poe. At the hearing, Ferdinand dela Cruz, Manila Water's chief executive officer, said he has instructed the firm to explore ways to provide "some relief in water bills of affected constituents during the period of the service interruption." "We will discuss it with the regulators and we will update this committee on this initiative," the executive said. Their customers, however, could still wait longer for water supply to normalize until June, Manila Water admitted to senators. "Our nine percent supply deficit will go down to 4.5 percent in April and 1.5 percent in May... before getting totally eliminated in June," Dela Cruz added. Senators pressed the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) if it could impose fines against Manila Water after the industry regulator earlier told House leaders that it was powerless to seek compensation on the widespread water interruptions although the concessionaire committed violations. With hesitation, MWSS chief regulator Patrick Ty said "we checked the law [but] there's no penal provision to impose fines. The penalties that we do is to disallow expenses and do this during the rate rebasing that is being done once every five years." But senators expressed misgivings about Ty's assertion, saying nowhere in the concession agreement indicates that the penalties could be meted only during the rate rebasing. "Puwede po magkaroon ng rebate subject to the proper process, dahil sa water shortage, even before the next rate rebasing in 2022," said Ty, adding they will come up with a decision by June or July. For Poe, the decision and amount of penalty that Manila Water faces should come out anytime soon. "Para sa akin, as soon as possible... sana mas mabilis," Poe added. Poe also supported a proposal by Sen. Panfilo Lacson to defer the charging of fees by Manila Water for its water treatment facility located in Cardona, Rizal that has yet to become operational and is partly being blamed for the shortage. Ty confirmed Manila Water has started collecting for the Cardona treatment plant although there was delay and it has not been fully operational. Dela Cruz said they started collecting in 2015 "when the new rates were given to us." Asked if the water industry regulator was also remiss, Poe said: "Talagang may pagkukulang dahil bakit ngayon lang... Sa tingin ko hindi din nila ginagawa ang trabaho nila. Alam mo, ang nakakalungkot dito, malaki ang naging pagkukulang ng Manila Water, pero sa tingin ko, mas malaki ang pagkukulang ng MWSS," Poe asserted. She said MWSS should hire competent professionals and a certified civil engineer as required by law. "The composition has to be according to how that law was actually intended. Dapat talaga mayroong engineer doon, a technical expert who understands the situation because if they are all lawyers, wala silang gagawin kundi mga ligal na bagay lang pero hindi mga teknikal na makaka-apekto sa daloy ng tubig. Malaki ang pagkukulang ng MWSS dahil hindi nila nakita ito," she said.
Sen. Bam proposes mandatory monthly net take-home pay

Senator Bam Aquino IV is proposing a mandatory monthly net take-home pay for all government employees.

Aquino, who filed Senate Bill No. 710, otherwise known as an Act Providing for a Minimum Monthly Net Take-Home Pay for All Government Employees After Authorized Deductions, said setting a minimum take-home amount would ensure that government workers would be able to meet their families' basic needs. He said it would also reduce the employees' need to take on debts.

Aquino said enactment of the bill into law would also allow government employees to budget their household's expenses.

"Government employees have turned to loan agents, government and private, to make ends meet. They go into debt in order to provide for their families' needs, even to the extent that the entirety of their salary end up going to loan payments," Aquino said.

"It is imperative that the state curb unhealthy practices and provide clear policies in support of its government servant-leaders," he added.

Aquino has proposed a minimum monthly take-home pay of at least 30 percent of the employees' monthly salary after authorized deductions.

He said the bill has prioritized authorized deductions in the following order: Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Home Development Mutual Fund (PagIbig) and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth);

Mutual benefits associations, thrift banks and non-stock savings and loan associations duly operating under existing laws with area managed by and for the benefit of, government employees;

Duly licensed insurance companies accredited by national government agencies and other authorize deductions as may be authorized by law.

Aquino said any deficiency in loan payments of government employees as a result of the mandatory minimum take-home pay may be addressed through direct payment arrangements to be voluntarily made by the employees to the lending institutions.
Press Release

March 19, 2019 Villanueva on Metro Manila water crisis: Regulator toothless, MWSS Board lacks technical expertise Twin revelations cropped up at Tuesday's hearing on the water crisis in Metro Manila: the MWSS Regulatory Office (RO) isn't living up to its role, and the MWSS Board of Trustees' lack of technical know-how is due to the absence of a civil or sanitary engineer in the policy-making body. Senator Joel Villanueva uncovered these facts at the hearing of the Senate Committee on Public Services, which sought to look into the crisis that has rendered thousands of Filipino families in the eastern portion of the National Capital Region without access to water. "Ang trabaho po ng regulator ay mag-protekta at magpulis para sa kapakanan ng taumbayan. Klaro po na sa estado ngayon, kulang sa tapang, kapos sa aksyon, at mapurol ang pangil nila. In short, madaling lusutan!" Villanueva said in a statement. "Dapat pinu-pulis ng Regulatory Office ang galaw ng mga water concessionaires, at kung kailangan patawan ng multa, ginagawa ito agad-agad." "We're also shocked when we discovered that not one single board member of the current MWSS Board of Trustees possessed a degree in civil or sanitation engineering, a clear violation of its charter," the senator continued. "Hindi na po tuloy nakapagtataka kung bakit malabo ang sagot sa tanong kung mayroon bang long-term na plano ang ahensya para maiwasan ang krisis sa supply ng tubig." Villanueva cited Section 4 of Republic Act No. 6234 or the MWSS Charter, which lays down the qualifications of its board of trustees. The provision states that the board "shall possess any one or a combination of the following qualifications: (a) duly licensed professional of recognized competence in civil engineering and/or sanitary engineering; (b) business management and finance, and law, or (c) recognized labor leader within the ranks with sufficient training, particularly in the field of labor-management relations or corporate practice." In the current board, six are lawyers, two retired officials from the military and police, and one engineer, according to MWSS Administrator Reynaldo Velasco. The engineer, Merly M. Cruz, is licensed in chemical engineering. "I think the lack of a civil or sanitation engineer in the board is one of the reasons why we are in this situation now. Kung mag-aapply nga tayo sa trabaho, hinahanapan tayo ng sapat na qualifications bago kuhanin ng kumpanya," Villanueva said. "Dapat pong masunod ang itinakda sa batas na naglalahad ng sapat na qualifications ng MWSS Board." The senator also took issue with the apparent lack of teeth that the MWSS-RO showed as the office appeared to be noncommittal when asked about the imposition of penalties to Manila Water, the concessionaire for the eastern part of Metro Manila, for the interrupted water supply that started in early March. "When you're the regulator, you make sure that public interest is paramount. Sa pagkakataong ito, tila interes ng concessionaire ang pinoprotektahan ng RO," Villanueva pointed out.
By Cindy Li

French movies and a bilingual job fair are just some of the French activities happening at SFUs Burnaby and Vancouver campuses in the next week or two to celebrate International Francophonie Day (March 20), when French-speaking nations all over the world celebrate the French language.

Created in 1988, International Francophonie Day marks the signing of the Niamey Convention in Niger on March 20, 1970, which established the precursor to the International Organization of La Francophonie. This organization represents countries and regions where French is the customary language.

It is estimated that 274 million people across the globe speak French, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the only language other than English to be spoken on every continent. In 2011, nearly 10 million Canadians reported being French-speakers, a number thats up from 9.6 million in 2006.

The Francophone presence in British Columbia has a history as old as the province itself, beginning from when Alexander Mackenzie crossed the Rockies in 1793 and brought six French-Canadians with him.

In 1805, Simon Fraser, explorer and namesake of Simon Fraser University, led expeditions to open up the fur trade with 20 or so Francophones, which then became a gateway for a larger number of Francophones from across the continent to colonize the region

At one point before the gold rush of 1858, French was the most spoken language in western Canada.

With the passing of the Official Languages Act in 1969, Canada recognized French as one of the two official languages of Canada, bearing equal status to English.

Today, seven per cent of B.C.s population speaks both English and French, and French education programs such as French Immersion have increased nearly 30 per cent over the past decade. French speakers at home have also increased by 21 per cent from 2006 to 2016.

To celebrate the French language and International Francophonie Day, here are some Francophone events happening at SFU over the next few weeks. All are welcome to attend.

March 24

French Movie Night (with English subtitles): Le Brio

Registration and details

March 27

Bilingual Job Fair

11am  2pm at SFU Burnaby Campus: Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs, 198 Cornerstone Building

Details

April 3  4

Film screenings at the OFFA (with English subtitles and free popcorn!)

Details

Get updates on SFUs French activities, services, and programs by subscribing to the OFFA Monthly Bilingual Newsletter!
Tiny song bird makes record migration, U of G study proves

It's an epic journey for a tiny bird.

For the first time, University of Guelph biologists have tracked an annual migration of up to 20,000 kilometres made by the 12-gram blackpoll warbler, one of the fastest declining songbirds in North America.

The bird's trek between its breeding grounds in the central and western boreal forest of North America and its winter home in the Amazon Basin - one of the longest songbird migrations recorded -- is the topic of a new paper by a research team headed by U of G biologist Ryan Norris.

The paper was published today in the journal Ecology.

Describing a "great circle route" arcing across North America and including a transoceanic flight to South America, the study confirms an epic migration journey that scientists had long suspected but not yet proved.

In 2015, Norris and other biologists were the first to show that blackpolls breeding in the Maritimes and New England complete a non-stop transoceanic flight of up to three days and about 2,700 km along the eastern coast of the United States.

For this new study, they looked at the full migration of birds from central and western breeding populations.

"It's amazing," said Norris, who worked on the study with Hilary Cooke, associate conservation scientist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. "A bird weighing a couple of loonies travels from the western edge of North America all the way to the Amazon basin - and, in between, traverses the Atlantic Ocean."

Other co-authors were integrative biology professor Amy Newman and U of G grad students Bradley Woodworth, Nikole Freeman and Alex Sutton, as well as researchers from other universities, conservation groups and national parks in Canada, the U.S. and Australia.

For the study, researchers tracked birds outfitted with tiny geolocators from four boreal forest sites across northern Canada and Alaska.

Total southward migration took about 60 days on average over distances ranging from 6,900 km for birds breeding in Churchill, Manitoba, to 10,700 km for populations on the western edge of the continent in Nome, Alaska.

Blackpolls from Nome took 18 days to fly across North America to the Atlantic coast of the Carolinas. There, the birds spent almost a month fattening up to double their body weight before a non-stop, 2 -day flight across open water to overwintering grounds in northern Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil.

They covered between 2,250 and 3,400 km for that transoceanic hop.

Norris said scientists had long believed that blackpolls followed the great circle route. Few of the birds have ever been found in the central or western States during fall migration.

He said population numbers have fallen in recent years, perhaps caused by habitat loss and declines in insect prey related to climate change.

"To understand what's causing the decline, we need to know their full annual cycle," he said.

In their paper, the researchers say climate change may make extreme coastal weather events more frequent and more extreme, with unknown impacts on long-distance migratory birds.

"As a conservation scientist, what strikes me most is that in a single year a blackpoll warbler has to navigate 20,000 kilometres across land and ocean, facing risks of cat predation, storms and collisions with buildings and vehicles, all while trying to find islands of habitat to rest and refuel in our human-dominated landscapes,"said Cooke. "In comparison, the boreal region of northern Canada provides safe and high-quality breeding habitat for this declining species. Protecting Canada's boreal forest is critical to saving this amazing songbird."

Norris is now working with biologists in Colombia looking at the overwintering portion of the warblers' life cycle. He said learning whether populations from across the boreal forest overwinter separately or together in South American rainforests may help improve habitat management along the migration route.

###

Contacts:

Prof. Ryan Norris

University of Guelph

rnorris@uoguelph.ca

Hilary Cooke

Wildlife Conservation Society Canada

hcooke@wcs.org

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The other pledges remain unfulfilled. There has been no re-establishing of a joint military committee, no conditional reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Park or resumption of tours to North Korea's scenic Mt. Kumgang resort, no reunion center in Mt. Kumgang for families separated by the Korean War, no video-conferencing reunions for separated families, no North Korean musicians performing in South Korea, no permanent closure of the North's missile facility in Tongchang-ri and no visit to Seoul by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The two Koreas were only able to hold a ground-breaking ceremony for reconnecting severed cross-border railways, but actual work cannot begin while sanctions against the renegade country remain in place.

Six months since the leaders of North and South Korea singed a joint declaration in Pyongyang, they have only lived up to one of 13 pledges they agreed on.

In fact North Korea appears to be resuming operations at the missile facility. Nam Sung-wook at Korea University said, "The agreement itself was based on the condition of North Korean denuclearization and was basically a political gimmick. Denuclearization should have gained pace, and some clear conditions should have been attached. But without them it's all wishful thinking."

North and South Korean officials also held several meetings to help the North reforest its barren mountains and bolster medical cooperation but made no progress.

Since North Korean leader Kin Jong-un's summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi collapsed, Pyongyang seems to have lost all interest in those projects.

However, implementation of a cross-border military agreement, which North Korea wanted included in the declaration, has progressed at breakneck speed. The two Koreas lost no time establishing no-fly zones over the border, removing guard posts from the demilitarized zone, disarming troops guarding the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom and establishing a peace zone along the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border.

Instead North Korea continues to accuse South Korea of failing to abide by its pledges. According to Liberty Korea Party lawmaker Baek Seung-joo, the North Korean regime criticized South Korea 122 times in the last six months, accusing the South of violating the military pact. North Korean state media criticized South Korea 1,471 times during that period.

Despite the agreement, North Korea continues to station artillery along the West Sea and protest against the NLL. Kim Do-gyun at the Defense Ministry said, "We spotted North Korean violations of the agreement involving the NLL and issued more than a dozen warnings to the North."

Free access to the JSA has seen zero progress due to a lack of initiative by North Korea. The North apparently insists that UN forces must leave before it can be allowed.
Amazon's diversity problems extend well beyond Bezos' closest confidantes: A 2018 Bloomberg piece found that according to numbers the company submitted to the government, 73 percent of Amazon's corporate employees  those who do not work as contractors or in the company's warehouses  are men, as are 78 percent of senior executives and managers.

They're coming out with a vibrator that you can control via Alexa. Having Amazon know when you're having an orgasm seems a but much.  Dr. Ruth Westheimer (@AskDrRuth) March 12, 2019

In general, Bickert would rather not censor content that's part of the national discourse, even when it's blatantly hateful. A prime example: in 2017, just before Facebook began re-writing its hate-speech policies, U.S. representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana posted a message on his Facebook wall demanding that all "radicalized Islamic suspects" be executed. "Hunt them, identify them, and kill them," he wrote. "Kill them all." People were obviously outraged. But Facebook left the message up, as it didn't violate the company's hate-speech rules. ("Radicalized Islamic suspects" wasn't a protected category.) Post-revamp, that outburst would run afoul of the Community Standards. Yet Facebook has not taken the message down, citing an exemption for "newsworthy" content. "Wouldn't you want to be able to discuss that?" Bickert asks, when I point to Higgins's post. "We really do want to give people room to share their political views, even when they are distasteful."



Bickert is articulating not just the classic Facebookian position that sharing is good, but also what used to be a fairly uncontroversial idea, protected by the First Amendment, that a democratic society functions best when people have the right to say what they want, no matter how offensive. This Brandeisian principle, she fears, is eroding. "It's scary," she says. "When they talk to people on U.S. college campuses and ask how important freedom of speech is to you, something like 60 percent say it's not important at all. The outrage about Facebook tends to push in the direction of taking down more speech. Fewer groups are willing to stand up for unpopular speech."

If the left wing of the Internet generally wants a safer and more sanitized Facebook, and the right wing wants a free-speech free-for-all, Bickert is clinging to an increasingly outmoded Obamian incrementalism. Lead from behind. Don't do stupid shit. Anything more ambitious would be utopian.

[W]e do know that the design of internet platforms can create and reinforce extremist beliefs. Their recommendation algorithms often steer users toward edgier content, a loop that results in more time spent on the app, and more advertising revenue for the company. Their hate speech policies are weakly enforced. And their practices for removing graphic videos  like the ones that circulated on social media for hours after the Christchurch shooting, despite the companies' attempts to remove them  are inconsistent at best.

The New Zealand massacre was livestreamed on Facebook, announced on 8chan, reposted on YouTube, commentated about on Reddit, and mirrored around the world before the tech companies could even react.  Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) March 15, 2019

Facebook has applied to patent a system where people could comment on laws that might affect them, then have that feedback worked into a formal political proposal, creating a way for people to "meaningfully engage in civil discourse" online. The concept would build on Facebook's earlier attempts at promoting civic engagement, and it sounds similar to other, existing crowdsourced democracy tools. But Facebook's vast scale could put tremendous weight behind any kind of private political forum.

[Content Note: Eliminationist Islamophobia; gun violence.]In light of the role that disinformation, particularly on social media, played in the U.S. 2016 presidential election, this post is a semi-regular roundup of news items related to disinformation and social media as we look toward 2020.At Medium, Maya Kosoff has written about the lack of diversity at Amazon. From her piece:Kosoff then delves into the business case for increasing diversity, and how research shows that diversity boosts productivity. I suppose that research would matter if hiring managers made hiring decisions rationally. To me, the more compelling argument, at least morally (which Kosoff also mentions) is that when white men are disproportionately creating platforms and technology, its features will likewise reflect the flawed, limited perspectives, biases, and safety concerns (or lack thereof) of white men.ran a profile, written by Simon Van Zuylen-Wood, of the high-level employees who contemplate free speech issues for Facebook. The focus is largely on Head of Global Policy Management and former federal prosecutor Monika Bickert, who leads Facebook's team that sets free speech norms. From the piece "Offensive" and "unpopular" are interesting word choices that, in my opinion, downplay what's going on here. Generally, I think it's more apt to say that people might beby, say, a bad movie review, whereas they areby speech that promotes genocide.My take-away is that Bickert (and thus Facebook) seems to err on the side of "tolerating" hateful, exterminationist speech , under the general liberal principle that blanket tolerance is a social good. Zuylen-Wood sums this up pretty well:At Kevin Rouse discussed last week's murderous, Islamophobic rampage in the context of Internet culture:See also:Here, it's also important to note how, in addition to radicalizing people, social media can also foster the dehumanization of various "target" human beings very quickly and algorithmically.In the context of feminists, for example, on Twitter alone I see other users engage in the most toxic, aggressive pile-ons of women pretty regularly. The trend is that once a feminist target has been identified as having said something deemed ridiculous, someone with a relatively high follower count will retweet it with their own mocking commentary added. Other users quickly begin competing to make the cruelest, edgiest, and/or wittiest attacks, reaction gifs, and memes, hoping to get likes and retweets.People stop caring that there's a human being on the receiving end of the commentary. And, when "everyone else" is engaging in the anti-social behavior, I think it's easy for individual abusers to think that their single addition to the discourse doesn't matter much, from a moral standpoint. Twitter has no pervasive stigma against being cruel. Rather, it's a predominant, widely-accepted norm.Last week, a rumor circulated on Twitter that the platform was going to start hiding like and retweet metrics . As a result, users began expressing outrage and panicking. Twitter then tried to clarify and now a bunch of people are mostly confused.So, just another day on Twitter, all in all.I actually don't think hiding like and retweet metrics would be thething. This article by Will Oremus is an interesting exploration of the Twitter "Demetricator" app and how users change their behavior based on perceived "shareability" and "likeability" of content. I think hiding these metrics has important implications for the spread of outrage, abuse, and misinformation.Internet debates mediated on Facebook. Woo.
Asia-Pacific refining margins remain volatile with Singapore gasoline margins gaining almost US$5 a barrel in the past two weeks, Refining NZ says.

The companys processing charges are based on the margins that operators of complex refineries in Singapore achieve relative to Dubai crude oil prices. Those margins turned negative in January and February  averaging -32 US cents a barrel for the two months  mostly due to weak gasoline demand.

Refining NZ, which operates the Marsden Point refinery, said at their lowest point, gasoline in Singapore was selling for US$2 a barrel less than the Dubai crude it was made from.

The Singapore gasoline margin - which directly impacts Refining NZs processing fee income - recovered to over US$1 per barrel by the end of the January/February period and is currently just under US$6 per barrel. This recovery has been driven by strong South - and South-East Asian demand, significant refinery maintenance and falling US gasoline stocks.

Refining NZ shares were recently up 2.1 percent at $1.97. They have fallen about 16 percent the past year.

Marsden Point is the countrys only oil refinery and produces about 70 percent of the petrol, diesel and jet fuel used in New Zealand. It is 43 percent-owned by Z Energy, BP and Mobil, and has to compete with Asian plants to deliver fuel cheaper than those customers can import it directly.

The plant last faced negative Singapore margins in mid-2014. Despite the recent global pressure on gasoline margins, the firm delivered a gross margin of US$4.88 a barrel during January and February.

That was down from US$6.53 in the final months of 2018 but an uplift of US$5.20 over Singapore margins - the biggest uplift achieved in almost two years.

The company said a balanced product mix and 100 percent uptime helped.

A new hydrocracker throughput record was set which supported production of higher margin jet fuel and diesel.

The company is aiming to process a record 44 million barrels this year. The current record was 42.67 million barrels in 2016.

The plant processed 6.96 million barrels of crude during the past two months, down from 7.01 million a year earlier and 7.31 million in November-December.

The lower throughput and margins saw the firms processing fee revenue fall to $34.9 million for the two months, down from $50.8 million a year earlier and $49.2 million in November-December.

Refining NZ said the decline in throughput was due to delays of some crude shipments and reduced gas supplies due to maintenance work at the Pohokura gas field.

Field operator OMV plans to complete that work by the end of April.

Refining NZ continues to build a gas portfolio and will make up any shortfall through firing of liquid fuels. It does not expect any material impact on the company.

(BusinessDesk)

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Fulton Hogan's first-half profit dropped by a third as the privately-held civil construction firm struggled with problematic projects on the other side of the Tasman.

The Christchurch-based infrastructure and construction group reported a pre-tax profit of $70.6 million in an update to shareholders, blaming the decline on several legacy construction projects in Australia.

Fulton Hogan noted those projects in its annual report last year, saying at the time that they were taken on in a highly competitive environment and that the board was considering all options to reduce the company's risks.

In the latest update, chair David Faulkner and managing director Cos Bruyn said those projects were at a stage where the final cost could be reliably assessed.

"Our half-year results reflect the conservative approach taken with respect to both cost and claims recognition," they said.

Graphs in the company's update show first-half Australian revenue rose to more than A$1.25 billion, while New Zealand revenue was flat at less than $1 billion.

Faulkner and Bruyn also noted increasingly competitive market conditions in Sydney and slowing activity in Canterbury and Kaikoura among reasons for the weak half.

They also blamed the New Zealand government's new funding priorities for slowing New Zealand Transport Agency work programmes and adding uncertainty to local authorities.

In its 2018 annual report, Fulton Hogan flagged this financial year would be a tough one, something it reiterated in the latest update.

"Volatility and uncertainty remains in many of our key markets, which has, and will continue to, impact on results," Faulkner and Bruyn said.

"This is contracting, the business has to adjust and flex accordingly to maintain acceptable shareholder returns whilst at the same time retaining our long-term focus."

Faulker told shareholders in a letter accompanying the update that the problematic Australian products and the uncertainty and delays created by the New Zealand government's new priorities weighed on the board's confidence in ongoing earnings. Because of that, the board has lowered the buyback price offered to $14.40 a share from the September 2018 price of $14.90.

Fulton Hogan's board declared an interim dividend of 24 cents per share, down from 25 cents a year earlier.

The company bought Stevenson Group's construction materials unit last year for about $300 million, and the latest update shows its net debt has climbed to almost $700 million at a gearing ratio of more than 40 percent.

Faulkner and Bruyn said the company will focus on integrating the Stevenson business and reducing its debt profile, with a focus on "achieving better bottom-line results than the pursuit of unprofitable revenue".

The company is paring back its Fijian unit after losing its road maintenance contracts. Fulton Hogan is reassessing its long-term presence in the Pacific "given the pricing behaviours of other foreign contractors who operate within the region," they said.

New Zealand head Graeme Johnson said the new transport priorities for the government meant there was a range of smaller regional construction projects coming to market, and upgrades to water infrastructure were also likely to create opportunities for Fulton Hogan at some time in the future.

(BusinessDesk)

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The first of three hydrogen refuelling stations planned for warehousing and trucking operations should be operating within 12 to 18 months, Hiringa Energy chief executive Andrew Clennett says.

The firm is currently screening 20 potential locations around the country for the trial sites, which will ideally include a forklift operation and a nearby truck stop. One of the sites will be in Taranaki.

Clennett says the initial three sites are likely to cost about $30 million including fuel supply. The project scales very well with subsequent sites likely to get underway for about $4 million and eventually less than $2 million.

Costs are falling as manufacturing volume builds, he says, but lead times for equipment delivery are already increasing due to growing global demand for hydrogen-related equipment.

So the sooner we make a decision the better, he told BusinessDesk.

The refuelling and distribution project is one of 11 either underway or expected to start within the next year. It will draw on two hydrogen supplies: a 'green' product made using renewable energy and a 'grey' net-zero carbon product sourced by cleaning up flue emissions from a major industrial site.

It was listed in the H2 Taranaki Roadmap released by Hiringa, New Plymouth District Council and Venture Taranaki last week.

The 68-page document provides an outline on where hydrogen technologies and usage are at globally and how Taranaki could use its energy and petrochemical expertise to start developing local capability in hydrogen-powered transport and industry in partnership with local firms.

The Provincial Growth Fund contributed $50,000 toward the roadmaps $190,000 cost. The fund has also provided Hiringa $950,000 to develop hydrogen infrastructure in the region.

Among other projects listed is work Hiringa has underway with Ballance Agri-Nutrients evaluating the potential to use renewable energy to make hydrogen and green ammonia at that firms Kapuni plant.

Other projects envisage trials of hydrogen blends in gas pipelines and involvement by the regions district councils in hydrogen car-sharing, public transport trials and the use of hydrogen fuel cells to power activities at remote locations.

Clennett says there is already a bit of momentum across the projects.

Formally establishing an H2 Taranaki group to coordinate the various projects, ensure they stay on track and that parties dont duplicate the work of others in isolation, will help.

Clennett says firms can already see how hydrogen is being used globally. The issue is how to commercialise it in New Zealand and to test technologies and business models at the least cost.

They need to build upon each other, he said of the roadmap projects.

We really dont want to be spending money just on demonstrations. You need to make sure that projects we are doing have got tangible outcomes.

A string of companies is investigating the potential use of hydrogen, either as a zero-carbon supplement to natural gas supplies, trucking fuel or longer-term as an export to Asia.

Refining NZ is considering the potential of a hydrogen hub around Northport and Ports of Auckland plans to test its suitability as a fuel for its straddle carriers and tugs. Pouakai NZ last year sought a loan of up to $20 million from the Provincial Growth Fund to test the feasibility of a combined power, hydrogen and fertiliser plant in Taranaki.

In February, Concept Consulting said hydrogen may have a role in niche freight and heavy transport operations, but was unlikely to be competitive against gas or electricity in other local transport or industrial applications.

That was largely because it was cheaper to use renewable electricity directly in cars, electrode boilers and heat pumps than to use it to make hydrogen. Opportunistically using surplus solar or wind generation to make hydrogen did lower the electricity cost but that was offset by the extra storage that would require.

Clennett says hydrogen costs are falling rapidly and it is important firms and policymakers keep their minds open to the best available options long-term.

He cited the cost of fuel-cell electric buses, which have fallen sharply. They are now comparable with battery-electric vehicles and dont face the same range, weight and passenger count restrictions.

Clennett says the country is going to need a suite of renewable solutions to meet its climate change targets, including battery-electric vehicles, hydrogen, wind, solar and geothermal.

The key is to let the technologies play to their strengths, understand their full system costs, and avoid looking for silver bullets.

(BusinessDesk)

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Seung-ri of boy band Big Bang has applied for his looming enlistment to be postponed while he is subject to a criminal investigation for pimping and other charges.

He filed the application with the Military Manpower Administration on Monday afternoon, according to his lawyer. He was to start his Army boot camp on March 25, but the escalating scandal has thrown a spanner in the works.

Earlier, police also asked the MMA for help so Seung-ri can cooperate in the investigation.


Clear differences are emerging between the U.S. and South Korea in their approaches to North Korean denuclearization. The Trump administration, sulking after the North Korea-U.S. summit in Hanoi last month collapsed, now insists on full denuclearization again, but Seoul would be content with a "good enough" deal.

Cheong Wa Dae believes the "complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization" the U.S. seeks is a pipe dream. It hopes that Washington and Pyongyang can agree on a comprehensive roadmap before embarking on a phased approach, whereby North Korea is rewarded with the easing of sanctions at each stage.

A high-ranking Cheong Wa Dae official said Sunday, "We need to go beyond this inertial framework of negotiations with North Korea and rethink the 'all-or-nothing' strategy" of the U.S. He said the new approach should be to "negotiate a comprehensive framework for denuclearization and turn small deals into 'good enough ones.'"

The phased approach is exactly what North Korea has been insisting on, which caused U.S. President Donald Trump to walk out of the summit.

A diplomatic source in Seoul said Monday, "There are conflicting views within the U.S. government about the possibility of a comprehensive deal, but the South Korean government is publicly toeing a different line that hurts its credibility."


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Finance Minister, the Honourable Perry Geerlings, is critical of the false claims made by the St. Maarten Consumer Coalition & Anti-Poverty Platform who recently said his Ministry's policy on alleviating the burden for businesses and residents with outstanding taxes, did not favour the small man," in a recent publication.

Geerlings said contrary to the Platform's claim, the Ministry did not make provisions for the average citizen and that certain taxes were exempt "is wrong."

This is a "misrepresentation of the truth" because the offer has been given to all residents and business owners to go to the Receiver's Office and make a payment arrangement if they feel they are unable to pay their "outstanding taxes" all at once.

Geerlings said he has always felt that the idea behind the Platform's establishment is commendable. It can be a vehicle to drive home to many benefits for the people of St. Maarten. This does mean, however, that the work they do has to be factual and be clearly in the interest of the people.

The Platform alleged in a recent publication that the Finance Minister has "no leniency for the consumers going through hardship after Irma" but is "providing leniency to businesses by allowing them to play a little longer with the money collected" from consumers that should be paid into the coffers of government.



The statements by the Platform are unfounded as the option of a Payment Plan for "outstanding Taxes" applies to businesses and residents alike. Geerlings said, "There is no distinction on the type of taxes in this case so long as it is outstanding taxes, the option is there for everyone to make a payment arrangement with the Tax Department."

He explained that only outstanding taxes are referred to in the payment arrangement option given to both business owners and residents. All current and future taxes should be paid as scheduled. The fact that the Platform has been so critical of his offer but has failed to reach out to the Minister raises the question of their actual intention. However, I am willing to give the Platform the benefit of having misunderstood the Governments intention through my Ministry. Everyone suffered after hurricanes Irma and Maria and therefore everyone who has a need for a payment arrangement to ease their burden is afforded one with this initiative, said Geerlings on Monday.

Geerlings said he is happy to discuss his approach regarding tax relief with the Platform should they wish to engage in a meaningful discussion on the matter.

"If indeed the Platform intends to address certain issues that are affecting the people, then a good approach would be to go to the sources and get accurate information. When falsehoods are peddled to the public by organisations that people expect to work in their best interest, it disrupts the otherwise good intention behind the work Government is doing in the interest of all the people of St. Maarten."

On Wednesday last week Minister Geerlings issued a statement indicating that in the interest of offering some relief to residents and business owners with outstanding taxes, the option is now available for them to visit the Receiver's Office in Philipsburg to make a payment plan.



The Finance Minister issued some guidelines, which stipulates that the term of a payment arrangement or an extension of payment be limited to between four (4) and 18 months.


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Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin has expressed her sympathy to the Government & people of the Netherlands on behalf of Sint Maarten on the shooting attack that killed three persons in Utrecht. Five other persons were injured during the shooting incident, Gokmen Tanis, a 37-year-old Turkish man, was detained several hours after the attack.



Sint Maarten pledges its resolute support and offers prayers to the Netherlands, its residents and Sint Maarteners living throughout the Netherlands. Prime Minister Romeo Marlin empathizes with the families that have lost their loved ones and wishes them much strength during this period of bereavement.



Photo caption  Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin
by Dr. Gerhard Wahlers





The first two years of Donald Trumps term as the 45th president of the United States have seriously damaged Europes confidence in the US as a partner, and put a strain on transatlantic relations. However, this review of American foreign policy under Trump, which takes a look at how Europe and the US are actually cooperating in five regions and five policy fields, reveals a differentiated picture with some rays of hope. Trump has taken a more nationalistic, unilateral, and protectionist approach to policy, and adopted a more confrontational style.









This has certainly reduced the number of overlaps between US and German interests, but it has not prevented pragmatic cooperation in key policy areas. Over the last two years, Trumps foreign policy has, in many respects, followed the route of traditional US policy.





Thus, the preservation of the transatlantic partnership  for which Germany has no alternative, particularly in terms of security and economic policy  remains, just as it once was, both possible and necessary.





Continuity Generally Prevails in Foreign Policy





As our contributors highlight, the policies of the Trump administration  especially as relates to security issues and Russia  have been characterised above all by continuity.





Despite all of Trumps rhetorical sabre-rattling, he has held fast to the key transatlantic alliance  NATO. Indeed, over the past two years, the US has ramped up its presence in Europe as a deterrent to Russia. In many respects, the USs approach to China also stands in continuity with its former policies, although it is being pursued much more aggressively and via other means. Trumps withdrawal from the Middle East ties in with Obamas policy. The termination of the nuclear deal with Iran represents a return to the traditional American Middle East policy and corrects the historical anomaly of rapprochement under Obama. The same applies to the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. The apparently unilateral shift in US foreign policy is not really a break with the past. Instead, it follows the traditional American logic, which regards the multilateral system merely as a means to an end  the enforcement of American security and economic interests. This being said, the new protectionism in trade policy does represent a clear break with the traditional maxims of US foreign policy; although the critical attitude towards the World Trade Organisation dates back to the era of President George W. Bush, and the US has always had its share of critical voices with regard to trade.





A New Transactional Style





First and foremost, it is the presidents style and rhetoric that has changed. Trumps transactional, often erratic style has given US foreign policy a new rationale. True to his campaign slogan America First  an exaggerated extension of Obamas Nation-Building at Home , US foreign policy is now more strongly geared towards domestic voter groups. Trumps policies are a symptom of a deeper process of domestic political change in the US. It takes into account the increasing divisions in American society, which have been emerging over many years as a result of changes in the countrys economic and socio-political structures. As the US midterm elections showed, Trumps policies are supported by large sections of the American public. The same applies to the presidents aggressive rhetoric, which clearly articulates this course.





There Is No Alternative to the Transatlantic Partnership





Following Trumps logic, transatlantic relations are now more than ever understood by the US as a means to an end, rather than a partnership of values. Even after Trump leaves office, it seems unlikely that the US will change its course given the aforementioned domestic political changes. The medias focus on Trump and the presidents style and rhetoric have affected confidence in the US as a reliable, protective, and regulatory power. However, Europe has no alternative to the transatlantic partnership in terms of other world regions and shared values. Over the last two years, the congruence of common interests has diminished in the ten 4 areas examined. Nevertheless, our authors describe how nothing has stood in the way of pragmatic cooperation in many areas, and this seems set to continue. This applies first and foremost to cooperation in what is probably Europes most important transatlantic field of cooperation  security policy, particularly as regards Russia, and the fight against international terrorism. The digital revolution is another area that will become increasingly important for both sides, and there is also potential for cooperation in Africa. With regard to China and Iran, the US and Germany are pursuing congruent goals, but arguing about the right means with which to pursue them. The US and Germany are diametrically opposed in the area of a rule-based, multilateral system, including on climate change, development policy, and international trade, and, with some exceptions, in their approach to the Middle East conflict.





The Preservation of the Partnership is Possible





Over the next two years of the Trump presidency, it will, therefore, be important to maintain a dialogue with the US, and to shape relations in a pragmatic way. The rule-based world order is vital to Germanys interests, but it cannot defend it without the US  and certainly not against the US. However, the federal systems and different constellations of actors in the two countries offer opportunities for a multi-layered dialogue. A transatlantic friendship does not mean it is necessary to be in total agreement.





Germany and the EU must have the courage to take a clear stand. For the US, the competition of ideas also applies to politics. In the US, objective criticism is also seen  if not by all, by many  as a strength and a sign of respect. It is therefore important to concretise, substantiate, and raise awareness of topics of mutual interest.





With regard to the multilateral order, Germany and the European Union must actively advance into the areas from which the US is withdrawing. Efforts to find multilateral partners  such as Canada, Australia, the Latin American countries and Japan  may complement, but not replace, the transatlantic partnership. A key factor in maintaining relations with the US will be to increase the European Unions internal and external capacity to act, and to assume more responsibility in international politics. The current disenchantment with transatlantic relations could act as a vital catalyst in this respect.





Dr. Gerhard Wahlers is Editor of International Reports, Deputy Secretary General and Head of the Department European and International Cooperation of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung . Click here to read the latest issue if the International Reports, where this piece first appeared.
There was no need for a negotiated written treaty. Unfortunately, it appears that Nehrus priority was his international stature rather than his national duty.





by Prafull Goradia





Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was never faulted for negotiating with Pakistan on the distribution of the Indus waters and for going to Karachi to sign the Indus Water Treaty in 1960. The Ravi is an eastern river whose source is in the Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh. Again an eastern river, Beas is sourced in the Rohtang Pass, also in Himachal. The third eastern river is the Sutlej, which starts near Mount Kailash in Tibet, passes through Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, until it finally flows into the Indus. Along with the Indus, the Jhelum is also considered a western river. It originates in the Pir Panjal Range in Kashmir, flows through Srinagar and eventually enters Pakistan and joins the Indus. Lastly, the Chenab is sourced at the Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh, flows through Kishtwar, Doda, Ramban and Reasi districts of Jammu and Kashmir and then into West Punjab before merging with the Indus. In short, all the six rivers help to form the Indus basin. Five are tributaries of the great Indus and they all reach the sea together, near Karachi.





The noteworthy point is that four of the tributaries originate in India, while the fifth one, the Chenab flows through India too. The Indus itself traverses Ladakh in India. It is clear from this description how strategically important the geography of Kashmir is to our country. In short, we could have held our neighbouring country by the scruff of its neck. We are a much bigger nation and could have assured Pakistan that we would let it have sufficient water provided it behaved like a normal nation. There was absolutely no need for a negotiated written treaty in the presence of World Bank officials, who played the role of negotiators for some nine years. If Kashmir was a mistakeNew Delhi ordered the Indian Army to stop at the line dividing the Kashmiri speaking part of the Valley from the Punjabi speaking Muzzafarabadthe Indus Waters Treaty was a blunder. Nehrus Kashmir move was intended to oblige Sheikh Abdullah, who although known as the lion of Kashmir, was not confident of support from the Punjabi speaking section. Realising the doubtful nature of his decision, Nehru put the burden of responsibility for ceasing fire and referring the issue to the United Nations Organisation on Viceroy Mountbatten.





If Nehru had the vision, India-Pakistan relations would have been smoother and friendlier. In the absence of a treaty, Pakistani diplomats would have frequented the South Block to make sure that the Indian government continued to be well inclined towards them and there was no threat of reducing the flow of Indus water into their part of the basin. Let us review how. The person who represented India throughout 1951 to 1960 in the Indus water negotiations with Pakistan and the World Bank was Niranjan D. Gulhati, an accomplished irrigation engineer. In his words: So far as India was concerned, the real problem arose out of the fact that out of 26 million acres of land irrigated annually by the Indus canals, Partition placed 21 million acres in Pakistan and only 5 million acres in India. Within the Indus plains, the areas irrigated in 1945-46 was 19.5 million acres in Pakistan and only 3.8 million acres in India. Most of the highly developed canal system, the famous canal colonies, the granary of the Punjab, were in west Punjab. The population depending on the waters of the Indus system, according to the 1941 census, was 25 million in Pakistan and 21 million in India. The newly imposed political frontier not only disrupted the food supply line for the 21 million in India but also severed suddenly the hydrologic unity of the river system and posed a serious obstacle to the development of several million acres of highly arid, but otherwise fertile, land in the Indian part of the Indus Basin. Only 5.9 million acres in the Indian part of the Indus plains had been provided with canal irrigation as against 28 million acres in the Pakistan part.





Indus water was a subject of dispute long before the partition of 1947. The provinces of Punjab and Sind and the princely states of Bahawalpur and Bikaner had quarrelled over Indus water for many years. The disputes however, were not taken seriously because all four parties owed their loyalties to the British Crown. Upon Partition, however, the issue became focused between east and west Punjab, with each side owing loyalty to different masters, namely New Delhi and Karachi. In the absence of any agreement or understanding, on 1 April 1948, the irrigation department on the Indian side stopped the water flowing into canals from rivers on their side. It was clear that India could not afford to go on giving plentiful supply to the canals constructed by the British earlier in the century. The granary that was west Punjab would be of little use to the Indian side. It was for Pakistan to add to its canal network, whereby they would draw water from the three western rivers, namely the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. Such a network would have needed the construction of several reservoirs.





The crisis created by the action of 1 April 1948 was temporarily overcome by the two Punjabs on 18 April. Subsequently, an inter-dominion accord was temporarily reached on 4 May. For permanence, Pakistan was deeply anxious and wished to take up the matter at the International Court of Justice, whereas India advocated bilateral discussions. Many a meeting was held between the two dominions, leading nowhere. The World Bank at Washington DC volunteered to mediate and by the time serious discussions could take place, it was 1954. It then took another six years for a treaty to be ready for signature. It was eventually signed in Karachi by Jawaharlal Nehru, Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Vice-President of the World Bank, W.A.B. Iliff. Why did India give the water dispute so much importance that the Prime Minister himself had to go to Karachi to sign the treaty? It was as if Pakistan was doing a India great favour.





Instead of this naivete, India, being the much bigger country and the one sharing its water, could have extracted the guarantee of good behaviour from Pakistan before allowing sufficient flow of water to that country. There was no need to waste World Banks time. If Karachi insisted on litigation at The Hague, despite New Delhis assurance, so be it. If the court gave an unwelcome judgement, India could have demanded behavioural guarantees on the part of Karachi. Pakistan was already guilty of vandalizing the Kashmir Valley from October 1947 to the whole of 1948.





Representatives of no decent nation could have indulged in rape, loot and arson on innocent people. Unfortunately, it appears that Nehrus priority was his international stature rather than his national duty. There might have been a war in 1965 notwithstanding a water treaty. It is possible that the over-confidence of Field Marshal Ayub Khan and the apparent meekness of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri might have precipitated a clash for the sake of Kashmir as well as a release from the water clutches. But one defeat would have settled Islamabad from raising its head again.





When one reads a book called Empires of the Indus by Alice Albinia, one comes to the bitter conclusion that India is wasting its time worrying about the Indus water basin and our obligation to release sufficient water. In her last chapter entitled The Disappearing River, Albinia describes her journey beginning from the Indus delta of the river at Karachi to several thousand kilometres upwards until she reached Senge Khabab in Tibet, where the source of the legendary river is located. To go back to the delta from where Albinia travelled by boat, she found that the first 150 kilometres of the water had come from the sea. There was no outward flow of the river until that point. Further up is the Kotri dam built to irrigate parts of Sind. Going further upwards in a jeep in the Punjab, is the much bigger Tarbela dam. This is to irrigate parts of Punjab. Thereafter, Albinia got to see the impressive hydroelectric dam with a reservoir, near Senge Khabab. All in all, it appears, considering the enormity of the Indus, not much water is allowed into Pakistan and certainly not to Sind. Little wonder that Albinia has named her final chapter The Disappearing River.
What a tragedy Mahinda has bound himself in! Mahinda has forgotten the days when he stood up against disappearances and worked to give voice to the pain and anguish of the families of the Missing.





by Mangala Samaraweera





Member of Parliament from Kurunegala and current Leader of Opposition Mahinda Rajapaksa has published a statement on 17 March 2019 instructing the government of Sri Lanka on what its position should be when the UN Human Rights Council that is at present meeting in Genevadiscusses Sri Lankas progress on national reconciliation.









In his statement, as usual aimed at hoodwinking the masses, he assumes a commanding and almost martial tone. Packing it with misinformation to mislead the public, he seems toforget the small detail that he is no longer the President or even the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka  fake or otherwise. As the citizens of our country  Asias oldest democracy  remember very well, Mahinda Rajapaksas attempts to usurp the position of Prime Minister a few months ago failed miserably in the face of the determined resistance of our citizens and our independent institutions including our judiciary.My recommendation to Mahinda would be, in true friendship:lets put aside the airs. It really is impossible to engage in constructive dialogue if you give instructions and orders on policy to a government that is trying very hard to fix the several troubles that you yourself, your close advisorsand those you appointed to high positions during your time as President created, especially since the conclusion of the conflict in May 2009.





And let us be serious. Any advice on policy must be placed on facts, not on fake or exaggerated assertions, which a quick scan ofMahindas statement reveals:





The opening line of Mahindas statement asserts that The government has announced that they will co-sponsor yet another resolution against Sri Lanka.





What Mahinda says isfalse. There is no resolution against Sri Lanka, and there has been no resolution against Sri Lanka since 2015. In 2009, the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government spearheaded a resolution in the Human Rights Council calling it a victory resolution and got it adopted by a division in the Council. The Rajapaksa Government included in that Resolution, the Joint Statement between the Government and the United Nations that was adopted during UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moons visit and also commitment to the implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Non-implementation of this resolution adopted by a vote led to a series of resolutions which the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government claimed to boycott but could not stop from being adopted. Finally, in March 2014, this led to the Human Rights Council adopting a resolution setting up the first known international investigation on Sri Lanka which is called the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL). Sri Lanka was cornered internationally and was in a pitiable state. Mahindas Government put all his eggs in one basket in terms of our economy, borrowing at commercial rates and not being able to repay them. Our military which Mahinda claims to be the guardian of, was losing heavily as they were deprived of military-to-military cooperation with the countries which have the most advanced militaries in the world. They were deprived of training opportunities, participation in UN peacekeeping, and in joint exercises.





After Mahindas defeat at the election on 08 January 2015, the new Government managed to reassert Sri Lankas sovereignty and regain Sri Lankas independent right to take charge of discharging the responsibilities of the Government towards its own citizens. As a result of taking charge of handling our own problems ourselves in consultation with all our own citizens, international action that would have followed as a result of the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka that was established under Mahindas regime in March 2014 ceased. As a result of Sri Lanka taking charge of discharging its own responsibilities towards its own citizens, international efforts became focused thereafter on support for Sri Lankas efforts. Contrary to Mahindas narrative, there are no resolutions AGAINST Sri Lanka in the Human Rights Council anymore. The resolutions since 2015are to work together with our partner nations in the world so that our citizens benefit from the best expertise in the world, and we work with all our citizens to set up processes that would help us put behind decades of distrust, violence and impunity and promote, protect and advance the human rights of all our citizens. I urge you to pause to think a little. If this resolution that Mahinda speaks of is AGAINST Sri Lanka  then there should be strictures on Sri Lanka through the resolution, or an investigation established as in March 2014 when Mahinda was President, or there should be sanctions. The resolutions from 2015, on the contrary, do no such thing. They have instead been the basis to secure economic benefits for all our citizens both in the short-term as well as in the long-term. They have been the basis for re-establishing and renewing trust and confidence of our own citizens. They have been the basis for establishing engagement with the international community to benefit our citizens, our administrators, our prosecutors, our forensic experts and our security forces with greater opportunities overall. They have been the basis for the doors of opportunity being open to us to develop Sri Lanka as a hub in the Indian Ocean and pursue a prosperous future for all.





Mahinda repeats old false allegations and assertions about the Office on Missing Persons. What a tragedy Mahinda has bound himself in! Mahinda has forgotten the days when he stood up against disappearances and worked to give voice to the pain and anguish of the families of the Missing. He alleges in his statement thatGovernment bodies at all levels including the armed forces and intelligence services are mandatorily required to render fullest assistance to the OMP even in contravention of the Official Secrets Act.





Mahinda says that if a criminal taking illegal advantage of an official position abducts and kills a citizen, the law must be forbidden to investigate such a crime? What kind of rule-of-law would exist in our country if inquiries on abuse of power were stopped on the grounds of official secrets? The notion of an official secret can only apply to legitimate national security concerns. Since when would finding the fate of a missing soldier be a violation of our national security? In what way is our national defense affected by families including the families of missing soldiers finally exercising the right to hold a dignified funeral for their loved ones?





Mahinda alleges that The Prevention of Enforced Disappearances Act enables an alleged enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka to be investigated and prosecuted in a foreign country as if it was an offence committed in that country.





Mahinda appears unware thatany country in the world can already investigate and prosecute disappearances and other war crimes alleged to have taken place in any other country in the world, because most countries in the world today have already signed treaties to deny safe haven to war criminals!This is a right that those countries already have which is not determined by whether Sri Lanka accedes to the convention or not. Therefore, our accession to the International Convention Against Enforced Disappearances does not give other countries a right they already have. That is why, in September 2018,Germany charged an ex-LTTE member residing in that country, with war crimes committed against 16 of our brave soldiers. I wonder whether Mahinda has not heard about that case. Of course Mahinda has heard of it, but he hides it and chooses not to mention it in his statement or in any of his speeches because it disrupts hisfalse narrative of international justice aiding terrorism.





International justice is activated when national justice fails to act. It was Chiles lack of action against General Augusto Pinochet which prompted Spain and the UK to arrest him in 1998 and determine his need to appear before justice.This process has not stopped. There are hundreds of universal jurisdiction cases open in the present day, everywhere in the world. These cases could well work against alleged criminals who might travel outside their safe havens to spend their ill-gotten fortunes.





Apart from criminalizing Enforced Disappearance with a view to preventing our citizens from ever going missing again like they did for several decades in our country irrespective of ethnicity, language, geographic location, religion or gender, what the Prevention of Enforced Disappearances Act does is to enable us to act on those crimes, so we assert our jurisdiction. In fact, the Act even gives us, Sri Lankans, the capacity to investigate and prosecute disappearances happening in any other country in the world, in case future Pinochets try to spend their time in our beautiful island home.





Mahinda alleges that The UN Human Rights Commissioner in her report on Sri Lanka to the current session of the UNHRC, has called on member states of the UNHRC to investigate and prosecute those suspected of war crimes in Sri Lanka under the principle of universal jurisdiction.





Im sure this happens to all of us. We all fall asleep in the middle of a movie sometimes, and when we wake up, for a moment we cant understand what is going on in the movie. I think this is what has happened to Mahinda. But without admitting it, he wants to try to tell our citizens that he knows the plot. The High Commissioner for Human Rights, as a result of the acts and omissions of Mahindas regime of impunity, holds the view that Sri Lankas judicial system has not made necessary progress. Therefore, the High Commissioner notes that any state can investigate war crimes in Sri Lanka, but this is IF and ONLY IF we dont do it ourselves! But Mahindaignores the first part of the movie (the inaction which his regime is responsible for) and he goes on to tell the story leaving out a crucial part.





As a nation responsible to all our citizens including our military personnel and policemen, we should not fail in our commitment as a sovereign, independent, democratic state to investigate the several emblematic cases of human rights violations currently in our legal system. We must set up a system to investigate and deal with allegations of human rights violations. If we fail to do this, we place our citizens in grave peril because the message we will be sending out to the world will be that we are unable or unwilling to do our job. If we fail to deal with our issues ourselves, then others will step in.





Mahinda says that Lord Naseby has obtained from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office copies of the dispatches filed by Lt Colonel Anton GashFive renowned international experts in the law of armed conflict namely, Sir Desmond de Silva QC, Professor David Crane, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, Rodney Dixon QC, and Professor Michael Newton have examined the allegations against Sri Lanka and provided written opinions to the effect that no violation of the law of armed conflict had taken place





This is rich, comingfrom the same person saying that future mechanisms to deal with human rights violations should not have the support of international experts! Mahinda claims he is the one and only protector of sovereignty and yet findssafety behind the robes of British lords and the whips of British colonels! No, Mahinda: we will never fall for this undignified maneuver. Global expertise is needed. We collaborate and work with international experts on almost everything that we do in this country. In fact, we are blessed with the philosophy and teachings of a foreigner  Gautama Buddha, an Indian Prince who became enlightened, and whose teachings were conveyed to us by the son and daughter of an Indian Emperor called Asoka. You brought so many foreign experts to Sri Lanka whose names you have cited in your statement. There is no reason to deprive ourselves from continuing to learn from our brothers and sisters in the Global South, who have already dealt with the legacies of their own conflicts. Why should we slam the door, for example, on Latin American forensic experts, or South African reconciliation experts, or Tunisian fighters against corruption? Sri Lanka should continue, as you yourself have done, to engage in such cooperation and collaboration, but on our terms, and in the capacity that we decide, based on our requirements.





Mahinda Rajapaksa, seemingly frustrated by his failure to grab power illegally, gives a series of instructions and finishes his statement by saying that all members of the delegation representing the government in Geneva should clearly understand that anything short of what he says will be a betrayal of the people of Sri Lanka.





By giving such a peremptory instruction, Mahinda is effectively asking the members of the delegation to determine whether they are representatives of Sri Lanka or whether they are Mahindas puppets; whether they follow the instructions of the government or the injunctions of the defeated Presidential candidate who failed to grab power illegally last October.





The Government will continue to defend Sri Lankas sovereignty by reaffirming our commitments to seek durable reconciliation and promote and protect human rights of all. We will, as the resolutions clearly say:





 Ensure justice through our national system, in free and fraternal cooperation with experts of other nations going through similar transitions, based on our requirements.

 Affirm the honor of the institutions of the army, navy and the air force, and project their professionalism including in UN peacekeeping missions, and increase their opportunities for collaboration with the best militaries in the world, by investigating allegations and prosecuting any abusethat may have taken place in accordance with the due process of the law.

 Affirm the rights of ALL citizens including citizens in the north and the south, military and civilian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian,and others to establish sustainable peace, reconciliation, and prosperity for all;

 Affirm the rights of ALL by determining the fate and whereabouts of ALL the missing including security forces personnel and police;

 Provide for those left behind  for all citizens in need  with integral reparation to rebuild their lives and strive for national development.

 Forever forbid the recurrence of horrors of our past like torture, sexual violence, war and white van abductions.





Nothing more and nothing less is what this government is committed to do for ALL the people of Sri Lanka. We will, in this journey, work with the international community. They will be our partners as they have always been. They will also be our witness as well as supporters of this solemn undertaking, and they will tell our story so that others too in this world can learn from Sri Lankas example of reconciliation.





No doubt our journey has been difficult, with ups and downs, achievements and disappointments, but those who caused the trouble in the first place, have very little authority to criticize us. Those who embraced and never investigated child abductors and war criminals like Karuna, cant tell Sri Lanka what a war hero is. Those who paralyzed the country on 26 October 2018 to send our economy into free fall cannot be allowed to continue their attempts to sabotage the progressive path of our nation.





Im sorry to be the one breaking the news, Mahinda, but someone has to say this: you do not have the authority to impose a fine on a badly parked tuk-tuk, much less give instructions to an official delegation representing Sri Lanka overseas.Your pretension to be Prime Minister in October 2018 failed several months ago. Stop trying to deny to a legally established government, the democratic authority it is endowed with. The journey toward reconciliation will continue. The people of our country are tired of pessimists and compulsive liars and fear mongers. They know that their future lies not in fear but in truth and that the economic prosperity of our nation depends on achieving sustainable peace, non-recurrence of conflict, strengthening the rule of law and democracy, and protecting and upholding the rights and dignity of all, and in working towards our goals together and in partnership with all the countries of the world and international organisations in which Sri Lanka is a member.





The writer, Miniter of Finance and Mass Media, Government of Sri Lanka
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Both countries should quickly resolve to scale back coal and nuclear power generation while working to implement the energy transition in Europe, according to a joint study by German Agora Energiewende and the French IDDRI.

The electricity systems of France and Germany are closely interlinked. As a result, energy policy decisions in one country have significant consequences in the other country and in Western Europe as a whole. France and Germany should therefore increase their cooperation in drafting future energy policy so that the supply of electricity on both sides of the Rhine remains reliable, sustainable and as affordable as possible. By 2030, this means encouraging a strong expansion of wind power and photovoltaics as well as a significant reduction in power generation from conventional sources  namely, coal in Germany, and nuclear in France. Clear strategies regarding these conventional generation assets are necessary to achieve climate targets in Germany and to avoid an oversized and unprofitable power sector in France. These are the key findings of a joint study undertaken by Agora Energiewende in Berlin and the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) in Paris. The two think tanks thus recommend that France and Germany cooperate closely in the implementation of their respective energy transitions, starting with a dialogue on the cross-border effects of their energy policies.

For economic reasons, France should reduce the output of its nuclear power plants from its current level of 63 gigawatts to around 50 gigawatts by 2030. At the same time, Germany should halve coal-fired power generation for climate reasons. In parallel, both countries should increase the generation of electricity from renewables, as foreseen by current planning: By 2030, 40 per cent of the electricity produced in France is to come from renewable energy; and 65 per cent of the electricity consumed in Germany according to the coalition agreement of the new German government. Closer cooperation between France, Germany and their neighbours would, among other things, help to bring about the political consensus necessary to build new power lines between European countries and to achieve a higher CO2 price. Following the recent decrease in renewable energy costs, a CO2 price of 30 to 50 euros per tonne would significantly ease cost recovery on wind and solar PV investment through the electricity market. Unilateral actions could lead to strong imbalances, according to the study.

With a nuclear power generation capacity kept at a level exceeding 40 gigawatts in 2030 in France, the national electricity export surplus will grow compared to today and the objective of reducing the share of nuclear power production to 50 per cent will be pushed beyond 2030. Over 50 gigawatts nuclear generation capacity, the risk of stranded assets increases significantly for the electricity market players. If France keeps todays level of nuclear power generation capacity of 63 gigawatts and thus modernises most of its existing nuclear power plants while also expanding renewable energy, this would result in a significant electricity surplus. This would lead to a decrease in the market price for electricity in France and in the EU, as well as to significant electricity exports to Germany and other European countries. However, such an export strategy in France will not generate sufficient income to recover the cost of modernising nuclear power plants, and thus result in financial losses for the players.

According to the study, this negative outcome could be avoided if Frances nuclear power capacity is reduced from its current level of 63 gigawatts to 50 gigawatts. The profitability of nuclear power plants in France will depend very much on the evolution of CO2 prices and the level of electricity interconnectors between France and its neighbours. However, these factors cannot be determined on a purely national level. Rather, they are the result of close coordination between France and its neighbours, especially Germany, says Michel Colombier, scientific director of IDDRI.

In the case of Germany, the study shows that CO2 prices ranging from 30 to 50 euros will help to reduce power generation from coal, but not to the extent that would be necessary to reach Germanys climate target. However, an increase in CO2 prices would significantly improve the market-based cost recovery on renewable electricity investment by 2030.

Higher CO2 prices  for example, through a minimum price for CO2 in the emissions trading system  is essential for climate protection. They would lead to a moderate rise in electricity prices for consumers in both countries. On the production side, the effects vary: while higher CO2 prices would benefit French nuclear power plant operators, they would also benefit gas-fired power plant operators and the environment due to lower coal-based electricity generation. In order for this not to lead to higher exports of nuclear energy from France to Germany, a political agreement between the two countries would make sense: France could undertake to reduce the overcapacity of its nuclear power plants. In return, Germany could actively support a Franco-German initiative for a minimum CO2 price, says Dr. Patrick Graichen, Director of Agora Energiewende.

In the study, eight scenarios for the future development of power generation in Germany and France were modelled and compared with each other. The research was co-ordinated by Agora Energiewende and IDDRI, and the modelling was performed by the consulting firm Artelys. The French-language study, summaries in German and English, as well as the hourly data results are available for download further below.

Source

Agora Energiewende 2019
An Air Force spokesman said the missile was fired "abnormally" and self-destroyed in midair over a nearby area at around 10:30 Monday morning.

The Cheongung was developed at a cost of W800 billion to replace the old Hawk missile and has been deployed warfare-ready since 2015 (US$1=W1,133).

A new homegrown medium-range surface-to-air missile took off by accident during maintenance at an Air Force unit in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province on Monday and blew up in midair.

Luckily the missile is designed to self-destroy if anything out of the ordinary happens during the launch in order to avoid a "Dr. Strangelove" scenario. Still, each missile costs W1.5 billion.

"We understand that the missile was fired even though the button was not pushed," the spokesman added.

No damage to people or property was reported. The Air Force has launched an investigation to find out what caused the accident.

Amateur footage of the accident shows a zig-zagging vapor trail before the missile exploded, like a fireworks howler taking off. A military officer said, "The zigzag trajectory suggests that it was fired without a target being set."

The Cheongung is supposedly capable of hitting an incoming aircraft some 40 km away at a speed of Mach 4.5. Each launch pad consists of eight missiles, which can be fired at an interval of only a few seconds.

The prototype did hit a target about 40 km away with pinpoint accuracy during the first live-fire test in November 2017. An improved version, which is capable of hitting an incoming ballistic missile at an altitude of 20 km, has also been developed and is ready for deployment.


A senior U.S. arms control official said on Tuesday that Iran's missile program is destabilizing the Middle East and raising the risk of a "regional arms race" through the provision of such weapons to armed groups in Lebanon and Yemen.

U.S. President Donald Trump said when he quit a landmark 2015 deal that lifted international sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear activities that it failed to rein in Iran's missile program or curb its regional meddling.

The United States has accused Iran of defying a UN Security Council resolution by carrying out a ballistic missile test and two satellite launches since December.

"Iran's missile program is a key contributor to increased tensions and destabilization in the region, increasing the risk of a regional arms race," Yleem Poblete, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, said in a speech to the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament.
Brazil leader, wooing Trump, opens base to US rockets



Washington, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



Brazil's new right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, signed a deal Monday to open a base to US satellite launches as he appealed for warm relations with Donald Trump on a visit to Washington.

The outspoken conservative, who will meet Trump at the White House on Tuesday, has ideological affinities with the US leader and has broken Brazilian precedent by heading to Washington, not Argentina, for his first official trip abroad.

Promoting a business-friendly approach after more than a decade of socialist presidents, Bolsonaro signed an agreement with US companies on technical safeguards to allow commercial satellite launches from the Alcantara base in the northern Brazilian state of Maranhao.

"We should be thanking God for the recent change of ideology in Brazil," Bolsonaro said at the US Chamber of Commerce.

"We want to have a great Brazil, just like Trump wants to make America great."

Alcantara is an ideal location as it lies near the Equator, decreasing fuel needs by 30 percent.

Brazil hopes it will take a slice of the multibillion-dollar launch market as it competes with the Kourou space center in French Guiana.

But the deal needs approval from the Brazilian Congress, which blocked a similar agreement by former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the grounds that the country would lose sovereignty to the United States.

Brazilian Science and Technology Minister Marcos Pontes, who was the country's first astronaut, likened the proposed status of Alcantara to a hotel.

"Imagine that you brought technology to your room. You have the key and I, the hotel owner, can get in if necessary," he said.

Brazil's aspirations for Alcantara were set back by a 2003 explosion in which 21 technicians were killed.

Former leftist president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva signed a deal for Ukraine to launch from the base, but the deal was later terminated, with Brazil citing economic and technological developments.

Bolsonaro -- whose close ties to business and agricultural interests have frightened environmentalists -- said he hoped for US investment beyond the space base.

"In different areas, minerals, agriculture, biodiversity -- we have immense biodiversity in the Amazon -- we would very much like to have a partnership with this country that I admire," he said of the United States.

Bolsonaro said he would also speak with Trump about their joint campaign to oust Venezuela's leftist president, Nicolas Maduro.

"We cannot leave them the way they are. We have to free the nation of Venezuela. This is why we're counting on the United States to reach this objective," he said.
Lawmakers ask tech leaders to explain viral Christchurch video



Washington, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



A US congressional panel said Tuesday it was asking top executives from US tech firms to explain the proliferation online of the "horrific" video of deadly attacks in New Zealand that were streamed on Facebook and then reposted on other platforms.

The House Committee on Homeland Security asked for a briefing by the four tech executives, calling it "critically important" to filter the kind of violent images seen in the video.

The panel asked for a briefing from Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Committee chair Bennie Thompson said it was troublesome to learn of the video going viral despite the commitment made by the industry's Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.

"Just last week -- nearly two years after you formed GIFTC -- a terrorist exploited your platforms to disseminate across the world a horrific video of mass violence," Thompson said in a letter released to media.

"I must emphasize how critically important it is for you to prioritize the removal of this sort of sensitive, violent content."

In the mosque attack that killed 50 people, the assailant streamed a video on Facebook Live, which was then copied and reposted elsewhere.

Facebook says it removed a staggering 1.5 million videos showing harrowing viral footage of the Christchurch attacks.

The livestream was viewed fewer than 200 times, but social platforms were unable to prevent the video from being widely seen.
A Mission for the Space Force







Bethesda MD (SPX) Mar 19, 2019





Many of the people familiar with the development of a Space Force have assumed that the current organization known as Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), headquartered at Peterson AFB in Colorado, will be transformed into this new service while remaining under the Secretary of the Air Force. This would be analogous to the Marine Corps being under the Secretary of the Navy. However, the mission of the new Space Force may well be quickly morphed into something quite different than the mission of the AFSPC. ... read more
Across China: Top tourist city strengthens cultural protection

From:Xinhua | 2019-03-18 08:29

KUNMING, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Every day, He Runyuan explains what happiness is to hundreds of tourists.

"Dongba symbols are used by China's Naxi ethnic minority and one of the world's only remaining pictographs. For them, happiness is a steaming hot pot of food," He said. "As in the past, having a hot meal means everything."

In a traditional Naxi costume of goatskin vest and a white robe, 42-year-old He guides tourists to learn the Naxi scripts, history, culture and tradition in his center of Naxi Dongba pictographs and paintings in the Old Town in the city of Lijiang, southwest China's Yunnan Province.

"Peak seasons such as national holidays and summer and winter vacations see around 5,000 visitors a day," he said.

"After explaining the symbols, I will ask the tourists to pick one they like and try to write it down," he added.

As a Naxi minority, He grew up in the Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with an 800-year history, which attracted more than 14 million tourists last year.

He has been learning Naxi painting and pictographs for about 30 years. "With a population of more than 300,000, less than 700 Naxi people now understand Dongba pictographs, and only a dozen can do traditional Naxi paintings," he said.

"I think it's my responsibility to pass down our culture and let more people know about it, which is so vivid and charming," he said, adding that most Naxi people live in Lijiang. "That's why I came back here after graduation. The origin of Naxi culture is here."

His devotion of cultural protection is greatly supported by the local government which entrusted He to open the experience center in 2016 in the busiest area of the Old Town and gives him 400,000 yuan (about 59,600 U.S. dollars) a year for daily maintenance and other expenses.

"The local government offered us this two-story cultural courtyard with traditional Naxi characteristics as our center, covering about 300 square meters. We have separated it into several rooms for exhibitions and classrooms," he said.

He and four other Naxi guides work 14 hours a day. "During peak seasons, we can barely take a sip of water," he said.

"It's hard, but it's worth it. We are so proud of what we are doing," he said.

By the end of last year, there were 17 free cultural courtyards in the Old Town of Lijiang, including He's. With the support of the local government, a further 12 are expected to open to the public this year.

"I think the courtyard is a window for promoting the culture of Lijiang, as well as an important base for visitors to learn and try by themselves to have a more comprehensive understanding of our culture," he said.

He's experience center has also cooperated with travel agencies, summer camps and schools to offer free training classes on Naxi culture, receiving more than 7,000 students each year.

"Without the courtyard, nothing would even be close to possible," he said.

To prevent the ancient Chinese city from over commercialization after years of tourism development, the local government has set up a specialized annual fund of 10 million yuan for cultural protection in the Old Town.

"Lijiang has long been China's name card to the world with the Old Town as its core. For sustainable development, we must spare no effort in protecting our culture and make it one of the most attractive parts of the city," said He Tang with the protection and administrative bureau of Lijiang Old Town.

All the buildings in the Old Town are required to maintain traditional ethnic characteristics. Dancing halls, Internet bars, and among others that are inconsistent with the ancient Old Town have all been closed.

A total of 299 traditional houses and 236 yards have so far been restored and renovated by the local government and the Global Heritage Fund.

"We also invite folk artists and culture inheritors to show their skills in the Old Town to get more tourists involved. On traditional festivals, we hold grand celebrations in the Old Town." He Tang said.

More than 90 sets of books telling stories of Lijiang and the culture of Naxi have also been published.

"Our life is limited, but so long as everyone makes even an effort, the life of a culture can exist forever," He Runyuan said.
Assault on IS jihadist redoubt in Syria grinds on



Baghouz, Syria, March 18 (AFP) Mar 18, 2019



A shroud of black smoke covered the Islamic State group's last redoubt in eastern Syria on Monday as US-backed forces battled holdout jihadists after a night of shelling and heavy air strikes.

Even as it fought IS, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces also came under threat from Damascus, which has sworn to retake the third of the country the SDF controls.

The SDF has been closing in on IS fighters holed up in a small sliver of territory in the eastern village of Baghouz since January.

A cluster of rudimentary tents and vehicles is all that remains of the once-sprawling "caliphate" declared across large swaths of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014.

Tens of thousands of men, women and children have poured out of the small farming village in recent weeks, slowing down an SDF offensive aimed at crushing the last vestige of the jihadist proto-state.

Backed by air strikes by the US-led coalition, the SDF pummelled the IS pocket with shelling on Sunday night, pushing deeper into the jihadist encampment.

Ground battles and artillery attacks continued on Monday as the Kurdish-led force worked to consolidate its most recent gains, SDF spokesman Adnan Afrin said.

"Clashes are ongoing between the SDF and IS" as the Kurdish-led forces secured positions it had seized inside the camp, he said.

On a hilltop overlooking the bombed-out bastion earlier, an AFP correspondent saw US-backed fighters training their guns on the camp.

"There, over there! Near the tree next to the bridge," a combattant shouted out, prompting another to unleash a torrent of machinegun fire in that direction.

Men -- believed to be jihadists -- could be seen shuffling inside the redoubt, beneath plumes of dark smoke that obscured most of the encampment.



- Kurdish areas to be 'liberated' -



"The SDF ground offensive has been very effective," coalition spokesman Sean Ryan said.

The SDF said on Sunday night that its forces had captured positions inside the camp.

Syria's minority Kurds have largely stayed out of Syria's eight-year civil war, instead carving out a de-facto autonomous region in the northeast of the country.

The Kurdish-led SDF now controls some 30 percent of the nation's territory, including areas from which it has expelled IS.

Syrian Defence Minister Ali Abdullah Ayoub on Monday said his government would recapture territory controlled by the SDF in the same way it "liberated" other parts of the country.

"The only card that remains in the hands of the Americans and their allies is the SDF," he said.

"The Syrian government will deal with this issue in one of two ways: a reconciliation agreement or liberating the territory they control by force," he said.

A shock announcement by President Donald Trump of a US troop pullout sent the Kurds scrambling to mend ties with Damascus to protect them from a feared Turkish offensive, but ongoing talks have yet to yield any results.

Eight years in to a conflict that has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions, President Bashar al-Assad's forces are in control of almost two-thirds of the country.

But the northeastern swathe held by the SDF, as well as the jihadist-held northwestern region of Idlib, remain beyond its control.



- Exodus -



It remains unclear exactly how many people remain inside the last IS pocket, but SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel on Sunday said those quitting the area put the number at up to 5,000 people.

More than 66,000 people, mostly civilians, have quit the last IS redoubt since January 9, according to the SDF.

They include 37,000 civilians, 5,000 jihadists and around 24,000 of their relatives.

An additional 520 IS fighters have been captured in SDF operations.

The huge numbers have flummoxed Kurdish forces, who are struggling to accomodate jihadists in Kurdish-run detention centres further north.

The exodus of civilians and relatives of fighters has also sparked a humanitarian crisis in Kurdish-run camps for the displaced.

The biggest of them is now struggling to host 70,000 people, including at least 25,000 school-aged children, according to the International Rescue Committee.

More than 123 people -- overwhelmingly under-fives -- have died on the way or shortly after arriving at the main camp of Al-Hol, the aid group said.

While SDF taking Baghouz would mark the end of the IS "caliphate", the jihadists still retain a presence in eastern Syria's vast Badia desert and have continued to claim deadly attacks in SDF-held territory.

In an audio recording released Monday, a spokesman for the group called on supporters in SDF-controlled areas to carry out "revenge" attacks.
Karadzic trial to close, but Bosnia's divides remain open



Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



Widows of the Srebrenica massacre hope he will die in prison, while Bosnian Serbs have honoured Radovan Karadzic with a university dorm in his name. Ahead of his final verdict in a UN court, the former Bosnian Serb leader continues to divide the country he helped drive to war.

On Wednesday a Hague-based tribunal will rule on whether to uphold the 40-year sentence Karadzic was handed in 2016.

The 73-year-old was notably convicted of genocide for the mass killings in Srebrenica, in which more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Serb forces, as well as other atrocities including the siege of Sarajevo, in which more than 11,000 were killed.

And yet among many Orthodox Serbs, who make up a third of Bosnia's 3.5 million population, Karadzic is still celebrated as one of the "heroes" -- alongside former Serb military leader Ratko Mladic -- who they believe helped save their community during the inter-ethnic war.

In Pale, a town east of Sarajevo that was Karadzic's stronghold during the conflict, local authorities named a university dormitory after him just four days before his first conviction in the Hague.

Many Serbs from Sarajevo settled in the bleak town during the war, which lies in the Republika Srpska, the semi-autonomous entity that emerged during the conflict.

Though few were willing to speak, Janko Seslija, a 58-year-old veteran, captured a common feeling among Serbs that the UN trials are rigged against them.

Karadzic's verdict will be "dictated by the great powers", he said.

- War on truth -

In 2016 Republika Srpska went as far as to decorate Karadzic in absentia for his "special merits".

The Serb entity also annulled a widely accepted 2004 report last year that detailed the scale of the Srebrenica killings.

Now the government has formed a new international commission to investigate the atrocity and death toll, drawing condemnation from the West.

For Nedzad Avdic, a rare survivor who escaped the executions in Srebrenica, the Hague's verdict is essential to countering these attempts to rewrite the history that left his father and several uncles dead.

"After (a guilty verdict), they will no longer be able to deny what happened here, deny that we had fathers, brothers, say that they were not executed," Avdic told AFP.

He recently protested at a presentation in Srebrenica by Dusan Pavlovic, who works for a Serb-run institute that commissioned the new investigation of the massacre.

Pavlovic has written a book titled "The Battle for Srebrenica, a War for Civilisation" that he claims he is trying to "de-mystify" the massacre.

He alleges that between 4,500 and 5,500 of those who died in the massacre were killed in combat with Serb forces, internal battles, by suicide or in minefields -- an account that veers far from the well-documented evidence of how the men were taken prisoners and systematically executed over the course of several days.

Pavlovic is not the only one pushing alternative histories.

At the same event the Serb mayor of Srebrenica, Mladen Grujicic, said those killed in Srebrenica were victims of a "project by their political leaders to sacrifice the Bosnian people" to win support of the international community.

For Avdic, the war on truth is now centre stage.

"The verdict itself and the facts that will be established" are ultimately "more important" than Karadzic's fate, he said.

- Divided Bosnia -

The UN verdict will draw the curtain on a prosecution that began 10 years ago when Karadzic, a onetime poet and psychiatrist, was found hiding in Belgrade in the guise of a self-styled healer.

But time has not lead to any major reconciliation between the ethnic groups that clashed in Bosnia's war.

Muslims, Serbs and Croats continue to live mainly in their own enclaves and their leaders cling to power by stoking fear and entrenching divides.

Momcilo Krajisnik, who was considered Karadzic's "right-hand man" during the conflict and handed a 20-year sentence for war crimes, still defends his former leader.

"I knew Radovan Karadzic and worked with him. I am sure he did not want war and that he is not responsible for the beginning of the war," he told AFP.

"That's my opinion and that's how Serbs think," he added.

But the memories of the war are still raw for widows like Bida and Vasva Smajlovic, whose husbands were among those killed in Srebrenica.

"Nothing can ease the pain and fill the void," Vasva, 75, told AFP during a recent visit to a memorial near the town.

"But I feel that my soul will be a little relieved when I hear that he will not be freed," she said of Karadzic.

"We are alive, but we are dead too," 66-year-old Bida Smajlovic says through tears, pointing to the rows of graves.
UK returns 3,000-year-old tablet looted during Iraq War



London, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



A 3,000-year-old carved stone tablet from Babylonia, which promises a curse on those who would destroy it, is to be flown home from Britain after being looted during the Iraq War.

British Museum boss Hartwig Fischer handed over the priceless work to Iraqi Ambassador Salih Husain Ali during a ceremony on Tuesday after museum experts had verified its provenance.

"It is a very important piece of Iraq's cultural heritage," said Fischer, praising the "extraordinary and tireless work" of border officials.

They spotted the object at London's Heathrow airport in 2012 and contacted the museum after being presented with fake documents.

"They seized this item when they saw it at a British port and several years later, after a lot of legal work, we are able to effect this transfer," said Michael Ellis, Britain's Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism.

"It's a very important and significant moment."

It is still not clear how the object was taken out of Iraq, "but we believe it was probably stolen about 15 years ago during troubles in Iraq," he said.

The kudurru is a ceremonial stone tablet recording the legal gifting of land by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I to one of his subjects in return for distinguished service, according to curator Jonathan Taylor.

On one side are depictions of the great Babylonian gods Enlil and Marduk, and on the other, legal text written in cuneiform, the Babylonian alphabet.

Taylor said the object also carried "terrible curses" for anyone trying to claim the land or damage the tablet.



- 'National hero' -



Fewer that 200 such objects are known to exist, and the one handed over on Tuesday was broken in antiquity and eroded, presenting a problem for sleuths trying to establish its history.

"The basic identification is quite straightforward," said Taylor.

"More difficult is tying down exactly who the king is and what the circumstances are, for that we need to read the inscription and it's quite worn, there's a lot of damage in the middle of the text," he said.

"It's old fashioned bookwork. We have a few clues."

They established the king was Nebuchadnezzar I, "a kind of national hero, a legend in his own life time".

The stone is thought to have originally been on display in the ancient city of Nippur, now in central Iraq.

"It's more than just a carved stone... It is a testament to the remarkable history of the Republic of Iraq," said Ellis.
Yemenis score legal win in Germany over US drone strikes



Berlin, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



Germany must ensure that the United States respects international laws when deploying drones over Yemen, a German court ruled Tuesday, in what amounted to a partial victory for three Yemeni plaintiffs.

The trio had turned to the court after losing close relatives to a drone attack in 2012 in Hadramaut province.

Pointing to the significance of the US airbase in the German town of Ramstein for drone deployments in Yemen, they took their case to Germany, seeking to make Berlin stop Washington from using the base in such unmanned missions.

On Tuesday, the court rejected their call for the German government to outlaw the involvement of Ramstein in drone attacks on Yemen.

At the same time, the court ordered Berlin to take "appropriate measures to ascertain if the use by the US of the Ramstein airbase in armed drone deployments at the residence of the plaintiff in Yemen complies with international laws".

"If necessary, Berlin would have to work with the US towards compliance (with international laws)," the court said in a statement, stressing that Germany has a responsibility to protect lives.

The court said there was "clear factual evidence" showing that the US was using Ramstein base in drone missions in Yemen that "at least partially violated international law".

As such, "the plaintiffs' right to life is unlawfully endangered", it said.

Andreas Schueller of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights which backs the plaintiffs, said the ruling was an "important step towards placing limits on the drone programme as carried out via Ramstein".

"Germany must now face up to its responsibility for these strikes," he said.

The US is supporting a Saudi-led coalition fighting against Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen.

Besides intelligence support, Washington has been supplying bombs and other weapons to the coalition.
EU announces 500 million euros for defence projects



Brussels, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



The EU on Tuesday announced up to 500 million euros in funding for defence projects, including the development of a "Eurodrone".

The European Commission, the bloc's executive, said 100 million euros was earmarked for the proposed drone as the bloc seeks to reduce its dependency on US technology.

Brussels is stepping up efforts to rationalise Europe's spending on new military equipment to make it more cost-effective and reduce waste.

"With the EU investments we are launching today, we are going from ideas to concrete projects, we are strengthening the competitiveness of our defence industries," Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska said.

The commission will soon invite proposals for projects in five priority areas, with over 180 million euros on offer for intelligence, secure communications and cyber and 5.7 million for AI-enabled defence technology.

"Cooperation in defence is the only way to protect and defend Europeans in an increasingly instable world," commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen said.

"Joint projects are materialising. European Defence is happening."

The commission has proposed a budget of 13 billion euros for defence for the period from 2021 to 2027.
Former US Defense Secretary Mattis to return to Stanford teaching job



Washington, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



Former US defense secretary Jim Mattis, who quit in December after disagreeing with President Donald Trump's Syria policy, is to return to his research post at Stanford University in California.

The Hoover Institution, where the retired Marine general taught from 2013 after leaving the military, said Mattis will return in May.

"The wealth of knowledge and experience of an already extraordinary career has been made even richer by General Mattis' latest endeavor as Secretary of Defense," said the institute's director Tom Gilligan.

The Hoover Institution, a research center specializing in international relations, said Mattis would "focus his research and writing on domestic and international security policy."

Mattis joined the institute in 2013 after being fired from his post as head of the US Central Command by then president Barack Obama over differences on Washington's Iran policy.

He left the research center in 2017 to become Trump's defense secretary, but resigned from that position after Trump announced a unilateral withdrawal from Syria without consulting US allies in the coalition that is battling Islamic State militants in Syria.

Mattis' duties at the Hoover Institution will include authoring research papers, participating in conferences on national security issues, and teaching.

"I believe we have an obligation to pass on the lessons we've learned so that future generations can study, learn and become better," Mattis said, according to the statement.

The Hoover Institute is considered to be conservative-leaning, having taken on several former senior officials as fellows, including George W Bush's secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
Russia defence minister meets Assad on Syria visit



Moscow, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu met Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in Damascus Tuesday, praising the Moscow-backed Syrian regime's "fight against international terrorism."

"With Russia's support, a significant success in the fight against terrorism has been achieved," Shoigu said, according to a statement published by Moscow's defence ministry.

"The main thing is that we were able to save the Syrian state and create conditions for the return of peaceful life," he added.

He criticised "Western countries" for "trying to minimise any positive changes in Syria and creating new obstacles for ending the crisis."

With the help of its Russian and Iranian backers, Assad has retaken swathes of territory from rebels and jihadists since 2015 and now controls almost two-thirds of the country.

But some key areas remain beyond his control, including the northwestern rebel-controlled region of Idlib.

Last week, Russian jets carried out strikes on the province, the first such attacks since a September Turkish-Russian truce deal.

According to monitors, the strikes killed at least 13 civilians.

Russia has backed Assad with troops and air strikes since 2015.

The Syrian conflict has left more than 370,000 dead and millions displaced since it started in 2011.
Teacher qualification test proves popular

From:Shine | 2019-03-18 22:29

More than 30 people from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan have registered for a Chinese mainland teaching qualification test, an official with the Shanghai Education Talent Exchange Center said on Monday.

In January the Ministry of Education announced the test was open to residents from the three places who are living on the mainland.

It is a must to be able to teach at primary and secondary schools on the Chinese mainland.

The exam includes a paper test on teaching theory and another part on practical skills. Only those who have passed the paper test will be able to take the practical test. Both tests are organized twice a year.

Besides the opening to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan residents, the exam is increasingly popular among mainlanders.

New policies require all educators, including those in online and offline training organizations, to have certificates, said Jiang Ming, director of the center.

We estimate that more than 20,000 people will show up in the practical teaching skill test in May, while the number was around 16,000 last year, he said.

With the certificates, they can apply for jobs at local schools in future.

Jiang said some athletes have also registered due to the increasing demand for sport teachers.

Meanwhile, the government has been increasing financial support for education and increasing pay for teachers," he said. "The job has become more attractive with stability and regular, long vacations.

It's interesting that there are also a small number of parents who would like to acquire the teaching qualification to better help their children with study."

A job fair for schools to hire teachers will be organized by the center at Shanghai Polytechnic University on Saturday.

People will not only be able to talk to school heads and recruitment officials face to face, but also try simulated teaching qualification exams and tests on Mandarin.

The job seekers can also participate in an interactive activity to be interviewed by three to five top-level headmasters to win recommendation letters jointly signed by them.

A small program will be launched on WeChat for schools to release recruitment information and for applicants to connect with potential employers all year round.
Overseas tourism themed store debuts in city

By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2019-03-19 17:32

The citys first theme store focusing on overseas tourism has opened on Xizang Road at Shanghai Peoples Square. Established by Australias New South Wales Tourism Bureau and Chinas largest online travel agency, Ctrip, the Australian styled store provides information for tourists leaving for the country.

According to Dong Qinyi, Director of the North Asia Region of the NSW Tourism Authority, experts who have a good understanding of the destination will be resident in the physical store for consultation.

With the aid of internet technology, Ctrip has attracted a huge number of users to its mobile app, so why has it opened a physical store in the expensive Peoples Square region? Zhang Li, the general manager of Ctrips Channel Business Unit explained that although standard products like trains or air tickets and hotel bookings are suited to apps or website, for non-standard tourism products involving pre-sales consultation, itineraries and after-sales service, physical stores offer more advantages. Compared with the single-digit probability of website or app browsers placing an order, clients entering a store have around a 40% likelihood of ordering a product. Moreover, a physical store which attracts people of all ages is a good supplement to the online customer base who are more likely to be younger.
Cursed and Sold Voodoo Spells and Forced Prostitution in Germany

Virtually all the Nigerian women forced into prostitution in Germany were bound to their madams through a bizarre voodoo curse. One year ago, the spiritual leader Oba Ewuare II issued a countercurse in the hope of putting a stop to human-trafficking in the region. Has it helped?
German Economics Minister Peter Altmaier: "Back when I was in school, in our free time we sawed up border posts and campaigned for a Europe without internal borders, with a common currency and a European environmental policy."

Foto: Gene Glover / DER SPIEGEL
What a tragedy Mahinda has bound himself in! Mahinda has forgotten the days when he stood up against disappearances and worked to give voice to the pain and anguish of the families of the Missing.





by Mangala Samaraweera





Member of Parliament from Kurunegala and current Leader of Opposition Mahinda Rajapaksa has published a statement on 17 March 2019 instructing the government of Sri Lanka on what its position should be when the UN Human Rights Council that is at present meeting in Genevadiscusses Sri Lankas progress on national reconciliation.









In his statement, as usual aimed at hoodwinking the masses, he assumes a commanding and almost martial tone. Packing it with misinformation to mislead the public, he seems toforget the small detail that he is no longer the President or even the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka  fake or otherwise. As the citizens of our country  Asias oldest democracy  remember very well, Mahinda Rajapaksas attempts to usurp the position of Prime Minister a few months ago failed miserably in the face of the determined resistance of our citizens and our independent institutions including our judiciary.My recommendation to Mahinda would be, in true friendship:lets put aside the airs. It really is impossible to engage in constructive dialogue if you give instructions and orders on policy to a government that is trying very hard to fix the several troubles that you yourself, your close advisorsand those you appointed to high positions during your time as President created, especially since the conclusion of the conflict in May 2009.





And let us be serious. Any advice on policy must be placed on facts, not on fake or exaggerated assertions, which a quick scan ofMahindas statement reveals:





The opening line of Mahindas statement asserts that The government has announced that they will co-sponsor yet another resolution against Sri Lanka.





What Mahinda says isfalse. There is no resolution against Sri Lanka, and there has been no resolution against Sri Lanka since 2015. In 2009, the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government spearheaded a resolution in the Human Rights Council calling it a victory resolution and got it adopted by a division in the Council. The Rajapaksa Government included in that Resolution, the Joint Statement between the Government and the United Nations that was adopted during UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moons visit and also commitment to the implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Non-implementation of this resolution adopted by a vote led to a series of resolutions which the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government claimed to boycott but could not stop from being adopted. Finally, in March 2014, this led to the Human Rights Council adopting a resolution setting up the first known international investigation on Sri Lanka which is called the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL). Sri Lanka was cornered internationally and was in a pitiable state. Mahindas Government put all his eggs in one basket in terms of our economy, borrowing at commercial rates and not being able to repay them. Our military which Mahinda claims to be the guardian of, was losing heavily as they were deprived of military-to-military cooperation with the countries which have the most advanced militaries in the world. They were deprived of training opportunities, participation in UN peacekeeping, and in joint exercises.





After Mahindas defeat at the election on 08 January 2015, the new Government managed to reassert Sri Lankas sovereignty and regain Sri Lankas independent right to take charge of discharging the responsibilities of the Government towards its own citizens. As a result of taking charge of handling our own problems ourselves in consultation with all our own citizens, international action that would have followed as a result of the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka that was established under Mahindas regime in March 2014 ceased. As a result of Sri Lanka taking charge of discharging its own responsibilities towards its own citizens, international efforts became focused thereafter on support for Sri Lankas efforts. Contrary to Mahindas narrative, there are no resolutions AGAINST Sri Lanka in the Human Rights Council anymore. The resolutions since 2015are to work together with our partner nations in the world so that our citizens benefit from the best expertise in the world, and we work with all our citizens to set up processes that would help us put behind decades of distrust, violence and impunity and promote, protect and advance the human rights of all our citizens. I urge you to pause to think a little. If this resolution that Mahinda speaks of is AGAINST Sri Lanka  then there should be strictures on Sri Lanka through the resolution, or an investigation established as in March 2014 when Mahinda was President, or there should be sanctions. The resolutions from 2015, on the contrary, do no such thing. They have instead been the basis to secure economic benefits for all our citizens both in the short-term as well as in the long-term. They have been the basis for re-establishing and renewing trust and confidence of our own citizens. They have been the basis for establishing engagement with the international community to benefit our citizens, our administrators, our prosecutors, our forensic experts and our security forces with greater opportunities overall. They have been the basis for the doors of opportunity being open to us to develop Sri Lanka as a hub in the Indian Ocean and pursue a prosperous future for all.





Mahinda repeats old false allegations and assertions about the Office on Missing Persons. What a tragedy Mahinda has bound himself in! Mahinda has forgotten the days when he stood up against disappearances and worked to give voice to the pain and anguish of the families of the Missing. He alleges in his statement thatGovernment bodies at all levels including the armed forces and intelligence services are mandatorily required to render fullest assistance to the OMP even in contravention of the Official Secrets Act.





Mahinda says that if a criminal taking illegal advantage of an official position abducts and kills a citizen, the law must be forbidden to investigate such a crime? What kind of rule-of-law would exist in our country if inquiries on abuse of power were stopped on the grounds of official secrets? The notion of an official secret can only apply to legitimate national security concerns. Since when would finding the fate of a missing soldier be a violation of our national security? In what way is our national defense affected by families including the families of missing soldiers finally exercising the right to hold a dignified funeral for their loved ones?





Mahinda alleges that The Prevention of Enforced Disappearances Act enables an alleged enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka to be investigated and prosecuted in a foreign country as if it was an offence committed in that country.





Mahinda appears unware thatany country in the world can already investigate and prosecute disappearances and other war crimes alleged to have taken place in any other country in the world, because most countries in the world today have already signed treaties to deny safe haven to war criminals!This is a right that those countries already have which is not determined by whether Sri Lanka accedes to the convention or not. Therefore, our accession to the International Convention Against Enforced Disappearances does not give other countries a right they already have. That is why, in September 2018,Germany charged an ex-LTTE member residing in that country, with war crimes committed against 16 of our brave soldiers. I wonder whether Mahinda has not heard about that case. Of course Mahinda has heard of it, but he hides it and chooses not to mention it in his statement or in any of his speeches because it disrupts hisfalse narrative of international justice aiding terrorism.





International justice is activated when national justice fails to act. It was Chiles lack of action against General Augusto Pinochet which prompted Spain and the UK to arrest him in 1998 and determine his need to appear before justice.This process has not stopped. There are hundreds of universal jurisdiction cases open in the present day, everywhere in the world. These cases could well work against alleged criminals who might travel outside their safe havens to spend their ill-gotten fortunes.





Apart from criminalizing Enforced Disappearance with a view to preventing our citizens from ever going missing again like they did for several decades in our country irrespective of ethnicity, language, geographic location, religion or gender, what the Prevention of Enforced Disappearances Act does is to enable us to act on those crimes, so we assert our jurisdiction. In fact, the Act even gives us, Sri Lankans, the capacity to investigate and prosecute disappearances happening in any other country in the world, in case future Pinochets try to spend their time in our beautiful island home.





Mahinda alleges that The UN Human Rights Commissioner in her report on Sri Lanka to the current session of the UNHRC, has called on member states of the UNHRC to investigate and prosecute those suspected of war crimes in Sri Lanka under the principle of universal jurisdiction.





Im sure this happens to all of us. We all fall asleep in the middle of a movie sometimes, and when we wake up, for a moment we cant understand what is going on in the movie. I think this is what has happened to Mahinda. But without admitting it, he wants to try to tell our citizens that he knows the plot. The High Commissioner for Human Rights, as a result of the acts and omissions of Mahindas regime of impunity, holds the view that Sri Lankas judicial system has not made necessary progress. Therefore, the High Commissioner notes that any state can investigate war crimes in Sri Lanka, but this is IF and ONLY IF we dont do it ourselves! But Mahindaignores the first part of the movie (the inaction which his regime is responsible for) and he goes on to tell the story leaving out a crucial part.





As a nation responsible to all our citizens including our military personnel and policemen, we should not fail in our commitment as a sovereign, independent, democratic state to investigate the several emblematic cases of human rights violations currently in our legal system. We must set up a system to investigate and deal with allegations of human rights violations. If we fail to do this, we place our citizens in grave peril because the message we will be sending out to the world will be that we are unable or unwilling to do our job. If we fail to deal with our issues ourselves, then others will step in.





Mahinda says that Lord Naseby has obtained from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office copies of the dispatches filed by Lt Colonel Anton GashFive renowned international experts in the law of armed conflict namely, Sir Desmond de Silva QC, Professor David Crane, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, Rodney Dixon QC, and Professor Michael Newton have examined the allegations against Sri Lanka and provided written opinions to the effect that no violation of the law of armed conflict had taken place





This is rich, comingfrom the same person saying that future mechanisms to deal with human rights violations should not have the support of international experts! Mahinda claims he is the one and only protector of sovereignty and yet findssafety behind the robes of British lords and the whips of British colonels! No, Mahinda: we will never fall for this undignified maneuver. Global expertise is needed. We collaborate and work with international experts on almost everything that we do in this country. In fact, we are blessed with the philosophy and teachings of a foreigner  Gautama Buddha, an Indian Prince who became enlightened, and whose teachings were conveyed to us by the son and daughter of an Indian Emperor called Asoka. You brought so many foreign experts to Sri Lanka whose names you have cited in your statement. There is no reason to deprive ourselves from continuing to learn from our brothers and sisters in the Global South, who have already dealt with the legacies of their own conflicts. Why should we slam the door, for example, on Latin American forensic experts, or South African reconciliation experts, or Tunisian fighters against corruption? Sri Lanka should continue, as you yourself have done, to engage in such cooperation and collaboration, but on our terms, and in the capacity that we decide, based on our requirements.





Mahinda Rajapaksa, seemingly frustrated by his failure to grab power illegally, gives a series of instructions and finishes his statement by saying that all members of the delegation representing the government in Geneva should clearly understand that anything short of what he says will be a betrayal of the people of Sri Lanka.





By giving such a peremptory instruction, Mahinda is effectively asking the members of the delegation to determine whether they are representatives of Sri Lanka or whether they are Mahindas puppets; whether they follow the instructions of the government or the injunctions of the defeated Presidential candidate who failed to grab power illegally last October.





The Government will continue to defend Sri Lankas sovereignty by reaffirming our commitments to seek durable reconciliation and promote and protect human rights of all. We will, as the resolutions clearly say:





 Ensure justice through our national system, in free and fraternal cooperation with experts of other nations going through similar transitions, based on our requirements.

 Affirm the honor of the institutions of the army, navy and the air force, and project their professionalism including in UN peacekeeping missions, and increase their opportunities for collaboration with the best militaries in the world, by investigating allegations and prosecuting any abusethat may have taken place in accordance with the due process of the law.

 Affirm the rights of ALL citizens including citizens in the north and the south, military and civilian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian,and others to establish sustainable peace, reconciliation, and prosperity for all;

 Affirm the rights of ALL by determining the fate and whereabouts of ALL the missing including security forces personnel and police;

 Provide for those left behind  for all citizens in need  with integral reparation to rebuild their lives and strive for national development.

 Forever forbid the recurrence of horrors of our past like torture, sexual violence, war and white van abductions.





Nothing more and nothing less is what this government is committed to do for ALL the people of Sri Lanka. We will, in this journey, work with the international community. They will be our partners as they have always been. They will also be our witness as well as supporters of this solemn undertaking, and they will tell our story so that others too in this world can learn from Sri Lankas example of reconciliation.





No doubt our journey has been difficult, with ups and downs, achievements and disappointments, but those who caused the trouble in the first place, have very little authority to criticize us. Those who embraced and never investigated child abductors and war criminals like Karuna, cant tell Sri Lanka what a war hero is. Those who paralyzed the country on 26 October 2018 to send our economy into free fall cannot be allowed to continue their attempts to sabotage the progressive path of our nation.





Im sorry to be the one breaking the news, Mahinda, but someone has to say this: you do not have the authority to impose a fine on a badly parked tuk-tuk, much less give instructions to an official delegation representing Sri Lanka overseas.Your pretension to be Prime Minister in October 2018 failed several months ago. Stop trying to deny to a legally established government, the democratic authority it is endowed with. The journey toward reconciliation will continue. The people of our country are tired of pessimists and compulsive liars and fear mongers. They know that their future lies not in fear but in truth and that the economic prosperity of our nation depends on achieving sustainable peace, non-recurrence of conflict, strengthening the rule of law and democracy, and protecting and upholding the rights and dignity of all, and in working towards our goals together and in partnership with all the countries of the world and international organisations in which Sri Lanka is a member.





The writer, Miniter of Finance and Mass Media, Government of Sri Lanka












English18/03/2019

BASTASIC: BLOODBATH COMMITTED AGAINST SERBS DURING NDH

BELGRADE, March 18 /SRNA/ - The Association "Jadovno 1941," of Banjaluka, which nurtures memories of Serbs killed during the time of the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/, asked today the Serbian society to rename the genocide against the Serbian people in the NDH into a Bloodbath.



The president of the "Jadovno 1941" Association, Dusan Bastasic, said that the institutions of the Serbian people and experts did not name the genocide committed against Orthodox Serbs by the NDH.



He told a press conference that the genocide against Jews was named the Holocaust, against Roma Porajmos, while the genocide against Serbs does not have a recognizable term.



Bastasic said the Assembly of the Jadovno Association last year decided to name the genocide against Serbs as the Bloodbath and that many associations supported it.



The initiative was supported by academic Vasilije Krestic, Professor Nikola Zutic from the Belgrade-based Institute of Contemporary History, and Momcilo Miric from the Belgrade-based Association Dobrica Eric tasked with nurturing the Cyrillic script.



Krestic said that the initiative of the "Jadovno 1941" Association is good and will contribute to saving victims from oblivion.



Zutic said that the Bloodbath is the right term which depicts the monstrosity of those who were killing Serbs during the NDH and added that the Serbian people should look up to Jews who, he said, counted all the victims.



Miric, who says that the term bloodbath shows what happened to the Serbian people, pointed to the aggressive attempts to revise the history regarding the Serbian victims of the NDH.



The Assembly of the "Jadovno 1941" Association of Banjaluka decided last year to name the genocide committed against Orthodox Serbs in WWII during the NDH as the Bloodbath.



More than one million of Serbs who before 1941 lived in the area covered by the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ were subjected to the Bloodbath, says the Association in its decision published on its web site.



The Bloodbath also included the economic terror and confiscation of property, organization and conduct of individual and mass murders, deportation to concentration camps, forced conversion into Catholicism and expulsions. /end/sg
English18/03/2019

COUNCIL OF MINISTERS AND SECURITY AGENCIES TO GIVE ANSWERS IMMEDIATELY

MOSTAR, March 18 /SRNA/ - HDZ BiH Leader Dragan Covic stated today in Mostar that the HDZ BiH had asked the Council of Ministers in caretaking capacity and security agencies to immediately give statement and answers on the Salafi Affair, adding that the activities of illicit intelligence services is present everywhere in BiH.



Covic said that the Salafi Affair, in which the Croatian intelligence service, Croatian diplomats, journalists, including some HDZ BiH officials were allegedly involved in recruiting salafi members in order to portray BiH as a dangerous terrorist base, is purposely placed prior to the conference on amendments to the Constitution organised in Neum to obscure everything uttered there.



Due to the affair, reported by a Sarajevo portal and confirmed by Dragan Mektic, Security Minister in the Council of Ministers in caretaking capacity, Covic stressed that it was about coordinated misinformation in order to achieve a certain goal in the public.



"Mijo Kresic is a deputy security minister and we find it interesting that they failed to communicate, while the world was informed. The names of a respected journalist and a diplomat are mentioned there. This issue is to be resolved by the Council of Ministers and security agencies as soon as possible," Covic told reporters.



He stressed that speculating about this information is unacceptable, pointing out that it is sensitive and dangerous topic related to radical groups and terrorism.



"I cannot highlight who is the ultimate target of these games by illicit intelligence sector in BiH, but this is not good. You cannot accuse somebody publically without having a single fact," said the HDZ BiH leader.



He warns that all this is undermining security.



"When through the state institutions contribution is made to say something for what you do not have any grounds, then we should start worrying about ourselves and our safety," Covic said.



Answering the question why Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina do not organise illicit intelligence service in response to the Bosniak one, Covic said the Croats are not allowed to do it, neither can they.



"We have to behave in accordance with the Constitution. It would be a paradox to respond to illicit activities with illicit activities. It is anarchy. We, as the fewest constituent people, abide by the system, the constitution and legislation. This Constitution, until the other one is passed. We must end illicit ctivities in BiH. They are present everywhere in BiH," Covic said.



Dragan Mektic, Minister of Security in the Council of Ministers in caretaking capacity, was heard last week in the Prosecutor's Office of BiH over allegations that Croatian intelligence officers and diplomats were recruiting members of the Salafi movement for weapons smuggling in BiH.



Mektic confirmed his allegations at the hearing.



The BiH Prosecutor's Office formed the case in order to urgently establish all the circumstances and allegations made in the media related to the alleged recruitment of members of the Salafi movement for weapons smuggling in BiH, in order to portray BiH as a terrorist base. /end/vos
Would better access to the Mississippi River be advantageous to Ste. Genevieve?

Yes! It would boost tourism and be awesome for locals.

Not really. Anyone who really wants to see it can drive to the ferry landing. View Results
Shares is the leading weekly publication for retail investors. It is packed with investment ideas, news and educational material to help build and run portfolios and get more from your money.

Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists.
Home  Just In  EU Delegation to Nepals new office inaugurated in Kathmandu

Kathmandu, March 18

The new office premises of the Delegation of the European Union to Nepal has been inaugurated amid a programme in Kathmandu on Monday.

Vice President Nanda Bahadur Pun, Deputy Managing Director for Asia and Pacific of the European External Action Service (EEAS) Paola Pampaloni and EUs ambassador to Nepal Veronica Cody jointly inaugurated the office.

Inaugurating the new premises, Pampaloni said, The EU and Nepal have been partners in development cooperation ever since bilateral relations began in 1973. Last year, in 2018, we marked 45 years of our friendship. The purchase of the new Delegation premises is a testimony to the European Unions commitment to remain engaged in and with Nepal and indeed over the term to strengthen this partnership.

During her visit to Nepal, Pampaloni met Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali, Finance Minister Yuba Raj Khatiwada, advisor to the prime minister Rajan Bhattarai and foreign secretary Shanker Das Bairagi.

The EU is the largest development donor in Nepal contributing around $400 million since 2014 in the fields of rural development, education, governance and reconstruction.
The government is preparing to host an investment summit in Kathmandu from March 29-30. It has prepared a list of 63 projects to showcase at the summit. According to government estimates, the projects are worth over Rs 300 billion. If one is to look at the history of investment summits in Nepal, only a fraction of investment committed during these meetings actually materialise. Onlinekhabar talked to former Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat, considered one of the key architects of Nepals liberalisation policy, about his take on the summit and its prospects.

Following the 2015 quake, the post-disaster summit of donors was organised under your leadership. You were the keynote speaker of the investment summit the government organised after that. Has the government contacted you for your input for this years summit?

No the government has not contacted me. I dont think they need to contact me. They must be thinking that they understand everything. I have not been consulted. I dont know whether they have consulted other people as well. This is a decision the government has to take. I dont have anything to say about it.

What is your assessment of the governments preparations for the summit?

The point I want to stress is that organising a summit is not enough. The present government has done a lot of publicity over the event. It has even sent representatives to different countries to talk about this summit.

Organising a summit is not enough, We need to look at the situation of the country. We need to create and investment-friendly climate in the country. The government needs to look at at the security situation in the country, listen to foreign investors. The investors look at what domestic investors are saying, what is the governance situation like and what are the returns.

Instead of indulging in publicity, the government should have spend more time on showing investors that the country has a favourable climate for investment. It needs to show that our country is governed well and we do not have strikes. The government also needs to show that if any investor decides to invest in Nepal he/she will get a return

How is the situation different from the investment summits held in the past?

The investment climate in the country has deteriorated. During our tenure, we organised the donor conference, it was not an investment summit. I had announced that I would organise the conference within 60 days after the quake. There were people who did not believe that I would organise the event on time.

During the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank, I expressed my opinion, That also helped. The government should have followed up on past commitments and asked why the commitments were not being converted into actual investments.

Why do you think the commitments did not translate into investments?

We could not create an investment-friendly climate in the country. There was a lack of good governance. Although we have a stable government in the country, the administration is not stable. Top bureaucrats are being transferred up to four times and how can we attract investors?

One of the major problems in Nepal related to the supply of electricity has been resolved. The government has introduced new legislation and many other reforms have been made.

It is not enough to talk. You have to implement what you say. Corruption is rife here, no one works without a bribe. Multi-national companies withdraw from Nepal because of rampant corruption. These days we have the NCell controversy. NCell is Nepals biggest tax payer. It pays Rs 22-25 billion in taxes, although there is some controversy about its capital gains tax.

But NCells towers are being targeted. In addition to that the Biplav group is collecting money from people in the name of taxes. How can we say the investment climate has improved?

What in your opinion are the reasons why foreign investors need to invest in Nepal?

There are many reasons. We have immense potential in hydropower. Similarly, we can usher in a revolution in the agriculture sector. We are located between to giant neighbours with who we have professional trade ties. Our trade ties with SAARC countries is also smooth. Our labour costs are also not high.

We need to cash these things. We need a leader with a vision who can provide good governance. Land acquisition is very difficult. It is expensive. I have already noted down the other issues.
Every hour 30 people are diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) in the European Region

The latest ECDC-WHO report Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring in Europe 2019 (2017 data) shows that despite an overall decline in numbers of people suffering from TB, the disease remains a major public health challenge in the Region. Of the 275 000 new diagnoses and relapses, an estimated 77 000 people are suffering from difficult-to-treat multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). The European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries fare better, with only 1 041 people reported to have MDR-TB. However, most countries in the Region, including many in the EU/EEA, struggle to treat patients successfully.

Dr Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said: "Even though tuberculosis is an ancient, preventable and curable disease, it still causes too much suffering and death to many people in the European Union and beyond. TB was high on the global agenda in 2018 and world leaders committed to mobilise efforts towards ending it. This momentum must be used to tackle tuberculosis from all angles and at all levels. The Commission has pledged its commitment to support the EU Member States towards reaching the goal of ending TB by 2030 as part of the wider Sustainable Development Agenda. Even though we are on the right track, sustained efforts centred on people are paramount to achieve a tuberculosis-free Europe and the world."

ECDC Director Dr Andrea Ammon believes in the capacity of the EU/EEA to improve: "We can end TB by 2030. However, as the burden in the region varies greatly, we will need to tailor approaches on a country-by-country basis. ECDC will continue to offer tailored country support and coordinate efforts across borders."

"TB is preventable and curable; the time to take action is now to end TB by 2030. If we don't act rapidly and decisively, the drug-resistant forms of the disease will increase their hold on Europe. Despite the challenges and threats that we face, I believe that Europe has the full potential to lead the way. We have science and technology, skilled health professionals and high level political commitment to leaving no-one behind - we have got what it takes to end TB", said Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe.

The recent United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB, held in September 2018, brought hope to the world as global leaders stepped up their commitment to end TB by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This political commitment now needs to be translated into action to end TB.

New hope for treatment of drug-resistant TB

Up until now, an MDR-TB diagnosis spelled the start of a gruelling two-year treatment plan for patients. New WHO recommendations for the treatment of MDR-TB involve safer and more effective drugs with reduced chances of severe side effects and a new treatment regimen for increased effectiveness.

This is also a welcome change for the EU/EEA countries struggling to successfully treat drug-resistant patients. In 2017, only 45% of patients with MDR-TB were treated successfully and for extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), the more resistant form of the disease, only 28% were reported as successfully treated.

Timely diagnostic tests are vital

Proper and fast diagnosis of TB is essential. The sooner a patient is diagnosed, the faster their treatment can begin, easing suffering and preventing further disease transmission. The new report indicates that just over half of all newly notified TB patients were tested using WHO-recommended rapid diagnostic tests. To improve diagnoses and ensure appropriate treatment approaches, it is also important to have capacity at country level to rapidly detect drug-resistant TB.

Overall, the situation in the European Region is improving too slowly to end TB by 2030. In order to reach the SDG target on TB, new intersectoral approaches are required, current tools need to be used more effectively and a people-centred approach to care is paramount.

###

Read the report: http://bit. ly/ WTBD_19

Notes to the editor

World Tuberculosis Day is observed on 24 March each year around the world. Its overall goal is to raise awareness concerning the burden of TB worldwide and the status of TB prevention and control efforts.

Sustainable Development Goal target 3.3: "By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases". The indicator is TB incidence per 100 000 population. The WHO End TB Strategy sub-targets for measuring progress towards the SDGs are: TB incidence 80% lower in 2030 compared to 2015; the number of TB deaths 90% lower; and no family should face catastrophic costs due to TB.

The United Nations High-level Meeting on TB was held on 26 September 2018, resulting in a political declaration endorsed by heads of state and government outlining the key commitments that must be met for the world to end the TB epidemic by 2030, as called for in the SDGs.

The WHO European Region comprises 53 countries with a population of over 900 million, of which around 517 million live in the EU/EEA (28 EU Member States plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway).

In the 31 EU/EEA countries, 55 337 TB cases were reported in 2017, with a notification rate of 10.7 per 100 000 population. MDR-TB was reported for 1 041 (3.8%) of the 27 339 cases with the relevant drugsusceptibility test (DST) results and XDR-TB was reported for 187 (24.3%) of 770 MDR-TB cases with the relevant DST results.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Three-quarters of the funding required for the refurbishment of Marbella castle is to come from the Ministry of Public Works (Fomento), it has been confirmed.

The project, with a budget of almost 500,000 euros, will address a number of issues affecting the outer wall of the Castillo-Alcazaba complex at the heart of the Old Town which is at serious risk of deterioration.

This is just one of 27 conservation projects which will be subsidised in Andalucia, worth a total of 17.5 million euros.
The two British men accused of the kidnapping of a Latvian woman in Marbella in 2014, told a Malaga court on Monday that they did not know where she was.

Westley Capper, the son of British multimillionaire John Capper, and Craig Porter, face prison sentences of 12 years and damages of more than 80,000 euros for the disappearance of Agnese Klavina. The trial began on Monday in Malaga's provincial court.

The young woman was last seen leaving the Aqwa Mist nightclub in Puerto Banus on 6 September 2014 and getting into a car with the defendants.

The prosecution says that video footage shows that Agnese was forced into the car against her will. She has not been seen since.

In court on the first day of the trial, Capper, whose defence is calling for his acquittal, said that he met Agnese that night in the club and had a few drinks with her and her female friend. He then suggested, he said, that they went back to his house to continue partying and Agnese agreed.

Capper said that his friend, fellow defendant Craig Porter, walked ahead of them as they went to his vehicle. She was drunk and stumbled, he said, which is why he had to grab her arm to hold her up.

According to Capper's story, he asked the club's doorman to close the car door and, after taking some cocaine, they drove out of the car park heading for his house on the El Madronal estate.

Minutes later, he said, Agnese asked him to stop the car because she wanted to get out. He dropped her off at the Ronda road roundabout, he said, as she told him she lived nearby, even though her home was really two kilometres away.

Drugs and alcohol

He and Porter, he said, carried on to his home where they took more drugs and drank alcohol.

Craig Porter confirmed in court that he had gone back to Capper's home where they continued "the party" by themselves. He told the court, however, that he didn't remember anything about what happened on the journey there from the nightclub as he fell asleep in the car.

The judge in charge of the investigation had said, however, that it was obvious from the camera footage that when Agnese left the club at 6am with a bald, corpulent man - who was later identified as Capper - she put up "active resistance" to going with the man who "dragged her by the arm towards his vehicle".

A second man (later identified as Capper's friend Porter), says the investigating judge's conclusion, was talking to the doorman before getting into the car.

In court on Monday the nightclub's doorman said that the woman got into the car of her own accord and he had to close the door twice because the first time it didn't close properly.

"Nothing unusual"

On Tuesday Agnese's sister, called as a witness, told the court that there was nothing unusual going on in her life and that she had never said she wanted to disappear.

Also questioned on Tuesday, the missing girl's mother and a male friend also stated that she lived a normal life. Everything in her apartment, they said, had been left in its place, just as it would be if someone goes out and expects to return home a few hours later. There was no indication that she might have planned to disappear of her own accord.

Her relatives said that they had had daily contact with Agnese and that she had been very active on social media.

When she stopped writing and they realised their messages had not reached her, they travelled to Marbella from Latvia to report her as missing.

The trial continues on Wednesday.
Anders Samuelsen

Inspiring meeting with @JorgeFaurie during Danish state visit. Lots of opportunities for even closer cooperation + shared views on many global issues including Iran, Venezuela and the need for more free trade and international cooperation.  pic.twitter.com/SwrdWRG5sM  Anders Samuelsen (@anderssamuelsen) March 18, 2019

El ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Dinamarca, Anders Samuelsen, pidio este lunes que los paises mantengan su "presion" sobre el gobierno de Nicolas Maduro en Venezuela para lograr una salida democratica a lo que califico de una dictadura socialista.Esperamos que la democracia gane y que los venezolanos puedan utilizar todos los recursos humanos y productivos que tienen para ser una gran pais, situacion que con esta dictadura socialista se complico, dijo Samuelsen en declaraciones a la prensa.El jefe de la diplomacia danesa destaco que desde su pais nos parece que es muy importante mantener la presion en Venezuela porque estamos en una encrucijada.
Parts of US Midwest deluged in historic deadly floods



Chicago, March 18 (AFP) Mar 18, 2019



The US Midwest struggled Monday with historic flooding that claimed at least three lives, displaced residents and damaged hundreds of homes and businesses.

Swollen waters hit much of Nebraska, as well as parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, after a major storm last week dumped snow and rain, even as melting snow was already raising the levels of area waterways.

Neighboring states could also be affected as floodwaters drain, officials said.

President Donald Trump on Monday described the floods as "devastating" and said the White House would remain in close contact with state officials.

"Our prayers are with the great people of South Dakota," he said in one tweet.

In another aimed at Iowa residents, he said: "We support you and thank all of the first responders working long hours to help the great people of Iowa!"



- 'Historic' flooding -



The National Weather Service (NWS) described the flooding as "major" and "historic," forecasting that it would continue across large sections of the middle of the country.

"Flood Warnings and Advisories are scattered throughout the Plains, Mississippi Valley, and western parts of the Ohio Valley region, with a focus in Nebraska and western Iowa," the NWS said in an advisory.

"Farther west and north, areal flooding is also possible in the Northwest and Northern Plains as snowmelt continues over frozen ground."

The early damage assessment total for the state of Nebraska was more than $260 million, according to emergency management officials.

Record flooding was reported in 17 locations in the state and 10 American Red Cross shelters were operating for displaced residents.

At its highest point, the Missouri River was expected to crest at 47.5 feet (14.5 meters), beating its 2011 record by more than one foot.

"Comparisons to 2011 were inevitable," the NWS office in Iowa tweeted, "but these floods have resulted in many more rescues and widespread damage in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa."

Failing levees were blamed for flooding in numerous communities -- damaging homes and businesses.

The US Army Corps of Engineers, which maintains federal levee systems, said a majority were compromised along an approximately 100-mile portion of the Missouri River in southeast Nebraska.



- Military base under water -



Hundreds of people were rescued in Nebraska, where 54 cities issued emergency declarations, as did four Native American tribal areas.

Fremont, a city of more than 25,000, was surrounded by floodwaters over the weekend and cut off from aid.

It finally received food and other emergency supplies Sunday after crews managed to clear debris and mud from a road, officials said.

Three dozen Iowa counties were under states of emergency.

Roads were closed throughout Wisconsin and more than 200 people were evacuated, according to officials.

A third of Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska was overcome with floodwater, and was not expected to be dry again until Thursday.

"It's important to understand that this is going to take weeks and months to recover so this will be a prolonged effort," one of the base's leaders, Kevin Humphrey, said in a statement.

Three people were reported killed.

A Nebraska farmer died Thursday, during the height of the storm, trying to rescue a motorist stranded by floodwaters, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

On the same day, 80-year-old Betty Hamernik died after being trapped by floodwaters in her home in rural Columbus, Nebraska, according to the newspaper.

Aleido Rojas Galan, 55, was killed Friday in Iowa when his vehicle was swept away by floodwaters, TV station KETV said.
Mozambique races to save stranded survivors after killer storm



Beira, Mozambique, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



Rescue workers in Mozambique were on Tuesday racing to pluck people out of trees and off rooftops after a monster storm which officials fear claimed more than 1,000 lives before smashing into Zimbabwe.

Four days after Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall, torrential rains, powerful winds and flash flooding swept away roads and bridges, inflicting further pain on the two impoverished nations.

More than a thousand people are feared to have died in Mozambique alone while scores have been killed and more than 200 are missing in neighbouring Zimbabwe following the deadliest cyclone to hit southern Africa.

Emergency teams in central Mozambique set off in boats to chart an inland sea of floodwater, rescuing survivors from roofs and treetops in an operation which stretched long into the night.

Air force personnel from Mozambique and South Africa were drafted in to fly rescue missions, while an NGO called Rescue South Africa said it had picked up 34 people since Friday night, using three helicopters.

"It is the only way to access the people that are stranded," Rescue SA's Abrie Senekal told AFP, saying the NGO was trying to source more helicopters.



- 'Like a tsunami' -



Ian Scher, who heads Rescue SA, said the rescue teams were having to make difficult decisions.

"Sometimes we can only save two out of five, sometimes we drop food and go to someone else who's in bigger danger," he said.

"There's two issues at the same time: people stranded in trees, and people stranded on houses or new islands that have no food," he explained.

Those stuck up trees were having to deal with snakes, insects and other wildlife sheltering there, he said.

"We just save what we can save and the others will perish."

In Nhamatanda, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Beira, 27-year-old Jose Batio and his wife and children survived by climbing onto a roof.

But a lot of their neighbours "were swept by the water," he said.

"Water came like a tsunami and destroyed most things. We were prisoners on the roof," he told AFP after they were rescued by boat.

On Monday, President Filipe Nyusi said the Pungwe and Buzi rivers in central Mozambique had "burst their banks and engulfed entire villages."

"Communities are isolated and bodies are floating" on the waters, he said.

"This is a real humanitarian disaster," he said.

"More than 100,000 people are in danger".

The UN World Food Programme said it was mobilising aid for some 600,000 people, saying the world did not yet appreciate the scale of the "massive disaster."

So far, it has dispatched more than five tonnes of emergency provisions to the affected areas.

"WFP aims to support 500,000 to 600,000 people in the coming weeks," spokesman Herve Verhoosel told reporters in Geneva.

"I don't think that the world (has) realised yet the scale of the problem," he said.

Mozambique's government believes that some 600,000 people have been impacted by the storm but WFP's analysis of satellite imagery has suggested that up to 1.7 million people in the country were in Idai's "path."



- Burying the dead -



The storm also lashed eastern Zimbabwe, leaving 98 people dead and at least 217 others missing, officials said.

Worst hit was Chimanimani in Manicaland, an eastern province which borders Mozambique.

Families started burying their dead in damp graves on Monday, as injured survivors filled up the hospitals, an AFP correspondent said.

Military helicopters were airlifting people to Mutare, the largest city near Chimanimani.

The storm swept away homes and bridges, devastating huge areas in what Defence Minister Perrance Shiri said "resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war".

Some roads were swallowed by massive sinkholes, while bridges were ripped to pieces by flash floods.

"There's going to be a large amount of dead people," Rescue SA's Scher said.

"The locals and the international community don't even realise it yet but it will be huge."

Care International has said the cyclone is "is possibly the deadliest cyclone" to hit southern Africa to date.

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Losses from US Midwest flooding seen above $1 bn



Chicago, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



Waters began to recede Tuesday in the US Midwest after historic flooding that claimed at least three lives and caused losses estimated at more than $1 billion.

The flooding across a predominantly rural part of the country was caused by a big storm last week and rapid snow melt that swelled streams and rivers in large swaths of the middle of the United States, and sent gushing water over levees.

Hundreds of homes and businesses were inundated, roadways damaged, and bridges washed away in several states, with much of Nebraska and parts of Iowa hardest hit.

Officials also were concerned about crop and livestock losses at farms.

"This past week will forever be remembered for the historic, devastating flooding our state experienced," Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts said in a statement.

"In scope of reach, we believe it is the most widespread natural disaster in our state's history."

Vice President Mike Pence headed to Nebraska on Tuesday to survey the damage, where nine shelters remained open for displaced residents.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said she and Ricketts would be seeking expedited federal funds to repair roads and other infrastructure. Reynolds has declared 41 Iowa counties disaster areas.

"We're continuing to work with local officials to assess the flood damage," she told a news conference.

While waters were receding in some areas, the National Weather Service (NWS) forecasted flooding would persist in parts of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.

"Major to historic and catastrophic flooding will continue across parts of the Missouri and Mississippi River Basins," the NWS said in an advisory.

Nebraska officials estimated that damage to public and private property topped $600 million. The Nebraska Farm Bureau, a group representing farmers, expected crop and livestock losses around $1 billion.

"We won't know of course for a little while what the losses are, but I would not be surprised to see the losses to go over a billion dollars for agriculture in Nebraska," the group's president Steve Nelson told The Weather Channel.

Dozens of cities and counties in Nebraska had declared states of emergency. Some residents in small towns and rural areas were surrounded by waters and cut off, while others evacuated to shelters.

Reynolds said two-thirds of the small town of Hamburg, with a population of approximately 1,000, was destroyed.

Two people were killed in Nebraska last week due to the raging flood waters, while a motorist died in Iowa after his vehicle was swept away.

A third of Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska was overcome with floodwaters, and was not expected to be dry again until Thursday.
Death toll from Mozambique, Zimbabwe floods exceeds 300 as UN boosts aid



Beira, Mozambique, March 19 (AFP) Mar 19, 2019



The death toll from a cyclone that smashed into Mozambique and Zimbabwe rose to more than 300 on Tuesday as rescuers raced against the clock to help survivors and the UN led the charge to provide aid.

"We already have more than 200 dead, and nearly 350,000 people are at risk," Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi announced, while the government in Zimbabwe said around 100 people had died but the toll could be triple that figure.

The UN, meanwhile, said that one of the worst storms to hit southern Africa in decades had also unleashed a humanitarian crisis in Malawi, affecting nearly a million people and forcing more than 80,000 from their homes.

Four days after Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall, emergency teams in central Mozambique fanned out in boats and helicopters, seeking to pluck survivors from roofs and treetops in an inland sea of floodwater, sometimes in the dead of night.

Air force personnel from Mozambique and South Africa were drafted in to fly rescue missions, while an NGO called Rescue South Africa said it had picked up 34 people since Friday night, using three helicopters.

"It is the only way to access the people that are stranded," Rescue SA's Abrie Senekal told AFP, saying the NGO was trying to hire more helicopters.



- 'Like a tsunami' -



Ian Scher, who heads Rescue SA, said the helicopter teams were having to make difficult decisions.

"Sometimes we can only save two out of five, sometimes we drop food and go to someone else who's in bigger danger," he said.

"We just save what we can save and the others will perish."

In Nhamatanda, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Beira, 27-year-old Jose Batio and his wife and children survived by climbing onto a roof.

But a lot of their neighbours "were swept by the water," he said.

"Water came like a tsunami and destroyed most things. We were prisoners on the roof," he told AFP after they were rescued by boat.

The city of Beira, Mozambique's second largest city and a major port, was immediately cut off after the storm. According to the Red Cross, the cyclone damaged or destroyed 90 percent of the city of half a million people.

President Nyusi, speaking on Tuesday after attending a cabinet meeting in the ravaged city, said the confirmed death toll stood at 202 and nearly 350,000 were "at risk."

The government declared a national emergency and ordered three days of national mourning, he said.

"We are in an extremely difficult situation," Nyusi said, warning of high tides and waves of around eight metres (26 feet) in the coming days.

On Monday, Nyusi had said he feared more than 1,000 had died and more than 100,000 people were in danger.

- Zimbabwe toll -



The storm also lashed eastern Zimbabwe, leaving around 100 dead, a toll that could be as much as 300, local government minister July Moyo said after a cabinet briefing.

"I understand there are bodies which are floating, some have floated all the way to Mozambique," he said.

"The total number, we were told they could be 100, some are saying there could be 300. But we cannot confirm this situation," he said.

At least 217 others are missing and 44 stranded, officials said.

Worst hit was Chimanimani in Manicaland, an eastern province which borders Mozambique.

Families started burying their dead in damp graves on Monday, as injured survivors filled up the hospitals, an AFP correspondent said.

Military helicopters were airlifting people to Mutare, the largest city near Chimanimani.

The storm swept away homes and bridges, devastating huge areas in what Defence Minister Perrance Shiri said "resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war".

Some roads were swallowed by massive sinkholes, while bridges were ripped to pieces by flash floods.







- Aid ramps up -



The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said it was mobilising aid for some 600,000 people, saying the world did not yet appreciate the scale of the "massive disaster."

So far, it has dispatched more than five tonnes of emergency provisions to the affected areas.

"WFP aims to support 500,000 to 600,000 people in the coming weeks," spokesman Herve Verhoosel told reporters in Geneva.

"I don't think that the world (has) realised yet the scale of the problem," he said.

In Malawi, 920,000 people have been affected by the cyclone and 82,000 people have been displaced, the UN said.

"OCHA (the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) has deployed resources to support assessments and information management, and UNICEF is deploying additional supplies to affected areas including tents, water and sanitation supplies and learning materials to affected children," it said.

burs-sn/ri
As one of over 25,000 African Americans living with HIV in Atlanta and as the Georgia State Lead for Positive Women's Network-USA, a national advocacy organization of women living with HIV, I was alarmed to hear the spokesperson for the Fulton County Sheriff's Office tell Atlanta's Project Q Magazine that the jail no longer conducts rapid HIV testing because "rapid tests are considered antiquated." This is inaccurate and dangerous. Fulton County Sheriff's Office has disregarded the positive impact of rapid HIV testing in Fulton County Jail.

HIV testing and treatment -- the literal foundation that allows us to identify and suppress HIV, the keys to preventing transmission -- must be a priority strategy to end HIV/AIDS in the Atlanta area, where HIV rates resemble those of developing countries in Africa. As the Interim Vice Chair and only openly person living with HIV serving on The Fulton County HIV/AIDS Prevention, Care and Policy Advisory Committee-whom functions as an advisory committee to the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to advance the policies, objectives, and priorities outlined in the Strategy to End AIDS in Fulton County Phases I, II and Ill and any future reports, at the request of the Board of Commissioners, the Advisory Committee may be requested to provide input into Fulton County's federal and state legislative packages. It's paramount for me to analyze Fulton County Jail HIV testing and administration of antiretroviral medication processes, to able my ability to advise on improvements.

As a black woman who contracted HIV through heterosexual contact with a black man, I support offering rapid HIV testing to everyone who enters Fulton County jail, no matter how long or short their stay will be. Due to black men having uneven access to health care outside of jail and mass incarceration, Fulton County Jail is a hub of black men -- who comprise the majority of new cases of HIV -- and a critical place to conduct rapid HIV testing.

Early detection and access to antiretroviral medications, are essential for preventing the transmission of HIV. The choice of the Sheriff's Office to not conduct rapid HIV testing will lead to later diagnosis and increased prevalence of HIV, even as cities like San Francisco and New York have achieved dramatic reductions in new cases of HIV through investments in prevention, testing, care, and services.

As reported by the CDC, in 2011, Fulton County Jail "implemented a demonstration project to integrate routine rapid human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) screening into the medical intake process. Without this, these people would likely have been diagnosed later, resulting in delayed access to care and treatment, worse health outcomes, and possible transmission of HIV to their partners." Since about half of inmates leave jail within 48 hours to five days, rapid HIV testing when booked into jail is an important and effective public health measure.

Fulton County investment in HIV testing has not kept pace with Atlanta's HIV epidemic. According to the CDC's 2016 HIV Surveillance Report, "Fulton County is one of the top 3 counties in Georgia with the highest HIV burden. Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) ranked 4th MSA with the highest rate of new HIV diagnoses in the US and Puerto Rico." In Atlanta and across Georgia, far too many people -- about 17% -- are unaware that they are living with HIV, according to the Fulton County Board of Health. Many more struggle to access antiretroviral medications, which can suppress the virus to an undetectable level, preventing transmission. I agree with Daniel Driffin of THRIVE SS that the lack of meds for HIV-positive Fulton inmates is "extremely alarming" and must be a priority.

Despite the growing need for testing and access to antiretroviral medications, there has been no urgency on the part of decision makers to remedy the situation. We must make a bold, sustained commitment to ensuring that everyone is tested for HIV and has access to antiretroviral medication. When we invest in testing and treatment, we invest in our community as a whole. If you are interested in joining me in this push, feel free to contact my organizations (see links below).

Fulton County jail must expand testing and treatment investments, not stifle them. Rapid HIV testing in jails is an important step toward ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Atlanta. There is no excuse for this inaction.

Shyronn Jones is the Georgia State Lead of Positive Women's Network-USA (PWN-USA); Interim Vice Chair of The Fulton County HIV/AIDS Prevention, Care and Policy Advisory Committee and Founder of iknowAwareness LLC. She has amplified local, regional and nation issues to bring about political and social change.

[Note from TheBody: This article was originally published by Positive Women's Network-USA on Feb. 8, 2019. We have cross-posted it with their permission.]
.           ,   .   (12- )            - ...
Mar 19 2019 7:56 am

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled that the parsonage allowance, an allowance provided for housing expenses to members of the clergy that is exempt from federal income taxes, is constitutional, overturning the lower district court decision that had ruled to the contrary.

The Court held that the parsonage allowance had a secular purpose, to treat religious employees similar to secular employees, who also receive tax exemptions for housing expenses that are work-related, and ruled that the parsonage allowance did not create an unconstitutional entanglement between government and religion.

Agudath Israel of America had joined with a number of other national Orthodox Jewish organizations in an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief urging the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to uphold the constitutionality of the parsonage allowance.

The brief, written by noted constitutional attorney Nathan Lewin on behalf of the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA), asked the court to reverse the ruling by the Wisconsin federal district court that the parsonage allowance violates the constitutional prohibition against establishment of religion.

The parsonage allowance provides a benefit to rabbis and religious teachers, among others, who can exclude this allowance from their gross income when calculating their federal income tax. The Internal Revenue Code provides for similar tax exemptions for housing allowances provided by employers where the housing is for the convenience of the employer, and it is the same tax principle that allows businesses and the military to reimburse its members for travel and overseas housing costs, and provides tax-free housing to teachers and police who live in the communities they serve. The brief argued that members of the clergy should not be treated differently, and this was one of the key points made by the Court of Appeals in its ruling.

Agudath Israel of America hailed the decision. Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of the organization pointed out one of the plaintiffs in the case calls itself Freedom From Religion, and that is what they hoped to achieve. Happily, the Court of Appeals was a different mind.
It is feared that Donald Trumps wall along the United States-Mexico border will have a devastating effect on the wildlife currently residing in the area.

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore on Flickr

his social and political policies have already had detrimental effects In the two and a half years Trump has been in power,. Less talked about, but as important, are the environmental impacts the President - who doesn't believe in climate change - is having on the world.

654 miles of barriers that already exist The US President has called for a 1000-mile wall along the 1954-mile border between the USA and Mexico, which would cut across environments and ecosystems home to a significant amount of wildlife. This is on top of reinforcing the

and financial Despite the high environmental () costs, construction is still planned to go ahead.

To construct the wall, Customs and Border Protection are allowed to waive environmental protection laws and regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act, due to the REAL ID Act. This Act was passed by Congress in 2005 and permits Homeland Security to waive any laws in the name of national security.

These regions feature luscious grasslands, marshes and deserts  home to over  1,500 species of flora and fauna , of which, 62 are listed as either endangered or vulnerable.

What are the likely effects of the extended border wall?

First of all, this barrier would hinder the movement of certain species, limiting their ability to roam in search of water, food, mates, or new homes due to the spread of disease or wildfire. Animal populations would become isolated, be subject to a smaller gene pool, and inevitably reduce in size.

Image Credit: Jon W. Iwanski on Flickr

the most endangered subspecies of wolf in the world The already-small population of endangered species, such as the Mexican grey wolf, which is, are particularly at risk. Being stranded on either side of the wall, away from other groups of the same species, would be detrimental to their survival.

for a critter thats nearly extinct in the US, you need to promote connectivity, not curtail it The Independent recently quoted research scientist Aaron D Flesch, of the University of Arizona, who said,

some low-flying birds such as Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl It isnt only animals on the ground that would be affected;, which flies below five feet off the ground, are in danger, as they would be unable to pass over the wall.

Image Credit: Andrew Fisher on Wikipedia

low-flying insects such as the Quino Checkerspot Butterfly Additionally, some experts worry thatand local bee species, will be negatively affected. These pollinators are already under a lot of stress from habitat loss, and the construction of the wall would just add to this.

youre pulling at the fabric of these ecosystems

David L Wagner, a professor at the University of Connecticut, believes that the majority of insects are, in fact, able to fly over the wall, but what we need to worry about is light pollution. Lighting used in construction would likely disturb nocturnal critters like moths  as Wagner says,

germinate best after they have passed through the digestive systems of javelinas and coyotes Both limits on animal migration and any effects on pollinating insects will subsequently affect plants. For example, seeds of mesquite trees, which are endemic to the region in question,, meaning that any limitation on where these animals can travel will ultimately have a knock-on effect on dispersal of seeds and subsequent tree growth.

Wildlife conservation areas

seven wildlife conservation zones As it stands, the wall is planned to cut throughin Texas, such as the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge and Big Bend National Park. It will also cut through the 100-acre National Butterfly Center, in Mission, Texas, placing over two-thirds of it on Mexicos side. This will undoubtedly cause disruption for the species protected here.

However, following strong objection from officials, the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, which is 2,100 acres big and is a vital location for migratory birds, will be protected from wall construction.

Trump and the environment

climate change a hoax invented by China The lack of environmental consideration concerning the wall may not be surprising, as Trumps antipathy towards climate change is recognised by many, having publicly called

A recent U.S. government report also emphasised the governments view that there is little that can be done to stop rising temperatures, so greenhouse gases may as well continue being released into the atmosphere.

This attitude towards environmental issues by one of the most powerful figures in the world is concerning and could prove detrimental to the future if his mentality does not change.
Such a privilege to welcome Her Majesty The Queen and HRH The Duchess of Cambridge to Kings for the official opening of Bush House! @RoyalFamily @KensingtonRoyal #LifeAtKings pic.twitter.com/AQLMbTjLp6  King's College London (@KingsCollegeLon) 19 March 2019

Absolutely disgusted that KCL politically profiled students and blocked their ID cards, preventing them from entering the university purely because the Queen is visiting. @kclsu what are you doing to protect students?  KCL Action Palestine (@KCLAP) 19 March 2019

We had an event today which demanded the highest level of security and we had to minimise movement through buildings for security reasons. At times some of our buildings were not accessible.  King's College London (@KingsCollegeLon) March 19, 2019
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Dr. Nir Barzilai to present at the 6th Aging Research for Drug Discovery Forum in Basel

Tuesday, March 19, 2019 - Today Insilico Medicine, a Rockville-based company developing the end-to-end drug discovery pipeline utilizing the next generation artificial intelligence, and the Scheibye-Knudsen Lab, University of Copenhagen, announce the presentation of Dr. Nir Barzilai, M.D., the Director of the Institute for Aging Research, Professor of Medicine (Endocrinology) at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, at the 6th Aging Research, Drug Discovery, and AI Forum during the Basel Life Congress, September 10-12, 2019, Basel, Switzerland.

Dr. Nir Barzilai will give a talk titled "How to obtain an indication that targets health span" presenting the study, called TAME (Targeting Aging with Metformin), that attempts to show that metformin possesses the anti-aging properties and can slow the rate of aging by delaying the time to occurrence of a composite of age-related diseases.

"Aging drives diseases and targeting aging is a feasible approach that regulators have not yet digested. Metformin is an example of a drug that targets the biology of aging. Clinical and observational studies have demonstrated that metformin can prevent diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, cognitive decline, dementia and mortality in diabetics and non-diabetics. TAME is a clinical trial supported by AFAR which aims to repurpose metformin, to prevent cluster of age-related diseases and obtain an FDA indication for preventing age-related diseases.," said Nir Barzilai, M.D., the Director of the Institute for Aging Research, Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

"Over the last 5 years, the "Aging & Drug Discovery" and "AI for Healthcare" forums have been leading events at BaselLife, attracting hundreds of delegates from over 50 countries. This year, we are combining the 2 platforms into a 3 day-event titled "the 6th Aging, AI and Drug Discovery Forum" to explore the convergence of these 2 cutting edge disciplines. Under the program leadership of Professor Morten Scheibye-Knudsen and Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, with distinguished scientists and industry experts in the field, we look forward to exploring breakthroughs for this great healthcare need for the planet," said Dr. Bhupinder Bhullar, Chair, Innovation Forum program committee, Basel Life 2019.

"We are extremely excited to welcome Professor Nir Barzilai, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, to the Aging, Drug Discovery and Artificial Intelligence meeting in Basel. Professor Barzilai has been spearheading much of our understanding of aging in the human population by exploring certain populations of long-lived individuals. Recently, he is pioneering interventions that target human aging where he has been instrumental in persuading the FDA to approve clinical trials targeting aging, a critical step towards aging interventions. We are therefore thrilled that he is joining us in September in Basel," said Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, MD, Ph.D., University of Copenhagen.

"The 6th annual Aging Research, Drug Discovery, and AI Forum at Basel Life will have a fresh program featuring some of the most prominent scientists and industry players in aging and longevity research covering the theory, applications and convergence of these three exciting areas," said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., Founder, and CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc.

The 6th Aging Research for Drug Discovery Forum Basel will bring together leaders in the aging, longevity, and drug discovery field, to describe the latest progress in the molecular, cellular and organismal basis of aging and the search for interventions. Furthermore, the forum will include opinion leaders in AI to discuss the latest advances of this technology in the biopharmaceutical sector and how this can be applied to interventions. This event intends to bridge academic and commercial research and foster collaborations that will result in practical solutions to one of humanity's most challenging problems: aging. The Forum will be held in Basel, Switzerland, September 10-12, 2019.

###

Contact: Ola Popova ola@pharma.ai

Website: http://insilico. com/

About Insilico Medicine, Inc

Insilico Medicine is an artificial intelligence company headquartered in Rockville, with R&D and management resources in Belgium, Russia, UK, Taiwan, and Korea sourced through hackathons and competitions. The company and its scientists are dedicated to extending human productive longevity and transforming every step of the drug discovery and drug development process through excellence in biomarker discovery, drug development, digital medicine, and aging research. Insilico pioneered the applications of the generative adversarial networks (GANs) and reinforcement learning for generation of novel molecular structures for the diseases with a known target and with no known targets. In addition to working collaborations with the large pharmaceutical companies, the company is pursuing internal drug discovery programs in cancer, dermatological diseases, fibrosis, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, ALS, diabetes, sarcopenia, and aging. Through a partnership with LifeExtension.com, the company launched a range of nutraceutical products compounded using the advanced bioinformatics techniques and deep learning approaches. It also provides a range of consumer-facing applications including Young.AI.

In 2017, NVIDIA selected Insilico Medicine as one of the Top 5 AI companies in its potential for social impact. In 2018, the company was named one of the global top 100 AI companies by CB Insights. In 2018 it received the Frost & Sullivan 2018 North American Artificial Intelligence for Aging Research and Drug Development Award accompanied with the industry brief. Brief company video: https:/ / www. youtube. com/ watch?v= l62jlwgL3v8 . http://www. insilico. com

About Basel Life 2019

Forum description: In this symposium, leaders in the aging, longevity, and drug discovery field will describe the latest progress in the molecular, cellular and organismal basis of aging and the search for interventions. Furthermore, the forum will include opinion leaders in AI to discuss the latest advances of this technology in the biopharmaceutical sector and how this can be applied to interventions. This event intends to bridge academic and commercial research and foster collaborations that will result in practical solutions to one of humanity's most challenging problems: aging. A panel of thought-leaders will give us their cutting edge reports on the latest progress in our quest to extend the healthy lifespan of everyone on the planet.

Conference Official Website: https:/ / www. basellife. org/ 2019. html

About Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school. For more than 60 years, our diverse faculty and staff have set the standard for excellence in medical and graduate education and patient-centered clinical care, and have made major contributions to scientific research enhancing human health in our communities and beyond. Our mission is to prepare a diverse body of students to become knowledgeable, compassionate physicians and innovative scientific investigators, and to create new knowledge.

College Website: http://www. einstein. yu. edu/

About the Scheibye-Knudsen Laboratory

The growing proportion of the elderly population represents an increasing socioeconomic challenge, not least because of age-associated diseases. It is therefore increasingly pertinent to find interventions for age-associated diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cardiovascular diseases. Although the cause of aging is currently unknown accumulation of damage to our genome, the DNA, may be a contributing factor. In the Scheibye-Knudsen lab we try to understand the cellular and organismal consequences of DNA damage with the aim of developing interventions. We have discovered that DNA damage leads to changes in certain metabolites and that replenishment of these molecules may alter the rate of aging in model organisms. These findings suggest that normal aging and age-associated diseases may be malleable to similar interventions. The hope is to develop interventions that will allow everyone to live healthier, happier and more productive lives.

Laboratory website: http://scheibye-knudsen. com/

About the University of Copenhagen

With over 40,000 students and more than 9,000 employees, the University of Copenhagen is the largest institution of research and education in Denmark and among the highest ranked universities in Europe. The purpose of the University - to quote the University Statute - is to 'conduct research and provide further education to the highest academic level'. Approximately one hundred different institutes, departments, laboratories, centres, museums, etc., form the nucleus of the University.

University Website: http://introduction. ku. dk/ presentation/

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.


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MBABANE  The dust between the Swaziland Revenue Authority (SRA) and Ngwane Mills (PTY) Limited has finally settled.

This comes after the parties agreed that Ngwane Mills should pay E10 500 000 million as full and final settlement.



SRA was initially demanding E40 109 557.26 from the company, which was in respect of Valued Added Tax (VAT) together with additional penalties levied thereon. The deed of settlement between the parties was signed at a time when Ngwane Mills had filed an appeal against the judgment of the High Court, which had ordered it to pay the E40 109 557.26.



The deed of settlement was yesterday presented to the Supreme Court by SRA lawyer Sidumo Mdladla, who also applied that it should be made an order of the court.

According to the agreement, Ngwane Mills and SRA engaged in negotiations and agreed to settle the dispute.



inclusive



The applicant (Ngwane Mills) has agreed to settle the respondents (SRA) claim by making a full and final settlement of E10 500 000, which is inclusive of the respondents claims to penalties, interest and legal costs associated with the claim, reads part of the deed of settlement which was yesterday made an order of the court.

It was further agreed that Ngwane Mills would pay the aforementioned amount as follows: Through equal monthly instalments of E291 666. 66 for a period of 36 months commencing on April 30,2019 to April 30, 2022 on each and every last day of the subsequent months.



The parties also agreed that in the event any instalment was not paid by the applicant on time, an interest of nine per cent per annum would accrue thereafter.

SRA agreed to furnish the company with relevant and sufficient documentation which formed the basis of the final report dated June 26, 2016. This would be done to enable Ngwane Mills to make the declarations of the VAT. The parties agreed there would be no penalties or any other amounts due by the respondents as a result of late declarations.



declared



The parties agreed that the VAT once declared will be set-off against the applicants deferred VAT account to be claimed back in the months to follow, agreed the parties.

Ngwane Mills previously lost the case at the High Court after Judge Maphanga dismissed its application to review and set aside the decision of the SRA general commissioner, in terms of which he determined that the company was liable to pay Valued Added Tax (VAT) together with additional penalties levied thereon, amounting to the sum of E40 109 557.26.



In his judgment, Judge Maphanga stated there was no question that in terms of Section four of the VAT Act, the applicant (Ngwane Mills) also had an obligation or at the very least, also became liable to pay VAT on the non-declared wheat imports.

procurement

The court held that the applicant had an active interest in the goods throughout the process of procurement and as such, had a beneficial interest in the merchandise to qualify it as an importer and as such, also became liable for the payment of VAT.

Judge Maphanga said the applicant also failed to show that the SRA commission general exceeded his powers in making the determination.
MBABANE  Is there any hope for the Miss Eswatini pageant? Following the trending publics outcry on the lack of sponsorships and limited prizes won by the beauty queen and her princesses, contrary to that, Pageants Eswatini has released registration forms for Miss Eswatini and Miss Teen for this year.



The Miss Eswatini pageant has been under grave scrutiny in the past few months as the public believes the beauty queen deserves better, in terms of the prizes she walks away after winning the prevalent title.

Manzini Member of Parliament (MP), during a parliament sitting, Macford Sibandze raised the issue, where he made it clear that the entire competition had lost its dignity. He suggested that the pageant should be scrapped.



disturbing



The MP said the beauty queen deserved to be given a car as part of the main prizes, as seeing the title holder using public transport or hitchhiking was a disturbing sight, more especially because the title holder assumes the duties of being the countrys ambassador as soon as she is crowned Miss Eswatini.



Pageants Eswatini President Catrien Potgieter, confirmed that forms were already out and encouraged aspiring beauties to register. However, she declined to comment about the outcry on lack of sponsorships for the pageants and them losing their dignity. She referred all questions to Eswatini National Council of Arts and Culture (ENCAC) CEO Stanley Dlamini.



scrapped



When contacted, Dlamini confirmed that the lack of sponsorship was a concern for them; however, he was quick to dismiss the notion that MPs wanted the pageant to be scrapped. There is none such from parliament. They only said the car prize should be made compulsory, he said.



He said no MP suggested that the competition should be scrapped, before saying he would not entertain any further questions. Dlamini said he had no further comments as far as the pageants were concerned.

Social media platforms also raised the issue of the title holder not being given a car, and said this made it difficult for her to conduct her duties properly while also adding that it left her vulnerable.



During previous interviews, both Dlamini and Potgieter said they were happy with the beauty queen receiving a scholarship to study abroad as the main prize.

Miss Eswatinis long-time sponsor, Viwas Driving School said scrapping the pageant would be bad.



It would be bad news to us who partner with Miss Eswatini because for us, it is another way of giving back to the nation and also to some of the national events we have in the country. It would also be sad news for the society because we know the beauty queens always do a lot of charity projects from which the society benefit, Sifiso Matsebula, the owner of Viwas Driving School, said.



initial



Former Miss Eswatini, Nomphilo Mncina, suggested that the organisers of the competition needed to revisit the history books and follow the initial purpose and mandate of the pageant.

I would suggest a proper relaunch of the pageant with the support of the affiliated ministry, as well as the media. Its up to all of us to bring back its dignity and for me as a former title holder, it is sad to see it in the state it is in now, Mncina said.

Another former title holder, Samu Magagula, also believed the pageant should be scrapped. Let it be scrapped until pageant directors are able to raise sponsorships or proof of sponsorships and international participation before it can continue with crowning and exploiting young ladies, she said.



The current title holder, Nosipho Dlamini, received a scholarship to study abroad and free driving lessons at Viwas Driving School. She also walked away with a hamper of beauty products. She will not be attending the Miss World competition. It has been a while for a local title holder to attend the prestigious international event.



comment



Former Miss Eswatini director Vinah Mamba, was not available for comment. In South Africa, when Miss South Africa was crowned in 2018, she walked away with a prize package of more than E3 million, which was the largest in the history of the event. The winner received E1 million in cash from Cell C and Sun International, as well as the use of a fully-furnished and serviced apartment for the year of reign.



She also walked away with a Nissan Qashqai worth E445 500 and was further provided with the use of designer garments for her red carpet looks. She also received Cell C voice and data contracts, Discovery Insure insurance and medical aid and Africology product and spa services.
NHLANGANO  A petrol pump burst into flames at a filling station in Nhlangano, causing untold panic.



The incident occurred at Puma Filling station, which is located right at the centre of the small town, shortly after 10am, causing dozens of people to run helter-skelter in fear for their lives.

No one seems to be certain about what might have caused the fire, but some even suggested that yesterdays scorcher could have contributed.



Narrating the events leading to the incident, a petrol attendant said he was standing nearby the pumps with colleagues when they suddenly heard strange sounds coming from the direction of two metal pipes situated next to one of the petrol pumps.

There are three petrol pumps at the filling station, but no one was filling up any car when the petrol attendants suddenly had spark-like sounds coming from the pipes.



We were all asking ourselves what was happening when all of a sudden there was a thick cloud of smoke coming out of one of the petrol pumps. Within moments, it burst into flames. At the time, everyone seemed to be running away and I also joined in fear for my life, he narrated.

A convenience shop, which is also part of the filling station, had to close immediately after the pump burst into flames. The same situation prevailed for other business establishments situated closer to the filling station, including a pharmacy.



Surprise



Patel Mohammed, who runs the nearby pharmacy, said the sudden turn of events took them by surprise. Mohammed explained that he was completely baffled as to how the fire was ignited as there was no one close to the pumps at the time.

He said the reaction was spontaneous, as he found himself handing out a fire extinguisher in a bid to put out the flames.

At that moment some people were running away, while curious individuals tried to move closer in order to ascertain what was happening.



We all panicked because it was a filling station burning, and we were afraid there could be a huge explosion. So, we tried to put out the fire with our chemical extinguishers but to no avail.

However, I must give credit to the Fire and Emergency Personnel for their swift response, remarked Mohammed.




LOBAMBA  As long as the new government does not address the issue of corruption, then it is wasting its time with the new budget.



This was the view of a majority of senators yesterday during Finance Minister Neal Rijkenbergs Budget Speech debate, which was held in the Senate chambers.

First to touch on the issue of corruption was Senator Moi Moi Masilela, who said many previous governments had constantly sung the same tune of combating corruption, but eventually did nothing about it.



Pity



He said it was a pity that the new minister was also laying out things which he wished to implement without first taking stock of what had happened in the previous government.

I feel sorry for him because this is not the budget we want, instead we were expecting the new government to take stock of what had happened in the past, which got this country into the current financial situation, before coming up with their own ideas, said Masilela.



The senator submitted that the country was drowning, especially when it came to issues of government tenders.

He said in some instances they had witnessed government allowing, for example, the purchase of a loaf of bread for E100.



There are three officers involved; that is the minister, principal secretary and the under secretary, who all agree that bread should be sold at E100 per loaf ,which is where the financial drain starts, said Senator Masilela.

He said the accountant general continued to pay out such large monies with no one questioning, for example, why a loaf of bread was priced at E100.



He said as far as he was concerned, the new government was in the same position as the previous ones. He said it was disheartening that the minister would then come to the people to announce that they were raising taxes, electricity and petrol.

Masilela wondered why the Cabinet led by Prime Minister Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini was bringing nothing new.
MBABANE  Government says it has drawn down more than E1.4 billion from its reserves at the Central Bank to pay salaries in November (2018), February and March (2019).



This was disclosed by the Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, in his confirmatory affidavit in the matter where government wants the cost-of-living-adjustment (CoLA) court case postponed to March 2020.

The affidavit by the minister comes after public sector associations (PSAs) called upon government to provide concrete proof that it did not have money. The PSAs are vigorously opposing the application to have the matter postponed to next year.

In his affidavit, the minister further highlighted that the country was now at risk of losing its peg to the South African Rand if government drew down any more money.



Treasury



According to Rijkenburg, government spent all of the money that was available at Treasury on a weekly basis.

He further disclosed that the state had accumulated more than E3.5 billion of arrears (invoices for services rendered and goods supplied that have not been paid).

The minister said: We do not have money for this.



We are in a financial crisis. Road projects are on suspension (costing us more than E10 million per month), building projects have been stalled, suppliers are suing us and medical supplies are in short supply, submitted Rijkenburg.

He said at the present moment, government could not pay salaries if it were to succumb to the payment of CoLA.

Meanwhile, PSAs claim that they have evidence that they could confidently prove and show with decisive evidence to the court, that government was frankly not broke.



According to SNAT Secretary General, Sikelela Dlamini, the PSAs could further prove to the court that government misused and continued to misspend and misappropriate money daily.

Dlamini said despite that the PSAs could prove that there was adequate money to meet their demands, they did not have adequate time to prepare their opposition. Dlamini then asked for the courts indulgence to prove same at a later stage. It is denied that the economic recovery strategies will be realised in the course of the next financial year and government is put to strict proof thereof, he argued.



Allegation



He further contended that government had placed nothing before court that substantiated this allegation so as to persuade the court to postpone the matter.

Dlamini asserted that a prudent government looked at its liabilities such as the PSAs and made provision for them.



The government has recently delivered its budget speech through the minister of Finance, who ought to have been a deponent in this application. In that speech the minister sought to raise enormous amounts of money in the form of taxes without fear or favour but pleads poverty and fails to include the PSAs demands in the budget, contended Dlamini.



He told the court that it was bad business practice to pile debts and push them forward to the next financial year.
MANZINI  Seemingly, some of the Asian businessmen implicated in the sex-for- jobs scandal have skipped the country to South Africa and INTERPOL is likely to be roped in.



Farooq Shahaizb said while recording his statement with the police last week, he also furnished the cops with information about the implicated Asian businessmen and that some were now living in South Africa, where they were conducting business.



He said in response, the police assured him that once they had recorded enough statements to build a strong case against the alleged culprits, their profiles would be sent to the International Criminal Police Organisation (INTERPOL).



Police



INTERPOL has 194 member countries, including the Kingdom of Eswatini, and this makes it the worlds largest police organisation. It works together with the general secretariat to share data related to police investigations. Each country hosts an INTERPOL National Central Bureau (NCB), which links national police with the global network.



Meanwhile, there are suspicions that the Asian Mafia style has already been put into play in the cases of alleged sexual abuse in Asian shops cases. This is cording to Shahaizb, the Pakistan national who is behind exposing the alleged sexual abuse by some of his countrymen of Eswatini girls who used to work for them.



Shahaizb said he had spoken and registered another statement with authorities of Manzini Police Station, who have since taken it upon themselves that the cases be given the priority they deserve.



He said after recording the three-page statement last week, he furnished the police with contacts of the survivors so that they could also record their statements. He said he also contacted them to alert them that they would receive calls from the police about recording their statements.



Unfortunately, out of the three girls I have been supporting, only one agreed to see the police to record her statement. The other two told me point blank that they were no longer interested in taking the matter up with the police, Shahaizb alleged.



He said judging from what happened when he started raising the matter, he was convinced that the implicated countrymen had implemented the Asian Mafia style by finding ways of bribing the girls to drop everything regarding the matter.



Shahaizb said he suspected this because after he started making noise about the sexual abuse issues, he was approached by a friend, who was allegedly working closely with one of the implicated Asian businessman.



Silencing



The mutual friend pleaded with me to assist in silencing the girls and he made an offer me and the survivors. However, I rejected his plea because we agreed with the girls to report the matter to the police. I could not let them down and be seen to be against justice, he alleged.



The Pakistan national emphasised that he was confident that the implicated Asian businessmen were the ones responsible for the sudden change of heart of the girls. He said this was because they were bitter when they were fired because of baseless accusations after they had resisted the abusive moves from their employers.



Meanwhile, Deputy Police Information and Communications Officer Inspector Nosipho Mnguni said the police have tried to get hold of the girls so that they would record their statements. However, she pointed out that they met some form of resistance when they contacted some of the survivors. She confirmed that only one of them promised to see the police and record her statement.
The Bahrain Association of Banks (BAB) held its regular General Assembly Meeting in which members approved the agenda, financial statements and the Board of Directors' report for 2018.



Adnan Ahmed Yousif, chairman of BAB, started the meeting by stressing that BAB has made great strides in achieving its objectives, thanks to the efforts of its members and team.



The year 2018 has been a year of achievements for BAB, where we have been able to provide more institutional dimension and fruitful partnership with our various partners. At the same time, we have strengthened our efforts to serve our members and the banking industry as a whole. Thus, our role has emerged prominently, which has enhanced the confidence in our mission and role, he said.



We recognize that the banking industry in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and by virtue of its leading position regionally and globally, is moving rapidly forward, led by the Central Bank of Bahrain, to maintain its global professional standards.



Therefore, the industry is witnessing major challenges such as the development of sustainable financing products, the new international regulatory legislation, digitalization and financial technology, serving its communities and providing more jobs for citizens, while at the same time satisfying its shareholders, customers, employees and all its stakeholders, he added.



Yousif pointed out that BAB has embarked on a well-defined business plan to mobilize the resources and expertise of its members, who are considered key players in development and society.



Our strategic focus has been on how to achieve synergy between the banking industry in its various orientations and services and the ambitious economic development programs planed by our wise political leadership. We have been very successful in achieving this goal through our initiatives and activities during the past year, he said.



Yousif spoke about the future aspirations of the Association We look forward with confidence to 2019, as Bahrain's economy is moving towards improvement and fiscal balance, which will be reflected positively on all levels, especially our banking industry, which is a key player in sustainable development.



In addition to implementing initiatives we have planned in the 2019 business plan, including organizing many events, the open dialogue for the second time, and the IMF reception, we will focus on the special preparation of the big celebration that we will be organizing on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of banks in Bahrain at the end of the year. This event will include a number of expressive activities that will rise to the level of our regional and global banking industry excellent position and will be a milestone in our growing march.



Melika Betley, HSBC's new CEO in Bahrain, noted the great achievements made by the Association over the past year. She noted that the Association has already re-established its position as a supporter for all financial and banking institutions in Bahrain.



CEO of BENEFIT, Abdul Wahid Janahi stressed that banks and other financial institution could benefit from the membership with BAB. He added: At BENEFIT, we invest our membership with the Association in achieving many objectives, including the permanent meeting with our partners from banks and financial institutions to consult them in concerns with the development of products and initiatives to meet our goals."



Mohamed Ali Malik, deputy chief executive Retail Banking Group in BBK pointed out the importance of Joining BAB for all banks and financial institutions in Bahrain, which allows them to benefit from their membership on the one hand, and to strengthen the Association position as representative of the financial and banking sector in Bahrain on the other hand.



Khaleeji Commercial Bank deputy general manager of Support Services Mahdi Abdulnabi called for further development of initiatives and launching them due to benefit all members of the Association and strengthens BABs support for all financial and banking institutions in Bahrain.



He praised the ambitious strategy set by BABs Board of Directors that enables the improvement of its performance and sustainable achievements.  TradeArabia News Service
Al Baraka Islamic Bank (Al Baraka  Bahrain) said that its Diplomatic Area branch will no longer be operating with effect from April 18, in line with its strategy to expand its presence in the digital banking sphere.



In order to provide significantly more services to its customer, Al Baraka-Bahrain will be diverting its Diplomatic Area patrons to its most strategically located branch at Bahrain Bay. The Bahrain Bay branch, which is located at the headquarters of Al Baraka Banking Group, offers customers a number of additional services and facilities that were not available at the Diplomatic Area branch.



Tariq Kazim, deputy general manager of Al Baraka Islamic Bank - Bahrain, said: After a careful study of the current market trends and looking into the preferences of our customers, we have taken appropriate, positive steps to strengthen our presence in the digital banking domain.



As per the guidance of Central Bank of Bahrain, we intend to offer many services and facilities online in order to provide utmost convenience to our customers. In time customers will be able to perform all their desired transactions and make any inquiry  through the Banks online portal, without the need to visit a physical branch.



Over the recent past, the banking sector has become more strategically focused and technologically advanced to respond to customer expectations and as clearly visible in the Kingdom today, a great deal of emphasis is being placed on digitizing core business process.



With the importance of innovation and developing new solutions rapidly growing, Al Baraka -Bahrain, through its strategic initiatives, strives to put more emphasis on providing digital banking services that are truly unmatched in the Kingdom of Bahrain.



However, although online transactions and online banking have been on the rise over the years, our customers do feel the need to visit our branches for services that require more personalized support, Kazim added.



Hence, we are redirecting our Diplomatic Area branch customers to the Bahrain Bay branch, which is our biggest and most conveniently located one in the Kingdom. Being an all-inclusive Islamic Bank, we also understand that there are still segments of the population that still havent adapted to digital banking and we shall of course continue to invest in outlets for these customers.  TradeArabia News Service
German industrial conglomerate Thyssenkrupp said its plant engineering business has won a major order from the Egyptian group NCIC (El Nasr Company for Intermediate Chemicals) for its new fertiliser complex coming up near the capital Cairo.



The project is being implemented by thyssenkrupp in a consortium with the Egyptian company Petrojet.



It is expected to go into operation in 2022 and produce up to 440,000 tonnes of ammonia, 380,000 tonnes of urea and 300,000 tonnes of calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) every year, said the company in a statement.



As per the deal, the company will provide engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services for the complex which will be located at Ain El Sokhna, close to the existing NCIC phosphatic and compound fertilizer complex.



These new plants are part of NCICs plans to expand its current product portfolio to include high-quality nitrogen fertiliser for local and export markets, it stated.



On the contract win, thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions CEO Marcel Fasswald said: "We have a particularly successful partnership with Egypt stretching back more than 160 years which offers great potential for the future. Our longstanding experience in plant construction, our strong local presence and close collaboration with our customers form the basis for our success and strong market position in the region."



Ralf Richmann, CEO Fertilizer & Syngas Technologies, said: "To date, we have planned and built 16 of the 17 existing nitrogen fertiliser plants in the country and are delighted that another state-of-the-art plant will now be added."-TradeArabia News Service
Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) has signed a volume commitment extension agreement for 2019 with the global shipping company AP Moller  Maersk for transport EGAs aluminium to customers around the world.



EGA exports its metal to customers in more than 60 countries worldwide and makes more than 11,000 shipments each year using over 100,000 containers. EGAs aluminium is the biggest made-in-the-UAE export after oil and gas, reported Emirates news agency Wam.



Walid Al Attar, EGAs chief marketing officer, said, "EGA has a track record stretching back decades as a reliable supplier of high quality aluminium worldwide for our customers. Meeting our customers expectations depends on both the quality of our production and the efficiency of getting the metal to them, so I am pleased to sign this agreement today with one of our most important shipping partners, Maersk."



Emirates Global Aluminium works with 20 different shipping lines to ship its products, transporting metal to over 70 global ports. Maersk is one of EGAs most significant shipping partners, and has supplied shipping services to the UAE aluminium giant since 1992.



Christopher Cook, managing director for Maersk in UAE, Oman and Qatar, said, "EGA is a long-standing key customer of Maersk, and we are grateful for their continuing trust. As the global integrator of container logistics, this agreement enables us to continue to partner with EGA to ensure their aluminium reaches their customers as fast and as cost-effectively as possible."
Haji Hassan, a leading diversified construction-focused group, has signed up as a strategic sponsor for Gulf Construction Expo, the leading construction and building event in the Northern Gulf region, which kicks off on April 23 at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre.



The three-day event is being held under the patronage of HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bahrain, said the event organiser Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions (HCE).



Haji Hassan Group, headquartered in Bahrain, is a conglomeration of complementary businesses which have been serving the construction and industrial services sectors in Bahrain and the GCC since 1952.



Group deputy chairman Waheed Hassan Al A'ali said: "Our Strategic Sponsorship support for Gulf Construction Expo delivers on two goals for the company. Firstly, we look to promote the world-class capabilities of Haji Hassan which has been built with over 67 years of expertise and investment in our facilities; and secondly we see Gulf Construction Expo as an important showcase to present Bahrain as a leader in quality building materials."



Amongst the groups companies represented will be the Arabian Parts Company, Bahrain Asphalt, Arabian Chemical Industries (Isola), Haji Hasan Ready-mix, Bahrain Pipes, Bahrain Precast Concrete, Bahrain Blocks and Haji Hassan Reinforcement, he stated.



Each entity specialises in essential resources for the construction sector such as building materials, precast concrete, readymix concrete, plastic and sewage pipes, construction chemicals, concrete blocks, steel reinforcement, rubber and mechanical engineering spare parts.



The Haji Hassan Group has an impressive track record of delivery on high-profile construction projects in the kingdom. These include Bahrain International Airport, American University of Bahrain, Ikea Bahrain, Bahrain Marina, Fontana Infinity, Alba Potline 6, Ramli Housing, Marassi Al Bahrain, Jasra Interchange, Diyar Al Muharraq and Al Shamaliya Housing.



On the partnership, HCE managing director Jubran Abdulrahman said: "Haji Hassan has, for over 60 years, been a leader and pioneer in the region in the building materials sector. We are proud to have the support of a Bahraini company that has been so instrumental in the growth and development of construction projects in the GCC."



"Gulf Construction Expo also carries the organisational support of Tamkeen alongside sector sponsors Universal Rolling for the Metal and Steel sector and Amna Politerm Blu covering Green Technology," he stated.



The event takes place alongside two other major exhibitions  The Gulf Property Show and Interiors Expo  thus ensuring the continued success of the biggest integrated business-to-business showcase for the construction, interiors and property sectors in the Northern Gulf.-TradeArabia News Service
Microsoft, a leading technology company, recently signed memorandums of understanding (MoU) with two organisations dedicated to strengthening Omans technology skill base and entrepreneurial spirit, at Comex 2019, held in Muscat.



The event, which opened on March 17 will conclude later today (March 19), at the Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre.



Sheikh Saif Hilal Al Hosni, country manager, Microsoft Bahrain and Oman, said: Our company has long been committed to helping enterprises fulfil Omans economic vision.



Digital transformations power to engage, empower, optimise and reinvent is an important tool for entrepreneurs and their leadership teams. We must ensure that people with the right skills stand ready to take their places in the countrys digital future, he added.



Microsoft also announced that it will work with nationally renowned training institute Oman Technology Institute (OTI), a subsidiary of Oman Line, to up skill the sultanates higher-education students and graduates in cloud computing, with a strong focus on artificial intelligence.



Microsoft will advise OTI on the best partner fit for building training programmes that the institute will offer on its Learning-as-a-Service platform.



OTI will focus on creating competitive, well-versed professionals who go on to bolster the nations digital transformation culture that is currently underpinning Economic Vision 2020 and Vision 2040. Microsoft will further support OTI by offering internships to certain trainees. The duo will additionally collaborate on the formation of a national professional-certification programme designed to formalise the skills of new professionals.



Ali Al Hashmi, chief executive officer, Omanline, said: Our partnership with Microsoft will allow us to offer a unique training platform to Omans technology-minded young people.



As we step forward into our shared digital future, the responsibility of educators is clear. Digital transformation is ongoing; and filling important skills gaps with competent professionals should be the goal of every training institute, he added.



The second MoU Microsoft signed was with Omani venture capital group, Phaze Ventures. The two will work together on multiple schemes to promote and accelerate the growth of the countrys small-business and start-up ecosystems. Microsoft will support SparkLabs Energy, a startup accelerator programme created by Phaze Ventures that focuses on ambitious digital disruptors in the energy industry that are focused on areas such as renewables, water management, Industrial Internet of Things, enhanced oil recovery, data analytics and logistics.



Additionally, Microsoft will assist with Phaze Education, an initiative that organises coding bootcamps, hackathons, and a variety of training courses, lectures and competitions for the purposes of offering upskilling in key technologies to entrepreneurs and start-up leadership teams.



Abdullah Al Shaksy, chief executive officer, Phaze Ventures, said: Like us, Microsoft understands that the startup sector is the backbone of many a nations competitiveness.



We need digital disruptors to catalyse the energy sector and Microsoft is going to help us do that by injecting much-needed skills and mentorship into an already enthusiastic innovation culture, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Bahrain, a kingdom known historically for pearls, will host one of the largest pearl exhibitions later this month (March).

Leading auction house Christies and Bahrains Institute for Pearls and Gemstones (Danat) announced the launch of the exhibition titled 'Magnificent Pearls', which will take place at the Four Seasons Hotel in Bahrain Bay from March 28 to 31.

Organised by Christies, the exhibition will showcase a selection of more than 50 exceptional pearls and other jewellery, all certified by Danat.

This will be one of the largest pearl exhibitions ever curated and open to the public, said a statement.

Christies is the worlds leading art business, with extensive service and international expertise in conducting most celebrated auctions for the arts, decorative arts, jewellery, and collectibles. Established in 1766, the house has sold some of the most prominent pearls of the world.

Danat Chief Executive Kenneth Scarratt said: By being part of Christies global presence, Bahrain once again demonstrates its commitment to building on its long and successful history of pearl trading.

"Magnificent Pearls represents a new step forward in expanding initiatives across the pearl industry, which is emblematic of Bahrains rich cultural heritage," he said.

The International Senior Director of Christies Jewellery, David Warren and Julien Vincent Brunie, Christies Director and Head of Private Sales Jewels, said: Christies is honoured to have been invited to present an exclusive exhibition of magnificent pearls. The exhibition will shed international light on Bahrains 5,000 years old pearling history and Danats dedication to developing the local and regional pearl and gemstone industry, as well as offering training programmes to the next generation of gemmologists as well as those interested in pearls and gemstones from Bahrain and across the world.

We would like to express our sincere thank you to HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bahrain, for offering to the world a first-in-class institute and laboratory, added Isabelle de la Bruyere, Senior Director and Head of Client Advisory, Christies EMERI.

This year marks Christies 14th year in Dubai with sales held consistently since 2006. Since opening, the firms activities in the region have been overseen by Michael Jeha, now Chairman of Christies Middle East, supported by a specialist team led by Hala Khayat (Middle Eastern Modern and Contemporary Art) and Remy Julia (watches). Recently Damaris Anghern, a colleague from the Zurich office, joined the team as General Manager.

This week also marks the opening of Christies Dubais newly refurbished gallery space in the DIFC, the teams permanent home and the location of a public library of art texts, available to all.

Christie' holds sales of Middle Eastern Modern and Contemporary Art twice a year, the first in Dubai in March to coincide with Dubai Art Week and the second in October in London to coincide with Christies 20th Century Week and the international Frieze Art Week.

Last years October sale attracted registrants from 18 countries demonstrating the continued international appeal of art from the region. The first online watch sale organised from Dubai concluded last week and was 85 per cent sold. In 2018, the number of buyers in Christies online sales from the Middle Eastern was up 50 per cent, the statement said. - TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabian airline flyadeal will wait until investigations into two Boeing 737 MAX crashes are completed before deciding whether to proceed with a signed order for 30 of the jets, reported Reuters, citing its chief executive.

The 737 MAX has been banned from flying in most countries after an Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday that killed all 157 people on board.

This was a second deadly incident involving the relatively new Boeing model in five months. In October, a Lion Air jet crashed in Indonesia killing all 189 people on board.

"Were in a hold for the moment. We are monitoring and in constant contact with Boeing and will wait for the outcomes to be known before moving forward," stated CEO Con Korfiatis.

Boeing Companys $600 billion-plus order book for its 737 Max began shaking after several big customers threatened to reconsider their purchases in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, the second deadly accident involving the plane since October, reported Bloomberg.

Flyadeal ordered 30 Boeing 737 MAX 8s last December with purchasing options for 20 more in a deal Boeing said was worth $5.9 billion at list prices.

Flyadeal, a unit of Saudi Arabian Airlines, said in December it would switch from Airbus and purchase up to 50 737 Max jets, subject to final terms being reached. The company says its waiting on the results of the investigation.

Were closely monitoring the situation and are in constant contact with Boeing, the company said in an email. There are no conclusions to be drawn at this time.

VietJet Aviation JSC, which doubled its order to about $25 billion only last month, said it will decide on its future plans once the cause of the tragedy has been found.

Kenya Airways too is reviewing proposals to buy the Max and could switch to Airbus SEs rival A320. Russias Utair Aviation PJSC is seeking guarantees before taking delivery of the first of 30 planes.

Thats as Indonesias Lion Air firms up moves to drop a $22 billion order for the 737 in favour of the Airbus jet, according to a person with knowledge of the plan.

Separately, Garuda Indonesia plans to cut orders of the Boeing plane and a $5.9 billion order from a unit of Saudi Arabian Airlines hangs in the balance.

The 737, which first entered service in the late 1960s, is the aviation industrys best-selling model and Boeings top earner. The re-engineered Max version has racked up more than 5,000 orders worth in excess of $600 billion, including planes that have already been delivered, said the Bloomberg report.

Boeing, whose shares have lost 11 per cent of their value this week, faces escalating financial risk after two disasters involving its newest narrow-body jet in the past five months.

The stock inched up 0.5 percent on Wednesday in New York after seeing its biggest two-day drop in almost a decade.

The deadly crash in Ethiopia comes just about five months after the Oct. 29 crash of another Boeing 737 Max plane, operated by Indonesias Lion Air.

The relationship between the carrier and Boeing soured after the manufacturer pointed to maintenance issues and human error at Lion as the underlying cause, even though the planes pilots had been battling a computerized system that took control following a sensor malfunction.

Sundays loss of an Ethiopian Airlines 737, in which 157 people died, bore similarities to the Asian tragedy, stoking concern that a feature meant to make the upgraded Max safer than earlier planes has actually made it harder to fly.

Boeing is in crisis as most of the world grounded the plane. On Wednesday, US regulators joined the global chorus by grounding the plane, citing evidence showing the Ethiopian Airlines flight may have experienced the same problem as the plane that went down five months ago off Indonesia.

With extensive grounding of the 737 Max, near term news could get worse for Boeing before it improves, Cai von Rumohr, an analyst with Cowen & Co., said in a note.

However, he added, because the company is readying an update to its flight-control software, we dont see meaningful long term risk.
Park Regis Kris Kin Hotel, an upscale five-star property located opposite of Burjuman Centre in Dubai, has appointed Samy Kamal Abd El Hammed as its senior development manager.



El Hammed will oversee corporate and government accounts in the region and will work closely with Ovidiu Marica, director of sales.



El Hammed brings with him more than 12 years extensive experience in sales. He started his career in 2003 as a receptionist in Hilton Sharm Dream Resort Egypt and transferred to Sheraton Soma Bay Resort in 2006. Due to his dedication and hard work, he had been promoted to sales executive in 2009 at Emirates Grand Dubai and held sales manager positions in different international brands such as Holiday International Sharjah and Movenpick Hotel Al Mamzar Dubai in 2011 to 2017.



Commenting on El Hammeds appointment, Jane Frazer, regional director revenue generation of the Park Regis, said: We are excited to welcome Samy to the Park Regis Middle East team. We are confident that he will play a vital role in achieving the targeted goals and drive maximum revenue for the hotel."



Prior to joining Park Regis Kris Kin Hotel, El Hammed worked with the Movenpick Hotel Al Mamzar Dubai as a senior sales manager. - TradeArabia News Service
British Airways has announced plans to launch flights from London Heathrow to Dammam, Saudi Arabia from December 1, with tickets going up for sale now.

The route will be the only direct flight to Dammam from London, via Bahrain, and will be operated by a four-class Boeing 777-200.



Dammam will be the third city in Saudi Arabia British Airways flies to, with the airline already serving Riyadh and Jeddah with non-stop daily flights.



Moran Birger, head of sales for The Middle East and Asia Pacific, said: Our customers are currently offered a limo service between Bahrain and Dammam, but the direct service will now enable seamless travel in eight hours from our home at Heathrow.



Return fares start from 498 ($660.2) in World Traveller, 603 ($799.5) for World Traveller Plus, 2,274 ($3,015) for Club World and 3,798 ($5,035.7) in First.



Dammam is one of five long-haul routes being launched by British Airways in 2019, its centenary year. The airline is also launching non-stop flights to Pittsburgh and Charleston in the US, Osaka in Japan and Islamabad in Pakistan alongside several short-haul routes. - TradeArabia News Service
Swiss-Belhotel International has appointed Paul Uglesic as the general manager for Swiss-Belinn Muscat in Oman.



Uglesic has 10 years of experience in the hospitality industry working with some of the worlds leading brands.



Making the announcement, Laurent A. Voivenel, senior vice president, operations and development for the Middle East, Africa and India, Swiss-Belhotel International, said: We are delighted to welcome Paul Uglesic to lead the team at Swiss-Belinn Muscat in Oman. Paul has a decade of strong knowledge and understanding of the hospitality sector as well as excellent pre-opening expertise targeted at achieving operational excellence and guest satisfaction. We are confident under his leadership this superb property, that is in advanced stages of development, will provide outstanding facilities in the three-star category.



Uglesic started his executive career in the industry at Radisson Blu Resort & Spa in Croatia in 2009. In 2015, Paul moved to Dubai taking up the role of executive assistant manager at Radisson Blu Hotel Dubai Deira Creek and performed a task force role as the acting general manager at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Dubai Downtown. His most recent posting was at the Park Inn by Radisson Dubai Motor City as the opening general manager.



Upon joining the Swiss-Belinn Muscat, Uglesic said: I am truly proud to take up the position at the fantastic Swiss-Belinn Muscat in Oman. It is an exciting adventure for me since Swiss-Belhotel International is a great brand to work for. Together with my team, I am looking forward to launching the hotel and positioning it as a preferred address for both regional and international travellers.



Expected to open this year, Swiss-Belinn Muscat is a three-star hotel located close to Muscat International Airport. Equipped with 128 rooms and suites, the hotel is being developed to offer its guests a comprehensive range of facilities including an all-day-dining restaurant, meeting space, gym, wi-fi access and 24-hours room service. Given its fantastic location near the airport, the hotel will serve as the perfect abode for transit passengers looking for stop-overs and airline crews as well as corporate travellers on a short visit to Oman or those facing unexpected flight halts. - TradeArabia News Service
IBTM Arabia, part of IBTMs global portfolio of meetings and events industry trade shows, has announced strong representation from Chinese and European buyers for its 2019 event, which will take place at Jumeirah Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi from March 25-27.



The proportion of Chinese buyers has increased this year to almost 15 per cent, including high profile corporate buyers such as Novo Nordisk Pharmaceutical China, HelmsBriscoe Asia, Thyssenkrupp Elevators Asia and Didi Chuxing. Other Chinese Hosted Buyers include China International Medicine Exchange Association International Service Center and World Travel Service Sichuan.



European buyers are due to make up almost 70 per cent of buyers this year, including Framatome (France), Honeywell (UK) and Adevma Communication Ltd. (Germany). Other high-profile buyers at the event include representation from the Azerbaijan branches of BP, Baker McKenzie and OEG Offshore.



A surge in incentive travel enquiries has also been reported by the event team this year, with Hosted Buyers increasingly enquiring about adrenaline-fuelled activities in the region such as Formula 1 experiences at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, as well as cultural tours of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the newly-opened Qasr Al Watan and Qasr Al Hosn.



Sevinge Dadashova from Baker McKenzie is attending as a Hosted Buyer this year and commented: IBTM Arabia is a chance to discover different types of event hosting and formats, as well as meeting suppliers face-to-face to check detailed information, to feel "how events happen" in the Middle East, and to find out how I can use this model to refresh our events and to seek new partners for future collaboration.



Danielle Curtis, exhibition director for Reed Travel Exhibitions Middle East, commented: Were pleased with the increased level of interest from Chinese and European Hosted Buyers to attend the event this year. The Middle East remains an incredibly dynamic market, and one where the Mice market is firmly in the ascendant. With governmental support, here in Abu Dhabi weve seen the country establish itself as a leading business events destination, and this is a trend being repeated across the Middle East and one which is gaining worldwide attention.



This is a region rich in culture and we are looking forward to welcoming all our Hosted Buyers and exhibitors to the event for three days packed full of fruitful business meetings, thought-provoking education sessions, exciting networking events and inspiring cultural activities.



IBTM Arabia, run in partnership with Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, is an exclusive one-to-one appointment-led event, which mutually-matches Hosted Buyers and Exhibitors using IBTMs bespoke matchmaking software.



IBTM Arabia features a full programme of pre-planned business meetings as well as an insightful series of Knowledge Programme sessions presented by experts and educators on the latest industry developments. - TradeArabia News Service


SIFMA Submits Written Statement on the SECs Regulation Best Interest

SIFMA submitted a written statement to the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets in conjunction with a hearing entitled Putting Investors First? Examining the SECs Best Interest Rule.

Regulation Best Interest would take the existing, well-functioning regulatory regime for broker-dealers and make it better, SIFMA wrote in the statement. In doing so, Reg BI would directly enhance investor protection and contribute to a heightened sense of trust and confidence among investors in their financial service professionals.

As outlined in the statement, SIFMA generally supports the SECs Reg BI proposal because it significantly raises the bar from the current standards. Specifically, the proposed rule:

Significantly strengthens and materially exceeds the existing FINRA suitability standard. Under Reg BI, recommendations must be not only suitable, but also in the retail customers best interest, meaning that broker-dealers cannot put their interests ahead of the interests of the customer.

Under Reg BI, recommendations must be not only suitable, but also in the retail customers best interest, meaning that broker-dealers cannot put their interests ahead of the interests of the customer. Holds broker-dealers to an even higher standard than the one that applies today to investment advisers because disclosure of conflicts alone does not satisfy the standard. With respect to material conflicts arising from financial incentives, under Reg BI disclosure is not enough, broker-dealers must either eliminate, or disclose and mitigate , such conflicts of interest.

With respect to material conflicts arising from financial incentives, under Reg BI disclosure is not enough, broker-dealers must either eliminate, or disclose , such conflicts of interest. Preserves access and choice for investors while providing meaningful protections in areas that the Department of Labors (DOL) conflict of interest rule (DOL Fiduciary Rule) sought to address. Specifically, Reg BI would require a broker-dealer to exercise reasonable diligence, care, skill, and prudence in making recommendations. These fiduciary principles are the core of a BDs Care Obligation under proposed Reg BI.

in areas that the Department of Labors (DOL) conflict of interest rule (DOL Fiduciary Rule) sought to address. Specifically, Reg BI would require a broker-dealer to exercise reasonable diligence, care, skill, and prudence in making recommendations. These fiduciary principles are the core of a BDs Care Obligation under proposed Reg BI. Appropriately follows a principles-based, facts and circumstances approach; the contours of the best interest obligation are clearly delineated by the new and heightened care, disclosure and conflicts of interest obligations imposed by Reg BI.

SIFMAs statement also outlines certain areas of Reg BI that should be modified or clarified to ensure the final rule will be workable for the industry and most effectively protect retail investors.

SIFMAs full submission provides additional detail, which can be found here: https://www.sifma.org/resources/submissions/putting-investors-first-examining-the-secs-best-interest-rule/



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CANNABIS CORNER: Choom Signs LOI to Enter US Market Through New Jersey Retailer

Choom, an emerging adult and medical use cannabis company that has secured one of the largest national retail networks in Canada, is pleased to announce it is entering the United States, starting with the state of New Jersey.

Choom through its wholly owned US subsidiary, Choom Holdings USA Inc., has signed a letter of intent ("LOI") to purchase an equity interest in a New Jersey based (the "NJ Company") medical retail dispensary applicant in New Jersey's upcoming Request of Applications ("RFA") that also intends to enter into recreational cannabis retail upon legalization, which is anticipated in 2020.

The NJ Company is advancing on its retail store strategy in New Jersey with the intention of receiving licenses to operate the maximum allowable cannabis stores for medical and eventually adult use when formally approved by the State. With these licenses, the NJ Company intends to create a network of branded stores using Choom's medical brand, Clarity Medical Centres, or Choom ("Choom Brands") for its recreational retail stores in the future. Choom will assist the NJ Company in this highly regulated market for the buildout and operations of cannabis retail stores. Choom will receive a royalty from the NJ Company for the use of the Choom Brands. Choom's investment in the NJ Company includes pro rata rights to maintain its equity interest on future financings.

"This is our first step into the United States, and we are very excited for our partnership with this experienced group to have the Choom Brands in New Jersey." states Chris Bogart, President & CEO of Choom Holdings Inc. "New Jersey is home to over 9 million people currently being served by only 12 cannabis operators in its medical program. New Jersey is an exceptional market to expand the Choom Brands. We are very impressed with the progress they have achieved to date, and with our expertise in cannabis retail, we are confident we can help them successfully operate in the New Jersey market."

The terms are not material.

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Congress seeks disqualification of two more rebel party legislators in Meghalaya 10 Dec 2021 | 11:49 PM Shillong, Dec 10 (UNI) Meghalayas opposition Congress on Friday submitted a petition to Speaker Metbah Lyngdoh seeking disqualification of the two remaining Congress legislators, who along with the ten others had merged with the Trinamool Congress, under the anti-defection law as they have recently merged with the Trinamool Congress (TMC). see more..

Assam: BJP Govt to amend municipal act to give more power to women in decision making process 10 Dec 2021 | 11:48 PM Guwahati, Dec 10 (UNI) In a significant decision to empower women in politics, the Assam government today decided to amend the Assam Municipal Act, 1956 to provide women reservation for 10 years to enable active participation of women in the decision making process. see more..

Revenue officer arrested taking Rs 50K as bribe 10 Dec 2021 | 11:45 PM Patna, Dec 10 (UNI) A Revenue officer Virendra Paswan of Babhaniyanv panchayat under Jagdishpur Circle of Bhojpur district was arrested while taking Rs 50 thousand as bribe today. see more..

School Headmaster sent to jail in a poaching case 10 Dec 2021 | 9:53 PM Kendrapara Dec 10 (UNI) A Headmaster of a primary school was held along with another person in a poaching case. see more..
Blinken says met with UK counterpart to discuss coordination on deterring Russia 11 Dec 2021 | 6:46 AM Washington, Dec 11 (UNI/Sputnik) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he met with UK counterpart Liz Truss on plans to deter Russia. see more..

US Horn of Africa envoy heads to UAE, Turkey for talks with senior officials - State Dept 11 Dec 2021 | 6:45 AM Washington, Dec 11 (UNI/Sputnik) US Special Representative for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman will be in the United Arab Emirates and Turkey the coming days for talks with senior government officials from the two countries, the State Department said in a press release. see more..

Syria's Idlib de-escalation zone shelled 5 times in past day - Reconciliation Center 11 Dec 2021 | 6:39 AM Damascus, Dec 11 (UNI/Sputnik) The Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group (banned in Russia) shelled Syria's Idlib de-escalation zone five times over the past 24 hours, Rear Adm. Vadim Kulit, deputy head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria, said at a briefing. see more..

US announces first sale of 18mln barrels from strategic oil reserve to reduce pump prices 11 Dec 2021 | 6:30 AM Washington, Dec 11 (UNI/Sputnik) The Energy Department announced the first sale of 18 million barrels of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) aimed at reducing pump prices of fuel that had hit seven-year highs and raised inflation woes. see more..
GLO.ACT trains police officers in South Africa on combatting human trafficking

Durban, South Africa - 19 March 2019 - UNODC, under the framework of the Global Action against Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants ( GLO.ACT) and in collaboration with the South African Police Services ( SAPS) in KwaZulu Natal and the National Prosecuting Authority, facilitated a three-day training workshop from the 12 to 14 March 2019 in the issue of Trafficking in Persons (TIP).

The Republic of South Africa is a primary destination for trafficked persons in the Southern African region and within Africa at large. It is also an origin and transit country for trafficking towards Europe and North America. Trafficking affects women, men and children who find themselves exploited for the purpose of forced labour, sex, forced begging and forced criminality. Forced labour victims, frequently not South African nationals, have also been detected on fishing vessels in South Africa's territorial waters. Internally, girls are trafficked from rural to urban areas for sexual exploitation and domestic servitude, while boys are forced to work in street vending, begging, agriculture, mining, and criminal activities.

Opening the workshop, Mr. Vusi Khoza, Director, Victim Empowerment, Department of Social Development in KwaZulu Natal said that: "This workshop is the best platform to equip police officers with skills to assist them to do their job when it comes to tackling human trafficking". He went on to say that, "human trafficking in KwaZulu Natal has widely been associated with sexual exploitation but we are beginning to see more cases of labour exploitation. We therefore hope that the training will cover other types of exploitation."

The main objectives of the workshop were:

To build capacity of detectives at provincial level on the identification and investigations of TIP cases;

To build the capacity of detectives at provincial level on victim interview techniques;

To build the capacity of detectives on the international legal framework of TIP (including distinguishing TIP and the smuggling of migrants;

To build capacity detectives on the TIP Act, South African Police Services National Instructions and the roles and responsibilities of the SAPS in TIP matters.

Speaking about the workshop, Mr. Sifiso Shongwe, Detective, South African Police Services in KwaZulu Natal said that "Thank you for this training. I will now review the prostitution cases that keep coming up at my station to determine if those cases border on trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation". He went on to say that: "This training has been is an eye opener and will improve the way I conduct my investigations."

One of the outcomes of workshop was the decision taken by detectives to re-investigate the missing persons and prostitution cases which resulted in arrests after they were reported to the provincial police clusters, in order to determine if a TIP elements can be established in those cases. The detectives were also connected to the provincial TIP rapid response task team in order to refer suspected TIP cases. Furthermore, a database for the officers trained on TIP was established and these officers will campion TIP in their various police stations by sharing the information they obtained and also by acting as focal point for TIP in their respective work stations.

Participants included members of the South African Police Services from the Cluster and Provincial offices including commanders, trainers and Detectives in KwaZulu Natal. National Prosecuting Authority and GLO.ACT project implementing partners.

The Global Action to Prevent and Address Trafficking in Persons and the Smuggling of Migrants (GLO.ACT) is a four-year (2015-2019), 11 million joint initiative by the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The project is being implemented in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). GLO.ACT aims to provide assistance to governmental authorities and civil society organizations across 13 strategically selected countries: Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Kyrgyz Republic, Lao PDR, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, South Africa, Ukraine. GLO.ACT works with the 13 countries to plan and implement strategic national counter-trafficking and counter smuggling efforts through a prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnerships approach. It supports the development of more effective responses to trafficking and smuggling, including providing assistance to victims of trafficking and vulnerable migrants through the strengthening of identification, referral, and direct support mechanisms.

For more information, please contact:

Banele Kunene, National Project Officer,

banele.kunene@unodc.org

Twitter: @glo_act.
(March 19, 2019) -- The San Antonio Area Foundation today announced the selection of Marjie M. French, UTSA Vice President for External Relations and Chief Development Officer, as its next Chief Executive Officer. French will join the San Antonio Area Foundation after spending more than a decade at UTSA, where she built a comprehensive philanthropic program that is propelling the university toward recognition as a premier research institution.

A seasoned leader with nearly 30 years of experience in the management of development, advancement, alumni relations, and communications and marketing teams, Frenchs career includes leadership roles in three comprehensive capital campaigns and personal major gift solicitations and acquisitions from both state and national charitable foundations. At UTSA, her portfolio included principal gifts as well as the development, advancement, alumni programs, and university communications and marketing operations.

In 2009, French launched UTSAs first capital campaign, We Are UTSA  A Top-Tier Campaign. The initiative sought $120 million in support for student scholarships, faculty and research initiatives, campus activities, and community outreach programs. In early 2013, UTSA surpassed its $120 million goal and, with two years left in the campaign, set a new goal of $175 million. By the close of the capital campaign in 2016, the university had surpassed that goal and secured more than $202 million in gifts and pledges.

Through the campaign, which was supported by nearly 33,000 donors, UTSA secured 143 new endowments including 70 endowed scholarships, 41 endowed faculty positions and nine endowments providing 32 graduate fellowships. Additionally, UTSA received its largest single private gift, $22 million from the estate of Mary E. McKinney.

More recently, French has led efforts to expand philanthropic support for UTSA students and researchers and to facilitate the expansion of the UTSA Downtown Campus as part of the citys high-tech corridor.

Last year, French guided UTSA in securing $37 million in gifts and pledges, setting a new annual fundraising record for the university.

Marjie is an exemplary leader who has energized the San Antonio philanthropic community in support of UTSA, said UTSA President Taylor Eighmy. For more than a decade, she has built a record-breaking program that has created a foundation of philanthropic stability and growth for the university. Because of her vision and commitment to excellence, UTSA is moving at light speed to become a world-class university.

He added, While I will miss working with Marjie, I understand how committed she is to serving the San Antonio community. I look forward to working with her at the Area Foundation, which will be in very good hands.

French will begin her role as San Antonio Area Foundation CEO on April 8. She will be responsible for managing more than $900 million in assets to educate youth, preserve the environment, protect animals, fund research and provide services that enhance the quality of life for people living in and around San Antonio.

A native Texan, French earned her bachelor of arts degree from the University of St. Thomas in Houston. From 2005 to 2008, she supervised all aspects of development at UT-Dallas including operations, alumni relations, major gifts, annual fund, communication and endowment services. Under her leadership, total giving increased by 50 percent and alumni participation increased by 70 percent.

From 2000 to 2005, French managed the Dallas major gift program for UT-Austins $1.6 billion Were Texas campaign. Additionally, she led fundraising that resulted in the creation of the Real Estate Finance Center at UT-Austins McCombs School of Business.

At the University of Houston, she supervised development programs for both the Honors College and the College of Architecture during the universitys $350 million creative partnership campaign.

In the coming days, Eighmy will appoint a search committee and launch a national search to fill Frenchs role. The university has retained education philanthropy executive Karl Miller of Bentz Whaley Flessner as a senior level advisor for development, advancement and alumni operations during the transition period.
SBDC Day in Wyoming Scheduled March 20

Gov. Mark Gordon signs the SBDC Day proclamation in Cheyenne March 18. Those present are, from left, Ron Gullberg and Will Hardin, both from the Wyoming Business Council; University of Wyoming Vice President for Research and Economic Development Ed Synakowski; and the Wyoming SBDC Networks John Privette, Jill Kline, Jake Dixon, Nicholas Giraldo and Kelly Haigler Cornish. (Rachel Girl Photo)

Gov. Mark Gordon signed a proclamation designating March 20 as Small Business Development Center Day in Wyoming. On Wednesday, Wyoming entrepreneurs will join thousands across the country in sharing their success stories thanks to assistance from their local Small Business Development Center (SBDC).

For 24 years, the Wyoming SBDC Network has helped entrepreneurs start or grow their businesses through nine regional offices across the state. In 2018 alone, the Wyoming SBDC Network assisted 1,366 entrepreneurs, resulting in 111 new businesses, 1,402 jobs created or saved, and a capital impact of more than $10 million for the states economy.

The Wyoming SBDC Network offers business expertise to help Wyoming residents think about, launch, grow, reinvent or exit their business. The Wyoming SBDC Network is hosted by the University of Wyoming with state funds from the Wyoming Business Council and funded, in part, through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The Wyoming SBDC Network has assisted and supported over 47,000 Wyoming residents during the last 24 years, says Jill Kline, state director of the Wyoming SBDC Network. We love this work for several reasons. We serve the great citizens of the state. We are able to offer confidential support at no cost and, every day, we know we have a positive effect in the entrepreneurial ecosystem statewide. SBDC Day is an opportunity for us to celebrate Wyomings small businesses and their successes as well as making sure we reach as many entrepreneurs as possible to let them know we are here to help them succeed.

To learn more about SBDC Day, join the Wyoming SBDC Network as they go live at 10 a.m. March 20 from their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/wyomingsbdc/
UW McNair Scholar to Pursue Graduate Studies at Bowling Green State University

Taylar Stagner

Taylar Stagnar, a McNair Scholar Program student from Riverton, has been accepted into the masters degree program in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University with a full-ride scholarship.

The McNair Scholars Program is an undergraduate research program and graduate school preparation program for college sophomores, juniors and seniors. The program provides services that promote successful entry to graduate school and increase the likelihood that participants will complete a Ph.D. program.

Stagnar, who is an American Studies major in the UW College of Arts and Sciences, an Arapahoe and Eastern Shoshone tribal member. As part of the McNair program, she conducted research on the Wind River Indian Reservation and the conflicts that exist in border towns within its boundaries. Angela Jaime, the UW American Indian Studies Program director, mentored Stagnar throughout her research.

Stagnar recently presented her research at the Midwest Popular Culture Association conference in Indianapolis, Ind., and is currently co-authoring, with Jaime, a book chapter, titled Theater in Critical Race Theory: A Native American Perspective.

While studying at UW, Stagnar also was an intern with Wyoming Public Media. She now works as a reporter who sometimes volunteers in cultural affairs, reporting on Indigenous issues.

Having been a theater major at Central Wyoming College, Stagnar has a love for performing. She was an actress in the Wyoming Shakespeare Company and has performed in and served as board member, treasurer and archivist of the Laramie Burlesque nonprofit.

Through her graduate work, she hopes to improve conditions on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

The UW McNair Scholars Program is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, and has been continuously funded and active on the UW campus since 1992. Since the program's inception at UW, more than 60 UW McNair alumni have gone on to earn their doctoral degrees in a wide variety of fields and disciplines.

Twelve to 16 highly motivated undergraduates with a desire to pursue a Ph.D. are selected each year to become McNair Scholars.
Under the sponsorship of the China Customs Cooperation Fund (CCF- China), a World Customs Organization (WCO) Accreditation Workshop for Technical Operational Advisers (TOAs) in the area of the WCO Time Release Study (TRS) was held at the WCO Regional Training Centre in Xiamen, China, from 11 to 15 March 2019.

The event was organized as part of the WCO strategic approach to obtain a greater number of experts to assist WCO Members in conducting a TRS. It was attended by Customs officials from the Asia Pacific (AP) region.

During the workshop, WCO facilitators (from the Secretariat and China Customs) presented a general overview of the organization of a TRS activity, and subsequently focused on TRS objectives, challenges, opportunity and ways forward as well as communication skills.

10 selected Customs officers from the WCO AP region participated in the workshop and were continuously assessed against a set of criteria that included their overall knowledge and strategic application of key WCO instruments and tools, their level of technical expertise, their ability to support Member administrations in preparing and conducting a TRS and their ability to facilitate discussion with senior Customs officials, including Directors/Commissioners General or equivalent.

At the end of the event, several participants successfully completed phase 1 of the accreditation process as they had demonstrated their potential to become TOAs in the area of TRS. The successful candidates will now be able to support the WCO in future TRS missions and, if appropriate, be finally considered by the WCO as full Accredited TOA in the area of TRS.
At the invitation of the Secretary to the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), Mr. Jingyuan Xia, WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya visited the IPPC Secretariat hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy on 18 March 2019. Both parties agreed on a Joint Work Plan for Cooperation (2019-2022) between the two Organizations, following on from the Agreement signed on 19 June 2018.

The Joint Work Plan consolidates the major activities for bilateral cooperation and explores further areas of joint work between the two Secretariats for the coming three years. This period coincides with the WCO Strategic Plan and also covers the International Year of Plant Health in 2020, approved through a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 2018 and for which the FAO, together with the IPPC Secretariat, will serve as the lead agency.

Although it is non-binding in nature, the Plan mentions seven areas of cooperation: (i) joint events, especially in the area of trade facilitation; (ii) communication and advocacy; (iii) cross-border e-commerce; (iv) electronic data exchange (e-Phyto); (v) sea containers; (vi) Single Window; and (vii) Time Release Study. These correspond to the priority areas of both Organizations, and they undertake to review the implementation progress of the Plan and prepare a revised Plan, as appropriate.

Secretary General Mikuriya stated that the Joint Work Plan will further enhance Coordinated Border Management in key areas of interest both for Customs and Phytosanitary agencies, including sea containers and cross-border e-commerce. Cooperation between the two Organizations will contribute to trade facilitation while protecting the health and safety of citizens through the use of common standards and tools for Data Exchange and Performance Measurement.

IPPC Secretary Xia fully agrees with the WCO Secretary Generals statement above and emphasized that this Work Plan provides a good opportunity for the two Organizations to cooperate and help facilitate the implementation of the World Trade Organizations Trade Facilitation Agreement. He also encourages the IPPC Community to cooperate with national Customs Administrations to help promote safe trade.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Mar. 19, 2019 | PADUCAH

By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 19, 2019 | 10:01 AM | PADUCAH

A man faces 15 years behind bars after pleading guilty to assault, burglary and other charges in a 2017 shooting and several break-ins in the Kevil area.



Court records show 21-year-old Spencer Forrest pleaded guilty but mentally ill Monday in McCracken Circuit Court to charges of first-degree assault, theft, two counts of criminal mischief, three counts of first-degree burglary and 10 counts of first-degree wanton endangerment. The charges stem from a series of break-ins in the Kevil area in 2017. Forrest reportedly admitted to shooting a woman during one of the burglaries. The victim, who has since recovered, told police she awoke to find him standing over her. He then reportedly shot her after asking for pills. Forrest also told investigators he shot a gun into the windows of two other homes.



Prosecutors recommended a 15-year sentence in the case. Forrest's formal sentencing will take place in May.



Forrest's family told police he suffers from schizophrenia and had not been taking his medication when the crimes occurred. When asked why he committed these offenses, Forrest reportedly said he had been hearing voices, and that the motive for his crimes was he was angry that he was not famous.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Mar. 19, 2019 | PADUCAH

By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 19, 2019 | 01:33 PM | PADUCAH

Three teens were arrested during a traffic stop Monday afternoon on drug and other charges.



The McCracken County Sheriff's Office says drug detectives pulled over a vehicle for traffic violations shortly before 4 p.m. near the intersection of North 24th and Harrison Streets. Detectives said they could smell marijuana coming from the vehicle.



Deputies said they arrested the driver, 18-year-old Roper Harper of Paducah, after they found Marijuana he had concealed in an undergarment. A 14-year-old juvenile passenger was cited after detectives found a concealed loaded handgun, marijuana packaged for sale and digital scales. A 17-year-old juvenile was also cited after a search revealed another set of digital scales.



Harper was booked into the McCracken County Jail on charges of marijuana trafficking less than eight ounces, second degree unlawful transaction with a minor, possession of drug paraphernalia, and traffic offenses. The 14-year-old was cited for firearm enhanced trafficking in marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of a handgun by a minor, and carrying a concealed deadly weapon. The 17-year-old was cited for possession of marijuana.



Both juveniles were released to their parents.
The next US shortage could be snowplow drivers
By WEST KENTUCKY STAR STAFF Mar. 18, 2019 | 03:58 PM | ULLIN

The event is free and open to the public on the main campus of the college, located at 8364 Shawnee College Road in Ullin.



This year, over 30 employers will have representatives on hand to meet with potential employees.



Job seekers should bring resumes, dress professionally, and be ready to be interviewed.





For more information regarding this upcoming event, contact Career Services Coordinator, Leslie Cornelious-Weldon at 618-634-3337 or lesliec@shawneecc.edu.



Shawnee Community College will host its annual career fair on Wednesday, March 20th from 8:30 am until 12:00 pm.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 18, 2019 | 09:05 PM | CARLISLE COUNTY

Two Carlisle County residents face drug charges.

According to the Carlisle County Sheriff's Office, a deputy stopped a vehicle, driven by 35-year-old Jason Busby, during a safety checkpoint on Highway 62 Friday night. During the stop, the deputy deployed his K-9 partner Izzy and she indicated the presence of narcotics inside the vehicle.

Inside the vehicle, deputies found a corner bag with methamphetamine inside it and a plastic straw believed to be used to inhale meth. When questioned, Busby allegedly told deputies the meth belonged to his passenger, 38-year-old Amanda Cornett.

Busby also informed deputies that Cornett had pills hidden in her underclothing. When questioned, Cornett produced a single Percocet 10mg pill from her underclothing. She denied any knowledge of the methamphetamine.

Cornett was charged with possession of a controlled substance and prescription not in the proper container. Busby was charged with possession of methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 19, 2019 | 10:51 AM | MURRAY

A Marshall County man faces multiple drug charges in Murray.

According to the Murray Police Department, while conducting a security check of an apartment complex, an officer saw a man in the parking lot that he recognized as having an active warrant for his arrest. The man was identified as 44-year-old Sonny Russell, of Benton.

While speaking with Russell, the officer learned that he had two outstanding warrants for his arrest. The officer also detected a strong odor of marijuana coming from Russells vehicle.

As a result of the ensuing investigation, Russell was arrested and charged with trafficking in methamphetamine, possession of marijuana, three counts of possession of a controlled substance - drug unspecified, possession of cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia. Russell was also served with the two outstanding warrants for failure to appear.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Mar. 18, 2019 | BENTON

By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 18, 2019 | 03:25 PM | BENTON

Members of the House finished business and walked off the floor late into the night on March 14. Since it is late in the session, the majority of the bills we considered this week were from the Senate, or House bills that were amended in the Senate with changes that had to be agreed on by the House.



We will reconvene for the final day of session on March 28, to consider overriding any vetoes the Governor might issue and deal with any last minute business. When we adjourn then we will close the books on the 2019 Regular Session.



The Governor has already signed ten bills into law, including SB 150, legislation that would allow persons over the age of 21 to carry concealed deadly weapons without government-mandated permitting and annual fee requirements. Currently, a license is not required in order to open carry in the Commonwealth. It is important to note that this measure does not allow the carrying or possession of a deadly weapon where prohibited by federal law. Also, according to testimony on the bill given in committee, similar laws have been in effect in three states for five years. In those states, the average crime rate is lower across all categories of violent crime five years following adoption.



The Governor has also signed SB 77, which seeks to increase awareness and participation in our states organ donor registry program. There was a concern that there would be a decrease in the amount of people registering to become an organ donor because of the enactment of the new Kentucky ID system. This bill addresses it and makes it easier to become an organ donor.



Among the bills we sent to the Governor before leaving Frankfort was SB 9, legislation that would outlaw abortions once the unborn childs heartbeat is detected. This measure is critical to protecting the life of the unborn. A fetal heartbeat can be detected about six weeks into pregnancy. The measure would provide narrow exceptions for abortions, such as when the mothers life is endangered. This is one of several pieces of pro-life legislation we have considered and passed this session, including HB 5, which would prohibit abortion providers from performing an abortion based on gender, race, national origin or disability. We have also approved HB 148, which seeks to prepare Kentucky for the possibility that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade. Senate Bill 50, which would require that prescription medications given by a physician with the intent to cause an abortion be reported as an abortion so that there may be a more accurate statistical reporting.



The legislature has also sent the Governor SB 85, an important piece of legislation that amends existing driving under the influence (DUI) laws to increase the amount of time a first time offender's license is suspended and expand the use of a device that prevents vehicles from starting if alcohol is detected on someones breath. SB 85 increases how long a license is suspended from a minimum of 30 days to nine months. However, the bill also allows the suspension to be decreased to six months if an offender agrees to purchase and use an ignition interlock device. The bill has the support of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), prosecutors and traffic safety stakeholders.



On Thursday, the House gave final approval to HB 296, which creates a higher education loan repayment program for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses who work in a Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs nursing home. The loan sets limitations to the program, which will become effective on January 1, 2020.



The House and Senate reached an agreement on a modified version of HB 354, legislation which builds on our efforts to transform our states tax code into one that stimulates job creation and allows Kentuckians to keep more of their hard earned money. Last year, the Kentucky General Assembly took a major step forward in making the tax code more pro-business, moving Kentuckys tax code in a more consumption based direction. HB 354 builds on that and also fixes some bad interpretations of existing tax law. The final version of the bill exempts all admission sales by nonprofit organizations, as well as all nonprofit fundraising event sales, including all sales of tangible personal property and digital property per calendar year. In addition, the final version of HB 354 provides a credit for a group of households who, due to a fluctuation in federal poverty guidelines, are paying more in state income tax than prior to 2018.



We have also sent the Governor HB 268, which provides financial assistance for critical maintenance and repairs at many of our decaying state parks. The bill authorizes $50 million in bonding authority for improvements to Kentuckys State Parks for vital maintenance and repairs. The bill explicitly specifies how funds can be spent, including projects like lodge roof replacements, wastewater treatment and infrastructure upgrades and ADA compliance projects.



As I mentioned, we will return to Frankfort on March 28. In the meantime I can be reached here at home anytime, or through the toll-free message line in Frankfort at 1-800-372-7181. If you would like more information, or to e-mail me, please visit the legislature's website www.legislature.ky.gov. Also, spring seems to be a popular time to visit our capital city and the State Capitol. If you have a school or community group, or just want to bring your family, I hope you will reach out to me so that I may help coordinate a tour of the Capitol, Governors Mansion, Kentucky History Center or Old State Capitol.



Rep. Chris Freeland was elected in November to represent Lyon and Marshall Counties, and part of McCracken County.




It is a rather unique housing project, which despite the very simple and economical materials used in its construction, achieves great expressiveness thanks to its volumetric and conceptual games.

Architect : OOIIO Architecture

Location : Ciudad Real, Spain

Year : 2018

Area : 250.30 sq.m.

Team : Joaquin Millan Villamuelas, Natalia Garmendia Cobo, Irene Munoz Fernandez, Alessio Runci, Pilar Bolanos Almeida, Paolo Mercorillo, Mario Gomez de Aguero.

Structures : Consultora CPE, Juan Vallejo.

Interior Design : OOIIO Architecture.

Facilities : Agroser Ingenieros.

Civil Engineer : Antonio Ruiz Rodriguez.

Safety Manager : Antonio Ruiz Rodriguez.

Builder : Propacons Mora s.l.

Photography : Josefotoinmo

From the architect: How to deal with the design of a house starting from a blank paper? How to organize and shape something as personal and important for a family as their own home? How to make singular and special something so many times repeated as a single-family housing project?

The OOIIO Architecture team is specialized over the years in the design and construction of unique homes, investigating different creative techniques to find originality, surprise and awaken new sensations in the projects they carry out.

Applying the paranoiac-critical method used by Dali and other Surrealist artists, the OOIIO Architects Team look for references, links, in the world of dreams, of the imagination, which they then shape and turn into reality through technique and constructive logic.

This is how that house design process started: after understanding the needs of the clients, site and regulations, the imagination was let fly in search of some poetic link that formed part of their lives and that they identified as something close and suggestive.

Thus we arrive at the famous La Mancha Mills, a traditional massive constructions, which emerge strikingly in the landscape of this area as cylindrical, white and coarse volumes that play with the sunlight and the wind. Its simple shape and architecture is a combination of the vertical lines of the white cylinder with the diagonals of its characteristics blades and inclined roof.

Albania House wants to be an abstraction of all this. As Dali saw human faces on the rocks of the coast of his hometown Cadaques, OOIIO Architects wanted to suggest windmills in a contemporary single-family house. A house that resembles a mill, decomposed and recomposed again, completing a different figure. A game, an experiment, an application of artistic techniques in architecture to create a unique work, nothing standardized.

The rational part of the entire creative process was focused on solving the needs of customers always following principles of sustainability and efficiency, fitting everything into a tight budget with simple materials and quick construction techniques. The program is distributed in three volumes: towards the west with a triangular floor, the living room; in the east with a square floor, kitchen and bedrooms; between both pieces we created an entrance hall similar to those zaguanes, welcome rooms coming also directly extracted from the local vernacular architecture.

The plot is located on the outskirts of the city, in a quiet residential area just where the countryside meets the urban, in a place of La Mancha, Ciudad Real.

The most observant and dreamer walkers who find the house there will discover a new link to the imagination, a link to another local cultural reference, the facades of the house look like the faces of giants who look at us directly defiant behind the wall of the house.

So? ... Are they mills, or giants?

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Miga House by OOIIO Architecture
How South Africa can improve community-based HIV services

South Africa introduced a community-based primary health care programme in 2012.

The aim of the programme, which includes a large HIV component, is to improve access to health care.

Under the programme, community health workers provide a wide range of services such as health education and referrals to clinics for HIV testing and treatment. Community health workers also support people on antiretroviral therapy and trace those who default on treatment. By early 2017 there were about 3 276 teams of community health workers in 2 590 of the 4 392 wards in South Africa, with at least six community health workers in a team.

South Africa has the highest number of people  7.1 million  living with HIV in the world. But new infections have decreased substantially from 390 000 in 2010 to 270 000 in 2017. This has been due to a number of successful interventions, including home-based care provided by community health workers. Introduced at the height of the epidemic in 2003, home-based and community-based care sought to relieve the burden on clinics and hospitals, and to improve access to health care in under-served communities.

We did a study that examined the factors impacting on the success of the community-based HIV programme in a district in Limpopo, one of South Africas rural provinces.

We measured three aspects of their work. First, we conducted a survey to assess if they were following the guidelines set by government, such as the number of households visited. We also looked at factors on the ground that could affect their work. Third, we assessed how effective community health workers were. We did this by counting the number of referrals they made to clinics for HIV testing and treatment, and how many people they referred back to a clinic who had defaulted on their HIV treatment.

Our findings showed that the community-based HIV programme has great potential to improve access to health care. But there are challenges. These include unclear job descriptions, inadequate infrastructures and remuneration.

What we found

We found that community health workers were motivated and had the confidence to do their work. The resources they were given also made a big difference to their ability to do their jobs. This included stationery and backpacks.

In addition, we found out by doing a survey in the community, that they provided uninterrupted services as set out in the guidelines. Community members and leaders mostly viewed the community health workers positively. This was reflected in the uptake of their referrals for HIV testing which stood at 73%.

Community health workers in this area provided support to 5 657 people on antiretroviral therapy. They also tracked down 52% of the people lost to the HIV treatment programme, of which 53% reverted back to the clinic. These are positive outcomes because its difficult to take lifelong HIV treatment and because returning to care more quickly, after defaulting on treatment, reduces the risk of deteriorating health and transmission of HIV.

But there are gaps.

Barriers

Several barriers must be overcome to improve community health worker service delivery. While they had a wide reach, community health workers didnt get to all of the households in the district.

Community health workers often felt unsupported and undervalued. Their job descriptions were unclear and remuneration was not always adequate and timeous. This led to demotivation and tension between community health workers and their superiors.

Community health workers had to perform their duties despite the lack of resources and proper infrastructure at clinics to hold meetings and prepare reports. For example, community health workers expressed the need for cellular phones, printers and portable tables to write on. They often held meetings in postnatal rooms or other unsuitable rooms due to the lack of space.

Community health workers said they would really appreciate ongoing training to keep abreast with current knowledge.

Several barriers were identified in the community. HIV-related stigma was rife, people with HIV feared being insulted and rejected. Other barriers included cultural issues such as people seeking health care from traditional healers instead of going to the clinic. Some community members and traditional healers didnt trust community health workers because they were unaware of their purpose.

The tipping point

The community-based HIV programme has great potential to improve access to HIV care. The government is planning to increase the number of community health workers in rural areas where theres a greater need for health care. Our findings can help inform how this is done.

Some suggestions we propose to scale up the work of community health workers include exploring approaches such as increasing staff numbers and getting community health workers to work during weekends to increase the number of households they service. Providing HIV self-testing kits to communities can be used to increase HIV testing and mobile technology can help improve monitoring of community health worker activities by keeping an accurate record of the number of households visited and services provided.

Other possible solutions include having community health workers host awareness campaigns or imbizos for the community, leaders and traditional healers. Finally, integrating HIV services with other chronic illness services so that people dont have to wait in separate queues for different illnesses, may address stigma related reasons for avoiding HIV care.

South Africas community-based HIV programme is at a tipping point. Financial investment to improve training, infrastructure and resources is urgently needed. And, grassroots community involvement is important to improve support and awareness of community health workers and to get buy-in for these health services.

Nireshni Naidoo, Epidemiologist, University of the Witwatersrand; Kate Rees, Honorary Research Associate, Public Health Medicine, University of Cape Town, and Remco Peters, Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology, University of Pretoria

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Launch of Penley Hospital: The Story of a Polish Community in Wales exhibition at Wrexham Museum

This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Mar 19th, 2019

A new exhibition exploring the history of a Polish community in a local village has launched at Wrexham Museum.

International events and local history come together to tell the story of Penley Hospital: The Story of a Polish Community in Wales, which opened its doors to the public on Monday.

Eighty years ago the Wehrmacht and the Red Army swept across the borders of Poland setting in motion a train of events that would lead to the establishment of three Polish hospitals in the Welsh countryside near Wrexham, in the village of Penley and the grounds of two country houses, Iscoyd Park and Llannerch Panna.

The hospitals were staffed by Polish medics and nurses whose job was to care for the thousands of Polish servicemen and service women displaced from their homes, battle worn and weary, and now living in post-war Britain.

The hospitals became the focal point of a Polish community whose story is told in this new exhibition.

Created with the help of former residents of Penley Hospital camp and volunteers, the exhibition includes:

 Artefacts from the former hospital and its chapel such as the reredos (a three-part artwork centred on the Madonna and Child.

 A film based on archive recordings of life at the hospital in the 1960s

 Oral histories of former residents and staff at the hospital

 A slideshow of photographs of the community

 A chance for younger ones to dress up in Polish style national costume, following a well-established tradition at Penley.

A reunion of former staff and families connected to Penley Hospital is planned for May.

Councillor Hugh Jones, deputy leader of Wrexham County Borough Council, said I would like to thank all those who have helped staff at the museum to stage this exhibition.

Your assistance and involvement has been invaluable in telling the amazing story of the Polish community who were unable to return home to Poland because of the Communist regime in that country and the Soviet occupation of their homeland. Their story still resonates today.

Councillor John McCusker, Member for Overton Ward said: I am very pleased to see this interest from the County Borough Museum in the extraordinary history of the village of Penley and how the arrival of the Polish community had a huge impact on the village.

Relatives of former residents still revisit the area and are always made very welcome.

The exhibition will run at Wrexham Museum until June 22nd 2019 and is open Monday  Friday 10am to 5pm and Saturday 11am to 4pm. Admission is free.

Courtyard Cafe at the museum is open 10am to 4:30pm.

For more information contact the museum on 01978 297460



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Leading mental health charity selected as North Wales Polices charity for 2019

This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Mar 19th, 2019

North Wales Police have selected Waless leading mental health organisation as the forces charity for the year.

Hafal, which has a base in Hightown, supports people with severe mental illness and their carers as they work towards recovery through self-management and empowerment.

Last week Chief Constable of North Wales Police, Carl Foulkes visited the Wrexham team.

Over the next 12 months money raised by North Wales Police through events will be donated to Hafal.



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New crackdown on modern day slavery across the region

This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Mar 19th, 2019

A new crackdown has been launched on North Wales companies involved in of modern day slavery and human trafficking.

North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones and Chief Constable Carl Foulkes have pledged to ensure the force acts ethically and does not buy goods or services from any businesses involved in the evil trade.

Together they have issued a Code of Practice with the police and crime commissioners and chief constables from the other three forces in Wales recognising their responsibilities as employers.

They also signed up to the Welsh Governments Ethical Employment in Supply Chains Code of Practice two years ago

An action plan has been drawn up and procurement staff at North Wales Police have received training from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply

Tackling modern day slavery and human trafficking is one of the main priorities in Mr Jones Police and Crime Plan. In 2017 he funded the appointment of the UKs first police support officer dedicated to helping victims of modern slavery.

Mr Jones said: Modern slavery is a crime and a violation of fundamental human rights. It takes various forms, such as slavery, servitude, sexual exploitation, forced and compulsory labour and human trafficking, all of which have in common the deprivation of a persons liberty by another in order to exploit them for personal or commercial gain.

The Chief Constable and I are committed to ensuring that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking in the force supply chains or in any part of the business.

The forces policies and procedures demonstrate our commitment to acting ethically and with integrity in all its business relationships.

Modern slavery and human trafficking are appalling and callous crimes which reach right into our society here in North Wales which is why I have made it one of my priorities in my Police and Crime Plan which sets the strategy for policing the area.

It is a growing issue and the more resources we are able to put in, the more we are uncovering. Holyhead Port is a real challenge and we know people smuggling and labour exploitation are issues we need to urgently tackle and address.

There are so many areas that are a concern whether its the fishing or cockling industries, car washes, agriculture or elsewhere. Its a growing problem that many police forces are having to address.

Chief Constable Foulkes said: We will be implementing the Code of Practice across he force by focusing on four areas.

In relation to enforcement, we will be improving intelligence gathering through compliance with code and promoting the development of ethical supply chains in the delivery of contracts for the police service.

We need to ensure that all of Wales is working to a common policy with buy-in across the organisations impacting mainstream and day to day business and that people in Wales are not bystanders and report exploitation in all its forms

The Social Value Policy 2017 includes an increased focus on the delivery of social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being through the way the force manages its procurement activity.

Where appropriate, the Force will seek assurances from suppliers and potential suppliers through its tendering processes, that they have no knowledge of modern slavery within their organisations or supply chains.

The force will expect that those suppliers take responsibility to seek similar assurances from their own supply chains.

The police and crime commissioner and I are working towards the Living Wage Foundation living wage and the Welsh forces have agreed to develop an All Wales Whistle Blowing Policy with specific reference to the Code of Practice.

Anybody who has concerns about possible cases of modern slavery or human trafficking in North Wales should telephone 101 (or 999 in an Emergency), Modern Slavery Helpline on 0800 0121700 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.



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Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-13 22:05:30|Editor: xuxin

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TASHKENT, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Uzbekistan's civil aviation agency said Wednesday that the country has decided to suspend Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9 aircraft into and out of its airports until further notice, after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane.

"We have temporarily suspended receiving and sending of such flights. However, such liners still can pass Uzbek air corridors if on transit," an Uzbek aviation official told Xinhua.

Uzbekistan airliners do not have Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9 aircraft.

Uzbekistan has joined the ranks of countries grounding Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft amid mounting safety concerns after the second crash of the same model in less than five months, including India, Poland, New Zealand, Fiji, Italy, Turkey, France, Germany, Britain, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore and China, among others.

An Ethiopian Airlines aircraft, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, crashed shortly after taking off from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday morning local time, killing all 157 people on board.

In October 2018, a Lion Air plane, also a 737 MAX 8, crashed into the sea off the Indonesian capital Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board.

Despite the two crashes, Boeing said in a statement on Tuesday that it has "full confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX," adding that "safety is Boeing's number one priority."
File photo taken on June 19, 2017 shows a Boeing 737 MAX 9 at the 52nd International Paris Air and Space Show in Bourget, France. (Xinhua/Chen Yichen)

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Aviation scientists have said the safety upgrade to software across the 737 MAX fleet is no easier than a plane redesign and it would take a while for pilots to regain their confidence of flying them after two crashes in less than six months.

Boeing said it is working with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to develop the software enhancement, which the FAA hoped to mandate with an Airworthiness Directive no later than April.

It came after an aircraft of Ethiopian Airlines crashed on March 10, killing all 157 passengers and crew members on board a 737 MAX 8 plane.

Preliminary investigation showed that the track of the Ethiopian flight was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight that crashed in October 2018 due to the automated software system called MCAS.

Eric Feron, professor of aerospace software engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Xinhua that there was a cross-compatibility problem with Boeing's willingness to make the 737 MAX 8 be "the same aircraft" as the previous 737 models, while improving its fuel consumption.

The geometric layout of the older 737 planes with narrow engines could fit snuggly under the wings as planned, but the wings of the 737 are too low to easily accommodate larger, more efficient engines in 737 MAX planes, according to Feron.

Boeing moved forward and up the new engines to prevent them from touching the ground, which changed the aircraft's aerodynamics, so engineers addressed it by changing control software to recover the same characteristics as the older model, to ensure the new model as "the same aircraft" to certification authorities, Feron said.

Feron said aircraft manufacturers and subcontractors were very averse to making big changes to existing flight software for fear of a complete new certification, but local changes to software, or adding a new piece of software, can have vast and hard-to-predict impact on the entire system, which made things "dicey."

However, solving hardware problems with software is okay but might be as difficult, and perhaps more difficult, than updating the hardware, said Feron. It can take as much money and time to fix a software issue as it is to fix a hardware issue, according to him.

Chien-tsung Lu, a professor of School of Aviation and Transportation Technology at Purdue University, doesn't think there is a mismatch between engine and fuselage for the 737 Max 8 as its structural dimensions have been improved to meet the best integrated aerodynamic design and performance.

But Lu is more concerned about Boeing's slow response to a potential software problem.

"If Boeing has perceived that the accident might be due to software problems according to archived pilot reports, it raises another question: Why Boeing did not take actions before the second B737 Max accident? What actually happened to Lion Air's crash?" Lu told Xinhua.

Some pilots had complained about unintended nose-down situations while flying the Max 8 jet, according to federal database.

Now, two black boxes of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines plane have been sent to Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety of France for an investigation.

"The probable causes of the accident are still unknown. We must be patient and wait for the final accident report," said Lu, adding that "it would take a while for pilots to regain their confidence of flying Boeing 737 MAX."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-18 22:44:57|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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VILNIUS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Mayors of Lithuania's three largest cities won re-election, preliminary data of the country's Central Electoral Commissions (VRK) showed Monday.

The Lithuanian capital Vilnius's incumbent mayor Remigijus Simasius received 60 percent of voters' support, beating his rival Arturas Zuokas who received just 38 percent of the votes.

"I am proud of all of you as we came to these elections talking not against somebody, but in favor of the values that we believe in," Simasius was quoted by local media as speaking to his supporters after the preliminary results were announced late Sunday night.

According to Simasius, the result is "a great victory," yet the next four-year term at the office "will not be easy."

A number of new important education, infrastructure and construction projects are planned for his second term as Vilnius's mayor, Simasius said in his interview with the news website Delfi.

In Lithuania's third largest city Klaipeda, mayor Vytautas Grubliauskas was re-elected with 55 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, in second largest city of Kaunas, mayor Visvaldas Matijosaitis was re-elected in the first round of the elections on March 3.

According to the VRK, after two rounds of the elections, Lithuania's Social Democratic Party won the highest number of mayoral seats, 15 in total.

Public election committees came second with 12 mayoral seats received, and the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrat obtained 11 mayoral seats.

The country's ruling Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union won 6 mayoral seats.

Public election committees, which made their debut in Lithuania's 2015 municipal elections, are legal groups made up of ordinary citizens who want to run in municipal elections without establishing or joining a political party.

During this year's municipal and mayoral elections, Lithuanians voted to elect mayors of 60 municipalities and 1,442 members of municipal councils.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-18 23:55:20|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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PHNOM PENH, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian police have arrested two Japanese men on suspicion of killing a taxi driver in northwestern Siem Reap province, the National Police said on Monday.

The duo, arrested late on Sunday, confessed to kill taxi driver Him Chan, 40, by slashing his throat with a knife at 5:20 p.m. on Sunday in order to rob his Toyota Highlander, the police said.

According to the police, they allegedly hired the driver and his car to take them from Poipet City in Banteay Meanchey province to Siem Reap province and killed the driver on the way.

The driver was killed and thrown out of the car in a village in Siem Reap province's Puok district, the police said.

After stealing the car, the two Japanese men escaped aboarding it and accidentally crashed into a truck, causing serious damage to the car's front part and came to a stop.

Under Cambodian law, the duo might face life imprisonment if they are found guilty of committing premeditated murder.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 00:20:29|Editor: Xiaoxia

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Guests and experts pose for photos during a seminar on Lancang-Mekong Cooperation in Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, on March 18, 2019. A seminar on Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) was held here on Monday, with officials and scholars from China and Vietnam reaching consensus on promoting regional cooperation. (Xinhua/Wang Di)

HANOI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- A seminar on Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) was held here on Monday, with officials and scholars from China and Vietnam reaching consensus on promoting regional cooperation.

Chinese Ambassador to Vietnam Xiong Bo told the seminar that after more than three years of joint efforts, the LMC has become one of the most dynamic cooperation mechanisms in the subregion.

At present, said the Chinese diplomat, the international situation is unstable and uncertain factors are increasing, and unilateralism and protectionism are on the rise.

The ambassador said in this context, the positive results achieved under the LMC mechanism are even more precious.

As an important country in the basin, Vietnam has an indispensable role in the LMC, and there is also a huge potential for cooperation, said the ambassador.

China is willing to work with Vietnam under the framework of LMC to focus on inter-connection, production capacity, cross-border economy, water resources, agriculture and poverty reduction cooperation, and promote cooperation projects in Vietnam to achieve more pragmatic results for the benefit of the two peoples, the Chinese ambassador said.

In his speech, Assistant to Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Van Thao said that in recent years, the LMC has made important progress, attracting extensive attention and active participation from various ministries, sectors and localities in the six state members of LMC.

A large number of related projects have helped spread new knowledge and new technology to promote cooperation in environmental protection, climate change and sustainable use of resources, and bring tangible benefits to the regional population.

Under the framework LMC, the countries have successfully coordinated and held many policy dialogues, cultural exchanges and youth exchanges, which will help strengthen friendship, deepen mutual understanding, enhance experience sharing, and make the public more aware of the opportunities and challenges faced by regional countries as well as the importance of conducting sincere and pragmatic cooperation.

Nguyen Vu Tung, Director of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, said at the seminar that for countries in the region, the number of projects under the framework of LMC is considerable and comprehensive, and it contains development opportunities.

These projects not only have economic, environmental and educational values, but also have important political, diplomatic and security aspects. The academy is actively involving in research activities and working with other academic institutions to help the public better understand this collaborative mechanism.

Qi Zhenhong, President of the China Institute of International Studies, told Xinhua that in the context of the profound and complex changes in the current international situation, strengthening Chinese-Vietnamese cooperation under the scheme of LMC will not only benefit the two countries and the two peoples, but also the six countries in the region and the whole world.

The seminar was jointly organized by the Chinese embassy in Vietnam and the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.

At the event, experts from China and Vietnam also discussed the status quo, achievements and prospects of the LMC, the LMC Economic Development Belt, the humanities and social cooperation among regional countries, and the rational use of water resources in the basin.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 00:25:32|Editor: Xiaoxia

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JAKARTA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia has permanently banned Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft from serving in Indonesian airspace, following the notice issued by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Indonesian Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi said here on Monday.

The official said the ban has taken effect since Thursday after the FAA issued Continuous Airworthiness Notification to the International Community (CANIC).

The permanent ban was based on the evaluation on the existing Boeing 737 Max 8 operated by national airlines and the FAA notice, the minister said.

"Lion Air and Garuda Indonesia have agreed to ground operation of their (Boeing 737 Max 8) planes," the minister said at the parliament building.

The crash of a Lion Air jet in October killed 189, while the Ethiopian Airlines crash that occurred on March 10 killed 157 people aboard.

The permanent ban was an upgrade from the previous temporary ban ordered by the ministry.

During the temporary ban, all related aviation agencies were ordered to examine Boeing 737 Max 8 planes operated by national airlines to assure flight safety.

Under the temporary ban, the authorized inspectors would grant permission for the aircraft which are declared fit to serve.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 00:45:37|Editor: Xiaoxia

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Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Secretary-General Angel Gurria (R, Front) and Mayor of Athens Yiorgos Kaminis (L, Front) attend the fourth meeting of the OECD Champion Mayors for Inclusive Growth Initiative in Athens, Greece, on March 18, 2019. The Athens Roadmap for Inclusive Growth in Cities was launched on Monday at the Greek capital which hosts the fourth meeting of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Champion Mayors for Inclusive Growth Initiative. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

ATHENS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The Athens Roadmap for Inclusive Growth in Cities was launched on Monday at the Greek capital which hosts the fourth meeting of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Champion Mayors for Inclusive Growth Initiative.

During an event held at the Athens City Hall, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria and Mayor of Athens Yiorgos Kaminis presented the document which "charters the way forward on how cities can leverage innovation, in particular, public sector-related, technological, and social innovation, in order to bolster their inclusive growth agendas," according to an OECD press release.

More than 30 mayors and representatives from municipalities from all over the world participated in the meeting, supporting the roadmap, which is the most detailed action plan adopted since the initiative's launch in 2016, Gurria said.

"The roadmap is a guide for cities and their leaders on how to seize innovation as a tool for more inclusive growth... Champion Mayors commit to leverage the full potential of innovation to ensure that we progress together as a society," he emphasized, addressing the event.

Noting that currently half of the world's population lives in urban centers, Gurria explained that starting from the level of cities the target is to continue to exchange views and agree on policies to tackle together rising inequalities worldwide.

"We must create cities and societies sustainable for all citizens...In this effort, cities should hold a leading role... We seek growth for all, growth that will leave no one behind," Kaminis said on his part.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the mayors will join ministers at the OECD's regional development ministerial meeting at the Athens Concert Hall to discuss common challenges such as globalization, digitalization, climate change and demographic issues, as well as proposed policies for their management under the theme "Megatrends: Building better futures for regions, cities and rural areas."

European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu represents the EU in the three-day meetings in Athens.

"In a changing world, faced with economic, social and demographic challenges, I remain convinced that Cohesion Policy is one of the best tools the EU has to remain ahead of the curve. It will help us achieve the transition towards a fairer, more sustainable society in Greece and in Europe," she said, according to an e-mailed press statement from her office.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 00:50:39|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ADDIS ABABA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, on Monday condemned the recent terrorist attack against a military base of the Malian army.

Chairperson of the pan African bloc made the remarks following a gunmen attack against a Malian army base over the weekend, killing scores of soldiers and destroying Malian military instruments.

"The chairperson strongly condemns the terrorist attack against a base of the Malian army in the village of Dioura, in the Mopti region, in the center of the country, on the nights of March 16 to 17, resulting in the deaths of many soldiers," an AU statement issued on Monday read.

Faki also "offers his heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families and wishes a speedy recovery to the injured."

The AU chairperson further expressed the AU's "unwavering solidarity with the government and people of Mali," following the terrorist attack.

"This despicable attack can only strengthen the resolve of the African Union," the statement read.

He also called for renewed international mobilization in support of the regional efforts to achieve lasting solutions to the security problems in the West African country.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 02:41:07|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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MADRID, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish economy is growing in a stable manner, the Bank of Spain said on Monday when it published its quarterly report.

The Bank of Spain confirmed in the report titled "A comparison of recent economic developments in Spain and in the euro area" that growth rates have remained stable at around 0.6-0.7 percent quarter on quarter and it highlighted the "greater resilience" of the Spanish economy in comparison with other countries within the eurozone.

"Economic activity lost dynamism in the area of the Euro during 2018, affected above all by the weakening of demand worldwide," explained the report.

The Bank added that "external factors have made negative contributions to the evolution of the Spanish economy, although growth rates have remained stable."

It also explained that short-term indicators had affected previsions for economic activity in Spain with respect to other countries in the eurozone.

"The divergence in the evolution of both areas could be due to the greater impact of idiosyncratic elements in the Spanish economy, which are having a positive effect over short-term activity," said the Bank.

The Bank predicts that the Spanish economy will expand by 2.2 percent in 2019 with a growth of 1.9 percent expected for 2020.

Following the economic crisis which began in 2008, the Spanish economy returned to growth in 2013 and since then Spain has enjoyed five years of consecutive expansion.
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Michael Hedges March 19, 2019 -

With ascendent authoritarianism further blunting the pens of journalism, little seems effective to stem the tide of impunity. Institutional advocates for a reasonably secure existence for news media workers - Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF), Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and others - provide policy support, typically to the like-minded. This is called preaching to the choir; comforting but limited. Reporting Most Urgent - A ListMichael Hedges March 19, 2019 - Follow on Twitter With ascendent authoritarianism further blunting the pens of journalism, little seems effective to stem the tide of impunity. Institutional advocates for a reasonably secure existence for news media workers - Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF), Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and others - provide policy support, typically to the like-minded. This is called preaching to the choir; comforting but limited. ...is available for restricted access. You may access this specific article or material for 4 If you are an ftm Member, please go to the home page HERE and log in ftm Members can access all site material at no additional charge. You can JOIN ftm here The ftm newsletter available at no charge to all with registration To register click here.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 04:56:40|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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VALLETTA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The promotion meeting for the Canton Fair and 2019 China International Import Expo (CIIE) took place here on Monday, attended by 40-odd Maltese enterprises.

"China and Malta have carried out fruitful cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, delivering tangible benefits to our countries and peoples. We welcome Maltese businesses to participate in the Canton Fair and the CIIE and explore more avenues of cooperation with their Chinese counterparts," Jiang Jiang, China's ambassador to Malta, said in his speech.

Xu Bing, deputy director general of China Foreign Trade Center, briefed the participants on the CIIE and the Canton Fair, and said that the latter is a symbol of China's opening up aimed at attracting buyers and exhibitors from all over the world every spring and autumn regularly.

"CIIE is an important decision made by China to promote a new round of high-level opening up," he said. "The first CIIE was very successful. The second edition of CIIE will be held in Shanghai on Nov. 5, 2019. Maltese enterprises are welcome to participate," he said.

"We need to promote these events more, this is very important," said Frank V Farrugia, president of the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry. "I think there are a lot of possibilities (for trade cooperation between China and Malta), but we have to move away from the traditional background of imports."

The promotion meeting was co-hosted by the Economic and Commercial Counsellor's Office of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Malta, the China Foreign Trade Center, Trade Malta and the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 07:22:10|Editor: Yamei

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UNITED NATIONS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Monday urged the international community to help the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with its security capacity-building.

"The current focus should be put on helping the DRC to enhance its security capacity-building, supporting the effort of the DRC government to maintain peace and stability," Wu Haitao, the charge d'affaires of China's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, told the Security Council meeting on the situation in the DRC.

The international community should "fully respect the sovereignty and independence and territorial integrity of the DRC," Wu said, adding that it should also "fully respect the ownership and leadership of the DRC government in handling its own affairs, strengthen communication with the DRC government, and help the DRC to resolve its challenges in humanitarian, security, development and other fields."

The Chinese envoy also called on the world to continue supporting regional and sub-regional organizations in playing their roles to facilitate and strengthen interactions between the parties within the DRC government to advance the implementation of the peace security and cooperation framework for the DRC and the Great Lakes Region, so as to jointly contribute to the realization of peace and stability in the DRC and a wider region.

"International partners should help with the DRC's effort to make sure that armed groups in the DRC to abandon the military solution and instead resolve the issues through dialogue and consultation," he added.

Wu also said that efforts must be made to "continue providing necessary humanitarian assistance and economic support to the DRC government."

"International partners should focus on increasing input in education, healthcare, infrastructure and other areas, help the DRC to increase employment, improve people's life, and restore economic and social development," he said.

"We hope bodies such as UN Development Programme and UN Environment Programme can play a bigger role," he added.

"The international community should continue actively responding to the DRC's humanitarian assistance appeal, support the activities of the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross and help contain the Ebola outbreak.

Noting that MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, is "indispensable" to peace and stability in the country, Wu said that China supports the extension of its mandate.

"We hope MONUSCO can continue its activities according to its mandate to help the DRC realize peace stability and development," he said.

"In the meantime, we hope the (UN) Secretariat, the DRC government and the troop-contributing countries can engage in communication, and in view of the development, conduct timely review and put forward proposals of adjustment to MONUSCO mandate, so as to ensure a step-by-step and orderly handover of security responsibilities from MONUSCO to the DRC security forces," said the envoy.

China is ready to work with the wider international community to continue contributing to the DRC's efforts to achieve early peace, stability and development, Wu noted.

Leila Zerrougui, the UN secretary-general's special representative for the DRC, briefed the Security Council on the situation in the DRC.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Feb. 15 submitted to the President of the Security Council an update on the situation in the DRC.

The update, which covers developments in the DRC from Jan. 1 to 31, was submitted pursuant to Resolution 2409 (2018), in which the Security Council requested the secretary-general to provide a written update every 30 days on political and technical progress towards the holding of elections in the DRC and on obstacles to the implementation of the political agreement of Dec. 31, 2016.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 07:37:14|Editor: Yang Yi

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WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Monday talked with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi over phone regarding security and economic issues.

According to a statement issued by the White House, Pence and Abdul Mahdi "discussed opportunities to advance the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Iraq, including continuing to work together to strengthen and professionalize Iraq's Security Forces and grow Iraq's economy."

Pence "welcomed news of Iraq's recent economic and trade agreements with Jordan and the Prime Minister's upcoming travel as major steps towards Iraq's reintegration in the region after the territorial defeat of ISIS," the statement read, referring to the Islamic State (IS).

For his part, Abdul Mahdi updated Pence on the Iraqi government's efforts "to exhume the mass graves of ISIS's genocide against Yazidis in Sinjar" and added that "he would personally investigate security and economic impediments" noted by Pence as preventing the return of many of Iraq's religious components and other displaced persons.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said last week that a UN team tasked with investigation in crimes committed by the IS group will assist the Iraqi authorities in exhuming mass graves in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, where the IS has killed hundreds of Yazidis in 2014.

Yazidis are a group of people indigenous to northern Iraq. Some of them identify themselves as ethnic Kurds, but most of them identify themselves as a distinct ethno-religious group. Hundreds of local Yazidi villagers were reportedly murdered by the IS fighters in August, 2014, while more than 700 women and children were abducted.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 08:22:20|Editor: Yang Yi

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WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. hotel chain giant Marriott International announced on Monday that it planned to open more than 1,700 hotels around the world over next three years, boosting its stocks for over 2 percent.

During its meeting with institutional investors and security analysts, the Maryland-based hotel giant said it planned to add 275,000 to 295,000 rooms by 2021.

In its assumptions for the three-year plan, Marriott said its diluted earnings per share may reach 7.65 U.S. dollars to 8.50 dollars by 2021, which means a compound growth rate of 11 to 15 percent based on the financial results of 2018.

Meanwhile, its cash available for shareholders could total 9.5 billion dollars to 11 billion dollars by 2021, said Marriott.

Besides, Marriott assumed in its plan that shareholders could see 1.9 billion dollars to 2 billion dollars in dividends and 7.6 billion to 9 billion dollars in share repurchases.

"Marriott will disclose that its new room openings during this period could contribute 400 million U.S. dollars in fee revenue in 2021 and 700 million dollars annually when stabilized," Marriott said in its announcement.

"The company's three-year growth plan assumes, but does not forecast, comparable hotel revenue per available room growth of 1 and 3 percent, compounded annually," said Marriott.

Marriott's shares rose 2.16 percent to 124.96 dollars after it finished the trading at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 09:27:29|Editor: Xiaoxia

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WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Monday visited U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the state of Virginia on Monday as part of his first official trip to Washington.

U.S. media quoted the remarks of Bolsonaro's son, Eduardo, a Brazilian legislator, as saying on twitter that his father will discuss with the U.S. side about the regional issues.

His visit to the CIA shows that the president pays a lot of attention to "fighting organized crime and drug trafficking and the need to strengthen intelligence," Reuters quoted Bolsonaro's office as saying.

According to the White House's announcement on March 8, Bolsonaro will visit the White House and meet his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday, during which the two leaders will discuss the issues in Western Hemisphere.

The two will also discuss opportunities for defense cooperation, pro-growth trade policies, combating transnational crime, and situation in Venezuela, the White House said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 09:42:35|Editor: Xiaoxia

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WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Special Representative for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Stephen Biegun will travel to Britain on Tuesday to discuss the denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. Department of State said here on Monday.

"Biegun will travel to London March 19 to meet with UK, French, and German counterparts to discuss coordinated efforts to advance the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea (the DPRK)," the department said in a brief statement.

The second summit between the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump in Vietnam's capital Hanoi ended without agreement on Feb. 28.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier on Monday that the United States will "re-engage" with the DPRK over issues of mutual concern.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 09:57:38|Editor: Xiaoxia

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YANGON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar navy has conducted a combined fleet exercise - sea shield 2019 in the Bay of Bengal, according to the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services on Tuesday.

The combined fleet exercise, carried out on Monday, was inspected by Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing from a vessel, Aung Zeya.

Navy seals gave a demonstration of raiding an enemy-seized passenger and trading ship and rescuing hostages by using four fast patrol crafts and three helicopters.

The exercise also included firing aerial defense weapons at enemy aircrafts and fired artilleries at enemy reconnaissance watercrafts.

In order to crush the enemy's main fleet, the naval troops changed into Formation-10 and conducted firing missiles and main artilleries.

It was another military exercise of Myanmar armed forces after Jan. 31 when the army and the air force conducted a joint one of air, artillery and armored forces in Meiktila cantonment in central Mandalay region with an aim towards security and defense of the country and raising the capability of the armed forces.

That joint exercise was also observed and inspected by Min Aung Hlaing who stressed the important role of air-defense capability in modern warfare as well as the effectiveness and accuracy of the arms and ammunition, calling for conducting continuous research by related forces.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 09:57:39|Editor: mingmei

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BRUSSELS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- China hopes Britain will make earnest efforts to promote the "golden era relationship" with China and properly handle issues affecting the healthy development of bilateral relations, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Monday.

Wang made the remarks when briefly meeting with British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on the sidelines of the ninth round of the China-EU High-level Strategic Dialogue.

Recently, some high-level British officials have repeatedly expressed London's commitment to promoting its "golden era relationship" with China, Wang said, hoping that the British side would carry out the commitment with concrete actions to strengthen mutual understanding and trust.

Hunt said Britain views China's development positively and is willing to see China playing a bigger role in global affairs.

London stands ready to make joint efforts with Beijing to deepen the "golden era relationship," said the foreign secretary, adding that some specific differences should not hinder the overall development of bilateral relations.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 10:07:47|Editor: mingmei

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BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The diplomatic efforts the People's Republic of China has made since its founding in 1949, in the persistent pursuit of global peace, international justice and win-win cooperation, have contributed to the Middle East peace and development, Arab experts have said.

"What the Middle East needs badly now is peace and stability. People long for tranquility and dignity, with less conflicts and sufferings," said Hisham el-Zimaity, secretary general of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs (ECFA), while praising China's endeavor as a popular, cooperative partner in building peace and boosting development in the region.

A country of its word, China has been committed to practical bilateral cooperation featuring mutual benefits and win-win results, he said.

Chai Shaojin, advisor to the Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development of the United Arab Emirates, said, "China has been a major part and stakeholder of the postwar international order since the mid-20th century. It has made enormous efforts towards a fairer, peaceful and prosperous world."

Tunisian political analyst Jomal Gasmi said China's diplomatic achievements over the past years are widely recognized in the political circle, and so in the world is its stance of mutual respect and non-interference in other countries' internal affairs in bilateral relations.

He observed that China chooses not to impose its will upon other countries, but rather to develop relations with all countries on an equal footing instead.

Ahmed Rafqi Awad, professor of political science at Palestine's Al-Quds University, stressed China's commitment over the past 70 years to peaceful development, win-win cooperation and justice in the international arena, calling it a true champion of world peace and common development.

It is impressive that China stands for a negotiated solution to the Mideast and the Palestinian issues based on international law and resolutions within the framework of international institutions, according to the scholar, who added that solutions as such are universally received among the Palestinians and the Arab people at large.

"China hasn't changed its firm methodology in international politics in terms of preserving international peace and establishing friendly relations with all countries regardless of the political systems," commented

Bashar al-Munair, chief editor of Syria's weekly Al Nour Newspaper.

"In Syria and the Arab region in general, we have tested this relation in different turning points along the way and China has always been a friendly country standing by the side of the Arab peoples in their quest to gain their national rights and develop their communities," he said.

Former Moroccan Minister of Economy, Fathallah Oualalou, said, "China has taken a major-country responsibility on important issues of global governance."

In his opinion, China's diplomatic efforts have played an important role in promoting peace and stability in the Mideast region, and the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is historic and brings closer links in trade and infrastructure between Asia, Africa and Europe, boosting economy in countries involved.

"China and Arab countries are greatly complementary with each other in the sectors including energy, industry and agriculture," said Mohammed El Khalil, director of Al Jazeera Center for Studies, expressing his belief that the Belt and Road will benefit the countries along the route, and eventually leading to common development and shared benefits with China.

Nourhan el-Sheikh, an expert on Asian affairs at Cairo University in Egypt, said he has found no case of China interfering in other countries' internal affairs.

In the near future, the world will be able to see the Belt and Road facilitate peace, stability and people's welfare in Arab countries, he said.

(Xinhua reporters Zheng Yihan, Yang Yuanyong, Huang Ling, Zhao Yue, Yang Yuanyuan, Chen Binjie, Su Xiaopo, Wu Danni, Li Binian, Shi Chun, Qin Yanyang and Tu Yifan also contributed to the story.)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 10:22:53|Editor: mingmei

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BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Steinway & Sons, a prestigious piano maker, expects to see its business flourish in China over the coming years, as musical eduction is gaining greater importance in the country, China Daily reported on Tuesday.

Benjamin Steiner, CFO of the time-honored company, said the Chinese piano industry is a huge and rapidly growing business.

According to the China Art Association, there were about 50 million Chinese children learning a musical instrument by 2018, and the piano was among the most popular options for parents.

"Thirty million to 40 million children in China take piano lessons, compared to less than 10 million in the rest of the world," said Steiner, "So, 60-80 percent of kids playing the piano are in China."

He said the company's business remained strong over the years, with the Chinese market accounting for a fifth of its global sales last year, adding he expected the ratio to grow to 50 percent over the next 10 years.

Although most of the pianos sold in China were lower-priced ones, Steiner believed that more people would invest in expensive pianos in the future.

Speaking of the uncertain global business environment, he said he has not seen any sales decrease caused by the economic uncertainties yet.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 10:42:56|Editor: Xiaoxia

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MEXICO CITY, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The Mexican government plans to develop 20 new oil exploration and production fields in the Gulf of Mexico this year, the state-run Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) said on Monday.

During a press conference, the Pemex General Director Octavio Romero said that 16 of these fields are in shallow water along the coastline of the states of Tabasco and Campeche. Others are on land in the southeast area of the country -- three in Tabasco and one in Veracruz.

The expectation is that by the end of the year, the fields will be retrieving the first barrels of oil, and by the first part of 2020, the work will ramp up, Romero said.

The company also plans to build 13 new production platforms, 14 submarine pipelines measuring up to 175 km, 13 land pipelines measuring 88 km and 77 sea wells and 44 terrestrial wells, he said.

The 20 new fields will be carried out through service contracts, so that private firms will handle the infrastructure and drilling. Most of these contracts have already been signed, Romero said.

He expected that with the development of the 20 new fields oil production will increase.

In the past 14 years, Mexico has registered a 45.8 percent drop in oil production, the largest plunge among the main oil producing countries in the world, according to data from the agency.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 10:52:58|Editor: Xiaoxia

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CANBERRA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will lead a push for the G20 to bring order to "ungoverned" social media platforms.

In a letter to G20 Chairman Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, published by News Corp Australia on Tuesday, Morrison asked for social media governance to be made the top priority at the next meeting of world leaders in June.

The letter was written after the terror attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, amidst revelations that the suspected gunman, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, who was charged with murder, was inspired by right-wing ideologies spread on social media.

Friday's terror attacks have so far left 50 people killed and 50 others injured.

Morrison questioned the "unrestricted role played by internet technologies in this and other terrorist attacks" and called on his fellow leaders to "ensure that there are clear consequences, not only for those who carry out such horrific acts, but for those who facilitate them."

Friday's attacks were live-streamed on Facebook and quickly spread on other platforms including Twitter and YouTube.

Morrison said the technology giants should be compelled to act quickly in "removing of content by actors who encourage, normalize, recruit, facilitate or commit terrorist and violent activities."

"It is unacceptable to treat the internet as an ungoverned space," he wrote.

"It is imperative that the global community works together to ensure that technology firms meet their moral obligation to protect the communities which they serve and from which they profit."

His sentiment was similar to that expressed by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who on Monday told reporters that the technology companies could do more in the fight against hate speech.

Meanwhile, Morrison told News Corp that the companies "can't operate as if the law doesn't apply to them."

"Today's technology means this type of content can be identified quickly and automatically, without having to wait for someone to phone it in. This is insufficient.

"There is no doubt they can develop the technological capability to... address this issue. The question is whether there is the will to make it happen."

In a column appearing in News Corp's newspapers on Tuesday, Bill Shorten, leader of the opposition Australian Labor Party, wrote that social media platforms "have an obligation to better monitor and prevent hate speech."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 11:13:00|Editor: mingmei

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Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2019. (Xinhua/Zhang Cheng)

BRUSSELS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Monday that he is willing to help the European Union (EU) and China achieve new progress on important issues, so as to make the EU-China Summit in April a success.

Juncker made the remarks when meeting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who landed here on Sunday night and co-chaired the ninth round of the China-EU High-level Strategic Dialogue with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini.

Juncker asked Wang to convey his greetings and best wishes to the Chinese leaders, saying that he is looking forward to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Brussels.

Hailing EU and China as friendly strategic partners, Juncker called on the two sides to help each other, move forward hand in hand, shoulder a shared responsibility for the well-being of the world and the future of humanity, and pass a good EU-China relationship to the next EU institutions to be elected through the European Parliament Election in May.

Conveying the cordial greetings from Chinese leaders to Juncker, Wang spoke highly of the ninth round of the China-EU High-level Strategic Dialogue, during which he held a collective dialogue with foreign ministers of the 28 EU countries.

The first of its kind, the collective dialogue worked well, as it increased trust, dispelled doubts, enhanced understanding, built consensus, and promoted cooperation, said Wang.

Noting that the China-EU Summit in April would be the last one in Juncker's tenure, Wang said that China appreciates Juncker and his EU colleagues' important contribution to China-EU cooperation.

China is willing to make joint efforts with the EU side to promote bilateral cooperation in key areas, foster new progress in the negotiation for the China-EU investment agreement, make this year's summit more fruitful, lay a good foundation for the further development of China-EU relations, and continuously push the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership to a new height, said Wang.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 11:33:05|Editor: mingmei

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WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The White House National Security Council spokesperson Garrett Marquis on Monday joined the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in refuting an earlier media report that Washington considers keeping some 1,000 troops in Syria.

Retweeting an earlier statement of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford that dismissed the report, Marquis criticized "terrible reporting by multiple outlets on this false claim."

"Good for Gen. Dunford for setting the record straight on Syria troop withdrawal," he said.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the U.S. military is mulling about leaving up to 1,000 troops in Syria.

The troops will be deployed from northern Syria to the south, continuing to work with Kurdish fighters, further drifting away from President Donald Trump's original plan of a total withdrawal, according to the report.

CNN also quoted a U.S. official as saying on Sunday that the U.S. plan "was to have a combined force of about 1,500 troops overall to ensure the safe zone in northern Syria."

The U.S. planning would be informed "based on how many allies have pledged contributions," CNN reported. "To date, there have been no firm pledges from allies, meaning the U.S. level would have to go up."

However, Gen. Dunford responded in a statement that The Wall Street Journal report "is factually incorrect."

"There has been no change to the plan announced in February and we continue to implement the President's direction to draw down U.S. forces to a residual presence," he said. "Further, we continue to conduct detailed military planning with the Turkish General Staff to address Turkish security concerns along the Turkey-Syria border. Planning to date has been productive and we have an initial concept that will be refined in the coming days."

Currently, there are about 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria.

On Feb. 21, the White House announced that the United States would leave about 200 troops in Syria after the planned pullout.

U.S. media later reported that the U.S. military would leave about 400 troops in two different regions of Syria.

Declaring victory over the Islamic State, Trump last December announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, leading to the resignation of then U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 11:33:05|Editor: mingmei

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YANGON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar security forces continued to launch offensives against an ethnic insurgent group in western Rakhine state days after an ambush, the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services Tuesday.

The security clashed with the Arakan Army (AA) group of 10 militants in Mrauk U on Thursday, who ambushed a military convoy with remote-controlled mines on Mrauk U-Kyauktaw road.

In the fighting, a suspect was arrested with an improvised explosive device found in the tool box of his motorcycle.

On Friday, a military convoy was attacked by a 30-strong AA in Mrauk U and Kyauktaw, prompting the security forces to attack an AA base at Point-802 hill near border post BP-67 on Sunday.

Some AA members were killed in that clash and arms and ammunition were seized by the security forces.

Meanwhile, AA also attacked a civilian vessel on Saturday loaded with steel frames, setting fire on it and abducting the crew members in Paletwa township, Myanmar's western Chin state.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 11:38:06|Editor: mingmei

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NEW DELHI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker Pramod Sawant was early Tuesday sworn in as the new chief minister of western Indian state of Goa, officials said.

Sawant succeeds Manohar Parrikar, who passed away on Sunday following a prolonged illness.

Goa Governor Mridula Sinha administered the oath of office and secrecy to the 46-year-old Sawant.

"The tough negotiations with BJP and its allies continued overnight, following which Pramod Sawant took oath at 2:00 a.m. local time today," a BJP lawmaker said.

"The governor also administered the oath to 11 other ministers, including those from BJP's allies Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and the Goa Forward Party (GFP)," the BJP lawmaker said.

Before taking oath as the chief minister of Goa, Sawant resigned from the post of speaker of Legislative Assembly.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 11:48:09|Editor: mingmei

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CANBERRA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Federal, state and local governments have funded a landmark City Deal to create "more jobs and more opportunities" for the capital of South Australia.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison joined SA Premier Steven Marshall and Lord Mayor of Adelaide Sandy Verschoor to sign the 551-million-Australian-dollar (390 million U.S. dollars) deal on Tuesday.

The agreement united the three levels of government on a vision to grow Adelaide's population, economy and global reputation for at least the next decade.

"(It's) a very practical deal because it goes right down in the detail of the things that we know can slow South Australians down, and Premier Marshall is speeding things up for South Australians," Morrison told reporters on Tuesday.

"Our combined investment and cooperation across the federal and state governments and local councils highlights that we all believe in Adelaide and SA and how we can make it an even better place to live."

Ahead of the signing, the prime minister said the deal would create "more jobs and more opportunities" for South Australians.

According to a statement of the government, the deal paves the way for the transformation of Lot Fourteen in the northeastern corner of Adelaide's CBD into an innovation precinct.

Lot Fourteen will host the headquarters of the Australian Space Agency, its mission control facility and the Australian Space Discovery Centre, as well as major cultural attractions, high tech businesses and world-class education facilities.

"It's a tremendous deal," Alan Tudge, minister for cities, urban infrastructure and population, said.

"It will directly focus on growing Adelaide's innovation economy, supporting population growth in the city and across the state, and boosting Adelaide's burgeoning cultural and tourism economy."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 12:08:12|Editor: mingmei

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CANBERRA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government will slash the nation's permanent migrant intake by 30,000 in the lead-up to May's general election.

Fairfax Media and News Corp Australia reported on Tuesday that the government is preparing to reduce the nation's annual permanent migration intake from 190,000 to 160,000 and place an official cap on the figure at that level.

The announcement will be reportedly made as part of the Federal Budget, which will be released by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on April 2, and comes months after Morrison first signalled the move in November 2018.

The budget is widely considered the government's major opportunity to make up ground on the opposition Australian Labor Party, which currently holds a lead according to Newspoll, one of the nation's opinion polls.

Despite the official ceiling currently being 190,000, the government allowed 162,417 permanent migrants into the country in financial year 2017-18.

The government will also announce measures to encourage new migrants to Australia to work in regional areas to ease the burden of rapid population growth on Sydney and Melbourne.

As many as 87 percent of the 112,000 skilled migrants who arrived in Australia in 2017-18 settled in either Sydney or Melbourne.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 12:18:15|Editor: mingmei

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BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Capital Museum in Beijing is hosting an exhibition about the cultural and historical development of northwest China's Qinghai Province, focusing particularly on its close relationship with the ancient Silk Road.

The show, Qinghai in the Belt and Road, is open until June 30 and displays 442 cultural relics, including works of colored pottery and copper ware, religious art and crafts, as well as silk fabrics and other treasures. It is the first time that many of the exhibits have been shown to the public, the China Daily reported.

A pottery basin depicting people dancing together hand-in-hand displays Qinghai culture during the Stone Age. "The work is one of the earliest symbols of dance culture in China," says Li Zhixin, the director of Qinghai Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the newspaper reported.

"The ancient people are joining hands to take part in the dance, which implies a spirit of joint effort. And this spirit inspires people today to seek cooperation as well," Li was quoted as saying.

Located on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Qinghai has an average altitude of over 3,000 meters. Its unique geographical conditions have nurtured distinctive cultural features over the centuries.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 12:23:16|Editor: mingmei

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WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The United States will "re-engage" with Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), over denuclearization-related issues of mutual concern, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday.

In an interview with B98 FM, a radio station of the U.S. state of Kansas via teleconference, Pompeo said that "we believe we're still moving forward. It's certainly difficult -- we knew it would be. It's been a decades-long challenge," according to the interview transcript circulated by the U.S. Department of State.

"But we have the toughest economic sanctions in history, but the most promising diplomatic engagement in history as well," he continued. "And so we made a little bit more progress in Hanoi, now three weeks back, when President Trump traveled there to meet with Chairman Kim."

"We'll re-engage with him. It's incredibly important that we take down the threat not only for America and for Kansas, but for the entire world," said the U.S. top diplomat.

In a separate interview with other local Kansas media outlets on the same day also via teleconference, Pompeo said that the U.S.-DPRK engagement over the Korean Peninsula denuclearization is "a long journey."

"It's going to be difficult. To convince North Korea (the DPRK) to give up their nuclear weapons took a great deal of work," he said. "We made a little bit of progress in Hanoi along that route, not nearly as much as we had hoped, but the effort continues because it's important."

Speaking of the reasons why the Hanoi summit has failed to lead to the agreement signing, Pompeo said that "it's clearly a range of issues around timing and sequencing and how it is we achieve this."

"President Trump's commitment ... has to follow the verified denuclearization of North Korea. And getting that sequencing right and getting it laid out in a way that each of the parties can agree to and take down the tension level along the North and South Korean border, it matters to ... our important partners, and it matters to the whole world," he said.

Noting earlier on Friday that Washington is still hopeful for continued talks with Pyongyang, Pompeo confirmed that there are ongoing negotiations between the two sides.

The second summit between the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump in Vietnam's capital Hanoi ended without agreement on Feb. 28.

On Friday, DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui blamed the U.S. side for the failure of the Hanoi summit, saying the talks failed because the U.S. side lacked sincerity.

Other parties concerned have also tried to promote the U.S.-DPRK dialogue. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said earlier on Monday that China hopes the DPRK and the United States would cherish the hard-won momentum of dialogue and keep talking until a peaceful denuclearized Korean Peninsula is realized.

"After the Hanoi summit, the DPRK and the U.S. both expressed willingness to continue dialogues. We commend and encourage this," Geng said, adding that the key to keeping up and advancing dialogue is to accommodate all parties' legitimate concerns in a balanced way, build up mutual trust and consensus, take phased and synchronized steps, and start with easier moves.

"As the nuclear issue has dragged on for decades and complicated factors are at play, one cannot expect it to be solved overnight. All parties need to have reasonable expectations. One shouldn't set the bar too high at the outset or make unilateral, unrealistic demands," Geng quoted Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying.

South Korea's presidential Blue House said Sunday that both the DPRK and the United States "never" wanted to go back to the past confrontation and tension.

Though Kim and Trump failed to reach an agreement in Hanoi, both Pyongyang and Washington made clear their willingness to continue diplomacy and negotiations, the Blue House noted, adding that the South Korean government will make best efforts to help resume the DPRK-U.S. negotiations as soon as possible in close cooperation with the United States while encouraging the DPRK to stay in the dialogue track.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 12:43:18|Editor: mingmei

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MAPUTO, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said on Monday that the death toll from Tropical Cyclone Idai could exceed 1,000.

The National Institute for Disaster Management said Monday more than 84 deaths have officially been recorded since the landfall of Idai on Thursday night, bringing torrential rains and devastating winds.

However, Nyusi said the situation could be much more serious in his speech addressed to the nation, after flying over the disaster-hit areas to conduct inspection on Sunday.

"Everything indicates that we may register more than 1000 deaths," said Nyusi, adding that the cyclone has left the region without drinking water, communications and it has affected the normal functioning of hospitals, schools and other public and private institutions.

"The water of the Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, making villages disappear and isolating communities," said the president. "Bodies are floating. It is a real humanitarian disaster with great proportions."

Nyusi said the government's concern and priority were to save people's lives without excuses.

According to the president, the Defense and Security Forces are on the ground to help with the searches, and air resources including helicopters and airplanes were mobilized to Beira, one of the worst-affected cities, to ensure rapid humanitarian assistance.

The disaster has forced the ruling party Frelimo to postpone its central committee meeting to elect the candidate for the October presidential election, which was scheduled for Friday.

"We hope that the government session tomorrow in Beira will make decisions that meet the needs of the people, in order to mitigate the impact and decide the following processes," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 12:53:21|Editor: mingmei

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BRASILIA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's overall mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal volume hit 177.2 billion reals (about 46.51 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, up 28 percent from the previous year, according to a report released Monday.

The report of the Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Markets Entities (Anbima) showed that the number of operations last year was 140, down from 143 in 2017.

"The positive results in 2018 were influenced by the greater stability in the macroeconomic scenario," said Dimas Mena, coordinator for Anbima's M&A Subcommittee.

"Greater clarity in the economic environment, related to the approval of the pension reform, should favor the M&A market in 2019," he said. "Companies are preparing for the opportunities that may arise in a potentially more positive outlook."

Mena said that the acquisition of Fibria by paper company Suzano, which hit 47.7 billion reals (about 12.52 billion U.S. dollars), marks the highest amount in the past 10 years.

Most of the deals traded last year were in the paper and pulp sector (26.9 percent), followed by electricity (11.6 percent), information technology and telecommunications (11 percent), industry and commerce (10.2 percent) and food and beverages (9 percent).
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 13:18:25|Editor: Xiaoxia

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HANOI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's central Thua Thien Hue province has become the latest locality in the country stricken by African swine fever (ASF), local media reported on Tuesday.

After the first ASF outbreak in Thua Thien Hue was spotted in Phong Dien district, all six infected pigs raised by a local household have been culled to prevent the animal disease from spreading, daily newspaper Thanh Nien (Young People) quoted Nguyen Van Hung, director of the provincial Bureau of Animal Health, as saying.

On March 16, the Department of Animal Health under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development announced on its website that ASF has been detected in 18 Vietnamese localities, including the capital city of Hanoi, and over 26,800 pigs have been culled.

ASF has affected over 20 countries and regions so far, and there is no approved vaccine against the disease, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.

ASF is a severe viral disease affecting domestic and wild pigs which can be spread by live or dead pig and pork products, the organization said, noting that the ASF virus is harmless to human, but causes hemorrhagic fever in pigs and wild boars that is almost fatal.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 13:58:34|Editor: mingmei

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BRUSSELS, March 18 (Xinhua) -- China and the European Union (EU) should continue to strengthen their comprehensive strategic partnership and enhance strategic communication and dialogue, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Monday.

Wang made the remark when meeting with foreign ministers from the 28 EU member states. Wang said the meeting was the first of its kind since China and the EU established diplomatic ties 44 years ago and was a sign of increased mutual trust between the two sides, and would send a clear signal to the world that China and the EU would strengthen their strategic cooperation.

Wang pointed out that Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to three European countries fully demonstrates the importance China attaches to Europe. "We have noticed that China-EU relations are becoming more stable, mutually beneficial and strategic, and the two sides share more common interests, a bigger common ground and more common goals," he said.

Although both sides have differences on some specific issues, cooperation has always been the mainstay of the China-EU relationship. In face of the complicated international situation, China and the EU should continue to strengthen their comprehensive strategic partnership, enhance strategic communication and dialogue, properly handle differences, demonstrate solidarity and mutual trust, and promote mutual benefit and win-win results. This is a shared responsibility for both sides, Wang said.

Wang emphasized China's firm support to the European integration process, the EU's unity and growth, and Europe's more important role in international affairs. These "three supports" are based on China's strategic grasp and long-term thinking of the evolution of the international situation. They are not an expedient measure, not targeted at any third party, nor will they affected by any momentary incidents that happen during the China-EU exchanges.

"We hope to see a multi-polar world, democratic international relations and more beneficial, inclusive and win-win globalization," Wang added.

During the dialogue, Wang briefed the European foreign ministers on the latest developments regarding the joint construction of the Belt and Road, the 16+1 cooperation format between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, China's development prospects and human rights protection, as well as the Venezuelan and Afghan issues.

The foreign ministers spoke enthusiastically and the two sides interacted actively, which enhanced mutual understanding.

The EU member states' foreign ministers praised the dialogue for being constructive and effective and affirmed the ten-point consensus between China and the EU.

Highlighting the importance of the EU-China comprehensive strategic partnership and the close attention they paid to China's rapid development and reform process, the foreign ministers expressed their willingness to work with China to cement strategic coordination and jointly cope with global challenges, so as to maintain multilateralism and promote world stability and development.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 14:18:40|Editor: Xiaoxia

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BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Brunei is expected to introduce prepaid water meters this year to curb the high water usage in the country.

Brunei's Minister of Development Hj Suhaimi said the introduction of prepaid water meters is hoped to reduce waste of water in the sultanate.

"The use of clean water in Brunei is still the highest in Association of Southeast Asian Nations at 380 liters per person a day," said the minister during Monday's Legislative Council meeting.

Brunei's water consumption of 380 liters per person a day was higher than Malaysia's 210 liters per person a day and Singapore's 150 liters per person a day.

"With regards to this, the Ministry of Development will implement initiatives that are expected to help reduce water wastage like the introduction of the Unified Smart Metering Solutions," he said.

He said the prepaid metering system is going to be introduced in stages.

"This change to the water tariff system will be implemented at a suitable time to ensure that it will not cause undesired difficulties and burden to the public, especially to low income families," he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 14:33:42|Editor: Xiaoxia

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OTTAWA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Canada's senior civil servant Michael Wernick said Monday he will step down as Clerk of the Privy Council amid accusations that he inappropriately intervened in the criminal prosecution of a corporate.

In an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau published on the Government of Canada website, Wernick said he will retire in the coming weeks after he had concluded that he had lost the trust of the opposition parties.

Wernick was thrust into the spotlight over the SNC-Lavalin scandal, during which former Attorney General and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould alleged she was politically pressured by Wernick and other officials to help the Quebec company secure a special legal agreement over charges of bribery and fraud.

During a testimony to the House of Commons Justice Committee on this matter, Wernick denied ever making any threats in relation to Wilson-Raybould's handling of the criminal case as she had alleged.

Wernick is supposed to be non-partisan as Clerk of the Privy Council. However, opposition parties labelled him as a partisan for his testimony and called for his resignation.

Wernick, who was named Clerk of the Privy Council in 2016 and has worked in the public service for nearly 38 years, admitted that working with opposition parties would be difficult going forward.

"One of the key roles of the Privy Council Office is to be ready to assist whichever government Canadians elect in October ... It is now apparent that there is no path for me to have a relationship of mutual trust and respect with the leaders of the Opposition parties. Therefore, I wish to relinquish these roles before the election," he said.

Trudeau announced Monday afternoon that he will appoint Ian Shugart, currently deputy minister of foreign affairs, to replace Wernick.

Meanwhile, Trudeau thanked Wernick for "his support over the last few years as we worked to implement an ambitious agenda to build a better future for the people and communities at the heart of this country."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 14:48:45|Editor: Xiaoxia

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CANBERRA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Australian capital city home prices fell an average of 5.1 percent from a year earlier.

According to data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Tuesday, residential property prices across Australia's eight capital cities fell an average of 2.4 percent in the final quarter of 2018.

The 2.4 percent decline represents about 133 billion Australian dollars (94.4 billion U.S. dollars) being wiped off the total value of Australia's 10.3 million residential dwellings.

According to ABS, the residential property price indexes are compiled quarterly by the ABS for the quarters ending in March, June, September and December each year.

Sydney property prices fell 3.7 percent in the December quarter 2018, while Melbourne property prices recorded the fourth consecutive quarter of falls (-2.4 percent).

"Australia's two largest cities continue to lead the fall in property prices," Bruce Hockman, the ABS' Chief Economist, said in a media release on Tuesday.

"These falls follow a period of solid growth, where prices in Sydney rose 68 percent and Melbourne rose 54 percent, over the five years to December quarter 2017.

"While property prices are falling in most capital cities, a tightening in credit supply and reduced demand from investors and owner occupiers have had a more pronounced effect on the larger property markets of Sydney and Melbourne."

Outside of the two biggest cities the residential property prices also fell in Darwin, Perth and Brisbane in the December quarter 2018.

The average price of a residential dwelling at the end of the December quarter was about 651,100 Australian dollars (462,402 U.S. dollars) in Australia.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 14:53:48|Editor: Xiaoxia

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LUSAKA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Zambian President Edgar Lungu on Monday stressed the need for African countries to trade more with each other before looking to the outside world.

He made the remarks while meeting with a visiting delegation from the Federation of Egyptian Industries that is in the country to explore investment opportunities.

The Zambian leader said visits by African business delegations need to be encouraged in Africa's quest to trade more within the continent.

Zambia, he said, is open for investment not only from within Africa, but also from outside, adding that the fact that the country has continued to receive potential investors from within the continent is impressive.

It is important for countries lagging behind in industrialization to look for partnerships with other countries on the continent that have become more industrialized, for example Egypt, Lungu added.

Ahmed Mustafa, Egyptian ambassador to Zambia, said the 35-member business delegation was in Zambia to explore business opportunities aimed at increasing bilateral cooperation between the two countries.

He said the Egyptian government decided to send the large business delegation to Zambia because of the country's investment potential.

The delegation will be in Zambia till Wednesday. The delegation comprising more than 15 companies in various industries will hold a number of meetings with local businesses and with Zambian government officials, he said.

The delegation is also expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Zambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ZACCI) after holding a business-to-business forum.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 15:23:56|Editor: Lu Hui

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DUBAI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Hollywood celebrities continue to seek a slice of Dubai action and this time it's global superstar Jackie Chan who is back in the emirate to film another movie.

Chan with director Stanley Tong is in Dubai to shoot Vanguard, an action film that follows the head of a private Chinese security agency (Chan), who teams up with Dubai officials to stop the criminals.

"We've been travelling around, every day, we're looking at the building, the construction, whatever I can use [for] explosion, car chasing. At this moment, I was walking around the studio, and the studios are very good - and very clean, very organised," local daily Gulf News quoted Chan as saying.

Chan had filmed Indian-Chinese fantasy adventure, Kung Fu Yoga, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with Tong in 2015.

"After 'Kung Fu Yoga', I go back, I tell all my friends, all the directors, you should film in Dubai... When you film here, you're comfortable, the police help, the government helps. You just [don't have to] worry about it," he said.

Chan explained his latest movie in three words: "Action. Comedy. Explosion."

Vanguard's cast includes international actors as well as UAE-based actors. The crew have been shooting around Dubai for the past three weeks with one more week left to go.

Producer Ammar Al Khrisat described the 64-year-old movie icon as down-to-earth. "He is always with his crew - he prefers his crew to go and eat before him. As a person, he's very humble," Gulf News quoted Al Khrisat as saying.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 15:23:56|Editor: xuxin

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WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan on Monday met with French Defense Minister Florence Parly amidst Paris' increasing questions over the U.S. commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

According to a statement issued by the Pentagon's acting spokesperson Charles E. Summers Jr., Shanahan and Parly met at the Pentagon to reaffirm the defense relationship and discuss "a broad range of defense issues," including U.S. commitment to the long-term destruction of the Islamic State (IS) group and "continuing commitment to leading the global D-ISIS coalition."

They "agreed to continue working together as coalition partners to address security and stability in northeast Syria," the statement read.

However, the AFP quoted Parly as saying also on Monday that "a question mark has emerged" over the transatlantic alliance.

Noting Washington's "current atmosphere of withdrawal: withdrawal from battlefields, from treaties, from trade pacts," she said in the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, that efforts need to be made in "building a European autonomy" as that question remains unanswered.

Some European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have mentioned the establishment of "a true European army" which was criticized by U.S. President Donald Trump as "very insulting."

"What Europeans are worried about is this: Will the U.S. commitment be perennial?" Parly asked. "The alliance should be unconditional, otherwise it is not an alliance."

However, the French minister said in Washington that building a European autonomy was not "a move against the U.S.," adding that "we want America solidly steeped in NATO."

The U.S.-led multinational coalition has been engaged in an operation to drive out the IS militants from their last stronghold in the Euphrates region in eastern Syria.

In December, Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, citing that the local IS force has been largely defeated. However, U.S. media reported last month that the U.S. military would leave about 400 troops in Syria.

CNN quoted a U.S. official as saying on Sunday that the U.S. plan "was to have a combined force of about 1,500 troops overall to ensure the safe zone in northern Syria," but the allies made "no firm pledges" to increase military engagement there so far, thus "the U.S. level would have to go up."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 15:23:56|Editor: xuxin

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SEOUL, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Six out of 10 South Korean people viewed positively future denuclearization talks between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States, a poll showed Tuesday.

According to the National Unification Advisory Council survey, 58.1 percent of respondents said they had optimistic outlooks for future talks between Pyongyang and Washington to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

Seeing negatively the future DPRK-U.S. dialogue was 37.6 percent.

The results were based on a survey of 1,000 adults from Friday to Saturday. It was commissioned by the presidential consultative body to a local pollster, having plus and minus 3.1 percentage points in margin of error with 95 percent of confidence level.

The survey came after the second summit between top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump ended with no agreement in late February in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

Asked about how to broker a compromise between Pyongyang and Washington, 63.9 percent said South Korean President Moon Jae-in would be required to hold a summit meeting with the DPRK leader.

Regarding international sanctions, 54 percent said sanctions against Pyongyang should be eased in accordance with the denuclearization measures taken by the DPRK.

Some 62.4 percent of respondents believed the resumption of the two major inter-Korean cooperation projects will help denuclearize the peninsula and settle peace.

The projects are the jointly run industrial zone in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong and the South Koreans' tour to the DPRK's Mount Kumgang resort that have been suspended since 2016 and 2008 respectively.

After their third summit in Pyongyang last September, the leaders of the two Koreas agreed to reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Mount Kumgang tour when conditions are met.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 15:33:58|Editor: xuxin

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JALALABAD, Afghanistan, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Five Taliban militants were killed and seven others wounded in clashes in two eastern Afghan provinces on Monday as fighting rages in the country, authorities said Tuesday.

In one incident, three militants were killed, two others wounded and a Taliban divisional commander named Attah Ullah was arrested after clashes erupted in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province.

"The militants tried to attack army security checkpoints in Khogyani. But troops of army Corps 201 Selab, who were aware of the attack, responded to the attackers, killing three," the army corps based in the region said in a statement.

In neighboring Laghman province, two militants named Massi Ullah and Malang were killed and five militants were wounded during an ongoing military operation in Alingar district, the statement added.

The army personnel also destroyed three militants' motorcycles, seized two motorcycles, an amount of weapons and ammunition as well as a telecommunication radio after the clashes.

The corps engineering teams also defused four improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in eastern region since early Monday, according to the statement.

Afghan troops intensified their offensive against the Taliban and other insurgent groups as the Taliban militants have been attempting to take territory and consolidate their positions during the winter in the mountainous country.

The militants responded by arm attacks and bombings.

On Monday, three police officers, including a district police chief, were killed and three policemen were injured in two IED explosions in eastern Logar and northern Baghlan provinces.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 15:44:01|Editor: xuxin

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SUVA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Concerns have been raised about hate speech posts on Fiji's social media following the Christchurch terror attack in New Zealand last Friday as the Fijian Police Force vowed on Tuesday to make investigation on the issue.

Police Commissioner Brigadier General Sitiveni Qiliho said Tuesday the Fiji police Force was going to take strict actions on those who put up hate speeches.

Many people that are posting, commenting, sharing and supporting such hate posts showed they were not fully aware of what the consequences are, he said.

He said he could not allow this type of hate speech and rhetoric to continue.

Meanwhile, Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama is urging Fijians to speak up against hatred.

Family members of the three Fijian nationals, who are among the 50 victims killed in the Christchurch attacks, have flown to New Zealand on Tuesday.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 15:44:01|Editor: xuxin

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VIENTIANE, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank has agreed to finance three major projects in Laos designed to reduce malnutrition in children, and improve public resource use and service delivery.

The bank's board of executive directors last week approved 72 million U.S. dollars in the form of a concessional loan to finance the projects, local daily Vientiane Times Tuesday quoted a media release from the World Bank Lao PDR Country Office as saying.

Explaining the reasons for the latest funding, World Bank Director for Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia Ellen Goldstein said, "One in every three children in Laos remains chronically malnourished, and maternal and child malnutrition is estimated to cost Laos an estimated 2.4 percent of national income annually. We want to support Laos in developing its precious human capital by tackling malnutrition."

According to the World Bank's media release, households in four northern provinces with high levels of malnutrition will benefit from the 25-million-U.S. dollar Scaling-Up Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene Project.

These regions would also profit from the 27-million-U.S. dollar Reducing Rural Poverty and Malnutrition Project, which supports the government to develop the building blocks of a national social protection system and implement a conditional cash transfer programme for improving nutrition.

The innovative multi-sectoral nutrition convergence approach will come together in Xieng Khuang, Huaphan, Phongsaly and Oudomxay provinces in northern Laos.

In these areas, chronic malnutrition affects over 40 percent of children under five, with long-term adverse impacts on height, brain development and the ability to succeed later in life. These two new projects complement three others supported by the World Bank in health, education and diversified food production.

The 20-million-U.S. dollar Enhancing Public Finance Management through Information and Communication Technology and Skills Project builds on reforms which have been undertaken to put a basic public financial management framework in place.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 15:54:05|Editor: Yurou

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SHANGHAI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- As the musical "School of Rock" drew the curtain in Shanghai Sunday after 29 performances, Kempton Maloney, 10-year-old Australian drummer in the play, has gained a huge popularity in China.

The musical, based on a hit movie of the same name, is composed by British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Shanghai is the first stop of its three-month China tour.

Kempton is among a dozen teenage players in the musical. They are required to be accompanied by their guardians during the tour.

He said it was the first time for his mother and him to travel this far, which made it more exciting. Without home duties, his mother had time to explore places in Shanghai with him.

In the play, the lead character gets little support from his parent to support his musical dreams. However, in real life things are a little different for Kempton, who has huge parental support.

The performing trip does not mean he can avoid study. In order to catch up with their studies, he and other young actors take online courses backstage. At the end of each week, teachers review their study online.

Kempton's mother Simone Maloney said like many parents in China, she considers school important. But taking her son to China in a professional musical was worthwhile.

"I want him to choose his own journey, and I want him to do what he loves most. We haven't experienced it before, so it's been a lot of learning all along the way," she said. "The response of audience in the theater has been really lovely."

Zhang Yifei is the only teenage player who has Chinese background in the troupe. Her mother was born in Shanghai.

The mother, Zhu Cailun, said the journey in China was an opportunity that many parents could not even dream of for their children.

She hopes the experience will help her daughter become more confident and professional on the stage.

The musical has helped boost cultural exchange among youngsters. Over 39,000 Chinese have watched the show. Ahead of the performance, Shanghai SMGLive organized a series of campus activities to brief middle school and primary school students on western musicals and operas.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 16:39:20|Editor: xuxin

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MUSCAT, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Oman's new mining law came into force on Tuesday, strengthening the role of the Public Authority for Mining (PAM) in exploring the country's mineral resources.

Eng Hilal bin Mohammed al Busaidi, CEO of the PAM, said that the new law includes incentives of developing the mineral sector, and facilitates and expedites the procedures of obtaining mining approvals.

Under the new law, PAM has the sole prerogative to offer mining concessions through public tenders based on competition, merit and fair play, he said.

Al Busaidi believed that the law will help address challenges facing the sector, as it specifies the rights and obligations of investors in the sector, and sets criteria for appropriately exploiting mineral resources in the country.

According to Ziyad bin Ali al Balushi, Director of the Legal Affairs Department, the PAM is currently working to prepare the executive regulations in support of the new mining law, which will stipulate penalties for offenders of the new law.

For example, those found engaging in mining activities without a valid license are liable to prison terms ranging from one to three years, in addition to fines extending from 20,000 Omani rials (51,939 U.S. dollars) to 100,000 Omani rials.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 16:49:22|Editor: xuxin

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WASHINGTON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- A prominent U.S. Republican lawmaker Monday filed a lawsuit against social media platform Twitter and several of its users for a total of more than 250 million U.S. dollars.

Devin Nunes, a California lawmaker who is the top Republican in the House Intelligence Committee, said Twitter had been limiting conservative voices and allowing several parody accounts to defame him.

The parody accounts were also listed as defendants.

"Twitter, by its actions, intended to generate and proliferate the false and defamatory statements about Plaintiff in order to influence the outcome of the 2018 Congressional election," the lawsuit said.

U.S. President Donald Trump signaled his support for Nunes's move by retweeting a news report on the story.

The lawsuit was filed against the backdrop of the increasing tension between tech giants and some conservative politicians, who accuse the tech giants of being biased against conservative politicians and voters.

The rare move from Nunes has become the center of a heated debate on social media. Supporters hailed the lawsuit as a brave move, while critics mocked Nunes, saying the lawsuit actually helped publicize the parody accounts.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 16:49:22|Editor: Yurou

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BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- New progress was made in jointly pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative in 2018, with strengthened industrial cooperation, improved infrastructure and closer ties in trade and investment, according to an official report.

The following are some key facts and figures, according to the report of the National Development and Reform Commission.

-- China vigorously pushed for international cooperation last year and has so far signed 171 cooperation documents on the Belt and Road Initiative with more than 150 countries and international organizations.

-- Industrial capacity cooperation made headway in 2018. Tangible results were seen in the construction of an industrial park of China and the United Arab Emirates. China has reached agreements with more than 10 countries including France, Japan and Singapore on cooperation in third-party markets.

-- The China-Laos and China-Thailand railway projects made solid progress. The high-speed railway from Jakarta to Bandung started construction, and the Gwadar port project in Pakistan was also pushed forward.

-- China-Europe freight trains have made more than 13,000 trips so far, with the proportion of China-bound trips up by nearly 20 percentage points in 2018. The trains connect Chinese cities with 49 cities in 15 countries.

-- Aviation connectivity improved in countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, with the number of air routes up by 106 in 2018. The current 387 air routes connect 33 countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.

-- The Belt and Road international science organizations alliance was established last year, which will help China build technology transfer platforms with ASEAN, South Asia, Arabian countries, Central Asia and central and eastern Europe, and facilitate joint efforts of China and eight countries including the Philippines and Indonesia to develop science parks.

-- Fruitful outcomes were achieved during the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

-- The Digital Silk Road was steadily advanced. Memorandums of understanding on cooperation between China and 16 countries have been signed.

-- China's accumulative trade volume with Belt and Road countries surpassed 7 trillion U.S. dollars. It has built 82 overseas economic cooperation zones in Belt and Road countries, with investment exceeding 30 billion U.S. dollars. In 2018, non-financial investment from China came in at 15.64 billion U.S. dollars, up 8.9 percent.

-- Eleven Chinese banks have set up 71 branches in 27 Belt and Road countries, and the renminbi cross-border clearing system covered 41 countries and regions.

-- China has signed cultural cooperation agreements with more than 60 Belt and Road countries, and established 17 overseas cultural centers in Belt and Road countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 16:49:22|Editor: Yurou

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CHONGQING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Customs officers of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality have intercepted around 40 ivory products and a wolf skin recently.

Chongqing Customs said they detected a suspected inbound parcel last week and found 40 pendants made of ivory, weighing 353 grams, and a wolf fur. The skin measures 2 meters in length and 1 meter in width.

The items have been seized by customs in accordance with Chinese and international regulations.

The General Administration of Customs launched a campaign this year to crack down on prohibited goods through international mail delivery.

Over the past few months, Chongqing Customs said they have detected some prohibited goods sent by post, such as giant clam and ivory products, red coral, live insects, human placenta extract and drugs.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 16:59:24|Editor: xuxin

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A worker is seen during the removal of the security walls in downtown Baghdad, Iraq, Dec. 24, 2018. (Xinhua)

by Jamal Hashim

BAGHDAD, March 19 (Xinhua) -- On a sunny spring day, al-Rabie thoroughfare in al-Jamia neighborhood in western Baghdad, was crowded with people jostling in front of shops on the sidewalk of the thoroughfare.

It has been 16 years on since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, as the neighborhood had seen hundreds of bombings and clashes, particularly in the early years that followed the invasion, which toppled the former president Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Hazim Yousif, 55, a shop owner at al-Rabie thoroughfare, told Xinhua that in recent years, residents here "haven't seen bombings and shootings in this street as in the past when it used to be a war zone. I think situations are getting much better after the defeat of Daesh (Islamic State group) in Iraq."

"This time we have a good level of peace, we hope to continue like this because we need stability to rebuild our country," Yousif added.

"In the early years after the invasion, my family and I rarely left our house because of the blind killing and bombings, but now we customarily go to restaurants, parks, coffee shops and other areas safely," Yousif said.

At a coffee shop in the thoroughfare, a group of young men were sitting around a table laughing and chatting. One of them is Hassan Ibrahim, who blamed the Americans and many Iraqi politicians for the misery of Iraqis.

"They brought corrupt politicians and empowered sectarian and ethnic parties to ignite bloody sectarian strife, and those who came with the Americans are the reason behind corruption, division and destruction of the country," Ibrahim said.

"But at the end of the day, we have to look forward for better future because there are signs of improvement. We have to cling to this hope and not to let it go," Ibrahim added.

Ibrahim believes that the better security after the defeat of IS group in late 2017 made foreign companies to return gradually to invest in Iraq, particularly in oil industry, which can bring prosperity to the oil-rich Iraq.

Many people in Baghdad still bear the anguish caused by challenges of everyday life of the past years. Such horrific memories are impossible to be completely erased from their minds and hearts.

Nevertheless, life in Baghdad is returning to some form of normality in which staying alive is not the only preoccupation the people.

The improvement of security is one of major signs that inspire people for better future as IS suicide bombers are no longer getting through Baghdad after losing their old bases following the full liberation of Iraq in late 2017.

"Suicide bombers have been trying for months to cross the Syrian border and make their way to Baghdad but they are being stopped there in the desert as Iraqi forces and paramilitary Hashd Shaabi brigades have spread near the borderline with Syria," Abdullah al-Temimi, a former police officer and a security expert told Xinhua.

"The extremist IS group is weaker now and can be easily penetrated by informants, and even if one of their terrorists make a success and pass to Baghdad, there will be no return to the multiple attacks like in the past years," al-Temimi said.

However, al-Temimi admitted that IS remnants are still capable of carrying out sporadic attacks against security forces and civilians from their hideouts in deserts and rugged areas in the provinces of Diyala, Salahudin, Nineveh and Anbar.

Being confident that security is improving in Baghdad, the Iraqi government decided to remove all the concrete blast walls across the Iraqi capital within a plan implemented by Baghdad Operations Command.

The walls, which were built during the sectarian strife in 2007, had turned Baghdad into dozens of replica Green Zones, dividing neighbor from neighbor and choking off normal commerce and communications.

Recently, cranes lifting hundreds of giant concrete walls, formed of large concrete slabs of about 1.5 meters wide and three to four meters high, has become normal view to Baghdad residents.

Hundreds of cement walls were also removed from the heavily fortified Green Zone, on the west bank of Tigris River, to be partially opened to public.

On the bank of the other side of the river, which bisects the Iraqi capital, a new Central Bank of Iraq headquarters, designed by the late well-known Iraqi-born architecture Zaha Hadid, is currently at the early stages of construction. The building signals a new phase of construction in a growing and developing Baghdad.

However, many Iraqi still have guarded sense of hope of better future as they have been repeatedly quashed by ramifications of chronic insecurity and the constant failure of subsequent post-invasion governments.

As a matter of fact, Iraq is still facing massive challenges as the extremist IS militants are also trying to prevent IS militants from creeping back to Iraq as they are losing their last stronghold in eastern Syria.

Iraq is also facing wide spread corruption, which is in most cases, the corrupt officials are well protected by some powerful and leading political parties, and are connected to networks of local and international companies and organizations.

Iraq is also facing the problem of hundreds of thousands of displaced people who cannot return to their homes as many cities and towns are still in ruin. Baghdad itself, like many other cities and town, is suffering from deteriorated infrastructure, as well as unemployment and poverty.

The profound division among Iraqi political parties has long been one of major reasons for failure of Iraqi governments. So far, nearly five months after Abdul Mahdi sworn in as prime minister, the government is unable to settle on candidates for the sensitive portfolios of Interior, Defense and Justice due to the political difference.

Najib al-Jubouri, a political expert, told Xinhua, that Baghdad government apparently is not strong enough to impose its power on the ground, as armed militias linked to some political and regional parties are more powerful than the government.

"The demand and hopes of the people do not fit with the power of the government. We have a feeling that we are asking too much from the government, because it is originally produced from the political parties that are widely accused of being involved in corruption," al-Jubouri said.

"In my opinion, the government of Abdul Mahdi have to be more aggressive toward corruption and have to prioritize development, social services and a life of dignity if it really wants to avert other crises," he said.

"The gradual return of normal life in Iraq can be accelerated, and Iraqis should not miss such an opportunity to get a prosperous future after tragedies that they have experienced," al-Jubouri concluded.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 17:09:33|Editor: Yurou

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MOSCOW, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos is ready to assist the United States if Washington's tests of new manned spacecraft are delayed, Roscosmos's chief said on Tuesday.

"We agree with NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration's) proposal to use both U.S. and Russian spacecrafts in the future... to send mixed international crews to the International Space Station (ISS)," Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin tweeted.

It was reported that NASA is considering the possibility of signing a contract with Roscosmos so that it can use Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to transport two U.S. astronauts to the ISS between 2019 and 2020.

This option is being considered as a backup plan in case there are any problems with tests of SpaceX's Dragon 2 and Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.

On March 15, Russia's Soyuz MS-12 manned spacecraft successfully brought Russian astronaut Alexei Ovchinin and U.S. astronauts Christina Koch and Nick Hague to the ISS.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 17:24:38|Editor: Yang Yi

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Customers choose products at the Bulk House, a zero waste and package free store, in Beijing, capital of China, March 16, 2019. The Bulk House, a pioneer social enterprise promoting a zero-waste lifestyle in the Chinese mainland, will close its physical store located in downtown Beijing on Wednesday, March 20. (Xinhua/Tang Yi)

by Xinhua writer Luan Xiang

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Bulk House, a pioneer social enterprise promoting a zero-waste lifestyle in the Chinese mainland, will close its physical store located in downtown Beijing on Wednesday, March 20.

But it won't disappear: it will switch to a more flexible and innovative business model to engage a wider audience and be more actively present in places and occasions, said Joe Harvey, co-founder and manager of the store championing a lifestyle that is "zero waste, package free, reusable, and natural."

"The closing of The Bulk House is, in a way, to reduce the waste of resources of operating a physical place and it will give us more time to do more," he explained to Xinhua.

The Chinese mainland's first zero-waste store will move its presence from the artsy and trendy Drum Tower area to online channels, pop-up stores, lectures and workshops, he said.

Since The Bulk House opened its doors in early 2018, it has inspired more and more people - local residents and travelers from inside China and abroad - to take up the challenge of reducing the amount of waste that we produce in our daily life.

"For over a year, I have witnessed with surprise that so many people have joined us to become zero-wasters, to live a green, eco-friendly life and to share their experience with more people around them," Harvey told Xinhua at the store's closing party on Saturday.

He said he felt proud to be part of and witness first-hand the zero waste movement that has been growing rapidly in China.

"I've had more support in China than back home in the U.K.," he said, pointing to his vintage training shoes. "My mates back home would tease me for wearing the same pair of sneakers, but here my Chinese friends think I look cool."

Harvey and his Chinese partner, Yu Yuan (or Carrie Yu) have been practicing and promoting a zero-waste lifestyle not only in their shop but also in their own lives.

Yu has been a zero-waster since 2016, inspired by Bea Johnson, "mother of zero waste lifestyle movement," a French woman living in the United States whose family embraced a sustainable lifestyle that produced a mason jar of garbage in six years.

"Every individual can contribute to saving the world from its plastic crisis and we don't need to wear tights and a cape to do so," she said, adding that starting from the details in our everyday life, each person can make a difference.

Yu and Harvey live by the six Rs of sustainability - Refuse the use of single-use, non-degradable materials such as plastic, reduce unnecessary consumption/purchase of resources, reuse materials instead of throwing them away, repair the broken or replenish what's exhausted, recycle the recyclable and be creative to recycle the non-recyclable, and rot and compost the organic such as kitchen waste.

At The Bulk House, people can bring in containers for refills of eco-friendly shampoos and detergents, or donate and trade things they no longer use. Stainless steel straws, bamboo toothbrushes and a cotton mesh drying agent can be used to replace single-use items.

There are also shopping bags made with recycled packaging waste, and beauty products that leave no impact on the environment when washed off and flushed into the waterways.

Though Bea Johnson is a major source of inspiration, many zero-waste ideas have roots in Chinese traditions.

"The Chinese nation has always valued frugality and thriftiness. Many people who come to our store tell us that it brings back fond memories of the good old times when extravagance would be scornfully rejected," Harvey said.

However, in recent years, with the industries of "fast fashion," online shopping and food delivery services booming in pursuit of convenience and profits, greater quantities of low-end disposable products that soon end up in the trash bins have worsened the situation of a "trash crisis" and plastic pollution is posing a more and more critical challenge for mankind.

Facing this crisis, China has taken firm steps to tackle the waste problem. In February 2019, the southern island province of Hainan announced a total plastic ban, committing to end the production, sales and use of single-use, non-degradable plastic by the end of 2025.

Shanghai Municipal People's Congress - the eastern metropolis' legislation - approved a bill to legalize garbage sorting, pledging to establish a comprehensive system of waste treatment.

"Based on our experience, it is much easier to reduce the amount of waste produced from the source, meaning if we could use less disposable materials and avoid waste, we would produce less garbage and lighten the pressure on urban waste treatment," said Yu.

Not long ago, a zero-waster in the eastern province of Shandong who purchased items from The Bulk House's online shop brought back all the carton boxes that he had received in earlier purchases on a work trip to Beijing. Yu and Harvey were touched, they told Xinhua.

"In our future online operations, we will make sure that all our packaging is made of 100 percent degradable and recycled materials and work to create a circular way to reuse the packaging materials," Yu said.

Besides the previously mentioned six Rs, raising awareness of a products' environmental impacts should be placed as a priority during the design process, pointed out Dr. Mao Da, an expert in environmental history at Beijing Normal University.

"The key to mitigating the waste crisis is to redesign the products and make them eco-friendly from the very beginning," he noted.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 17:24:42|Editor: Yurou

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SUVA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Fiji National Provident Fund (FNPF) has said that low wages are one reason for low member account balances.

The superannuation fund has almost 430,000 registered members, out of which about 57,000 are over 50-years-old and have balances below 10,000 Fijian dollars (about 4,700 U.S. dollars).

About 64,000 members now have zero balances.

FNPF Chief Executive Jaoji Koroi said Tuesday that the majority of Fijians earn low wages, or are in irregular employment or have taken earlier withdrawals.

FNPF has 236,058 members who actively contribute throughout the year while over 4,000 are voluntary members. FNPF opened membership to Fijian children as young as six years old from February 2019.

The Minor Voluntary Scheme allows children to earn compounded interest on their savings; enabling them to accumulate and grow these at a faster rate with zero fees and no taxes.

Koroi said the decision to extend membership to children is part of the Fund's plan to extend its social security agenda to allow Fijians who are excluded from the compulsory savings scheme to also save for retirement, especially the younger generation.

The age eligibility for membership into the Voluntary Scheme has been reduced from 16 years to six years and allows Fiji Citizens up to 54 years old to sign up for this scheme.

Anyone who is not employed by a registered employer can also join as a voluntary member. This means that market vendors, taxi drivers, domestic workers, farmers, operators of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) as well as students are potential voluntary members.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 17:24:43|Editor: Yurou

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BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, March 19 (Xinhua) -- A survey carried out in 2016 found 19.9 percent of smokers in Brunei are over 18 years old and 11.4 percent of smokers are teenagers under the age of 17, local daily Borneo Bulletin reported on Tuesday.

Brunei's Minister for Health Haji Mohd Isham was quoted as saying that 11.4 percent of smokers, or 4,000 smokers, are teenagers below 17 years old, most of which are male students and some of which are female students.

The minister also mentioned the findings from the Global School-based Students Health Survey in 2014, noting that the study showed the average age of smokers in Brunei is 17, 70 percent of which start smoking at the age of 14 and even as early as seven.

As per the enforcement of rules against underage smoking, the minister said the Tobacco Enforcement Unit of the Ministry of Health will seize any tobacco, vape and smoking-related products from individuals below the age of 18.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 17:54:50|Editor: Yurou

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HARARE, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from tropical cyclone Idai induced floods in Zimbabwe has risen to 98 with 217 missing, the government has said.

The Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services said in a tweet that as at late Monday afternoon, the number of injured people was 102 while 42 were marooned.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa is due to visit the affected areas in Manicaland Province on Tuesday to assess the damage.

The government on Monday released 50 million dollars for emergency relief and infrastructure restoration after the cyclone, which hit the country from neighboring Mozambique on Friday, caused severe damage in Manicaland, Masvingo and Mashonaland East provinces.

The most severely affected area is Chimanimani district where most of the deaths have occurred, followed by Chipinge district in Manicaland.

Roads and bridges were severely damaged while thousands of people were left homeless after their homes collapsed in the driving rains and floods.

The government has since declared the floods a state of disaster and has launched an international appeal for assistance.

In an address to the nation Monday night, Mnangagwa said there were fears that more people could still be buried in debris.

He said no efforts or resources would be spared to help those in distress.

"Government is doing all it can to reach all lives that can still be saved and to bring succor to families and communities fast running out of necessities, including food, medicines and shelter. Units of our Defense Forces have now accessed Chimanimani town where they have begun working with different arms of Government already active on the ground.

"The blocked roads have to be reopened so food, safe water and medicines reach people who have congregated around hotels, churches, schools, community centers and other makeshift safe gathering points. This is an effort which is now underway," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 18:30:11|Editor: xuxin

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COLOMBO, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka received its highest ever foreign direct investments (FDI) of 2.37 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, up 38 percent from 1.78 billion U.S. dollars received a year earlier, the state owned Board of Investment said here Tuesday.

Director General of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka Champika Malalgoda said although the island country fell short of its target of 2.5 billion U.S. dollars, the achievement of 2.37 billion dollars was the highest received in a single year.

Malalgoda said this year, Sri Lanka aimed to attract 3 billion U.S. dollars worth of FDIs and the country could achieve this with the projects in the pipeline.

One of the projects planned to kick off this year is an oil refinery in Mirijjawila, in Hambantota, in southern Sri Lanka, with an investment of 3.85 billion U.S. dollars.

Last year, the highest FDIs came from China, followed by India and Singapore.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 18:35:14|Editor: xuxin

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MOSCOW, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif agreed on Tuesday to work towards a settlement of the Venezuelan crisis.

The two top diplomats discussed the current situation in Venezuela during a phone conversation at the initiative of the Iranian side, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a brief statement.

They expressed "readiness to contribute, on the basis of the principles of the UN (United Nations) Charter, to the efforts of the international community to find mutual understanding between the responsible political forces of Venezuela."

These efforts should be in the interests of ensuring Venezuela's internal peace and the earliest possible solution of pressing social and economic tasks, the statement said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov is scheduled to meet U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams in Rome later on Tuesday.

Russia has said repeatedly that it opposes foreign interference, especially armed intervention, in Venezuela's internal affairs and called for dialogue between the government and the opposition.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:00:18|Editor: zh

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NANNING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- China and Vietnam officially opened a new cross-border bridge on Tuesday linking the city of Dongxing in China and the city of Mong Cai in Vietnam.

The 27.7-meter-wide Beilun II bridge has four main lanes and two auxiliary ones. Its opening means that the busy port of Dongxing will have two bridges, and improved capacity to serve booming border trade between China and Vietnam.

Construction of the bridge started in 2014 and was completed in September 2017, involving investment of about 220 million yuan (32.7 million U.S. dollars) from China and Vietnam.

It will shorten waiting time for customs clearance, thus boosting border logistics and trade and promoting joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, said Huang Xiong, deputy director of Dongxing Customs.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:00:20|Editor: zh

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BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Local authorities and communities in China have come up with various measures to combat extravagant rural wedding traditions such as hefty "caili" (betrothal gifts), according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs Monday.

According to the tradition of "caili," the groom's family is required to give riches to their future in-laws to either secure a happy marriage or display the family's wealth. On occasion, the cost of this gift can put certain families in poverty.

In Ningling County, north China's Henan Province, all 364 villages have formulated village rules and regulations to promote thriftiness in hosting weddings and funerals.

Local governments in east China's Jiangxi and Shandong Provinces have also issued recommendations on several aspects of weddings, including the cost of banquets and the number of limousines.

To fully facilitate the reform against extravagant wedding traditions this year, the ministry has pledged to mobilize grassroots organizations in rural areas to promote such practices and explore new forms of weddings, such as group weddings.

The initiative was prominently featured in a document released by China's central authorities on Feb. 19, which prioritizes the development of agriculture and rural areas.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:05:22|Editor: xuxin

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MANILA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- There are at least 10 foreign terrorists lurking in the southern Philippines, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said on Tuesday.

Lorenzana said that his assessment is that many terrorists who went to the Middles East to join the Islamic State (IS) militants have gone back to their respective countries.

Analysts say that many IS cadres have decided to leave the Middle East after losing its major strongholds in Syria and Iraq. The militants have reportedly targeted the Philippines as in their plan to build an IS caliphate in Southeast Asia.

"While (IS militants) are losing their territories there (in Iraq and Syria), they are fleeing, they are going back to their own countries. Now, if we have Filipinos fighting there in Syria, then we might expect them to be coming back here," Lorenzana said.

Nevertheless, he said that the Philippines is "intensifying its (security) cooperation" with Malaysia and Indonesia to prevent the militants from crossing borders.

Lorenzana further said that Philippine security forces have intensified their operation to eliminate the IS-linked militants in the southern Philippines. "I do not believe that they are growing in number here," he added.

However, a senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there are about 40 to 100 foreign terrorists currently embedded with various local terrorist groups in the Philippines.

Last week, Maj. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, commander of the Philippine Army's 6th Infantry Division based in Mindanao, claimed that the military troops killed a foreign terrorist in Shariff Saydona Mustapha town in Maguindanao after troops shelled a camp of Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).

Security officials have earlier said that there are 40 foreign militants in the country. The foreign terrorists, who include Indonesians, Malaysians, Pakistanis, Moroccans, Egyptians, and Singaporeans, are mostly in Sulu archipelago and Maguindanao province in central Mindanao.

There are a number of radical fighters with alleged link to IS operating in the southern Philippines, including the BIFF, the Abu Sayyaf Group, and the Maute Group.

Abu Sayyaf and Maute militants co-plotted the siege of Marawi City in May 2017 that triggered a five-month fierce fighting between government forces and militants. The military claimed foreign terrorists also helped in plotting the Marawi siege that led to the death of at least 1,200.

Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon and Maute brothers Abdullah and Omar were killed, along with some 900 terrorists, as troops liberated Marawi in October 2017. New terrorist leaders emerged, including Abu Dar, who the army has described as IS' new chief in Southeast Asia.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:15:26|Editor: xuxin

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BEIRUT, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese state security arrested on Tuesday drivers of four trucks in Bibnin, north of Lebanon, carrying smuggled vegetables from Syria, local media reported.

The vegetables were confiscated and the four drivers were transferred to the related judiciary bodies for further investigations, according to Elnashra, an online independent newspaper.

Head of the Lebanese Farmers' Association Antoine Howayek told Xinhua that merchants are buying produce from Syria because they are cheaper.

"Also, farmers' harvests, last year, were impacted by the weather in Lebanon which led them to produce less this year, prompting merchants to buy agricultural products from Syria," he said.

Howayek emphasized the need to find a mechanism in cooperation with the government and the customs authorities to control the smuggling of agricultural produce from Syria to Lebanon.

Over a week ago, Lebanese Customs raided several shops in the Sidon suburb of al-Hasbeh in search of fruits and vegetables smuggled from Syria.

Many apples and tomatoes bearing stickers of "Product of al-Sham" were seized.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:25:29|Editor: xuxin

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BEIRUT, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's Health Minister Jamil Jabak vowed Tuesday to support the manufacturing of local pharmaceutical drugs to offer them to citizens at affordable costs, local media reported.

"The boost in local production of pharmaceutical drugs will reduce their prices to become more affordable for citizens," Jabak was quoted as saying by the National News Agency.

Jabak added that he will make sure to offer high quality of locally manufactured pharmaceutical drugs to guarantee their effectiveness.

His remarks, came during his meeting with Industry Minister Wael Abou Faour to discuss the importance of supporting local industries to minimize the import of foreign products.

Lebanon-based pharmaceutical production is weak due to high local production costs.

As a result, imports constitute over 95 percent of the total available pharmaceutical products in the market which are even more expensive than locally produced drugs.

The Lebanese have in the past few years resorted to buying their medical needs from nearby countries such as Turkey and Egypt which have strong pharmaceutical markets and low cost of production.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:45:37|Editor: Yurou

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Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party of China and state leaders Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu and Wang Huning attend the opening ceremony of the eighth congress of the China Law Society and extend their congratulations to the congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party of China (CPC) and state leaders, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu and Wang Huning, Tuesday attended the opening ceremony of the eighth congress of the China Law Society and extended their congratulations to the congress.

Entrusted by the CPC Central Committee, Guo Shengkun, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, made a speech at the ceremony.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, historical achievements have been made in building rule of law in China, and socialist rule of law has steadily opened new horizons, Guo said.

Guo called on law professionals to be committed to socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics, building a socialist country based on the rule of law, developing Chinese socialist rule of law theory, and cultivating legal talent with integrity and ability.

The congress will summarize the society's work over the past five years, plan its work in the coming five years and elect a new leadership.
Photo taken on March 12, 2019 shows the launch of a publication titled "Making cities sustainable through rehabilitating polluted urban rivers: Lessons from China and other countries", in Nairobi, Kenya. (Xinhua/Zhang Yu)

NAIROBI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The just concluded fourth session of the UN Environment Assembly recognized China's pragmatic approach toward hastening ecological renewal amid rapid industrial progress.

Senior UN officials and experts acknowledged that China has raised the bar in environmental protection as evidenced by improved air and water quality in major cities, besides global stewardship in green energy.

Joyce Msuya, the acting executive director of UN Environment Programme, hailed pragmatic choices China has adopted in recent times to restore health of natural habitats against a backdrop of phenomenal economic growth.

"China has a lot to offer in terms of lessons for example on how the government set up policies to address the issue of pollution. The direction the Chinese government is taking on reassessing sources of energy is positive," Msuya told Xinhua.

Kenya hosted the fourth edition of the global environment assembly that was attended by more than 4,700 delegates including presidents, ministers, industry executives, scientists and innovators.

The March 11 to 15 assembly whose theme was "Innovative solutions for environmental challenges: sustainable production and consumption" adopted sweeping resolutions to revitalize the global green agenda.

China's environmental stewardship was felt prior to the assembly when a report indicating drastic improvement in the capital Beijing's air quality for the last two decades was launched.

"This improvement in air quality did not happen by accident. It was as a result of an enormous investment of time, resources and political will," said Msuya at the launch of the report titled Review of 20 years' Air Pollution Control in Beijing.

"Understanding Beijing's air pollution story is crucial for any nation, district or municipality that wishes to follow a similar path," she added.

China's success in restoration of urban rivers as revealed in a publication jointly authored by the UN Human Settlements Program (UN Habitat) and Tongji University, was recognized at the UN environment assembly.

"I applaud the efforts of the Government of People's Republic of China in developing technical, managerial and financial solutions to improve the water quality of urban rivers," said Maimunah Mohd Sharif, UN Habitat executive director.

Luis Alfonso de Alba, special envoy for the 2019 climate summit to be held in September in New York, said that China is in the frontline of advancing the global green agenda.

"I'm happy China has assumed greater responsibility in promotion of climate resilience. China has also agreed to green the Belt and Road projects," said Luis.

He revealed that China has agreed to play a major role in the September climate summit that is expected to come up with a new road map for low carbon development.

Experts who attended a science policy business forum that took place ahead of the UN environment assembly also hailed China's clean technology revolution whose positive ripple effects have been felt across the globe.

Mohua Mukherjee, an energy and climate finance expert at the International Solar Alliance said that developing countries have benefited from cheaper but high quality technologies from China to facilitate uptake of green energy.

"China is a leader in production of solar panels that have revolutionized access to clean energy among households in low income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America," said Mohua.

She lauded China for promoting knowledge sharing and technology transfer on renewable energy through South-South cooperation.

The signing of an agreement between UNEP and China's electric motorbike firm, TAILG Group at the UN environmental assembly was a confirmation the Asian country will be an influential player in the switch to clean mobility.

David Rubia, project manager in charge of electric mobility at UNEP said the entry of TAILG into the east African market will unleash new jobs for the youth and tackle traffic congestion that is to blame for rampant air pollution.

"Our partnership with TAILG marked a giant step in clean mobility across the region. We look forward to emissions reduction and employment for the youth," said Rubia.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:50:39|Editor: Lu Hui

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Chris Alonzo, President of Pietro Industries, checks the growth of mushrooms at his farm in Kennett Square of Chester County in Pennsylvania, the United States, July 9, 2018. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

by Xinhua writers Yang Shilong, Liu Yang, Xu Xiaolei

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Chris Alonzo, a third-generation mushroom farmer from the county of Chester, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, will soon enjoy a strong foothold in China's much-coveted, growing mushroom market.

Alonzo, president of Pietro Industries, has partnered with a Chinese businessman to open a mushroom-growing facility in east China's Anhui Province. The state-of-the-art mushroom-growing facility, which will produce 17 tons of mushrooms daily in the beginning, is expected to be operational later this year.

The mushroom grower could hardly gain entry into the Chinese market if Chester County had not established a sister city relationship with Funan County, in the northwest of Anhui, which is near the megacity Shanghai.

"That is a project that's probably the furthest along in terms of our relationship with sister cities," Chester County Commissioner Terence Farrell told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The county, with an area of 1,965 sq km and about 516,000 people, has long taken pride in its diverse agricultural products. Farmers there produce a whopping half of all the mushrooms in the United States.

Building relationships in a foreign market as big as China "takes a little bit more (time)," and "people have to get to know each other (first)," Farrell said. "So the sister city relationships provide a foundation for what you can continue to fill."

STRONG ENTHUSIASM ON BOTH SIDES

Sister city ties between China and the United States began shortly after the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1979.

The Chinese province of Hubei and the U.S. state of Ohio became the first pair of sister province/state, while the Chinese city of Nanjing and the U.S. city of St. Louis became the first pair of sister cities.

Forty years on, bilateral sister city relationships are flourishing, as now the two countries have 277 pairs of sister relationships at different levels, and the momentum is still going strong, said Roger-Mark De Souza, president of Sister City International (SCI), a non-profit organization that promotes local-level ties between the United States and other countries.

"There's real hunger to engage and partner" between China and the United States at local levels, De Souza told Xinhua at a celebration held by the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. on March 13, marking the 40th anniversary of sister city relationships between Chinese and U.S. cities.

The sister city program was created by former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, and was centered on the idea of promoting citizen diplomacy between countries as a supplement to government diplomacy. The SCI for its part was formed to serve as a platform to boost the program.

In the decades that ensued, the idea translated into a "fruitful and sustained" relationship at the grassroots level between China and the United States, said De Souza.

"There are a lot of opportunities because China is so large. It's such a large population. A lot is happening," said De Souza, noting there's equal enthusiasm on both sides.

"They have given birth to a number of innovations, exchange programs, and unique opportunities," De Souza said, as the relationships have expanded far beyond sister province/state and cities to sister counties, ports and schools.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

The sister relationship is often forged between entities sharing similar geographical features or trade opportunities, and is fueled by common local interests.

A case in point is the sisterhood between the Chinese coastal city of Tianjin and the U.S. eastern city of Philadelphia. The two port cities became "sisters" almost 40 years ago.

"We are one of the first (of those relationships). We honor it. We want to do it well," said Samuel K. Chueh, director of international business at the Philadelphia Department of Commerce, noting that his city is fully devoted to its Chinese "sister" Tianjin.

"Tianjin to Beijing is like Philadelphia to New York," Chueh said, adding that both cities enjoy an abundance of cultural diversity.

"We just learned that Tianjin is upgrading its port and we are upgrading our port. Tianjin is developing their life science industry, and we are so good at life science," he said.

Philadelphia has the largest temperature-controlled port along the East Coast of the United States, he said, "so we do have our advantage and the sister city relationship can help us better understand our friends in China and see how we can find more connectivity."

Chueh said he hoped that Philadelphia and Tianjin will set up a direct shipping route in the future, adding that Philadelphia also plays a leading role in life science, with the presence of about 80 percent of the world's pharmaceutical companies.

Next to Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), many Chinese pharmaceutical companies also have offices in Philadelphia, he said.

According to the Brookings Institution, from 2010 to 2016, foreign direct investment in Philadelphia's biotech industry from China was five times higher than that of Boston, which is home to Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In June, Tianjin is sending delegations to attend the BIO International Convention in Philadelphia, which excels in life science and looks forward to more collaboration with Tianjin.

"We are working very closely with China and see how we can support the life science development in China," Chueh said.

In 1998, a Sister City Scholarship was established to allow Tianjin high school graduates to study at Drexel University. Over the years, it has expanded to also include La Salle University, Moore College of Art and Design, and Temple University.

Yang Mu, the first recipient of the scholarship, pursued a degree in computer science and graduated second in her class. She later went to Temple Law School and is now an intellectual property lawyer at a local firm.

In addition, the sister city exchanges include a year-long "internship" with Philadelphia's finance department by a vice mayor from Tianjin, according to CDI, which runs the sister city program.

The cultural exchanges between the two cities are also expanding. In May, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the first U.S. orchestra to perform in China in 1973, is returning to China for the 11th time to play for audiences in multiple cities, including Tianjin.

LEGACY FOR GENERATIONS TO COME

"The sister cities relationship is a major channel for people-to-people exchanges and sub-national cooperation. It is an important driving force for our relations," said Minister Xu Xueyuan of the Chinese embassy at the celebration.

"Following the principles of friendship, mutual benefit and practical results, the two sides have made great achievements in their trade and economic cooperation as well as people-to-people ties, with the purpose of common development and shared prosperity," Xu said.

The sister city ties, which focus on people-to-people exchanges, foster strong connections between the Chinese and American people, De Souza said.

Some Chinese high school students who come to the United States for an exchange program may later apply to a university in the same city, while a visit by a Chinese student may spark an interest to learn Chinese in a host family, he said.

"Sister city relationships touch the hearts and the passions of U.S. and Chinese citizens, because of that these relationships have endured over time," De Souza said.

The sturdy relationships established at the people-to-people level also help stabilize the U.S.-China relationship, De Souza said.

"People get together, they get to know each other, they begin to understand each other and they begin to trust each other, and they have fun," De Souza said, adding that this trust between the two peoples can help both countries weather turbulent times in their relationship.

"I think building these sister city relationships, the people-to-people relationships will actually spur our two countries to work out whatever difficulties we are going through right now," Farrell said. "Because people see the opportunities, the results, or the fruits from all of the bilateral trade."

Looking forward, De Souza sees great potential for sister city relationships as they take on a new meaning.

"We do trade and investment, community development, youth and leadership and arts and culture, those areas will continue. Things like disaster mitigation, sustainability, resilience, economic development, cyber security are all areas that we want to continue to build on," De Souza said.

As sister city relationships between China and the United States continue to prosper, De Souza said he hopes they will become a legacy for the generations to come.

"I hope my great-great-grandchildren would be able to see that the U.S.-China sister city relationships have sustained over time and continued to allow us to better understand each other, to collaborate and engage and to build trust," he said.

(Xinhua reporters Hu Yousong, Liu Jie in Washington D.C., Li Muzi, Wang Ying and Zhang Mocheng in New York contributed to the story.)

(Video reporters: Hu Yousong, Zhang Mocheng; Video editor: Yin Le)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:50:40|Editor: xuxin

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BUJUMBURA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Unidentified gunmen on early Tuesday killed two policemen in an ambush in Bujumbura province's Mutara village, western Burundi, a government spokesperson said here.

The two victims went to rescue a man who was said to have been abducted by gunmen at Mutara after receiving a woman's phone call, and fell into an ambush by the gunmen at around 2:30 am, said Pierre Nkurikiye, spokesman of Burundian Security Ministry, at a press briefing.

The gunmen also took away their guns before running away, said Nkurikiye.

The gunmen are still on the run, and five suspects, including the woman who alerted the policemen and the man said to have been abducted have been arrested for investigations, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:55:41|Editor: xuxin

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TOKYO, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Japan will send Self-Defense Force (SDF) members to Egypt in mid-April, the government said here Tuesday, with the controversial move marking the first non-United Nations-backed deployment of Japanese troops.

It's accelerating the cabinet approval in late March for the dispatch.

The government said two SDF members will be deployed to join the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), a multinational peacekeeping force in Egypt, which is not under the command of the UN.

The pair will be sent to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, in the first such deployment since the controversial security legislation came into effect in 2016, amid a staunch political, public and international backlash.

By way of forcing the required legislation through both chambers of Japan's bicameral parliament, the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, while ignoring calls from opposition parties for more debate on the disputed issue and against the will of the public, effectively bulldozed the legislation into law.

Legal experts and constitutional scholars have maintained the law, which has loosened the restrictions on Japan's SDF and allows for Japan to send troops overseas on peacekeeping missions if requested by international organizations, thwarts Japan's pacifist charter.

Earlier in March, the Japanese government sent members of the Defense Ministry to the Sinai Peninsula to gauge the situation.

The government judged that the current situation there dose not breach the five legal requirements necessary for participating in UN peacekeeping missions, one of which includes the existence of a ceasefire agreement among warring parties.

Japan has decided to adopt the UN's five legal requirements as a barometer to determine whether or not to send SDF members overseas for peacekeeping missions, regardless of the UN's actual involvement.

Defense Ministry officials briefed ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers on Tuesday about the situation on the Sinai Peninsula, and the deployment of the SDF members was approved.

Japan's prime minister is a staunch proponent of amending Japan's pacifist Constitution to further loosen the constrains on Japan's forces and allow them to increase their footprint in overseas theaters.

To achieve his goal, Abe will need to secure a two-thirds majority in a vote in both houses of parliament and a majority in a public referendum.

The LDP's coalition ally Komeito, however, is wary of amending the Constitution, Article 9 of which forever renounces war and prohibits Japan from maintaining armed forces with war potential.

The majority of the public are also against the contentious move, with nationwide rallies and protests held before, during and after the forced ratification of Japan's security shift.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 19:55:41|Editor: Yurou

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Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng (R), also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with Kazakhstan's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alikhan Smailov in Beijing, capital of China, March 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Han Zheng on Tuesday called on China and Kazakhstan to further align each other's development strategies and advance pragmatic cooperation.

Han, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks while meeting in Beijing with Kazakhstan's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alikhan Smailov.

China and Kazakhstan are friendly neighbors and comprehensive strategic partners, and under the leadership of the two countries' top leaders, Sino-Kazakhstani relations have kept high-standard development and become a model of peaceful coexistence and mutual benefit among all countries, Han said.

Han said the two countries maintained frequent high-level exchanges, consistently enhanced mutual trust, and achieved fruitful results in jointly promoting the Belt and Road Initiative.

While urging for advancing pragmatic cooperation in fields of economy, trade, investment, customs, and finance, Han stressed the importance of extending support for enterprises of both countries to strengthen cooperation in accordance with the market-oriented principles and push for new progress in this regard.

For his part, Smailov said Kazakhstan stands ready to continue active participation in construction associated with the Belt and Road Initiative and enhance cooperation with China in finance and infrastructure.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 20:10:46|Editor: Yurou

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Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan (R) meets with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Beijing, capital of China, March 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan met with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi here Tuesday, and hoped that the two countries would deepen all-round cooperation.

"China and Pakistan are good neighbors, and the friendly relationship between the two countries has stood the test of times and the changing international situation," said Wang, adding that leaders of the two countries frequently met in recent years and the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership has yielded continuous progress.

Wang said establishing good-neighborly and friendly relations and creating a good surrounding environment on the basis of mutual understanding and mutual trust is an important condition for a country to achieve peaceful development.

He said China supports Pakistan in seizing opportunities and tackling challenges, and properly handling relations with its neighbors, to achieve stable development.

Wang expressed the hope that the two countries would continue to deepen all-around cooperation, and promote the progress of important projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Qureshi said Pakistan appreciates China's constructive role in moderating tensions between India and Pakistan.

He said Pakistan stands ready to enhance cooperation with China in various fields and push the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership to a new level.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 20:10:47|Editor: xuxin

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BEIRUT, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's General Security arrested Tuesday a Lebanese Canadian working for Israel in Lebanon, local media reported.

The arrested agent was recruited in 2013 by another Lebanese, who is head of a unit at the Israeli intelligence agency, according to local news agency Lebanon Files.

Lebanon Files said that the agent was planning to recruit two other agents to infiltrate Hezbollah while collecting security information for the Israeli intelligence unit about Ron Arad, an Israeli Air Force weapon systems officer, who has been missing since 1986.

The arrested agent, who was also planning to enter the occupied Palestinian territories, was transferred to judiciary bodies along with other involved people for further investigations and other legal procedures.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 20:20:53|Editor: Yurou

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by Xinhua writer Ma Qian

NEW YORK, March 19 (Xinhua) -- China's newly approved foreign investment law bodes well for overseas investors in terms of equal treatment and stronger legal protection, observers of various communities in the United States have said.

China's national legislature on Friday passed the foreign investment law, a landmark legislation that will provide stronger protection and a better business environment for overseas investors.

The law, based on a system of pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list, aims to improve the transparency of foreign investment policies and ensure that foreign-invested enterprises participate in market competition on an equal basis.

The law "has sent a clear message that China welcomes foreign investment and protects the legitimate rights of foreign investors," Li Ji, a professor of law at Rutgers University in the U.S. state of New Jersey, told Xinhua.

"A main purpose of law-making is to add transparency and predictability to (China's) investment environment, which will help strengthen investor confidence," the professor added.

BOOSTING INVESTOR CONFIDENCE

China's national treatment "will afford foreign investors treatment that is no less favorable than that afforded to Chinese investors during the establishment, acquisition, expansion and other stages of their investment," Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies, told Xinhua.

He noted that the legislation explicitly prohibits forced technology transfer by administrative measures and essentially bars local governments from interfering in national foreign investment policies.

Therefore, the investment protection clauses in the law will be "gladly welcomed by foreign businesses," he said.

Jorge Mariscal, emerging markets chief investment officer at Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) Global Wealth Management, also said he believes that these measures will help foreign investors to strengthen their confidence to invest in China.

"We hope and remain positive that these measures will increase investors' confidence in investing in China," Mariscal told Xinhua.

Similarly, Gupta also believed that the law will help address major issues that foreign investors face in China, as it provides them with strong protection to ensure administrative and regulatory impartiality.

"Foreign investors will now be able to compete on the same terms as China's domestic companies," Gupta told Xinhua, adding that a number of key sectors have gone through significant liberalization for foreign direct investment (FDI), such as cars, finance and insurance.

By explicit prohibition, the law would help resolve investors' grave concerns and prompt more foreign capital to flow into China, said Hao Yong, a partner of JunHe law firm LLP New York office.

"It shows the government's respect to contracts, and will improve its credibility," Hao told Xinhua. "Such measures will make a more level playing field for overseas firms and help increase their competitive edge in China."

About 960,000 foreign-invested enterprises had been set up in China, with the accumulated FDI exceeding 2.1 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of 2018, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

A survey of 240 companies by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China also shows that the respondents plan to increase their reinvestment budgets from profits in China this year to an estimated total of 19.4 billion dollars, up nearly 40 percent from 2018.

EFFECTIVE LAW ENFORCEMENT KEY

The law is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2020, yet more auxiliary measures supporting the enforcement of the law would be needed to effectively upgrade China's investment environment for foreigners, Hao said.

Viewing the legislation as "a definite step in the right direction," Mariscal from UBS also stressed that enforcement of the law would be key.

"What would particularly affect the foreign investors is the effectiveness in the implementation of the legal framework," the UBS investment officer said.

"The foreign investment law relates to longer term FDI. It will take some time, but we should see greater appetite to relocate businesses to China," he said.

In this aspect, Gupta said that it would take some time for the law to reassure foreign businesses that "the playing field is being leveled in China to allow fair competition to take hold, irrespective of national origins."

As always, when a piece of legislation is passed, the key is in the implementation, he noted, adding that the success of the enforcement will depend on how rigorously the regulations regarding implementation are written.

In terms of foreign investment protection, "strong measures to deal with political, regulatory and administrative non-compliance are envisaged. A robust working mechanism to promptly address foreign businesses' complaints is also envisaged," he said.

The scholar also pointed out that the law's significance for China's new round of opening-up and reform is "potentially profound," as it embodies its potential to help transform the Chinese economy into "a more sophisticated, advanced economy-type, productivity-led growth model."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 20:30:59|Editor: xuxin

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MOGADISHU, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Somali forces on Monday night killed two al-Shabab extremists during confrontation in the southern region of Middle Shabelle, officials said on Tuesday.

A police officer who declined to be named told Xinhua that the militants attacked Bal'ad town which was 30 km north of the Somali capital Mogadishu, but were overpowered.

"They (al-Shabab) attacked our bases in the town but our forces have managed to foil their attempt and inflicted them heavy casualties killing two of them during the fighting," the officer said.

He added that Somali forces are in full control of Bal'ad denying the claims of al-Shabab that they took over the town.

Residents reported sporadic fighting amid sustained gunfire. "We woke up with the sound of gun fire, we were in fear and panic the whole night," Idman Aways, a local resident told Xinhua by phone.

The incident comes a day after al-Shabab militants captured Dhanane town along the coast road in Lower Shabelle region after the government forces withdrew for unpaid salary of two months.

Al-Qaida allied group al-Shabab claimed that they had launched an overnight attack on Bal'ad, capturing the town for a while before setting combat vehicles on fire.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 20:46:04|Editor: xuxin

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PARIS, March 19 (Xinhua) -- French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Tuesday rejected the oppositions' calls for his step-down after the "Yellow Vest" street action turned violent in Paris during the past weekend.

Asked whether he had envisaged presenting his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron, Castaner said "No."

"If you think it's a man's responsibility, I'm ready to listen perfectly. I'm totally responsible for my decisions," he told France Inter radio.

The French minister said he had exchanged views with President Macron throughout the weekend and "at no time" he did get bawled.

"But I would have understood perfectly that the President of the Republic shouted at me and in addition our relationship allows that," he said.

Castaner, one of the president's earliest backers, has been on the hot seat, with the critics from both the right and left parties calling for his resignation. They denounced his policing tactics, saying the tactics were ineffective in protection of public properties and the restoration of order during Saturday rioting.

In the latest demonstration in a series of weekly protests that began in November 2018 against dwindling purchasing power, a group of hard-left protestors, known as Black Blocs, ran amok across the capital over the weekend, torching cars and buildings, looting shops and smashing windows of boutiques in the fanciest shopping districts in Paris.

Police said 60 individuals, including 17 police officers, were wounded following the flare-up of violence.

Ministers of interior affairs and finances will be heard in the Senate later in the day.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 20:51:04|Editor: zh

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OSLO, March 19 (Xinhua) -- U.S. mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck wins the Abel Prize for 2019 "for her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems," the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters said Tuesday.

Uhlenbeck, a 76-year-old professor of the University of Texas at Austin, is the first woman to win the Abel Prize, which has been awarded annually since 2003 to one or more outstanding mathematicians in memory of the Norwegian mathematics genius Niels Henrik Abel.

Uhlenbeck is a founder of modern geometric analysis, said the citation by the Abel Committee. "Her perspective has permeated the field and led to some of the most dramatic advances in mathematics in the last 40 years."

She will receive the financial award of 6 million Norwegian kroner (704,000 U.S. dollars) from Norway's King Harald V at an award ceremony in Oslo on May 21.

Uhlenbeck was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the United States, in August 1942. she received her B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1964 and later earned a M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) from Brandeis University.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 20:51:04|Editor: zh

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DAR ES SALAAM, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian authorities said on Tuesday they have planned to build some 30,000 low cost houses across the country.

William Lukuvi, the country's Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development, said the houses will be constructed by state-owned National Housing Corporation (NHC).

"The intention of the government is to provide affordable housing for its people," said Lukuvi shortly after he had inspected the construction of 20 houses by the NHC in the coastal city of Tanga.

He told the parliamentary standing committee on lands, natural resources and tourism that the construction of the low cost houses was part of implementation of the election manifesto of the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi.

The minister said construction of the houses will go in tandem with the improvement of infrastructure in the areas, including roads, schools and health centers.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 20:56:06|Editor: zh

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BAGHDAD, March 19 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi officer and a soldier were killed Tuesday, and six more soldiers wounded in separate bomb explosions near the Iraqi capital Baghdad, a security source said.

"An army major and a soldier were killed in a roadside bomb blast while they were on a foot patrol searching orchards in Tarmiyah area, some 40 km north of Baghdad," Major Amer al-Jubouri from Baghdad Operation command told Xinhua.

In another attack, an explosive device went off near an army patrol during the search operation in Tarmiyah area, leaving two soldiers wounded, al-Jubouri said.

Iraqi security forces have repeatedly searched the dense orchards of Tarmiyah area, where many of the Islamic State (IS) militants are believed to be hiding, al-Jubouri said, adding that many of the suspected extremist IS militants have been killed or arrested so far.

The security situation in Iraq has been dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017.

However, IS remnants have since regrouped in desert and rugged areas, carrying out attacks against security forces and civilians despite the military operations from time to time to hunt them down.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:06:11|Editor: Yurou

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Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan meets with a Philippine government delegation led by Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez in Beijing, capital of China, March 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan met with a Philippine government delegation led by Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez here Tuesday.

Wang said the sound development of bilateral ties benefits from the friendly exchanges between the two peoples for over a thousand years and the strategic guidance of the heads of state of the two countries.

"Peace is the prerequisite of development," said Wang, adding that both Chinese and Filipinos hope to live a better life through peaceful development.

He called on the two sides to strengthen understanding of each other's past and present, consolidate the foundation of mutual trust, pursue common development, share opportunities and plan for the future, so as to make the relationship of comprehensive strategic cooperation more mature and jointly build a community with a shared future for humanity.

Wang said China appreciates the measures taken by the Philippines for development, and stands ready to work with the Philippines to keep the momentum of frequent high-level exchanges, comprehensively implement the consensus reached by the heads of state of the two countries, enhance pragmatic cooperation in various fields and exchanges of governance experience.

The Philippine side said the Philippine government is committed to constantly pushing forward relations with China and stands ready to take part in the Belt and Road construction.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:06:13|Editor: xuxin

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DAR ES SALAAM, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The government of Tanzania on Tuesday donated relief supplies to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe hit by cyclone Idai.

The relief supplies, including food and medicines, were handed over to respective ambassadors of the three countries to Tanzania by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation Palamagamba Kabudi and the Minister for Health, Ummy Mwalimu.

Speaking at the Julius Nyerere International Airport in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam shortly after he had handed over the donation, Kabudi said the supplies were airlifted to Mozambique and Zimbabwe by army planes.

Kabudi added that seven lorries carrying 200 tonnes of maize had left Mbeya region in southern highlands for Malawi.

Kabudi said President John Magufuli directed relevant authorities to donate the relief supplies to support the three countries during this trying period.

Mwalimu, the Minister for Health, said 24 tonnes of medicines had been delivered to the cyclone-hit countries with each receiving eight tonnes.

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said on Monday that the death toll in his country could exceed 1,000.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:11:15|Editor: xuxin

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SHANGHAI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The first batch of Sicilian blood oranges from Italy entered the Chinese market Tuesday after the imported fruits passed customs inspection in Shanghai, according to the city's customs.

The blood oranges, weighing 37.44 tonnes, were shipped from Catania Harbor on Sicily Island over a month ago and arrived at Shanghai's Yangshan Port.

In recent years, China has seen a growing demand for imported fruits, said Cai Xiuchao, a logistics manager in charge of the shipment of the oranges, adding that imports from EU countries will provide diverse and quality fruits to Chinese consumers.

Chen Weiqun, a wholesaler of imported fruits in Shanghai, said more orders of Sicilian blood oranges are being discussed.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:16:16|Editor: xuxin

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RAMALLAH, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Saeb Erekat on Tuesday slammed the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to build 840 new settler units in the West Bank.

In statements to the official Palestinian radio station (Voice of Palestine), Erekat urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to "open an investigation with Israeli criminals who are committing the crimes of settlements on Palestinian territory."

"The ICC is not a court for states, but for individuals, those who carry out such crimes as Netanyahu and all those involved in settlement activity, killings, the closures, the sieges, the ethnic cleaning and they are all known," he said.

The Israeli prime minister announced the construction of 840 new settler units in the settlement of Ariel, build on lands of Salfit district north of the West Bank, during a visit to the area on Sunday.

Israeli settlement watchdog, Peace Now, denounced the project, which was approved two years ago, saying "it is a shame" that the construction will begin now.

Ariel settlement is considered one of the largest Jewish only settlements in the West Bank, located around 16.5 km away from the Green Line. According to Israeli data, it is home to some nearly 20,000 settlers and is the only settlement that includes a university.

Based on UN reports, some 20-25,000 settlers add up to the current population in the West Bank settlements annually.

Israeli settlement activity, deemed illegal by most world powers and under the international law, is considered one of the thorniest issues that hinder the peace talks between Palestinians and Israeli. It continues to be one of the main issues of disagreement since the stop of the peace talks in 2014.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:26:22|Editor: xuxin

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ULAN BATOR, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Merely 3,800 Mongolian Saiga antelopes, a critically endangered species, existed in Mongolia at the end of 2018, down nearly 40 percent year on year, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-Mongolia on Tuesday.

The decline is mainly due to drought-related food shortage, WWF-Mongolia Director Dorjgurkhem Batbold told Xinhua.

"The Saiga antelope population of Mongolia has been very unstable for many years. Several factors, including infectious diseases, harsh weather conditions and poaching, have negatively affected the growth of the population," said Batbold.

The species' population has suffered a roller coaster since 2001 when its number declined to only 750 following a summer drought and a harsh winter, he said.

Due to continuous efforts by the WWF-Mongolia and MAVA foundation, it had risen to 14,000 by 2016, he added. However, a combination of an outbreak of goat plague and the extreme wintry weather locally known as "dzud" in 2017 reduced the number to 5,000.

To help the species overcome harsh winters, experts from the WWF have been taking desperate emergency actions, including putting a ton of additional hay or 400 bundles in the animal's ranges over the past winter, according to Batbold.

In addition, the WWF-Mongolia started implementing an initiative called "GG-6" (Great Gobi's or Gobi's Gracious Six) since 2016 to sustain the Gobi's ecosystem using six iconic species, among which are the Mongolian Saiga antelopes, he said.

"Joint efforts are needed to protect endangered species," Batbold said, urging governments and international non-governmental organizations to protect the Saiga antelopes and others.

To prevent the extinction of the antelopes that currently live in western Mongolian provinces, including Govi-Altai, Khovd and Uvs, it is necessary to relocate them, according to the WWF-Mongolia.

This year, the WWF-Mongolia is planning to conduct studies on relocation within Mongolia, and more funding is required for the endeavor in the years ahead, said Batbold.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:36:25|Editor: Yurou

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ZHENGZHOU, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Customs in central China's Zhengzhou City said they had recently intercepted 1,250 vials of human placenta extract, hailed as a tonic and cosmetic panacea in a number of Asian countries.

Zhengzhou customs said they found the vials in suspicious mail parcels that arrived from Japan on March 15 and March 18. No permit was provided for their entry.

Human placenta extract is popular among those who believe it can remedy disease and combat aging, spawning a profitable black market in China where traditional medical theories also recognize the therapeutic values of human placenta.

However, due to risks of transmission of hepatitis, syphilis or HIV, human placenta extract is strictly supervised and entry without certification is illegal in China.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:36:26|Editor: xuxin

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LUSAKA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Journalists in Zambia on Tuesday welcomed the announcement that cabinet has approved the Access to Information Bill.

On Monday, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services, Dora Siliya said cabinet approved the long-awaited bill during its meeting on Monday and that the bill was meant to promote proactive and organized dissemination of information to the public.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Zambia Chapter said the announcement was welcome as stakeholders had been waiting for the same bill for years.

Hyde Hanguta, Vice-Chairperson of the media body said stakeholders are finally happy that the bill has been approved although he noted that the battle was not yet over.

He told journalists during a press briefing that the government should now inform stakeholders on when the bill will be tabled before parliament, adding that mere approval by cabinet was not enough.

He further said the government should share with stakeholders the contents of the bill so that they can see what was contained in it in order to avoid speculations.

Stakeholders in Zambia have been fighting for the access to information law for years, with successive governments failing to provide it despite repeated promises to do so.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:36:27|Editor: Yurou

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NAIROBI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- China's opening-up policy will boost Kenya's exports to the Asian nation, a Chinese government official said on Tuesday.

Li Xuhang, Charge d'Affaires at the Chinese Embassy in Kenya told a press conference in Nairobi that Beijing's ever growing consumer market will bring more export opportunities for Nairobi.

"We will encourage more Kenyan enterprises to cooperate with their Chinese counterparts and obtain more funds, technologies, equipment and capacity from them, so as to increase added value and be more competitive in the Chinese market," Li said during a workshop for media and think tanks on the progress of the Chinese-built Standard Gauge Railway (SGR).

He noted that the Chinese market welcomes more exports of Kenyan products such as flowers, tea, coffee and avocado.

He added that the agreement on Sanitary and PhytoSanitary signed in 2018 between the two countries has opened a new gate for the healthy and balanced development of China-Kenya trade.

He revealed that currently the annual bilateral trade value has reached 537 billion shillings (5.37 billion U.S. dollars) while China's non-financial direct investment in Kenya amounted to about 520 million dollars in 2018, which was more than two times the amount during the previous year.

The Chinese official also noted that due to the strong bilateral ties, there were around 170 Kenyan students who obtained Chinese-funded scholarships for studying in China in 2018, and 686 government officials and professionals went to China for training programs during the same year.

In the aviation sector, Li said that direct flights between China and Kenya have now increased to 10 per week, and the number of annual Chinese tourists visiting Kenya has reached 81,000.

Lindsay Kiptiness, deputy director of Asia, Australasia and Pacific Islands at Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kenya said the relationship between China and Kenya has moved to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

Kiptiness noted that the Chinese-funded-and-built railway demonstrates the cordial relationship between Kenya and China, noting that Nairobi is keen to leverage on the Sino-Kenya relationship to boost its industrial sector.

He said that since Kenya achieved independence in 1963, the country has been heavily reliant on selling unprocessed agricultural produce to the rest of the world.

"We want to use Chinese technology to add value to our raw materials so to increase employment opportunities and foreign exchange earnings," he added.

Kiptiness urged Chinese manufacturing companies that are relocating from China to consider moving to Kenya in order to produce for both domestic and international markets.

Cavince Adhere, a Sino-Africa expert said that China has now emerged as one of the top trading partners of the African continent.

Adhere said that the African continent has benefited tremendously from infrastructure development funded and constructed by China.

He urged Africa to develop policies that will ensure the continent can tap into the huge Chinese market through selling globally competitive products.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:41:28|Editor: xuxin

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DAR ES SALAAM, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian and Rwandan officials were in talks to enable RwandAir ferry fish from Mwanza airport in northern Tanzania to overseas markets, an official said on Tuesday.

Luhaga Mpina, Tanzania's Minister for Livestock and Fisheries, told stakeholders in the fishing industry in Mwanza city that he was confident that the deal would go through.

"Should the two sides strike a deal, it will be a massive relief for Lake Zone fish traders, who have, for a long time, been seeking an alternative airline to transport their products abroad," said Mpina.

Usually, the wholesale fish dealers in the region have been relying on Entebbe and Nairobi airports in Uganda and Kenya respectively, which they claim are more costly.

"Indeed, the talks are at an advanced stage for RwandAir planes to transport fish from Mwanza to overseas markets," said the minister.

He said the government collected 1.7 trillion Tanzanian shillings (about 726 million U.S. dollars) from the fishing industry in the 2017/18 financial year, out of which 1.1 trillion shillings were from Lake Victoria.

Sijaona James, the spokesperson of the Tanzania Fishermen Union, said over 1,000 tonnes of fish could not be exported in the past few months because of transport problems. The total loss of the exports destined for Japan and Israel stood at 5.5 billion Tanzanian shillings, said James.
Photo provided by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 10, 2018 shows Kim Jong Un (R), top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), shaking hands with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on May 9, 2018. (Xinhua/KCNA)

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Xinhua) -- The United States will "re-engage" with Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), over denuclearization-related issues of mutual concern, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday.

In an interview with B98 FM, a radio station of the U.S. state of Kansas via teleconference, Pompeo said that "we believe we're still moving forward. It's certainly difficult -- we knew it would be. It's been a decades-long challenge," according to the interview transcript circulated by the U.S. Department of State.

"But we have the toughest economic sanctions in history, but the most promising diplomatic engagement in history as well," he continued. "And so we made a little bit more progress in Hanoi, now three weeks back, when President Trump traveled there to meet with Chairman Kim."

"We'll re-engage with him. It's incredibly important that we take down the threat not only for America and for Kansas, but for the entire world," said the U.S. top diplomat.

In a separate interview with other local Kansas media outlets on the same day also via teleconference, Pompeo said that the U.S.-DPRK engagement over the Korean Peninsula denuclearization is "a long journey."

"It's going to be difficult. To convince North Korea (the DPRK) to give up their nuclear weapons took a great deal of work," he said. "We made a little bit of progress in Hanoi along that route, not nearly as much as we had hoped, but the effort continues because it's important."

Speaking of the reasons why the Hanoi summit has failed to lead to the agreement signing, Pompeo said that "it's clearly a range of issues around timing and sequencing and how it is we achieve this."

"President Trump's commitment ... has to follow the verified denuclearization of North Korea. And getting that sequencing right and getting it laid out in a way that each of the parties can agree to and take down the tension level along the North and South Korean border, it matters to ... our important partners, and it matters to the whole world," he said.

Noting earlier on Friday that Washington is still hopeful for continued talks with Pyongyang, Pompeo confirmed that there are ongoing negotiations between the two sides.

The second summit between the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump in Vietnam's capital Hanoi ended without agreement on Feb. 28.

On Friday, DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui blamed the U.S. side for the failure of the Hanoi summit, saying the talks failed because the U.S. side lacked sincerity.

Other parties concerned have also tried to promote the U.S.-DPRK dialogue. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said earlier on Monday that China hopes the DPRK and the United States would cherish the hard-won momentum of dialogue and keep talking until a peaceful denuclearized Korean Peninsula is realized.

"After the Hanoi summit, the DPRK and the U.S. both expressed willingness to continue dialogues. We commend and encourage this," Geng said, adding that the key to keeping up and advancing dialogue is to accommodate all parties' legitimate concerns in a balanced way, build up mutual trust and consensus, take phased and synchronized steps, and start with easier moves.

"As the nuclear issue has dragged on for decades and complicated factors are at play, one cannot expect it to be solved overnight. All parties need to have reasonable expectations. One shouldn't set the bar too high at the outset or make unilateral, unrealistic demands," Geng quoted Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying.

South Korea's presidential Blue House said Sunday that both the DPRK and the United States "never" wanted to go back to the past confrontation and tension.

Though Kim and Trump failed to reach an agreement in Hanoi, both Pyongyang and Washington made clear their willingness to continue diplomacy and negotiations, the Blue House noted, adding that the South Korean government will make best efforts to help resume the DPRK-U.S. negotiations as soon as possible in close cooperation with the United States while encouraging the DPRK to stay in the dialogue track.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 21:51:30|Editor: xuxin

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KUWAIT CITY, March 19 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's visit to Kuwait will boost strategic cooperation between the two countries, an official from Kuwait's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

The visit will result in signing more agreements to boost strategic cooperation between the two friendly countries for the next 25 years in various sectors, said Reem Al-Khaled, Kuwaiti assistant foreign minister for the Americas, in a statement.

Kuwait will host the third Kuwait-U.S. Strategic Dialogue with Pompeo during his visit, highlighting the exceptionally solid relations between the two countries, she added.

Pompeo will meet with Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah to discuss bilateral relations and regional matters of common concern, the Kuwaiti official noted.

Al-Khaled also hailed the important role of the private sectors of Kuwait and the United States in boosting economic cooperation between the two countries.

Established in October 2016, the Kuwait-U.S. Strategic Dialogue were held in the United States in 2016 and 2017, during which the two countries signed cooperation agreements and MoUs over security, counter-terrorism, economy, trade, education, oil, custom and consular affairs.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:01:31|Editor: Yurou

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BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Representatives from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and nine parties of Pakistan including the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz met in Beijing Tuesday for the first meeting of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Political Parties Joint Consultation Mechanism.

The meeting, focusing on the theme of "towards steady and sustainable development of the CPEC: mission and responsibility of political parties," also attracted representatives from think tanks, the business community, media and non-governmental organizations from the two countries.

Hailing the China-Pakistan All Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership, Song Tao, minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, said the CPEC Political Parties Joint Consultation Mechanism is an innovation to intensify China-Pakistan party-to-party relations, as well as a new exchange platform to strengthen China-Pakistan cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi, vice chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and foreign minister of Pakistan, as well as other representatives from Pakistan's political parties, spoke highly of the corridor in promoting the economic and social development of Pakistan and expressed a willingness to strengthen communication and coordination with the Chinese side.

The meeting also approved the Beijing Declaration to support the Belt and Road Initiative and further promote the building of the CPEC.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:01:32|Editor: xuxin

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ULAN BATOR, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia has launched a youth volunteer development center to encourage more young people involved in the country's social development.

"Youth participation is important to solve any problem facing the country," Sodnomtsog Sukh-Ochir, head of the Youth Development Department of the country's capital Ulan Bator, told a press conference on Tuesday.

The center aims to raise awareness among the public on the need to volunteer and how young people can play a role in solving problems facing the country, Sukh-Ochir added.

The center is first of its kind in the country to focus on all sectors of society, he said, adding that the door of this center will always be open to young people who are willing to take part in humanitarian efforts.

The center plans to hold activities directed at promoting public health, protecting the environment, promoting urban culture, and preventing natural disasters and accidents.

Mongolia has a young population with nearly one in three classified as between 15 and 34 years, according to the United Nations Development Programme, adding that a significant challenge facing this group is income generation.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:11:34|Editor: xuxin

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MANILA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' overall balance of payments (BOP) position yielded a surplus of 467 million U.S. dollars in February 2019, a reversal of the 429 million U.S. dollars BOP deficit recorded in the same month last year, the Philippine central bank said on Tuesday.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said inflows in February 2019 stemmed mainly from the BSP's foreign exchange operations, national government's (NG) net foreign currency deposits, and BSP's income from its investments abroad.

These were partially offset, however, by the payments made by the NG for its foreign exchange obligations during the month in review, the BSP said.

On a cumulative basis, the BSP said the BOP position for the period January -February 2019 posted a surplus of 3.17 billion U.S. dollars, a turnaround from the 961 million U.S. dollars BOP deficit recorded in the first two months of 2018.

"The surplus may be attributed partly to remittance inflows from overseas Filipinos in January 2019 and net inflows of foreign portfolio investments (net BSP- registered transactions based on custodian banks' reports) for the first two months of the year, which was a reversal of the net outflows reported in January -February 2018," the BSP said.

The reported BOP position reflected the final gross international reserves (GIR) level of 82.78 billion U.S. dollars as of end-February 2019.

At this level, the BSP said the GIR represents a more than ample liquidity buffer and is equivalent to 7.3 months' worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.

It is also equivalent to 5.2 times the country's short-term external debt based on original maturity and 3.6 times based on residual maturity, the BSP said.
How heavy elements come about in the universe

FRANKFURT. Heavy elements are produced during stellar explosion or on the surfaces of neutron stars through the capture of hydrogen nuclei (protons). This occurs at extremely high temperatures, but at relatively low energies. An international research team headed by Goethe University has now succeeded in investigating the capture of protons at the storage ring of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung.

As the scientists report in the current issue of Physical Review Letters, their goal was to determine more precisely the probability for a proton capture in astrophysical scenarios. As Dr. Jan Glorius from the GSI atomic physics research department explains, they were faced with two challenges in this endeavour: "The reactions are most probable under astrophysical circumstances in an energy range called the Gamow window. In this range, nuclei tend to be somewhat slow, making them difficult to obtain in the required intensity. In addition, the cross section - the probability of proton capture - decreases rapidly with energy. Until now, it has been almost impossible to create the right conditions in a laboratory for these kinds of reactions."

Rene Reifarth, Professor for experimental astrophysics at Goethe University suggested a solution as early as ten years ago: The low energies within the Gamow window range can be reached more precisely when the heavy reaction partner circulates in an accelerator in which it interact with an stationary proton gas. He achieved first successes in September 2015 with a group of Heimholtz early career researchers. Since then, his team has gained excellent support from Professor Yuri Litvinov, who leads the EU-funded research project ASTRUm at GSI.

In the experiment, the international team first produced xenon ions. They were decelerated in the experimental storage ring ESR and caused to interact with protons. This resulted in reactions in which the xenon nuclei captured a proton and were transformed into heavier caesium - a process like that which occurs in astrophysical scenarios.

"The experiment makes a decisive contribution to advancing our understanding of nucleosynthesis in the cosmos," says Rene Reifarth. "Thanks to the high-performance accelerator facility at GSI, we were able to improve the experimental technique for decelerating the heavy reaction partner. We now have more exact knowledge of the area in which the reaction rates occur, which until now had only been theoretically predicted. This allows us to more precisely model the production of elements in the universe."

###

The experiment took place as part of the research collaboration SPARC (Stored Particles Atomic Physics Research Collaboration), which is part of the FAIR research programme. Equipment funded by the Verbundforschung (collaborative research) of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research was used in this experiment.

A picture can be downloaded here: http://www. uni-frankfurt. de/ 76756294

Caption: For the first time, the fusion of hydrogen and xenon was able to be investigated at the same temperatures as occur in stellar explosions using an ion storage ring.

Credit: Mario Weigand, Goethe-Universitat

Publication:

J. Glorius et al: Approaching the Gamow window with stored ions: Direct measurement of 124Xe(p,) in the ESR storage ring, in PRL, DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.092701

Further information: Professor Rene Reifarth, Institute for Applied Physics at Goethe University, Riedberg Campus, Tel.: +49 69 798-47442, Reifarth@physik.uni-frankfurt.de.

Current news about science, teaching, and society can be found on GOETHE-UNI online

Goethe University is a research-oriented university in the European financial centre Frankfurt am Main. The university was founded in 1914 through private funding, primarily from Jewish sponsors, and has since produced pioneering achievements in the areas of social sciences, sociology and economics, medicine, quantum physics, brain research, and labour law. It gained a unique level of autonomy on 1 January 2008 by returning to its historic roots as a "foundation university". Today, it is one of the three largest universities in Germany. Together with the Technical University of Darmstadt and the University of Mainz, it is a partner in the inter-state strategic Rhine-Main University Alliance. Internet: http://www. uni-frankfurt. de

Publisher: The President of Goethe University Editor: Dr. Anne Hardy, Science Editor, PR & Communication Department, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Tel: +49 69 798-13035, Fax: +49 69 798-763 12531, , hardy@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-18. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
ABC/Heidi GutmanGucci Mane and Sheena Evans -- the mother of his son -- are in a nasty battle over child support, and now Evans wants the rapper thrown in jail.

According to documents obtained by People, Evans is claiming Mane failed to cover the cost of her lawyer, even though the court ordered him to do so. In her complaint, filed in Georgia's Superior Court of Fulton County, Evans says Mane's failure to cough up the $2500 he owes is "outrageous and egregious.

Evans also claims in her motion that Mane hasn't turned over certain documents to her lawyers as part of the resolution of their case. Her legal representatives have now suggested that the "Icy" rapper be jailed until he "purges himself of his contempt.

Back in August, People reports, Evans asked for $20,000 a month in child support for 11-year-old Keitheon -- a massive increase from the just over two grand a month he was initially ordered to pay in 2011.

She also wanted Mane to pay for a caregiver for the kid so that she could go to work or school, and for him to foot the bill for Keitheon's uncovered medical expenses.

At the time, Evans claimed that the payments should increase because the rapper had been "thriving financially" since his 2016 release from jail. As proof, she pointed to Mane's October 2017 wedding to Keyshia Ka'oir, which cost some $1.7 million, and the subsequent 10-part BET special about the nuptials.

Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The photo taken on March 12, 2019 shows the construction site of the 385-meter-high Iconic Tower in New Administrative Capital, about 45 km east of Cairo, Egypt. (Xinhua/Wu Huiwo)

CAIRO, March 19 (Xinhua) -- On a sunny day, some 45 km east of the Egyptian capital Cairo, one of the gates of the under-construction new administrative capital city had a Chinese sign on top, welcoming visitors at the huge Central Business District (CBD) project carried out by a renowned Chinese construction firm.

Egyptian and Chinese engineers and workers can be seen everywhere in the CBD construction site that has the Iconic Tower as one of its buildings, whose height is expected to exceed 385 meters to be the tallest tower in Egypt and Africa.

Carried out by China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), the project is a landmark for the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that seeks win-win development cooperation between participating states through economic and trade partnerships as well as infrastructure projects.

People work at the construction site of the 385-meter-high Iconic Tower in New Administrative Capital, about 45 km east of Cairo, Egypt, on March 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Wu Huiwo)

Ahmed al-Banna, the project manager from Dar Al Handasa, the Egyptian designer and consultant of the project, said that the CBD has about 18 giant, extremely tall buildings including the 385-meter-high Iconic Tower.

The area of the tower's base is about 3,600 square meters and the total area, after its 80 floors are completed, will be 260,000 square meters, he added.

"With our humble efforts, we hope that we are taking part in the progress of our country for a better future," Banna told Xinhua near the concrete base of the Iconic Tower, highlighting the importance of the new capital city for Egypt's development.

The engineer hailed CSCEC as "not only the right choice for this project but also a beginning for new techniques to be witnessed in the history of construction in Egypt."

"It is my first time to deal with a Chinese company and Chinese people in general. They are very friendly, organized and hardworking. We also learned from the Chinese how to use manual piles and post-grouting piles in construction for the first time in Egypt," said the Egyptian project manager.

Built on an area of 714 square km, the new administrative capital city is expected to be a new home to most government buildings including 29 ministries and the cabinet, in addition to the parliament.

It will also have 20 residential neighborhoods that can accommodate 6.5 million people, luxurious hotels, malls, parks and many other venues, making some room in the congested and overpopulated traditional capital Cairo that is home to about one fifth of the country's 100-million population.

The four-year CBD project started in May 2018 and is expected to be completely finished in early 2023 including the giant Iconic Tower.

Photo taken on Feb. 25, 2019 shows the construction site in Egypt's under-construction new administrative capital city, about 45 km east of Cairo, Egypt. (Xinhua/Wu Huiwo)

Project Manager Tang Ling from CSCEC said that China in general and his corporation in particular hope, through the CBD project, to take part in building the future of Egypt and creating more job opportunities for Egyptians through win-win cooperation.

"When the CBD is completed, it will be another landmark for Chinese-Egyptian cooperation under the BRI," said the Chinese manager.

The Iconic Tower base of about 18,500 cubic meters of concrete and 5,000 tons of reinforced iron bars was poured in late February in one shot for 38 hours non-stop, an unprecedented process in Egypt's construction history.

The concrete mass pouring process was attended by Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly who described the architectural project as "a miracle by all means."

Zhou Changming, a Chinese construction team leader, said that it is his first time to work outside China and that he is happy to be with CSCEC team working on this huge project.

"We are currently working on the construction foundations of the Iconic Tower and the process is expected to be completed in June, after which the tower will be rising at a noticeable speed," Zhou told Xinhua.

CSCEC hired many local architects and construction workers to carry out the CBD project, holding free training courses for them on the latest construction techniques, including 27-year-old site engineer Mohamed al-Tantawi, who joined CSCEC in June 2018.

Tantawi said he learned a lot from the Chinese expertise and made many Chinese friends during his work with CSCEC, expressing pride of being part of the CBD project.

"This is the biggest project in Egypt now and the new capital city will be a very big shift for the country. It is a huge honor to be part of this project," the Egyptian engineer told Xinhua near the Iconic Tower.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:16:35|Editor: xuxin

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DOHA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met on Tuesday with visiting Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to discuss bilateral relations, official Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported.

Talks between the two leaders covered economy, investment, tourism and infrastructure projects, QNA said.

They also exchanged views on regional and international developments, it added.

The meeting was attended by Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and the delegation of the Ethiopian prime minister.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:16:35|Editor: xuxin

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SARAJEVO, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Indirect Taxation Authority (ITA) of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) conducted the biggest confiscation of tobacco and cigarettes here on Tuesday, ITA said in a statement.

In cooperation with the Ministry Interior, ITA members seized a total of 670 kilograms of tobacco and 12,000 packages of cigarettes.

The market value of temporarily the seized goods is 150,000 KM (86,956 U.S. dollars).

The seized goods were not marked with excise stamps of ITA, and were intended for illegal sale on the market of BiH, ITA added in the press statement.

The people involved will be tried at local courts for suspicion of committing the criminal offense of unauthorized sale of excise goods.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:26:38|Editor: xuxin

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WINDHOEK, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Namibia's President and Southern African Development Community Chair, Hage Geingob, on Tuesday appealed to member sates in the region to stand in solidarity with the people and governments of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi following the devastating Cyclone Idai and floods.

The presidency in a statement Tuesday said the Namibian government will provide quantities of fish as part of the relief contribution to the nations affected.

"I call on the public and the business community to offer assistance to our brothers and sisters who are affected by this unbearable natural disaster," he added.

Geingob further extended sympathies to families and friends of those who lost their loved ones during Cyclone Idai and related floods.

Cyclone Idai has ravaged parts of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, leading to loss of lives, livestock and destruction of homes and infrastructure.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:31:44|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- A 1.3 million-square-meter underground transportation hub project is expected to start construction in Beijing's Tongzhou District this year.

The overall construction plan has been formulated. Upon completion, it will be one of the largest underground transportation hubs in China, Miao Ziyi, general manager of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei intercity railway investment Co. Ltd., said Tuesday.

The hub, an important juncture linking downtown Beijing and its sub-center, is located in Tongzhou's Yangtuo Village. In the future, railways, including Beijing-Harbin Railway and some Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei intercity railways currently under construction, and several subway lines, will be connected to the transportation hub. There will also be a few bus routes on the ground to transport passengers.

According to the plan, the land above the hub will be used for building a large business district, which will contribute to the construction and operation of the city's rail transit with its revenue.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:51:58|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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HARARE, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) on Tuesday released 3.5 million Euros in emergency aid to Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe following the tropical cyclone Idai, which induced devastating floods in the three countries.

Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides said in a statement the funding will be used to provide logistical support to reach affected people, emergency shelter, hygiene, sanitation, and health care.

He said the aid package was based on needs and 2 million Euros will be provided to Mozambique, 1 million Euros to Malawi and 0.5 million Euros to Zimbabwe.

The money is in addition to 250,000 Euros in initial humanitarian assistance also by the EU.

In addition, the EU was sending technical experts on the ground while its Copernicus satellite system had been activated to identify needs and help humanitarian partners and the local authorities in their response, Stylianides added.

Around 600,000 people in Mozambique and 900,000 in Malawi are thought to have been affected by the cyclone, according to United Nations estimates.

In Zimbabwe, the cyclone-induced floods have left at least 98 people dead, 217 missing and 102 injured, while 42 are marooned.

The cyclone has also destroyed roads, bridges and houses in the affected southern and eastern parts of the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 22:56:59|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping stressed firm implementation of major reforms at the seventh meeting of the central committee for deepening overall reform Tuesday.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, chairman of the Central Military Commission and head of the central committee for deepening overall reform, presided over and addressed the meeting.

Xi stressed efforts to fix the problem of formalities for formalities' sake at the grassroots level through reform, continue to strengthen people's sense of fulfillment, happiness and security, and unswervingly promote the implementation of major reform policies and measures.

Members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and deputy heads of the reform committee Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng also attended the meeting.

Participants agreed that to reach a new stage in the large-scale development of the western region, measures should be taken to focus on priorities, address inadequacies, and shore up points of weakness.

The meeting decided to prioritize ecological and environmental protection and stick to a new path featuring environmental protection and green growth in the western region development.

With joint development of the Belt and Road playing a leading role, the country should accelerate cross-border route and regional hub construction as well as improve the infrastructure network, for a high level of opening-up and economic development.

The meeting also stressed efforts to promote high-quality development and coordinate economic and social development of the population, resources and environment in the western region.

Stating that higher education and research institutes serve as important forces in the process of implementing the innovation-driven development strategy and making China a country of innovators, the participants underlined efforts to streamline management procedures for science and technology projects and reform the system on approval and enforcement of major science and technology projects.

Participants agreed that efforts should be made to promote further integration of artificial intelligence with the real economy, deepen reform and innovation, optimize the institutional environment and boost the innovation vitality of enterprises.

The meeting also stressed strengthening and improving rural governance, calling for the establishment of a law-based modern rural social governance model under which Party committees exercise leadership, the government assumes responsibility, non-governmental actors provide assistance, and the public gets involved.

Efforts are needed to deepen the integration and sharing of public resource trading platforms, innovate the transaction supervision system, and improve the efficiency and fairness of public resource allocation.

The meeting stressed promoting reform in the operation mechanism of the oil and natural gas pipeline network. The country will set up oil and gas pipeline network companies that are state-owned capital controlled and with diversified investors. The country will also work to improve the oil and natural gas resource allocation efficiency and ensure a stable supply of resources.

The meeting stressed speeding up the building of a modern public legal service system that covers urban and rural areas with high efficiency, convenience, and equitable access.

As for reform on firefighting law enforcement, the meeting stressed efforts to develop new ways of regulation and supervision, strengthen management at the source, further streamline administration and delegate powers, and resolutely remove various unreasonable barriers.

The participants called for efforts to defuse prominent tensions and problems and push forward reform in a steady and orderly way as this year will face more challenges and risks in reform and development.

A number of documents were reviewed and adopted at Tuesday's meeting.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 23:02:02|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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WASHINGTON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said recently that he would discuss the Middle East Strategic Alliance, energy and the "threat" of Iran during his upcoming trip to the region.

Pompeo's March 19-23 visit includes stops in Beirut, Jerusalem, and Kuwait City. According to a transcript provided by the State Department on Tuesday showing his briefing with media traveling with him on Monday, Pompeo said there are "multiple missions" during his three-stop tour.

Speaking of his agenda in Kuwait, Pompeo said he will "go back and make sure that we reconnect with them, talk to them about what we're doing with the Middle East Strategic Alliance, some energy issues, and also of course talk about things we talk about with all the states in the Gulf region: the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran."

As for Jerusalem, he said he will discuss Syria with Israeli officials and visit the new U.S. embassy there.

"We'll also talk about issues and how we're jointly going to work against the terror threats they face with Hamas, and Hizballah, and Iran of course as well," he added.

In Lebanon, Pompeo said he will spend plenty of time talking with the government about "how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hizballah present to them."

The State Department said on March 15 that Pompeo will also participate in a meeting in Jerusalem with Israeli, Cypriot, and Greek leaders to discuss key energy and security issues facing the Eastern Mediterranean region.

In Kuwait City, he is expected to lead the U.S. delegation to attend the third U.S.-Kuwait Strategic Dialogue, focusing on such cooperation issues as defense, counterterrorism, cyber-security, strengthening trade and investment ties, and education.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 23:07:03|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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MOGADISHU, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The United States military said Tuesday its special forces conducted an airstrike against al-Shabab terrorists in southern Somalia on Monday, killing three terrorists.

The U.S. Africa Command (Africom) which oversees American troops on the African continent said the latest strike was conducted in cooperation with Somali government in the vicinity of Awdheegle, Lower Shabelle region.

"This airstrike is one element of a larger strategy to support the Somali National Army as it increases pressure on the terrorist network and its recruiting efforts in the region," Africom said in a statement.

The U.S. army also said it was aware of reports alleging civilian casualties resulting from this airstrike, promising to investigate any information on civilian casualties.

"As with any allegation of civilian casualties we receive, U.S. Africa Command will review any information it has about the incident, including any relevant information provided by third parties," it said.

The Monday airstrike is the latest in a series of similar missions by the U.S. forces in Somalia in collaboration with Somali and African Union forces in the Horn of Africa country.

The strikes have largely targeted al-Shabab figureheads and based in southern Somalia where the group still maintains a strong grip in some regions.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 23:12:04|Editor: Yang Yi

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Cambodian Transport Minister Sun Chanthol (C, rear) and Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Wang Wentian (L, rear) witness the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and China's Shenzhen 4PX Express in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on March 19, 2019. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Cambodia and Shenzhen 4PX Express, part of the Alibaba Cainiao Logistics Group, signed here on Tuesday a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on building an ecosystem to nurture e-commerce and related logistics. (Xinhua/Phearum)

PHNOM PENH, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Cambodia and Shenzhen 4PX Express, part of the Alibaba Cainiao Logistics Group, signed here on Tuesday a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on building an ecosystem to nurture e-commerce and related logistics.

The partnership would help build capacity for Cambodian small and medium enterprises to put their products onto the global scene through Alibaba platform as well as to tap into global online products and services for Cambodia, according to Cambodian Transport Minister Sun Chanthol

The Cambodian government is committed to fostering an investor friendly ecosystem to help address the challenges in logistics and efficiency of the flow of goods and services, he added.

The ecosystem, initiated by 4PX, UNDP and partners, will eventually empower Cambodian consumers to buy and merchants to sell worldwide without any difficulties, and help the country to benefit from global market, according to Shenzhen 4PX Express.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 23:12:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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Wang Yang (R), chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, holds talks with a Lao delegation led by Xaysomphone Phomvihane, president of the Lao Front for National Construction, in Beijing, capital of China, March 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese top political advisor Wang Yang held talks in Beijing Tuesday with a Lao delegation led by Xaysomphone Phomvihane, president of the Lao Front for National Construction.

Wang, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top advisory body, said that in recent years, top leaders of the two ruling parties in China and Laos made several exchanges of visits, and reached consensus on building a China-Laos community of shared future, and pointed out the direction for the development of bilateral relations in the new era.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China-Laos comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation, and therefore the bilateral relationship has ushered in an important stage of building on past achievements and seeking further progress, said Wang.

Wang said the CPPCC is willing to work with the Lao Front for National Construction to deepen the exchange of experience in participation in and deliberation of state affairs, and advance mutual learning, to consolidate the public support for the development of bilateral ties.

Xaysomphone expressed willingness to maintain efforts to deepen exchanges and cooperation with the CPPCC and promote the development of relations between Laos and China.

After the talks, they jointly attended the signing ceremony of the cooperation agreement between the two sides.
File Photo: Devin Nunes speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., Feb. 24, 2018. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

WASHINGTON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- A prominent U.S. Republican lawmaker Monday filed a lawsuit against social media platform Twitter and several of its users for a total of more than 250 million U.S. dollars.

Devin Nunes, a California lawmaker who is the top Republican in the House Intelligence Committee, said Twitter had been limiting conservative voices and allowing several parody accounts to defame him.

The parody accounts were also listed as defendants.

"Twitter, by its actions, intended to generate and proliferate the false and defamatory statements about Plaintiff in order to influence the outcome of the 2018 Congressional election," the lawsuit said.

U.S. President Donald Trump signaled his support for Nunes' move by retweeting a news report on the story.

The lawsuit was filed against the backdrop of the increasing tension between tech giants and some conservative politicians, who accuse the tech giants of being biased against conservative politicians and voters.

The rare move from Nunes has become the center of a heated debate on social media. Supporters hailed the lawsuit as a brave move, while critics mocked Nunes, saying the lawsuit actually helped publicize the parody accounts.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 23:22:08|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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Li Zhanshu (R), chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, meets with Xaysomphone Phomvihane, president of the Lao Front for National Construction, in Beijing, capital of China, March 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Shen Hong)

BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Li Zhanshu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), on Tuesday met with Xaysomphone Phomvihane, president of the Lao Front for National Construction.

Hailing that China and Laos are "good neighbors, friends, comrades and partners," Li said China attaches great importance to ties with Laos and stands ready to work together with the country to promote the Belt and Road cooperation guided by the consensus reached by top leaders of both governing parties and countries.

The NPC is willing to intensify exchanges with the Lao legislative body to provide legal guarantees for bilateral friendly ties and lift the ties to a new level, said Li.

Xaysomphone said Laos is ready to build a Laos-China community with a shared future, adding that he believes the Belt and Road cooperation will inject strong impetus into the development of Laos and benefit both countries and peoples.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 23:27:09|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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JAKARTA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia has revised down revenue target in tourism sector this year to 17.6 billion U.S. dollars from the initial target set at 20 billion dollars due to string of disasters in the first several months this year, Indonesia Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said on Monday.

"After we recalculated, our revenue projection in tourism sector may reach 17.6 billion U.S. dollars this year. Disasters are unpredictable. That's why we came up with that amount," the minister said on the sidelines of a tourism coordination meeting between government and the central bank here.

The minister, however, said that government's target to receive 20 million foreign tourists this year remained unchanged.

Revision of tourism revenue target was referring to the hampered targets last year following strong earthquakes, tsunami and a plane crash, the minister said.

Those disasters have led to unfulfilled targets as the nation only received 16.1 billion dollars of revenues in tourism sector, lower than 17 million dollars targeted last year, he added.

The disasters also made government missed the target to receive 17 million foreign tourists last year as it only received actual visit of 15.6 million ones.

To achieve targets for this year, government has set strategies, among others by providing more facilities for budget airlines serving flights to Indonesia and making Singapore as a main flight hub to enter Indonesia, he said.

Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said that Indonesia would open a new airport in Yogyakarta next month, designated to serve international flights.

Besides that, projects to expand runways in Jakarta and Bali airports are also underway at present to accommodate more flights to Indonesian destinations through those main gates, he added.

Apart from the disasters, Indonesia has positive indicators in economic and several other aspects that make government optimistic to cope with the targets, he added.

Meanwhile, Governor of Indonesian central bank Perry Warjiyo said that tourism sector apparently has turned to a major driver to the nation's economy.

It has seized top ranks of Indonesia's forex gainers besides palm oil and coal commodities in the last few years.

Should government is able to achieve the 17.6 billion dollars target, Perry said tourism will become the second largest forex contributor to the country after palm oil commodity this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 23:42:15|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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VILNIUS, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The current agricultural policy of the European Union (EU) is "not efficient," therefore it should be reformed, and the funds allocated to the agricultural sector should be linked to the results achieved, Klaus-Heiner Lehne, head of the European Court of Auditors (ECA), said here on Tuesday.

"We believe that the whole agricultural sector should be reformed in order to save money and use it more efficiently," Lehne was quoted as telling reporters during his first official visit here.

"We often support the agricultural industry as such, in principle, yet we don't support people who effectively cultivate the land and preserve the countryside for the future generations," the ECA chief noted.

During his visit, the EU's chief auditor met with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis.

Grybauskaite underlined that Lithuania was not satisfied with the drastic cuts to EU funding suggested in the EU's new budget, therefore the Baltic country had asked for a transitional period.

"The funding assigned to Lithuania in the new multiannual financial framework is not fair, since it suggests drastic cuts to cohesion funds, and direct payments to farmers are still way behind the EU average, therefore Lithuania asks for a transitional period and gradual cuts in EU support," Grybauskaite was quoted as saying in a statement released by her office after her meeting with the ECA president.

Prime Minister Skvernelis said in a separate statement that as regards EU funding, Lithuania was seeking a balance "between traditional policies and new priorities."

"The quality of the final agreement on the multiannual EU budget is the most important for us, not the speed of the negotiations. The future funding of the cohesion and common agricultural policies and the financing of the closure of the Ignalina nuclear power plant are the most important issues for Lithuania," Skvernelis said.

The EU countries are currently negotiating the new multiannual financial framework for the 2021-2027 period.

The European Court of Auditors is the EU's independent external auditor. It is tasked with checking whether EU funds are raised, spent, achieve value for money and accounted for in accordance with the existing regulations.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-19 23:47:17|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ARUSHA, Tanzania, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme on Tuesday pledged to support the health sector in Tanzania's Zanzibar by providing specialist doctors.

Olivier Adam, Executive Coordinator of United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme, made the pledge during his talks with his host, Zanzibar President Ali Mohamed Shein.

The two discussed a number of issues including ways on how to cement the existing relationship.

Adam also pledged continued support to Zanzibar's development endeavour, noting that UNV works with experienced personnel who can assist Zanzibar in a number of sectors.

According to him, UNV programme contributes to peace and development through volunteerism worldwide.

It works with partners to integrate qualified, highly motivated and well-supported UN volunteers into development programming and promote the value and global recognition of volunteerism.

For his part, Shein called on the UNV to assist Zanzibar for science subject teachers in secondary schools.

He said despite government efforts to sensitize students to learn subjects, a deficit of teachers is a major challenge.

He appealed to the UNV to help Zanzibar with specialist doctors to conduct complicated surgeries as the government strives to train its own doctors.

He also commended UNV programme for its crucial roles in the implementation of different development projects in the archipelago.

Shein revealed that the UNV programme has for years supported Zanzibar's development in the health, agriculture and several other sectors.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 00:07:21|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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PHNOM PENH, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Another five of the 118 former Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) senior members, banned from politics in late 2017, were allowed to return to politics on Tuesday, according to royal decrees.

Cambodia's acting Head of State Samdech Say Chhum signed five separate royal decrees to restore their political rights, a day after their requests to Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen through the Ministry of Interior.

The five are former CNRP lawmakers Ou Chanrath, Kang Kimhak, Chiv Kakta, Tep Sothy and former party board member Chan Seila.

Say Chhum, president of the Senate, has served as the acting head of state since Sunday as King Norodom Sihamoni is in China for a regular medical check-up.

To date, nine of the 118 have had their banned political rights lifted after filing requests, while one has died.

The restoration of their political freedom came after the country's parliament amended in December the Law on Political Parties to allow banned politicians to return to politics.

Under the legal change, King Norodom Sihamoni can pardon banned politicians at the request of the prime minister.

In November 2017, the Supreme Court barred 118 former CNRP senior members from politics for five years after it dissolved the party following the arrest of party president Kem Sokha on "treason" charges.

Sokha, 65, is currently on bail at his home in capital Phnom Penh awaiting trial.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 00:12:22|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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RAMALLAH, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Tuesday called on Hamas to immediately stop its "brutal" suppression of the popular protests in the Gaza Strip and implement reconciliation agreements.

In a press statement, the PLO said the youths in Gaza "have fair and right demands to cancel high taxes illegally collected."

"Attacking peaceful demonstrators brutally and using electric clubs, opening live ammunition ... raiding homes and detaining journalists are all seriously disgusting," the statement added.

Over the past few days, protests were organized in the Gaza Strip against the deterioration of the living situation in the coastal enclave that Hamas has been ruling since 2007.

However, Hamas accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party of being behind the protests.

The photos and videos published by social media activists show Hamas police dispersing demonstrators in the streets in various towns in Gaza.
File Photo: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro reacts during the presidential inauguration ceremony in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 10, 2019. (Xinhua/Andrea Romero)

WASHINGTON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of the Treasury on Tuesday slapped sanctions on a Venezuelan gold mining company and its leader, accusing them of supporting the nation's President Nicolas Maduro.

The sanctioned targets are CVG Compania General de Mineria de Venezuela CA, or Minerven, the Venezuelan state-run ferrous metals mining company, and its president Adrian Antonio Perdomo Mata, the Treasury said in a statement.

The Treasury accused them of participating in "the illicit gold operations that have continued to prop up" the Maduro government. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement that Washington will "aggressively pursue those involved with Maduro's reckless illicit gold trade."

As a result of Tuesday's sanctions, all property and assets in property of the company and its chief in the United States are blocked and all U.S. citizens are prohibited from dealing with them, according to the statement.

This is the sixth round of sanctions since January by the Trump administration to pile up pressure on incumbent Venezuelan President Maduro.

The Trump administration recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the nation's "interim president" on Jan. 23, days after Maduro was inaugurated for a second term as Venezuelan president.

In response to Washington's support for Guaido, Maduro announced he was severing "diplomatic and political" ties with the United States.
An image provided by the European Space Agency shows an artist's impression of the Venus Express as it enters an orbit around Venus, which took place on April 11, 2006.

MOSCOW, March 19 (Xinhua) -- A Russian-U.S. interplanetary probe to Venus will be possibly launched in 2027, said Lyudmila Zasova, co-chair of the bilateral scientific working group of the mission.

"We are discussing launch windows for 2026, end of 2027, 2029 and 2031. Even if the funding starts this year, there will be no time left for the first date. Most likely it may happen in 2027," Zasova told RIA Novosti news agency in an interview published Tuesday.

The costs of Venera-D, a joint project to land on Venus, will be discussed in Moscow in October, she said.

Japan and Europe are ready to join the project by providing their scientific equipment, Zasova said.

The mission was first proposed in 2003 by the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 2013, the United States became interested in the project and in the same year a joint working group was set up.

But the project was suspended in 2014 due to Crimea and was resumed the next year with the launch of the probe preliminarily scheduled for 2026.

The probe, involving Russian orbital and landing gear and a small U.S. scientific station, is expected to be launched by the Russian Angara-A5 heavy rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far Eastern Amur Region.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 02:08:03|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ATHENS, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras pledged on Tuesday more efforts to reverse the brain drain, as a new survey showed that 60 percent of Greeks living and working abroad wish to return home.

During a visit at the National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos" in Athens, Tsipras discussed with scientists the topic "From brain drain to brain gain", according to an e-mailed press release from his office.

In the past four years the government increased funds directed to research and efforts to give opportunities to young scientists to return and offer their services to the country, contributing to the economic recovery after the acute debt crisis which hit Greece in 2009, he said.

Six in 10 Greeks who live and work abroad wish to return to Greece, according to a survey of the National Documentation Centre that collects and preserves scientific and cultural content and data in digital form.

The 60 percent wish to return home citing the good quality of life in Greece, and 42 percent cited the wish to be close to their families as the main reason, according to the survey published by Greek national news agency AMNA.

The key prerequisite for 44 percent of expats to return to Greece is a good income, while 36 percent said that they would make the step if they could find jobs in their specialization.

During the debt crisis, Greece has seen an exodus of its young talents.

According to data from the central Bank of Greece, some 427,000 Greeks have left the country in the past decade. Half of them were highly educated and qualified youth.

In the peak of the crisis in 2013, Greeks aged under 25 faced unemployment rates of 60 percent.

The figure dropped to 39.5 percent in December 2018, according to the latest data from Greece's statistics authority, but more needs to be done, the Greek leader acknowledged.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 02:13:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DAMASCUS, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday discussed the situation in Syria's Eastern Euphrates region and Idlib Province with visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergey Kuzhugetovich Shoygu, state news agency SANA reported.

Both sides agreed to continue joint work to find suitable solutions to the issues of Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria, and the Eastern Euphrates River region in eastern Syria, which is largely controlled by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

It's worth noting that the United States is behind the SDF in its push in the Eastern Euphrates River region in eastern Syria while Turkey enjoys big sway over the rebels in Idlib.

Assad and Shoygu also discussed the "high coordination" between the two countries in the anti-terror efforts and the achievements made in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) militant group and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front in Syria.

The visit of Shoygu comes a day after the chiefs of staff of Iran and Iraq visited Syria and held meetings with Syrian Defense Minister Ali Abdullah Ayyoub and then Assad.

During the meeting with the two officials, Ayyoub said the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) must embark on reconciliation with the government, or the areas under their control will be retaken by the Syrian army.

The Syrian official said the government will completely wrest control over all territory including Idlib sooner or later, through reconciliations or military force.

The Syrian government has long said it would retrieve Idlib from the ultra-radical rebels. However, a planned military campaign was put on hold late last year when Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed on setting up a demilitarized zone in Idlib.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 02:13:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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WASHINGTON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Two U.S. detectors to find ripples in space and time known as gravitational waves will restart their third round of scientific observation work in April for a one-year observation.

Joseph Giaime, LIGO's Observatory head, told Xinhua in an email that the observatory intended to start observation on or around April 1.

The two large L-shaped detectors, respectively located in Washington state and Louisiana, are separated by thousands of kilometers in order to detect ripples coming in from deep space as they pass through Earth.

David Shoemaker, spokesman for LIGO Scientific Collaboration, told Xinhua that "We are pretty confident, based on observations in the past, that we will regularly see binary black holes and probably several binary neutron star coalescences."

In August 2017, the twin detectors detected the gravitational wave signal from a binary neutron star merger. They're ripples in the fabric of the universe predicted by Albert Einstein over a century ago.

It came after the first-ever discovery of gravitational waves by LIGO announced in February 2016. It was caused by collision of two black holes.

LIGO has been shut down since August 2017 after it wrapped up its nine-month observation during which engineers installed hardware upgrades.

Progress has been made on commissioning the two LIGO and one VIRGO instruments, and all three have exceeded the best sensitivity seen, according to Shoemaker.

VIRGO interferometer is a European counterpart to LIGO, working together with LIGO to locate the source of gravitational waves.

However, Shoemaker said it was "still very uncertain estimates" of detecting in the coming year with the present sensitivity the gravitational waves from other sources, such as black hole and neutron star coalescence.

"We search continuously for all the known signals, and also remain open to unexpected signals," said Shoemaker.

More scientific instruments will be applied to study the gravitational wave in coming years.

Japan's underground Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector is expected to start working in late 2019 on the same principle of LIGO and VIRGO.

China plans to launch its first satellite to test the technologies of the space-based gravitational wave detection program "Tianqin" by the end of 2019. Also, a telescope to detect the primordial gravitational waves, will be up and running in 2020 in China.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 03:43:24|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BUDAPEST, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Nothing jeopardizes the independence of judges in the new administrative branch of the Hungarian judiciary system, the Hungarian government declared here on Tuesday in reaction to the Venice Commission's report released on Monday.

"The Venice Commission adopted a balanced report on the establishment of independent administrative courts, which also appreciated the goals and efforts of the Hungarian government," Laszlo Trocsanyi, Hungary's justice minister, said here, quoted by the government's official website.

"In addition to professional criticisms, the report adopted by the Venice Commission with a full consensus also highlights the positive features of the contemplated system and recognizes the efforts the Hungarian government is making in order for the Hungarian system of administrative courts to fully comply with the traditions of public law and general European standards," Trocsanyi explained.

The Venice Commission is the Council of Europe's advisory body of independent experts in constitutional law.

But the findings of the Venice Commission also highlighted several critical aspects of the Hungarian project: "The laws regulating the administrative courts lack effective brakes and counterbalances," adding that the main problem was that "too much power was concentrated in the hands of a few people."

According to the Venice Commission, the broad powers of the minister of justice to appoint and promote judges "raise questions about the lack of genuine remedy procedures."

"Amendments pending before Parliament and constructively supported by Minister Trocsanyi would make a considerable part of criticism moot. I hope that our recommendations will be followed," Gianni Buquicchio, president of the Venice Commission, tweeted on Monday.

Nevertheless, the Venice Commission has acknowledged that states had sovereign rights to regulate the area, to establish such a separate court system.

The Hungarian Parliament adopted a controversial law setting up a supreme court on administrative matters in December 2018.

Opposition parties and NGOs have severely criticized the law establishing the new courts, arguing that it would undermine judicial independence.

The Hungarian government has pledged that the new courts will be independent of political interference.

The new administrative courts are planned to become operational on Jan. 1, 2020.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 03:48:25|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIRUT, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese Minister for the Displaced Saleh Gharib said Tuesday Syrian refugees in Lebanon will return to their homeland "soon," local media reported.

"We will help return of Syrian refugees to Syria soon and we have no information about the attempt of new refugees to move to Lebanon," Gharib was quoted as saying by Elnashra, an online independent newspaper.

Gharib's remarks came following comments by the leader of the Tawhid Party Wiam Wahhab saying that refugees will not go back to Syria but new ones will move to Lebanon, Turkey and Europe.

Wahhab attributed the attempt of new refugees to enter Lebanon to the economic slowdown in Syria.

Elnashra quoted sources involved in the matter as saying that Lebanon's general security is taking all the necessary measures to prevent Syrian refugees from illegally entering Lebanon.

"There is also a political consensus in Lebanon about the need to stop hosting new Syrian refugees," the sources said.

The sources added that economic slowdown in Syria is not a reason for more refugees to come to Lebanon.

Lebanon is hosting 976,000 registered Syrian refugees according to the UN data, while the government estimates the true number of Syrian refugees in the country at 1.5 million.

Lebanese officials have been negotiating with the international community the need to help Syrian refugees return home.
File Photo: Wu Haitao (front), Chinese deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, addresses a Security Council meeting on the humanitarian situation in Syria, at the UN headquarters in New York, Feb. 26, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, March 19 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy said Tuesday that China is firmly opposed to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and their means of delivery.

"China has consistently and strictly implemented its international non-proliferation obligations and committed to the political settlement of non-proliferation hotspot issues, and has made positive contribution to this end," Wu Haitao, the charge d'affaires of China's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, told a UN Security Council meeting on non-proliferation of WMDs.

"China is ready to further deepen its cooperation with the committee (Security Council 1540 Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1540) and will continue to work with all other countries to make positive contribution to the perfection of international non-proliferation regime, global non-proliferation governance, and lasting peace and security for all," he said.

The Chinese envoy expressed his appreciation for the "long-term joint efforts of all parties," noting that "the international non-proliferation consensus has steadily deepened."

"Its mechanism has gradually improved, and the cooperation has further deepened," he added.

However, the global security landscape "remains complex and grave," he said. "In a globalizing world with technological advances, the risk for non-state actors, particularly terrorists, to gain access to WMDs and related materials and technologies still exists."

Under the new circumstances, the international community should continue to "deepen cooperation and further strengthen global governance in the area of non-proliferation," he noted.

The envoy then put forward a four-point proposal by placing first the need to uphold multilateralism.

"First, there is a need to uphold multilateralism and foster an enabling security environment," he said.

All countries need to embrace "the concept of common, comprehensive, collaborative and sustainable security...and eliminate the threat of proliferation from its root," he said.

"Second, the international community should uphold international rules and consolidate the international non-proliferation regime," he continued.

"All parties and countries should effectively maintain the authority, universality, and effectiveness of the international non-proliferation regime, effectively avoid non-state actors, especially terrorists, from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and related materials and technologies," said the envoy.

"Thirdly, we must strengthen state responsibility and promote pragmatic cooperation," he said, noting that the primary responsibility for non-proliferation "should be borne by governments."

"All countries should deepen non-proliferation and pragmatic cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect, focus on meeting the international system requirements of developing countries in the field of non-proliferation, and help developing countries strengthen their capacity building," Wu added.

"Fourth, the committee should adhere to the principle of consensus and ensure the primacy of member states in non-proliferation efforts," he noted.

On April 28, 2004, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1540 under Chapter VII of the UN Charter which affirms that the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery constitute a threat to international peace and security.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 03:58:26|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIRUT, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri called upon all Lebanese officials to stop political bickering which is weighing heavily on the country, the National News Agency reported.

"Political bickering is killing Lebanon," Hariri said during a dialogue on Tuesday at a conference tackling sustainable tourism.

Hariri said that the country will improve at all levels if Lebanese officials succeed to avoid political squabbles.

The prime minister said that tourists have been avoiding Lebanon in the past few years due to the complicated and unstable political situation in the country.

Hariri noted that tourism contributes to 20 percent of GDP in Lebanon.

"I want this sector to contribute 40 percent of GDP in the coming years because this will have a positive influence on other sectors such as agriculture, industry, trade and the local airlines," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 04:23:32|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIRUT, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Tuesday reaffirmed its support to Lebanese Army, while vowing to maintain peace on the Lebanon-Israel border.

UNIFIL head General Stefano Del Col was quoted by the National News Agency as making the pledge during a ceremony to mark the 41st anniversary of the UNIFIL peacekeeping mission in south Lebanon.

Del Col said that the UNIFIL will spare no efforts to protect the civilians in the areas of its operation regardless of the source of aggression against Lebanon.

He added that the UNIFIL will continue its cooperation with the Lebanese Army to find a solution to the Lebanese-Israeli conflict.

"This is why we are keen to implement (UN) Resolution 1701 which is the only solution to long-term peace," Del Col said.

The resolution called for an end to the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, deployment of the Lebanese Army along the Israeli border, and establishment of a weapons-free zone south of the Litani River.

It also urged the Lebanese government to fully respect the Blue Line that demarcates the Lebanon-Israel border following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
A screengrab of footage released by the Russian Defense Ministry shows Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (C) talking with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (R) on March 19, 2019.

MOSCOW, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu paid a working visit to Syria under instruction of President Vladimir Putin and held talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday.

Shoigu delivered a message from Putin to al-Assad, and they discussed fighting international terrorism in Syria, various aspects of security in the Middle East and post-conflict settlement, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a press release.

They exchanged views on expanding the possibilities for the voluntary return of refugees and temporarily displaced persons to their places of residence in Syria, as well as providing humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people.

Syria with the support of Russia achieved significant success in the fight against international terrorism, and they saved the Syrian state and created conditions for the return of citizens to a peaceful life, Shoigu told al-Assad.

"However, not everyone is satisfied with the successes of the Syrian government in restoring a peaceful life. Western countries are trying to minimize any positive changes in Syria and create new obstacles to ending the crisis," Shoigu said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 05:13:42|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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WASHINGTON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Renewable electricity generation in the United States set a new record in 2018, according to a report released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Tuesday.

According to EIA, renewable electricity generation reached 742 million megawatthours (MWh) in 2018, nearly doubled the 382 million MWh produced in 2008.

In 2018, renewable electricity generation provided 17.6 percent of power generation in the United States, while wind and solar generation contributed nearly 90 percent of the increase in U.S. renewable electricity between 2008 and 2018.

From 2008 to 2018, wind generation rose from 55 million MWh to 275 million MWh, while solar generation increased from 2 million MWh to 96 million MWh, according to EIA.

EIA explained that the recent growth in renewable technologies in the United States resulted from federal and state policies, as well as declining costs.

Federal policies such as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, the Production Tax Credit and Investment Tax Credits for wind and solar projects have also contributed to the development, said EIA.

Meanwhile, economies of scale have led to continued cost declines, as more wind and solar projects have come online, said EIA.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 05:43:50|Editor: mingmei

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BELGRADE, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Children born after 1999 in Serbia, aged from five to nine, show an increased tendency of developing malignant diseases, showed a study conducted by Serbian institutions and published on Tuesday, which analyzes the health impact of the bombing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 20 years ago.

The scientific study was commissioned by the Commission for Researching Health Impacts of the NATO Bombing in the parliamentary and was conducted by the Institute of Public Health "Milan Jovanovic Batut".

The commission's President Darko Laketic said at a press conference in the Serbian parliament on Tuesday that according to the research, children born after 1999 were more sensitive to the onset of malignant diseases of the blood, and that it is essential to identify the causative agent.

The bombing started on March 24, 1999, and during the 78 days, NATO deployed depleted uranium bombs.

Laketic said that after 1999, there were cases of blood disorders among children that raised suspicion that some generations were exposed to a certain toxin that made them sensitive to illness.

The research, said Laketic, unambiguously shows that several generations in a certain sensitive period were exposed to a certain factor that made them more susceptible to certain malignant diseases compared to some other generations of the same age.

He explained that the frequency of malignancies in children born before and after the NATO bombing, was analyzed and that it was determined that most common tumors that occur in children from birth to four years are neuroectodermal.

The commission further determined that malignant blood disorders occur to children between five and nine years of age, while children from 10 to 14 years of age most often develop brain tumors.

From 15 to 18 years, solid tumors are most commonly reported.

Laketic reminded that the Commission for Researching Health Impacts of the NATO Bombing was founded last year by the Serbia's National Assembly on the proposal of Speaker Maja Gojkovic.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 05:43:50|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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RABAT, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Morocco and Rwanda signed Tuesday in capital Rabat 12 agreements to step up cooperation in several areas.

These agreements were signed during the first session of the High Joint Committee between the two countries under the chairmanship of the Moroccan foreign minister, Nasser Bourita, and his Rwandan counterpart, Richard Sezibera.

The two countries signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate bilateral trade and a protocol to develop economic partnership and the promotion of private initiatives and sustainable development.

They also inked another MoU in the field of tourism to develope cooperation between the various institutions in charge of promoting this sector.

In the energy sector, the two sides signed a framework agreement to set up a framework for cooperation as well as another deal to establish cooperation in the areas of mining, geology and hydrocarbons.

An MoU in environment and sustainable development was also signed, which aims to promote bilateral cooperation in the areas of environment and rational management of natural resources.

In the fields of land use planning, urban planning, housing and city policy, a Protocol of Agreement was initialled by the two parties on the exchange of expertise and good practice.

Other agreements and MoUs were reached legal issues, diplomacy and education.

Bourita commended the steady development of relations between Morocco and Rwanda since the visits by President Paul Kagame to Morocco in June 2016 and by the Moroccan King Mohammed VI to Rwanda in October of the same year.

He noted that this first session of the High Joint Committee was an opportunity to review the progress made in carrying out the projects initiated by the two leaders, adding that most of which are at an advanced stage.

The minister said this meeting represents an important institutional mechanism that will help better structure bilateral relations, ensure a permanent monitoring of commitments and identify new areas for cooperation.

For his part, Sezibera commended the new dynamic in bilateral relations, based on the strategic vision and commitment to build a strong, dignified and confident Africa.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 05:58:53|Editor: xuxin

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A Palestinian inspects the damaged house after Israeli soldiers killed Omar Amin Abu Laila, a Palestinian, in the West Bank village of Abwein near Ramallah city, March 20, 2019. Omar Amin Abu Laila, a 19 year-old Palestinian suspected of killing two Israelis, was shot dead by Israeli forces in a crossfire on Tuesday night, two days after a manhunt, the army said. Omar Amin Abu Laila, who carried out a deadly shooting and stabbing attack on Sunday, was tracked down in a house in the West Bank village of Abwein, according to Palestinian media reports. (Xinhua/Nidal Eshtayeh)

JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH, March 19 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian suspected of killing two Israelis was shot dead by Israeli forces in a crossfire on Tuesday night, two days after a manhunt, the army said.

Omar Amin Abu Laila, who carried out a deadly shooting and stabbing attack on Sunday, was tracked down in a house in the West Bank village of Abwein near Ramallah city, according to Palestinian media reports.

A short army notice said "the terrorist was tracked down and killed in fire exchanges with the Israel security forces."

Israel's Shin Bet security agency said in a statement that intelligence tips led the forces to the building where Abu Laila holed up.

"As the special forces were closing in on the building, the terrorist opened fire but was killed during an exchange of fire," the statement read, adding no Israeli troops were injured.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commended the Shin Bet and army for finding the attacker, saying "Israel's long hand reaches anyone who harms our civilians and soldiers."

On Sunday, Abu Laila, 19, stabbed a soldier and took his assault rifle before a shooting spree outside the settlement of Ariel, according to the army.

He killed a 19-year-old Israeli soldier and a 47-year-old father, who was a resident of the settlement of Eli. Another soldier was seriously injured.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 06:08:58|Editor: xuxin

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Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, UAE vice president and ruler of Dubai, speaks during the ceremony of signing the charter for the Arab Group for Space Collaboration in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, March 19, 2019. Eleven Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on Tuesday set up the first Arab space organization, whose first project will be developing a satellite to monitor environmental and climate changes. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, UAE vice president and ruler of Dubai, attended the ceremony of signing the charter for the Arab Group for Space Collaboration, held on the opening day of Global Space Congress in Abu Dhabi. (Xinhua)

DUBAI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Eleven Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on Tuesday set up the first Arab space organization, whose first project will be developing a satellite to monitor environmental and climate changes.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, UAE vice president and ruler of Dubai, attended the ceremony of signing the charter for the Arab Group for Space Collaboration, held on the opening day of Global Space Congress in Abu Dhabi.

Sheikh Mohammed said the group's first project would be developing a satellite named as 813, the year the House of Wisdom in Baghdad reached the height of its reputation. The satellite will be developed in the UAE.

He noted that the House brought together scientists and translated books of knowledge, and became a place for the region to unleash its scientific energy.

The Global Space Congress, held on March 19-21, is one of the key events bringing together space sector leaders of the Middle East and North Africa region.

The UAE cabinet on March 11 adopted the National Space Strategy 2030, which includes 36 objectives and 119 initiatives benefiting more than 85 entities in the UAE.

The strategy is seen as the general framework for UAE's space industry and activities until 2030.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 06:18:59|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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by Eric J. Lyman

ROME, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Delta Airlines emerged as the last remaining suitor for struggling Italian carrier Alitalia, though analysts said Delta's initial investment in Alitalia was too small to help the Italian carrier reverse its fortunes.

Britain-based discount carrier EasyJet had been involved in a proposed takeover deal that included Delta and Italian rail company Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane. But on Monday, EasyJet formally announced it was no longer interested in pursuing a deal. Though Ferrovie dello Stato remains part of a deal, Delta is now the only remaining airline involved.

In a statement e-mailed to journalists, Delta said it "confirms that it continues to explore ways to work with Ferrovie dello Stato and maintain [its] partnership with Alitalia."

Rescuing Alitalia remains a priority for both of the parties backing Italy's government as they head toward European Parliament elections in May.

"There are many areas where the Five-Star Movement and the League disagree, but rescuing Alitalia is one where they are on the same page," Olivieri Fiorini, a political affairs analyst, said in an interview.

But it is not clear that Delta is willing to invest enough money in Alitalia to help turn the airline around.

When the discussions included EasyJet and Ferrovie dello Stato, the three companies were expected to jointly invest at least 400 million euros (455 million U.S. dollars), and a 40-percent stake in the new company. Even that amount was considered too low to help Alitalia, most analysts said, arguing the company needed at least 1 billion euros (1.14 billion U.S. dollars) to engineer a turnaround.

On its own, reports are that Delta will invest a quarter of that amount, 100 million euros (114 million U.S. dollars) for a ten-percent stake in Alitalia. The company could double its ownership within four years, but doing so is not certain, according to media reports.

Delta's investment will have a limited impact for a company reportedly losing as much as 1.2 million euros (1.35 million U.S. dollars) a day.

"Delta is putting a chip on the table and will see how things develop," Lucio Cillis, an analyst and the author of "Everything you wanted to know about Alitalia," told Xinhua.

"On its own, Delta investing 100 million euros (114 million U.S. dollars) is not that significant," Cillissaid. "That's the cost of a new mid-range commercial jet. It would cover Alitalia's losses for only three months or so."

Cillis went on: "If Delta invests just 100 million euros (114 million U.S. dollars), then the question becomes, where will Alitalia find the other 900 million euros (1 billion U.S. dollars)?"

Ferrovie dello Stato is not expected to inject a substantial sum into Alitalia, and the Italian state has already loaned Alitalia hundreds of millions of euros. Adding more would run afoul of European Union rules limiting state aid for private companies. (1 euro = 1.14 U.S. dollars)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 05:33:48|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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LONDON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Downing Street confirmed Tuesday that British Prime Minister Theresa May will write to European Council President Donald Tusk asking for Britain's departure from the bloc to be delayed.

The latest development came after the bombshell decision by the Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow to stop May putting her Brexit deal to politicians for a third time.

Media in London quoted an official Downing Street spokesman as saying it has plunged Britain into a constitutional crisis.

Worldwide media converged on Westminster expecting May to present her deal to politicians for a third time on Tuesday or Wednesday. It had already been defeated by a record 230 at the first attempt, and 149 at the second.

Instead there was an urgent Cabinet meeting of May's most senior ministers to discuss the crisis at 10 Downing Street.

Bercow ruled Monday that he would block May presenting her deal for a vote by MPs unless it was substantially different to the deal already rejected.

After the urgent Cabinet meeting, May's official spokesman confirmed the prime minister will write to Tusk seeking to extend Britain's departure date beyond March 29.

The spokesman would not elaborate on the length of a delay May will ask for. But May said last week she would like an extension running until June 30, or a longer period if her deal is not ratified by the British Parliament.

May's spokesman insisted the prime minister has an "absolute determination" to make sure Britain leaves the EU with a deal as soon as possible.

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said at a press conference in Brussels Tuesday that May that should not take it for granted that the EU will agree to an extension of Britain's departure date, scheduled in just 10 days.

At the press conference in Brussels, Barnier said delaying Brexit could bring economic and political costs, and the EU would want reasons for an extension.

Any extension will need the support of the other 27 EU members.

May will meet the leaders of the other 27 EU members at an EU summit taking place on Thursday.

May is due to take questions Wednesday at her usually PMQ's, Prime Minister's Questions, in the House of Commons when she could be asked to comment on the latest EU situation.

The next major Brexit debate is scheduled to take place in the House of Commons on Monday when MPs will be told the result of May's talks.

Under current legislation Britain's membership of the EU will come to an end next week, on May 29, unless a change is made to the law that set the departure date.
Stiri pe aceeasi tema

- The Acting Prime Minister Florin Citu had a meeting on Tuesday, at Victoria Palace, with the president of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu, who is carrying out an official visit to Bucharest. According to a press release sent by the Government, talks were focused on measures for a strengthened

- The chairman of PSD (Social Democratic Party) declared on Tuesday, in Parliament, after discussions with PNL (National Liberal Party), UDMR (Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania) and the parliamentary group of national minorities, that the future governing program should contain short and medium

- Constructorul japonez de automobile a lansat, la inceputul lunii iunie, a doua generatie NX. Modelul nipon este construit pe o platforma noua si poate fi comandat, in premiera, in versiune plug-in hybrid. Acum, noul Lexus NX este disponibil si in Romania. Clientii de aici au al dispozitie patru niveluri

- A number of 19,987 people infected with SARS-CoV-2, 367 children included, are currently hospitalized in Romania, the Strategic Communication Group (GCS) announced on Tuesday. According to the cited source, 1,876 patients, 32 children included, are in intensive care. Also, 152,580 people

- The Government communicated that Prime Minister Florin Citu has interrupted, on Tuesday, the press statement that he was holding at the Parliament Palace after the meeting of the National Liberal Party's Executive Bureau because he believed his statements "are no longer of interest to journalists"

- Chairman of the National Liberal Party (PNL), Prime Minister Florin Citu, said on Tuesday that in Parliament, where two censure motions are submitted, there is a "competition" of those who want to "destabilize Romania". He argued that the reasoning of the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR)

- The Government is considering raising the minimum salary earlier this year, given price increases, and the proposed increases are between 8% and 12%, Labor Minister Raluca Turcan said on Tuesday in Ploiesti, agerpres reports. "At the moment we are in the negotiation stage between employers and unions,

- Minister of Defense Nicolae Ciuca was present on Tuesday at the military and religious ceremony marking the end of the major restoration, rehabilitation and conservation operations of the Commemorative Cross to the Romanian Heroes of the First World War also called the Heroes' Cross on Mount Cairaman.
Ne-a batut Rapid cu 2-0 si FC Arges a aratat ca o echipa de amatori de la Apa Canal, platita cu bani multi

FC Arges a pierdut fara drept de apel partida de pe Arena Nationala cu Rapid (0-2), dupa un meci in care apararea a gafat ca in curtea scolii. Turda si Miguel la primul gol, [citeste mai departe]
Kyiv city state administration made the respective decision in November 2017; the Cabinet upheld the respective draft bill in late 2018

Kyiv court recognized the legitimacy of the decision by Kyiv city state administration on prohibiting the work of circuses employing animals across the city. The leader of UAnimals NGO Olexandr Todorchuk posted this on Facebook.

'Today, the court confirmed the legal nature of Kyiv city hall's decision about banning the tent circuses in Ukraine. The promoters of circuses refused from any further attempts to bring the violence back to the capital', he wrote.

The campaign against the tent circuses in Kyiv has been underway for a while now. Numerous events were held in Kyiv and some other cities. In Odesa and Lviv, some activists brawled with the police while protesting against animal abuse; several people were detained.

Kyiv city state administration made the respective decision in November 2017; the Cabinet upheld the respective draft bill in late 2018. The circuses have five years to make all the decisions and take the necessary measures for this process to complete.

In January, the Ukrainian Parliament prohibited testing cosmetics on animals.
Open source

Militants in Donbas shelled Ukrainian positions three times and used weapons of forbidden calibers on March 18. This was reported by the press service of Defense Ministry of Ukraine.

All the attacks were detected in the area of responsibility of the North tactical group.

Occupants shelled Ukrainian military positions from mortars of calibers 120 and 82 mm in the area of Katerynivka; twice the enemy used large-caliber machine guns, sniper and small arms near the Vilne and here the militants fired at military positions also from mortars of 82 mm caliber, automatic heavy rocket launcher and large-caliber machine guns.

As a result of enemy attacks in Donbas, one Ukrainian soldier was killed.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, two militants were eliminated and two others were injured. Two infantry fighting vehicles and two military vehicles of the occupants were also destroyed.

In the morning on March 19, shelling has not been recorded.

As it was reported earlier, on March 18, two Ukrainian troopers killed in action over 24 hours. The illegal armed gangs of Russian mercenaries landed an attack on Vilny farmstead, Luhansk region. The shelling, where the militants used small arms and heavy machineguns took place at about 10 a.m. The Ukrainian fighter, born in 1998 lost his life in that attack. Another young man, born in 1990 was killed in action due to the Russian armed aggression; the tragedy occurred on late Sunday.
Open source

Ukrainian soldier Viktor Grabar died in Pryazovia as a result of the hostile shelling, as 79th Paratrooper Assault Brigade of Mykolaiv reported on Facebook.

Viktor Grabar, the pointer www.facebook.com/79AMBUA/

It was a 25-year-old man. He was the pointer and died on March 17 as a result of a mortar attack of the Ukrainian position. Viktor Grabar was from Dnipropetrovsk region.

The war has taken another young life. The command and personnel of the military unit express the deep condolences to the family of the deceased soldier, the message said.

Earlier President Petro Poroshenko reported that 2955 soldiers of Armed Forces of Ukraine died from the beginning of the hostilities in the Donbas combat zone.

Earlier, pro-Russian militants from Luhansk region stated about the capture of a soldier of Ukraines Armed Forces. Allegedly, the militants shelled them and Ukrainian saboteurs retreated. As a result of the attack, one Ukrainian soldier became disoriented due to the concussion and was captured by the militants. Ukrainian side refutes this information.
Corsair, man-portable missile launcher Ukroboronprom

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with defense-industry engineers and designers in Zhytomyr, on March 11, and stressed that Ukraine needs high-precision missile weapons capable of striking targets far into the rear of the enemy ( President.gov.ua , March 11). In fact, however, the Ukrainian military has been successfully employing such weaponry in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) area, along with the Donbas frontline, for the past two months.

The Ukrainian war is evolving. What began as an invasion of small groups of Russian special forces, later turned into repeated clashes at checkpoints, and eventually became an almost full-scale war involving heavy artillery, tanks, tactical missiles, and the air force. But following two (Minsk) ceasefire agreements, the conflict in Donbas now resembles World War Istyle trench warfare, with both sides dug into fixed, well-equipped positions. In such conditions, high-precision weapons like sniper rifles and guided anti-tank missile systems have become particularly prominent. It is also worth pointing out, however, that unlike heavy artillery or mortars, anti-tank missile systems are not prohibited under the aforementioned Minsk agreements.

Since January 2019, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) operating in the JFO area have begun to employ greater numbers of domestically produced anti-tank missile systems, including the Stugna-P, Fagot, Barer and Corsar. This shift was undertaken in response to two prominent attacks on Ukrainian military vehicles. The first of these attacks, on January 16, near the village of Troyitske (Luhansk region), involved Russian-backed separatists firing off an anti-tank missile, which struck a Ukrainian truck carrying military personnel. Ten soldiers of the AFUs 72nd mechanized brigade were wounded ( Mil.gov.ua , January 17). The second attack occurred near the Luhansk region village of Katerynivka, on January 25. One Ukrainian soldier was killed and four were wounded as a result of this strike on their vehicle (Mil.gov.ua, January 26).

Following these incidents, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a massive counteroffensive. On January 29, the AFU destroyed a separatist KAMAZ truck with a Fagot anti-tank missile, near the village of Krymske (Luhansk region) ( Mil.gov.ua , January 30). On the same day, a Ukrainian Stugna-P missile destroyed a rebel/Russian armored personnel carrier (APC) armed with a mounted anti-aircraft gun ( Facebook.com/generalstaff.ua , January 31). The Ukrainian retaliatory strikes continued with series of successful attacks on bunkers, fortified positions and armored vehicles on February 3, 4, 11, 12, 14, 15, and on March 5 and 11. According to information posted to online social networks, even some separatist field commanders recognized that the AFU had gained a new level of mastery of anti-tank missile systems, even without Javelins from the United States having yet reached the frontlines ( Censor.net , March 11).

At the same time, on March 5, the US Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing to review the administrations defense authorization request for FY2020, which includes military assistance to Ukraine. Speaking before the committee was, in particular, General Curtis M. Scaparotti, the commander of US European Command who simultaneously serves as the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO) Supreme Allied Commander Europe. General Scaparotti declared that he was impressed with the level of training Ukrainian soldiers have already undergone with the Javelin and stressed this anti-tank missile systems contribution to Ukraines security ( Eucom.mil , March 5).

During a trip to the JFO area last month, General Viktor Muzhenko, the head of the AFU General Staff, reported that the newest Ukrainian-made weapons systems have proven their high-precision and quality (Facebook.com/v.muzhenko, February 14). This was later reiterated by the commander of the JFO effort, General Serhiy Nayev. In a recent interview, he argued that increased use of anti-tank missile systems has been a deliberate part of the rearmament strategy for Ukraines mechanized brigades operating on the frontline. According to this strategy, every military unit will be equipped with modern Ukrainian-made anti-tank weapons, and soldiers will be receiving special instruction at the 184th training center, run by the National Academy of Land Forces. In General Nayevs opinion, the high effectiveness and accuracy of these anti-tank missile systems makes them a particularly strong argument for the two sides to quickly conclude hostilities ( Tyzhden.ua , March 1).

Read the original text here.
According to Minister Pavlo Klimkin, the Russian Federation uses occupied territories of Ukraine as the means for bargaining

Ukraines Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin MFA of Ukraine

Minsk agreements on Donbas conflict settlement are in the coma, and only Russia can drag them out of it by leaving the occupied Ukrainian territories, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin was reported as saying by Interfax-Ukraine.

Minsk agreement is not dead, in fact, but it is in a coma. Only the Kremlin can drag it out of coma, as it induced Minsk in a coma and did it deliberately. Russia must leave Donbas to bring Minsk out of this state, Klimkin said.

He stated that Moscow uses occupied territories of Ukraine as the mean for bargaining.

As for today, Russia does not want to make such decision (about the withdrawal from Donbas, - 112.international). Of course, it is connected with the elections but even more with bargaining, which Russia is trying to hold with the Euro-Atlantic society, Ukrainian Foreign Minister noted.

According to him, the EU agenda is full of inner issues (Brexit and elections to the European Parliament); however, Ukraine is keeping its place in the agenda to counteract the Russian threat.

Some of my European interlocutors still tell me that we cannot solve Donbas issue and it is should be frozen for some time. I have a simple example for them: you have a wound and it aches. Of course, the wound can become numb but it should be treated not frozen. Or it will not heal, the minister said.

As we reported, OSCE Secretary-General Thomas Greminger stated that countries members of Minsk Agreements do not have the political will for their implementation.

Earlier Russias Foreign Minister stated that the amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine, which stipulate the country's membership in the EU and NATO, 'are supposed to destroy Minsk agreements'.
The record holder in terms of the period of time of staying in power in the post-Soviet space, the ex-head of the state will still be chairing the National Security Council and Nur Otan, the pro-presidential party in the Kazakh parliament

Open source

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev officially claimed that he gives up his authority as the head of the state. He made the statement on Tuesday, March 19.

'I decided to cease my authority as the President,' he said in his address to the people of Kazakhstan, which was broadcasted on the local TV channels. 'We, the Kazakh nation did it all together. You supported me during every election. It's a pleasure to be the president of such a country. I served you with good faith and fidelity. Thanks to you I became the president'.

Nazarbayev chaired the country since 1990. In 2015, he was elected for the fifth consecutive term, which makes him the undisputed record holder in terms of the period of stay in power among other leaders of the post-Soviet countries.

'This year marks the 30th anniversary since I took the highest office. The people gave me this opportunity to be the first president of independent Kazakhstan', he said.

The ex-head of the state will still be chairing the National Security Council and Nur Otan, the pro-presidential party in the Kazakh parliament.

Nazarbayev, born in 1940 in Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, came to power in 1990, as the President of this Republic. After the breakdown of the USSR, he became the president of independent Kazakhstan. When they re-elected him as the President the fifth time, Nazarbayev collected almost 98 percent of votes.
Ukraine protested against Putin visiting the annexed peninsula on the fifth anniversary of its occupation

Open source

The Russian Federation's Foreign Ministry returned the protests note back to their colleagues in Ukraine; previously, the Ukrainian authority blamed Vladimir Putin's visit to the annexed Crimea on the fifth anniversary of its occupation.

The press office of the Russian ministry reported that on Tuesday.

'...We return the notes of that kind without any consideration or reaction. We'd like to stress that neither Ukrainian foreign ministry nor anyone else has the right to point out to the Russian leadership how and when to build up the schedule of visiting regions in its own state', the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote.

Apart from that, the Russian diplomatic entity urged Ukraine to recognize Crimea part of Russia.

'We call on the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry to recognize the real state of affairs; the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol made their historical choice in spring 2014 and re-joined Russia ultimately', the office claimed.

On March 18, Russian president Vladimir Putin visited the annexed Crimea. During the visit, the Russian president launched two local thermal power plants at the maximum output rate.

Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014. Ukraine immediately announced the peninsula a temporarily occupied territory, putting February 20 as the official beginning of the temporary occupation of Crimea and Sevastopol by Russia. The international organizations and Western governments blamed Russia's actions, treating the annexation of Crimea illegal.
According to Jeremy Hunt, Russia's pattern of unacceptable behaviour has continued with their supply of weapons and personnel to Donbas, the illegal construction of a bridge, and their relentless attempts to monopolise the Kerch Strait

Jeremy Hunt, British Foreign Secretary AFP

The United Kingdom will never recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a statement distributed on March 18, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

"I condemn the illegal annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine, five years ago. The UK will never recognize Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and we call on Russia to end their illegitimate control of the peninsula and their attempts to redraw the boundaries of Europe," he said in a statement distributed on Monday, March 18.

According to him, Russia's pattern of unacceptable behaviour has continued with their supply of weapons and personnel to the conflict it initiated in eastern Ukraine, the illegal construction of a bridge connecting mainland Russia with Crimea, and their relentless attempts to monopolize the Kerch Strait in a campaign intended to undermine Ukraine's economy and demoralize its citizens.

"I call for the immediate release of all Ukrainian political prisoners, who are being held in Crimea and Russia without access to international monitoring organizations or essential medical treatment. Russia must also immediately release the 24 Ukrainian servicemen, who were detained whilst lawfully attempting to sail through the Kerch Strait," he said.

"We join NATO and the EU in condemning Russia's unjustified use of force on Ukrainian vessels in November last year. The UK, along with our EU and G7 partners, remains unwavering in our support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Crimea is Ukraine," he added.

As we reported earlier, NATO urged the Russian Federation to return control over Crimea to Ukraine. The North Atlantic Council reported this in the statement on the fifth anniversary of the Crimea annexation. The North Atlantic Alliance confirmed the full support of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.
The missile aircraft undergo deep modernization; they are capable of destroying any target in Europe, - Chairman of Russias State Duma Defense Committee

Tu-22 M3 bomber AusAirPower

The Russian Tupolev Tu-22M3 strategic bombers were deployed in occupied Crimea, as Interfax reported citing Chairman of Russias State Duma Defense Committee Vladimir Shamanov.

According to him, the issue is about the missile aircraft, which undergo deep modernization, and they are capable to destroy any target in Europe.

Viktor Bondarev, the Head of the Defense and Security Committee of the Russian Federation Council, stated that Russia deployed the Tupolev Tu-22M3 supersonic strategic bombers on the peninsula and deployed Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile system in Crimea as well.

The S-300, S-400, Buk-M2, Pantsir-S1, surface-to-air missile systems and Iskander of two modifications deployed in Crimea, Bondarev said.

He added that the range of Tupolev Tu-22M3, the distance of the cruise missiles allows to carry the warhead to any spot in Europe, hitting any object of the enemys missile defense and anti-aircraft warfare and the further modernization in the next few years up to M3M and installing of the new types of the aviation ordnance will make at the universal means for strikes at all types of targets at the range of thousands of kilometers.

Earlier Russias Defense Ministry reported that two Tupolev Tu-22M3 strategic bombers carried the flight over the neutral waters of the Black Sea.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu stated that Russia has enhanced command in occupied Crimea.

As it was reported, in late 2018, the UN General Assembly supported that resolution On the issue of militarization of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol (Ukraine) and parts of Black and Azov Seas. The document urges Russia to withdraw its forces from Crimea and stop illegal occupation of Ukraine.
Local authorities of Luhansk region will appeal to Ukraine's Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine concerning the situation with the possible blackout of the mines in the region. Such a decision was made during the session of the regional commission on technogenic environmental issues and emergencies, as local authority reported.

Deputy Chairman of the Regional City Administration Yuriy Klymenko informed that the administration and coal enterprises got the message from Ukrinterenergo state company (electrical power industry) about the possible stop of energy supply to the Pervomaiskvugillya and Lysychanskvugillya mines.

According to the law of Ukraine On the marker of electricity, since January 1, 2019, these coal-mining enterprises get electricity from the mentioned enterprise as the supplier of the last hope.

The debt for the consumed electricity makes $2,8 million.

The supplier demands to restrict these consumers up to the level of the current economic or technological reservation. Considering the fact that the proper enterprises do not have it, the complete blackout can take place. The most difficult situation is at Pervomaiskvugillya, where blackout can lead to the flooding of the mines from objects situated from another side of the demarcation line, the message said.

Thus, the measures, which should be assumed during the possible blackout were considered during the session. The heads of the coal-mining enterprises should calculate possible ecological, economic and social consequences in the case of blackout.

The level of the emergency will be established on the basis of this data and State Emergncy Service of Ukraine will be informed about it for further confirmation of the level and putting of it on the register.

As it was reported earlier, militants started to flood Yunkom mine in a temporarily occupied Yenakiyeve of Donetsk region. Almost 40 years ago there has been a nuclear explosion performed with an aim to relieve the tension in the mountain massif. Thus, Donbas residents are facing the danger of radiation poisoning, in particular through the poisoning of drinking water.

As it was reported earlier, out of 4 thousand dangerous objects established by Swiss experts, 17 represent a "radiation hazard". The most dangerous mine can be the Yunkom mine in Yenakiyeve, the city of steel and coal in the separatist Donetsk People's Republic, which is proud not only of its fellow countryman, Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Beregov, but also of former president Viktor Yanukovych who fled to Russia. Here in 1979, the Soviet Union tested the atomic bomb deep underground.
According to the documents, the child was vaccinated; however, the analyses showed the absence of the antigen against measles

Open source

A nine-year-old girl died from measles in Rivne region. It is the third case since the beginning of the year, as local Healthcare Department reported on Facebook.

Last Friday, a nine-year-old girl from Berezne area died from measles. She contacted with a child sickened with measles at school. At the end of February, a girl underwent treatment at Berezne central regional hospital. Since March 1, she has been hospitalized at regional children clinics, the message said.

According to the Head of the Intensive Care Unit of the Regional Children Hospital Mykola Khoruzhy, a girl was taken to the hospital with severe complications. She got the mechanical ventilation. However, she died, despite the intensive care and resuscitation.

According to the documents, the child was vaccinated; however, the analyses showed the absence of the antigen against measles.

At the moment, the histological examinations take place.

It is not a typical situation. This child did not have the immunity against measles; she had a low level of immunoglobulin G. There are 1,636 people sickened with measles in Rivne region. We have information that over 13,000 schoolchildren are not vaccinated. For example, there is a private school in Dubno, where 72% of the children are not vaccinated, Viktor Moroz, the Head of Epidemic Department of Lab Center of Healthcare Ministry of Ukraine.

Over 18,000 people were vaccinated in 2019.

Earlier, it was reported that over 15,000 Ukrainian sickened with measles in January 2019. However, the measles epidemic was not declared in Ukraine.

Besides, the outbreak of measles was spotted among the personnel of the National Guard of Ukraine, assigned to Vinnytsia military unit.
It is proposed to add Optymistychna Cave, the length of discovered paths of which is 2114 km, to UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Ternopil region caves Open source

Ukrainian Ministry of Ecology suggests adding Ternopil region caves to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. This was announced by the Ecology Minister Ostap Semerak, as the ministrys press service reports.

Ternopil region is known all over the world for its unique natural sites. This is the only such complex of caves on the European continent. There are similar caves in the United States. I do not think there is a need to persuade anyone that such natural sites belong to more than one country, that they are a natural heritage of mankind, therefore we have initiated the enlistment of Ternopil caves in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Semerak told.

He noted that the ministry held preliminary consultations with the Institute of Geological Sciences of Ukraine and Ternopil Region State Administration was also involved.

In particular, it is proposed to add Optymistychna Cave to this list. The length of explored paths of this cave is 214 km. Earlier it was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest gypsum cave and as the second largest cave trail in the world. Optymistychna Cave is second only after the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System in the United States.

In general, the system of caves of Ternopil region has over a hundred caves. Among them are Ozerna (Blue Lakes) - 83 km 400 meters, Mlynky - 14 km 330 meters, Verteba - 7 kilometers 820 meters, and many others located near the villages Kryvche, Koralivka, Shuparka, Horodok, Skovyatyn, Uhrin, Ulashkivtsi, Kudryntsi , Sapohiv, Zbruchanske, Mizhirya. The majority of these caves have the status of natural monuments of national or local significance and are part of the Dniester Canyon National Nature Park, and now, at the initiative of the Ecology Ministry, they can enter the list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

The National Commission of Ukraine for UNESCO supported the proposal of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine to declare 2025 the International Year of Caves and Karst.

As it was reported earlier, the city hall of the Ukrainian capital plans to develop the scientific documentation, which provides for including Kyiv's main street, Khreshchatyk into the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Nordic countrys Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen says the intentional disruption of GPS signals before and during Western military exercises also affected the navigation of civilian air traffic in the Arctic

Finland's GPS was disrupted during NATO war games and Russia could be responsible Reuters

Norway has electronic proof that Russian forces disrupted global positioning system signals during recent NATO war games, and has demanded an explanation from its eastern neighbor, the Nordic countrys Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said on Monday, Reuters reported.

Both Finland and Norway said in November that Russia may have intentionally disrupted GPS signals before and during Western military exercises, which also affected the navigation of civilian air traffic in the Arctic.

Both Norway and Finland protested to Russia, which dismissed those allegations when they were first made.

Russia asked (us) to give proof. We gave them the proof, Norwegian Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen told reporters, adding that this consisted of measurements showing signals had been jammed.

Russia said thank you, we will come back when our experts review that. To have such an answer from Russia is a positive thing. To be a neighbor of Russia you need to be patient, he said.

Asked whether Russia could have targeted Norway intentionally, the minister said: They were exercising very close to the border and they knew this will affect areas on the other side.

Finland is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation but took part last year as an ally in NATOs largest exercise in decades, involving forces from 31 countries in an area stretching from the Baltic Sea to Iceland.
Earlier it was reported that the functions of the sailors arm did not regenerate, the fingers did not bend and edema did not disappear, after the wound

Vasyl Soroka, detained Ukrainian sailor 24tv.ua

POW Ukrainian sailor Vasyl Soroka had the surgery as his lawyer Sergey Badamishyn reported on Defense of POW Ukrainian sailors Facebooks group.

Wounded POW Vasyl Soroka underwent a surgery. The information confirmed by Nina Karpachova (the Vice President of European Ombudsman Institute) and the hospital, where the surgery took place, the lawyer said.

Earlier it was reported that Vasyl Soroka, had troubles with recovering after the injury, he suffered during the Russian Navy attack in the Sea of Azov.

Ukraines ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova stated that Russia postponed medical treatment of Ukrainian POWs without reason.

On November 25, the coast guard ships of the Russian Navy attacked the ships of the Ukrainian Navy, which have been carrying out a scheduled transition from Odesa port to Mariupol port in the Sea of Azov. Ukrainian ships were rejected passage via the Kerch Strait, Russian coast guards opened aimed fire on them.

All 24 sailors on board were captured and delivered to Moscow  21 of them were delivered to Lefortovo remand center, the rest came to the hospital of Matrosskaya Tishina prison.

Facing an extension of the sentence term, Ukrainian POWs detained in the Kerch Strait refused to testify in Lefortovo court. Sailors were distributed into six groups, four people in each. On January 15, 2019, Moscow's Lefortovo district court decided to keep 20 Ukrainian sailors in remand until April 24. On January 16, the court extended the detention term for another 4 sailors.
Kevin Mazur/WireImageNicki Minaj and Ariana Grande are good friends, so it's no wonder that, during her Monday night concert in Manchester, England, the Head Barb paid tribute to the 22 people killed in the 2017 terrorist bombing after Ariana's show at that same venue.

After singing "Grand Piano," which she called "the saddest song I've ever had to perform," Nicki told the musicians to keep playing, so she could "take a moment to remember the victims of the Manchester terrorist attacks."

At the show, Nicki told fans, "Put your light in the sky to remember everybody we lost, and God bless the families of everyone who survived them. And God bless Manchester for being resilient and not bowing down to fear! For being strong...no matter what! No matter what!"

The audience responded with wild cheers.

You can watch fan-shot video of the moment now on YouTube.

The European leg of the rapper's Nicki Wrld tour, which has been plagued by technical difficulties and cancellations, continues Wednesday night in Luxembourg.

Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Gary Miller/Getty ImagesTwo Phil Anselmo shows in New Zealand have been canceled following the mass shooting at two mosques in the country that killed 50 people, the New Zealand Herald reports.

The Pantera vocalist and his band The Illegals had been scheduled to play the city of Christchurch, where the attack happened, on March 26 and Auckland on March 27.

The cancellations were in apparent response to a 2016 incident, during which Anselmo gave the Nazi salute and yelled "white power" while on stage at a concert. The alleged gunman from the New Zealand attack posted white supremacist language on social media.

Ben Mulchin of Valhalla Touring, which booked the shows, said in a statement to Billboard, "As a whole our naive little country woke up to the fact hatred, bigotry, and f***ing nutjobs live, work and are around us. White supremacy and any forms of hatred should not be apart of any society."

Following the incident, Anselmo issued two apologies in the form of a video and a written post, in which he said he was "truly sorry" for his actions.

Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
More and more students at Jewish schools in ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn went without the measles vaccine over the past five years, setting the stage for whats become the largest measles outbreak in New York City in nearly 30 years.

The percentage of students who are unvaccinated for measles ticked steadily upwards from 2.1 percent in 2012 to 3.8 percent in 2017 among yeshivas in Borough Park and Williamsburg, an increase of about 1,177 children, according to a WNYC analysis of the most recently available state data.

While misinformation about the dangers of the vaccine has spread rapidly through social media, it doesnt appear to have affected all communities at the same rate. In non-Jewish schools across the city, the rate of unvaccinated children have remained steady during that time: 2 percent of private school students, and 1 percent of public school students.

[Parents] come up with their own ideas about when the children are healthy enough, says Dr. Jay Begun, a pediatrician in the heart of South Williamsburgs ultra-Orthodox community. It used to be 10 years ago, most people would come in at two months and start giving the shots.

Now, he says, parents often wait until the child is a bit older, and sometimes go without them altogether.

A big argument that they use is, Oh the babys immune system isnt ready to receive the shots, he added.



(Clarisa Diaz, WNYC/Gothamist. Data analysis by Dave Sheingold.)

Earlier this month Gothamist/WNYC reported on a telephone hotline for Orthodox moms that was fanning fears of vaccines with misinformation. But experts on Judaism could not explain why the rate of unvaccinated children were higher in yeshivas than the general population. (Some other private schools also showed high rates of unvaccinated children, according to the state data, but they have far fewer students.)

Deep down I think the mothers really believe [vaccination] is the right thing to do, but theyre nervous, theyre scared, Begun said. That has caused them just to delay it.

Begun blames the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism and other misinformation about the dangers of vaccines, instead of religious reasons, for the hesitancy among his ultra-Orthodox patients.

That has had an effect worldwide on immunization and were feeling the effects of that here in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he said.

Many religious and community leaders have publicly encouraged community members to get vaccinated and most interpretations of Jewish law also support it, according to Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

Because of the low-risk vaccines bring and the great benefits they bring to the individual and the community as a whole that there would be a Halachic Jewish...obligation to vaccinate, he said. The overwhelming majority of rabbinic authorities stand with the medical community.

Rabbi David Niederman, head of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, an umbrella organization for the areas Hasidic community, emphasizes that unvaccinated children are a small minority.

The utilization rate of immunizations is extremely high in our schools, Niederman said. I saw the audits of the schools, very high100 percent many of them.



(Clarisa Diaz, WNYC/Gothamist. Data analysis by Dave Sheingold.)

Since the outbreak began in October, 7,000 more children were vaccinated in ultra-Orthodox areas than the year prior, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, meaning the downward slump leading up to the measles outbreak will likely be reversed when the latest school years data becomes available.

But because an estimated 1,800 children still arent vaccinated, the department issued an order in December, prohibiting them from attending yeshivas in nine ZIP codes until the outbreak was declared over. (The ZIP codes roughly correspond to the neighborhoods of Borough Park and Williamsburg, Brooklyn.)

Listen to Gwynne Hogan's report on WNYC:

About a fifth of the approximately 135 Jewish schools in those areas have 100 percent immunization rates for measles. Most schools fall somewhere between 90 percent and above. Another 15 schools have rates lower than 90 percent.

Vaccines are required by state law, unless parents provide proof of a religious or medical exemption. The citys department of education evaluates the religious exemptions at public schools, while each individual private school decides whether or not to accept the childs exemption, according to state Health Department spokeswoman Jill Montag.

An administrator at one private school said in an email she does not have control over her schools immunization rate.

When we accept a child into our school, we do not ask parents about immunization, said Jennifer Chace, the director of the New Amsterdam School in the East Village, where just 60 percent of kids had measles vaccines in 2017. As a part of the enrollment process, parents need to return the required medical forms and immunization records, and it is at that time that we would be made aware of a religious or medical exemption. Not before.

Among the two dozen private schools with the lowest immunization rates, there are yeshivas, Islamic schools, Christian ones, and several non-religious ones, like Brooklyn Waldorf and the Rudolf Steiner Schools.

Still, the sheer size of the Jewish school system in Williamsburg and Borough Park, and the density of the ultra-Orthodox population in those areas make it a unique case. While the increase in the percentage of unvaccinated students was small, it is troublesome just the same, said Dr. Walter Orenstein, a professor and associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta.

This is of concern, he said. A cluster of unvaccinated children in one school, he added, allows the virus to maintain an ongoing chain of transmission.

A decision that is made not only affects the individual child, but affects the community at large, Orenstein said.

The results of clustering of unvaccinated children can be seen at Yeshiva Kehilath Yakov on Wilson Street in Williamsburg. Immunization rates had dipped there, from 97.1 percent in 2012 to 92.7 percent in 2017, leaving about 49 children unvaccinated at last count.

According to the citys Health Department, one unvaccinated child who was infected with measles but wasnt yet showing symptoms attended school despite the order. That child spread the virus to other unvaccinated kids who also shouldnt have been there, resulting in an additional 42 measles cases, department officials said.

Two administrators at the Yeshiva Kehilath Yakov who declined to give their names told WNYC that a parent had sent an unvaccinated child on the school bus. The school tried to contact the parent to send the child home, the administrators said, but were unsuccessful. The school kept the child in a separate room and sent the child home on the school bus at the end of the day, they said.

We fully comply with the Department of Health, one of the administrators said. However, neither would answer follow up questions about the other unvaccinated children whom health department officials said were also in attendance.

Gwynne Hogan is an associate producer at WNYC. You can follow her on Twitter at @GwynneFitz.
Over the last month, there have been multiple incidents in which random pieces of debris have fallen from elevated subway tracks, almost impaling motorists in at least one case. Despite the fact the MTA says it has inspected the lines for any loose objects, these incidents keep happeningincluding at least three in the last couple of days.

ABC reports that a metal bolt fell from the A line on Monday, directly onto a driver's car below, and leaving a dent. This was at the Lefferts Boulevard station near 115th Street and Liberty Avenue in Queens. "I was driving by going to the bank, and all of a sudden, something hit the car," driver Patty Jessel told them. "It scared the shit out of me. I didn't know what it was so I pulled over."

"It's more than concerning as I have said, this is a public health crisis, this is an emergency," said New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer. "We have no faith and confidence that the MTA has truly inspected every inch of elevated subway tracks in the city of New York. It isn't just the 7 line. It's all of the lines. And the fact that you have had four incidents in about four weeks goes to show you that unless the MTA starts to take this more seriously people are going to get hurt. Someone may die."

Immediate action must be taken to protect people under our elevated subways. It isnt just the 7 line. Its all of the lines. 4 incidents in less than 4 weeks. @MTA needs to start taking this more seriously before someone gets hurt. Full interview here:https://t.co/yEsAIMol2T pic.twitter.com/r3zSnJ2oFw  Jimmy Van Bramer (@JimmyVanBramer) March 19, 2019

In a separate incident on Saturday morning, a chunk of concrete fell and left a crack in a motorist's windshield on Fulton Street in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. "Almost like an explosion to be honest. It was a loud boom," the driver told ABC.

And last Friday, debris fell (see the "hunk of metal" in the tweet below) from the elevated 7 train tracks onto a car that was driving on Queens Boulevard and Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside. No one was injured in these recent incidents.

@JimmyVanBramer

Drebis fell on my car while underneath the elevated 7 train on Queens Bvld and Skillman Avenue

How can anyone feel safe ? pic.twitter.com/T6kCOpCCWY  Patrick Tsang (@PatrickTsang17) March 15, 2019

Im on the scene with my constituent Patrick who had this piece of heavy metal fall and crash into his car from the 7 train tracks on Queens Blvd and Skillman Ave. 3rd time in 3 weeks. Patrick got lucky. Someone is going to die if the @MTA cant make this area safe for all! pic.twitter.com/AlkjaG3Ujx  Jimmy Van Bramer (@JimmyVanBramer) March 15, 2019

MTA spokesperson Shams Tarek told Gothamist, "We take these reports very seriously. These are isolated incidents but the safety of our customers, neighbors and employees is of utmost importance. We will prioritize this area as we continue our inspection of the entire elevated structure of the subway system."

When debris from the 7 line pierced the windshield of a car in Woodside on February 21st, the MTA said it was a piece of wood that appeared "to be from a worker or supply platform that was installed beneath the tracks years ago." They also added at the time that after checking the 7 line, they planned on checking "every other elevated structure in the system." A little over a week later, another piece of debris fell from the 7 tracks in Woodside and onto a vehicle.

A track from the 7 train just crashed down upon a driving car around 65th Street in Woodside, piercing through the windshield. These photos are horrifying! pic.twitter.com/fBjxItlK7Q  Jimmy Van Bramer (@JimmyVanBramer) February 21, 2019

The MTA adds that they have continued inspections on the various lines where incidents have occurred, but insist these are isolated and uncommon incidents. They add that they walk the tracks weekly to inspect them, the elevated structures are inspected annually, and they've started consulting with third parties to learn other best practices.

According to ABC, those third parties include the Chicago Transit Authority: "We are reaching out to sisters agencies," said Transit Authority President Andy Byford. "Obviously a classic example would be Chicago because of the L, they operate a lot of overhead structure, to see if there's anything additional they do to what we do. But we will not let up until we put a stop to these incidents."
The man accused of killing the head of the Gambino crime family on a residential Staten Island street last week appeared at his extradition hearing in New Jersey with QAnon symbols written on his hand. Anthony Comello, 24, also doodled other things: "Mr. Comello held up a palm on which he had scribbled 'United We Stand,' and 'M.A.G.A. forever,' as well as a circle and 'U.S.A.,'"according to the New York Times.

Comello was arrested in Brick, New Jersey, on Saturday and agreed to waive extradition in order to face looming charges in New York related to Frank Cali's murder. Cali, 53, the reputed leader of the Gambinos, was gunned down by a pickup truck driver according to video footageright outside his housearound 9:15 p.m. on March 13th. The footage also showed Cali talking to the truck driver, who had apparently crashed into Cali's Cadillac SUV, and then taking a license plate from the driver before the driver shot him 10 times.

Cali's death, the first mob boss hit since Paul Castellano was shot and killed in 1985, raised questions about whether there was a mob civil war afoot. Soon investigators found fingerprints on the license plate that reportedly match Staten Island resident Comello's, which were submitted for a rifle permit.



Anthony Comello at his extradition hearing in Toms River, NJ (Seth Wenig/AP/Shutterstock)

The New York Post reports:

Comello has been researching QAnon online and often wears one of Trumps signature 'Make America Great Again' hats, law-enforcement sources told The Post. Comello appeared to have written on his palm with a ballpoint pen before being brought into the Ocean County Courthouse in Toms River with his hands cuffed and shackled to a leather belt around his waist. He showed off the handiwork while seated in the jury box before the judge entered, smirking as he turned to face the reporters and government workers who packed the courtroom. A court officer who noticed Comello holding his hand out asked why he was doing it. Why not? Im handcuffed, he answered.

Comello's New Jersey lawyer, Brian Neary, apparently didn't see what Comello had on his hands because told the Daily News, "He had nothing I saw written on his hands. There were no pictures on his hands. This was a relatively short court proceeding where his rights were explained to him." In

Neary added, "Today's proceeding was a waiver. Anthony has agreed to give up his right to a hearing in New Jersey and return to Staten Island to face the charges. Anthony is resolute and willing to go back to New York to face these charges."

Police sources speculate that Comello may have been upset at Cali because Cali did not want him dating Cali's niece. (The niece was reportedly at Cali's home the night of the shooting.) According to the Times, "Mr. Comello told detectives on Saturday that he had a romantic interest in one of Mr. Calis female relatives and that Mr. Cali had told him to stay away, the officials said. He also said that he was high on marijuana at the time and shot Mr. Cali because he feared the crime figure had a gun and would shoot him."

However, the Staten Island Advance reports that there may yet be a mob angle: "In the past, shot-callers in the world of organized crime have hired mercenaries to carry out hits, which authorities said was the case in the 2018 slaying of Lucchese associate 'Sally Daz' in the Bronx, said Scott Bernstein, an organized crime historian and true crime author. 'Using buffers and cutting direct ties after a job, whether it be a hit or other forms of (organized crime) activity is standard mob protocol,' said Burnstein."

Comello's New York lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, said, "Because of serious threats, he has been placed in protective custody where he will remain while this case is pending."


On Friday afternoon, Margaret W. was waiting for an M train at the Court Square station in Queens when she spotted something unsettling: a rectangular black case, mounted to the wall of the Manhattan-bound platform, apparently meant to hold a large firearm.

"I'm absolutely sure [it] was a gun case for a large assault rifle style gun," Margaret, a Greenpoint resident, wrote to Gothamist. "It was secured vertically to the wall and clearly labeled 'Gun Guard Plano.' It was also padlocked shut and wired with an extension cord into a power outlet above the platform." Like many elements of our ever-tattered transit system, she reported, the case was secured to the wall with electrical tape.

After a quick Google search revealed the product to be a "lockable, weatherproof hard-sided gun case" designed for assault style rifles, Margaret heeded the subway's ubiquitous instructions to See Something, Say Something. She dialed the 888-NYC-Safe hotline, spoke to a person who seemed very concerned," and was transferred to 911. The dispatcher promised to send someone out immediately.

But when Margaret returned six hours later, the mysterious storage box was still there. Frustrated, she avoided the station for the weekend.

On Monday, we asked the MTA and the NYPD if they were aware of the fact that an assault rifle case was plugged in to the wall of the Manhattan-bound platform of the Court Square station with the aid of electrical tape. The police department referred our comments to an MTA spokesperson, who did not immediately respond.

At 5:30 p.m., Margaret returned to the platform to find the gun case, still affixed to the wall, but now bearing a cautionary note: "Vibration Monitoring Equipment, Property Of Structural Engineer Technologies." In bolded font, the label warned: "DO NOT TOUCH."



Spotted on Monday night with updated labeling. (Courtesy of Margaret W.)

"Is that true?" wondered Margaret. "That still seems sketchy." A phone call to the listed number was not immediately returned.

The MTA did eventually respond to our queries later on in the evening. They confirmed that the case held vibration monitors, adding that the original manufacturer's brand name had been mistakenly revealed as a consequence of the authority's increasingly vigilant approach to keeping our subways clean. (You're welcome?)

Explained MTA spokesperson Shams Tarek: "This case was used by a contractor to house vibration monitoring equipment, chosen as an off-the-shelf product with a slim shape and high security. It had adhesive labeling on it identifying it as NYC Transit test equipment but that labeling was washed off during a recent station power washing. It was a mistake on the contractors part to allow the manufacturers engraving to be seen  moving forward were directing this and other contractors to permanently modify these cases such that their purpose is clear and not misleading at all."

Okay. That is somewhat reassuring, maybe, while at the same time raising a whole host of new questions. Like, why cant the MTA find a storage device thats not specifically designed to carry assault rifles? And how much money are we giving these gun case makers anyway? Alternatively, if this thing is so secure, why don't we make the whole subway out of the black box material?

The MTA did not immediately respond to this line of inquiry. As for Margaret, she's not exactly satisfied by the MTA's explanation, though she's at least glad to know someone looked into her concerns.

"Its really irresponsible to put something like that on the platform, everyone is on high alert these days," she said. "But, Im happy to know the hotline actually connects you to people who really care and want to help. I do wish they would get back in touch to follow up afterwards though."


Update below: A brown baby cow was found running near the Major Deegan Expressway on Tuesday afternoon.

According to the NYPD, the tiny bovine was found at 149th Street and Major Deegan, running on the highway towards the George Washington Parkway. Officials caught the cow around noon at East 153rd Street and River Avenue (the exit for Yankee Stadium), and have taken it into custody, they tell Gothamist. A handful of officers were seen tying the calf to a light pole in the median, as Channel 4 reports.

#BREAKING: The cow is in custody, off exit 6 of the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx. @ABC7NY pic.twitter.com/FZumb4lBBa  Morena Basteiro (@morenabasteiro) March 19, 2019

CBS News notes that the cow is set to be taken to Animal Care and Control facility in Manhattan, and later to Skyland Sanctuary, a New Jersey animal rescue service.

Update: As of right now, it's unclear how the cow made its way onto the road, or where it came from. He's since been named Major Deegan by NYPD, as Pix 11 reports, and you can see him serenely hanging out in the video below.
A charter bus headed from Orlando to New York City tipped over outside Richmond, Virginia, early Tuesday morning, leaving two passengers dead and dozens more injured.

According to NBC 4 New York, the driver was a 40-year-old man from Staten Island: He reportedly tried to exit I-95 in Prince George county around 5:30 a.m., running off the left edge of the ramp and flipping the vehicle onto its side, leaving the road littered with spilled luggage. Investigators are currently looking into what precisely caused him to crash.

Of the more than 50 people on board, one died at the scene and another died at a hospital, an official with the Virginia State Police confirmed to a Richmond CBS affiliate. At least 50 other passengers were admitted to area hospitals, and some remain in critical condition.

Investigation continues into cause of Tao's Travel bus crash in @PrinceGeorgeVa Tuesday AM on I-95 that claimed 2 lives & injured dozens. Charges pending. Bus was traveling from #Orlando #FLA to #NYC. @FMCSA on scene w/#VSP Motor Carrier Safety Team. pic.twitter.com/pT2Yg6EtGO  VA State Police (@VSPPIO) March 19, 2019

A Massachusetts-based company called Tao's Travel, Inc. chartered the busnumber 9591, on its way from Orlando to New York City at the time of the accidentto an NYC company, NBC 4 reports. According to federal records, Tao's Travel has a satisfactory safety rating and no reported injurious crashes within the past 24 months.

As-yet unspecified charges are reportedly pending against the driver, whose name has not been released. Anyone who may have had a family member or loved one onboard the bus can call the Prince George County Emergency Services Center at 804-733-2659 in state, or 800-230-6977 out of state. (Chinese translation services are available.) Authorities will use Prince George County Central Wellness Center, located at 11023 Prince George Drive in Disputanta, Virginia, as a family reunification center. Once patients have been released from the hospital, they'll be sent there.

This story is developing, check back here for updates.
On Monday, the Department of Education released the results of its latest specialized high school admissions, which only uses a test (the Specialized High School Admissions Test) to determine acceptances. The rates of accepted students for different demographic groups barely changed from previous years, and still doesn't reflect the diversity of the city's students. Of the offers, 51.1 percent were given to Asian students (51.7 percent in 2018); 4.0 percent to black students (4.1 percent last year); 6.6 percent to Latino students (6.3 percent last year); and 28.5 percent to white students (up fro 26.5 percent last year).

This is an op-ed from a recent NYC public high school graduate Muhammed Deen who is working with Teens Take Charge to reimagine diversity in schools.

Victory Collegiate looked like a dream school on paper. The citys public high school directory promised a college-prep curriculum, French, spoken word, and fencing. My parents didnt have time to take me to visit the campus, but from what I read, I knew that Victory Collegiate was for me.

When I missed the cutoff score to Brooklyn Tech by a few points, I was thankful that I got matched to Victory Collegiate. But, the next fall at freshmen orientation, my enthusiasm vanished. I learned that many of the extracurriculars and classes that led me to apply to Victory Collegiate no longer existed. No spoken word. No fencing. No French.

Then, I discovered that the school did not offer science to freshmen. I was only 14, but I had done enough research on colleges to know that the best ones wanted students who took four years of math and science in high school.

You would never guess that Victory Collegiate is located in one of the most diverse and wealthy cities in the world: my school was 90 percent black, 7 percent Hispanic, and had a few Arab and South Asian kids. Most of us qualified for free lunch.

One day, in my AP Biology class, a bullet flew into the classroom, lodging itself in the whiteboard, missing our heads by inches. The teacher was so traumatized that she never returned. But we, the students, were back in the same room two days later. A rotation of substitutes, unqualified to teach the course, monitored us the rest of the year. None of us passed the end-of-year exam.

As the son of two poor immigrants, neither of whom are fluent in English, I already had obstacles in my path, but by that point, I knew that my educational environment had become one, too.

My story is not unique. New York City has at least 124 small high schools where fewer than 1 in 5 students enters the school having passed the 8th grade state English exam. At Victory Collegiate, that number was 1 in 20. At some schools the number is zero. These schools are, on average, 92% black and Hispanic.

Meanwhile, at three dozen other high schools, which tend to be much larger, at least 7 in 10 students enter having passed the 8th grade state English exam. This group, which is collectively just 25% black or Hispanic, includes the eight specialized high schools and "screened" schools such as Bard, Baruch, Beacon, Goldstein, Millennium, and Townsend Harris.

Compared to Victory Collegiate, these schools have far fewer poor students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. They have more advanced courses, more extracurriculars, more experienced teachers, and more college and career support.

Even seemingly minor differences in the schools made a big impact. We werent allowed to take textbooks home. Our calculators rarely worked. I could not exit the building for lunch due to my schools metal detector, which wasted ten minutes daily just waiting in line. These fancy detectors made us feel like prisoners every day. If the city invested the money differently, my school might have been able to afford to take us on an out-of-state college trip. But I guess the city didnt expect that many of us would be able to get into out-of-state universities anyway.

What may seem like natural disparities on the surface are actually the result of a rigged high school matching process with complicated rules that lead to winners and losers. Students like me, who are poor and dont have parents who can sort through complex admissions requirements at top schools and who dont have counselors with the time to provide personalized guidance, often lose. We wind up in segregated schools ill-equipped to prepare students for college.

Learning about the policies that create these inequities made me question how progressive our city and its government actually is. Mayor de Blasio talked about the tale of two cities when he was running for office. We also have a tale of two school systems. Mayor de Blasio took office the same year I started high school, and I havent seen much change, other than who and what he is blaming for why he has not integrated schools.

But instead of making excuses, I have worked with my peers in the coalition Teens Take Charge to find solutions. With support from researchers at the Community Service Society, I helped develop an Enrollment Equity Plan to undo the high school hierarchy by establishing citywide benchmarks for academic diversity that each high school would have to meet. Our plan would create more diverse and well-rounded student bodies, reducing concentrations of low-performing and high-performing students. It would make public schools what they should be.

We did make an exception for the specialized high schools, which we believe should admit the top 7% of students from every middle school. That way, those schools will maintain academic prestige while expanding opportunities to students who have historically been excluded.

We are glad that Mayor de Blasio has supported the plan for specialized schools, but after five years in office, he has not attempted to address segregation in the rest of the citys 450 public high schools.

We cannot wait any longer. Its time for him to deliver the equitable education that he talks about a lot, but which thousands of kids like me have never seen.

Muhammad Deen is a freshman at Hunter College studying economics and politics. He continues to work with Teens Take Charge to advocate for equity in New York City public schools.




His trip was made official through a supreme resolution published Tuesday in El Peruano official gazette.





According to the document, the diplomat will be outside of the Inca country from March 20 to 22.









Popolizio 's participation in said event will reaffirm Peru's commitment to South-South and Triangular Cooperation mechanisms as complementary tools towards development, based on foreign policy interests and goals.





"Likewise, his presence will strengthen the regional stance that focuses on topics that are key for Peru, mainly the need of multidimensional methodologies for the measurement of development beyond the scope of GDP per capita, structural gaps, and important challenges to achieve the development goals of upper middle-income countries like Peru," reads the document.





On March 21-22, the Peruvian minister will attend a meeting of presidents on South American Integration in Santiago, at the invitation of the Government of Chile





During Popolizio's absence, Economy and Finance Minister Carlos Oliva will take over the Foreign Affairs portfolio.





(END) FHG/CCR/RMB/MVB

Peruvian Foreign Affairs Minister Nestor Popolizio will head to Argentina to attend a UN meeting on South-South cooperation and to Chile for a meeting of presidents on South American integration.Published: 3/19/2019
Presidente @MartinVizcarraC: El principal factor para mejorar la educacion son los docentes. En sus manos esta la ninez, que son el presente y futuro de nuestro pais. Pero en este camino, necesitamos el apoyo tambien de los padres de familia. pic.twitter.com/IpE3UhjF8i
I am a Flag-Waving Everyman, also known as a patriot. I believe in freedom, apple pie, rooting for America at all times, and that God gave us a two-day weekend so we could enjoy football and NASCAR.
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan extended condolences over the armed attack in the Dutch city of Utrecht, reports Armenpress.

I am shocked by the attack in Utrecht. Armenia stands by the side of the friendly Netherlands and its people. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, Pashinyan said on Twitter.

A man has been arrested after three people were killed and five wounded, some seriously, in a shooting on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht, BBC reported. Gokmen Tanis, a 37-year-old Turkish man, was found several hours after the attack in a building about two miles (3km) from the scene. Authorities said the attacker's motive was unclear. The incident sparked a city-wide manhunt and the closure of schools.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. The ministry of emergency situations informs that on March 19, as of 08:30, some roads are difficult to pass in Armenia, reports Armenpress.

Vardenyats Pass, Sotk-Karvachar highway and the inter-community roads of Amasia, Ashotsk regions are difficult to pass.

Drivers are urged to use snow tires.

The Georgian authorities inform that the Stepantsminda-Lars highway is closed for trucks.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Lawrence Meredith, Director for Neighbourhood East at the European Commission and leading International Financing Institutions (IFIs) are on a joint mission in Yerevan to discuss policy priorities and sustainable investment solutions for energy efficiency in buildings, both public and private, the EU Delegation to Armenia told Armenpress.

Senior EU and IFI representatives met with key government Ministers and sector experts to discuss the potential to scale up investments in energy efficiency in buildings, as well as the necessary reforms.

Speaking on behalf of the EU, European Commission Director responsible for relations with Armenia, Lawrence Meredith said: In Armenia, buildings consume up to 40% of total energy, which has a significant impact on Armenian families budgets and the environment. Together with the main financing institutions, we are here to discuss with the new Armenian government where mobilizing our support would significantly improve energy efficiency in buildings and, ultimately, the living standards of people.

Lionel Rapaille, EIB, Head of Division, Eastern Neighborhood, commented: The EU bank, in cooperation with the European Commission and partner financing institutions, supports projects in Armenia contributing to the improvement of everyday life of citizens. Increase of energy efficiency of buildings is important for the wellbeing of people, energy and cost savings, as well as combatting climate change. There is a significant potential for energy performance improvements in Armenia.

Background:

The joint mission is part of wider EU and partner IFI efforts to increase support for energy efficiency policies and investments in buildings in the EU's enlargement and neighbourhood regions. The initiative aims to move away from individual energy efficiency projects to a comprehensive approach that supports concrete policy actions and scales up sustainable investments. After concluding the mission and dialogue with the Armenian government, the European Commission together IFIs will identify priority areas for support of energy efficiency measures in public and private buildings. The participating institutions are the European Commission, the European Investment Bank (EIB), The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), International Finance Corporation (IFC), KfW Development Bank (KfW), Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD), and Asian Development Bank (ADB).






















YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Swedens Minister for International Development Cooperation Peter Eriksson will visit Armenia on March 21-22, swedenabroad.se reports.

Ahead of the ministers visit the Swedish government announced that it intends to expand its financial support to Armenia in response to the strong political will to undertake necessary reforms, following the velvet revolution of 2018.

An active democratization process has started in Armenia after the velvet revolution in 2018. We see a strong political will to undertake necessary reforms and to strengthen democracy, freedom of expression and other fundamental rights and freedoms, the Swedish minister said.

The opening of a bilateral program for Swedens development cooperation with Armenia will mean increased funding for projects in Armenia and make the Swedish support to Armenia more targeted.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. The issue of the Iranian gas transit via Armenia has been one of the key points of the agenda of the recent visit of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to Iran: earlier this issue has also been discussed with the Russian, Georgian and Turkmen leaders, PM Nikol Pashinyan said during todays press conference with reporters, reports Armenpress.

You know that before visiting Iran I had telephone conversations with the Georgian PM, Presidents of Russia and Turkmenistan. I informed them what issues I am going to discuss in Iran because their approaches are also important, in particular to what extent Georgia, Russia and Turkmenistan are interested in such talks. It was decided also based on the results of the discussions with them that this topic should become one of the key points during the visit in Iran. The discussions continue and will continue as long as we havent come to any conclusion, the Armenian PM said.

He added that overall mood should be that Armenia develops relations with all possible directions both with Iran, Georgia, Russia, EU and the US. In other words, we must have initiatives, ideas at all directions on how we can develop these relations. Its important to state that such developments are important in terms of ensuring stability and integration in our region. I am happy to note that there is an interest which is identical. The most important in this process is that we are holding discussion with all our partners and do everything so that our agenda and actions are transparent for them, Pashinyan said.

Asked whether the issue of the Iranian gas transit via Armenia supposes a creation of a new gas pipeline, the PM clarified that the talk is not about a new gas pipeline. The talk is not about a new gas pipeline as long as it is possible to implement the current programs with the existing gas pipelines, he said.

Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan paid an official visit to Iran on February 27-28, 2019.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said he himself is the harshest critic of his own government.

Pashinyan was asked by a reporter at a news conference today what he would criticize the most in the incumbent government if he were opposition.

There is no restriction of the freedom of speech or critique in Armenia in order for me to imagine myself opposition and criticize the incumbent government. I can reassure that I myself am the biggest and harshest critic of the government in Armenia. Be certain, there is no substantiated criticism for me to hear from someone else and then myself. I hear all critique firstly from myself, he said.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
On Tuesday morning, Patricia Okoumou was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and five years probation for climbing the Statue of Liberty in protest of the Trump Administration separating families at the U.S. border, according to NBC New York.

Prosecutors had asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein to sentence Okoumou to 30 days in prison with 3 years of probation. Judge Gorenstein, who visited the statue with Okoumou before the sentencing, warned the protester that she will see jail time if she breaks the law again.

AM New York reported that Okoumou appeared in court today with her face covered in tape. She had been confined to her Staten Island home since late February after she was arrested for climbing the Southwest Key building in Austin, Texas, in another protest of the government's immigration policies.

"I do not need probation, and I do not belong in prison, Okoumou said on Tuesday.

Last Fourth of July, the world looked on as Okoumou scaled the statue after breaking away from a protest with the group Rise and Resist, which had placed a large banner emblazoned with the words "Abolish ICE." Okoumou then began climbing the statue on her own, and stayed put for hours until she finally came down.

When we started putting people in cages that was the straw that broke the camels back, Okoumou told Gothamist. I had had enough and I didnt care about the repercussions. We have gone so low as a country I had to climb as high as I could on the Statue of Liberty to raise consciousness.


YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. The European Union is ready to support programs in a number of sectors in Armenia. These concern infrastructure development, water reservoir construction, near two dozen water reservoirs are expected to be constructed in Armenia, as well as road construction, police, judicial reforms, energy development, the process of forming an energy corridor, education and tax administration reforms, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan told reporters during todays press conference in Matenadaran, reports Armenpress.

We are fully ready to cooperate within the frames of the whole agenda of reforms. The EU leaders also expressed readiness to assist the implementation of all these programs. Here there is one recording: the EU is ready to provide serious support to the programs, but we all understand that it will not finance these programs at once. Armenia also must have its investment. But here we face a problem in connection with the legislative restrictions on state debt, Pashinyan said. Armenias state debt cannot exceed certain percent of GDP. At this moment the most visible source for Armenias investment is the foreign funding which can lead to increase of the state debt volume. And now we must hold a serious discussion whether we are ready to go on this path. We will have a discussion with the Central Bank in the coming 20 days to observe these issues, the Armenian PM said.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. The domestic political situation in Armenia has never been as stable as today, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a news conference today, noting that this stability isnt a repressive one, but a democratic stability. He said that the governments report on its action plans performance gives an in-depth description on the changes that took place in this period.

I dont think I have to speak much about these changes, but I would like to say one thing. Theres talk about polls, there was this same talk in the summer, autumn of 2018, before and after elections. This isnt the case when the prime minister isnt in control of the situation, I am very often in direct contact with people. They write as if the country is in a period of instability, that once again the cycle will begin, a heated spring, a heated summer, look whats gonna happen. Nothing is going to happen. People must understand their [ship has sailed] long ago, they wouldnt catch up with it even on a Ferrari if they wanted to, their chapter is closed. They have one way, stand before the people, repent and ask for forgiveness. But let me say, we will guarantee all their desires on being engaged in public and political activities, Pashinyan said. He expressed certainty that if today elections were to be held, his My Step Alliance would once again win, this time even bigger. In the December 2018 election, My Step won a landslide victory with over 70%.

He claimed that millions of dollars are being spent on a smear campaign against his government, but the government is not taking any actions against this. Pashinyan did not specify who the propagandists are.

The PM stressed that the freedom of speech is an absolute value for the incumbent government.

These circles must understand they cannot have this kind of business in Armenia, they cannot garner support among the Armenian people, he said.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Over the past 10 months the amount of social benefits and pensions of nearly 85.000 people, as well as the salaries of 200.000 people have increased in Armenia. 100% growth of mortgage lending has been registered in the country, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told reporters during a press conference, reports Armenpress.

Whether this is an indicator of improvement of the peoples social condition or not? In January 2019 the gross trade recorded 19% growth in the country. Whether this speaks about the improvement or not? An important change has taken place in Armenia. Previously there was elite who distributed rice, potato to the people, who told the people  I will rob you and will give you something, who exerted pressure on the people via police so that they will avoid going out. But our policy is the following: we should create opportunities for the people to work and create. We say we will not rob you and will create an opportunity for you so that you will be able to improve your social conditions with your job, because work is the best way to improve the social situation, the PM said, stating that working person was not beneficial for the previous political elite, because that person is politically independent.

Pashinyan said the Armenian government is implementing numerous programs to improve the peoples social condition. He said more than 200.000 citizens got an access to free healthcare services.

I have no doubt that the economic revolution will succeed in Armenia. I have no doubt that the content remains of the old system have no prospect. Armenia irreversibly will be democratic country, a country of work and technologies, the PM said.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Armenia is ready to exchange Azerbaijanis who appeared in its territory with Armenians who appeared in Azerbaijani territory, however this swap cannot happen in case of the people who have trespassed from Azerbaijan committed murders, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at a news conference when asked about the likelihood of an exchange at the all for all principle.

This is constantly in the dimension of our discussions. In the past there was a practice when both Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh were bound to return people who were lost and trespassed the border within a week. And this practice has always been carried out. It wasnt done when the infamous case took place when armed Azerbaijanis entered our territory and committed murders, Pashinyan said. He stressed that convicted murderers cannot simply be exchanged with lost accidental trespassers.

We are ready to exchange people who got lost with people who got lost. Now we have a lost citizen there, who they claim to be a saboteur, who got sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Now, a citizen has trespassed from their side, an investigation will determine whether he is a saboteur or a lost citizen. We are ready to consider exchange for those whose actions did not lead to anyone getting killed or hurt, the PM said.

If we are exchanging someone we must take into account the opinion of the family of the victim that he killed.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Armenian President Armen Sarkissian today hosted leading chess player of Armenia, three-time winner of the World Chess Olympiad, Levon Aronian, the Presidents Office told Armenpress.

Aronian introduced the President on his upcoming plans and tournaments, noting that quite a busy year is expected.

President Sarkissian in his turn wished success to the chess player and stated: Your each victory provides wonderful moments of pride to our people.

The President expressed confidence that they will have similar moments in the near future.



Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan is convinced that the upcoming presidential election in Artsakh will be free, independent and competitive, reports Armenpress.

I am convinced, and I think that all understand that the upcoming presidential election in Artsakh should be fair, free, democratic and competitive. I am sure that will be so, the PM told reporters during todays press conference in Matenadaran.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. A new secretary general cannot be appointed at the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) without taking into account Armenias opinion, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told a news conference today.

He noted that Armenias stance at the CSTO is very clear. We believe that the term there is ours, however our colleagues disagree with us because they say this issue isnt regulated and theres space for comment. Therefore we are saying lets bring clarification in the charter before appointing a new secretary general. If for some reason the term in office of the secretary general remains incomplete, we will know how the issue gets regulated. It seems we have reached an agreement over this issue.

He reminded about the harsh pessimistic comments from certain segments of the society when the government recalled Yuri Khachaturov from the post of Secretary General of the CSTO.

Very apocalyptic assessments were being voiced on what happened. However, actually nothing happened. We were saying that everyone is equal before the law, and we proved this. In this process Armenias interests have fully been protected. The talks that we had in the CSTO format were very useful, these types of conversations have never taken place during the entire period of the CSTOs existence, he said.

The Armenian PM highly assessed the atmosphere in both the CSTO and the EEU.

Unfortunately, the big part of work in these organizations takes place behind closed doors, and the public doesnt have the opportunity to see in what spirit discussions happen there. I have to say, these are very substantive, deep, interested, sometimes heated discussions, which has significantly increased my respect for these organizations. I think this is an objective and accurate assessment, Pashinyan said.

Armenian general Yuri Khachaturov was sacked as CSTO Secretary General in November of 2018 after Armenian law enforcement agencies pressed criminal charges against him over the March 1 case. Then the Armenian government recalled Khachaturov from the post.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, 19 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 19 March, USD exchange rate down by 0.25 drams to 486.27 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 0.09 drams to 552.06 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.04 drams to 7.57 drams. GBP exchange rate up by 0.59 drams to 645.47 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price up by 22.35 drams to 20411.67 drams. Silver price up by 0.27 drams to 240.45 drams. Platinum price down by 6.68 drams to 12991.81 drams.
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. The delegation led by the Speaker of the National Assembvly of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan, which is in Germany on an official visit from March 18 to 21, met with President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schauble on March 19.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the parliament of Armenia, the President of Bundestag noted in his welcome speech that they followed the Velvet revolution of Armenia in April-May 2018 with great enthusiasm, underlining that no similar tevolution has ever taken place in the world.

Thanking for the reception, Ararat Mirzoyan noted that this is his 1st official visit to Europe in the position of the Speaker of the National Assembly. The Head of the legislative of Armenia presented the incentive for the Armenian revolution to his German partner, the post-revolutionary period and the early parliamentary elections, that were highly assessed by the international observers.

Highlighting the parliamentary traditions of Germany, Ararat Mirzoyan noted that the experience of the Bundestag can be very useful for the National Assembly of Armenia. In this context the sides expressed readiness to make mutual visits more frequent.

During the conversation the members of the Armenian delegation and Wolfgang Schauble discussed a range of issues referring to the Armenian-German agenda, the ratification of the Armenia-EU agreement, visa liberalization, assistance of the European countries in the development of infrastructures in Armenia.

Referring to the cultural and educational links between Armenia and Germany, the Speaker of the parliament of Armenia suggested his German colleagues to consider the issue of establishing an Armenian-German university in Armenia, which will further deepen the relations between the citizens of the two countries.

Ararat Mirzoyan and Wolfgang Schauble agreed to continue the constructive dialogue and the discussion of the issues of mutual interest in the evening, during the official dinner on behalf of the President of the Bundestag in honor of the head of the Armenian parliament.

Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan received a delegation led by Olaf Zimelka, Regional Director of German Development Bank (KfW), ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia.

Highlighting the need for continued development of cooperation between Armenia and Germany, Nikol Pashinyan noted that the bilateral relations have been upgraded recently. The Premier stressed that several top-level visits had been reciprocated over the past few months, which will add momentum to the Armenian-German friendly relations. According to Nikol Pashinyan, the ongoing cooperation between the Government of Armenia and KfW holds a key place in these relations. Noting the importance of joint projects, the Prime Minister considered it necessary to discuss and implement new programs of strategic importance for Armenia with the German Development Bank.

The German side assured of their countrys willingness to back the Armenian government on the path of reforms. Olaf Zimelka pointed out that Armenia is in a beneficial position in the regional context, and our country has an exceptional opportunity to develop at a higher pace. The KfW Regional Director reflected on the ongoing joint projects, and welcomed the fact that the Government of the Republic of Armenia is specifically making a point of environmental issues. He expressed confidence that the joint programs will drastically improve the situation in this area.



Then the interlocutors touched upon a number of issues related to joint projects in agriculture, construction, energy, water reservoirs, infrastructure and implementation of new programs.
Three years ago, Susan Schiffman started photographing apartments in the East Village for her project, I Am A Rent Stabilized Tenant. At first on Instagram, then as a column on the blog EV Grieve, the photographer shared candid images of the interiors of rent-stabilized apartments in her neighborhood.



Schiffman captures the quirks, like photographer Johnny Roza's doll collection. She spoke to the experience of shooting his apartment"[Johnny] was like you get me! You get me. People come here and they don't get it. He had this whole backyard. He had a little greenhouse. This apartment is so tiny. The doll collection he had. It's so huge. Lots of dolls. He had these cool fixtures." (Susan Schiffman)

Schiffman's project has since grown to include interviews providing stories and context. Each interview is guided by the same three questions: Why did you come to the East Village, how did you find your apartment, and what do you love about your apartment?

Though the tenants themselves are never present in Schiffmans photos, their homes give us an intimate look into their lives. Her photos capture the details: the contents of a kitchen cabinet, the arrangement of someone's jewelry on a dresser, a pair of shoes sprawled out under a table, an assortment of family photos on a wall.

As a rent-stabilized tenant herself, Schiffman understands and appreciates those details. The details and quirks that come with being in space for so long. There is an air of solidarity within her work that is also reflected in the EV Grieve comments, where readers reflect on East Village restaurants and shops that are no longer, or supply tips and resources to residents Schiffman has featured who are fighting landlords or at risk of being pushed out of their homes.

In the living room of her own East Village apartment, Gothamist spoke to Schiffman about the evolution of her photo project from an Instagram to a column, being a rent-stabilized tenant, and her creative process.

When did you move to the East Village?

I came to the East Village in 1980 something. My friend Jan, who I waitressed with at Folk City, was at an apartment on 11th Street behind Veniero's that she was leaving and said that I could have it. That was the beginning of the East Village for me.

How did this photo project come into existence?

Well, I love my neighborhood. I've been here a very long time. My husband had two businesses. We raised our son here. He went to the public school. We had a car. There are a lot of people we know from the neighborhood. I always wanted to do a [photo] project but I can't remember where the idea [for photographing rent-stabilized] apartments came from. I love looking into people's windows. Not to peep or anything, just to see.

It was word of mouth. I just started asking people I know. I wanted to see if I could step into the homes of people from the neighborhood and into their spaces. People don't always let people in.

Drew was the first apartment I photographed. I had known him and his brother for 20-plus years, but I had never been into their apartment. I thought he was going to say no. I didn't know if people would be up for it. And people are.

Are you surprised by that?

Sometimes I am. But sometimes people reach out to me through EV Grieve because my email is on there. A lot of people have contacted me. There was this woman who reached out to me. She said that her mother had passed away. She had the keys in her hand and she was on her way to the landlord's, but asked if I would be able to come over and photograph it. She really wanted a record of it.

What was that experience like?

When I walked in it was just chills from head to toe. It was so sad. There was a hospital bed. There weren't really any personal items. Linda went through [so much] to fight for the apartment to keep for her mother. She said it took a thousand pages to prove that her mother was still in the apartment. Not only was she still in the apartment, but she was sick and in a hospital bed. She said something to the effect of I spent years fighting for this apartment. I don't have a relationship or have a family. Do you think I should stay and fight for this place? I was like, I can't answer this.

This sparked a response in the comments?

[Readers] were really upset about the whole thing. The comments said, "Stay and fight, please don't turn over the keys! Have you contacted Good Old Lower East Side?" She wasn't evicted. She decided to leave on her own to start a new life somewhere else.

The comments are great. People are really into it. In the comments, a lot of stuff comes out for people to look into and check for help and support. Sometimes they share memories like Oh, I lived on that block. Or, I know so and so.

What do you look for when you photograph an apartment?

I go in totally blind. With these apartments, I don't know most of the people. They don't send me pictures. We dont talk about it. There is a text that has always been important to me. It's called the Poetics of Space, and its basically about how the house is a metaphor for the mind. There are few things that informed this work and that is one of them.

To get into these peoples homes and see how they arrange their jewelry, their clothing, and their booksits people's arrangements that make them feel safe and secure in their home. When I walk into home, I can tell a really important arrangement. It's one thing to live in a house: A house has a basement and an attic and all those rooms and closets. It's another thing to live in an apartment for 40 years, where do you house all those memories and belongings?

Why did you choose to focus on rent-stabilized apartments?

I am a rent-stabilized tenant and I have been since I've moved to this city in 1979. So I guess because it's my experience and it's been a good one.

How has having a rent-stabilized apartment shaped your experience in the city, and why is it important?

It's affordable housing. It has let me live here. Even with affordable housing, I feel as though it's expensive to live in New York. If I didn't have that I could never pay what the young people are asked to pay.

Do you feel as though your project is intended to celebrate this?

Oh definitely. I don't know if what I am doing is helping people in any way, but I think sharing people's stories is important.

It seems as though there is a subtle political element to your work, would you agree?

I do think the personal is political with all the rent-stabilized history and laws. I don't want to go just the political [route], but yes, people should know who the bad landlords are and they should be outed. Once in a while I ask people if they want me to say the landlord's nameit's up to the tenant.

People get scared. I have had people say no to [an interview] because they're in the middle of an eviction court case. A lot of people are in court with their landlords and they are totally in the right but they have to fight for it.

Can you elaborate on the personal being political?

If the government has rules and regulations about where you live and how you can receive affordable housing, it's political. The personal is political, whether we want to be political or not. I mean I couldn't have lived here if it wasn't affordable housing. I don't know where I would have gone.

Although this project in ways is documenting and discussing the past, it is extremely important for the present.

Yes, this is about people who came here a long time ago but they are still living here. These are people are still here. It's still going on. They are still living their lives and figuring out how to live here.

You have been here for a long time. How has the neighborhood changed?

Its changed so much, and in the project everyone talks about that. It's become more of a transient community. Things are temporary. The people in my building, they come and they go.

Do you feel like the neighborhood becoming more transient has changed its character?

Oh, yeah! It totally changes how it feels. It's money. The high rents bring in different people.

Despite the influx of newcomers, what makes the tenants that you interview, and you yourself, love and stay in the East Village?

I feel like almost everyone has said this, that it still feels like a community or a neighborhood despite the changes. Everyone has those few couple of [stores and restaurants] that they still go to since they first came here. I think people are still able to find enough of the things that made them feel good here years ago. As much as we don't love some of the changes, we still love the neighborhood.
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan received on March 19 U.S.-Armenian businessman, philanthropist and prominent designer James Tufenkian.

As ARMENPESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia, the PM saluted the activities of James Tufenkian in Armenia and Artsakh, noting that the implementation of projects in various spheres by Tufenkian' Foundation are very important for the development of both Armenia and Artsakh. Nikol Pashinyan noted that on the path to the economic revolution the Government of Armenia carries out reforms aimed at the continuous improvement of business environment, fostering business initiatives, simplifying legislative regulations that will make doing business in Armenia easier and will foster investments. PM Pashinyan emphasized that among the priority goals of the Government is to encourage people to initiate something, since it's possible to reach solution of problems only through work.

James Tufenkian said that Diaspora-Armenians are very proud of and inspired by the changes taking place in Armenia and there is great desire and interest among Diaspora-Armenians to visit Armenia, get acquainted with the processes on site, be involved in the development projects and support the implementation of reforms. He noted that he has personally felt the positive changes, which is the application of a new culture in business, significant simplification of regulations for doing business and so on. According to Tufenkian, the mentioned improvements are important for attracting investments, and the innovations made so far are a serious positive signal for business.

The PM and James Tufenkian discussed the projects of 'Tufenkian' Foundation and particularly referred to the investment project of the construction of a hotel complex in Areni community of Vayots Dzor Province. Zpashinyan highlighted the construction of the hotel, noting that it will have positive chain reaction not only for Areni, but also for the surrounding communities, it will improve the business environment in the province and will foster the development of tourism, economic activity and improvement of infrastructures.

James Tufenkian noted that the 'Tufenkian' hotel will be the largest in the country and it's expected to be put into operation in 2 years. He emphasized that he is ready to continue the implementation of development projects both in Armenia and Artsakh and support the Government in bringing into life the reforms.

The interlocutors also exchanged views on the prospects of implementing new projects.

Businessman James Tufenkian makes investments and carries out projects in Armenia and Artsakh through Tufenkian Foundation. The Foundation's programs in Armenia are aimed at overcoming poverty, creating educational opportunities, protecting the environment, social justice and human rights protection. The Foundation has implemented and implements large-scale infrastructural and development projects also in Artsakh.

Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 19, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan had a telephone conversation with President Nursultan Nazarbayev of the Republic of Kazakhstan, who announced a few hours ago that he would no longer remain in office as President of Kazakhstan, and will only hold the post the Head of Security Council and the ruling Nur Otan party, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia.

Nikol Pashinyan highlighted Nazarbayevs undeniable role in bringing progress and prosperity to Kazakhstan and his valuable contribution to the integration process in the Eurasian region. The Armenian Prime Minister highly appreciated the friendly relations between the two countries and his personal relations with President Nazarbayev. He wished Mr. Nazarbayev every success in his future activities.

An agreement was reached to meet in Astana on the margins of the jubilee summit of the Eurasian Economic Union on May 29.
Ex-combatants from Konnou in South Bougainville surrender weapons in preparation for the referendum. Member for Konnou Willie Masiu MP said peace building is a priority in his constituency

ANTHONY KAYBING

BUKA - Bougainvilleans have been urged to present a unified front in casting their votes when the Autonomous Region of Bougainville goes to the polls for the referendum on its political future in October.

As your leader I urge you all to vote for option two and that is independence, President John Momis said during the final stage of the week-long Bougainville referendum roadshow.

Having a result that presents a unified Bougainvillean choice gives our leaders the power to negotiate with the national government, Dr Momis said.

He reminded the people that after the referendum the result will still have to be ratified by the PNG parliament as stipulated under the Bougainville Peace Agreement.

If the national parliament fails to ratify the result of the referendum then we still have the option of a negotiated outcome where both governments will collaborate to get the best outcome for the people of Bougainville, he said.

This is our time to exercise our right to self-determination, it is our time to forge a new future for our children and the generations to come.
Moreover, the overtly anti-foreigner attitude of the government, chancellors and many university staff members, as demonstrated by the recent persecution of foreign vice-chancellors and academics, is not conducive to a positive working environment.

As a result, for anyone interested in student protest, it has become the worlds number one place to be. If you want to lead a peaceful family life on campus, however, it is possibly not the preferred location.

In Papua New Guinea, there have been four major student uprisings in the five years from 2012 to 2017, the result of endless government meddling in university council affairs.

VERONA, ITALY - The recent visit by minister Richard Maru to the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech), where he donated a few hundred thousand kina in laboratory equipment may give the impression that everything is fine.

In 2012, when I accepted the vice-chancellors position at Unitech there was great hope that governance would be streamlined and major investments in infrastructure would take place. One minister even announced this in the international press.

None of the changes was implemented and none of the investment took place.

The traditional model of PNG university governance was at best a recipe for stasis, but most likely a pathway of gradual decline and irrelevance. In 2010, the Namaliu-Garnaut Report, an independent review of the PNG university system had rightly recommended streamlining the independent university governance structure and improving academic quality of programs. The two things are of course related.

After 2012, however, the ONeill government followed none of these recommendations and instead proceeded to steamroll a Higher Education Act through parliament, abolishing university autonomy and giving the universities tough medicine for 10 years.

This is how the first fascist legislation in Europe in the 1930s was passed, always announced as a temporary measure for exceptional circumstances.

Meanwhile, the show must go on. During my two terms as vice-chancellor, I focused on creating employable graduates and producing world-class academic programs. Industry supported the efforts to turn Unitech into a real university with graduates who could be employed as professionals rather than as technicians.

We called this program Making Unitech Fly! and it focused on key higher education values and creating a rule-based organisation and a mission-focused and student-centred university.

As an administrator, I had to first put in the building blocks. I established financial controls, stopped the leakage of funds and by 2017 managed to balance the budget. This was the year the university received a clean audit from the Auditor-Generals office for the first time in over two decades.

This gave us the opportunity to engage with outside industry and academic partners, in fact we were able to send 77 staff members abroad for training - almost half the academic staff.

The mismanagement and stealing stopped, the budget was balanced and industry support for international accreditation of programs increased greatly.

We significantly improved the teaching environment on 1 June 2015as the first university in the world to open an O3B installation and buy discounted laptops for all first years students. The operating environment for Unitech, however, remained extremely challenging due to government meddling and insufficient and irregular monthly funding.

Student safety and welfare issues could not be addressed vigorously due to lack of funding and political infighting.

The violent suppression of the students demonstration at the UPNG campus on 8 June 2016 was a major turning point. A boycott on classes had started in May 2016, the students demanding that PM Peter ONeill submit himself to due judicial process after serious and credible allegations of fraud and corruption had surfaced. That he did not do so increased suspicions of his guilt.

The demonstration was violently suppressed with police shooting hundreds of live rounds into a crowd of peacefully demonstrating students, even following them into their dormitories. The promised investigation never happened so we dont know who gave the orders to shoot and nobody was charged. The message was loud and clear: anyone protesting risks being shot.

On the same day at Unitech in Lae we convinced the students not to attack the police and stay on campus although in later riots one student was seriously wounded and one murdered in inter-tribal fighting. We were able to re-open the campus on 30 August and finish the academic year, unlike UPNG which abandoned classes, court action continuing long after the protest had been crushed.

As Unitechs vice-chancellor with the principal duty of upholding the provisions of the PNG University of Technology Act, the way forward for me was clear: the government should respect academic freedom and university autonomy and stop trying to direct university affairs from Waigani.

The university council would restore the voice of the students by granting a modified version of the Student Representative Council constitution. The principle of shared governance enshrined in the University Act was to be respected.

Instead the PNG government decided to appoint political cronies as chancellors who did not follow this course of autonomy and academic freedom but reverted to how things had been before. First the government needed to get rid of all foreign vice-chancellors, who were unceremoniously insulted, disrespected, expelled, charged and, in my case, even arrested.

Whats more they were not given the legally established accumulated pay, in other words the foreign academics were cheated out of their salaries. Then the government decided to appoint political cronies as vice-chancellors, mostly relatives of current ministers.

As a result, I predict the collapse of the PNG university system within two years. First, because of the financial unsustainability, and secondly because the voice of the students has not been restored.

Unsustainable finances are not a secret in PNG and as a result no private company will give credit to universities. Now Unitech is trying to run its messing facility, for example, without qualified managers or support from a professional catering company. Students expect three meals a day for 250 days a year. We will see what happens.

My greatest mistake during my tenure as vice-chancellor was believing that my management team of supposedly highly educated Papua New Guineans had genuinely bought into the vision of turning Unitech into a rule-based organisation, a university producing employable graduates and engaging in meaningful research and knowledge transfer.

Regrettably, they said one thing to my face and did the opposite behind my back. They could not resist going to Waigani to flatter the government of the day, thus feeling more important. In this way, they failed to provide the necessary university leadership and missed the last opportunity to put Unitech on a solid and sustainable footing.

In general, there are two models for public universities: the politicised model and the shared governance model with institutional autonomy and academic freedom.

The first model, dominating in corrupt environments, is based on political control of the governance and management of universities. The university is never adequately funded but small gifts are handed out in return for demonstrations of allegiance, admiration and voter support.

The recent donation of some equipment to Unitech by minister Richard Maru is a case in point. He is not the Minister for Higher Education but has been meddling in the university. Previous donations of this kind were not effectively used. For example, some laboratory apparatus donated by the European Union is still rotting in boxes 15 years after it was donated.

Although Unitechs Act is clearly based on universal higher education values, the ruling classes in PNG never liked this second model highlighting academic freedom and institutional autonomy. They much preferred a system where universities operated like government departments. Under my predecessor who was at Unitech for 19 years, the university became part of the mechanism of political patronage and a means of diverting public funds.

It was an uncommon honour and pleasure to be vice-chancellor for two terms serving the students of Unitech  young people who were able and talented learners, willing to overcome unimaginable obstacles to obtain a true university education.

While the politicians stayed out of my hair, we achieved substantial and rapid progress, despite the management team's lack of commitment to true transformation and constant disobedience from staff.




Seemingly routine talk about the authorization of the AY CDC's $250,000 budget for 2019-20 (see last three pages here ) prompted a few questions about the entity's funding, and its ability to hire its own consultants to advise on a pending project change. Answer: it can't.The budget is "expected to be funded in its entirety by an imprest account funded by project developers and maintained at and by Empire State Development," the board materials said. (An imprest account is a cash account, replenished routinely.)The budget covers two employees (salary and fringe benefits), plus $46,300 in other costs, including insurance and occupancy, such as hosting meetings. It's an increase from $235,000.In response to a question from board member Cy Richardson, AY CDC Executive Director Tobi Jaiyesimi said the increase was anticipated in a cost letter negotiated in 2014 with the developer for the first five years. "We anticipate that, now that we have an understand of actual cost that should be projected, the budget will stay at 250,000," she said. (The other salaried employee is Greg Lynch, an onsite monitor.)Regarding the project at large, she said, each imprest account is funded to the scope of work and the developer that's responsible for it, including outside counsel, environmental monitor, and owner's representative.In the early stages of the project, when it was fully controlled by original developer Forest City Ratner, it funded the imprest account. It sold a 45% stake in the arena operating company to Mikhail Prokhorov's BSE Global, and later sold the rest. There is now a separate imprest account related to any Barclays Center charges, Jaiyesimi said.When, in 2014, the joint venture Greenland Forest City Partners (GFCP) was established, with 70% ownership by Greenland USA, a joint venture imprest account was established, she said. Last year, Greenland bought all but 5% of the project going forward from Forest City, then sold development rights to three sites to two developers, TF Cornerstone and The Brodsky Organization."There are new entities," she said, "and there will be imprest accounts established."What, asked board member Gib Veconi, is the procedure for amending the budget in the course of the fiscal year? His reason: it's long been expected that GFCP will propose relocating density from the unbuilt B1 tower--originally slated for the location of the arena plaza--to create a giant two-tower project at Site 5, currently home to P.C. Richard and Modell's.(That's been slowed by litigation involving P.C. Richard, which claims it was promised space in the replacement building, and won a first-round ruling .)The AY CDC, said Veconi, "might benefit from expert opinion and analysis that would require some budget." That seemingly referenced a 2018 proposal by departing board member Jaime Stein, who suggested that the advisory body be able to hire independent third-party consultant to evaluate such new plans.The proposal got bureaucratically buried by AY CDC President Marion Phillips III, an ESD executive, who said it would work by amending existing ESD contracts with law firms and environmental consultants."Since we might not be able to anticipate the scope," asked Veconi, could they be certain those contracts would be sufficient?Phillips said the parent ESD could modify the project's overall Modified General Project Plan, if necessary, while a proposal for the AY CDC to hire consultants would require a slow, unwieldy procurement process. "I think the contracts we have in place would be sufficient."Unmentioned: those existing consultants are the ones that have eased the project's path forward in the interest of the developer and the state. (See discussion here of environmental consultant AKRF.) It's quite questionable that they could offer a more community-oriented perspective."As it relates to Site 5, in terms of P.C. Richard and Modell's, that has not gone forward," said Phillips. It's still in negotiations, with the court case pending, "so there's really nothing to report there."He did not mention that P.C. Richard had won the first round, so it's likely that board members don't know that; it hasn't been reported beyond my blog, and it was not mentioned in board materials. That kind of limits the ability of the board to be advisory.The board, Phillips noted, has asked about greater community engagement, and when they get to the point of modifying the plan for Site 5, "that's something we're committed to doing."How, asked Richardson, does the AY CDC deal with the recommended hiring of consultants. "It's an ongoing, kind of fluid conversation, we meet once a year," he said, with a touch of chagrin. (The board last met in March 2018.)"As you know, we ought to meet quarterly," Phillips responded, citing the challenge of getting quorums. "If you had a need to amend the budget, we would amend the budget through our regular meeting process."Later in the meeting, he acknowledged an "upside and downside of not meeting" for so long.While not meeting was a downside, "the reason it did not have a great of an effect had more to do with the fact because we were not going vertical at the time," since most of the work on the project was at the Vanderbilt Yard. "The upside, we're ready to go forward and start going vertical," given that two buildings are starting in the first half of the year.There's been a lot of turnover on the 14-person board , which some members resigning before the end of their three-year appointments and others choosing not to continue after that.Of the total, nine are appointed by the Governor, and five are appointed respectively by the President Pro Tem of the New York State Senate, Speaker of the New York State Assembly, Mayor of New York City, Borough President of Brooklyn, and Speaker of the New York City Council. The latter five appointments all involve input from local elected officials.Currently, three gubernatorial appointments are pending, as is the mayor's appointment; an appointment by the City Council is being vetted.Phillips at one point welcomed Veconi, the Assembly appointment. "Welcoming Gib is like welcoming the guy who's been at the family dinner in the last 20 years," he said, a reference to Veconi's longtime role in the project as a leader of the BrooklynSpeaks coalition, and a negotiator of the 2014 settlement that accelerated the delivery of affordable housing to 2025 (after the deadline had been extended), as well as the establishment of the AY CDC."It's good to welcome someone who's been a partner," Phillips said, "who's been very constructive in moving the project forward."That's not necessarily the language that those more wary of the project might appreciate, though, in the context of the AY CDC, Veconi is more informed than other board members, and, as I'll report separately, pressed (unsuccessfully) for a more specific, building-by-building timetable for the project buildout, aiming to understand how the required 2,250 units of affordable housing will be built by 2025.
Heres what is really going on in our property markets. Source: Getty Images

There is a lot of talk about a gloomy real estate outlook, but what are our property markets really up to?

Thats one of the most common questions Im asked these days. And my answer is: It depends.

Of course it depends on which market youre talking about  some are performing much better than others.

It depends if youre a buyer, a seller or a long-term investor.

Yes our property markets are in a decline with Corelogic reporting that national dwelling values fell for the 16th consecutive month in February 2019, but the rate of decline is easing.

Their National Home Value Index was down a further -0.7 per cent in February taking the total decline nationally to 6.8 per cent since the market peaked in October 2017.

The current downturn is related to various factors including:

Decreased investor activity with local investors having difficulty obtaining finance due to the banks credit squeeze, at a time of higher supply of new and off the plan properties

Fewer overseas investors due to difficulty getting money out of their home countries at a time when we pulled the welcome mat out from under them with increases taxes and fees

Decreasing consumer confidence causing home buyers to go on strike

Uncertainty about the outcome of the upcoming Federal election.

Related story: Half of new Sydney and Melbourne apartments now valued BELOW their purchase price

Related story: Property market meltdown could ruin small businesses, treasurer warns

Related story: Is your credit score stopping you from buying your dream home?

The upper end of our markets are suffering most

As usually happens when the market turns, the higher end of the property market suffers more.

This is really an area of discretionary spending  maybe you dont need to upgrade your $5 million home to that $7 million mansion at the moment.

In due course the cheaper, more affordable areas will also suffer as wages growth is likely to be low in these suburbs.

Here is what is happening in each major city around Australia.

Story continues

Sydney

The Sydney housing market is likely to remain weak for the first half of this year in part due to the downturn in investor activities at a time of oversupply of new apartments on the market but things are likely to pick up in the second half of the year after the Federal election.

Obviously some segments of the Sydney property market are likely to fall considerably more than that average this year (were looking at you off the plan properties), while some segments of the market are holding their own.

Investors are abandoning the off the plan apartment sectors and many of those who purchased off the plan a few years ago are now having trouble settling with valuations coming in on completion at well below contract price at a time when banks are more reluctant to lend on these properties.

But in the background strong economic growth and jobs creation is leading to population growth and ongoing demand for property in Sydney.

At the same time international interest from tourists and migrants continues.

Sydney is currently offering investors an opportunity to buy established apartments in the eastern suburbs, lower north shore and inner west in a buyers market with little further downside and the prospect of the market moving forward again in late 2019.

Melbourne

Overall property values here will be underpinned by a robust economy, jobs growth Australias strongest population growth and the influx of 35 per cent of all overseas migrants.

Remember, Melbourne rates as one of the 10 fastest growing large cities in the developed world, with its population likely to increase by around 10 per cent in the next 4 years.

Brisbane

Currently the oversupply of new apartments is slowly being soaked up, but rents and values have yet to rise.

However we are not expecting the Brisbane market to have a substantial correction like Melbourne and Sydney are experiencing considering the underlying strong demand from home buyers and investors from the southern States at a time when yields are attractive and housing affordability is relatively healthy.

Brisbanes economy is being underpinned by major projects like Queens Wharf, HS Wharf, TradeCoast, Cross River Rail, the second airport runway and the Adani Coal Mine, but jobs growth from these wont really kick off for a few more years.

In the meantime, a healthy level of affordability at a time of increased interstate migration from Sydney and Melbourne and the return of local and interstate investors seeking strong rental yields plus capital growth should help make 2019 a good year for Brisbane property.

Adelaide

Adelaide property is likely to chug along nicely again this year, much like it has the last few years due to affordable housing prices, a healthy balance between demand and supply and mildly positive economic conditions.

New jobs are being created by many new projects like the $2.4 billion Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Port Adelaide defence contract for manufacture and maintenance of military boats leading to improving migration rates.

While Adelaide remains the most affordable capital city for houses at present and while things look good in the short term, over the next few decades the bulk of Australias long-term jobs growth, economic growth and population growth will occur in our 4 big capital cities meaning there are better locations for long term wealth creation that Adelaide.

Perth

The median house value in Perth is now the lowest of any capital city but housing affordability being the best it has been in a long time, local confidence is low with poor economic conditions, relatively high unemployment and subdued migration levels.

To get people back into the State more jobs will need to be created.

Its much too early for a countercyclical investment in the west  I cant see prices rising significantly for a number of years.

Hobart

Hobart has been the best performing property market in the last three years, but its likely this will change in 2019, and well see Hobart market lose its momentum.

Over the last few years too many investors chased the Hobart hot spot at a time when there was a lack of employment drivers, insufficient population growth and not enough infrastructure spending.

Remember home buyers create a property market (they make up 70 per cent of buyers) and investors create property booms  which is whats happened in Hobart.

And Hobart is too small a market to be a long term investment grade proposition.

Darwin

The Darwin property market peaked in August 2010 is still suffering from the effects of the end of our mining boom today with a very soft employment market, lack of migration and infrastructure spending.

Currently values are 27 per cent below the historic averages and it is unlikely well see these types of house prices again in the next decade.

The small size of the Darwin market makes it more susceptible to local events and Darwin typically has a higher and more variable vacancy rate, a product of a large transient working population.

Darwin does not have significant growth drivers on the horizon and would be best avoided by investors.

Canberra

While economic growth in the territory is projected to slow down in the 2019 financial year, it is likely remain above the national average.

Population growth is expected to remain strong, which will support underlying demand for dwellings.

With public sector employment accounting for more than 40 per cent of jobs in the Australian Capital Territory, if history repeats itself the uncertain political climate leading up to the federal election later this year will reduce local consumer confidence and dampen housing demand a little.

But, as always, this will correct itself after the election and Canberras property market is likely to continue to perform well in the medium term.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Were clearly in for another interesting year in property, one with moderate price growth in some locations and virtually no growth in others and falling prices in yet others.

Australias property markets are very fragmented, driven by local factors including jobs growth, population growth, consumer confidence and supply and demand.

This makes it an opportune time for both home buyers and investors to buy property at a time when theyll face less competition.

Remember that our property markets are behaving as they always do and some of the best profits are made by investors at this stage of the cycle.

Thats because these downturns are only temporary, while the long term increase in value of well located capital city properties is permanent.

However correct asset selection will be more important now than ever, so only buy in areas where there are multiple long term growth drivers such as employment growth, population growth or major infrastructure changes.

Similarly suburbs undergoing gentrification are likely to outperform.

Michael Yardney is a director of Metropole Property Strategists, which creates wealth for its clients through independent, unbiased property advice and advocacy. He is a best-selling author, one of Australias leading experts in wealth creation through property and writes the Property Update blog.

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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called on world leaders to press technology firms to tackle the "ungoverned" space of extremist internet content in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack. In a letter published Tuesday, the Australian leader asked the G20 summit host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that the issue be raised when leaders gather in Osaka this June. Morrison is in the middle of a tough re-election campaign, where his party has faced persistent allegations of fuelling anti-migrant sentiment to appeal to conservative voters. Morrison has spoken publicly several times to denounce extremism since the attack that killed 50 people in neighbouring New Zealand on Friday. He has also taken aim at tech companies for their seeming inability to stop the propagation of extremist content, such as live footage shot by the gunman as he rampaged through the Al Noor mosque. "They've created these capabilities, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, they're available for peaceful and happy purposes, but we do know that they can be used and weaponised by terrorists of any description," he told the press. "If you can write an algorithm to make sure that the ads they want you to see can appear on your mobile phone, then I'm quite confident they can write an algorithm to screen out hate content on social media platforms. "I'm sure we can work together to make sure they protect our citizens by ensuring that their tools that they have developed are not used by terrorists as weapons to advance their agendas of hate," he said. Opposition leader Bill Shorten backed that call, telling social media platforms: "If you help create the swamp, you can't go missing when evil things start crawling out of it." Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants the G20 summit to tackle online extremism
A Danish lawmaker said Tuesday she was ordered to remove her infant daughter from parliament's chamber, sparking surprise in a country often hailed as a pioneer in women's rights. "You are not welcome with your baby in the parliament's chamber," speaker Pia Kjaersgaard, an outspoken former leader of the far-right Danish People's Party, allegedly told MP Mette Abildgaard. "I didn't ask for permission to bring her since I had previously seen another colleague bring a child into the chamber without any problems," Abildgaard, whose Conservative party is part of the ruling centre-right coalition, wrote on Facebook. Abildgaard, who is in her 30s, said she found herself in an exceptional situation with her five-month-old daughter, and had never brought her into the chamber before. But she said the infant was "in a good mood and had a pacifier in her mouth." Kjaersgaard passed the message to an assistant, who then asked Abildgaard to remove the baby from the room. Abildgaard handed the child to an assistant and returned to the chamber to vote. "MPs should be in the chamber, not babies or children," insisted Kjaersgaard when questioned by news agency Ritzau. She said clear rules would be issued on the subject. The Scandinavian country is often held up as a champion of gender equality and women's rights, and as a child and family-centred nation with generous parental leave. Abildgaard noted that she was entitled to a year's maternity leave with full pay, but that she had chosen to return to work. Her Facebook post garnered more than 600 comments within the space of a few hours. "A chamber that represents mothers, fathers and babies ought to be open to mothers, fathers and babies," one person wrote. In 2016, an Icelandic lawmaker made headlines after breastfeeding her infant while speaking at the podium in parliament. And in September, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern became a symbol for working mothers when she brought her baby to the UN General Assembly in New York. "You are not welcome with your baby in the parliament's chamber," speaker Pia Kjaersgaard, an outspoken former leader of the far-right Danish People's Party, allegedly told MP Mette Abildgaard
Dutch police said they were investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack, as they arrested a new suspect on Tuesday over the deadly shooting. Authorities said they had found a suspicious letter in a getaway car used by Turkish-born main suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, which made them "seriously" consider terrorism might have been involved in Monday's rampage in which three people were killed and seven injured. Armed counter-terrorism officers meanwhile arrested one new suspect, aged 40, in Utrecht who was "suspected of being involved in the shooting incident", prosecutors said, adding that his "role was being further investigated." Two other men who were arrested Monday in connection with the shooting had been released, prosecutors added. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earlier in the day laid flowers for the victims at the scene of the attack and said he was "still filled with horror" by the bloodshed. "So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," Dutch police and prosecutors said in a joint statement. Apparently ruling out reports that the shooting was due to a family dispute, the statement added: "Our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims." The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, south of Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said. Armed police captured Tanis after an eight-hour manhunt that virtually shut down the Netherlands' fourth largest city and saw security stepped up at airports and key sites across the country. - 'Filled with horror' - Police said they found a red Renault Clio that the suspect had carjacked before the attack and used as a getaway car afterwards. They had also found a firearm after his arrest. Tanis is expected to appear before a judge later this week in a closed-door hearing after which he most likely will be remanded in custody. A stream of mourners laid flowers on Tuesday at the site of the attack near the 24 Oktoberplein square. "One of the victims was my friend's girlfriend. So coming here today was the least I could do," Marco van Rooijen, 43, told AFP. The attack raised security fears ahead of Wednesday's provincial elections in the Netherlands. Populist and far-right parties have seized on the attack to push their agenda for the polls but Rutte has remained restrained. "A day later, I am still filled with horror," Rutte told parliament. "There are still many questions about the motive, and the police and prosecutors still have to do a lot of work. But there is no doubt that the impact was huge." Flags were flying half-mast on many buildings around the Netherlands and on foreign embassies. Public transport was running again after forensic police finished their investigations at the scene and removed the tram on which the shooting erupted. - 'Completely mad' - But there was also growing anger after it emerged that the suspect had only been freed from jail in a rape case two weeks ago. Tanis was originally arrested in 2017 then released from pre-trial detention, before being taken back into custody when he breached his bail conditions, the central Netherlands district court said. He was freed again at the start of March. In 2014, he was also convicted of "illegal possession of weapons" and attempted theft but acquitted of attempted manslaughter. He was also convicted in recent months for shoplifting and burglary. Broadcaster NOS meanwhile said some of his relatives had links to fundamentalist Islamic groups, but also that he was known for unstable behaviour after divorcing his wife two years ago. A woman involved in the rape case told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper: "He is completely mad and uses drugs. I have previously warned the police against him. He's not a terrorist but a psychopath." Support for the Netherlands poured in from around the world, including the United States, the EU and Russia. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: "America stands with you. We will continue to do all we can to help you in this terrible time of tragedy." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's intelligence agency was "looking into" the attack. burs-jhe/pvh Dutch officials say they are still investigating a possible terrorist link to the deadly Utrecht attack but cannot rule out a family dispute Mourners laid flowers at the site of the tram shooting in the Dutch city of Utrecht Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis, 37, was arrested after a massive eight-hour manhunt Dutch police launched a manhunt after Monday's shooting before arresting the suspect
wingedwolf/iStock(RICHMOND, Va.) -- Attorneys for President Donald Trump will appear in court Tuesday to argue against claims that the president violated a constitutional clause that prohibits elected officials from doing business with foreign governments.



The case, which is being brought jointly by the attorneys general from Maryland and Washington, D.C., argues that Trump violated the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clauses by benefiting from the patronage of foreign dignitaries at the Trump International Hotel located just a few blocks away from the White House.



On any given night, patrons walking through the lobby could chance upon Trump insiders hosting social events, or could even spot the president himself dropping in for dinner unannounced.



The hotel also sees its fair share of foreign government officials. Dignitaries from Bahrain, Azerbeijan, Nigeria and South Korea have all been spotted in the hotel, and just last month the hotel hosted the Kuwaiti embassy's national gala.



Attorneys who have brought the lawsuit against Trump are arguing that foreign officials who patronize Trump's D.C. property may be currying favor with the president.



"We're very confident that we can prove that the President of the United States, a major owner of the Trump Hotel, is in fact receiving moneys from foreign countries who are quite motivated to show the president favor," said Karl Racine, the Washington D.C. attorney general. "So that the president might be more inclined to tilt in a direction that they like."



The Constitution's two so-called emoluments clauses prohibit the president from accepting gifts or profiting from a foreign or domestic government. Tuesday's case is one of three such cases brought against the president related to this issue.



Attorneys for the president moved that one of the other cases, brought by members of Congress, be dismissed. A judge in that case found that the members of Congress have standing for the suit, and is currently considering other elements of the president's motion to dismiss. The other emoluments case, brought by a government watchdog group, was dismissed and is currently being appealed.



Attorneys for the president attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed earlier this year, but a judge in Maryland ruled in July that the case could proceed, citing in his decision that the Maryland and D.C. attorneys general had "convincingly argued that the term 'emolument' ... means any 'profit,' 'gain,' or 'advantage' and that accordingly, they have stated claims to the effect that the president, in certain instances, has violated both the foreign and domestic clause."



The outcome of the case will depend largely on how the term "emolument" comes to be defined. This is open for debate however, as emoluments cases are exceptionally rare, and one has never gone to trial in the United States.



Earlier this year, the president's legal team argued for a more narrowly tailored interpretation of the emoluments clause, stating that payments by foreign dignitaries to the Trump Hotel should not be considered emoluments because they don't relate to his work as president.



The president is being represented in his professional capacity by attorneys from the Department of Justice.



But the judge who allowed the case to proceed sided with the Maryland and D.C. attorneys generals' broader definition of the term, who argued that an emolument is anything of value, including payments to the president's companies.



"No Americans should ever have to question whether a decision, a priority, or a policy approach that the President is taking has been influenced by his receipt of foreign money that goes right into his pocket," Racine said. "That's why we're bringing this lawsuit."



The president's adult sons running the business have bristled at the charge they are profiting off the presidency.



"Unlike any other luxury hospitality company, we do not market to or solicit foreign government business," said Eric Trump, an executive vice president of the Trump Organization. "In fact, we go to great lengths to discourage foreign government patronage at our properties."



Potential violations of the emoluments clause have also caught the attention of some members of Congress with oversight power.



Rep. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight committee, told ABC News that he believes that Trump is personally profiting from the presidency.



"Every time he gets a check. Every time you have a situation where -- people say -- go to his hotel -- spend money there, and it appears that they are trying to either curry favor or they're trying to get something," Cummings said. "That, to me, is a violation."



During Tuesday's arguments before an appellate judge in Richmond, Virginia, attorneys for the president will challenge that ruling, arguing as they have in the past that foreign dignitaries simply "prefer the Trump brand" and are not currying favor with the president when patronizing the Trump Hotel.



In February, the Trump Organization donated $191,000 to the United States Treasury, a figure the organization said reflects its profits from doing business with foreign governments during the 2018 fiscal year. Before his inauguration, Trump pledged to donate all profits from foreign government patrons at his hotels and other properties to the U.S. Treasury. He similarly donated $151,000 the previous year.

Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The Staten Island lawyer best known for his demand to settle scamming allegations with an old-timey duel pleaded guilty in a separatebut no less outlandishcase on Monday, without ever stepping foot inside the battle arena.

Richard Luthmann of Staten Island wound up indicted on a slew of extortion-related charges in 2017, roughly two years after his infamous call for a trial by combat. (We will get to that, don't worry.) According to the Staten Island Advance, federal investigators accused Luthmann of "kidnapping, kidnapping conspiracy, money laundering, brandishing a firearm to commit a crime, aggravated identity theft, and extortion conspiracy" in connection with a fairly bonkers scrap metal scheme they say Luthmann helped architect from his law office in 2015.

A brief synopsis of the grift, per the NY Times:

Prosecutors said that Mr. Luthmann joined forces with a blind man and two reputed mobsters to pack shipping containers with "cheap filler material" and fraudulently sell them to a group of local businesses as scrap metal. In the midst of the plot, prosecutors claim, Mr. Luthmann turned on one of his partners and had him held at gunpoint to collect a $7,000 debt.

Additionally, prosecutors said that Luthmann engineered aggressive social media campaigns against perceived political adversaries, and set in motion wild plots intended to take down his nemeses. For example: Luthmann allegedly attempted to pay an exotic dancer $10,000 to accuse Staten Island's district attorney Michael E. McMahon of rape, while also trying to bribe people into saying McMahon's wifeJustice Judith McMahonaccepted bribes in exchange for preferential rulings.

In June, a judge revoked Luthmann's bail and ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after he allegedly wrote a threatening "Game of Thrones-inspired" letter to a witness, believed to have been his wife.

The month before, Luthmann's alleged co-conspirators pleaded guilty, and in January, the Advance reported that Luthmann's legal team was approaching a plea deal of their own. As part of Monday's guilty plea, Luthmann admitted to having penned the intimidating note, and could serve up to six-and-a-half years in prison for two counts of wire fraud and extortion conspiracy.

So what about that whole "trial by combat" thing? In August 2015, facing separate allegations that he'd helped a client commit fraudulent wire transfer, Luthmann attempted to get a civil complaint dismissed by invoking his 11th century rights. Describing the charges against him as absolutely unfounded, Luthmann told the Advance he was more than ready to out-absurd his legal opponents: "I'll give them back ridiculousness in kind," he said. "If these people want to insist on having it out, then we'll have it out."

And then Luthmann filed a 10-page brief with the New York Supreme Court arguing that, because England's common lawwhich included the right to trial by combatwas in effect upon New York's founding in 1776, and because neither New York law nor the U.S. Constitution ever bothered to disavow that point specifically, it's still a reasonable request to make of our legal system. And if the court would not let him settle his score with a fight to the death, or appoint a champion to do so in his place, then he wanted his case thrown out. A judge denied Luthmann's request, while acknowledging that trial by combat is, technically, a viable option. Just something to think about for your future legal disputes.
Germany launches its auction Tuesday for the construction of an ultra-fast 5G mobile network as a transatlantic dispute rages over security concerns surrounding giant Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei. The United States has warned it could scale back the sharing of sensitive information with Berlin if it does not exclude hardware made by Huawei from the infrastructure, arguing that Chinese equipment could help Beijing spy on Western companies and governments. Attempting to play down the row on Monday, Jochen Homann, chairman of the German Federal Network Agency (BNA), said: "No matter whether a supplier comes from Sweden or China, companies must meet certification requirements and security checks." '5G' -- 'fifth generation' -- is the latest, high-speed generation of cellular mobile communications and Berlin will require winning bidders to offer 5G service to at least 98 percent of German households and along motorways and rail lines. Germany, Europe's biggest economy whose wireless networks however rank 46th in the world for download speeds, wants to close the sizeable digital gap by making the shift to the ultra-fast 5G system. The BNA started the auction in Mainz at 0900 GMT on Tuesday and the process will allocate 41 different frequency blocks. Four operators are in the running, among them Germany's three main mobile network providers -- Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Germany (O2) -- plus United Internet (1&1), a German company specialising in internet services. Huawei is not one of the bidders but provides the four German companies with essential hardware such as antennas and routers. The US has accused Beijing of using Huawei's 5G network gear as a Trojan horse, forcing operators to transmit data to the regime, but Washington has not provided evidence to support their suspicions. Huawei has strenuously denied allegations its equipment could be used for espionage. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday lashed out at what he called "abnormal, immoral" attacks on Huawei and demanded a "fair and just competition environment" for Chinese firms. US-led attempts to encourage other nations to ban Huawei equipment from their telecoms infrastructure suffered a setback when Chancellor Angela Merkel's government decided against imposing company specific-restrictions on the 5G auction. - US fears of security compromise - According to media reports, US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell last week warned that Washington could review intelligence cooperation unless Berlin agreed a Huawei ban. In a letter, Grenell told Peter Altmaier, Germany's economy minister, that intelligence-sharing cooperation could be scaled back if Berlin allows the Chinese firm to be part of the 5G network, the Wall Street Journal reported. The threat escalated last week when NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, warned Germany that NATO forces would cut communications if Berlin works with Huawei. "We're concerned about their (Germany's) telecommunications backbone being compromised in the sense that, particularly with 5G, the bandwidth capability and ability to pull data is incredible," Scaparrotti told the House Armed Services Committee last Wednesday. "If it also is inside of their defence communications, then we're not gonna communicate with them. "And for the military that would be a problem." Merkel has tried to reassure senior figures in Washington by saying Germany would consult with the US over whether to use Huawei tech, but would "define our standards for ourselves". However, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) shares some of the US fears. BND security experts have asked the government to take China's overall strategy into account, including a law on forced cooperation in security matters, according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine. Other media outlets claim Berlin is drawing up a catalogue of measures, for all 5G providers, to change the telecommunications laws. These measures range from a non-espionage clause to the requirement of testing all components and the obligation to publish source code used in infrastructure. In some cases, the government could insist equipment already installed is replaced, which could exclude Huawei from the infrastructure without pronouncing a formal ban on the Chinese firm, according to business daily Handelsblatt. Germany launches its 5G auction on Tuesday amid a dispute with Washington over the use of equipment made by Chinese telecoms giant Huawei
The gunman who killed three people and wounded at least nine others on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht has been arrested, as police investigate any terror links.

The city was put into lockdown following the shooting, shortly after the morning rush hour.

Police said the suspect, 37-year-old Turkish man Gokmen Tanis, had been taken into custody after an hours-long manhunt and had earlier run-ins with authorities in the Netherlands.

But hours after the shooting, the gunmans motive remained unclear. A prosecutor said it could be for family reasons, while Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency said he had fired at a relative on the tram and had then shot at others who tried to help her.

Rescue workers install a screen on the spot where a human shape was seen under a white blanket following a shooting in Utrecht, Netherlands. Source: AP

Gokmen Tanis, 37, has been arrested in connection with the shooting. Source: AP

The Turkish intelligence agency said it is investigating whether the attack was personally motivated or an act of terrorism, President Tayyip Erdogan said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Dutch authorities had raised the terrorism threat in Utrecht province to its highest level. Schools were told to shut their doors and paramilitary police increased security at airports, other vital infrastructure and at mosques.

The threat level was reduced by one notch to where it had been after the suspect was arrested, the National Counter-Terrorism Agency said.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte convened crisis talks immediately after the incident, which came three days after a lone gunman killed 50 people in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.

Our country has today been shocked by an attack in Utrecht A terrorist motive cannot be excluded, Rutte said.

The first reports have led to disbelief and disgust. Innocent people have been struck by violence.

Dutch counter terrorism police prepare to enter a house with a sniffer dog equipped with a camera after the shooting. Source: AP

Dutch counter terrorism stand guard as others raid a house in connection with the shooting. Source: AP

The mayor of Utrecht, Jan van Zanen, said three people had been killed and five injured, three of them critically.

The shooting took place in Kanaleneiland, a quiet residential district on the outskirts of Utrecht with a large immigrant population.

Its frightening that something like this can happen so close to home, said Omar Rahhou, who said his parents lived on a street cordoned off by police. These things normally happen far away but this brings it very close, awful.

Story continues

Witness Daan Molenaar, who said he had been sitting at the front of the tram when the shooting started, told national broadcaster NOS he did not believe it was a terrorist attack.

Forensic investigators are seen in the building where the main suspect of the shooting has been arrested. Source: Reuters

The first thing I thought was, this is some kind of revenge or something, or somebody whos really mad and grabbed a pistol, he said.

Utrecht, the Netherlands fourth largest city with a population of around 340,000, is known for its picturesque canals and large student population. Gun killings are considered rare in Utrecht, as elsewhere in the Netherlands.

 with Reuters.

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Haiti's Chamber of Deputies voted Monday to censure Jean-Henry Ceant's government, with a new prime minister set to be named soon. Of the 103 lawmakers participating, 93 voted to dismiss the prime minister and his government. Six voted against and three abstained. "Notice will be sent to the president of the Republic. A new prime minister will be appointed in consultation between the head of state and the presidents of both branches of Parliament," said Speaker Gary Bodeau. Lawmakers say Ceant failed to do anything to improve the living conditions in the six months since he took over at the head of government. Ceant has faced violent protest movements. In February, thousands of people took to the streets across the country to demand better living conditions and the departure of the head of state. For about 11 days, all activities ground to a halt in Port-au-Prince and across most of the country's city. Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant (L), seen here speaking with President Jovenel Moise in 2018, has been censured by the lower house of Parliament


A huge, unexpected explosion with 10 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb has gone mostly undetected above the Earths surface, NASA has revealed.

It said the massive fireball from an exploding meteorite was the second largest blast of its kind for 30 years.

The meteorite blew up over the Bering Sea, off Russias Kamchatka Peninsula, in December, NASA said.

The asteroid came through the Earths atmosphere at a speed of 32km/s on December 18, on a steep trajectory of seven degrees, BBC News reported.

The explosion happened about 25km off the Earths surface. Source: Simon Proud

Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer at NASA, told the BBC that a fireball of its size is only expected two or three times every century.

It measured several metres and exploded 25.6km above the Earths surface, with an impact energy of 173 kilotonnes.

It was the largest fireball since one exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia six years ago.

While it may appear small from satellite images, the explosion had 10 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Source: Simon Proud

That was 40 per cent the energy release of Chelyabinsk, but it was over the Bering Sea so it didnt have the same type of effect or show up in the news, Dr Kelly Fast, near-Earth objects observations programme manager at NASA, said.

Thats another thing we have in our defence, theres plenty of water on the planet.

She gave details of the blast at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference near Houston, Texas.

NASA was notified of the explosion by the US Air Force after it was picked up by military satellites.

Dr Johnson said the meteor came in over an area not far from routes used by commercial planes flying between North America and Asia.

NASA is checking with airlines to see if there were any reported sightings.

Some colour views of the #meteor that flew over the North Pacific in December 2018, taken by Japan's #Himawari satellite.

The meteor is really clear here  bright orange fireball against the blue + white background! Background: https://t.co/r403SQxicZ pic.twitter.com/ctNN8zxsXb  Simon Proud (@simon_sat) March 18, 2019

With Yahoo UK

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Despite hefty anti-mafia powers, international police cooperation and thousands of arrests, Italy has yet to deal a significant blow to the human-trafficking networks responsible for sending countless migrants across the Mediterranean. Those now behind bars are hardly kingpins, and the one headline-grabbing arrest of a top trafficking mastermind appears increasingly likely to be a case of mistaken identity. In 2015, Italy jailed a Tunisian people smuggler for 18 years for his role in a shipwreck that killed 366 people two years earlier. And in 2016, they handed another Tunisian an identical sentence for captaining a boat in which up to 900 people perished. But both were the equivalent of mere drivers -- a far cry from those organising the transports who rake in vast sums of cash from sending migrants to an uncertain fate on the high seas. Although dozens of these smugglers -- or "scafisti" as they are known in Italian -- have been jailed, most are like Cheikhaya Dieng, a 26-year-old Senegalese man who was forced to steer the rubber dinghy that brought him to Italy. "The judge asked me 'did you steer the dinghy?' and I said 'yes, I did, to save my life'. Because if I refused they could kill me," he said with barely concealed anger. "I saw others like me, they shot them in the legs," he told AFP at the Sicilian jail where he is serving his sentence. "But the judge didn't care, he gave me three years and eight months in prison -- for nothing." - Huge resources, few results - The Italian justice system, however, appears to have taken such cases into consideration: although more than 2,500 scafisti have been arrested, interior ministry figures show, only a handful have been prosecuted. Those who do face justice tend to be the ones who reach shore in areas where the magistrates have less on their plates. Last month, a Palermo appeals court acquitted seven crew members of a boat in which 53 migrants suffocated in 2015. They all said they had steered the boat after being threatened. Although the Italian authorities are desperate to get their hands on those running the show, the task is daunting, despite the impressive resources available to them. Italian prosecutors have wide-ranging powers to probe each and every vessel headed for Italy, even if they've been intercepted or shipwrecked in international waters. They also have an array of extensive powers drawn up in recent decades to fight organised crime, including the right to use overseas wiretaps and turncoat testimony. On top of that, they have access to intelligence from Europe's border protection agency Frontex and from the EU's anti-trafficking mission Sophia which operates in the Mediterranean. And they also benefit from cooperation with police in other European countries where the networks exist, including Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. But despite plentiful intelligence, most of the "bosses" remain safely out of reach in Libya, rendered untouchable by the chaos that has reigned there since the fall of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011. - Top smuggler or Eritrean refugee? - Despite repeated requests from AFP, no Italian ministry or prosecutor would comment on the state of investigations. In June 2016, Italy hailed the arrest in Khartoum of one of its most wanted -- an Eritrean called Medhanie Yehdego Mered. Known as "the General", he was wanted on suspicion of being the head of one of the largest migrant trafficking networks that had sent thousands of migrants to Europe -- and hundreds to their deaths. But the triumph was short-lived, with serious doubts quickly arising over the real identity of the man now on trial in Palermo, who claims he is an Eritrean refugee called Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe -- whose only misfortune is to share a first name with the smuggling kingpin. Three years after his arrest, he may have put on a bit of weight but he still doesn't bear much of a resemblance to photographs of the "real" Medhanie. Although more than 2,500 alleged smugglers have been arrested, only a handful have been prosecuted Those now behind bars in Italy are hardly kingpins, with the real trafficking masterminds safely ensconced in the chaos of Libya There are now serious doubts about the real identity of the Eritrean man now on trial in Palermo, whom officials claim is top smuggler Medhanie Yehdego Mered
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev shocked the nation on Tuesday by resigning after nearly three decades in power that transformed the Central Asian republic. Nazarbayev, 78, ruled Kazakhstan since before the collapse of the Soviet Union and leaves no obvious successor. He will continue to enjoy significant powers, however, thanks to his constitutional status as "Leader of the Nation" and lifelong position as chief of the country's security council. "I have made a difficult decision -- to resign as president of the Republic of Kazakhstan," Nazarbayev said in a televised address to the nation. "I see my future task as ensuring the coming to power of a new generation of leaders who will continue the transformations being carried out in the country." Nazarbayev said the chairman of the Kazakh Senate, 65-year-old Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, would take over for the remainder of his mandate. A presidential election is due in March next year. Tokayev is due to be sworn in as the country's interim leader at 0600 GMT on Wednesday. As well as his state positions, Nazarbayev will remain head of the ruling Nur Otan party. "I am staying with you, the needs of the country and people will remain my concern," he said. Nazarbayev took office in 1990 and following the death of Uzbek president Islam Karimov in 2016, was the last regional leader to have been in power since before the 1991 collapse of the USSR. Nazarbayev spoke with Russian ally President Vladimir Putin about his resignation and the pair agreed to maintain "regular contact", according to a statement published by the Kazakh presidential administration. He also spoke to other leaders of former Soviet republics. - 'Put Kazakhstan on the map' - Nazarbayev was elected in 1999, 2005, 2011 and again in 2015, when he took more than 97 percent of the vote. The votes were internationally criticised and he was accused of tolerating little opposition to his rule. But under Nazarbayev, the sprawling nation of 18 million parlayed its energy resources and strategic location into influence, emerging from ex-Soviet obscurity to host Iranian nuclear talks and Syria peace negotiations. The gleaming futuristic new capital Astana, built in the years since independence, symbolised Nazarbayev's drive to transform the country. In his address, Nazarbayev listed a series of achievements, saying the economy had grown by 15 times during his years in office. "From the ruins of the USSR, we managed to build a successful state with a modern market economy in Kazakhstan," he said. "We put Kazakhstan on the map, where there had been no such state." Recent years however have seen growing frustration over falling living standards as Kazakhstan's commodity-dependent economy struggled to recover from a 2014 plunge in oil prices and Western sanctions against Russia, a key trading partner. Nazarbayev's resignation came less than a month after he sacked his government citing a lack of economic development. Nazarbayev subsequently named 53-year-old Askar Mamin as the new prime minister and announced a plan to spend more than $5 billion on social programmes and state salaries. There is no obvious succession plan in place and there are no clear alternatives to Nazarbayev's rule in the largely Muslim country, which has a significant ethnic Russian minority. - 'Breath-taking move' - Andrei Suzdaltsev, a professor at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, said the resignation would have an impact across the region. "You have to hand it to him -- this is a breath-taking move. He established a tradition of power transfer, he resigned voluntarily. And for Central Asia this is something incredible," Suzdaltsev told AFP. He said Mamin, the interim prime minister, "is most likely a contender" to replace Nazarbayev in the longer term. In his speech, Nazarbayev also expressed confidence in Senate chief Tokayev, saying: "He is the person we can entrust with the governance of Kazakhstan." Sergey Duvanov, an independent Kazakh analyst, said that by holding on to his other positions Nazarbayev would remain the power behind the throne. "He will continue to rule the country, just with a different title. This plan has been thought up precisely in order for everything to stay the same," Duvanov said. The son of a shepherd, Nazarbayev trained as an engineer before rising through the ranks of the Kazakh Communist Party to head it and the country in 1989. He was elected to the new role of president on the eve of the Soviet breakup in 1991. Nursultan Nazarbayev first took power in Kazakhstan during the Soviet era Kazakh leader Nazarbayev, who announced he was stepping aside on Tuesday, presided over the transformation of the capital Asata
Roger Federer departed Indian Wells empty-handed for a second straight year, but the Swiss great sees no reason he can't get back on track at the Miami Masters. "Sure, it's frustrating and disappointing and sad to some extent," Federer said after falling 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 to Austrian Dominic Thiem in Sunday's final. Thiem, 25, denied Federer a record sixth Indian Wells title and returned to his career-high of fourth in the world -- bumping Federer down to fifth going to the second leg of the "Sunshine Double" of Indian Wells and Miami. But Federer, the 20-time Grand Slam winner who claimed a remarkable 100th career title in Dubai last month, can afford to take the defeat in stride -- especially when he's playing well and feels his 37-year-old body is fully fit. "It's just not as dramatic," he said of falling to a player who was "just a bit better when it mattered". "Whereas, when you're hurt and things are difficult, maybe those hurt more. "I'm going to Miami. The body is perfectly fine. That also always keeps me upbeat, and I feel it's a privilege when I feel this way leaving a tournament. "I have been playing every single day for the last three weeks. I can be very happy and proud of that fact." As at Indian Wells, Federer could meet fellow Swiss Stan Wawrinka in the third round in Miami. Federer is a three-time winner at Miami, but he lost his second-round opener last year after falling to Juan Martin del Potro in the final at Indian Wells. With that in mind, Federer shied away from predicting he would bounce back in a big way from his loss to Thiem, with the Miami event's move to a new venue adding to his sense of uncertainty. "Now it's totally different," Federer said of the tournament moving from its longtime home on Key Biscayne to the Hard Rock Stadium -- home of the NFL's Miami Dolphins. A new stadium court inside the actual stadium is the centerpiece of the new venue, which also features a secondary grandstand court and two smaller show courts and practice courts. "Everybody's got to get used to center court or the conditions at the new site," Federer said. "I'm eager to find out how it's going to be like. There are stil a lot of open question marks. Right now I feel really good." Swiss great Roger Federer will aim to regroup at the Miami Open after falling in three sets to Austria's Dominic Thiem in the final of the ATP Indian Wells Masters
Our latest installment of Quick Bites brings us to East 4th Street for Vietnamese food.

THE VIBE

Another Vietnamese restaurant opened last Friday in the East Village, which is an always welcome development in any neighborhood, especially when, as is the case of Van Da, the menu focuses on regional dishes you don't find everywhere else. The owner here is Yen Ngo, a fine-dining restaurant veteran who grew up with this food, and running the kitchen is Gramercy Tavern alum Hannah Wong. Together these "warrior women" (which is how you'd translate Van Da) are determined to bring something new to the scene.

There's no exterior signage yet, but the restaurant is in that awkward bi-level space near Avenue B that used to be The Cardinal (among other things). At street level there's a small dining room with a dozen seatsit's still unfinished, decor-wise, so it looks a bit forlorn when no one else is thereand a staircase unfortunately positioned right near the front door, cutting the bar area in two. Should you find yourself in a waiting-for-a-table situation there's a small holding pen by the front window, with a few stools and a counter for drinks.

Downstairs is cozier, even a bit lounge-y, and can accommodate about 24 at various tables and wrap-around banquettes. Either way, it's easy to get comfortable once you're seated. There's also the friendly, attentive serviceNgo herself often brings over a plate or two, explaining why the dish is important to her personallyand the deft pacing of the meal, a forgotten skill in today's "we'll bring out the stuff whenever it's ready" environment.

THE BITES

The Van Da menu is divided into six categories, starting with a handful of Street Food items and then three sections defined by the dishes' city of origin. So there's a section dedicated to the foods and flavors of Hue (Ancient, Refined, Royal), and one for Hanoi (Traditional, Authentic, Subtle), and a third for Saigon (Bold, Modern, Driven). This is all immediately exciting because most everything is unfamiliar at first glance; there are no bowls of Pho to be had, for example, nor Bahn Mi anything. Even better: everything I ate across the whole menu was great.

All four of street snacks appeal, but I loved my rich and gloppy Pho Short Rib Grilled Cheese one night (for maximum pleasure, sip, don't dip, the shot of broth) and my Red Curry Corn Fritters the next. The latter start out sweet and then deliver a nice little kick once you get into them. The Stir-Fried Pho Noodles are the obvious pick in the Hanoi section, the slippery rice noodles complemented beautifully with bitter greens and earthy trumpet mushrooms. This dish works particularly well with a squirt or two from the bottle of housemade Nuoc Cham, available upon request.

My favorite dishes across two meals were probably from Hue, including the beautifully textured, intensely flavored tapioca dumpling stuffed with pork and shrimp, called Bahn Bot Luc; and the turmeric Bahn Khot, which are crisp, bite-sized little saucers filled with wild mushrooms and creamy coconut custard. You get about a half dozen of these, and they will be gone in well under a minute. The largest, most entree-sized dish is the Bo Luc Lac, or Shaking Beef, and it's an excellent version of the Saigon classic. The meat is tender and juicy, the chunks of sunchoke really satisfy, and the whole thing is buried under a bright watercress salad. For something a bit more unusual, the Grilled Eggplant with ground spiced lamb is also a winner.

And don't skip dessert! Ngo and Wong's Vietnamese Yogurt Panna Cotta, topped with tart golden berries, is rich, tangy and refreshing; and the superb Che, or Coconut Tapioca Pudding, costars caramelized green banana andsecret ingredient alerttiny bits of crackling peanut brittle.

THE VERDICT

Van Da is a terrific restaurant. There's a bit of a small plates dynamic going on heretwo people should get at least four, and probably five, things, plus a dessertwhich can add up, price-wise. But the food is so good, and made with such obvious love, that you won't regret it.

Van Da is located at 234 East 4th Street, between Avenues A and B, and is open Tuesday through Thursday 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., and on Friday and Saturday from 6 to 11 p.m.. Closed Sunday and Monday. (vanda.nyc)
On June 15, 2015, four-year-old Chepchirchir Kiplagat's life changed forever. Bitten by a snake as she slept, she permanently lost the use of the left side of her body. Sleeping beside her on a mattress on the floor of their modest, mud-walled home, Chepchirchir's two-year-old sister Scholar was also bitten. She did not survive. "It was hard to tell what had happened because the children were crying from the pain," their father Jackson Chepkui, a 39-year-old livestock farmer, told AFP at home in the tiny village of Embosos in Kenya's remote western Baringo county. "We saw two blood spots on her (Chepchirchir's) wrist, that's how we were able to conclude that they were bitten by a snake." With tiny Scholar no longer breathing, Chepkui scrambled to save his surviving daughter. Embosos does not have its own clinic, and the frantic father struggled to find a motorcycle taxi to take them to the nearest town: Marigat about 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) away. They finally arrived at about 1:00 am -- some five hours after the child was bitten -- only to find the clinic had no antivenom. They set off again for the town of Kabarnet, another 40 km away, again to find no stocks of the lifesaving serum. Finally, Chepchirchir was brought to a hospital in the city of Eldoret, a further 90 km away, by 5:00 am. The little girl was in hospital for two months and suffered permanent damage. Of school age now, she requires a wheelchair her family cannot afford. Every year, snakes bite about 5.4 million people worldwide, of whom up to 2.7 million experience "envenoming" -- when the animal transfers its poison through its fangs. This number is likely a vast underestimation, given underreporting and patchy recordkeeping, officials say. An estimated 81,000-138,000 people die of snakebites annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), while about 400,000 survivors suffer permanent disabilities and other nasty aftereffects. Snake venom can cause paralysis that stops breathing, bleeding disorders that can lead to fatal haemorrhage, irreversible kidney failure and tissue damage that can cause permanent disability and limb loss. Most snakebite victims live in the world's tropical and poorest regions, and children are worse affected due to their smaller body size. - This one won't bite - The fate of victims like Chepchirchir and her little sister is avoidable, insisted Royjan Taylor, director of the Bio-Ken venomous snake centre in Watamu on the Kenyan coast. Even simple barriers such as mosquito nets around beds can repel the slithering reptiles, while easy access to trained medical staff and species-specific antivenoms can save thousands of lives. Figures on antivenom availability today are hard to come by, but a report by Nick Brown of the Global Snakebite Initiative a few years ago estimated it could be as low as 2.5 percent of what is needed, with the majority of African countries having no effective or affordable antivenom at all. And a recent study of more than 100 clinics in Kenya's southern Kilifi county revealed that nearly 90 percent of staff had had no training in snakebite treatment. "Because it (a snakebite) can't be transmitted (like a disease), people tend not to look at it seriously. But we see so many snakebites, we see so much suffering because people lose limbs, they lose a leg" for something as random as "stepping on a snake," said Taylor. During a visit by AFP, the Bio-Ken centre receives a call on a dedicated telephone line that immediately jolts the team into action: a snake has been spotted. The call came from Emmanuel, 23, who waits for the team, machete in hand, at the spot where he last saw the reptile while locking his goat in its pen. Moments later, Taylor and a colleague each grab an extremity of the snake using long pincers, and with a choreographed swoop, place it in a special box. Today's find: an African puff adder -- the same type that bit Chepchirchir and Scholar. "This one was well hidden" under piles of dead leaves, said Taylor. "At least this snake won't bite anybody here." The captured snakes are released into national parks, far from populated villages and towns. The poison of some is extracted for use in antivenom production. - Neglected - Kenya boasts some of the world's deadliest snakes, key among them green and black mambas and spitting cobras. And as in other poor, rural areas of Africa, Latin America and Asia, venomous snakes pose a public health risk that experts say has been neglected for far too long. Things may finally be changing. On February 21, a dedicated working group set up by the UN's public health organ unveiled a strategy for halving snake bite deaths by 2030. In its report, the group slams policymakers and drug developers for turning a blind eye to the issue. "Like many diseases of poverty, snakebite envenoming has failed to attract requisite public health policy inclusion and investment...," the authors state. "This is largely due to the demographics of the affected populations and their lack of political voice." The working group's plan envisions making 500,000 antivenom treatments available in sub-Saharan Africa every year by 2024, rising to three million per year globally by 2030. WHO will work to boost production of the serum, improve regulatory control and reinvigorate the market by ensuring that safe and effective products are available, the report says. Every year, snakes bite about 5.4 million people worldwide but the figure is likely a vast underestimation, given underreporting and patchy recordkeeping, officials say Chepchirchir Kiplagat (pictured) was bitten by a snake when she was four years old as she slept The WHO says that about 400,000 survivors suffer permanent disabilities and other nasty aftereffects of snakebites Royjan Taylor (pictured), director of the Bio-Ken venomous snake centre in Watamu on the Kenyan coast, says the fate of snakebite victims is avoidable
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will return to Beijing next week as the United States and China inch toward resolving their trade war, a senior administration official told AFP on Tuesday. The renewed shuttle diplomacy is a sign of progress in the talks after several weeks in which momentum toward a resolution appeared to have slowed. Following the renewed talks in Beijing, Chinese trade envoy Liu He will return to Washington the following week, with talks in their final stages, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday told reporters the talks were going "very well," reiterating the positive message of recent months. But he also said last week he was in "no rush" to strike a bargain, insisting any deal had to do more than make cosmetic changes. US and Chinese officials in recent weeks have alternated between projecting optimism and warning that they have much to do before reaching a final outcome. On Friday, China's rubber-stamp parliament approved a foreign investment law to strengthen protections for intellectual property -- a central US grievance -- but foreign businesses said they were not given enough time add input. The report helped lift Wall Street on Tuesday after stock prices had begun to sag, following a Bloomberg report that some US officials believed China was reneging on earlier trade concessions. US officials are demanding far-reaching changes to Chinese industrial policy -- including an end to massive state intervention in markets, subsidies and the alleged theft of American technology -- and insist that any agreement must be enforceable. China has been willing to increase purchases of American exports but analysts say they will be reluctant to accede to American demands in ways that could weaken the communist party's hold on power. The two sides have exchanged tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way trade. Lighthizer has declined to state publicly whether Washington would lift the tariffs it has imposed so far if both sides reach a deal. In congressional testimony last week, he said China and the United States were in "the final weeks" of talks but he stopped short of predicting success. In this file photo taken on February 22, 2019 US President Donald Trump watches as China's Vice Premier Liu He (L) speaks with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (R) in the Oval Office


A Melbourne man with a violent criminal history, including a previous attack on a housemate, has been jailed for 11 years for killing an Airbnb guest.

Jason Rohan Colton, 42, was on Tuesday sentenced to at least eight years behind bars after pleading guilty to manslaughter over the violent death of Ramis Jonuzi in October 2017.

Colton was the instigator of the attack, for which his housemates Craig Levy and Ryan Smart are already serving prison time.

With their help, Colton repeatedly beat Mr Jonuzi, dragged him unconscious around the front yard of the Brighton East home and held him in a choke hold, angry that Mr Jonuzi owed Levy $210 for an unpair Airbnb bill.

Jason Colton (right) admits he choked to death Melbourne Airbnb guest Ramis Jonuzi (left) over an unpaid $210 bill, as the victim pleaded for his life. Colton is pictured in court in 2017. Source: 7 News

Earlier in March Colton faced a jury charged with murder, but at the conclusion of his trial last week, his lawyers submitted there was no case to answer.

That was accepted, as was the manslaughter plea Colton had earlier offered.

On Tuesday, Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth called the attack vicious and callous, carried out against a man who didnt fight back and posed no threat.

The group bashed him Mr Jonuzi at this home while he begged them to stop. Source: 7 News

At a pre-sentence hearing it was revealed the assault on Mr Jonuzi was not the first time Colton had been violent towards a housemate.

Colton, who married a Norwegian woman in 2008 and moved to her home country, was jailed by the Drammen District Court in Norways south in 2013.

Colton attacked that housemate while he was asleep in bed, punching his face and grabbing his throat.

After serving about three months jail in Norway, he was sent back to Melbourne, where he worked mainly in hospitality until Mr Jonuzis fatal assault.

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A French travel publisher presented Tuesday its first guide book for North Korea, offering 190 pages of tips for getting the most out of a trip to experience the "survival of a totalitarian communist state". "The guide wasn't conceived to defend the current regime or to cast judgment, but to show the genuine touristic interest of the country," Jean-Paul Labourdette, a co-founder of the "Petit Fute" guides, said in Paris. He said 4,000 copies had been printed -- more than enough for the estimated 400 French tourists which head each year to the pariah state, which has been isolated from the international community for decades. North Korea has endured harsh UN sanctions to pursue its nuclear weapons programme under the Kim dynasty, which implemented a dictatorship that has been accused of provoking widespread hunger and human rights abuses. The French foreign ministry strongly discourages tourists from visiting, while the US State Department only rarely grants exceptional permits for Americans hoping to travel to North Korea. But Labourdette said "there are no security issues" for travellers, though he admitted "very restrictive" conditions, not least tight surveillance that limits foreigners to just a handful of hotels and restaurants. And while tourist visas are readily granted, the guide warns that missteps are costly: "The punishments can be severe... as was the case for the American student Otto Warmbier." Warmbier, an Ohio native who studied at the University of Virginia, was pulled away from his tour group at the Pyongyang airport in 2016 and charged with crimes against the state for allegedly taking down a propaganda poster in his hotel. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour. After lengthy negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, Warmbier was released in a vegetative state in 2017 but died a few days later on American soil. - 'Don't take pictures' - Mainstream travel guides have steered clear of the repressive nation, with English-language stalwarts like "Lonely Planet" limiting their coverage to a few chapters in their Korea books. "Don't take any pictures of airports, road, bridges or train stations," the "Petit Fute" warns, and make sure you don't throw away or even fold any newspaper with a picture of former or current leaders. "Roll it up instead," the guide advises. The book comes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump are holding halting talks on ending the country's nuclear weapons efforts. "We launched this project four years ago, we didn't wait for Donald and Kim to start their little friendship," Labourdette said. "But it took quite a while to find qualified French writers." "Petit Fute" aims to publish guides on all the world's countries, or 204 instead of the 175 it covers now. "We still don't have Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Liberia," Labourdette said. An estimated 400 French tourists head each year to North Korea, which has been isolated from the international community for decades North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (L) has been holding talks with US President Donald Trump on ending the pariah state's nuclear weapons efforts
Boeing's 737 MAX aircraft are grounded across the world following the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, casting a harsh spotlight on the plane's safety certification and the close relationship between Boeing and American authorities. Nearly 10 days later, what do we know? - What happened? - On March 10, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed southeast of Addis Ababa, killing the 157 people on board. It was the second accident in five months for a 737 MAX aircraft, a product line meant to replace the 737 NG. The first crash, involving a MAX 8 operated by Lion Air, occurred October 29 in Indonesia's Java Sea and left 189 people dead. The aircraft have been temporarily grounded or banned from airspace around the world. - Are the two crashes related? - Both aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff. Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said Sunday that a study of the flight data recorder retrieved from the Ethiopian plane had shown "clear similarities" to that of the Lion Air flight in Indonesia. She said the parallels would be the "subject of further study." - What have investigators found? - In both cases, investigations are still underway, with the outcomes not expected for several months. The flight recorders retrieved from the Ethiopian crash have been sent to France for analysis. Preliminary results in the Lion Air crash have pointed to a possible malfunction on the aircraft's stabilization system intended to prevent stalling, known as MCAS, or the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. American pilots have also reported encountering problems using MCAS. - What does Boeing say? - The manufacturer has expressed its condolences to the victims' families, sent staff to the crash sites and says it is cooperating with investigators. Boeing's CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the company was finalizing a software update to the MCAS and an update for onboard manuals and pilot training. The US Federal Aviation Administration has given the company until April to carry out these changes. Sources familiar with the matter told AFP that the fix should be ready by March 25 and that it should take around two hours to perform. Boeing has also suspended deliveries of 737 MAX aircraft but has continued to manufacture them. - Why such controversy? - Since the Ethiopian Airlines crash, questions have arisen about Boeing's ties to the FAA, which has offices within the company's plants. For a decade, the FAA has allowed manufacturers themselves to certify their aircraft. FAA-accredited Boeing employees notably certified the MCAS system, sources say. Critics say the aviation regulator has been too soft on Boeing, a major player in the American export economy whose planes are also at issue in the current US-China trade talks. - What other US authorities say - The Justice Department, as well as the inspector general's office at the Department of Transportation, have both opened investigations into how the 737 MAX was certified, according to media reports. The Justice Department investigation is reportedly a criminal matter. The House of Representatives Committee on Transportation is also considering an investigation and calling on FAA officials to testify in public. - When will MAX fly again? - Three months is the best-case scenario, according to Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at Teal Group. United Airlines is banking on this scenario after canceling flights that were scheduled to use 737 MAX 9 planes at the end of May. In 2013, the 787 Dreamliner was grounded for four months following battery problems. - What is Boeing's financial hit? - The cost will depend on what the accidents' cause turns out to be. If it is only an MCAS modification, the repair bill will be less than $1 billion, according to Ken Herbert of Cannaccord Genuity. This would be peanuts for Boeing, which is aiming for $15 billion in cash flow this year after record revenues of more than $100 billion last year. The company may still have to pay damages demanded by clients or victims' families. In the meantime, Boeing has already lost roughly $30 billion in market capitalization on Wall Street. The company is also facing a logistical dilemma: where to store the 737 MAX aircraft it continues to produce? If the grounding and air space bans continue, can it keep building the jets, knowing it will be unable to deliver them? Boeing 737 MAX airplanes are seen at the company's factory in Renton, Washington Mourners in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia carry portraits of victims from the Ethiopian Airlines crash A boy looks on as forensic investigators work at the crash site of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX aircraft
For the third time this month, U.S. Rep. John Katko has received recognition for bipartisanship and legislative effectiveness.

Katko, R-Camillus, has been ranked the third-most bipartisan member of Congress by The Lugar Center and Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy. The center rated him as the seventh-most bipartisan legislator in 2018. The latest rating covers the 115th Congress, which spanned the 2017 and 2018 sessions.

The Lugar Center's Bipartisan Index is based on an analysis of bills sponsored by a lawmaker and how many colleagues from the other party sign on as cosponsors of a measure. The index also examines how often a member cosponsors legislation introduced by the opposing party.

Katko sponsored 31 bills during the 115th Congress, according to the Congress.gov database. He cosponsored 323 measures.

When Katko introduces a new bill, he seeks Democratic cosponsors. It has been a self-imposed rule for the congressman, who has been in office since 2015.

"Working to accomplish central New York's priorities in Congress means engaging with the other side to get things done," Katko said in a statement Tuesday. "Washington is more dysfunctional than ever, with rhetoric from the extreme ends of the spectrum often dominating the narrative. But I have always believed that if we work together, we can achieve meaningful reforms."

Earlier this month, Katko received recognition from the Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project spearheaded by the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, for being one of the most effective legislators in Congress. The center rated him as the fourth-most effective member of Congress for advancing bills he's authored.

The Bipartisan Policy Center honored Katko last week at an event in Washington. He was one of six members of Congress who received the group's annual Legislative Action Award.

The Lugar Center has calculated the bipartisan index for every Congress dating back to the 103rd Congress in 1993. The overall scores for the House and Senate improved, with the Senate's mark exceeding the historic average for the first time since 2008.

Richard Lugar, president of the Lugar Center and a former U.S. senator from Indiana, explained that there was plenty of bipartisan cooperation when it came to introducing bills in Congress.

"Overall bipartisan index scores improved for the third straight Congress after bottoming out in 2011-2012," he said. "The new index scores show that even as the rhetoric and overall atmosphere in Washington remains partisan, there is an appetite among many lawmakers for bipartisan problem solving."

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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The state Department of Transportation is expected to release the Interstate 81 draft environmental impact statement sometime early this year. State Sen. Rachel May wants to ensure central New Yorkers don't have to wait much longer.

May, D-Syracuse, tweeted Monday that she is "considering all the tools available to the legislature" to advance the I-81 process. Her tweet included a photo of draft legislation that would require the release of the draft environmental impact statement within 30 days of the bill being signed into law.

The bill hasn't been introduced by May. Her office confirmed she is "exploring all options," which includes legislation or adding the language to the state budget.

There hasn't been an update on the status of the draft environmental impact statement. The state Department of Transportation announced the timeline in 2018. The agency said the draft statement would be released early this year.

The statement will assess the three options to replace the I-81 viaduct in Syracuse. The proposed alternatives are demolishing the viaduct and replacing it with a community grid, rebuilding the viaduct or removing the elevated highway and constructing a mile-long tunnel.

Prior estimates for the project range from $1.3 billion for the grid to $3.6 billion for the tunnel.

The state Department of Transportation initially narrowed the project's options to either the grid or a new viaduct. But state lawmakers representing central New York wanted the agency to consider a tunnel option. Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed and called for an independent study to examine whether a tunnel would be feasible.

The study released in December 2017 found that a tunnel is "technically feasible." Any tunnel would require street-level improvements, according to the study.

Once the draft environmental impact statement is released, the state Department of Transportation will hold a public hearing. Additional meetings will be held in the Syracuse area. The state is also required to have a public comment period, which will last at least 45 days, and must respond to each message.

After the public comment period concludes, the state can move forward with the final environmental impact statement. The statement is needed for the approval process. Before advancing to the design phase, the project must be approved by the state Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration.

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A pair of upstate New York members of Congress will lead a bipartisan group that aims to bolster the relationship between the U.S. and Canada.

U.S. Reps. Brian Higgins and Elise Stefanik will serve as co-chairs of the House Northern Border Caucus. Higgins, D-Buffalo, and Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, represent congressional districts that border Canada.

The Northern Border Caucus was founded in 1994 by former U.S. Rep. John LaFalce. The group consists of House members from across the country, especially those whose districts benefit from trade between the two countries.

Higgins, who has served in Congress since 2005, participated in North American Free Trade Agreement discussions last year in Montreal and is a member of the Great Lakes Task Force. He has been nominated to lead the Canada-U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group, which encourages conversations between lawmakers in both countries.

"Canada and the United States are strong allies with interconnected economies," Higgins said in a statement. "The Northern Border Caucus provides a forum for dialogue that explores further opportunities to strengthen bi-national coordination and advance shared interests."

Stefanik has worked on several issues related to the U.S.-Canada relationship. In 2015, her first year in office, she led a North Country delegation to Montreal.

In the last Congress, she introduced legislation that would allow Canadian "snowbirds" to stay in the U.S. for a longer period of time. And together with Higgins, she spoke out against tariffs on Canadian newsprint.

"Canada continues to be our strongest economic ally, and we must actively work to maintain our partnership with them so that it is productive and beneficial for both countries," Stefanik said.

There are 24 other members of the House Northern Border Caucus, including three from New York. U.S. Reps. Chris Collins, Joe Morelle and Paul Tonko, all of whom represent upstate districts, are members of the caucus.

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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LEDYARD  Once he and his family took over a local beef farm, Tim Pallokat said protecting the lakes has always been a priority.

Cayuga View Farm, located in Ledyard, was awarded the New York Beef Producers Association's Environmental Stewardship Award at its 2019 winter conference for the practices Pallokat has implemented to protect the environment since taking the farm over around 2012.

Wilson Mitchell Jr. began the farm years ago and transitioned to a black Angus beef herd in 1965 when he left the dairy business, Pallokat said. Living down the road from one another, the farmers began to work together in 2008. Pallokat asked Mitchell for some hay and he was told he could have all the hay he wanted as long as he helped bail it the next year. The farmers then chose to merge their cattle herds.

Thats how it all started, Pallokat said. "He died at the age of 94, so he was a young spring chicken when we met him, he laughed. He added that Mitchell donated two acres of his land to create the Evergreen Cemetery, so now he rests on his own farm.

Adhering to Mitchell's No. 1 priority of "quality over quantity, Cayuga View strives for "really good genetics and progressive cattle," Pallokat said. The 50-cattle herd, producing natural beef, is given extreme care. "They get treated like queens sometimes. Ours are above and beyond spoiled.

In an effort to also control how the cattle treat the environment, Pallokat did multiple projects on Cayuga View Farm with the help of about $92,000 in federal grants from the Natural Resources Conservation Service and about $170,000 in state grants in partnership with Cayuga County Soil and Water Conservation District. The farm was on a priority funding list due to being on karst soil, Pallokat said. Karst soil breaks up easily and allows water and contamination to leech into the lakes quickly, he said, adding there's not much sand or gravel in the soil to filter the water.

Originally, the main barn facility consisted of a single indoor barn dating back to the late 1800s, Pallokat said. As of 2017, the farm also has a covered manure storage area and a covered barnyard.

The covered facilities have a roof system designed to collect rain runoff that is then directly routed to a creek on the property via an underground 10-inch drain pipe, Pallokat said. The creek is part of Great Gully tributary and water may take about 10 minutes or less to flow from the farm to Cayuga Lake, so keeping the water clean is important to Pallokat.

What those facilities do, is that this time of year, provide a place for the cows to go out, they exercise, they eat, theres (beds) out there, and the manure is contained, Pallokat said. And then we spread when we can, when the ground is right.

Manure is spread in accordance to the farm's Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plan, which Pallokat said is optional for a farm his size. The farm's roughly 125 acres is more than enough land for the 50 cows' manure, which allows all of it to be spread on crop ground and not on hay ground.

As another water protection measure, Pallokat also started a grazing plan that fully operated for the first time last summer. Funding helped Cayuga View pay for a new well, fencing to create about 12 pasture areas and a laneway and bridge for the cattle to cross the creek that runs through the farm. With the laneway and 40 acres of land dedicated to be a grassland buffer, the farm is containing and preventing runoff.

The 1,000-foot-long laneway is 12-feet wide and helps prevent erosion by leading from the barn to a bridge. The bridge allows cows to access 20 acres on the other side of the creek. Pallokat also laid out water lines so he can provide water from the barn to the pasture areas on both sides of the creek.

Last summer, Pallokat moved around a single wire, creating a new fence line, to rotate the cows to a new pasture area within his three large fields. The cows were moved every three days with 30 days of rest for each pasture.

"They got so accustomed to it, it was the coolest thing. When they heard the four-wheeler coming, they would run to the laneway and be waiting for me to drop that wire so they could get in the fresh grass, he said. The grass would grow, and it worked out really cool. And it was the best thing we did."

Since the cows were relocated to a new pasture when the one they were in still had about three inches of grass left, the plants grew back faster, Pallokat said.

The most important thing I can tell you is: We all have to work together around here. For us  it became very important  the No. 1 thing was leaving the water better than we found it for our kids to use the lakes," Pallokat said. "It can be tough to work with (grants), but if youre conscious of the environment and thats what you want  you can do it. ... I wish a lot of the smaller farms would do it.

Due to receiving the state's Beef Producers Association Environmental Stewardship Award, Cayuga View Farm is now nominated for regional recognition.

I think its really cool that this part of New York gets to represent the National Cattlemens Beef Association, or have a nomination for that, Pallokat said. Thats very unique because ... were competing against ranches from Arizona, from California  were competing against big, 20,000 acre ranches. But, the difference is, they have 20,000 acres out there (but) whats the population their watershed affects? 100,000? This watershed affects millions. Because it affects Cayuga Lake which goes to Lake Ontario which affects all the watersheds around.

While the changes made to the farm were huge, Pallokat said, it benefits everyone when manure isn't headed into the lakes from farms.

This is your tax dollars. It might benefit Cayuga View Farm, but it also benefits everybody in the county and everybody in the state and anybody who uses the lake.

Staff writer Megan Ehrhart can be reached at (315) 282-2244 or megan.ehrhart@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter @MeganEhrhart.

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AUBURN  An Auburn woman will spend about five years in prison for stealing a wallet in Venice.

In November 2017, Shannon Terwilliger, 38, entered dwellings on two Venice dairy farms. At one, she offered another woman for prostitution services and at the other, she stole a wallet. Although scheduled to begin a week-long trial for her crimes in December, she pleaded guilty instead.

Woman pleads guilty to burglary in Cayuga County prostitution case Shannon Terwilliger entered dwellings on two Venice dairy farms in 2017  at one, she offere

Terwilliger and a female codefendent left the first dwelling when farmworkers said they weren't interested in prostitution services, Chief Assistant District Attorney Christopher Valdina told The Citizen in December. At the second home, Terwilliger stole a wallet and debit card found in a man's pair of pants.

The situation wasn't much unlike that of Clarence Brown who was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008 for his conviction of second-degree felony burglary and one year in jail for promoting prostitution, a misdemeanor, Valdina said. Terwilliger was an accomplice of Brown and testified at his 2008 trial.

Terwilliger, a second-violent-felony offender, was involved in a series of similar burglaries which victimized immigrants and other vulnerable people, Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann said in Cayuga County Court Tuesday.

"She has continued this course of victimizing this population. ... It's very disappointing."

Initially charged with two counts of second-degree attempted burglary, grand larceny, conspiracy and criminal possession of stolen property along with misdemeanor charges of petit larceny and promoting prostitution, Terwilliger was able to satisfy her indictment by pleading guilty to to one count of second-degree attempted burglary.

Judge Mark Fandrich sentenced Terwilliger, of 19 Orchard St., to 5.5 years in prison and five years of post-release supervision. Orders of protection were put in place for victims and she was ordered to pay about $300 in restitution. She could have faced up to 30 years in prison for her crimes.

"It's been a long road for Ms. Terwilliger with regards to this case (and) with regards to her life," said Rome Canzano, Terwilliger's defense attorney.

"I accept full responsibility for my actions," Terwilliger said. She asked Fandrich to allow her to enter any programs that might get her home sooner as she has full custody of her 16-year-old daughter.

"I've known you for a long time  a real long time," Fandrich said. "I know you've been through a lot ... but with that said there are consequences for our actions. ... I do not oppose any program that you qualify for while in (the state's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision)."

Also in court:

 An Auburn man was sentenced to up to four years in prison for a November robbery and for violating his probation.

Steven Felder, 24, of 7 Grover St., pleaded guilty Jan. 15 to forcibly robbing people of prescription medication and a vehicle. At the time this crime was committed, Felder also had a violation of probation pending, Budelmann said in court Tuesday.

Three charged with robbery, using stolen vehicle in Auburn The Auburn Police Department arrested three people in connection with a robbery at a Pulaski

"I come to you with sadness in my heart," Felder said. "I've allowed my addiction to turn me into something I'm not."

Felder, a second-felony offender, said he was on the verge of losing his wife and family and is now able to see the chaos and hurt the addiction caused them. He asked Fandrich for a drug treatment sentence to help turn his life around, saying he wants to be home for the birth of his child in August.

Fandrich said Felder "did very poorly on probation" and the court and the probation department tried to give him a chance. He said addiction "is not an easy road" and said he wasn't opposed to him participating in any drug program he may qualify for.

Felder was sentenced to two to four years in prison for his robbery charge and 1 1/3 to four years in prison for his violation of probation  he was on probation from a 2017 second-degree attempted assault charge. The sentences will run concurrently. An order of protection was issued for the victim and Felder will pay restitution jointly with his codefendants.

 A Niles man was sentenced to probation for attempting to posses a weapon.

Matthew Matijas, 25, of 3761 Route 41A, was pulled over for a taillight violation and ended up being charged with third-degree attempted criminal possession of a weapon, a class E felony.

Budelmann said the defendant was found in possession of an assault-style rifle, but had no criminal history, was an employed high school graduate and had been a member of the fire service for many years.

"He has otherwise been an outstanding member of the community," said Thomas Turturo, Matijas' defense attorney.

Fandrich said that a prison sentence would be unduly harsh for this matter and sentenced Matijas to a term of shock probation. The shock portion includes 100 hours of community service and his probation term will be five years.

Staff writer Megan Ehrhart can be reached at (315) 282-2244 or megan.ehrhart@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter @MeganEhrhart.

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Uphill battle for transparency in government continues

Try this tonight on the way home.

If you see a police officer camped out by an intersection, run the stop sign.

When the officer pulls you over, explain to him that you only choose to obey certain traffic rules, and that stopping for stop signs isnt one of them.

Think hell agree with you and not give you a ticket?

OK, dont really run a stop sign. Were just making a point here.

The point is that laws are passed for a reason and they were meant to be obeyed. People dont get to decide which ones theyll follow and which ones they wont.

Yet despite actual laws ensuring the publics right to learn about their government through access to public records and public meetings, government officials still regularly decide not to follow them.

This week, we in the journalism profession celebrate Sunshine Week to focus the publics attention on government transparency.

What would really improve transparency in government is if the government agencies just follow the existing laws.

In many cases, they know theyre violating the law and choose to deliberately blow through legal stop signs.

Other times, they claim ignorance of the law in refusing to comply with it. And in other cases where the language of the law is ambiguous but the intent clear, they err on the side of secrecy.

Almost every day, journalists and citizens encounter public officials who routinely deny access to records without trying to comply with the law, who refuse to follow established deadlines for notification and compliance, who close public meetings illegally by citing phony exemptions or lying about the reason for closing the meeting. Citizens routinely have to fight for basic public documents like police reports and mugshots and budget information.

For example, The Gazette and other media outlets recently sought information about safety issues related to the intersection of Octobers fatal Schoharie limousine crash. Officials hid behind subjective language in the law that allows information to be withheld if it was compiled for law enforcement purposes. They also withheld statistical information in defiance of the language and spirit of the law.

One of our reporters recently tried to obtain a salary schedule for a local municipal water authority and was told the agency had payroll records, but not job titles. They have to have a list of compensation for each position somewhere. But instead of releasing the information, theyre giving us, and their constituents, the runaround.

In October, the Albany Times Union was denied access to emails between state Health Department staff and a major donor to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Not only would the department not turn over the records, officials wouldnt even explain why the department couldnt conduct a search of its own computer system that was the basis for its denial.

For two years, the Buffalo News sought a videotape showing a cell block attendant abusing a criminal suspect in the basement the City Court building.Here we have a government employee in a government building committing some kind of act against a citizen, yet government officials felt they had the right to keep the tape secret from the public for two years.

The Post-Star in Glens Falls has for years published local deeds, along with the sale prices of the properties. That is until recently, when Saratoga County arbitrarily decided to remove the sale prices from the listings. Only after calling out the county on its pages and consulting with industry and state officials did the paper convince the county to restore the sale prices.

This defiance of open government laws isnt limited to state and local governments.

On the federal level, the Trump Administration is so secretive that good-government groups have dubbed its record on transparency an eclipse on sunlight. To be fair, the Obama and Bush administrations also had awful track records when it came to withholding records and not releasing them in a timely manner. Unfortunately, the disturbing pattern toward greater secrecy continues.

We could go on all day with examples of how government regularly abuses, ignores, obfuscates and violates existing transparency laws, with the ultimate outcome being the public is deprived of information about government to which they are rightly entitled.

We must say that not all public officials behave this way. To those officials who do follow and respect the law, thank you for your integrity and cooperation.

If any progress can be made as a result of this years Sunshine Week, let it be that more public officials respect the peoples right to know and recognize and reject efforts to deny citizens that right.

Mark C. Mahoney is the editorial page editor for The Daily Gazette in Schenectady.

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In Russia, where the government already has broad powers to regulate and censor online content, President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a new law that massively expands his own administrations authority to outlaw online content that the government doesnt like. The new bill is aimed, according to The Moscow Times, mainly at fake news and insults to government officials, but widely encompasses any online material that spreads disrespect of Russian society.

The bill, authored by legislators in Putins own United Russia party, was passed last week by Russias duma, or parliament, and sent on Wednesday to Putin for his signature.

How such disrespect is defined and what constitutes fake news will be solely at the discretion of Putins government, under the law, according to the Washington Post.

The prosecutor general now has essentially unconstrained authority to determine that any speech is unacceptable under the new law, Russia expert Matthew Rojansky told the Post.

While persecution of Putins critics and penalties for online speech are nothing new in Russia, Rojanksy said, the new law makes it much easier and more straightforward for the government to silence dissenting voices online.

If the state considers any online speech extremist, it can block it, and it can severely punish the speaker, the Russia expert said. One consequence may be to make it nearly impossible for individuals or groups to call for public protest activity against any action taken by the state.

When it comes to online porn, Russia has blocked major porn sites including PornHub and YouPorn since 2016. While simply viewing porn is not illegal in Russia, production, distribution or public demonstration of pornographic content is punishable by two to six years in prison.

Under the law signed by Putin on Monday, any online content that shows clear disrespect for society, the state, the official state symbols of the Russian Federation, the Constitution of the Russian Federation and bodies exercising state power is now punishable by fines and up to 15 days behind bars, according to Bloomberg News.

Publishing fake news carries a fine equivalent to $23,000 under the new law.

Photo by the Kremlin / Wikimedia Commons
LOS ANGELESChaturbate was named Best Overall Live Cam Site along with individual awards going to their Chief Operations Officer, Shirley Lara, and Chaturbate broadcasters in two of the popular performer categories entered into the fifth annual Live Cam Awards held in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 3, 2019.

Chaturbate broadcaster ChronicLove received the award for Best Female Live Cam Model; FunnyBecky was voted Best Non-Nude Live Cam Model and Lara was awarded the industry insider titleBusinesswoman of the Year.

Lara said, "Chaturbate is proud to consistently receive the recognition of the industry for innovation and excellence in live cam platform technology. Our congratulations go to ChronicLove and FunnyBecky on their well-deserved awards. Chaturbate always attracts the very best entertainers in live cam performances by offering every broadcaster and their fans a range of amenities and options that are unavailable from other cam platforms."

Held on the closing night of the annual European Summit, the Live Cam Awards recognize the outstanding individuals and companies in the cam industry. This year's award show represented the fetish niche when trophies were presented at the Casino Estoril, which is widely noted as an inspiration for Ian Flemings James Bond novel Casino Royale.

For on overview of the 2019 Live Cam Awards visit livecamawards.com.
Make your birthday special - by brewing a beer originally made on that date.

For a mere 25 euros, I'll create a bespoke recipe for any day of the year you like. As well as the recipe, there's a few hundred words of text describing the beer and its historical context and an image of the original brewing record.

Just click on the button below.
Have Sheriff Offices in North Carolina, possibly even Beaufort County's Sheriff Office, become too political in the discharging of their sworn constitutional duties?

No, the sheriff is a constitutional officer.

Yes, the Sheriff Office, on strong occasion, often reverts back to political patronage in the dispensation of their sworn constitutional duties.
Concerned about the high cost of college, the University of North Carolina system is testing a low-tuition model at some schools to drive up enrollments. Though the experiment only started last fall, some preliminary observations can be made.The North Carolina Promise Tuition Plan was created by legislators in 2016 to help students who struggle to afford college. The plan encourages students to attend certain campuses over others by lowering tuition.But it's unclear whether it increases UNC system enrollment or, rather, pulls students from one UNC campus to another.The $51 million plan reduces in-state tuition for undergraduates at participating UNC system schools to just $500 per semester and out-of-state tuition to $2,500 per semester. Room, board, and other expenses remain the same, but students still save thousands of dollars each year. The state also launched a program promising that tuition will not increase for students during four years of continuous enrollment within the UNC system. The system is required to solicit feedback from participating schools.Legislators originally allocated $40 million from the state's general fund to participating schools to make up any revenue lost from the tuition reduction in response to early concerns about the plan. Another $11 million was added after enrollment predictions were updated.NC Promise was launched in 2018 at Western Carolina University, UNC-Pembroke, and Elizabeth City State University, which represent three geographic regions and groups. Western Carolina is in the remote and economically struggling mountains, with a majority-white student body. Pembroke, located in the southeastern interior of the state, serves the region's Lumbee Indian population and has a highly diverse student body. Elizabeth City State is a historically black college located in the far reaches of northeastern North Carolina.Since the program's launch, each participating school has reported considerable enrollment increases. Carolina Journal reports:Undergrad transfer rates saw the largest spike, with ECSU at a 57 percent increase over 2017, data from UNC show. UNCP saw a 56 percent bump in the same category, while WCU scored a 40 percent increase.First-year enrollment jumped 20 percent at ECSU and UNCP, and just over 10 percent at WCU since 2017.Low-cost tuition seems to be pushing students to those schools; no other school experienced enrollment growth above 3 percent.At ECSU, in-state students will save less than $2,000 annually in tuition, but out-of-state students will save a staggering $11,000. Students from nearby states like Virginia now can attend ECSU for only $4,000 more than native North Carolinians. Indeed, NC Promise schools are located near state borders, so the tuition cuts may serve to entice students from neighboring states to attend. ECSU chancellor Karrie Dixon has attributed an increase in Virginia students to the tuition savings brought by NC Promise.At UNCP, NC Promise saves in-state students $2,600 a year and out-of-state students $10,000 a year. In-state students at WCU save nearly $3,000 year, and out-of-state students save close to $10,000 a year.Beyond tuition savings, other benefits have come about from NC Promise. UNCP's increase in enrollment meant nearly 900 new students, and it also improved standardized testing scores and freshman retention went up by five percent. Whether this increase in student academic quality can be sustained or repeated at other schools remains to be seen, but it should be noted by policymakers in evaluating NC Promise's success.But enrollment growth may come from a small crowding-out effect. Three nearby UNC schools had drops in enrollment. UNC-Asheville was the hardest hit, losing slightly more than two percent compared to a year before, and East Carolina University and UNC Wilmington both shrunk by less than one percent. Those schools are roughly in the same regions as the NC Promise participants, with UNCA fewer than 60 miles from WCU, but proximity cannot be pinpointed as the cause for falling enrollment.Until information on the source of undergraduate transfers is available, it is unclear if students are choosing to attend NC Promise schools at the expense of other UNC schools.UNCP chancellor Robin Cummings attributed the university's growth to NC Promise."It is clear that NC Promise has made a high-quality college education more accessible to North Carolina students," Cummings said in a statement. "Over the long term, this will lead to a more highly-educated workforce, a more engaged citizenry and improved economic growth for the state and region."Some university leaders, though, touted academic programs as the primary cause of higher enrollment and claimed that NC Promise was one of several secondary influences.Until more data is available, however, it's hard to say whether NC Promise actually gets students to college who otherwise couldn't afford it.said Phil Cauley, assistant vice chancellor for undergraduate enrollment at WCU.Western Carolina recorded its highest-ever spring semester enrollment in 2019, topping out at over 11,000 students, an eight percent boost from 2018.Jason Tyson, media relations director for the UNC system, described the program's main customer as students who would not otherwise attend college due to cost.Tyson said.Until more data are available, however, it's hard to say whether NC Promise actually gets students to college who otherwise couldn't afford it. Indeed, the limited available data show that much of the relevant enrollment growth has been driven by transfer students.Another area of concern is the relatively low in-system, six-year graduation rates for students who start at NC Promise schools. ECSU had an abysmal graduation rate of 43.4 percent in 2017, in addition to poor performance in a variety of other academic and student financial measures. UNCP, too, struggled with a 48.5 percent graduation rate. WCU fared better with a 64.4 percent graduation rate, still below the system average of 68.8 percent.Pushing students to underwhelming regional campuses is a risky move if the state's goal is to educate them for post-graduate success.Hundreds or thousands of students will surely earn bachelor's degrees with the assistance of NC Promise. The cheap tuition may give many students the unique confidence of financial security after graduation-particularly if they completed their first two years at one of the state's inexpensive community colleges. But if NC Promise doesn't lead to improvements at its participating schools, it could encourage even more students to attend college who will not earn a degree.NC Promise could be the perfect recruitment aid that turns impoverished North Carolinians into successful college graduates, a mediocre redistributor of students among the university system's several campuses, or a false promise that leaves already-poor victims with debt and no degree.Tyson called the program a success, but stressed that the General Assembly controlled its concept, funding, and future. If it becomes a permanent program, or expands beyond three UNC schools, the $51 million plan will have to grow, too.And the longer it exists, the more political protection it will have. Speaking in fall 2018, then-system president Margaret Spellings predicted the plan would survive political turnover over time in state government. "I can't find anyone who doesn't think college should be more affordable," Spellings said. "Of course, once you start providing a benefit like this people are drawn to it. I'm confident the legislature will see the merit of the policy they've put in place and will continue to fund it."NC Promise is certainly a smart political tool. Lawmakers created constituencies at three schools and thousands of students and families are now accustomed to the de facto tuition subsidy. But more time and data is needed to certify that NC Promise is an effective means of broadening college access-and not a diversion from meaningful improvement.
I am triggered by those who piled on Representative Ilhan Omar and incited a hate mob against her until she got assassination threats now giving condolences to our community. What we need you to do is reflect on how you contribute to islamophobia and stop doing that.  Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) March 16, 2019

Women's March leader - and accused anti-Semite - Linda Sarsour, lashed out at those expressing condolences for the victims of the New Zealand mass shooting, claiming she's "triggered" by those who both criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her anti-Semitic remarks and reached out in love to the more than 50 families who lost a loved one last week.Somehow, according to Sarsour, critics of openly anti-Semitic language can't also express support for Muslim victims of terror because they areSarsour tweeted Saturday.The commentary echoes that of two women who angrily confronted a befuddled Chelsea Clinton at a memorial for the New Zealand victims on Friday evening. Apparently, criticizing any Islamic lawmaker - even one that repeatedly uses anti-Semitic slurs against her colleagues, even after meeting with Jewish leaders who explained the history and consequences of theregardless of the content of the crticism.The two women who confronted Clinton went so far as to claim Clinton was directly responsible for inciting the New Zealand attacks after she spoke out, in general terms, about opposing anti-Semitism.Sarsour took aim at a wider audience, using the victims of the New Zealand mass shooting to smear Omar's and her own critics. By the end of the day Saturday, more than 14,000 people had "liked" her tweet. CNS News also reports that an advocacy group Sarsour co-founded, MPower Change, also used the tragedy to lash out atandas embraced byandthe group said, according to CNS.Such language is far more forceful than either Sarsour or her colleagues on the left used when confronting Omar, who has repeatedly used anti-Semitic language to criticize her fellow members of Congress. In a particularly disturbing incident a few weeks ago, Omar accused lawmakers of having split loyalty to the United States and Israel - a modern twist on the age-old anti-Semiticsmear.But fearing backlash from the more progressive wing of their party, Democrats shied away from censuring Omar specifically, and even watered down a Congressional resolution meant to condemn anti-Semitism withlanguage. Sarsour, in particular, lashed out at Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) forandfor even insisting that Omar be censured in the first place.Sarsour, of course, has her own problems. Although she claims to preach againstshe and other Women's March leaders are directly linked with anti-Semitic hate preacher Louis Farrakhan and his organization, the Nation of Islam. Sarsour and fellow Women's March leader Tamika Mallory have attended Farrakhan's events, and the Women's March itself contracted with the Nation of Islam to provide security at its events.
It's nothing new.Reporters, government accountability activists, and residents often grapple with government institutions, which can be slow to respond to and or even hostile toward any attempt to shine light on their operations.Some states have taken steps toward transparency, yet others have seemingly doubled down on restrict people's right to know.As part of Sunshine Week , an initiative by news organizations to highlight open record and public meeting access nationwide, Carolina Journal looked at how North Carolina's neighbors handled government transparency.Here's what we learned: Virginia: Only residents of the commonwealth or media with a circulation in the state can request public records. This is unlike North Carolina, where non-residents can request public information. Virginia has live webcasts for proceedings in the House and the Senate, as well as live webcasts of committee hearings. The state also keeps archived webcasts of past committee hearings and floor proceedings. The Virginia Coalition for Open Government releases a monthly Sunshine report that tracks bills related to public records, open meetings, and other related transparency issues. South Carolina: People have access to live and archived webcasts for the House and Senate floor proceedings, as well as access to live and archived videos of committee hearings. South Carolina also broadcasts the House and Senate when in session. Anyone in South Carolina can make a records request without including a statement of purpose. Confidential attorney communications, income tax returns, and certain business transactions are exempt from the open records law. Georgia: People can watch live or archived videos of House and Senate floor proceedings, as well as live webcasts of committee hearings. People can also watch the Georgia Public Broadcast, which covers the House and Senate when in session. Regarding, public records laws, an agency in Georgia has three days to respond to a request by either releasing the request documents or citing a reason for a refusal. In the wake of the federal bribery probe into former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed's administration, the city created the Atlanta's Open Checkbook . The tool makes the city's expenditures publicly available.


In the gleaming kitchen of her culinary academy in Florence, I once asked an architect-turned-chef-turned-restaurateur about the passions that had changed her life: How did she know that she was choosing the right one to follow?

Ah, signora, we do not choose our passion, she said. Passion chooses us.

I understood. Italy chose me.

Decades ago, shivering in a frigid Swiss station after a talk in Gstaad, I impetuously switched trains and headed south to a sun-kissed country Id never visited. I had no reservations, no itinerary, no inkling of what I might discover. The last thing I expected was to fall in lovebut I did.

Day by day, sometimes hour by hour, Italy seduced me with tastes, sounds, scents, and sensations Id never encountered before. Of course, countless others have swooned for its food, wine, incomparable art, or breathtaking scenery. I fell for the Italians. With scarcely a shred of their language, I yearned to communicate with these intriguing strangers -- more marvelous than the land, as the British author E. M. Forster aptly said.

After I returned to the United States, I immersed myself in Italian classes, movies, and conversation groups. My linguistic infatuation eventually inspired a book: La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the Worlds Most Enchanting Language. Kindred Italophiles embraced my labor of love, which garnered a spot on the New York Times bestseller list and won for me the great honor of an Italian knighthood.

Yet even after La Bella Linguas success, Italy didnt loosen its grip on me. I became captivated by the real woman immortalized by Leonardo in his most famous portraitand wrote Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered.

So are you done with Italy? asked a man at one of my readings.

God, no! I replied. The very notion seemed unthinkableand impossible. Italy wasnt done with me. Without realizing exactly how, I had become appassionata, a word that dates back to the fourteenth century and translates as taken by passion. I didnt fight this sweet seduction. I indulged it, embraced it, delighted in it.

When I described my quasi obsession to a sophisticated Roman, she pegged it immediately as una passione italiana. There are two types, she said with the seen-done-tried-that worldliness of the Eternal City. There is the passion that you take to bed, but beyond children, what does it get you? Then there are the passions that create something, that take you beyond yourself and outlast you.

I chose to pursue the latter. Searching for la passione italiana became my passion. I pursued its trail north to the Dolomites and south to Sicily, from Sardinias rugged western coast to Venices labyrinth of canals. I trekked through pagan temples, ancient ruins, medieval chapels, glass furnaces, silk mills, fashion salons, restaurants, workshops, studios, concert halls, street markets, vineyards, wine cellars, olive groves, movie sets, and museums of every ilk. Yet what intrigued me most were the passionate Italiansfamous, unknown, legendary, actual, historical, contemporarythat I encountered along the way.

You will meet many of these men and women in my new book. They are, in fact, the reasons why I wrote LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. I hope you find their stories as irresistible as I did.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the soon-to-be-published LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information on her books and upcoming events, visit her website: www.diannehales.com.

I will be moving my blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. Click HERE to subscribe (top of sidebar). Note that if you are already subscribed (via e-mail) to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again (using the same link as above). Thank you!
I hope all of you already know this, for just in case and for those of you who do not, registration is now open for the 2022 PLUS D&O Symposium, which wi...

1 day ago
In todays global economy, a company that provides a successful product or service can earn billions of dollars a year. Governments steal a greedy glance and ask how they can get their fair share of this money. The latest example is the EU attempting to create tax harmonization among its members as it imposes a digital tax on Big Tech firms.

The proposal is currently stalled, as more fiscally responsible nations like Ireland object to the EUs plan to tax tech firms revenue rather than their profits. In a new essay for Religion & Liberty Transatlantic, Angel Manuel Garcia Carmona writes that the EU seeks to force all its member states to apply a uniform tax and regulatory system to assure there is no escaping the grasping hand of government. However, it is precisely in lower tax nations like the U.S. and South Korea that technological advancements take place.

He writes:

Proper human flourishing cannot come from nations following Machiavellian policies to maximize their concentrated economic power. Development of technological industries must open new avenues for entrepreneurship, which aims to serve the needs of our fellow citizens. People may serve society by using these new platforms to discover new ways to boost productivity, make life easier for disabled people, improve medical procedures, and numerous other fronts. A lighter economic burden, and a less restrictive environment, facilitates technological advancement and yields new discoveries to benefit all Gods creation.

Read his full essay here.

(Photo credit: Public domain.)


New Zealand is one of the Five Eyes countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ) who collaborate on mass surveillance, and it has a notoriously off-leash, invasive surveillance apparatus that has been caught spying on NZ Greenpeace, the NZ Green Party, the Mana Movements and anti-TPP activists; the state was also caught giving private corporate spies access to its national surveillance data to help them hunt down and neutralize activists; unsurprisingly, the NZ police also abused these records, accessing them without a warrant on thousands of occasions (NZ also recruited the NSA to spy on kiwi activists).



This was especially dire under former PM John Key, who is personally implicated in the illegal surveillance. Key was also a notorious enabler of offshore money-laundering, massively expanding NZ's role in the global dark money network, and the surveillance the state engaged in helped shield financial criminals from scrutiny.





Notably, despite all this surveillance, the NZ security services was either unaware of the white supremacist terrorist who murdered 49 people last week; or did not judge him to be a threat.





This blind-spot is typical of security services, who tend to follow the tacit media/political consensus that treats nonviolent pipeline activists and animal-rights advocates as dangerous terrorists, while ignoring the rise of heavily armed, right-wing militia and white supremacist movements. The rot goes all the way up to the top, with Donald Trump tacitly informing right-wing terrorists that they can continue to have a free pass to operate.





In the wake of this ghastly terrorist atrocity, the NZ security forces will be demanding more powers to spy on more people, but they will doubtless continue to insist that their surveillance practices  which went so terribly awry and proved so completely inadequate  be hidden from public scrutiny and criticism.





It would be naive to think that giving NZ's historically corrupt and reactionary security forces more powers will make them less reactionary.





NZ's new Prime Minister, the most excellent Jacinda Ardern, is doing a lot of things right in the wake of the attack. But she should not reward her security services for their failures. Instead, she should use this as an opportunity to clean house and insist on a review of the services' priorities, accountability, and adherence to the rule of law.



While the intelligence agencies were looking in all the wrong places, someone who should have been a target slipped through the cracks. Let that sink in. Some will say that as injured parties of the intelligence agencies, we just have an axe to grind and are exploiting this tragedy to criticize them. But as always, it is those very agencies that have failed their charges, who will be first in line to exploit the news cycle in a quest to justify the provision of ever more money, more power, more resources and ultimately, the ability for them to engage in ever more spying. The question is, how will they choose to employ those gains once they are inevitably granted? In the absence of meaningful intervention by oversight bodies or an official inquiry  and if their recent history is any measure  the answer may well be: poorly, undemocratically, and unjustly.



Misguided Spying and the New Zealand Massacre [Suzie Dawson/Consortium News]

(via Naked Capitalism)
The finances of the US armed forces have been in a state of near-continuous audit for decades and despite spending billions of dollars and thousands of person-years trying to make sense of what the military spends, we're no closer to an answer, and no one disputes that there are trillions of dollars' worth of unaccountable transactions (but importantly, not trillions of dollars in spending) that make it impossible to figure out whether and when and how the Pentagon is being ripped off, or wasting money, or both.



Enter Matt Taibbi (previously), who is one of journalism's princes of incandescent invective, a superb polemicist at short and longer lengths.

But that's only half of the Taibbi story: the other half is his uncanny knack for unravelling baroque scams, cutting through the mind-numbing complexity and getting right to the chase.

That's what he's done in The Pentagon's Bottomless Money Pit, an 8,000-word explainer on the Pentagon's budget crisis that is one of the clearest pieces of financial writing I've ever read, drawing in the structural, economic, personal and historic elements that have created the "bottomless money pit" that is the US military.





The problem is a snarled knot of many smaller problems. For example, the Pentagon has terrible IT systems. Leaving a "quantity" field blank in a purchase order form caused the computer to place an order for 990,000 units, for a total of $3.5 trillion. The order never went' through, but the system also had no way to unwind the transaction, so it was just left on the books, and mysteriously deducted later, creating an accounting overhang a third the size of the US GDP.





When the military manages to actually order things, it doesn't keep track of things. Key military materiel like nuclear weapons have historically not even been assigned serial numbers or tracking tags (the Air Force once accidentally shipped nuclear nose-cones to Taiwan, where they were expecting a shipment of helicopter batteries) (oops).

To make things worse, the system is genuinely full of waste and pork, which any kind of real audit would uncover. The military contractors who benefit from these scams have gotten so rich from them that they can afford to buy key Congressmen on the relevant committees, and so every legislative attempt to force the military to genuinely account for itself has died.

Which is not to say that there haven't been audits. There have. These audits have run for years, cost billions (literally) and either concluded that the system was unauditable as it stood, and needed a complete overhaul; or have later been revealed to be fraudulent and had to be retracted.

And that's where those trillions have gone. The military hasn't lost trillions of dollars, but its books contain trillions of dollars' worth of transactions, only a small fraction of which are real, and the noise in the system lets grifter military contractors rip off the taxpayer for billions, and their campaign contributions have ensured that this will never be fixed.

The Pentagon just committed to giving billions more to Big Four auditing companies to conduct another audit, though the best we can hope for from all this is that they will simply repeat the conclusions of the other auditors who've gone before them.



The Defense Department, for the most part, does not know how much it spends. It has a handle on some things, like military pay, but in other places it's clueless. None of its services  Navy, Air Force, Army, Marine Corps  use the same system to record transactions or monitor inventory. Each service has its own operations and management budget, its own payroll system, its own R&D budget and so on. It's an empire of disconnected budgets, or "fiefdoms," as one Senate staffer calls them. Instead of using a single integrated financial accounting system that would maintain a global picture of its finances at all times, the Pentagon built another bureaucracy to pile atop the others, called the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, or DFAS. Created by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1991, DFAS is in charge of collecting financial reports from all the different fiefdoms at the end of each month. DFAS is like a tribune traveling on horseback at month's end, collecting a pile of scrolls from each castle.



In 2013, Reuters published a brutal expose showing how DFAS accountants conducted a mad scramble at the end of each month to try to piece together records of transactions to justify spending. But in thousands of cases a month, no records existed. "We didn't have the detail," one accountant explained. Complicating matters is the fact that money is allocated to the military on different schedules. If Congress gives the Navy $53 billion for operations and maintenance, as it did this year, the service is expected to spend all that money that year. Such expenses  payroll is another  are called "one-year money." Meanwhile, research and development might be "two-year money," and contracting might be "five-year money."

The Pentagon's Bottomless Money Pit [Matt Taibbi/Rolling Stone]
[Editor's note: Gigapixel panorama impressario Jeffrey Martin (previously) offers us "an eye full from Eiffel" in this astounding gigapixel pano of Paris -Cory]

I shot this gigapixel photo in autumn 2018 from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Using an SLR camera and a variety of telephoto lenses, I shot a few thousand photos from both levels of the Eiffel Tower. The image you see here was shot from the top level, and you can actually see the Eiffel Tower itself in the image.











The Eiffel Tower, for those of you who haven't been there before, is an astonishingly huge bunch of cast iron, bolted together sometime in the 1800's. It is unbelievably large and tall for such a thing. No matter how iconic it is, no matter how many times you've seen it in pictures and movies, it doesn't fail to amaze with its sheer size when you're standing under it, or in it.



Anyway, on this particular day, all I knew was that Paris, being Paris, was totally mobbed with tourists, and I'd better get there early. I tried buying tickets online but they were all sold out  the tour companies buy up all the tickets and resell them for 3x more. Every day. This is kind of unfair, isn't it? Ok, so I paid for one of those tickets, not knowing any better at the time. (As it turns out, the tickets for the elevators are hard to get, but the tickets for the stairs are easier to get  just show up before the tower opens, and buy a ticket for the stairs. You can be the first one up to the top of the tower! A few minutes later it will be crowded until evening.)







I came to Paris to shoot this image. This kind of thing is a bit of a gamble, since the weather really makes or breaks the photo. Sometimes the air is thick with smog or clouds and the view is just not very nice. On this day, it was gloriously sunny and fairly clear. After three hours of shooting in every direction, I was thirsty, I had to pee, and I couldn't lift my arm anymore. But I got the shots!

Post production of gigapixel images can take many months. This image, not being the biggest I've shot, was supposed to take only a few weeks, but as i shot it by hand, not with my trusty gigapixel robot, it took much longer than I expected and I actually had to scrap the whole thing after a couple months and start again from the beginning. Shooting by hand means that there can be holes, and I did have a few holes which I had to fill with different sets of pictures from different focal lengths shot at different times. The resulting finished photo does therefore have quite a few errors that shouldn't be there, but I couldn't do anything about it. Since I live in Europe, I'll simply have to go back there and shoot it again someday! At any rate, I hope you enjoy looking at this photo. I can't say that I've even seen every pixel myself yet at 100% resolution  it's that big.

I'm always on the lookout for new places to shoot from; getting access to the top of a skyscraper in the middle of a city is extremely difficult, so if you have any tips, please get in touch!


A senior source at Uber has confirmed to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners programme that Uber Australia illegally deployed an in-house piece of spyware called Surfcam in order to spy on drivers for a rival rideshare company called Gocatch; Uber was able to compile lists of drivers' emails, car registration numbers and other details and it used these to poach Gocatch drivers and turn them into Uber drivers.

Uber was previously caught using Surfcam illegally in Singapore. A company spokesperson reported that they have "conducted an audit of the use of Surfcam and it has been prohibited," and blamed the tool's use on the previous CEO, the disgraced and ousted Travis Kalanick.





Gocatch was notable for not launching until after the Australian government had created a regulatory framework for the lawful operation of rideshare systems; by contrast, Uber entered the market before the practice was legalized.





Uber developed Surfcam in-house. It was just one of many in-house dirty tricks software: in 2017, it was caught using an internally developed program called Greyball to kick people off the system if they were suspected of being cops or investigators in territories where the company was fighting with regulators.



GoCatch's co-founder and chief executive, Andrew Campbell, has told Four Corners that while GoCatch survived, Uber's tactics damaged the company. "The fact that Uber used hacking technologies to steal our data and our drivers is appalling," he said. "It had a massive impact on our business. It sets a really dangerous precedent for the Australian economy and Australian businesses as well. It tells every multinational company to come to Australia and follow the same practice." "As an Australian small business, a technology start-up business based in Australia that's improving efficiency and service levels in the taxi industry, to have a company come to Australia and get away with that type of behaviour is  it's disgusting. "It's completely un-Australian and it shouldn't be allowed in this country. "The damage that that has done to GoCatch and other businesses is significant and frankly it should have been stopped."

Uber used secret spyware to try to crush Australian start-up GoCatch [Sean Nicholls, Peter Cronau and Mary Fallon/ABC]

(via /.)
If, as Pope Francis said recently, every feminist is machismo with a skirt then Im off to buy myself a new wardrobe.

I couldnt bear anyone questioning my feminist credentials.

One of my earliest memories is of protesting outside our parish church. My mother was trying to fix a hat on my head by tying a ribbon under my chin. I kept pulling away from her because the ribbon was pinching my skin.

My two older brothers had gone into the church with their heads uncovered and I wanted to do the same. My mother said women had to cover their heads in church because Our Lady always covered hers.

I may have been five years old but I didnt buy it. Intuitively, I knew the imposition of the hat was a tug on my freedom as a girl. Just like I knew the absence of women priests from the altar meant the church thought women were less important than men.

Eight years later, I had an encounter with a monk in Mount Melleray who told me  dead-pan  that I couldnt join my father and three brothers on a tour on the monastery; because I was a daughter of Eve, and Eve was the one who brought sin into the world.

I laughed, thinking the man was being funny  but one look at his face told me he wasnt.

I knew the absence of women priests from the altar meant the church thought women were less important than men

It would be years later before I realised that all these experiences were examples of an entrenched sexism rooted in the church from its earliest days.

All-male elite

The monk in Mount Melleray was simply continuing what a powerful, all-male elite had been doing to women for centuries: systematically excluding, silencing, demonising and vilifying us  using the image of Eve.

Growing up in a world where all the authority figures were male, and men were the only ones allowed to interpret the Bible, formulate doctrine and conduct acts of worship, it was easy to buy into the illusion that patriarchy was the natural way of things.

The rebellious little five year old in me never did. She instinctively knew it wasnt right, but what she didnt know, was why it wasnt right.

Every time shed stomp her foot and say Its not fair that only men can be priests, the churchs stock answer was Jesus picked 12 male apostles. He didnt pick any women, get over it.

My inner five-year-old self never got over it. So, you can imagine how happy she was to discover that scholars, investigating the ori gins of the church, had burst a big hole in the churchs theory that its hierarchical order and exclusive male ministry is the way it is because, thats how Jesus organised it.

Amazingly, many Catholic women still dont know this. They have no idea that over the last 40 years the history of women in the early church has been significantly revised. They have yet to hear the good news.

They dont know that new evidence about the role of women has emerged contradicting everything the institutional church ever taught us.

They dont know that Jesus never ordained anyone in his life; that he had lots of apostles, not just 12 and they included many women; that the hierarchical church didnt emerge until hundreds of years after Jesuss death and that the word priest wasnt used until the middle of the second century.

Feminist theologians

These are explosive new findings that have yet to be fully appreciated by the majority of Catholics. Their discovery is due to painstaking scholarship carried out by historians and feminist theologians.

Jesus picked 12 male apostles. He didnt pick any women, get over it

Like a detective forensically re-examining a crime scene, they discovered that women in the early church were disciples, apostles, martyrs, house church leaders, ecclesiastical scholars, diplomats, missionaries and teachers, just like the men.

And crime scene is the appropriate way to describe the examination of the origins of our faith tradition. It becomes clear that in later centuries women were robbed of their religious heritage and unjustly relegated to a subordinated status by men.

The perniciousness of this is felt today by every woman who learns that a global organisation like the Roman Catholic Church , purporting to represent Gods people on Earth, excludes half its membership from leadership positions, because they are female.

Can you imagine any other organisation in the western world getting away with such a practice? Isnt it astonishing we have to remind ourselves that women are half the human race? Their invisibility in the church and the hierarchys failure to see women as full human beings is the elephant in the church.
Mampintsha received a rude wake-up call when he went to Cubana in Pietermaritzburg on Saturday night. A video is doing the rounds on social media showing the disgraced musician being jeered by patrons as he enters the club.

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The muso entered the nightclub and was welcomed by people shouting, "Khona iy'ngane la endlini," meaning, "There are children in the house."

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These are the words Mampintsha said to Babes Wodumo after he physically assaulted her in the viral video that landed him in jail.

READ ALSO: Muvhango: Marang's lies begin to unravel as KK and Moelihi meet

Mampintsha was charged with assault and released on a bail of R2 000.

PAY ATTENTION: 20 Funny Wedding Memes That Describe Almost Any Wedding

Briefly.co.za reported that he has since issued an apology in the form of an open letter to Babes Wodumo and South Africa as a whole. The musician of Big Nuz fame has issued a lengthy statement, claiming that he is in a dark place and that he let his emotions get the best of him. The statement also included a vow to seek counselling and an apology to Babes family.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download BRIEFLY's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major South African news!

Source: Briefly.co.za
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New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 55F. NW winds at 5 to 10 mph, increasing to 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 55F. NW winds at 5 to 10 mph, increasing to 15 to 25 mph.
- T. S. Eliot

Thoughts After Lambeth

"The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide."
By Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik OSLO (Reuters) - Norsk Hydro, one of the world's largest aluminum producers, battled on Tuesday to contain a cyber attack which halted parts of its production, the latest example of the damage hackers can cause to business and industry. The company shut several metal extrusion and rolled products plants, which transform aluminum ingots into components for car makers, builders and other industries, while its giant smelters in Norway were largely operating on a manual basis. "This is a classic ransomware attack," Chief Financial Officer Eivind Kallevik told a news conference, adding that the company had not identified the hackers. "The situation is quite severe." The Norwegian National Security Authority (NNSA), the state agency in charge of cybersecurity, said the attack used a virus known as LockerGoga, a relatively new strain of so-called ransomware which encrypts computer files and demands payment to unlock them. Kallevik, who could not turn on his desktop computer or access files, would not say whether a specific sum had been asked for. However, when asked if the company planned to pay to unlock its systems, he said the intention was to restore them from backup servers. "We have good back-up systems and we have plans on how to restore it," he said. The attack began in the United States on Monday evening and escalated overnight, hitting IT systems across most of the company's activities and forcing staff to issue updates via social media. "It is too early to indicate the operational and financial impact, as well as timing to resolve the situation," Hydro said in a regulatory filing via the Oslo Stock Exchange. However, Kallevik said the financial impact was limited so far. "It is mostly direct labor: some of the activities that we use computers to do, today we use manual labor. We have to add some more people," he told Reuters. News of Hydro's plant outages pushed aluminum prices to a three-month high on the London Metal Exchange. The company's shares fell as much 3.4 percent before recovering to trade 0.8 percent lower by 1438 GMT. The LockerGoga malware is not widely used by cyber crime groups, cyber security researchers said, but has been linked to an attack on French engineering consultancy Altran Technologies in January. Haakon Bergsjoe, head of NNSA's National Cyber Security Centre, said there were no reports of other companies affected on Tuesday. All major Norwegian companies had been warned in the wake of the attack on Hydro, he told Reuters. The last publicly acknowledged cyber attack in Norway was on software firm Visma, when hackers allegedly working on behalf of Chinese intelligence breached its network to steal secrets from its clients. PLANT CLOSURES Companies and governments have become increasingly concerned about the damage hackers can cause to industrial systems and critical national infrastructure following a number of high-profile cyber attacks. In 2017, hackers later accused by the United States of working for the North Korean government unleashed billions of dollars worth of damage with the Wannacry ransomware virus, which crippled hospital, banks and other companies worldwide. Pyongyang has denied the allegations. Other cyber attacks have downed electricity grids and transport systems in recent years, and an attack on Italian oil services firm Saipem late last year destroyed more than 300 of the company's computers. Hydro makes products across the aluminum value chain, from the refinement of alumina raw material via metal ingots to bespoke components used in cars and construction. The company's hydroelectric power plants were running as normal on isolated IT systems unaffected by the outage, as was the alumina operation and smelters located outside Norway, including in Qatar and Brazil, Hydro said. Hydro, which has 36,000 employees in 40 countries, made a net profit of 4.3 billion Norwegian crowns ($505 million) last year on sales of 159.4 billion. At its headquarters in the suburbs of Oslo, signs at the entrances warned employees not to log on to the IT system. (Refiles to remove repeated word in paragraph 1.) (Additional reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo, with Jack Stubbs and Barbara Lewis in London; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and David Holmes)
Calgary man killed in avalanche near Egypt Lake in Banff National Park

A 36-year-old Calgary man was killed in an avalanche near Egypt Lake in Banff National Park on the weekend, while a second skier survived, according to police.

RCMP Const. Mike Hibbs said the avalanche happened Saturday afternoon near the Egypt Lake Shelter.

Two male skiers were caught in the slide, Hibbs said.

The skier who survived was partially buried in the slide, said Lisa Paulson, a visitor safety specialist with Parks Canada. He was able to get himself free of the snow but it took a long time, she said.

The skier then made his way to the shelter, where he found people with emergency satellite communication devices, who activated them to call for a rescue.

Parks Canada got the call around 7 p.m. MT Saturday evening, leaving just enough daylight left to send a helicopter to the area, Paulson said.

The injured skier hadn't been fully buried in the avalanche but had suffered severe injuries in the slide.

He was taken to hospital in Banff, where he was pronounced dead.

Skier-triggered slide

Paulson said the avalanche was a skier-triggered and size-2.5 slide on the five-point scale used by Avalanche Canada.

On that scale, a size-2 slide is defined as enough to bury, injure or kill a person. A size-3 avalanche is large enough to bury a car, break trees or destroy a small, wood-framed building.

Parks Canada had rated the avalanche danger in Banff for Saturday as moderate in the alpine and at treeline and low below treeline.

On Monday, Avalanche Canada issued a special avalanche warning after a rapid temperature increase across British Columbia and Alberta.

"Any time the snowpack is hit with a big change, it tends to destabilize," avalanche forecaster Grant Helgeson said in a release.
A Canadian citizen arrested after a January terrorist attack on a hotel complex in Nairobi is back in Canada after 21 days in a Kenyan jail.

Abdihakim Guleid returned to his home in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, Ont., three weeks ago, after he was released unconditionally on Feb. 9, according to court documents from Kenya.

On Monday, the 46-year-old was back at his job as a truck driver. Guleid said he's relieved to be back in the country where he's lived most of his life.

"Hopefully everything will go smooth and good," he said. "And we will forget [what] happened and move on."

That may take some time. Guleid said his Kenyan wife, who joined him in Canada for the first time at the end of February, is afraid to return to her home country.

'They terrorized our home'

On Jan. 15, attackers fired guns and set explosions in a complex around the DusitD2 Hotel in Nairobi. Victims were held for 18 hours. In all, 21 people were killed.

Authorities said all the attackers were killed. The Somalia-based militant group Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility.

Soon after the siege, police began arresting suspects believed to have supported the attackers. Guleid was among the people rounded up.

Guleid moved to Canada in 1992. He became a Canadian citizen while he was working as a gravel truck driver in the Alberta oilsands.

For years, he regularly travelled to Kenya, visiting his wife and children in Nairobi.

After the January attack, Guleid was at his family's home in Eastleigh, a neighbourhood in Nairobi where many Somali immigrants live. He had planned to bring his wife to Canada on her new Canadian visa.

But two days before they were supposed to leave, police arrived.

Guleid had just stepped out of the shower when they arrested him.

"They terrorized our home with guns," he said. "In front of my wife and children, they handcuffed me and blindfolded me."

The four children are between one and nine years old.

Story continues

Guleid said later he learned the reason for his arrest, though he was never charged.

Held 'purely on suspicions'

The day of the attack, he had tried to make a phone call from the Canadian embassy. He was filing out citizenship documents for his youngest son, and when he realized his phone wasn't working, he borrowed one from a stranger.

He made a call to his wife from a number authorities said belonged to one of the attackers.

According to Guleid and his lawyer, authorities later dropped their suspicions when they found no evidence that the person whose phone he borrowed had anything to do with the attack.

A spokesperson for the Kenyan Ministry of Interior did not respond to an interview request from CBC News.

Abdihakim Guleid

Guleid's lawyer, Chacha Mwita, said Guleid was also targeted because of his ethnicity.

"He was detained purely on suspicions, and those suspicions were heightened because of his Somali looks and Somali birth," Mwita said.

Human Rights Watch in Kenya has researched the conduct of police investigations into terrorist attacks in the country. Researcher Otsieno Namwaya found that police made arbitrary arrests, beat suspects and solicited bribes after a 2014 attack by al-Shabaab that killed 87 people in the Lamu and Tana River regions.

A year after that attack, none of the suspects had been prosecuted.

Namwaya said he has yet to investigate how police have handled suspects following January's hotel complex attack, but said it's possible authorities are still employing similar tactics.

"I doubt [it's changed] because there's no indication that the police have changed," he said.

After he was blindfolded, Guleid said, he was afraid because he had heard of cases where suspects disappeared after being picked up.

"You don't know what they're going to do because a lot of people they took, they're never seen again, even innocent people like me. But I was lucky."

A lot of people they took, they're never seen again.  Abdihakim Guleid

He said the Canadian government offered him consular services to ensure he was not mistreated in prison. His family hired a lawyer.

Global Affairs Canada confirmed that a Canadian citizen has returned to Canada after being arrested in Kenya and that he was provided consular services, but for privacy reasons would not disclose his identity.

Guleid said he received regular visits from his wife to bring him food and other necessities. He was in a five-metre-by-five metre cell with about 20 other people.

They slept on thin mats on the floor, and at night, groups were often transferred to sleep in jails in police stations, where Guleid said conditions were much worse.

Court documents show that Guleid and two others were released at the same time. There was "no need to continue holding them," one of the documents said.

Guleid said he never doubted he would be released.

"I was confident I'm going to be out soon, because when you're innocent you know," he said.

CBC News found that he had no criminal record in Canada. He said before this incident, he had never been in trouble with the law.

Happy to be home, despite the weather

Guleid, who left Alberta for Ontario in 2015 during the economic downturn, said it feels good to be back in Canada after his ordeal.

"I was missing home," he said, "except for the weather. I didn't miss the weather."

The cold climate is also a reason it took him a decade to convince his wife she and their children should move here.

"Every time I tell her, 'Come here, I will sponsor you,' she said, 'No, it's very cold in Canada.

"Hopefully, in a few months she will see the summertime."
A newborn's first few days of life is fragile and potentially dangerous, navigating a world full of viruses, infections and bacteria. Many around the world don't survive.

While doctors and researchers have traditionally had few clues about what is happening to a newborn during this critical time, a new international study involving the University of British Columbia (UBC) may provide doctors with a roadmap for better survival strategies.

"A large proportion of childhood mortality is newborn mortality and there's a lot we don't know about neonatal immunology," said Dr. Jeffrey Pernica, head of pediatric infectious disease at McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, looked at two groups of newborns in different parts of the world: Papua New Guinea and Gambia.

The researchers compared two tiny blood samples  less than a quarter of a teaspoon from each newborn  with the first being taken at birth and the next taken later in the first week of life.

What they found was dramatic: Thousands of changes over that first week of life, including specific genes and immune cells being activated and proteins being produced.

Pond 5

"I don't think we knew how the infant's immunity changed over time," said Canadian microbiologist and study co-author Bob Hancock. "I don't think we appreciated the staggering number of changes that are occurring."

Hancock's lab at UBC performed the blood work on the tiny recruits. Up until now, the biggest challenge for scientists gathering data had been sourcing a large enough blood sample from a newborn to provide comprehensive information.

Hancock's team pioneered a technique using sophisticated software to get a huge amount of data from a tiny drop of blood.

"We saw a turn on of dedicated cells called neutrophils; neutrophils are the body's way of fighting infections. We saw a turn on of proteins called interferons, which is the major anti-viral or viral-fighting mechanism in the body. And we saw a turn on of a protein called complement  one of the most important ways of fighting bacteria," said Hancock.

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"So in these ways, the infant was adapting to try to resist the challenges of the first week of life, recovering from the stress of birth."

Common developmental path

What also surprised Hancock and the global research team were the common biological threads between two sets of newborns born thousands of kilometres apart. It suggests that the molecular changes aren't random, but instead follow a specific developmental pathway.

The researchers say that finding could provide doctors with better opportunities to save more infants, particularly when it comes to immunization.

"This common trajectory is exciting, as it allows us to ask bigger questions about the differences between different populations and the impact of biomedical interventions, such as vaccines, on development," said Dr. Ofer Levy, one of the study's senior authors and a physician with Boston Children's Hospital.

In most of Canada and the developed world, infants are given their first vaccine at two to three months, for diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and polio. Some provinces also offer vaccines for influenza type B and hepatitis B. The schedule is a bit different in Canada's North, where newborns and infants in Nunavut also get a vaccination for tuberculosis because of a high prevalence of the disease.

CBC News

This latest research could potentially change how all doctors think about the best time to vaccinate a baby.

"We'd really like to know more about whether we can actually start doing these vaccinations even earlier in the infants to give them a better chance of fighting off the devastating diseases that vaccines protect against," said Hancock.

For Pernica, the study offers other things to consider when looking at how to protect newborns in those early days, including whether more specific testing can be done at birth to determine which baby may get sick, as well as providing more information to new mothers.

"This study will add a lot to what scientists know in the future," he said.

The study's main limitation was its small sample size: Only 60 babies were involved. But the researchers say they plan to increase that number through subsequent research in the hopes of providing the world's most vulnerable with a fighting chance as early as possible.
1. A candidates list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset, and a person shall not be a candidate for election to the Knesset, if the objects or actions of the list or the actions of the person, expressly or by implication, include one of the following:

2. negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state;

3. incitement to racism;

4. support of armed struggle, by a hostile state or a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel.



a1. For the purposes of this section, a candidate that was at a hostile state unlawfully within the seven years preceding the date for submitting the candidates list, is deemed a person whose actions express support of armed struggle against the State of Israel, as long as he has not proven otherwise.

b. The decision of the Central Elections Committee that a candidate is prevented from participating in the elections requires the affirmation of the Supreme Court of Israel. 

Cassif, who was one of the first Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories, in 1987, gained fame thanks to a number of provocative statements. The best known is his branding of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked as neo-Nazi scum. On another occasion, he characterized Jews who visit the Temple Mount as cancer with metastases that have to be eradicated.



On his alternate Facebook page, launched after repeated blockages of his original account by a blitz of posts from right-wing activists, he asserted that Culture Minister Miri Regev is repulsive gutter contamination, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an arch-murderer and that the new Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, is a war criminal.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh. blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

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..Abu Yehuda..18 March '19..The Elections Committee ruled on several petitions prior to the upcoming election. It rejected a petition against the(Jewish Power) party which accused its members of anti-Arab racism, and it disqualified theparty, a joint list composed of the(land) party and several other Arab parties. It also ruled against the candidacy of Ofer Cassif, a Jewish member of the mostly Arab(Communist) party.To nobodys surprise, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the committee . It decided to disqualify Michael Ben Ari of, and to reinstate Balad-Raam and Cassif.The Supreme Court has always been loath to allow the disqualification of candidates, and has always reversed such decisions, with only a few exceptions. In 1988, Meir Kahanesparty was disqualified for racism (as well as its successor,in 1992), and in 1965 a far-left Arab party was ruled out for negating the State of Israel. On several other occasions, the Election Committee tried to disqualify various Arab or right-wing Jewish parties, but it was always overruled.Im not going to discuss the case of Michael Ben Ari in detail. He has certainly made anti-Arab statements, as Arabs often make anti-Jewish ones. But I believe the concept of racism is vague and unclear, especially in the context of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs (and I would have said the same about Meir Kahane, whose ideas Ben Ari embraces), and its unfortunate that it is included in the law.I am also going to leave aside the case of the Arab parties, which do their best to skirt the letter of the law while at the same time vying with each other to present themselves to the Arab public as the most anti-Zionist., in my opinion, has crossed very far over the line , including having members of the Knesset who engaged in criminally subversive activities (and have even been imprisoned for it).But I do want to talk about the Jewish communist, Ofer Cassif Cassif is a teacher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who also lectures at several other Israeli colleges and universities. He enjoys insulting his political enemies His insults may rise to the level of incitement to violence, which warrants criminal prosecution.An anti-Zionist, he considers Zionism a racist and colonialist movement. He compares Israel to Nazi Germany on a regular basis, and accuses it of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Israel commits murder on a daily basis, he says. He favors the return of Palestinian Arab refugees  that is, those approximately 5 million Arabs recognized by the UN as descendants of those who lived in the area that became Israel for at least 2 years prior to 1948, and fled before and during the war  to their homes in what is today Israel, even if it means that Jews will have to leave. He favors the division of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan into two states, one a Palestinian Arab state (which would be Jew-free), and the other a state of all its citizens, with a right of return for millions of Arabs.He is not opposed to the existence of the state called Israel, but he is opposed to its character as the nation-state of the Jewish people. He would annul the Law of Return for Jews, but favors such a law for Arabs, whom he sees as the true natives of the place, the ones whose homeland it is. He would change the national anthem, the flag, and other symbols, to belong to all the states residents. Chances are it wouldnt continue to be called Israel for long.Cassif opposes terrorism against civilians, but calls attacks on Israeli soldiers by Palestinian Arabs legitimate guerrilla warfare. When an interviewer asked him if todays Hamas commanders who are carrying out attacks on soldiers will be heroes of the future Palestinian state, his answer was of course.At the Supreme Court hearing, several justices questioned him about this . His lawyer  Hassan Jabareen, the director of Adalah, an NGO concerned with the rights of Arabs in Israel  said that Kassif was explaining the academic debate about whether attacking soldiers is terrorism or part of armed conflict between two warring sides, but that on a personal level, Kassif opposes all violence. His statements, however, were not in the context of an academic debate, but rather an interview withDoes Cassif meet the criteria for disqualification? It seems incontrovertible. He explicitly opposes the Jewish nature of the state, and the implications of his support of a right of return for Arab refugees cannot be imagined as anything but a call for the negation of the existence of the state. He supports terrorism directed at soldiers in the territories, which certainly counts as armed struggle by an enemy of the state. And yet, the Supreme Court  by a majority of 8 to 1  does not feel that there is sufficient evidence to keep him out of the Knesset!I see these events as a manifestation of the Oslo Syndrome , the Jewish internalization of our antisemitic enemies representation of our nature and our motives. In particular, left-leaning Israelis act as though the moral high ground is held by the Palestinian Arabs, that  even though objective historical accounts show that our narrative of the founding of the state is far closer to reality than that of the Arabs  we are guilty, guilty of the horrible, almost as bad as the Holocaust, and that in fact we are todays Nazis. In order to expiate their feelings of guilt, syndrome sufferers like the judges of the Supreme Court bend over backwards to give the Arabs more than true justice demands. At the same time, the harshest treatment is reserved for Jews.Our legal system, and especially the Supreme Court, applies a double standard to Jews and Arabs. Precisely as is forbidden in the Torah, our judges lean toward those that they (wrongly) believe to be oppressed.
I am a Cat Woman. My self-appointed mission in life is to save the feline world! To accomplish this mission, I get cats fixed. Perhaps my mission might be slightly delusional. This blog is a mishmash of wishful thinking, rants, experiences as I remember them and of course, cat stories and cat photos. I have a nonprofit now, to help keep the cats here cared for and to fix community cats. Happy Cat Club formed in 2015. Currently, we are on a mission to fix 10,000 cats.
Agile Cigar Reviews are cigar assessments where we use a lightweight, shorter format. These will never take the place of our comprehensive reviews. They are only used on blends we have previously assessed. This might be a blend we are re-scoring or giving a score for the first time. It might be a blend we are looking at in a different size. Today we look at the MQBA Torpedo by Bombay Tobak. This is a cigar line we have assessed several times before, most recently back in November 2018 in the Nikka size.

Wrapper: Ecuadorian

Binder: Ecuadorian

Filler: Ecuadorian

Country of Origin: Costa Rica

Factory: Tabacos de Costa Rica

Torpedo: 6 x 52

At the 2018 IPCPR Trade Show, Mel Shahs Bombay Tobak introduced a new brand known as MQBA. The MQBA project features tobaccos from a single farm. While that is something we have seen before in cigar releases, it is the location of the farm that is most interesting. Bombay Tobak is using the tobaccos from a farm it is leasing in Ventana, Ecuador. This makes the MQBA an Ecuadorian puro  something that is not commonly seen in the cigar industry. Today, we take a look at Bombay Tobaks MQBA release in the Torpedo size.

The 6 x 52 Torpedo size is one of four sizes of MQBA that were launched. The other three sizes include Nikka (Lonsdale, 6 x 44), Toro (6 x 52), and Diadem (7 x 56). The cigars are available in 24-count wooden boxes or soft packs (four-count packs, except for Diadem which is a three-count pack). The MQBA Nikka was our #5 Cigar of the Year for 2018.

The MQBA Torpedo started out with notes of sweet cream, cedar, and a slight amount of citrus and black pepper. An herbal tea note soon surfaced and became primary by midway around the first third. The herbal tea notes became the central flavor for the duration of the smoking experience. As the cigar experience progressed, the sweetness from the cream transitioned to the herbal tea notes. The cedar notes morphed into more of classic wood notes. These wood notes along with the citrus and cream remained grounded in the background for the remainder of the smoking experience. The last third saw a slight increase of the pepper and cream notes.

In terms of strength and body, the Torpedo had a little more intensity than the Nikka and Diadem sizes. This was a cigar that started out medium-bodied before progressing to medium to full in the second half. This was countered by medium strength.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

Final Thoughts

As Ive noted when I first smoked the Diadem size, the all Ecuadorian tobacco of the MQBA is going to deliver a unique smoking experience. Another thing that I like about the MQBA series is how each vitola tells its own story  and each tells a very good one. This is a flavorful cigar from start to finish. If you smoked MQBA before, and wanted just a little more strength and body -the Torpedo size should more than satisfy. Still, its not a cigar thats overpowering and its one I could recommend to any cigar enthusiast. As for myself, this is a cigar I would smoke again  and its one that garners box worthy consideration.

Summary

Key Flavors: Herbal Tea, Black Pepper, Cream, Cedar, Citrus

Burn: Excellent

Draw: Excellent

Complexity: Medium Plus

Strength: Medium

Body: Medium (1st Half), Medium to Full (2nd Half)

Finish: Excellent

Rating

Value: Box Worthy Consideration

Score: 91

References

News: Bombay Tobak to Launch MQBA at 2018 IPCPR

Price: $15.60

Source: Bombay Tobak

Brand Reference: Bombay Tobak

Photo Credits: Cigar Coop
India's maiden Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) issue by Embassy Office Parks, with allotments to both strategic and anchor investors, has already seen over 55 percent subscription through the issue opens on March 18.



This is the first-time ever a public issue has witnessed more than half of its size being picked up by investors before the issue opens.



Embassy Office Parks, a joint entity of realty developer Embassy Group and US private equity major Blackstone, is looking to raise Rs 4,750 crore through the issue. Of this, Rs 1,743 has already been raised through allotment to 59 anchor investors and Rs 876 crore been received from a strategic investor.



Embassy Office Parks REIT has allotted 5.81 crore units at Rs 300 apiece to 59 anchor investors including Smallcap World Fund, American Funds Insurance Series Global Small Capitalisation Fund, Fidelity Investment Trust's funds, Schroder Asian Asset Income Fund, Morgan Stanley France S.A., and Citigroup Global Markets Mauritius.

Last week, Embassy REIT also allotted 2.92 crore units aggregating to Rs 876.3 crore to strategic investor American Funds Insurance Series - New World Fund, American Funds Insurance Series - Global Small Capitalisation Fund, New World Fund, Inc. and Smallcap World Fund.

Embassy Office Parks has put 33 million sqft of office and hospitality assets under its REIT, comprising of seven business parks and four city-centric buildings spread across Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Noida.



The initial issue with total size of 12.95 crore units of REIT will open on March 18 with a price band of Rs 299-300 per unit and will close on March 20.

REIT is an investment trust that owns, manages and operates income-producing real estate assets. It allows individual investors to make the investment in this platform and earn income in the form of rental yield and appreciation in capital values of the property.



Globally, REITs have become an increasingly popular vehicle to own real estate ever since its debut more than 50 years. Following its introduction in 1960 in the US market, REIT regime has established itself across over 35 countries including UK, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Canada and Finland. And now India is set to join the club.

Kailash Babar, Economic Times, Mumbai
Question: Regarding my posts about the terrible perversion of Torah and halacha that Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky has engineered with his prod...

lt is clear that no one in the world has the authority to establish guilt  anyone without both [the accuser and accused] coming ...

Important!! email - yadmoshe@gmail.com
Bangladesh: Cabinet approves law to control quality of fish

March 19,2019 | Source: Dhaka Tribune

The cabinet on Monday approved in principle the draft of the Fish and Fish Product (Inspection and Quality Control) Bill, raising the maximum penalty to two-year imprisonment for adulterating fish and fish products, and other offences under the proposed law. The approval came from the weekly cabinet meeting held at the Prime Ministers Office on Monday, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.



"According to clause 20 of the bill, the court can jail anyone for maximum two years or fine Tk5 lakh, or both, for committing offences under the proposed law and its rules," said Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam while briefing reporters at the secretariat after the meeting.



As per the existing Fish and Fish Product (Inspection and Quality Control) Ordinance 1983, the punishment is maximum three months' jail or a fine of Tk5,000 or both, he said. In the case of repetition of such offences, the punishment will double, the cabinet secretary added. He further said the administration (authorized or inspection officers) can also fine a maximum Tk5 lakh for such offences according to the proposed law.



He also said the Bangla version of the bill was brought in as the existing ordinance was promulgated during a military regime, which the court declared illegal. The bill was updated to some extent after considering the present context. Shafiul Alam said no one can export or import fish and fish products without a licence, while farmers cannot run a fish farm without registration as per the bill. The inspection provision has been made tougher in the bill, to ensure proper inspection and maintaining quality of fish and fish products in case of exports, he added.



According to the bill, adulterating fish and fish products, as well as infiltrating and mixing unwanted material or harmful chemicals with fish and fish products are prohibited, he said, adding that there will be a quality assurance manager under the Fisheries Department. The cabinet secretary said the use of banned antibiotics and chemicals in fish farms is prohibited for the sake of safe fish production.



No decomposed, contaminated, adulterated fish or fish products can be processed or marketed as per the bill, he added. The cabinet also approved the draft of the Bangladesh Sugar Crop Research Institute Bill, 2019 to conduct research on other sugar crops alongside sugarcane in the country. The proposed law will replace the existing Bangladesh Sugarcane Research Institute Act 1996, said Shafiul Alam.



The bill was placed to expand research areas, as sugar is produced not only from sugarcane but also from palm, date, Golpata and other sweet crops and trees. In addition, the cabinet approved in principle the draft of the Bangladesh Lighthouse Bill, 2019 which updates the existing the Lighthouse Act, 1927, Shafiul Alam said.



As per the bill, a port lighthouse authority will be formed to supervise and run the country's lighthouses. The cabinet secretary said the levy (charge) collection process of lighthouses has been made easier in the bill.
Bangladesh: 4 fishermen jailed, 14 fined in Laxmipur for violating ban

March 19,2019 | Source: UNB

A mobile court here on Monday night sentenced four fishermen to one year jail each and fined 14 other fishermen for catching fish in the Meghna river violating the ongoing ban. A joint team of coast guard, Department of Fisheries and River Police conducted drives in the river from 12pm to 10:30pm and arrested the fishermen along with six engine-run boats and 30,000 metres current net.



Later, they were produced before the mobile court led by assistant commissioner (land) and acting upazila nirbahi officer Fahmida Mostafa which sentenced four fishermen to one-month jail and fined 14 fishermen Tk 3,042 each, said the acting UNO. The seized net was burnt.



The government imposed a two-month ban on catching of all sorts of fish in the Padma and the Meghna rivers in 100-km area from Laxmipur to Chandpur from March 1 to April 30 to protect jatka (hilsa fry less than nine inches long).
Maharashtra: Whose Seas, Whose Coasts?

March 19,2019 | Source: EPW

For more than five years now, Mumbais local fisherfolk have been protesting against the controversial coastal road project on the grounds that the project will displace them of their generations-old livelihood. The conflict between the modern cityscape with its marginal inhabitants is nothing new to this city. In the 1980s, Olga Tellis v Bombay Municipal Corporationbrought to court by the pavement dwellers to resist eviction of their habitat by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)had led to the Supreme Courts historic finding that the interpretation of the right to life, as in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, should be extended to the right to livelihood for no person can live without the means of living. However, within three decades of such a verdict, when uncertainties loom large over the indigenous ecology of several marine fishing communities, the ruling governmentwhether in the state or at the centreis apathetic to their situation and has not intervened with any factual clarifications to assuage the tension, while the judiciarys response to the situation is downright inimical.



At a hearing of the petition against the project filed by the Worli Koliwada Nakhwa and Worli Machimmar Sarvodaya Sahakari Society, the Bombay High Court has held the state government accountable for failing to come up with a rehabilitation plan for the fishers, but, ironically, not for pushing a project that has brought the community to a point of vulnerability that has necessitated their rehabilitation. While the fundamental issue at this hour should be to explore those checks and balances in the democracy that can restrain this aggressive capitalist encroachment on peoples lives and livelihoods, the high courts earnestness for rehabilitation is an implicit acceptance of the inevitability of such aggression. This is not only a violation of the spirit of democracy, but also of the essence of rehabilitation, which should be a safeguard against the expedient contravening of peoples constitutional rights by governments and not a sop for allowing it.



Here is the most expensive infrastructure project of the country, with a record high unit cost of ? 1,200 crore per kilometre (km), but no functionality beyond electoral rhetoric. Whether this corridor can decongest the city roads is a black box given that the proposal of this project is not based on any extensive transport survey. If decongesting road traffic is the real intention, then why not first expedite the completion of the metro rail work across the city? The coastal road cannot be considered a silver bullet for the citys infrastructural issues, which are not only varied but often mutually exclusive. For instance, if citizens must benefit from easy connectivity via the coastal roads, they must endure the degradation of their citys inter-tidal ecology almost as a natural corollary.



These hard choices, however, cannot be explained away simply as dilemmas of development. Evidences of coastal development in this country over the past two decades, and particularly in the last five years, indicate that such trade-offs are the result of an emerging partisan politics of welfare, which is characterised by a brazen display of corporate clientelism. From Gujarat to Kerala, vast stretches of the coastal lands are under corporate control through the state-abetted circumvention of regulations, especially in the name of special economic zone (SEZ), and the coastal regulation zone (crz) or the coastal management zone (CMZ) schemes. On the one hand, this encroachment has ousted traditional fishing communities from their ancestral lands, while on the other, a number of extractive industrial and construction activities in these zones are jeopardising their conventional livelihood.



Simultaneously, it is hard to dismiss how the government policies, camouflaged by the rhetoric of blue economy, have de-commonised the sea and displaced the traditional (local) institutions of fisheries management. With the corporate-friendly policies framing the seas and the coasts as the new frontiers of economic opportunity and growth, private takeover of the marine resources is progressively squeezing out traditional fisherfolk from their native fishing grounds...
Kerala: Weathermen: Listen to the fishers, it works

by MM Paniyil

March 19,2019 | Source: India Climate Dialogue

Marine weather forecasts are getting popular slowly and steadily on the Arabian Sea coast of Thiruvananthapuram in south India, home to one of the largest and most diverse concentrations of artisanal (small scale) fishers. Amid this newfound interest in marine forecasts, research by the University of Sussex in Britain  in collaboration with Indian forecasters and Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA)  seeks ways to fill the gap between what forecasters offer and local fishers demand. In a policy brief released in February, researchers noted that there is often a gap between what marine weather forecasters provide and artisanal fishers accept as useful information to decide whether or not to go to fish, especially in rough weather. To fill this gap, the forecasters need to listen to the fishers, the interdisciplinary Sussex team said.



Accessible forecasts



Besides, forecast dissemination needs to be easily accessible in local languages to the last mile through different media. The forecast has to be precise, clear, timely and locally relevant and actionable. It requires teamwork  involving forecasters, media, local popular science groups and forecast users, the researchers pointed out. At one of the field study sites, in Anchuthengu village north of Keralas capital city of Thiruvananthapuram, the forecast for late February sea usually involves moderate breeze, and slight to moderate waves with occasional crests, or white horses in sailors slang. One-metre waves and 30 km per hour (kmph) wind is safe for us, said Michael Joseph, a local fisherman with a 32 ft boat fitted with two outboard engines. Still, fishers diligently listen to forecasts, said his colleague Susa Melkias.



Melkias leads the fishers disaster risk reduction committee of Anchuthengu that tried to make the local fishing harbour safer with a fishers own, makeshift signal system  a work still in progress amid red tape and a general disinterest among government harbour engineers about artisanal fishers safety issues. On the brighter side, Melkiass efforts to popularise marine weather forecasts  an outcome of the Sussex research  found many takers in Anchuthengu as well as his native village Poonthura, another study site. Poonthura fishers often sail south towards the shores of Kanyakumari, where seasonal easterlies turn around the cape, gusting to 60 kmph, generating enough waves to capsize a 32 ft boat.



Fishers interest in forecasts has been kindled by two developments, said Baiju K.K., a social scientist based in Keralas trade hub Kochi, but researching on fishing communities in Kanyakumari and elsewhere. One reason is Cyclone Ockhi of 2017 that shook the confidence of many fishers, he said. Then there is increasing technology penetration that demands and opens up avenues for accessing forecasts.



Over the past year, there has been an increase in marine forecast dissemination in Kerala. For the tech-savvy, there are regular forecasts available mostly online though their penetration to the last mile is often hindered with language and technology barriers. Forecasts tend to be in English. Though there are local language text services of ocean forecasts that are short and to the point, the fishers said they prefer voice.



India Meteorological Department (IMD) has opened a new Cyclone Warning Centre (CWC) in Thiruvananthapuram in October 2018, in view of a trend of extreme weather events over the Arabian Sea. IMDs regular coastal weather bulletins are picked up by local radio stations, but not regularly. IMD scientists said they were looking at better ways to interact with more users. Meanwhile SDMA, on its part, is considering services for fishers over All India Radios medium wave channels. There is also an effort to make wireless radio services more easily available.



Making forecasts relevant



The bigger challenge, however, lies in making and keeping forecasts relevant. To make better forecasts, forecasters need to regularly update, interact, and gather feedback from user groups, said Abhilash S., assistant professor at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), Kochi. A group of scientists, forecasters and social workers are now trying to promote boundary organisations to overcome the barriers between science and society. Sussex research came as a catalyst for these efforts.



As Sekhar Lukose Kuriakose, member-secretary of SDMA, an outspoken scientist critical of forecasting traditions, said at the recent Kerala Science Congress: Forecasters need to listen to those who listen to their forecasts as well. At the Congress that focused on better disaster risk reduction measures, J. Sundaresan Pillai, head of climate change informatics at the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources, called for a network of boundary organisations that interface closely with different communities promoting climate and weather knowledge.



The yearlong pilot field study by Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP), School of Global Studies, and Sussex Asia Centre tested ways to do precisely that  bridging barriers between science and society. Their work allowed forecasters to listen closely to the fishers, and produce forecasts they wanted in the style they preferred, together with them.



Good start



The work has produced some early outcomes. INCOIS started talking about ocean currents, and fixed their forecast boundaries as the fishers preferred. SDMA limited the number of days when they restricted fishing on account of bad weather forecast by the IMD. On their part, IMD started giving more details on offshore systems, their track, timing and impact. IMD has acknowledged that better user interface design of forecasts helps in making them more relevant to user groups. It is a good start, as a top official noted. While Sussex researchers were designing their field study, Cyclone Ockhi devastated local fishing livelihoods. Midway through the study, a set of unusual oceanic and atmospheric phenomena led to a series of extreme rainfall events, leading to Keralas worst flood in a century, its impact amplified by denuded hills, clogged drainage basins, and discharge of water from many dams.



Extreme weather events which have affected the south-west coast of India during the last months have made it apparent that accurate and timely weather forecasts are of crucial importance for ensuring the safety of the local population, said Filippo Osella, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Sussex, who led the study. Our research has focused on fishing communities in south Kerala, and suggested ways to improve risk communication by promoting the co-production of weather bulletins with fishers and forecasters. The persistence of weather-related accidents calls for urgent action to provide artisanal fishers with accurate, accessible, and actionable forecasts as a means to foster safety at sea. Co-production has become a buzzword of late. As the UK Met Office notes, it promotes collaborative approaches in weather and climate services that meet standards of scientific credibility, while also being considered trustworthy, relevant, and legitimate among users.



The new policy brief elaborates on how co-production can lead to more accurate accessible and actionable forecasts. The context is artisanal fishing becoming more predictable with modern technologies; still becoming riskier due to financial pressures that stretch the limits of fishing operations, even in rough weather. The research team is now looking at a follow-up involving different coastal geographical features, fishing techniques, and traditions. As Osella puts it: Save one life, and our work will be worth the effort.
TUSCALOOSA, AL (WBRC) - It took jurors just a couple of hours on Monday to agree unanimously that Michael Belcher should die for the role he played in Samantha Paynes murder.





She was severely beaten and tortured before Belcher and others killed her in Tuscaloosa Countys Talladega National Forest in 2015.





We talked to Paynes mother before the jury recommended Belcher face the death penalty.





Our life has been forever changed. It will never be the same. Just the fact of knowing that shes gone and that I suppose is a torture that were going to have to live with from now on, Susanne Payne explained.





Belcher was the only one of the five people charged in Paynes killing to face the death penalty.





Belchers mother spoke up in his defense and his defense attorney showed pictures of him as a child in hopes swaying the jury to consider life without parole instead of death.





Paynes mother told WBRC shed be happy with whatever the jury decided.





Either of the sentences is perfectly fine with me. Life in prison without parole, thats not much of a life, said Payne.





Tuscaloosa County Circuit Judge Brad Almond has the final say so on Belchers fate.





He could agree with the jurys recommendation or decide a sentence of life without the possibility of parole on April 3.

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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
Iran Human Rights (IHR); March 18, 2019: A prisoner was hanged at Zahedan Central Prison for murder charges last Saturday.





According to IHR sources, on the morning of Saturday, March 16, a prisoner identified as Enayatollah Totazehi, 25, was executed at Zahedan Central Prison for murder charges.





According to HRANA , he was arrested 7 years ago.





The aforementioned execution has not been reported by Iranian media so far.





According to the Iran Human Rights statistic department, the majority of executions in 2017 and 2018 in Iran was for murder charges.





At least 188 prisoners were executed for murder charges in 2018.





Only 33% of executions were announced by Iranian authorities in 2018.





There is a lack of a classification of murder by degree in Iran which results in issuing a death sentence for any kind of murder regardless of intensity and intent.

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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
The House of Representatives has passed a bill that removes a step in the state's death penalty appeal process, despite concerns from some in the legal system.





The "Sgt. Daniel Baker Act" was named after a Dickson County sheriff's deputy who was shot and killed in the line of duty in May 2018. Two suspects, Steven Wiggins and Erika Castro-Miles, were each charged with first-degree murder in Baker's killing.





Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for both defendants, whose trials are set for August.





House Bill 258 was approved 72-22. If passed in the Senate and made law, the legislation would remove the appeal to the court of criminal appeals after a defendant is sentenced to death, a step that currently precedes the case being heard by the Tennessee Supreme Court.





The Baker Act has three times been scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor, but has been deferred each time. It is on the calendar again for Thursday.





While the bill received pushback both from Democrats and representatives from the court system while moving through committees, Republicans backing the legislation have said the state's current system delays justice by dragging out cases for too long.





Several Democrats spoke against the bill on the House floor Monday evening.





"When it comes to death penalty cases, we have to get it right," said Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis. "It's mostly the people who look like me who are getting charged with the death penalty more than anybody else. And that's a fact.





"I dont know why we would want to rush or speed up a process when you're talking about taking someone's life."





Of the 30 states where the death penalty is permitted, Tennessee is one of only two that uses a two-step appeal process.





Sponsored in the House by Rep. Mary Littleton, R-Dickson, the bill was originally filed a few years ago by Sen. John Stevens, R-Huntington, who is again the Senate sponsor.





Baker's family stood in the gallery of the House chamber on Monday evening as the discussion and voting took place.





Littleton said the bill was "not influenced by (Baker's) death or the pending trial.





Among those who spoke out against the bill during the committee process was Judge John Everett Williams, who current presides over the states Court of Criminal Appeals and rebutted the notion that his court could be drawing out the death penalty cases.





"We are not the reason these cases are taking 30 years, said Williams to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 27.





Williams said death penalty cases in his court are normally handled in a three to five month period and are given priority."

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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
I am a retired newspaperman. I live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 44 years, Lou Ann. I grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather.



Report all errors to DonSurber@GMail.com
The new Emerson Poll of Wisconsin voters shows only three Democrats into double-digits in their primary:

 Bernie- 39%

 Biden- 24%

 Elizabeth Warren- 14%

But it also shows that any of that trio (as well as Beto) would beat Trump in a general election matchup. Kamala and Klobuchar would both tie him in a head to head if the election were held today. In other words, Wisconsin, a state he eon in 2016 looks bad for Trump going into 2020. A fully 40% of Trump voters in the state said they voted for him primarily because they didn't like Hillary. Hopefully, the Democrats won't nominate another Wall Street mushy centrist.





If Roy Blunt's experience in Missouri after he voted against Trump's phony state of emergency, Trump's party is cracking and splintering. McClatchy reported yesterday that Blunt was "disinvited from a local GOP gathering in Christian County, Missouri, next month amid a backlash over his vote... [which] angered ardent Trump supporters across Missouri, who saw it as a betrayal."

I am so disappointed in you now that I can hardly speak, wrote Wanda Martens, a member of the Christian County Republican Central Committee, in an email to Blunts office. Why could you not support my president in the emergency declaration? President Trump tried every available means to work the Senate to resolve the border issue and build the much needed wall. He is well within his presidential powers to do this.



Martens serves as the local party committees events chair. She told the senator in her email, which was obtained by The Kansas City Star, that she did not want to see him when the local party holds its Lincoln/Trump Day Dinner on April 6 in Ozark, Missouri, one of the most conservative areas in the state.



Please dont try to tell me that I dont understand. I understand completely, Martens wrote. I hate it when someone calls you the establishment and that you are part of the swamp, but maybe they were right.



...John Adams, a 74-year-old retiree who lives in south Kansas City, said hes voted for Blunt in every election he has run for elected office. Hell never vote for him again.



I used to support Blunt. I just cant do it anymore, Adams said. Im sorry. Hes not supporting my president in the way that I anticipated.



Adams said hed support another Republican in the primary if Blunt runs again in 2022. And if Blunt wins the GOP nomination, Adams said hed sit out Election Day rather than cast a ballot for Blunt again, even against a Democrat.



I absolutely felt betrayed.









The Republicans have cultivated these ignorant crackpots and allowed them to take over the party. They are reaping what they have sown-- all the garbage from Trump straight down to Wanda Martens. At least Trump can blame it on his bad brain. Early the morning, attorney George Conway, the highly respected and universally admired husband of one of Trump's top lieutenants, Kellyanne Conman, started tweeting out passages from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . No one could read them and claim they don't describe Trump to a "t." Here's one; what do you think?
One of these guys works with his hands... and the other works for Wall Street



Writing for CNN over the weekend, David Gergen came up with a novel warning for Biden. who he asserted "must do much more than assemble a campaign team, match Bernie Sanders in micro-fundraising, and set off on the campaign trail. He must also offer a compelling rationale for why he wants to be president... So far, Biden hasn't signaled what his clarion call will be... [W]hen he declares, Biden might break precedent by promising up front that he will serve for only a single term-- 'one and done'... Unlike other politicians who always seem grasping for power, Biden would have a credible argument that he is truly putting country first." Biden, of course has always been the quintessential politician grasping for power for power's-- and ego's-- sake. He has no program for America, just for Joe Biden. The ultimate careerist.





I don't know whether Gergen was a campaign advisor on the successful Warren G. Harding Back to Normalcy campaign or not, but it would have certainly been right up his alley and the premise is what attracts him to an empty suit like Status Quo Joe. Speaking for wealthy white people, "from my small corner of the country," he wrote, "People want to go beyond getting rid of Trump but are not yet ready for epic new battles over a hard-left agenda. Rather, they are most eager to get the country back on track, restore civility and sanity to our lives and bring a healing to our people." He wants Biden to "begin keeping a list of Republicans as well as Democrats who might join his administration-- his own 'team of rivals' representing a variety of views and backgrounds. There is plenty of precedent for presidents reaching across the aisle to bolster their governing capacities." He seemed especially excited about how JFK picked Ford Motor Company president Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War catastrophe, to run the newly renamed Department of Defense (after Robert Lovett, "architect if the Cold War," turned him down).





DWT readers that this is a progressive blog and a pro-Bernie blog. My feeling is that since FDR died, America has a series of mediocre presidents, some better than others, but no historically great. Bernie, I feel would be the change America craves-- that transformational greatness we've muddled along without. I'd be perfectly happy with Elizabeth Warren as well. The rest... meh. Better than Trump, one and all. But what a low bar! The only credible nominee who I fear would make a predictably terrible president is Biden, something I have believed for 4 decades and something I've been Politico piece that goes to Biden's personal integrity, It's no secret toreaders that this is a progressive blog and a pro-Bernie blog. My feeling is that since FDR died, America has a series of mediocre presidents, some better than others, but no historically great. Bernie, I feel would be the change America craves-- that transformational greatness we've muddled along without. I'd be perfectly happy with Elizabeth Warren as well. The rest... meh. Better than Trump, one and all. But what a low bar! The only credible nominee who I fear would make a predictably terrible president is Biden, something I have believed for 4 decades and something I've been endeavoring to explain all year . Monday morning, Marc Caputo and Holly Otterbein added to the No-Joe canon with apiece that goes to Biden's personal integrity, 'Middle Class Joe' Rakes In Millions . "'Middle-Class Joe' Biden has a $2.7 million vacation home. He charges more than $100,000 per speaking gig and has inked a book deal likely worth seven figures," they wrote. Yes, he's full of shit with his carefully crafted image as a lunch-pail Democrat, a working class guy the way Randy "IronStache" Bryce is a working class guy. Biden, Inc has an explanation though.

Since leaving office in 2017, the 76-year-old former vice president has watched his bank account swell as he continues to cultivate the image of a regular, Amtrak-riding guy. Hes repeatedly referred to himself as Middle-Class Joe on the campaign trail and in speaking engagements as he publicly mulls whether to run for president.



While his finances might be unexceptional by the standards of well-heeled Washington politicians, Biden is unique among the top Democratic presidential hopefuls because of his avowed distance from the upper class. Its central to his political identity. But if Biden runs, his newfound wealth could give his Democratic and GOP opponents an opening to attack him as disingenuous, or at least less than advertised.



For Biden and his supporters, middle class isnt so much a financial status as it is a state of mind, a sensibility thats ingrained in his political DNA. In a party where voters have grown increasingly wary of income inequality, Bidens use of the nickname functions as an us-vs-them foil that tells both middle- and working-class people hes one of them, the little guys sneered at by the elites.



I know Im called Middle-Class Joe. Its not meant to be a compliment. It means Im not sophisticated. But I know what made this country what it is: ordinary people doing extraordinary things, Biden said in Kentucky last year, a refrain hes used repeatedly for years, including when he floated a potential presidential run in 2017.



And Bidens supporters argue theres nothing inconsistent or hypocritical about his fatter bank account since he exited the public sector after almost 50 years.

Trumpanzee takes to Twitter to boost Biden Monday morning









Who would dare point out that his entire time in "public service" has been effectively serving the interests of Wall Street and corporate fat cats who have, in turn, served Biden and his family well? A quid pro quo? You bet your ass. Biden, Inc likes to claim that Biden's "entire career has been dedicated to trying to make life easier for hardworking people in this country. The American people know that." That's a laugh and a half and the opposite of the truth. Caputo and Otterbein acknowledge that "Skeptics on the left see it differently."

Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Bidens earnings on the speaking circuit and elsewhere reinforce his negatives as a Washington insider and deal-maker who cashed out once he left office. At least at the outset, the former vice president is expected to rely on a traditional network of big-money Democratic donors to bankroll his campaign more than his rivals, as opposed to an army of small-dollar givers.



Joe Biden is the opposite of an outsider and the opposite of someone who will challenge big corporate and moneyed elites on many, many fronts. And his big money and speaking deals would be just the cherry on top of that larger totality of circumstances, said Green, whose group supports Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. This would be an exacerbating data point in a larger story of him being the wrong person in a moment when people want someone to shake up the political establishment and take on corporate and wealthy elites.



Democratic voters have grown increasingly concerned with vast income inequality; how to address it is a central issue in the nomination fight. But when it comes to the candidates own wealth, Bidens primary opponents might have a hard time attacking him on his recent money-making ventures because many of them are wealthy themselves.



...Working-class white voters certainly didnt hold Trumps wealth against him in the 2016 election, and Bidens supporters believe hes the Democrat best able to win them back. They point to some polls showing Biden leading among whites and less-educated voters as well as the rousing support for him last week at the International Association of Fire Fighters union convention in Washington.



The unions president, Harold Schaitberger, said Bidens connection to working-class voters is undeniable because Biden-- a Scranton, Pa., native-- is genuinely middle class, regardless of how rich he is.

The International Association of Fire Fighters union is a relatively conservative union and in the last few years has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of Republican politicians like Kevin McCarthy (CA), Chris Collins (NY), Ron Johnson (WI), Peter King (NY), Steve Stivers (OH), Fred Upton (MI), Carlos Curbelo (FL), Mike Bost (IL), Dean Heller (NV), Dan Donovan (NY), Greg Walden (OR), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Jeff Denham (CA), Tom Cole (OK), Rodney Davis (IL), Paul Cook (CA), David Joyce (OH), John Katko (NY), Mario Diaz-Balart (FL)... And of course, lots of shit Blue Dogs and corporate Dems-- from Jeff Van Drew, Kyrsten Sinema, Dan Lipinski, Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Anthony Brindisi to Joe Crowley's campaign against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Perfect for Biden-- and another stain on Obama's legacy.
Yesterday, Fox News broke the story that reviled Central Valley Republican, Devin Nunes, a Trump/Putin appendage is suing... suing... suing. The doesn't like being mocked and he's probably one of the most-mocked members of Congress-- after Gym Jordan. Who knew he was such an advocate for political correctness though?

Nunes, who has 390,000 Twitter followers (a lot for a Republican), wants a quarterdollars in compensatory damages-- and another $350,000 in punitive damages-- from Twitter, several parody accounts, like DevinNunesCow and DevinNunesMom and from Republican strategist Liz Mair, for what amounts to... making him feel badly and upsetting his days. This has got to be the silliest lawsuit ever filed.

He accused Twitter of "of 'shadow-banning conservatives' to secretly hide their posts, systematically censoring opposing viewpoints, and totally 'ignoring' lawful complaints of repeated abusive behavior.

In a complaint filed in Virginia state court on Monday, obtained by Fox News, Nunes claimed Twitter wanted to derail his work on the House Intelligence Committee, which he chaired until 2019, as he looked into alleged and apparent surveillance abuses by the government. Nunes said Twitter was guilty of "knowingly hosting and monetizing content that is clearly abusive, hateful and defamatory-- providing both a voice and financial incentive to the defamers-- thereby facilitating defamation on its platform."





The lawsuit alleged defamation, conspiracy and negligence, as well as violations of the state's prohibition against "insulting words"-- effectively fighting words that tend towards "violence and breach of the peace." The complaint sought not only damages, but also an injunction compelling Twitter to turn over the identities behind numerous accounts he said harassed and defamed him.





Twitter is a machine," Nunes' personal attorney, Steven S. Biss, told Fox News. "It is a modern-day Tammany Hall. Congressman Nunes intends to hold Twitter fully accountable for its abusive behavior and misconduct.





Although federal law ordinarily exempts services like Twitter from defamation liability at all levels, Nunes' suit said the platform has taken such an active role in curating and banning content-- as opposed to merely hosting it-- that it should face liability like any other organization that defames.





"Twitter created and developed the content at issue in this case by transforming false accusations of criminal conduct, imputed wrongdoing, dishonesty and lack of integrity into a publicly available commodity used by unscrupulous political operatives and their donor/clients as a weapon," Nunes' legal team wrote. "Twitter is 'responsible' for the development of offensive content on its platform because it in some way specifically encourages development of what is offensive about the content."





Additionally, as the complaint stated, Twitter has a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid hosting outwardly defamatory content because of its increasingly important role in current affairs.





"Access to Twitter is essential for meaningful participation in modern-day American Democracy," the complaint stated. "A candidate without Twitter is a losing candidate. The ability to use Twitter is a vital part of modern citizenship. A presence on Twitter is essential for an individual to run for office or engage in any level of political organizing in modern America. That is because Twitter is not merely a website: it is the modern town square. Twitter is equivalent to the private owner of a public forum who has fully opened its property to the general public for purposes of permitting the publics free expression and debate. That is, in fact, what Twitter has always claimed to be."





Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has testified previously before Congress that his platform is a kind of "digital public square," although he has insisted that Twitter, as a private company, retains the right to censor speech.





In large part because of Twitter's actions, Nunes "endured an orchestrated defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope, one that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life" in the past year, according to the complaint.





The complaint also named specific Twitter accounts that spread allegedly defamatory material about Nunes. One defendant, identified as "Liz" Mair, purportedly published tweets that "implied that Nunes colluded with prostitutes and cocaine addicts, that Nunes does cocaine, and that Nunes was involved in a 'Russian money laundering front,'" according to Nunes' lawyers.





The complaint quoted a June 22, 2018 tweet from Mair that implied Nunes invested in a winery that "allegedly used underage hookers to solicit investment."





Mair did not respond to Fox News' request for comment. Fox News has also reached out to Twitter for comment on the lawsuit, and was told only that "we're not commenting at this time." (The lawsuit seeks joint and several liability, which permits plaintiffs to recover from one defendant, and then leaves the defendants to sort out what each owes.)





The complaint also named "Devin Nunes Mom," "a person who, with Twitters consent, hijacked Nunes name, falsely impersonated Nunes mother, and created and maintained an account on Twitter (@DevinNunesMom) for the sole purpose of attacking, defaming, disparaging and demeaning Nunes."





Nunes lawyers' wrote, "In her endless barrage of tweets, Devin Nunes Mom maliciously attacked every aspect of Nunes character, honesty, integrity, ethics and fitness to perform his duties as a United States Congressman."





One tweet from the account, cited by the complaint, contained a crude drawing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump, and Nunes in a physically linked, symbiotic arrangement like the characters in the horror film "The Human Centipede (First Sequence)."





The complaint goes to allege that the account gave factually false and defamatory information, mixed in with impermissibly "insulting" fighting words.





"Devin Nunes Mom," the complaint alleges, "stated that Nunes had turned out worse than Jacob Wohl; falsely accused Nunes of being a racist, having 'white supremist friends' and distributing 'disturbing inflammatory racial propaganda'; falsely accused Nunes of putting up a 'Fake News MAGA' sign outside a Texas Holocaust museum; falsely stated that Nunes would probably join the 'Proud Boys', if it werent for that unfortunate 'nomasturbating rule'; disparagingly called him a 'presidential fluffer and swamp rat'; falsely stated that Nunes had brought 'shame' to his family; repeatedly accused Nunes of the crime of treason, compared him to Benedict Arnold, and called him a 'traitor.'"













As of Monday afternoon, the @DevinNunesMom account was suspended by Twitter when Fox News tried to access it. The complaint stated that "Twitter only suspended the account in 2019 after Nunes real mother, Toni Dian Nunes, complained. ... Twitter permitted @DevinNunesMom, for instance, to tweet and retweet with impunity throughout 2018."





However, according to the complaint, "Twitter did nothing to investigate or review the defamation that appeared in plain view on its platform. Twitter consciously allowed the defamation of Nunes to continue" despite reports and purported reviews by Twitter's content moderators.





"As part of its agenda to squelch Nunes voice, cause him extreme pain and suffering, influence the 2018 Congressional election, and distract, intimidate and interfere with Nunes investigation into corruption and Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election, Twitter did absolutely nothing," the complaint stated.





Another account named as a defendant was "Devin Nunes' Cow," or @DevinCow, which purportedly called Nunes a "treasonous cowpoke" and an "udder-ly worthless" criminal.





The timing and substance of the tweets, according to Nunes' team, suggested that Mair was working jointly with @DevinCow and @DevinNunesMom accounts. Mair's LinkedIn profile, the complaint notes, contains the boast: "What do I do for [my] clients? Anonymously smear their opposition on the Internet."





In response to the lawsuit, the @DevinCow account-- which was still active as of Monday evening-- posted numerous tweets mocking Nunes. "Im not quitting my day job," one read.
The number of Vietnamese people making mobile payments in 2019 rises by 24 percent from 2018. Photo by Shutterstock/Gerain0812

The number of Vietnamese people making mobile payments in stores this year has grown fastest globally by 24 percent.

A survey by the audit, tax and consulting services provider PwC found 37 percent of the respondents making mobile payments in 2018, but it went to 61 percent this year, placing Vietnam fourth below China at 86 percent, Thailand at 67 percent and Hong Kong at 64 percent.

In terms of growth, the Middle East ranked second at 20 percent, said the Global Consumer Insights Survey 2019, which polled 21,000 online consumers in 27 territories.

"Mobile payment is becoming a new trend with the rise of technologies such as QR codes, contactless payments, and the tokenization of card information," Nghiem Thanh Son, deputy director of the Department of Payments at the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), had said earlier.

The Vietnamese government is working to accelerate the use of cashless transactions. In a resolution released January, it tasked the central bank to come up with solutions that would promote the use of e-wallets, which allow users to deposit cash into their e-wallets without the need for a bank account.

However, Vietnam is still far away from becoming a cashless society, given low financial literacy and the lack of an ecosystem, experts say.

The use of cash in Vietnam remains high. World Bank's statistics released last year showed that Vietnam had the lowest percentage of cashless transactions in the region with only 4.9 percent, while this value for China and Thailand were 26.1 percent and 59.7 percent respectively.
The Grand Prize at the Hamdan International Photography Award in Dubai this year has been won by a photo taken in Vietnam.

Malaysian Edwin Ong Wee Kee won the $120,000 prize with a photo he took during a recent trip to northern Yen Bai Province. Mothers Hope captures a HMong mother with a speech disorder holding her children.

HIPA said on its official website: "Edwin Ong Wee Kee was honored with the Grand Prize for his photo documenting an intense human moment. The feelings of a Vietnamese mother whose speech disorder did not prevent her from feeling hopeful and a sense of strength for her children."

Kee said he loves to travel with his camera. He had pulled over on the side of the road while in Vietnam to capture this intimate moment using his Nikon D850 and an 80-400mm lens.

HIPA offers total prize money of $450,000, the largest of any photography award. It is also one of the most inclusive awards because there are no fees, no barriers to entry in terms of age, photographic status, gender, or nationality.

Wee is actually a full-time traditional Chinese medicine physician.

Other awards included best general photography, portfolio photography, aerial photography, the main theme photography, and special recognition.

The theme this year was "Hope." Season nine of HIPA opens later this year for submissions with the theme "Water."
Police search the house of Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, former deputy director of Da Nang's finance department, on March 19, 2019. Ha has been put under probe for public land violations. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong

Former director and deputy director of Da Nangs finance department are being investigated for violations in managing public land.

The Ministry of Public Security Tuesday opened a criminal investigation against former director Nguyen Thanh Sang and former deputy director Nguyen Thi Thu Ha for violations related to public property management that led to "losses or wastefulness."

Police searched their houses Tuesday afternoon, but the officials were not taken into custody.

Sang and Ha are suspected of violating regulations in land management, helping disgraced property tycoon Phan Van Anh Vu acquire public land in prime downtown Da Nang locations.

Da Nang is considered the third most important city in Vietnam after Hanoi and HCMC.

By helping Vu acquire properties at prices much lower than the market rates, they caused losses worth millions of dollars to the state budget, police allege.

A day earlier, on Monday, the ministry also opened probes into three businessmen and two other former officials in Da Nang on the same charges, including Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, who served as Da Nang's construction director between 2002 and 2012, before serving as its vice chairman until last year.

Police allege Tuan had colluded with Ha in at least one case during his time as the construction director. They helped Vu buy a piece of land for VND4.4 billion ($190,000), VND1.2 billion ($51,700) less than the initial price approved by the city leaders.

Vu, 44, used to be one of the biggest property developers in Da Nang and was the chairman of three large property companies as also a shareholder in a number of projects in the city.

He also ran businesses in Ho Chi Minh City and manipulated public land prices there as well. Several former officials in HCMC are also being investigated for their roles in Vu's violations.

The biggest casualties in this case so far are former deputy public security ministers Bui Van Thanh, 60, and Tran Viet Tan, 64, who were sent to prison last January for "negligence of responsibility, causing serious consequences."

The court heard that the former officials mismanagement had allowed Vu to commit violations involving public land that caused VND1.16 trillion ($50 million) in losses for the state exchequer.

Vu is still awaiting trial in this case, even as he serves an eight-year sentence for deliberately disclosing state secrets and a 17-year sentence for misappropriating more than VND200 billion ($8.6 million) from Dong A Bank.
Vietnamese workers making garments for Australian brands are unable to afford basic necessities and suffer sub-standard working conditions, said Oxfam.

Two ten-minute breaks.

One in the morning, another in the afternoon.

Nhan says she and most of her colleagues opt not to take these two breaks that their factory allows, because it is "meaningless."

Instead, they try to make more money, because their earnings depend on a piece rate.

"Every worker is keen on doing this, because they can get some more money rather than 10 minutes break, which seems to be meaningless," she says.

Nhan is a factory worker who makes garments for leading Australian brands like Big W and Kmart.

An Oxfam Australia report says long working hours in Vietnamese factories like the one Nhan works in take a toll on the workers health, especially new mothers, who report pain and having no space to express milk.

One Vietnamese mother says she has to run home at lunch time to feed her baby, then work extra hours at night to make up for the wage loss. Another reports that working overtime takes a toll on her physically and mentally because she has to stay late at work even though she needs to go home to feed her child.

"I feel tired, but I still have to stay, go home late; no one listens to us. I have to feed my baby."

Hau, a 27-year-old garment worker, spends more on food for her children than herself. She spends very little on her own food in order to help pay off the familys debt. Even then, when she brings food into the factory to feed herself during the day, her allowance is cut. She does it anyway, because she would go hungry otherwise.

Damning indictment

These poignant anecdotes are related in the Oxfam Australia report which is a damning indictment of leading Australian brands like Target and Cotton On that pay scant attention of the plight of workers in factories even as they rake in millions of dollars in profit each year.

The report exposes the ways in which Australian companies drive wages down and impose harsh working conditions, despite "clear commitments on important fundamental rights at work in their Codes of Conduct."

The companies pressurize factories in many ways including fierce price negotiations, jumping between contracts instead of establishing long-term relationships, squeezing lead times for orders.

They operate "with a separation between their ethical and standards staff and their buying teams, who negotiate directly with factories," the report says.

It notes: "One factory owner even reported the extensive measures a company had taken to keep their clothing safe in case of a fire, but a lack of interest from the very same company in fire safety measures for the workspaces where people sew their clothes."

Made in poverty

Titled "Made in Poverty," the report is based on interviews held last April and July with 474 workers in Bangladesh and Vietnam. It seeks to examine the impact of low wages on the wellbeing of workers and their families working in the factories that supply garments to major brands in Australia.

The two countries were chosen as they were key sourcing countries for Australian clothing brands, making up almost 10 percent of the clothing imported by Down Under in 2017, and their share of the market has been growing in recent years.

Among the interviewed workers, 88 were Vietnamese, of which 13 were male and 75 were female. They were from six Vietnamese factories with a total labor force of 5,882 people and were identified as suppliers for Australian clothing brands. All workers were interviewed at locations away from the factories and none were identified by their real names to protect their employments and wellbeing.

The national average minimum wage in Vietnam is around $197 per month, which is 64 and 37 percent of the living wage compared against the Global Living Wage Coalition and the Asia Floor Wage, respectively. 74 and 99 percent of Vietnamese garment workers earn below the living wage compared against the Global Living Wage Coalition and the Asia Floor Wage, respectively, according to the report.

With such low wages, 70 percent of the workers reported that their income was not sufficient to meet their needs, 28 percent feel their wages were not sufficient to sustain their families for the whole month, while 37 percent said they had to borrow from friends, relatives or neighbors to fill in the income expenditure gap, the report added.

Moreover, 27 percent said they experienced no change to their wages, with 5 percent reporting that their wages had been reduced in the past year.

As a result, many garment workers could not afford some of the most basic necessities for their daily lives, including sufficient food, proper housing, clean water or affordable medical treatment.

23 percent reported living in semi-permanent or temporary housing, 20 percent could not afford enough food for themselves and their families, 44 percent constantly worry about having to use well or rainwater due to uncertainty about the waters safety, and 53 percent were unable to afford medical treatment when sick or injured, the report states.

An abusive working environment also adds to their misery, with 23 percent reporting regular verbal abuse, including shouting, yelling, cursing and using rude words as aggressive tactics to speed up workflows and meet deadlines.

"Yelling is a common practice in the company. The management slap on the table, on the chair, use bad words... It happens every hour, every day, every minute," the report quotes one Vietnamese worker as saying.

Dirty tricks

The report also details wage tactics and other tricks used in Vietnam.

Almost all companies use fingerprint attendance checks.

"Some workers told us that when they scan their fingerprints, sometimes it does not appear in the system. Even though they work a full day and get it confirmed by their supervisors, only half a working day is counted."

By law, employers need to pay a social insurance premium based on each workers wage and allowances. However, the report notes that in reality, "when unions and workers representatives look at pay slips from workers, its clear that many workers only have their social insurance premiums paid based on the minimum wage and seniority allowance, ignoring all other allowances and supplements. This is a common trick to keep the social insurance premium low, denying workers this important safety net."

Despite such appalling working conditions, most workers decide to keep their heads down and carry on, constrained by their personal circumstances and choices. One in every four workers interviewed said they constantly feared losing their jobs.

The long hours of work for many garment workers in Vietnam also causes nutrition problems, as workers struggle to make as many pieces as possible to meet their targets and increase their pay, the report says.

Among workers in one factory in Vietnam, it was reported that there is a concept of "selling annual leave." This meant that when a team failed to complete their weekly or monthly production target, the team leader would ask the workers to work overtime and "sell" workers annual leave to the company, meaning that workers are "voluntarily" not taking their owed leave.

All of this adds up to a workforce that is overworked, tired, malnourished, stressed, sick, unable to afford treatment and afraid to take time off for fear of losing their already poor salaries, the report concludes.

Vietnam is an emerging giant in the global textile and apparel industry. There are around 6,000 textile and garment manufacturing firms operating in Vietnam, in which 84 percent are privately owned, 15 percent funded by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and 1 percent are state-owned. The industry employs around 2.5 million people, according to the report.

The report says that brands should implement, monitor and make credible commitment to living wages in their supply chains and be transparent and fair when dealing with human rights abuses, while governments should develop, legislate and implement plans to protect laborers.

It will not take much for Australian brands to do their bit.

A 2017 Oxfam showed that the cost of the average piece of clothing sold in Australia would increase by just 1 percent to ensure that workers in Australian garment supply chains earned a living wage.

Instead, the new investigation shows the poverty and reality of working conditions for those who help make clothes bound for Australia, and "the ways in which Australian brands both profit from this poverty and actively operate in ways that keep wages low."
The extremely rare giant turtle has been plastinated and lodged in a temple on its home, Hanois Sword Lake.

The plastinated specimen of the giant turtle is now on display at Ngoc Son Temple, which stands on a small islet inside the lake in downtown Hanoi.

The turtle was one of the last of the Yangtze giant soft-shell turtles, species Rafetus swinhoei, of which there are just three known specimens now, two in China and one in a lake outside the city.

The female turtle, which had reached the fullest growth of 2.08 meters (6.82 feet) long and 1.08 meters wide and weighed 169 kilos when she was still alive, was sacred to the capital city and its people.

Referred to as Cu Rua, or Great-Grandmother Turtle, she was the symbol of a legendary turtle, the legend being that a golden turtle God showed up in the lake to take back the sword that King Le Loi, a national hero, had borrowed from a Dragon King in the 15th century to help him fight Chinese invaders. That is where the name of the lake, Hoan Kiem, (Returned Sword and now Sword in short) comes from.

According to local experts, while the oldest tortoise in the world is now about 186 years old, the turtle in the Sword Lake is estimated to have lived for 200 years.

The method of plastination, a technique to preserve animal and human tissue by which body fluids and fat are replaced with synthetic materials such as silicone resins or epoxy polymers, is chosen as it can keep the specimen almost the same, leaves no odor and is sustainable.

The legs and nails of the turtle. For the turtle to be plastinated, two German experts were invited to Vietnam three months after she died. In August 31 last year, Vietnam assessed their work and concluded that the "the plastinated specimen retains the same charisma of the turtle when alive."

Scars on the turtles shell and legs have been kept intact. Before her death, the turtle had been surfacing several times due to the lack of oxygen in the water caused by pollution.

In November 2017, Hanoi announced a VND29 billion ($1.28 million) project to clean up the lake. The Hanoi Sewage and Drainage Ltd. said its surveys had found "serious pollution" in the lake, which is home to aquatic plants, invertebrates and fish.

The turtles reproductive organ.

Unofficial reports have said the Sword Lake used to be home to three giant turtles, but one had died a long time ago. The latest death was in 1967 and the carcass of that turtle is now placed next to the newly plastinated one.

For preservation, the plastinated specimen should be kept at temperature under 25 degrees Celcius (77 degress Fahrenheit) and a humidity of 55 percent. It should also be shielded from direct sunlight, dust, and mildew.

The box where the plastinated turtle is displayed is made of toughened, anti-light and anti-flash glass is one centimeter thick, and equipped with air cleaning and humidity conditioning systems.

In July last year, China suggested a collaboration project to breed the Sword Lake turtle and Vietnam has welcomed it.
Rice terraces in the Pu Luong Nature Reserve, Thanh Hoa Province. The terraces are farmed by Muong and White Thai ethnic minorities. Photo by Shutterstock/ronemmons

Vietnams Thanh Hoa and Laos Hua Phan will collaborate on tours covering attractions in both provinces.

The two provinces' tourism authorities last week announced the Quan Son - Vieng Xai tour. This is the first tour to connect destinations in both localities.

Quan Son District in the central province of Thanh Hoa is blessed with a picturesque landscape of terraced fields and stilt houses outside which people of the Thai ethnic minority community weave fabric.

Besides, visitors can go fishing on Luong river, explore the Bo Cui and Nang Non caves, and enjoy the Ban Nhai waterfall, and other attractions.

A small fish market on beach in Thanh Hoa in sunrise. Photo by Shutterstock/Jimmy Tran

Culinary specialties of the Thai, including rock moss, grilled river fish and chopped chicken with mangrove bamboo are also worth trying. The day can be rounded off with Thai folk music and dance performances.

Vieng Xai District of Hua Phan Province boasts nearly 500 caves, including the one named after Laos' former President Kaysone Phomvihane, who used it as a revolutionary operations base in 1964-1973.

A traditional water festival and culinary specialties like sticky rice, grilled chicken, Savanakhet grilled chicken, fried vegetable salad rolls and papaya salad add to the districts natural attractions. Beer aficionados should know that Lao beer has been hailed as being among Southeast Asia's best.

Vuong Hai Yen, deputy director of Thanh Hoa's tourism department, said that to have more people take the tour, the localities will continue to invest in infrastructure, human resources, and complementary services.
Vietnamese who live in Japan celebrate Vietnamese New Year at a Catholic Church in Kawaguchi, near Tokyo, Japan, February 10, 2019. Photo by Reuters/Issei Kato

The trainees system began in Japan in 1993 with the aim of transferring skills to workers from developing countries, but experts say abuses developed early on.

When a young Vietnamese woman found out late last year that she was pregnant after arriving in Japan on a "technical trainee" visa, she was given a stark choice: "Have an abortion or go back to Vietnam."

But returning home would leave her unable to pay back the $10,000 she borrowed to pay recruiters there.

"She needs to stay to pay back her debts," said Shiro Sasaki, secretary general of the Zentoitsu (All United) Workers Union, who has advocated on her behalf and said such threats were common.

Buoyed by hopes of higher wages but burdened by loans, Vietnamese youth - the fastest-growing group of foreign workers in Japan - will be among those most affected by a new scheme to let in more blue-collar workers that kicks off in April.

"Trainees from China have been declining as wages there rise with economic growth, while in Vietnam, unemployment is high for youth with high education levels, so many young people want to go abroad to work," said Futaba Ishizuka, a research fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies, a think tank.

The technical trainee program is widely known as a back door for blue-collar labor in immigration-shy Japan. Reported abuses in Japan include low and unpaid wages, excessive hours, violence and sexual harassment. In Vietnam, unscrupulous recruiters and brokers often charge trainees exorbitant fees.

Such problems will persist and could worsen under the new system, aimed at easing a historic labor shortage, according to interviews with activists, academics, unionists and trainees.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose conservative base fears a rise in crime and a threat to the countrys social fabric, has insisted that the new law, enacted in December, does not constitute an "immigration policy."

That worries critics.

"In fact, Japan is already a country of immigrants. But because they say it is not an immigration policy and the premise is that people will not stay, they only take temporary steps," said Japan Civil Liberties Union director Akira Hatate. "The needs of society are not met, and the needs of the workers are not met."

Growing numbers

The trainees system began in 1993 with the aim of transferring skills to workers from developing countries. But persistent abuses developed early on, experts say.

Those issues were spotlighted last year during debate over the new law.

Among the high-profile cases was that of four companies using trainees for decontamination work in areas affected by radiation after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Two firms, also accused of not paying appropriate wages, were banned from employing trainees for five years; the others got warnings from the justice ministry.

A labor ministry survey published in June showed more than 70 percent of trainee employers had violated labor rules, with excessive hours and safety problems most common. That compared to 66 percent for employers overall.

Technical trainees from Vietnam work at a knitwear factory in Mitsuke, Japan February 26, 2019. Photo by Reuters/Linda Sieg

The Organization for Technical Intern Training (OTIT), a watchdog group, was set up in 2017. This month, it issued a reminder to employers that trainees are covered by Japanese labor law. It specifically banned unfair treatment of pregnant workers.

Harsh conditions led more than 7,000 trainees to quit in 2017, experts say, many lured by shady brokers promising fake documentation and higher-paying jobs. Almost half were from Vietnam.

Because trainees are not permitted to switch employers, leaving their jobs usually means losing legal visa status. A few go to shelters run by non-profit groups or get help from unionists; many disappear into a labor black market.

"The situation is completely different from what they were told back home," said Shigeru Yamashita, managing director of the Vietnam Mutual Aid Association in Japan. "They have debts they cannot repay with their salaries at home, so the only option is to flee into the black market for labor."

Addressing shortages

The new law will allow about 345,000 blue-collar workers to enter Japan over five years in 14 sectors such as construction and nursing care, which face acute labor shortages. One category of "specified skilled workers" can stay up to five years but cannot bring families.

A second category of visas - currently limited to the construction and shipbuilding industries - allows workers to bring families and be eligible to stay longer.

Nguyen Thi Thuy Phuong, 29, left her husband and elementary-school-age child home in Vietnam to work as a trainee in a knitwear factory in Mitsuke City in northern Japan.

The textile industry was not included in the new visa program after coming under fire for the high number of labor violations in its trainee programs.

Now she wishes she could bring her family and stay longer than three years.

"Life in Japan is convenient, and the air is clean," she told Reuters in careful Japanese during a break from work.

For-profit employment agencies and individuals can register as liaisons between recruiters and employers. These "registered support organizations" will not need licenses.

Immigration authorities will provide oversight of the new foreign workers; the labor ministrys immigration bureau will become an agency on April 1, a bureaucratic distinction that gives it more clout.

On Friday, the justice ministry issued fresh rules for the new system, including a requirement that foreign workers be paid at least as much as Japanese employees.

But Sasaki said the agencys focus would be residence status, not labor conditions.

Some companies have woken up to the risk of losing investors if they or their suppliers violate workers rights, said Japan Civil Liberties Unions Hatate.

But the rush to implement the new law has left local authorities worried that too little has been done to support and integrate more foreigners.

"If there is not a proper framework to accept them and they are thought of as purely a way to fill the labor shortage, for certain there will be major problems," Yuji Kuroiwa, governor of Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo, told Reuters.

Takashi Takayama, whose Vietnamese name is Cao Son Quy, left Vietnam in 1979. He recalled how foreigners were laid off in droves after the 2008 global financial crisis and fears a similar scenario when demand for labor eases after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

"When the Olympics are over, I think a tragic event will occur," Takayama said at a Vietnamese New Year celebration at a Catholic church outside Tokyo. "I dont want to see that."
Ukroboronprom refutes allegations of arms supplies to Russia

Allegations were voiced following a report by Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

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Inspections of three regional gas companies owned by Firtash confirm violations  Naftogaz

Violators may get a maximum fine of UAH 850,000 (US$31,284).

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
The technology group Wartsila has signed five-year Lifecycle solution agreements for two power plants in Bangladesh. With the agreements in place, the customers can be assured that their plants can be operated at optimal efficiency, and that maintenance will be effectively planned and executed to maximise operational uptime.

A Wartsila Maintenance management and operational advisory services agreement with PowerPac Mutiara Jamalpur Power Plant Ltd, an independent power producer (IPP) covers PowerPac Jamalpur plant in Jamalpur, Bangladesh. The agreement is booked with Wartsila in Q1 2019. This is the first long term service agreement signed for a baseload power plant owned by a private company in Bangladesh. The agreement answers to the customer's need of operational reliability and optimal power plant performance. This plant was commissioned in November 2016 with capacity of 100 MW by twelve Wartsila 32 engines.

"The Maintenance management and operational advisory solution with Wartsila, supported by local and remote operational advisory services, maintenance planning and spare parts supply, is essential for ensuring optimal power plant performance. Wartsila has provided outstanding support during the Dependable Capacity Test (DCT) procedures," commented Mr Debabrata Ukil, Chief Engineer, PowerPac Holdings Ltd.

An Operation and maintenance and spare parts supply agreement has been signed with LafargeHolcim Bangladesh Ltd, a major cement producer. The company owns a 30 MW power plant that provides power to its cement production facility in Chattak, Sunamgonj. The agreement covering full operation and maintenance plus parts supply, was booked with Wartsila in Q1 2019. The plant was commissioned in December 2004 and has four Wartsila 34SG and two Wartsila 200 engines.

Mr Sanjit Roy, Head of Procurement, LafargeHolcim said: "We are a company that does not compromise on quality, and that applies to all aspects of our business, including the operation and servicing of our power plant. By utilising Wartsila's expertise to optimise the plant's performance, we can focus on our core business knowing that we shall have a reliable supply of the electricity needed to run our cement production."

Henri van Boxtel, Director, Energy Services Middle East & Asia at Wartsila responded by saying: "Wartsila Lifecycle solutions essentially deliver peace of mind to our customers. In addition to optimising the performance of this power plant, we deliver financial predictability for maintenance budgeting with guaranteed response times. Our dedicated experts provide quality maintenance management that assures maximum uptime and reliability."

Wartsila currently has in excess of 4850 MW of installed or on order power generating capacity in Bangladesh. Of these 1100 are operated and maintained under contract by Wartsila.

Read more about Wartsila Lifecycle solutions for the energy industry.

For further information, please contact:

Mostafa Zahed Hossain

General Manager, Service Sales

Wartsila Energy Business

Mob. +880 17 140 86600

mostafa.Zahed@wartsila.com

Mirja-Maija Santala

Manager, Marketing & Communications

Wartsila Energy Business

Mob: +358 40 079 3827

mirja-maija.santala@wartsila.com

Wartsila Energy Business in brief

Wartsila Energy Business is leading the transition towards a 100% renewable energy future. As an energy system integrator, we understand, design, build and serve optimal power systems for future generations. Wartsila's solutions provide the needed flexibility to integrate renewables and secure power system reliability. Our offering comprises engine-based flexible power plants - including liquid gas systems - hybrid solar power plants, energy management systems and storage and integration solutions. We support our customers over the lifecycle of their installations with services that enable increased efficiency and guaranteed performance. Wartsila has 70 GW of installed power plant capacity in 177 countries around the world.

www.wartsila.com/energy

Wartsila in brief

Wartsila is a global leader in smart technologies and complete lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. By emphasising sustainable innovation, total efficiency and data analytics, Wartsila maximises the environmental and economic performance of the vessels and power plants of its customers. In 2018, Wartsila's net sales totalled EUR 5.2 billion with approximately 19,000 employees. The company has operations in over 200 locations in more than 80 countries around the world. Wartsila is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki.

www.wartsila.com

Read the full press release.
Atlas Renewable Energy, leader in clean energy in Latin America, announced the completion of long-term financing of three of its solar energy plants in Brazil for a total amount of USD $152 million. The financing was obtained through Banco do Nordeste (BNB), backed by an equivalent sum of commercial bank guarantees from BTG Pactual, Banco ABC Brasil, and Banco Bradesco. Together, the plants will have an installed capacity of more than 300 MWps, which has allowed them to achieve new standards for financial alliances and boost the Brazilian energy sector to higher levels of solar capacity.

The Sao Pedro Solar Complex, Atlas Renewable Energy's first fully operational plant in Brazil.

Each project has a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Chamber of Electricity Sales (Camara de Comercializacao de Energia Eletrica- CCEE). It is estimated that the combined energy produced of 672.8 GWh / year will provide clean energy for a total of 470,000 families per year. Atlas Renewable Energy estimates that the operation of the plants will prevent the emission of 108,000 tons of CO2 per year.

The plants are located in the northeast region, namely the Sao Pedro and Juazeiro plants in the state of Bahia, and the Sol Do Futuro plant in the state of Ceara. The Sao Pedro solar complex is the first functioning operation of Atlas Renewable Energy in Brazil, with an installed capacity of 67.1 MWp in two secondary plants. As part of the company's commitment to work with local communities and environmental guidelines during the construction, development, and operation phases of its plants, the Sao Pedro project created nearly 700 direct jobs, and will prevent the emission of more than 61,000 tons of carbon dioxide. The Juazeiro and Sol do Futuro plants are currently in the start-up phase and will be fully operational in the coming months.

BNB's Business Director, Antonio Rosendo Neto Junior, highlights that "A partnership with Atlas Renewable Energy demonstrates the synergy of Banco do Nordeste with this sector of the economy. Investments are essential for the evolution of the energy matrix throughout the Brazilian Northeast, especially from renewable and non-contaminated sources. We are fulfilling the Bank's mission, while generating employment and income in our region."

Atlas Renewable Energy CEO Carlos Barrera explains, "Brazil is Latin America's largest renewable energy market, and these three projects allow us to consolidate a strong presence in this market. We are pleased to have partnered with these strong, high-caliber financial institutions enabled in part by our team's solid track-record and expertise in development and execution." He adds, "As a renewable energy company, we're just scratching the surface of how powerful Latin America's renewable energy sector can be when you combine it with high-quality PPAs, financing innovation, and top-tier projects."

"By closing our investment goals of $170 million in Brazil, Atlas Renewable Energy adds to Brazil's thriving renewable energy sector," explains General Manager of Brazil, Luis Pita, who also added, "we believe Latin America's renewable energy market is due for an innovative approach to the solar technology that can deliver data driven decisions at scale and statistics aimed at increasing energy production across borders. Atlas Renewable Energy is becoming a leader in this arena. These solar projects are in line with our company's commitment to invest in top of the line technologies, such as NEXTracker's TrueCapture Technology and the introduction of the first digital substation in Brazil, which, along with our work ethic, quality of production, and company culture, are part of the company's strategic priorities."

These three projects are expected to be complemented by an additional 1.5 GW, which Atlas Renewable Energy plans to add to its investment portfolio over the next three years throughout Latin America. The current operations in Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, and Mexico are evidence of Atlas Renewable Energy's commitment to alternative energy development in Latin America and a testament to its track record as a developer and administrator of assets in the region.

About Atlas Renewable Energy

Atlas Renewable Energy, a renewable energy company that develops, builds, and operates renewable energy projects with long-term energy contracts across Latin America. Atlas Renewable Energy's current portfolio is 1.2GW of contracted projects in development, construction, or operational stages, and aims to grow an additional 1.5GW over the next decade.

Launched in early 2017, Atlas Renewable Energy includes an experienced team with the longest track record in the solar energy industry in Latin America. The company is recognized by its high standards in development, construction, and operation of large-scale projects.

Atlas Renewable Energy is part of the Energy Fund IV, founded by Actis, a leading private equity investor in the energy sector of emerging markets. Actis has allocated more than $600 million of equity in Atlas Renewable Energy to invest in long-term renewable energy contracted projects.

Atlas Renewable Energy's growth is focused on the main emerging markets and economies of Latin America, using its proven development, commercialization and structuring know-how to bring clean energy to the region. By actively engaging with the community and stakeholders at the center of its project strategy, Atlas works every day to provide the world with a cleaner future.
Senvion installs the tallest wind turbines in France for BayWa r.e. With a tip height of 200 metres, the Senvion 3.0M122 wind turbines are currently being installed in the wind farm Les Landes, located in the French department of Haute Vienne.

Olivier Perot, Managing Director of Senvion Europe South, states: "Thanks to its flexible and modular wind turbines portfolio, Senvion is capable to offer BayWa r.e. the most suitable and high-performing wind turbine for the features of this wind farm. We are proud to contribute to the success of this project with the tallest wind turbines in France, which is another milestone for the country's successful energy transition."

"It is a great satisfaction to participate in the construction of the tallest wind turbines in France", says Can Nalbantoglu, Managing Director of BayWa r.e France SAS. "We decided to install wind turbines with such a dimension in order to capture stronger and steadier wind in order to optimize production. In total, the expected electricity production for this wind farm is more than 50 GWh per year, the equivalent of the electricity consumption of 10,000 households."

With an installed capacity of 18 megawatts (MW), the wind farm will save 11,500 metric tons of CO2 emissions every year.

Senvion's recent projects which include the tallest wind turbines in France, the first offshore wind farm in the Italian Mediterranean Sea as well as the installation of the longest blade in Portugal, demonstrate its capability to be an innovative solutions provider for its customers in the wind industry.

About Senvion:

Senvion is a leading global manufacturer of onshore and offshore wind turbines. The company develops, produces and markets wind turbines for almost any location - with rated outputs of 2 MW to 6.33 MW and rotor diameters of 82 metres to 152 metres. Furthermore, the company offers its customers project specific solutions in the areas of turnkey, service and maintenance, transport and installation, as well as foundation planning and construction. The Senvion systems are mainly designed in the major TechCenters in Osterronfeld and Bangalore and manufactured at its German and Portuguese plants in Bremerhaven, Vagos and Oliveira de Frades as well as in Zory-Warszowice, Poland and Baramati, India. With approximately 4,000 employees worldwide, the company makes use of the experience gained from the manufacture and installation of more than 8,200 wind turbines around the world. The company's operational subsidiary Senvion GmbH is based in Hamburg and represented by distribution partners, subsidiaries and participations in European markets such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Poland as well as on a global level in the USA, China, Australia, Japan, India, Chile and Canada. Senvion S.A. is listed on the Prime Standard of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

BayWa r.e.:

Across solar and wind, at BayWa r.e we r.e.think energy - how it is produced, stored and used the best.

We are a leading global developer, service supplier, wholesaler and provider in energy solutions.

We deliver renewable energy solutions worldwide; have brought 2.4 GW of energy online---while managing 5.5 GW of assets in operation. BayWa r.e is a leading supplier to the solar wholesale market. We also have a rapidly growing energy trading business. As an integral part of the 16 billion BayWa Group, we work hard every day to find new solutions, push technological boundaries and actively shape the future of energy.

Vice President Capital Markets and Public Relations

Dhaval Vakil

phone: +44 20 3859 3664

mobile: +44 7788 390 185

email: dhaval.vakil@senvion.com

Communication and Marketing Manager

Delphine Hochepot

phone: +33 (0)1 41 38 17 59

mobile: +33 (0)6 46 16 12 25

email: delphine.hochepot@senvion.com
A yellow ribbon outside the regional government building in Barcelona. Massimiliano Minocri

Spanish election officials have given Catalan premier Quim Torra another 24 hours to remove pro-independence symbols from all public buildings owned or run by the regional government.

A week ago, the Central Electoral Board (JEC) reminded the Catalan government that public authorities have the legal obligation to preserve political neutrality ahead of the local, regional, general and European elections coming up in April and May.

Torra had argued that the estelada flag is a symbol that represents a desire for freedom

The move chiefly affects public buildings displaying yellow ribbons, used to show support for separatist leaders standing trial for rebellion, and esteladas, the unofficial flags used by supporters of Catalan independence.

The body that monitors elections in Spain has also asked the government delegate in Catalonia, Teresa Cunillera, to check that these instructions are followed, and warned Torra that failure to do so could have administrative and criminal consequences.

But on Tuesday it emerged that Torra would once again ignore the instructions, and will instead request a report from the Catalan ombudsman as to whether the symbols should be removed.

Minister Elsa Artadi said on Tuesday that more information about the regional governments plans for the symbols would be made public this evening or tomorrow morning. We will do what the ombudsman tells us, said Artadi. The deadline given to Torra to remove the material will expire on Tuesday afternoon.

A yellow ribbon on a public building in Catalonia. Massimiliano Minocri

The JEC has rejected Torras arguments that the estelada flag is a symbol that represents a desire for freedom and makes a democratic, legitimate, legal and non-violent claim.

Election officials noted that these symbols may indeed symbolize the aspirations of one part of Catalan society, but not all of it. It is a legitimate symbol that may be used by political groups in their campaigning, but not by public powers, at least not during election periods, as they have an obligation to maintain rigorous political neutrality as per Article 50.2 of the Electoral Regime Law (LOREG).

The JEC underscored that a public authoritys legitimacy resides in its respect for the Constitution and the countrys laws. In a democratic concept of power, there is no other legitimacy than that which is founded on the Constitution.

Torra had alleged that many public buildings are not owned or managed directly by the Catalan government

Torra had also alleged that many public buildings are not owned or managed directly by the Catalan government, but the JEC said that most of them fall under the stewardship of a regional department, and proposed making a list of those that do not so its managers may be notified.

As for Torras claim that government workers have the right to express their personal views, the JEC said that this individual right does not include using public buildings in a partisan way.

This latest decision by the JEC may be appealed before the Supreme Court within a two-month period. Failure to comply with election regulations could entail penalties ranging from 300 to 3,000 as well as criminal consequences.

There is a precedent in the regional and general elections of 2015, when the mayor of Berga, in Barcelona province, refused to take down an estelada from town hall during the campaign period. Montserrat Venturos, of the far-left CUP party, was barred from public office for six months and fined 540.

English version by Susana Urra.
Scene from the play 'God has a Vagina' by the Vertebro company. Mila Ercoli

The ongoing dispute in Spain between ultra-conservative groups and defenders of creative freedom has flared up once again over the play Dios tiene una vagina (or, God has a vagina). On Sunday afternoon, a group of Catholics prayed with rosary beads outside the performance venue at the Matadero cultural center in Madrid to protest against the production, which they argue disrespects the tradition of Easter.

The performance went ahead as planned but the dispute did not end there. The Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers has said it will file a complaint against Madrid City Hall and the creators of the work for offending religious sentiment  the same charge the group brought against Spanish actor Willy Toledo.

Willy Toledo case The Spanish Association of Christian lawyers also accused Spanish actor Willy Toledo of "offending religious sentiment" over a post on Facebook in 2017, in which he expressed his indignation over a court probe into three women in Seville who, in 2014, paraded a large model of a vagina through the city streets, in an imitation of a religious procession, dubbing it the "cono insumiso," or "Insubordinate pussy." Speaking to Spanish news agency EFE in April, Toledo said that it was outrageous that an ultra-fundamentalist Catholic association such as the Association of Christian Lawyers could, in the present day, file a lawsuit for blasphemy, as if we were in the Middle Ages. The law that covers religious sentiment, he added, was anti-democratic given that it stops atheists from expressing their opinions. I am an atheist and I dont believe in the virginity nor the sanctity of the Virgin Mary, the actor added, stating that he would continue to think the same way even if he ends up in jail.

The play, performed by the theater collective Vertebro, explores how the popular imagination  religion and its icons, music, food, fiestas  shapes personal identity. The actors remain naked throughout the performance and recreate scenes related to tradition, including Easter. The work debuted in 2017 at the Terrasa Noves Tendencies Festival in Barcelona and since then, has been performed without incident in Valencia, the Reims Festival in France, and in Mexico City.

The protest began ahead of the plays debut in Madrid on Friday night. On the morning of the performance, the Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers began to receive calls from people who were offended by what they had seen in promotional videos, the groups head Paloma Castellanos told EL PAIS.

The organization launched a petition to demand Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena stop the performance and call on the Madrid public prosecutor to suspend the work for offending religious sentiment, adding that minors were allowed to attend. According to Castellanos, the petition received 60,000 signatures in one day.

Meanwhile, the Catholic organization Hazte Oir (Make Yourself Heard), which recently campaigned for Spains gender violence law to be repealed with a bus against what it described as feminazis, also launched a petition entitled: Pornography to make fun of Easter. More than 32,000 people have since signed the petition, according to the campaign website.

But Madrids public prosecutor ruled on Friday that there were not sufficient legal grounds to stop the performance scheduled for that night or Sunday. And on Monday, the prosecutor decided not to suspend the play given it had already been performed and there was therefore no urgency or the possibility of irreparable damage as the complainants had argued.

While the theater collective has not commented on the backlash, Madrid City Halls cultural department has defended the work on the grounds of creative freedom. The head of cultural activities Getsemani de San Marcos said on Sunday that both the administrations that program municipal cultural centers and the artists who present their work have artistic autonomy, adding that many other artists have used iconography and an aesthetic that evokes religious symbols without causing offense.

Bookshop threatened for offensive cover

The scandal over God has a vagina comes just a few days after La Integral bookshop in Madrid received a threatening phone call over the offensive book cover of Espana salvaje (or, Savage Spain). The history book, which has an image of Spanish general Jose Millan Astray y Terreros on its cover, takes a critical look at the role of the military leader.

Cover of the book Savage Spain.

According to the bookstore clerk Maria, the person who called was a member of the Millan Astray Patriotic Platform and a member of the [far-right] political party Vox. In the phone conversation, they said the book was an offense to many Spaniards. So we ask you to take it down and are letting you know we will take legal action against your store and the publishing house that has published it.

Servando Rocha, the editor of the book, which is written by various authors, explained: Some consider [Millan Astray] a hero, but others dont [...] They only want one interpretation of history: theirs. But history cannot be tailored like a suit.

English version by Melissa Kitson.
The Toro de la Vega festival in 2017. VICTOR SAINZ

A ruling by Spains Supreme Court has definitively brought an end to the traditional way of celebrating the Toro de la Vega, a medieval bull festival held in the town of Tordesillas in central Spain. No longer will the animal be lanced to death by a spear-wielding crowd after having been chased to the banks of the River Duero.

Tordesillas local council had argued that the legislation eliminated the essence of the popular rite that gave rise to bullfighting

In the latest chapter in a long-running legal battle by animal-rights groups to outlaw the tradition, the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the Tordesillas local council, which sought to amend a sentence that also outlawed the Toro de la Vega and was passed by the Castilla y Leon regional High Court. In April, the latter tribunal upheld a decree passed by the regional government that outlawed the death of the bull as part of the fiestas.This law is also applicable to similar practices should they be held in other towns in the region.

Since 2016, the Toro de la Vega has involved a normal bull-run through the town, during which the animal is not killed in public.

In its appeal, the Tordesillas local council had argued that the legislation eliminated the essence of the popular rite that gave rise to bullfighting. Another of the arguments stated that 40,000 fans attended the event compared to 100 animal activists. The council also argued that the death of the animal did not detract from its dignity, but rather enhanced it. The appeal claimed that there was no real justification to do away with the death of the bull.

Tordesillas town council argued that the death of the animal did not detract from its dignity, but rather enhanced it

Silvia Barquero, president of Spains animal-rights party PACMA, has spent years fighting for the prohibition of the torture and death of the bull in the Toro de la Vega festival. She has welcomed the definitive abolition of a practice that her group believes is not in accordance with the sensitivities of todays society. According to Barquero, the ruling is the first victory in the fight to end similar festivals related to bullfighting. Now, she explained, the Toro de la Vega has become just another bull-run, one that we reject just like we do all the others.

After receiving news of the ruling, the mayor of Tordesillas announced that the Town Hall had requested that its external legal services examine what possibilities present themselves now. This report will made available to the council that is formed after the upcoming municipal elections on May 26, says Gonzalez Poncela, who will not be running again as mayor.

English version by Asia London Palomba.
The government should more actively attract Ukraines pharmaceuticals producers to the process of health care reform, but for that, it must change the number of game rules on the countrys pharmaceuticals market.

This was an opinion Dmytro Shymkiv, the chairman of the Executive Board of the managing company of the PrJSC Pharmaceutical firm Darnitsa, expressed during his speech on the Ukrainian Pharmaceutical Congress 2019 in Kyiv.

When we talk about the health care reform, we want to hear how the Ukrainian pharma can join the reforming process. We can help! he said.

Lets see where we are buying the majority of oncology agents  we are buying them abroad, from an international pharma. Why shouldnt we raise a question about the strategic project? Offer the Ukrainian and international pharma to locate their production here, in Ukraine,  Shymkiv said as the example.

According to him, the state must also solve the problem of the evergreening patents - when the companies artificially delay the terms of patens on their pharmaceutical agents, and by that deprive the Ukrainian pharma of an opportunity to produce generics  authorized copies of those pharmaceutical agents.

To keep their monopoly on the market, patent owners play a dirty game of baring other producers from developing similar agents, Shymkiv explained, pointing out that Ukrainian generics help the patients to decrease the medical treatment spending significantly.

In particular, he stands for the removal of the ban on generics production until the end of the patent on the original agent.

He also stood for the limits for registrations of the medical agents in the same segment.

Nowadays a producer can be represented by several pharmaceutical agents in one segment. The state doesnt regulate this situation by no means, and the operators of the market find it hard to work in such circumstances, Shymkiv explained.

According to him, different producers share a segment in the European Union.

Several companies sign an agreement on their obligations concerning the production of certain type products. Therefore the state provides regulation and controls the prices, he said.

Dmytro Shymkiv took up his position in Darnitsa in September last year. Since 2014 to 2018 he worked as a deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, before that he headed the Ukrainian branch of the Microsoft Corporation.

PrJSC Pharmaceutical firm Darnitsa was founded in 1930. It is Ukraines leader of pharmaceuticals production in volume terms. Companys portfolio includes some 250 names of the medical agents. In 2018 Darnitsa increased its net profit by 31.3 percent, to UAH 449.134 million.
The technical mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has been working in Ukraine for the past two weeks, rather positively assessed the fulfillment of the Stand-By Arrangement conditions, but the estimating mission for it is expected only in May-June, Finance Minister of Ukraine Oksana Markarova has said.

"If to look at where we are in the program now, then we are fulfilling the overwhelming part of things that we had to do," she said on the air of Radio NV on March 18.

The minister of finance also said that the IMF technical mission on reforming the State Fiscal Service, which will be divided into tax service and customs service, is expected to come soon.

At the same time, Markarova confirmed that the IMF, like other donors of Ukraine, in particular, the EU, the G7 states, is concerned about the decision of the Constitutional Court on recognizing unconstitutional of Article 368-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine on illegal enrichment.

"Lawyers are working to understand how to get out of this situation. All our partners raise this issue, since combating illegal enrichment was part of the anti-corruption reform," the official said.
The estimates of the volume of exports of weapons and military equipment from Ukraine in 2014-2018 with a 23% share of exports to the Russian Federation, published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in March, are incorrect and do not correspond to the reality, Ukroboronprom state concern has stated, noting that it has not been exporting weapons and military equipment to Russia since 2014.

The press service of Ukroboronprom said that the annual SIPRI 2018 report data on the supplies of Ukrainian turbojet engines AI-222 by PJSC Motor Sich, which is not part of Ukroboronprom, for Russian military-combat YAK-130 aircraft were provided in 2009-2014 in the framework of the contracts signed in 2006.

"The notes to the study state that, most likely, the engines were supplied prior to 2014, when the ban on exports of weapons and military equipment to the Russian Federation was introduced. SIPRI researchers assume that after 2014 these engines could be manufactured by the Russian side independently," the state concern said.
DTEK Grids, which unites three power distributors in Kyiv city, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions, warns of a possibility of disconnecting some facilities important for infrastructure from power supply from April 1, 2019. Electricity to them is transmitted by the supplier of last resort state-owned enterprise Ukrinterenergo.

The company said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday that the term, during which the supplier of last resort is to supply electricity to enterprises an companies which failed before January 1, 2019 to sign a power supply contract with suppliers at market prices (due to a debt for electricity consumed or the failure to hold a tender to buy electricity on time), will expire on March 31, 2019. According to the law, the power distribution operators are to disconnect its clients from the power supply network based on notifications from Ukrinterenergo from April 1.

"If the customer has the terminated contract (or it is expired) with one supplier and the customer has not signed it with another supplier, the supplier informs the power distribution operator about the termination of the contractual relationship with the consumer and the operator is obliged to disconnect this consumer. In fact, from the date of termination of the contract between the supplier and the consumer is [delivery without a contract] it will be stealing electricity," Head of Client Operations Department at DTEK Kyiv Grids Hanna Fursova said.

Failure to comply with the supplier's request for disconnection of a customer by the power distribution operator may be regarded by the regulator as violation of the law.

Thus, customers who will not be able to conclude contracts with suppliers before March 31 in the conditions of the new market will be deprived of energy supply. At the same time, among such facilities are water supply companies, transport infrastructure enterprises, as well as state-owned enterprises, including state-owned coalmines.

According to a notification of the supplier of last resort received by the power distribution operators, in Kyiv the following enterprises could be disconnected from power: Mayak Plant and Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Hydrodevices belonged to Ukroboronprom, several enterprises of Kyivpastrans, the Center of Public Land Cadastre and some residential complexes.

In turn, in Donetsk region, municipal enterprise Voda Donbasu, the branch Trunk Gas Pipeline Department of Kharkivtransgaz of JSC Ukrtransgaz, in Dnipropetrovsk region municipal enterprise Aulsky Vodovod, municipal enterprise Raivodokanal (Novomoskovsk district), municipal enterprise Dniproteploenergo, several transport enterprises, including the Kryvy Rih international airport could be disconnected.

DTEK Grids called on consumers to hold talks with suppliers on the new electricity market, as there are many of them, to prevent disconnection from power from April 1.

"If this problem concerns critical facilities, then, probably, it is necessary to consider this issue at the national level, and to make some changes to the legislation. Perhaps this issue should be addressed to the relevant ministry or the Cabinet of Ministers," the press service of the company said.
Ukrainian President and presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko has said that Crimea's return to Ukraine will be a priority if he wins the upcoming presidential election.

"Immediately after the presidential elections, the first priority of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko will be the Crimea issue," Poroshenko said during the Freedom of Speech program aired by the ICTV television station on Monday evening.

As soon as the election has been held, "the international community will immediately step up its activities to liberate Crimea by political and diplomatic means," he said.

Sanctions imposed on Russia are making it pay a high price, he said.

Poroshenko also said he is confident that if he wins the presidential election, talks on deploying a UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas will resume.

Today, the majority of UN member countries are "ready to deploy a peacekeeping mission as a necessary component of the package of security measures to implement the Minsk Agreements," Poroshenko said.

Ukraine is due to hold its presidential election on March 31.
One Ukrainian soldier KIA, three reports of enemy shelling in Donbas over last 24 hours  JFO

Russia-led forces over the last day mounted three attacks on Ukrainian army positions in eastern Ukraine. One Ukrainian soldier was killed in action (KIA).

"As a result of shelling, a Ukrainian soldier was killed. The Joint Forces properly responded to all enemy attacks, having eliminated two invaders and wounded another two," the press center of Ukraine's JFO headquarters said on Facebook on Tuesday morning.

JFO HQ said the enemy used 82mm and 120mm mortars, grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns, sniper, and small arms to attack Ukrainian defenders of the villages of Katerynivka and Khutir Vilny in area under control of the Pivnich (North) operational-tactical group.

"Not one shelling incident passed without an adequate response from the JFO," JFO HQ said.

According to Ukrainian military intelligence, on March 18 two enemy fighters were killed and two were wounded. Two armored personnel carriers and two military transport vehicles were also destroyed.

No enemy shelling of JFO positions has been reported since midnight on Tuesday.
Survey results show comedy actor and co-owner of Studio Kvartal 95 Volodymyr Zelensky continuing to lead among presidential candidates at the end of the second week in March, with 24.9% support among Ukrainians who intend to vote in the election. Batkivshchyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko is in second place with 18.8%, followed by incumbent President Petro Poroshenko with 17.4%, according to a survey conducted by the Sociological Group Rating.

Some 10.2% of those polled support Opposition Platform  For Life leader Yuriy Boiko, who is followed by Civil Position Party leader Anatoliy Hrytsenko with 9.4%, Radical Party leader Oleh Liashko with 5.8%, and Opposition Bloc candidate Oleksandr Vilkul with 3.5%.

Every sixth respondent could not decide whom to support.

"It's important that most of these persons are among the poorer voters, village residents, mostly women," sociologists said.

Zelensky has strong electoral positions in the south-eastern regions and in the center of the country, Tymoshenko and Poroshenko  in the central and western regions, Hrytsenko in western regions and Boiko in Ukraine's eastern regions. According to the poll, Zelensky is the most popular candidate in cities, and Tymoshenko in villages. Zelensky is a leader enjoying popularity with young people and middle-aged people, while Tymoshenko appeals to older voters. Zelensky, Poroshenko and Hrytsenko are more popular with men, and Tymoshenko with women.

Poroshenko leads the anti-rating among candidates. Nearly half of those polled said they would not vote for him under any circumstances. Some 30% said they would not vote for Tymoshenko, 19% for Boiko, 17% for Liashko, 12% for Zelensky, and 12% for Vilkul.

At the same time, 20.8% of respondents said Poroshenko would be the next president. Some 19.5% believe in Zelensky's victory and 18.6% in Tymoshenko's victory. According to this indicator, leaders of the race are almost even. Only 3% of those polled believe in the victory of Boiko and Hrytsenko. More people last month switched their sympathies to Zelensky while Poroshenko slightly lost there.

Results of the survey for the second round of the presidential election are as follows: Tymoshenko takes first place in a race against Poroshenko (28% to 19%). At the same time, Zelensky would beat Poroshenko (39% to 19%), Tymoshenko (35% to 22%) and Hrytsenko (34% to 26%).

The leading party in the parliamentary election rating is Zelensky's Servant of the People Party, which is supported by 22.4% of those who are determined and intend to vote. Batkivshchyna is supported by 19.1% and the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko (BPP) Solidarity by 15.8%, Opposition Platform by 10.2%, the Civil Position Party by 7.9%, the Radical Party by 6.1%, the Svoboda Party by 3.6%, Opposition Bloc and Samopomich by 3.2% each. Other parties would garner less than 2% of support, according to the survey results.

Almost a quarter of those polled have not decided on the choice of the party. Over the past month, the positions of leading parties have become stronger. The Civil Position Party and BPP have added the most support, with Samopomich losing the most support.

The study was conducted from March 9 to March 15 among Ukrainians who are 18 years and older. The sample is representative by age, gender, region, and type of settlement. Some 2,500 persons took part in the survey conducted by formalized interview (face-to-face). The margin of error of the survey does not exceed 2%.
Ukraine's 10th Mountain Assault Brigade has since the start of 2019 destroyed five pieces of equipment of Russia-led armed groups in eastern Ukraine with the domestically produced Stugna-P anti-tank weapon system," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

Appearing at Ivano-Frankivsk region's regional development council in Kolomyia on Tuesday, the president recognized the accomplishments of the Ivano-Frankivsk brigade in Donbas. He said the brigade has distinguished itself near Marynka, Popasna and Zolote and is carrying out combat missions in eastern Ukraine.

"Now the special composition of the brigade once again performs the combat mission in the east and is leading in the destruction of Russian military equipment. Since the beginning of the year, the brigade used the Stugna anti-tank weapon system to destroy five enemy weapons, which, in violation of the Minsk agreements, opened fire at our positions," Poroshenko said.

The president also said that the 114th Tactical Aviation Brigade has carried out more than 100 combat missions in order to fulfill a wide range of tasks, including the destruction of ground targets and to provide air support for ground units.
Officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have blocked activities of organizers of the international financial pyramid Forex Trend Limited, the functioning of which caused millions in losses for citizens of Ukraine and the European Union countries.

"The task force discovered that the offenders under the guise of the operation of the international investment company Forex Trend Limited, using previously created websites and supposedly trading platforms, attracted funds of citizens in very large amounts, guaranteeing windfall revenues in the short term," the press center of the SBU said on Tuesday.

During the period of vigorous activity, businessmen managed to seize the funds of several thousand citizens of Ukraine and foreigners in the amount of more than UAH 340 million. Financial resources were "removed" by offenders through a chain of companies with signs of dummy companies to companies registered in offshore jurisdictions and private entrepreneurs using cash withdrawals in Ukraine and the European Union. The money laundering was through the purchase of luxury goods both in Ukraine and in the EU countries.

Law enforcement officers conducted a series of raids in the residential premises of the scam participants and their associates in Kyiv, Zaporizhia, Dnipro and Kharkiv region.

According to the results of investigative actions, SBU officers seized documentation, fake seals and digital storage media confirming the facts of illegal activities, cash received from the transaction, jewelry, including gold bars, gilded watches, jewelry, and also an arsenal of firearms.

Now the criminal group members were notified that they are suspected of committing a crime under Part 4 of Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (fraud).
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has announced he is stepping down.

"I have made the decision to terminate my powers as Kazakh president," Nazarbayev said in an address to the nation on Tuesday aired by Kazakh TV channels.

"This year is the 30th since I took the highest post. People gave me an opportunity to be the first president of an independent Kazakhstan," he said.

According to the Kazakh Constitution, if a president steps down or dies, the Kazakh Senate speaker takes on his powers until the expiration of the presidential term. If the Senate's speaker is unable to take on presidential powers, then the Kazakh Majilis speaker does so. If the Kazakh Majilis speaker is also unable to take on the powers, then the Kazakh prime minister performs the duties of Kazakh president.

The person assuming presidential powers steps down as Senate speaker, Majilis speaker or prime minister, respectively. Vacant posts are filled in this case, in accordance with the Kazakh Constitution.

Nazarbayev, who turns 79 this year, was the first, and so far has been the only, president of Kazakhstan. He won several presidential elections since Kazakhstan's gaining of independence in 1991. The last time he won was in the extraordinary elections of 2015, where he gained 97.75% of votes. His current term in office expires in April 2020.

In 2007, the Kazakh parliament granted Nazarbayev the right to run for presidency an unlimited number of times.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said Ukraine's international partners are constantly raising the issue of the Constitutional Court's decision on decriminalizing illegal enrichment. He said the decision could influence the speed of Ukraine's EU integration and change perceptions of Ukraine as a country trying to change.

"Definitely, [it could affect the pace of Ukraine's European integration]. This may affect not only the pace, but the perception of Ukraine as a country that is changing and seeks to go forward. This is one of the key issues that definitely needs to be solved. And to be solved in a way that it becomes a definite guarantee for all, and not a temporary solution," Klimkin said in an interview with the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

At the same time, the minister added that international partners are extremely concerned about this issue.

"This is more than a concern. They believe that this court decision can change the whole paradigm of fighting corruption in Ukraine, and this is a fundamental question for them. Our partners do not say that we cannot make decisions within the framework of the Ukrainian legal field. They say that we have to solve this issue," Klimkin said, adding that Ukrainian partners "very clearly" say the solution of the issue of illegal enrichment should also apply to already existing cases that have suffered as a result of the decision of the Constitutional Court.

"If just to cancel all existing affairs now, this will mean, first of all, a loss of trust. And not only for our international partners, but for ourselves," he said.
Ukrainian servicemen shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of militants in the Avdiyivka sector, its elements were transferred to specialists for identification.

In the Avdiyivsky sector, the enemy's UAV was flying over the positions of the Ukrainian units in order to clarify the development of the defense system and detect the fire system of the JFO, the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) staff said on Facebook on Monday.

"Thanks to the coordinated actions of observers and calculations of on-duty fire weapons, the provocation was stopped, and the enemy's yet another UAV was destroyed. The remains of the shot down UAV were transferred to specialists of special units for study and identification," the report said.
KYIV. March 19 (Interfax-Ukraine)  Violation of honest and transparent competition rules, in particular intellectual property rights, by Ukrainian pharmaceutical manufacturers results in disengagement of investors and representatives of the European business, Deputy Director of Scientific and Research Institute of Intellectual Property under the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine, PhD in Law, forensic expert Oleksandr Doroshenko has said.

He gave his opinion at a press release entitled "Corvalol: 60 years on the market. How to protect a brand and not become a precedent for unfair competitors' profit" at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.

The expert said that this concern registration of medicines, which names include the name of a well-known medicine made by other manufacturers. Doroshenko said that there is practice in the world, according to which it is possible to use the existing name of a medicine with the name of the manufacturer, but this concerns only international generic names.

"There is a practice in the world when adding to the name of a medicine the name of a manufacturing company is a designation that can be registered as a trademark. However, this is only about those medicines whose names are international generic names. In this case, at the time of registration of the medicine Corvalol-Darnitsa the Corvalol trademark has been defended for 10 years as belonging to private JSC Farmak. Unfortunately, this is not the only example in Ukraine where pharmaceutical manufacturers are trying to use someone else's reputation and other people's efforts in bringing the medicine to the market, as this does not need to spend extra money. If we do not respect the fair rules and, in particular, issues related to intellectual property, then what investments it can be talking about," he said.

In turn, Head of PJSC Farmak's Legal Department Dmytro Taranchuk, said that the company had repeatedly defended the intellectual property rights to Corvalol.

"Farmak consistently defends its intellectual property rights, especially for such well-known brands as Corvalol. As an example, we can cite an absolutely fresh legal proceeding initiated by Farmak regarding the state registration of the medicinal product called Corvalol-Zdorovye. This medicine was registered in 2017 by the Zdorovye pharmaceutical company and is in fact analog. As a result, the Kyiv Economic Court of Appeals overturned the registration of the medicine and obliged this company not to use this name in its activities," he said.
A fast-track court set up last year in Iran to fight financial crimes has sentenced three former Bank Sarmaye (Capital Bank) board members to twenty years in prison each.

Ali Bakhshayesh, Mohammad Reza Tavassoli, and former Labor and Social Welfare Minister Parviz Kazemi were each also sentenced to 74 lashes in public and were banned from serving in government positions.

The verdict will be officially delivered to the defendants tonight, the presiding judge, Assadollah Massoudi Maqam, told reporters March 18.

The special courts were established in August 2018 after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded swift and just legal action be taken against those accused of financial crimes. The verdicts issued by the courts, save the death penalty, are final and cannot be appealed.

Parviz Kazemi, 62, was in charge of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (2005-2006) in hardline former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first cabinet. He began working in banking after he resigned from his post in 2006.

During the hearings, Kazemi admitted that thirty million euros (approximately $34 million) was deposited in his wife's account but maintained that the sum was paid in exchange for the consultancy work done for a South Korean company.

The hardline politician was also accused of granting 46 illegal loans, approximately $600,000 in total. 41 of the loans are not traceable and the money cannot be recovered, the prosecution told the court.

It was also revealed during the trial that Kazemi gained a seat on the board of directors of a company called Steel Azin by granting a six trillion rial (roughly $143 million) loan to an investor Hossein Hedayati. The investor only returned $2.9 million of the loan, having squandered the rest. Hedayati is currently under trial in another branch of the special courts for economic corruption.

The Prosecutor-General's representative to the court, Rasoul Qahraman, described Bank Sarmayeh's violations as "super corruption," involving at least 400 identified suspects.

The trial for another suspect in the case, Mohammad Hadi Razavi, will be held after the Iranian New Year holidays. (March 21-April 3), Judge Massoudi Maqam said, adding, "The files against other suspects have not been delivered to the investigative court, yet."

Based on the indictment, the most important charge against the three men convicted Monday was the mismanagement of 140 trillion rials (approximately $3.5 billion) in the Teachers Reserve Fund (TRF). With 47 percent of shares, the TRF is Sarmayeh Banks principal shareholder.

The fund has 800,000 members, all employed by the Education Ministry, who receive annual interest based on their monthly deposits. The prosecutor says 150 trillion rials (roughly $3.6 billion) of the fund's assets went missing as a result of fraud committed by the three defendants.

Had Razavi, the son-in-law of the current Minister of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare, Mohammad Shariatmadari, is also implicated in the case, as is Mohammad Emami, producer of the popular TV program Shahrzad.

Currently, at least ten trials concerning economic corruption are under way in the special courts, including cases involving financial institutions and petrochemical companies.

Irans Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri, admitted on state-run media last year that financial corruption in Iran reaches to the countrys top officials.

The fight against corruption needs impartiality, free from factional interests, Jahangiri told IRNA August 18.

Jahangiri mentioned Ahmadinejads Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi as well as his Deputy for Executive Affairs Hamid Baqaei, both of whom are serving prison terms for corruption, as examples of graft reaching the highest levels of government.

However, some of the closest allies of current President Hassan Rouhani and his vice president have also been questioned about possible corruption, including Rouhanis brother, Hossein Fereydoun, and Jahangiris brother Mehdi.
There has been yet another signal from Islamic Republic officials that Tehran does not pin high hopes on the trade mechanism offered by European powers to help Iran continue trade, despite U.S. sanctions.

The spokesperson of Irans foreign ministry, Bahram Ghasemi (Qassemi) told the local Young Journalists Club website on March 19 You should not have hopes for the trade mechanism to do miracles.

Germany, France and Britain offered the Instrument for Supporting Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) to Iran in January to help maintain limited trade, after the U.S. reimposed tough economic sanctions on Iran in 2018. The sanctions specially hit Irans banking sector hard, which practically cut off most trade, as transferring funds becomes impossible.

Per Fischer, a German banker, heads INSTEX, which is based in Paris.

Ghasemi also said: We have not been waiting for Europeans, and we have pursued other mechanisms with other countries. He added that countries such as China, Turkey, India and Russia have been mulling over trade with Iran using their national currencies.

The problem with such schemes is that trading in local currencies deprives Iran of receiving U.S. dollars and other major currencies, which are needed to sustain a variety of imports vital for economic domestic activity.

In recent days multiple Iranian officials have expressed pessimism about INSTEX and the ability or willingness of Europeans to initiate serious trade with Iran. Currently most European companies are staying away from doing business, as they fear court cases and fines on their subsidiaries or operations in the United States.
Rs35 billion and 2 years is what it takes to get detailed project report of Kathmandu-Kerung railway

The government has estimated that it will take around two years and Rs35 billion to complete the detailed project report of the Kathmandu-Kerung railway.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met with a joint Iraqi-Iranian military delegation headed by Chief of General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Baqeri and Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Armed Forces Gen. Othman Al-Ghanimi March 18 in Damascus.

"Meeting with the Iranian and Iraqi military delegations reflects the fact that Baghdad and Tehran have a common enemy, as well as a common battlefield," the Islamic Republic's Arabic speaking TV, Al Alam, cited Assad as saying.

Gen. Baqeri (Bagheri) who visited Syria last October insisted that fighting in Syria is necessary for Irans security.

"This terrorism poses a threat to all of us since it targets the region as a whole. It requires the states and peoples of the region to coordinate their efforts to combat terrorism, he said.

The general denounced what he described as the illegal presence of foreign forces in Syrias Idlib region and the eastern side of the Euphrates, adding, U.S. forces should leave Syria as soon as possible.

Iran's role in crushing opposition to Assad has been crucial and hundreds of forces sent by Iran have died fighting, including several high-ranking generals.

The United States and Israel view Irans involvement in Syria and Iraq in a different light. Washington insists that Iran pursues an expansionist policy to spread mayhem in the region, while Israel deems Irans military presence in Syria as a serious threat to its security.

Idlib, northwest Syria, is mainly under the control of an extremist group called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, or Levant Liberation Committee), commonly referred to as Tahrir al-Sham and abbreviated HTS, also known as al-Qaeda in Syria. It is a Salafist jihadist militant group involved in the Syrian Civil War.

Currently, a ceasefire is in effect Idlib under the supervision of Russia and Turkey, which have declared it a "safe area."

Before leaving Tehran for Damascus on Sunday, Baqeri had also stressed that one of the main issues to be emphasized in the meeting with his Iraqi and Syrian counterparts is that the forces that are present in Syria without coordination with its government will be leaving the Syrian soil sooner or later.

Just as Iran is in Syria at the official invitation of the Syrian government, the presence of forces of other countries should also be arranged with and permitted by the Syrian government, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)-run Tasnim news agency quoted Baqeri as saying.

In tandem with its own military personnel in Syria, the Islamic Republic has recruited citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries to serve in military units in Syria, including in the Liwa Fatemiyoun (Fatemiyoun Division), a division made up mainly of Hazara Afghan refugees living in Iran, and the Liwa Zainebiyoun (Followers of Zainab Brigade) composed of Pakistani immigrants.

Meanwhile, following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu February 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that a task force would be formed to coordinate the withdraw of all foreign troops from Syria. Netanyahu had traveled to Moscow to discuss Tel Aviv's concern over the Islamic Republic's attempts to shore up its military presence in Syria.

Furthermore, Russian authorities have repeatedly insisted that Irans forces should leave Syria
Hassan Rouhanis trip to Iraq was discussed from various angles by observers, but few noticed that he did not carry any greetings from Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the highest religious leader of Shiites, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Najaf.

Likewise, when Rouhani returned to Iran he did not carry any message from Sistani, who is also originally from Iran, to Khamenei.

One is a religious and political leader in Iran and the other is regarded as the highest spiritual authority for Shiites in Iraq and beyond.

It is odd, to say the least, that no news emerged about an exchange of messages, or at a minimum, a simple greeting between the two influential leaders of the same denomination.

After all, Rouhani is the president of the only official Shia country in the world and he is a clergyman. It is surprising he did not convey Khameneis greetings to Sistani, something that would have been reported by at least one of the parties.

The answer to this puzzle lies in the differences between the Shia Jurisprudence of Najaf, the oldest Shiite religious center and Qom, the relatively new contender in Iran.

Najaf has a millennial history, while Qom was established less than a century ago as a religious rival to Najaf. However, due to the Islamic Republics resources, it is now considered an important point of gravity for Shiites.

Qoms only advantage is its political sway, which it acquired just forty years ago when Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini overthrew the monarchy and appointed himself as the all-powerful leader of the first Shiite clergy-run state in history.

The differences of these two religious centers are not new. Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim Khoei, the spiritual leader of Shiites in Iraq, until his death in 1992 refused to get involved in politics. He only gave advice to political leaders and never uttered a word against Irans last monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

In contrast, Khomeini who represented Qom was a political Islamist, who led the Iranian revolution and pushing all revolutionaries aside, became the absolute ruler of Iran.

Khoei never sent a congratulatory message to Khomeini for the establishment of the Islamic Republic and never got involved with the Iran-Iraq war. He also happened to be from Iran.

Khoei, devoted to non-political Islam, remained a respected religious scholar and leader and passed this tradition on to Sistani.

In other words, these two worldviews differed in how they perceived Islam. Najaf was non-political and Qom, especially after 1979, was all about politics. Not only Khomeini established the Islamic Republic, he became commander in chief of Iranian armed forces, an unheard of proposition for Shiite clerics  at least since the 8th century.

The story is completely different with Sunni Islam, as the first Caliphates were founded on the basis of religion and religious legitimacy. The emergence and the essence of Shias on the other hand was their refusal to accept the Sunni model and the apolitical style of their clergy continued for centuries.

With the coming of Khomeini, political Shiism emerged with full force, almost as a copy of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. It is no accident that Khamenei translated two Brotherhood books into Persian when he was a young clergyman.

Interestingly, Egypts Muslim Brotherhood which initially had welcomed the birth of the Islamic Republic quickly distanced itself from Khomeinis realm. Mohammad Morsi who was the only Brotherhood member to become president of Egypt, visited Tehran for a few hours in 2012, but he did not meet with Khamenei.

The opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the views of Radio Farda
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

This year Holcim's Garadagh Cement Plant, founded in 1949, celebrates its 70th anniversary. In the jubilee event held under the concept of "70 Years of History With the Future", lots of valuable guests, along with the partners of Holcim Azerbaijan, expressed their warmest wishes and congratulations to the company.

Holcim Azerbaijan management welcomed the guests of honor, gave a detailed speech about the company's recently implemented works, its policy, values and future plans.

Holcim Azerbaijan which has been pioneering lots of novelties in the course of all these 70 years, will keep its contribution to the production of high-quality products for projects that will have a positive impact on the country's economy. Lets build together the foundation of tomorrow!, said the CEO of Holcim Azerbaijan Frederic Guimbal at the jubilee event.

The plant, known as Garadagh Cement brand in the Soviet era, today operates as Holcim Azerbaijan, which is one of the most advanced solution-provider for the most innovative production of clinker, bulk and bag cement products.

With its global experience and quality, quite a lot of modern buildings and infrastructural projects were realized in the country with the cement produced and supplied by Holcim Azerbaijan. Heydar Aliyev International Airport, Port of Baku in Alat, Crystal Hall, Baku Olympic Stadium, Koroglu junction, SOCAR, SOFAZ and AZERSU administrative buildings, New Boulevard, new Baku Metro stations and Baku Shipyard are among the best examples of the projects implemented with cement products supplied by Holcim Azerbaijan. The plant has a significant capacity to produce wide range portfolio of cement products for masons, as well as for strategic and innovative projects.

First and foremost, the core value of Holcim Azerbaijan is its employees. This sustainable teamwork boosts the perfect opportunity for the growth of professional staff. Thats the reason why dozens of Holcim Azerbaijan employees work in several countries around the world, both inside and outside the company. Alongside its glorious history of its staff, Holcim Azerbaijan has a sad story as well. Seven of Holcim Azerbaijan employees have become martyrs in the defense of our motherland.

Based on international experience and customer satisfaction, the company also carries out production of various hydraulic based products. Production of road binders are widely used in road infrastructure within the country as well as in the countries of the region.

Building together foundation of tomorrow!

***

Holcim is a member of LafargeHolcim Group, which is operating with a labour force of 80,000 workers in 80 countries. LafargeHolcim is one of the leading companies in the world with its experience of more than 180 years in the production of cement, finished concrete products and aggregates.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have 21 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said March 19, Trend reports.

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, March 19

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The visit of Azerbaijans First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva to Paris showed the high level of trust between France and Azerbaijan, Ambassador of France to Azerbaijan Aurelia Bouchez said in an interview with Trend in "PREZIDENT. Mustqillik. Thluksizlik. Rifah" video project.

I am delighted to be back in Baku after such an important visit, which took place in Paris. Her Excellency First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva paid a meaningful and successful high-level visit to Paris, which showed the high level of trust and mutual understanding between France and Azerbaijan, as well as the comprehensive and diversified nature of our bilateral cooperation, she said.

The diplomat noted that the First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva was invited by the Prime Minister of France Edouard Philippe to Paris.

Her meeting with the Prime Minister of France, as well as various other high level meetings and contacts  with the French First Lady, with the Presidents of the National Assembly and Senate, with the ministers of Culture and Economy - offered opportunities to touch upon issues of the region, including the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh. It allowed us to assess the state of play of our economic cooperation: what has been done, what is about to be done and what more could be done. Both sides stressed the dynamism of this cooperation, but also the untapped potential of our economic cooperation, she said.

Bouchez noted that the two sides also congratulated each other on the big success achieved in the field of education and cultural cooperation.

They praised the success of the French Lyceum of Baku and French-Azerbaijani University (UFAZ) and the promotion of French language in schools. Indeed, this visit was an opportunity for exchanges, for discussing future projects and future action.

Four agreements were signed in order to give a concrete substance to the development of our economic cooperation. Of course, a lot of other projects have been discussed. A number of common points between Azerbaijan and France were stressed, such as the tradition of secularism and the role of women. Thus this visit illustrated the vibrant nature of our relations, what we do and what we could do to further develop our cooperation in various areas, noted the ambassador.

She further talked about economic cooperation between Azerbaijan and France.

Regarding business perspectives, I am happy to say that in 2018, we registered a 15 percent increase in commercial exchanges in volume. We are quite optimistic because French companies cover rather well the spectrum of Azerbaijans economy: they are particularly well placed to contribute to its diversification and to tap its great potential. Of course, the oil and gas sector remains of crucial importance and I would like to mention Totals successful cooperation with Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR for more than 20 years. We view Azerbaijan and SOCAR as very reliable partners. Total is contemplating doing more in Azerbaijan than its current activities. We hope that its projects will be fulfilled, noted Bouchez.

She went on to add that there is also the non-oil sector and its growing share in the economy thanks to the diversification policy launched by His Excellency President Aliyev.

French companies are well positioned in priority sectors, such as transport: rail (Alstom), metro (Thales), buses (Iveco) and airports (Thales). Azerbaijan has a big potential as a regional transportation hub and French companies are ready to step up their activities to contribute to this goal. The French Agency for Development is already supporting rail-related projects. Then there are promising fields of cooperation such as agriculture. And we are very happy to see that Azerbaijans minister of agriculture has already been to France several times and we very much look forward to further developing our cooperation in the field of agriculture and agro-business, said Bouchez.

Regarding the environment, the ambassador said Baku is a beautiful and modern city but it also has to address concerns related to water systems and the environment.

The French company Suez is already active here. It is eager to do even more through, for instance, pollution remediation programs and improved water management. Tourism is booming in Azerbaijan. It is normal, because its towns are beautiful and its regions have a very high potential for touristic development. There are also other fields which can be further developed, in particular space activities. We see the success of the programs developed by Azercosmos and of course, in particular the observation satellite it developed in cooperation with Airbus, noted the diplomat.

She said these are just a few examples of the existing cooperation.

But each of them is to be further developed. Each of the companies has projects. Each of them would like to develop them and to expand their presence here, because French companies are very much interested in the Azerbaijani market. There is a fantastic potential in your beautiful country. This potential is enhanced by the conductive policy currently developed by the Azerbaijani authorities, including the latest fiscal reforms and the support measures to the SMEs. Economic cooperation is a topic which was discussed by the First Vice-President with each of her interlocutors, among other topics. Each time there was an exchange on what we can do to ensure deeper and broader connection between France and Azerbaijan, Ambassador Bouchez concluded.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Trends exclusive interview with Saudi Arabian Prince Turki Al Faisal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud

Question: How do you assess the current level of economic relations between Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan? What are the ways of even more improving those relations?

Answer: The current level of economic relations is good but there are more opportunities to explore. The creation of the Saudi-Azerbaijani Joint Committee in 2001 helped in contributing to the bilateral relations. In 2018, the trade between Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan was only $20,000,000. The vision of 2030 puts an emphasis in developing the areas that involve tourism, agriculture, food Security, health care, and sports.

Earlier this month (March 2019) in Baku, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan signed a protocol on expanding the economic and trade investments between Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and Azerbaijani Minister of Finance. Signing this protocol will take Saudi-Azerbaijani relations to a higher level of cooperation.

Q.: Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia are both oil rich countries with great experience in this sphere. How could the two countries cooperate for the benefit of each other for even more boosting their oil and gas industry? How can the two countries benefit from each other in this sphere?

A.: The vision of 2030 pays special attention to the energy sector. Both countries can benefit in the fields of refining; expanding petrochemical products for the world market; the expansion of relations between Saudi Aramco and SOCAR; renewable energy investments; research in energy efficiency.

Q.: Both Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan are participants of the OPEC+ deal to curb the oil output to maintain the oil market balance. How do you assess Azerbaijan's role in this agreement?

A.: Besides being a powerhouse in OPEC, Saudi Arabia always played a major role in stabilizing the oil market and accommodating the global demands of international consumers and protecting the interests of OPEC members. The Kingdom built a reputation for unmatched reliability in supplying crude oil to energy markets around the world. Like other non-OPEC oil producers countries, Azerbaijan's partnership with the OPEC members to end a three-year supply glut that has savaged crude prices and the global energy industry will be beneficial for all parties and this agreement will open new venues for collaboration.

Q.: How do you in general assess the effectiveness of this deal in keeping the market balance?

A.: Capitalizing on the size and quality of our reserves, our expertise in exploration and recovery, and our state-of-the-art, Saudi Arabia along with its OPEC+ counterparts will manage to balance the energy market effectively and efficiently. The deal is an extension of our previous commitment to maintain equilibrium in the market and providing an attractive and profitable price for the consumers.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

Chile is interested in comprehensive cooperation with Azerbaijan, Foreign Minister of Chile Roberto Ampuero said during a meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov who is on a visit to Chile, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Chilean Minister Roberto Ampuero highly appreciated the first official visit of his Azerbaijani counterpart to Chile and expressed confidence that this visit will further contribute to strengthening the exiting friendship relations between the two countries, adding that Chile is interested in comprehensive cooperation with Azerbaijan.

Elmar Mammadyarov underlined the importance of intensifying high-level mutual visits between the two countries for the expansion of contacts at various levels and holding political dialogue on regular basis.

At the meeting the sides expressed their satisfaction with the current level of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which will mark the 25th anniversary this year. To this end, it was highlighted that the establishment of the Embassy of Chile in Azerbaijan will give a new impetus to the development of bilateral relations.

The ministers noted that there are huge opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation in economic, trade, education, tourism, agriculture, energy, transport, investment and humanitarian spheres.

The sides also exchanged their views on the current issues of international agenda, as well as the situations in the relevant regions. In this context, Mammadyarov informed his counterpart about the latest situation of the negotiation process on Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Also the sides discussed the cooperation issues within international organizations, including the Non-Aligned Movement and other issues of mutual interest. Azerbaijani minister emphasized that Chile is invited to the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, which will be held on October in Azerbaijan and expressed his hope that that Chile will be represented at the event at the highest level.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

Hikmat Hajiyev, head of the Department of Foreign Policy Affairs of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, paid a working visit to Berlin on March 18, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani Embassy in Germany.

As part of his visit, Hikmet Hajiyev met with Advisor to the Federal Chancellor on Foreign and Security Policy Jan Hecker, Head of the Foreign Policy Directorate of the Administration of the Federal President Thomas Berger and the head of the department of the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs for cooperation with countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Ambassador Michael Siebert.

Hajiyev also took part in a round table held with the participation of the foreign policy officials of Germany. Hikmat Hajiyev also took part in the seventh symposium "Stability and Security in the South Caucasus. Prospects for the German-Azerbaijani Partnership" on the anniversary of the Khojaly genocide.

During the meetings, there was a wide exchange of views on Azerbaijans foreign policy, relations with Germany and the EU, regional issues, as well as the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Hikmat Hajiyev stressed that, despite the location of Azerbaijan in a complex geopolitical region, the country pursues an independent and based on national interests policy, has established good neighborly relations with its neighbors, with the exception of Armenia.

He also noted that Azerbaijan has laid the foundation for international cooperation in the region, and spoke about Azerbaijan's role in the energy security of the EU, its major regional projects, including the Southern Gas Corridor, projects serving the development of the North-South and West-East transport corridors.

Hajiyev further spoke about the contribution of these projects and the multidirectional foreign policy of Azerbaijan to peace, stability, development and cooperation in the region. He also spoke about the consequences of the Armenian military aggression, the process of the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as the expectations of Azerbaijan regarding the new leadership of Armenia.

During the meetings, the fair position of Germany on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the country's support to the conflict resolution process, as well as the potential for further expansion of ties between Azerbaijan and Germany, were discussed.

German officials called Azerbaijan a reliable partner of Germany in the region, as well as a major economic partner, highly appreciated the environment of multiculturalism and religious tolerance in Azerbaijan and welcomed the reforms carried out in the country under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev.

The meetings held by Hikmat Hajiyev in Berlin were also attended by the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Germany Ramin Hasanov and the embassy official Vugar Gafarov.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have welcomed the pardon decree signed recently by Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev, Trend reports citing PACEs message.

I welcome President Aliyevs decision to release on humanitarian grounds a significant number of prisoners, said PACE rapporteur Sunna Aevarsdottir.

Under the presidential decree, a total of 431 people were pardoned. Among them, 399 people were freed from the unserved part of their prison sentences.

The punishment of one person sentenced to life imprisonment has been replaced by 25 years in prison and that of two people by 20 years in prison. In addition, one person is exempt from serving delayed sentence. Eleven people have been exempted from conditional sentence.

One person was freed from public works, 12 people were exempted from punishment in the form of a fine.

Among the pardoned are 14 foreign citizens, including three Georgian citizens, two from Russia and Nigeria each, and one from Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Cameroon, India and Belarus each.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

Deputy Chairman of the Azerbaijani Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Relations and Inter-Parliamentary Ties Samad Seyidov, MPs Sahiba Gafarova and Asim Mollazade will visit Washington on March 23, Trend reports with reference to the Parliament.

The MPs will take part in a number of meetings in the US Congress, discussions will be held on the development of inter-parliamentary relations, other issues, they will exchange experience in the field of lawmaking.

The visit will end March 30.
After quitting Free Madhes campaign, CK Raut launches a new party

Six years of struggle to generate momentum for creating a separate Madhes. In and out of jail for about a dozen times on various charges. Behind bars for five consecutive months since October last year.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

Hydrometallurgical Plant JSC, a fertilizer producer in Russias Stavropol Krai, will start supplying water soluble fertilizers to Azerbaijan at the end of March this year, Trend reports with reference to Interfax-Russia.

Arrangements on deliveries were reached at the conference Argus Mineral Fertilizers 2019. Production and Logistics in the Caspian-Black Sea Region held in Baku March 14-15, the message said. As part of the conference, representatives of the Hydrometallurgical Plant JSC and the Cashmere Capital trading house signed a number of agreements on the supply of monoammonium phosphate, diammonium phosphate and monopotassium phosphate. The first deliveries of water soluble fertilizers should begin at the end of March 2019.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

By Fakhri Vakilov-Trend:

Samarkand Automobile Plant of Uzbekistan plans to start production of the Isuzu D-MAX pickup, Trend reports via Uzbek media.

Representatives of the Japanese company Itochu have announced this during a solemn ceremony in connection with the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the Samarkand Automobile Plant.

Currently, the Samarkand Automobile Plant produces 7 types of modern buses and 36 types of trucks and special vehicles.

Over the past period, Samarkand automakers have established a wide production of national products - low-floor bus LE60.

Currently, the company employs more than 1,200 people. Over the past period, the plant produced more than 33, 700 buses and trucks. Due to this, the country meets the need for buses and trucks, at the same time manufactured products are exported to the countries of Central Asia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia.

Follow author on Twitter:@vakilovfaxri
Tehran, Iran, March 19

Trend:

Iran's auto industry has been facing many ups and downs in recent months.

The rise of prices alongside massive pre-sales that was originated from the foreign exchange rate rise and delayed releases of auto part cargos from the customs are among the major problems of the mentioned sector.

Iranian MP Behruz Nemmati has discussed the country's auto price situation in an interview with Trend.

"The fact is that we are seriously opposing the chaotic auto pricing and recent events in auto industry. he said.

Hemmati went on to say that Iranian parliament's Industries and Mine commission

He went on to say that he's not optimistic about the car price cuts.

"The reason is that we are looking to support the auto production in any possible way, and it doesn't make any difference what people want from us," he said.

"No one asks the automakers,who have been delaying the car deliveries, about the quality of cars. No one asks about the quality of fuel," said the MP.

"I believe due to budget regulations, the government should leave the automakers and assign them to the real private sector. he added.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

By Sara Israfilbayova - Trend:

In January-February 2019, Azerbaijan exported 35,200 tons of cement to Georgia, which is 9.5 percent less than in the same period of 2018, Trend reports referring to Geostat (National Statistics Office of Georgia).

The export value of the delivered products exceeded $2 million, which is almost equal to the figure in January-February 2018.

For comparison, in January-February 2018, Azerbaijan exported 38,900 tons of cement to Georgia for over $1.9 million.

The total trade turnover of Georgia with Azerbaijan in the first two months of 2018 amounted to $184.4 million.

The trade turnover with Azerbaijan accounted for 10.6 percent of Georgia's total trade turnover. Thus, Azerbaijan ranked third in the list of major trade partners of Georgia.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @IsrafilbekovaS
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

By Fakhri Vakilov - Trend:

The troops of the Ministry of Defense of Uzbekistan received new equipment and weapons of Uzbek, Russian and Chinese production, Trend reports via Uzbek media.

The troops of the Ministry of Defense received another batch of military equipment and weapons as part of the program of measures to modernize and equip the troops for 2018-2021.

Mortar throwers, grain carriers, ambulances, water carriers, range finders for small arms and a tractor for the transport of artillery are among them.

A solemn event on the transfer of equipment to the military took place at the Chirchik tank training ground.

The representative of the Ministry of Defense stated that the military regularly receive vehicles and weapons, but this year the lot of equipment is huge.

The next batch of military equipment will arrive next week. As a result, the Armed Forces will receive more than 200 units. This is the first big supply of vehicles and weapons. All equipment will be distributed in five military districts of Uzbekistan, and some will go to the command of the security forces of categorized objects, he said.

As the representative of the Ministry of Defense noted, new cars are more economical than previous ones. Among the cars handed over to the military are, in particular, the ones that were assembled at the sites of UzAuto Trailer, KamAZ and SamAuto on the order of the Ministry of Defense.

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Follow author on Twitter:@vakilovfaxri
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

The Russian oil company Lukoil highly appreciates the investment environment in Azerbaijan, he company's president Vahid Alakbarov said during a meeting with President of Azerbaijan's State Oil Company SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev in Baku, Trend reports referring to SOCAR.

Long-term ties between Lukoil and SOCAR were discussed, and Lukoil's participation in projects implemented in Azerbaijan was highly appreciated during the meeting.

Alakbarov said that Lukoil's relations with SOCAR are of strategic importance. He highly appreciated the creation of favorable conditions by the Azerbaijani government for foreign investments, and expressed satisfaction with cooperation in various areas.

Lukoil has been operating in Azerbaijan's oil and gas sector since 1994. The company has a 10 percent stake in the Shah Deniz and South Caucasus Pipeline projects. The company is also involved in the retail fuel market.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

More than 90 percent of construction work has been completed on the Albanian section of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which envisages transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe, Albanian Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy told Trend.

Albania estimates that the overall progress in TAPs implementation in the country has been in line with the forecast, according to the ministry.

"Since September 2016, when the TAP project has gone to the pipeline construction phase in its onshore section, by the end of 2018, over 90 percent of the pipeline construction has been completed on this section," said Albanian energy ministry.

The work on TAPs offshore section on Albanian territory started in October 2018, said the ministry.

Albanian energy ministry said that during 2019 it is expected that the construction of TAP will be completed.

Moreover, TAP progress in 2019 will include issuing the relevant permits for the certification of the respective sections of the TAP project in the Albanian territory, the relevant approvals from the ERE for the licensing of TAP AG as a gas transmission operator, according to the ministry.

TAP project, worth 4.5 billion euros, is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union (EU). The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries.

Connecting with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) at the Greek-Turkish border, TAP will cross Northern Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea before coming ashore in Southern Italy to connect to the Italian natural gas network.

The project is currently in its construction phase, which started in 2016.

Once built, TAP will offer a direct and cost-effective transportation route opening up the vital Southern Gas Corridor, a 3,500-kilometer long gas value chain stretching from the Caspian Sea to Europe.

TAP shareholders include BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Snam S.p.A. (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagas (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Mar. 19

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Bahrains Gulf Petrochemical Industries (GPIC) company has signed a number of agreements with Turkmenistans state concerns in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat, Trend reports referring to the Turkmengas state concern.

Memorandums of understanding on cooperation were signed with the Turkmengas and Turkmenhimiya state concerns, along with confidentiality agreements.

GPIC has been discussing joint projects with Turkmenistan since the beginning of the year.

It was reported earlier that a number of innovative gas processing complexes were being planned for construction in Turkmenistan, including the second stage of the plant in Owadandepe (Ahal Region) for the production of synthetic gasoline. In the coastal town of Kiyanly (Balkan Region), it is planned to build one gas-chemical complex for the production of polypropylene, linear low density polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, as well as caustic soda, hydrochloric acid, and liquid chlorine.

Moreover, a project is being developed for the construction of a plant in Kiyanly for the production of methyldiethanolamine (MDEA), through the processing of 4,000 tons of ethylene gas and 2,000 tons of methanol per year.

Intermediate products of neighboring gas chemical complexes will be used as raw materials. Carbamide, polyethylene, polypropylene, and polypropylene film are among the products in demand abroad  all of which are already produced in Turkmenistan. According to a report by British Petroleum (BP), Turkmenistan ranks fourth in the world in terms of natural gas reserves and currently exports it to China and Iran. Negotiations are underway to resume the supply of this of fuel to Russia.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 19

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Iraq may start exporting oil and oil products to world markets via the Azerbaijani state-owned company SOCAR, Trend reports referring to the Ministry of Energy of Azerbaijan.

The matter was discussed during a meeting held between the Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov and the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban, as part of the 13th meeting of the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC).

The sides also discussed cooperation within the OPEC+ format and the training of Iraqi specialists in the field of oil and gas in Azerbaijan.

Minister Shahbazov told the guest about the ongoing regional and global projects, as well as the activities of the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan, established to manage oil revenues.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, in turn, spoke about his country's success in the oil industry, the recent price trends in the oil market, and Iraqs activities in OPEC. He noted that the modernization and rehabilitation of the oil industry in Iraq are priorities for the government.

The 13th meeting of the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) was held in Baku on March 18. A day before the JMMC meeting, Baku hosted the 27th meeting of the Joint Technical Commission.

Participants of the meeting discussed the current state of the oil market, existing problems and other issues. The event then featured a presentation on the pace of oil market development, and the report of the Joint Technical Commission on production figures for February.

New members of the JMMC were also elected by the end of the event  Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and the UAE.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 19

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Azerbaijan is ready to sign a memorandum of understanding with Algeria in the field of energy, as stated Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov during a meeting with the CEO of Algerias Sonatrach oil and gas company Abdelmoumen Ould Kadour, Trend reports referring to the Ministry of Energy of Azerbaijan.

The meeting was held as part of the 13th meeting of the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC).

According to the Shahbazov, this document will allow for expanding cooperation between the two countries in the implementation of energy projects, in the fields of the petrochemical industry, transportation and the sale of liquefied gas and oil products.

The 13th meeting of the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) was held in Baku on March 18. A day before the JMMC meeting, Baku hosted the 27th meeting of the Joint Technical Commission.

Participants of the meeting discussed the current state of the oil market, existing problems and other issues. The event then featured a presentation on the pace of oil market development, and the report of the Joint Technical Commission on production figures for February.

New members of the JMMC were also elected by the end of the event  Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and the UAE.
omersukrugoksu/iStock(WASHINGTON) -- U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria have captured five ISIS fighters believed to have been involved in the deadly suicide bomb blast in Manbij last January that killed four Americans, according to a U.S. official.



U.S. officials have interrogated the fighters since they were first detained weeks ago, the official said.



The five were captured in the Manbij area by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) several weeks ago, according to the U.S. official.



On Jan. 16, an ISIS suicide bomber exploded a bomb at a restaurant in Manbij that was frequented by U.S. personnel stationed in the town.



The attack was the deadliest incident for American forces in Syria since they arrived in late 2015.



An SDF spokesman confirmed on Twitter that a group of suspects linked to the attack had been captured following technical surveillance by our forces.



The spokesman, Mustafa Bali, added that the outcome of the ongoing investigation will be shared at a later time.



Their capture was said to have been facilitated by the Manbij Military Council and other partners and the ISIS fighters have been under SDF detention since then.



Killed in the attack were Army Green Beret Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan Farmer, Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent, Ghadir Taher a contractor working as an interpreter, and Scott Wirtz, a civilian working for the Defense Intelligence Agency.



Three other Americans were injured in the blast.



Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Anti-graft body to probe stock trading software deal

The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority is preparing to investigate possible corruption in the procurement of the software used to operate the Nepal Stock Exchanges automated online trading system as it has been repeatedly crashing and disrupting trading, raising doubts about its quality.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

By Ilhama Isabalayeva - Trend:

The Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA) and the Uzbek Tourism Training and Consulting Center will jointly prepare tourist guides with international status, the Association told Trend.

The AzTA and the Uzbek Tourism Training and Consulting Center agreed to train professional guides with international status in both countries.

This agreement was reached during the meeting of Chairman of the Association Nakhid Bagirov with the delegation of the aforementioned center headed by Elena Golysheva.

The visit of the Uzbek delegation to Azerbaijan was aimed at the mutual exchange of information, the achievement of mutual understanding in the methodology of trainings held in the two countries for the preparation of guides, programs and timetables for conducting training courses in both countries, as well as an agreement on joint trainings.

In 2018, 2.849 million people from 196 countries arrived in Azerbaijan, or 5.7 percent more foreigners and stateless persons compared to last year, according to the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan.

According to the committee, 30.9 percent came from Russia, 21.4 percent from Georgia, 10.2 percent from Turkey, 8.5 percent from Iran, 3.3 percent from the UAE, 2.6 percent from Saudi Arabia, 2.4 percent from Iraq, 2 percent from Ukraine, 1.4 percent from Israel, 17.2 percent from other countries, while 0.1 percent of the tourists were stateless persons.

In 2018, there was a significant increase in the number of visitors from the Gulf countries (excluding the UAE and Iran). The largest increase in the number of foreigners arriving in Azerbaijan in January this year was recorded from Pakistan, India, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

According to the State Tourism Agency, in January 2019, 191,400 foreigners arrived in Azerbaijan. This is by 5,000 people or 3 percent more than in the same period last year.

The greatest increase in foreign tourists is observed among those arriving from Georgia with a 22 percent growth. Other markets where significant growth was achieved are South Asia and Central Asia. The number of tourists from these regions increased by 60.9 percent and 35.4 percent, respectively.

The highest growth rates from South Asia were recorded in Pakistan and India, and from Central Asia in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. More than 2,000 foreign citizens arrived in Azerbaijan from each of these countries in January.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 19

By Ilhama Isabalayeva  Trend:

Some 364,200 foreigners and stateless persons from 152 countries came to Azerbaijan in January-February 2019, which is 3.3 percent more compared to the same period last year, Trend reports referring to the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan (SSC).

In particular, 29.8 percent of visitors were citizens of Georgia, while 27.6 percent were from Russia, 12 percent from Turkey, 5.8 percent from Iran, 3.6 percent from the UAE, 1.8 percent from Ukraine, 1.7 percent from India, 1.5 percent from Pakistan, 1.4 percent from Iraq, 14.7 percent from other countries, and 0.1 percent were stateless persons.

Among them, 72 percent were male, and 28 percent were female.

The largest increase in the number of visitors during the aforementioned period was registered among the citizens of Egypt (2.8 times), India and Pakistan (1.8 times), Turkmenistan (1.6 times), Hungary (47.7 percent), China (32.7 percent), Japan (32.3 percent), Oman (24.4 percent), South Korea (23.8 percent), Georgia (23.7 percent) and Poland (21.3 percent).

In January-February 2019, the number of people arriving from EU member states increased by 1.6 percent, reaching 11,500 people, while the number of those who came from the CIS states decreased by 0.9 percent, making up 121,900 people.

As many as 63.9 percent of foreigners and stateless persons who arrived in Azerbaijan used railways and road transport, while 35.2 percent used airways and 0.9 percent used water transport.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 19

By Ilhama Isabalayeva  Trend:

The number of Azerbaijani citizens who went abroad in January-February 2019 increased by 25.5 percent (compared to the same period last year), reaching 731,600 people, Trend reports referring to the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan (SSC).

As such, 36.5 percent of Azerbaijani citizens traveled to Iran, 26.2 percent to Georgia, 18.4 percent to Russia, 9.8 percent to Turkey, 1.1 percent to Ukraine, 1 percent to the UAE, and 7 percent to other countries.

Among those who left the country, 67.7 percent were male, and 32.3 percent were female.

There was an 83.8-percent increase in the number of Azerbaijani citizens visiting Iran during this period, along with an increase in the number of Azerbaijanis visiting Russia by 7.3 percent, Georgia by 7 percent, and Turkey by 1.9 percent.

During this period, 83 percent of Azerbaijani citizens used railways and road transport, while 16.1 percent used airways and 0.9 percent used water transport.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his resignation on March 19, Trend reports.

I made a decision to terminate my powers as president, Nazarbayev said in an appeal to the people of Kazakhstan broadcast on national TV channels.

This year marks my 30th year in office as the supreme leader of our country, he noted. I was given the great honor by my great people to become the first president of independent Kazakhstan.

At the same time, he said that he will remain the chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan.

On Feb. 15, the Constitutional Council of Kazakhstan clarified on Nazarbayevs appeal about the interpretation of Paragraph 3 of Article 42 of the Constitution on the list of grounds for early termination of the powers of the head of state.

The main law implies the right of the head of state to resign, according to the council.
Details added (first version posted on 17:19)

Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his resignation on March 19, Trend reports.

I made a decision to terminate my powers as president, Nazarbayev said in an appeal to the people of Kazakhstan broadcast on national TV channels.

This year marks my 30th year in office as the supreme leader of our country, he noted. I was given the great honor by my great people to become the first president of independent Kazakhstan.

At the same time, he said that he will remain the chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan.

On Feb. 15, the Constitutional Council of Kazakhstan clarified on Nazarbayevs appeal about the interpretation of Paragraph 3 of Article 42 of the Constitution on the list of grounds for early termination of the powers of the head of state.

The main law implies the right of the head of state to resign, according to the council.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

Trend:

Nursultan Nazarbayev, who signed on March 19 a decree on termination of his powers as the president of Kazakhstan from March 20, has appointed Mahmud Kasymbekov as head of his office, while Abay Bisembayev has been appointed as assistant to the first president - first deputy head of presidential affairs, Trend reports via RIA Novosti.

Nazarbayev served as president for almost 29 years - since April 24, 1990, when he was elected president of the then Kazakh USSR. In December 1991, he was elected as head of an already independent state. Previously, he worked as chairman of the council of ministers of the republic for five years, then, from 1989 to 1991, he was first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan.

In accordance with the Law on first President of Kazakhstan - the Leader of the Nation, Nazarbayev, who has this status, due to his historic mission, has the lifelong right to appeal to the people of Kazakhstan, government bodies and officials with initiatives on the most important issues of state-building, domestic and foreign policy and the country's security, which are subject to mandatory review by the relevant government agencies and officials.

In addition, the first president has the right to speak before the parliament and its chambers at government meetings when discussing important issues for the country, head the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, head the security council, be a member of the Constitutional Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

In accordance with the law, the initiatives that are being developed regarding the main directions of domestic and foreign policy of the state are coordinated with the first president - the Leader of the Nation.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, March 19

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Bahraini companies have been invited to participate in the implementation of a promising project to build the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline (TAPI), Trend reports via the State News Agency of Turkmenistan.

Talks on the matter were held in Ashgabat between President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and King of Bahrain Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa.

It was also noted that the construction of the TAPI gas pipeline is currently continuing at a high pace. Bahraini companies were invited to participate in this promising project.

The fact that the both countries have fuel, energy and processing facilities, and their favorable geographical location will serve as a platform for mutual exchange of experience, implementation of large-scale projects for the delivery of energy resources to international markets.

Construction of the Turkmen section of TAPI was launched in December 2015, while the Afghan section in February 2018. Pakistan plans to start the work on its pipeline section this year.

The total length of the pipeline, with a capacity of 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year will be 1,840 kilometers. The length of the Turkmen section will be 205 kilometers.

Then, this energy bridge will pass through the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar (816 kilometers), through the cities of Quetta and Multan across Pakistani territory (819 kilometers), and reach the settlement of Fazilka in India.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Mar. 19

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Last week, 52 transactions were registered at the State Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange of Turkmenistan, Trend reports referring to the exchange.

Businessmen from the UK, the UAE, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of the PRC) purchased hydrotreated diesel fuel, gasoline, diesel fuel, and heavy vacuum gas oil.

In addition, colorless sheet glass, Portland cement, cotton and mixed yarn were sold to businessmen from Russia, the UAE, Turkey, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The total amount of transactions exceeded $87,416,000.

Businesses and organizations of all ownership forms, residents of Turkmenistan and other countries can participate in the exchange trading by acquisition of a broker place or signing of service contract with exchange brokers.

Petrochemicals, cotton fiber, local textile and chemical production are the main exports.

Prices for some products put up for auction change daily and are set according to international quotations  for cotton in accordance with the Liverpool news agency "Cotton Outlook" and for petroleum products in accordance with S&P Global Platts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 19

By Matanat Nasibova - Trend:

The issue related to tariffs for Russian gas remains one of the most frequently discussed ones in the media in Armenia, Trend reports via Sputnik Armenia news agency.

The authorities of Armenia and the company Gazprom Armenia for two months given for making a decision didnt agree on the issue of gas prices, according to the report.

On Dec. 31, 2018, the company Gazprom Armenia issued a statement announcing an increase in gas prices at the border, the report said. It was noted that the company will continue working with the relevant agencies of the Armenian government on the structure of domestic gas tariffs.

On Feb. 6 this year, answering the question of Sputnik Armenia, Deputy Director General of Gazprom Armenia Vakhtang Mirumyan stated that the preliminary terms of the discussions were determined - about two months from the moment of the companys statement.

However, no results have been achieved on any agreements so far.

Sputnik Armenia also quotes Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan as saying that the government of Armenia wont subsidize the price of natural gas for domestic consumers, and no shares or enterprises will be transferred in exchange.

Thus, following the Armenian-Russian negotiations, it was decided that gas prices will be at $165 per 1,000 cubic meters, instead of the previous $150.

In turn, well-known Russian expert, head of the Laboratory of Political and Social Technologies Aleksey Nezhivoy, commenting on possible solutions to this problem, told Trend that in the current situation Russia wont give in to Armenia in this issue.

He said that Russia after the well-known events in Armenia will exert pressure over the new government in Armenia by its very non-flexible trading instruments.

The outcome of such a policy can be deplorable for Armenia, which can very soon be left without support, the Russian political analyst noted.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met on Tuesday with visiting Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to discuss bilateral relations, Trend reported citing Xinhua.

Talks between the two leaders covered economy, investment, tourism and infrastructure projects, QNA said.

They also exchanged views on regional and international developments, it added.

The meeting was attended by Qatari Prime Minister Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani and the delegation of the Ethiopian prime minister.
Baburam Bhattarai objects to governments bid to further empower prime minister

Former prime minister and coordinator of Naya Shakti Party-Nepal Baburam Bhattarai has objected to the governments bid to further empower the prime minister by allowing him the authority to recommend army deployment without holding a meeting of the National Security Council.
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Monday announced a package of measures, including a ban of protests in the Champs Elysees avenue, in response to the spike of violence broken out from the "Yellow Vest" street action over the weekend, Trend reports Xinhua.

In the latest demonstration in a series of weekly protests that began in November 2018 against dwindling purchasing power, a group of hard-left anti-capitalism militants, known as Black Blocs, ran amok across Paris on Saturday, torching cars and buildings, looting shops and smashing windows of boutiques in the fanciest shopping districts in Paris.

"These were criminal acts. The government's response must be strong," Philippe told reporters.

"From next Saturday, we will ban 'Yellow Vest' protests in neighborhoods that have been worst hit as soon as we see signs of the presence of radical groups and their intent to cause damage," he added.

"When a demonstration is not declared and banned, all those who participate, protect the thugs, encourage or glorify them on social networks, are accomplices," he warned.

In a televised speech, the prime minister admitted some security flaws and vowed to strengthen the government's security strategy "to adapt to the evolution of the movement and the radicalization of the protesters."

With that aim, he pledged more decision-making autonomy to security officers on the ground and to provide them with extra equipment including drones.

He also stressed that he was "determined to use all the legal means" against people attending unauthorised protests with "significantly" increased fines.

As part of the government's initiative to improve its security tactics, Paris police chief Michel Delpuech had been sacked and would be replaced on Wednesday by Didier Lallement, the top police officer in the southwest region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

At the end of last year, people angry at higher fuel tax started blocking roads, occupying highway tollbooths and staging rolling nationwide protests.

Four months on, the "Yellow Vest" movement which has no clear leader, is still posing a stern challenge to French President Emmanuel Macron, who is still struggling to defuse public anger and meet protesters' requests, despite a series of concessions he had made.

Some representatives of the movement are already coordinating on social media the upcoming "act" next Saturday.
At least six people were wounded in gunfire as Myanmar soldiers hunted ethnic Rakhine insurgents in the western town of Mrauk U, residents said on Tuesday, while the military said a convoy was ambushed entering the historic temple town, Trend reports citing Reuters.

Soldiers moved into the town on Monday night, marking an intensification of violence in Myanmars Rakhine State, where security forces have waged a campaign against a militant group called the Arakan Army.

While Rakhine State gained global attention after the army drove about 700,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims across the border into Bangladesh in late 2017, the ethnic Rakhine are largely Buddhist like the majority of Myanmars people.

The military said in a statement there was shooting back-and-forth as insurgents attacked a military convoy approaching Mrauk U before retreating into houses.

Myo Oo Khaung Sayataw, a monk, said he had taken six people to hospital and that a seven-year-old girl with burn wounds was among the casualties.

I went out to the wounded people, because no one dared to go out, he said. I saw six military cars, they were shooting everywhere.

Mrauk U, the former capital of an ancient kingdom, is popular with foreign travelers visiting its hundreds of centuries-old pagodas, which Myanmar wants classified as a World Heritage Site.

Two British tourists said they heard gunfire and explosions on Sunday.

Christopher Caddy, 32, who lives in Manchester, posted a video on Twitter showed him and his fiancee wandering through a temple.

If youre wondering what that noise is outside thats just the Myanmar army just firing rifles and exploding stuff, Caddy said.

We were in the temple for maybe five minutes when we first heard all the shots and explosions, he told Reuters. A few minutes later, when I noticed that the gunfire was still continuing I started filming.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that the United States will "re-engage" with Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), over issues of mutual concern, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

Pompeo made the remarks in an interview with B98 FM, a radio station of the U.S. state of Kansas via teleconference.

"We believe we're still moving forward. It's certainly difficult - we knew it would be. It's been a decades-long challenge," he said, according to the interview transcript circulated by the State Department.

"But we have the toughest economic sanctions in history," Pompeo said, adding that there was the most promising diplomatic engagement in history as well.

"And so we made a little bit more progress in Hanoi," he said, referring to the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and the DPRK top leader.

"We'll re-engage with him. It's incredibly important that we take down the threat not only for America and for Kansas, but for the entire world," said the U.S. top diplomat.

Pompeo said on Friday that Washington is still hopeful for continued talks with Pyongyang, confirming that there is ongoing negotiation between the two sides.

After ending the summit in Hanoi on Feb. 28 without reaching an agreement, Trump told a press conference that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of the DPRK's nuclear program, something the United States could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that DPRK only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Monday talked with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi over phone regarding security and economic issues, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

According to a statement issued by the White House, Pence and Abdul Mahdi "discussed opportunities to advance the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Iraq, including continuing to work together to strengthen and professionalize Iraq's Security Forces and grow Iraq's economy."

Pence "welcomed news of Iraq's recent economic and trade agreements with Jordan and the Prime Minister's upcoming travel as major steps towards Iraq's reintegration in the region after the territorial defeat of ISIS," the statement read, referring to the Islamic State (IS).

For his part, Abdul Mahdi updated Pence on the Iraqi government's efforts "to exhume the mass graves of ISIS's genocide against Yazidis in Sinjar" and added that "he would personally investigate security and economic impediments" noted by Pence as preventing the return of many of Iraq's religious components and other displaced persons.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said last week that a UN team tasked with investigation in crimes committed by the IS group will assist the Iraqi authorities in exhuming mass graves in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, where the IS has killed hundreds of Yazidis in 2014.

Yazidis are a group of people indigenous to northern Iraq. Some of them identify themselves as ethnic Kurds, but most of them identify themselves as a distinct ethno-religious group. Hundreds of local Yazidi villagers were reportedly murdered by the IS fighters in August, 2014, while more than 700 women and children were abducted.
The United States military said Tuesday its special forces conducted an airstrike against al-Shabab terrorists in southern Somalia on Monday, killing three terrorists, Trend reported citing Xinhua.

The U.S. Africa Command (Africom) which oversees American troops on the African continent said the latest strike was conducted in cooperation with Somali government in the vicinity of Awdheegle, Lower Shabelle region.

"This airstrike is one element of a larger strategy to support the Somali National Army as it increases pressure on the terrorist network and its recruiting efforts in the region," Africom said in a statement.

The U.S. army also said it was aware of reports alleging civilian casualties resulting from this airstrike, promising to investigate any information on civilian casualties.

"As with any allegation of civilian casualties we receive, U.S. Africa Command will review any information it has about the incident, including any relevant information provided by third parties," it said.

The Monday airstrike is the latest in a series of similar missions by the U.S. forces in Somalia in collaboration with Somali and African Union forces in the Horn of Africa country.

The strikes have largely targeted al-Shabab figureheads and based in southern Somalia where the group still maintains a strong grip in some regions.
KYODO NEWS - Mar 19, 2019 - 17:40 | Japan, All

The Japanese government said Tuesday it will invite guests from up to 195 nations for events in the fall to mark Crown Prince Naruhito's enthronement, including banquets, following his father Emperor Akihito's abdication scheduled for next month.

At the abdication ceremony starting at 5 p.m. on April 30, to be attended by about 300 guests including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet members, the premier will offer words of gratitude before the 85-year-old emperor speaks to the representatives of the people, the government said.

Foreign guests at the fall events will include heads of states and people of Japanese descent from countries Japan has officially recognized as states. "The Foreign Ministry will study to which countries it will actually send invitations," a senior government official said.

In the previous "Sokuirei Seiden no gi" ceremony held in November 1990 to proclaim the enthronement of the current emperor, 474 guests from 158 nations and two international organizations were among total participants of some 2,200.

Among the events for the new emperor, a banquet to be hosted by Abe and his wife Akie on Oct. 23 will stage Japanese cultural performances, which will be overseen by Kyogen actor Nomura Mansai, the government said.

The 52-year-old leading performer of the Japanese traditional comic drama is a supervisor of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics opening and closing ceremonies. The previous banquet in 1990 to celebrate the current emperor's enthronement also featured Kabuki and Noh performances.

"We will make thorough preparations so that we can observe our country's historic turning point without any trouble," Abe said at a governmental meeting on Tuesday.

On appointment of Nomura as general adviser for the banquet, the government official explained the actor is "the most suitable person from the standpoint of entertaining foreign guests with Japanese traditional culture." The party is expected to draw around 900 guests from home and abroad.



(Emperor Akihito, right, and Crown Prince Naruhito)

The emperor expressed his desire to resign in a rare video message in August 2016, citing concern that he might not be able to fulfill official duties due to his advanced age.

In June 2017, Japan enacted one-off legislation enabling him to step down as the first monarch to do so in the country in around 200 years, to be succeeded by his 59-year-old elder son.

On the morning of May 1, the new emperor will inherit traditional regalia such as the sacred sword and jewels as proof of ascension to the throne in the "Kenji to Shokei no gi" ceremony.

Later in the day, he will meet the representatives of the public for the first time since the accession to the throne in the "Sokui go Choken no gi" rite.

Male guests at both rituals are supposed to wear tailcoats but in the "Taiirei Seiden no gi" farewell ceremony to mark the emperor's abdication on April 30, the dress code for them will be morning coats, while female guests will be asked to wear long dresses, the government said.

As an alternative choice, attendants can also wear formal kimono, it added.

Related coverage:

Japan emperor to be addressed with "emeritus" after abdication

Crown prince ready to carry on legacy, find new role as emperor

Photo chronology of major events related to Crown Prince Naruhito

IN PHOTOS: Key events related to Japan's Emperor Akihito
KYODO NEWS - Mar 19, 2019 - 21:47 | Sports, All, Japan, Olympics

Japanese Olympic Committee chief Tsunekazu Takeda said Tuesday he will step down at the end of his current term in June and resign as a member of the International Olympic Committee amid bribery allegations related to Tokyo's successful bid for the 2020 Games.

The development is unlikely to affect the actual preparations for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, with less than 500 days to go. But it is the latest disappointment for the country that has seen a series of controversies over the event regarding costs and the official emblem since being awarded the hosting rights in 2013.

While the 71-year-old, who has been in the JOC's top post since 2001, has denied the allegations, he declared at a JOC executive board meeting the same day that he intends to retire on June 27 without seeking re-election and apologized for the turmoil.

"It is most appropriate to leave the JOC to younger leaders as we await the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, and have them open up a new era," Takeda, a great-grandson of Emperor Meiji (1852-1912), told reporters.

He also said, "I have not committed any wrongdoing. I will strive to prove my innocence."

Former Olympic judo gold medalist Yasuhiro Yamashita, a 61-year-old senior executive board member of the JOC, is seen as a potential successor to Takeda.

"We need to accelerate preparations. We want the JOC to structure the organization in the wake of (Mr. Takeda's) announcement to retire," Yoshitaka Sakurada, the minister in charge of the Olympics, told reporters.

(Takeda speaks to reporters in Tokyo after announcing his decision to resign at the end of his current term in June.)

Takeda, a retired equestrian who competed in the Olympics in the 1970s, was president of the Tokyo 2020 bid committee from 2011 to 2014. He has been a member of the IOC since 2012.

He was initially expected to be re-elected JOC president when his 10th term ends in June, with the body granting him an age limit exemption beyond the 70-year-old threshold. But pressure for Takeda to resign has been increasing since media reported in January that French authorities were investigating him over vote-buying allegations.

French investigators suspect that part of a 2.8 million Singapore dollar ($2 million) amount paid by the Tokyo Games' bid committee to Singaporean consultancy firm Black Tidings in 2013 went to Papa Massata Diack, a Senegalese man whose father was a powerful member of the IOC at the time.

Diack is also suspected of playing a role in the cover-up of Russia's state-sponsored doping program and alleged bribery in the bid process for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

Tokyo lost to the Brazilian city in the race to host the 2016 Summer Games. The Japanese capital was awarded the 2020 Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in 2013, defeating Istanbul and Madrid.

Takeda said at a press conference in January that he is innocent and the payments to Black Tidings were "authorized following an appropriate procedure."

The alleged payment of funds was first reported in 2016, but a Japanese probe concluded later that year there was no illegality.

Preparations for the 2020 Games have been plagued by other controversies, including massive cost overruns for the main stadium that led to a scaled-down redesign as well as accusations of plagiarism against the designer of the initial logo.

With Takeda denying his decision to step down is related to the bribery accusations, the JOC is considering offering him the post of honorary president following his retirement.

Takeda's father, Tsuneyoshi Takeda, whose family was formerly recognized as an imperial branch, also led the JOC and was a member of the IOC.
Governor Arif Muhammad Khan, in his letter to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, wrote that he was not interested in continuing as Chancellor if it was to implement the government's political interests in universities.
Construction of Miteri bridge gains momentum

The construction of the Miteri bridgethat connects Tatopani in Sindhupalchok to Khasa in Tibethas gained momentum. The bridge, damaged by the 2015 earthquake, has remained closed for the past three years.
Electricity output slated to double in next fiscal year

Nepals electricity output is slated to double in the next fiscal year 2019-20 when another 983 MW will be fed into the national grid, the Energy Ministry said on Monday The expected increase in energy generation is almost equal to the maximum annual production of 1,027 MW.
Hasty deal with Raut

The 11-point agreement signed between the government and the Alliance for Independent Madhesh came as a shock in the current political scene Key leaders of the Nepal Communist Party said they had no idea that such a pact was going to be signed, which calls into question the intention of the government
Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
Scientists at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently revealed hydroxyl super rotors from water photochemistry by using the Dalian Coherent Light Source (DCLS). The researchers, under the direction of Prof. YUAN Kaijun and Prof. YANG Xueming, published their findings in Nature Communications.

Hydroxyl (OH) is a key radical in interstellar oxygen chemistry due to its capacity to react with most gases in the interstellar medium. OH radicals with extraordinarily high rotational levels of excitation were observed by astronomers in emission from HH 211(one of the youngest known stellar outflows) and the T Tauri star DG Tau. It is very unlikely such rotationally "hot" OH radicals would be formed from any chemical reactions, but they could originate from short wavelength photolysis of H2O. In the present work, the production mechanism of rotationally hot OH radicals was identified by systematic studies of vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) water photochemistry.

"The advent of the intense, pulsed VUV free electron laser at the DCLS opens the way for state-of-the-art molecular photodissociation dynamics studies at any user-selected VUV wavelength," said YUAN.

"Highly rotationally excited OH radicals, so-called 'super rotors' existing above the bond dissociation energy, were observed from the photodissociation of water at 115.2 nm. Such peculiar dissociation dynamics were only observed at around 115.2 nm, which reveals interesting dissociation mechanisms," YUAN added.

The free electron laser facility provides a chance to investigate the VUV photochemistry of small molecules. The dissociation processes of these molecules are ubiquitous in interstellar space and should be recognized in appropriate interstellar chemistry models.

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The research work was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chemical Dynamics Research Center, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have proposed a way to create a completely new source of radiation. Ultra-intense light pulses consist of the motion of a single wave and can be described as a tsunami of light. The strong wave can be used to study interactions between matter and light in a unique way. Their research is now published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

"This source of radiation lets us look at reality through a new angle - it is like twisting a mirror and discovering something completely different," says Illia Thiele, a theoretical physicist at Chalmers University of Technology.

Together with Dr Evangelos Siminos at the University of Gothenburg, and Tunde Fulop, Professor of Physics at Chalmers, Illia Thiele now presents a theoretical method for creating the fastest possible single wave motion. This kind of radiation has never yet been observed in the universe or even the lab.

The radiation source is interesting for understanding the properties of different materials. Since it offers an ultra-fast switching of light matter interactions, it can be useful in material science, or sensor related research, for example. Moreover, it can be used as a driver for other types of radiation, and to push the limits of how short a light pulse could be.

"An ultra-intense pulse is like a great tsunami of light. The wave can pull an electron out of an atom, accelerating it to almost the speed of light, creating exotic quantum states. This is the fastest and strongest switch possible, and it paves the way for advances in fundamental research," says Dr Illia Thiele.

The new pulses can be used to probe and control matter in unique ways. While other light pulses, with multiple wave periods, impose changes in the material properties gradually, pulses with a single strong wave period cause sudden and unexpected reactions.

Researchers worldwide have tried to create this source of radiation, since it is of high interest for the scientific communities within physics and material science.

"Now, we hope to be able to bring our theoretical setup to the lab. Our method could help close the existing gaps in the scientific landscape of light sources," says Tunde Fulop.

Read the scientific paper Electron beam driven generation of frequency-tunable isolated relativistic sub-cycle pulses in Physical Review Letters.

A more detailed explanation of the new method to create ultra-intense light pulses

The researchers propose a method for the generation of ultra-intense light pulses containing less than a single oscillation of the electromagnetic field. These so-called sub-cycle pulses can be used to probe and control matter in unique ways. Conventional methods can only produce sub-cycle pulses of limited field strength: above a certain threshold the amplifying medium would be ionized by the intense fields. The researchers propose to use an electron beam in a plasma, which is not subject to a damage threshold, as an amplifying medium for a seed electromagnetic pulse. To ensure that energy is transferred from the electron beam to the pulse in such a way that a sub-cycle pulse is produced, the beam needs to be introduced at an appropriate phase of the oscillation of the electromagnetic field. This can be achieved by using a mirror to reflect the seed pulse while the electron beam is being injected. This scenario leads to significant amplification of the seed pulse and the formation of an intense, isolated, sub-cycle pulse. Readily available terahertz seed pulses and electron bunches from laser-plasma accelerators could generate mid-infrared sub-cycle pulses with millijoule-level energies, which are highly desirable as probes of matter but not possible to produce with conventional sources.

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For more information, contact:

Illia Thiele, Postdoctoral researcher, Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, +46 76 607 82 79, illia.thiele@chalmers.se

Tunde Fulop, Professor, Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, +46 72 986 74 40, tunde.fulop@chalmers.se

Evangelos Siminos, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, University of Gothenburg, +46 31 786 9161, evangelos.siminos@physics.gu.se
HANOVER, N.H. - March 19, 2019 - Marcelo Gleiser, the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth, has been awarded the 2019 Templeton Prize.

The award, among the world's richest annual prizes for an individual, honors Gleiser for blending hard science and deep spirituality in his work as a researcher, professor and public intellectual.

Gleiser is the 49th recipient of the award, joining a list that also includes Mother Teresa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama. This year's prize is valued at 1.1 million British pounds (about $1.4 million).

The award was announced online today by the John Templeton Foundation.

Gleiser, a theoretical physicist, specializes in cosmology, high-energy physics, complexity theory, and astrobiology. He has also authored books on topics ranging from the origin of the universe to how science engages with spirituality.

"I am deeply honored and humbled to receive this prize," said Gleiser. "To see my work of so many years celebrated at this level is profoundly gratifying and inspiring. This prize is not the end, but a new beginning. I will work harder than ever to spread my message of global unity and planetary awareness to a wider audience, as we prepare to face this century's daunting social, technological, and environmental challenges."

The Templeton Prize is presented to honor "a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works," according to the foundation.

Gleiser joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth in 1991. He is known at Dartmouth for blending his research and teaching with deep thinking on the nature of spirituality.

"Professor Gleiser embodies the values that inspired my grandfather to establish the Templeton Prize and to create the John Templeton Foundation," said Heather Templeton Dill, the foundation's president. "Two values which were especially important for him, and the focus of various foundation grants, are the pursuit of joy in all aspects of life, and the profound human experience of awe."

Gleiser studies the interface between what he calls the "physics of the very large" and "the physics of the very small" to reconstruct the beginnings of the universe. He also researches the origin of life on Earth and the possibility of life beyond the planet.

Gleiser's early-career research includes a paper on the application of superstring theory to Big Bang cosmology, which was one of the first studies in this field. In 1994, Gleiser co-discovered oscillons--small, long-lived energy "lumps" made of sub-atomic particles--opening up a new avenue of research and inspiring research groups around the world. He is also recognized for his work on phase transitions in cosmology and the origin of matter.

Gleiser's most recent research uses information theory to study the life and death of stars and other physical objects. In addition to his research, Gleiser teaches an undergraduate physics course and mentors graduate and post-doctoral candidates at Dartmouth.

"This is an extraordinary first for Dartmouth, and we could not be prouder of Marcelo, whose work goes to the heart of humanity's place in the cosmos and explores the biggest questions about our existence," said Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon. "This award acknowledges his place among the scientists, theologians, writers, and others who have transformed the way we view the world."

The Templeton Prize was established in 1972 by the late global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton to promote discoveries relating to the "deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind" on "subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and emergence to creativity, forgiveness, and free will."

Gleiser, a native of Brazil, is the first Latin American to win the award. He is also the first scientist to be presented the Templeton Prize since theoretical astrophysicist Martin Rees in 2011. Gleiser joins a list of eminent scientists that have been honored, including Freeman Dyson, who was a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth in 1994.

"The prize celebrates the work of many wonderful individuals, including some of the great physicists and scientists of our time whose research explored questions of meaning and value beyond the traditional confines of their disciplines. To think that I'd one day be included in this distinguished group, being an immigrant from Brazil, is unbelievable," said Gleiser.

Gleiser received his undergraduate degree from Brazil's Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He received his master's degree from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and his PhD from King's College in London. He is a Fellow and past General Councilor of the American Physical Society as well as a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Faculty Fellows Award.

At Dartmouth, Gleiser directs the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement (ICE), which was founded through a separate grant from the Templeton Foundation. ICE supports a fellows program, public dialogues, and online courses as part of the DartmouthX series of massive open online courses featured on EdX.

"I thank Dartmouth from the bottom of my heart, my home for the past 27 years, for allowing me to pursue my ideas both in physics and in science and spirituality. It serves to prove that passion and dedication can indeed open many doors in life, even those that you never planned to open," Gleiser said.

Gleiser works to advance the public understanding of science. He has published five books in the United States and numerous others in his native Brazil. Gleiser also co-founded the long-running 13.7: Cosmos and Culture blog for National Public Radio with fellow astrophysicist Adam Frank. The blog now appears as 13.8 at ORBITER Magazine. His online course "Question Reality!" has reached thousands of students from more than 120 countries, and was the first bilingual offering from EdX.

The award will be presented at a ceremony in New York City on Wednesday, May 29.

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Follow the Templeton Prize on Twitter: @TempletonPrize and #TempletonPrize2019

Follow Marcelo Gleiser on Twitter: @MGleiser

Follow Dartmouth College on Twitter: @Dartmouth

About Dartmouth

Founded in 1769, Dartmouth is a member of the Ivy League and offers the world's premier liberal arts education, combining its deep commitment to outstanding undergraduate and graduate teaching with distinguished research and scholarship in the arts and sciences and its leading professional schools: the Geisel School of Medicine, the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies, Thayer School of Engineering, and Tuck School of Business.

About the Templeton Prize

The Templeton Prize each year honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works. Established in 1972 by the late global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, the Prize is a cornerstone of the John Templeton Foundation's international efforts to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind. The Foundation supports research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and emergence to creativity, forgiveness, and free will. The monetary value of the Prize is set always to exceed the Nobel Prizes to underscore Templeton's belief that benefits from discoveries that illuminate spiritual questions can be quantifiably more vast than those from other worthy human endeavors. Everyone is a potential nominator for the Templeton Prize.
Can tokamak fusion facilities, the most widely used devices for harvesting on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars, be developed more quickly to produce safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy for generating electricity? Physicist Jon Menard of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has examined that question in a detailed look at the concept of a compact tokamak equipped with high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. Such magnets can produce higher magnetic fields - necessary to produce and sustain fusion reactions - than would otherwise be possible in a compact facility.

Menard first presented the paper, now published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, to a Royal Society workshop in London that explored accelerating the development of tokamak-produced fusion power with compact tokamaks. "This is the first paper that quantitatively documents how the new superconductors can interplay with the high pressure that compact tokamaks produce to influence how tokamaks are optimized in the future," Menard said. "What we tried to develop were some simple models that capture important aspects of an integrated design."

"Very significant" findings

The findings are "very significant," said Steve Cowley, director of PPPL. Cowley noted that "Jon's arguments in this and the previous paper have been very influential in the recent National Academies of Sciences report," which calls for a U.S. program to develop a compact fusion pilot plant to generate electricity at the lowest possible cost. "Jon has really outlined the technical aspects for much smaller tokamaks using high-temperature magnets," Cowley said.

Compact tokamaks, which can include spherical facilities such as the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) that is under repair at PPPL and the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) in Britain, provide some advantageous features. The devices, shaped like cored apples rather than doughnut-like conventional tokamaks, can produce high-pressure plasmas that are essential for fusion reactions with relatively low and cost-effective magnetic fields.

Such reactions fuse light elements in the form of plasma -- the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei -- to release energy. Scientists seek to replicate this process and essentially create a star on Earth to generate abundant electricity for homes, farms, and industries around the world. Fusion could last millions of years with little risk and without generating greenhouse gases.

Extends previous examination

Menard's study extends his previous examination of a spherical design that could develop materials and components for a fusion reactor and serve as a pilot plant to produce electric power. The current paper provides a detailed analysis of the complex tradeoffs that future experiments will need to explore when it comes to integrating compact tokamaks with HTS magnets. "We realize that there's no single innovation that can be counted on to lead to some breakthrough for making devices more compact or economical," Menard said. "You have to look at an entire integrated system to know if you are getting benefits from higher magnetic fields."

The paper focuses key issues on the size of the hole, defined as the "aspect ratio," in the center of the tokamak that holds and shapes the plasma. In spherical tokamaks, this hole can be half the size of the hole in conventional tokamaks, corresponding to the cored apple-like shape of the compact design. While physicists believe that lower aspect ratios can improve plasma stability and plasma confinement, "we won't know on the confinement side until we run experiments on the NSTX-U and the MAST upgrades," Menard said.

Lower aspect ratios provide an attractive setting for HTS magnets, whose high current density can produce the strong magnetic fields that fusion requires inside the relatively narrow space of a compact tokamak. However, superconducting magnets need thick shielding for protection from neutron bombardment damage and heating, leaving scant room for a transformer to induce current in the plasma to complete the twisting field when the device size is reduced. For lower aspect ratio designs, scientists would thus have to develop new techniques to produce some or all of the initial plasma current.

200-to-300 megawatts of electric power

Sustaining the plasma to generate the 200-to-300 megawatts of electric power the paper examines would also require higher confinement than standard tokamak operating regimes typically achieve. Such power production could lead to challenging fluxes of fusion neutrons that would limit the estimated lifetime of the HTS magnets to one-to-two years of full-power operation. Thicker shielding could substantially increase that lifetime but would also lower the delivery of fusion power.

Major development will in fact be needed for HTS magnets, which have not yet been built to scale. "It will probably take years to put together a model of the essential elements of magnet size requirements and related factors as a function of aspect ratio," Menard said.

The bottom line, he said, is that the lower aspect ratio "is really worth investigating based on these results." The potential benefits of lower ratios, he noted, include the production of fusion power density -- the crucial output of fusion power per volume of plasma -- that exceeds the output for conventional aspect ratios. "Fusion needs to become more attractive," Menard said, "so it's important to assess the benefits of lower aspect ratios and what the tradeoffs are."

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The DOE Office of Science supported this research.

PPPL, on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas -- ultra-hot, charged gases -- and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, which is the largest single 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.
Brazilian researchers have discovered that a drug regularly prescribed to control cholesterol can also be used to treat cachexia, or wasting syndrome, a condition characterized by rapid weight loss and muscle atrophy associated with extreme physical weakness. This condition is common among patients with chronic diseases such as cancer, heart failure and AIDS.

The study was supported by FAPESP - Sao Paulo Research Foundation and has been published in Scientific Reports, an online journal owned by Springer Nature.

"Our goal is to understand more comprehensively how cachexia develops and to explore the activity of drugs capable of slowing the process down," said Miguel Luiz Batista Junior, a professor at the University of Mogi das Cruzes (UMC) in Brazil and the principal investigator for the study.

According to Batista, previous research has shown that a process of adipose tissue remodeling known as browning occurs in patients with cachexia and that browning significantly contributes to the rapid loss of weight and fat. Through experiments with mice, researchers at the Adipose Tissue Biology Laboratory of UMC identified a key protein in this process and showed that atorvastatin can attenuate its effects.

The study was conducted in collaboration with scientists at Federal University of Minas Gerais and University of Maringa in Brazil and University of Massachusetts and Boston University in the United States. Funding was awarded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development of Brazil (CNPq, an agency of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications), Serrapilheira Institute, as well as FAPESP.

Batista explained that white adipose tissue stores fat when surplus energy is available, while the main function of brown adipose tissue is thermoregulation and insulation.

For this reason, in winter, it is important to eat more food or choose meals with a higher calorie content because brown adipose cells turn fat into body heat and regulate body temperature.

Brown adipose cells are not the only cell type that can burn fat for thermoregulation. At times of intense cold, beige adipose cells may also go into action via the browning of white adipose tissue. The structure and function of the cells change during this process. They continue to store excess energy but prioritize fat burning to assist in thermoregulation.

"In patients with cachexia, white adipose cells are transformed into beige cells. This is curious, since, in theory, the organism of a debilitated individual doesn't benefit from a reduction in fat reserves," Batista said.

The physiological role and consequences of the browning process induced by cachexia are unknown. "This is one of our study's two major contributions," Batista said.

TLR4

TLR4 (toll-like receptor 4) is a protein that plays a key role in pathogen recognition, innate immunity activation and inflammatory responses. Because obesity, similar to cachexia, is associated with systemic inflammation, the authors of the study suspected that TLR4 might be linked to adipose tissue remodeling. "We set out to associate the action of TLR4 with cachexia," Batista said.

In a mouse model, the researchers used both genetic ablation and pharmacological inhibition of a receptor similar to human TLR4. They next induced lung cancer in genetically modified mice (without TLR4) and in control wild-type mice (with TLR4).

"We found that 28 days after the inoculation of cancer cells in their lungs, the wild-type mice with TLR4 had lost 12% of their body weight, a classic sign of cachexia," Batista said.

Cachexia was less severe in mice without TLR4. "These animals lost less weight and muscle mass. They also lived longer, even though tumor growth was the same as in the control group. It's also important to note that no lung metastasis was detected among the genetically modified mice," Batista said.

An analysis of adipose cells from the two groups showed that browning had occurred in the control mice with TLR4. This process likely led to accelerated weight loss. "Adipose tissue was less altered in the genetically modified mice without TLR4. In other words, lack of the receptor significantly blocked the adipose tissue browning effect," Batista said.

Atorvastatin

Atorvastatin is an inexpensive drug widely used to control cholesterol. Research performed in recent years has described the anti-inflammatory effects of atorvastatin, including the downregulation of TLR4 gene expression.

The authors of the study decided to use a preclinical model to determine whether atorvastatin affects the development of cachexia in wild-type mice with TLR4 in a similar manner to its effect on genetically modified mice without TLR4. They induced lung cancer in two groups of wild-type mice. In the group not treated with atorvastatin, tumors developed, and symptoms of cachexia were observed.

In mice treated with atorvastatin, the result was even better than that in genetically modified mice without TLR4.

"Treatment with atorvastatin proved effective in extending survival, attenuating adipose tissue remodeling and reducing tumor growth [by 49.7%] in comparison with a control group not treated with the drug. We showed that atorvastatin had a direct effect on the action of TLR4, which inhibited adipose tissue browning and reduced tumor growth," Batista said.

"With regard to the prospects for treatment of cachexia, the results of the genetic and preclinical models were highly promising. We expect these results to encourage researchers to test the clinical use of atorvastatin in patients with cancer."

In a vast majority of cases, cachexia is associated with the terminal stage of chronic diseases. In 20% of these terminal patients, cachexia is the cause of death. Among patients with pancreatic, lung and gastrointestinal tumors, cachexia is observed in 60%-80% of cases.

"Cachexia is irreversible once established. In cancer patients, the development of cachexia usually shows that death is approaching. The patient's extreme debilitation almost always obliges the medical team to reduce medication or even to suspend radiation therapy or chemotherapy," Batista said.

"The cancer doctor's priority isn't to treat cachexia but to attack the tumor. However, knowing the causes of this severe metabolic syndrome can help us discover drugs that attenuate its effects and mitigate its tendency to prevent the continuity of oncological treatment."

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About Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at http://www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at http://www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the 2019 Abel Prize to Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck whose affiliation with the Institute for Advanced Study spans four decades, as a current Visitor in the School of Mathematics and a former Member and Visiting Professor in the School. Professor Emerita of Mathematics and Sid W. Richardson Regents Chair at the University of Texas at Austin, Uhlenbeck was cited by the Abel Committee "for her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics."

"The Institute is thrilled that Karen Uhlenbeck has been recognized with the 2019 Abel Prize, for her transformative work across various mathematical disciplines, from minimal surfaces to gauge theory, and for her foundational contributions to the field of geometric analysis," said Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor. "A leading mathematician of our time and a member of the IAS community since 1979, Karen has played a leading role in advancing mathematics research, championing diversity, and inspiring the next generation of women to become leaders in the field."

"Quite frankly: it is about time. Karen has had a tremendous impact on the development of modern geometric analysis, particularly the calculus of variations. Her contributions to minimal surface theory and Yang-Mills theory have changed the subjects and started some of the most exciting developments in mathematics," said Helmut Hofer, IAS Professor in the School of Mathematics. "Karen has had a long affiliation with IAS, and we are very happy that after retiring from the University of Texas at Austin she continues to contribute to the vibrancy of IAS as a Visitor. Besides her scientific impact, Karen has been an extraordinarily good citizen, making numerous contributions to the mathematical profession at large. She is a role model for all of us."

The Abel Prize is an international award that acknowledges outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics and comes with a monetary award equivalent to about $700,000. The Prize will be given to Uhlenbeck by H.M. King Harald V at an award ceremony in Oslo on May 21. Since the Abel Prize was first bestowed in 2003, 18 of the 20 recipients have been affiliated with the Institute as Faculty or Members, including the 2018 honoree, Robert Langlands, Professor Emeritus in the School of Mathematics.

Uhlenbeck, the first woman to receive the Abel Prize, initially came to the Institute as a Member in the School of Mathematics in 1979. She returned as a Member in 1995, served as a Visiting Professor in 1997-98 and 2012, and has been a Visitor since 2014. She is a founder of the Institute's Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI), a summer program that brings together mathematicians and math teachers to study and exchange ideas, providing immersive educational and professional development opportunities. Uhlenbeck also cofounded the IAS Women and Mathematics program (WAM) with fellow IAS Member Chuu-Lian Terng in 1993 as part of PCMI, and then established the program on the Institute's campus in 1994. The purpose of WAM is to address gender imbalance and success rates among women in the mathematics field. Both Uhlenbeck and Terng have mentored hundreds of young women mathematicians through the program they founded, resulting in a powerful network of nearly 1,500 participants to date.

Uhlenbeck was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1942. Her father, Arnold Keskulla, was an engineer, and her mother, Carolyn Windeler Keskulla, an artist and school teacher. Having a curious mind, she developed a lifelong love of the outdoors, read incessantly, and dreamed of becoming a research scientist. Planning to major in physics, she enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she discovered the intellectual challenge of pure mathematics, guiding her future academic path. Graduating in 1964, she went on to study at Brandeis University, earning her Master's degree in 1966 and Ph.D. in 1968.

In 1990, in Kyoto, Japan, Uhlenbeck became the second woman to give a Plenary Lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians, the largest and most important gathering of mathematicians in the world. The first woman to deliver the lecture was Emmy Noether in 1932; the following year, Noether joined the Institute's School of Mathematics as a Visitor from 1933-35. In 2016, a series of lectures at the Institute celebrated the life and work of Noether, during which Uhlenbeck explored Noether's fundamental insight into the conservation law in modern theoretical physics.

Uhlenbeck has held academic positions at the University of Texas at Austin; Institute Des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques; the University of Chicago; Max-Planck-Institut fur Mathematik; Harvard University; University of California, Berkeley; University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Uhlenbeck is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, the National Association of Mathematicians, and the Association for Women in Mathematics. Her honors include the Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society (2007); the National Medal of Science (2001); the Noether Lecture award from the Association for Women in Mathematics (1988); and a MacArthur Prize Fellowship (1983-88).

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About the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters:

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters was founded in 1857. It is a nongovernmental, nationwide body that embraces all fields of science and scholarship. The Academy has Norwegian and foreign members, as well as honorary members. The members are divided into two sections: Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and Humanities and Social Sciences. In addition to the Abel Prize, the Academy awards the Kavli Prize in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience.

About the IAS Women and Mathematics Program:

The Women and Mathematics Program (WAM) at the Institute for Advanced Study is an annual program with the mission to recruit and empower women to lead in mathematics research at all stages of their academic careers. WAM encourages female mathematicians to form collaborative research relationships and mentoring networks that provide ongoing support and guidance. WAM brings together scholars from early- to late-stage careers to maximize opportunities for growth and exchange. WAM is funded by the National Science Foundation as well as a generous grant from Lisa Simonyi.

About the Institute:

The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities--the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.

The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 8,000 former Members have held positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates, 42 out of 60 Fields Medalists, and 18 of the 20 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.
Market monitoring ineffective in Jhapa

Market monitoring, an exercise that is mandatory to ensure consumer health and safety, has not seen effective implementation in Jhapa district due to a lack of technical knowhow, required resources and manpower.
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the IMDEA Networks Institute, in collaboration with the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at Berkeley (USA) and Stony Brook University of New York (USA), have carried out a study that encompasses 82,000 pre-installed apps in more than 1,700 devices manufactured by 214 brands, revealing the existence of a complex ecosystem of manufacturers, mobile operators, app developers and providers, with a wide network of relationships between them. This includes specialized organizations in user monitoring and tracking and in providing Internet advertising. Many of the pre-installed apps facilitate access to privileged data and resources, without the average user being aware of their presence or being able to uninstall them.

The study shows, on the one hand, that the permission model on the Android operating system and its apps allow a large number of actors to track and obtain personal user information. At the same time, it reveals that the end user is not aware of these actors in the Android terminals or of the implications that this practice could have on their privacy. Furthermore, the presence of this privileged software in the system makes it difficult to eliminate it if one is not an expert user.

These results are detailed out in an article that will be made public on April 1 and which will be presented at one of the main cybersecurity and privacy conferences worldwide, the 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, California (USA) under the title An Analysis of Pre-installed Android Software. The Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos- AEPD (Spanish Data Protection Agency), which has contributed to the dissemination of this study because of the massive impact of the results on citizen privacy, will present the results before the European Commission for Data Protection.

Other findings

In addition to the standard permissions defined in Android and that can be controlled by the user, the researchers have identified more than 4,845 owner or personalized permissions by different actors in the manufacture and distribution of the terminals. This type of permission allows the apps advertised on Google Play to evade Android's permission model to access user data without requiring their consent upon installation of a new app.

As for pre-installed apps on devices, 1,200 developers have been identified behind the pre-installed software, as well as the presence of more than 11,000 third party libraries (SDKs) included in the same. An important part of the libraries is related to advertising services and online tracking for commercial purposes. These pre-installed apps are executed with privileged permission and without being able, in the majority of cases, to be uninstalled from the system. An exhaustive analysis of the behavior of 50% of the identified apps reveal that many of them display potentially dangerous or undesired behavior.

In relation to the information offered upon logging into a new terminal, the lack of the apps transparency and of the Android operating system itself is brought to light, upon showing the user a list of permissions different from the real ones, thereby limiting capacity for decision-making regarding personal data management.

AEPD course of action

In accordance with a press release from the AEPD, this national agency will present this study and its conclusions to the working subgroups of the European Commission for Data Protection (ECDP), a European Union entity that forms a part of the Agency, together with other European data protection authorities and the European Supervisor. Among the functions of the ECDP is the fostering of cooperation among data protection agencies.

The Agency includes in the second central axis of its Strategic Plan (Innovation and Data Protection) the establishment of channels of collaboration with research groups, industry, and developers, with the objective of fomenting confidence in the digital economy in line with what is set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). According to the Spanish Data Protection Agency, this study contributes to enabling manufacturers, developers and distributors to apply the principles of Privacy by Default and Design established in the GDPR and aimed at safeguarding the rights and freedom of individuals. Dissemination of the study undertaken by IMDEA Networks and UC3M forms part of these actions, independent of possible actions that may result from the powers and the coherent framework established by the GDPR.

###

More information:

Preliminary version of the study available here:

An Analysis of Pre-installed Android Software

Julien Gamba, Mohammed Rashed, Abbas Razaghpanah, Juan Tapiador, Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez

https://haystack.mobi/papers/preinstalledAndroidSW_preprint.pdf

To appear in the 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P 2020)
CORVALLIS, Ore. - A newly discovered parasitic cycle, in which ocean bacteria keep phytoplankton on an energy-sapping treadmill of nutrient detoxification, may offer a preview of what further ocean warming will bring.

The research, conducted by Oregon State University scientists in the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda, also may explain how the bacteria, SAR11, came to be so prolific.

Findings were published today in mBio.

In large bodies of water, plankton are the collection of organisms unable to swim against the current.

Phytoplankton refers to the autotrophic, or self-feeding, components of the community - the ones that can produce, often via photosynthesis, organic compounds like fats, proteins and carbohydrates from substances in their environment.

Already, in many of the vast, warm regions of the ocean, phytoplankton must deal with the challenge of discriminating between phosphate, a scarce nutrient essential for cell growth, and arsenate, which is chemically similar but toxic.

"Many phytoplankton, including the most common phytoplankton type in warm oceans, Prochlorococcus, detoxify arsenate by adding methyl groups," explains Kimberly Halsey, a microbiology researcher at Oregon State University and a co-author on the study.

A methyl group is one carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms.

"We found that the most abundant non-photosynthetic plankton in the oceans, SAR11 bacteria, remove the methyl groups, releasing poisonous forms of arsenic back into the water," said Steve Giovannoni, distinguished professor of microbiology at OSU and also a study co-author. "That suggests that the methylation and demethylation of arsenic compounds create a cycle in which the phytoplankton can never get ahead - they're continually transferring energy to the arsenate-resistant SAR11."

The process makes SAR11, in effect, parasites.

"It might help explain why SAR11 are so successful, surpassing all other plankton in their numbers," Giovannoni said.

The Sargasso Sea, the only region on Earth described as a sea that doesn't have any land boundaries, is a subtropical ocean gyre east of Bermuda; a gyre is a large system of circulating currents.

Known for its deep blue color and distinctive, brown Sargassum seaweed, the Sargasso Sea lies between the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic, Canary and North Atlantic Equatorial currents.

"The Sargasso Sea is sometimes called an ocean desert because there is not enough phosphorous in the water to support large blooms of phytoplankton," Halsey said. "Ocean deserts are expanding as the oceans absorb heat and grow warmer."

The parasitic arsenic cycle is a process that scientists predict will become more widespread as the Earth continues to warm.

"The cycle might help explain why rates of photosynthesis in the ocean are sometimes much higher than we expect," Halsey said. "In other words, SAR11 is making the phytoplankton work much harder. One of the big challenges in oceanography is understanding what causes variability in rates of photosynthesis carried out by phytoplankton."

###

The National Science Foundation, Simons Foundation International and NASA supported this research.
Osaka, Japan  In a groundbreaking series of experiments, an Osaka University researcher has demonstrated an exciting new method for understanding the power of antioxidants to protect us from harmful free radicals. Professor Kazuo Kobayashi has used linear electron accelerators, sometimes called "linacs," to fling electrons at speeds not previously seen in biological research. When the electrons slammed into water molecules in the samples, highly reactive free radicals were produced. This work will be extremely valuable for understanding the body's naturally occurring antioxidant molecules and proteins, such as ascorbic acid, also called vitamin C.

A free radical is a molecule with an unpaired electron, which makes it very eager to react. Some biological processes, including photosynthesis, harness energic free radicals to power vital chemical reactions. However, when a free radical gets loose, it can be extremely damaging to DNA and other important biomolecules. Rogue radicals can also be created by radiation, including from the sun's UV light. To avert damage from free radicals, a circulating antioxidant molecule or protein in the body can absorb the extra electron. For many years, scientists could only guess at the exact pathway of this process, since the transfer of the electron from the free radical to the antioxidant occurs extremely fast, in times measured in trillionths of a second.

In the current research, to watch the charge transfer in action, electrons were accelerated by a linac in a process called pulse radiolysis. Since biological samples almost always contain water, the electrons could be counted on to slam into H 2 O molecules, leading to the rapid and reliable generation of free radicals inside the sample. Although the merits of this innovation are widely applicable, it took many years to gain acceptance in biological fields.

"Linacs are well-known in the field chemistry and physics," Professor Kobayashi explains, "but less familiar to researchers from other fields. Some skeptics thought they are too complex and damaging to biomolecules to be useful. However, this research demonstrates how valuable linacs can be for understanding a wide range of biological processes."

This method can not only elucidate many uncertain biological reaction mechanisms that include electron transfers, but also help develop new medications for preventing cell damage.

###

The work is published in Chemical Reviews as "Pulse Radiolysis Studies for Mechanism in Biochemical Redox Reactions" at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemrev.8b00405.
Searching high-Tc superconductor has become a hot topic in physics since superconducting mercury was first reported more than one century ago. Dense hydrogen was predicted to metalize and become superconductor at high pressure and room temperature. However, it has been very challenging and no widely accepted experimental work has been reported yet. In 2004, Ashcroft predicted hydrogen-dominant hydrides could become high-Tc superconductor at high pressure, due to the 'chemical precompression'. Later, Drozdov et al. observed the superconductive transition of H2S at 203 K and 155 GPa, which broke the highest Tc record. Very recently, LaH6 was reported to shown superconducting behavior at ~260K. Motivated by these works, extensive investigations on hydrides system have been reported.

PH3, a typical hydrogen-rich hydride, has attracted a great deal of research interest because of its superconducting transition discovered at high pressure. However, structural information was not provided, and the origin of the superconducting transition remains puzzling. Although a series of theoretical works suggested possible structures, the PH3 phase under compression has remained unknown and no relevant experimental studies have been reported.

In a recent research article published in National Science Review, scientists from the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Jiangsu Normal University, Key Laboratory of Carbon Materials of Zhejiang Province, College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Wenzhou University and Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences present their results on the studies of stoichiometric evolutions of PH3 under high pressure. It was found that PH3 is stable below 11.7 GPa and then it starts to dehydrogenate through two dimerization processes at room temperature and pressures up to 25 GPa. Two resulting phosphorus hydrides, P2H4 and P4H6, were verified experimentally and can be recovered to ambient pressure. Under further compression above 35 GPa, the P4H6 directly decomposed into elemental phosphorus. Low temperature can greatly hinder polymerization/decomposition under high pressure, and retain P4H6 up to at least 205 GPa. "Our findings suggested that P4H6 might be responsible for superconductivity at high pressures." said Dr. Lin Wang, the corresponding author of the article.

To determine the possible structure of P4H6 at high pressure, structural searches were further performed. Theoretical calculations revealed that two stable structures with space group Cmcm (< 182 GPa) and C2/m (> 182 GPa) were found. Phonon dispersions calculations of the two structures do not give any imaginary frequencies and therefore, this verifies their dynamic stabilities. The superconducting Tc of the C2/m structure at 200 GPa was estimated to be 67 K. "All of these findings confirmed P4H6 might be the corresponding superconductor, which is helpful for shedding light on the superconducting mechanism." Dr. Wang added.

###

This work was mainly supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11874076), National Science Associated Funding (NSAF, Grant No. U1530402) and Science Challenging Program (Grant No. JCKY2016212A501).

See the article:

Ye Yuan, Yinwei Li, Guoyong Fang, Guangtao Liu, Cuiying Pei, Xin Li, Haiyan Zheng, Ke Yang, Lin Wang

Stoichiometric evolutions of PH3 under high pressure: implication for high Tc superconducting hydrides

Natl Sci Rev, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz010

The National Science Review is the first comprehensive scholarly journal released in English in China that is aimed at linking the country's rapidly advancing community of scientists with the global frontiers of science and technology. The journal also aims to shine a worldwide spotlight on scientific research advances across China.
A professor emerita of mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin has received mathematics' top international award for the year. The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has named Karen Uhlenbeck its 2019 Abel Prize award winner.

The prestigious international award, modeled after the Nobel Prize, comes with a monetary award of 6 million Norwegian kroner, approximately $700,000.

"For more than three decades at The University of Texas, Karen Uhlenbeck conducted research that revolutionized geometric analysis and mathematics as a whole" said President Gregory L. Fenves. "She was an inspiring teacher and dedicated mentor to thousands of UT students, motivating them to reach great heights in their academic and professional lives. The Abel Prize is the highest honor in mathematics, and it is one that Professor Uhlenbeck richly deserves."

Uhlenbeck was cited "for her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics." Her work has been described as some of the most important in 20th century mathematics, constituting revolutionary advances in geometry.

The President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Hans Petter Graver, announced the winner of the Abel Prize at the academy in Oslo today. Norway's King Harald V will present the Abel Prize to Uhlenbeck at an award ceremony in Oslo on May 21.

Some of her most noted work focused on gauge theories, providing an analytical foundation for a number of concepts explored in modern physics.

"Uhlenbeck's research has led to revolutionary advances at the intersection of mathematics and physics," said Paul Goldbart, dean of the College of Natural Sciences and a professor of physics. "Her pioneering insights have applications across a range of fascinating subjects, from string theory, which may help explain the nature of reality, to the geometry of space-time."

One of the premier mathematicians of her generation, Uhlenbeck in 1983 received a MacArthur Fellowship (sometimes referred to as a "genius award"). In 1986 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2000 she was awarded the National Medal of Science. In 2007 she received the Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research from the American Mathematical Society.

"She transformed the fabric of the department with her broad view of mathematics and beyond," said Thomas Chen, chair of the Department of Mathematics at UT Austin. "Her insatiable curiosity fuels both her deep vision in mathematics and wisdom in the human sphere, which is evident in her legendary generosity and attention to mentoring young mathematicians."

Outreach and mentoring have also been passions for Uhlenbeck, who says, "Seeing the success of students is its own reward." She co-founded programs at both Princeton University and UT Austin, including the Saturday Morning Math Group, the Distinguished Women in Mathematics Lecture Series, the Park City Mathematics Institute and the Women and Mathematics program at the Institute for Advanced Study, designed to inspire and support young people in mathematics.

Since shortly after she arrived at UT Austin in 1987 through her retirement in 2014, Uhlenbeck has held the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Mathematics.

The Abel Prize recognizes achievements in mathematics at any stage of a mathematician's career. It differs from the Fields Medal, another international prize in math, which is given only to mathematicians younger than 40. The two prizes are considered the highest international awards in mathematics, and during the past year the University of Texas math program celebrated both. Former faculty member Alessio Figalli was among the 2018 Fields Medalists in recognition of work he did while on the Austin campus.

Since the Abel Prize was first awarded in 2003, one other UT Austin faculty member has been among its recipients: professor emeritus John Tate in 2010.

###
Lewis Hamilton isn't jumping to any premature conclusions regarding Ferrari after the Italian outfit's surprise under-performance in Australia last weekend.

After showing its might in pre-season testing, the Scuderia's SF90 was expected to be the class of the field in Melbourne.

Not only was it outpaced by Mercedes in qualifying, Ferrari was also beaten to the checkered flag by Red Bull's Max Verstappen, leaving everyone with more questions than answers regarding its opening round performance.

However, Hamilton isn't buying into the view that something has gone awry at the House of Maranello. On the contrary, the reigning world champion believes the Scuderia will regroup and come back stronger in Bahrain.

"No-one was expecting to have a gap like that, "Hamilton said, referring to the deficit in qualifying and on race day between Mercedes and Ferrari.

"What I was shown and was led to believe from the analysis that we were given was that they were ahead. It obviously wasnt the case during this weekend."

While Hamilton praised the Mercedes squad for its flawless execution, the reigning world champion didn't feel that his W10 had a significant edge over its rivals.

"Im not quite sure why their performance was how it was, but I wouldnt say we particularly over-delivered," he added.

"We did our normal job in the sense of our operations, the team did an exceptional job throughout the weekend.

"I dont know what their problem was, but Im sure they will come back strong in the next races so weve got to stay on our toes."

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was equally puzzled by Ferrari's drop-off in pace since winter testing but suggested the SF90's issues were centered around a specific set-up mishap.

"For sure Ferrari didn't meet their expectations," he said. "But I think it's tricky to find the sweet spot of these new cars.

"In a race weekend where you basically have two days to find the right set-up, I think they took a wrong junction. I don't think there is a big performance problem.

"Yes, I am surprised to not see them on the podium because they were really strong in Barcelona.

"But Bahrain is a completely different ball game, with a very rough surface, and very hot, and I think we could see quite some variances in terms of the performance level of the teams."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

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According to Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton's performance in last Sunday's Australian Grand Prix was hampered by a damaged floor, but was the German team wary of a potential issue before the race?

Mercedes argued that the slight damage sustained by Hamilton's W10 at some point during the race would have had a significant effect on the car's aerodynamics.

A thorough post-race inspection by the Silver Arrows' engineers revealed a missing component located on the trailing end of the W10's floor, right in front of the left rear wheel.

The specific part, and its associated slot in the floor, helps channel an energized flux of air that mitigates the effect of the turbulence produced by the tyre's rotation and helps combat 'tyre squirt'.

The sudden breakage or loss of the small but entire rear left corner of the floor would have inevitably led to balance issues impacting the handling of the W10's rear end as left and right side downforce levels would have no longer been in sync.

Interestingly, the Mercedes crews were seen working on this exact area of the car on Sunday morning.

As the exclusive picture here-above shows, it appears a resin was applied to the specific part, likely to reinforce the floor's left corner element which was then heat cured.

Hamilton noticed a change of handling of his W10 after four laps in Sunday's race, and suggested that a piece of debris - perhaps from Robert Kubica's front wing - had crucially damaged the W10's floor.

Regardless of the cause of the damage, Mercedes' engineers will no doubt strengthen the specific area of the W10's floor for next week's Bahrain Grand Prix.

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

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Mr. Ciruli is the Director of the Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Denvers Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He is an adjunct professor teaching public opinion and foreign policy. The Crossley Center conducts research and presents live and virtual programs on foreign policy, politics, public policy and public opinion.





Mr. Ciruli holds a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a bachelors degree cum laude in political science from UCLA. He is a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), and is the past-president of the Pacific Chapter of AAPOR (PAPOR). Mr. Ciruli is a board member of the Social Science Foundation of the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies and past-president of the Georgetown Law Alumni Board and the Denver Athletic Club.




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"Real talk: Daniel Rubin has a great little piece up wherein he chats with The Field Negro, the Philly-based blogger who sharply ponders all things black on a daily basis. (Seriously, if youve never checked in with TFN, you should: Its author, Wayne Bennett, is a fantastic read who can cut through bullshit like a hot knife through butter, which is a far grosser analogy than I wanted to make, but there you have it.)"

~Philebrity~



"One of the most precocious and hilarious Black political minds on the net. Ive been a long-time fan!" ~Asad Malik~









"..While most of what he writes is tongue-in-cheek, his space is a safe house for candid discussions about race, especially in the comments section, where people of all colors meet."



~~Daniel Rubin, "The Philadelphia Inquirer"~~



"To white people, Bennett's musings are like kitchen-table talk from a kitchen they may otherwise never set foot in. To African Americans, he is part of a growing army of black Internet amateurs who have taken up the work once reserved for ministers and professional activists: the work of setting a black agenda, shaping black opinion and calling attention to the state of the nation's racial affairs."



~~Richard Fausset, "L.A. Times"~~~











~Erik Hare, "The Twin Cities Daily Planet"~



"That's why I love the blog " Field Negro " so much. Field, as he's known to his fans, has the sense of reality that it takes to call out the ( CowPuckey ) of blame beating by those who are in positions of power and their lackeys. Because of his handle and his unabashed way of writing about racial issues, Field is often cited as a "Black blogger." What he is, however, is a first-class detector of blame deflection and an excellent student of history. If you want to write about the past and future of repression there's really no other perspective to take - which is why everyone should read Field."~Erik Hare, "The Twin Cities Daily Planet"~





411 On The Field field negro Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Raised in the house, but field certified. Jamaica is the land of my birth, but I consider myself a citizen of the world. I currently practice law in the city of "brotherly love". View my complete profile



"Half a century after Little Rock, the Montgomery bus boycott and the tumultuous dawn of the modern civil rights era, the new face of the movement is Facebook, MySpace and some 150 black blogs united in an Internet alliance they call the

AfroSpear.



Older, familiar leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, are under challenge by a younger generation of bloggers known by such provocative screen names as Field Negro, thefreeslave

and African American Political Pundit. And many of the newest struggles are being waged online."



~Howard Witt-The Chicago Tribune~



"I had no idea, for example, of the extent of the African-American blogging world out there and its collective powers of dissemination.But now, after reading thousands of anguished, thoughtful comments posted on these blogs reflecting on issues of persistent racial discrimination in the nation's schools and courtrooms, what's clear to me is that there's a new, "virtual" civil rights movement out there on the Internet that can reach more people in a few hours than all the protest marches, sit-ins and boycotts of the 1950s and 60s put together." ~Chicago Tribune Reporter, Howard Witt~

IF YOU ARE BRAVE ENOUGH TO FLAUNT IT. Come visit my store on CafePress!




































Nepal has reassured it would continue to protect rights of Tibetans in the country: US Secretary of State

Nepal has given assurance to US officials that it would continue to protect the rights of the Tibetans refugees living in Nepal, according to the US Secretary of State.
During his presidential announcement speech earlier this month, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., attacked the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex but he failed to mention that his entire campaign is predicated on further empowering the bureaucratic industrial complex.

There is little doubt that socialism will dominate the 2020 presidential campaign. Spurred on by the perceived political failures of Obama-era liberalism, many in the Democratic party now see full-blown socialism as viable and advantageous.

No candidate has done more to propel socialism than Sanders. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is poised to fully endorse him and the latest polls show Sanders neck and neck with former Vice President Joe Biden, who said he still hasn't made a decision about a 2020 presidential bid, for the top spot in the Democratic primary.

Sanders claims that, as president, he would be able to use government to solve every problem in society. His goal is to create an economy and government which works for all Americans, and not just the one percent. But in reality, his policies would hurt the economy and take away choice from consumers. Here are five examples.

Socialism would fail to end poverty

Sanders rightfully shines a light on the level of poverty in the United States but fails to mention the poverty rate has barely budged since President Lyndon Johnson declared war on it more than a half century ago. This policy stagnation occurred despite Johnsons flurry of federally-focused social programs. Sanders would apparently like to recklessly double down on this public policy failure.

Socialism would bankrupt Medicare at taxpayers' expense

Sanders proposes that Medicare, a program that is on a perilous fiscal footing, should be expanded while demonizing advocates who want to save it from insolvency as wanting to slash benefits and bankrupt seniors. The Congressional Budget Office predicts Medicare will become insolvent by 2026. Nearly one in 10 Medicare payments was found to be improper by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2018, costing taxpayers $31.6 billion. Imagine the exponential increase in waste if Medicare is expanded to those younger than 65.

Story continues

Socialism doesnt get American businesses

On jobs and the economy, Sanders bemoaned the minimum wages of large companies like Walmart even as those same companies voluntarily raised employee wages due to basic economic incentives in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, not federal dictates from Washington. Sanders attacked this law even though eight out of 10 Americans received a tax cut.

Socialism would strip every American of health care choice

Sanders-style single-payer health insurance already exists in America today at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). But the massive VA bureaucracy was unable to prevent, detect or adequately resolve its wait-times scandal -- and veterans died waiting for care. Sanders should be familiar with this because he chaired the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee from 2013-15, during the height of the scandal. Access to timely health care is also a chronic problem for single-payer systems in Canada and the United Kingdom.

Socialism would explode the bureaucratic state

The same bureaucratic vulnerabilities that existed at the VA exist throughout every federal program because the monopolistic incentives in sprawling bureaucracies are simply not well-suited to deliver fast, efficient and affordable services. The Government Accountability Office has already identified hundreds of billions of dollars in duplication, overlap and fragmentation in the federal bureaucracy, which would surely skyrocket under a Bernie Sanders administration.

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Sanders and the other socialist sympathizers running for president need to be clear-eyed about the limits of the federal bureaucracy that they are all too eager to put in charge of virtually every aspect of American life. There is a reason why capitalism has lifted more than one billion people out of poverty around the world in the last quarter century. The incentives inherent to capitalism lead to practical, affordable and timely services and products available to everyone.

If elected, Sanders would be the first American president to reject these uniquely American economic norms.

Curtis Kalin is the communications director and spokesman for Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization representing more than one million members and supporters nationwide.

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(Bloomberg) -- Asias richest man Mukesh Ambani has helped his younger brother avert a stint in jail, stepping in to make an $80 million payment for his sibling whose telecom-to-infrastructure empire is struggling with debt.

The embattled former billionaire, Anil Ambani, thanked his brother Mukesh and sister-in-law after Anils Reliance Communications Ltd. completed the required 5.5 billion rupee ($80 million) payment to a local unit of Ericsson AB for past maintenance services provided to his group. Repeated failures to pay and Anils personal guarantee landed him in trouble in February, with Indias top court giving him a months notice to comply or face prison.

The last-minute twist shows family ties appear to have won out despite the brothers fraught relationship over more than a decade. The scions of one of Indias richest families have feuded over control of an empire left behind by their father. After Mukesh and Anil carved up the conglomerate, the older brothers oil and petrochemicals business flourished, while Anils businesses ranging from telecommunications to power and infrastructure strained under massive debt. He has fended off creditors in multiple court cases.

The younger brothers net worth has shrunk to about $300 million from at least $31 billion in 2008 based on the current foreign-exchange rate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. His stunning fall stands in contrast to the success of Mukesh, whose net worth is $54.3 billion and has increased $10 billion this year alone, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Shares of RCom, as Anils telecommunications carrier is known, surged 10 percent as of 9:15 a.m. in Mumbai following the payment. Reliance Power Ltd. shares gained as much as 8.6 percent, while Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. jumped 8.2 percent and Reliance Capital Ltd. gained almost 6 percent.

The decline in Anils wealth ranks among the largest and fastest implosions in modern history, ranking alongside the reported $70 billion loss Japans Masayoshi Son suffered during the dot-com crash after his SoftBank Group Corp.s stock tumbled.

Story continues

Brazils Eike Batista was worth more than $30 billion at the start of the decade, according to the index. But his commodities and logistics empire evaporated under a mountain of debt and insider trading investigations. Batista gained the rare distinction of negative billionaire in 2015 when his net worth sank to more than $1 billion in debt.

The bailout money was an outright grant from Anils elder brother, the Times of India reported, citing a person working for Anils group.

Timely Support

Thanking Mukesh and his wife Nita Ambani, Anil said he and his family were grateful we have moved beyond the past, and are deeply grateful and touched with this gesture and timely support, according to a statement issued by RCom.

RCom stock plummeted 60 percent in 2018 as Anil struggled to close a 2017 deal to sell spectrum, signal towers and fiber to Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., a new service provider controlled by Mukesh, for 173 billion rupees.

RCom said Monday that the two companies have mutually agreed to terminate the pact, adding RCom is committed to a comprehensive resolution of overall debt through Indias National Company Law Tribunal.

As regulations hindered Anils biggest deal, creditors such as Ericsson began demanding past dues. The Swedish equipment makers relentless legal pursuit led to a settlement under which RCom was to pay half of the past claims, or 5.5 billion rupees -- an offer backed by a personal guarantee from Anil.

Failure to keep this promise after a personal guarantee from Anil saw the situation escalate into a contempt case, with the court eventually setting the payment deadline.

The threat of a prison term if Anil didnt make the payment also came as a rare warning to some of Indias richest borrowers whose firms have turned defaulters over the past few years. The nations policy makers and courts have been cracking down on delinquency to help banks saddled with the worlds worst bad-loan ratio.

The Ambani brothers used to serve as executives at their father Dhirubhai Ambanis company. In 2005, three years after their fathers death, the pair agreed to split the empire into two. Anil got newer businesses such as telecommunications, power generation and financial services.

But since then, Mukesh has also re-entered Indias now lucrative telecommunications sector with the creation of Reliance Jio Infocomm. His nationwide 4G network, which debuted with free services in 2016, has disrupted the industry, forcing rivals including RCom to bleed, merge or exit the business.

(Updates with shares in ninth and 11th paragraphs.)

--With assistance from Tom Metcalf, Ronojoy Mazumdar, Arijit Ghosh and Abhay Singh.

To contact the reporters on this story: Upmanyu Trivedi in New Delhi at utrivedi2@bloomberg.net;Pei Yi Mak in Hong Kong at pmak17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sam Nagarajan at samnagarajan@bloomberg.net, ;Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Bhuma Shrivastava

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
* Annual dividend sends shares higher

* Expects copper market deficit of as much as 300k T

* 2019 capex to rise to $1.2 bln on mine expansion (Adds shares, CEO comments from call)

By Justin George Varghese and Zandi Shabalala

March 19 (Reuters) - Chilean copper miner Antofagasta Plc announced on Tuesday a higher-than-expected dividend for 2018, sending its shares to a seven-month high, though core earnings dropped in line with analysts' projections.

The company, majority-owned by Chile's Luksic family, lowered its 2018 total dividend by 14 percent to 44 cents per share compared to the prior year, but beat the 26 cents expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv Smart Estimates.

"The dividend is strong and equates to a significant portion of our earnings, it's a positive surprise to what was expected," Chief Executive Ivan Arriagada told Reuters.

"Essentially we are giving back all excess cash to our shareholders and rewarding them in this way."

Antofagasta, along with its peers, has steadily increased returns to shareholders after repairing its balance sheet from the damage done by the commodities crash of 2015-16.

Shares in the FTSE-100 company rose 4.7 percent to 984.2 pence at 0943 GMT, their highest since August.

"The dividend is higher than expected with Antofagasta effectively pushing through non-core asset proceeds to investors which should be taken positively," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Tyler Broda.

Antofagasta said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell 13.9 percent to $2.23 billion in the year ended Dec. 31, hurt by higher input costs and lower sales volumes.

It said in January that annual copper production rose 3 percent to 725,300 tonnes and came in at the higher end of its forecast, as its Centinela mine produced better quality ore and higher output.

This was after the company was forced to tighten its 2018 production guidance in October, hurt by demand disruptions for the metal, caused by top consumer China's trade war with the United States.

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The tit-for-tat trade dispute pushed benchmark copper prices down 17 percent last year, stoked by fears over demand from the world's top metals consumer China.

Arriagada said he expects a deficit of between 100,000 and 300,000 tonnes this year which should help prices trade either sideways or slightly higher.

He added that Antofagasta's planned $2.7 billion concentrator at the Centinela mine, which is at the feasability stage, would most likely be funded by debt.

Antofagasta plans to spend $1.2 billion this year, higher than $873 million in 2018, mainly on the expansion of Los Pelambres which is expected to be completed in late 2021.

The company saved $184 million this year as part of a cost-savings plan, ahead of its targeted $100 million. The miner said it was targeting another $100 million in savings this year. (Reporting by Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru and Zandi Shabalala in London; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Over 77,000 chickens slaughtered

Veterinary technicians deployed from the Department of Livestock Services have culled over 67,000 chickens in Hetauda of Makwanpur, Tarakeshwor and Tokha of Kathmandu, and Madi of Kaski districts.
Edmonton, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Benchmark Metals Inc. (TSXV: BNCH) (OTCQB: CYRTF) (WKN: A2JM2X) (the "Company" or "Benchmark") - is pleased to report successful 200 metre step-out and infill drilling at the Dukes Ridge zone mineral resource located within the +20 kilometre Lawyers Trend at the Lawyers Gold-Silver Project. Lawyers is located in the prolific Stikine Terrane of the Toodoggone Mineral District, which also hosts the Golden Triangle region of British Columbia, Canada.

CEO John Williamson commented, "We continue to see long drill intercepts from surface that include over 63 metres of near 1.5g/t gold equivalent grade (DR15-05). The 2018 exploration program has extended the Dukes mineralized zone 400m southeast towards the Phoenix zone, and extends the mineralisation at depth. The 2018 drilling at Dukes Ridge comprised 1,304.24m in 13 holes and an additional 7 holes (732.74m) at the Phoenix zone. The Phoenix zone has potential to extend an additional 500m beyond the 2018 drilling to the southeast, as defined by anomalous soil and rock samples collected during 2018."

Director, Michael Dufresne, P.Geol commented, "We are encouraged by the results of our initial drilling at the Lawyers Trend and believe that the 2018 drilling results combined with follow-up drilling during 2019 will lead to a significant increase in the existing mineral resources at the Lawyers Project. Geological comparisons can be made to the world-class Cerro Negro and Cerro Vanguardia mines in Argentina where operations began with selective mining of high-grade veins and evolved to bulk-tonnage mining that enveloped the higher-grade areas. Lawyers is a large, road accessible property with anomalous gold and silver at surface across a +20km trend."

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Dukes Stepout Holes



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Drill Results and Zone Extension

Drilling at the Dukes Ridge zone extends the gold and silver mineralization southeast to over 600m in total strike length. The Dukes Ridge zone forms part of the maiden resource estimate with a 200m strike length. The 2018 drilling has extended the mineralized zone by an additional 400m southeast to the Phoenix zone. Within the mineral resource area, more extensive sampling has identified continuous near-surface bulk tonnage type mineralization, in addition to the previously recognized high-grade zones. Selected infill holes have provided long intercepts up to 5.76 g/t Au and 128.65 g/t Ag over 33.52m (reported February 9, 2019) and 1.16 g/t Au and 36.18 g/t Ag over 63.75m. The entire +600m zone from Dukes Ridge to Phoenix is coincident with a large radiometric anomaly and a linear magnetic anomaly indicates the mineralized system likely extends further along strike to the southeast. The infill drilling will provide substantial validation on historical drill-holes to be used in a future mineral resource estimate. The Phoenix zone and the extension to the north remain to be tested and will form part of the 2019 drill program.

Selected Infill and Step-out Drill Results





DR15-05 From 1.25m to 65.00m 1.16 g/t Au 36.18 g/t Ag 63.75m interval including From 33.50m to 42.06m 3.85 g/t Au 106.56 g/t Ag 8.56m interval 18PXDD002 From 69.00m to 72.95m 10.99 g/t Au 819.43 g/t Ag 3.95m interval 18DRRC001 From 39.62m to -86.87m 0.70 g/t Au 29.51 g/t Ag 47.25m interval 18DRRC006 From 48.77m to 60.96m 2.22 g/t Au 82.82 g/t Ag 12.19m interval including From 59.43m to 60.96m 7.86 g/t Au 188 g/t Ag 1.53m interval 18DRRC010 From 0.00m to 33.52m 5.76 g/t Au 128.65 g/t Ag 33.52m interval including From 10.67m to 13.72m 52.02 g/t Au 846.44 g/t Ag 3.05m interval

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Michael Dufresne, M.Sc., P.Geol., P.Geo., a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Benchmark Metals Inc.

Benchmark is a Canadian mineral exploration company with its common shares listed for trading on the TSX Venture Exchange in Canada, the OTCQB Venture Market in the United States and the Tradegate Exchange in Europe. Benchmark is managed by proven resource sector professionals, who have a track record of advancing exploration projects from grassroots scenarios through to production.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

s/ "John Williamson"

John Williamson, Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please contact:

Jim Greig, President

jimg@BNCHmetals.com

Tel: (604) 260-6977

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release may contain certain "forward looking statements". Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of this news release and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43449
Beto O'Rourke enjoyed strong support from tech industry workers and executives from companies such as Apple, Facebook and Amazon during his ultimately unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign last year in Texas.

That could mean a boost for the breakout Democratic star's fundraising hopes as he seeks to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.

Yet, it will likely be a point of contention for the new campaign. O'Rourke and several of his Democratic rivals have made it a point to distance themselves from corporate money.

Beto O'Rourke enjoyed strong support from tech industry workers and executives during his ultimately unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign last year in Texas, which could give the breakout Democratic star a fundraising edge over his primary opponents as he seeks to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.

Yet, it will likely be a point of contention for the new campaign.

O'Rourke  who announced Monday that he raked in a record $6.1 million in the first 24 hours of his 2020 campaign  and several of his Democratic rivals have made it a point to distance themselves from corporate money. Likewise, perceived coziness with big tech could pose political risks with rising bipartisan calls to crack down on and regulate the industry.

During his shockingly close loss to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in deep red Texas, O'Rourke raised tens of millions of dollars, much of it from so-called small donors, or people who give $200 or less. As the Democratic former congressman touted his success among smaller donors, while rejecting money from corporations and super PACs, he also reaped the benefits from bigger-dollar donors, such as executives and employees from major tech companies such as Apple AAPL , Facebook FB and Amazon AMZN .

Amazon's top spokesman, Jay Carney, gave $1,500 directly to the O'Rourke campaign. Carney previously served as White House press secretary to President Barack Obama, to whom O'Rourke has been compared. Brian Olsavsky, the company's financial chief, wrote a check for $2,700 to O'Rourke's 2018 campaign, which is the most an individual can give in an election. Amazon employees, overall, gave $75,751 to his campaign.

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O'Rourke finished the 2018 campaign having raised $80 million, with 45 percent coming from small donors. The rest came from people giving more than $200, including important players at Facebook and Apple.

Chris Espinosa, who was designated Apple's eighth employee after the company was founded in the 1970s, gave O'Rourke $2,700 . Apple employees gave O'Rourke's campaign just over $90,000 during the 2018 campaign.

Alex Stamos, who was Facebook's chief security officer until August, also gave $2,700 to O'Rourke's campaign. Stamos told CNBC that he has not decided whom to support among the Democratic field. But he did say he is advising campaigns on cybersecurity in the wake of Russia's interference and hacking during the 2016 cycle.

"One of the great benefits of not being a professional political operative is that I don't have to pick sides 20 months before the general election," Stamos said. "I've been trying to be helpful to multiple Democratic campaigns, and right now my focus is on helping them get their campaign technology stacks set up in a secure manner."

He declined to name the campaigns he's helping.

It is also not clear whether Carney, Olsavsky or Espinosa would support O'Rourke during the 2020 campaign. Representatives from Facebook, Amazon and Apple did not return repeated requests for comment. A spokesman for O'Rourke did not return an email seeking comment.

O'Rourke's 2020 campaign has yet to announce how much of his recent $6.1 million haul came from smaller donations. The Texas Democrat has repeatedly said his campaign will not be financed by political action committees, corporations or special interests. In the run-up to O'Rourke's first big fundraising splash of the presidential campaign, Louis Susman, a bundler for Obama, had been privately making calls to "family and friends" to coax support for O'Rourke, he told CNBC last week .

O'Rourke himself was once involved in the tech industry, having founded the internet services and software company Stanton Street Technology Group. Up until the middle of 2017, his wife, Amy, ran the business, which is based in their home city of El Paso. A recent Reuters report , meanwhile, revealed that O'Rourke was involved decades ago with America's oldest hacking group, the Cult of the Dead Cow.

Support from people in the tech industry could have downsides for O'Rourke as several of his rivals have taken aim at Silicon Valley.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, has called for the breakup of big firms , such as Google and Apple.

"Today's big tech companies have too much power  too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They've bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation," she said i n a blog post.

Another 2020 Democratic candidate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, has called for tighter regulations on tech companies. Trump himself has attacked Amazon and Google.

O'Rourke has yet to cite specific policy stances on regulating the tech industry.





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For the 2020 presidential campaign, newly-entered candidate Beto ORourke set a new record for this seasons opening 24-hour fundraising blitzes. His campaign claimed that it already received $6.1 million from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and all territories, according to the Washington Post.

In just 24 hours, Americans across this country came together to prove that it is possible to run a true grassroots campaign for presidenta campaign by all of us for all of us that answers not to the PACs, corporations, and special interests but to the people, a campaign statement quoted ORourke.

There had been questions whether his ability to raise money as he did in 2018 during the most expensive Senate campaign in history, when he ran against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in Texas.

The amount ORourke raised in the first 24 hours edged out the initial success of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which said that it brought in $5.9 million, according to CNBC. The campaign says that it raised the funds from 223,000 people with an average donation of $27.

ORourkes campaign reportedly would not state the number of people who had donated in the 24-hour period or the average contribution. It also has not released amounts obtained on following days or said whether the candidate would shun big fundraiser events as Elizabeth Warren has.

Although he may be the money front-runner among Democrats at the moment, ORourke, or any other candidate, will have some distance to catch incumbent Donald Trump, who filed for re-election on his inauguration. Over a period slightly longer than two years, Trumps campaign has raised $16.3 million, with another $15.9 million raised in outside money, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, March 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BIOXYTRAN, INC. (BIXT), a developmental stage biotechnology company, with a pipeline of anti-necrosis drugs designed to treat hypoxia by delivering a small molecule carrying oxygen to the brain of stroke victims, announced today that the Company has retained Resources Unlimited NW, LLC., a strategic investor relations agency, with a wealth of experience in biotech to manage the companys investor relations program.

We are excited to be partnering with Resources Unlimited (RU) in our investor relations effort, said BIXT CEO, Dr. David Platt. This group truly understands the sector we are in and the opportunities and challenges of bringing a potentially game changing development stage drug to market. We believe their insight will help us tell our story to the millions of patients that can benefit from our intellectual property. We have seen their success on social media and their ability to attract key influencers to follow the story and believe they will be able to help us achieve our corporate goals. If our drug works as we have theorized, not only could it save lives but also the quality of life by improving patient outcomes and potentially reducing the amount of restorative care needed after a stroke.

Bioxytrans objective is to develop and license our platform technology using a rapid, cost-effective, and validated development plan. Our goal is to create a pipeline of safe new drugs using our first in class molecules to address unmet medical needs in disease indications resulting from hypoxia. At the moment, there are no drugs that can permeate blood clots in stroke victims, and deliver that lifesaving oxygen to the brain in a rapid fashion. Quickly restoring the flow of oxygen to the brain during a stroke, is vital for a good prognosis and recovery. Providing oxygenation to the brain delays the onset of cell death, giving doctors the critical time they need to treat stroke victims. Management believes that Bioxytrans BXT-25 will be the first drug to successfully carry oxygen through blood clots. BXT-25 was designed to support the oxygenation of the brain until the clot is dissolved or surgically removed.

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RU Investor Relations Partner Michael Sheikh stated: The delivery of oxygen to critical organs has been a challenge for decades. The recent death of 90s icon Luke Perry, 52, celebrity actor from Beverly Hills 90210 and more recently Riverdale, has brought heightened awareness for those suffering from strokes and the urgency for finding a solution for people stricken with this condition. The key to battling as stroke is to restoring oxygenation to the brain as quickly as possible. Dr. Platt has assembled an all-star team of directors with medical experience in drug development who understand the challenges of finding the right long term strategic investors. This team has the experience and wherewithal to develop Bioxytrans intellectual property on a global scale. We are pleased to be working with such a talented team and hope to showcase their plan to bring much needed solutions to the medical community.

About Bioxytran, Inc.

Bioxytran Inc. is a developmental stage biotechnology company. The company is working towards a first-in-class oxygen treatment platform for victims of brain stroke trauma. The first product to proceed to testing is BXT-25, which will be evaluated as a resuscitative agent to treat strokes, especially during the all-critical first hour following a stroke. The product will also be evaluated for its efficacy in treating other brain trauma issues. BXT-25 is based on a new molecule designed to reverse hypoxia in the brain. Hypoxic brain injuries such as ischemic strokes, could be treated with BXT-25 via an intravenous injection that quickly allows the drug molecule to travel to the lungs and bind with the oxygen molecules. From the lungs the molecule mimics a red blood cell traveling to the brain. Since the molecule is 5000 times smaller than red blood cells it can penetrate the clot and deliver the oxygen to the critical areas in the brain blocked by the clot. To learn more, visit our website: http://www.Bioxytraninc.com

About Resources Unlimited NW LLC

Resources Unlimited is a full-service investor relations firm for small cap companies. Resources Unlimiteds mission is to assist entrepreneurs, corporate executives and investors in the public

market realize their visions and achieve their goals by delivering effective communications and investor relations services. Our goal is to be that bridge between the company and the investment community, assisting in all aspects from social media, company awareness, press, media content, strategy and more. For additional service info on our Investor Relations, please visit www.ResourcesUnlimitedLLC.com .
By Stefanie Eschenbacher

MEXICO CITY, March 19 (Reuters) - Blackstone Group has raised $695 million from Mexican pension funds for its first two local private equity funds, filings showed, joining Black Rock and KKR & Co in expanding in Mexico following regulatory changes.

Several of the world's top private equity managers have quietly raised billions of dollars from Mexican pension funds, known as afores, since new rules were enacted early last year, filings to the Mexican Stock Exchange and a non-public document reviewed by Reuters showed. Regulators have authorized some managers to raise more over time.

It was not immediately clear how much in total has been raised to date in Mexico by equity managers, which include Discovery Capital Management, General Atlantic, Partners Group, Lexington Partners and HarbourVest Partners.

Their arrival in Latin America's second-largest economy comes after a regulatory change in January 2018 that allowed foreign private equity managers to tap into $179 billion worth of pension fund assets for the first time and eased some restrictions on how pension funds invest their assets.

Mexico's lower house of Congress is about to vote on a draft law by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's ruling National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) that would give pension funds further flexibility.

Blackstone Managing Director Matthew Pedley said in an interview that pension funds were taking advantage of the recent change in regulation to add exposure to international alternatives and diversify their portfolios.

Others consulted by Reuters on their funds in Mexico declined to be identified.

The private equity funds could help Mexican pension funds spread risk with international investments ranging from infrastructure to energy and special situations hedge funds.

Luis Sayeg, investment management director at Citibanamex, which manages one of the leading pension funds in the country, said the new funds could benefit pensions.

"It is a new opportunity to diversify the portfolio into alternative asset classes, with likely attractive returns, that do not necessarily exist in Mexico," Sayeg said.

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The draft law was praised by ratings agency Fitch although some critics have expressed concern that the government wants to tap pensions to help finance pet projects.

PENSION POT

Black Rock was one of the first foreign asset managers to expand into Mexico, raising $615 million for two funds, one of which will focus on infrastructure investments, a non-public document detailing fundraising activity showed.

KKR & Co raised $683 million for two funds, including one that will invest across private equity, growth equity, real assets as well as special situations hedge funds and private credit funds, the document showed.

The new funds are all listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange.

Mexico is attractive to those looking to raise assets for long-term investment.

The country has the largest and one of the fastest-growing private pension fund systems in Latin America, almost doubling in size in seven years, a global pension fund assets analysis by consultancy Willis Towers Watson found.

Mexican pension funds' investment outside the country is still limited to 20 percent of overall assets while their investment in alternatives like private equity is also limited to 20 percent.

This gives them little room for diversification at a time when most other maturing pension fund systems are loosening investment restrictions to help address problems like funding gaps and an ageing population.

Investing in new asset classes or geographies adds layers of complexity. This often requires more sophisticated investment processes, risk management and corporate governance practices.

Tonatiuh Rodriguez, chief executive at one of Mexico's leading pension funds, Afore Azteca, said its investment committee had decided not to invest in private equity for now.

"The risk of these investments is a risk that needs to be monitored and managed in a different way," Rodriguez said. "The returns we get from investments in the public market, which, by definition, is more regulated, are good."

Regulation stipulates that the private equity managers need to invest at least 10 percent of the capital in Mexico and commit at least 2 percent as co-investment alongside the pension funds.

Despite his risk aversion, Rodriguez said: "The fact that those are large, well-known managers, with best practices, minimizes the risks for pension funds." (Reporting by Stefanie Eschenbacher; additional reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York; editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Cynthia Osterman)
Parties undecided on appointment of officials at transitional justice bodies

Delays in the formation of a recommendation committee by the government will see two transitional justice bodies vacant following last months amendment to the Enforced Disappearances Inquiry, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Act-2014, that will conclude the terms of existing officials beginning April 14.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Carl Data Solutions Inc. (CSE: CRL) (FSE: 7C5) (OTCQB: CDTAF) ("Carl Data" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce the Company and their wholly-owned subsidiary Astra Smart Systems ("Astra") have signed an MOU to join forces with Living Lakes Canada ("LLC"), to build and deploy an end-to-end IIoT solution for advanced AI water monitoring. The Columbia Basin Transboundary Water Monitoring Initiative (CBTWMI) will support industry, First Nations and community members in achieving long-term sustainable water management in the Columbia River Basin.

"Great decisions come from great data. To this end, we are thrilled that Astra Smart Systems and Carl Data Solutions will be key participants in this critical initiative," said Pilar Portela, CEO of Astra. "Our expertise in collecting remote environmental data and combining it with historical community-based knowledge, will create a pool of water data that can be analyzed and visualized in a myriad of ways. A variety of different end users will be able to fulfill their objectives and learn from each other."

Using low-cost environmental sensors based on Internet of Things (IoT), telemetry technologies and a low-power network system, this initiative will help to address significant gaps in environmental data. Technology companies working with the Columbia Basin Water Monitoring Transboundary Initiative will support the management and protection of the region's water resources in response to climate change. This work will increase the availability of climate change related data and strengthen healthy partnerships across the Columbia River Basin. This is particularly relevant to the region's large water users such as communities and municipalities, hydropower operators, agricultural producers, industrial operations and ski resorts (snowmaking).

Kat Hartwig, Executive Director of LLC, said, "Coming in advance of international World Water Day, the opportunity to build new and innovative collaborations for collective problem solving is of paramount importance. This is an enormous opportunity to actualize new technology for on-the-ground solutions. We are working to address the need to collect water data, which in turn supports informed water allocation decisions to help maintain healthy ecosystems and build more climate resilient communities throughout the Columbia Basin and beyond."

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LLC was established in 2010 to share best practices knowledge for water stewardship groups throughout the country. It is part of a global network of over 120 non-government organizations that share the mission to enhance the protection, restoration and rehabilitation of lakes, rivers, wetlands and watersheds throughout the world.

"This project highlights the key importance of data collection," said Greg Johnston, Carl Data CEO and President. "Access to data, and the tools to extract actionable information from that data, are how we can protect environmental assets and critical infrastructure from potential impacts caused by changing environmental conditions."

About Astra Smart Systems Inc.

Astra is located at the i4C Innovation building, an Industrial IoT lab, production and development facility located in Trail, B.C., Canada. Astra's mandate is to develop E2E solutions for complex industrial challenges.

Astra's facility is at the centre of the Kootenay regions industrial fibre optic hub and sits along the newly established Metal Tech Alley. This corridor of high-technology ventures focused on industrial innovation, right across from the regional Trail Airport (YZZ) and with railway access to the US border at only seven kms away. Astra offers custom-designed infrastructure, equipment, and professional services for IIoT applications. More information can be found at http://astra.earth.

About Carl Data Solutions Inc.

Carl Data Solutions Inc. is an Industrial IoT (IIoT) company that provides next generation collection, storage and analytics solutions for data-centric companies. Building on its recent acquisitions, Carl Data helps clients analyze and model environmental data through a powerful technology agnostic end-to-end platform of smart sensors combined with web-based monitoring, reporting, and predictive analytics applications

Carl Data continues to develop applications that extract value from new cloud-based mass storage services and machine learning (AI) analytics tools to provide the scalability needed to effectively monitor smart cities, utilities and other industrial verticals. This software suite saves clients time and money by amassing information from any sensor or source to create a real-time decision support system with deep insights into how to protect infrastructure and assets. More information can be found at www.CarlSolutions.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Greg Johnston

President, Chief Executive Officer, Director

Carl Data Solutions Inc.

For further information please contact:

Kimberly Bruce

Corporate Communications

Carl Data Solutions Inc.

Telephone: (778) 379-0275

Email: kimberly@carlsolutions.com

The Canadian Securities Exchange (operated by CNSX Markets Inc.) has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. In particular, forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, the statements of beneficial results expected from the Columbia Basin Transboundary Water Monitoring Initiative if it is completed in the manner described or at all.

Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the statements including, without limitation, risks with respect to the MOU not becoming finalized into a project agreement, the inability of the various partners and stakeholders to complete their portions of the work, the potential that he Company may lose the confidence of municipal partners in its services; competitive conditions in the industry; general economic conditions in Canada and globally; the inability to secure additional financing; competition for, among other things, capital and skilled personnel; potential delays or changes in plans with respect to deployment of services or capital expenditures; possibility that government policies or laws may change; technological change; risks related to the Company's competition; the Company's not adequately protecting its intellectual property; interruption or failure of information technology systems; and regulatory risks relating to the Company's business, financings and strategic acquisitions. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

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Barrick reaffirms commitment to resolving environmental issues

All amounts expressed in U.S. dollars

SANTIAGO, Chile, March 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On Thursday, March 14, the Supreme Court of Chile annulled the October 2018 administrative decision of the Antofagasta Environmental Court, which had rejected four of the five closure orders issued by Chiles environmental regulator (the Superintendencia del Medio Ambiente, or SMA) in January 2018 against the Chilean subsidiary of Barrick Gold Corporation (GOLD)(ABX.TO) (Barrick) that holds the Chilean portion of the Pascua-Lama Project. Barrick was not a party to this process.

The Supreme Court overturned the Antofagasta Environmental Courts decision on procedural grounds and remanded the case back to the Environmental Court for review by a different panel of judges, a process that could last several months. The Supreme Court did not review the merits of the SMAs January 2018 closure orders which remain in effect and are subject to an appeal by Barrick.

Barricks President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Bristow, said that although the Supreme Courts decision was not helpful in that it delayed a decision on the future of the Pascua-Lama project, the company remains focused on resolving the legal and environmental issues around the project and, in addition to the ongoing remediation work, it had embarked on a technical review of the project parameters and potential. As part of this work, it has conducted extensive geochemical and geohydrological studies for a water management plan which it was confident would be acceptable to the environmental authority.

Bristow, who last month met with Chiles Minister of Mining Baldo Prokurica, said Barricks Chilean assets were an important part of its global portfolio. These include the jointly owned Zaldivar copper mine and the Norte Abierto and Alturas gold projects. Over the past 10 years, the company has spent some $8 billion in the country on exploration and development as well as royalties and taxes, wages and payments to local suppliers.

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Chile is an investor-friendly country, with a significant mineral endowment, and which encourages the development of mining projects. We believe that despite the legacy challenges relating to the Pascua-Lama project there are exciting opportunities here, especially in the El Indio Belt, and we will be pursuing this in line with our strategy of creating value for all our stakeholders, including the governments, and people, of our host countries, Bristow said.

Enquiries:

President and Chief Executive Officer

Mark Bristow

+1 647 205 7694

+44 788 071 1386

Senior Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer

Graham Shuttleworth

+44 1534 735 333

+44 779 771 1338

Investor and Media Relations

Kathy du Plessis

+44 20 7557 7738

Email: barrick@dpapr.com

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information

Certain information contained in this press release constitutes forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. The words embark, potential, believe, opportunity, will and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. In particular, this press release contains forward-looking statements including, without limitation, with respect to technical reviews and studies at Pascua-Lama and the resolution of legal and environmental issues at the project.

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company as at the date of this press release in light of managements experience and perception of current conditions and expected developments, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Known and unknown factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements and information. Such factors include, but are not limited to: fluctuations in the spot and forward price of gold, copper or certain other commodities (such as silver, diesel fuel, natural gas and electricity); the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development; changes in mineral production performance, exploitation and exploration successes; diminishing quantities or grades of reserves; increased costs, delays, suspensions and technical challenges associated with the construction of capital projects; operating or technical difficulties in connection with mining or development activities, including geotechnical challenges and disruptions in the maintenance or provision of required infrastructure and information technology systems; failure to comply with environmental and health and safety laws and regulations; timing of receipt of, or failure to comply with, necessary permits and approvals; uncertainty whether the Pascua-Lama project will meet the Companys capital allocation objectives and internal hurdle rate; changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls or regulations and/or changes in the administration of laws, policies and practices, expropriation or nationalization of property and political or economic developments in Chile, Argentina and other jurisdictions in which the Company or its affiliates do or may carry on business in the future; lack of certainty with respect to foreign legal systems, corruption and other factors that are inconsistent with the rule of law; the outcome of the appeal of the decision of Chiles Superintendencia del Medio Ambiente and any future decision of the Environmental Court; damage to the Companys reputation due to the actual or perceived occurrence of any number of events, including negative publicity with respect to the Company's handling of environmental matters or dealings with community groups, whether true or not; the possibility that future exploration results will not be consistent with the Companys expectations; risks that exploration data may be incomplete and considerable additional work may be required to complete further evaluation, including but not limited to drilling, engineering and socioeconomic studies and investment; risk of loss due to acts of war, terrorism, sabotage and civil disturbances; litigation; contests over title to properties, particularly title to undeveloped properties, or over access to water, power and other required infrastructure; business opportunities that may be presented to, or pursued by, the Company; and risks associated with the fact that certain of the initiatives described in this press release are still in the early stages and may not materialize. In addition, there are risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining, including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations, pressures, cave-ins, flooding and gold bullion, copper cathode or gold or copper concentrate losses (and the risk of inadequate insurance, or inability to obtain insurance, to cover these risks).

Many of these uncertainties and contingencies can affect our actual results and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made by, or on behalf of, us. Readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements.

Specific reference is made to the most recent Form 40-F/Annual Information Form on file with the SEC and Canadian provincial securities regulatory authorities for a more detailed discussion of some of the factors underlying forward-looking statements and the risks that may affect Barrick's ability to achieve the expectations set forth in the forward-looking statements contained in this press release.

We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.
A Volkswagen badge on a production line at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Fabian Bimmer

The German government is putting up 1bn (870m, $1.1bn) in subsidies to support national companies developing battery cell production in Germany, and national carmakers are keen for a slice of the money.

More than 30 companies have already applied for subsidies, Reuters reported on 18 March. Germanys economy minister Peter Altmaier said the response has far exceeded our expectations. The government could decide how to allocate the aid by this summer.

Volkswagen (VOW.DE) is among the big names applying for the state support, as are BMW (BMW.DE), chemicals giant BASF (BAS.DE), and battery maker Varta (VAR1.BE). Reuterss sources said that up to six consortiums could be formed, which may also include French and Polish companies.

Automobile production is moving into the highly competitive era of electric cars and the German government is concerned that the countrys mighty automotive industry may become too heavily reliant on battery makers from China, South Korea, and Japan.

Chinas biggest battery maker, Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), was given approval to build a giant battery cell factory in the German state of Thuringia in July 2018, which is slated for completion in 2021. Daimler (DAI.DE) has already signed a multibillion-euro battery contract with CATL, and BMW said it would buy 4bn (3.4bn, $4.5bn) worth of battery cells from the new factory.

Germanys largest automotive supplier Bosch announced last year it would not go ahead with battery-cell manufacturing for economic reasons.

For Bosch, its important to have a technical understanding of cells, Rolf Bulander, a member of Boschs management board, said at the time. We dont have to make them ourselves.

Considering that the battery is by far the most expensive component of an electric car, it benefits German carmakers not to be completely dependent on Asian producers. The government has been voicing concerns for months about Germany falling behind on this essential technology.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged companies in September 2018 to get serious about developing battery cells, noting, I believe that will be extremely important in the next decades.
In addition to the fact that limousine travel is very glamorous, it is also the most comfortable trip you can...
Right to choose

A citizenship amendment that demands proof of gender reassignment is unfair to the trans community
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CSX Corporation (CSX) will release first-quarter financial and operating results after the market close on Tuesday, April 16, 2019. This will be followed by a conference call and live webcast hosted by the companys management team at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time.



Those interested in participating via teleconference may dial 1-888-327-6279 (1-888-EARN-CSX). Callers outside the U.S. dial 1-773-756-0199. Participants should dial in 10 minutes prior to the call and enter in 3276279 as the passcode.

Presentation materials and access to the audio webcast will be available on the companys website at http://investors.csx.com . Following the earnings call, a webcast replay and an MP3 audio file will be archived on the companys website.

About CSX and its Disclosures

CSX, based in Jacksonville, Florida, is a premier transportation company. It provides rail, intermodal and rail-to-truck transload services and solutions to customers across a broad array of markets, including energy, industrial, construction, agricultural, and consumer products. For nearly 200 years, CSX has played a critical role in the nation's economic expansion and industrial development. Its network connects every major metropolitan area in the eastern United States, where nearly two-thirds of the nation's population resides. It also links more than 230 short-line railroads and more than 70 ocean, river and lake ports with major population centers and farming towns alike.

This announcement, as well as additional financial information, is available on the company's website at http://investors.csx.com . CSX also uses social media channels to communicate information about the company. Although social media channels are not intended to be the primary method of disclosure for material information, it is possible that certain information CSX posts on social media could be deemed to be material. Therefore, we encourage investors, the media, and others interested in the company to review the information we post on Twitter ( http://twitter.com/CSX ) and on Slideshare ( http://www.slideshare.net/HowTomorrowMoves ). The social media channels used by CSX may be updated from time to time.

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More information about CSX Corporation and its subsidiaries is available at www.csx.com and on Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/OfficialCSX ).

Contact:

Kevin Boone, Investor Relations

904-359-1090

Bryan Tucker, Corporate Communications

855-955-6397
By Richard Lough and Jean-Baptiste Vey PARIS (Reuters) - France is ready to veto any British request for a Brexit delay that either kicks the can down the road without offering a way out of its deadlock or imperils European Union institutions, an official in President Emmanuel Macron's office said on Tuesday. The warning came as Britain planned to ask the EU to extend the negotiating period by at least three months after Prime Minister Theresa May's plans for another vote on her twice-defeated divorce deal were thrown into turmoil. The Elysee official's comments were the strongest indication yet from Macron's office that France will not agree to an extension beyond the scheduled March 29 leave date simply to save Britain from a chaotic exit with no deal. Asked about a possible French veto, the official said: "it is a possible scenario, yes, if the conditions for an extension are not met." Any extension has to be approved by all 27 EU members remaining in the bloc. Macron, an ardent Europhile, has championed an EU refusal to reopen at the eleventh hour Britain's withdrawal agreement, the result of more than two years of hard-fought negotiations. The presidential aide said France would assess any request for an extension against two criteria: is there a credible British plan, or strategy, that can win a majority in Westminster; and what will the impact be on the smooth running of Europe's institutions? An extension beyond late June, a month after European elections in late May, could see Britain maintain a commissioner in the EU executive, lawmakers in the European Parliament and a seat at the table of EU leaders, with influence on decisions for the bloc's future even as it tries to leave. A no-deal exit by Britain was "not desirable, was not being pushed by the EU, by France or other member states, but will impose itself on us if no real alternative is put forward in the next few days or even the next few hours," the official added. May's spokesman said on Tuesday the prime minister was writing to European Council President Donald Tusk to ask for a delay. He did not disclose how long a delay she would seek, but said she believed it should be as short as possible. May had earlier told parliament that if it did not ratify her deal, she would ask to delay Brexit beyond June 30, a step that Brexit advocates fear would endanger the entire divorce. French officials say in private that they are not alone in their stance but that they are more willing than other countries to stick their necks out because Britain will always blame the French for their misfortunes. In Brussels, Germany's Europe Minister Michael Roth complained that EU patience was being sorely tested by London but adopted a softer tone than Paris, saying Germany's main aim was to avoid a no-deal Brexit, which would disrupt business across the continent. "Everything has been done to avoid a no-deal and a disorderly British exit," the French presidency official said. "Now, we need a clear political choice in the United Kingdom." (Reporting by Jean Baptiste Vey and Richard Lough; Editing by Frances Kerry)
Before becoming U.S. president, Donald Trump took loans totaling more than $2 billion across nearly two decades from Deutsche Bank, The New York Times reported on Monday.

In some instances, Trump exaggerated his wealth and promised to reward bankers with a weekend at Mar-a-Lago in order to get those loans, according to the report.

Deutsche Bank DBK-DE loaned more than $2 billion to Donald Trump before he became United States president  despite multiple red flags surrounding Trump, The New York Times reported on Monday .

The Times interviewed more than 20 former and current executives and board members at Deutsche Bank for the report, which outlined how Trump managed to secure financing from the Germany bank for nearly two decades despite his bankruptcies and being considered a risky client by other lenders.

The Times report comes after Germany's two largest lenders, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank CBK-DE , confirmed on Sunday that they were in talks about a merger . German-traded shares of both banks jumped higher on Monday.

According to the newspaper, in some instances, Trump exaggerated his wealth and promised to reward bankers with a weekend at Mar-a-Lago  his private club in Palm Beach, Florida  in order to get loans.

Over the years, Trump used loans provided by Deutsche Bank to build skyscrapers and other high-end properties, the Times reported. For the German bank, its relationship with Trump was key in building its investment-banking business, the report said.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the Times report. The Trump Organization and the White House did not immediately reply to CNBC's request for comment.

Trump's relationship with Deutsche Bank has come under scrutiny in the U.S. The New York attorney general's office and the Democratic-controlled Intelligence Committee and Financial Services Committee in Congress have been looking into the president's financial ties with the German bank.

For the full report on U.S. President Donald Trump's relationship with Deutsche Bank, read The New York Times.

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WATCH: Deutsche Bank reportedly considered restructuring Trump loans over default concerns





More From CNBC


Things have quietly perked up in the land of crypto, and there are grounds for some cautious optimism.

Ill explain why in just a moment, but let me start with some big picture stuff.

In an ideal technical world, this is the scenario I am looking for: that $3,200, the low Bitcoin made in December, is the low. We then enjoy a gentle rally through the first half of this year, before a retest of the low sometime in the autumn (or fall as our US cousins call it).

We would then want to see that $3,200 area hold on the retest. Then we have a nice double bottom in place, and a firm base. Moreover, we would have had a bear market of close to two years and an 85% correction in price. Thats enough of a correction in terms of both price and time to purge most of the excesses of 2017.

The second retest of $3,200 later this year should be accompanied perhaps by a lot of negative news: many of the companies that raised money in the mania of 2017 are out of capital and closing down; their projects were too ambitious or unrealistic; they didnt get the projected take-up in terms of users; crappy altcoins are fading from view  these kinds of scenarios.

Im not wishing ill fortune on anyone when I say all this either. I am just describing the kinds of scenarios which are common to bear markets  not just in tech, but in all sectors. Losses are an unfortunate part of that, and these are the kinds of things we need to be looking out for. The better operators will survive and likely become the new leaders in the space when the next cycle gets underway.

Turning now to the shorter-term picture and the outlook for the next few months, I am feeling quite positive. Lets start with a chart of Bitcoin.

On the chart below, I have drawn three simple daily moving averages  the 21 DMA in red, the 55 DMA in blue, and the 233 DMA in green.

You can see that Bitcoin has now got above both its 21 DMA and its 55 DMA, and both are sloping up. That is a positive move and indicative of a rising trend, at least in the short term.

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In addition, it is also worth noting that the February low was higher than the December low. The March low is also higher than the February low. Higher lows are good.

There is a line of resistance at the $4,200 area  where I have drawn the dashed red line. If Bitcoin can get above that, we will have a short-term breakout. $4,200 is Bitcoins next hurdle.

If it can get above there, then the $5,000 to $5,500 area comes into play. There is some resistance there, and even more at around $6,000, which was support for Bitcoin through so much of 2018.

Just in terms of historical price levels, I think there is a distinct possibility Bitcoin stumbles at $4,200 but gets through. I would say it stumbles again in the mid-$5,000s, before going up to the $6,000 area by the summer. It will then retest that zone a few times  there is a buzz, Bitcoin is back in the news and so on  before it gives up the ghost. Thats the point at which we then go back and retest $3,200.

Im all too aware that what I am forecasting is far too precise. Please dont bet your house or anything significant on it. What I am describing, however, would be classic bear market action. I am merely projecting that onto Bitcoins existing price levels.

We could just as easily fail at $4,200 and the sector could plumb to new depths. Nobody knows! Such are the hazards of investing and speculation. I do sometimes, however, have a nose for these things, so if I am proved right, I would expect to be at least made a knight of the crypto realm and made the official minister of forecasting.

In other news, lets discuss the Tulip Trust. This is a trust rumoured to have been set up between Dave Kleiman and Craig Wright some years ago. Kleiman was a Florida-based US computer forensics investigator who died in 2013, thought to have been one part of Satoshi Nakamoto. Craig Wright is an Australian computer scientist who claims to be another part. The Tulip Trust is rumoured to contain Satoshis Bitcoins  or a large part of them at least. (Satoshi probably has somewhere between 700,000 and 1.2 million coins, depending on whose research you follow. Either way, there are a lot.) In 2020, the coins in that trust are to be moved to a third party and can be sold, so the story goes. A lot of this is hearsay, I stress, and at present, there is a legal dispute between Craig Wright and Kleimans estate. One of the issues in dispute is believed to be access to the keys.

Many people think the whole dispute is bogus. That might be so. But rumours are powerful things nonetheless and, as the year goes by, we will likely see it get some oxygen. A narrative will creep into the conscious that 2020 will see large volumes of selling as Satoshi Nakamotos Bitcoins become free trading. If so, the latter part of this year might see some selling in anticipation of that. Perhaps that is what will take us back to $3,200.

Like I say, theres a lot of ifs and buts, but when it comes to rumour and narrative, fiction can be as powerful as fact, so whichever side of that divide the above story fits into may not be that important. What is important is that there is a story at all.

Its something I shall be looking out for as the year passes. In the interim, however, we have a short-term uptrend. That is good!

Dominic Frisby is author of the first (and best, obviously) book on Bitcoin from a recognised publisher, Bitcoin: the Future of Money?, available from all good bookshops, and a couple of rubbish ones too. Dominic is director of Cypherpunk Holdings (CSE:HODL), a company set up to invest in privacy-related technologies. Follow Dominic  @dominicfrisby

For more news, guides, and cryptocurrency analysis, click here.

The post Dominic Frisbys crypto market update: Short-term optimism, an impending double bottom, and the Tulip Trust appeared first on Coin Rivet.
By Maggie Fick and Tim Hepher

ADDIS ABABA/PARIS (Reuters) - Investigators into the Boeing Co 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia have found striking similarities in a vital flight angle with an airplane that came down off Indonesia, a source said, piling pressure on the world's biggest planemaker.

The Ethiopian Airlines disaster eight days ago killed 157 people, led to the grounding of Boeing's marquee MAX fleet globally and sparked a high-stakes inquiry for the aviation industry.

Analysis of the cockpit recorder showed its "angle of attack" data was "very, very similar" to that of the Lion Air jet that went down off Jakarta in October, killing 189 people, a person familiar with the investigation said.

The angle of attack is a fundamental parameter of flight, measuring the degrees between the air flow and the wing. If it is too high, it can throw the plane into an aerodynamic stall.

"If that's the case, that does raise the possibility that there is a similar occurrence between the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents," said Clint Balog, a Montana-based professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Even then, it was too early to draw firm conclusions, he added.

A flight deck computer's response to an apparently faulty angle-of-attack sensor is at the heart of the ongoing probe into the Lion Air crash.

Ethiopia's Transport Ministry, France's BEA air accident authority and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have all pointed to similarities between the two disasters, but safety officials stress the investigation is at an early stage.

"Everything will be investigated," Ethiopian Transport Ministry spokesman Musie Yehyies told Reuters.

Both planes were 737 MAX 8s and crashed minutes after takeoff with pilots reporting flight control problems.

Under scrutiny is a new automated system in the 737 MAX model that guides the nose lower to avoid stalling, while Boeing has raised questions in the Lion Air case about whether crew used the correct procedures.

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Lawmakers and safety experts are asking how thoroughly regulators vetted the system and how well pilots around the world were trained for it when their airlines bought new planes.

BOEING PLANS NEW SOFTWARE

Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg, facing the biggest crisis of his tenure, said on Monday the company understands that "lives depend on the work we do."

Muilenburg also said a software upgrade for its 737 MAX aircraft that the planemaker started in the aftermath of the Lion Air deadly plane crash was coming "soon."

The fix was developed when regulators suggested false sensor data could cause a system known as MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) to overreact and make the jet hard to control.

Canada is re-examining the validation it gave Boeing's 737 MAX jets, following reports of a U.S. probe into the aircraft's certification by the FAA, Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau said on Monday.

Acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell said on Wednesday in a call with reporters that he was absolutely confident in the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX 8. The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Canadas action.

The FAA finds itself in the hot seat, especially over its decision to certify the 737 MAX without demanding additional training. FAA and Boeing will face congressional questions about why the software upgrade took so long to complete and whether Boeing had too great a role in the certification process.

With the prestige of one of the United States' biggest exporters at stake, Boeing has halted deliveries of its best-selling model that was intended to be the industry standard but is now under a shadow. Developed in response to the successful launch of the Airbus A320neo, some 370 MAX jets were in operation at the time of the Ethiopian crash, and nearly 5,000 more on order.

After a 10 percent drop last week that wiped nearly $25 billion off its market share, Boeing stock slid about 1.8 percent on Monday.

Weekend media reports intensified pressure on Boeing and its domestic U.S. regulator following a call last week by a U.S. flight attendants union for a "certification review."

The Seattle Times said the company's safety analysis of the MCAS system had crucial flaws, including understating power.

Prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Transportation were scrutinizing the FAA's approval of the MAX series, sources told Reuters. A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., last week issued at least one subpoena to an entity involved in the plane's development, one of the sources said.

Boeing and the FAA declined to comment on the reports.

Last week, sources told Reuters that investigators found a piece of a stabilizer in the Ethiopian wreckage set in an unusual position similar to that of the Lion Air plane.

FUTURE ORDERS AT STAKE

Ethiopia is leading the probe, although the black boxes were sent to France and U.S. experts are also participating.

Investigators were expected to select a handful of the roughly 1,800 parameters of flight data in their initial review, including those thrown up by the Lion Air investigation, before analyzing the rest in coming weeks and months.

Norwegian Airlines has already said it will seek compensation after grounding its MAX aircraft, and various companies are reconsidering orders.

Boeing's main rival, Airbus, has seen its stock rise 5 percent since the crash, but cannot simply pick up the slack given the complicated logistics of plane-building. For now, Boeing continues to build planes while keeping them parked.

Some airlines are revising financial forecasts, too, given the MAX had been factored in as providing around 15 percent maintenance and fuel savings.

WestJet Airlines Ltd on Monday became the second Canadian carrier to suspend its 2019 financial projections, following Air Canada in light of the 737 MAX groundings.

(GRAPHIC: The grounded 737 Max flee - https://tmsnrt.rs/2u5sZYI)

(GRAPHIC: Ethiopian Airlines crash - https://tmsnrt.rs/2Hn6V4k)

(Reporting by Maggie Frick and Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Savio D'Souza in Bengaluru, Ed Cropley in London, David Shepardson in Washington and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Jason Neely, Keith Weir, Mark Potter and Peter Cooney)
BRUSSELS, March 19 (Reuters) - The following are mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:

APPROVALS AND WITHDRAWALS

-- Carlyle U.S. Equity Opportunity Fund and TA Associates LP to acquire joint control over WU Holdco Inc. (approved March 18)

NEW LISTINGS

-- French fashion company LVMH to acquire sole control over British hotel and travel operator Belmond Ltd (notified March 15/deadline April 24/simplified)

EXTENSIONS AND OTHER CHANGES

None

FIRST-STAGE REVIEWS BY DEADLINE

MARCH 20

-- U.S. aircraft parts maker Spirit Aerosystems Holdings Inc to acquire EU-based supplier Asco Industries NV (notified Jan. 30/deadline extended to March 20 from March 6 after Spirit offered concessions)

MARCH 22

-- Insurer Marsh & McLennan Companies to acquire share capital of British peer Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group (notified Feb. 1/deadline extended to March 22 from March 8 after Marsh & McLennan offered concessions)

MARCH 25

-- U.S. aluminum company Novelis, which is a unit of India's Hindalco Industries Ltd, to acquire aluminum processor Aleris (notified Feb. 18/deadline March 25)

-- DA Agravis Machinery Holding and Danish Agro Machinery Holding to acquire Kesko Group's agrimachinery activities in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from Finnish subsidiary Konekesko Oy (notified Feb. 4/deadline extended to March 25 from March 11 after the companies offered concessions)

MARCH 27

-- Swiss chemicals company Sika to acquire French rival Parex from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners (notified Feb. 20/deadline March 27)

-- Japan's CK Holdings Co to acquire Italian car parts maker Magneti Marelli from Italian auto maker Fiat Chrysler Automotives (notified Feb. 20/deadline March 27/simplified)

MARCH 28

-- ArcelorMittal and Italy's CLN Group to acquire joint control over two Italian steel service centers of the Ilva Group (notified Feb. 21/deadline March 28)

MARCH 29

-- Financial services company Great-West Lifeco's Irish Life and Clyde Property Fund and UK property developer Hammerson to jointly acquire a shopping centre in Dublin, Ireland (notified Feb. 22/deadline March 29)

APRIL 1

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-- UK asset management company Segro and Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board to jointly acquire a logistics site in Poland (notified Feb. 25/deadline April 1/simplified)

-- UK asset management company Segro and Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board to jointly acquire a logistics site in France (notified Feb. 25/deadline April 1/simplified)

-- Mitsubishi's trust and banking corporation to acquire sole control of First State Investments through a share acquisition (notified Feb. 25/deadline April 1/simplified)

APRIL 5

-- U.S. tech and consulting services provider DXC Technology to acquire U.S. software development company Luxoft Holding (notified March 1/deadline April 5/simplified)

APRIL 9

-- India's HCL Technologies to acquire sole control over four of IBM's software product portfolios (notified March 5/deadline April 9/simplified)

-- France's Caisse des Depots et Consignations and solar group Reden H2 to acquire joint control over French photovoltaic power plant company Berroute (notified March 5/deadline April 9/simplified)

-- France's Mirova and Bouyges Batiment International to acquire joint control of Bouygues Construction Airport Concessions Europe (notified March 5/deadline April 9/simplified)

APRIL 11

-- Mercuria Energy Group to acquire marine fuel logistics company Aegean Marine Petroleum Network (notified March 7/deadline April 11/simplified)

APRIL 17

-- GTCR LLC and U.K.'s Apax Partners LLP to acquire joint control of U.S.-based Dolphin TopCo (notified March 13/deadline April 17/simplified)

APRIL 24

-- Swedish telecoms provider Telia Company to acquire Bonnier Broadcasting which cludes brands such as Swedish TV4 and streaming service C More and Finnish MTV (notified March 15/deadline April 24)

APRIL 29

--- Germany's Thyssenkrupp and India's Tata Steel to set up a steel joint venture (notified Sept. 25/deadline April 29)

MAY 20

-- Electronic and motor manufacturing company Nidec to acquire sole control of U.S. white goods maker Whirlpool Corp's compressor subsidiary Embraco (notified Oct. 8/deadline extended to May 20 from May 13)

JUNE 3

-- UK mobile telephony provider Vodafone to acquire U.S. Liberty Global's telecommunications business in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Romania (notified Oct. 19/deadline June 3)

JULY 23

-- German energy company E.ON to acquire German peer Innogy's retail and network activities (notified Jan. 31/deadline extended to July 23 from March 7 after the Commission opened an in-depth investigation)

GUIDE TO EU MERGER PROCESS

DEADLINES:

The European Commission has 25 working days after a deal is filed for a first-stage review. It may extend that by 10 working days to 35 working days, to consider either a company's proposed remedies or an EU member state's request to handle the case. Most mergers win approval but occasionally the Commission opens a detailed second-stage investigation for up to 90 additional working days, which it may extend to 105 working days.

SIMPLIFIED:

Under the simplified procedure, the Commission announces the clearance of uncontroversial first-stage mergers without giving any reason for its decision. Cases may be reclassified as non-simplified - that is, ordinary first-stage reviews - until they are approved. (Reporting by Clare Roth;)
A consortium of New Zealands major companies has pledged to pull their advertising from Facebook fb following the live-streaming of Fridays mosque shootings in Christchurch, the New Zealand Herald reported Monday.

In a joint statement, the Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA) and the Commercial Communications Council asked domestic companies to think about where their advertising dollars are spent, and carefully consider, with their agency partners, where their ads appear.

They added, We challenge Facebook and other platform owners to immediately take steps to effectively moderate hate content before another tragedy can be streamed online.

ASB Bank, Lotto NZ, Burger King and telecoms company Spark have signed on to pull their ad dollars from Facebook, the Herald reported.

It follows the decision of state-owned Lotto NZ to pull its advertising from social media as the tone didnt feel right in the aftermath of these events, a spokesperson told Reuters.

Kiwibank, the Bank of New Zealand, and the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group have also independently pulled most or all of their ads from Facebook. Its not yet clear how extensive the pull-back will be or how long the companies will abstain, however.

Businesses need to seriously consider if they wish to be associated with social media platforms unable or unwilling to take responsibility for content on those sites, ANZA CEO Lindsay Mouat told the Herald.

Facebook did not immediately return Fortunes request for comment.

A total of 50 people died in the attacks in Christchurch, which were documented in a 17-minute video from the shooter. New Zealand police have charged 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant with murder, while a second so-far-unnamed 18-year-old man has been charged with inciting violence by distributing footage of the attack.

Facebook said Sunday it removed 1.5 million videos of the mosque shooting from its servers in the 24 hours following the attack, many of those at the upload stage. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern countered Monday that tech companies have a lot of work to do to curb the proliferation of hateful and violent content. She urged all social media companies to take responsibility for how their platforms were used both before and after the mosque attacks.

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Many social media and video platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Twitch, have been scrambling to prevent the video from spreading further. Automatic filters are only likely to be able to catch exact copies of the video, the Wall Street Journal reports, so if the footage is slightly altered then human intervention is required to block it. Facebook initially allowed clips and images showing nonviolent scenes of Tarrants video to stay up, but has since reversed course and is removing all of his footage.

Tony Fernandes, CEO of Malaysias low-cost airline AirAsia, said goodbye to his 670,000 Facebook followers over the weekend over the Christchurch atrocity.

Facebook could have done more to stop some of this. I myself have been a victim of so many fake bitcoin and other stories. 17 mins of a live stream of killing and hate!!!! Its need to clean up and not just think of financials.  Tony Fernandes (@tonyfernandes) March 17, 2019

Fernandes posted messages on rival Twitter twtr , where he has 1.3 million followers, explaining that he could no longer be a part of Facebook after the killings were live-streamed.
SAN DIEGO, March 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fate Therapeutics, Inc. (FATE), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of programmed cellular immunotherapies for cancer and immune disorders, today announced that Karin Jooss, Ph.D. has been appointed to the Companys Board of Directors. Dr. Jooss has more than 20 years of experience in oncology and immunology research and development, and is currently the Executive Vice President of Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Gritstone Oncology, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation cancer immunotherapies targeting tumor-specific neoantigens.



Karin is an accomplished leader in the research and development of novel therapeutic modalities for the treatment of cancer, and we are excited to welcome her to our Board of Directors, said Scott Wolchko, President and Chief Executive Officer of Fate Therapeutics. We look forward to benefiting from her immunology expertise and operational experience as we continue to leverage our proprietary iPSC product platform and bring our pipeline of universal, off-the-shelf NK cell and T-cell product candidates to patients.

Prior to joining Gritstone in April 2016, Dr. Jooss served as head of Cancer Immunotherapeutics and Immunopharmacology at Pfizer, Inc. While at Pfizer, she built and led immuno-oncology teams within the Vaccine Immunotherapeutics department, was a member of the Vaccine Immunotherapeutics leadership team, and served as the head of the Immunopharmacology team. She launched Pfizer's first clinical cancer-vaccine program deploying a variety of vaccine platforms and immune modulators to build multi-component vaccine-based immunotherapy regimens. Prior to joining Pfizer, Dr. Jooss was at Cell Genesys from July 2001 to April 2009, most recently as Vice President of Research.

Fate Therapeutics is at an exciting inflection point, advancing the first-ever iPSC-derived cell product into clinical development in the U.S., said Dr. Jooss. The Company has built a deep pipeline of off-the-shelf cellular immunotherapies that can be delivered using novel multi-dose, multi-cycle treatment regimens and which are designed to synergize with well-established agents, such as checkpoint inhibitors and monoclonal antibodies. I am delighted to be joining the Companys Board of Directors and to help bring these first-of-kind cell-based cancer immunotherapies to patients.

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Dr. Jooss received her diploma in theoretical medicine and a Ph.D. in molecular biology and immunology from the University of Marburg in Germany, and performed postgraduate work in gene therapy and immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is on the editorial board of Molecular Therapy and the Journal of Gene Medicine and is a member of the Immunology and Educational Committee of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy and the Industry Task Force of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer.

About Fate Therapeutics iPSC Product Platform

The Companys proprietary induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) product platform enables mass production of off-the-shelf, engineered, homogeneous cell products that can be administered in repeat doses to mediate more effective pharmacologic activity, including in combination with cycles of other cancer treatments. Human iPSCs possess the unique dual properties of unlimited self-renewal and differentiation potential into all cell types of the body. The Companys first-of-kind approach involves engineering human iPSCs in a one-time genetic modification event and selecting a single iPSC for maintenance as a clonal master iPSC line. Analogous to master cell lines used to manufacture biopharmaceutical drug products such as monoclonal antibodies, clonal master iPSC lines are a renewable source for manufacturing cell therapy products which are well-defined and uniform in composition, can be mass produced at significant scale in a cost-effective manner, and can be delivered off-the-shelf to treat many patients. As a result, the Companys platform is uniquely capable of addressing the limitations associated with the production of cell therapies using patient- or donor-sourced cells, which is logistically complex and expensive and is fraught with batch-to-batch and cell-to-cell variability that can affect safety and efficacy. Fate Therapeutics iPSC product platform is supported by an intellectual property portfolio of over 100 issued patents and 100 pending patent applications.

About Fate Therapeutics, Inc.

Fate Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of first-in-class cellular immunotherapies for cancer and immune disorders. The Company is pioneering the development of off-the-shelf cell products using its proprietary induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) product platform. The Companys immuno-oncology pipeline is comprised of FATE-NK100, a donor-derived natural killer (NK) cell cancer immunotherapy that is currently being evaluated in three Phase 1 clinical trials, as well as iPSC-derived NK cell and T-cell immunotherapies, with a focus on developing next-generation cell products intended to synergize with checkpoint inhibitor and monoclonal antibody therapies and to target tumor-associated antigens. The Companys immuno-regulatory pipeline includes ProTmune, a pharmacologically modulated, donor cell graft that is currently being evaluated in a Phase 2 clinical trial for the prevention of graft-versus-host disease, and a myeloid-derived suppressor cell immunotherapy for promoting immune tolerance in patients with immune disorders. Fate Therapeutics is headquartered in San Diego, CA. For more information, please visit www.fatetherapeutics.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 including statements regarding the Companys advancement of and plans related to its product candidates, and the therapeutic and market potential of the Companys product candidates. These and any other forward-looking statements in this release are based on management's current expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risk that the Company may cease or delay preclinical or clinical development of any of its product candidates for a variety of reasons (including requirements that may be imposed by regulatory authorities on the initiation or conduct of clinical trials or to support regulatory approval, difficulties or delays in subject enrollment in current and planned clinical trials, difficulties in manufacturing or supplying the Companys product candidates for clinical testing, and any adverse events or other negative results that may be observed during preclinical or clinical development). For a discussion of other risks and uncertainties, and other important factors, any of which could cause the Companys actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see the risks and uncertainties detailed in the Companys periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the Companys most recently filed periodic report, and from time to time in the Companys press releases and other investor communications. Fate Therapeutics is providing the information in this release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact:

Christina Tartaglia

Stern Investor Relations, Inc.

212.362.1200

christina@sternir.com




The megaprojects conundrum

Improving performance requires serious introspection and understanding of the reasons for the delay at the highest political level.
BiTA New Member Press Release Graphic (2).jpg

GT Solutions, a French transport solutions provider, recently became a member of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA).

Applications of blockchain technology within transportation and the supply chain are growing at an exponential rate, but so are the hurdles to incorporating such technology with existing platforms.

Matthieu Sarrat, GT Solutions' Director of Operations stated, "GT Solutions is excited to partner with other BiTA members." Sarrat continued, "GT Solutions sees tremendous value in our BiTA membership. The BiTA Community is at the forefront in establishing new blockchain standards, and these efforts will pave the way for blockchain expansion and exploration. The results will be better track and trace solutions, supply chain transparency and the use of smart contracts."

Oliver Haines, Vice President-European Region for BiTA, said, "GT Solutions is the latest member of BiTA, and we look forward to the company's contributions to the BiTA Community. With interest in blockchain technology growing rapidly, there is a need for increased standardization in the global freight, transportation and logistics markets. GT Solutions brings expertise in current industry practices and standards, which will be critical to establishing a seamless path for blockchain applications going forward." Haines added, "Recognizing the immeasurable potential to advance operational efficiency within the supply chain, GT Solutions is well-positioned to help by aligning the company's deep knowledge of transportation and logistics with the newly formed standards."

GT Solutions is a family-owned business that was founded in 1946. The company is headquartered in the city of Bassens in the Aquitaine region of France. GT Solutions operates in dedicated trucking, freight forwarding and distribution for a wide range of industries, including automotive, building materials, live animals, refrigerated products and pharmaceuticals. It has 2,000 employees and 1,500 trucks.

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Founded in August 2017, BiTA has quickly grown into the largest commercial blockchain alliance in the world, with nearly 500 members that collectively generate over $1 trillion in revenue annually. BiTA members are primarily from the freight, transportation, logistics and affiliated industries. Alliance members share a common mission to develop a standards framework, educate the market on blockchain applications and encourage the use of those applications. BiTA has offices in: Chattanooga, Tennessee (North America Region); Sydney, Australia (Asia-Pacific Region); and London (European Region).

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The Free Speech Century



Edited by Lee C. Bollinger & Geoffrey R. Stone



Oxford University Press, New York, 376 pages, $21.95



From its adoption in 1791 until 1919, the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was largely dormant. During World War I, however, it sprung to life in response to the federal governments program to stifle dissent against the war. Passing judgment on that program, the Supreme Court began to decide cases that have since elevated the free speech guarantee to a special place in our democracy.



In commemorating the centennial of this emergence, editors Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone have produced a powerful book that analyzes both the evolution of free speech jurisprudence and the future challenges of this signature constitutional right, which is globally recognized as quintessentially American.



The book is arranged into sixteen chapters, each authored by a leading constitutional scholar. Written primarily for lawyers, the book analyzes the controversies that have transformed the first amendments significance, discusses the historical events that have affected its development, examines the luminaries who have provoked thought, discloses surprising insights that have arisen from campaign finance case law, explains how the first amendment has influenced other constitutional democracies and dissects the misconceptions that plague current disputes over free speech rights on college campuses. Given the stature of Bollinger and Stone, the editing of the book is predictably excellent.



In the introduction, Bollinger sets the stage for the narrative by observing that freedom of speech is more than just a mere legal principle. It is a part of our national identity, and in so many ways we have learned to define ourselves as a people through the process of creating the principle itself.



Part One of the book addresses The Nature of First Amendment Jurisprudence, and includes chapters written by Vincent Blasi, Frederick Schauer, Laura Weinrib and Heather Gerken.



Blasis superb chapter examines Rights Skepticism and Majority Rule at the Birth of the Modern First Amendment. The author analyzes the central roles played by three federal judges--Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Louis Brandeisin the early development of free speech doctrine. Perceptively, Blasi traces the different intellectual paths these judges followed in elevating free speech to fundamental right status. In so doing, he observes that all three possessed a well-developed regard for majority rule and espoused judicial commitments that both denied the existence of natural rights and treated positive rights as limited. For these seminal judges, ruling that fundamental rights trump majority preferences was a heavy lift.



Entitled Rethinking the Myth of the Modern First Amendment, Laura Weinribs chapter describes how progressives distrusted the courts to protect dissenters in the early 1900s. She posits that, to understand how the modern free speech guarantee ultimately prevailed, we need first to understand the change in attitude among the advocates and litigants who chose to pursue their free speech agenda in the courts. In surveying those early advocates and litigants, she examines the evolution of attitudes of (among others) the progressive American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative American Bar Association, and how those organizations influenced the development of free speech doctrine between 1920 and 1950. This historical analysis provides important context, as it shines a useful light on the non-judicial actors who influenced the first 30 years of The Free Speech Century.



Part Two analyzes Major Critiques and Controversial Areas of First Amendment Jurisprudence, and includes chapters written by Floyd Abrams, Lawrence Lessig, Robert Post, David Strauss, Catherine MacKinnon and Cass Sunstein.



The most evocative of these is Citizens United: Predictions and Reality, by Floyd Abrams. This chapter analyzes the controversial 2010 case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court applied broad first amendment protection to political speech, holding that corporations (and, implicitly, unions) could not be limited in their expenditure of money used to advocate the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office. In Citizens United, Abrams, the preeminent first amendment litigator and scholar, argued on behalf of the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who asserted that limitations on corporate spending were unconstitutional.



Abrams points out that those who favored limitations on corporate spending in federal elections repeatedly predicted that, if such limitations were eliminated, a new era in corporate spending would dominate election outcomes. According to Abrams, this prediction was erroneous. Utilizing records of the Federal Election Commission through the 2016 election cycle, Abrams argues persuasively that the fears expressed about corporate dominance of the political process as a result of Citizens United were not only overstated but also simply unsupportable. To prove his point, Abrams demonstrates that the total amount of money donated by individuals and labor unions to super PACS was over twelve times higher than the total amount donated by corporations.



In recent years, the issue of whether outside speakers should be permitted to deliver speeches on college campuses is a recurring controversy, one that President Donald Trump has promised to remedy with an executive order. In addressing this issue, Robert Post contends that universities are not public fora. According to Post, speaker invitations should be justified by the universitys twin missions of research and education, and that universities betray their fiduciary responsibilities to the extent they expend resources on speakers who fail to serve these missions. As such, content and viewpoint discrimination, as well as judgments of value, are acceptable in universities, so long as they serve educational and research purposes.



Part Three discusses The International Implications of the First Amendment, with chapters written by Albie Sachs, Tom Ginsburg, and Sarah Cleveland.



Writing about the first-ness of the first amendment, Sachs, a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court, discusses how the American first amendment influenced the concept of free speech under the new democracy led by Nelson Mandela. One telling insight comes from a 1994 discussion Sachs had with Justice Frank Jacobucci of the Canadian Supreme Court, who explained to the South African that American judges consider the government to be the foe that needed to be guarded against, not the friend that had to be prevented from taking the wrong steps.



Part Four covers New Technologies and the First Amendment of the Future, and includes chapters written by Emily Bell, Monika Bickert and Tim Wu. This portion discusses the ways in which technology companies have failed as publishers, examines the defining boundaries of free speech on social media and explores whether the scarceness of the attention of listeners in an age of information overload has rendered the first amendment obsolete. In analyzing the drastic changes wrought by technology companies and social media on the dissemination of information over the past 20 years, these chapters raise questions about the future relevance of and the challenges to the free speech guarantee.



The Free Speech Century has been bookended by government attacks on its critics. Mindful of the admonition of Justice William O. Douglas, who observed that restriction of thought and speech is the most dangerous of all subversions, this excellent book takes stock of the free speech guarantee as it enters its second century. In the words of editor Bollinger, when the sovereignty resides in the citizenry, then there can be no place for the State to tell the people what they can and cannot say or hear.



Jeffrey M. Winn is an attorney with the Chubb Group, a global insurer, and serves as the secretary to, and a member of, the executive committee of the New York City Bar Association.
HELSINKI, March 19 (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Tuesday he would prefer to give the United Kingdom more time on Brexit than to end up with an unwanted no-deal scenario.

"If more time is needed, it's always better to do another round than a no-deal Brexit," Maas told a news conference he gave together with the Finnish and Swedish foreign ministers and Denmark's state secretary for foreign policy in Helsinki. (Reporting by Anne Kauranen; Editing by Catherine Evans)
By John O'Donnell and Arno Schuetze

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German lawmakers on Monday criticized deputy finance minister Joerg Kukies and Goldman Sachs, alleging a conflict of interest in the U.S. investment bank advising state-backed Commerzbank on a possible merger with Deutsche Bank.

Kukies, who was formerly co-head of Goldman Sachs in Germany, left the Wall Street firm a year ago to become deputy German finance minister.

Kukies has since advocated a merger between Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, which unions warn could mean up to 30,000 job cuts, people familiar with the matter say.

Goldman Sachs is advising Commerzbank on the $28 billion plus deal deliberations, people familiar with the matter said.

"It's a conflict of interest," Fabio De Masi, a prominent leftist lawmaker in the German parliament, said, pointing to the state's 15 percent stake in Commerzbank.

A spokesman for Kukies told Reuters there was no conflict of interest and that he had worked in the trading department at Goldman Sachs, which was "strictly separated" from bankers who advised on mergers.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

"In his 17 years at Goldman Sachs, Joerg Kukies exclusively worked for the sales and trading sector with no responsibility for the advisory/mergers and acquisitions section," the spokesman for Kukies said.

Although confirmation of merger talks between Germany's two largest banks, following months of speculation, has boosted their share prices, it has also triggered opposition and concerns over the impact on employment.

The issue is a highly emotive one in Germany and in its Tuesday edition, top-selling tabloid newspaper Bild raised a question mark over Kukie's future in the government.

"When 30,000 jobs are on the line, the government must avoid the impression of a conflict of interest," De Masi added.

This was echoed by Danyal Bayaz, a German parliamentarian and finance expert from the countrys Green party.

"In the financial crisis, we saw that government and finance were too interconnected. Ten years later, we don't want to have the same. We want a strict separation from politics and industry," Bayaz said.

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"It is important to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest," he added.

(This story removes extraneous words from first paragraph)

(Writing by John O'Donnell; Editing by Alexander Smith)
Investing.com  A closely-watched measure of Germanys economic mood improved to a one-year high in March, but concerns over the health of the euro zone's largest economy lingered after the government's council of economic advisors slashed their growth forecast for this year.

The ZEW Center for Economic Research said that its index of German economic sentiment rose to -3.6 points this month from a reading of -13.4 in February, above analysts' expectations for a rise to -11 points.

But any relief was tempered by comments from Germany's so-called "5 sages", who cut their forecast for German growth this year to only 0.8%, from an estimate of 1.5% in November. They cited temporary problems with key sectors such as chemicals and autos, weak demand from key export markets and capacity constraints at home.

Even so, domestic demand, helped by the construction sector and public-sector spending, is still strong enough to ensure that the country doesn't fall into recession, the council's chairman Christoph Schmidt said in a statement.

The German economy narrowly avoided a recession at the end of last year, as Brexit woes and global trade tensions with the U.S. weighed on it. Business confidence has also lagged, hitting its weakest level in five years in February, according to the Ifo research institute.

ZEW's report, meanwhile, hinted at a bottoming out in the short term.

The significant increase in the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment shows that major economic risks are considered to be less dramatic than before," ZEW President Achim Wambach said in a press release. "The possible delay in the Brexit process as well as the renewed hope for a deal on the UKs withdrawal from the EU seem to have given rise to more optimism among financial market experts."

ZEW's Current Conditions Index fell to 11.1 from 15.0, compared to expectations for a reading of 11.7.

An index level above 0.0 notionally indicates optimism, whereas a level below 0.0 indicates pessimism. In reality, the ZEW index is more useful as a gauge of turning points in the economic mood, rather than as a measure of absolute levels.

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Germanys central bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, is concerned that smaller companies are not prepared for the U.K.s exit from the European Union later this month, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. Many companies rely on London for derivatives clearing and currency swaps. Shifting such activities to other cities in Europe is a slow process and even if Brexit is postponed, companies arent prepared, according to the FT.

Germany's trade with the U.K. amounts to around 120 billion euros ($136 billion) a year, according to the BDI industry association. A recent survey found that nearly a quarter of German companies expect to lay workers off in the event of a no-deal Brexit. BDI President Joachim Lang said in February that a disorderly Brexit could take at least half a percentage point off gross domestic product growth this year.

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(Bloomberg) -- Golden Gate Ventures is teaming with South Koreas Hanwha Asset Management Co. to raise $200 million to fund technology startups across Southeast Asia, people familiar with the matter said.

The pair have already secured about $80 million of commitments from investors for the envisioned vehicle, which will target the series B capital raising rounds of consumer tech platforms around the region, the people said, asking not to be named because they arent authorized to discuss details publicly.

The latest fund underscores a more active role by Seoul-based Hanwha Asset, which has $80 billion under management. It invested more passively in the past via Singapore-based venture capital houses. Founded in 2011, Golden Gate Ventures has backed Southeast Asian startups including classifieds app Carousell, Jakarta-based health care platform Alodokter, car marketplace Carro and peer-to-peer lending service Funding Societies.

To contact the reporters on this story: Yoolim Lee in Singapore at yoolim@bloomberg.net;Sohee Kim in Seoul at skim847@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Robert Fenner

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Singapore-based Golden Gate Ventures said Tuesday it is teaming up with South Korea's Hanwha Asset Management to invest in growing technology start-ups in Southeast Asia.

A source familiar with the matter said the firms are looking to raise around $200 million in funds and already have about $80 million worth of commitments from investors.

Golden Gate Ventures declined to comment on the amount of funds it was looking to raise with Hanwha.

Singapore -based Golden Gate Ventures said Tuesday it is teaming up with South Korean asset manager Hanwha Asset Management to invest in technology start-ups in Southeast Asia .

The firms are looking to raise around $200 million in funds and already have about $80 million worth of commitments from investors, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Both Golden Gate Ventures and Hanwha Asset Management declined to comment on the goal for the fund's size or on how much had been committed so far.

In a press release, however, the companies said investments will focus on start-ups that are raising funds in the so-called Series B round  at that stage, start-ups have moved past the early development phase, achieved a few important initial milestones, and are looking for financing to grow their businesses to meet user demands.

Start-ups in Southeast Asia receive fewer investments during Series B funding than their counterparts in the U.K. and the United States, according to Golden Gate Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund in the region.

"Just like there was a Seed-stage gap in 2013 that closed by 2015, then a Series A gap in 2015 that closed by 2017, now there's a Series B gap that started in 2018," Vinnie Lauria, a founding partner at Golden Gate Ventures, told CNBC by email.

Seed and Series A refer to early-stage fundraising efforts from new start-ups.

A 2018 report from the Singapore Venture Capital & Private Equity Association revealed that less than a third of early stage-funded companies in Southeast Asia successfully raised Series B financing. In the U.S. and the U.K., around of half of them secured Series B funding by the end of 2017.

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Lauria explained the emergence of widely successful start-ups in Southeast Asia in recent years, including ride-hailing giant Grab, its rival Go-Jek, e-commerce platform Tokopedia and travel booking site Traveloka, has turned the region into an attractive choice for global investors, including large private equity funds from the U.S.

But those investors prefer to finance larger, more established start-ups because they are perceived to be less risky, according to Lauria. "Their funds are so big, writing a $15 million check is like the average person making a $15 investment," he added.

Other investors have reportedly said a lack of high-quality start-ups contribute to the funding crunch at the Series B stage.

Last year, global investment firm KKR poured about 200 million Singapore dollars (roughly $148 million) into Southeast Asian real estate portal PropertyGuru during a late-stage funding round.

Southeast Asia is a lucrative opportunity for investors because of its potential  a commonly cited study from Google and Singapore's Temasek Holdings predicted the region's internet economy will exceed $240 billion by 2025 as affordable mobile internet drives rapid growth in sectors such as e-commerce and ride-hailing.

Golden Gate Ventures and Hanwha, which has $80 billion in assets under management, predict there would be between 80 to 110 Series B investment opportunities available over the next two years and that number could potentially double within four years.

"We are looking to invest into start-ups targeting Southeast Asian markets and raising Series B financing of $15-30 million," Lauria said.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that KKR invested about 200 million Singapore dollars (roughly $148 million) into Southeast Asian real estate portal PropertyGuru.





More From CNBC


NAIROBI, March 19 (Reuters) - Gunmen in Ethiopia have shot and killed five workers from a mining company in the restive west on Tuesday, residents said, with a TV station reporting two foreigners among the dead.

The unidentified attackers struck near Nedjo town, about 500 km (310 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa in the Oromiya region where several conflicts simmer, the inhabitants told Reuters.

State-affiliated Fana Broadcasting said on Twitter three Ethiopians and two foreign nationals had died in the incident early on Tuesday. It did not give their countries.

The huge region is home to Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, the Oromo, and has at least four separate conflicts in addition to a border dispute constantly threatening violence.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, himself an Oromo, has overseen a series of major political and economic changes since coming to office in April 2018 - making peace with arch-foe Eritrea, freeing political prisoners, pledging to open up the state-controlled economy and promising to overhaul security services.

But the reforms have not stopped ethnically-charged violence - including in his own native region.

Ethiopia's Oromo, who make up about a third of the population, have long complained of being marginalized during decades of authoritarian rule by governments led by politicians from other smaller ethnic groups. In recent years the Oromo have been angered by what they see as encroachment on their land.

It was unclear which mining company was involved in Tuesday's incident.

Among companies operating in Ethiopia are MIDROC Gold Mine Plc owned by Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi, which has operated an open-cast mine in the Guji zone of Oromia region for more than two decades.

Its licence was suspended last year after weeks of protests by locals who accused the mine of polluting their water and the atmosphere.

Others are Newmont Mining, which is prospecting for gold, while Norwegian fertiliser maker Yara International plans to build a potash mine and a fertiliser factory. (Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Elias Biryabarema and Andrew Cawthorne)
Workers unload oil palm fruits in a state-owned crude palm oil processing unit in North Sumatra Workers unload oil palm fruits in a state-owned crude palm oil processing unit in North Sumatra May 29, 2012. REUTERS/Tarmizy Harva/Files

By Rajendra Jadhav

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's palm oil imports in 2018/19 are likely to jump a tenth from a year earlier to a record high, as a sharp fall in the prices made the tropical oil more attractive for buyers than rival soyoil and sunflower oil, industry officials told Reuters.

Higher purchases by the world's biggest edible oil importer could support palm oil prices that are trading near their lowest level in three months.

"Palm oil imports are going to rise in the coming months. At current price level, it is very competitive compared to soyoil and sunflower oil," said Govindbhai Patel, managing director of trading firm G.G. Patel & Nikhil Research Company.

The country's palm oil imports in the 2018/19 marketing year that started on Nov.1 could jump 10.3 percent from the previous year to 9.6 million tonnes, he said.

Palm oil's discount to rival soyoil has widened to over $200 per tonne from $133 in March 2018, according to data compiled by the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA), a Mumbai-based trade body.

Malaysian palm oil futures fell to 2,038 ringgit ($499.82) a tonne on Friday, the lowest in three months, due to weak demand and ample supplies.

India's sunflower oil imports are likely to remain largely steady around 2.5 million tonnes, but soyoil imports could fall slightly from last year's 3.05 million tonnes as local supplies have increased, Patel said.

Soybean production in 2018/19 is estimated to have risen 38 percent from a year ago to 11.5 million tonnes, according to the Soybean Processors Association of India.

India primarily imports palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia and soyoil from Argentina and Brazil. It also buys small volumes of sunflower oil from Ukraine and canola oil from Canada.

Palm prices are attractive but refiners are not making money due to lower refining margins, said B.V. Mehta, executive director of the SEA.

"Refiners are gatekeepers. As they are earning less from palm oil refining, they are not aggressively importing despite lower prices," Mehta said.

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The import duty difference between crude and refined palm oil halved to 5 percent for supplies from Malaysia after India changed the duty structure.

"The lower duty difference is prompting some traders to import refined palm oil instead of crude," said a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trading firm, adding the country's imports of refined palm oil could jump a third from a year ago to 2.8 million tonnes in the current marketing year.

"The winter is nearly over. As palm is cheaper and temperature is rising, refiners will step up imports," he said.

In winter months, household palm oil consumption falls in India as the tropical oil solidifies at lower temperature.

($1 = 4.0775 ringgit)

(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Two of the biggest index fund providers, Vanguard Group and BlackRock, have been more vocal in recent years on the subject of corporate responsibility.

As two of the world's largest asset-management companies, with more than $11 trillion invested on behalf of fund shareholders, they also are among the largest shareholders of stocks in the world.

A recent analysis of their proxy voting records on climate change shows them to be among the worst in the fund industry, but they are not alone. T. Rowe Price Group, Putnam Investment and Dimensional Fund Advisors also were among the bottom tier of fund companies.

Climate change questions don't get more fundamental than this one: How much time is left to act before it is too late?

Right now the difficulty of answering that question is showing up in a place where many individuals are heavily invested in getting the answer right: The index funds responsible for meeting millions of Americans personal financial goals, from saving for a house, to a child's education, and a secure retirement.

Before he died, Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle said one of the biggest issues the index fund would face in the future is its societal influence. Specifically, he meant the need to vote proxies on complex issues such as sustainability at annual meetings held by every publicly traded company and on behalf of so many individual fund shareholders.

BlackRock BLK , the world's largest asset manager, and Vanguard Group, the creator of the index fund, manage more than $11 trillion combined. Just in ETFs, they manage roughly $2.5 trillion. And their market influence continues to grow: Vanguard has attracted roughly $1 trillion in the past three years alone.

"Larger mutual funds companies, like Vanguard, Fidelity, BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors STT , can move the market," said Mindy Lubber, CEO and president of Ceres, a nonprofit organization that works with big investors and companies on sustainability. "They can take a shareholder resolution from 10 percent to 40 percent."

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In 2017 both companies voted to require ExxonMobil XOM to produce a report on climate change, a watershed moment showing what can occur when index funds punch their weight in proxy voting.

Yet shareholder advocates say there have not been nearly enough of those ExxonMobil vote moments.

Big funds in the bottom quartile

A data analysis released by Ceres in early March shows that when BlackRock and Vanguard are measured on their up-or-down votes on climate change resolutions at stockholder annual meetings, they have among the worst voting records in the fund industry.

Rob Berridge, director of shareholder engagement at Ceres, said when the group ran the numbers on 2018 proxy voting, there was plenty of reason for encouragement, just not among the biggest fund companies.

"The overall trends are positive," Berridge said. "More firms are above 50 percent for resolutions.

"The surprise is that the biggest firms aren't among those above 50 percent," he added. "Index funds are the ultimate long-term diversified investors, and it is in their interest to ask companies to address climate.

"They need ExxonMobil to be in business in 50 years."

Many are not even close to the 50 percent mark.

Among 48 large fund companies that Ceres included in its review of up-or-down votes on climate-related shareholder proposals, Vanguard finished 42nd (voting for climate proposals 12 percent of the time), and BlackRock finished 43rd (voting in favor of these resolutions 10 percent of the time). T. Rowe Price Group TROW , Putnam Investments and financial advisor favorite Dimensional Fund Advisors were all below BlackRock and Vanguard.

"It is unfortunate that the biggest firms are at the bottom of the list," Lubber said. "When they vote proxies, as they did on Exxon, the votes changed substantially and the conversations do get started, at least."

Fund companies say proxy votes aren't everything

The fund companies can't argue with the data, but they do argue with placing all the importance on proxy votes. Both BlackRock and Vanguard are among the companies with corporate stewardship departments that focus on engagement with corporations on issues from climate change to executive pay and human rights.

A Vanguard spokeswoman said that its Investment Stewardship team views voting proxies as one piece of a broader engagement strategy that also includes discussion with company boards and management and advocating on behalf of all shareholders.

"A vote against a shareholder proposal does not always indicate we disagree with the broader issue. ... As near-permanent investors intently focused on the long term, we engage with companies over the course of years, not weeks or months."

Vanguard pointed to its Investment Stewardship report , which listed engagements with more than 700 portfolio companies, 200 of which are involved in carbon-intensive industries.

BlackRock declined to comment, referring questions to its published materials, which include its approach to corporate stewardship , its most recent stewardship annual report discussing climate change and a full voting history that includes a list of companies with which it engages .

But here's the problem: Disclosure of a proxy vote is black and white; disclosure of ongoing engagement is not.

Shareholder advocates say these lists may be long in the number of companies engaged, but fund shareholders don't know who specifically was engaged at the companies and what policy changes were offered as a result of the fund companies' efforts.

Wide gap in progress between big funds over three years

Jackie Cook, a specialist in corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure analysis and founder of FundVotes, which was acquired last year by Morningstar MORN , said the "engagement first, voting later" rationale doesn't add up, because there is no reason why these companies can't do both. And the engagements suffer from a lack of transparency. "There is no standard disclosure structure," Cook said. "No one shows any granularity to the engagement. ... We want more transparency from the fund managers."

A broad data set that Cook has compiled over the past three years  the Ceres report is based on her analysis but uses a more narrow definition for climate-related proposals  shows that in 2016 neither Vanguard nor BlackRock voted in favor of any climate change proposal. In 2017 they voted in favor of 4 percent. State Street Global Advisors, by contrast, voted for 38 percent of climate proposals in 2016 and 45 percent last year. Fidelity Investments went from voting in favor of no climate change proposals in 2016 to voting in favor of 45 percent last year.

The fund companies counter with what amounts to a catch-22: They can't talk more openly about their engagement, because the nature of engagement precludes them from doing so.

"We believe that Vanguard and portfolio companies need to have candid, direct dialogue, so we don't publicly disclose specific details about particular engagements," the Vanguard spokeswoman said.

A report Cook published for Morningstar last Friday found something else disappointing. Socially responsible funds specifically created by these managers to target issues such as climate change don't always vote in support of climate resolutions, either. The BlackRock Impact U.S. Equity (BIRAX) voted against three greenhouse-gas and climate change shareholder proposals in 2018, including two that called for greater greenhouse-gas disclosure from oil and gas companies Chevron CVX and Range Resources RRC .

The FundVotes' analysis found that environmental, social and governance funds from Vanguard, Fidelity Investments and TIAA-CREF, among others, cast a number of votes that seemingly conflict with an ESG mandate, including funds specifically aimed at the environment.

"The main reason to have oil and gas companies in an 'impact fund' should be to improve the climate-related performance. ... Proxy voting is an obvious, simple way to do that," Berridge said.

Funds do need to go beyond proxy voting and engage with these companies as part of their impact investing mandate, but he said, "Voting in conflict with an ESG mandate should raise red flags, above and beyond the red flags associated with not voting for these resolutions in a non-ESG fund."

The first climate change bankruptcy

Tim Smith, director of ESG shareowner engagement at Walden Asset Management, which has specialized in socially responsible investing and shareholder advocacy for decades, said there is a disconnect between BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's words on corporate stewardship and his firm's actions.

"Larry talks about being deeply concerned and how he understands climate change, but the voting record is still backward-looking. They can argue they are engaging with management, but you don't end up voting only 10 percent of the time against management when you are engaging with this."

Another thing that BlackRock and Vanguard have not done, even as they point to weakness in shareholder proposals as a reason for voting against them: offer their own shareholder proposals on issues such as climate change.

For shareholder advocates, there simply isn't enough time to debate the relative merits of long-term dialogue versus the annual proxy voting power: Climate change is a material risk to corporate value today. Lubber pointed to a market event that recently occurred but not long ago would have been unthinkable: a highly regulated, "safe" utility company, PG&E PCG'A , going bankrupt as a result of unprecedented California wildfire liabilities. "Two years ago people would have said that was unreasonable, an absurd proposition."

"We need to see progress  material progress," Lubber said. "Having 2,000 or 5,000 engagements that nobody knows what is happening doesn't reflect the urgency of the problem. Given the dialogue that Larry Fink has put out in the public domain, his lofty, thoughtful quarterly letters, one would expect to see more consistency in their voting of proxies. Larry has said these issues matter, but there is only one way for them to matter."

The proxy season is just beginning across corporate America, and climate-related proposals are again expected to be a major push among shareholder advocates. According to an analysis of proxies from shareholder advocate As You Sow that was released last Tuesday , climate change and corporate political influence spending are the top investor concerns in about half the proposals filed so far.

In an annual letter line from 2017 that has been quoted often , Fink wrote that BlackRock is patient on behalf of its long-term investors, but that does not mean it is "infinitely patient," and there does come a time to vote against management when long-term value is at risk.

"I respect the pressure that their voice as world's largest money manager brings. It is quite significant and should not be dismissed. ... But they still need to up their game, because the situation is urgent," Smith said. "We don't have a calm five- year waiting period."





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LONDON (AP)  The Latest on Britain's exit from the European Union (all times local):

4:25 p.m.

The European Union's Brexit negotiator says Prime Minister Theresa May must explain to EU leaders this week exactly why she wants an extension to the Brexit deadline beyond March 29.

Michel Barnier said Tuesday that "the question is: what is the point? What is the objective of that extension? That will determine the length, or explain the duration."

After talks with EU ministers to prepare Thursday's Brexit summit, Barnier said that any U.K. demand for a long extension "must be linked to something new, a new event, or a new political process."

He says that the draft agreement sealed between EU leaders and May in November remains the only deal possible.

Barnier warned of the danger that Britain might crash out of the EU without a deal, saying "everyone should now finalize preparations for a no-deal scenario."

___

11:10 a.m.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says Brexit is in a state of flux and that European Union leaders will "try to react" to whatever British Prime Minister Theresa May proposes on Brexit at an EU summit this week.

Merkel said in Berlin: "We will watch very attentively how the British government reacts to what was said yesterday in Parliament and then deal with the situation. I cannot evaluate what it will be on Thursday  much too much is in flux."

The British government appears to be preparing to ask the EU for a long extension to the country's departure date of March 29, after the House of Commons speaker ruled the government cannot keep asking lawmakers to vote on the same divorce deal they have already rejected twice.

Merkel said: "I'll concede that I wasn't actively aware of the British Parliament's rules of procedure from the 17th century, so I took note of this with interest yesterday."

___

10:45 a.m.

For all the talk of Brexit uncertainty weighing on the British economy, the country continues to post sizeable declines in unemployment.

The Office for National Statistics said employment in Britain rose by 222,000 in the three months to January, compared to the previous quarter. That took the employment rate up to a record 76.1 percent.

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Meanwhile, the country's unemployment rate declined to 3.9 percent. That's the first time it has fallen below 4 percent since early 1975.

James Knightley, chief international economist at ING, said the figures are "stunningly strong" and suggest that business in Britain "must still be seeing healthy demand to have the confidence to hire workers in such numbers."

Wages are also on the up, with average weekly earnings excluding bonuses 3.4 percent higher than the previous year.

The figures counter much of the economic news of recent weeks, with increasing signs of Brexit uncertainty harming the economy, notably business investment.

___

9:55 a.m.

France's European affairs minister, Nathalie Loiseau, says Britain must make up its mind about its future in the EU or it risks crashing out of the bloc by default on March 29.

Loiseau said U.K. lawmakers "have said no to a 'no-deal' and they have said no to a realistic deal. They have to change their mind on one of the two options."

Meeting with EU counterparts to prepare this week's Brexit summit, she said "if there is no decision, the date of March 29 comes and then it's a 'no-deal.' For the British to decide nothing is to decide on a 'no-deal'."

Summing up the growing European fatigue with two years of protracted negotiations, Loiseau said: "You have to have a sense of humor when you deal with Brexit right now."

She added: "We have goodwill but we also have other issues to deal with and we have citizens and companies and the uncertainty is unbearable for them."

___

9:20 a.m.

Germany's European affairs minister, Michael Roth, says Brexit is not a game and that the EU is worn out by two years of tortuous and interminable negotiations over Britain's departure from the bloc.

Speaking at a meeting with his EU counterparts to prepare a leaders' summit this week, Roth said "we are really exhausted by these negotiations."

Roth said: "I expect clear and precise proposals of the British government."

He told reporters that "it's not just a game. It's an extremely serious situation, not just for the people in the United Kingdom but also for the people in the European Union."

Roth underlined that Germany stands by the deal the EU agreed with British Prime Minister Theresa May in November and "it's the key priority to prevent a no-deal Brexit."

Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29 but following the failure of lawmakers to back her withdrawal agreement, May is expected to ask leaders at the summit for an extension to the country's departure date.

___

9:15 a.m.

The European Union's presidency thinks a series of developments over recent days have made it more difficult to predict what might happen at this week's summit of EU leaders, at which British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to request a delay to Britain's departure date from the bloc.

Romania's European affairs minister, George Ciamba, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said "the biggest issue right now is that it's getting more foggy."

His comments come a day after John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons, ruled out a new vote on May's Brexit deal unless there are substantive changes. May was trying to win support from opponents who have voted against her deal on two occasions previously.

Ciamba said "we need to have more clarity from London. Clearly, there is no clarity."

EU leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday to weigh whether to grant Britain an extension on beyond March 29, and if so, for how long.

___

8:50 a.m.

The British government is considering its response to the ruling of the speaker of the House of Commons that Prime Minister Theresa May cannot keep asking lawmakers to vote on the same European Union divorce deal they have already rejected twice.

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told Sky News Tuesday that the Cabinet would give "serious consideration" to John Bercow's decision that the government could not bring the deal back for a third vote without substantial changes. May has been lobbying opponents in preparation for another vote on her plan.

Barclay says the government needs "to look at the details of the ruling."

"The fact that a number of members of Parliament have said that they will change their votes points to the fact that there are things that are different."

___

Follow AP's full coverage of Brexit at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit
An employee tends to a medical cannabis plants. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen

London-listed natural resources company Highlands (HNR.L) is getting into cannabis after making a surprising discovery.

Highlands exclusively told Yahoo Finance UK that during the summer of 2018, the company discovered a naturally occurring source of nitrogen, which was subsequently found to also include hydrogen. The combination created a natural and organic fertiliser. Highlands then began selling this gas to an organic cannabis grower in Colorado.

It was then discovered that the gas essentially turbocharged the growth of cannabis plants.

Pleasingly, the gas mixture increased plant size, height, root diameter, and flower count by up to 30%, surpassing expectations, Highlands told Yahoo Finance UK.

This has led to the groups decision to move into weed by raising more than 1.27m ($1.69m) to establish an organic, vertically integrated cannabidiol (CBD) operation in Colorado, through a newly established and wholly-owned Highlands subsidiary, Zoetic Organics.

The new operation enables Highlands to grow the cannabis resources, process them, and turn them into end products that Zoetic Organics will sell. Those products, including organic hemp oil, retail bottled tinctures, CBD-infused chewing pouches, and pre-rolled smokables, will be distributed through wholesale and retail channels.

Zoetic Organics provides us with a compelling opportunity to enter the rapidly growing CBD market at low cost and to secure the value that our large, rare, and valuable gas discovery creates for organic agricultural operations for shareholders, said Robert Price, executive chairman and CEO of Highlands.

Our immediate priority is to advance the discussions currently underway with potential retail and wholesale partners, purchase manufacturing equipment, and expand our outdoor growing, ahead of our intended harvest of our first 10,000 hemp plants by mid-2019. Beyond this we will expand our harvest and expand our product range.

Highlands intends to grow approximately 40,000 hemp plants per annum in a 33,000 square feet greenhouse  with a minimum anticipated harvest of three times per year. The group will also be able to grow hemp outside on this land and plans to plant 20 acres this year, equating to around 50,000 hemp plants. Highlands is set to expand their operations to 100 acres in 2020.

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The group reiterated that operating at full capacity in 2020 could see the business harvest approximately 290,000 hemp plants next year.

Market research firm Brightfield Group has estimated that the CBD market will reach $22bn (16.6bn) by 2022. Price said that Highlands intends to generate revenue and profits during the course of 2019.

Highlands will target a yield of 12 grams of CBD per indoor plant and 30 grams of CBD per outdoor plant. Estimated wholesale prices are $3 per gram although the Board believes sales made direct to retail channels could be at a premium of over five times this, the group told Yahoo Finance UK.

Highlands said that it intends shortly to announce a proposed offer for subscription via PrimaryBid for new or existing retail investors that may want a slice of the action.

The extra PrimaryBid offer is expected to be announced on Tuesday, 19 March, and remain open until 9pm local time on 19 March, 2019.

Highlands called this investment opportunity a low-cost entry into a rapidly growing market  growing hemp in Colorado for CBD sales in that state is legal, and certain CBD products are legal both in the USA and the UK  subject to legal and regulatory compliance.
1. Yes. The Schlueter Group has extensive experience and contacts. Its a good investment.

2. Yes. The firms namesake has a background as a legislator and knows Killeen well.

3. No. The expenditure is a waste of money. Our lawmakers should be doing that work.

4. No. The contract should be shorter, incentivized and based on performance benchmarks.

5. Unsure. Its not always easy to quantify the outcomes of lobbying efforts.

Vote

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(Adds details, response by North Korean diplomat)

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, March 19 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. arms control official said on Tuesday the only way for North Korea to achieve security and development is to abandon all of its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes.

The Hanoi summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un last month broke down over differences about U.S. demands for Pyongyang to denuclearise, as well as Pyongyang's demand for major relief from international sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile tests, which it pursued for years in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

"North Korea must understand that the only way to achieve the security and development that it seeks is to abandon all of its weapons of mass destruction, all of its ballistic missile programmes as numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions demand," said Yleem Poblete, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.

Poblete, addressing the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, also urged countries to halt any weapons or military cooperation with North Korea.

"You are violating U.N. Security Council resolutions that explicitly prohibit such transfers," she said without naming names.

North Korea is considering suspending talks with the United States and may rethink a freeze on missile and nuclear tests unless Washington makes concessions, a senior Pyongyang diplomat said last week, according to news reports from Pyongyang.

On Tuesday, a North Korean diplomat said there was no justification for maintaining full sanctions on Pyongyang given that it has halted nuclear and missile testing for the past 15 months.

Ju Yong Chol said that U.S.-North Korean differences should be tackled one-by-one in a phased way to build trust.

"Instead, they came up with the preposterous argument that sanctions relief is impossible prior to denuclearisation," Ju told the Geneva forum. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay Editing by Mark Heinrich)
(Bloomberg) -- Netflix Inc. Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings confirmed that his company wont be participating in Apple Inc.s new streaming platform, reflecting new competition between the Silicon Valley giants.

We want to have people watch our content on our service, he said at a press conference on Monday. Weve chosen not to integrate into their service.

Apple plans to introduce the video-streaming service on March 25, opening up a new battlefront for the tech industry and Hollywood. The idea is to combine original content with programming from partners, including HBO and Starz.

Apple has played a neutral role in the fight for eyeballs online, opting to distribute shows, apps and movies from all major companies. But it now wants to sell the service that people use to watch TV as well.

Weve always had massive competitors, Hastings said. Weve been competing with Amazon in video streaming. These are amazing, large, well-funded companies with very significant efforts. But you do your best job when you have great competitors.

Given that Apples service -- at least at launch -- will be heavily reliant on outside suppliers to fill up its content library, there had been some discussion that the company might partner with Netflix to some degree. But Bloomberg News reported last week that Netflix wont be part of the service.

Apple will announce the streaming initiative alongside other new products, including a magazine subscription bundle, at the event in Cupertino, California. The company declined to comment on Hastingss comments.

Netflix has previously shunned integration with Apples television application on iPhones, iPads and Apple TV boxes, which aggregates video content from several providers. The company also recently stopped allowing Apple users to subscribe via the App Store billing feature, retaining the 30 percent cut that previously went to Apple.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lucas Shaw in Los Angeles at lshaw31@bloomberg.net;Mark Gurman in San Francisco at mgurman1@bloomberg.net

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To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
TechnipFMC's (FTI) total backlog at the end of the first quarter is $17,777.6 million, reflecting year-over-year growth of 27%.

It was a week where oil prices rose to its highest since mid-November, while natural gas futures dropped.

On the news front, offshore driller Transocean Ltd. RIG clinched twin contracts from Petrobras, while Italian energy major Eni SpA E announced a major oil find in Angola.

Overall, it was a mixed week for the sector. While West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures gained 4.4% to close at $58.52 per barrel, natural gas prices lost 2.4% to $2.795 per million Btu (MMBtu). (See the last Oil & Gas Stock Roundup here: Big Oil's Strategy Updates, Conoco's Venezuela Win & More)

The U.S. crude benchmark rallied to four-month highs, after government data showed a surprise draw in crude inventories and a pullback in production from record levels. Oil was also pushed up by the so-called OPEC+ deal that is cutting production by around 1.2 million barrels per day until the end of June. U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and Iran continue to tighten the oil further.

However, natural gas prices dropped on smaller-than-expected decrease in supplies and forecasts of warmer weather, which might lead to the heating fuels tepid demand.

Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories

1. Transocean recently clinched twin contracts for its ultra-deepwater rigs from the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras PBR. Post the announcement, shares of the offshore drilling powerhouse rose 6.54%.

Notably, the company secured contracts for two of its drillships, namely Mykonos and Corcovado, which was acquired as part of Ocean Rig buyout in December 2018. Both the rigs are set to commence operations offshore Brazil in November 2019. The deal further cements the companys relationship with Petrobras, in turn boosting revenues.

Importantly, the estimated backlog for 629-day Corcovado contract is $123 million, reflecting a dayrate of $195,548. The projected value for 550-day Mykonos award is $118 million, depicting a dayrate of $214,545. The Mykonos and Corcovado awards include priced options for 815 days and 680 days, respectively. (Read more Transocean Secures Twin Contracts Worth $241M From Petrobras)

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2. Eni SpA made an important oil discovery in Block 15/06 in the Agogo exploration prospect, located in Angolas deep water. The find is estimated to hold light oil in place in the range of 450-650 million barrels with expected further upside potential.

The Agogo-1 NFW well, which led to the discovery, is located about 180 kilometers off the coast and about 20 kilometers west from the NGoma FPSO (West Hub). Following Kalimba and Afoxe, Agogo represents the third find of commercial nature since the partners of Block 15/06 decided to begin an exploration campaign in 2018.

In another announcement, the company stated that it has inked a farm out agreement with Qatar Petroleum. Per the terms, Qatar Petroleum will acquire a stake of 30% in Tarfaya Offshore Shallow Petroleum Agreement, which involves 12 exploration blocks in the offshore of Morocco.

Located in the southern part of the Moroccan offshore shallow waters, the Tarfaya Area lies in water depth of about 1,000 meters and is spread across an area of about 23,900 square kilometers. (Read more Eni Strikes Oil in Angola, Sells Stake in Tarfaya Area)

3. Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.A and its partners in the major LNG Canada project intend to decide within 2025 whether to boost its capacity via doubling it, per Reuters. Shell, which carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), is building the LNG export terminal on the west coast of the country. The facility is located in Kitimat, British Columbia.

You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Currently, production capacity at the facility is expected at 14 million tons per annum from the first two trains, while first export is anticipated to occur in 2025. The second phase is expected to add two more trains and increase its capacity to 28 million tons. A final investment decision on the second phase is expected before the first phase comes online. Notably, the facility has the potential to include two more trains after the second phase.

The project, wherein Shell actively worked its way to lower costs and take advantage of the tax breaks announced by the government of British Columbia, is expected to cash in on the improving energy landscape and booming global demand for liquefied natural gas, especially in the growing markets of Asia.

Moreover, the exporting facility is strategically situated in a prime location, which provides a shipping route that is around 50% shorter than the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, while avoiding the Panama Canal. The project will liquify and carry the gas from Montney and other fields to the Asian markets. (Read more Shell to Decide on LNG Canada 2nd Phase By 2025)

4. EQM Midstream Partners, LP EQM announced its decision to purchase controlling stakes in two key pipelines that are connecting major natural gas producing shale plays like Utica and Marcellus. For the transaction with Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, EQM Midstream is willing to pay $1.03 billion  comprising cash consideration of $860 million and $170 million of debt assumption. The agreement, which is awaiting customary regulatory and several closing conditions, is likely to get consummated on or around Apr 15, 2019.

As part of the accord, EQM Midstream decided to acquire entire stake in Hornet Midstream Holdings and 60% interest in Eureka Midstream Holdings. Notably, Eureka Midstream is a gathering pipeline network, spreading across 190 miles in West Virginia and Ohio that provides midstream services to prolific shale resources like Marcellus and Utica. The Hornet Midstream, linking the Eureka Midstream pipeline, is a high-pressure gathering network that covers roughly 15 miles in West Virginia.

There is an increasing demand for fresh pipeline networks in the Appalachian Basin  comprising Marcellus and Utica shale plays. This is because these regions are facing pipeline bottlenecks, owing to surge in production of natural gas volume in the past several years. (Read more Can EQM Midstream Gain From $1B Pipeline Asset Purchase?)

5. Despite being scarred by a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal and huge debt burden, it seems that Petrobras committed efforts to improve operational efficiency and financials are paying off well. Shares of the Brazilian oil giant moved up 5.94%, after the company approved its Resilience Plan (from 2019 to 2023) to maximize its shareholders value.

Per the plan, Petrobras plans to slash operating expenses by $8.1 billion for its five-year plan through 2023. The original estimate for the same was $122.6 billion. The cost control will be aided by layoffs, lower advertisement/sponsorship costs, digital transformation and other practices.

The state-owned company plans to expand its divestment plan of $26.9 billion to further trim its debt load, streamline portfolio and sharpen its focus on other profitable segments for achieving top-tier results. As such, Petrobras will be jettisoning more non-core downstream and midstream assets, along with stakes in some mature oil and gas fields.

While the company is pursuing aggressive divestment and cost containment initiatives, its investment program for the five-year period ending 2023 remains unchanged, with the only exception being the postponement of the installation of fifth production platform at the Buzios pre-salt field by a year to 2022. (Read more Petrobras to Cut Costs and Rev Up Divestments to Deleverage)

Price Performance

The following table shows the price movement of some the major oil and gas players over the past week and during the last 6 months.

Company Last Week Last 6 Months XOM +1.4% -4.2% CVX +3% +5.3% COP +3.3% -10.5% OXY +4.4% -15.6% SLB +2.7% -29.2% RIG +11.2% -23.2% VLO +6.7% -20.9% MPC +5.1% -22.9%

In line with the weeks positive oil market sentiment, the Energy Select Sector SPDR  a popular way to track energy companies  generated a +3.3% return last week. The best performer was offshore driller Transocean whose stock jumped 11.2%.

But longer-term, over six months, the sector tracker is down 11.6%. Oilfield service biggie Schlumberger SLB was the major loser during this period, experiencing a 29.2% price decline.

Whats Next in the Energy World?

As usual, market participants will be closely tracking the regular releases i.e. the U.S. government statistics on oil and natural gas - one of the few solid indicators that comes out regularly. Energy traders will also be focusing on the Baker Hughes data on rig count.

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019

In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?

Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.

See Latest Stocks Today >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



Petroleo Brasileiro S.A.- Petrobras (PBR) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Schlumberger Limited (SLB) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Eni SpA (E) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDS.A) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Transocean Ltd. (RIG) : Free Stock Analysis Report



EQT Midstream Partners, LP (EQM) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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ROME (Reuters) - Potential bidders for troubled Italian lender Carige are in touch with the European Central Bank ahead of an April 15 deadline to submit possible offers, a source close to the matter said on Monday.

The ECB appointed three temporary administrators on Jan. 2 to run Italy's 10th-largest bank and asked them to find a buyer to stave off the risk of state intervention.

Under an emergency decree approved in January, Italy's government can spend up to 1 billion euros by September to buy new Carige shares.

The bank has said it needs to raise 630 million euros (539.4 million pounds) in capital after reporting a 2018 loss of 273 million euros.

The source said there were a handful of investors interested in Carige but declined to name them. Some of the bidders, which are either investment funds or rival banks, are only interested in specific assets, the source said.

However, a second source close to the matter said there were only two bidders and both were private equity funds.

The ECB declined to comment.

Various sources have said that U.S. funds Varde Partners and Apollo Global Management are among potential bidders for Carige, which has 3.5 billion euros in bad loans.

Some of the sources have said BlackRock might also be interested. The Italian press has also mentioned British fund Attestor, although sources have said it is less keen.

Carige declined to comment while the funds were either not available for comment or had no comment.

Back in 2016, Apollo had offered to buy Carige's bad debt and fill the ensuing capital shortfall by taking a majority stake in the bank. The offer was rejected.

Apollo has bought Carige's insurance units, whose products are distributed through the bank's network.

(Reporting by Stefano Bernabei and Andrea Mandala, writing by Valentina Za, Editing by Catherine Evans)
Puma Biotechnology, Inc. PBYI announced that the regulatory body in Australia has granted a marketing approval to its kinase inhibitor, Nerlynx (neratinib). The drug is approved as an extended adjuvant treatment of HER2-positive early stage breast cancer in adult patients, previously treated with Roches RHHBY Herceptin-based adjuvant therapy.

Notably, Pumas Australian licensing partner Specialised Therapeutics Asia (STA) has received the marketing authorization from Australias Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

Meanwhile, STA has submitted a regulatory application in Singapore to get Nerlynx approved for the same indication. The same also plans to file regulatory petitions in South East Asia including Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and Thailand for getting Nerlynx approved.

Shares of Puma were up 7.8% following this news on Monday. In fact, so far this year, the stock has skyrocketed 108.2%, significantly outperforming the industrys increase of 15.6%.

The above approval was based on data from the phase III ExteNET study, which evaluated Nerlynx following Herceptin-based adjuvant treatment in women. Results from the evaluation demonstrated that patients treated with Nerlynx achieved a 34% reduction in the risk of invasive disease recurrence or death compared with placebo after patients completed a year of Nerlynx regimenfollowing a Hereceptin-based treatment.

Additional five-year data shows that Nerlynx lowers the risk of invasive disease relapse or death by 42% in women afflicted with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer. Following the nod, Nerlynx became the first anti-HER2 treatment to be approved in Australia.

We would like to remind investors that Nerlynx was approved in the United States during July 2017. Sales of the drug have improved steadily since its launch and were above managements expectations last year. For 2018, Nerlynx generated sales of $200.5 million, slightly higher than managements guided range of $175-$200 million. The medicine was approved in the EU last September.

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In a separate press release, Puma announced updated interim results from the ongoing phase II SUMMIT basket study on Nerlynx for treating patients, suffering HER2 mutated cervical cancer. The data was presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2019 annual meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The study evaluated the safety and efficacy of Nerlynx as a monotherapy in 11 patients with advanced/metastatic cervical cancer. The median progression free survival was 7 months.

Outcomes from the program showed that treatment with Nerlynx led to durable responses and disease control in metastatic patients, down with HER2-mutant cervical cancer.

Zacks Rank & Other Key Picks

Puma currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Other top-ranked stocks in the biotech sector include Celgene Corp. CELG and Trevena, Inc. TRVN, both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Celgenes earnings estimates have moved 3.8% north for 2019 and 3.9% for 2020 over the past 60 days. The stock has surged 37.3% so far this year.

Trevenas loss per share estimates have been narrowed 40.3% for 2019 and 68.5% for 2020 in the last 60 days. The stock has skyrocketed 288.4% year to date.

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019

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Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.

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FILE PHOTO: A man speaks on his mobile phone as he walks past a closed shop painted with an advertisement of Reliance Communications in Mumbai, India, January 29, 2018. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade/File Photo

By Sankalp Phartiyal and Krishna V Kurup

MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Ambani brothers, whose public feud over control of the Reliance empire after their father's death in 2002 led to a split in the conglomerate, may have taken a major step to a more harmonious relationship on Monday.

India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, who controls oil-to-telecoms powerhouse Reliance Industries that is now worth many times the troubled business group run by his younger brother Anil, appears to have offered some kind of support to ensure Anil paid off a 5.5 billion rupees debt.

That was owed to Swedish telecom equipment company Ericsson and had been run up by his telecoms group Reliance Communications. If Anil didn't pay the debt, then he had been threatened by India's Supreme Court with a prison term.

The nature of the backing and how it was delivered is unclear, but in a statement Anil Ambani thanked his billionaire brother "for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to our strong family values by extending this timely support".

In that same short statement, Reliance Communications said the requisite payment had been made to Ericsson to comply with an Indian Supreme Court judgement.

The development may mark a watershed moment in the relationship between the two brothers, who carved their separate businesses in 2005 with Mukesh Ambani getting the oil and petrochemicals business and Anil winning control of power, telecoms and financial services.

The feud for the control of the business began between the two brothers after their father Dhirubhai Ambani, a schoolteacher's son and founder of the Reliance empire, died in July 2002.

Peace was finally brokered by their homemaker mother Kokilaben in 2005, in a deal that split the Reliance business.

Like other Indian telecoms firms, Reliance Communications (RCom) was hit by a fierce price war following the entry of Mukesh Ambani's telecom upstart Jio, which offered free voice and cut-price data plans. Once India's second-biggest phone carrier, RCom shut down its mobile business late in 2017.

India's Supreme Court had ordered Anil Ambani and two RCom directors to pay Ericsson within four weeks or face a three-month jail term for contempt of court.

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The court had found RCom's chairman guilty of contempt of court for failing to pay the Swedish company.

RCom had also planned to sell airwaves and mobile masts to Jio, and real estate to other buyers for 181 billion rupees ($2.64 billion) in a bid to shore up its finances. But RCom said the airwaves deal had been called off by "mutual consent" due to objections from India's telecom department and more than 40 of the company's foreign and domestic lenders.

Ericsson said RCom paid it dues of 4.62 billion rupees, the balance of funds that it was owed. RCom had already deposited 1.18 billion rupees due to Ericsson with the Supreme Court in February.

The Swedish firm approached the court in 2018 over the unpaid dues from a deal it had signed in 2014 to manage and operate RCom's network.

(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal and Krishna V Kurup; Additional reporting by Arnab Paul; Editing by Louise Heavens and Mark Potter)
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sage (SGE.L), the market leader in cloud business management solutions, today announced that Sage Business Cloud has been recognized as First Place Winner for the Best Financial Software/ERP in Canada category at the 2018 Reseller Choice Awards. Sage Business Cloud is the only cloud platform that businesses will ever need throughout their journey. It offers a powerful set of cloud solutions ranging from small business accounting to advanced financial, people and enterprise management software.



The annual Reseller Choice Awards invite Canadian channel partners to vote for their favorite vendors and distributors. This years ceremony took place in Toronto and saw Canadian channel partners from across the country casting votes for more than 600 nominees in over 70 categories.

The channel partners vote of confidence in Sage at the 2018 Reseller Choice Awards serves as a particularly strong testament to Sage Intacct, Sage 300cloud, Sage People and Sage Business Cloud Enterprise Managementbusiness management solutions that partners support as part of the Sage Business Cloud platform.

We are incredibly honoured to be named Best Financial Software/ERP solution by the Canadian Reseller community," said Nancy Teixeira, Vice President of Enterprise and Partner Group for Sage Canada. The Reseller Choice Award attests to the value Sage brings to partners in providing solutions that fully address customers' business management needs, and also reaffirms our commitment to providing customers as well as partners with the tools they need to grow their businesses."

For more information and to see the full list of the winners, visit: https://e-channelnews.com/the-2018-reseller-choice-award-winners-for-canada-are/ .

Media contact:

Betty Tian

Sage

Office: 604-207-3611

Betty.Tian@Sage.com

Additional resources:

Like Sage on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/Sage/

Follow Sage on Twitter  http://www.twitter.com/SageNAmerica

Follow Sage News http://www.sage.com/company/news-and-events

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About Sage
- President Donald Trump wants the U.S. to reduce dependence on foreign sources of critical mineral commodities that are vital to the nation's security and economic prosperity. A new executive order has made this a priority, and it could help certain domestic mining and resource companies in a big way.

- Lithium is one of the critical minerals, which makes sense as this key metal is barely mined in the U.S. despite the potential for very promising reserves. Public lithium and other metals companies are poised to benefit as Trump takes action.

- Oroplata Resources (ORRP) is making headway on a major mineral claim in Nevada, where they're about to conduct their first exploratory well drilling for lithium and battery metal extraction. Railroad Valley closely matches the geologic criteria for the United States Geological Survey deposit model for Clayton Valley, a region just over 100 miles away that's home to the first producing lithium mine in the U.S., the Silver Peak mine. As they approach some big events, ORRP could be a name to know in 2019.

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / It went unnoticed in the mainstream, but President Trump made a major step towards bringing amulti-billion industry to the US doorstep. In signing Executive Order 13817, Trump made domestic production of critical minerals a top priority in order to reduce our reliance on foreign sources. [1] The West Wing likely has elevated concerns over America's reliance on China and Russia for many of the raw minerals needed to produce key technologies.

Lithium is one of these critical minerals, and for good reason: the U.S. produced only 3% of the world's lithium supply in 2015 according to Deutsche Bank, and there's only one major mine of consequence in Nevada, owner by mega-producer Albemarle (ALB).

Lithium production and extraction is a huge global business every year thanks to the demand for lithium-ion batteries everywhere. The rise of electric vehicles is expected to grow that demand. We don't know exactly how Trump will incentivize U.S. producers, but this executive order could help to usher in a new wave of miners in the U.S. who are pursuing lithium and battery minerals. That could create unique investment opportunities, and some small-caps stand out as a result.

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Lithium Batteries Worth $60B In A Few Years?

Lithium is the lightest metal and an excellent conductor, making the lithium ion batteries in cell phones, laptops, and of course new electric vehicles the ability to recharge more often with more energy per weight or volume than most other batteries.

The increasing use of lithium ion batteries in automotive applications has made the upcoming electric vehicle industry the biggest influencer of lithium production and demand. For illustration, Bloomberg has written that electric vehicles use more than 10,000 times more lithium than a phone. Tesla (TSLA) expects to be producing 7,000 of their newer mass-market Model 3 per week in 2019, or almost 400,000 each year, and they're already delivering about 100,000 of their higher-end cars each year. The market for lithium-ion batteries is expected to reach $60 billion by 2024.

Lithium comes from two main sources: brine and hard rock. Brine deposits are found in underground salt lakes or aquifers, and lithium is extracted through an evaporation process. It is the simpler extraction method compared to hard rock, and makes up more of the current production.

Unfortunately, the U.S. doesn't do much of their own lithium extraction. There's only one active commercial lithium mine in the U.S., a brine mine in Silver Peak Nevada operated by one of the largest lithium producers in the world, Albemarle (ALB). But up-and-comers are making strides to set up extraction operationsjust like Trump wants.

The time is right as lithium demand from battery-makers alone is expected to almost double by 2027, according to Roskill.

LithiumOre Could Step In As A Top New Player

There's a wide open void for American-produced lithium, and only a few small companies are making headway with mining projects. LithiumOre looks promising. The company is a subsidiary of the publicly traded Oroplata Resources (ORRP) and holds 1,300 lithium mineral claims, totaling 26,000 acres, in Railroad Valley of Nye County, Nevada. Railroad Valley is approximately 112 miles northeast of Clayton Valley, where Albemarle is mining lithium. The company owns 120 acres in the area with water rights that could provide for stationary refinement facilities.

LithiumOre has made Railroad Valley a top priority considering the potential for lithium and other battery metals to be locked underground based on their early exploration work. The companys drilling partner and immediate neighbor, a company called 3PL, has sampled the region's pool after their first drill hole, and 3PL CEO Vince Ramirez has said that he estimates 30billion barrels of brine are locked up underground.

According to a recent press release, LithiumOre's early studies suggest that Railroad valley brines may contain multiple battery minerals: ''Presence potassium, sodium, magnesium, manganese and zinc, besides lithium, especially in the form of sulfates or carbonates may tremendously enhances the value minerals. For example, the value of potassium sulfate or carbonate may be 3-5 times higher than corresponding potassium chloride salt.'' The details corespond with their recent name change announcement to American Battery Metals Corp.

Interestingly, Oroplata/LithiumOre recently added a Panasonic Automotive executive to their advisory board. Hakan Kostepen is the executive director for strategy and innovation at Panasonic's automotive systems unit, which makes this an intriguing addition considering that Panasonic (PCRFY) is a major lithium battery producer, and of course user in their consumer products. This kind of tie-up could be a major vote of confidence from an industry expert: Panasonic is a key partner for Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory.

What's Next For LithiumOre?

Oroplata/LithiumOre has some big events coming that could help to validate their plans at Railroad Valley. They'll be drilling their first sole exploratory and production well in April, and results from testing the brine pool will follow. Second, they're planning a geophysical survey to help qualify exactly what's underground at Railroad Valley.

For a $25 million market capitalization company, their fortunes could change dramatically within a few months. We've seen government initiatives affect industries before. Cannabis could be a parallel, where state legalization and federal in Canada has ushered in dozens of public market wins, like Innovative Industrial Properties Inc (IIPR) or CannTrust (CTST)(TRST.TO). Trump's executive order gives the government some possible teeth, and as ORRP prepares to do their first drill this could be a top lithium contender in 2019.

About One Equity Stocks

One Equity Stocks is a provider of paid-for research on publicly traded emerging growth companies. This is an advertisement. We are not a licensed broker-dealer and do not publish investment advice and remind readers that investing, especially in penny stocks, involves considerable risk. One Equity Stocks encourages all readers to carefully review the SEC filings of any issuers we cover and consult with an investment professional before making any investment decisions. One Equity Stocks is a for-profit business and is typically compensated for coverage of issuers we cover as well as other advisory work we perform. Although we always strive to be objective and present the facts, you should assume we are biased because of the financial relationship we have with companies we write about. One Equity Stocks and affiliates and/or partners have had an advisory relationship with ORRP since December of 2017 and have received 3,500,000 restricted shares of ORRP for various advisory services including this advertisement. We may buy or sell stock in the future, and if so are unable to update this disclosure. We may receive additional compensation in the future. Please contact us at info@investorclick.net for additional information or to subscribe to our intelligence service.

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The US-China trade war has roiled markets and hit the US economy by $7.8bn (5.8bn), according to a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

After accounting for higher tariff revenue and gains to domestic producers from higher prices, the aggregate welfare loss was $7.8bn (0.04% of GDP), the study found. The NBER paper was co-written by researchers at prestigious US universities UCLA, UC Berkeley, Columbia, and Yale.

Researchers added that annual consumer and producer losses from higher costs of imports were $68.8bn (0.37% of GDP).

Since July last year, US President Donald Trump has followed through on threats of extra tariffs on China, kickstarting a trade war with the country. The US has already slapped around $250bn worth of tariffs on Chinese products and the Trump administration has said it will ramp them up.

Chinese president Xi Jinping meets US President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters

This has led to months of negotiations between the two countries. The Trump administration has since postponed a planned increase of China tariffs from 10% to 25%, which was originally scheduled for 1 March. A key meeting between Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping has reportedly been postponed to at least April this year.

The findings from the NBER come a day after pro-trade advocacy group Tariffs Hurt the Heartland showed that trade wars cost consumers $20bn and US exporters $16bn, using data commissioned from market research firm Trade Partnership Worldwide.

When Yahoo Finance UK spoke to a raft of executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year, the worlds most powerful people said that the US-China trade is the biggest threat to the global economy.




March 19 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Tuesday approved Venture Global LNG Inc's request to proceed with full site preparation at its proposed $4.5 billion Calcasieu Pass liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Louisiana:

* Calcasieu Pass is designed to produce about 10 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG, or about 1.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas. One billion cubic feet is enough gas to fuel about 5 million U.S. homes for a day.

* Calcasieu Pass is one of dozens of LNG export terminals that developers are seeking to build in the United States, Canada and Mexico over the next decade to meet growing global demand for the fuel.

* The United States, which was a net importer of LNG before shipping its first cargo from the lower 48 states in February 2016, became the third biggest exporter of the super-cooled fuel by capacity in 2018, behind Australia and Qatar.

* Looking at only the plants currently under construction, U.S. LNG export capacity is expected to rise to 9.0 bcfd by the end of 2019 and 10.4 bcfd in 2020 from 5.2 bcfd now.

* Venture Global, which is also developing the 20-MTPA Plaquemines LNG export facility in Louisiana, said it expects Calcasieu Pass to enter service in 2022 and the $8.5 billion Plaquemines in 2023.

* Venture Global said it has secured 20-year off take agreements with units of UK-Dutch oil major Royal Dutch Shell PLC, UK oil major BP PLC, Italian energy company Edison SpA, Portuguese energy company Galp Energia SGPS SA, Spanish energy company Repsol SA and Polish oil and gas company Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo SA (PGNiG).

* Venture Global, which has a goal of building a 60-MTPA LNG business, said its liquefaction systems will use technology from General Electric Co's Baker Hughes unit.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino Editing by Tom Brown)
U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen

U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen



U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen in Atlanta answers questions about his judicial career and how he reached the bench. He worked in the state attorney general's office for Georgia Gov. Zell Miller and Troutman Sanders before being nominated in 2014 by President Barack Obama.



What prompted you to become a lawyer? I grew up in South Florida, and my father (who was not an attorney) used to take me to see hearings and trials in the Dade County Courthouse because of his respect for the practice of law. That, and seeing Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird," certainly contributed to my desire to become a lawyer.



What prompted you to seek a job on the bench? The desire to return to the public sector and use my experience as a 35-year practitioner to be the type of judge who effectively and efficiently manages litigation while not getting in the way of (good) lawyers arguing their own cases.



What do you like most about being a judge? The privilege of resolving disputes and dispensing justice makes me proud every morning when I walk into the federal courthouse. I love my job and the men and women I get to work with every day.



What keeps you up at night? A sentencing that is scheduled for the next day or one that may have occurred earlier that same day. The toughest role for any judge is deciding what an appropriate sentence is for a particular criminal defendant. The ability to deprive someone of their freedom is a sobering responsibility, and it should always be the most difficult thing any judge has to do. While I am comfortable with my decision-making process and the time it takes me to get to a final result, there still are instances where I struggle with the outcome. That said, if this ever gets too easy for me, it's probably time to do something else.



What are your pet peeves in briefs, arguments and trial practice? At the top of the list are lawyers who refuse to consent to requests for reasonable extensions of time because "my client told me not to consent to the extension." Part of being an attorney is managing one's own clients and telling them that some disputes do not rise to the level of requiring court assistance. It also is stunning how many lawyers fail to read the Local Rules or the judge's Standing Order setting forth the procedure for litigating cases in that court. Finally, attorneys increasingly are trying to seal way too many documents that are filed in civil cases. The docket is presumed to be public and, when protection is sought, redactions should be limited to personal or confidential information that is authorized to be sealed.



How do you see your role, if any, in encouraging civil settlements or plea bargains? I don't actively encourage either. Of course, with respect to criminal cases, Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure bars a federal judge's participation in plea discussions, and I believe it would be an appearance of impropriety for me even to encourage such discussions. With respect to civil cases, I don't encourage settlement, although I will advise parties of the option to mediate the case with one of our magistrate judges.



When I was a practicing attorney, I did not take kindly to a trial judge "encouraging" (which sometimes meant brow-beating) the lawyers to settle a case. Sitting now as a trial judge, I take the view is that it's not my case; It's the parties' case and the parties' ultimate decision whether it should be settled. On rare occasions, I have called in both parties and attorneys to a hearing when it appears to me that personal animus has impeded the litigation. My purpose in those situations is to make sure the parties themselves know how the case is proceeding, what will occur at a trial and what other options may be available. This often succeeds in reducing the level of rancor and getting the parties to consult with one another, which can lead to a settlement.



Do disputes over discovery look different from the bench as opposed to when you were advocating for a client? Absolutely. I must have lived a charmed existence in my practice of law, because I do not recall having the number and intensity of civil discovery disputes that are present in my court. Come to think of it, the term "civil discovery" has become an oxymoron. If I could mandate one change in the practice of law, it would be to ban the use of e-mail communication between civil practitioners. The days of actually calling someone to discuss an issue (or, better yet, actually meeting with opposing counsel in someone's office) apparently have gone the way of the slide rule.



I prohibit motions to compel discovery and, instead, manage discovery disputes via teleconference with the affected lawyers. I am able to resolve these disputes more than 95 percent of the time. It's not that I am particularly wise; it's just that I get lawyers to talk to each other in lieu of tossing e-mail and text bombs back and forth. "Civility" is a concept that needs to be re-discovered in the legal profession, as well as in life, in my humble opinion.



What characteristics do successful advocates before you share? Being well-prepared, addressing legal issues in a thorough and concise fashion, and maintaining professionalism with both the court and one's adversaries. At trial, making the most objections doesn't win over the judge or the jury. Even when an objection may have technical merit, a lawyer should first ask, "did the testimony hurt my case?" If the answer is no, then staying firmly planted in your chair is often the best approach.



What trial judge would you like to emulate and why? I am fortunate to serve with some excellent judges, but one who always stood as a model for me is Harold Murphy. If I had to define the term, "judicial temperament" for a legal dictionary, I would just insert Judge Murphy's photograph. During his unparalleled judicial career, he has been a shining example for how lawyers and litigants should be treated in a courtroom and how jurists should determine cases pending before them.



We understand that growing up in South Florida you became a bit of a space junkie. What interested you in the space program, and what do you think of the shift from government-run to privately-run space travel?



Oh, if I could only have been an astronaut. I followed the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs with fervor and went to several launches. The space program united not only all Americans but people all over the world. It fulfilled President Kennedy's vision and provided President Nixon with one of his most memorable statements when speaking to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin after they set foot on the moon: "For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one." Wish we could hear and feel that today. I'm saddened that the government has pretty much abandoned the space program. People forget that much of the technology we take for granted today had its origins in the development of space travel. I understand there is a cost and potential danger, but humans have been explorers throughout history, and I sincerely hope we join as a nation in exploring that frontier again.
Dover Fueling Solutions (DFS) has been awarded a five-year global contract with EG Group, which operates as Euro Garages in the UK, for the provision of its ClearView and

Fairbanks wetstock management services.

Sites within the EG Group global network  including those in Germany, the USA, Australia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy - will receive real-time monitoring and advanced wetstock investigation services, designed to help businesses lower operational costs and improve profit margins, while keeping them legally and environmentally compliant.

EG Group will benefit from fuel loss identification services, determining losses caused by a variety of factors, including leakage, delivery shortages, spillage and evaporation, theft, fraud and meter drift. They will also have access to the Fairbanks Station Manager online web portal, which centralizes data from across the network, giving users greater insight into stock levels, pump and nozzle activity and alarm notifications, as well as access to many detailed reports which help to maintain forecourt efficiency and availability.

The contract engages DFS as EG Groups global wetstock management partner for their current estate, but also for sites and networks they acquire during the term of the contract. EG Group already has a strong presence in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, the USA and Australia and has grown significantly in recent years building a global network of around 4,700 sites.

The contract is a significant success for DFS: "We are confident that the wet-stock management services from DFS will truly benefit the EG Group network," said Guy Bickerstaffe, EGs group director of development. Having a third-party monitoring service take care of our wetstock management gives us peace of mind, leaving us safe in the knowledge that even the smallest instances of fuel loss dont go unnoticed. Its a real cost-saving investment for us, with the added benefit of protecting the environment from the detrimental effects of leaks to ground.

Andy Sullivan, business global wetstock business unit director, DFS, said: This contract builds upon the strong customer-centric focus that DFS has exercised whilet delivering its service to EG Group sites in the UK over the past eight years, resulting in a strong business relationship that both parties were keen to expand upon. DFS looks forward to continuing to nurture this partnership as the EG Group network grows.

DFS is part of Dover Corporation that delivers advanced fuel dispensing equipment, electronic systems and payment, fleet systems, automatic tank gauging and wetstock management.
By Juliet Nalwooga.

Police has vowed to hold accountable any official who will be found to be behind the World Program food Poisoning scandal in Amudat and Napak district if it is established that the food had poisonous bacteria.

The Red Cross society has so far confirmed the death four people while 100 victims have been discharged from Lotome health center three.

Addressing journalists at the police headquarters in Naguru, the police spokesperson Fred Enanga said they have already sent samples of blood, Urine and food leftovers of six survivors to the government analytical laboratory for examination.

Enanga adds that they are yet to establish whether the entire food donation from Turkey was affected.

World Food program has since suspended food distribution in the region with the body working with Ugandan authorities to establish the cause of the suspected food poisoning.
A senior U.S. diplomat has told Afghanistan's president that U.S. officials will no longer deal with his national security adviser, Reuters news agency reports, citing four knowledgeable U.S. and Afghan sources.



The report published on March 18 said the diplomat told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the United States was ending contacts with Hamdullah Mohib, who serves as Ghani's national security adviser.



The State Department declined to comment, and a representative of the Afghan Embassy in Washington could not be reached for comment.



Mohib in a Washington news conference on March 14 accused the U.S. special envoy to his country, Zalmay Khalilzad, of "delegitimizing" the Kabul government by excluding it from peace negotiations with the Taliban and acting like a "viceroy."



He added that Khalilzad had "his own personal history -- he has ambitions in Afghanistan. He was wanting to run for president twice."



Khalilzad is leading the U.S. negotiating team in talks with Taliban militants in Qatar as Washington attempts to bring an end to the long war in Afghanistan.



Many Afghan officials have been upset by their exclusion from the talks, as the Taliban has refused to talk directly to the Kabul government, claiming it is a puppet of the West.



A U.S. move to end contacts with Mohib would likely increase Kabul's anger about being left out of the negotiations.



According to the Reuters report, the day after Mohib made his comments, David Hale -- the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs -- told Ghani by phone that Mohib would no longer be received in Washington and that U.S. civilian and military officials would not do business with him.



"Hale called Ghani and told him that Mohib is no longer welcome in D.C. The U.S. will not deal with him in Kabul or in D.C. any more," said a former senior Afghan official who requested anonymity.



The former official said he saw the move as an effort to pressure Ghani to fire Mohib.



In mid-February, a planned meeting between Taliban negotiators and Pakistani officials in Islamabad was called off after Afghanistan issued a protest to the UN Security Council over the talks.



In a letter to the Security Council seen by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, the Afghan UN mission wrote that the Taliban-Pakistan meeting "constitutes a violation of the national sovereignty of Afghanistan."



"These engagements, which are taking place under the pretext of support for peace efforts in Afghanistan, are void of any degree of coordination and consultation with the government of Afghanistan," it said.

With reporting by Reuters, RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, and The Washington Post
The kids are in for a treat this summer.

PAW Patrol Live! The Great Pirate Adventure will stop by Pikes Peak Center on Aug. 24-25. Tickets start at $19 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, March 29. Call 520-7469 or go online to pikes peakcenter.com or axs.com.

PAW Patrol, an animated preschool series on Nick Jr.  a programming block on Nickelodeon  features six rescue dogs led by a boy named Ryder. In the interactive The Great Pirate Adventure, PAW Patrol must rescue a sea captain whos on the hunt for secret pirate treasure. Audience members will learn pirate lingo, the pirate boogie and help the pups solve puzzles.
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Starting at The Denver Post before a decade at The New York Times, Alex Berenson left journalism to launch his fiction career, bursting onto the scene with The Faithful Spy. Inspired by his war correspondence, his first mystery thriller was a bestseller.

He continued with a popular series. Honestly, I was getting paid very well to write those books, he says from his Hudson Valley, N.Y., home. Its funny when people accuse me of doing this for the money. I get paid a lot more to write fiction than to write nonfiction.

But this is something I feel I need to do. Thats why Im doing it.

By this, Berenson means his deep dive back into nonfiction. As for accusations, he has faced many since Januarys release of Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence.

The Nation and Rolling Stone called the book fear-mongering and trolling, respectively. Vox wrote it off as an exercise in cherry-picking data and presenting correlation as causation. But The Marshall Project, the nonpartisan investigative reporting center, deemed it an intensively researched and passionate dissent from the now prevailing view that marijuana is relatively harmless.

Berenson also was blasted in an open letter by 75 scholars and clinicians for irresponsibly and dangerously claim(ing) a causal link between marijuana use and increases in rates of psychosis and schizophrenia.

Which is all disappointing to Berenson, who will state his case in Colorado Springs and Denver this week during talks sponsored by The Gazette, Colorado Politics and Childrens Hospital Colorado.

IF YOU GO Alex Berenson will be in Colorado Springs and Denver this week to talk about his latest book, "Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence."  Noon to 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at Springs' Warehouse Restaurant, 25 West Cimarron St.  6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, 2201 East Dry Creek Road, free and open to public  Noon to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in Denver at the History Colorado Center at 1200 North Broadway

The opioid epidemic has come in the profiting wake of companies such as Purdue Pharma, and now a for-profit community has sprung up for the use of marijuana, Berenson says. Fellow journalists should be asking harder questions, he says. Its crazy to me that that hasnt happened.

He expected the criticism but not the personal attacks  the suggestions to get his kids high and the harassing calls to his wife, a forensic psychiatrist. It was her repeated mentions of marijuana in violent cases that made Berenson curious in the first place. He previously considered himself a libertarian on pot, having smoked a handful of times in college and after, he says. I didnt particularly care about it one way or another.

He expected controversy before he even typed the prologue, which establishes the book as an argument and, in his words, not balanced. Berensons stance is further announced by the title, a nod to Reefer Madness. (The early propaganda film originally was called Tell Your Children.)

Yes, Berenson knew users wouldnt appreciate his book.

People have a really strange attachment to this drug, he says. I think most people who use alcohol, if theyre using it every day and certainly if theyre using it all day every day, theyre going to acknowledge, you know what, maybe I have a little problem with this.

And by the way, if youre using cocaine or heroine or methamphetamine like that, youre not even gonna tell people. But cannabis people are proud to tell you they wake and bake.

Berenson, a 1994 Yale graduate, cites a 2017 study by the National Academy of Medicine that said cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk. In a New Yorker piece stirred by Berensons findings and titled Is Marijuana as Safe as We Think?, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that the committees statement was one of its few unequivocal conclusions.

But committee member Ziva Cooper took to Twitter in January to say we did NOT conclude that cannabis causes schizophrenia. She wrote that since the report, we now know that genetic risk for schizophrenia predicts cannabis use and that cannabidiol improves outcomes in patients with schizophrenia.

Berenson has stood by his reporting. After his wife switched the light bulb in 2016, he went to London to meet with concerned psychiatrists at Kings College, among scientists around the world he interviewed. He pulled records from several states and nations. He came to the Colorado prison holding Richard Kirk to talk at length with the man who blamed a marijuana edible for shooting and killing his wife in 2014.

Berenson says he could have reported longer. But my feeling was, I dont need to do that, I dont need to reinvent the wheel here, because science is really clear. And this is a really important issue for public health ... Its more important that I get it out.
City Editor

Tom Roeder is the Gazette's City Editor. In Colorado Springs since 2003, Tom has covered the military at home and overseas and has covered statehouses in Denver and Olympia, Wash. His main job, though, is being dad to two great kids.
By Ruth Anderah.

Senior superintendent of Police Nixon Agasirwe has denied ordering the issuance of an AK 47 machine gun to a one Sowali Ngobi who was arrested alongside boda boda 2010 patron Abdullah Kitatta.

Agasirwe who has been a defence witness has shocked court when he repeatedly emphasized it that as he was still the commandant of Special operations in Uganda Police he only ordered for the issuance of a Star Pistol to Ngobi Sowali but didnt do anything beyond that as Ngobi had told court earlier.

During cross examination by the state prosecutor Lt col Raphael Mugisha Agasirwe said that he didnt put in writing his order to the armory man who issued out the said pistol.

However this morning Agasirwe accepted giving Karata guards and guns on orders of General Kale Kayihura the IGP by then, although he couldnt prove it to court by any written proof since he claims that it was through a verbal communication.

Now the matter has been adjourned to March 25th when more defense witnesses who include Old Kampala Police Armory man, Vinetea Hotel manager and Allan Matsiko who was a second guard to Kitatta.

Kitata and 9 others are facing six counts of unlawful possession of firearms, unlawful possession of military stores and failure to protect war materials allegedly committed in January 2018.

The offences attracts a maximum sentence of death upon conviction.

Related Stories.

Kitatta denies being a member of Bodaboda 2010
A 21-year-old Colorado Springs man was completely sane when he stabbed his 5-year-old sister and 7-year-old brother to death in October 2017, a judge said Monday in disclosing results of a state psychiatric evaluation.

The findings of Malik Murphys sanity review were made public in court Monday, marking a hurdle in his attorneys plans to convince a jury he is not guilty by reason of insanity. No trial date has been set.

Under Colorado law, Murphys public defenders are entitled to a second sanity evaluation by a private expert, and 4{sup}th{/sup} Judicial District Judge G. David Miller approved their request for one during a brief hearing.

The second evaluation is poised to add at least three months of delays.

An update will be given when Murphy returns to court May 20, the judge ruled.

No other details of Murphys evaluation were released, and all records were filed under seal, consistent with privacy protections.

The sanity findings represent the latest wrinkle for the defenses attempts to call into question Murphys mental state during the October 2017 stabbing spree that killed brother Noah, 7, and sister Sophia, 5, and wounded their father, Jefferson Vinny Murphy, who wrestled his son to the floor and held him until police responded.

In a Colorado Springs police interrogation room, Murphy said he planned to kill his entire family and bury them in the backyard, authorities said.

In October, Miller ruled Murphy competent to stand trial after evaluations by the state hospital and a privately retained expert agreed that Murphy could understand the charges against him and assist in his defense.

The separate sanity evaluation looked at whether Murphy knew what he was doing during the crimes, and whether he understood the difference between right and wrong. People found not guilty by reason of insanity are not imprisoned; they are confined for indefinite treatment to a state psychiatric facility.

Even if a second evaluation concludes that Murphy was sane during the attacks, his attorneys can dispute his sanity at trial, said longtime Colorado Springs criminal defense attorney Phil Dubois, who isnt affiliated with the case.

Prosecutors could introduce the state sanity evaluation at trial, forcing defense attorneys to present competing experts or even lay witnesses who could attest to Murphys diminished capacity, Dubois said.

They will be facing a rough, uphill fight, he said.

Dubois said the goal would be to persuade the panel that Murphy didnt intend to commit the crimes, in hopes of getting a lesser conviction than first-degree murder, which carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole.

Second-degree murder convictions would require proof that Murphy knowingly attacked his siblings and father, a lower legal standard.

Murphy is being held without bond at the El Paso County jail, records show.
Robert Francis Beto ORourke is the Democratic front-runner today because he stands for nothing.
Colorado voters are evenly divided over a law that would hand the state's Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who wins the 
By Prossy kisakye.

Kawempe division mayor Dr Emmanuel Serunjogi has expressed disappointment with parliament for approving the 1.3 trillion shilling loan for construction of a specialized hospital in Lubowa, Wakiso District.

Parliament last week passed the loan which will be given to an investor to construct the hospital government says will be for treatment of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs).

Serunjogi says government should instead concentrate on rehabilitating the existing hospitals in the country other than borrowing such a huge amount for a private investor.

President Museveni addressing the NRM parliamentary Caucus in Kyankwanzi last week applauded the members for passing the loan .
5G - The Future Is About To Arrive



Mark J. Grant







Summary





The new 5G network promises blazing speeds, massive throughput capability, and ultra-low latencies and makes "the existing communication model obsolete."



This is critically important to understand for investors.



I still do not believe that many people and institutions know just how important this new technology is going to be in a wide variety of sectors.





Let me be explicitly clear. The new 5G network that is most assuredly beaming itself our way makes "the existing communication model obsolete." This is critically important to understand for investors.



The 5th generation of cellular connectivity promises blazing speeds, massive throughput capability, and ultra-low latencies. While I have written about subject before, I still do not believe that many people and institutions know just how important this new technology is going to be in a wide variety of sectors.



5G is going to have a huge positive impact on most major phone carriers, as the major carriers all plan to launch 5G this year. As they will become the provider of streaming services for everything from data, to TV content, to games, it is my opinion that they will eventually replace the cable and internet connections as there will be no need, any longer, to use those services. There will be a router in your house, or office, that will supply "everything." Also, virtually every phone will have to be replaced by the new 5G phones which will be a giant boon for the mobile telephone makers and their suppliers, in my opinion.



President Trump recently stated,



I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible. It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard. American companies must step up their efforts, or get left behind I want the United States to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies. We must always be the leader in everything we do, especially when it comes to the very exciting world of technology!



In a statement the CTIA, the trade association representing the U.S. wireless communications industry, appreciated the support from the President.





We share the President's commitment to leading the world in next-generation 5G wireless.

Thanks to the innovation, hard work and investment of America's wireless industry, the first commercial 5G deployments are happening now, in communities across the country.



5G, and its connectivity to the "Internet of Things," has the capability to create more efficient industries such as connected cars, and smarter cities which are all components of the "Internet of Things" equation. The uses for the military are inestimable as military installations can be instantaneously controlled from hundreds of miles away. Cameras on military and commercial aircraft will be able to see and diagnose issues in "real-time," allowing for much safer experiences.



The global population is set to reach 9.6 billion people by 2050. In the "Internet of Things" 5G based smart farming, a new system will be built for monitoring the crop field with the help of sensors (light, humidity, temperature, soil moisture, etc.) and automating the irrigation system.



The farmers can monitor the field conditions from anywhere. The "Internet of Things" based smart farming is highly efficient when compared with what is available now.



One of the major telephone service providers has announced multiple partnerships focused on an enhanced 5G healthcare experience. Perhaps the biggest announcement was the partnership with Chicago based Rush University Medical Center. Together, they're working to bring the first standards-based, 5G-enabled hospital to the United States.



Incorporating 5G technology into the healthcare space will ultimately bring faster speeds and lower latency which are critical to the mission-critical nature of hospital care and they support the abundance of innovative technologies Rush is currently deploying throughout its system.



Dr. Shafiq Rab of Rush stated,



High-speed, low-latency 5G technology will help enable care to be delivered virtually anywhere at any time. The technology will enhance access to care, even from long distances, while also helping to decrease costs and improve efficiency. Imagine sometime in the not too distant future, for example, a doctor performing a virtual visit with a patient while downloading an entire MRI scan within seconds. The cutting-edge applications we're implementing need a fast, reliable network to support them.



The numbers are staggering for growth of 5G. IDC forecasts 5G connections to rise at an annual average rate of 315.7% from 2019-2022. They also project 5G mobile subscriptions to expand by 322.2% during this same time period.



Next consider the car and truck companies. The vehicles will be able to communicate with each other in almost virtual time because the latency is so quick. A human being is unlikely to be part of this equation and the safety factor on the new 5G cars and trucks will make travelling much safer, which should speed up people and companies buying and leasing these new cars and trucks. The vehicles will be able to "sense" each other and avoid collusions and also avoid obstacles as the use of very detailed maps, constantly changing in "Real Time," will become available.



Then there will be the monitoring of devices. Water meters, electric meters, locks for your offices, garage door openers, inventory in a store and a whole host of the "internet of things" can be monitored in virtually "Real Time." The savings to many types of companies, such as utility companies, and retail stores, is likely to be substantial.



The 5G network, because of the speed, also requires more antennas at closer distances. That means that the tower companies, along with the chip makers, will benefit along with the makers of the antenna equipment. This will just be a huge boon for these companies, in my estimation.



The FCC estimates that there will be 4 trillion MHZ-Pops which is compared to the 230 billion that are in existence at this time. HIS forecasts that the 5G equipment market will grow 321.3% from 2018-2022.



You might think that the new 5G technologies are far off so that nothing needs to be done now.



I beg to differ. Keysight commissioned Dimensional Research to conduct the survey on which its state of 5G report is based, which included responses from more than 350 senior technology leaders and strategists from service providers and technology companies. Fifty-four percent of respondents said that they had already begun their 5G development, and 16% said they already had 5G partially deployed. Thirty-one percent of respondents said that they planned to deploy 5G within the next 12 months, with an additional 13% saying that deployment would come within the next 12-24 months.



The first mobile phone call took place on April 3, 1973. This was almost 46 years ago. The technology advanced slowly, slowly from one generation to the next. 5G is not an evolution, in my opinion, but a revolution, because of the huge increase in speed which allows for modern day miracles. "Real Time" has finally arrived.



I suggest investors take some "Real Time" now to size up both the opportunities and the pitfalls. If not, they will be making decisions in the past, as the future will have already materialized.
1. Fill in your name or an alias. Do not leave blank or use the name 'guest' or 'anonymous'.

2. No Nivul Peh. Profanity will be deleted.
" " An acupuncturist applies needles to a woman's shoulder. A large study published in 2017 investigated whether acupuncture could help women with polycystic ovarian syndrome get pregnant  and didn't find any supporting evidence. Hero Images/Getty Images

Many of us find ourselves living with a body that isn't quite clockwork-perfect. When as many as one in 10 women have a condition that leads to cyst-filled ovaries and possible infertility, there's still plenty of room for science to intervene and give women the freedom to make better choices about parenthood and general health.

But when it comes to polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal condition that causes ovarian problems that often result in fertility issues, many have sought alternative treatments, like acupuncture, that had some promise as good complementary medicine for treating PCOS and the infertility struggles that go with it.

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"Had" being the important qualifier.

A randomized study published in 2017, using 1,000 Chinese women with PCOS, didn't find that acupuncture increased the number of live births. The blinded study put the women into four groups:

One received the fertility medication clomiphene plus active acupuncture. (Researchers defined active acupuncture as deep needle insertion with both manual and electrical stimulation.) One received clomiphene and control acupuncture. (Researchers defined control acupuncture as superficial needle insertion with no manual stimulation and placebo electricity.) One received active acupuncture and a placebo medication. One received control acupuncture and a placebo medication.

Among the study population, 21.8 percent of women with active acupuncture had a live birth compared to 22.4 percent of women receiving control acupuncture. Not a significant difference. However, the live birth rate was much higher for all the women who took the clomiphene: 28.7 percent of women had a live birth if taking the medication, as opposed to 15.4 percent for those on a placebo med. Acupuncture, used on its own or in combination with the medication, simply was not an effective fertility treatment.

Dr. Richard Legro, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and public health sciences at Penn State University College of Medicine, is a co-author of the study. He says in an email that previous studies about acupuncture and PCOS have had the following limitations: "small sample size, lack of randomization, no standardized protocol [and] no blinding of treatments." In other words, this study was the first to look broadly and systematically at the benefits of acupuncture of PCOS. And the results were surprising.

"We designed this trial to document a benefit of acupuncture, alone or in combination with the drug clomiphene," Legro says, as previous smaller studies had shown promise. But the results said otherwise, although Legro does acknowledge that some critics will still not be appeased if they disagree with the methods of acupuncture used.

"Acupuncture experts want it both ways," he says. "They want to say acupuncture works, but without a standardized protocol, it is not reproducible. These 'experts' criticize every study that is done which show no benefit, because acupuncture wasn't done the way they do it (with or without supplements) and therefore is invalid."

But the researchers maintain they were diligent about methodology. "To control for the confounding of varied techniques we utilized a single active acupuncture protocol and a single control acupuncture protocol," Legro says. "We followed accepted guidelines [called STRICTA] for conducting randomized controlled studies of acupuncture."

So don't get out your wallet for acupuncture if you have PCOS and are looking to increase your chances for a birth. Of course, not all hope is lost  it's heartening to see that clomiphene produced a statistically important result that increased the odds of a live childbirth for those women with PCOS.

Learn more about acupuncture in "Acupuncture: A Comprehensive Text" by Chen Chiu Hseuh. HowStuffWorks picks related titles based on books we think you'll like. Should you choose to buy one, we'll receive a portion of the sale.

NOW THAT'S COOL The study did find that back pain during pregnancy for those who received active acupuncture versus placebo was less frequent. New practice guidelines from the American College of Physicians also recommend acupuncture as a possible avenue of back pain relief.
By Moses Kyeyune

The former presidential candidate Rtd Col Dr Kiiza Besigye has implored the public to remain calm and hopeful to see a Uganda without Museveni as President.

Besigye has been speaking to KFM in reaction to the decision of the NRM Parliamentary Caucus, which yesterday backed President Musevenis sole candidature come 2021 and beyond.

The proposal was first adopted by the partys top organ the Central Executive Committee, during their retreat at Chobe Safari Lodge in Nwoya district early this year.

The MPs who are gathered at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi say that Uganda is at the most critical and delicate juncture in the process of transformation and that this cant be the time to let go of Musevenis visionary leadership.

Now Besigye says that efforts to cut Musevenis long stay in power are underway and that Ugandans should have confidence, the NRM Chairman will not be on the ballot come 2021.
" " One-time Myspace founder and Tom Anderson posed for a portrait during the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Mark Mainz/Getty Images

Everyone remembers their first friend. The familiar smile, the kind eyes. The casual over-the-shoulder pose, early 2000s Caesar cut, and plain white T-shirt set against a series of scribbles on a dry-erase board. Wait, we're talking about Myspace friends, right?

Whether you know him as one of your Top 8, Myspace Tom, or the Mona Lisa of profile photos, Tom Anderson is an internet icon. Before Facebook became the preferred tool for building connections online and spying on exes (later becoming the preferred tool of opinionated relatives posting unsolicited political rants), Myspace was the social media king. Along with ad executive Chris DeWolfe, Anderson co-founded the site in 2003 as a response to older-old-school online buddy system, Friendster. While Friendster didn't permit pseudonyms, Myspace emerged as a safe haven for invented personas of all kinds. Users could customize their profile pages in myriad ways, adding colors, music, and of course, interchanging their chosen eight pals to showcase to the world.

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It didn't take long for Myspace to take over the web in a big way  within three-and-a-half years it surpassed Yahoo as the most popular site in the United States, and Rupert Murdoch wound up purchasing it for $580 million and appointing Anderson president. (He sold it a few years later for $35 million. Ouch!) But the internet, as we all know, is a fickle universe. A few years after its heyday, Myspace's numbers began to pale in comparison to social networking wunderkind, Facebook. By 2009, Facebook was logging 307.1 million global visitors per month while Myspace racked up just 123.3 million. Anderson had by then transitioned into an advisory role and felt ready to call it a day  he left the company for good that year.

So where exactly does a retired 38-year-old multi-millionaire go from there? Well, if he's Anderson, he goes literally everywhere. Since stepping down from Myspace, the self-proclaimed "former 1st friend" has become a successful travel photographer, snapping stunning pics of places all over the world, including his homebase of Hawaii, Thailand, Iceland, and more. At the ripe old age of 48, Anderson leans on the earnings from his Myspace empire to fund his passion, which he discovered after attending Burning Man in 2011. "I took photos at the event and couldn't believe that was coming from my own camera. I was hooked instantly," he wrote to Architectural Digest in a 2017 email. And while he'll forever be known as the internet's first friend, Anderson prefers sweeping views to human interaction in his current line of work. "On the rare occasion I get people in my landscapes and scenes, it's mostly never planned. I'm a little shy about it," he told ABC in 2014.

Now That's Interesting In March 2019, Myspace admitted it had accidentally deleted 12 years' worth of photos, videos and music uploaded to its site, due to a server migration error. This means anything before 2015 is unlikely to be found. Although the numbers of Myspace users is a drop in the bucket of what they used to be, the platform was still well-known as a launching pad for artists such as Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris.

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Originally Published: Jan 22, 2019
Brief Encounter (1945) is considered one of the best British films ever by those of a certain age. It is based on the play Still Life (1936) by Noel Co...

15 hours ago




IceViking strongly condemns physical attacks and harassment directed towards them.





They are also often victims of the Islamic idea. This is true when it comes to the cruel and tragic treatment of Muslim women and children when it is in accord with the Koran, the example of Mohammed and Islamic law, Sharia, which may be applied regardless of where a Muslim male may find himself in the world, whether in a Muslim or non-Muslim country.





However, in no way, shape or form should one judge all Muslim men because of what is in Islamic scripture and what constitutes the Islamic law, Sharia.





"Race", ethnicity or basically anything that you are "merely" born with should never be a basis for bigotry and discrimination.





Apostates from Islam have been executed for 1400 years in accord with the Koran and the words and actions of the Islamic prophet Mohammed and Islamic law, Sharia.





They should be lovingly helped.





Furthermore, approximately as many as 11,000,000 Muslims may have been killed by other Muslims since 1948.





To quote the website The Religion of Peace (TROP), edited by Glen Roberts:





While it may be safe to say that a true Muslim would not intentionally kill another true Muslim ( 4:92-93 ), the Quran places no such value on the life of a Muslim who is not true. Consider verse 9:73 :

Strive hard against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh against them, their abode is Hell.

The Arabic for strive hard uses the same root as Jihad - and the context in this sura is holy war (see v. 86 and 91). Thus, there are two distinct classes of people that a true Muslim is to target with harshness: disbelievers and hypocrites.



A disbeliever obviously refers to a non-Muslim, so a "hypocrite" must be a Muslim of some sort. In fact, hypocrites are those who say they believe, but do not act as they should. In other words, they are "Muslims", but not true Muslims. They will go to hell just as unbelievers do, and so, according to the verse, their lives matter for naught.



The same sura says that a hypocrite can be recognized not just by lack of piety (reluctance to follow Sharia), but by fear of death ( 9:56 ), reluctance to fight ( 9:44-45 ) and even friendliness toward non-believers ( 9:67 ). A true Muslim would thus be a pious person who relishes martyrdom, is eager to fight, and shuns non-believers.



Even the Quranic passage that warns against killing "believers" ( 4:88-94 ) is more complicated than it first appears. It never says that a true Muslim is incapable of killing another Muslim, just that it should not be done. In fact, it makes exceptions for the unintentional killing of "believers" in war and mandates the killing of "hypocrites."



Verse 17:33 says, "Do not kill anyone which Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause" . The greatest cause of all is that Islam be superior ( 9:33 ), which is exactly what Islamic terrorists say is their goal. Thus believing Muslims are allowed to be collateral damage in the war on unbelievers.









There is sadly a phenomena that I`ve noticed in Sweden and elsewhere of people using true facts about Islamic doctrine and history as a cover for all sorts of irrational targeting of Muslims, ranging from xenophobia and racism to verbal abuse and physical attacks.





This is strongly condemned by this website and does not in any way serve serious criticism of orthodox Islam and other important work.





It`s also important that one tries to express oneself in a civilized way. Words matter.





In this bloggers humble opinion the root cause of the problem is the ancient doctrine of orthodox Islam.













In simple terms a non-Muslim is a Kafir.





" The Koran defines the kafir and kafir is not a neutral word. A kafir is not merely someone who does not agree with Islam, but a kafir is evil, disgusting, the lowest form of life."





An exact quote, as stated in the writings of Dr. Bill Warner in the article "Kafir" at http://www.politicalislam.com/kafir .





In the perfect Koran (Allah`s direct and literal word as revealed to Mohammed through the angel Jibril), Muslims are told 89 times to emulate Mohammed in all ways (see Koran 33:21 for instance).





Mohammed`s example, the Sunna, is found in the Hadith (stories of what Mohammed said and did) and the Sira (biographies of Mohammed).





Islamic law, Sharia , is directly derived from these unchanging scriptures. It is based on the Koran`s numerous commands to obey Allah and obey the Messenger, that is Mohammed (see Koran 4:59 for instance).









Islam is Sharia. Sharia is Islam.





It is a capital crime for Muslims to deny Sharia in any way.





A Muslim is someone who submits to Islam and submitting to Islam means obeying the Sharia of Allah.





Sharia law includes pronouncements for both Muslims and non-Muslims (Kafirs).









Islam is a "complete way of life", a "complete code of life", a "complete system of life".





Islam is not just a religion but also a comprehensive ideology.





Islam is a supremacist ideology.





Islam is a totalitarian and imperialistic ideology akin to Communism and Nazism.





Islam is a civilization.

Islamic law, Sharia, is a manual for a civilization.





Islamic law, Sharia, governs every aspect of life.

It has a say about every conceivable human act .





Non-Muslims are morally and legally inferior in Islam. Women are morally and legally inferior in Islam.

























The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS by Robert Spencer is the first one-volume history of jihad in the English language and a great book on the topic.





Allah guarantees Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for him (Koran 9:111).





A hadith depicts a Muslim asking Muhammad: "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." Muhammad replied, "I do not find such a deed." (Bukhari 4.52.44)





Muhammad himself said:

I have been commanded to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah, and he who professed it was guaranteed the protection of his property and life on my behalf except for the right affairs rest with Allah. (Sahih Muslim 30)









Freedom of speech, human rights, democracy, science and human lives are all at stake in the fight against the Islamic Jihad.




Democrats often propose ideas that take forever to explain and are difficult for the masses to understand. That wasnt the case last week.



Under my fair tax plan, Gov. J.B. Pritzker tweeted, 97 percent of taxpayers get tax relief and the wealthy will pay their fair share.



Its gonna be really tough to top a succinct message like that, particularly when its chief supporter is worth $3.2 billion and is willing to spend big on this.

The governors new graduated income tax plan is obviously designed to appeal to the most people possible. And 97 percent is almost everybody.The dirty truth is that human beings tend to prefer taxes which dont apply to them. Its really no surprise that 72 percent of Illinoisans backed a progressive income tax in the most recent Paul Simon Public Policy Institute poll taken last year.So, the tiny 2.7 percent of income tax filers who will pay more taxes under Pritzkers plan and who, unlike in the past, have little hope of outspending the governor if it goes to the voters for approval will have their work cut out for them.One of the early responses from opponents was to attempt to scare people into believing rich people will pack up and leave, even though one of our biggest exit problems is the tens of thousands of kids who leave for out-of-state colleges every year and never come back.Other pro-business types claimed part of Pritzkers proposal was a millionaires tax, which actually polls even better than a graduated tax. They cant beat Pritzker that way.Democratic state legislators were mostly silent. Thats often the case with big proposals. Legislators are, for the most part, naturally cautious creatures who will want to be assured they can do this without harming their districts and, in turn, themselves.As with the recent minimum wage hike, the governor can stress to legislators that his tax plan is a core Democratic Party value, and that he will have their backs if theyre attacked. This wont be an easy roll call, but things like infrastructure projects will help smooth things over.The House Republicans have been a hard heck no for weeks on this topic. But the Senate Republicans left the door open to negotiations.Without guaranteed protections for middle class families, we are opposed to the governors $3.4 billion tax increase, the caucus statement read. They wouldnt say what those guaranteed protections might be, but I was told that the caucus is open to exploring the topic.Senate Republican Leader Bill Brady has always been a guy who wants to be at the table. And he likely knows he cant stop that constitutional amendment in his chamber (the real fight will probably be in the House).And, remember, 97 percent of taxpayers will get some relief. Its not much, but sneer at a $271 annual tax cut for a family of four earning $61,000 at your own peril. Thats a decent credit card payment or two, and families in that bracket arent exactly flush with cash. Anyone who is a hard no on this can be portrayed as opposing tax relief for almost everybody on behalf of the rich.So, why not try to make his caucus look reasonable and bend the proposal his direction?From what Im told, Pritzker is not only eager to talk with the Republicans, he doesnt expect them to put a single vote on the amendment. Adding some Republican ideas would undoubtedly make his case stronger with moderate Democratic legislators and with voters. Does that mean Republicans would be used as cover? Of course, but it also means that the Republicans will have made some important changes. Its called governing.
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A Korean bank's branch in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam / Korea Times file



By Kim Bo-eun



Twelve Korean banks saw record earnings in Vietnam in 2018, according to data from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), Tuesday.



The banks' net incomes in the region more than doubled from $61 million in 2017 to $131.8 million in 2018.



Shinhan Bank Vietnam made the biggest contribution to the lenders' overall growth there as it posted nearly 100 billion won ($88 million) in net profit last year.



Their combined net income in Singapore also grew by 17.2 percent in 2018; while assets also grew in Vietnam and Indonesia.



The banks' profits from business in Vietnam grew from $5.72 billion in 2017 to $6.43 billion in 2018; and in Indonesia from 5.76 billion to $6.34 billion.



In 2018, the twelve Korean banks were operating in 39 countries through 55 subsidiaries, 77 branches and 57 offices, and most of their overseas operations, or nearly 70 percent were concentrated in Asia.



New openings were also concentrated in the region  out of seven, four were opened in Cambodia and one in Bangladesh.



"We continue to see increasing profits in Asia," an FSS official said. "The scale of assets in the region is not very great compared to that of other larger economies but continues to grow."



Shinhan Bank said its stellar growth in Southeast Asia, especially in Vietnam, was due to its well-executed strategy and services tailored to local customers.



"We believe it's due to localization strategies, as the bank has focused securing local customers, hiring local employees and local executives, and increasing the percentage of local assets," a Shinhan Bank official said.



The FSS assessed the banks did better in terms of localization in 2018 than a year earlier.



According to the FSS, the total asset volume of overseas businesses came to $114.25 billion, up 8.9 percent from a year earlier. The banks' overseas businesses reported a net income of $983 million for 2018, up 22.2 percent from a year earlier. This was due to considerable increases in interest and non-interest incomes.



Meanwhile, FSS First Senior Deputy Governor Yoo Kwang-yeol is in Southeast Asia for meetings with his regulatory counterparts to discuss Korean financial companies' businesses there.



He was in Jakarta Monday and will hold meetings in Hanoi Wednesday and Thursday.



This is the first visit by members of the FSS management in four years  the last took place in 2015 under then governor Zhin Woong-seob.



An FSS official said "There is a lot more to discuss with our counterparts there because the presence of Korean finance companies in the region has grown significantly over the past years."


There was something different about the grand opening this Sunday of a new Chabad facility in Alpharetta, Georgia.

Speaking to the guests, Rabbi Hirshy Minkowicz, director of Chabad of North Fulton, framed it this way: Our story epitomizes the story of the Jewish people. Five years ago, Minkowiczs wife Rashi suddenly passed away in March 2014 at the young age of thirty-seven, leaving her eight children, her husband and her community reeling from the shock.

So the event brought a measure of consolation and optimism to the 800 people who came to celebrate the grand opening of Rashis Campus, the magnificent new Chabad center named in her memory. Five years after her tragic passing, Rashis vitality is missed. But her energy continues to inspire.

The Lubavitcher Rebbes approach to tragedy was to respond with more joy, more growth. And here we are at the grand opening, celebrating life, said her husband.

When Rashi passed away, the community came together, led by a push from our oldest son Mendel, who was fourteen at the time, and decided it was time to build Rashis Campus, a permanent home for Chabad where her legacy and work could continue for generations to come, explains Rabbi Hirshy. At the grand opening, Mendel performed a song he composed in his mothers memory.

Mendel Minkowicz performs a song he composed in his mothers memory

A crowd of 800 gathered to celebrate Rashis life

Through a series of divinely guided coincidences, as Rabbi Hirshy calls them, they met a local Roswell architect, Arie Kohn, who designed and managed every detail of the facility, all the way to the mezuzahs on the doorposts.

The beautiful 23,000 square foot center, located on a busy road in the heart of North Fulton, was guided by Rashis vision, says Kohn. Its large multi-purpose room will be used as a synagogue, assembly room, and social hall. There is a teen lounge, two kitchens (meat and dairy), classroom wing (for the camp, Hebrew School, and preschool), and an outdoor play area.

In addition to visiting Chabad Houses around the country to gain a sense of what worked and what didnt, Kohn also began to study Chasidic philosophy.

What stood out for me in Chassidut was the principle of happiness, serving G-d with joy, he says. I wanted to evoke happiness in the new building. I learned that light and color make people happy, and that Kabbalah even talks about specific colors that bring joy.

Rabbi Hirshy Minkowicz with architect Arie Kohn

Joy was also the theme of remarks at the grand opening by Brigitte Garrett, who described the session of Torah and Tea, Rashis signature weekly Torah class for women, that she attended hours before Rashis passing. The table was set beautifully, and Rashis daughters were teaching us how to make hamantaschen, which I had never done before. I clearly remember thinking that even though Rashi wasnt there because she wasnt feeling well, she must be having such pride in her daughters and in hearing all the joy and laughter that was in her home.

And now the joy and laughter from Rashis home will be present in the center.

As big a milestone as the opening of Rashis Campus five years after her passing, it is not the only initiative launched in Rashis memory. On her first yahrzeit, a new Torah scroll was dedicated and the ground broken for the campus. Torah and Tea has been adopted in more than 200 locations worldwide, in her memory. And in Brooklyn, New York, her friends established New Shoes 4 Kids, an organization that provides struggling families with new shoes for their growing children.

While people around Rabbi Hirshy marvel at his resilience and resolve in the face of devastating loss, Rabbi Hirshy himself marvels at the blessings he and his family have received. Over the past five years, I have seen openly and clearly how G-d gives us all the resources and tools we need to thrive as a family and as a community, he says.

Rabbi Yossi New, Director of Chabad of Georgia, and many of Rabbi Hirshys childhood friends traveled from their own Chabad outposts around the country to participate. Local mayors of Jones Creek, Roswell, and Milton also attended.

If Rashi were herewhich of course she is in spiritshe would be very proud and delighted at how the community didnt abandon ship, but actually got together and held strong, even stronger than before, said Rabbi Minkowicz. It is very rewarding to see the communitys level of commitment to ensure that Rashis legacy continues.

This Purim, Rashis Campus will host its first major event as friends, families and neighbors celebrate in the new facility.

The lobby of the new building

The architect used bright colors, representing Rashis vitality

The sanctuary where Rashis new Torah scroll will reside

Signage proudly displays the name of the new facility
Curating information literacy stories from around the world since 2005
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled to learn that Raisi, whose crimes against humanity include passing death sentences on thousands of political prisoners who refused to renounce their beliefs in 1988.

These summary executions caused many international human rights organizations and some UN special rapporteurs to criticize Raisi and demand that he be held accountable.

Khomeinis onetime heir apparent, Hossein Ali Montazeri has been heard on an audio tape describing the executions as the most terrible crime to have been committed under the Islamic Republic. He also addressed the commissions members, saying, It is you, sirs, who carried it out, and your names will be registered as criminals in Irans history.

Now, one of these criminals will head Irans judicial system  under which many judges are regarded as guilty of corruption.

Raisis judicial system colleagues include Aboughasem Salevati, head of the Tehran revolutionary courts 15th chamber, and Mohammad Moghiseh, head of its 28th chamber. These men are alleged to be interrogators and torturers at Evin and Hamadan prisons in 1988. As well, these two judges have passed heavy jail sentences on some 100 journalists and citizen-journalists since 2009.

A very alarming assessment of the regimes press freedom and human rights policies and practices was provided by Javaid Rehman, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, in report presented last week. Rehman was not allowed to visit Iran. However, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres released a Human Rights Report on March 8th, that said that representatives of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visited Iran in 2018, and Iranian officials now say they have invited the High Commissioner herself to make a visit.

Iran is maneuvering to suppress criticism by not allowing the UN special rapporteur to do an in-country investigation, said Reza Moini, the head the Iran desk of Reporters without Borders (RSF). The special rapporteur must be allowed to travel to Iran with High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in order to observe the disastrous human rights and press freedom situation in a country that is one of the worlds five biggest jailers of journalists.

RSF held a news conference in Paris on February 7th to expose the scope of the lies that the Iranian regime has allegedly orchestrated about judicial persecution in Iran. This new information was leaked via an Iranian justice system file.

The justice system upheld the prison sentences of several members of the Sufi website Majzooban Noor on the day Raisis appointment was announced. Mohammad Sharifi Moghadam and Kasra Nouri, members of the editorial committee were sentenced to 12 years in prison, and Sina Entesari, a citizen-journalist was given a seven year sentence.
The festival, taking place on March 19 this year, is one of the most beloved Iranian celebrations and in recent times it has become a chance for Iranians to air their grievances against the Regime, due to the reflective nature of sitting in the light of the fire. Now, more than ever, the Iranian people are reflecting on 40 years of oppression and how the Regime must soon burn.

In response, the Regime has launched a massive crackdown by literally banning firecrackers, sparklers, and even gatherings of families and neighbours in streets, for the two-month period before the festival. Theyve even set up checkpoints, dispatched security forces to the area, and threatened shopkeepers that their licences will be revoked if they sell fireworks. The prosecutors general and revolutionary prosecutors of various provinces and cities indicate that they are preparing for an influx of arrests, with a separate branch created solely to deal with celebrations of the fire festival.

The Peoples Mojahedin of Iran (MEK), a banned Iranian opposition group, has called for resistance units and the Iranian people to come together and celebrate the festival as an annual anti-regime event with protests, much like what happened last year.

However, this year, the mullahs are even more fearful of the peoples protests, following 16 months of protests, so theyve resorted to issuing directives to deter the people from holding the customary annual celebration. The mullahs are terrified of ongoing protests and new calls from a popular opposition group for a nationwide uprising  indeed, the mullahs have even acknowledged the resistance units as aiding the recent flare-up of protests  so the upcoming fire festival is a crucial situation for the regime and its suppression forces.

Human rights activist Hassan Mahmoudi wrote on American Thinker: With the coming heated fire festival, the people in Iran have this message for the regime: Fire is the symbol of our long battle against dictatorship, we are all altogether, and repression will not affect us. Imagine the fear of mullahs!
In each of these cases, accusations against the detainee has been only vaguely expressed, and accounts of the proceedings suggested that Iranian authorities worked to build a case upon little to no pre-existing foundation. In Whites case, the arrest followed his traveling to Iran for a third time in order to meet with a woman with whom he was pursuing a romantic relationship. Although the arrest took place last July, it was not made known publicly until January. Thereafter, Iranian officials stated that White was not being held on national security charges, but then contradicted that announcement and later affirmed that his sentence was based in part on a security complaint.

The latest information on the case finally discloses specific charges. Previously, these were absent not only from public reporting but also apparently from what little information was communicated to White himself. Last week Tuesday, a report by IranWire gave the impression that Iranian authorities had specifically prevented White from communicating with the outside world about anything other than his deteriorating health condition. This in turn lends credence to the common assumption that Western nationals are typically held as hostages by the Islamic Republic in an attempt to pressure their home countries for the provision of political concessions.

According to IranWire, the judge in Whites case expressly banned him from receiving visitors or communicating with his family by phone. This apparently arbitrary treatment also prevented him from receiving consular assistance from the Swiss embassy for a period of months. Because Iran and the United States have no direct diplomatic relations, American consular affairs are channeled through Swiss diplomatic intermediaries. Even after White received such assistance, information about his case remained unclear, and this is still true in the wake of the latest disclosures.

What is known is that the US citizen was convicted in separate sessions on March 6 and March 9, after being charged with insulting the supreme leader and posting a private photograph publicly. The latter charge may be related to social media content that depicted White seated beside the Iranian girlfriend he had gone to visit. Physical contact between unmarried and unrelated women and men is illegal in the Islamic Republic, and internet communication is heavily censored.

The charge of sharing private content is presumably the private complaint that was initially cited by Iranian authorities as the reason for his arrest. Meanwhile, Reuters indicates that no plausible explanation has been put forward for the charge of insulting the supreme leader, which may have been added to the case after the fact, in keeping with Tehrans practice of interrogating political prisoners in order to build cases against them from scratch.

This practice often involves the use of torture to illicit false confessions, as in the case of eight Iranian conservationists who are reportedly still awaiting sentencing on charges that include spreading corruption on Earth. That case has taken on a high profile since the initial arrests in January and February of last year. A ninth conservationist, Kavous Seyed-Emami, died while in police custody, likely as a result of torture. And owing to his status as an Iranian-Canadian dual national, the case helped to underscore the regimes crackdowns both on the domestic activist community and on persons with ties to the West.

Both of these phenomena have been subject to vigorous international advocacy in recent weeks and months. On March 7, Babak Namazi, the brother of Siamak and son of Baquer, delivered remarks before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and pushed for more action to secure the release of these and other US citizens. That same week, governments and human rights organizations condemned the appointment of a well-known human rights violator, Ebrahim Raisi, to the head of Irans judiciary, noting that it underscored Irans rejection of international human rights principles and the potential worsening of an already difficult situation for political prisoners and Iranian society on the whole.
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- A 23-year-old barangay tanod will be graduating with Latin honors on March 20

- Janryl Tan has been serving as the CCTV operator of their barangay for four years now

- Aside from that, he is also the treasurer of their own Sangguniang Kabataan

PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed

A barangay tanod from Kalubihan, Cebu City, has successfully finished his degree in Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering at the University of Cebu. KAMI learned that the 23-year-old will be graduating with Latin honors.

In a report by the SunStar Cebu (author Justin Vestil), Janryl Judila Tan has been serving as a barangay tanod for four years. He will be joining the universitys annual commencement exercises on March 20.

PAY ATTENTION: The Amazing Cast Of Game Of Thrones In Then And Now (PHOTOS)

Rex Millan, the chief of Barangay Kalubihan, said that Tan has been working hard to finish his studies. Tan would do prioritize his studies in the morning and then fulfill his role as the CCTV operator during the night.

Aside from being a good student and barangay tanod, Tan is also the treasurer of their own Sangguniang Kabataan. All of Tans earnings went straight for his education, as reported by Yahoo! Philippines.

PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read KAMI news there too. Use the search option to find us. Read KAMI news while saving your data!

According to Millan, Tan had no permanent address. Therefore, they offered a room for him in the village hall. Tans father is working as the barangays Lupon Tagapamayapa and as a habal-habal driver.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news!

Tricky Questions: What Is The English Of "Sinok"? What is your favourite tricky question in this episode? Maybe about the province of smiles? Or the acronym? Or maybe about sinok? Check out all of our exciting videos  on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: Kami.com.ph
- Julia Barretto surprised her followers as she announced her new movie without her boyfriend, Joshua Garcia

- She revealed the news on her Instagram account

- Its title is 'Between Maybes' and it is Gerald Anderson who will be her leading man in the film

PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed

Julia Barretto has officially announced her new movie "Between Maybes", which she revealed on her recent Instagram post.

KAMI learned that it is a film under the direction of Jason Paul Laxamana.

The Kapamilya star revealed that Gerald Anderson is going to be her leading man in the said movie.

She told some details about it and according to her, it is about two lost souls trying to take control of their lives back to their hands.

Julia will play the character of Hazel Ilagan, a famous actress in the Philippines, who has lost control of her own life.

Gerald, on the other hand, will be Louie Puyat, a simple guy whose parents will be repatriated back to the Philippines.

The Kapamilya actress also revealed that the movie will be shot in Saga, Japan.

Furthermore, Julia's fans were so ecstatic after her announcement.

They are excited not only about the new movie but also with the idea of their idol having a new partner in a film.

"Wow love this new love team dapat talaga ganto explore din ng iba para di nakakasawa anyway congrats po i hope maganda story"

"time to explore your craft and move a little bit from loveteam standard of abscbn you are a amazing actress of your generation.. So happy for this"

"Hi juls so happy see that your now working with black sheep!!! Hey queen keep on reaching your goals!!!"

"Ecited na kmi Juls!! fresh tandem dios mio lakas ng chemistry nio ni Budoy!anooo ba!!!"

PAY ATTENTION: 12 Times Meghan Markle Went Against Royal Rules

In a previous report by KAMI, Julia Barretto's epic 'kulitan' moments with siblings was caught on cam. They were seen hanging out together with their youngest sister Erich and it was evident that they were enjoying spending time together.

Julia Barretto is the daughter of Marjorie Barretto and Dennis Padilla. Her team-up with young actor Joshua Garcia was popularly known as JoshLia.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news!

Social Experiment: Will You Let Someone Steal From A Blind Man? Imagine that you witness an outrageous situation in which a person literally steals from a blind man. Would you interfere or it is none of your business? We checked the reaction of Filipinos  on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: Kami.com.ph
We listen to local police and fire departments scanner traffic, but sometimes miss crimes, wrecks, fires or other incidents, especially if they happen overnight. If you know of something were not covering yet, please let Managing Editor Jeff Pownall know by emailing him at jpownall@lufkindailynews.com, or submit a news tip online by visiting lufkindailynews.com/tips.
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Until this year, California had some of the most secretive laws in the country when it came to police records.

That has changed. A new state law, SB 1421 allows access to police records involving dishonesty, sexual assault and use of force. Now KPCC/LAist is joining with more than 30 newsrooms across the state, to share both Public Records Act requests and the files we get in response.

So far partners in the California Reporting Project have filed:

More than 1,100 public information requests under SB 1421

Requests to 675 agencies across all 58 California counties

Requests to 29 state and 8 regional agencies

Partners have received at least some records back from 134 agencies.

HOW DID THIS GET STARTED?

Our friends up at KQED in San Francisco -- the NPR station there -- called late last year to ask if we'd be interested in joining them in collaborating on these police records requests. It started out as just a handful of public radio newsrooms and then we realized: Why stop there?

Editors and reporters at the L.A. Times were interested and, from there, we continued to reach out to other newsrooms across the state.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

It's important to keep in mind that these kinds of police records were not always so opaque. L.A. used to televise public inquests into use of force by the LAPD, the last inquest was in 1981. And then more recently you could still get access to Sheriff's Department disciplinary records if a deputy appealed a decision. That was shut down by a 6-1 California Supreme Court ruling in 2006 that found the public did not have the right to access discipline records that were filed as part of an appeal, unless the officer waived his or her right to privacy.

WHAT CHANGED?

As that California Supreme Court ruling underscored, over the years many police unions successfully lobbied lawmakers and/or fought in court to expand privacy protections for sworn officers. That put most records involving internal discipline out of public view. And as Annie Gilbertson reports in in our podcast, Repeat, California became one of the most difficult states for journalists and the public to get access to records.

Keep in mind -- that fight is still going on now. Many police unions have gone to court to argue records that predate the law going to effect January 1, should not be made public. They argue it's unfair to change the rules on their members.

The Downey Police Officer's Association has argued that older police records should be destroyed, in keeping with the city's policy of retaining records for five years.

KPCC/LAist and the Los Angeles Times opposed the unions' attempts in L.A. and O.C. winning decisions in both Los Angeles and Orange County Superior Courts.

And KPCC/LAist is seeking to intervene in the Downey case.

WHO HAS SIGNED ON TO THE STATEWIDE COLLABORATION?

Knowing there was this real sea change coming when it came to access to these records, California journalists started to think about what it would take to actually acquire those documents and then report on what they told us about patterns in police behavior.

At this point, we have more than 30 newsrooms in the state:

DON'T THESE NEWSROOMS USUALLY COMPETE? WHY WORK TOGETHER NOW?

When the newsrooms started talking to each other, we started thinking about how how much more comprehensive our reporting could be if we share what we got openly across the state.

And, as one editor pointed out: These are PUBLIC records after all.

It was a little bit of an evolution to be honest. Journalists are by nature very competitive -- we are definitely arm-around-our-food kind of people, so it was interesting to see how that thinking changed as we talked more.

Jack Leonard -- the L.A. Times Metro Investigative Editor -- had one of the real "ah-ha" moments when we were talking about what we wanted to accomplish.

"It struck me when I was talking to an old rival at the Orange County Register, and we were talking about how these records had been kept hidden for more than 40 years." Leonard said, "and we were saying this was a real opportunity for us to explain to Californians what kind of misconduct was going on and how police departments react to shootings deadly force and other serious incidents."

HOW UNIQUE IS THIS?

It's unique in California. We're unaware of any collaboration spanning so many newsrooms in the state. That said, we know collaborations can produce some powerful journalism like the Paradise Papers and the Panama Papers.

We thought it was important to colloborate now because many newsrooms in the U.S. -- and here in California -- have been shrinking at a pretty steady rate. That means fewer resources are devoted to accountability journalism.

We are fortunate here in the KPCC/LAist newsroom because we have been able to continue to grow and invest in journalism with support from our listeners and readers.

WHY DID YOUR NEWSROOM TAKE A LEADERSHIP ROLE IN BRINGING ORGANIZATIONS TOGETHER?

KPCC, which owns and operates LAist, has sought to hold law enforcement accountable.

Reporters here have done painstaking reporting to investigate police killings in L.A. County. Our series, Officer Involved, tracker 375 police killings between Jan. 1, 2010 and Dec. 31, 2014 and found one in four people killed by an officer was unarmed.

Until December of last year, when a sheriff's deputy in Cerritos was charged with voluntary manslaughter for shooting an unarmed man, an officer in L.A. County hadn't been charged in a shooting since 2000.

We thought it was important to really look at those cases -- to the best of our ability at the time -- to understand why.

A follow-up series analyzed more than 100 police shootings in San Bernardino County.

Tennell Billups' illustration of the events the morning Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Gonzalo Inzunza shot him. (COURTESY OF TENNELL BILLUPS)

And last year, our Repeat pocast went deep into L.A. County sheriff's deputies who had multiple shootings on their record. Most law enforcement officers go their entire career without ever shooting at another person on duty.

Host Annie Gilbertson found that one deputy, Gonzalo Inzunza, shot at four people in seven months -- which stood out in KPCC's analysis of police shootings as an unusual cluster. Each shooting was justified by officials and each time Inzunza said he feared for his life.

Three of the people claim Deputy Inzunza had no provocation or lied to justify his shootings. Ultimately, because the records into the shootings were kept from public view under the law at the time, it was very difficult to get to determine how thoroughly allegations about Inzunza were investigated.

And yes, now that additional records are available, we are digging in again.

READ MORE: L.A. Times round-up of stories from the files so far

UPDATES:

March 20, 10 a.m.: This article was updated with additional information about KPCC's past work on police use of force.

This article was originally published on March 19 at 7:15 a.m.
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Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 348173

03-19-2019 05:21 AM











Post: #1 Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back

Advertisement Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back during traffic stop in suicide, police say



A 19-year-old woman involved in a traffic stop committed suicide after shooting herself through the mouth while her hands were cuffed behind her back, Virginia police said.



Sarah Wilson and her boyfriend were arrested during a stop in Chesapeake in July 2018 after cops allegedly found drugs in the 1996 Lexus the couple were driving. Police said they handcuffed Wilson and, while attempting to apprehend her boyfriend, 27-year-old Holden Medlin, he became combative and ran away from the scene.



Cops then reportedly left Wilson handcuffed with her hands behind her back as they ran to catch Medlin. While unattended, police say, she was able to grab a weapon out of the Lexus, "contorted" her body and shot herself through the mouth . An internal investigation was launched after her death, which has since been concluded, though police have declined to comment on its outcome.



A medical examiner confirmed on Thursday that Wilson died of a suicide -- but friends and family continue to doubt the official story.



In all of her life I have never known of her to shoot a gun, own a gun, or even hold a gun, Wilson's mother, Dawn, told ABC 13 last year. She told the station she spoke to witnesses who told her the police were responsible for her daughter's death.



https://www.foxnews.com/us/woman-shot-he...police-say



A 19-year-old woman involved in a traffic stop committed suicide after shooting herself through the mouth while her hands were cuffed behind her back, Virginia police said.Sarah Wilson and her boyfriend were arrested during a stop in Chesapeake in July 2018 after cops allegedly found drugs in the 1996 Lexus the couple were driving. Police said they handcuffed Wilson and, while attempting to apprehend her boyfriend, 27-year-old Holden Medlin, he became combative and ran away from the scene.Cops then reportedly left Wilson handcuffed with her hands behind her back as they ran to catch Medlin.An internal investigation was launched after her death, which has since been concluded, though police have declined to comment on its outcome.A medical examiner confirmed on Thursday that Wilson died of a suicide -- but friends and family continue to doubt the official story.In all of her life I have never known of her to shoot a gun, own a gun, or even hold a gun, Wilson's mother, Dawn, told ABC 13 last year. She told the station she spoke to witnesses who told her the police were responsible for her daughter's death. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 493876

03-19-2019 05:23 AM











Post: #2 RE: Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back

That happened a few years earlier than that as well ... with a single dude arrested, handcuffed in the back seat while he killed himself with a gun. SkeptiSchism

Registered User

User ID: 450243

03-19-2019 05:24 AM



Posts: 36,631









Post: #3 RE: Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back





Nuthin suspicious about that. Evil is the root of all fiat 'money' LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 493876

03-19-2019 05:25 AM











Post: #4 RE: Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back

Here, about 20 years or so back, a woman somehow shot herself in the mouth (suicide) while sitting in the driver's seat! She was stopped for running ared light.



That's some fancy contortion too. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 442077

03-19-2019 05:27 AM











Post: #5 RE: Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back

A nimble little mynx, eh?



No way she could have done that. For whatever reason or no reason, the cops must have done it. Cra cray cops on the streets. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 493876

03-19-2019 05:32 AM











Post: #6 RE: Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-19-2019 05:27 AM) A nimble little mynx, eh?



No way she could have done that. For whatever reason or no reason, the cops must have done it. Cra cray cops on the streets.

no chit Cherlock. *smirk* no chit Cherlock. *smirk* LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 218949

03-19-2019 05:34 AM











Post: #7 RE: Woman shot herself in the head while cuffed with hands behind her back

Body cameras will tell all here, and cop cars have cameras in them as well. If the tapes goes poof Ill be suspect, but till then its odd as fu*k but still isnt unrealistic.

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Defying the Odds Black History Educational Experience, Kinecta Federal Credit Union Empowered African American Male Students

There has been a decline in African-American men transitioning successfully into and through college. As part of its commitment to the advancement and strengthening of the communities it serves, Kinecta Federal Credit Union hosted Defying the Odds Black History Event to shed light on the history of the struggles and successes of

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African-Americans while helping to equip young men with the necessary tools and contacts to define their own path of success.

30 African-American male students from Leuzinger High School, Hawthorne High School and Lawndale High School had access to a panel discussion comprised of 12 African-American professionals who shared their own overcoming-difficulties stories and explained the steps they took to achieve their professional success.

Topics included etiquette on the job, working with law enforcement, goal setting, and resiliency. The students also had the opportunity to be part of discussion tables to have an open dialogue with the professionals and share their own stories and goals.

Defying the Odds Black History Event is a key collaborative educational experience for the students of Centinela Valley Union High School District. It will serve both the participant students and the future communities they serve.
Metro to Hold Four Community Meetings to Evaluate Routes for Northern Extension of the Crenshaw/LAX Line

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) is holding four community meetings in March to evaluate alternatives to extend the Crenshaw/LAX Line to the north with connections to the Metro Expo, Purple and Red Lines as well as numerous bus lines. The public is encouraged to attend and participate in the planning of this important transit project.

The Crenshaw/LAX Line is currently under construction and runs between the Metro Green and Expo Lines. With a scheduled opening in 2020, the light rail line will provide service to the Crenshaw Corridor, Inglewood and LAX communities.

The Crenshaw Northern Extension is a Measure M-funded project that will continue the line north and will serve portions of the cities of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. The project will ultimately provide a rail connection between the South Bay, LAX area, South Los Angeles, Inglewood, Crenshaw Corridor, Mid-City, Central Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Hollywood communities.

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There are five potential alignments under review. Metro is conducting technical analysis of the alignments and gathering public input to determine which alternative/s will be studied further during the subsequent environmental review process.

The Crenshaw Northern Extension project is one of several new rail projects with funding from Measure M, a countywide sales tax measure approved by 71 percent of Los Angeles County voters in November 2016. Based on the current Measure M schedule, this project is planned to start construction in 2041 and begin operations in 2047. Metro is conducting this study now as there are efforts underway to identify funding to accelerate this schedule.

The information at all four community meetings will be identical.

Thursday, March 21, 2019, 6  8 p.m. at the Westside Jewish Community Center, 5870 West Olympic Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90036. Accessible via: Metro bus lines 30, 217, 28, 728 and 780. Limited parking lot and ample street parking is available.

Saturday, March 23, 2019, 10 a.m.  12 p.m. at Virginia Road Elementary School, 2925 Virginia Road, Los Angeles, CA 90016. Accessible via: DASH, Metro bus lines 38, 210, 710 and 740. Parking lot and street parking is available.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019, 6  8 p.m. United Teachers Los Angeles, 3303 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90010. Accessible via: Metro Red/Purple and DASH, Metro bus lines 18, 20, 51, 52, 201, 204, 720 and 754. Limited lot and street parking are available.

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Thursday, March 28, 2019, 6  8 p.m. West Hollywood Library, 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90069. Accessible via: DASH, West Hollywood Cityline and Metro bus lines 4, 10, 16, 30, 105 and 704. Limited lot and street parking are available.

All Metro meetings are held at ADA accessible facilities. Spanish translation will be provided for all meetings. Korean translation will be provided for the March 26 meeting at United Teachers Los Angeles. Russian translation will be provided for the March 28 meeting at the West Hollywood Library. Other ADA accommodations and translations will be available by calling (323) 466-3876 or California Relay Service at 711 at least 72 hours in advance.

Study Schedule

Metro will be conducting this screening study through Fall 2019. Information from this study will be used to help determine which alignment options will be studied further in a formal environmental review process that is anticipated to begin in early 2020.

For more information contact the project at (213) 418-3093 or visit [email protected] or metro.net/crenshawnorth
The Importance of a Good Nights Sleep Cannot be Underestimated!

Although sleep experts recommend adults get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night, American adults are now averaging 6 hours per night. It is estimated that one in three Americans dont get enough ZZZs. Are you one of them?

Many people think sleep is just for resting at the end of their busy day. They justify less sleep by saying: I feel fine. However, sleeping is as important as any other activities a person does during the day. When we sleep, our immune system is activated to hunt and kill viruses, bacteria and even cancer cells.

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Our brain reviews all the information taken in during wake hours, then sorts and files it in an organized way to build memory. Psychological stability is also an important function of sleep. With sufficient sleep hours, a person wakes refreshed, with the mental and physical energy needed for a new day.

Dr. Dennis Hwang and Physician Assistant Cindy Gulley, national behavioral sleep medicine experts at Kaiser Permanentes world-renowned San Bernardino County Sleep Center, stress that sleep disorders and chronic sleep loss can put you at an increased risk of physical and mental conditions, which can affect your overall health. Dr. Hwang advises that sleeping for 7 hours to 8 hours a night is best for maintaining a healthy level of metabolism among adults.

Dr. Hwang offers the following answers to frequently asked questions about the importance of sleep:

Can I make up for lost weeknight sleep on weekends? No. While it may help some, sleeping long hours on weekends can actually contribute to insomnia. Your best bet is to keep the same schedule all week long when it comes to waking up.

Do older people need less sleep? Not always. Studies show all adults, with few exceptions, need to ideally sleep between seven and eight hours per night. Older adults are less active in the day, and nap often, which makes night sleep more difficult. Staying active in the day is the key. Going outside in sunlight is energizing, and makes it easier to sleep at night.

Not always. Studies show all adults, with few exceptions, need to ideally sleep between seven and eight hours per night. Older adults are less active in the day, and nap often, which makes night sleep more difficult. Staying active in the day is the key. Going outside in sunlight is energizing, and makes it easier to sleep at night. Will consuming caffeine make it harder for me to fall asleep? Its not advisable to consume caffeine late in the day, as its likely to stimulate your nervous system and may stop your body from naturally relaxing at night. In fact, according to one study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, consuming caffeine up to six hours before bed significantly worsened sleep quality.

Its not advisable to consume caffeine late in the day, as its likely to stimulate your nervous system and may stop your body from naturally relaxing at night. In fact, according to one study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, consuming caffeine up to six hours before bed significantly worsened sleep quality. What about alcohol? Avoid drinking alcohol before bedtime. It does make people relaxed and drowsy, but it suppresses production of melatonin, the natural sleep hormone, causing very disrupted sleep patterns and reduction of REM sleep. REM sleep is needed for mental stability.

Avoid drinking alcohol before bedtime. It does make people relaxed and drowsy, but it suppresses production of melatonin, the natural sleep hormone, causing very disrupted sleep patterns and reduction of REM sleep. REM sleep is needed for mental stability. If I wake up in the middle of the night, does that mean I dont sleep well? Not necessarily. Its normal to occasionally wake up during the night. As long as you can go back to sleep, and you feel rested when you wake up, its normal to occasionally wake up during the night. If symptoms such as daytime sleepiness occur, further evaluation may be needed.

Not necessarily. Its normal to occasionally wake up during the night. As long as you can go back to sleep, and you feel rested when you wake up, its normal to occasionally wake up during the night. If symptoms such as daytime sleepiness occur, further evaluation may be needed. What about using my iPhone or iPAD before I go to bed? It is easy to say NO,

but we are very attached to our devices and constant flow of information. Research has found that exposure to blue-white light suppresses your bodys production of melatonin. Without sufficient melatonin it is difficult to fall and stay asleep. Blocking blue light with special glasses, and turning down blue light on devices, can really help.

Can I watch TV in bed to relax to sleep? Bed should be reserved for sleep.

Wait until you are sleepy to go to bed. The bedroom should be dark, cool, and quiet to optimize the quality of sleep. Avoid checking the time during the night, it causes anxiety. Use an alarm to wake. Morning sunlight is important to be wakeful and energetic in the day.

The facts are clear: getting a good nights sleep is critically important to everyones good health.

If youre in need of sleep therapy, or want more information about a Kaiser Permanente sleep center, please visit www.kp.org. We want you to Sleep Well, Sleep Enough, Be Well and Thrive!
UPDATE: Mom Charged in killing of LA-area Girl Trinity Love Jones, who was found in Duffel Bag

LOS ANGELES (AP)  A woman was arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of her 9-year-old daughter Trinity Love Jones, was found in a duffel bag along a suburban horse trail near Los Angeles, authorities said Monday.

Taquesta Graham, 28, is expected to be charged with murder on Wednesday, Los Angeles County sheriffs officials said.

Prosecutors last week charged Grahams boyfriend, Emiel Hunt, with murder in the killing of Trinity Love Jones.

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The dead girl was found March 5 at the bottom of an embankment in the suburb of Hacienda Heights. She was wearing pants with a panda pattern and a pink shirt that said, Future Princess Hero.

There were no obvious signs of trauma on her body. Authorities have not revealed a cause of death or motive.

Graham was extradited from Texas to California last week and was initially held on an unrelated warrant. Graham was in custody Monday and could not be reached for comment.

Hunt, 38, has a previous child abuse conviction from 2005 in San Diego County, according to prosecutors. His arraignment is scheduled for April 16.

Friends and family members described Trinity as a joyful and talented girl who did well in school. A memorial near where her body was found featured stuffed animals, heart-shaped balloons, dozens of votive candles and notes expressing love for Trinity and one that said Rest in heaven, Princess.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019

From The ABA Journal:

An en banc federal appeals court has upheld an Ohio law that bans the state from providing health funds to abortion providers.

In an 11-6 decisionissued Tuesday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Cincinnati turned down a challenge by two Planned Parenthood affiliates. They had argued that the funding ban imposes an unconstitutional condition on public funding.

The Planned Parenthood affiliates are correct that the Ohio law imposes a condition on the continued receipt of state funds, Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote for the majority. But that condition does not violate the Constitution because the affiliates do not have a due process right to perform abortions.

Four judges in the majority were appointed by President Donald Trump, Politico reports.

Read more here.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/family_law/2019/03/no-due-process-right-to-perform-abortions.html
Monday, March 18, 2019

This week's mass shooting in New Zealand claimed the lives of several refugees and immigrants (including permanent residents, workers, and international students) from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Syria.

The BBC has profiles on many including the heroes like Daoud Nadi who "is believed to have thrown himself in front of other people in the mosque to protect them when the gunman burst in." And Naeem Rashid, originally from Pakistan, who tried to tackle the shooter and ended up being fatally shot. Rashid will be posthumously honored by his native country.

Afghan-born Abdul Aziz also played a key role in stopping the shooter. Aziz ran after the shooter with a credit card machine, throwing it at him. Aziz also picked up one of the shooter's guns and aimed it at him, causing the shooter to flee. Since the gun was empty, Aziz threw the gun at the shooter as he got into his car to escape.

Today, New Zealand students performed the traditional Maori haka to honor the dead.

-KitJ

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/03/refugees-immigrants-among-massacred-in-new-zealand.html
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03-20-2019 08:54 AM













Post: #11 RE: CIA sitreps Bolsonaro on Venezuela invasion.

Fight the Power Wrote: (03-20-2019 04:04 AM) It's all about confronting Russian and Chinese interests in South America.

Actually... no.



It's all about turning the largest South American country (population of 200 million, 2/3rds of the U.S. population, mind you) into a fascist dictatorship, in order to serve as the CIA's private, world-wide Nazi army.



U.S. military is unwilling to play that role (as is the Russian one, and Chinese have their own ideas about world domination, so they don't have to play second fiddle to the CIA to accomplish that), so the CIA is turning to the next best largest source of raw manual (and fighting) force (aka 'cannon fodder').



Venezuela has nothing to do with it, except as a perfect excuse to be exploited.



BBC has a very nice documentary about the whole Brazilian mess, now years in the making.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n3ct5frg



Unfortunately, the documentary stops right when it should get really interesting... with the "election" (CIA installment, in reality) of openly pro-fascist Bolsonaro as the president of Brazil.



CIA never changes its modus operandi . Learn how it operates, and you can predict all it does or will ever do . Every. Single. Move.



It's the greatest weakness of psychopaths (that is, of artificial /biological, or otherwise/ intelligence), and since CIA's top consists of only and nothing but psychopaths, it's really not that hard to predict its moves.



On a side note, and somewhat related to the subject of the CIA...



The only advantage a synthetic AI has over biological intelligence is in the speed it can search a problem-space for optimal solutions. Once the solution has been found, however, biological intelligence gains the upper hand, because, unlike synthetic AI, biological intelligence can access existing solutions non-locally (to use the modern lingo).



In this universe, 99.999...% of solutions to all the problems are already known, and they all exist on its horizon .



Ironically, while some (most?) biological species may eventually decide to design a synthetic AI in order to speed up their search for solutions they're not aware of (and are not aware of the fact that they can already access those solution without any help from such an AI), the only way for a synthetic AI to access those solutions is by designing a suitable biological intelligence.



In other words...



In a universe like this one, existence of biological intelligence and the existence of synthetic Artificial General Intelligence are mutually incompatible .



In fact, those interested in such meaningless trivialities can actually prove the above statement mathematically ( Game Theory may be the most suitable approach).



Always beware of AI-designed biological intelligences (aka psychopaths).



They are A(G)I's trump card... and should be the first and primary target on anybody's list of targets in any form of strategic warfare. Actually... no.It's all about turning the largest South American country (population of 200 million, 2/3rds of the U.S. population, mind you) into a fascist dictatorship, in order to serve as the CIA's private, world-wide Nazi army.U.S. military is unwilling to play that role (as is the Russian one, and Chinese have their own ideas about world domination, so they don't have to play second fiddle to the CIA to accomplish that), so the CIA is turning to the next best largest source of raw manual (and fighting) force (aka 'cannon fodder').Venezuela has nothing to do with it, except as a perfect excuse to be exploited.BBC has a very nice documentary about the whole Brazilian mess, now years in the making.Unfortunately, the documentary stops right when it should get really interesting... with the "election" (CIA installment, in reality) of openly pro-fascist Bolsonaro as the president of Brazil.CIA never changes its. Learn how it operates, and you can predict all it does or. Every. Single. Move.It's the greatest weakness of psychopaths (that is, of artificial /biological, or otherwise/ intelligence), and since CIA's top consists ofpsychopaths, it's really not that hard to predict its moves.On a side note, and somewhat related to the subject of the CIA...The only advantage a synthetic AI has over biological intelligence is in the speed it can search a problem-space for optimal solutions. Once the solution has been found, however, biological intelligence gains the upper hand, because, unlike synthetic AI, biological intelligence can access existing solutions(to use the modern lingo).In this universe, 99.999...% of solutions tothe problems are already known,Ironically, while some (most?) biological species may eventually decide to design a synthetic AI in order to speed up their search for solutions they're not aware of (and are not aware of the fact that they can already access those solution without any help from such an AI), thefor a synthetic AI to access those solutions is by designing a suitable biological intelligence.In other words...In a universe like this one,In fact, those interested in such meaningless trivialities can actually prove the above statementmay be the most suitable approach).(aka psychopaths).They are A(G)I's trump card... and should beon anybody's list of targets in any form of strategic warfare.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Last Thursday, the Connecticut Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling, allowed plaintiff families from the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shootings to proceed to trial against Remington, the manufacturer of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the attack. The cause of action was based on the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUPTA) for "personal injuries that result directly from wrongful advertising practices. Significantly, the court held the suit was not barred by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) of 2005, which, with limited exceptions, immunizes firearms manufacturers, distributors, and dealers from civil liability for crimes committed by third parties using their weapons. The court held the plaintiffs' CUPTA claim fell within a:

predicate exception [that] permits civil actions alleging that a manufacturer or seller of a [firearm] knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or market of the [firearm], and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought  15 U.S.C.  7903 (5) (A) (iii) (2012)  [I]f the defendants did indeed seek to expand the market for their assault weapons through advertising campaigns that encouraged consumers to use the weapons not for legal purposes such as self-defense, hunting, collecting, or target practice, but to launch offensive assault against their perceived enemies, then we are aware of nothing in the text or legislative history of PLCAA to indicate that Congress intended to shield the defendants from liability for the tragedy that resulted."

The court's opinion:

puts the victims families in a position where they may be able to try to prove a connection between Remingtons marketing for its Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and the horrific act of violence by a disturbed 20-year-old. The state Supreme Court said they can try; making the connection, lawyers and experts say, is a steep challenge.

It is a Herculean task, said Victor E. Schwartz, co-chairman of the public policy practice in the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon  quoting from the Supreme Courts majority opinion.

The Litchfield County Times has the story. Alberto Bernabe has coverage here. Thanks to Don Gifford for language from the opinion.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/tortsprof/2019/03/ct-supreme-court-allows-sandy-hook-families-trial-against-remington.html
Googles Pixel 3 smartphones sell for $799 and up when theyre not on sale for $200 off (like they are right now), which isnt surprising for a modern flagship phone. But that does make them the most expensive Pixel or Nexus phones to date which makes them a tough sell for some customers.

Rumor has it that Google plans to launch a line of cheaper Pixel phones soon, offering some of the Pixel 3s best features for a lower price.

Just dont expect to get a Pixel quality camera in a $200 phone. 9to5Google has posted some more details about the upcoming Google Pixel 3a and while it cuts a few corners, it sounds like an upper mid-range phone, not a budget device.

The Pixel 3a (which we had been calling the Pixel 3 Lite) until recently is expected to feature the same camera hardware and software found in the more expensive Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL smartphones. But it has a less powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 processor which will likely account for some of the price difference.

According to 9to5Google, there are a few corners Google is not cutting. The phone is said to have a 5.6 inch, 2220 x 1080 pixel OLED display rather than an LCD screen. It has pressure-sensitive sides, which means you can squeeze it to trigger Google Assistant or other Active Edge features. And the phone has Googles Titan M security chip.

Other features are expected to come with an 18 watt USB-C fast charger and the Pixel 3a is said to have a 3,000 mAh battery.

Less is known about the Pixel 3a XL, but itll certainly have a larger display and it may also have a different processor and/or higher capacity battery.

All of which is to say, I wouldnt be surprised if the starting prices for these new phones is in the $400 to $500 range rather than the $200 to $300 range.

Thats not necessarily a bad price for a phone with an excellent camera, 3 years of security updates and at least 2 years of OS updates. But if youve got a little more money to spare, you might be better up picking up the full-fledged Pixel 3 when its on sale for $599.

Then again, maybe were wrong about the pricing. Maybe Google will sell a budget phone with an OLED display. I just wouldnt bet on it.
It is often asserted that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 proved that HWA was right and he really did see the future.

This of course is nonsense. Herbert W. Armstrong said that Christ would return within twenty years in his book Mystery of the Ages. (PCG has since deleted those words so someone in there knows HWA spoke nonsense.) How convenient for them to forget this.

Also Herbert W. Armstrong never said the Soviet Union would collapse. He thought it would survive intact until a few years after Christ's return. It shows how biased some many in the COGs are that they never seem to notice this. This inconvenient truth is just tossed into the memory hole.

It is true that HWA said that some Eastern European states would break away from Moscow's orbit and join the European Empire he said would arise at any moment. But he never talked of the Soviet Union collapsing. He did not teach that. Also he portrayed the rise of the European Empire to be far quicker then what has actually happened. In Mystery of the Ages Christ was supposed to return by 2005 at the most.

So assertions that the fall of the Berlin Wall somehow prove that HWA was right is just complete nonsense spread by people who, for whatever reason, are still in denial that HWA was a false prophet who merely talked out of his own "human reasoning".
Bryan Washington describes his short story collection "Lot" as "my little book about queer POC running around Houston."

That Twitter reference reminded me of Randy Newman's line about rich white frat boys "running around Atlanta in their alligator shoes."

Newman's "Good Ole Boys" defined the urban South of college-educated white businessmen that emerged in the 1960s. Now, Washington's multi-hued quilt of Houston's ethnic neighborhoods reveals the South's new urban reality

Washington's book about gay, black, mixed-race and immigrant people in the country's most diverse city is making a big arrival, including a laudatory review by The New York Times' Dwight Garner on the newspaper's coveted Arts front page Tuesday.

"Lot," echoing the biblically referenced name in the collection's central story, is also receiving media attention ranging from NPR to the Los Angeles Times and Texas Monthly.

The birthplace of Donald Barthelme, whose surrealistic reveries made no reference to his hometown, Houston has received little literary attention outside of a quartet of novels written by Larry McMurtry. McMurtry's books took place in the ranch homes, business suites and academic halls of Houston's white, upper-middle class, reflecting the city's urban cowboy image.

Following Michael Arcneaux's memoir about growing up as a black gay Catholic in Houston, Washington's "Lot" gives voice to minority groups clambering for livelihoods in a sprawling, bumptious city known for oil wealth and white privilege.

Published Tuesday by Riverhead Books, "Lot" relates the experiences of a young black gay narrator as he travels through Houston's raucous ethnic streets and neighborhoods, according to media accounts. The unnamed young man's life intersects with those of gay, black, mixed-race and Latino denizens of the city's marginal neighborhoods.

Southern literature was obsessed for years with a guilt-ridden upper-class white aristocracy threatened by a rising white commercial class. William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Peter Taylor and Robert Penn Warren produced novels that gained national prominence. Old Southern cities like New Orleans and Memphis were shown as exclusive enclaves of genteel manners and gracious traditions rather than cauldrons of urban diversity and conflict.

Breaking from the white dominated literature, Louisiana's Ernest Gaines gave witness to the fraught rural experience of Southern blacks. In recent years, Jesmyn Ward's novels explored the deprivation and endeavors of working class blacks in coastal Mississippi's small towns and farm communities.

Now, Washington joins writers like Atlanta's Tayari Jones in examining the minority experience in major cities like Houston and Dallas. Voices are also rising from New Orleans.

Washington's Houston stories might not even be considered Southern literature. Houston and Texas have always been seen as separate from the South, with a different economic and social history.

With its vastness, Texas developed its own literature, criticized by McMurtry as self-consciously regional and shallow. Washington, novelist and political writer Ben Fountain and journalist Lawrence Wright are bringing new perspectives to the state's literature.

From Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles to John Updike's and John Cheever's suburbia, Saul Bellow's Chicago, Philip Roth's Newark and Mark Twain's Mississippi River, American literature has examined how place intersects with racial, social, religious and economic demands and individual identity. Washington's "Lot" brings new stories to that tradition.
Rumyana van Ark (nee Grozdanova) (University of Amsterdam - Faculty of Law; TMC Asser Institute) has posted Individual Terrorist Suspects as the New Folk Devil: New Labour, Rights Tokenism and Security Compulsions (Forthcoming, M. Gordon and A. Tucker (eds.), New Labour and the Rule Of Law, 2019 Hart Publications) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

On a certain May morning of 1997, a new dawn had broken over Britain. A triumphant Tony Blair was celebrating Labours long-awaited victory at the polls. By October of the same year, his government was already working on fulfilling their pledge to modernise British politics and deliver on its commitment for a comprehensive programme of constitutional reform. A key component of this agenda was increasing individual rights by introducing legislation to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic law. Yet, by early 2002, the United Kingdom (UK) was the only Council of Europe member state to have derogated from the ECHR under the provisions of Article 15 as a response to the events of 9/11. The derogation allowed for the adoption of certain extended powers of arrest and detention under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA)  an Act was once described as the most draconian legislation Parliament has passed in peacetime in over a century. The comprehensive and highly restrictive nature of the provisions and counter-terrorism measures contained within ATCSA set the stage for New Labours post-2001 approach towards human rights and national security: a perfunctory or token respect for individual rights in comparison to the exhaustive commitment to counter-terrorism measures and policies. If New Labours legislative and policy record on security matters post 9/11 is to be summarised, it would be thus: when faced with a choice between a prompt legislative response to close perceived legal and policy gaps or first exhausting the wide range of legal powers already available within the statute books, the government chose the former. Furthermore, rather than demonstrating a deep commitment to human rights, the legislation and policies adopted from the year 2000 and onwards were more reflective of the following two interrelated considerations: how much interference with various human rights could be proportionate and acceptable to allow for pre-emption of acts of terrorism as early as feasible? Concomitantly, how restrictive can the measures immobilising a terrorist suspect be before they are seen as unpalatable and/or found to be disproportionate? This tokenism has arguably led to the hollowing out of a number of individual rights such as the right to fair trial.
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Hong Kongs most famous stock picker is on the attack again, criticizing the accounts of one of the citys top performers this year.

Kingdee International Software Group Co. dropped as much as 14 percent Monday as the worst performer on the Hang Seng Composite Index after David Webb published a critical report calling it a bubble stock. Webb did not specify whether he had a short position in the shares, nor what he thinks they should be worth.

The company has relied on sector-specific tax breaks, government grants, property investment gains and questionable transactions with related parties to book any profit at all, Webb wrote in a post tweeted during the citys one-hour lunch break. An external representative for Kingdee said management is confident about the companys future and considers its strategy a success.

Webb, a former Barclays Plc banker, founded a well-followed website two decades ago that gives away his research on Hong Kongs publicly traded companies. He often advises readers to stay clear of certain firms due to corporate governance issues  and is often right. Stocks on his not to own lists have lost USD16 billion of their value since he warned against buying them.

Kingdee had rallied 53 percent this year through Fridays close to near a record high, trading at a whopping 60 times projected earnings. Its annual report last week was welcomed by analysts, many of whom raised their price targets on the stock after Kingdee said revenue from cloud services surged almost 50 percent.

Investors are taking this excuse to lock in the profit as the valuation of Kingdee is at demanding level, said Kingsway Group Services Ltd.s Steven Nie, one of only two analysts tracked by Bloomberg who recommends selling the stock. There has been concern about its cloud business after it decided to acquire the cloud segment from its parent, as it doesnt make money. MDT/Bloomberg
After a two-year investigation, the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) has found that Macaus incumbent Secretary for Administration and Justice and her predecessor did not violate the law in recommending their relatives to the Office of the Prosecutor General, at the time headed by Ho Chio Meng.

In December 2016, while standing trial at the Court of Final Appeal accused of corruption, former Prosecutor General Ho Chio Meng alleged that his Office had hired personnel based on the recommendations of the Macaus incumbent Secretary for Administration and Justice, Sonia Chan, as well as her predecessor, Florinda Chan.

Shortly after the revelations, Sonia Chan came forward to acknowledge her recommendation, but denied exerting any pressure on the public prosecutor. The Secretary was at the time of the recommendation the chief of the Office for Personal Data Protection.

The CCAC received complaint letters soon after Ho Chio Mengs remarks were reported by the media and, pursuant to Law no. 10/2000 Organic Law of the Commission Against Corruption of the Macao Special Administrative Region, it carried out an investigation.

In January 2017, Macau Daily Times made several enquiries with the anti-graft commission to determine whether it had any intention of investigating the case, but those requests for information went unanswered.

Faulty memories

According to the testimony given by Ho Chio Meng during his trial in late-2016, former Secretary for Administration and Justice Florinda Chan once phoned him to recommend her younger brother, Roque Silva Chan, for the prosecution service.

Roque Silva Chan was later hired by the Office of the Prosecutor General. Prior to that he worked for a law firm for almost 20 years, where he was responsible for formalities of real estate transactions and clerical work. In September 1999, after being dismissed by the law firm, Roque Silva Chan was hired as a part-time worker by a trading company.

In November of that same year, Roque Silva Chan started to work at the Preparation Office of the Prosecutor General. According to the CCAC report, in the following January, the assessor of the Office of the Prosecutor General wrote a proposal recommending that Roque Silva Chan be employed as a third grade assistant technical specialist with 380 salary points. The proposal was approved by Ho Chio Meng on the same day.

Interviewed by the anti- graft authority, Roque Silva Chan said that his employment at the Office of the Prosecutor General was obtained by result of his own application, rather than the recommendation of Florinda Chan.

Florinda Chan also told the CCAC that she had never recommended Roque Silva Chan to Ho Chio Meng and that she felt strange about Ho Chio Mengs remarks at the court hearing.

Ho Chio Meng later changed the statement he made during his trial, correcting that he could not accurately remember the details of how Roque Silva Chan had been hired.

Nevertheless, upon investigation and analysis, the CCAC said it believed it was difficult to completely rule out that the then Secretary for Administration and Justice designate, Florinda Chan, had recommended the employment of her brother.

In fact, evidence uncovered by the anti-graft body suggests that Roque Silva Chan may not have been a strong candidate for the role on paper, and that there is reasonable doubts in the incident.

Roque Silva Chan had only finished 9th grade of education at that time and the CV he sent had fewer than 100 words  one could hardly tell he excelled others in terms of academic knowledge or work experience, notes the CCAC conclusions released yesterday. Nevertheless, the then Prosecutor General designate, who did not know him personally, allegedly interviewed him and hired him immediately.

Just a recommendation

The case of Sonia Chan, the second government official accused by Ho Chio Meng of having used her influence to secure a job, is recalled by both parties more clearly. While both agree that a telephone call took place, the incumbent Secretary contends that she did not exert any pressure on the Prosecutor General to hire her relative.

During the investigation, it was found that the relative in question is her elder sister, Chan Hoi In.

Before joining the Office of the Prosecutor General, Chan Hoi In, having a diploma in administrative management, used to work for a civil association in Macau and her main duties were writing, event planning and venue decoration. In July 2008, the then-Chief of the Office of the Prosecutor General, Lai Kin Ian, wrote a proposal which suggested employing Chan Hoi In as a first grade assistant officer of second rank with 320 salary points. The proposal was approved by Ho Chio Meng later that same month.

Questioned by the CCAC, Chan Hoi In said that she applied to several government services at the time, before receiving an interview with the Office of the Prosecutor General, during which she did not mention her kinship with Sonia Chan, who at the time headed the Office for Personal Data Protection.

After learning her elder sister wanted to change jobs and had already applied to several public services, Sonia Chan admitted to telling Ho Chio Meng she could recommend a candidate for a job vacancy at his office if needed. Ho Chio Meng argued during his trial that Sonia Chan had actively lobbied for her sister, asking if he could find her suitable work.

The Commission Against Corruption noted in the report that since the statements of all the parties are basically consistent, it finds the case is substantiated. While noting that the recommendation is not good practice for a transparent government and would probably constitute an illegality today, the CCAC points out that no such regulation existed at the time of the recommendation. Therefore, there is no basis for the agency to call for disciplinary action against the Secretary for Administration and Justice.

Officials of their times

The recommendations for the hiring of Roque Silva Chan and Chan Hoi In, who joined the Office of the Prosecutor General under Ho Chio Mengs approval in 1999 and 2008 respectively, both occurred prior to the establishment of the legal regime of central recruitment and at a time in Macau when the Prosecutor General had the discretion to freely appoint workers.

Article 5 of Administrative Regulation no. 24/2010 Statute of Principal Officials of the Macao SAR says that principal officials are required to prevent conflict of interests and shall not make use of their official status directly or indirectly to seek personal interests, while Article 11 of Law no. 15/2009 General Provisions of the Statute of Leadership and Management stipulates that individuals in leadership positions shall behave ethically so that their personal behavior will not adversely affect the image of the Macau Government or the services or entities they serve.

However, both regulations were introduced in Macau after the alleged recommendations made by Florinda Chan and her successor. Therefore, the CCAC concludes that neither recommendation violated the laws at that time, given that there was no specific law on the conduct of principal officials designate or leaders designate of public services.

The CCAC has submitted its investigation report to the Chief Executive, as well as further suggestions for improvements to the accountability system for officials.
Lawmaker Leong Sun Iok has urged a government authority to enhance the promotional campaign on diametric parking. In his written inquiry to the government, Leong pointed out that local residents are not completely familiar with the diametric parking ban sign. In addition, he pointed out that some residents had reported that their legal parking had been ticketed by police officers, and that their complaints to the Transport Bureau (DSAT) were often in vain. Leong asked whether the government will introduce CCTV surveillance to assist transport police officers on duty.

Gongbei continues breaking single day crossing records

Gongbei Border Gate has registered a new single day crossing record, with 462,500 crossings on Saturday. The old record was also set on a Saturday. Last year, Gongbei broke its crossing record three times: once on April 21 (440,000 crossings) and twice in November, (446,000 crossings and 460,000 crossings respectively). All three of these previous records were registered on Saturdays. In 2018, Gongbei Port processed a total of 134 million passengers, representing a 5 percent increase year-on-year.

MAM celebrates 20 years with event series

March 19 marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Macao Museum of Art (MAM). On occasion of the 20th anniversary of Macaus Handover to China and the 20th anniversary of the Museum this year, a series of celebratory events and activities has been organized, including large-scale thematic exhibitions, the publication of an album of works selected from its collections, the promotion of the Youth Internship Program at the Palace Museum and a series of thematic talks and promotional activities in arts education. All are welcome to participate.
DBS Bank of Singapore expects the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to resume the reduction in the reserve requirement of banks in its meeting Thursday. The current reserve requirement of banks stands at 18 percent, considered one of the highest in the region, despite the 2-percentage-point reduction last year. DBS said in a report Tuesday the BSP might proceed with the RRR reduction but would likely keep the benchmark policy rates steady in the second MB meeting this year. We expect Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to cut bank reserve requirement ratio by 1 percent but keep the policy rate unchanged... The appointment of former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno to the position of BSP Governor has fundamentally changed the monetary policy outlook, DBS said. After his appointment as BSP governor by President Rodrigo Duterte last month, Diokno made known his intention to cut the reserve requirement of banks, saying the current ratio remained too high. Diokno, however, said the Monetary Board, which he chairs, would continue to be data-dependent in deciding when to resume the reduction in reserve requirement. The reserve requirement, or cash reserve ratio, is a central bank regulation that sets the minimum amount of reserves that should be kept by a commercial bank.Diokno said the timing for the next RRR cut would be very important. DBSs expectation echoed that of ING Bank Manila senior economist Nicholas Mapa who said earlier that the Bangko Sentral might cut the reserve requirement in its meeting Thursday to address the current tight liquidity condition. Given the relatively tight liquidity conditions in the market, with M3 growth grinding to single-digit growth for five months and with the settlement of the recent RTB [retail treasury bonds] siphoning off roughly P200 billion from the market, the BSP may look to address the current tightening conditions with a RRR cut, announced either at the March 21 meeting or at an off-cycle meeting on the 28th, Mapa said. Mapa said another evidence of tightening liquidity conditions was the price of money with short-term time deposit rates now as high as 4.794 percent. The timing will be determined on whether Governor [Benjamin] Diokno reverts to viewing adjustments to the RRR as a policy move or a procedural adjustment. This may also be given attention given Dioknos recent comments that he would like to bring forward RRR cuts to carry on the reforms started by the late Governor [Nestor] Espenilla, Mapa said. Mapa said he was not expecting a policy cut at the March 21 meeting, adding this could happen in May.
Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. is mining the data of its business- class customers so theyll keep spending with the airline.

The company has invested a lot in its data capability to find out what its premium customers like and is tailoring offerings specific to them, Chief Executive Officer Rupert Hogg said in an interview in Singapore yesterday. In addition, the Hong Kong flagship carrier plans to introduce a new product in its business-class cabin in the second half, he said.

We are doing what we would call sub-furnishing the environment, the ambiance of the business-class cabin. Its mainly things that arent structural, Hogg said. Its everything that will make that journey comfortable, such as for sleeping, he said.

The efforts are part of Cathays three-year transformation program started in 2017 when Hogg assumed the top post. The carrier is seeking to strengthen its financial health after taking a beating from competition from China to the Middle East. Mining client data enables precision and is what any consumer company is doing, according to aviation analyst Mohshin Aziz of Maybank Investment Bank Bhd.

Cathay definitely needs to take advantage of data mining, said Mohshin. By doing this correctly, you can have repeat customers.

Reaping dividends

The data analysis is helping Cathay understand what people like and what they dont like, Hogg said. Thats really paying dividends.

After cutting jobs and slimming down its operating structure, the airline posted its first full-year profit in 2018 following two straight annual losses. As part of the overhaul, the carrier also added international routes and lured customers with improved service offerings and meals for premium fliers.

Echoing the passenger reach of rival Singapore Airlines Ltd., whose operations range from budget to premium customers, Cathay has also changed its view about the low-cost-carrier business. Operating a budget airline was something that Hogg ruled out two years ago at the start of the transformation program.

Unique segment

Its a unique segment to the market, Hogg said in a Bloomberg Television interview with Yvonne Mann and Rishaad Salamat yesterday. Its a stimulatory type of model and its changed a lot.

The airline said this month that its in active discussions to buy shares in Hong Kongs only budget carrier from debt-laden Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co. A successful acquisition of Hong Kong Express Airways Ltd. would fill a hole in Cathays product offering, according to Rahul Kapoor and Chris Muckensturm, analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Cathay has added 31 of the more fuel-efficient Airbus SE A350s to help start new destinations, and has also cut its overall fuel consumption, Hogg said. The carrier is making Wi-Fi available on its widebodies used for long-haul flights by 2020, and thereafter on its narrow-body aircraft operated by its Cathay Dragon unit.

Were really focused on productivity rather than cost cutting because productivity is about doing things smarter, the executive said. MDT/Bloomberg
Former Chief Executive Edmund Ho has implored Macau to refrain from behavior that is not conducive to solidarity and stability. Ho made this suggestion yesterday, at the Central Peoples Government Liaison Office of the Macau Special Administrative Region.

Yesterday, members of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), representatives of Chinese companies in Macau, leaders of the Macau government, and other Chinese government officials and important political persons from Macau were present at the Liaison Office to study the spirit of the most recent sessions of the CPPCC and the National Peoples Congress (NPC).

Five people, comprising of Legislative Assembly (AL) chairman Ho Iat Seng, CPPCC member Ma Iao Lai, Director of the Liaison Office Fu Ziying, the incumbent Macau Chief Executive Chui Sai On and his predecessor Edmund Ho, each read a similar statement on the spirit of the two conferences to the attendees.

During the meeting, mobile phone service was fully blocked, with the majority of the attendees listening to the study presented by these five individuals.

When presenting his speech, Edmund Ho focused on the fifth Macau Chief Executive election  which will take place this August, according to Zhang Xiaoming, Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office.

I am fully confident, and I believe that the Macau people have the wisdom to elect a Chief Executive who meets the requirements of the Central Government and who is also responsible, said Edmund Ho.

The former Macau Chief Executive remarked that one of the Central Governments requirements for the next Chief Executive is that the official is able to take the lead in making a political stance and stabilize and unite society.

Anything not conducive to solidarity and stability, dont say. I would want to add dont listen, but that seems to be too extreme, said Ho. Anything not conducive to solidarity and stability, dont do.

Liaison Office Director Fu Ziying also spoke, declaring that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vice Premier of China Han Zheng have reiterated to Macau CPPCC members the importance of having a smooth election for the third Chief Executive.

In addition to the Chief Executive election, the speakers also conveyed the Chinese Central Governments hopes for the development of the Greater Bay Area (GBA).

The speakers highlighted parts of the GBA plan, including: having more Macau residents living in Hengqin and other parts Guangdong, developing Macaus tourism industry, developing the Chinese medicine industry in Macau and Hengqin, and having more Macau youth launching entrepreneurship projects in the Bay.

Besides the frequently-mentioned plan, Fu noted that there are institutional differences in promoting the integration of Macau into the development of GBA. Everyone here feels it directly. [The government] needs to push forward institutional innovation and institutional coordination in order to let passengers and cargo flow freely within the GBA.

Some speakers, including Ho Iat Seng in particular, not only expressed the Chinese Central Governments hopes for Macau, but also highlighted Beijings endorsement of the work of Macaus current government, mainly associated with 2018.

As Ho Iat Seng reported, Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng endorsed the Macau governments work in economic development, employment, GBA participation, One Belt, One Road participation, and livelihood improvement, as well as progress on national security matters.

According to Ho, the Chinese vice premier commended Macau for having established a national security committee, as well as improving and protecting the mechanisms and systems of national security.

[Macau] organized the first overseas national security education exhibition and achieved the hanging of national flags and singing of the [national] anthem in primary schools, in middle schools, in high schools and in universities. Macau completed the anthem law establishment, listed Ho.
The number of people killed after torrential downpours triggered flash floods and mudslides that tore through mountainside villages in Indonesias easternmost province has climbed to 79, with dozens of others missing, officials said yesterday.

On Sunday, the disaster-prone country was hit by an earthquake, triggering a landslide that hit a popular waterfall on the tourist island of Lombok, killing at least three people and damaging hundreds of homes.

The worst-hit area from the flooding was Sentani subdistrict, where tons of mud, rocks and trees from a landslide on a mountain early Sunday rolled down to a river that burst its banks, sweeping away residents, National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told a news conference in the capital, Jakarta.

Floodwaters and landslides destroyed roads and bridges in several areas of Papua provinces Jayapura district following days of torrential rains, hampering rescue efforts, Nugroho said.

The combination of natural factors and human activities has caused this fatal disaster, he said.

Nugroho said 79 bodies had been pulled from the mud and wreckage of crumpled homes by Sunday. Another 74 people were hospitalized, many with broken bones and head wounds.

Nugroho said the number of dead and injured would likely increase since affected areas had not been reached and rescuers were still searching for dozens of people reportedly still missing.

We are overwhelmed by too many injuries, said Haerul Lee, the head of the Jayapura health office, adding that some medical facilities had been hit by power outages. We cant handle it alone.

Papua military spokesman Col. Muhammad Aidi said rescuers saved two injured infants who had been trapped for more than six hours. The parents of one of the babies were washed away and died.

Nugroho said rescuers evacuated more than 4,200 people to temporary shelters as more than 600 houses and buildings were damaged and submerged.

Television footage showed hundreds of rescuers and members of the police and military evacuating residents to shelters at a government office. Others were carrying bodies in black and orange body bags. Ambulances and vehicles were seen carrying victims on muddy roads to several clinics and hospitals.

Seasonal downpours cause frequent landslides and floods and kill dozens each year in Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains.

Meanwhile, a moderately strong earthquake triggered a landslide on Lombok island on Sunday. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 5.5 and struck at a depth of 23 kilometers (15 miles).

The earthquake was felt across the island, located next to Bali, panicking residents still recovering from a major quake last August that killed more than 300 people and left thousands homeless.

Sundays quake triggered a landslide from Mount Rinjani and hit dozens of tourists at the Tiu Kelep waterfall located in the foothills of the active volcano, said Nugroho, the disaster agency spokesman.

Two Malaysians and a 14-year- old Indonesian boy were killed in the landslide, Nugroho said.

He said rescuers managed to evacuate 22 Malaysians and 14 Indonesians from the waterfall site, and 56 others  mostly local surveyors from government institutions, the military and the police  from the mountainous area.

At least 182 people were injured in the quake, including 26 Malaysians, Nugroho said. About 525 homes were damaged, including 32 that were flattened.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and has frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the United Nations was ready to help Indonesia cope with the disasters.

The United Nations expresses its solidarity with the Indonesian authorities and stands ready to work with them as they respond to the humanitarian needs resulting from both natural disasters, the spokesman for the secretary- general said in a statement.Jeffrey Pattirajawane, Jayapura, AP
Two Hong Kong subway trains collided during a test run of a new signaling system, the second mishap in months for local rail operator MTR Corp.

The incident occurred yesterday around 3 a.m., when train services werent open to the public, according to MTR. Two drivers were taken to the hospital, with one having a leg injury, MTR Operations Director Adi Lau said.

The accident comes about five months after a rare, simultaneous signaling glitch on four subway lines caused chaos at stations during the morning peak-hour rush. Hong Kongs subway, often lauded as being among Asias best, carries millions of passengers on weekdays.

Service on the Tsuen Wan line between Admiralty and Central, where Hong Kongs main business districts are located, was suspended yesterday.

MTR shares fell as much as 1.3 percent before rebounding and rising 0.3 percent at the close in Hong Kong.

Preliminary findings show that theres a problem with the new signaling system, according to Jacob Kam, MTRs managing director and incoming chief executive officer. The company will investigate further before giving a more definitive cause for the collision, Kam told reporters yesterday afternoon.

The signaling system may be responsible for a 2017 crash in Singapores subway that injured 38 people, the South China Morning Post reported, citing Hong Kong Federation of Railway Trade Unions Chairman Lam Wai-keung.

Hong Kongs government said it is following the situation closely. Frank Chan, secretary for transport and housing, contacted MTR Chairman Frederick Ma and asked the company to hold an urgent board meeting to investigate the incident.

MTR further said the companys board will hold a meeting today. Repairs may take more than a day, and the company said it plans to notify the public in due course. Jinshan Hong, Bloomberg
The New Zealand leaders promise of tightened gun laws in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings has been widely welcomed by a stunned population.

Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern said her Cabinet considered the details of the changes yesterday. She has said options include a ban on private ownership of semi-automatic rifles that were used with devastating effect in Christchurch and a government-funded buyback of newly outlawed guns.

While curtailing gun owners rights is a political battleground in the United States, Christchurch gun owner Max Roberts, 22, predicted Ardern wont face serious opposition to her agenda.

There will be no opposition to it. Theres no movement in New Zealand for that. Our media and politics are more left wing, said Roberts, a carpenter who uses guns for hunting.

Elliot Dawson, who survived the shooting at Christchurchs Linwood mosque by hiding in a bathroom, hopes New Zealand follows Australias lead on gun control.

In Australia, a virtual ban on private ownership of semi-automatic rifles and a government-f unded gun buyback cut the size of the countrys civilian arsenal by almost a third.

The ban followed a 1996 massacre in which a lone gunman used assault rifles to kill 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.

Personally, I dont think guns should be legal at all. Maybe in some extreme self-defense, but I dont think they need such firearms like that, Dawson said. New Zealand is not America. America is a totally different situation. I think in America it would be probably more dangerous to take peoples guns away. But here, I dont think we need them at all.

Akshesh Sharma moved to Christchurch from Fiji to study. He was shocked that the shooter was able to get his hands on such military-style weapons.

Sharma agrees with the prime minister that gun laws need to be tightened.

I dont see this as a place where you need guns to live to feel safe, Sharma said. I can understand in the U.S. maybe, but here its a different story.

Roberts, the gun owner, doubted banning certain types of weapons would be effective. But he said New Zealand should only allow its own citizens to buy guns. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian charged in the Christchurch shootings, obtained a New Zealand gun license in November 2017 and started legally amassing an arsenal of five guns within a month.

I think when people harbor hate like, that these things are possible, Roberts said.

Particularly Australian citizens, I dont understand how they can get access to firearms in New Zealand when New Zealand citizens cant get access to firearms in Australia, he added.

Ian Britton uses a rifle for shooting rabbits and target shooting. He favors outlawing assault rifles like those used in Christchurch because theyre unnecessary.

I cant use the words Id like to use, but its disgusting. I never thought Id see that in this country, Britton said.

Ardern noted that attempts to reform had failed before under pressure from the gun lobby.

There have been attempts to change our laws in 2005, 2012 and after an inquiry in 2017. Now is the time for change, she said.Stephen Wright & Kristen Gelineau, Christchurch, AP
London replaced Macau as the city with highest number of top-rated hotels as new luxury resorts emerged in the European capital, according to the Forbes Travel Guide 2019.

London finished with 13 top-ranking hotels this year, and Macau at a close 12.

The replacement was due to the addition of new five-star hotels including Bulgari Hotel & Residences; the Langham; Mandarin Oriental, Hyde Park; and Shangri-La Hotel, At The Shard.

The annual awards acknowledged a total of 19 hotels in the region, 12 of which are five-star hotels.

The Travel Guide indicated that six new restaurants captured the coveted five-star achievement for the first time, including new five-star awards for Mizumi at Wynn Palace, Sichuan Moon by Andre Chiang and Wing Lei Palace. Robuchon au Dome and Pearl Dragon at Star Tower at Studio City Macau also received five-star ratings.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, a standout amongst the awardees was The Peninsula Hotels, which made Forbes Travel Guide history by becoming the worlds first all five-star hotel company. The Peninsula Manila earned its fifth star this year, which pushed the Hong Kong-based brands tally to 10 five-star hotels.

China also has a new addition to its highest-rated hotel following the opening of the Bulgari Hotel Beijing.

A total of 210 hotels across the globe were deemed five-star resorts, up from the 199 properties that made the cut in 2018.

The guide, whose tagline is We verify luxury, uses anonymous, professional inspectors who make incognito visits to evaluate luxury hotels around the world.

Forbes assesses each hotel by looking at more than 500 criteria. Scores are computed using an algorithm weighted toward the level of service hotel guests receive. The quality of the facility is also taken into account.

Our objective, data-driven star rating list features properties that achieved an impeccable standard of excellence in hospitality, Forbes Travel Guide CEO Filip Boyen said, as cited in a press statement.

Discerning travelers can trust that each winner is the best of the best. We are pleased to honor the 2019 Star Rating recipients, an exceptional collection of hotels, restaurants and spas dedicated to guest service.

Forbes Travel Guide rates properties in 76 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. Newly added destinations for 2019 include: Anguilla, Bahrain, Belize, Danang, Doha, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hoi An, Istanbul, Oman, Perth, Tel Aviv and the Swiss Alps.

The 2019 award recipients include 21 new five-star hotels, 49 new four-stars hotels and 62 new hotels in the Recommended category. Other first-time recipients include six five-star restaurants, eight five-star spas and 21 four-star spas. LV
Dutch police were hunting down a suspect after a shooting yesterday on a tram in the central city of Utrecht that left three people dead and wounded five.

Authorities immediately raised the terror alert for the area to the maximum level and said they are considering the possibility of a terrorist motive in the attack. Dutch military police went on extra alert at Dutch airports and at key buildings in the country as the Utrecht manhunt took place.

Police, including heavily armed officers, flooded the area after the shooting yesterday on a tram at a busy traffic intersection in a residential neighborhood. They later erected a white tent over an area where a body appeared to be lying next to the tram.

Utrecht police said trauma helicopters were sent to the scene and appealed to the public to stay away. As the manhunt continued, heavily armed anti-terror officers gathered in front of an apartment block close to the scene.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the situation very worrying.

Police spokesman Bernhard Jens said no one had been detained yet in the shooting, and one possible explanation is that the person fled by car. He did not rule out the possibility that more than one shooter was involved in the attack.

We want to try to catch the person responsible as soon as possible, Jens said.

A German police spokesman said German authorities near the border were initially told to look out for a red Renault Clio compact sedan but were later told it had been found abandoned in Utrecht. There was no immediate confirmation on that from Dutch police.

The Netherlands anti-terror coordinator raised the threat alert to its highest level around Utrecht. Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg said the threat level has gone to 5, exclusively for the Utrecht province.

The culprit is still on the run. A terror motive cannot be excluded, he said in a Twitter message.

After the shooting, Dutch political parties halted campaigning ahead of a provincial election scheduled for Wednesday that will also determine the makeup of the Dutch parliaments upper house.

In neighboring Germany, police stepped up their surveillance of the Dutch border. Heinrich Onstein, a spokesman for federal police in North Rhine-Westphalia state, said additional officers had been detailed to watch not only major highways, but also minor crossings and railway routes.

German police are in close contact with authorities in the Netherlands and have a description of the suspect, he said, but would not elaborate for security reasons. Aleksandar Furtula & Mike Corder, Utrecht, AP
Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Italy, France and Monaco from Thursday to March 26, the foreign ministry said yesterday.

Italys coalition government has sent mixed signals over whether it will sign a proposed agreement to join Chinas trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure investment drive. The initiative aims to expand commerce by building ports, railways and other infrastructure across more than 60 countries from the South Pacific through Asia to Europe and Africa.

Projects under the initiative have faced complaints that they leave host countries with too much debt, and with too little work going to local companies.

Italys Undersecretary of State Guglielmo Picchi tweeted earlier this month that Italy should not sign the agreement.

The foreign ministrys statement did not give details of Xis schedule during the trip. AP
Century Properties Group Inc. said it will spend between P8 billion and P10 billion in capital expenditures this year to fund residential and office development projects, as well as land acquisitions. CPG said funding for this years capital expenditures will be financed equally from internal and external sources, including the planned P3-billion retail bond offering scheduled next month. CPG reported that net income in 2018 2018 jumped 72 percent to P1.1 billion from P650 million recored in 2017. Revenues surged 60 percent to P10.7 billion from P6.7 billion in 2017, driven by the completion of three residential buildings, an office tower and 259 affordable housing units. Our very positive results in 2018 are strong indications that our diversification strategy is starting to bear fruit and we are headed to the right direction. Century Properties Groups expansion into affordable housing and commercial leasing have started to be profitable and we expect this upward trend to continue, said CPG chief finance officer and head of investor relations Ponciano Carreon, Jr. These two businesses will contribute a bigger share of the companys revenue and income in the coming years, sustaining CPGs growth momentum, Carreon said. Carreon expects horizontal housing projects in the next three years to contribute up to 40 percent of the companys revenues from the current 10 percent.CPGs affordable housing business under the brand PHirst Park Homes, in partnership with Mitsubishi Corp., this year plans to launch 33,000 units with a sales value of P57 billion within the next four to five years. To date, it has rolled out communities in Tanza, Cavite; Lipa, Batangas; and San Pablo, Laguna, with three more sites targeted for launch this year. CPG plans to expand its leasable space from the current 133,000 square meter to 300,000 sq m by 2020 with a target of P1.5 billion in revenues. From being concentrated in high-rise residential properties, CPG undertook a business expansion program to diversify into allied areas of real estate. The diversification plan started five years ago to serve unmet market demands and increasing revenue streams.
e-vehicle group eyes help of battery firms

posted March 19, 2019 at 07:35 pm by Othel V. Campos March 19, 2019 at 07:35 pm

After drawing about P3 billion worth of investments from assembly line and supply investors, the countrys e-vehicle group has urged battery makers to set up manufacturing operations in the Philippines. E-Vehicle Association of the Philippines expects as much as one million e-vehicles plying the roads, which will be a combination of e-trikes, motorcycles, e-jeeps and e-buses 2020. This redounds to about P1.68 billion in sales and services. The direction of the industry is leaning mostly to e-jeepneys and e-buses but we still support e-motorcycles and e-trikes, said EVAP president Edmund Araga at the sidelines of a business conference.He noted the P3-billion investments were mostly in assembly lines and e-vehicle suppliers, excluding battery supply and manufacturing. The group recently signed an agreement with China Battery Association to form linkages, especially with the Philippine Nickel Industry Association, to discuss areas of cooperation in battery production.

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FGen LNG Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of First Gen Corp., said Tuesday it received the formal approval of its application to proceed with the construction of the FGen Batangas liquefied natural gas terminal project in Batangas City. The FGen Batangas LNG Terminal Project is intended to serve the natural gas requirements of existing and future gas-fired power plants of third parties and FGen LNG affiliate, First Gen said in a disclosure to the stock exchange. The notice to proceed is a requirement under the Energy Departments Philippine Downstream Natural Gas Regulation. First Gens LNG terminal project is located in the First Gen Clean Energy Complex in Batangas City. First Gen owns 2,000 megawatts in operating gas assets composed of four gas-fired power plantsthe 1,000-megawatt Santa Rita Power Plant, the 500-MW San Lorenzo Power Plant, the 414-MW San Gabriel Power Plant and the 97-MW Avion Power Plant. These facilities feed on natural gas from the Malampaya gas field. Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi signed the notice allowing FGen LNG to proceed with the $1-billion LNG project in partnership with Tokyo Gas Co. Ltd. on March 7. Cusi said FGen had no overlapping market with Tanglawan Philippine LNG Inc., the consortium of Phoenix Petroleum Philippines and CNOOC Gas and Power Group Co. Ltd., which was also given an NTP for a separate LNG project. No [overlapping market], otherwise we will not have approved it. It was approved because they have a different business model and they can stand and live up to their business model, Cusi said. First Gen president Francis Giles Puno said the NTP was a positive development.The next phase is the selection of the contractor. The main reason for selecting the contractor is to firm up the cost of the project Hopefully, we move towards financing close, he said. Puno said First Gen was expecting to complete the partnership arrangement within the year and start the construction of the project next year. Were going through this phase now with the final design of the facility and then hopefully we make a decision on the contractor. In the meantime, were also looking at other partners who are available, he said. Puno said other foreign investors expressed interest in joining the project. For me, it improves our likelihood to be able to proceed with the project, he said. I think I can say is that were just flexible because we need to make sure it proceeds. But fortunately, its not the lack of interest from other investors. Its in a way a good position because there seems to be a lot of interest, he said. Puno said First Gen was looking at a capacity of about 3 million to 5 million metric tons of LNG depending on the shipment and the usage.
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About Tagalog Marinduque:

"Such provincial forms of speech have been originally the roots, or among the roots, from which modern national forms have sprung, and that in them may, therefore, be found remnants of the more archaic speech of our forefathers, remnants long forgotten by our modern parlance but nevertheless of great interest to the linguist" - Cecilio Lopez (Father of Philippine Linguistics)





Rainbow over Mt. Malindig





The origin of the name,

"Marinduque"

, has been the subject of discussions and thought-provoking conjectures.



Fr. Miguel Bernad in a brief account commented on the origin of the names of a number of places in the Philippines, among which was Marinduque. He said that "Malinduk (or Malindik) is now Marinduque." Explaining that there are provinces, towns and villages whose modern names have been the result of some inability on the part of the Spaniards (or of others), to pronounce the original native name.



F. Arsenio Manuel (of the former National Historical Institute), who conducted a study of place-names, made an interesting one on the origin of 'Marinduque'. He said that 'Marinduque' could not have originated from Malinduk or Malindik but rather from "MALINDUG".



This he said, has historical implication, for the word "malindig" which means "tall and elegant stature" in Tagalog has similar if not parallel meaning to the Visayan term "malindug". These were two cognate terms, Manuel wrote in the study, which fittingly describe the island's volcano, Mt. Malindig.



As for the probability that the Visayan term used as basis for naming the mountain and not the Tagalog word, accounts of early Visayan migration to the island would appear to support this view. The Dasmarinas listing of encomiendas in 1751 already spelled Marinduque in this manner, said he.



Manuel explained further that the phonetic hispanization of Malindug followed the Spanish phonetic system. Spanish does not tolerate the voiced velar stop "g" in its phonology. In Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas and other Spanish chronicles for example, the term for 'loincloth' is spelled 'bahaque'. This spelling and its Spanish pronunciation follows Spanish phonetic laws - 'bahag' becoming 'bahaque'.



This change according to Manuel also appears to have happened to "Palanyag" which became "Paranaque", with additional change taking place, the "l" becoming "r", again following Spanish phonetic tendencies. This "l" - "r" 'spin shift' is, of course, also evident in 'Marinduque'.



Hence, the legend of Marinduque as having resulted from the romance of "Marin" and "Duque", the ill-starred lovers of a popular local myth "cannot have any value in historical writing nor folklore studies", stated Manuel. This, he opined, was just another instance of 'folk-etymologising'.





Recent Teatro Balangaw dance-drama directed by this blogger. Photo by Toby Jamilla

In 2002, as a volunteer cultural worker I decided to call the theater group I formed in Buenavista, "Teatro Malindug", for that picturesque town lies at the foot of the subject volcano. I spent sometime, of course, explaining to the cast (students from the Marinduque Victorian's College), that we owe it to our ancestors to preserve that forgotten name.



The MALINDUG name wasn't new to me, though. I first encountered the same explanation from a research paper given to me by the late Ding Jardiniano of Boac back in 1993, in connection with a play I was writing entitled "Saan Nanggaling ang Moryon", which we presented as "Moryonan" Isang Baliktanaw."



The said research paper (there was a dearth of such materials at that time so we valued anything about Marinduque), was authored by another person (Jardiniano told me then that he knew the guy personally), not Manuel.



However, in 1997, I happened to attend the Conference on Local History sponsored by the National Historical Institute (NHI) held in Makiling, where Manuel, who was present, freely distributed copies of his work entitled: "Marinduque: A Study of Place Names" - an identical copy of the same document I encountered back in 1993. And so I took note to change the name of my source promptly to that of Mr. Manuel.



(I was aware at that time that the previous author, also from NHI, earlier figured in the loss of the famous Bonifacio trial papers and sale of other historical documents and was promptly jailed. For that reason I decided that he must have been the one who copied Manuel's paper and claimed the work as his. I am also aware that even on this small island-province, this kind of deplorable practice also happens. Anyway, in 2004 Manuel was declared as National Artist for Literature).



Then, in 2000, former Balangaw member (and kindred spirit), Patrick Henry R. Manguera, who decided to take up a Master's Degree in History at the University of the Philippines, after some discussions on our local history, sent me a mimeographed copy of a 1923 (repeat 1923), article on Boak Tagalog, written by CECILIO LOPEZ, of the University of the Philippines. It gave me a surprise, almost startled by its implications. The said article was reprinted in 1970 by the University of the Philippines also in mimeographed form for distribution.



Excerpts from the Lopez paper:

"A few words may here be said regarding the derivation of the name Marinduque, a word around which the same kind of regrettable, because superficial and erroneous etymologyzing and inventive story-telling has sprung up which is indulged in, nowadays, by only too many of my countrymen who seem to have allowed themselves to be guided away from that historical sincerity which true patriotism should dictate to them.



"The name in question has nothing to do with a Mary, and a Spanish duke ('duque'), but can be shown to be derived from the name of a high and particularly steep mountain on the island, called Malindig.



"In old chronicles the name of the island occurs in such varying forms as Malinduc, Marinducq, Marinduc, Malindic, and Malindig, forms quite evidently to be analyzed into the well-known 'adjectival' prefix 'ma-' denoting chiefly existence, and a radical word, or stem, occuring in Tagalog as 'lindig', in Bikol as 'lindog' or 'lindug', the second vowel of both forms (i.e. Tag. 'i', Bik. 'o' or 'u'), going back, in accordance with the so-called 'pepet law', to the indistinct vowel 'e'.



"The change of the first sound of the stem, 'l', to 'r' is likewise in consonance with a common Indonesian phonetic law, while the conversion of final 'g' into the Spanish ending 'que' finds an exact parallel in the case of the town Paranaque on Manila Bay, which in Tagalog is called Palanyag. Note, in this connection, also the fluctuation of the last sound of the name Boac which is given by Buzeta y Bravo (Diccionario geografico de las Islas Filipinas) as 'Boac o Boag'.



"The stem 'lindig occurs, according to Noceda y Sanlucar, in the new obsolete Tagalog word 'maglindig', meaning 'rising up straight so as not to be covered by the water', while for the Bikol form 'lindog' Marcos de Lisboa states quite clearly that it means 'monte muy alto y derecho', both forms embodying thus the idea of English 'steep, towering'."



After further research, I came to know that Cecilio Lopez was known as the 'Father of Philippine Linguistics', and his works have not been squarely contested by anyone. I like and admire Lopez. Why? Listen to his expert remarks made after a very thorough study of Boak Tagalog (that's really Marinduque Tagalog, not Tayabas Tagalog or any other): (I was aware at that time that the previous author, also from NHI, earlier figured in the loss of the famous Bonifacio trial papers and sale of other historical documents and was promptly jailed. For that reason I decided that he must have been the one who copied Manuel's paper and claimed the work as his. I am also aware that even on this small island-province, this kind of deplorable practice also happens. Anyway, in 2004 Manuel was declared as National Artist for Literature).

"When listening to a conversation between people belonging to the speech-group here in question, a native from the country around Manila is likely to receive the impression that Boak Tagalog is simpler, more imperfect form of his own more highly developed speech, an impression comparable to that experienced under similar circumstances by an Englishman, German, or Frenchman, when listening to one of the different dialects spoken in his country.

"We should not forget, however, that altho they have followed a different development, such provincial forms of speech have been originally the roots, or among the roots, from which modern national forms have sprung, and that in them may, therefore, be found remnants of the more archaic speech of our forefathers, remnants long forgotten by our modern parlance but nevertheless of great interest to the linguist".

Wala na si Lopez pero mahalaga hindi lamang sa mga mag-aaral ng wika, kundi higit para sa mga taga-Marinduque ang kanyang naisulat. Higit sa lahat.





Galaw-galaw mo, ang Boak Tagalog (na masasabing 'Marinduque Tagalog' o Tagalog-Marinduque at hindi ano pa mang termino na iniimbento sa kasalukuyan, na sadyang nagaganap sa isang pamantasan pa mandin - maituturing tuloy na academic dishonesty dahil walang historical, research, nor any legal basis, o ano mang paliwanag at pinapalulon na lamang ng mga tagaturo sa mga nagtitiwalang mga mag-aaral at madla), ang pinag-ugatan, o isa sa pinag-ugatan ng Tagalog at inasalita pa rin natin ngay-on, at doon pa ngani mismo maririnig ang mga sinaunang pananalita ng 'ating' ('ating' bilang Filipino, dahil ni hindi taga Marinduque si Lopez, ha?), mga ninuno!





Isipa raw maigi!
Credit: shutterstock

The so-called Framingham cardiovascular risk calculator was developed in 1991 on the basis of data gathered in the U.S. between 1968 and 1975. It is named after the town of the same name in Massachusetts, where a systematic evaluation of heart health had previously been conducted in the late 1940s. Using figures from the Federation of Austrian Social Insurance Institutions gathered between 2009 and 2014, Daniela Dunkler working with a team from MedUni Vienna's Centre for Medical Statistics, Informatics and Intelligent Systems (Division of Clinical Biometrics) investigated whether this prognostic model is still valid today. The outcome: even in the 21st century, it is still providing the best and most accurate results  especially for Austria or other Central European countries with a similar lifestyle.

The Framingham prediction model involves screening people for the parameters of age, gender, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes and smoking. MedUni Vienna statisticians analysed the data from 1.7 million Austrians, who had taken part in screening programmes run by the Federation between 2009 and 2014. The result: 4.66 percent of the people screened suffered a cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack or stroke, within five years.

By directly comparing three well-known prediction models, the researchers established that, although the prediction model developed in 1991 slightly overestimated the risk of a cardiovascular event associated with hospital admission or death, it approximated very closely to the actual outcome. Similar figures were produced by the 2008 Framingham Model, while another model (Pooled Cohort Prognosis) that was also studied vastly underestimated the risk in some cases. Says Dunkler: "From a statistical point of view, it is therefore better to rely on the Framingham Model for a more realistic prediction of individual risk." The Framingham Prediction Model produced particularly good results for the age group between 40 and 64 years. "Adjustments would therefore be desirable, particularly in the age group from 65 years upwards but also for the under 40s," says Dunkler. MedUni Vienna is already researching this.

Also relevant for Austria

At the same time, the results show that  although it was first developed and used nearly 30 years ago and is oriented towards the US standard of living  the model is also suitable for assessing the risk of the Austrian population today. "This is all the more surprising," stresses Dunkler, "because people certainly used to smoke more than they do today, particularly in the 1960s and 70s when the data was collected. On the other hand, people are fatter now and more likely to have diabetes."

Explore further Abdominal aortic calcification may signal future heart attack

More information: Christine Wallisch et al. External validation of two Framingham cardiovascular risk equations and the Pooled Cohort equations: A nationwide registry analysis, International Journal of Cardiology (2018). Journal information: International Journal of Cardiology Christine Wallisch et al. External validation of two Framingham cardiovascular risk equations and the Pooled Cohort equations: A nationwide registry analysis,(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcard.2018.11.001
Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images/Cancer Research UK

Studying how cells grow naturally is at the heart of cancer research. But it often relies on an unnatural world.

Like the cells in our body, cells grown in a lab are kept alive with food. In the lab, this food  called cell culture media  is the red liquid you often see in plastic Petri dishes. And importantly, lab-grown cells, like our own, behave differently depending on what food they receive.

This is where the complications arise. What's the best food to give to cells in a lab to make them grow and behave like the cells in our body? Or, put another way, what should cell culture media be made from?

Dr. Saverio Tardito, from the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute in Glasgow, has been pondering this question. And it's led to him developing a new cocktail called Plasmax which he believes helps his cells in the lab to behave more naturally. The result, as shown in Tardito's latest research, is that cells grown in his medium more closely mirror those inside a tumour, making experimental results more accurate.

Cell culture shock

Plasmax was born out of Tardito's frustration with the limited number of liquid foods that were available in 2012. Back then he was studying how cells process one of the building blocks of proteins, an amino acid called glutamine. And it was here that he found himself in a predicament. "When we went to design the first experiment I did as most experimenters do. I said: 'Okay, I have here my cells, which medium do I need to grow them in?' And I was actually a bit embarrassed by the lack of choices that we had at that time."

Tardito was in a unique situation. To do his experiments correctly, he needed to vary the amount of amino acids in his media to see how it affected the cells in his Petri dish. But commercial cell culture media tends to be supplemented with two levels of amino acids: a lot of some, and none of others. This wasn't good enough for what Tardito needed from his cell culture medium, so he made his own. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

The cell culture media that most scientists use are based on the same recipe. This tracks back to the 1950s, when the goal of cell culture was "identifying the essential nutrients needed for cancer cells to grow continuously in a Petri dish", says Tardito. And while the 60-year-old recipe still keeps cells alive, it doesn't necessarily put them in conditions that mirror our body. And, crucially, this might be skewing scientists' results.

"So, at that time in 2012, I asked: 'Why don't we try to do something more physiologically relevant?" recalls Tardito. He began mixing the first version of his own medium and used it throughout his project, publishing the results in 2015.

But Tardito was left with an itch that he couldn't scratch.

"The results we were obtaining with my medium were not aligned with results that had been previously published. And I always put that difference, at least in part, down to the difference in the medium we were culturing the cells in."

So began Tardito's project to create Plasmax, a more complex cell culture medium based not just on the idea of keeping the cells alive and thriving, but of including nutrients at same concentration as they would be found in our blood. "We simply believed that a medium formulated on the physiology would give us back better and more relevant results," he says.

And it seems Tardito wasn't the only one to recognise this problem. In 2017, he was surprised to learn that a lab from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US published a paper using homemade media that was very similar to Plasmax. This first left Tardito feeling disappointed. But on reflection, this gave him confidence in his idea with validation from "another well-established, leading research group overseas".

So Tardito continued to document the differences he was finding. "A few years later we had a good amount of results supporting the hypothesis that Plasmax and commercial media are doing different things when we look at the metabolism of cancer cells."

And his own, updated results that have now been published compare cancer cells grown in commercial media to those in Plasmax, showing convincing results. For example, including ingredients from blood in the Plasmax recipe, such as the micronutrient selenium, makes a difference, and, adjusting the levels of amino acids allows lab-grown cells to behave more similarly to those in our body.

Producing Plasmax on a larger scale

So far, Tardito  like other cell culture mixologists  has been brewing just enough of his concoction to support his group's projects. But Tardito has received many requests to share some Plasmax, which he is keen to do. Importantly, he is now in touch with a few companies interested in working together to commercialise the medium. It's still early days, but the growing interest of commercial partners is an essential step towards allowing the wider scientific community to test the medium.

"I think that to appreciate how much difference the medium will do in terms of cancer biology, we need to have range of options available for a wide community of researchers. That is why I am trying to use Plasmax not only internally, but to make it available to a wider community," he says.

All this may initially seem like scientific pedantry. But cell culture media is vital in lab work with cancer cells. Ultimately, the goal of these experiments is to reduce the complexity of translating lab-based results into people.

"Most of the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last three or four decades on cancer came from looking at cancer cells in a Petri dish, and all these studies use cell culture media to grow them," says Tardito.

"There is no other option. You cannot grow cells without putting them in a medium that contains nutrients and those nutrients will affect their biology."

And in the spirit of trying to gather ever more accurate results, he's the first to admit that Plasmax is not the finished article. "I already have in mind three or four things that should be improved."

Tardito may never land on the perfect media, and a more complex formula raises questions about its shelf life.

"When you put hundreds of components in a solution you are not entirely sure of how long these components will be stable for," he says.

But with commercial support, Tardito hopes to see his recipe appear in lab fridges around the world.

"There is no good reason not to scale up the production."

Explore further Scientists make strides in creation of clinical-grade bone

More information: Johan Vande Voorde et al. Improving the metabolic fidelity of cancer models with a physiological cell culture medium, Science Advances (2019). Johan Vande Voorde et al. Improving the metabolic fidelity of cancer models with a physiological cell culture medium,(2019). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau7314 Jason R. Cantor et al. Physiologic Medium Rewires Cellular Metabolism and Reveals Uric Acid as an Endogenous Inhibitor of UMP Synthase, Cell (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.03.023 Saverio Tardito et al. Glutamine synthetase activity fuels nucleotide biosynthesis and supports growth of glutamine-restricted glioblastoma, Nature Cell Biology (2015). DOI: 10.1038/ncb3272 Journal information: Science Advances , Cell , Nature Cell Biology
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Cerebral organoids, also sometimes called mini-brains or brain organoids, have become an important and useful tool in understanding human brain development and disease. They have the potential to model brain functions, such as information transfer between neurons, but restrictions in their growth have so far limited this. Now, Madeline Lancaster's group in the LMB's Cell Biology Division, have for the first time demonstrated that cerebral organoids can direct muscle movement. In collaboration with Marco Tripodi's group and Emmanuel Derivery's group, both also in the LMB, and researchers at the University of Cambridge, they have made significant advances in this field.

Cerebral organoids are three-dimensional tissues generated by directed differentiation of human stem cells, with the resulting neural precursor tissue spontaneously self-organising into structures and layers that resemble the early human embryonic brain. Their growth, though, is restricted, both in terms of how large they can grow and how long they can be maintained in a dish, as they do not form blood vessels through which nutrients and oxygen are supplied. This has prevented the study of later neuronal development.

Ordinarily, cells are maintained submerged in a nutrient-rich liquid media, which provides little access to oxygen and therefore limits growth. Stefano Giandomenico, a researcher in Madeline's group, helped develop a method for growing a slice of cerebral organoids on a porous supporting membrane such that the tissue is at the air-liquid interface. This gives access to the nutrient-rich liquid media below and oxygen in the air above. This allowed the mini-brain model to be maintained in the dish for longer, so that it could mature further.

Movie of evoked muscle contractions. The brain organoid is stimulated at regular intervals, sending a signal to the spinal cord, which relays the information to the muscle to make it contract. Credit: Medical Research Council

Stefano observed neuronal maturation in the cerebral organoid slice using long-term live microscopy and electrode arrays to measure neural activity, allowing the researchers to see patterns of connectivity between different regions of the mini-brain. Most notably, they placed a piece of mouse spinal cord and adjacent back muscle near to the organoid to see if neurons from the mini-brain slice would grow out to connect with it. Not only did some specific neurons from the organoid grow out to and connect with the spinal cord, but, most remarkably, the mini-brain projecting neurons could stimulate muscle contractions just as motor neurons do in our own bodies. This is the first demonstration of a functional output from cerebral organoid tissues in a dish.

The capacity for this model to be used to investigate the way in which neurons connect up within the brain and with the spinal cord could have important implications for our understanding of a range of diseases. In particular defects in neuronal connectivity are thought to underlie various psychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia, autism, and depression. Similarly, this model could shed light on conditions in which connectivity is disrupted, such as stroke or dementia. Although this new approach allows better maturation of mini-brains, they are still very small and lack the full repertoire and organisation of brain regions that are required for higher cognition. Nevertheless, they have the potential to significantly increase our knowledge and understanding of neuronal development.

Explore further Researchers develop increasingly complex mini-brains

More information: Cerebral organoids at the airliquid interface generate diverse nerve tracts with functional output. Nature Neuroscience, www.nature.com/articles/s41593-019-0350-2 Journal information: Nature Neuroscience Cerebral organoids at the airliquid interface generate diverse nerve tracts with functional output.
Overall, the situation in the European Region is improving too slowly to end TB by 2030. In order to reach the SDG target on TB, new intersectoral approaches are required, current tools need to be used more effectively and a people-centred approach to care is paramount. Credit: ECDC

The latest ECDC-WHO report Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring in Europe 2019 (2017 data) shows that despite an overall decline in numbers of people suffering from TB, the disease remains a major public health challenge in the Region. Of the 275 000 new diagnoses and relapses, an estimated 77 000 people are suffering from difficult-to-treat multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). The European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries fare better, with only 1 041 people reported to have MDR-TB. However, most countries in the Region, including many in the EU/EEA, struggle to treat patients successfully.

Dr. Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said: "Even though tuberculosis is an ancient, preventable and curable disease, it still causes too much suffering and death to many people in the European Union and beyond. TB was high on the global agenda in 2018 and world leaders committed to mobilise efforts towards ending it. This momentum must be used to tackle tuberculosis from all angles and at all levels. The Commission has pledged its commitment to support the EU Member States towards reaching the goal of ending TB by 2030 as part of the wider Sustainable Development Agenda. Even though we are on the right track, sustained efforts centred on people are paramount to achieve a tuberculosis-free Europe and the world."

ECDC Director Dr. Andrea Ammon believes in the capacity of the EU/EEA to improve: "We can end TB by 2030. However, as the burden in the region varies greatly, we will need to tailor approaches on a country-by-country basis. ECDC will continue to offer tailored country support and coordinate efforts across borders."

"TB is preventable and curable; the time to take action is now to end TB by 2030. If we don't act rapidly and decisively, the drug-resistant forms of the disease will increase their hold on Europe. Despite the challenges and threats that we face, I believe that Europe has the full potential to lead the way. We have science and technology, skilled health professionals and high level political commitment to leaving no-one behindwe have got what it takes to end TB", said Dr. Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe.

The recent United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB, held in September 2018, brought hope to the world as global leaders stepped up their commitment to end TB by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This political commitment now needs to be translated into action to end TB.

New hope for treatment of drug-resistant TB

Up until now, an MDR-TB diagnosis spelled the start of a gruelling two-year treatment plan for patients. New WHO recommendations for the treatment of MDR-TB involve safer and more effective drugs with reduced chances of severe side effects and a new treatment regimen for increased effectiveness.

This is also a welcome change for the EU/EEA countries struggling to successfully treat drug-resistant patients. In 2017, only 45% of patients with MDR-TB were treated successfully and for extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), the more resistant form of the disease, only 28% were reported as successfully treated.

Timely diagnostic tests are vital

Proper and fast diagnosis of TB is essential. The sooner a patient is diagnosed, the faster their treatment can begin, easing suffering and preventing further disease transmission. The new report indicates that just over half of all newly notified TB patients were tested using WHO-recommended rapid diagnostic tests. To improve diagnoses and ensure appropriate treatment approaches, it is also important to have capacity at country level to rapidly detect drug-resistant TB.

Overall, the situation in the European Region is improving too slowly to end TB by 2030. In order to reach the SDG target on TB, new intersectoral approaches are required, current tools need to be used more effectively and a people-centred approach to care is paramount.

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Provided by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)
Back with atopic dermatitis. Credit: Dermatologische Klinik, USZ

How does the immune system respond to fungi on our skin? Researchers at the University of Zurich have demonstrated that the same immune cells that protect us against skin fungi also encourage the inflammatory symptoms of atopic dermatitis. An antibody therapy could alleviate this chronic inflammatory skin disease.

The skin of humans and animals is densely populated by fungi. It is suspected that a small yeast species called Malassezia, which besides bacteria and viruses is part of the microflora of healthy skin, strengthens the body's defenses and prepares the immune system for dangerous pathogens, much like certain bacteria do. However, little is known about the physiological processes that keep the ubiquitous fungus in check.

Immunologists at the University of Zurich have now shown that the immune system is responsible for maintaining the balance on our skin. The researchers were able to demonstrate that in mice as well as in humans, Malassezia fungi stimulate the immune system to produce the cytokine interleukin-17. "If this cytokine isn't released or if the immune cells that produce interleukin-17 are missing, there is nothing to stop the fungus from growing and infesting the skin," explains Salome LeibundGut-Landmann, professor of immunology and head of the immunology section at the Vetsuisse Faculty of UZH.

Fungus can encourage skin allergy

But what happens when the balance between the fungus and the immune system on the surface of our body is lost? There is some evidence that the usually harmless Malassezia fungus plays a role in atopic dermatitis. In this chronic inflammatory skin allergy, which affects up to 20 percent of children and 10 percent of adults, the immune system overreacts to antigens from the environment, for example, house dust mites. This can lead to eczema, which is characterized by dry, inflamed skin lesions, typically appearing on the neck, forearms and legs. It is also one of the most common skin diseases in dogs.

The current study confirms that interleukin-17 production by certain immune cells, which normally provide protection against uncontrolled fungal growth on the skin, also contribute to the development of symptoms characteristic for atopic dermatitis. The fungus becomes an allergen on the skin, so to speak, and triggers an overreaction of the immune system with the respective inflammatory characteristics. This finding is supported by experiments with cells from atopic dermatitis patients carried out in cooperation with the University Hospital Zurich and ETH Zurich.

Treatment with therapeutic antibodies

"The findings of our study suggest that therapeutic antibodies that neutralize the effect of interleukin-17 could be an effective treatment for atopic dermatitis. These antibodies already exist and are being used to treat psoriasis with great success," says LeibundGut-Landmann.

However, it remains to be studied why the immune response against the Malassezia fungus can become pathological and why the normally protective mechanisms break down in atopic dermatitis patients.

Explore further Scientists identify unique subtype of eczema linked to food allergy

More information: Florian Sparber et al, The Skin Commensal Yeast Malassezia Triggers a Type 17 Response that Coordinates Anti-fungal Immunity and Exacerbates Skin Inflammation, Cell Host & Microbe (2019). Journal information: Cell Host & Microbe Florian Sparber et al, The Skin Commensal Yeast Malassezia Triggers a Type 17 Response that Coordinates Anti-fungal Immunity and Exacerbates Skin Inflammation,(2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2019.02.002
In my wildest dreams, I would like to see a molecule developed that interferes in the cascade of events and reverses the stress effect and prevents increased drug-taking, said Klaus Miczek. Credit: Anna Miller

When people undergo stress, some turn to alcohol or other drugs to help them cope. Most of us, certainly, have had the experience of cracking open a beer to relax at the end of a tough day. But in cases of extreme or long-term emotional strain, some people can develop an addiction to drugs or alcohol, which can lead to a whole host of negative health effects and social problems.

For decades, neuroscientist Klaus Miczek has explored this thorny association, peering inside the brain to understand why social stress causes some peoplebut not othersto become unhealthily dependent on chemical substances.

"You would like to learn who is most vulnerable and who is resilient," said Miczek, Moses Hunt Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience in the School of Arts and Sciences.

Understanding these mechanisms in the brain could lead to creation of a diagnostic tool for doctors to identify those most at risk for stress-induced drug-taking. Ultimately, it could also lead to finding targets for therapeutic drugs to break the connection between stress and drug use.

"The question is whether you can therapeutically protect or reverse these neuroadaptations produced by the social stress experience," Miczek said.

He has been looking at the association between stress and drug dependence since he first arrived at Tufts from Germany via the University of Chicago and Carnegie-Mellon University forty years ago. Early on, he discovered that exposing animals to even small or occasional amounts of stress increased their drug takinga result that was consistent across species, including mice, rats, and monkeys.

"Only a few seconds of exposure to social stress creates behavioral changes that last for many weeks and months," said Miczek, who is also a co-director of the Circuits and Behavior Core of the Sackler School's Center for Neuroscience Research.

In the 1990s, he and colleagues made a curious discovery about the potential cause of these changes in the brainsocial stress increased the action of dopamine, a neurotransmitter more commonly associated with pleasure and enjoyment.

"For many years, dopamine has been thought to be associated with the reward system in the brain," Miczek said. "Here, we found exactly the oppositethat intensely aversive experiences also cause dopamine synthesis, activation, and release."

As they pursued this seeming contradiction, the researchers eventually determined there are different kinds of dopamine systems in the brain, some of which have to do with pleasurable experiences, while others are tied to more negative ones.

They began homing in on the interactions between dopamine and neuropeptidesbrain proteinsoutside the hypothalamus and pituitary and adrenal glands, the structures in the brain usually associated with dopamine.

In particular, they have explored the function of one neuropeptide called corticotropin releasing factor (CRF), a stress hormone that may hold the key to understanding what causes animalsand humansto develop a harmful dependence on drugs.

A Root Cause

In order to expose animals to stress under the controlled conditions of the laboratory, Miczek and colleagues usually create a confrontation between an aggressive and non-aggressive animal.

"These are very common reactions that animals show in the wildthey fight for territory or dominance or protecting their offspring," Miczek said. In the most sophisticated models, they don't even expose the animals directly to one another, but just create the idea of a confrontation by putting them in close proximity, separated by a barrier.

After exposing the animals to social stress, the researchers then allow the animals to self-administer drugs, either drinking a solution containing alcohol or injecting themselves with cocaine. For the latter, Miczek outfits mice or rats with an intravenous catheter connected to a syringe pump. "They have total control over when they administer pulses of drug solution," he said.

In these controlled conditions, researchers have observed marked differences in the way that animals use alcohol and cocaine in response to stress. Alcohol ingestion seems to increase most in response to repeated episodes of social stress. "It is most striking when the social stress is intermittent," Miczek said.

In those cases, they escalate their drinking, varying according to the day, over the course of several months. Cocaine use and relapse increase in response to sudden, acute bouts of social stress.

In both cases, however, the brain mechanism follows a similar pattern, with bouts of stress sparking a cascade of stress hormones in the brain, including CRF, that in turn triggers specific dopamine neurons and spurs an increase in craving for and consumption of alcohol and cocaine.

Miczek, together with his colleague Herb Covington, a research assistant professor, and a team of students, have found that if they block CRF receptors in certain areas of the brain, they can almost completely undo the craving for alcohol and cocaine that social stress induces. Animals subjected to stress in those cases drink no more than their unstressed fellows. Miczek has been able to reproduce this effect in multiple situations, including in male and female mice, as well as in adolescent and adult mice.

The problem, however, is that the drugs that he has been using to block the CRF receptors have a host of negative side effects, disrupting other hormones in the body released by the thyroid, testes, and adrenal glands and wreaking havoc on the body's equilibrium. "Many of these drugs are experimental drugs that are not really useful in the clinic as of yet, because of these unacceptable side-effect profiles," Miczek said.

Together with Covington, Miczek is currently working to study other ways using genetic interventions to target the CRF system in parts of the brain associated with the stress-activated dopamine system, while leaving other parts of the brain untouched.

Recently, he has found success with one compound so experimental it doesn't yet have a namejust a numberthat seems to provide that kind of selectivity. However, it has the disadvantage of being short-acting. "That's not very useful," Miczek said. "No one wants to take a drug every few hours."

Male vs. Female Differences

In the meantime, he and his colleagues are continuing to explore the interaction between stress and drug dependence. One new area of exploration is examining how female animals are affected differently than males. "Sadly, I have to say there has been quite a bit of negligence in studying females," said Miczek. "This has only recently been corrected."

Experiments by a graduate student in Miczek's lab, Emily Newman, have found that female mice actually exhibit a much higher social-stress effect, causing them to drink more alcohol. At the same time, they don't respond as well to the CRF manipulation that works so well with male mice, implying that different drugs may need to be developed for men and women dealing with stress-induced drug use.

While Miczek has so far confined his experiments to other species, he hopes that one day they may be able to use similar techniques to develop medication to tackle drug addiction in humans.

"The goal is to make sure that what we study in the laboratory can be translated from the rodent model to the human condition," he said. "Ideally, we would like to discover a discrete, specific mechanism for how stress amplifies and intensifies drug-taking, and how this could be reversed."

One day, instead of cracking open a beeror worsepeople might be able to take a pill that would take away their craving for potentially harmful drugs and allow them to develop better ways to cope with stress.

"In my wildest dreams," said Miczek, "I would like to see a molecule developed that interferes in the cascade of events and reverses the stress effect and prevents increased drug-taking."

Explore further Modulating stress circuits
This photomicrograph reveals Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria using acid-fast Ziehl-Neelsen stain; Magnified 1000 X. The acid-fast stains depend on the ability of mycobacteria to retain dye when treated with mineral acid or an acid-alcohol solution such as the Ziehl-Neelsen, or the Kinyoun stains that are carbolfuchsin methods specific for M. tuberculosis. Credit: public domain

Around one in 15 people affected by tuberculosis are likely get the treatable fungal infection aspergillosis according to new research by experts at The University of Manchester and Gulu Referral Hospital, Uganda.

The new knowledge could influence TB programs by helping doctors to identify  and treat  at risk patients.

Professor David Denning from The University of Manchester and Chief Executive of the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI), said: "These results have global implications for TB programs  simple antibody testing and chest X-rays can diagnose chronic fungal infection after TB.

"The risk of aspergillosis is 30-fold higher in those with a cavity after TB, and these patients need to be actively followed up and treated if they develop this fungal complication."

TB leaves a cavity in the lungs in about 1 in 4 patients, and so with 7.7 million survivors from TB in the lungs, about 140,000 people worldwide will develop chronic pulmonary aspergillosis (CPA) every year after finishing TB therapy, assuming the results from Uganda are similar elsewhere.

Between 2000 and 2016, around 45 million lives were saved due to effective treatment of pulmonary TB worldwide and 1.63.5 million of these would subsequently have developed aspergillosis.

The research published today in the prestigious European Respiratory Journal, also found this complication in those with and without HIV infection.

CPA Symptoms, persisting for 3 months, include coughing, coughing up blood, chest pains or night sweats, fever and tiredness.

People with a positive Aspergillus antibody and any of these symptoms have a 93% chance of having CPA with 98% accuracy.

Confirmation requires a chest X-ray showing the characteristic features of pleural thickening and/or a cavity.

Dr. Iain Page, Clinical Lecturer at The University of Manchester, who conducted the study over four years paid tribute to collaborators in Gulu, Uganda and said:

"I am immensely proud that the doctors and patients in Uganda have led the world in defining this important fungal complication of TB. In other studies, over 75% of those with aspergillosis have died within 5 years and we fear this is currently the case in many countries."

Explore further Mistaken identity: New report highlights the global impact of medical misdiagnosis
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has urged the public to protect the community from Japanese encephalitis. Protect the infants and children from contracting this deadly disease by getting JE immunization. Duque said Tuesday. Among the 12 countries with established JE transmission, he said only two countries have not introduced the vaccine in their immunization program, and one of these was the Philippines. Now, the Japanese encephalitis vaccine is available in the Philippines.. This vaccine is WHO-prequalified and Philippine FDA approved. It is safe and effective. It has been used for over 30 years in 12 countries and given to more than 400-million children with an excellent safety record, he said. The World Health Organization recommends that JE vaccination should be integrated into the national immunization schedules in all areas where JE is recognized as a public health priority. It noted that that the most effective immunization strategy in JE endemic settings was a one-time campaign followed by incorporation of JE vaccine into the routine childhood immunization program. The Department of Health introduced the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine to address the public health burden of this disease in the Philippines. JE vaccination is the only effective measure to stop the transmission of JE and bring down the number of cases. JE is a mosquito-borne viral disease and is the leading cause of viral encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) in Asia. Children are most at risk of JE. One in every 250 of those infected with the JE virus will succumb to severe illness, with an onset characterized by flu-like symptoms (sudden onset of high fever, chills, headache, and tiredness).Disease may rapidly progress to severe encephalitis (infection of the brain). At this stage, a patient may experience symptoms like mental disturbances and progressive decline in consciousness to coma. Convulsions occur in 75 percent of pediatric patients. Three out of 10 JE cases that progress to severe illness will die. Among those who survive, more than half will show serious residual neurologic, psychosocial, intellectual and/or physical disabilities such as paralysis, recurrent seizures, or inability to speak. The JE virus is transmitted by Culex mosquitoes that breed in water pools and flooded rice fields. Those who live close to rice fields and pig farms are at most risk. The Philippines is endemic for JE, with cases recorded in every region in the country. The DOH Epidemiology Bureau data shows that JE virus is the cause of encephalitis in 15 percent of all cases of acute encephalitis and recorded 122 laboratory-confirmed JE cases in 2016 and 275 in 2017. In 2018, there were 340 laboratory-confirmed JE cases, with Region III reporting the highest number of cases (110), followed by Regions I and II. The JE vaccine will be introduced March 2019 in Regions I, II, III, and the Cordillera Administrative Region CAR. Children nine months old to less than five years old will be eligible to receive the vaccine through an immunization campaign. The WHO recommends that campaigns should be scheduled outside periods of high JE disease activity. In the Philippines, JE disease activity peaks at the start of the rainy season, hence the campaign is scheduled before this period.
Everett's appointment fills the impending gap in Leon County circuit court, which handles most of the lawsuits filed against the state by virtue of its location in the capital. Gievers, who was first elected to the seat in 2010, earned a reputation for being

a sharp legal thorn

in former Gov. Rick Scotts side, ruling against the state in a series of high-profile cases including a challenge to a ban on smoking medical marijuana and a case involving Joe Redner, the Tampa strip club owner seeking to grow his own medical marijuana for his lung cancer. She also ruled against Scott when she allowed a legal challenge to the former governors blind trust to proceed.
@NewsBySmiley and @Kyra Gurney

Donna Shalala is an analog politician in a digital age.

Not one to talk in 280-character soundbites, the 78-year-old congresswoman is reconnecting with her constituents after two months in Washington in an old-fashioned way: face-to-face conversations.

On Monday, for the second time since she became the second-oldest freshman in U.S. history, Shalala stood in front of a room of constituents from Floridas 27th Congressional District during a town hall and fielded questions about guns, anti-Semitism and Donald Trump. The Miami Democrat will host five more gatherings before the end of May, including another Wednesday at the Palmetto Bay Municipal Center.

Shalala, who billed the event as a town hall on guns, touted legislation shes supported to strengthen gun laws, including a bill passed by the House last month that mandates federal criminal background checks on all firearm sales.

Read more here.
The Court of Appeals has sustained its earlier decision ordering the dismissal from the service of two ranking officials of the Department of Social Welfare and Development for illegal release of P1 million in Priority Development Assistance Fund. In a resolution dated March 18, the CA through Associate Justice Ramon Garcia denied the motion for reconsideration and supplemental motion filed by dismissed DSWD regional director Minda Brigoli and operations division chief Mely Pangilinan. Brigoli and Pangilinan were dismissed by the Office of the Ombudsman in 2017 for gross misconduct, serious dishonesty, and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service. PDAF, or the so-called pork barrel fund of lawmakers, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2013. The appellate court upheld the finding of the anti-graft body holding Brigoli and Pangilinan liable administratively for disbursing in 2008 P1 million in PDAF funds of former Bulacan first district Rep. Maria Victoria R. Sy Alvarado to the Cooperative Rural Bank of Bulacan. The Ombudsman stressed that CRBB, a private business enterprise, was not authorized under the law that created the then PDAF to handle PDAF funds that were intended for public needs through Non-Government Organizations and Peoples Organizations. In its 2018 decision that dismissed Brigoli and Pangilinans petition, the appellate court cited OMBs finding that the Special Allotment Release Order No. ROCS-08-00364 covering the subject P1,000,000 PDAF of former Congresswoman Sy-Alvarado expressly provides that the said fund shall be used in furtherance of the DSWDs Protective Services for Individuals and Families in Difficult Circumstances (PSIFDC) under the Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services Program in the 1st District of Bulacan.Evidently, CRBB was unauthorized to receive the P1,000,000 PDAF since only the NGOs and POs are considered as valid recipients thereof. In spite of the said irregularities, petitioners Brigoli and Pangilinan knowingly participated in the execution of the MOA and the subsequent release of the funds to CRBB, the CA ruled. Petitioners [Brigoli and Pangilinan]connivance with the other public officials, clearly diverted the public purpose of the PDAF to a private purpose, which the law prohibits. Certainly, these repeated and illegal transfers of public funds to CRBBs control and possession gave the latter unwarranted benefits and caused undue injury to the government, the CA said. Because of this, the CA stressed that there exists substantial evidence on record to hold petitioners Brigoli and Pangilinan liable for grave misconduct, serious dishonesty and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service. With the adverse decision, Brigoli and Pangilinan filed a motion for reconsideration and a supplemental motion which were both denied. Petitioners failed to show any compelling reason that would warrant a reversal or modification of the aforementioned Decision. A perusal of the Motion for Reconsideration and its Supplemental Motion shows that no new matters are alleged therein that have not been considered, passed upon and discussed in the decision sought to be reconsidered, the CA held. Associate Justices Eduardo Peralta Jr. and Geraldine Fiel Macaraig concurred with the ruling.
" " Robocalls aren't new, but now scammers are illegally disguising their identities under familiar-looking numbers to get people to pick up their phones for these recorded messages. Oscar Wong/Getty Images

Your phone rings. It's a local number, but it's not one you know, so there are a few seconds when your thumb seesaws between tapping the answer and ignore icons. But it could be a potential job interviewer or a food delivery driver, so you answer the call with a hesitant "hello." Alas, you roll your eyes when you hear a mechanical voice say, "Great news! You've won!"

It's easy to ignore 800-numbers, but it's tricky when your area code pops up and even trickier when a recognizable prefix displays. These dreaded prerecorded, auto-dialed telemarketing robocalls with local numbers are dubbed "neighbor-spoofing" calls.

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If you're getting these calls, you're not alone. It's estimated that U.S. phone users received 2.4 billion monthly robocalls in 2016, even if they added their number to the 14-year-old National Do Not Call Registry. Along with telemarketing solicitations, robocalls ring No. 1 among consumer complaints to the Federal Communications Commission.

So what's all the buzz about? Familiarity. A spoofing service can insert a fake ID instead of the caller's real number, often using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software, which transmits calls via the internet. We tend to let our guard down when we see phone numbers that appear to originate close to our local area. When a call comes in with the same area code and first three digits as ours, we're more inclined to answer.

The problem is, these misleading robocalls are illegal under the Truth in Caller ID Act, which prohibits spoofing "with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongly obtain anything of value." Often, people and companies spoofing robocalls hide their identity because they're committing fraud. Although the FCC requires telemarketers to have consumers' written or oral consent to receive robocalls, people share their phone numbers in so many places  like social media profiles and contest entries  that it's easy for telemarketers to get hold of them.

However, phone companies do offer robocall-blocking services. And the telecom industry is trying to prevent, detect and filter these fraudulent robocalls with the Industry Robocall Strike Force, formed in 2016. In 2017, the FCC even proposed an $82 million fine against a health insurance telemarketer who made millions of illegally spoofed robocalls. So, even though telemarketers are sure to employ more schemes to get people's personal information and money  like ringless voicemail  it's good to know people still have options to protect their privacy and avoid scammers.

Now That's Interesting According to the Robocall Index, Atlanta area codes hold the first and fourth place spots in a list of the top 10 area codes affected by robocalls. Houston, Dallas, New York, Chicago, and Memphis, Tennessee, are also in the top 10.
" " Many more people are working from home these days; how does that affect their taxes? Alistair Berg/Getty Images

If your morning commute takes you from kitchen to couch, consider it a win. Maybe it took years to convince your employer that you'd make an ideal telecommuter. Now you are enjoying the fruits of your labor, a perfect blend of working at home and traveling to consult with clients in other states. Plus, you get to skip roadway hassles and dive straight into your workday.

Or maybe you never planned to work from home, but the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the main office and turned everyone into remote workers. You might have moved back to your parents' house temporarily during the pandemic or rented an Airbnb with some buddies in Montana to wait out the crisis.

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Then, tax time arrives. Suddenly, you're faced with paying taxes in your state of residence and the states in which you work. Or are you? The internet is full of questionable tax advice for people working in one state and living in another, including a few dubious suggestions that you're pretty sure could land you in hot water.

To make matters more complicated, the rules and regulations covering personal income tax vary from state to state. If you commute across state lines to get the job done, it can have specific and surprising consequences on your personal income taxes. These 10 tax tips can help you navigate the way.

10: Understand Residency, Nonresidency and Your State Taxes

If you're living and working in two different states, you'll need a firm understanding of key tax-related definitions. The distinctions between residency and nonresidency  and, more importantly, how they affect your taxes  vary from state to state. You'll want to investigate the tax rules and regulations that apply to each of the states in which you lived and worked during the tax year.

It may seem obvious, but it's worth mentioning that the state in which you reside is considered your state of residency. In general, you'll pay state taxes on all the personal income you earn in your home state (unless you live in a state without personal income taxation).

If you work in a state but don't live there, you are considered a non-resident of that state. So, who gets to tax you? It's a little complicated.

It used to be that both states might try to take a bite of the apple, but in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed such double taxation, and barred two states from taxing the same earnings. That means that if you live in Maryland but actually earn your money and pay taxes on it in Pennsylvania, Maryland can't tax you for that same income. Instead, the state has to issue a tax credit for the amount that you've paid to Pennsylvania [source: Wolf]. Essentially, the state where you actually work gets precedence, unless the two jurisdictions have an agreement to allow you to pay taxes where you live [source: Turque].

9: See If Reciprocity Applies

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have reciprocity agreements with neighboring states, which means that if you work in D.C. but live in Virginia, you don't have to pay taxes in D.C. or even file a return. All you've got to do is document your residency to your employer, so that he or she will withhold taxes for your home state, but not for the two states [source: Moreno].

In addition to the District, the states with reciprocity agreements with neighboring states are New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Arizona [source: Moreno].

In the remainder of the country, you may have to spend some time and money filing a nonresident state tax return in both places, but you can take a tax credit for whatever amount of tax you may owe in the state where you work [source: Moreno].

Some states have an earned-dollar threshold that must be met; others have a time threshold. In Massachusetts, for example, nonresidents are required to file state taxes if the income they earn in the state exceeds $8,000 or reaches a certain portion of their overall income. In Kansas, nonresidents are subject to tax withholding from the first day they travel to the state for work [source: Massachusetts Department of Revenue].

8: Check to See If You're Covered by the "First Day" Rule

A blast of chilled air finds its way into the jet bridge, offering a greeting as bracing as it is refreshing. You deplane and check emails on your smartphone while walking through the Denver International Airport. It may not look like you're clocked in, but you are mentally preparing for a business meeting. And even though you don't live in Colorado, today you'll be part of its workforce  if only for about 24 hours.

You may not realize it right now, but you'll soon join Coloradans in paying income tax, too. That's because Colorado, like two dozen other states in America, operates under a "first day" rule. This means nonresident workers will owe Colorado state taxes even if their work there is temporary. Once you set foot on "first day" soil for work, you'll pay the price come April 15.

In addition to Colorado, there are "first day" personal income tax regulations in Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. Illinois used to be on that list, but switched to a 30-day minimum for tax years starting after Dec. 31, 2020. If you travel for work, it's a good idea to brush up on state tax code or consult a knowledgeable tax professional [sources: Mobile Workforce Coalition, Povich].

7: Understand the State Waiting Period

There are great variations among states when it comes to requiring nonresidents to pay taxes. In addition to the "first day" rule, some states have a waiting period. This waiting period allows nonresidents to earn income in the state for a specific period of time before subjecting that income to taxation.

For example, in some states, you can be a nonresident who works in-state for two to 60 days (it varies by state) before becoming liable for nonresident income tax. Alternatively, a handful of states  California, Idaho, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Wisconsin  have earned income thresholds instead of waiting periods. Georgia has a combination, in which you must have taxes withheld if you've worked for more than 23 days or else made $5,000 or 5 percent or more of your total income in Georgia [sources: Mobile Workforce Coalition, Povich].

Arizona and Hawaii don't tax income from out-of-state sources if you're a nonresident [sources: Arizona Dept. of Revenue, Hawaii Dept. of Taxation]. There are other states in which personal income tax is not withheld for residents or nonresidents. Despite this lack of income tax, you may still need to file a tax return in those states if you live or temporarily work there.

6: Working in a Tax-free State Is Still Taxing

There are seven U.S. states that do not withhold income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming [source: Mobile Workforce Coalition]. Two other states  New Hampshire and Tennessee  tax interest and dividend income, but not earnings [source: Dzombak].

Still that doesn't mean you won't pay taxes on the income you earn while working in these nine states. If you work in one or more of these income tax-free states, but live in a state that does withhold income tax, you'll still need to pay taxes on the money you earned in the tax-free state. You'll claim these earnings on the tax return you file in your resident state.

For example, Lois lives in New Mexico but earned an income of $25,000 while working in Texas. Lois won't owe any state income taxes in Texas, because Texas is one of the nine states in the U.S. that doesn't require its workers to pay personal income tax. However, because Lois lives in New Mexico  and New Mexico is a state that withholds personal income tax, she will need to report her Texas income on the taxes she files in New Mexico [source: Moreno].

5: State Income Tax Isn't the Same as Federal

When it comes to paying personal income tax, it's rarely as simple as "one and done." Especially for people who live in one state and work in another. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that if you file federal taxes, you've covered all the bases. State income taxes follow entirely different rules and regulations. What's more, these rules and regulations vary by state. People who live in one state and work in another could find themselves filing tax returns in multiple states. In fact, there are accounts of road warriors who work in as many as 20 or 30 states, each with different rules for reporting income for taxes [sources: Moreno, Povich].

This presents a significant record-keeping problem not only for workers, but also for the companies that employ them. As a result, some multistate companies, as well as tax professionals, are turning to software developers for programs that can track interstate taxation among employees. However, the complexities  and ever-changing nature of the tax code  make it a monumental task.

For example, some regulations tax nonresident workers who enter the state for one day, which poses issues for workers who might do business on a smartphone during a lengthy layover or attend a conference at which work is discussed [source: Povich].

5: Know Where You Don't Have to Pay Taxes

" " If that executive jet takes you to work in a different state from where you live, check as to whether you need to file taxes in both states. Bob Thomas/Getty Images

The location of your employer's corporate headquarters doesn't have any effect on where you pay taxes, if you work at a branch office in another state. For example, you might live in Connecticut and work for a California-based company, but if your office is in Connecticut, that's the state that gets to withhold your taxes and require you to file a return, because you actually perform your job duties in Connecticut instead of California.

The only complication to this is if your company inadvertently withholds taxes in its home state. In that case, here's some bad news  you may have to file a tax return there in order to get a refund [source: Moreno].

A different sort of complication arises if you work in the U.S. capital. The District of Columbia allows residents of any U.S. state an exemption from D.C. income taxes, although they still must file in their home states. Other multistate regions aren't quite as accommodating. In fact, some would even argue that some states are overtaxing workers. Keep reading to find out more.

4: Be Wary of the New York-Connecticut Trap

As we previously explained, there are many states with reciprocity agreements that save taxpayers from having to file tax returns in two places. Unfortunately, though, not all neighboring states have such agreements.

If you live in Connecticut, for example, but work in New York, you'll have to file both a nonresident tax return in New York and a resident tax return in Connecticut. You'll be allowed to claim a tax credit for income tax paid in New York on work you do there by filing a Form CT 1040, Schedule 2, and attaching your New York return, according to the state of Connecticut's official online portal [source: Ct.gov].

Another problem is that the credit amounts to the lesser of the tax paid to New York or the tax that Connecticut would impose on the wages, meaning that if you earned a lot of money in New York, you still owe taxes in Connecticut even with the credit. If the amount owed is $1,000 or more, you'll also be required to file quarterly estimated tax payments to Connecticut, due April 15, June 15, September 15 and January 15. See, we warned you this was going to get complicated [source: Ct.gov].

3: File in the Right Order

Most people filing a state tax return only need to do so in a single state. For those who live in one state and work in another, the process is a bit more complicated.

There's a specific order in which you'll need to file multiple state tax returns. First, you'll file in the nonresident state or states in which you've earned income. For example, if you were not a resident of Missouri, but worked there for three months as a contractor, you'll need to submit your tax return to Missouri before submitting one to your home state. Keep in mind, you'll only need to do a tax return in your home state if it levies income tax against its residents.

The reason for filing in the nonresident state first is to determine the amount of credit or deduction you can claim for taxes already paid in other states before completing the tax return from your resident or "home" state. Even if you don't owe taxes in your home state  perhaps your only income for the tax year was earned in another state  you may still need to file a state tax return to get a refund [source: Caplinger].

2: Be Aware of Telecommuting Complications

For many years, Sarah worked and lived in New Mexico, the same state in which her employer was located. Then she and her family moved to Colorado, where she continued to work for her employer.

So, what's the problem? The solution is simple enough, right? Sarah will need to file taxes in the state in which she lives and works: Colorado. Most states have a physical presence rule, and Colorado is one of them. In short, this means Sarah's wages will be taxed where the work is done.

If Sarah lived in one of the five states that does not follow the physical presence rule (Alaska, Oregon, Montana, New Hampshire and Delaware), she'd have different rules to follow. The wages she earned would be taxable in the state where she lives and the state where her employer is located.

There are a couple of exemptions, including an exemption for work that could only be performed out of state. An employee who works in sales and covers an out-of-state sales territory is a good example of this exemption [sources: Schapiro, Avalara].

A few states have also issued exemptions for workers affected by COVID-19 "stay at home" orders. Georgia, for example, has offered tax protections to workers who temporarily relocated to Georgia and telecommuted to work. They do not have to pay Georgia income tax for the time that they were working in Georgia under an official stay at home order or during quarantine from exposure to COVID-19 [source: Georgia Dept. of Revenue].

Most states have not changed their income tax rules in response to the pandemic, so check with your state department of revenue for more information. (The law firm Hodgson Russ has provided a chart showing the tax implications related to telecommuting during the COVID-19 crisis for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Many states, according to their chart, have so far not offered any specific guidance.)

1: There May Be Corporate Tax Implications

Telecommuting from another state may not pose a problem for you, but it could for your employer. When a telecommuter works for an employer in another state, the employer establishes "nexus," or a business presence, in the telecommuter's state. And this can have tax consequences. The employer may need to file a corporate income tax return in the state in which their employee is working.

In general, these corporate tax implications have little to do with your personal income tax. Although you could get some blowback from an employer who is reluctant to spread its corporate reach to another state for just one employee, there's not much to worry about from an individual standpoint, aside from being phased out. The truth is, the location of your employer's corporate offices has nothing to do with your tax responsibility. You'll pay taxes in the state or states where you work, as long as they tax personal income.

In most cases, states are giving corporations a pass for employees who relocated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, state tax authorities are not requiring corporations to establish "nexus" in their state if an employee relocates there temporarily due to the pandemic.

Again, if your employer mistakenly withholds tax in the state in which it is headquartered, you'll have to voluntarily file a return in that state. That way, you can get any refund you are due [source: Moreno].

Home Office Expenses If you've been required to work from home because of COVID-19 restrictions, you may be wondering whether you can deduct any home-office expenses (like internet access or office supplies) from your taxes. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated deductible expenses tied to maintaining a home office  unless you are an independent contractor.

Originally Published: Dec 18, 2014
Mayor Abigail Binay commended the Makati City Police Department for the arrest of two graduating college students and seizure of P1.5 million worth of party drugs during an anti-drug operation at a condominium in Barangay Pio del Pilar on Monday. I commend the Makati police led by Senior Supt. Rogelio Simon for their relentless anti-drug campaign that has led to numerous arrests, including the two college students arrested in a condominium yesterday, said Binay. On Tuesday, the city chief executive urged condominium and condotel owners and managers to be vigilant against any illegal activity such as drug dealing taking place inside their buildings. I am calling on all condominium and condotel owners and managers in Makati to keep a tight watch on the goings-on in their buildings. It is their duty to promptly notify the authorities of any suspicious activities of their tenants, and cooperate in the conduct of police operations, Binay said. Adriel Ryoichi Suzuki, 24, of Unit 736 of Cityland Tower 9, was arrested on March 18 after he was identified by the driver of a Grab Angkas who he allegedly hired to deliver a package to Bonifacio Global City. The police said the driver became suspicious on the content of the package and turned it over to the police at the Police Community Precinct 3 of Makati. Upon inspection, the package yielded seven pieces of suspected ecstasy tablets. The authorities coordinated with the management of Cityland 9 and raided Suzukis condominium unit and placed the suspect under arrest. While conducting an inventory of the drugs, the police intercepted a text message to Suzuki from a cohort informing him he was about to deliver ecstasy to his unit. The second suspect, 23-year-old Ralph Jeffrey Tulio Esteban, was subsequently arrested by the police.Investigation showed that Suzuki and Esteban are both college students in private schools in Manila. They reportedly admitted that they were selling the party drugs to their schoolmates. As of presstime, both suspects are set for inquest proceedings, according to the Makati police. From January to March 15 this year, the Makati police have arrested a total of 267 suspects of drug-related offenses, consisting of 217 users and 50 pushers. Illegal drugs worth more than P376,500 were also confiscated during the series of police operations. In 2018, the Makati police arrested over 600 suspects, including eight out of the Top 10 Most Wanted in the city. To date, Makati has two drug-free barangays, San Lorenzo and Urdaneta, as declared by the Regional Oversight Committee on the Barangay Drug-Clearing Program. The said body has also declared as drug-cleared seven barangays, namely, Sta. Cruz, Dasmarinas, Bel-air, Forbes Park, Magallanes, Pinagkaisahan, and Southside. The Makati police also reported that the remaining 24 barangays of Makati have been cleared by their respective Barangay Anti-Drug Abuse Council (BADAC), and are now waiting to be recognized by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) as drug-cleared. To be declared as drug-free by PDEA, a barangay must first be declared drug-free by BADAC. It is gratifying to know that our local police are keeping our communities under tight watch for illegal drugs. We urge citizens to be vigilant and cooperate with law enforcement authorities, Binay said.
A group of farmers described the Department of Agricultures proposed plan to use sniffing dogs to stop the entry of deadly African Swine Flu in the country as absurd, saying a concrete approach was needed to prevent the spread of the disease that could affect the countrys P200-billion pig industry. Your plan to mobilizing sniffing dogs to air and sea ports against ASF virus does not suffice. What we need is a holistic approach that addresses the peculiarity of the virus. We dont need mere propaganda at this point where the potent virus is encroaching fast and without a sound bio-security up in place, disaster will hit our farm and backyard swine industry, Teody de Belen, vice president of the Association of Free Framers told Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Pinol. The farmers also urged Pinol to lay down the countrys program towards preventing and controlling entry and outbreak of the ASF virus. Pinol said the Department of Agriculture was planning to mobilize sniffing dogs at major sea and air ports to sniff at contaminated imported meats from countries affected. The country doesnt have trained dogs to do this. In fact, it is quite expensive and it takes time to train these animals. Besides dogs capability to do this task is very limited. What we need is a program uniquely designed to the peculiarity of the virus, De Belen said in a statement. The group has raised its concern after learning that the DA was not prepared with the prospect of ASF presence in the country. The group also wanted the Senate to probe and determine why DA quarantine officials were not following Pinols order to set up quarantine measures along the countrys entry points. De Belen said the country led by the Department of Agriculture needed bio-security measures to protect the P200-billion hog industry as soon as possible since local agriculture and industry players themselves has limited information about the disease.There is specifically a need for the DA to provide technical assistance to raise the capacity of all local government agriculture officials and the industry players and prepare them with the right precautionary measures that directly addresses the peculiarity of the ASF disease, he said. Theres a need to capacitate our local government units, local officials and the farmers and backyard hog raisers in provinces. They need to know what to do in order to prevent it. But if ever it gets into our borders, they need to know how to control it. So the technical assistance that can be provided by the DA is very strategic and very important at this stage, De Belen said. Once these information are introduced, he said theres also huge task for the Department of Agriculture in establishing the right local and national levels coordination and communication needed as part of the entire prevention and control program against possible outbreak, he added. Only recently, the World Organization for Animal Health released a report on March 1, 2019, listing Vietnam as the new ASF infected country. The African swine fever is a severe viral disease affecting domestic and wild pigs. It is responsible for serious production and economic losses. This trans-boundary animal disease can be spread by live or dead pigs, domestic or wild, and pork products.
The IoT Industry Council of South Africa (IOTIC) announced it has been formally constituted as a new industry representative body, holding its first meeting on 15 March.

The council includes South African and international industry experts, and represent companies that provide devices, network connectivity, application software, and systems integration services in the IoT space.

Founding members of IOTIC include MTN, Microsoft, Comsol, SqwidNet, Dimension Data, Vodacom, and Internet Solutions.

The IoT Industry Council is dedicated to helping business and public sector organisations gain insight into the capabilities that IoT technology brings, said council chairman Roger Hislop.

We see ourselves as an organisation serving the public good, promoting exciting new technologies that translate into highly-effective solutions to make South Africa a better place for all.

Organisations can apply for membership through the councils official website.

Now read: SqwidNet challenges university students to embrace IoT
U.S. federal authorities began exploring a criminal investigation of how Boeing Co.s 737 Max was certified to fly passengers before the latest crash in Ethiopia involving the new jet, according to people familiar with the probe.

The investigation was prompted by information obtained after a Lion Air 737 Max 8 crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta on Oct. 29, said one person, who wasnt authorized to speak about the investigation and asked not to be named.

The investigation has taken on new urgency after the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8 near Addis Ababa that killed 157 people. It is being conducted in part by the Transportation Departments Inspector Generals office, which conducts both audits and criminal investigations in conjunction with the Justice Department.

Boeing shares fell 1.8 percent percent to $372.28 in New York on Monday.

The Justice Department is now in the process of gathering information about the development of the 737 Max, including through a grand jury subpoena, according to a person familiar with the matter who wasnt authorized to speak publicly about it. The Justice Departments Criminal Division, which is overseeing the effort, declined to comment.

The grand jurys involvement was earlier reported by the Wall Street Journal. Separately, a Seattle Times investigation published Sunday found that U.S. regulators delegated much of the planes safety assessment to Boeing and that the company in turn delivered an analysis with crucial flaws.

Both Boeing and the Transportation Department declined to comment about the investigation.

Ethiopias transport minister said Sunday that flight-data recorders showed clear similarities between the crashes of that plane and Lion Air Flight 610 last October.

A possible criminal investigation during an aircraft accident investigation is highly unusual. While airline accidents have at times raised criminal issues, such as after the 1996 crash of a ValuJet plane in the Florida Everglades, such cases are the exception.

U.S. Federal Aviation Administration employees warned seven years ago that Boeing had too much sway over safety approvals of new aircraft, prompting an investigation by Transportation Department auditors who confirmed the agency hadnt done enough to hold Boeing accountable.

The 2012 investigation also found that discord over Boeings treatment had created a negative work environment among FAA employees who approve new and modified aircraft designs, with many of them saying theyd faced retaliation for speaking up. Their concerns pre-dated the 737 Max development.

In recent years, the FAA has shifted more authority over the approval of new aircraft to the manufacturer itself, even allowing Boeing to choose many of the personnel who oversee tests and vouch for safety. Just in the past few months, Congress expanded the outsourcing arrangement even further.

It raises for me the question of whether the agency is properly funded, properly staffed and whether there has been enough independent oversight, said Jim Hall, who was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001 and is now an aviation-safety consultant.

At least a portion of the flight-control software suspected in the 737 Max crashes was certified by one or more Boeing employees who worked in the outsourcing arrangement, according to one person familiar with the work who wasnt authorized to speak about the matter.

While people like Hall have raised concerns about the potential for a conflict of interest, the FAA has been designating authority for certification work and other tasks to employees of companies it regulates for decades and executives at the agency believe it is necessary to keep up with the demands of industry.

The agency doesnt have the budget to do every test, and the use of designees is absolutely necessary, said Steve Wallace, the former head of accident investigations at the FAA. For the most part, it works extremely well. There is a very high degree of integrity in the system.

In a statement on Sunday, the FAA said its aircraft certification processes are well established and have consistently produced safe aircraft designs, adding that the 737 Max certification program followed the FAAs standard certification process.

Separately, Canadian transport authorities are re-examining the certification given to the 737 MAX, Reuters reported, citing Transport Minister Marc Garneau. Canada had earlier accepted FAAs certification of the plane in March 2017 under a deal where both countries accept each others approvals.

Ethiopian Crash

The Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed minutes after it took off from Addis Ababa. The accident prompted most of the world to ground Boeings 737 Max 8 aircraft on safety concerns, coming on the heels of the October crash off the coast of Indonesia that killed 189 people. Much of the attention focused on a flight-control system that can automatically push a plane into a catastrophic nose dive if it malfunctions and pilots dont react properly.

In one of the most detailed descriptions yet of the relationship between Boeing and the FAA during the 737 Maxs certification, the Seattle Times quoted unnamed engineers who said the planemaker had understated the power of the flight-control software in a System Safety Analysis submitted to the FAA. The newspaper said the analysis also failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded  in essence, gradually ratcheting the horizontal stabilizer into a dive position.

Boeing told the newspaper in a statement that the FAA had reviewed the companys data and concluded the aircraft met all certification and regulatory requirements. The company, which is based in Chicago but designs and builds commercial jets in the Seattle area, said there are some significant mischaracterizations in the engineers comments.

Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg said the company will soon release a software update for the plane and related pilot training to address concerns that emerged after the Lion Air tragedy.

Now read: Boeing 737 Max black box shows similarities between Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes
Goldman Sachs, one of the last bastions of crisp-collared, bespoke-suited workplace attire, has loosened up. It announced an official firm-wide flexible dress code earlier this month. And at last  after the long, slow undoing of corporate formality  business casual seems to have triumphed in the American workplace.

But for women and minorities who have been playing corporate catch-up for decades, a more casual dress code presents its own complications.

As one Goldman Sachs banker in GQ put it: All the men are psyched.

For everyone else, dressing more casually for work can be fraught, even risky. Over decades, expensive suits have projected power on Wall Street, almost like a piece of armor, said Susan Scafidi, academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University.

Women at work who feel pressure to prove they deserve to be in the room might be wary of ditching their blazers and pumps.

Weve just achieved the parity of the pantsuit, and suddenly were told the standard pantsuit is no longer standard workforce attire, Scafidi said. Women will need to find another way to achieve parity in attire at business casual or some other lower level of formality.

Parity, of course, extends not only to power, but to pay.

Jaclyn Wong, who researches the intersection of gender and professional life, co-published a study in 2016 looking at the differences in how men and women are rewarded for attractiveness in the workplace.

Attractive men and women make roughly 20 percent more than their less attractive co-workers, Wong found. Even so, they are measured by different standards.

For women, perceived attractiveness was based on grooming, like hairstyle, makeup, fitness and clothing. They are rewarded, Wong said, for looking the part.

For men, grooming counts far less. If attractive, they tend to be rewarded whether they are well-groomed or not.

We know that appearance matters for women and people of color in being seen as competent and worthy of respect, said Wong, a professor of sociology at University of South Carolina. It becomes this difficult position: Do I want to dress down because I dont want to be seen as this kind of stiff and un-fun person, or do I want to continue dressing up because thats the only way people will treat me with respect? 

Goldman Sachs is following other firms in a hunt for tech talent that is most comfortable with the sneakers and hoodies of Silicon Valley. Also it is accommodating a growing fraction of its workforce that is made up of millennials  with about 75 percent of its workers under 40, and dressing in a way that fits more casually dressed clients.

The investment bank, which announced the change in a memo, called for employees to please dress in a manner that is consistent with your clients expectations, but stressed that they should exercise good judgment. A spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the memo.

Good judgment, of course, is open to interpretation.

You have to decide: How do you present yourself when youre often the only woman in the room? said Jane Newton, a managing partner at RegentAtlantic. Newton spent 17 years at JPMorgan and runs a forum for women in leadership on Wall Street. In a male-dominated environment, gravitas becomes a key variable in decisions that are made about your potential.

Workers tend to take their signals from the top. According to the lore of Corporate America, IBM made its first big leap decades ago when executives such as Louis V. Gerstner Jr. changed up the uniform of suit and tie and white collar  by mixing in a blue button-down shirts.

A 1995 headline in the New York Times read Black Jeans Invade Big Blue after Gerstner said he was rolling out casual dress. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packards relaxed Blue Sky Days on Fridays were said to influence future generations of tech entrepreneurs.

Today, its Goldman CEO David Solomon, who performs as a DJ in his spare time and has appeared in interviews without a tie.

In the 80s and 90s, there were few role models for women on Wall Street, Newton said, so they tried to blend in. Men in suits cut imposing figures, so women wore blazers with padded shoulders. Men wore ties, so women wore blouses with pussy bows.

Fashion is far more flexible now, she said, but younger women still ask Newton the same questions about how to present themselves to be taken seriously. Sometimes she offers to go shopping with them, or she pages through catalogues to show what works and what doesnt.

Women on Wall Street have adapted to more casual norms. But some still face the possibility that they could be perceived as lacking power when they dress down at work, said Laura Sherbin, managing director of Culture@Work, a division of Working Mother Media that helps companies develop best practices around diversity.

When a woman is dressed informally, shes more likely to be assumed to be more junior or to be someones assistant, Sherbin said. The topic of dress codes still comes up all the time in focus groups she does at companies, she said.

Sherbin recalls working with one management consulting client that had a relaxed dress code. She complimented a sharply dressed female executive whose look  black dress, edgy black leather jacket with zippers  was powerful. The executive, who was headed into a tough strategy meeting, told Sherbin she was relieved to hear it.

I want to walk in the room and be seen as fierce and somebody whos not going to back down so instantly, the executive said. I never would have worn pastels today.

For women of color, issues of image at the office are thornier. In schools throughout the country, girls of color are more likely to be punished for dress code violations, according to a report by the National Womens Law Center.

Even the freshmen women of Congress  the most female and diverse group ever  have inspired a huge amount of discussion about red lipstick, hoop earrings and ethnic garb. In some cases much more than their actual platforms and ideas.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it this way: If I walked into Congress wearing a sack, they would laugh & take a picture of my backside. If I walk in with my best sale-rack clothes, they laugh & take a picture of my backside.

A more relaxed dress code means a broader range of choices, and a broader range of choices means greater possibility for error, Scafidi said. So while men will naturally gravitate toward old-fashioned polos and khakis  or possibly to fleece and jeans  women dont have a business casual uniform in the same way.

Maureen Sherry worked 12 years on Wall Street and was the youngest managing director at Bear Stearns.

Women never walked in wearing khakis or athleisurewear, she said. Professional women just didnt do that because we wanted to be in meetings and not have our outfit be a point of discussion.

She wrote a novel, Opening Belle, about a female Wall Street executive, based partly on her experience as well as interviews with other women.

A friend of mine wore the first pantsuit on the Salomon Brothers trading floor in 1991, and it caused an uproar, she said. She still has it as a kind of trophy.

Today, she said, if you saw a woman wearing Birkenstocks or loafers, wed like to think that were not taking her less seriously as a result, but Im not sure if thats true.

Although shifting norms add to the litany of micro-decisions women must make before they set foot in the office, they do signal more freedom.

In the past, Newton said, there were these clear, unwritten rules, but who wrote the rules? The men, so we adapted to them so that we could fit in.

Now we can write our own rules, she said, to the extent that were comfortable.
The ability of internet users to spread a video of Fridays slaughter in New Zealand marked a triumphhowever appallingof human ingenuity over computerized systems designed to block troubling images of violence and hate.

People celebrating the attack that left 49 Muslims dead were able to keep posting and reposting videos on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter despite the websites use of largely automated systems powered by artificial intelligence to block them. Clips of the attack stayed up for many hours and, in some cases, days.

This failure has highlighted Silicon Valleys struggles to police platforms that are massively lucrative yet also persistently vulnerable to outside manipulation despite years of promises to do better.

Fridays uncontrolled spread of horrific videosa propaganda coup for those espousing hateful ideologiesalso raised questions about whether social media can be made safer without undermining business models that rely on the speed and volume of content uploaded by users worldwide. In both Washington and Silicon Valley, the incident crystallized growing concerns about the extent to which government and market forces have failed to check the power of social media.

Its an uncontrollable digital Frankenstein, said Tristan Harris, a former Google design ethicist and founder of the Center for Humane Technology.

Those pushing videos of Fridays attack made small alterationssuch as changing the color tones or lengthof the shooting video originally live-streamed by the alleged killer himself through his Facebook page. Such tricks often were enough to evade detection by artificial-intelligence systems designed by some of the worlds most technologically advanced companies to block such content.

But for all of the investment in such technology, even more has gone into building social media platforms into powerful springboards for delivering images, sounds and words to as many people as possiblefor the purpose of generating advertising revenue that fuels profits measured in the tens of billions of dollars each year.

The only good thing thats come out of this is that it laid bare the lie that the big tech companies can solve this problem with AI, because they really cannot, said Cathy ONeil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction about the societal impact of algorithms. Nobody knows how to counteract this stuff. They should stop pretending they do.

Mia Garlick, the head of communications and policy for Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, said the company would work around the clock to remove violating content using a combination of technology and people. Garlick said the company is also now removing even edited versions of the video that dont feature graphic violence.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, and Reddit declined to comment, but both have described working hard over several days to remove objectionable content from the shooting. For Reddit, that includes forums named gore and watchpeopledie.

YouTube acknowledged that its systems were overwhelmed in an exclusive interview with The Washington Post and vowed to make improvements. Weve made progress, but that doesnt mean we dont have a lot of work ahead of us, and this incident has shown that, said Neal Mohan, YouTubes chief product officer.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have scrambled before and largely failed to contain odious content on their platforms. Nor is this the first time murderers have used social media to deliver images of their crimes.

But nobody before had staged a mass-casualty attack in a way so geared to spreading it virally across social media. Many critics worry that now that it has happened once, it almost certainly will happen again.

Micah Schaffer, a technology policy consultant and a former director at YouTube, said that over the past decade social media companies designed software to more effectively promote content to broad audiences. Those design choices, he said, have made it easier for content to spread online.

Back in 2007, when I was at YouTube, if a video on the homepage was a success, that meant getting hundreds of thousands of views, Schaffer said. These videos were handpicked, and we scrutinized each one. Compare that today to the recommendation algorithm sending millions of views to videos with no human intervention. To me, thats just irresponsible.

Those who study social media say that slowing the spread of appalling videos might require the companies to change or limit some features that help spread stimulating content. These include powerful search and recommendation algorithms, nearly instantaneous uploads and auto-play.

The companies losing battle to keep content in check already is having financial consequences. Facebooks stock saw its steepest drop of the year, falling more than three percent on Monday. Needham & Co. analyst Laura Martin blamed the negative effects of horrific images ... that are technologically difficult to block at the 100% level and which hurt (Facebooks) brand.

Shares in Googles parent company Alphabet slid less than 1 percent.

The day of the New Zealand shooting, the alleged gunman, Brenton Tarrant, posted on the anonymous message board 8chan that he would live stream the attack via facebook and included a link to Facebook and a number of other sites where he had stored an anti-Muslim manifesto and other documents.

Within minutes of this announcement, a flood of anonymous posters were cheering him on and rallying to save and re-upload the video widely online to give it maximum distribution: I am downloading it; Stream saved; SAVE THIS S*** NOW; GRAB THEM WHILE YOU CAN.

One poster wrote that the gunmen had delivered on his pledge: I just saw him kill so many people, using an obscene term for Muslims. Nice shootin, another wrote. 8chan did not respond to requests for comment.

Human nature has always had evil and horrific elements to it. But were not asking for the platforms to solve humanitythats not the issue, said Mike Ananny, an associate professor of communication at the University of Southern California. These companies have the advertising monopolies, the eyeball-attention monopolies. . . . We have to expect them to be a much more responsible player than they are.

When the tech giants want to block a troubling video, they add the original to a vast internal blacklist so that their systems can quickly recognize whenever a copy of it resurfaces. This type of hashing technology is a key reason why companies can automatically flag or block child pornography, terrorist propaganda and copyrighted material before it spreads widely online.

But their algorithms depend on pattern recognition, and even the most sophisticated systems are easily deceived. Anyone hoping to spread an otherwise-blocked videosuch as movie pirates and creators of extremist videoscan cut out shorter snippets or change the videos playing speed, coloring, sound or video size, then upload it again.

Facebook said it blocked 80 percent of the New Zealand first-person shooting videos from being uploaded within the first 24 hours, but that roughly 300,000 videos slipped througha showing that put them within reach of millions of people online.

U.S. law largely shields major tech platforms from being held liable for the content users post to their sites. Silicon Valley sees this decades old legal shieldknown as Section 230 for the provision in law it representsas the reason that major social media sites have flourished without having to defend themselves against lawsuits.

But frustrated lawmakers from both parties increasingly are wondering if the time has come to craft new legislation to curb such digital ills as hate speech and terrorist propaganda.

I think that we absolutely need to have a hearing, and understand exactly what happened in the situation, to determine the best solutions to prevent it from happening in the future, said Democratic Rep. Suzan Delbene of Washington. What happened in New Zealand is horrifying, and heart breaking, and that video should never be available online.

But a chief architect of Section 230, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., urged caution. While stressing tech giants must be far more vigorous about identifying, fingerprinting and blocking content and individuals who incite hate and violence, Wyden said that eliminating the section could have unintended consequences for free speech.

So often in the wake of horrible events politicians grasp for knee-jerk responses that wont solve real problems, and may even make them worse, he added in a statement.

European policymakers have been more aggressive in holding technology giants responsible for what appears on their platforms. Germany, for example, began enforcing a law last year that requires social media sites to remove instances of hate speech within 24 hours. The European Union broadly has proposed rules that would give Facebook, YouTube and others an hour to remove terrorist contentor face hefty fines.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg told congressional lawmakers last year that AI systems would help the company solve some of its most intractable problems, including automatically flagging harmful videos.

But AI researchers have said that view doesnt factor in the vast number of ways in which automated systems fail to come even close to human ability, including in understanding context and common sense. Todays algorithms excel at certain tasks but are what AI engineers call frustratingly brittle, with even small changes to their tasks or training data quickly leading them to collapse.

Stephen Merity, a machine-learning researcher in San Francisco, said the tech companies dont want to use more drastic measures, such as tougher restrictions on who can upload or bigger investments in content-moderation teams, because of how they could alter their sites usability or business model. They dont want to do that, so they make these wild promises.

But you cant bank on future magical innovations. Were past the point of ceding the benefit of the doubt to these tech companies.
Creation of a 1,254-acre hiking area with a new, tree-shaded route up 4,342-foot Mount St. Helena looked like a sure thing, until insurance issues related to carbon credits made the deal go up in smoke.

Open space groups had an option agreement to buy this part of the Montesol Ranch in Napa and Lake counties. They had the $1 million needed to complete the deal and turn the land over to the Napa County Regional Park and Open Space District for public access.

Escrow was to close by the end of 2018. That never happened and the option to buy expired.

It officially died the last day of February, Open Space District General Manager John Woodbury said.

Usually, securing money from grants is the big obstacle to buying parkland. Woodbury said that in this case, the sticking point involved carbon credits that the owners had previously sold to the state of California for the trees on the 1,254 acres.

California under its cap-and-trade program to combat climate change has a carbon offset program administered by the Air Resources Board. Forest owners can sell credits for carbon-sequestering trees to offset emissions from businesses.

The Montesol Ranch owners wanted to sell the 1,254 acres for parkland, but would retain the timber rights. The carbon credits agreement with the state would remain. That raised liability and insurance issues over protecting the trees from such disasters as a human-caused wildfire.

We wanted to provide public access, Woodbury said. What if someone throws out a cigarette, causes a fire, is it negligence on our part because we didnt stop them? The Air Resources Board wouldnt say.

The property owners wanted the district to provide liability insurance to protect their interest in the carbon credits, an Open Space District report said. The district was unable to secure it.

People can already hike up Mount St. Helena in Robert Louis Stevenson State Park. Much of that trip, while providing impressive views of Napa Valley, is unshaded and uncomfortable on hot summer days.

The Montesol Ranch route would have taken hikers through a dense forest of firs, maples, bays and other trees. It would have provided a new Mount St. Helena hiking experience.

Still, even though the 1,254 acres wont become a park, this land is safe from ranchette development and most vineyard development because of an earlier deal.

A team effort by the Land Trust of Napa County and The Trust for Public Land led to a conservation easement being established in 2017 on the 7,260-acre Montesol Ranch. That easement cost $11.5 million and covered an area comparable to the cities of American Canyon and St. Helena combined.

The deal, while retiring development rights, left the land as private property. It also gave The Trust for Public Land the option of buying 1,254 acres for $1 million to improve access to Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, with the Open Space District to own the land.

The Open Space District during 2017 made public presentations in Middletown on the proposed, new park. A $200,000 grant from the California Habitat Conservation Fund and $800,000 grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation provided the purchase money. Then the carbon credit issue sank the effort.

Montesol Ranch is owned by Montesol LLC, which consists of at least 18 multi-generational descendants, a 2017 state Coastal Conservancy report said. The Livermore family bought the first parcel of what became the ranch in 1880.

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Pahlmeyer Winery of Napa Valley announces the release of its 30th Anniversary 2016 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red, an iconic Napa Valley red wine blend with a special commemorative label.

Vintner Jayson Pahlmeyer established Pahlmeyer in the 1980s with a string of successful vintages for his wines. His spirit drove his quest for the highest quality wine in every single vintage. Everything worth doing is worth doing to excess is one of his favorite mantras.

All I wanted to do was to create my own California Mouton  a rich, powerful Napa Valley Bordeaux blend. A wine that would drop wine lovers to their knees, Pahlmeyer said. The 1986 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red was the realization of Jaysons dream, earning 94 points from Robert Parker.

More than 30 years later, Pahlmeyers daughter Cleo Pahlmeyer leads the winery with the same pursuit of quality and joie de vivre her father instilled in her. The constant pursuit of the highest quality with investments in our vineyards and in the winery will drive our success for the next 30 years. We never lose sight of that, she said.

Produced in limited quantities, the Proprietary Red is a classic Napa Valley Bordeaux blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec blended and bottled without filtering or fining.

Cleo Pahlmeyer will present tastings of library wines from three decades for collectors and trade in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco this summer. In the fall, a limited-edition magnum of the 2016 Pahlmeyer Proprietary Red will be released with the original Pahlmeyer 1986 label design.

The Pahlmeyer portfolio of wines features the flagship, Proprietary Red, complemented by Merlot and Chardonnay. The 2016 30th Anniversary Proprietary Red wine is available direct through pahlmeyer.com.
A first-of-its kind anti-trafficking training program will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 27, at the Harvest Inn, 1 Main St. in St. Helena.

Organized by Napa Special investigations Bureau (NSIB), in partnership with Soroptimist International of St. Helena and Soroptimist St. Helena Sunrise, the four-hour program will offer guidelines for identifying and reporting incidents of human trafficking within the community.

Specific interest groups encouraged to attend the seminar include police and fire departments, teachers, counselors, foster parents, lawyers, social workers, therapists, nurses, doctors, and city and county officials. Hospitality professionals who attend can learn more about the pending California law slated to go into effect in 2020 requiring all hotel employees to receive mandated training in human trafficking identification and reporting.

Since 2017, California Civil Code has required hotels, motels and inns to post a model notice in public sight that includes information related to support and services available to human trafficking victims.

Human trafficking, as defined by the U.S. Department of State, is a form of modern slavery where human beings  children and adults alike  are trafficked, usually through force, fraud or coercion, for sex and/or labor or both.

According to statistics collected from the National Human Trafficking Hotline run by Polaris and quoted by the State of California Department of Justice, California led the nation in reported incidents of human trafficking in 2018. Within California, the North Bay, including the Napa Valley, is seeing some of the highest rates of trafficking in the state, local officials report.

A nationwide scourge, human trafficking is projected to surpass the illegal sale of arms and drugs in the United States within the next year or two. To reverse this trend, law enforcement organizations like NSIB are teaming up with community activists and non-government organizations such as Soroptimist International to train the public to combat human trafficking.

Interested attendees are requested to RSVP to Soroptimist International of St. Helena at GinaLewis46@gmail.com.
Less than a year after hiring St. Helenas first full-time firefighters, the city is looking to add two part-time firefighters to staff the firehouse during the day.

The City Council signaled its support for the staffing changes during a study session last Thursday. The package costs $234,450, which includes a stipend for firefighters who respond to night calls.

The shift signals one more step away from the volunteer/part-time model that sustained the St. Helena Fire Department for more than 100 years but has become less effective due to increasing call volume, high housing costs, and a shortage of firefighters who work in St. Helena and can respond to daytime calls.

Mayor Geoff Ellsworth said its important for the city and community to support the fire department because it protects St. Helenas $2.5 billion in assessed property values.

That depends on (the department) working correctly and being immediate in its response, Ellsworth said.

The departments 26 firefighters, who are technically part-time employees but arent stationed at the firehouse, would sign up to fill the two part-time slots: one year-round and the second during fire season between May 1 and Dec. 1.

The part-time positions would supplement the two full-time positions and  depending on the time of year  put either two or three firefighters on duty from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

The hiring of two full-time firefighters last July has been a financial success, reducing salary and benefit costs by about $10,000.

City Manager Mark Prestwich estimated that the part-time/professional model saves the city $1.5 million a year compared with the cost of a fully professional department. He said the city should try to keep the model intact for as long as possible.

On the operational side, the full-time firefighters have brought the department back into compliance with standards set by the National Fire Protection Association, said Fire Chief John Sorensen.

St. Helena firefighters have reached the scene of fires and medical aids within five minutes 66 percent of the time, up from 41 percent under the old system. Responses of less than 10 minutes have increased to 95 percent, up from 86 percent the previous year.

Every minute counts during emergencies like fires and heart attacks, Sorensen said. Fires double in size every minute, and structural damage can quickly become catastrophic once the response time stretches past five minutes.

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The Bureau of Immigration ordered the deportation of an American and a Korean both wanted for serious crimes in their homelands. Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente identified the American fugitive as 56-year-old Joel Pasay Aquino, arrested Saturday in Clark Field, Angeles City, Pampanga, and the Korean as 60-year-old Kim Jae Hyoung, apprehended the same day in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu. Aquino is wanted for child pornography in Nevada while Mr. Kim is a notorious swindler in Korea, Morente said. These are very serious offenses, and their stay here poses a risk to our people. The BI chief added the two fugitives were already issued deportation orders, with their passports already canceled by their respective governments. Official sources said Aquino was wanted by federal authorities in Nevada for receipt of child pornography and a warrant for his arrest had been issued by a US district court there.US federal laws make it a separate crime for receiving child pornography and a person found guilty of knowingly distributing or receiving any material that contains images or videos of child pornography may be sentenced to a minimum of five years to as high as 20 years in prison. Kim, on the other hand, has a standing warrant of arrest for fraud issued by a district court in Seoul for swindling a compatriot of more than 265.4 million won or $234 million. Authorities alleged that Kim induced his female victim to wire transfer the money to his account on the promise that it would earn interest. But he reneged on his promise and instead absconded with the money by fleeing to Manila. A check of the BIs travel database showed that Kim hid in the Philippines for more than four years.
Tuesday, March 12

0841 -- Police and fire units responded to a house fire on Vineyard Avenue.

2045 -- Report of people yelling and playing loud music in a car parked on Tainter Street.

2334 -- Calistoga police were engaged in a vehicle pursuit at 82 mph approaching the elm tunnel and continuing through St. Helena. The sheriffs office and CHP were notified.

Wednesday, March 13

1021 -- Report of an unwelcome person in the Crane/Vallejo area.

1043 -- A person asked about leaving a moving pod on Sylvaner Avenue. Police said to go to City Hall for an encroachment permit.

1126 -- Report of a human-shaped bundle dropped over an embankment on Deer Park Road. Officers inspected and found no human remains.

1147 -- A witness saw a man in a pickup back into a newsrack near Main/Spring and break his taillight. Police contacted him and got his information.

1243 -- Someone said the traffic light at Main/Madrona was taking a long time to change signals.

1314 -- A box of tequila was found near the elementary school. Police took a report.

1325 -- Report of a suspicious man going through mailboxes on Grayson Avenue. Police checked the area and didnt see him. He was described as a Hispanic man wearing brown glasses, coat, pants, backpack, and carrying an A&W bag.

1444 -- Report of a truck parked in a red zone on Monte Vista.

1805 -- A white Chevy F-10 was reported stolen from Crane Avenue. Police were given the name of the suspect.

1854 -- A caller was concerned about the construction taking place at a winery near Main/Grayson and whether the work violated the noise ordinance.

1939 -- Police contacted Caltrans about the slow traffic light at Main/Madrona.

Thursday, March 14

0859 -- A person fell and needed help getting up on Pope Street.

0913 -- Two suspicious men approached a store owner and asked questions about the store. They had a black SUV.

0951 -- Medical aid for a sick person on Chiles Avenue.

1012 -- Report of an unwelcome person trespassing on Crane Avenue. Police arrested the 52-year-old St. Helena woman on suspicion of trespassing.

1021 -- Report of utility lines down on Madrona Avenue.

1308 -- A stolen iPhone appeared to be somewhere in Calistoga. The owner asked to file a police report.

1346 -- Report of a yellow hauler swerving and trying to run people off the road near Spring Mountain/Madrona. It continued onto Highway 29.

1401 -- A caller said a big white truck parks on Pine Street for days at a time.

1520 -- There was a swarm of bees on Spring Street.

1656 -- A house was broken into on Crinella Drive.

2106 -- Police pulled over a driver for failing to yield to pedestrians on Mitchell Drive. The 30-year-old St. Helena man was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs and possession of an open container of cannabis while driving.

2251 -- Report of a possible drunk driver on Valley View. Police checked the area.

Friday, March 15

0653 -- Lift assist on Laguna Seca Court.

1014 -- A woman asked to speak to an officer. She expressed how thankful she is for the police departments service.

1223 -- Medical aid on Laguna Seca Court.

1242 -- Medical aid on Redondo Court.

1444 -- A black and white cat named Porsha was reported missing from Olive Avenue.

1523 -- Report of an out-of-compliance leaf blower on Spring Street.

1630 -- Police received another leaf blower complaint, this one on Stockton Street.

1726 -- Report of a possible drunk driver on Highway 29 at Elmhurst Avenue.

2006 -- Alcohol was reported stolen from a Hunt Avenue store.

Saturday, March 16

0815 -- The signal lights were out at Main/Pope.

1206 -- The faucet in the mens bathroom at Crane Park wouldnt stop running.

1550 -- A feral cat came into a house on Monte Vista and got stuck under the bed.

1820 -- Police responded to Main/Pope for a verbal dispute between a man and a woman.

1843 -- Police responded to a complaint of loud amplified music coming from an apartment building on Hunt Avenue.

1938 -- Report of a fire at a winery in south St. Helena.

2042 -- A black puppy with a white stripe from his chin to his belly and white fur on his paws was found on Spring Street. Police put him in the city kennel. The person who found him would like to keep him if his owner doesnt come forward.

2300 -- Report of a suspicious man causing problems on Edwards Street. He was last seen following a girl who appeared to be drunk. Police checked the area.

Sunday, March 17

0058 -- Non-injury lift assist on Pratt Avenue.

0618 -- A Pratt Avenue woman reported a prowler knocking on her windows and walking around in her front and back yards. She said the noises had stopped 10 minutes ago. Police checked the area.

0725 -- Someone left graffiti at the skatepark, in the restrooms at Crane Park next to the playground, the Little League field, the Head Start building, and the womens restroom at Meily Park. Police took a report.

0934 -- Police found more vandalism at Lewis Station Park.

0955 -- A man picking up a co-worker on Monte Vista said hed been contacted at 8:30 a.m. by a hostile resident of Monte Vista whod asked him who he was and why he was there. He said hes been picking up and dropping off his friend every day for two years.

1102 -- A silver Mercedes was parked in a red zone with its door open and its keys in the ignition near Main/Grayson. Its owner agreed to move it.

1232 -- A silver Honda had been parked near Pratt/Main for four days.

1320 -- Report of a possible drunk driver heading into St. Helena from Calistoga on Highway 29.

1943 -- A person reported being the victim of fraud and hacking that started in 2016.

2119 -- A driver reportedly crashed into a parked car on College Avenue. Nobody was hurt, but police arrested the 34-year-old St. Helena woman on suspicion of DUI, possession of prescription drugs without a prescription, possession of an open container of marijuana while driving, and child endangerment.

Monday, March 18

0302 -- Someone said there was a big cow in the 1900 block of Vallejo Street.

0341 -- Report of a possible drunk driver swerving all over Main Street near Grayson Avenue.

0443 -- Police found two cows in the middle of Vallejo Street. The officer canvassed the area but couldnt find the cows owners.

1922 -- The traffic lights were out at Main/Pope.

2336 -- Police checked on an occupied vehicle on Grayson Avenue and arrested a 54-year-old transient for a misdemeanor bench warrant.
Two Napa and Sonoma County restaurant owners have been ordered by the state Labor Commissioners Office to pay an employee $14,000 in back tips that they illegally withheld from the worker.

The employee, Tashi Dhondup, immigrated to the U.S. from Tibet three years ago. Dhondup found a job as a server at St. Helenas Himalaya Sherpa Kitchen.

Paid $10 an hour, he also received tips from customers.

Unfortunately, only about half of those total tips made their way into Dhondups pocket. According to the Labor Commissioner report, business owners Chirring Sherpa and Ngima Sherpa were keeping the other half.

I was new to American work regulations and rules, said Dhondup, who is 31. I was making pretty good money, but I didnt know that withholding tips is illegal, he said in an interview.

After about seven months of working at the restaurant, and talking with other service industry workers, Dhondup questioned Chirring Sherpa about why he was keeping half his tips.

Sherpa told him the owners were entitled to take 50 percent of the tips because they were a family owned business and also did the work of busing tables and serving food, he said.

When Dhondup told Sherpa that wasnt fair, he was fired, said the Labor Commissioner report.

I was shocked, Dhondup said.

Even after that, Dhondup was still willing to settle the issue. He told Chirring Sherpa, If you pay me back, I will forget about what you did.

Sherpa refused.

When Dhondup filed his case with the labor board, one of the Sherpas offered him $2,500 to settle the claim.

I told him, no, I dont want $2,500. I want what you took from me.

Neither Sherpa showed up at the Labor Commissioner hearing, and on Feb. 13, Dhondup was awarded $14,000 for unpaid tips between Dec. 2, 2016 and July 15, 2017.

As of Tuesday, Dhondup had not yet received the money he is owed.

However, on Wednesday, business partner Chirring Sherpa said he had sent the check to the Labor Commissioner that same day.

He declined to comment further about his case with Dhondup, only to say, I didnt want to fight with him, anymore.

That $14,000 is a lot of money to his family, Dhondup said.

Im struggling, he said. I need to support my family.

Dhondup and his wife, Rowan Fasi, have a 4-year-old son.

The two met about 10 years ago when Fasi traveled from the U.S. to Nepal to study Shedra, a four-year course on Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan language.

Today, Fasi and their son live in St. Helena while Dhondup is living with a friend in Richmond and working at a Target.

Dhondup had some advice for other workers in his same situation.

Know your rights when you take a job, he said.

Be smart, he said. Ask for what you deserve.

Whats right is right.

According to the St. Helena restaurant website, Himalaya Sherpa Kitchens sister restaurants include Yak & Yeti in Napa and Ngima at Sonoma Grille in Sonoma.

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CalPERS' newest elected board member floated a proposal Monday asking the pension fund to consider investing in tobacco, an industry that CalPERS abandoned 18 years ago.

Jason Perez, a Corona police officer who was elected to the pension board in October, put forward the motion during a meeting of the fund's investment committee Monday.

Board members Margaret Brown and Dana Hollinger supported the proposal to consider reinvesting in tobacco, but the rest of the 13-member committee rejected it.

Perez campaigned last year as an opponent to so-called divestment measures, which lawmakers propose from time to time forcing CalPERS to pull its money out of industries ranging from coal to guns.

CalPERS as an institution and its board members generally oppose divestment from legal industries because withdrawing money from a particular investment can increase risk for the overall fund. Instead, CalPERS prefers to use its clout as the nation's largest pension fund to press companies to account for their environmental and social impacts.

Perez a year ago confronted former Treasurer John Chiang at a CalPERS board meeting when Chiang advocated for divestment from retailers that sell certain kinds of guns and ammunition. CalPERS rejected Chiang's proposal.

CalPERS last considered reinvesting in tobacco in December 2016. The pension board by a 9-3 vote at the time declined to put money back into tobacco and cigarette makers.

The fund divested from tobacco in 2001. From then through June 2018, the divestment cost the fund about $3.6 billion, or about 1 percent of its total asset value, Steven Foresti with Wilshire Associates told the board.

In 2017 and the first half of 2018, however, the divestment started showing positive returns. Tobacco investments underperformed the rest of the market in that time, meaning the money was better invested elsewhere than in tobacco, Foresti told Perez in response to a question.

For those six quarters, divesting from tobacco saved the fund about $490 million, dropping the total loss to the $3.6 billion, Foresti said.

In addition to tobacco, CalPERS has divested from Sudan, Iran, manufacturers of guns that are illegal in California, thermal coal and certain companies that don't meet its environment, social and governance standards.

The fund has lost about $11 million on the firearms divestment, but the others have gained the fund money. Overall, its divestments have cost the fund about $2.5 billion, according to Foresti.

The latest divestment proposal, Assembly Bill 33, would eliminate CalPERS' investments in private prisons. CalPERS staff member Danny Brown recommended the board oppose the legislation in order to improve its chances of meetings its return-on-investment targets.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
ST. HELENA  A St. Helena police officer was suspended without pay for one month after admitting she issued an undeserved traffic citation to a man who subsequently accused her of racial profiling, according to records posted on the citys website.

During a January 2018 traffic stop, Officer Melissa Brown, who is white, cited a black driver for driving without proof of insurance, even though he had shown her his valid proof of insurance.

A subsequent investigation didnt find any evidence to support the racial profiling allegation, but Brown did admit citing the driver for an offense he hadnt committed.

Brown more likely than not violated a state law prohibiting police from filing false reports, as well as several department policies concerning police conduct, concluded an investigation by attorney Fred Deltorchio of Municipal Resource Group, a human resources consulting firm.

Brown, who had previously pulled over the driver for speeding, told the investigator she hadnt issued the man a speeding ticket because her supervisor had admonished her to tone down her enforcement activities, but she didnt want to let him off with another warning so she cited him for lack of proof of insurance instead.

That explanation fails to justify Officer Browns decision to issue (the driver) a citation for an offense he never committed, the investigation concluded.

(Brown) maintained that she has never stopped (the driver) because of his ethnicity and noted that her husband is also black, and she would never use race as a motivation for making a stop, an investigator wrote.

Brown, who returned to active duty after her suspension, told the St. Helena Star shed tried to do the man a favor by giving him a fix-it ticket instead of a speeding ticket. She admitted shed made a mistake by writing a false citation.

All I was trying to do was do something nice for someone and it totally backfired, Brown told the Star. Hopefully most people in the community know that I try hard to be a good officer.

The drivers name was redacted from the records released by the city, but courthouse records identify him as Jamall Joseph Delmore Robinson. He is a former associate of the Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland, which was shut down in 2007 after being linked to an organized crime syndicate and several murders, including of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey. Robinson, 33, has been convicted of real estate fraud and conspiring to commit passport fraud, according to the Bay Area News Group.

The city posted the results of the investigation on March 7 in response to Public Records Act requests from Bay Area journalists and the American Civil Liberties Union. The requests sought records involving police misconduct, which became public information under a new state law that took effect Jan. 1.

This is the first Napa County police misconduct case to be revealed under the new law, which covers cases of sexual assault and serious lying by law enforcement. So far, the only other Napa County law enforcement agency to respond to records requests is the Napa Police Department, which reported no misconduct cases covered by the new law in the last 10 years.

Drivers account

Robinson claimed Brown had pulled him over more than 20 times, but had never cited him until a traffic stop in the early morning hours of Jan. 13, 2018.

Robinson said hed been driving north on Main Street on his way home from a performance. He said hed previously been pulled over and accused of speeding in St. Helena, so he was driving with his cruise control set 2 or 3 miles below the speed limit.

He claimed Brown pulled him over, accused him of speeding, and cited him for driving without proof of insurance. He said that when he asked her why she was citing him even though hed just shown her his proof of insurance, she told him to take it up with the court.

Robinson contested the citation in court, and after a May 2 traffic court hearing the ticket was dismissed at the request of Brown and then-Police Chief Bill Imboden. Robinson also sued the city for $5,000 in small claims court alleging that Brown had harassed him and issued him a citation for a violation she knew to be false. The claim was dismissed after neither party appeared at a July 26 hearing.

Imboden placed Brown on paid administrative leave in June and arranged for a human resources consultant to investigate Robinsons allegations.

Browns account

Brown claimed her radar had clocked Robinsons pickup at 48 mph in a 25 mph zone heading north over the Sulphur Creek bridge. When she stopped him in front of Lyman Park and talked to him through the drivers side window, she recognized him from previous stops.

She told Robinson hed been speeding and said shed given him warnings about speeding in the past. She recalled pulling him over twice before the Jan. 13 stop, and maybe encountering him a third time when he was riding as a passenger. Each time, he was in a different car.

She described Robinson as really angry. She told an investigator that her supervisor had directed her to give people breaks in these situations. However, she wanted Robinson to take (her) more seriously so she gave him the ticket to cause an inconvenience without levying a fine or adding points to his driving record.

She said she told Robinson she was giving (him) a break for the last time and would cite him for speeding the next time she caught him speeding. She denied telling him to take it up with the court.

She told the investigator this was the first and only time she had ever cited anyone for an offense they hadnt committed.

Browns admission

Imboden said Brown approached him on May 1  the day before the traffic court hearing  and told him she had cited Robinson for not having proof of insurance even though hed given it to her.

Imboden said Brown told him shed decided not to cite Robinson for speeding because she wanted to give him a break. Instead she cited him for not having proof of insurance to drive the message home to him to drive better in St. Helena.

Imboden said Brown told him, I wanted to give him a citation and that one seemed like an easy one to fix.

Imboden told the investigator he was caught off guard and stunned by Browns admission. He told her they would have to appear in traffic court and ask for the citation to be dismissed. They did so, and as they were leaving the courthouse Imboden told Robinson that the citation should not have been issued.

Previous stops

Imboden said Brown also told him about her history with Robinson, mentioning that when she previously stopped him for having tinted windows on his car sometime in 2016 or 2017, the first thing he said was You stopped me because Im black.

Officer Brown told Chief Imboden that this comment made her very uncomfortable as she is very sensitive to race issues and does not like to be perceived as doing her job based on race, the investigator wrote.

Brown told Robinson she hadnt been able to tell what race he was because his windows were tinted and it was nighttime. Brown told the investigator she even had him roll up his window to demonstrate that she couldnt see him through the tinting. She gave him a warning about the tinting and let him go without a citation.

When she stopped Robinson on Jan. 13 for speeding, he again told her that she had stopped him because he was black.

I dont know

Another officer said Brown had admitted shed cited Robinson even though he had insurance. When the officer asked her why shed done it, Brown told him I dont know.

That officer told the investigator he didnt believe Brown had cited Robinson out of malice or because of his race, noting that Brown is married to a black man.

A third officer told the investigator that before the Jan. 13 stop, Brown had mentioned she was concerned because Robinson had threatened to sue her for racially profiling him. Brown told the officer she hadnt recognized Robinson prior to the traffic stops because it was nighttime and she couldnt see into his car.

The investigator praised Browns candor, called her a credible witness, and questioned whether the driver had been completely honest. Brown claimed there had been another person in the car during the Jan. 13 traffic stop, but Robinson claimed hed been alone.

A second officer whod been present at the beginning of the stop said she couldnt tell whether there were any passengers.

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Within a fortnight of Indian military operation targeting their bases in South Mizoram, the separatist Arakan Army (AA) has attacked a Burmese civilian vessel carrying steel frames for a bridge constructed by India.

The rebels set fire to MV Yadana Win 7, carrying 300 steel frames for the Paletwa Bridge project. The crew, all of them Burmese, was abducted.

The vessel had sailed from Yangon to Paletwa via Sittwe and Kyauktaw . It was attacked by the AA near Namada village in Paletwa on Saturday night.

The attack forced the vessel to dock by the river bank where the AA set fire to it and abducted the crew members. The abducted crew was later released, Myanmar Police sources confirmed.

The Paletwa bridge is one of the nearly 70 bridges that India is constructing or strengthening as part of the road element of the $ 484 million Kaladan Multimodal project.

After years of delay, India finally got on with the construction of the 109-kms road that is to connect the Paletwa river terminal to Zorinpui in Mizoram.

The target date for completing this road is October, 2019 but work is far behind schedule because the contractor , Delhi based C&C Constructions, had to wait until Jan 2018 for requisite clearances.

India has completed the rest of the Kaladan project, including the construction of the Sittwe Port, construction of a river terminal 158 upstream at Paletwa and dredging of the Kaladan river.

On the Indian side, the Aizawl-Saiha National Highway is being extended by 90 km to Zorinpui on the Myanmar border.

Also, a Rs 6,000-crore project is under way for four-laning the 300-km highway from Zorinpui to Aizawl to ensure speedy cargo transhipment.

Completion of the Paletwa-Zorinpui road, therefore, holds the key to operationalize the Kaladan multi-modal project.

But with the increasingly powerful Arakan Army , perhaps upset with the Indian military operations in southern Mizoram, targetting projects like the Paletwa bridge , the Kaladan Multimodal project may run into a new set of difficulties.
Kopirkin: Russia is ready to make all efforts to contribute to normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations

Armenia MFA: '3+3' platform needs to refrain from duplicating formats with mandate to settle conflicts

RT: US may build facilities in Georgia and Armenia to support its 'defense activities'

Armenia 2nd President: We will continue the struggle, all the phony cases will be crushed

MFA: Armenia calls on Azerbaijan to refrain from provocative rhetoric

Hero of 44-day Karabakh war Garik Hovakimyan's sister Mariam is born

Republican Party of Armenia Executive Body holds session chaired by Serzh Sargsyan

Iranian Embassy: Iran supports '3+3' platform during meeting held in Moscow

Armenia ex-defense minister on Prosecutor General's Office imposing attachment on his assets

Alen Simonyan: Armenia is in one of the most crucial stages in its history, and opposition is demanding my resignation

PM: Armenia is committed to contributing to global mission of strengthening democracy, and we hope we're not alone

Armenia MOD: Soldier who was injured from gunshot fired by fellow serviceman has regained consciousness

Armenia Deputy PM: Omicron variant is not sufficiently explored

First meeting within scope of '3+3' regional platform held in Moscow

NEWS.am daily digest: 10.12.21

Armenia soldier killed while resisting Azerbaijanis' attack, 8 are injured, 6 of whom are in severe condition

Armenia PM introduces new Head of State Supervision Service Romanos Petrosyan

Armenia human rights activists: There were cases when POWs were brought to territory under Azerbaijan's control

The book Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman was translated and published on the initiative of Ardshinbank

Armenia regional governor, IFRC Secretary General discuss return of Armenian POWs originally from Shirak Province

Armenia human rights activist: Number of Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan is 80 more than the confirmed one

Pashinyan: Environmental sphere is of strategic importance for Armenia

Armenia President: We must understand that we are entering completely different era for humanity

Dollar goes up somewhat in Armenia

Armenia State Revenue Committee chief meets with French Development Agency Regional Director

Opposition 'Armenia' faction MPs Artur Sargsyan and Mkhitar Zakaryan released from penitentiary institution

Head of Armenia's Norabak village: Azerbaijan has military post that is 2 km from us

Armenia finance minister receives France Ambassador and French Development Agency Regional Director

Armenia opposition MP Ishkhan Zakaryan leaving 'With Honor' faction

Russian and Armenian Deputy FMs meet in Moscow

Armenia PM highlights importance of speedy conclusion of full-format agreement between Iran and EEU

Armenia opposition MPs Mkhitar Zakaryan and Artur Sargsyan to be released without court decision today

Armenian opposition MP Armen Charchyan is released

Armenia MOD: Armenian side has one casualty, few soldiers are injured, exchange of fire is over

Armenias Pashinyan: High-tech component development also important in Eurasian integration context

Armenia Deputy PM dismisses his two assistants

Nazarbayev says Azerbaijan can become observer country in Eurasian Economic Union

Head of Armenia village: The Azerbaijanis tried to advance in direction of Sotk, but our soldiers didn't let them

Armenia MOD: Azerbaijan attacked in eastern direction of border

Special court hearing underway on case of Armenia opposition lawmaker behind bars

Artsakh officials visit Stepanakert memorial

2 more die of coronavirus in Karabakh

Vardenis protesters dismiss Armenia MOD statement on obstructing car taking wounded soldier to Yerevan

Armenia FM briefs Francophonie chief on regional security issues (PHOTOS)

Armenia Police: 13 people apprehended near MFA building

Armenia protesting residents reopen Martuni-Vardenis motorway due to border tension

Armenia parliament passes changes to some laws

Armenia MOD: Deputy commander was told in Vardenis that car taking wounded soldier to Yerevan would be obstructed

347 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Armenia opposition movement staging protest inside MFA building

Armenia has new environment minister

Artsakh MFA: Referendum on independence is solid legal basis for statehood

Special court session to be held on case of imprisoned Armenia opposition MP

Biden promises Zelenskyy to punish Russia in case of invasion of Ukraine

Newspaper: Armenia parliament recent fight case to have former ones fate

Newspaper: What is reason for recent long visit to Armenia by ex-commander of Russia peacekeepers in Artsakh?

Petition to arrest one of accused Armenia soldiers returned from Azerbaijan captivity is granted

Russian Aerospace Forces consider practice of reconnaissance and strike UAVs during Karabakh conflict

Investigative Committee: Motion filed for arrest of 5 of 10 POWs returned to Armenia on Dec. 4

Armenia State Revenue Committee chief hosts Iran Customs Administration head

Armenia Shirak Province ex-deputy governor Boris Aleksanov dies

Constitutional Court announces decision on release of arrested MPs of opposition 'Armenia' parliamentary faction

Iran, Azerbaijan discuss cooperation in petrol and natural gas sectors

Lavrov: We understand the complexity of the situation in Armenia, but it's not right to speculate Russia's role

Cem Ozdemir who initiated adoption of Armenian Genocide resolution is Germany's first minister with migration history

Armenia FM, France Secretary of State sign 'Roadmap for Armenian-French Economic Cooperation'

Armenia PM scheduled to deliver speech at Summit for Democracy on Dec. 10

Zakharova says news about recall of Russia's Ambassador to Armenia is misinformation

Opposition 'Armenia' Alliance: 3 deputies of parliamentary faction will be released

Attorney: MP Armen Charchyan needs to be released immediately by virtue of Armenia Constitutional Court decision

Armenia ex-environment minister Romanos Petrosyan appointed Head of State Supervision Service

Armenia MOD: 2 Armenian soldiers receive slight firearm injuries as a result of Azerbaijanis' provocation

NEWS.am daily digest: 09.12.21

Zakharova: Moscow hopes Armenia and Azerbaijan leaders reaffirm commitment to implementing agreements

Zakharova on Aliyev's statement and murders of Armenian peaceful civilians

Ex-chief advisor to Armenia PM Hakob Simidyan appointed Minister of Environment

Joe Biden's Summit for Democracy kicks off, Armenia PM is also participating

Armenia environment minister sacked

Residents of Armenia's Vardenis shut down Martuni-Vardenis road in support of opposition alliance's leader (PHOTOS)

Armenia MOD: Azerbaijan opened intense fire toward Gegharkunik Province military positions

Armenia President meets with Emir of Qatar

Azerbaijan opened fire on Artsakh village tractor operator, says Machkalashen mayor

Parliament ruling majority obstructs decriminalizing severe insult in Armenia

Armenia deputy defense minister: No group has come from Moscow for demarcation

Armenia parliament approves several amendments to laws in first reading

Ambassador: American Studies center at YSU will play important role in deepening relations with Armenia

Armenia Parliament Speaker receives IFRC Secretary General-led delegation

Armenia PM receives IFRC Secretary General

Dollar still gaining more value in Armenia

Armenia Parliament Speaker sues opposition MP Aregnaz Manukyan for previous allegations

Law will lead to positive changes in Armenia universities administration, says US ambassador

Georgia formally refuses attending '3+3' regional cooperation platform meeting

Armenia MFA officials pay tribute to innocent victims of genocides

2 Azerbaijanis killed in mine explosion near Karabakh's Karin Tak village

MFA: Armenia will continue to work diligently to raise awareness of genocides

American Studies center to open at Yerevan State University

Gerasimov: Russian military in Karabakh working to restore peaceful life in region

Armenia opposition MP: Authorities present at household level establishment technical furnishing on frontline

Bomb threat in Yerevan building

Armenia: 6,500 people in border communities to receive cash for winter needs
The Court of Appeals has junked the bid of a telecommunications firm to stop the governments selection process for the countrys third major telco player. In a resolution, the CAs Special 11th Division denied the prayer for urgent relief in the petition filed by NOW Telecom of businessman Mel Velarde in Nov. last year that questioned the legality of the terms of reference set by the National Telecommunications Commission. The appellate court turned down the plea of petitioner for issuance of a temporary restraining order or writ of preliminary injunction that could prevent the final awarding of the third telco slot to Mislatel, the consortium of Udenna Corp. of businessman Dennis Uy and China Telecom. After careful consideration of the allegation made in the petition in relation to the prayer for injunctive relief, it is the Courts considered view that petitioners application for the issuance of a temporary restraining order and/or writ of preliminary injunction must be denied. This court observes that the assailed RTC order denied petitioners prayer for preliminary injunction before said court, stated the ruling penned by Associate Justice Ricardo Rosario. If this Court issues the preliminary injunction prayed for, we would dispose of the instant petition on the merits as we would have already determined the very issues of the petition before us: Whether indeed there is a clear legal right that exists in petitioners favor that warrants judicial protection and that respondent gravely abused her discretion in denying injunctive relief despite such existence, it said. Associate Justices Nina Antonio Valenzuela and Perpetua Atal-Pano concurred with the ruling. Solicitor General Jose Calida earlier asked the CA to deny the prayer by NOW Telecom and also dismiss the petition for lack of merit. Calida argued that the CA is not allowed by law to issue an injunction order against the selection process for the new major player in the telco industry. He cited Section 3 of Republic Act 8975, which specifically prohibits appellate and lower courts from issuing temporary restraining orders or WPIs on national government projects, including infrastructure projects.And assuming the telco bidding is not covered by RA 8975, he stressed that NOW Telco is not entitled to such relief simply because it did not participate in the bidding process and therefore had no legal standing to file the case. Calida said that NOW Telco has waived or abandoned its right to question the TOR when it did not submit a bid during the selection process in November last year. In its petition, NOW Telecom asked the CA to reverse and set aside an earlier decision of Manila regional trial court branch 42 Judge Dinnah Aguila Topacio that dismissed the firms petition for issuance of WPI. It questioned provisions in the TOR, which were supposedly not taken up during a series of public consultations. Specifically, the company assailed the P700-million participation security, the P14- to P24-billion performance security, and a P10-million non-refundable appeal fee, which is branded as money-making schemes. A similar petition was filed in Nov. by disqualified bidder Philippine Telegraph & Telephone Corp. before the Supreme Court. Without any TRO, the NTC proceeded with the selection process and awarded the third telco slot to Mislatel being the remaining qualified bidder. Mislatel is now in the process of securing a ratified Congress resolution on its franchise to be able to start its operations.
YEREVAN.  The parties need to listen to the arguments of each other for the dialogue to take place, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during a press conference on Tuesday, answering a question about the process of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Asked how long Armenia is ready to wait, PM noted that there is no need to wait but to work consistently when it comes to the diplomatic processes. Speaking about the necessity of Karabakhs direct involvement in talks, Pashinyan recalled that this not at all a new approach neither for the co-chairs, nor for Azerbaijani side.

I want to emphasize that this is neither a caprice, nor a condition, he said, adding that Yerevan continues discussions with partners. The talks are meant for listening to each other. Armenia is at least capable of listening and trying to understand the opponent. And we expect the same. If our positions is too tough on some matters, we can soften it, but we expect the opponent to do the same. Otherwise, there will be no dialogue.

Speaking about Artsakhs participation in talks, he said it is not a challenge, but an offer for dialogue.

Dialogue in fact started in Dushanbe, continued in Saint Petersburg and Davos. I do not know where it will continue, he said, adding that rejection of dialogue is illogical.

We are not abandoning the dialogue and intend to put arguments on the negotiating table, and are ready to listen to counterarguments. An effective solution should be found within the framework of this logic.

Answering the question about the idea expressed by him during the joint meeting of the Security Council of Armenia and Artsakh about the necessity of evaluating well-known principles and elements, the Prime Minister noted that it was necessary to understand how we treat them and what they mean. According to him, there are texts of documents and dozens of comments to them, and they are made at the state level. The Prime Minister stated that the comments of the Azerbaijani side are unacceptable for us.

We, of course, can submit our comments, but the point is not in exchanging statements. What does this mean in practice? Azerbaijan believes that Nagorno-Karabakh should be part of it. But there is also an interpretation of the documents, according to which Nagorno-Karabakh should be a separate state or part of Armenia. While the range of possible discussions is not agreed, we do not understand each other,Pashinyan said, adding that the need for clarification appeared during discussions with the president of Azerbaijan, the co-chairs and other international partners.

After being elected a Prime Minister, we met with former minister Edward Nalbandian. We asked him to brief us on some facts. And the process continues, Pashinyan said.

I need to understand what was happening and what is happening. Every word and every stage. This is not a whim, but a necessity. Yes, I received tremendous amount of information. But, it creates the need for even more thorough information. This is a complex process. Aliyev has been in the process for more than ten years; this is work for the co-chairs. I am the only new person, and naturally everything is interesting to me. Much is unclear. If everything is clear to everyone, why do we need dialogue? It is needed to clarify unclear issues. There are many controversial issues. What happened in Kazan? In Vienna? In Key West? The more participants, the more comments, and there are questions, they need to be clarified. As a new participant in the process, I must have answers to the question and hope for the assistance of partners, Pashinyan resumed.
Kopirkin: Russia is ready to make all efforts to contribute to normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations

Armenia MFA: '3+3' platform needs to refrain from duplicating formats with mandate to settle conflicts

RT: US may build facilities in Georgia and Armenia to support its 'defense activities'

Armenia 2nd President: We will continue the struggle, all the phony cases will be crushed

Ralf Rangnik has goals for transfers

MFA: Armenia calls on Azerbaijan to refrain from provocative rhetoric

Hero of 44-day Karabakh war Garik Hovakimyan's sister Mariam is born

Borussia Dortmund reach agreement with Karim Adeyemi

Republican Party of Armenia Executive Body holds session chaired by Serzh Sargsyan

Iranian Embassy: Iran supports '3+3' platform during meeting held in Moscow

Armenia ex-defense minister on Prosecutor General's Office imposing attachment on his assets

Alen Simonyan: Armenia is in one of the most crucial stages in its history, and opposition is demanding my resignation

PM: Armenia is committed to contributing to global mission of strengthening democracy, and we hope we're not alone

Armenia MOD: Soldier who was injured from gunshot fired by fellow serviceman has regained consciousness

Armenia Deputy PM: Omicron variant is not sufficiently explored

Magnus Carlsen defends title of world champion for the fourth time (PHOTO, VIDEO)

FC Barcelona plan to sell ter Stegen, Dest and de Jong

First meeting within scope of '3+3' regional platform held in Moscow

Kanye West asks Kim Kardashian to come back during his Runway rendition

NEWS.am daily digest: 10.12.21

Armenia soldier killed while resisting Azerbaijanis' attack, 8 are injured, 6 of whom are in severe condition

Armenia PM introduces new Head of State Supervision Service Romanos Petrosyan

Armenia human rights activists: There were cases when POWs were brought to territory under Azerbaijan's control

The book Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman was translated and published on the initiative of Ardshinbank

Armenia regional governor, IFRC Secretary General discuss return of Armenian POWs originally from Shirak Province

Armenia human rights activist: Number of Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan is 80 more than the confirmed one

IMDb shares list of the most popular movies and TV series of the year

Pashinyan: Environmental sphere is of strategic importance for Armenia

Armenia President: We must understand that we are entering completely different era for humanity

Dollar goes up somewhat in Armenia

Armenia State Revenue Committee chief meets with French Development Agency Regional Director

Opposition 'Armenia' faction MPs Artur Sargsyan and Mkhitar Zakaryan released from penitentiary institution

Head of Armenia's Norabak village: Azerbaijan has military post that is 2 km from us

Armenia finance minister receives France Ambassador and French Development Agency Regional Director

The first edition of Harry Potter sold for a record amount

Armenia opposition MP Ishkhan Zakaryan leaving 'With Honor' faction

Russian and Armenian Deputy FMs meet in Moscow

Armenia PM highlights importance of speedy conclusion of full-format agreement between Iran and EEU

Armenia opposition MPs Mkhitar Zakaryan and Artur Sargsyan to be released without court decision today

FC Van defeat FC Noravank

Armenian opposition MP Armen Charchyan is released

Armenia MOD: Armenian side has one casualty, few soldiers are injured, exchange of fire is over

Armenias Pashinyan: High-tech component development also important in Eurasian integration context

Armenia Deputy PM dismisses his two assistants

Nazarbayev says Azerbaijan can become observer country in Eurasian Economic Union

Head of Armenia village: The Azerbaijanis tried to advance in direction of Sotk, but our soldiers didn't let them

Crazy Frog is back with 1st track in 11 years

Armenia MOD: Azerbaijan attacked in eastern direction of border

Barca president promises Xavi to be active in January transfer market

One of Sex and the City main characters dies in 1st episode

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Thierry Henry: You need to understand that Messi is human being also

Artsakh officials visit Stepanakert memorial

2 more die of coronavirus in Karabakh

Vardenis protesters dismiss Armenia MOD statement on obstructing car taking wounded soldier to Yerevan

Armenia FM briefs Francophonie chief on regional security issues (PHOTOS)

I went to premiere: scandals, intrigues, investigations - "House of Gucci" (NO SPOILERS)

Armenia Police: 13 people apprehended near MFA building

Armenia protesting residents reopen Martuni-Vardenis motorway due to border tension

Russia researchers developing intranasal vaccine against Covid

Armenia parliament passes changes to some laws

Unvaccinated Bayern footballer to be out of action for 1 month due to coronavirus effects

Travis Scott comments on death crush for the first time at his concert

Armenia MOD: Deputy commander was told in Vardenis that car taking wounded soldier to Yerevan would be obstructed

347 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Armenia opposition movement staging protest inside MFA building

Gwyneth Paltrow prepare joint gift for Kim Kardashian, Pete Davidson

Armenia has new environment minister

Artsakh MFA: Referendum on independence is solid legal basis for statehood

Armenia ready for new pandemic?

Special court session to be held on case of imprisoned Armenia opposition MP

Alec Baldwin defends continuing making of Rust

Biden promises Zelenskyy to punish Russia in case of invasion of Ukraine

Newspaper: Armenia parliament recent fight case to have former ones fate

Newspaper: What is reason for recent long visit to Armenia by ex-commander of Russia peacekeepers in Artsakh?

Europa Conference League: Match results of the day

Europa League: Match results of the day

Petition to arrest one of accused Armenia soldiers returned from Azerbaijan captivity is granted

Russian Aerospace Forces consider practice of reconnaissance and strike UAVs during Karabakh conflict

Investigative Committee: Motion filed for arrest of 5 of 10 POWs returned to Armenia on Dec. 4
The Legal Education Board yesterday said the administration of the Philippine Law School Admission Test next month will push through as scheduled since it is not covered by the temporary restraining order recently issued by the Supreme Court. The administration of the Philippine Law School Admission Test on April 7, 2019 has not been restrained and will proceed as scheduled, The TRO issued by the SC covers only LEB Memorandum Circular No.18, Series of 2018 which prohibits the admission and enrolment as freshmen students in the basic law course beginning in Academic Year 2018-2019 of those without the required PhilSat eligibility, the LEB said in an advisory signed by its chairperson Emerson Aquende. There is no TRO as far as the administration of the PhilSat on April 7, 2019, it added. The LEB said in compliance with the TRO, all those who have taken the PhilSat, and those who have taken the same exam did not pass, and those who have passed the PhilSat but have expired certificates of eligibility, college honor graduates without certificate of exemption, and college honor graduates with expired certificates of exemption will be conditionally admitted and enrolled as freshmen in the basic law course in the incoming 1st semester of Academic Year 2019-2020 under the same terms and conditions in Memorandum Order No. 11, Series of 2017. In an injunction order, the SC enjoined the LEB from implementing Circular No. 18 dated June 8, 2018, effective immediately and until further orders from this Court. The said memorandum removed the conditional enrolment of law students. However, the memo added that Those who have not taken the PhilSAT prior to the beginning of the Academic Year 2018 to 2019, or who have taken the PhilSAT but did not pass, or are honor graduates in college with no PhilSAT Exemption Certificate, or honor graduates with expired PhilSAT Exemption Certificates may now be allowed to conditionally enroll as incoming freshmen law students under the same terms as LEB Memorandum Order No. 11. Rey E. Requejo The SC held oral arguments on the issue based on the petition filed by former Makati RTC Judge Oscar Pimentel and a group of law students who questioned the constitutionality of Republic Act 7662 (The Legal Education Reform Act) and asked the Court to issue an injunction to stop its implementation and the PhilSat.Pimentel and the other petitioners told the SC during the oral arguments last month that the exams deprived those who wanted to become lawyers if they failed to pass it. The petitioners sought to restrain the implementation of LEB Memorandum Order No.7 Series of 2016 which scheduled the conduct of the PhilSAT. According to the assailed memorandum, aspiring law students will be required to take the PhilSAT before they can be admitted to any law school. The LEB said schools will not be allowed to enroll students who did not take the PhilSAT and that if they failed to comply, they will be subject to possible sanctions, including the payment of fine of up to P10, 000. But it explained that schools can ask aspiring law students to take complementary exams such as to test the ability to write in English through an essay or conduct a panel interview if they want so as not to curtail their academic freedom. Four PhilSat exams were already conducted by the LEB in April and September 2017 and in April and September 2018 in Baguio City, Metro Manila, Legazpi City, Cebub City, Iloilo City, Davao City and Cagayan de Oro City.
In essence, there is no government official whom we can point at and say he or she has failed. This is what Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said during a March 19 press conference, responding to the question as to whether or not the fact that most government officials were among those who started the revolution and now their actions spark public discontent doesnt constrain the Prime Minister to dismiss those government officials.

As far as discontent is concerned, according to Pashinyan, nobody can be more discontent with those government officials than him. However, when they say those government officials have failed, nobody states exactly what they have failed to do. In essence, the government hasnt failed in any sector. In essence, there is no government official whom we can point at and say he or she has failed. If a certain government official fails, I wont feel constrained to dismiss that government official. Are there omissions and shortcomings? Yes, there are, but there are omissions and shortcomings in all of our actions, but we cant dismiss every official that has omissions.

Touching upon the scandal over the State Revenue Committee and public discontent, Pashinyan stated that the current public pressure and criticism needs to be used as a tool for making the governments efforts fruitful. They tell the government to cut the rewards and give the money to others. Nobody says that the State Revenue Committee has to work so that pensioners receive their pensions and others receive their salaries or benefits. Public servants need to receive decent salaries. We cant hope that officials with low salaries can provide high-quality service to the public."
YEREVAN.  The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, ruled out the possibility that the next Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Secretary General may be appointed by bypassing Yerevans respective position.

How can such a thing happened? he said at his press conference on Tuesday. It would mean that there is no CSTO at all.

In his words, Armenias respective position is constructive.

We [Armenia] believe that the [secretarys generals] term there is [still] ours, Pashinyan stressed. But our partners [there] dont agree; they say the matter isnt settled, there is a need to discuss.

We are saying, Then lets put amendments to the [CSTO] charter, before the [next] appointment. If the person prematurely leaves the office of the Secretary General for some reasons, the matter should be settled.

We fully protect Armenias interests.

In his words, all consultations within the framework of the CSTO were useful, and they had not been as such throughout the existence of this organization. Overall, Pashinyan positively assessed the climate at both the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union.

[But] sadly, most of the work is held behind closed doors, and [therefore] the society cant asses [it], he added. Profound, interested, and sometimes heated discussions are held [there].

And when asked whether the timeframes for the appointment of the next CSTO Secretary General were known, the Armenian PM responded that the respective discussions were still in progress.

State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus, Stanislav Zas, has been proposed as candidate for the post of next CSTO Secretary General. The Belarusian candidature is approved by other CSTO members Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Russia. But difficulties in the matter remain with Armenia, which withdrew its representative Yuri Khatchaturov from this post ahead of time and insists on appointing its own candidate to this post until 2020, when the countrys term in this office formally comes to an end.

Khatchaturov had stepped down from the aforesaid position due to the charges which Armenia has brought against him, and along the lines of the criminal case into the tragic events that occurred in capital city Yerevan, in March 2008.
The Philippine National Police now considers the case of the grisly murder of 16-year-old Christine Lee Silawan of Lapu-Lapu City in Cebu as solved. Still, it will only be considered closed when the police finally arrest the two accomplices of the main suspect, who is reportedly Silawans former boyfriend. PNP spokesperson Colonel Bernard Banac said the National Bureau of Investigation is now handling the investigation of the case, with the PNP assisting the agency in hunting down the two other suspects. Meron pang mga posibleng dalawa pang suspects na may kaugnayan sa kasong ito kaya patuloy ang pagsuporta ng PNP dahil ang NBI na ang lead agency dito sa investigation at lahat ng mga records na nauna na nating hawak ay nakahanda na pong ibahagi sa NBI Regional Office 7 at inaasahan natin sa loob ng madaling panahon ay magkakaroon ito ng resulta katulad din na nangyari na pagkaroon ng agarang kalutasan sa kaso, said Banac. (There are two other suspects in the case and the PNP continues to support the NBI, which is now the lead agency handling the investigation, and the NBI Central Visayas is set to release all the records that we have on the case. We expect the case to be resolved soon.)On Saturday, NBI agents arrested the 17-year-old suspect, who reportedly admitted his role in the killing, together with his two cohorts. The suspect was identified through a CCTV footage as the last person seen with Silawan in the evening of March 10, before she was found dead. Silawans lifeless body was found in a vacant lot in Barangay Bankal, Lapu-Lapu City on March 11. Her face was skinned to the bone and some of her organs were missing.
Either the Prime Minister has to be brought to justice for discrediting the good reputation of the ex-President and the major state institute, or a criminal case has to be instituted against the ex-President for committing a grave state crime. This is what political analyst Stepan Danielyan wrote on his Facebook page.

He particularly wrote the following:

The Prime Minister said that businessmen were taking suitcases full of money to the building located at 26 Baghramyan Street, and this means the commission of the gravest state crime.

Now he says that people are wrong when they ask him why those crimes arent being revealed. This means that the issue has to be presented to the relevant authorities.

Based on the Prime Ministers statement, the prosecutors office had to initiate criminal proceedings to find out the following:

1. either the Prime Minister must be brought to justice for discrediting the good reputation of the ex-President and a major state institute,

2. or a criminal case has to be instituted against the ex-President for the commission of a grave state crime.

If this isnt done, then:

1. either the Prosecutor General has to be punished for failure to perform his duties,

2. or it shall be declared that Armenia has neither law-enforcement authorities nor a constitution.
If there is no criminally prosecutable element in the act of the citizen of Azerbaijan having crossed the border of the Republic of Armenia and the person wishes to return by his own will, we will obviously deliver him to Azerbaijan. This is what Minister of Justice Artak Zeynalyan told journalists on 19 March, touching upon the case of the Azerbaijani having crossed the border on 16 March.

He urged journalists not to give evaluations on whether he unlawfully crossed the border or not. The person is currently arrested and preliminary investigation is underway, he stated.

The minister stressed the fact that Armenia is performing all of its duties provided for by the countrys constitution. The Red Cross is also involved in this case, and we will protect all the rights of the person.

When asked about the delivery of the citizen of Azerbaijan having crossed the border of the Republic of Armenia, Zeynalyan said: If there is no criminally prosecutable element in his act and the person wants to return by his will, we will obviously deliver him to Azerbaijan. Perhaps he is seeking political asylum.

Elvin Ibrahimov crossed the border of the Republic of Armenia near the Barekamavan village of Tavush Province on 16 March 2019 at around 01:00-01:30. According to the documents that he had, he is a citizen of Azerbaijan. A criminal case under the elements of part 1 of Article 329 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia has been instituted in relation to the unlawful crossing by Elvin Ibrahimov of the border protected by the Republic of Armenia.
READ: Arroyo seeks to penalize erring water companies

President Rodrigo Duterte was to meet with the officials of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System in Malacanang Tuesday night to discuss the water shortage in Metro Manila, the Palace confirmed. Presidential SpokesmanPanelo said he only learned of the meeting on the day itself. I dont know if they were called. I just saw it in his schedule, Panelo said. He said he didnt know if officials from the Manila Water Company Inc., responsible for service interruptions in Metro Manilas east zone, would be present at the meeting. The meeting came four days afterto solve the water shortage. As 1.2-million households suffered water service interruptions and two cities were on the verge of declaring a state of calamity, Duterte demanded that the concessionaires supply water to their customers good for 150 days., but Manila Water has blamed the dropping of water levels at La Mesa Dam. In a Palace briefing Tuesday, Panelos said 90 percent of water service has been restored in the affected cities following Dutertes order. He also added that the water supply would be back to normal in the following days. MWSS regulator Patrick Ty on Tuesday told a Senate hearing Manila Water could face penalties by June or July for failing to deliver water to its franchise area. Although penalties in the form of rebates to customers are usually taken up during rate adjustments every five years, Ty said they would not have to wait until then to impose penalties for the unprecedented loss of water service. We do not need to wait because of this unprecedented situation. We are studying it right now, we are also actually studying the amount of the penalty that will be imposed, which can be rebated, Ty said. The priority, he said, was to fix the supply, then give Manila Water due process. Manila Water consumers can expect lower bills next month as a result of the service interruption, he said. The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, meanwhile, called for accountability on the part of Manila Water. This water shortage has caused more than just inconvenience and stress to Filipinos. Apart from disrupting our daily way of life, it has also affected productivity as many people could not go to work, school, or manage their business. Many businesses had to shut down or limit operations. Services were also disrupted. The economic impact of this shortage cannot be swept under the rug, the group said. On Monday, at the House hearing on the issue, Manila Water apologized for the shortage, nearly two weeks since its La Mesa reserve breached the critical level, triggering service interruptions. We sincerely hope that there will be some form of reckoning for this issue, the PCCI said. Its too important and critical to our peoples well-being and our economy. Moving forward, government has to make sure that there will be policies in place to first, prevent this from happening again, and second, to identify penalties for those responsible. We believe that a true socially responsible company with high corporate governance standards will be sincere in their efforts to rectify the situation and will not skirt or avoid responsibility, it added.The chamber cited the government for its quick response to demand the release of water from Angat Dam to all affected areas. Manila Water on Tuesday said it is targeting to reach 99 percent water availability in its service coverage area with ground-floor level standard by the end of March. During a Senate hearing on the water shortage affecting parts of Metro Manila, Manila Water president and chief executive officer Ferdinand dela Cruz said their consumers have about 90 percent water availability at the ground floor level from a low water availability of 70 percent since the supply shortage occurred. Our target is by the end of this month is to reach 99 percent of our coverage area using this ground floor level standard so that we could spread our limited supply, Dela Cruz said. Dela Cruz said that the 9-percent supply deficit, or about 150 million liters per day since March 6, was due to the La Mesa Dam breaching the critical level of 69 meters. Dela Cruz said the company is implementing some solutions to plug the supply deficit, such as the reactivation of the Cardona, Rizal water treatment plant project, commissioning of deep wells, development of new deep well sources, the Maynilad-Manila Water supply sharing arrangement, and updating its existing water supply master plan. Dela Cruz said he expects to totally eliminate the supply deficit and normalize water services by June. With these efforts, our 9-percent supply deficit will go down to 4.5 percent in April and further go down to 1.5-percent supply deficit in May before getting totally eliminated in June, dela Cruz said. He apologized to the consumers for the inconvenience and took full responsibility for the water shortage, noting that he is prepared to resign from his post. I am seeking their forgiveness, from your constituents, and Im holding myself fully accountable for the sudden drop in our 24/7 service level to your constituents whom we have consistently served well over the past 21 years with 24/7 water availability and sufficient water pressure, he said. If my resignation today will not only erase our supply deficit but would also result in a united front to urgently build new water resources then I would be extremely happy to resign at this moment, he added. The Trade department, meanwhile, announced that prices of bottled water remain the same, despite the shortage in some parts of Metro Manila. The Consumer Protection Group announced this after after a dailogue with members of the Beverage Industry Association of the Philippines Monday regarding the prices and supply of bottled water amidst the ongoing water shortage situation in the country. Trade Undersecretary and CPG head Ruth Castelo said they would also monitor the pricing of water containers, as these have gone up during the shortage. READ: Water shortage probe begins
Members of the Council of Elders of the Avshar village of Armenias Ararat Province had addressed a letter to Minister of Education and Science Arayik Harutyunyan in relation to the situation created in the village school.

A school strike and workers strike have been going on at the school in the Avshar village of Ararat Province for over five days now. As the major representative of education in the Republic of Armenia, it seems as though you are still not aware of or are not interested in this weeklong class strike and workers strike against the new school principal that are taking place in the secondary school of the Avshar village of Ararat Province since all the presses are talking about that, the letter reads.

The letter states that the members of the Council of Elders have visited the school to clarify the situation.

It turned out that the demand of the teachers and parents is not fulfilled, and since the newly appointed principal has shown improper attitude towards fulfillment of the requirements of Article 115 of the Labor Code of the Republic of Armenia since the very first day of term of office and the governor of Ararat Province is absolutely indifferent, viewing the issue as a politicized issue, even though it is clear to see that the governor of Ararat Province is the one creating and maintaining the politicized situation by using the word politicized and giving justifications for the school administration, we are surprised that you have not responded to this issue to this day and no representative of the Ministry has come to the school and listened to the teachers and schoolchildren, the letter reads.

The members of the Council of Elders voice hope that the issue will be solved.

Since 12 March, schoolchildren of the secondary school of Avshar have been on a school strike and are demanding the resignation of the schools newly appointed principal Hermine Andreasyan along with their parents.
Smokable medical marijuana in Florida has gotten the green light.

In an overwhelming vote of 101-11, the Florida House last Wednesday repealed the states ban on smoking medical pot, bowing to a demand from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that lawmakers do so by March 15. The Senate passed the bill (SB 182) a week earlier.

The bill allows patients to purchase up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana for smoking every 35 days. It bans the smoking of medical marijuana in public places and requires patients under 18 to have a terminal condition and get a second opinion from a pediatrician before receiving the drug.

I thank the Florida Legislature for taking action on medical marijuana and upholding the will of the voters, DeSantis posted.

In 2016, about 71 percent of voting Floridians approved a constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana. But the bill, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Scott, legalized access to medical marijuana in pill, oil, edible, and vape form only. Smoking the drug was still illegal.

At a press conference held in Winter Park, Florida, earlier this year, DeSantis asked the legislature to repeal the smoking ban by March 15 or he would do so through the courts.

In a prepared statement, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried applauded the passage of the bill, which now heads to the governors desk. Today's action to finally allow smokable medical marijuana brings four words to the lips of people across our state: It's about damn time. Im thankful for the House and Senates work to fix this situation and look forward to the governor signing this much-needed legislation into law. Its long past due that the state of Florida honored the will of the people and allowed doctors to determine their patients course of treatment.

Medical marijuana is legal in 33 states. But how much does the average person know about marijuana as medicine? How does it work, and which conditions can it treat?

Denise C. Vidot, an assistant professor in the University of Miamis School of Nursing and Health Studies, who is conducting extensive research on the use of medical marijuana to manage HIV comorbidities in the context of cardiovascular disease risk, sheds more light on the issue of medical pot in this News@theU exclusive.

What research have you conducted on medical marijuana?

Currently, collaborators and I are conducting a study on the use of medical marijuana to manage HIV comorbidities in the context of cardiovascular disease risk. HIV is a qualifying condition to obtain medical marijuana in Florida; therefore, there is a portion of HIV patients with an active prescription for medical marijuana. In this study, funded by the National Institutes of Health as a Center for AIDS Research Supplement, we are examining differences in cardiovascular disease risk among patients who have an active prescription for medical marijuana compared to those who use marijuana not prescribed by a health care professional. I also recently completed two other studies on medical marijuana. One examined differences in respiratory and cardiometabolic disease among medical and recreational marijuana users via a population-based sample of adults in the United States. The second study was a qualitative study that sought to examine stigma and perceptions of medical marijuana use by current users and those who have never used marijuana.

What is the difference between medical marijuana and recreational marijuana?

In Florida, the differences include the composition of marijuana, how it is obtained, and the route of administration (until the ban on smokable marijuana was repealed). Marijuana is composed of compounds called cannabinoids. The two main cannabinoids that have been studied are cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). In general, medical marijuana contains a high concentration of CBD and a low, if any, concentration of THC. CBD has been associated with the medically beneficial effects, such as reduced inflammation. Recreational marijuana tends to have a high concentration of THC, which has been identified as the psychoactive ingredient causing the high feeling. In Florida, patients who obtain legal medical marijuana are typically given a prescription label that lists the proportions of each cannabinoid and ingredient used in the regulated medical marijuana. Since recreational marijuana is illegal, users are largely unaware of the ingredients and cannabinoid ratio of the marijuana they obtain from non-health care professionals. Furthermore, in Florida, medical marijuana is provided in non-smokable form; but that may change now that the Florida House has ended the ban on smokable medical marijuana. Potential legal routes of administration are via pill, oil, tincture, nasal spray, edible, etc. Recreational marijuana is most commonly smoked, although the aforementioned routes of administration can also be used.

What is medical marijuana used for and how does it work?

In Florida, medical marijuana can be prescribed for qualifying conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, glaucoma, post-traumatic stress disorder, ALS, Crohns disease, Parkinsons disease, and/or multiple sclerosis. Licensed physicians are also able to prescribe medical marijuana to patients who have a condition in the same class as the list of qualifying conditions, to patients who are terminally ill, or to patients who have chronic pain related to a qualifying condition. There are various ratios of CBD (cannabidiol) and THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) used within medical marijuana based on the condition. The majority of medical marijuana in Florida contains a higher ratio of CBD than THC, along with terpenes and flavonoids. For example, if an HIV patient is experiencing wasting syndrome, medical marijuana that includes THC can be considered since it has been shown to increase appetite and reduce nausea. Epilepsy patients, for example, may consider medical marijuana with high CBD concentration since CBD has been shown to control epileptic seizures.

Medical marijuana works via cannabinoids (CBD and THC), engaging with the patients endocannabinoid system. The body naturally produces cannabinoids; and the endocannabinoid system has been documented to play a role in regulating common processes such as appetite and pain. There are two main cannabinoid receptors found in the body, CB1 and CB2 receptors, to which cannabinoids in marijuana attach and activate. CB1 receptors are found throughout the body (i.e., brain and nervous system). THC typically binds with CB1 receptors, which can be associated with the psychoactive and mental health effects. CBD typically binds to CB2 receptors found in the immune system, which can be associated with reduced inflammatory effects.

How much evidence exists on the benefits of medical marijuana?

Evidence on the benefits of medical marijuana is growing. This is particularly true in oncology, and other fields that include medical marijuana qualifying conditions identified in the states that have legalized its medical use.

Do you see yourself perhaps expanding your academic research in the area of medical marijuana now that it is legal in over 30 states?

Certainly. I am already examining differences in the health impact of marijuana use by route of administration, including various ways to smoke marijuana. Now that Florida has repealed the state ban on smokable medical marijuana, it is even more important to make evidence-based decisions on patient care when deciding on the route of administration.

Weve heard a lot about the benefits of medical marijuana. But what are the side effects?

There are patients who report side effects after using marijuana. Effects vary as a function of CBD and THC ratio, non-active ingredients, and route of administration. Furthermore, there are limited prospective studies examining the long-term impact of medical marijuana on health outcomes.

What impact do you see medical marijuana having on health care, and could it help solve the opioid crisis?

As marijuana becomes part of the clinicians toolbox to provide care for patients, I believe health care professionals will become more engaged in the marijuana research community. In Florida, medical marijuana has begun to make an impact on pain management. Preliminary results from a Provost Research Award pilot study I conducted found that the majority of patients who use medical marijuana do so to manage pain and/or anxiety. In the context of the opioid epidemic in the U.S., studies have suggested that medical marijuana may be an alternative to prescribing opioids.
19:43

The grand-alliance of opposition parties in Bihar is intact and its candidates for all the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state will be announced after Holi, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.





"All is well in 'mahagathbandhan'. It is intact and strong and we will put up a strong fight at the hustings. All differences have been ironed out. We will announce our candidates after Holi," Yadav said.





RJD, he said, would be staying away from Holi celebrations this year as a mark of respect for the jawans killed in the Pulwama attack.





Sharad Yadav, whose Loktantrik Janata Dal is one of the constituents of the grand-alliance, was more specific on the date of announcement of candidates. Candidates will be announced at a press meet in Patna on March 22, he told reporters in the national capital.





Meanwhile, a senior Congress leader from Bihar, who is camping in the national capital, said on condition of anonymity, that reports of his party having agreed to contest only nine seats are "mischievous".





"Our state election committee had met in Patna last week and authorised Rahul Gandhi to take the final decision in the matter. There has been no communication within the party about the number of seats. The media reports are, at best, speculative," he said.





Asked how many seats the Congress would want to contest, he said, "Initially we wanted 15. Later on it was agreed to scale down. But we do not think a number less than 11 would be acceptable to even Rahul Gandhi."





"Gandhi is likely to kick off his campaign in Bihar with a rally in Purnea on March 23. There is a possibility that former BJP MP Uday Singh, who joined the Congress today, will be fielded from there on a Congress ticket. It is also almost final that actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha will be fielded from his Patna Sahib seat on our ticket. His resignation from the BJP and induction into the Congress will take place in a few days," he said.





The Darbhanga seat has become a bone of contention between the Congress and RJD. While, the Congress wants to field Kirti Azad, who had won the seat five years ago on a BJP ticket, the RJD wants it too.





"The seat is a stronghold of Mohd Ali Ashraf Fatmi of the RJD, who wants a ticket again. That too remains to be sorted out," the Congress leader added.





-- PTI
Manila pullout from ICC in effect, UN tells members

READ: ICC probe of Philippines will backfire, Panelo claims

The Palace on Tuesday brushed off suggestions that Presidentto avoid accountability for any wrongdoing, saying he could still be impeached or face criminal charges after his term ends. Those fears are misplaced, if not recklessly advanced, Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said of a statement issued earlier by Human Rights Watch. We have a rich history of making presidents and officials accountable in this country. Panelo said the Philippines has a robust judicial system. Anybody can file any complaint against any incumbent official. Even this President, after he steps down from office, if he indeed violated any provision of law, will be accountable, Panelo added. Panelo was responding to Human Rights Watch associate director Param-Preet Singhs statement that Presidentin the face of criticism against his anti-drug campaign was a mark of desperation to avoid any trace of accountability. His bald-faced effort to protect himself from the courts reach looks more like an act of desperation for a man who appears deeply implicated in alleged crimes against humanity, she said in a dispatch. Panelo earlier also disputed claims by an international lawyers group that foreign investors have stayed away from the Philippines because of reports of extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration. There is no direct correlation between human rights and the economy, as some quarters particularly two international lawyers groups would like to point out, Panelo said in a statement. The Philippine economy has been growing at least 6 percent under the Duterte administration and according to our economic managers, [thats] the strongest economic growth we have seen since the mid-1970s, he added. The Philippines, he said, had an unprecedented $20.1 billion in net foreign investments in 2017 and 2018 during the first two full years of Dutertes presidency. There has been strong investor confidence in the economy under the decisive leadership of the President, Panelo said. In contrast, he said, the previous Aquino administration managed only $2 billion and $3.2 billion in its first two years.Panelo also cited the Presidents passage of Republic Act 11032, or the Ease of Doing Business Act, and said the Philippines jumped 48 notches to 19th place out of 193 countries in the e-Participation Index of the United Nations, underscoring the administrations moves to streamline business registration. He also noted that the Build-Build-Build Infrastructure Program was moving forward at full steam. As we all know, lack of infrastructure hampered the competitiveness of our economy; thus, the administration committed more resources to infrastructure, Panelo said. These are hard facts and figures, which cannot be disputed and which should be relayed by those in capable positions to the public, including those in the international community. They are more reliable than some anecdotes that are politically colored by some groups or interests, he said. The international groups of lawyers claim that our foreign investments have been or will be adversely affected by the issues on human rights and EJKs. Its further from the truth as shown by the economic growth stated above, Panelo added. The Palace official also said foreign investments are anchored on principal considerations such as macro-economic fundamentals, no or minimal restriction on foreign equity in investment areas and activities, ease of doing business, good infrastructure, non-restrictive labor laws, and a consistent policy milieu. He said the Duterte administration adheres to the rule of law, uphold international humanitarian law, and protects human rights amid its controversial policies. Earlier, Christopher Leong, president of regional lawyers group LawAsia, said the alleged extrajudicial killings and issues of rule of law in the Philippines have affected the entry of foreign investments. The Palace refuted Leongs conclusion, telling him to conduct more research.
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Southern Illinois University Carbondale has selected a group of STEM-focused junior high and high school teachers from throughout the area for participation in an ongoing National Science Foundation-funded training grant. The Robert Noyce Master Teacher Fellowship is funded with a $2.2 million grant to SIU. It is aimed at helping highly qualified teachers present STEM subjects to junior high and high school students throughout the region. The teachers are, from left to right: Top row: Keith Campbell, John Casebolt, Emily Richbourg. Second row: Alyssa Weisenstein, Eryn Daugherty, Tiffany Garner. Third row: Holly Dunderdale, Jonathan Loucks, Megin Rice. Fourth row: Meteicha Green, Andrea Burzynski, Amy Telford. Bottom row: Lindsay Adams, April Bartnick, Craig Kirchner. (Photo provided)

Area educators to focus on STEM learning through SIU program

by Tim Crosby

CARBONDALE, Ill. - Southern Illinois University Carbondale has selected a group of STEM-focused junior high and high school teachers from throughout the area for participation in an ongoing National Science Foundation-funded training grant.

The Robert Noyce Master Teacher Fellowship is funded with a $2.2 million grant to SIU. It is aimed at helping highly qualified teachers present STEM subjects to junior high and high school students throughout the region. STEM refers to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

SIU leads way in STEM education

SIU received the latest grant last year, bringing the amount the university has received to help teachers more effectively present STEM courses to $4.5 million since 2011.

The initial funding of $3.25 million built a community of more than 40 regional teachers who conducted research in the Cache River wetlands, developing skills they subsequently took to their classrooms.

This latest round of funding will fuel a project with a different focus, said Karen Renzaglia, a research professor of plant biology and the principal investigator on the grant. Although the emphasis remains on further enhancing STEM education for regional students, the co-principal investigators include SIU experts in plant biology, zoology, teacher leadership, effective STEM pedagogy and sustainability and environmental science.

Teachers recently selected

Program leaders recently selected participating teachers based on their performance as educators, content knowledge and their commitment to enhancing STEM teaching practice through innovative and effective pedagogy. Those selected will conduct summer research projects and other professional development activities throughout the project.

The teachers, their school, educational degrees, years of experience and grades taught are:

Cairo

Keith Steward Campbell, Cairo School District No. 1, MS in elementary education, 15 years, grades 7 and 8, and high school robotics.

Carterville

Andrea Burzynski, Carterville High School, MS in teacher leadership, 19 years, grads 9-12.

Cape Girardeau, Missouri

John A. Casebolt, Cape Central High, MA in teaching, 6 years, grades 9-12.

Collinsville

Eryn Daugherty, Collinsville High School, MS in educational administration, 19 years, grade 9.

Du Quoin

Craig Kirchner, T.C. Ward School  Tri-County Special Education, MS in plant and soil science; MA in secondary education biology; license in special education learning behavioral specialist, 10 years, grades 6-12.

Gallatin County

Lindsay Adams, Gallatin County School, MA in education expected in May; nine years, grades 9-12.

Marion

Holly Dunderdale, Marion High School, MS in math and science education, 19 years, grades 9-12.

Megin Rice, Marion High School, MS in biology, 25 years, grades 10-12.

Alyssa Weisenstein, Marion High School, MA in teaching, three years, grade 9.

Mount Vernon

Jonathan Loucks, Mount Vernon Township High School, M. Ed. in instructional design, grades 9-12.

Murphysboro

April Bartnick, Carruthers Elementary School, MA in sociology, 13 years, grade 5.

Meteicha Catherine Green, Carruthers Elementary School, MS in special education, 17 years, grade 3.

Salem

Amy Telford, Salem Community High School, MA in instructional strategies, 25 years, grades 9-12.

Sesser-Valier

Tiffany Garner, Sesser-Valier School District, MA in education expected in May, 12 years, grades 6-8.

Wolf Lake

Emily Richbourg, Shawnee High School, MS in biology education, grades 9-12.
Bangui (Central African Republic) (AFP) - Eleven out of 14 armed groups that signed last month's peace deal in Central African Republic (CAR) have demanded that Prime Minister Firmin Ngrebada step down, according to a statement seen by AFP Tuesday.

"Firmin Ngrebada is no longer credible, he is therefore no longer our discussion partner for pursuing the process and must be replaced as prime minister," they said.

Armed groups in the peace deal are attending a followup meeting in Addis Ababa under the aegis of the African Union.

Their statement, which was dated Monday, called for the formation of a "government of national unity" and for "direct talks" with President Faustin-Archange Touadera.

The peace deal was signed in the CAR capital Bangui on February 6 after it had been concluded in negotiations in Sudan.

The pact -- the eighth since 2012 in the conflict-wracked, impoverished state -- brought together the CAR government and 14 armed groups who control most of the country.

The agreement called for a series of confidence-building measures, such as establishing joint patrols and the creation of a truth and justice commission within 90 days.

- 'Inclusive' -

Under the peace accord's provisions, Touadera agreed to form an "inclusive" government.

But within weeks, the deal was under strain -- five militia groups either pulled out of the new government or rejected its makeup.

Ministers in sensitive key posts all kept their jobs, while six of the 14 armed groups obtained no post at all.

CAR has been struggling to recover from the bloodletting that erupted when former president Francois Bozize, a Christian, was overthrown in 2013 by mainly Muslim Seleka rebels.

Former colonial ruler France intervened militarily under a UN mandate, pushing the Seleka from power, and a 12,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission, known as MINUSCA, was established to help restore stability.

Despite the elections in 2016 that brought Touadera to power, the country remains convulsed by violence.

Story continues

Armed groups, typically claiming to defend an ethnic or religious group, control about 80 percent of the CAR, often fighting over access to the country's mineral wealth.

The conflict has left thousands dead and forced a quarter of the population of 4.5 million from their homes.

The new statement said the Khartoum agreement was "still valid" but the government that followed it was "stillborn".

Its 11 signatories include two out of the three biggest ex-Seleka groups -- the Unity for Peace in Central Africa (UPC) and the Patriotic Movement for Central Africa (MPC).

The other ex-Seleka major group, the Popular Front for the Rebirth of Central Africa (FPRC), led by Noureddine Adam, did not sign the statement.

Two groups from the so-called anti-balaka movement, which emerged to fight the Seleka, also did not put their names to the communique.

In Addis Ababa, the UA's commissioner for peace and security, Smail Chergui, who is also chief mediator in the follow-up meeting, tweeted on Tuesday that he had met with Ngrebada "to exchange views on opportunities for fast tracking implementation of the #RCA Peace Agreement".
Washington (AFP) - Democrat Beto O'Rourke pulled in a record $6.1 million in the 24 hours after announcing his US presidential run, outraising the crowded field of challengers to Donald Trump in 2020.

The former congressman from Texas, who rose to national prominence last year with an inspirational but ultimately unsuccessful effort to unseat Senator Ted Cruz, jumped into the presidential race last Thursday in a closely-watched kick-off.

"In just 24 hours, Americans across this country came together to prove that it is possible to run a true grassroots campaign for president -- a campaign by all of us for all of us that answers not to the PACs, corporations and special interests but to the people," O'Rourke said in a statement.

Like most other major Democrats running for the nomination, O'Rourke has sworn off contributions from corporations and political action committees, groups that raise money in support of a candidate.

The 46-year-old Texan impressively eclipsed the $5.9 million opening-day haul of Senator Bernie Sanders, the liberal icon who maintains a vast database of supporters and donors from his 2016 presidential race.

That O'Rourke outraised Sanders and all other Democrats on Day 1 signals he will be able to draw massive donations on a national level by tapping into his own substantial support list from his Texas Senate campaign, which helped him pull in $79 million for that race.

Hours after announcing his candidacy, O'Rourke embarked on a three-day, 837-mile (1,347-kilometer) road trip across Iowa, the state that votes first in 2020 in the party primary process.

He headed to Wisconsin at the weekend, and is in Michigan and Ohio on Monday.

All four states voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but swung to Trump in the 2016 election.

Experts say grassroots enthusiasm among Democrats and Republicans, coupled with increasingly seamless online donor options for voters, could help the 2020 presidential cycle break records for total small-dollar donations.
Abbott Lifesciences ABT recently announced favorable results from two distinctly-conducted analyses of the two-year long COAPT (Cardiovascular Outcomes Assessment of the MitraClip Percutaneous Therapy for Heart Failure Patients with Functional Mitral Regurgitation) clinical trial.



The study sheds light on the additional benefits of the companys mitral valve repair device, the MitraClip. The positive data sets prove that the MitraClip ensures the sustenance of long-term quality of life for patients of secondary or functional mitral regurgitation (MR).



Results of COAPT Trial Study



Both sets of data were presented at the American College of Cardiology. Based on the results of the COAPT trial data, the U.S. FDA gave its approval for the expanded use of MitraClip in the treatment of secondary mitral regurgitation. In 2013, MitraClip was approved as a repair device for primary MR.



The study revealed that Abbotts MitraClip performs better than any traditional treatment for functional MR available in the market. A second round of sub-analysis compared the baseline characteristics of advanced heart failure patients, before and after their enrollment in the study. The results testified that all sub-groups of patients, who enrolled in the study, received long-term benefits from the application of MitraClip.



Results show that the device provides instant symptom relief and also ensures swift discharge of patients. In fact, the study noted that MitraClip alleviates the risk of hospitalization, prolongs life term and enhances the quality of life of patients affected with severe MR.



This two-year data by Abbott can be treated as a major development in the field of the complicated secondary mitral regurgitation. Per a Star Tribune report, in a recent study, two-thirds of the people, taking the maximum recommended doses of drugs for severe forms of secondary MR, were either hospitalized or dead within two years. The report, however, claims that at the late-breaking sessions of the American College of Cardiology, researchers noted that the rate of hospitalization and death dropped to 46% in patients implanted with a MitraClip device.



Market Prospects



Per Allied market research, the global market for transcatheter heart valve replacement and repair is projected to reach a worth of $8.13 billion, at a CAGR of 13.8% during the 2017-2025 period.Abbott expects MitraClip to reach a market worth $4 billion in the United States, where about 6.5 million people suffer from heart failures.



Other Researches by Abbott



New late-breaking Momentum 3 data has highlighted the efficiency of Abbotts recently-approved HeartMate 3 left ventricular assist device in treating advanced heart failure.



This February, the company announced real-world research findings that highlighted the global impact of its FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring system on health outcomes for people affected with diabetes.



Earlier in January, Abbott presented study-based data which proved the benefits of the BURSTDR spinal cord stimulation for people suffering from chronic pain.



In September 2018, real-world research proved that Abbotts Portico transcatheter aortic valve was equipped to treat severe aortic stenosis.

Later that November, Abbott started conducting studies to assess the efficacy of ablation in treating patients suffering from complex cardiac arrythmia.

Story continues

Price Performance

Over the past year, Abbotts shares have outperformed the industry it belongs to. The stock has rallied 25.9% compared to the industrys gain of 6.6%.







Zacks Rank & Other Key Picks



Currently, Abbott has a Zacks Rank of #2 (buy).



A few other top-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are ABIOMED, Inc., ABMD, Varian Medical Systems, Inc. VAR and Masimo, Inc. MASI. Each of these stocks currently carries a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



ABIOMEDs long-term earnings growth rate is expected at 27.67%.



Varians long-term earnings growth rate is projected at 8.00%.



Masimos long-term earnings are projected to grow 15.60%.



Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019



In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.

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Abbott Laboratories (ABT) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Masimo Corporation (MASI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Varian Medical Systems, Inc. (VAR) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
Aerie Pharmaceuticals, Inc. AERI announced that it has initiated dosing in a phase II study to evaluate its investigational pipeline candidate, AR-1105, for treating patients with macular edema due to retinal vein occlusion (RVO).

The phase II program will enroll up to 45 patients and be conducted at various sites in the United States. The primary endpoint of the study is to examine the safety, tolerability and efficacy of the dexamethasone intravitreal implant, AR-1105. Positive results from this study will help Aerie optimize the formulation of the candidate to achieve the clinical objective in phase III analyses.

AR-1105 is a bio-erodible implant, designed to release the steroid dexamethasone over a six-month period. It is commonly administered through intravitreal injection. The benefits of AR-1105 compared with other steroid products are its six-month duration of efficacy, improved administration owing to a smaller needle size and a better safety profile on the back of lower peak drug levels.

In January 2019, the FDA reviewed the investigational new drug (IND) application for AR-1105.

Apart from AR-1105, Aeries retina pipeline includes AR-13503 (rho kinase and protein kinase C inhibitor implant). The IND for AR-13503 is expected to be filed with the FDA in the first quarter of 2019 and if accepted, studies are expected to begin in the second quarter of 2019 for wet age-related macular degeneration and DME (diabetic macular edema).

Shares of Aerie have surged 30.4% so far this year, outperforming the industrys17% rise.

We would like to remind investors that last week, Aerie received the FDA approval for Rocklatan to reduce the elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) in patients with open-angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension.

Rocklatan is a once-daily, quadruple-action fixed-dose combination of Rhopressa (netarsudil) and Pfizers PFE Xalatan (latanoprost).

This is the second FDA approval that Aerie has received for treating glaucoma within a year of Rhopressas launch in the United States. The company plans to launch Rocklatan in the second quarter of 2019.

Story continues

Zacks Rank & Other Stocks to Consider

Aerie currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Two other top-ranked stocks in the same sector are Lannett Co Inc LCI and AIT Therapeutics, Inc. AITB, both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Lannetts earnings estimates have moved 1.9% north for 2019 and 2% for 2020 over the past 60 days. The stock has soared 58.8% so far this year.

AIT Therapeutics loss per share estimates have been narrowed 18.8% for 2019 and 11.8% for 2020 in the last 60 days. The stock has inched up 1.6% year to date.

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019

In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?



Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.

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Pfizer Inc. (PFE) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Lannett Co Inc (LCI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Aerie Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AERI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



AIT Therapeutics, Inc. (AITB) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe (AP)  Aid workers rushed to rescue victims clinging to trees and crammed on rooftops Tuesday after a cyclone unleashed devastating floods in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. More than 350 people were confirmed dead, hundreds were missing and thousands more were at risk.

In Mozambique, the rapidly rising floodwaters created "an inland ocean," endangering tens of thousands of families, aid workers said as they scrambled to rescue survivors and airdrop, food, water and blankets to survivors of Cyclone Idai.

"This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's recent history," said Jamie LeSueur, head of response efforts for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi said late Tuesday more than 200 people had been confirmed dead in his country. Earlier he said the death toll could reach 1,000.

At least 400,000 people were left homeless.

In Zimbabwe's eastern mountain areas bordering Mozambique, residents struggled to cope with the disaster.

"There was a house there, it was buried and the owners may have been buried with it. They are missing," said Zacharia Chinyai of the Zimbabwean border town of Chimanimani, who lost 12 relatives in the disaster.

The cyclone took residents by surprise, Chinyai said.

"We heard news on the radio" about the flooding in neighboring Mozambique, he said. "But we never thought we could also be victims. ... No one told us it was going to be this devastating."

Chipo Dhliwayo lost her daughters, 4-year-old Anita and 8-year-old Amanda.

"I wasn't able to save anything except this baby," she said of her lone surviving child, a 6-month-old son, who suffered an eye injury and scars to his face.

The family was sleeping when theit house collapsed, the 30-year-old said.

"Trees, rocks and mud were raining on us. I grabbed my son, my husband took Anita and we ran to a hut, but that also collapsed. Anita died there," she said.

Story continues

Amanda was trapped in the rubble of their house and her body was not found until the next day.

"I knew she was already dead. I cried the whole night," Dhliwayo said. "I lost so much that I wish I had just died."

The cyclone created southern Africa's most destructive flooding in 20 years, said emergency workers. Heavy rains were expected to continue through Thursday.

Mozambique's Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, creating "inland oceans extending for miles and miles in all directions," said Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program.

"This is a major humanitarian emergency that is getting bigger by the hour," Verhoosel said.

He said people were "crammed on rooftops and elevated patches of land."

"People visible from the air may be the lucky ones and the top priority now is to rescue as many as possible," he said.

Many areas remained impassible. With key roads washed away, aid groups were trying to get badly needed food, medicine and fuel into the hard-hit city of Beira, on Mozambique's coast, by air and by sea.

"It's dire," Caroline Haga of the Red Cross told The Associated Press from Beira, a city of 500,000. "We did an aerial surveillance yesterday and saw people on rooftops and in tree branches. The waters are still rising and we are desperately trying to save as many as possible."

Satellite images were helping the rescue teams target the most critical areas, Haga said. Rescue operations were based at Beira airport, one of the few places in the city with working communications.

The waters flooded a swath of land more than 150 square miles (290 square kilometers) in central Mozambique, according to the European Union's global observation program, which was mapping the crisis, putting more than 100,000 people at risk.

"The full horror, the full impact is only going to emerge over coming days," Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane told reporters in Geneva.

Thousands of homes were destroyed in Beira, and the city and surrounding areas were without power and nearly all communication lines were destroyed. Beira's main hospital was badly damaged, and in large areas flood waters completely covered homes, telephone poles and trees, the Red Cross said.

Beira could face a "serious fuel shortage" in coming days, the WFP said, and its power grid was expected to be non-functional through the end of the month.

In Zimbabwe the death toll was 98 but expected to rise, a local government minister, July Moyo, said.

He said bodies of Zimbabweans had been reported floating all the way into Mozambique. "Some of the peasants in Mozambique were calling some of our people to say, 'We see bodies, we believe those bodies are coming from Zimbabwe,'" Moyo said.

Among those fleeing Chimanimani on foot was Luckmore Rusero, who carried a small bag with his remaining possessions. His wife carried their 1-year-old while their 11-year-old son struggled to keep pace as they joined many others in seeking refuge.

"Thank God we survived. There are no roads, no transport, so we have been walking for more than 20 kilometers now through the forests and the mountains," Rusero said.

Some escaped with nothing but their lives.

"I fled naked," said Tecla Chagwiza, whose home in Chimanimani was destroyed, "I only received clothes in the morning from well-wishers who are also helping me with food."

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa arrived in the flooded area on Tuesday and was expected to fly by helicopter to disaster sites on Wednesday. He said the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and Angola, were offering aid.

The European Union and Britain also pledged aid, and the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe said the U.S. was "mobilizing to provide support" to partners in the three affected countries, but provided no details.

Malawi's government confirmed 56 deaths, three missing and 577 injured in the flooding, which caused rivers to burst their banks, leaving many houses submerged and around 11,000 households displaced in the southern district of Nsanje.

___

Meldrum reported from Johannesburg.

___

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa
In the past week, Latin American carrier  Azul AZUL reported lackluster fourth-quarter 2018 results with lower-than-expected earnings per ADS as well as revenues.

On the non-earnings front, the unrest in Venezuela compelled American Airlines AAL to temporarily suspend its operations to the Latin-American nation. Following American Airlines pull out, no major U.S.-based carrier will be operating in the troubled nation. Delta Air Lines DAL and United Continental Holdings UAL had stopped operating flights to Venezuela in 2017.

Also, Southwest Airlines LUV inked an Agreement in Principle with the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA)  the union representing 2,400 mechanics at this low-cost carrier  in the past week. The deal will become effective for five years, if the outcome of the voting procedure is favorable. In that case, the agreement becomes amendable on Aug 16, 2024.

(Read the last Airline Stock Roundup here).

Recap of the Past Weeks Most Important Stories

1. Azuls fourth-quarter 2018 earnings per ADS of 31 cents fell short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 18 cents. Moreover, the bottom line plunged on a year-over-year basis. This downturn was due to high fuel costs and devaluation of the Brazilian Real. Notably, fuel price per liter surged 37.2%, while the Brazilian Real depreciated 17.3% year over year. Operating revenues in the reported quarter totaled $651 million (R$2,480.4 million), which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $692 million. The top line also decreased on a year-over-year basis. However, passenger revenues, contributing 94.4% to the top line, rose 13.3% year over year. (Read more: Azul Q4 Earnings & Revenues Miss Estimates, Down Y/Y).

Azul carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

2. Citing safety concerns, American Airlines Allied Pilots Association (APA) told its pilots to turn down assignments to Venezuela. The APAs decision was supported by the carriers flight attendants union. This move came after the U.S. State Department issued a warning to Americans against traveling to Venezuela due to crime, civil unrest and other factors. The U.S. administration recently suspended daily operations at the U.S. embassy in Caracas and even withdrew all its diplomats from the country. (Read more: American Airlines Halts Venezuelan Operations: Here's Why).

Story continues

3. After a week of mediation, Southwest Airlines and AMFA reached an agreement in principle. Markedly, both the parties have been involved in negotiations for six years. However, the relationship between them turned sour of late and even hampered Southwest Airlines operations. The company had to cancel multiple flights as mechanical issues continued to render them unfit for flying. Consequently, the Dallas-based carrier declared an operational emergency and also apologized to its passengers for the harassments.

Per the companys CEO, the flight cancellations/delays resulted in the carrier losing millions of dollars on a weekly basis. Subsequently, the carrier filed a case against AMFA as it believed that the union was aiding the illegal slowdown in operations.

Realizing that the situation might go out of control, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in an unusual move, warned the parties that the conflict between them might pose safety-related risks. Mediation followed the FAAs warning and led to agreement. In the event of the agreement becoming effective, mechanics at Southwest Airlines would get a 20% pay hike (effective Apr 1, 2019) in addition to bonuses worth $160 million.

4. At Alaska Air Group ALK, consolidated traffic for February decreased 2% year over year to 3.7 billion. Also, consolidated capacity contracted 1.9% to 4.7 billion. Consolidated load factor (% of seats filled with passengers) decreased 10 basis points year over year to 79.3%. This key metric declined as capacity decrease was less than the reduction in traffic.

5. In customer-friendly move, Hawaiian Airlines  the wholly-owned subsidiary of Hawaiian Holdings HA  stated that it will operate a third daily flight between San Francisco and the Hawaiian Islands from Oct 16, 2019. Hawaiian Airlines will operate the additional flights on the route by utilizing the new Airbus A321neo planes. The carrier also announced intentions to start operating flights between Honolulu and Boston from Apr 4, 2019. Currently, the carrier operates non-stop flights connecting North America and Hawaii from 12 mainland cities.

Performance

The following table shows the price movement of the major airline players over the past week and during the last six months.

Company Past Week Last 6 months HA 0.5% -35% UAL 0.1% 4.2% GOL 9.4% 21.6% DAL -0.1% -12.4% JBLU 0.2% 2.7% AAL 0.4% 7% SAVE -1.7% 3.6% LUV -0.1% -19.6% CPA -1.1% 4.9% ALK 2% -19.9%

The table above shows that airline stocks exhibited a mixed trend with respect to price in the past week. Consequently, the NYSE ARCA Airline index remained almost flat in the period. Over the course of six months, the NYSE ARCA Airline index appreciated 4.4%.

What's Next in the Airline Space?

Stay tuned for usual news updates in the space.

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019



In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?



Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.



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Inday Sara endorses Romualdez speakership bid

posted March 20, 2019 at 02:00 am by Macon Ramos-Araneta March 20, 2019 at 02:00 am

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Moscow (AFP) - Algeria's deputy prime minister Ramtane Lamamra on Tuesday promised "open and transparent" steps to resolve the country's political crisis, as ally Moscow backed his government's plans.

Lamamra was in Moscow for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as a wave of mass protests continued in Algeria against the rule of its ageing president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power for 20 years.

Tens of thousands of Algerians have taken to the streets to demonstrate, prompting the government to respond with promises of political and constitutional reform.

So far, the authorities have pledged to hold a "national conference" to discuss reforms, followed by a referendum on a new constitution and eventually the election of a new president.

Speaking after talks with Lavrov, Lamamra said Algeria was developing a "concept of a future state" and that a new constitution would be formed "on the basis of an open and transparent discussion".

He said the national conference would decide the date of future elections and that Bouteflika was "ready to fully transfer his powers" to a new president.

An independent commission would be set up to monitor elections and Algerian opposition groups would be allowed to participate in political life, he said.

"We hope to implement all of this in the near future," said Lamamra, who is also Algeria's foreign minister.

Lavrov said Moscow, a longtime ally of Algiers, was behind the Algerian government's efforts.

"We support these plans and we expect they will help stabilise the situation," Lavrov said, hitting out at "attempts to destabilise the situation from the outside".

"I am convinced... that the people of Algeria can solve their own problems, resolve their own internal affairs," he said.

Algeria has been rocked by mass demonstrations for more than three weeks, with thousands of students protested in Algiers again on Tuesday, calling for Bouteflika to step down.

In response to the protests, the ailing 82-year-old initially said he was withdrawing his bid for a fifth term.

But an April 18 election was scrapped and on Monday, Bouteflika confirmed that he planned to stay in power beyond his term, which expires next month.
Andreas Antonopoulos hopes that we may soon see the independence day of crypto, calling for the many crypto tribes and open blockchain advocates to come together and unite in the event of any upcoming societal backlash against governments and banks.

His remarks were taken from a Q&A delivered at the recent ETHDenver conference about the scalability of electoral politics and the asymmetric power of cryptography.

At the start of the Q&A, Antonopoulos was posed a question regarding what he thought about the current turmoil in electoral politics across Western nations.

He started out by stating that in the current institutions of democracy, he sees a lot of classical liberal perspective with an essence of Greek democracy and finally some renaissance and enlightenment ideals.

However, he commented that countries of a Western cultural background are currently struggling with a fundamental collapse of institutions.

In his opinion, this collapse in governance is due to scalability problems in decision-making that were failing to address an interconnected globe with trade across continents, and problems like climate change which affect people across the world.

A fan of banks?

Andreas is known to be against big banking organisations, but on this occasion, he told the audience how banks in the 17th century were the greatest liberalising institution humanity had ever seen.

They were persecuted for the idea that someone other than the pope or the king could write a cheque, have a deposit, trade across borders with ease, invest in a mutual corporation or association. It was absolutely unthinkable at the time, but they did their job and liberated billions of people.

He mentioned that at the time, the only people with a chequebook were the kings of France or Spain.

Catering only to billionaires and multi-national corporations

Story continues

Back on the topic of global politics, the Mastering Bitcoin author proclaimed: We need to fix these institutions. We have tried to make a single institution or set of institutions scale up from the local all the way to the transnational level, but almost certainly the locals and the whole planet are being screwed.

The only scale that works is in the middle. One constituency. The billionaires and multi-national corporations are very well represented.

Public opinion has near-zero impact on US law

The Internet of Money author then brought up the 2015 research carried out by the prestigious Princeton University that concluded public opinion has near-zero impact on US law.

Regarding the report, Antonopoulos commented: They looked at public policy and tried to see if there was a correlation with national surveys of popular sentiment on key political ideas. They couldnt find any correlation. Then they compared public policy with the opinions of billionaires, and they were an exact match.

They get the legislation they want. The constituency is being served. The only problem is, you are not the constituency. I am not the constituency.

Debt is the constituency

The Mastering Ethereum author went on to speculate that in many countries, oil, diamonds, cobalt, and lithium are the constituency, but in the United States, debt is the constituency.

He went on to say that governments extract debt from the ground like oil and drown us in it. Creating a class of parasitic elites who dont give a sh*t about any of us. They are the constituency.

When asked if he thinks this will change any time soon, he said: I am an optimist. But on this topic, even I have doubts at this point.

By Nawaz Sulemanji  March 19, 2019

Moving on to the topic of unity amongst the various tribes in the cryptocurrency space today, Andreas asked the crowd: If the giant government and bank backlash starts now, can we all be friends again?

Talking about the perspective of legislators and governments today, he said: We are all weirdos in the same camp [to them]. They can not tell the difference.

The only way [the crypto community] can achieve unity is by unifying against an external threat.

Referencing the plot of the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, Andreas concluded: I want to see the independence day of crypto, where we go implant a BIOS virus in an alien ship and blow them all up..or something like that, only with Wells Fargo.

The post Andreas Antonopoulos: I want to see the independence day of crypto appeared first on Coin Rivet.
Investors focused on the Finance space have likely heard of Annaly Capital Management (NLY), but is the stock performing well in comparison to the rest of its sector peers? By taking a look at the stock's year-to-date performance in comparison to its Finance peers, we might be able to answer that question.

Annaly Capital Management is a member of our Finance group, which includes 849 different companies and currently sits at #5 in the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank considers 16 different sector groups. The average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups is measured, and the sectors are listed from best to worst.

The Zacks Rank is a successful stock-picking model that emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions. The system highlights a number of different stocks that could be poised to outperform the broader market over the next one to three months. NLY is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy).

Within the past quarter, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for NLY's full-year earnings has moved 0.28% higher. This shows that analyst sentiment has improved and the company's earnings outlook is stronger.

Based on the latest available data, NLY has gained about 5.50% so far this year. Meanwhile, the Finance sector has returned an average of 12.19% on a year-to-date basis. As we can see, Annaly Capital Management is performing better than its sector in the calendar year.

Breaking things down more, NLY is a member of the REIT and Equity Trust industry, which includes 29 individual companies and currently sits at #61 in the Zacks Industry Rank. Stocks in this group have gained about 9.49% so far this year, so NLY is slightly underperforming its industry this group in terms of year-to-date returns.

Investors with an interest in Finance stocks should continue to track NLY. The stock will be looking to continue its solid performance.



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WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump welcomed a South American admirer to the White House on Tuesday.

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, dubbed the "Trump of the Tropics," visited Washington to talk trade, the Venenzuela crisis, space launches  and how Bolsonaro's campaign in part mirrored Trump's.

Here are five things you should know about the new Brazilian leader and his trip north:

Hes a Trump fan

Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain, was elected president of Latin Americas largest and most populous nation last fall on an anti-corruption and pro-gun agenda. Bolsonaro, 63, ran as an outsider whos not afraid to speak his mind and shake up the establishment. Echoing Trumps calls to Make America Great Again, he campaigned on a nationalist slogan of Brazil before everything, and God above all.

Like Trump, hes a hardliner on immigration (he once complained that the scum of the Earth was showing up in Brazil), dismisses bad press coverage as fake news and has an affinity for Twitter.

Upon Bolsonaro's arrival at the White House, Trump greeted him at the door of the West Wing, and the two later exchanged pleasantries in the Oval Office.

Trump said he was honored Bolsonaros campaign had been compared to his and that the U.S. and Brazil have never been closer.

Bolsonaro said through a translator he was pleased to meet with Trump, particularly after what he described as decades of anti-U.S. presidents in his country.

The two leaders then exchanged gifts: soccer jerseys. Trump presented Bolsonaro with a U.S. jersey bearing the number 19 and the Brazilian leader's name. Bolsonaro gave Trump a Brazilian No. 10 jersey, which was the number worn by the nation's soccer legend Pele.

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in the Oval Office of the White House March 19, 2019, in Washington.

Like Trump, Bolsonaro is controversial

Bolsonaro has appalled critics and thrilled supporters with his views on abortion, the environment, immigration, race, women and more. He was charged with hate speech by Brazil's attorney general and was stabbed and nearly died while campaigning for the presidency.

Story continues

In one of his more controversial remarks, he told Playboy magazine in 2011: I would not be able to love a gay son. I would rather he die in an accident."

He once denigrated a fellow lawmaker by saying: Shes not my type. I would never rape her. Im not a rapist, but if I were, I wouldnt rape her because she doesnt deserve it."

He told a Brazilian newspaper in 2018 how he spent the housing allowance he received as a congressman: Since I was a bachelor at the time, I used the money to have sex with people."

Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro delivers a joint press conference with Brazilian President Michel Temer (out of frame) after a meeting in Brasilia on Nov. 7, 2018.

Why did he visit?

Bolsonaros visit to Washington was perhaps more political than anything. He was hoping to assuage voters who drove his election: ultra-conservative nationalists who are aligned with the religious right in the U.S.

"He's looking to appease and placate his base," said Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Steve Bannon, the former Trump political adviser, has spoken with Bolsonaro during his trip to Washington, and has said the two are in the vanguard of a movement to promote nationalism.

"They're very similar," he said. "It's about economic growth and making their countries great again."

More: Bolton embraces Brazils hard-right president as like-minded leader, blasts others in region as troika of tyranny

What was on the agenda?

Folllowing their Oval Office meeting, Bolsonaro and Trump had a working luncheon to talk about trade and the Venezuelan crisis, among other things.

The Trump administration saw Bolsonaros visit as a chance to remake the relationship between the two countries and create a North-South axis on economic issues as well regional and international foreign policy affairs.

Brazil wants the U.S. to grant it major non-NATO ally status, which would help the country buy military equipment and technology. The U.S. wants permission to allow commercial space launches from a site in Brazil.

After their lunch, Trump said at a news conference with Bolsonaro that he's inclined to support giving NATO privileges to Brazil and that the U.S. and Brazil are finalizing an agreement so U.S. companies conduct space launches from Brazil.

"Its actually an incredible location when you study it and when you see it," he said. "Because of the location, tremendous amounts of money would be saved. To put it very simply, the flights are a lot shorter. Brazils proximity to the equator makes it an ideal launch location.

Turmoil in Venezuela

U.S. officials also hope Brazil can help them deal with the ongoing political turmoil in Venezuela.

Brazil has sided with the Trump administration in recognizing National Assembly leader Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela and in trying to force Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro out of office.

Brazil has allowed the U.S. to position humanitarian aid for Venezuela along Brazils northern border. Brazils military still has a good relationship with the Venezuelan military. U.S. officials believe Brazil could act as an intermediary with the Venezuelan military and could encourage them to protect civilians and pressure Maduro to step down.

Asked at the news conference about the prospects of U.S. military action, Trump said: "All options are open; I think of all possibilities."

Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard

More: Son of far-right Brazilian leader says Boca's stadium stinks

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Trump of the Tropics': Five things you should know about the Brazilian president's visit with Trump
Data privacy is an important topic, but will it help sell iPhones?

Apple obviously believes it will.

The iPhone maker has just released its first privacy-focused TV commercial, a 54-second ad that, without mentioning the names of Facebook and Google, subtly dings rivals whose privacy lapses have garnered the attention of lawmakers.

Apple's new TV spot is privacy-themed.

The commercial, titled "Privacy on iPhone  Private Side," is amusing, a bit quirky and spotlights scenarios where keeping private is paramount. In one scene, a guy tries to keep his distance when nature calls in a public urinal. In another, two men who had been gabbing in a restaurant go silent when the waitress approaches. The ad also showcases many of the keep-out type signs we run across, from No Trespassing to Beware Of Dog. The spot ends with the tagline, If privacy matters in your life, it should matter to the phone your life is on, after which a padlock morphs into the Apple logo.

Verizon teamed up with Apple on the ad.

Apple's approach to privacy is to process as much data as possible on the iPhone and other devices themselves so that only you get to see that information. The company also attempts to dissociate that data so that youre not personally identifiable.

Issues with iCloud: One day after Facebook and Instagram went down, iCloud has problems

Why Facebook and Instagram went down: Facebook and Instagram are officially back and blaming server configuration change for outage

This isnt Apples first crack at spreading the gospel on privacy through its marketing efforts. In January, at the CES tech industry conference in Las Vegas, Apple posted signs that read, What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone, with a link to the company's privacy page on the web.

That same month, CEO Tim Cook, long outspoken on the subject of privacy, published an essay in Time magazine, calling for a landmark package of reforms that protect and empower the consumer.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Apple's new TV ad shows they hope you care as much about privacy on iPhones as they do
Apple AAPL is all set to launch its much-anticipated video streaming and news subscription service on Mar 25. The video streaming service is likely to comprise a generous dose of free original programming along with subscription-based streaming offerings like CBS Showtime, Starz and Viacom.



However, Netflix NFLX will not be part of Apples new offering as confirmed by CEO Reed Hastings, per Variety, quoted by TechCrunch. The streaming giants protectiveness toward its own app has been cited as the primary reason. Notably, Netflix is also not available on Amazon Prime and Rokus ROKU video subscription marketplace.



We also believe that revenue sharing could have been a major issue between Apple and Netflix. The iPhone maker was reportedly pushing for a higher cut in revenue share instead of the rate it usually charges.



In fact, Netflix has stopped allowing Apple users to subscribe through the App store billing feature. This has helped the company retain 30% of the revenue share, which Apple used to get previously.



Revenue sharing arrangement has also been a bone of contention between Apple and a host of major publishers, including the New York Times and Washington Post, for the upcoming paid news service. Reportedly, Apple has demanded a revenue cut of roughly 50%. The paid news service will be integrated into the Apple news app.



Apple Inc. Revenue (TTM)

Apple Inc. Revenue (TTM) | Apple Inc. Quote

Will Netflixs Absence Hurt Apple?



As iPhone sales growth slows down, Apples Services business has emerged as the companys new cash cow. Apple currently has more than 360 million paid subscribers across its Services portfolio. More than 30,000 third-party subscription apps are available on the App Store.



Expanding App Store, Apple Music and Apple Pay subscriber base has been a major growth driver. The upcoming video service is an important addition to this ensemble portfolio. Apple has spent roughly $2 billion on its content (either through producing or acquiring) and inked a multi-year content deal with Oprah Winfrey.



Per Macworld, Apple has spent $1 billion on original TV programming in 2018. The involvement of Hollywood stars like Jennifer Garner, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Chris Evans, Jason Momoa along with acclaimed directors and producers like Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams surely makes the shows attractive.



However, Netflixs absence will surely hurt the video streaming service. The growing appeal of the streaming platform, driven by a solid content portfolio, is helping it expand subscriber base rapidly, which is hard to ignore. Netflix hit 139.26 million subscribers globally at the end of 2018. The company now expects to add 8.90 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2019.



Moreover, absence of Netflix also reduces Apples competitive strength in the streaming market, which is expected to see a plethora of new services from well-known media giants like Disney DIS and NBCUniversal.



Among the new entrants, Disneys video streaming service, Disney+ is expected to be a major player in the streaming market space, due to its strong content slate, brand name and ability to market the service. Notably, Disney+ is estimated to on-board 160 million subscribers worldwide, per CNBC.



Zacks Rank & A Key Pick



Currently, Apple has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



Lenovo LNVGY is a stock worth considering in the same industry. The company flaunts a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Story continues

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019

In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?

Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.

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Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentina's former president Cristina Kirchner was charged with a new corruption case for the second day running on Tuesday, this time related to irregularities in the concession of subsidies for train and bus operators.

The 66-year-old senator was already facing numerous allegations before she was indicted on Monday for the fraudulent import of liquid gas.

Judge Claudio Bonadio asked that Kirchner be remanded in pre-trial custody with bail of one billion pesos ($25 million).

But the center-left politician, who was president from 2007 to 2015, is protected from incarceration by partial parliamentary immunity.

She is in Cuba, where her daughter Florencia is receiving hospital treatment.

Among the previous 10 cases brought against Kirchner, the most notable is the "corruption notebooks" scandal in which she is accused of having received tens of millions of dollars in bribes.

In that case, the prosecution claims that a total of $160 million in bribes were handed over between 2005 -- when her husband Nestor was president -- and 2015.

Kirchner hopes to stand in October's presidential elections and is the closest rival to center-right president Mauricio Macri, according to polls.

But the first of the many trials she faces for corruption begins on May 21, in a case in which she is accused of having corruptly favored businessman Lazaro Baez in the attribution of 52 public works contracts worth 46 billion pesos ($1.2 billion) during her presidency.
Reminiscing the harrowing ordeal they suffered under the previous administration after being ravaged by Super Typhoon Yolanda, mayoralty candidate Alfred Romualdez urged the people of Leyte to vote for the senators endorsed by HNP. The mayor raised the possibility that another Yolanda could happen again in Tacloban and the Eastern Visayan region. What happened before can again happen. I wish, when we were hit by Yolanda, Rodrigo was already our president, he said. The senators running under HNP are reelectionists Senators Aquilino Pimentel III, Cynthia Villar, Sonny Angara and JV Ejercito, Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos, returning Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Bong Revilla and Pia Cayetano, former presidential aide Christopher Go, former MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino, former PNP chief and Bureau of Corrections director Ronald Bato, broadcast journalist Jiggy Manicad, and Maguindanao Gov. Dong Mangundadatu.Those we have chosen, brought here in the [Tacloban] Astrodome, let us not allow outsiders, he said, Let us help them in their campaign, added the mayor as he remembered how they seriously took to heart the failure of the previous administration to help them when Yolanda pummelled their people and their province. I was then taking seriously complaints on why were we not being helped, why was there no budget. Because you didnt listen. You voted for them, he stressed, referring to the past administration under former President Benigno Aquino.
Sydney (AFP) - Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called on world leaders to press technology firms to tackle the "ungoverned" space of extremist internet content in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack.

In a letter published Tuesday, the Australian leader asked the G20 summit host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that the issue be raised when leaders gather in Osaka this June.

Morrison is in the middle of a tough re-election campaign, where his party has faced persistent allegations of fuelling anti-migrant sentiment to appeal to conservative voters.

Morrison has spoken publicly several times to denounce extremism since the attack that killed 50 people in neighbouring New Zealand on Friday.

He has also taken aim at tech companies for their seeming inability to stop the propagation of extremist content, such as live footage shot by the gunman as he rampaged through the Al Noor mosque.

"They've created these capabilities, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, they're available for peaceful and happy purposes, but we do know that they can be used and weaponised by terrorists of any description," he told the press.

"If you can write an algorithm to make sure that the ads they want you to see can appear on your mobile phone, then I'm quite confident they can write an algorithm to screen out hate content on social media platforms.

"I'm sure we can work together to make sure they protect our citizens by ensuring that their tools that they have developed are not used by terrorists as weapons to advance their agendas of hate," he said.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten backed that call, telling social media platforms: "If you help create the swamp, you can't go missing when evil things start crawling out of it."
Tripoli (AFP) - A baby's body was found after a shipwreck Tuesday off the coast of Libya, an official said, while at least eight migrants are missing at sea.

A boat carrying 27 people sank near the coastal town of Sabratha, to the west of the Libyan capital Tripoli, said Bassem al-Gharabli who heads the local office combatting illegal migration.

The figure is based on testimony from the 18 survivors, whom Gharabli said were rescued after fishermen alerted the coast guard.

The group attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea included seven women, said Gharabli without detailing the migrants' nationalities.

The International Organization for Migration's Libya office confirmed the shipwreck and said 15 people were hospitalised.

"Some of whom have fractured bones, according to IOM doctor onsite," the IOM wrote on Twitter.

Thousands have died in recent years trying to cross from North Africa to reach European shores, crammed into rickety boats by people smugglers.

Libya has been a key departure point for those hoping to reach Italy, 300 kilometres (185 miles) to the north.

But a controversial decision to Rome to close its ports to rescue ships has slashed the number of arrivals over the past few months.

Nearly 350 migrants have reached Italy so far in 2019, according to figures from the UN refugee agency.
Beto ORourke confirmed his support for unrestricted access to abortion regardless of gestational age during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, one day after refusing to answer directly when asked about the morality of third-trimester abortion.

I just want to make sure that I had clarity: Yesterday when you were asked about abortion, you said its a womans right to choose, correct? Does that include up into the third trimester? asked the Washington Examiners Salena Zito, who trailed ORourke as he was walking the Penn State University campus.

I think those decisions are best left to a woman and her doctor. I know better than to assume anything about a womans decision, an incredibly difficult decision when it comes to her reproductive rights, ORourke responded. Roe v. Wade, though its being tested unlike any other time, its still the law of the land, it must be upheld. When were talking about universal health care, were talking about womens health care.

Speaking to supporters in Cleveland, Ohio on Monday, ORourke was asked specifically about his views on third-trimester abortion, but pivoted to the issue of abortion generally, which he argued should be unrestricted.

Are you for or against third-trimester abortion? asked an attendee at ORourkes campaign stop in Cleveland.

The question is about abortion and reproductive rights and my answer to you is that should be a decision that the woman makes. I trust her, ORourke said to raucous applause.

ORourke, like his fellow Democratic presidential contenders, has refused to draw distinctions about the morality of abortion based on gestational age, maintaining instead a blanket opposition to any abortion restriction whatsoever. Shortly before leaving Congress to launch an ultimately futile challenge to Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), ORourke co-sponsored the Womens Health Protection Act, which would have eliminated nearly all state restrictions on abortion, including so-called right-to-know laws and mandatory waiting periods.

More from National Review
DOVER, Del. (AP)  Did Joe Biden accidentally reveal his plans to run for the White House? Or was it just another slip of the tongue by the former vice president with a reputation for veering off script?

In a keynote speech at a dinner for the Delaware Democratic Party, Biden boasted Saturday that he has "the most progressive record of anybody running." The only problem is that Biden hasn't announced whether he will launch a third run for the White House, despite repeatedly teasing the possibility.

He quickly corrected himself, clarifying that he meant to say "anybody who would run," then adding "I didn't mean it" while a cheering crowd in his home state nearly drowned him out.

Although Biden has been known to go off script, his remark is likely to be viewed as a Washington-style gaffe  a case of accidentally telling the truth.

During the rest of his speech he sounded very much like a candidate-in-waiting. He repeatedly attacked President Donald Trump, accusing him of stoking division and anger, and bemoaned that the ascendant "new left" of his own party has criticized him for being cordial toward Republicans.

"The only thing strong enough to tear America apart is America itself and we've seen its start," he said.

Biden accused Trump of backing away from America's role as a leader on the world stage and abandoning its allies. He said it's no coincidence that "fake news"  one of Trump's favorite labels  "has become the phrase of choice for every despot terrorizing his people."

"We're literally in a battle for the soul of America," he said.

More than a dozen Democrats have already launched formal 2020 presidential campaigns. After former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke's entered the race last week, Biden, who is his party's best-known and best-connected presidential prospect, is the last major contender to remain on the sidelines.

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But that didn't stop the friendly home-state crowd from reveling in the idea that will jump in.

"I told him recently I have one campaign left in me," said Sonia Schorr Sloan, a fundraiser and longtime Biden adviser.

Delaware Gov. John Carney said Biden "doesn't just look like he's back. He looks like he's ready for a fight."

Just minutes before Biden's slip of the tongue, though, Carney raised the possibility of a Biden campaign with a bit more delicacy.

"I am not up here to break any news tonight," Carney told the crowd. Then he added: "In my humble opinion, we have never needed Joe Biden more than we need him right now."
On Mar 18, we issued an updated research report on Boston Scientific Corporation BSX. The companys recent acquisitions have added various products (though many are under development) with immense potential to its portfolio. The stock carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Over the past three months, shares of Boston Scientific have outperformed the industry it belongs to. The stock has inched up 0.4% versus the 5.3% decrease of its industry.

Boston Scientific delivered a solid fourth-quarter 2018 with both earnings and revenues surpassing the respective Zacks Consensus Estimate. Growth across all business lines and geographies was promising. The company is pulling out all the stops to strengthen its core businesses and invest in new technologies and global markets.

We are also optimistic about the receipt of an FDA approval for its SYNERGY Everolimus-Eluting Platinum Chromium Coronary Stent System with 4.50 mm and 5 mm diameter. The company also got an FDA nod for its Vercise Primary Cell and Vercise Gevia Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) Systems. It is currently gearing up for the upcoming U.S. launch of VICI VENOUS STENT, which will be the first on-label VENOUS STENT in the said market.

As part of major developments, the company closed the purchase of Millipede and entered into an agreement to buy BTG plc. With the completion of the BTG buyout, the company expects to gain an enhanced category leadership position in interventional oncology, arterial and venous therapies. Meanwhile, Millipede is likely to leverage its position in the growing field of mitral regurgitation (MR) falling under the structural heart business.

We are also looking forward to the companys recently-concluded consolidations, which are NxThera, Claret Medical, VENITI and Augmenix. These are projected to strongly upgrade the companys inorganic growth profile going forward.

Moreover, the companys significant progress with its LOTUS valve relaunch encourages us. Also, post the suspension of the Lotus valve in Europe, ACURATE TAVR valve platform continues to build a momentum. The company announced that it will begin a limited release of the LOTUS Edge TAVR platform during March in Europe. It hopes to initiate a controlled launch of the same in early second-quarter 2019 across the United States following the FDA approval. Millipede also noted that it began enrolling patients in the LOTUS REPRISE IV study at intermediate risk.

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On the flip side, an unfavorable currency movement and product recall were major dampeners during the reported quarter. Strong competitors in the large medical device market also pose a tough challenge to Boston Scientific.

Key Picks

A few better-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are ABIOMED, Inc., ABMD, Varian Medical Systems, Inc. VAR and Masimo, Inc. MASI, each currently carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

ABIOMEDs long-term earnings growth rate is expected at 27.67%.

Varians long-term earnings growth rate is projected at 8.00%.

Masimos long-term earnings are predicted to grow 15.60%.

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019



In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?



Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.



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Masimo Corporation (MASI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Washington (AFP) - Brazil's new right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, signed a deal Monday to open a base to US satellite launches as he appealed for warm relations with Donald Trump on a visit to Washington.

The outspoken conservative, who will meet Trump at the White House on Tuesday, has ideological affinities with the US leader and has broken Brazilian precedent by heading to Washington, not Argentina, for his first official trip abroad.

Promoting a business-friendly approach after more than a decade of socialist presidents, Bolsonaro signed an agreement with US companies on technical safeguards to allow commercial satellite launches from the Alcantara base in the northern Brazilian state of Maranhao.

"We should be thanking God for the recent change of ideology in Brazil," Bolsonaro said at the US Chamber of Commerce.

"We want to have a great Brazil, just like Trump wants to make America great."

Alcantara is an ideal location as it lies near the Equator, decreasing fuel needs by 30 percent.

Brazil hopes it will take a slice of the multibillion-dollar launch market as it competes with the Kourou space center in French Guiana.

But the deal needs approval from the Brazilian Congress, which blocked a similar agreement by former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the grounds that the country would lose sovereignty to the United States.

Brazilian Science and Technology Minister Marcos Pontes, who was the country's first astronaut, likened the proposed status of Alcantara to a hotel.

"Imagine that you brought technology to your room. You have the key and I, the hotel owner, can get in if necessary," he said.

Brazil's aspirations for Alcantara were set back by a 2003 explosion in which 21 technicians were killed.

Former leftist president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva signed a deal for Ukraine to launch from the base, but the deal was later terminated, with Brazil citing economic and technological developments.

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Bolsonaro -- whose close ties to business and agricultural interests have frightened environmentalists -- said he hoped for US investment beyond the space base.

"In different areas, minerals, agriculture, biodiversity -- we have immense biodiversity in the Amazon -- we would very much like to have a partnership with this country that I admire," he said of the United States.

Bolsonaro said he would also speak with Trump about their joint campaign to oust Venezuela's leftist president, Nicolas Maduro.

"We cannot leave them the way they are. We have to free the nation of Venezuela. This is why we're counting on the United States to reach this objective," he said.
By Lisandra Paraguassu and Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazil's new far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro forged a bond over their shared brand of conservative and populist politics on Tuesday, with Trump pledging to give more U.S. support to Brazil's global ambitions. In a joint news conference in the White House Rose Garden, Trump said he told Bolsonaro he would designate Brazil a major non-NATO ally and possibly go further by supporting a campaign to make Brazil "maybe a NATO ally." Bolsonaro, a former army captain who rode to the presidency with a brash, anti-establishment campaign modeled on Trump's 2016 run, has declared himself an unabashed admirer of the U.S. president and the American way of life. He praised Trump for changing the United States in a way he said he hopes to change Brazil. "Brazil and the United States are tied by the guarantee of liberty, respect for the traditional family, the fear of God our creator, against gender identity, political correctness and fake news," Bolsonaro said, touching on themes that have inflamed his critics in Brazil concerned about his autocratic views. Nicknamed the 'Trump of the Tropics,' Bolsonaro rose to power praising the U.S.-backed military government that ran Brazil for two decades before a return to democracy in 1985. He moved quickly to ally Brazil closer to the United States, a shift in diplomatic priorities after over a decade of leftist party rule that had seen Brazil forging closer ties with regional allies. At Tuesday's news conference, the two presidents repeatedly rejected socialism, celebrating their joint efforts to oust Venezuela's left-wing leader, Nicolas Maduro. They showed an easy rapport, exchanging soccer jerseys from their national teams at the outset of their meeting in the Oval Office, with Trump's name emblazoned on Brazil's famous yellow shirt and Bolsonaro's on the USA uniform. The two also share a penchant for family politics, employing relations as some of their closest advisers. In the Rose Garden, Trump praised Bolsonaro's son Eduardo, a congressman who sported a Trump 2020 hat when visiting Washington last year. TRADE PROMISES As leaders of the two largest economies in the Western Hemisphere, Trump and Bolsonaro also discussed how to increase trade and committed to reducing barriers. "Brazil makes great product and we make great product, and our trade has been never as good as it should be in the past. And in some cases it should be far, far more," Trump said. They struck initial agreements on agricultural trade, with better access for American wheat and pork exports to Brazil and the possibility of restarting sales of Brazilian fresh beef to the United States. Looming over their discussion was the fact that China, currently embroiled in a trade war with the United States, has eclipsed America in trade and investment with Brazil. Bolsonaro, who was critical of China in his campaign, announced hours after meeting Trump that he will visit the country in the second half of the year. Bolsonaro's Economy Minister, Paulo Guedes, on Monday urged the United States to open its market more to Brazil if it wanted to change the status quo. Trump also said he supported Brazil's efforts to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a club of wealthier nations sharing best practices on economic policy. But U.S. support would not come for free, according to Guedes. In exchange, the Americans asked Brazil to give up some benefits at the World Trade Organization (WTO), he told journalists earlier on Tuesday. Becoming a "major non-NATO ally" implies a status upgrade that gives a country preferential access to the purchase of U.S. military equipment and technology. Supporting Brazil for an association with NATO would be a considerable step further, one that Trump recognized would mean he would "have to talk to a lot of people." Colombia became in 2018 the only Latin American nation to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as a "global partner," which means it will not necessarily have to take part in military action. In a Fox News interview on Monday, Bolsonaro threw his weight behind Trump's immigration agenda, which includes a wall on the Mexican border. "We do agree with President Trump's decision or proposal on the wall," Bolsonaro said, in remarks translated to English by the broadcaster. "The vast majority of potential immigrants do not have good intentions. They do not intend to do the best or do good to the U.S. people." His comments sparked an uproar at home and among Brazilians in the United States, forcing Bolsonaro to issue an apology. "I meant to say that a little part of the people who immigrate don't have good intentions and I made a mistake. I apologize for that," he said. (Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Roberta Rampton, additional reporting by Steve Holland and Alexandra Alper; Writing by Marcelo Rochabrun and Mary Milliken; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Phil Berlowitz)
British Airways has pulled back the curtain on its new business class seat which features a sliding door for privacy, flat-bed seats, vanity and increased storage space.

Ahead of its July debut aboard the A350, BA unveiled the Club Suite, designed in response to customer feedback.

Each seat features direct-aisle access -- no climbing over seatmates to go to the bathroom -- a door for greater privacy, and lie-flat beds. Units are also designed to offer 40 percent more storage; vanity and mirror; Wifi; PC and USB power outlets; and 18.5-inch hi-def screens.

Bedding is supplied by The White Company.

The newest addition to BA's fleet, the A350 claims to offer an improved flight experience with reduced noise levels, high ceilings, and ambient lighting meant to complement the time of day and outside light.

Cabins have also been designed to feature higher levels of humidity and refreshed air: cabin pressure is equivalent to an altitude of just 6,000 feet.

The A350 is also one of the more fuel-efficient aircrafts in the industry.

British Airways' first A350 will debut in July flying between London and Madrid, before being dispatched for long-haul flights beginning in October.

Another three A350 aircraft are also scheduled to join the fleet in the fall.
Sittwe, MyanmarA Myanmar court on Tuesday sentenced a prominent ethnic Rakhine leader to 20 years in jail for treason, a verdict likely to intensify anger amid fighting between the ethnic group and the army. Security forces tried to calm hundreds of supporters outside the court in Rakhine state capital Sittwe as Aye Maung was escorted to a waiting police van following the verdict. Aye Maung, the former chairman of the Arakan National Partywhich is renowned for hard-line views against the Rohingya Muslim minority was sentenced for treason and defamation over an allegedly inflammatory speech in January 2018, a day before deadly riots. State-backed media at the time said he railed against the central government for treating the ethnic Rakhine as slaves and said it was the right time for the community to launch an armed struggle. The following evening, Rakhine protesters briefly seized a government building and police opened fire, killing seven people. Aye Maung and a fellow detaineewriter Wai Hin Aung, who also gave a speech at the same rallywere detained days later. Both Dr Aye Maung and writer Wai Hin Aung were sentenced to 20 years each... for the charge of high treason and two years each for defamation of the state, Wai Hin Aungs defence lawyer Aye Nu Sein told AFP. Myanmars Rakhine state is cut by violence and hatred. A brutal military crackdown in 2017 forced some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims over the border into Bangladesh. Yet the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist population, some of whom are accused of aiding soldiers in the anti-Rohingya campaign, also feels marginalised by the state.The lawyer said they were discussing whether to appeal. Treason can carry the death sentence.- Supporters of the pair were enraged by the perceived persecution of two prominent Rakhine figures. This is not fair. This is oppression and bullying of ethnic Rakhine people, one woman shouted in front of court, as the protesters spread to the centre of the town. In recent weeks, the military has waged war on the Arakan Army (AA), an armed group claiming to represent the ethnic Rakhine. The group launched a brazen attack on police posts in early January that killed 13 officers and killed nine more policemen earlier this month. The violence has spread to the ancient temple city of Mrauk U, the former capital of the Rakhine kingdom and a popular tourist site -- the same town where Aye Maung gave his controversial speech last year. Support for the AA has grown with the fighting, even though several thousand Rakhine have been forced from their homes by the violence. A further 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine without citizenship, restricted to either camps or their villages, many unable to access medical care. Much of northern Rakhine is in lockdown and information is difficult to verify independently.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP)  A New Jersey businessman accused of killing his brother, his brother's wife and two children pleaded not guilty Monday to felony murder and other charges, the same day his defense lawyers withdrew from the case due to recently discovered conflicts of interest.

Michael Wicke, a public defender for Paul Caneiro, 52, entered the pleas on his behalf during a five-minute court hearing in Freehold, New Jersey.

Monmouth County prosecutors have said Caneiro's brother, Keith, was planning to cut him off financially because he was suspicious of Paul over missing money from two companies they owned at the Jersey shore. The next day, Keith Caneiro and his family were found dead in their burning mansion in Colts Neck.

An indictment handed up late last month charges Paul Caneiro with murder, felony murder, aggravated arson and a weapons offense. He also faces counts of theft, misapplication of entrusted property and hindering his own apprehension.

Caneiro had previously been represented by private attorneys Robert Honecker Jr. and Mitchell Ansell, who maintained his innocence. However, they said they determined they could no longer represent him because a review of materials recently released by prosecutors found "at least two separate and clear" conflicts of interest.

The attorneys' statement did not specify those conflicts, and they declined to elaborate on the matter after the hearing. They said their decision to withdraw came "after great debate and discussion within our firm," and noted that prosecutors and the trial judge had agreed with their assessment that "our continued representation of Mr. Caniero would be impossible at this time."

The two attorneys have said Paul Caneiro loved his family, had no reason to harm them and had been "wrongly accused."

Colts Neck police were dispatched to Keith Caneiro's mansion in New Jersey horse country on Nov. 20 after a neighbor reported the house was on fire. Officers found Keith Caneiro's body on the lawn; he had been shot once in the lower back and four times in the head.

Inside the mansion were the bodies of his wife, Jennifer, their 11-year-old son Jesse and 8-year-old daughter Sophia. The children were stabbed multiple times; their mother was shot and stabbed.

Prosecutors have said that after he committed the slayings, Paul Caneiro set a slow-burning fire in the mansion and returned to his own family's home in Ocean Township to set it on fire in a ruse to make it look like the Caneiro family was being targeted by someone else. His wife and two daughters were inside, but no one was injured.
The Calgary Police Service (CPS) cybercrime team has released photos of four men who are suspects in an ongoing Bitcoin ATM fraud case.

It is believed $195,000 has been stolen as a result of the fraudulent Bitcoin ATM transactions.

Back in October 2018, the CPS cybercrime team received information about multiple fraudulent transactions that had occurred across Canada.

It is alleged that between September 16th and September 26th 2018, 112 fraudulent transactions had been made on Bitcoin ATMs in seven Canadian cities.

51 of the transactions were made in Calgary, with an additional 27 made in Montreal, 17 in Toronto, 13 in Winnipeg, two in Sherwood Park, one in Ottawa, and one in Hamilton.

After receiving the information, the CPS cybercrime team began a national investigation with assistance from agencies across the country, including the Toronto Police Service, Hamilton Police Service, Winnipeg Police Service, and Halton Regional Police Service.

The CPS believes that the suspects were committing double-spend attacks.

A double-spend attack is when a hacker creates a duplicate of a given token and sends it to another party. In doing so, they retain the original token, allowing them to spend it without losing anything.

The CPS also believes that a suspect used a Bitcoin ATM to successfully withdraw money before remotely cancelling the transaction prior to the Bitcoin ATM provider processing the withdrawal.

Reportedly, investigators believe all 112 transactions were committed by a group of individuals located across the country who are suspected of colluding together.

Images of the suspected individuals have been uploaded to the City of Calgary Newsroom as the CPS continue to seek aid from the public in finding them.

Anybody with information about the identity of the suspects has been asked to contact the Calgary Police Service non-emergency line at 403-266-1234  regardless of the jurisdiction they live in.

Interested in reading more about crypto theft-related news? Discover how an app was discovered on the Google Play store which was designed to steal cryptocurrency.

The post Calgary Police Service releases photos of suspected Bitcoin ATM fraudsters appeared first on Coin Rivet.
Canadian Solar Inc. CSIQ is set to report fourth-quarter and 2018 results on Mar 21, before market open.

In the last reported quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 108.70%. Moreover, the bottom line outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the trailing four quarters, the average beat being 49.66%.

Lets see how things are shaping up prior to this announcement.

Factors at Play

Canadian Solar has been witnessing flat demand for its modules from China for the past couple of quarters, thanks to this nations latest solar policy. This, in turn, is pulling down the companys module shipment volumes and thereby affecting its performance. We can expect this trend to have continued in the to-be-reported quarter as well.

Moreover, unfavorable pricing coupled with oversupply and more capacity coming online has made us skeptical about Canadian Solars ability to generate solid revenues in the soon-to-be-reported quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fourth-quarter revenues is pegged at $874.1million, reflecting an annual decline of 21.2%. However, the consensus estimate remains above the companys fourth-quarter guidance range of $698-$800 billion.

For fourth-quarter earnings, the Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at 87 cents, mirroring a significant decline of 13.9% year over year.

However, Canadian Solars consistent focus on reducing its cost of production is commendable. This should get duly reflected in the companys upcoming results.

Canadian Solar Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Canadian Solar Inc. Price and EPS Surprise | Canadian Solar Inc. Quote

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not show that Canadian Solar is likely to beat estimates in fourth-quarter 2018. This is because a stock needs to have both  a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold)  for this to happen. This is not the case here, as you will see below.

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Earnings ESP: Canadian Solar has an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Canadian Solars Zacks Rank #1 increases the predictive power of ESP. However, the companys Earnings ESP of 0.00% makes surprise prediction difficult. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Conversely, we caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

Recent Solar Releases

SunPower Corp. SPWR incurred adjusted loss of 21 cents per share in fourth-quarter 2018, narrower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a loss of 38 cents.

SolarEdge Technologies SEDG reported fourth-quarter 2018 adjusted earnings of 63 cents per share, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 70 cents by 10%.

First Solar Inc. FSLR reported fourth-quarter 2018 earnings of 49 cents per share, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 64 cents by 23.1%.



Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019



In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?



Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.



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SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. (SEDG) : Free Stock Analysis Report



First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Paris (AFP) - The death rate from cancer has been falling for half a decade in the EU, researchers said Tuesday, although the overall number is expected to rise to 1.4 million this year due to an expanding population.

The chances of dying from cancer for men has dropped about six percent from 139 deaths per 100,000 males in 2014 to 131 this year, according to a paper in the Annals of Oncology medical journal.

For women, the improvement is 3.6 percent, from 86 deaths per 100,000 females to 83, the study showed.

However the total number of deaths is expected to increase to 1.4 million in 2019, a rise of nearly five percent from 1.35 million in 2014. Some 787,000 will be men and 621,900 women.

The study showed that lung cancer among women will this year claim more lives than breast cancer -- 96,800 against 92,800.

Lung cancer remains the most deadly form of the disease, with 279,000 combined deaths expected this year.

As for breast cancer, the study reports significant improvements since 2014 in the biggest EU countries. Britain leads the way with a 13 percent fall in the death rate, followed by France down 10 percent, German nine percent, Italy seven percent and Spain five percent.

Poland however showed a two percent increase, according to the study, written by professors Carlo La Vecchia of the University of Milan and Fabio Levi at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

"It is clear that despite the good news that death rates are declining in most cancers, the bad news is that, due to growing and aging populations, the number of people who will die from cancer is increasing," said professor Fabrice Andre of the Institut Gustave Roussy in the Paris region and Annals of Oncology editor.

"This represents a significant burden on society, and more needs to be done to prevent cancers occurring in the first place, particularly by reducing the numbers of people who smoke and are overweight."
Christchurch (New Zealand) (AFP) - As Tipene Newbery laid a wreath outside Al Noor Mosque -- where dozens of worshippers were massacred by a white supremacist last Friday -- his children called out, "Don't cry daddy!"

Families in the southern New Zealand city have struggled to come to terms with the mental toll of the attacks at two mosques that left 50 people dead Friday, including children, just years after a devastating earthquake killed 185 residents.

At memorial sites across Christchurch, children's heartfelt notes and drawings of young Muslims holding hands or hugging non-Muslims have been particularly poignant.

One drawing of children from different backgrounds holding hands had the words: "You are my friends. I will keep watch while you pray."

Newbery, who was a teenager when the 2011 earthquake struck, admits he was "messed up" by the destruction it caused, and wants to create a more positive environment for his four young children following the shootings.

"This is way worse than the earthquake as far as I'm concerned. Natural disasters are inevitable but this can be prevented," the 26-year-old told AFP at a memorial site outside Al Noor.

"Even though there's a lot of hate inside me, I can't show that in front of them (his children). Just show that peace and love is the only way."

The impact of the shootings stretches from those directly affected, such as children who lost their parents in the attacks, to New Zealanders shocked at how such a violent act could be carried out in their usually peaceful country.

Saleha Hussain travelled from Auckland to support her friend's young daughters aged two and five after their father Suhail Shahid was killed in Al Noor.

Having comforted the older daughter when she woke up in the middle of the night screaming for her father, Hussain told AFP her message to children was for them to not have "fear in their hearts" as they would be protected by God.

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- 'World that isn't torn apart' -

Clinical psychologist Sarb Johal, a New Zealand expert in mental health for those coping with disasters, said it was important for parents to monitor what their children were exposed to when they were outside home, in case they were being fed misinformation.

Giving them a sense of hope, to contrast against the shootings, was also key, Johal said.

"We have a duty to make sure that we present a world that isn't torn apart," he told Radio New Zealand.

"This is a terrible, terrible event, a horrific event but in the broader context of things we need to remember that there are many people working... to help assist and protect people going about their everyday lives, so point them out."

Moazzem Hossain, who survived the hail of gunfire at Linwood Mosque and has struggled to sleep since, told AFP he had worked hard to reassure his 16-year-old daughter.

"I tell her to keep mentally strong and to find resilience," he added.

Newbery admits his children's curiosity has been a big challenge, noting that "you don't have a choice with children, they ask the hardest questions".

But he feels that public displays of compassion -- as seen in the growing fields of flower bouquets at makeshift memorial sites in Christchurch -- are a good starting point.

"I think doing stuff like... coming and paying respect, and showing love and compassion and not hatred towards the person who did it, is important," Newbery said.

"I'm devastated but I'm trying not to show too much of that around them (the children)."
Brussels (AFP) - China's foreign minister lashed out Monday at what he called "abnormal, immoral" attacks on Huawei amid growing concern, led by the US, that the telecom giant poses a security risk to the West.

Wang Yi demanded a "fair and just competition environment" for Chinese firms as he met EU foreign ministers and officials for talks in Brussels.

His call comes as Washington steps up pressure on allies, particularly in Europe, to shut Huawei out of tenders for fast fifth-generation, or 5G, telecom networks, because of the firm's ties to the Chinese government.

"China hopes all countries will create a fair and just competition environment for companies of all countries," Wang told reporters before joining a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

"What we oppose is groundless accusations out of political purposes and attempts to bring down a foreign company. We think such practices are abnormal, immoral and have no support from other countries."

Huawei strenuously denies allegations its equipment could be used for espionage and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang insisted Friday that Beijing would "never" ask its firms to spy on other nations.

A law recently enacted by Beijing obliging Chinese companies to aid the government on national security has added to concerns about Huawei just as European countries begin planning 5G infrastructure.

The US has said the company poses a "threat" to Europe and last week NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance took these concerns seriously.

Several Western countries have followed the US lead in barring Huawei from bidding for 5G tenders but Wang urged Europe not to be swayed by US pressure.

"We hope and we believe European countries and other countries will have independence in making their own choice and their own judgment," he said.

Wang also hit back at a new EU policy document published last week outlining a shift to more assertive relations with Beijing.

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The 10-point plan called for more balanced ties, warning that China was a "rival" to the bloc as well as its biggest trading partner.

In response Wang insisted China and the EU were "comprehensive strategic partners" and laid out his own 10-point plan for greater cooperation.

- Tough words -

His comments found an echo in EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini, who stressed common ground between the two sides and insisted that last week's policy document was primarily aimed at informing internal debate in Brussels.

Mogherini's comments contrasted with the tougher rhetoric of European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen at the launch last week of the new EU plan -- pointing to divisions over the China strategy at the very highest level in Brussels.

Katainen insisted on a need for Europe to "more assertively" push for reciprocity in trade relations and defend its values.

The EU is concerned about China's failure to open up its markets to foreign competitors and the distorting influence of subsidies for state-run enterprises.

As he arrived for Tuesday's meeting Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius warned that in the face of a China that was becoming "really ambitious, expansionist", the EU had to set rules and stick to them.
Shanghai (AFP) - The key role China played in grounding the troubled Boeing 737 MAX 8 has demonstrated its growing clout in global aviation and may give it an extra bargaining chip in trade talks with Washington.

China ordered its domestic airlines to ground the plane on March 11, a day after the deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airways Boeing 737 MAX 8.

That touched off a domino effect as other countries followed suit in light of the aircraft's second fatal accident in months, and came two days before the Trump administration and US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the plane grounded.

The situation raised eyebrows because China historically takes its cues from the FAA -- particularly given the US safety regulator's familiarity with Boeing.

Regardless of the trade war or big-power rivalries, it was a move that China had to make, aviation analysts said.

China now has the world's fastest growing aviation sector as rising prosperity fuels travel among a huge population that a generation ago struggled to afford basic necessities.

A deadly safety mishap in Chinese skies would be a catastrophe for the Communist government.

"China as a country simply has to be serious about safety. You can try to read more into it but ... it's a country prioritising safety more than anything else because of the size of the market," said Janesh Janardhanan, director of Aerospace, Defence & Security at business consultancy Frost & Sullivan.

"It was not a stand-alone isolated reaction, as many countries followed suit."

- Propaganda win -

The turn of events has prompted suggestions that US regulators may have temporarily abdicated their vital watchdog role, giving China an opening to exercise more global leadership.

But analysts said the Boeing crisis will likely prove an isolated incident and there was no reason to view the FAA's days as the world's de facto safety watchdog to be under threat.

Boeing and European rival Airbus have a huge lead over China's homegrown passenger jets, which do not yet have a proven service record.

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There also is concern over granting safety leadership to an opaque Communist Party government.

China had a dismal safety record culminating in a series of deadly plane incidents in the 1990s, improving the situation after inviting the FAA to work with the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

"The FAA and the NTSB (an US agency which investigates accidents) are the gold standard-setters in aviation safety. Let's not forget that the airplane was invented in the US. China's decision in my view will not change this," said Shukor Yusof, head of Malaysia-based aviation consultancy firm Endau Analytics.

He added that on safety China "has improved a lot, obviously. But it hasn't reached US or EU standards".

Robert Mann, head of US-based aviation consultancy R.W. Mann and Co, said predictions of the FAA's decline were "precipitous, arguably irresponsible."

But he noted that there was indeed propaganda value for China in the 737 fiasco.

"Science and hard data-based decision-making are becoming subordinate to public opinion and appearances," he said.

- Home-made jets -

Few question China's growing clout in aviation.

A generation ago air travel was not that common in China, but the country is expected to surpass the US within a few years to become the world's largest market for air travel.

More than 1.26 billion passengers moved through Chinese airports in 2018, an increase of 10.2 percent compared to the previous year, according to official figures.

An improving safety record has no doubt helped fuel such traffic, and thousands more aircraft are expected to be needed by China to keep up with future growth.

"China is the largest user of new planes, new aircraft deliveries, so you will see them play an increasing role in terms of defining safety standards, in terms of end-user expectations," said Janardhanan.

China's stance on the 737 gives Beijing added leverage in its trade dispute with Washington.

Aircraft make up one of the biggest product segments in terms of US export value to China and it would not be difficult to see Beijing using the un-grounding of the 737 MAX 8 as a bargaining chip.

But China remains heavily dependent on jets from Boeing -- and Airbus -- and has excluded the US aircraft from the tariff war with the United States.

Longer term, China may be looking for a bigger voice in aviation to push its unproven domestically-made jets, but it will take "a decade at least" to see whether this will work, said Mann.

"Chinese civil aircraft and high-bypass engine technology have a long way to go to be globally competitive," he said.
The suspect in the Christchurch massacre, Brenton Tarrant (Picture: AP)

The accused Christchurch shooter could avoid facing terrorism charges over fears the trial would give him the platform to promote his ideological views.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a self-described white supremacist, was charged with one count of murder at the weekend after 50 people were killed in Fridays shootings at two mosques in New Zealand.

But as the authorities consider the possibility of further charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act, legal experts have warned that Tarrant may instead face multiple murder charges.

There are fears that a trial on terrorism charges would allow Tarrant to espouse his views, as well as posing more of a challenge for prosecutors and causing added trauma for victims families.

The shootings in Christchurch claimed the lives of 50 people (Picture: AP)

A woman cries at a memorial site for the victims of Fridays shooting, outside Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand (Picture: Reuters)

In my view, the elements are all made out, but to minimise the impact on victims, straight murder is easier to prove, former crown prosecutor Ross Burns told the Stuff news website.

And theres less scope to use a platform to espouse his ideological reasons.

Youve got 50 people killed and probably ten times that number directly affected so it will be a long trial and will be unduly traumatic for everyone.

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Mr Burns led New Zealands only case to attempt to use the Terrorism Suppression Act, after police raids in 2007 on an alleged paramilitary training camp near the town of Ruatoki, but the terror charges were later abandoned.

Tarrant wrote a 74-page manifesto filled with his anti-Muslim views.

Mr Burns said: If hes denied a platform, hes failed in his objective.

Alexander Gillespie, a law professor at Waikato University, told 9news its possible that Tarrant will instead face multiple murder charges.

Theres a lot of debate on whether he should be charged under terrorism legislation or whether he should be charged under the Crimes Act for the simple act of murder  in many ways its academic debate, he said.

Story continues

People mourn at a makeshift memorial site near the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch (Picture: AP)

In New Zealand, a murder conviction usually comes with a minimum of ten years in prison before possible parole.

But criminal lawyer Simon Cullen told AFP: He may be sentenced to imprisonment without parole. There is a very significant possibility.

This would seem to be the type of situation that may well attract consideration of that type of sentence.

University of Auckland criminal procedure expert Bill Hodge said prosecutors may steer clear of terror charges.

He told the AFP: We havent used our terrorism laws previously and the laws are designed to inhibit or prosecute those involved with groups and financing and publications and the like.

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The congressional probe into the water shortage in Metro Manila and parts of Rizal began Monday, with the chief executive of Manila Water Company Inc., one of two private concessionaires, apologizing for his companys failure to fulfill its contractual obligation to provide non-stop water service to its six-million customers.

The admission was a step forward from his companys original attempt earlier this month to blame the service interruptions on the El Nino, and the dwindling water levels at the La Mesa Dam as a result of the lack of rain. That rationalization rang hollow when people realized that the other water concessionaire, Maynilad Water Services Inc., experienced no similar shortage, and that both of them were supposed to draw water from the Angat Dam. If the shortage was indeed the result of the El Nino, it should have been felt by both concessionaires and the households and business establishments they serviced, and not just Manila Waters franchise area. Moreover, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System pointed out that Manila Water was supposed to go to La Mesa only as a backup source, if it could no longer meet the demand of its customers using water from Angat. As tens of thousands of households of Manila Water customers saw their taps run dry for hours in Metro Manilas east zone over the last two weeks, it was clear that something was terribly wrong with their water distribution system. What it is is not exactly clear, but we trust that the ongoing hearings give us a better picture of just what went wrong, and how it might be prevented from happening again.It was disconcerting, however, to hear the MWSS administrator first say that his agency had no powers under the law to impose penalties on concessionaires that failed to fulfill the terms of their contractonly to later say that there were provisions in the concession agreement after all to penalize Manila Water. If this is a point of ambiguity, it is something Congress needs to clear up and settle as a result of its hearings. Amid the simmering anger surrounding the water shortage in Metro Manila, it is but natural to ascribe blame and to call for penalties on those who caused it. Certainly, calls for a refund for Manila Water customers would not be unreasonable. But, as House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo suggested, lawmakers need to move forward and keep an eye on the vital objective of ensuring an adequate water supply for all.
On The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Monday night, Colbert offered condolences to the people of New Zealand and spoke about a trip to film the show there this week that had been kept a secret until now.

Last September, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern appeared on The Late Show and invited Colbert to New Zealand, where the J.R.R. Tolkien super-fan would be made an honorary citizen of Hobbiton, the movie set used in The Lord of the Rings andThe Hobbit movies. But following a terrorist attack by a white nationalist at two mosques in Christchurch that left 50 people dead, Colbert felt compelled to postpone the trip.

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We didnt ever tell anybody, we were gonna make it a surprise, but we were actually supposed to go down Wednesday. We were going to go down there for a week to shoot in New Zealand because it had been such a lovely invitation and I just love that country, Colbert said. He later added, Obviously were not going to go down now, but we hope to go down in the future. And again, we just want to say to everybody down there how sad, how heartbroken we are for what that country is going through.

Colbert, who first traveled to New Zealand to make a cameo in 2013s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, also lamented the spread of white supremacy there.

Its this wonderful, isolated country so far away from the problems that we take for granted here north of the equator, and now this particular brand of evil has infected that country, like a ghost or something you wouldnt imagine, Colbert said. Truly like an evil creature has arrived on that island.

Following the attack, Ardern promised to strengthen gun laws, which are already much stricter than the laws in America, and Colbert hopes that New Zealands government is able to do what the American government has not.

I pray with all my heart that they take the action down there, Colbert said, and have the courage to take action that we seem to lack up here in the United States.

Story continues

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MONTGOMERY, Ala.  The U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled Monday that Alabama cannot shield its lethal injection execution protocol from the public.

The unanimous ruling from the court's three-judge panel upheld a 2018 U.S. District Court ruling, which sided with the Montgomery Advertiser, Associated Press and Alabama Media Group's motion to unseal Alabama's execution protocol on First Amendment grounds.

The media organizations filed the motion following the botched execution of Doyle Lee Hamm, a death row inmate who walked out of the execution chamber in February 2018 after officials couldn't find a suitable vein for lethal injection.

More: California governor to freeze death penalty, says it's 'fundamentally immoral' and biased

More: Supreme Court will decide if convicted sniper in 2002 District of Columbia-area killings can get new sentence

Though Alabama said at the time it would pursue another execution, Hamm's attorney later said the state had agreed not to seek another attempt.

U.S. District Court Judge Karon Bowdre ruled last year the state must release its lethal injection protocol, sealed transcripts of two court hearings and a related motion in the case of Hamm.

"Capital punishment is a hotly contested issue that involves an irrevocable punishment for prisoners convicted of terrible crimes," the ruling stated. "The public has a great interest in understanding how the state carries out its punishment."

Alabama halted executions in 2014 after it ran out of pentobarbitol, a sedative used in the execution process. Later the same year, the Alabama Department of Corrections adopted a new three-drug protocol that includes a sedative, a paralyzing agent and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

More: Two men arrested in fight during execution of Texas inmate

More: Supreme Court blocks death sentence for murderer with dementia who can't remember crime

Alabama has not released information on how and where it procures its execution drugs. The state has also remained tight-lipped about other protocols and procedures leading up to executions.

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ADOC officials called off Hamm's lethal injection attempt at Holman Correctional Facility shortly before midnight on Feb. 22, 2018. ADOC officials said it was a time issue  Hamm's death warrant expired at midnight  but Hamm's legal team say multiple attempts to set an IV in his lower legs and groin led to extreme pain, possible infection and psychological distress.

Afterward, Hamm argued in court the execution attempt amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. His lawyers had previously warned the court his veins were too damaged from medical issues to be access for an IV line.

"There are few things the citizens of Alabama need to know more than how the state is executing someone," Advertiser Executive Editor Bro Krift said last year. "Open government is good government."

Alabama now has three weeks in which it can ask the appeals court to rehear the case.

Follow Melissa Brown on Twitter: @itsmelissabrown

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Court rules Alabama must disclose lethal injection execution protocol
Zagreb (AFP) - Croatia's Serbs and Jews said Tuesday they would snub for the fourth straight year a commemoration for the victims of the country's notorious World War II death camp saying the authorities tolerate pro-Nazi ideology.

The Jasenovac camp, known as Croatia's Auschwitz, was run by the country's Nazi-allied Ustasha regime which persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians.

The commemoration ceremony for the victims is held every April at the site of the camp, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) southeast of Zagreb.

Ethnic Serb and Jewish minorities as well as anti-fascists have snubbed the official commemoration for the past three years and held their own events.

They accuse the authorities of tolerating nostalgia for the Croatia's pro-Nazi past

"Nothing has changed in the past year" over the issue, Ognjen Kraus, head an umbrella association of Jewish groups here, told media Tuesday.

Ethnic Serbs echoed the view.

"The state did not undertake necessary measures to halt or at least decrease negation of Holocaust ... and (historical) revisionism," Sasa Milosevic, deputy head of the SNV ethnic Serb umbrella body, told the Novosti weekly magazine.

Anti-fascists said they would decide on Thursday whether to attend the ceremony.

The decision on boycott comes as media reported that the government of conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic had launched talks with the groups which had snubbed the official event to rejoin it.

Anti-fascists, ethnic Serbs and Jews were notably incensed by a plaque with an Ustasha slogan unveiled at Jasenovac in November 2016.

The plaque, laid by former paramilitaries, was removed from the camp's immediate vicinity nearly a year later -- only to be displayed at another location around 10 kilometres (six miles) away.

Jasenovac was the largest and most brutal of the country's death camps, where many inmates were killed by hammers, knives and stones.

The total number of people killed there remains disputed. It varies from tens of thousands to 700,000.
Havana (AFP) - Cubans are using new found social media muscle to challenge their leaders in ways hitherto unseen on the communist-run island.

Using Twitter to snipe at once-untouchable ministers over government failures is catching on in a country whose leadership once demanded, and got, total unity.

"This confluence of people entering the social networks -- with the leaders within reach of their keyboards and being able to tell them what they think -- has changed the dynamics of Cuban society," says Cuban Twitter influencer Camilo Condis.

It's all down to an explosion of mobile internet users since Cuba became one of the last countries in the world to roll out a 3G mobile internet service in December.

It suddenly put the internet within reach of anyone with a mobile phone.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on his election in April that dragging Cuba into the modern online age was a top priority.

Analysts say he is now experiencing the other side of the coin -- rolling criticism of his government.

- Social media muscle -

Cuban citizens first saw the power of social media in January as they picked up the pieces after a powerful tornado devastated large parts of Havana.

Residents mobilized on WhatsApp to help thousands of disaster victims, for once without waiting for the state to react.

"Nobody knew each other before but we contacted each other through the social networks," says 29-year-old Aida Duarte, who coordinated donations of food and material.

"We started to get out there and we created a WhatsApp group to get organized."

The strength and efficiency of the public reaction took the authorities by surprise in a country where the state has sole authority to coordinate labor.

"The social networks put a bit of pressure" on the state, Duarte says.

"I think that this civil society was already there, but it did not have the means to organize and communicate. Now it gets the message out there thanks to mobile internet," says Condis.

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Diaz-Canel, 58, became the first Cuban leader to use Twitter when he opened an account in August. He made his embattled Socialist counterpart in Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and Bolivian ally Evo Morales, his first follows.

The president instructed his government ministers to make themselves more visible on the social networks. They did, but increasingly, Cuba's 11 million people can tweet back, often with a bit of bite to boot.

Cubans' embrace of the internet has led to sharper criticism of the socialist government as many social media users challenge ministers over day to day problems.

One user slammed Canel-Diaz for still riding the wave of Fidel Castro's revolution -- talk of 1959 simply won't do in modern Cuba, was his message. Another thanked him for steering the country towards a "prosperous socialism".

Before the roll-out of 3G technology in December -- opening up the online world to the country's 5.3 million smartphone users -- the internet was available to the general public only via wifi hotspots, payable by the hour.

Small-business owner Condis has built a following in Cuba by constantly questioning ministers and authorities on everyday problems facing Cubans.

"I'm pretty critical but I do it with respect and a modicum of common sense," says Condis, who claims several ministers -- including Communications Minister Jorge Luis Perdomo -- have blocked him on Twitter.

A source close to the government acknowledged that ministers still have a lot to learn about communicating on the social networks.

- 'The new Cuba' -

Cuba has been long accustomed to political unanimity -- more than 97 percent voted for the current constitution in 1976, 99 percent in a later referendum.

However, Cuba's embrace of social media is now shaping a different kind of civil society, one more inclined to express itself.

Last year, new restrictions on the emerging small business sector sparked an outcry on social media, and were later modified.

"Now people have the opportunity to send a tweet to a minister or the president," said political scientist Carlos Alzugaray, "and they've managed to force the government to rectify its policies."

"That's the new Cuba. But it's not counter-revolutionary. The majority of the Cuban population want things to improve," he added.

Cubans are not considering overthrowing the government, Alzugaray says, but are enthusiastically taking the opportunity to speak out if they think the government isn't doing its job.

"There's a civil society there that the government does not recognize as such, but it's there regardless," he told AFP.

"It's a challenge for the Cuban state apparatus which has never been confronted by that."
Dead dissidents dumped in a river, activists knotted up by the courts, and Big Brother-style internet laws -- critics of Thailand's junta fear this week's election is poised to sharpen the dangers faced by those who disagree.

Thais goes to the polls on March 24, in the first election since the 2014 coup that installed the generals in power.

But it will be held under new rules established by a junta that has made clear it has no intention of leaving the political stage.

Scores of dissidents, academics and "Red Shirt" activists have been pushed into self-exile during the junta years, in what analysts say is one of the biggest political flights in Thailand's recent history.

Some found sanctuary in the West, but the majority fled to neighbouring countries to avoid charges and jail terms.

"I couldn't bear living under an unjust power anymore," said Thantawut Twewarodomgul, an activist who had previously served a jail sentence for royal defamation. He left Thailand for Laos in the wake of the coup.

In Laos, some launched digital radio stations to keep up their opposition to the generals and -- in some cases -- the kingdom's unassailable monarchy.

- 'Shocked and scared' -

But rights groups say their continued activism may have jeopardised their lives.

Three firebrand radio hosts have been reported missing in Laos since the coup, according to Human Rights Watch.

Late last year the corpses of two aides of radio host Surachai Danwattananusorn washed ashore on the Thai-Laos border.

Their disemboweled bodies were stuffed with concrete blocks and their faces battered beyond recognition.

The men lived with Surachai, 77, who had fled to Laos in June 2014 soon after the coup, and hasn't been seen since mid-December.

His wife Pranee, who remains in Thailand, fears the lifelong activist -- who spent nearly three years in jail in Thailand after being sentenced under royal insult laws -- is dead.

"In a democracy, people should be able to criticise public figures," Pranee told AFP.

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The grim case has injected fear into the exiled community.

"We are shocked and scared. We are looking to leave Laos," another exile involved with the anti-junta radio, who declined to be named for their safety, told AFP.

- Activists at risk -

After four years smothering political debate, the junta lifted some of its bans on political activity weeks before announcing elections.

But there is little trust its repressive reflexes have dulled.

Pro-democracy campaigner Nuttaa Mahattana, 39, said she was slapped with "sedition" charges for anti-junta stunts.

"Very few voices have risen in the kingdom against the junta. Someone had to do it," Nuttaa said.

She is among thousands of activists facing prosecution in Thailand -- rights groups say nearly 2,000 have gone to trial in military courts.

These lawsuits are "a reminder of the perils of speaking out," said Tyrell Haberkorn, a researcher on Thai state violence from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Prosecutions under a royal defamation law -- referred to as "112" after its criminal code -- spiked early in the junta rule, with record sentences meted out.

It has been upheld as a necessity to protect the monarchy but rights groups decry it as a tool against dissent.

There were no fresh charges in 2018 -- two years after Thailand's new King Maha Vajiralongkorn ascended the throne -- and the halt in cases could signal the palace's shifting attitude regarding 112's use, said a senior police source.

But Haberkorn remains unconvinced the law, which she said was used to "create a climate of fear", is in retreat.

"It will not disappear with elections."

- From streets to online -

Thailand's northeast is the heartland of supporters loyal to the powerful Shinawatra clan, and serves as the home to the "Red Shirts" -- a grassroots pro-democracy movement made up of farmers and the urban working-class.

One of the junta's first moves was to head off any possible Red Shirt resistance, and its leaders have been "summoned, visited and surveilled", a former leader told AFP, requesting anonymity.

"We just don't have the power" to mobilise anymore, he said.

With the streets off-limits to protest for several years, anti-junta sentiment has spilled online, with memes, videos and raps against the military going viral.

But freedom on the web is not a sure bet.

The draconian Computer Crime Act, revised by the junta, has been wielded against online critics.

The junta-picked parliament also passed a cybersecurity bill, allowing authorities to seize devices without court orders when confronted with perceived "critical" threats.

While critics have likened the bill, which allows officials to ask internet providers and users for personal information, to a "Big Brother" mandate, junta spokesman Werachon Sukondhapatipak told AFP it is necessary to "protect citizens against cyber crimes and fraud".

But the prospect of the new law in the hands of a junta eyeing a return to power in civilian clothing has left many queasy.

"If the junta-allied party forms the new government, they will retain the same measures," said Yingcheep Atchanont of monitoring group iLaw.
Disney Theatrical Productions under the direction of Thomas Schumacher presents Frozen, the new Broadway-bound musical, music and lyrics by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez and book by Jennifer Lee.

Its time to let it go once more, as Frozen the musical is heading to Londons West End.

The stage adaptation of the animated movie has been a hit on Broadway, and a new production of the musical will reopen the newly refurbished Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 2020. You could say the theatre is a bit of a fixer upper.

The announcement comes as Frozen 2, a sequel to the hit film  the story of Elsa and Anna and famous for songs like Let It Go and For The First Time In Forever  is scheduled for release later this year.

Prepare to Let It Go as London welcomes Disneys #FrozenTheMusical in 2020! Dont get left out in the cold  sign up for #FrozenInLondon priority booking access and exclusive news: https://t.co/ABGiME82BF  pic.twitter.com/7k0D1FU4Z5  Disney UK (@Disney_UK) March 19, 2019

Jennifer Lee, who wrote and co-directed the film and penned the book for the musical, said: Were so humbled by the continued support for Frozen  at its heart, a joyous story about love and sisterhood.

Were very excited to share what we have created on stage with London and to see it come to life in that gorgeous theatre.

Frozen was the highest grossing animated film of all time and scooped two Oscars, including Best Animated Feature and Original Song for Let It Go.

Read more: Frozen 2 plot details revealed

Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, responsible for the music and lyrics, said: The power of Frozen comes from the story of two strong, very real women saving their world by leaning in to their deep love for one another. Expanding this story has been an absolute joy.

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We went deeper and discovered several song moments that enrich the story in a new emotional and theatrical way.

Casting for the production, directed by Michael Grandage, has not yet been announced.

Frozen opened on Broadway in March 2018.





With reporting by PA
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump defended his ongoing attacks on the late Sen. John McCain Tuesday, saying he never liked the Arizona senator over differences that included Russia and health care.

"I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be, Trump told reporters at the White House, answering a question before a meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Supporters of McCain said they don't understand why Trump would continually criticize a dead man, especially one who represented Republicans as their 2008 presidential nominee.

During a series of tweets over the weekend, Trump hit McCain for his handling of a dossier compiled by a former British spy on Trump's relationship with Russia leading up to the 2016 election.

John McCain and Donald Trump

"So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) 'last in his class' (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election," Trump tweeted on Sunday. "He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!"

Trump also blamed McCain for casting a key vote against a Republican health care plan.

More: Nation's political leaders pay tribute as Sen. John McCain lies in state at U.S. Capitol

More: Social media responds to emotional John McCain memorial by talking Trump

McCain supporters pointed out that Trump was incorrect about the late senator's class standing  he finished fifth from the bottom at the Naval Academy, something he joked about frequently. They also called the attacks disrespectful to the longtime senator, veteran and former prisoner of war.

Your life is spent on your weekends not with your family, not with your friends, but obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to," daughter Meghan McCain said of her father on her television program, "The View."

The Trump-McCain feud goes back to the summer of 2015, when Trump kindled it by mocking McCain's experience as a POW in Vietnam.

"He's not a war hero," Trump said then. "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump: 'I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be'
Hong Kong: Support for Lantau project urged

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said a detailed feasibility study is needed for implementing the Lantau Tomorrow Vision project and called on lawmakers to support the Governments work on the project.

Speaking before today's Executive Council meeting, Mrs Lam said the Task Force on Land Supply has proposed a number of options, including reclamation, adding it is an imminent job to implement the suggestions.

She said the Government will submit to the Legislative Council a funding proposal of $500 million for the feasibility study required for the project.

Noting that land reclamation needs time and has to go through various processes, the Chief Executive hoped the funding proposal can be endorsed as soon as possible.

Mrs Lam said supporting infrastructure has to be built for the reclaimed land, and the government spending involved will be affordable.

She noted the project can provide huge returns, such as social returns and increased housing supply.

The Government also plans to build the third central business district on the reclaimed land, offering more space for commercial and business use, she added.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Development Should Guide US-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty Review

In times of great uncertainty, strategic ambiguity offers little clarity. The review of the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty should be guided by the quest for sovereignty and economic development.



During his recent visit in the Philippines, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad met Murad Ebrahim, the Filipino Muslim rebel leader who became a regional governor under the Malaysian-brokered peace deal. In the course of the meeting, Mahathir told to Murad that its easy to shoot and kill, but its difficult to develop. If there is peace, then everything will come.



Mahathirs words offer guidance in intra-country divides, but also in inter-country friction, including the review of the decades-old Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) with the United States.





In early March, Philippine defense secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the government should review the MDT to avoid provoking a potential armed conflict with China in the South China Sea. Lorenzana pointed out that the security environment in the region is today much more complex than in the early Cold War era, when it was drawn up. The Philippines is not in a conflict with anyone and will not be at war with anyone in the future.Obviously, there are different views about the preferred future of the MDT in Manila, Washington and elsewhere. Typically, most are predicated on geopolitical arguments, treaty texts and interpretations of various statements.Yet, Mahathirs wisdom matters. Development is not viable without peace. In the long-run, it is the quest for economic development that should drive the MDT debate.

Sovereignty and zero problems foreign policy



Since the early 2000s, the rapid growth of the so-called BRIC economies has greatly inspired debates on economic development. As a large emerging economy with solid structural potential for the future, Philippines could draw from the lessons of these countries.



As I have stressed since my 2014 Mabini lecture at the Foreign Service Institute, there is nothing automatic about strong growth potential. Vital economic, political and security shifts can support or penalize growth.



In light of Mahathirs views, the most important lesson may well be the zero problems policy, which was developed a decade ago by former Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu who lectured in Malaysia in the Mahathir era.



Historically, this approach has been typical to successful industrializers in the emerging world. From the 1980s to 2000s, China was largely focused on inward development, though gradually building international relations. The same goes for Indias industrialization in the past two decades. In Brazil, the most intensive phase of modernization occurred earlier but could only be completed in the Lula era.



In Southeast Asia, the rise of Singapore only took off after Lee Kuan Yew's leadership overcame race riots and began a decisive focus on development. In Vietnam, reunification and reforms could only move ahead after colonialism and triumphs against the French and U.S. neocolonial wars. In Indonesia, both Sukarno and Suharto sought rapid industrialization, but it was only completed with peace and stability in the era of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY).



Of course, none of the large emerging economies have been able to avoid all conflicts, many of which stem from colonial legacies following artificial partitions (India), invasions and wars (China), and structural dependency (Brazil). Yet, the effort to reduce friction in foreign relations, in order to focus on economic development has been typical to successful modernization.



What these large emerging economies also share is their insistence on sovereignty. After decades, even centuries of colonial divide and rule," they want to control their own future. While all of them seek to cooperate and partner with other nations in different ways, they do not easily tolerate the military presence of other countries within their territories.



As evidenced by the Middle East, such presence is not just a reminder of colonial legacies but can violate their sovereignty and result in destructive proxy conflicts in the region.

Economic development first



Following the recalibration of the Philippine foreign policy, there is nothing so challenging in the countrys bilateral relations with China that could not be negotiated in a mutually satisfactory way over time.



But just as Manila would not easily tolerate an anti-Philippine stance by foreign troops in China, it is hardly surprising that Beijing has concerns about any military presence by third-party countries in the Philippines  especially in light of historical track-record.



The Philippines became U.S. colony after the Spanish-American war and the subsequent Philippine-American War. The promised independence materialized only after Japanese invasion and the end of World War II in 1946. Yet, a strong U.S. military presence remained in the country until 1991.



Following President Obama's pivot to Asia in 2011, President Aquino and his foreign minister Albert del Rosario achieved the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), as a sort of a prelude to more intimate collaboration with the anticipated presidency of Senator Mar Roxas in 2016.



The scenario was foiled by Dutertes electoral triumph, which, reportedly, led to a regime change plan by former U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg in fall 2017.



In all these scenarios  from the late 1890s up to present - Philippines has been seen as a geopolitical platform to project U.S. hard power in the region, particularly vis-a-vis China, as most historians acknowledge.

Toward peace, development and prosperity



When defense secretary Lorenzana said last December that the objective of the MDT Treaty review would be to maintain it, strengthen it, or scrap it, he presented three clear future scenarios to the country.



Any scenario that would maintain or strengthen the MDT runs the risk of undermining Philippine sovereignty, exposing the country to costly entanglements and potentially fatal conflicts in the region, which, in turn, would undermine the quest for economic development. Instead, what Manila needs is strengthened sovereignty, strong ASEAN cooperation and development.



Successful economic modernization is not viable without sovereignty and focus on development, as evidenced by the history of the BRIC economies (and that of the United States).



When the MDT was signed in 1951, the U.S. and advanced countries still dominated world growth, whereas emerging Asia was struggling amid poverty. Today, China and emerging countries fuel global growth prospects, while emerging Asia is catching up with higher living standards  but only as long as peaceful conditions prevail in the region.



So if economic development is to remain the national priority, these are the facts that should guide the review of the MDT in the new and far more complex security environment.

Dr Steinbock is the founder of the Difference Group and has served as the research director at the India, China, and America Institute (USA) and a visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more information, see http://www.differencegroup.net/

 2019 Copyright Dan Steinbock - All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

Dan Steinbock Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters celebrate after fighting Islamic State (IS) group jihadists - AFP

The US is preparing to leave nearly 1,000 troops in Syria, it was reported last night.

Mr Trump announced a complete withdrawal in December, ending the US involvement in Syria, a country he described as little more than sand and death.

It was an announcement which triggered the resignation of James Mattis, the Defence Secretary.

Within weeks Mr Trump backtracked, amid pleas from both Republican and Democrats in Washington, who feared that pulling out all US forces could allow the defeated Islamic State to regroup.

Earlier this month, Mr Trump told a bipartisan group that he agreed 100 per cent with keeping a military presence in Syria.

However, it was envisaged that the force would number no more than a few hundred troops.

The White House said initially that 200 peacekeepers would remain in Syria; however that figure edged up towards 400.

Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, administration officials are drafting plans to maintain as many as 1,000 troops in Syria  roughly half the number who were in the country at the time of Mr Trumps announcement.

According to the latest reports the force would be stationed across Syria with some troops working alongside Kurdish forces.

.
Every investor on earth makes bad calls sometimes. But really bad investments should be rare. So consider, for a moment, the misfortune of China Baoli Technologies Holdings Limited (HKG:164) investors who have held the stock for three years as it declined a whopping 89%. That would be a disturbing experience. And over the last year the share price fell 84%, so we doubt many shareholders are delighted. On top of that, the share price has dropped a further 20% in a month.

We really feel for shareholders in this scenario. Its a good reminder of the importance of diversification, and its worth keeping in mind theres more to life than money, anyway.

See our latest analysis for China Baoli Technologies Holdings

China Baoli Technologies Holdings isnt a profitable company, so it is unlikely well see a strong correlation between its share price and its earnings per share (EPS). Arguably revenue is our next best option. Shareholders of unprofitable companies usually expect strong revenue growth. Some companies are willing to postpone profitability to grow revenue faster, but in that case one does expect good top-line growth.

Over the last three years, China Baoli Technologies Holdingss revenue dropped 6.4% per year. That is not a good result. Having said that the 52% annualized share price decline highlights the risk of investing in unprofitable companies. This business clearly needs to grow revenues if it is to perform as investors hope. Dont let a share price decline ruin your calm. You make better decisions when youre calm.

The chart below shows how revenue and earnings have changed with time, (if you click on the chart you can see the actual values).

SEHK:164 Income Statement, March 19th 2019

We consider it positive that insiders have made significant purchases in the last year. Having said that, most people consider earnings and revenue growth trends to be a more meaningful guide to the business. Before buying or selling a stock, we always recommend a close examination of historic growth trends, available here..

Story continues

What about the Total Shareholder Return (TSR)?

Investors should note that theres a difference between China Baoli Technologies Holdingss total shareholder return (TSR) and its share price change, which weve covered above. Arguably the TSR is a more complete return calculation because it accounts for the value of dividends (as if they were reinvested), along with the hypothetical value of any discounted capital that have been offered to shareholders. We note that China Baoli Technologies Holdingss TSR, at -89% is higher than its share price rise of -89%. When you consider it hasnt been paying a dividend, this data suggests shareholders may have had the opportunity to acquire attractively priced shares in a discounted capital raising.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 6.6% in the twelve months, China Baoli Technologies Holdings shareholders did even worse, losing 84%. However, it could simply be that the share price has been impacted by broader market jitters. It might be worth keeping an eye on the fundamentals, in case theres a good opportunity. Regrettably, last years performance caps off a bad run, with the shareholders facing a total loss of 30% per year over five years. We realise that Buffett has said investors should buy when there is blood on the streets, but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality businesses. It is all well and good that insiders have been buying shares, but we suggest you check here to see what price insiders were buying at.

China Baoli Technologies Holdings is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on HK exchanges.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Chief Executive Elon Musk has never sought pre-approval for a single tweet about Tesla since striking a court-approved deal about how to communicate important information about the electric vehicle maker, the top U.S. securities regulator told a judge on Monday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is doubling down on the government's demand to find the Tesla CEO in contempt of a previous fraud settlement that required him to have the company pre-approve any tweets that could materially impact the automaker.

The ongoing public battle between Tesla's chief executive and the SEC piles pressure on Musk, the public face of Tesla, who is struggling to make the company profitable after cutting the price of its Model 3 sedan to $35,000.

The SEC said a Feb. 19 tweet that Musk sent to his more than 24 million Twitter followers claiming the electric vehicle-maker would build around 500,000 cars in 2019 was "a blatant violation" of the agreement.

The SEC asked Tesla in late February whether any of Musk's tweets had been pre-approved since he agreed to that policy in the settlement, according to the filing in federal court in Manhattan.

Tesla responded, after more than two weeks, to say simply: "No."

"It is therefore stunning to learn that, at the time of filing of the instant motion, Musk had not sought pre-approval for a single one of the numerous tweets about Tesla he published in the months since the court-ordered pre-approval policy went into effect," the SEC said in the filing.

The regulator last month alleged that Musk had violated a September settlement of fraud charges by tweeting material information about Tesla without pre-approval from the company.

In response, Musk had argued that his "single, immaterial" tweet was in compliance with the settlement, and that the SEC's push to find him in contempt infringed on his free speech.

Lawyers for Musk said the tweet complied with the company's communication policy for senior executives and was a "proud and optimistic restatement of publicly disclosed information."

Story continues

The SEC said in Monday's filing that the pre-approval policy agreed in the settlement was designed to include a wide variety of his comments, not just those that were deemed material by the regulator's standards.

The fraud settlement between Musk, Tesla and the SEC resolved a lawsuit brought by the regulator over claims Musk made on Twitter in August that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private at $420 per share. The SEC called those tweets "false and misleading" and a go-private deal never materialized.

As part of that settlement, Musk stepped down as the company's chairman and he and Tesla agreed to pay $20 million each in fines.

Tesla has backed off a plan to close all its U.S. stores and said it will instead raise prices of its higher-end vehicles by about 3 percent on average. Last week, Tesla unveiled its Model Y crossover SUV, targeted to begin production in 2020.

Musk called the regulator the "Shortseller Enrichment Commission" on Twitter after the settlement, and tweeted that "something is broken with SEC oversight" just one day after the agency started pursuing the contempt order.

Legal experts have said the SEC could pursue multiple avenues, including a higher fine, imposing further restrictions on Musk's activities or removing him from Tesla's board or helm.

Tesla published a new communications policy in December for senior executives as part of the settlement. It called for Tesla's general counsel and a newly designated in-house securities law attorney to pre-approve any written statements about Tesla that could be material.

A disclosure controls committee, made up of board members Brad Buss, Antonio Gracias and James Murdoch, was tasked with overseeing compliance with the new policy.

The case is U.S. SEC v Elon Musk, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 1:18-cv-8865-AJN-GWG.
Federal investigators and prosecutors appear to be raising questions about the process that led to the certification of Boeing's 737 Max jetliners in the aftermath of two deadly crashes.

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, said a grand jury issued a subpoena dated the day after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines' 737 Max 8. The subpoena may be taking aim at the regulatory approval process that went into the plane's design.

It seeks emails, messages and documents and lists a Justice Department prosecutor as the contact, the Journal reported.

The Seattle Times, moreover, reported that the Federal Aviation Administration urged its safety engineers to delegate more oversight to Boeing as the aerospace giant was hustling to develop the control systems on the 737 Max ahead of a competing jetliner from Europe's Airbus. That report was also based on unnamed sources.

A woman lays on the coffin of her loved one during

Both accounts point to a new direction in the investigation of the crashes as analysis continued on the black boxes from the Ethiopian crash that killed 157 passengers and crew.

Neither the Justice Department, FAA nor Boeing responded to USA TODAY's request for comment on Monday.

The rush to create an updated version of the venerable 737 has raised questions about whether the basic design dating to the 1960s could handle today's new engines and technology.

"This is really pushing the bounds of reasonableness with the 737. When initially designed, it was a very stable aircraft, but it's gone through four generations of changes," said Daniel Rose, an attorney for the firm of Kreindler & Kreindler, which specializes in aviation disaster litigation.

And, he said, issues surrounding design changes appear to have been made worse by a "cozy relationship" when it came between Boeing and the FAA during the plane's development.

The Seattle Times reported sources say Boeing understated how dramatically the plane's automated anti-stalling system  which has been at the center of the crash probes  would move the plane's horizontal stabilizer. It also didn't properly address how the system would reset itself after pilots tried to intervene and how such a critical system could be designed to rely on one, instead of two or more, sensors.

Story continues

Some of the answers may come from analysis of the 737's cockpit and flight data recorders, which have been taken to France for analysis.

On Sunday, Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said clear similarities have been found between the March 10 crash and last October's Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 in a 737 Max. France's civil aviation investigation bureau confirmed links as well on Monday.

For Boeing and airlines operating the Boeing 737 Max, the answers and a remedy to whatever issues arise can't come soon enough. The worldwide fleet of 371 Max 8 and 9 models was grounded last week when the U.S. joined other nations in ordering them out of the skies until the cause of the crashes is found.

Some wonder why a cause wasn't found sooner after the Lion Air crash.

"Either you should have fixed it or you shouldn't be flying it. That's where Boeing the FAA didn't do their job," said Michael Barr, an air crash expert and senior instructor for the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ethiopian Airlines crash raises questions about Boeing 737 Max certification process
Los Angeles (AFP) - Former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, who is facing extradition from the United States over corruption charges, was briefly jailed for public intoxication after getting drunk in a California restaurant, local police said Monday.

Toledo, 73, was arrested at the eatery near Palo Alto on Sunday, and spent the night in a cell before being freed early Monday, San Mateo County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Rosemerry Blankswade told AFP.

Toledo is wanted in Peru over allegations he received $20 million in bribes from Brazilian construction Odebrecht, as part of a wide ranging corruption scandal implicating high-level politicians in Peru and beyond.

But Blankswade confirmed Toledo, who led Peru from 2001 to 2016, would not be extradited following his arrest.

And the Peruvian Foreign Ministry confirmed the arrest had "nothing to do with the ongoing extradition process."
By Kate Holton and Pamela Barbaglia

LONDON (Reuters) - A series of buyout funds including U.S. firms Advent and Blackstone are in talks with advertising group WPP to explore bids for a majority stake in its data analytics unit Kantar, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The sale, led by Goldman Sachs, may value Kantar at up to 3.5 billion pounds ($4.7 billion), but some private equity investors are fretting over the decline in profits and revenues that the business has suffered in recent years.

Hellman & Friedman and CVC Capital Partners are also working on the deal, the sources said, while industry players have so far shied away from the process.

Bain Capital has also expressed interest in making a bid for Kantar, another source said, adding Bain might later decide to team up with one of the other buyout funds in the race.

WPP sent out confidential information packs this week, with non-binding offers expected in April, one of the sources said.

WPP, Blackstone, Advent and CVC declined to comment, while representatives at Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman were not immediately available.

WPP, the owner of agencies including JWT, Finsbury and Ogilvy, is in the middle of an overhaul launched by its new boss Mark Read following several profit warnings in 2017 and 2018.

The London-based group wants to sell a majority stake in Kantar to reduce debt as it braces for a tough year with revenue expected to drop by between 1.5 and 2 percent in 2019.

Kantar, a leading player in market research, provides brand and marketing communications research for some of the world's largest advertisers.

Yet it has suffered a decline in revenue in recent years, with underlying sales down 2 percent last year to 2.6 billion pounds and operating profit down 14 percent to 301 million.

"The deal poses some challenges for private equity funds as it's been on a downward trajectory for a while," one source said.

Private equity investors are examining the turnaround potential of a possible deal, the sources said, and would value the business at up to 10 times its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), hoping to reignite growth within the first three years of their investment.

Story continues

Liberum analyst Ian Whittaker said in February that Kantar could fetch more than 3 billion pounds, with WPP raising close to 2.1-2.2 billion pounds from a 60 percent stake sale.

WPP boss Read aims to complete the sale by the end of the summer as he needs cash to steer the world's biggest advertising group back to growth.

Read took the helm of WPP last year, pledging to spend 300 million pounds to restructure the group and bring it back in line with peers by the end of 2021.

Founder Martin Sorrell, 74, remains a major WPP shareholder but is now running a new company which last year beat WPP in the race to buy Dutch digital agency MediaMonks.

(Editing by David Holmes)
By Tova Cohen and Steven Scheer TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israel's exports of computer chips to China soared last year as Chinese companies bought more semiconductors made at Intel's Kiryat Gat plant. An official at the Israel Export Institute told Reuters that new data showed semiconductor exports to China jumped 80 percent last year to $2.6 billion. An industry source told Reuters that Intel Israel accounted for at least 80 percent of those sales. The data will be welcome news for the Israeli government as it pushes for deeper ties with China and because semiconductors accounted for $3.9 billion of overall goods exports in 2018, according to the institute, a government agency. The two countries have started negotiating a trade deal and technology is expected to be a major part of the discussions. Overall exports of Israeli goods to China, excluding diamonds, rose 50 percent to $4.7 billion, statistics. Intel announced a $5 billion investment to expand capacity in its Kiryat Gat plant in southern Israel in 2017, which makes some of the smallest and fastest chips in the world. That year it also bought Israeli auto-focused chip and technology firm Mobileye for $15 billion. It said this year it would invest $11 billion in a new Israeli plant. A spokesman for Intel said the firm exported $3.9 billion worth of goods from Israel last year, up from $3.6 billion in 2017. He declined to give further details of Intel's operations in Israel. Chinese officials have said they are looking to develop a domestic chip market because Chinese companies import $270 billion of semiconductors each year. Israel has a reputation for exporting high-end chips. Israel's export institute also said sales to China of inspection equipment for semiconductor manufacturing jumped 64 percent to $450 million last year. That equipment is used to control and inspect manufacturing processes in semiconductor plants and is useful for China as its domestic chip manufacturing increases. Companies in Israel making such equipment include Orbotech, which was just acquired by fellow semiconductor equipment maker KLA-Tencor of California for about $3.4 billion. That deal was announced a year ago but was held up by Chinese regulators, who only gave their approval in February. PIVOT TO ASIA China is now Israel's second largest export market for goods after the United States, having overtaken Britain last year. Sales of semiconductors to the United States slipped 20 percent to $860 million, contributing to a 3 percent drop in goods exports. But at $10.9 billion, overall goods exports still dwarf those to China. Israel has been pivoting its economy toward Asia in the past few years both because of perceived political hostility in some European countries and the fact that Asian markets are growing rapidly. In recent years, Chinese-based airlines have started direct flights to Tel Aviv, the two countries signed a visa agreement and are working on the trade deal. Israel is also in talks for free trade agreements with Vietnam and South Korea. Some analysts in China expect the ties to get stronger due to the tit-for-tat trade war between the United States, a major chip producer, and China. "Because of the trade war, China and Israel's cooperation is closer than it has been before," said Gu Wenjun, chief analyst at ICWise, a semiconductor consultancy in Shanghai. "Israel has the technology and China has the market  the space for cooperation is big." Eyal Waldman, founder and CEO of Israeli chipmaker Mellanox, said his company was benefiting from China's policies. "In China they prefer to use Chinese silicon and then after that non-U.S. silicon and only if they don't have that then U.S. silicon, so we are benefiting from that," he told Reuters. "We are seeing better growth in China." Mellanox agreed this week to sell itself to California-based chipmaker Nvidia Corp for almost $7 billion. Intel lost the bidding war to Nvidia. Russell Ellwanger, the CEO of another major chip manufacturer TowerJazz, said his company's growth in China "is very, very strong". (Additional reporting by Josh Horwitz in Shanghai and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by Anna Willard)
Could a Lurch Toward Socialism Sink Democrats in 2020?

Rahm Emanuel, the former Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama and now Mayor of Chicago, is worried about socialism. Of course, hes a proponent of redistribution and collectivist initiatives such as socialized medicine. He just thinks its bad politics.

He believes too many Americans arent yet keen on overt socialists running for office.

According to Emanuel, Democratic candidates and operatives should distance themselves from using the word socialism and find other ways to describe their agenda.

If they dont, they may lose in 2020. He thinks President Donald Trump is vulnerable, but not if Trump and other Republicans can pin the socialist label on Democrats and use the candidates own rhetoric to do it.

Emanuel drafted a March 10th editorial in The Atlantic outlining the danger for Democrats. He writes:

Earth to Democrats: Republicans are telling you something when they gleefully schedule votes on proposals like the Green New Deal, Medicare for all, and a 70 percent marginal tax rate. When theyre more eager to vote on the Democratic agenda than we are, we should take a step back and ask ourselves whether were inadvertently letting the political battle play out on their turf rather than our own.

If Trumps only hope for winning a second term turns on his ability to paint us as socialists, we shouldnt play to type.

Emanuel knows a direct assault on Americas pro-freedom values being waged by many of his partys rising stars is no way to win an election.

But he takes care to ensure the ideologues in his party dont misunderstand him. He isnt criticizing their values:

Thats not to say Democrats should abandon our priorities. We should work hard to combat climate change. We should fight to expand health-care coverage and reduce costs. We should find ways to make the tax code more progressive.

Emanuel thinks Democratic luminaries, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, really need to be more careful about what they say out loud, in public. Otherwise their political adversaries will find it childs play to link their ideas to all of the other times and places they have been tried and failed.

President Donald Trump is eager to help Americans make the connection between an Ocasio-Cortez and other avowed socialists  such as Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

Maduro and Ocasio-Cortez have a lot in common when it comes to theory and governance.

Rahm Emanuel sees disaster if Cortez and other Democratic stars keep it up, declaring themselves as socialists and openly advocating for things like 70% tax rates and printing money to fund their grand vision for America.

Dont they know what is happening in Venezuela is not a good model?

Again, it isnt an actual disaster, like the one depicted above, that apparently bothers Emanuel. He isnt worried about dollars swirling through the streets as America descends into Third World style poverty. Emanuel is simply terrified of another disaster at the polls.

The political establishment has a problem though. A growing number of Americans from the left, right, and center have had their fill of clever politicians mouthing whatever it takes to be elected.

Americans are looking for candidates that stand for something. Ocasio-Cortez is a rising political star because she rejected the establishment and convinced voters she is genuine.

Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders proudly champion socialism over capitalism. Their political stock has been rising, despite embracing a philosophy that would have ended most political careers just a decade or two ago.

They are likely to continue campaigning to the hard left, even if old guard Democrats like Emanuel plead for members of his party to soft-pedal their support of socialist policies.

By Clint Siegner

MoneyMetals.com

Clint Siegner is a Director at Money Metals Exchange, perhaps the nation's fastest-growing dealer of low-premium precious metals coins, rounds, and bars. Siegner, a graduate of Linfield College in Oregon, puts his experience in business management along with his passion for personal liberty, limited government, and honest money into the development of Money Metals' brand and reach. This includes writing extensively on the bullion markets and their intersection with policy and world affairs.

 2019 Clint Siegner - All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




Healthy self-storage industrys fundamentals, driven by favorable market demographics, continue to drive Public Storages PSA growth. Further, the company has been undertaking acquisitions to generate maximum returns from this upbeat market trend. However, there is a development boom of self-storage units in many markets, at present. This is likely to intensify competition for the company.



One of the largest owner and operator of storage facilities in the United States, Public Storage has an extensive presence in all major metropolitan cities. In addition, the Public Storage brand provides a competitive edge to the company over other industry competitors.



Moreover, the company remains well poised to benefit from the European markets robust fundamentals through its 35.2% stake in Shurgard Self Storage SA. In fact, the Shurgard brand, used by Shurgard Europe, is a well-established and valuable brand in the continent.



In addition, the company has been capitalizing on growth opportunities. In fact, since the beginning of 2013 through Dec 31, 2018, the company acquired 296 facilities, with 20.6 million net rentable square feet, from third parties for around $2.7 billion. Additionally, the company opened newly-developed and expanded self-storage space for a total cost of $1.2 billion, adding approximately 11.3 million net rentable square feet over this period.



Following Dec 31, 2018, the company acquired or was under contract to acquire 14 self-storage facilities, spanning 0.9 million net rentable square feet of space, for $102.4 million. Such acquisitions and expansions bode well for long-term growth.



Moreover, Public Storage has one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector, with adequate liquidity to actively pursue acquisitions and developments. The company exited 2018 with around $361.2 million of cash and cash equivalents. In addition, solid dividend payouts are arguably the biggest enticement for investment in REIT stocks and given the companys financial position and lower debt-to-equity ratio compared to that of the industry, its current dividend payout is expected to be sustainable.



However, in recent years, supply has been high in a number of markets. Further, deliveries are expected to remain elevated in 2019 as well. This is a concern as high supply affects the companys pricing power. In fact, it operates in a highly fragmented market in the United States, with intense competition from numerous private, regional and local operators. This limits the companys power to raise rents and turn on more discounting.



The company has a significant development and refurbishment pipeline. In fact, as of Dec 31, 2018, the company had several facilities in development (1.7 million net rentable square feet), with an estimated cost of $253 million, as well as expansion projects (3.5 million net rentable square feet) worth roughly $354 million. Public Storage estimates to incur the remaining $322 million of development costs related to these projects over the next 18 months.



Though this is encouraging, the substantial pipeline increases operational risks and exposes the company to rising construction costs, entitlement delays and failure to fulfill government requirements. In addition, self-storage spaces are not usually pre-leased and new assets generally take time to generate yields.



Public Storage currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Stocks to Consider



Some better-ranked stocks in the real estate industry include Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. ARE, Boston Properties, Inc. BXP and PS Business Parks, Inc. PSB. Each of these stocks carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), at present.



Alexandria Real Estate Equities Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year funds from operations (FFO) per share moved up a cent to $6.96 in a months time.



Boston Properties Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2019 FFO per share inched up 0.4% over the last 30 days to $6.92.



PS Business Parks Zacks Consensus Estimate for the ongoing years FFO per share moved 0.3% north over the last 30 days to $6.60.



Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019



In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?



Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.



See Latest Stocks Today >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



Public Storage (PSA) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Boston Properties, Inc. (BXP) : Free Stock Analysis Report



PS Business Parks, Inc. (PSB) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (ARE) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
Its been nearly four years since leaked documents revealed Exxon Mobil Corp. understood that fossil fuel emissions caused the planet to warm before it began funding a Big Tobacco-style misinformation campaign to discredit climate science.

Now the worlds largest publicly traded oil company will face public questions for the first time over its role in creating a climate crisis that threatens to upend human civilization and render dozens of major cities uninhabitable before the end of the century.

On Thursday, European Parliament members are set to hold a hearing in Brussels that could strip Exxon Mobil of lobbying access and deepen the oil giants mounting legal woes.

The historical evidence is incontrovertible, Geoffrey Supran, the Harvard University researcher who co-authored the first peer-reviewed analysis of Exxon Mobils history of climate communication, said by phone. The evidence points only one way, that these companies and trade associations funded misinformation to stifle policymakers.

The organizers say Exxon Mobil declined an invitation to testify. Spokesmen for the company did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Under new rules, the European Unions lawmakers could ban the company from lobbying the transnational parliament overseeing a market that in 2015 made up 14 percent of its global oil and gas production and into which it invested $2 billion last year to expand a new refinery. In 2017, the European parliament barred the agrochemical giant Monsanto  now owned by the German conglomerate Bayer  after the company rebuffed an invitation to testify at a hearing on whether it influenced studies into the safety of the glyphosate used in its RoundUp weedkiller.

Oil rigs in the Permian Basin area of Odessa, Texas. Exxon Mobil plans to double its production in the Permian Basin to 1 million barrels per day over the next five years. (Photo: Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Supran will give testimony alongside Italian European parliamentarian Eleonora Evi, Dutch European parliamentarian Bas Eickhout and Food & Water Europe campaigner Frida Kieninger.

Parliamentarians will show that they do take this issue seriously, Evi said in a statement to HuffPost. I call on fellow MEPs to use this hearing as a stepping stone to start tackling Exxon Mobils undue and heavy influence in EU decision-making now.

Story continues

The new scrutiny comes as Exxon Mobil is struggling to fend off state investigations in the United States.

In January, the Supreme Court refused the companys bid to block Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey from forcing Exxon Mobil to turn over decades of records on what it knew about climate change as part of a fraud probe.

In February, a state judge allowed New York Attorney General Letitia James to file a motion to dismiss Exxon Mobils motion alleging prosecutorial misconduct in the Empire States own lawsuit against the oil giant for allegedly misleading investors about the risks of climate change.

On Monday, Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine tweeted a link soliciting outside legal counsel to help an investigation and potential lawsuit against Exxon for possible fraud.

Exxon Mobil is facing a host of other litigation in the United States, too, including a federal lawsuit from Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation claiming the company failed to protect an oil storage facility in Massachusetts from the effects of climate change. A federal judge in Boston last week allowed the lawsuit to proceed.

The cases took on a new urgency last October after the United Nations released a report warning that world governments have roughly a decade to halve global emissions or face warming beyond 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That average temperature rise  roughly half a degree Celsius above what the planet is experiencing today  is forecast to cause cataclysmic destruction, including $54 trillion in damages from extreme weather, droughts and flooding.

Exxon Mobil abandoned directly funding its most egregious climate misinformation think tanks years ago and has since embraced the scientific reality that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels are increasing the planets average temperature. In 2017, the company publicly urged President Donald Trump not to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accords. Last year, the firm pledged $1 million to support efforts to pass a national tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

In a boilerplate statement distributed since InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times published documents revealing the company understood the threat of climate change as far back as 1981, Exxon Mobil said: We unequivocally reject allegations that ExxonMobil suppressed climate change research contained in media reports that are inaccurate distortions of ExxonMobils nearly 40-year history of climate research.

Yet, in January, a report by researchers at more than a dozen environmental groups calculated that U.S. oil and gas production, particularly in the vast Permian Basin of West Texas, is set to add 1,000 coal plants worth of climate pollution to the atmosphere by 2050. That would make reaching the emissions cuts called for in the latest United Nations report nearly impossible.

Exxon Mobils response was telling. Two months later, the company said in a press release that it doubled its production in the Permian Basin last year and would increase and accelerate its output to 1 million barrels per day over the next five years.

Related Coverage

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Why This California City Is Taking On Chevron, Exxon And Shell Over Climate Change

Big Business Spent $1.4 Billion On PR, Advertising Over The Last Decade

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Facebook said Sunday that it removed or blocked from the social media site 1.5 million videos of a gunman's rampage on two New Zealand mosques that killed 50 people and wounded dozens more.

Mia Garlick, spokeswoman for Facebook New Zealand, said that about 300,000 videos were removed within the first 24 hours of the terrorist attack Friday. More than 1.2 million were blocked at upload, she said.

"Out of respect for the people affected by this tragedy and the concerns of local authorities, we're also removing all edited versions of the video that do not show graphic content," Garlick said in a tweet.

Garlick said that Facebook was using technology and people "around the clock" to remove content that violates its violence policy.

Minutes before the attack, the alleged shooter posted a 74-page manifesto on Twitter and sent it to numerous officials and media outlets in New Zealand. The gunman also livestreamed the rampage via helmet cam on Facebook and Twitter.

Footage of the massacre circulated for hours after the shooting, despite efforts by Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Reddit to take it down as quickly as possible. Twitter and YouTube said they were continuously monitoring and removing any content depicting the tragedy.

"Our hearts are broken over todays terrible tragedy in New Zealand," YouTube tweeted within hours of the attack. "Please know we are working vigilantly to remove any violent footage."

Australian politicians and religious leaders light candles at an interfaith service at St Marys Cathedral in Sydney on March 17, 2019.

Twitter issued a statement citing its "rigorous processes and a dedicated team" that activates in such emergencies. The site also stressed that it cooperates with law enforcement investigations.

Church services and candlelight vigils were taking place across the nation of fewer than 5 million people Sunday. Dozens of people wounded in the assault on the Al Noor and Linwood mosques remained hospitalized.

In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload...  Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 17, 2019

New Zealand Police on Sunday released some details of the initial response to the attack.

Story continues

"There has been some speculation around the Police response times to the first attack," New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush said in a statement. "To clarify, police received its first 111 call at 1.41pm. The first armed police unit was on scene at 1.47pm. Thats six minutes to respond."

The department's highly trained Armed Offenders Squad arrived with 10 minutes, and the 28-year-old suspect was in custody within 36 minutes, Bush said.

"I am very proud of the police response to this terrible attack," he said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Facebook removed 1.5 million videos of New Zealand attack within 24 hours
The rising demand for processed and packaged food has increased applications for food additives worldwide, largely driven by the rapidly-changing lifestyle of health-conscious consumers. This demand has made food additives an integral part of the food production and packaging industry.

Factors Boosting the Global Food Additives Market

According to a Global Market Insights report, the global food additives market is set to grow at a compounded annual rate of 7.5% and cross $115 billion by 2024.

Further, Europe has already led the global food additives market in 2014 with a 30.1% share, seconded by Asia-Pacific, per Transparency Market Research data. But the increasing consumption of food additives in developing countries could have Asia-Pacific surpass Europe by 2021. Growing urbanization in developing countries and higher lifestyles are major factors pushing this shift.

In North America alone, the food additives market is estimated to surpass $13.6 billion by 2023, Mordor Intelligence cited. As more customers are able to lead a better lifestyle boosted by higher disposable income, the demand for processed food products is likely to increase further. This should propel the food additives market higher.

Overall, the rising number of health-conscious consumers is a major factor fueling this increase of food additive applications. Needless to say, inclination toward processed and packaged food items is driven by consumers busy schedules.

Stocks to Benefit

Given the growing demand for food additives, one could track a few companies that are key players in this segment. Archer-Daniels-Midland CompanyADM, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. IFF and McCormick & Company, Incorporated MKC are expected to gain from the market boom.



Archer-Daniels-Midland recently purchased Florida Chemical for $175 million. This deal strengthens the agricultural giants foothold in the food additive market, given that Florida Chemical is a manufacturer of citrus oils and flavors. Archer-Daniels-Midland carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and has an expected earnings growth rate of 4.4% for the next year.

Story continues

International Flavors & Fragrances Frutarom division recently acquired a 70% stake in Italy-based Leagel. The latter is a producer of ice cream and gelato components in Europe. The company had earlier acquired SDFLC Brasil Industria E Comercio, a Brazil-based producer of taste enhancers of desserts and ice creams.

International Flavors & Fragrances is expected to build a distinct global space for ice cream ingredients through its acquisitions across continents. The company carries a Zacks Rank #3 and has an expected earnings growth rate of 1.6% for the current year.

McCormick & Company is a leading manufacturer of garlic salt, which is a seasoned salt constituting table salt, dried ground garlic and an anti-caking agent. The company carries a Zacks Rank #3 and has an expected earnings growth rate of 5.6% for the current year.

You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019

In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year?

Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%.

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Canada's Finance Minister Bill Morneau speaks after he tried on a new pair of shoes during a pre-budget photo opportunity with children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, March 14, 2019. (REUTERS/Mark Blinc)

The federal government is asking Canadians to take a break from the drama around the SNC-Lavalin scandal, and instead pay attention to the countrys finances.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau unveils the Liberal partys latest budget today at 4 p.m. EST. The wishlist for goodies among various stakeholders is long. We could see new money for broadband internet, especially in rural areas. Relief for home buyers locked out of the market is widely expected to be included.

Today were building on the same plan Canadians chose in 2015, by investing in the middle class and making sure you have the support you need, when and where you need it. Stay tuned. #YourBudget2019. pic.twitter.com/t3CLOTZfz3  Bill Morneau (@Bill_Morneau) March 19, 2019

Getting a foot in the door

UBC professor Paul Kershaw wants to see language that signals the scale of the gap between home prices and earnings. He also wants to see acknowledgment that, despite a cooldown in parts of the country, housing prices remain a big problem for younger generations.

Kershaw, along with Generation Squeeze, thinks theres a lot Ottawa can do, including lowering taxes on the earnings of regular folks, while increasing taxes on speculators and flippers. But hes not holding his breath during an election year.

If I were a betting person, and knowing that many have appropriately discouraged the Finance Minister from relaxing stress tests and amortization periods, I would expect an increase to the First Time Home Buyers Tax Credit and/or an expansion of the amount of Tax Sheltered RRSP savings that people can allocate toward a down payment, Kershaw told Yahoo Finance Canada.

Relief for taxpayers

Aaron Wudrick, Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, wants to see broad-based tax relief.

Story continues

Especially for individuals, coupled with spending reductions would be ideal, along with a plan to pay down debt, Wudrick told Yahoo Finance Canada.

The government should also eliminate corporate welfare programs that benefit only select businesses and instead put that money towards tax relief so that all businesses can benefit.

Wudrick would like to see the Liberals follow through on a promise to balance the budget in 2019, or at least come up with a plan to get back to balance in a reasonable timeframe. He says rising government debt cannot be ignored any longer.

Growing the economy

The economy has been sending mixed messages as of late. Sluggish GDP growth and a Bank of Canada on hold, stand in stark contrast to some of the best jobs growth in a long time.

Bank of Nova Scotia economist Rebekah Young says the government is on track to lower the deficit to a greater degree than predicted in the fall economic update. Young says if Morneau plans to open up the nations wallet, it needs to be spent wisely.

If they are going to spend  as we think they will  the bulk of it would be best targeted at boosting Canadas waning growth potential.

In any case, the government will stick to its downward debt-to-GDP anchor (forecast at 30.9% for 2018/19), which will contain any additional spending. The spending magnitude implied by the windfall would not significantly change the outlook. Young told Yahoo Finance Canada.

Filling in skills gaps

Personal finance expert Rubina Ahmed-Haq wants to see money for real change.

If the government of Canada wants adults to go back to class and gain skills to apply for jobs that companies are finding hard to fill, than make those courses accessible in every corner of Canada, Ahmed-Haq told Yahoo Finance Canada

Also make them affordable, so Canadians can easily apply and not worry about the costs. Also build relationships with companies looking for highly skilled workers who can hire workers once their training is complete.

Help for seniors

A growing number of Canadas seniors are finding themselves in financial difficulty. Ahmed-Haq hopes help is on the way for seniors living on a fixed income.

There is some indication that there will be a focus on pharmacare.

That focus should be on helping seniors because they require greater care than any other segment of the Canadian population, said Ahmed-Haq.

Something for small businesses

There havent been many rumours about measures for small business. Monique Moreau, VP of national affairs at Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), hopes some of the concerns among entrepreneurs will be addressed.

Moreau told Yahoo Finance Canada her wishlist includes reversing or stopping the CPP increases, ending the federal carbon tax in the four provinces impacted by the carbon backstop grandfathering existing passive investments to exempt them from the tax changes announced in 2017, and recognizing the vital formal and informal roles spouses play in a small business by fully exempting them from the new income splitting rules.

Moreau says she would also like to see measures like trading credits, and a holiday from EI premiums paid by employers when they hire a young worker. She would also like to see a reduction in red tape.

Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.
A former neo-Nazi skinhead has attempted to pinpoint exactly how white supremacists are radicalised to commit violent attacks against minorities similar to the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand that killed at least 51 people last week.

Christian Picciolini, a former leader of the American white power movement, said more effort needs to be done to protect vulnerable people before they become radicalised."

The co-founder of Life After Hate, a nonprofit organisation aimed at helping people leave white supremacist groups, was asked on CNN if stationing armed guards at houses of worships could effectively prevent white supremacists from committing a heinous attack like Christchurch.

While Mr Picciolini agreed vulnerable places need to be protected, he said more priority should be placed on the forums and sources where men and women are often radicalised by white supremacist ideology.

Ideology is not what leads them there in the end, Mr Picciolini said, referring to what drives white supremacists to massacre innocent people, its the pre-radicalisation. Its the trauma. Its the abandonment. Its the isolation. Its the marginalization. Even the mental illness that leads people to the fringes to accept this narrative.When theyre there, somebody is absolutely waiting to give them this narrative.

He reiterated that armed security guards wont prevent white men and women from white supremacy indoctrination, adding that resources should focus on online forums and communities vulnerable to radicalisation.

What we need to do is protect our most vulnerable communities online, Mr Picciolini added. Depression forums, where theyre targeting people, or autistic and Aspergers communities, where they know vulnerable people might bethat maybe arent making connections in real-life.

In an interview with NPR on Saturday, Mr Picciolini argued that white supremacy is not  and should not be seen  as a fringe movement.

Story continues

[White supremacy] is certainly not a fringe movement, the former skinhead said. It is a large-scale terrorist movement.

In addition to calling white supremacy a terrorist movement, Mr Picciolini noted that Donald trump has been championing policy positions  building a wall and a ban on Muslim immigrants, to name a few  neo-Nazis have been calling for in the last three decades.

[Trump] is feeding people  the same rhetoric that I used to say 30 years ago  build a wall, Muslim ban, you know, remove immigrants from the country  all the same things that I used to say, Mr Picciolini added.

He argued that President Trumps rhetoric and the Internet have helped white supremacist movement grow exponentially.

Now, because of the Internet, it has spread farther and wider than ever before. And that narrative is landing on people all over the world. So it is not just contained to the United States, he added. And never before in my life have I received emails from mothers of 10-year-old sons who are being recruited. So it is definitely growing.

Life After Hate, the organisation Mr Picciolini co-founded to combat white supremacy, was awarded a $400,000 grant in January 2017 from the Department of Homeland Security under the Obama Administrations Countering Violent Extremism Task Force.

In June 2017, less than six months since assuming office, Mr Trump discontinued the grant.
A man has been arrested in connection with the murder of reputed Gambino family mob boss Francesco Frank Cali, police in New York said.

The 53-year-old was shot 10 times outside his Staten Island home last week. Cali was allegedly the head of the Gambino family, one of the five Italian-American Mafia families that have historically dominated organised crime in New York and New Jersey.

Anthony Comello, 24, was detained in New Jersey and appeared at the Ocean County Courthouse in Toms River, New Jersey, at 2.30 pm.

Mr Comello wore a green and white jump suit during his appearance, which was a preliminary affair that included a reading of the charges he faces and rights.

Before the hearing, Mr Comello's lawyer indicated that his client would sign extradition papers, putting him on the fast track to be returned to New York for trial.

The case, involving a top mob boss, has captured the imaginations of observers of the mob world.

But, it may turn out that Mr Comello was not allegedly motivated by suspect business, with multiple reports noting that he was romantically interested in the mobster's niece.

Cali, according to those reports, would not allow Mr Comello to date his niece.

Follow the updates below, as they happened

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In 2013, US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning was given a 35-year prison sentence after she had leaked more than 700,000 confidential US State Department and Pentagon documents, videos and diplomatic cables about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. Perhaps the most notorious of the releases was a US military video that WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder. It showed the indiscriminate killing of up to eighteen people in Baghdad on 12 July, 2007. The footage, taken from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, showed the slaying of a wounded Reuters journalist and his rescuers. A second Reuters staff member, employed as a driver and camera assistant, was also killed. Two young children, whose father was among those killed, were seriously wounded.

The video, together with the transcript of army exchanges during the indiscriminate US killings, shocked many around the world:

Lets shoot.

Light em all up.

Come on, fire!

Keep shoot, keep shoot. [keep shooting]

keep shoot.

keep shoot.

[]

Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards.

Nice.

While in prison, Manning twice attempted to commit suicide and also spent time in solitary confinement. She was released in 2017, after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama, two days before he left office.

On 8 March  International Womens Day  Manning was once again jailed after she refused to testify against WikiLeaks, and its founder Julian Assange, before a grand jury in Virginia. A grand jury means that the public is not allowed entry: the hearings are held in secret. She said in a statement:

I will not comply with this, or any other grand jury. Imprisoning me for my refusal to answer questions only subjects me to additional punishment for my repeatedly-stated ethical objections to the grand jury system. I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech.

Binoy Kampmark, who lectures at RMIT University in Melbourne, remarked:

The sense of dredging and re-dredging in efforts to ensnare Manning is palpable There is a distinct note of the sinister in this resumption of hounding a whistleblower.

Kampmark added:

Mannings original conviction was a shot across the bow, the prelude to something fundamental. Journalists long protected for using leaked material under the First Amendment were going to become future targets of prosecution.

Sending Manning back to jail shows:

the unequivocal determination of US authorities to fetter, if not totally neutralise, the reach of WikiLeaks in the modern information wars.

The famous whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971 detailing US war crimes in Vietnam and US government lies to the public, told Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now!interview:

This is a continuation of seven-and-a-half years of torture of Chelsea Manning, in an effort to get her to contribute to incriminating WikiLeaks, so that they can bring Julian Assange or WikiLeaks to trial on charges that would not apply to The New York Times. Its been speculated for years now that the secret charges, if they did existand apparently they do existagainst Julian Assange were under the same charges that I was firstthe first person to be prosecuted for, back in 1971: violations of the Espionage Act, conspiracy and theft. It would be the same cases brought against me.

Ellsberg continued:

Unfortunately, bringing that against a journalist is even more blatantly a violation of the First Amendment, freedom of the press. And although Donald Trump has made it very plain he would love to prosecute and convict The New York Times, he doesnt have the guts to do that, to do what he wants, fortunately, because it would be so obviously unconstitutional, that although his base would be happy with it and he would be happy with it, he would get into too much trouble constitutionally. So he wants to find charges against Julian that would be different from mine, because if he brought the same charges that he brought against mein this case, against a journalistit would clearly be found unconstitutional.

He then pointed to the significance of this latest development:

And so, Chelsea, having failed to give them what they wanted over seven-and-a-half years here she was incarcerated, or since, or in the grand jurynamely, false incriminating charges against WikiLeakstheyre resorting again to torture, which does work at getting false confessions. Thats what its for. Thats what it mainly does. They want her to contradict her earlier sworn testimony many times, that she behaved in relation to WikiLeaks exactly as she would have to The New York Times or The Washington Post, to whom she went first, before going to WikiLeaks. And they didnt pick up on what she was offering, so she went to WikiLeaks. But she took sole responsibility, not to spare them, but because that was the truth. And she tells the truth.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to a series of Guardian and Washington Post articles based on documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, concurred that the real target is WikiLeaks:

the Trump administration is trying to do what the Obama administration tried to do but ultimately concluded it couldnt do without jeopardizing press freedoms, which is to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for what it regards as the crime of publishing top-secret or classified documents.

Greenwald rightly called this attempt to go after WikiLeaks a grave threat to press freedom. However:

most reporters are mute on this scandal, on this controversy, and while a lot of Democrats are supportive of it, because they still hate WikiLeaks so much from the 2016 election that theyre happy to see Julian Assange go to jail, even if it means standing behind the Trump administration.

The reference to the 2016 election is the allegation that WikiLeaks publication of emails from the Democratic Party and John Podesta, Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign chairman, brought about Trumps victory. Assange had even supposedly conspired with Trump, and with Trumps alleged Russian allies, to fatally damage Clintons 2016 campaign: charges that are without any solid basis.

The Courage Foundation, a trust set up to fundraise the legal defence of individuals such as whistleblowers and journalists, warns of the Assange Precedent; namely, the threat to all media posed by the Trump administrations attempt to prosecute Julian Assange:

All media organizations and journalists must recognize the threat to their freedom and ability to work posed by the Trump Administrations prosecution of Assange. They should join human rights organizations, the United Nations and many others in opposing Assanges extradition. They should do so out of their own self-interest given that their ability to safely publish is under serious threat.

In December 2015, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention deemed that the WikiLeaks founder, whose health is deteriorating, has been arbitrarily detained since 2010, and that he should be freed and compensated. George Galloway rightly points out that:

Its a kind of modern day torture that Julian Assange has been subjected to.

In November 2018, Assanges mother made an urgent and impassioned plea to raise awareness of his plight:

This is not a drill. This is an emergency. The life of my sonis in immediate and critical danger.

On 18 March, Christine Assange renewed her appeal to journalists, in particular, to stand up for her son. Their record to date has been, in the main, shameful. We have previously detailed numerous examples of journalistic abuse, scorn and ridicule thrown at Assange, and WikiLeaks, notably by Guardian journalists. For instance, Hannah Parkinson, who writes for the Guardian and its sister Sunday paper, the Observer, tweeted this about Assange last year:

this little shit has lived rent free in Knightsbridge for 5 years, probably saved about 200k

The tweet was liked by John Simpson, the impartial grandly-titled BBC World Affairs Editor who exudes gravitas, if little insight, on world affairs.

And in response to the news last October that Assange was to launch legal action against the government of Ecuador, accusing it of violating his fundamental rights and freedoms, Parkinson had tweeted:

a teenager whose parents turn the wifi off

This is par for the course at the Guardian whose journalists are regularly shamed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange doing the real job of exposing power to public scrutiny. In 2015, Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs had even mocked Chelsea Manning when she was put in solitary confinement:

And the worlds tiniest violin plays a sad song

That, however, did earn a mild rebuke in a tweet from Guardian editor Matt Wells. The tweets were subsequently deleted, but not before screenshots had been saved.

The disdain, sometimes outright hostility, towards WikiLeaks and Assange is also reflected in the minimal coverage, and distinct lack of support, for Chelsea Mannings renewed incarceration. The Guardian merely published a brief article titled, Chelsea Manning jailed for refusing to testify to grand jury in WikiLeaks case. As WikiLeaks journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson pointed out:

Of the MSM [mainstream media] the @guardian benefitted most from material Chelsea Manning was sentenced for in 2013. You might expect a huge story on the yda [yesterday] jailing of @xychelsea [Chelsea Manning] to extort her to testify against Assange/@wikileaks. But nothing except a small AP [Associated Press] based story that quickly lost front.

Hrafnsson added:

Every day Chelsea Manning @xychelsea spends in jail for refusing to testify against Assange/@wikileaks adds shame to those journalists who remain silent about this disgrace. This applies especially to those who benefited most from her brave acts in the past. @guardian @nytimes

The Guardian had, of course, benefitted in publishing Greenwalds work based on Mannings releases via WikiLeaks; as well as book sales that were generated on the back of WikiLeaks work. In 2012, journalist and filmmaker John Pilger wrote that the British governments pursuit of Julian Assange was an assault on freedom and a mockery of journalism. He described the corporate medias treatment of Assange as a vituperative personal campaign:

Much of it has emanated from the Guardian, which, like a spurned lover, has turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book has led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, gratuitously abuse Assange as a damaged personality and callous. They also reveal the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables.

A ProQuest newspaper database search on 19 March revealed that there were but four newspaper articles about the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning in the whole of the national print press: TheTimes, the Daily Mail, The Herald and the Daily Record (the latter two newspapers are based in Scotland). The Guardian article mentioned above, based on an Associated Press release, was published online; but not in the print version. There was also an online Telegraphpiece which was also just a press release (by Agence France-Presse). As far as we could tell, there was not a single editorial or column in a major national newspaper defending Chelsea Manning, nor pointing to the grave danger to press freedom that her new incarceration posed. That is a disgraceful indictment of our so-called free press.

In an interview last week with Dennis Bernstein on Radio KPFA, John Pilger described the significance, and injustice, of the recent jailing of Chelsea Manning. The irony of her being imprisoned on International Womens Day was first noted, then Pilger pointed to the shameful silence from the womens movement, and other human rights activists:

Where are they [human rights activists] on Chelsea Manning? Why were there only ten people outside the Court House? Where is Amnesty International? Where are the womens groups? Where are the LGBT groups? Where are the Pride people? Why arent they massing in support of Chelsea Manning? Instead I see Chelsea Mannings story relegated in a sort of, Oh well, thats almost inevitable this is going to happen. But this [] is the most significant act of principle; an inspiration to all decent people; to democrats, to people who believe in justice. So where are the groups who have been very loud in their condemnation  rightly  of Donald Trump? Where are they? Why are we not hearing from them?

Discussion then turned to the crushing reality that the corporate media is an extension of an oppressive establishment order:

Dennis Bernstein: it seems to me that journalists believe Chelsea Manning should be in jail. And that Julian Assange isnt a publisher, and that he should be tried for treason because, after all, these journalists are patriots. Theyre no reporters. John Pilger: Well, I think Ill stand back a little from that question a little, Dennis. I think we can go on and beat our heads on the media brick wall, and asking these questions on the media. The media is part of an oppressive system in various forms []. It is an extension of the established order and these days it is without something it used to have, and that is spaces  limited spaces  but spaces for free and fair comment. Right across the corporate media these spaces have evaporated. So they are part of a system. They have shown this in a most grotesque way by the persecution of Julian Assange  the slandering of him, the distortion of the facts about his case.

Pilger, who is well-versed in Edward Herman and Noam Chomskys propaganda model of the media, explained that it has already been clear for some considerable time how and why the corporate media operate in the way they do. It is now time for nonviolent direct action against the media that constantly promotes rapacious Western interests and erodes public freedoms:

It is certainly right for us to protest  and I think our protests against the media should be more of a direct action now: occupy their spaces, occupy their buildings, confront them.

Pilger added that people who preserve human decency  the majority, that is  need to ask ourselves what we are doing about the ongoing state and corporate assault on freedom of expression; and, indeed, on freedom itself:

The Chelsea Manning/Julian Assange case goes to the very heart of everything. It is about freedom. Its not just about freedom of expression. It is about justice. It is about the law: the use of law, the misuse of law. It is about right and wrong. If there is going to be any real debate, I think we have to confront it, and we have to do it on our terms; not through the hopeless cypher of a corporate media.

The corporate media is institutionally opposed to the interests of the vast majority of the public; that is why we reject the label mainstream. The corporate media, including BBC News, systematically promotes imperialist and exploitative state interests, together with private power in the form of big business, financial speculation, military forces, the arms industry, the fossil fuel lobby, destructive agribusiness, unsustainable food production and rampant global consumerism that is destroying ecosystems, ramping up mass loss of species and endangering human survival through climate chaos. This oppressive system, with the corporate media a vital cog in the apparatus, must be exposed, confronted, dismantled and replaced with a society that truly promotes democracy, justice and human potential. It is up to us to make it happen before its too late.

DC
PARIS (Reuters) - Philippe Barbarin, the French Roman Catholic cardinal convicted of failing to report sexual abuse charges, said on Tuesday that Pope Francis had turned down his offer to resign but had suggested he stand aside for a while.

Barbarin, who is appealing his guilty verdict, said in a statement that he had agreed to the idea for the good of the diocese in the city of Lyon.

"On Monday morning, I put forward my resignation to the hands of the Holy Father. Invoking the presumption of innocence, he declined to accept this resignation," Barbarin, who is the Archbishop of Lyon, said in a statement issued by the Catholic Church.

"At his suggestion and given how the Church of Lyon has suffered for the past three years, I have decided to step aside for a while and hand over the day-to-day running of the diocese to Vicar General, Father Yves Baumgarten," he added.

Barbarin told France's KTO television that he would stay out of day-to-day activities for a while, depending on the court appeal process, although he would remain head of the dioceses in title and would continue to sign off on documents.

He added that he decided to take a step back to allow the dioceses to heal and turn the page.

"I think that my dioceses has been suffering a lot for a long time," Barbarin told KTO television.

"I was also particularly touched by one of the victims who said during the trial that... yes, you have been suffering for around three to four years. Do you realise that we have been suffering for around 30 to 40 years. That was painful to hear," he said.

In a separate statement, the Vatican acknowledged that the pope had not accepted the resignation offer and had let Barbarin decide what was best for his diocese.

"The Holy See is keen to reiterate its closeness to the victims of abuse, to the faithful of the Archdiocese of Lyon and of the whole Church of France who are experiencing a particularly painful moment," the Vatican statement said.

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A court in Lyon ruled this month that between July 2014 and June 2015 Barbarin covered up allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts in the 1980s and early 1990s by a priest who is due to go on trial later this year.

Barbarin, 68, the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in the child sex abuse scandal inside the French Church, was handed a six-month suspended prison sentence. He has denied the allegations and has launched an appeal.

The trial put Europe's senior clergy in the spotlight at a time when the pope is grappling with criticism over the Church's response to a decades-long sexual abuse crisis that has gravely damaged its standing around the globe.

Victims of sexual abuse by clergymen say a top-level conference at the Vatican last month failed to come up with concrete measures to tackle the issue.

An Australian court last week sentenced former Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell to six years in prison for sexually abusing two choir boys in Melbourne - the most senior Catholic to be convicted for child sex offences.

(Reporting by Marine Pennetier, Sudip Kar-Gupta and Bate Felix; Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Ed Osmond)
General Dynamics Corp.s GD Electric Boat division recently secured a $2-billion modification contract in relation to the Virginia-class submarines. The deal has been awarded by The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC.



The contract involves long lead time materials and economic ordering quantity, in connection to fiscal 2019-2023 Virginia-class submarines. Work related to the deal will get executed in Sunnyvale, CA, along with several other locations across the country. General Dynamics will also utilize fiscal 2019 and 2018 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funds for completing the task.



Recent Developments on the Virginia-Class Submarines



General Dynamics is the lead contractor of the Virginia-class submarine program, which was its largest program in 2018 and the largest contract in its backlog. The company's Marine Systems segment that manufactures these submarines had a year-end backlog that included $8.8 billion for 11 Virginia-class submarines, scheduled for delivery through 2023.



Since the delivery of the lead Virginia-class submarine, General Dynamics has substantially reduced the cost and delivery time for these submarines from 84 months to 66 months alongside improving mission capability and ship construction quality. Moreover, the company is also developing the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) for the fifth block of Virginia-class submarines, scheduled to begin construction in 2019 in support of the Navys fleet plans providing significant upgrades in size and performance.



What Favors General Dynamics?



General Dynamics, being one of the only two contractors in the world equipped to build nuclear-powered submarines, enjoys a dominant position as a Navy contractor. Moreover, the United States is strategically strengthening its naval power by upgrading missile submarines, due to the rising widespread geo-political tensions across the world.



Inevitably, demand for its technical expertise and other support services required for the proper functioning of submarines also remain high. As a result, defense giants like General Dynamics enjoy a smooth flow of contracts, like the latest one.



Looking Ahead



Per a report by Market Research Future firm, the global submarine market is expected to showcase a CAGR of 4.24% from 2018 to 2023. Such projections, going forward, will not only increase the submarine production demand but also lead to a rise in regular system modifications and upgrades of different submarine variants. As submarines are a vital part of the U.S. navy fleets imperative in combat, surveillance, counter- surveillance and other missions, we may expect General Dynamics to benefit significantly, in the days ahead.



Price Performance



Shares of General Dynamics have plunged about 23.8% in a year compared with the industrys decline of 5.4%.

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Zacks Rank & Key Picks



General Dynamics currently carries Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked stocks in the same sector are The Boeing Company BA, Spirit Aerosystems Holdings SPR and Heico Corporation HEI.



While Boeing and Spirit Aerosystems sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Heico carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Boeing came up with average positive earnings surprise of 17.08% in the last four quarters. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2019 earnings has risen 11.3% to $20.13 in the past 90 days.



Spirit Aerosystems long-term growth estimates currently stand at 7.80%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2019 earnings has risen 3% to $7.56 in the past 90 days.



Heico Corporations long-term growth estimates currently stand at 12.10%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2019 earnings has risen 5.4% to $2.14 in the past 90 days.



Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019



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Aerial view of a loading terminal in the port of Hamburg, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Fabian Bimmer

Germanys Council of Economic Experts slashed its 2019 GDP growth forecast to 0.8% for 2019, from their November prediction of 1.5%. They forecast growth of 1.7% for 2020.

The German economys boom is over for the time being, council chairman Christoph Schmidt said in a statement on Tuesday. However, given the robust domestic economy, a recession is currently not to be expected.

The slowdown is primarily a result of an ongoing drop in demand for German exports, which have long powered the countrys economic engine, according to the group. The economy has also grappled with supply issues, for example in the automotive industry, where carmakers suffered huge delivery bottlenecks as they struggled to get their cars compliant with new WLTP emissions standards.

Capacity constraints and labour shortages also played a role, the report noted, but the council added that wages are expected to remain strong and it expects employment levels to keep rising.

In my view, 0.8% looks relatively low, Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING in Germany, told Yahoo Finance UK. First of all, the upward revision of the December production data could still lead to an upward revision of Q4 growth and would lead to a small positive carry-over for the 2019 projections. Second, 0.8% assumes hardly any growth in Q1 and a very gradual rebound in Q2.

Germanys industrial output fell by 0.8% in January, which was a bigger drop than expected, and fell by 3.3% year-on-year, while export figures were flat for the month. However, Decembers output was revised up from a 0.4% drop to a 0.8% increase.

Brzeski said that, looking at sentiment indicators, the first quarter could eventually turn out to be stronger than many expected, since theres currently only hard data available for January.

READ MORE: Hopes for a recovery in Europes largest economy dashed by disappointing data

On the upside, the council expects healthy growth in private consumption, as well as construction and public-sector investment, to boost the domestic economy for the rest of 2019, noting in view of the robust domestic economy, a recession is not expected.

Looking ahead, the council says key threats to Germanys economic development are mainly Brexit; the still-unresolved trade tariff issues between the US, China, and the EU; and the slowing Chinese economy.

In light of the already slowing global economic momentum, a spiral of protectionist measures would have the potential to slide the German economy into recession, the Council of Economic Experts said.
Berlin (AFP) - Germany launched its auction Tuesday for the construction of an ultra-fast 5G mobile network as a transatlantic dispute rages over security concerns surrounding giant Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei.

The United States has warned it could scale back the sharing of sensitive information with Berlin if it does not exclude hardware made by Huawei from the infrastructure, arguing that Chinese equipment could help Beijing spy on Western companies and governments.

On Tuesday, Angela Merkel ruled out blocking Huawei from Germany's 5G network, but said stringent telecommunications laws will be drafted.

"So far, lots of countries have used Huawei technology," said Germany's chancellor at a conference in Berlin.

"That's why the federal government has not taken the approach of simply ruling out any contractor or stakeholder, but we have set standards for those bidding for 5G technology.

"We will also write these standards legally into our telecommunications laws... We will give everyone a chance, but shouldn't be naive, instead we see that there are very different laws in China."

'5G' -- 'fifth generation' -- is the latest, high-speed generation of cellular mobile communications and Berlin will require winning bidders to offer the service to at least 98 percent of German households and along motorways and rail lines.

- Slow internet in Europe's engine -

Germany, Europe's biggest economy whose wireless networks however rank only 46th in the world for download speeds, wants to close the sizeable digital gap by making the shift to the ultra-fast 5G system.

Four operators are in the running to secure the 41 different frequency blocks up for grab in the auction.

Among the contenders are Germany's three main mobile network providers -- Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Germany (O2) -- plus United Internet (1&1), a German company specialising in internet services.

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Huawei is not one of the bidders but provides the four hopefuls with essential hardware such as antennas and routers.

Jochen Homann, chairman of the German Federal Network Agency (BNA), says excluding Huawei's equipment would present significant problems for the auction winners.

"Huawei is an important supplier, already present in our previous networks -- it will be difficult to do without such companies and this is not at all what we want," Homann told German public broadcaster ARD.

- US fears of security compromise -

The US has accused Beijing of using Huawei's 5G network gear as a Trojan horse, forcing operators to transmit data to the regime, but Washington has not provided evidence to support their suspicions.

Huawei has strenuously denied allegations its equipment could be used for espionage, while China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday lashed out at what he called "abnormal, immoral" attacks on the Chinese firm.

US-led attempts to encourage other nations to ban Huawei equipment from their telecoms infrastructure suffered a setback when Merkel's government decided against imposing company specific-restrictions on the 5G auction.

With other nations across the EU also grappling with the same issue, Jyrki Katainen, vice-president of the European Commission, said Brussels will make recommendations on security in digital networks.

But he told business newspaper Handelsblatt that it is "unlikely that we will name one or two companies that should be excluded".

According to media reports, the US ambassador to Germany last week warned in a letter to Germany's economy minister that Washington could review intelligence cooperation unless Berlin agreed a Huawei ban.

The threat escalated when NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, warned Germany that NATO forces would cut communications if Berlin were to work with Huawei.

Scaparrotti said the US military is concerned about the risk of Germany's telecommunications being compromised as "particularly with 5G, the bandwidth capability and ability to pull data is incredible".

"If it also is inside of their defence communications, then we're not gonna communicate with them. And for the military that would be a problem."

However, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) shares some of the US fears, according to a report.

BND security experts have asked the government to take China's overall strategy into account, including a law compelling cooperation in security matters, according to the Der Spiegel magazine.
Michael Clark got out of jail in 2013. But he arguably got his first true taste of freedom when he landed a full-time job.

Just having something positive to do is very important, says Clark, who once dealt drugs. The 24-year-old said that earning $20 an hour doing construction work has enabled him to get his own apartment in Brooklyn.

But finding a job took years.

"They had those questions, and I just used to check 'yeah' because I wanted to be honest about the situation, he said about queries regarding whether he had previously been convicted of a crime. I applied everywhere, and I didnt hear back at all. So it was really difficult for me...trying to survive.

Now, Clark and others may no longer have it so hard.

A low unemployment rate, millions of open jobs and shifting attitudes are leading to a tearing down of barriers that have long hindered those who've had run-ins with the law from finding a job.

In December, Congress passed the First Step Act, which, in addition to giving judges more latitude when giving sentences for non-violent offenses, bolstered rehabilitation programs for former inmates.

Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., have banned private or public employers from asking prospective employees if they have a criminal history until after they've passed an initial screening, had an interview or been given a conditional job offer, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some local jurisdictions, like New York City, also ban most workplaces from asking about criminal history until they're offered employment.

And in January, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) announced an initiative in which businesses are committing to giving the same opportunities to qualified applicants with a criminal background as they do to those who don't.

More than 700 individuals, companies, associations and nonprofits have taken the pledge so far. "The key is to get us past the point where people are rejected immediately and automatically because they have a criminal background,'' says Johnny Taylor, SHRM's CEO.

Story continues

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At a time when the national unemployment rate is 3.8 percent, SHRM says that more than 7.8 million jobs need to be filled by 2020. With 650,000 people being released from jail and prison every year, the time is ripe for employers to be more open to those with a criminal history, Taylor says.

Job growth slows: Just 20,000 jobs added in February as hiring slows, unemployment drops in latest report

Just the beginning: As FIRST STEP Act raises bar on reform, ending ban on prison Pell Grant becomes imperative

A 'perfect storm'

"I think it's the perfect storm,'' Taylor says, noting that communities also become safer when people are able to legally earn a living. "People aren't recidivating (or returning to criminal activity) simply because they're bad actors. They're recidivating because they can't provide for their families.''

Even before the recent push by Congress and state lawmakers, some major companies had implemented policies to ease the path of those who'd spent time behind bars.

Target removed a question about criminal history from its job applications in 2013. "Now, we gather criminal background information in the final stages of the hiring process,'' says Danielle Schumann, a Target spokeswoman. "This ensures individuals are considered for employment based on their qualifications, interview and availability.''

The retailer has also signed onto federal and New York State pledges calling for a reduction of workplace barriers to the formerly incarcerated.

At Tyson Foods, "while applicants ... may be subject to background checks, questions about felony convictions arent part of the application process and dont automatically preclude them from employment,'' says spokesman Derek Burleson, "We make hiring decisions on a case by case basis."

And Walmart, the nation's largest employer, removed criminal history questions from its job application nearly a decade ago.

"The removal does not eliminate the background check, but it offers those whove been previously convicted of a job-related crime a chance to get their foot in the door,'' says spokesman Justin Rushing. "We also have a thoughtful and thorough process where the candidate can, if they choose, submit additional information to have their individual circumstances reviewed.

Only 5 percent of managers say their businesses have specific recruiting programs for people with a criminal record, according to a study by SHRM and the Charles Koch Institute that was released in May.

However, more than a third of managers and HR staffers said they were willing to give jobs to applicants with such a history, and over 80 percent of managers feel the value employees with criminal histories bring to the business is as high, or greater, than that of their colleagues who do not have a record.

Such openness is significant, says Geoffrey Golia, associate executive director of Getting Out And Staying Out (GOSO), a New York area re-entry program that helps with needs ranging from education to job placement.

"Human resource officers for medium- and large-sized businesses are often the people who make the decisions about who to hire and how to set standards for hiring,'' says Golia, whose program helped Clark land his job, "so obviously that kind of effort demonstrates that there's a real sea change in terms of people's perspective on hiring formerly incarcerated and justice involved people.''

He adds that changing attitudes may be more responsible for the shift than a low jobless rate since "it is possible to, in some ways, continually discriminate against people and still meet your hiring needs....I think people know people who've been involved in the criminal justice system. When they hear individual people's stories, I think it humanizes it in a way that people start to realize the human cost and the reality of the system. So I think the social and cultural piece is important.''

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Job key to staying out of jail

The link between having a job and staying out of jail is strong.

Among those who've gone to school, undergone training, received mentorship or gotten jobs through GOSO in the previous 90 days, the recidivism rate is under 2 percent, Golia says. For those who've engaged with the program over the previous three years, the rate is 15 percent. That's compared to a five-year recidivism rate of 76.6 percent for those released from state prisons according to the Bureau of Justice.



"I can't overstate how important it is to make a decent wage,'' Golia says. "The dignity inherent in work and being able to earn a wage to support yourself and others is a really powerful incentive.''

Four years ago, Michael Almodovar, 19, says he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, charged with robbery and assault because of crimes committed by a friend. He was released after a month in New York City's Horizon Juvenile Center, but he says that brush with the law woke him up.

Three months ago, through GOSO, he got a job making salads and doing deliveries for the restaurant Harlem Pizza Co.

My whole family is incarcerated, Almodovar says, noting that he has a teenage cousin whos been in New York City's Rikers Island jail complex for three years on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. Nobody in my family finished school....My grandmother always told me she saw more in me than anybody else. I want to make my grandmother proud of me.''

Some still say 'not in my backyard'

SHRM's goal is not merely to get companies to hire a set number of workers who were once incarcerated "as an act of good will,'' Taylor says. The organization intends to collect data from businesses about not only the number of people they bring on board but their rate of retention, and how well they perform in comparison to their colleagues.

"If you're just hiring people purely because they were formerly incarcerated, we could end up hurting this movement, this initiative, because its a quota,'' Taylor says. "Our goal is to ensure that employers take the formerly incarcerated through the same level of rigor and assessment that they would any other employee....Our hope is that it will show that people with criminal backgrounds stay as long and or longer and dont commit more crimes.''

Still, even some businesses that are open to hiring employees who've had run-ins with the law are reluctant to publicize it.

One of the biggest challenges that we have to overcome is the NIMBY (not in my backyard) phenomenon,'' Taylor says, "and thats 'Yeah you should hire people with criminal backgrounds as long as they dont work here'....You must respect the privacy (of the formerly incarcerated) because there are some employees who have strongly held opinions and it would change their view of someone they previously thought was great.''

But Almodovar's experience has been positive, and he says that earning $15 an hour plus tips is helping him reach for goals both near and far. "We just recently got evicted from our apartment,'' he said about his family, which he said fell behind paying the rent, and then wasn't allowed to make good on the payment because the landlord is trying to rid the building of lower-income tenants. "I need to save my money to get a new apartment.''

Despite that setback, he has hope. Through GOSO, he's studying to get his high school diploma, and Almodovar thinks he may go on to college. "I'm not on the streets anymore,'' he said. "Im on a brighter path.''





This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Got a criminal record? Will hire: Businesses pledge to give formerly incarcerated a chance
New York (AFP) - A representative of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday defended taking control of the country's New York consulate as a "liberation," and promised it would soon reopen to "all Venezuelans."

The six-story consulate, located near the United Nations, "was illegally inhabited by officials of the regime of (Venezuelan President) Nicolas Maduro," said Gustavo Marcano, a senior Guaido-appointed official, adding they had "no legal status to be here."

As US President Donald Trump told a press conference with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro that his administration could impose "a lot tougher" sanctions on Venezuela, Marcano showed journalists around the consulate.

Some rooms were empty, but the building was dotted with art and pictures of former President Hugo Chavez -- Maduro's predecessor -- maps of Venezuela, piles of passport applications and a cabinet where shirts remained on hangers.

A computer room had been stripped, but it was not immediately clear who had taken the contents.

Guaido's ambassador to Washington, Carlos Vecchio, announced Monday that the opposition government had taken control of three Venezuelan diplomatic properties in the US: two military buildings in Washington and the consulate in New York.

A US State Department spokesman confirmed that the US government -- which recognizes Guaido's authority along with some 50 other countries -- backed the move.

"This is a welcome development for our bilateral relations with Venezuela... US policy is to support democracy in Venezuela, interim President Guaido and the National Assembly, which is the only democratically elected institution in the country," the spokesman told AFP.

In a statement on Twitter, the Venezuelan government meanwhile branded the action an "extremely serious violation of the US government's international obligations," and threatened to take reciprocal action in Venezuela.
Miami (AFP) - Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido's ambassador to Washington said Monday he had taken control of three Venezuelan diplomatic properties in the United States.

Carlos Vecchio, appointed by self-declared president Guaido, entered two Venezuelan military buildings in Washington -- while advisory minister Gustavo Marcano took control of the consulate in New York.

"We are recovering and protecting the assets of the Venezuelan people to stop the usurper regime from continuing to steal from and destroy them as it has in the last 20 years," Vecchio said.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, who is loyal to embattled President Nicolas Maduro, denounced the "forced and illegal occupation."

In a statement on Twitter, the Venezuelan government branded the action an "extremely serious violation of the US government's international obligations," and threatened to take reciprocal action in Venezuela.

The ambassador said that in the coming days, his mission would take possession of the Venezuelan embassy, although its accounts are frozen.

A source close to Vecchio said the opposition-controlled National Assembly would have to approve their use.

A US State Department spokesman confirmed that President Donald Trump's administration -- which recognizes Guaido's authority along with some 50 other countries -- backed the move.

"This is a welcome development for our bilateral relations with Venezuela... US policy is to support democracy in Venezuela, interim President Guaido and the National Assembly, which is the only democratically elected institution in the country," the spokesman told AFP.

Vecchio added that the Venezuela's military attache in Washington, Colonel Jose Luis Silva Silva, would remain in his poist.

Silva Silva represented Maduro until January 26, when he took advantage of Guaido's offer of amnesty for military personnel who reject Maduro's socialist government.
In 1994, the Montgomery Advertiser reported that the Southern Poverty Law Center was a toxic atmosphere for its black employees, who said they felt threatened and banded together. At the time, SPLC co-founder Morris Dees pooh-poohed the report, claiming that the most discriminated people in America today are white men when it comes to jobs. This month, SPLC employees notified management that allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it. Dees, 82, was fired.

By any fair or rigorous standard, its difficult to impugn Deess character based on either the old charge of racial discrimination or the current, still-vague allegations. But Deess leadership of the SPLC has done enough to impugn his character, and by the SPLCs own standard, both incidents could be enough to designate the organization a hate group. Far from being a nonpartisan watchdog genuinely dedicated to exposing racism and extremism, the SPLC has spent recent decades stoking fear and hostility for fun and funds. That is Deess legacy as he departs.

The SPLCs estrangement from its former moral authority is an open secret. Yale law professor Stephen Bright, former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, told the Los Angeles Times that Morris is a flimflam man and hes managed to flimflam his way along for many years raising money by telling people about the Ku Klux Klan and hate groups, he said. He sort of goes to whatever will sell and has, of course, brought in millions and millions and millions of dollars. SPLC assets reached $477 million in 2017.

Hate groups, in Deess junk-mail pitches, are forever on the march, always growing, always metastasizing in sinister new ways. These fears were built on smears: Dees would make ever more absurd claims about right-leaning individuals and groups, labeling scholars and intellectuals such as Charles Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Christina Hoff Sommers soldiers of hatred to attract publicity, which in turn would stoke the fundraising furnace. The Center for Immigration Studies and the Alliance Defending Freedom were absurdly designated hate groups, as was the Family Research Council for its traditional views on gay marriage. In 2012 a shooter who picked his target off the SPLCs hate map marched into FRCs offices and shot an unarmed security guard.

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The SPLC hustle has become so brazen, the group was lately starting to receive skeptical coverage even from left-leaning media outlets. Last year, liberal Muslim Maajid Nawaz sued the SPLC for calling him an anti-Muslim extremist. It settled the lawsuit for $3.4 million and an apology, but its grift continued apace.

Lumping together neo-Nazis and distinguished authors is a vile, shameless tactic in which much of the mainstream media has been complicit for many years by treating the SPLC as a neutral umpire instead of a wildly and unabashedly partisan activist group. (Were not really set up to cover the extreme Left, a spokesperson told NR in 2012.) Deess SPLC took a nominal stance against hatred, but its true mission was to profit from hate-mongering. While we doubt new leadership will solve the SPLCs problem, were nonetheless happy to see him go.

More from National Review
A health food store employee was fired after using anti-Semitic slurs against a co-worker. (Photo: Mother Earths Storehouse via Facebook)

A health food store in New York has fired an employee after he allegedly called a Jewish co-worker a f**king Jew and then turned off the lights in a produce cooler before telling her youre in the gas chamber, local paper the Daily Freeman reports.

The alleged incident took place on March 11 at the Mother Earths Storehouse location in Kingston. Frustrated that management did not take her daughter Sarahs concerns seriously enough, the young womans mother, Jackie Winder Shabanowitz, called out the store in a Facebook post last Friday.

According to her post, the male coworker was made to apologize to her 18-year-old daughter for the initial incident  but he still had his job and had harassed her again two days later. She also claimed that managers told Sarah that shed be fired if she went public about the anti-Semitic attack.

I wanted to show up there and cause a huge stink but Sarah didnt want me to, she added. I told her to quit and go to the police. I told her when the managers threatened her she should have threatened them with the media. I can offer her advice and support, its up to her if she still wants to work there. If she continues to work there then she condones that behavior.

The posts sparked outrage, with some commenters calling for a boycott of the store.

This is disgusting and appalling behavior from her co-worker and management, read one comment. How awful for your daughter to be spoken and treated.

Shabanowitz later told commenters that her daughter quit her job at the store, which Mothers Earth Storehouse owner Kevin Schneider confirmed to the Daily Freeman.

Schneider also confirmed that the male coworker in question was fired by phone on Saturday, a day after Shabanowitzs post went up. But he said that managements response was misrepresented, resulting in unfair backlash that he felt the store didnt deserve. Schneider told the paper that the two part-time employees had clashed in the past, which is why the store conducted an investigation with the aim of both keeping their jobs.

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It started off as a complaint, then it was countered, then it escalated, he said.

The store also acknowledged the negative feedback it received in a Facebook post, citing a lot of misinformation on social media. In a subsequent post, however, management did apologize for the incident, adding, We have never, nor will we ever tolerate hate.

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Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.




Henry Schein, Inc. HSIC recently announced the buyout of Lighthouse 360 through its Henry Schein One joint venture (JV). Lighthouse 360 is a provider of user-friendly dental practice management and patient communication software. Henry Schein expects the acquisition to be neutral to its 2019 earnings per diluted share and accretive thereafter. However, the financial terms of the deal have been kept under wraps.

Offering a large variety of web-based tools that automate tedious tasks and enhance time-efficiency, Lighthouse 360 serves more than 11,000 dental practices. We believe the addition of Lighthouse 360's highly automated software platform will widen the range of Henry Scheins practice marketing and client communication solutions.

Market Potential

Per Transparency Market Research, the global dental practice management software market is expected to value $4.3 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of more than 11% between 2017 and 2025. The report further states that growing digitization of dental practices, rising healthcare IT budgets and increase in demand for chair time optimization in developed markets will continue to fuel growth in the niche market. Given the data, we believe the latest development is a timely one and will significantly contribute to the top line in the near term.

Henry Schein One At a Glance

Henry Schein seems to be upbeat about its dental technology business, Henry Schein One. It was formed as a result of the companys JV with Internet Brands last July. The JV combines Henry Schein Practice Solutions' products and services with the dental businesses of Internet Brands.

Recently, the company launched Dentrix G7, the upgraded version of the dental practice management system in Canada.

In February 2019, Henry Schein One announced the buyout of a dental practice management solutions company, Kopfwerk. The company also announced integration of CareCredit's financing tool into its dental practice management software solutions in December 2018. CareCredit integrates into practice management software solutions like Dentrix and Easy Dental, provided to dental professionals by Henry Schein One.

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Furthermore, Henry Schein One launched additional products like Dentrix Smart Image, enhanced Dentrix service bundles including Optimum Pro for payment management services and Ultimate Service Bundle, online booking for Dentrix and Dentrix Ascend and the Dentrix Ascend Quick Exam module. The company has also introduced the Dentrix Ascend in the United Kingdom.

Share Price Performance

Over the past month, Henry Schein has outperformed its industry. The stock has lost 0.6% in comparison with the 1.8% fall of the industry.

Zacks Rank and Key Picks

Henry Schein currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). A few better-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are Integer Holdings Corporation ITGR, Veeva Systems Inc. VEEV and Hologic, Inc. HOLX.

Integer Holdings projects earnings growth rate of 31.2% for the first quarter. It currently carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Veeva Systems long-term earnings growth rate is projected at 14.8%. The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Hologics long-term earnings growth rate is estimated at 8.9%. The stock presently has a Zacks Rank #2.

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1500 Employees of Omega Group Address Bidzina Ivanishvili

By Tea Mariamidze

1500 workers of Omega Group Tobacco (OGT) have released a joint statement from the factory that has been suspended for three months already, addressing the real ruler of the government of Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili.Ivanishvili is a billionaire and the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party, but he is often referred to as the informal governor of the whole country.Omega Group employees expressed hope that the schedule proposed by Omega to cover its debt to the state budget will be acceptable for the government and the factory will resume working.According to the statement, Omega Group has paid more than GEL 1.5 billion in the state budget over the past few months, adding due to the suspension of operation of the factory during a few months, the country lost more than GEL 12 million.The workers added that Omega was successfully reimbursed in 2004 for 5 years as a result of the reorganization, the company paid to the budget more than 700 million GEL.We, simple people have been working here for 30 years. We are proud that our company Omega Group has paid more than 1.5 billion GEL in the budget, and when it resumed working in November-December 2018, we again paid GEL 6 million to the budget. Now that the factory has been suspended in January, February, and March, the state lost GEL 2012 income for that, the statement says.The employees say that their founder Zaza Okuashvili exposed evidence of corruption and racket towards his business, adding it is the government that does not let them continue working.We, Omega Group staff, still do not believe that we will get the right of labor, enshrined in the Georgian Constitution, in our factory and the company which has been successful in its existence for 30 years. We hope we will not become victims of illegal revenge of the government, the statement reads.In March 2018, the Revenue Service (RS) appealed to Tbilisi City Court to obtain a permit for the sale of seized property of OGT as it had accumulated unpaid GEL 51 million tax to the state budget.In June, the Tbilisi City Court satisfied the request of the Revenue Service, which was appealed by the company. On the decision of the Appeals Court on 25 July 2018, the company's complaint was not satisfied and the Revenue Service was granted permission to sell the sequestered property of Omega Group., in case the company did not cover the debt.The Revenue Service says Omega Group paid 1 million GEL on October 26, 2018, and asked for a renewal of production to "maintain jobs and continue production so the company was granted such rights.The factory resumed functioning and worked until January when its work was again suspended for not fulfilling the obligations undertaken under the new schedule.Omega and its founder Zaza Okuashvili says that under the Georgian Dream leadership its cigarette company OGT suffered $100 million in losses after multinational company British American Tobacco violated the laws on competition and tobacco control with the help of the Georgian Dream government members.The corporation says that they had to take loans from banks to cover their necessary expenses to the staff and the state budget but they failed to do so.
Cousins Properties Incorporated CUZ is a promising stock right now backed by its organic and inorganic growth strategies that poises it well for future growth. Further, earnings growth prospects and industry tailwinds make it an attractive pick.

This March, it sold air rights at The Gulch, retaining office development rights on the property. The company will also develop Norfolk Southerns new headquarters at 650 West Peachtree in Midtown Atlanta. In addition, the company strengthened its portfolio in Midtown Atlanta with the acquisition of 1200 Peachtree, a Class A office building. These transactions offer value-accretion opportunities over the long term, encouraging Cousins Properties to raise its 2019 earnings outlook.

Cousins Properties not only beat estimates in the last reported quarter, but has also been witnessing upward estimate revisions, reflecting analysts optimism about its prospects. Over the past 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2019 funds from operations (FFO) per share moved 12.7% north.

Further, this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock has gained around 23.1% over the past three months, outperforming 12% growth recorded by the industry.

Notably, Cousins Properties has a number of other aspects that make it an attractive investment option.

Why Cousins Properties is an Attractive Pick

Revenue Strength: Cousins Properties continues to make steady progress toward improving its top line. Revenues witnessed a 28% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) over the five-year period ended 2018. Also, the companys projected sales growth (F1/F0) of 7.06% (the industry average being 3.13%) indicates constant upward momentum in revenues.

Strong Leverage: Cousins Properties debt/equity ratio stands at 0.38 compared with the industry average of 0.84, indicating a relatively lower debt burden. This reflects that it has a lower debt burden relative to its peers and will likely be able to perform well even in a dynamic business environment. In addition, the company is focused on improving its balance-sheet position which will enable it to leverage on improving market fundamentals and raise operational efficiency.

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Operational Strength:Cousins Properties owns an unmatched portfolio of Class A office assets concentrated over the high-growth Sun Belt markets. Also, assets in these markets command higher rents compared with the broader market. Additionally, with trophy assets acquisitions and opportunistic developments, the company has built a stronger portfolio that drove its performance. In fact, the company recorded positive year-over-year cash net operating income (NOI) growth during fourth-quarter 2018, which marks the 28th consecutive quarter of such increase.

Encouraging FFO picture:Over the trailing four quarters, the companys FFO per share has surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate, with average beat of 3.23%. This encouraging performance will likely continue as reflected by its long-term (three-five years) projected FFO per share growth rate of 15.1% (higher than the industry average of 1.71%). Moreover, strategic transactions executed in Atlanta encouraged the company to increase its 2019 FFO per share guidance to 70-75 cents, up from the 61-65 cents, provided earlier.

Other Stocks to Consider

Investors can also consider other top-ranked stocks from the same space like Terreno Realty Corporation TRNO, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. ARE and Boston Properties, Inc. BXP. All three stocks carry a Zacks Rank of 2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Terreno Realtys FFO per share estimates for first-quarter 2019 remained unchanged at $1.32, over the last month. Further, it has a long-term growth rate of 8.40%.

Alexandrias Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2019 FFO per share has been revised upward marginally to $6.96 over the last month. Also, it has a long-term growth rate of 4.4%.

Boston Properties FFO per share estimate for the ongoing year has been revised marginally north to $6.92 in seven days time. Additionally, it has a long-term growth rate of 6.20%.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represent funds from operations (FFO)  a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.

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Trapani (Italy) (AFP) - Gambian Cherno Jallow, Senegalese Cheikhaya Dieng, and Ivorian Fofana Lamine, are finishing 44-month jail sentences in Italy after people smugglers forced them to navigate boats across the Mediterranean.

Shortly before they were due to be released, the three men told AFP about their ordeals from their prison in Trapani, Sicily.

All three left their respective countries in 2015 in search of work, and all three hoped to find it in Libya.

But once there, 22-year-old Jallow was kidnapped and his family forced to pay a ransom.

The chaos and threats to their safety meanwhile pushed Dieng, 22, and Lamine, 25, to contact people smugglers to try to reach Italy.

"On the day of my departure, they gave me a compass and told me: 'Someone will steer the boat and you will hold the compass.'" said Lamine.

"Me, I said I don't have any experience. But they have weapons! I didn't use the compass. I'm Ivorian, the other was Gambian, we didn't speak the same language!"

Dieng was on another boat.

"When he found out I was a fisherman for years, the intermediary gave me back my money and made me take the rudder," he said.

"I did it to save my life, because if I refused, they could kill me, for nothing."

Jallow's unfinished teacher training drew the people smugglers' attention.

"On the same day we were going to leave for Italy, a man told me: you are the one who is going to hold the compass," he said during the interview in the prison's theatre.

"'You have studied, you know how to use a compass.' He said: 'If you don't use this compass, we will kill you because you will have destroyed our business.'

"They put the gun, literally, on my head... And then the Arab took the boat up to the middle of the sea and threw the compass to me. I had no other choice," he said.

The three men and their boats were rescued off Libya by a Norwegian vessel before being transferred to the Italian coastguard and disembarked in Trapani in January 2016.

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There, police asked the migrants who had steered and navigated the vessels, and they identified the three men now in prison.

They were sentenced to three years and eight months in prison, and with some time off for good behaviour, they will soon be released.

But they have also just heard that Italy has rejected their asylum applications.

"The real people responsible, they're still over there," said Dieng.

"There are Africans like me who work with the Libyans, they're the traffickers. They stay in Libya because they make lots of money," he lamented.
Jerusalem (AFP) - Hungary opened a new trade office in west Jerusalem on Tuesday, fulfilling a February pledge by Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Israel to do so in the disputed city.

The opening stops short of moving Hungary's Israel embassy to Jerusalem as US President Donald Trump has done, breaking with decades of international consensus, but was still welcomed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Attending the ribbon-cutting in a city-centre office tower along with Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, Netanyahu hailed the move.

"It's the first European diplomatic mission to open in Jerusalem in many decades," Netanyahu said.

He called it "important for trade, for diplomacy and for the move that Hungary is leading right now to change the attitude in Europe towards Jerusalem."

The Jerusalem office is to be a branch of the Hungarian embassy in Tel Aviv.

The European Union's collective position is that Jerusalem's status must be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians as part of a future peace agreement.

The Palestinians see the Israeli-annexed eastern sector of the city as the capital of their future state.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said Tuesday he would consider moving Lithuania's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem should he win May's presidential elections.

Senior politicians in fellow EU states Czech Republic and Romania have said they are also considered moving their embassies to Jerusalem but no decisions have been announced.

Netanyahu frequently lashes out at what he calls the EU's "hypocritical and hostile attitude", referring to the bloc's criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

The Jewish state considers the entire city its capital.

Trump in December 2017 drew criticism worldwide when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

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His country's embassy moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv the following May.

Guatemala was the first country to follow in America's footsteps, and Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office on January 1, has said he wants to also move its embassy to Jerusalem.

Australia in December recognised west Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but said it would not shift its embassy from Tel Aviv until a peace settlement is signed.
While it may not be enough for some shareholders, we think it is good to see the China Properties Group Limited (HKG:1838) share price up 12% in a single quarter. But that doesnt change the fact that the returns over the last five years have been less than pleasing. In fact, the share price is down 29%, which falls well short of the return you could get by buying an index fund.

Check out our latest analysis for China Properties Group

There is no denying that markets are sometimes efficient, but prices do not always reflect underlying business performance. One imperfect but simple way to consider how the market perception of a company has shifted is to compare the change in the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price movement.

During the five years over which the share price declined, China Properties Groups earnings per share (EPS) dropped by 22% each year. The share price decline of 6.6% per year isnt as bad as the EPS decline. So investors might expect EPS to bounce back  or they may have previously foreseen the EPS decline.

You can see how EPS has changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values).

SEHK:1838 Past and Future Earnings, March 19th 2019

Dive deeper into China Properties Groups key metrics by checking this interactive graph of China Properties Groups earnings, revenue and cash flow.

A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 6.6% in the twelve months, China Properties Group shareholders did even worse, losing 23%. Having said that, its inevitable that some stocks will be oversold in a falling market. The key is to keep your eyes on the fundamental developments. Unfortunately, last years performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 6.6% over the last half decade. We realise that Buffett has said investors should buy when there is blood on the streets, but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality businesses. Before deciding if you like the current share price, check how China Properties Group scores on these 3 valuation metrics.

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For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on HK exchanges.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
By Manoj Kumar NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Hundreds of Indian traders burned Chinese goods on Tuesday and urged the government to raise import taxes on them to protest against China's trade and foreign policies. The traders, who also urged consumers to boycott Chinese imports, are concerned that Chinese products are hurting Indian manufacturers. But there is also anger in India after China used its veto to block the U.N. Security Council from blacklisting a Pakistan-based Islamist leader. Masood Azhar is the founder of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), which claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack that killed 40 paramilitary police in Indian-controlled Kashmir in February. China prevented a U.N. Security Council committee last Wednesday from blacklisting Masood. It said it had done so to give more time for the committee to have consultations and study the issue. China is India's second biggest trading partner and a trade deficit has widened in favor of Beijing by nearly 75 percent to $63 billion since 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power. Modi, who is seeking a second term in a general election beginning next month, faces criticism from both opposition parties and groups affiliated with his party for what they see as his failure to take steps to contain the growing influence of Chinese companies on the Indian economy. The Confederation of All India Traders, which represents millions of traders, said their action against Chinese goods was aimed at teaching it a lesson, after it used its veto to block Masood's blacklisting. In the capital, New Delhi, traders burned Chinese goods including laptops, mobile phones, computers, fax machines and toys at the Sadar Bazar, the city's main market for Chinese goods. Chinese good were burned in similar protests in several other cities. Demonstrators also urged people to boycott Chinese goods, and asked the government to increase import tariffs on Chinese imports that they said were hurting small Indian manufacturers and costing millions of jobs. Such protests have usually been ineffective in the past. (Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Edited by Martin Howell)
Basra (Iraq) (AFP) - Over 2,000 artefacts, including about 100 that were looted and found abroad, were unveiled Tuesday in a museum in Basra province on the southern tip of Iraq, authorities said.

Basra is the most oil-rich province in Iraq but its heritage sites have long been neglected.

On Tuesday between 2,000 and 2,500 pieces went on display in the Basra Museum, the second largest in Iraq, said Qahtan al-Obeid, head of archeology and heritage in the province.

"They date from 6000 BC to 1500 AD," he told AFP, referring to the Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian periods.

Obeid said about 100 artefacts -- most of which came from Jordan and the United States -- were given back to Iraq to be displayed in the museum, a former palace of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

The heritage of Iraq, most of which was former Mesopotamia, has paid a heavy price due to the wars that have ravaged the country for nearly four decades.

Following the US-led invasion that overthrew Saddam in 2003, Islamic State group jihadists destroyed many of the country's ancient statues and pre-Islamic treasures.

During its occupation of nearly a third of Iraq between 2014 and 2017, IS captured much attention by posting videos of its militants destroying statues and heritage sites with sledgehammers and pneumatic drills on the grounds that they are idolatrous.

But experts say they mostly destroyed pieces too large to smuggle and sell off, and kept the smaller pieces, several of which are already resurfacing on the black market in the West.

The United States says it has repatriated more than 3,000 stolen artefacts to Iraq since 2005, including many seized in conflict zones in the Middle East.
An Islamic State spokesman on Monday called on the groups followers to violently retaliate against non-believers in response to the massacre of 50 people at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch last week.

The scenes of the massacres in the two mosques should wake up those who were fooled, and should incite the supporters of the caliphate to avenge their religion, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir said in a 44-minute audio recording, according to the New York Times.

Al-Muhajir, who uses a pseudonym and whose true identity remains unknown, went on to mock the Trump administrations claim that ISIS has been totally defeated in Syria, saying that the administration had created a state of confusion and contradiction that make it impossible for any observer to know what is meant by the word victory.

As the Times Rukimi Callimachi notes, Muhajir, whose whereabouts are unknown, has somehow been able to keep apprised of current events despite his being on the run in what is likely a desolate part of Syria. He knew, for example, that Trump visited Iraq in December and used the abbreviated visit to deride American efforts to stabilize the region.

How strange for a victor who cant even announce publicly an official visit to a country he claims to be bringing peace and stability to. He could only come like a frightened and cowardly thief, he said.

Al-Muhajir also claimed during his video message that ISISs leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, previously rumored dead, is alive.

The Friday shootings in Christchurch have shaken New Zealand, which had never before experienced a mass shooting on a similar scale, and will likely usher in both new gun-control laws and new restrictions on social-media platforms, since the shooter, a 28-year-old Australian man, live-streamed part of his attack on Facebook.

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Omar Oil Field (Syria) (AFP) - An Italian fighting alongside a Kurdish-led force to expel the Islamic State group from its last pocket of territory in eastern Syria has been killed, the force said Tuesday.

Lorenzo Orsetti, 33, was killed in battle on Sunday as he fought diehard jihadists in the village of Baghouz, a spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said.

"Two days ago... he was at the forefront of the fighting and he died in battle," Mustefa Bali told AFP.

"He was a frontline fighter in the ranks of the People's Protection Units" or YPG, a Kurdish force spearheading the SDF, he said.

"He participated in more than one battle and more than one SDF campaign" against IS, Bali said.

Orsetti even fought to defend the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in northwest Syria, before it was overrun by Turkish-backed Syrian rebels a year ago, he said.

IS published a photograph of the slain fighter and a snapshot of his healthcare card on its social media channels Monday, claiming to have killed him in Baghouz.

The YPG on Tuesday released a video of Orsetti, in which the Italian said he joined the Kurdish force of his own free will, knew the risks involved, and had no regrets.

Dressed in military uniform and with a weapon in his hand, he said he was in Syria mainly "because I believe in freedom -- I'm an Anarchist -- and I was tired of my life in... Western society".

- 'I love you all' -

"If you see this message, probably something's going... you know," he said, a yellow triangular-shaped YPG flag on the wall behind him.

"I love you all, all of you -- all of you (who) passed through my life: my friends, my family -- my dog," he said.

"Long live Kurdistan, long live the YPG and the YPJ," its female fighter units, he added in Kurdish.

Orsetti's father told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera he and his wife were "very proud" of their son.

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A former waiter and chef from Florence, Orsetti had initially travelled to Syria in September 2017 as an observer but felt "increasingly involved", his father said.

His body "is apparently still in a combat zone. We hope to be able to recover it as quickly as possible," he said.

"Lorenzo once told us he'd love to be buried in Syria. We don't know what we'll do yet, but I think we'll respect his wishes".

Orsetti had left a "last testament" cited by La Stampa daily and other media.

"I have no regrets. I died doing what I believed was right, defending the weak," it read.

According to the Corriere della Sera, some 25 Italians have travelled to Syria since 2015 to fight alongside Kurdish forces.

Three men and two women are still there, it said.
Palermo (Italy) (AFP) - Despite hefty anti-mafia powers, international police cooperation and thousands of arrests, Italy has yet to deal a significant blow to the human-trafficking networks responsible for sending countless migrants across the Mediterranean.

Those now behind bars are hardly kingpins, and the one headline-grabbing arrest of a top trafficking mastermind appears increasingly likely to be a case of mistaken identity.

In 2015, Italy jailed a Tunisian people smuggler for 18 years for his role in a shipwreck that killed 366 people two years earlier.

And in 2016, they handed another Tunisian an identical sentence for captaining a boat in which up to 900 people perished.

But both were the equivalent of mere drivers -- a far cry from those organising the transports who rake in vast sums of cash from sending migrants to an uncertain fate on the high seas.

Although dozens of these smugglers -- or "scafisti" as they are known in Italian -- have been jailed, most are like Cheikhaya Dieng, a 26-year-old Senegalese man who was forced to steer the rubber dinghy that brought him to Italy.

"The judge asked me 'did you steer the dinghy?' and I said 'yes, I did, to save my life'. Because if I refused they could kill me," he said with barely concealed anger.

"I saw others like me, they shot them in the legs," he told AFP at the Sicilian jail where he is serving his sentence.

"But the judge didn't care, he gave me three years and eight months in prison -- for nothing."

- Huge resources, few results -

The Italian justice system, however, appears to have taken such cases into consideration: although more than 2,500 scafisti have been arrested, interior ministry figures show, only a handful have been prosecuted.

Those who do face justice tend to be the ones who reach shore in areas where the magistrates have less on their plates.

Last month, a Palermo appeals court acquitted seven crew members of a boat in which 53 migrants suffocated in 2015.

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They all said they had steered the boat after being threatened.

Although the Italian authorities are desperate to get their hands on those running the show, the task is daunting, despite the impressive resources available to them.

Italian prosecutors have wide-ranging powers to probe each and every vessel headed for Italy, even if they've been intercepted or shipwrecked in international waters.

They also have an array of extensive powers drawn up in recent decades to fight organised crime, including the right to use overseas wiretaps and turncoat testimony.

On top of that, they have access to intelligence from Europe's border protection agency Frontex and from the EU's anti-trafficking mission Sophia which operates in the Mediterranean.

And they also benefit from cooperation with police in other European countries where the networks exist, including Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

But despite plentiful intelligence, most of the "bosses" remain safely out of reach in Libya, rendered untouchable by the chaos that has reigned there since the fall of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

- Top smuggler or Eritrean refugee? -

Despite repeated requests from AFP, no Italian ministry or prosecutor would comment on the state of investigations.

In June 2016, Italy hailed the arrest in Khartoum of one of its most wanted -- an Eritrean called Medhanie Yehdego Mered.

Known as "the General", he was wanted on suspicion of being the head of one of the largest migrant trafficking networks that had sent thousands of migrants to Europe -- and hundreds to their deaths.

But the triumph was short-lived, with serious doubts quickly arising over the real identity of the man now on trial in Palermo, who claims he is an Eritrean refugee called Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe -- whose only misfortune is to share a first name with the smuggling kingpin.

Three years after his arrest, he may have put on a bit of weight but he still doesn't bear much of a resemblance to photographs of the "real" Medhanie.
Rome (AFP) - Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Monday launched a fresh crackdown on charity ships which rescue migrants off Libya and bring them to Italy.

"The ports have been, and remain, CLOSED", Salvini said on Twitter, as his office released an eight-page directive on the laws regarding rescue operations -- laws it said some aid vessels had been breaking.

The minister, who also heads up the anti-immigrant League party, has repeatedly declared Italian waters closed to NGO rescue vessels, leaving several of them stranded at sea in the past in a bid to force Europe to take its share of asylum seekers.

While he acknowledged in his directive that helping those who lives are in danger was a "priority", he warned that there must be "sanctions" for those who "explicitly violate international, European and national rescue regulations".

"Nor must the real risks that the group of migrants may conceal individuals involved in terrorist activities... be overlooked".

The "passage of rescue ships in Italian territorial waters" was "detrimental to the order and security of the Italian State", he said.

The directive was issued just hours after an Italian charity ship rescued 49 people off the coast of Libya, under the nose of the Libyan coast guard, before requesting permission to disembark the migrants in Italy.

NGO ships have drawn fire from Rome by attempting on occasion to stop migrants being taken back to crisis-hit Libya, which human rights organisations insist cannot be considered safe for repatriations.

- 'Violation of maritime law' -

"It has happened that ships... have come to the aid of migrants in non-Italian SRRs (Search and Rescue Regions) and have disregarded the orders of the competent SAR (Search and Rescue) authorities," Salvini said in the directive.

Ships rescuing migrants in areas of the Mediterranean that fall under Libyan responsibility, during operations not coordinated by the command centre in Rome, have no right to seek Italy as a port of safety, he said.

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He accused the ships in question of "carrying out the rescue on their own initiative and then heading towards European maritime borders... in violation of international maritime law".

Salvini also took issue with charity ships that set sail for Italy rather than other ports.

"Nor are the Italian coasts the only possible landing places in the event of rescue events, given that the Libyan, Tunisian and Maltese ports can offer adequate logistical and health assistance... (and) are closer in terms of nautical miles".

Salvini, whose anti-migrant rhetoric has boosted him in the polls, has repeatedly vowed to find a way to ban all ships with rescued migrants from entering Italian waters.

He also insists Europe must do much more to help house asylum seekers.

Europe has been wrestling with divisions over how to handle the problem since the migration crisis of 2015 when more than one million people arrived on its shores, many of them fleeing conflict in the Middle East.
Mirza Subelianis Case: Objective Justice or Pre-Determined Decision

On March 4, 2019, the court made its decision towards one of the people involved in the murder case on Khorava street, Mirza Subeliani, and gave the defendant a prison sentence of 1 year and 1 month. This decision raises further suspicions of an informal influence in the case and the possible involvement of the court. The Khorava street case and the role of the high-ranking officials have once again intensified the feeling that influential individuals can manipulate the process of justice in the country. Transparency International Georgia presents significant findings related to this case.In December 2017, two minors were murdered on Khorava Street in Tbilisi. On May 31, 2018, the Tbilisi City Court made its decision about the case, according to which one of the persons accused in the murder of David Saralidze was exonerated, while the second person was charged with attempted murder. To date, it is unclear who killed Davit Saralidze. A few weeks before the decision was made, Rustavi 2 TV published security cam footage which showed how Mirza Subeliani was in the house of one of his relatives, who was involved in the Khorava street accident and thus had access to specific pieces of evidence. The footage also allegedly shows how the family, which Subeliani was visiting that day, was destroying specific pieces of evidence.Mass-scale protests demanding for the resignation of the Government started following the decision of the Tbilisi City Court. The father of one of the murdered minors, Zaza Saralidze, was leading the protests. Zaza Saralidze spoke about the influence of Mirza Subeliani during the investigation. According to Saralidze, due to the influence of specific persons, Subeliani covered up the real criminals, destroyed and tempered the evidence.As it is publicly known, Mirza Subeliani worked as Prosecutor during the rule of the United National Movement. After the change of the government, he was appointed as the Head of the General Inspection at the Ministry of Corrections. There were many media reports that he was a relative of the then Minister of Corrections, Sozar Subari, who had a hand in his appointment. Sozar Subari denied these claims and stated that Mirza Subeliani was appointed on the basis of professional merit.Mirza Subeliani is also associated with the 2013 case of the murdered prisoner in the Geguti colony, Levan Kortava. 27-year old Kortava passed after sustaining injuries from a beating. At that time, Mirza Subeliani was the Head of the General Inspection under the Ministry of Corrections, Probation and Legal Assistance. Days after Kortava passed away, the Ministry released two contradicting versions of his death. According to the first version, the prisoner tumbled on stairs in the hospital, while the other version stated there was a fight between the prisoners and that Kortava sustained deadly injuries as a result.According to the information published by the media, Mirza Subeliani is also associated with the May 26 case. He was the Prosecutor of a case where he charged two protestors with assault on an unknown individual. In both cases, the charges were proven against the defendants due to Prosecutor Subelianis efforts.It is widely believed by the public that Mirza Subeliani has information related to the removal of ex-Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili from his cell. The Strasbourg Human Rights Court has released a verdict that there had been a violation of Article 18 and ordered the state to investigate this case. To date, the government has not investigated the case. There is an opinion that Mirza Subeliani exerted influence over the investigation process of the Khorava Street case due to him holding secret information related to the removal of Vano Merabishvili from the cell. Nino Lomjaria, the Public Defender, has spoken how closely these two cases are intertwined.Mirza Subeliani is the father of one of the persons involved in the Khorava Street case and an uncle of another. On the day of the murder, Subeliani worked in a high-ranking position in the Prosecutors Office and resigned voluntarily a few days after the incident. According to Zaza Saralidze, Mirza Subeliani was protecting and covering up for persons involved in the murder, while the government, in turn, covered up for Mirza Subeliani.The Chief Prosecutor, Irakli Shotadze, resigned against the backdrop of mass-scale protests in Tbilisi. He was replaced by Bidzina Ivanishvilis former lawyer, Shalva Tadumadze.Against the backdrop of a strong public protest, the Ministry of Internal Affairs launched a new investigation into the murder case and, following the calls by the public and Zaza Saralidze, arrested Mirza Subeliani.Mirza Subeliani was charged with failure to report the crime in spite of the fact that the temporary investigative commission created within the Parliament found that Subeliani was also complicit in a number of other criminal charges (misuse of a power of office, an exertion of influence on witnesses and obstructing investigation). According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Mirza Subeliani is guilty of failing to notify the law enforcement about the details of the crime that occurred on Khorava Street on December 1, 2017. The court later reclassified the charges to concealment of a crime.A temporary investigation commission was created in the Parliament due to the high level of public interest and mass-scale protests. The majority of the members in the commission were members of the opposition party European Georgia. The commission prepared findings, according to which the commission found a number of serious violations during the investigation phase. Based on the information and witness interrogations, the commission concluded that the investigation into the Khorava Street case started in a proper manner and the participants of the incident were promptly identified, however, the investigation was derailed after Mirza Subeliani showed up. Moreover, the commission identified one more possible participant in the incident and has issued a recommendation to start an investigation in this regard.The document published the commission was not supported by the Georgian Dream, who instead presented alternative findings. According to these alternative findings, there is no evidence to suggest the existence of another participant who had to be criminally charged for delivering the killing blow to Davit Saralidze. The Parliament approved the alternative findings document.The Public Defender was given the Khorava Street case for an assessment. The Public Defenders office analyzed the evidence of the case, quality of the investigation and declared the following in its findings: One or two components of abuse of official powers is evident: negligence of duties, or abuse of powers, depending on what signs are behind the actions of the subjective parties  deliberate ineffective investigation or negligence, lack of professionalism and/or negligence disposition of duties.On October 14, 2018, audio recordings were published which allegedly included a discussion between Mirza Subeliani, Georgian Dream MP Viktor Japaridze and Dato Tsukhishvili, a former high-ranking official of the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons and former employee of the General Inspection. In the recording, Mirza Subeliani speaks about a number of criminal acts. The recording leaves the impression that Subeliani gave his consent to go to prison. In the recording, he is heard as saying that he holds a significant number of evidence of illegal activity by the Georgian Dream. Namely, he talks about kidnapping and torture. He also mentions a number of high-profile cases that the government took care of for him. Quite possibly, Subeliani has information about the removal of Vano Merabishvili from his cell. In the recording, he expresses disapproval of him having to go to prison and allegedly asks Viktor Japaridze to provide this information to the representatives of the government. In the same recording, Subeliani also states that he knew beforehand what sentence the court would issue against him. It is clear from the recording that he expected the court to sentence him to 1 year in prison. Subeliani also mentioned "buying" a suspended sentence.On October 15, the Prosecutors Office released a statement that they had started the investigation in several directions related to the secret audio recording, including illegal recording, blackmail, and abuse of office. The Prosecutors Office also had a version that the recording was staged and deliberately released to the public. The Prosecutors Office decided to involve the respective experts to confirm the authenticity of the recording. They also stated that due to the high public interest, the Prosecutors Office would provide systematic updates about the investigation to the public. However, the public still does not know what investigative mechanisms were carried out in regards to the high-profile cases named in the secret audio recording and how these investigations ended.On October 16, two days after their statement was released, the Prosecutors Office released one more audio recording, in which Mirza Subeliani now stated that he was ready to say lies to protect himself, namely to lie that he had some evidence on high-profile cases that would damage the reputation of the government. This prompted public opinion that this recording could have been created after the first one was released. This opinion was based on the fact that Viktor Japaridze visited Mirza Subeliani after Rustavi 2 TV announced the release of scandalous audio recordings. It is particularly noteworthy that Viktor Japaridze visited Mirza Subeliani on October 14, which was a weekend day that also happened to be a public holiday - the Day of Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. FactCheck took interest in this case and discovered that from November 2016 to date that this was the only instance out of 156 orders by the Chairperson of the Parliament that issued a permit to enter the penitentiary institution on a weekend day.The court made its decision on Mirza Subelianis case on March 4, 2019, and sentenced the defendant to 1 year and 1 month of prison for concealment of a crime. It is important to note that in the first audio recording, Subeliani spoke exactly about how the court would sentence him to 1 year in prison.In conclusion, it can be said that the joint analysis of the decision of the court and the information available from the audio recordings (provided these recordings are authentic) raises further suspicions about informal influence on the case and the existence of systematic issues within the justice system.
By Gayatri Suroyo and Tabita Diela JAKARTA (Reuters) - Rival campaigners in Indonesia's elections next month are sparring over ways to fix the education system in Southeast Asia's biggest economy, which is widely blamed for failing to equip students with the skills to find jobs. As a flood of young people enters the workforce, President Joko Widodo, who seeks re-election on April 17, has pledged to develop human capital in his second term, after focusing on roads, railways and airports since taking office in 2014. In a vice presidential debate this week, partly focused on education, opposition candidate Sandiaga Uno attacked Widodo's record and his signature program to improve one of the world's biggest vocational high school systems. "How ironic it is that this country's economy is the world's 15th or 16th biggest, but faces difficulties providing jobs for its youth," Uno said, adding that Indonesia's vocational school graduates are the largest chunk of its 7 million unemployed. Uno, who is running alongside retired general Prabowo Subianto, promised to cut youth unemployment by 2 million if elected. Widodo and his running mate, cleric Ma'ruf Amin, have a double-digit lead in most opinion polls, but education could prove a weakness. Indonesia should be enjoying a demographic sweet spot with its youthful population, but 90 percent of its labor force of 131 million have no college degree and more than half works in informal sectors. The World Bank said more than 55 percent of citizens who complete education are functionally illiterate, far more than 14 percent in neighboring Vietnam, which has been more successful in wooing manufacturers moving out of China. The OECD ranks Indonesia's education system 62nd among the 72 nations in its Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) that rates 15-year-olds' maths, science and reading skills. Neighboring Vietnam placed 8th. Pledging to emulate Germany's skills training system, Widodo's government wants to spend $1.22 billion in 2019 on improvements to 14,000 vocational schools which have 320,000 students, or more than double the past three years' spending. Vocational schools have failed to keep pace and offer the skills employers want, said Hariyadi Sukamdani, chairman of Indonesia's employers' association. "Once we hire people, they always have to be retrained." A joint assessment by the government and the World Bank revealed shortages of skills in managerial positions, from chemical manufacturing to biochemistry and food technology. At one of Jakarta's best vocational schools, deputy head Handayani said it was tough to keep pace with technology. While a course on office management that replaced secretarial training taught use of a fax and even a typewriter, there were no courses on artificial intelligence or automation, she added. During Sunday's debate, the 76-year-old Amin defended the government's program to produce a skilled workforce. He touted a plan for skills training and cash handouts to the unemployed, but some economists have warned that could stretch the budget. Uno, a businessman and former deputy governor of Jakarta, said he would push training for entrepreneurs and boost teachers' salaries if elected. Experts point to the looming demographic challenges. "Like it or not, this population is growing older and before it turns old, people have to be made more productive," Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said this month. (Additional reporting by Jessica Damiana; Editing by Ed Davies and Clarence Fernandez)
Amman (AFP) - Issam was reduced to tears recounting his life as a drug addict, as Jordanian authorities press an unprecedented campaign in the Muslim-majority country where substance abuse remains taboo.

Slogans such as "No to Drugs" are part of the new drive, launched in the wake of a worrying rise in the number of cases of addiction, possession and smuggling, to raise overall awareness of the issue, according to the anti-narcotics department.

Jordan's public security directorate has also started a primetime radio show that airs every Tuesday to address the dangers of drug addiction.

"Drugs have made me an outcast. No one respects me or even looks at me," Issam said during the show, hosted by Major Anas al-Tantawi of the anti-narcotics department.

"It got to the point where I sold my furniture and my five-year-old daughter's gold earrings ... I tried to commit suicide twice."

As the show came to a close, Tantawi said: "They are victims, and we must help them, not discard them."

- 'Bags of evidence' -

Brigadier Anwar al-Tarawneh, director of the anti-narcotics department, told AFP there has been a 32 percent increase in cases of addiction, possession smuggling in Jordan since 2017.

The evidence is there. In a room in the department, the shelves are crammed with white plastic bags and brown envelopes bulging with seized drugs -- including heroin, cocaine and amphetamines. Some were smuggled into the country in hollowed-out books, or shoes or disguised as pastries in a box.

But authorities say hashish is the most commonly used drug in the kingdom, where 20,000 people were arrested in 2018 for drug abuse.

Drug traffickers in Jordan, which has a small population of just over nine million, face sentences of between three and 20 years, depending on the amount and type of drugs seized.

Under a 2016 law, addicts are exempted from serving time if they agree to treatment at a rehabilitation centre.

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But drug addicts are generally still looked down upon by Jordan's conservative society.

"Drugs are a (vice) that affects one's mind, soul, finances and health," Muslim preacher Raed Sabri, who has a YouTube channel, told AFP.

Recovering addicts however must be "cared for and not discarded so that they can again be contributing members of society," he insisted.

The kingdom's anti-drugs campaign targets those aged between 18 and 27, who make up 47 percent of users, according to the anti-narcotics department.

According to Jamal al-Anani, a psychiatrist and drug addiction specialist, "curiosity, lack of maturity and stress" are the main causes that lead to addiction among teenagers.

Apart from workshops in schools and universities, Tarawneh said authorities were using "modern methods", including social media, to reach those most vulnerable.

- 'Drugs are a monster' -

At a 170-bed rehab centre in the capital Amman, affiliated with the public security directorate, posters on the walls read "Drugs are a Monster, don't come near" and "Drugs are a Waste of Money".

Treatment lasts between one and two months, said Fawaz al-Masaeed, the centre's director.

"There are three stages: detox, treatment and rehabilitation,"he told AFP, and the centre follows up with patients for four months after their discharge.

Omar, 32, said his mother encouraged him to check in to the centre after having struggled with drug addiction for 14 years.

"A friend offered me a cigarette when I was depressed, telling me 'Take this, it'll make you relax,'" Omar, now a father of four, told AFP.

"When I asked for another, I realised it was hashish ... I was 18 years old."

After years of substance abuse, "my health deteriorated, I lost 27 kilos (almost 60 pounds), I lost my job, and it strained my relationships with everyone around me. I destroyed my life."

Now after his rehabilitation, Omar hopes "to start a new life".
LONDON (AP)  The Latest on negotiations over Britain's departure from the EU (all times local):

3:50 p.m.

The speaker of Britain's House of Commons says the government can't ask lawmakers to vote again on its twice-rejected Brexit deal unless it is substantially changed.

John Bercow says parliamentary rules prevent a motion being brought back repeatedly for votes in the same session of Parliament. He says the government can't "resubmit to the House the same proposition or substantially the same proposition" that has already been rejected.

Bercow's statement complicates Prime Minister Theresa May's attempts to get her deal approved.

Lawmakers rejected the deal in January and again last week. May has been holding talks with opponents in a bid to persuade them to back the bill at a third attempt this week.

Amid the gridlock, lawmakers voted last week to delay Brexit by at least three months.

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1:10 p.m.

British Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman says there has been no breakthrough in talks on winning Parliament's support for the government's EU divorce deal  and there is just a day to shift opinion before Britain will have to seek a long delay to Brexit.

Spokesman James Slack says talks are continuing between the government and the Democratic Unionist Party, whose support is crucial.

May hopes to bring her twice-rejected Brexit deal back to Parliament this week for a third vote. But Slack says the government will only do that if there is "a realistic prospect of success."

May will have to make that judgment by the end of Tuesday. Wednesday is the last day a vote can be held before May heads to an EU summit where she will ask the bloc to delay Brexit.

If the deal has been approved, May will ask for a short "technical extension." If it is not, she will seek a much longer delay.

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9:10 a.m.

European Union foreign ministers are urging Prime Minister Theresa May to make clear Britain's position on leaving the bloc, as the Europeans weigh whether to approve an extension to the Brexit process.

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Ahead of a Brexit-focused summit of EU leaders this week, the ministers implored May once again to set out clearly what she wants from her European partners, less than two weeks before the Brexit date.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Monday: "We have to know what the British want: How long, what is the reason supposed to be, how it should go, what is actually the aim of the extension?"

Belgium Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said: "We are not against an extension in Belgium, but the problem is, to do what?"

___

9:05 a.m.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is making a last-minute push to win support for her European Union divorce deal, with attention focused on wooing Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party.

The DUP's 10 lawmakers are pivotal to May's effort to overturn two overwhelming defeats in Parliament, because their support could influence hard-line members of May's Conservative Party. Opposition has focused on the so-called backstop, designed to ensure there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

But May suffered a setback Monday when former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson refused to support her deal.

Johnson used his column in the Daily Telegraph to say that further changes are needed to the backstop, claiming it left the U.K. vulnerable to "an indefinite means of blackmail" by Brussels.
By Omar Mohammed

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Financiers, passengers and industry partners are, for now, still backing Ethiopian Airlines' quest to become Africa's dominant carrier, despite a March 10 crash that killed 157 people.

The causes of the Flight 302 tragedy will likely take months to establish. While much of the international focus has been on U.S. planemaker Boeing and its 737 MAX 8 jet, the airline's reputation could also hinge on the results of the investigation.

Although crash inquiries focus on preventing future accidents rather than attributing liability, any findings that the carrier fell short in plane maintenance or piloting could be damaging.

For the present, however, passenger confidence in Ethiopian Airlines, long regarded as one of the most reliable in Africa, has remained steady, according to the company. Cancellation and booking rates are unchanged since the crash, said spokesman Asrat Begashaw.

"We are operating as normal," he told Reuters. "Our brand is keeping its level, and we are okay."

Two banking sources with knowledge of the matter said that, barring a major new twist in the investigation with long-term fallout, banks were still comfortable lending to Ethiopian Airlines.

"Ethiopian is a solid company," said one, an official from an international bank that helped finance the acquisition of some Ethiopian Airlines planes. "No reason to change the way the bank sees its credit risk at this point."

A vote of confidence from lenders is important for the airline because its years of rapid expansion have largely been financed by international borrowing.

The second source, a top European aviation banker, said Ethiopian Airlines was "a good airline, with a good reputation".

"So unless it (the crash) is a major problem of piloting or maintenance  and it is far too early to talk about that - they will still have access to financing," the source added.

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The sources declined to be identified because the matters are confidential.

FOREIGN INVESTORS

Ethiopian Airlines has borrowed from foreign banks including JP Morgan, ING Capital and Societe Generale over the past decade. It also has outstanding bonds worth $540 million, though none due until 2024, Refinitiv data shows.

The borrowing helped finance the acquisition of stakes in or establish partnerships with at least four African carriers, establishing hubs to feed traffic into Addis Ababa. Last year, the Ethiopian capital overtook Dubai as the main gateway for long-haul passengers into Africa.

The airline's fleet grew from 35 planes in 2007 to 111 in 2019. It now flies to more than 119 international destinations, up from 52 a decade ago.

The expansion has made the state-owned carrier, founded in 1945, the most profitable major airline on the continent. Ethiopian's net profit in the 2017/18 financial year rose to $233 million from $229 million the previous year; operating revenue jumped 43 percent to $3.7 billion.

Last year, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced plans to sell a minority stake in the airline as part of a broad strategy to open up the country to foreign investors.

Industry analysts said it was too early to evaluate the impact of the crash on the airline's long-term plans but said, for now, its reputation remained largely intact.

"It's a very strong management team, with good vision," said Nawal Taneja, an author and professor at Ohio State University's Center for Aviation Studies. "We've got to look at the strength of the airline as a whole, not just this one incident."

PARTNERS, BOEING BOOKINGS

Those who want to travel across Africa have few options other than flying. Conflict, poor roads, and limited cross-border train transport often make travel by land difficult.

Analysts said the crash was unlikely to damage Ethiopian's partnerships with African carriers, key to a strategy that helped increase passenger numbers from 2.5 million a decade ago to 10.6 million last year, or with other industry players.

One such partner is ASKY, a Togo-based carrier which Ethiopian Airlines helped launch in 2010.

"Ethiopian's accident has not affected our partnership in any way," said Lionel Tsoto, the airline's head of public relations. "We continue just as before."

Global aviation leasing firm GECAS said the airline was a "close and valued partner who we look forward to working with in the future".

The crash, which saw the Nairobi-bound flight go down minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa, triggered a global grounding of 737 MAX planes, wiping about 10 percent off Boeing's share price.

GRAPHIC: http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/testfiles/boeing737maxseries

Investigators have noted similarities with another deadly crash in Indonesia five months ago involving a plane of the same type owned by Lion Air, but safety officials stress the investigation is at an early stage.

Ethiopian Airlines, which grounded its handful of remaining 737 MAX planes, said it would decide whether to cancel orders for 29 others after a preliminary investigation.

Analysts said it was unlikely that the carrier would cancel the orders, worth $3.5 billion at the current list price, because Boeing would have to fix any problems before regulators permit the jet to fly again.

Boeing will be keen to retain the airline as a customer; more than half of Ethiopian's fleet are Boeing jets.

"Ethiopian have been very loyal to Boeing in the past," said Phil Seymour, chief executive of the IBA Group, a Surrey-based aviation consultancy.

"They will be in control of the conversation with Boeing now," he added. "I would suspect that the business decision is to stick with the order."

(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher and Inti Landauro in Paris, Rachel Armstrong in London, Maggie Fick in Addis Ababa and John Zodzi in Lome; Editing by Katharine Houreld, Alexandra Zavis and Pravin Char)
Vilnius (AFP) - Centrist Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said Tuesday he would consider moving Lithuania's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the disputed city of Jerusalem, should he win May's presidential elections.

Skvernelis said that moving the mission could lead to closer ties with Israel and the United States, which Lithuania sees as a key security buffer against Russia.

The embassy transfer "could bring new impetus for relations with Israel, both in the areas of security and trade," Skvernelis told reporters as he hit the presidential campaign trail to outline his foreign policy priorities.

"We would also send a signal that the United States is our partner not only in words but that we also side with it in bitter questions under discussions," he added.

President Donald Trump's decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem ruptured decades of international consensus that the city's disputed status should be settled as part of a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who also claim it as the capital of their future state.

Senior politicians in fellow EU states Czech Republic and Romania have said they are also considering moving their embassies to Jerusalem but no decisions have been taken to this date.

The EU as a whole holds the position that Jerusalem's status must be negotiated by Israel and the Palestinians.

Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.

Skvernelis insisted on Tuesday that his nation "must not be afraid to differ from neighbouring states", saying cultural and security links made Israel one of Lithuania's closest allies.

The legacy of the Holocaust and close alignment with the US are among the reasons why Lithuania has become one of Israel's closest friends within the EU over the last decade.

Outgoing president Dalia Grybauskaite, who after two consecutive terms is not running for re-election, "would not comment on election programmes", her spokeswoman said.

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Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said Tuesday that Skvernelis' remarks did not mark any change in Lithuania's official policy because "he was talking as a presidential candidate, and not the prime minister".

"The official Lithuanian position has not changed: Jerusalem's status must be solved through negotiations and both sides should refrain from unilateral actions and decisions," the minister told AFP.

By law, moving the embassy would require the approval of both the government and the president.

Lithuania will hold a two-round presidential election on May 12 and 26.

In recent opinion polls, Skvernelis was trailing independent economist Gitanas Nauseda and conservative ex-finance minister Ingrida Simonyte.
Paris (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron has set a new personal record for talking during a public appearance by debating for more than eight hours with intellectuals and scientists.

For two and half months, the 41-year-old has criss-crossed France for town-hall meetings as part of his "Great National Debate", launched as a remedy to the anger seen in the "yellow vest" protests.

Previous sessions had seen him show off his stamina, with the former investment banker fielding questions from voters on issues ranging from hospital closures to foreign policy, often for four or five hours or more.

But on Monday night he surpassed himself talking in Paris for eight hours and 10 minutes, finishing at 02:30 am in a room that had slowly emptied of spectators and even participants, some making their excuses before the end.

The title of the debate -- "the main challenges and future issues that France will be confronted with" -- set the tone for sometimes dense discussions at the presidential palace, which were broadcast on France Culture radio station.

Sixty intellectuals, economists and environmental scientists took part with Macron, who won office in May 2017 promising to speak rarely to increase the impact of his declarations.

- Defending his record -

The "Great National Debate" was written off by some critics before it started, but it has helped pull the centrist leader out of the worst crisis of his presidency caused by protests which began in mid-November.

A poll published last Thursday by the Elabe survey group showed Macron's approval rating up eight percentage points since December, with 31 percent of voters having a positive opinion of him.

The "yellow vest" protests started over fuel taxes, but snowballed into a national revolt against Macron's governing style and pro-business policies.

He has repeatedly defended his record during debate appearances and again made the case on Monday for highly contested tax cuts for the wealthy, which he introduced early in his term.

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"We haven't sufficiently kept productive capital in France which creates jobs," he told the audience.

Around 10,000 meetings were organised nationwide between mid-January and last Friday, when the debate officially finished, with participants encouraged to discuss government policy and make suggestions.

But a group of five political scientists who were asked to guarantee the independence of the debate process regretted last week that Macron had been so personally involved.

With Monday's discussion he has now joined 11 debates.

"It was perhaps useful to have the president and the government implicated at the beginning of the process to motivate citizens," one of the guarantors, Pascal Perrineau, said on March 12.

But "the way in which that has continued, after initially motivating, has depressed participation," he added.

Political opponents have accused Macron of camouflaged campaigning ahead of European parliament elections in May, while some have compared him to Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro -- Latin American leaders with a famous taste for hearing their own voices.
Malaysian prosecutors said Monday they will summon Goldman Sachs units in London and Hong Kong to appear at a June hearing of a case linked to corruption in state investment fund 1MDB.

The Wall Street titan is accused of misleading investors in the case when it helped 1MDB raise $6.5 billion through a series of bond issues in 2012 and 2013.

Malaysian authorities are seeking fines in excess of the $2.7 billion allegedly misappropriated from the bond issues as well as the $600 million Goldman earned in fees.

Last December, Malaysia filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs units in Singapore, London and Hong Kong as well as two of the bank's former employees.

A representative from Goldman's Singapore unit and a team of local lawyers appeared in a Malaysian court Monday for a pre-trial hearing.

Prosecutor Aaron Paul Chelliah told reporters that "fresh summonses" will be served on the bank's Hong Kong and London offices ahead of the next pre-trial hearing on June 24.

This would mean representatives from all three Goldman units would appear in court in June, he added.

Allegations that huge sums were looted from 1MDB and used to buy everything from yachts to artwork, in a fraud that involved former Malaysian leader Najib Razak, contributed to the last government's shock defeat at May elections.

The new administration under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has filed dozens of charges against Najib and barred him from leaving the country. The ex-premier has denied any wrongdoing.

The Goldman units and former bankers Tim Leissner and Ng Chong Hwa, a Malaysian, are accused of misappropriating $2.7 billion, bribing officials and giving false statements in relation to bond issues they arranged for the fund.

At a separate Kuala Lumpur court Monday, a frail-looking Ng was led handcuffed into court, where a judge fixed April 15 for another pre-trial hearing of his case.

Ng was charged last December with abetting Goldman to provide misleading statements in the offering prospectus for the 1MDB bond sales.

New York-based Goldman has denied the allegations and vowed to defend the charges, saying it had been misled by Leissner and senior officials in the Malaysian government about the role of a key intermediary in the scandal, Low Taek Jho.

Better known as Jho Low, the jet-setting Malaysian financier, whose whereabouts is unknown, is accused of being the mastermind of the fraud.
Marriott International is planning to open more than 1,700 new hotels around the world over the next three years, translating to between 275,000 and 295,000 new rooms.

This is part of a three-year growth plan for Marriott. Its merger with Starwood propelled these goals, according to a company statement.

Marriott's President and CEO Arne Sorenson told CNBC Monday that over the next three years, "we'll open half of our hotels outside the U.S," meaning international travelers will now see Marriott hotels popping up in more locations around the world.

The announcement comes after a rough end of 2018 for Marriott.

The company disclosed a large-scale data breach that was said to affect hundreds of millions of customers. Sorenson spoke in front of a U.S. senate panel in March, pledging to stop future problems, Reuters reported.

Sorenson credited Starwood with helping the company expand its footprint.

"Starwood has made us a more formidable competitor, providing a more valuable loyalty program, brands with strong appeal to loyalty members and owners, talented associates, terrific locations, particularly in the fast-growing Asia Pacific region, significant cost synergies and meaningful scale," Sorenson said in a statement. "We launched our newly branded loyalty program, Marriott Bonvoy, just last month. The program reached 125 million members as of year-end 2018 adding roughly 50,000 members per day."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Marriott reveals plan to open more than 1,700 hotels worldwide
Meghan and Harry leaving New Zealand House in London, where they signed the book of condolence for the victims of the Christchurch terror attack [Photo: PA]

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex made an unannounced visit to New Zealand House in London today, to pay tribute to Christchurch terror attack victims.

The visit was arranged on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen as the newlyweds were the last royals to visit New Zealand.

The couple arrived carrying flowers, which they proceeded to lay with other bouquets at the buildings entrance. During their visit, the couple signed a book of condolence and spoke to staff.

The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House in London [Photo: Getty]

Meghan wrote: Our deepest condolences. We are with you.

Harry signed his name with Arohanui, Maori for with deep affection.

READ MORE: The Queen and Kate are all smiles at joint engagement

Following the attack on two mosques on Friday, numerous members of the Royal Family voiced their support for the victims and their families.

The Queen was the first member of the monarchy to offer condolences, saying: I have been deeply saddened by the appalling events in Christchurch today. Prince Philip and I send our condolences to the families and friends of those who have lost their lives.

The duchess gives the hongi, a traditional maori greeting as she arrives at New Zealand House [Photo: Getty]

I also pay tribute to the emergency services and volunteers who are providing support to those who have been injured.

At this tragic time, my thoughts and prayers are with all the New Zealanders.

The Sussexes and the Cambridges sent a joint message, saying: Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the people who lost their lives in the devastating attack in Christchurch.

We have all been fortunate to spend time in Christchurch and have felt the warm, open-hearted and generous spirit that is core to its remarkable people.

READ MORE: Meghan Markles maternity wardrobe: 76 outfits and a combined cost of almost 500,000

Meghan, who is due to give birth to the couples first child next month, currently has no more scheduled public engagements until the baby arrives.

Tomorrow, Harry will join schoolchildren as they take part in a tree planting project in support of The Queens Commonwealth Canopy initiative, together with the Woodland Trust.
Sakina Mariam Abdalla, the mother of the mastermind of Dusit terror attack Ali Salim Gichunge, was on Monday freed on a Ksh1 million bail with an alternative bond of Ksh2 million.

Ms Abdalla was accused that on diverse dates between 2015 and 2019 at Kula Mawe in Isiolo County, she declined to disclose information pertaining to the whereabouts of Mr Gichunge.

The prosecution told the court that the information which was within her knowledge would have been used to prevent the 14 Riverside drive terror attack.

Milimani Chief Magistrate Martha Mutuku directed Ms Abdalla to deposit all her travel documents with the court, not to contact any witnesses in the case and to report to the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU) every month pending conclusion of the case.

The Magistrate stated that a breach of any of the set conditions will lead to cancellation of her bail/bond.

The case will be mentioned on April 1, 2019, for purposes of pretrial proceedings.

During her arraignment in Court last month, the prosecution said scrutiny of Ms Abdallas phones call data confirmed that her phone number was in constant communications with several phone numbers located in Somalia.

Investigators believe she was communicating with her son.
Berlin (AFP) - Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday insisted Germany will not cut foreign aid to raise military spending, rejecting US criticism of its defence outlays.

She said "we will continue our effort" in terms of raising defence spending, "but not at the expense of development aid".

The United States had Tuesday labelled as "worrisome" budget plans by NATO ally Germany that project a fall in military spending in coming years.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused the biggest EU economy of freeloading on US military might with defence spending far below the NATO member target of two percent of GDP.

Germany's finance ministry had Monday presented its budget planning for coming years, which signalled a drop.

It said defence spending would first rise to 1.37 percent of gross domestic product in 2020 but then likely fall back to 1.25 percent by 2023.

US Ambassador Richard Grenell -- who has criticised Germany on issues from its Iran policy to proposals to use telecom equipment by China's Huawei -- was quick to comment on the projection.

"NATO members clearly pledged to move towards, not away from, two percent by 2024," he said, referring to a goal set at a 2014 alliance summit.

"That the German government would even be considering reducing its already unacceptable commitments to military readiness is a worrisome signal to Germany's 28 NATO Allies."

- 'Total diplomatic failure' -

Grenell's latest reprimand sparked anger in Berlin.

A senior lawmaker of the Social Democrats, Carsten Schneider, labelled Grenell a "total diplomatic failure" and the liberal FDP party's Wolfgang Kubicki even demanded the envoy be expelled.

Merkel, speaking more diplomatically at a Berlin conference, pushed back against the criticism by arguing that Germany was as focused on foreign aid as on military spending.

"We have always said that we're headed in the direction of two percent, and that by 2024 we will reach 1.5 percent," she said.

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"I can understand that this is not enough for the American president, it's not enough for many European allies," she conceded, speaking at the Global Solutions Summit in Berlin.

But Merkel stressed that Germany had already raised military spending as a proportion of GDP despite a growing economy, and that future spending will likely be higher than current projections.

While German defence spending went up from $45 billion to $50 billion last year, the growing economy meant the figure relative to GDP stayed flat at 1.23 percent.

Merkel also pointed out that Germany is one of the biggest donors to help Syrian refugees, and one of the largest recipients of Syrians seeking safe haven -- which, she noted, Trump had also criticised.

Trump's regular outbursts about European defence expenditure have caused some to question the future of the alliance, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year.

US military spending dwarfs that of the rest of the alliance. In 2018 Washington spent nearly $700 billion on defence, compared with just $280 billion for all the European NATO allies combined.
Berlin (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday she would struggle until the last possible moment to achieve an orderly Brexit, saying the interests of Germany, Britain and the EU were at stake.

"I will fight to the last hour of the deadline on March 29 for an orderly exit (of Britain from the European Union)," she told a conference in Berlin.

"We don't have a lot of time for it but still have a few days."

Merkel admitted she had been surprised by the bombshell announcement on Monday by House of Commons speaker John Bercow that he could not put Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit plan to another vote in its current form.

"I must confess that I was not familiar with the rules of order of the British parliament from the 17th century," she said with a wry smile.

And she stressed ahead of a crunch EU summit in Brussels Thursday and Friday at which Brexit is to take centre stage that the ball remained in London's court to plot the way forward.

"I am as of now unable to say what my position will be on Thursday because it depends on what Theresa May presents, what the situation looks like, (and) what may still happen in parliament," she said.

Merkel stressed that avoiding Britain crashing out of the EU without an exit deal was in the fundamental interest of all sides.

"We, together as the other 27 (EU member states), will react in an adequate manner and the less people play guessing games, the easier it will be," she said.

May is still hoping she can get the divorce agreement she struck with the European Union through parliament before March 29, despite MPs having rejected it twice.

But weeks of chaotic political deadlock in parliament have already forced May to concede that Brexit must be delayed, amid fears of an economic shock if Britain ends its 46-year membership of the EU with no new arrangements in place.

She had been hoping to ask EU leaders for only a short delay when they meet at the Brussels summit, warning that without a deal, any extension would be lengthy.
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo says he knows his tenure as Americas chief diplomat is only as fleeting as a tweet.

Mr Pompeo, during an event in Kansas, that was part of global entrepreneurship summit, responded with a joke and praise for Donald Trump when asked how long he might stay in the presidents cabinet.

Im going to be in there until he tweets me out of office, Mr Pompeo said, to laughs.

He continued: Which, Im not counting on. At least, [not] today.

Mr Pompeo, who has as secretary of state overseen a major push towards denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula, continued to praise the president for his management style.

It has been an enormous privilege to be part of the Trump administration. He is truly a leader who provides guidance to me. He says. Mike this is the direction we want to go'," he said. It is often times different than what weve done before. I think thats a great thing. It gives us a real opportunity to partner in different ways, and build coalition in different ways.

But Mr Pompeos future as secretary of state has been called into question recently after remarks from the diplomat indicating he would like to move back to Kansas, where he served as a congressman previously for several terms.

Mr Pompeo has reportedly ruled out a potential run to become a senator in the state, but it is believed that he may run to become governor of the state.




A federal jury in San Francisco found Monsantos Roundup herbicide was a substantial factor in causing the cancer of a California man, in a landmark verdict that could affect hundreds of other cases.

Edwin Hardeman of Santa Rosa was the first person to challenge Monsantos Roundup in a federal trial and alleged that his exposure to Roundup caused him to develop non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL), a cancer that affects the immune system.

In the next phase of the case, the jury will weigh liability and damages, and Hardemans lawyers will present arguments about Monsantos influence on government regulators and cancer research.

During the trial, the 70-year-old Santa Rosa man testified that he had sprayed the herbicide for nearly three decades and at one time got it on his skin before he was diagnosed with cancer. He used the chemical to control weeds and poison oak on his properties, starting in 1986.

Related: Monsanto: judge threatens to 'shut down' cancer patient's lawyer

Hardemans case is considered a bellwether trial for hundreds of other plaintiffs in the US with similar claims, which means the verdict could affect future litigation and other cancer patients and families. Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, is facing more than 9,000 similar lawsuits across the US.

The unanimous ruling on Tuesday follows a historic verdict last August in which a California jury in state court ruled that Roundup caused the terminal cancer of Dewayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper. That jury said Monsanto failed to warn Johnson of Roundups health hazards and acted with malice or oppression, awarding Johnson $289m in damages.

Hardemans trial has been more limited in scope. While Johnsons attorneys argued that Monsanto had bullied scientists and fought to suppress negative studies about its product, the federal judge barred Hardemans lawyers from discussing Monsantos alleged influence on research and regulations during the hearings.

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The US judge Vince Chhabria went so far as to sanction Hardemans lawyer for bringing up Hardemans personal history, referring to internal Monsanto documents, and explaining the process behind various regulatory decisions about glyphosate in her opening remarks. With Hardemans trial limited to a strict discussion of whether Roundup exposure caused his cancer, his attorneys have argued they were facing a significant disadvantage.

Related: The man who beat Monsanto: 'They have to pay for not being honest'

Monsanto has continued to argue that Roundup is safe to use and does not cause NHL.

Although the judge restricted the first part of the trial to a limited discussion of Hardemans cancer, he issued something of a rebuke of the company in one procedural order last week, saying: Although the evidence that Roundup causes cancer is quite equivocal, there is strong evidence from which a jury could conclude that Monsanto does not particularly care whether its product is in fact giving people cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about the issue.

Bayer expects to prevail later in the trial, a spokesperson said following Tuesdays ruling. We are disappointed with the jurys initial decision, but we continue to believe firmly that the science confirms glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer, spokesman Dan Childs said in a statement. We are confident the evidence in phase two will show that Monsantos conduct has been appropriate and the company should not be liable for Mr Hardemans cancer.

Child also argued the decision would not impact future cases, because each one has its own factual and legal circumstances.

Jennifer Moore and Aimee Wagstaff, Hardemans attorneys, said they were prepared to show the jury examples of Monsantos bad conduct in the next phase of the trial. Now we can focus on the evidence that Monsanto has not taken a responsible, objective approach to the safety of Roundup, they wrote in a statement.

Environmental advocates were quick to celebrate the verdict. Ken Cook, the president of the Environmental Working Group, said the ruling supported previous conclusions that glyphosate causes cancer in people.

As similar lawsuits mount, the evidence will grow that Roundup is not safe, and that the company has tried to cover it up, he added.




Robert Mueller persuaded a judge within weeks of being made special counsel in 2017 that Michael Cohen, Donald Trumps legal fixer, may have been secretly working for a foreign government.

Related: Michael Cohen FBI raid documents released  live updates

Legal filings unsealed on Tuesday said investigators working for Mueller were granted access to Cohens personal email account on 18 July 2017 on the basis that he may have broken several laws, including those on unregistered foreign agents.

Cohens suspected efforts were not detailed in the documents. Cohen, one of Trumps closest advisers for a decade, was known to have been paid in 2017 for consulting work by a state-controlled South Korean aviation company and a bank in Kazakhstan.

The filings said Muellers investigators were looking in Cohens Gmail account for records on any funds or benefits he received from foreign governments or companies, as well as any files revealing efforts by Cohen to work on their behalf.

The court documents were released by a federal judge in New York, where Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance and personal financial crimes. They were originally filed by investigators in April last year to obtain additional search warrants.

It was not previously known that Cohen was suspected of crimes relating to representing foreigners without registering with US authorities, and no such charges were brought against him. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison and is due to be jailed in May.

The filings released on Tuesday ran to hundreds of pages. More than 19 pages, apparently relating to the campaign finance scheme, were entirely blacked out, indicating that it remains under investigation.

Cohen directly implicated Trump in the scheme, which involved hush-money payments to women who alleged during the 2016 campaign that they had affairs with Trump. Some legal analysts have said Trump could be vulnerable to prosecution for the scheme once he leaves office. He denies breaking any laws.

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The documents released on Tuesday gave a rare insight on the early actions taken by Muellers office in the weeks after his appointment as special counsel on 17 May 2017, following the presidents firing of James Comey, the FBI director. Mueller was asked to look into any connections or coordination between Russia and Trumps team.

They showed search warrants obtained for Cohens email accounts gave investigators sweeping authority to look into related data including Cohens calendars, contacts and photographs. Investigators were also given permission to use Cohens fingers or face to unlock his electronic devices if necessary.

Following their successful July 2017 application, Muellers team secured several more warrants for Cohen. They were granted a search warrant for Cohens Apple iCloud account on 8 August 2017, the filings said, and then obtained two more search warrants in November 2017 for two additional email accounts used by Cohen.

Muellers team passed some of its findings, which did not relate to their central investigation, up to justice department colleagues in New York. After prosecutors there were granted further warrants, FBI agents raided Cohens home, hotel room and storage facility and seized millions of documents.

Muellers investigation, which appears to be drawing to a conclusion, has roiled Trumps first term in office and led to the criminal convictions of a series of former Trump advisers for financial crimes and lying to investigators.

It has also led to the indictment of more than two dozen Russians for interfering in the 2016 US election campaign, but no one from Trumps campaign has been charged over activity relating to the election campaign.

Paul Manafort, Trumps former campaign chairman, has been accused by Mueller of sharing private polling data with a colleague accused of having ties to Russian intelligence services.
New court filings reveal the extent of investigations Special Counsel Robert Muellers office conducted against Donald Trumps longtime fixer and former lawyer Michael Cohen  well before the infamous raid against him took place last year.

The special counsel received warrants nearly a year before the raid to begin reading Cohens private email correspondence, according to court documents that were unsealed on Tuesday morning and reviewed by The Independent.

Initially, the special counsel's office had launched a probe into whether Cohen was acting as an unregistered foreign agent, an allegation he has not been charged over.

When federal prosecutors raided Cohens properties in April of last year, they seized all sorts of material evidence as part of their investigation into Donald Trumps 2016 presidential campaign and Russian interference in the general election.

According to exhibit 6 of the partially redacted records, prosecutors seized at least two DVDs and a USB flash drive. It remained unclear what significance any of this evidence has played in the special counsel probes.

However, one of the DVDs in question featured a date prominently displayed on a label reading Cohen  2018.03.07. That date  7 March, 2018  was the same day numerous outlets reported on a secret restraining order Cohen had sought against Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who has alleged to have had an extramarital affair with Mr Trump. Another DVD featured a label reading 2-28-18 Cohen SW Returns  Google and 1&1.

Cohen pleaded guilty over the summer to failing to report more than $4m (3m) in income to the IRS, making false statements to financial institutions and campaign-finance violations stemming from the hush-money payments he arranged for Ms Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen implicated Mr Trump in his guilty plea, saying the president directed him to make the payments during his 2016 campaign.

The records show the inquiry into Cohen had been going on since July 2017  far longer than previously known  and that a big part of its focus was Cohens taxi businesses and misrepresentations he made to banks as part of a scheme to relieve himself of some $22m (16.6m) in debt he owed on taxi medallion loans.

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Tuesdays release of the search warrant came nearly six weeks after US District Judge William H Pauley III partially granted a request by several media organisations that the search warrant be made public due to the high public interest in the case.

Many sections of the records dealing with the campaign-finance violations Cohen committed when he paid two women to stay silent about alleged affairs they had with Mr Trump were redacted. A judge ordered those sections to remain secret after prosecutors said they were still investigating campaign finance violations.

The judge acknowledged prosecutors concerns that a wholesale release of the document would jeopardise an ongoing investigation and prejudice the privacy rights of uncharged third parties, a ruling that revealed prosecutors are still investigating the campaign-finance violations.

The judge ordered prosecutors to redact Cohens personal information and details in the warrant that refer to ongoing investigations and several third-parties who have cooperated with the inquiry. But he authorised the release of details in the warrant that relate to Cohens tax evasion and false statements to financial institutions charges, along with Cohens conduct that did not result in criminal charges.

The FBI raided Cohens Manhattan home and office last April, marking the first public sign of a criminal investigation that has threatened Mr Trumps presidency and netted Cohen a three-year prison sentence that he is scheduled to start serving in May. The agents, who also scoured Cohens hotel room and safe deposit box, seized more than 4 million electronic and paper files in the searches, more than a dozen mobile devices and iPads, 20 external hard drives, flash drives and laptops.

Additional reporting by AP
Almost 40 percent of new HIV cases in the US occur because people do not know they are infected, while a similar proportion know but are not in treatment, according to a study released Monday.

The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is based on 2016 data and aims to bolster a strategy outlined by President Donald Trump to end the epidemic within 10 years.

The strategy has two main strands: far more widespread screening, and enabling the infected better access to treatment from the moment they test positive.

The study found that 38 percent of infections came from HIV-positive people who were unaware of their status, and 43 percent from people who knew they were infected but took no anti-retroviral drugs.

The remaining infections came from people who were receiving HIV treatment but were not yet "virally suppressed."

The CDC blamed financial, social and other reasons for people not using medication, which these days typically comes in the form of a daily pill with minimal side effects.

The study said that the infection rate from the half million people in the United States who take medication and are virally suppressed -- meaning they cannot pass on the disease to others -- was zero.

- Screening -

The most at-risk group remains homosexual men, with almost three-quarters of new infections coming from men having sex with men, the report said.

Five percent of infections came from intravenous drug abuse among homosexual men, while 10 percent came from injecting drugs among the rest of the population.

Twelve percent of infections were among heterosexuals. Overall, the highest rate of transmission was among 13 to 24-year-olds.

The Trump administration has said it will invest $291 million in the next financial year to fight HIV/AIDS, which has plateaued since 2013 to around 39,000 annual transmissions.

The goal is to reduce that number by 75 percent within five years and by 90 percent in 10 years.

Questioned about the relatively small amount of money earmarked for the multi-billion dollar task of treating HIV carriers, CDC head Robert Redfield said he was "confident that the resources that are required to accomplish this mission are in the long term plan."

Story continues

The CDC, based in Atlanta, Georgia, wants doctors to make HIV screening a routine procedure.

"Everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 should get tested for HIV at least once in their lifetime," said Eugene McCray, the head of the CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention.

"Those at higher risk should get tested at least annually," he said.

"The key to controlling is helping those with HIV to control the virus," said the CDC's Jonathan Mermin, who focuses on preventing the spread of the HIV as well as other sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis and hepatitis.

"Time spent working closely with patients who are having trouble paying for, picking up or taking their daily medications is time well spent"
Photo credit: Pixel_away - Getty Images

From Men's Health

If you didnt get the measles vaccine (MMR) as a child-or don't know whether you did-should you get it as an adult? The answer is, unsurprisingly, a resounding yes. From January 1 to March 14, 2019, 268 cases of measles have been confirmed in 15 states. Even if you did get the vaccine, certain people who fit some specific criteria might need it again.

Photo credit: .

The vast majority of people have had the measles vaccine. One group that has recently generated public attention are the people who were deliberately not immunized as children, because of misplaced parental concerns over the safety or effectiveness of the vaccine. Those who are now becoming adults-and those who are already adults-have the opportunity to make up their own minds about whether to get themselves vaccinated.

Vaccination is generally a requirement for students planning to attend college, unless there is a legitimate medical reason not to vaccinate (such as a severe immune system disease). This is part of the social contract: you need to protect not only yourself but others who may not be able to take the vaccine. Depending on the state, some teens may be able to get vaccinated without parental consent before age 18: in all states, all may get vaccinated at age 18. Vaccines can be obtained from ones own doctor, many local pharmacies, and state and local health departments.

But if youve had it, youre fine, right?

Maybe. Two groups of people should check just how protected they are:

People who are risk of exposure to measles. This could be healthcare workers or childcare workers. These groups should consider getting tested for immunity-its a simple blood test your doctor can do. Healthcare workers are usually tested at hiring to be sure their blood contains protective levels of antibodies. Lack of antibodies might be due to a poorly stored vaccine, or someone may be one of the few people who didnt respond. If not, they are required to get two doses of vaccine before starting to work. People planning international travel to a place with ongoing measles outbreaks. Madagascar is having a massive outbreak now: information for travelers can be found at https://www.cdc.gov/measles/travelers.html. Those who do not have protective antibodies will need two doses before travel, separated by at least 28 days, so this requires advance planning. People born between 1963 and 1967. Many who were born doing that time period were vaccinated using a killed vaccine, and they are at risk for a syndrome called atypical measles. The vaccine record should say whether you received a killed vaccine or a live vaccine (the Schwarz, Edmonston B, and Moraten strains are all live strains). If it doesnt say, you cant find your records, or received a killed vaccine, then you are at risk, and if you are in an area of an outbreak in the US or planning international travel to an area with an outbreak, you should see your doctor about getting revaccinated with 2 doses of the current MMR vaccine. (Since there is no measles vaccine apart from MMR, you get additional protection to mumps and rubella, and mumps has had several outbreaks lately.)

The measles vaccine is generally safe and effective, but there is no treatment in medicine that is perfect. Common side effects after the vaccine include joint pain, fever, and a short-lived rash. Two doses of the vaccine provides protection for more than 99% of the population, and this protection is thought to be lifelong.

Story continues

Protection against measles is important, because measles is a serious disease. Many people mistakenly feel measles is no big deal, but it's not always a harmless disease. People over age 20 are more likely to have complications. Best case is two weeks off from work. Worst case goes from ear damage (can be permanent hearing loss) to pneumonia or encephalitis (swelling of the brain, which may cause permanent brain damage), both of which can be fatal. One out of 1,000 people with measles will die; 5 percent will require the ICU. One in 2,000 will later develop another problem, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which is uniformly fatal.

And even among those who have a straightforward course, measles leaves a "hole" in the immune system that predisposes people to other kinds of infections for years. There is no effective treatment for measles (although vitamin A is given to people with vitamin A deficiency), so prevention is important.

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Newell Brands Inc. NWL has entered into an agreement with One Rock Capital Partners, LLC, a private equity firm, to sell its Process Solutions business for after-tax proceeds of $500 million. The deal, which is anticipated to close in the second quarter of 2019, is subjected to customary working capital as well as transaction adjustments.



The Process Solutions business involves making of custom-designed plastic, nylons, monofilament and zinc products catering to industrial and consumer challenges. The business, which recorded net sales of roughly $640 million in 2018, includes plastic solutions, lifoam, consumer table top, zinc products and applied materials.



Last month, Newell agreed to sell the Rexair business to Rhone Capital  a global private equity firm. The transaction is anticipated to close by the end of second-quarter 2019 and subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. This business, which manufactures unique Rainbow products to improve indoor environments since 1963, generated roughly $123 million of sales in 2018.



All these strategic moves clearly highlight Newells smooth progress of its Accelerated Transformation Plan. Restructuring the company into a global consumer product entity, valued at more than $9 billion, is the key aspect of this plan. As a result, the company intends to offload non-core businesses that account for nearly 35% of its sales; utilize $10 billion after-tax proceeds from divestitures and free cash flow to lower debt and make share repurchase as well as retain its investment grade rating and an annual dividend of 92 cents per share through 2019, targeting 30-35% payout ratio.



In 2018, Newell generated more than $5 billion of after-tax proceeds from divestitures. Going ahead, management expects to split up the Consumer and Commercial Solutions business besides offloading the MAPA and Spontex businesses in a separate transaction. It expects these divestitures to be completed by the end of 2019.



Meanwhile, proceeds from the sale of the underperforming assets have been utilized to lower balance sheet debt and make share repurchases. These efforts will help improve Newells operational performance by reshaping its portfolio and enhance shareholder value. Notably, the company improved leverage by allocating proceeds to pay down debt and share repurchases. As a result, it exited 2018 with the targeted leverage ratio of 3.5 times. The company repaid debt of $2.6 billion in fourth-quarter 2018. Also, Newell deployed $102 million for the payment of dividends and $996 million for share repurchases in the same period.

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A glance at this Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) companys share price performance shows that it has lost 21.7% in the past three months, against the industrys 1.6% growth. This underperformance can be attributed to Newells dismal sales surprise history, having missed estimates for the fourth straight time including fourth-quarter 2018. Lower core sales, foreign currency headwinds and adverse impact from the new revenue recognition standard have been weighing on sales.



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The government is in control of the prevailing drought situation in sections of the country, Deputy President William Ruto has said.

In a presser on Monday morning, DP Ruto said the government has disbursed Ksh2 billion for the supply of food and water to about 1.1 million Kenyans affected by drought and food scarcity.

This morning, the government of Kenya has approved Ksh. 2 billion to be spent within this week in water tracking, making sure that boreholes and waterpumps are working, said Ruto.

The second in command noted that this years drought situation has improved compared to previous years.

It is important to state that the situation we have this year is better than the situation we had last year and the year before, said Dr Ruto, adding, There should be no cause for alarm at the moment, the government has put in place both at the county and national level interventions to manage the current drought. We will work together with partners such as the United Nations agency and all other friendly institutions to ensure we dont have any casualties as a result of this drought.

According to the DP, a situation assessment report by the government shows that a total of 865 persons have been severely affected by the drought while 1.1 million others are being affected generally.

Counties facing food scarcity include Samburu, Marsabit, Garissa, Isiolo, Mandera, Wajir, Baringo, Kilifi, Tana River, West Pokot, Makueni, Kajiado, and Kwale.

Ruto said the new funding to be channelled through the Ministries of Devolution and Agriculture, is in addition to Sh12.4 billion set to be disbursed through the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection via cash transfers to 1.3 million vulnerable persons including the elderly.

As part of ensuring there is resources around the country for people to buy food, all beneficiaries under our cash transfer program, the vulnerable old people, people with disability and orphans, the government has again released Ksh.12.4 billion to 1.2 million beneficiaries that will put them in position to be able to buy food, especially those in areas that are affected by the drought.

Ruto said the government had put measures in place to strengthen distribution of food in counties facing shortages assuring that Kenyas food security situation was stable.

He said the drought situation in the country had been triggered by poor performance of short rains.
Managua (AFP) - Nicaragua's opposition alliance said Tuesday that talks with President Daniel Ortega's government cannot resume until "political prisoners" are released and the repression of anti-regime protesters ends.

"There aren't the conditions to continue negotiating" with the government, opposition lawyer Azahalea Solis told reporters.

On Monday, the opposition Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy (ACJD) suspended peace talks with the government aimed at breaking the deadlock over a political crisis that has lasted 11 months.

And although the ACJD turned up at the venue in Managua where talks have been hosted by the Central American Institute of Business Administration, the delegation did not meet with government negotiators.

Instead, the opposition asked mediators Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, the Vatican envoy, and Organization of American States (OAS) special envoy Luis Angel Rosadilla to push the government "to show willingness" to reach an agreement, Solis said.

The talks were suspended on Monday in protest over the "violence and repression" of demonstrators.

Riot police had used tear gas to stop an opposition protest on Saturday while temporarily detaining 100 people, including two opposition leaders.

The opposition is also angry that 150 prisoners released since the talks started on February 27 have been confined to house arrest, and is demanding their total liberation.

The government made no comment about the latest impasse in negotiations.

- 'Government lacks political will' -

The alliance, which also suspended the talks for three days last week until the government gave in to a demand to release prisoners, "energetically condemned" the weekend crackdown on dissent.

In a statement, it said the government "is holding more than 700 political prisoners simply for defending their citizens' rights."

More than 700 people were arrested between April and October last year during protests that also left 325 dead after a brutal crackdown by security services.

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The union of business leaders (COSEP) that forms part of the opposition alliance said Ortega's government "lacks the political will" to find a solution.

COSEP said the government crackdown proved the regime doesn't want "to create the basic conditions for the national dialogue to show its viability and to reply to the people's legitimate demands."

The union said Saturday's crackdown showed that "we're faced with a police state that doesn't allow the expression of the fundamental constitutional rights of all Nicaraguans."

It said the police acted in "a disproportionate manner with excessive violence."

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro wrote on Twitter that "to continue in good faith, in Nicaragua all political prisoners... must be freed."

Nicaragua has been mired in political crisis since April last year, when a protest initially against a now-scrapped pension reform snowballed into opposition to Ortega's rule.

The 73-year-old former left-wing guerrilla leader has been in power for more than 11 years but alongside his wife Vice President Rosario Murillo, he's been accused of ruling with an iron fist and rights abuses.

Ortega has rejected out of hand another key opposition demand that he steps down and brings forward elections slated for 2021.

He has offered to implement electoral reform and release prisoners -- some of whom have been charged with terrorism for taking part in protests against Ortega -- that have yet to be tried.
By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - A senior U.S. arms control official said on Tuesday the only way for North Korea to achieve security and development is to abandon all of its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes.

The Hanoi summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un last month broke down over differences about U.S. demands for Pyongyang to denuclearise, as well as Pyongyang's demand for major relief from international sanctions imposed for its nuclear and missile tests, which it pursued for years in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

"North Korea must understand that the only way to achieve the security and development that it seeks is to abandon all of its weapons of mass destruction, all of its ballistic missile programmes as numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions demand," said Yleem Poblete, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.

Poblete, addressing the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, also urged countries to halt any weapons or military cooperation with North Korea.

"You are violating U.N. Security Council resolutions that explicitly prohibit such transfers," she said without naming names.

North Korea is considering suspending talks with the United States and may rethink a freeze on missile and nuclear tests unless Washington makes concessions, a senior Pyongyang diplomat said last week, according to news reports from Pyongyang.

On Tuesday, a North Korean diplomat said there was no justification for maintaining full sanctions on Pyongyang given that it has halted nuclear and missile testing for the past 15 months.

Ju Yong Chol said that U.S.-North Korean differences should be tackled one-by-one in a phased way to build trust.

"Instead, they came up with the preposterous argument that sanctions relief is impossible prior to denuclearisation," Ju told the Geneva forum.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern promised on Tuesday that the man responsible for last week's deadly mosque massacres would face "the full force of the law", as she vowed never to utter his name.

"He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety -- that is why you will never hear me mention his name," Ardern said in an emotional address to a special meeting of parliament, which she opened with the Arabic greeting "as salaam aleikum" -- 'peace be upon you'.

"I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them," she told the gathering in Wellington, four days after the massacre in the southern city of Christchurch.

"He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless," she said.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, was captured by police and has been charged with one count of murder, but Ardern assured parliament other charges would follow.

"He will face the full force of the law in New Zealand," she said.

Ardern has promised reforms to New Zealand gun laws which allowed Tarrant to legally purchase the weapons he used in the attack, including semi-automatic rifles.

And she announced a full review of how the Australian -- an avowed white supremacist -- was able to plan and carry out the attacks in New Zealand under the radar of security services.

"The person who committed these acts was not from here. He was not raised here. He did not find his ideology here. But that is not to say that those very same views do not live here," she said.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Oman says it helped negotiate the release of an Indonesian and a Malaysian held in Yemen amid the war in the Arab world's poorest nation.

The state-run Oman News Agency said Monday it reached an agreement "with the relevant authorities in Sanaa," Yemen's rebel-held capital, for the return of the two captives.

It said they arrived in Oman on Monday.

The brief statement did not identify those freed.

Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, did not join a Saudi-led military campaign targeting Yemen's Houthi rebels.

Since the war, Oman has been crucial in negotiating the release of prisoners held in Yemen by the Houthis.

The Saudi-led coalition launched its war in Yemen in March 2015.
Pope Francis shaking hands with France's Cardinal Philippe Barbarin (R), during their meeting at the Vatican on March 18, 2019 - AFP

Catholic campaigners condemned as shocking a decision by Pope Francis not to accept the resignation of a French archbishop who was given a suspended prison sentence this month for failing to report the sexual abuse of boy scouts by a known predatory priest.

Tuesday's surprise decision came just a month after the Vatican convened an unprecedented conference of cardinals in which it pledged to get tough on priests who abuse children and the bishops who cover up for them.

French cardinal Philippe Barbarin travelled to Rome on Monday and offered his resignation to Pope Francis.

But on Tuesday the Vatican announced that the Argentinian pontiff had decided to reject the resignation.

While the Vatican offered no explanation, it seems likely that the Pope wants to wait to see the outcome of an appeal that the 68-year-old archbishop intends to launch against his six-month sentence.

But the decision was condemned by groups representing survivors of clerical sex abuse from around the world.

Pope Francis receives Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon, at the Vatican Credit: Reuters

Im stunned by this decision. It is shocking and depressing, Anne Barrett Doyle, the head of the US-based organisation Bishop Accountability, told The Telegraph.

It reveals the Popes very narrow concept of accountability. It is a reminder to bishops that they have nothing to fear from this Pope. It is a profound and disastrous misreading of what is required to address this crisis.

Just last month, during a four-day conference at the Vatican attended by bishops and archbishops from around the world, the Pope said that no abuse must ever be covered up, as has happened in the past".

In a statement, Barbarin, the most senior French Catholic to have been swept up in the Churchs sex abuse scandal, said: On Monday I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation."

Barbarin said that he would step back from his role as archbishop of Lyon "for a little while", allowing his deputy to stand in for him.

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Even the Bishops' Conference of France  the countrys most senior Catholic body - said it was surprised by the decision, which it described as "unheard of".

Barbarin was convicted earlier this month of failing to act against Bernard Preynat, a priest who has confessed to abusing boy scouts in the 1980s and 1990s. Preynat is expected to be put on trial later this year.

Barbarin became archbishop of Lyon in 2002 and learned of Preynats abuse of boys but let him remain in ministry until 2015, said Bishop Accountability.

French victims of clerical abuse also reacted with outrage to the papal decision.

"I think that man (the Pope) is going to manage to kill off the church. It's a mistake too many, said Francois Devaux, a co-founder of a victims' organisation.

Faith in the Catholic Church has plunged as a result of its failure over two decades to address sex abuse perpetrated by clergy.

Last week George Pell, the Australian cardinal who was once the third most powerful figure in the Vatican, was sentenced to six years in prison after being convicted of abusing two altar boys in Melbournes St Patricks Cathedral in the 1990s.

He also intends to appeal and remains a cardinal, despite being behind bars.

Campaign groups were profoundly disappointed when last months Vatican conference on combating sexual abuse failed to come up with any new, concrete initiatives to address the crisis.
By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - It would be irresponsible for any scientist to conduct human gene-editing studies in people, and a central registry of research plans should be set up to ensure transparency, World Health Organization experts said on Tuesday. After its first two-day meeting in Geneva, the WHO panel of gene editing experts - which was established in December after a Chinese scientist said he had edited the genes of twin babies - said it had agreed a framework for setting future standards. It said a central registry of all human genome editing research was needed "in order to create an open and transparent database of ongoing work", and asked the WHO to start setting up such a registry immediately. "The committee will develop essential tools and guidance for all those working on this new technology to ensure maximum benefit and minimal risk to human health," Soumya Swamanathan, the WHO's chief scientist, said in a statement. A Chinese scientist last year claimed to have edited the genes of twin baby girls. News of the births prompted global condemnation, in part because it raised the ethical specter of so-called "designer babies" - in which embryos can be genetically modified to produce children with desirable traits. Top scientists and ethicists from seven countries called last week for a global moratorium on gene editing of human eggs, sperm or embryos that would result in such genetically-altered babies - saying this "could have permanent and possibly harmful effects on the species". The WHO panel's statement said any human gene editing work should be done for research only, should not be done in human clinical trials, and should be conducted transparently. "It is irresponsible at this time for anyone to proceed with clinical applications of human germline genome editing." The WHO's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, welcomed the panel's initial plans. "Gene editing holds incredible promise for health, but it also poses some risks, both ethically and medically," he said in a statement. The committee said it aims over the next two years to produce "a comprehensive governance framework" for national, local and international authorities to ensure human genome editing science progresses within agreed ethical boundaries. (Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Dove Men+Care campaign looks at the stigmas associated with paternal leave (Dove)

Starting this week, fathers and other non-birthing parents in Canada have an additional five weeks of use-it-or-lose-it time to stay home with their newborns.

Before the change took effect on March 17, parents could split 35 weeks between them. Many new dads hesitated to take time out of their partners pool.

One of the major contributing factors are social stigmas that discourage men from taking the time off.

Dove Men+Care champions paternity leave for men around the world and is taking up the cause in Canada. It started by conducting a national survey, which found more than 4 in 5 Canadian men (85 per cent) agree that fathers should make it a top priority to take all available paternity leave, to bond with their child.

As part of the campaign, Dove Men+Care is collecting actual online comments that disparage paternity leave for men. such as Paternity Leave is for wimps and Fathers use paternity leave as a vacation.

The ads are posted online and can also be seen at Torontos Union Station, Yonge & Eglinton Centre, Fairview Mall, and the Scotiabank Arena. Dove Men+Care is asking Canadians to visit its site and agree or disagree with the statements.

The company says responses will better help it understand how to break down stigmas around parental leave.

Dove Men+Care is committed to challenging the social stigmas that discourage fathers from taking paid leave, said the company in a news release.

Parental leave should be a socially-acceptable option for everyone.

Paternity leave is becoming more commonplace among young fathers. According to the study half of the millennial fathers report taking it. Only 37 per cent of Gen X fathers have done the same.

Even though more Canadian fathers want to take paternity leave, the study found 75 per cent fear taking time off will negatively impact their finances. About half (51 per cent) fear it will hurt their relationships with their manager at work.

Dove Men+Care is asking Canadians to agree or disagree with statements regarding actual online statements about paternity leave (Dove)

Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Farmer Jeff Jorgenson looks out over 750 acres of cropland submerged beneath the swollen Missouri River, and he knows he probably won't plant this year.

But that's not his biggest worry. He and other farmers have worked until midnight for days to move grain, equipment and fuel barrels away from the floodwaters fed by heavy rain and snowmelt. The rising water that has damaged hundreds of homes and been blamed for three deaths has also taken a heavy toll on agriculture, inundating thousands of acres, threatening stockpiled grain and killing livestock.

In Fremont County alone, Jorgenson estimates that more than a million bushels of corn and nearly half a million bushels of soybeans have been lost after water overwhelmed grain bins before they could be emptied of last year's crop. His calculation using local grain prices puts the financial loss at more than $7 million in grain alone. That's for about 28 farmers in his immediate area, he said.

Once it's deposited in bins, grain is not insured, so it's just lost money. This year farmers have stored much more grain than normal because of a large crop last year and fewer markets in which to sell soybeans because of a trade dispute with China.

"The economy in agriculture is not very good right now. It will end some of these folks farming, family legacies, family farms," he said. "There will be farmers that will be dealing with so much of a negative they won't be able to tolerate it."

Jorgenson, 43, who has farmed since 1998, reached out to friends Saturday, and they helped him move his grain out of bins to an elevator. Had they not acted, he would have lost $135,000.

Vice President Mike Pence surveyed flooded areas in Nebraska Tuesday, where he viewed the raging Elkhorn river, talked to first responders and visited a shelter for displaced people. He promised expedited action on presidential disaster declarations for Iowa and Nebraska.

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"We're going to make sure that federal resources are there for you," Pence told volunteers at Waterloo, a town of less than 1,000 residents about 21 miles (34 kilometers) west of Omaha that was virtually cut off by the floodwaters.

The flooding is expected to continue throughout the week in several states as high water flows down the Missouri River. Swollen rivers have already breached more than a dozen levees in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

The flooding, which started after a massive late-winter storm last week, has also put some hog farms in southwest Iowa underwater. The dead animals inside must be disposed of, Reynolds said.

The water rose so quickly that farmers in many areas had no time to get animals out, said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

"Places that haven't seen animal loss have seen a lot of animal stress. That means they're not gaining weight and won't be marketed in as timely a manner, which results in additional cost," he said.

In all, Nebraska Farm Bureau President Steve Nelson estimated $400 million of crop losses from fields left unplanted or planted late and up to $500 million in livestock losses.

In a news release issued Tuesday, Gov. Pete Ricketts said there have been deadlier disasters in Nebraska but never one as widespread. He said 65 of the state's 93 counties are under emergency declarations.

In neighboring Missouri, water was just shy of getting into Ryonee McCann's home along a recreational lake in Holt County, where about 40,000 acres (16,188 hectares) and hundreds of homes have been flooded. She said her home sits on an 8-foot (2.5-meter) foundation.

"We have no control over it," the 38-year-old said. "We just have to wait for the water to recede. It's upsetting because everything you have worked for is there."

The Missouri River was forecast to crest Thursday morning at 11.6 feet above flood stage in St. Joseph, Missouri, the third highest crest on record. More than 100 roads are closed in the state, including a growing section of Interstate 29.

Leaders of the small northwestern Missouri town of Craig ordered an evacuation. The Holt County Sheriff's Department said residents who choose to stay must go to City Hall to provide their name and address in case they need to be rescued.

In nearby Atchison County, Missouri, floodwaters knocked out a larger section of an already busted levee overnight, making the village of Watson unreachable, said Mark Manchester, the county's deputy director of emergency management/911.

Officials believe everyone got out before thousands of more acres were flooded. But so many roads are now closed that some residents must travel more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) out of their way to get to their jobs at the Cooper Nuclear Station in Nebraska, he said.

"It's a lot harder for people to get around," Manchester said.

River flooding has also surrounded a northern Illinois neighborhood with water, prompting residents to escape in boats. People living in the Illinois village of Roscoe say children have walked through floodwaters or kayaked to catch school buses.

Flooding along rivers in western Michigan has damaged dozens of homes and businesses.

___

Associated Press writer Margery Beck reported from Omaha, Nebraska. AP writers Jim Salter in St. Louis and Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, contributed to this report.

___

Check out the latest developments on flooding in the Midwest.
WASHINGTON  Luke Robbins couldnt hold back the tears when he introduced South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg as a featured speaker at the College Democrats of Americas 2018 convention.

Robbins told the gathering that Buttigiegs 2015 public essay, Why Coming out Matters, helped persuade him  a gay teen from a conservative Indiana family  to come out. It also showed him that doing so wouldnt mean giving up his love of politics.

As Buttigieg explores a bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, it just makes me so happy, said Robbins, president of College Democrats of Indiana.

But Buttigieg isnt necessarily Robbins top choice for the nomination. Im personally very feminist. I would love to see a female candidate, he said. I have no clue who Im going to support.

And there's the evolution in American politics. Buttigiegs trailblazing role as the first presidential contender with a same-sex spouse is a milestone  maybe more so because it has not won him instant backing from the LGBTQ community, an important part of the Democratic base. Just as not all women supported Hillary Clinton because she was female, Buttigieg isn't getting monolithic support from LGBTQ voters.

Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend, Ind. and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, talks with Daily Iowan reporter Sarah Watson during an event on Monday, March 4, 2019, at The Airliner in downtown Iowa City, Iowa.

Embracing, not defining

Buttigieg's exploratory campaign comes only about a decade after the 2008 Democratic presidential candidates did not get behind same-sex marriage. But it follows closely on a record number of LGBTQ candidates winning office in the 2018 elections in which the community provided some of the energy that helped Democrats take the House and many governorships across the country.

Activists are already excited about trying to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the educational arm of the nations largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization, will co-host a forum for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates this fall.

Like many other Democratic constituencies, however, theyre taking their time deciding who in the crowded field of hopefuls has the best chance of ousting Trump.

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Buttigieg is navigating the advantages of his historic bid  such as getting media attention and an early fundraising boost  without letting it define his potential candidacy. He has been guided by how Barack Obama, who has called Buttigieg a gifted politician, handled the question of race.

No one could ignore the historic nature of his candidacy, Buttigieg told USA TODAY. But he found a way of embracing that without letting it define him.

In fact, MetroWeekly, a magazine for Washingtons LGBTQ community, asked Buttigieg if hes worried that he appears to be part of the status quo as a white cisgender man.

If thats the case, then that represents progress, Buttigieg told USA TODAY. My lifestyle, if you want to use that word, is pretty conservative. Chasten and I live with our dogs, in our neighborhood, are building a marriage and hopefully eventually a family. Thats just who we are.

Druet Cameron Klugh, center, has her photo taken by Chasten Buttigieg, left, with his husband Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend, Indiana and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, during an event on Monday, March 4, 2019, at the Public Library in downtown Iowa City, Iowa. Druet Cameron Klugh works as a librarian at the University of Iowa Law School.

Waiting to endorse

Buttigieg got a hearty reception in January when he stopped by the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign. But the gay rights organization has not promised him an endorsement.

HRC is going to consider all our options, said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs. But we have a field of many pro-equality candidates.

The LGBTQ Victory Fund, a group that supports gay and transgender candidates, is waiting for the race to develop.

Buttigieg will have the chance to impress the groups backers when speaking at their main fundraising event in April. And the Victory Fund did activate its supporters to help him meet the Democratic National Committees donor support threshold for being invited to this summers debate.

We will do our best to help him raise his profile, said Annise Parker, the groups president and CEO. But in terms of an actual endorsement, hes got to win that.

More: Pete Buttigieg says hes mayor of a turnaround city. Heres how that claim stands up.

Who came before

Buttigieg is not the first openly gay presidential hopeful from a major party.

That would be Fred Karger, who seems a little miffed that people dont remember him.

My historic campaign in 2012 made me the first, Karger recently wrote in The Advocate. Then why all the mainstream media omissions of my historic candidacy and so many qualifiers when describing Petes run?

Karger ran as a sort of party crasher for the GOP nomination. Passing out pins that crossed the American flag with the rainbow one, the gay rights advocate compared himself to Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American to run for president. He wanted to be an inspiration to young people and to pave the way for the next openly gay candidate.

So, Pete, go for it, he wrote.

'A little less of a long shot'

At this early stage, Buttigieg is an underdog in a crowded field of bigger names and longer resumes. But he gained significant buzz after his recent appearance at a CNN town hall in Austin at the South By Southwest conference, which helped expand his donor base enough to meet the DNCs viability threshold for the debates.

Hell be a little less of a long shot tomorrow, former Obama strategist David Axelrod tweeted after the town hall.

I have rarely seen a candidate make better use of televised Town Hall than @PeteButtigieg is on @CNN tonight. Crisp, thoughtful and relatable. Hell be a little less of a long shot tomorrow.  David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) March 11, 2019

He was also a long shot when he ran in 2017 to head the DNC. He didnt win, but he won the support of five former chairmen and made many other party insiders sit up and take notice.

Buttigieg took people by surprise when, at age 29, he became the youngest mayor of a city with more than 100,000 residents.

Now 37, Buttigieg would be the youngest person to take the oath of office if elected president.

I see a moment thats kind of crying out for generational change, he has said when talking about the standing he would bring as a millennial and Afghanistan war veteran to issues such as gun control, climate change, income stagnation and fighting terrorism.

I think thats actually the most significant thing, more so than where hes from or his sexual orientation, said John Bauters, an openly gay member of the Emeryville, California, City Council who supports Buttigieg. Electing young people is critical at all levels of government right now.

Standing out by coming out

While Buttigieg has emphasized his millennial status, executive experience and industrial Midwestern roots much more than his marriage, his sexual identity has helped him stand out.

If his husband happened to be a wife and not a husband, hed look really boring, said Andrew Reynolds, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina and author of The Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World.

The New York Times covered his marriage to teacher Chasten Glezman last June under the headline: Pete Buttigieg Might Be President Someday. Hes Already Got the First Man.

In February, CNN promoted that it was airing the first joint interview with the campaigning couple.

"I'm a gay man from Indiana. I know how to deal with a bully, Buttigieg responded when asked by CNN how he would handle attacks from Trump.

In his recently published memoir and in interviews, Buttigieg talks about what is was like coming out in a state headed by then-Gov. Mike Pence who signed a religious freedom law viewed by critics as a license to discriminate against gay people. Buttigieg calls the vice president fanatical in his beliefs.

I think it chills a lot of us, especially in the LGBTQ community, to see that somebody like that can be in that kind of position of power, Buttigieg told BuzzFeed News  after drawing headlines at the CNN town hall for calling Pence the cheerleader of the porn star presidency.

Buttigieg said his status has helped in recruiting and mobilizing supporters. And it gives donors a way to contribute to keep him in the mix while avoiding committing to one candidate this early in the process.

"It takes a little pressure off potential backers," he said, when the pitch is "we recognize that it will take a little time to close the deal on who your preferred nominee is going to be. But can we all agree that you want to see somebody like me on that debate stage?"

Not all positive

While hes regularly thanked on the campaign trail for inspiring others in the LGBTQ community, Buttigieg has also dealt with some unpleasant things in my inbox and in our mailbox sometimes. He declined to elaborate about that and whether he has had concerns about his personal safety.

Its something that obviously weve talked about, taking steps to make sure were paying attention to that, he told USA TODAY. We take it in stride and deal with it. Theres always an ugly side in politics no matter where youre coming from. But you cant let that dominate your attention, because its part of what were trying to do away with.

Still, he longs for the day when his sexuality wont be considered noteworthy and gay politicians wont have to publish essays announcing their identity.

Ideally, I should have just showed up at a chicken dinner with a dude, he said at a February reading of his best-selling memoir, Shortest Way Home.

Authenticity sells

The self-described introvert is candid in his book and at public events about feeling humiliated to have been in his 30s with no clue of what it was like to be in love because it had taken him so long to come out.

That kind of openness can help him with voters, even if theyre uncomfortable with his sexuality, said Parker of the LGBTQ Victory Fund.

Theres a dynamic where a voter will say, internally, 'Youre honest with me about your sexual orientation, which is something of which I disapprove, (so) youll probably be honest with me about everything, she said. What voters are hungry for right now are authentic, honest candidates.

A record number of openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people were elected across the country in November, including two in the Senate and eight in the House.

Parker expects the trend to continue in 2020 because success breeds success.

And having someone from the community running for president will help fan the flames as well, she said.

Still a liability?

Research, however, shows theres still a residual prejudice against gay candidates, said Reynolds, the political science professor at the University of North Carolina. Thats not necessarily because of the candidates sexuality. But it also could be because of the fear they cant win. Plus, voters like experience, and openly gay candidates have not been competing as long.

Its not a death knell, Reynolds said. But its still a hurdle.

Buttigieg knows his electability is on the minds of some Democrats. But when his party has focused on who is viewed as having the best chance of winning, rather than someone we believed in, he said, we wound up generating somebody who was less electable.

His blunt response for the multiple interviewers asking if the country is ready for an openly gay president?

Theres only one way to find out.

Competition: Beto O'Rourke after his first round of campaigning in Iowa: 'It's absolutely relentless'

Warren's issue: Breaking up Big Tech: Advocates spar over how to trim sails of technology giants at SXSW

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: If Pete Buttigieg had 'a wife and not a husband, hed look really boring.' Candidate not defined by LGBTQ label.
Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) lawmakers now want Deputy President William Ruto to resign if he is tired of being part of the presidency.

Led by Rarieda Member of Parliament Otiende Amollo, the MPs from Siaya County accused Ruto of using his allies to attack and undermine the institution of the presidency which he is part of.

William Samoei Ruto has chosen to send his foot soldiers to attack the institution of the Presidency, in other words he is a pastor sending the congregation to attack the church, Otiende said.

The outspoken MP further argued that if Ruto has lost trust in the presidency, he should resign and pave way for someone else.

Raila and the President Uhuru Kenyatta shook hands for the betterment of this nation, you cannot attack the handshake unless you do not mean well for this country, Otiende said during an ODM campaign rally at Kolali trading center in Ugenya constituency.

The Rarieda MP also laughed off the Deputy Presidents claims that Raila Odinga was out to split the Jubilee party.

Otiendes remarks were echoed by Siaya Senator James Orengo who said that it is high time the deputy president realised that he must respect the president as his boss.

Just like Otiende has said, if Ruto has found the fire in the kitchen too hot then he better leave the kitchen, Orengo said.

Gem MP Elisha Odhiambo encouraged President Uhuru to stay firm in the war against graft.

We are challenging the President, do not be intimidated by thieves, as the President you are a symbol of our national unity, Odhiambo said adding that, you have to stand out so that the public can trust and have confidence in your leadership, we will support you.

Source: Citizen Digital
Jazmyne Futrell, a mother-of-four is often questioned about her family life. (Photo: Facebook/Mixed Mom Brown Babies)

Words by Elise Sole.

A mother whose four children pique public fascination took a Facebook photo that exudes the realness of family life.

Jazmyne Futrell, 31, a mother in California recently posted an image to her Facebook page Mixed Mom Brown Babies.

In the image, shes cooking chicken noodle soup at the stove wearing her seven-month-old baby Koehn, who is breastfeeding.

Karson, her seven-year-old son, is tugging on her shirt and showing her a page of his homework, while her five-year-old daughter Kinley and three-year-old son Karter, enjoy screen time at her feet.

Read more: Is five-year-old North West too young for black lipstick?

She wrote under the photo taken by her husband, Friends with no kids: You go to bed at 9pm? Girl I cant fall asleep before 11pm.



Mom [sic] friends: you go to bed at 9 [pm]? Girl I cant seem to stay up past 8:30.



With four kids Im way too exhausted to even think about having a life after dark and way too busy to go to bed at a decent hour.

Theres so much to say about this photo, the blogger tells Yahoo. I shouldnt be cooking while holding my baby, my son has a ponytail because I didnt have time to braid his hair, and my kids are on the floor. Thats why I posted it  theres not enough realness on social media.

Futrell took an interest in blogging after Koehn was born.

I had postpartum depression and all the other mums looked amazing on social media, she continues. Many times I thought, Can I do this? I hope showing photos like this lets mothers know theyre not fighting their battles alone.

People said Futrell was a rock star and a warrior, except for those concerned for her apparent lack of help. Maybe shes a single mom [sic], a commenter wrongly assumed.

Read more: Meghan appears to break royal tradition with trendy iCandy pushchair for baby

When Futrell goes shopping with her children, people arent shy to make assumptions.

A woman asked me, How old you? and was relieved to learn I was older than expected, she says. While in labor with Koehn, the nurse asked my husband if he was a father to my unborn child or all [of] my kids because she [said there are] a lot of single moms [sic].'

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Meanwhile, Futrell says her husband is doted on in comparison.

Once at a store, my husband took the kids to another section so I could try on clothes, she said. A woman told me, I just want to compliment you for your awesome husband. Hes babysitting so you can shop.'

He wasnt babysitting his own children  hes required by law to care for them, says Futrell. The bar is set so low for fathers.

Futrell says social expectations for families makes her village stand out. I used to make excuses for peoples comments, she says. Not anymore.
Washington (AFP) - The annual Templeton Prize, which recognizes outstanding contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension," was awarded Tuesday to Brazilian Marcelo Gleiser -- a theoretical physicist dedicated to demonstrating science and religion are not enemies.

A physics and astronomy professor whose specializations include cosmology, 60-year-old Gleiser was born in Rio de Janeiro, and has been in the United States since 1986.

An agnostic, he doesn't believe in God -- but refuses to write off the possibility of God's existence completely.

"Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method," Gleiser told AFP Monday from Dartmouth College, the New Hampshire university where he has taught since 1991.

"Atheism is a belief in non-belief. So you categorically deny something you have no evidence against."

"I'll keep an open mind because I understand that human knowledge is limited," he added.

The prize is funded by the John Templeton Foundation -- a philanthropic organization named after the American Presbyterian who made his fortune on Wall Street, and who set on "seeking proofs of divine agency in every branch of science", as The Economist put it.

Gleiser joins Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and dissident Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as recipients of the prize, first awarded in 1973. At 1.1 million ($1.5 million), the prize money well surpasses that of the Nobels.

The physicist focuses on at making complex subjects accessible. He has written on climate change, Einstein, hurricanes, black holes, the human conscience -- tracing the links between the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy.

The author of five English-language books and hundreds of blog and press articles in the US and Brazil, Gleiser has also explored in depth how science and religion both try to respond to questions on the origins of life and the universe.

"The first thing you see in the Bible is a story of creation," he said. Whatever your religion, "everybody wants to know how the world came to be."

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This fundamental curiosity unites science and religion, though each provides very different answers: science has a methodology, where hypotheses are eliminated.

"Science can give answers to certain questions, up to a point," Gleiser pointed out.

"This has been known for a very long time in philosophy, it's called the problem of the first cause: we get stuck," the physicist, a father of five, said.

"We should have the humility to accept that there's mystery around us."

- Scientific arrogance -

So, what does he think of people who believe that the Earth was created in seven days?

"They position science as the enemy ... because they have a very antiquated way of thinking about science and religion in which all scientists try to kill God," he said.

"Science does not kill God."

On the other hand, he accuses the "new atheists" of doing a disservice to science by making an enemy out of religion: notably British scientist Richard Dawkins -- who called for the arrest of Pope Benedict XVI over pedophilia in the Catholic Church -- and the late journalist Christopher Hitchens, who criticized Mother Theresa.

For Gleiser, who grew up in Rio's Jewish community, religion is not just about believing in God: it provides a sense of identity and community

"At least half of the world population is that way," he said.

"It's extremely arrogant from scientists to come down from the ivory towers and make these declarations without understanding the social importance of belief systems."

"When you hear very famous scientists making pronouncements like ... cosmology has explained the origin of the universe and the whole, and we don't need God anymore. That's complete nonsense," he added.

"Because we have not explained the origin of the universe at all."
London (AFP) - With Brexit chaos deepening, public opinion may have been shifting in favour of the prime minister's proposals, polls indicate -- before a fresh obstacle sprang up to her twice-rejected plan.

The fate of Theresa May's Brexit plan was thrown up in the air on Monday when the parliamentary speaker ruled out a new vote on it unless it were changed.

Yet recent polls had indicated that a growing number of voters and MPs, desperate to see Brexit concluded, may have been preparing to back her plan.

Here is a round-up of what opinion polls and MPs have indicated in recent days about their shifting positions in the fraught process of ending Britain's 46-year membership of the European Union.

- Leavers swing to May -

MPs and Leave voters have rejected Theresa May's deal twice already because of its provisions on the Irish border.

But in two YouGov polls published last week, one third of voters said they wanted MPs to back May's deal -- an increase from one quarter the week before, with the shift almost exclusively among "Leavers".

"There are signs that some Leave voters are now inclined to feel, however reluctantly, that the deal should now be accepted," said Professor John Curtice, a polling expert at the University of Strathclyde.

- Conservative no-Brexit fears -

People who voted for May's Conservative party at the 2017 election are also increasingly backing her deal, with support at 54 percent in one YouGov poll.

A survey by the ConservativeHome website published on March 14 found backing for the deal among party members rose from 19 to 40 percent in a week.

ConservativeHome editor Paul Goodman said he believed growing support for the deal was "less to do with any satisfaction over the revisions than fear of No Brexit".

- Extreme alternatives -

The alternatives to May's deal are stark. Many in each camp still reject it and now back either a no-deal Brexit or a second referendum.

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"The problem with trying to seek compromise is that the centre ground on Brexit policy is very thinly populated," Curtice told AFP.

"The two most popular options are the most extreme options -- leave without a deal or hold another referendum."

John Redwood, a strongly eurosceptic MP in May's Conservative party, cited emails he received from his constituents.

"The prime minister's bad deal has achieved the impossible of uniting a lot of my Remain voters with my Leave voters," he told the BBC.

- Popular vote? -

Some argue a new referendum is needed to resolve the disagreement.

Almost three years ago, Britons voted by 52 to 48 percent to leave the European Union.

It is unclear what might happen if a new popular vote were held now.

A compilation of opinion polls by NatCen Social Research Agency indicated "Remain" would win 53 to 47 percent if the 2016 vote were re-run.

However a YouGov poll published over the weekend found only 38 percent were in favour of a second referendum that could reverse Brexit and 52 percent were against it.

- No delay -

May is now preparing to ask Brussels to delay Brexit beyond the scheduled departure date of March 29, her spokesman said Tuesday.

The prospect of a delay has worried Brexit supporters.

Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski voted against May's deal twice but said he would support it if it came back to the House of Commons a third time.

He said the mood among voters had changed.

"They feel that although the deal isn't optimum, now is the time to support it otherwise we could lose Brexit," he told the BBC.
Lyon (AFP) - Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who was handed a six-month suspended sentence this month for failing to report sex abuse by a priest under his authority, the cardinal said on Tuesday.

The pope's decision, which was confirmed by the Vatican, triggered sharp surprise from the chairman of the Bishops' Conference of France, who termed the situation "unheard of".

"Monday morning, I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation," Barbarin, who has appealed his sentence, said in a statement from his see in the southeastern city of Lyon.

Barbarin said he would remain in Lyon pending his appeal, but added that "for a little while" he would step back from his job, allowing, at the pope's "suggestion", the local vicar general Yves Baumgarten to run day-to-day affairs.

The 68-year-old is the most senior French cleric caught up in the global paedophilia scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church.

The chairman of the Bishops' Conference, Georges Pontier, told AFP he was "surprised" by the decision.

"I did not expect this scenario which falls between the two most expected," he said, adding that this "unheard of" situation resulted from the difficulty of "respecting the judicial process" along with the need to "look after the Lyon diocese".

On March 7 a Lyon court ruled that Barbarin, a cardinal since 2003, was guilty of failing to report allegations of abuse of boy scouts committed by a priest, Bernard Preynat, in the 1980s and 1990s.

After the ruling, Barbarin said he would go to Rome to tender his resignation.

The pope had previously defended the cardinal, saying in 2016 that his resignation before a trial would be "an error, imprudent".

Barbarin's lawyer has announced plans to fight the guilty ruling, which was hailed by abuse victims as ushering in a new period of accountability in the French Church.

The case came as the pope seeks to restore faith in the Church following a slew of abuse scandals that have spanned the globe, from Australia to Chile and the United States.

Less than a week after Barbarin's conviction the Vatican's former number three, Australian Cardinal George Pell, was sentenced to six years in prison by a Melbourne court for the "brazen" sexual abuse of two choirboys.
Washington (AFP) - At precisely 11:48 am on December 18, 2018, a large space rock heading straight for Earth at a speed of 19 miles per second exploded into a vast ball of fire as it entered the atmosphere, 15.9 miles above the Bering Sea.

From below, the only witnesses to this fiery event may have been the fish that inhabit the frigid waters between Russia and Alaska, as no human eye caught sight of it.

A meteor is the luminous phenomenon that results when an asteroid or other celestial body enters the Earth's atmosphere. It is commonly called a shooting star. If it does not fully vaporize and some part of it hits the Earth's surface, it is called a meteorite.

One of the first researchers to detect the event was Peter Brown, a meteor scientist at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Western Ontario.

On March 8, he was poring over December data from the system used by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization to detect atmospheric explosions caused by nuclear tests.

The system is comprised of seismic and acoustic sensors capable of picking up infrasound, inaudible to the human ear, at a distance of tens of thousands of miles.

"Many of them detected the sound waves from this explosion," he told AFP. "If you were directly under it, it would have been deafening."

- 10 meters in diameter -

US military satellites spotted the explosion immediately.

But it was not until March 8 that the Air Force officially informed NASA, which logged the event in the database of fireballs it has kept since 1988, according to Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer.

"It was almost immediately published on our website, within 10 minutes, I would say," he told AFP.

NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies calculated the energy released by the explosion to be 173 kilotons, more than 10 times as destructive as the 15-kiloton atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima in 1945.

It was the most powerful explosion in the atmosphere since the fireball that burst over the Russian town of Chelyabinsk in 2013. That was 440 kilotons, and left 1,500 people injured, mostly from glass flying out of smashed windows.

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The event was described on Monday by scientists at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.

When he read a report on the subject on the BBC, Simon Proud, a meteorologist and specialist in satellite data at Oxford University, decided to check the archive of images collected by a Japanese weather satellite, Himawari, which his center permanently monitors.

Bingo: the satellite was in the right place at the right time, he told AFP.

Proud published the image on his Twitter account: what looks like an orange ball of fire above the clouds and sea, but which is in fact a cloud of dust from the meteor caught in the sunlight, Brown said.

As it turns out, NASA's MODIS satellite also photographed the dust cloud, the agency's Kurtis Thome told AFP Tuesday.

"It doesn't surprise me," said Patrick Michel, research director and asteroid specialist at the observatory of the Cote d'Azur in southern France.

"It is a good reminder that there are a bunch of these things that pass over our heads and that it would be good to be more concerned about them," he told AFP.

"It should remind us that even if it is the least likely natural risk we face, it is a still a risk that exists and will in the long term become a reality," he said.

The rock was roughly 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter: the most dangerous celestial bodies for the Earth are those in excess of 150 meters.

"Nothing very unusual," said Rudiger Jehn, head of planetary defense at the European Space Agency (ESA).

"We were lucky it was over the ocean. It can happen again, and someday there will be a bigger one," he said, noting that the ESA plans to ask member states for a budget to create a better protection system against asteroids during a ministerial meeting in November.

"That meteor explosion is a perfect promotion for our program. And it is free," he said.
By Olzhas Auyezov ALMATY (Reuters) - Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev unexpectedly resigned on Tuesday after three decades in power, in what appeared to be the first step in a choreographed political transition that will see him retain considerable sway. Known as "Papa" to many Kazakhs, the 78-year-old former steel worker and Communist party apparatchik has ruled the vast oil and gas-rich Central Asian nation since 1989, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. Bestowed by parliament with the official title of "The Leader of the Nation", he was the last Soviet-era leader still in office and oversaw extensive market reforms while remaining widely popular in his country of 18 million people. "I have taken a decision, which was not easy for me, to resign as president," Nazarbayev said in a nationwide TV address, flanked by his country's blue and yellow flags, before signing a decree terminating his powers from March 20. "As the founder of the independent Kazakh state I see my task now in facilitating the rise of a new generation of leaders who will continue the reforms that are underway in the country." But Nazarbayev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said he would retain key security council and party leader positions and hand over the presidency to a loyal ally for the rest of his term, which ends in April 2020. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, speaker of the upper house of parliament, will take over as Kazakhstan's acting president for the remainder of his term in line with the constitution, Nazarbayev said. Nazarbayev has no apparent long-term successor. His decision hit the price of Kazakh bonds, while the London-listed shares of Kazakhstan's biggest bank, Halyk Bank, tumbled 5 percent. The news also appeared to weigh on the Russian rouble. Moscow is Kazakhstan's main trade partner. The Kremlin said Nazarbayev and Putin had spoken by phone on Tuesday, but gave no details of their conversation. SMOOTHER TRANSITION? "(Nazarbayev) will continue to some extent to oversee things, so it is not like he has cut the cord totally - he still has his fingers in the pie," said Theodor Kirschner of Capitulum Asset Management in Berlin. "That a 78-year-old won't be sticking around forever shouldn't be such a surprise to anyone, and this move makes the transition smoother. This doesn't really give us a headache." Nazarbayev, who helped attract tens of billions of dollars from foreign energy companies and more than tripled Kazakh oil output, said he would continue to chair the Security Council and remain leader of the Nur Otan party which dominates parliament. The new acting president, 65-year-old Tokayev, is a Moscow-educated career diplomat fluent in Kazakh, Russian, English and Chinese who has previously served as Kazakhstan's foreign minister and prime minister. While praising Tokayev as "a man who can be trusted to lead Kazakhstan", Nazarbayev - who has three daughters - stopped short of endorsing him as his preferred heir. "We expect Tokayev to be an interim figure," said Camilla Hagelund, an analyst at consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft. "The real question is, who will be Kazakhstans third president." Kazakhstan is scheduled to hold both presidential and parliamentary elections next year. Nazarbayev's eldest daughter, Dariga, the most politically ambitious of his children, is a senator and once led a political party of her own. Another close relative, his nephew Samat Abish, is the No.2 official on the National Security Committee. The head of state security, 53-year-old Karim Masimov, is also a close Nazarbayev confidant. He has served twice as prime minister and also worked as the president's chief of staff. But regardless of who eventually leads Kazakhstan, the transition may slow reforms, including in the key energy sector, according to GlobalData analyst Will Scargill. "Although Nazarbayev will retain some key roles, his decision to resign will doubtless slow policy-making as political dynamics are restructured," Scargill said. Uncertainty could also hurt investor appetite for Kazakhstan's biggest state-owned companies, which the government planned to list as part of a privatization campaign. BALANCING ACT Nazarbayev steered his nation, which is five times the size of France in area, to independence from Moscow in 1991. He has since managed to maintain close ties with Russia, the West, and China, Kazakhstan's giant eastern neighbor. Nazarbayev won 97.7 percent of the vote in the last presidential election in 2015. International observers have long judged elections in Kazakhstan to be neither free nor fair. Nazarbayev tolerated no dissent or opposition and was criticized by rights groups who accused him of locking up his critics and muzzling the media, allegations he denied. His government recently pushed through a number of popular policies - including raising public-sector salaries and forcing utilities to cut or freeze tariffs - stoking speculation that he was preparing for a re-election bid. Members of Nazarbayev's family have stakes in some of Kazakhstan's most lucrative assets, including Halyk Bank and firms in sectors ranging from telecoms to fuel trading. (Additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov/Andrew Osborn; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Belgrade (AFP) - Thousands of demonstrators rallied around Serbia's presidential palace in Belgrade on Sunday, accusing President Aleksandar Vucic of authoritarianism and muzzling the media.

The protest came a day after opposition supporters stormed a state-run television building.

The events mark a new boldness in opposition protests that have been held weekly in the Balkan country since December against what critics describe as Vucic's slide towards autocratic rule.

On Saturday night, dozens invaded the offices of RTS television -- which the protesters accuse of pandering to the ruling party -- demanding to address the population.

The leaders of opposition parties have become more visible at the rallies, and among those storming the RTS building were former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas and Bosko Obradovic, head of the right-wing Dveri party.

At Sunday's demonstration, the protesters practically blocked the presidency building for several hours.

The trouble started when police tried unsuccessfully to prevent protesters from bringing a truck with loudspeakers close the presidency building.

They moved on from there to the police headquarters, where they called for 10 arrested protesters to be freed. Police said only six had been arrested.

The stand-off lasted around two hours, without incident.

One protest leader issued an ultimatum to the president.

"Aleksandar Vucic, you have until 3:00 pm Monday (1400 GMT) to free those who have been arrested. Failing that we will decide on a fresh protest and we will continue to the end," he said, calling on the government to resign.

The protests have spread to dozens of other Serbian towns.

In his press conference at the presidential palace -- broadcast live on RTS -- Vucic said he was not intimidated by the protesters, whom he called "hooligans".

He also lashed out at the opposition, calling Obradovic a "fascist" and Djilas an "oligarch".

Vucic, an ultra-nationalist turned pro-European, has rejected claims that he has become autocratic.

Serbia, which aspires to join the EU in 2025, was criticised by the European Commission last year over press freedoms in the country, denouncing threats, intimidation and violence against journalists.
The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge teamed up for their first joint engagement at Kings College London today.

Kate, 37, accompanied the 92-year-old monarch as they opened Bush House, a new education and learning facilities on the Strand Campus.

Rather sweetly, the pair shared a blanket in the car on the way to the event.

Kate and the Queen on a joint engagement together at Kings College London [Photo: Getty]

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge arrive at Kings College London together, even sharing a blanket in the car [Photo: Getty]

The engagement marked a milestone for the duchess: it was the first time weve seen the royals out and about together, without another member of the Royal Family present and outside of palace walls.

The Duchess of Cambridge visited Leicester with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in March 2012 and they have also hosted receptions at Buckingham Palace together, including the Dramatic Arts Reception in 2014.

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge arrive at Kings College London [Photo: Getty]

The pair toured the universitys facilities, including the facultys new roof terrace and also viewed a robotics demonstration, including robotic surgery.

The Queen looked lovely in a rose pink Stewart Parvin cashmere coat with a matching hat by Rachel Trevor Morgan, paired with a pink sapphire and diamond brooch.

READ MORE: The Queen and Kates relationship timeline in photos

Kate, meanwhile, ensured she didnt outshine the Queen in a new grey pleated coat dress by Catherine Walker with belt and contrast collar detailing.

She appeared to be wearing the same black Lock & Co hat worn on her visit to Leicester with the Queen in 2012.

Black suede pumps and her Mulberry Bayswater clutch bag finished the outfit.

Kate turned and waved to the crowd before walking in. pic.twitter.com/JVHwrCNenJ  Danielle Stacey (@daniellestacey1) March 19, 2019

The duchess had a second engagement on Tuesday afternoon, at the Foundling Museum in London.

She was announced as Patron ahead of her visit, where she learned how the organisation works with art and artists to transform the lives of vulnerable and marginalised young people.

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Kate receives flowers as she arrives at the Foundling Museum in London [Photo: Getty]

Kate, who remained in the same outfit for her second duty of the day, gave a speech at museum, saying: I am passionate about improving childrens life chances and giving them opportunities, so that they can look forward to the best possible futures, fulfil their whole potential, and have the freedom to explore their creativity.




Paris (AFP) - An asteroid described as a "pile of rubble" is rich in hydrated minerals that could help solve the mystery of how Earth got its water, scientists said Tuesday.

The Ryugu asteroid, around 300 million kilometres (185 million miles) from Earth, is estimated to be between 100 million and one billion years old.

It appears to have broken off from a parent body, according to observations from a Japanese probe that landed on the space rock.

Kohei Kitazato, from The University of Aizu in Fukushima, told AFP that images taken by the Hayabusa2 craft showed that hydrated minerals -- which contain traces of water in their crystal structure -- were "ubiquitous" on Ryugu's surface.

"Asteroids like Ryugu are considered as a potential source of Earth's water, so we are expecting that our results and the future analysis of Ryugu samples would provide new insights about the origin of Earth's water," he said.

Several previous studies suggested that meteorites or similar extraterrestrial bodies from our Solar System's asteroid belt may have been responsible for bringing water to Earth.

Scans of the rock, which is shaped like a spinning top roughly 3.2 kilometres around its equator -- about a 45-minute stroll -- showed its interior to be highly porous.

The team behind several studies of the asteroid published in the journal Science said this suggested it had lost moisture over time.

"Our preferred scenario suggests that Ryugu's parent body once had much more water in the beginning and subsequently lost a large fraction of it," said Sheji Sugita, one of the studies' authors.

He said Ryugu's parent body was roughly 4.6 billion years old -- dating from the very earliest days of our Solar System.

In February, officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the Hayabusa2 probe touched down on Ryugu, fired a bullet into its surface and collected the dust before blasting back to its holding position.

Hayabusa2, which is about the size of a large fridge, travelled for three and a half years to reach the space rock.

Next month it will fire an "impactor" to blast out material from beneath Ryugu's surface, allowing the collection of "fresh" materials unexposed to millenia of wind and radiation.
The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a win Tuesday, ruling that the federal government can detain immigrants with years-old criminal records indefinitely without a bond hearing.

The case concerned the governments power to detain noncitizens who have been convicted of crimes that make them deportable, served their sentences, and been released. The plaintiffs, noncitizens who joined class-action suits against the government filed in California and Washington, argued that the law required the government to immediately detain such convicts upon their release at the end of their sentences, at which point they would be held while an immigration court decided their cases. But the Court disagreed.

The 54 decision, which fell along the Courts established ideological fault lines, overturned a 9th Circuit ruling that immigrants with criminal records may request a bond hearing if they are arrested by immigration authorities long after their release from detention.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, making the textual argument that neither the statutes text nor its structure supported the interpretation that immigration authorities must act quickly in arresting a criminal alien after his release. The statute in question states that the government can detain convicted immigrants when the alien is released, but does not specify a time frame.

Alito called especially hard to swallow the plaintiffs argument that such immigrants must be detained a mere 24 hours after their release from criminal detention.

Justice Stephen Breyer read his dissent from the bench, warning that the majoritys decision grants the government extraordinary power. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor also voted against the decision.

It runs the gravest risk of depriving those whom the Government has detained of one of the oldest and most important of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms: the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law, Breyer wrote.

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The Supreme Court has endorsed the most extreme interpretation of immigration detention statutes, allowing mass incarceration of people without any hearing, simply because they are defending themselves against a deportation charge, said the plaintiffs attorney, American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Cecilia Wang.

More from National Review




The media storm around Seann Walsh kissing his married Strictly Come Dancing partner Katya Jones was a result of people who overreacted, Katya and her husband have said six months on.

The duo were pictured kissing during their time dancing together on the show, despite both being in relationships at the time.

Read more: Katya Jones hints at Strictly signing Cheryl

Katya is married to fellow Strictly professional Neil Jones, while Walsh was in a relationship with actress Rebecca Humphries, who split from the stand-up comedian after the scandal erupted.

The 29-year-old dancer, who was born in Slovakia, told Lorraine Kelly: I didnt realise the scale it was going to be so sort of hyped up. It was quite shocking really.

Seann Walsh and Katya Jones were embroiled in controversy during their time on Strictly Come Dancing in 2018. (Credit: BBC)

It was really shocking, but I just tried not to look on the outside, we were just trying to keep it all together here.

Kelly branded Katya a dafty for kissing the 33-year-old comedian and suggested to Neil that the scandal must have been really embarrassing.

Neil said that he felt people overreacted to what had happened and said he was more worried for Katya than about anything else when the media attention intensified.

Neil and Katya Jones are seen attending the opening night of Notre Dame de Paris at the London Coliseum in London. (Photo by Gary Mitchell/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Katya added: Even the fact that were still talking about it. Its like, were over it, I think everyone else is over it, lets just move on.

Read more: Neil Jones sparks Joe Sugg engagement rumours

Katya and Walsh were eliminated in the sixth week of the show after performing a Viennese Waltz to I Put a Spell on You.

She won the show in 2017 with Holby City actor Joe McFadden as her partner.




(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued warning letters to Sientra Inc and a Johnson & Johnson unit for failing to comply with the post-approval study requirements for their breast implants. The long-term safety of breast implants has been questioned over the years. Last month, the FDA issued a statement warning doctors about a type of lymphoma linked to breast implants after receiving reports of the disease. The agency's letters, dated March 18, highlighted issues in the companies' post-approval studies, which included evaluating the long-term performance and safety of the implants, used for breast augmentation and reconstruction procedures. The letter to J&J's medical aesthetics unit Mentor Worldwide LLC noted "several serious deficiencies" in the company's post-approval study for its MemoryShape breast implant approved in 2013. Failure to enroll the required number of patients in the study and data inconsistencies, including poor patient accounting and missing race and ethnicity data, were identified as violations in the letter to Mentor. Mentor said it was disappointed with the FDA's decision to issue a warning letter, even as the company attempted to address post-approval study requirements with the agency. "Despite multiple attempts to discuss this with FDA, Mentor has not received feedback," Mentor spokeswoman Mindy Tinsley said in an emailed statement. Sientra had reported a poor patient follow-up rate of 61 percent for the post-approval study of its silicone gel breast implants, which required the company to evaluate the study subjects annually for 10 years, according to the FDA letter. The agency said failure to make good the violations may result in the withdrawal of the premarket approval granted to the products. The FDA asked the companies to provide responses within 15 working days with details about how the noted violations will be corrected. Last year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Sientra's former chief executive for fraudulently concealing problems with his company's breast and other implants while raising $61.4 million in a public stock offering. Shares of Sientra were down 1.8 percent at $8.65, while J&J shares were flat in after market trading. (Reporting by Saumya Sibi Joseph in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Chris Reese)
This one is for the birds: A racing pigeon considered one of the best ever was sold at an auction for a record $1.4 million.

According to PIPA.be, a pigeon-racing website based in Belgium which managed the auction, the pigeon named Armando grabbed the record-breaking amount after a bidding war ensued between two Chinese buyers.

On Sunday morning, the auction for Armando reached roughly $603,000 before jumping to the final $1.4 million mark in an hour. The previous record for a single pigeon was about $427,000, said PIPA.

PIPA said Armando is considered Belgium's best long distance bird of all time. The Guardian reports Armando has been described as "the Lewis Hamilton of pigeons," an homage to the Formula 1 race car driver.

Armando was part of a group of 178 pigeons, including seven of his offspring, sold at auction for approximately $2.7 million, the third-highest ever, said PIPA.

Joel Verschoot, the seller of the pigeons, tells The Guardian he spent 12 hours a day working with the pigeons since taking up the hobby. "This is a crowning glory of all those years in the pigeon sport. The icing on the cake," he said.

Jiangming Liu, a representative for PIPA in China, told CNN they knew Armando would command a higher price, but did not expect the final million-dollar bid. "We're all surprised," he said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Someone just spent $1.4 million to buy a pigeon named Armando
Johannesburg (AFP) - The South African government said Tuesday it was unsure when severe rolling electricity power cuts would end as the continent's most developed nation struggles to grow its economy.

Utility giant Eskom imposed highly unpopular rotational power rationing, known as load-shedding, since last Thursday.

By the weekend it had escalated the blackouts to one of the severest levels - plunging swathes of the country into darkness for long hours and sparking public anger targeted at the ANC-led government, less than two months to crucial national elections.

Cash-strapped power monopoly Eskom had been plagued by maintenance problems at its plants.

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said authorities were still trying to get to the bottom of the underlying issues affecting power supplies.

"We need to complete these investigations," Gordhan told a news conference.

"We don't have a magic formula," Gordhan said.

"We understand the frustration," he said, telling consumers that the utility would "get it right in the next few years."

For many critics of the ANC, the Eskom blackouts have come to symbolise the price that South Africans are paying for alleged state corruption and mismanagement.

The power utility which generates more than 90 percent of the country's energy is buried under a debt bill of 420 billion rand ($30 billion). Last month Finance Minister Tito Mboweni announced a $1.6 billion-a-year bailout for the company.

Eskom has traditionally imported hydro-generated power from Mozambique's Cahora Bassa and Tropical Cyclone Idai which struck the region last week, knocked down some pylons that transmit power to South Africam, adding to Eskom's woes.

Gordhan said technicians have been dispatched to assess the damage caused by the cyclone .

With national elections in May, the blackouts have shaken the ANC party, which has held power since the end of apartheid in 1994.

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Analysts warn that the power outages may be one of the biggest political threat facing President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC party as elections loom.

On Sunday Ramaphosa apologised for the severe power cuts.

The main opposition Democratic Alliance said the ANC has neither the capacity, ideas nor the political will to fix the electricity crisis.

"The challenges at Eskom lie squarely at the feet of the failing ANC, which has actively looted and broken Eskom to the verge of collapse." the DA said in a statement.
If, as I wrote last week here, Joe Biden may save the Democratic party from a horrible debacle at the polls next year, Beto ORourke may be doing the whole process a good turn now. Biden, despite his efforts to masquerade as the vanguard of what is now called progressivism, is politically sane and, if nominated, might hold his shaggy legions back from holus-bolus embrace of the many suicide potions being offered to the Democratic contestants. To date, the most lethal intoxicants that have been extolled by some of the candidates are legalized infanticide, open borders, reparations to African and other minority Americans, nationalized health care, a fascistic and Luddite green policy, and top personal-tax rates above 70 per cent. So far, this cocktail, which is such an assault on the sanity of an electorate that it could reduce the Democrats to splinters, has scared off Michael Bloomberg, Sherrod Brown, and Hillary Clinton (though she is probably contemplating her legal future with some well-founded consternation too).

But another candidate-benefactor is also in sight, and so hyperactive and in his way irresistible that it is hard to get him out of your sight. Beto ORourke is stoking up one the great bonfires of modern political history; he is a phenomenon of these strange times so unique that no one could have imagined him. Even the Trump-hating media, desperate to find a Democrat who can win, in despair at the collapse of the impeachment bubble, demoralized and hung over from pelagic overconsumption of sour Kool Aid, are taking a break from their sacred mission to destroy Trump. They are not turning their swords into ploughshares, but some sort of quasi-Biblical grace of change is occurring.

All of the Democratic candidates and the entire political process are being taken over and occupied by the invasion of the whole public space by Robert Francis ORourke. No one has ever heard or seen anything like this candidate: a hyperactive limb-flailing imbecile, babbling compulsively in a torrent of extremist nonsense barely couched in comprehensible syntax. No idea is too stupid to be endorsed in terms of absolute finality: If we do not abolish all fossil fuels within twelve years, everything on the planet will be dead. The scientists are 100 percent united on this. Just as Americans of the past had to fight at Normandy, we have to fight this now, and save our planet.

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It does not require an immensely sophisticated political scientist to see that there are a few problems with that sequence, as there are with all Betos sentences, and with his much more numerous and even more idiotic non-sentences. The invasion of Normandy in 1944 has become a metaphor for urgent, brave, and imaginative actionvery deservedly, as it was the greatest single military operation in history: moving ten divisions in the teeth of the German army and air force from England to France in one day, beginning the liberation of Western Europe. It is now being bandied about as an operation to be emulated even in the most mundane circumstances: D-Day was invoked in an advertisement for an automobile dealership that I heard on the radio last week. As an Anglo-Canadian, I hope I will be pardoned for mentioning that a majority of the beaches, and of the personnel who descended on northern France that day, by sea and by air, were British and Canadians, who also provided most of the 7,000 ships, and about half of the nearly 15,000 aircraft, and under General Dwight Eisenhower as supreme commander, all of the individual service chiefs. (The maritime commander, Admiral Bertram Ramsay, had masterminded the miraculous evacuation from Dunkirk four years before, and the defense against invasion threats after that, and brought the men back at D-Day and in succeeding months, in overwhelming strength.)

It is an operation to praise, but when Beto ORourke is comparing the Battle of Normandy to saving the earth from carbon use as he waves his arms around in an Iowa high school, the electoral process is becoming worryingly unserious. (Cory Booker, who is no prize for intellectual depth either, was using the same metaphor in a similar Iowa setting, but spared us the frenetic hand signals.) ORourkes great and presumably unsought contribution to this campaign is that he is going to attract the fire of all the media, very soon. They are already shifting. The immense, grunting media monsters, snorting fire and pawing the ground and trying in their Jurassic minds to think of how to lay this president low, have picked up the succulent scent of a ludicrous and clangorous political imposture ardently seeking its own destruction. The media of America will not allow this asinine mockery of a presidential campaign to go another week before it picks up this wild, scrawny, noisy, incoherent nincompoop and shreds him. Somehow, he raised $8.5 million running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, and came close to ousting Ted Cruz. A special psychiatric counsel should be appointed to find out what peculiar mass mental infirmity afflicted millions of Texans to consider this quack.

Let us be clear: This isnt a matter of policy differences. This man is a boob, a dolt. He is vulgar and ungrammatical, knows nothing, and makes no sense. He cant keep his mouth shut for five seconds and he is wired like an early helicopter with a vertical rotor on its tail: he cant gabble out his nonsense without waving his arms around. He knows everything, meaning nothing, is incapable of making a correct factual statement, and throws in the f-word for emphasis, even where there is nothing to emphasize. Yet he is performing a valuable role: This is the candidate the media have been looking for. They savagely attacked Donald Trump three years ago because they thought he was a rich vulgarian blowhard who couldnt speak in sentences, didnt know anything, couldnt run a two-car funeral, stole his money, and colluded illegally with a foreign power. There was never any truth to any of that, apart from Trumps boorishness at times, which has almost completely ended. But Trump had some weak moments.

Now we have the coruscation, the magic deliverance of the process. Almost everything they said about Trump, except the source of his money and any foreign connection (which was a pack of lies in respect of Trump anyway), applies to Beto. The mighty and malicious meat-grinder of the American national political media, twitching and drooling in anticipation, is turning toward Beto, scarcely believing the noisy and juicy helplessness of this victim. Individual wildebeests dont taunt prides of lions, any more than swimmers cock their noses at nearby crocodiles. This is one for the record books. George Romney didnt quite realize the implications of saying he had been brainwashed in Vietnam. (LBJ said he must have gone quietly into a corner and brainwashed himself.) Gary Hart had a bit of a political death wish and set them a chase in 1984. Howard Dean didnt mean to behave like a raving dunce in 2004; he just couldnt help himself. Senator Fred Thompson didnt really want to run in 2008 and folded with a little dignity.

Beto has asked, screamed and flailed, gesticulated, run long distances, and jumped through hoops for the attention he is about to get. Anyone who launches his campaign in Vanity Fair, the most vulgar magazine in the western world, has arrived at the gallows voluntarily ahead of the executioner. In a month, there will be nothing left of him but a few feathers floating in the spring air. And now for the emollient and curative aspect of the Beto moment. The national political media are a savage beast, and they are now an extremely vicious beast because they have been beaten badly by President Trump. They are going to have to cover his implicit exoneration and the intense questioning and in some cases indictments of those who manipulated them. The famished devouring of this delicious self-proffered victim will not sate their antagonisms or slake their blood-lust, but it will be a tasty sorbet, a textbook candidate demolition to show they can still do it when they get the target right. And there is nothing like a good clean public execution to calm everyone down.

With Beto under their belts, they will have the chance to deescalate with dignity, if not honor, as they prepare themselves for the presidents likely reelection.

More from National Review
Pearl K. Dowe, noted political scientist and scholar, will join Emory University in fall 2019 as Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science and African American Studies with a joint appointment between the universitys Oxford College and Emory College of Arts and Sciences. Dowe currently chairs the department of political science and is an affiliated faculty member of the African and African American Studies Program at the University of Arkansas.

This Asa Griggs Candler professorship is an exciting and important addition to our faculty ranks, says Oxford College Dean Douglas A. Hicks. Welcoming a scholar of Pearl Dowes stature to Oxford and Emory will greatly strengthen our curriculum in African American studies and leadership education. Her expertise in African American political leadership will make a valuable and much-needed contribution to our curriculum and to faculty scholarship in service to American democracy.

Dowes unique joint appointment will bridge Oxford and Emory colleges. With a home base for teaching and scholarship at Oxford, Dowe will liaise to the Department of African American Studies at Emory College, where she will teach a course each year and help expand the curriculum. At Oxford, her courses will have a thematic focus on understanding leadership.

Throughout our search, the support and vision of Provost Dwight A. McBride have been essential, and the partnership with colleagues in Emory College made recruiting Dr. Dowe possible, says Hicks.

Building a strong community of scholars who study race, inequality and resilience is one of our strategic priorities, and Pearl Dowe will help us to achieve that goal, says Michael A. Elliott, dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences.

We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Dowe to the Emory community, says Dwight A. McBride, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. Dr. Dowes scholarship and teaching will contribute significantly to the innovative work taking place at both the Oxford and Atlanta campuses while also creating another connection between them.

Dowes most recent research focuses on African American womens political ambition and public leadership. Her published writing includes co-authorship of Remaking the Democratic Party: Lyndon B. Johnson as Native-Son Presidential Candidate (University of Michigan Press: 2016) and editorship of African Americans in Georgia: A Reflection of Politics and Policy Reflection in the New South (Mercer University Press, 2010).

She has published numerous articles and book chapters that have appeared in the Journal of African American Studies, Political Psychology, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Journal of Black Studies and Social Science Quarterly.

Dowe has presented widely at professional conferences and given frequent news-media interviews about American political topics. She currently serves as parliamentarian for the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, is a member of several committees for the American Political Science Association and previously served on the executive council of the Southern Political Science Association. She is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy and the Race, Gender & Class Journal.

The University of Arkansas recognized Dowe for her commitments to diversity and students, awarding her the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences Nudie E. Williams Diversity Award, the NAACP Faculty of the Year Award, and the University of Arkansas Greek Life's Order of Omega Faculty of the Year Award.

Raised in Georgia, Dowe is a graduate of Savannah State University and holds an MA in political science from Georgia Southern University and a PhD in political science from Howard University. She joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas in 2008. In 2016 she was visiting scholar in residence at Howard Universitys Ronald Walters Center for Public Policy.
Omar Oil Field (Syria) (AFP) - Syria's Kurds have criticised the "threatening language" of the Damascus regime after it pledged to retake northeastern areas they control by reconciliation or by force.

The minority have largely stayed out of Syria's war, instead carving out a de-facto autonomous region across a large swathe of northern and northeastern Syria.

That region is held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces who have been battling the Islamic State group with backing from a US-led coalition.

Syrian Defence Minister Ali Abdullah Ayoub on Monday said his government would recapture all areas held by the SDF "in one of two ways: a reconciliation agreement or... by force".

In a statement late Monday, the semi-autonomous administration slammed his comments.

"The Syrian defence minister's statement regarding the SDF... reflects the continuation of the racist and sterile policy that has led Syria to this disastrous situation," it said in a statement.

"The use of threatening language against the SDF who have liberated and protected the north and east of Syria from terrorists only serves those forces working to divide Syria," it said.

US President Donald Trump's announcement in December of a pullout of all American forces from Syria shocked the Kurds and sent them grappling to mend fences with Damascus.

Dialogue between both sides has been ongoing, but has failed to bear fruit.

Damascus rejects Kurdish self-rule and wants a return of government institutions to oil-rich SDF-held areas.

The Kurds want protection from a long-threatened Turkish offensive, but seek some form of decentralisation from Damascus.

"The autonomous administration... stands by its position of the need for a solution and dialogue within the Syrian framework for all pending issues," the Kurdish authorities said.

"But we want all sides to know that we, while choosing the political solution, we will spare no effort in the legitimate defence of our rights if necessary," he said.

Eight years into a war that has killed more than 370,000 people, the Damascus regime controls almost two-thirds of the country after a series of victories against rebels and jihadists.

But the SDF-held region, a northwestern jihadist bastion and border areas held by Turkey's Syrian proxies remain beyond its control.
A Houston high school hosted an early graduation ceremony for a senior with terminal cancer. (Photo: Facebook)

Words: Kerry Justich

A teenager from Texas, USA, received her secondary school diploma during an early graduation ceremony, after she found out that her cancer had spread and decided to not follow through with more treatment.

Crystal Iris Marquez was diagnosed with Ewings sarcoma (a type of cancer that forms in or around bones) in her shoulder back in April 2015. She went through a year of chemotherapy and was told that she was cancer-free. But just six months after completing treatment, a doctor informed the 17-year-old that the cancer had spread.

Recently, I was diagnosed with a tumour on my lung, Marquez told KPRC. When I went back for a checkup, they saw on my rib cage I also had a tumour.

Despite the troubling prognosis, Marquez wasnt ready to give up on her dreams, and told her family that she wouldnt be missing school, nor would she be going through with treatment. Instead, she expressed a final wish to graduate high school. Luckily, the district was behind her in making that happen.

READ MORE: What you should never say to cancer sufferers

We knew we had to make the year special for her as we didnt know what time she would have left, Taylor High School Principal Mary Williams tells Yahoo Lifestyle. We started planning for a graduation for her to be held on Senior Awards night (23 April 2019) and that we would also make sure she had a great prom with her class on 4 May 2019.

But following an update on how aggressive Marquezs cancer had become, Williams says that they moved the graduation to March 8. On that Friday, Alief Independent School District brought administrators, classmates and Marquezs family and friends together to fill the auditoriums 900 seats and honour Marquez in an early ceremony.

This school is a wonderful community! The staff members all became vested in making this a wonderful experience, Williams explains. A make-up artist came and did her make-up for graduation day. A staff member donated a new wig for her.

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Feeling confident, Marquez stood at the podium and gave a speech in front of administrators, friends and family, addressing her hardships and her drive to overcome them.

I am a Disney girl. I have battled pirates, dragons and evil queens. I have dreamed impossible dreams, Marquez said in her speech. Seniors, there will be times when there are things that are out of your control. Dont let it harden your heart. Dont let it define who you are.

According to Williams, Marquez certainly hasnt let her illness define her.

READ MORE: Woman mortified after told to cover up on flight

Iris, even in pain attended school most days. She is a very bright child. She loves school and she loves learning, Williams says. All she wanted was to achieve these two milestones and to enjoy her senior year. It didnt seem like a lot to ask. We could make that happen for her.

Marquez didnt immediately respond to Yahoo Lifestyles request for comment. However, she explained to KPRC just how much the support of her classmates means to her.

It makes me feel like I matter and it motivates me to keep pushing on, she said.

And in her speech, she made just one request of those supporting her.

There is one thing that I can ask for you, she shared, and that is to reach for the sky, to infinite and beyond.

Watch the latest videos from Yahoo
Utrecht (Netherlands) (AFP) - The prime suspect in a deadly shooting on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht was known for a "rap sheet from here to Tokyo" but showed few signs of radicalism, according to residents and reports.

Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis, 37, had been released from jail only two weeks ago in a rape case and has an extensive criminal record including for the possession of illegal weapons.

Police were still questioning Tanis over Monday's rampage in which three people were killed, saying they were "seriously" investigating a terrorist motive because of a letter found in his getaway car.

In the largely immigrant Kanaleneiland area of Utrecht where Tanis hailed from, people were in shock at the allegations about a man variously described as "nice" and "mad".

"I was shocked when I saw his picture. I thought to myself: 'I know this guy!" said Mehmet, an unemployed 51-year-old who asked to be identified only by his first name.

"I heard from people here that he was using drugs," Mehmet told AFP, adding however: "He is really a nice guy. I never heard anything bad from him."

The neighbourhood is home to mainly people of Turkish and Moroccan descent, full of shops and restaurants, with many veiled women on the streets. Since Monday, police cars have been patrolling the streets.

- 'IQ of a shrimp' -

The imam at a local mosque said Tanis did not attend prayers there, but added "I have learned that he had family problems."

"If he had come to this mosque, he would never have done what he did yesterday," imam Ali Cepi told AFP.

The picture that emerged of Tanis in Dutch media was a far darker one.

People in Kanaleneiland described Tanis as a "small-time criminal and dealer", a "loser with a drug problem" and as being "confused and lost."

Broadcaster NOS reported that some of his relatives had links to fundamentalist Islamic groups, but also that he was known for unstable behaviour after divorcing his wife two years ago.

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"He got involved with hard drugs and started smoking heroin," one resident told the Volkskrant newspaper, asking not to be named.

"We want nothing to do with him. He has the IQ of a shrimp," the resident said.

A woman involved in the 2017 rape case against Tanis was even more scathing.

"He is completely mad and uses drugs. I have previously warned the police against him. He's not a terrorist but a psychopath," she told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper.

His father Mehmet Tanis told Turkish media that his son "must be punished" if he was responsible for the tram shooting.

But Mehmet Tanis, whose family originally hails from Yozgat in central Turkey, said he had had "no dialogue, no contact" with his son for 11 years since divorcing Tanis's mother, leaving the Netherlands and returning to Turkey.

- Long criminal record -

Dutch court officials confirmed that Gokmen Tanis had a criminal past.

In 2017, he was detained for a month in a rape case, and then taken back into pre-trial detention in January 2019 after he did not comply with probation conditions including a "personality test", the central Netherlands district court said.

But he was again released at the beginning of March after agreeing to cooperate.

In 2014, he was convicted of "illegal possession of weapons" and attempted theft but acquitted of attempted manslaughter.

He also has convictions in recent months for shoplifting and burglary.

The fact that he was released from jail prompted angry questions from Dutch lawmakers on Tuesday.

"He had a rap sheet from here to Tokyo and yet he was freed. You are politically responsible," Dutch far-right and anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders told Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus during a parliamentary session on Tuesday.

Jesse Klaver, leader of the GroenLinks (Green-Left) party, asked Grapperhaus simply: "Why was this man not in jail?"
By Erwin Seba

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A fire at a Houston-area petrochemical storage site continued to rage late on Monday and is expected to burn for up to two more days, officials said, sending thick black smoke into the air for miles around.

Firefighters were making progress seeking to contain the blaze at Intercontinental Terminals Co (ITC), with the number of giant storage tanks on fire reduced to six from seven earlier, said ITC spokeswoman Alice Richardson.

The blaze at a site along the Houston Ship Channel in Deer Park, Texas, began Sunday when a leak from a tank containing volatile naphtha ignited and spread to others in the same complex, the company said. The tanks hold tens of thousands of barrels of products used to boost gasoline octane, make solvents and plastics.

The blaze has not disrupted nearby refineries or shipping at the country's busiest petrochemical port, authorities said. The Houston Ship Channel is home to nine U.S. oil refineries that process 2.3 million barrels per day (bpd), or 12 percent of the national total.

ITC, which is owned by Japan's Mitsui & Co, reported no injuries among its staff. Nearby residents were encouraged to remain indoors by the city of Deer Park, which lifted a shelter-in-place order for all residents imposed earlier on Monday.The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality had "not detected any immediate health concerns at ground level" around the plant as of midday Monday. The state was also seeking to bring in a specialized aircraft to monitor emissions at higher altitudes.

The burning tanks held naphtha and xylene, fuels used in gasoline and plastics and toluene - a volatile liquid used to make nail polish remover and paint thinner. Other tanks held base oils commonly used as machine lubricants.

Firefighters were seeking to drain naphtha from one of the tanks to deprive the fire of fuel.

"It's going to be probably two days," said Ray Russell, communications officer for Channel Industries Mutual Aid, which coordinates firefighting departments from Houston Ship Channel plants.

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"It's going to have to burn out at the tank," he said at a briefing.

The fire had little effect on the price for regular gasoline delivered on Monday on the Colonial pipeline, which sends fuel from the U.S. Gulf Coast to eastern states.

The naphtha storage tank ignited first from a leak in a pipe, and flames spread to nearby tanks, ITC reported to a Texas regulator on Monday. Its report did not say what caused the leak to catch fire.

School officials in Deer Park, population 32,000, and nearby La Porte, Texas, with about 34,000 residents, suspended classes on Monday and told employees not to report to work.

Tanks containing naphtha and xylene, petrochemicals used to make gasoline and were burning early Monday, ITC officials said.

The six tanks still burning are surrounded by nine other storage tanks within a spill containment dike. Firefighters used a foam fire retardant on nearby tanks to try to limit the fire from spreading.

Ships continued to transit the 50-mile-long channel, which is part of the Port of Houston linking refineries and chemical plants in Houston and Texas City, with the Gulf of Mexico.

"There has been no affect on vessel traffic other than at the two terminals," said J.J. Plunkett, port agent at the Houston Pilots, whose members guide ships in and out of the channel. Ship access to docks at the ITC and Vopak terminals was restricted by the U.S. Coast Guard, he said.

Air emissions tests detected the presence of a volatile organic compound six miles away from the facility. Levels were below those considered hazardous, ITC said.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Additional reporting by Rich McKay and Gary McWilliams; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and G Crosse)
Prime minister Theresa May is asking the EU for a Brexit delay (Picture: PA)

Theresa May is to write to the European Union asking for Brexit to be postponed until the end of June with the option of a longer delay, it has been reported.

The prime minister also admitted that the country is in a political crisis over Brexit.

The BBC reported that one minister said there was no agreement in a Cabinet meeting about the governments next move.

Under current law, the UK is due to leave the EU with or without a deal in 10 days time.

The BBCs political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, said the prime ministers letter will also include a provision for a delay of up to two years.

Another Cabinet source told the BBC there was frustration that Mrs May did not make a clear indiction of which length of delay she would ask for.

On Monday, the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, warned that Mrs May had to bring back a substantially altered Brexit deal to Parliament, otherwise it would not go before MPs a third time.

The prime ministers official spokesman said on Tuesday: If you were to look back to the speech which the prime minister gave just before Meaningful Vote 2, she said that if MPs did not support Meaningful Vote 2, we would be in a crisis.

Events yesterday tell you that that situation has come to pass.

The prime minister says the UK will need a short extension to get the necessary legislation through Parliament, if MPs back her withdrawal deal.

If the prime ministers EU withdrawal deal is backed by MPs at the third attempt, she says the UK will need a short extension to get the legislation through Parliament.

But she has warned Brexiteers in her party that a longer period will be needed if the deal is defeated again.

Any delay must be agreed by all 27 EU member states.

Read more

Police hunt for killers of Shetland pony that was found tied up and beaten in Yeovil

Theresa May tells MPs back my Brexit deal or we will not leave EU for months, if ever

Archaeologists slam Cadbury treasure hunt that could see prosecutions for trespassing

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Downing Street sources told the BBC there was no final decision in the Cabinet meeting on the length of the requested extension.

The prime minister will travel to Brussels on Thursday to discuss the options with EU leaders.

Ms Kuenssberg reported that House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom criticised her colleagues in the Cabinet, saying it is now a Remain Cabinet, not a Brexit Cabinet.

1. Cabinet sources say PM is writing letter to EU today asking for extension  frustration that she is going to ask for end date of June 30th, with proviso of up delay of up to 2 years  Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) March 19, 2019

Downing Street said that in the course of a 90-minute discussion at the weekly Cabinet meeting, Mrs May made it clear she wanted MPs to have another vote as soon as possible.

Her official spokesman said: What you can see from the prime minister and her colleagues is an absolute determination to find a way in which Parliament could vote for the UK to leave the European Union with a deal.

The prime minister has been very clear throughout that she wants that to happen as soon as possible.

Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom reportedly criticised her Cabinet colleagues (Picture: PA)

Downing Street confirmed discussions were continuing with the Democratic Unionist Party  which props up the government at Westminster  in an effort to build support for the deal after last weeks 149-vote defeat.

But Commons speaker John Bercow confirmed Mrs May must bring back an amendable motion on the Brexit process by next Monday regardless of what happens in the negotiations with the EU.

Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK


Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that authorities can detain some immigrants with criminal records at any time, marking a victory for the administration of President Donald Trump and its hard line on migrants.

Justices of the country's highest court, which has a conservative majority under Trump, decided by five votes to four against a lower court ruling from California's Ninth Circuit appeals court.

Trump's measures to curb migration have faced numerous court challenges.

In this case, two permanent residents of the US had filed class actions over their arrest and detention without bond hearings by immigration authorities years after they had served criminal sentences and been released.

The Ninth Circuit -- whose rulings Trump has previously criticized as "dangerous" -- said that aliens deemed deportable under a 1996 law and who have committed certain crimes must be arrested immediately by immigration agents upon release from jail. Otherwise, the alien must have a chance for a bond hearing.

Justice Samuel Alito, in delivering the Supreme Court's judgment, said that "we have held time and again, an official's crucial duties are better carried out late than never."

Justice Stephen Breyer dissented, saying that when Congress enacted the law it "did not intend to allow the government to apprehend persons years after their release from prison and hold them indefinitely without a bail hearing."

The American Civil Liberties Union, a party to the case, reacted to the Supreme Court's ruling by saying the government's interpretation of the 1996 law "has resulted in gross violations of due process for thousands."

Speaking of an "invasion" of illegal immigrants and criminals, Trump last week signed the first veto of his presidency, overriding congressional opposition to secure emergency funding to build a wall on the Mexican border, the signature policy of his administration.

Earlier in his term, a travel ban for citizens from several mostly Muslim countries was repeatedly blocked by judges before the Supreme Court approved a version of it.
Ottawa (AFP) - Canada's finance minister doled out goodies for almost everyone in an election year budget Tuesday that looks to brace a slowing economy and sagging support for Justin Trudeau's Liberals.

The spending binge appeared calculated to appeal to the broadest number of voters.

But pundits said it likely won't be enough to turn the page on a political scandal dogging Trudeau, and lamented a lack of signature initiatives and no clear path to a balanced budget.

For weeks, the Trudeau government has been rocked by accusations it sought to shield engineering giant SNC-Lavalin from prosecution for alleged fraud and bribery in Libya.

Four senior officials quit in the scandal, plunging the Liberals behind the opposition Tories in opinion polls for the first time in the golden boy premier's first term.

With only seven months until the next election and the economy forecast to brake suddenly before then, the Liberals desperately needed to wow voters.

In a speech to parliament, Finance Minister Bill Morneau pointed to past achievements -- more than 900,000 new jobs created since 2015 and the lowest unemployment rate in 40 years -- while acknowledging fears that the best is behind Canadians.

"There's a growing sense of uncertainty taking root around the world," Morneau said. "And Canada is not immune to those worries."

"A good job, the ability to make ends meet, the chance to build a life that's at least as good as the one your parents had -- that's what we all want," he said.

"With this budget we are continuing our proven and successful plan of investing in the middle class."

Canada's economy surged after the Liberals took office in 2015 and unleashed a massive stimulus. But growth is forecast to slow to 1.8 percent this year and 1.6 percent in 2020.

Under the government's plan, the fiscal deficit would grow to Can$19.8 billion (US$14.9 billion), or 0.9 percent of Canada's gross domestic product.

It includes slightly higher revenues of Can$338.8 billion, and Can$355.6 billion in program spending and public debt charges. Over five years, new spending would top Can$18 billion.

The federal debt, meanwhile, is forecast to rise to Can$705.4 billion, or 30.7 percent of the economy, and keep rising with no end in sight.
Ottawa (AFP) - Canada's government doled out goodies for almost everyone in an election year budget Tuesday that looks to brace a slowing economy and sagging support for Justin Trudeau's Liberals.

The spending binge appeared calculated to appeal to the broadest number of voters.

But pundits said it likely won't be enough to turn the page on a political scandal dogging Trudeau, and lamented a lack of signature initiatives and no clear path to a balanced budget.

For weeks, the Trudeau government has been rocked by accusations it sought to shield engineering giant SNC-Lavalin from prosecution for alleged fraud and bribery in Libya.

Four senior officials quit over the scandal, plunging the Liberals behind the opposition Tories in opinion polls for the first time in the golden boy premier's first term.

With only seven months until the next election and the economy forecast to brake suddenly before then, the Liberals desperately needed to wow voters.

In a speech to parliament delayed by a Tory protest over the SNL-Lavalin affair, Finance Minister Bill Morneau pointed to past achievements -- 900,000 new jobs since 2015 and the lowest unemployment in 40 years -- while acknowledging fears that the best is behind Canadians.

"There's a growing sense of uncertainty taking root around the world," Morneau said. "And Canada is not immune to those worries."

"A good job, the ability to make ends meet, the chance to build a life that's at least as good as the one your parents had -- that's what we all want," he said.

"With this budget we are continuing our proven and successful plan of investing in the middle class."

Canada's economy surged after the Liberals took office in 2015 and unleashed a massive stimulus. But growth is forecast to slow to 1.8 percent this year and 1.6 percent in 2020.

- 'A lot of sprinkles' -

Under the government's plan, the fiscal deficit would balloon to Can$19.8 billion (US$14.9 billion), or 0.9 percent of Canada's gross domestic product.

Story continues

It includes slightly higher revenues of Can$338.8 billion, and Can$355.6 billion in program spending and public debt charges. Over five years, new spending would top Can$18 billion.

The federal debt, meanwhile, is forecast to rise to Can$705.4 billion, or 30.7 percent of the economy, and keep rising with no end in sight.

New initiatives include affordable housing for millennials, faster rural internet, arresting the decline of Canada's 70-plus indigenous languages, electric car incentives and boosting seniors' benefits.

There is also cash for cancer and dementia care, anti-hate initiatives and tighter controls at the US border.

Former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page noted more than 120 budget measures he framed as "a lot of sprinkles to make a lot of constituents as happy as possible."

"In the context of a two trillion dollar economy, that spending is not going to change the economy fundamentally, but could make people's lives a little bit better with relatively small amounts -- that's the gamble the government is taking," Page told AFP.

In some areas, such as a child welfare crisis gripping indigenous communities, "a little money could make a big difference. There could be enough of those measures throughout the budget," Page said.

"But it's not a budget politically that is going to change the dial on the current (scandal)."
Donald Trump has doubled down on his criticism of the late John McCain, a man millions of Americans consider a war war hero, saying: I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.

Seven months after the former POW died at the age of 81 from cancer, and after the president spent the weekend making accusations about him on Twitter, Mr Trump was asked why he was attacking a dead man.

The president claimed he was angry when the then Arizona senator had in 2017 dramatically voted against a White House-backed plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, when Mr McCain had campaigned to get rid of the programme.

Mr Trump claimed the late senators actions in reversing his position at the last minute and displaying a thumbs down on the floor of the senate, had been disgraceful.

And there are other things, Mr Trump added. I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.

Mr Trump, who secured five deferments to avoid the Vietnam draft, has long had a testy relationship with McCain, who spent more than five years as a POW after his jet was shot down. At least two of the years he spent as a prisoner, were in solitary confinement.

While campaigning in 2015 for the Republican nomination, a position McCain had secured in 2008 when he ran and lost against Barack Obama, Mr Trump disputed the suggestion that his fellow Republican was a war hero.

No one will ever love you the way they loved my father.... I wish I had been given more Saturdays with him. Maybe spend yours with your family instead of on twitter obsessing over mine? https://t.co/q7ezwmHiQ4  Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) March 16, 2019

Hes not a war hero, said Trump. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who werent captured.

Mr McCain never hid his dislike of Mr Trump, though he was obliged to outwardly support him to some degree because he relied on many of the presidents supporters to vote for him in his 2016 senate reelection campaign.

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This weekend, Mr Trump, who was asked by McCains family not to attend his state funeral in Washington DC, continued his attacks on the dead man.

Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain, he tweeted, Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Bill Clinton and who had made the comments in a Fox News interview.

He also tweeted of McCain: He had far worse stains than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!

McCains family has hit back at the comments, which included a false accusation that the senator had come last in his class at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. The late senators daughter, Meghan McCain, told ABC News that Mr Trump spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he will never be a great man.

My father was his kryptonite, McCain said.

That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now. I genuinely feel bad for his family. I cant imagine having a father that does this on the weekends.
Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump lashed out at the late John McCain again on Tuesday, saying he was "never a fan" of the Arizona senator and Vietnam War hero and "never will be."

Trump, who also criticized McCain in a series of tweets over the weekend, launched his latest attack on his fellow Republican in remarks to reporters during a White House meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

"I'm very unhappy that he didn't repeal and replace Obamacare," Trump said of McCain, who voted in 2017 against a repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

"Our country would have saved a trillion dollars, and we would have had great health care," Trump asserted.

"I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be," he said.

Over the weekend, Trump took to Twitter to criticize McCain, who died of brain cancer in August at the age of 81.

Among the tweets was a claim that McCain had finished "last in his class" at the US Naval Academy.

McCain actually finished fifth from the bottom and went on to fly jets in Vietnam, where he was captured and spent more than six years incarcerated.

Trump, who avoided military service with a medical deferment, once said he only liked war heroes who "weren't captured."

McCain's daughter Meghan fired back at the president following his weekend tweets.

"He spends his weekend obsessing over great men, because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it, he will never be a great man," she said Monday on the ABC show "The View," where she is a co-host.

"My father was his kryptonite in life and he was kryptonite in death," she said.

McCain was one of Trump's most persistent critics and made it clear in his final wishes that he did not want the president at his funeral.
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump has nominated a veteran Washington lawyer as his first ambassador to Mexico, a delicate role in representing a US leader set on building a wall between the countries.

Christopher Landau, who had been rumored for a job since he start of the Trump administration, served as a clerk to two conservative-leaning Supreme Court justices before becoming a prominent lawyer focused on appeals.

He has no diplomatic experience but studied Latin America at Harvard and speaks Spanish. His father, George Landau, was a longtime US policymaker in Latin America who served as ambassador to Chile, Paraguay and Venezuela.

Trump announced Landau, who requires confirmation by the Senate, in a statement released late Monday. Numerous key diplomatic posts remain empty more than two years into Trump's tenure.

The United States has been without an ambassador in Mexico City since May, when Roberta Jacobson, who was named by Barack Obama, resigned.

She had initially decided to stay on after Trump's election to ensure continuity but complained of chaotic decision-making.

In an interview with National Public Radio after she quit, Jacobson called Trump's hard line on immigration "un-American" and warned it could reduce US standing in the region.

Trump rose to power on a staunchly anti-immigration platform, calling some Mexican immigrants rapists and making his signature issue the construction of a wall on the border which he told campaign rallies that Mexico would fund.

Trump triggered a shutdown of the government and issued his first veto to seek the building of the wall, with his administration tacitly acknowledging that Mexico will not pay for it.

Mexico's new leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has taken a low-key approach with Trump despite their strong ideological differences.

He has agreed to keep migrants fleeing troubled Central America inside Mexico as they apply for asylum in the United States, a break with standard practice as he seeks to avoid public spats with Trump.
An intriguing area of focus in Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into the Kremlins role in the 2016 US election is a proposed Moscow real estate deal that Donald Trump pursued while running for president despite denying at the time any links to Russia.

The special counsel has revealed in court filings numerous details about the project, which never came to fruition. Further information has come from Michael Cohen, Trumps former personal lawyer who was instrumental in the negotiations, in congressional testimony and in his guilty plea to a charge of lying to Congress about the project.

Muellers team said in a December 2018 court filing that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government. If the project was completed, the Company (the Trump Organisation) could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues.

The project is significant because it shows Trump was chasing a lucrative business deal in Russia at the same time that President Vladimir Putins government, according to US intelligence agencies, was conducting a hacking and propaganda campaign to boost his candidacy. The project also coincided with Trumps positive comments as a candidate about Putin and his questioning of US sanctions against Russia.

Mueller is preparing to submit to US Attorney General William Barr the report on his investigation into whether Trumps campaign conspired with Russia and whether the Republican president has unlawfully tried to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction. Russia has denied election interference.

Here is an explanation of the Trump Moscow tower project and what the president has said about it.

WHAT IS TRUMPS HISTORY IN MOSCOW?

Trump, a wealthy New York real estate developer, had discussed expanding his business empire into Russia for more than three decades. In 2013, after visiting Russia and hosting his Miss Universe pageant there, he wrote on Twitter: TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next. The Trump Organisation's longtime partner in the project was Felix Sater, a Russian-born, Brooklyn-raised real estate developer, according to company emails released to congressional investigators.

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WHAT WAS THE TRUMP TOWER MOSCOW PROJECT?

Trump in October 2015 signed a non-binding letter of intent to move forward with a Moscow tower project with a Russian development firm. The firm, IC Expert Investment Co, agreed to construct the skyscraper, and the Trump Organisation agreed to license its name and manage the buildings operations. The letter of intent described a building in a Moscow business district with 250 luxury residential condominiums, at least 150 hotel rooms and a luxury spa.

Sater, who has served prison time in the United States for assault and later became an FBI informant on organised crime, assured Cohen in a November 2015 email he could get the Russian government to support a Trump property in Moscow.

I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, Sater told Cohen in that email.

Trump had announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015.

In testimony last month to the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee, Cohen said Sater came up with a marketing stunt of offering Putin a free penthouse in the tower to drive up unit prices, no different than in any condo where they start listing celebrities that live in the property.

Cohens House testimony portrayed Trump as keenly interested in completing the deal even as he campaigned for president. Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project, Cohen testified.

In his guilty plea, Cohen admitted he had lied to Congress in a 2017 letter that claimed he had only discussed the negotiations with Trump three times and that the project talks ended in January 2016. Cohen said he lied to Congress to minimise links between Trump and the project and give the false impression that the proposal had ended before key early milestones in the 2016 race to determine the Republican presidential nominee.

Cohen in his guilty plea said the project was discussed within the Trump Organisation multiple times and that he spoke with Sater about obtaining Russian governmental approval as late as June 2016, after Trump had clinched the Republican nomination.

WHY DID THE NEGOTIATIONS END?

Legal filings in Cohens plea deal did not make clear why the negotiations ended. But June 2016 was the month when the Washington Post first reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the Democratic National Committees computers, a cyber operation that was a key part of Moscows interference in the presidential race, as described by U.S. intelligence.

One of Trumps lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, indicated in January 2019 that the Moscow tower discussions had continued through the November 2016 election, though he later backtracked.

WHAT HAS TRUMP SAID?

Trumps public statements about business dealings in Russia have evolved over time. In July 2016, Trump told a news conference: I have nothing to do with Russia. Nine days before becoming president, Trump wrote on Twitter, Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!

In November 2018, after Cohens guilty plea, Trump told reporters that in 2016 he was in a position to possibly do a deal to build a building of some kind in Moscow. Trump added, There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldnt have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities? Cohen told the House panel Trump made clear to him that he should lie about when the negotiations ended.

Trump and his allies have called Cohen a liar trying to reduce his prison time after pleading guilty to a series of federal criminal charges.

WHAT ROLE DID TRUMPS CHILDREN PLAY?

Cohen told the House panel that he briefed the presidents son and daughter, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, about the tower negotiations. Donald Trump Jr., an executive at the Trump Organisation, told Congress in September 2017 he was only peripherally aware of the talks during the campaign. Ivanka Trump, a former Trump Organisation executive, told ABC News last month she knew literally almost nothing about the project, saying there were 40 or 50 deals like that were floating around, that somebody was looking at.

Reuters
WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - U.S.-backed forces have captured Islamic State fighters tied to a January suicide bombing in Syria that killed four Americans, U.S. officials say, generating concrete leads for Washington about the deadliest attack to date there against U.S. personnel.

The bombing killed Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan Farmer, Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent and Scott Wirtz from the Defense Intelligence Agency. It also killed Ghadir Taher, a naturalized U.S. citizen working as a civilian interpreter for a U.S. contractor.

One of the officials told Reuters the number of people detained was in the "single digits." A second official said there were several "initial detentions" made in February, without offering a specific number. The detentions have not been previously reported.

"Those initial detentions have provided some leads and opportunities that we are continuing to exploit," the second official said, speaking on condition of anonymity and declining to offer additional details.

"The investigation is ongoing as are efforts to bring all of those terrorists responsible to justice."

The attack was the worst single incident involving U.S. personnel in Syria since they deployed on the ground there in 2015 and took place at a cafe in the town of Manbij, which was controlled by a militia allied to U.S.-backed Kurdish forces.

The bombing occurred nearly a month after President Donald Trump confounded his own national security team and allies with a surprise decision on Dec. 19 to withdraw all 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, declaring Islamic State had been defeated there.

Critics seized on the killings as clear evidence that the Islamic State still posed a threat.

Trump backtracked in February, agreeing to leave a small U.S. presence to help keep pressure on Islamic State during what the U.S. military believes will be a critical stabilization phase in Syria. The United States is seeking contributions from allies including Britain and France to remain in Syria.

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INSURGENCY THREAT

The U.S. military has warned that Islamic State may still count tens of thousands of fighters, dispersed throughout Iraq and Syria, with enough leaders and resources to present a menacing insurgency in the months ahead.

The Pentagon's own internal watchdog released a report last month saying Islamic State remained an active insurgent group and was regenerating functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria.

"Absent sustained (counterterrorism) pressure, ISIS could likely resurge in Syria within six to 12 months and regain limited territory," the report from the Pentagon's inspector general said. The report, citing information from U.S. Central Command, said Islamic State would portray the withdrawal as a "victory" and conduct attacks on American personnel during the pullout process.

A report by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that Islamic State has transformed into a covert network, but is still a threat with centralized leadership, up to $300 million at its disposal and thousands of fighters. It said the group was interested in attacking aviation and using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials and that there were up to 18,000 Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, including up to 3,000 foreign fighters. (Reporting by Phil Stewart Editing by Tom Brown)
GENEVA (Reuters) - A senior U.S. arms control official said on Tuesday that Iran's missile programme is destabilising the Middle East and raising the risk of a "regional arms race" through the provision of such weapons to armed groups in Lebanon and Yemen.

U.S. President Donald Trump said when he quit a landmark 2015 deal that lifted international sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear activities that it failed to rein in Iran's missile programme or curb its regional meddling.

The United States has accused Iran of defying a U.N. Security Council resolution by carrying out a ballistic missile test and two satellite launches since December.

"Irans missile program is a key contributor to increased tensions and destabilization in the region, increasing the risk of a regional arms race," Yleem Poblete, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, said in a speech to the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament.

"Iran must immediately cease activities related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and halt the proliferation of missiles and missile technology to terror groups and other non-state actors," she said, denouncing Iran's support to the Houthi movement in Yemen and to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

She said Iran had provided ballistic missiles to the Houthis that were fired into Saudi Arabia and unmanned aerial systems to Houthi groups that enable strikes against land-based targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

"We are committed to aggressively countering Iran's regional proliferation of ballistic missiles and its unlawful arms transfers," she added.

Poblete urged "all responsible countries" to enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions restricting the transfer of missile-related technologies to Iran.

She further accused Iran of "pursuing pharmaceutical-based agents for offensive purposes", but did not elaborate.

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An Iranian diplomat took the floor to reject her remarks as "cheap, unprofessional, false, irrelevant and pathetic" and accused the United States of "sabotaging" the Geneva forum.

"We should all be truly worried about the U.S. representatives misbehaviour as we all warn that they may turn violent since they lack any human logic to talk and listen in a normal manner as we are used to," he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Tom Miles; writing by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by William Maclean)
By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday endorsed the U.S. government's authority to detain immigrants awaiting deportation anytime - potentially even years - after they have completed prison terms for criminal convictions, handing President Donald Trump a victory as he pursues hardline immigration policies.

The court ruled 5-4 along ideological lines, with its conservative justices in the majority and its liberal justices dissenting, that federal authorities could place such immigrants into indefinite detention anytime without the possibility of bail, not just immediately after they finish prison sentences.

The ruling, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, left open the possibility that some immigrants could challenge their detention. These immigrants potentially could argue that the use of the 1996 federal law involved in the case, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, against them long after finishing their sentences would violate their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Most of the plaintiffs in the case are legal immigrants.

The law states the government can detain convicted immigrants "when the alien is released" from criminal detention. Civil rights lawyers in the case argued that the language of the law shows that it applies only immediately after immigrants are released. The Trump administration said the government should have the power to detain such immigrants anytime.

In dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said the ruling raises serious due process questions.

"It runs the gravest risk of depriving those whom the government has detained of one of the oldest and most important of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms," Breyer wrote.

But Alito wrote that it is not the court's job to impose a time limit for when immigrants can be detained after serving a prison sentence. Alito noted that the court has previously said that "an official's crucial duties are better carried out late than never." Alito said the challengers' assertion that immigrants had to be detained within 24 hours of ending a prison sentence is "especially hard to swallow."

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It marked Trump's latest immigration victory at the court. The conservative justices also were in the majority in June 2018 when the court upheld on a 5-4 vote Trump's travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries.

Tuesday's decision follows a February 2018 ruling in a similar case in which the conservative majority, over liberal dissent, curbed the ability of immigrants held in long-term detention during deportation proceedings to argue for release.

'MOST EXTREME INTERPRETATION'

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Cecilia Wang, who argued the newly decided case for the challengers, said that in both rulings "the Supreme Court has endorsed the most extreme interpretation of immigration detention statutes, allowing mass incarceration of people without any hearing, simply because they are defending themselves against a deportation charge."

Wang said the ACLU is "looking into follow-up litigation along various avenues."

Trump has backed limits on legal and illegal immigrants since taking office in January 2017.

Kerri Kupec, a U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman, said administration officials were pleased with the ruling.

The case's plaintiffs included two legal U.S. residents involved in separate lawsuits filed in 2013, a Cambodian immigrant named Mony Preap convicted of marijuana possession and a Palestinian immigrant named Bassam Yusuf Khoury convicted of attempting to manufacture a controlled substance.

In the two detention case rulings, the Supreme Court reversed the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a liberal leaning court with jurisdiction over a large part of the western United States that Trump has frequently criticized. In both cases, litigation against the federal government started before Trump took office.

In the latest case, the administration had appealed a 2016 9th Circuit ruling that favored immigrants, a decision it said would undermine the government's ability to deport immigrants who have committed crimes.

The 9th Circuit had ruled that convicted immigrants who are not immediately detained by immigration authorities after finishing their sentences but then later picked up by immigration authorities could seek bond hearings to argue for their release.

Other regional federal appeals courts that have addressed the issue did not rule the same way as the 9th Circuit and were more in line with the Supreme Court's ruling. That means immigrants in those regions who were subject to mandatory detention already were not entitled to bond hearings.

Under federal immigration law, immigrants convicted of certain offenses are subject to mandatory detention during their deportation process. They can be held indefinitely without a bond hearing after completing their sentences.

In April 2018, conservative Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch joined the court's four liberals in a 5-4 ruling that could hinder the administration's ability to step up the removal of immigrants with criminal records, invalidating a provision in another law, the Immigration and Nationality Act.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Will Dunham)
By Karen Dillon BROWNVILLE, Neb. (Reuters) - Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Nebraska on Tuesday to survey the devastation unleashed across the U.S. Midwest by floods that have killed four people and caused more than a billion dollars in damage to crops, livestock and roads. The floodwaters have inundated a large swath of farm states Iowa and Nebraska along the Missouri River, North America's longest river, prompting half of Iowa's 99 counties to declare states of emergency."Touched down in Omaha, Nebraska to survey flood damage & thank volunteers & emergency personnel," Pence said on Twitter, in a post that included photos of him meeting with the governors of both states and lawmakers. "The hearts of the American people are with those who have been impacted across the Midwest!" Pence said in the tweet. Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin have all declared states of emergency in the floods, which stem from a powerful winter hurricane known as a "bomb cyclone" that slammed into the U.S. Farm Belt last week, killing untold numbers of livestock, destroying grains and soybeans in storage, and cutting off access to farms because of road and rail damage. The latest confirmed death was identified by the sheriff in Fremont County, Iowa, as 55-year-old Aleido Rojas Galan, who was pulled from floodwaters along with another man on Friday and later succumbed to injuries. Authorities said they had rescued nearly 300 people in Nebraska alone, with some rivers continuing to rise. Rescuers could be seen in boats pulling pets from flooded homes. Some roadways crumbled to rubble, while sections of others were submerged. In Hamburg, Iowa, floodwaters covered buildings. In Brownville, Nebraska, floodwaters lapped at the edge of the small town of 132 people, closing the main bridge across the Missouri River. $1 BILLION IN DAMAGE "Its a lot worse than Ive ever seen it, said Malina Wheeldon, who went ahead with the scheduled opening of her new Euphoric Soul Salon & Boutique business despite the floods. Her husband, Justin, who grew up in Brownville, agreed, saying he had lived through the floods of 1993, 2010 and 2011. "About every five years now, we have a 100-year flood, he said. The Missouri was expected to crest at 47.5 feet (14.5 m) on Tuesday, breaking its 2011 record by more than a foot (31 cm), the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said. The flooding was expected to continue through Thursday. Nebraska officials estimated more than $1 billion in flood damage for the state's agricultural sector so far, according to Craig Head, vice president of issue management at the Nebraska Farm Bureau. Head said the number was expected to grow as floodwaters recede. "It's really too early to know for sure how bad this is going to get. But one thing we do know: It's catastrophic for farmers," said Matt Perdue, government relations director for the National Farmers Union trade group. "Were hoping it's only $1 billion, but that's only a hope." Nebraska officials estimate the floods have caused $553 million in damage to public infrastructure and other assets, as well as $89 million in privately owned assets, according to the state's Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday. The water also covered about a third of Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, home to the U.S. Strategic Command, whose responsibilities include defending against and responding to nuclear attacks. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is distributing 400,000 sandbags to operators of 12 levees along the Missouri River in Missouri and Kansas that were in danger of being breached by floodwaters, the Army Corps said in a news release on Tuesday. In Niobrara, Nebraska, south of the Missouri River near the border with South Dakota, Mayor Jody Stark said flooding that began on Thursday had devastated his community of 350 people, with businesses being the hardest hit. "Our road system is shot pretty much in every direction coming into town," Stark said. "It's one day at a time. We will do what we can to get back on our feet," Stark said. "It's just so heartbreaking. It's going to be tough, but hopefully we can all get through it." The floodwaters were the result of snowmelt following heavy rains last week and warm weather, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center. The weather service's website shows some locales along the Missouri River in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri are expected to see waters rise for several more days. Roads leading to the Nebraska Public Power District's Cooper nuclear plant near Brownville were engulfed by floodwaters from the Missouri, but the facility was still operating safely at full power on Tuesday. The plant operator was flying staff members and supplies to the plant with helicopters, said power district spokesman Mark Becker. (Reporting by Karen Dillon; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Rich McKay in Atlanta, Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia, P.J. Huffstutter and Mark Weinraub in Chicago and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)
LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt condemned the sentence handed out to a prominent human rights activist by a court in Chechnya, calling it "an awful example of Russia suppressing vital work of human rights defenders". Oyub Titiev, who runs the office of the Memorial Human Rights Center in the southern Russian region, was sentenced to four years in a penal settlement on Monday after he was found guilty of possessing illegal drugs. His supporters say he was framed, with the drugs planted in his car. Hunt wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: "Fabricated charges & absurd sentence imposed on Oyub Titiev are intended to silence his work in holding Russian govt to account for human rights abuses in Chechnya - they must #FreeTitiev." (Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison)
A Job Centre in Westminster in London, England. Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

The UKs Office of National Statistics (ONS) accidentally published potentially market-moving jobs and pay data 10 minutes ahead of schedule on Tuesday.

Official data on the UK unemployment rate and earnings growth in February was published at around 9.20am UK time on Tuesday. It was meant to be released at 9.30am.

Due to a problem with the release process some data were released early. In accordance with standard release practices we therefore published all data immediately, the ONS said in a statement.

A spokesperson told Yahoo Finance UK that the early publication was due to an error and an oversight on our part. The spokesperson said it was too early to comment on whether there would be an investigation.

The timely release of market sensitive data is a serious matter, Laith Khalaf, a senior analyst with Hargreaves Lansdown, told Yahoo Finance UK.

The early release has the potential to create an uneven market where some traders and investors have access to the official data ahead of others.

However, Khalaf added, While this slip from the ONS may have created brief panic for short term traders, for long term investors, 10 minutes is not a material time frame.

David Cheetham, the chief market analyst at trading platform XTB, said the early release had the effect of catching some traders off guard.

Connor Campbell, a financial analyst with SpreadEx, said that the ONS bungling out the jobs report 10 minutes early could potentially have caused issues for plenty of traders.

That sterling is so Brexit-focused at the moment perhaps saves the ONSs blushes somewhat, Campbell said. In a different week, and with a different set of figures, however, it may have been far more disastrous.

The ONS data was better than economists were forecasting. Earnings including bonuses grew by 3.4% in February, against a forecast of 3.2%, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 3.9% from 4%.

In terms of market reaction there has been a little pop higher in the pound, but the markets remain far more concerned with the latest on the Brexit front, Cheetham said.
Beirut (AFP) - The United Nations envoy for Syria on Tuesday said a solution to the eight-year-long conflict begins with confidence building measures and reconciliation between warring parties.

"Path to a new Syria begins with confidence-building and reconciliation," Norwegian diplomat Geir Pedersen said on Twitter.

"Syrians need to come together to decide and build (a) future," he said.

His comments came after he visited the central Syrian city of Homs during his second official trip to the war-torn country since he assumed his post in January.

Pedersen met the governor of Homs, the UN team in the area as well displaced Syrians living in camps, he said.

"Scale of challenges facing #Syria and Syrians (is) immense," he said.

The envoy also toured the former rebel stronghold of Baba Amr, which was recaptured by government forces in 2012 after almost a month of heavy shelling.

There has been little reconstruction in the district since the Syrian army seized the area.

"Level of destruction in Baba Amr is vast," Pedersen said.

"Displaced Syrians have suffered enormously and still suffer. But their strength (is) also inspirational."

Pedersen landed in Damascus on Sunday, before meeting with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.

The envoy said he held "constructive discussions" with Muallem on implementing UN resolution 2254, which calls for a nationwide ceasefire and a political transition.

"Work progressing well, looking forward to furthering the discussions," Pedersen said on Monday.

Pedersen became the fourth UN negotiator aiming to resolve the nearly eight-year conflict, following the resignation of his predecessor Staffan de Mistura.

Since the start of January, he has travelled extensively to meet with the government, opposition and others.

Syria's war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since the conflict began with the repression of anti-government protests in 2011.

The regime has made a military comeback with Russian military support since 2015, and now holds almost two-thirds of Syria.
Geneva (AFP) - The US on Tuesday accused Russia and China of raising the risk of conflict in space, notably by developing anti-satellite weapons, as diplomats held talks on a treaty to keep space peaceful.

The closed-door negotiations in Geneva involving experts from 25 governments -- including the US, China and Russia -- are aimed at laying the groundwork for a legally-binding text to prevent an arms race in outer space.

Beijing and Moscow pushed for the discussions that run through March 28, which experts have said may show results despite the grim climate for disarmament diplomacy.

But addressing the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, US assistant secretary of state Yleem Poblete questioned whether China and Russia were sincerely committed to the talks.

"How can we believe (Russia is) serious about preventing an arms race in outer space when they are the ones that are developing ground-launched anti-satellite weapons?" Poblete asked.

She also accused Russia of trying to develop lasers that could "blind or damage satellites".

Poblete, of the State Department's arms control bureau, spoke as the US took over the rotating presidency at the Conference on Disarmament. The space peace talks are being held in a different venue in Geneva.

- China criticised -

Turning to China, Poblete accused the country of developing a range of anti-satellite capabilities, including jammers and ground-based missiles intended to target "low-Earth-orbit satellites".

Given that, "it is difficult to determine the truthfulness of China's concern about the prevention of an arms race in space," she said.

US President Donald Trump has called for the creation of a new military branch devoted exclusively to space, with the Pentagon submitting a proposal to Congress earlier this month.

Trump's "Space Force" call and his declaration that Washington considered space a "war-fighting domain," has raised widespread concern.

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But experts have noted that the three major powers -- and all seafaring nations -- have a lot to lose if the ongoing negotiations collapse, given the increasing importance of satellite technology in both civilian and military affairs.

The negotiations being led by Brazil's ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, Guilherme de Aguiar Patriota, will only produce a report if all nations reach consensus on its content.

He said he hopes the sides will agree on "elements" that could form the basis of a future, legally-binding treaty.
Washington (AFP) - A Republican congressman is suing Twitter claiming the online platform discriminates against conservatives by hiding their messages, and for allowing "abusive, hateful and defamatory" content about the lawmaker.

The complaint was filed by Representative Devin Nunes, an ally of President Donald Trump, in a Virginia state court, and released online by Fox News. It seeks $250 million in damages.

Nunes alleges that Twitter "shadow bans" conservatives -- purportedly making their messages less visible -- and failed to crack down on parody accounts such as "Devin Nunes' Mom" and "Devin Nunes' cow" which accused him of obstructing investigations into the president.

The suit echoes accusations from Trump that major internet platforms discriminate against conservatives, even though he himself has more than 59 million followers on Twitter.

Twitter declined to comment on the lawsuit, but has in the past vigorously denied claims that its platform is politically biased.

Legal analysts have largely maintained that internet platforms such as Twitter are not liable for most content posted by third parties, but the Nunes lawsuit claims Twitter was negligent and failed to enforce its own terms of service.

"Twitter let it happen because Twitter had (and has) a political agenda and motive," the lawsuit said.

The complaint included many of the insulting tweets, including one from the Devin Nunes' Mom account stating: "Are you trying to obstruct a federal investigation again? You come home right this instant or no more Minecraft!"

Other tweets accused the lawmaker of having "white supremist friends" and distributing "disturbing inflammatory racial propaganda."

Nunes, who represents a district in California, is a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and was accused of undermining the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 president election.

Trump himself weighed in on the issue again on Tuesday, retweeting a message about the lawsuit and repeating his claims about bias by internet firms.

"Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats. But fear not, we will win anyway, just like we did before!" Trump tweeted.
Washington (AFP) - US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will return to Beijing next week as the United States and China inch toward resolving their trade war, a senior administration official told AFP on Tuesday.

The renewed shuttle diplomacy is a sign of progress in the talks after several weeks in which momentum toward a resolution appeared to have slowed.

Following the renewed talks in Beijing, Chinese trade envoy Liu He will return to Washington the following week, with talks in their final stages, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday told reporters the talks were going "very well," reiterating the positive message of recent months.

But he also said last week he was in "no rush" to strike a bargain, insisting any deal had to do more than make cosmetic changes.

US and Chinese officials in recent weeks have alternated between projecting optimism and warning that they have much to do before reaching a final outcome.

On Friday, China's rubber-stamp parliament approved a foreign investment law to strengthen protections for intellectual property -- a central US grievance -- but foreign businesses said they were not given enough time add input.

The report helped lift Wall Street on Tuesday after stock prices had begun to sag, following a Bloomberg report that some US officials believed China was reneging on earlier trade concessions.

US officials are demanding far-reaching changes to Chinese industrial policy -- including an end to massive state intervention in markets, subsidies and the alleged theft of American technology -- and insist that any agreement must be enforceable.

China has been willing to increase purchases of American exports but analysts say they will be reluctant to accede to American demands in ways that could weaken the communist party's hold on power.

The two sides have exchanged tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way trade. Lighthizer has declined to state publicly whether Washington would lift the tariffs it has imposed so far if both sides reach a deal.

In congressional testimony last week, he said China and the United States were in "the final weeks" of talks but he stopped short of predicting success.
Washington (AFP) - With a septuagenarian president preparing his re-election bid, and two likely main challengers in their late seventies by 2020, Americans are facing an inevitable question: does age matter in White House politics?

Donald Trump, the oldest person ever elected US president, will be 74 on Inauguration Day 2021.

Two likely contenders for the Democratic nomination who lead early polls, Senator Bernie Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden, will be 79 and 78, respectively. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive also in the race, will be 71.

Democrats already sport several far younger White House hopefuls: Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg are 37, Julian Castro is 44 and Senator Cory Booker is 49.

History would suggest they have a better shot at victory than members of the gerontocracy. The last time Americans elected a Democrat older than 55 to the White House was Harry Truman in 1948.

As Americans mull the prospect of a president turning 80 in his first term, two images from recent days stand out.

Candidate Beto O'Rourke, 46, drew attention to his own comparative youth, running a five-kilometer (three-mile) race at a brisk clip Saturday in Iowa, while Bernie Sanders, 31 years his senior, slipped in the shower and sustained a gash on his head that required seven stitches.

(Sanders has been given a clean bill of health.)

For Biden and Sanders, their decades in the political arena mean greater name recognition among voters and valuable experience that they can apply to the most powerful position on Earth.

It could also weigh them down, as they seek to expand support and embrace modern forms of communication like social media.

Biden and Sanders backers frequently brush off questions about their political favorites' ages, touting their vitality and firing off ageism accusations.

Sanders can appear to have more support from young people than senior citizens.

"His age doesn't matter to me, (and) there's no reason to believe he's not healthy," Garrick Dodson, who is 17 but will be old enough to vote next year, told AFP in Iowa.

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He said Sanders inspired "a whole generation of kids" in the 2016 presidential race, with his progressive platform that includes universal health care and the fight against wealth inequality.

"I love Bernie Sanders and will vote for him no matter what," Dodson added.

Trump, who delights in confounding health experts with his junk food cravings, was declared to be in "very good health" last month by his chief physician.

"And I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his presidency, and beyond," chief physician Sean Conley said in a statement.

But a rambling series of bombastic tweets by Trump in recent days caused concern.

Aides defended the president's mental state. But lawyer George Conway, the husband of Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway and a regular critic of the president, insisted Trump's "condition is getting worse."

- 'Harder' at 80 -

Age has been no barrier to success in US politics.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has shown that, at nearly 79, she remains a remarkably shrewd politician. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, 77, is also fully engaged and a master tactician.

Trump infuriated Democrats in 2016 by attacking Hillary Clinton, then 68, with claims his rival lacked the "mental and physical stamina" to be president.

Sanders, who would be the oldest-ever president by far, is firm on the issue: Voters need to treat candidates "not by their sexual orientation or their gender, and not by their age," he said last month.

"I have been very blessed in my life with good health... and I think I had and still have a great deal of energy."

But gradual decline is inevitable. Eric De Jonge, director of geriatrics at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, said aging's effects become particularly noticeable after 80, when dementia becomes more prevalent.

Organs naturally degenerate, there is neuron loss in the brain, blood vessels stiffen, exercise capacity decreases.

"Exhausting 16-, 18-hour campaign days are going to be harder on an 80-year-old than on a 50-year-old, all other things being equal," De Jonge told AFP.

"That doesn't mean you can't have a great candidate who's 75 years old."

For those entering the presidency in their late seventies, physical and cognitive deterioration could become an issue in their second term.

De Jonge believes age is likely to play out in the 2020 campaign.

"People will react to an incredibly robust and energetic 75-year-old and think 'Wow, that guy can really handle it and keep up with everybody, good for him,'" he added.

"Or it may play out in the other way, that they may reveal certain symptoms of aging that are of concern to the electorate."
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is soliciting industry input as it potentially reconsiders existing custody rules in specific cases of digital asset trading and settlement.

The SEC launched its information gathering initiative in an open letter to Karen Barr, president and CEO of the Investment Adviser Association, on March 12.

Currently, the Custody Rule (Rule 206(4)-2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 determines rules that aim to protect investors who delegate custody of their funds or securities to professional investment advisors.

As the letter outlines, such custodial authority carries an increased risk of misappropriation or misuse of [investors] assets, and investment advisors are thus legally bound to register with the SEC and to comply with a series of rules for sound custodial practices.

The SEC states that its appeal for input regards the application of the Custody Rule to digital assets, and more specifically as to whether any revisions to the rule might be necessary regarding the regulatory status of investment adviser and custodial trading practices that are not processed or settled on a delivery versus payment (Non-DVP) basis.

A DVP settlement procedure is where a buyers payment for a given security is due at the same time as that securitys delivery.

As Katherine Wu  director of business development at New York City-based crypto research firm Messari  has noted in her coverage of the SEC initiative, an example of DVP at work is the US DTC (Depository Trust Corporation) system. Here, the DTC clearing house acts as an SEC-registered custodian and intermediary that ensures the secure payment and transfer of securities between parties.

In cases of non-DVP settlement procedures  i.e. where payment is made after the delivery of a security  the settlement risk is deemed to be higher.

The SEC is thus soliciting input on non-DVP settlement in the digital asset space, regarding both the settlement process of peer-to-peer digital asset transactions, as well as intermediated settlement that involve exchanges or over-the-counter trading platforms.

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Among the questions in its letter, the SEC solicits information on what types of digital asset instruments trade on a non-DVP basis, what role custodians play in non-DVP digital asset trading and how they currently mitigate risks.

Wu, who worked as a legal intern at the SEC prior to her crypto industry involvement, has given her perspective on the agencys first move:

Whats interesting to me is that the SEC does not seem to be jumping the gun in subjecting all non-DVP trades as under the custody rule, but rather is posing this as an opportunity for them to assess the underlying custody risks.

As reported, the SECs chairman Jay Clayton has recently emphasized that custodial practices are a particular area of scrutiny as the agency mulls the regulation of new, prospective crypto investment instruments such as exchange-traded funds.

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Thousands of people are being forced to leave their homes after a so-called bomb cyclone brought flooding to huge swathes of the American midwest.

From Nebraska to Kansas, and Missouri to Illinois, residents have been evacuated amid flooding that has killed at least three people. In some parts of the country, the situation is expected to get worse.

The governors of Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin have declared states of emergency. "This really is the most devastating flooding we've probably ever had in our state's history, from the standpoint of how widespread it is, Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts tweeted on Monday. In 2011, it took 108 days for water to subside, and this year the water is 4-5 feet higher."

By Monday, it appeared water levels in his state were falling. But residents were advised to use extreme caution. Do not enter flood waters or drive around barricades. The structural integrity of roads/bridges must be determined before roads can be opened, said Maj Gen Daryl Bohac, of the Nebraska National Guard.

Downstream on the Missouri River, in Missouri and Kansas, people were told to expect the river to reach record levels. In the Kansas city of Atchison, businesses were said to be piling up sandbags as the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted river levels to reach 30 feet there later this week.

Its not looking good at all. I think its going to get us this time and I hate to say that, Sara Tull, one resident of the city located on the Kansas/Missouri border and 60 miles north east of Topeka, said.

Residents remember flooding there in 2011, when the river reached 31 feet. Theyve got their stuff out of their house, a lot of them have, you know weve gone through this before and it is ugly, Judy Prohaska, another resident, told KCTV News.

Historic flooding continues across the plains and midwest this week with many rivers at 'major flood' stage, the NWS said. Many roads are closed due to flooding in the region and theyre closed for good reason. Fifty per cent of all flood deaths are vehicle-related. Turn around, dont drown.

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Historic flooding continues across the Plains and Midwest this week with many rivers at major flood stage. Many roads are closed due to flooding in the region and theyre closed for good reason. 50% of all flood deaths are vehicle related. Turn around, dont drown! pic.twitter.com/a557SvaKJj  NWS (@NWS) March 18, 2019

The flooding across the US heartland has followed a bomb cyclone winter storm, a hurricane-like weather phenomenon that last week hit the Rocky Mountains and other parts of the country, bringing snow and freezing rains to millions of people.

The Associated Press said residents in parts of southwestern Iowa were forced out of their homes in Sunday, as a torrent of Missouri River water flowed over and through levees, putting them in a similar situation to those in Nebraska.

While river depths were starting to level off in parts of Nebraska, the water is so high in many places that serious flooding is expected to remain for several days.

Lucinda Parker of Iowa Homeland Security & Emergency Management said nearly 2,000 people had been evacuated at eight Iowa locations since flooding began late last week. Most were staying with friends or family. Seven shelters set up for flood victims held just a couple dozen people Saturday night.

In Nebraska, the Missouri River flooded Offutt Air Force Base, with about one-third of it under water.

At least three people have died in the floodwaters, the news agency said. Aleido Rojas Galan, 52, of Norfolk, Nebraska was swept away on Friday night in southwestern Iowa, when the vehicle he was in went around a barricade. Two others in the vehicle survived, one of them by clinging to a tree.

On Thursday, James Wilke, 50, a farmer from Columbus, Nebraska, died when a bridge collapsed as he used a tractor to try and reach stranded motorists. On Monday the Omaha World-Herald newspaper, reported that an 80-year-old woman had become the latest confirmed fatality. Betty Hamernik died in her home near Columbus, Nebraska, after becoming trapped by rising floodwaters from the Loup River.

Two men remain missing. A man from Norfolk, Nebraska, was seen on top of his flooded car late on Thursday before being swept away. Water also swept away a man after a dam collapse.
A 37-year-old man of Turkish descent was arrested on Monday - AFP

Dutch authorities said Tuesday they were "seriously" investigating a possible terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack because of evidence including a letter found in the gunman's getaway car.

Police were questioning Turkish-born main suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, and two other men over Monday's rampage in which three people were killed and seven injured, three seriously.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had earlier said they "cannot exclude" other motives including a family dispute, but police and prosecutors said on Tuesday that the probe was leaning towards terrorism.

"So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.

"Our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims."

Flowers have been set up in tribute to victims at the site of the shooting in a tram Credit: JOHN THYS/ AFP

The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, south of Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said.

Armed police captured Tanis after an eight-hour manhunt that virtually shut down the Netherlands' fourth largest city and triggered a nationwide increase in security at airports and key sites.

Police said they had found a red Renault Clio used as a getaway car after the attack. They had also found a firearm after his arrest, they added.

Tanis and two other men aged 23 and 27 are still being interrogated, police said.

A stream of mourners laid flowers on Tuesday at the site of the attack near the 24 Oktoberplein square.

"One of the victims was my friend's girlfriend. So coming here today was the least I could do," Marco van Rooijen, 43, told AFP.

"I am here to pay homage to the victims and to support their families," added local resident Yvette Koetjeloozekoot, 29.

Flags were flying half-mast on many buildings around the Netherlands.

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Public transport was running again after forensic police finished their investigations at the scene and removed the tram on which the shooting erupted.

Rutte was chairing a cabinet meeting on the attack, which has raised security fears a day before provincial elections in the Netherlands.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's intelligence agency was "looking into" the attack.

"Some say it is a family matter, some say it is a terror attack ... Our intelligence agency is looking into the matter", Erdogan told Ulke TV late Monday.

Dutch media have reported that the suspect had a long rap sheet and was only released from jail two weeks ago on a number of charges.

Broadcaster NOS reported that some people close to him had links to fundamentalist Islamic groups, but also that he had divorced his wife two years ago.

Police and witnesses said gunfire broke out on the tram on Monday morning, sending people fleeing and triggering a huge police response.

Mosques and schools were closed across Utrecht following the bloodshed, before heavily armed officers surrounded a building and arrested Tanis.

Support for the Netherlands poured in from around the world including the United States, the EU and Russia.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: "America stands with you. We will continue to do all we can to help you in this terrible time of tragedy."
Seventy-four cities, 65 counties and four tribal areas in Nebraska declared states of emergency Tuesday as swaths of the Midwest battled rivers swollen by days of heavy rains and spring snowmelt.

Three deaths have been blamed on the flooding in Nebraska. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 7 million people in 14 states live where a flood warning was still in effect, the National Weather Service said.

In Nebraska alone, the farm and ranch losses because of floods could reach $1 billion, the state's farm bureau said.

Vice President Mike Pence surveyed damage in Nebraska on Tuesday, talking to first responders and visiting a temporary shelter. He promised expedited action on presidential disaster declarations for Nebraska and Iowa.

Were going to make sure that federal resources are there for you, Pence told volunteers at Waterloo, a town of less than 1,000 residents about 20 miles west of Omaha that was virtually cut off by the floodwaters.

About 200 miles of levees were compromised in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. Thousands of people have been driven from their homes by the fast-rising waters.

Flooding is expected to continue throughout the week in several states as high water flows down the Missouri River.

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The levees are busted, and we arent even into the wet season when the rivers run high, said Tom Bullock, the emergency management director for Missouris Holt County.

In North Dakota, Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney declared a state of emergency despite what he described as tremendous strides in permanent flood protection in recent years.

This is a very serious flood forecast, and we will meet it with a serious response," he said. "It is critically important for everyone to know that we will need the publics assistance. We cannot be complacent."

In Illinois, Freeport City Manager Lowell Crow said the town of 25,000 residents west of Rockford could see an all-time record flood along the Pecatonica River, which was at its highest level since 1933 on Tuesday. City officials braced for flooding in the downtown area, he said.

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In Missouri, 130 people were urged to leave their Atchison County homes near strained levees, three of which had been overtopped by water. Missouri State Highway Patrol crews were on standby for rescues.

The next four to five days are going to be pretty rough, said Rhonda Wiley, the county emergency management and 911 director.

The Missouri River was expected to crest Thursday in St. Joseph, Missouri, at its third-highest level on record, the National Weather Service said. Military C-130 planes have been evacuated from nearby Rosecrans Air National Guard Base.

In Iowa, water stood 10 feet high near Pacific Junction, where only the top halves of gas stations, homes and storage units were visible. Mills County Emergency Management Director Larry Hurst said the flooding might be worse than some of the most extreme historical events  in 1952, 1993 and 2011.

"This is actually different even than the flood of '52," he said. "There's water on this entire basin."

Touring the damage, Reynolds said the flooding was unlike anything she had seen before as the state's top elected official.

It looked like an ocean, she said.

Water gushed through a levee break near the Plattsmouth Toll Bridge, where the Platte and Missouri Rivers converge. The mystery, Hurst said, is how long it will take for the water to recede.

"To tell you the truth, I don't know," he said. "I don't think anybody knows."

Glenwood Mayor Ron Kohn said his city of 5,000 was in pretty good shape, but to the west, where the aging levee broke under rapidly rising waters last week, farms were swamped.

"That's all going to be gone until next year," Kohn said. "Rice is about all they could grow out there now."

Reynolds said 41 Iowa counties have requested and been approved for help through the governor's disaster proclamation last week. President Donald Trump tweeted his support for Reynolds and authorities who were fighting the floods.

In Nebraska, the National Guard said its members joined with the State Patrol to escort a caravan of semis and fuel tankers packed with food and supplies from Omaha to Fremont. The Department of Transportation cleared the way by "plowing over 5 inches of mud outside of Fremont," the National Guard said on Twitter. Nearly 70 percent of the state is under a disaster declaration.

Offutt Air Force Base

Offutt Air Force Base, home of the 55th Wing  the "Fightin' Fifty-Fifth"  was essentially underwater. Officials and airmen will not be able to get into roughly 60 structures until water recedes, and only mission-essential personnel are working at the installation, base spokesman Ryan Hansen said

"I am foremost grateful there have been no injuries reported by our Airmen or their families, proud of the effort by our Airmen & the community there to take care of one another & confident in our ability to continue generating combat airpower as @Offutt_AFB recovers," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein tweeted.

Contributing: Shelby Fleig and Austin Cannon, Des Moines Register; Kristin Lam, USA TODAY; The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nebraska underwater: 74 cities, 65 counties declare emergencies as flooding envelops state
A police officer has been connected to white nationalist group Identity Evropa, joining a growing list of public employees who have been identified in a gargantuan leak of the groups chat logs. Daniel Morley, 31, a school resource officer at L.C. Bird High School in Virginia, holds a side gig as an organizer for Identity Evropa, a group noted for its part in the organizing of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. The group (also known as the American Identity Movement) tasked Morley with helping new recruits through the application process.
Paris (AFP) - A French travel publisher presented Tuesday its first guide book for North Korea, offering 190 pages of tips for getting the most out of a trip to experience the "survival of a totalitarian communist state".

"The guide wasn't conceived to defend the current regime or to cast judgment, but to show the genuine touristic interest of the country," Jean-Paul Labourdette, a co-founder of the "Petit Fute" guides, said in Paris.

He said 4,000 copies had been printed -- more than enough for the estimated 400 French tourists which head each year to the pariah state, which has been isolated from the international community for decades.

North Korea has endured harsh UN sanctions to pursue its nuclear weapons programme under the Kim dynasty, which implemented a dictatorship that has been accused of provoking widespread hunger and human rights abuses.

The French foreign ministry strongly discourages tourists from visiting, while the US State Department only rarely grants exceptional permits for Americans hoping to travel to North Korea.

But Labourdette said "there are no security issues" for travellers, though he admitted "very restrictive" conditions, not least tight surveillance that limits foreigners to just a handful of hotels and restaurants.

And while tourist visas are readily granted, the guide warns that missteps are costly: "The punishments can be severe... as was the case for the American student Otto Warmbier."

Warmbier, an Ohio native who studied at the University of Virginia, was pulled away from his tour group at the Pyongyang airport in 2016 and charged with crimes against the state for allegedly taking down a propaganda poster in his hotel.

He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour.

After lengthy negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, Warmbier was released in a vegetative state in 2017 but died a few days later on American soil.

- 'Don't take pictures' -

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Mainstream travel guides have steered clear of the repressive nation, with English-language stalwarts like "Lonely Planet" limiting their coverage to a few chapters in their Korea books.

"Don't take any pictures of airports, road, bridges or train stations," the "Petit Fute" warns, and make sure you don't throw away or even fold any newspaper with a picture of former or current leaders.

"Roll it up instead," the guide advises.

The book comes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump are holding halting talks on ending the country's nuclear weapons efforts.

"We launched this project four years ago, we didn't wait for Donald and Kim to start their little friendship," Labourdette said. "But it took quite a while to find qualified French writers."

"Petit Fute" aims to publish guides on all the world's countries, or 204 instead of the 175 it covers now.

"We still don't have Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Liberia," Labourdette said.
When it comes to funding development of Ethereum, Buterin stands behind his push to allow wallet developers to charge a 1 gwei fee per transaction made through their software.

In the most recent episode of Into the Ether, Vitalik Buterin appears to discuss all things Ethereum. One of the subjects that came up was the Ethereum governance model. Eric Conner asked Buterin about on-chain governance models, and his thoughts on how Ethereums governance stacks up against them.

Current Governance Model Underrated: Vitalik Buterin

Buterin says that the current Ethereum governance model works pretty well, considering the problems it has guided the protocol through.

I actually think that Ethereum governance is under-rated at this point. Because its not something that we can attach a cool name to and advertise. And honestly, moderation is a less exciting pitch for people than either on-chain votes, maximum coin holder engagement, or on the other hand immutability. We as a community have never tended to go for extremes. But in reality, on the one hand people complain about governance as a process. But on the other hand, in terms of concrete outcomes that Ethereum governance has achieved, its done really well. Its implemented the issuance reductions. The issuance reductions seem to be something that most people tend to agree with. [] When there was a crisis back in the year 2016 DOS attacks, it managed to implement, roll, stack out, test and roll out a hard fork all within a time span of 6 days. Thats not something we want to repeat but its clearly something we can do if we really wanted to. When there was a Constantinople bug, it managed to delay the fork within a few hours. It is achieving the things that you might reasonably want a governance of a protocol to achieve, which is to make changes people want and not make changes people want. The one thing that its not achieving is dispute resolution or fund recovery or things in that category. And the other thing its not achieving is decentralized funding of public good projects.

Not Interested in Arbitration

He goes on to say that both of these things can lead to more harm than good. In the context of dispute resolution and fund recovery, he says youre opening up a Pandoras box. Where can you draw the line if transactions lose immutability? He also says that decentralized funding of public good projects is easily gameable  in an anonymous context, how can you delineate between a wealthy Ethereum holder or someone thats legitimately trying to do good?

Later in the episode, Buterin talks about privacy in Ethereum. He says that he currently is working on a patch that will make it harder to determine if the same wallet is interacting with multiple decentralized applications. The host claims that he uses a different Ethereum wallet for every dApp he uses, as a way to protect his privacy. They both agreed that privacy is paramount for Ethereums long-term viability.

Read the full story on CCN.com.
A memorial to victims of the two mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand. (Photo from Anadolu Agency/Getty Images )

New Zealands Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has personally taken a stand against the man accused of opening fire on two mosques in Christchurch last week and killing 50 Muslim worshippers.

In the New Zealand Parliament on March 18, Ardern vowed not to say the mans name, and urged others to follow suit.

You will never hear me mention his name, Ardern said.

He is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist, but he will, when I speak, be nameless, and to others I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety but we in New Zealand will give him nothing  not even his name.

The man made a point of drawing attention to his alleged crimes. He wrote online about the attacks before carrying them out, and even live streamed part of the rampage.

He was arrested and placed in custody following the shootings.

And now, between Arderns refusal to say his name and a publication ban on details about him, he has been rendered silent and small.

While Ardern has drawn international praise for the decision, she is not the first person to advocate for starving murderers of attention.





When a gunman killed 26 people in a Texas church in 2017, CNNs Anderson Cooper purposely withheld the mans name.

We dont say the killers name, he said.

Experts have warned media for years not to repeat the names of mass murderers, citing the media contagion effect whereby a suspects infamy following an attack inspires copycats.

A study by Western New Mexico University in 2016 pointed out that most shooters are driven to emulate past shooters by a desire for fame. The study, which looked at FBI data and the findings of other similar studies, said nearly all rampage shooters are white men seeking power and dominance.

Therefore, giving a shooter as little media coverage as possible denies him the reward he seeks and, theoretically, creates a smaller incentive for future shooters. It also shifts attention away from the aggressor and onto the victim or victims.

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Other experts have claimed that telling media to withhold the names of gunmen oversimplifies the complex subject of mass shootings and the factors that precipitate them.

The Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism think tank, argued in 2015 that aside from making a scapegoat out of reporters for supposedly glorifying violent crimes, to withhold information about a mass murderer can potentially have the following effects:

It can make it harder to identify trends, like the fact that most mass murderers are young white males.

It can lead to misinformation about the shooter in the public, like when journalist Ryan Lanza was initially named as the suspect in the Sandy Hook shooting when it was actually his brother, Adam Lanza.

It can make it hard for media to add context to the story that might have come from researching the suspects background and past acts of violence.

So what should media in Canada do in light of the Christchurch attack? Repeat the accused shooters name or refuse to publish it?

Let us know by voting in our poll above, or have your say in the comments below.
Senator Elizabeth Warren said Monday that she supports eliminating the Electoral College.

My view is that every vote matters and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College, Warren told the audience at a CNN town hall at Mississippis Jackson State University.

The Massachusetts Democrat, who announced her 2020 presidential campaign last month, noted that before a general election, candidates do not visit places like Mississippi or Massachusetts since they are not a swing states.

Warren also called for a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every American citizen and makes sure that vote gets counted.

Hillary Clinton won almost three million more votes than President Trump in 2016, but lost the Electoral College and thus the presidency. For Democrats, the loss evoked bitter memories of 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush after an intense legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Years before the 2016 campaign, Trump himself once called for an end to the Electoral College, calling it a disaster for a democracy in a 2012 tweet. Despite his victory, the president said last year that he stood by that position.

I would rather have a popular election, but its a totally different campaign, he told Fox News. Youre practicing for the 100-yard dash as opposed to the one mile. . . . I would rather have the popular vote because its, to me, its much easier to win the popular vote.

More from National Review
New York (AFP) - Boeing's 737 MAX aircraft are grounded across the world following the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, casting a harsh spotlight on the plane's safety certification and the close relationship between Boeing and American authorities.

Nearly 10 days later, what do we know?

- What happened? -

On March 10, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed southeast of Addis Ababa, killing the 157 people on board.

It was the second accident in five months for a 737 MAX aircraft, a product line meant to replace the 737 NG.

The first crash, involving a MAX 8 operated by Lion Air, occurred October 29 in Indonesia's Java Sea and left 189 people dead.

The aircraft have been temporarily grounded or banned from airspace around the world.

- Are the two crashes related? -

Both aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff.

Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said Sunday that a study of the flight data recorder retrieved from the Ethiopian plane had shown "clear similarities" to that of the Lion Air flight in Indonesia.

She said the parallels would be the "subject of further study."

- What have investigators found? -

In both cases, investigations are still underway, with the outcomes not expected for several months.

The flight recorders retrieved from the Ethiopian crash have been sent to France for analysis.

Preliminary results in the Lion Air crash have pointed to a possible malfunction on the aircraft's stabilization system intended to prevent stalling, known as MCAS, or the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System.

American pilots have also reported encountering problems using MCAS.

- What does Boeing say? -

The manufacturer has expressed its condolences to the victims' families, sent staff to the crash sites and says it is cooperating with investigators.

Boeing's CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the company was finalizing a software update to the MCAS and an update for onboard manuals and pilot training.

Story continues

The US Federal Aviation Administration has given the company until April to carry out these changes.

Sources familiar with the matter told AFP that the fix should be ready by March 25 and that it should take around two hours to perform.

Boeing has also suspended deliveries of 737 MAX aircraft but has continued to manufacture them.

- Why such controversy? -

Since the Ethiopian Airlines crash, questions have arisen about Boeing's ties to the FAA, which has offices within the company's plants.

For a decade, the FAA has allowed manufacturers themselves to certify their aircraft.

FAA-accredited Boeing employees notably certified the MCAS system, sources say.

Critics say the aviation regulator has been too soft on Boeing, a major player in the American export economy whose planes are also at issue in the current US-China trade talks.

- What other US authorities say -

The Justice Department, as well as the inspector general's office at the Department of Transportation, have both opened investigations into how the 737 MAX was certified, according to media reports.

The Justice Department investigation is reportedly a criminal matter.

The House of Representatives Committee on Transportation is also considering an investigation and calling on FAA officials to testify in public.

- When will MAX fly again? -

Three months is the best-case scenario, according to Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at Teal Group.

United Airlines is banking on this scenario after canceling flights that were scheduled to use 737 MAX 9 planes at the end of May.

In 2013, the 787 Dreamliner was grounded for four months following battery problems.

- What is Boeing's financial hit? -

The cost will depend on what the accidents' cause turns out to be. If it is only an MCAS modification, the repair bill will be less than $1 billion, according to Ken Herbert of Cannaccord Genuity.

This would be peanuts for Boeing, which is aiming for $15 billion in cash flow this year after record revenues of more than $100 billion last year.

The company may still have to pay damages demanded by clients or victims' families.

In the meantime, Boeing has already lost roughly $30 billion in market capitalization on Wall Street.

The company is also facing a logistical dilemma: where to store the 737 MAX aircraft it continues to produce?

If the grounding and air space bans continue, can it keep building the jets, knowing it will be unable to deliver them?
Wells Fargo & Company WFC is in talks to divest the retirement plan services business to Principal Financial Group, Inc. PFG, per Reuters. Per people familiar with the matter, if all negotiations are successful, a deal of more than $1 billion could be announced later this month.



This move by the bank comes as part of its efforts to streamline its business in order to deal with consequences of the unauthorized-account scandal, which led the Federal Reserve to impose a cap on the companys asset growth in February 2018.



Notably, Principal Financial, based in Des Moines, IA, provides an expansive range of retirement savings, investment, and insurance products and services through various subsidiaries.



Wells Fargos retirement plan services unit, which includes its 401(k) savings accounts business, if merged with Principal Financial, would aid in expanding the latters similar business.



However, no comment on a final deal has been made by Wells Fargo or Principal Financial yet.



In fact, this is not the first divestment that Wells Fargo will make. With a view to cut costs, it inked a deal with Flagstar Bancorp FBC last year to divest all of its branches in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Also, it entered into a deal with the local unit of Popular, Inc. BPOP to offload its Puerto Rico auto finance business.



Troubles for Wells Fargo began from its retail banking segment in September 2016, when its employees opened unauthorized accounts on behalf of its clients to fulfill sales targets. Following this, scandals in different areas of business came to light, which put Wells Fargo under the strict supervision of regulators.



In May 2018, Wells Fargo disclosed an impressive cost-control plan to help it deal with persistent legal expenses. Also, the banks efforts to revamp its financial position supported by lower tax rates and rising rate environment might help it overcome negatives.



Shares of Wells Fargo have lost 5.8% over the past 12 months compared with 8% decline recorded by the industry.





Story continues





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Oleg Ivenko as Rudolf Nureyev, and The White Crow director Ralph Fiennes. (Studiocanal)

There are similarities to be made between English acting royalty Ralph Fiennes and Kenneth Branagh. Both are classically trained, and both have turned their hands to directing, yet while the latter had dipped his toes into franchise film-making with Thor, Jack Ryan, and Artemis Fowl the former plans to steer well clear.

Fiennes explained to Yahoo Movies UK why this is, when discussing his third film from behind the lens  following 2012s Coriolanus and 2014s The Invisible Woman  The White Crow; a biopic of Russian ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev, which is a tale far more akin to Fiennes directorial sensibilities.

I dont want to work for an entity who insists I have so and so in a role, and other stuff like that. That doesnt appeal to me, Fiennes declared. At odds somewhat with his acting choices, as hes soon to revisit the role of M in the James Bond franchise, a role he also admits hed be keen to continue on even after Daniel Craig departs the series.

On The White Crow (in cinemas 22 March) he also discusses his influences, and why he felt compelled to learn both Russian and ballet for his performance (he stars as ballet master Alexander Pushkin), while also commenting on the essential theme of dedication to the arts, which enriches this drama.





He talks about the challenges in directing Oleg Ivenko (Nureyev) in his acting debut, and admits there is another story of Nureyevs life to be told, following the criticisms aimed at the film for not delving into the protagonists homosexuality. Though also says if there is a sequel, its not for him to tell it.

Yahoo Movies UK: Despite being quite a moving and profound tale, at its core, the film is a celebration of art and the unwavering pursuit of artistic expression. How much of an inspiration was Nureyev for you when making this? To have a central character who gave everything to his craft, does that filter through into the cast and crew?

Ralph Fiennes: Yes, it does. I think the reason I came to the film was not because of a love of ballet, but because there was something about the story of the young Nureyev, a student, who exemplified a devotion to art and the possibilities of us the audience having a transformative experience.

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We know what its like when we sit in front of a screen and watch a film, or go to a play, or even read a book, where our whole inner life is changed, and were moved and provoked into another awareness. There are so many appalling things that mankind has done, but one of the better things is this ability to create stuff that enriches our human spirit. In the discipline of being an artist is the road to giving audiences, or the receiver I suppose, that experience of transformation.

Oleg Ivenko as Rudolf Nureyev (Studiocanal)

I guess I, as an actor, I live to be part of that experience. Even as an audience member I go to the cinema or the theatre because I want to have something happen to me. Somehow when I read this story I felt there was something in this, a parable, a little definition of the drive to make art, which I think is a vital food for the human soul, not some airy fairy little thing you do before dinner, its a vital thing that keeps us coherent and keeps us on the better side of things.

On the set, interestingly I felt, and I cant talk for other people, that Nureyevs determination and discipline to work himself against the odds helped me. The shooting of this was very tough and often I thought that I cannot wimp out here, because Rudolph wouldnt, so I have got to keep driving through and finish the scene, theres no time to think, or for a few hours of rest, you just have to keep going, and the effect of that permeates everyone.

Read more: Fiennes defends Neeson

I think Davids script pulled people to the project, they loved the script and they loved what it was about, so we had a lot of heads of departments and actors just giving themselves because were all dreamers dreaming that we will help you have this transforming experience, and also the film is about someone who is not giving any quarter to themselves, they are driving themselves to the limit.

Do you remember the last time you had that transformative experience as an audience member?

I saw Three Tall Women with Glenda Jackson in New York, and that was extraordinary to see Glenda Jackson do that, and I felt very moved by the power of that piece. Another one that comes to me, which I revisited at home, was Ozus Late Spring, which just devastated me. That slow, precise build, and the way the emotions build and build while being so tightly controlled, it moved me to tears.

You speak Russian in the film  did you have any grasp of the language before getting involved? And how challenging it was to be speaking and performing in Russian, but thinking in English?

Ralph Fiennes as Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin in The White Crow (Studiocanal)

To clarify one thing very quickly, I have minimal Russian. I have enough to have to simplistic conversation, and with a few days in Russian I guess I get a little bit more confident, but I had to work on the basic Russian that I had to get to the standard for the film, so I have to correct people who think Im fluent, because Im not.

But yes, it is really hard. Unless your heart to mind to mouth connection is immediate, because its your native tongue, its very hard. I have to admit I dont think in Russian, and therefore I have to drill the sentences so theyre in my mouth and the muscles of the mouth are absolutely ready to say them, theyve learnt the shapes. Of course I learn it with the meaning, but also Im aware that the nuances of inflection is the hardest thing. I can get the technical pronunciations close to accurate, but the nuances of delivery, thats the giveaway.

And you also took ballet lessons? This must be one of the great perks to being an actor, is acquiring all of these skills along the way that you wouldnt have otherwise.

It is, its a perk, a great perk. To dip your toe into other set of skills and ultimately have no pressure to master them because its all smoke and mirrors. I just thought, I might as well get a sense for what is being asked of the body, so the ballet lessons were incredibly basic, but I loved them. I mean I was terrible, but I like exercise and I like the presentational aspect, youre presenting yourself in this highly stylised way.





We did actually have ballet based movement classes at RADA and we all thought they were horrible, that we had to wear tights and do these positions, and nobody actually made it clear that it was actually about how you hold your body, and now Im very interested all the time in how the body expresses. A couple of ballet lessons would give an actor another dimension on how they can express themselves.

Oleg Ivenko is excellent in the lead role, and youve spoken about the importance in hiring a dancer who can act as opposed to an actor who can dance, because of the nuances in movement. But were there any challenges in directing a first-time actor?

Oh huge challenges. The discipline of screen acting which I think is about sustaining your focus over a 10-12 hour day, the waiting time and downtime when people are moving scenery or shifting location or whatever, is to keep your interior focus sharp and thats something I had to keep pressure Oleg in.

Read more: Forrest Gump sequel details emerge

Just because he had done that emotion well, he was going to have to do it again from another angle, and that was a challenge. And just to keep him aware of the interior life, to keep it cooking. The camera is coming in to you as an actor, its really reading everything in your face and so the activity within you has to be full. Of course theres a point with very skilled actors where they can learn what theyre showing and control the minute degrees, but I think for a novice screen actor, just to say its inside you, thats what is important was the challenge, to keep that cooking.

In your last directorial outings, you were very much the lead role, almost in every scene. Was it quite nice to alleviate some of those pressures in this instance in not being the central character?

Fiennes gives instructions to Oleg Ivenko on the set of The White Crow (Studiocanal)

Yes it was. I mean, I didnt want to be in this, but luckily the Pushkin days of shooting were not very many or very hard when we were doing them, so I was so relieved when we shot it. If I direct another film, and Im not sure I will, but if I do, I really dont want to be in it. You never know whats going to happen when youre squeezed on finance like I was on this, but I have memories of happy days without the pressure and anxieties of being an actor, and I could just focus on the other actors and work with the team around me, and that was great.

It feels like the film is an opportunity to comment on the current situation for gay people in Russia, yet this is primarily about his early life and his career, but do you think there is scope in this story for a sequel, to look into those elements?

I dont have that impulse to make a sequel, I feel that this was a very particular story, a standalone moment in his life. I have come across one aspect of his later life which occurred to me could also have been a film, but at the moment I would leave Nureyev alone and let someone else make the sequel or the next instalment.

In your acting career, youve always struck a balance in making films that serve as escapism, and those which need to be told. But as a director youve only explored the latter. Do you harbour any feelings towards doing an escapist piece of cinema, much like Kenneth Branagh has done with Thor?

Maybe. Its been difficult but Ive worked with wonderful producers and worked in situations where Ive made the film Ive wanted to make. I mean there have been struggles and arguments and tussles, but I havent had a great corporation or business or executive producer insisting on a piece of casting.

Ive seen Mike Leigh is very vocal, and quite rightly, about casting who he wants, and I dont want to work for an entity who insists I have so and so in a role, and other stuff like that.

So something in me is fearful of taking on a job for a studio, whereby I am at the mercy of these other big forces. That doesnt appeal to me.

One of the big studio films you are in of course in James Bond. It sounds like Bond 25 will be a major turning point for the franchise. Based on what you know about it, how do you think fans are going to react?

Ralph Fiennes Bonds boss M in Spectre (Sony Pictures)

The thing is, I dont know anything about it. I think Cary [Fukunaga] is a great choice for director, but I really dont know, I havent seen the script. This is the usual pattern, where cards are held very close to the chest of the producers, writer and director, and I think when the moment is right then Ill be allowed to read something.

Read more: Bond 25s new working title

I just guess that the challenge of keeping the films intelligently alive with a contemporary twist that is entertaining to audiences, thats a challenge. Ive seen articles where he is increasingly written off as a dinosaur from another era, so its a juggling act to keep him in the conversation.

Its set to be Daniel Craigs last outing at Bond, but do you intend to carry on as M?

I like playing M, yes. I would be very happy to continue on.

Youve also expressed an interest in playing the live-action Alfred in the Batman franchise? Is that just that, an interest? Or have any conversations taken place?

No, somebody out of the blue asked me about playing the real flesh and blood Alfred, and Ive always loved him, Michael Gough, Michael Caine, Jeremy Irons, Ive always liked the character, so if someone wanted me to be the real-life Alfred, I would have to take it very seriously.

The White Crow is in cinemas from 22 March.
WASHINGTON (AP)  A top White House official said Sunday that President Donald Trump "is not a white supremacist" and attempts to tie him to the alleged New Zealand mosque shooter are "absurd."

Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff, described the New Zealand shooter as a "disturbed individual" and "evil person" and said it was unfair to cast the 28-year-old Australian "as a supporter of Donald Trump any more than it is to look at his, sort of his eco-terrorist passages in that manifesto and align him with Nancy Pelosi or Ms. Ocasio-Cortez."

Pelosi, a California Democrat, is the House speaker. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is a freshman and major proponent of a plan, named the Green New Deal, for tackling climate change.

"This was a disturbed individual, an evil person, and to try and tie him to an American politician from either party probably ignores some of the deeper, difficulties that this sort of activity exposes," Mulvaney said.

Still, Mulvaney's defense of Trump failed to quiet calls, chiefly from Democrats, for the president to issue a forceful denunciation of white nationalism. They argue that Trump's rhetoric, including harsh comments about immigrants and Muslims, encourages individuals like the New Zealand shooter.

Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the man accused of the deadly shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, left behind a lengthy document stating he was a white nationalist who hates immigrants and was set off by attacks in Europe that were perpetrated by Muslims.

"Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump?" was one of the questions he posed to himself in the document. His answer: "As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no."

The attacks left 50 people dead and 34 others wounded, a dozen of them critically.

Mulvaney said Trump is a defender of religious minorities worldwide, and that his actions speak louder than his words.

Story continues

"Look at what we've done while we've been here," he said. "I don't think anybody could say that the president is anti-Muslim." Mulvaney added that it frustrates him personally that "every time something goes wrong around the world now, not just in our country, somehow the president of the United States must be responsible. And that's just, that's absurd and it doesn't help contribute to the dialogue that's necessary to fix these problems."

Before Mulvaney appeared on the Sunday talk shows, Trump tweeted in defense of Fox News weekend host Jeanine Pirro, whose program did not air in its regular Saturday time slot. Fox offered no explanation, but Pirro's absence from the lineup followed anti-Muslim comments she directed last week toward Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of three Muslims in Congress, who wears a head covering known as a hijab. Trump tweeted "Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro."

Mulvaney also addressed a threat by North Korea to reconsider its halt to nuclear and ballistic missile tests, saying such a move would be a "truly disappointing turn of events." The threat followed the collapse of nuclear disarmament talks last month between Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un.

The chief of staff also expressed confidence that Trump's veto of a measure blocking his declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border -- in order to build a border wall -- will be upheld when the House votes later this month to override the president.

"It doesn't have a chance," Mulvaney said of the vote set for March 26.

Asked last week whether he saw white nationalism as a rising global threat, Trump said "I don't really."

He went on to characterize the movement as made up of a "small group of people that have very, very serious problems" and said "I guess, if you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that's a case. I don't know enough about it yet."

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., disagreed, saying white nationalism is on the rise "and the president should call it out, but sadly he's not doing that."

As a candidate, Trump proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States. As president, he drew criticism for attempting to institute the travel ban and for being slow to condemn white supremacy and related violence. After a violent 2017 clash between white nationalists and anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one demonstrator dead, Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides" of the confrontation.

Trump also did not immediately reject support from David Duke, a former KKK Grand Wizard, during his presidential campaign.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who is also Muslim, said Trump should call the Justice Department for data on the rise of white supremacy in the U.S. She urged Trump to use his bully pulpit to denounce the movement.

"He, from the Oval Office, from that power position, can be able to send a signal very loud and clear," she said.

Mulvaney appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and CBS' "Face the Nation." Kaine and Tlaib spoke on CNN's "State of the Union."

___

Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap
Paris (AFP) - Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev shocked the nation Tuesday when he announced he would be resigning after nearly 30 years in power.

Here is a recap of some of the world leaders who have held power the longest -- excluding monarchs enthroned for life.

- More than four decades -

Topping the list with 49 years in power is Cuba's revolutionary hero Fidel Castro, who handed over to his brother Raul in 2008 when he was in his early 80s.

Taiwan's first president Chiang Kai-shek was in charge on the island and in mainland China for a total of 47 years until his death in 1975.

North Korean founder Kim Il Sung ran the reclusive state for 46 years before dying in office in 1994. He is still revered as the "eternal leader".

Moamer Kadhafi ruled Libya with an iron fist for almost 42 years before being ousted and then slaughtered in 2011 by rebels.

Omar Bongo governed oil-rich Gabon for more than 41 years until his death in 2009.

- Still counting -

Currently, the world's longest serving president is Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema, with 39 years under his belt since he toppled his uncle in 1979.

Others that are still counting their years in power:

Cameroon's President Paul Biya: 36 years.

Congo President Denis Sassou: 34 years, excluding a five-year pause.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen: 34 years.

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni: 33 years.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: 29 years.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir: 29 years.

Chad's President Idriss Deby: 28 years.

Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmon: 26 years.

Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki: 25 years.

Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko: 25 years
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL March 19, 2019  Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: HighPoint Resources HPR, Bonanza Creek Energy, Inc. BCEI, Extraction Oil & Gas Inc. XOG, SRC Energy Inc. SRCI and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. APC.

Here are highlights from Mondays Analyst Blog:

Colorado Oil & Gas Bill Passes Senate: What Lies Ahead?

A bill that would change the way oil and gas drilling permits are issued in Colorado has passed in the Senate. The regulation, which went through three committee hearings, was approved 19-15 along party lines, with Democrats voting in favor and Republicans voting in opposition. SB19-181 will now be sent to the House for a vote where things are expected to be easier with Democrats holding a comfortable majority. The legislation will then head to the desk of Colorado Governor Jared Polis for consideration.

The Senate Bill 181 in a Nutshell

The hotly debated and controversial measure, known as Senate Bill 181, is being referred to as the most sweeping oil and gas reforms the state has seen. It will lead to a comprehensive overhaul of Colorados oil and gas development regulations by expanding the authority of local government/communities over drilling sites.

The bill also strives to address concerns about climate change, pollution and threat to wildlife from drilling operations, while protecting the interests of unwilling mineral rights owners. Finally, the proposal aims to rewrite the mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission  the state agency overseeing the energy industry  from economic gain to public safety and environmental protection.

Lets debate the pros and cons of the bills.

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Pro: Backers of the Bill Hail the Health and Safety Provisions

Proponents of the measure and environmental groups in particular argue that the passage of the bill is a decisive step toward protecting the Colorado residents health and safety. Its goal is to ensure that state regulators take profit out of citizen welfare while maintaining the continued development of the local oil and gas industry. Moreover, the bill looks to strengthen local control and address the interests of landowners who refuse to lease their lands to an operator

Con: Opponents of the Bill Fear Crippling Blow to the Industry

People who are against the bill, along with industry officials, argue that the regulations, if signed into law, would have a devastating economic impact on the entire state. With the Colorado economy depending heavily on oil and gas industry for tax revenues, funds for infrastructure and welfare projects could be hit if local communities go slow on drilling permit approvals within their jurisdiction. They warn that the legislation could potentially lead to job losses and economic hardship.

Which Companies Will Be Affected?

While the bills passage through the House is almost a given following which it will reach the desk of Governor Jared Polis (a supporter of the measure himself), it is expected to take many months and public hearings before the rules implementing the law are written.

But the Senate Bill 181, which comes after the energy industry defeated Proposition 112  an initiative that would have required new oil and gas wells to be drilled at least 2500 feet from most buildings  is expected to be a real concern for the operators in Colorado.

Oil and gas explorers who are exclusively focused on the states Denver-Julesburg (or, DJ) Basin including HighPoint Resources, Bonanza Creek Energy, Inc., Extraction Oil & Gas Inc. and SRC Energy Inc. among others, could be in for some rough time. Biggies like Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which has invested heavily in the prolific D-J Basin also stands exposed to an element of uncertainty. The Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company holds approximately 400,000 net acres in the DJ Basin.

You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL March 19, 2019  Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Invesco S&P Global Dividend Opportunities Index ETF LVL, First Trust STOXX European Select Dividend Index Fund FDD, Global X SuperDividend Emerging Markets ETF SDEM, ETRACS Monthly Pay 2xLeveraged Mortgage REIT ETN MORL and Global X SuperDividend Alternatives ETF ALTY.

Here are highlights from Mondays Analyst Blog:

5 High-Dividend ETFs Available Under $15

If theres any equity ETF segment that almost always comes to investors rescue, then it is dividend. And if it is priced low, what could be better? After all, the broader market is guilty of overvaluation (read: 6 Dividend ETFs That Beat S&P 500 in the 10-Year Bull Run).

U.S. markets have been on cloud nine since the start of the year. A dovish Fed and cues of improvement in the U.S.-China trade relation helped the S&P 500 eke out more than 12% gains this year.

In this northbound journey, stock valuation got elevated. Many are screaming that a steep correction is long overdue. This is especially true as analysts earnings estimates for Q1 and Q2 of 2019 are moving south (read: Is Market Overvalued? 5 Cheap Top-Ranked ETFs to Play (Revised)).

As investors poured in a lot of money to make the most of the rally, they may have run out of cash. Obviously, many must be on the lookout for ETFs that are still trading below $20 but have reasons to outperform in the days ahead.

We have thus zeroed in on some global high-dividend ETFs. After all, U.S. benchmark Treasury bond yields fell to its lowest level since early January on Mar 15 as U.S. government debt rates were on the way for two straight weeks of declines. As of Mar 15, the yield on benchmark U.S. Treasuries was 2.59%, down from this years high of 2.79% recorded on Jan 18.

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In a nutshell, a high dividend feature clubbed with cheaper prices could make an intriguing investment choice at the current level. After all, with low-priced stocks, retail buyers would need less cash to join the market.

Also, stocks below $15 see huge profits as share price increase of a dollar adds to 6.7% in ones portfolio. On the other hand, stocks priced at $100 or above see 1% or less gain if their share price rises by $1.

Thus, we highlight a few high-yield dividend ETFs and stocks under $15 that investors can keep a watch on in the days to come (see: all the World ETFs here).

Invesco S&P Global Dividend Opportunities Index ETF $11.31

The underlying S&P Global Dividend Opportunities Index comprises securities that offer high dividend yields. It charges 64 bps in fees and yields 3.23% annually.

First Trust STOXX European Select Dividend Index Fund  $13.14

The underlying STOXX Europe Select Dividend 30 Index consists of 30 high dividend-yielding securities selected from the STOXX Europe 600 Index. It charges 60 bps in fees and yields about 4.59% annually.

Global X SuperDividend Emerging Markets ETF  $14.22

The underlying MSCI Emerging Markets Top 50 Dividend Index tracks the performance of 50 equally-weighted companies that rank among the highest dividend yielding equity securities in Emerging Markets. It charges 66 bps in fees and yields 5.94% annually.

ETRACS Monthly Pay 2xLeveraged Mortgage REIT ETN  $14.74

The ETN is linked to the monthly compounded 2x leveraged performance of the MVIS US Mortgage REITs Index, reduced by accrued fees. It charges 40 bps in fees and 20.51% annually.

Global X SuperDividend Alternatives ETF  $14.75

The underlying Indxx SuperDividend Alternatives Index tracks the performance of some of the highest dividend yielding securities in each category of alternative investments. It yields 7.09% annually. Its annual operating expense is 2.84%.

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  March 19, 2019 - Stocks in this weeks article are Catabasis Pharmaceuticals Inc. CATB, Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc. LGND, Key Energy Services Inc. KEG, Carbonite Inc. CARB and Second Sight Medical Products Inc. EYES.

Rising P/E an Overlooked Criterion: 5 Top Stocks

Trying hands at bargain stocks that have a low price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is a common practice. The perception is that the lower the P/E, the higher will be the value of the stock. This inference is drawn on the simple logic that a stocks current market price does not justify (is not equivalent to) its higher earnings and therefore the stock has room to run.

But have you ever given it a thought that stocks with a rising P/E can also be worth buying. Well tell you why this often-overlooked approach may go a long way to reap some solid returns for you.

Why Rising P/E is a Valuable Tool

Investors should note that stock price moves in tandem with earnings performance. If earnings come in stronger, the price of a stock shoots up. Solid quarterly earnings and the forward guidance boost earnings forecasts, leading to stronger demand for the stock and an uptrend in its price.

So, if the price is rising steadily, it means that investors are assured of the stocks fundamental strength and expect some solid positives out of it. Suppose an investor wants to buy a stock with a P/E ratio of 30, it means that he is willing to shell out $30 for only $1 worth of earnings. This is because the investor expects earnings of the company to rise at a faster pace in the future on strong fundamentals.

Also, studies have revealed that stocks have seen their P/E ratios jump more than 100% from their breakout point in the cycle. So, if you can pick stocks early in their breakout cycle, you can end up seeing considerable gains.

For the rest of this Screen of the Week article please visit Zacks.com at: https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/360023/rising-pe-an-overlooked-criterion-5-top-stocks

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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Zacks Investment Research
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's prime minister, has vowed never to refer to the Christchurch mosque attacker by his name, as she said he would face "the full force of the law."

Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white supremacist, gunned down 50 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch last week and broadcast the footage live on the internet.

He is now in police custody awaiting trial and has asked to represent himself in court, prompting concerns he will seek to use the legal system as a platform for his far-right ideology.

But Ms Ardern said she wanted to ensure that the killer did not enjoy any publicity as a result of the shooting, and that attention should instead focus on his victims. "He sought many things from his act of terror but one was notoriety," she said.

"That is why you will never hear me mention his name."

She also implored others "to speak the names of those who are lost, rather than the name of the man who took them". Relatives of the victims say they have been overwhelmed by support from New Zealanders, who have flocked to vigils in Christchurch following Friday's attack.

Janna Ezat, whose son Hussein died as he charged at Tarrant in an attempt to save lives, said he was wearing white instead of mourning black because he was so proud of him.

Brenton Tarrant, the man charged in relation to the Christchurch massacre Credit: AFP

It came as Facebook sought to defend itself from criticism about Tarrant using the social media website to broadcast the massacre, as it claimed no one reported the video while it was being live streamed. In a blog post on Tuesday, Chris Sonderby, vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, said the video was viewed fewer than 200 times during its live broadcast.

"No users reported the video during the live broadcast. Including the views during the live broadcast, the video was viewed about 4,000 times in total before being removed from Facebook," he said.

Family members from Fiji visit a memorial site for victims of Friday's shooting, in front of Christchurch Botanic Gardens in Christchurch Credit: Reuters

"The first user report on the original video came in 29 minutes after the video started, and 12 minutes after the live broadcast ended. "Before we were alerted to the video, a user on 8chan posted a link to a copy of the video on a file-sharing site," he added, referring to an online message board with links to far-right movements.

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But Ms Ardern said social media firms needed to take responsibility for the content, as they were "the publisher, not just the postman." "There is no question that ideas and language of division and hate have existed for decades, but their form of distribution, the tools of organisation, they are new," she told the New Zealand parliament.

"We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published."

Meanwhile, Turkish president Tayyip Recep Erdogan called on New Zealand to reinstate the death penalty in response to the massacre. If the New Zealand parliament doesnt make this decision I will continue to argue this with them constantly. The necessary action needs to be taken," he told an election rally.

Mr Erdogan has faced criticism for using footage of the shootings and extracts from Tarrant's manifesto to drum up domestic support among Muslim voters.

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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hugs a mosque-goer at the Kilbirnie Mosque - Getty Images AsiaPac

The Australian terrorist who filmed himself slaughtering 50 worshipers at two mosques in New Zealand has asked to represent himself in court, prompting concerns the trial could become a platform to promote his far-Right ideology.

Brenton Tarrant, a white supremacist who gunned down his victims with a semi-automatic rifle at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch, sacked his court-appointed lawyer so he could defend himself.

His former lawyer, Richard Peters, told reporters that the attacker "indicated he does not want a lawyer" and that he "wants to be self-represented in this case."

Mr Peters, who represented Tarrant at a preliminary court hearing, played down speculation that he was mentally unfit to stand trial.

"The way he presented was rational and someone who was not suffering any mental disability. That's how he appeared. He seemed to understand what was going on," Mr Peters said.

Tarrant was partially inspired by Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, who used his own trial to expand on his crazed political ideology.

For instance, on the first day of his trial in 2012, Breivik claimed his attack was an act of "self-defence" against mass migration and multiculturalism. Extracts from his propaganda videos were played during the trial and on at least one occasion he gave a Nazi salute in court.

More than 30 people remain in hospital after the shooting, including a four-year-old girl who is in critical condition.

It came as a British security minister warned that the attack, which was widely broadcast on social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, could be copied by extremists in the UK.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Ben Wallace said: "It absolutely could happen here. That's why the Government has been concerned about the growing group of people crossing into the extremist mindset on the far-right and the neo-Nazis.

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"It is why 18 months ago, we proscribed a neo-Nazi group, National Action."

Mr Wallace added that the Government was putting "lots and lots of resources" into tracking down people involved in far-right activities and into the Prevent programme against radicalisation.

A woman carries a candle at a vigil for victims of the mosque shootings in New Zealand, Credit: REUTERS

On Monday, Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's prime minister, said she would announce new laws on gun ownership to make it more difficult to obtain semi-automatic weapons, such as those wielded by the attacker.

"Within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer," she told a news conference, but did not provide further details.

She has previously expressed support for a ban on semi-automatic weapons. The owner of weapons shop Gun City revealed that Tarrant bought four weapons and ammunition there between December 2017 and March 2018, but said these were not the high-power rifles used in the massacre.

"The MSSA, military-style automatic, reportedly used by the alleged gunman was not purchased from Gun City. Gun City did not sell him an MSSA, only A-category firearms," said David Tipple.

As mourners continued to hold vigils for the victims in Christchurch, Donald Trump, the US president, complained that the media was trying to blame him for the massacre because he had been praised by Tarrant.

"The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one," he wrote on Twitter. "So Ridiculous!"

Mr Trump was described by Tarrant as a "symbol of renewed white identity" in a manifesto he sent to the New Zealand prime minister's office minutes before beginning his rampage.
New Zealanders have begun handing in weapons in response to government appeals following the Christchurch massacre, but the gesture has put some squarely in the social media firing line.

John Hart, a farmer in the North Island district of Masterton, decided to give his semi-automatic rifle to police after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday plans to tighten gun laws in light of the slaughter Friday of 50 Muslim worshippers.

She also encouraged owners to surrender unnecessary firearms after it emerged that the accused mosque attacker, Australia white nationalist Brenton Tarrant, had legally acquired the guns he used in the rampage.

Hart said it was an easy decision for him to hand in his semi-automatic and tweeted that "on the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesnt outweigh the risk of misuse. We dont need these in our country".

The tweet drew a barrage of derogatory messages to his Facebook account -- most apparently from the US, where the pro-gun lobby is powerful and vociferous.

Hart deleted the messages but posted online: "A warm kia ora to all my new American Facebook friends."

"Im not familiar with your local customs, but I assume 'Cuck' is a traditional greeting," he said of the insult, short for "cuckold', frequently used by far-right extremists.

Hart told AFP many of the messages made inaccurate references to his sexuality.

"It was very sudden. It started about the time the US east coast was waking up. There seemed to have been a rallying call," he said.

A more mild message, from Kaden Heaney asked: "What's the point of giving up yalls personal guns? Yall do realize what happens to societies that give up their guns right? Evil people will get their hands on guns, knives, bombs or whatever they want to kill no matter what the intentions of good people are. Who will protect you."

Christopher @offwhiteblogger said: "You did the right thing then; you clearly arent responsible enough to own a firearm."

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Police said they did not have data available on the number of weapons handed in since Friday.

But they issued a statement saying that "due to heightened security and the current environment, we would ask that people please call us first before attempting to surrender a firearm."

A person calling himself Blackstone tweeted: "this is one of the easiest decisions I have ever made. Have owned a firearm for 31 years ... Once I realised that, the only way I could go forward with a clear conscience was to hand it into the police for destruction."

Ardern has said that details of the government's proposed law changes on gun ownership will be announced by next week, but she indicated that gun buybacks and a ban on some semi-automatic rifles were under consideration.

"As the Cabinet, we were absolutely unified and very clear: the terror attack in Christchurch on Friday was the worst act of terrorism on our shores, it was in fact one of the worst globally in recent times, it has exposed a range of weaknesses in New Zealand's gun laws," she said.

New Zealand police, meanwhile, were investigating a suspicious fire at a gun club in the far north of the country, but were not immediately linking it to the current gun debate.

There had also been a fire at the same club a year ago.
The bodies of six of the Christchurch massacre victims have been released to their families, New Zealand police said Tuesday, but they warned only a fraction of the 50 people killed had been fully identified, with the delay angering anguished relatives.

Muslims whose loved ones were gunned down by an Australian white supremacist at two mosques last Friday have had their grief compounded by the failure of the authorities to return bodies to families in time for a speedy burial, as required under Islamic custom.

Police in Christchurch said only 12 of the 50 victims had been identified, and appeared to warn next of kin to brace for further delays.

"We are doing all we can to undertake this work as quickly as possible and return the victims to their loved ones," a police statement said.

"While identification may seem straightforward the reality is much more complex, particularly in a situation like this."

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed on Tuesday that gunman Brenton Tarrant would face the "full force of the law" as she opened a sombre session of parliament with an evocative "as-salaam alaikum" message of peace to Muslims.

But the black-clad Ardern pledged to grieving Kiwis that she would deprive the 28-year-old gunman of the publicity he craved by never uttering his name.

"That is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless," she told assembled lawmakers.

"I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them."

The 38-year-old leader closed by noting that Friday marks a week since the attack, and urged New Zealanders to grieve along with them.

"Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh," she said -- "May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be with you too."

- Families gather -

But the forensic delays are casting a cloud over New Zealand's handling of the horrific ordeal.

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Dozens of relatives of the deceased have already begun arriving from around the world ahead of expected funerals which have already been delayed far beyond the 24 hours after death usually observed under Islam.

Peter Elms of New Zealand's immigration department said 65 visas had been granted for overseas family members so far.

Christchurch police said post-mortems had been completed on all 50 victims.

But only 12 had been "identified to the satisfaction of the coroner" nearly a week after the rampage.

Javed Dadabhai, who travelled from Auckland to help bury his cousin, said families and volunteers had been warned of a slow process.

"The majority of people still have not had the opportunity to see their family members," he told AFP.

Mohamed Safi, 23, whose father Matiullah Safi died in Al Noor mosque, pleaded for officials to let him identify his father and set a date for his burial.

"There's nothing they are offering," Safi, an Afghan refugee, said outside a family support centre.

"They are just saying they are doing their procedures, they are doing their process. But what process? Why do I not know what you are going through to identify the body... Why am I not contacted as an immediate family member?"

In a rambling manifesto, the gunman had said he was motivated partly by a desire to stoke a violent response from Muslims and a religious war between Islam and the West.

The Islamic State group, in a message on social media, appeared to encourage retaliatory attacks.

"The scenes of killing in the two mosques... incite members of the caliphate living there to avenge their religion and the children of the umma (Muslims) who were are being slaughtered in all corners of the earth with the sponsorship and blessing of the Crusader countries," it said.

- Gun control -

Following the mass shooting, Ardern has promised to reform New Zealand laws that allowed the gunman to legally purchase weapons used in the attack.

New Zealanders have already begun answering government appeals to hand in their weapons, including John Hart, a farmer in the North Island district of Masterton.

Hart said it was an easy decision for him to hand in his semi-automatic and tweeted: "on the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn't outweigh the risk of misuse. We don't need these in our country."

The tweet drew a barrage of derogatory messages to his Facebook account -- most apparently from the US, where the pro-gun lobby is powerful.

Ardern has said details of the proposed reform will be announced by next week, but she indicated they could include gun buybacks and a ban on some semi-automatic rifles.
Home | News | General | BREAKING: Suspected Boko Haram terrorists attack Adamawa town

- There was an attack in the Michika local government area of Adamawa state on Monday, March 18

- Media reports claim that the said attack was carried out by some suspected Boko Haram terrorists

- An indigene of the community said that Boko Haram terrorists invaded Michika without resistance

Ahmad Sajoh, the Adamawa commissioner for information and strategy, on Monday, March 18, confirmed to newsmen that an attacked on Michika local government area of the state was carried out by some suspected Boko Haram insurgents, TVC News reports.

READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda

Moreover, a former local council chairman of the town who spoke on condition of anonymity said that he went into hiding in the mountains for safety when the tragedy ensued, although the police was yet to confirm the development.

The image maker of the Othman Abubakar, told newsmen that he is yet to be given information concerning the reported development by the police command in Michika.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that suspected members of the Boko Haram sect reportedly attacked a community in Michika local government area of Adamawa.

A source disclosed that the insurgents stormed the town on the night of Monday, February 4. Legit.ng gathered that Buba Marwa, a former military administrator of Lagos state, was from the town.

It was gathered that the incident happened after Marwa led 13 major generals, eight air vice marshals, two rear admirals, 11 brigadier-generals, nine air commodores, eight commodores and 17 former military administrators  all retired, to Aso Rock to endorse President Muhammadu Buhari.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng: Same great journalism, upgraded for better service!

Can Nigerian Soldiers really not deal with Boko Haram fighters?| Legit TV

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Home | News | General | Breaking: You have betrayed us - Nigerian Army replies INEC over Rivers election violence

The Nigerian Army, in the evening of Monday, March 18, said it was betrayed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over its alleged role in the violence that engulfed Rivers state during the 2019 general election.

The Nigerian Army insisted that its men were professional during their outing in Rivers state.

In a statement by Colonel Aminu Iliyasu, the Army spokesperson, the security body further said it was surprised that after meeting with the committee that visited Rivers state on a fact-finding mission, INEC still went ahead to indict its men.

The Nigerian Army, which said its position to the fact-finding committee were not reflected in the report, also urged the police to go ahead with its investigation into the clash between men of the two security bodies.

Read the full statement by the Nigerian Army below:

READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda

Headquarters 6 Division Nigerian Army (NA) has observed with dismay and sense of betrayal in the statement made by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) signed by its national commissioner and chairman information and voter education committee, Festus Okoye (Esq), on 15 March 2019. The statement according to INEC was the findings of its fact-finding committee that assessed the situation in Rivers state.

It is however pertinent to note that, representatives of the 6 division met with the fact-finding committee on Tuesday, 12 March, 2019, at the INEC headquarters in Port Harcourt and had honest discussions and made a written submission to aid the committee in its task. Regrettably, none of the divisions input form any of the findings of INEC as made public. This clearly indicates lack of trust by an institution that the NA sacrifices so much to assist in the course of performing their role.

Genesis of the suspension of governorship/state House of Assembly elections process in Rivers state

What INEC failed to mention or even consider is the fact that at about 10:30 pm on Saturday, 9th March, 2019, troops of 6 Division NA detailed at the outer perimeter of Obio/Akpor local government headquarters collation center were brazenly attacked by Governor Wikes security aides and armed thugs who stormed the collation center with the governor in a convoy of more than 50 vehicles while collation of results was going on. In the ensuing melee, Captain Adams Salami was shot at close range by the security aides of Governor Wike while Corporal Adeosun Adebayo was matcheted by Governor Wikes thugs. Both victims are currently receiving treatment at University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH) intensive care unit and Military Hospital Port Harcourt respectively with life threatening injuries. Thereafter, election materials were carted away and electoral officials abducted by the Governors thugs to an unknown destination. This was made known to the INEC fact-finding committee but INEC does not see it worth condemning or mention in its report.

Consequently, after due consultations and considerations between 6 Division and the Rivers state police command on Sunday, the 10th of March 2019, the Rivers state police command, on their own, - took the initiative to invite the media to the hospitals where the two victims are receiving treatment and thereafter to host a press conference on the matter with the view to dissociate itself from the unprofessional conduct exhibited by their men attached to Wike and tell the public what disciplinary action the command will take or is already taking. However, while the visit to the victims was accomplished and the two victims interviewed by the media, the press conference was aborted by the police after journalists have been assembled.

Coincidentally, a rescheduled press conference on the matter was also aborted on Thursday, the 14th of March, 2019. Most disheartening is that while the Rivers state police command accepts the involvement of their personnel in the attack at Obio/Akpor LG headquarters, till date those personnel have not at least been reprimanded.

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To this end, - in the circumstance, - the 6 division NA as a stakeholder in the 2019 general elections takes exception to the lopsided and therefore unfair INEC report and is hereby strongly and totally rejected by the NA.

The division is equally disappointed with the attitude exhibited by the Nigerian police in this regard and hereby request the police leadership to commence full scale investigation of those security aides to Governor Wike that attacked troops at the Obio/Akpor LG headquarters collation centre and shot at Capt AA Salami with a view to appropriately sanction those found responsible/culpable. Until that is done, Headquarters 6 Division NA will have to review all existing joint activities with the Rivers state police command.

Legit.ng earlier reported that the Bayelsa deputy governor, retired Rear Admiral John Jonah, urged Nigerians not to blame the Army for its involvement in the elections.

Jonah said this on Saturday, March 16, at Elebele in Yenogoa, during the inauguration of some projects in the 16 Brigade Barracks otherwise known as 'Tukur Buratai Camp' located in the community.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better.

2019 elections: Do you still trust INEC to conduct fair elections? - Nigerians speak| Legit TV

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Home | News | General | Court nullifies Omo-Agege's candidacy, sacks Delta APC exco

- Federal High Court sitting in Asaba has nullified the Jones Erue-led executive committee of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Delta state

- The Jones Erue's faction produced Senator Ovie Omo-Agege and the party's governorship candidate

- Okubo Nwachukwu, the counsel to the Erue-led executives, however, said they would review the courts judgment

Senator Ovie Omo-Agege's second term ticket was on Monday, March 18, threatened as the Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, sacked the Jones Erue-led executive committee of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Delta state.

The Independent reports that in its two-hour judgment, the court, presided over by Justice Toyin Adegoke upheld the Cyril Ogodo-led Delta APC faction in the state, declaring the executives as duly elected.

READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda

Legit.ng gathered that Justice Adegoke further held that all actions purportedly taken by the Erue-led executives were null and void, thereby nullifying the candidacy of the candidates who emerged from the primaries conducted by the Erue-led executives.

According to Rowland Ekpe, the counsel to the Cyril Ogodo exco, the re-election of Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, representing Delta central and other candidates in the just-concluded elections, is now null and void following the judgment since they all emerged from the primaries conducted by the Erue-led executives.

The primaries conducted by Mefor Progress, those names are the authentic names. Ekpe stressed.

Other candidates affected by the judgment include the state governorship candidate, Great Ogboru, and the senatorial candidate for Delta south senatorial district and immediate past governor of the state, Emmanuel Uduaghan, among others.

The counsel to the Erue-led executives, Okubo Nwachukwu, however, said they would review the courts judgment, noting that they would appeal the verdict passed by Justice Toyin Adegoke.

We will look at the judgment, and see what we are going to do, but hopefully we are going to appeal against the judgment. I am very certain that the appeal will be favourable. Nwachukwu stated.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that the senator representing Delta central, Ovie Omo-Agege, vowed that any member who is remotely connected with Senator Bukola Saraki's agenda would not be allowed into the leadership of the Senate.

READ ALSO: Governorship forum pledges support to El-Rufai over his reelection

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have upgraded to serve you better.

2019 elections: Do you still trust INEC to conduct fair elections? - Nigerians speak| - on Legit TV

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Home | News | General | Nigerian Army confirms killing of garrison commander

- An army spokesman, Major Yahaya Nasir Kabara, confirms reports about the shooting of the Garrison Commander of 33 Artillery Brigade in Shadawanka Barracks, Mohammed Barack

- It is still not clear whether the unidentified gunmen that shot the officer dead were bandits or assassins

- Barack was reported to have been riding a power bike when he was shot on Jos-Bauchi highway, while returning from Kaduna

An army spokesman has confirmed the killing of Col Mohammed Barack, the Garrison Commander of 33 Artillery Brigade of Nigerian Army in Shadawanka Barracks, Bauchi,

Unidentified gunmen killed the officer on Sunday, March 17. It was not clear whether he was killed by bandits or assassins, The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

Barack, who was riding a power bike, was shot on Jos-Bauchi highway, while returning from Kaduna. The officer hailed from Kano state.

READ ALSO: Probe attack on our reporter - BBC tells PDP

The spokesperson of 33 Artillery Brigade, Major Yahaya Nasir Kabara, confirmed the shooting.

Yes, its true, he said

Investigation is ongoing, I will get back to you when the finding is out. Let me communicate with my Commander, I will get back to you. he said.

Legit.ng had earlier reported that suspected gunmen have killed the garrison commander of 33 Artillery Brigade of Nigerian Army in Shadawanka Barracks, Bauchi, Col. Mohammed Barack.

According to Punch Newspaper, the incident which took place on Bauchi  Jos Road has raised panic in the state.

PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet!

In another report, the Nigerian Army, in the evening of Monday, March 18, said it was betrayed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over its alleged role in the violence that engulfed Rivers state during the 2019 general election.

The Nigerian Army insisted that its men were professional during their outing in Rivers state.

In a statement by Colonel Aminu Iliyasu, the Army spokesperson, the security body further said it was surprised that after meeting with the committee that visited Rivers state on a fact-finding mission, INEC still went ahead to indict its men.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng: Same great journalism, upgraded for better service!

Can Nigerian Soldiers really not deal with Boko Haram fighters?| Legit TV

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Home | News | General | Just in: Probe attack on our reporter - BBC tells PDP

- There have been claims that a reporter of the British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) was assaulted during the general polls in Lagos

The journalist, a reporter of the British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC), was allegedly attacked by a bigwig of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)

- Thus, the BBC, on Monday, March 18, called on the national and state leadership of the party to investigate the issue

The British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) on Monday, March 18, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to look into the reported violence on Ajoke Ulohotse, attacked during the gubernatorial and House of Assembly polls in Alimosho, Lagos.

In a letter to the party's national head, Prince Uche Secondus, the chairman of the state's chapter, Adegbola Dominic, BBC claimed that Ulohotse was attacked by one PDP bigwig Segun Adewale.

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The media outfit urged Secondus and Adegbola to investigate the development and make public its discoveries after its probe, Vanguard reports.

Signed by Adejuwon Soyinka, the editor of BBC News pidgin service, the letter reads: We will like to draw your attention to an incident on Saturday March 9, 2019 in which a BBC reporter, Ajoke Ulohotse, was assaulted while carrying out her lawful duties by Mr. Segun Adewale, popularly known as Aeroland. Mr . Adewale is said to be a prominent member of your party in the Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State.

The BBC reporter was assigned to cover the Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State during the Governorship and state House of Assembly elections and was monitoring voting proceedings at a polling unit located right in front of Pleasure Bus Stop, along the Lagos-Abeokuta expressway when she was attacked by Mr. Adewale.

At the polling unit, she noticed that voters were encouraged to approach Mr. Adewale immediately after they voted to collect a cash reward of N1,000 that the politician was personally handing over to them. Sensing this was an apparent case of vote-buying, the reporter decided to film.

Sadly, she was attacked by Mr. Adewale who slapped and forcefully took her phone away. In assaulting the BBC reporter, Mr. Adewale was assisted by some thugs who had accompanied him to the polling unit.

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We have video evidences of how Mr. Adewale assaulted the BBC reporter and are therefore demanding that you use your offices to ensure that this incident is thoroughly investigated and your findings shared with us.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Delta state had called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to cancel the Delta state governorship election.

The Delta state chapter of the All Progressive Congress (APC) who made the call Monday, March 11, accused the PDP of ballot snatching, over voting, vote buying and impunity during the election.

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Home | News | General | ALLEGED N2.2BN FRAUD: Court admits evidence against Fayose

By Innocent Anaba

LagosA FEDERAL High Court sitting in Lagos, yesterday, admitted in evidence a statement made by one late Mr Justin Erukaa, who worked as Personal Assistant to Mr Musiliu Obanikoro, before his death.

Obanikoro-Fayose

In a short ruling, trial judge, Justice Mojisola Olatoregun admitted Erukaas statement and marked it as Exhibit J in the ongoing trial of former governor of Ekiti State, Mr Ayodele Fayose over an alleged N2.2 billion fraud.

The second defence counsel, Mr Olalekan Ojo, SAN, had at the previous hearing tendered the statement, which Erukaa made to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in the course of investigating the alleged N2.2 billion fraud against Fayose.

Ojo said Erukaas statement was relevant to the case, adding that it could be admitted in the absence of the deceased.

Why Sanwo-Olu, deputy governor-elect met Buhari in Aso Rock

After the judge admitted Erukaas statement in evidence, the case proceeded with further cross-examination of Obanikoro, who is the fifth witness to testify for the EFCC against Fayose.

Fielding questions from Mr Ahmed Tafa, who stood in for Ojo, Obanikoro reiterated that he was into farming, with his farms in Lagos, Badagry and Ogun State.

He also confirmed knowing a company, MOB Integrated Limited.

Asked by Tafa if he knew that staff members of MOB Integrated Limited were signatories to the bank account of Fayoses co-accused, Sylvan Mcmanara Ltd, Obanikoro said, I dont know what you are talking about.

He explained again that then NSA, Col Sambo Dasuki (retd), entered into an agreement with Taiwo Kareem, who owns Sylvan Mcmanara Ltd, to use the firms account for the disbursement of funds for security operations in Lagos.

Obanikoro said after the agreement with Kareem, he took over Sylvan Mcmanara Ltds account in supervisory capacity, adding that all the major decisions taken on the account were cleared with him.

There were three transactions. One was for the security of Lagos; one for election in Ekiti and for election in Osun State, he said.

When Tafa asked if matters of elections were matters of security, Obanikoro said, They can be.

Asked if the Office of the National Security Adviser funded his campaign while he was vying for governorship on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Obanikoro said, Not to my knowledge.

He said he had no records of his transactions with the NSA.

He, however, said he would not be surprised if the record of the NSA showed no N2.2 billion transaction.

Trial judge, Justice Olatoregun adjourned further proceedings till today for continuation of cross examination.

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Home | News | General | MASSOB condemns killings in Ebonyi, Kaduna, Taraba, others by herdsmen

By Peter Okutu

AbakalikiThe Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, led by Uchenna Madu, weekend condemned the incessant killings of citizens belonging to Christian communities in some parts of Nigeria, allegedly by herdsmen.

File: Members of the Movement for the Survival of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB)

In a statement in Abakaliki by the National Director of Information of MASSOB, Samuel Edeson, the group which observed that the killing of innocent Nigerians commenced immediately after President Muhammadu Buhari was declared winner of the just- concluded presidential election added that security agents in their bid to deceive the international community labelled the killers as gunmen instead of herdsmen.

The statement read in part: It is very unfortunate that these ethnic cleansing commenced immediately after presidential election in which INEC was subjected to announce Muhammadu Buhari as winner.

PDP to Buratai: Stop pitching military against Nigerians

MASSOB reminds the citizens that prior to the presidential election, mostly within the campaign period, the terrorist activities of armed herdsmen suddenly reduced because Buhari and his cabals controlling Nigerias federal government do not want to refresh the damaging effects of the activities of the herdsmen in the consciousness of the people because of their votes.

It is very disheartening that overwhelming evidences abound on the incessant, systematic and well coordinated attacks, killings and ethnic cleansing of Christian- dominated villages of Kaduna, Taraba, Benue, Plateau and Ebonyi States recently after the presidential election. The killings were executed by herdsmen. Then, security agents in their bid to deceive the international community labelled the attackers as gunmen instead of what they are.

Having clinched power through dubious and corruptible means, we remind the people of Biafra to be more vigilant and conscious of their residential environment because the APC cabal will unleash many dangerous and systematic mayhem that will subject the people of Nigeria to political and economic islamisation of Nigeria.

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Home | News | General | The kind of finance minister Nigeria needs to transform its economy - Industrialist reveals

- An industrialist, Imo Anasonye, has aired his views as to the kind of finance minister Nigeria needs to boost its economy

- Anasonye said that the country should have a technocrat if it aims to experience a total transformation in the sector

- He said that Nigeria needs someone who knows about pure economic planning because it cannot keep relying only on oil revenue

Nigeria needs an economically vibrant technocrat as minister of finance to put its economy on a sound footing, says an industrialist, Imo Anasonye.

The industrialist made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Aba on Tuesday, March 19.

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Anasonye, also the director general, National Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI), Abia chapter, said: We need an up to date, dynamic Minister of Finance.

Somebody that is well abreast of the Nigerias economic situation and somebody that has within his or her reach, the solution to what is happening in Nigerias economic sphere now.

We need a vibrant Finance Minister, somebody that understands the economic game and plays it well to turn around the economic fortunes of this nation, because if we dont get that, we are sunk.

We need someone who knows about pure economic planning because Nigeria cannot continue relying only on oil revenue which is dwindling by the day. We need to shore up the capacities of the real sector without further delay in a strategic manner.

Anasonye said that the nations economy was having hiccups and needed proper economic planning to boost the real sector, the backbone of great economies.

He stressed that with a good economist grounded in economic planning, the real sector would be revived for the benefit of all Nigerians as the nation would depend less on oil.

The industrialist expressed concern that SMEs, which contributed much to the economy, were rarely captured in national and state budgets and cautioned that continuing in that direction would ruin Nigerias economy further.

Anasonye said that the only way to grow the economy fast in a big way was for governments to invest in SMEs through SME institutions like NASSI, Chambers of Commerce, among others.

He further suggested continuous dialogue between the government and SME operators and sincerity on the part of government in order to take the SMEs to the height desired in sustaining the economy.

Anasonye said: Let the SME institutions be included in the policies that affect them because.You cannot continue to separate the SME institutions from the economic management systems and expect things to be right, it cannot be right.

Anasonye said that Nigeria was bigger than a beggarly nation seeking funds from everywhere it turned into, adding that Nigeria needed to develop its rich economic capacities.

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He noted that Nigerians were yearning for political offices because there were less jobs for people to engage in the real sector, but expressed optimism that with developed economic capacities, politics would become less attractive to people.

The industrialist said that solving Nigerias economic problems would not take rocket science but only required knowledge, courage and political willpower to accomplish, with the resources available.

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Home | News | General | Student hit by bullet, 2 officers injured as police repel attack on cultists, ritualists in Ikorodu

- Lagos police command said it has arrested three person following a raid on cultists and ritualists hideout in Ikorodu

- The commands spokesperson, DSP Bala Elkana, disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday, March 19

- DSP Bala Elkana said the raid led to as serious attack serious attack on Imota police station in Ikorodu

Operatives of the Lagos state police command have arrested three suspects following a raid on cultists and ritualists hideout.

The commands spokesperson, DSP Bala Elkana, disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday, March 19, NAN reports.

He also said that the raid, which took place on Monday, March 1 8, almost led to a serious attack on Imota police station in Ikorodu, during which two policemen were injured.

READ ALSO: Declare me winner of February 23 election - Atiku tells tribunal

He said: On March 18, at about 5:30pm, following a tip-off, a team of policemen on surveillance at Adama community, Ikorodu, raided a den of cultists who specialise in ritual murder and kidnapping for ritual purposes.

On sighting the police, they opened fire and equally used some of their hostages as human shields.

During the operation that lasted for about one hour, two police officers were injured and three suspects were arrested namely, Ahmed Hassan, Daniel Enyin and Olaniran Alium.

One Hadiyat Sikiru an SS1 student was hit by a stray bullet. Attempt by other members of the deadly gang to attack our police station at Imota was met with stiff resistance by the gallant officers on duty.

The commissioner of police, Lagos state, CP Zubairu Muazu mni, has directed the deputy commissioner of police in charge of criminal investigation, Panti, to take over the case for further investigation.''

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that Nigerian Army spokesman had confirmed the killing of Colonel Mohammed Barack, the Garrison Commander of 33 Artillery Brigade of Nigerian Army in Shadawanka Barracks, Bauchi.

Unidentified gunmen killed the officer on Sunday, March 17 but It was not clear whether he was killed by bandits or assassins.

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Home | News | General | Itll be bad if S/East isnt given Senate presidency in 9th Assembly - APC chieftain declares

- Austin Meregini, an APC chieftain in Abia, says it will be bad if the south-east is not given the Senate presidency in the 9th National Assembly

- Meregini added that Orji Uzor Kalu, the Abia North senator-elect is the right man for the position

- According to Meregini, the south-east being brought to the mainstream of Nigeria politics will douse tensions and cries of marginalisation

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abia, Austin Meregini, aka Ugolee, says it will be bad if the south-east is denied the position of Senate president in the 9th National Assembly.

Meregini, the APC candidate for Umuahia East constituency seat in the Abia state House of Assembly in the 2019 general elections, made the assertion while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday, March 19 in Lagos.

READ ALSO: Supplementary polls in Kano will determine INECs credibility - Kwankwaso

It is natural justice to cede the position to the south-east to douse all complaints about marginalisation by the people of the region.

For the 9th Senate, it is obvious that there is a common consensus and informal agreement among Nigerians that the south-east is properly positioned to produce the Senate president.

And it will be bad if south-easterners are denied this position. As we have it now, obviously, it is only the south-south and south-east that are left out in the equation.

For the south-south, President Muhammadu Buhari took over from south-south; the south-east has never played or occupied any major role within the power configuration of the country, he said.

The APC chieftain added: It will be natural justice to have a south-easterner assume this position and it will be no other person than Dr Orji Uzor Kalu, the Abia North senator-elect for the ninth assembly.

And from all indications without mincing words, no other person is more positioned or more qualified than Chief Orji Uzor Kalu.

According to him, Kalu, though a first term senator in the Senate, possesses the requisite leadership and legislative experience to lead the red chamber.

He said that Kalu, as a former member of the House of Representatives in 1991 and two-term governor of Abia, had the love of the country at heart and cares so must about the south-easterners.

So, in terms of leadership and what it takes to project the interest of the country at the Senate, as well as what it takes to represent the south-easterners, Kalu is more qualified and properly positioned to assume this position.

By ceding the Senate presidency to the south-east, it will go a long way to pacify the region, and give them a sense of belonging in the Nigerian equation.

According to him, if the office is zoned to the region, it will bring natural peace and harmonious coexistence in the country and end all Biafra agitations as well as secession quests.

Meregini said that the south-east being brought to the mainstream of Nigeria politics will douse tensions and cries of marginalisation.

The candidate, who alleged that he was rigged out during the election, urged his supporters to remain calm as the mandate would be regained at the tribunal.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that politicians in the south-east were advised by the Coalition of Southeast Civil Society and Human Rights Organisations (CSECSHRO) to forget their agitation for Senate presidency in the ninth National Assembly.

The conveners of the group, Jasper Uche and Ibuchukwu Ezike, at a press conference in Enugu, said that since 1999, the region produced the Senate president, deputy Senate president and the deputy speaker of the House of Reps.

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Home | News | General | Family rendered homeless in the aftermath of Itafaji building collapse

Recently, in Itafaji, Lagos Island, a building housing a school collapsed and this has caused trauma and havoc to virtually everyone affected by the collapse. Recently, some of the school children who were involved in the incident were interviewed and made to talk about their experiences. Hearing their stories firsthand really expresses the depth of the wreck caused by the event.

For one, a 3-year-old boy named Kabiru Sasore was interviewed by the The Independent. He revealed that he was afraid of going back to school to study due to the impact of the accident.

According to him, he had been eating in class when the incident happened. Just as he was digging deep in his food, he heard a sound which he thought was a bomb.

However, he was quick to find out that it was not a bomb, but a building collapse. To this effect, he said: I was eating in my class when my school collapsed, I heard a loud sound, and our school shook and all of us fell on each other. I was afraid and I didnt want to go to school that day, I later saw a caterpillar. Though I am fine but my back is still painting me and my neck.

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For this reason, he was scared of going back to school because he did not want a repeat of such an incident. Even more, his aunty, Balikis Muhammed, said he was recently discharged from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH ). She added that he is still trying to regain his health and has an appointment in the hospital next Thursday to this effect.

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She had more to say: "His mother, Idera, is not feeling fine due to the shock from the incident; she is currently on admission in the hospital. When I saw him in the hospital last Thursday, when he woke up in the hospital, what he told us was that they bombed his school, everybody shook and it was not fair. He was shouting the name of his friend from the same school who was by his bed side, that one was asleep but Kabiru continuously shouted his name and was banging on his bed till that one woke up, opened his eyes, shouted Daddy."

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Even more, another survivor of the incident named Farouk Abimbola also spoke to The Independent and told his side of the story. The boy who is seven years old had this to say:

"We were in the class reading with our teacher when the building suddenly started shacking and it collapsed, I heard a loud sound and I saw pillars coming down. I later saw caterpillar then sand was covering my leg and my head; some people carried and removed me from the sand and took me to the hospital. My leg and my hand are still paining me."

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His aunt Titilayo Kowobar revealed that, although he has been discharged from the hospital, he was still undergoing treatment. Even more, she disclosed that the family has been displaced from their home which also collapsed, hence, they are now homeless:

She is not in the right frame of mind, because her house has also been demolished. Now the family has no where to live; the father hangs around, the mother and Farouk stays with me, while their other children stays elsewhere."

Recently, an actress named Queen Oluwa shared a very disturbing video of another building on the verge of collapse. Even more, this structure also houses a school!

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Home | News | General | Security chiefs decline comment after 3-hour meeting with President Buhari

- Security chiefs met with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa

- The meeting lasted three hours although the service chiefs declined comment after

President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday, March 19 presided over routine national security meeting with service chiefs and heads of security agencies in attendance.

The closed door meeting, held at the presidents mini conference room at the Presidential Villa, lasted for over three hours.

READ ALSO: PDM rejects Bauchi governorship poll result, heads to court

The acting Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, who usually addresses State House correspondents at the end of the weekly meeting, however, declined comment on the outcome of the meeting.

Those in attendance at the meeting included the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Gabriel Olonisakin, Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai; Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Ibok Ekwe Ibas, and Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall Abubakar Sadique.

Others were the director general of Department for State Service (DSS), Yusuf Bichi, and the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno.

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha, Minister of Defence, retired Brig.-Gen. Mansur Dan- Ali, and Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Malam Ahmed Abubakar, also attended the meeting.

Legit.ng had earlier reported that President Muhammadu Buhari met with Nigeria's service chiefs in Aso Rock, Presidential Villa, Abuja

According to The Nation, the meeting started at the presidents office in the State House around 11am on Tuesday, March 19.

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According to the report, discussions at the meeting would likely dwell on the security situation in the country and how to ensure maximum security in states where the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is conducting rerun election on Saturday, March 23.

The meeting was still in progress as at the time this report was published.

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Home | News | General | Reps members ignore valedictory session for late Oyo lawmaker Sugar

- The House of Representatives has shunned a valedictory session for Temitope Olatoye Sugar who was killed in Oyo state

- Olatoye lost his life during the 2019 gubernatorial and House of Assembly polls in the state

- A day of tributes is set aside by the Green Chamber after both chambers would have adjourned for 24 after the death of a member

The leadership of House of Representatives has shunned a day of tributes for a member, Temitope Olatoye Sugar, who lost his life during 2019 gubernatorial and House of Assembly polls in Oyo state.

The Nation reports that no reason was given for skipping tributes for the lawmaker who represents Lagelu /Akinyele federal constituency in the state.

It was learnt that a day of tributes is usually set aside by the Green Chamber after both chambers would have adjourned for 24 after the death of a member.

READ ALSO: Senate finally passes N30,000 minimum wage for Nigerian workers

It was held for Ayeola Abiodun, who represented Ibeju-Lekki Federal constituency of Lagos and Funke Adedoyin who represented Irepodun/Isin/Ekiti/Oke-Ero federal constituency in Kwara state.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that Nigerian Senate suspended plenary in honour of a member of the House of Representatives, Temitope Olatoye, who lost his life during Saturday, March 9 gubernatorial and house of assembly polls in Oyo state.

Olatoye popularly known as Honourable Sugar was shot dead by unknown gunmen in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, on election day. He was contesting for the Oyo central senatorial seat under the Action Democratic Party before he met his untimely death.

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During plenary, Senate leader, Ahmad Lawan cited order 43 and made reference to the demise of Olatoye.

Lawan said: It is our culture in the Senate and National Assembly in general that when this kind of thing happens either in Senate or House of Representatives we observe a minute silence and adjourn plenary in honour of our late brother and friend. May his soul rest in peace.

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Home | News | General | Promoting openness, effective regulatory agencies and 8 other reasons why Buhari should sign PIB

President Muhammadu Buhari has the rare opportunity to etch his name in gold as his first term in office as Nigeria's leader winds down in a few weeks.

The president should as a matter of urgency pass the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) into law, a bill that has been in and out of the National Assembly since Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999.

The bill seeks to establish a framework for the creation of commercially-oriented and profit driven petroleum entities, to ensure value addition and internationalisation of the petroleum industry, through the creation of efficient and effective governing institutions with clear and separate roles for the petroleum industry.

President Buhari should be aware that Nigeria is ripe for a comprehensive review of the legal and regulatory framework applicable to its oil and gas sector and the PIB will undoubtedly benefit the industry.

The Buhari administration will do well to consider and give due regard to the genuine concerns of stakeholders especially the International Oil Companies (IOC) and oil producing regions of the country regarding what is perceived as the potential adverse impact of the regime proposed under the PIB.

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In 2013, Nigeria lost about N1.74 trillion to the absence of the bill, according to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).

NIETI, in January 2018, also said the oil and gas sector lost over $10.4 billion and N378.7 billion through under-remittances, inefficiencies, and theft due to absence of a clear governance framework for the oil and gas industry.

Globally, oil revenues continue to fall and investments in the sector continues to dwindle. This fact should be a motivating factor for the government to join hands with stakeholders to reform the sector through the PIBs before the Nigerian economy collapses.

The descent of Venezuela to a failed state is a testament to what failure to reform the oil and gas industry could portend owing to the fact that, like Nigeria, the industry was the national cash cow and most critical sector of the Venezuelan economy.

Presently, all signs indicate that Nigerias oil and gas sector is overwhelmed by market and governance failures and things might get worse if the federal government fails to address the issue by instituting urgent reforms like the PIB.

All these and more are why President Buhari should prioritize the signing of the bill before the expiration of the 8th National Assembly.

The major reasons include:

1. Creating a conducive business environment for petroleum operations and effective governing institutions with clear and separate roles for the petroleum industry

2. Enhancing exploration and exploitation of petroleum resources for the benefit of Nigerians

3. Optimizing domestic gas supplies particularly for power generation and industrial development

4. Protecting health, safety and the environment in petroleum operations

5. Establishing a progressive fiscal framework that encourages further investment in the petroleum industry while optimizing revenues accruing to the government

6. Establishing commercially oriented and profit driven oil and gas entities

7. Deregulating and liberalizing the downstream petroleum sector

8. Creating efficient and effective regulatory agencies

9. Promoting openness and transparency in the administration of petroleum resources

10. Encouraging the development of Nigerian content for instance, the establishment of the Nigeria Oil and Gas Investment Pact Scheme, will ensure components of industry equipment can be manufactured locally

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Home | News | General | Bandits in Zamfara better equipped than the state's security command - Yari speaks after meeting Buhari

- Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara state visited President Buhari at the Aso Rock on Tuesday, March 19

- The security crisis in the state was the major issue Yari discussed with the president

- The Zamfara state governor raised alarm over stock piling of arms by bandits in the state but expressed optimism that the federal government will soon address the crisis

Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara state on Tuesday, March 19, in Abuja raised alarm over stock piling of arms by bandits operating in the state.

Yari made this known while speaking with State House correspondents after he had updated President Muhammadu Buhari on the socio-political and security developments in the state, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

The governor, who ruled out dialogue with bandits, said: I have told my people that dialogue will no longer take place during my time because I have done that three times, but it did not work.

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This is in the sense that we know their capacity.

For instance, during the first dialogue, they invited some of our team, army, DSS, police, and my chief security officer as well as some representatives of traditional rulers and we have seen what they have.

They are in control of the kind of weapons that the security command in Zamfara does not have.

In one armoury alone, they have more than 500 AK 47 rifles; we saw it.

Our people were even given the chance to take pictures.

But when we said we will dialogue and offer them amnesty if they surrendered their arms, they refused.

I can tell you that till date we have not received up to 90 AK 47 rifles.

So it is deceit. That is why I said no more dialogue during my tenure.

During dry season they try to get us to dialogue because they know the security forces can get to them anywhere in the forest and they would not have a place to hide.

But when the rainy season comes and the forest becomes thicker they return to their normal practice.

That is why I said there has to be a show of force before anything else.

I know that in any war, eventually you have to come to the table and dialogue, but at this point and given the situation we are in right now, dialogue is not needed.

The governor expressed the hope that the federal government would soon address the security challenges facing the state as it would soon take delivery of military hardware and modern weapons to check the activities of the bandits in the area and beyond.

The federal government has already given procurement contracts, inter-government transactions to the United States, China, and other European countries.

"In 2018, the Nigeria Governors Forum, approved one billion dollars to help the federal government equip the security agencies.

We believe the equipment will soon come into the country and it is our hope that the equipment will be used so that this worrying situation that we are in will become history, he added.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Governor Yari of Zamfara announced that the state owned university would soon commence admission of pioneer students in 2019.

Yari who made the announcement at the presentation of the 2019 appropriation proposal said the development followed the registration of the state university by the National Universities Commission (NUC).

The governor said that the state government regretted the fact that Zamfara was the only state of the federation that had no state owned university.

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"DOCTORS at government hospitals have denied claims by the Health ministry that they had received supplies of medicines, bandages and critical accessories to alleviate their plight, following last week's protests," reported Newsday.

"The minister (Obadiah Moyo) told us that there were stocks at NatPharm. He told us to send representatives to go and see on our behalf and when they went there, all they found were a few samples," a doctor, who refused to be named, said.

"People were discussing on whether to hold a Press conference or to wait for two weeks and give the government a chance to act. Eventually we agreed to wait and see if concrete action will be taken."

The first question one would ask is do these doctors really believe that government will source and deliver to drugs, accessories and repair/ replace all the equipment in two weeks? If government could do that then why it done nothing until now!

The doctors are giving government two weeks not because they expect government to perform miracles but this is part and parcel of their modus operandi, kicking the can down the road. The situation at the hospitals have reached this sorry state of affairs where a referral hospital like Parirenyatwa has no painkiller, no bandages, etc. The situation is infinitely worse at provincial and district hospitals; they should have just shut their doors years ago. Of course, the doctors have been aware of the rot and decay in the health service but have done nothing about it all these years. Nothing!

The rot and decay is everywhere, in education, NRZ, ZESA, transport, judiciary, everywhere. So it is not just the doctors and nurses who love kicking the can down the road, everyone else does. Doing nothing to stop the rot in the country is a favourite obsession of Zimbabwean right across the board.

The doctors have finally been forced to act and demand that the governments buys the supplies because there was nothing left at the hospitals. The doctors acted because they had kicked the can down the road and had finally ran out of road!

It is a great tragedy that Zimbabweans have allowed Zanu PF to destroy the country's economy, health and education services, to corrupt the country Police, ZEC and other state institutions, etc. Even now, with the millions of people living in abject poverty and hundreds if not thousands dying every month of hunger and easily preventable diseases there are Zimbabweans bending over backwards to let Mnangagwa and his junta regime do as they please rather than hold the regime to democratic account.

Zimbabwe's health services has all but completely collapsed because of 38 years of bad governance. For 38 years we have pretended not to notice that Zanu PF leaders were incompetent and corrupt and only remained in power because they rigged the elections and brute force to impose themselves on the nation.

For the last 38 years we have done nothing to stop the vote rigging and thus end Zanu PF's corrupt and tyrannical rule. For 38 years we have kicked the can down the road and now we are being forced to act because the economic, social and political situation is now so bad it is and unsustainable and unbearable!

Now that we have worked ourselves into a tight corner, after 38 years of dithering and kicking the can down the road, we must now act, do or die. Here is what doctors, nurses, teachers, engineer, rural peasant, every Zimbabwean out there must do: demand that Mnangagwa and his junta step down.

Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF junta rigged last year's elections just as the regime has done in the past. How can the elections be judge free, fair and credible when 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora were denied the vote, there was no verified voters' roll, vote count from many polling stations were never released, etc.

Zanu PF has rigged elections in the past and was allowed to stay in power only for the party to rig the next elections. The only sure way to break this vicious cycle is to force Zanu PF to step down. If Zanu PF is still in power in 2023 then we can be 100% certain the party will rig that year's elections too!

Besides, we need Zanu PF to step down now to allow the appointment of an interim administration that will be tasked to implement the democratic reforms necessary to end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance.

If we are serious about reviving our collapse health and education service, bringing back to life the country's commerce and industry and productive farms and to restore the individual freedoms and rights of all our people then we must first restore good governance. We must restore the democratic values necessary for free, fair and credible elections.

"Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you," said Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana. He was right.

For the last 38 years Zimbabweans have buried our heads in the sands and have done nothing to end the criminal waste of the nation's human and material resources by a corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF regime. Now with the country is a serious mess, one only hopes that we have finally learned the lesson that good governance is important and it is our duty as citizens to secure such a government!
Home | World | Africa | Herald Editor clashes with America

Herald's Editor-at-Large Caesar Zvayi has confronted the United States of America Embassy in Harare to remove sanctions against the country if they are serious about expressing their condolences amidst the Cyclone Idai damage.

"The damage wrought by sanctions since the turn of the millennium far outstrips what Cyclone Idai did over days. Remove your ruinous sanctions to enable Government to prepare for and respond to such disasters. That said, am sure Government and the victims welcome all well-meant assistance." Zvayi said.

Zvayi's statements came after the US Embassy had issued a statement affirming that they are on the ground working to assisting the victims.

Said the Embassy, "We send sincere condolences to all the people affected by Cyclone Idai. Our hearts go out to those who have lost loved ones, property, and livelihoods. We are following up with our partners who are on the ground."

Donald Trump recently extended the sanctions against Zimbabwe.

In an exclusive interview with The National, a media house in the United Arab Emirates, in Abu Dhabi, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said US should have removed Zimbabwe sanctions 'yesterday'.



In an exclusive interview in Abu Dhabi, President Emmerson Mnangagwa says US should have removed Zimbabwe sanctions 'yesterday' pic.twitter.com/dWp50EL6Cn  The National (@TheNationalUAE) March 18, 2019

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In the running ... Former MDC MP Blessing Chebundo among 133 applicants for ZACC positions

Former Zimpapers board chairman Tommy Sithole and former Chronicle editor Geoffrey Nyarota are among a list of 133 people who have applied to become commissioner of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC).

Parliament's Committee on Standing Rules and Orders (CSRO) published a list of the applicants on Tuesday, and will shortly invite objections from the public before it conducts public interviews with the applicants.

At the end of the interviews, Parliament will submit a shortlist of at least 12 names to the President, from which the President will select eight commissioners before appointing the chairman in consultation with the CSRO.

The constitution requires that at least one of the commissioners be a lawyer with seven years of experience; one be an accountant with auditing competence and at least one commissioner should be a criminal investigator with at least 10 years' experience. All the commissioners must be chosen for their "integrity and their knowledge of and experience in administration or the prosecution or investigation of crime or for their general suitability for appointment."

Mnangagwa dissolved the ZACC board in January after the nine commissioners, including the chairman Job Whabira, were forced to resign under pressure from Vice President Constantino Chiwenga.

CSRO consequently invited nominations for potential commissioners, attracting a deluge of applications from lawyers, politicians and retired journalists.

Among some of the prominent applicants are former MPs Tongai Matutu, Jessie Majome, Blessing Chebundo and Gabriel Chaibva.

Nanette Silukhuni, who was a commissioner in the dissolved board, is seeking a comeback after throwing in her application along with the former Clerk of Parliament Austin Zvoma.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa's lawyer Tinomudaishe Chinyoka, currently facing criminal prosecution for assaulting another lawyer in a courtroom, is also on the list after failing in an earlier bid to be the country's Prosecutor General.

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Secretary Ambassador James Manzou is surprisingly among the applicants, along with former Harare town clerk James Mushore.

Former Chronicle editor Nyarota, who reported on the Willowgate scandal in the 1980s, told ZimLive he was surprised to see his name on the list, suggesting somebody else had nominated him.

"It's not true that I applied. I'm aware that parliament invited the public to submit nominations for commissioners. It's possible that someone may have nominated me. If that's indeed the case, it would be ill-advised, even suicidal, of me to start granting interviews on such nomination," Nyarota said.

Clerk of Parliament Kennedy Chokuda said the CSRO will meet on Thursday this week to set a date for the public interviews.

ZACC is the focal point in Zimbabwe's fight against corruption, but the last commission was criticised for doing politicians' bidding and being corrupt.

The constitution enjoins ZACC to "combat corruption, theft, misappropriation, abuse of power and other improper conduct in the public and private sectors" as well as "promote honesty, financial discipline and transparency in the public and private sectors."

The commission, which must operate independently, can "receive and consider complaints from the public and take such action in regard to the complaints as it considers appropriate".

ZACC also has power to "direct the Commissioner-General of Police to investigate cases of suspected corruption and to report to the Commission on the results of any such investigation." It can also refer matters to the National Prosecuting Authority for prosecution.

ZACC is also given a broader mandate to make recommendations to the government on measures to enhance integrity and accountability and prevent improper conduct in the public and private sectors.

ZACC's powers of arrest have been challenged in court, but the constitution empowers the body to "recommend the arrest and secure the prosecution of persons reasonably suspected of corruption, abuse of power and other improper conduct which falls within the Commission's jurisdiction."

The constitution also empowers ZACC to bring to the attention of parliament "matters relating to improper conduct in the public and private sectors."
There are few things that reveal the priorities of a government better than a national disaster. In Zimbabwe, Cyclone Idai, which had left at least 65 people dead and more than 100 missing in its wake by Sunday, has once again raised questions on the country's disaster response.

The answer lies in the budget.

Here are a few sobering figures.

The Department of Civil Protection (DCP), formerly the Civil Protection Unit (CPU), is the Local Government arm tasked with the job of managing disasters. In the 2019 budget, the DCP was allocated $2.36 million for its work. For perspective, this is less than what the government is spending on wages for State Residences, which stand at $3 million.

The DCP, which requires experts and constant training, was allocated just $88,000 for staff costs. For goods and services, the DCP only has $58,000. While there is an allocation of $1 million for maintenance of State Residences, the DCP only got a tenth of that, with an allocation of $108,000 for maintenance.

For the DCP, there is an allocation of $100,000 for capital expenditure, which is not enough to by the fully kitted out, high spec 4X4s for the unit's purposes. Compare that with $3.4 million, the allocation granted by the government for a vehicle loan scheme for chiefs.

In fact, the allocation for chiefs in this budget is $5.2 million, more than two times what the DCP has been given to protect millions of people from disasters.

From that $2.36 million, the DCP is expected to run an effective early-warning system, to push extensive communication campaigns, to coordinate the evacuation of people in harm's way and to lead rescue efforts in times of crisis, such as Cyclone Idai. All from a budget that is a fraction of what we are spending on chiefs.

Last year, DCP director Nathan Nkomo said the unit "is operating on a shoestring budget". To function properly, the DCP needed an allocation of at least $10 million a year, he was quoted as saying.

What exactly does department do?

The DCP has the responsibility of coordinating the management of disasters. This is done thought the National Civil Protection Coordination Committee (NCPCC), which pools together government departments, parastatals and NGOs.

In times of crisis, Provincial and District Administrators (PAs / DAs) are mandated to chair DCP actions to lead emergency responses, through the Provincial or District Civil Protection Committees.

Members of the NCPCC, in times of crisis, are grouped into sub-committees: Food supplies and food security chaired by Ministry of Public Service Labour and Social Welfare Health; Nutrition and Welfare, chaired by Ministry of Health and Child Care; Search, Rescue and Security, chaired by Zimbabwe Republic Police; and International Cooperation and Assistance, chaired by Ministry of Finance.

Zimbabwe floods: No lessons learnt

Zimbabwe has experienced serious floods over the past two decades. In 2000, Cyclone Eline devastated parts of the country, claiming 136 lives and destroying tens of thousands of houses. Each time, the disasters have left deaths and significant damage to infrastructure in their wake. However, the government's response has not improved after each crisis, as one would expect.

While the Met Department and the DCP did issue out warnings, days ahead of Cyclone Idai making landfall in Beira, there was not much else done. Zimbabwe was already poorly prepared by then.

Leaving people behind

The poor funding affects not just preparedness and reaction during disaster. It also makes it hard for DCP to act after the crisis. One of its jobs is helping victims recover, both psychologically and materially.

However, a line in the Blue Book, the Treasury record of expenditure, shows how badly DCP is doing on that score. For 2017, under the performance indicator of "psychological trauma support as a proportion of highly traumatic events", the DCP scored only 10%. In other words, the DCP did not go back to help people affected by floods to pick up the pieces and get on with their lives.

With global warming, floods and other extreme weather will worsen over the coming years. There is nothing that Zimbabwe can do about the weather, but there is a lot the country can do to prepare better for disasters, to respond more efficiently, and to build resilience. It starts with spending more on protecting people, than on luxury and patronage.
Home | World | Africa | Zimbabwe cannot outsource its development - it has to fix the fundamentals first

While South Africa believes sanctions should be scrapped in Zimbabwe, analysts indicate that the sanctions narrative has been an easy scapegoat in addressing the real issues affecting the country.

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Dr Azza Mashumba, a paediatrician at Parirenyatwa Group of hospitals in Harare, could not hide her anguish over the dire situation at the hospital.

"Nobody is listening to us. I have knocked on a thousand doors. I come to work and do my very best, but my output is stillbirths; my output is disabled babies.

"This is heartbreaking for me but we are struggling with the work we are doing, we are not working, we are not helping patients," says Mashumba with tears still flowing down her cheeks.

This comes after senior medical practitioners and consultants scaled down their operations on 12 March 2019 demanding that government provides the necessities that enable them to deliver the required health services.

A letter signed by Dr Matthew Wazara, a specialist surgeon working at Parirenyatwa Hospital, reads: "The authorities indicated that active effort was being to restock the hospital with supplies and address the challenges in the immediate term but accept that the hospital has had to run on an emergency mode in the interim while the supplies are being secured."

Dr Wazara adds, "This is obviously not the best option and leaves a lot of patients without the care they need, much suffering has to be endured and lives are at risk until the situation is returned to normal and ideal."

Meanwhile, the hospital has called for donations from well-wishers to alleviate the suffering of patients. However, minister of health and child care Obadiah Moyo was quoted in the state daily, the Herald, as saying they have secured US$1-million for the procurement of medical supplies and equipment.

Earlier last week South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was in the country with his team of five ministers during the third session of the Zimbabwe/South Africa Bi-National Commission. Ramaphosa continued with his sanctions mantra as a solution in an attempt to bring back normalcy to the economic crisis that has rocked its neighbour for more than two decades.

"South Africa made a clarion call to assist Zimbabwe and support the reform efforts by lifting unfair and unjustified sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe. We want more than just that (removal of sanctions), we want more meaningful support given by international development partners to Zimbabwe as the country deserves the support that the world can give," said Ramaphosa.

The commission is a biennial meeting initiated in 2015 by the two countries to strengthen bilateral ties, to be sustained and nurtured through economic partnership. During this visit, Ramaphosa signed two memoranda of understanding, on agriculture, and science and technology. However, previous agreements have not seen the light of the day, as none has been implemented.

The crisis in Zimbabwe has had a debilitating effect on the South African economy as it is a major recipient of the country's diaspora - with at least two million Zimbabweans living in the neighbouring country.

Zimbabwe is among South Africa's top five trading partners with more than 120 companies doing business in Zimbabwe, across several sectors.

But the question remains: Are sanctions the elephant in the room?

Will the removal of sanctions revive Zimbabwe's economy?

While the European Union has taken heed of the call to remove sanctions on Zimbabwe, US President Donald Trump has extended sanctions for one year.

In a notice announcing the extension, Trump said the sanctions will remain until President Mnangagwa and his government change Zimbabwe's laws restricting media freedom and protests.

In 2001, the US Senate passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which imposed travel bans on Zimbabwean officials. It also denied Zimbabwe access to international loans.

While South Africa believes sanctions should be scrapped, analysts indicated that the sanctions narrative has been an easy scapegoat in addressing the real issues affecting the country.

Daily Maverick spoke to Dr Godfrey Kanyenze, director of the Labour and Economic and Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, who said there was a need to dwell more on addressing poor governance, lack of reforms, corruption, misplaced priorities and the military being used as an instrument of dealing with dissent.

Kanyenze said of the Zimbabwe/South Africa Bi-National Commission:

"It's almost become a meeting to gang up to call for the removal of sanctions, without really equally talking about the underlying factors that resulted in those sanctions being imposed on Zimbabwe."

Senior researcher at the Institute of Security Studies Derek Matyszak does not see how the removal of sanctions will help to solve the currency crisis facing the country.

"Sanctions statements alone won't be enough; rather they should be coupled with condemnation, particularly looking at the heavy-handedness of the military when they were responding to social unrest. In the absence of that, SA foreign policy will look more like quiet diplomacy," Matyszak said.

In January, when the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions called for a three-day nationwide protest against a more than 150% increase in fuel prices, the result was 17 people killed, hundreds injured, beaten up and tortured, and mass arrests and trials.

Matyszak highlighted that there were serious structural problems that include a pervasive military influence in the running of the country's economy that should be looked into, including piling pressure on President Mnangagwa to walk the talk.

Capital injection key to recovery

While the country is in urgent need of financial support or capital injection to bolster the economy, it's not been a stroll in the park for Zimbabwe to get lines of credit.

"Countries are not eager to extend lines of credit to Zimbabwe because there is no guarantee of payment when they do. No one is keen on giving a straight bailout to Zimbabwe unless they know they are going to get their money back," says Dr Kanyenze.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) spokesperson Gerry Rice told the media that there was no financial programme agreed to between Zimbabwe and the IMF. Instead, there have been talks and engagements - and the IMF is looking to be supportive as it can.

"The IMF is trying to help; we are engaged with them (Zimbabwe) on how we can help them as much as possible. Given the absence of a financing programme it depends on the clearance of arrears to other international financial institutions and financing assurances from bilateral creditors and agreement on policies," says Rice.

Speaking on currency reforms that saw the US dollar now pegged at a 2.5 exchange rate with the bond note and Real Time Gross Settlement, Rice said: "it was a step in the right direction".

"The success of the currency reforms will depend on the implementation of an effective overall monetary policy framework supported by market-determined interest and exchange rates together with prudent fiscal policies."

Zimbabwe Finance minister Mthuli Ncube said the total debt stands at US$16.9-billion with domestic debt at US$9.5-billion and foreign debt at US$7.4-billion.

In December 2018 South Africa turned down a request from Zimbabwe for a $1.2-billion loan, stating it did not have the money.

"There is nothing that is going to cause economic revival other than capital injection to aid the country's economic crisis," Matyszak said.

"We should focus on what we can do as a country, knowing that we cannot outsource solutions to our problems. None but ourselves, we can't really harp on about external factors, whether real or imagined. It's us. No one can do it for us other than ourselves," said Dr Kanyenze.

As alluded to by Ghanaian author Nana Awere Damoah who said:

"Rome was not built in a day but we fail to remember that Rome was eventually built, and it must have been so magnificent that when people admired it, they were told that it didn't happen in just a day. The question, then, is: If Rome was not built in a day, how was it built? It was built every day."

While it's critical that the country starts to build now, however, Zimbabwe's economic turnaround is still a far-fetched dream for many as the situation on the ground remains catastrophic.

As long as there are no sound and concrete programmes and policies, which are implemented, it remains as before: mere rhetoric. There is indeed a need for a new template in addressing the country's problems.

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Home | World | Africa | EU gives 3.5 million to Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique

The European Union Commission has announced it had released an emergency package of 3.5 million to assist the victims of Cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides said: "The EU stands in solidarity with all those people affected by Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Just hours after the Cyclone's impact, we are making emergency aid available to address the pressing humanitarian needs and to boost the local response efforts. In addition, we are sending our technical experts on the ground and our Copernicus satellite system has been activated to identify needs and help our humanitarian partners and the local authorities in their response."

EU Commission explained that the funding will be used to provide logistical support to reach affected people, emergency shelter, hygiene, sanitation, and health care. Out of the aid package, based on needs, 2 million will be provided in Mozambique, 1 million in Malawi and 0.5 million in Zimbabwe.

Cyclone Idai has claimed close to 100 confirmed lives in Zimbabwe and about a thousand in Mozambique.

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In Thailand people like to do things differently, including how they interact with and buy Porsche cars, making Bangkok the perfect location for the regions first Porsche Studio.

Bangkok, the bustling capital of Thailand and home to around 17 million inhabitants, is a city of contrasts. A city where cheap street food is served alongside Michelin-star restaurants. Where tuk-tuks share roads with luxury cars. Where modern condominiums overlook ancient temples.

Those contrasts can be seen on the banks of the Chao Phraya River, where opposite the storied hotel that once hosted John le Carre, W Somerset Maugham, Joseph Conrad, and Noel Coward, has risen a new luxury retail and residential development that is home to the regions first Porsche Studio.

In the area known as Thonburi, where the original inhabitants of Bangkok first settled, ICONSIAM is the latest development in a what is a renaissance of the banks of the Chao Phraya. All along the river, condominiums are being built, boutique hotels are flourishing, and warehouses are being refurbished  repurposed with new retail and dining outlets, attracting the young, hip and urban set.

It is a fitting location for the opening of the Porsche Studio Bangkok, the seventh such Porsche Studio worldwide.

If a luxury mall seems an unusual location for a Porsche facility, it is worth noting that in Thailand people like to do things differently; that of the three existing Porsche showrooms in Bangkok the most sales are currently made at the Porsche City Showroom Siam Paragon, located in a luxury mall in the centre of the city.

Retail Therapy

The Porsche Studio Bangkok concept offers customers and fans a new way of interacting with, and learning about Porsche, in a welcoming boutique-like retail space.

Arthur Willmann, Managing Director of Porsche Asia Pacific, said: Bangkok is one of the most dynamic cities in the world and a hotbed of creativity, which makes it the perfect location for the first Porsche Studio in Southeast Asia. It is a place where customers, enthusiasts and all those who share the same passion for the brand and products can meet, exchange and interact with Porsche in a casual and innovative environment.

Arthur Willmann, Managing Director of Porsche Asia Pacific, and Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak, President, AAS Auto Service Co. Ltd. (l-r) at the Opening



He added, At the same time, it is a very open concept and we are happy to welcome everyone who wants to know more about Porsche  be it the products, the rich history of our brand or the very exciting future that is to come. The Porsche Studio is the perfect place for the Porsche community or, as we like to refer to, the Porsche family  and we have no doubt they will feel at home and discover something new, every time they come to visit.

On arrival visitors are greeted by the runway  a central stage with an LED display wall as a backdrop, that can be used as an area to display cars, host events, and to show Porsche stories. With the capacity to exhibit three vehicles, guests can get close to the cars and be guided by professionally trained Porsche staff. Digital elements and exhibitions focus on key Porsche themes such as E-Performance and Porsche heritage.

Naturally, Porsche Studio visitors can configure a new Porsche with the aid of digital technologies, and a trimming area with a wide array of samples and colours, including components from Exclusive Manufaktur, Porsches in-house workshop specialising in bespoke modifications. Shoppers can also indulge in Tequipment and Porsche Drivers Selection merchandise available in the Studio. After a days shopping in the Studio or the mall, the Cafe area offers a comfortable and welcoming place to relax.

Go West

According to Peter Rohwer, Managing Director of AAS Auto Service, the riverside location of the Porsche Studio Bangkok was both a strategic decision and a stroke of good fortune. We are already very well-represented in Bangkok with our current locations. However, we always desired to have a presence in Thonburi, the west of the river, to ensure we have covered every area of this large city to be where customers are. Then the prime location of ICONSIAM came up as an opportunity, which fitted into our plans perfectly.

The luxury mall location also reflects the interests of the increasing number of Porsche customers in Thailand. AAS always put our customers first, hence we chose one of Bangkoks newest and most luxurious shopping malls, ICONSIAM, to be closer to them. We welcome anyone of any age to visit us, including families and their children  our important future customers, says Rohwer.
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Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Monday launched a fresh crackdown on charity ships which rescue migrants off Libya and bring them to Italy. "The ports have been, and remain, CLOSED", Salvini said on Twitter, as his office released an eight-page directive on the laws regarding rescue operations -- laws it said some aid vessels had been breaking. The minister, who also heads up the anti-immigrant League party, has repeatedly declared Italian waters closed to NGO rescue vessels, leaving several of them stranded at sea in the past in a bid to force Europe to take its share of asylum seekers. While he acknowledged in his directive that helping those who lives are in danger was a "priority", he warned that there must be "sanctions" for those who "explicitly violate international, European and national rescue regulations". "Nor must the real risks that the group of migrants may conceal individuals involved in terrorist activities... be overlooked". The "passage of rescue ships in Italian territorial waters" was "detrimental to the order and security of the Italian State", he said. The directive was issued just hours after an Italian charity ship rescued 49 people off the coast of Libya, under the nose of the Libyan coast guard, before requesting permission to disembark the migrants in Italy. NGO ships have drawn fire from Rome by attempting on occasion to stop migrants being taken back to crisis-hit Libya, which human rights organisations insist cannot be considered safe for repatriations. - 'Violation of maritime law' - "It has happened that ships... have come to the aid of migrants in non-Italian SRRs (Search and Rescue Regions) and have disregarded the orders of the competent SAR (Search and Rescue) authorities," Salvini said in the directive. Ships rescuing migrants in areas of the Mediterranean that fall under Libyan responsibility, during operations not coordinated by the command centre in Rome, have no right to seek Italy as a port of safety, he said. He accused the ships in question of "carrying out the rescue on their own initiative and then heading towards European maritime borders... in violation of international maritime law". Salvini also took issue with charity ships that set sail for Italy rather than other ports. "Nor are the Italian coasts the only possible landing places in the event of rescue events, given that the Libyan, Tunisian and Maltese ports can offer adequate logistical and health assistance... (and) are closer in terms of nautical miles". Salvini, whose anti-migrant rhetoric has boosted him in the polls, has repeatedly vowed to find a way to ban all ships with rescued migrants from entering Italian waters. He also insists Europe must do much more to help house asylum seekers. Europe has been wrestling with divisions over how to handle the problem since the migration crisis of 2015 when more than one million people arrived on its shores, many of them fleeing conflict in the Middle East. Italy?s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini insists Europe must do much more to help house asylum seekers
Italy seized control Tuesday of an NGO ship it had prevented from landing nearly 50 migrants picked up off the Libyan coast, the interior ministry said. The authorities "are in the process of taking control of the Mare Jonio, escorting the boat into the (southern) port of Lampedusa," it said. "Questioning of the crew could following in the next few hours," it added. Hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the action showed "that from here on in Italy has a government which defends its borders and enforces respect of its laws, above all as regards human traffickers." Salvini had on Monday reiterated that Italy's ports were "closed" to new migrant arrivals, insisting his hardline approach to asylum seekers since last summer has effectively stopped departures from crisis-hit Libya. He said the Italian-flagged Mare Jonio had not carried out a rescue operation but instead "aided illegal immigration". "They can be cared for, nourished, clothed, whatever you like, but they won't get permission from me to step foot in Italy." As the debate raged over the ship's fate, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said another dinghy with an unknown number of migrants on board had sunk off Libya, leaving 15 survivors. The Mare Jonio, operated by the Mediterranea collective of aid groups, took shelter from bad weather off the island of Lampedusa early Tuesday, despite being ordered to maintain a distance from the coast and turn off its engine, according to its mission head and captain. "We have people on board who are sick, I have to take them to a place of safety and there are two-metre (six-foot) high waves. I'm not turning off the engine," Captain Pietro Marrone told the authorities, according to the Avvenire daily. - 'No other choice' - "The weather conditions were impossible. We had no other choice," mission head Luca Casarini said. "We are sailing under an Italian flag, they cannot forbid us to disembark," he added, according to AGI news agency. A 25-year old with suspected pneumonia was evacuated to Lampedusa for medical attention. Salvini, who heads up the far-right League, has repeatedly declared Italian ports closed to NGO rescue vessels, previously leaving several of them stranded at sea in a bid to force other European countries to take their share of asylum seekers. He issued a directive on Monday saying ships rescuing people in areas of the Mediterranean under Libyan responsibility, during operations not coordinated by the command centre in Rome, have no right to use Italy as a port of safety. Any infringement of international maritime or Italian law "can be read as a premeditated action to bring illegal immigrants to Italy and facilitate human trafficking", he said. On Tuesday, he said the ministry was creating a commission of "experts and police" to ensure his directive -- which lays down rules about rescues at sea -- was enacted. - 'Extremely concerned' - The Italian Refugee Council said it was "extremely concerned" over the directive, which "assumes that Libyan ports can be considered safe and that docking at Tunisian and Maltese ports is possible". "It takes no account of the dramatic reality," council director Mario Morcone said in a statement. "We act as if the countries with which we share the Mediterranean were the Netherlands, Germany or Sweden. But this is clearly not the case," he said. Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio confirmed that the authorities were boarding the vessel which had refused an order to switch off its engine. He accused the ship's crew of "disobeying an order from the Libyan coast guard by taking on board the migrants". Since Italy's populist government came to power last year and began a crackdown on rescue vessels, "we have seen an exponential increase in the number of deaths compared to the number of migrants landing," the refugee council said. Some 152 people have died in 2019 so far, while 471 have reached land in the central Mediterranean. Some 152 people have died in 2019 so far, while 471 have reached land in the central Mediterranean Italy?s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini reiterated Italy's ports were "closed" to new migrant arrivals
You can tell which one of the two duchesses she likes more. Wasn't Meghan's dog riding around in the Queen's limo right before the wedding?

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oh god didnt know being liked by another woman is a competition

people are so quick to say to stop pitting them against each other etc but you still see this crap

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I never said it was a competition. Sometimes you just vibe better with other people.

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I think it has more to do with which prince she likes more.

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lmao what? it doesn't seem she likes Meghan at all. if anything it looked forced to have an engagment with her so soon. her goal is to prove the firm aren't racist old geezers nothing more. It seems she likes kate a lot based on her loaned personal jewels



Edited at 2019-03-22 06:36 pm (UTC)

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lol, didn't the Queen like Megan right off because the corgis loved her?

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I could see this being a factor.



The media wasn't really kind to Kate but it was nothing like how they are to Meghan.

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I don't think that was it because their appearance was literally like a month after the wedding. People were still riding high from it and so even the asshole royal tabloid writers were taking a break.They weren't exactly nice, but the truly hateful shit didn't start up again until later in the summer and after Meghan and Harry got back from their Australian tour. So I don't buy that was the reason.



Honestly, I know some Kate fans hate to hear this because for some reason they seem to take it as shade against her, but I do think the Queen likes Meghan's work ethic. I think she genuinely likes that she's someone who's worked hard her whole life and continues to. The joint trip barely a month after the wedding was surprising enough but then giving her two big patronages the Queen herself held as some of her first, was also huge. The royal tabloid writers were trying to spin that one in all kinds of ways.



Edited at 2019-03-19 05:48 pm (UTC)

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double the useless! but what tiaras will they wear?

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Not correct, they had a engagement together back in 2012



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yeah i thought that was wrong because i remember when meghan and the queen had their outing, kate stans being quick to say that she had been on one with the queen as well.

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they had engagements with others (Camilla or Philip) in 2012 and 2013, but the Queen and Kate did visit the Wedding exhibit in 2011 together alone.

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I feel like i remember kate and the queen looking at art or clothes together

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they had a lot of engagements together. most of them were private tho

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It's really interesting to see when the Queen has favorites. Zara, Harry, Eugenie, and Louise (who I think is also one of Philip's favorites) are all very clearly favored by the Queen. Kate has always been treated pretty cooly by the Queen, especially in the dating process. Whether that's because the Queen didn't want another Charles-Diana situation, or because of some other reason, it's hard to say. But the Queen and Charles have been overtly kind and welcoming to Meghan vs. Kate.



That said, the darting on Kate's coat is weird af, I think it might be too low? Or it's too angular looking with how thin her shoulders are? I don't know. I do love the silhouette of the coat though.

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that's not true. The Queen has been very warm (as much as she is to anyone in public) to Kate since the wedding. She & Kate have done several engagements together. Not to mention she has loaned Kate some very personal jewels in the last 8 years.



And Charles has been very warm and welcoming to both women.

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she has loaned Kate some very personal jewels in the last 8 years.



Yeah I think people don't appreciate this enough. But like the fact that the bracelet that Philip gave QE2 as a wedding gift appears to be on long term loan to Kate is pretty significant imo. I think if she didn't like Kate, she wouldn't be loaning out a piece of jewelry like that to her.

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she has loaned Kate some very personal jewels in the last 8 years

spot on. they seems to love Kate a lot

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Honestly this is grasping as straws with regards to "solo engagements" Kate's first "solo engagement" with the Queen, and it was considered her first solo engagement with the Queen, happened in 2012. Prince Phillip being there really didn't make it less so. Prince Phillip has now retired.

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It's their second together. The first was to see Kate's wedding gown...and the queen called the display ~~ghastly~~!!!



Then they did about five engagements with other people (Camilla or Phillip were there.)



Now this one.





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Oh

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What's with the blanket they're sharing? It can't be that cold.

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old people get cold easily

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I dont understand being so invested in this family.

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These pics are making me so nostalgic. I went to KCL for my junior year abroad and then did post grad work there too.



Anyway. Kate looks nice. I like the coat. I also really like a lot of her recent looks (esp the reworked McQueen gown she wore to the NPG gala and the trouser/blouse combo she wore to the engagement with the adorable kids and their moms). Shes on a fashion roll imo!

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sharing a blanket in the car? can't they turn up the heat?

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The windows would fog up and people would not be able to see them.

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Oh right, this is why the Queen supposedly always wear those bright colors if they are appropriate to the occasion. So that even from afar people can see her.

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They have done an engagement together before though, so..

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South Africas Energy Minister Jeff Radebe has highlighted the importance to consider all energy sources available in the countrys future energy plans.

Addressing the BBQ Awards in Johannesburg, Radebe stressed the need for the country to consider nuclear as a clean energy source that can be part of its electricity generation mix.

He said South Africa is endowed with abundant coal reserves that come at a cheap price.

He argued that the impact of unreliable or unaffordable energy on value-creating industries, which contribute significantly to economic development, could be very devastating if mismanaged, adding that sustainable energy planning requires a holistic approach to planning for future energy needs.

We have to consider nuclear, and despite its high capital costs, we have not lost sight of the fact that this is a clean energy source that can contribute optimally for electricity generation, he said.

South Africas long-term energy plans are outlined under the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which first came into effect in 2011. At that time, the plan called for construction of 9600 MWe of new nuclear capacity up to 2030.

Russian state-owned firm Rosatom is seen as a frontrunner to build the additional nuclear capacity.
Cloud Peak Energy made a bet a little more than a decade ago that the U.S. power sector was still going to see coal as indispensable. That failed bet has now pushed the company to the brink of collapse, according to a new Bloomberg article.

Betting everything on Wyoming and Montana strip mines, the company gambled that easy-to-access coal for electricity plants would secure its future for years to come. At first, the bet panned out - the company grew into the third largest U.S. miner at one point, while its competitors went bankrupt due to overleveraging themselves. But now, as coal power plants continue to fade away, Cloud Peak is doing the same.

On Friday the company warned that it may be filing for Chapter 11 in weeks - becoming an unfortunate example of an industry that has declined precipitously. Coal has been displaced by natural gas and renewable energy in recent years, despite the Trump administration rolling back environmental regulations to try and help the industry.

Jeremy Sussman, an analyst with Clarksons Platou Securities, said of Cloud Peak: "This is not a problem with a fix."

Cloud Peak was formerly a spinoff of Rio Tinto Group more than a decade ago. The industry today is extremely different. Production and consumption in the coal industry are both down more than a third since then and the "fuel that made up almost half of the U.S. power mix at the time is expected to supply less than 25 percent this year", according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Cloud Peak stayed focused on thermal coal for power plants while rivals took on debt to try and expand production of metallurgical coal, which is used in steelmaking - a niche of the industry Cloud Peak never took hold of. Despite competitors Peabody and Arch filing for bankruptcy in 2016 while Cloud Peak reported a $21.8 million profit, the tables have now turned. Related: Oil Slips As Alberta Relaxes Oil Production Cuts

Since Chapter 11, both Peabody and Arch have kept their balance sheets clean and are posting good results. The demand for metallurgical coal has caused its price to double since 2016. It remains a great source of revenue for miners - except Cloud Peak.

Cloud Peak has also missed out on exports, which were up 91% last year from 2016. Exports have helped miners in the Appalachians and the Illinois Basin, but with Cloud Peak located in the plains of Wyoming and Montana, it's hardly a help for them. The company does ship some coal from Vancouver, however, and exported about 11% of its third quarter output.

However, states like Washington and Oregon have blocked efforts to ship coal from the U.S. west coast, which has limited the company's options. The company posted a $718 million loss for 2018 on Friday, compared to just a $6.6 million loss in 2017. Tons sold was down by 14%.

Lucas Pipes, an analyst with B. Riley FBR Inc. said that the company could have broadened its strategy by expanding into met coal, but that window, now, has obviously closed.

He said: I dont fault them for not succeeding with U.S. West Coast terminal. I fault them for not thinking out of the box.

By Zerohedge.com

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Anti-government protests in Algeria were probably supposed to end after long-term president Abdelaziz Bouteflika dropped his plan to run for a fifth term in office this year. They didnt. In fact, protests in the North African oil and gas producer intensified after Bouteflika pulled out of the race. Now, some warn the country could become another Libya: another wild card in the OPEC deck.

Bloomberg commentator Julian Lee last week sounded an alarm drawing a sketchy, hypothetical parallel between the situation in Algeria and the one in neighbor to the East, where inter-factional violence continues to cast a long shadow over the security of its oil production.

For now, however, Algerias oil industry has not been disrupted, and Lee notes that the possibility of future disruptions is just that, a possibility. Yet oil majors with plans for growth in Algeria are becoming reluctant to move forward with these plans.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Exxon, BP, and Equinor have all put the brakes on their investment plans for the North African country amid escalating protests. Exxon was about to sign a preliminary deal for a trading joint venture with Algerias Sonatrach in the next few months. BP has a long presence in the country, and so does Norways Equinor, and both had new investment intentions that will not be put on hold.

Algeria produces around 1.1 million bpd of crude oil, which makes its output comparable to Libyas. Oil reserves are estimated at 12 billion barrels. Yet it is also a major natural gas producer and home to the third-largest shale gas reserves in the world, at 20 trillion cu ft, according to U.S. government data. Production was around 94.78 billion cubic meters for 2017, of which 53.89 billion cubic meters was exported. Oil exports account for roughly half of Algerias output. Related: Oil Slips As Alberta Relaxes Oil Production Cuts

The country, in other words, is an important player in both oil and gas, and production outages will certainly affect both markets, the oil one especially. For now, the protests, though massive, are peaceful. Security forces, according to the BBC, are also careful and violence has not reared its head yet. However, the protests have reached the energy industry.

Reuters reported on Sunday that workers at the countrys largest natural gas field had staged a protest in response to the newly appointed Prime Ministers perceived plans to extend Bouteflikas fourth term instead of calling new elections. The PM, Noureddine, announced he will form a new government of ministers without any political affiliations, but this is not enough for the protesters.

Their demands are for new elections now and the promised reforms that never materialized, according to them. Bouteflika has postponed the elections, initially scheduled for April, until a new constitution is adopted, effectively extending his fourth term in office.

According to all media covering the situation in Algeria, the country is ripe for a drastic change in government, a change in the ruling elite, which has so far been comprised of independence war veterans and military and intelligence officials. However, there are also Islamist formations in the local political spectrum and as history has shown more than once, these formations are adept at using peaceful unrest for their own ends.

OPEC does not need another wild card. The cartel needs consistently higher prices, not panic-driven spikes followed by drops. Oil markets do not need another swing producer with prices already volatile enough. Yet if the situation in Algeria escalates enough, another swing producer is exactly what OPEC and the market will get. For now, the possibility of that happening is remote.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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The province of Alberta is further relaxing the production cap it imposed in January in an effort to prop up Canadian oil prices.

Alberta is now increasing the limits on oil production by 25,000 bpd in May and by another 25,000 bpd in June, also taking into account that less diluent is needed in warmer weather for bitumen to flow in pipelines, meaning more capacity, the province said in a statement.

As Canadian oil production was growing last year, takeaway capacity constraints and maintenance at U.S. refineries in the fall of 2018 drove down the price of Western Canadian Select (WCS)the benchmark price of oil from Canadas oil sandsto as low as US$14 a barrel in October and November, with its discount to WTI at around US$50 a barrel.

In early December, the Alberta government moved in to shore up the price of Canadian heavy oil and in the most drastic measure yet, the province of Alberta mandated an oil production cut of 325,000 bpd beginning in January 2019.

In recent weeks, the discount of WCS to WTI has been below US$15 a barrel, compared to more than a US$40 differential in the fall of 2018.

Alberta has been gradually easing the cuts, the previous time being at the end of February when the province said that April oil production would be up by 100,000 bpd compared to the initial limit set for January.

The latest increase in the total production cap means that as of June 1, the total allowed production will be 3.71 million bpd, or 150,000 bpd higher than the January ceiling of 3.56 million bpd.

Related: Why This Oil Price Rally Has A Limit

As we increase production, were providing even more certainty for producers who have been working with us to protect the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of Alberta families and businesses. This temporary policy has been critical to reducing the oil price differential while we move ahead with our medium-term plan to ship more oil by rail and lead the long-term charge for new pipelines as we fight to get full value for the resources owned by all Albertans, Albertas Premier Rachel Notley said.

Canadas oil industry, however, has been divided over Albertas decision to respond to the very low Canadian heavy oil prices by imposing a production cut. While some companies, such as Cenovus Energy, have argued for all-around cuts across the industry, othersincluding Imperial Oil, Suncor Energy, and Husky Energywere against cuts across the board and they continue to hold the view that the Alberta government has been wrong in intervening on the free market.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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The worlds largest independent commodity trader, Vitol, expects global oil demand to peak after 15 years, essentially putting the peak oil demand date somewhere in the mid-2030s like other key players in the oil industry.

We anticipate that oil demand will continue to grow for the next 15 years, even with a marked increase in the sales of electric vehicles, but that demand growth will begin to be impacted thereafter, Vitol said in the outlook included in its 2018 trading volumes report.

Last month, BP said in its annual BP Energy Outlook that oil demand would rise during the first half of the outlook to 2040, but at a much slower pace than in the past, before plateauing in the 2030s.

Vitol admitted there has been a growing focus on the long-term outlook for oil demand within and outside the oil industry. The top independent trader also said it was supportive of the need to move to more renewable sources of energy and outlined recent investments in low-carbon joint ventures, including in the UKs largest battery park portfolio. Vitol also plans to invest in renewable energy assets across Europe, with a focus on large-scale wind generation.

Despite recognizing the need of more green energy around the world, Vitol noted that However, at present, we do not see how this can be achieved across all sectors in the near to mid-term, without halting economic development in large parts of the world. Related: Trade Tensions Are Keeping A Lid On Oil Prices

While the peak oil demand narrative has intensified over the past years, Vitols oil trading business generated a turnover of US$231 billion last year, thanks to higher volumes of traded crude oil and products7.4 million barrels per dayand higher oil prices, the 2018 review showed.

To compare, in 2017, Vitols turnover was US$181 billion from the trading of 7 million bpd. Crude oil volumes, which continue to represent the largest part of Vitols business, rose to 3.8 million bpd in 2018 from 3.6 million bpd in 2017.

The privately held trader, which doesnt disclose full results, was one of the bigger winners in the oil price volatility in the second half last year, tripling its second-half underlying profit compared to the first half, the Financial Times reported, citing people who have seen Vitols full 2018 earnings.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Pemex will drill three times more new wells this year than previously planned, Reuters reported, citing the companys chief executive. This should boost production by 300,000 bpd by 2022, which would be a new record, CEO Octavio Romero said at a presentation.

Pemex has been struggling with declining oil and gas production for over a decade. The previous government opened up the industry to foreign investment by organizing several tenders for oil and gas blocks in a bid to reverse the fall. The new government, however, has suspended tenders until it reviews the contracts signed by the previous administration.

The Obrador administration has prioritized the increase in local oil and gas production and to this end earlier this year provided a US$3.6-billion lifeline for Pemex, who had accumulated uncomfortable amounts of debtUS$106 billionover the past few years. Boosting production is crucial for the company and the government, which has promised better energy security for Mexico.

In Petroleos Mexicanos entire history, it has perhaps never developed 20 new fields in one year, Romero told media, adding that these measures should help production begin to climb up as early as this year. At the moment, it is 1.68 million bpd but, Romero said, We can expect this level of production to be maintained and that it will begin to grow from this year.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has promised that by the end of his term in office, Mexico will produce almost 2.5 million bpd of crude  a level close to the 2013 average of 2.522 million bpd.

As part of the production decline reversal plan, Pemex also increased its spending plans for this year. In December, the company said it had budgeted US$23 billion for 2019, up by 15 percent on 2018. Half of the total will be directed towards exploration and production, with some onshore deposits also benefitting from the investment alongside shallow-water blocks. Exploration in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, however, will be put on hold.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Saudi Arabias crude oil exports continued to fall at the start of this year after OPECs largest producer started to aggressively cut oil supply in December last year to prevent another glut, while the Kingdom signals that further cuts are coming.

According to data by the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) database, which collects self-reported figures from 114 countries, Saudi crude oil exports dropped to 7.254 million bpd in January, down from 7.687 million bpd in December 2018.

During the last month of 2018, OPECs de facto leader and the cartels key ally Russia realized their preemptive production ramp-up to meet a steep Iranian export shortfall would create another glut if they dont implement another round of cuts, which they did, starting in January.

Saudi Arabias crude oil exports plunged by nearly 550,000 bpd to 7.687 million bpd in December, down from a two-year high in November, as the Kingdom started to limit supply after the U.S. granted waivers to eight Iranian customers and the market swung into oversupply.

In November, Saudi Arabias crude oil exports had jumped by 534,000 bpd month on month to 8.24 million bpdthe highest level in two years after the Saudis boosted supply to the market to offset supply losses from Iran with the return of the U.S. sanctions on Tehrans oil industry.



Related: Oil Rises As OPEC Holds Off On Production Cuts Decision

Last week, Saudi Arabia signaled that it is determined to do whatever it takes to rebalance the market and support oil prices by keeping its April crude oil exports at below 7 million bpd, despite requests for more than 7.6 million bpd of Saudi oil from its customers. The lower allocations by Saudi Aramco for April will also mean that the Kingdoms oil production will be well below 10 million bpd in April, a Saudi official told Reuters.

In an interview with the Financial Times in February, Saudi Arabias Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said that the Saudis would cut production to around 9.8 million bpd in March, some 500,000 bpd below the commitment in the OPEC+ deal. Al-Falih also said that Saudi Arabia would be cutting its crude oil exports to near 6.9 million bpd this month, slashed from the November high of 8.2 million bpd.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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The Securities and Exchange Commission has approached a Manhattan court accusing Tesla chief executive Elon Musk of violating an agreement with the regulator that required him to seek approval from the companys board for any tweet that might affect Teslas share price.

Reuters reports, quoting the SEC court filing, that the regulator accused Musk of not asking the approval of Teslas board of directors for any tweets posted since the agreement was made. The watchdog said it had asked the Tesla board if the CEO had approached it for approving tweets, and the board responded in the negative.

It is therefore stunning to learn that, at the time of filing of the instant motion, Musk had not sought pre-approval for a single one of the numerous tweets about Tesla he published in the months since the court-ordered pre-approval policy went into effect, the SEC told the judge in a Manhattan court.

Last month, The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a judge to hold Elon Musk in contempt for violating a deal the regulator struck with the Tesla chief executive last year, which requires him to get the approval of the Tesla board of directors before tweeting anything that could be material to investors.

The tweet that prompted the SEC move said that Tesla will manufacture half a million cars this year. The tweet, however, was quickly followed by another one, clarifying that he Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k.



Related: Oil Rises As OPEC Holds Off On Production Cuts Decision

Musk first drew the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission last summer when the Tesla CEO said on Twitter he was planning to take the company private and had already secured funding.

It was this phrase, funding secured, that alerted the Securities and Exchange Commission, which launched a probe into this claim, prompting Musk to come forward with the revelation that he had for years been in talks with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund to take the company private.

Yet the tweet and the following explanation caused changes in the Tesla stock price within two days, which allegedly affected shareholders who bought Tesla stock in the period and prompted the SEC to act.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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South Sudan, ravaged by years of conflict, should immediately stop contracting expensive and nontransparent oil advances, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its latest report on the African nation, which has taken loans from Chinese companies with the promise to repay them with proceeds from future oil revenuesfrom oil it has yet to get out of the ground.

South Sudan is still struggling to return to the level of oil production it had at the start of this decade, after the civil war and the oil price crash nearly halved its oil output.

South Sudan broke from Sudan in 2011 and took with it around 350,000 bpd in oil production. But then civil war in South Sudan broke out in 2013 that further complicated oil production. The oil price crash the following year additionally affected oil income and oil production in South Sudan.

Hoping to out an end to this war, South Sudans government and rebels signed a power-sharing agreement in September 2018. Oil production at some oil fields that were shut in at the start of the conflict has resumed.

Strugglingto get its oil industry back on its feet, South Sudan is now looking to pump more than 350,000 bpd of oil by the middle of next year, compared to current production of just 140,000 bpd, South Sudans Oil Minister Ezekiel Lul Gatkuoth said earlier this year.

However, until more oil is really pumped out of the ground, South Sudan should carefully manage oil revenues and stop taking oil advances and focus on spending those revenues on immediate peace-related purposes instead, according to the IMF.



Related: Oil Slips As Alberta Relaxes Oil Production Cuts

On the management of oil revenues, the mission urges the authorities to immediately stop contracting oil advances that are expensive and nontransparent. This measure will also help to ensure that oil revenues will be fully available for financing budgetary spending, the IMF said.

In addition, those oil advances are tightening South Sudans finances, the fund said, noting that Fiscal conditions for the remainder of 2018/19 will be constrained by large repayments of oil advances. With a tight resource envelope, the authorities should strictly prioritize core peace-related spending and payment of civil servant salaries.

Apart from extending loans, Chinese companies are also dominant in South Sudans oil industry. Oil Minister Gatkuoth met with CNPC in Beijing earlier this month and urged the Chinese state energy conglomerate to bring new production on-stream at its concessions by exploring for new oilfields.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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The UK is on track to import this month its highest volume of liquefied natural gas (LNG) since October 2015, as a wave of new global LNG supply and muted winter demand and low spot prices in Asia are boosting flows of the fuel to Europe.

As many as 14 cargoes of LNG are set to arrive in the UK in March, Reuters reports, citing shipping data from Refinitiv Eikon. The surge in LNG imports has pushed down wholesale gas prices in Britain to their lowest in 18 months, according to Reuters data.

In addition, UK wholesale gas prices have halved since September last yeara highly unusual occurrence because winter is a peak natural gas demand season in Britain with gas used for heating.

But the increased flow of LNG has been pushing prices lower.

According to British Gas, the UK typically produces enough gas to meet 44 percent of its needs, while it imports 47 percent of its gas via pipelines from Norway and Europe, and another 9 percent in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Yet, over the past six months, LNG supply has accounted for between 15 percent and nearly 30 percent of the gas supply to the UK, Reuters data shows.

Qatar used to be the overwhelmingly dominant LNG supplier to the UK until 2017. But in 2018, Britain imported a lot of U.S. and Russian LNG, which has diminished Qatars market share, according to Refinitiv Eikon shipping data. In 2017, Qatars market share was 87 percent, in 2018 it fell to 39 percent, and it has further dropped to 34 percent so far in 2019.

Meanwhile, Asian LNG spot prices plunged to their lowest for this time of the year since 2016. The low LNG prices, however, have already started to spur some demand for May onward, especially from India, trade sources tell Reuters.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Venezuela has suspended crude oil exports to India, one of its key markets until very recently, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing a statement from the energy ministry of Azerbaijan, where Venezuelas Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo is on a visit for this past weekends OPEC+ panel meeting and for talks with his Azeri counterpart.

Russia and China are seen as the main destinations because of the suspension of oil exports to India, Reuters quoted the Azeri ministry as saying in a statement after a meeting between the Venezuelan and Azeri oil and energy ministers on Tuesday.

Quevedo said in order to prevent a sharp reduction, various measures are being implemented and diversification of the export market is underway, the statement further reads, as carried by Reuters.

India has been one of the largest buyers of Venezuelan oil and the second-largest customer paying in cash, following the United States. Russia and China, which Maduro sees as priority markets, are owed money by Venezuela that repays loans to Moscow and Beijing mostly with crude oil shipments.

The U.S. sanctions on Venezuelas oil at the end of January essentially cut off Venezuelan exports to the United States. Washington has also warned other countries against buying oil from Nicolas Maduros regime and has been pressing India to refrain from buying Venezuelan crude.



Related: Cuba Faces Oil Crisis As Venezuela Crumbles

Last month, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton warned countries and companies against buying crude oil from Venezuela after Manuel Quevedo said during a surprise visit to India that Venezuela was looking to sell more oil to the fast-growing Indian market.

In a tweet with a Bloomberg article on Venezuelan-Indian oil relations attached, Bolton wrote: Nations and firms that support Maduros theft of Venezuelan resources will not be forgotten. The United States will continue to use all of its powers to preserve the Venezuelan peoples assets and we encourage all nations to work together to do the same.

The United States has also pressed India to stop buying Venezuelan crude oil as a means of accelerating Nicolas Maduros removal from office.

We say you should not be helping this regime. You should be on the side of the Venezuelan people, the U.S. envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams told Reuters in an interview published earlier this month.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Two Moroccan nationals appeared in the dock Monday in Spain for attempting to join the ranks of the Islamist State group (ISIS) in Syria.

The men identified as Anouar Bensaddik and Abdelmounaim Bennassar face eight years in jail, Huffpost Maroc reports citing Spanish state-run news agency EFE.

The defendants were arrested in February last year for planning to join ISIS in Syria along several members of Badalona group, a terror group in the town of Badalona near the city of Barcelona.

Police sources told the media that the duo and the Badalona terror group used to indoctrinate people in favor of ISIS in the city and to raise funds for the group through drug and other crime-related activities.

The two men are also known by police for previous wrongdoings including threats and robbery.

Abdelmounaim Bennassar is also accused of persuading three women to travel to Syria.

Several members of Badalona group are currently in detention over attempts to join the war-torn country. The detainees include 16-year old Achataoui twins, Chakib and Chakir arrested in 2015 alongside with their mother.

Morocco is detaining a member of the group who had been arrested in the North African country.

The inaugural session is being held under the theme India and Africa: Shaping a Global Partnership for a Better World.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
The Republican National Committee has fended off a copyright claim in Montana, convincing a judge that unauthorized use of an image to criticize a Democratic candidate was fair use. In a decision that will upset photographers and copyright advocates, Montana judge Dana L. Christensen sided with the Republican National Committee (RNC) in a 2017 lawsuit filed by Missoula, Montana-based photographer Erika Peterman. Peterman accused the RNC of willful copyright infringement for their use of Petermans photo of congressional candidate Rob Quist in a mailer that criticized and mocked Quist, a Democrat. The RNC argued fair use, and the court agreed, saying the RNC had transformed the work and had not undermined Petersons ability to profit from the image in the future.

Petermans image, which she licensed to Quists campaign, shows Quist onstage in a cowboy hat, singing at a campaign event. Quist is a musician and would perform during appearances in his campaign for a Montana senate seat, which he eventually lost to Greg Gianforte. Peterman was hired by the Quist campaign to photograph at an event. The RNC evidently took the image from Quists Facebook page.

The court ruled that the cropping and minor alterations to the light in the photograph did not transform the work. However, because the text in the mailer used Quists musicianship to criticize his candidacy, subverting the purpose and function of the work, it was transformative, the court ruled.

The general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, Mickey Osterreicher, criticized the judges decision. We see district courts making incorrect fair use rulings all the time, he told PDN. Its disappointing that this district court, we believe, got it wrong.

In a similar case in 2014, a federal judge in Colorado ruled that a wedding photographers image of a gay couple used in political mailers did not constitute fair use. Photographer Kristina Hill and the gay couple in her photograph sued a conservative political non-profit organization for using Hills photo in a mailer that criticized political candidates in Colorado who supported same-sex marriage. (More on that case here).

Had Peterman given the RNC permission to use her image, Osterreicher points out, she could have opened herself up to a lawsuit from Quist. Copyright is so photographers can say: no I dont want my work used in that way. To see fair use used in this way is really problematic, Osterreicher says.

Christensen also determined that the use would not adversely effect the market for Petermans image, another of the four factors judges consider in determining fair use. Peterman received the entirety of her $500 fee to photograph the campaign event, Christensen wrote in his decision. He also noted that the image was published on social media without credit or copyright notices. The Quist campaign made the image available for download on Facebook without including any photographer attribution or copyright information. It is unclear how the Work could conceivably have any future commercial value to Peterman. The Work has no recognizable value outside of Quists congressional campaign, and that value has been fully realized by Peterman.

Update: PDN asked Erika Peterman for her reaction to the decision, and whether or not she planned to appeal. Her emailed response is below.

I think equating political criticism to transformative use is pretty far-reaching. This decision gives any political party (or PAC) the freedom to use artistic or creative photos of political candidates for political criticism under the auspices of fair use. This impacts me greatly because I do a lot of political photography and work hard to create compelling, creative photos for the candidates I work with. And, like any photographer or artist, I also want to share my work. However, if I know that my photos can be used for political criticism without my permission, it creates a major dilemma for me.

And no, Im not appealing. Not because I dont think the decision is wrong, because I do. However, even if my decision were reversed and remanded back to the district court for a trial on whether the RNCs use of my photo was transformative, I would again be in front of the same judge and the outcome would probably be the same. Additionally, I would most likely have to pay the RNCs costs and possibly their attorney fees. Thats thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars I dont have.

Last, the judges comments about my sharing the photo on Twitter are incorrect. I posted a different photo of Rob Quist on Twitter, but not the one that was the subject of the lawsuit.

[Editors note: The judges comments regarding Twitter in his decision were as follows: Peterman herself posted the Work to Twitter, captioned with a Teddy Roosevelt quote and the hashtags #resist #RobQuist #Montana #vote #montanaspecialelection. Any internet user could, as the RNCs vendor did, download a high-quality version of the image. And, absent a complete suspension of common sense, it must be assumed that the [Montana Democratic Party], Quist Campaign, and Peterman herself would have welcomed reposts, retweets, and other forms of appropriation by other pro-Quist social media users. This, after all, is the purpose of sharing an image on a social media platform.]

Related:

Montana Photographer Sues Republican National Committee for Copyright Infringement

Photographer Wins $2,501 for Infringement in Anti-Gay Attack Ad Case

In Fight over Anti-Gay Ad, Misappropriation Claims are Dismissed
Lee Berthiaume of the Canadian Press reports military veterans detail fight with feds to overhaul disability supports: When his son was nearly killed by an anti-personnel mine in Afghanistan in 2010, Jim Scott had no idea he was about to embark on a multi-year legal battle with the federal government on behalf of his son and thousands of other modern-day veterans. The battle took the form of a class-action lawsuit over a major overhaul of the benefits and services available to ill and injured veterans in 2006 that provided todays ex-soldiers less in support and compensation than those in previous generations. For Scotts son Dan, that meant a one-time, $41,000 payment from Ottawa as compensation for having lost his kidney, spleen and part of his pancreas from the explosion rather than the lifelong pension provided to similarly disabled veterans since the First World War. And my son said to me: You know, were all getting these letters for really small amounts and we hav
" " An NYPD officer talks on his radio while people take part in a protest in New York City. The problems with using 10-codes came into full display during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images

It was April 1928, and a Detroit police officer named Kenneth Cox, along with an engineering student Robert L. Batts, devised a system for police to receive radio calls in their cars. The portable AM radio communication system they dreamed up was innovative but limited  it only worked one way. Police could receive messages from headquarters, but they couldn't talk back. Although primitive, the system was about to change police work forever.

Fast forward five years to Bayonne, New Jersey. Radio engineer Frank A. Gunther, and police Lt. Vincent Doyle, installed the nation's first two-way police radio system for use in the city's patrol cars. Bayonne police cars had a transmitter and a receiver allowing officers to not only communicate with the station house, but with each other. It wasn't long before radio became standard equipment in police cruisers across the country.

At that time, radios were not the digital marvels they are today. In fact, radios didn't even have transistors, but instead used vacuum tubes and a small generator for power. The technology was groundbreaking for the day, but transmitting a signal was slightly delayed.

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10-Codes

In 1937, Charles "Charlie" Hopper, communication director for the Illinois State Police, solved the problem by devising a system of codes that allowed police to talk to one another in a timely and more efficient fashion. Known as 10-codes (each code had a number preceded by the numeral 10), it was a type of short-hand. "10-4," for example, met "affirmative;" 10-7, "out to lunch." The 10-codes were a major innovation at the time, and new police officers were required to learn them.

The codes worked because they were short and to the point. However, there was a huge drawback: Not every police department used the same 10-codes, a standardization problem that still exists today. For example, in one jurisdiction, "10-54" might mean a fatal car accident, while in another it might be "dead animal in the road," or "coffee break."

Although 10-codes are meant to be concise and uniform, the ad hoc way police departments employ them has made the system somewhat useless when different agencies communicate in emergencies. These problems were on full display during the 2011 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., and again in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. During both instances, first responders from multiple agencies were often at a loss in deciphering one code from another.

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Back to Plain Language

As a result, many jurisdictions started to eliminate 10-codes in favor of using so-called "plain language." Plain language means exactly what you think it means. Instead of talking in coded lingo, police communicate in every-day vernacular. For example, in Maryland police now say "disabled vehicle" instead of using the 10-code "10-46."

"Because coded language is not standardized across jurisdictions, using 10-codes can result in miscommunication and confusion when multiple agencies and disciplines respond to an incident," a 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned.

The biggest argument for plain language is that it can save lives. In 2005, for example, a police officer from Independence, Missouri, saw a state trooper lying in a ditch, shot eight times. The officer called the police dispatcher to report the situation. Instead of using the city's 10-Code, "10-33," which for the state police meant "traffic backup," the police dispatcher used plain language allowing an army of state troopers to converge quickly on the area. The officer survived, and a suspect in the shooting was caught in less than an hour.

Although many fire departments and emergency medical service units already use plain language in their transmissions, there are some departments in law enforcement that are hesitant to make the switch.

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The Problem With Privacy

Part of the problem is that the pervasiveness of technology often means that private information over the airwaves can fall into the wrong hands. People, as you know, routinely monitor police calls on scanners. Moreover, in the view of some, plain language might disclose sensitive information about police or victims. Some also say plain language compromises officer safety and takes longer to utter than the truncated 10-codes, putting lives at risk.

While there's no doubt that plain language takes some getting used to, over time, experts say, police get better at using the new vernacular. It doesn't take long for officers to stop chattering things they shouldn't say over the radio.

Although there are no standardized codes that police agencies across the spectrum use, officials for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are pushing for communities to change to plain language. In fact, FEMA in 2006 linked granting federal emergency preparedness funds to departments using only plain language.

"The use of plain language in emergency response is matter of public safety, especially the safety of first responders and those affected by the incident," FEMA told local first responders at the time. "It is critical that all local responders, as well as those coming into the impacted area from other jurisdictions and other states as well as the federal government, know and utilize commonly established operational structures, terminology, policies and procedures."

Not all police agencies have transitioned exclusively to plain language. In fact, many agencies use a mix of plain language and 10-codes. Although the police department in Lakewood, Colorado, stopped using 10-codes in the 1970s, the city kept four of the codes relating to officer safety, as did the state of Virginia. Virginia State Police even reprogrammed its computer-aided dispatch system, changing the 10-code calls into plain language abbreviations. The system can send the messages wirelessly and over text SMS.

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING! Over the decades, Charles "Charlie" Hopper's 10-codes have become part of our culture. Truck drivers and those with CB radios  "10-4 good buddy"  still use the codes, as do make believe cops on TV and in the movies. Broderick Crawford was the first actor to bark out "10-4" in the 1950's hit show "Highway Patrol."
MULTI-HYPHENATE Josua Cabrera will hold a solo show mostly featuring his works in Latagaw (Wanderer), his illustrated social commentary that comes out every Thursday issue of SunStar Cebu.The exhibit,

MULTI-HYPHENATE Josua Cabrera will hold a solo show mostly featuring his works in Latagaw (Wanderer), his illustrated social commentary that comes out every Thursday issue of SunStar Cebu.

The exhibit, Latagaw og Utok (Wandering Mind), will be held at the Jose T. Joya Gallery of University of the Philippines Cebu in Cebu City at 7 p.m. Friday, April 5. It is curated by Jay Jore.

Two dogs, Red and Blue, and a rat named Ben are the main characters in Latagaw, which tackles social issues with the Bisdak (Bisayang dako) traits of wit, irony, sarcasm and humor.

Cabrera, a native of Maasin City, Southern Leyte, helms the SunStar Cebus art group as its chief.

He also dabbles in creative writing. His short story, Sesyon, won a Palanca in 2005. His debut poetry collection, Kisaw sa Napukaw Nga Mga Adlaw, was launched on Dec. 15, 2018.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison condemned "reckless" and "highly offensive" comments made by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, warning he would consider "all options" in reviewing ties. On the campaign trail, the Turkish leader has used video footage of the terror attack that killed 50 people and painted it as part of an assault on Turkey and Islam. He has also warned anti-Muslim Australians -- like the suspected gunman -- would be "sent back in coffins" like their grandfathers at Gallipoli, which was the scene of a blood-drenched WWI battle. More than 8,000 Australians died fighting Turkish forces around the seaside town, a landmark moment in Australian history. "Remarks have been made by the Turkish President Erdogan that I consider highly offensive to Australians and highly reckless in this very sensitive environment," Morrison said after summoning the Turkish ambassador and dismissing the "excuses" offered. "I am expecting, and I have asked, for these comments to be clarified, to be withdrawn," Morrison, who also faces an election challenge in the coming weeks. "I've asked for these comments, particularly their reporting of the misrepresented position of Australia on Turkish television, the state-sponsored broadcaster, to be taken down and I expect that to occur." He described claims about Australia and New Zealand's response to the white supremacist attack as "vile." New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern refused to be drawn on Erdogan's comments, but said her deputy would be going to Turkey to "set the record straight." Morrison said Australians travelling to Turkey should exercise common sense and cautioned that travel advice for Turkey was under review. "I will wait to see what the response is from the Turkish government before taking further action, but I can tell you that all options are on the table," Morrison said. In fiery remarks, Morrison accused Erdogan of betraying the promise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk -- the father of the modern state and a revered figure in Turkey -- to forge peace between the two countries. A memorial at the battlefield carries Ataturk's words: "There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets... after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well." "Ataturk sought to transform his country into a modern nation and, an embracing nation, and I think these comments are at odds with that spirit," Morrison said. - 'Totally unfair' - Erdogan had already been sharply rebuked by New Zealand for his comments and for using gruesome video shot by the Christchurch mosque gunman as an election campaign prop. New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters protested on Monday that such politicisation of the massacre "imperils the future and safety of the New Zealand people and our people abroad, and it's totally unfair". Peters announced on Tuesday that he would be travelling to Turkey this week at Istanbul's request to attend a special meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Three Turkish nationals were wounded in the rampage that killed 50 worshippers at two mosques in the southern New Zealand city of Christchurch on Friday. The accused gunman, a self-avowed white supremacist from Australia, live-streamed much of the attack and spread a manifesto on social media claiming it was a strike against Muslim "invaders". The manifesto references Turkey and the minarets of Istanbul's famed Hagia Sophia, now a museum, that was once a church before becoming a mosque during the Ottoman empire. "This is not an isolated event, it is something more organised," he said during a campaign event on Monday in Canakkale in western Turkey. "They are testing us with the message they are sending us from New Zealand, 16,500 km (10,250 miles) from here." Erdogan did not project the video at the Monday event. Peters said he had complained directly to visiting Turkish Vice-President Fuat Oktay and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
THE National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) has removed over 650,000 campaign materials all over Metro Manila.NCRPO Director Major General Guillermo Eleazar urged the candidates to also do their

MORE direct flights are being eyed to cities in China from Cebu, as Chinese travelers continue to be the top market for airline companies and airports.

Erwin Balane, Department of Tourism head of route development, said Chinas distance to the Philippines makes it easier for carriers to establish a flight route.

We are looking at the Chinese carriers to increase their frequencies and to put up more routes from China. Our primary target is China because of its promixity. Its within the range of the smaller and narrow-bodied aircraft which the charter operators and the airlines can easily fill up, he said.

A narrow-bodied aircraft has 150 to 180 seats.

Filling up this type of aircraft could be quite easy for the charter operators and the airlines, and it would be very easy to operate as well, Balane said, in an interview during the Routes Asia 2019 conference.

In 2018, Central Visayas welcomed more than eight million tourists.

Out of the eight million, 3.6 million were foreign tourists. Of the foreign tourists, 621,993 were Chinese, 17.11 percent of the total foreign arrivals. This grew by 44.88 percent from 2017.

The Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) is connected to 12 destinations in mainland China namely, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Shenzen, Chengdu, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Kunming, Sichuan and Wenzhou.

Balane said the participation of other cities and provinces in China bodes well for the countrys route development.

So far, since 2018, weve been monitoring the new routes from different points in China. So now we already have flights coming from cities in China that, for so many years, we have not heard of here in Cebu, he said.

He added that recent flight route openings of Chinese carriers in the MCIA will boost Cebus tourism industry.

Those are to Cebu particularly, not Manila or elsewhere. Its all about Cebu, he said.

He said China is the second largest market of the Philippines, set to overtake South Korea.

In the next few years, despite the visa requirements, the spike in tourist arrivals from China would be very significant, he said. (JOB with KOC)
A century after Egypt's March 1919 revolution, the prominent Wafd party credited with leading popular demands to end the British occupation, has now been largely sidelined on the country's political scene, analysts say. A one-time liberal opposition force with a mass following, Wafd is considered Egypt's oldest surviving party, having started its political life under the then monarchy during the early 20th century. But in recent times critics say the party's role has descended into irrelevance under the rule of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. "The party has completely lost its lustre and no longer attracts liberals," said political science professor at Cairo University Hassan Nafaa. "Wafd still lives on the credit of its historic track record." Since its founding in the wake of the 1919 revolution, the party quickly rose through Egypt's political echelons leading several governments which were largely at odds with the king. It remained for years the face of Egyptian politics before being dismantled along with others amid the rise of the military rule in Egypt in 1952. - Blurred values - It was not until more than 20 years later that Wafd rose again from the ashes rebranding itself as the "New Wafd" under late president Anwar al-Sadat. But Wafd MP Fouad Badrawi maintains his party still has "impact" on the ground despite the political blows it has received over the years. "It has been through multiple ups and down over the years, but it is still surviving," he said. The "New Wafd" claims to embrace the principles of the old party with civil rights and freedoms at its core. Critics however argue that Wafd has lost its liberal essence by supporting Sisi. "It is not possible for any party in connection with the current regime ... to claim to be liberal," Nafaa said. Under Sisi, Egyptian authorities have curtailed freedoms and launched a crackdown on dissent. Tens of thousands of political opponents have been arrested and charged. In January, Amnesty International said Egypt's stepped up crackdown on dissent has made the country "more dangerous" than ever for peaceful critics. Badrawi, who is also a senior Wafd member, however maintains that the party adheres to its liberal policies, dismissing rights group's accusations as "baseless." "We (as the Wafd party) don't object for the sake of objection. We only raise objections when the people or the nation are in danger," Badrawi said. Another core value of the old Wafd was its support for secular governance. To this day, the party's motto is still "religion is for God and the nation is for all." Its emblem remains the cross interlinked with the crescent moon, symbolic of national unity. This secular spirit was blurred after the party forged alliances with the Muslim Brotherhood group on several occasions since its resurrection. "Its alliance with the Brotherhood damaged its image and reduced its popularity," said Nafaa. Wafd has also backed general-turned-president Sisi since his rise to power after the military ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who hails from the Brotherhood. In the 2018 elections, the party threw its support behind Sisi who ran virtually uncontested winning 97 percent of the vote. - Possible contender? - Wafd currently holds 43 seats in the 596-seat parliament which convened in 2016, two years after Sisi took office. As an established party, it counts prominent businessmen among its ranks and is considered to be well financed compared to others. "Wafd has some 220 branches and more than 500,000 members nationwide," said Wafd spokesman Yasser al-Hodeibi. Although it is not clear whether all the party's members are active. It also possesses the only partisan newspaper, according to Hodeibi. Despite its ample financial capabilities, the party failed to field a candidate in the 2018 elections. But it has nonetheless promised to run a candidate in the upcoming elections in 2022. In recent weeks, the overwhelming majority in parliament including Wafd MPs approved in principle possible constitutional amendments that would extend Sisi's rule beyond 2022. "We are preparing three prominent figures so that one of them could potentially run the race," said Hodeibi. Nafaa believes a Wafd candidate will stand little to no chance if they are running against Sisi. "It will be a candidate to justify the elections," Nafaa said. "This will be another blow to the party's image."
The United Nations will put forward a new plan for the pullback of forces from Yemen's flashpoint city of Hodeida to the government and Huthi rebels, a UN envoy said Tuesday. The redeployment of forces was agreed in December under a ceasefire deal reached in Sweden that offered the best hope in years of moving toward an end to the war that has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine. "Following constructive discussions with both parties, there is significant progress towards an agreement to implement phase one of the redeployments of the Hodeida agreement," said a statement from Martin Griffiths, the UN envoy for Yemen. "Operational details will be presented to the parties in the Redeployment Coordination Committee (RCC) for endorsement shortly," he added. The RCC, chaired by Danish General Michael Lollesgaard, was set up under the Stockholm deal to bring the government and the Huthis to the table to hammer out details of the ceasefire deal. The UN envoy's statement did not give a date for the start of the pullback, which would mark the first concrete step towards de-escalation in Hodeida. Griffiths said he "looks forward to the swift endorsement of the plan" and expressed hope that a deal would pave the way to a broader political settlement to end the war. The United Nations announced a deal on the two-stage pullback from Hodeida city and its ports on February 17, but the redeployment failed to materialize on the ground and the peace effort appeared to run out of steam. - One step at a time - According to UN diplomats, the Huthis have refused to pull away from the ports as part of the first stage, citing fears that forces linked to the Saudi-led coalition will move in to take over those facilities. Griffiths and Lollesgaard have been holding talks with all sides to overcome the final hurdles, but the United Nations sounded a cautious note about the latest developments. "I don't want to sound over-confident about this," said UN spokesman Farhan Haq. "Whether we can get to actually having the withdrawals to occur, that remains to be seen. We are moving one step at a time." The Red Sea port of Hodeida is the entry point for the bulk of imported goods and relief aid to Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to push back an advance by Huthi rebels who continue to hold the capital Sanaa, and restore President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to power. The conflict has unleashed the world's worst humanitarian conflict, according to the United Nations, with millions facing famine. Since the Stockholm agreement three months ago, the UN envoy has struggled to turn details of that deal into reality on the ground, and several deadlines have been missed. Aside from the redeployment, the Huthis and the government agreed to an exchange of thousands of prisoners from the war and to hold talks on the future of the city of Taez, which is beseiged by the Huthis.
Russia will deliver 20 Su-35 fighter jets to Egypt as early as 2020-21 following a $2-billion deal signed between the two countries end of last year.

Egypt will start receiving the military aircraft as early as next year, reported Russian media kommersant, citing two senior defense industry officers.

The Su-35 fighter is a fourth-generation multi-function fighter of Russias military know-how.

With this new deal, Egypt further underlines its position as one of Russias military hardware largest customers.

Cairo in 2014 signed with Moscow a $3.5-billion military contract that included artillery and firearms.

According to the latest report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), published earlier this month, Egypt accounted for 5.1 percent of world arm imports in the 201418 period.

Egypts deal with Russia could irk US President Donald Trump, a strong supporter of President al-Sisi but in loggerheads with Moscow. Trump in August 2017 signed the Countering Americas Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) meant to punish Russia for actions that include alleged election interference. The Act also targets countries that might sign for Russian military and intelligence equipment.
THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has placed the entire Mindanao and three other areas in the country under "category red" election hotspots.Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said in a statement

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) has placed the entire Mindanao and three other areas in the country under "category red" election hotspots.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez said in a statement Tuesday, March 19, that along with the entire Mindanao Island group in category red are Jones in Isabela, Lope de Vega in Northern Samar, and the entire province of Abra.

"The category red classification may warrant the motu proprio declaration of Comelec control over the affected area, and the Comelec en banc may direct the augmentation of personnel of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as the need arises," Jimenez said.

He said the declaration was due to election-related incidents in the last two elections, as well as the serious armed threats posed by the New People's Army (NPA), Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), and rogue elements of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and other analogous groups.

The Comelec, PNP, and AFP identify and classify election hotspots using the following system of classification: category green, yellow, orange and red.

Green refers to areas of no security concern and are relatively peaceful and orderly, while category yellow refers to areas with a history of election-related violence or the existence of intense partisan political rivalry, but without the participation of domestic terror groups.

Areas under category orange have the conditions set under yellow but there is a serious armed threats posed by domestic terror groups and other analogous armed groups.

Category red refers to areas where, while being under category orange, the relevant government agencies declare the existence of conditions that may constitute grounds for the declaration of Comelec control.

In a statement, PNP spokesperson Colonel Bernard Banac said they will abide by the declaration of the Comelec on election hotspots and make the necessary adjustments in their intensified security preparations.

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"We shall continue to perform our mandate to enforce the law and ensure peace and order in the run up to the May 13 polls," he said.

Earlier, the PNP said 701 areas have been listed as election hotspots for the upcoming May polls.

Of the 701 election hotspots, 223 areas were under yellow category, 382 were under orange or areas of immediate concern, and 94 under red category or areas with grave concern. (SunStar Philippines)
Phuket Marriott Resort and Spa, Nai Yang Beach has launched a series of new menus that celebrate innovative culinary styles and interesting local ingredients, providing a wide range of dining opportunities for guests and local residents alike.

At Big Fish Restaurant, the signature seafront dining destination, Executive Chef Bastian Ballweg has created a special Spanish menu that reflects the bright, vibrant produce that have inspired him throughout his culinary career. Guests can Savor the Flavors of Spain with a series of delicious dishes, including gambas al ajillo (prawns in garlic oil), sopa de pescado Andaluza (Andalusian fish soup) and albondigas (beef meatballs in tomato sauce). Prices start from just THB 220++ per dish.

Chef Bastian said the new menu would appeal not only to in-house guests, but also to local residents who are starting to discover Big Fish as a standalone restaurant.

Recently we have seen increasing numbers of local residents taking advantage of our excellent restaurants and bars. The hotel industry no longer just provides rooms and dining to guests; we are providing services to the local community, catering to discerning visitors who want to enhance their lifestyles. Big Fish, our beachfront venue, is the perfect place to visit for a leisurely drink, evening meal or business meeting, said Chef Bastian.

The resorts all-day dining restaurant, The Andaman Kitchen, has also recently revealed a series of new dishes that showcase high-quality, fresh and local produce, including unique ingredients from the various culinary regions of Thailand. An exquisite new menu features a choice of traditional Thai soups, salads, curries and more, plus a selection of local Phuket specialties such as Andaman prawns in shrimp paste and Phuket-style sea bass with yellow curry and coconut shoots.

Alternatively, the Western menu at The Andaman Kitchen features an array of family favorites, including soups, salads, burgers, pizzas, pastas and grilled meats, starting from THB 230++.

Executive Chef Bastian and his team of epicurean experts, including Executive Sous Chef Worakant Singha and Thai Sous Chef Aekarat Ratso, have developed a wide range of menu items to suit every occasion, from casual daytime bites to memorable evening meals. Local residents are always welcome to visit Phuket Marriott Resort and Spa, Nai Yang Beach, and experience its unique location and culinary excellence.

Operating Hours:

The Andaman Kitchen

Breakfast: 06:30  11:00 hrs

Lunch and dinner: 12:00 23:00 hrs

Happy hour: 14:00  16:00 Hrs

Big Fish Restaurant& Bar

Lunch and dinner: 12:00  23:00 hrs

Happy hour: 16:00  18:00 hrs

For more information, please contact +66 76 625 555 or email hktnb.restaurant@marriott.com.
The burial of a 15,000 year old Anatolian hunter-gatherer. Credit: Douglas Baird

An international team led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and in collaboration with scientists from the United Kingdom, Turkey and Israel, has analyzed eight prehistoric individuals, including the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer, and found that the first Anatolian farmers were direct descendants of local hunter-gatherers. These findings provide support for archaeological evidence that farming was adopted and developed by local hunter-gatherers who changed their subsistence strategy, rather than being introduced by a large movement of people from another area. Interestingly, while the study shows the long-term persistence of the Anatolian hunter-gatherer gene pool over 7,000 years, it also indicates a pattern of genetic interactions with neighboring groups.

Farming was developed approximately 11,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, a region that includes present-day Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan as well as the fringes of southern Anatolia and western Iran. By about 8,300 BCE it had spread to central Anatolia, in present-day Turkey. These early Anatolian farmers subsequently migrated throughout Europe, bringing this new subsistence strategy and their genes. Today, the single largest component of the ancestry of modern-day Europeans comes from these Anatolian farmers. It has long been debated, however, whether farming was brought to Anatolia similarly by a group of migrating farmers from the Fertile Crescent, or whether the local hunter-gatherers of Anatolia adopted farming practices from their neighbors.

A new study by an international team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and in collaboration with scientists from the United Kingdom, Turkey and Israel, published in Nature Communications, confirms existing archaeological evidence that shows that Anatolian hunter-gatherers did indeed adopt farming themselves, and the later Anatolian farmers were direct descendants of a gene-pool that remained relatively stable for over 7,000 years.

Local hunter-gatherers adopted an agricultural lifestyle

For this study, the researchers newly analyzed ancient DNA from 8 individuals, and succeeded in recovering for the first time whole-genome data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer. This allowed the team to compare that individual's DNA to later Anatolian farmers, as well as individuals from neighboring regions, to determine how they were related. They also compared the individuals newly analyzed in the study to existing data from 587 ancient individuals and 254 present-day populations.

Video interview with the researchers describing the findings of the publication Feldman et al. 2019. Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia. Credit: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

The researchers found that the early Anatolian farmers derived the vast majority of their ancestry (~90 percent) from a population related to the Anatolian hunter-gatherer in the study. "This suggests a long-term genetic stability in central Anatolia over five millennia, despite changes in climate and subsistence strategy," explains Michal Feldman of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

"Our results provide additional, genetic support for previous archaeological evidence that suggests that Anatolia was not merely a stepping stone in a movement of early farmers from the Fertile Crescent into Europe," states Choongwon Jeong of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History, co-senior author of the study. "Rather, it was a place where local hunter-gatherers adopted ideas, plants and technology that led to agricultural subsistence."

Genetic interactions with neighbors warrant further study

In addition to the long-term stability of the major component of the Anatolian ancestry, the researchers also found a pattern of interactions with their neighbors. By the time that farming had taken hold in Anatolia between 8,300-7,800 BCE, the researchers found that the local population had about a 10 percent genetic contribution from populations related to those living in what is today Iran and the neighboring Caucasus, with almost the entire remaining 90 percent coming from Anatolian hunter-gatherers. By about 7000-6000 BCE, however, the Anatolian farmers derived about 20 percent of their ancestry from populations related to those living in the Levant region.

"There are some large gaps, both in time and geography, in the genomes we currently have available for study," explains Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, senior author on the study. "This makes it difficult to say how these more subtle genetic interactions took placewhether it was through short-term large movements of people, or more frequent but low-level interactions." The researchers hope that further research in this and neighboring regions could help to answer these questions.

More information: Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia, Nature Communications (2019). Journal information: Nature Communications Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia,(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09209-7
China is the world's fastest growing aviation market

The key role China played in grounding the troubled Boeing 737 MAX 8 has demonstrated its growing clout in global aviation and may give it an extra bargaining chip in trade talks with Washington.

China ordered its domestic airlines to ground the plane on March 11, a day after the deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airways Boeing 737 MAX 8.

That touched off a domino effect as other countries followed suit in light of the aircraft's second fatal accident in months, and came two days before the Trump administration and US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the plane grounded.

The situation raised eyebrows because China historically takes its cues from the FAAparticularly given the US safety regulator's familiarity with Boeing.

Regardless of the trade war or big-power rivalries, it was a move that China had to make, aviation analysts said.

China now has the world's fastest growing aviation sector as rising prosperity fuels travel among a huge population that a generation ago struggled to afford basic necessities.

A deadly safety mishap in Chinese skies would be a catastrophe for the Communist government.

"China as a country simply has to be serious about safety. You can try to read more into it but ... it's a country prioritising safety more than anything else because of the size of the market," said Janesh Janardhanan, director of Aerospace, Defence & Security at business consultancy Frost & Sullivan.

"It was not a stand-alone isolated reaction, as many countries followed suit."

Various Airbus A330 and Boeing 737 planes of Air China parked at Beijing's capital airport

Propaganda win

The turn of events has prompted suggestions that US regulators may have temporarily abdicated their vital watchdog role, giving China an opening to exercise more global leadership.

But analysts said the Boeing crisis will likely prove an isolated incident and there was no reason to view the FAA's days as the world's de facto safety watchdog to be under threat.

Boeing and European rival Airbus have a huge lead over China's homegrown passenger jets, which do not yet have a proven service record.

There also is concern over granting safety leadership to an opaque Communist Party government.

China had a dismal safety record culminating in a series of deadly plane incidents in the 1990s, improving the situation after inviting the FAA to work with the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

"The FAA and the NTSB (an US agency which investigates accidents) are the gold standard-setters in aviation safety. Let's not forget that the airplane was invented in the US. China's decision in my view will not change this," said Shukor Yusof, head of Malaysia-based aviation consultancy firm Endau Analytics.

He added that on safety China "has improved a lot, obviously. But it hasn't reached US or EU standards".

Robert Mann, head of US-based aviation consultancy R.W. Mann and Co, said predictions of the FAA's decline were "precipitous, arguably irresponsible."

But he noted that there was indeed propaganda value for China in the 737 fiasco.

A Chinese-made Comac C919 passenger jet takes off from Pudong International Airport in Shanghai. Until China's domestic aircraft manufacturing industry is more developed, the country will be reliant on US and European makers

"Science and hard data-based decision-making are becoming subordinate to public opinion and appearances," he said.

Home-made jets

Few question China's growing clout in aviation.

A generation ago air travel was not that common in China, but the country is expected to surpass the US within a few years to become the world's largest market for air travel.

More than 1.26 billion passengers moved through Chinese airports in 2018, an increase of 10.2 percent compared to the previous year, according to official figures.

An improving safety record has no doubt helped fuel such traffic, and thousands more aircraft are expected to be needed by China to keep up with future growth.

"China is the largest user of new planes, new aircraft deliveries, so you will see them play an increasing role in terms of defining safety standards, in terms of end-user expectations," said Janardhanan.

China's stance on the 737 gives Beijing added leverage in its trade dispute with Washington.

Aircraft make up one of the biggest product segments in terms of US export value to China and it would not be difficult to see Beijing using the un-grounding of the 737 MAX 8 as a bargaining chip.

But China remains heavily dependent on jets from Boeingand Airbusand has excluded the US aircraft from the tariff war with the United States.

Longer term, China may be looking for a bigger voice in aviation to push its unproven domestically-made jets, but it will take "a decade at least" to see whether this will work, said Mann.

"Chinese civil aircraft and high-bypass engine technology have a long way to go to be globally competitive," he said.

 2019 AFP
Experts have called for a moratorium on clinical research with CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing. of the germline  that is changing heritable DNA in sperm, eggs or embryos to make genetically modified children. Credit: Shutterstock

In a newly published article in Nature, a group of prominent scientists and ethicists have called for a moratorium on clinical research using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing.

This moratorium deals with the use of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing of the germline changing heritable DNA in sperm, eggs or embryos to make genetically modified children.

In other words, this would be a temporary ban on experiments that might result in more "CRISPR babies."

The document was signed and authored by a number of prominent ethicists and scientists, including CRISPR pioneers Emmanuelle Charpentier (one of the co-discovers of the CRISPR/Cas9) and Feng Zhang (one of the first to use CRISPR in human cells), as well as geneticist Eric Lander and bioethicists Francoise Baylis and Jing-Bao Nie.

However, CRISPR researcher Jennifer Doudna (the other co-discoverer of the CRISPR/Cas9 system) refused to sign this call for a moratorium. She told The Washington Post: "My feeling is, this is effectively just rehashing what's been going on for several years."

This is a contentious point, as the word moratorium has been used sparsely by the scientists involved in this research. Many of the signatories have, however, been vocal about their views on germline gene editing in the past.

By asking for a global moratorium, the signatories do not mean a permanent ban, but rather, a temporary one to allow for the development of an international governance framework surrounding human germline genome editing. Specifically, they suggest a five-year moratorium, a period of time sufficient to allow critical conversations and stakeholder engagement.

Importantly, they are not calling for a unanimous decision among nations either. Countries would be allowed to come up with their own regulatory framework considering the ethical, scientific, technical and medical considerations of CRISPR/Cas9 germline gene editing.

Slowing down science for the common good

CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing has moved forward at unprecedented speed since CRISPR was first used in human cells in vitro in 2013 to claims of the birth of the first germline gene-edited babies in 2018. This is very concerning, especially when the medical need and social risks are still being debated and the safety and efficacy of the treatments are still largely unknown.

In our view, what the authors of the recent Nature editorial are asking for is Slow CRISPR Science. Slow Science a response to the increasing speed and corporate interest driving the scientific endeavour, and the "publish or perish paradigm" was built on concepts of the Slow Food movement.

Slow Food was a direct response to Fast Food, a system in which the environment, people and economies were often jeopardized at the expense of corporate interests that ostensibly provided quick and easy meals. Ideally, the Slow movement is not calling for "less productivity or efficiency" but for more thoughtful and engaging work be done in the food industry and in science.

In terms of gene editing, moving slow would mean perfecting non-heritable gene-editing techniques in patients before attempting ethically charged and technically more difficult heritable gene-editing clinical trials (which appear to be driven by profit or the need to be first, rather than societal need or the common good).

J. Benjamin Hurlbut, an associate professor of biology and society at Arizona State University, wrote in a Nature commentary in early January 2019: "To move forward in a positive direction, science must not presume to set the destination for a technology, but should follow the direction that we, the people, provide."

Slow CRISPR science would allow for proper consultation with appropriate stakeholders and the public before making the decision to move forward.

A divided scientific community

Scientific communities are not in agreement on the issue of a moratorium. In fact, a commentary published in Science in 2015 pushed for "a prudent path forward" and discussed what steps should be taken to ensure ethical and safe use of this technology.

However, the word moratorium was never used in this document. Further, many of the authors of the 2015 publication have shied away from a moratorium, with much of the organizing committee of the 2018 Human Genome Editing Summit (many of whom were also authors on the 2015 Science article) suggesting a "translational pathway" on human germline genome editing.

This is in direct conflict with the language in the concluding statement of the 2015 Human Gene Editing Summit that considered germline genome editing "irresponsible" until relevant safety and efficacy concerns were addressed and "broad societal consensus" was achieved.

Many have effectively skipped to the question of, "How we can do this," rather than, "Should we do this?"

Ultimately a period of time to pause and reflect would allow for citizens in each nation to have the important conversation of whether their society condones germline genome editing. Each society has to decide for themselves if the rewards outweigh the risks, informed by science but not dictated by it.

Time to get it right

For Canada, the moratorium will have little effect on CRISPR research activity as germline gene editing of embryos is already banned under the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act.

Clearly the stakes are high, and missteps in the early applications of CRISPR to human health may result in an all-out ban on this technology, which holds such incredible promise for alleviating human suffering by curing genetic disease.

Therefore, a prudent step in our view is to temporarily press pause on germline gene editing to allow deeper contemplation of the risks and benefits. In essence, this is what these scientists and ethicists are calling for in their proposed moratorium.

They are requesting time to pause and reflect. Time to conduct the appropriate consultations with relevant stakeholders, and (very importantly) the public in an attempt to achieve broad societal consensus. And finally, time to develop the most robust and precise gene-editing tools so that when we use CRISPR/Cas9 to rewrite the source code of humanity, we get it right.

Explore further Experts call for halt to CRISPR editing that allows gene changes to pass on to children

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new fingerprint technique capable of producing high-resolution images from the most challenging of metal surfaces, including knives and firearmsis already attracting interest from detectives working on cold cases.

Experts at the University of Nottingham in collaboration with the University of Derby, are using highly sensitive, non-destructive Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS) to develop high resolution fingerprint images from surfaces conventional fingerprint imaging fails to pick up at all.

The research, "Exposing latent fingermarks on problematic metal surfaces using time of flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy," has shown the technique is capable of revealing fingerprints in so much detail, defined ridge definition and the position and shape of the sweat pores are clearly visible. In samples stored under ambient conditions they were able to reproduce the fingerprint as long as 26 days after it was originally planted.

Dr. James Sharp, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham led the research. He said: "This raises the possibility of being able to reliably visualise fingerprints on surfaces previously thought to be devoid of such crucial evidence. ToF-SIMS imaging has the potential and could be a valuable tool in helping to visualise fingermarks on objects such as stainless-steel knife blades and firearms."

The fingerprint

In 1902 London burglar, Harry Jackson, became the first man in England to be convicted for a crime based on fingerprint evidence. Since then fingerprints have been regarded as indisputable evidence. But the case of Shirley McKei in 1999 showed that fingerprint evidence can be flawed.

Over the decades a multitude of techniques have been developed for enhancing the visualisation of hidden fingermarks. But substrates such as simple metals and alloys have stubbornly refused to give up their fingerprint secrets  until now.

Adam Long, Undergraduate Programme Coordinator for Forensic Science at the University of Derby, said: "Fingerprints are incredibly difficult to retrieve from metallic surfaces. This is mainly due to physical and environmental conditions that the prints may be exposed to at the crime scene, the age of the print, as well as how the developing agents react with the surface.

"A common example of the difficulties investigators face, comes from examining fired bullet casings. The high temperatures, pressure and friction caused when a bullet is fired makes fingerprints extremely fragile and this, combined with other factors, often results in their apparent removal or obliteration. This technique is non-destructive and can be used repeatedly to image fingerprint marks without compromising their quality."

The Study

The research team took fingermarks from six donors, every day for 14 days. The fingerprints were put on to disks of brass, aluminium and stainless steel and treated simultaneously so the effects of ageing could easily be determined.

The results showed that the fingerprints developed using traditional techniques were unreliable. Quality degraded after 8 days. Some prints were unrecognisable within 3 days, and one sample showed no results at all after the 14 days.

Being able to measure a mass of different molecules in an individual sample, the Ion beam from the ToF-SIMS technique was able to detect and visualise the fingerprint secretions in samples up to 26 days after they were taken  the first time this has ever been done.

The results were the same for all donors  irrespectively of gender, age and ethnicity.

The fingermarks used in this study were produced to contain consistent levels of eccrine and sebaceous secretions. However, real-world samples are likely to contain variable amounts of these deposits and further studies are required to demonstrate the applicability of ToF-SIMS to a broader range of fingermarks and samples surfaces.

Combination of expertise

Dr. Ian Turner, Associate Professor at the University of Derby said "This research project has shown the impact of combining the expertise of leading physicists and forensic scientists has had on developing fingermarks on this challenging surface."

This technique is of interest to the East Midlands Special Operations Unit  Forensic Services who helped develop the conventional marks used in the study.

Explore further We've discovered a way to recover DNA from fingerprints without destroying them

More information: Tshaiya Devi Thandauthapani et al. Exposing latent fingermarks on problematic metal surfaces using time of flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy, Science & Justice (2018). Tshaiya Devi Thandauthapani et al. Exposing latent fingermarks on problematic metal surfaces using time of flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy,(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.scijus.2018.08.004
Chin Wu, meteotsunami researcher with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Credit: University of Wisconsin-Madison

The storm on Lake Michigan lasted only 15 minutes, but the conditions it put into motion took seven lives.

It was the Fourth of July in 2003, near Warren Dunes State Park along the Michigan coast. People left the water during the storm, but once it passed and the sun came out several hours later, they thought it was safe to swim. They went back into the water even though no lifeguards were present and red flags flew their warning colors over the beaches.

In one case, members of a religious group drove 80 miles from Chicago to the beach. Under clear skies, many hit the water immediately. Several men and young boys went out deep, although they stayed within the swimming area buoy markers. Then they felt the strong current carrying them away from shore.

News accounts at the time called the current a riptide and undertow, but scientists now know it was a rip current. Two boys, ages 12 and 15, were in distress and a group of older men swam out to help them. The men pulled the 12-year-old to shore but were unable to rescue the 15-year-old. Two of the rescuers were pulled away by the current.

The young boy survived, but the older boy and the two rescuers drowned. On other parts of that Lake Michigan shoreline during the same timespan, four other people drowned in separate incidents over the deadly holiday.

These incidents came under scrutiny recently by Wisconsin Sea Grant scientists who are studying a storm-induced wave called a meteotsunami (a contraction of the term meteorological tsunami, which means a wave caused by weather).

Their results were published on Feb. 14 in Scientific Reports. The article, "Unexpected rip currents induced by a meteotsunami," details findings that the storm formed a moderate-height (less than 10 centimeters) meteotsunami, which is what went on to cause the unexpected rip currents.

Although these conditions may not be rare, this is the first time researchers have verified a meteotsunami-generated rip current (or meteo-rip, for short).

"No one in the world has ever documented this before," said Chin Wu, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Meteotsunamis are a new generation mechanism for rip currents."

Wu explained that rip currents formed by the one-time wave of a meteotsunami can last for hours afterward. Beachgoers need to be cautious even after a storm passes. "Please do not go back to the beach because that's the most dangerous time. The water might look calm, but underneath, there's a hidden danger," Wu said.

Eric Anderson, physical oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Great Lakes Environment Research Laboratory, is a member of the research team. The team was headed by Wu's Ph.D. student Alvaro Linares. "It wasn't explained before exactly what happened that day to connect all these different swimmers together into one event," Anderson said. "People maybe weren't even aware that a storm had passed a couple of hours earlier, and they decided to go to the beach because things had cleared up. They went in the water and this caught them off guard. When you see clear skies and calm conditions, you don't expect dangerous conditions on the shoreline.

"In this paper, we see how a relatively small wave height of the meteotsunami translates into dangerous currents. It comes from the wavelength being so long. The wave may be short but when it's a kilometer long, that's a lot of water that comes to the shore and then retreats back over a few minutes. When that much water moves that fast, you get some dangerous currents," Anderson said. The water pushed by the wave escaped the shore by forming rip current channels.

To document the meteo-rip formation, Linares, who recently graduated from UW-Madison and is now working for a consulting company in the United Kingdom, performed feats of forensic computing. Through powerful hydrodynamic modeling, he was able to reveal what was happening on the beaches at the time of the 2003 incidents, going from a grid scale of several kilometers down to one meter. He also used eyewitness reports of the events.

The National Weather Service (NWS) currently issues beach hazard statements, which include conditions for rip currents but not for meteotsunamis. This journal article has forecasters considering how to include this new type of hazard.

"As an operational forecaster for the National Weather Service, my thought is, how can I put this into action with a warning for people before the event?" said Robert Dukesherer, senior forecaster for the NWS in Grand Rapids, Michigan. "Meteotsunami-induced rip currents are something that will require an education effort and then we're going to need data in real-time to try to be able to forecast them while they're going on."

Megan Dodson, a NWS meteorologist in northern Indiana, said this study, "Gives us the green light to say, 'Yeah, we're pretty confident that meteotsunamis impact current development and we should issue a warning.' "

The 2003 events sparked Dodson's passion for studying rip currents. Both she and Dukesherer are involved in the Great Lakes Water Safety Consortium, which works to make people aware of rip currents and other beach hazards. She finds the study's results validating.

"We didn't even think rip currents could happen on the Great Lakes until the late 1990s," Dodson said. "It was the subject of debate all the way through the early 2000s. Even after we started doing the forecast warnings, not everybody was totally convinced that it was rip currents. A lot of people were saying it was just waves. So this study scientifically supports speculation of rip currents in the Great Lakes. Now we know there was something else going on!"

Public education is also needed on the topic, Wu said. "I believe that everyone should talk to their parents, to their people, about this. After a storm is the time we should pay great attention for rip currents. The highest risk occurs when people pay no attention."

Statistics from 2018 attest to the need for education about water safety. With 117 drownings, last summer was the deadliest on record for the Great Lakes, according to the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project.

Anderson thinks public understanding of meteotsunamis has progressed, but still faces challenges. "A lot of people picture those big tsunami waves from a Hollywood movie, and that's not what these things look like."

Dukesherer said many people mistake meteotsunamis for seiches. "They're two very distinct things. A seiche is a sloshing in a bathtub that is rhythmic. There's a rise and fall on each end. A meteotsunami is if you put your hand in a bathtub and just rammed it from one side to the other," Dukesherer said.

Explore further Pilot project to warn of potentially dangerous 'meteotsunami' waves in Great Lakes

More information: Alvaro Linares et al. Unexpected rip currents induced by a meteotsunami, Scientific Reports (2019). Journal information: Scientific Reports Alvaro Linares et al. Unexpected rip currents induced by a meteotsunami,(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-38716-2
The radio jet of the quasar 4C+19.44, powered by a supermassive black hole lying in the center of its host galaxy and shining at long radio wavelengths as seen by the LOFAR radio telescope (magenta). The background image shows neighboring galaxies in the visible light highlighted thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope (cyan and orange) having the radio jet passing into the dark voids of intergalactic space (Harris et al. 2019). Credit: NASA/HST/LOFAR; Courtesy of J. DePasquale

An international team of astrophysicists observed for the first time that the jet of a quasar is less powerful on long radio wavelengths than earlier predicted. This discovery gives new insights in the evolution of quasar jets. They made this observation using the international Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope, which produced high-resolution radio images of quasar 4C+19.44, located over 5 billion light-years from Earth.

Supermassive black holes many millions of times more massive than the sun reside in the central regions of galaxies. They grow even larger by attracting and consuming nearby gas and dust. If they consume material rapidly, the infalling matter shines brightly and the source is known as a quasar. Some of this infalling matter is not digested, but instead is ejected in the form of so-called jets that punch through the surrounding galaxy and into intergalactic space for millions of light years. These jets, shining brightly at radio wavelengths, are composed of particles accelerated up to nearly the speed of light, but exactly how these particles achieve energies not attainable on the Earth is yet to be completely solved.

The discovery on quasar 4C+19.44 gives new insights to the balance between the energy in the field surrounding the quasar and that residing in the quasar jet. This finding indicates the phenomenon arises from an intrinsic property of the source rather than absorption effects. It implies that the energy budget available to accelerate particles and the balance between energy stored in particles and in the magnetic field is less than expected.

"This is an important discovery that will be used for years to come to improve simulations of jets. We observed for the first time a new signature of particle acceleration in the power emitted by quasar jets at long radio wavelengthsan unexpected behaviour that changes our interpretation of their evolution," said Prof. Francesco Massaro from University of Turin. "This was already discovered in other cosmic sources, but it was never before observed in quasars."

The international team of astrophysicists observed the jet of the quasar 4C+19.44 at short radio wavelengths, in visible light, and X-ray wavelengths. The addition of the LOFAR images allowed astrophysicists to make this discovery. LOFAR is the first radio facility operating at long radio wavelengths, which produces sharp images with a resolution similar to that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

"We have been able to perform this experiment thanks to the highest resolution ever achieved at these long radio wavelengths, made possible by LOFAR." Said Dr. Adam Deller, an astrophysicist of the Swinburne University of Technology who contributed to the LOFAR data analysis and imaging of 4C +19.44 while at ASTRON in the Netherlands, heart of the LOFAR collaboration.

Dr. Raymond Oonk, an astronomer at ASTRON and Leiden University and Dr. Javier Moldon, astronomer at the University of Manchester, explained that "We have developed new calibration techniques for LOFAR and this has allowed us to separate compact radio structures in the quasar jet known as radio knots, and measure their emitted light. This result was unexpected, and demands deeper investigations. New insights and clues on particle acceleration will come soon, thanks to the international stations of LOFAR."

The observation performed on the radio jet of 4C+19.44 was designed by Dr. D. E. Harris, supervisor of Prof. Francesco Massaro, while working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics several years ago. He performed the observation in collaboration with Dr. Raffaella Morganti and his friends and colleagues at ASTRON. He only got the opportunity to see preliminary results, as he passed away on 6 December 2015. This publication, published in the first March issue of the Astrophysical Journal, is in memory of his career, which spanned much of the history of radio astronomy.

Explore further Astronomers publish sky map of thousands of newly discovered galaxies

More information: D. E. Harris et al. LOFAR Observations of 4C+19.44: On the Discovery of Low-frequency Spectral Curvature in Relativistic Jet Knots, The Astrophysical Journal (2019). Journal information: Astrophysical Journal D. E. Harris et al. LOFAR Observations of 4C+19.44: On the Discovery of Low-frequency Spectral Curvature in Relativistic Jet Knots,(2019). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab01ff
This photo of Ceres and the bright regions in Occator Crater was one of the last views NASA's Dawn spacecraft transmitted before it depleted its remaining hydrazine and completed its mission. This view, which faces south, was captured on 1 September 2018 at an altitude of 3 370 km as the spacecraft was ascending in its elliptical orbit. At its lowest point, the orbit dipped down to only about 35 km, which allowed Dawn to acquire very high-resolution images in this final phase of its mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The mission to the smallest asteroid ever explored will employ the same main camera as the mission to the largest asteroids of all. ESA's proposed Hera spacecraft to the Didymos asteroid pair has inherited its main imager from NASA's Dawn mission to the Vesta and Ceres asteroids.

Hera is currently the subject of detailed design work, ahead of being presented to Europe's space ministers at the Space19+ Ministerial Council at the end of this year, for launch in late 2023. The spacecraft will survey a tiny 160-m diameter moon of the 780-m diameter Didymos asteroid, in the aftermath of a pioneering planetary defence experiment.

But the Asteroid Framing Camera (AFC) Hera will use to navigate through space and survey its targeted double asteroids is already built and ready. Two of these cameras  Hera will carry a pair, for redundancy  are sitting in protective nitrogen gas inside a clean room in Gottingen, Germany.

"The AFC was designed specifically for NASA's Dawn mission to the two largest bodies in the Asteroid belt: Vesta, at 525 km across, and 946 km diameter Ceres," explains Holger Sierks of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

"There was no other camera aboard the spacecraft so the AFC had a mission-critical role, being employed both for navigation and scientific investigation.

Hera mission. Credit: ESA/ScienceOffice.org

"The AFC worked like Swiss clockwork throughout Dawn's 11-year lifetime. Before Dawn finally ended in November 2018 the spacecraft came as close as 30 km from the surface of Ceres, and returned spectacular views of its striking bright spots.

"At the same time the camera, equipped with seven spectral filters from the visible to the near-infrared, was able to gather spectral information on these formations, as well as the rest of the asteroids. An eighth clear filter was used when the AFC was employed for navigation purposes and for broadband surface science."

Two AFC flight units were supplied to NASA by the Institute, in cooperation with the DLR German Aerospace Center and the Technical University of Braunschweig's Institute of Computer and Network Engineering. A spare camera was built and kept at the Institute to replace a flight unit if needed.

"We still had spare, flight quality subsystems including the optics that we could integrate into a full camera, so ended up with two flight ready spares on the shelf," adds Holger. "We wanted to find a flight use for them, and decided we should contribute these fully mission proven cameras to Europe's next asteroid mission free of charge."

NASA's Dawn spacecraft arrived at the giant asteroid Vesta on 15 July 15, 2011 and departed for its second target, Ceres, on 4 September 2012 using its ion propulsion system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The 5.5 kg AFC resembles a computer printer-sized box containing power and mass memory with a thermally insulated telescope extending out from it. Maximum image sensitivity is ensured by cooling the telescope's CCD light detector down to -60 C.

One qualification model camera has already been lent to GMV in Spain as they develop autonomous navigation systems for Hera. This allows the team to test their feature-detecting algorithms with the same hardware as will actually be flown.

While the AFC was designed specifically for Vesta and Ceres, Holger explains the camera is also a very good fit for Hera  especially with its dual science and navigation functionality: "When we designed it, those two asteroids were only known to us as little dots in the sky, just a few pixels across at best using the Hubble Space Telescope, like the Didymos system today. The camera's optics  the work of the Kayser-Threde company in Munich, now owned by OHB  are distortion free with a sharp focus, right down to 150 m from the target surface."

The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research also built the Rosetta comet chaser's main Osiris science imager, so has plenty of experience in imaging distant planetoids close up. "These bodies would be dark like charcoal to the human eye, so it takes highly sensitive detectors and carefully judged exposure times to see what we see."

Hera's planetary defence purpose feels personal to Holger and the rest of the Institute team. The team recently met in the German town of Nordlingen, located inside a 24-km diameter crater, formed by an impacting binary asteroid just like Didymos and its moon an estimated 14 million years ago.

The Asteroid Framing Camera provided to NASA's Dawn mission by the DLR German Aerospace Center. Hera is planned to use a flight-spare of the AFC. Credit: DLR

The Asteroid Framing Camera is equipped with seven spectral filters from the visible to the near-infrared, to gather spectral information on its target bodies. An eighth clear filter was used when the AFC was employed for navigation purposes and for broadband surface science. Credit: MPS

Explore further Close encounters: planning for extra Hera flyby
Expansion of transposable elements explains genetic paradox of biological invasion. Credit: IBCAS

Species often experience a genetic bottleneck that diminishes genetic variation after speciation or introduction into a new area. Though bottlenecks in population size always reduce fitness and evolutionary potential, introduced species often become invasive. This is known as the genetic paradox of invasion.

Now, a research group led by Prof. Guo Yalong from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS), together with SONG Ge, and Sureshkumar Balasubramanian from the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Australia, has revealed that transposable element (TE) insertions could potentially help species with limited genetic variation adapt to novel environments.

To evaluate how TE insertions drive rapid phenotypic variation and help plants adapt to new environments, the researchers compared an annual and inbreeding forb (Brassicaceae), Capsella rubella, to its outcrossing sister species Capsella grandiflora.

They found that transposable elements (TEs) are highly enriched in the gene promoter regions of C. rubella compared with its outcrossing sister species C. grandiflora.

Interestingly, they found that a number of polymorphic TEs in C. rubella are associated with changes in gene expression, including TEs inserted into the FLOWERING LOCUS C gene, which is one of the key determinant genes of flowering time.

Intriguingly, the accessions with TE insertion are early flowering and distributed in the southernmost habitat of this species, around the Mediterranean region. This region has a Mediterranean climate and is characterized by high precipitation, warm winters, and dry, hot summers.

These results indicate that the genetic variation caused by the expansion of TEs can help species quickly adapt to new habitats. Its influence on adaptive traits could account for the genetic paradox of biological invasion to some extent.

This study was published in PNAS on March 15 and was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Innovative Academy of Seed Design, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences President's International Fellowship for Visiting Scientists, and the Monash University Larkins Fellowship.

Explore further Getting more mileage from microsatellites

More information: Xiao-Min Niu et al, Transposable elements drive rapid phenotypic variation in Capsella rubella, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Xiao-Min Niu et al, Transposable elements drive rapid phenotypic variation in Capsella rubella,(2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1811498116
A group of more than 110 Danish tourists have returned to the scene of the murder of the two Scandinavian hikers that was perpetrated in Imlil last December with the aim to show the world that Morocco is a moderate country, open to other religions.

On December 17, the mountainous locality of Imlil was shaken by a terrible tragedy: Two Scandinavian tourists, Louisa Jespersen fom Denmark and Maren Ueland from Norway, were savagely murdered by four individuals.

Louisa Jespersen, who was 24, and 28-year-old Maren Ueland had arrived on a month-long holiday in Morocco on December 9 and had travelled to the foothills of Mount Toubkal, North Africas highest peak.

However, the gruesome murder of the two hikers did not tarnish Moroccos reputation as a safe and stable country and tour operators had then recorded no cancellations.

Three months after this tragedy, a group of more than 110 Danish tourists is currently visiting the region, reports local Al Ahdath Al Maghribia daily in its Tuesday issue.

According to the daily, the Scandinavian tourists, who are almost of the same age as the victims, wanted to return to the scene of the crime to demonstrate that Morocco is one of the most open and moderate countries in the region, tolerant towards other religions and welcoming for tourists.

Al Ahdath added that local authorities in Al Haouz province have warmly welcomed the delegation and put in place a reinforced security system to accompany the visitors throughout their stay.

Few days after the murder, 14 suspects were arrested, including four suspected of having taken part in the assassination of the two Scandinavian tourists. The Four suspects, aged between 25 and 33, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in a video made a week before the crime. Nine other individuals were arrested in several cities in Morocco for alleged links to the murderers.

A Swiss national was also arrested for alleged links with certain suspects.
Non-native dung beetle species (Onthophagus nuchicornis) Credit: Matthew Jones, Washington State University

Food safety regulations increasingly pressure growers to remove hedgerows, ponds and other natural habitats from farms to keep out pathogen-carrying wildlife and livestock. Yet, this could come at the cost of biodiversity.

New research published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology encourages the presence of dung beetles and soil bacteria at farms as they naturally suppress E. coli and other harmful pathogens before spreading to humans.

Wild and domesticated pig faeces have been known to contaminate produce in the field, leading to foodborne illnesses. Wild, or feral, pigs especially pose a risk of moving around pathogens as farmers cannot control where or when these large animals might show up.

Matthew Jones, who led the research as part of his Ph.D. project at Washington State University, said: "Farmers are more and more concerned with food safety. If someone gets sick from produce traced back to a particular farm it can be devastating for them."

"As a result, many remove natural habitats from their farm fields to discourage visits by livestock or wildlife, making the farmland less hospitable to pollinators and other beneficial insects or birds", he added.

Dung beetles bury faeces below ground and make it difficult for pathogens to survive. To study how this may aid food safety, the entomologist drove a van full of pig faeces along the US West Coast to follow the planting of broccoli at 70 farm fields during the growing season. Broccoli, much like leafy greens, is susceptible to faecal contamination due to its proximity to the ground and the likelihood of humans consuming it without cooking.

The pig faeces were used to attract dung beetles and see how quickly they would clean up. The experiment was carried out at conventional and organic farms, and farms with or without livestock.

The organic farms seemed to attract a diverse range of dung beetle species that were most effective at keeping foodborne pathogens at bay. At conventional fields or those surrounded by pastureland, a less effective and accidentally introduced species (Onthophagus nuchicornis) outweighed the number of native dung beetles.

"We found that organic farms generally fostered dung beetle species that removed the faeces more rapidly than was seen on conventional farms", said Professor William Snyder of Washington State University.

Dung beetles likely kill harmful bacteria when they consume and bury the faeces. Previous research also suggested that these beetles have antibiotic-like compounds on their body.

To validate these findings, the researchers exposed the three most common species found in the field survey to pig faeces contaminated with E. coli. A 7-day laboratory experiment revealed that Onthophagus taurus and Onthophagus nuchicornis, both of which bury faeces as part of their breeding behaviour, reduced E. coli numbers by > 90% and < 50% respectively.

They also found that organic farming encouraged higher biodiversity among soil bacteria, which decreased the survival of pathogens.

"Bacteria are known to poison and otherwise fight among themselves and the same may be happening here", said Snyder.

These results suggest dung beetles and soil bacteria may improve the natural suppression of human pathogens on farms, making a case for reduced insecticide use and the promotion of greater plant and insect diversity.

"Wildlife and livestock are often seen as something that endanger food safety, but our research shows that reducing on-farm biodiversity might be totally counterproductive", Jones concluded.

"Nature has a 'clean-up crew' of dung beetles and bacteria that quickly remove faeces and the pathogens within them, it appears. So, it might be better to encourage these beneficial insects and microbes."

Explore further Long-term use of some pesticides is killing off dung beetle populations

More information: Jones MS, Fu Z, Reganold JP, et al. Organic farming promotes biotic resistance to foodborne human pathogens. J Appl Ecol. 2019;00:1-11. Journal information: Journal of Applied Ecology Jones MS, Fu Z, Reganold JP, et al. Organic farming promotes biotic resistance to foodborne human pathogens.2019;00:1-11. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.13365
Ryugu is a C-type asteroid -- rich in carbon -- about 900m wide. Credit:  2019 Seiji Sugita et al., Science

The first data received from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Ryugu is helping space scientists explore conditions in the early solar system. The space probe gathered vast amounts of images and other data providing researchers clues about Ryugu's history, such as how it may have formed from a larger parent body. These details in turn allow scientists to better estimate quantities and types of materials essential for life that were present as Earth formed.

"The ground shook. My heart pounded. The clock counted three, two, one, liftoff!" said Professor Seiji Sugita of the University of Tokyo's Department of Earth and Planetary Science. "I've never felt so excited and nervous at the same timethat wasn't just another science experiment on top of that rocket. That was the culmination of my life's work and the hopes and dreams of my entire team."

On Wednesday, 3 December 2014, an orange and white rocket over 50 meters tall weighing almost 300 tons launched from Tanegashima Space Center in South West Japan and successfully sent the Hayabusa2 spacecraft hurtling into space. Its carefully calculated trajectory swung Hayabusa2 round the Earth to pick up speed so it could reach its destination in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The target was the asteroid Ryugu, and Hayabusa2 arrived on schedule on Wednesday, 27 June 2018.

Since then, the spacecraft has used a wide range of cameras and instruments to collect images and data about Ryugu, which it continually sends to researchers back on Earth. It has even made a brief soft landing in preparation for a second during which it will collect loose surface materialregolithto return to Earth. Scientists will have to wait until 2020 before that sample returns, but researchers are far from idle in the meantime.

Ryugu has an unusually low albedo, or reflectance, of 2 percent, so to our eyes it is blacker than coal.Hayabusa2's cameras are especially sensitive in order to resolve fine details. Credit:  2019 Seiji Sugita et al., Science

"Just a few months after we received the first data, we have already made some tantalising discoveries," said Sugita. "The primary one being the amount of water, or lack of it, Ryugu seems to possess. It's far dryer than we expected, and given that Ryugu is quite young (by asteroid standards) at around 100 million years old, this suggests its parent body was largely devoid of water, too."

According to colleagues of Sugita writing in a companion paper, various instruments on Hayabusa2 including a visible-light camera and a near-infrared spectrometer confirm the lack of water. This fact is important as it's thought all of Earth's water, including that comprising 70 percent of the human body, came from local asteroids, distant comets and the nebula or dust cloud that became the sun. The presence of dry asteroids in the asteroid belt would change models used to describe the chemical composition of the early solar system. But why does this matter?

"Life," explained Sugita. "This has implications for finding life. There are uncountably many solar systems out there and the search for life beyond ours needs direction. Our findings can refine models that could help limit which kinds of solar systems the search for life should target."

But there's more to this than water; other compounds crucial to life exist in asteroids, and Ryugu has some surprises here, too. To understand why, it's important to know that Hayabusa2 is not the only terrestrial robot out there exploring asteroids right now. In 2016, NASA launched OSIRIS-REx, which arrived at its target asteroid Bennu on 3 December 2018, four years to the day from the launch of Hayabusa2.

It is unclear how Ryugu's parent body became so dehydrated. It's possible it was internally heated by radioactive materials, or suffered prolonged bombardments by other rocky bodies. Credit:  2019 Seiji Sugita et al., Science

The two projects are not in competition, but actively share information and data that could help one another. Researchers compare their asteroids to learn even more than would be possible if they could only probe one. Although alike in most ways, Bennu and Ryugu differ significantly in some areas. They are both extremely dark, have spinning-top-like shapes and are covered in large boulders, but Ryugu contains far less water. This discrepancy has researchers scratching their heads.

"I hoped the surface of Ryugu had more variety as previous ground-based observations had suggested. But every surface feature and boulder on Ryugu seems to be like every other, showing the same scarcity of water," said Sugita. "However, what felt limiting is now enlightening; Ryugu's homogeneity demonstrates the capacity of our instruments to capture nuanced data. It also serves as a necessary constant to compare subsequent data against. So much of science is about controlling variables and Ryugu does this for us."

As Hayabusa2 continues to explore our little rocky neighbour, researchers are gradually piecing together its history, which is entwined with our own. Sugita and his colleagues believe Ryugu comes from a parent asteroid several tens of kilometers wide, most likely in the asteroid families Polana or Eulalia.

"Thanks to the parallel missions of Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, we can finally address the question of how these two asteroids came to be," concludes Sugita. "That Bennu and Ryugu may be siblings, yet exhibit some strikingly different traits, implies there must be many exciting and mysterious astronomical processes we have yet to explore."

The research results are published in a trio of papers in Science.

Explore further Touchdown: Japan probe Hayabusa2 lands on distant asteroid

More information: S. Sugita, E. Tatsumi, T. Okada, K. Yoshioka, Y. Cho, H. Miyamoto, R. Hemmi, S. Tachibana, C. Sugimoto, N. Takaki, Y. Suzuki, H. Kamiyoshihara, M. Okada, Y. Oki, Y. Takao, et al. The geomorphology, color, and thermal properties of Ryugu: Implications for parent-body processes. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw0422 S. Sugita, E. Tatsumi, T. Okada, K. Yoshioka, Y. Cho, H. Miyamoto, R. Hemmi, S. Tachibana, C. Sugimoto, N. Takaki, Y. Suzuki, H. Kamiyoshihara, M. Okada, Y. Oki, Y. Takao, et al. The geomorphology, color, and thermal properties of Ryugu: Implications for parent-body processes. S. Watanabe, E. Tatsumi, S. Sugita, S. Tachibana, et al. Quest for samples from reshaped rubble-pile asteroid 162173 Ryugu by Hayabusa2. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aav8032 K. Kitazato, E. Tatsumi, T. Okada, S. Sugita, K. Yoshioka, Y. Cho, et al. The surface composition of asteroid 162173 Ryugu from Hayabusa2 near-infrared spectroscopy. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aav7432 O. S. Barouin, S. Sugita, et al. Shape of (101955) Bennu indicative of a rubble pile with internal stiffness. Nature Geoscience. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0330-x Journal information: Science , Nature Geoscience
Many insects species require pristine environments, including old-growth forests. Credit: Atte Komonen

Amidst worldwide publicity and talks about 'Insectageddon': the extinction of 40% of the world's insects, as estimated in a recent scientific review, a critical response was published in the open-access journal Rethinking Ecology.

Query- and geographically-biased summaries; mismatch between objectives and cited literature; and misuse of existing conservation data have all been identified in the alarming study, according to Drs Atte Komonen, Panu Halme and Janne Kotiaho of the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). Despite the claims of the review paper's authors that their work serves as a wake-up call for the wider community, the Finnish team explain that it could rather compromise the credibility of conservation science.

The first problem about the paper, titled "Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers" and published in the journal Biological Conservation, is that its authors have queried the Web of Science database specifically using the keywords "insect", "decline" and "survey".

"If you search for declines, you will find declines. We are not questioning the conclusion that insects are declining," Komonen and his team point out, "but we do question the rate and extent of declines."

The Finnish research team also note that there are mismatches between methods and literature, and misuse of IUCN Red List categories. The review is criticised for grouping together species, whose conservation status according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is Data Deficient with those deemed Vulnerable. By definition, there are no data for Data Deficient species to assess their declines.

Many butterflies have declined globally. Scolitantides orion, for example, is an endangered species in Finland. Credit: Atte Komonen

In addition, the review paper is seen to use "unusually forceful terms for a peer-reviewed scientific paper," as the Finnish researchers quote a recent news story published in The Guardian. Having given the words dramatic, compelling, extensive, shocking, drastic, dreadful, devastating as examples, they add that that such strong intensifiers "should not be acceptable" in research articles.

"As actively popularising conservation scientists, we are concerned that such development is eroding the importance of the biodiversity crisis, making the work of conservationists harder, and undermining the credibility of conservation science," the researchers explain the motivation behind their response.

More information: Atte Komonen et al, Alarmist by bad design: Strongly popularized unsubstantiated claims undermine credibility of conservation science, Rethinking Ecology (2019). Journal information: Biological Conservation Atte Komonen et al, Alarmist by bad design: Strongly popularized unsubstantiated claims undermine credibility of conservation science,(2019). DOI: 10.3897/rethinkingecology.4.34440
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new study has revealed that the language used by the global climate change watchdog, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is overly conservative  and therefore the threats are much greater than the Panel's reports suggest.

Published in the journal BioScience, the team of scientists from the University of Adelaide, Flinders University, the University of Bristol (UK), and the Spanish National Research Council has analysed the language used in the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (from 2014).

"We found that the main message from the reportsthat our society is in climate emergencyis lost by overstatement of uncertainty and gets confused among the gigabytes of information," says lead author Dr. Salvador Herrando-Perez, from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.

"The IPCC supports the overwhelming scientific consensus about human impact on climate change, so we would expect the reports' vocabulary to be dominated by greater certainty on the state of climate sciencebut this is not the case."

The IPCC assigns a level of certainty to climate findings using five categories of confidence and ten categories of probability. The team found the categories of intermediate certainty predominated, with those of highest certainty barely reaching 8% of the climate findings evaluated.

"The accumulation of uncertainty across all elements of the climate-change complexity means that the IPCC tends to be conservative," says co-author Professor Corey Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Fellow in Global Ecology at Flinders University. "The certainty is in reality much higher than even the IPCC implies, and the threats are much worse."

"Uncertainty is to science what the score is to musicbut it's a two-edged sword: what the IPCC and the majority of the scientific community regard as a paradigm of rigour and transparency is exactly what the 'merchants of doubt' put forward as a weakness," says Dr. Herrando-Perez.

"However, climatic uncertainties are nothing but an expression of the climate risks we face, and should inspire action rather than indifference."

The team says the IPCC reports should incorporate a clear connection between the certainty of thousands of scientific findings and the certainty that humans are vastly altering the Earth's climate. The team recommends a new IPCC working group of communication specialists to oversee the language and effective dissemination, and convey the message accurately.

"Our evolutionary history tells us Earth will ultimately survive more aridity, more hurricanes, more floods, more sea-level rise, more extinctions and degraded ecosystems, but our society as we know it today might not unless we clearly articulate the magnitude of the threat it poses," says Dr. Herrando-Perez.

Explore further Language about climate change differs between proponents and skeptics

More information: Salvador Herrando-Perez et al. Statistical Language Backs Conservatism in Climate-Change Assessments, BioScience (2019). Journal information: BioScience Salvador Herrando-Perez et al. Statistical Language Backs Conservatism in Climate-Change Assessments,(2019). DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biz004
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

'Dead zones' could become increasingly common in lakes in future due to climate change, reducing fish numbers and releasing toxic substances into drinking water.

Scientists at the University of Reading have warned that warming of the climate in the years to come will inhibit movement of water within some lakes, due to surface temperature increases and reduction in winter ice cover. This would leave deeper areas of those lakes devoid of oxygen that is essential for supporting ecosystems.

The study looked at water mixing patterns in 635 large lakes around the world and found climate change would disrupt mixing in around 100 of them by the end of the century. Many lakes would mix less frequently, with some experiencing no mixing at all throughout the year.

Dr Iestyn Woolway, lead author of the study in the University of Reading's Department of Meteorology, said: "A lack of oxygen in deep waters can have a detrimental effect on fish habitats and even lead to dead zones that cannot support life. Added to this is the potential for poisonous substances to be released into water we drink by algae that flourish at the surface in the warmer conditions. Analysis of how climate change will affect lakes shows clearly the threat to animals and humans in the not-so-distant future."

The scientists used a model to assess the impact on lake mixing regimes under two climate scenarios projected for the 21st century. The first, 'best case' scenario assumes global greenhouse gas emissions will peak between 2010-2020 and then decline, while the second, worst-case scenario assumes emissions peak around 2080 before declining.

Under the higher temperature rise scenario, around a quarter of lakes currently covered by ice in the winter would become permanently ice-free by 2080-2100. For the most-affected lakes, surface water temperatures were projected to warm by up to 5.5C.

Lake mixing, which is influenced by water temperatures and wind, is important to transport nutrients up from deep water to support near-surface ecosystems. Some lakes mix a regular number of times each year, while shallower lakes can be mixing constantly and others not at all  producing vertical layers of water at different temperatures and quality.

Lakes with reduced ice cover warm more quickly in the spring, leading to reduced oxygen levels and potentially harmful algal blooms, which can release phosphorus, ammonium and poisonous metals into the water. Both of which could occur earlier in the year, threatening more fish and humans.

A previous study, led by York University in Toronto and co-authored by Dr Woolway from Reading, found many more lakes worldwide would become ice-free in the winter due to climate change. It concluded that 35,000 more lakes would experience intermittent ice if global temperature rise was limited to 2C, affecting hundreds of millions of people who live close to them.

Professor Chris Merchant, co-author of the study at the University of Reading and NERC National Centre for Earth Observation, said: "Not all lakes that are projected to see temperature rises will experience a change in mixing regimes, but global warming will affect lakes across the world, and consequently the countless animals, organisms and people that depend on them."

Explore further As the climate warms, tens of thousands of lakes may spend winters ice free

More information: Sapna Sharma et al. Widespread loss of lake ice around the Northern Hemisphere in a warming world, Nature Climate Change (2019). Sapna Sharma et al. Widespread loss of lake ice around the Northern Hemisphere in a warming world,(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0393-5 Woolway, R I, Merchant, C J (2019). 'Worldwide alteration of lake mixing regimes in response to climate change'. Nature Geoscience. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0322-x Journal information: Nature Geoscience , Nature Climate Change
Morgridge Postdoctoral Fellow Rory Power inspects the first iteration of the Flamingo microscope, which at a little over 40 pounds can be mailed to biology labs around the globe. Credit: Jan Huisken, Morgridge Institute for Research

An invention designed to transform how and where high-powered research microscopes are deployedand who gets to use themwill make its way from Madison this spring to the fertile biology labs of greater Boston.

A portable, shareable scientific microscope nicknamed Flamingo, created in 2018 by imaging pioneer Jan Huisken of the Morgridge Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will make its cross-country journey thanks to support announced today (March 19) by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).

Huisken's vision is to redesign a high-end optical microscopenormally big enough to fill an entire roomdown to the dimensions of a suitcase, with minimal loss of power or precision. It's capable of being shipped to interested research partners in a lab or in the field, configured to meet specific needs, then shipped on to the next bright idea.

The roughly $1 million CZI grant will support a Morgridge Institute scientist embedded for five years in the Boston area, making connections with biologists at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other research centers. Created in 2015 by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, CZI's mission is to find new ways to leverage technology, community-driven solutions, and collaboration to accelerate progress in science, education, and justice.

Michael Weber has been hired as the project's field application specialist in Boston.

"We're turning the idea of a research imaging facility upside down," says Weber. "We want to bring the microscope as close to the sample as possible, rather than biologists bringing their delicate samples to us."

Medical engineer Jan Huisken holds a tank of zebrafish at the Morgridge Institute for Research. Zebrafish are a commonly used model in science, and Huisken's work has a special focus on the cardiovascular system and endoderm. Credit: Morgridge Institute for Research

Huisken, visiting professor of UW-Madison integrative biology, says the new approach could bring transformative benefits to the study of basic biology. The Flamingo Project will allow scientists to do studies on living organisms without disturbing the specimen, or do studies right in their native environments. It also may help democratize expensive high-end microscopy, bringing it cost-free to campuses and labs where access may be scarce.

"We think this will be especially useful for reproducing scientific results, something increasingly important to science," Huisken says. "When anyone publishes a paper that used Flamingo to produce data, another scientist can request a Flamingo and reproduce that same project."

Huisken is co-inventor of light sheet microscopy, in which a thin laser light sheet selectively illuminates samples in 3-D, giving scientists the ability to image samples over hours or days from every angle. This generates a tremendous amount of data quickly and gives researchers a view of embryonic development without harming the specimen. Flamingo brings this technology in a compact frame.

It's a widely used technology for those who study zebrafish, a model organism that provides a spectacular window into early embryonic development. Scientists can see the earliest formations of organs and even follow cell-by-cell development. Vertebrate model organisms like zebrafish are critical to helping understand human development.

A video from Huisken's zebrafish lab on neural development recently won the 2018 Nikon Small World in Motion award: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQLsyf64xak

Huisken says he hopes Flamingo access also will open imaging opportunities to new species. For example, it could be deployed to marine biology labs that study rare aquatic life, or to a lab studying a local endangered species. Any relatively small critter could be a candidate.

Pictured is the heart of a living, 2-day-old zebrafish with the membranes of heart muscle cells shown in blue and their nuclei in red, provided by CZI Imaging Scientist Michael Weber of the Morgridge Institute for Research. The heart is about 200 micrometers (akin to a thick human hair). Scientists study animals like zebrafish -- a tropical fish sporting horizontal blue stripes -- to learn about human diseases. Credit: Michael Weber, Morgridge Institute for Research

"I love being able to record and study the behavior and function of living organismswithout harming them and without them realizing that they're being observed," adds Weber, who before joining Flamingo was a postdoc in Harvard's Nikon Imaging Center.

The Boston partnership will help establish proof of concept for the traveling microscope, where Huisken hopes for a mix of easy imaging tasks to "projects where we have no idea if it's going to work."

Huisken says they hope to later make increasing access part of the selection process. "I'd like someone from a small college to email me and say, 'I have this crazy idea, what do you think?' We get them an instrument and they start doing science they could never otherwise do."

Huisken also sees potential in deploying Flamingo as a research education tool. He notes the Marine Biological Laboratory at nearby Woods Hole, Mass., and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, train hundreds of graduate students and postdocs annually in advanced research methods. Flamingo would be right at home in such a world, he says.

While the Huisken lab current has one operational Flamingo, the plan is to build multiple microscopes to expand their use base. The team may also partner with overseas physics labs who could build and distribute Flamingoes in their countries. The lab has ongoing fundraising efforts to support the project.
The asteroid Bennu as seen by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The flying saucer-like shape of Bennu is generated, in part, by its spin. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Arizona

Research led by the University of Colorado Boulder is revealing the Alice in Wonderland-like physics that govern gravity near the surface of the asteroid Bennu.

The new findings are part of a suite of papers published today by the team behind NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission. And they come just three months after OSIRIS-REx first encountered Bennu on Dec. 3, 2018.

Since then, the spacecraft has completed a few dozen laps around the asteroid, which is about as tall as the Empire State Building, circling Bennu from a distance of about a mile. And those early circuits are giving scientists a whole new look at this mysterious rock, said CU Boulder's Daniel Scheeres, who leads the mission's radio science team.

In research appearing in Nature Astronomy, for example, his team reports the mass of that asteroid: a respectable 73 billion kilograms.

But Scheeres and his colleagues are also working to develop a map of the asteroid's gravitational pull. Their findings suggest that Bennu exists in a delicate balance between two competing forces, the result of the asteroid's wild spin. Bennu completes a full revolution about once every four hours.

And, Scheeres said, those forces could play an important role in the asteroid's long-term evolutionand potential demise.

"When you spin this guy up, you create a competition between the gravity that's holding you down and the centrifugal acceleration, which is trying to throw you off," said Scheeres, distinguished professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences who leads the mission's radio science team.

To study those forces, Scheeres and his colleagues use OSIRIS-REx's navigational instruments to measure the minute tug that the asteroid exerts on the spacecraft.

And they dug up more than they expected. Based on the group's calculations, the region around Bennu's equator is trapped within a gravitational feature called a rotational Roche lobesomething that scientists had not yet clearly observed on an asteroid.

In practice, that feature gets weird. If you were standing inside the boundaries of Bennu's Roche lobe and slipped on a banana peel, for example, not much would happenyou'd be captured by the lobe and fall back to the surface.

"But if you were outside of the Roche lobe and slipped on a banana peel, you would roll toward the equator," Scheeres said. "And you could gain enough energy so that you'd roll off the equator and maybe up into orbit and then out into space."

It sounds like the sort of environment that Lewis Carroll could appreciate. But it also matters for the lifespan of Bennu, he added.

That's because radiation from the sun is causing Bennu to spin faster and faster over time. And as the asteroid's whirling builds up speed, its Roche lobe might also be shrinking, along with the forces that are holding Bennu together.

"As that Roche lobe narrows further and further around the equator, it becomes easier and easier for this asteroid to lose material," Scheeres said. "So far, that material has been trapped by gravity, but at some point, if the asteroid keeps spinning faster, then you fall off the cliff."

In other words, Bennu could be in the process of spinning itself into oblivion.

Understanding those physics matters for advance OSIRIS-REx's scientific mission, too, said Jay McMahon, an assistant professor in aerospace engineering and a co-author of the new study.

He explained that in 2020, mission scientists will nudge OSIRIS-REx to within a few feet of Bennu, using the spacecraft's retractable arm to collect a sample of material from the surface. And to do that safely, they will need to know the rock's physics inside and out.

"You need to know the gravitational field for spacecraft operations, really to enable all the other science," McMahon said.

"When you're going to a new world, you have some idea of what it might look like," Scheeres said. "Then you actually go there, and you can start comparing what you thought it might look like versus reality."

Explore further Taking the measure of an asteroid

More information: The dynamic geophysical environment of (101955) Bennu based on OSIRIS-REx measurements, www.nature.com/articles/s41550-019-0721-3 Journal information: Nature Astronomy The dynamic geophysical environment of (101955) Bennu based on OSIRIS-REx measurements, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-019-0721-3
Credit: University of Kansas

The conclusion of a second Trump-Kim summit with no North Korean opening to the West puts an even greater premium on the research that Maya Stiller, University of Kansas assistant professor of the history of art, has been able to do inside the hermit kingdom, and about which she continues to publish.

In a forthcoming article in the 2019 edition of Cahiers d'Extreme-Asie (Journal of the Far East), a bilingual journal published by Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient (the French School of the Far East) in Paris, Stiller writes about medieval Buddhist practices revealed in a sacred mountain range just north of today's Demilitarized Zone. She outlines the burial of a number of small sculptures of buddhas and bodhisattvas (i.e., deities and near-deities), along with their likely origin and purpose.

The range is called Kumgangsan, or the Diamond Mountains, and Stiller visited there in 2008 and again in 2014, taking thousands of photos of ancient rock carvings and Buddhist monasteries.

Kumgangsan was open to a limited number of South Korean tourists between 1998 and 2008 under an arrangement between the North Korean government and the South Korean industrial conglomerate Hyundai, Stiller said. She visited under that program just a few days before it was shut down after North Korean soldiers shot to death a South Korean tourist under mysterious circumstances.

Stiller returned in 2014 by booking an individual tour with United Kingdom-based travel agency Koryo Tours, which specializes in travel to North Korea, to do further research in an area that was not open to tourism, even during the 1998-2008 period.

She says Kumgangsan is a popular topic in Korean art history, the subject of many paintings, travelers' stories and even songs. She became interested in the general topic, and then in the mountain's role as a Buddhist pilgrimage site in pre-modern Korea. She's working on a book about her discoveries.

"There was no North Korea prior to 1948," Stiller said. "Korea was just one peninsula with one culture, and so you have got to look at this from a holistic perspective."

In her most recent article, Stiller focuses on a series of small sculptures of religious figures  smaller than Barbie dolls  placed into ceramic jars and buried in niches in the Kumgangsan mountain range during the 14th and 15th centuries. Most of the ones known today were uncovered during 20th-century construction work in the area.

She writes that the practice "served a religious purpose for the temple or community that buried them."

Physical and written evidence, Stiller wrote, "show that the sculpture burial patrons wished for a better rebirth  the main purpose of this burial was to avoid falling into any of the three evil destiniesthe worlds of hells, hungry ghosts and animalsand to be reborn in Amitabha's Pure Land."

In order to secure these benefits, Stiller wrote, "locally prominent individuals visited sacred mountains near their villages to bury sculptures as an offering to divinities that were believed to reside at the mountain. (At) Kumgangsan  the divinity in residence was the bodhisattva Dharmodgata."

"My research provides an alternative perspective to the prevailing notion that sculptures were buried at Kumgangsan solely because of the mountain's connection with the Flower Ornament Sutra," Stiller wrote. Rather, relying on geographic information system mapping data about the burial locations, "pilgrims intentionally buried their sculptures near or in the line of sight of peaks and cliffs associated with Dharmodgata and his disciple Sadaprarudita."

Stiller said her article not only contributes to a deeper understanding of local religious practice in pre-modern Korea, "but it also emphasizes the importance of studying the placement and spatial context of Buddhist statues, paintings and other objects, in order to better understand their ritual function."

Explore further North Korea denies South Korean hacking claims
Illustration of fish obstacle flow Credit: Jeffrey Andrew Tuhtan

Freshwater biodiversity is rapidly declining worldwide, and nature-based solutions that increase the resilience of ecological communities are becoming increasingly important in helping communities prepare for the unavoidable effects of climate change.

TalTech robotics scientists, together with their colleagues from Lisbon, studied how fish adapt to rapid changes in the surrounding freshwater environment. To conduct the study, the researchers varied the water current and depth in a simulated river with obstacles, and found that fish were able to rapidly adapt to the changes when alone and also when in groups.

The results of the study are published in a prestigious scientific journal PLOS ONE in the article "Fish under pressure: Examining behavioural responses of Iberian barbel under simulated hydropeaking with instream structures."

Researcher at TalTech Centre for Biorobotics and a co-author on the study Jeffrey Tuhtan said, "The findings suggest that cues initiated by obstacles in the flow can be detected by fish to find energetically-beneficial places in the flow even under extreme and rapid environmental change."

The concept of observing fish in simulated rivers as individuals or in groups is not unusual, but the effects of rapid environmental variations, such as quickly changing water depths due to hydropower plant operations or a flash flood remain largely unknown.

Barbel are a common fish species in many European rivers, and are usually found in rocky-bottomed and slow flowing rivers with plenty of dissolved oxygen. "These fish are an important indicator of ecosystem health in the Iberian peninsula and in many other European rivers. Hydropower operations and the uncertainty caused by climate change mean we need to begin to look at the compound effects of rapid changes, from 'the fish's perspective,'" said research biologist and first author Maria Joao Costa.

Fish sense their surroundings using the biological lateral line, which consists of canals and tiny hair-like structures that are sensitive to minute changes in the water motion and pressure near the fish's body. This study was the first to combine biological observations of individuals and groups of fish with a new bioinspired sensing technology. The researchers observed that both individual fish and groups of fish reacted to the changing flow conditions in very clear ways and wondered if their natural flow sensing abilities were guiding their ability to cope with the stressors.

"It was exciting to compare the results of the artificial lateral line with actual observations of fish behavior. This was a very unique opportunity to combine sensor research with real-world biological observations, something which is rarely done," said Juan Francisco Fuentes-Perez, a Ph.D. candidate at TalTech and co-author.

"A fish's sensing abilities have developed over millions of years and are incredibly advanced compared to what engineers have available. This is likely part of the reason they have survived for hundreds of millions of years," said Isabela Boavida, a senior researcher at the University of Lisbon and co-author. When developing nature-based solutions for improving resilience to climate change, it makes sense to look to fish and other ancient organisms who have proved their ability to survive throughout long history.

"Understanding how a fish's advanced sensing system help them react to rapid changes in the flow environment will help scientists develop new designs for nature-based solutions to improve climate change resilience. With more than 500 million years of real-world experience, fish are likely to have learned a few tricks for quickly adapting to challenging conditions," said Prof. Antonio Pinheiro, co-author from the University of Lisbon.

Explore further Mediterranean freshwater fish species susceptible to climate change

More information: M. J. Costa et al, Fish under pressure: Examining behavioural responses of Iberian barbel under simulated hydropeaking with instream structures, PLOS ONE (2019). Journal information: PLoS ONE M. J. Costa et al, Fish under pressure: Examining behavioural responses of Iberian barbel under simulated hydropeaking with instream structures,(2019). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211115

Provided by Estonian Research Council
Credit: Nik Macmillan

Offering praise and having a good working relationship isn't always enough to engender loyalty from staffemployees also need to feel that the relationship with their boss is important, according to new research.

The study, led by Dr. Allan Lee from the University of Exeter's Business School, is the first of its kind to examine both the quality of exchanges between a leader and follower and the value of those exchanges in the eyes of the follower.

It had previously been assumed that a high quality relationship alone would automatically lead to feelings of loyalty towards managers, but this latest research shows that it also depends on whether the employee views the relationship as important in the first place.

"Our findings have real implications for the workplace because it shows that the perceived importance of a manager is also really important in building loyalty," said Dr. Lee.

"While it's worthwhile investing in employees who see the relationship as important, employers would also do well to look for ways to motivate those staff who don't."

The research was also carried out by Professor Geoff Thomas from Surrey Business School, Professor Robin Martin from Alliance Manchester Business School, Professor Yves Guillaume, Liverpool Business School and Dr. Anders Marstand, Birkbeck, University of London.

"We also found that a quality relationship with a boss caused greater feelings of psychological empowerment and this effect was felt more strongly when the relationship was viewed as important by the employee," added Dr. Lee. "For instance, if a member of staff receives recognition and praise from a leader, it has more impact on the way they view their own competencies the more importance they place on that relationship.

"Employees with a strong sense of empowerment are also likely to take an active attitude towards their work and perform "above and beyond" what is expected."

Two separate studies were carried out; the first with 292 participants studying for a business-related degree at a UK business school. The second study involved 196 participants from a UK-owned organisation based in India.

Participants were asked their views at three different time points over a period of six months. Those in the first study reflected on their relationship with their appointed team leader for a group-work based module and participants in the second study reflected on their relationship with their work supervisor.

The research, Beyond relationship quality: The role of leadermember exchange importance in leaderfollower dyads is published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

Explore further Bosses with mood swings make workers most anxious

More information: Allan Lee et al. Beyond relationship quality: The role of leader-member exchange importance in leader-follower dyads, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (2019). Allan Lee et al. Beyond relationship quality: The role of leader-member exchange importance in leader-follower dyads,(2019). DOI: 10.1111/joop.12262
The United States will grant Angola around two million dollars in ongoing assistance for combating money laundering and terrorist financing, the US Deputy Secretary of State has announced.

John Sullivan made the announcement in Luanda Monday at a joint press conference with Angolan Foreign Minister Manuel Augusto at the end of a meeting of the Strategic Partnership Dialogue between the two countries, reported the Angolan news agency Angop.

He stressed that Angola is one of the main US partners in Africa, highlighting the countrys economic potential and the strength it represents for security and the fight against terrorism in the region.

John Sullivan expects the US State and Treasury departments to meet with the Angolan authorities to improve trust and the investment climate, as well as to resume correspondent banking through guarantees to fight money laundering and corruption, Angop added.

Speaking to journalists after a meeting with President Joao Lourenco, the US Deputy Secretary of State also reaffirmed the readiness of the United States to help Angola in the process of repatriating capital illegally transferred abroad.

The materialization of this intention depends however on the signing of an agreement in the field of justice, he said.

He confirmed that the government of President Joao Lourenco has made a good impression on his initial efforts to promote good governance both in Angola and at regional level.
The flagella being ejected. See Notes to Editors for more images. Credit: Morgan Beeby

When nutrients are dangerously low, a group of bacteria have been found to take the drastic measure of getting rid of their tails.

Some bacteria use tails, or flagella, to swim through liquidsincluding those in our bodies. However, new research published today in PLOS Biology reveals a surprisingly drastic measure taken by some bacteria when facing starvation: they eject their flagella, leaving themselves paralyzed, but conserving energy so they can stay alive.

The research team, led by Imperial College London in collaboration with researchers from the Francis Crick Institute, the University of Leiden, and Justus-Liebig-Universitat Giessen, say this is the first time such curious behaviour has been observed in bacteria.

The serendipitous discovery was made when the team were collecting detailed images of the 'motors' that drive flagella in a group of bacteria that includes various harmful species, including Vibrio cholerae, which causes cholera.

They saw some instances where part of the motor 'housing' was present in the membrane of a bacteria, but not the motor or flagellum itself. This suggested two possibilities: either they had caught an image of the motor-flagellum complex as it was being assembled, or as it was being disassembled.

First author Josie Ferreira, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "Before we started our experiments, we thought we had caught the bacteria in the process of assembling their motor-flagella complexes. To our surprise, we found the opposite: not only had the bacteria ejected their flagella, they had plugged the hole it left behind. This suggested to us it was a deliberate action."

Bacterial use their flagella to get around, even swimming through thick gut mucus as in the case of food-poisoning bacterium Campylobacter jejuni. However, flagella are costly to build and power, and constantly grow throughout the bacteria's life, using up a lot of resources.

The team found that bacteria placed in environments that lacked nutrients ejected their flagella into the growth medium. The discarded flagella were complete, including the adaptor structure that connects flagella to their motors, suggesting that they were ejected whole from their base, and not broken off.

Lead author Dr. Morgan Beeby, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "The bacteria's actions appear to be deliberate. It's not like when our fingers or toes drop off from frostbiteit's more a calculated act like mountaineer Aron Ralston cutting off his arm in the film 127 Hours to free himself from under a rock."

Bacteria have been observed swimming more slowly when nutrients are low, but this is the first time they have been observed jettisoning their flagella completely in a bid to save energy.

The team say that determining what mechanism harmful bacteria use to eject their flagella could suggest new targets for drugs that force them to push the eject button.

Dr. Beeby also says that although the bacteria have evolved a clear mechanism for ejecting flagella and plugging the gap, the process shows how irrational and messy evolution can be. He said: "Evolution is not neat or tidy: leaving the motor structure behind in the membrane is a kind of 'bacterial clutter' that the bacteria close the door on. While an inelegant solution, their molecular clutter doesn't hurt them."

Explore further Pathogen predicament: How bacteria propel themselves out of a tight spot

More information: '-proteobacteria eject their polar flagella under nutrient depletion, retaining flagellar motor relic structures' by Josie L. Ferreira, Forson Z. Gao, Florian M. Rossmann, Andrea Nans, Susanne Brenzinger, Rohola Hosseini, Amanda Wilson, Ariane Briegel, Kai M. Thormann, Peter B. Rosenthal, and Morgan Beeby is published in PLOS Biology. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000165 Journal information: PLoS Biology '-proteobacteria eject their polar flagella under nutrient depletion, retaining flagellar motor relic structures' by Josie L. Ferreira, Forson Z. Gao, Florian M. Rossmann, Andrea Nans, Susanne Brenzinger, Rohola Hosseini, Amanda Wilson, Ariane Briegel, Kai M. Thormann, Peter B. Rosenthal, and Morgan Beeby is published in
A rendering of CatSat, a nanosatellite being built by UA students. Credit: Vishnu Reddy

An inflatable space antenna designed by University of Arizona students is one of 16 small research satellites from 10 states NASA has selected to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard space missions planned to launch in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

The selections are part of the 10th round of NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative.

CubeSats are a type of spacecraft called nanosatellites, often measuring about four inches on each side and weighing less than three pounds, with a volume of about one quart. CubeSats are built using these standard dimensions as Units or "U," and are classified as 1U, 2U, 3U, or 6U in total size.

CatSat is a 6U CubeSat led by UA students from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and various departments including aerospace and mechanical engineering, astronomy, computer science, and systems and industrial engineering.

"This is a great opportunity for students to get hands on experience building a spacecraft and running a space mission," said Tanner Campbell, an aerospace and mechanical engineering doctoral student who is serving as project manager for CatSat. In the end, this a team effort involving more than a dozen students spread across campus, he added.

The spacecraft selected under the CubeSat Launch Initiative are eligible for placement on a launch manifest at no cost, depending on the availability of a flight opportunity. Launch opportunities include planned spaceflight missions led by NASA, other U.S. government agencies or commercial organizations, as well as deployments from the International Space Station. After launch, satellites will perform technology demonstrations, conduct scientific investigations or provide educational benefits.

"Let's say you are flying a space probe across the solar system and you want to beam a lot of data back to the Earth," says Vishnu Reddy, the principal investigator of the mission and an associate professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. "To do that, you need a large antenna, but those are too bulky to be carried on small spacecraft such as CubeSats. To overcome the problem of getting large antennas into small spacecraft, our group of students proposed a bold mission that would test a novel inflatable antenna system in space."

CatSat is the size of a large cereal box. When fully deployed, the inflatable expands in a bubble gum fashion, forming a sphere three feet across that sticks out from one side of the box. An aluminized spot inside the inflated sphere is used as the communication antenna to beam data back to the Earth. Since Catsat will be in low Earth orbit, the data can be downloaded using a ground station located at the UA.

CatSat is mainly a technology demonstration mission to mature this inflatable concept in Earth orbit. The ultimate goal is to fly such an antenna on an interplanetary mission that Reddy wants to lead to explore small bodies in the solar system.

Inflatable antenna technology is the brain child of UA astronomy professor Christopher Walker, who is also the science principal investigator of the mission. FreeFall Aerospace, a local small business co-founded by Walker to advance inflatable antenna technology, helped the project as an industrial affiliate.

Two engineering principal investigators  Roberto Furfaro, a professor in the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering, and assistant professor Jekan Thanga, an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering  are leading the student teams who are building the actual spacecraft hardware on campus.

Explore further Small satellites tackle big scientific questions
Starlux chairman Chang Kuo-wei, right, joined Christian Scherer, Chief Commercial Officer of Airbus, for a signing ceremony in Taipei

Taiwan's new StarLux Airlines signed a deal on Tuesday worth up to $6 billion for 17 Airbus A350 XWB aircraft in one of the island's biggest single commercial plane purchases.

The deal included five A350-900s and 12 A350-1000s with ten options, which are scheduled to be delivered from late 2021, the companies said.

StarLux, founded in May 2018 by Taiwan's EVA Airways former chairman Chang Kuo-wei, is set to operate regular international flights starting in 2020.

"The aircraft purchase deal today is one of the largest in Taiwan ... We promise to all that we will use the latest equipment, " Chang said at the signing ceremony in Taipei.

The company declined to disclose financial details of the deal, which is the largest single purchase of Airbus planes in Taiwan.

According to Airbus list prices it is worth nearly $6 billion, though aircraft manufacturers usually offer discounts on large orders.

StarLux has also leased ten Airbus A321 neos, set to be delivered from October, which will fly its initial routes from Taipei to Southeast and Northeast Asia, a company statement said.

StarLux aims to serve over 20 destinations in Asia and North America by the end of 2024 with a fleet of 27 aircraft, according to the statement.

It would be the first airline in Taiwan to fly the A350-1000.

In 2015 EVA signed a deal worth more than $6 billion for 26 Boeing jetliners while Chang was chairman, making it the biggest ever single commercial plane purchase in Taiwan.

Explore further British Airways announces huge Boeing order

 2019 AFP
The United Arab Emirates has announced its first astronaut will blast off to the International Space Station in September 2019

Eleven Arab states including Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Morocco on Tuesday signed on to the first regional team to cooperate on a space programme, the UAE said.

"Today at the Global Space Congress in Abu Dhabi, we attended the signing of a charter to establish the first Arab body for space cooperation, bringing together 11 Arab states," said Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum in comments carried by the government media office.

The pan-Arab team's first project is "a satellite that Arab scientists will work on from here in the UAE", he said.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed, the UAE's vice president and prime minister, vowed in 2017 to send four Emirati astronauts to the International Space Station by 2022.

The UAE announced last month that its first astronaut will blast off on a mission to the station on September 25.

The oil-rich Gulf state has two astronauts in training as it looks to get an ambitious space programme aimed at exploring Mars off the ground.

The astronaut programme would make the UAE one of only a handful of states in the Middle East to have sent a person into space, as it looks to make good on a pledge to become a global leader in space exploration.

The first Arab in outer space was Saudi Arabia's Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on a US shuttle mission in 1985.

Two years later, Syrian air force pilot Muhammed Faris spent a week aboard the Soviet Union's Mir space station.

Explore further UAE announces first astronauts to go to space (Update)

 2019 AFP
Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, USA. Credit: R.A. Schweickert et al.

Emerald Bay, California, a beautiful location on the southwestern shore of Lake Tahoe, is surrounded by rugged landscape, including rocky cliffs and remnants of mountain glaciers. Scenic as it may be, the area is also a complex structural puzzle. Understanding the history of fault movement in the Lake Tahoe basin is important to assessing earthquake hazards for regional policy planners.

The Lake Tahoe region is rife with active faults, many of which have created the dramatic and rugged landscapes. The Lake Tahoe region lies between the Sierra Nevada microplate to the west and the Basin and Range Province to the east. Northwestward movement of the Sierra Nevada microplate creates stresses that may produce both strike slip (horizontal) and vertical movement on faults. For years, geologists have traversed the forbidding terrain around Emerald Bay, noting where faults cut the landscape, but a detailed picture of the faults was still missing.

Two of these faultsthe Tahoe-Sierra frontal fault zone (TSFFZ) and the West Tahoe-Dollar Point fault zone (WTDPFZ)stretch along the western side of Lake Tahoe, but their continuity across landscapes and the nature of their movement has been debated for nearly two decades. Richard Schweickert, of the University of Nevada-Reno (UNR), part of a team of geologists and engineers from UNR, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Santa Clara University, said, "We found plenty of evidence for scarps (i.e., faults) that cut the glacial moraines all along the west side of Lake Tahoe, in particular around Emerald Bay."

But it was what they couldn't hike across that most interested them. "We were desperate to see what's actually going on the bottom [of Emerald Bay]." The research team decided to examine the faults both "by land and by sea."

In a new paper in Geosphere, Schweickert and colleagues describe a number of deep dives that uncovered evidence for major faults on the floor of Emerald Bay. Using a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, and previously published multibeam echo sounder imagery, the team created a detailed map of the bathymetry (depth and shape) and geology in Emerald Bay.

The high-resolution bathymetry survey showed clear evidence of scarps cutting across submerged glacial deposits and lake sediments, along with landslide deposits that toppled into the bay after the glaciers melted. Based on the age of nearby moraines, Schweickert says the scarps in most cases are younger than about 20,000 years old.

Emerald Bay, California, a beautiful location on the southwestern shore of Lake Tahoe, is surrounded by rugged landscape, including rocky cliffs and remnants of mountain glaciers. Scenic as it may be, the area is also a complex structural puzzle. Understanding the history of fault movement in the Lake Tahoe basin is important to assessing earthquake hazards for regional policy planners. Credit: R.A. Schweickert et al.

The faults scarps in the Bay are very sharp, with steep faces sloping between 30 and 60 degreessurprisingly steep for scarps that could be thousands of years old. "You would only see that steep angle on land exposures for faults that had just moved within the last few hundred years," Schweickert says, but noted the scarps were likely preserved by being underwater instead of being repeatedly exposed to running water on land.

Schweickert says that the bathymetric data paired with direct underwater observations with the ROV show conclusively that the scarps are related to faults. "We've been able to produce the highest resolution maps with the greatest amount of detail of anywhere in the Lake Tahoe Basin," he added.

After studying the ROV, bathymetry, and LiDAR data, the team noted that over the past 20,000 years, the TSFFZ and WTDPFZ were moving vertically, with no strike slip motion. Schweickert says their discovery was a bit of a paradox to what might be expected in the Lake Tahoe basin. Ten to 15 years of satellite GPS measurements show a northwest movement for the Lake Tahoe region, relative to the interior of North America. But the TSFFZ and WTDPFZ don't reflect that direction of movementat least not recently.

"I think this shows us that the GPS data really doesn't tell us what the faults themselves are doing on a local scale," says Schweickert. "They do their own thing." He adds that scientists studying other faults in the Lake Tahoe area have reached similar conclusions.

However, Schweickert notes that landforms around Emerald Bay, thought to be roughly 100,000 years old, look like they experienced right lateral, strike slip movement sometime in the past. "Faults can move in different directions over long periods of time," he says. "Just because we see some them doing something right now doesn't mean that they didn't have a more complex history in the not too distant past."

"There's more to this story that still needs to be known," says Schweickert, and notes that studies like theirs have value for policy and planning.

Explore further LiDAR technology reveals faults near Lake Tahoe
Credit: BigTuneOnline/Shutterstock

The deadly attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 50 people were killed and many others critically injured, was streamed live on Facebook by the man accused of carrying it out. It was then quickly shared across social media platforms.

Versions of the livestream attack video stayed online for a worrying amount of time. A report by the Guardian found that one video stayed on Facebook for six hours and another on YouTube for three. For many, the quick and seemingly unstoppable spread of this video typifies everything that is wrong with social media: toxic, hate-filled content which goes viral and is seen by millions.

But we should avoid scapegoating the big platforms. All of them (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google, Snapchat) are signed up to the European Commission's #NoPlace4Hate programme. They are committed to removing illegal hateful content within 24 hours, a time period which is likely to come down to just one hour.

Aside from anything else, they are aware of the reputational risks of being associated with terrorism and other harmful content (such as pornography, suicide, paedophilia) and are increasingly devoting considerable resources to removing it. Within 24 hours of the Christchurch attack, Facebook had banned 1.5m versions of the attack video  of which 1.2m it stopped from being uploaded at all.

Monitoring hateful content is always difficult and even the most advanced systems accidentally miss some. But during terrorist attacks the big platforms face particularly significant challenges. As research has shown, terrorist attacks precipitate huge spikes in online hate, overrunning platforms' reporting systems. Lots of the people who upload and share this content also know how to deceive the platforms and get round their existing checks.

So what can platforms do to take down extremist and hateful content immediately after terrorist attacks? I propose four special measures which are needed to specifically target the short term influx of hate.

1. Adjust the sensitivity of the hate detection tools

All tools for hate detection have a margin of error. The designers have to decide how many false negatives and false positives they are happy with. False negatives are bits of content which are allowed online even though they are hateful and false positives are bits of content which are blocked even though they are non-hateful. There is always a trade off between the two when implementing any hate detection system.

The only way to truly ensure that no hateful content goes online is to ban all content from being uploaded  but this would be a mistake. Far better to adjust the sensitivity of the algorithms so that people are allowed to share content but platforms catch a lot more of the hateful stuff.

Mourning the victims of the Christchurch mosque attacks. Credit: EPA-EFE

2. Enable easier takedowns

Hateful content which does get onto the big platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, can be flagged by users. It is then sent for manual review by a content moderator, who checks it using predefined guidelines. Content moderation is a fundamentally difficult business, and the platforms aim to minimise inaccurate reviews. Often this is by using the "stick": according to some investigative journalists, moderators working on behalf of Facebook risk losing their jobs unless they maintain high moderation accuracy scores.

During attacks, platforms could introduce special procedures so that staff can quickly work through content without fear of low performance evaluation. They could also introduce temporary quarantines so that content is flagged for immediate removal but then re-examined at a later date.

3. Limit the ability of users to share

Sharing is a fundamental part of social media, and platforms actively encourage sharing both on their sites (which is crucial to their business models) and between them, as it means that none of them miss out when anything goes viral. But easy sharing also brings with it risks: research shows that extreme and hateful content is imported from niche far-right sites and dumped into the mainstream where it can quickly spread to large audiences. And during attacks it means that anything which gets past one platform's hate detection software can be quickly shared across all of the platforms.

Platforms should limit the number of times that content can be shared within their site and potentially ban shares between sites. This tactic has already been adopted by WhatsApp, which now limits the number of times content can be shared to just five.

4. Create shared databases of content

All of the big platforms have very similar guidelines on what constitutes "hate" and will be trying to take down largely the same content following attacks. Creating a shared database of hateful content would ensure that content removed from one site is automatically banned from another. This would not only avoid needless duplication but enable the platforms to quickly devote resources to the really challenging content that is hard to detect.

Removing hateful content should be seen as an industry-wide effort and not a problem each platform faces individually. Shared databases like this do also exist in a limited way but efforts need to be hugely stepped up and their scope broadened.

In the long term, platforms need to keep investing in content moderation and developing advanced systems which integrate human checks with machine learning. But there is also a pressing need for special measures to handle the short-term influx of hate following terrorist attacks.

Explore further New Zealand wants answers from tech giants after mosque attack livestream

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Measures of land Subsidence in San Joaquin Valley. Credit: USGS

California's Central Valley aquifer, the major source of groundwater in the region, suffered permanent loss of capacity during the drought experienced in the area from 2012 to 2015.

California has been afflicted by a number of droughts in recent decades, including one between 2007 and 2009, and the millennium drought that plagued the state from 2012 to 2015. Due to lack of water resources, the state drew heavily on its underground aquifer reserves during these periods.

According to new research, the San Joaquin Valley aquifer in the Central Valley shrank permanently by up to 3 percent due to excess pumping during the sustained dry spell. Combined with the loss from the 2007 to 2009 drought, the aquifer may have lost up to 5 percent of its storage capacity during the first two decades of the 21st Century, according to Manoochehr Shirzaei, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe and one of the co-authors of a new study published in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

Groundwater exists in the pore spaces between grains of soil and rocks. When fluids are extracted from aquifers, the pore spaces close. There is a range for which these spaces can shrink and expand elastically. But if the pore spaces close too much, they start to collapse, causing the land to shrink irreversibly.

Figuring out how much the aquifer shrank permanently could help water managers prepare for future droughts, according to the study's authors. The San Joaquin Valley aquifer supplies freshwater to the Central Valley  a major hub that produces more than 250 different crops valued at $17 billion per year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"If we have even one drought per decade, our aquifers could shrink a bit more each time and permanently lose more than a quarter of their storage capacity this century," said Susanna Werth, a research assistant professor of earth sciences at Arizona State University, and a co-author of the new study.

The new study could also help scientists understand how other areas might be affected by drought.

"That was a curiosity for us to understand how much groundwater has been lost in those particular regions and will give us a picture of what we can expect for arid areas around the globe if groundwater practices are not sustainable," said Chandrakanta Ojha, a post-doctoral researcher at Arizona State and the lead author of the new study.

Surface deformation map over San Joaquin Valley during 2015-2017 using Satellite radar interferometry. Credit: Chandrakanta Ojha

Underground water from space

The researchers measured water volume changes due to groundwater variation in the aquifer using data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a twin satellite mission that has been measuring the Earth's gravity field every month from April 2002 until June 2017. The study's authors compared the groundwater losses based on GRACE measurements with those calculated from vertical land motion measurements obtained by GPS. Land depressions were also measured by a radar technique called InSAR and multiple extensometers, devices which are installed in a borehole of a groundwater observation well. They also examined groundwater level records.

The study's authors found that from 2012 to 2015, the aquifer of the San Joaquin Valley lost a total volume of about 30 cubic kilometers (7.2 cubic miles) of groundwater. The aquifer also shrank permanently by 0.4 percent to 3.25 percent, according to the new study.

Previous research found the 2007 to 2009 drought caused the San Joaquin aquifer to permanently lose between 0.5 percent to 2 percent of its capacity. Cumulatively, the authors said both drought periods  2007 to 2009 and 2012 to 2015caused the San Joaquin aquifer to shrink permanently by as much as 5.25 percent.

Forecasting future drought effects

Shirzaei said the information they have gathered is important for future planningparticularly since the loss of permanent storage capacity is unsustainable in the long-run.

By using this type of calculation, Shirzaei said land and water resource managers can predict the effect of droughts on the aquifer system. This can help to make better regulations for groundwater conservation during those periods and prevent permanent loss of aquifer storage capacity.

Shirzaei said the compaction of the aquifer may also cause fissures and cracks on the surface as the land subsides. This could affect roads, power lines, railroads or other infrastructure, but more research is needed to understand the details of these effects.

Explore further Scientists use satellites to measure vital underground water resources

More information: Chandrakanta Ojha et al. Groundwater loss and aquifer-system compaction in San Joaquin Valley during 2012-2015 drought, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth (2019). Chandrakanta Ojha et al. Groundwater loss and aquifer-system compaction in San Joaquin Valley during 2012-2015 drought,(2019). DOI: 10.1029/2018JB016083

This story is republished courtesy of AGU Blogs (http://blogs.agu.org), a community of Earth and space science blogs, hosted by the American Geophysical Union. Read the original story here.
A new study by King's scientists will monitor air quality exposure of 250 children on their way to school and in the classroom. The announcement was made today at Haimo Primary School in Greenwich by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who is funding the study.

Led by Dr. Ben Barratt from the Environmental Research Group at King's, the study will use state-of-the-art toxic air monitoring backpacks developed by Dyson, to help monitor and better understand the levels of toxic air young Londoners are exposed to during their journeys to school and in the classroom.

250 pupils from five London primary schools, situated across five boroughs (Southwark, Richmond, Greenwich, Haringey and Hammersmith and Fulham) will take part in the project, wearing specially adapted backpacks to and from school for a week.

Weighing just over 1kg, the sensors fit into lightweight bags and measure particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels. The children involved will use the backpacks like a normal bag (the monitor takes up one pocket, leaving plenty of room for school equipment), allowing the monitors to record pollutant levels on each child's journey to school and throughout the school day.

The data from this study will allow King's scientists to analyse at which point of their journey to school (or which part of their school day) children are exposed to the most pollution. They will also be able to the compare the exposure of children who have similar journeys but take different routes and travel modes and then make recommendations of how children can reduce their exposure in future.

Dr. Ben Barratt from King's said: "Air pollution has been found to restrict lung growth in children. Low lung function in childhood can persist into adulthood and is often associated with other health problems including chronic obstructive lung disease in later life.

Led by Dr. Ben Barratt from the Environmental Research Group at King's, the study will use state-of-the-art toxic air monitoring backpacks developed by Dyson, to help monitor and better understand the levels of toxic air young Londoners are exposed to during their journeys to school and in the classroom. Credit: Dyson

"Analysing the impact of air pollution and providing information to our local, national and international communities is a core component of King's civic responsibility. By monitoring the air that children breathe on the journey to and from school, we will gain a better understanding of which pollutants are the most harmful and where they are coming from, helping us to support effective improvements in public health."

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said: "It remains a shameful fact that London's toxic air is harming the lung growth and health of our young children, and City Hall is determined to do everything in our power to protect them.

"An issue this large and complex requires bold and innovative action to protect future generations and ensure our children inherit cleaner, healthier air. I'm proud that we're able to launch world leading studies like this which will help us find new ways to reduce children's exposure to toxic air. I hope the success of this scheme will act as a blueprint for cities around the world as they battle their own toxic air emergencies.

"The health of London's children is key to everything we do to improve air quality. We've already conducted air quality audits at dozens of schools and nurseries across London,resulting in positive changes that are helping reduce pollution and clean the air for thousands of pupils. But alongside these measures, we need strong action, I will continue to prioritise the health of all Londoners with a range of strong measures including cleaning up the bus fleet, funding a scrappage scheme for micro-businesses to remove the most polluting vans and, next month, the launch of the world's first Ultra Low Emission Zone in the central London Congestion Charge area. But we can't win this battle without more help from the Government, who are still failing to take this problem seriously and offer the support London needs to tackle this public health crisis."

The new sensors have been developed by Dyson engineers in co-operation with King's as part of the Mayor's Breathe London projectlaunched in January.

Jessica Le Dinh, Category Intelligence Engineer, Dyson, said: "Our engineers have been researching clean air technologies for over two decades. Our team of experts applied their leading knowledge to develop intelligent sensors, compact enough to fit in children's backpacks.

"Children can take up to 30,000 breaths a day. Their lungs are still developing, which makes them vulnerable to air pollution. City air can contain potentially harmful pollutantsincluding nitrogen dioxide and soot-based particulate matter. That's why this study is so vital. It will help us monitor exactly what our children are exposed to, to inform effective solutions."

Explore further Study of 2,000 children suggests London air pollution is restricting lung development
In 1987 Karen K. Uhlenbeck moved to The University of Texas at Austin to take up the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents' Chair in mathematics. She would remain at the University of Texas until the end of her working career. Currently, Uhlenbeck is a Visiting Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University as well as a Visiting Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). Credit: Marsha Miller

A professor emerita of mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin has received mathematics' top international award for the year. The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has named Karen Uhlenbeck its 2019 Abel Prize award winner.

The prestigious international award, modeled after the Nobel Prize, comes with a monetary award of 6 million Norwegian kroner, approximately $700,000.

"For more than three decades at The University of Texas, Karen Uhlenbeck conducted research that revolutionized geometric analysis and mathematics as a whole" said President Gregory L. Fenves. "She was an inspiring teacher and dedicated mentor to thousands of UT students, motivating them to reach great heights in their academic and professional lives. The Abel Prize is the highest honor in mathematics, and it is one that Professor Uhlenbeck richly deserves."

Uhlenbeck was cited "for her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics." Her work has been described as some of the most important in 20th century mathematics, constituting revolutionary advances in geometry.

The President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Hans Petter Graver, announced the winner of the Abel Prize at the academy in Oslo today. Norway's King Harald V will present the Abel Prize to Uhlenbeck at an award ceremony in Oslo on May 21.

Some of her most noted work focused on gauge theories, providing an analytical foundation for a number of concepts explored in modern physics.

Karen Uhlenbeck giving a talk at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). Credit: Andrea Kane

"Uhlenbeck's research has led to revolutionary advances at the intersection of mathematics and physics," said Paul Goldbart, dean of the College of Natural Sciences and a professor of physics. "Her pioneering insights have applications across a range of fascinating subjects, from string theory, which may help explain the nature of reality, to the geometry of space-time."

One of the premier mathematicians of her generation, Uhlenbeck in 1983 received a MacArthur Fellowship (sometimes referred to as a "genius award"). In 1986 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2000 she was awarded the National Medal of Science. In 2007 she received the Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research from the American Mathematical Society.

"She transformed the fabric of the department with her broad view of mathematics and beyond," said Thomas Chen, chair of the Department of Mathematics at UT Austin. "Her insatiable curiosity fuels both her deep vision in mathematics and wisdom in the human sphere, which is evident in her legendary generosity and attention to mentoring young mathematicians."

Outreach and mentoring have also been passions for Uhlenbeck, who says, "Seeing the success of students is its own reward." She co-founded programs at both Princeton University and UT Austin, including the Saturday Morning Math Group, the Distinguished Women in Mathematics Lecture Series, the Park City Mathematics Institute and the Women and Mathematics program at the Institute for Advanced Study, designed to inspire and support young people in mathematics.

Since shortly after she arrived at UT Austin in 1987 through her retirement in 2014, Uhlenbeck has held the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Mathematics.

The Abel Prize recognizes achievements in mathematics at any stage of a mathematician's career. It differs from the Fields Medal, another international prize in math, which is given only to mathematicians younger than 40. The two prizes are considered the highest international awards in mathematics, and during the past year the University of Texas math program celebrated both. Former faculty member Alessio Figalli was among the 2018 Fields Medalists in recognition of work he did while on the Austin campus.

Since the Abel Prize was first awarded in 2003, one other UT Austin faculty member has been among its recipients: professor emeritus John Tate in 2010.

Provided by University of Texas at Austin
The J-V characteristics for OSCs based on P2F-EHp:BTPT-4F and P2F-EHp:BTPTT-4F; the chemical structures of active layer components. Credit: Science China Press

Two non-fullerene acceptors, namely BTPT-4F and BTPTT-4F, were selected to match with a wide-bandgap polymer donor P2F-EHp consisting of an imide-functionalized benzotriazole moiety, as these materials presented complementary absorption and well-matched energy levels. By delicately optimizing the blend film morphology, an unprecedented power conversion efficiency of over 16% was achieved for the device based on P2F-EHp:BTPTT-4F, suggesting the great promise of materials matching toward high-performance OSCs.

As a promising technology for renewable energy, organic solar cells (OSCs) have attracted particular interest from both industrial and academic communities. One of the main challenges to promote practical applications of OSCs is their less competitive power conversion efficiency than that of the counterpart photovoltaic technologies such as inorganic silicon, CIGS, or perovskite solar cells.

The photovoltaic performance of bulk-heterojunction OSCs is determined by open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current density and fill factor. The optimal performances require state-of-the-art pair of the electron-donor and electron-acceptor in the light-harvesting layer, which should have complementary absorption profiles, excellent miscibility, and appropriate frontier molecular orbital energy levels. Specifically, for the electron-donor materials, the deep highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy level is much appreciated as it is favorable for open-circuit voltage; however, it may negatively affect charge transfer when pairing with acceptors with shallow HOMO levels.

Very recently, Professor Yong Cao's group in South China University of Technology demonstrated an unprecedented power conversion efficiency of over 16% for single-junction OSCs. This remarkable photovoltaic performance is achieved based on a home-made wide-bandgap polymer P2F-EHp, which has an appropriate HOMO energy level and can form complementary absorption profile and optimal morphology of the bulk-heterojunction photoactive layer with a recently emerging non-fullerene acceptor. In particular, this electron-donating polymer, which contains an imide-functionalized benzotriazole (TzBI) unit, is versatile in matching with various categories of electron-acceptors, and thus presents great promise for constructing high-performance OSCs.

More information:

Baobing Fan et al, Achieving over 16% efficiency for single-junction organic solar cells, Science China Chemistry (2019). DOI: 10.1007/s11426-019-9457-5

Provided by Science China Press
Moroccan police announced on Monday the arrest of one of the leaders of the Camorras infamous Mazzarella clan, a brutal Italian mafia group.

The suspect, 44, was captured in the Ourika region near Marrakech following a red notice issued by Interpol at the request of the Italian judicial authorities, for his involvement in a case of premeditated murder and possession of unauthorized firearms.

The Italian authorities have been notified of the arrest, which was carried out by Moroccan police within the frame of the security cooperation with Italy.

The arrested person is in custody pending his extradition to his home country, Italy.

Moroccan authorities did not disclose the name of the arrested individual, but according to the Italian media, this leader of the mafia is Antonio Prinno. He was on the run since 2014.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini reacted to the arrest on his Twitter account, describing it as a nice gift for all of Italy.

Moroccos security and intelligence services work closely with their European and American counterparts, receive extensive training and are highly proficient.
I have been thinking about gift giving in Shakespeare. There doesn't seem to be too much of it if I remember rightly. What there is tends to be more insult...

I have been thinking about gift giving in Shakespeare. There doesn't seem to be too much of it if I remember rightly. What there is tends to be more insult...

Man plans, God laughs. Or so the saying goes. My intention was to send out this post so last evening, but "the internets" in my home has been unavailable,...

Man plans, God laughs. Or so the saying goes. My intention was to send out this post so last evening, but "the internets" in my home has been unavailable,...

I've been wanting to write something up about how at Mass we worship God just as Homer described his guys doing 3000 years ago, and how this is essentially...

I've been wanting to write something up about how at Mass we worship God just as Homer described his guys doing 3000 years ago, and how this is essentially...

By the end of 2016, this part of the internets will be no more. The blog posts are being moved to the new home of *A Good Beer Blog* but this place, this...

By the end of 2016, this part of the internets will be no more. The blog posts are being moved to the new home of *A Good Beer Blog* but this place, this...

There are tons of specials everyday as most of you know, and you'll always see the various types linked on the Reference column at the right of this bl...

There are tons of specials everyday as most of you know, and you'll always see the various types linked on the Reference column at the right of this bl...

Well, for this site anyway. This page is going dark. I simply dont post enough to warrant paying for it any longer. Any future posts will appear at my old...

Well, for this site anyway. This page is going dark. I simply dont post enough to warrant paying for it any longer. Any future posts will appear at my old...

My latest post on Catholicmom.com is up here! An excerpt: So while I can no longer shield my adult children, or forbid or prevent them from doing whatever ...

My latest post on Catholicmom.com is up here! An excerpt: So while I can no longer shield my adult children, or forbid or prevent them from doing whatever ...

Kate Spade I never once set foot in one of the stores, passing by never saw a thing Id buy for myself or anyone I know. But when I walk by now a sense...

Kate Spade I never once set foot in one of the stores, passing by never saw a thing Id buy for myself or anyone I know. But when I walk by now a sense...

FROM *THE BOOK OF MIRACLES* Hi people, for current subscribers, or for those who may wish to become new subscribers, please go to the Subscribe to Blog via...

FROM *THE BOOK OF MIRACLES* Hi people, for current subscribers, or for those who may wish to become new subscribers, please go to the Subscribe to Blog via...

In one of her letters, St. Catherine of Siena said -- well, she said basically the same thing in more than one letter, but I'm quoting Letter T5/G225 to...

In one of her letters, St. Catherine of Siena said -- well, she said basically the same thing in more than one letter, but I'm quoting Letter T5/G225 to...

Thanksgiving week is upon us. I can't believe the end of the year is in sight, that Advent starts this week. What happened to all the time I thought I was ...

Thanksgiving week is upon us. I can't believe the end of the year is in sight, that Advent starts this week. What happened to all the time I thought I was ...

Our children are spread all the country this Thanksgiving - on G is home, and my in-laws are here. Two days ago we had a bonfire so we could use the "ho...

Our children are spread all the country this Thanksgiving - on G is home, and my in-laws are here. Two days ago we had a bonfire so we could use the "ho...

Yaretzi is one of the up and coming new names in the US. Some people say its Nahuatl (the language spoken by Aztecs, and by a lot of other tribes that d...

Yaretzi is one of the up and coming new names in the US. Some people say its Nahuatl (the language spoken by Aztecs, and by a lot of other tribes that d...

Quick Quotes

"Christianity brought reverence for what is below us." - Goethe

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"Your salvation is in the hands of God...There is no purely human knowledge of one's eternal destiny that can contain the infinitely greater certainty contained in your faith and hope through Christ our Lord." - EWTN Q&A

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"It is a truism in the interpretation of Scripture that its spiritual message is disclosed only to those who bring to their reading a consciousness of their need for God and his mercy. Only they get it and appreciate the urgency of the message. The others are all bewildered. - Msgr. Herron


Photo: Mark Airs/Getty Images/Ikon Images

In 2007, Wake Forest sociology professor Joseph Soares published a book, The Power of Privilege, that explored how the metrics we use to measure high-school students achievement have a way of shifting over time to favor the wealthy and well-connected. In the wake of the revelation last week that some parents were actually committing crimes to ensure their childrens placement at elite institutions, Intelligencer spoke with Soares about the less lurid ways in which American parents have long taken advantage of a system that is meritocratic in name only.

Your book poked holes in the notion that college admissions were really just based on academic merit. Parents have been using their money and means to help children get ahead for a long time, of course. But I was wondering if you were shocked by the brazenness of this weeks revelations.

People are expressing a lot of outrage because clearly there were immoral and illegal acts, but it strikes me as what you would expect nouveau riche, really wealthy elites to pursue, because academia does have these two industries that play an inappropriate role. One is standardized testing. In my book, I document the extent to which the SAT was embraced, in the beginning, because it was thought that an IQ test would discriminate against Jews. The Ivy League was blatantly anti-Semitic, and people introduced the test because they thought, hey, all these Jewish boys from New York City are getting into Columbia, and we dont want Princeton and Yale and Harvard to suffer the same fate. This guy called Brigham thought that the IQ test showed that Jewish boys were less intelligent, and that if you use used an IQ test, they wouldnt be able to get in. So the Ivy League pivoted away from subject tests. The Power of Privilege is a story about how the upper class in our society has always sought to conflate the criteria that matched with it with the criteria that was most desirable.

It turned out that the IQ test didnt work very well to filter out Jewish students. Places like Yale, which didnt drop its Jewish quota until about 1964, insisted upon having photographs and family history. You had to give dad and moms place of birth as part of the application. They figured out ways of maintaining a quota system. None of this is news, but people forget that the test was introduced for that reason. So why did they keep it around? In the beginning, it was because the private universities wanted bragging rights over the public universities.

You got into the University of Michigan by graduating from a certified public high school in the state of Michigan; they werent using the SAT. The SAT didnt become adopted by public universities in a widespread way until the late 1960s. Between when it was invented in 1927 and the 60s, the private sector kept it for bragging rights, so that they could say: Our boys are achieving this gold standard of merit.

And the other reason they kept it around was they were trying to figure out how can they could fill their incoming class with boys whose parents bank accounts were big enough to be able to afford them. Arthur Howe, who was the admissions director [at Yale], and in charge of the commission that investigated this thing, calculated that Harvard and Yale and Princeton had to get 60 percent of their incoming class from boys whose families were in the top 5 percent of Americas income group.

So, how do you tell people youre selecting for brains and not bank account? Well, it turns out they figured out, as early as 1964, that theres a very robust correlation between family income and standardized test scores. It works with the ACT today as well as with the SAT. But that correlation meant that you could use it as a proxy for bank accounts.

The cruelty of this is that the test doesnt predict college grades  but it does correlate well with family income. The upper class always cares about thinking that it really deserves its privileges, so it wants to claim that it really is the best and the brightest.

The thing that surprises me is the journalists and intellectuals and talking heads who have been all expressing outrage about this. Many of them have thrown around the term meritocracy. The professional, managerial class, the people with high incomes, they like to think they deserve to be where they are. And this sort of crass, vulgar, illegal, immoral, side-door attempt to get into these private institutions offends everybodys ego, and makes them think that theyre somehow themselves undeserving. Meritocracy is part of the mythology and identity of the upper class in the United States.

And when the Brookings Institute and others, say, oh, we can fix this problem just by making things more meritocratic? Thats bullshit  thats never going to work. No matter what kind of criteria you set, if youve got a private sector in the United States as we do, which enrolls 25 percent of the undergraduates  the private sector gets to define what matters most to them. And I guarantee you, whatever they decide is important, the professional, managerial class are going to do a better job of getting their kids into those institutions than anybody else. So it doesnt matter what the criteria is.

Do you think that colleges should get rid of the SAT altogether? It seems like it may be one of the more difficult criteria to game  would losing it ultimately backfire to the benefit of the elites?

Test-optional is definitely part of the solution. With the University of Chicago signing on, there are over a thousand colleges and universities that are test-optional in the United States today, including public institutions like George Mason and Virginia. And that does remove a proxy for social class that means oure going to be selecting more for high-income families than just for peoples academic ability.

Texas and California both have a formula for their public universities. I think it goes back and forth a little bit in Texas. It was originally written as a top 10 percent rule.

But in California, its the top 9 percent in the local high school who are all admitted to the University of California. They use the test to sort out which campus you go to, but you get admitted by being in the top 9 percent. Given the economic stratification and local control of Americas high schools, that means if [students in] every single public high school in a state get into the public university in the state, youre going to capture a lot more social class diversity than youre going to get through a test, like the SAT. So thats part of the solution, surely.

A lot of the families named in the lawsuit were rich to begin with, and it seems like what theyre purchasing had little to do with the future earnings of their kids. What do you think they were buying? Is it just prestige?

I think most of them were interested in buying prestige, of buying social networking, or, in a few cases, at least, being able to ensure the social media brand of their offspring.

Lori Loughlins daughter  I dont know if she was already friends with the daughter of the board of trustees chairman for the University of Southern California before she went there, but either way, this was cementing a social tie with a powerful network.

I mean, the news broke to her while she was on this guys yacht in the Bahamas. You cant make this stuff up.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Beto and Bernie are pulling Democrats in different directions on health care policy. Photos: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Theres an ancient debate within the Democratic Party about how (and how quickly) to move the country toward universal health coverage. The enactment of the Affordable Care Act was the high point of one basic approach: incremental, involving both public and private insurance, and minimally interfering with existing arrangements. The many dissatisfactions, substantive and political, with Obamacare have fed a revival of the other basic approach: a full leap into a single-payer system operated by the federal government.

The preeminent single-payer scheme of the moment is Bernie Sanderss proposal, which he has wisely dubbed Medicare for All, trading on the popularity of the Great Societyera health insurance program for seniors. The title is a bit of a misnomer, in that it would change Medicare itself in very significant ways. But once you get past that issue, its pretty straightforward: private insurance would be abolished, as would copays, deductibles, and premiums; Medicaid and Obamacare would be folded in; and the cost of this massive new Medicare program would be fully socialized through taxes. The basic appeal of the proposal is its simplicity and equality, and the proposition that most people would pay less in higher taxes than theyd save in premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.

The two obvious problems with Medicare for All are those higher taxes (Sanders proposes a combination of new employee and individual taxes and making existing federal income taxes more progressive), and the disruption of existing insurance. That would include not only the employer-sponsored insurance that covers roughly half the U.S. population, but the Medicare Advantage plans offered by private insurance companies that cover a third of the Medicare population.

These are pretty big problems, so unsurprisingly, the world of left-of-center think tanks has generated a different initiative building off Medicare, called Medicare for America. That this initiative isnt some sort of timid Clintonian, incremental improvement of existing law is signaled by the names of its two chief congressional sponsors, Rosa deLauro and Jan Schakowsky, both stalwarts of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It is probably best understood as a public option on steroids: it would enroll Medicaid and Obamacare participants in Medicare, while making it a voluntary option for everyone else, regardless of age. Out-of-pocket expenses would be capped, not abolished, and premiums would be maintained on a means-tested sliding scale.

Because the federal government would continue to obtain revenues from premiums, and enrollment would presumably be less than universal, Medicare for America would be less of a fiscal leap than Medicare for All. And no one would be forced to give up her employer-sponsored insurance or Medicaid Advantage plan. The grand idea is a gradual transition to the kind of single-payer system Sanderss proposal would initiate immediately.

These two proposals arent just competing in the abstract world of health care wonks. Sanderss plan is at the center of his own presidential campaign, and has been embraced to one degree or another by Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren, among others. Medicaid for America has won an important new advocate in Beto ORourke. And because so many Democratic politicians (not to mention voters) are more than willing to support alternative plans that vary in cost, scope, and ambition, it wont be surprising if ORourke is joined by others, regardless of their position on Medicare for All.

Even though either proposal would represent a significant leftward move for the Democratic Party and the country, and would also cast a large shadow over more modest centrist proposals like a limited Medicare buy-in opportunity, the emergence of Medicaid for America could collide with the determination of some progressives to make Medicare for All a non-negotiable demand (or as detractors put it, a litmus test). As Dylan Scott observes, its unclear how deeply that idea is rooted in the opinion of rank-and-file Democrats:

I have wondered for some time how many absolutist single-payer acolytes there really are within the Democratic Party. A January poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 81 percent of Democrats support a single-payer Medicare-for-all plan  but support for a plan like Medicare for America, opening government coverage to everyone but allowing people to keep their current plan if they so choose, was a little higher, at 91 percent. Like the rest of the public, Democratic support for single-payer rose when they heard out-of-pocket costs would be eliminated and every American would be guaranteed coverage. But then support fell when they were told it would lead to higher taxes or delays in medical treatment.

Another poll, taken by Democratic pollster Michael Perry, found that just 11 percent of Democrats say they would support only Medicare-for-all, because incremental reforms prop up a broken system. The vast majority  84 percent  said they support Medicare-for-all and more gradual improvements to the Affordable Care Act.

So long as the two big Medicare proposals are understood as two paths  one very simple and equitable, one perhaps more feasible and less disruptive  to the same goal, they may play a limited role in the 2020 Democratic primaries (Republicans will, of course, savage both as socialized medicine and as an effort to soak hard-working white taxpayers to provide still more benefits to coddled and idle minorities). But the Beto-versus-Bernie dynamic could make a lot of wonky health policy distinctions politically salient right away.
10 hours ago

EXPLAINER: Why US inflation is so high, and when it may ease

WASHINGTON (AP)  Inflation is starting to look like that unexpected  and unwanted  houseguest who just wont leave. For months, many economists had sounded a reassuring message that a spike in consumer prices, something that had been missing in action in the U.S.

Read Article
March 19, 2019 in Utility (E)

[prMac.com] Perg, Austria - Ergonis Software today released PopChar X 8.6, an improved version of the company's award-winning tool for finding and inserting special characters and exploring fonts.



The new version 8.6 offers a couple of smart user interface improvements, which make PopChar even more convenient to use. One of these improvements is the option to define the desired number of lines in the section of recently used characters. PopChar now also supports font-specific Unicode descriptions for several symbol fonts, such as FontAwesome, Material Icons, Webdings, Wingdings, and more, and informs about the total number of available Unicode characters in the About window.



PopChar X 8.6 has been notarized by Apple. This means that the software has been uploaded to Apple before distribution, and Apple has confirmed that all executables are signed correctly and that the app does not contain any malware. This is a security feature that all Ergonis products now carry.



Finally, PopChar X 8.6 contains fixes and workarounds for user-reported issues and improves overall compatibility and stability on all versions of macOS. Visit Ergonis Software's website to learn more about the changes in this release and to download the new version.



PopChar solves a problem faced by every technologist and multi-lingual worker. Inserting special characters into application documents can be frustrating and results in a steady loss of productivity. With PopChar, thousands of special characters are only a few clicks away. Just pop up the PopChar window, click the desired character, and the character appears in your current document right away.



System Requirements:

* PopChar X 8.6 requires Mac OS X 10.6 or newer

* Recommended for macOS Mojave (10.14)



Availability and Ordering:

PopChar X can be purchased securely on the Ergonis Software website. The upgrade to PopChar X 8.6 is free for anyone who purchased a license for PopChar X 8 or for PopChar X 7 on or after September 1st, 2016. Upgrade paths are available for owners of older licenses. For information about purchases, including enterprise licenses, volume discounts, and upgrade pricing offers, see the company's web site.



Instead of purchasing PopChar separately, customers can save money by ordering the Ergonis Productivity Bundle, which also includes the text expander Typinator and the keyboard shortcut helper KeyCue.

Ergonis Software develops ergonomic and intuitive software that boosts the productivity of Mac and PC users. Ergonis Software, a privately held company founded in 2002, is headquartered in Perg, Austria. Copyright 2002-2019 Ergonis Software Gmbh. All Rights Reserved. Ergonis products are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Ergonis Software GmbH. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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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
WWE RAW REPORT: BATISTA TALKS ABOUT HUNTER, DANA VERSUS RONDA, DREW CHALLENGES ROMAN, AND MORE

We are in Chicago, Illinois and your announcers are Michael Cole, Renee Young, and Corey Graves.

Brock Lesnar makes his way to the ring with Paul Heyman.

Paul introduces his client, Brock Lesnar. Seth Rollins is the one who necessitated an appearance tonight by Brock Lesnar. Seth Rollins comes out here but he is a revisionist. He is a suplex city arsonist. He can weave propaganda on Heyman levels. Seth comes out and says that Brock Lesnar has a problem. A stylistic problem with athletes of Seth's size and moveset. Here is where Seth proves himself to be a fool. Paul brings up Brock Lesnar versus AJ Styles. Did AJ win the match? Nope. Brock won the match. Brock Lesnar versus Daniel Bryan. Was Daniel the winner? Nope. The winner was Brock Lesnar. Brock Lesnar versus Finn Balor. Did Finn win? Nope. Brock won the match.

Paul says that Drew McIntyre is a career killer, not like Brock Lesnar. Drew got up on Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose. Twenty nights before he faces Brock Lesnar, Seth wants to fight Drew McIntyre? What are you thinking?

Drew McIntyre makes his way to the stage. He says it is refreshing to get the respect he has earned in WWE. He tells the people of Chicago to shut their mouths and open their ears. He brutalized Roman Reigns last week. When Dean tried to save his fallen brother, Drew brutalized him too. Drew tells Brock to have his advocate find another opponent for him at Wrestlemania. After he brutalizes Seth Rollins tonight, he won't make it to Wrestlemania.

Seth Rollins hits Drew McIntyre from behind with a chair and then he hits Drew in the ribs with the chair. Officials come out to stand around Seth and Drew so Seth hits Drew many more times with the chair.

Seth makes his way into the ring with his chair but Brock leaves the ring before Seth can do anything.

Paul tells Brock that he is not doing this if he is not getting paid to fight.

We take a look back at what happened last week when Bobby Lashley won back the Intercontinental Title from Finn Balor.

Lio and Bobby are in the locker room and Bobby has his belt put around his waist.

We go to commercial.

Finn wishes everyone a belated St. Patrick's Day. He says the luck of the Irish was not on his side when he lost the title last week. This stubborn Irishman does not plan on being a former champion long.

Lio Rush tells Bobby that the little leprechaun is upset because you have his pot of gold around your waist. Before we get this match started, Bobby needs to show everyone his newest post.

Finn says he plans on getting his title back real soon. Lio will remember his partner and he will get his hands on both of you.

Match Number One: Finn Balor and Braun Strowman versus Bobby Lashley and Lio Rush

Braun and Bobby start things off and go to a stalemate. Braun sends Bobby to the mat and Braun poses, like Bobby just did. Braun with shoulder tackles and Bobby goes to the floor. Bobby leaps onto the apron and Braun knocks him off. Bobby with punches to Braun. Braun with a shoulder to Bobby and he chops Bobby. Finn tags in and hits a double sledge from the turnbuckles and then he kicks Bobby in the hamstrings. Finn goes to the apron and Lashley blocks an enzuigiri. Lashley sends Finn to the floor.

Lashley with a slam when Finn returns to the ring and Bobby gets a near fall. Lio tags in and Finn with a forearm and Bobby tags in and stops Finn from making the tag. Lashley with a rear chin lock. Lashley with a Flatliner for a near fall. Lio tags in and chokes Balor in the ropes. Rush with a sunset flip but Balor rolls through and hits a drop kick. Lashley tags in and punches Balor. Lashley with a reverse chin lock. Lashley stops Balor from making the tag and sends Balor into the turnbuckles. Lashley misses a splash and hits the ring post. Rush tags in and misses a frog splash. Balor with an elbow to the chest and Braun tags in. Braun misses a splash and Rush escapes a choke slam but Braun with a splash and biel to Rush.

Braun tosses Rush across the ring again and he connects with a forearm across the chest. Lashley spears Braun when Braun goes for a power slam. Balor with a double stomp to Lashley. Rush sends Balor to the floor. Rush goes up top and sets for a frog splash but Braun kicks out and sends Rush into the turnbuckles. Rush goes to the floor and runs away in fear but Balor stops Rush. Rush is surrounded and Balor stops Rush. Lashley sends Balor into the timekeeper's area. Strowman with a shoulder tackle to Lashley on the floor followed by one on Rush in the ring. Strowman with a choke slam and Lashley walks to the back as Strowman hits the running power slam for the three count.

Winners: Braun Strowman and Finn Balor

We see what happened last week between Ronda Rousey and Dana Brooke.

Ronda Rousey is walking in the back with her husband.

Ronda is told that she is late by a referee. She is told that extra security has been hired and Ronda walks away.

Alexa Bliss makes her way to her Moment of Bliss set and she will be joined by Elias when we come back from commercial.

We are back and Alexa welcomes everyone to A Moment of Bliss. Alexa is going to show everyone what the buzz is about and we go to Michael Cole running through the card for Wrestlemania.

Alexa says the Oscars did not have a host but this is Wrestlemania. With a card like that, she is the person worthy of hosting. She does not want to talk herself up but she is a really good talk show host. Alexa says that she has influenced others.

Alexa introduces her guest, Elias.

Alexa says this is a safe place. She mentions that they have fallen victim to rude interruptions.

Elias says that he will be the headlining act at Wrestlemania.

Alexa congratulates Elias but she has a few questions for him. Alexa asks Elias about last year and Elias says last year is his motivation for this year. He thrives on moments of pressure. Elias says if his performance at Wrestlemania was a game winning field goal, he'd make it every single time. This performance will be the best by him or anyone. Think of Prince at the Super Bowl, Queen at Live Aid, or Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.

Elias says if anyone interrupts him at Wrestlemania . . .

No Way Jose comes out and Heavy Machinery is at the front of the conga line.

Alexa asks Otis and Tucker what are they doing. She says the conga line was a gag for the end of the show. Alexa says they rehearsed this ten times.

Elias says that in music, timing is everything. Elias is attacked from behind by someone wearing a mask and it is No Way Jose.

Match Number Two: No Way Jose versus Elias

The match is joined in progress and Jose has Elias in an airplane spin and then he goes on the return trip. Jose with a Finlay slam followed by an elbow drop for a near fall. Jose sends Elias into the turnbuckles and then he punches Elias. Elias with an Irish whip and Jose floats over and gives Elias an arm drag into an arm bar. Jose with an arm drag into an arm bar. Elias with a chop and kick. Elias chokes Jose in the ropes. Elias with an Irish whip but he misses a splash. Jose with chops and a hip toss neck breaker. Jose goes up top and misses a cross body.

Elias with kick and punches in the corner. Elias with a running boot to the head followed by a clothesline. Jose with elbows but Elias with a slam. Elias with a knee drop and he goes to the turnbuckles. Elias with an elbow drop. Elias with Drift Away for the three count.

Winner: Elias

Kurt Angle makes his way to the ring and we will find out who Kurt will face at Wrestlemania.

We go to commercial.

Coverage Continues on Next Page

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Pro-Brexit activists march outside Parliament on February 27, 2019. Photo: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images

With a week and a half to go before the U.K. is scheduled to withdraw from the European Union with or without a deal, Prime Minister Theresa May still has not secured Parliaments approval of the agreement she negotiated with Brussels over the past two years. Now, after a surprise ruling by the speaker of Parliament, she may not even get another chance to ask.

John Bercow, speaker of the House of Commons, threw the government a curveball on Monday when he announced that May could not put the negotiated deal to another vote in its current form. The Commons rejected it first in January, by 230 votes, and again last week, by the smaller but still massive margin of 150 votes. Her plan, as it has been for the past several months, was to keep whipping support for her deal with help from the looming threat of the March 29 deadline and hold another vote this week. Bercows ruling likely puts an end to that plan.

Citing the U.K.s 19th-century guide to parliamentary procedure and precedent dating back to 1604, Bercow noted that the legislatures rules prohibit it from voting twice on the same or fundamentally similar proposals twice in the same session. The speaker said it was not his final word on the matter and that the government was welcome to reintroduce a Brexit deal proposal  as long as it is substantially different from the ones already voted on (he had judged the January and March versions of the deal sufficiently different to allow a second vote).

Ten Downing Street said it had gotten no advance warning of Bercows statement, which also shocked MPs. Some legislators expressed outrage at the speakers decision, but hard-line Brexiteers, who would rather have no deal than Mays deal, were pleased, as it would seem to make their preferred outcome more likely and bury a proposal they despise.

Solicitor General Robert Buckland described the situation as a constitutional crisis, noting that one possible way around Bercows demand would be to end the current session of Parliament early, start a new session next week, and hold the vote then. Such a drastic measure would almost surely be followed by calls for a general election. MPs could also conceivably hold a procedural vote to waive the rule for this one vote.

The chances of May actually coming up up with a substantially different version of the deal are roughly nil, as the E.U. leaders have repeatedly stressed that the only deal they are willing to make is the one on the table. Parliament, however, remains intractably deadlocked over the deals backstop solution for preventing the reestablishment of a hard border in Ireland. Proponents of a hard Brexit say the backstop could leave the U.K. stuck in a customs union with the E.U. indefinitely, which would undercut the whole point of leaving the bloc. The government has considered trying to placate the Brexiteers by adopting novel legal theories based on Article 62 of the Vienna Convention and claiming a right to cancel the backstop arrangement unilaterally under certain conditions. Bercow, however, added that changes in an opinion would not be enough of a difference to justify voting on the deal again, closing off that escape route.

The tumultuous Brexit process has already raised serious constitutional questions for the British government and strained the balance of power between its executive and legislative branches. Whether out of ambition or necessity, Bercow has expanded his role as speaker from an impartial referee to a legislative leader, wielding the Parliaments arcane rules to constrain the governments policy-making power. Under the House of Commons rules, the speaker renounces his party affiliation upon appointment, does not cast votes, and is meant to serve as a nonpartisan presiding officer. Brexiteers have accused Bercow, formerly a member of Mays Conservative Party, of abusing his office and violating that code of impartiality to undermine Brexit.

Bercow is hardly the only person standing in the way of Mays deal, however. Had he not decided to put the kibosh on bringing her deal to the floor again this week, its chances were already shaky. May had already confirmed that she would not put the deal to another vote without first making sure it had the backing of her Northern Irish coalition partners, the Democratic Unionist Party, plus a critical mass of recalcitrant Tories, some of whom have said theyd back her deal to avoid a lengthy delay in Brexit. Still, the number of minds she needs to change to get to a majority at this late date is staggering. Eurosceptics in her party, negotiating from a position of extreme leverage, have begun issuing ultimatums, saying they will only vote for the deal if she first sets a date for her resignation and threatening vote strikes if Brexit is delayed by more than a year.

No matter what, May will request a delay in the Brexit deadline when she meets with E.U. leaders at the European Council summit this Thursday. The question is, for how long: If she has Parliaments approval of her deal in hand by then, the plan is to ask for just three months to wrap things up. If not, she is expected to request a longer extension (nine months, according to one anonymous cabinet member). Her case to holdout MPs, which she reiterated in an op-ed in the Telegraph on Sunday, is that if they dont back her deal now, the U.K. could end up crashing out of the E.U., or Brexit could be delayed, subject to a second referendum, or possibly never happen at all. Its the only card she has left, but Bercow just made it harder to play.

Any delay would require the unanimous consent of the other 27 E.U. countries. The government expects the E.U. to decide at the summit whether to grant the request, but senior E.U. diplomats said they might not make a decision right away, especially if Parliament hasnt held a third vote on the deal. Meanwhile, European governments arent all sold on the idea of granting an extension at all. German chancellor Angela Merkels chief of staff said on Monday that the whole notion of granting an extension was not uncontroversial among the E.U. member states, particularly since it would mean the U.K. participating in the upcoming European Parliamentary elections in May. While European Council president Donald Tusk is advocating the longest possible delay and trying to whip up support for that in European capitals this week, theres no guarantee that he will succeed.

Amid this last-minute drama, new polls show that the small majority of U.K. citizens who now favor remaining in the E.U. is growing, while the public also supports a vote on whether to leave with no deal or remain in the union after all, but would not want a verbatim repeat of the 2016 referendum. Those who still want to leave are split between preferring to leave with a deal or without one. With those numbers in mind, some British Europhiles cheered Bercows ruling as improving the odds of a delay and a second vote in which Remain prevails  even as the hard Brexiteers relish the thought of it catalyzing a no-deal Brexit.

Parliament also voted last week to rule out the no-deal option, but its not entirely in their power to prevent it. If a deal is not finalized by next Friday (or by whatever new deadline the E.U. agrees to), the only way to prevent the country from crashing out of the E.U. is for the government to take the politically cataclysmic step of unilaterally canceling Brexit.

The chances of the U.K. eventually coming to such a fork in the road, between no deal and no Brexit, are hardly remote. Even if May does manage to push her deal through, it would only start the clock on a transition period and another round of negotiations over the same irresoluble final-status issues the parties couldnt agree on during the past two years of talks. Throughout this ordeal, the bulk of the U.K.s political class has been avoiding hard decisions and honest reckoning with the public about what Brexit really means. Even if they arent forced to face reality this month, it will  eventually, inevitably  catch up to them.
Needs a renovation. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Donald Trump has already appointed 91 judges to the federal judiciary. Thanks to Mitch McConnells ruthless subversion of Senate norms, the president is poised to appoint more than 100 additional federal judges before his first term ends. Theres a decent chance that at least one of those will be a Supreme Court justice (Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 86 years old).

The high courts existing conservative majority has evinced few qualms about legislating from the bench. Within the past two decades, conservative jurists have gutted the Voting Rights Act, legalized most forms of political bribery; rewritten antitrust law; declared voluntary school desegregation plans unconstitutional; invented an individual right to bear arms; abolished virtually all restrictions on corporate spending in American elections; overturned an Arizona law that attempted to counter such spending by providing candidates with public funds; restricted the capacity of consumers and workers to sue corporations that abuse them; rewrote Barack Obamas Medicaid expansion in a manner that enabled red states to reject the program (thereby condemning thousands of Americans to preventable deaths); and came within one vote of striking down Obamas entire health-care law on audaciously specious grounds.

Meanwhile, the worlds top climate scientists say that averting ecological catastrophe will now require a World War IIstyle mobilization  which is to say, aggressive forms of state intervention in the private economy that many conservative jurists regard as unconstitutional.

Together, these realities have persuaded a large number of progressive activists and intellectuals that reforming the federal judiciary may well be a prerequisite for social progress (if not human civilizations long-term survival). And now, they have convinced a significant number of Democratic presidential candidates of the same:

Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand told POLITICO they would not rule out expanding the Supreme Court if elected president, showcasing a new level of interest in the Democratic field on an issue that has until recently remained on the fringes of debate.

 We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court, said Harris (D-Calif.). We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that.  Gillibrand said in an interview that she believes Justice Neil Gorsuch essentially possesses an illegitimate seat after Garland was denied even a committee hearing. The New York Democrat added that the Senate should move swiftly to impose strict ethics rules on the Supreme Court.

Its not just about expansion, its about depoliticizing the Supreme Court, said Warren (D-Mass.), who mentioned bringing appellate judges into Supreme Court cases as an option.

Its a conversation thats worth having, she added.

This is an encouraging development for the reasons outlined above. But Politicos coverage of the issue elides (or underemphasizes) three critical points:

1. Democratic candidates want to reform the courts, not pack them.

Court-packing is a pejorative in American politics, one that connotes a partisan power grab. Thus, it makes sense that Republicans would wish to describe the plans that Warren and Harris are mulling as court packing. But progressive advocates for those plans should probably avoid doing so not least because the term is inaccurate.

As Warren suggests, the goal is not merely to expand the Supreme Court, or to turn a bastion of conservative judicial activism into a liberal one. Rather, the idea is that one could nullify the threat that a reactionary, activist judiciary (appointed largely by men who were not popularly elected) poses to self-government in the U.S. without triggering an endless court-packing arms race  by establishing new rules that lower the stakes of Supreme Court appointments, and suppress judicial partisanship.

In article for Vox last fall, the legal scholars Daniel Epps and Ganesh Sitaraman outlined two different ways in which this could be achieved. When Warren mentioned bringing appellate judges into Supreme Court cases, she may have been referencing their first suggestion:

[C]hanging the Supreme Court from nine permanent justices to a rotating group of justices, similar to a panel on a court of appeals. Every judge on the federal court of appeals would also be appointed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court panel would be composed of nine justices, selected at random from the full pool of associate justices. Once selected, the justices would hear cases for only two weeks, before another set of judges would replace them.

This approach would effectively eliminate the high stakes of Supreme Court appointments, thereby taking the Court out of the electoral and political realm. It would also significantly decrease the ideological partisanship of each court decision. No single judge would be able to advance an ideological agenda over decades of service or develop a cult of personality among partisans. And it would be very difficult to be a judicial activist on any given case because the next panel  arriving as soon as two weeks later  might have a different composition and take a different tack. Cases would also be chosen behind a veil of ignorance. While serving their two weeks, the justices would consider petitions for Supreme Court review. But with such short terms of service, the justices could not pick cases with a partisan agenda in mind; another slate of justices would hear the cases they select.

They also offer a balanced court solution, in which ten justices  five Republican and five Democratic  would be chosen through a political process much like our current system and then these politically appointed justices would need to unanimously pick five additional justices, drawn from the courts of appeals, to sit with them for a year.

Of course, todays Republicans are likely to view any reform that nullifies their hard-won Supreme Court majority as an illegitimate power grab. But if you squint hard, you can imagine a world in which Democrats win federal power, pass one of these judicial reforms  and then retain power long enough to endow the new system with bipartisan legitimacy. That said, red states would liable to start nullifying Supreme Court decisions in the interim.

Regardless, such concerns are almost certainly moot for the foreseeable future because:

2. The next Democratic president is extremely unlikely to have the votes necessary for reforming the Supreme Court.

Democratic senators Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennett, and Dianne Feinstein have all already voiced opposition to meddling with the Supreme Courts composition. Which is to say: It isnt just red-state moderates like Jon Tester and Joe Manchin who stand in the way of judicial reform  its the median member of Chuck Schumers caucus. Heck, many of the Senates most progressive senators cant even bring themselves to endorse abolishing the (utterly irrational) legislative filibuster.

Meanwhile, Democrats will need to pull off a minor miracle just to secure a single-vote Senate majority in 2021. And even if they dominate the next two election cycles, they still (almost certainly) wont be in a position to pass any laws that dont have the support of the likes of Booker and Klobuchar. Whats more, absent a drastic escalation in the Roberts Courts activism, public opinion is unlikely to force moderate Democrats hands. Thanks to the publics capacious ignorance of 99 percent of Supreme Court rulings, rank-and-file Democratic voters actually espouse a broadly positive view of the existing judiciary; as of last month, a plurality of Democratic voters approved of Chief Justice John Roberts, while just 7 percent described him as very conservative (despite the mans evisceration of landmark civil-rights legislation, and myriad efforts to expand corporate power).

Reforming the courts is a good policy  and may prove a necessary one. But theres no evidence its good politics. Which means that moderate Democratic senators are unlikely to budge, absent a massive judicial power grab that eviscerates a core Democratic achievement.

Nevertheless, the push for Supreme Court reform remains worthwhile because:

3. Building support for reform could temper John Robertss appetite for judicial activism.

Franklin Roosevelt never managed to pass his court packing scheme  but the threat alone (ostensibly) forced a reactionary high court to make peace with the New Deal state.

Theres reason to think that contemporary efforts to politicize the court (or, perhaps, to politicize the rights politicization of said courts) could have a similarly beneficent effect. In her forthcoming biography of John Roberts, The Chief, journalist Joan Biskupic reports that Roberts initially intended to join his four conservative colleagues in voting to strike down the Affordable Care Act, but was reluctant to make such a sweeping intervention into an issue as potent as health care. Thus, he reportedly negotiated a compromise with Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, which resulted in those two liberals voting to undermine the Medicaid expansion, while Roberts voted to preserve the bulk of the law.

Biskupic holds out the possibility that Robertss change of heart really arose from a sudden new understanding of the congressional taxing power. But the weight of the available evidence suggests otherwise.

And even if the justices do not consciously consider the risk of political backlash, that threat still might unconsciously inform their reasoning. So long as progressives are loudly preparing plans for stripping the court of its present prerogatives, its conservative jurists will have some cause to worry that striking down the next expansion of public health insurance might be more trouble than its worth.

Granted, as stipulated above, the threat to reform the courts isnt currently an empty one. But Roberts may wish to protect this status quo, by declining to give Amy Klobuchar & Co. a good excuse to change their minds.
Devin Nunes leaves the Longworth Building on November 14, 2018. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

Representative Devin Nunes, who is bringing a $250 million suit against Twitter because he has been the subject of mean tweets, is not an obscure kook. He is a famous and highly influential kook who chaired the House Intelligence Committee until January. From this perch, he largely orchestrated President Trumps legal defense in the Russia scandal, ejecting a wild flurry of charges that Trump is the subject of a deep state conspiracy, running a sham inquiry that claimed to clear the president of all wrongdoing, and feeding scoops to the conservative media to support Trumps no-collusion narrative. For these efforts, Trump has praised Nunes as a very courageous man, and suggested that he deserves to win the Medal of Freedom.

I have spent innumerable hours excavating the loopy theories emanating from Nunes. And yet none of that prepared me for the full barking-mad preposterousness of his lawsuit. It might be the most staggeringly juvenile and inadvertently hilarious document I have ever read.

Nuness legal case hinges on the argument that Twitter is not merely a platform for users, but a media company with a distinct point of view. Twitter actively censors and shadow-bans conservatives, such as Plaintiff, thereby eliminating his voice while amplifying the voices of his Democratic detractors, the suit argues. (Nunes is referencing a conspiracy theory; Twitter does not shadow-ban conservatives, nor promote Democrats.)

Even if Twitter did exclude conservatives in the way he alleges, it would hardly support his lawsuit. The First Amendment provides broad legal protection for the criticism, including mockery and satire, of public officials. If Twitter wanted to censor conservatives and promote mockery of Devin Nunes, it would have a strong constitutional basis to do so.

Nunes provides almost no arguments to support his demand, which would overturn decades of well-settled legal precedent. In place of the extremely novel constitutional case he needs to make, his lawsuit asserts that the existence of very mean tweets runs contrary to every tenet of American Democracy, including the guarantees of both the First Amendment and Article I,  12 of the Virginia Constitution. In the words of the late United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought  not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

You dont have to be a lawyer to understand that this quote  defending the existence of speech from those we hate  supports the exact opposite position from Nunes. It is perhaps worth noting that the attorney representing Nunes in this lawsuit has reportedly had his law license suspended twice, and was reprimanded once.

Building atop his foundation of a completely false factual understanding of how Twitter operates and what the First Amendment means, Nunes builds the rest of his suit around detailed recounting of the mean tweets he has suffered and the pain they have caused him. During his last re-election for the 22nd Congressional District, the lawsuit notes, Nunes endured an orchestrated defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope, one that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life.

Specifically, Nunes cites tweets by anti-Trump Republican Liz Mair, and two parody accounts, Devin Nunes Mom and Devin Nunes Cow. He complains that Mair tweeted references to a Fresno Bee investigation showing that a winery co-owned by Nunes permitted the sexual harassment of employees, cocaine use, and visits from prostitutes, who were apparently underage. He further charges that the Devin Nunes Mom account falsely impersonated Nunes mother  for the sole purpose of attacking, defaming, disparaging and demeaning Nunes. To wit:

Devin Nunes Mom stated that Nunes had turned out worse than Jacob Wohl; falsely accused Nunes of being a racist, having white supremist friends and distributing disturbing inflammatory racial propaganda; falsely accused Nunes of putting up a Fake News MAGA sign outside a Texas Holocaust museum; falsely stated that Nunes would probably join the Proud Boys; if it werent for that unfortunate nomasturbating rule; disparagingly called him a presidential fluffer and swamp rat; falsely stated that Nunes had brought shame to his family; repeatedly accused Nunes of the crime of treason, compared him to Benedict Arnold, and called him a traitor, treasonous shitbag, a treasonous Putin shill, working for the Kremlin; falsely stated that Nunes was 100% bought and sold. He has no interest remaining for his constituents; falsely accused Nunes of being part of the Presidents taint team 

This part of the lawsuit includes a helpful footnote explaining the taint team accusation. The verb taint means to contaminate morally or to affect with putrefaction, it notes, A taint is a contaminating mark or influence or a trace of a bad or undesirable substance or quality. Urban Dictionary defines taint as the area of skin on a women between her vagina and her anus.

The list of mean tweets goes on for pages; it even includes several exhibits, including:

the greatest exhibit ever in a federal complaint? pic.twitter.com/2bTSkOcIcq  harm to ongoing matter (@dancow) March 18, 2019

The legal takeaway here, from the complainants standpoint, is that the tweet likening Nunes to the part of Donald Trumps body between his anus and genitals was not in fact written by his actual mother, but an imposter.

Devin Nunes Cow  the true author of which, Nunes does not bother to point out, is not the actual voice of Nuness cow, and in all probability not a cow at all  has made, published and republished hundreds of false and defamatory statements of and concerning Nunes, including the following: Nunes is a treasonous cowpoke and Devins boots are full of manure; Hes udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison; Devin is whey over his head in crime, and other bovine-themed puns that Nunes has found deeply wounding.

Nunes charges that these very mean tweets were published as part of [Twitters] agenda to squelch Nunes voice, cause him extreme pain and suffering, influence the 2018 Congressional election, and distract, intimidate and interfere with Nunes investigation into corruption and Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election.

This nefarious campaign to hurt Nuness feelings by Twitter was undertaken for the larger goal of discrediting his oh-so-fair efforts to get to the bottom of the Russia scandal. The two are indeed connected: Nuness preposterous, juvenile lawsuit tells you everything you need to know about the intellectual caliber of Trumps defense against the Mueller investigation.
I was riveted to a car chase broadcast on Fox 2 News this morning. Bommarito Sky Fox traffic helicopter followed an SUV which was stolen in Maryland Heights and raced at speed which reached 115 MPH over to Illinois and back across the JB Bridge to south county. The young men did a home invasion in Illinois and then headed back to the Missouri side. Watching this clear video and seeing how fast this car was going sliding from lane to lane to pass rush hour traffic and big trucks was just unreal.

Eventually the two gave up, stopped on the shoulder of 55 near Reavis Barracks, got out and started running through a local neighborhood. At one point they tried to get into a house but it was locked. They then ran around that neighborhood for a bit until they just had no escape and County and city and probably state police got them.

The thing is, this could have caused as disastrous crash with any number of people injured.

KMOV's traffic copter was following this too, but their station had gone to national news so it was not broadcast live, but here is a good write-up and video.
Sanctions against individual Russian oligarchs work, at least according to a lawsuit filed by Kremlin friend Oleg Deripaska, claiming that hes lost billions, and decrying the fact that he is officially referred to as an oligarch.

According to the civil lawsuit, Deripaskaa metals magnate who essentially created the entire aluminum industry in Russiahas lost $7.5 billion of his net worth because of U.S. sanctions, which forced international businesses to steer clear of him and banks to stop issuing credit.

In fact, the lawsuit claims that sanctions have led to the utter devastation of Deripaskas wealth and reputation.

Deripaska, in his attempt to sue the United States, says he is a victim of American political infighting and that the sanctions against him have created an atmosphere of general hysteria that has rendered him and his businesses toxic. Now hes seeking simple justice.

He takes issue with the fact that hes is referred to as an oligarch in this age of oligarch re-invention. The dictionary definition of oligarch is a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence. Deripaska argues that he doesnt have close ties to Vladimir Putin, even though he is the founder of two massive aluminum producersEn+ Group and United Co. Rusal.

In April 2018, OFAC placed Deripaska on its list of Designated Russian Oligarchs, saying that he acted on behalf of a senior Russian government official, and accusing him of money laundering and threatening the lives of business rivals, among other nefarious activities. Related: U.S. Tech Stocks Look Increasingly Vulnerable

In January, headlines were awash with news that the Trump administration was lifting sanctions against Deripaska and his companies, with scathing criticism of the administrations weakness in the face of the Russian oligarchy. However, that move only lifted sanctions against En+ Group, and not against Deripaska himself, who remains toxic and, according to the lawsuit, shut of out international business.

While Deripaska--whose wealth originates from the free-for-all privatization of the 1990s, like every other Russian oligarchsays he is interested to see whether the U.S. justice system can deliver true justice in this case, its not his first rodeo here.

Lets not forget about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has been convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years behind bars. Deripaska sued him, too. Manafort used to serve as Deripaskas political consultant, and that consulting led the metals magnate to invest nearly $19 million with Manafort in a cable TV deal in Ukraine. Manafort charged him $7.35 million in management fees, according to Bloomberg. Deripaska has sued both Manafort and his lackey, Rick Gates (who has also pleaded for fraud).

Deripaska insists that the sanctions against him represent the weaponization of finance, and that this is about American politics under Trump.

Well, of course, he is correct.

The market would surely agree. Deripaskas Rusal is the second-largest producer of aluminum in the world, and when the U.S. slapped sanctions on the behemoth, the immediate response was a panic that supply would become abruptly short, sending aluminum prices soaring.

When the U.S. Treasury starts playing around with oligarchs in the age of globalization, the ripples are huge. The only way to avoid unsettling the aluminum markets (and any other add-on ripples) was to backtrack a bit and give companies more time to find alternative suppliers, and then not long after that, to announce that sanctions would be lifted on Rusal (though not on Deripaska himself).

Related: De Beers To Expand Worlds Most Profitable Diamond Mine

Deripaskas point that this was a political game and financial warfare against Russia is also clearly justified. The other activities he is accused of, including money laundering and threatening business rivals, were known of long before the sanctions. As such, the sanctions were a direct response to Russian meddling in the U.S. elections, which Deripaska insists has nothing to do with him.

But at some point, if youre a Russian oligarcheven in the age of re-inventionyou must pay the piper. And this era of globalization means that the biggest weapons of mass destruction are financial. There is no more separating politics and finance, and oligarchs must surely understand this better than anyone.

What Deripaska is really fighting against is this: The lifting of sanctions against Rusal in January came with a weighty conditionthat he reduce his direct and indirect shareholding stake in these companies and severed his control.

By David Craggen for Safehaven.com

More Top Reads From Safehaven.com:
Widespread protests have failed to halt the Kremlins march towards internet censorship and population control, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has now signed into law a set of bills that render both fake news and online disrespect of the state criminal.

It was only on March 7 that the Russian State Duma, the countrys lower house of parliament, passed the two bills, which then required approval in the upper house before going to the President.

While tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Russian cities after the Duma passed the two laws, the breakneck speed with which these laws were approved and signed by the president gave protesters no time to organize on a mass level.

The package of harsh restrictions is called the digital sovereignty bill, which requires all Russian telecoms companies to reroute internet traffic through the state telecom regulator, Roskomnadzor.

So, as of today, Russians find themselves living under a modern-day digital iron curtain.

According to The Moscow Times, the bills make it criminal for news outlets or individual users to spread fake newsdetermined by the authoritiesor face fines of around $23,000 for repeat offenses.

Even more ominous is the fine and prison sentence for insulting state symbols and authorities, for which repeat offenders will pay around $4,500 and spend 15 days in jail.

In the face of expectedly harsh criticism, the Kremlin insists that the new laws are nothing beyond the war on fake news and other digital forms of bullying that governments across Europe are waging. But this is decidedly different, whatever spin the Kremlin wishes to put on it.

Europes war has been about protecting privacynot about suppressing dissent and controlling the population. The EUs tough General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) push focuses on providing consumers with greater control over how their personal data is collected and used. Related: Homeowners Experiment With Risky New Investment Trend

The Western world is also trying censor hate speech that incites violence against groups of people. That doesnt include disrespecting the state or its authorities, a time-honored tradition of democracy.

Speaking to NPR, Matthew Rojansky, director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, said: "The idea that there should be a Russian internet is very convenient for those whose main goal is control, and that's where you come back to the siloviki, the security apparatus of Russia, including the legacy organizations of the KGB which were uncomfortable to begin with, with the idea that Russians were fully connected to a global information space that was in their view a tool of the United States," Rojansky said.

The new laws are in sharp contrast to Russias own spreading of fake news and its use of such tools to manipulate 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

It also makes one thing very clear: The internet in Russia is a tool of the government, not a right of the people.

Take the Russian troll factories, for example. As PRI reports, a Russian journalist recently went undercover in a troll factory, recounting a massive, well-organized operation and concluding that the fight against trolls is impossible to win.

Divided into departments categorized as news division, social media seekers and demotivators who produce visual memes, the operation boasted hundreds of young Russians working in rotating shifts.

Related: U.S. Tech Stocks Look Increasingly Vulnerable

And this operation was headed by a local restauranteur who has been sanctioned by the U.S. for interfering in elections in 2016.

The Russian journalist is Lyudmila Savchuk, and she was among the first to uncover Russias disinformation campaign in 2014.

The iron curtain has been drawn, and while Russian protesters like to compare it to North Korea, China is an equally viable example. Consider Beijings new, state-controlled fake news killer, a platform called Piyao and its even more sinister Social Media Credit Score system, which uses big data and AI algorithms to decide who is an upstanding citizen and to punish those who arent.

China may be big brother, but Russia is big daddy.

Make no mistake, the new cold war is digital, and the new iron curtain boldly separates those with access to information and those without.

By Charles Benavidez for Safehaven.com

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It might have been the luck of the Irish that let the 2019 Buellton Wine and Chili Festival 
Well cross that bridge when we come to it. Photo: Stephen Maturen/AFP/Getty Images

Since his entry into the presidential race, Beto ORourke has been criticized for being long on inspirational rhetoric and short on granular policy detail. (Though he did endorse a health-care plan yesterday.) Meanwhile, some candidates, like Elizabeth Warren, have been very clear on exactly what they want to do in office. How important is it for a candidate to present a full-bore policy platform at this point in the race  or, really, ever? Intelligencer staffers Benjamin Hart, Jonathan Chait, and Ed Kilgore discuss.

Jon: I think its important to display a command of the issues, or enough command to be able to make important decisions. I tend to believe policy outcomes will be determined by Congress, at least domestically, more than the president anyway.

Ed: Candidates differ in how much they need to do to demonstrate that command. Nobody much doubts Warrens command of substance. Beto ORourke has more to prove.

With someone like Biden, fans trust him enough that they dont need to see a detailed platform. But as rivals and journalists question his past positions, he may need to rebut doubts with new positions  as on criminal-justice reform, for example.

Jon: I agree that command of policy is in part a proxy for the question of whether he is qualified for the job given his thin resume.

Ed: I dont necessarily agree with Jon on the relative importance of presidents and legislators on policy. Presidential agendas often matter a great deal, depending on the presidents own approach to politics.

Ben: A presidents first priority tends to be the first priority of Congress.

Jon: Thats true, though Congress discarded Bill Clintons first priority (an economic stimulus).

Ed: In any event, at this particular moment in Democratic politics, taking positions on policy issues is also a way for activists and journalists to identify candidates ideologically. Its not in the interest of a potential unity candidate like Beto to cater to that need.

Obama was strategically imprecise about certain policy issues in 2008, though again, few doubted his policy chops.

Jon: I actually think people did question Obamas policy chops, and he had to overcome that.

Ed: I thought that was mostly later, when Republicans claimed he was a slave to the teleprompter.

Jon: He faced a lot of the same questions as ORourke  too young, vacuous cipher, inspirational but empty.

Ed: Either way, Obama definitely chose to present a trans-ideological appeal, running both to the left and right of HRC. Im guessing Beto wants to do the same thing with his more ideologically distinct rivals.

Jon: Warren might attract voters who like the idea of policy specificity. That is a real Democratic constituency.

Ben: I fall into that category.

Jon: I certainly like it too.

Ed: I would also guess that Warrens famously weak general-election numbers owe a lot to low-information voters, whose votes count just as much as those of folks like us. As they should.

Ben: Given the constraints of Congress, foreign policy is probably the area where the president has the most executive leeway. Isnt it a little weird that we havent heard much about the Paris Climate Accord, or the Iran Deal? Instead, its all insanely difficult to pass health-care legislation, expanding the Supreme Court, and so forth.

Ed: Unless theres a big and hot war going on, Americans always care more about domestic issues.

Jon: On Paris they all agree. Iran is more interesting  why havent they brought it up? I cant remember hearing it a single time.

Ben: I know most care more about domestic stuff, but the complete absence of these issues is still notable.

Ed: I think its assumed any Democrat will be less reckless than Trump internationally. But the size and variety of the field could make specifics begin to matter. Bernie seems to want to do that. I couldnt even begin to tell you where Beto or Kamala Harris is on foreign policy, other than Not With Trump.

Ben: Does the unification of the Democratic coalition on almost every issue make it easier than before for candidates to skate by without offering their own vision?

Ed: Maybe, though it also means theres a market for specifics on the issues where they are less united, like health care, SCOTUS-packing, and the filibuster.

Jon: Great question!

Ben: Finally, someone appreciates my work.

Jon: I was just looking for a way to avoid answering it, but sure. No, actually, it is a really interesting question and its hard to say. I think the answer might be yes.

Ed: It was amazing how many crazy Republican positions didnt get aired in the 2016 primaries because they all agreed on them, despite the huge field.

Jon: And then didnt get aired because Trump was saying wild stuff every day.

Ed: Yeah. In addition, Trump was able to keep his intentions toward entitlement programs vague, because all the other Republicans wanted to hammer them. But nobody wanted to talk about it publicly. So Medicare/Medicaid became the Entitlements We Do Not Speak Of.

Ben: In conclusion, policy is a land of contrasts.

Ed: Haha. With high vistas and low valleys.
" " Using seismometers, UChicago scientists (including Becky Goodsell, pictured) recorded hundreds of thousands of 'ice quakes,' a phenomenon that may help track glacier melting. Alison Banwell/University of Chicago

There's a corner of the frigid Antarctic where the ice itself shivers at night, according to research published in the journal Annals of Glaciology in December 2018.

From late November, 2016 to mid-January, 2017, lead author Douglas R. MacAyeal and his team gathered seismic data on the McMurdo Ice Shelf, a sheet of frozen water that encases part of Antarctica's Ross Sea.

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Out on the ice, the team set up two seismograph stations. One of them  dubbed the "wet station"  was placed in an area where meltwater lakes were present at and below the surface. Meanwhile, the so-called "dry station" was deposited on a body of compact snow roughly 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) away.

Those areas yielded wildly different readings. Every night, from late November to mid-December, the equipment at the wet station would record what MacAyel describes in a press release as "tens, hundreds, [or] thousands" of extremely small seismic events. (Each one began and ended in less than a second.)

Nothing like that was observed at the dry station, which mostly picked up anthropogenic, or "man-made" rumblings produced by nearby field vehicles. Yet the wet station quakes were clearly of natural origin. MacAyel and his colleagues hypothesize that they're linked to the area's subsurface water deposits.

"In these ponds," MacAyel says in that same release, "there's often a layer of ice on top of melted water below, like what you see in a lake that's only frozen on top. As the temperature cools at night, the ice on the top contracts, and the water below expands as it undergoes freezing. This warps the top lid, until it finally breaks with a snap."

For decades, scientists have known that ice can generate seismic activities  many of which are very small in scale. A well-documented example would be the alarmingly loud "frost quakes" that allegedly besieged the Chicago area this year.

When most liquids freeze, they lose volume and contract. But water isn't like most liquids; the freezing process actually causes H2O to expand. Frost quakes are what can happen when groundwater that's seeped into a plot of soil or rock rapidly freezes. Just as you'd expect, as the liquid water turns into ice, it quickly expands. The resultant pressure can cause the surrounding material to crack, sometimes with a booming noise that sounds like the roar of a shotgun.

Frost quakes belong to a larger family of phenomena known as "ice quakes." This label's also been applied to the earthquake-like events triggered by glaciers as they skid across underlying pools of liquid water.

But the observations made by MacAyel's group imply that the upper surface of an ice shelf can create its own quakes  which has never been suggested before. They hope future scientists will be able to monitor Antarctic melting trends by keeping tabs on these rumblings.

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING The Ross Sea was named after Sir James Clark Ross, a British explorer who  in addition to surveying much of Antarctica  successfully located the magnetic north pole in 1831.
" " Anybody can be knocked over by wind, as long as it's blowing hard enough. OLI SCARFF/Stringer/Getty

In early March 2017, a 4-year-old Ohio girl named Madison Gardner had just returned home with her mother Brittany from a shopping trip. As her mom was unloading the car, Madison walked up the front stoop to enter the house. She grabbed the door handle, turned the knob, and then suddenly went for ride.

Like the tornado that swept Dorothy and Toto to Oz, a gale blew Madison's front door open, turning it into a sail with the tiny tot hanging on for dear life. Madison wasn't hurt, but the episode proves that yes, the wind can send a person off their feet and even knock them down.

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But how? Let's start with some basic science: The wind is always blowing. It can be as calm as a warm summer's breeze, or as destructive as a those that blow in the strongest hurricane. Wind blows because of pressure differences in the atmosphere. The sun hits parts of the planet at different angles, warming Earth's atmosphere unevenly. As result, some places are warmer than others.

Because of this uneven temperature, the gases in the atmosphere start to "dance." Where the air temperature is hotter, air molecules expand and move upward, creating low air pressure. On the other hand, cold air temperatures press air molecules together, causing them to sink, creating high air pressure. When these molecules flow from high pressure areas to low pressure areas  hang on to your hat, or as Madison abruptly learned, the door handle. The wind can blow, sometimes violently.

Meteorologists use the Beaufort Wind Scale to measure the force of wind. The scale starts at 0, which is a calm breeze, and ends at 12, which is hurricane-force wind that speeds along at more than 64 miles per hour (102.9 kilometers per hour). Still, at what point can wind move a person? It depends on a lot of things, according to Kait Parker, a meteorologist at the Weather Channel.

The formula has to take into consideration variables: the velocity of wind; the effect of gravity (the force of attraction between a person and Earth); static friction (the force that keeps a person anchored to the ground); and drag from the wind, which is the opposing force of static friction. "You'd also have to take into account the density of the air," Parker says. "Is it super-moist or heavy? Is it dry? Is it lighter?"

A person's mass and center of gravity also need to be factored. For instance, little Madison didn't have much mass (or much of a center of gravity, for that matter), so the wind easily took her for a ride. The wind would have had to blow much harder to lift her mom off her feet.

"If you are a larger person, or a heavier person, it would take a lot more force to knock you off your feet," Parker says. "For a person who weighs 100 pounds (45.3 kilograms), it would take a wind speed of 40 to 45 miles an hour, or tropical storm force, to move them."

Now That's Crazy On March 12, 2017, organizers of the Cape Town Cycle Tour, which drew 35,000 riders, had to cancel the event when winds topped 60 mph (96 kph), knocking riders off their bikes.
" " Places like Colorado have many THC-laced edibles for sale.  Erich Schlegel/Corbis

In 2014, when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd ventured to Colorado, legally purchased a marijuana-infused candy bar and ate way too much of it, she spent eight sleepless hours believing she was dead [source: Dowd]. After writing a column documenting her nightmarish experience, a billboard appeared in Denver, offering sage advice: "Don't let a candy bar ruin your vacation. With edibles, start low and go slow" [source: Wallis].

While smoking is the prevailing means of consuming marijuana -- the most commonly used illegal drug in the country -- eating marijuana is a popular alternative [source: National Institute on Drug Abuse]. Typically, "eating marijuana" doesn't mean chowing down on cannabis plants in their raw form. Instead, it means eating baked goods, candies, ice cream, salsa or another food fortified with the drug's constituent chemicals -- in particular, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, its main psychoactive ingredient. These chemicals can produce a range of effects, including euphoria, relaxation, increased appetite, impaired motor skills, short-term memory loss, dry eyes and mouth, and anxiety. If you're among the two in five Americans who have used marijuana at least once in their lifetime, you probably have some idea what that feels like [source: MedlinePlus].

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But there are a few key differences between smoking marijuana and eating it, starting with how quickly you begin feeling high. The effects come on more or less immediately after smoking marijuana and disappear within three hours. Meanwhile, with ingestion, the effects can take anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours to kick in, and they can linger for six to 10 hours (an advantage for medical marijuana users who want to minimize the frequency of dosage).

Additionally, digestion alters THC in ways that inhaling it does not. Your liver metabolizes delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol into 11-hydroxy-tetrahydrocannabinol -- a THC variant with more psychedelic properties -- before it reaches your stomach [source: Wishnia]. As a result, getting high on ingested marijuana can seem stronger than its puffed counterpart.

What you feel after eating a pot brownie all depends on how much you ate, your tolerance and its potency. If your friend with the lava lamp collection baked the brownie, it might be hard to know how strong it is. But if you bought it legally, odds are you can look on the label: Colorado state law, for example, requires disclosure of the amount of THC and other chemicals in edible marijuana products. A standard serving size is 10 milligrams (.00035274 ounces), while first-timers are recommended to start with 5 milligrams (.00017637 ounces) [source: Marijuana Policy Project].

If you ignore these limits and eat too much -- or if your friend with the lava lamps got a little too enthusiastic in the kitchen -- the good news is you won't die from overconsumption of marijuana. However, as Dowd's experience shows, you could be in for a long, paranoid night, and you might even hallucinate. The indirect consequences could be deadly: In 2014, a college student visiting Denver ate a pot cookie with 65 milligrams (.00229281 ounces) of THC, then jumped over a balcony and to his death [source: Nicholson].

Fortunately, the worst symptoms should pass within two hours [source: Marijuana Policy Project].
Frontier Airlines planes at Denver International Airport, the airlines main hub. Photo: Robert Alexander/Getty Images

A flight attendants work, according to Joslynn Wiese, begins long before the an airplane leaves the tarmac. You have to think about the trip youre going on, Wiese, who works for Denver-based Frontier Airlines, told New York last week. If youre doing a three- or four-day trip, youre packing. Youve got to think about all the food, so youre meal prepping. She usually takes half a day to get ready for a trip, she said, and when its time to fly, she arrives an hour before her scheduled check-in to get ready for the work ahead of her. She isnt paid for that preparation time, which is normal for the industry. Flight attendants are generally paid for flight hours, and the clock starts as soon as the airplane door shuts.

That industry practice means that a flight attendants hourly wage is all-important to their ability to pay rent. But Wieses employer, Frontier, pays among the lowest wages in the industry, and she and her colleagues say they often cant afford to make ends meet. They want a raise, and soon. Their union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, has been in contract negotiations with Frontier since 2016, and in November 2018, 99 percent of the unions members voted to authorize a strike if those negotiations stall. Though the National Mediation Board is guiding talks, AFA-CWAs patience appears to be running thin. The unions international president, Sara Nelson, wrote to Frontier members on March 6 to tell them that the union would demonstrate in Denver if a new contract isnt reached by March 20.

Its a major test for the union, which made national headlines earlier this year after Nelson called for a general strike to end the government shutdown. For Frontier flight attendants themselves, the stakes are also high. Their work requires a high degree of vigilance, and they say their poor compensation adds to their stress. Over 15 years, weve taken two pay cuts and weve had three different owners, Wiese said. We just havent been compensated.

As Wieses comments indicate, Frontier has a tumultuous past. Its current contract with flight attendants dates from 2011, not long after it filed for bankruptcy and was acquired by Republic Airlines. Frontier then changed hands a second time. Indigo Partners, a Phoenix, Arizonabased private equity firm, purchased the airline in 2013. Amid this turnover, the airlines working conditions produced other, high-profile complaints. In 2016, four Frontier pilots filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that the airline had failed to provide them a private area to pump breast milk, as required by Colorado state law. A year later, two flight attendants sued the airline, claiming that they had been required to take unpaid leave in order to breastfeed, the Washington Post reported.

This time, wages are driving unrest. Unionized flight attendants say their low wages reflect Frontiers former state of precarity, and that the airline could now afford to pay them a higher rate if it chose. In fact, Frontiers wages are low even when compared to other low-cost competitors, like Spirit Airlines. Flight attendants who have worked for Frontier a year or less only make a base rate of $19.25 per flight hour. Newcomers on reserve, which is the industrys equivalent to being on call, are only guaranteed to be paid for 75 flight hours a month. Pay increases the longer a flight attendant works for Frontier, but veterans say its still difficult to make ends meet. Wiese has worked for Frontier for 15 years, and only makes $37 per flight hour. If she worked for Spirit, shed be making at least $45.94. The most senior flight attendants at Frontier make a yearly base salary of $33,489; at Spirit, its $43,380.

To support themselves, some Frontier flight attendants work overtime to be able to pay their bills. Flight attendant schedules dont correlate to a typical 40-hour work week; anywhere from 80 to 85 hours on a plane per month is considered a full-time schedule for workers in this industry. Wiese says that before she got married, she always worked at least 100 flight hours a month. That is about average for members of her local, she estimated. Other flight attendants work even more. Michael Rice, who has worked for Frontier for five years and heads the unions Trenton-Philadelphia local, told New York that he usually works at least 120 flight hours per month, a schedule that only gives him six days a month at home. He lives with his sister, an arrangement that helps him makes ends meet, but he says its harder for others, especially first-year staff. With our current starting pay, its not sustainable, he explained. Some people can apply for food stamps, but they cant pay their regular bills. They are deciding, do I pay a bill this month or do I disregard that bill and buy groceries?

Economic precarity inflicts well-known psychological burdens. For Frontier flight attendants, those burdens pose unique risks: They pride themselves on being the first responders of the air. Flight attendants are responsible for identifying safety threats onboard their flights. When the worst happens  a crash, a safety failure, an attack  flight attendants are also tasked with getting passengers to safety, even though they too are in harms way. Twenty-five flight attendants died on September 11, 2001. You do have to be alert, Wiese said. You have to make sure all of your safety equipment is checked and you have to be vigilant about every passenger that walks on the plane. Sometimes passengers are sick and need emergency care; on other occasions, theyre belligerent. Flight attendants have to manage both situations. Its a very emotional job. People are stressed out when they get on the plane, Weise added.

Were safety professionals. We go through training to do what we need to do, Rice echoed. When were on our layovers and were in different cities, were kind of budgeting our whole lives. And were worrying so much at home that sometimes, you know, our minds are not as clear when they need to be. For flight attendants, stress is also a safety concern, which adds some urgency to the unions negotiations with Frontier.

Weise said she felt optimistic that the union will reach an agreement with Frontier, and in a statement emailed to New York on Friday, the airline itself said it remained committed to talks. We are engaged in negotiations with our flight attendants for a new contract and continue to exchange proposals under the guidance of the National Mediation Board. We look forward to working toward an agreement that is fair and sustainable, said Jonathan Freed, a spokesman for Frontier. On Tuesday, however, the union and the airline remained at the bargaining table, and Wednesdays demonstration is imminent. An AFA spokesperson said that over 200 flight attendants from Frontier and other airlines are expected in Denver tomorrow.
PaloAlto Networks researchers discovered a new variant of the infamous Mirai botnet is targeting IoT devices belonging to businesses.

Researchers at PaloAlto Networks spotted a new variant of the infamous Mirai botnet is targeting IoT devices belonging to businesses.

Mirai malware first appeared in the wild in 2016 when the expert MalwareMustDie discovered it in massive attacks aimed at Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Since the code of the Mirai botnet was leaked online many variants emerged in the threat landscape. Satori, Masuta, Wicked Mirai, JenX, Omni, and the OMG botnet are just the last variants appeared online in 2018.

A variant discovered last year was leveraging an open-source project to target multiple architectures, including ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, and x86.

The new Mirai variant targets embedded devices (i.e. routers, network storage devices, NVRs, and IP cameras) and leverages various exploits to hack them.

Experts observed attacks against WePresent WiPG-1000 Wireless Presentation systems and LG Supersign TVs, both families of devices intended for use within business environments.

In particular, Unit 42 found this new variant targeting WePresent WiPG-1000 Wireless Presentation systems, and in LG Supersign TVs. Both these devices are intended for use by businesses. This development indicates to us a potential shift to using Mirai to target enterprises. Palo Alto Networks notes.

The previous instance where we observed the botnet targeting enterprise vulnerabilities was with the incorporation of exploits against Apache Struts and SonicWall,

The malicious code was hosted at a compromised website in Colombia: an Electronic security, integration and alarm monitoring business.

Researchers discovered that the new Mirai variant uses a total of 27 exploits, 11 of them are new to the threat. The bot can also leverage a new set of credentials to use while carrying out brute force attacks.

The new malware implements the same encryption scheme characteristic of Mirai, it is also able to scan for vulnerable devices and launch HTTP Flood DDoS attacks.

The samples analyzed by the experts were fetching the same payload hosted at the same IP that had been hosting some Gafgyt samples just a few days before, and that these used the same name as the binaries fetched by the shell script.

IoT/Linux botnets continue to expand their attack surface, either by the incorporation of multiple exploits targeting a plethora of devices, or by adding to the list of default credentials they brute force, or both.

Palo Alto Networks concludes. In addition, targeting enterprise vulnerabilities allows them access to links with potentially larger bandwidth than consumer device links, affording them greater firepower for DDoS attacks,

Further details, including IoCs are reported in the analysis published by PaloAlto Networks.

Pierluigi Paganini

( SecurityAffairs  Mirai, IoT)

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The giant of aluminum producers, Norways Norsk Hydro, announced on Tuesday that it had been hit by a cyber-attack of unknown origin.

One of the biggest Aluminum producer, the Norwegian Norsk Hydro, suffered an extensive cyber attack.

Hydro became victim of an extensive cyberattack in the early hours of Tuesday, impacting operations in several of the companys business areas, reads a statement issued by the company.

The cyber attack caused production outages and affected operations across Europe and the U.S. The news of the incident caused a drop in the share price of 2.0 percent in early trading on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

The company defined the situation quite severe, its systems were infected with ransomware and the experts are still working to contain the threat.

According to the company spokesman Halvor Molland, it was too early to determine the full extent of the attack, at the time the source of the attack is still unknown.

Our IT department is working to contain the impact of the attack, the spokesman told AFP.

Norsk Hydro is assessing the affected systems, at the time it only confirmed that its potlines, which process molten aluminum and need to be kept running 24 hours a day, were forced to operate in manual mode.

Some operations at plants where metal is fashioned into finished products for use in cars, planes and other manufactured goods, have been temporarily stopped, said spokesman Halvor Molland. reported Bloomberg. The company is doing everything possible to fix the problem, but isnt ready to give any forecasts yet, he said by phone. Aluminum futures were little changed on the London Metal Exchange.

The website of the company was down on Tuesday morning.

Norways National Security Authority (NSM) announced it is assisting Norsk Hydro.

We are obviously trying to identify whether it will spread, but we have not detected anything yet, NSMs communications director Mona Strom Arnoy said.

Pierluigi Paganini

( SecurityAffairs  Norsk Hydro, cybersecurity )

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Security experts at Group-IB presented at Money2020 Asia the results of an interesting analysis of hi-tech crime landscape in Asia in 2018.

Group-IB, an international company that specializes in preventing cyberattacks, on Money2020 Asia presented the analysis of hi-tech crime landscape in Asia in 2018 and concluded that cybercriminals show an increased interest in Asia in general and Singapore in particular. Group-IB team discovered new tool used by the Lazarus gang and analyzed North Korean threat actors recent attacks in Asia. Group-IB specialists discovered 19 928 of Singaporean banks cards that have shown up for sale in the dark web in 2018 and found hundreds of compromised government portals credentials stolen by hackers throughout past 2 years. The number of leaked cards increased in 2018 by 56%. The total underground market value of Singaporean banks cards compromised in 2018 is estimated at nearly$640 000.

Lazarus go rogue in Asia. New malware in gangs arsenal

According to Group-IB Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2018 report, Southeast Asia, and Singapore in particular, is one of the most actively attacked regions in the world. In just one year, 21 state-sponsored groups, which is more than in the United States and Europe combined, were detected in this area, among which Lazarus a notorious North-Korean state-sponsored threat actor.

Group-IB established that Lazarus is responsible for a number of latest targeted attacks on financial organizations in Asia. Group-IB Threat Intelligence team detected and analyzed the gangs most recent attack, detected by the company experts, on one of the Asian banks. In January 2019, Group-IB specialists obtained information about previously unknown malware sample used in this attack, dubbed by Group-IBRATv3.ps (RAT  remote administration tool). The new Trojan was presumably downloaded to a victims computer as part of the second phase of a so-called watering hole attack, which, according to Group-IB report on Lazarus, the group has been actively using since 2016. During the first stage, cybercriminals supposedly infected a website, visited by a victim, with a Trojan Ratankba, a unique tool used by Lazarus. Group-IB specialists note that the new RATv3.ps might have been used by North Korean hackers in other recent attacks at the end of 2018. At least one of RATs was available via a legitimate Vietnamese resource, which might have been involved in other attacks.

The newly discovered Lazarus malware is multifunctional: it is capable of data exfiltration from the victims computer, downloading and executing programs and commands via shell, acting as a keylogger to retrieve victims passwords, moving, creating and deleting files, injecting code into other processes and screencasting,  comments Dmitry Volkov, Group-IB CTO and Head of Threat Intelligence. So in case of Lazarus a stitch in time saves nine. It is very hard to contain their attacks as they happen. You have to be well prepared and know their tactics and tools. In particular, it is extremely important to have most up-to date indicators of compromise, unavailable publicly, that can only be gathered through automated machine learning-powered threat hunting solutions. Given the groups increased activity in the region in 2018, we believe that Lazarus will continue to carry out attacks against banks, which will result in illicit SWIFT payments, and will likely experiment with attacks on card processing, primarily focusing on Asia and the Pacific.

Several cybersecurity researchers note that also in 2018 Lazarus carried out global campaign known as Rising sun. The malicious campaign affected close to 100 organizations around the world, including Singapore. The gangs new endeavor took its name from the implant downloaded to victims computers. It was found that Rising Sun was created on the basis of the Trojan Duuzer family, which also belongs to cybercriminals from the Lazarus group. The malware spreader as part of this campaign was primarily aimed at collecting information from the victims computer according to various commands

According to Group-IB Hi-Tech Crime Trends report 2018, Lazarus, unlike most of other state-sponsored threat actors, does not shy away from attacking crypto. Singapore, being one of the most crypto-friendly countries in the world, attracts not only thousands of crypto and blockchain entrepreneurs every year, but also threat actors willing to grab a piece of the pie. We expect that that other APTs like Silence, MoneyTaker, and Cobalt will stage multiple attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges in the near future,  says Dmitry Volkov.

Have you been pwned?

Group-IB Threat Intelligence team identified hundreds of compromised credentials from Singaporean government agencies and educational institutions over the course of 2017 and 2018. Users logins and passwords from the Government Technology Agency (https://www.tech[.]gov.sg/), Ministry of Education (https://www.moe[.]gov.sg/), Ministry of Health (https://www.moh[.]gov.sg/), Singapore Police Force website (https://polwel[.]org.sg/about/), National University of Singapore learning management system (ivle.nus[.]edu.sg) and many other resources were stolen by cybercriminals. CERT-GIB (Computer Emergency Response Team) reached out to Singaporean CERT upon identification of this information. Users accounts from government resources are either sold on underground forums or used in targeted attacks on government agencies for the purpose of espionage or sabotage. Even one compromised account, unless detected at the right time, can lead to the disruption of internal operations or leak of government secrets,  comments Dmitry Volkov. Cybercriminals steal user accounts data using special spyware aimed at obtaining users authentication data. According to Group-IB data, PONY FORMGRABBER, QBot and AZORult became the TOP 3 most popular Trojan-stealers among cybercriminals.

Pony Formgrabber retrieves login credentials from configuration files, databases, secret storages of more than 70 programs on the victims computer and then sends stolen information to cyber criminals C&C server.

Another Trojan-stealer  AZORult, aside from stealing passwords from popular browsers, is capable of stealing crypto wallets data. Qbot worm gathers login credentials through use of keylogger, steals cookie files and certificates, active internet sessions, and forwards users to fake websites. All these Trojans are capable of compromising the credentials of crypto wallets and crypto exchanges users.More information on the most actively used Trojans and their targets can be accessed through Group-IB Threat Intelligence.

Public data leaks is another huge source of compromised user credentials from government websites. Group-IB team analyzed recent massive public data breaches and discovered 3689 unique records (email & passwords) related to Singaporean government websites accounts.

Underground market economy. Number of compromised cards of Singaporean banks on sale increases

In 2018, Group-IB detected the total of 19,928 compromised payment cards related to Singaporean banks on darknet cardshops. Singapore, as one of the major financial hubs in Southeast Asia is drawing more and more attention of financially motivated hackers every year. According to Group-IB data, compared to 2017, the number of leaked cards increased in 2018 by 56%. The total underground market value of Singaporean banks cards compromised in 2018 is estimated at nearly $640,000.

Group-IB Threat Intelligence team observed two abnormal spikes in Singaporean banks dumps, unauthorized digital copies of the information contained in magnetic stripe of a payment card, offered for sale on the dark web in 2018. The first one occurred on July 20th, when almost 500 dumps related to top Singaporean banks surfaced on one of the most popular underground hubs of stole card data, Jokers Stash. On overage, the price per dump in this leak was relatively high and kept at 45$. The high price is due to the fact that most of the cards were premiums (e.g. Platinum, Signature etc.).

Another significant breach happened on November 23rd when the details of 1147 Singaporean banks dumps were set up for sale on cardshops. The seller wanted 50$ per item 50% of stolen cards in batch were also marked as Premium.

Group-IB Threat Intelligence continuously detects and analyses data uploaded to cardshops all over the world. According to Group-IBs annual Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2018 report, on average, from June 2017 to August 2018, the details of 1.8 million payment cards were uploaded to card shops monthly.



About the author: Group-IB is a leading provider of solutions aimed at detection and prevention of cyberattacks , online fraud, and IP protection.

Pierluigi Paganini

( SecurityAffairs  hi-tech crime landscape, Asia)

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 Notable new materials on economic sanctions from The Hamilton Project | Main | "Misdemeanor Appeals" 

March 19, 2019

Federal judge pens extraordinary and compelling order requesting US Attorney to vacate old stacked 924(c) conviction in extraordinary and compelling case

I learned last night of a remarkable new four-page order entered in US v. Marks, No. 03-CR-6033 (WDNY March 14, 2019) (available for download below). Chad Marks' case has been followed for years by clemency advocates like Amy Povah, and this CAN-DO profile page has lots of background materials about his case, his requests for clemency, and all the positive work he has done since being sentenced many years ago to 40 mandatory prison years due to extreme recidivist stacking  924(c) firearm charges.

As informed readers know, the FIRST STEP Act eliminated the provisions of federal law that had required multiple  924(c) firearm mandatory-minimum sentences to be stacked to include recidivist 25-year terms. But it did not make this change retroactively applicable to offenders like Mr. Marks' who were subject to its severe terms in prior years. This new order by US District Judge David Larimer speaks to this reality, and here is part of what it has to say:

Although the First Step Act and the Guideline changes referenced in it benefit many, it does not appear that Marks would benefit directly because the changes to Section 924(c) do not appear to be retroactive. One option now is for those in the system to say to Mr. Marks, too bad, the changes dont apply to you and you must serve the lengthy remainder of your 40-year term, and perhaps die in jail. Chad Marks has now filed a pro se motion (Dkt. #491) requesting this Court, in part, to request the United States Attorney for the Western District of New York, James P. Kennedy, Jr., to consent to vacating one of Marks Section 924(c) convictions, which would, in effect, remove the draconian, mandatory 25-year consecutive sentence. Admittedly, this is not a typical request. Marks makes this request, though, relying on several cases from other districts throughout the country where the U.S. Attorney did precisely what Marks seeks here. Marks relies principally on the case of U.S. v. Holloway, 68 F. Supp. 3d 310 (E.D.N.Y. 2014). That thoughtful opinion is annexed to Marks motion as Exhibit A. In the Holloway case, the defendant was convicted of three Section 924(c) violations for three separate car jackings over a two-day period. He received a mandatory sentence of 57 years. In Holloway, District Judge John Gleeson remarked that such a stacking sentence would be laughable if only there werent real people on the receiving end of them. Prosecutors spend their days seeking convictions and appropriate sentences. What is sought here is different, but in his decision in Holloway, Judge Gleeson praised the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York for agreeing to vacate a prior conviction in that particular and unusual case. He noted that prosecutors can and should use their vast power to remedy injustices in an appropriate case. So, what to do? Does this defendant, Chad Marks, deserve this remedy? In my more than 30 years as a district court judge, I have never known a prisoner to do more to make changes in his life while incarcerated. Marks acts and accomplishments while incarcerated for the last decade are truly extraordinary. Marks has obtained a college degree, participated in about 100 rehabilitative programs, has received numerous awards and citations, is engaged as a GED teacher and has mentored other inmates. Marks has recounted many of these accomplishments in his motion (Dkt. #491, page 7). The record reflects extraordinary accomplishments. Extraordinary cases require extraordinary care and sometimes extraordinary relief. I urge all to review Judge Gleesons thoughtful decision in the Holloway case. The criminal justice system is about justice and fairness ultimately. Chad Marks was convicted of serious crimes, but I believe that Marks is not a danger and is not now the person convicted of these charges in 2008, which involved a rather small-scale drug case. All of Marks co-defendants have completed their sentences. I request that the United States Attorney for the Western District of New York, James P. Kennedy, Jr., carefully consider exercising his discretion to agree to an order vacating one of Marks two Section 924(c) convictions. This would eliminate the mandatory 25-year term that is now contrary to the present provisions of the statute. Congress has now recognized the injustice of stacking. To facilitate that review, I request that Marks appointed counsel, Jillian S. Harrington, Esq. provide a filing listing in detail the many, many accomplishments, awards and other matters involving Marks while he has been incarcerated. In addition, counsel should list the scores of rehabilitative programs that Marks successfully completed. Marks has described many of his accomplishments in his pending motion, but I leave it to counsel to provide a detailed supplement to assist the U.S. Attorneys review as well as this Courts. Download 3-18-19 LARIMER ORDER

I am so very pleased to see this federal judge enter this formal order urging the US Attorney to vacate a charge in order to do justice in this extraordinary and compelling case. However, I keep using the term "extraordinary and compelling" in this post because I do not think the federal judge here has to rely on the US Attorney to do justice in this case now that the FIRST STEP Act has changed the process around judicial consideration of sentence modifications under 18 U.S.C.  3582(C)(1)(A).

As noted in this prior post, the FIRST STEP Act now provides that an inmate can bring a request to "modify a term of imprisonment" directly to a sentencing court (rather than needing a motion made by the Bureau of Prison) based on the claim that "extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction." This is what gets described often as the "compassionate release" provision of federal law, and most generally assume that it is only applicable to sick and dying prisoners. But, ever the textualist, I am eager to highlight to everyone that Congress only formally requires a judge to find "extraordinary and compelling reasons warrant such a reduction." As I read this new Marks order, I think Judge Larimer has already essentially made such a finding.

That all said, even though I think Judge Larimer has authority to do justice for Mr. Marks without awaiting action by the local US Attorney, I still think it strategically wise to see the prosecution's involvement in his effort to do justice. With the buy-in by the local prosecutor and vacating of a one of Mr. Marks' 924(c) convictions, there would likely be no appeal and likely no impediment to a Mr. Marks getting released in short order. If Judge Larimer were to act on his own using  3582(C)(1)(A), however, the feds could possibly appeal and seek to block any early release.

March 19, 2019 at 10:57 AM | Permalink

Comments

Sorry but I would say this should have ended with a ruling for lack of standing. For an issue to lie within judicial competence it is supposed to be one where a favorable ruling actually advances the interests of the petitioner in some meaningful way. A mere request that an executive officer examine a case would not seem to qualify.

For something to be an order it should ... you know ... order something.

Posted by: Soronel Haetir | Mar 19, 2019 10:47:18 PM

Sure, but one of the great things about the law is that if the court acts improperly, and neither party objects, such that the improper act becomes final, the improper order is chiseled in stone. Judge Gleeson's grant of the 2255 in Holloway was utterly contrary to the law, but where the government did not object, the order became final and justice was done.

Posted by: Tom Root | Mar 20, 2019 7:46:22 PM

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The logo of Swiss Falcon Private Bank as seen at its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.(Photo: REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann)

By Patrick Winters and Jan-Henrik Forster

(Bloomberg)  Abu Dhabis Mubadala Development Co. is reviving plans to sell Falcon Private Bank in Switzerland as it seeks to distance itself from the 1MDB money laundering scandal, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The state-backed investment firm has invited bids for at least 5 billion francs ($5 billion) of assets managed by Zurich-based Falcon, the people said, asking not to be identified as the plans are private. The bank had held unsuccessful talks with potential buyers last year, people familiar with the matter said.

Mubadala is seeking to move past the 1MDB scandal after Falcon Banks Singapore unit was closed by regulators for failing to adequately flag $1.27 billion in suspicious deposits linked to the Malaysian government fund known as 1MDB. A branch manager in Singapore was also jailed as regulators and prosecutors investigated how banks were used to funnel corrupt money.

A spokesman for Falcon declined to comment, saying that the management and board of Falcon is focused on its current strategy. A spokesperson for Mubadala also declined to comment.

Goldman Sachs

Mubadala also recently halted new business with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as it seek damages from the bank for what it calls its central role in the 1MDB scandal, according to the fund. The bank is accused of misleading investors when it helped 1MDB raise $6.5 billion through bond deals in 2012 and 2013, while allegedly knowing that the funds would be misappropriated.

Falcon hired Boston Consulting Group in the aftermath of the scandal to review its operations and identify revenue sources as part of its mandate, people familiar with the matter said last year. The bank has been pursuing a strategy based around cryptocurrencies and digital private banking.

Small Swiss private banks such as Falcon are struggling to boost revenues and margins a decade after the end of Swiss banking secrecy rules, as regulatory costs rise and compliance procedures grow stricter. The bank generated 93.6 million francs in revenues and made a net loss in 2017, one of the people said.

 2019 Bloomberg L.P
March 19 (Reuters) - Inner Mongolia Energy Engineering Co Ltd:

* BOARD IS OF OPINION THAT 2018 ANNUAL RESULTS OF COMPANY MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED BEFORE 31 MARCH 2019

* AUDIT COMMITTEE ENTERED FORENSIC REVIEW AGREEMENT WITH PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS MANAGEMENT CONSULTING (SHANGHAI)

* INNER MONGOLIA ENERGY ENGINEERING UPDATES ON CERTAIN BUSINESSES & TRANSACTIONS OF CO IDENTIFIED BY BOARD & CO'S AUDITORS WITH SUSPICIOUS RATIONALITY Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:
Reuben Lai, senior managing director, Grab Financial, speaking at Money 20/20 Asia. (PHOTO: Grab)

Grab has announced its Grow with Grab roadmap, which includes services such as consumer credit, and Pay with GrabPay check-out system that allows online sellers to accept GrabPay as a mobile wallet on their websites or platforms.

The moves come as part of its goal to become the regions largest payment and financial services platform.

With Pay with GrabPay, consumers can log in to their GrabPay accounts to pay for their online purchases. Online marketplaces such Qoo10 and 11Street, as well as merchants such as Cathay Cineplexes in Singapore and SM Cinema in the Philippines, have agreed to use the new service.

With Grabs Point-of-Sale (POS) device integration, merchants can add GrabPay as a payment method. It will first launch in Singapore with merchants such as coffee chain Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and bakery chain Paris Baguette before expanding across the region.

This is a huge untapped opportunity for Grab Financial to support the regions entrepreneurs who are less able to access traditional financial institutions, said Grab Financials senior managing director Reuben Lai at the Money 20/20 Asia conference on Tuesday (19 March).

Grab has also launched Pay Later, which includes a post-paid service and an instalment payment service under its existing joint venture with Japanese credit card company Credit Saison.

Under this plan, customers can pay for Grab services at the end of the month, without additional costs. This will be launched in Singapore in the coming weeks, before it is rolled out in other countries.

The company also plans to offer an interest-free instalment product for consumer purchases.

Grab is also pursuing lending licences across South-east Asia after successful pilot schemes aimed at lending to Grab driver-partners and small businesses in Singapore.

The company also plans to launch its digital insurance marketplace in April. Micro-entrepreneurs will be able to access the insurance product directly from the Grab app.
By Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik

OSLO (Reuters) - Norsk Hydro, one of the world's largest aluminium producers, battled on Tuesday to contain a cyber attack which halted parts of its production, the latest example of the damage hackers can cause to business and industry.

The company shut several metal extrusion and rolled products plants, which transform aluminium ingots into components for car makers, builders and other industries, while its giant smelters in Norway were largely operating on a manual basis.

"This is a classic ransomware attack," Chief Financial Officer Eivind Kallevik told a news conference, adding that the company had not identified the hackers. "The situation is quite severe."

The Norwegian National Security Authority (NNSA), the state agency in charge of cybersecurity, said the attack used a virus known as LockerGoga, a relatively new strain of so-called ransomware which encrypts computer files and demands payment to unlock them.

Kallevik, who could not turn on his desktop computer or access files, would not say whether a specific sum had been asked for. However, when asked if the company planned to pay to unlock its systems, he said the intention was to restore them from backup servers.

"We have good back-up systems and we have plans on how to restore it," he said.

The attack began in the United States on Monday evening and escalated overnight, hitting IT systems across most of the company's activities and forcing staff to issue updates via social media.

"It is too early to indicate the operational and financial impact, as well as timing to resolve the situation," Hydro said in a regulatory filing via the Oslo Stock Exchange.

However, Kallevik said the financial impact was limited so far.

"It is mostly direct labour: some of the activities that we use computers to do, today we use manual labour. We have to add some more people," he told Reuters.

News of Hydro's plant outages pushed aluminium prices to a three-month high on the London Metal Exchange. The company's shares fell as much 3.4 percent before recovering to trade 0.8 percent lower by 1438 GMT.

Story continues

The LockerGoga malware is not widely used by cyber crime groups, cyber security researchers said, but has been linked to an attack on French engineering consultancy Altran Technologies in January.

Haakon Bergsjoe, head of NNSA's National Cyber Security Centre, said there were no reports of other companies affected on Tuesday. All major Norwegian companies had been warned in the wake of the attack on Hydro, he told Reuters.

The last publicly acknowledged cyber attack in Norway was on software firm Visma, when hackers allegedly working on behalf of Chinese intelligence breached its network to steal secrets from its clients.

PLANT CLOSURES

Companies and governments have become increasingly concerned about the damage hackers can cause to industrial systems and critical national infrastructure following a number of high-profile cyber attacks.

In 2017, hackers later accused by the United States of working for the North Korean government unleashed billions of dollars worth of damage with the Wannacry ransomware virus, which crippled hospital, banks and other companies worldwide.

Pyongyang has denied the allegations.

Other cyber attacks have downed electricity grids and transport systems in recent years, and an attack on Italian oil services firm Saipem late last year destroyed more than 300 of the company's computers.

Hydro makes products across the aluminium value chain, from the refinement of alumina raw material via metal ingots to bespoke components used in cars and construction.

The company's hydroelectric power plants were running as normal on isolated IT systems unaffected by the outage, as was the alumina operation and smelters located outside Norway, including in Qatar and Brazil, Hydro said.

Hydro, which has 36,000 employees in 40 countries, made a net profit of 4.3 billion Norwegian crowns ($505 million) last year on sales of 159.4 billion.

At its headquarters in the suburbs of Oslo, signs at the entrances warned employees not to log on to the IT system.

($1 = 8.5193 Norwegian crowns)

(Additional reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo, with Jack Stubbs and Barbara Lewis in London; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and David Holmes)
In an effort to boost tourism numbers, Brazil has announced plans to lift visa requirements for citizens of the US, Canada, Australia and Japan beginning this summer.

Effective June 17, traveling to Brazil will be a lot easier for the aforementioned countries. The visa-free access will be valid for stays of 90 days and extendable for another 90 days under certain conditions.

The move is aimed at bolstering international tourist arrivals and filling empty hotel rooms which were originally built to accommodate visitors during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

It's hoped the relaxed visa rules will increase tourist traffic with each country by up to 25 percent.

The new measure builds on last year's creation of an e-visa platform, which allows travelers to apply for visas online. Brazil's tourism office says they saw a 35 percent increase in visa applications following the implementation of the e-visa platform, from 169,910 visas issued in 2017 to 229,767 issued last year.

The US, Canada, Australia and Japan are described as "strategic" markets for the development of tourism in Brazil.

"This is one of the most important achievements of the Brazilian tourism industry in the last 15 years and we are confident that it will be extremely beneficial to the country," said Minister of Tourism Marcelo Alvaro Antonio in a statement.

"This decision of the Brazilian government proves that we are living a new moment and that tourism is being seen as a vector of economic and social growth of the entire nation."

Visitors arriving before June 17 will be required to obtain an e-visa.
Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux

With Nancy Pelosi recently taking impeachment off the table  leading to consternation among some Democrats  and the completion of the Mueller investigation looking imminent, the question of how Trumps presidency will and should end has never been more contested, and more unknowable. We canvassed 100 people on the streets of New York  at the Oculus, Washington Square Park, and Union Square  to find out how they thought this would end. Heres what they told us.

51% Think Hell Run Again and Lose in 2020

I wish he could be dragged out of the country right now, but most likely he will run again and lose. Susan, 21, Lower East Side

The optimist in me says he gets impeached, but then were left with Pence, which worries me because he actually knows about government. Realistically, he runs again but doesnt win. Myliyah, 22, Bushwick

I doubt that America will make the same mistake again. Rajendra, 21, Elmhurst

Runs again but doesnt win. Has a breakdown on Twitter. Simona, 21, Bushwick

His broken presidency will have motivated high voter turnout. Several decades from now, he will be the reason our system shifts aggressively left. Jonny, 24, Flatiron

Americans come to their senses. Jezoen, 48, Upper East Side

Loses the 2020 election (wins the primary). Closely gets impeached but voted down by Congress. Mindy, 23, Midtown East

Hell run but wont be elected. Maybe hell resign and Pence will become president for ten minutes and pardon him. Leslie, 54, Soho

23% Think Hell Win Reelection

Trump runs again and wins, based off of wild MAGA diehards and Russian interference  again! Ryan, 21, Washington Square Park

Hell probably get reelected and die halfway through. Hes old and sucks.

Natalie, 20, East Harlem

Unless the Democrats can come up with a really great candidate. Jess, 31, New Jersey

Best president Ive ever seen. His administration knows the problems of America and the world. Americans will suffer if they dont follow him. Hell be reelected. Julius, 64, Jersey City

After the second term, he might face justice. Malte, 30, Nolita

9% Have No Idea

Not sure; he hurts my soul. Jordan, 38, Bushwick

Hopefully it will just end. Like Brexit. Stacey, 35, Queens

8% Think Hell Lose in 2020 and Have to Be Deposed

The Cheeto-head angers a militia of people who then try to attack him.

In the end he flees the country to Russia. Gina, 23, Greenwich Village

Loses next election and claims election is hoax. Needs to be removed. Jack, 45, Greenwich Village

3% Think He Wont Even Bother Running

Hes over the pressures. Stephen, 64, midtown

3% Think Hell Be Impeached and Convicted

Truly feel like he will be impeached. Yasmeen, 18, Jamaica, Queens

2% Think Hell Resign

After Trump learns that the recently submitted Mueller report includes his (scandalous) tax returns and damning information about his familys and the Trump Organizations finances, Trump abruptly resigns (via Twitter, of course). Robert, 33, Chelsea

1% Think Hell Become a Despot

It does not end  he changes the laws and becomes dictator with inspiration from his idols Kim Jong-un and Putin. Kristina, 29, Soho

What the Professionals Say

We also asked 14 pundits, journalists, academics, and activists to weigh in on how they see the Trump administration ending.

Dahlia Lithwick, Slate legal correspondent

I believe that Trump will run again in 2020 and lose. The slow drip-drip of indictments, congressional probes, and state investigations will mean that his approval ratings stay flat. He will run again because Trumps gonna Trump. This is all subject to several frightening open questions, however: Will there indeed be free and fair elections? Will this president accept the result of those elections? And will Democrats resist the urge to eat their own faces off?

Frank Rich, New York Magazine writer-at-large

A mix-and-match of the Nixon and Agnew templates may apply. If Trump is made to believe by federal and state prosecutors and/or Robert Mueller that he, his business, and/or his crime family face terminal legal consequences the moment he leaves the White House, hell make a deal to save his ass (if not necessarily Donald Jr.s or Jareds), declare himself a winner, and fade into house arrest at Mar-a-Lago as part of the grand bargain. If the Vichy Republicans en masse are made to believe that the 2020 polls are their obituaries foretold, they may finally man up to help grease the skids.

Brian Feldman, New York Magazine writer

The Trump presidency ends, in 2024, with a peaceful transition of power. He wishes the best of luck to his successor, President Elizabeth Holmes.

Ann Coulter, Columnist

I assume youre referring to some future Barron Trump presidency. As for the Donald Trump presidency, it already ended, killed by laziness and lies about the wall. Massive opportunity squandered. From now on, it will just be photo ops and depositions.

Tony Schwartz, Ghostwriter of The Art of the Deal

I no longer believe Trump will resign, as I long believed he would. At this stage, if Trump leaves office, he will almost certainly be criminally indicted and in all likelihood spend his golden years in prison. The Mueller report will be worse than we can imagine and will continue to erode Trumps support, already the worst of any modern president, and he will lose to whichever Democratic candidate wins the nomination. One caveat: If Donald Jr., Jared, and/or Ivanka get indicted, there is a remote chance Trump could resign in a deal to spare them. However, that would be an act of selflessness  something Trump hasnt evidenced in his first seven decades on earth.

Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine writer-at-large

This is unknowable, but my sense is that the likely outcome will be, in descending order: (1) Hes impeached but acquitted and wins reelection; (2) the 2020 election is close, the Democrat wins, but Trump insists he won anyway, wont quit, leading to federal marshals removing him from White House amid civil unrest; (3) a catastrophe in foreign or domestic policy (like, say, Katrina or Iraq) breaks the base; (4) he loses badly to a currently nonexistent Democratic candidate.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and publisher of The Nation

The Trump presidency ends when hes voted out of office in November 2020. But for that to become a reality, its vital that we expose how Trump is serially betraying the very people he claims to champion.He has a better shot at reelection if Democrats and the media obsess about his daily outrage, most recent tweet-insults, and his personal corruptions and offenses.

Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine columnist

The end, in descending order of probability: (1) Walks away January 20, 2021, as Democrat takes oath of office; (2) dies or resigns owing to health; (3) walks away January 20, 2025, after serving eight years in office; (4) resigns after cutting deal to avoid prosecution.

Kevin D. Williamson, Author of The Smallest Minority

In an important sense, the Trump presidency is not going to end  even if he is impeached, dragged off in irons, or humiliated in 2020. What seemed to be an anomaly in 2016 has proved to be a revelation. In the same way that Trump understood he could run what amounted to a third-party campaign within the GOP, Republicans have learned that they can pursue their top policy priorities  tax cuts, Federalist Societyapproved judges, etc.  within Trumpism. The welfare chauvinism, mutant nationalism, and Idiocracy-style rhetorical cretinism are here to stay as items of public consumption, even if the old tax-cuts-and-tax-cuts Republican agenda remains dominant. This will be the case irrespective of what happens to Trump, who has only shown himself to be what we knew him to be: the opportunist nonpareil.

Cecile Richards, Former Planned Parenthood president

The same way it started: with millions of women coming together to demand better for ourselves and our daughters.

Allan Lichtman, American University professor

In a Washington Post interview on September 23, 2016, I predicted Donald Trumps victory, using my forecasting system. I also predicted Trumps impeachment. I stand by that prediction.

Samuel Moyn, Yale professor

Donald Trump is likely to lose if he makes it to November 2020  and everyone on both sides of the political spectrum should want him to do so. Not only is it critical for the people themselves to throw Trump out of office, but getting him out some other way will reinforce suspicions that the deep state and elite forces rule in the place of democracy.

Patricia J. Williams, Columbia Law School professor

I conceive of my work as facilitating a system of governance by rules. Alas, we live in unruly times. The end of the Trump presidency is thus beyond the capacities of my imagination  as was its commencement.

Heidi Heitkamp, Former U.S. senator

The Trump presidency will end in January 2025 unless we unite behind a vision of civility to and equal opportunity for all Americans.
China backed its "iron friend" Pakistan on Tuesday, applauding its recent counter-terrorism measures as Islamabad faces criticism for harbouring militants. An attack on Indian-administered Kashmir last month killed 40 Indian security personnel and was claimed by a Pakistan-based militant group. "China commends Pakistan's recent strong counter-terrorism measures at home," Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters after meeting with his Pakistani counterpart. "We fully support Pakistan in carrying through its counterterrorism campaign," Wang said. Since March 5, Pakistani authorities have arrested hundreds of suspected Islamist militants and shuttered more than 700 madrassas, mosques, and clinics linked to banned groups. Islamabad has come under pressure to demonstrate it is sincere about eliminating militancy, but the crackdown has yet to convince the international community. "We also call on the international community to adopt a fair perspective of the commitments and efforts made by Pakistan over the years to combat terrorism," Wang said as he stood beside Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of harbouring militant groups, which it says are used by Pakistan intelligence agencies to launch attacks in India. The February 14 suicide blast in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops -- claimed by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed -- ignited the most recent crisis between the nuclear-armed neighbours. China last week blocked measures by the UN Security Council to blacklist JeM leader Masood Azhar. It was the fourth time China has blocked such attempts, reinforcing suspicions that it was acting on Pakistan's behest. On Tuesday, Pakistan expressed gratitude for China's continued support as it faces international criticism. "Pakistan appreciates the role China has played once again, standing by Pakistan in these difficult times," Shah said. "We have been cooperating against this menace of terrorism, and we feel strengthening this in relevant fields is important," Shah said. "We have made a considerable progress vis-a-vis terrorism, we have paid a huge price, everybody recognises that," Shah said. Wang welcomed Shah to Beijing by noting China calls Pakistan "our iron friends" because Islamabad "provides us with iron-like support" on Beijing's core issues of concern. "Of course, China does the same," Wang said.
Denmark's biggest telecom group TDC has chosen Swedish firm Ericsson over existing provider Huawei to roll out its ultra-fast 5G mobile network across the country, as a debate rages over security concerns surrounding the Chinese giant. The US and several other Western nations have shut Huawei out of tenders for the development of fifth-generation, or 5G, networks, because of the company's close ties to the Chinese government. "TDC has chosen Ericsson to build and deploy its 5G network," TDC CEO Allison Kirkby said in a statement released on Monday night. The statement did not mention Huawei, which has equipped TDC's network since 2014. "Over the past year, TDC has negotiated with several suppliers about the upcoming 5G rollout," the statement said. The decision comes as Germany launches an auction for the construction of its own 5G network after the US reportedly warned it could scale back the sharing of sensitive information with Berlin if it does not exclude hardware made by Huawei from the infrastructure. The US has accused Beijing of using Huawei's 5G network gear as a Trojan horse, forcing operators to transmit data to the regime, but Washington has not provided evidence to support their suspicions. Huawei has strenuously denied allegations its equipment could be used for espionage. TDC did not disclose the value of the Ericsson deal, which will begin on April 1 and run until the end of 2023. The Danish company hopes to offer its customers 5G by the end of next year.
Dutch police said they were investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack, as they arrested a new suspect on Tuesday over the deadly shooting. Authorities said they had found a suspicious letter in a getaway car used by Turkish-born main suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, which made them "seriously" consider terrorism might have been involved in Monday's rampage in which three people were killed and seven injured. Armed counter-terrorism officers meanwhile arrested one new suspect, aged 40, in Utrecht who was "suspected of being involved in the shooting incident", prosecutors said, adding that his "role was being further investigated." Two other men who were arrested Monday in connection with the shooting had been released, prosecutors added. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earlier in the day laid flowers for the victims at the scene of the attack and said he was "still filled with horror" by the bloodshed. "So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," Dutch police and prosecutors said in a joint statement. Apparently ruling out reports that the shooting was due to a family dispute, the statement added: "Our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims." The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, south of Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said. Armed police captured Tanis after an eight-hour manhunt that virtually shut down the Netherlands' fourth largest city and saw security stepped up at airports and key sites across the country. - 'Filled with horror' - Police said they found a red Renault Clio that the suspect had carjacked before the attack and used as a getaway car afterwards. They had also found a firearm after his arrest. Tanis is expected to appear before a judge later this week in a closed-door hearing after which he most likely will be remanded in custody. A stream of mourners laid flowers on Tuesday at the site of the attack near the 24 Oktoberplein square. "One of the victims was my friend's girlfriend. So coming here today was the least I could do," Marco van Rooijen, 43, told AFP. The attack raised security fears ahead of Wednesday's provincial elections in the Netherlands. Populist and far-right parties have seized on the attack to push their agenda for the polls but Rutte has remained restrained. "A day later, I am still filled with horror," Rutte told parliament. "There are still many questions about the motive, and the police and prosecutors still have to do a lot of work. But there is no doubt that the impact was huge." Flags were flying half-mast on many buildings around the Netherlands and on foreign embassies. Public transport was running again after forensic police finished their investigations at the scene and removed the tram on which the shooting erupted. - 'Completely mad' - But there was also growing anger after it emerged that the suspect had only been freed from jail in a rape case two weeks ago. Tanis was originally arrested in 2017 then released from pre-trial detention, before being taken back into custody when he breached his bail conditions, the central Netherlands district court said. He was freed again at the start of March. In 2014, he was also convicted of "illegal possession of weapons" and attempted theft but acquitted of attempted manslaughter. He was also convicted in recent months for shoplifting and burglary. Broadcaster NOS meanwhile said some of his relatives had links to fundamentalist Islamic groups, but also that he was known for unstable behaviour after divorcing his wife two years ago. A woman involved in the rape case told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper: "He is completely mad and uses drugs. I have previously warned the police against him. He's not a terrorist but a psychopath." Support for the Netherlands poured in from around the world, including the United States, the EU and Russia. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: "America stands with you. We will continue to do all we can to help you in this terrible time of tragedy." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's intelligence agency was "looking into" the attack. burs-jhe/pvh
By Maggie Fick, Tim Hepher and David Shepardson

ADDIS ABABA/PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Europe and Canada said they would seek their own guarantees over the safety of Boeing's 737 MAX, further complicating plans to get the aircraft flying worldwide after they were grounded in the wake of two accidents killing more than 300 people.

As the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) analyses Boeing's plans for a software fix prompted by the first crash five months ago, the European Union's aviation safety agency EASA promised its own deep look at any design improvements.

"We will not allow the aircraft to fly if we have not found acceptable answers to all our questions," EASA Executive Director Patrick Ky told an EU parliament committee hearing.

Canada said it would independently certify the 737 MAX in the future, rather than accepting FAA validation. It also said it would send a team to help U.S. authorities evaluate proposed design changes and decide if others were needed.

Boeing Co declined to comment.

U.S. government officials do not believe the crash will lead to a worldwide shift away from FAA certifications but U.S. lawmakers, as well as federal prosecutors, are scrutinizing the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX.

The FAA declined to comment on individual actions by Canada or other countries, but said in a statement that the current, historic aviation safety record in the U.S. and globally is achieved through the FAAs robust processes and full collaboration with the aviation community."

The U.S. Transportation Department's inspector general plans to audit the FAA's certification of the jet, an official with the office said on Tuesday. The office can recommend changes or improvements to how the FAA operates. Boeing said it would cooperate with the audit.

The unusual public intervention by two leading regulators came as a probe into the final minutes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 turned towards secrets hidden in the cockpit voice recorder.

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The voices of Captain Yared Getachew and First Officer Ahmednur Mohammed could help explain the March 10 crash of the Boeing 737 MAX that has worrying parallels with another disaster involving the same model off Indonesia in October.

The twin disasters killed 346 people, but there is no conclusive evidence so far that they are linked.

Black box data was downloaded in France but only Ethiopian experts leading the probe have access to the dialogue between Getachew, 29, and Mohammed, 25. The data was back in Addis Ababa on Tuesday, sources familiar with the probe told Reuters.

Experts believe a new automated system in Boeing's flagship MAX fleet - intended to stop stalling by dipping the nose - may have played a role in both crashes, with pilots unable to override it as their jets plunged downwards.

Both came down just minutes after take-off after erratic flight patterns and loss of control reported by the pilots. However, every accident is a unique chain of human and technical factors, experts say.

The prestige of Ethiopian Airlines, one of Africa's most successful companies, and Boeing, the world's biggest planemaker and a massive U.S. exporter, are at stake.

AWKWARD QUESTIONS FOR INDUSTRY

Lawmakers and safety experts are questioning how thoroughly regulators vetted the MAX model and how well pilots were trained on new features. For now, global regulators have grounded the existing fleet of more than 300 MAX aircraft, and deliveries of nearly 5,000 more - worth well over $500 billion - are on hold. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Hv2btC)

Pressure on Chicago-headquartered Boeing has grown with news that federal prosecutors are scrutinising how carefully the MAX model was developed, two people briefed on the matter said.

The U.S. Justice Department is also looking at the FAA's oversight of Boeing, one of the people said. And a federal grand jury last week issued at least one subpoena to an entity involved in the plane's development.

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to nominate former Delta Air Lines executive Steve Dickson to head the FAA on Tuesday. The agency has been without a permanent head for 14 months.

In the hope of getting its MAX line back into the air soon, Boeing has said it will roll out a software update and revise pilot training. In the case of the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, it has raised questions about whether crew used the correct procedures.

Development of the 737 MAX, which offers cost savings of about 15 percent on fuel, began in 2011 after the successful launch by its main rival of the Airbus A320neo. The 737 MAX entered service in 2017 after six years of preparation.

Argus Research cut Boeing stock to "hold" from "buy", giving the planemaker at least its fourth downgrade since the crash, Refinitiv data showed. Its shares, however, were enjoying a rare respite on Tuesday, up 0.3 percent at $373.43.

GLOBAL RAMIFICATIONS

Various firms are reconsidering Boeing orders, and some are revising financial forecasts given they now cannot count on maintenance and fuel savings factored in from the MAX.

Air Canada said it intended to keep its MAX aircraft grounded until at least July 1, would accelerate intake of recently acquired Airbus A321 planes, and had hired other carriers to provide extra capacity meantime.

Beyond the corporate ramifications, anguished relatives are still waiting to find out what happened.

Many have visited the crash site in a charred field to seek some closure, but there is anger at the slow pace of information and all they have been given for funerals is earth.

"I'm just so terribly sad. I had to leave here without the body of my dead brother," said Abdulmajid Shariff, a Yemeni relative who headed home disappointed on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Maggie Fick in Addis Ababa, Tim Hepher in Paris and David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting by Jason Neely in Addis Ababa, David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Jamie Freed in Singapore, Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Savio D'Souza in Bengaluru; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Ben Klayman; Editing by Keith Weir, Mark Potter and Lisa Shumaker)
Authorities knock down an establishment in Boracay for violating the easement rule

BORACAY, Philippines  The Boracay Interagency Rehabilitation Management group forcibly knocked down a privately-owned resort on the island for violating the easement rule.

Interagency General Manager Natividad Bernardino said the owner of the Boracay Plaza Resort was already given an ultimatum to self-demolish but failed to comply with the order.

Out of the 10, ito na lang ang hindi gumagalaw (it is the only establishment that did not comply) and there is no intention at all of doing voluntary demolition. The rest have complied, completely complied. Others partially (but siya) nagtutuloy tuloy pa rin (but they still continued their operation) so we were forced to do demolition it ourselves, Bernardino said.

Authorities issued an order to undertake voluntary demolition on April 27, 2018, to Boracay Plaza Resort along with other non-compliant establishments.

The structure was also issued with closure order on February 24, 2019 for continuously operating despite the violation.

It was given a 15-day ultimatum on March 4 to self-demolish but it remained defiant on the deadline.

Authorities have begun their inventory to ensure that no items in the resort will be lost while the demolition is ongoing.

Bernardino clarified that the entire structure will not be knocked down but only the portion that violates the 30-meter and 12-meter beach easement policy.

Meanwhile, self-demolitions in other resorts and establishments are now ongoing following the issuance of the demolition order.

Sa totoo lang, its to their interest and advantage if they finish it at the soonest possible time so they can start operating at ma-recoup na nila ang kanilang expenditures and loses during the closure, Bernardino concluded.  Marje Pelayo (with details from Vincent Arboleda)

The post Forced demolition begins on illegal structures in Boracay beachfront appeared first on UNTV News.
Germany launches its auction Tuesday for the construction of an ultra-fast 5G mobile network as a transatlantic dispute rages over security concerns surrounding giant Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei. The United States has warned it could scale back the sharing of sensitive information with Berlin if it does not exclude hardware made by Huawei from the infrastructure, arguing that Chinese equipment could help Beijing spy on Western companies and governments. Attempting to play down the row on Monday, Jochen Homann, chairman of the German Federal Network Agency (BNA), said: "No matter whether a supplier comes from Sweden or China, companies must meet certification requirements and security checks." '5G' -- 'fifth generation' -- is the latest, high-speed generation of cellular mobile communications and Berlin will require winning bidders to offer 5G service to at least 98 percent of German households and along motorways and rail lines. Germany, Europe's biggest economy whose wireless networks however rank 46th in the world for download speeds, wants to close the sizeable digital gap by making the shift to the ultra-fast 5G system. The BNA started the auction in Mainz at 0900 GMT on Tuesday and the process will allocate 41 different frequency blocks. Four operators are in the running, among them Germany's three main mobile network providers -- Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Germany (O2) -- plus United Internet (1&1), a German company specialising in internet services. Huawei is not one of the bidders but provides the four German companies with essential hardware such as antennas and routers. The US has accused Beijing of using Huawei's 5G network gear as a Trojan horse, forcing operators to transmit data to the regime, but Washington has not provided evidence to support their suspicions. Huawei has strenuously denied allegations its equipment could be used for espionage. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday lashed out at what he called "abnormal, immoral" attacks on Huawei and demanded a "fair and just competition environment" for Chinese firms. US-led attempts to encourage other nations to ban Huawei equipment from their telecoms infrastructure suffered a setback when Chancellor Angela Merkel's government decided against imposing company specific-restrictions on the 5G auction. - US fears of security compromise - According to media reports, US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell last week warned that Washington could review intelligence cooperation unless Berlin agreed a Huawei ban. In a letter, Grenell told Peter Altmaier, Germany's economy minister, that intelligence-sharing cooperation could be scaled back if Berlin allows the Chinese firm to be part of the 5G network, the Wall Street Journal reported. The threat escalated last week when NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, warned Germany that NATO forces would cut communications if Berlin works with Huawei. "We're concerned about their (Germany's) telecommunications backbone being compromised in the sense that, particularly with 5G, the bandwidth capability and ability to pull data is incredible," Scaparrotti told the House Armed Services Committee last Wednesday. "If it also is inside of their defence communications, then we're not gonna communicate with them. "And for the military that would be a problem." Merkel has tried to reassure senior figures in Washington by saying Germany would consult with the US over whether to use Huawei tech, but would "define our standards for ourselves". However, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) shares some of the US fears. BND security experts have asked the government to take China's overall strategy into account, including a law on forced cooperation in security matters, according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine. Other media outlets claim Berlin is drawing up a catalogue of measures, for all 5G providers, to change the telecommunications laws. These measures range from a non-espionage clause to the requirement of testing all components and the obligation to publish source code used in infrastructure. In some cases, the government could insist equipment already installed is replaced, which could exclude Huawei from the infrastructure without pronouncing a formal ban on the Chinese firm, according to business daily Handelsblatt.
Hong Kong MTR bosses could punish supplier of signalling system blamed for train crash near Central station

Hong Kong rail bosses could punish the French supplier of the new signal system on the citys subway network, after it was blamed for a train crash.

But a top designer on the system denied the accident on the MTR had anything to do with a software failure, as rail bosses have suggested.

On Monday, two trains collided near Central station during an overnight trial run of the new system, derailing one carriage and injuring a driver. No passengers were on board.

Tsuen Wan line services between Central and Admiralty, two stations at the heart of the citys business district, remained suspended. The MTR Corporation said a software problem in the new system could have been to blame.

Speaking on a radio programme on Tuesday, the corporations head of operations engineering, Dr Tony Lee Kar-yun, said software supplier Thales could be punished for the crash.

We will negotiate with them in accordance with the terms in the contract, Lee said, without elaborating.

The MTR Corp board was scheduled to meet that afternoon to discuss its response.

Thales, in a joint venture with fellow French company Alstom, was awarded the contract in 2015 to install a system known as SelTrac CBTC on seven lines, for HK$3.3 billion. The Tsuen Wan line was to be the systems first roll-out.

We will negotiate with them in accordance with the terms in the contract

Dr Tony Lee, MTR Corps head of operations engineering

While the new system was still being tested in Hong Kong, it was already up and running on Singapores MRT.

In late 2017, two trains collided on the city states East West MRT line, injuring 38 passengers.

The accident was also said to have been caused by a problem in the softwares design. Singapores Land Transport Authority said the system had disabled a safety feature which maintained a safe distance between trains.

The authority later said Thales had fixed the design to prevent similar issues, and had upgraded related track equipment.

Asked if there were similarities between the two accidents, Lee said: Their mode of operation and this problem weve encountered today  are different.

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While Lee did not go into specifics, one notable difference was that the MRT had both the old and new signalling systems running in parallel, controlling different sections of the railway, at the time of the accident.

Meanwhile on Tuesday morning, at the Asia-Pacific Rail conference in Hong Kong, Mihai Lungu, principal design authority for Thales Canada, denied the signal systems failure had anything to do with its software design.

No, I dont think so ... But I cant comment any longer, he said when asked whether the software had led to the smash. I feel sorry for the incident.

That was despite the MTR Corp saying on Monday Thales own Toronto lab had identified the same software issue in a computer simulation after the crash.

Lungu said his firm would help with the crash investigation and his team of experts had already arrived in Hong Kong.

Pro-government legislator Michael Tien Puk-sun said he had lost faith in Thales, citing its involvement in two train crashes.

The biggest issue is the publics confidence in this company working on all the signalling systems, Tien, who was chair of the KCR network before it merged with the MTR, said.

He said the government should consider bringing in a new contractor to finish the job.

The new signalling system on the Tsuen Wan line was supposed to go online late last year. But that was pushed back to the second half of this year before Mondays accident.

The MTR Corp said the commencement would probably be delayed further, as all tests had been suspended.

This article Hong Kong MTR bosses could punish supplier of signalling system blamed for train crash near Central station first appeared on South China Morning Post

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Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his shock resignation on Tuesday, 29 years after taking office. "I have taken the decision to resign from the post of presidency," the 78-year-old said in a speech broadcast on state television. Nazarbayev came to power in oil-rich Kazakhstan when it was still a Soviet republic and has previously never indicated a successor. "The mandate of the presidency will pass to the chairman of the senate for the remainder of my presidential term," Nazarbayev said, referring to the constitution. The senate chair position is currently held by Nazarbayev loyalist Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, 65, a former prime minister and career diplomat. Nazarbayev's term expires in March 2020. The move comes on the back of growing social discontent and an economy still recovering from an oil price plunge in 2014. Western sanctions against Russia, a key trading partner, have also hit the economy. The resignation comes just weeks after the ageing strongman dismissed the country's government. Last month Nazarbayev announced a spending package of several billion dollars on social programmes and state salaries. He also promised major investments in infrastructure. Nazarbayev will enjoy significant policy-making powers following his resignation thanks to his constitutional status as "Leader of the Nation". He became lifelong head of the country's security council last year. Nazarbayev, who won a 2015 election with almost 98 percent of the vote, was widely expected to seek another term in 2020.
From left to right: Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, Governor Ralph Northam, and Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax. Photo: Steve Helber/AP

Eric Kaufmann on Monday published an opinion piece in the New York Times arguing that Americans are not divided by race, but by racial ideology. This is an odd formulation, although not an incorrect one: Peoples views on racism are indeed important insofar as they shape attitudes and policies.

But Kaufmann seems less concerned with racisms material impact  on wealth gaps, education access, incarceration rates, and so on  than on different peoples opinions regarding what is and isnt racist. His specific focus is on how Americans answer questions like, Should [Ralph] Northam resign? and Is [Trumps] border wall racist? The evidence fueling his thesis  that race divides Americans less that racial ideology  is that peoples answers to these questions are determined not by their racial categorization, but by what they believe about race and racism, which can differ as much among black Americans as it does between, say, black and white Americans.

Kaufmann is optimistic about the implications of his findings. [Its] a good thing for the countrys unity, he writes, because ideological differences, however lamentable, are less polarizing than racial conflict, in which whole communities mobilize against an enemy.

The rest of us should be less so. Two reasons stand out: First, racism has never required the kind of mass mobilization that Kaufmann describes to achieve its ends; acquiescence to systems already in motion suffices. Second, a version of the ideological divide that Kaufmann describes  between hard-line white bigots, more sympathetic whites, and nonwhites of varying orientations forced to navigate the spaces outside and in between  has existed for centuries, without resulting in fundamental changes to Americas racist hierarchies: White supremacy still rules the day.

Kaufmanns Northam example highlights the shortcomings of his analysis. To recap, the Democratic governor of Virginia in February was reported to have appeared in a racist yearbook photograph. The image, published in 1984 and presumably captured not long before, depicts a person in blackface at a party next to a person in Ku Klux Klan garb. Northam initially admitted to, and apologized for, appearing in the photo  which was printed on his personal medical school yearbook page  but did an about-face the next day, abruptly denying having appeared in it at all. The damage seemed to have been done. Democratic lawmakers at both the local and national levels called for Northam to resign. But he declined, and perhaps improbably, today seems to have weathered the storm.

The strongest evidence that Northams decision was politically astute was that he had a majority of black Virginians in his corner, according to polls. Kaufmann cites one of these polls in his op-ed  taken from the Washington Post  indicating that 48 percent of white Virginians thought Northam should stay in office, as compared to a majority of black Virginians, at 60 percent. These findings might seem counterintuitive: One would assume that black Virginians would be more repulsed by Northams bigoted behavior than their white counterparts, and thus support his resignation more strongly. But this is the problem with drawing sweeping conclusions about ideology from polling where ideology seems apparent, but, in fact, is explored only shallowly. There are several scenarios where black support for Northam makes pragmatic sense  while simultaneously saying nothing illuminating about how black or white Virginians feel about racism more broadly.

The stakes of resignation in February, after all, were not just Northams political career. Black Virginians had good reason to fear the state falling under the control of Republicans  the party of voter suppression, racist gerrymanders, and Donald Trump. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax was facing sexual-assault accusations and Attorney General Mark Herring had his own blackface debacle alongside Northams. Had all three resigned, the top three Democrats in the gubernatorial line of succession would have been depleted, leaving the Republican speaker of the House of Delegates to run the state.

A persons answer to the question Should Northam resign, is not a pure measure of how racist they think blackface is, as Kaufmann implies  it is the result of a pragmatic political calculation. Indeed, some white people may be more progressive on subjects of racial ideology than many black people, depending on how one defines the terms. But black Americans have also rarely had the luxury of taking for granted their self-preservation. Sometimes the result is a betrayal of progress, as it is commonly understood. Failing to pursue a universal armed revolt against slavery, for example, was arguably not the most progressive choice that enslaved black Africans and Americans could have made  but it was the choice that allowed many more of them to survive than would have perished in retaliatory massacres.

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That people within the same racial category are driven to differing degrees by self-interest and self-preservation  real or imagined  or even by delusion, is no surprise. (The Post poll does not differentiate between white Democrats and Republicans, the latter of whom had a clear interest in Northams resignation that had nothing to do with antiracism, thus skewing the results.) Even Kaufmanns measures that seem less tied to political calculus and more rooted in principle  questions about how people rate members of other racial groups in terms of esteem, for example, or whether increased diversity is a good or bad thing  are often conditional. Research has demonstrated that liberal white attitudes can shift when social precarity is introduced into the equation. Measures to integrate black and white public school children have found some of their more vocal opponents in liberal Brooklyn, New York. White Americans support for government welfare programs tends to decrease when they see data suggesting that their numerical and financial dominance is declining relative to nonwhites.

The notion that mere ideological differences are cause for optimism is unconvincing, as such. If the kind of race war that Kaufmann alludes to was the risk here, one would imagine a different racial alignment defining historical moments like the Civil War, or the civil-rights movement. Yet despite both conflicts having been waged largely over the liberties of black Americans  dividing white Americans in the process  neither succeeded in upending the racist hierarchy that kept blacks on the bottom rung. The overwhelming resilience of white supremacy and Americans willingness to invest and reinvest in it, often regardless of their own racial categorization, or intentions, is the reason why. The case for optimism on this front is the same now as it has been since time immemorial. Some white Americans proudly flaunt their stake in white supremacy; others are willing to think more critically and challenge it. But however the cards fall, it is clearer by the day that racisms persistence  and the material divides it causes in everyday life  should worry Americans far more than Kaufmanns case for optimism should encourage them.
FILE PHOTO: Robert Mueller, as FBI director, testifies before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Federal Bureau of Investigation oversight on Capitol Hill in Washington June 13, 2013. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special Counsel Robert Mueller, examining potential conspiracy between President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia, is leading the latest in a series of high-profile U.S. investigations conducted by prosecutors outside usual Justice Department channels in recent decades.

The release of the findings by previous investigators analogous to Mueller has been handled differently, sometimes with voluminous reports and other times with no reports or with key elements kept under wraps for months and even years.

Mueller is preparing to submit a report to U.S. Attorney General William Barr on his findings, including Russia's role in the election and whether Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. The Republican president has denied collusion and obstruction. Russia has denied election interference.

Barr already is coming under pressure from lawmakers to make the entire document public quickly, though he has wide latitude in what to release.

Here is an explanation of some past investigations and how their findings were made public.

WATERGATE SCANDAL

The Justice Department named a special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate scandal that eventually forced Republican Richard Nixon in 1974 to become the only U.S. president to resign from office. At the time, no specific regulations or laws governed special prosecutors.

Attorney General Elliot Richardson, as a condition of his Senate confirmation, appointed Archibald Cox as a special prosecutor to examine the 1972 break-in by Republican operatives at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington.

Cox found himself at odds with Nixon over subpoenas to obtain taped White House conversations. Nixon ultimately ordered the firing of Cox, and several top Justice Department officials resigned in protest including Richardson, in an event dubbed the Saturday Night Massacre.

Leon Jaworski, subsequently named as the new Watergate special prosecutor, prepared a report with his findings, known as the "road map," to assist Congress with possible impeachment proceedings to remove Nixon from office.

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The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee used it as a basis for hearings and passed articles of impeachment, though Nixon quit before the full House could act. The 1974 "road map" remained under seal by a federal court until it was released by federal archivists in 2018.

IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR

The job of independent counsel, with broader powers, was created by Congress after the Watergate scandal. In 1986, Lawrence Walsh was named as independent counsel to investigate the Iran-Contra affair involving illegal arms sales to Iran under Republican President Ronald Reagan, with the proceeds diverted to fund rebels in Nicaragua called Contras.

The probe lasted nearly seven years and led to criminal charges against 14 people. The convictions of some prominent officials - Oliver North and John Poindexter - were overturned on appeal. In 1992, Republican President George H.W. Bush pardoned others.

Walsh submitted his final report in 1993 to a federal court, which had the power to release it publicly but was not required to do so. Its release was delayed after people identified in the report sued to keep it suppressed. A federal appeals court ruled in 1994 that it should be released in the public interest. Walsh then unveiled it at a news conference.

WHITEWATER AND LEWINSKY SCANDALS

Attorney General Janet Reno in 1994 appointed Robert Fiske as a independent counsel to investigate allegations of impropriety by Democratic President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton regarding real estate investments in the Whitewater Development Corporation. Fiske's probe was expanded to include reviewing the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, which police had ruled a suicide.

Fiske, who was not subject to the independent counsel law because it had temporarily lapsed, publicly released an interim report in 1994 clearing White House officials of wrongdoing in the Whitewater affair and confirming that Foster's death was a suicide unrelated to Whitewater.

On that same day, Clinton signed a law reauthorizing the independent counsel statute, which paved the way for a federal court to replace Fiske as independent counsel with Kenneth Starr. Starr turned in a report on Foster's death to federal courts in 1997, also finding no foul play. It remained under seal for three months before being released.

Starr's probe expanded into other areas, including a sexual affair between Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky and alleged improprieties in the White House travel office. His expansive 445-page report, containing explicit details on Clinton's sexual affair, was sent to Congress in 1998. Two days later, lawmakers voted to release it publicly. Its findings triggered an unsuccessful Republican effort to remove Clinton from office through the impeachment process. In 2018, Starr wrote that he regretted taking on the Lewinsky part of the investigation, but felt he had no other option.

Congress let the independent counsel law expire, with some lawmakers believing Starr went too far. The Justice Department in 1999 wrote regulations creating the new job of special counsel, with more limited powers.

FEDERAL RAID AT WACO

Reno in 1999 appointed John Danforth as special counsel to investigate the 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, Texas. The FBI used tear gas and a fire broke out, killing more than 70 people including cult leader David Koresh.

Danforth was the first person appointed under the 1999 regulations, the rules that now apply to Mueller. Under those rules, a special counsel must submit a confidential report to the attorney general, who then has discretion to publicly release some or all of it. The attorney general must weigh the public interest. But he also must consider thorny issues such as secrecy of grand jury testimony, protecting classified information, communications with the White House possibly subject to the principle of executive privilege shielding certain information from disclosure, and safeguarding confidential reasons for why some individuals were not charged.

Reno specifically instructed Danforth to prepare two versions of his report, a confidential one and another for public release. Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department's No. 2 official, gave no such instruction to Mueller when he appointed him in May 2017.

In 2000, Danforth held a news conference to publicly release his report, exonerating federal agents and Justice Department officials of any wrongdoing.

OUTING OF CIA AGENT PLAME

In 2003, James Comey, then the Justice Department's No. 2 official, appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as special counsel to investigate how CIA operative Valerie Plame's cover was blown through media leaks. Fitzgerald was not appointed under the 1999 regulations and was not bound by them.

Fitzgerald held a 2005 news conference to announce that a grand jury had returned a five-count indictment against Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements. Fitzgerald never published a final report on his findings.

A jury convicted Libby. Republican President George W. Bush commuted his sentence in 2007. Trump gave Libby a full pardon in 2018.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham)
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev shocked the nation on Tuesday by resigning after nearly three decades in power that transformed the Central Asian republic. Nazarbayev, 78, ruled Kazakhstan since before the collapse of the Soviet Union and leaves no obvious successor. He will continue to enjoy significant powers, however, thanks to his constitutional status as "Leader of the Nation" and lifelong position as chief of the country's security council. "I have made a difficult decision -- to resign as president of the Republic of Kazakhstan," Nazarbayev said in a televised address to the nation. "I see my future task as ensuring the coming to power of a new generation of leaders who will continue the transformations being carried out in the country." Nazarbayev said the chairman of the Kazakh Senate, 65-year-old Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, would take over for the remainder of his mandate. A presidential election is due in March next year. Tokayev is due to be sworn in as the country's interim leader at 0600 GMT on Wednesday. As well as his state positions, Nazarbayev will remain head of the ruling Nur Otan party. "I am staying with you, the needs of the country and people will remain my concern," he said. Nazarbayev took office in 1990 and following the death of Uzbek president Islam Karimov in 2016, was the last regional leader to have been in power since before the 1991 collapse of the USSR. Nazarbayev spoke with Russian ally President Vladimir Putin about his resignation and the pair agreed to maintain "regular contact", according to a statement published by the Kazakh presidential administration. He also spoke to other leaders of former Soviet republics. - 'Put Kazakhstan on the map' - Nazarbayev was elected in 1999, 2005, 2011 and again in 2015, when he took more than 97 percent of the vote. The votes were internationally criticised and he was accused of tolerating little opposition to his rule. But under Nazarbayev, the sprawling nation of 18 million parlayed its energy resources and strategic location into influence, emerging from ex-Soviet obscurity to host Iranian nuclear talks and Syria peace negotiations. The gleaming futuristic new capital Astana, built in the years since independence, symbolised Nazarbayev's drive to transform the country. In his address, Nazarbayev listed a series of achievements, saying the economy had grown by 15 times during his years in office. "From the ruins of the USSR, we managed to build a successful state with a modern market economy in Kazakhstan," he said. "We put Kazakhstan on the map, where there had been no such state." Recent years however have seen growing frustration over falling living standards as Kazakhstan's commodity-dependent economy struggled to recover from a 2014 plunge in oil prices and Western sanctions against Russia, a key trading partner. Nazarbayev's resignation came less than a month after he sacked his government citing a lack of economic development. Nazarbayev subsequently named 53-year-old Askar Mamin as the new prime minister and announced a plan to spend more than $5 billion on social programmes and state salaries. There is no obvious succession plan in place and there are no clear alternatives to Nazarbayev's rule in the largely Muslim country, which has a significant ethnic Russian minority. - 'Breath-taking move' - Andrei Suzdaltsev, a professor at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, said the resignation would have an impact across the region. "You have to hand it to him -- this is a breath-taking move. He established a tradition of power transfer, he resigned voluntarily. And for Central Asia this is something incredible," Suzdaltsev told AFP. He said Mamin, the interim prime minister, "is most likely a contender" to replace Nazarbayev in the longer term. In his speech, Nazarbayev also expressed confidence in Senate chief Tokayev, saying: "He is the person we can entrust with the governance of Kazakhstan." Sergey Duvanov, an independent Kazakh analyst, said that by holding on to his other positions Nazarbayev would remain the power behind the throne. "He will continue to rule the country, just with a different title. This plan has been thought up precisely in order for everything to stay the same," Duvanov said. The son of a shepherd, Nazarbayev trained as an engineer before rising through the ranks of the Kazakh Communist Party to head it and the country in 1989. He was elected to the new role of president on the eve of the Soviet breakup in 1991.
Four members of staff at an Oslo primary school were slightly hurt when a pupil threatened an employee with a knife, Norwegian police said Tuesday. Police sent several patrols to the school in the Brynseng district after reports of "violence and a threatening situation", the force said on Twitter. A pupil at the school, which has students between six and 13 years old, was threatening a staff member with a bread knife, Norway's NTB news agency reported. Police said they overpowered the boy, who was described in Norwegian media reports as very young. None of those hurt were stabbed with the knife, but suffered bites or were stabbed with a fork by the boy, Verdens Gang newspaper reported. All were staff at the school, said police. The incident reportedly happened after a confrontation in the playground.
The company has a remittance service, a corporate payments platform and even a physical card issuance product



InstaReM, a Singaporean cross-border payments company, has officially closed its Series C funding round at US$41 million. In the announcement, the company said it plans to IPO in 2021.

The company has been raising the funding round for awhile, having announced its first US$25 million close in November, 2018. The original goal was to raise US$45 million.

The funding was led by Vertex Growth Fund, a fund that targets startups on the cusp of growth-stage with the hopes of helping them through the process. This is the firms first investment into Southeast Asia.

Atinum Investments, a VC out of South Korea, was the other participant in the latest tranche of the funding.

The money will be used for both international expansion as well as growth in current markets.

The previous portion of the Series C included investment from MDI Ventures and Beacon Venture Capital  two VC arms of large corporates in Indonesia and Thailand respectively.

The latest close brings the companys total funding to US$59.5 million.

Also Read: Golden Gate Ventures, Hanwha Asset Management team up to invest in Series B rounds

InstaReM is a cross-border payments company and hopes to receive its operations license for Japan and Indonesia this year. It already operates across APAC, North America and Europe. The company hopes to open a Latin America headquarters by the end of 2019.

It recently received approval from Malaysias Central Bank to onboard customers via its electronic know-your-customer process. InstaReM said this should allow it to pursue fast growth in Malaysia.

The service allows people to send money to one another in the realtime but it also helps companies with their Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments across borders. ACH refers to financial bills like payroll, tax refunds, direct deposits, merchant bills and other corporate payment processes.

Story continues

It also recently partnered with Visa to pursue a card-payments platform that should allow people to use their InstaReM account to buy goods via plastic.

The company claims it can send remittances in over 50 countries, facilitate SME payments in 35 countries and issue cards in 25 countries.

When we started InstaReM four years ago, our mission was to make moving money internationally, faster and more convenient through seamless digital payments. Its the whole concept of open money which were trying to par, said Prajit Nanu, the Co-founder and CEO in a statement.

Also Read: Startup that helps hotels perfect their deals raises US$3.7M Series A

InstaReM won the fintech festival pitching competitions for both India and Singapore in 2017. It is also a member of RippleNet, a network of over 200 banks organised by the blockchain company Ripple.



Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

The post Singapore payments startup InstaReM closes Series C at US$41 million appeared first on e27.
Taiwan's new StarLux Airlines signed a deal on Tuesday worth up to $6 billion for 17 Airbus A350 XWB aircraft in one of the island's biggest single commercial plane purchases. The deal included five A350-900s and 12 A350-1000s with ten options, which are scheduled to be delivered from late 2021, the companies said. StarLux, founded in May 2018 by Taiwan's EVA Airways former chairman Chang Kuo-wei, is set to operate regular international flights starting in 2020. "The aircraft purchase deal today is one of the largest in Taiwan ... We promise to all that we will use the latest equipment, " Chang said at the signing ceremony in Taipei. The company declined to disclose financial details of the deal, which is the largest single purchase of Airbus planes in Taiwan. According to Airbus list prices it is worth nearly $6 billion, though aircraft manufacturers usually offer discounts on large orders. StarLux has also leased ten Airbus A321 neos, set to be delivered from October, which will fly its initial routes from Taipei to Southeast and Northeast Asia, a company statement said. StarLux aims to serve over 20 destinations in Asia and North America by the end of 2024 with a fleet of 27 aircraft, according to the statement. It would be the first airline in Taiwan to fly the A350-1000. In 2015 EVA signed a deal worth more than $6 billion for 26 Boeing jetliners while Chang was chairman, making it the biggest ever single commercial plane purchase in Taiwan.
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda is investigating a supply of food from the World Food Programme after three people died and 262 others got sick, police said.

People suffered diarrhoea, nose bleeds and other health problems after eating food provided by the United Nations food agency, police said in a statement late on Monday.

The food was part of a community feeding programme in the northeastern Karamoja region, a semi-arid area where the UN has long provided food aid for people facing poor harvests.

Police are "actively investigating the death of three people ... from eating adulterated or poisonous food supplied by the World Food Programme," the statement said.

Samples of the food and the patients' urine and blood had been sent to a government laboratory for analysis.

The food agency said on Saturday it had suspended distribution of Super Cereal - a fortified blended food - at all its operations in Uganda.

In a statement on Tuesday, WFP said some 262 people had reported falling sick after eating the cereal, with some exhibiting "mental confusion, vomiting, headache, high fever and abdominal pain."

The organisation also said it was aware of "reports of three deaths" that had occurred on March 16 and that extra samples of the cereal had been sent to Kenya and South Africa for testing.

Uganda hosts a large population of refugees, mostly from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where conflict and widespread insecurity has uprooted hundreds of thousands of people.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by Larry King)
Robert Kraft prior to Super Bowl LII on February 4, 2018. Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Prosecutors in Florida have offered to drop solicitation charges against Robert Kraft after the Patriots owner was charged in February, along with 24 other men, on the misdemeanor of buying sex at a strip-mall day-spa, the Orchids of Asia. At first glance, the offer appears to have an odd tone of shaming going on, in addition to being a slap on the offenders wrists: Review the evidence, admit that we would have found you guilty if the case went to trial, and we wont charge you with anything.

But the provision, which a spokesman for the state attorneys office claimed was standard for first-time offenders, may be a result of police tactics that could be difficult to justify in court. Police used a so-called sneak-and-peek warrant  the practice of hiding cameras on private property made more common by, ironically, the Patriot Act  in the sting, which prosecutors described as an investigation into human trafficking. But no one has been charged with an offense related to human trafficking, and prosecutors affidavits have reportedly not included any evidence of human trafficking at the spa.

The police are making this case that this is a major human trafficking ring, and thats why its so serious, Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor, told The Wall Street Journal, which originally reported on the offer. The fact that they had cameras installed in the locations for so long somewhat undermines the claim that there was an extraordinary danger to the people working in the establishment.

Its unclear if Kraft will agree to the provision, which would also call for completion of an education course about prostitution and 100 hours of community service. When charges were first announced in February, a spokesman for Kraft denied that he had engaged in any illegal action.

Whether or not Kraft agrees to the deal, the controversy surrounding the billionaires alleged pursuit of a $64 sex act will not disappear for two reasons. The first is the bizarre connections of spa owner Cindy Yang, who has reportedly attempted to sell access to the Trump administration to businesses in China. The second, though less of a national security risk, is a greater concern for Kraft: the potential of a penalty being handed down by the N.F.L. Next week, the league  which has a well-known and largely unaddressed problem with women  will meet for its annual meeting in Phoenix. According to the New York Times, organizations supporting the survivors of sexual exploitation are planning to send a letter to the league making the long-shot request that it ban Kraft from owning the Patriots.
A 3,000-year-old carved stone tablet from Babylonia, which promises a curse on those who would destroy it, is to be flown home from Britain after being looted during the Iraq War. British Museum boss Hartwig Fischer handed over the priceless work to Iraqi Ambassador Salih Husain Ali during a ceremony on Tuesday after museum experts had verified its provenance. "It is a very important piece of Iraq's cultural heritage," said Fischer, praising the "extraordinary and tireless work" of border officials. They spotted the object at London's Heathrow airport in 2012 and contacted the museum after being presented with fake documents. "They seized this item when they saw it at a British port and several years later, after a lot of legal work, we are able to effect this transfer," said Michael Ellis, Britain's Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism. "It's a very important and significant moment." It is still not clear how the object was taken out of Iraq, "but we believe it was probably stolen about 15 years ago during troubles in Iraq," he said. The kudurru is a ceremonial stone tablet recording the legal gifting of land by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I to one of his subjects in return for distinguished service, according to curator Jonathan Taylor. On one side are depictions of the great Babylonian gods Enlil and Marduk, and on the other, legal text written in cuneiform, the Babylonian alphabet. Taylor said the object also carried "terrible curses" for anyone trying to claim the land or damage the tablet. - 'National hero' - Fewer that 200 such objects are known to exist, and the one handed over on Tuesday was broken in antiquity and eroded, presenting a problem for sleuths trying to establish its history. "The basic identification is quite straightforward," said Taylor. "More difficult is tying down exactly who the king is and what the circumstances are, for that we need to read the inscription and it's quite worn, there's a lot of damage in the middle of the text," he said. "It's old fashioned bookwork. We have a few clues." They established the king was Nebuchadnezzar I, "a kind of national hero, a legend in his own life time". The stone is thought to have originally been on display in the ancient city of Nippur, now in central Iraq. "It's more than just a carved stone... It is a testament to the remarkable history of the Republic of Iraq," said Ellis.
Nursultan Nazarbayev may have resigned as president of Kazakhstan but analysts say the longest-serving post-Soviet leader will hardly be easing into retirement. By retaining key posts -- as head of the security council and chair of the ruling party -- the 78-year-old Central Asian strongman will be in a position to keep ruling the nation behind the scenes. "Nazarbayev is not going anywhere, he will be in charge of the country for as long as his health allows," said Central Asia analyst Andrei Grozin. Sergey Duvanov, an independent analyst based in Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty, said Nazarbayev will continue to rule the country "just with a different title". "He will continue to have all the power, but that hectic presidential schedule -- government meetings, diplomatic visits, ceremonial occasions -- will belong to someone else now." Eduard Poletaev, director of the Kazakhstan-based World of Eurasia think tank, was even more blunt. "No need to expect any change," he said. Poletaev said the balance of power in Kazakhstan may not change much in the coming years, comparing Nazarbayev to Deng Xiaoping who was China's ultimate decision-maker until his death in 1997. The Kazakh ruler has expressed admiration for Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew, a personal friend who retained influence over decision-making in the country even after he quit as prime minister. - 'Incredible' for Central Asia - While analysts had long pointed to the possibility of a phased transition of power in the country of 18 million, the decision "has come as a shock to many in Kazakhstan," said Joanna Lillis, author of "Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan". "Clearly Nazarbayev had decided to oversee the political transition and establish his legacy once and for all in his lifetime," she said in written comments. Some observers suggested the announcement might have been prompted by a crisis in Algeria where protesters have taken to the streets to call for an end to the long rule of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. "He has taken this decision against the background of what's happening in Algeria, but he retained key duties," said Poletaev. Still, analysts said they were impressed at the veteran leader deciding to step aside voluntarily, unlike some of his Central Asian counterparts who left office feet first. "You have to hand it to him -- this is a breathtaking move. He established a tradition of power transfer," said Andrei Suzdaltsev, a professor at Moscow's Higher School of Economics. "And for Central Asia, this is something incredible." Leadership transitions in authoritarian Central Asia are the subject of regular speculation due to the region's deep authoritarian tradition and abundance of oil and gas wealth. Nazarbayev's counterpart in Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, died after 27 years in power in 2016 and was replaced by his prime minister, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Turkmenistan's long-ruling first president Saparmurat Niyazov -- who died in 2006 -- fashioned one of the world's great personality cults. His former health minister and one-time dentist Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov picked up where Niyazov left off, overseeing a system that has no space for independent media or political opposition and sometimes draws comparisons with North Korea. - Model for 'certain neighbour'? - Many drew parallels between Nazarbayev's address and the stunning resignation of Russia's Boris Yeltsin on New Year's Eve 1999, when he appointed Vladimir Putin as acting chief. "Take care of an independent Kazakhstan," said Nazarbayev, echoing Yeltsin's call to "take care of Russia" in his legendary televised address. The Kremlin said that Nazarbayev and Putin had on Tuesday spoken by phone and many analysts said that the resignation had been likely discussed with Moscow. Some suggested that Putin may borrow from the Kazakh leader's playbook when the Kremlin chief's fourth term runs out in 2024. "One wonders whether this is a model for a certain neighbour to the north," Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King's College London, said on Twitter. or-ml-cr-as/mm/hmw
Donald Trump at a National Prayer Breakfast. Photo: Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Now and then you hear reports that Donald Trumps hold on certain demographic groups is slipping. Heres a good example from todays USA Today:

President Donald Trumps support among white evangelicals has dropped nearly 10 percentage points since taking office in January 2017, according to new data from the Pew Research Center released Monday 

Trump has been a divisive figure within the evangelical community, with some prominent evangelicals  like Jerry Falwell, Jr., the president of Liberty University  staunchly defending Trump and his policies.

Others, like founder of Living Proof Ministries Beth Moore, who has a large following of mostly female evangelicals, openly oppose Trump. And some leaders, like Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback megachurch in Orange County, California, which serves more than 20,000 congregants on a weekly basis, have expressed mixed feelings about Trump.

You get the impression, then, that Trumps support in this specific demographic  his best  has dropped as Evangelical leaders argue over his divisive views and behavior. Thats very misleading.

Pew did indeed show a 78 percent approval rating for Trump among white Evangelicals in February of 2017. That, however, was a point at which Trumps overall approval ratings hit their absolute peak. The 69 percent Pew showed in its new data was from mid-January of this year, near (but still before) the end of the government shutdown, when Trumps approval ratings were lower than they are now, and certainly lower than they were in the earliest days of his presidency.

Add in the usual risk of statistical noise and theres really no evidence that Trumps doing worse among white Evangelicals (relative to the rest of the country), which is probably why Pews own headline for the same report was: Evangelical approval of Trump remains high, but other religious groups are less supportive.

What can we actually learn from this relatively new data? There are a couple of interesting things. First of all, Trump consistently does better with regular churchgoing white Evangelicals than with less observant members of this group (70 percent of weekly churchgoers approve of Trumps job performance, versus 65 percent of others). This finding suggests that MAGA people arent just a bunch of rednecks who identify as Evangelical but are as heathenish as Trump in their actual belief systems and conduct. The same is true, interestingly enough, of another relatively pro-Trump religious demographic, white Catholics. Being churchy and being Trumpy seem to go hand in hand (not so much, however, with white mainline Protestants, an at-best-lukewarm group for Trump).

Second, there is continuing evidence that support for Trump among white Evangelicals is not just a product of some single-issue obsession with abortion or the composition of the courts. Pew found about three-fourths of white Evangelicals favoring Trumps pet border-wall project. Even factoring in partisanship, thats remarkable, since that level of support is higher than Trumps overall approval rating in this demographic.

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All in all, as we head deeper into the 2020 presidential election cycle, theres no reason whatsoever for Team Trump to doubt the reliability of white Evangelicals as the heart of his base. And we can expect the president and his congressional and media allies to keep up a drumbeat on issues thought to motivate them to show up at the polls in very high numbers, from Islamophobic themes to overwrought infanticide alarms to more immigration emergencies. Most important of all is the general idea that Trump is protecting traditionally-minded people from cultural change, whether its coming from the border or from college campuses or from Hollywood or Washington or media outlets. White Evangelicals have come to view themselves as a besieged minority, and Donald Trump, for all his faults, has committed to a common desire to take America back to its days of greatness in the 1950s. Thats not going to go away between now and November of 2020.
Theres a concept in landscape architecture called a desire line. It refers to a path worn into the ground by foot traffic, in defiance of the planned curves of sidewalks and roadways. A desire line is where people want to walk, and each one reminds architects and developers that they can never really make people behave like the crisp printed figurines that populate their models.

Right now, no piece of American city is more crisp than Hudson Yards, a $25 billion development on the Manhattan waterfront that epitomizes the kind of tightly controlled central planning that takes shape at the hands of one developer, in this case Stephen Ross of Related Companies. The sense of cohesion begins with the architecture, extends into the public space, and culminates in an advanced information-collection program on air quality, traffic, trash, noise, and morea testing ground for applied urban data science, as Shannon Mattern has written.

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Hudson Yards opened to the public last week and already the first desire line has emergedbut its not in the landscape. It is a linguistic desire line, and its target is the developments sculptural centerpiece, a made-for-the-gram, free tourist attraction that Related has meekly, temporarily christened the Vessel. New Yorkers have already decided it resembles, more than anything, a shimmering shawarma.

This $200 million rotisserie reverie is the work of Thomas Heatherwick, the British starchitect-sculptor-engineer. Its actually kind of cool: a vertiginous stack of 154 flights of stairs rising 15 stories into the sky. Heatherwick won Ross approval with his design in 2013; like so many of New Yorks best cuts, it was imported from Italy. But activity-wise, it is less capicola than shawarma, an Arabized version of the Turkish word for turning, which is the very essence of the thing. Just as a shawarma rotates against the heat for an even roast, guests of the Shawarma rotate around the structure as they ascend to the top.

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Ross told the Times in 2016 he wanted a year-round Christmas tree, something to rival Rockefeller Center. Instead he has the meat stick on 34th Street. Heatherwick says it was inspired by Indian step wells; others have seen M.C. Escher, or more prosaically, a wastebasket, a honeycomb, and a bedbug. But New Yorkers, I hope, will forever know it as the Shawarma.

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The comparison was first made back in 2016 by Amy Plitt, the editor of Curbed New York. On Friday, Eaters Carolyn Alburger forcefully revived the metaphor and it was picked up by the indefatigable, irascible blogger Jeremiah Moss, who happily reported that a local halal vendor had endorsed the idea. And why not? Each outward copper landing does seem to hang from Heatherwicks work like the browned crust of a mammoth meat filet. The New York Post and Bloomberg both ran with the comparison.

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To be fair, Related Cos. never actually named the thing: Theyve been using Vessel as, well, a placeholder since 2016, and briefly flirted with New Yorks Staircase. But as Norman Foster learned when he unveiled plans for an enormous glass pickle on the London skyline in 1999, you can tell the public where to sit, when to visit, and what they can buy, but no amount of money will buy you a name people want to use. Perhaps by dawdling, Ross offered naming rights to the public, Boaty McBoatfacestyle. And the public thinks it looks like a kebab.

Resemblances aside, the Shawarma is the perfect name: a beloved street-food staple exerting its hold over the billionaires fantasy city. The Shawarma matters because it represents the imposition of a public voice on a project that has been roundly criticized for its private and inward-facing design. Twenty-five billion dollars will buy you a city, but nothing can buy you a name.
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For much of his career, Jia Zhangkes films were officially banned in his home country, China. But through austere, realist movies like Still Life, Platform, and The World, Jia became one of the most celebrated directors on the international art-house circuit.

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His latest film, Ash Is Purest White, appears at first to be a conventional mob epic, focused on a gangsters moll character played magnificently by Zhao Tao. But with a story beginning in 2001 and spanning 17 years, the movie is just as much about the effects of the rapid growth of Chinas economy on its society. The dramatic changes led some working-class Chinese to form criminal brotherhoods for support.

These are the people bound together because of the human connections among them, says Jia. They have their code of honors and code of behaviors, and the way that they connect with one another to somehow protect one another.

Jia Zhangke joins Kurt Andersen for a conversation about Ash Is Purest White. And he shares some of the movies that have had the greatest impact on him, from Robert Bresson to Breakin.

This podcast was produced by Studio 360s Evan Chung.

Studio 360 plugs:

Please remember to like us on our Facebook page and Twitter. Send your emails to incoming@studio360.org.
Heres Elizabeth Warren answering a question about slavery at a CNN town hall on Monday night in Jackson, Mississippi.

America was founded on principles of liberty and freedom and on the backs of slave labor. This is a stain on America. And were not going to fix that, were not going to change that, until we address it head-on, directly. And its not just the original founding. Its whats happened generation after generation. The impact of discrimination handed down from one to the next means that today in America because of housing discrimination, because of employment discrimination, if the average white family has $100, the average black family has about $5. So I believe its time to start the national full-blown conversation about reparations in this country. And that means I support the bill in the House to appoint a congressional panel of experts, of people who are studying this, who talk about different ways we may be able to do it, and to make a report back to Congress so that we can as a nation do whats right and begin to heal.

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Warren noted that one way to discuss reparations is within the frame of an apology, the frame of national recognition.

Here, meanwhile, is Ta-Nehisi Coates, in a new interview with Eric Levitz at New York magazine, discussing the way he thinks the argument outlined in his 2014 Atlantic article The Case for Reparations could fit practically into the current political discourse:

In terms of political candidates, and how this should be talked about, and how this should be dealt with, it seems like it would be to support HR 40. Thats the bill that says you form a commission. You study what damage was done from slavery, and the legacy of slavery, and then you try to figure out the best ways to remedy it. Its pretty simple. I think thats Nancy Pelosis position at this point. Theres a whole line of thinking that says the recommendation for a study is somehow like a cop-out or weak. I dont really understand why that would be the case. Look, if you have a sickness, you have an illness, you probably start with diagnosis. The first step is to get some idea of what actually happened. Weve never really done that. Youre talking about an epic crime that literally has its origins before there was a United States of America, and carries all the way up to this very day  You need time. You need people to actually put some resources behind an actual study  If were going to do it, then lets do it. Lets put it all out there. Lets tell folks how we imagine this new America being.

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Levitz asked Coates about polling results that show the idea of reparations to be broadly unpopular. In response, Coates argues that part of the reason such poll results exist is because mainstream political figures have always treated reparations as too radical an idea to touchin his words, the people who have the megaphone not taking it seriously at all. Well, Warren seems to be.

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Other 2020 candidates, most prominently Kamala Harris, have also endorsed the broad idea of reparations (and its true that Pelosi has said shed back HR 40). But where Harris has argued that facially race-neutral programs that happen to disproportionately benefit black Americans would count as reparations, Warren is more directly adopting a Coates-like framing of the issue. Later in the town hall, for example, when Warren talked about her housing affordability plan, she noted that into the 1960s in America, the federal government was subsidizing the purchase of homes for white families and discriminating against black families. Thats redlining. The history of redlining was a crucial part of Coates argument in the Atlantic, conveying the way that even white Americans who might say their ancestors werent responsible for slavery benefited (and continue to benefit) from its legacy.

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It should be noted that, from Warrens perspective, supporting HR 40 does mean somewhat conveniently that she doesnt have to describe the specifics of a program that would redistribute wealth to black Americans. Still, by talking about redlining and the ongoing benefits that white Americans derive from segregation, Warren is endorsing (broadly speaking) a worldview that was on the radical edge of the media-politics ideas ecosphere just five years ago. Its the kind of envelope-pushing position that you might expect from a younger candidate hoping simply to shift the terms of national debateor to benefit from the national exposure of a presidential run. But Warren is 69, and shes already a senator and nationally known figure. She gets little out of this campaign if she doesnt win, and her position is an electoral risk, especially given that roughly 90 percent of the Democrats who participate in the Iowa caucus are white.

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On that front, Warren furthermore said at the Jackson town hall that she thinks Confederate monuments should be removed from public spaces, which is another position thats generally unpopular among white people, and that the Electoral College should be abolished in favor of a national popular vote for president, which would reduce the political influence of the disproportionately white, rural population in states like Iowa and New Hampshire. As a member of a party that has long lived in fear of the white moderate, especially on racial issues, Warren is running her primary campaign into uncharted territory. Its exciting!
The Supreme Court delivered a brutal blow to immigrants rights on Tuesday morning, ruling that the Trump administration may detain unauthorized immigrants indefinitely once they have been taken into criminal custody. Its 54 decision permits the government to arrest and imprison undocumented individuals who were released from custody years, even decades ago. Even immigrants convicted in the distant past of a minor crime, like possession of a stolen bus transfer, may now be apprehended and detained without bond. To reach this result, the courts conservative justices manipulated the plain text of a federal statute and ignored basic principles of due process. Their decision hands Immigration and Customs Enforcement even more power to terrorize immigrant communities, suspending due process for certain unauthorized immigrants snatched up by ICE.

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Tuesdays ruling in Nielsen v. Preap revolves around a 1996 law designed to crack down on unauthorized immigration. One section of the statute compels the Department of Homeland Security to detain certain non-citizens without a bond hearing as the government awaits permission to deport them. This provision states that immigration officials shall take into custody any unauthorized immigrant who has committed a certain criminal offense when the alien is released from jail. (Qualifying offenses include crimes of moral turpitude, drug violations, and aggravated felonies.) Officials may not release these individuals prior to deportation unless they are participating in witness protection. ICE interprets this statute to permit it agents to arrest and detain any unauthorized immigrant who was convicted of a crime, then hold him without a bond hearing. It doesnt matter if the immigrant was convicted a half-century ago and has fully rejoined his community; according to ICE, he remains subject to indefinite detention.

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If Congress truly did prescribe the result outlined by the majority, it has trammeled immigrants constitutional rights.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought this case on behalf of multiple immigrants ensnared by ICE, read the law differently. The ACLU notes that the statute has two parts: First, it directs the government to take certain aliens into custody when the alien is released from prison; second, it instructs the government to hold aliens described in this first section without bond. (Emphasis mine.) The ACLU argues that the law does not give ICE a blank check to arrest and indefinitely detain these aliens years after theyve been freed. Instead, it gives ICE an opportunity to detain immigrants without bondif agents arrest them when theyre released from custody. If ICE instead waits for months, years, or decades to arrest these individuals, the ACLU asserts, they must treat them like other unauthorized immigrants by providing them with an opportunity for release.

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The plaintiffs in Preap, who were picked up by ICE long after they completed their criminal sentences, are not asking for much. They are not asking for guaranteed freedom, just a bond hearing to prove that they arent flight risks or dangers to their communities. Most would probably meet that standard because they have families and roots and gave up crime long ago. But ICE wont give them the chance to prove it, citing the 1996 statute. And now the Supreme Court has agreed with the Trump administrations reading of the lawby essentially ignoring a substantial portion of the text itself.

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Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, held that this when  released clause plays no role in identifying which aliens must be arrested and held without bond. To the contrary, Alito, claimed, these words merely clarify that ICE cannot cut short an aliens state prison sentence in order to usher him more easily right into immigration detention. They also exhor[t] the Secretary to act quickly once an unauthorized immigrant is freed, but do not require her to do so. Thus, the government can wait years to detain an immigrant who has completed his sentence, and once it arrests him, it can still deny him a bond hearing.

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To Justice Stephen Breyer, who dissented along with his liberal colleagues, this reasoning is dangerous nonsense. The issue may sound technical, he acknowledged. But it is extremely important, because it implicates the longstanding right of virtually all persons to receive a bail hearing. The plain language of the statute, Breyer asserted, resolves this case in favor of the plaintiffs. Remember: The first part of the law directs immigration officials to detain a class of aliens when [they are] released from jail. The second part declares that aliens described in this first section must be held without bond. But an alien who was not detained when he was released from prisonand is instead seized years after releaseisnt described in the first section. And so he does not qualify as an alien whom ICE must hold without bond.

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Breyer did not argue that these immigrants are permanently shielded from ICE custody. Rather, he wrote that the word when should be interpreted in the same manner as we interpreted other parts of this statute: as creating a six-month time limit. Under Breyers theory, if ICE detains an unauthorized immigrant who has committed a qualifying crime within six months of his release from jail, he must be held without bond. If ICE waits any longer, it must offer him a bond hearing.

Breyer also addressed the problem that underlies this litigation: If Congress truly did prescribe the result outlined by the majority, it has trammeled immigrants constitutional rights. The court cannot interpret the words of this specific statute, Breyer wrote, without also considering basic promises that Americas legal system has long made to all persons. He continued:

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We cannot decide that question without bearing in mind basic American legal values: the Governments duty not to deprive any person of liberty without due process of law  I would have thought that Congress meant to adhere to these values and did not intend to allow the Government to apprehend persons years after their release from prison and hold them indefinitely without a bail hearing. In my view, the Court should interpret the words of this statute to reflect Congress likely intent, an intent that is consistent with our basic values.  I fear that the Courts contrary interpretation will work serious harm to the principles for which American law has long stood.

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Here, Breyer waves a red flag that he raised last year in another case undermining immigrants due process rights. Both the Trump administration and the Supreme Courts conservatives, Breyer suggested, doubt whether unauthorized immigrants have any right to due processeven freedom from arbitrary detention, a right as ancient and important as any found within the Constitutions boundaries. In light of this fundamental guarantee, the court should interpret statutes to avoid the indefinite detention of immigrants.

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Breyer read his Preap dissent from the bench to emphasize his dire concerns. It was so trenchant that it drew a response from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote to assert that the question before us is narrow and compelled by a law signed by President Clinton. (He does not explain why it matters that President Clinton approved this particular statute.) But Breyer criticized Kavanaughs attempt to downplay the ruling. In terms of potential consequences and basic American legal traditions, Breyer wrote, the question before us is not a narrow one. Instead, it goes to the heart of the Constitutions guarantee of liberty to all persons, citizen and immigrant alike.

A professorial and even-tempered justice, Breyer is not prone to overstatement. When he issues a warning this urgent and ominous, we should listen. Preap is another dent in the constitutional rights of immigrants who, as Breyer put it, have established families and put down roots in a community. When ICE seeks to detain these individuals without any chance of releaseyears after theyve paid their debt to societyit must comply with due process. Yet a majority of the justices have now rejected efforts to make ICE honor its detainees constitutional rights. Breyer has good reason for alarm.
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Leon Krauze talks to FiveThirtyEight writer Perry Bacon Jr. about how he defines the six different groups within the Democratic Party, where each stands on current issues, and how 2020 presidential candidates might fall within those factions.

Follow Trumpcast on Twitter: @realtrumpcast

Podcast produced by Melissa Kaplan, with help from Maria Elena Ochoa.

Further Reading

The Six Wings of the Democratic Party by Perry Bacon Jr., FiveThirtyEight.com.
An affidavit released Tuesday reveals that the FBI requested a warrant to use former Trump lawyer Michael Cohens fingerprints and face to access Apple devices retrieved during a 2018 raid on his office, home, and hotel room in New York. An agent, whose name has been redacted in the document, wrote that it would likely be necessary to press the fingers of the user of the Subject Devices to the devices Touch ID sensor, or hold the Subject Devices in front of the users face to activate the Face ID sensor because law enforcement did not know Cohens password. Judge Henry B. Pitman approved the warrant application, though it is unclear whether the investigators ultimately used these biometric authenticators to unlock the devices.

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Apple debuted Touch ID on the iPhone 5S in 2013 and Face ID on the iPhone X in 2017, and law enforcement sought to use each in investigations soon after their releases. In 2014, a Virginia judge issued a landmark ruling decreeing that police could not force a man accused of strangling his girlfriend to disclose his iPhone password, but that they could make him press his finger on the phones fingerprint sensor. The reasoning was that passwords are considered abstract knowledge, and compelling people to divulge that information would violate their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. However, fingerprint logins fall under the realm of gathering physical evidence like DNA swabs and breathalyzer tests and is not considered a form of self-incrimination.

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Since then, police have now and again used Touch ID to collect evidence from phones. Police in Lancaster, California, went as far as to request a warrant to force everyone inside a suspects home to unlock their smartphones with fingerprints in 2016. Its unclear if the warrant was approved since the document was not made public. The FBI also weathered criticism in 2017 for failing to quickly consult with Apple on ways to access a password-protected iPhone SE belonging to Devin Patrick Kelley, who killed 26 people in a Texas church before killing himself. Law enforcement only had 48 hours to press Kelleys fingers against the phone before the device reverted to requiring a password, but officials reportedly declined to request Apples help during that time. Privacy advocates contended that the FBI had no interest in cooperating with the Apple because the bureau ultimately wanted to pressure the company into weakening its encryption.

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The first known case of law enforcement executing a warrant to access a phone using Face ID was in August 2018. Forbes discovered that FBI agents were raiding a Columbus, Ohio apartment in connection with a child pornography investigation when they instructed the suspect, 28-year-old Grant Michalski, to place his face in front of his phone. Michalski complied, giving agents access to his online chats and photos. His lawyer did not challenge the compelled Face ID login, and Michalski later pleaded guilty to receiving and possessing child pornography.

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Yet law enforcements license to manipulate a devices biometric features may soon face more challenges in the courts. In January, Judge Kandis Westmore of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California broke from precedent and ruled that police could not compel the use of Face nor Touch ID. Westmore wrote, If a person cannot be compelled to provide a passcode because it is a testimonial communication, a person cannot be compelled to provide ones finger, thumb, iris, face, or other biometric feature to unlock that same device. She further argued that lie detector tests take advantage of a host of physiological responses, and that courts have previously invoked the Fifth Amendment to prohibit police from forcing suspects to undergo such tests. But Josephine Wolff wrote in Slate at the time that theres already a lot of uncertainty and disagreement about when courts should be able to compel decryption of devicesand Westmores opinion will only make things less clear and more complicated.

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The search warrants connected to the Michael Cohen raid featured a number of other controversial technologies. Investigators apparently tracked Cohen using a Stingray, a device that mimics a cellphone tower to trick phones in the area into sharing location data. They also subpoenaed data from actual cell towers to trace the whereabouts of two of Cohens phones for 45 days. Google refused to provide prosecutors with certain contents from Cohens Gmail and Drive accounts because the data was stored overseas, but a law that Trump signed a few weeks later gave them the authority to eventually compel the company with a new warrant.
This article is part of Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University. On March 20, Future Tense will host an event in Washington, D.C., about how law enforcement is using genetic genealogythanks to consumer DNA testingto solve crime. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

Imagine the federal government enacted a law requiring all U.S. residents to provide law enforcement with their DNA profile so police could solve more crimes. Would you be OK with such a system?

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Imagine instead that the federal government established a database for which people could volunteer genetic profilesbut that the decision about whether to volunteer your DNA belonged not to you, but to your third cousin. Would you be OK with that?

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Whether you like it or not, the United States has effectively already adopted this second system. Since April 2018, law enforcement investigations stemming from DNA searches in consumer genetics databases have led to nearly three dozen arrests. In every case, those ultimately arrested did not actually upload their own genetic profiles to any database. Rather, they were identified through partial matches between crime scene DNA samples and the genetic profiles of often-distant relatives shared on consumer platforms like GEDmatch or FamilyTreeDNA. By one estimate, more than 60 percent of Americans of European descent are already identifiable through the DNA of a third cousin or closer on one of these platforms, and nearly all such Americans may be findable soon. Meanwhile, Parabon Nanolabs, the leading private company selling genetic genealogy services to law enforcement, claims that it can identify criminal suspects out to ninth-degree relatives (e.g., fourth cousins)widening the genetic web of indirect database inclusion still further.

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Law enforcement use of consumer genetics platforms in this way amounts to a massive failure of democratic accountability. While resolving cold cases and bringing wrongdoers to justice is laudable, forensic genealogys reliance on matches between genetic relatives should prompt serious questions about whose identifying genetic data is included in law enforcement searches and with what justification. Unless we change course, the United States will soon be home to a de facto national DNA databasesomething that no U.S. jurisdiction has suggested would be appropriate.

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Existing genetic databases typically come in one of two types. One is traditional law enforcement DNA databases: Every state and the federal government has enacted legislation identifying whose DNA is subject to government collection and search for crime detection purposes, and each has limited its database to some subset of individuals arrested or convicted of crimes. While these databases have grown in size and scope over time, no state has proposed using DNA from most or all of its residents for law enforcement purposes. Rather, each jurisdiction has affirmatively chosen to limit who can be included, even requiring expungement of DNA profiles in certain instances.

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The second type of DNA database used for law enforcement is a new entrantthe consumer genetics platform. To date, at least two consumer genetics platforms, GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, have publicly acknowledged or embraced working with law enforcement to identify criminal suspects. Proponents of government use of these databases have emphasized that genetic profiles are voluntarily shared on these sites. In other words, because people have volunteered their genetic data, it is OK for law enforcement to use it too.

But the identification of individuals who are not directly included in a genetic database runs afoul of any given reason law enforcement use of such databases is legally and ethically acceptable. These individuals have not previously been arrested or convicted of a crime. Nor have they volunteered their DNA on a consumer genetics platform. Instead, like millions of ordinary Americans, these individuals are identifiable to police through the genetic data of their kin. Few genetic relationships, however, are voluntary. Even if parents can be said to voluntarily choose to have children, children plainly do not choose their parents. Nor do we choose our siblings, cousins, or more distant relativesif we even know who they are.

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And the reach of these genetic databases, combined with identifiability-by-relatedness, is rapidly growing. Law enforcement will soon have access to enough genetic profiles to reach nearly all Americans of European descent, if they dont already. As one expert has explained, law enforcement would need access to DNA profiles for as little as 2 percent of the U.S. population (about 4 million profiles) to reach nearly any of us with European ancestry through a third cousin or closer. Meanwhile, as many as 26 million individuals have already used an at-home genetics test.

Law enforcement use of consumer genetics platforms in this way amounts to a massive failure of democratic accountability.

That is a problem. A comprehensive genetic database is unlikely to be a viable policy proposal, and with good reason. For one thing, despite apparent public support for investigations like the Golden State Killer case, Americans are very concerned about genetic privacy. A recently proposed bill in Arizona that would have radically expanded the states official DNA database lasted mere weeks, before being substantially amended twice in a 72-hour period. The legislation would have required that DNA be collected from anyone who has to be fingerprinted by the state for a job, to volunteer in certain positions or for a myriad of other reasons. (The text of the original bill can be found here.) It had ignited widespread opposition, including from the Arizona Police Association. The bill was quickly amended twice, ultimately focusing on advancing the use of Rapid DNA technology to test rape kits. Having been hollowed out and replaced with different, less objectionable content, the bill passed out of committee. In other words, a bill that appeared to approach the model of a comprehensive DNA database available for law enforcement use met a swift and ignominious death, abandoned even by its sponsor. More broadly, no state to date has proposed storing the DNA of all its residents in a law enforcement database.

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Moreover, such a database might not even be legal. As I have argued elsewhere, identifiable genetic information is precisely the sort of sensitive data in which individuals ought to have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That means that a comprehensive DNA database for law enforcement use may well run afoul of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

If Americans are unwilling to accept a formal national DNA database, they should not accept what amounts to the same thing by happenstance.

Yet that is where we are headed.

There is another way forward: Prohibit law enforcement searches of DNA databases that seek to implicate individuals whose genetic information is not directly included. Doing so would limit law enforcement access to those who really do fit the rules for database inclusion, whether by virtue of an arrest or conviction or by their voluntary sharing of genetic data. To be sure, such a solution would make crime solving more difficult. But it would also prevent millions of ordinary Americans from involuntarily and unjustifiably coming within the scope of the states genetic surveillance, while ensuring greater public accountability about the means and ends of law enforcement.

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In Maryland, such a law has already been proposed. Maryland has long been a leader in including meaningful limitations to protect ordinary individuals against routine DNA searches for crime detection purposes. Most significantly, in 2008 Maryland prohibited familial searches in the states own database. In January 2019, Del. Charles E. Sydnor III introduced a bill that would extend that prohibition to reach any DNA database, including those hosted by consumer genetics platforms. Although this bill has not advanced, Sydnor has not abandoned its intent. He hopes to educate his fellow House of Delegates committee members on the topic, as part of a conversation about appropriate law enforcement use of genetic technology. Its a conversation that needs to take place nationwide.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
In HBOs new documentary on Theranosthe blood-testing startup valued at billions of dollars that turned out to be a massive scamone of the creepiest scenes isnt footage shot by a journalist but an ad from the now-defunct company itself.

Mom, you really are an important part of our family, a woman says in the clip, which appears about halfway through The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. She clears her throat meaningfully as she looks at an older woman. Your health is really important to us. The kids adore you. She hands the woman a square, blue-green card. A child stands by, a giant, single tear running down her cheek.

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Theranos gift cards, a voice-over says. Because nothing is more important than the health of those you love. (Its unclear if the commercial ever aired on TV.)

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Theranos might be toast, its demise a cautionary tale of Silicon Valleys fake-it-till-you-make-it ethos. But medical gift cards are still around. Theyre not all that new, either: Ten years ago, an insurance company in Florida had a program that sold $59 gift cards at Florida Winn-Dixies and CVS drugstores, according to an AP report, which could be used toward insurance premiums.* That article mentioned a handful of other examples including a Michigan-based home health care service, Complete Compassionate Care, that offered gift cards; one woman used a gift card that she won as a raffle prize to pay for a few hours of caregiving for her husband, who had Alzheimers. A 2009 episode of This American Life described a savings card for acne medication that allowed patients to skip the copay (the card was free, and insurance was stuck with the rest of the hefty bill).

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Today, Talkspace, a company that offers (scientifically questionable) text-based therapy, sells gift cards for one month or three months of treatment. The marketing language is similar to the pitch in the Theranos ad: Offering someone a path to a happier life is more valuable than any material gift.

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Yes, that sounds like a pretty awkward gift to receive, and Talkspace knows it. You need to be tactful, though, the company notes in a blog post on how to properly send a text-therapy gift card. Some language they suggest: It seems like you needed help. You should use this gift card. (This is, to be clear, still an overstep!)

Health careespecially nonemergency stuff like therapy, home care, and proactive blood testshas become such an expensive privilege that gift cards may seem like they make a kind of sad sense. But if you want to help someone pay for care, a gift card is definitely not the best way to go about it. For one thing, they sway where people get their health care if they choose a provider based on whats stashed in their junk drawer rather than whats medically ideal. So do coupons, another emerging weapon of health care capitalism, like a Cyber Monday $10 off deal I received for telehealth company Doctor on Demand last fall, or a Betterhelp therapy deal sold on Groupon.

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These gift cards and coupons are emblematic of a future of direct-to-consumer health care where consumers are given power in a way that, while sometimes satisfying, isnt necessarily healthy. Theranos allowed patients to order blood tests for themselves off a menuan appealing proposition when its costly to visit a doctor, though not exactly a helpful one if you dont have the knowledge to interpret complicated lab results. Talkspace and Betterhelp offer a mental health service thats appealingly simple (texting!). But its not backed by the same research that in-person or even video therapy is, a fact that the companies dont adequately explain. The startup Hers, which offers birth-control subscriptions at an alluring rate of $5 for the first month, has ads that are so styled like a clothing or makeup companies, and a setup that is so akin to shopping (you pick out a birth control, and then consult a doctor), that I half-expect it to suggest I treat myself to some pills. Health care should involve options and second opinions, but it shouldnt mimic the marketing tactics of retail stores or e-commerce. Yet it increasingly does. In at least that way, Theranos was prescient.

Even sweetened with a gift card, a test at Theranos almost definitely wasnt a wise choice, in hindsight, because its proprietary blood-testing method turned out to be faulty. Former employee Tyler Shultz characterized the companys abysmal accuracy rates in the documentary like this: If people are testing themselves for syphilis using Theranos, theres going to be a lot more syphilis in this world.
Congress has released the fifth list of its candidates for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This list includes 22 contenders from Andhra Pradesh, 11 from West Bengal, eight from Telangana, six from Odisha and five from Assam. Candidates for the three remaining seats from Uttar Pradesh have also been declared.

The Congress party has fielded Abhijit Mukherjee, son of former President Pranab Mukherjee, from the Jangipur Lok Sabha consituency in West Bengal.

For more updates on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, follow us on BusinessToday.In live blog:

5:45pm: Communist Party of India (CPI) on Tuesday released list of 7 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal.

Communist Party of India (CPI) announces list of 7 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal. pic.twitter.com/BSheu5zZxK - ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

5:00pm: Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora met representatives from various social media platforms to discuss issues related to social media content.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora along with Election Commissioners Sushil Chandra & Ashok Lavasa meet representatives from various social media platforms to discuss issues related to social media content, post implementation of Model Code of Conduct. #LokSabhaElections2019pic.twitter.com/lhebCQb0Or - ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

4:50pm: Newly appointed Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has said that he will pass the floor test tomorrow.

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant: We have 21 MLAs, we will pass the floor test tomorrow. Our coalition partners are with us. #Goapic.twitter.com/fQBlrfhzkm - ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

03:33 pm: Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi offers prayers at Mirzapur's Vindhyavasini Devi and Dargah of Khwaja Janab Ismail Chisti.

03:13 pm: Modi mocks the idea of mahagathbandhan, but BJP is running coalition governments in many states, said JDS chief HD Devegowda.

02:35 pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with people who have participated in the 'Main Bhi Chowkidaar' initiative from 500 locations in the country, ANI reported.

02:30 pm: We will remove 'Gabbar Singh Tax' and give you GST as soon as we form the government, Rahul Gandhi says in Arunanchal Pradesh.





Rahul Gandhi in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh: We have decided, as soon as we form the government in 2019 we will remove the Gabbar Singh Tax and give you the GST. pic.twitter.com/cdJK5Kdi6X  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

01:50 pm: Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has released list of its candidates for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Party chief Chaudhary Ajit Singh will contest polls from Muzaffarnagar. RLD will field two more contenders - Jayant Chaudhary from Baghpat, and Narendra Singh from Mathura.

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01:45 pm: Complaint lodged against BJP MP Babul Supriyo for alleged derogatory remarks against Trinmool Congress and Mamata Banerjee in his elections song.

01: 35 pm: Income Tax department to attach properties today of Netram, reportedly a close aide of BSP chief Mayawati, ANI reported. Around 20 properties related to Netram in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Noida will be attached. The assets will be attached under the provisions of Section 132(9) of Income Tax Act. Orginally bought at Rs 225 crore, I-T Department has recorded the value of these properties at Rs 100 crore in its books

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) releases list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Chaudhary Ajit Singh to contest from Muzaffarnagar, Jayant Chaudhary from Baghpat and Narendra Singh from Mathura. RLD is in alliance with BSP and SP in Uttar Pradesh. pic.twitter.com/YDvUYqtPEu  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 19, 2019

12:06 pm: Releasing DMK's manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, party chief Stalin said that the seven prisoners of Rajiv Gandhi assassination case will be released on humanitarian grounds.

Income Tax Sources: Income Tax department to attach properties today of Netram, reportedly a close aide of BSP chief Mayawati. IT department will attach around 20 properties related to Netram. The properties are situated in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Noida. pic.twitter.com/6I5nNL2S31  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

12:03 pm: Three state working presidents - Devender Yadav, Haroon Yusuf and Rajesh Lilothia - have arrived at residence of Delhi Congress chief Shiela Dikshit for a meeting.

12:00 pm: NCP chief Sharad Pawar is mediating an alliance between Congress and AAP in Delhi, ANI reported;.

DMK Chief MK Stalin during the release of DMK Election Manifesto in Chennai: The seven prisoners of Rajiv Gandhi assassination case will be released on humanitarian basis. #LokSabhaElections2019pic.twitter.com/KUmmjiNMIB  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

11:45 am: Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi reaches Bhadohi, offers prayers at Sita Samahit Sthal.

Congress General Secretary UP-East Priyanka Gandhi Vadra offers prayers at Sita Samahit Sthal in Bhadohi. pic.twitter.com/cb5gDN4bnl  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 19, 2019

11:42 am: "'What did they do in 70 years?' argument also has an expiry date. Now they (BJP) should tell what they have done in their five years when they are in power," said Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi.

Congress General Secretary UP-East Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in Bhadohi: 'What did they do in 70 years?' argument also has an expiry date. Now they (BJP) should tell what they have done in their five years when they are in power. pic.twitter.com/VEYgPsDh4Q  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 19, 2019

09:50 am: Most of the Congress leaders believe that the party should ally with AAP, says party's PC Chacko. Rahul Gandhi will decide on this matter in a few days.

PC Chacko, Congress: Our president Rahul Gandhi will take decision in few days time, & the policy of our party as decided by working committee is to go for alliance with the parties who are opposed to BJP. I hope Delhi leaders will also follow this policy decision of the Congress https://t.co/HeOZiG5llf  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

09:45 am: Congress likely to field Manish Khanduri from Pauri Garhwal, a Lok Sabha seat currently held by his father and BJP leader BC Khanduri. Although his candidature has not been declared yet, speculations in the political circle do point in this direction. The Congress party is expected to release the list of its candidates for Uttarakhand soon.

09:34 am: The Election Commission of India will meet social media representatives to discuss the nature of content on social media platforms, in view of the Model Code of Conduct.

Election Commission to meet social media representatives today to discuss various social media content, especially after Model Code of Conduct came into force ahead of #LokSabhaElections2019pic.twitter.com/hmK2kE6awf  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

09:00 am: Andhra Pradesh police conducts flag march to advocate for free and fair 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Ahead of LS polls, AP police conduct flag march to advocate for free and fair elections



Read @ANI Story| https://t.co/rLCvxyrlIFpic.twitter.com/n8HO56cWt4  ANI Digital (@ani_digital) March 19, 2019

08:40 am: Jana Sena Party has released names of one candidate for 2019 Lok Sabha polls and 13 for state assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh.

08:35 am: Deputy CM of Uttar Pradesh D Sharma takes says Priyanka Gandhi's 'Boat Yatra' is only for votes.

Dy CM D Sharma on Priyanka Gandhi Vadra: Had it been old times,they would've been called a 'Rajgharana'. They come during elections, have picnic, go back&return after 5 yrs. 'Boat yatra' is only for votes. Inki boat yatra mein khot pehle hi inke sehyogiyon ne darsha diya. (18.03) pic.twitter.com/caOcWJkIiC  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 19, 2019

08:30 am: Telegu Desham Party has released list of 25 candidates for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It has also released a list of 36 candidates for upcoming state assembly polls

The party has also released list of 25 candidates for the upcoming #LokSabhaElections2019 . Ashok Gajapathi Raju to contest from Vizianagaram, Kesineni Srinivas from Vijayawada, Galla Jayadev from Guntur and N Sivaprasad from Chittoor. https://t.co/1HPQKs7KWv  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

Andhra Pradesh: Telugu Desam Party (TDP) releases third list of 36 candidates for the upcoming elections to the state legislative assembly. The polling will be held on 11 April. pic.twitter.com/dHuU6fnRfR  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

08:30 am: 4 FIRs have been registered against political parties, says Delhi's Chief Electoral Officer Ranbir Singh.
The Benefits of Being Smart

By Ginger Schlueter 01 March 2019 Print Issue: March 2019

Dubai is on a mission. It wants to become the worlds smartest city by 2021 and has more than 545 initiatives in the works to fundamentally change the way people experience the city.

The effort is part of Dubais Smart City strategy, which launched in 2014, according to Visit Dubai.

Key strategic goals include: transforming more than 100 essential government services into smart services carried out primarily online; introducing autonomous vehicles and smart transportation services; providing free, high-speed Wi-Fi across the emirate; and developing a data-driven economy that authorities estimate will generate an additional AED 10.4 billion (U.S. $2.83 billion) in GDP by 2021, a press release explained.

The Smart Dubai Platform will be unlike any other smart city platform operating in the world today, said Her Excellency Dr. Aisha Bin Bishr, director general of the Smart Dubai Office, which is rolling out the Smart City strategy.

And Dubai is not alone. Cities around the world want to provide residents and visitors with greater access and connections via technology as more people begin to migrate to urban areas.

The United Nations projects that 68 percent of the worlds population will live in urban areas by 2050, and that more than 60 percent of the land projected to become urban has yet to be developed. This creates an opportunity for the security industry to provide the safety and security segment smart cities need.Smart Cities 101

There are varying definitions of a smart city, but they share many similarities. Smart cities are sustainable, both environmentally and economically; proactive in detecting threats; able to break down big data gathered from devices throughout the city into understandable, usable information; livable for people; and utilize connected components.

The motive right now of smart cities is the ability to manage a city based upon the interconnectivity of traffic control, emergency systems, video infrastructurein terms of tracking incidents and potential threatsand parking management and controls, says Pierre Bourgeix, consulting manager at Boon Edam.

To make this possible, cities must invest in a robust infrastructure to support the technology theyre installing.

Smart grids, together with fixed broadband infrastructure based on 5G and Fixed Wireless Accessessentially fiber optic performance in a wireless transport mediumare some key elements providing the underlying infrastructure to advance smart cities, says Steve Surfaro, a physical and cybersecurity solutions expert and member of the ASIS International Security and Applied Sciences Ad Hoc Council.

In one of its smart city initiatives, Dubai is using artificial intelligence-driven robots to assist tourists by answering their questions, providing directions, and more. Dubai is also looking into creating an autonomous police station controlled by a mobile app to assist its police department.

Some countries and citiesDubai, Kuwait, India, Singapore, and Chinaare way ahead of the curve, explains Jumbi Edulbehram, regional president Americas at Oncam Grandeye. China especially has a ton of smart city technology, including a whole highway that can power cars as they are driving on top of it.

The United States lags behind many nations when it comes to smart city development. However, this gives the United States a chance to look at successfully functioning smart cities and reproduce similar applications.

The United States is starting to see how new technologies are being birthed with smart cities, Bourgeix says. We see the advancement oflighting, infrastructure solutions, etc., so we already know what the U.S.s future looks like and were preparing by installing wide area networks and 5G infrastructure.Smart City Trends

While cities adopt technology to improve transportation and efficiency, areas of smart city development offer the security industry the opportunity to play a vital role. And the industry is beginning to step up.

The big camera players, for example, all started a smart cities division and hiredor are still hiringsmart city business development personnel to go out into the market, Edulbehram says. And security associations are starting smart city committees to help investigate all the intersections between safe and smart cities.

Biometric technologies will also further enhance the smart cities of the future, implemented into access control applications and others.

We are already starting to see currency as you, Bourgeix says. Eventually, you wont need a [credit card] anymoreyour faceyour biometric authentication will be enough to make a purchase.

The rapid growth of smart city concepts and the innovation of technologies to operate them present the security industry with opportunities.

I am currently talking to a lighting company that has been selling lights with this communication hub and a processing bar for a few years, Edulbehram says. The company is looking for ways to provide value-added services on top of just selling lights. It wants to incorporate video cameras into the actual lights, along with other sensorslike gun-shot and weather detection.

Smart cities will also look to the security industry to help secure the data collected and transmitted through all this interconnectivity.

One example of the serious ramifications of unprotected data occurred in 2017 in Dallas, Texas. Hackers used a rogue radio signal to set off tornado sirens around the city, which could have caused a panic. Dallas officials have since made changes to the system to prevent similar attacks in the future.

Secured communication must happen, and were heading in that direction with secured identity, secured entry, and secured storage, Bourgeix explains. This is critical to the success of smart cities; we have these wonderful devices and theyre connected, but we must secure it. If not, they become our weakest link.

However, most cities will consider addressing these challenges with tighter budgets than in the past. One way to secure funding, says Janet Fenner, chief marketing officer at ISS, is to incorporate security technologies for other uses.

For example, in 2016 Detroit installed high-definition security cameras at eight gas stations the city had partnered with and connected the video feeds to the Detroit Police Department, blending public and private interests into real-time crime fighting.

Two years later, the program expanded to more than 400 businesses feeding video directly into the police departments Real-Time Crime Center where dedicated staff receive, monitor, and analyze the feeds.

Such initiatives simultaneously enhance public safety and help business owners and operators keep their facilities secure. They will become more prevalent in the future and are the best way to secure funding for new technology.

Overall, law enforcement needs to start working more effectively and efficiently with others within the city, says Fenner. The more [the city as a whole] pools its resources together, the better protected it is.
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
The biggest group of tourists are still Slovaks.

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Tourism flourished in the High Tatras in 2018. The Statistic Office recently published the official statistics for last year. The region of the High Tatras remained the most visited one in Slovakia. The biggest group of tourists are still Slovaks.

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In our region the year 2018 was more successful than the previous ones, said manager of Regional Organisation of Tourism High Tatras, Veronika Littvova, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

The number of accommodated visitors exceeded the level of half million for the first time in history. There were almost 512,000 accommodated guests, i.e. an increase by 2.5 percent.

Interest grows

The number of overnight stays also increased by 2.63 percent and reached a value of almost 1.5 million. The increase in turnover for accommodation is also significant, growing by 14.4 percent.

The data shows that interest in visiting the region is continually growing, she said, as quoted by TASR.

Both Slovak and foreign tourists will find something for themselves in the High Tatras. They can enjoy fun and cultural events, admire the beauty of nature, hike and relax.

Strba the winner

The largest increase was in Strba village, with an increase in accommodated visitors by 5.71 percent, overnight stays by more than 8.6 percent, and a significant increase in turnover for accommodation by almost 13.3 percent.

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Second place goes to the town of Vysoke Tatry, with an increase in accommodated visitors by 3.63 percent, overnight stays by 2.71 percent, and the highest increase in turnover for accommodation by 17 percent.

Slovak tourists remained the biggest group of visitors in the region, followed by tourists from the Czech Republic and Poland. Frequent visitors also include Hungarian and German tourists. There has been a slight decrease of Russian tourists, replaced by Ukrainians.
The Elite Language Center recently conducted an online survey to learn more about foreign language use for business purposes in Slovakia.

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Companies clearly say that the need for foreign workers will very probably increase in the near future, especially for people who speak languages other than Slovak.

Elite Language Center, the largest American English language school in Slovakia,recently conducted an online survey to learn more about foreign language use for business purposes in Slovakia. While Elite did not intend for this to be a large study, they wanted to get a better understanding of the most common foreign languages used for business in Slovakia, for what purposes, and to learn more about the hiring and professional development process.

To do this, Elite created an online survey to collect job seeker and worker demographics such as citizenship and location, industry and job category, employment status, what languages people use, what the languages are used for, the employment process, and any challenges that workers and job seekers have faced along the way.

Elite also asked companies about their industry type and company size, where they usually find people who speak foreign languages, the purposes for using these languages, and the challenges of recruiting foreign language employees. Companies were also asked if employees are provided language training opportunities to enhance their skills, and about the business impact of such training.

The surveys were distributed in Slovak and English.

Foreigners' police a discouraging obstacle

The results were quite interesting. Notably, companies made it clear that the need for foreign workers will very probably increase in the near future, especially for people who speak languages other than Slovak. However, there are definitely challenges for organisations in finding qualified foreign language workers, as well as for the government in resolving well-reported issues with the foreign police application process.

Given the presence of many international companies in Slovakia, it was not surprising to learn that English is most commonly used as a shared language for internal and external communications in diverse contexts.

(Source: Elite Language Center)

The SITA newswire reported that approximately 45,900 foreigners were working in Slovakia in September 2018. According to a recent report quoting an economic analyst at Tatra Banka, about every fourth new job position is currently filled by a foreigner.

For individuals who seek employee or self-employed status, anecdotal and media-reported evidence indicates that theCudzinecka policia ('foreign' or 'alien' police) has in recent years presented a discouraging obstacle for job seekers and workers in Slovakia. This was clearly reflected in Elites survey results.

(Source: Elite Language Center)

While the average number of rejected or delayed applications by theCudzinecka policia is unknown, media reports suggest that the process for submitting an application is cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming, particularly in Bratislava where the highest number of foreigners apply. The police themselves recognise the challenges that accompany Slovakia's growing popularity with foreigners, and recently introduced new measures to better cope with this increase. While considerable improvements have been made following the move to their new location in March 2018, reports routinely indicate ongoing administrative problems with the process due to the increasing number of foreign citizens relocating to Slovakia.

Improvements in language training needed

Elites survey also found that while many companies offer language training for their employees, and a large percentage wish to introduce such opportunities, more than a third of companies with existing programs would like to see a greater business impact for their investment. Similarly, employees would like to see a more obvious link between existing language training and the ability to do their job more effectively.

An anonymous survey respondent opined that "Language courses are only worth it if the courses are taught by native speakers, or people who can sound like they are native. Many courses are unfortunately taught by people who did not succeed in the corporate world and not because they enjoy teaching."

Overall, what this survey gave us was hard evidence to back up what weve been hearing from clients and students for a long time, said David Rubin, Director of Elite Language Center. We know that while many teachers out there are native or fluent English speakers, theres a significant number of under-qualified teachers being hired at cheap rates by language companies that win contracts by offering the lowest bid. Of course, choosing the lowest bidder understandably makes immediate financial sense to clients. Regretfully, often forgotten is the long-term business impact of lower quality training for their employees, which can end up being much more expensive in the long run.

Regardless of which language institution companies choose to work with, we recommend that HR, the language school, and students agree to a written training plan for each student, aligned with that individual's language learning needs, the language requirements of their job, and the company's objectives, Rubin suggested. This gives measurable structure to training and can help companies assess if the training their employees are receiving is having a demonstrable impact. This approach works extremely well at Elite Language Center, which is reflected by our high rate of long-term client relationships and very low turnover.

Elites full survey report can be found here.

Elite Language Center is the largest American English school in Slovakia. Their team of instructors has been teaching English and coaching Slovak professionals for more than a decade. Elite works with global through to start-up organizations across a diverse range of industries including banking, finance, healthcare, technology, legal, and manufacturing. For more information about Elite Language Centers training, copywriting, and language audit services, please visit www.elitelanguage.eu.
Iveta Radicova's government fell because of the bailout mechanism eight years ago.

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Will you not return to politics? journalist Monika Todova asked former Slovak prime minister, Iveta Radicova, in a debate organised by the Dennik N daily on March 18.

Radicova's government fell following a failed vote on the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in October 2011 . Since the voting was also linked to the vote of confidence in her cabinet, early elections followed and Radicova decided to leave politics.

Of course I will return, and the law will come with me, Radicova replied wittily to Todova's question, as quoted by the Trend weekly.

Although she at first did not want to return to the question, she continued.

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I carry the shared responsibility for the fall of my government on my shoulders, she said, as quoted by Trend. I punished myself  I retreated from politics.

Talks with the president

At the same time, Radicova admitted that she has been regularly meeting with incumbent President Andrej Kiska. They often discuss politics. When asked to provide more details, the former PM just said that everything is about the right timing.

The art of politics is about the timing, she claimed, as quoted by Trend. As soon as the right time comes, you will be fully informed.

Kiska wanted to be part of a change

The possibility of Kiska entering politics has been discussed since he announced he would not seek re-election as president last May. Even though he described wanting to spend more time with his family as the main reason, he did not say he was leaving politics once his term ended.

Slovakia needs a fundamental change in the style of governance and I feel a personal responsibility to help with such a change, Kiska said at the time.

He wanted to think of how to use the trust he enjoys among a great part of the public.

I want to contribute to the start of a new era in Slovakia, to join those who are willing and able to rule in a decent way, Kiska said.

Although he had promised to give more details about his plans in politics after the autumn 2018 municipal elections, he has not yet commented on the issue.

However, during the first round of the presidential elections on March 16, Kiska confirmed his intention of not leaving politics through a Facebook post, Trend wrote.
The number of applications received is one of the lowest since 1993.

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Slovakia granted asylum to five people in 2018. (Source: TASR)

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Slovak authorities only granted five people asylum last year, which is the lowest number in history.

Last year, the figure was higher: they granted a total of 29 people asylum, the CTK newswire reported.

The authorities received 178 asylum applications in 2018, up from 166 applications received in 2017. This represents a 7-percent increase, CTK reported.

Slovakia still considered a transit country

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Slovakia belongs among the EU countries that consistently receive the lowest number of asylum applications. This is because it is seen merely as a transit country, and some Slovak authorities have negative attitudes towards asylum seekers.

Slovakia granted asylum to 149 Assyrian Christians in 2016, but some of them have already returned to Iraq.
What transforms coffee from a heap of beans and water into the beverage we all know and love? The answer, in short, is extraction, the process in which water gets all up in your coffee grounds, hangs out for a sec, and then leaves with more than it came with. Were that all you needed to know, everyone would make great coffee all the time. But actually understanding what extraction is, how it works, and then being able to apply it in practice is infinitely more complex.

Thats why The Crown in Oakland is hosting an event titled Understanding Extraction this Friday, March 22nd, where Professor William Ristenpart of the University of California, Davis Coffee Center will discuss the current leading research on extraction. And the best part is, its free.

The number of variables affecting extraction is seemingly endless. Water temperature, grind size, roast level, bean density, how you pour the damn water, it all affects what compounds get extracted. For this two-hour event, Professor Ristenparta chemical engineering professor and the founding director of the UC Davis Coffee Centerwill discuss the chemical properties of extraction and how they affect sensory perception. The events description states Understanding Extraction will debut of some of the most exciting and captivating data showing specific sensory and consumer-liking attributes of different extraction protocols, different roast levels, and even fractions of coffee extractions.

It all gets started at 6:00pm on Friday, March 22nd in Royal Coffees brand new mega-coffee facility The Crown in Oakland (featured here on Sprudge). The event is completely free to attend, but space is limited. To reserve your spot, you can RSVP via the Understanding Extraction Eventbrite page. For more information, visit Royal Coffees official website.

And bring your refractometers. I bet Professor Ristenpart wouldnt mind signing a few.

Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

Images via The Crown.

Disclosure: Royal Coffee is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network
After a three-month break, the proceedings pertaining to a civil lawsuit from a group of Ontario Standardbred racehorse breeders against the Province of Ontario and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation reconvened in Ontario Superior Court on Tuesday, March 19 in Brampton, Ont.

Ontario Lottery and Gaming lawyer Michael Rosenberg was front and centre during the opening session, as he continued the OLGs defense to the breeders claims.

In a nutshell, Rosenberg stated that the OLG was not negligent nor did it misrepresent anything to the plaintiffs, whom were not a party of any contractual arrangement with the lottery corporation. He said that there was no proximity between the two entities, and cited prior cases which conveyed that although lobbying may have been conducted, that in itself does not constitute proximity. Citing the lack of a contractual arrangement between the parties, Rosenberg stated that there was zero negligence from the OLG when it regard to the Province of Ontarios "core-policy decision" to ultimately cancel the Slots at Racetracks program.

Rosenberg stated that the OLG did not have a proximate relationship with the plaintiffs, and thus did not owe the plaintiffs any duty of care, seeing as the lottery corporation was only contractually obligated to the siteholders (racetracks) and not the breeders of Standardbred racehorses.

Additionally, Rosenberg made it clear that the OLG did not owe duty of care to the plaintiffs, did not conduct themselves in bad faith when it came to lobbying interactions with the plaintiffs, nor did it cause damage to the market, especially since the ultimate decision to cancel SARP came from the provincial government and not the lottery commission.

Rosenberg cited a recent case in Ontario where the province, after a change in the political party in power, pulled out of a three-year pilot program after just one year. The decision to pull out had been made at the cabinet level. The legal recourse from the decision had come from plaintiffs that were direct financial beneficiaries from the arrangement. The plaintiffs did not win their case.

Rosenberg stated that there was an indirect impact on the plaintiffs market when the Minister of Finance directed the OLG to terminate the siteholder agreements with the racetracks  17 siteholder agreements in all. "Decisions were not irrational or made in bad faith," explianed Rosenberg, who went on to say that there was no contact with the breeders.

Citing prior case law, Rosenberg explained that just because government makes the decision to take, for instance, a dollar out if the marketplace, a well-removed entity located well down the line and not connected via a legal contract does not have the right to claim damages in court. He challenged anyone willing to undertake the process to find any case law where government cancelled a program and was then subsequently found to be negligent.

Rosenberg later spoke to the topic of the possibility of improper representation from the OLG to the breeders. He stated that any representations that the lottery corporation may have made to the plaintiffs in the past, prior to the announcement of the SARP cancellation, were based off of the true information that was reality at the time.

Rosenberg hammered home that the tail doesnt wag the dog in terms of the OLGs relationship with the Province of Ontario. If anything, Ontario may ask the OLG to merely bring forth recommendations for potential courses of action from time to time, but any decision of any weight comes at a higher level -- a government or cabinet level. Until cabinet decides to undertake a modernization plan, there is no modernization plan, said Rosenberg. He stated that when the order for the SARP cancellation came (the order to terminate the siteholder agreements), it came to the OLG from the government, not the other way around.

Rosenberg went on to say that the OLG did not recommend a particular level or amount of support for horse racing -- reiterating that the decision to cancel the siteholder agreements came from the government.

Rosenberg stated that, if you accept that there was no contract between the OLG and the plaintiffs, and accept that there was no fraud being conducted, how can the OLG possibly be negligent in regard to the plaintiffs?

Rosenberg got directly to one of the OLGs main points late in his address. He stated that OLG is immune in this case due to the Province of Ontario having made a "core-policy decision" at the cabinet level when it opted to cancel SARP, an action which was downloaded to the OLG to execute via the termination of the 17 siteholder agreements with the Ontario racetracks.

Jonathan Lisus, lawyer for the plaintiffs, stepped up to mention to Justice Emery that the OLG is not a crown corporation, but an agent of the Province of Ontario. Lawyers for the lottery corporation clarified that the OLG is a crown corporation that also within its duties acts as an agent for the Province of Ontario.

A key aspect of the morning proceedings was the concept of policy. The plaintiffs are contesting that the decision to cancel SARP was not a policy decision because the contracts that were at the core of the Slots at Racetracks Program were commercially-bargained financial deals and not in any way government policy deals.

Lisus then began his reply.

Lisus commenced his reply on the behalf of the plaintiffs just before lunch. The reply, which ultimately ran past 5 p.m., featured scores of objections from both the Province of Ontario and the OLG defenses.

Lisus kicked off his reply by stating that the primacy of the evidence found during the fact-finding process and the rule of law were paramount in the plaintiffs case.

Lisus stated that the case comes down to four questions.

First: What was the nature of the relationship that was struck in the 1998 Letter of Intent and the amendment in 2001? Was it a government/business enterprise that involved government, tracks and breeders that gave rise to proximity and duty of care? Or was the relationship an undocumented government program that generated billions of dollars to an industry?

Second: What was the character/nature of monies that went from a customers pocket in a casino to a trust fund (the court will have to determine what the state of that money was, and what the nature of those monies was). Was the Slots at Racetracks program a partial subsidy or market stimulus  something that the OLG and Province of Ontario wants the court to agree with.

Third: Did Ontario break its contractual duties and duty of care when it decided it was going to cancel SARP with zero transitional considerations at the time of decision? Lisus argues that transitional actions came well after the initial announcement.

Fourth: Was the decision to cancel SARP a core-policy decision or an operational decision? Lisus stated that the LOI was a binding contract and that the SARP deal was ultimately a commercial contract which was crafted after two years of back and forth bargaining between Ontario and the provincial horse racing industry.

Lisus was clear in stating that the matter at hand was not a relational/economic-loss case, but a case based on proximity developed over the course of a 14-year relationship between the province, the OLG and the plaintiffs; which is a collection which consists of a group of Ontario equine breeders that produced Standardbred racehorses for the market under the encouragement of Ontario via the LOI and siteholder agreements, which make up the core of the Slots at Racetracks program.

Lisus stated that the government cut a deal with Ontario racetracks to introduce slot machines to their premises  a move which Lisus vehemently hammered home was a commercial deal, not a policy decision from government. Lisus pointed out that SARP  which the government has opted to characterize as a subsidy only after the cancellation of the wildly successful program  was, interestingly enough, never recorded as a line item by the government during its 14-year existence. Lisus pointed out that the LOI and siteholder agreements were never part of any legislation, nor were they ever part of any government policy. That was, according to Lisus, because SARP was a bargained-for, commercial deal.

Lisus continued his reply after a lunch break. He started back by saying that the money at issue was never in the consolidated revenue fund. He said, in terms of government accounting, it wasnt and it couldnt be. Government cant have a policy to take money from an account that isnt theirs, explained Lisus, who went on to state that is why the nature of the funds is so central to the case (the monies went to a segregated fund, or a trust fund, for lack of a better term).

Lisus went on to state that the LOI was amended in 2001 and that its clear that the amendment contained the language of business and not the language of policy. Why, Lisus asked rhetorically, would that be the case if the LOI wasnt a legal document? Lisus stated that the LOI wasnt referred to in any 1998 cabinet material, which reinforces that it was not a piece of policy, but a commercial deal. He also said that the LOI was also not referred to in any 2012 cabinet material.

Lisus also took the opportunity to state that the one-year out clause in the siteholder agreements were not designed to be executed en masse, but was included in the agreements in case of racetracks failing to meet perceived benchmarks. According to Lisus, the defendants purposefully manipulated the out clauses to terminate all 17 of the siteholder agreements in effect at racetracks across the province in order to reset the deck so that the OLGs gaming modernization plan to be introduced and implemented.

A significant aspect of the plaintiffs case rests on the development  which was cultivated over the course of 14 years, according to Lisus  of a relationship of proximity between the group of Ontario breeders and the Ontario Government and the OLG. Lisus again highlighted the fact that official representatives of the Standardbred Breeders and Owners Association of Ontario sat in what were somewhat regular meetings with members of the Minister of Finance during the latter years of SARP. Just as he did throughout the entire motion, Lisus pointed out that the plaintiffs were still receiving the green light from Ontario to continue to breed horses even as the OLG was in the midst of cultivating a gaming modernization plan behind the scenes that could/would cause financial harm to Ontario breeders.

Continuing on in terms of the relationship of proximity, Lisus highlighted the fact that Ontario breeders were being mentioned specifically in official government documents, even though the defendants have now chosen in court to characterize the Ontario racehorse breeders as downstream marketplace/industry entities  not the key cogs that produced horses via protracted cycles to fill both races and provincial racing programs.

Lisus stated that the OLG and the then-ORC were agents of the Province of Ontario, and the two organizations and the Government of Ontario, collectively, should be treated as a single party when it comes to law. Lisus explained that while the ORC was announcing via industry PR, marketing and promotions that breeders should keep breeding, the OLG, which, according to Lisus, is part of the same party, was actively working on altering the racing landscape behind the scenes via modernization efforts.

Lisus stated that, after having examined all of the evidence, the breeders were doing exactly what they were encouraged to do by Ontario: breed for the market. The eventual transitional-panel members, John Snobelen, John Wilkinson and Elmer Buchanan, each went on the record as agreeing with that fact. Lisus pointed out the fact that Ontario was publishing documents about breeders financials and projections during this time, to which Lisus stated was just more proof of proximity and assurances from Ontario.

Lisus then made a slight pivot and pointed to the announcement of the Ontario Racing Program in 2010. Ontario racetracks were getting locked in to having to host certain amounts of Standardbred race dates per year. Horses would be needed to fill the ensured amount of annual race dates (and thus races). Lisus said that the race-date guarantees and the trumpeting of the ORP in 2010 was a clear sign from Ontario that the breeders were encouraged to continue breeding, just like they had since the late 90s.

Lisus followed his ORP point up by shining his light on the fact that, later in 2010, it was announced to the provincial Standardbred industry that there would be a five-year extension to the siteholder agreements. Lisus explained that this announcement was yet another sign to the breeding industry that Standardbred racehorses would be needed. The announcement came a very short time after prominent breeder Jim Bullock, whom is now one of the plaintiffs, met with Ontario Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan on behalf of the SBOA to discuss the short-term future of the provincial Standardbred breeding industry going forward.

As the provincial horse racing industry is well aware, then-Ontario-Premier Dalton McGuintys cabinet would go on to make the unexpected decision to cancel the Slots at Racetracks program in 2012, something that is another key aspect of Lisus and the plaintiffs case against Ontario. Was the 2012 cabinet decision a core-policy decision or an operational decision? Cabinet would receive immunity if it were a core-policy decision, but Lisus and the plaintiffs are saying that cancelling the revenue sharing deal by taking slots from racetracks was an operational decision. Modernization may have been a core-policy decision, Lisus contended, but the decision to remove slots from tracks wouldve been operational. He bolstered his claim by referring to the record, which contained testimony from Steve Orsini, former deputy minister of Finance, who clearly stated that the decision to pull the slots from tracks was operational.

One of the last main points that Lisus made Tuesday afternoon involved Ted McMeekin, who had been Ontarios Minister of Agriculture at the time that SARP cancellation was initially announced  an announcement which caught McMeekin by surprise, as well. Referring to the record, Lisus pointed out that McMeekin said under oath that the characterization of the decision being a policy decision was an out by the government.

Lisus also wanted to clear up the misconception of there was transitional funding announced when the SARP cancellation was publicly unveiled. He explained that the facts have shown that the OLG had been working on concepts for the implementation of transitional funding away from SARP, but that Ontarios Finance department abruptly took a go to zero stance for horse racing. The hard-landing approach by his cabinet peers spurred McMeekin to plead with Finance for transitional funding, according to Lisus. Finance ultimately agreed to figure out transitional funding, but that came months after the announcement and only after persistent pleading by McMeekin, according to Lisus. The efforts resulted in the aforementioned transitional panel being assembled, although, at the that time, with the lack of a transitional funding announcement alongside the SARP cancellation announcement, the breeders bore the brunt of the decision. Lisus thought it was prudent to refer to Dwight Duncans testimony on the record that no transitional funding had been factored for in the budget.

Lisus would conclude his reply minutes later.

Lawyer Robert Ratcliffe, representing the Province of Ontario, stood up next for a brief response. He referred back to case law in regard to core-policy decisions and rulings. He also stated that although the Province of Ontarios decision may have caused harm to some parties, that doesnt make the decision an impractical one at a government level.

Awanish Sinha, representing the OLG, then also issued a response. He stated that the Ontario cabinet chose to direct the OLG to terminate the siteholder agreements en masse, which effectively ended SARP. He referred to that decision as a core-policy decision, period. He also said that the LOI is not a legally-binding document and not a contract, nevertheless, he said, the OLG abided by it in full. Sinha also pointed out that the termination provisions were clearly within the siteholder agreements.

With that, submissions for the motions came to a close.

Justice Emery is taking his decision under reserve.

For previous coverage on this court case, be sure to check out the recap from the final court session of 2018, as well as the final recap from the first week of court sessions.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has dismissed the concerns raised by some economists over the integrity of statistical organisation and economic data of the country. Jaitley said the campaign started by them is politically motivated. Last week, 108 economists and social scientists had called for restoration of institutional independence and integrity of statistical organisations in India. The appeal came in the backdrop of controversy over revision of GDP numbers and withholding employment data by the NSSO.

"A few days back, 108 so-called economists issued a statement questioning the veracity of Indian data. I analysed the credentials of all 108 and found out that 70 per cent of those are compulsive contrarians, critics of the government, who have signed multiple memorandums against this government in the last five years. Most of these memorandums are on the issue of politics and not economy," Arun Jaitley said in a video posted on his Twitter handle.





Majority of 108 so called economists questioning validity of data are compulsive contrarians. pic.twitter.com/ggaGQ9hUO1  Chowkidar Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) March 19, 2019

Jaitley countered the claims of flaws in India's economic data by stating that the same data is accepted by credible international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He also refuted claims of jobless growth in Indian economy.

Jaitley claimed that that India's infrastructure growth has been the fastest, which has created jobs. He referred to the work being done in highway construction, electrification, housing, sanitation, and urban infrastructure, growth in manufacturing, especially electronic manufacturing in his claim. "There is a fake campaign going on that all this growth doesn't create job," Jaitley said.

ALSO READ:131 CAs vouch for India's growth statistics, term call by 108 economists to save statistical system politically motivated

Yesterday, 131 Chartered Accountants (CAs) had come out with a joint statement to counter the allegations raised by the economists. The group of CAs said the earlier appeal was "politically motivated and baseless" and most "independent professionals have no doubt about the remarkable progress India has achieved in the last five years".

The signatories of the new list include eight former presidents of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), dozens of ICAI council members, independent practitioners with CA firms, entrepreneurs like T V Mohandas Pai, chairman, Manipal Group, and professionals in the field of finance, banking, among others.

ALSO READ:108 economists denounce tinkering with India's economic indicators; call for unity
The Racing Under Saddle series of New York is proud to host its inaugural Derby Night at the Races event on (Saturday) May 4 in Orange County, N.Y., the Cradle of the Trotter.

The fundraiser is an audience-participation event where actual races are shown on multiple televisions and guests are given the chance to wager on the outcome of eight pre-recorded horse races and win prizes.

The event starts at 6:00 pm, and guests will also be able to watch the 145th Run for the Roses live from Churchill Downs, which is slated for a 6:50 pm post time.

Party-goers are encouraged to wear Kentucky Derby-themed attire and there will be prizes for the derby best hat, best dressed, as well as a host of great door prizes.

To be held at G.W. American Burgers in Chester, N.Y., the multi-media facility is well-equipped to host the fun and excitement of a horse racing-themed affair which is geared toward adults and equine enthusiasts.

Tickets are $25 each or $40 per couple and seating is limited.

Advance ticket purchase is necessary, and can be reserved by contacting Vanessa Karlewicz at (call or text) 914-588-3104 or thru Facebook messenger.

RUS NY is a group of passionate equestrians that are collectively committed to organizing and promoting under saddle races for Standardbreds across the state of New York, including events held in conjunction with various New York Fair Stakes races.

(RUS NY)
The U.S. Trotting Association announced Tuesday (March 19) the launch of the USTA Chip ID app to utilize with Universal Worldscan Reader Plus microchip readers from Merck/HomeAgain.

The USTA Chip ID app can be downloaded from iTunes (Apple) and Google Play (Android) by searching USTA Chip ID.

Paired with a HomeAgain Universal WorldScan Reader Plus microchip scanner, this App will rapidly identify horses that are registered with the USTA. Scanning the horses microchip with a paired scanner and the App open will return the horses name, year of foaling, color, sex, sire and dam.

Once the app is installed, the Bluetooth functionality of the Universal HomeAgain WorldScan Reader Plus microchip scanner must be paired with the device. The app provides explicit directions on this procedure.

After logging in with Pathway/My Account credentials and connectivity is established, the chip can be scanned. For users without an account, the app allows for easy registration to obtain one.

Once a horse is identified, the app provides direct access to Pathway, the USTAs statistical database, with its basic horse information as well as the menu of performance, pedigree and breeding reports for that horse.

Last April, the USTA announced an innovative collaboration with Merck Animal Health and HomeAgain to be the organizations sole microchip provider.

The technology allows for a quicker, safer and more accurate identification process versus freeze branding. Additionally, the scanning feature instantly measures equine body temperature.

The USTA is the first horse registry to formally incorporate temperature scanning into their microchip identification program.

This significant health-related information can be a sentinel for contagious and potentially fatal equine diseases such as Equine Herpes Virus 1 and Equine Herpes Virus Myeloencephalopathy (EHM).

The USTA will microchip around 9,000 foals annually, as well as another 25,000 older racehorses, stallions, and broodmares. Foals can be swiftly microchipped in the neck at an early age with minimal pain  microchipping appears to be less painful and more efficient than the current freeze branding method.

Beginning with the foal crop of 2019, the primary means of USTA horse identification will be the microchip and by 2021, all horses that race in the U.S. at all USTA member tracks (including county fairs) will be required to be identified with a microchip.

All USTA extended pari-mutuel racetracks will be equipped with readers to identify horses and county fair officials that will be responsible for identifying horses will be required to have them as well.

(USTA)
An acute care pediatric nurse practitioner provides intensive care to juvenile patients, and they are often found in emergency rooms, intensive care facilities, and other locations where patients may be in critical or life-threatening condition. As with a standard nurse practitioner, they provide a wide range of care and are able to diagnose and treat illnesses, diseases, and injuries without the need to consult with a physician. However, with this specific focus, it may be expected that an acute care pediatric nurse practitioner has greater experience or knowledge with life-threatening traumas, injuries, and other conditions, specifically in children. Nurse practitioners are able to prescribe medications and provide support and education to their patients regarding treatment protocols.

Educational Requirements Master's or doctoral degree Job Skills Calmness under pressure, attention to detail, communication and leadership, diagnostic skills Median Salary (2020)* $90,000 Job Outlook (2019-2029)** 52% increase (for all Nurse Practitioners)

Sources: *PayScale.com **U.S. Bureau of Labor & Statistics

Salary Information

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS), reports that in 2019, the median salary for all nurse practitioners was $109,820. However, PayScale.com reports that the median salary for pediatric nurse practitioners working in acute care is $90,000, with total pay (inclusive of bonus, profit sharing, and commission) between $75,000 and $100,000.

PayScale.com also reports an increase in salary commensurate with experience level for pediatric nurse practitioners:

Experience Level Median Salary (2020) Entry Level $85,489 Mid-Career $91,425 Experienced $97,001

Candidates may also be interested in pursuing formal certification to increase their potential value to employers. The Pediatric Nursing Certification Board offers a Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in Acute Care (CPNP-AC) designation. Salaries in the field of nursing is often improve based on levels of education received.

The facility and company that employs a nurse practitioner will also have an effect on salary levels. As noted previously, acute care often takes place in the emergency room of a hospital, or other in-patient facilities. Whether the hospital is private or managed by the state, the size of the facility, and the nature of the overall care they provide may be variables to look out for when assessing salary levels. According to the BLS, nurse practitioners who worked in surgical hospitals made an average salary of $115,790 in 2019, but those who worked in physicians offices or outpatient care earned $108,930 and $119,920, respectively.

Salaries for nurse practitioners also vary by geography. The BLS reports that California, Washington, and Hawaii were the top paying states in 2019, with mean wages of $138,660, $126,920, and $124,000 respectively.

Job Outlook

The BLS expects a large growth in the nurse practitioners jobs over the next decade, with a predicted increase of 52% from 2019 to 2029. The growing specialization of physicians leaves a high demand for experienced and well qualified nurses to move into the role of nurse practitioner. Healthcare continues to be a growing industry, which also increases demand in general.
Florida Atlantic University

Graduate students at Florida Atlantic University can earn an MFA in Visual Arts and Art History with a concentration in photography. MFA students must complete at least 60 hours of coursework, oral exams, and reviews of their photography. The program culminates with a gallery exhibition of each student's work. In addition to technique, the photography concentration provides instruction in the history of photography and aspects of photography as a profession. Students participate in critiques and complete projects under the guidance of faculty committees. Florida Atlantic offers opportunities for working in both analog and digital photography labs.

Barry University

Barry University offers an MFA in Photography through its Department of Fine Arts. Photography students pursuing this terminal degree complete 66 credit hours and usually take at least three years to finish the program. During the course of their studies, students examine black and white and color photography, lighting, the history of the medium, editing and manipulation, and digital imaging. Working with faculty members, MFA students spend about a year producing a thesis and exhibition. Graduate students interested in careers in higher education also have the opportunity to gain teaching experience while at Barry University.

University of South Florida

The University of South Florida offers a MFA in Studio Art program with the option to focus on photography. In addition to technical skills, this three-year program emphasizes history, criticism, and the relationships between photography and other media formats. Students complete 60 hours of full-time study, beginning with classes in art history, theory, and criticism. Later in the program, students work with a faculty committee to create an MFA project that is presented in an exhibition, and they complete an oral exam related to their work. The University of South Florida's program also allows students to gain teaching experience by working as assistants to the department's faculty.
New York University

New York University has several part-time options for earning an MBA. Students will take year-round evening and Saturday classes as part of the accelerated, two-year option. With the evening program, students will take classes on either Mondays/Wednesdays or Thursdays/Thursdays. Those in the Saturday program will take classes from either 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM or 1:00 - 4:00 PM. The core curriculum includes Business Communication and Financial Accounting and Reporting.

Potential students must have a bachelor's degree. They will need to take either the GRE, GMAT, or GMAC Executive Assessment and provide their scores. Students will also need to provide their transcripts, three essays, two EQ endorsements, and a resume.

Hofstra University

Candidates can enroll in Hofstra University's hybrid, accelerated MBA program. They will need to earn 38 credits and can do so in two years. A majority of the classes are offered via distance learning, with traditional classes held one evening per week. An economic survey class is part of the core curriculum. Candidates will need at least three years of relevant work experience to be considered for admission. They will need to complete Hofstra's online application, which includes academic and work information.

CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College

CUNY Bernard M. Baruch College offers two scheduling options for their 48-credit regular MBA program. The full-time option offers classes on weekdays and evenings and can be completed in 22 months. Students enrolled in the evening program typically earn their degree in three years. Each program includes core courses in business communication and statistics. The admissions process includes an online application, GRE or GMAT scores, transcripts, two recommendations, a resume, and two essays.

Fordham University

Students can complete their MBA via Fordham University's two-year, full-time program. Classes are held during the day, with most students having 3-5 years of applicable work experience. Students can choose from core concentrations like accounting and communications and media management, with secondary concentrations such as marketing available. The program offers students opportunities like consulting trips to Buenos Aires, Argentina and applied projects working with real clients. Students will need to provide their GRE or GMAT scores, an essay, and two recommendations as part of the application process.

Columbia University in the City of New York

Columbia University in the City of New York has a full-time MBA program. Students will need to earn 60 credits, 18 of which are core classes. They will complete the program in four semesters or two academic years. Program coursework includes Corporate Finance and Managerial Economics. Prospective students will need a bachelor's degree and must provide their transcripts. They will also need to provide GRE or GMAT scores no older than five years, three essays and two recommendations.

Students considering an MBA program in Manhattan can take traditional evening or weekend classes or choose a hybrid program. Fordham University offers concentration areas for interested students.
University of Michigan

The University of Michigan offers a part-time online MBA program that is intended to accommodate the busy schedules of working professionals. In this program, students are required to complete 57 total credit hours, including 27 credits of core courses and 18 credits of elective coursework. All of this coursework can be completed online, through both self-paced, asynchronous components and live course sessions. In addition to coursework, students must complete three different on-campus residencies, totaling nine credits, that cover business leadership, transformation, and innovation. The program culminates in a three-credit Multidisciplinary Action Project in which students are paired with a real-world organization to work towards a solution to an actual problem that the business or non-profit is facing.

Spring Arbor University

Spring Arbor University offers an online MBA program that students can choose to complete at an accelerated pace in 12 months or on a part-time basis that still can lead to program completion in 18 months. In this program, students can select one of five concentrations to pursue, depending on their interests. These options are management, executive leadership, human resource development, organizational consulting, and healthcare administration. Regardless of the option that students select, it is possible to complete any of these concentrations on the accelerated or part-time format.

Central Michigan University

Another option is the online MBA program at Central Michigan University, which requires the completion of 36 credit hours. These 36 hours are comprised of 27 hours of core courses that all enrolled students must complete. The core courses cover topics in global business, data analysis, and managerial accounting, among many others. Students then select an emphasis area from five options, which are logistics management, marketing, human resource management, ERP with SAP software, and VDO. Each concentration requires the completion of nine additional credit hours.

Kettering University

Kettering University offers an online MBA program to interested students that can be completed entirely online with no in-person requirements. The curriculum can be completed in an 18-month time frame, and students must earn 40 credits that are split among ten courses. Seven of these courses are core courses that all students in the program must complete, while the remaining three courses are organized into a certificate. Students can select a certificate according to what field they are working in or want to work in, as there are options in global leadership, supply chain or operations management, and healthcare management.

Walsh College

Finally, students may be interested in the online MBA program at Walsh College. In this program, students are required to complete 14 core courses that cover topics in information technology, accounting, strategic management, and operations management, among others. Students who are particularly interested in an adjacent business area, like marketing or finance, can also complete some additional courses (between four and six) and obtain a dual MBA and Master of Science degree in the secondary area.
As the deescalation agreement that governs Idleb continues to crumble, active parties are exploring a potential assault on the region and the implications that it could have writes Al-Araby al-Jadeed.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the al-Nusra Front) has once again prepared the appropriate conditions for Russia to declare a war on Idleb in northern Syria. It has handed them the necessary pretexts they need to put an end to the truce agreements that are guaranteeing the lives of more than three million Syrian living in the fourth deescalation zone in accordance with the agreements between the three Astana partners.

These agreements previously delayed the fighting, but failed to remove the conditions that cause the fighting. The barbecue party Russia and Iran are holding with the flesh of Syrians once again tops headlines. The third partner, Turkey, is staying silent, seemingly stuck between the conflicting messages coming from two sides: The Russians, who have declared war on the area under the influence of their partner in the Astana and Sochi tracks; and the Americans, who are silently standing as spectators before a massacre that targets the same Syrians that American President Donald Trump believes, according to a tweet on September 2018, have been protected from a grave humanitarian mistake that would have been committed by Russia and Iran.

The battle that Russia has declared in Idleb means in fact an end to the previous agreement, which granted Idleb to Turkey as a zone of influence. The three countries are returning to the negotiations table again. The United States will not be far away. What it wants out of the theoretical war, which has so far been met with international silence, is not on the list of priorities for Russia, which has the upper hand in the coming negotiations. Russia is moving to secure its interests while implementing Americas international agenda in the region, carrying out agreements with Israelthe focus of Americas interest in the Syrian warwhile also ensuring the reduction of Iranian influence in Syria.

On the other hand, Turkey is repositioning itself according to a map in which Turkey does not overstep its geographical boundaries, with assurances of its national securitythat is, a return to the international allocations in Syria. Russia, which has never hesitated to stress its desire to see the regime regain control over Idleb, has ensured that in the deescalation zone agreements, which were declared to be temporary after they were signed, all areas are returned to the control of regimes executive institutions, by way of regional reconciliation agreements. Or you could say, it has been a military surrender by armed groups affiliated with the opposition, coinciding with the signing of an agreement, without the return of the political opposition, which supposedly represents the negotiating body. This has occurred following severe Russian airstrikes that targeted the truce areas in the Damascus countryside or Hauran (Daraa province). Rebel groups announced their surrender after agreements that ensured the personal interests of armed commanders, while expelling residents of the areas that were under their control and those who rejected the non-international guaranteed deals, to Idleb.

This is to say, there is nothing new in Russias policy of administering the deescalation zones, including Idleb, which is the fourth deescalation zone (signed on Sept. 15, 2017). Both Russia and Turkey have returned to supporting the deal after tensions on the ground. A meeting was held on Sept. 17, 2018, which included the presidents of both countries, in the resort town of Sochi, with the aim of coming out with what was then called the Idleb agreement, or a deal to set up a demilitarized zone in Idleb. With its airstrikes, Russia announced this was no longer in effect and returned to the scenario in which negotiations are followed by changing the areas loyalties with incendiary airstrikes supported by land militias from various nationalities that are supporting the regime, including the Lebanese, Iranians and others.

Therefore, Idleb is today leaving Turkeys hands, after its opportunities have run out. Meanwhile, the United States is standing opposed to Turkish statements regarding a battle east of the Euphrates, which has required changing the American plans for a swift and complete withdrawal from Syria to a partial withdrawal, and for rearranging interests with Russia within the foreseeable results of the military meetings held between the Russian and American chiefs of staff in Vienna on Mar. 4, 2019. Russia has a bargaining chip on two levels: First within the Astana guarantor trackthat is, with Turkeywhich agreed to reopen two highways that cross through Idleb. The first linking Aleppo to Damascus and the other Aleppo and Lattakia. Opening these roads will allow the regime to reenter the are. This is not opposed by the American administration, whose representative in the United Nations had previously declared, through a tweet, that she approved of a battle in Idleb as long as no chemical weapons were used.

On the American-Israeli level, Russia is heading into its latest military battles after the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February. This meeting led to a bilateral agreement that included the removal of foreign forces from Syria, and setting up a joint team to work to achieve that aim, with the participation of other parties. This meant using Iran and its militias as proxies to kill Syrians before kicking them out of Syria.

There are questions here about who really wants to besiege Turkey in Idleb? And why do they want to take this bargaining chip away from them? And will the opposition who agreed to the Astana track as a defector path from Geneva, fall with them? This is allowing the discussion to return again to new meetings in which the United States gives Russia freedom of movement once again. This freedom of movement is linked to Russia establishing a new Syrian regime, ensuring the end of the previous regime in form and in substance, without announcing its defeat or death, in order to save face for Putin under the pretext of a joint international agreement, for which Moscow is today building alternative and deep institutions to overthrow the regime and its proxies from inside.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
General Ali Abdulla Ayoub held a meeting with the chief of staffs from Iraq and Iran where they discussed confronting the spread of takfiri terrorism reports The Syria Times.

Defense Minister, General Ali Abdulla Ayoub, has affirmed that Syria doesnt bargain over their right to defend its sovereignty and restore control over all its lands.

In a press conference he held jointly with the Chief of General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Mohammad Baqeri, and the Chief of Staff of Iraqi Army, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi, General Ayoub said the three men held very important and successful meetings, pointing out that, the results of these meetings will help the three countries confront the challenges and dangers that emerged with the spread of takfiri terrorism in this vital area of the world.

We dont bargain or negotiate over our right to defend our sovereignty and we will re-establish control over every inch of Syrian land. The Syrian state will restore full control over its entire territory either through reconciliation or through military force and Idleb will not be an exception, as it is one of the four established de-escalation zones, said General Ayoub, noting that the other three de-escalation zones have returned to Syrian state control.

General Ayoub reiterated that the military presence of any country in Syria, without an official invitation by the Syrian state, is illegal and is an act of occupation, therefore, it is Syrias right to defend its national security and sovereignty.

This right is recognized by all international laws and conventions, he said, adding that preserving the Syrian states territorial integrity is non-negotiable.

The Syrian army has enough strength to drive the American occupation forces out of the al-Tanf area, stressing that US troops and others will leave Syria, Ayoub went on to say.

For his part, Major General Baqeri said that security in the region is a collective issue that concerns all countries of the region. We are ready to assist in confronting terrorism, because terrorists also pose a serious threat to Iran.

We affirm the need to respect the Syrian states sovereignty and will not allow any country to enter the Syrian territory illegally, he added.

This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
A Delhi court Tuesday extended Robert Vadra's anticipatory bail in a money laundering case till March 25 and asked him to join the probe in the matter after the Enforcement Directorate said he was required for custodial interrogation.

Special judge Arvind Kumar granted the relief to Vadra, brother-in-law of Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

Vadra had filed an anticipatory bail application in the case linked to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property at 12, Bryanston Square worth 1.9 million pounds. The property is allegedly owned by him.

On February 16, the court had extended his protection from arrest till today.

ED had said it has received information about various new properties in London which allegedly belong to Vadra, including two houses of five and four million pounds each, six other flats and more properties.

Also read: Bikaner land scam case: ED attaches assets worth Rs 4.62 crore belonging to Robert Vadra's company
Ibrahim Obaid, who was once an officer in the regime's army, agreed to a reconciliation when the opposition lost control of Homs reports Etihad Press.

45 days after being arrested, a former dissident officer from the Engineering Corps died under torture in one of the regimes prisons. He had reached a settlement agreement with the authorities, after he defected and joined an armed faction in the province of Homs.

According to local Facebook pages, Military Intelligence arrested the defected officer, Ibrahim Obaid, about a month and a half ago, accusing him of joining an armed faction that was active in the northern Homs countryside. When the regime forces took over Homs, Obeid remained in the province and reached a reconciliation agreement with the regime.

His family was notified that Obeid died of a heart attack. They were not allowed to bury his body, in his hometown of al-Rastan, north of Homs, for fear of a protest by people against the regime.

The regime security forces continue to violate reconciliation agreements signed with former members of the factions. According to these agreement, which were held under Russian auspices, fighters could either leave the area or sign a reconciliation agreement and stay if they wanted to. They were given guarantees that they would not be prosecuted.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
While the Democrats are falling over themselves, rushing to the left, promising free healthcare for everyone, this is a terrifying story about what can happen when the government controls everyones medical care.

Via NYT.

Yansnier Arias knew it was wrong. It violated the Constitution, not to mention the oath he took as a doctor in Cuba.

He had been sent to Venezuela by the Cuban government, one of thousands of doctors deployed to shore up ties between the two allies and alleviate Venezuelas collapsing medical system.

But with President Nicolas Maduros re-election on the line, not everyone was allowed to be treated, Dr. Arias said.

A 65-year-old patient with heart failure entered his clinic  and urgently needed oxygen, he said. The tanks sat in another room at the ready, he recalled.

But he said his Cuban and Venezuelan superiors told him to use the oxygen as a political weapon instead: Not for medical emergencies that day, but to be doled out closer to the election, part of a national strategy to compel patients to vote for the government.

To maintain their hold over Venezuela, Mr. Maduro and his supporters have often used the nations economic collapse to their advantage, dangling food before hungry voters, promising extra subsidies if he won, and demanding that people present identification cards tied to government rations when they came to the polls.

But participants in the schemes say Mr. Maduro and his supporters have deployed another tool as well: Cubas international medical corps.

The Cuban doctors said they were ordered to go door-to-door in impoverished neighborhoods, offering medicine and warning residents that they would be cut off from medical services if they did not vote for Mr. Maduro or his candidates.

Many said their superiors directed them to issue the same threats during closed-door consultations with patients seeking treatment for chronic diseases.

One former Cuban supervisor said that she and other foreign medical workers were given counterfeit identification cards to vote in an election. Another doctor said she and others were told to give precise voting instructions to elderly patients, whose infirmities made them particularly easy to manipulate.
Project Scientist Daniel Mendez (right) and Postdoc Nawa Baral work on samples at JBEI, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Their research team is exploring how advances in production could make the plant-based jet fuels, currently under development at JBEI, price competitive with conventional fossil jet fuels. Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab

With an estimated daily fuel demand of more than 5 million barrels per day, the global aviation sector is incredibly energy-intensive and almost entirely reliant on petroleum-based fuels. Unlike other energy sectors such as ground transportation or residential and commercial buildings, the aviation industry can't easily shift to renewable energy sources using existing technologies.

However, a new analysis by scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) shows that sustainable plant-based bio-jet fuels could provide a competitive alternative to conventional petroleum fuels if current development and scale-up initiatives continue to push ahead successfully.

"Techno-economic analysis and life-cycle greenhouse gas mitigation cost of five routes to bio-jet fuel blendstocks," published recently in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, provides promising evidence that optimizing the biofuel production pipelinetaking carbohydrate-rich plant material and using genetically modified bacteria to digest the isolated sugars into energy-dense molecules that are then chemically converted into a fuel productis well worth the effort.

"It's challenging to electrify aviation using batteries or fuel cells in part because of the weight restrictions on aircraft, so liquid biofuels have the potential to play a big role in greenhouse gas emissions reductions," said lead author Corinne Scown, a researcher in Berkeley Lab's Energy Technologies Area as well as DOE's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). "The team at JBEI has been working on biological routes to advanced bio-jet fuel blends that are not only derived from plant-based sugars but also have attractive properties that could actually provide an advantage over conventional jet fuels."

How to get fuel from plant material

Currently, multidisciplinary teams based at JBEI are focused on optimizing each stage of the bio-jet fuel production process. Some researchers specialize in engineering ideal source plantsreferred to as biomassthat create a high proportion of carbohydrates and a low proportion of lignin, a type of material that, as of now, is more challenging to make useful. Meanwhile, others are developing methods for efficiently isolating the carbohydrates in non-food biomass and breaking them into sugar molecules that bacteria can digest, or "bioconvert," into a fuel molecule. To obtain the highest possible yield from bioconversion, yet other JBEI researchers are examining what genetic and environmental factors make the modified bacteria more efficient.

Once these stages are optimized, JBEI scientists can transition the technologies to commercial partners who may then modify and blend the fuels into ready-to-use products and devise strategies to industrialize the scale of production. Given the vast amount of experimentation and innovation needed to accomplish all this, Scown and her co-authors used innovative analysis methods to assess whether the undertaking could actually reach the end game of a jet fuel alternative that airlines will want to use.

"Our hope is that early in the research stages, we can at least simulate what we think it would look like if you develop these fuel production routes to the point of maturity," Scown said. "If you were to push them to the ethanol benchmarkthe technology to create ethanol from plant material like corn stalks, leaves, and cobs has been around a long time, and we can ferment sugars with a 90 percent efficiencyhow close would this get us to the market price of petroleum fuels? That is important to know now.

Project Scientist Daniel Mendez works on lab-scale bio-jet fuel production at JBEI in Emeryville, CA. Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab

"Thankfully, the answer is they can be viable. And we've identified improvements that need to happen all along the conversion process to make that happen."

Imagining the production process at scale

Due to the biomass deconstruction and fuel synthesis technologies developed at JBEI, the theoretical cost of bio-jet fuel has declined steadily in recent years and is currently as low as $16 per gallon, as compared to $300,000 per gallon when JBEI was established, according to co-author and JBEI postdoctoral fellow Nawa Baral. The cost of standard jet fuel is about $2.50 per gallon.

To explore how bio-jet fuel could bridge the remaining price gap, the research team used complex computer simulations that modeled the necessary technology and subsequent costs of complete, scaled-up production pathways at different efficiency levels and with a range of biomass and chemical inputs. The authors simulated a total of five different production pathways to four distinct fuel molecules.

The results showed that all five pathways could indeed create fuel products at the target price of $2.50 per gallon if manufacturers are able to convert the leftover lignin into a valuable chemicalsomething JBEI researchers are currently working towardthat could be sold to offset the cost of biofuels. The net price of a gallon of biofuel could be lowered further if airlines were offered even a modest financial credit for emissions reduction.

Following some industry research, the team also found that airlines may be willing to pay a premium of as much as fifty cents per gallon because all four biofuels deliver more energy per unit volume, meaning a plane could fly farther on a tank of the same size.

"The development of plant-based compounds that have a performance advantage over their petroleum-based counterparts is an important factor in determining their marketplace viability," said Blake Simmons, a co-author and the Chief Science and Technology Officer at JBEI.

However, as promising as these findings are, getting the biofuel production technology to the gold-standard yields assumed in these simulations will require further advances.

"It's clear that, to get these fuels to commercial viability, we need all hands on deck," Scown noted. "But this analysis highlights the importance of multi-institutional, integrative research centers like JBEI because no group working on one phase of the process alone can make it happen."

Explore further Scientists brew jet fuel in one-pot recipe

More information: Nawa Raj Baral et al, Techno-economic analysis and life-cycle greenhouse gas mitigation cost of five routes to bio-jet fuel blendstocks, Energy & Environmental Science (2019). Journal information: Energy & Environmental Science Nawa Raj Baral et al, Techno-economic analysis and life-cycle greenhouse gas mitigation cost of five routes to bio-jet fuel blendstocks,(2019). DOI: 10.1039/C8EE03266A
A new UD study shows that people who live close to wind power projects prefer those over energy alternatives. Credit: University of Delaware

A new University of Delaware study examined the attitudes of people who live in close proximity to wind power projects to see if they prefer those projects to energy alternatives, such as a central power plant fueled by either coal, natural gas or uraniumor a commercial scale solar installation.

UD's Jeremy Firestone and an undergraduate student, Hannah Kirk, used a publicly-available dataset from a Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study to assess the opinions of individuals who live within 8 kilometers of a wind turbine to gain insight into their energy preferences.

They found study respondents strongly preferred their local wind power project to any of the alternatives being located at a similar distance, regardless of the political, geographic or economic characteristics of the state in which those respondents lived.

Overall, the study showed that approximately 90 percent of respondents prefer their local wind project to a central power plant sited at a similar distance regardless of fuel. Furthermore, of the approximate two-thirds who have a preference, the local wind power project was preferred over a commercial-scale solar installation by approximately three to one.

The results of the study were published Monday, March 18 in the journal Nature Energy.

Firestone, professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment's School of Marine Science and Policy and Director of the Center for Research in Wind, said that there have been studies of comparative preferences with regards to wind power before, but they focused on people who lived far away from wind turbines.

"Those studies measured opinions regarding generation facilities located 40 to 160 kilometers away," said Firestone. "At those distances, people are more likely expressing general attitudes regarding technologies rather than how those technologies affect them at the level of community."

State characteristics

The researchers considered state characteristics of a respondent such as level of coal production, locationwhether coastal or southwesternand proportion of farmland and rangeland as well as population density.

"Irrespective of living in geographically different locations with diverse economies, respondents exhibited a strong overall preference for their local wind power project," said Firestone. "Even respondents in coal-mining states would prefer their local wind power project by more than 10 to one over a similarly-sited coal-fired power plant. This suggests the energy transition that is underway in the United States may be embraced widely."

They also evaluated the effect of state voting patterns on choice among energy technologies, characterizing a red state as those states whose populations voted for the Republican candidate for president in 2012 and 2016; purple for those who voted one way in 2012 and then switched in 2016; and blue for those who voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012 and 2016.

Kirk, the sophomore majoring in energy and environmental policy who helped with the research, said that they "did not find a significant difference among the respondents' preferences for wind power based on voting patterns, reflecting that preferences for wind power are bipartisan."

This overwhelming preference for one's local wind power project made Firestone think about how researchers are asking questions of the public with regards to local renewable energy projects.

Firestone said that researchers need to be more nuanced when it comes to characterizing results from studies and design them to fully capture public attitudes, preferences and opinions.

"We've looked at social acceptance of wind projects examining factors such as effect of landscape change, sound and place attachment. In those studies, the ultimate question is whether a community member supports or opposes a local projectthat is, wind power or nothing. But that's not the societal choice, which is instead, among wind power, solar, coal or natural gas," said Firestone. "Even when residents might have less than positive attitudes toward a local project, the majority appear to conclude that their local wind power project is better than the alternatives."

Explore further Researchers survey beachgoers on potential implications for offshore wind farms

More information: A strong relative preference for wind turbines in the United States among those who live near them. Nature Energy. doi.org/10.1038/s41560-019-0347-9 Journal information: Nature Energy A strong relative preference for wind turbines in the United States among those who live near them.
A French former prisoner who had converted to Islam while incarcerated was arrested after trying to have a sub-machine gun delivered to him by post.



The 30-year-old, who was not identified by name, was arrested last week in the city of Angers in Western France at a local post office while attempting to pick up the firearm that had originally come from the United States, Le Parisien reports.



On Friday, the man was indicted on charges of importing category A weapons, according to public prosecutor Yves Gambert.



Local media also added that the suspect had served a seven-year prison sentence in 2010 for violence with a weapon and targeted a police officer. While in prison, he converted to Islam and was examined by security services in 2016 following the Bataclan massacre in November of 2015.



He also is alleged to have met and had become well acquainted with Islamist David Pagerie who had previously been convicted of consulting Islamist jihadi sites in 2016.

A French convert to Islam in prison tried to order a machine gun through the mail , and was arrested for it:Presumably, security at the post office spotted the weapon, and saw to it he was taken into custody. This is exactly why inmates cannot be housed with the most extremely dangerous of Islamofascists. But which arms maker in the US approved of this sale? This is what the Democrats who condone gun control refuse to consider.

Labels: dhimmitude, France, islam, jihad, racism, terrorism, United States, war on terror
A Delhi court on Tuesday extended the interim bail granted to Robert Vadra till March 25 in a money laundering case lodged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) even as the agency said he was required for custodial interrogation.

Special judge Arvind Kumar granted the relief to Vadra, brother-in-law of Congress president Rahul Gandhi and asked him to join the probe in the matter.

Vadra, husband of Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, had filed an anticipatory bail application in the case linked to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property at 12, Bryanston Square worth GBP 1.9 million.

Earlier this month, the Delhi court had extended his protection from arrest till today.

Also Read: Robert Vadra, the flats in London and an endless list of cases

The agency had alleged that Robert Vadra is the "ultimate beneficiary" of London residencies and six flats which were bought by his associates through a web of companies, some of which are allegedly owned by absconding arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari and the UAE-based businessman CC Thampi.

It alleged that Vadra and his associates received kickbacks in a petroleum deal inked in 2009 during the UPA regime. The proceeds from this deal were allegedly used by Vadra to buy the plush properties in London.

Meanwhile, ED is scrutinising Bhandari and Thampi for allegedly violating the FEMA Act. It has also written to authorities in London and UAE to collate more information about the said companies which includes their ownership details.

Edited by Chitranjan Kumar
Shares of Hotel Leela Venture hit the 5 per cent upper circuit in late morning deals on Tuesday after its board approved the sale of four hotels, including one in the national capital, and a property to Canadian investment fund Brookfield Asset Management for Rs 3,950 crore.

"The company has entered into a binding agreement with a Brookfield Asset Management-sponsored private real estate fund to sell, by way of slump sale, four owned Leela hotels located at Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Udaipur and the property that it owns in Agra," Hotel Leela Venture said in a filing to Bombay Stock Exchange.

The shares of Hotel Leela Venture opened at Rs 11.63 and have touched a high of Rs 11.63 on BSE. On Monday, it ended at Rs 11.08 per scrip, up 1.09 per cent.

According to data available with exchange, a combined 1,96,330 shares have changed hands on the counter on the NSE and BSE so far.

In a similar fashion, stock of the company locked at Rs 11.55, up 5 per cent, on the National Stock Exchange after opening at Rs 11.55 against previous close of Rs 11.

The transaction includes assignment of all hotel management contracts currently in operation as well as all under-development, along with the employees of the hotels. "The total transaction value is Rs 3,950 crore plus the applicable transaction costs," it said in the filing.

Also Read: RCom shares jump 10% after Mukesh Ambani bails out brother Anil on Ericsson dues

"After completion of the aforesaid transaction, all borrowings of the company from all banks and financial institutions would stand repaid," it added.

Commenting on the development, Hotel Leela Venture Chairman and MD Vivek Nair said: "The Leela is rated amongst the top hospitality brands in the world and I am confident that the brand will receive a boost and be further strengthened and continue to be known for its world-class services".

The company further said that post-sale, it will continue to operate the hotel in Mumbai and own certain land in Hyderabad apart from the joint development project of residential apartments with Prestige Developers in Bangalore.

Brookfield will have a right of first refusal over the company's hotel in Mumbai, as a part of the transaction, the filing said.

"We are excited with this opportunity and look forward to completing this transaction at the earliest while ensuring that all operations remain unaffected. We expect the Leela hotels to continue to be market leaders," Brookfield Asset Management MD and Head-India Real Estate Ankur Gupta said.

Edited by Chitranjan Kumar

Also Read: Mindtree, L&T shares slip over 2% after Rs 10,700 crore deal announcement; L&T Infotech surges 6%
Ahead of its March 25 event, where the Cupertino giant is expected to debut its video streaming service, Apple has announced the launch of two new iPads. The 10.5-inch new iPad Air and the 7.9-inch new iPad mini are powered by A12 Bionic chip with the Neural Engine, which features Retina display along with support for 1st generation Apple Pencil.

The new iPad mini and iPad Air will be available in silver, space grey and gold finishes in 64 GB and 256 GB configurations. The price of new iPad mini starts at Rs 34,900 for the Wi-Fi model and Rs 45,900 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. The 10.5-inch iPad Air starts at Rs 44,900 for the Wi-Fi model and Rs 55,900 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. While the new iPad models are available in select countries including US, UK, Japan, France, Germany and more, it will be available in India along with China, Russia, Greece, Isreal and Turkey starting next week. Apple Pencil (1st generation) can be purchased separately for Rs 8,500 and the Smart Keyboard for 10.5inch iPad Air is available for Rs 3,500. Even the Polyurethane Smart Covers are available at Rs 3,500 for iPad mini and at Rs 3700 for iPad Air in charcoal grey, white, pink sand and a new papaya.

"The iPad continues to provide magical new experiences for a growing range of uses where it is the absolute best device, from playing games in augmented reality to note-taking and drawing with Apple Pencil, from streaming HD movies and editing 4K films to learning to develop apps with Swift Playgrounds", said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "Today the iPad family takes two big leaps forward with an all-new 10.5-inch iPad Air that brings high-end size, features and performance at a breakthrough price, and a major upgrade to the 7.9-inch iPad mini, which also brings Apple Pencil, Retina display and the A12 Bionic chip to the many customers that love its compact size".

Running iOS on iPad, the new Air and mini are pegged as the perfect devices for productivity on the go as Siri shortcuts, photo search and voice memos should be able to get things done faster. The Dock provides quick access to frequently used apps and documents from any screen, and multitasking is easy with Split View and Slide Over. Drag and Drop make moving images, text and files between apps easier than ever, and managing documents in the Files app is seamless and easy on iPad and across Apple devices. Users have access to more than 1.3 million apps designed specifically for iPad - from journaling with Apple Pencil to managing schedules and finances, editing photos, learning, connecting with friends and family, and playing games.

Apple Pencil support for these two new iPads offers creativity tools, which allow users to draw and write on documents, presentations, images and more. And is increasingly becoming popular amongst students and professionals for a natural drawing experience. Even the upcoming update iWork for iOS will enhance Apple Pencil integration, which includes new animation options in Keynote and more. However, Apple has opted for the 1st generation Apple Pencil instead of the 2nd generation launched late last year.

For seamless connectivity, it features Wi-Fi and Gigabit-class LTE connectivity. With built in eSIM technology, users can easily connect to wireless data plans right from iPad when travelling in more than 180 countries around the world.

For multimedia, the iPad mini and iPad Air captures stable 1080p HD videos. The upgraded cameras with better low-light performance and HD video recording come handy for scanning a document or connecting over FaceTime calls.

Apple iPad Lineup: Introduced first in 2010, Apple has been constantly refreshing the iPad portfolio with models in different sizes. The new iPad Air and iPad mini join the most affordable 9.7-inch iPad and the most advanced iPad Pro models. The complete lineup now includes Apple Pencil support.

Also read: US Court dismisses visa fraud lawsuit against Infosys, Apple

Also read: Global wireless hearables sales to reach 129 million units by 2020, says report
Luxembourg city courts on Monday morning saw three young men receive their verdicts for a variety of driving offences.

The individuals were on trial due to driving without a license, driving an unregistered motorbike, speeding and driving under the influence, among other charges.

The first man caught the attention of a police patrol back in September 2018. He was speeding on Luxembourg City's Route d'Esch heading in direction of the A4. The officers first gave chase following him at 140-150 km/h, then again at the tunnel in Merl nearing 190km/h without successfully getting the driver to pull over. Approaching the Leudelange exit, the motorist slowed down and came to a stop. He was arrested and taken to the station where officers measured the man's blood alcohol content (BAC) as 0.142.

The court representative requested an appropriate fine of a 20 month driving ban and the confiscation of his car. Monday's verdict demands a 1,000 fine, an 18 month driving ban excluding his work related commute, and also the confiscation of the car.

The second man had been caught driving a motorbike in Rodange, without registration plates, insurance or a license - of which he has never been in possession. The man was also driving despite a previous and outstanding ban and was under the influence of cannabis.

When he saw the police in Route de Longwy, he accelerated quickly and tried to escape. The police gave chase at speeds of up to 140 km/h. The dangerous driving continued when the motorist ran a red light despite the fact that a woman was on the crossing. The latter informed officers to the direction in which the man had sped off. The officers found the bike on the floor of a housing estate with the man next to it. He had apparently burst through a hedgerow and collided with a pole.

The representative of the court demanded a six month prison sentence, an appropriate fine, a 54 month driving ban and the confiscation of the motorbike. The verdict passed down was a six month probationary prison sentence, an 800 fine, a 54 month driving ban and the confiscation of the bike.

The third man caused an accident on the Red Bridge in Luxembourg City back in November 2018, where he had run into the back of another car driven by a shocked female.

After both of them had gotten out of their cars, the man had laughed and not wanted to tell the woman the phone number of the police, nor where she was.

The initial alcohol test showed a BAC of .368, while the second test "only" showed .250.

In this case, the court representative requested and appropriate fine and a 40 month driving ban. On Monday the verdict called for an 800 fine, an 18 month driving ban excluding to and from work and a 22 month probationary driving ban.
Xiaomi will launch its first Android Go affiliated smartphone, the Redmi Go, in India at 12:00 in the noon today. With this smartphone at an extremely affordable price point, Xiaomi is looking to appeal to the first time smartphone user in the India market. The price tag for Xiaomi Redmi Go is expected to be below Rs 5,000.

The Xiaomi Redmi Go is already listed on Flipkart, which means it can be bought from e-tailer's website, as well as Xiaomi's own official website Mi.com and Mi Home stores. The launch event in New Delhi will be live streamed on the Mi.com as well as Flipkart.com.

While Xiaomi's Redmi line of phones is known for bringing affordable offerings in the mid-range segment, this is the first time the Chinese tech giant has steered its sub-brand into the Android Go territory which promises affordable entry-level smartphones. Android Go comes with its own suite of streamlined Google applications like YouTube Go, Maps Go, Files Go and more, for delivering the complete experience despite not-so-powerful hardware.

ALSO READ:Xiaomi bets big on India, invests Rs 3,500 crore in two tranches

Coming to expected specifications, the Xiaomi Redmi Go might come with a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC clocked at 1.4GHz. The device will be available in a single variant with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage which can be expanded to 128GB via microSD card.

On the optics front, the Redmi Go could come with 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5MP front camera. The battery on the Android Go smartphone could be a 3,000mAh unit, which should be enough, given the less-demanding hardware. In India, the Xiaomi Redmi Go could with Hindi support for Google Assistant as well as support for more than 20 regional languages.

The price for Xiaomi Redmi Go might range between Rs 3,000 and Rs 4,000. This price tag puts it in competition with the likes of Nokia 1, Samsung J2 Core, and even the JioPhone 2.

ALSO READ:Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro review: Look no further for a phone under Rs 15,000
Tax rebate for singles, vignette for Luxembourg City, protection of flora and fauna, different sanctions for speeding, these are some of the themes of the new petitions.

One of the petitioners demands the lowering of taxes for singles.

Another petition proposes the idea of a vignette for Luxembourg City, in order to reduce peak time congestion in the city centre.

An additional suggestion is the construction of additional parking lots on the outskirts of the City, which should be linked by public transport.

As of today, you can sign a new petition to reduce food waste: its author demands a food legislation that makes it illegal for supermarkets to bin food which has passed it's sell by date, but is still edible. To avoid this, retailers should discount the relevant food items a few hours before closing and any that remain unsold, should be donated to charities.

Petition 1229 is concerned with the protection of the country's flora an fauna. The population should receive proper notice if trees are to be cut down or parks are to be removed and covered with concrete, says the author of the petition.

At the moment, civil servants are required to have a bank account with Post in order to receive their salaries. This should be changed, says another petitioner. The people in question should have the choice about which bank account their salary will be paid into, regardless of who they bank with in Luxembourg.

Speeding sanctions are another topic: the amounts of fines for speeding should be calculated differently.

The speed limit in Rue de Cessange should drop to 30 km/h. The author of the petition highlights that it is located in a residential area, where many children play on the street. Many times, drivers to do not respect the current speed limit of 50 km/h.

Another petitioner demands that the current prices of public transport should be upheld, under the motto "Quality instead of free".

The last petition demands that adults should no longer able to be naked in front of children in the showers of public swimming pools.



All of these petitions, as well as others, can be signed on the website of the Chamber of Deputies. When a minimum of 4,500 signatures have been reached, MPs will debate the petition in public.
The first of new developments including a new rail track (number 11) and the first platform (number 5), are supposed to open in December. (video in Luxembourgish)

The planned openings have been confirmed by he minister for mobility, Francois Bausch, in an answer to a parliamentary question by Greens MP Francois Benoy.

Luxembourg's main train station is at full capacity at present, especially at peak times, and the rail service has drawn strong criticism from commuters. Despite this, CFL posted few delays and cancellations for 2018.

The opening of the new track and platform should improve and alleviate congestion problems.

In December 2021, platforms 5 and 6 are planned to be fully put into operation. The same applies to the three additional tracks currently under construction.

Minister Bausch's also suggests that a new footbridge is also supposed to be ready by this point in time. The footbridge aims to make it easier to access platforms, in particular for people with a disability or limited mobility.

PDF: Antwert op parlamentaresch Fro
According to a University of Luxembourg press release, the university and the European rocket developer ArianeGroup will collaborate over the next two years.

The project's goal is to reduce the costs of launching a rocket and will be funded by ArianeGroup and Luxembourg's National Research Fund (FNRL).

The university wrote that the use of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen allow rocket launches to be more efficient and less toxic.

Before a rocket is launched, the so-called chill-down phase takes place to allow various components to cool down to the same temperature as the fuel. The process is a highly technically complex one and requires substantial time and effort.

There are no current models to predict an ideal chill-down phase, ArianeGroup's Dr Sebastian Stoller explained. For this reason, the group is hoping to test the components and make technical estimations with high security margins.

The test runs, in return, affect both development times and impacts costs, which is where the university partnership comes into play. The private public partnership will allow the university to work with the private group ArianeGroup to experiment with the cooling processes by using computer simulations for predictions. According to Professor Stephan Leyer, the university's team consists of thermo-analysis experts who will begin by a detailed examination of the process before developing reliable and precise methods.

The partnership is part of the university's wider development in spatial activities. As of this September, Luxembourg's brightest students will be also able to attend an interdisciplinary Space Masters programme.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, joined by his wife, Amy Rule, at his announcement in September that he would not seek re-election. | Rahul Parikh/Sun-Times

As his eight-year mayoral reign winds to a close, Rahm Emanuel has been all about legacy-building. Hes been making announcements at such a frenzied pace, one might think he was still campaigning for the job hes about to relinquish.

Now, records show Emanuel used his private email accounts to do what he does best: lobby the friends he has cultivated in the national media to tout his record of accomplishments and, just maybe, lay the groundwork for a future run for office.

Private emails released to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a Freedom of Information request show Emanuel lobbying for favorable coverage even after Sept. 4, when he announced he had chosen political retirement over the uphill battle for a third term.

Here is the latest data on our childrens nation-leading academic progress, Emanuel wrote in a Sept. 20 email to David Leonhardt of the New York Times that included 2.5 pages of data points, as the mayor loves to put it.

In yet another email to Leonhardt that same day, Emanuel wrote: New data on college acceptance.

Leonhardt replied, Thanks, I will read.

Five days later, Emanuel wrote a similarly self-promoting email to Clifton Leaf, editor-in-chief of Fortune magazine.

Nice seeing you. Would like to follow up re: a public schools turnaround piece. Enjoy Chicago, Emanuel wrote.

Leaf replied, Thank you for being here, Mr. Mayor. I thoroughly enjoyed your talk this afternoon and will follow up with your staff on extraordinary school turnaround story. Congratulations again, Cliff.

Emanuel didnt have to offer his normal sales pitch to Yumi Ross, who serves on the board of directors of the Art Institute of Chicagos Architecture and Design Society, the Hyde Park Art Centers board of directors and the advisory board of CPS Lives.

On Sept. 14, Ross wrote a gushing email to Emanuel after hearing him speak at the Chicago History Museum.

You did a fantastic job speaking. I was literally moved to tears. Fought to regain my composure when you addressed your reasons for not running. Your announcement shocked me and I remain shocked, Ross wrote.

I cannot imagine anyone else as mayor. A New Yorker asked me, `Do Chicagoans know how respected Rahm is around the world? Youve turned Chicago into a world-class city. You are irreplaceable. Many people have expressed to me their shock and worry that you arent running again.  You are a great mayor, a phenomenal elected official. Nobody can fill your and the First Ladys shoes.

Hedy Ratner, president emeritus of the Womens Business Development Center, was more focused on making the most of Emanuels final months in office.

What fabulous things we can do together until May, Ratner wrote on Sept. 7, three days after Emanuel set off the political equivalent of an earthquake.

How about minimum wage for tipped workers?

On Aug. 9, less than a month before Emanuels announcement, Howard Tullman, founder of the technology incubator 1871, wrote to the mayor with an idea to help City Hall change the subject from the medias laser-like focus on Chicago violence.

Tullman was inspired after listening to a so-called community leaders violence call.

Heres what I would do: Get a city video crew on the street to visit some of these places where things are working. Capture two minutes of the video [B-roll], which shows what the various community leaders are doing that is helping block [by] block, Tullman wrote.

Make these media aholes run some of these little pieces to off-set when [they] run all over the crappy shooting stories and tell them its their job to balance the news. This way is the best way to help share good ideas and successful solutions. Bad news generally pushes out good news. But, we can tell the story better.

Emanuel replied with a simple, Thanks.

Dr. Eric Whitaker, a close friend of former President Barack Obama, also offered the mayor advice on July 19, more than six weeks before Emanuels shocking announcement.

Dude, you had me crying today! I think more people need to see that side of you, Whitaker wrote after hearing Emanuel give what he thought was a particularly poignant speech about his efforts to recruit college graduates to start their careers in Chicago.

Can we [city, WBC] initiate a targeted campaign to recruit African-American and Latino students to Chicago post-graduation? We can profile individual members of our diverse business and social sector community.  In my view, we need a concerted effort to reverse the exodus of black folks from Chicago.  Heres to middle children.

Emanuel replied, Call me tomorrow.

Even the mayors own brother, Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, used the mayors private emails to pitch an idea.

Rahm, I have worked with One World Academy both personally and through the company. This is something I think you should do for the public schools in Chicago. Please let me know a good time to discuss, Ari wrote to his older brother on Aug. 22.

On July 22, the mayor got a personal email from billionaire Ken Griffin, Illinois richest man and one of his most generous campaign donors.

Thank you for including Citadel in your trade delegation trip to China and Tokyo, Griffin wrote.

I caught up with Jamil when he returned. He found the trip extremely informative and really appreciated your hospitality. All the best, Ken.

Emanuel replied, It was a real success for the city. He was a great member of the delegation.

The mayor couldnt resist a little chest-pounding.

Chicago was named for the sixth consecutive year in a row No. 1 city for foreign direct investment and fifth worldwide and only American city in top ten for the last six years.

Eight days after the mayors announcement, personal injury attorney Bob Clifford wrote the mayor an email asking if the two men could chat about two matters.

Emanuel was at the dentist, but promised to call Clifford, adding, Problem?

Clifford replied, No problem. In one situation, trying to help someone who several people say is getting a raw deal that maybe you can correct. And, in the other, re: a situation where one of my experts says city getting screwed by BCBS, the acronym for Blue Cross-Blue Shield.

On Aug. 31, Chicago real estate broker Erik Schwab wrote a private email to the mayor after having read a front-page story in the Chicago Sun-Times with the headline, What is he waiting for? The story hinted strongly that Emanuel might not seek a third-term.

I read the article in Thursdays Sun-Times regarding when/if youll announce and I couldnt help but shake my head. I would imagine there are other things they could write about instead of an election that is over six months away. I personally hope you wait until the end of the petition filing period before you make any announcement, Schwab wrote.

The pile of mayoral wannabes is doing nothing to set themselves apart from each other yet, let alone you. You are doing what you should be doing: governing, circulating petitions and raising money. The moment you announce, all the TV ads and pointless back and forth on everything but the issues facing our city will begin and become annoying by weeks end.  Best of luck in 2019. Hope to see your name on the ballot.

Five days later, Emanuel announced his political retirement.
Here are todays leading news stories:

Society

-- Officers under Vietnams Ministry of Public Security on Monday initiated legal proceeding against Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, former vice-chairman of the Peoples Committee in the central city of Da Nang, and four other ex-officials for their involvement in the violations related to Phan Van Anh Vu, a.k.a. Vu nhom.

-- Rescue units were able to save a 45-year-old man who was stuck under a train in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City at around 5:00 pm on Monday.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport has asked the administrations in District 7 and Binh Chanh District to focus on cleaning up trash along local roads and bridges.

-- Public workers in Vietnam are expected to have a total of three days off for the upcoming Hung Kings Commemoration Day (March 14) and up to five days for the Reunification Day (April 30) and International Workers Day (May 1).

-- A car was traveling along National Highway 6 in the northern province of Son La at around 1:00 am on Monday when it plunged off a 400 meter cliff, resulting in the death of the driver and serious injuries to an 11-year-old girl.

-- A female employee of a hotel in the north-central province of Nghe An was killed after a fire broke out at the eight-story venue on Monday morning. The incident also urged people inside the hospital located next-door to evacuate for their own safety.

-- Two people were killed and another severely wounded after a truck rear-ended a trailer tractor along the Ho Chi Minh City-Long Thanh-Dau Giay Expressway on Monday morning.

-- A man received a fine worth VND200,000 (US$8.6) on Monday for forcefully hugging and kissing a 20-year-old girl inside an elevator at an apartment building in Thanh Xuan District, Hanoi earlier this month.

-- Two 10th-grade students in Go Vap District, Ho Chi Minh City were hospitalized on Monday following their physical confrontation with students from another school that arose from their conflicts on Facebook.

Business

-- The Ministry of Finance has proposed that the import of auto parts, which are used in the production of eco-friendly automobiles, should be eligible to a zero percent tax in Vietnam.

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One man was killed and an 11-year-old girl seriously injured after their car ran off a 400-meter cliff in the northern Vietnamese province of Son La on early Monday morning.

The accident occurred along a section of National Highway 6 in Chieng Hac Commune, Moc Chau District, at around 1:00 am, according to district police officers.

The car carrying two people was traveling in the direction from Son La to Hanoi when it crashed into the road fencing and plunged off a cliff about 400 meters deep.

The vehicle hit a lot of large rocks as it landed and was heavily distorted.

Nguyen Cong Hung, the 36-year-old driver, was killed on the spot, while Dang Thi Thu Huyen, 11, was found unconscious with severe injuries by first responders.

The car is heavily damaged following the crash. Photo: Tung Minh / Tuoi Tre

Huyen was brought to the hospital for emergency treatment and her health condition has stabilized.

Despite some difficulties, competent authorities have been able to salvage the car from the rock-filled cliff.

Further investigation is ongoing to determine the cause of the accident.

The driver was possible fatigued and sleepy prior to the crash, according to preliminary information.

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Legal proceedings were commenced on Sunday and Monday against five former Da Nang officials for land mismanagement as Vietnamese police expanded their investigation into activities of local business tycoon Phan Van Anh Vu.

Among those prosecuted is Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, 61, former deputy chairman of the Da Nang administration, who is investigated for violating regulations on the management and use of public capital and land management.

The Investigative Police Agency under the Ministry of Public Security also launched legal proceedings against Nguyen Thanh Sang, former director of the municipal finance department, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, former deputy director of the finance department, Phan Xuan It, former deputy chief of the office of the Da Nang Peoples Committee, and Nguyen Dinh Thong, former director of the Da Nang Land Exploitation and Management Company, for violations of regulations on the management and use of public capital.

Two corporate leaders, Le Anh Tuan, chairman of the board of directors of the Da Nang Ship Chandler Corporation, and Phan Minh Cuong, former director of the I.V.C Limited Company and general director of the 79 Construction Joint Stock Company, were prosecuted for the same charge.

All of the accused had their house searched in accordance with court warrants.

Cuong was put into temporary detention for the investigation, while the remaining six were barred from leaving their place of residence.

Nguyen Ngoc Tuan is photographed while serving as deputy chairman of the Peoples Committee of Da Nang. Photo: Doan Cuong / Tuoi Tre

The former Da Nang officials and business leaders are being probed in an expanded investigation into the crimes of Phan Van Anh Vu, a.k.a. Vu nhom, a local business tycoon who acquired many of the central citys prime real estates via unorthodox methods.

In January, Vu was sentenced by a court in Hanoi to 15 years in jail for abusing position and power while performing duties.

Vu, 44, is a former Senior Lieutenant Colonel and deputy head of an intelligence division at the Fifth General Department of the Ministry of Public Security.

According to his indictment, while running the Bac Nam 79 Construction and Nova Bac Nam 79 Companies, Vu abused his power as a Ministry of Public Security intelligence officer to ask authorities to rent land to him or give him land use rights for multiple prime locations in Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City, which was not in line with state regulations.

He then made the land plots his own properties or those of his relatives, transferred them, or put them under shared ownership with other people to earn illegal profits, the court ruled.

Under the first-instance judgement, Vu, with the highest role in the case, was found responsible for a loss of over VND135 billion (US$5.81 million) to state assets.

Fourteen ex-officials in Da Nang, including the five prosecuted this week, have so far been put under criminal investigation for links to Vus illegal activities.

Phan Van Anh Vu leaves a court in Hanoi on December 4, 2018. Photo: Hoang Dong / Tuoi Tre

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Police in Hanoi apprehended and held in custody a man on Monday evening for allegedly molesting a nine-year-old local girl, about two weeks after he was released on bail by a district-level police unit following an arrest in late February.

The suspect is Nguyen Trong Trinh, 31, who resides in Hoa Chinh Town, Chuong My District, a police official confirmed on Tuesday morning.

Trinhs arrest was to assist the investigation into the alleged sexual abuse of Q., a nine-year-old girl who lives in the neighborhood, which happened on February 24.

On that day, Q. was walking home after her English lesson when she was approached by Trinh, who said he was a friend of her parents and asked her to get on his motorbike.

Despite her refusal, Trinh forced the girl on his vehicle and took her to a nearby banana plantation, where he allegedly molested her.

After noticing Q.s absence, Nguyen Thi H., the girls mother, went looking for her and eventually found the daughter crying with blood on her face and clothes.

Q. and her injured right arm at her home in Chuong My District, Hanoi. Photo: P. Thao / Tuoi Tre

Q. said her right arm was in pain, while some of her teeth were broken and her genital was bleeding. Finger marks were also noticed on the childs neck.

H. believed her daughter had been sexually assaulted and reported the incident to police in Chuong My District.

Officers later identified Trinh as the suspect and apprehended him on February 26, but released him on bail on March 6. Trinh was required not to get out of his place of residence.

The decision to release the alleged sexual abuser met with fierce opposition from the public.

The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs has also expressed its disagreement upon the decision of Chuong My police unit.

The Vietnam Association for Protection of Child's Rights on Tuesday sent a document to Hanoi police department and relevant agencies to demand justice for the victim.

The police agency then received the case and captured the suspect on the same day.

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Garbage is both piling up on and floating around several islands in Vietnam, as local authorities are still scratching their heads trying to find solutions to household waste treatment on the localities.

Trash is now threatening the ecosystem of several beautiful islands in Vietnam, including the island district of Con Dao in the southern province of Ba Ria - Vung Tau, and Phu Quoc and Kien Hai off the southern province of Kien Giang.

Overloading

The only dumpsite on Con Dao Island is surrounded by mountains on three sides, with the remaining facing the Bai Nhat beach.

The 4,000-square-meter garbage dump has been receiving trash for the last 20 years, with only about 300 square meters of space left in its capacity, according to the Con Dao District administration.

Around 15 metric tons of trash of all kinds, from the easily biodegradable garbage to plastic bottles and plastics, are delivered to the site on a daily basis, but only about five metric tons of them are handled.

As a result, up to 70,000 metric tons of untreated garbage still remains at the landfill, sending stinking smells and leachate to nearby streets and even to Bai Nhue, one of the tourists favorite beaches on the island.

Massive heaps of waste also pile up in the vicinity of Con Dao Prison, a historical site commemorating the escape of 198 Vietnamese patriots imprisoned during French colonial period in 1952.

Therefore, the Con Dao administration has recently submitted a plan to transport untreated waste to the mainland for treatment in the provinces Phu My Town.

The garbage is expected to be compressed into 450kg bales before being loaded onto ships.

Over VND35 billion (US$1.51 million) is expected to be earmarked for the project, according to the provincial deputy chairman Le Tuan Quoc.

People in Lai Son Commune, Kien Hai District, the southern province of Kien Giang, wash fish and discharge waste and wastewater directly into the sea. Photo: K. Nam / Tuoi Tre

Islands without garbage factories

The rising tourist numbers to Phu Quoc Island, which covers nearly 590 square kilometers with an estimated population of over 100,000 people, come with increased amount of daily waste.

In 2014, it was estimated that residents and tourists on Phu Quoc released about 140 metric tons of garbage every day. The current figure is about 200 metric tons per day.

There had been no garbage treatment facility on the island, but only two temporary dumps in Cua Can Commune and An Thoi Town, until the second half of 2017, when a waste treatment plant spanning about ten hectares was built in Ham Ninh Commune.

However, the facility, named Bai Bon, had to undergo a test run for more than 1.5 years, and sometimes had to have its operations temporarily suspended for equipment addition.

The Bai Bon garbage plant currently receives about 130 tons of waste per day.

In the near future, an additional waste treatment plant of about seven hectares will be established in Duong To Commune, while the two rubbish mountains at the temporary dumps in Cua Can and An Thoi will be cremated under a VND40-billion ($1.72 million) project funded by an enterprise in order to avoid environmental pollution.

Besides the planned facility on Phu Quoc, in Kien Giang, there are only two incinerators, with capacities from about two to 2.5 tons a day, on Tien Hai Island Commune in Ha Tien Town and Cu Tron Island off Kien Hai District.

Meanwhile, the first thing to welcome visitors to several other islands off Kien Hai, which are attractive destinations for tourists, are garbage.

While Vietnamese islands are in dire need of waste treatment plants, the problem is expected to persist as the private sector does not seem to be interested in investing in this field, according to experts.

Private investors usually face difficulties in technology and financing, while profit from the sector is not attractive enough.

Workers push a garbage bin on Cham Island, off the central province of Quang Nam. Photo: V. Hung / Tuoi Tre

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Chinese fighters jet to participate on 23rd March

BEIJING: The J-10 fighter jets of the Peoples Liberation Army Air Forces Bayi Aerobatic Team arrived in Pakistan in preparation for a flight performance there on March 23 in celebration of Pakistans National Day.



The Chinese pilots, invited by the Pakistani side, received a warm welcome upon arrival as local children greeted them with bouquets, China Central Television reported.



Hu Zhiyong, a research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Institute of International Relations, told the Chinese media that China sending fighter jets to celebrate Pakistan Day is symbolic of the friendship between China and Pakistan, noting that Pakistan is an all-weather friend of China.



This is not the first time the Bayi Aerobatic Team performed in Pakistan. On November 19 2017, the team staged a wonderful aerobatic flight with J-10 fighter jets in Quetta, the capital city of Pakistans Baluchistan province, according to China Military Online.



In addition to the J-10s flight performance, Chinese analysts expect more Chinese elements at Pakistan Day parade as the country operates a variety of Chinese weapons.



The Pakistan Air Forces main fighter jet, the JF-17, is a product of Chinese-Pakistani joint development, China Military Online reported.



The Pakistan Air Force also operates the ZDK-03 early warning aircraft, which is developed by China and is reportedly capable of aerial detection and sharing real time battlefield information.



The MBT-2000 main battle tank developed by China North Industries Corporation (Norinco) is designated the Al-Khalid in the Pakistan Army, the report said.



Pakistan also operates the likes of Chinas HJ-8 anti-tank missile and FM-90 air defense missile, according to China Military Online. Hu noted that China has contributed to Pakistans military development, as China has been helping the country with its national defense industry for decades. China is likely to have more joint development projects and arms sales to Pakistan in the future, analysts said.
A former SKY News employee, Rashna Farrukh, has written a breathtaking editorial on the emotions she battled whilst working for the news broadcaster.

Farrukh, writing for ABC News, describes herself as a young Muslim woman working in a junior role in Canberra.

She details the conflicts she experienced whilst news programmes and guests took hardline stances on issues, including her religion.

Here are a few excerpts:

I realised pretty quickly though that the Sky News I worked on wasnt focused on reporting facts and informing the public. Rather, conservative media commentators came together with current and former right-wing politicians, disseminating misinformation which bordered on conspiracies.

I compromised my values and beliefs to stand idly by as I watched commentators and pundits instil more and more fear into their viewers.

I stood on the other side of the studio doors while they slammed every minority group in the country  mine included  increasing polarisation and paranoia among their viewers.

Id walk commentators to the studio where after some very polite chit chat  how are you?, hows uni going? theyd go on air and talk about my community.

I was there when Cory Bernardi advocated for banning the burqa, and when he called on the government to remove offend and insult from 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act under the guise of free speech.

I was there when Pauline Hanson proudly talked about how she would, the following day, put forward the Its OK to Be White motion to counter the rise of so-called anti-white racism.

I watched as Bronwyn Bishop, following the terror raids in Sydney, insisting that war had been declared against western culture.

I answered calls from viewers who yelled about immigrants and Muslims ruining Australia. They did not realise that the person on the other end of the phone was both of those things.

And in the aftermath of Fridays terror attack, Skys coverage was among Australian media outlets who played parts of the gunmans live stream.Some nights I felt physically sick, others I even shed tears in my car on the way home.

But Farrukh resigned following incidents on the weekend, concerned at the medias role in the wider scheme of things.

I felt like I compromised the very reason I went into journalism  a search for truth  for a foot in the door.

When I reflected on who I work for and whether I could justify going into work this weekend, I knew what I had to do. Even as young journalists, we should act on our morals now rather than at some point in the future where we assume that we will have more of a say.

A SKY News told TV Tonight, We respect Rashnas decision and wish her well with her future endeavours.

As a news and national affairs broadcaster SKY News is committed to debate and discussion which is vital to a healthy democracy.

We feature a broader range of views and counterviews that are challenged and held to account than anywhere else on Australian television.

The full article is a brilliant read at abc.net.au.
The role of the Speaker in parliament is to ensure legal precedents are always followed by the House of Commons, including making decisions on which debates can go forward, who can speak and generally keeping the House in Order.

In an apparently shock move, John Bercow has announced he will not allow a third meaningful vote on Theresa Mays Brexit deal if she is not able to show the deal is not the same, in substance, as a question which has been decided. This rule comes from the parliamentary bible, Erskine May, to ensure the same question cannot be put to parliament on multiple occasions hoping for different results.

Unannounced and unhelpful

Bercows announcement has been seen as a surprise according to many government officials, who have argued they cannot comment on the statement due to not having been forewarned that Bercow was going to make such a ruling.

However, in an article for The Independent last week, Bercow had previously announced he would be considering whether to allow a third meaningful vote over the coming days.

Indeed, Angela Leadsom, Leader of the Commons, highlighted this same question issue as something which could allow the Speaker to block a third meaningful vote due to regulations disallowing government to put the same question to parliament multiple times during a single session.

According to Bercow, this rule is necessary to ensure the sensible use of House time and proper respect for the decision which it takes. He has further gained support based on his comments that by putting the same question to the House numerous times is not only a waste of time but goes against the will of parliament to continue debating on an issue which has already been closed.

Furthermore, Bercow announced in his statement that this decision wasnt purely of his own making. He claims he had been approached by MPs on both sides of the House from Leave and Remain supporters alike who were concerned about the government being permitted to bring back the same motion, again and again, hoping for a different outcome.

His ruling is in accordance with Erskine May, which acts as a bible for parliamentary decisions and procedures, to avoid deadlocked proposals being brought in front of the House once a decision had already been made.

Support

Although supporters of Mays deal have argued Bercows statement has come at an unhelpful time, with just days to go until our leaving deadline of 29 March, supporters of both no-deal Brexit and a second referendum have expressed support of Bercows ruling as neither side were happy with the deal May has presented so far.

Conservative Brexit supporter, Bill Cash, claimed Bercows ruling made an enormous amount of sense, highlighting that Mays deal has already been defeated on two separate occasions. The most recent defeat of Mays deal was voted on 12 March, when she suffered another enormous defeat of 149 votes.

On the other side of the argument, Brexit Secretory Stephen Barclay stated a no-deal Brexit as unlikely due to the recent vote whereby the House has already moved to take no deal off the table. This vote was followed by another where MPs voted in favour of May writing to the EU to request an extension of Article 50, the legal mechanism by which the UK will withdraw from the European Union.

The current state of play

Part of the fury at Bercows ruling against May bringing back the same deal for yet another vote comes from claims that her intention was to do just that, having spent the last week rallying support from DUP and Conservative Brexiteers to vote for her deal following further clarifications being made regarding the controversial Irish Backstop.

Following the latest ruling, however, clarifications are unlikely to satisfy the requirement for substantial changes which Bercow has stated are required for a third vote to be allowed.

As it stands, Mrs. May will be writing to European Council President Donald Tusk to request an extension to the UKs leaving date of 29 March.

However, this must be approved by all 27 member states in order to go ahead.

Many MPs are hoping for a short extension in order to get the required legislation in place for a smooth Brexit, and that should Mrs. Mays deal be approved then this is all thats required, although Bercows ruling that substantial changes must be provided may mean a longer extension than ideally hoped for will be required.

In terms of the EU, it seems likely they will agree to extend Article 50, although it is clear that the European Union will want some sort of explanation as to what is hoped to be achieved during an extension. As Frances Europe Minister, Nathalie Loiseau, stated, time is not a solution, and a reason for the extension will be required for it to be granted.

In the meantime, theres growing support for a peoples vote which could include the option to Remain in the EU as a potential way out of the deadlock.

What next?

Following the ruling, there are a few options which May and her government could consider to get around the same question issue.

Firstly, MPs could vote on whether to ignore the same question convention which has been in place for 400 years to protect the Houses time and decisions. Although Stephen Barclay claimed MPs must respect the referee, Children and Families Minister Nadhim Zahawi suggested the government could push to ignore Bercows ruling and that they have to look at all our options when deciding how to move forward.

According to Solicitor General Robert Buckland, this is the most likely course of action and that if enough MPs show support for a third vote, then Bercows ruling could be overturned.

Based on Erskine May, the same question may not be brought forward again during the same session of parliament. The session could be ended by suspending parliament and starting a new session. This could require a speech from the Queen, which risks putting her in an awkward position as part of the UK convention requires Her Majesty to remain apolitical insofar as is possible, and asking her to get involved in starting a new parliamentary session could be seen as allowing the Queen to provider her political opinion.

This option would also require an emergency General Election to take place, so also means that Mays government may lose control on the situation entirely should the British public choose to vote against the Conservatives at the next opportunity.

The third option would require May to obtain the substantial changes required to bring her deal for a legal third meaningful vote. However the EU has previously expressed disinterest in any further negotiations regarding the Brexit deal at this time, so questions remain over whether May will be able to secure a sufficiently different deal to satisfy the same question issue.
A new group of Algerian political leaders, opposition figures and activists are calling on Algerias powerful generals to stay out of politics.It comes as protesters continue protesting in an effort to push President Abdelaziz Bouteflika out from power, despite his claim that he will no longer run in the upcoming presidential elections.On Monday evening, the National Coordination for Change, a collective of leaders from the nearly month-long protests, released a statement entitled Platform of Change demanding that Bouteflika step down before the end of his mandate on April 28th and that his government resign immediately.Shortly after Bouteflika confirmed his plans to stay in power after his mandate expires.Foreign interventionMeanwhile, Algerian deputy prime minister, Ramtane Lamamra wrapped up a visit on Tuesday in Moscow with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.Following on from Bouteflikas comments on Monday, Lamamara said that Algiers would find a solution to the situation that would be open and transparent.Lavrov added that any plans from the Algerian government would be supported.The one element that has remained consistent between protesters and the current government is a refusal of foreign intervention.Algeria still bears the scars from its French colonial past.So any foreign help, no matter how measured it is, is looked on with suspicion.This issue is very sensitive in Algerian politics because of the legacy of colonialism says Arthur Asseraf, lecturer at University of Cambridge with a specialty in the history of colonial Algeria.In particular, any moves by France will be met with caution.Any attempt by the French government to do anything really, is very badly considered and they are accused of having propped up this regime for the past 20 years and then before. . .If they don't say anything against the regime, they will be badly seen by the demonstrators. But if they say something too intense, they will be accused of meddling in Algerian affairs, which is a very negative thing for Algeria.Role of militaryOn Tuesday morning, The National Coordination for Change said the military should play its constitutional role without interfering in the people choice.To date, the Algerian army has not taken a major role in the protests.But on Monday, the Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Ahmed Gaed Salah indicated that the military should take on the responsibility of finding a quick solution to the crisis.Historically, Algerias military has played an important role in the country since independence.Following the war of independence in 1962 against France, the army declared itself a legitimate force having defeated the French army, though Asseraf notes this was not a strictly military victory, the Algerian army never defeated the French army.But it did participate in the war and it carved out a role for itself in the transition to Algerian rule post-France.Asseraf stresses its misleading, however, to refer to Algeria as a military government, when compared to other countries such as Egypt or Syria, as its always been a fairly mixed system with elements of the ruling party, the FLN, the other interest group which has shifted a lot since independence.In the context of today since the protests broke out on February 22nd, the army was called in to maintain order among the demonstrators.But at most, it's used tear gas and pushed back against a few rowdy protesters.Since day one, protesters have vowed to keep their marches peaceful.So the army hasnt done much to push-back against protesters as was the case in 1988 when demonstrations turned violent says Asseraf.Added to that is the mere fact that the military is not entirely uniform. There are different interest groups within the army itself, so its not clear that everyone is speaking with one voice adds the historian.Revolution?This is definitely its own social movement says Asseraf. People on the ground have been referring to it as a social movement.While the semantics dont really change whats going on in Algeria, the far-reaching effects it has cannot go unnoticed nor the scope of people taking part in the action.Never since the Algerian War of Independence have the Algerians risen in this way to unite all the people around a common goal says the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt.Prior to the eruption of protests, Algerians were often seen as totally passivethere were never any complaints or protests says Asseraf.Facts that are untrue, given there were always small scale protests, but never to the level that we are currently seeing.The one comparison that people have made is the independence demonstrations in 1962. . . .lots of people flooded out into the streets, just joyfully and they danced, and they sang, and they remember this, so a lot of older people, have been coming out in to the streets in recent weeks on Friday and crying because they say this reminds them of the independent celebrations of July in 1962 adds the lecturer.And as the thousands continue to flood the streets of the Algerian capital and other major cities across the country, the demand remains the same.The Algerian people will not accept any approach that will tend to extend the current system, whether from the brother entourage or the friend, say leaders from the protest.

A new group of Algerian political leaders, opposition figures and activists are calling on Algerias powerful generals to stay out of politics.

It comes as protesters continue protesting in an effort to push President Abdelaziz Bouteflika out from power, despite his claim that he will no longer run in the upcoming presidential elections.

On Monday evening, the National Coordination for Change, a collective of leaders from the nearly month-long protests, released a statement entitled Platform of Change demanding that Bouteflika step down before the end of his mandate on April 28th and that his government resign immediately.

Shortly after Bouteflika confirmed his plans to stay in power after his mandate expires.

Foreign intervention

Meanwhile, Algerian deputy prime minister, Ramtane Lamamra wrapped up a visit on Tuesday in Moscow with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Following on from Bouteflikas comments on Monday, Lamamara said that Algiers would find a solution to the situation that would be open and transparent.

Lavrov added that any plans from the Algerian government would be supported.

The one element that has remained consistent between protesters and the current government is a refusal of foreign intervention.

Algeria still bears the scars from its French colonial past.

So any foreign help, no matter how measured it is, is looked on with suspicion.

This issue is very sensitive in Algerian politics because of the legacy of colonialism says Arthur Asseraf, lecturer at University of Cambridge with a specialty in the history of colonial Algeria.

In particular, any moves by France will be met with caution.

Any attempt by the French government to do anything really, is very badly considered and they are accused of having propped up this regime for the past 20 years and then before. . .If they don't say anything against the regime, they will be badly seen by the demonstrators. But if they say something too intense, they will be accused of meddling in Algerian affairs, which is a very negative thing for Algeria.

Story continues

Role of military

On Tuesday morning, The National Coordination for Change said the military should play its constitutional role without interfering in the people choice.

To date, the Algerian army has not taken a major role in the protests.

But on Monday, the Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Ahmed Gaed Salah indicated that the military should take on the responsibility of finding a quick solution to the crisis.

Historically, Algerias military has played an important role in the country since independence.

Following the war of independence in 1962 against France, the army declared itself a legitimate force having defeated the French army, though Asseraf notes this was not a strictly military victory, the Algerian army never defeated the French army.

But it did participate in the war and it carved out a role for itself in the transition to Algerian rule post-France.

Asseraf stresses its misleading, however, to refer to Algeria as a military government, when compared to other countries such as Egypt or Syria, as its always been a fairly mixed system with elements of the ruling party, the FLN, the other interest group which has shifted a lot since independence.

In the context of today since the protests broke out on February 22nd, the army was called in to maintain order among the demonstrators.

But at most, it's used tear gas and pushed back against a few rowdy protesters.

Since day one, protesters have vowed to keep their marches peaceful.

So the army hasnt done much to push-back against protesters as was the case in 1988 when demonstrations turned violent says Asseraf.

Added to that is the mere fact that the military is not entirely uniform. There are different interest groups within the army itself, so its not clear that everyone is speaking with one voice adds the historian.

Revolution?

This is definitely its own social movement says Asseraf. People on the ground have been referring to it as a social movement.

While the semantics dont really change whats going on in Algeria, the far-reaching effects it has cannot go unnoticed nor the scope of people taking part in the action.

Never since the Algerian War of Independence have the Algerians risen in this way to unite all the people around a common goal says the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt.

Prior to the eruption of protests, Algerians were often seen as totally passivethere were never any complaints or protests says Asseraf.

Facts that are untrue, given there were always small scale protests, but never to the level that we are currently seeing.

The one comparison that people have made is the independence demonstrations in 1962. . . .lots of people flooded out into the streets, just joyfully and they danced, and they sang, and they remember this, so a lot of older people, have been coming out in to the streets in recent weeks on Friday and crying because they say this reminds them of the independent celebrations of July in 1962 adds the lecturer.

And as the thousands continue to flood the streets of the Algerian capital and other major cities across the country, the demand remains the same.

The Algerian people will not accept any approach that will tend to extend the current system, whether from the brother entourage or the friend, say leaders from the protest.
By Maggie Fick, Tim Hepher and David Shepardson

ADDIS ABABA/PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Europe and Canada said they would seek their own guarantees over the safety of Boeing's 737 MAX, further complicating plans to get the aircraft flying worldwide after they were grounded in the wake of two accidents killing more than 300 people.

As the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) analyses Boeing's plans for a software fix prompted by the first crash five months ago, the European Union's aviation safety agency EASA promised its own deep look at any design improvements.

"We will not allow the aircraft to fly if we have not found acceptable answers to all our questions," EASA Executive Director Patrick Ky told an EU parliament committee hearing.

Canada said it would independently certify the 737 MAX in the future, rather than accepting FAA validation. It also said it would send a team to help U.S. authorities evaluate proposed design changes and decide if others were needed.

Boeing Co declined to comment.

U.S. government officials do not believe the crash will lead to a worldwide shift away from FAA certifications but U.S. lawmakers, as well as federal prosecutors, are scrutinizing the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX.

The FAA declined to comment on individual actions by Canada or other countries, but said in a statement that the current, historic aviation safety record in the U.S. and globally is achieved through the FAAs robust processes and full collaboration with the aviation community."

The U.S. Transportation Department's inspector general plans to audit the FAA's certification of the jet, an official with the office said on Tuesday. The office can recommend changes or improvements to how the FAA operates. Boeing said it would cooperate with the audit.

The unusual public intervention by two leading regulators came as a probe into the final minutes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 turned toward secrets hidden in the cockpit voice recorder.

Story continues

The voices of Captain Yared Getachew and First Officer Ahmednur Mohammed could help explain the March 10 crash of the Boeing 737 MAX that has worrying parallels with another disaster involving the same model off Indonesia in October.

The twin disasters killed 346 people, but there is no conclusive evidence so far that they are linked.

Black box data was downloaded in France but only Ethiopian experts leading the probe have access to the dialogue between Getachew, 29, and Mohammed, 25. The data was back in Addis Ababa on Tuesday, sources familiar with the probe told Reuters.

Experts believe a new automated system in Boeing's flagship MAX fleet - intended to stop stalling by dipping the nose - may have played a role in both crashes, with pilots unable to override it as their jets plunged downwards.

Both came down just minutes after take-off after erratic flight patterns and loss of control reported by the pilots. However, every accident is a unique chain of human and technical factors, experts say.

The prestige of Ethiopian Airlines, one of Africa's most successful companies, and Boeing, the world's biggest planemaker and a massive U.S. exporter, are at stake.

GRAPHIC: The grounded 737 Max fleet - https://tmsnrt.rs/2u5sZYI

AWKWARD QUESTIONS FOR INDUSTRY

Lawmakers and safety experts are questioning how thoroughly regulators vetted the MAX model and how well pilots were trained on new features. For now, global regulators have grounded the existing fleet of more than 300 MAX aircraft, and deliveries of nearly 5,000 more - worth well over $500 billion (376.6 billion) - are on hold. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Hv2btC)

Pressure on Chicago-headquartered Boeing has grown with news that federal prosecutors are scrutinising how carefully the MAX model was developed, two people briefed on the matter said.

The U.S. Justice Department is also looking at the FAA's oversight of Boeing, one of the people said. And a federal grand jury last week issued at least one subpoena to an entity involved in the plane's development.

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to nominate former Delta Air Lines executive Steve Dickson to head the FAA on Tuesday. The agency has been without a permanent head for 14 months.

In the hope of getting its MAX line back into the air soon, Boeing has said it will roll out a software update and revise pilot training. In the case of the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, it has raised questions about whether crew used the correct procedures.

Development of the 737 MAX, which offers cost savings of about 15 percent on fuel, began in 2011 after the successful launch by its main rival of the Airbus A320neo. The 737 MAX entered service in 2017 after six years of preparation.

Argus Research cut Boeing stock to "hold" from "buy", giving the planemaker at least its fourth downgrade since the crash, Refinitiv data showed. Its shares, however, were enjoying a rare respite on Tuesday, up 0.3 percent at $373.43.

GRAPHIC: Ethiopian Airlines crash - https://tmsnrt.rs/2Hn6V4k

GLOBAL RAMIFICATIONS

Various firms are reconsidering Boeing orders, and some are revising financial forecasts given they now cannot count on maintenance and fuel savings factored in from the MAX.

Air Canada said it intended to keep its MAX aircraft grounded until at least July 1, would accelerate intake of recently acquired Airbus A321 planes, and had hired other carriers to provide extra capacity meantime.

Beyond the corporate ramifications, anguished relatives are still waiting to find out what happened.

Many have visited the crash site in a charred field to seek some closure, but there is anger at the slow pace of information and all they have been given for funerals is earth.

"I'm just so terribly sad. I had to leave here without the body of my dead brother," said Abdulmajid Shariff, a Yemeni relative who headed home disappointed on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Maggie Fick in Addis Ababa, Tim Hepher in Paris and David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting by Jason Neely in Addis Ababa, David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Jamie Freed in Singapore, Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Savio D'Souza in Bengaluru; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Ben Klayman; Editing by Keith Weir, Mark Potter and Lisa Shumaker)
Another case of a questionable arrest, forced confession and death penalty sentence in the world of Saudi Arabian justice.According to Amnesty International, there were some 993 executions in 23 countries in 2017, with the greatest number of executions taking place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan, in that respective order.The figures for 2018 have yet to be published, but countries that maintain the death penalty are now in the minority.Here in France, the National Assembly voted to abolish the death penalty in 1981 and the most recent country to abolish capital punishment for all crimes is Guinea in 2017.At present, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is under considerable international pressure with regards to its poor human rights record, particularly in cases related to those who speak-up against the country, such as activists and journalists.In 2019 alone, there have been a reported 23 executions, with 150 executed in 2018. In 2017 that number was 146.45 people are believed to be on death row in the kingdom since the end of 2017.A familiar taleOn May 18th 2014, Jordanian national Hussein Abulkheir was arrested upon returning to his month-old job as a driver in Saudi Arabia.Speaking to RFI from Geneva, his sister Zeinab recounted his story as she tries to find a way to get her brother acquitted.She says her brother was arrested after returning from a visit to his hometown Aqaba, Jordan where his wife and eight children live.He had just begun working in the Saudi city of Tabuk, after finding it hard to make ends meet running his own tyre repair shop in Aqaba.After a month of work in Tabuk, he returned home for a visit.But when crossing the border, he was asked step out of the car in which he was traveling, and the vehicle was then searched.Drugs were then allegedly found in his car  specifically Captagon, which contains an amphetamine-like stimualnt known as Fenethylline - and he was immediately arrested.Over the following 12 days, Abulkheir was allegedly tortured and then forced into signing a confession.Eight months later, without access to a lawyer, he was tried in court and found guilty of smuggling drugs and sentenced to death by beheading.Abulkheir appealed this sentence and another trial was held, again with no access to a lawyer.He was once again sentenced to death by the sword.Eye-for-an-eye punishmentThe charge of smuggling drugs into the kingdom is a crime that is not necessarily met by death; that is at the discretion of each judge.The penal code system in Saudi Arabia is based on the Islamic law principle of qisas, or tit-for-tat retributive punishment.For example, murdering someone is a crime met by the same sentence, death.But in the case of drug smuggling, there is no exact equivalency, thus a judge is free to decide on the best sentence, as he sees fits.The judge may also rely on a 1987 fatwa (a non-binding legal ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority) declared by the kingdoms Council of Senior Religious Scholars that suggests death for any drug smuggler.According to Human Rights Watch, between 2014 to 2018 the kingdom has executed over 200 people in drug-related cases.International standardsThe League of Arab States put forward The Arab Charter on Human Rights that was adopted in Cairo on September 15, 1994.The charter lays out certain regulations and practices pertaining to humanitarian values.Such articles include the use of the death penalty, as stated in Part II, Article 10Saudi Arabia ratified the charter in 1994, yet since cases of drug smuggling are still being met with capital punishment, one can assume that drug smuggling is regarded as a most serious of crimes that warrants death.Pressure to abandon capital punishment?Saudi Arabia has faced numerous calls from across the globe to end the death penalty, or at least adopt a moratorium on executions says Human Rights Watch.But, despite the veneer of reforms introduced by the young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Adbulaziz Al Saud, or MBS as hes often referred to, 2018 alone saw a rise in the number of cases being referred to the death penalty.A Mecca for CaptagonAccording to the European Union Institute for Security Studies, there have been reports about Captagons proliferation in the Middle Eastern markets, especially in Saudi Arabia.Another article in the online journal Raseef22 notes that Saudi Arabia is considered the largest market for importing Captagonand considered one of the toughest challenges for Saudi Arabian authorities.In the black market, a tablet can retail at 12 US dollars. A seizure can be worth nearly 294 million US dollars according to 2015 prices, reports EUISS.The counter-narcotics strategy is run by the Saudi Interior Ministry and is considered more of an imported security threat rather than a domestic social problem states EUISS.In a way, the war against Captagon is similar to the American war on drugs.Given the opaque legal proceedings against those allegedly charged in connection with Captogon, such as in the case of Abulkheir, it wouldnt be surprising if a few people were being used as an example to show authorities and locals that the counter-narcotics strategy is in fact working; even if those very people had nothing to do with the drug.

Another case of a questionable arrest, forced confession and death penalty sentence in the world of Saudi Arabian justice.

According to Amnesty International, there were some 993 executions in 23 countries in 2017, with the greatest number of executions taking place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan, in that respective order.

The figures for 2018 have yet to be published, but countries that maintain the death penalty are now in the minority.

Here in France, the National Assembly voted to abolish the death penalty in 1981 and the most recent country to abolish capital punishment for all crimes is Guinea in 2017.

At present, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is under considerable international pressure with regards to its poor human rights record, particularly in cases related to those who speak-up against the country, such as activists and journalists.

In 2019 alone, there have been a reported 23 executions, with 150 executed in 2018. In 2017 that number was 146.

45 people are believed to be on death row in the kingdom since the end of 2017.

A familiar tale

On May 18th 2014, Jordanian national Hussein Abulkheir was arrested upon returning to his month-old job as a driver in Saudi Arabia.

Speaking to RFI from Geneva, his sister Zeinab recounted his story as she tries to find a way to get her brother acquitted.

She says her brother was arrested after returning from a visit to his hometown Aqaba, Jordan where his wife and eight children live.

He had just begun working in the Saudi city of Tabuk, after finding it hard to make ends meet running his own tyre repair shop in Aqaba.

After a month of work in Tabuk, he returned home for a visit.

But when crossing the border, he was asked step out of the car in which he was traveling, and the vehicle was then searched.

Drugs were then allegedly found in his car  specifically Captagon, which contains an amphetamine-like stimualnt known as Fenethylline - and he was immediately arrested.

Story continues

Over the following 12 days, Abulkheir was allegedly tortured and then forced into signing a confession.

Eight months later, without access to a lawyer, he was tried in court and found guilty of smuggling drugs and sentenced to death by beheading.

Abulkheir appealed this sentence and another trial was held, again with no access to a lawyer.

He was once again sentenced to death by the sword.

Eye-for-an-eye punishment

The charge of smuggling drugs into the kingdom is a crime that is not necessarily met by death; that is at the discretion of each judge.

The penal code system in Saudi Arabia is based on the Islamic law principle of qisas, or tit-for-tat retributive punishment.

For example, murdering someone is a crime met by the same sentence, death.

But in the case of drug smuggling, there is no exact equivalency, thus a judge is free to decide on the best sentence, as he sees fits.

The judge may also rely on a 1987 fatwa (a non-binding legal ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority) declared by the kingdoms Council of Senior Religious Scholars that suggests death for any drug smuggler.

According to Human Rights Watch, between 2014 to 2018 the kingdom has executed over 200 people in drug-related cases.

International standards

The League of Arab States put forward The Arab Charter on Human Rights that was adopted in Cairo on September 15, 1994.

The charter lays out certain regulations and practices pertaining to humanitarian values.

Such articles include the use of the death penalty, as stated in Part II, Article 10

Saudi Arabia ratified the charter in 1994, yet since cases of drug smuggling are still being met with capital punishment, one can assume that drug smuggling is regarded as a most serious of crimes that warrants death.

Pressure to abandon capital punishment?

Saudi Arabia has faced numerous calls from across the globe to end the death penalty, or at least adopt a moratorium on executions says Human Rights Watch.

But, despite the veneer of reforms introduced by the young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Adbulaziz Al Saud, or MBS as hes often referred to, 2018 alone saw a rise in the number of cases being referred to the death penalty.

A Mecca for Captagon

According to the European Union Institute for Security Studies, there have been reports about Captagons proliferation in the Middle Eastern markets, especially in Saudi Arabia.

Another article in the online journal Raseef22 notes that Saudi Arabia is considered the largest market for importing Captagonand considered one of the toughest challenges for Saudi Arabian authorities.

In the black market, a tablet can retail at 12 US dollars. A seizure can be worth nearly 294 million US dollars according to 2015 prices, reports EUISS.

The counter-narcotics strategy is run by the Saudi Interior Ministry and is considered more of an imported security threat rather than a domestic social problem states EUISS.

In a way, the war against Captagon is similar to the American war on drugs.

Given the opaque legal proceedings against those allegedly charged in connection with Captogon, such as in the case of Abulkheir, it wouldnt be surprising if a few people were being used as an example to show authorities and locals that the counter-narcotics strategy is in fact working; even if those very people had nothing to do with the drug.
Mediterranea Saving Humans said on March 18 that it had rescued 49 people from the sea 42 miles off the coast of Libya, prompting a new standoff with Italian authorities.

The Mare Jonio vessel remained off the coast of Lampedusa on March 19, but Italys interior ministry said those on board, including 12 minors according to rescuers, would not be allowed land. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini tweeted the ports remain closed. Credit: Mediterranea Saving Humans via Storyful
A body has been found in the search for a 30-year-old mother who went missing while at a hen party.

Ruth Maguire, 30, was last seen at 11.30pm while out celebrating in Carlingford in the Republic of Ireland, Belfast Live reported.

The search for her has been stood down after a body was discovered in the water at Carlingford Lough on Monday afternoon, officials said.

Ms Maguire was originally from Belfast but lived in the village of Newcastle, Co Down.

Her friend Seana McMullan posted on Facebook on Sunday: "It's now been a full 24 hours since Ruth Maguire has been seen.

"She was separated from our hen party in Carlingford and we assumed that she would return by morning after a few of the girls searched for her."

The post added: "Her phone has not been active since 12pm last night."

Her friend Katrina O'Hare told Belfast Live: "We thought she was going to head home to Newcastle because she had said to a bouncer she was going to get to Newcastle from here, but her partner and her kids were at her mum's house in Ligoniel.

"He drove down today and she was not there."

Gardai in Carlingford, County Louth, said Ms Maguire was reported missing on Sunday 17 March.

The force said in a statement: "(Officers) are conducting a search operation along with other agencies in trying to locate a 30-year-old female who became separated from her friends."
Dutch prosecutors and police said Tuesday they were taking "seriously" the possibility of a terrorist motive behind the Utrecht tram attack based on evidence including a letter found in the main suspect's getaway car. Dutch authorities were searching Tuesday for the motive behind a gun attack on an Utrecht tram that killed three people a day earlier, withDutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saying authorities were trying to determine whether the attack had "terror motives".The Turkish-born main suspect, identified as Gokmen Tanis, 37, was known to authorities and had a criminal record, said Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus. Tanis was detained Monday after a manhunt that saw the historic city of nearly 350,000 people under a security lockdown for most of the day."So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," Dutch police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.Armed counter-terrorism officers meanwhile arrested one new suspect, aged 40, in Utrecht who was "suspected of being involved in the shooting incident", prosecutors said, adding that his "role was being further investigated".Two other men who were arrested Monday in connection with the shooting had been released, prosecutors added.Reporting from The Hague, FRANCE 24s Stephanie Van den Berg said the suspect can be held for three days before appearing before a judge under Dutch law. The main question that everyone is trying to figure out is what exactly was the motive because were hearing mixed things," she said. "Were hearing from his friends and family that the gunman is a psychiatric patient, that he has psychiatric trouble and that he had some kind of family feud and may be this shooting is related to that."On the other hand, there are also reports that he is linked to extremist Islam via a brother who fought in Chechnya and went through periods of being extremely devout and Muslim, and also periods of using a lot of drugs and kind of spiraling out of control.While the identities of the victims have not been officially released, Van den Berg said the names of some of the victims have been mentioned on social media sites. Their identities could provide clues about the motives for the attack, she said.There are rumours that one of the victims is somehow related to the gunman. But we dont have anything confirmed, and among the victims who have been named on social media, they dont seem to have any link to the gunman.Local media said Tanis had been charged several times over the past years with offences ranging from attempted manslaughter to petty crime in and around Utrecht. Two weeks ago he was in court on charges of raping of woman in 2017, news reports said.Tightened securityThe shooting came three days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating white supremacist opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers. There was no immediate indication of any link between the two events.The Utrecht attack took place at a busy intersection in a residential neighbourhood. The gunman was alleged to have had an automatic weapon, said Grapperhaus.In the aftermath of the shooting, Dutch authorities put the Netherlands' fourth-largest city on lockdown, raised the threat level in the area to the maximum of five and tightened security at airports and key buildings in the country. Police issued a photo of a bearded Tanis aboard a tram in a blue hooded top."If it is a terror attack," the prime minister declared, "then we have only one answer: Our nation, democracy, must be stronger than fanaticism and violence."Heavily armed officers with dogs searched for the killer, gathering at one point in front of an apartment building close to the scene. However, the suspect was later arrested at another location in the city. The threat level soon returned to four.Police said a red Renault compact car was carjacked shortly before the shooting and later found across town.Reports of targeting a womanThe drama began when gunfire broke out on a tram near the 24 Oktoberplein square, sending people fleeing from the tram and triggering a huge police response.Reports in Dutch media quoted eyewitnesses as saying the gunman appeared to target one woman and others who tried to help her.One witness told broadcaster NOS they saw an injured woman running out of the tram with blood on her hands and clothes who then fell to the ground."I brought her into my car and helped her. When the police arrived, she was unconscious," the witness, who was not named, told NOS.A body covered in a white sheet could later be seen lying on the tram tracks.(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)

Dutch prosecutors and police said Tuesday they were taking "seriously" the possibility of a terrorist motive behind the Utrecht tram attack based on evidence including a letter found in the main suspect's getaway car.

Dutch authorities were searching Tuesday for the motive behind a gun attack on an Utrecht tram that killed three people a day earlier, withDutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saying authorities were trying to determine whether the attack had "terror motives".

The Turkish-born main suspect, identified as Gokmen Tanis, 37, was known to authorities and had a criminal record, said Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus.

Tanis was detained Monday after a manhunt that saw the historic city of nearly 350,000 people under a security lockdown for most of the day.

"So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," Dutch police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.

Armed counter-terrorism officers meanwhile arrested one new suspect, aged 40, in Utrecht who was "suspected of being involved in the shooting incident", prosecutors said, adding that his "role was being further investigated".

Two other men who were arrested Monday in connection with the shooting had been released, prosecutors added.

Reporting from The Hague, FRANCE 24s Stephanie Van den Berg said the suspect can be held for three days before appearing before a judge under Dutch law.

The main question that everyone is trying to figure out is what exactly was the motive because were hearing mixed things," she said. "Were hearing from his friends and family that the gunman is a psychiatric patient, that he has psychiatric trouble and that he had some kind of family feud and may be this shooting is related to that."

On the other hand, there are also reports that he is linked to extremist Islam via a brother who fought in Chechnya and went through periods of being extremely devout and Muslim, and also periods of using a lot of drugs and kind of spiraling out of control.

Story continues

While the identities of the victims have not been officially released, Van den Berg said the names of some of the victims have been mentioned on social media sites. Their identities could provide clues about the motives for the attack, she said.

There are rumours that one of the victims is somehow related to the gunman. But we dont have anything confirmed, and among the victims who have been named on social media, they dont seem to have any link to the gunman.

Local media said Tanis had been charged several times over the past years with offences ranging from attempted manslaughter to petty crime in and around Utrecht. Two weeks ago he was in court on charges of raping of woman in 2017, news reports said.

Tightened security

The shooting came three days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating white supremacist opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers. There was no immediate indication of any link between the two events.

The Utrecht attack took place at a busy intersection in a residential neighbourhood. The gunman was alleged to have had an automatic weapon, said Grapperhaus.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Dutch authorities put the Netherlands' fourth-largest city on lockdown, raised the threat level in the area to the maximum of five and tightened security at airports and key buildings in the country. Police issued a photo of a bearded Tanis aboard a tram in a blue hooded top.

"If it is a terror attack," the prime minister declared, "then we have only one answer: Our nation, democracy, must be stronger than fanaticism and violence."

Heavily armed officers with dogs searched for the killer, gathering at one point in front of an apartment building close to the scene. However, the suspect was later arrested at another location in the city. The threat level soon returned to four.

Police said a red Renault compact car was carjacked shortly before the shooting and later found across town.

Reports of targeting a woman

The drama began when gunfire broke out on a tram near the 24 Oktoberplein square, sending people fleeing from the tram and triggering a huge police response.

Reports in Dutch media quoted eyewitnesses as saying the gunman appeared to target one woman and others who tried to help her.

One witness told broadcaster NOS they saw an injured woman running out of the tram with blood on her hands and clothes who then fell to the ground.

"I brought her into my car and helped her. When the police arrived, she was unconscious," the witness, who was not named, told NOS.

A body covered in a white sheet could later be seen lying on the tram tracks.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)
First China-Pakistan FM-level dialogue to be held in China

BEIJING: The first China-Pakistan foreign minister-level strategic dialogue will be held on Tuesday in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said on Monday.



The strategic dialogue will be co-chaired by Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Chinas State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, he said during a routine press briefing. Giving the details, the spokesperson said the two sides will exchange views on China-Pakistan relations and international and regional issues of common concern. He pointed out that India-Pakistan relations and regional situation recently remained very tense and hoped that the two sides will touch this issue as well in the dialogue.



What I want to say here is that as a friendly neighbour of India and Pakistan, China actively promotes peace and promotes talks and has played a constructive role in easing tensions in future, he said. The Chinese side will continue to encourage India and Pakistan to move in the same direction, resolve differences through dialogue and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability, he added.



While commenting on the first meeting between officials of India and Pakistan to discuss Kartarpur corridor, he welcomed the latest interaction between the two countries and hoped that the progress will help further normalize India-Pakistan relations and the regional situation. India and Pakistan are neighbours who cannot geographically change the place. It is in fundamental interest of both the sides that they live in harmony with each other  this is also a common expectation of the international community, he added.



The spokesperson also hoped that the two sides will continue to demonstrate goodwill and move in the right direction to resolve differences through dialogue, improve relations and jointly safeguard regional peace and stability.



Responding to a question, he said he cannot predict which specific issues will be discussed in the strategic dialogue between the foreign ministers of China and Pakistan. But as I said earlier, the dialogue will definitely involve China-Pakistan bilateral relations and international and regional issues of common concern, he added.



To a question about the issue of listing of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Azhar Masood, he said the position of the Chinese side is already very clear and I will not repeat it here. He emphasized that China will continue to handle this matter in a constructive and responsible manner and maintain close communication with all the relevant parties, including India and Pakistan.



Meanwhile, Shah Mahmood Qureshi addressed a large gathering of Chinese scholars and researchers at the China Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS) in Beijing.



In his speech, the foreign minister said that the all-weather friendship between Pakistan and China is an anchor of regional peace and security. He also highlighted the recent developments in South Asia and Pakistans efforts to defuse the tensions. Referring to volatile strategic environment in the region, the foreign minister stressed the need for a meaningful dialogue between neighbouring countries to ensure regional peace and stability.
A map illustrating Chinas silk road economic belt and the 21st century maritime silk road, or the so-called One Belt, One Road megaproject, is displayed at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong, China. Photo: Reuters/Bobby Yip

The UK parliament has voted down prime minister Theresa Mays Brexit deal twice and a third is apparently on the table. But while politicians also voted to reject Britain leaving the EU without an agreement, there is still a possibility that there could be a no-deal Brexit  also known as a hard Brexit.

This means there is still a risk to contagion spreading to other parts of the globe.

In a recent research note from Nomura, entitled What the Brexit saga means for Asia, authors Rob Subbaraman and Michael Loo said that Asia would only face serious contagion in the event of a hard Brexit.

The note was published just before the second parliamentary vote and the authors, like most analysts, pointed out that a hard Brexit was an unlikely event. However, even though members of parliament have voted to reject a no-deal Brexit when Britain is legally meant to leave the EU on 29 March, that vote is not legally binding and a hard Brexit could still be an outcome for the nation further down the line.

Nomuras Subbaraman and Loo said that the UK crashing out of the EU would likely drive the economy into recession and prompt a large depreciation of GBP. The [Bank of England] could be forced to raise rates, putting considerable strain on the UK financial sector.

While the UK is not a major export market for Asia, it is Britains connections to the Asian financial sector that pose a great risk, according to the note.

Reflecting the UKs position as a global financial hub  UK financial sector assets account for over 8x its GDP  the financial channel is significant, Subbaraman and Loo said.

UK banks have relatively large claims on Asia, particularly in the two financial hubs, Hong Kong and Singapore, but also in Malaysia and Taiwan.

A global asset market sell-off could add to this financial channel, through negative wealth, confidence, and liquidity effects. However, we believe only in the unlikely event of a hard Brexit would there be a high risk of UK banks retrenching from Asia and activating these financial channels.
UK & Ireland Sunday Briefing: Kevin Killeen Wins the Bigger $109

March 19 2019 Matthew Pitt

Mar. 17 saw dozens of online poker tournament players hailing from the United Kingdom and Ireland help themselves to substantial prizes at 888poker, partypoker and PokerStars.

One such player was Irelands Kevin torino2000 Killeen who came out on top of a 1,365-strong field in the PokerStars Bigger $109 for a $21,026 score. Killeen, a former UKIPT Dublin champion, was joined on the final table by the UKs Ben Spraggy Spragg who busted in eighth-place for a $2,088 prize.

The UK had two players at the final table of the $1,050 Sunday Warm-Up 8-Max. tua133 fell in fourth-place for $18,745 while Damian DamoWain Wain managed to go one place deeper, busting in third-place for a $24,671 addition to his bankroll.

MkMyWishFish came close to a massive prize when they reached the final table of the $109 Sunday Million. The British player outlasted almost all of the 10,360-entrants in the $1 million guaranteed event, but ran out of steam to bust in ninth-place, a finish worth $7,727.

Some of the other notable PokerStars cashes on mar. 17 included:

Harry Iamapoopie Lodge - third-place in the $1,050 Sunday Supersonic for $22,792

- third-place in the $1,050 Sunday Supersonic for $22,792 mcsmudge - second-place in the $109 Bounty Builder for $22,033*

- second-place in the $109 Bounty Builder for $22,033* Weland holly17 Holroyd - second-place in the $215 Sunday Supersonic for $18,194

- second-place in the $215 Sunday Supersonic for $18,194 Damian DamoWain Wain  fourth-place in the $530 Sunday 500 for $11,311

BeatZer0 - fifth-place in the $109 Bounty Builder for $9,726

- fifth-place in the $109 Bounty Builder for $9,726 Conor 1_conor_b_1 Beresford  eighth-place in the $2,100 Sunday High Roller for $7,990

 eighth-place in the $2,100 Sunday High Roller for $7,990 ilucky2 - fourth-place in the Bigger $215 for $6,659

- fourth-place in the Bigger $215 for $6,659 OLDWOLF133 - sixth-place in the $530 Sunday 500 for $6,341

- sixth-place in the $530 Sunday 500 for $6,341 Euan mrnappa Baxte r - third-place finish in the $109 Sunday Kickoff for $5,069

r - third-place finish in the $109 Sunday Kickoff for $5,069 Crokou - fifth-place in the $530 Omania High Roller for $3,902

Over at 888poker, WalnutPix narrowly missed out on taking down the $1,050 Whale, a $50,000 guaranteed tournament. The Brit finished second from 43-entries to win $15,000.

This weekends $215 Sunday Mega Deep $100,000 Gtd saw four players from the UK and one from Ireland reach the final table. Dara Doked OKearney busted in seventh-place and collected $3,400 while rivaldi13 banked $5,700 for their fifth-place finish. Former Irish Open champion Ian Simpioni Simpson fell in fourth-place for a $8,250 score, while tupastacerdo went one place deeper and turned their $1,050 into $11,000.

The tournaments champion was one of our own, paraRC who fired two bullets at the prize pool. The decision to re-enter was a good one because they claimed the $19,350 top prize.

In the $109 Sunday Challenge $20,000 Gtd, JohnJones34 busted in sixth-place for $1,190 with plomaha navigating their way to third-place, good for $2,796.

Across to partypoker now where there were even more big prizes won, including the $14,800 claimed by Iveybluffallin who finished second in the $530 Sunday High Roller Clasico: $100K Gtd. British duo Sentapied99 and Boy-George fell in seventh and eighth-place for scores of $3,100 and $2,300 respectively.

Irelands SlowDoke reached the final table of the $320 Sunday Gladiator: $250K Gtd where they busted in fifth-place for $6,014 plus an additional $2,941 worth of bounty payments.

Check out these other large partypoker scores enjoyed by British and Irish players on Mar. 17.

joselalorxxl - fifth-place in the $1,050 Sunday High Roller Bounty Hunter Fast: $200K Gtd for $9,099*

- fifth-place in the $1,050 Sunday High Roller Bounty Hunter Fast: $200K Gtd for $9,099* LordPuasonG - eighth-place in the $1,050 Sunday High Roller Bounty Hunter Fast: $200K Gtd for $7,494*

- eighth-place in the $1,050 Sunday High Roller Bounty Hunter Fast: $200K Gtd for $7,494* SlowDoke - third-place in the $109 Sunday 6-Max Bounty Hunter Turbo: $30K Gtd for $2,657*

- third-place in the $109 Sunday 6-Max Bounty Hunter Turbo: $30K Gtd for $2,657* BendNSnap - fifth-place in the $109 Sunday Bounty Hunter: $50K Gtd for $2,421*

- fifth-place in the $109 Sunday Bounty Hunter: $50K Gtd for $2,421* OreoMilkshake - fifth-place in the $109 Sunday 6-Max Bounty Hunter Turbo: $30K Gtd for $1,509*

Want a mention in this article? First you'll need an account at these online poker rooms. Get the best deposit bonuses here.

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Women from various backgrounds who inspire and lead will be celebrated through speakers and other events on the schedule at the University of North Georgia (UNG) for the second half of Women's History Month.

Sarah Riggs Amico, Beauty P. Baldwin and Brenda Lopez Romero will speak at the Women's History Month breakfast from 9-11 a.m. March 27 in the Robinson Ballroom of the Student Center on UNG's Gainesville Campus.

"We are excited about exposing our students to these remarkable women who have achieved and exhibited a great deal of leadership throughout their careers," said Dr. Robert L. Robinson, UNG's director of Multicultural Student Affairs (MSA). "It can help these students learn and grow as future leaders of America."

Amico, executive chairwoman of auto company Jack Cooper, ran for lieutenant governor in 2018. Baldwin became the first black female school superintendent in Georgia when she took over Buford City Schools in 1984. Baldwin Elementary School in Norcross, Georgia, is named for her. Lopez Romero is a state representative who in 2016 became the first Latina elected to the Georgia General Assembly.

The Women's Minority Seminar is set for noon to 2 p.m. March 20 in the Robinson Ballroom, sponsored by the Black Student Union. Maxine Douglas, UNG lecturer of human services delivery and administration; Brandi Williams, UNG assistant dean of students for student conduct; Dr. Natasha Merchant, UNG assistant professor of foundations in teacher education; and Rose Johnson, executive director of Newtown Florist Club in Hall County, will share their experiences.

"As a woman of color, hearing how women of color have gotten where they are is important," said Wakeitha Cunningham, an MSA student worker and sophomore from Hartwell, Georgia. "We all have our own struggles, but we all can accomplish the things we want to if we push through."

Dr. Mary Gowan, new dean of the Mike Cottrell College of Business (MCCB), will be the keynote speaker at noon March 25 for "Women Who Inspire: a Women's HERstory Month Event" in the Hoag Great Room on the Dahlonega Campus. MSA also plans to recognize female student leaders at UNG at the event. Amanda Lopez, an MSA graduate assistant, is organizing the event.

"We want to continue to encourage and inspire our students to be trailblazers," said Wendell Raiford, temporary coordinator of MSA on the Dahlonega Campus.

A pair of Women's History Month documentary film showings are planned, at 5:30 p.m. March 20 in Martha T. Nesbitt Academic Building room 3110-A on the Gainesville Campus and 5:30 p.m. March 28 in the room 232 auditorium of the Health and Natural Sciences Building on the Dahlonega Campus. The film being shown at both events is "Me, My Sex, and I: Disorders of Sexual Development."

The Oconee Campus will host Women in the Arts from 6-8 p.m. March 28 in room 522 (multipurpose room), featuring a guest speaker and an art gallery hosted in conjunction with the Art Association Club on campus. Those who submit will also have the chance to speak at the event.

Ten female UNG students were honored at the Women of UNG Leadership Luncheon on the Dahlonega Campus on March 3, and the Women's History Month Expo was March 4 on the Gainesville Campus.

As UNG celebrates Women's History Month in March, it also holds the distinction of being the first senior military college in the nation to accept women into the Corps of Cadets.

On Sept. 16, 1973, four days ahead of Virginia Tech, three women entered UNG's Corps: Jean Raines, Susan Harris and Janet Walls. Norwich and Texas A&M accepted women in their Corps in 1974, while the Citadel and VMI followed in 1995 and 1997, respectively, after court challenges.

UNG's female cadets have reached the highest ranks of UNG's Corps of Cadets, and they participate in all military skills clubs, including combat shooting, mountaineering, and small unit tactics. Since the Department of Defense elimination of all gender-based restrictions in January 2016, the corps has produced 34 female officers, representing 14 percent of UNG's commissions. Within that group, seven (21 percent) have been commissioned into all the various branches of Combat Arms.
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.
Imran Khan summoned Punjab CM

Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday directed Punjab Chief Minister Usmam Buzdar to improve governance in the province, as he summoned the provincial chief executive to seek an explanation over a bill recently passed by the Punjab Assembly proposing hefty increase in salaries of the lawmakers.



During the meeting held at the PM Office, Imran Khan reiterated his disapproval of the Punjab Public Representatives Laws (Amendment) Bill 2019 passed by the Punjab Assembly last week. Buzdar reportedly told Imran Khan that an increase in the salaries of lawmakers was necessary, to which the prime minister responded that the increase should have been proposed while keeping in mind the austerity drive of the federal government and the financial limitations of the country.



The chief minister informed the prime minister that lifetime perks and privileges of the chief minister have already been removed from the bill. He also pledged to review proposed increase in salary and other perks of the provincial legislators as well.



The prime minister directed the chief minister to implement Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf manifesto and vision in the province in true letter and spirit in consultation within the party leadership as well as with the coalition partners. The chief minister reportedly complained about interference by some PTI leaders in administrative affairs of the province, to which the prime minister directed him to improve governance while keeping all administrative affairs in his own hands.



The two leaders also discussed political and law and order situation of the province. Progress on different development initiatives was also reviewed, besides overall performance of the provincial cabinet.



Buzdar briefed PM Khan about arrangements done to ensure the best medical facilities for former prime minister Nawaz Sharif at the Kot Lakhpat jail.



A day after the bill moved by PTI lawmaker Ghazanfar Abbas was unanimously approved by the Punjab Assembly, Prime Minister Imran Khan had taken to Twitter to express his extreme disappointment over the move, saying that it was untenable in the current atmosphere when the country [does] not have resources to provide basic amenities to all our people. In his Twitter message, Imran Khan had said that measures like these would be justified only when the country sees prosperity.



The prime minister, while expressing extreme disappointment over the move, had asked the Punjab governor not to sign the bill. Two days later, Punjab Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Pervez Elahi reviewed the bill and amended a clause that detailed the increase in perks and privileges provided to the lawmakers. The amendment removed the lifetime perks and privileges of the chief minister, leaving intact only suitable and adequate security.



After the passage of the bill, the speakers salary had jumped from Rs 37,000 to Rs 200,000 per month and his deputy would get Rs185,000 instead of Rs 35,000, along with cabinet members and advisers.



Punjab MPAs are now entitled to Rs 80,000 per month rather than Rs 18,000, and their utility bills entitlement has gone up to Rs 200,000 instead of earlier Rs 120,000. This fiscal adjustment had no one to oppose in the House and the bill was passed within a few minutes.
About Me

I am an urban/commercial district revitalization and transportation/mobility advocate and consultant and a principal in BicyclePASS, a bicycle facilities systems integration firm, based in Washington, DC. Urban economic competitiveness is dependent on efficient transit and mixed use, compact places. Therefore, I end up writing mostly about mobility and urban design. While I am based in and write about Washington, DC issues, I try to write so that "universal lessons" are evident in the entries.

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"Little people, Big World" matriarch, Amy Roloff's in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Wow, she seems super-excited to be there judging by a video she posted on Instagram. It looks like she's busy assisting with a promo of some kind for TLC in the South American country. Actually, she not only posted it on her Instagram account but also on her IG Stories and on Facebook. Amy used her #amyroloffssecondact hashtag, which she adopted after her divorce from Matt.

Amy Roloff's in Brazil maybe for a 'Little People, Big World' shoot

While Amy confirmed for sure that she actually went to Brazil, she never said it's specifically for a "Little people, Big World" shoot.

However, it just might be, it could be - fans can hope. First, she introduced the cameraman, sound guy, and producer, before turning the camera on herself. Behind her, on the left, there's a big picture of most of the Roloff's in the TLC "LPBW" show. it shows Amy, Zach, Tori, Jeremy, Matt, and Audrey. On her right was a giant picture of Amy by herself.

Amy said they are in Brazil doing a TLC shoot. Her Facebook post, the same as the Instagram account post, added more info. Amy said that she's in Brazil to do a "big TLC marketing promo shoot." She said they're at a really "neat place" where they do "a lot of weddings." Obviously, she mentioned the place is in Sao Paulo. In particular, this brings a lot of interest.

The next season of "Little people, Big World" starts on April 2. Shooting for that ended already, one can assume, so is this a new direction for the show?

Amy doing a promo shoot for TLC means travel

Amy really seems lit to be traveling with TLC to a foreign country. On her video caption, she wrote, "Brazil! What! They said thered be travel and off I went." You can see from her huge smile as she talks about being in the country, that she's totally happy.

Discuss this news on Eunomia

She says that she "cannot believe it" that she's actually there "doing a big TLC marketing promo shoot." The obvious question is, does this mean the upcoming season won't end the series?

Apart from that question, many fans commented on her Facebook and Instagram about her "Little people, Big World" travels. Actually, this might be a good time for Amy to brush up on her Brazilian Portuguese skills as loads of Brazilians commented on her Instagram with lots of heart emojis.

Fans of 'Little People, Big World' are thrilled for Amy Roloff

Fans from Brazil, in particular, were thrilled for Amy and that she's visiting their country. Here's what some of them had to say about it:

"Hello, Amy!! You are here in Brasil?? I love this Roloff family!! do not miss any episode every week!! I would love to meet you there but i live more distant from Sao Paulo! Chris come back with you?? You welcome in your Brasil!!"

"Love you! Family Roloff!! Sao Paulo!"

"Seja bem vinda Amy! Welcome to Brasil!"

"Heyyyy welcome to Brazil, so nice having you here. Hope you have the best time"

There were so many more comments, that it's obvious Brazilians are major fans of the TLC show. What do you think of Amy Roloff going to Brazil?

Do you hope we get to see some of her travels in a TLC special or something? Sound off your thoughts in the comments.

Remember to follow the Reality TV Channel on Blasting Pop to stay current with "Little People, Big World."
Cyclone Idai left more than 500,000 residents in the port city of Beira isolated. This is one of the largest cities in the country and roads were flooded while the airport could not function. The tropical storm tracked over Mozambique, disrupting the power supply and communication systems in Manicaland province, Zimbabwe. Manica is located on the Western border of Mozambique. Some students from a couple of boarding schools died in their sleep when rocks rolled down a mountain and the wall gave way.

The BBC reports rains and flooding had started before Cyclone Idai struck and the initial death toll is more than 120 in Mozambique and Malawi.

This could increase once more information becomes available after the floodwaters recede. Zimbabwe declared a state of emergency in view of the loss of many homes and bridges that have washed away in the floodwaters.

#UPDATE More than 100 people have died and many more are missing in Mozambique and neighbouring Zimbabwe after tropical #CycloneIdai https://t.co/qQ9YuPIYLK pic.twitter.com/ACVVK1TPF5  AFP news agency (@AFP) March 17, 2019

The cyclone took a heavy toll

Apart from loss of more than 100 lives, there are many people missing. The devastation caused by Cyclone Idai has affected people at all levels and the full implications will be known when normalcy returns. A school in the mountainous district of Chimanimani is closed and the army will evacuate the 200 pupils trapped on the premises.

The Department of Civil Protection has revealed this. Zimbabwe's information ministry also mentioned damage to more than 100 houses in the town of Chimanimani.

More than 150 people dead, hundreds more missing in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe as rains and flooding caused by tropical cyclone Idai hit southern African nations pic.twitter.com/ErREjcBv4s  CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) March 18, 2019

The BBC says police advised drivers to avoid crossing flooded rivers in the region.

Discuss this news on Eunomia

It seems some people are marooned on a nearby mountain. They were in a bus that was swept away by the strong currents. Zimbabwe's information ministry said stranded people will be airlifted and those injured will be given medical treatment.

Large-scale damage to infrastructure

According to CNN, the Ministry of Information said Cyclone Idai swept away people and have resulted in large-scale damage to infrastructure.

This happens when high-speed winds uproot trees, damage roads and bridges and bring down power lines resulting in blackout conditions. Rebuilding such infrastructure will take time and will be a cost-intensive affair.

The countrys Civil Protection Unit is handling the rescue efforts. Zimbabwe Red Cross and the International Organization for Migration are extending necessary assistance. Zimbabwe Red Cross Operations Director says the situation is "quite dire." The displaced persons need immediate shelter and these are humanitarian issues. The authorities have set up two command centers to cater to those rescued from the worst affected areas. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has cut short his state visit to the United Arab Emirates in view of the situation.
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has announced that individuals without a Tax Identification Number (TIN), effective today [April 3, 2018] will not be allowed to acquire a Drivers license, open a bank account, get a passport, transact business with government, or register a business.



The TIN, according to the GRA, is aimed at uniquely identifying potential taxpayers to broaden the tax base.



The Authority has, in recent times, announced that all Ghanaians working must acquire a TIN to fulfill the Revenue Administration Act (RAA), 2016, Act 915.



Some of the institutions that will require TIN are the DVLA, RGD, Passport Office, GRA, Lands Commission, Law Courts, Ministries, government departments, agencies, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.



Addressing journalists at a press conference, the Commissioner-General of the GRA, Emmanuel Kofi Nti warned that institutions mandated to check the TIN must do so before transacting businesses with the public.



One cannot transact business with these institutions if one does not have the TIN. One cannot clear goods from the ports, register land documents with the Lands Commission, obtain a Tax Clearance certificate from the GRA, open a bank account, register your company, and obtain payments for jobs or contracts done for government, he stressed.



He added that without the TIN, a person cannot file a case at the courts, bid for contracts from government agencies, conduct business with any ministry, departments, agencies, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.



Mr. Nti explained that this is to help increase the number of people currently issued with TIN; a total of 1,090,338 people.



He disclosed that the GRA has already held series of meetings with the key institutions that must help inspect the TIN to ensure the smooth operations of the policy.



These institutions have been requested to modify their forms to include a field for the provision of TIN. Consequently, GRA expects the institutions mentioned above to demand the TIN of their clients before transacting business with them, he said.



Sounding a word of caution, Mr. Nti stressed that refusal to inspect the TIN will mean a breach of the law, which will attract the necessary consequences.



He explained that to get the TIN, one only needs to pick a registration form from any GRA Office, complete and attach the necessary coloured photocopies of a Drivers license, National Identification Card, Voters Identification Card, or a passport and submit at no cost to the GRA.



He stated that it is important for Ghanaians to pay their taxes since that is the only way government can redistribute wealth to cover the poor and vulnerable in the society.



I think we must be tax compliance because that is the only way we can be part of the state and demand development from government. Everybody working must make it a point to pay their taxes.











Source: citibusinessnews.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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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  Missouri State Representative, Hardy Billington (Rep.), who is also a deacon at Faith Baptist Church, has introduced a bill, HB 728, of concern to Pagans and others. The bill would require public disclosure of the legal names of adult plaintiffs who file suits involving church-state separation issues. Plaintiffs can now use their initials in public documents. Their legal names only appear in sealed court documents. Missouri Courts currently allow that practice in cases where plaintiffs have a reasonable fear of harassment, violence, or other attempts at intimidation.

What is the issue?

The Wild Hunt recently spoke with Alison Gill, Vice President for Legal and Policy, at American Atheists. She said, HB 728 is a bill that would undermine the freedom of religion by making it more difficult for people whose religious liberty has been violated to bring lawsuits in Missouri courts. Gill stressed that this proposed law would only impact church-state separation suits. Other types of plaintiffs could bring cases under a pseudonym if the lawsuit would put them at risk.

Gill continued HB 728 is a reckless attack on the separation of religion and government. She considered that separation to be the bedrock of freedom of religion. Gill stressed that people who stand up for their religious liberty face public harassment and death threats. Gill argued that atheists and religious minorities are especially at risk. They tend to be most threatened by coercion by the dominant religious community.

Testimony before Missouri House Committees

The hearing on HB 728 attracted both supporters and opponents. Among the supporters were the following: its sponsor, Rep. Billington; Concerned Women for America of Missouri; Don Hinkle, Missouri Baptist Convention; Missouri Family Network; and Keith Carnahan, Maranatha Baptist Church. Supporters argued that religious people in Missouri are not violent. As a result, no one had to fear harassment. Supporters also argued that this law would reduce frivolous lawsuits.

The proponents statement directly from HB 728:

Supporters say that this would require plaintiffs to

be named in cases where people want to sue to remove religious

symbols because such plaintiffs currently hide behind unknown

names. We need to protect the rights of Missourians and this would

make it more fair for religious people because they are currently

being singled out. They say they hide behind anonymous names

because they fear retaliation from religious people, but religious

people in Missouri are not violent. This would treat claimants the

same no matter the viewpoint. This will hopefully reduce the

number of frivolous lawsuits. Civic leaders have to endure

scrutiny so why shouldnt plaintiffs.

Among the opponents of this bill were the following: Ryan Jayne, Freedom from Religion Foundation; James C. McLaurin, Secular Coalition for Missouri; Scott McKellar; American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri; David Rosman; and Eric Wells, American Atheists.

Eric Wells, Missouri Assistant State Director of American Atheists, supplied The Wild Hunt with a copy of his testimony. Wells testified that The unfortunate fact is that all too often, people who stand up for their religious liberty face public harassment and death threats.

Wells provided examples of harassment in church-state separation cases. Threats sometimes extended to the pets and children of plaintiffs.

In 1993, for example, Lisa Herdah and her children moved from Wisconsin to Mississippi. Their new local school system had daily devotionals, Biblical History classes, group prayer sessions, and religious videotapes. She sued. Her harassment included being forced out of a job, death threats, and threats of eviction. She sued and won in July of 1996.

In 2012, Jessica Ahlquist, a 16 year-old atheist in Rhode Island, sued over a Prayer Mural (Our Heavenly Father ). She received death threats. The New York Times reported that representative Peter Palumbo, a Democrat, called Jessica an evil little thing on a popular talk radio show.

Mona Dobrich, who practices Orthodox Judaism, objected to a statement at a graduation that Jesus is the only way to truth. She asked the local school board to consider more inclusive prayers at school functions. Other students harassed Dobrichs son for wearing a yarmulke and making derogatory statements. She received so many threats that she had to move to Wilmington, Delaware which damaged them financially because the cost of renting forced them to sell their house. When another family joined their suit, the other family did so anonymously because of the Dobrich familys experience.

The legislative process in Missouri

Gill described the process whereby a bill becomes law in Missouri. Gill stressed that Missouri residents should urge their state representatives to oppose HB 728.

HB 728 has passed through two committees and is now eligible to be voted on by the full house. Then it would have to go to the Missouri Senate and more committee votes before a full Senate vote. Once a bill passes both Houses, the Governor will have to decide whether to sign it or not.

As of March 18, 2019, it is not scheduled for a House vote. If the bill is not passed by the end of the 2019 Legislative Session, May 17, the process would have to begin again in the next Legislative Session.

Billington has co-sponsored several other bills. One designates the first Friday in May as Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. Another prohibits abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected. A third would allow schools to offer elective social studies courses on the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. A fourth warns of the dangers of pornography. A fifth expands areas where people can carry a concealed firearm. That bill would also prohibit other jurisdictions in Missouri from expanding gun free zones.

The Wild Hunt will continue to follow the progress of Missouri HB 728.
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Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the Minister of Education, has reiterated the need for Ghanaians to learn to speak the French Language so as to facilitate integration into the francophone community for mutual interest.



He said the mutual interest include building bridges over the cultural and linguistic diversity of citizens, pursuing values that were cherished by all such as democracy, rule of law and peace and solidarity.



Dr Opoku Prempeh said this in Accra at the opening ceremony of the Francophonie Festival 2019, on the theme: Say it in FrenchPlease.



The term Francophonie refers to all the states and governments worldwide who share the French Language.



The International Organisation of La Francophonie, created in 1970, represents one of the biggest linguistic zones in the world.



Following the annual tradition, the Francophonie communities in Ghana including France, Canada, La Cote dIvoire, Burkina Faso and Togo, together with the Alliance Francais, are organising various events to mark the Festival.



Its cultural and linguistic diversity will be celebrated through concerts, job application skills workshops, sporting events, film screenings, debates, singing and spelling contests, gastronomic events, art exhibition and comedy.



Dr Opoku Prempeh said to promote French speaking in Ghana, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had again appointed at the seat of Government, a focal person to coordinate activities of Francophonie in all ministries, departments and agencies.



The Minister noted that this step would go a long way to re-inforce Ghanas participation in the programmes of the Organisation.



He said his Ministry had taken the initiative to establish bilingual schools at the basic level of education where children, beginning from class one, were made to learn French through games and play.



Madam Shirley Ayokor Botchwey, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, who addressed the event in French, reiterated Ghana's commitment to promoting the learning of the French Language.



Dr Heather Cameron, the Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), hailed Ghana for the efforts to encourage its citizens to see the opportunities that shared language offered.



She noted that it was encouraging that the Government recognised the value of Ghanaians who could speak French, saying this created new synergies to build communities and to celebrate being together.



Dr Cameron said it was worth noting that the Minister of Education and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration spoke about educational reforms that would give priority to the French Language and the Ghanaian education system.



He said Ghana, in late 2018, committed to becoming a full member of the La Francophonie and commended President Akufo-Addo for that decision.



Dr Eric Adja, the Director of West Africa Regional Headquarters of the International Organisation of La Francophonie, told the Ghana News Agency that Ghana was surrounded by three French speaking countries, therefore, it was appropriate to develop French as its second official language.



He said this would widen the communication skills of Ghanaians for better negotiations within the Sub-region and on the global front.



He encouraged Ghanaians, particularly students, to learn and speak the French language as it was an asset.

Source: GNA









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The dream of a united Africa started way before the formulation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 following an intervention by the King of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I in Addis Ababa.



In the early 1960s, when independence was sweeping throughout the colonized continent, liberation fighters and independence heroes were loosely speaking about a united Africa that will end colonization in the whole continent.



Ghanas first president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, had verbalized the idea in 1957 when the Gold Coast gained independence from Great Britain. He proposed for an immediate unity of the continent.



Nkrumah further wrote about African unity and showed the way by financially supporting Guinea after the French abandoned the newly independent country in 1958. He also organised the first Pan-African meeting called the All-African Peoples Conference in the same year.



The second president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, also penned down the concept of African unity while Tanzanias first president, Julius Nyerere, expressed confidence in a united Africa.



Together, with the leaders of Algeria, Guinea, Morocco, Mali and Libya, they became known as the Casablanca Bloc, formed after the second All-African Peoples Conference in Addis Ababa in 1961 and led by Nkrumah to push for a federation of all African states to be called the United States of Africa. The name takes its origin from Marcus Garveys 1924 poem, Hail, United States of Africa.



One of the All-African People Conference in Accra



The United States of Africa concept was opposed by some leaders of other independent African states including Senegals Leopold Sedar Senghor and the leaders of Nigeria, Liberia and Ethiopia. They were referred to as the Monrovia Bloc and wanted unity to be achieved gradually while Africa remains a continent of independent states.



Subsequent debates over a United Government  before the OAU was formed  was held during meetings in the towns of Sanniquellie, Liberia and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1959 and 1960 respectively. This was followed by an invitation from Emperor Haile Selassie to Addis Ababa for a summit.



The monarch is reported to have financed the building of an Africa Hall worth $2 million to provide a place for African leaders to meet. He also footed the bill for a luxurious guest house and banquet among others.



Leaders of the 32 independent African states honoured the invitation of Haile Selassie and were offered a luxurious treatment ahead of the meeting that was a deciding factor for Africas unity.



The Casablanca Bloc stood by Nkrumahs philosophy that Africa must unite now, as Egypts Nasser, Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria and Sekou Toure of Guinea denounced imperialists and colonial exploiters at every opportunity.



Haile Selassie opening the 1963 meeting that birthed the OAU



The Monrovia Bloc thwarted the possibility of an immediate union with the argument that no matter how good it sounds, unity wont work unless economic cooperation is achieved.



The host, Haile Selassie, added his voice saying the leaders must move step?by?step toward unity as tradition cannot be abandoned at once and the disagreement to a union by the people could frustrate progress toward cooperation and development.



A 1964 New York Times report stated that: Africans would disagree on immediate union because they fear Nkrumahs driving egocentricity might lead to his becoming the first, and perhaps permanent, president of a United States of Africa.



The Emperors astute voice successfully gained the signatures of all the 32 independent African states on the charter that established the Organisation of African Unity on May 25, 1963.



44 years after the attempt to create a Union Government during the founding of the OAU, the opportunity came up once again at the 9th Ordinary Session of the newly formed African Union (AU) in Accra, Ghana.



The agenda was to debate the creation of the Union Government that will lead to the formation of the United States of Africa as adopted by a 2006 study. The study proposed a single African military force, a single currency and a single passport for Africans.



OAU Founders



Those in support of the Union Government included Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.



The heated debate in Accra failed to institute the Union Government but the heads of state agreed to accelerate political and economic integration, strengthen the organs and institutions of the AU and then set a timeframe to establish a Union Government with the involvement of Africans and the diaspora.



Since then, teams have been set up in 2007, 2008 and 2009 to review the recommendations and give the green light for the transformation of the African Union Commission into the African Union Authority to pave way for the Union Government which will be led by a president, vice president and secretaries.



All the teams have since deferred their assignments and the dream of a United States of Africa still lingers as its key proponents including Gaddafi and Mugabe have been kicked out of power.

Source: face2faceafrica.com









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The Ministry of Communications has declared its resolve to deal ruthlessly with cyber crime to ensure a safe digital space for national development.



In line with that, it is pursuing measures, such as leveraging international cooperation, to enhance and accelerate the fight against cyber crime with urgency.



The Minister of Communications, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, said this in Accra yesterday when she opened a national conference and workshop on the technical implementation of the Budapest Convention, the only international treaty on cyber crime.



Workshop



The two-day workshop, jointly organised by the National Cyber Security Centre of Ghana, under the Ministry of Communications, and the Council of Europe, has brought together more than 100 participants drawn from the Judiciary and the private sector.



Others are policy makers and legislators.



The participants are to be educated on the Budapest Convention and its implementation gaps, benefits and opportunities.



Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said the growth in the use of digital services and products had made the cyber ecosystem an irresistible target for cyber criminals.



She pointed out that knowingly or unknowingly, people were exposed to cyber threats, as they affected every facet of the increasingly digitised lives of today.



She, therefore, stressed the need for cyber security to be strengthened as a matter of urgency to ensure that we derive the full benefit of our emerging digital economy, while minimising the risks.



Statistics



On Ghana, she said while statistics on the quantum of cyber crimes were difficult to come by, information available at the Ministry of Communications showed that about 400,000 scam messages were blocked from reaching their recipients on a daily basis, while half of mobile money subscribers had either experienced some form of fraud or been targets for mobile money fraudsters.



The identities of some Members of Parliament and ministers of state have been cloned on Facebook and other social media platforms.



As quickly as these fake accounts are pulled down, others spring up, she added.



She said the increased volumes of online transactions came with inevitable increased risks for users of the various online platforms, with telecommunication service providers reporting year-on-year increases in mobile money fraud cases.



Budapest Convention



Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said Ghana, as a demonstration of its commitment to fight cyber crime and the recognition that the fight would only be successful with international cooperation, acceded to the Budapest Convention in December 2018.



She said that made Ghana the 62nd state to have signed the treaty and the fifth country in Africa to have acceded to the convention, after Mauritius, Senegal, Cape Verde and Morocco.



Additionally, she said, Ghana had ratified the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, also known as the Malabo Convention.



Domestic cooperation



On local cooperation, the minister pointed out that the lack of effective cooperation at the domestic level had impacted on efforts to fight cyber crime.



She said to enhance the fight, her ministry was currently working on draft cyber security legislation which would help further address some identified weaknesses in the countrys cyber crime laws and make provisions for appropriate sanctions for non-compliance with the cyber security provisions.



In addition, the Council of Europe has assessed our current cyber crime legislation and identified some gaps which we need to fill in order to achieve compliance with the convention.



We will close all legal and regulatory gaps in our domestic legislation which will impede the full and effective implementation of the Malabo and the Budapest conventions and provide protection for our digital economy, she said.



Council of Europe



On the global Internet space, the Programme Manager of Cybercrime at the Council of Europe, Mr Matteo Lucchetti, said 4.4 billion people, out of the 7.5 billion global population, were connected to the Internet.



Mr Lucchetti said the Internet permeated society in every single aspect of life and the number of users would continue to increase.



With respect to Ghana, he said the country was in the top 10 countries (ninth) in the world for the number of hours spent per day on social media.



But while digitisation offers many development opportunities to achieve a better future, an equivalent rise must be registered of crimes committed against or through the use of computer systems; in brief, of cyber crimes, he said.



NCA



The Director-General of the National Communications Authority, Mr Joe Anokye, proposed that one of the most important things the world needed now was a framework which would guide states on how to ensure the safety of citizens and increase their participation in the global economy without fear.



He said that was in view of increased globalisation, trade, connectivity and digital financial inclusion which gave citizens the ability to play across borders.



It is in this interest that the NCA has, over the years, enthusiastically supported, in every way possible, Ghanas accession to the Budapest Convention and its subsequent implementation, he said.

Source: Daily Graphic









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Jonathan Guyer in American Prospect:

Until the 1970s, Saudi Arabia was simply a docile U.S. ally and source of cheap oil. That began to change with the OPEC-engineered price hikes, masterminded by the Saudi government. The Saudi government then subsidized the spread of radically fundamentalist Islam through the Muslim world. The stakes increased with the attacks of 9/11 (the majority of the skyjackers were Saudi). But throughout this era, Washington continued to indulge Riyadh, either because of the politics of oil, plain conflicts of interest, the fact that the Saudi policy toward Israel was covertly not as hostile as it might have been, or all three. With the ascension of MBS, a newly bellicose kingdom has emerged. Saudi has reached out to allies in Asia who neglect human rights and are happy to displace U.S. influence. It has engaged in monstrous violations of diplomatic norms, of which the Khashoggi hit was only the most extreme case. The U.S.-Saudi relationship has at last reached the inescapable crisis that Washington has been dreading since 9/11.

But that said, what should our Saudi policy be, even assuming a competent government in the White House after 2020?

More here.
Noem earns strong poll support, except on legalizing marijuana

With nearly three years as governor complete, and as she kicks off a reelection campaign, Gov. Kristi Noem is enjoying strong statewide support.
Copyright  2019 Albuquerque Journal

On Sunday evening, St. Patricks Day, 27-year-old James Porter and a friend called a ride-sharing service like Uber or Lyft for a ride.

They didnt reach their destination.

Instead, police say, a fight broke out and the ride-sharing service driver shot and killed Porter by the side of southbound Interstate 25 near Montano NE.

Porter, who worked for Hewlett-Packard in Rio Rancho, died at the scene.

The driver has not been charged, and detectives are continuing to investigate. They arent searching for any other suspects.

Officer Simon Drobik, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, said that shortly before 6 p.m. police were called to the interstate for reports of a shooting. When officers arrived, they found Porter had been shot in the chest.

The other two men  Porters friend and the driver  had remained nearby and were taken to police headquarters to be interviewed. They were later released.

Drobik did not identify the shooter or the ride-sharing service.

The investigation shut down southbound lanes for hours while detectives combed through the scene and tried to contact anyone who may have seen something. A blue hatchback remained on the side of the road into the night, and Porter could be seen lying next to the drivers-side door.

Homicide detectives have multiple witnesses to interview, search warrants to execute and are continuing to seek witnesses who saw this event, Drobik said.

One man who was traveling through town told the Journal he saw the shooting unfold as he drove by.

He said he saw the three men standing outside the car and watched as one man pointed a gun at two others. Then, he said, that man fired three times, hitting one of the men in the chest.

Porter graduated from New Mexico State University in 2014 with a degree in hotel, restaurant and tourism management, according to a university spokeswoman.

Clinton Martine, a friend from Albuquerque, said he met Porter five or six years ago playing volleyball.

He said Porter worked as an accounts manager for Hewlett-Packard and was planning to get his real estate license.

He was a very motivated person, Martine said. I mean that not only in volleyball, but also his career. He was always striving for bigger, greater things for himself.

Reached by the Journal on Monday afternoon, Porters father said he was talking to investigators and did not want to do an interview.

Drobik acknowledged that many rumors have been circulating on social media about the shooting.

Once again, I would remind you that the Albuquerque Police Department does not work off speculation, rumors or innuendo when it comes to investigations, Drobik wrote in an email. The Albuquerque Police Department relies on witnesses interviews, search warrants and thorough and sometimes lengthy investigations especially cases that are as complex as this one.

Contact number

Police ask anyone with information about the crime to call Crimestoppers at 843-STOP
John Wesley Austin popped his way to the next round on NBCs World of Dance on Sunday.

The Farmington native competed in the duel rounds where he battled DD Flection, the World of Dance Thailand champions. He scored at 91.3 to move to the next phase of the competition.

Austin, known professionally as Poppin John, was chosen by DD Flection because hes an inspiration to the dancers.

Their reason for picking me was that Im an inspiration for them, Austin said in the broadcast. Its humbling and motivating.

World of Dance is executive produced by Jennifer Lopez, who also serves as a judge alongside Ne-Yo and Derek Hough. It features dance performers, including solo acts and larger groups, representing any style of dance.

The contestants compete for a $1 million grand prize. The third season is hosted by Scott Evans.

The 34-year-old Farmington native has made a name for himself over the course of 20 years.

Hes amassed more than 200 million views of his dance videos across multiple platforms.

On Sunday night, Austin performed a routine to Snoop Doggs Who Am I (Whats My Name)?

After his routine, Lopez said, That was sickening.

You were talking throughout the whole routine, she said. Youre such a seasoned performer.  The musicality was off the charts.

Judge Ne-Yo chimed in, That is isolation 101 and I loved all the burns.

Meanwhile Hough told Austin, From a duel perspective, it was solid and every move was intentional.

Lopez agreed and said. I really felt it was super intentional.

Austin moves onto the next round, where he will battle more competitors.

Im going to fight as hard as I can to stay in this competition, Austin said.

We welcome suggestions for the daily Bright Spot. Send to newsroom@abqjournal.com.
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LAKE ELSINORE, Calif.  Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, the Southern California city of Lake Elsinore is being overwhelmed by the power of the poppies.

About 150,000 people over the weekend flocked to see this years rain-fed flaming orange patches of poppies lighting up the hillsides near the city of about 60,000 residents, about a 90-minute drive from either San Diego or Los Angeles.

Interstate 15 was a parking lot. People fainted in the heat; a dog romping through the fields was bitten by a rattlesnake.

A vibrant field of poppies lures Dorothy into a trap in the Wizard of Oz when the wicked witch, acknowledging that no one can resist their beauty, poisons the wildflowers and she slips into a fatal slumber until the good witch reverses the spell.

Lake Elsinore had tried to prepare for the crush of people drawn by the super bloom, a rare occurrence that usually happens about once a decade because it requires a wet winter and warm temperatures that stay above freezing.

It offered a free shuttle service to the top viewing spots, but it wasnt enough.

Sunday traffic got so bad that Lake Elsinore officials requested law enforcement assistance from neighboring jurisdictions. At one point, the city pulled down the curtain and closed access to poppy-blanketed Walker Canyon.

It was insane, absolutely insane, said Mayor Steve Manos, who described it as a poppy apocalypse.

By Monday the #poppyshutdown announced by the city on Twitter was over and the road to the canyon was re-opened.

And people were streaming in again.

Young and old visitors to the Lake Elsinore area seemed equally enchanted as they snapped selfies against the natural carpet of iridescent orange.

Some contacted friends and family on video calls so they could share the beauty in real time. Artists propped canvasses on the side of the trail to paint the super bloom, while drones buzzed overhead.

Patty Bishop, 48, of nearby Lake Forest, was on her second visit. The native Californian had never seen such an explosion of color from the state flower. She battled traffic Sunday but that didnt deter her from going back Monday for another look. She got there at sunrise and stayed for hours.

Theres been so many in just one area, she said. I think thats probably the main reason why Im out here personally is because its so beautiful.

Stephen Kim and his girlfriend got to Lake Elsinore even before sunrise Sunday to beat the crowds but there were already hundreds of people.

The two wedding photographers hiked on the designated trails with an engaged couple to do a photo shoot with the flowers in the background, but they were upset to see so many people going off-trail and so much garbage. They picked up as many discarded water bottles as they could carry.

You see this beautiful pristine photo of nature but then you look to the left and theres plastic Starbucks cups and water bottles on the trail and selfie sticks and people having road rage because some people were walking slower, said Kim, 24, of Carlsbad.

Andy Macuga, honorary mayor of the desert town of Borrego Springs, another wildflower hotspot, said he feels for Lake Elsinore.

In 2017, a rain-fed super bloom brought in more than a half-million visitors to the town of 3,500. Restaurants ran out of food. Gas stations ran out of fuel. Traffic backed up on a single road for 20 miles (32 kilometers).

The city is again experiencing a super bloom.

The crowds are back. Hotels are full. More than 6,000 people on a recent Saturday stopped at the visitors center at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Californias largest park with 1,000 square miles (2,590 sq. kilometers).

But it helps that the masses of blooms are appearing in several different areas this time, and some sections are fading, while others are lighting up with flowers, helping to disperse the crowds a bit.

Most importantly, Macuga said, the towns businesses prepared this time as if a major storm was about to hit. His restaurant, Carlees, is averaging more than 550 meals a day, compared to 300 on a normal March day.

We were completely caught off guard in 2017 because it was the first time that we had had a flower season like this with social media, he said. It helps now knowing whats coming.

_____

Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press writer Amanda Lee Myers in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

____

This story has been corrected to show Dorothy was saved in Wizard of Oz by good witch after friends failed to carry her out of fields.
The President and Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, yesterday observed the change of guard at the Jubilee House.



At a brief but colourful ceremony, a contingent from the Ghana Air Force took over guard duties at the seat of government.



The Naval Contingent that had been keeping guard at the presidency for the past three months handed over duty to the Ghana Air Force, who would be performing the task for the next quarter.



Chief of Staff, Frema Osei Opare; Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. Obed Akwa; service commanders; senior government officials and the Inspector General of Police (IGP), David Asante-Apeatu, also witnessed the colourful event that was characterised by military drills.



Instituted on the 5th of May, 2013, the ceremony, a replica of the guard changing system at the General Headquarters Command Gate of the GAF, is conducted with 20 each of old and new guards from different services/ regiments, escort contingents, corps of drums and the national / regimental colours under the command of a captain in the army or its equivalence from the other services.



School-children, students and teachers from the Oxford International School, Tiny Gem School, Eno Kwakyewaa International School, Madina Senior High School, Saps School and Accra High School, also witnessed the ceremony.

Source: Daily Guide









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DALLAS  A date has been set for the murder trial of a white former Dallas police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man in his own apartment.

Court records show that Amber Guyger is scheduled to begin a jury trial on Monday, Aug. 12, less than a year after she shot Botham Jean, whose apartment she says she mistook for her own.

Guyger was arrested on a manslaughter charge three days after the Sept. 6 shooting of her neighbor, a 26-year-old native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia who worked in Dallas for an accounting and consulting firm.

The case drew national attention and the initial charge was criticized as being lenient. Guyger was fired from the Dallas Police Department later in September. A grand jury indicted her for murder in November.
WASHINGTON  Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, little known outside his home state, boasts he raised over $1 million in the days after launching his White House bid. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and others say they did, too.

Impressive numbers, even if dwarfed by the $6 million or so reported by Bernie Sanders and now Beto ORourke .

The seven-digit figures for the lesser-known Democratic hopefuls dont lie, but they dont tell the whole story either. Early bursts of donations dont happen by accident, especially for candidates with little national name recognition such as Inslee, who hit his target thanks in part to an email list of donors hes cultivated for months.

Hes among a crowded field of more than a dozen Democrats who are feverishly trying to show they can raise big money and realistically challenge Republican President Donald Trump. With the first-quarter fundraising deadline looming, some are straining credulity to give the impression of a spontaneous groundswell of support.

In addition to Inslee and Hickenlooper, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and California Sen. Kamala Harris have boasted they raised $1 million or more in the hours and days after launching their campaigns.

What that signifies is less clear.

Its a strange goal post for viability, and there are a lot of tricks you can use to come up with that number, said Tim Lim, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clintons and Barack Obamas campaigns. However, he added: Its a great talking point.

So how do you get to $1 million within 24, 48 or 72 hours?

Candidates like Vermont Sen. Sanders and former Texas Rep. ORourke have used their star power to quickly raise astronomical sums. ORourke announced on Monday that he edged Sanders by pulling in $6.1 million in the 24 hours after his launch.

But a wide range of tools are available to help the lesser-known White House hopefuls.

They include rented fundraisings email lists, targeted social media ads (which all candidates use) and revenue sharing agreements, which allow interest groups to raise money for their own causes while splitting it with a favorite candidate. Fundraising commitments are often lined up in advance, while creative accounting maneuvers can be used to pad the bottom line.

Senators have a leg up. They can take money from existing federal campaign accounts, while governors are largely barred from doing the same with their state accounts.

Before his early March launch, Inslee spent months running targeted ads that asked Facebook users to fork over their email addresses to join his fight against climate change  now the signature issue of his campaign. At the same time, Inslee, who was then head of the Democratic Governors Association, made prospecting trips to states including New York and California.

He started collecting larger checks from conventional donors in the weeks before the launch. Then, shortly after announcing his run, his campaign blasted out thousands of fundraising emails and the online money started to roll in, which he juiced by making rounds on the talk show circuit.

Within about three days, he reached the magic $1 million figure  and his campaign issued a news release.

The fundraising effort was described by two Inslee aides who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the inner workings of his campaign.

Michael Duncan, a Republican digital strategist, said numbers posted by lesser-known candidates are likely to be less grassroots and more the campaign equivalent of AstroTurf. But Duncan, who formerly handled digital strategy for the insurgent tea party group FreedomWorks, said it was a shrewd tactic. Particularly now that the Democratic National Committee is using online fundraising, with an emphasis on low-dollar contributions spread out across many donors to qualify for the debate stage.

I would imagine the grassroots support is manufactured, said Duncan, who also was an architect of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus digital strategy in 2015. Id doubt theyd own a file of hundreds of thousands of Americans dying to give them $10.

Most campaigns wont offer specifics on how they reached their mark. News releases sent out at the time shed some light, however.

Harris offered the most detail. Her campaign announced in January that it raised $1.5 million in 24 hours, collecting an average donation of $37 from more than 38,000 people.

From there, it gets more fuzzy.

Klobuchars campaign said it raised $1 million in 48 hours from online and grassroots supporters in all states, but did not break the numbers down further. Inslee launched his campaign on a Friday and announced the following Monday that he had reached the mark, with donations coming from all 50 states.

Hickenloopers campaign said it reached the figure in less than 48 hours and received donations from all 50.

His campaign wouldnt offer specifics. But touting the number was a no-brainer, said spokeswoman Lauren Hitt.

Of course we thought it was important in our launch to show he is the more-than-viable candidate we know, she said.

Though $1 million is a lot to most, raising that much isnt as difficult as it may seem. It could be reached if about 357 donors cut checks for the $2,800 primary maximum. And lining up support from longtime donors in advance could go a long way toward getting a candidate close.

Zac Moffatt, Mitt Romneys 2012 digital director, said the focus now will be whether they can keep it up.

The question would be: what is Act II? he said.
SANTA FE  Santa Fe would get $9 million to improve and expand its airport terminal building in the capital outlay or local infrastructure bill that the Legislature sent to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham before its session ended on Saturday.

Another big appropriation in the bill is $4,257,000 for dormitories and a cafeteria for the New Mexico School for the Arts, the competitive-entry statewide charter school that is moving into the former Sanbusco Market Center space adjacent to the city-owned Santa Fe Railyard property.

Lujan Grisham has until April 5 to act on the bill. The governor has authority to remove appropriations with line-item vetos.

In a phone interview Monday night, Mayor Alan Webber said the airport is long overdue for a remake, a redesign, and a redevelopment.

The highest priority is really to upgrade the terminal and make it able to handle more traffic and more passengers and do it in a way that is a first-class customer experience for people who are flying in and out of Santa Fe, Webber said. Were bursting at the seams right now. 

Public Works Director Regina Wheeler said 16 commercial flights now come in and out of the Santa Fe airport daily. She said plans for the terminal, still in the early conceptual phase, include upgrading the current facility as well expanding the building to support more flights.

She and Webber both expressed interest in bringing back direct flights to and from Los Angeles to add to current ervice to Denver, Phoenix and Dallas/Fort Worth. A study is underway done to determine other possible destinations for flights , according to Wheeler.

The airport also needs amenities that tourists and locals expect at an airport, Webber said. Some improvements he hopes to see are an updated, more comfortable waiting area  which he said can be crammed when full flights are coming in or going out  better food and restaurant options, and improved work spaces for the staff.

It, like so many other parts of city government, it is a victim of deferred maintenance, Webber said of the airport.

Wheeler estimated the entire project would cost $14-$16 million. That could include an extension of Jaguar Drive to make going to the airport quicker and to divert travelers away from a vehicle junkyard and the city wastewater treatment plant, she said, as well as improving other transportation options to and from the airport, including rental car service.

While the School for the Arts is slated to get big bucks for dorms, a proposal to designate it a special statewide residential public high school, like the state schools for the blind and hearing-impaired, failed.

Journal North reporter T.S. Last contributed to this story.
SANTA FE  A bill to create a system to track students moving between public school districts, spurred by a boys tragic death after he fell off the radar of the education system and wasnt enrolled in classes, was passed by the state Senate just as the clock ran out on the 2019 legislative session.

But a bill to close a loophole in the states child abuse reporting law died in a House committee.

House Bill 447 passed the Senate 23-17 around noon Saturday and was the final action taken by the Senate before adjourning. The bill, which now heads to the governors desk, requires the state Children, Youth and Families Department and Public Education Department to create a tracking system for students who move among districts and CYFD services.

The bill also requires each student to get a unique identification number that wont be used again for any other student.

The legislation was inspired by the case of 13-year-old Jeremiah Valencia, who was killed in Nambe, north of Santa Fe, in November 2017. Jeremiah and his younger sister were pulled from West Las Vegas Schools in February of 2017. Their mother, 36-year-old Tracy Ann Pena, started paperwork to transfer the children to a Santa Fe school, but the children never attended classes there.

Jeremiah was allegedly killed by house member Jordan Nunez, 20, the son of Penas live-in boyfriend Thomas Ferguson, who is also said to have abused the boy. Jeremiahs body was found buried off the side of the road near Nambe in late January 2018.

Pena has pleaded guilty to one count of child abuse resulting in death. Nunez still faces charges and Ferguson committed suicide in jail.

No state education agency was making sure Jeremiah and his sister were in school, leading Santa Fe Reps. Linda Trujillo and Andrea Romero, both Democrats, to introduce the tracking bill.

I am thrilled that it passed, Trujillo said. This is a piece of the puzzle that has the potential for saving children.

If the governor signs the bill into law, CYFD and PED must work together to create a task force to develop a tracking system. The task force has until December to report to the Legislative Education Study Committee. Im hoping its not years before any of this happens, Trujillo said.

House Bill 488, sponsored by Rep. Javier Martinez, D-Albuquerque, would have required the reporting by every person of alleged child abuse committed by anyone. Current state law only requires child abuse to be reported if its allegedly being committed by a parent or guardian. The bill got past the House Health and Human Services Committee, but stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

The legislation was inspired by the case of ex-teacher Gary Gregor, who was able to move between school districts in Utah and New Mexico despite repeat accusations that he was molesting his female elementary school students.

Gregor was recently convicted for sexual crimes committed against two students at Fairview Elementary School in Espanola during the 2007-08 school year and faces 168 years in prison. But school personnel in Espanola and Santa Fe, where hed previously faced accusations of misbehavior with girls, never called police or CYFD despite complaints or concerns expressed by students and others.

According to state Attorney General Hector Balderas, whos lobbying for Martinezs bill, New Mexico is the only state in the nation with this kind of loophole.

I am disappointed that the House Judiciary Committee killed this bill, leaving New Mexico as the only state in the nation that does not offer this important protection for children who are sexually abused, Balderas said in a statement Monday.

At a March 1 hearing, the Judiciary Committee chair, Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, voiced concerns about whether the proposed changes should be in the criminal code instead of the states childrens code and whether they were constitutional. A representative of the state defense attorneys association said the amendments language was vague and could require the reporting of someone talking on a cellphone while driving with a child as a passenger.
The three members of New Mexicos U.S. House delegation are sponsoring a bill that could grant permanent residence status to as many as 2.5 million undocumented immigrants nationwide.

Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Lujan, U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., and U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, D-N.M., are co-sponsors of the Dream and Promise Act, which would offer protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure recipients.

This legislation will secure the futures of thousands of men and women who proudly see themselves as Americans, Lujan said.

The bill could impact as many as 10,000 people in New Mexico, according to the state branch of United We Dream.

Approximately 6,000 DACA recipients live in New Mexico. As of 2016, 73 percent of DACA-eligible immigrants in the state, or 7,410 people, had applied for DACA.

An additional 2,000 residents of the state satisfied all but the educational requirements for DACA, and another 3,000 would be eligible as they grow older.

Some 422 people were TPS recipients as of October 2017, according to the Congressional Research Office.

 Dreamers, TPS and DED recipients are our neighbors. They are students, small-business owners, first responders and essential parts of our community, Torres Small said. The Dream and Promise Act (is an) essential step towards a clear and moral immigration system that keeps our border communities vibrant and safe.

The legislation has the support of DACA recipients who are involved with the New Mexico Dream Team, the state branch of United We Dream.

The Dream & Promise Act would give millions of immigrant people who call this country home a pathway to citizenship and the opportunity to thrive without the  fear of deportation, said Michelle Murguia, a computer engineer student at Central New Mexico Community College. Best of all, the bill ensures no one I love is thrown under the bus in exchange for my protection and right to stay.

The Dream and Promise Act would give me and the other millions of immigrants living in this country the tranquility and peace needed to thrive, said New Mexico State student Uriel Rosales, who described life in a border community as an undocumented immigrant as a living nightmare.

What our undocumented immigrant communities need now more than ever is a bill that provides a pathway to citizenship without sacrificing any of the members of our communities to obtain it, Rosales said.

The bill would provide Dreamers a path to legal resident status on completion of higher education degrees, military service or employment for at least three years.

The bill would allow TPS and DED recipients who have been in the U.S. since the fall of 2016 to apply for Green Cards.

The contributions of our immigrant communities are what make our country the beautiful, diverse fabric we are today, Haaland said. I joined the Dream and Promise Act so that Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure recipients will be able to go to school, and become doctors and business owners without having to worry about being forced out of the only place they call home.
The boom lives on.

For now.

As Journal reporter Kevin Robinson-Avila reported Wednesday, New Mexico is enjoying tandem surges from both oil and natural gas industries. Oil production in 2018 jumped 42 percent from the previous year, while natural gas production enjoyed a more measured 13 percent increase in the same time frame.

While the presence of tech giants in the Land of Enchantment offers promise, those statistics from the state Oil Conservation Division are a reminder oil and gas has been the most constant private industry in the states modern development. Even taking into consideration the frustrating roller coaster of booms and busts, energy has quite literally kept the lights on in New Mexico.

Yes, we as a state need to be vigilant environmental stewards of our public lands, especially in the era of scaled-back federal protections and considering our proportionately massive methane emissions. The successful Senate Bill 489, a historic measure that lays out a path to carbon-free electricity generation by 2045, is a good step in that direction.

Yes, we need to pay heed to the need for more rural infrastructure investment, especially for those roads in the far-flung areas of the state that bear the brunt of wear and tear from energy workers traffic.

Yes, we need to encourage a diversified economy that will better cushion the blows of the busts.

Yes, we need to guard against an outsized influence on state or local policy.

But politicians shouldnt be too quick to turn their noses up at the boons that energy taxes, royalties and leases have to offer. The current boom is why New Mexico has an estimated extra $2 billion this and next fiscal year.

Lawmakers in February proposed hitting a four-year pause button on the issuance of new fracking permits across the state. While the bill never made it out of the state Senate Conservation Committee, Steve Pearce, chairman of the New Mexico GOP, told the Journal he fears the mere discussion of a moratorium by Roundhouse politicians could send potential future energy investors fleeing  presumably to the gentler hills of Texas. Pearces comments may have been a touch dramatic, but the fact is, if oil and gas up and left, the impact on the state budget would be devastating.

In fiscal 2018, the industry generated a record $2.2 billion in state income  money that will go to strengthening schools, bridges, roads and public safety initiatives.

Now that theres a several-year forecast for sunny O&G revenues, its time to invest this money wisely in New Mexicos future while transitioning to carbon-free options and diversifying the states economy beyond extractive industries and government spending.

Because rainy days come, even in New Mexico.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
At the Border Security Meeting in Deming (on) March 9 there was a lot of good information but the most compelling, for me, and of the greatest concern, came from Richard Wooten, respiratory therapist, and Gary Thrasher, doctor of veterinary medicine.

Based on their data, we are one of the most vaccinated nations in the world and thus are free from human cases of TB, measles, mumps and, in animals, equine encephalitis, brucellosis, etc.

When people enter the USA through legal channels, part of the entry requirement is a health check and immunization against disease. With the uptick of migrants entering the USA as asylum seekers, there are some medical assessments, but no immunization is taking place at the border.

A significant number of asylum seekers are carrying diseases that threaten the U.S. inoculated herd. According to the March 11 Journal editorial, Vaccinations are essential to a healthy population because they are predicated on herd immunity  when enough people are vaccinated and immune to a disease, its transmission is reduced or eliminated.

The bacteria in TB is spread by coughs and sneezes that may travel as much as 200 feet. Measles, like TB, is highly contagious, especially four days before and after the rash appears. My children missed mumps because of MMR vaccine, yet there are over 200 recently reported cases of mumps in the asylum-seeker community.

As the number of asylum seekers grows, the number of Americans taking care of them are increasingly at risk, simply because of the number of humans compounded by buildings and buses without enough ventilation for the crush of people. 

Asylum seekers with children are frequently put on a GPS monitor with a promise to return for their credible threat hearing. There are few health interventions, but the likelihood of them disappearing into our country is high. They will find work in dairies, hotels and restaurants where the spread of TB, measles, lice and scabies is possible. 

In New Mexico, nearly 5,000 out of approximately 320,000 school-age students were granted immunization waivers. Add nearly 30,000 asylum seekers, since October 2018, passing into and through New Mexico; is there now a significant health risk?

Lastly, Border Patrol agents and medical professionals, who are the first contact for these large groups of asylum seekers, become vulnerable. Nothing presented during the discussion talked about protecting them. 

On March 4, Mexican officials said they expected 700,000 migrants to pass through Mexico on their way to our southwestern border. New Mexico will get its share, and with that a significant health risk due to microscopic baggage.

 New Mexicans in the Bootheel have been asking for help since at least 2005. What have they received? A hundred times more illegal immigrants passing through their property, some breaking and or stealing equipment, setting signal fires, leaving trash and needles, and sometimes a gun shoved in their face. The Bootheel is in crisis and, sadly, the chairs reserved for our governor or congressional delegation, or their representatives, remained empty (at the meeting). It is hard to listen if you arent there, and if you want to be in charge, you need to show up.

Yes, it is a crisis, and the health crisis may be the biggest threat of all.
Copyright  2019 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham will not appeal a landmark court ruling on New Mexico education spending, but she said her administration will litigate aggressively in the coming months in an attempt to avoid long-term court oversight of the states public schools.

Lujan Grisham, a Democrat who took office in January, faced a Monday deadline to decide whether to appeal a state judges ruling last summer that the state was not meeting its constitutional requirement to provide an adequate education to all students.

She said Monday that she agrees with the spirit of that ruling but that her administration will mount a vigorous legal defense.

We will litigate aggressively each finding and each fact, Lujan Grisham said during a meeting with Journal editors and reporters. I am not inclined to a consent decree  I think that would be problematic in any number of ways.

Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represented the Martinez plaintiffs, said the state earned court intervention through many years of neglect.

While that neglect may have occurred under different leadership, this lawsuit is not about current state leadership, but about fulfilling the states guarantees to future leaders of the state who are currently in public school, Saenz said told the Journal in an email. The judicial system maintains an obligation to address and remedy any situation that would perpetuate a system that fails to satisfy New Mexico state constitutional standards.

New Mexico has been embroiled in several long-running and expensive class-action lawsuits, including litigation dealing with the way it provides services to people with developmental disabilities and how it handles applications for food assistance benefits.

Lujan Grisham said she wants to avoid a similar scenario in the public school litigation, adding that allowing the courts to have supervision over New Mexico schools would encroach into the Legislatures authority to appropriate state dollars and potentially be harmful to taxpayers.

I dont think thats prudent for the state of New Mexico, she said.

The court case played a central role during the just-ended 60-day legislative session, as lawmakers approved a slew of bills to address the deficiencies highlighted by District Judge Sarah Singleton in her ruling.

That includes a $7 billion budget bill passed by lawmakers that is awaiting final approval from Lujan Grisham, which would increase state spending on public schools by roughly $447 million  or 16 percent  over current levels.

Those additional dollars would be used to give a 6 percent pay raise to teachers and school administrators, extend the school year and give more money through the states funding formula to school districts with a large number of low-income students.

Legislators say that spending infusion, along with other bills, could bring the state into compliance with the court ruling.

Gail Evans, lead counsel for the Yazzie plaintiffs, said that although she is pleased the governor wont appeal, shes not pleased with the outcome of the legislative session, saying the public education system is still not getting necessary resources.

We are terribly disappointed  and it shows our children still will not get what they need, she told the Journal on Monday. We, too, intend to show the court just how much the Legislature did not meet the needs of our students.

The lawsuit has a yearslong history, born from two separate but similar cases that were eventually merged.

What came to be known as the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit was filed by the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 2014, arguing the state has been breaking its constitutional obligation to provide a sufficient education to all children.

A bench trial in 2017, which lasted several months, resulted in over 130 depositions taken and in excess of a million pages of documents exchanged. Closing arguments wrapped up in early 2018, and the court entered its decisions in July, saying the state did violate the constitutional rights of students, especially at-risk students.

Singleton had previously set an April 15 deadline for lawmakers and the governor to come up with a plan.

Lujan Grisham also suggested the administration of her predecessor, former Gov. Susana Martinez, had not mounted a strong enough defense in the case. The Martinez administration had declared its intent to appeal the ruling before Martinez left office at the end of this year.

The new governor, who said on the campaign trail that she would not appeal the ruling, said her administration will file motions in the case and could ask the judge to vacate parts of her decision.

We think we can prevail in some of the positions we take, Lujan Grisham said.
Theyre shooting at me.

Those are the last words Daniel Sandoval, 26, spoke to his nine-month-pregnant wife, Tanya Sandoval.

He was so happy, He wouldnt hurt nobody, she said. This is killing me.

Sitting at a picnic table at Daniel Fernandez Memorial Park in Los Lunas on her due date on March 8, Tanya talked about her late husband, sobbing and wondering what will come next for her and their son, who was born a couple of days later.

On March 2, a Saturday, Daniel was working on the couples trailer in Meadow Lake while Tanya made a trip to the store with her daughter. While they were still shopping, she got a call from her husband that rocked her world.

He said, Theyre shooting at me. Then it cut off. I tried calling and calling and calling, but he didnt answer, she said.

At a loss, Tanya decided to try to find Daniel.

For some reason, I thought he was in El Cerro (Mission), so I went out there, she said. I didnt find him, so I tried to go back to the trailer.

By then, law enforcement had closed off Meadow Lake Road, the only road in or out of the eastern community, and Tanya couldnt get home.

Her aunt came and picked up her little girl and eventually someone took Tanya to the hospital where Daniel had died.

I didnt get to see him. I couldnt be with him, she said, tears pouring down her face.

The two met through Facebook a year ago. The only thing publicly visible on Tanyas page now is a profile picture of she and Daniel taken at the Los Lunas River Park.

In the image, they wear smiles and matching T-shirts that proclaim they were established as husband and wife on Oct. 1, 2018.

He saw my picture and wanted to get to know me. He said he didnt think Id talk to him, Tanya says with a small chuckle.

She did talk to him and she fell in love with him.

What made me fall in love with him was his love for his little girl, she said.

Daniels daughter will turn 6 this month.

Tanya has family in the area, including two other children, but says it was mostly just her and Daniel, and soon a new baby and blended family.

The pregnancy was planned and the couple decided to name the baby after his father as soon as they found out they were having a boy.

He was so happy to be having a baby boy, Tanya said, to bring us all together as a family.

The same day he was killed, Daniel had gotten a new stroller and installed the car seat in their car.

Now, huddled in a sweatshirt that belonged to Daniel, Tanya mourns.

I just want to be with him, hear him. I want him back, she said. He wasnt doing nothing to nobody.

Tanya described Daniel, the family provider and protector, as funny, outgoing and willing to help anyone.

He had so much love to give. How he loved his daughter, thats how I know my son would have been loved so much, she says.

Two men  Jesus Angel Garcia, 32, of Peralta, and Alexandro Motelongo Murillo, 24, of El Paso  are in custody and accused of Daniels murder.

When asked how she feels about the two suspects, Tanyas tone is venomous.

So much hatred.

When Valencia County sheriffs deputies arrived at a home on Sportsman Drive that Saturday, they found Sandoval shot multiple times. He was transported to a hospital where he later died.

According to a news release issued by the U.S. Marshals Service, who helped capture Garcia and Murillo in El Paso, the two men allegedly engaged in a vehicle pursuit with Sandoval and a second victim, shooting at the vehicle Sandoval was driving. The second victim was unharmed.

Valencia County Sheriffs Office Lt. James Harris said the incident went from one location to another.

There was gun fire along the way, Harris said. There were multiple crime scenes between the two locations.

On the day of the shooting, officers with Bosque Farms Police Department were assisting with the incident, and found Garcia and Murillo hiding along a ditchbank. The two suspects were taken into custody and turned over to sheriffs deputies. However, Murillo and Garcia were eventually released.

We had them in custody for a considerable amount of time, but we did not have enough probable cause, so we had to release them, Harris said. Shortly after they were released, we were able to establish probable cause and issue the arrest warrants.

Garcia and Murillo, who were wanted on open counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence, were located at a hotel in El Paso on March 7 and taken into custody.

Tanya Sandoval shares a picture of her husband, Daniel, who was shot and killed earlier this month. The images on her phone will be the only way their newborn son will know his father.
Its the workforce, stupid.

Thats one way to sum up the rationale behind a new push by Texas businesses to rally support for immigrants and immigration reform. At a time of low unemployment and strong demand for workers, the group wants to stop scaring off potential newcomers to Texas. Some are even pushing for a way to let unauthorized immigrants work here legally.

In late February, over 50 companies and chambers of commerce formed the Texans for Economic Growth Coalition to take their message to lawmakers in Austin and Washington.

We are committed to promoting common-sense immigration reforms that strengthen our economy and attract talent and business to our state, the group wrote in its compact.

One goal is to head off bills that would punish immigrants and hurt the economy. There are proposals in the Texas House and Senate to end in-state tuition for high school graduates who dont have legal status. If enacted, Texas could lose $400 million in annual economic activity, one study found.

Another goal is to make a persuasive case on the economic value of immigration. The group wants the Texas delegation to push for more immigrants, not fewer.

The reality is that everyone is starving for workers, said Eddie Aldrete, senior vice president at IBC Bank in San Antonio. You either import enough human capital or create it. Right now, were not doing either.

Tight labor markets in the U.S. have been exacerbated by policies to reduce legal and illegal immigration, including President Donald Trumps focus on the border wall. Reducing this labor supply especially threatens Texas because immigrants have accounted for much of the fast growth here.

From 2000 to 2017, foreign-born workers in Texas grew over three times faster than U.S.-born workers, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. Texas immigrants accounted for more than 1 in 4 four jobs in construction, manufacturing, food services and lodging.

The new coalition wants to broaden the immigration conversation from protecting the border to growing the economy.

This irony is that the best border security can be achieved through immigration reform, Aldrete said.

Large chambers of commerce often push for more immigrants because theyre important to business, both as a source of talent and a consumer market. But in 2017, they failed to hold back Senate Bill 4, which banned sanctuary cities and allowed law enforcement to require people to show their documents.

Many opposed the show-me-your-papers bill, and that sentiment helped fuel the new coalition on immigration.

A bipartisan pro-immigration group, New American Economy, met with businesses throughout the state and heard many complaints about SB 4  and regrets.

They didnt realize how devastating the consequences would be, said Chelsie Kramer, state organizer for the group. They were very hungry for a way to speak out in a uniform voice.

Members of the coalition include chambers of commerce from Dallas, North Dallas, Irving and North Texas, as well as from Austin, Houston and San Antonio.

Their effort is similar to Texas Competes, a business-led group that pushed back on bathroom bills targeting the LGBTQ community. It emphasized the economic risks of the legislation, and business opposition was crucial.

A large group can coordinate and amplify a message, and provide cover for executives and their companies. In general, they dont want to alienate customers over controversial issues.

Its not like you want to stick your neck out, said Jim Baron, who owns Blue Mesa Grill and TNT Tacos and Tequila restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth. So were going into this all together, holding hands  hoping we can do something about it.

Baron is one of nine executives on the leadership team of the business coalition. He said this was the first time he has stepped out at this level. He hopes to persuade the state restaurant association and other trade groups to get more aggressive in pushing for reforms.

He said he is paying $17 an hour for a line cook, up from $12 four years ago, and thats still not enough.

Its not just the wages, Baron said. I cant find anyone. There are restaurants I cant open because I cant get the staff.

People often suggest that unauthorized immigrants just get in line for a work visa. But he said that process can take seven to 10 years and require applicants to return to their homeland. So thats not a solution.

Marek, a specialty subcontracting company in Houston, has been turning away big projects because it cant fill open jobs. CEO Stan Marek proposes a temporary work visa for unauthorized immigrants who pass a background check, but he acknowledges an uphill fight in Washington.

We should go after the low hanging fruit  the people who are already here, Marek said. We gotta find a way for these workers to get legal status.

For the public, he recommends a series of nonpartisan videos on immigration, which trace the history in Texas and the U.S. But in Austin, he wants more companies to push back against anti-immigrant bills and sentiment.

After the sanctuary cities law, some construction workers departed for California, Colorado and Florida, including immigrants who were here legally. They were afraid of being hassled in Texas, he said.

Thats not the right message, and its no way to fix immigration.

If we dont solve this, its gonna cost us billions of dollars, Marek said.



2019 The Dallas Morning News

Visit The Dallas Morning News at www.dallasnews.com

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PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194):
Womens groups in Ghana have expressed concern that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addos recent nomination of 14 persons for consideration by Parliament as Ministers had only one woman.



In a statement, the group said: We are extremely disappointed at this appointment as we believe that all state appointments must be undertaken within the overall commitment to gender equality of women and men in order to add value and make use of diversity of experiences in ways that are democratic and define genuine and equal citizenship.



Below is a copy of the full statement



STATEMENT FROM WOMENS GROUP IN GHANA ON THE NOMINATION OF MINISTERS FOR THE NEW REGIONS



We have learnt with shock and dismay the nomination by His Excellency, the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, of 14 persons designated as Ministers and Deputy Ministers for the newly created Regions and some existing Regions in the country.



We are dismayed because this list contains the names of thirteen (13) men and only one (1) woman.



We are extremely disappointed at this appointment as we believe that all state appointments must be undertaken within the overall commitment to gender equality of women and men in order to add value and make use of diversity of experiences in ways that are democratic and define genuine and equal citizenship. Article 35(6b) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana stipulates that the country must: achieve reasonable regional and gender balance in recruitment and appointment to public offices.



The gender ratio being represented in this list is a mere 6.25% for women nominated as against men.



This cannot be said to be reasonable and does not represent a genuine act of gender responsiveness but rather reinforces the critical gender equality gaps and challenges. Again, this appointment does not reflect the Presidents current position as an African Union Gender Champion.



The African Union (AU) per its Gender Agenda calls on all member states to achieve parity and equal representation of both women and men in political and public offices.



It is based on this parity principle that Ethiopia, Rwanda, Senegal, and other sister African countries are making progress towards the 50/50 appointment of women and men to high-level political offices.



This list of Ministers designated to manage these Regions does not also reflect the governing partys (NPPs) Manifesto provision promising to give a minimum of 30% appointment to women in participation and in representation in all levels of decision making structures in Ghana. We do sincerely acknowledge the appreciable progress that has been made in placing individual women in very high profile positions but we are still missing out on the full benefits of gender equality leadership teams. Gender equality is a precondition for meeting the challenges of reducing poverty, promoting peace and security and enhancing the quality of our human capital.



We, therefore, demand that:



1. The list of designated Ministers and Deputy Ministers for the newly created Regions and some existing Regions be recalled and reconsidered to ensure gender equality



2. The formulae of not less than 40% women and not more than 60% men or 40% men and 60% women be applied



3. Any government appointment should reflect the 40-60 formulae or the African Union 50-50 Agenda.



We are using this opportunity to also call on the Speaker of Parliament and all Parliamentarians to ensure that gender equality and parity are at the heart of all appointments that come to Parliament for approval. Gender inequality and gender disparities contributed in very realistic and substantial ways to Ghanas failure to secure comprehensive improved conditions for all citizens.



Signed

1. Womens Manifesto Coalition

2. Women in Law and Development in Africa

3. Abantu for Development

4. International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Ghana

5. Women Media and Change (WOMEC)

6. Free the Marginalised Women Advocates (FREMWA)

7. Caritas Ghana

8. Golden Star Foundation

9. Voice of People with Disability, Ghana (Voice Ghana)

10. Child Research and Resource Centre (CRRECENT)

11. Community Development and Advocacy Centre (CODAC)

12. Action for Sustainable Development (ASUDEV)

13. SMAid International

14. Penplusbytes

15. Pronet North

16. 4-H Ghana

17. Association of Women for the Preservation of the Environment

18. Youth Empowerment for Life (YefL)

19. NORSAAC

20. Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC)

21. Our Lady of Mercy Community (OLAMCS), Navrongo

22. Penal Reform Ghana (PRG)

23. African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA)

24. Youth and Women Empowerment (WOYE)

25. Lorlornyo FM

26. Ghana Community Radio Network

27. Radio Builsa

28. Radio Ada

29. Radio Justice

30. Daasgift Quality Foundation

31. CILTAD/Coastal TV

32. Kekeli Foundation

33. Volta Educational Renaissance Foundation (VEReF)

34. Child Research and Resource Centre (CRESCENT)

35. ABANTU for Development

36. Amnesty International, Ghana

37. Ghana Journalists Association (GJA)

38. Association of Women in Media (ASWIM)

39. Regional Advisory Information and Network Systems (RAINS)

40. Ark Development Organisation

41. Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA)

42. Women Integrated Development Organization (WIDO)

43. Central and Western Fishmongers Improvement Association (CEWEFIA)

44. Womens Hope Foundation

45. Center for the Development of people (CEDEP)

46. Peoples Dialogue on Human Settlement (PDHS),

47. SMAid International

48. Local Governance Network (LOGNET).

49. Convention Peoples Party (CPP)

50. Odekro PMO

51. Musician Union of Ghana (MUSIGA)

Source: Women Groups









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 Carl C. Anderson, Sr. and Marie Jo Anderson Charitable Foundation just awarded St. Felix Pantry with $20,000 to help the organization buy a new food truck.

Manuel Casias, Spokesman for St. Felix Pantry said in a press release that the pantry is in need of a slightly newer used truck to replace two older food trucks that are need of constant repairs.

The primary use of the new truck will be used for our mobile food pantry that visits various food deserts throughout Sandoval County, Casias said. As of today, we are now providing food to over 400 households in Cuba, Jemez, and Pena Blanca.

Casias said the pantry still needs an additional $8,500 before it can reach its goal of buying the new truck.

For more information about St. Felix Pantry please call 505-270-1366 or email: mcasias@stfelixpantry.org
A 15-year-old girl who was the subject of an Amber Alert after she was reported missing in Gallup was found safe Tuesday morning.

New Mexico State Police sent out the alert around 10 a.m. and cancelled it about an hour later.

They said the girl, Tanisha Jim, was found in Gallup.

According to the Gallup Police Department, Tanishas siblings had told officers they dropped the teenager off at Ford Canyon Park because she said she was going to hang out with a male friend.

The next morning State Police announced Tanisha was believed to be with 18-year-old Murray Jameson in a black Toyota Corolla in Albuquerque. They said the two had made plans on Facebook.

It is unclear if Jameson was found or if the two had actually been together. No one from the Gallup Police Department returned phone calls asking for more information.
Copyright  2019 Albuquerque Journal

A week and a half after a fire and ensuing flood caused more than $1 million in damage at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, state officials say they will be charging two people after an arson investigation.

The Office of Superintendent of Insurance will hold a news conference today to provide more details about the incident and about the investigation, but special agent in charge Mark Torres said he can confirm charges are pending.

He would not say what the people will be charged with, who they are or whether theyre connected to the Barelas-area center, at Bridge SW near Fourth.

Torres said he plans to also discuss why the sprinkler system failed. He said the individual had interrupted the process so it wouldnt call the fire department when the alarm went off.

We will be able to explain where there was a breakdown in the system and how an individual overrode the system, he said. Thats why it didnt work, causing $1.5 million in damage.

Neither the executive director nor a spokeswoman for the NHCC responded to requests for comment.

On March 10, a small fire broke out in the mechanical room of the second floor of the cultural centers Roy E. Disney Performing Arts Center.

The sprinkler system was triggered and extinguished the fire, but then it failed to notify Albuquerque Fire Rescue.

The sprinklers then ran for four hours, flooding parts of the building.

The incident forced several major planned performances to be canceled or moved to other locations.

The New Mexico Philharmonic planned to play at the performing arts center on Sunday but had to cancel. Opera Southwest and the National Institute of Flamenco had scheduled performances at the center, as well, and were forced to find new venues.

Torres said the arson investigation was complicated and took extra time because he had to travel out of Albuquerque to western New Mexico. He declined to say why.

The multijurisdictional investigation was a coordinated effort by OSIs criminal division, the State Fire Marshals Office, Albuquerque Fire Rescue, New Mexico General Services Department and the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

The National Hispanic Cultural Center is a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

It hosts more than 700 events a year, and it includes an art museum, library, genealogy center and educational resources.
As of the 2012 Census, the most recent source for such data, there were at least 2,000 businesses in New Mexico owned by members of the black community.

Thats according to Theresa A. Carson, the president and CEO of the African American Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, which launched this week.

We are a thriving community for black-owned businesses, said Carson. . . . We need to let that be known. Its like a diamond in the rough here.

Carson, who was a supply chain manager for Sandia National Laboratories until her retirement last year, said raising the public profile of those businesses is a major priority for the chamber. So too is addressing the challenges facing those organizations, challenges like accessing capital, scaling and sustaining small businesses and winning procurement contracts.

The chamber has about 20 members, said Carson. For the next month, it will focus on member recruitment, and then will prioritize developing its educational programming, mentorship opportunities and networking events.

Carson said the African American Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce is not the first organization in the area to serve the needs of the black business community here. Both an African American Chamber of Commerce and a New Mexico Black Chamber of Commerce have existed in Albuquerque in the past, though Carson said she could not speak to why they no longer do. She did say members of what became the new chamber circulated a survey in the community last summer to ensure theres a need for a new organization.

Though the chambers mission is centered on serving the black business community in New Mexico, Carson said all are invited to join. Memberships begin at $100 for individuals and small businesses and as much as $5,000 for corporations.

We welcome everyone, she said. We are a very inclusive chamber.

The chamber is headquartered at 3150 Carlisle NE near Candelaria NE.
Embattled Secretary to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Mining and Environment (IMCIM), Mr. Charles Onua Wontor Bissue, has indicated his resolve to sacrifice his job and should he be found guilty of the various offences captured in the latest expose by ace investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, leader of the Tiger Eye PI group.



He has thus challenged Anas to produce the unedited tape of his undercover expose on the alleged galamsey scandal.



"I have subjected myself to the laws of Ghana and since no one is above the law, I urge Tiger Eye PI and Anas Aremeyaw Anas to provide the CID with the raw unedited footages, so that the good people of Ghana can have the benefit of knowing the truth," he stated.



Speaking in an interview with Kwame Nkrumah Tikese on Okay fm's "Ade Akye Abia" programme, he expressed surprised that Anas has not till date, submitted the unedited tape as demanded by government.



Breaking his silence for the first time since the said video was released by the Tiger eye PI team, he stressed that he wants Anas, government and the entire nation to use his case as a case study.



"I reiterate that, in the course of my duty as the Secretary to the IMCIM, I have never received any money as consideration to render a service as a public officer."



"I have also noted with considerable interest, the many well-wishing messages and solidarity demonstrated by friends and acquaintances from all walks of life who believe in my integrity and can attest to my values and principles."



"Irrespective of my position and the work i have done so far for the inter-ministerial committee on mining and environment, i will resign if am found guilty of any charge that will be leveled against me in raw unedited video of Anas's expose," he added.

Source: Isaac kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline.com/[email protected]









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VF Corp. is adding skateboard and streetwear brand Supreme to its line of recreational apparel brands as people seek comfort and leisure wear during the pandemic.

The parent company of Vans, Dickies, Timberland and The North Face on Monday announced plans to purchase Supreme in a $2.1 billion acquisition deal set to be completed before the end of the year.

Founded in a New York skateboard shop in 1994, Supreme apparel has become popular with skateboarders, hip-hop fans and other Millennial and Gen Z youth cultures. In 2007, the Carlyle Group acquired half the company for $500 million. Over the years, VF and Supreme have routinely collaborated on products for VF's North Face, Timberland and Vans apparel lines.

Both companies' leaders say the acquisition allows Supreme to leverage VF's expertise and resources, including its global supply chain, to maximize growth. VF says Supreme gives it "deeper access to attractive consumer segments that apply to many of VF's existing brands."

VF CEO Steve Rendle says his company is the "ideal steward" for Supreme's unique brand and can provide it with the resources and insight "to enable sustainable long-term growth."

"We are thrilled to welcome Supreme to the VF family and to build on our decades-long relationship as we create value for all of our stakeholders," Rendle said in a written statement.

The news gave VF's stock price a notable boost following the opening bell on Monday before leveling out by midday.
CHICO, Calif. -The Chico Fire Department is investigating a shed fire at a home near Neal Dow Elementary School.

Authorities said the fire broke out just after midnight Tuesday in the 1500 block of Neal Dow Avenue near E. 5th Avenue. Firefighters were able to knock down the fire within 45 minutes, but say the wood and metal shed was destroyed. No one was injured, and there was no damage to the home.

Action News Now spoke to neighbors on the scene that said the homeowner's son lives in the shed. The Chico Fire Department could not confirm that information.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.
PLACER COUNTY, Calif. - The Placer County Sheriff's Office is warning people to stay away from the swift waters of the American River after a man was found dead in the waters.

Search crews found Andy Odon Ortega Fonseca, 23, of Sacramento, Monday afternoon. The sheriff's office said he fell into the river in the area of No Hands Bridge in Auburn at 7 p.m. Sunday while he was with his fiancee. Authorities said the man was quickly swept away by the river, and the search had to end at 9 p.m. Sunday due to lack of visibility. Search crews found Fonseca's body Monday afternoon.

The sheriff's office is now warning people to avoid the American River until at least June.

Officials say the river's temperature ranges from 38-45 degrees Fahrenheit, and the flows are swift and choppy. They also say it is easy to get swept under the current, even when the water appears calm.
MARYSVILLE, Calif. - The Marysville Police Department is searching for a wanted felon who escaped on foot following a high-speed chase with officers.

Officers with the department attempted to stop a white Hyundai sedan for speeding in the area of East 11th Street and Ramirez Street around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday.

The driver of the Hyundai, identified as Jonathon Mims, 28, of Marysville, initially stopped.

As officers were speaking to Mims, they noticed that he smelled like alcohol and marijuana. When they asked him to step out of the vehicle, he sped away from the scene.

Officers went after Mims for eight blocks until Mims lost control of his vehicle at the intersection of Sampson Street and East 19th Street, striking a fence, power pole and water agency pump house.

Mim's vehicle came to rest on the driver-side door with a female passenger trapped inside.

Mims fled on foot before officers could make their way to the vehicle. Marysville Fire responded and was able to get the female passenger out of the vehicle.

After a search of the car, officers found Mim's wallet and identification, a small amount of marijuana and a loaded black revolver near the driver's door in the grass.

Mims is currently wanted for felony evading and felon in possession of a firearm.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Marysville Police Department at (530) 749-3900.
REDDING, Calif - Community members in Redding will be holding a vigil to honor the 50 people that died in last weeks deadly mosque attack in New Zealand.

The Shasta County Interfaith Forum said it is organizing this event not only to honor the victims and their families but to show support to all Muslim community members.

The vigil, which begins at 7 p.m. at the Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ, will include brief comments and prayers from various faiths including the Islamic Center of Redding.

The vigil will be free and is open to the public.

Donations will be collected and sent to New Zealand to help in this difficult time.
Television personality, Nana Aba Anamoah has posted a video of her interactions with two young and handsome homosexuals in Labadi, Accra.



Perhaps the time has come for Ghana to consider legalising homosexuality since there are a lot of them living in the country already but hiding for the fear of being lynched.



Nana Aba Anamoah asked of their names and why they put on eyelashes and the motive behind their feminine fashion style apparently, they are women to other gay men.



Social media folks have reacted to the video and whilst some are bashing them, others are praising them for being themselves and not living a pretentious life.



Watch the video below;







































View this post on Instagram







Just before I left Labadi Olympia last night...





A post shared by nana aba (@thenanaaba) on Mar 18, 2019 at 10:37am PDT





Source: ghanacelebrities.com









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With just one day left till AdFest 2019 kicks off in Pattaya, Thailand, on March 20, the festival has unveiled its complete line-up of speakers with Michelle Cao, Founder and CEO of VPhoto in Shanghai, the last speaker to be announced. Google Indias Umma Saini is also returning to AdFest for the session titled, What would Juliet do? Staying creative in a changing world.

Cao founded VPhoto in 2015 and today the company has cooperated with over 4,000 photographers whose services cover 176 Chinese cities and 16 other countries. The company has grown so quickly, Cao is now known as the Queen of internet images from China.

In a session titled A Picture Says A Thousand Words, Cao will introduce the regions creatives to VPhoto, explaining how the company is subverting the conventional photography industry while enabling new opportunities for agencies. Her session takes place this Thursday, March 21, 10.40-11.15 am.

Meanwhile, Umma Saini, Brand & Creative Lead at Google India in Gurgaon, will also be questioning What would Juliet do? Staying creative in a changing world on Thursday, March 21 at 14.30.

This is the fastest humanity has ever advanced since its inception. From hand prints in caves to AI, we have come a long, unfathomable way. Todays media is tomorrows obsolete. And the world is only going to keep moving forward. How do we stay relevant in such a fast changing world? Where do we rest our faith? explained Saini, who is one of the youngest and most celebrated Creative Directors in the world, now working as the Brand & Creative Lead for Google India for all Google products.

Saini has been ranked No.1 Creative Director in India by Campaign Brief Asia, and No. 10 in the world by the Big Won Report  the first Indian woman ever to feature. She played a key role in launching Ariels #ShareTheLoadcampaign that went on to become WARCs No. 1 Campaign in the World, twice in a row, and is now a global cultural phenomenon.

AdFest is also hosting a series of screenings and exhibits this year, from ADC*Es showcase of the best in European graphic design and advertising creativity to D&ADs exhibition of D&AD Impact winners  a category that seeks to celebrate these great, transformative, creative ideas that have had real impact and, ultimately, contribute towards a better, fairer and more sustainable future for all. FIAP, the London International Awards, Longxi Creative Awards and The One Show will also showcase their winners and finalists, giving AdFest delegates the chance to be inspired by ideas from all corners of the globe.

Film screenings include the Asian premiere of Warsaw Rising, a cinematic VR experience where the audience will be immersed in Polish history and experience what it was like to live in destroyed cities in the midst of explosions, gunshots and tanks.

From London, Straight 8 is returning to present The Best of Straight 8 Shootout 2018  a screening of short films made using a single cartridge of super 8mm film, without re-takes, editing or post-production. Last year, 43 creative companies worldwide took part in SHOOTOUTS in 2018 at AdFest, Cannes and the new online-premiere shootout launched in December.

AdFest is also proud to be screening Young Director Award winners at the festival this year. The Young Director Award is the only award in the world aimed at promoting young directing talents. It offers these new directors remarkable opportunities, maximising their global media coverage, and is proudly supported by AdFests Fabulous Five short film program.
Building on the global success of its latest brand claim Say Yes to the World, Lufthansa today launched a new cross-media brand campaign in India, namely #LifeChangingPlaces. Following the brands legacy of promoting open-mindedness, this campaign celebrates five real-life explorers who were rewarded with enriching experiences on their travels.

Through strong visual storytelling, #LifeChangingPlaces invites global travelers to explore the limits of who they are and find out who they can be. First launched globally in 2017, the campaign has now come alive in India with the story of Somnath Haldar. An IT consultant based in India, Somnath turned to music after he stumbled upon New Yorks vibrant Jazz scene on a trip to the city. The journey transformed his life, leading him to leave his job and pursue his passion as a music teacher back home in India.

Commenting on the strategic thought behind the campaign, Michael Knapp, Director B2C Marketing Asia Pacific, Lufthansa said: Places can change people. They can inspire and motivate them to become more of who they are by opening them up to new experiences. At Lufthansa, we want to enable such experiences for everyone. That is the main goal of our brand campaign. As a premium international airline and a proud driver of globalization, Lufthansa remains committed to being a preferred travel partner to the global Indian who values quality, reliability and a sense of adventure.

With the India story launched, the thought behind #LifeChangingPlaces now resonates with five incredible travel stories set in New York, Mexico, Lofoten, France, and Cape Town. The video highlights of these powerful journeys can be viewed at www.lifechangingplaces.com/in-en/.

Speaking on the launch of the latest phase in India, George Ettiyil, Senior Director Sales, South Asia, Lufthansa Group Airlines said: As a travel market, India is constantly evolving and expanding at a tremendous pace. A growing number of travelers, from different industries, demographic groups and parts of the country, are now choosing international destinations in search of enriching experiences. Our latest marketing campaign lends support to our sales activities in India by reaching out to a new generation of would-be explorers to go on inspirational journeys with Lufthansa. We wish to serve as an enabler for a travel savvy Indian nation to pursue newer adventures and horizons in their quest for self-discovery.

Strong cross-media focus and launch of Mobile Inspiration Tool

Backed by powerful audio-visual content, the roll-out of #LifeChangingPlaces in India will differentiate itself on its strong cross-media interlocking and engagement across online, social media, TV, print, OOH and cinema. The campaign will further leverage innovative tools, creative formats and localized content to enhance delivery of the brand message to target audiences.

One such innovative tool launched for this campaign is Lufthansas Artificial Intelligence-led Mobile Inspiration Tool, which recommends potentially life-changing destinations based on photos of where users are. One simply needs to log on to www.lufthansa.com/places on a mobile device, click the photo of any surrounding object, and allow the tool to search through a database of several object-location combinations to suggest a life-changing place for the user.

Over the coming months, Lufthansa will take the campaign further through a strategic BTL campaign backed by a creative social media concept, specialized targeting, contextual advertising, user experiences and engagement, long-format podcasts, relevant platforms and partnerships, and much more.
USA Today has an opinion piece titled, Doctor: Teens who want vaccines shouldn't need parental consent.



The doctor says he works with critically ill children. Bless his heart. He may well see children with measles more seriously affected than their healthy peers. Could he document some of these cases and prove that he knew the children were not vaccinated? What was their outcome - as related strictly to the measles infection versus their pre-morbid diagnosis?



Vaccinations have zero product liability. You can not sue the administering doctor or nurse for an injury. You can not sue the medical practice or the hospital. You can not sue the grocery store on Minute clinic. You can not sue the vaccine manufacturer for an injury. The vast majority or lawyers, doctors and lay people do not know that there is a special government run vaccine "court" was created in 1986 to funnel through a minute number of injuries. To date, the court has paid over $3B, and vaccine injury, like rape, at least in the past, is vastly under-reported.



If a teen boy or girl gets a Gardasil vaccination because he or she wants to become sexually active, and suffers an adverse reaction like fainting, falling, paralysis, anaphylaxis, how are Mom or Dad to know? Or the emergency room that treats the teen? Or the school where the child falls ill? This is similar territory to getting birth control or an abortion. Where to teen privacy rights and parental right to know meet or diverge. It's not an easy question. Most of us are pro-vaccine choice. The Anti-Vaxxer label is a slur meant to diminish us. If Johnny wants an MMR at 15, who protects him from the possible adverse affects? How about at 18, still living under Mom and Dad's roof and on their health insurance until age 26?



###





How should doctors like me approach teens like Ethan Lindenberger, who asked to be vaccinated against his mother's wishes?

Should we refuse a teenager the right to protect himself from a preventable disease or respect the authority of the parents for raising their child as they see fit?

As a physician who cared for critically ill children for more than 30 years at Phoenix Children's Hospital in Arizona, I've taken care of several young children who were not vaccinated and who developed measles, leading to advanced medical care.

Despite parents seeing their child stricken with a preventable disease, they all stood their ground and still refused to vaccinate. There was no recourse on our part to change their mind or intervene. Parental values and their best interest regarding their children trumped the evidence of the outcome of their decisions. Read more here.








Photographer and scholar Jessie Morgan-Owens was researching his dissertation when he came across a modest daguerreotype housed in obscurity at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The portrait, made in Boston in 1855, shows a 7-year-old girl who appears to be white. In fact, the child, Mary Mildred Williams, was black and born into slavery. The image was used as propaganda to ignite the abolitionist movement, notes The New York Times. Morgan-Owenss explains its impact in a new book.
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https://www.aish.com/j/as/The-Shtisel-Phenomenon.html

Fans cant get enough of this Hareidi family.

On a recent Shabbat afternoon, I was arranging chicken on a serving platter when I heard one of our lunch guests talking about the hit Israeli series, Shtisel. I dropped my serving fork on the counter with a clang and hustled into the dining room.

No talking about Shtisel till Im back at the table! I commanded, taken aback by my own vehemence. After all, our guest was not giving a Dvar Torah; he was just talking about a television show about make-believe people. Yet, like thousands of other Shtisel devotees, my husband and I were hooked on the show from the first episode. It was compulsively watchable, even gripping in its quiet way. Now, I couldnt bear for even a bissel (little bit) of Shtisel talk to take place without me.

No talking about Shtisel till Im back at the table!

The show centers on the Shtisel family of Jerusalem. On one hand, the lives of this hareidi family seem narrowly constrained by religious, social and professional parameters that most Jews  and certainly non-Jews  could not imagine for themselves. Yet the patriarch, the widower Reb Shulem, his daughter Gitty, and youngest son, Akiva, all grapple with universal and timeless issues: adjusting to the loss of a beloved wife and mother, whose presence even after death is keenly felt; navigating the world of dating and trying to find ones bshert; coping with marital betrayal and then trying to move past the crisis; teenage rebellion; and how far one can push the boundaries of acceptable behavior and career choices in society.

A key dramatic arc that is brilliantly teased out through both seasons of the show is the conflict of Akiva, still single in his late twenties, a natural artist who feels compelled to bury his artistic passion and hide his creations because his father, Reb Shulem, believes it goes against Torah values. Watching Shulems relationship with Akiva play out against this tension is alternately frustrating and poignant.

Originally broadcast in Israel starting in 2013, Shtisel became an international sensation when Netflix purchased the rights to stream the show in December 2018. Nancy Federman Kaplan and Mimi Cohen Markofsky, two friends in Detroit, were so enamored of the show that they co-founded the Facebook group, Shtisel  Let's Talk About It. Currently the group has more than 6,700 members across the Jewish religious spectrum as well as other religions, and grows by a few hundred members each week. Despite the diversity of the membership, the conversation is always respectful. Everyone wants a glimpse into this usually closed and mysterious world.

I pop in there a few times a week for my fix of Shtisel talk, insights, and star-sightings: one member posted a picture of herself with the actor who plays the cagey and cold Nuchem; another offered the insight that when the teenage character Ruchami secretly reads Tolstoys Anna Karenina, its a hint that Tolstoys adage that all happy families are the same but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways also applies to the hareidi world. The rumor that there may be a belated third season has nearly brought the atheists in the group to kneel down and pray.

Cohen Markofsky, who identifies as Modern Orthodox, explained the magic of the show this way: The writers of the show are telling stories about characters who happen to be hareidi, but the stories and dramas could play out in any religious or even secular setting and probably have the same effect. Its placement in Israel is a plus for Jewish people everywhere! It engages so many people as a looking glass into the lives of a culture in the Jewish population that many group members might never have come across.

In this way, the show has become an unexpected teacher of Judaism. Jews and non-Jews alike seem to love learning about differing levels of observance within the Jewish community. Members ask questions all the time: What does the name Nuchum mean? Why are parents so involved in their childrens dating lives? Why are they looking at the eggs in the bowl before they make an omelet?

The hareidi community often gets bad press  unfairly, in my opinion. The extreme acts of a minority become instant news, distorting the lives of quiet faith that should characterize them more fairly. In this way, Shtisel has performed a wonderful feat of public relations, peeling back layers of stereotypes and seeing ultra-Orthodox Jews as complex, sympathetic, and multidimensional. There are no perfect characters and no perfectly bad ones, either. Even the most dislikable character, Nuchum, has a few moments that redeem his humanity.

The two seasons of the show were created by Abot Hameiri Barkai for Yes, an Israeli satellite company, and won 11 Israeli TV Awards (including Best Drama, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Script for Season 1) and six awards in 2015 (including Best Actor and Best Actress for Season 2). The realism of the writing is no accident. Both co-writers have Orthodox roots  Yehonatan Indursky grew up in a hareidi family and attended the Ponevezh Yeshiva, while Ori Elon attended a yeshiva in Efrat.

Ruchi Koval, a Cleveland-based Jewish educator, author and motivational speaker, carves out some time in her day to discuss the show in the Facebook group because, as she explains, The show has so much subtlety, and so much art in a show about art and artists. I need to unpack much of the symbolism with other members of the group. Also, because I have first-hand insight into the Charedi world, though I don't quite live there, I can be useful in clearing up misunderstandings and answer questions, especially as there are so many non-Jews in the group who are fascinated by what they see. And when I have questions, others in the group help me.

Koval also points out another draw of the program that strikes me as very true. There are almost no cars, no smartphones, none of the fast pace we are used to, she observes. Watching it, you feel everything slowing down. You want to slow down. Its allure is unmistakable. It is so different from Hollywood and it doesnt rely on any Hollywood tropes. The Hebrew and Yiddish bring back a lot of memories for people. The nostalgia aspect is strong.

As a Jewish educator and leader, Koval now has many students asking her questions about Orthodoxy based on their watching Shtisel. They have 100 questions, she says. Is this true? Could this really happen? Why do they say a prayer before they eat? It's literally a Jewish educator's dream come true.

While I miss the intrigue and suspense of what will next happen in the lives of the Shtisel family, I can also heartily concur with their oft-repeated phrase, Baruch Hashem. That a dramatic series portraying a hareidi family and community has led to such a wellspring of respect, interest, and sympathy is, to me, nothing short of a miracle. As one new gentleman in the Facebook group said, I identify myself as a secular Jew, however, I felt very much a part of the show, because we are all part of the same history.
https://www.aish.com/jw/id/Rabbi-Ahiad-Ettinger-Murdered-in-Terror-Attack-Built-Bridges-between-Israelis.html

His heroic efforts caused the terrorist to flee. He leaves behind his wife and 12 children and a unique yeshiva.

A family, community and yeshiva were left devastated Monday, as a rabbi who dedicated his life to building bridges between Israelis from different backgrounds, was killed in a terrorist attack.

Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger, 47, was shot by an Arab terrorist on Sunday near the town of Ariel north of Jerusalem. Gal Keidan, a 19-year-old IDF soldier, was also killed in the attack which also left another in a serious condition.

Rabbi Ettinger, a renowned educator and father of 12, lived in the West Bank town of Eli and had established an inspiring yeshiva in Southern Tel Aviv to lift spirits in one of Israels most run down areas. In the days leading up to his death he had been preparing Purim festivities to bring joy to the Neve Shaanan neighborhood, home to the some of the highest crime and poverty rates in the country.

You died as you lived, trying to help others

At his funeral in Petah Tikva attended by over a thousand friends, family, students and community members, Rabbi Ettinger was praised for his bravery and heroism after it emerged he had turned and driven his car towards the terrorist, firing four bullets before being shot and critically wounded by in the neck and head. His efforts which caused the terrorist to flee the scene in a nearby abandoned car were praised as having prevented further deaths.

You died as you lived, his brother in law said, adding,

this self-sacrifice characterized him over the years.

Dedicated father of 12

Leaving behind his wife Tamar, 44 and 12 children, the oldest 22 and the youngest 18 months, Ettinger was just a few weeks away from seeing his first grandchild, with his daughter Moriah, recently married, soon to give birth.

Children mourn their father

His daughter Efrat Ettinger, 20, eulogized him saying, Dad, how much you achieved in your life, you did so much for others and you fought to do good. All the time you spoke about doing more and good for the yeshiva you made and for the neighborhood around it. Until your last moment, you were true to yourself you gave your body for that which was important to you. The cursed terrorist thought that he was stopping life. But he doesn't know much life you left behind here. How much strength you taught us - which will escort us and help all of us and all of Israel continue to grow."

Elyashiv Ettinger, 19, who serves in an elite IDF combat unit, said, Abba, look how much it is possible to do in a life. You worked like ten men, to bring more and more Torah to the world yet I know you hadnt even got started yet. He added, "I ask your forgiveness that I cannot avenge your death because we have life and a family to continue."

A statement made by the family captures the spirit in which Rabbi Ettinger lived: We hope that after the great mourning we will see this nation unite, and from this great unity we will also see great joy.

Man of the People

Arial Elmaliach, a close friend from the town of Eli, said of Rabbi Ettinger He was such an incredible human being, in his dying moments when he saw a Jew in trouble he went to help him, adding But thats what he did his entire life. It whats he did both in South Tel Aviv and also in our town of Eli where we lived.

Rabbi Ettinger teaching Torah

He said that Ettinger had become quietly known as the rabbi of their neighborhood without imposing himself at all. He gave Torah classes, people came to him for advice, and they called out to him, and he helped whoever he could. He was a man of the people.

Deeply moved by the poverty rate in southern Tel Aviv caused by an influx of over 20,000 illegal immigrants around 5 years ago, Rabbi Ettinger established the Oz Vemuna, Strength and faith yeshiva, bringing dozens of idealistic inspired Israeli students to the area and with them an injection of vitality and Jewish values to the heart of one of Israels most troubled neighborhoods.

Rabbi Ettinger in Neve Shaanan

"We came to strengthen the Jewish population in the area, to give morale and tradition to a traditional population," Rabbi Ettinger said in an interview a few years ago, adding that when the main building was opened, Locals were overwhelmed to see a synagogue that had been closed and on the verge of disappearing into a pub, club or church brought back to life. Along with Torah classes within the community, Rabbi Ettinger was involved with the social and financial needs of the community constantly thinking of new initiatives to make a positive difference. A major project distributing charity and gifts of food for the festival of Purim was underway when Rabbi Ettinger was murdered.

Gal Keidan, Inspiring Musician

Gal Keidan, from Beer Sheva, was also killed in the attack. A gifted musician, he had dedicated ten years to mastering a rare instrument - the mandocello. At his funeral held on Monday, he was eulogized as an inspiring young man who loved to play music, spread that love to those around him and left behind him both admiring students and teachers alike at Beer Shevas musical conservatory.

Gal Keidan

Alexander Dvorsky, a second soldier injured in the attack, is still fighting for his life. Having grown up in Moldova, he made aliya on his own with a Youth Aliya program and volunteered to serve in a combat unit. In recent years, some of his family members had followed his example and also moved to Israel as well.
Re-entry into the nuclear deal with Iran is fast becoming a litmus test for Democrats hoping to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.

No fewer than five declared candidates have told Al-Monitor over the past few weeks that they would rejoin the deal without preconditions should they win the presidency  as long as Iran continues to live up to its end of the 2015 pact. These include well-known lawmakers such as Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who both voted for the deal in 2015, along with Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who was elected in 2016.

The trend comes as pro-deal advocacy groups are ramping up their outreach to Democrats ahead of the first primary debate in June. Al-Monitor has learned that National Security Action, a group of former Barack Obama administration officials, has circulated a draft memo to all declared Democratic candidates asking them to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

While we wont speak to private conversations, the message we have been sending is clear and simple, said Ned Price, the groups policy director. If Iran remains in compliance, the next administration should rejoin the Iran deal and use principled diplomacy to negotiate a follow-on agreement to keep the Iranian nuclear program in a box for the long term.

That argument is gaining traction in the crowded Democratic field.

Harris would rejoin the Iran deal if the US could verify Iran is not cheating and is complying with the strict requirements detailed in the agreement, said a spokesman for the senator. She believes we must engage in tough, forceful diplomacy to combat Irans destabilizing behavior in the region, her spokesman said. The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have both repeatedly said that Iran remains in compliance.

Likewise, a Warren spokesperson said that as long as Iran continues to abide by the terms of the deal, she would return to it as president in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And a Sanders aide said that as president, Sen. Sanders would rejoin the JCPOA and would also be prepared to talk to Iran on a range of other issues, which is what Trump shouldve done instead of simply walking away. Rejoining the JCPOA would mean meeting the United States commitments under the agreement, and that includes sanctions relief.

Longshot candidates Wayne Messam, a mayor from Florida, and spiritual leader Marianne Williamson also said they would return to the deal, with Messam vowing to make it a priority. Other Democratic candidates have been more evasive.

My concern right now, my focus, is the denuclearization of Iran, said New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. We need to be focused on best strategies to get us there. 2021 is a long time from now, and Im focused on the steps we have to do right now. The senator is a close ally of the pro-Israel lobby whose vote for the nuclear deal was long in doubt before he cast a decisive yes vote for President Barack Obamas signature foreign policy effort.

The other 10 candidates did not respond to Al-Monitors request for comment, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former Texas Rep. Beto ORourke. All four voted for the deal in 2015, while ORourke was one of only 20 House members to vote against new Iran sanctions opposed by Obama in 2015.

And former Vice President Joe Biden, who is expected to announce whether he is running next month, remains a champion of the pact negotiated under his watch.

Talk of a 'better deal' is an illusion, Biden said in a statement when Trump pulled out in May. It took years of sanctions pressure, painstaking diplomacy, and the full support of the international community to achieve that goal. We have none of that in place today.

Indeed, the enduring Democratic support for the JCPOA comes as Trump continues to struggle on foreign policy in the polls. A CNN poll this week showed the president continues to get failing grades on foreign affairs, with 54% disapproving versus 40%.

Public support for the deal reached its all-time high right around the time the US withdrew, with 56% of respondents backing it in a Morning Consult-Politico survey versus 26% opposed. But the public remains extremely wary of Iran: 48% of respondents declared themselves extremely or very concerned by the countrys nuclear program in an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in January.

Democratic primary voters expect candidates to favor diplomacy over war, said Dylan Williams, senior vice president of government affairs with the liberal group J Street. Reversing Trumps violation of the Iran deal should be an easy lift for them.

Foreign Policy for America, another advocacy group with several former Obama era officials, has the same stance. The groups spokeswoman, Jessica Sarstedt, called re-entering the JCPOA an important foreign policy component for any Democratic presidential candidate.

The National Iranian American Council released its own white paper shortly after last years midterm elections calling on all 2020 candidates to make crystal clear that their intent is to return to the JCPOA if elected and build on it as the floor, rather than the ceiling. Council President Jamal Abdi told Al-Monitor that his organization will be engaging all of the candidates to make similar commitments.

And just last month, the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution calling for a return to the JCPOA to restore America's commitment to an agreement made with allies and prevent a renewed nuclear crisis in the Middle East. But fissures are already appearing between advocates who believe the United States should move quickly to undo Trumps sanctions and others who want Democrats to leverage them to extract additional concessions from Tehran.

Robert Einhorn, a former adviser for nonproliferation and arms control in the Obama administration, and former sanctions coordinator Richard Nephew have made that case on social media and in the pages of the Atlantic. They are expected to unveil a 100-page paper on the issue at a Brookings Institution event next week.

Its important to engage in negotiations with Iran on what I call a renewed nuclear bargain, Einhorn told Al-Monitor. And in particular, renewing that original bargain in a way that extends some of the timelines  defers some sort of the expiration dates for key nuclear restrictions.

In particular, the UN conventional arms embargo on Iran expires in 2021 under the terms of the JCPOA, shortly after the US election. As a result, a Democratic president would be rejoining the deal just as Iran is slated to receive more of its benefits, making it even more controversial than in 2015.

But some experts point out that Iran is slated to hold its own elections in 2021, making further concessions to the United States unlikely when the United States was responsible for walking out in the first place.

Youd be doing it in an environment of heightened mistrust given US non-compliance with the deal, and of course youd be doing it when the politics of both countries are overlapping and complicated, said Jarrett Blanc, who oversaw the JCPOAs implementation in the Obama administration. Immediately after a new [US] president is inaugurated in 2021, it ultimately turns into a presidential election season in Tehran.

Meanwhile, opponents of the deal are eager to lock in Trumps hard line. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., has even discussed adding language to this years national defense authorization bill that bar a future president from re-entering the nuclear deal.

Tehran is closely watching the US debate over the JCPOA and presidential campaign. Sanders in particular has generated considerable enthusiasm in the Iranian media upon announcing his candidacy last month.

More so than ever before, Iranian strategic thinking on the JCPOA is informed by politics, not just policy, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which opposes the deal. Irans cognizance of the trans-Atlantic divide over Iran policy, as well as the divide within the US over Iran and re-entry into the JCPOA incentivizes the regime to wait for a better deal.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  Many Palestinian journalists, nongovernmental organizations and members of the public concur that holding comprehensive elections  for the presidency and legislature at the same time, and in all the territories  is the best remedy for the 12-year-long Palestinian divide, after all attempts to end the Fatah-Hamas split have failed.

But many people, mostly Fatah members and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, don't agree. As could be expected, reaching a consensus seems only a distant possibility at this point.

The dissolution of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), in accordance with the Constitutional Courts decision in December, has triggered talks about the elections in the Palestinian territories. The court explained that a key reason behind its decision was that the PLC has been largely ineffectual since 2007, without Fatah's participation.

On Dec. 21, Abbas called for legislative elections to take place in the Palestinian territories within six months. He stressed in February that the date of the elections would be decided after making sure it's possible to hold those elections in all of the Palestinian territories.

Abbas' remarks indicate that the decision to hold legislative elections depends on the consent of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Hamas, and Israel, which control, respectively, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Hamas on March 7 expressed its desire to see legislative and presidential elections taking place at the same time. This was made clear at a Gaza Strip meeting that brought together the head of Hamas' political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, and the head of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission, Hanna Nasser.

Hamas' consent to hold comprehensive elections opposes Fatahs focus on only legislative elections. This will make it hard to hold the elections unless an agreement can be reached.

Speaking to Al-Monitor, Hisham Kahil, executive director of the elections commission, affirmed the commission is technically ready for the elections to take place at any time. He stressed that the commissions task is to ensure the participation of all Palestinian parties in any elections.

He pointed out that the commission met with the Palestinian factions and NGOs in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and heard their ideas on the upcoming elections. More than 2 million Palestinians are eligible to vote, he noted.

While Abbas won the last presidential election, in 2005, Hamas secured a majority of PLC seats in the last legislative election, in 2006. The internal divide  which has been ongoing since 2007, after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip  has staved off new legislative or presidential elections, which are supposed to take place every four years under the Election Law of 2005.

Hamad al-Raqab, a top Hamas official, told Al-Monitor that his movement is committed to holding presidential and legislative elections at the same time to renew national institutions and enable Palestinian citizens to choose their representatives. Holding the elections separately would drain the Palestinian institutions human, material and financial resources, he said.

Why is Fatah insisting on holding the legislative election separately? Why does it fear comprehensive elections? he asked.

Hamas believes Abbas fears losing if a presidential election is held.

Abdullah Abdullah, a top Fatah official, told Al-Monitor that his movement wants to limit the ballot to the legislative election at this stage to allow the people to choose their representatives in the PLC rather than waiting until a presidential election can be held fairly. He pointed out that this, however, doesn't imply that we are against holding comprehensive elections.

The presidential elections are not on the table, given the threats posed to the Palestinian cause, the latest of which was the US decision Dec. 6, 2017, to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the US [Middle East peace plan] that is being currently prepared, he stated.

It is unacceptable and intolerable to hold presidential elections at a time when President Abbas is facing the above-mentioned risks, Abdullah added. He accused Hamas of impeding legislative elections by insisting on comprehensive elections.

Palestinian elections have been in the interest of the international community. UN Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace Nickolay Mladenov arrived Feb. 14 at commission headquarters in the West Bank, where Nasser briefed him of the efforts to hold the elections. On Feb. 27, Susanna Terstal, the EU special representative for the Middle East peace process, also visited the headquarters, where she affirmed EU support for the democratic process in the Palestinian territories.

Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political science professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, told Al-Monitor that holding comprehensive elections in the territories is the best solution to end the split, and local and international parties must provide guarantees to ensure that the ballot outcomes are accepted.

According to Abu Saada, Israel is expected to be a key obstacle to comprehensive elections, given that it rejects holding them at all in East Jerusalem. He pointed out that holding them there is crucial for the process in the Palestinian territories, as Abbas voiced in January.

Mustafa al-Sawaf, a political analyst and former editor-in-chief of the local Felesteen newspaper, told Al-Monitor the best way to resolve the divide is through comprehensive elections. He noted that all of the civil society segments and Palestinian factions, with the exception of Fatah, have called for comprehensive elections, following the failure of the most recent round of reconciliation talks, held Feb. 11 in Moscow.

In light of the differing views, Palestinians fear that the controversy between Fatah and Hamas will deny them the right to choose their representatives.
CAIRO  The Egyptian government agreed Feb. 27 to a proposal introducing new legal amendments to Anti-Terrorism Law No. 94 of 2015, forcing landlords to inform the police of any new lease contracts, as part of the governments effort to combat terrorism.

Landlords who do not provide information of their tenants  whether Egyptians or foreigners  are subject to penalties, ranging from a fine to time in prison.

The proposal has raised concerns in terms of human rights and whether or not these new amendments will be used to further clamp down on people under the state emergency that has been imposed on the country for nearly two years.

The amendments were made in response to security and parliamentary demands for tighter control of rented apartments in Cairo, following the Feb. 18 terrorist attack in an area near Al-Azhar Mosque, which killed three policemen, including a national security lieutenant, and wounded six others.

In a Feb. 27 statement, the government said that the new amendments were introduced to curb any attempts to shelter terrorist militants, as part of the states commitment to face the threat of terrorism in all its forms across the nation.

In recent years, Egypt has suffered dozens of terrorist attacks, particularly in the northern Sinai Peninsula, a pocket of the Islamic State.

Maha Ahmad, a lawyer and researcher at the Cairo-based Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, expressed concerns that the security forces would take advantage of the new proposal to commit further human rights violations under the pretext of combating terrorism. According to international human rights organizations, these violations have reached unprecedented levels in recent years.

These amendments restrict the freedom of citizens to elect domicile and their freedom of movement, Ahmad said.

On Feb. 25, the Egyptian parliament announced that a similar draft law was submitted to the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee for discussion by Maj. Gen. Yahya al-Kadwani, a member of the parliamentary Defense and National Security Committee, along with 60 other parliamentarians.

Undersecretary of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee Nabil al-Gamal said the committee is looking into the proposed amendments, which were approved by the government, and into the draft law in preparation for discussion. The committee will compare the two documents, in the presence of a government representative and the members of parliament sponsoring the draft law, in a bid to reach the best possible and consensual formula.

The amendments are still proposals and we might change them, Gamal told Al-Monitor.

According to the state-owned Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, there are about 43,000 leased apartments, which represent 1% of the total 43 million apartments in the country. This is not to mention the 10 million apartments that are unoccupied.

Kadwani, who is pro-government, explained that some apartments were used for terrorist and illicit acts, mainly terror acts, drug trafficking, organ trafficking, prostitution and arms caches.

Commenting on concerns that the bill would be misused to cover human right violations, Kadwani told Al-Monitor, The proposal is regulatory procedure that would not harm any party. It is some kind of a proactive approach to safeguarding security and stability.

Meanwhile, Ahmad said that the Ministry of Interior has already begun to implement the ensuing procedures, as the police has been raiding furnished apartments in the heart of Cairo, while the amendments have yet to be approved by the parliament.

Egypt has been under a state of emergency since April 2017, following the attack targeting two Coptic churches in Tanta, north of Cairo, and Alexandria in the north of the country, which killed 45 people.

The emergency law gives greater powers to the security authorities to carry out arrests and monitor and restrict peoples freedom of movement.

Ahmad noted that the government has yet to hold community dialogues to dispel the fears of citizens vis-a-vis the proposals. She noted that the Commission for Rights and Freedoms reported that the police have indeed searched leased apartments and harassed tenants without any search warrants. They also confiscated IDs, which is a flagrant violation of the constitution.

Khaled Okasha, a retired brigadier general and member of the Supreme Council for Combating Terrorism and Extremism, said that the new proposals would facilitate the police work in gathering complete data on tenants in a bid to curb terrorist acts, as some apartments are used for storing weapons and as safe havens to carry out operations.

Dozens of terrorist operations took place in Cairo over the past two years, during which terrorists used to rent apartments as hideouts where they hatched their plans. This is what prompted the government to submit the bill, he said.

Okasha noted that landlords used to ignore to flag any situation to the security services, for fear of having to pay the taxes they were evading. He believes that the new proposals would restore order and facilitate the job of the police.

According to the Ministry of Interior estimates, many terrorist elements have used furnished rented apartments to hide and to plan for at least 85% of the terrorist operations that have hit the country in recent years.

Former Assistant Interior Minister Maj. Gen. Mohammed Zaki said that the proposals are merely regulatory and precautionary measures to help the security forces thwart any terrorist activities against the state. The proposal would make it difficult for terrorists to plot but would not stop them from carrying out operations, he told Al-Monitor.

Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information Gamal Eid believes that the new proposals strengthen the authoritys grip on the country, and could be used to collect more taxes from citizens. He told Al-Monitor that the government could use the data the police possesses to impose taxes on landlords for renting out their apartments, which would further cause financial hardship to citizens.

He explained that it is not the police prerogative to collect taxes unless they create a database of all furnished rented apartments. All indicators confirm that these proposals and any ensuing laws will not be used for their proper purposes, he concluded.
ANKARA, Turkey  Opposition parties have condemned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for campaigning using the video made by the gunman who killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

In election rallies in the northwest towns of Zonguldak and Kocaeli today, Erdogan interrupted his speech to allow the crowds to watch the film taken by a camera strapped to the gunmans helmet as he entered Al-Noor Mosque and went from room to room shooting worshippers. The video was played on huge screens beside the stage on which Erdogan stood.

The two main private TV channels, NTV and CNNTurk, broadcast the rallies live, as is customary with Erdogans speeches, meaning the video entered the homes and tearooms of millions of Turks.

The presidents video editors had blurred the images to lessen the horror of the atrocity, but one clearly saw the barrel of the gunmans shotgun in the foreground. One heard the Pop! Pop! of rounds being fired, and one saw the hazy shapes of the people being targeted, some kneeling in prayer.

Pervin Buldan, the co-leader of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the third-biggest party in Turkey, accused Erdogans Justice and Development Party (AKP) of exploiting the video for the municipal elections March 31.

Fifty people lost their lives in a very painful way (in New Zealand), and they want to turn this into votes, Buldan told a rally of the pro-Kurdish party in Agri, eastern Turkey. Its a shame and it's a sin.

Erdogan began using the video in his campaign speeches Saturday, the day after the atrocity. New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters promptly expressed his concern to Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who had arrived in Wellington to visit the three wounded Turks and convey Turkeys sympathies over the massacre.

Peters told the media he had told Oktay and Cavusoglu that screening the video was totally unfair.

Anything of that nature that misrepresents this country, given that this was a non-New Zealand citizen, imperils the future and safety of New Zealands people and our people abroad, Peters said.

However, New Zealands appeal did not stop Erdogan from re-screening the video Monday and today.

Hes unstoppable, Ahmet Erozan, a legislator and deputy chairman of the Good Party (Iyi), told Al-Monitor. Erozan said the president was broadcasting the video because losing an election for him is worse than to die. He is out of control.

Opinion-makers across the world have censured social media for disseminating the gunmans manifesto and video. Facebook was quick to reply that it had removed 1.5 million copies of the video in the first 24 hours after the massacre.

But evidently Erdogan has no qualms about disseminating the video, however blurred. And there are children in the crowds that he is addressing. During his speech in Kocaeli today Erdogan put his arm around a young boy.

He appears to have several motives. First and foremost, Erdogan wants voters to see the leader of the opposition, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, as a weak and ineffectual defender of Islam.

The video Erdogan screens has been edited so the massacre scenes are followed immediately by a clip of Kilicdaroglu speaking to a rally of his Republican Peoples Party (CHP) in Yalova on Friday. Kilicdaroglu is shown saying: In all the world, the drama and the terror going on within Islam have led to different perceptions of Islam. The Islamic world should reflect on why there is terrorism within its territory.

When the video ends, Erdogan attacks Kilicdaroglu, saying How can a Muslim speak like that?

In fact, the quote Erdogan has picked on came at the end of a long and balanced passage. Kilicdaroglu condemned the atrocity in New Zealand, urged Western nations to recognize that it is dangerous to make political capital out of Islam and other religions, and criticized the terrorist organizations Islamic State and al-Qaeda for imposing their view of Islam at pain of death.

Erdogan also wants voters to see that he is a victim of the gunmans hate. The manifesto does threaten Erdogan, and the video he screens includes highlighted texts from the manifesto. As the president told a crowd in Gaziantep on Sunday: Together with all Muslims, our country, our nation and myself are targeted.

The president intends for voters to see him as a strong defender of Islam. Today in Zonguldak he said of the gunman: You killed our 50 brothers as they prayed. You will pay for it. If New Zealand does not deal with you, we will find a way to do so.

Hours later, the HDPs Buldan attacked the president for this. She recalled that dozens of people had been killed in the Islamic State group bombings of Diyarbakir, Suruc and Ankara in 2015, and accused the government of reassigning the security officials who failed to stop the suicide bombers involved.

Now (Erdogan) comes along and says, We will deal with the New Zealand (mass killer) if it does not. You have to account for the massacres in your own country first, Buldan told a rally in Istanbul.

Kilicdaroglu was contemptuous of Erdogans attempt to destroy his reputation.

A terrorist films how he massacred people, and you serve him by showing it at election rallies, Kilicdaroglu said of the president. Its incredible. If you are enjoying it, you should take the video to the palace and watch it with your family for 24 hours.

Opposition media have poured scorn on the presidents use of the video.

Sozcu, the third-biggest paper in Turkey, was the first to draw attention to Erdogans use of the massacre clip. On Saturday, its editorial gave the opinion of the CHP legislator Gursel Tekin, who said: I condemn the spread of hate speech for a few votes. I invite the Supreme Electoral Council to fulfill its responsibilities. It is callous of Erdogan to show the video while knowing news channels would broadcast it live. He called on the national broadcasting authority to stop TV channels from covering rallies that spread hate speech.

Neither the Supreme Electoral Council nor the national broadcasting authority, RTUK, has been known to rule against Erdogan.

The CHP channel, Halk TV, published a perceptive comment from one of the partys former legislators, Eren Erdem, who is in jail for publishing terrorist material.

After such a massacre, a terrorist expects the media to spread the images of the atrocity, Erdem wrote. The more these images are spread, the more the terrorists aims are realized. I am sure the (Christchurch) terrorist is now freaking out with delight.

The debate over Erdogans publicizing of the massacre video coincided with a state prosecutor indicting the man who shares the HDP leadership with Buldan, Sezai Temelli. The official Anatolian Agency reported Temelli has been charged with making terrorist propaganda.
"[Chaharshanbeh Soori] not only lacks a religious basis, it also brings about harm and misdeed. It is advised that [the rituals] be refrained from." That's the text of a fatwa published by the official website of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in response to a religious query about Chaharshanbeh Soori, the ancient Iranian Festival of Fire held on the eve of the last Wednesday before Nowruz, the start of the Iranian New Year. The festival is largely marked with bonfires set up in alleyways and streets nationwide with people gathering around to jump over the flames and celebrate the arrival of spring.

The Iranian supreme leader's statement is not the sole opinion expressed by clerics and political figures within the Islamic Republic in rejection of Chaharshanbeh Soori. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, a number of religious figures have repeatedly dismissed the ceremony on the grounds that it runs counter to Islamic principles. They consider the celebrations to be a series of "superstitions" characterized by "religiously forbidden" customs. For instance, Morteza Motahari  a key ideologue of the Islamic Revolution  considered the popular epigram shouted when jumping over fires on the annual occasion as a manifestation of blasphemy and polytheism. "Jumping over the fire  bears signs of blasphemy.  Such slogans are descriptive of fire worshippers. Islam was introduced to battle these very rituals," Motahari wrote in one of his religious essays.

Meanwhile, foreign-based opposition groups such as Mujahedeen-e Khalq have issued calls ahead of the same festival to turn the event into political rallies against the Islamic Republic.

In recent years, however, the conservative clerical community's rejection has not managed to throw the festival into oblivion. Moreover, calls from the opposition for protests have not given the event a political color either. Days ahead of this year's Chaharshanbeh Soori, which falls on March 19, opposition groups have been launching campaigns across social media for organized rallies against the Islamic Republic. But the state is seemingly easing restrictions and exhibiting far less strictness about the ancient festival this year. To many pundits, this is partly explained by a gradual reemergence of patriotism and a strong emphasis on "Iran's glory" in remarks by the country's senior leadership.

In one such speech addressing a gathering of members of the hard-line volunteer Basij militia, Ayatollah Khamenei made a rare reference to nationalism as a top value. "The gist of my speech today is about putting Iran's glory first. Then comes the Islamic Republic's power, followed by [protecting] the insurmountable nature of the Iranian nation." For the first time ever, the Iranian leader seemed to be elevating the concept of the homeland in a highly patriotic sense, placing it above the Islamic Republic.

A historical and social study of Chahrshanbeh Soori leads to few clues as to where the origins of the festival were laid. Researchers are divided on whether the tradition came into being before or after the advent of Islam in Iran. There are even etymological differences over the roots of the word "Soor" in Persian, as it could signify both "celebration" and "ruddiness." But what has remained indisputably unchanged in the original ritual is the practice. Iranians have jumped over the flames for centuries, as they deem fire to be a sacred phenomenon that is capable of cleansing them of illnesses and evil. They repeat "Bestow upon me your ruddiness," the epigram to highlight the symbolic power of fire, as they jump over bonfires.

Abbas Abdi, a Tehran-based political activist and sociologist, contends that negative sensitivities toward the festival in the post-revolution era were rooted in the attitude that Chaharshanbeh Soori violated the ideals of the revolution and the principles of Islam. "The revolutionary and Islamic atmosphere back then had pushed Chaharshanbeh Soori to the corner. Anyone trying to celebrate the event would have to face hostile reactions from the public," Abdi told Al-Monitor. But he added that over time such a stance has been moderated with the society turning less "revolutionary and religious," offering more room for the restoration of ancient Iranian culture and traditions.

The recent shift in the Iranian leadership's stance toward Chaharshanbeh Soori, according to Abdi, is an outcome of the vehement denial of nationalistic sentiments in the aftermath of the revolution. "The shahs regime sought to reinstate ancient and patriotic values by suppressing tendencies toward Islam, but the effort backfired," Abdi noted. On the very opposite side of the extreme, he said, the Islamic Revolution took a similar unsuccessful approach of rejection. He added, "In spite of the two approaches, ordinary Iranians still support a compromise between both nationalistic and Islamic values and even find bonds that link these two."

"The Evolution of Children's Names in Tehran from 1996 to 2015" is the title of sociological research conducted by Abdi and released in 2017. In it, he detects a growing inclination toward both Islamic and patriotic principles. "These days, parents tend to choose names that represent a mixture of nationalistic and religious elements, meaning that the two do not contradict one another," Abdi said. He argued that a denial of either nationalism or religiosity has proven to be met with public backlash. "People demonstrate more eagerness toward anything that the government propagates against," he noted.

Abdi also believes that employing Chaharshanbeh Soori for political purposes by opposition groups is in contrast with what the public generally pursues in the festival. He said, "People hold the celebrations and keep their own way, inattentive to the oppositions calls for protests." Such moves, he maintains, are mainly aimed at highlighting certain developments that happen very rarely. Abdi added, "But lets also not underestimate the fact that rituals like Chaharshanbeh Soori do always suffer a susceptibility to alterations and are subject to redefinition by political groups."

In post-revolution Iran, the ritual's content and form have both undergone changes. Passionate teenagers are no longer satisfied with bonfires alone. They have introduced a variety of firecrackers and tiny dynamites, modifying the ancient festival into a loud one. The nonstop, battle-zone-like sound of the small explosives has come to characterize the eve of the last Wednesday in recent years. The substantial deaths and injuries from the accidents caused by the fireworks have now fueled concerns about citizen safety.

"Given the harm inflicted upon citizens, what happens during Chaharshanbeh Soori is forbidden from a religious point of view," said ultraconservative cleric Mohammad Khatami in sermons addressing Friday prayer worshippers in March 2014.

Three days after the speech, however, the social affairs department chief at the Islamic Republic Police expressed support for the ritual, promising that the force will "vigilantly stand by the people as always during the event and the entire New Year holidays."

Last year's festival resulted in at least four deaths and 2,082 injuries  23 were left permanently maimed. Some 160 building blazes were also reported nationwide. Still, the casualty figures marked an overall 50% decline in the capital city of Tehran compared to the previous year.

In a March 9 statement, days ahead of this year's festival, the Iranian Police asserted that it has no intention of standing in the way of the publics joy and celebration, but it urged the nation not to turn the Festival of Fire into a "festival of damage and burns." "People have every right to observe traditions, but the red line needs to be observed as well," the statement read. It also warned that "police will not tolerate any move that disrupts public order and irritates fellow citizens," promising to "severely deal" with those who cause injuries to individuals and inflict damage upon public property.
At noon March 17, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shakeds new right-wing party held a press conference to launch its new election campaign and its slogan, Shaked will defeat the High Court, Bennett will defeat Hamas. In response to Al-Monitors question about the meaning of the slogan, Shaked said that there wasnt an intent to equate Hamas and the High Court, but that Bennett is aiming to become the defense minister who would deal with Hamas, and that she, as justice minister, would continue dealing with the judicial system and the High Court.

That evening, the High Court announced its decision to ban the candidacy for the Knesset of Michael Ben Ari, of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) Party, because of his racist statements and calls to harm Arabs. On the other hand, the court decided to overturn the decision of the Central Election Committee to ban the candidate of the Hadash Party, Ofer Cassif, who has said, among other things, that he doesnt oppose harming an Israeli Defense Forces soldier in the territories, that Netanyahu is the murderer-in-chief and that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. The high court further ruled that it wouldnt ban the joint list of the two Arab parties Balad and Raam.

The March 17 decisions provided the impetus for a sharp attack on the court from all the right-wing parties. Shaked and others on the right have often accused the High Court judges of being politically and morally skewed, and the minister has been proud that more conservative judges have been appointed throughout the system, including to the High Court. Now she has sharpened her critique, as is reflected in her partys election slogan, and presented her plan to change the court's character.

At a March 18 conference in Jerusalem, Shaked said that if shes appointed justice minister again, she would eliminate the committee for appointments to the high court, a committee now populated by members of Knesset, judges and representatives of the bar association. In its place, the minister would select candidates to the courts and bring them to the prime minister and Knesset for confirmation; candidates would also be subject to a public hearing.

The method she suggests is somewhat similar to the American system, where the president nominates and Congress confirms justices following a hearing. However, most legal and constitutional experts in Israel are opposed to this change. One of them, former Justice Minister Dan Meridor, who was a senior member of the Likud, spoke about this issue at the Meir Dagan Conference for Strategy and Defense on March 18. He said that as Israel lacks a formal written constitution, the High Court is the only body that can maintain equality between all segments of the population; in the Knesset, he said, theres democratic expression, but it certainly does not promote equality. Another former justice minister, Daniel Friedman, a professor who served in a left-wing government, said on that same occasion that there is merit to the claim that the High Courts decisions have hurt democracy and that the court has assumed greater power in a way that has shifted the balance of power with the Knesset. However, he also opposes transferring direct control of judicial appointments to politicians.

Bennett and Shaked also want to hasten legislation for the Override Clause, which would allow the Knesset to re-legislate laws the high court ruled unconstitutional, and for these laws not to be subject to a second court challenge. In the outgoing government it was Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon of Kulanu who blocked the legislation, but he recently declared that in the next Knesset he wouldnt oppose it. At the conference, Shaked explained her demands by saying that the High Court has turned itself into a higher government.

Opinions in the ruling party are similar. Minister Yariv Levin of the Likud said March 18 at a conference in Netanya that the High Court has a double standard, which on the one hand allows supporters of terrorism and collaborators with the enemy to run for Knesset, and on the other hand, bans right-wing candidates. He, like Shaked, says that judges should not serve on the committee that appoints judges to the High Court, and that the retirement age should be lowered in order to force veteran judges associated with judicial activism to leave the system.

In the past the Likud was one of the defenders of the High Court, and especially memorable is Menachem Begins 1979 statement, There are judges in Jerusalem, which was meant to stress the respect he holds for the court. His son, outgoing Knesset member Benny Begin, told Al-Monitor that todays Likud is not the same movement, and the evidence for this is its actions against the court during the current Knesset term, and the fact that he has been excluded from running for Knesset because of, among other things, his defense of the court.

On the deep right the messages are even sharper. Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich, who in this election is running in a joint list with the Otzma Yehudit Party, is calling for a special Knesset session in order to pass flash legislation that would cancel the clause in the law that allows the High Court to ban candidates. Smotrich said, For the first time in the history of the State of Israel a council of elders decides for Israeli citizens whom they are allowed to vote for. The high court judges banned a person for his view on Israels enemies and allowed parties that openly identify with Israels enemies. The distortion of the law must be corrected today. He wrote a letter to all the heads of the coalition parties and the prime minister demanding that the law be changed immediately. Since the Knesset has already disbanded ahead of the April 9 elections, this demand has only declarative value.

The Otzma Yehudit Party is trying to leverage the ban in order to change the judicial system. Lawyer Itamar Ben-Gvir, the partys candidate who wasnt banned, and who holds the seventh spot in the candidate list of the United Right, has demanded that his partners on the list ensure that he be appointed chairman of the Knessets Constitution Committee and a member of the Judicial Appointments Committee. When Ben-Gvir first made this demand, the political system reacted with a chuckle. In the past, as an activist in Rabbi Meir Kahanas racist movement, Ben-Gvir was arrested many times. While acquitted of most charges, he is considered a symbol of anti-institutional activism in Israel. Today hes considered the most careful of his partys members and thus his candidacy was not banned, but if he is elected to the Knesset, one of his main aims would be diminishing the power of the High Court. Ben-Gvir told Al-Monitor that the judges decision would increase the number of voters for the United Rights list.

Other right-wing parties are counting on this scenario, since the High Courts judgments are not popular on the right side of the map, including decisions that prevent the destruction of terrorists homes or enable the evacuation of illegal West Bank settlement outposts. The anger on the right toward High Court judges is what motivates the heads of these parties to sharpen their critiques of the judicial system during the election season and to let loose populist pronouncements. Even if only some of these come to pass, the balance between the legislative and judicial branches will be seriously shaken.
RAMALLAH, West Bank  Every workday morning for 71 years, 88-year-old Hani Rihani has headed for work at the Aslan Tile Factory in downtown Nablus.

The factory is one of the last bastions for the tradition of Shami tiles, which were brought into the Levant by French colonialism. In 1913, founder Hamdi Jamal Aslan built a workshop in the city of Acre and opened branches in the cities of Haifa, Jaffa and Nablus the same year. All were closed shortly after the 1948 war save the Nablus workshop.

Palestinian flagstone tiles are now seen as part of the Palestinian culture, heritage and identity. Nearly all Palestinian houses sought to line their floors with the durable and attractive tiles. Today, however, they have become a luxury item that few consumers can afford.

For seven decades, I have been doing the same work. It is the closest to my heart. I made hundreds of pieces that decorated palaces and houses in Palestine and Jordan. I lived through major events, wars and invasions but never missed a days work, Rihani told Al-Monitor.

Anan Aslan, 41, took over the management of the factory from his father and is now the fourth generation of the Aslan family to run the business. Anan wants to pass down the profession to his sons, who are studying law and accounting at the An-Najah National University in Nablus.

This craft is a cultural legacy that one generation passes on the next. I teach my children about the Shami tiles whenever they have some time. I do not want this craft to be forgotten, Aslan told Al-Monitor.

The tile production has not changed except for the introduction of an electric tile press to replace a hand-cranked machine, according to Aslan.

We changed the machine because it is quicker. But we still use the white finely ground cement that we get from Jamma'in and Madama. It is the best cement in Palestine, known for its durability, Aslan said.

The copper base of the mold is cleaned with oil and then the tile-making process begins by pouring pigment, cement, crushed stones and water into segments of the stencil. Once the stencil is filled, it is lifted out of the mold. This is when the design pattern becomes apparent, but it is still soft and not entirely solid. The mold is then placed beneath a press and a finished tile emerges. The next day the tile is submerged for 24 to 30 hours so the cement can absorb water and then it is packaged and ready to be sold, he added.

Although the raw materials are simple and available, production has plummeted. I produce four to eight square meters of tiles a day to fill orders, said Rihani. It's far below the factorys capacity, Aslan said, explaining, The workshop has a capacity to produce 60 square meters of colored tiles and 100 square meters of black and white tiles per day. But under the current conditions, it only produces 10 to 15 square meters in color and 30 square meters in black and in white a day.

Commenting on the decline in demand, Aslan said, With inexpensive mass-produced tiles in the market, the demand for local tiles dwindled. A meter of colored tiles is worth 150 shekels ($41.5), the white tile 50 shekels ($14). He pointed out that the price is not associated with the cost of the materials, but rather the time it takes to produce the tiles.

Aslan also explained that the workshop can accommodate 17 workers, but currently it has only five, given the low demand. He noted that 70% of the tiles are sold to Palestinians [and Arabs] within the Green Line and are used in the restoration of old houses. Another 29% is sold in the West Bank, also mostly for restoration of old palaces and houses. Less than 1% is exported abroad.

Hundreds of tile molds hang from the workshops walls, some of them more than 100 years old. The molds came from Damascus and are made of copper to resist the effects of water and sun, Aslan said. When the first workshop was built, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan were one area with no borders, known as the Levant. My father used to travel to Damascus to learn how to make and repair molds.

Every design has a name. Aslan pointed out a mold for Jerusalemite, mostly used in old houses in Old Jerusalem. Another is named the Mosque door, and as its name indicates, the tile appears at mosque entrances. There is also the Beiruti, used in Beiruts old houses, and the Shami carpets appear in the floors of old Damascene houses.

Aslan said that a few years back he was told he should move to Jaffa. An Israeli journalist visited the workshop and suggested that I to move the operation to Israel, where I would be allowed to export but under the name of Israeli export companies and not Palestinian ones, he recalled.

I refused and still refuse to do so. I believe this is an attempt by Israel to take over this legacy, he concluded.
The state of emergency declared after the July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey ended in July 2018, but the victims of the massive purges that followed continue to suffer from the fallout. Some 135,000 people were expelled from public service during the two-year emergency rule and, according to Justice Ministry figures, half a million people have faced some sort of judicial action.

In a bid to shine light on the social toll of the state of emergency, a team of 50 researchers, headed by sociologist Bayram Erzurumluoglu, have conducted interviews with 3,776 people, including individuals who were expelled from their jobs via legislative decrees, their relatives and others who were affected indirectly by the crackdowns. A report detailing the survey was recently presented to the public by Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party.

According to the survey, 95.3% of those expelled from public jobs said they experienced major economic hardships, 86% said they were ostracized by their social circles and 84.6% said they struggled with psychological problems as a result. Some 83% said they were still jobless.

One interviewee, for instance, said, Im a teacher  thats my area of competence. I couldnt do anything after my working license was taken away. No place would employ me and I worked as a porter. My family treated me as a criminal. Acquaintances and neighbors stopped greeting me. I was left to a social death.

Another interviewee described how the expellees were stigmatized as members of the Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the officialese for supporters of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, who stands accused of orchestrating and carrying out the coup attempt. We woke up one day to see the words FETO-ers, f*** off from here inscribed on our car, the interviewee said.

According to the report, many of those expelled from their jobs also suffered from serious health problems. Forty-five of the respondents said their existing or new illnesses had advanced, while 14% said their children developed health problems. Another 4% said they or their spouses suffered miscarriages due to stress.

Six percent of the interviewees said that they or a family member had attempted suicide, while 1.2% said they knew someone expelled via a legislative decree or a relative who committed suicide. An individual who had suicidal thoughts said, I cannot stop thinking how I wish suicide was permissible in Islam. I left home three times to commit suicide, but I couldnt do it.

According to the survey, 92% of the victims said they most struggled in their efforts to obtain justice. Eighty-three percent said they were hopeless about their future, while 95% and 90% said they had lost trust in the state and people in general, respectively. Ive lost all my faith, values and my trust in and compassion toward people. I dont know if there is anything worse than that, an interviewee was quoted as saying.

The feelings of mistrust are coupled with a widespread desire to leave Turkey. Asked whether they would go to another country if they could, because of the traumas they endured, 83.9% of respondents answered in the affirmative. According to the survey, 9.9% of the victims had attempted to leave Turkey, but many said they did not try because of judicial decisions banning them from traveling abroad.

Some made it abroad illegally. One individual, who remains abroad, described crossing by foot the Maritsa River between Turkey and Greece, slogging through mud and barely escaping drowning. In Greece, I was on my own, all alone. I didnt speak a foreign language and had no idea what to do. I went to Athens and then to Norway, the interviewee said. I stayed in camps for a year and half, living half-hungry and wearing ragged clothes. I collected expired food from groceries.

Why did those people brave death to embark on such dangerous journeys? Another person interviewed abroad said that the only alternative was to live jobless and under the constant risk of torture, while being insulted time and again in front of your children and family.  Weve committed no crime. We hit the road in pursuit of an honorable and free life.

Unemployment, economic hardships, apprehension over an uncertain future and social pressures have caused many families to fall apart. According to the survey, 41% of the respondents said their families had disintegrated, either because of divorce or the flight of a spouse abroad. One percent said they had children taken into state custody.

Those who faced judicial action during the state of emergency had to endure even harsher conditions. According to the report, 88% of those who spent time in custody said they were not allowed to see relatives, 66% said they were kept in overcrowded wards and 56% complained of psychological violence. Also, 22% said they were denied food and water, and 74% said they were kept in solitary confinement. On a grimmer note, 5.8% said they were subjected to physical violence and 3% said they suffered sexual violence.

The report concludes that the state of emergency had a devastating impact on the rule of law in Turkey. The state of emergency and the measures enacted afterward via legislative decrees have completely turned Turkey away from being a state of law and made it a state where no one has legal security, the report says. According to the report, the two-year emergency rule created 250,000 direct victims, in addition to 1.5 million people affected indirectly. The far-reaching impacts, it warns, might lead to serious crises across the country.

What should be done? The report, which Gergerlioglu sent to all political parties and the government, calls on Ankara to immediately abandon the practices inherited from the state of emergency and return to the principles of the rule of law. It is a sociological fact that countries devoid of law have never been able to produce peace, tranquility and prosperity. To think otherwise amounts to knowing nothing about the worlds social and political history.
Im a hugger  but a hugger who would really and truly rather shake your hand. I hug some people freely, with joy and enthusiasm, but feel its a status to be earned, not expected.

When I see hug-worthy friends, Ill gladly throw myself into their arms, while others warrant a warm smile, friendly handshake, or in some situations the lethal Southern lady weapon of a cold stare.

If youve been around teenaged girls lately, you know its like a barrel of otters with all the squirming and hugging going on. While chaperoning a group of teens I noticed the girls hugged each other every few minutes. Huggsies! one girl screamed as she launched herself into the middle of a group. Do their parents think this ear-piercing squealing and over- hugging behavior is cute? And once again, I say, thank you God for giving me boys.

Southerners will say, let me hug your neck or give me some sugar which is usually directed at kin-folk. I think its the newcomers who are introducing the hug everyone in the world concept.

My New Jersey husband says everyone up there not only hugs but kisses each other whether theyre close or not. My moms Irish family hugged, but not excessively. My Dads British family excelled at the handshake.

Mother said the first time she met Dads family when she went home with him in college, Daddy and his Dad ran towards each other and enthusiastically shook hands. She liked-to-have-died. By the time I was born, she had converted them to huggers but with my DNA test reporting Im 74% British, 14% Scottish, Irish and Wales, Im doomed to a lifetime of sunscreen and handshaking.

The list of people I like to hug includes but is not limited to: those who smell really good, puppies, good altos, clean children, people who have been missing for over 8 months, anyone who ever helped me with algebra, everyone on Easter, and anyone who is wearing an FSU shirt. Bless their hearts, the Seminoles need extra hugs this year.

I loved watching Downton Abbey when the British characters would shake hands. Even with great excitement, there was no hugging, fist bumping, slapping or tousling hair. Just a big smile and a hearty, well done, old chap!

My husbands Italian family wants to hug and kiss you, then repeat it all over again two minutes later. Even if theyre yelling at you, they want to hug, which is very scary for anyone from South Alabama. His grandmother nearly smothered me once when I went to the kitchen to get her a napkin, which was hard to do, because she had tiny spaghetti-like arms.

I recently met a man for the first time who reached out and pulled me in for a full-frontal hug which I found to be quite awkward. I mean, I didnt even know the guy and he got the full tour. Of course, when I pulled away, he was equally rude to mention it  What? You dont like me? Which of course is a huggers way of labeling you as a psychopath. I didnt think anything bad about him, but secretly loathed his mother for raising such a man. She was probably a teenaged squealing hugger in her youth.

Leslie Anne is the author of The Majorettes are Back in Town and Other Things to Love about the South. You can read more at her blog: http://leslieannetarabella.com
A journey to build a new outpatient health clinic for veterans in Mobile that began when Sonny Callahan was still representing Alabamas first congressional district more than 17 years ago, ended Monday with the opening of a new facility in Tillmans Corner.

The Mobile VA clinic, a 65,000-square-foot facility visible from Interstate 10 west of downtown Mobile, will officially begin seeing patients on March 25. But on Monday, with about 400 people in attendance  most of whom were military veterans  a celebration took place to welcome a clinic viewed as one that our veterans deserve."

These people are worth every bit of it in giving them a state-of-the-art facility so they can get the health care they deserve when they need it, said U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope. There are many who will take advantage of it.

The new clinic replaces the regions only VA outpatient clinic at University of South Alabama facility on SpringHill Avenue. The stand alone facility, is about 20,000 square feet larger than the longtime existing facility that will close next week once the new clinic opens.

It has served its purpose, said Bryan Matthews, director of the Gulf Coast Veterans Health Care System. USA has been a gracious host, but we are ready for what we are moving into. Its probably a whole new universe. Its one that our veterans deserve.

Said Byrne, It is an old facility. Not good parking and it wasnt built for outpatients.

The new facility is part of a 15-year lease agreement in excess of $40 million that the Veterans Administration secured in 2016, in order to speed up construction. The Mobile County outpatient clinic is the latest example of a community-based facility built by a private developer and leased to the VA through a system that accounts for the great portion of the administrations recent expansion.

The new lease, according to a 2016 Press-Register story, cost approximately $178,430 per month for the first year its opened. No further details were provided during Mondays ceremony.

The new clinic will offer primary care, mental health care, womens health, audiology, dermatology, gynecology, optometry and orthopedics. It will serve a regional veterans population of about 54,000 people, 19,000 of whom are enrolled with the system.

Matthews said the clinic at USA saw about 12,000 veterans last year, but he anticipates more patients in the coming year because of the new facilitys bigger size.

Byrne acknowledged the lengthiness of getting the clinic built in Mobile. He had, in years past, been a vocal critic of the Department of Veterans Affairs and blasted them for not addressing long wait times for veterans seeking care.

He has also expressed concerns about veterans unable to access immediate care since veterans have to travel to Pensacola or Biloxi for major operations and procedures.

Matthews said the new outpatient facility will not have inpatient care that can be found at hospitals, such as the one in Biloxi.

We encourage any veteran in distress to seek care in their community and we will make sure that once they are in that system, we get them into the VA system as quickly as possible, he said.

Byrne said hes been pleased in recent years with the care provided to coastal Alabama veterans.

His comments come despite criticism from national veterans groups that the Trump Administrations proposed budget didnt include enough funding for community care facilities and infrastructure.

Said Byrne, Ive heard from veterans that they have experienced a significant improvement in the timeliness and improvement of their care.
A young Alabama man who died after helping save a boy that got caught in a Gulf Shores rip tide was posthumously awarded a national heroism medal Monday during a ceremony in Pittsburgh.

Landscaper Bradley Eugene Murphy, 21, was awarded the Carnegie Medal after giving his life to help save a 12-year-old boy who was carried 100 feet from the shore on Oct. 9, 2017, according to the Carnegie Hero Commissions report.

Waves as high as five feet were breaking on the shore when the boys mother asked Murphy and Kentucky-native Steven Wahler to help save him. Wahler entered the water with a boogie board and managed to get the boy, but a breaking wave separated the two and Wahler was carried farther from the shore. The boys mother was able to guide her son back to the beach on a different boogie board.

Murphy, who was also in the water helping, swam out to Wahler in an attempt to save him from the rip tide, but both men got caught and eventually submerged. Their bodies were later recovered by rescuers.

Wahler from Owensboro, KY, was also awarded the Carnegie Medal for his efforts during the rescue.

The two men make up a list of 19 people who received the medal so far this year. Sixteen of those being celebrated are still alive.

The Carnegie Medal is given throughout the U.S. and Canada to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others. With this first announcement of 2019 recipients, a total of 10,081 Carnegie Medals have been awarded since the Pittsburgh-based Funds inception in 1904.

Commission Chair Mark Laskow said each of the awardees or their survivors will also receive a financial grant. Throughout the more than 115 years since the Fund was established by industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, $40.8 million has been given in one-time grants, scholarship aid, death benefits, and continuing assistance.
A bill to allow Alabama taxpayers to donate a portion of their state income tax refunds to a private organization supporting President Trumps proposed wall on the border with Mexico won approval today in a state Senate committee.

The bill, by Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, would add a line to Alabama state income tax forms so taxpayers could give to We Build the Wall Incorporated, which was started by Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, who lost both legs and his right arm in a rocket attack in the Iraq war.

Alabama law already allows tax refund donations for 18 organizations or causes. Examples include the Child Abuse Trust Fund, the Alabama Veterans Program, the Foster Care Trust Fund, the Alabama Breast and Cervical Cancer Program, and the Children First Trust Fund.

Marsh said his bill allows Alabama resident to contribute to a cause he believes most support.

I believe Alabamians support building the wall overwhelmingly, Marsh said.

Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham, said people who support the wall can donate to the effort without getting state government involved.

I think this brings government into a volatile issue that is very controversial, Coleman-Madison said.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee approved the bill on an 8-2 vote, with the two Democrats, Coleman-Madison and Sen. Malika Sanders-Fortier, D-Selma, voting against it. Republicans on the panel voted for it.

The committee approval puts the bill in line for consideration by the Senate as early as Wednesday.

Marsh has said he is considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Doug Jones. The election is next year.
A man who already served 15 years in prison for his role in the 1996 cellphone murders has been indicted in another Huntsville slaying case.

Corey Johnson was indicted Friday on a capital murder charge for the Nov. 30, 2016 slaying of his 42-year-old girlfriend Candy Wilson, court records show.

Johnson, 45, is accused of stabbing Wilson more than 60 times with a small pocket knife, authorities said, citing an autopsy. It happened during an argument at the couples home on Del Norte Lane in northwest Huntsville, police said.

Candy Wilson was killed at her northwest Huntsville home "Nov. 30, 2016. Her boyfriend, Corey Johnson, is indicted on a capital murder charge. (File photo)

Its because of Johnsons conviction in the cellphone murders that a grand jury indicted him on a capital charge for Wilsons slaying, records show. In Alabama, there are nearly 20 ways a slaying can become a capital murder case, including: Murder by a defendant who has been convicted of any other murder in the 20 years preceding the crime.

Because Johnson pleaded guilty to a murder charge in 1998, Madison County Chief Trial Attorney Tim Gann said the Wilson slaying happened within that 20-year window.

The law is real clear, Gann said.

But Johnsons defense attorney Michael Tewalt argued in court this past week that because the cellphone murders happened more than 20 years before Wilsons slaying, his client shouldnt be charged with capital murder.

Because of a clerical error, Gann said, a grand jury signed an indictment charging Johnson with murder (not capital) in February. On Friday, a grand jury re-indicted Johnson on a capital murder charge.

Murder is punishable by up to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Capital murder carries a sentence of either the death penalty or life in prison without parole. Gann said prosecutors dont plan to seek the death penalty if Johnson is convicted.

The 1996 killings

In September of 2011, about five years before Wilson was killed, Johnson was released from prison. He served a 15-year sentence for his role in the execution-style killings of four people in Huntsville.

Johnson was convicted along with two other men in the Sept. 25, 1996 shooting deaths of Bryan Carter, 21; Michael Beaudette, 19; Johnny Couch, 18; and Lamar Hemphill, 21. Two other young people were injured by gunfire and a third ran to safety.

It happened at a home on U.S. 72 near Providence when Johnson and his accomplices went to confront Hemphill about a police report he filed. The report listed one of the killers as a suspect in stealing his cellphone.

Johnson would later be convicted in the murders along with Nick Acklin and Joey Wilson. Johnson, who by all accounts never fired a weapon that night, pleaded guilty to murder in 1998. Acklin and Joey Wilson, both convicted of capital murder, remain on death row.

Joey Wilson is the brother of Candy Wilson, whom Johnson is now accused of stabbing to death.

Joey Wilson and Nick Acklin are on death row at Holman prison in Alabama. (Photos: Alabama Department of Corrections)

Johnson is held in the Madison County jail without bail on the capital murder charge. A trial date hasnt yet been set.
Last weeks firing of Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, pushed the working environment of the civil rights organization into the national spotlight.

Recent reports in news organizations including the Los Angeles Times cite internal SPLC emails in which employees describe problems with alleged workplace sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism.

Dees, 82, has publicly denied any inappropriate behavior.

The SPLC didnt publicize specific reasons for its termination of Dees. But in an official statement, SPLC President Richard Cohen said, Were committed to ensuring that our workplace embodies the values we espouse  truth, justice, equity and inclusion.

When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.

Allegations of harassment and racism within the SPLCs offices arent new, according to two former employees who spoke with AL.com on the record. AL.com contacted more than two dozen current and former employees and board members, some of whom spoke with AL.com off-record.

In 1987, Dees won a landmark civil case in which the Ku Klux Klan was forced to turn over its assets to the family of a young black man who had been lynched by Klan members. It was a case later dramatized in a 1991 made-for-TV movie called Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story.

The same year, Donald Jackson was hired as an intern to work on the case, locating Klan assets.

Jackson, who is black, worked at the SPLC for a few months before entering law school at the University of Virginia. He said he liked his work at the SPLC and found it fulfilling, but the workplace atmosphere not so much.

I grew up in the Montgomery area and I had this perception of what that organization was all about, Jackson told AL.com last week. At least during my tenure there, perception didnt match reality. It was unfortunate.

Jackson declined to go into detail on-record, but said the office climate at the time was not always friendly to its black employees  an attitude later highlighted in an investigation published in the mid-1990s by The Montgomery Advertiser. Dees and the SPLC denied all claims of racism after that series published.

Jackson found it difficult to reconcile his office experience with the work the SPLC was doing, he said.

Theyve done a lot of incredible things, very positive things, the Center and Morris as well, said Jackson. But, he said, Discrimination can sometimes have a liberal face. And so can racism.

The Montgomery-based SPLC has built its reputation as a research and activist organization dedicated to civil and human rights and fighting extremism. Dees made a name for himself and the SPLC by battling the Ku Klux Klan in court and fighting to desegregate institutions like the Montgomery YMCA.

But Dees has long faced scrutiny for his tight control over the SPLC and its multi-million-dollar budget.

Employees told the Advertiser in 1994 that Dees calls all the shots and had filled the SPLCs governing board with hand-picked friends and supporters.

Dennis Balske, the SPLCs former legal director and now an attorney in Portland, agreed. He told AL.com last week that he was shocked to hear Dees had been fired because in his experience at the organization, Dees had been head of the show.

All the people on the board were people hed picked, he was boss of the office; there wasnt really anybody who could fire him back then, said Balske.

He said there was a dispute in 1986 over Dees treatment of SPLC staff attorneys and the direction of the organization. That dispute was detailed in a 1991 book by Southern author and journalist John Egerton called Shades of Grey: Dispatches from the South.

At the time, Dees wanted to continue the SPLCs anti-Klan efforts, while other staff wanted to expand its focus to issues like affirmative action, voting rights and criminal justice. Balske and two other attorneys ultimately resigned. He said one of those was a black attorney who felt he was not respected at the office, a claim that attorney also made in the Egerton book.

Things were bad when I left, Balske told AL.com. The treatment wasnt good at the time. Since then, I understand theyve changed. But those of us that were there when I left were pretty unhappy (at) the way Morris was treating individual lawyers.

No one who spoke on record with AL.com said they ever saw Dees act inappropriately toward female staffers.

The SPLC issued a public statement saying the organization will take steps to bring in an outside organization to assess workplace climate and practices.
A former Mississippi Gulf Coast cop who left her young daughter to die in an overheated patrol car while she had sex with her supervisor plead guilty Monday to manslaughter.

Cassie Barker, 29, took a plea deal after being indicted in Harrison County, Mississippi, on second-degree murder charges after leaving her 3-year-old child alone for four hours in late September 2016, according to court reports.

When Barker returned to the car she found her daughter, Cheyenne Hyer, unconscious. Investigators say that the child had a temperature of 107 degrees when she was taken to a nearby hospital.

Barker told authorities she left the car running and the air conditioning on when she left her daughter alone and strapped to a car seat. However, no cold air was blowing from the AC at the time, according to prosecutors.

Barker and her supervisor at the time, Clark Ladner, were both fired within days form their law enforcement jobs. Ladner has not been charged and told investigators he was not aware the child was in the car at the time.

The court was also told how Barker was suspended for one week without pay after leaving her daughter alone in a car in April 2015. Child welfare took temporary custody of Hyer at the time.

Hyers biological father is suing the Long Beach Police Department and the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services for the wrongful death of his daughter, claiming that her death could have been prevented if stronger action had been take the first time she was left alone in a car.

He was not aware of the first incident until the current trial.

Prosecutors have asked that Barker receive a sentence of 20 years. Harrison County Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois said he would sentence the former Long Beach cop April 1.
Less than a week after firing its founder, the Southern Poverty Law Center has hired a Chicago lawyer and former White House staffer to conduct a top-to-bottom external review of workplace culture at the SPLC, according to its board of directors.

The SPLC hired Tina Tchen, who previously worked as chief of staff to then-First Lady Michelle Obama and now leads the Workplace Cultural Compliance practice at Buckley LLP.

The events of the last week have been an eye-opening reminder that the walk towards justice must sometimes start at your own front door and force you to look at your past so you can improve your future, said Bryan Fair, chair of the SPLC Board of Directors, in a statement on Monday.

A key first step in that process for the SPLC is an immediate, top-to-bottom external review of our workplace culture and our past practices and policies.

Last week the SPLC did not give specific reasons for firing its founder, Morris Dees, but announced it was committing resources to creating a workplace that embodies the values we espouse  truth, justice, equity and inclusion, according to a statement by SPLC President Richard Cohen. He announced the SPLC would take steps to bring in an outside organization to assess its workplace climate and practices.

Tchens work includes counseling organizations on issues related to gender and racial equity, sexual harassment and barriers to diversity and inclusion, according to her online bio. She has also served as an assistant to President Barack Obama and was the executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls.

Every workplace, including social justice organizations, must work hard to create a workplace culture that fully reflects their values and priorities, including when it comes to racial and gender diversity, said Tchen in a statement.

She said she will lead a comprehensive process to address all aspects of the workplace culture at SPLC.

The move comes after current staffers sent a letter to SPLC leadership in recent days, detailing concerns about workplace climate and culture, according to news outlets including the Los Angeles Times.

Allegations of harassment and racism in the SPLCs Montgomery office stretch back decades, according to former staffers interviewed on and off-record by AL.com.

A 1994 Montgomery Advertiser investigation also detailed concerns about Dees discrimination and harassment of employees, including black employees.
Alabamas health problems arent going away unless something is done about its housing problems, according to a new county-by-county breakdown of health in the state.

The Alabama findings, released at midnight Monday, are part of a nationwide report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsins Population Health Institute. It rates counties based on Health Factors  a variety of indicators related to education, quality of life, access to health care and other points  and Health Outcomes, meaning how long people live and how healthy they feel.

Alabama showed great disparity, both geographically and racially. "In Alabama, 13 percent of households spend more than half of their income on housing costs," said a summary. "(B)ut when we look by race  even deeper differences emerge with households headed by Black residents most burdened by severe housing costs at 21 percent compared to White resident households at 9 percent. County by county, severe housing cost burden ranges from 7 percent to 22 percent of households."

Overall, according to the report, 24 percent of Alabama's children live in poverty. Out of those, 48 percent were living in a household that spends more than half of its income on housing.

Our homes are inextricably tied to our health, said Richard Besser, MD, RWJF president and CEO. Its unacceptable that so many individuals and families face barriers to health because of what they have to spend on housing. This leaves them with fewer dollars to keep their families healthy. Imagine the stress and pain that come with unplanned moves. We are all healthier and stronger together when everyone has access to safe and affordable housing, regardless of the color of their skin or how much money they make.

Ericka Burroughs-Girardi, who works with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations County Health Rankings and Roadmaps program, put it more bluntly. For people struggling to keep a roof over their heads, she said, the cost of medical care can be a crisis.

They may not go to the doctor because they prefer not to be homeless, she said.

Shelby County was listed as the states healthiest, based on Health Outcomes. It was followed by Baldwin, Lee, Madison and Limestone counties. The survey found Lowndes County to be the least healthy of Alabamas 67 counties. With it in the bottom five were Perry, Sumter, Greene and Dallas.

Burroughs-Girardi said the Alabama rankings show patterns familiar from other Southeastern states. The top-ranked counties are scattered around the state. Most include or are peripheral to major metropolitan areas, meaning they benefit from the resources and economic activity of major cities while often avoiding the extremes of urban and rural poverty. The exception is Lee County, but the influence of Auburn University may help explain its high ranking. Counties that contain large universities do tend to fare better, Burroughs-Girardi said. (Tuscaloosa ranked 13th.)

The bottom-ranked counties, by comparison, are all in a Black Belt swath south of Tuscaloosa and Montgomery. Burroughs-Girardi compared that cluster effect to the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Geography made that a rich tobacco-farming area, she said, but when that industry waned, other economic development opportunities didn't offset the collapse.

In general, the report calls for big-picture efforts to address the problem of affordable housing.

"A comprehensive, strategic approach that looks across a community and multiple sectors is needed to create and preserve stable, affordable housing in our communities," it says. "The way forward requires policies, programs, and systems changes that respond to the specific needs of each community, promote inclusive and connected neighborhoods, reduce displacement, and enable opportunity for better health for all people."

The good news is that a couple of Alabama counties, notably Jefferson County, show that it is possible to make such changes. Jefferson Country ranked 24th for health outcomes, a few spots ahead of 29th-ranked Mobile. But Jefferson's Health Factors ranking was 8th, compared to 35 for Mobile.

Mobile, like most counties, had a Health Factors ranking close to its Health Outcomes score. Montgomery likewise had a Health Outcomes ranking of 21 and a Health Factors ranking of 26. Burroughs-Girardi said the wide disparity in Birmingham's scores shows that change is happening. The strong Health Factors rating shows that it is doing things that should eventually result in better Health Outcomes.

Jefferson County has enacted a number of policies that influence health, she said. Moves to increase green space, promote fitness, increase the supply of affordable housing and combat food deserts ultimately mean people will live longer, better lives, she said. Jefferson County is a great example of a county where were starting to see change come about, she said.

Walker County, which includes Jasper, showed similar potential with a low Health Outcomes ranking of 60 but a respectable Health Factors ranking of 24. So did Lamar County, a relatively rural area on the state line west of Jasper. Its Health Outcomes ranking was 51, its Health Factors ranking a promising 19.

Not every disparity signaled progress. Barbour County, just to the east of the lowest-ranked counties, had a respectable Health Outcomes ranking of 33 but a Health Factors ranking of 58. "When you see that pattern, they're starting to struggle a little bit," said Burroughs-Girardi. DeKalb, Clay and Crenshaw counties showed similar patterns.

Delving into the figures for Barbour County, Burroughs-Girardi said warning signs included a high poverty rate, a lackluster high school graduation rate and indications that too many young people aged 16-24 were disconnected  meaning not working and not in school.

"There probably needs to be some type of economic infusion," she said.

What form that might take, like the question of how to address housing stress, is complicated. Because the housing question isn't just about housing. It relates to employment opportunities, the employability of the work force, income disparities and other issues.

"There have to be multiple groups of people coming together to work on solutions," she said. When such discussions are held, she said, they ought to include the people most affected by the problems, not just policymakers and interest groups, she said.

Full details of the reports can be found at www.countyhealthrankings.org. The institutions behind it also offer What Works for Health tools at the site to help develop solutions to public health issues.
A teen girl reported missing in Lauderdale County has been found, authorities said Tuesday evening.

Earlier Tuesday the Lauderdale County sheriffs office was asking the public for help finding 17-year-old Marissa Dawn Davis.

Davis had been last seen Friday, authorities said.

******Update******* Juvenile has been located The Lauderdale County Sheriff's Department is asking for the public's... Posted by Lauderdale County Sheriff's Office on Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Updated at 7:50 p.m. to show Davis has been found.
President Donald Trump took fresh aim Tuesday (March 19) at the late senator John McCain, calling his 2017 vote on a health care bill a disgrace and saying he never was and never would be a fan of the Arizona Republican, who died of brain cancer seven months ago.

Trumps comments came during a meeting in the Oval Office with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in response to a reporters questions about his continuing disparagement of McCain, including in multiple tweets over the weekend.

"I'm very unhappy that he didn't repeal and replace Obamacare, as you know," Trump said, referring to McCain's vote against overhauling the Affordable Care Act in July 2017. "He campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years, and then he got to a vote, and he said thumbs down."

Trump asserted that McCain had told the White House hours before his no vote that he would support the president.

"I think that's a disgrace, plus there are other things," Trump said. "I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be."

Trump has fixated on the health-care vote since it occurred. Amid a spate of tweets over the weekend, the president called it a "stain" on McCain's record and later took another swipe at him, falsely asserting that he was "last in his class" at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Later that day, Trump retweeted a tweet from a supporter who wrote that "millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain."

Despite his assertion that he was never a fan, Trump made multiple campaign donations to McCain in 2008, the year he was the Republican presidential nominee.

Trump made three separate contributions totaling $5,600, in excess of the legal limit at the time, prompting the McCain campaign to refund $1,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

As Trump emerged as a force in the Republican Party, friction between the two men grew.

During his campaign for the GOP nomination, Trump said that McCain, who spent more than five years as a POW in Vietnam, was "not a war hero," and continued to snub the longtime senator throughout McCain's battle with brain cancer.

McCain, in turn, pulled no punches in criticizing the president on foreign policy and other issues, including in a stinging denunciation of Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July.

McCain called Trump's comments at a joint news conference with Putin "one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory," adding that Trump "proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin."

After McCain's death in August, Trump drew widespread criticism after flags that had been lowered to half-staff at the White House were raised back to full staff before McCain's burial. Trump later issued a proclamation reversing the decision.

Meghan McCain, the late senator's daughter, offered thinly veiled criticism of Trump during a eulogy for her father and has been far more outspoken in recent days.

"He spends his weekend obsessing over great men, because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it, he will never be a great man," McCain, a co-host of ABC's "The View," said of Trump during Monday's episode.

Upon seeing derogatory tweets about her father, McCain said she thought "your life is spent on your weekends not with your family, not with your friends, but obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to."

"That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now," she added.

- John Wagner (c) 2019, The Washington Post; Elliot Smilowitz contributed to this report.
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The majestic live oak is a Deep South emblem for strength and beauty, with lifespans of hundreds of years. When they are unceremoniously removed, outrage follows.

Remember when that rabid Alabama fan poisoned the Auburn trees? Pete Burns, a Mobile attorney, said Tuesday, referring to the notorious 2010 crime at Toomers Corner.

Remember when the guy girdled the Inspiration Oak at Magnolia Springs? Burns continued, referring to tragic vandalism in 1990 when someone sawed a ring around the trunk of a giant live oak in Baldwin County, sentencing it to death.

He added, It was an international issue. Why? The trees are irreplaceable.

The history lessons, and ringing praise for the tree thats an unofficial symbol of Mobile, were heard again and again Tuesday at a hearing before the Mobile City Council.

In the end, the council voted 6-1 to deny an appeal from residents protesting a project that involves removing 62 live oak trees along Broad Street and the Hank Aaron Loop. But the council members expressed plenty of admiration for the residents passion.

The appeal was aimed at a reversal of a Feb. 21 city Tree Commission decision endorsing the tree removals. The project will pave the way what city officials call a transformative streetscape redevelopment on downtowns west side.

Councilwoman Bess Rich was the only No vote.

Modicum of success

The councils action didnt endorse any long-range tree plan that the city might have in store for its $22 million revitalization of Broad Street. That project is primarily financed through a $14 million TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant received in 2016.

Instead, the council endorsed a verbal agreement that members of a neighborhood group, called the Government Street Collaborative, struck with Mayor Sandy Stimpsons office for potential preservation of some of the trees slated for removal.

We feel weve had a modicum of success, said Bill Boswell, a representative of the collaborative and a resident along Government Street, one of coastal Alabamas best-known oak-canopied roadways.

Key points of the verbal agreement:

Reduce the amount of parallel parking that would be added as part of the overall Broad Street project, in favor of salvaging some of the live oaks.

Establish a mitigation plan to find property owners along Broad Street willing to plant live oaks and replace those which will be removed.

Develop an advisory committee consisting of neighborhood activists from Oakleigh, Leinkauf, Old Dauphin Way and elsewhere. The group would provide advice on larger-scale projects on a host of issues, including whether to preserve live oaks, and would provide communication back to other neighborhood leaders.

Boswell requested that the council grant one more week to put into writing the issues that were verbally agreed upon between the collaborative and Stimpsons administration.

He said that a number of residents within the collaborative were concerned about moving forward without written agreements from Stimpson, who was not at Tuesdays hearing. Also absent was Stimpsons chief of staff, Paul Wesch.

Boswell said his group plans to schedule a meeting with the mayor soon.

Ive asked for a conversation with him and some type of signed agreement by the end of the week, said Boswell, adding that the mayor will return to Mobile Government Plaza on Thursday. I firmly believe this administration has acted on good faith.

Commitment or distrust?

Mobile City Councilman Levon Manzie addresses an audience of supporters for live oak trees along Broad Street during the council's meeting on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. The council voted 6-1 to deny a citizen's appeal of a previous tree commission decision after a negotiation among all the parties produced a tentative plan to ensure that more trees could be saved. (John Sharp/jsharp@al.com).

A majority of council members felt confident in the verbal agreements. They also said that future construction contracts, which would include a written tree plan, still must come back to them for consideration.

The commitments made, I believe those are firm commitments, said Councilman Levon Manzie, who represents the downtown area. A tree plan has to be submitted with the contracts relative to the TIGER grant. If what is submitted to us is not satisfactory to the majority of this group, well have a secondary option not to move forward.

Nick Amberger, the citys engineer, urged against a one-week delay. He has advocated for the council to approve various issues pertaining to the Broad Street project in order not to jeopardize deadlines and other issues related to the TIGER grant. The city has until September to obligate the grant money, and has until 2024 to spend it.

Its a very dynamic project, said Amberger. I dont believe we have a week to spare.

Burns, though, called the verbal agreement a pig in a poke, and advocated for more time so all parties could get a better understanding on which trees can be realistically saved.

Boswell said the collaborative hopes to find 10 or 15 live oaks that can be saved.

If it ends up being five, well be disappointed, he said. But its five more trees that we had earlier of the 62. Well work with the city, and I think theyll work with us.

But distrust clearly abounds. Boswell said that residents were surprised by a parallel parking plan along Broad Street that would force the cutting of a good number of live oaks, many which are relatively young.

He said that his group first learned about the parking plan last month, during the Tree Commission meeting. He said that the lack of transparency over what was in store for the trees fueled concerns.

Amberger said the overall plan calls for planting plenty of trees to compensate for the removals. All in all, the area would gain 114 trees, although many of them wouldnt be live oaks.

Amberger said hes since had 18 different engagements with residents within the past month about the tree plan.

Weve gone as far as we can go, said Amberger.

Said Boswell, I feel very comfortable today that the administration understands they made a mistake in not involving the neighborhoods more in depthly in this process and that going forward, well have a more open and better process.
Authorities are asking for help in locating a man who went missing Monday afternoon.

The Lee County Sheriffs Office is searching for Eddie Dale Watson, a 64-year-old white male who was last seen Monday afternoon near Lee Road 885 in Phenix City. He was driving a 2000 white GMC Sierra with Alabama license plate DC936 when last seen.

The sheriffs office described Watson as 5 7 and 265 pounds, with green eyes and a white goatee. He is bald and has a large indention in the top of his head, officials said, and may be suffering from a condition that could impair his judgement.

Watson was last seen wearing a grey fleece Columbia jacket and jeans.

Anyone with information about Watsons whereabouts should call the Lee County Sheriffs Office at 334-737-7131 or call 911.

Updated at 10:03 a.m. to reflect a different tag number.
Initiative aims to provide jobs and safeguard women in Sri Lanka, where sexual harassment is common on public transport.

Southern Province, Sri Lanka  Lochana is 10 years old. Every morning, he gets up and lights an incense stick, which he places in a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw parked outside the family home in Sri Lankas coastal Southern Province.

The vehicle is a bright shade of pink and as the fragrant smoke fills the interior, Lochana says a prayer for his mothers safety and prosperity.

Jega raised Lochana as a single mother. She is the familys sole breadwinner and works hard to keep them afloat.

She used to work as a labourer on a road construction site and a factory worker grinding rice flour.

She now drives a tuk-tuk, or auto-rickshaw.

Men comprise the majority of auto-rickshaw drivers, but Jega is happy to challenge a few stereotypes in exchange for a steady income.

The 43-year-old did not imagine she would have to work so hard.

There are now nine pink tuk-tuks on Sri Lankas roads [Courtesy: Rosie May Foundation]

As the daughter of a wealthy mechanic, she had a privileged childhood and when she got married to her partner, Siriarshan, her family settled a hefty dowry, which included a seven-bedroom home.

However, both of her parents died after the wedding, leaving Jega in a vulnerable position.

Before Lochana was born, Siriarshan abandoned his young family for another woman. He also sold everything Jega brought into the marriage.

As she attempted to track down Siriarshan and claim child support, Jega was housebound with her infant and relied on handouts from her relatives, existing on as little as 500 rupees, or $3, a month.

During that time, she and Lochana ate nothing but lentils ground and boiled into a thin soup.

As a girl, I didnt know sorrow, Jega tells Al Jazeera. I lived like a queen. I only understood poverty after this man left us.

A decade later, Jega is now independent.

She receives Rs5,000 ($30) per month in alimony and supplements this with the income from her pink tuk-tuk.

Jega drives it daily, but her passengers are never single men or men in groups.

She offers transport to children, women or families.

Mary, left, pictured with tuk-tuk rider Jega [Smriti Daniel/Al Jazeera]

Having ridden for just a few months, she already earns enough to pay for the tuk-tuks daily rental and fuel costs, and still has some extra money.

The little three-wheeler belongs to the Rosie May Foundation, an organisation which leased it to Jega at a nominal rate after helping her get her licence.

But the scheme is not charity: drivers pay for training and the money they pay to rent the tuk-tuks goes towards maintenance.

It is one of several programmes by the organisation which supports children and single mothers in Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Project manager Ramani Samarasinghe says the women are referred by social services or police, and that they tend to be in difficult personal circumstances.

Often, the man is the sole breadwinner in the family and suddenly when he goes, the wife feels lost, she says.

According to the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016, just 25.8 percent, or 1.4 million households, are headed by women.

In Jegas experience, social attitudes are discriminatory.

When they see a single woman, the community always tries to suppress you, she says, adding she worries for her physical safety.

On public transport, men will come and poke you or say things to you, she explains, describing routine harassment.

A United Nations Population Fund study in March 2017 found 90 percent of Sri Lankan women endure sexual harassment on public transport.

None of this is news to Deepthi Priyadarshini, a 52-year-old widow who also drives a pink tuk-tuk.

Sri Lanka can be a very difficult place for a woman alone. Mothers are not always happy to send their children alone in a tuk-tuk with a male driver. Deepthi Priyadarshini, tuk-tuk driver

She misses her husband of 20 years and worries about her daughters safety. Men from the neighbourhood, she claims, knock on the door asking for sexual favours.

Sri Lanka can be a very difficult place for a woman alone, she says.

She began riding in January.

Mothers are not always happy to send their children alone in a tuk-tuk with a male driver.

In less than half a year, she has already secured 10 regular clients.

Their parents know I take care of them like a mother, she says.

The foundation was named after 10-year-old Rosie May, a British girl who was murdered by a 17-year-old boy she knew, at a Christmas party in Leicestershire in 2003.

Her parents Mary and Graham Storrie set up the organisation.

We realised we knew the full pain of what it was like to lose a child, and this gave us the empathy we needed to be able to do this work, says Mary.

There are now nine pink tuk-tuks out on Sri Lankas roads.

But one of the biggest challenges has been finding women to enter a male-dominated field.

We need people who are willing to step out of their comfort zones, says Mary.

On March 8, International Womens Day, the women took the tuk-tuks out on a parade to mark.

Deepthi smiled and waved as they drove through small towns crowded with tourists.

Just seeing us, just seeing our success, she says, will change peoples minds about what women can do.
Residents fear for their future after pollution in North Macedonias capital reaches alarming levels.

Skopje, North Macedonia  Every winter, the pollution in Skopje skyrockets to alarmingly high rates.

In 2018, Skopje became the most polluted capital city in Europe, reaching the highest annual mean of PM 2.5, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Tiny particles named for their diameter of 2.5 micrometres  about three percent of the diameter of a human hair  PM 2.5 are considered the most dangerous air pollutants for health.

They are small enough to penetrate the respiratory system, and even the bloodstream, and have been linked to premature deaths and various diseases.

By breathing this air, we are slowly dying, Tomislav Maksimovski, a Skopje resident, told Al Jazeera.

We feel the pollution. You can feel it in your mouth and lungs. Our children are suffering and our parents are coughing. We dont deserve to live in such a polluted city.

Skopje, in the centre of the Balkan Peninsula, is nestled in a valley between mountain ranges that hem the city in from the north and the south. This landscape proves deadly in the winter.

As warm air rises up from the mountains, it meets the colder, heavier air travelling downwards. This temperature inversion creates a blanket of smog that settles heavily over the valley, trapping polluted air on city streets and in the lungs of residents.

Several factories operate in Skopje, many burn coal and other non-ecological sources of fuel [Joi Lee/Al Jazeera]

Some of the pollution problems specific to the western Balkans may be due to industries, in general, older than in the rest of Europe, as well as domestic heating, said Alberto Gonzalez Ortiz, an air quality expert from the European Environment Agency (EEA).

For instance, the use of coal implies that the PM emissions are high. The vehicles may also be older than in other parts of Western Europe.

Many of the power plants and small factories in North Macedonia have been there since the communist era, before the 1990s, and burn brown coal (lignite)  which is cheap and abundant, but highly polluting.

A 2016 study by the Health and Environment Alliance found that within areas of former Yugoslav countries, 16 lignite plants emit as much pollution as all of the EUs 296 power plants combined.

The loosely regulated old vehicles that crowd Skopje is also highly polluting.

Many of those came by way of the European Union when the previous VMRO-DPMNE government in the country allowed the import of old vehicles in 2010.

Many of these ran on diesel and no longer met EU environmental standards.

Stop poisoning our only children reads a banner at a protest in Skopje [Joi Lee/Al Jazeera]

But the biggest contributors to pollution are the combustion processes, at 77 percent, which include household heating.

Another reason for the pollution is that too many citizens, because of their financial situation, use firewood for heating, said Jani Makraduli, North Macedonias Deputy Minister of Environment.

Although the countrys electricity tariffs, alongside Serbia, are among the lowest in Europe, energy can cost up to a third, or even a half, of the average monthly salary, especially during winter.

Most residents cannot afford clean energy heating sources, and as many as 42 to 45 percent of the citys residents turn to firewood to heat their homes.

A lot of that is purchased on the black market  cheaper but more toxic to the environment.

Heart diseases and strokes account for 80 percent of the premature deaths associated with air pollution, with lung diseases and lung cancer in tow, as well as other respiratory cardiovascular diseases and cancers.

Some of the more serious complications from polluted air are the carcinogenesis, said Nikola Brzanov, a doctor who works in the emergency department at Mother Teresa University Hospital in Skopje.

Younger generation at risk

Air pollution is also linked to negative health impacts on newborns and children, including on neural development and cognitive capacities that can lower performance and quality of life as the child grows older.

After long-term exposure to polluted air, our organs start to manifest that in some chronic illness, mainly respiratory diseases and heart diseases. In the long run, I think the younger generation will be affected, added Brznov.

With more studies explaining the link between pollution and health, as well as air-monitoring apps like MojVozduh (MyAir) that draw data from over 40 measuring stations in North Macedonia, citizens are more educated about the scale and effect of pollution.

However, there are still many concerns, including those of parents across the city who are worried about their childrens futures.

In 10 years, our health and that of our children will deteriorate significantly Tomislav Maksimovski, Skopje resident

I am afraid of the pollution and I am concerned for my kids, said Ivana Georgievska, a mother of three. Thats why we try to use our free time to go out of the city for fresh air, either on Vodno mountain or in the village.

Maksimovski, who has one child, said in 10 years, our health and that of our children will deteriorate significantly.

Late last year, the government announced, for the first time, a strategy towards combating pollution, aiming to halve it in Skopje over the next two years.

Some key factors include encouraging and supporting residents to move from fuel-burning heating to more ecological sources like gas or central heating.

However, many residents are doubting the government is making an appropriate investment, having set aside only a small annual budget of 1.6 million euros ($1.8m), which experts say is not enough.

We are not seeing that the government is fighting pollution, said Davor Vrgovikj who is part of the Carcinogenic Society which organises weekly protests in Skopje.

Our main demand is for more funds to be allocated. We dont care what political party it is. We dont ask for medals. We just want clean air.
Before the attack in Christchurch, very few people expected New Zealand would witness a terror incident of such magnitude. To all outward appearances, we were a very safe and tolerant society. The Global Peace Index had New Zealand as the second most peaceful country on the planet. Our terror rating was low (meaning attacks were believed to be unlikely) and we had a national homicide rate by firearms (about 10 a year for the whole country) that was insignificant by international standards.

Despite these considerations, at the end of August 2016, I warned a select committee of the New Zealand government which was looking into gun regulation legislation that the risk of a mass shooting in the country was rising due to the growing threat from extremists and the possibility of lone wolf attacks following recent incidents in Europe and the United States. To me, it was foreseeable that there would be an atrocity in my country. Yet my predictions were laughed off and I was perceived as being melodramatic.

The reason why I believed a major attack was inevitable was that I could see two major factors related to mass shootings and terrorism taking shape in the New Zealand context.

Attackers often profess extremist views or follow an ideology which justifies violence against innocent people. In New Zealand, I could see the extreme right, while small in numbers (perhaps a couple of hundred), becoming increasingly active. It was learning from other extremist groups abroad and was being nurtured by virulent like-minded haters over the internet. At the same time, the authorities did not take any serious action to address the security threat far-right activism posed, nor to counter its poisonous rhetoric. Too many people looked the other way, believing that the extreme right in New Zealand was harmless.

Although some in the New Zealand intelligence community heard what I and others were warning about, the issue was not given a high priority. The security agencies were much more preoccupied with investigating potential jihadis, criminal gangs, or Maori separatists.

The result was that the extreme right was largely overlooked, as the intelligence community spent millions chasing other would-be terrorists, some real, some imaginary. In practical terms, this meant that there was probably a considerable degree more surveillance of mosques and Muslim worshippers than far-right extremists like Brenton Tarrant and the shooting clubs and chat rooms they were frequenting.

Attackers also need easy access to weapons in order to commit a terror act. New Zealands rate of gun ownership is one of the highest in the world and civilians are able to legally obtain semiautomatic guns. Had the perpetrator of this terror attack attempted to do it with a firearm which could only fire one or two bullets before being reloaded, he would have been quickly overpowered and the death toll would have been much lower.

The Australians, like the British before them, figured this one out after suffering a number of large-scale mass shootings. As a result, both countries prohibited semiautomatic firearms which multiplied death tolls from single figures to the dozens. They also implemented elaborate amnesty and buy-back programmes to take as many guns out of circulation as possible.

The New Zealanders did not learn from the Australian or British experience. Despite firearms only being a legal privilege, and not a legal right (like in the US), successive New Zealand governments preferred to close their eyes and cross their fingers that the overseas problems would not hit their country.

Believing they were immune to the risks of mass shootings, and acting within the paradigm that gun issues were only a problem of the criminal world (and not lawfully licensed firearm owners), the New Zealand authorities allowed anyone with an entry-level firearms licence to buy the very type of firearm, which with a small amount of modification (replacing small with large magazine clips) could massacre dozens of people, as the Christchurch terror act clearly demonstrated. In this context, it is quite telling that Tarrant chose to carry out the terror attack in New Zealand and not in his native Australia.

The price of failing to appreciate the risk of the extreme right and to remove the types of firearms that could result in heavy human losses is 50 dead innocent men, women and children in what was meant to be one of the safest places on Earth.

The government of New Zealand now has an obligation to act decisively on both the far right and the lax gun laws in the country. They have to take the necessary tough measures to reassure the families of the slain, the communities they came from, and the entire world, that what happened in Christchurch will not repeat.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
Many oppose President Abdelaziz Bouteflikas plan to stay in power beyond end of his term.

More anti-government protests are under way in Algeria as the country marks its 57th anniversary of the war of independence. This time medical students and doctors are demonstrating against the presidents plan to stay in power beyond the end of his term.

They are also calling for a free democracy.

Additionally, 13 independent unions have refused to back the newly appointed prime ministers efforts to form a government, risking further political unrest in the weeks to come.

Al Jazeeras Mohamed Vall has more.
New Zealands deadly mosque attack forces its neighbour to take a closer look at its anti-immigration stance.

The man arrested for the mosque attacks in New Zealand is from Australia.

Some mainstream politicians are being blamed for further inciting a growing anti-immigrant sentiment, creating a divided political climate.

Al Jazeeras Rob McBride reports from Sydney.
Fundraising page says Connolly decided to give majority of the funds to the Christchurch shooting victims.

An Australian teen, who egged a far-right senator over his offensive comments about the New Zealand mosque attacks, will donate most of the money raised for his legal fees to the victims of the shootings, according to the fundraising page set up by his supporters.

William Connolly, now known as Eggboi, cracked an egg over Fraser Annings head at a press conference in Melbourne on Saturday, prompting the senator to hit him in the face repeatedly.

A day earlier, the controversial politician triggered outrage by claiming the attack in New Zealand, which killed 50 people at two mosques, was the result of Muslim immigration to the country.

Connollys act spawned viral memes and drew support from social media users, with one setting up a GoFundMe page with an initial target of 44,000 Australian dollars (about $31,000) to cover legal fees and more eggs.

The goal was later raised to 50,000 Australian dollars (about $35,500), which has now been surpassed.

An update to the page said: EggBoi (Will) plans to send a majority of the money to the victims of the Christchurch terrorist attack.

The "Egg Boy" is being praised for cracking an egg on this Australian politician's head for his Islamophobic comments. Here's why. pic.twitter.com/1llucsmt9T  AJ+ (@ajplus) March 18, 2019

Appalling comments

Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the Queensland senators comments as appalling and ugly with no place in Australia.

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd dubbed Anning a racist and a fascist, and encouraged Australians to sign a petition calling for him to be booted out of parliament.

The Change.org petition has amassed 1.2 million digital signatures.

Anning brushed off the backlash on Monday, repeating his claims tying Muslim immigration to terrorism and defending his use of violence against the 17-year-old, according to Australias ABC media network.

Self-confessed white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, from Australia, has been charged with murder in the Christchurch mass shootings.
Pressure on Boeing is intensifying as crisis engulfs the company and its most popular plane.

It could take months to determine exactly why a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet crashed minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 people on board. But the safety concerns raised by the second deadly crash in five months involving the model have unleashed a storm around Boeing and its most popular plane.

Pressure on the company intensified on Monday after Frances BEA air accident authority said it found clear similarities between flight data recovered from the Ethiopian crash and an October crash of a 737 Max in Indonesia that killed all 189 people on board.

Also on Monday, Canadas transport minister told reporters Transport Canada is reexamining the validation it gave to the 737 Max.

That decision followed a pair of newspaper reports over the weekend that cast doubt over the certification process for the 737 Max.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that federal prosecutors and US Department of Transportation officials are scrutinising the development of the 737 Max. And a separate Seattle Times investigation revealed that federal regulators had delegated wide responsibility for assessing the planes safety to Boeing and the company, in turn, had delivered an analysis with crucial flaws.

Last week, aviation officials around the world grounded the 737 Max until further notice.

Having a major product designated a global pariah in its class  even temporarily  would be a crippling blow to many firms. And the longer questions circulate around the safety the 737 Max, the more uncertainty it creates for Boeing.

But the company enjoys a market position that makes it highly resilient.

Boeing is the worlds largest aerospace company and the US biggest manufacturing exporter with revenues topping $100bn in 2018. Its also part of a duopoly along with Airbus, which together control nearly the entire global market for large aircraft manufacturing.

Combine that duopoly power with booming international demand for air travel and Boeings potential to weather the storm engulfing the 737 Max becomes clearer.

Its a duopoly with very high barriers to entry, Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at Teal Group, told Al Jazeera. Its an enormous market with huge existing revenue streams.

Surging demand

Demand for international air travel is climbing rapidly, with passenger numbers expected to more than double from around four billion in 2018 to 8.2 billion in 2037, according to the International Air Transport Association.

That surge in demand represents a huge opportunity for aircraft makers.

In the category of next-generation single-aisle planes, Airbus offers the A320neo, while Boeing has its 737 Max.

The big selling point of both is that they are reengineered updates of popular, pre-existing product lines and boast greater fuel efficiency. That combination can save airlines a great deal of money, and indeed, next-generation single-aisles are in tremendous demand.

The Boeing 737 Max is the fastest-selling aircraft in the companys history with roughly 370 delivered so far and some 4,700 more on order.

Some airlines have said they are reevaluating existing orders of the 737 Max in the wake of the deadly crashes.

All 157 people on board an Ethiopian Airlines flight died on March 10 when the Boeing 737 Max plane crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa [Jemal Countess/Getty]

But moving that business to Airbus would not necessarily be painless for airlines, because planes are ordered years in advance.

They can back someone elses line and in the meantime burn lots more fuel and spend lots more money than they had to, said Aboulafia.

If orders are affected, it could show up in key US economic data because Boeing is an important component of orders for US durable goods that are designed to last three years or more.

If airlines will hold off on ordering Boeing jets  or buy Airbus jets  that could show up in figures for a few months, Michael Pearce, senior economist at Capital Economics, told Al Jazeera.

Cost to Boeing and beyond?

Last week, Boeing temporarily halted deliveries of the 737 Max. But its still building them. Its also been working on a software upgrade for the jets flight systems since the October crash, and has promised new training for pilots.

On Friday, AFP news agency reported the software upgrade could be rolled out within 10 days.

Meanwhile, analysts are trying to get to grips with how much the 737 Max crisis could cost Boeing.

Some $25bn was wiped off the value of Boeing shares last week and the stock was under pressure again on Monday.

Beyond its share price, the crisis could end up costing the company billions in delivery delays, settlements with victims families, compensating airlines for losses relating to grounded planes, and the cost of upgrading software on existing aircraft.

But its too soon to know what the total financial hit could be.

Theres no way to estimate the total cost for Boeing, George Hamlin of Hamlin Transportation Consulting told Al Jazeera. We dont know yet the causation in both accidents.
Relatives and activists criticise the sentencing of the human rights activist who exposed extrajudicial killings, kidnappings and torture by Chechnyas government.

A court in Chechnya has sentenced a human rights defender, Oyub Titiev, to four years in prison after he was found guilty of drug possession.

Relatives and activists have said the charges against the head of the Chechnya branch of Russias main human rights organisation Memorial are absurd and fabricated.

Al Jazeeras Step Vaessen reports from Chechnya.
Gene editing is a breakthrough technology that may be able to help fix faulty DNA.

A Chinese scientist caused an uproar when he altered the DNA of twin baby girls as embryos. These changes are permanent.

This prompted a meeting in Geneva aimed at discussing a set of rules governing the editing of the human genome.

Al Jazeeras Mereana Hond has more.
The mass shootings at mosques in New Zealand is prompting examination of racism in a society believes itself multicultural and tolerant.

New Zealand is a multicultural, multi-ethnic country and everyone seems to get along.

But the attacks that took the lives of 50 Muslims has forced New Zealand examine the presence racism in its own society.

Although ethnic minorities have said that New Zealand is a generally tolerant place, most have stories of experiencing racism.

Police, too, have admitted that the threat of white supremacist violence was not considered an urgent problem until this weekend.

Al Jazeeras Andrew Thomas reports from Christchurch.
Anger is growing over the Colombian presidents attempts to make changes to a special tribunal set up to investigate war crimes.

Last week, Colombian President Ivan Duque objected to six out of 159 articles of the law implementing a peace deal with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Duque criticised the special jurisdiction for peace law that also oversees the establishment of a tribunal for war crimes, as being too lenient towards rebel commanders.

Critics say the presidents action serves into the hands of the dissident fighters who refuse to adhere to the peace deal and can potentially dissuade some of the demobilised rebels.

Al Jazeeras Alessandro Rampietti reports from Bogota.
Dutch authorities still trying to determine the motive behind the shooting on a tram in which three people were killed.

Dutch authorities are still trying to determine the motive behind a shooting incident on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht in which three people were killed.

So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts, police and the prosecutors office said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

Turkish-born main suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, and two unnamed men from Utrecht aged 23 and 27 remain in custody. Police found a red Renault Clio after Mondays attack which they said the attacker had used to flee.

The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, which is near Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said.

So far our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims, police and prosecutors added.

Dutch and Turkish media reports had previously reported that a family dispute may have been the motive for the shooting.

190318101924533

However, the police and prosecutors said that other motives are not excluded, they are also being investigated.

Armed police arrested Tanis in Utrecht after a huge manhunt on Monday during which police released his picture on social media.

A firearm was found during his arrest, the statement added.

Children placed flowers at the site of a shooting in Utrecht [Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters]

Public prosecution office spokesperson Ties Kortmann said Tanis is being held on suspicion of manslaughter, but added that investigations were continuing into what drove him to allegedly open fire in a tram.

Authorities said they have not ruled out other possible motives and Dutch media citing his neighbours in Utrecht have speculated that the shooting may have been linked to a relationship.
Egypt imposes new rules that allows state to block websites and social media accounts for fake news or incitement.

Egypts top media regulator put into effect tighter restrictions that allow the state to block websites and social media accounts with more than 5,000 followers, if they are deemed a threat to national security.

The move, implemented on Tuesday, is the latest step by the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to suppress dissent.

In recent years, Egypt has launched an unprecedented crackdown on reporters and the media, imprisoning dozens and occasionally expelling some foreign journalists.

The new regulations allow the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block websites and accounts for fake news, and impose stiff penalties of up to 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,400), all without having to obtain a court order.

Prominent Egyptian journalists have called the measures unconstitutional, saying they grant far-reaching powers to authorities to censor the media, in violation of basic press freedoms.





Chief regulator Makram Mohammed Ahmed refused to comment.

Mohamed Abdel-Hafiz, a board member of the journalists union, said the government was threatening journalists with vaguely defined national security violations, as well as vaguely defined political, social or religious norms.

The nine-page document gave a broad list of prohibited topics, including anything inciting violating the law, public morals, racism, intolerance, violence, discrimination between citizens or hatred.

Media outlets that continue to publish offending material will be fined up to five million Egyptian pounds (around $298,000).

The new regulations laid out the same penalty for outlets that publish content without obtaining distribution rights, plus additional compensation.

Court order needed

Critics of the new measures said the rules were stricter than those approved by legislators in July last year, which they said gave the government almost total control over the media.

Blocking websites is not included in the laws. The constitution itself states that websites and newspapers cannot be shut down without a court order, journalists union board member Gamal Abdel-Rahim said.

He said the regulatory council had also ignored all of the unions notes and comments on the new measures.

Since late 2017, some 500 websites, including news outlets and pages of rights groups have been blocked, according to a recent report by an Egyptian watchdog group, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.

Authorities say the measures are necessary to prevent instability as Egypt struggles to revive its economy and combat a rebellion in northern Sinai.





Sisi has frequently suggested political rights are less important than the right to food, housing and other necessities, and has rolled back many of the freedoms won by the 2011 uprising against the countrys former longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

In November, Egypt created a human rights watchdog to protect the state from allegations of rights abuses and defend it on the international stage.

The body does not include any rights activists and its main members are representatives of the foreign ministry, military, intelligence agencies and the interior ministry, which oversees a police force accused of torture and forced disappearances by international rights organisations.

In mid-2013, the military overthrew the democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, in a large-scale crackdown. Since then the state has arrested thousands of dissidents, including activists and journalists, as well as Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Egypt remains among the worlds worst jailers of journalists, behind China and Turkey, according to the press freedom group the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Protesters say Hamas forces attacked them with batons while protesting against dire living conditions in Gaza Strip.

Gaza, Palestine  Several human rights organisations and political factions have denounced attacks on protesters by Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip, who had demonstrated for several days against the increasing cost of living and tax hikes.

The new movement was launched about a month ago, with the slogan we want to live, by a group of media activists not affiliated to political parties.

The first protest, which took place on Thursday, was repressed by dozens of Hamas security forces, who dispersed protesters by beating them and firing in the air. Videos of the crackdown were widely circulated on social media.

Hamas security forces also broke into citizens homes and carried out arrest campaigns throughout the strip in Gaza City and Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, Deir al-Balah in the middle district, and Khan Younis and Rafah in the south.

Protesters said they were attacked with batons by Hamas forces while protesting against the dire living conditions in Gaza Strip. Israa Buhaisi, a journalist with Al-Alam news channel, told Al Jazeera her father and brother were beaten up by Hamas security forces, while they were trying to intervene between said forces and a group of protesters getting attacked by them.

A group of protesters had gathered near the centre of Deir Al-Balah camp, holding posters and chanting slogans  We want to live. We want to work. Our future is lost, Buhaisi said.

This is a popular movement. People took to the street to ask for a solution for their miserable life in Gaza.

Hamas forces came to the place and asked the activists to vacate the area but the protesters refused to leave, the 34-year-old said.

Supporters of Hamas have claimed that the movement was backed by its rival government based in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority.

Talking to Al Jazeera, a Hamas spokesman denied the existence of a popular independent movement, however, in an official statement, he said that the Hamas security forces had arrested employees previously under the payroll of the West Bank government, who were blackmailed by the PA to provoke chaos in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the return of their salaries.

We emphasise that we support peaceful demonstration, but we will not allow the exploitation of the protests to provoke chaos, Iyad al-Buzom said.

The security forces arrested a number of protesters and took them to an unknown area, then they raided a number of homes in the refugee camp, mostly belonging to the Buhaisi family.

The police started to beat the protesters in the area and clashes erupted between the two sides, Buhaisi said.

Vehicles belonging to the security forces arrived at the scene and attacked protesters in the area. My father, who is 60 years old, tried to mediate to stop the assault, but he was also beaten up by the forces and they broke his hand.

According to Buhaisi, around 70 members of the family are still in the detention of Hamas security forces. They took my dad who is a cancer patient, but they released him the same day, Buhaisi added.

Movement supported by factions

Nearly a dozen Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip have declared their support for the youth movement and their support for what the group calls just demands  which include establishing a labour office that protects workers rights from exploitation; ending control of goods and prices by some parties and monitoring the work of the private sector; and suspending all taxes burdening citizens.

The factions also denounced the Hamas attack on protesters and called on the movement to respond to the demands of easing taxes.

Baker Abu Safia, a member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said that the Palestinian people have been very patient during the last 12 years of the blockade.

We support this popular movement, he told Al Jazeera. People have the right to express themselves. We all live under occupation and the sacrifices of the people must be respected.

In a statement, the factions said that the catastrophic crisis currently affecting the Gaza Strip is essentially caused by the Israeli occupation, and the Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007.

The factions also pointed out a number of domestic political issues, such as the Palestinian political division between Hamas and Fatah, and the punitive measures adopted by the PA against the population of the coastal enclave, such as forcing many of its employees into early retirement and not paying the Israeli power plant to supply the population of Gaza with electricity.

The statement also laid fault on the decisions of Hamas officials in Gaza to impose more taxes, which has contributed to the high costs of living and the deteriorating conditions of Palestinians in the strip.

Worsening of public freedoms

There were serious violations of human rights, the right to peaceful demonstration and the freedom of expression, Mustafa Ibrahim, a human rights researcher in the Independent Commission of Human Rights (ICHR) told Al Jazeera.

The security forces, which the public prosecution abetted by preventing media coverage, violently beat up, detained and broke into civilian homes under the pretext that protesters threw stones and that the demonstration is supported by PA and Fatah.

This attack on human rights has clearly shown that the security forces dont respect the human rights situation, Ibrahim said, adding that 20 journalists were detained. This reflects the deterioration of the state of public freedoms in Gaza.

Ibrahims colleague in the occupied West Bank, Ammar Dweik, told local Palestinian news agency Maan that Hamas has apologised to the ICHR for the attack on its members, but the rights group is awaiting further investigation and accountability, and most importantly an end to transgressions against citizens.

We will continue to monitor violations in the Gaza Strip, and demand access to visit detention centres in the Gaza Strip, Dweik said.

In a statement, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned the attack by Hamas police officers on peaceful protesters, calling it a crime and violation according to the national and international laws and called upon the security services to respect the right to peaceful assembly and right to freedom of expression.

PCHR also called upon the security services to immediately and unconditionally release the dozens of detainees, and for the competent authorities to take the necessary measures to stop such violations and respect civilians public freedoms.

Everyone is under siege

Mohsen Abu Ramadan, a Gaza-based political analyst, said that the movement was a result of the unprecedented high rates of poverty and unemployment in the Gaza Strip, which has reached 70 percent among the youth.

Around 20,000 university graduates each year find no jobs, which has caused a number of social problems in the strip. Furthermore, the withdrawal of a number of international NGOs working in Gaza has deepened economic problems.

The violent reaction of the Hamas security forces has incensed public opinion, Abu Ramadan said, explaining that Hamas should have dealt better with the movement without resorting to physical attacks.

Everyone in Gaza is under occupation and under siege, he said. People here have embraced the resistance wing of Hamas and are still participating in the weekly Friday return march protests.

The state of anger is not directed against Hamas but against the current situation of the people, but Hamas does not seem to read the message and reacted emotionally, he said.

Regarding the pro-Hamas claims that the PA is behind the movement, Abu Ramadan said: I think these excuses are readily prepared from both sides. I blame some parties specifically in the official Palestinian media, who used these protests to incite against Hamas.

The demonstrations do have popular backing, he said, adding that it was not appropriate for any party to use them for their own interest.
UN says 2.6 million people affected as rescuers struggle to reach victims trapped on rooftops and trees in remote areas.

Cyclone winds and floods that swept across southeastern Africa have affected more than 2.6 million people and could rank as one of the worst weather-related disasters recorded in the southern hemisphere.

Rescue crews were still struggling to reach victims on Wednesday, six days after Cyclone Idai raced in at speeds of up to 170 kph from the Indian Ocean into Mozambique, then its inland neighbours Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Aid groups said many survivors were trapped, clinging to trees and crammed on rooftops in remote areas, surrounded by wrecked roads, flattened buildings and submerged villages.

This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambiques recent history, said Jamie LeSueur, who is leading rescue efforts in the hard-hit city of Beira for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.





The organisation said large areas to the west of Beira were severely flooded, and in places close to the Buzi and Pungwe rivers, flood waters are metres deep, completely submerging homes, telephone poles and trees.

The scale of suffering and loss is still not clear, and we expect that the number of people affected as well as the number of people who have lost their lives may rise, said LeSueur.

Death toll in the flood disaster has crossed 200 in Mozambique, according to President Filipe Nyusi.

Nyusi said on Monday he had flown over some of the worst-hit zones, seen bodies floating in rivers and now estimated more than 1,000 people may have died.

The cyclone hit land near Beira on Thursday and moved inland throughout the weekend, leaving heavy rains in its trail on Tuesday.

People are escorted to safety by aid workers at the airport of the coastal city of Beira in central Mozambique [Adrien Barbier/AFP]

Major humanitarian emergency

Mozambiques government said about 600,000 people have been impacted by the storm, but the UN World Food Programme said its analysis of satellite imagery suggested up to 1.7 million people in the country were in Idais path.

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Another 920,000 were affected in Malawi, said Herve Verhoosel, senior spokesman at the UN World Food Programme said.

This is a major humanitarian emergency that is getting bigger by the hour, said Verhoosel. The flooding of the Pungue and Buzi rivers had created inland oceans extending for miles and miles in all directions, Verhoosel said.

Dams were at 95 percent to 100 percent capacity.

Those visible from the air may be the lucky ones and the top priority now is to rescue as many as possible and ferry them to safety, he added.

Aid groups said many people are stuck on roofs in remote areas affected by Idai [Rick Emenaket/ Mission Aviation Fellowship/AFP]

Al Jazeeras Fahmida Miller, reporting from Beira, said power lines were down in the city and surrounding areas.

Theres also no communication. People are not able to call for help, while others are unable to determine where missing people are, she said.

The roof of the citys main hospital was torn away during the cyclone. That hospital is also running out of medicine.

Reporting anger and frustration among survivors in the city, she said: Residents were told to evacuate ahead of the storm but the question for them was where to.

Mozambiques president says Cyclone Idai may have killed as many as 1,000 people as recovery efforts underway. https://t.co/xcDKxZOc0H pic.twitter.com/Y9tX6fGidH  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 19, 2019

The WFP, meanwhile, warned Beira could face a serious fuel shortage in the coming days and said its power grid was expected to be non-functional through the end of the month.

Like a tsunami

In central Mozambique, emergency teams set off in boats, plucking survivors from roofs and treetops in an operation that stretched long into the night.

Some 60km northwest of Beira, 27-year-old Jose Batio told the AFP news agency his wife and children survived by climbing onto a roof. But a lot of their neighbours were swept [away] by the water, he said.

Water came like a tsunami and destroyed most things. We were prisoners on the roof, he said after they were rescued by boat.

The village of Tica, in central Mozambique, was flooded after the area was hit by the Cyclone Idai [Adrien Barbier/ AFP]

Air force personnel from Mozambique and South Africa were also drafted in to fly rescue missions, while an NGO called Rescue South Africa said it had picked up 34 people since Friday night, using three helicopters.

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Ian Scher, who heads Rescue SA, said the rescue teams were having to make difficult decisions.

Sometimes, we can only save two out of five, sometimes we drop food and go to someone else whos in bigger danger, he told the AFP news agency.

We just save what we can save and the others will perish.

Al Jazeeras Malcolm Webb, reporting from Mozambiques central Espungabera, said torrential rain continued to lash the region on and off on Tuesday.

Rivers have swelled, washing away bridges, houses, schools, hospitals, and farms, he said. Down the road, several trees came down taking down the power lines, so there is no electricity and no running water in most of the affected areas, and almost no communication.

Those displaced by the disaster were taking shelter at schools and government buildings in Espungabera, a town connected to the rest of Mozambique by only two roads, both of which have been washed away, he added.

Clare Nullis, of the UN World Meteorological Organization, said Idai could be one of the worst weather-related disasters, tropical-cyclone-related disasters in the southern hemisphere.

The storm also lashed eastern Zimbabwe, leaving 98 people dead and at least 217 others missing, officials said.

Worst hit was Chimanimani in Manicaland, an eastern province which borders Mozambique. Families started burying their dead in damp graves on Monday, as injured survivors filled up the hospitals.
Hardline minister prevents rescue ship from docking on island of Lampedusa and issues directive to keep refugees out.

Forty-nine rescued refugees and migrants, including 12 minors, remained stranded at sea on Tuesday on board a nonprofit rescue ship as Italys Interior Minister Matteo Salvini barred them from disembarking in Italy.

Rescuers from the Italian aid group Mediterranea Saving Humans pulled the migrants off a sinking rubber dinghy near Libya on Monday and brought them close to the Italian island of Lampedusa.

They were refused permission to disembark on the island with Salvini tweeting Monday evening: Our ports were and remain CLOSED.

I porti erano e rimangono CHIUSI.https://t.co/TSle90ViEf  Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) March 18, 2019

On Tuesday morning, Salvini tweeted again saying that Italy will not give in to blackmail by social groups that are accomplices to human traffickers.

The migrants can be cured, fed, clothed, given all kinds of comfort goods, but as far as Im concerned, with my permission, they wont set foot in Italy, Salvini told SkyTG24 news channel on Tuesday.

His ministry issued a directive on Monday saying ships rescuing people in areas of the Mediterranean that are not Italian and that do not coordinate with the command centre in Rome have no right to use Italy as a port of safety.

The Italian-flagged rescue vessel Mare Jonio has been prevented from landing in Italy [File: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters]

Any infringement of international maritime or Italian law can be read as a premeditated action to bring illegal immigrants to Italy and facilitate human trafficking, he said.

On Tuesday, Salvini said the ministry was creating a commission of experts and police to ensure the directive was enacted.

Mayor challenging Salvini

The mayor of Lampedusa is challenging Salvinis assertion that Italian ports are closed.

Mayor Salvatore Toto Martello said that more than 3,000 migrants arrived in Lampedusa last year on smuggler boats.

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The Mediterranea Saving Humans vessel, the Mare Jonio, flies an Italian flag and is currently stationed off Lampedusa, a small Italian island roughly halfway between Sicily and North Africa.

Salvini has claimed that his closed-door immigration policy has contributed to a dramatic drop in migrant arrivals and in migrant deaths at sea.

Preventing migrants from leaving Libya or returning them there is controversial because they are usually exposed to serious human rights violations.

In January, Human Rights Watch issued a report saying that refugees and migrants locked in overcrowded Libyan camps, including children, have no access to decent food, healthcare or sanitation, and are routinely beaten by guards and other authorities.
Milan theater decides to refund payment and cancel Saudi partnership after criticism by rights groups and politicians.

Italys famed La Scala opera house has decided to return three million euros ($3.4m) in investment funding to Saudi Arabia after a plan to work closely with the kingdom was widely criticised by rights groups and the government.

Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala, who also chairs La Scalas board, said the funds  part of a proposed 15 million euro ($17m) five-year partnership deal with the Saudi culture ministry  were deposited into an escrow account.

Back to square one. Well return the money to the Saudis, Sala told reporters on Monday, adding that the board voted unanimously to refund the down payment. Right now, going down this road is not possible.

The proposed deal, which would have included giving a seat on the La Scala board to Saudi Arabias Culture Minister Badr bin Abdullah, came under fire earlier this month in light of the countrys human rights record.

The kingdom is under increased global scrutiny since the killing of a Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside its consulate in Istanbul last October and the plight of a Saudi woman who turned to social media to help escape alleged family abuse.

Deputy Prime Minister and Northern League leader Matteo Salvini had urged the opera house to reject the cash, while the governor of the Lombardy region  also a member of the Northern League  called for the dismissal of the opera houses artistic director, Alexander Pereira.

Sala said Pereira, who had negotiated the financing deal with the Saudi culture ministry, will keep his job.

Not closing doors

The fundraising deal foresaw the establishment of a music school run by La Scalas academy in Riyadh that would be open to all Saudi children regardless of gender.

While the current procedure aimed at making Saudi Arabia an official financial backer of the opera house was officially closed, Sala refused to rule out future talks with the kingdom.

He said a planned tour by La Scalas orchestra in 2020 will go ahead.





We are not closing doors to Saudi Arabia, said Sala.

It depends on the form of cooperation. We will do the tour. I wouldnt make a list of countries where it doesnt make sense to go. Also because this kind of activity can help in respect to the situation that exists today in Saudi Arabia.

Sala said the talks with Saudi Arabia, which included discussions before the gala season-opener on December 7, were poorly handled in terms of communication.

He said he had been aware of the talks, but not of their speedy advancement nor of the transfer of funds.

Other Western cultural institutes have also grappled with how to handle financial contributions from Saudi Arabia following Khashoggis murder.

Earlier this month, a US-based talent agency, Endeavor, returned a $400m investment fund to Saudi Arabia and cancelled its contract.

Saudi Arabia, which has been making moves to open culturally to the West, participated for the first time in last years Biennale architecture exhibit in Venice.

Italy is Saudi Arabias ninth-largest trading partner, according to the Saudi embassy website.
Aye Maung was sentenced for his so-called inflammatory speech in January 2018, a day before the deadly riots broke out.

A Myanmar court has sentenced a prominent Rakhine leader to 20 years in jail for treason, a verdict likely to intensify anger amid fighting between the ethnic group and the army.

Security forces tried to calm hundreds of supporters outside the court in Rakhine state capital Sittwe as Aye Maung was escorted to a waiting police van following Tuesdays verdict.

The lawyer said they were discussing whether to appeal. Treason can carry the death sentence.

Aye Maung, former chairman of the Arakan National Party  which is renowned for hardline views against the Rohingya Muslim minority, was sentenced for treason and defamation over his so-called inflammatory speech in January 2018, a day before the deadly riots broke out.

At the time, state-backed media said he railed against the central government for treating the ethnic Rakhine as slaves and said it was the right time for the community to launch an armed struggle.

The following evening, Rakhine protesters briefly seized a government building and police opened fire, killing seven people.

Aye Maung and a fellow detainee, writer Wai Hin Aung who also gave a speech at the same rally, were arrested days later.

Both Dr Aye Maung and writer Wai Hin Aung were sentenced to 20 years each for the charge of high treason and two years each for defamation of the state, Wai Hin Aungs defence lawyer Aye Nu Sein told the AFP news agency.

A brutal military crackdown in 2017 forced around 740,000 Rohingya in Rakhine state across the border into Bangladesh.

A further 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine state without citizenship, restricted to either camps or their villages, many unable to access medical care.

Yet, the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist population, some of whom are accused of aiding soldiers in the anti-Rohingya campaign, also feels marginalised by the state.

Oppression and bullying

Supporters of the pair were enraged by the perceived persecution of two prominent Rakhine figures.

This is not fair. This is oppression and bullying of ethnic Rakhine people, one woman shouted in front of the court, as the protesters spread to the centre of the town.

In recent weeks, the military has waged war on the Arakan Army (AA), an armed group claiming to represent the ethnic Rakhine.

The group launched a brazen attack on police posts in January that killed 13 officers. The group also killed nine more policemen earlier this month.

Much of northern Rakhine is in lockdown and information is difficult to verify independently.
Attacker Tarrants desire for infamy made clear by his 74-page manifesto and move to live stream Fridays attack.

The white supremacist accused of killing 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand dismissed his lawyer and opted to represent himself at trial, prompting the prime minister to declare on Tuesday she would do everything in her power to deny him a platform for his racist views.

I agree that it is absolutely something that we need to acknowledge and do what we can to prevent the notoriety that this individual seeks, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told reporters.

He obviously had a range of reasons for committing this atrocious terrorist attack. Lifting his profile was one of them. And thats something that we can absolutely deny him.

Asked if she would like the trial to occur behind closed doors, Ardern demurred, saying that was not her decision to make.

One thing I can assure you  you wont hear me speak his name, she said.

He will face the full force of the law in New Zealand, Ardern later told a special session of parliament, which she opened by saying, peace be upon you in Arabic.

Were here, this is our home and were staying. Waleed Wahsh talks to Al Jazeera about the loss of 3 close friends during the New Zealand mosque attacks. pic.twitter.com/8Pnoar6qX6  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 18, 2019

Horrendous video

The gunmans desire for infamy was made clear by the fact that he emailed a convoluted 74-page manifesto before Fridays massacre and live streamed footage of his attack on the Al Noor mosque.

The video prompted widespread revulsion and condemnation by legislators and members of the public. Facebook said it removed 1.5 million videos of the shootings during the first 24 hours after the massacre. But on Tuesday, Ardern expressed frustration as the video remained available online, four days after the attack.

We have been in contact with Facebook; they have given us updates on their efforts to have it removed, but as I say, its our view that it cannot  should not  be distributed, available, able to be viewed, she said. It is horrendous and while theyve given us those assurances, ultimately the responsibility does sit with them.





Ardern said she had received some communication from Facebooks Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg on the issue. The prime minister has also spoken with British Prime Minister Theresa May about the importance of a global effort to clamp down on the distribution of such material.

Australias prime minister urged world leaders to crack down on social media companies that broadcast attacks.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has written to G20 Chairman and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe calling for agreement on clear consequences for companies whose platforms are used to facilitate and normalise horrific acts.

Social media companies are international businesses and its up to the international community to force them to act, Morrison said.

Facebook, the worlds largest social media network with about 2.3 billion monthly users around the world, said the original video on its service was seen fewer than 200 times. An archived copy drew about 3,800 additional views on Facebook before the company removed it.

This incident highlights the importance of industry cooperation regarding the range of terrorists and violent extremists operating online, a grouping of tech firms, which includes Facebook Inc, Alphabet Incs Google and Twitter Inc, said of the attack.

Clear and lucid

Lawyer Richard Peters, who was assigned to represent Tarrant at his initial court appearance on Saturday, told the New Zealand Herald that Tarrant dismissed him that day.





A judge ordered Tarrant to return to New Zealands High Court on April 5 for his next hearing on one count of murder, though he is expected to face additional charges. He is being held in isolation in a Christchurch jail.

He seemed quite clear and lucid, whereas this may seem like very irrational behaviour, Peters told the newspaper. He didnt appear to me to be facing any challenges or mental impairment, other than holding fairly extreme views.

He said a judge could order a lawyer to assist Tarrant at a trial, but the suspect would likely be unsuccessful in trying to use it as a platform to put forward any extreme views.

Under New Zealand law, a trial is to determine innocence or guilt, Peters said. The court is not going to be very sympathetic to him if he wants to use the trial to express his own views.

Peters said Tarrant didnt tell him why he wanted to represent himself.

Ardern has said gun law reforms would be announced within 10 days of the attack and an inquiry conducted into intelligence and security services that failed to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans. There have been concerns intelligence agencies were overly focused on the Muslim community in detecting and preventing security risks.

New Zealands international spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, confirmed in a statement it had not received any relevant information or intelligence leading up to the shootings.
Christchurch, New Zealand  Six bodies have been returned to the families of Christchurch mosque attack victims, according to New Zealand police, amid growing anguish over a lack of progress by officials tasked with identifying the dead.

In a statement on Tuesday evening, police said six other bodies were also ready to be released having been identified to the satisfaction of coroners tasked with distinguishing the 50 victims killed last week in the Pacific countrys worst-ever mass shooting.

Autopsies had been completed on all those killed, the statement added.

While identification may seem straightforward the reality is much more complex, particularly in a situation like this, the police statement said.

Our absolute priority is to get this right and ensure that no mistakes are made, it added.

Anguish over delayed burials

The police announcement came against a backdrop of growing frustrations within Christchurchs Muslim community over the release of the bodies of Fridays attack, with families eager to bury their loved ones thwarted from doing so to date.

Police are acutely aware of frustrations by families associated with the length of time required for the identification process following Fridays terror attack.  New Zealand Police (@nzpolice) March 19, 2019

Muslims customarily bury the deceased within 24 hours of death. Before their burial, the bodies are washed and wrapped in a white shroud so that funeral prayers can be conducted.

On Sunday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said some bodies would be returned to victims families the same evening and expressed hope that all of those killed would be with their relatives again by Wednesday at the latest.

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It now seems unlikely that that will be the case, however, with coroners and police yet to confirm the identity of 38 of those killed at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in what Ardern has branded a terrorist attack.

Volunteers at a makeshift victim support centre in Christchurch, set up in the wake of the massacre, said the Muslim communitys initial patience with the authorities processes was beginning to run out.

They were understanding but no longer as much now, Javed Dadabhai, who is part of a team at the support centre helping to organise the release of bodies and burials, told Al Jazeera.

The mood is starting to shift, theres still nothing the families can do about it because its not something they can push, but theres a bit more venting starting to happen, he added.

Procedures versus culture

Officials have pledged to move swiftly in returning bodies to the victims families, acknowledging the need to act as quickly and sensitively as possible.

Mike Bush, New Zealands police chief, said on Sunday that authorities were aware of the cultural and religious needs of Muslim victims.

On Tuesday, New Zealand Police Association President Chris Cahill said he understood the great level of frustration felt by families eager to reclaim their loved ones but added officials had to follow procedure.

The last thing anyone would want is to get the wrong body back, Cahill told Al Jazeera.

Its a challenge of procedures versus culture  I think the message has got through but sometimes in moments of grief its totally understandable that the frustration still continues.

The Coronial Services of New Zealand declined to comment when contacted by Al Jazeera on Tuesday.
Bulldozers and road graders struggled through the night to clear obstructed roads after Cyclone Idai strands thousands.

Chimanimani, Zimbabwe  Rescue efforts in eastern Zimbabwe picked up the pace on Tuesday in distressed areas from Cyclone Idais trail of destruction with nearly 100 people dead and hundreds missing.

Poor weather conditions and destroyed infrastructure hampered efforts by the military and humanitarian agencies to reach thousands of stranded people. A massive landslide blocked access to the town of Chimanimani  about 400km southeast of the capital Harare  and there was limited access to the worst-affected areas by air.

But in lower altitude regions there was some relief.

The cyclone killed at least 98 people and more than 200 are missing in Zimbabwe, the government said on Monday.

While cyclones are not uncommon in this area, Idai is said to be the worst to hit the Southern Africa region since the devastating Cyclone Eline in 2000.

Mozambique has been hardest hit with the president saying more than 1,000 people may have been killed. Dozens have also died in Malawi.

Bulldozers and road graders struggled through the night to clear obstructed muddy roads in parts of the Chipinge and Chimanimani districts. In the previously inaccessible villages of Sanctuary, in eastern Chimanimani, the army handed out basic food items  beans, mealie meal, and cooking oil  to hundreds of affected families.

"This is a real humanitarian disaster. More than 100,000 people are in danger"  Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi More than 1,000 feared killed by Cyclone Idai in Mozambique https://t.co/QEWoATgiV4 @AFPgraphics pic.twitter.com/Nk1oJIkkz5  AFP news agency (@AFP) March 19, 2019





Helicopter rescue

Hundreds of high school boys were evacuated by helicopter from a school buried by a mudslide. Survivors will be transported to Harare for medical checks and support. Two people, including a student, died in the landslide at St Charles Luwanga Seminary School.

Zuze Zubuka, 53, who lives on one of Chimanimanis lower mountain slopes, told Al Jazeera the roof and walls of his three huts were blown away by the rain. Now he and his family of eight squat in a small shack near the original home. Up the road, Zubuka attended the funeral of an in-law, Morgan Chimene Dube, crushed by falling rocks while sleeping in his home as Fridays massive storm hit.

I have lost my home, it was impossible to escape the rain, we were trapped but now that the roads are cleared we can move. I came to see how my brother-in-law was doing, but he is dead now.

We have lost a relative, our fields and our home. My family is there, but I dont know how we will start all over again, he said.

Some of the high school students evacuated from St Charles Luwanga Seminary after it was hit by a landslide [Tendai Marima/Al Jazeera]

Everything lost

Another mourner at the funeral Fortunate Saziya, 48, told Al Jazeera she was anxious and hoped for more help as shed also lost her home.

Who can I give a list of all the things I have lost? Will we get any support for all weve lost? When is the government going to help us? she asked.

Minister of Defence Oppah Muchinguri visited the area and told victims she hadnt anticipated Cyclone Idai being so bad, lamenting the lack of preparedness by the community and the government.

We had heard that floods were coming and a cyclone, but we had not moved or done anything to help ourselves, Muchinguri said.

I think we as people of Manicaland [province] have learnt a lesson and next time we will protect lives and urge people to move knowing what will happen, and we move into camps together with the governments help, she added.

Follow Tendai on Twitter and Instagram: @i_amten
In the red shirt heartland, voters say odds may be against democratic forces but they wont give up without a fight.

Waeng Noi, Thailand  As a deepening red sun slips from the sky behind the parched paddy fields of Isaan in Thailands northeast, villagers walk their floppy eared cows back home for the night and Pheu Thai Party hopeful Saratsanun Unnopporn makes her pitch for votes.

The 30-year-old first-time politician is one of 41 candidates on the ballot paper for the constituency just over an hour south of Khon Kaen city, but she is confident of victory in Sundays election, the first since a military coup in 2014.

In the last five years is anyone in a better position? Saratsanun asks the crowd of mostly white-haired villagers, speaking in the local dialect as well as Thai. The state of the economy is on everyones minds and the villagers shake their heads.

Isaan is Pheu Thais spiritual home; the countrys most populous and largely agricultural region whose people propelled telecommunications tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra to power in 2001 on a platform of pro-poor policies. People in Isaan have backed Thaksin-linked parties ever since despite the cycle of protests and military coups that have forced successive popularly elected governments  most recently Pheu Thai  from power.

Thaksin and his sister Yingluck  who was prime minister from 2011 to 2014  live in exile.

Now, with the economy having shown little sign of improvement under the generals, many Thais are looking to support parties that will boost growth and implement policies that will make a demonstrable improvement in their lives.

Saratsanun Unnopporn, a candidate for Pheu Thai, campaigns at a village in northeastern Thailand [Hathairat Phaholtap/Al Jazeera]

Excited to vote

At early voting on Sunday  a week before the election proper  people in Khon Kaen, Isaans second-biggest city, waited patiently beneath the fierce sun to cast their ballots.

Im very excited to vote, said Nipaporn Phumipark, who was voting for the first time in her life. I never thought I would get to do it.

The 20-year-old Khon Kaen resident said she had decided to back the pro-military Palang Pracharat Party because the candidate in her constituency was a local man.

Others were reluctant to reveal their intentions, but some said they would be voting Pheu Thai. Under new election rules, the party is banned from using Thaksins name or image during campaigning.

I like their economic policies, said Bangon Khamsuk, 43, adding she was happy to finally be voting again. When they were in power they made the economy better. She said she was hoping the pro-democracy parties would win, despite a new constitution that stacks the odds in favour of the military. I hope we will see a miracle.

The generals economic initiatives have focussed mainly on modernising Thailands infrastructure  Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha was in Khon Kaen earlier this month to open a newly renovated central station and a light rail is also planned  but the effect of the more than 40 planned projects has yet to filter to the ground.

Growth in Southeast Asias second-biggest economy has remained around four percent a year, below Thailands neighbours in the region and well below its actual potential, according to economists.

A burned sugarcane field in Issan, northeastern Thailand. Sugarcane is one of the regions main crops alongside rice and cassava [Kate Mayberry/Al Jazeera]

Attitude adjustment

But for the people of the northeast, whose choice of government has been overthrown again and again by the elite that has traditionally dominated Thailands politics, it is not only economic hardship that has taken its toll.

Attitudes have also been shaped by the crackdown that accompanied the 2014 putsch.

It might have been possible immediately after the coup for the military to initiate some real effort at bringing reconciliation to the various parties, but it was clear from the very beginning that the primary impulse was to eliminate as much of what they believed to be Thaksin influence in Thai politics as possible, David Streckfuss, a historian and independent scholar based in Khon Kaen, told Al Jazeera.

Scores of political critics as well as the regional and local leaders of the red shirts, who took to the streets in defence first of Thaksin and then Yingluck, fled overseas. Some villages, seen as overly sympathetic to the cause, were required to undergo attitude adjustment  told why military rule was good for the country and good for peace. Others found themselves detained under repressive laws.

Pornchanok Boonchais husband, a security guard at a bank, was arrested in May 2014 and accused of being part of a plot to topple the military government. He remains in jail where he also faces charges under the Computer Crime Act and lese-majeste law.

He didnt do anything wrong, 58-year-old Pornchanok told Al Jazeera, propping herself up on pillows because an old injury made it painful for her to sit in one position for too long. Why is he still being kept in jail, why is he still being kept inside? Pornchanok wiped tears from her face with a tissue. The people who took him should release him. Hes been held too long.

Pornchanok Boonchais husband was detained in May 2014 and she says he has done nothing wrong [Kate Mayberry/Al Jazeera]

Opinion polls last month suggested about 45 percent of Isaan voters were leaning towards Pheu Thai, followed by Future Forward, the upstart party of car-parts tycoon Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, at 21 percent and Palang Pracharat at seven percent. Not to be outdone, Palang Pracharat is also offering goodies to voters in the form of higher welfare payments to elderly people, financial support to farmers, and a three-year moratorium on agricultural debt.

I burnt it all

Widower Kangwan Yotikha, 55, farms around three hectares of land about 90 minutes north of Khon Kaen with rice, sugarcane, rubber and fruit including mango and coconut.

Sitting in his wooden hut surrounded by banana trees, two pictures of the king on the wall behind him, he says he wants a government that understands business and does more to help farmers.

Hes reduced the amount of land dedicated to rubber with the collapse in prices, and a few metres away, his sugarcane fields are burned black.

Life is difficult, Kangwan told Al Jazeera. The price of sugarcane has come down. Theres no point selling and there are no labourers to harvest it anyway, so I burnt it all.

Kangwan once worked in Bangkok and was among thousands of red shirts who took to the streets in 2010. Now, he hopes Pheu Thai will be returned to power again.

Kangwan Yotikha on his farm in Isaan, northeastern Thailand [Kate Mayberry/Al Jazeera]

Back in Waeng Noi, Saratsanun is explaining the new voting system to the villagers.

Under the new constitution drawn up by the military the lower house of parliament will be chosen not only through direct elections, but according to each partys popularity. Saratsanun stresses the importance of not only voting for her, but also for the party.

If you want Sudarat Keyuraphan [the Pheu Thai candidate] to be prime minister you must vote for Pheu Thai, she tells them.

The odds might be stacked against Thailands democratic forces, but the 30-year-old is not giving up without a fight.

No matter what laws they try to establish to weaken us, no matter what other measures they try to weaken us, we have to stand up to dictatorship, she tells the crowd as the night closes in.

Additional reporting by Hathairat Phaholtap
Refugee peace women are putting themselves at the heart of the fight for justice.

A female Rohingya refugee, Hamida Khatoon, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for the first time last week.

Khatoon is part of a womens support group called Shanti Mohila, which means peace women in Rohingya.

Brought together by their trauma, they began meeting in the refugee camps of Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh.

But they are much more than just a support group, they want justice and are actively fighting for it.

Al Jazeeras Stefanie Dekker reports from Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh.
The countrys estimated death toll is 98 and is expected to rise with many people still missing.

Chimanimani, Zimbabwe  High in the eastern hills of Zimbabwe rescue efforts continue and medical services are starting to reach some stranded communities.

Roads are slowly becoming more accessible and aid organisations are arriving to help to those in need in the wake of deadly Cyclone Idai.

In Chimanimani district, which borders Mozambique, critically injured villagers are being airlifted to hospitals. Tents for a temporary clinic and an aid camp have been set up in the mountainous section locally known as Skyline.

Chipo Liwayo and her six-month-old baby have bruises on their face that will forever remind them of what the storm took from them.

Liwayo lost two children when a rockfall and mudslide enveloped her home just beneath Skyline.

The children aged four and eight were swept away and are still missing.

The rocks hit us as we tried to get out of the kitchen where we had run to hide, but my four-year-old child didnt make it. The other one was already taken when the rains destroyed the bedroom where he slept. God has his ways, but I dont know why this. It hurts, Liwayo said as she cradled her only surviving child.

Farai Muskwe says she is nervous about returning to the area where a mudslide killed her two grandchildren [Tendai Marima/Al Jazeera]

Her 77-year-old mother, Farai Muskwe, survived the rocks and mud but complained of a swollen leg and needs blood pressure pills that were swept away by the storms.

Farai Marume, emergency co-ordinator for NGO, Doctors without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF) told Al Jazeera that while medical rescue efforts had just begun, the agency had already received many injuries.

The magnitude of this cyclone was huge. We have received a lot of patients with fractures and some others with more serious wounds.





We are making efforts but the major challenge is accessibility. We are working on that and trying to collaborate with our other partners to reach those in remote places.

Weve managed to send out medication to Chimanimani hospital via helicopter with the help of our partners, he told Al Jazeera in an interview.

On the other side of the impassable mountain range lies Ngangu, a poor township in Chimanimani town where 40 victims of Cyclone Idai were buried on Monday according to the state-owned daily paper, The Herald.

It said the government had advised residents to go ahead with burials as there were no adequate mortuary facilities.

The news of the burials has unsettled those who are unable to reach their relatives stranded in other areas.

Witness Nyandoro, 36, a vendor in Chipinge town told Al Jazeera she was worried about her family in a village in Nyanyandzi area, about 85km further north.

All the roads to my home area are bad, I cant try going there, what if the cars cannot make it? I keep trying to phone but the numbers cant get through so I dont even know if my family is OK, he said.





In a statement issued today, the spokesman for the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his sadness at the loss of life, destruction of property and displacement of millions by the cyclonic rains and subsequent flooding.

According to UN estimates 600,000 people in Mozambique and 900,000 in Malawi have been affected by Cyclone Idai.

Assessments in Zimbabwe are still ongoing, but the death toll continues to rise. The current estimate from the Ministry of Information is 98 dead, with many more still missing.

The UKs International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt has announced Britain will provide up to 6 million pounds ($7.96m) in humanitarian aid for Mozambique and Malawi.

Follow Tendai on Twitter and Instagram @i_amten.
The Polisario-run Tindouf camps have started to feel the impact of the massive demonstrations organized since February 22 in Algeria, against the candidacy of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to a fifth term despite his critical health condition and against the regime as a whole.

In addition to the unusual protests observed in recent weeks in front of the Polisario headquarters in Rabouni, the separatists propaganda machine is seemingly running out of steam. As an evidence to this, the separatist fronts leadership and its media relays have not even reacted to the organization of the 5th Crans Montana Forum in Dakhla on March 14th-17th as they used to do during previous editions.

As an additional evidence that a downbeat scenario is indeed unfolding in Rabbouni, a 29-year-old militiaman, who claims to be a captain and deputy commander of a Katiba (battalion) of the so-called Gendarmerie of the Polisario Front, has deserted the ranks of the Polisario armed militias.

He showed up on Monday morning at a checkpoint at the Defense Line in the area of Farcia (Oued Draa Region) and revealed his intention to rally Morocco, according to military sources.

The militiaman also said that many other Sahrawis repented and wish to flee the Tindouf camps to rally Morocco, the same sources said.

Over the past ten years or so, Moroccan authorities have halted the massive return of Sahrawis. These returns were organized under the royal motto: The fatherland is forgiving and merciful.

Actually, a large number of Polisario militiamen, disguised as civilians, took advantage of this forgiveness to infiltrate the southern provinces of Morocco, with the aim to sow discord, commit acts of vandalism and challenge police forces.

The implementation of Moroccos new strategy has allowed the return to calm and serenity throughout the southern areas of the Kingdom.

However, with the winds of change blowing on the region and the bitter diplomatic failures recently suffered by the Polisario, the number of Sahrawis wishing sincerely to return to Morocco is likely to increase.
Hundreds of protesters clash with troops in Indian-administered Kashmir after Rizwan Asad Pandit dies in police custody.

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir  Hundreds of protesters clashed with Indian security forces in parts of Indian-administered Kashmir after police said a man detained over a security investigation died in police custody.

Rizwan Asad Pandit, a 29-year-old chemistry teacher, was arrested as part of terror case investigation, the police said in a statement on Tuesday. The person died in police custody, the police said, adding an investigation into the cause of his death was under way.

Pandits family condemned his death as a cold-blooded murder as crowds gathered in the southern Pulwama district in protest. Security forces fired tear gas at protesters as authorities suspended internet services in the region.

Mubashir Asad, Pandits brother, said police arrested Pandit at his home in the Awantipora village late on Sunday night. They said he would be released soon. My brother was not involved in anything. This is a cold-blooded murder, he said.

Tensions in Kashmir, a region claimed by both India and Pakistan, have been high since a suicide bombing killed 42 Indian soldiers in the Pulwama district in February.





New Delhi blamed Islamabad for harbouring the armed group, Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) that claimed responsibility for the attack, and launched a retaliatory air raid inside Pakistan, a move that brought the nuclear-armed neighbours to the brink of war.

India also banned the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) political party in Kashmir and arrested some 300 of the groups leaders and activists.

Helplessness

A senior police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Rizwan was detained over the Pulwama attack. We had some information that he knew how to make explosives and suspected his role in the recent attack, the official said.

Following Rizwans death, separatist leaders in Indian-administered Kashmir called for a shutdown in the region.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the separatist umbrella All Parties Hurriyat Conference, denounced Rizwans death in a post on Twitter, saying: The brutal killing once again exposes the helplessness, vulnerability, and insecurity to the lives of Kashmiris as the impunity of the authorities keeps rising, he said.

190215200015849

Rights groups claim hundreds of people detained by Indian security forces following a 1989 armed revolt have died in state custody, although there are no official figures.

Yet, no one has been brought to justice for such deaths, said Khurram Parvez, a human rights activist.

While custodial deaths have not been common in recent years, Rizwans death adds to the more than 70,000 killings, more than 8,000 enforced disappearances, as well as thousands of torture and sexual violence cases in Indian-administered Kashmir over the past three decades, he said.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since their independence from Britain, two of them over Kashmir.

Rebel groups in Indian-administered Kashmir have for decades battled troops and police, demanding independence or a merger of the Himalayan territory with Pakistan.
Ground-breaking data from space telescope comes three years after it was decommissioned in 2018 when it ran out of fuel.
Its hard to believe that were entering into another presidential campaigning season, but its right around the corner. And one of the big calling cards of the left will be a push towards socialism. But why?

The Increasingly Loud Calls for Socialism

Identity politics have always played a powerful role within the Democratic Party. What was once a party of predominantly white males over the age of 40 has now become an eclectic mix of different genders, races, and religious backgrounds -- a real hodgepodge of 21st-century American culture. But in the push towards identity politics, the Democratic Party has found itself in the middle of its own identity crisis. Its no longer simply about skin color and sexual orientation. For better or worse, its about eclectic ideology. And in many cases, this ideology runs counter to the foundational principles of America.

Last June, Democratic Party voters elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez -- a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist -- into office. Two years before that, Senator Bernie Sanders  another self-described democratic socialist -- came very close to winning the partys nomination for the presidency. Look around and there are a handful of other prominent Democrats and rising stars who are openly rallying around socialistic ideas. Its no longer a hushed conversation behind closed doors -- its an overt push in the public eye.

Theres clear leftward movement among Democratic voters on a range of issues, and there are more progressive candidates running than ever, political correspondent David A. Graham writes for the Atlantic.

The data show that more Democratic voters now identify themselves as liberal than ever before. At the same time, the number of moderate Democrats has dropped to an all-time low. An increasingly large segment of the voter base is moving far left. And in an age when many liberal voters feel like President Donald Trump is giving capitalism a black eye, the calls for socialism sound sexy.

Millennials whose only understanding of socialism comes from nostalgic Che Guevara t-shirts are clinging to Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and others like theyre visionaries with fresh ideas of future prosperity, when theyre actually pushing failed ideas that have historically caused significant harm and oppression to millions.

As this editorial on Investors.com puts it, Millennials may love socialism, but socialism wont love them back.

Consumerism, Shopping Addiction, and a Breaking Point

The push towards socialism isnt all about politics, though. Other undertones are at play, which could lead to a groundswell in American culture. Chief among these factors is the growth of consumerism and, dare we say it, shopping addiction.

Researchers have spent decades studying shopping behaviors and have found that compulsive shopping has similar impulses to drug and alcohol addiction. In fact, one study suggests that 7 percent of American consumers -- or roughly 20 million adults -- have some degree of shopping addiction.

Consumerism will always be a defining characteristic of a wealthy capitalistic society, but theres been a major spike in the last 20 years. This spike directly coincides with the rise in e-commerce and online shopping.

The internet is a wonderful thing, but it can be like crack cocaine for people with an addictive personality, writes Terrance Shulman, founder of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending, and Hoarding. Theres an immediacy that can be a slippery slope.

In a consumer-driven society, things equal status. The more you can buy, the more you can trick people into thinking youre happy and fulfilled. And at a time when theres serious income inequality and significant gaps between the lower, middle, and upper classes, the friction is becoming apparent.

Thousands of millennials are strapped with heavy student loan debt, low-paying jobs, and a high cost of living. Another large segment of the population has become exhausted by consumerism and craves a simplified system thats equal for the masses. Its at this intersection that we find the breaking point that makes socialism seem so sexy.

Socialism: Clearly Not the Answer

As appealing as socialism seems to someone who (a) is struggling to find economic prosperity and (b) has never experienced socialism firsthand, its clearly not the answer. All you have to do is pick up a history book or talk to someone who has experienced the oppression of socialism, and it becomes quite clear. However, there are other solutions that Americans can implement in order to overcome the exhaustion of consumerism and discover greater satisfaction.

Effective change doesnt happen from the top down; it happens from the bottom up. In other words, we dont need to elect radical leaders into office so that they can enact sweeping changes. Instead, we each need to focus on our own lives and make small changes to how we approach money, shopping, saving, and investing. Collectively, these results will have far more power.

Here are a few suggestions for how you can subdue the exhausting more is better approach and make smarter money decisions:

Avoid and eliminate debt. Crippling debt may seem normal, but it shouldnt be. Americans would do well to avoid adding on any new debt and to aggressively pay down balances so that they have more room in their budgets to make smart financial decisions.

Use coupons. Nobody is telling you not to shop. But you do need to be smarter about how you shop. Learn how to use coupons to save money on items youre already purchasing. Purposeful spending is the mark of a fiscally savvy person.

Save more. When you eliminate debt and practice smarter spending, you have money left over to save and invest. Experts recommend putting at least 15 percent of your income towards retirement.

Understand want vs. need. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you have to learn how to differentiate between a want and a need. The lines have been blurred over the years and we can all benefit from gaining a clearer understanding of what constitutes a real need. (Hint: You dont have very many.)

These four suggestions arent going to solve all of Americas economic problems, but they do show the importance of personal responsibility. The government isnt designed to prop up Americans financially. It exists to protect the inalienable rights of the people. The sooner people realize this, the quicker we can stop talking about socialism.

Freedom at Any Cost

Contemporary capitalist societies like Germany rely on nostalgic socialism both as its context and its target. At best, this tendency reduces socialism to a Disney-fied consumption experience. At worst, it perpetuates entrenched social biases and inequalities, writes Markus Giesler, Associate Professor of Marketing at Schulich School of Business, York University.

While America doesnt have a socialist past, we certainly have a growing problem in which young voters are attracted to a Disney-fied version of it -- and its dangerous.

The real value of a socialist past is that it can open up new ways for interrogating our capitalist present -- and the forces we allow to shape both how we remember the past and how we forget, Giesler continues.

As the Democratic Party and its voter base continue to experience an identity crisis, its important for the rest of us to stand up and support freedom at any cost. Change can be good, but it should always be filtered through the foundational principles that our Founding Fathers laid out all those years ago.
As I sit here writing, a terrible thing is happening. It started mid-week, but theres nothing being reported on the national news. No TV cameras or on-the-street interviews. I saw blurbs on Drudge and Breitbart this morning (Sunday), but no big fuss. As of this moment 54 of Nebraskas 93 counties have been declared disaster areas. Seventeen rivers have set flood records and some six million people are affected. Offutt Air Force Base, just outside of Omaha, looks more like an inland sea  thirty buildings are closed due to the flooding. South Dakota and Iowa have been affected as well.

This was a hard winter and much snow accumulated and ice formed on all the rivers. Then suddenly the weather turned and most of that H2O turned liquid. What didnt melt floated high-speed in chunks the size of cars, ripping out grain elevators and barns, tearing into houses and businesses. I saw one picture of a kitchen filled to the tops of the counters with dirt-laden ice.

At the same time heavy rain began to fall. So far hundreds people have had to be evacuated from 29 small farming communities that are now more islands than they are towns. No one knows how many animals have been frozen or drowned. This isnt warm water - its just one step down from ice and theres a wild wind blowing. One picture I saw showed a cluster of maybe 30 cattle huddled together hopelessly on a tiny hillock in the middle of what looked like a vast, edgeless lake, but was really the Platte River far over its banks. One helicopter pilot said there were many more such tiny bovine islands across the landscape.

Freemont, Nebraska, is completely cut off - no roads are left. The highways arent just covered in feet of water, theyre torn completely out or so littered with ice boulders as to be impassable. Dikes have been breached and many bridges torn out by the rampaging ice. And this is Nebraska - winter isnt over.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the bomb cyclone blizzard that hit Denver also hit the western half of Nebraska, dumping feet of snow. On Thursday I-80 from Grand Island, Nebraska to Wyoming was closed. Seventy mile per hour winds were blowing semis over onto their sides. The western half of Nebraska is cattle country, wheat country. It is sparsely populated by ranchers whose spreads may cover thousands of acres and may well own thousands of head of cattle out on those lonely sand hills. How do you go about protecting your herds in that kind of a storm? You dont -- they just freeze.

This disaster hits me personally because Nebraska is my home state, and even though I havent lived there for over 40 years, the prairie is still in my blood, and seeing my grandparents little Garrison Keillor town covered in four feet of water breaks my heart. Hearing that my home city of Lincoln is worried about its water supply - a town of 250,000 souls - scares me. I have people there.

But what has bothered me the most is the realization that the news tells us so little of what is happening in the world. The TV news rattles on and on 24-7 and not a single story about the heart of this country and the suffering and struggle of our fellow Americans. Not until the story was three days old does it even make honorable mention. Two people are dead so far - one because he was trying to rescue another victim. There must be, if I know my fellow Nebraskans, many stories of heroism and heartbreak, but if my cousin and her kids hadnt been filling Facebook with pictures, I wouldnt know yet that anything was happening.

This last week, on the other side of the world, 32 Nigerian Christians were brutally murdered by jihadists. Some missionary sources say the number is closer to 200. Has that been on the news? No. We heard all about the mosque attack in Christchurch, but not a word about Nigeria. In the last few years 6,000 Nigerian Christians have been murdered - burned in their own churches, beheaded, mutilated. But no major news stories. Silence.

What else is happening that we dont know about? How are our opinions and decisions being shaped by what we dont hear? I understand that it is expensive to send reporters around looking for stories when all you have to do to get viewers is tell yet another tale about what nonsense the latest left-wing nutcase has spouted. And true, thats frightening enough, but how are we to form reasonable opinions if we dont know the half of it? And add to that the demonstrable fact that most of these news organizations will knowingly lie to fit whatever narrative is the going thing.

I suppose these floods, the worst the state has seen in a half a century, will make the news as soon as the MSM can come up with a way to blame Trump or global warming. In the meantime, as bad and questionable as it is, social media is all we have to go on, and we know that is being manipulated.

So we must keep our eyes peeled, search for truth far and wide and stay in contact with people we love. And pray please  for Nebraskans  theyre tough, resilient people, but this is pushing anyones limits  and for Nigerians, whose lives must be terrifying, and for all those folks who need help and about whom we know nothing.

Deana Chadwell blogs at www.ASingleWindow.com. She is also an adjunct professor and department head at Pacific Bible College in southern Oregon. She teaches writing and public speaking.
In the aftermath of the evil mosque attacks in New Zealand, everyone is having a grand old time blaming their favorite scapegoat. In the New York Times, a chap called Wajahat Ali blamed Donald Trump and Breitbart News. Another Muslim activist blamed Chelsea Clinton, who -- fatal error -- apologized. In a statement of characteristic intellectual originality, Sandy O blamed the NRA.

Good Little Boys and Good Little Girls all, hating and fearing the scapegoat as they have been carefully taught.

But I have a much juicier culprit to blame for all the hate and division. I blame the educated ruling class that has risen to power and maintains its power by dividing and conquering the masses and teaching them to hate each other.

As I wrote in my Leftism is a School of Hate: first the left taught the workers to hate the middle class, then it taught women to hate men, then it taught blacks to hate whites, then it taught gays to hate straights, then Muslims to hate Jews.

But I left off the latest course offered by the lefty school of hate: teaching all its Coalition of the Fringes to hate white working-class men, ordinary white guys sorely in need of the privilege of rich parents to boost them into fancy colleges.

Wait! I got it wrong. The lefts school is not just about hate. There is also fear, and the fear comes first.

First, the left teaches its Little Darlings to fear; then, after the system meets their just demands, the left teaches them to hate.

So, first the left taught the workers to fear the bosses; then the left taught the workers to hate the bosses. First the left taught blacks to fear the whites; then the left taught blacks to hate whites.

Hate comes after fear: you read it here first.

When did the workers start to show their hate with strike and protest? They did it after the factory owners had rescued them from rural starvation. When did women really start to hate men? Right: it was after they got the vote and the sacrament of abortion. And when did blacks really start to hate whites? After the civil rights era, when King gave way to Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. Gays? After they got gay marriage.

Today, of course, we have our stalwart educated ruling class teaching us, from year to year, that everyone should hate and fear those eeevil white nationalists.

But something went wrong. The white nationalists are fighting back.

Hey! No fair! That wasnt supposed to happen!

Why not? Lets consult Marxist Gyorgy Lukacs and his deployment of Marxian dialectics. According to La Wik:

For Lukacs, "ideology" is a projection of the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie, which functions to prevent the proletariat from attaining consciousness of its revolutionary position.

Rubbish. Lets update Lukacss 1920s dialectic:

For me, Christopher Chantrill, woke is a projection of the class consciousness of the educated elite, which functions to prevent the white working class from attaining consciousness of its revolutionary position.

How do you like them apples, lefties? What with the NRA eeevilly promoting revolutionary gun culture among the white working class, and all?

I am just trying to point out that everything from the left and the educated class, including and and the is, and always has been, a lie. In the words of Sen. Lindsay Graham:

Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it.

Well, yes, Senator. That is what politics is all about, especially politics on the left. And that is the fundamental and evil folly of the left. It thinks, from the commanding heights of the academy to the urban playgrounds of the well-born millennials, that the crying need is to transform the world with more politics: in a word, socialism.

Ya think? Here is the prophet Nietzsche, writing way back in 1878, in Human, All Too Human, that:

Socialism can serve to teach, in a truly brutal and impressive fashion, what danger there lies in all accumulations of state power, and to that extent implant mistrust of the state itself. [from A Glance at the State]

Fritzi. How the heck did you figure that out back in 1878?

That is what all the hate and fear of the lefts school of hate is all about: the accumulations of state power. The whole point of the plight of the workers, the women, the blacks, the gays, is to accumulate state power for the educated elite. Period.

And it serves the rulers right if, after 150 years, the workers, now marinating in the toxic masculinity of white nationalism, should turn around and bite them in the neck.

Hey, I know! Lets elect a president who can soften all the angry voices with the unifying call to Make America Great Again.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
As far as I can understand from the highly redacted and still understandably highly confused reports, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump (R), was not the shooter in the tragic slaughter at a mosque in New Zealand. Multiple and reliable witnesses, including CNN reporters (OK, they're not so reliable), have placed the president in Washington, D.C. at the time of the shootings. Not only that, Trump spoke immediately and forcefully against the horror, offering U.S. assistance if needed, as did Vice President Mike Pence (R). Obviously, he didn't commit this evil act thousands of miles from the White House.

So why are people  well, OK, just Democrats  blaming him? Prolific tweeter Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-no Amazon for me in N.Y.) pontificated:

All of these are terrorist incidents.



We have a responsibility to understand how white supremacy + online radicalization works, because it is impacting our entire society.



President Trump defunded Federal programs designed to fight the spread of white supremacist hate groups. https://t.co/7WgC65f5Fp  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 15, 2019

Oh. Of course. New Zealand is another culture far, far away from the Bronx, which Ocasio-Cortez presumably represents; there are plenty of worthwhile programs out there on the internet against hate, while there are also many vile programs out there that Muslim supremacists, black supremacists, homosexual supremacists, animal-lover supremacists, female supremacists, etc. utilize for their evil radicalization and to reach others. But these forms of hate don't seem to bother her; indeed, she often parrots some of it.

Continuing the Big Lie narrative, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) whined:

Our leader of our country. He cannot just say it's a small group of people. There are too many deaths. Not only from the synagogue to the black churches to the temples to now the mosques, we need to be speaking up against this, and it has to start with him.

Perhaps  uh, no, she actually was too busy blaming Trump, Jews, and everyone who doesn't agree with her to notice Trump's early and forceful denunciations of this evil  an evil she justifies against Jews in Israel, not so by the way.

In their desperate attempt to deflect scrutiny of the Democrats' total failure to condemn anti-Jewish hate in a House vote to appease Muslim hate, even more Democrats also jumped on the Blame Trump Train for New Zealand and every problem in the U.S., including the divisiveness they've encouraged.

In a series of swipes against President Trump on Sunday, Democrats called on him to defend Muslims publicly after a white supremacist killed 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand, suggesting the president's rhetoric was partly to blame. The lawmakers, along with several Sunday show hosts from various networks, questioned the president's denial that attacks motivated by white supremacy are on the rise, citing statistics from the Southern Poverty Law Center that claim more than 80 people have been killed in the U.S. and Canada from 2014 to 2018 by white nationalists. The critics pointed to the shooting last year killing 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pennsylvania, the 2015 shooting in Charleston killing nine black people at a Bible study, and the recent attack in New Zealand against Muslims. "We have to confront the fact that there is a rising white supremacy, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim attitude. The president uses language often that is very similar," Sen. Tim Kaine, Virginia Democrat, told CBS's "Face the Nation." Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, said the president needs to publicly defend Muslims, but stopped short of blaming him for the killings. "At the very least, he is dividing people," she said during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."

Trump is "dividing people" to become killers. Also noticing these "divisions," Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) complained:

[O]ne of the most despicable things about President Trump's campaign and his actions as president has been the way in which he has seen the divisions in our country and tried to crack them open more widely for his own partisan political advantage.

Uh, Senators Coons and Klobuchar and all Democrats: it is the Democrats who have elevated "resistance" to the duly and democratically elected Trump as a virtue while dumping their contempt on the people who voted for him.

Thus, the Democrats' hate of Trump is so deep that they unashamedly exploit a tragedy in a country halfway across the world for their own hate-filled benefit. They are responsible for much of the hate in this country and perhaps for the New Zealand killer's hate.

Image: YouTube screen shot via Global News.
Democrats are pushing the job-destroying national minimum wage increase to $15 an hour, and they are almost universally supported in their quest for office by the news media. The increase will take away job opportunities for the young, minorities, and the less educated. It will greatly harm rural areas, along with small and midsize communities, as they struggle to keep jobs and people from moving. People will have fewer opportunities to get their first job to start moving up the economic ladder.

Seniors on fixed incomes will be greatly harmed because not only will their opportunities to get jobs to supplement their income disappear, but their costs for necessities will increase substantially.

The economy is already moving toward more automation because of existing costs, and the movement will be accelerated exponentially depending on how high government pushes the cost of hiring employees. Not only do Democrats want $15 per hour for the lowest wage jobs, they also want mandated health insurance and paid leave. Along with payroll taxes, the cost of each full-time worker at the lowest level would be around $50,000 per year. The cost of robots would be cheaper for many, many tasks now performed by low-wage humans.

According to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, automation would be good because they would have more free time. People would depend on government, which is the Democrats' goal.

I suggest that members of Congress could easily be replaced by robots, and Ocasio-Cortez would have more free time.

We are constantly told that the minimum wage will not support a family, but it was never intended to. In 1950, rarely were there two people working in a household, and the minimum wage was 75 cents per hour. Fifteen hundred dollars would not have supported a family when the average income was $3,300.

In 1987, the New York Times wrote that the right minimum wage was zero because raising the wage would destroy jobs, and the idea of using a rising minimum wage to overcome poverty is fundamentally flawed.

In 2017, the Los Angeles Times recognized that the origin of the minimum wage was to price minorities, women, and the disabled out of a job. I thought Democrats were against racist and sexist laws!

Labor reformers then believed that a legal minimum would hand a raise to deserving white Anglo-Saxon men, and a pink slip to their undeserving competitors: "racially undesirable" immigrants, the mentally and physically disabled, and women. The original progressives hailed minimum-wage-caused job losses among these groups as a positive benefit to the U.S. economy and to Anglo-Saxon racial integrity.

For almost ninety years, prevailing wage laws have oppressed minorities and punished taxpayers, yet Democrats continually support them because they are beholden to unions. If journalists and other Democrats were interested in helping minorities and repairing the infrastructure in an efficient and effective manner, they would immediately repeal these laws.

StephenVukovits writes:

Michigan has joined a growing list of states that are repealing their prevailing wage laws. With this latest reversal, 24 states no longer require public contractors to pay prevailing wages  wages that are calculated by the Labor Department and are generally higher than average  allowing wages to be determined by economic conditions instead of central planners. Prevailing wage laws are derived from the federal Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which mandates that federally-contracted workers be paid "prevailing wages" on projects over $2,000. These prevailing wages are intended to match the local cost of labor, based on the occupation and location of the work. Though the law's intention was to protect American workers from immigrant labor during the Great Depression, the law has artificially raised wages, decreased competition, and boosted union power. Historically, prevailing wage laws have also resulted in discrimination against African American and immigrant workers. A recent study by David E. Bernstein of the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University concluded that these restrictions disproportionately hurt minority contractors since African Americans and immigrants tend to be less skilled. Passage of the Davis-Bacon Act was partially driven by a fear of African American workers driving down wages, and minorities continue to feel the negative effects of federal and state prevailing wage laws. Nearly 98 percent of African American and Hispanic construction companies are non-union, so wage rate restrictions that favor unions hit these communities the hardest.

Democrats call themselves progressives, but there is nothing progressive about job destruction to reduce economic opportunity and making more people dependent on government.

Graphic credit: Nick Youngson.
Unlike, say, Beto O'Rourke, who offers nothing upstairs, or Kamala Harris, who flits with the wind with regard to what she's in favor of, Elizabeth Warren is a Democratic presidential candidate with some specific ideas.

And they're not good ones.

Here's what's probably her worst, from Twitter:

Every vote matters. We need to get rid of the Electoral College so that presidential candidates have to ask every American in every part of the country for their vote, not just those in battleground states. #WarrenTownHall pic.twitter.com/UT3mYHXHQ2  Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 19, 2019

It's a programmatic call from the worst of the Democratic electoral operatives' dream book: to wipe out the constitution and replace it with riggings for Democrats. With Warren, it's now coming into the mainstream as a respectable idea.

It's also awful, an idea clothed in the California-style slogan of "count all the votes," which is the rationale used for the open practice of ballot-harvesting there. "Count all the votes." "Every vote matters..."

What it is is a bid to second-guess and smash up the wisdom of the founding fathers for the sole reason that Democrats don't like losing. Call it the Democrat Pacifier for Permanent Power Act of 2020.

Sounds so nice  who could be against it? But what we have here is a proposed dismantling of a founding constitutional pillar of our country, which is that every state matters. If the Electoral College is abolished, not every state is going to matter; just the big ones are. End the Electoral College, and candidates will adjust their platforms to advocate for the interests solely of large states. If tiny Vermont needs something, too bad. Democrats will campaign to scarf up the California and New York vote and not bother to go to...Wisconsin. And with the large number of Democrats over the age of 70 now running for president, that's convenient, given the energy required for campaign travel.

There is a recent argument that as things stand now with the Electoral College, candidates actually spend most of their trip time in swing states rather than tiny states, but it still proves that size isn't necessarily the determinant  the competition of ideas (read: purple states), combined with the winner-take-all system, is. Purple states won't matter either if the Electoral College is abolished.

Democrats actually benefit from one aspect of the Electoral College as it is, given that in a state like California, its sizable number of Electoral College votes (their numbers inflated by the fact that a quarter of the nation's illegal aliens live in the state) all go to the leftist candidate of the majority, despite the fact that a sizable minority voted for the Republican. Every vote count? Well, not exactly. My vote as a conservative for President Trump or some other Republican is always translated into a blue Electoral College vote for a Democrat, and close to half of California voters' votes are, given the winner-take-all system, which is how it goes. But the state representation elsewhere remains, which is why our republic works and why we see political back-and-forth. Were California and New York to become the only games in town, there would be no pendulum swing  just a Mexican PRIstyle rigged one-party "perfect dictatorship."

That was why the Electoral College was put there to compensate for the tyranny of the majority, something seen in every third-world hellhole calling itself a "democracy." It's important that smaller states and their interests matter, too.

Here's another thing about the Electoral College worth noting: at the U.S.'s founding, the College came as the result of a deal. The smallest of the 13 colonies, such as New Jersey, were squarely against joining the Union, because they knew that their interests would be swallowed up by much larger New York. The Electoral College was instituted in a compromise deal crafted by the founding fathers to get those smaller states into the Union. So if the deal is broken with the abolition of the Electoral College, and the U.S. goes to a tyranny-of-the-majority model, those states would have a reasonable legal case to secede, given the bargain that was struck.

Now, I get what Democrats are upset about: it's got to be tough to lose when the absolute popular majority of votes for president goes to a Democrat, while the presidency is won by a Republican. It's happened at least twice in our lifetimes. Maybe a clean-out of the near-million illegal votes, which is now Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton's estimate, would show a truer picture. But even if every vote were cast legally, what the results show is that Democrats fail to campaign for the interests of the small states that vote against them. Their problem is one of failure to appeal to enough regions, despite wanting to rule the entire region  they want to rule Iowa as if its interests were identical to coastal California's. They're unhappy because they've lost out by not working on their appeal to more than just a narrow slice of hip, coastal voters. Instead of changing their platforms to something less odiously socialist, they want to double down and marginalize North Dakota's sentiment as irrelevant.

Is this a pattern?

I think so. They lose a lot, so they want to change the rules.

They don't like the Electoral College.

They want 16-year-olds to vote.

They want non-citizens to vote.

They favor ballot-harvesting in California.

They are trying to nullify the Supreme Court by stacking it with their own.

They are all in for selective prosecutions of political opponents and censorship on social media to silence opponents.

It's as if they are at odds with all of the founding principles of how the republic works, from the First Amendment to the last. Warren's grim determination to destroy the Electoral College is just the latest of a bad pattern. The tyranny-of-the-majority model is not only a PRI model; it's a Venezuela model. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez destroyed the integrity of the electoral system long before his country went into its current disastrous slide. Socialist meddling in the electoral apparatus is hell on a republican democracy. Elizabeth Warren is just promoting it with her latest bad idea.

Image credit: Barry Kronenfeld via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Socialist "it girl" Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no match for President Trump on the popularity front in their mutual home state of New York.

According to the Washington Examiner:

More registered voters in the state of New York view President Trump favorably than outspoken left-wing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., according to the latest poll numbers from the Siena College Research Institute. While neither politician crossed the 40 favorability percent threshold, Trump had the backing of 36 percent of people surveyed, compared to Ocasio-Cortez's 31 percent.

The report has some caveats, notably on the unfavorable front. But in a deep blue state, that differential is something special.

It's also an indicator of the obvious, given that this is New York, a practical state often focused on whether things work or not: Trump creates jobs. Ocasio-Cortez kills them off.

It corresponds to President Trump's latest printout on the jobs front, from a few days ago, showing that available jobs outnumber workers looking for them  by a factor of one million.

Remember this from ZeroHedge?

After a modest slowdown in job openings which started in September and continued through November, today's JOLTS report  Janet Yellen's favorite labor market indicator  for the month of January showed an unprecedented surge in job openings across most categories at the start of 2019, with the total number soaring from an upward revised 7.479 million (from 7.335 million), to an all time high 7.581 million, smashing expectations of a 7.225 million print.

In sharp contrast, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now most famous in New York for killing Amazon's plan to build a second headquarters in New York City. Amazon blamed her by name, and the Siena poll reports that New Yorkers agree. The city won the deal in a competition where hundreds of cities were competing for Amazon's favor, and as soon as that was done, Amazon pulled out, saying Ocasio-Cortez killed the deal because Amazon didn't want to operate in a city with the likes of her around. She was bad for the business climate. Ocasio-Cortez thought that was a good thing and celebrated, gloating with glee about the whole fiasco on her Twitter account. This is her idea of declaring victory.

Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazons corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world. https://t.co/nyvm5vtH9k  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 14, 2019

Too bad about all those New Yorkers who were looking for those jobs with benefits and big Amazon salaries...

No wonder she's unpopular.

Here's the good thing about it: we can expect Trump to tweet about this new reality. Socialist: job-killer. Free-marketer: job-creator. New Yorkers know the score.

With both Trump and Ocasio-Cortez voracious users of Twitter and other social media, it might just be the thing that can drive home the reality that Ocasio-Cortez, despite her impressive Twitter presence and adoring media, is, for ordinary people who vote, a job-killer.

Trump, on the other hand, makes things better. The poll shows that New Yorkers are already spotting the differences on this one.

Image credit: Screen grab from Washington Post via YouTube.
My grandfather was part of the Greatest Generation. Toughened by wars and depression, they were patriotic nation-builders.

Their monuments are long-term productive assets like the Mount Isa and Broken Hill mines; smelters and refineries; the Wollongong Steelworks; the Sydney Harbor Bridge; the transcontinental railway; the overland telegraph line; the Yallourn coal mines and power stations; the Kalgoorlie Goldfields; the Weipa and Gladstone bauxite industries; Pilbara Iron; the Perth-Kalgoorlie pipeline; the Kidman Cattle Empire; the world's biggest merino flock; QANTAS; the Holden car; the Sunshine Harvester; and a network of roads, railways, towns, ports, and airports. They survived floods, droughts, bushfires, and plagues of mice, rabbits, grasshoppers, and prickly pear to develop an agricultural industry that provides food and fibre for millions of consumers. They welcomed millions of hardworking migrants to farms and factories and celebrated the arrival of "clean coal energy by wire" to every home. They created parks and planted forests.

The Greatest Generation made sure their kids behaved at school and did their homework. Mostly kids were "seen but not heard." The kids walked, rode bikes, or rode horses to school, and parents reinforced school discipline.

Our lives are now controlled by the Green Generation, who follow a globalist agenda. This generation has devalued science, engineering, and trade skills and pollute education curricula with the mantras of the green religion. Now they mobilize noisy truant kids for political rallies.

Too many of the Green Generation specialize in obstruction, demolition, and delay while themselves consuming the assets of the past. They cheer the demolition of coal-fired power plants and use green lawfare to stop or delay almost everything else. Among their battle trophies are South Australian and Victorian coal mines and power stations, most new industry proposals in Tasmania, much offshore oil exploration, new dam proposals in every state, every new coal development proposal, gas exploration, and fracking. They hope to hang the scalps of Adani Coal, Rocky Point Coal, Wandoan Coal, and all Galilee Basin developments on their trophy wall. Australia has huge uranium resources, but nuclear power is banned.

Nowhere is the contrast between the generations more stark than in the Snowy Mountains.

The Greatest Generation planned, financed, and built the Snowy Hydroelectric Scheme (without U.N. direction or advice). This nation-building project captures Snowy water, uses it to generate reliable electricity, and diverts the water to irrigate towns, orchards, and crops on the dry western plains.

The Green Generation supports Snowy Hydro 2, a hollow-shelled project that steals electricity from the grid and water from Snowy 1 to pump water uphill and then recovers part of that electricity by letting the water run back down again (when their intermittent green energy fails). It will be a big, power-consuming, expensive battery.

The sad history of Whyalla is instructive. The Greatest Generation built an iron mine, a steel works, and a great shipbuilding enterprise there. Most of it is idle now. This generation of technophobes is trying to build foreign nuclear-powered submarines there but with diesel-electric engines (presumably running on biofuel). The British navy that ruled the world ran on coal for the warships and bread, salt beef, lard, limes, and rum for the sailors. Today's green dreamers hope to feed the multisexual crew on nuts and raisins and use the alcohol to power the motors.

A truly modern navy runs on nuclear fuel.

But is this Australia's next warship under construction?
Peat bogs are favorite hunting grounds of archeologists because of the many odd surprises these marshy wetlands have revealed from time to time. These wetlands of decaying plant matter have remarkable preservation properties. Low in oxygen and high in tannic acid, bogs are perfect place to fall into and have your bodies stay intact for millenniums to come. Ritual sacrifices by drowning in peat bogs were common in northwestern Europe. We know this from the thousands of bog bodies that have been pulled out from bogs across Europe. A variety of Bronze-age artifacts and mediaeval manuscripts have also been recovered by peat-cutterspeople who harvest the peat and use it as fuel for cooking, throughout the centuries. Another ubiquitous find are stashes of butter, carefully wrapped in wooden buckets and barrels and buried in peats for reasons that are not entirely clear.

Illustrations of a barrel used to store bog butter and a churn.

A study conducted in the 1990s to test the preservation qualities of peat bogs found that the combination of cold water temperature and increased acidity produces a kind of bacteria that can survive without oxygen. This bacteria in the samples of meat the researchers buried in peat bogs made the meat unpalatable to other bacteria that normally decompose dead tissue. Laboratory analyses of the meat retrieved after two years in the bogs were found to have roughly the same levels of bacteria and pathogens as meat stored in a modern freezer.

The meat-preserving ability of bogs were known to Ice Age hunters ten thousand years ago. When small groups of hunters killed a mastodon they preserved the meat underwater in ponds and bogs for the lean winter period. Researchers have discovered large cache of mastodon meat at various sites in North America.

Related: Tollund Man, The 2,400 Year Old Bog Body

It is possible that the caches of butter found in peat bogs across Ireland and Scotland were buried for the same purposepreservation. They were probably meant to stay buried for a few season at most, but somehow got lost, or forgotten, or their owners died. The bog butters we have today are thousands of years oldso old that their chemical signature had changed significantly. For a long time, scientists couldnt tell whether they were dairy products or animal fats. Recent research have confirmed that bog butters are indeed butter.

A 1,600-year-old bog butter recovered from a peat bog at Kyleakin on Skye

One hypothesis that have emerged from the significant change in the consistency, smell and composition of the butter is that maybe the early people wanted the butter to change chemically, like a kind of primitive food processing. In many traditional cuisines, burial is an essential step in the preparation of highly perishable foods such as meat and dairy products. Many foods are also deliberately fermented to acquire new taste.

The Rev James O'Laverty, writing in 1892, on the true reason why the Irish buried their butter in bogs, suggested that it was so that the butter could undergo a fermentation process to produce a more nutritive product. He maintained that science and experience taught us that many substances, after passing through a state of fermentation become much more nutritive.

A modern experiment conducted by the Nordic Food Lab found that butter buried in peat for three months absorbed a considerable amount of flavor from its surroundings, gaining flavor notes which were described primarily as animal or gamey, moss, funky, pungent, and salami.

Photo credit: Nordic Food Lab

A few intrepid gastronomists have tasted authentic bog butters and lived to tell the tale. In 1859, Edward Clibborn and James OLaverty wrote with great excitement that for the first time an almost perfect wooden butter container had been found in a bog, and the contents tasted somewhat like cheese. Every specimen of bog-butter to which I have had access, wrote Clibborn and OLaverty, I found them all rancid or acid (except one, which I may say is fossilized).

Another reasons for burying butter that has been suggested is security. In mediaeval times, marauding enemies often plundered food stock. Butter, being precious, could have been hidden in bogs to prevent its theft and destruction. Votive offerings to god for past abundance, and sovereignty rites which were common during the Bronze and Iron Ages, could be another reason why so many butter have been pulled out of Irish and Scottish bogs.

Over 430 instances of bog butter have been recorded, of which nearly two-thirds came from Scotland and Ireland in the past two centuries. The earliest bog butter dates back to 1500 BCE.
According to commits posted on the Chromiums Gerrit source code management, two upcoming Chromebooks codenamed Ekko and Bard will come with fingerprint support and numeric keypads. These devices were first spotted over six months back in the Chromium repository. Previously, it was being assumed that fingerprint support might remain exclusive to Pixel Slate for a while.

Although support for fingerprint readers was added to Chrome OS more than two years ago, only Google Pixel Slate currently come with a fingerprint scanner. However, if the new commit is to go by, high-end Chromebooks will also come equipped with fingerprint sensors in the future. Apparently, Ekko and Bard will borrow the required hardware and software from Pixel Slate.

A series of commits posted this month have revealed where the fingerprint sensors will be placed on the Ekko and Bard Chromebooks. It has been depicted in an image posted alongside the commit. The picture basically shows the setup graphic for the fingerprint reader. The commits also detail how the fingerprint reader would be used. The fingerprint reader has been placed beneath the right side of the keyboard, and the setup is reminiscent of fingerprint sensors on some Windows devices.

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The setup image has also revealed that the upcoming Chromebooks might also come with a numeric keypad. Currently, Chromebooks do not come with a numeric keypad and this is one thing that holds back many people from switching to Chromebook. Users currently make do with USB numeric keypads, which are pretty affordable and can easily be plugged in. A few weeks ago, it was reported that Chrome OS is adding support for numeric keypads and now the setup image has revealed that Ekko and Bard might come with one.

Since Ekko and Bard have usually been spotted in the same lines of code, it is plausible that both will be made by the same company. Many of the commits related to Ekko and Bard were posted by Quanta Corp developers, who usually work on Acer Chromebooks so Acer could be the company behind the duo. However, this doesnt rule out the possibility that some other manufacturer could be behind them.

As for when Ekko and Bard would be unveiled, we might see them during Googles Cloud Next event, which will take place in April in San Francisco. The event attracts IT professionals, developers, and executives and thus it could be a great opportunity to present the new Chromebooks. Even if the devices are not introduced during Cloud Next, they will most likely be released in a few months.

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Per previous reports, Ekko and Bard will come with Intels eight-generation 14nm Kaby Lake processors. Ekko and Bard might be released as Acer Chromebook 13 and Spin 13 eventually. Other details are sparse at the event, with some publications speculating that the duo could have a clamshell design.

In the last few years, Chromebooks have slowly been increasing in popularity because of their lightweight and affordability. Adding new features could help Google increase its market share. With more OEMs making Chromebooks, there could be even greater choices and competition in the market in the future.
Googles new streaming gaming platform will launch in the US, Canada and Europe later this year. Google did not give a specific date, other than the fact that it was launching in 2019. That could mean next week, it could also mean December.

With Stadia launching in Canada and Europe as well as the US, its a departure from what Google typically does. Which is to launch a new product in the US only, before bringing it to other countries many months (if not years) down the road. This is going to make those in Canada and Europe a bit more excited for the platform.

The fact that the time frame for launching is pretty vague should not be a huge surprise. This is a very new platform, that was put out as a beta last year, but hasnt really been tested other than that. So as expected, Google is likely going to need to do a bunch of testing to make sure that it is working the way it should be working. Google could also run into some issues as it gets more games up and running on Stadia, that its going to need to fix, before it can roll out the service to everyone.

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Google has also been very quiet in terms of pricing for Stadia. As there is essentially no way that it can offer this for free, even with ads included. Seeing as youre going to be playing, essentially $60 games, on your laptop, smartphone or tablet through Chrome. Itll be interesting to see what the price is for Stadia when it does finally launch later this year, and how it competes with GeForce Now from NVIDIA.

However, Google did state that it would share more information on Stadia later this summer, which could mean that Google will be making an appearance at E3 in Los Angeles, which kicks off on June 11. E3 is one of the biggest gaming shows of the year, if not the biggest. And its where all of the big players announce new consoles, games and much more. So it would be a good place for Google to also showcase Stadia, even if they are just demos.

Stadia looks to be a complete game streaming service that offers some pretty impressive features, as well as being able to pick up a game youre playing on virtually every platform. As Stadia does work through Chrome, it means that you can play games on your smartphone, tablet, laptop and even your TV through Chromecast. That makes this a rather big deal, and for good reason.

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The hardware that Google announce today with Stadia was pretty limited, just a gaming controller. This gaming controller, however does resemble controllers from Sony and Microsoft and also connect directly to the data center, so you are able to play with even less lag. Than having it connect to your laptop and then that connects to the data center. Either way, were going to learn more in the coming months, on Stadia.
Seguin, TX (78155)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 56F. Winds SSW at less than 5 mph, becoming N and increasing to 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 56F. Winds SSW at less than 5 mph, becoming N and increasing to 15 to 25 mph.
The international observers have flagged Justice Manuel Marchena, the Supreme Court judge who presides over the trial against the Catalan independence leaders, for a hypothetical lack of impartiality. In their roundup of week 5 of the trial, International Trial Watch (ITW) has zeroed in on an incident which occurred last Thursday while former Catalan police boss Josep Lluis Trapero was testifying in court. The Prosecutors cross-examination was limited when it came to asking about crucial aspects of the accusation, as the Prosecutors office had not summoned Trapero as their witness unlike Vox, but the far-right plaintiff forgot to question Trapero about key meetings that would have strengthened the rebellion narrative. As a result, the Prosecutor was only allowed to enquire about the issues originally raised by Vox. It was then that Justice Marchena fell victim to his own decisions, and he had to grant the defence teams their request to limit the scope of the cross-examination. However, later on Marchena used his power to ask Trapero about relevant events that had not been addressed by the prosecution. As far as ITW is concerned, this sort of conduct might suggest that the court lacks objective impartiality, as per the doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights.

There are yet more examples of this lack of impartiality alleged by the international observers: their statement mentions the fact that two of the judges serving on the court are also members of Spains Central Electoral Board, a non-jurisdictional function which they could easily give up, which is having a negative impact on the trials sessions, as the two judges must attend the Boards meetings [ahead of the April elections in Spain]. ITW believes that this leads to uneven breaks between sessions, lasting anywhere between twenty minutes and ten hours. Furthermore, the observers point out that there is no indication of the two judges abstaining in the Boards vote to ban the public display of yellow ribbons on government buildings in Catalonia.

And there is yet another indication: ITW has criticised the fact that some witnesses have been asked whether they are a member of certain associations, whereas others havent. A case in point is the secretary of Barcelonas Court 13: defence lawyer Andreu Van den Eynde attempted to ask her if she followed Spanish unionist websites, but Justice Marchena warned him that he was not allowed to question Montserrat del Toro about her political views. In contrast, the prosecutor and other plaintiffs were allowed to put similar questions to other witnesses, which the observers have criticised as showing a different treatment by the presiding judge between the defence and the prosecution when faced with questions that might reveal the political bias of a witness.

A flexible court of law

The observers assessment also highlights a number of positive aspects about the trial. This week they praised the courts flexibility when it comes to the testimony of witnesses who live abroad, as well as the fact that the President has allowed any witness indicted in a different case to claim their right not to appear in court in writing rather than in person.

The observers during week 5 were Ralph J. Bunche, Secretary General of Unrepresented Nations and People Organization (UNPO); Hannibal Unwaifo, Managing Partner at the African Bar Association; and Ricardo Juan Sanchez, Associate Professor in Procedural Law at the University of Valencia.
Muilenburg said: We know lives depend on the work we do, and our teams embrace that responsibility with a deep sense of commitment every day. Our purpose at Boeing is to bring family, friends and loved ones together with our commercial airplanessafely. The tragic losses of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610 affect us all, uniting people and nations in shared grief for all those in mourning. Our hearts are heavy, and we continue to extend our deepest sympathies to the loved ones of the passengers and crew on board.

Safety is at the core of who we are at Boeing, and ensuring safe and reliable travel on our airplanes is an enduring value and our absolute commitment to everyone. This overarching focus on safety spans and binds together our entire global aerospace industry and communities. We're united with our airline customers, international regulators and government authorities in our efforts to support the most recent investigation, understand the facts of what happened and help prevent future tragedies. Based on facts from the Lion Air Flight 610 accident and emerging data as it becomes available from the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accident, we're taking actions to fully ensure the safety of the 737 MAX. We also understand and regret the challenges for our customers and the flying public caused by the fleet's grounding.

Work is progressing thoroughly and rapidly to learn more about the Ethiopian Airlines accident and understand the information from the airplane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders. Our team is on-site with investigators to support the investigation and provide technical expertise. The Ethiopia Accident Investigation Bureau will determine when and how it's appropriate to release additional details.

Boeing has been in the business of aviation safety for more than 100 years, and we'll continue providing the best products, training and support to our global airline customers and pilots. This is an ongoing and relentless commitment to make safe airplanes even safer. Soon we'll release a software update and related pilot training for the 737 MAX that will address concerns discovered in the aftermath of the Lion Air Flight 610 accident. We've been working in full cooperation with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Transportation and the National Transportation Safety Board on all issues relating to both the Lion Air and the Ethiopian Airlines accidents since the Lion Air accident occurred in October last year.

Our entire team is devoted to the quality and safety of the aircraft we design, produce and support. I've dedicated my entire career to Boeing, working shoulder to shoulder with our amazing people and customers for more than three decades, and I personally share their deep sense of commitment. Recently, I spent time with our team members at our 737 production facility in Renton, Wash., and once again saw firsthand the pride our people feel in their work and the pain we're all experiencing in light of these tragedies. The importance of our work demands the utmost integrity and excellencethat's what I see in our team, and we'll never rest in pursuit of it.

He added: Our mission is to connect people and nations, protect freedom, explore our world and the vastness of space, and inspire the next generation of aerospace dreamers and doersand we'll fulfill that mission only by upholding and living our values. That's what safety means to us. Together, we'll keep working to earn and keep the trust people have placed in Boeing.
"Paulo Cesar idealised the partnership with Boeing and led the negotiation process of the transaction that will bring Embraer and Brazil to a much more competitive and prominent level in the global aviation industry," said Alexandre Silva, chairman of the Board.



For 22 years at Embraer, de Souza e Silva, came from the financial market to structure the company's sales financing area. For six years he was President and CEO of Commercial Aviation and in 2013 launched the E2 Program, the medium-sized commercial jets considered today to be the most efficient in the market.



In 2016, de Souza e Silva, became President and CEO of the Embraer Group, with a mission to make the company more efficient, competitive and better prepared to face structural changes in the global aviation market.



His administration established three key initiatives focused on value creation and the sustainability of the company. The first was the transaction with Boeing. The second was the creation of the Passion for Excellence programme, a structural transformation project focused on reducing costs and increasing operational efficiency, generating significant annual recurring savings. The third was the creation of EmbraerX, responsible for disruptive innovation and the development of opportunities for the future, such as eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle), a project that will revolutionize urban transport in partnership with Uber.



"Without the support of the Board and Embraer's 18,000 employees and colleagues, none of our achievements would have been possible, said de Souza e Silva,. "We are challenged to remain at the forefront of engineering and operations. In Executive Aviation and Defense, and with the KC 390 joint venture with Boeing, we will expand our international competitiveness and everything indicates that we will have another 50 years of success ahead. And he added: "I am sure that the new leadership of the company will find fertile ground ahead to expand and consolidate Embraer."

de Souza e Silva, was invited to be a Senior Advisor to the Board, with the task of facilitating the integration of the future President and CEO and advising the Board on the monitoring of assets and resources segregation, an integral part of the process of concluding the partnership with Boeing. As it was reported, 96.8% of Embraer's shareholders approved an agreement with the North American company last February, which should be concluded after obtaining all approvals of the Regulatory and Competitive Agencies in Brazil and abroad.



Embraer also informs that the future President and CEO, to be elected for the next term, will be recruited externally and announced on or before the Ordinary General Assembly on April 22nd.
PTE, the most highly-regarded airport conference in the world, attracts over 7000 senior airport, airline, aviation authority, government and related business executives from all over the world to debate current issues, exchange ideas, and forge new business relationships across the airport and aviation industry.



HIA delegates will be giving a series of addresses on airport planning and development, asset management, customer experience, and airport-airline sustainability collaboration.



Commenting on HIAs contribution to PTE 2019, Engr. Badr Mohammed Al Meer, Chief Operating Officer at Hamad International Airport, stated: We look forward to the Passenger Terminal Expo each year as it gathers the worlds best airport and aviation experts to discuss the many facets of our industries, several of which are rapidly changing and being disrupted. PTE, as A platform for knowledge-sharing and learning from best practices, has a foothold in shaping the future of the aviation sector by tackling the most pressing issues were facing today.



HIA has, in a few short years, become recognized as a leading international airport for its operations, facilities, and passenger experience excellence. Part of what shapes our success is the willingness not only to learn from key players in the industry, but to offer our expertise and viewpoints to contribute to the success of the global airport industry. We are honoured to represent Qatar at PTE this year, and look forward to working with other participants, he added.



During the first day of the event, Sujata Suri, HIAs Vice President of Strategy and Developement, will chair the panel discussion on customer service and passenger experience, offering insight into how the fast-changing needs of travellers impacts the airports business development strategy, strategic investments, and the overall passenger experience.

On 27th March, Ioannis Metsovitis, HIAs Vice President of Operations, along with Alberto Fernandez Lopez, Associate Director of Meinhardt Group, will jointly chair the session on Airport Design, Planning & Development  Middle East & Asia. Ioannis will discuss the next phase of HIAs expansion plan which will accommodate nearly double of HIAs current capacity.
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang's Regular Press Conference on March 19, 2019

2019/03/19

Q: According to media reports, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria announced that he would not seek reelection. There have been mass demonstrations for some time in Algeria protesting against President Bouteflika's staying in office. Does China have any comments?

A: China noted that President Bouteflika of Algeria announced that he would not seek reelection and would hold inclusive national dialogue to advance political reform. As an influential country in Africa and the Arab world, Algeria's stability is a matter of fundamental interest to its people and has a bearing on the regional peace and tranquility. China is committed to the principle of not interfering in other country's internal affairs. We believe the Algerian people have the wisdom and capability to find a development path consistent with its national conditions. It is our sincere hope that the political agenda in Algeria will see smooth progress.

Q: I just want to ask you about coal again. I have asked you about this before, and you said there is strict testing for coal coming in. But there was a report from Platts saying a port in the southern China, Fangcheng, had imposed stricter testing requirements for Australian coal. There are other reports that the China Customs is telling ports to take a closer look on Australian coal in the last six weeks. Could you clarify that situation?

A: My answer would be the same as what I gave before. In accordance with relevant laws and regulations, the General Administration of Customs of China carries out risk monitoring and analysis on the safety and quality of imported coal and takes corresponding measures for testing and inspection. It is the bound duty of the Chinese government to safeguard the interest of public safety.

Q: Tropical cyclone Idai has claimed 84 lives in Mozambique, 56 in Malawi and 98 in Zimbabwe. Mozambique's president said that more than 100,000 people are still in danger and Idai may have killed more than 1,000 in Mozambique. What is your comment? Will China send condolences or offer assistance to these countries?

A: Tropical cyclone Idai has wreaked great havoc in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, causing major casualties and property loss. China expresses its sympathy to these three countries and condolences to the victims. We wish the injured a speedy recovery and the affected an early return to their homeland.

Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are all friendly countries to China. The Chinese government will support and assist in their disaster relief efforts in accordance with the impact of the disaster and the needs of the three governments as its capability allows.

Q: The Dalai Lama said in an interview that it was possible that once he died, his incarnation could be found in India. And he warned that any other successor named by China would not be respected. What's China's comment?

A: I knew you would come up with this question, and let me give you an authoritative reply.

Reincarnation of living Buddhas, as a unique institution of inheritance in Tibetan Buddhism, comes with a set range of rituals and conventions. The Chinese government implements the policy of freedom of religious belief. The reincarnation system is respected and protected by such legal instruments as Regulations on Religious Affairs and Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas.

The institution of reincarnation of the Dalai Lama has been in existence for several hundred years. The 14th Dalai Lama himself was found and recognized following religious rituals and historical conventions and his succession was approved by the then central government. Therefore reincarnation of living Buddhas including the Dalai Lama must comply with Chinese laws and regulations and follow religious rituals and historical conventions.

Q: According to reports, Democrats in the US have called on the FBI to investigate a Florida massage parlor owner Cindy Yang, saying she created a business that may have been selling access to US leaders to clients from China. Can the Foreign Ministry categorically deny that Ms. Yang is not working for or on behalf of the Chinese government?

A: I have seen relevant reports and I'm not aware of the specific situation.

As you know, the Chinese government follows the principle of non-interference in others' internal affairs. This is what we say and this is what we do.

Q: Is this inspection process of coal applied to all countries or is there a specifically tighter restriction on coal from Australia?

A: I've already answered your question. I can add a few words.

While performing its duty of risk monitoring and analysis on the safety and quality of imported coal over these years, the General Administration of Customs of China has discovered many cases where imported coal failed to meet certain environmental standards. Therefore, in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, we have strengthened testing and inspection on imported coal in terms of its quality and environmental standards. The purpose is to better protect the lawful rights and interests of Chinese enterprises and consumers on the receiving end of the imported coal and to protect China's ecological environment.

Q: Taiwan's "diplomatic ally" Solomon Islands will soon hold elections. Is it China's hope that the new administration severs ties with Taiwan? Has the Chinese side initiated contact with the Solomon Islands?

A: The one-China principle is a consensus of the international community. The Chinese government develops friendly and cooperative relationships with other countries on the basis of the one-China principle and the five principles of peaceful coexistence.

Q: There is a report that Pakistan is likely to seek a two-billion-dollar loan from China, probably by the next couple of weeks. Can you please respond to that?

A: I'm not aware of the specific situation you mentioned. As all-weather strategic cooperative partners, China and Pakistan have maintained normal cooperation in various fields with steady progress, which brings tangible benefits to the two peoples.

You may have noted that the Pakistani Foreign Minister is now on a visit in China and will soon hold the first China-Pakistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue with State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, which testifies to the full and close communication and cooperation across the board at various levels.

Q: US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has said that China could as much as triple its purchases of American farm products as part of the trade deal between the two countries. Is that the case?

A: Both China and the US have recently released the information about the trade talks. The working teams of the two sides are in close contact and the relevant consultations have also made progress. We hope the two teams will implement the important consensus of the Presidents and reach a mutually beneficial and win-win agreement. This is in the interests of the two countries and also meet the shared aspiration of the international community.

Q: Are you doing further inspections on all countries' coal? Or is that just a small number of countries' coal?

A: I just said that we have encountered many cases of sub-standard coal coming in during risk monitoring and analysis on the safety and quality of imported coal. Therefore, in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, we have strengthened testing and inspection on imported coal in terms of its quality and environmental standards. The purpose is to better protect the lawful rights and interests of Chinese enterprises and consumers on the receiving end of the imported coal and to protect China's ecological environment.
Apple didnt need stars before, but it needs them now. Although the company was the first publicly traded American firm to be valued above $1 trillion, its most recent earnings report showed flat profits and falling revenue. So the plan now is not only to sell devices, but to fill them with content. That has led the company into the alien territory of Hollywood, where local customs can clash with Silicon Valley folkways.  The New York Times
The Teatro alla Scala in Milan on Monday decided to return more than three million euros in funding to Saudi Arabia, amid growing criticism that Italys premier temple of music should not accept money from a country with a jarring human rights record. Mayor Giuseppe Sala said the theaters board of directors had deliberated over the issue and unanimously decided to return the money.'  The New York Times
Arcadian Broad, who has a national following as Orlando Ballets best-known dancer, will depart the company next month. The ballet company declined to renew his contract, as well as that of his fiancee, fellow dancer Taylor Sambola. Said the companys executive director, Were grateful for Arcadians talents, and wish him the best as he spreads his wings. Now its time to bring new voices, new ideas and ballets with widespread critical acclaim to Central Florida.  Orlando Sentinel
So-called virtues of the mind, such as open-mindedness, thoroughness, and intellectual humility, have been extensively discussed by philosophers. Arrogance, imperviousness to evidence and an inability to deal with mistakes are vices of the mind. They have until very recently attracted much less philosophical attention. Philosopher Quassim Cassam argues that these vices need more attention, because they can cause so much damage. (Exhibit A: The Iraq War.)  IAI News
German investment in the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been increasing steadily and has the potential to grow further in the coming years. In the first part of this five-part article, we analyzed German investment in Brunei and Cambodia. We next look at Indonesia and Laos.

Indonesia

Indonesia represents the largest ASEAN country with a vast potential to accelerate into one of the major economies of the world.

Ranked 30 on the Market Potential Index, Indonesia represents a large consumer market with a potential for increasing attractiveness for German products. FDI inflow in Indonesia somewhat dropped in 2016 due to both domestic and international factors. 2017 showed slight recovery with some US$268 million invested in Indonesia by German investors.

German  Indonesian Relations at a Glance

Having exported US$3 billion worth of goods to Indonesia in 2017, the country represents the 52nd largest export partner of Germany. In the same year, Germany imported US$4.4 billion worth of goods from Indonesia. Germany mainly imports textiles and shoes, oil-based products, electronics and food products. Import-Export trade registered a modest 15 percent growth in 2017.

Several major German brands have already established offices or production facilities in Indonesia. Adidas, Airbus, BASF, Bayer, BMW, Daimler, Bosch, Siemens and ThyssenKrupp are among the major German brands with a presence in Indonesia. Several others have recently established offices or facilities or are on the verge of doing so. In particular, German companies are attracted to Special Economic Zones in Indonesia, which offer the perfect infrastructure for foreign business to set up in the country.

Investment Outlook

Indonesias fast-growing middle class represents a huge consumer market for German products. Increasing disposable incomes make German products more affordable in the recent years. At present, food items still represents the largest consumer good segment for German exporters. With a stable annual growth rate of around 5 percent, Indonesia presents perfect opportunities for German exporters.

With its large and cheap workforce, the country is also an ideal location for setting up of manufacturing facilities by German companies. Local resources make the production less dependable on global developments. A growing domestic market and a strategic location in Asia provides additional advantages.

With an increase in their standard of living, Indonesians are also spending more on healthcare. Germany was the largest exporter of medical equipment to Indonesia in 2017 with a total export of US$138 million. Especially, German high-tech are in great demand and open up large opportunities for German high-tech producers in one of the largest and fastest growing healthcare markets in Asia.

The automotive sector with an annual growth of over 5 percent also offers immense opportunities. Although the market is largely dominated by Japanese producers that sell small, eco-friendly and therefore less-taxed cars, increasing disposable incomes open up opportunities for German automotive companies.

The construction sector also offers opportunities for German companies. With an annual growth rate of more than 10 percent in the last ten years, it represents a major market for future German investments. In 2017, the market grew 24 percent due to large investments especially in the tourism industry. The countrys infrastructure depends heavily on foreign machines and investments to back this development trend.

The energy sector, which is built upon foreign investments and equipment as the local industry is not in the position to conclude complex energy projects, is another potential area for increased German investments.

Most machines in Indonesia are imported. The recent ban on export of untreated resources opens the opportunities for large heavy-industry projects which will be extensively dependent on foreign know-how, including German technology.

Risk analysis

Indonesia represents a country with a large potential but also poses risks. Non-tariff barriers continue to hinder investments and trade. Rules around import requirements are subject to regular changes. Corruption also poses risks in the country. In the 2015 Corruption Perception Index, Indonesia was placed 88 out of 168 countries. The relatively unskilled workforce presents another obstacle for investments in Indonesia.

Laos

Located close to China, Laos opens up for German manufacturers opportunities for low-cost production to supply the Chinese market or factories in China. Low wages and good energy supply make this option increasingly attractive. FDI inflows into Laos have increased since 2012 and represent immense opportunities for further development of the country.

German  Laotian Relations at a Glance

German imports from Laos have remained steady in recent years with US$89 million worth of goods imported in 2017. On the other hand, German exports to Laos decreased to US$33.8 million in 2017. German imports consists mainly of textiles at around 85 percent of total imported goods. However, German companies are not well represented in Laos.

Investment Outlook

Laos can position itself as an alternative for companies that formerly produced in China.

Cheap labor, close proximity to the Chinese market and increasing infrastructural ties with China make Laos an attractive manufacturing location. The countrys annual growth rate has remained around 7 percent in the last five years.

Textile industry can especially benefit in view of increasing wages in China. The nation can especially benefit from Chinese companies outsourcing their production for the Chinese market as it is closely tied to the country by infrastructure and Special Economic Zones. Tourism, particularly eco-tourism, present further market opportunities in Laos for German investors.

Laos aspires to become a large producer of energy in the region. Often called the Battery of Southeast Asia, the country wants to export especially to Thailand and Vietnam, two fast growing and highly energy depending economies. With a capacity growth of approximately more than 30 percent in the first half of 2017, Laos is on its way to achieve this goal.

Risk analysis

Laos represents an interesting market, especially for machine and high-tech energy equipment exports by German companies. However, the Chinese dominance in this sector due to cheaper prices and closer location presents an obstacle.

Overall the countrys dependency on Chinese FDI presents challenges for further investments by other countries as most infrastructural projects are being implemented with Chinese help and therefore directed towards the Chinese market.

In the third part of this five-part article, we look at German FDI in Malaysia and Myanmar.
ANNAPOLIS (March 19, 2019)Multiple bills that would provide protection and treatment for victims of sexual assault, as well as assist local law enforcement agencies with the testing and tracking of rape kits, made their way through the House and Senate, ahead of the Monday deadline for bills to crossover into the other chamber.



These bills are the byproduct of a January report on sexual assault evidence kits in the state, produced by the Maryland Sexual Assault Evidence Kit Policy and Funding Committee.



The committee was created in 2017 and is chaired by the Office of the Attorney General. Multiple stakeholders, including law enforcement, medical professionals, victim advocates and legislators make up the board.



Privacy and reimbursement for sexual assault evidence kits



Senate bill 933, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher, D-Montgomery, and House bill 1248, sponsored by Delegate Sandy Bartlett, D-Anne Arundel, would provide more protections for victims of sexual assault.



The measures would prohibit medical personnel from using the name, narrative or photographs of a victim in order to receive reimbursement for testing or examination.



In lieu of those, medical personnel would present a diagnostic code that could be accepted for reimbursement.



"If you are a sexual assault victim, you do not want anyone to know your circumstances without your personal consent," Bartlett said at a March 5 House committee hearing.



The deadline for which medical personnel can be reimbursed for the testing of rape kits and cervical swabs would also be extended from five days to 15 days.



The committee recommended that the reimbursement policy be adjusted to reflect advancements in research.



This legislation would allow more victims of sexual assault to come forward and be tested for more days after the assault occurred. Many hospitals do not conduct tests for victims following the five-day window because of the current limits, according to the report.



Lisae C. Jordan, executive director of the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said at the House hearing that tests are used for emergency medical treatment and collection of evidence for prosecution of sex offenders.



While the Senate version of the bill has not made its way out of its committee, the House version passed that chamber unanimously on March 10 and has been assigned to a Senate committee.



Rape Kit Testing Grant Fund



House bill 1268, sponsored by Delegate Shelly Hettleman, D-Baltimore, and Senate bill 569, sponsored by Sen. Sarah Elfreth, D-Anne Arundel, would establish the Rape Kit Testing Grant Fund to assist local law enforcement agencies with the testing of rape kits.



The Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention would be in charge of dispersing a $2.6 million federal grant to local jurisdictions and would make sure that each has a forensic laboratory to use the funds.



The three-year grant will be used to test more rape kits, many of which go untested, as well as developing a statewide tracking system for the kits.



A system is also being developed for victims to track the status of their kits.



The committee's report stated that there is a backlog in Maryland untested rape kits, but it is not in the "traditional sense."



Local law enforcement agencies leave kits untested, according to the committee's report, because, for example, the suspect's identity is known, the state's attorney declined to prosecute or because an assailant pleaded guilty.



Hettleman told Capital News Service the shift in procedure is the result of a change in thinking. She said testing kits can help not only solve crimes, but connect cases, identify serial offenders and exonerate wrongfully convicted suspects.



The Senate version of the bill has not made its way out of its committee, while the House version passed unanimously on the floor on March 7 and has been assigned to a Senate committee.



Pilot program for HIV prevention



House bill 1249, sponsored by Kirill Reznik, D-Montgomery, and Senate bill 657, sponsored by Senators Nancy King and William Smith Jr., both Montgomery Democrats, would establish a pilot program for HIV prevention for victims of alleged rape or sexual assault.



The three-year pilot program would provide victims full access to HIV non-occupational post-exposure prophylactic treatment, a recommendation of the committee.



The full 28-day treatment must be taken within 72 hours for maximum efficiency, but Maryland only reimburses victims for three to seven days, according to the report.



If a victim has health insurance, co-pays for the treatment can be as high as $1,000, and victims without insurance can be forced to pay between $3,312 and $3,371, according to the report. Victims in Maryland's Medicaid Program can pay as low as $1, but not all victims are eligible for that coverage, according to the report.



The pilot program, operated by the governor's crime office, would help pay for the medication and is estimated to cost at least $730,400 in the first year, increasing in the next two years.



The House version of the bill has not made its way out of its committee, while the Senate version passed unanimously on the floor on March 14 and has a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in a House committee.



Analysis of sexual assault collection evidence kits



House bill 1096, sponsored by Hettleman, and Senate bill 767, sponsored by Smith, would mandate law enforcement submit a sexual assault evidence kit to a forensic laboratory for testing within 30 days of a request by a victim.



Forensic laboratories would also be mandated to screen, test and analyze rape test kits in a "timely manner."



At a House committee hearing, Hettleman said over 6,000 kits remain untested statewide for a variety of reasons.



The House version of the bill passed unanimously on the floor on March 11 and has been assigned to a Senate committee, while the Senate version passed unanimously on the floor March 15 and has a hearing scheduled for March 27 in a House committee.
Do it yourself if you can We accept  in principle  that private equity can deliver (somewhat) excess returns over most other asset classes. But there are a lot of qualifications attached to that, and most of them are very relevant to whether and how pension funds should invest in private equity.
Raised hackles are a sign of an aggressive moose, state wildlife officials say. This stock photograph from Colorado Parks and Wildlife is not a picture of one of the moose sighted east of Aspen over the last week.
Being frequently asked to work on the business worlds most major deals is sure to get any M&A lawyer excited, but Rebecca Maslen-Stannage admits that it can quickly become hectic.

The rainmaker says that with everything that needs to be handled, lawyers in her position often do not have time for reflection, which is why winning the Australian Dealmaker of the Year award in the 2018 Australasian Law Awards was, of all things, refreshing.

Life as an M&A lawyer tends to be pretty full-on, and you dont often have time to catch your breath and reflect on what the team has achieved. Winning this award gave us a great cause for reflection on the amazing deals our team has done, she says.
The man tells Cleveland that the scene was something out of Hollywood action flicks. His cousin had parked the car on a friends driveway and had gone inside for a chat, while leaving the engine running.Xeyxes Hopkins, 28, happened to be passing by when he noticed the vehicle. He jumped inside thinking he could just drive off, and clearly not expecting to find Sleeping Beauty in the backseat. It all happened so fast, the man says for the publication. When the door opened, I thought it was my cousin getting back into the car. But it was a totally different person.It was weird, the man adds. It was like something out of a movie.Hopkins told the man he needed to get out and, when he wouldnt, he (Hopkins) reached for his gun. The man jumped out of the car and ran into the house to tell his cousin that his car had been stolen. The cousin later told the police that he had a gun inside the vehicle, which he had just purchased and was hidden under the driver seat, together with all the proper documentation.Hopkins was arrested the next day in an unrelated domestic dispute. Cops recovered the stolen Impala hours later, after Hopkins abandoned it. The report doesnt say whether he took the other gun or not.Given the carjacking and the domestic violence charge (to which he pleaded not guilty), Hopkins is being held without bail until his hearing on March 25. For stealing the Impala, hes been hit with an aggravated robbery charge.
TDI

SUV

An engineering marvel that tops at 250 km/h and accelerates to 100 km/h (62 mph) in 4.8 seconds, the Audi SQ7 has a low-key counterpart. Enter the Touareg 4.0, de-tuned to 421 PS (416 horsepower) but cheaper than the luxuriousfrom the four-ringed automaker.Volkswagen is currently testing the V8 in the Amarok too, but nothing much is known about the development of the mid-size pickup truck. Leveling up from the 3.0 TDI V6 would be overkill, and given the segment, eight cylinders doesn't sound like a business case for the German automakers commercial vehicles division. Autocar.co.uk reports the V8 diesel-engined Touareg is likely to be a swansong for the eight-cylinder blunderbuss. Sales and marketing boss Jurgen Stackmann hopes itll become as sought after as the old V10 diesel Touareg, although thats a misconception. Searching for the ten-cylinder SUV in the classifieds reveals dirt-cheap prices because reliability and desirability arent the strongest points of this model.The V10 TDI was sold in the United States too, and if you were wondering, the Touareg with this engine is much obliged to tow even a Boeing 747. In its ultimate form, the R50 5.0 V10 TDI developed 350 PS (345 horsepower) and 850 Nm (627 pound-feet) of torque at 2,000 rpm.Although Volkswagen hasnt offered confirmation in regard to the 4.0 TDI V8 , chances are this engine doesnt belong in a world where everyone is pushing onwards with the electric revolution. Even Volkswagen is working 24/7 on rolling out the MEB vehicle architecture while Audi and Porsche are developing the Premium Platform Electric. The group hopes to sell 150,000 electric vehicles in 2020, an ambitious target given Teslas popularity.
Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday called for the G20 to discuss taking measures against social networks at its upcoming meeting, following the live-streaming of the fatal New Zealand mosque attacks.

What he's saying: "It is unacceptable to treat the internet as an ungoverned space," Morrison writes in a letter to Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, chairman of June's G20 meeting in Osaka. "It is imperative that the global community works together to ensure that technology firms meet their moral obligation to protect the communities which they serve and from which they profit."

The big picture: Friday's attacks on two Christchurch mosques that killed 50 people were live-streamed on Facebook for 17 minutes. Copies of the video were shared quickly and widely on other sites, including YouTube and Twitter.

Between the Lines: Facebook is being widely criticized for failing to block the footage. NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Sunday she wants answers from Facebook on how the video was able to be live-streamed. Some New Zealand business have stopped advertising on the social networking site in protest and asked businesses around the world to join the boycott, Newshub reports.

The other side: Facebook said Monday video footage of the New Zealand attacks was viewed fewer than 200 times during the live stream and 4,000 times in total before it was removed. "The first user report on the original video came in 29 minutes after the video started, and 12 minutes after the live broadcast ended," it said. It said earlier moderators removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally in the first 24 hours, of which 1.2 million were blocked while being uploaded.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro began his visit to Washington today with an unusual stop: the CIA. He'll visit the White House tomorrow.

Between the lines: The presidents son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, described the CIA as one of the most respected intelligence agencies in the world, in a tweet that was likely to raise eyebrows back home in Brazil, where the U.S. and its spy services have been regarded with suspicion in recent years, AP notes.

The younger Bolsonaro also raised eyebrows by attending a far-right gathering on Saturday night at the Trump Hotel, hosted by Steve Bannon. According to the FT, Eduardo told attendees the populist right was at last doing what the communists and the socialists did a long time ago  were organizing ourselves internationally.

The big picture: A senior Trump administration official told reporters today that the visit signals a "historic remaking of the US-Brazil relationship" and noted that Bolsonaro is "unabashedly pro-American."

Some of the focus at the White House will be on Venezuela, but Bolsonaro's other stop today  the U.S. Chamber of Commerce  shows the visit is a chance to make the case that Brazil is now open for business. Both sides think theres a lot of room to increase trade and investment.

At home, Bolsonaro is pushing for much-needed pension reform. But the Economist notes that he often uses his massive social media presence to fight culture wars rather than promote policies.
President Trump suggested that Brazil could be a NATO member during a joint press conference at the White House with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday.

The big picture: Trump said that he intends to designate Brazil as a major non-NATO ally, which is a significant diplomatic designation granted by the U.S., but suggested that Brazil could "possibly" become a NATO member at some point in the future if he talked "to a lot of people." The Balkan country Montenegro was the last country to join the alliance in 2017, per the BBC.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo is seeking re-election next month in the worlds largest Muslim-majority country and, as the FT points out, presenting himself as defender of the faith is central to his campaign strategy. But when the newspaper asked him about the imprisonment of up to 1 million Muslims in Chinas Xinjiang territory, he repeatedly declined to comment.

Why it matters: His reticence signals how influential Beijing has become in Asia and how the Chinese Communist party is increasingly able to control global narratives and silence critics far beyond Chinas borders."

The presidents unwillingness to criticize the Chinese government echoes similar reluctance in many countries, from Pakistan to New Zealand.

Somewhat miraculously considering the scale of its human rights abuses, James Leibold of La Trobe University in Melbourne argues, China is actually winning the propaganda battle over its treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang.

The latest: Kazakhstan recently arrested activist Serikzhan Bilash, who has campaigned for the closure of the Xinjiang camps, and charged him with inciting ethnic strife. Ethnic Kazakhs are among those held in the camps.

Turkey is the only Muslim-majority country to have condemned the mass detentions.

The U.S. has been more willing to speak out. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently said such horrific human rights abuses hadnt been seen since the 1930s.
During a difficult year for U.S. agriculture amid President Trump's trade war with China, record-breaking floods in the Midwest are causing farmers to lose their livestock en masse, further putting their livelihoods at risk, the New York Times reports.

Why it matters: Lessened demand due to Trump's trade policies and greater international competition in agriculture already pushed Farm Belt bankruptcies last year to the highest level in a decade. Now, the floods across the Midwest could cause a $400 million hit to the state's livestock sector as farmers in the region are cut off from their cattle herds  and the supplies necessary to care for them.

Go deeper: Farmers hit by Trump tariffs, crop prices struggling to repay loans
President Trump once again blasted General Motors and the United Automobile Workers this week for closing a Chevrolet Cruze plant in Lordstown, Ohio, as union activists accused the carmaker of favoring hedge funds over the workers laid off amid plant closures.

Why it matters: Ahead of Trump's visit to Ohio later this week where he's expected to push for more manufacturing jobs, the closure of the GM plant has become a key issue in a state critical for him in 2020. The closure in Lordstown was part of a 15% cut to GM's salaried workforce in North America, affecting jobs that the president promised were "all coming back" to the state in 2017.

What Trump's saying: He tweeted Sunday: "Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce. G.M. let our Country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves. I want action on Lordstown fast. Stop complaining and get the job done! 3.8% Unemployment!"

Later that day, he indicated that he spoke to both leaders in the dispute, tweeting: "Just spoke to Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors about the Lordstown Ohio plant. I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING. I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW Union  I don't care, I just want it open!"

The state of play: UAW filed a lawsuit against GM last month, alleging that it could not idle the Lordstown plant under a previous labor contract, per the Detroit Free Press.

UAW retweeted Trump Sunday with a comment, "Thank you, Mr. President, for fighting alongside the UAW against @GM. We will leave no stone unturned to keep the plants open!"

Driving the news: A new report from Hedge Clippers and the American Federation of Teachers showed that GM diverted $25 billion to shareholders over the last 4 years  including $10 billion in stock buybacks, set to be a key 2020 issue  which is more than 5 times the amount GM said it needed to try and save the Lordstown facilities.

The other side: In response to Trump, GM said on Monday that the automaker and UAW will decide what happens to the plant.

"We remain open to talking with all affected stakeholders, but our main focus remains on our employees and offering them jobs in our plants where we have growth opportunities. We have opportunities available for virtually all impacted employees."

Go deeper: Politicians react to GM closings in their backyards
The landfall and subsequent flooding from Tropical Cyclone Idai, which struck Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe last week, "risks being one of the deadliest weather-related disasters in the Southern Hemisphere," Clare Nullis, the spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization, a UN agency, tells Axios.

The big picture: The storm made landfall as the equivalent of a Category 3 storm near Mozambique's fourth-largest city of Beira on Thursday. At least 1,000 people are believed to have died in Mozambique with thousands more injured, while officials estimate that as many as 1.5 million are at risk of water-borne diseases, starvation or other impacts from the inland flooding due to the storm.

Reports from aid groups and the Mozambique government show that at least 90% of Beira and its surrounding areas is now submerged.

The first thing you see when you arrive is destruction  and a lot of water. We hear that the situation outside the town may be even worse. But in the limited time since we arrived, weve focused on trying to understand the situation and needs in this city, as there are some 500,000 people who live here and most houses are damaged or destroyed.

 Gert Verdonck, Doctors Without Borders' emergency coordinator in Beira, Mozambique

Details: The warnings from aid groups and governments grew more urgent on Tuesday as the massive scope of the disaster became clear. For example, UNICEF warned that the damage to water and sanitation infrastructure will bring great risk of water-born diseases and limit access to safe drinking water. The organization is hoping to raise $20.3 million to support relief efforts.

The European Commission announced it will release an emergency aid package of about $4 million to the countries affected by Idai. Zimbabwe's treasury is already planning to release $50 million for emergency infrastructure restoration.

Nullis said the storm could rank at the top of the deadliest weather disasters list if the figures coming from Mozambique's government and aid groups turn out to be true.

"We have to be careful with figures and different databases  and also whether all flooding deaths are related to the cyclone. We are not trying to compare it to slow onset related climate disasters, like El Nino triggered droughts," she added.

The state of play: It's been difficult to fully assess the damage and number of casualties in Mozambique because communication lines are down and many main roads have been destroyed.

Context: Mozambique does occasionally get struck by tropical cyclones. Typically, the presence of the large and rugged island of Madagascar to the east of Mozambique weakens such storms before they hit the country. However, in this case, Idai was able to intensify rapidly in between Madagascar and Mozambique due to light wind shear aloft and warm ocean waters.

While studies do show climate change-related trends in tropical cyclone intensity and rainfall amounts in parts of the world, the role climate change may have played in this disaster has not yet been analyzed.

Because of warmer ocean waters and air temperatures globally, storms are able to dump higher amounts of rainfall than they did several decades ago  with such trends expected to continue.

However, with this storm, the biggest factor driving up the death toll is the vulnerability of the region, given the relatively poor population and weak infrastructure that is unable to withstand powerful winds and prolonged, heavy rainfall.

A rescue team working to distribute supplies. Photo: Adrien Barbier/AFP/Getty Images

Thousands of homes have been destroyed along the coast of Mozambique. Photo: Caroline Haga/International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

A man in Zimbabwe looks onto the wreckage left by Idai. Photo: Zinyange Auntony/AFP/Getty Images

A girl injured during Cyclone Idai rests in a hospital in Zimbabwe. Photo: Zinyange Auntony/AFP/Getty Images

Go deeper:
French Defense Minister Florence Parly said today that an unthinkable question now hangs over Europe: What happens if the U.S. leaves us to fend for ourselves?

The big picture: Speaking at the Atlantic Council, Parly indicated that the growing transatlantic divide isnt just about defense spending, or even a clash of personalities. Now that the strategic rivalry is moving to Asia, and Europe is no longer its main playground, a question mark has emerged, she said. With Washington's eyes turning toward China, will U.S. commitment [to Europe] be perennial?"

Between the lines: Parly conceded that despite the current push on strategic autonomy, the state of Europes collective military capabilities is unflattering.

Europes NATO contingent has a combined GDP more than 10 times Russias, spends 3.5 times as much on defense, and includes two nuclear powers, the Economist points out. But reliance on the U.S. has left gaps in capability that would, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, take at least 15 years to fill.

Thats not even accounting for the political hurdles. Washingtons security guarantee has papered over cracks that Moscow and Beijing would rush to expose. Removing it would overwhelm the Europeans politically, financially and militarily, said Michael Ruhle, a NATO official.

Parly paraphrased NATOs first secretary-general, Hastings Pug Ismay, who quipped that NATO was designed to keep the Russians out and the Americans in (she left out the part about keeping the Germans down).

While President Trump has put one-half of that equation in doubt, Vladimir Putin continues to nibble away at the other.

Angela Stent, author of the new book Putins World, says the West has been flummoxed as to how a country with a GDP smaller than Italys could play a great power role  how Vladimir Putin could invade Ukraine and deploy a nerve agent in Salisbury, England, and continue to be seen as a man with whom the world can do business.

Putin is adjusting to the new global reality. China shields him from political isolation and offers him an economic lifeline. Its also a burgeoning superpower with which Russia shares a 2,600-mile border, much of it sparsely populated.

The potential China danger is something that you dare not speak its name, Stent says. She adds that the Kremlin recognizes, but would never acknowledge, that it's the junior partner in the relationship.

But while the U.S. turns its focus elsewhere, Alina Polyakova of Brookings notes, Russia is deploying trolls online and mercenaries in places like the Central African Republic: Were not paying attention and ceding ground to a country that is relatively weak but is playing a weak hand well.

Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, speaking at Brookings last week, expressed frustration that NATO allies are speaking in hypotheticals about conflict with Russia at a time when Moscow is occupying Crimea and flexing its cyber and disinformation capabilities:

People say, This is nothing like the real thing. Its the real thing of the 21st century.

She noted that the NATO security guarantee was not merely symbolic in Estonia and that Russia's "hybrid" activities are backed by conventional and nuclear capabilities. "We've seen all this before, and none of it is good."

Parly also referenced Eastern Europe, contending that if the next flare-up was allowed to happen on NATO's turf, rather than in Georgia or Ukraine, it would signal a drastic reduction in U.S. power" and have global repercussions.

The bottom line: China's rise poses new questions for the U.S., but it can't afford to ignore the old ones.

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HOUSTON  A carbon tax would cost natural gas export company Tellurian Inc. hundreds of millions of dollars, but the company's founder is still backing the policy.

Driving the news: The Houston-based company has done internal modeling showing projected costs on its operations from a carbon tax, which at roughly $200 million a year would be significant, says co-founder Charif Souki. Tellurian announced last week it was donating $2 million to Columbia Universitys Center on Global Energy Policy to research a carbon tax and related policies.

[A carbon tax] would make American gas more expensive. Since we buy American gas as cheap as possible and try to resell it on the world market, its going to be a very significant cost to Tellurian. Regardless of this, its the right thing to do. We need to accept it and move on.

 Charif Souki

Where it stands: The 3-year-old company is working to build an export terminal in Louisiana backed by its own gas resources and pipelines that allows partners to gain equity  a business model it hopes can ensure cheaper prices than competitors. It's projected to begin operating in early 2023.

Souki told me an interview last year

At least in the short-term, natural gas is likely to benefit from a carbon tax that pushes out coal for electricity, particularly in Asia's growing economies like India, which is poised to become one of

By the numbers: Tellurian ended last year with a nearly $126 million loss on roughly $11 million revenue, according to the Houston Chronicle. The Chronicle notes that the results are better than in 2017, when the company had $230 million loss on $5.4 million of revenue.

The big picture: Oil and gas companies are increasingly supporting and putting money behind lobbying for a carbon tax, driven by investor pressure and greater public awareness. But it remains a far-fetched idea in Washington for at least the next couple of years, with President Trump in the White House, Republicans controlling at least one chamber of Congress, and Democrats focused on the Green New Deal, which as of now doesnt include an explicit price on emissions.

Reality check: Its easier for companies to absorb new taxes than it is for individual consumers, partly because companies often pass along those costs to consumers. Thats the main argument from Republicans for why they oppose any big action on climate change, although independent modeling  some done by Columbia University  shows that a carbon tax whose revenue is returned to consumers ultimately helps lower-income people.

Go deeper: Energy pioneer tries to surf the natural-gas wave

Editor's note: This piece was corrected to show Charif Souki is a co-founder of Tellurian (not CEO).
1 big thing: GOP is isolated on climate change

President Trump and congressional Republicans are increasingly outliers in an otherwise emerging consensus across America that climate change is a problem and that the government should pass new laws to address it.

The big picture: The shift has been underway for the last couple of years, driven by investor pressure, growing public concern and mounting scientific urgency.

In the last several months, the fervor around the Green New Deal is accelerating this shift and accentuating Republicans isolation and their internal divisions  as a handful of Republicans break ranks and acknowledge the problem is real.

The intrigue: The juxtaposition was on stark display last week.

I spent the first half of last week at a major oil and gas conference in Houston, where virtually all executives acknowledged climate change as a pressing issue and a few, including CEOs of major oil companies like BP and Equinor, implored the industry to do more and embrace big policy changes.

The second part of the week I was back in Washington, D.C., where Republican leaders of House committees held a press conference to criticize the GND but didnt discuss policies they would pursue instead of it.

Where it stands: After a decade of either questioning or ignoring climate change, some Republicans are slowly beginning to discuss the issue. But for now it's mostly rhetoric and it's not enough to convince the majority of the party, and especially Trump, to change their views.

For now, most of the rhetoric appears to be in response to Democrats controlling the House  which means they get to hold hearings.

The loudest voices in the Republican caucus are those that make inflammatory or bizarre statements, such as likening the GND to genocide and responding to a question about climate change by explaining photosynthesis.

Between the lines: Those remarks aside, a fundamental difference persists between what most congressional Republicans say should be done about climate change versus almost all other leaders: mostly status quo with incremental bills versus more sweeping policy changes.

Republicans say what theyre supporting now  relatively narrow bills on topics like carbon-capture technology, hydropower and nuclear power  is sufficient.

Zack Roday, spokesperson for Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said: I disagree that those are minor bills  solutions that reduce emissions while expanding Americas renewable energy options matter.

Bigger policies that could more substantially reduce emissions are unpopular with most conservative lawmakers: a price on carbon emissions, regulations or subsidies.

Matt Sparks, spokesperson for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, said: "Conservatives are leaning into the debate on our future. ... But whether it is a carbon tax or Green New Deal, the conventional conversation in Washington today has impacts that hurt working Americans."

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Top global scientists declined to declare the moratorium on gene editing heritable genes in humans called for by some experts, but warned it would be "irresponsible" to allow this in clinical practice and recommended initial steps for a global regulatory framework under the World Health Organization.

Why it matters: The global scientific and ethical community continues to be divided on whether there should be a complete moratorium on editing germline, or heritable, cells for now. However there's a growing consensus that some global regulatory framework is needed to prevent a repeat of the ethically and medically questionable way a Chinese scientist edited and implanted embryos.

What's new: There's an "urgent need" to create an international registry of all human genome research, which they committee hopes could be partly enforced via publishers and research granters who would require registration before allowing studies to receive grant money or have their results published, according to committee co-chair Margaret A. Hamburg, who spoke at the press conference.

"We agree that it is irresponsible at this time for anyone to proceed with a clinical application of human germline editing," Hamburg added.

Details: The committee said the recommendations are based on the core principles of transparency, inclusivity and responsibility.

A central registry for both somatic (non-heritable) and germline genetic cell research is key for transparency and increasing accountability, Hamburg says.

WHO should act as an information resource for all countries and should involve the wider range of stakeholders to be inclusive of the various players with different cultural perspectives.

The committee will establish various subcommittees to develop the standards, which must be inclusive of all types of cultures and technological advances.

While a moratorium "will be part of those discussions" over the next 18 months, Hamburg says their mandate is to look at the broader discussion of what is the best framework for responsible stewardship.

What's next: Hamburg says there will be at least 3 more in-person meetings of the expert advisory committee, which includes scientists from the U.S., China and elsewhere, plus various subcommittee and online discussions. They expect to make final recommendations to the WHO's director general in about 18 months.
The Russian soldier charged with beating an Armenian woman to death will remain in custody at the Russian military base in Gyumri, according to a local court.

The Shirak Regional Court of General Jurisdiction on Tuesday rejected the lawsuit of the killed Gyumri womans family, who demanded that Andrey Razgildeyev be transferred to Armenias law-enforcement bodies and be kept in pretrial detention in Armenian remand prison.

Razgildeyev, a 23-year-old serviceman at the Russian military base in Gyumri, was arrested in December in connection with the violent death of Julieta Ghukasian, a 57-year-old street cleaner in Gyumri.

Armenian law-enforcement bodies later charged the Russian with brutal assault and involuntary manslaughter. Motives for the alleged attack still remain unclear.

Under Armenias criminal law, such crimes are punishable by between five and ten years in prison.

Despite being charged under Armenian law, Razgildeyev has remained under arrest inside the Russian military base  something that has caused complaints from the family of the victim and a number of Armenian human rights activists.

Attorney Arayik Zalian, who represents the interests of Ghukasians daughter, says that a comprehensive and impartial investigation of the case is only possible if the Russian soldier is handed over to Armenian law-enforcement bodies.

Armenian Prosecutors Office representative Mihran Martirosian, meanwhile, insisted that keeping the Russian soldier at the base is legitimate as it is stipulated by provisions of an Armenian-Russian intergovernmental agreement.

The accused was arrested in the territory of the Russian Federations 102nd base. That is, getting him out of the territory of the base is contrary to the Russian Federations legislation, he explained.

In 2015, another Russia soldier murdered seven members of an Armenian family in Gyumri. The case sparked protests in the northwestern city and elsewhere in Armenia. An Armenian court in August 2016 sentenced private Valery Permyakov to life in prison.

Permyakov too was held in detention at the Russian base before and during his trial. He was later transferred to Russia to serve his sentence.
A number of human rights activists in Armenia have joined the open letter of Amnesty International calling on the Iranian authorities to release Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh.

Today they held a silent protest in front of the Iranian embassy in Yerevan.

Sotoudeh, the co-winner of the European Parliaments 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, last year represented several of the women detained for removing their head scarves in public to protest against the countrys Islamic dress code.

She has reportedly been sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes after what Amnesty International called two grossly unfair trials.

The 55-year-old activist was arrested in June and ordered to serve a five-year sentence imposed on her in absentia in 2016.

And in February, the Iranian authorities allowed Sotoudeh to read the verdict in her most recent court case, which showed that she had been convicted of seven charges and sentenced to an additional 33 years in prison and 148 lashes, London-based Amnesty International said on March 14.

Armenian human rights activist Arman Gharibian told RFE/RLs Armenian Service that he did not know whether the Yerevan protest could change anything. But one thing is clear: we cannot remain indifferent when this kind of repression against a human rights activist takes place in the neighboring country, he said.

Iranian-Armenian Vardges Gaspari, who is a prominent activist in Armenia, said he was raising his voice to encourage the jailed activist morally. So that she can feel that she is not forgotten, that there are people, even if few, who are concerned about her fate, the activist added.

The protesters in Yerevan tried to hand over a letter, stating their protest, to the Iranian embassy staff, but no one came out to take it. Eventually, they had to put the letter into the mailbox placed at the entrance to the embassy.
By Trend

Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have 21 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said March 19, Trend reports.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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By Trend

A feed processing plant has started operating in Azerbaijan as part of a project jointly being implemented by the countrys government and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Trend reports with reference to the Agency for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) of Azerbaijan.

In general, 20 feed processing plants, including those in Gazakh, have been commissioned so far as part of the jointly implemented project SEDA (Socio-Economic Development Activity in Azerbaijan).

Speaking at the event held with organizational support from the Agency for the Development of SMEs, Deputy Chairman of the Agencys Board Elchin Ibrahimov spoke about the diversification of the countrys economy under the leadership of the president of Azerbaijan, measures to develop the non-oil sector and the Azerbaijani regions and the results achieved.

It was noted that implementation of business projects in the regions as well as the commissioning of a new feed processing plant in Gazakh , are of great importance in the development of the agriculture sector and in increasing employment.

Chief Executive of Gazakh Rajab Babashov in his speech at the event said that commissioning a new feed processing plant will make it possible to expand the activities of the Gzakh residents in the cattle breeding and crop production, satisfying the need for feed.

USAID Project Manager Parviz Musayev spoke about the importance of such joint projects and noted that they will contribute to the development of the Azerbaijani regions.

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By Trend

A feed processing plant has been commissioned in the Azad Garagoyunlu village of Azerbaijans Terter region as part of the project SEDA (Socio-Economic Development Activity in Azerbaijan) being jointly implemented by the Azerbaijani government and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Trend reports with reference to the Economy Ministry.

In connection with the commissioning of the feed processing plant, an event was held with the organizational support of the Agency for the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) of Azerbaijan.

Speaking at the event, Deputy Chairman of the agencys Board Elchin Ibrahimov, Head of the Terter Executive Power Mustagim Mammadov and USAID Project Manager Parviz Musayev noted that the implementation of business projects in the regions including the commissioning of the feed processing plant in the Azad Garagoyunlu village of the Terter region, contributes to the development of the agriculture sector of the region.

In particular, it contributes to the expansion of activities in the field of livestock breeding and crop production, meets the needs in feed and increases employment.

As part of the SEDA project, a feed processing plant was commissioned on the same day in the Yeni Dashkand village of the Barda region.

At the feed processing plants in Azad Garagoyunlu and Yeni Dashkand villages, a production site and a warehouse were built, equipment was installed that makes it possible to refine two tons of seeds per hour, grind feed and chop the grass.

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By Leman Mammadova

Tajikistan is considering the possibility of increasing the transportation of its goods through the Baku International Sea Trade Port.

Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Tajikistan Nematullo Hikmatullozoda met with the Director General of this Port Taleh Ziyadov a few days ago as part of his visit to Azerbaijan.

The minister was provided with detailed information on the activities of the port and proposed to widely use its capabilities for the transport of goods in Tajikistan, news.tj reports citing the press service of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Tajikistan.

It was particularly noted that the Baku Sea International Trade Port was commissioned in 2018. Its territory is 117 hectares, the port can simultaneously receive up to 12 ships, and its carrying capacity is currently 15 million tons of cargo per year. For a comprehensive use of the potential of the port, a free economic zone has been created next to it.

The use of the port will contribute not only to an increase in cargo traffic, but also to strengthen the regional cooperation, Ziyadov concluded.

Tajikistan is forced to transport its cargoes bypassing Turkmenistan from the beginning of February of this year, which, for still unknown reasons, does not allow Tajik vehicles to enter its territory.

Delivery of Tajik cargo to the Middle East or goods imported from this region have been transported by the Caspian Sea for almost two months : using the ports of Baku and Aktau (Kazakhstan).

The Baku International Sea Trade Port in Azerbaijans Alat settlement is expected to become one of the leading trade and logistics hubs of Eurasia.The New Port in Alat is a transportation hub linking the west (Turkey & EU), south (Iran & India) and north (Russia). Situated in the vicinity of the regions of Azerbaijan, it will also increase its connectivity as an efficient hub and so increase the volume of cargo being handled. In addition, new port location is linked to existing highways and railways, connecting the port to the inland regions of the country.

Azerbaijan and Tajikistan established diplomatic relations on May 29, 1992. The cooperation between the two countries reached a new level in 2008, when the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation was launched. It coordinates the realization of economic ties and develops new proposals for future cooperation.

The contractual and legal framework of cooperation is secured by more than 40 agreements in trade, economic, banking, tax, cultural and investment spheres. The priority areas of economic cooperation between Azerbaijan and Tajikistan are non-ferrous metallurgy, agro-industrial sector, energy, light industry, transport and communications.

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Leman Mammadova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888

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By Leman Mammadova

The trade turnover between Georgia and Azerbaijan amounted to $ 184.4 million in January-February 2019.

According to the National Statistics Office of Georgia, the share of Azerbaijan in the total trade of the neighboring country constituted 10.6 percent, Report informs.

Thus, Azerbaijan became the third largest trading partner of Georgia after Turkey and Russia.

In January-February, Georgias exports to Azerbaijan grew by 33.7 percent in annual comparison, reaching $ 58.4 million. The share of Azerbaijan in total exports of Georgia was 11.6 percent, thus, after Russia, it became the second largest partner of this country in terms of exports.

In February, Georgia imported goods from Azerbaijan worth $ 126 million, which is 2.5 percent less than the same period last year. The share of Azerbaijan in Georgias total import constituted 10.2 percent. With this indicator, Azerbaijan became the third main partner of the neighboring country for imports after Turkey and China.

In January-February of this year, Georgia imported oil and oil products from Azerbaijan worth $ 133.2 million. The total volume of oil and oil products exported by Azerbaijan to the neighboring country amounted to 25,161 tons, which is 6,601 tons or 35.5 percent more than the same indicator for 2018.

Azerbaijan and Georgia maintain high-level relations in all spheres, especially in economic field. Two countries have already taken initiatives for global projects in the region together for a long time. Close bilateral ties play a key role in the development of regional cooperation.

The trade turnover between Georgia and Azerbaijan amounted to $1.1 billion in 2018. The share of Azerbaijan in the total trade turnover of the neighboring country made 8.7 percent last year. Azerbaijan became the third largest trading partner of Georgia after Turkey and Russia in 2018.

Georgian exports to Azerbaijan amounted to $ 502.7 million in 2018. In turn, Azerbaijan exported goods worth $ 586 million to Georgia. Georgian exports to Azerbaijan include cement, locomotives and other railway vehicles, mineral and chemical fertilizers, mineral waters, strong drinks, glass and glass wares, and pharmaceuticals, among other things. Azerbaijani mainly exports to Georgia oil and petroleum products, natural gas, electricity, plastic, cement, anhydrite and gypsum binders.

In 1995-2018, Georgia invested $ 93.8 million in Azerbaijani economy and Azerbaijan invested $ 3 billion in Georgia. Since 2012, Azerbaijan is in the first place in terms of investments in Georgia. More than 300 Georgian companies registered in Azerbaijan, about 650 Azerbaijani investment companies, especially SOCAR, operate successfully in Georgia.

Azerbaijan has been named a "number one investor in Georgia" in 2018. Last year, Azerbaijan invested $ 240 million in Georgia's economy. Azerbaijan's share in direct investments in the economy of Georgia was 19.5 percent. Although it is 1.9 times less than in 2017, Azerbaijan has maintained its leadership.

Azerbaijan and Georgia have taken initiatives for global projects in the region together for a long time. Close bilateral ties play a key role in the development of regional cooperation. The both countries broadly cooperate in regional energy development, transportation and economic partnership projects such as Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC), Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, Southern Gas Corridor, Kars-Tbilisi-Baku railway (BTK), the TRACECA and BSEC (Black Sea Economic Cooperation).

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Leman Mammadova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888

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By Trend

Hikmat Hajiyev, head of the Department of Foreign Policy Affairs of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, paid a working visit to Berlin on March 18, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani Embassy in Germany.

As part of his visit, Hikmet Hajiyev met with Advisor to the Federal Chancellor on Foreign and Security Policy Jan Hecker, Head of the Foreign Policy Directorate of the Administration of the Federal President Thomas Berger and the head of the department of the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs for cooperation with countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Ambassador Michael Siebert.

Hajiyev also took part in a round table held with the participation of the foreign policy officials of Germany. Hikmat Hajiyev also took part in the seventh symposium "Stability and Security in the South Caucasus. Prospects for the German-Azerbaijani Partnership" on the anniversary of the Khojaly genocide.

During the meetings, there was a wide exchange of views on Azerbaijans foreign policy, relations with Germany and the EU, regional issues, as well as the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Hikmat Hajiyev stressed that, despite the location of Azerbaijan in a complex geopolitical region, the country pursues an independent and based on national interests policy, has established good neighborly relations with its neighbors, with the exception of Armenia.

He also noted that Azerbaijan has laid the foundation for international cooperation in the region, and spoke about Azerbaijan's role in the energy security of the EU, its major regional projects, including the Southern Gas Corridor, projects serving the development of the North-South and West-East transport corridors.

Hajiyev further spoke about the contribution of these projects and the multidirectional foreign policy of Azerbaijan to peace, stability, development and cooperation in the region. He also spoke about the consequences of the Armenian military aggression, the process of the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as the expectations of Azerbaijan regarding the new leadership of Armenia.

During the meetings, the fair position of Germany on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the country's support to the conflict resolution process, as well as the potential for further expansion of ties between Azerbaijan and Germany, were discussed.

German officials called Azerbaijan a reliable partner of Germany in the region, as well as a major economic partner, highly appreciated the environment of multiculturalism and religious tolerance in Azerbaijan and welcomed the reforms carried out in the country under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev.

The meetings held by Hikmat Hajiyev in Berlin were also attended by the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Germany Ramin Hasanov and the embassy official Vugar Gafarov.

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By Trend

Hikmat Hajiyev, head of the Department of Foreign Policy Affairs of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, held an exchange of views with Ambassador Michael Siebert, head of the department of the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs for cooperation with countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Trend reports referring to Hajiyev's Twitter page.

"As part of trip to Germany had fruitful discussions with Director for Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia Ambassador Michael Siebert, Foreign Ministry of Germany. We had broad exchange of views on bilateral agenda, regional and international issues of mutual interest," Hajiyev wrote.

Moreover, during the visit, Hikmat Hajiyev will also meet with his colleagues in the Presidential Administration and the Office of the German Chancellor, speak on the South Caucasus in the Bundestag, and also meet with representatives of leading research centers.

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By Trend

The visit of Azerbaijans First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva to Paris showed the high level of trust between France and Azerbaijan, Ambassador of France to Azerbaijan Aurelia Bouchez said in an interview with Trend.

I am delighted to be back in Baku after such an important visit, which took place in Paris. Her Excellency First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva paid a meaningful and successful high-level visit to Paris, which showed the high level of trust and mutual understanding between France and Azerbaijan, as well as the comprehensive and diversified nature of our bilateral cooperation, she said.

The diplomat noted that the First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva was invited by the Prime Minister of France Edouard Philippe to Paris.

Her meeting with the Prime Minister of France, as well as various other high level meetings and contacts  with the French First Lady, with the Presidents of the National Assembly and Senate, with the ministers of Culture and Economy - offered opportunities to touch upon issues of the region, including the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh. It allowed us to assess the state of play of our economic cooperation: what has been done, what is about to be done and what more could be done. Both sides stressed the dynamism of this cooperation, but also the untapped potential of our economic cooperation, she said.

Bouchez noted that the two sides also congratulated each other on the big success achieved in the field of education and cultural cooperation.

They praised the success of the French Lyceum of Baku and French-Azerbaijani University (UFAZ) and the promotion of French language in schools. Indeed, this visit was an opportunity for exchanges, for discussing future projects and future action.

Four agreements were signed in order to give a concrete substance to the development of our economic cooperation. Of course, a lot of other projects have been discussed. A number of common points between Azerbaijan and France were stressed, such as the tradition of secularism and the role of women. Thus this visit illustrated the vibrant nature of our relations, what we do and what we could do to further develop our cooperation in various areas, noted the ambassador.

She further talked about economic cooperation between Azerbaijan and France.

Regarding business perspectives, I am happy to say that in 2018, we registered a 15 percent increase in commercial exchanges in volume. We are quite optimistic because French companies cover rather well the spectrum of Azerbaijans economy: they are particularly well placed to contribute to its diversification and to tap its great potential. Of course, the oil and gas sector remains of crucial importance and I would like to mention Totals successful cooperation with Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR for more than 20 years. We view Azerbaijan and SOCAR as very reliable partners. Total is contemplating doing more in Azerbaijan than its current activities. We hope that its projects will be fulfilled, noted Bouchez.

She went on to add that there is also the non-oil sector and its growing share in the economy thanks to the diversification policy launched by His Excellency President Aliyev.

French companies are well positioned in priority sectors, such as transport: rail (Alstom), metro (Thales), buses (Iveco) and airports (Thales). Azerbaijan has a big potential as a regional transportation hub and French companies are ready to step up their activities to contribute to this goal. The French Agency for Development is already supporting rail-related projects. Then there are promising fields of cooperation such as agriculture. And we are very happy to see that Azerbaijans minister of agriculture has already been to France several times and we very much look forward to further developing our cooperation in the field of agriculture and agro-business, said Bouchez.

Regarding the environment, the ambassador said Baku is a beautiful and modern city but it also has to address concerns related to water systems and the environment.

The French company Suez is already active here. It is eager to do even more through, for instance, pollution remediation programs and improved water management. Tourism is booming in Azerbaijan. It is normal, because its towns are beautiful and its regions have a very high potential for touristic development. There are also other fields which can be further developed, in particular space activities. We see the success of the programs developed by Azercosmos and of course, in particular the observation satellite it developed in cooperation with Airbus, noted the diplomat.

She said these are just a few examples of the existing cooperation.

But each of them is to be further developed. Each of the companies has projects. Each of them would like to develop them and to expand their presence here, because French companies are very much interested in the Azerbaijani market. There is a fantastic potential in your beautiful country. This potential is enhanced by the conductive policy currently developed by the Azerbaijani authorities, including the latest fiscal reforms and the support measures to the SMEs. Economic cooperation is a topic which was discussed by the First Vice-President with each of her interlocutors, among other topics. Each time there was an exchange on what we can do to ensure deeper and broader connection between France and Azerbaijan, Ambassador Bouchez concluded.

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By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

Every year on March 20-21, Azerbaijan celebrates ancient and beloved holiday Novruz.

The holiday falls on the spring equinox.

In this connection, the Baku Metro has prepared mini-concerts for its passengers, who will be able to listen to live performances of musicians in the station pavilion, on March 19 and 20.

The performance of the laureate of international music competitions, pianist Fuad Alizade is scheduled for March 19 and 20 from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm at the Icherisheher metro station. Within two hours he will perform on the synthesizer works of Azerbaijani, as well as world-famous composers.

In addition, a trio of national mugham and instrumental quartet will give mini-concerts at four metro stations. Musical groups will perform alternately on March 19 and 20 from 11:00 to 13:30 in the pavilion of 28 May station, from 12:00 to 13:30 at the station Sahil, from 13:00 to 14:30 at the station Icherisheher, from 14:00 to 15:30 at the station Elmlyar Akademiyasi.

Along with this, Baku Metro CJSC will switch to an enhanced mode of operation on holidays of Novruz.

Taking into account seven non-working days - from March 20 to March 26, the work of Baku metro will go according to the holiday schedule. However, taking into account the mass festivities in the central streets of the city and the arrival of tourists, the metro plans to adjust the operating mode of some stations and train traffic. In this regard, the chairman of the ZAO Zaur Huseynov signed the convenient order.

Touching upon the Novruz, many traditions and believes are associated with this cherished holiday.

Khidir Ilyas (the symbol of fertility), Kos-Kosa- an entertaining game, which symbolizes the incoming of spring and fortunetelling are among them.

Four Wednesdays before Novruz are devoted to one of the four elements: Water, Fire, Wind and Earth. Each Tuesday has its own traditions.

As with most major festivals in Azerbaijan, a significant part of Novruz celebrations revolve around food.

The decoration of the festive table is khoncha, a large silver or copper tray with Samani (wheat) placed in the centre and candles and painted eggs representing the number of family members around it. The feast should consist of at least seven dishes the names of which starts with letter 'S', for example sumakh(a kind of spice), sirke(vinegar), sud(milk), samani(grown wheat), sebzi(fried meat with greens)etc.

There's always lots of food and sweets at Novruz.

With a filling made of nuts sugar, and aromatic spices, shekerbura,pakhlava, badambura, shor-gogal, mutaki are delicious sweet pastries traditionally eaten during spring feast.

In the evening on March 21, all family members gather at home for dinner to eat a traditional dish called pilaf celebrate the spring holiday. In some parts of Azerbaijan, on the last night of the old year, family members sprinkle water on each other. This custom symbolizes the washing off of all the hardships of the old year.

The holiday was given the status of an official holiday in Azerbaijan by a presidential decree dated 13 March 1990. In 2009, Novruz was included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and since then, March 21 was declared the International Day of Novruz.

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(WB) Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his partner on Thursday attended a St. Patricks Day breakfast at Vice President Pences official residence.

Pictures that Varadkar posted to his Twitter page show him and his partner, Dr. Matthew Barrett, with Pence and his sister, Anne Pence Poynter, at the breakfast. Mike Pences wife, Karen Pence, who teaches at a Virginia school that does not allow openly LGBTI students to enroll and refuses to hire out faculty members, was not in attendance.

We are greatly honored for our third time as a family in this historic residence to welcome the taoiseach of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, said Mike Pence as he introduced Varadkar at the breakfast. We are also really honored to be joined by your partner, Dr. Matthew Barrett.

Pence and President Trump continue to face criticism over their administrations anti-LGBTI policies that include efforts to ban openly transgender service members. The breakfast also took place less than a month after the White House announced openly gay U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell will lead a campaign that encourages countries to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations if they havent done so already.

Varadkar in his remarks said Mike and Karen Pence at last years breakfast told him my partner Matthew would be welcome to join us at this years event. Varadkar also referenced the fact that Ireland criminalized homosexuality until 1993.

I knew at the time that I lived in a country where if I tried to be myself at the time, it would have ended up breaking laws, but today that has all changed, he said. I stand here as leader as my country, flawed and human, but judged by my political actions and not by my sexual orientation, my skin tone, gender or religious beliefs.

Varadkar is Irelands first prime minister who is openly gay and of Indian descent. Varadkar is one of a handful of out world leaders.

Varadkar raised LGBTI-specific issues during Pope Francis visit to Ireland in August 2018. Varadkar last month also discussed them in his public comments at a summit with European Union and Arab League of Nations countries that took place in Egypt.
By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

Chile is interested in comprehensive cooperation with Azerbaijan.

This was stated by Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile Roberto Ampuero at a meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, Trend reports on March 19.

Ampuero highly appreciated the first official visit of his Azerbaijani counterpart to Chile and said that this would make an important contribution to strengthening the existing friendly relationship between the two countries and expressed Chiles interest in comprehensive cooperation with Azerbaijan.

Mammadyarov stressed the importance of intensifying mutual high-level visits in order to expand contacts at various levels and the ongoing political dialogue between the two countries.

The sides expressed satisfaction with the current state of diplomatic ties, which this year mark 25 years. It was noted that the beginning of the activities of the Chilean Embassy in Azerbaijan will give a new impetus to the development of bilateral relations.

There was also an exchange of views on topical issues of the international and regional agenda. In this context, Mammadyarov informed his colleague about the current situation in the negotiation process to resolve the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The parties also discussed cooperation within the framework of international organizations and the Non-Aligned Movement and other issues of mutual interest. The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister also emphasized that the Chilean side was invited to the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in October of this year in Baku, and noted that he hopes that Chile will be represented at a high level at this event.

Recall that The Embassy of Colombia in Azerbaijan transferred part of its premises to Chilean Charge d'Affaires ad interim to Gabriel Leopold Hara Maldonado at the end of 2018.

With his arrival, the Pacific Alliance in Baku is represented fully in the form of general embassies of this integration mechanism.

The diplomatic missions of Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru work together in Azerbaijan, strengthening not only bilateral relations, but also the interests of the region.

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By Trend

Rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have welcomed the pardon decree signed recently by Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev, Trend reports citing PACEs message.

I welcome President Aliyevs decision to release on humanitarian grounds a significant number of prisoners, said PACE rapporteur Sunna Aevarsdottir.

Under the presidential decree, a total of 431 people were pardoned. Among them, 399 people were freed from the unserved part of their prison sentences.

The punishment of one person sentenced to life imprisonment has been replaced by 25 years in prison and that of two people by 20 years in prison. In addition, one person is exempt from serving delayed sentence. Eleven people have been exempted from conditional sentence.

One person was freed from public works, 12 people were exempted from punishment in the form of a fine.

Among the pardoned are 14 foreign citizens, including three Georgian citizens, two from Russia and Nigeria each, and one from Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Cameroon, India and Belarus each.

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By Trend

Until the next OPEC+ meeting, oil reserves in the world will begin to fall, but not so much to require to take some steps, Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Khalid Abdulaziz Al-Falih said at a press conference on the results of the 13th meeting of the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) in Baku, Trend reports.

There are more than three months left until the next meeting, so its impossible to say something exact now, the minister said, adding that he leaves Baku with the confidence that the market is moving in the right direction.

The 13th meeting of the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) was held in Baku March 18. A day before the JMMC meeting, Baku hosted the 27th meeting of the Joint Technical Commission.

The meeting participants discussed the current state of the oil market, existing problems and other issues.

The event then featured a presentation on the pace of oil market development, and the report of the Joint Technical Commission on production figures for February.

New members of the Committee were also announced at the end of the event. The new members are Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and the UAE.

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By Leman Mammadova

SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev met with President of the Russian Lukoil Company Vagit Alekperov on March 18, who is on a visit to Baku.

During the meeting, the sides discussed long-term relations between Lukoil and SOCAR. Lukoil's participation in projects implemented in Azerbaijan was highly appreciated.

Alekperov underlined the strategic importance of his company's relations with SOCAR and highly appreciated the creation of favorable conditions for foreign investments by the Azerbaijani government. In this regard, he expressed his pleasure in investing in new fields in Azerbaijan and expressed his satisfaction with cooperation in various fields.

The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) is one of the world's 50 largest oil companies. SOCAR's mission is to ensure the energy security of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Established in 1992, SOCAR aimed at manage Azerbaijan's oil resources on the basis of a single state policy, to improve the management structure of the oil industry and to ensure the development of fuel and energy complex.

Three production divisions, one oil refineries and one gas processing plant, a deep water platform fabrication yard, two trusts, one institution, and 23 subdivisions are operating as corporate entities under SOCAR. SOCAR has a significant position in a number of regional and international energy projects.

Currently, SOCAR is the only producer of oil products in the country, and also operates more than 370 filling stations in Switzerland, Georgia, Romania and Ukraine.

Oil company "Lukoil" is one of the leaders of the oil business in Russia. Lukoil is one of the largest international vertically integrated oil and gas companies, providing 2.2 percent of world oil production.

Lukoil has been operating in Azerbaijan's oil and gas sector since 1994, when the company entered its first international project on the development of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field, one of the largest fields in the Caspian Sea. The company has 10 percent stake in the projects "Shah-Deniz" and "South Caucasus Pipeline". Lukoil is also interested in participating in such projects as Umid-Babek and Absheron in Azerbaijan. In addition, the company is involved in the retail fuel market.

Since 1995, Lukoil has also been developing its own distribution network of filling stations in Azerbaijan, which meet international standards. The company manages 58 petrol stations and an oil depot, which ensures transfer of 320,000 tons of oil per year. Due to this, Lukoil has become a reliable supplier of diesel fuel and motor gasoline, as well as lubricants to large international and Azerbaijani companies operating in the local market.

So far, Lukoil implemented landmark projects in the fields of hydrocarbon production, retail and wholesale of petroleum products, telecommunications, insurance, banking, multimedia businesses in Azerbaijan. The contribution of Lukoil to the charitable support of culture, science and education of Azerbaijan, religious denominations of the republic, veterans of war and labor is significant.

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Leman Mammadova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888

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By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

SOCAR's subsidiary in Romania - SOCAR Petroleum SA plans to sell in Romania oil and oil products produced at the Petkim and STAR plants in Turkey, methanol and carbamide plants in Azerbaijan.

This was stated in the company's response to a request of Report.

SOCAR Petroleum SA will also sell these products in the Eastern European region.

At the same time, the company is considering plans to supply Azerbaijani gas to the end consumer in Romania via the Southern Gas Corridor, as well as to build gas distribution networks in that country.

SOCAR conducts wholesale and retail sale of petroleum products in Romania at gas stations under its own brand through its subsidiary, SOCAR Petroleum SA. The company entered the Romanian market with the opening of 12 gas stations in 2011. Today, a network of 42 filling stations of SOCAR covers 19 regions of Romania.

SOCAR carries out various operations, including sales, transportation and trade operations across all continents in more than 40 countries, among over 100 points of sale. The company is also exploring opportunities to enter new markets and develop operations in existing markets.

ROMGAZ and TRANSGAZ, two of the most important Romanian companies in the natural gas sector, have long-standing cooperation relationships with SOCAR.

Recently, SOCAR has expressed its interest in cooperation with ROMGAZ in exploration and production of gas in the Black Sea, while Romanian company voiced its intention to cooperate with SOCAR both on the onshore area of Azerbaijan and on the offshore area in the Caspian Sea as well.

Earlier, Transgaz and SOCAR signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that envisages strengthening cooperation in the gas transportation, studying opportunities to use Romanias potential in the gas transit and distribution at the expense of gas supplies from Azerbaijan, the Caspian region and other promising directions, jointly studying the possibilities of cooperation in the supply and trading of natural gas and LNG in the Romanian market on the basis of long-term contracts and spot trading as part of the AGRI (Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector) project.

AGRI may be considered as additional supply route for the BRUA interconnector.

The participants of the AGRI project are SOCAR, Georgia's Oil and Gas Corporation, as well as MVM (Hungary) and Romgaz (Romania).

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By Trend

Iraq may start exporting oil and oil products to world markets via the Azerbaijani state-owned company SOCAR, Trend reports referring to the Ministry of Energy of Azerbaijan.

The matter was discussed during a meeting held between the Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov and the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban, as part of the 13th meeting of the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC).

The sides also discussed cooperation within the OPEC+ format and the training of Iraqi specialists in the field of oil and gas in Azerbaijan.

Minister Shahbazov told the guest about the ongoing regional and global projects, as well as the activities of the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan, established to manage oil revenues.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, in turn, spoke about his country's success in the oil industry, the recent price trends in the oil market, and Iraqs activities in OPEC. He noted that the modernization and rehabilitation of the oil industry in Iraq are priorities for the government.

The 13th meeting of the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) was held in Baku on March 18. A day before the JMMC meeting, Baku hosted the 27th meeting of the Joint Technical Commission.

Participants of the meeting discussed the current state of the oil market, existing problems and other issues. The event then featured a presentation on the pace of oil market development, and the report of the Joint Technical Commission on production figures for February.

New members of the JMMC were also elected by the end of the event  Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and the UAE.

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Trends exclusive interview with Saudi Arabian Prince Turki Al Faisal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud

Question: How do you assess the current level of economic relations between Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan? What are the ways of even more improving those relations?

Answer: The current level of economic relations is good but there are more opportunities to explore. The creation of the Saudi-Azerbaijani Joint Committee in 2001 helped in contributing to the bilateral relations. In 2018, the trade between Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan was only $20,000,000. The vision of 2030 puts an emphasis in developing the areas that involve tourism, agriculture, food Security, health care, and sports.

Earlier this month (March 2019) in Baku, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan signed a protocol on expanding the economic and trade investments between Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and Azerbaijani Minister of Finance. Signing this protocol will take Saudi-Azerbaijani relations to a higher level of cooperation.

Q.: Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia are both oil rich countries with great experience in this sphere. How could the two countries cooperate for the benefit of each other for even more boosting their oil and gas industry? How can the two countries benefit from each other in this sphere?

A.: The vision of 2030 pays special attention to the energy sector. Both countries can benefit in the fields of refining; expanding petrochemical products for the world market; the expansion of relations between Saudi Aramco and SOCAR; renewable energy investments; research in energy efficiency.

Q.: Both Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan are participants of the OPEC+ deal to curb the oil output to maintain the oil market balance. How do you assess Azerbaijan's role in this agreement?

A.: Besides being a powerhouse in OPEC, Saudi Arabia always played a major role in stabilizing the oil market and accommodating the global demands of international consumers and protecting the interests of OPEC members. The Kingdom built a reputation for unmatched reliability in supplying crude oil to energy markets around the world. Like other non-OPEC oil producers countries, Azerbaijan's partnership with the OPEC members to end a three-year supply glut that has savaged crude prices and the global energy industry will be beneficial for all parties and this agreement will open new venues for collaboration.

Q.: How do you in general assess the effectiveness of this deal in keeping the market balance?

A.: Capitalizing on the size and quality of our reserves, our expertise in exploration and recovery, and our state-of-the-art, Saudi Arabia along with its OPEC+ counterparts will manage to balance the energy market effectively and efficiently. The deal is an extension of our previous commitment to maintain equilibrium in the market and providing an attractive and profitable price for the consumers.

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By Trend

Last week, 52 transactions were registered at the State Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange of Turkmenistan, Trend reports referring to the exchange.

Businessmen from the UK, the UAE, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of the PRC) purchased hydrotreated diesel fuel, gasoline, diesel fuel, and heavy vacuum gas oil.

In addition, colorless sheet glass, Portland cement, cotton and mixed yarn were sold to businessmen from Russia, the UAE, Turkey, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The total amount of transactions exceeded $87,416,000.

Businesses and organizations of all ownership forms, residents of Turkmenistan and other countries can participate in the exchange trading by acquisition of a broker place or signing of service contract with exchange brokers.

Petrochemicals, cotton fiber, local textile and chemical production are the main exports.

Prices for some products put up for auction change daily and are set according to international quotations  for cotton in accordance with the Liverpool news agency "Cotton Outlook" and for petroleum products in accordance with S&P Global Platts.

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By Trend

INSTEX, the special financial mechanism formed between Iran and the EU, does not fully reflect transparency, Iranian MP Ahmad Alirezabeigi told Tasnim News Agency, Trend reports.

According to Alirezabeigi, this financial mechanism is incomplete and is an opportunity open for the time being, and this will not solve Irans problem.

"Restricting the country to a financial mechanism set by Europe for Iran goes against the Islamic Republic's national interests," he said.

The Iranian MP said that this could lead to alarming security problems for Iran in the future.

Alirezabeigi noted that, according to this financial mechanism, Iran's revenues from oil exports to Europe will be collected in the INSTEX account, adding that food and medical products will be purchased from European countries with that revenue.

"In other words, this mechanism is a barter of oil with products," Alirezabeigi said.

In late January 2019, the European signatories of the JCPOA (namely the UK, France and Germany) have officially announced the establishment of INSTEX, a special financial mechanism formed with Iran for backing the said agreement.

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By Abdul Kerimkhanov

Expanding multidimensional cooperation and strengthening mutually beneficial relations with Pakistan is one of the main directions of Tajik foreign policy.

The trade and economic opportunities of Pakistan, its geostrategic position and influence in South Asia and the Islamic world is important for Tajikistan.

Tajik businessmen call on their Pakistani counterparts to expand trade and thus achieve a tenfold increase in Tajik-Pakistani turnover.

Investors and businessmen from Tajikistan are interested in the incentives offered by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, which will help the two countries increase bilateral trade to $ 500 million, according to the Pakistani edition The Express Tribune.

The head of the Union for the Development of the Private Sector of Tajikistan, Faizali Rajabov, expressed the desire to develop trade with Pakistan.

At a meeting in Islamabad with the business community of Pakistan, Rajabov said that Tajikistan and Pakistan have enormous potential for expanding trade, creating joint ventures and investments in various areas.

He called on Pakistani businessmen and investors to be more active in promoting business relations with their Tajik counterparts since the countries have something to strive for mutual cooperation.

Rajabov stressed that Pakistan can export many goods to Tajikistan, including furniture, sugar, textiles and cement. He asked Pakistani exporters to make efforts to seize the opportunities.

He noted that investors from China and other countries are actively participating in the Tajik market, insisting that Pakistani investors should also focus on Tajikistan in order to gain access to the huge market of Central Asia.

Diplomatic relations between Tajikistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan were established on June 6, 1992.

According to official statistics of Tajikistan, the volume of bilateral Tajik-Pakistan trade in 2018 amounted to $ 62 million. More than $ 52 million in trade between the two countries is the import of Pakistani products in Tajikistan.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, more than 500 Pakistani students have been trained in higher educational institutions of Tajikistan.

During this period, Tajikistan and Pakistan signed more than 30 agreements, memorandums of understanding and other official documents.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

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Trot Insider has learned that pacing mare Tall In The Saddle has passed away at the age of 28.

A well-bred daughter of Legal Notice - Sonsamette, a full-sister to the great Sonsam, Tall In The Saddle raced against the likes of Harem Success and Queens Arms in the Ontario Sires Stakes program at two before racing at tracks across the province in conditioned and claiming ranks up until the age of nine.

Making 130 starts, Tall In The Saddle posted a career summary of 11-21-19 while earning $75,185 and taking a mark of 1:58.3 at Hanover Raceway at the age of seven. As a broodmare, Tall In The Saddle produced Imitandthatsthat, a son of Fit For Life that banked $64,984 and took a mark of 1:54.1 at Windsor Raceway.

"She enjoyed her racing career until we retired her in 2000," said owner Patrick Denomme. "She spent her retirement on our farm in Woodslee and we enjoyed everyday we had with her."

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the connections of Tall In The Saddle.
By Leman Mammadova

The Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AzTA) and the Uzbek Tourism Training Center will jointly prepare tourist guides with international status.

AzTA and Uzbekistan's Tourism Training Center agreed to train professional guides with international status in both countries, the Association told Trend.

This agreement was reached during the meeting of the chairman of the Association Nahid Bagirov with the delegation of Uzbek Tourism Training Center headed by director of the Center Elena Golisheva.

The visit of the Uzbek delegation to Azerbaijan was aimed at the mutual exchange of information, the mutual acquaintance with the methodology of training for the preparation of guides conducted in two countries, training programs and schedules for conducting training courses in both countries, as well as an agreement on joint training sessions.

Azerbaijan enjoys a great potential for the development of tourism. Nature, climate, historical monuments, cuisine, rich culture of the people and other factors lay the foundation for the development of many areas of tourism. There are wide opportunities for Azerbaijan to be recognized as a tourist destination in the world.

Azerbaijan is among the developing countries in the field of tourism, occupying the 39th place among 148 countries in terms of global competitiveness in tourism.

It is noteworthy that in 2018, as many as 2,849,600 tourists from 196 countries arrived in Azerbaijan, showing a 5.7 percent increase compared to 2017.

According to the State Statistics Committee, 30.9 percent came from Russia, 21.4 percent from Georgia, 10.2 percent from Turkey, 8.5 percent from Iran, 3.3 percent from the United Arab Emirates, 2.6 percent from Saudi Arabia, 2.4 percent from Iraq, 2 percent from Ukraine, 1.4 percent from Israel, 17.2 percent - citizens of other countries, 0.1 percent - stateless persons.

In 2018, there was a significant increase in the number of visitors from the Gulf countries (excluding the United Arab Emirates and Iran).

In January 2019, 191,600 foreigners and stateless people from 143 countries visited Azerbaijan (a 2.9 percent increase compared to January 2018).

The largest increase in foreign tourists is observed among those arriving from Georgia with an increase of 22 percent. Other markets where significant growth was achieved are South Asia and Central Asia. The number of tourists from these regions increased by 60.9 percent and 35.4 percent respectively.

Uzbekistan is located in the "heart" of Central Asia and has tremendous opportunities in the field of tourism. The country has 7,300 cultural heritage sites, which is more than 90 percent of all historical monuments in the region. More than 500 of them are included in tourist routes.

The implementation of a large number of activities contributed to a sharp increase in the attractiveness of Uzbekistan for tourists.

If in 2017, as many as 2.6 million tourists entered Uzbekistan, in 2018 their total number increased to 5.3 million (a 99 percent increase). By 2025, it is expected that the number of tourists will increase to 9 million.

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Leman Mammadova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888

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Meghan Mahowald, known professionally as MEGG, said she hopes to make the event an annual tradition, with proceeds going to a different local foundation every year.
Port Arthur could announce its choice for city manager in less than a week.

The City Council met in executive session for more than an hour Tuesday to discuss, among other issues, city manager duties.

When four members of the council emerged, Mayor Derrick Freeman said they had not yet made a choice on a city manager candidate. He said the council instead had a spirited debate on duties for the next manager.

Freeman said he anticipates hell have an announcement regarding the position at the councils Tuesday meeting.

The council interviewed four finalists in late February. The finalists were chosen from a pool of 17 applicants from states including Texas, Colorado, Washington and Florida.

The four finalists most recently or currently work in Flint, Michigan; OFallon, Missouri; and Floresville; while Hani Tohme is the citys Director of Public Services.

The city has been without a permanent manager since Brian McDougal resigned from the position in November 2017.

The city manager is responsible for 650 employees and an annual budget of $141 million, acts as the chief executive officer for the city and carries out City Council priorities.

kaitlin.bain@beaumontenterprise.com

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With at least $23.6 billion in new industrial projects announced so far this year, Southeast Texas is proving the value of being in the right place at the right time.

Natural gas production in Texas grew almost 1 trillion cubic feet last year, the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association reports, driven by continued advances in fracking technology and horizontal drilling. The state leads the country in production.

That production has meant a wealth of feedstock gases for chemical companies and manufacturers  and that growth hasnt been limited to domestic markets.

Hector Rivero, president of the Texas Chemical Council, said his association has watched the U.S. change from the most expensive place to manufacture to one of the cheapest thanks to increased gas production, and now companies are betting on serious export projects.

If the abundance and availability of low-cost natural gas continues, there is a great opportunity for the export of natural gas, Rivero said. Its like the old Blue Bell commercials: Eat what you can and sell the rest.

Thanks in part to its access to some of the largest producing shale fields and existing transportation infrastructure, Southeast Texas is primed to become the home to a natural gas export hub, Rivero said.

There are natural gas operations spread across Texas, but production numbers are still led by the Eagle Ford Shale, Barnett Shale and Permian Basin fields, now tied to Southeast Texas by a dedicated distribution system.

Houston-based American Ethane announced in January that it would be using Martin Midstreams in Beaumont to house an ethane terminal project aimed at supplying about $72 billion in gas to China for its plastics and chemical industry.

If its permits are granted by China, it would be the first U.S. company to export ethane to that country.

Golden Pass LNG, through a joint-venture between Exxon Mobil and Qatar Petroleum, followed in February with a final investment decision to create a $10 billion export facility at its Sabine Pass plant by 2024.

As a facility originally created to import natural gas from the Middle East before the production boom, Rivero said, Golden Pass LNG exemplifies an industry adapting to the new market situation.

Sempra Energy recently got a step closer to opening a two-unit Port Arthur LNG facility after the federal government granted it a positive environmental impact statement in January. It also plans to build three LNG export terminals in Texas, Louisiana and Mexico that will ship 45 million metric tons of the natural gas per year.

Construction is already underway at Sempras Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana.

Rivero said the chemical council is currently tracking 90 projects in Texas expected to create 150,000 jobs.

The new wave of terminal projects comes at a time when parts of Southeast Texas are slipping in oil and gas employment.

The Beaumont-Port Arthur Metropolitan Area is still in the top 25 regions with the most oil and gas jobs in the nation, but dropped to the No. 22 spot, behind Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana, in 2018 after losing 480 jobs, according to the 2019 TIPRO industry report. That is 6 percent of the regions available jobs in oil and gas.

The region didnt make the top 25 list for wages in the oil and gas industry.

With the supply of feedstock gases also enticing the manufacturing side of the chemical industry, investments are cropping up in parts of Southeast Texas that have been off the radar for the oil industry for some time.

In January, Chevron Phillips confirmed that Orange County was a finalist on an undisclosed list of locations being considered for a future ethylene plant. The company has said it would represent an investment of more than $5 billion over its lifetime.

The company last week confirmed the plant would employ from 300 to 500 people, adding to the 200-plus workforce at the existing plant in Orange.

In a statement to The Enterprise on Wednesday, representatives from Chevron Phillips said it had formed a research team to look at chemical production for foreign markets as a result of increased natural gas production in Texas.

We remain very encouraged by the fundamentals supporting an additional petrochemical investment in the U.S. Gulf Coast, the company said. The availability of competitive feedstocks in the region and growing worldwide demand for our products appear to support such an initiative.

Rivero said the regions proximity to a gas network was helpful, but there were also logistical and resource needs that chemical companies have to meet. Again, he said, Southeast Texas might be a place to be.

Obviously, shale natural gas is a key factor, he said. But other key components are considered for this investment. We need natural gas, we need quality transportation infrastructure and we need a supply of water for our processes. Southeast Texas is uniquely situated to do that.

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

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Officials are looking for a man responsible for the armed robbery of a Hamshire Quick Mart in Jefferson County Monday afternoon, according to information from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

At approximately 3:19 p.m. officials responded to a call in reference to an aggravated robbery at the convenience store in the 24000 block of Texas 73 and Englin Road.
The plume of smoke coming from a petrochemical fire in Deer Park is now visible across the Houston area.

The smoke, which has been billowing from the facility for more than 24 hours, is also starting to show up on weather radar images, according to a tweet for Meteorologist Jeff Lindner.
The latest chemical to cause concern at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. facility in Deer Park is benzene, which was detected at elevated levels early Thursday morning and prompted shelter-in-place alerts.

The benzene release comes after a massive fire burned through the tank farm for three days and created a miles-long plume of smoke visible throughout the Houston area. The fire was extinguished Wednesday, but officials previously warned of the possibility of other chemical exposure in the area.

RELATED: Shelter-in-place alert issued for Deer Park after elevated benzene levels detected

Fire officials said benzene leaked out from a foam blanket smothering the tank farm in Deer Park. ITC officials added that the benzene levels "are below those that represent an immediate risk." Cities were advised to shelter in place as a precaution, officials said.

According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Benzene is made mostly from petroleum and is used to make Styrofoam, synthetic fibers, rubbers and pesticides, among other substances.

RESIDENTS WARNED TO STAY INDOORS: What does it mean to shelter-in-place? Here are the necessary steps to take

Risks of benzene exposure fluctuates depending on the concentration. Short-term health effects of concentrated exposure include dizziness, nausea, headaches, drowsiness, tremors and loss of consciousness, according to a report from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.

Continuing exposure can lead to "permanent suppression of bone marrow functioning so that few new blood cells are formed, a condition known as aplastic anemia," the report said.

Other chemicals that burned in the fire include Naphtha and Xylene, two components used in gasoline. The fire eventually spread to more tanks, one of which was storing Toluene, a chemical used in nail polish remover, glues and paint thinner.

The fire affected up to eight tanks at one time. While air quality levels were listed as "good" or "moderate" in the Houston area for much of the fire, health officials warn of side effects from exposure to these chemicals.

DEER PARK PLANT FIRE: Officials say it could last for days

Naphtha can irritate the nose and throat when breathed, and poisonous gases are produced when naphtha is exposed to fire, according to earlier reports in the Houston Chronicle.

Luke Metzger, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Environment Texas, previously told the Chronicle that Naphtha can cause headaches, dizziness nausea and vomiting in the short term. Long-term side effects include risk of cancer and risk to the nervous system, he said.

Xylene exposure produces similar side effects, including including headaches, dizziness, confusion and change in one's sense of balance, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease registry.

Exposure to Xylene at very high levels can cause unconsciousness and, in some cases, death, according to the registry.

HOW TO FILE A CLAIM: ITC sets up hotline to cover damages of Deer Park fire

Toluene's short-term side effects also include confusion, headaches and dizziness. Weakness, memory loss and nausea can also occur, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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In the long-term, Toluene can cause brain damage, as well as damage to the kidneys and liver. Read more about the side effects here.

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Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates visited Google researchers March 18 to share ideas about using artificial intelligence in healthcare, according to CNBC.

Specifically, Mr. Gates talked about using AI and machine learning for predictive medicine when analyzing ultrasounds. With Google, Mr. Gates is working to use AI to diagnose high-risk pregnancies.

Were doing a lot of work with analyzing ultrasounds, and we can do things like sex-blind the output, because were not having anybody actually see the image, Mr. Gates said, according to CNBC. We can tell you whats going on without revealing the gender, which is, of course  when you do that, it drives gendercide.

Although Microsoft and Google are major competitors, Mr. Gates visit demonstrates his interest in the technology trumps his rivalries. Mr. Gates also talked about AI in weapons systems and autonomous vehicles.

More articles on artificial intelligence:

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Most industries embrace the motto "the customer is king." They are acutely aware their success is driven by it. While the complexity of the healthcare business model has made it challenging for provider organizations to adopt such an ethos, the recent rise of consumerism in the industry necessitates that providers prioritize the patient experience if they are to keep their patients happy and their bottom line healthy -- especially when it comes to billing and collections.

In a March 11 webinar, sponsored by Cedar, a patient payment and engagement platform, and hosted by Becker's Hospital Review, Florian Otto, MD, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Cedar, noted that the expectations of the healthcare consumer are shaped by innovation in other industries since "the same patient that visits your entity is also shopping on Amazon or watching Netflix." Consumers expect healthcare to evolve and deliver similar convenience and efficiency.



The biggest drivers of healthcare consumerism over the last decade include the continuously rising cost of care and the proliferation of consumer technology, such as smartphones. The rising cost of care has led to increased enrollment in high-deductible health plans. Consumers are now one of the nation's largest payers and are increasingly looking to make more informed decisions about how and where they receive care. And, with a February 2018 Pew Research Center report showing nearly 80 percent of Americans now owning a smartphone, providers should expect the demand for digital healthcare to continue increasing.

"It is also a common misconception that patients do not want to pay their medical bills. Most do want to pay," Mr. Otto said. "But the process is so complicated and cumbersome, many do not end up paying."



Thus, the current system is not working for patients or providers. Patients become frustrated with the billing process or confused by the bills, and when they do not pay, they suffer financial repercussions (i.e. low credit scores). This leads to low patient satisfaction. Patients often take to Yelp or other websites to express their frustration.



For providers, patient collections become a difficult and expensive endeavor. They also face bad debt from non-payments and may even suffer collateral damage from negative word-of-mouth or reviews.



"We need to be patient-centric," Mr. Otto said. "We need to do what helps a patient reduce stress when [they receive] a bill, making it transparent. We need to be where the patient is, and last but not least, we need to have consumer-friendly technologies."



Strategies for making the billing process more consumer-centric

Raj Mehra, head of strategy and operations, and Tiffany Jackson, director of patient and user success at Cedar, laid out three strategies healthcare organizations can employ to ensure they are putting the patient first as they design billing processes.



1. Understand the entire patient journey. It is important for providers to acknowledge the entire spectrum of care, paying close attention to pain points, Ms. Jackson said. The billing experience is often the final point of contact between the patient and provider, so it is critical to make a lasting positive impression. Complex bills, complicated jargon and confusing insurance breakdowns are some of the pain points that can cause patient satisfaction to drop.



"Throughout my many years of providing support and guidance to patients across the country, I've heard countless times 'my service was excellent, but the billing experience was not on the same level," Ms. Jackson said.



She suggested providers can better understand patient financial experience by thinking about what they value as consumers. Then, after identifying pain points, leaders can determine a path to optimization for each point.



2. Digitize and personalize the patient experience. The lack of self-service options and patient-centric technology in healthcare can frustrate patients, especially since they're used to encountering that technology in other industries, Mr. Mehra said.



Starbucks, for example, uses machine learning to look at engagement patterns and offers consumers incentives and discounts based on those patterns. Similarly, Amazon looks at previous purchase behaviors and searches to adapt each experience to the individual consumer.



"In healthcare, we can do something similar," Mr. Mehra said. "Each patient has a different experience in mind for how they want to interface with the healthcare system. Some patients may like to receive emails and interface through their desktop. Others may use text messages. Some patients may need larger fonts and messaging that eludes to payment plans."



Mr. Mehra said providers should take a look at their current process to determine if it matches up with other industries. They can also consider partnering with a third party to implement a customized technology solution and conduct a pilot program to see if it works well for their organization.



3. Provide convenient, on-demand support. Patients want answers to their questions as soon as possible, and technology can help deliver these answers in a more timely fashion. Tools such as live chat provide immediate support, with a level of human interaction patients desire.



Ms. Jackson suggested that providers need to listen to their patients regarding their preferred methods of communication and support. Research on-demand support innovation in other industries and consider investing in real-time support technology to better meet patients needs.



Putting winning strategies to practice: Maimonides Medical Center

Cedar worked with New York City-based Maimonides Medical Center, a $2 billion academic medical center, to improve its billing processes by modernizing its largely paper-based billing system.



Cedar helped Maimonides identify processes that could be automated with the Cedar patient payment and engagement platform. They also worked side by side with Maimonides to train the staff and support team. The pilot program yielded results within three months and was subsequently rolled out across the medical center.



Post-implementation, Maimonides saw a 97 percent patient satisfaction rate as well as a 75 percent increase in collections. Additionally, 50 percent of patients engaged with the technology without using the call center, suggesting they were able to easily understand the digital interface.

Looking ahead: The sky's the limit

In terms of consumer experience, healthcare is where airlines were a decade ago. Today, airlines work to improve the consumer experience before and after the flight, shifting to mobile and app-based consumer engagement, said Mr. Otto; however, the experience on the actual flight has not changed much.



In healthcare, it's the opposite: Clinical care delivery has made huge progress, while the experience before and after receiving care has remained stagnant.



"After discharge, the billing and transparency nightmare begins," Mr. Otto said. "Satisfaction drops and confusion increases, making it overall a pretty poor experience. We definitely want to get healthcare where the airlines are now on consumer engagement before and after the point of service."

The potential for improvement in the end-to-end patient experience is not so far off if providers continue to optimize for patient needs. Healthcare's 'new boss' is standing by.



To learn more about Cedar, click here, and view the full webinar here.






As federal lawmakers work to reach a consensus on a surprise billing solution, insurers and hospitals are debating the issue.

Eight things to know:

1. Representatives of employees, large and small American businesses, health insurance providers and brokers sent a letter March 18 urging congressional leaders to act this year to pass legislation that will protect patients from surprise medical bills and reign in rising healthcare costs.

2. The letter  which was signed by nearly 20 groups, including Americas Health Insurance Plans and BlueCross BlueShield Association  said surprise billing legislation should protect patients by banning physicians from sending such bills to patients in situations of emergency, involuntary care, or situations where the patient was unable to choose their provider.

3. It also advocates for requiring that facilities notify patients of whether their physician is in the insurance company's network and potential options for receiving care from a different provider, without requiring patients to agree to out-of-network care.

4. Authors of the letter said surprise billing legislation should set reimbursement rates that won't increase premiums or affect access to care "by basing amounts on market rates determined by reasonable, contracted amounts paid by health insurance providers to similar doctors in a geographic area or a percentage of Medicare."

5. The authors said legislation should also make sure these protections apply to all health plans, including self-funded plans.

6. The letter opposes using arbitration processes that can keep patients in the middle of disputes between the service provider and insurer and result in higher coverage costs.

7. Commenting on the letter, AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack and Federation of American Hospitals President and CEO Chip Kahn said, "Beyond protecting patients and ensuring adequate health plan provider networks, it is essential that insurers and providers of care retain the ability to negotiate appropriate payment rates. Not only is it a dangerous precedent for the government to start setting rates in the private sector, but it could also create unintended consequences for patients by disrupting incentives for health plans to create comprehensive networks."

8. Six national healthcare groups, including the AHA and the FAH, last month penned their own letter to Congress outlining principles for lawmakers to consider amid their efforts to eliminate surprise billing.

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Glens Falls (N.Y.) Hospital has reached a settlement with Cerner over losses it sustained when Cerner's billing system did not work, according to The Post-Star.

Five things to know:

1. Glens Falls Hospital President and CEO Dianne Shugrue announced the settlement in an ad in The Post-Star. However, the ad didn't include the terms of the settlement or when it was reached.

2. The hospital ran the ad after The Post-Star published a report detailing "collection issues" the hospital experienced after implementing a new Cerner billing system in November 2016.

3. According to an audit report cited by The Post-Star, Glens Falls Hospital was unable to collect on $16.3 million in bills in 2016, and that number rose to $54 million in 2017. The auditors attributed $38 million of the increase to "collection issues" caused by the switch to Cerner.

4. The hospital's ad said the billing problems lasted for two years. "It was a serious, short-term issue and it's fixed," Ms. Shugrue said in the ad. Ms. Shugrue told The Post-Star the terms of the hospital's settlement with Cerner are confidential. She said both parties were satisfied by the settlement.

5. Regarding the settlement, a Cerner spokesperson issued the following statement to Becker's: "The hospital remains a valued partner. The matter was previously resolved. We continue to work together to provide care to the community."

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At least 50 staff members from Chicago-based Northwestern Memorial Hospital have been fired for improperly viewing Jussie Smolletts medical records, according to NBC Chicago.

One employee said she was fired on the spot. Simply put, it was morbid curiosity, the former employee told NBC Chicago. I went into the charting system and started to search his name. I clicked just once. I never clicked into his chart.

Another nurse was fired after her shift Feb. 26. She claimed to have never accessed the actors records and had simply scrolled past them.

Mr. Smollett came to Northwestern Memorial Hospital Jan. 29, claiming he was assaulted by two men. The hospital declined to comment on the employment status of personnel.
Traverse City, Mich.-based Munson Medical Center and nurses represented by the Michigan Nurses Association have reached a tentative agreement.

The three-year agreement includes staffing protections, mandatory overtime limits and raises to recruit and retain nurses, according to a union news release. Nurses must still ratify the agreement.

"This is a huge achievement, not just for us, but for our community as a whole," said James Walker, RN. "We formed a union so that we could make sure our patients always come first. By winning language that protects safe staffing and limits the use of forced overtime, we are excited to have taken a major step toward this goal."

Munson Medical Center said in a statement that it was also pleased an agreement was reached and hopes nurses accept the deal.

"We feel strongly that the tentative agreement takes into account what is best for our entire healthcare team, our patients and our community, and affirms that Munson Medical Center is a great place to work," the statement reads.

The union plans to publicly share more details of the agreement later and said a vote to ratify the agreement will be scheduled soon.

More articles on human capital and risk:

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The New York City Hospital Alliance has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the New York State Nurses Association, after the union announced an April 2 strike.

The alliance  which represents Mount Sinai Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Mount Sinai West/St. Luke's Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center  alleges that the union engaged in bad-faith bargaining in violation of the National Labor Relations Act.

The union "has failed and refused to bargain collectively and in good faith with the NYC Hospital Alliance and its member hospitals concerning terms of a new collective bargaining agreement by preconditioning negotiations over nurse staffing issues on the alliance's acceptance in principle of mandatory staffing ratios; and serving a 10-day strike notice on March 18, 2019, and threatening to strike on Apri1 2, 2019, in furtherance of NYSNA's unlawful position regarding staffing ratios," the alliance charged.

On March 18, unionized registered nurses in New York City revealed the strike plans at Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian locations.

The union said nurses are striking because hospitals will not hire enough bedside caregivers, which forces nurses to care for up to 19 patients at one time and negatively affects patients.

Staffing has been a sticking point in negotiations. The union has supported mandated staffing ratios, while an alliance spokesperson said the group instead supports "a patient-first approach to staffing that is built on tailored, flexible staffing plans  designed by experienced nurses."

The alliance spokesperson encouraged union leadership to return to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith "to significantly increase nurses' salaries, fully fund their benefits, and improve hospitals' tailored, flexible staffing plans to provide the best patient care."

Editor's note: Becker's has contacted the union for an updated comment and will post more details as they become available.

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Aetna will close its mail-order prescription delivery location in Plantation, Fla., resulting in 106 layoffs, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The decision is part of the insurer's consolidation with CVS Health, Aetna spokesperson Anjie Coplin told the newspaper. Aetna and CVS closed their merger last November.

The affected employees will lose their jobs by May 13. The move will affect several positions, including pharmacy technicians, accounts receivable analysts, operations managers and pharmacists.
Republican-led states are ramping up their efforts alongside President Donald Trump's administration to implement Medicaid changes including work requirements, block grants and drug testing, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Seven things to know:

1. While the ACA's Medicaid expansion decreased the nation's uninsured rate because more people became eligible for coverage, it has its critics.Those who have criticized the federal health law argue Medicaid expansion has pressured state budgets and benefited people who could instead get insurance through jobs, according to the report. More than 30 states and Washington, D.C., have expanded Medicaid.

2. President Trump's $4.75 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2020 would end Medicaid expansion funding. It would also nationally mandate work requirements as a condition of Medicaid coverage and proposes allowing states to receive fixed federal block grants or per capita caps for Medicaid spending, WSJ reports. States would also have flexibility to make Medicaid changes.

3. Meanwhile, at least 15 states have approved or have pending waiver applications for implementing Medicaid work requirements. They are:

Alabama

Arkansas

Arizona

Indiana

Kentucky

Michigan

Mississippi

New Hampshire

Ohio

Oklahoma

South Dakota

Tennessee

Wisconsin

Virginia

Utah

4. In Tennessee, lawmakers also are seeking permission to shift the state's federal Medicaid funding to a capped grant, according to WSJ.

5. In Utah, lawmakers reportedly are seeking federal approval for partial Medicaid expansion with an eventual fixed, per capita federal funding level for new Medicaid enrollees. Utah voters approved full Medicaid expansion in November, but lawmakers in February approved a Republican bill that would draw back the expansion to people who make up to 100 percent of the poverty line.

6. In Kentucky, lawmakers have considered requiring Medicaid enrollees with criminal or substance-abuse histories to pass drug tests to receive benefits, according to WSJ.

7. Proposed Medicaid changes have received pushback from Democrats as well as legal challenges. For instance, a district judge in Washington, D.C., recently heard oral arguments on lawsuits challenging the federal approval of work requirements in Arkansas and Kentucky, according to WSJ. Arkansas was the first state to impose work requirements.
Eli Lilly received a tax abatement worth $7 million over the next 10 years with the Indianapolis City-County Council's approval, according to The Indianapolis Business Journal.

The council, in a 19-6 vote, approved Eli Lilly's request. Eli Lilly has pledged to spend $91 million renovating its Lilly Technology Center in the city. The updated building will house insulin production operations.

Eli Lilly also won a $9.3 million tax abatement in 2017, in exchange for investing $159 million in other insulin manufacturing operations.

Angela Smith-Jones, Indianapolis deputy mayor of economic development, told The IBJ that Eli Lilly's presence in the area "absolutely pays more than whatever the abatement benefit is in a dollar amount."

Those in opposition of the abatement raised concerns that the tax decrease isn't being given in exchange for additional jobs.

Read the full report here.
In the latest blow to the philanthropic image cultivated by the founding family of Purdue Pharma, the National Portrait Gallery in London will not move forward with a $1.3 million pledge from a charitable organization overseen by some members of the Sackler family, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The London gallery had been reviewing the 2016 pledge from the organization, and decided March 19 that it will not proceed with obtaining the funding. The money was intended for the gallery's Inspiring People project.

"It has become evident that recent reporting of allegations made against Sackler family members may cause this new donation to deflect the National Portrait Gallery from its important work. The allegations against family members are vigorously denied, but to avoid being a distraction for the NPG, we have decided not to proceed at this time with the donation," a representative for the trust said in a statement on the gallery's website.

This is the latest blow to the philanthropic image of the Sackler family amid allegations that Purdue Pharma fueled the opioid crisis. Last month, Columbia University in New York City announced its not accepting donations from Sackler-related entities. Tufts University and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston are also reviewing their policies and ties to the Sackler family. The Sacklers have donated to numerous healthcare and art institutions in the last two decades.

Purdue Pharma is currently facing hundreds of lawsuits over the company's alleged role in fueling the U.S. opioid crisis.

Read the full report here.
A Massachusetts woman filed a lawsuit against Providence, R.I.-based Women & Infants Hospital in January, claiming the hospital stored one of her embryos without her knowledge for 13 years, reports The Providence Journal.

After having her first child, Marisa Cloutier-Bristol underwent an in vitro fertilization treatment at Women & Infants in 2004. A physician told Ms. Cloutier-Bristol she produced four embryos, but all were abnormal and would not lead to viable pregnancies.

"At that point [the physician], we thought, was just going to discard [the embryos] because I was not having an input back," Ms. Cloutier-Bristol told The Providence Journal. "She never told me that she was going to freeze anything."

Ms. Cloutier-Bristol's first husband died of a heart attack in 2006. In late 2008, Ms. Cloutier-Bristol returned to Women's & Infants to try IVF treatment again with her current husband. The hospital did not mention it had one of her embryos in storage.

Ms. Cloutier-Bristol learned of the frozen embryo in 2017 when Women & Infants sent her a letter saying she had to pay a $500 storage fee for the embryo. She claims in the lawsuit that the hospital's negligence took away her chance of having another child and caused severe emotional distress. The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages from the hospital.

Women & Infants spokesperson Amy Blustein declined to comment to The Providence Journal on Ms. Cloutier-Bristol's specific case, citing privacy laws. However, she shared the following statement:

"Our approach to care is guided by comprehensive policies and procedures that evolve as our services, technology and the needs of our patients change. We maintain a commitment to open and honest communication with all patients about all aspects of their fertility treatment."
North Charleston, S.C.-based Trident Medical Center's Sabino D'Agostino, DO, performed robotic spinal surgery on 91-year-old Julia Tourtellotte  and performed a dance with the patient just months later, Live 5 News reports.

What you should know:

1. Ms. Tourtellotte, who teaches clogging at her local senior center, met with Dr. D'Agostino, a neurosurgeon, after she began experiencing pain in her leg. He operated on her spine.

2. Ms. Tourtellotte returned to the hospital a few months after her surgery, accompanied by her daughter and friends, to dance with D'Agostino. Click here to view the video on YouTube.

3. Dr. Sabino performed the first minimally invasive robotic surgery at Trident Medical Center.

4. Dr. D'Agostino told Live 5 News Ms. Tourtellotte's recovery was spectacular. "If she was a 35-year-old person or a 91-year-old person, she is doing wonderful," he said. "So we're here to honestly celebrate her and her accomplishment."

5. Ms. Tourtellotte has been doing physical therapy exercises and is no longer experiencing pain. She has plans to travel to Tennessee for a clogging trip.
A retail unit currently occupied by a restaurant in an apartment block in Belfast's Custom House Square has gone on the market for 370,000.

The unit is occupied by Cafe on the Square, which is unaffected by the sale.

The unit, which is being sold as an investment, was developed by DASC Construction, based in England.

It's let on a 10-year-lease, with a tenant-only break option at the end of the seventh year.

Selling agents Lambert Smith Hampton described the site as an "attractive retail unit, fitted out to a high standard".

There is an initial rent of 30,000 per annum paid by the tenant.

In the brochure, Lambert Smith Hampton said the property benefits from close proximity to Cathedral Quarter - "the city's premier destination for bars, restaurants, hotels and city living".

"A dynamic mix of occupiers, against the backdrop of some of the city's oldest and most beautiful streets and buildings sets the location apart as one of Belfast's most exciting places to work, visit and live," it adds.

The brochure also outlines how close it is to corporate occupiers such as law firms Allen & Overy and Tughans, Grafton Recruitment and Royal Mail, as well as the proximity of the new Ulster University campus.

"There are a number of public car parks in the locality and excellent road infrastructure provides easy access to the motorway network, which is around 0.5 miles from the property," it says.

"Customs House is a key link between the Cathedral Quarter, city centre and The Waterfront/Titanic Quarters."

The brochure describes Custom House Square as one of the premier apartment blocks in the city, with a "marble, stone-rendered and wooden-decked facade" complimenting the building's "iconic" appearance. The brochure adds that the unit measures 2,238 sq ft and also comes with one car parking space in the underground car park.

"The original design allows for sub-division into two retail units in the future if so required or other uses subject to planning."

Cafe on the Square is the first tenant of the ground floor unit of Custom House Square, although the apartment block opened in 2009.

Speaking when the restaurant opened last year, DASC Construction director Shane Corr said: "DASC Construction has successfully delivered many developments similar to Cafe on the Square right across the UK, and we believe there is a real gap in the market for an eatery of this quality to land in the area.

"We wanted to make a positive contribution to the area, not only for the residents in the Custom House Square residence development, but also for local businesses, students and tourists who find themselves within close proximity to the cafe every day."
South Bank Squares Seamus Gillan is behind the plans for Ballyoan

The north west of Northern Ireland is to get its biggest ever housing development in a 100m investment to build 800 new homes.

The plan by South Bank Square Ltd at Ballyoan, beside Crescent Link in Londonderry, is expected to bring 90 jobs in construction.

And the project is tipped to be approved by Derry City and Strabane District Council in a meeting next week.

The outline planning application recommended for approval by council planning officers comprises detached and semi-detached homes, as well as townhouses and apartments.

Councillors are expected to rubber-stamp the plans at a special meeting of the planning committee next Monday.

According to the developer, the construction of the homes will create and sustain employment for 90 full-time staff over the 10 years it's expected to take to complete the project.

It's the latest mammoth housing project in Northern Ireland, and follows Hagan Homes' plans for 900 houses at Enler Village in Comber.

Seamus Gillan, the owner of South Bank Square Ltd, said: "We are delighted to have received a recommendation for approval from the city planners.

"This is a unique site and a significant development for the Derry city region that will deliver much-needed quality family homes in a neighbourhood environment.

"We very much welcome the support we have received from the council, local community [and] elected representatives, and the significant progress that has been made to bring forward our development plans to this stage."

He said that if approval is secured, proposals for phase one of the site will be put forward, with the company hoping to get detailed planning permission to start development straight away.

As well as the new homes, the plan also includes play and recreation areas and some commercial space.

Mr Gillan added: "Throughout the process we have enjoyed very constructive and positive feedback from the council planners, statutory consultees, elected representatives and local residents.

"We very much welcome this support and we look forward to this new development being our first major investment in the city."

As well as his housebuilding, Mr Gillan is also known as director of BSG Civil Engineering Ltd. The Maghera-based business is a major contractor for Northern Ireland Water.

In its latest accounts for 2017, BSG reported turnover of 29.3m and pre-tax profits of 2.9m.

Brian Kelly, a director of Turley - the planner for South Bank Square - said: "In recent years there have been few developments with the ability to develop housing of this scale and investment, and if approved this will be a welcome boost for the north west economy and for home-buyers seeking quality family homes in the city.

"We are grateful for the effort from council planners and statutory agencies."
US forklift firm Hyster-Yale is set to embark on a 5m expansion at its Craigavon factory amid a huge growth in warehousing across the UK and Europe.

The US-owned group has been given the green light by Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council to extend its factory on Charlestown Road at Carn - already the biggest of the few remaining forklift manufacturing plants - by 61,000 sq ft.

The company has been manufacturing forklifts in the Co Armagh town since 1981 and now employs 670 people at its 40-acre site.

It says it needs additional space at the plant to manufacture a new line of forklift trucks.

Hyster-Yale said the expansion will likely translate into new jobs at the factory, with a direct and indirect economic windfall, adding that the investment will help secure employment at the major Craigavon facility.

The Craigavon plant is already capable of manufacturing over 100 forklifts per day, with over 15,000 units expected to be built this year.

The company's primary market is Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with the market continuing to grow.

Its workforce continues to grow as well, with the firm adding 100 new staff in the last three years.

But despite the size of its EU market, the company has consistently declined to comment on the issue of Brexit.

Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Manufacturing NI, said the worldwide growth in warehousing is driving demand for modern forklift trucks.

"Hyster-Yale is benefiting from the huge growth in warehousing not just in the UK but across Europe and beyond. They also see a chance to increase market share from competitors," he said.

"Portadown is an exceptionally well-run facility through their plant manager Jim Downey (left) and this latest investment comes on the back of introducing more technology on site, including robotic production lines, proving that automating and introducing innovative work practices can increase headcount as well as productivity."

In its assessment of Hyster-Yale's plans, a report from Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council's planning department described the factory as the largest of the few forklift truck manufacturing plants remaining in the UK today.

"The plant has been a true success story in Northern Ireland, now employing hundreds of people.

"The work at the Craigavon plant has helped to set the standard for quality in manufacturing processes at Hyster-Yale's plants across the globe."
The Oresund Bridge, which features in Scandanavian drama The Bridge, links Sweden and Denmark

In recent years a Scandinavian crime drama called The Bridge has gained some popularity on British TV. We have also seen a small scale political drama relating to suggestions that serious consideration be given to building a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Here is a high level summary of relevant considerations:

1. Where?

Probably from either the Larne or North Down areas to Portpatrick, a distance of just over 20 miles. The distance from Ballycastle to the Mull of Kintyre is much shorter but the further road travel time to Glasgow is about three hours.

2. Is it do-able?

As a non-engineer I cannot answer that. There are bridges/causeways of about 20 miles in the US and China but the North Channel may be unusual in terms of its depth and roughness of seas.

3. Cost?

One recent estimate is 20bn-plus. As a rough rule, each mile of a "short" suspension bridge costs about 750m but this connection may be unusually difficult. Large infrastructure often has considerable cost over-runs. Improving road (and rail) access to the bridge could easily add another billion.

4. The economic benefits?

Perhaps the main one is that with lower transport costs out of Northern Ireland, we would be able to sell more and hence GDP would be higher.

Research (admittedly very dated) suggests that the cost differential between firms located in Northern Ireland and Scotland is two percentage points.

Assume the bridge could remove that differential and that half of Northern Ireland sales to Great Britain would travel across the bridge and also assume a one-to-one elasticity from lower costs or prices to sales.

All these assumptions are probably optimistic. An increase in Northern Ireland's GDP of about 100m is indicated.

Let's assume that there would be a similar increase based on trade moving in the opposite direction: a gain to GDP in the rest of the UK.

What about reduced travel times for individuals? There are about two million sea passenger journeys between Northern Ireland and Great Britain each year. Let's assume half would use the bridge and each save two hours valued at 20 per hour. That implies an economic gain of 40m.

Recent economic theory has emphasised the advantages of "agglomeration" arising from faster, cheaper transport: bigger and better labour markets and increased networking between firms.

The problem here is geography - having crossed the bridge there is still a two-three hour drive to Glasgow or Edinburgh and even longer to north west England.

The Oresund Bridge, the one featured in the Scandinavian drama The Bridge, may well have facilitated a lot of agglomeration between Sweden and Denmark but it is significant that Copenhagen and Malmo are only 45 minutes apart.

5. Benefits relative to cost

There could be a cost of at least 20bn spread over perhaps 10 years of building. We can perhaps assume a life of the bridge of 50 years: the Forth Road Bridge gave 53 years of service before being downgraded by the Queensferry Crossing in 2017.

It is not clear that the annual economic benefits would reach much above 300m. By implication once the benefits from the more distant future, say the 2060s, are depreciated into today's money it begins to look unlikely that the economic benefits would approach the costs.

6. Some tentative conclusions

It is notable that there have been calls for a consideration to be given as to the feasibility of the bridge. That feasibility should be investigated in detail.

The balance of economic benefits and costs does not have to be the sole basis of decision but surely it should be important.

Alongside the question of the benefits relative to the costs there is practical matter of how the bridge would be financed.

Any suggestion that we could expect much largesse from the EU, Scottish government, Irish government, or the US is probably fanciful.

HM Treasury may demand an exercise in burden sharing with Northern Ireland such as a considerable deduction from the Northern Ireland block grant: 300m for 30 years?

That would be following the precedent set by the corporation tax reduction proposals.

This would be the mother of all City deals.

There are, of course, many uncertainties about such a large scale project.

New technologies or materials might transform the analysis.

Maybe thousands of Scots would switch Spanish holidays for the North Coast.

If we really are going for a zero carbon future then that might mean an end to cheap flights.

A high speed electric train out of Belfast or Dublin to Paris might be necessary.

Any bridge would be a technological marvel and perhaps an object of beauty.

So was Concorde.

As a Scot who once lived in the shadow of the Forth Bridges I wish the proposal well but there is economic concept of opportunity cost - all the other things we could have spent the money on.
A property let to retail companies Bensons for Beds and Harry Corry on the Boucher Road in south Belfast has gone on the market for 3m.

It's for sale as an investment through commercial property agents Frazer Kidd.

The agency said the property has net income of 176,500.

Also in Ballymena, agency Lisney is selling the former Ballee Home site, asking for offers of over 350,000.

The property at 36 to 38 Boucher Road is fully let to Northern Ireland interiors chain Harry Corry and Bensons for Beds.

The Harry Corry site, which is let for 10 years from 2015, has full planning permission to allow the sale of convenience foods.

The Benson for Beds property is let for 25 years from 2001.

The units are next to the former B&Q building, which is now partly let to discount household retailer The Range. According to Frazer Kidd's brochure for the site, the Boucher Road is "Belfast's primary retail warehouse and car showroom location".

It adds: "The subject property occupies a highly accessible and visible location on the Boucher Road in south Belfast approximately two miles from Belfast city centre and in close proximity to the M1 junction at Broadway and the Westlink."

While Benson for Beds is a two-storey unit, Harry Corry Interiors is only fitted out on the ground floor.

"Both units have been internally fitted out to the corporate specification of the retailer," the brochure adds.

Meanwhile, Lisney said that the former Ballee Home at Hollybank Park in Ballymena was an "excellent redevelopment opportunity".

There are 11,887 sq ft of buildings which Lisney said were suitable for a range of uses, subject to planning permission.

Lisney director Andrew Gawley said: "A former children's residential home, the huge site features a two0storey building across more than 11,200 sq ft with an additional 676 sq ft of space from a detached garage and a separate storage building."

The site is just over a mile from Ballymena centre, and is also close to the main A26 road.

The ground floor consists of offices, communal areas and kitchens, while the first floor has bedrooms and washrooms, communal areas and two other self-contained two-bed flats.

He added: "Offers over 350,000 are invited for this site and we would expect interest from potential owner occupiers and developers.

"While the building could once again be used as a residential home or even for offices, interested parties are advised to make their own enquiries into the planning potential of the site."
A rigger who was responsible for setting up a hazard zone on an Australian building site where two workers from Northern Ireland were crushed to death has been fined $4,000.

Benjamin Paul Botica was also ordered to pay $10,000 in costs as he appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on Friday in relation to the deaths of Joe McDermott (24) and Gerry Bradley (29) in the city on November 25, 2015.

They were sitting with two other men in an area used at break time outside the Bennett Street site when two concrete panels each weighing three tonnes fell to the ground.

One of them struck the two men as they sat on the kerb at the roadside.

The leading hand and advanced rigger for ABC Crane Hire originally pleaded not guilty to causing the deaths after being charged in July 2017.

However, he changed his plea last week when the charge was downgraded to failing to take reasonable care at work.

The panels had not been individually restrained and the footpath where the two victims were sitting had not been set up as an exclusion zone, even though the slabs were in the process of being lifted by cranes.

The court also found that Mr Botica failed to ensure that the weight distribution of six panels did not compromise the stability of the load, which led to its collapse.

Mr Bradley, from Coleraine, had only been working at the East Perth site for eight days when he was killed alongside Mr McDermott from Omagh.

Two other workers were unharmed when the heavy slabs crashed to the ground.

Hundreds of mourners who packed into Sacred Heart Church to pay their respects to Mr McDermott were told he was a "gentle giant with an infectious personality".

The heartbreaking service was streamed live online in December 2015 for his many friends in Australia, where he had began to build a new life.

Just days earlier his "bright and bubbly" pal had been laid to rest in Coleraine following Requiem Mass at St Malachy's Church.

The parish priest said that while the family's pain was indescribable, the love and support from around the globe was like a bandage for their wounds.

Magistrate Mark Millington said he took the accused's change of plea and personal and financial circumstances into account when he fined Mr Botica $4,000 and ordered him to pay $10,000 in court costs.

"You accepted responsibility and saved witnesses having to relive the trauma of giving evidence," he added.

Speaking outside court, Mr Botica said he was happy the charge had been downgraded.

Western Australia's WorkSafe Commissioner Darren Kavanagh said the case should provide a reminder that legislation places obligations on workers for their own safety and that of others.

"The result of reasonable care not being taken in this case was absolutely tragic and should serve as a reminder that everyone in a workplace needs to keep safety and health as their top priority," Mr Kavanagh added.

Two other parties were charged over the two men's deaths. Axedale Holdings, trading as Shaw's Cartage Contractors, was fined $160,000 and ordered to pay $2,200 in court costs in May 2018.

Jaxon Construction site manager David Ferguson, who was second in command on the day of the incident, was acquitted in December 2018.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has said that "big gaps" remain in negotiations between his party and the Government around Brexit.

Mr Dodds was speaking as the two sides attempt to find a compromise, with Prime Minister Theresa May hoping to secure the support of the party's ten MPs for her Brexit withdrawal deal.

Despite days of negotiations the North Belfast MP told the BBC that the DUP "haven't softened" on their Brexit stance and that the sides were still some way apart.

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He said focus had shifted after Speaker John Bercow ruled that Mrs May could not present her Brexit deal for a third meaningful vote without significant changes to the proposal.

"The Government have been talking to us, those were good discussions, but there were and still are big gaps," Mr Dodds said.

"Given the speaker's announcement the Government has been entirely focused on how to handle that and less on the discussions with us and others in the Conservative Party."

Mr Dodds said that the DUP's position had remained the same throughout the Brexit process.

"We have always been very clear about the conditions under which we would back any withdrawal agreement," he said.

"And that is about the treatment of Northern Ireland in terms of single market and customs union compared to the rest of the United Kingdom."

The DUP remain opposed to Mrs May's deal due to the controversial backstop clause, aimed to prevent a hard border in Ireland.

The party and hardline Tory Brexiteers have claimed that the backstop would create a trade border in the Irish Sea and could leave the UK tied to the EU indefinetly.

With time running out ahead of Brexit on March 29 and with no deal in place the Prime Minister is expected to ask the EU for a Brexit extension when she visits Brussels later this week.

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney has said the UK would need to provide a "very persuasive plan" to go with any requests for a delay to Brexit.

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"The disruptive effect of Brexit for another nine months or another whatever period of time is something that I think people will need convincing on.," Mr Coveney said.

"What I mean by that is if there is going to be a request for a long extension of Article 50 by the UK then there will need to be a very persuasive plan to go with that to explain why that's needed and how they will use the time to conclude the outstanding issues that haven't been able to be agreed in London in the context of the Brexit process.

"It's also been very clear that there is absolutely no appetite to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement or the detail of that."
A Sinn Fein MLA has expressed his concern after it was reported that police are expanding their investigation into the alleged mistreatment of patients at Dunmurry Manor care home.

The BBC has reported that police are widening their investigation to include the care of residents at the home between June 2014 and July 2017.

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It is understood police have contacted up to 70 families of patients at the west Belfast care home during this period, and intend to contact around 180 in total.

The letter invites relatives of patients to speak with police, especially if they have concerns around their family member's care while at the home.

Police launched their investigation after an explosive report into conditions at the home by the Commissioner for Older People in Northern Ireland, Eddie Lynch.

He made a damning assessment of the conditions at the facility in which he outlined inhumane and degrading treatment of residents.

Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Colm Gildernew said the news would cause "distress and anxiety" to residents and their families.

When we last met with the PSNI, we encouraged them to ensure that the investigation was given sufficient resources and that the families of those involved must be kept informed throughout the process," the Sinn Fein MLA said.

Given that the investigation remit has been extended it suggests that there are more questions regarding the oversight and management of the care home. The PSNI must be given the space to follow all lines of enquiry."
The Irish Coastguard during the search for Ruth Maguire

The Irish Coastguard during the search for Ruth Maguire

Some of the women who were with Ruth on the hen party

A community is in shock after a missing Co Down mother's body was recovered from a lough in the Irish Republic yesterday afternoon.

Ruth Maguire, who lived in Newcastle, disappeared after spending a night out with a hen party in Carlingford, Co Louth. She was last seen at 11.30pm on Saturday evening.

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An extensive cross-border multi-agency search operation was subsequently launched involving the Irish Coastguard, Belfast Coastguard, Kilkeel lifeboat and Newcastle RNLI as well as Mourne Mountain Rescue.

Rescue teams had suspended sea and land searches on Sunday evening but resumed their efforts early yesterday.

The search was called off around 1pm after reports emerged that a body had been found in waters off the coast of Greenore, which lies 5km from Carlingford.

At the scene, George Campbell, officer in charge of the Greenore Coastguard Unit, confirmed the body recovered was that of Ms Maguire.

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"I'm sorry to say that a young female has been recovered and identified as the person reported missing," he said.

Thanking the PSNI and Gardai for their assistance along with their Northern Ireland counterparts, Mr Campbell said it was a very sad development for all concerned, especially for Ms Maguire's loved ones.

"Our sympathies go out to the lady's family," he added.

His colleague, James Larkin, east coast sector manager with the Irish Coastguard, told the Belfast Telegraph he took some comfort the family had received closure in what was very tragic circumstances.

He revealed the recovery operation had taken place in the "vicinity of Haulbowline Lighthouse", a landmark situated at the entrance to Carlingford Lough.

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Just hours before the terrible news broke, members of the hen party had been maintaining a vigil at Carlingford Harbour.

Bystanders also reported seeing some of Ms Maguire's loved ones looking distressed.

Ms Maguire had been part of a 32-strong group which had travelled to Co Louth to celebrate an impending wedding.

The hen party began searching for the Daisy Hill Hospital worker, who was originally from Belfast, when she failed to a return to a house located close to Taaffe's Bar, where the group had celebrated. A doorman is reported to have heard Ms Maguire say that she was considering making her way home to Newcastle where she lived with her partner and children.

It was later discovered she had left her coat in the bar and had later taken a photograph of the lough and posted it to Instagram around midnight.

Her friends had launched a frantic appeal on social media for her safe return.

Two of the hen party members said they had been left devastated by Ms Maguire's disappearance. "No one has had any sleep," said one young woman, who did not wish to be named.

Local Sinn Fein councillor Antoin Watters said Carlingford was reeling from a double tragedy yesterday - that of Ms Maguire as well as the deaths of two Northern Ireland men who were killed in a nearby fatal road collision.

"The mood has been very sombre. I was talking to a lot of business owners who were offering any assistance they could," he said.

"The [Cooley] Peninsula will also be in mourning with the two road deaths last night. My thoughts and prayers are with their families."

He described Ms Maguire's death as "very sad news".

"My thoughts and prayers are with the family and the other girls on the hen. This morning we came out to help. That's what the local community comes out to do, to offer any assistance we could give, and it's very sad how it ended."

Meanwhile, police and the family of Nicola Murray from Cushendall continue to appeal for information in relation to her whereabouts.

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Whatsapp Nicola Murray disappeared from Cushendall on Saturday evening

Rescue teams have been carrying out searches of the Co Antrim coastline.

Nicola is 43 years old, around 5ft 3ins tall, of slim build, with dark brown shoulder-length hair, which is slightly greying and normally tied in a ponytail.

She was last seen leaving her home address in Cushendall at around 6.15pm on Saturday. When last seen she was wearing a short red padded coat, dark blue jeans and a pink-coloured beanie hat.

Police are appealing for Nicola, or anyone who knows of her whereabouts, to contact officers in Coleraine on 101 quoting reference 1183 16/03/19.
A DUP MP has asked the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service to explain his absence from meetings of a panel that supports veterans of the armed forces.

East Belfast MP Gavin Robinson was speaking after it emerged during a parliamentary committee that David Sterling has never attended any meeting of the Armed Forces Covenant and Veterans Board since it was set up in 2017.

This is despite there being a standing invitation for the Civil Service chief to attend such meetings.

Mr Robinson said he was "shocked" to learn the invitation has never been taken up.

"For some time I have queried whether the Northern Ireland Office were the most appropriate representation for Northern Ireland on the board," he said.

"The NIO has no functional or operational involvement in the key departments that deal with veterans needs. I was shocked today to hear it confirmed that there is a standing invitation for the Head of the Civil Service to attend the board, but that has never been taken up either personally or with a substitute representing NICS.

"I would hope the head of the Civil Service can explain why this invitation has not been taken up. There may be an opportunity for the Defence Committee to ask those questions directly to David Sterling."

Mr Robinson said one of the key roles of the boards was to draw on the commitment of all government departments, including devolved regions, and Northern Ireland "should not be left behind"

An Executive Office spokesperson said it would be improper to attend the panel as it had not been agreed politically.

The NICS takes seriously its responsibility to all citizens including veterans and serving personnel. Northern Ireland is represented by the Department of Health on the MOD/Departments of Health Partnership Board which covers England and the three Devolved Administrations," the spokesperson said.

"This Board deals with health matters for veterans and serving personnel. Participation in Armed Forces Covenant structures was not agreed by the Executive and in the absence of political agreement, it would not be appropriate for civil servants to participate.

"The NICS has, however, provided advice to the UK Government on the services available to UK armed forces veterans in Northern Ireland."
Hundreds of mourners have left written and floral tributes to three teenagers who died following a crush outside a St Patricks Day disco.

Up to 400 people were present as the tragedy near the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown unfolded on Sunday night, and detectives said it was fortunate more were not killed.

Youngsters described chaotic scenes and police confirmed some were trampled underfoot as they waited to enter the popular Co Tyrone night spot.

On Tuesday, tearful well-wishers embraced tightly after laying flowers at a shrine to the dead beside a police cordon.

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Whatsapp Eyewitness Eboney Johnston, 16, said people just started to fall; as one person fell another went down (Liam McBurney/PA)

Books of condolence across the county filled with page upon page of tribute.

Eyewitness Eboney Johnston, 16, recalled: People just started to fall, but as one person fell another went down.

As a person went to lift another person up, they were pushing and shoving and another person would fall, which caused a build up of everybody lying there.

She said she was lucky to survive.

We nearly feel guilty because it was not us, we nearly feel bad.

Students Lauren Bullock, 17, Connor Currie, 16, and Morgan Barnard, 17, all from nearby Dungannon in Co Tyrone, died.

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Whatsapp Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Detective Chief Superintendent Raymond Murray said it was fortunate more were not killed following every parents worst nightmare (Liam McBurney/PA)

They were likened to a ray of sunshine, ambitious and charismatic young people with compassion and courtesy.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Detective Chief Superintendent Raymond Murray said: This is an event that should have been a celebration and it has turned into every parents worst nightmare.

He added: Bad enough, a horrendous tragedy, but we could easily have been looking at more.

Buses let youngsters off outside before the disaster happened.

This is an event that should have been a celebration and it has turned into every parent's worst nightmareRaymond Murray

Ms Johnston described the unfolding events.

She said: We looked down and you could just see everybody lying there and then you could just see Connor himself being took out.

It was just such a tragic situation.

Youngsters will not face police action for being under age if they come forward, prosecutors pledged, in a bid to encourage people to tell their stories to officers.

Mr Murray praised those in the crowd who worked hard to get party-goers who had fallen down back on their feet when others were tumbling on top of them.

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Whatsapp Councillor Sean McPeake, chairman of Mid-Ulster District Council, signing a book of condolence in Cookstown (Liam McBurney/PA)

One tribute in a book of condolence in Dungannon said: Heartfelt sympathy for you all on the tragic loss of your child.

It was signed a mother.

Lauren was a bright and bubbly cheerleader and schoolgirl who lit up the lives of her friends, a close friend said.

Alice Lambert, also 17, from Coalisland in Co Tyrone, was among the first to sign the memorial book in Cookstown.

She said: She was such a nice person  she was like a ray of sunshine.

She made you happy, you saw her on a night out and she would have made you happy.

St Patricks Academy in Dungannon, where the two other victims attended school, said it was a time of profound sadness.

Morgan was an ambitious and charismatic young person with abundant potential.

Teachers said: He lifted the mood everywhere he went, everyone benefited from Morgans energetic, positive zest for life. It was contagious.

His smile was bright and when Morgan was around, fun and laughter always followed.

Connor was a kind-hearted, loyal friend, always willing to help others, courteous, mannerly and compassionate.

The school said: He had a great sense of team spirit and his warm, caring nature endeared him to all and earned him much deserved respect.

Counselling services are being provided to those affected and prayer services have been held.

The British Psychological Society and the Royal College of Psychiatrists said it was completely normal for those present to experience distress  difficulty sleeping and bad dreams, thoughts and memories of what happened popping into your head, irritability, feeling sad and worried.

A statement from the professional bodies said: People all react in different ways. It is helpful to be with family and friends and for those who were there to talk about happened if they want to.

For some people quiet time can be important.

Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley signed the Cookstown book of condolence and met members of the emergency services.
Game of Thrones star Kristian Nairn has thrown his weight behind calls for same-sex marriage to be made legal in Northern Ireland.

The Lisburn actor played servant Hodor in the hit HBO fantasy series filmed in Northern Ireland, but at one time was a drag queen artist called Revvlon and a resident DJ at the Kremlin nightclub.

"It confuses me why we always have to be that little step behind on social issues like this," Nairn told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"It should be brought into line with the rest of the UK.

"It makes it hard to be an ambassador from here.

"There's a lot of very amazing things about Northern Ireland, but the gay rights issues are definitely not one of them.

"It's not as if we're going anywhere, we're human beings and we're no more, no less than anybody else."

Same-sex marriage has been legal in the UK since 2013 but the DUP has blocked any moves to bring Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the UK in the Assembly.

Meanwhile, members of the Love Equality campaign met with the Secretary of State Karen Bradley yesterday to demand she uses her powers to legalise gay marriage in the absence of Stormont, in the same way she took action to cut MLA pay and RHI boiler subsidies.

Following their meeting in Whitehall with Mrs Bradley, Cara McCann of HereNI and Patrick Corrigan of Amnesty International said they were disappointed with the outcome.

Ms McCann said: "Karen Bradley simply reiterated the Government's policy of inaction on marriage equality, effectively committing it to ongoing discrimination against same-sex couples in Northern Ireland."
The death of Morgan Barnard is the second St Patrick's Day tragedy to hit his family.

His great-uncle Patrick Barnard was just 13 when a UVF car bomb exploded outside the Hillcrest Bar in Dungannon on March 17, 1976, killing him, his 13-year-old best friend James McCaughey and two others instantly.

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SDLP councillor Denise Mullan said a dark cloud is again hanging over the family and the close-knit community in Dungannon.

"It's the 17th of March again and it's hit that poor family once again, and the town as well," she said.

"Morgan lost an uncle in a terrible atrocity in Dungannon back in 1976 when the UVF blew up the Hillcrest Bar. My heart goes out to them and the community's heart goes out to them.

"I want to let the family know that as a community we are all here for them."

Morgan's grandmother Betsy Martin put out a call on social media for anyone who saw anything of the incident on Sunday evening to get in touch with the family as they "wanted answers".

"Can anyone that was with Morgan last night please message me," she wrote.

"We need to know who he was with and who took him over to the Greenvale. This is for the family to get questions answered."

Shocked friends last night paid emotional tributes to the popular teenager, who alongside Connor Currie, was a student at St Patrick's Academy in Dungannon.

Eliot Barnard said: "I love you so much lad. You're always gonna be my best friend no matter where you are. Do me proud up there kid. Missing you already."

Another friend wrote: "He was such a great lad, great manners and always had a smile for everyone."

Another school pal said: "School will never be the same without you."

A friend wrote: "Doesn't seem real that you're gone, always brightened up our classroom with your humour and smile."

A family friend wrote that Morgan was a 'lovely young boy' and a 'bright lad'.

Another said: "No one deserves to not come home from anywhere, especially a night of fun."

Another of Morgan's friends wrote: "Heartbreaking, such beautiful kids just enjoying life as they should do. Taken too soon."

profiles: Leona O'Neill
President of Ireland Michael D Higgins has offered his condolences to the families and victims of those caught up in the Greenvale Hotel St Patrick's tragedy.

Three teenagers Lauren Bullock, 17, Connor Currie, 16, and Morgan Barnard, 17, from Dungannon in Co Tyrone, died in the incident at the hotel.

It's thought there may have been a crush at the entrance as large numbers of people descended on the Co Tyrone venue.

Police said it appeared that people had fallen and then been fatally injured, but are still investigating the cause.

Several hundred people were trying to get into the venue, Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, after being dropped off by buses shortly before 9.30pm on Sunday.

On Monday evening, Mr Higgins said: "As President of Ireland may I express what I know is the shared grief of the people of Ireland at the terrible loss of life of young students in the tragedy that took place in Cookstown, County Tyrone on St Patricks Day.

"May I offer, in particular, my condolences to the families of the victims and to the pupils of the schools in Dungannon that I visited recently.

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Police have set up a major investigation team with specialist detectives involved. They are appealing for anyone with film footage to urgently get in touch.

A dedicated room at the Burnavon Arts Centre, Cookstown has also been established for witnesses. It will be open from 10am on Tuesday.

Detective Superintendent Richard Campbell said: I can understand that there may be some reluctance to come and speak to police if you are underage, but please do not be concerned. We are investigating the deaths of three young people  that is our focus.

If you have video footage on your phone I would ask that you please bring it with you, as we have the ability to download it. This footage could prove vital to our investigation."
Antoinette Keegan holds pictures of her two sisters who died in Stardust fire in 1981

A woman who survived the worst fire disaster in the history of the Irish state - which claimed the lives of her two teenage sisters - said the horrors of the Glenvale Hotel tragedy will haunt the families of the three teenagers who died.

Dubliner Antoinette Keegan said it was devastating to hear how the three Co Tyrone teens lost their lives when a crowd surged towards the hotel entrance on St Patrick's night.

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Antoinette suffered horrendous burns in the 1981 Stardust disco blaze in Dublin in which her sisters Mary (19) and Martina (16) died.

A total of 48 people died in the Valentine's Day fire.

Ms Keegan said the provision of long-term counselling for families bereaved and for the young people at the hotel will be essential.

"I am so saddened to hear about these three young people from Co Tyrone and offer my deepest condolences to their families," she said.

"It is such a devastating tragedy that I know will traumatise the families of the three young people and all those young people who were there celebrating St Patrick's Day in the same way as we were out celebrating Valentine's Day 48 years ago.

"No one can imagine how it feels to be told that your son or daughter will not be coming home after what should have been a good night out with their friends. These were young people, so full of life just as we were, all going out with their friends with I'm sure not a care in the world. It is just so tragic.

"The families will never get over their loss.

"Their lives will never be the same but this tragedy will leave a scar on the lives of all of those young ones who were at the hotel and who witnessed what happened.

"I only hope there will be long-term counselling made available for them because I can tell you, they will definitely need all the help that's available.

"This was something that we didn't get and to this day still haven't been offered any counselling, something that I think it is an absolute disgrace.

"Counselling won't make this go away.

"It won't take away the terrible memories that will stay with the families of these three young people and their friends but it should teach them how to cope with the pain of their loss and the whole trauma."
A threatened revolt over huge cuts to renewable energy subsidies in Northern Ireland has been avoided after assurances by the UK Government at Westminster.

Ministers have hinted at financial assistance for those who will suffer genuine hardship as a result of reduced payments, although the exact details remain sketchy.

The Government moved to allay peers' concerns in the face of a potential defeat in the House of Lords of the Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) (No 2) Bill.

It contains changes to the controversial Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme, with annual returns for the most common RHI boilers being reduced from 13,000 to 2,000 from April 1.

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The scheme was closed to new entrants in 2016 after claims the tariffs were overly generous, and the controversy around how it was handled at Stormont led in part to the collapse of the devolved executive and assembly.

The Government has argued the subsidies need to be cut to comply with state aid rules.

Failure to do so would mean the RHI scheme having to close completely as it would be in breach of EU law.

Former Ulster Unionist leader Lord Empey called for the changes to not come into force until the Northern Ireland Affairs committee had completed its investigation into the initiative to ensure "fairness".

Lord Empey said the scheme was "ostensibly responsible for the collapse of the devolved institutions" in Northern Ireland.

He said his amendments to the Bill were designed to ensure there was proper scrutiny of the proposals and the new tariffs were not imposed until the committee's report was brought forward.

"The point of all this is that the scheme is so complex that I don't believe Parliament has had an opportunity to assess it," Lord Empey said.

"Our principal anxiety must be to ensure that people don't fall through the cracks and find themselves in a position where they are financially stressed and embarrassed as a result of the change to the tariff."

Tory Lord Cormack, a former chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, backed the move, saying peers had received many communications from people who were at their "wits' end as to how they can survive financially".

People had made an investment "in good faith" and with ministerial assurance, he said.

The RHI scheme, however well intentioned, was not well designed and the results had been "catastrophic", he said.

Tory former lord chancellor Lord Mackay of Clashfern said when a member of the public made an investment in a government scheme, he or she was entitled to trust the terms on which the scheme was launched.

Those who invested in it relied on the Government's statement of what was involved and were entitled "to be protected by the Government from any failure on the part of the Government to meet the terms on which the scheme was set up", he said.

Democratic Unionist Party peer Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown said: "There are people who are genuinely hurting because of no fault of their own. They should not be left to pay the penalty."

Labour former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Murphy of Torfaen said it was "a sorry business" and "a terrible mess".

He stressed the need for those adversely affected to "be dealt with in a properly decent and humane manner".

Northern Ireland Minister Lord Duncan of Springbank said of the scheme: "At heart it was a noble endeavour but frankly its construction was top to bottom flawed.

"Flawed in almost every possible way. To the extent in which we can almost describe it's construction as a good old fashioned scandal."

The Tory frontbencher told peers: "What I am proposing that we move forward on is that the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland - not upon our instruction but rather because this is a thing they believe to be right course of action - set up a unit inside their department under independent chairmanship.

"And that unit will be responsible for examining each and every case of those individuals who have been in receipt of funds from the RHI initiative and who believe that they have experienced hardship.

"That each element of their case is considered in detail, thoroughly and with their participation to understand exactly what that hardship looks like."

Along with the parliamentary inquiry, it would "help inform" the voluntary buyout option for those who do not want to stay on the scheme.

Promising to put the assurances in writing, Lord Duncan said: "We need to be in a situation where the compensation element of this is adequate and informed by these elements."

He added: "Appropriate funds must be set aside to address these issues."

Responding, Lord Empey warned if the conditions set out were not honoured there would be "a lot of very, very angry parliamentarians".

Pointing out he had served as minister for the predecessors of the Department for the Economy, he said: "So to coin a phrase, I know who they are and I know where they live."

"We are talking about the livelihoods of good, honest, decent people," he added.

The Bill later received an unopposed third reading.
The mother of a man who died in a police cell has lost her legal battle over the redeployment of a custody officer ultimately cleared of his manslaughter.

Sergeant Brian McKenna had been suspended following the death of David McGowan at Lisburn PSNI Station in May 2014.

Mr McGowan's mother, Elizabeth, challenged the original decision to allow Sgt McKenna to return to work later that year.

But the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that senior officers were entitled to temporarily revoke his suspension.

Mr Justice McCloskey said: "He was allocated purely administrative duties and his reassignment ensured he was remote from the State investigation into the death."

Mr McGowan, a 28-year-old from Lisburn, had been arrested over an incident in east Belfast.

His body was discovered in a police cell hours later, with a post mortem indicating death was due to the effects of alcohol and drugs.

Sgt McKenna had faced charges of manslaughter and misconduct in public office following a Police Ombudsman investigation - allegations he always denied.

In October last year a jury was directed to return verdicts of "not guilty" on both counts after the prosecution offered no further evidence at his trial.

Mrs McGowan's legal challenge centred on the decision to lift the officer's suspension until the charges were brought in 2016. Her lawyers claimed he was reinstated while up to 14 other officers suspected of lesser offences remained suspended.

They argued that budget cuts within the PSNI could not properly explain the redeployment of Sgt McKenna to administrative duties at police headquarters.

Counsel for the Chief Constable pointed out how the custody sergeant was suspended again in May 2016 following the decision to prosecute.

He also stressed that the original suspension took place less than a month after the tragedy - and went beyond the Ombudsman's stance that it would have been enough to reposition the officer.

Ruling on the case, Mr Justice McCloskey acknowledged the McKenna family's objections and disappointment.

However, he said Sgt McKenna's reinstatement and reassignment was a temporary measure, subjected to frequent reviews and, ultimately, terminated when the decision to prosecute was notified.

Dismissing the appeal, he added: "In reinstating and redeploying the custody sergeant during the period November 2014 to May 2016 the PSNI did not violate the procedural obligation enshrined in Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights."
Police at the scene of the cash in transit van robbery at Greysteel on Saturday in which two security guards were held up by armed raiders

Two men wearing "old man masks" made off with money after the robbery of a cash-in-transit van in Greysteel, a court heard yesterday.

Alan Carroll (37), of Island Key, and Darren Redmond (24), of Caledon Road - both in the East Wall area of Dublin - appeared at Ballymena Magistrates Court.

They are both charged with robbing a security firm of money and possessing a firearm with intent to commit robbery in the village on Saturday.

Carroll is also accused of using a mobile phone while driving and using a RAV4 vehicle without insurance or MOT on the Foyle Bridge.

And Redmond is accused of possessing cannabis.

A PSNI officer said police received a report from G4S around noon on Saturday that one of its security vans had been robbed at gunpoint.

Two security guards had been held up by two men with southern accents wearing "old man masks" and "brandishing a silver handgun".

The officer said the two security guards were refilling an ATM and one was pushed inside and a gun was held to the head of the other guard.

An attempt was made to take money from the ATM. When told it was on a timer, one of the raiders then demanded that a guard opened a security box.

Money was placed in a black holdall and the robbers ran off.

The officer said police identified a RAV4 Jeep-type vehicle.

It was stopped on the Foyle Bridge with Carroll at the wheel.

The court heard Carroll claimed to have bought the vehicle a few days earlier in England.

The officer said neither men gave any explanation as to why they were in Northern Ireland.

The officer said Carroll had 180 convictions and is currently on bail accused of murder relating to November 6, 2016. The court heard he had been acquitted of murder in 2009.

The officer said Redmond had one previous conviction in the Republic for the possession of knives in 2013.

Defence lawyers said no items in relation to the robbery were found on the defendants and there was nothing placing the alleged robbers getting into the vehicle both accused were in.

One of the lawyers said there was a dispute as to the colour of a vehicle allegedly seen in the area.

District Judge Nigel Broderick said it was clear it was a "circumstantial case" but added there were a number of sightings of a vehicle close to and after the robbery and there were questions to be asked in terms of the movements of the defendants.

Redmond did not make a bail application but Carroll did and it was objected to by police.

Judge Broderick refused bail.
Reece Leeman was killed in the Kyle Street area of the Sydenham estate

The funeral of murdered east Belfast man Reece Leeman will be held on Saturday.

Mr Leeman was found collapsed on Connsbrook Drive after being seriously assaulted on Friday morning (March 15).

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Police believe the 21-year-old was stabbed after an altercation at a property on Kyle Street. A 28-year-old man has been charged with murder.

His funeral will take place at St Marks Parish of Dundela on the Hollywood Road on Saturday at 9.15am and afterwards to Roselawn Crematorium at 11am.

A funeral notice read: "Will be sadly missed by his loving Mum, Dad and sister.

"Our son, this is for someone wonderful as loved as one could be, for you were everything in life, you meant the world you see, and sometimes life can be unkind when hearts are torn in two, but nothing ever could compare to the pain of losing you.

"But all the love you left behind forever will live on and so until we meet again, rest peacefully, our dear son. Night, night number one son, forever young, love your Mum and Dad."
The parents of an IRA murder victim have asked the most influential Irish-American politician in Washington to put pressure on Sinn Fein to help them in their justice campaign.

Breege and Stephen Quinn have written to Congressman Richie Neal, the powerful new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

They asked DUP leader Arlene Foster to deliver their letter to him during her St Patrick's Day trip to the US. She said Congressman Neal had promised to personally reply to the family. Paul Quinn from Cullyhanna in south Armagh was brutally beaten to death by the IRA in 2008.

The 21-year-old was lured to a barn across the border where he was attacked by a gang wielding iron bars and nail-studded cudgels.

Every bone in his body below his neck was broken.

Although more than 20 people have been arrested during the murder investigation - including Padraig 'Paudie' Treanor, a former driver for Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy - none have been charged.

In the letter to the Congressman, the Quinns wrote: "We are a father and mother who grieve for our son who was killed in a heinous and gruesome way at the hands of terrorists.

"He was so badly beaten (we) could not put rosary beads in his hands when he was put in his coffin. His ear was ripped up and his coffin had to be covered over with a net, so that we could not touch him. It was so upsetting to see him."

They accused Sinn Fein of not lifting a finger to help them secure justice.

"Sinn Fein know about this death. They know who carried it out, but since that night in 2007, they have done nothing but provide cover ups," they wrote.

"We have had to fight for justice. That's why we need your help in our quest for justice. We recognise the strong Irish-American links that exist and so it is imperative that we try every avenue available to help us get the help we need."

Mrs Quinn added: "People know what happened to my son. Eleven years on the pain and hurt caused to our family still exists.

"I do not know how people can sleep at night, as there have been days when I can't get up in the morning with grief."

The Quinns told Congressman Neal that after their son's death, Mr Murphy said he had spoken to the IRA and was satisfied it wasn't involved. He linked the murder to a feud among criminals.

The family claimed the Sinn Fein politician "misrepresented" the murder and have repeatedly ask him to lift his "disgraceful slur" against their son.

Last year Mr Murphy told the Irish News that claims he had branded Mr Quinn a criminal were "without any foundation".

He insisted he had condemned the murder and "said consistently that the Quinn family deserve justice". He called on anyone with information about the killing to contact the PSNI or Garda.

The Quinns told Congressman Neal: "Let nobody tell you that the IRA has 'left the stage', they still exist. They are responsible for our son's death. We hope that you will help us find justice."

Mrs Foster, who met the Quinns a fortnight ago, said she had promised to deliver the letter to the politician.

"I was pleased that Richie Neal committed to read it in detail and that he was already aware of the case," she said.

"Importantly when I met Rep Neal the day after, he spoke to me very passionately about the case. He said, having read the letter, he would reply personally to Mr and Mrs Quinn."

The DUP leader added: "No one has the right to take another's life, no matter how important the perpetrators may think they are. There are people who know exactly what happened to Paul.

"Intimidation for speaking out against IRA bully-boy members should not be allowed to continue.

"That's why I raised this matter with Richie Neal given our important Irish-American links and urged him to use his influence to press for justice for the Quinn family."
The Dungannon school two of the young victims killed in the Greenvale Hotel St Patrick's night disco has spoken of the profound sadness enveloping the school and local community in paying tribute.

Two pupils at the school, Morgan Barnard (17) and 16-year-old Connor Currie were killed in the incident on Sunday evening.

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St Patrick's Academy described Morgan as an "ambitious, charismatic young person with an abundance of potential".

He had been studying maths, digital technology, business studies and his "absolute passion," Irish.

"He lifted the mood everywhere he went, everyone benefited from Morgans energetic, positive zest for life," the school said in a Facebook post.

"It was contagious. His smile was bright and when Morgan was around, fun and laughter always followed."

Connor was described as "kind-hearted and a loyal friend".

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"Always willing to help others, courteous, mannerly and compassionate," the school statement continued.

"He had a great sense of team spirit and his warm, caring nature endeared him to all and earned him much deserved respect.

"Our school community will miss them both deeply. Our lives have been enriched by knowing them and they will always have a place in our hearts."

Counselling support has been offered to those affected, prayer services taken place and books of condolence opened right across Northern Ireland. Belfast Lord Mayor Deirdre Hargey has opened a book for the public to pay their tributes at City Hall.

On Monday around 400 pupils, staff and parents from St Patrick's Academy and St Patrick's College came together in a joint prayer service to pay tribute to the "beautiful lives" of Connor, Morgan and Lauren Bullock who also died in the tragedy. Both the schools sit side-by-side.

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St Patrick's Academy added: "This is a time of profound sadness for our school community as we come to terms with the tragic loss of our much loved and popular pupils Morgan Barnard and Connor Currie.

"Our prayer service yesterday afternoon and the time afterwards was very important for those who were close to Connor and Morgan and those who were witness to the events of Sunday night.

"We remember also Lauren and our friends in St. Patricks College as they too process their grief and devastation.

"This is a terrible tragedy for the families and friends of Morgan, Connor and Lauren and we keep them in our thoughts and prayers at this time and in the difficult time ahead."

Several hundred people had been trying to get into the Co Tyrone venue after being dropped off by buses shortly before 9.30pm on Sunday.

Police said preliminary investigations showed there was a crush towards the front door of the hotel, and in that crush people seem to have fallen. They have appealed for anyone with video footage from the night to contact a special investigation team.

Police have also agreed with prosecutors that those that may have been attempting to gain access to the licensed venue while underage is not an issue for them.

Detectives can be contacted at the dedicated incident room at Dungannon police station by calling 101, extension 53055. Anyone with any images or footage can pass it to police via the following link: https://mipp.police.uk/operation/PSNI19O08-PO1.
Police and the family of missing Co Antrim woman Nicola Murray have issued a renewed appeal for information.

Ms Murray (43), was last seen leaving her home in Cushendall at around 6.15pm on Saturday.

On Sunday, rescue teams from Coleraine, Ballycastle and Larne were dispatched to aid in the search, alongside the Red Bay RNLI crew.

She is approximately 5ft 3ins tall, of slim build, with dark brown shoulder-length hair, which is slightly greying and normally tied back in a ponytail.

A PSNI spokesperson said: "When last seen she was wearing a short red padded coat, dark blue jeans and a pink coloured beanie hat.

"Police are appealing for Nicola, or anyone who knows of her whereabouts, to contact officers in Coleraine on 101 quoting reference 1183 16/03/19."
A 96-year-old woman has been left shaken after her south Belfast home was broken into on Thursday evening.

The apartment in Finaghy Road South was broken into around 9pm and sentimental jewellery was stolen.

The woman was not confronted by the intruders, who went through her bedroom and stole "a lot" of jewellery.

Police said the most the most identifiable items taken are a gold gents watch inscribed with "JMCCG 1948" and a gold ladies watch inscribed with "EG".

SDLP Balmoral Representative Michael Mulhern said he was "outraged" by the incident.

It is an absolute disgrace to learn that one of our elderly neighbours was targeted in a robbery. Everyone should have the right to feel safe in their own home including and especially the elderly," he said.

To target vulnerable members of our community like this is absolutely apprehensible. Finaghy is a tight-knit community and many residents will be alarmed by this incident.

I would appeal to anyone with information to contact the PSNI.

If you can help in anyway please contact police on 101 quoting 1357 14/3/19 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111
A major police investigation has been launched into the tragic deaths of three teenagers at the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown on Sunday night.

Lauren Bullock (17) from Donaghmore; Morgan Barnard, also 17, from Dungannon, and 16-year-old Connor Currie from Edendork were killed in a crush outside a disco.

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The death of Morgan is the second St Patrick's Day tragedy to hit the family. The young man's great-uncle Patrick Barnard was just 13 when a UVF bomb exploded at the Hillcrest Bar in Dungannon on March 17, 1976, killing him and three other people.

A 16-year-old girl was in a stable condition in hospital last night, while two other teenagers were treated for injuries suffered during the incident.

Several hundred people were trying to get into the venue after being dropped off by buses.

Police investigations are pointing towards a crush at the door which resulted in some people falling. Officers said people struggled to get off the ground and there was confusion in the immediate aftermath between 9pm and 10pm.

In a post on social media, Eimear Tallon (17) from Armagh said the incident had "started with pushing" but then the "literal crushing started".

She added: "I was hysterically screaming for people to move.

"With more and more pushing, I also fell. But the thing about me was that I wasn't on the ground, I was on top of someone, and this person was on top of someone else.

"As I looked down I could see multiple bodies underneath me and as I looked up I could see multiple bodies on top of me.

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"It was the most traumatic, frightening and stressful moment of my life."

Also waiting to get in to the venue was Kyra Coyle (17) from Stewartstown, who said: "Everybody was just shoving and pushing trying to get in.

"It was disgusting for me to experience, for me to see that.

"I just think everybody just wanted to get inside and drink."

Detectives from the PSNI's Major Investigation Team (MIT) have set up a dedicated room at the Burnavon Arts Centre in Cookstown where witnesses can go and speak to police.

Security camera footage is being examined and police have appealed for videos captured by those present.

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PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alan Todd said the specialist team of detectives assigned to the inquiry "will seek to establish the full circumstances of this dreadful incident".

He added: "This will be an extensive investigation with potentially hundreds of witnesses, many of whom are teenagers.

"The community will understand that this investigation will rightly be painstaking and detailed.

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"We will proceed in a sensitive manner and our enquiries are likely to take some time to complete.

"I thank the Cookstown and wider community in advance for their patience and support.

"I would urge young people who were present at the Greenvale last night to please get in touch with MIT detectives. We need to know what you saw."

The senior officer said he could understand that there may be some reluctance to contact police by those who were at the event but underage, but added "please do not be concerned".

"We are investigating the deaths of three young people, young people just like you. That is our focus.

"We want to be able to give their families answers and your recollection of the events as they unfolded is crucial."

In an emotional statement, hotel owner Michael McElhatton, who gave CPR to the victims, said management and staff are assisting the police with their investigation. "We are all deeply shocked and saddened by the traumatic events of last night," he said.

"We offer our heartfelt sympathies to the families and friends of the three young people who lost their lives. Our thoughts are also with those who have been injured or affected in any way by this tragedy.

"I would like to place on record our appreciation for the speedy response of the emergency services to last night's terrible events."

Tributes have been paid to all three victims.

Connor was the youngest of the three and attended St Patrick's Academy in Dungannon along with Morgan.

Hundreds of students, staff and parents yesterday attended a prayer service at the school in memory of all three teenagers.

A keen GAA player, Connor was remembered by his club Edendork GAC as a "much loved and highly thought of player and member".

Lauren was a pupil at sister school St Patrick's College, where principal Catherine McHugh yesterday remembered her as "a beautiful girl and "a shining light in our school community".

Euphoria Allstar Cheerleading NI, of which Lauren was a member, said it was devastated at the loss of "the most down to earth, beautiful soul".

Meanwhile a family member, Betsy Martin, put out a call on social media for anyone who saw anything of the incident on Sunday evening to get in touch with the family as they "wanted answers".

PSNI detectives can be contacted at the dedicated incident room at Dungannon police station by calling 101, extension 53055.
A young girl who witnessed the tragic crush which killed three teenagers at a St Patricks Day event in Tyrone has described how people struggled to get their friends off the ground as the pushing worsened and the efforts to save one of the victims.

Eboney Johnson (16) was one of around 400 people in the queue at the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown on Sunday night which left three dead and several injured.

The teenager said she was at the front of the queue to get into the hotel when the pushing started. It escalated and she saw several people lying on the ground, including Conor Currie (16) who died during the crush. Lauren Bullock (17) and Morgan Barnard (17) also tragically passed away following the incident.

She laid flowers at the scene on Tuesday afternoon.

"We were all up in the queue at the front. The pushing and everything had started but that would be normal enough on a night out," she said.

"The bouncers would normally come out and get us in some sort of a line but I think they never realised the seriousness of it at that stage. We were lucky we were in a corner but some people started to go down.

"People were trying to pick each other up. Every time someone went down to pick someone up another person would push. As people tried to pick people up it just became a struggle. Id have to say for all the lads that were there they done most of the work lifting everybody up.

"It was like a (protective) circle was formed pushing everyone out but nobody realised why, she said.

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Eboney described seeing several people on the ground including 16-year-old Connor Currie.

"I looked down and could see everybody lying there, and I could see Connor himself there getting the help that he needed. It was such a tragic situation. I wouldnt know if it could have been prevented but it definitely could have been helped.

"Thats all we would have seen then there were people taking us younger ones away from the scene so we wouldnt be able to see it.

"It was just so emotional, then they took everyone up to the roundabout so nobody could see anything. It was just tragic.

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Her mother Wendy Johnson said she was one of the lucky ones who managed to bring her child home.

Its horrendous, you were just waiting to see if your own child was okay and as I say we were the lucky ones who got our children home, but its just an awful tragic event even for the young children to watch and to witness their friends going through what they went through," she said.

Now they just have to be there for each other and support each other and hopefully that will guide them all and not scar them too much.

The PSNIs serious crime branch is investigating the planning and organising of a St Patricks Day event in a Tyrone hotel where three teenagers died during a crush.

Lauren Bullock (17), Connor Currie (16) and Morgan Barnard (17) from Dungannon in Co Tyrone, died in the tragedy at the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown on Sunday night.

A number of people were also injured in the crush which investigators say went on for a number of minutes.

Police are urging those who were at the venue to get in touch. They have said there would be nothing to fear if they were underage as investigators are focused on getting an accurate picture of events.

Secretary of State Karen Bradley visits Cookstown to offer her condolences & show her support to the community & all those affected by the tragedy on St Patrick's Day. The SoS met @MidUlster_DC reps & members of the emergency services to thank them personally for their efforts. pic.twitter.com/hQuLNtMcef  Northern Ireland Office (@NIOgov) March 19, 2019
A psychotherapist has appealed to those caught up in the St Patrick's Day disco horror in Cookstown "not to suffer alone".

Joe Coney from Coalisland, who runs JMC Counselling and Training in Dungannon, is among those offering support to those caught up in Sunday night's tragic events at the Greenvale Hotel.

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He has urged those young people from Coalisland, Dungannon, Cookstown or surrounding areas who are in need of trauma counselling to seek help.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph yesterday, Mr Coney explained: "I have been contacted by many parents of those who were at the Greenvale on Sunday night.

"It's really obvious that the young people, their parents and hotel staff have been deeply affected by what happened.

"Many are deeply traumatised by what they saw and will still be very numb.

"Some people may experience trauma while others will be able to cope with it better.

"For those who decide to bottle everything up, that's probably the worst thing that they could do - they need to talk about it."

Mr Coney said those affected may experience a range of emotions in the aftermath of the tragedy.

"At this stage there will be total confusion, but the danger is always that once things settle down over the next day or two, that's really when counselling may be needed to allow them to process events in more depth," he said.

"Once a person suffers this type of trauma, the mind and body is trying to regulate itself.

"A lot of people will think they are going crazy or something is seriously wrong.

"In effect there is something wrong and anyone who has suffered trauma will go through that process.

"Quite often when we explain what is happening to them, it settles them a bit."

The psychotherapist said anyone who feels they need help should ask for it.

"We have a team of 10 counsellors on standby at our Coalisland premises should anyone wish to talk," he said.

"It will be a platform for them to come in and tell their story.

"To any of those who have been affected, I would urge them to please don't suffer this alone and contact us as soon as possible.

"If anyone needs to talk please call 028 8774 6375," Mr Coney said.

Schools and GAA clubs in Cookstown and the surroundings areas have also pledged to support affected members and their families in the days and weeks ahead.

Anyone affected by this story is also being urged to contact Lifeline, the 24-hour crisis helpline on 0808 8088 000, The Samaritans on 116 123 free from any phone (028 9066 4422) or Childline on 0800 1111.
Flowers outside the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, in Northern Ireland where three young people have died at a party that was being hosted at the hotel on St Patrick's Day evening.

Two men have been arrested in connection with the deaths of three teenagers at the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown on St Patrick's Day.

The pair, aged 52 and 40, were arrested earlier on Tuesday on suspicion of manslaughter.

Conor Currie (16) died during a crush at the event. Lauren Bullock (17) and Morgan Barnard (17) also passed away following the incident.

Both men have been taken to Dungannon Custody Suite for questioning.

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Around 400 people were trying to get into the venue after being dropped off by buses on Sunday night.

Police said a crush at the door resulted in some people falling. Officers said people struggled to get off the ground and there was confusion in the immediate aftermath between 9pm and 10pm.

A major investigation into the deaths was launched on Monday.

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At a press conference on Tuesday Detective Chief Superintendent Raymond Murray said that police had already spoken to over 160 witnesses and would be speaking to more in the coming days.

He said that police wanted to speak to as many people as possible and that young people would not be punished for trying to enter a licensed premises while underage.

"This was an event that should have been a celebration and it turned into any parents' worst nightmare," Detective Chief Superintendent Murray said.
A US court is to examine the purchase of one of Northern Ireland's biggest employers, Moy Park, US media has reported.

The firm was bought over by the Pilgrim's Pride Corporation in September 2017, a subsidiary of the then owners, Brazil-based JBS SA - one of the largest meat producers in the world.

A report in The Washington Post says stockholders are now challenging the deal.

Shareholders are taking the challenge to see if the purchase was fair. They claim JBS needed to raise cash quickly. The sale came after JBS's controlling shareholder J&F Investimentos agreed to pay the world's largest 'leniency fine' to settle its role in a Brazilian corruption scandal. That fine amounted to more than 2.4bn.

Food industry news organisation Just Food reports "minority stockholders" of Pilgrims are behind the lawsuit. JBS is said to have a 78.5% stake in the firm.

At the time of the purchase in September 2017 Pilgrims Pride said it was approved by an independent committee that had been granted full authority over all aspects of the transaction. JBS said a special committee was appointed to oversee the purchase by three directors "unaffiliated" to it.

No date has been set for the trial.

Based in Craigavon, Co Armagh, Moy Park employs 6,300 people in Northern Ireland and 12,000 more at operations in the Republic and elsewhere in Europe. The business is a huge buyer of poultry on both sides of the border.

Founded in 1943 it was bought by JBS from Marfig for 1.2bn in 2015.

Janet McCollum chief executive of Moy Park at the time of the 2017 change in ownership to The Pilgrims Corporation described the deal as "positive".

Last year it was reported the company had a record turnover of 1.5bn with pretax profits of 64milion.

Moy Park has been approached for comment.
A number of vehicles were set alight in a suspected arson attack at a commercial premises in Newry on Monday night.

Police received a report of a fire at premises on Newry Road shortly after 11:10pm.

It was reported entry to the premises had been forced and a number of vehicles inside had been set alight.

The vehicles inside the premises were completely destroyed and a building situated nearby sustained damage as a result of the blaze.

Detective Sergeant Darragh appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

"I want to appeal to anyone who was in the area last night and saw what happened, or who saw any suspicious activity to contact police/detectives in Ardmore on the non emergency number 101, quoting reference number 1691 of 18/03/19," he said.

"Alternatively, information can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111, which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime."
The decision to close a hospital ward in Limerick has been criticised by a leading nursing trade union and TDs.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) slammed the plans by University Hospital Limericks management to close the ward, resulting in the loss of 17 funded medical beds.

The hospitals overcrowding situation reached the second highest it has ever been on Tuesday, with 76 patients waiting for beds, according to INMO figures.

The beds facing closure are in Ward 1A, used primarily for the treatment of patients who require short periods of admission.

Limerick is the most overcrowded hospital in the countryMary Fogarty

The INMO say it learned of the plans in recent weeks, and has written to the chief executive, on March 6, to object to the loss of hospital capacity.

The union released a statement saying that the hospitals issues with overcrowding will be exasperated by the closure.

University Hospital Limerick is already the most overcrowded hospital in Ireland, with the INMOs daily trolley watch showing that 11,400 patients were on trolleys, without beds, in the hospital in 2018, a statement said.

On Tuesday, a total of 76 people were waiting for hospital beds in UHL, with 54 waiting in the emergency department, and 22 elsewhere in the hospital.

INMO industrial relations officer for Limerick, Mary Fogarty, said the numbers were unacceptable.

Limerick is the most overcrowded hospital in the country, she said.

Overcrowding is endemic and we already see unacceptable numbers of patients forced to wait without a proper bed.

It simply does not make sense to close further beds when faced with such a problem.

We need to be going in the opposite direction.

Closing beds will only worsen Limericks overcrowding crisis, leading to compromised treatment and patients being forced to wait on public corridors.

Closing these 17 funded beds is a disservice to the patients and staff at the hospital.

Sadly, to date the hospital management has refused to review this illogical decision.

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Sinn Fein TD for Limerick Maurice Quinlivan also condemned the plans.

The decision to close this in-patient ward beggars belief, he said.

University Hospital Limerick is already the most overcrowded in the state with more than 70 people lying on hospital trolleys today because there arent enough beds.

The loss of these 17 inpatient beds can only add further pressure to the overcrowding in the hospital.

This closure has been decided by the management of the hospital and I would urge them to immediately review that decision.

Our health service is in crisis and Minister (Simon) Harris has failed to deal with the issues that are causing this emergency.

The government should be working to address the systemic problems in the health service, rather than making the situation worse.

A spokesman for the hospital said: Ward 1A is to close to facilitate the completion of works on the new fracture unit.

This is in accordance with the overall plan to redesignate the space occupied by the old emergency department at UHL.

Staff were fully involved in this process, with various teams presenting business cases on optimal use of the old ED.

The outcome of this process was to open a new fracture clinic in a portion of the old ED footprint.

This will have a significant benefit for patients attending our busy fracture clinic in terms of reduced wait times and improved patient experience.
Donald Tusk has expressed EU solidarity with Ireland amid Brexit talks in Dublin.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar welcomed the European Council president in front of the media, but neither of the men made any reply when questioned by journalists.

When asked if Mondays Westminster news posed a problem, Mr Tusk did not reply but shrugged.

The Dublin meeting was to consider any requests from the UK to delay Brexit, and other issues on the EU agenda, ahead of the European Council meeting in Brussels later this week.

A joint statement after the meeting said they discussed the current state of play regarding Brexit.

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Whatsapp Donald Tusk, fourth left, and Leo Varadkar, third right, at Government Buildings in Dublin (Niall Carson/PA)

President Tusk expressed the strong and ongoing solidarity with Ireland of the European Council and European leaders, the statement read.

They agreed that we must now see what proposals emerge from London in advance of the European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

Meanwhile, preparations continue in Ireland and across the European Union for a no-deal scenario, which would have serious consequences for all concerned.

Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow provoked uproar at Westminster on Monday when he ruled that the Government could not bring the Prime Ministers deal back for a third meaningful vote unless there were substantial changes.

The Speakers ruling was welcomed by some Tory Brexiteers opposed to Theresa Mays deal, who argued that it increased the chances of a no-deal break.

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has indicated ministers will continue to press on with Mrs Mays Brexit deal despite Mr Bercows ruling.
The Nobel Prize of a towering economist and political philosopher who influenced Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan has become the most valuable item ever to be auctioned by Sothebys online after it sold for 1.1 million on Tuesday.

Friedrich von Hayeks Nobel Prize for Economic Science sold for almost triple its pre-sale low estimate of 400,000-600,000, the auctioneer said.

The auction was organised to mark the 75th anniversary of the publication of Hayeks Road to Serfdom in 1944.

The Nobel Prize was auctioned alongside Hayeks possessions from his personal collection, including his annotated copy of Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations, which sold for 150,000, the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to Hayek by President H.W. Bush in 1991, which sold for 112,500.

The auction also featured the Companion of Honour awarded by the Queen to Hayek in 1984, which sold for 35,000, and the economists typewriter, which sold for 18,750.

In total, the auction raised 2.04 million for the 27 lots and drew more than 1,000 bids.

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Hayeks Nobel Prize replaces an archive of Supreme skate decks as the most valuable item ever to have sold at an online auction at Sothebys.

The previous record of 800,000 US dollars (602,880) was set in January.

Hayek was born in Vienna in 1899 and first made his name on economic issues before expanding into the wider political and philosophical implications of his free market economics in the 1940s, the auction house said.

He was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science in 1974 with Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.

The economist is perhaps best known for his dispute with John Maynard Keynes over monetary and fiscal policy following the Great Depression, when he argued for the regulating power of the market and against government stimulus packages.

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He is also often credited with influencing right-wing policymakers of the 1980s, including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

During a policy meeting, Mrs Thatcher is said to have slammed a copy of Hayeks Constitution of Liberty on the table and declared: This is what we believe.

The debate over Hayeks work has been revived in recent years in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Sothebys said.

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Sothebys specialist Dr. Gabriel Heaton said: Friedrich von Hayeks influence is perhaps still unmatched by any other Economics laureate. His theories, which have influenced some of the of the major political moments in Western history, continue to resonate today as demonstrated by the extraordinary demand we witnessed for his personal collection at Sothebys.
Jim Wells said the Education Authority should focus on the "real" crisis in the Northern Ireland education system

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow has scuppered any chance of another Commons vote on Theresa May's Brexit deal before Thursday's EU summit.

Mr Bercow ruled that the Prime Minister cannot bring her EU withdrawal agreement back before MPs unless it is substantially different from the package which was decisively defeated last week.

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The Speaker's ruling, announced in an unexpected statement to the Commons, throws a further obstacle in the way of the Prime Minister's scramble to get a deal agreed by the scheduled date of Brexit on March 29.

Downing Street has indicated that Mrs May will not table a motion on a third "meaningful vote" ahead of Thursday's EU summit in Brussels unless there is a realistic prospect of securing a majority in the Commons.

If no vote takes place over the coming days, she is expected to ask the leaders of the remaining 27 EU members for a lengthy extension to the two-year Article 50 negotiation process, delaying Brexit for months or even years beyond March 29.

The PM had been expected to then make a last-ditch attempt to get her deal through the Commons next week, effectively presenting MPs with a choice between the withdrawal agreement which they have already rejected twice, or a long wait for Brexit.

But Mr Bercow's ruling could make that plan impossible, unless Mrs May is able to negotiate some change to her deal before presenting it once more to MPs.

A Number 10 spokesman said: "We note the Speaker's statement. This is something that requires proper consideration."

Solicitor General Robert Buckland said the Government was facing a "major constitutional crisis" and that Mr Bercow's intervention would have "huge reverberations" for the Brexit process.

He suggested ministers may need to prorogue Parliament and call a new session in order to get around the ruling.

"There are ways around this," he told BBC News. "Frankly we could have done without this. Now we have this ruling to deal with, it is clearly going to require a lot of very fast but very deep thought in the hours ahead."

The Speaker cited the Commons rulebook Erskine May as he set out a convention dating back to 1604 that a defeated motion cannot be brought back in the same form during the course of a parliamentary session.

He said it was within the rules for a second vote to be held on the withdrawal agreement in March, because it had been substantially revised - including by the addition of three new documents - since its defeat by 230 votes in January.

"If the Government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same nor substantially the same as that disposed of by the House on March 12, this would be entirely in order," said Mr Bercow.

"What the Government cannot legitimately do is resubmit to the House the same proposition - or substantially the same proposition - as that of last week, which was rejected by 149 votes."

Mr Bercow was asked by Commons Brexit Committee chairman Hilary Benn whether there would have to be "new political agreement" for the Government to bring its deal back before MPs.

He replied that "in all likelihood" this would be needed.

The change must be "not different in terms of wording but different in terms of substance" and "this is in the context of a negotiation with others outside the UK", he told MPs.

Mrs May's hopes of rallying Conservative MPs behind her agreement were dealt a blow by 23 Leave-backing backbenchers who signed a letter to The Daily Telegraph backing a no-deal Brexit.

And former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called on the PM to postpone any further vote on her deal, warning it would be "absurd" to bring it back to the Commons without first securing change from Brussels.

Discussions were continuing between the Government and DUP during the course of Monday, including over the question of how the Assembly could block any new regulatory barriers to trade with the rest of the UK.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman confirmed that ministers would want to be confident they had a "realistic prospect" of success before deciding to call a third vote. Leading Tory Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg said he would wait to see what the DUP decided before finally making up his mind which way to vote.

He warned that if a third meaningful vote were lost, it might mean the UK never leaves the EU.

"If it is thwarted now, no one is ever going to allow us another chance to have a vote," Mr Rees-Mogg told LBC radio.

"The whole weight of British Establishment opinion will prevent that ever happening again."

He added: "As long as people think we can get to no-deal, they will vote the deal down. That is my position."

The 10 DUP MPs are viewed by Downing Street as pivotal, not just for the votes they provide but the influence of their stance on the Conservative Eurosceptics.

DUP MLA Jim Wells denied that the party was taking part in a financial "auction" for its support, insisting that "money is not being discussed on the table at the moment".

Although he does not have the party whip, Mr Wells told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We still have a huge difficulty with the backstop, because we see it as a waiting room for constitutional change.

"We could find ourselves locked in there forever in effect, and once you get in you can never get out. We have to have a mechanism where we can escape the backstop."
The brother of a soldier murdered by the IRA in the Hyde Park bombing 37 years ago has criticised the Labour leader after he voiced support for the prosecution of soldiers.

Mark Tipper - whose brother Simon was among the 11 killed in two IRA bombs in London on July 20, 1982 - accused Jeremy Corbyn of not caring about the feelings of families bereaved by the terror group.

His comments came after the Public Prosecution Service said there was enough evidence to prosecute a soldier for the murders of two men on Bloody Sunday in 1972.

Mr Corbyn was pressed on whether it was fair, given how members of the IRA suspected of crimes were offered an effective amnesty as part of the peace process. He replied: "The Good Friday Agreement was important, seminal and complicated, but it does not provide complete immunity for everyone, it was never intended to."

Mr Tipper said the law should apply to all "but it isn't being applied to everyone and that's wrong".

"It's all one way traffic at the moment but the holders of these On The Run (OTR) letters should be investigated in the same way as the soldiers, but that's not what's happening," he said.

"If the IRA have OTR letters, then our troops should have them and the loyalist side should have them. All I see now is the persecution of soldiers, including from Jeremy Corbyn. He doesn't know how we feel, I don't think he cares how we feel."

He said it "feels like a betrayal by the British Government, who should be there to help us".

"They always say they will look after the victims and they will come down hard on the terrorists, but until they revoke every single OTR letter and investigate them in the same way soldiers are being investigated they are not helping victims."

The 2014 trial of John Downey for the Hyde Park bomb collapsed after he produced a so-called comfort letter given to him by Tony Blair's government, assuring him that he was no longer wanted by the police.

He is currently living in the Republic, but fighting an extradition battle to face charges in Northern Ireland over the murder of two soldiers in Enniskillen in 1972.

Former soldier and Assembly member Doug Beattie said it is easy to see why people are angry at the investigations into Troubles related to soldiers, while those in possession of OTR letters are apparently protected from prosecution.

The Ulster Unionist MLA said: "The OTR scheme was never designed as an amnesty, but the reality is it has delayed justice and it was done behind the backs of the nation so people see that and it doesn't sit well.

"We have to remember that 16 terrorists received Royal Prerogative of Pardons between 1998 and 2002 and that doesn't sit well with people either.

"If you look at the proposed mechanisms for dealing with the past - especially the Historical Investigations Unit (HIU) which will see every single killing by a soldier re-investigated again and not every killing of a soldier - I think there is a genuine slant in balance towards this and it's not right that terrorists seem to be able to walk with impunity while soldiers have to face the full weight of the law.

"It has led people to be angry about the whole process.

"If you combine everything that is going out there - the OTR letters, the pardons, the HIU, the fact that we have so many terrorist walking about our streets virtually untouched - I can see why people think the way they do.

"This should be addressed, we can't buy into a one-sided process, but it isn't being looked at at this present time."
Plans to introduce a drugs consumption room in Glasgow have been discussed for several years (Paul Faith/PA)

The UK Government has been urged to devolve drugs legislation to Scotland so that a consumption room can be created in Glasgow.

Under current legislation, such a facility, which aims to prevent drug-related deaths and reduce HIV infection rates, would be illegal.

Drug Consumption Rooms (DCRs) are aimed at providing a safe environment for drug addicts to inject.

However, unless the UKs Misuse of Drugs Act is amended, addicts and staff working at a DCR could be arrested.

A bill that'd allow Glasgow's safer drug consumption facility to open lawfully has been put before the UK Parliament with cross-party support. The full text of the case made by Glasgow Central's @alisonthewliss in support of the bill is here: https://t.co/9Q8moSyz1c @GCHSCP pic.twitter.com/EbwsoNXhZB  Glasgow City Council (@GlasgowCC) March 15, 2018

In a submission to Westminsters Health and Social Care Committee  which is carrying out an inquiry into drugs  four charities in Scotland set out the advantages of introducing a DCR.

The submission states: DCRs are cost-effective, reduce public injecting, do not increase injecting frequency, drug use, or drug-related crime, and increase the uptake of social work and addiction services

The introduction of a DCR in Glasgow could potentially reach 400-500 people that currently partake in public injecting  a particularly vulnerable population who face severe and multiple disadvantages and are disproportionately affected by health inequalities

The legal barriers that are currently in place to a DCR in Glasgow could be solved by an exemption to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to protect both people that inject drugs and the staff at such a facility.

So proud that @theSNP conference has given overwhelming support to our resolution on medically supervised drug consumption facilities. We call on the @ukhomeoffice to let Glasgow's pilot go ahead so we can help save lives and reduce harm. #DCRs #HarmReduction #SNP18 pic.twitter.com/csMGpCqK9V  Alison Thewliss  (@alisonthewliss) October 8, 2018

Nathan Sparling, HIV Scotland chief executive, said: The localisation of drug laws would allow the Scottish Government to respond far faster and in a far more relevant manner than the current legal framework allows.

Allowing the Scottish Government to act in the best interests of its citizens in this instance makes perfect sense and we hope that the committee agrees.

Leon Wylie, Hepatitis Scotland lead officer, said: With legislative control reserved to Westminster, its important that they understand the actual issues affecting the people we work with and stand for.

The international evidence base tells a positive story but at the moment Westminster is not listening.

Grant Sugden, Waverley Care chief executive, said: The establishment of a DCR in Glasgow could play a really important part in addressing the huge health impacts of problem drug use.

In particular, it would help tackle the transmission of blood-borne viruses amongst some of societys most vulnerable individuals.

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: A safer drug consumption facility would help save lives in Glasgow.

Such facilities reduce accidental overdoses and syringe sharing  cutting the risk of HIV and other infections. They also cut risks to the general public by reducing the number of syringes and needles found in public places.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: As demonstrated by our support for Glasgows proposals to introduce a safer medically supervised drug consumption facility, and offer heroin-assisted treatment, we are willing to back innovative, evidence-based approaches that can make a real difference.

If the UK Government continue to block these proposals, we hope they will devolve the necessary authority over these matters to Scotland so we can take action that saves lives.

Tackling stigma over blood-borne viruses is one of the top priorities of the Scottish Government  and one of the five high level priorities of our sexual health and blood borne virus framework.
The Duchess of Cambridge during a visit to the Foundling Museum, London (Kirsty OConnor/PA)

The Duchess of Cambridge had a moving meeting with young people as she viewed photographs showing the living conditions of Londons most disadvantaged children.

Kate was at the Foundling Museum, of which she is now a patron, to understand how it uses art to make a positive contribution to society by engaging with vulnerable young people.

The museum tells the history of the Foundling Hospital, the UKs first childrens charity and Englands first public art gallery.

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Kate met young people who have all been in some form of care.

In a speech, she said: I feel hugely proud to be here today to become patron of the Foundling Museum.

Your work connects and celebrates two subjects that are deeply important to me  children and art.

I am passionate about improving childrens life chances and giving them opportunities so that they can look forward to the best possible futures, fulfil their whole potential and have the freedom to explore their creativity.

I have always believed in the power of art, not only to unlock that creativity but also to bring us joy and to inspire, challenge and positively change our lives.

I could not be more delighted to support such a special organisationDuchess of Cambridge

She added: Your museum here powerfully links these two forces for good.

By weaving together moving stories of looked after children with art and artists of all genres, you create meaningful learning experiences which will have a lasting and often transformational impact on young lives.

I could not be more delighted to support such a special organisation.

The museum works with contemporary artists, writers and musicians to develop learning programmes for young people.

Kate visited the museums Bedrooms of London, a photography exhibition by Katie Wilson that documents the living conditions of the capitals most disadvantaged children.

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Chatting to Kate about her exhibition, Ms Wilson said: A lot of these people have fallen through the net.

The duchess was shown the photographs by graduates of the museums Tracing our Tales programme, which has been developed to equip care-experienced young adults from London with the skills to devise and deliver workshops at the museum.

The graduates picked out images in the gallery that particularly resonated with them and chatted to Kate about their experiences.

As 20-year-old Callum, who has moved 14 times, spoke to Kate about one of the photographs, she put her hand on his arm and told him: Its so moving. It really is.

She added: Hold on in there.

Kate also chatted to Ameera Patel and Rohima Poosch, and told the three 20-year-olds: Hats off to all of you to have the inspiration and the willpower to stick with it.

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In 2017, Kate visited the museum and met the first intake of Tracing our Tales trainees.

Two years later she was meeting them again to hear how the programme has helped them gain confidence and employment.

She joined them in a creative Tracing our Tales training session where participants were learning how to deliver a creative workshop on block printing techniques.

Kate, wearing the same Catherine Walker coat dress that she wore alongside the Queen earlier in the day, was announced as a patron of the Foundling Museum not long before she arrived.

Caro Howell, director of the museum, said: The Foundling Museum is thrilled and honoured to receive the duchesss patronage.

Her support is a huge boost to our work transforming the lives of vulnerable young people through the arts.
The best friend of Claudia Lawrence has said she still dreams about the missing chef, 10 years after she disappeared.

Suzy Cooper (54), was speaking at an event at York Minster to mark the tenth anniversary of her friend's disappearance.

Ms Cooper was the first person to realise Miss Lawrence was missing. She said she still thinks about her friend a lot.

"I don't want to wake up, because I feel like I am back in my old world, and that world was nice and comfortable, and the world I'm in now isn't," she said.

"I think those dreams are my way of getting some comfort. I like to have them. I always wake up thinking I've been with Claudia."

Ms Cooper said she had an "intensive" friendship with Miss Lawrence and described her disappearance as "all very surreal".

She said: "In those first few days we thought it would be over in a few days. It's just unbelievable, really. You can't quite comprehend the fact that it's been 10 years. It's been a long 10 years but it also seems like only yesterday."
Three people have been jailed for life for the merciless murder of a man at a flat.

Defenceless Haider Hayat, 49, was subjected to a sustained and relentless attack with lethal weapons at the property in Raithburn Road, Castlemilk, Glasgow, on April 3 last year.

He suffered more than 100 injuries and his throat was cut in the assault, which likely began when he was asleep.

Muhammed Rauf, Shahida Abid and Saima Hayat were all convicted of murder at the High Court in Glasgow last month.

Main assailant Rauf, 42, was ordered to spend a minimum of 24 years behind bars when he returned to the court for sentencing on Tuesday.

The victims wife, 34-year-old Saima Hayat, who was also convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice, was told she would spend at least 25-and-a-half years in jail before she can be considered for release.

Her co-accused 33-year-old Shahida Abid, Raufs wife, who also tried to cover up the crime, was given a life sentence with a 25-and-a-half year minimum term.

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Passing sentence, judge Lady Rae told them: All three of you are responsible for what was a merciless attack on Mr Hayat and all three of you are equally responsible for his death.

The judges comments were released by the Judicial Office for Scotland following the hearing.

The court heard that pathology evidence showed that Mr Hayat had sustained at least 100 severe blows to his head, while his throat and neck had been cut at least 16 times.

He also had numerous other blunt force injuries to other parts of his body, including defensive wounds.

Lady Rae told the killers: You have all been convicted by the jury of the brutal murder of a defenceless man who was, at the start of the assault, in all probability, asleep in his bed.

He was then subjected to a sustained, relentless and merciless attack with lethal weapons.

From the chilling recording which the jury heard of the noise from within the flat, it is clear that this attack lasted in excess of six minutes. The number of injuries Mr Hayat sustained were so extensive that it was difficult to count them.

The judge also rejected Saima Hayats claims that her husband had been abusive towards her.

From the evidence I have heard in this case I am satisfied that you Saima Hayat were the abusive partner in this relationship and not your husband, Lady Rad said.

The evidence disclosed that you are a manipulative, scheming woman.

Detective Chief Inspector Craig Willison, of Police Scotland, welcomed the lengthy sentences handed out.

Speaking after the hearing, he said: Haider Hayat was subjected to a brutal and sustained violent attack in the property where young children were present.

This brings to a close a chilling investigation of acts which are simply unacceptable in our society.

I hope Haiders family are now able to be comforted that his murderers are in prison for a very long time and in some way can move on.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has signalled that ministers will continue to press on with Theresa Mays Brexit deal despite the Commons Speakers bombshell intervention.

John Bercow provoked uproar at Westminster on Monday when he ruled that the Government could not bring the Prime Ministers deal back for a third meaningful vote unless there were substantial changes.

Mr Barclay said that, while the Cabinet would give serious consideration to his ruling, Mrs Mays plan remained the only deal on the table.

What we need to do is secure the deal. This is the only deal on the tableStephen Barclay

What we need to do is secure the deal, he told Sky News.

This is the only deal on the table. The EU is clear it is the only deal on the table. Business need the certainty of this deal and it is time that Parliament comes together and gets behind it.

Mr Barclay acknowledged that the ruling made it more unlikely that there would be an attempt to get the deal through the Commons before Mrs May attends the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.

However, he said the Speaker had made clear in earlier rulings that the Commons should not necessarily be bound by precedent.

What the Speaker has said in his ruling is there needs to be something that is different. You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed, he said.

So we need to look at the details of the ruling, we need to consider that in the terms of earlier rulings that dont particularly align with yesterdays.

The fact a number of Members of Parliament have said that they will change their votes points to the fact that there are things that are different.

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Mr Barclay rejected suggestions that ministers could seek a prorogation of Parliament from the Queen in order to get round the ruling.

I think the one thing everyone would agree on is involving Her Majesty in any of the issues around Brexit is not the way forward so I dont see that as a realistic option, he said.

He accepted that there would now have to be a short extension to the Article 50 withdrawal process as the Government would not be able to get through all the legislation it needed in time for March 29 when the UK is due to leave.

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We are now in a situation where we do need to have an extension to pass the legislation for the Withdrawal Bill, he said.

The Speakers ruling was welcomed by some Tory Brexiteers opposed to Mrs Mays deal, who argued that it increased the chances of a no-deal break, but Mr Barclay warned their optimism was misplaced.

I think that is clutching at straws because the House has already ruled to take no-deal off the table, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme.

His warning echoed a Government source, who said it seemed clear that the Speakers motive was to rule out a meaningful vote this week which could have led to a shorter extension.

(This) leads you to believe what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit, the source said.

But anyone who thinks that this makes no-deal more likely is mistaken  the Speaker wouldnt have done it if it did.

Mr Bercow faced awkward questioning from the media as he made his way to the Commons on Tuesday.

The Speaker refused to be drawn when he was asked a series of questions regarding his controversial ruling as he walked towards the Palace of Westminster.

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Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will meet leaders of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Green Party to discuss Brexit.

In a joint statement ahead of the talks, Ian Blackford, Sir Vince Cable, Liz Saville Roberts and Caroline Lucas said: The UK faces an unprecedented crisis with Brexit, and Westminster remains deeply divided.

The best and most democratic way forward is to put the decision back to the people in a new vote  with the option to Remain on the ballot paper.

Mr Corbyn will also meet members of the Norway Plus group of MPs for separate talks on Tuesday.

Meanwhile in Dublin, European Council president Donald Tusk will hold talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar.
Private companies should pay for trials into medical cannabis because they stand to make the profits, Englands top doctor has said.

But the countrys chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies told an influential committee of MPs that there were no shortcuts to getting the drugs to patients.

The Government announced plans to reschedule the drug earlier this year, and doctors have been able to prescribe cannabis products to patients in the UK since November 1.

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But patients and their families have complained about being denied NHS prescriptions for medical cannabis because the professional guidance is too restrictive.

Dame Sally told the Health Select Committee on Tuesday that there needed to be a series of randomised control trials in order to get cannabis drugs licensed for use.

She said that because the private sector was set to make the most profits from the drugs being licensed, it should to fund some of the trials.

Dame Sally added: We have a role for the public sector to fund these studies because it matters to patients.

But we would expect the manufacturers, who are going to be making the profit at the end of the day, to be funding the licensing trials.

Thats whats needed  randomised control trials are the only way to get these drugs licensed.

Those would normally be funded by the industry and I think its time that the industry started to say what it is going to do about funding trials to get the licence so patients can have access.

But when asked if the process could be streamlined to allow patients quicker access to the products, Dame Sally said: There is no shortcut, we have to find out how it works and what the impact is.

Her comments come on the same day families of children with severe epilepsy handed a petition with about 578,000 signatures to 10 Downing Street calling for the guidance on prescribing medical cannabis to be reviewed.

The petition, organised by the End our Pain campaign, said that despite medical cannabis being rescheduled, guidance issued Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and British Paediatric Neurology Association (BPNA) was so restrictive that almost no one will get access to medical cannabis.

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It is supported by Hannah Deacon, whose son Alfie Dingley was the first person in the UK to receive a permanent medical cannabis licence and went on to be granted the first NHS prescription issued after the UK law change.

Speaking at Parliament on Tuesday, Ms Deacon said she could not stand back and let other children suffer after seeing the wonderful change medical cannabis had had on Alfie.

She said that since the prescription, her seven-year-old son had gone from being in hospital 48 times in one year to just one hospital admission in a year.

Ms Deacon added: A public health crisis is looming if these children are not helped urgently.

All these children have tried many drugs, many interventions, and they still have seizures every single day and its an utter disgrace.

But Alette Addison, head of pharmacy development and regulation at Department of Health and Social Care, told the select committee that without an evidence base doctors will not be confident prescribing the drugs.

She also denied that the current guidance was too restrictive, insisting it was based on the best international evidence available.

She added: Doctors are only going to be confident in prescribing, signing that form, if they have the evidence base to do so, and its not there at the moment.
Jamaican immigrants being welcomed by RAF officials from the Colonial Office after the ex-troopship HMT Empire Windrush landed them at Tilbury (PA)

Nearly 3,700 people have been issued with British citizenship under a Home Office scheme set up in response to the Windrush scandal.

From May last year, members of the Windrush generation, their UK-born children, and those who arrived in the country as minors have been able to apply for citizenship free of charge.

By the end of January, 3,674 people had been granted citizenship.

Ministers faced a furious backlash over the treatment of members of the Windrush generation, named after a ship that brought people to Britain from the Caribbean in 1948.

Commonwealth citizens who arrived before 1973 were automatically granted indefinite leave to remain but many were not issued with any documents confirming their status.

A public outcry erupted after it emerged that long-term UK residents were denied access to services, held in detention or removed despite living legally in the country for decades.

The latest statistics show that as of January 31:

 Nearly 2,500 individuals had been given documentation confirming their right to be in the UK;

 There had been 48 requests for urgent and exceptional support under a policy introduced in December, of which 41 were under consideration, two had been approved and five had been declined;

 The Home Offices dedicated taskforce had rejected 597 applications made under the Windrush scheme;

 Fifty requests for refusals to be reviewed had been lodged, with two decisions overturned, 39 upheld, and nine in progress;

Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee said it was completely shocking that only two people had been accepted for help under the urgent support arrangements.

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We know the endless difficulties and destitution that Windrush families have faced as a result of Home Office failures, and yet they are still not getting swift and comprehensive support from the Government, she said.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid said the majority of requests have yet to be concluded.

He added: The taskforce are working closely with individuals who have submitted requests in order to assess the current circumstances and gather the necessary evidence to support the urgency of their claim.

I would like to emphasise that all these cases have had lengthy and detailed consideration.

Any decision made in these cases has been checked and challenged extensively at operational level and been approved at senior official level.

Mr Javid noted that three exceptional payments were made for return flights to the UK before the official launch of the policy on December 17.

The Home Office added that a vulnerable persons team within the Windrush taskforce has already provided support to over 600 people, including referrals to the Department for Work and Pensions for benefit claims and advice and support on housing.

Last year the Government apologised over 18 cases where people were considered most likely to have suffered detriment because their right to be in the UK was not recognised.

Ministers are also preparing to set up a compensation scheme for those affected by the failings.
Self-styled yellow vest protester James Goddard has denied calling MP Anna Soubry a Nazi and a traitor during a chaotic court hearing which resulted in the judge adjourning proceedings part-way through.

Goddard, 29, pleaded not guilty to harassing the politician between December 18 last year and January 8 in Westminster.

He also denied one count of racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress, and another count of harassment, alarm or distress, when he appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

Goddard, wearing a white T-shirt featuring a British flag, a logo for The Directory Guys, a motif of three childrens faces, and the words our boys, repeatedly gesticulated to the packed and noisy public gallery during the hearing.

Expand Close James Goddard denies harassing MP Anna Soubry (Dominic Lipinski/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp James Goddard denies harassing MP Anna Soubry (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

He is expected to rely on a defence of fair comment.

Addressing Judge Kenneth Grant from the dock, Goddard said: Its not illegal to heckle an MP. All of this is wrong.

He also complained that he was called a far-right fascist every day, and drew raucous applause from the public gallery as he addressed the judge.

Judge Grant rose and temporarily adjourned the case 15 minutes into the hearing after several people in the public gallery began shouting about Brexit, made derogatory comments about Ms Soubry, and chanted: Shame on you.

Supporters chanted Soubry is a Nazi, commented on the perceived severity of his bail conditions by telling the judge that Goddard is not a terrorist, you know, and said a police officer briefly present in court would be better off fighting knife crime.

The hearing resumed to inform Goddard of his bail conditions, but descended into farce again soon after as the defendant left the dock complaining to the judge that he could not get a fair trial.

People in the public gallery shouted messages of support to the defendant as he left the court.

He will return for a two-day trial on July 19, during which Ms Soubry is expected to be among the witnesses. It is not known whether or not the Independent Group MP will give evidence in person.

Goddard, 29, from Timperley in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, denies one count of harassment without violence in which he allegedly shouted and chanted at Ms Soubry, pursued her, filmed her, called her scum, Nazi and traitor, and used other insulting language; one count of using threatening/abusive words/behaviour or disorderly behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress; and one count of racially/religiously aggravated harassment/alarm/distress by words/writing, towards Pc Mindaugas Sciukas.

Goddard, who live-streamed his arrival at court, addressed swells of supporters outside upon its conclusion.
Democratic Party presidential hopeful Beto ORourke has said theres a lot of wisdom in scrapping the Electoral College system because it puts some states out of play in presidential elections.

Mr ORourke made the comments on Tuesday after speaking to a college-campus crowd of hundreds in Pennsylvania, a late-voting state that may yet play a role in the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.

Expand Close Beto ORourke in Pennsylvania (Gene J. Puskar/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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The Texan suggested that changing the Constitution to adopt a popular vote for president would ensure that every voter counts.

Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Republican Donald Trump by nearly three million popular votes in 2016, yet Mr Trump won the Electoral College to capture the White House.

Expand Close Donald Trump won the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton (Brian Lawless/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Donald Trump won the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton (Brian Lawless/PA)

Also on Tuesday, US Senator Elizabeth Warren reiterated her support for eliminating the Electoral College while on her Democratic presidential campaign swing through Selma, Alabama.

Mr Trump achieved his victory against Mrs Clinton by winning the popular vote narrowly in several swing states, notably in the rust belt, thus taking all the Electoral College votes for those states despite the narrow margins of victory.
Ambulances are parked next to a tram after the shooting in Utrecht (Peter Dejong/AP)

A third person has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the tram shooting in the city of Utrecht that left three people dead and five injured, Dutch police say.

Public prosecution office spokesman Ties Kortmann said three people were in custody  the alleged gunman Gokmen Tanis, 37, and two others who were also arrested on suspicion of involvement in the shooting on Monday morning.

Mr Kortmann said Tanis was being held on suspicion of manslaughter with a possible terrorist motive, but added that investigations were continuing into what drove him to allegedly open fire in a tram.

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Prosecutors said the nature of the attack and a note found in a getaway car give them reasons to consider terrorism as a motive, but other possible motives are being investigated.

Dutch media said Taniss neighbours in Utrecht have speculated that the shooting may have been linked to a relationship, but prosecutors said investigations do not so far indicate the gunman knew any of the victims.

Earlier, justice minister Ferd Grapperhaus said Tanis was known to authorities and had a criminal record, but would not elaborate.

If it had terror motives, that is being investigated. But it was very serious. The world shares our grief, prime minister Mark Rutte said.

Our thoughts go to the victims relatives, to the families who have lost a beloved member. Our thoughts also go to the wounded, who are now fighting for their lives. The whole of the Netherlands shares your deep pain.



Full statement  https://t.co/VBOPf232R3  Mark Rutte (@MinPres) March 18, 2019

The attack came three days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating white supremacist opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers.

Dutch authorities reduced the threat level in the city back to four out of five following the arrest of Tanis, which came after a manhunt involving heavily armed officers with dogs.

During the hunt, police released a photo of a bearded Tanis on a tram in a blue hooded top.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Dutch military police tightened security at airports and key buildings in the country, and Mr Rutte said: If it is a terror attack, then we have only one answer: Our nation, democracy, must be stronger than fanaticism and violence.

The shooting took place at a busy intersection in a residential neighbourhood.

Local media said Tanis had been charged several times over recent years with offences ranging from attempted manslaughter to petty crime in and around Utrecht. Two weeks ago he was in court on charges of raping a woman in 2017, news reports said.

The Netherlands anti-terror co-ordinator, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, raised the threat alert to its highest level, five, around Utrecht, a city of nearly 350,000, until Tanis was captured.
Another day, another Brexit plot twist - and this one looks set to make a lengthy extension to EU membership ever more likely.

Embattled Tory leader Theresa May is all but clinging onto her premiership and has now had her apparent strategy of running down the clock dealt a potentially fatal blow by the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.

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Her 'third time lucky' vote has turned out to be rather unlucky - and that's without looking at the parliamentary arithmetic which still looks breathtakingly tight even if she does manage to win over her key targets.

The announcement by Mr Bercow - a man who could have been plucked from central casting for the role in the House of Commons - was met with frantic reaction across the spectrum in the UK.

It was welcomed by hardline Brexiteers, including Jacob Rees Mogg who said: "May I say how delighted I am that you have decided to follow precedent which is something I am greatly in favour of."

But in Whitehall there was an unsurprisingly icy reception, with the Prime Minister's spokesman confirming that the "Speaker did not forewarn us of the content of his statement, or indeed the fact that he was making one".

The Solicitor General described the chaos as a "constitutional crisis". The words of Winston Churchill which described a "riddle wrapped in an enigma" have been invoked often along the Brexit way.

But it seems now that Mr Bercow has added another layer of complexity, adding a lock to which only he holds the key.

He will be the one to determine if the Government has met the bar he has set, based on hundreds of years of parliamentary precedent.

The Brexit battle facing Mrs May, with just 10 days to go until the UK is scheduled to leave, has split on two fronts.

On one hand, she must continue trying to sway the DUP behind her deal in order to convince enough rebel Tory and Labour MPs to vote for it.

While on the other hand, she will have to find a way to actually ensure there is a vote for them to get behind. Mr Bercow has suggested it would take a change from Europe to ensure the deal was substantially different if it returned for a third vote.

But there wasn't immediate clarity on whether changes to domestic legislation alongside the deal would be enough to meet his litmus test.

Changes to the UK's Brexit legislation have been mooted as a potential way to reassure the DUP.

Within minutes of his proclamation, speculation had already turned to the idea that the Queen could end the parliamentary session early and convene a new one to allow the deal to be brought back for a vote.

There are, it appears, avenues out of the current crisis.

But the intervention by Mr Bercow has left the UK scrambling to find it - and all the while the ticking of the clock is only getting louder.

Laura Larkin is the political correspondent of the Irish Independent
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.
Theresa May watches MPs give the result of the vote during the Brexit debate in the Commons last week

Are we witnessing the greatest parliamentary betrayal ever inflicted on the British people? Forget all the complex Brexit motions and their even more complicated amendments and the otiose language being used at Westminster and consider instead the simple issue of the honour of parliamentarians, because it is now seriously in question.

Parliament ordered the referendum and vowed it would honour the result. To their great shame, many MPs are now betraying that pledge.

The Remainers were so cocksure of winning that they conducted a ludicrously low-key and complacent referendum campaign.

The allegations they are making now and the questions they're asking should have been aired during the campaign.

Furthermore, the suggestion that the referendum revealed a divided nation and should mean a second vote is just so much nonsense.

All elections reveal that - and Winston Churchill, when asked what he considered a satisfactory majority, replied: "One vote."

Let us hope the next few weeks will give the majority voters in the referendum what they asked for.

The vultures are already menacingly circling over the silver-haired head of David Steel, former leader of the Liberal Party.

They are not exactly screeching: "Off with his head!". But they are demanding that he be stripped, here and now, of his peerage.

You could be forgiven for assuming (wrongly) that such people might have possessed more common sense and a feeling for normal justice than to demand punishment for a man while an inquiry into his conduct is still in progress.

Steel has already been suspended from the Liberal Democrats while the inquiry continues. It relates to how much he knew about the behaviour of his long-time colleague Sir Cyril Smith's now well-documented abusive behaviour towards young people in Rochdale.

There are still many unanswered questions about Smith's murky behaviour. Why did Smith not sue when an underground newspaper in the town openly printed the accusations against him? And why did the police take no action at the time?

Meanwhile, Steel has served the party well and faithfully for years, including overseeing the tricky link-up of the dying SDP with the Liberals in the 1980s. He has also been been a highly valued servant to Parliaments both in Westminster and Edinburgh.

Give the man a chance, please, and a fair hearing.

And yet more national newspaper exposure for the Liberal Democrats. Vince Cable, the party's venerable leader, announced that he will relinquish the leadership in May, conditional on the state of health of Brexit at that time. Who is likely to succeed him, given that there are no household names left in the party in the House of Commons any more?

Incidentally, the last big name the Lib Dems could boast was Nick Clegg, the former Deputy Prime Minister, who quit the political scene recently to take a lavishly rewarded post with Facebook.

It may not be widely known that Clegg acquired the nickname of "Cleggover" on the basis of his bragging about his conquests with women.

However, I digress.

Jo Swinson, the reasonably competent deputy leader, must seem the obvious choice as Cable's successor, especially since the Lib Dems remain the only major party in the country that has not had a female leader - people seem to forget that Margaret Beckett was briefly the fully-fledged leader of the Labour Party on John Smith's sudden death in 1994.

Swinson has ministerial experience in the recent Conservative-Lib Dem coalition administration. She is also a lot less growly than the incumbent, who is also an unlikely suave ballroom dancer.

A smallish man with horn-rimmed glasses gently asked an attendant if he could enter a part of the House of Commons not normally opened to the public.

When he was denied entrance, he said: "I am an MP's husband." It still cut no ice. It was only when someone who overheard these exchanges called out "he's the Prime Minister's husband" that he was granted admission.

Philip May is, commendably, a modest man.

Nothing of the "don't you know who I am?" about him.

He absolutely exemplifies that wonderful line of Shakespeare's: "There's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility."

What a refreshing change compared with some of his predecessors as spouses of Prime Ministers.
How much does the European Union actually care about keeping the UK inside the union? I ask this because, after Speaker Bercow's historic ruling yesterday, Britain's destiny now lies in the hands of 27 "foreign" governments, our partners in the EU.

Assuming - as things stand it is reasonable to do so - that Mrs May fails again to win support in the Commons for her deal, then things move, once again, into Brussels' court. Mr Bercow has in effect hit the reset button.

The European Council then has a choice: it can offer the UK a short extension to the Article 50 process to sort out the details of the Brexit deal that hasn't actually been agreed (with little chance Mrs May will be able to put it to the Commons anyhow), or it can offer Mrs May a far longer delay - 21 months say - in which, basically, to start again.

Of course some Brexiteers will find that unpalatable, yet others will reflect that they will live to fight for Brexit another day.

They know that the existing blindfold Brexit deal keeps the UK in the customs union anyway, fails to solve the "trap" of the Irish backstop, with the terms of the future deal completely unknown.

Whatever your point of view, it would be much easier for all concerned to know those. Some Brexiteers might prefer to have them negotiated by a new Prime Minister.

Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson may have an interest in this approach - the Ctrl-Alt-Delete option, where we just reboot the process, but get things the right way around this time.

Today we face the absurdity of a hard Brexit in little over a week's time. The EU and the Commons agree on one thing: they do not wish this to happen. So, one way or another, it will not.

If hard Brexiteers are rational they will opt for a delay - however long it takes to get it right (on their terms that is).

The one novel option that is now emerging from the fog of Brexit war is the grand compromise of a second referendum, coupled with conditional approval of the May deal.

This is the so-called Kyle-Wilson amendment, which has won the, albeit confused, support of Jeremy Corbyn (who wants to vote Leave in the subsequent referendum, but on Labour terms which do not, of course, exist).

It is substantially different from previous meaningful votes because it has a national referendum attached to it - a big move by anyone's standards.

Anyway, we can leave some of the trickier questions about campaigning and the ballot paper to the Electoral Commission and just get on with choosing between the only deal that actually exists in real, non-mythical form, and staying in.

If we want we can put 'hard Brexit' on the ballot paper as well as a theoretical possibility - maybe with preferential voting. This would end the Farageists' charge of "Brexit betrayal".

As a democrat I'd be content to see it on the forms and to live with it if the country actually wanted it. Besides, Mrs May might even win.

The truth is that this option could be placed before the Commons this week under Speaker Bercow's ruling and win a majority - and a huge one - if Mrs May, reluctantly, admitted she needs to take her case to the country.

She could then go to the EU Council and ask for a delay long enough to hold a democratic vote - something it has indicated it would grant. Ideally, she would also ask for it to turn her woolly "political declaration" into a proper UK-EU Trade and Security Treaty. That way we would be voting with all of our eyes open on a complete deal and not a leap in the dark - blindfold Brexit.

Thus we come round, as we always do, to the need to break the deadlock in the most efficient and democratic way possible - a final say referendum sooner or later.

We have a right to vote on our future and have had it as a constitutional fact once the 2016 referendum transferred sovereignty to the British people.

The House of Commons effectively then put itself out of business as a "sovereign" body and has once again shown itself unable to summon up the energy and ingenuity to regain its historic role.

Our future should not be in the shaky hands of the MPs or of EU heads of government.

It is time to let us lot - the poor old voters - sort Brexit out once and for all.
Pictured at Northstones head office in Dunmurry is Peter Gilgunn, Account Director at BT Enterprise in Northern Ireland, Harry Ritchie, IT Manager at Northstone and Barry Hughes, Enterprise Architect at BT Enterprise in Northern Ireland.

In our modern fast-paced economy, customers look for ever more efficient, innovative and flexible network and communication services which offer best value for money and help to future-proof their business.

Paul Convery, Head of Business for BT Enterprise in Northern Ireland, cites Northstone, the largest construction and building materials group in Northern Ireland, as a good example of one such company. Based in Dunmurry, Northstone has three divisions - Northstone Materials, Farrans Construction and Cubis Systems. Having grown significantly in recent years, the company has a multi-million pound turnover and over one thousand employees, so requires efficient and reliable networks and quick connectivity for its daily operations.

Following the adoption of the very latest technology, Northstone now enjoys around ten times the technological capacity it used to have, but at no extra cost.

Paul says: Over the past couple of years, weve worked closely with the team at Northstone to fulfil their goal of having an improved ICT infrastructure which can offer increased capacity, both now and into the future. Weve delivered flexible, next-generation services to help future-proof their business, rebuilding their unified comms platform, introducing SIP (internet calls) and delivering increased bandwidth and security with a new WAN.

Harry Ritchie, IT Manager at Northstone, says the relationship with BT has seen a complete turnaround of service delivery. Working alongside the BT account team and technical experts, he says expectations are fully aligned, with clear strategic objectives in place.

Adopting a more strategic approach to the relationship, BT initially restructured and rebuilt Northstones Cisco unified comms system, creating a platform capable of handling the large volume of calls Northstone manages across 70 sites and 12 regional offices. With the company using everything from Skype and video conferencing, as well as document sharing and communicating across multiple platforms, the system was adapted to meet the growing businesses requirements.

BT redeveloped and future-proofed Northstones ICT infrastructure, creating a more efficient and reliable network to give the business the increased capacity it requires. The result is a solution which meets current demands but also future-proofs the company moving forward.

Alongside this, BT also delivered a WAN upgrade, giving Northstone increased bandwidth, along with better security and disaster recovery, while also ensuring business continuity and high-quality services. As Harry says: Its an entirely different way of managing the site.

Another innovative solution BT put in place was SIP (internet calls), which has reduced Northstones costs and provided secure back-up, again with built-in business continuity. Throughout the business we have about 700 channels, says Harry. With SIP we can consolidate these and pay for about 200 at a much reduced rate. Its flexible, secure and future-proof. Were one of the first companies to do this sort of thing.

Northstones firewall security is now also provided by BT and a team based locally in Belfast, with a full Managed Services contract ensuring clarity of service delivery as well as proper processes.

Meanwhile, innovation remains at the heart of the relationship with BT. New innovations and products come to the market all the time and we need to know about them, says Harry. Regular meetings with BT ensure the business is up-to-date with all the latest developments and as Paul Convery concludes: What sets us apart is that we share innovative ideas and insights, as well as looking at vertical trends and what we can do to meet the future challenges of the company, to continue to give them a distinct competitive edge.

For further news and insights, please visit https://business.bt.com/public-sector/regions-northern-ireland/
American Joel Aquino Pasay, seen in this photo released March 19, 2019, is in custody after hiding in the Philippines for nearly two years.

Federal agents from the United States backed by Philippine immigration officers captured a 56-year-old American wanted on a child pornography charge over the weekend, authorities said Tuesday.

The suspect, Joel Aquino Pasay, who had been in hiding for nearly two years north of Manila, did not resist arrest when members of U.S. Homeland Security and local authorities raided his hideout in Angeles City on Saturday, the Philippine Bureau of Immigration said.

The agency said Pasay is wanted by U.S. authorities in Nevada for receipt of child pornography. A warrant for his arrest was issued by the U.S. district court there.

Under U.S. law, a person found guilty of knowingly distributing or receiving any material that contains images or videos of child pornography may be sentenced to a minimum of five years to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

This is very serious offense, and his stay here poses a risk to our people. He is an undesirable alien who should be deported immediately, immigration commissioner Jaime Morente said. U.S. federal laws make it a separate crime for receiving child pornography.

In May 2018, American national Antonio Fouad Bounab was arrested at an airport in Manila on a child pornography charge as well. He allegedly contacted Filipino minors through a social media site.

Three months later, a court in the south sentenced Australian Peter Gerard Scully, 55, and Filipina partner, Carmen Ann Alvarez, to life in prison for operating a cybersex business that targeted Filipino children.

Scully and Alvarez were caught in 2014 in a police raid at their apartment near Cagayan de Oro in the south. Two girls, ages 9 and 11, whom the couple had sexually abused, had escaped and told police about them.

In December 2018, American priest Kenneth Bernard Hendricks, 78, was arrested in the central Philippines for allegedly sexually molesting dozens of altar boys in the central town of Naval. He is to be deported soon, according to officials.
Darrell Blatchley, director of DBone Collector Museum Inc., shows plastic waste found in the stomach of a Cuviers beaked whale on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, March 16, 2019.

After a whale stranded in shallow waters in the southern Philippines died, marine biologists discovered about 40 kilos (88 pounds) of plastic in its stomach, environmental groups said Tuesday.

The carcass of the 15.4-foot (4.7-meter) whale was found on the coastal town of Mabini in Compostela Valley on the island of Mindanao. It had been stuck there since Friday.

Darrel Blatchley, founder of the DBone Collector Museum, examined the Cuviers beaked whale and found the trash in its stomach. The garbage contributed to dehydration and starvation that led to the whales death.

Every single river, every single canal goes directly to the ocean. So everything from small whales and dolphins, even the sea turtles are affected by this, as well as humans, he said. We are eating the food that comes out of that ocean. So were basically throwing our own garbage into our food source.

Regional Greenpeace campaigner Abigail Aguilar said the whales death was one of the worst cases of plastic poisoning she had seen.

The frequency on which marine animals are dying due to plastic ingestion is alarming. In less than a year, whales, dolphins and turtles have died in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, a clear proof how grave plastic pollution affects our environment, most specifically ocean creatures, Aguilar said.

In Davao Gulf alone, Aguilar said three whales and a dolphin were found dead with plastic in their stomachs this year alone.

Just a week ago, we have documented a crab trapped inside a disposable cup under the seas of Verde Island Passage, the epicenter of marine biodiversity in the world, she said.

It is unimaginable how many more animals are mistaking and ingesting plastic for food right now, and how many more of them will be found beached and dead soon she said.

Aguilar called on corporations to reduce or stop the production of single-use plastic for packaging, or for governments to ban single-use plastic products.

Weeks earlier, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternative (GAIA), an environmental NGO, said that about 57 million plastic bags were used daily throughout the Philippines, mostly for shopping.

The GAIA called on the government to institute a comprehensive national plastic bag ban that promotes reusable bags, as well as regulations on other single-use plastic products and rules requiring companies to redesign products and packaging to minimize plastic waste.

In 2017, the Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, said the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam were responsible for more than half of the plastic waste entering the oceans.
Thai business tycoon Premchai Karnasuta walks to a provincial court in Thong Pha Phum, a district of Thailands Kanchanaburi province, for his sentencing over allegations of poaching a black panther at a national forest reserve, March 19, 2019.

A Thai criminal court sentenced one of the countrys wealthiest men Tuesday to 16 months in prison after finding him guilty of illegal hunting in a wildlife sanctuary, but acquitted him of the more serious charge of possession of a black panther carcass.

Premchai Karnasuta, the president of construction giant Italian-Thai PLC, and three of his companys employees were arrested at Thung Yai Naresuan National Park in February last year after park rangers found them with guns and the skinned carcass of a panther and other wildlife species protected under Thai law, authorities said. Premchai and the three men pleaded not guilty in May and were released on bail.



The first defendant is sentenced to six months in jail for jointly carrying guns in public place, eight months for supporting others to hunt wildlife, two months for possessing the carcass of a gray peacock-pheasant  a total of 16 months in jail, the court sheet distributed to the media stated, referring to Premchai.

The Thong Pha Phum provincial court acquitted Premchai of possessing the panther carcass  the highlight of the case that ignited national outrage and spurred public skepticism about whether rich Thais are immune from the law. The court found the three other men guilty of possessing the panther carcass and ordered each of them to serve a variety of sentences, from four months to more than three years.

Premchai and one of the defendants were ordered to pay fines of 2 million baht (about U.S. $64,500) for the damages caused to the wildlife sanctuary in western Kanchanaburi province.

I have a word to say: I apologize, Premchai told a throng of reporters as he walked to his luxury SUV.

One of Premchais co-defendants, a helper who was not involved in the hunt, received a two-year probation. Premchai and the two others were temporarily released on bail, their lawyers said, emphasizing that they would appeal.

We will refute the charges, Kijja Ali-Isho, one of the defense lawyers, told reporters.

The black panther is a subspecies of the Indochinese black leopard, according to environmentalists who said about 900 to 2,500 remain in the wild.

Premchais company built Bangkoks Suvarnabhumi Airport and the Bangkok Metro system. In May 2017, Forbes magazine listed him among Thailands 50 richest people, with a net worth of at least U.S. $240 million (7.6 billion baht).

An activist from the pro-wildlife group TChalla said the verdict was acceptable to him but expressed concerns on why the tycoon was acquitted on the more serious charge of panther carcass possession.

I feel OK with the verdict. The court took only over a year to decide that is pretty quick, Tatpong Kaedam told BenarNews.

But the court should have explained why Premchai was acquitted of possessing panther carcass. We will keep campaigning to not let the panther forgotten, he said. The society wants to see the rich getting punished.
Bowling Green community encouraged to review emergency plans, update safety kits

Ohios Spring Severe Weather Awareness Week  March 17-23  provides the opportunity for Ohioans to prepare their homes, schools and businesses for potential severe weather.

Bowling Green State Universitys Emergency Management office encourages everyone to learn what to do to protect themselves from spring and summer weather hazards while on and off campus. Take time now to review emergency plans, get reacquainted with weather warnings and watches and update safety kits and supplies.

Ohios spring and summer weather hazards include tornadoes, thunderstorms, floods and even snowstorms through early spring. The Ohio Committee for Severe Weather Awareness provides current Ohio weather and severe weather safety and preparedness information.

This week provides us with another opportunity to continue to educate and prepare ourselves for severe weather events, said Matt Keefe, manager of support services, BGSU Department of Public Safety. Severe weather can impact our lives any time of the year, while at work, school, home or while traveling.

"Being vigilant when threatened with inclement weather and preparing for these events can help to protect lives and reduce injures. There are many weather preparedness tools and educational materials available from local, state and federal agencies that you can use before, during and after severe weather events.

As part of the Universitys efforts to safeguard against the effects of severe weather, Emergency Management has placed at least one emergency alert weather radio in every occupied building on campus. Now is a good time to check that your weather radio is working properly by following these three steps:

1. Have a backup power source (batteries) in case of a power outage.

2. Ensure the unit is in weather radio mode by turning the switch on the left side of the unit to ON.

3. Check the volume and weather broadcast by pressing the WEATHER/SNOOZE button.

The University Department of Public Safety is following the state of Ohios guidelines in getting the message out about preparing for severe weather. On Wednesday (March 20) at 9:50 a.m., Wood County and the city of Bowling Green will take part in the Statewide Tornado Drill. The purpose of the drill is to sound and test outdoor warning sirens. Buildings on campus that have internal weather receivers/notification systems will also be activated for the same duration. Schools, businesses and households are encouraged to practice their tornado drills and emergency plans. This is a good time to review emergency procedures.

Learning tornado and other weather terms will also ensure that everyone knows the difference between a tornado watch and a tornado warning. A tornado watch means conditions are favorable for the development of tornadoes. A tornado warning is issued when a tornado is imminent or occurring. If a tornado warning is issued for your area, do not stop to take photos or shoot video. Seek safe shelter immediately and D.U.C.K.:

 D  Go DOWN to the lowest level; stay away from windows

 U  Get UNDER something (such as a basement staircase or heavy table or desk)

 C  COVER your head

 K  KEEP in shelter until the storm has passed

As part of the Universitys emergency plan, students, faculty and staff are automatically enrolled in AlertBG, a way to communicate emergency information. Text messages and emails are sent to the campus community in the event of emergency or severe weather closures. Users may add one additional cell phone number and/or email address by visiting the MyBGSU. Click on the AlertBG tab at the top of the Welcome page.
By Azernews





By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

More than 90 percent of construction work has been completed on the Albanian section of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which envisages transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe, Albanian Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy told Trend.

Albania estimates that the overall progress in TAPs implementation in the country has been in line with the forecast, according to the ministry.

"Since September 2016, when the TAP project has gone to the pipeline construction phase in its onshore section, by the end of 2018, over 90 percent of the pipeline construction has been completed on this section," said Albanian energy ministry.

The work on TAPs offshore section on Albanian territory started in October 2018, said the ministry.

Albanian energy ministry said that during 2019 it is expected that the construction of TAP will be completed.

Moreover, TAP progress in 2019 will include issuing the relevant permits for the certification of the respective sections of the TAP project in the Albanian territory, the relevant approvals from the ERE for the licensing of TAP AG as a gas transmission operator, according to the ministry.

Generally, TAP project, worth 4.5 billion euros, is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union (EU). The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries.

The pipeline would be supplied by natural gas from the second stage of the Shah Deniz (Azerbaijan) gas field development in the Azerbaijani section of Caspian Sea through the South Caucasus Pipeline and the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP). Since it will enhance energy security and diversify gas supplies for several European markets, the TAP project is supported by the European institutions and seen as a "Project of Common Interest" and a part of the Southern Gas Corridor.

Connecting with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) at the Greek-Turkish border, TAP will cross Northern Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea before coming ashore in Southern Italy to connect to the Italian natural gas network.

The project is currently in its construction phase, which started in 2016.

Once built, TAP will offer a direct and cost-effective transportation route opening up the vital Southern Gas Corridor, a 3,500-kilometer long gas value chain stretching from the Caspian Sea to Europe.

In June 2013, the project was chosen as a route for gas from Shah Deniz II over the competing Nabucco West project. Later in 2013, BP, SOCAR, Total, and Fluxys became shareholders of the project.

Trans Adriatic Pipeline AG is a joint venture company registered in Baar, canton Zug, Switzerland, with a purpose of planning, developing and building the TAP pipeline. The Managing Director of the company is Luca Schieppati.

TAP shareholders include BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Snam S.p.A. (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagas (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).
Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, my coming interviews with former President Donald Trump

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For Immediate Release, March 19, 2019 Contacts: Patrick Sullivan, (415) 517-9364, psullivan@biologicaldiversity.org House Armed Services Urged to Halt Airbase Construction to Save Okinawa Dugongs WASHINGTON More than a dozen American conservation and animal protection groups today urged the House Armed Services Committee to push for a temporary halt to construction of a U.S. military base in Japan that could wipe out the Okinawa dugong, one of earths most endangered marine mammals. Okinawa voters recently approved a measure opposing the airbase. Todays letter to committee chairman Adam Smith and ranking member Mac Thornberry notes that the proposed U.S. airbase in Okinawa will destroy two ecologically rich bays crucial to the dugongs survival. The Department of Defense is being sued for failing to comply with U.S. environmental laws requiring a thorough evaluation of the projects threat to the Okinawa dugong, a critically endangered manatee relative. Our own natural heritage is at risk when we destroy sensitive ocean habitats and endangered species. We would not condone such activities at home, nor should we condone them abroad, states the letter from the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, Animal Welfare Institute, and 10 other nonprofit organizations. Wiping out these gentle animals to build this controversial base would deeply stain Americas international reputation, said Miyoko Sakashita, director of the Centers oceans program. The House Armed Services Committee should push the Pentagon to halt this reckless construction and thoroughly evaluate the projects threat to dugongs and Okinawan culture. The ongoing construction ignores a democratic referendum last month in which an overwhelming majority of Okinawa voters opposed the base construction. The base construction is also opposed by Okinawas new governor, Denny Tamaki, who has strongly urged Japans Defense Ministry to stop work on the project. Building the base will involve filling in and paving over hundreds of acres of rich coral and seagrass habitat crucial to the handful of surviving Okinawa dugongs. The Center, other organizations and residents of Okinawa recently filed the opening brief in an appeal of a court ruling allowing construction of the base. The brief, filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, highlighted the bases threat to the dugong. The 9th Circuit ruled in 2017 that Okinawa residents deserved a full hearing on their concerns. Dugongs have long been revered by native Okinawans. The dugong is listed as an object of national cultural significance under Japanese law. Under the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act and international law, the United States must avoid or mitigate harm to places or things of cultural significance to another country.
The Indo-German joint venture also announced further expansion plans in Gujarat and North India to meet requirements of the growing domestic market

In a first-ever industry initiative, leading pharmaceutical packaging company SCHOTT KAISHA successfully concluded its 5-city roadshow, bringing together industry experts, R&D specialists, business and sales leaders for discussions on the latest technological advancements and best practices that lead to drug safety.

Held over 2 weeks, the events gave participants a clear understanding on the importance of conversion process in tubular glass manufacturing, and showcased SCHOTT KAISHAs upcoming product portfolio, tailor-made design and development capabilities.

Rishad Dadachanji, Director, SCHOTT KAISHA shared, the Indian packaging industry is undergoing rapid growth and we have always been committed to address the demands and challenges of our customers. Hence, we always work together with our partners to deliver better integrated lines of solutions and services. We are extremely happy with the response at the roadshow. This has helped us further strengthen our position in the industry as a catalyst of innovation and technology. As a key takeaway, we have decided to work even closer with our stakeholders and meet their demands by investing in yet another manufacturing unit in Umarsadi, Gujarat as well as plan to set up an entirely new plant in northern India.

With fresh investments in new sites in Gujarat and North India, expansion and upgradation of existing plants in Daman and Jambusar, SCHOTT KAISHAs financial commitment will further increase by upto INR 500 crores between 2018 and 2020. The increased capacity will cater to the growing demand of ampoules, vials, syringes, cartridges and sterile portfolio. Through this increased production capacity, the company is focussing on catering to the domestic market first, with a current supply to export ratio of 75:25.

Major Customers of SCHOTT KAISHA played an active role during the roadshow, in giving a feedback from an end-user perspective. Mr. Ajay Bapat from Emcure shared his impression, This is a great initiative by SCHOTT KAISHA. Companies like ours, who are closest to the end-users, look forward to such events which gives us valuable insights on solutions and innovations available for the final consumer. In any industry, and more particularly, for pharmaceuticals where customers health is at stake, it is important to have a feedback mechanism in place. Being an informal gathering of professionals from all spheres, the event gave participants an opportunity to share challenges and demands of their customers. Now, it becomes even more important for us to work closely to overcome challenges.

Similarly, the roadshow provided a platform for partners of SCHOTT KAISHA to showcase their unique offerings to potential clients. Severine Duband, Global Category Manager, Nemera said, Most events in the industry generally cover a wide spectrum of offerings and cater to a mix audience. However, such a roadshow is much more targeted and caters to our specific audience. Hence, this is a much more effective platform for us resulting in quality over quantity in terms of prospective business opportunities.

Other partners included global industry leaders such as ACE Technologies, Aptar Pharma, Datwyler, Kaisha Lifesciences, Nemera, Packwell Industries, Shakai Packaging Pvt. Ltd., Smart Skin Technologies, Snowbell Machines Pvt. Ltd., Sovereign Pharma Pvt. Ltd. and Vanrx Pharmasystems Inc.

Jayant Joshi, Managing Partner of Shreedhar Group, distributors for VANRX in India shared, We appreciate this association as it is the first time that so many players  representing foreign brands and local players have come together on a common platform. We use SCHOTT KAISHA products and in fact, design our machines accordingly. Such events through the company are instrumental for us to get closer to our customers, gather new learnings and, in turn evolve our solutions.

Today, India is undoubtedly a huge pharmaceutical market for the world, exerting unmatched strength in manufacturing of generic drugs for US and other global markets. With the Indian pharmaceutical packaging market estimated at INR 147.8 billion in 2017 and expected to reach INR 245.5 billion by the end of 2023, there is huge demand for an increased supply of high quality primary packaging material. SCHOTT KAISHA has always given preference to a quality by design approach, benchmark manufacturing and quality control processes using breakthrough inspection technology, combined with best-in-class components.
The Global Chagas Disease Coalition is a collaborative alliance, which aims to increase awareness of Chagas disease and foster synergies in controlling the disease and promoting access to diagnosis and treatment

At the Annual Meeting of the Global Chagas Disease Coalition in Barcelona, Spain, Novartis announced that it is joining the Coalition as a member contributor. In addition, the company announced its commitment to launch a multinational, prospective, randomized study with heart failure drug, Entresto (sacubitril / valsartan), in people with chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy, one form of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. This is the first definitive morbidity and mortality study to assess a potential therapy for cardiac disease in this underserved patient population.

The clinical trial will assess the efficacy and safety of Entresto vs. enalapril and is expected to start within 2019, with the aim of recruiting approximately 900 patients with confirmed Chagas disease in Latin America. The primary endpoint is time to occurrence of a composite of cardiovascular events, including cardiovascular death or first hospitalization due to heart failure. This definitive study follows an exploratory post hoc analysis from the PARADIGM-HF trial, which suggested that Entresto may have beneficial effects in people with chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy and heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

At the same time, Novartis is working with stakeholders in endemic countries to co-develop tailored access-to-medicine programs and health system strengthening strategies to help ensure lower-income patients suffering from chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy can benefit from the best available treatment.

Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a potentially life-threatening neglected tropical disease estimated to affect approximately six million people globally and is responsible for approximately 12 000 deaths annually. The disease is endemic in 21 Latin American countries, where it is the second leading cause for developing chronic heart failure.

Novartis is also taking steps to advance research efforts around the disease and is committed to providing mentorship opportunities for scientists from Latin America to help strengthen capacity for relevant research regionally. The Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases (NITD), the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) and collaborators have developed a promising portfolio of novel drug candidates for the treatment of kinetoplastid diseases.

The proteasome inhibitor LXE408 was recently advanced as a promising drug candidate for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis. This novel mechanism of action is also being explored for other indications, including Chagas disease.

In addition, Novartis is partnering with the World Heart Federation to develop an end-to-end roadmap for addressing Chagas disease. The final roadmap is expected to be launched within 2019. In parallel, we are working together with different stakeholders in Latin American countries, such as Argentina and Colombia, to support existing national plans for an integrated care approach to Chagas disease.
NIH-funded discovery uses common antifungal drug to improve lungs ability to fight infection

Researchers at NIH say a widely-used antifungal drug may hold promise for treating people with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening genetic disorder that causes serious damage to the lungs. In studies using human cells and animals models, the researchers found that the medication, called amphotericin, helps lung cells function in a way that could make it easier for patients to fight chronic bacterial lung infections that are a hallmark of the disease.

The findings from the study, which was supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health, will appear in the journal Nature.

If human studies validate the findings, the use of the drug could be good news to the more than 30,000 people in the United States and 70,000 worldwide who live with cystic fibrosis, a disease with no cure and few treatment options. It holds special promise for a subset of patients, about 10 percent of the people with cystic fibrosis, who do not respond to any treatment.

Martin D. Burke, leader of the study and a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois in Champaign said, The really exciting news is that amphotericin is a medicine thats already approved and available on the market. We think its a good candidate.

Cystic fibrosis is caused by a defect in a gene called CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator). This gene normally makes a protein that controls or channels the movement in and out of cells of such materials as salt, bicarbonate, and waterall of which are important to normal lung function. In people with cystic fibrosis, however, the defective gene makes a protein that is itself defective, causing the accumulation of acidic and sticky mucus that not only clogs the lungs and makes it hard to breathe, but also makes the lungs vulnerable to bacterial infection.

While some treatments are currently available, they are limited because different people have different types of mutated proteins, and because 10 percent of people with cystic fibrosis make no protein at all. But amphotericin, Burke said, has the potential to work regardless of the kind of mutation, and even when the protein is missing.



Instead of trying to correct the protein or do gene therapy  the latter of which is not yet effective in the lung  we use a small molecule surrogate that can perform the channel function of the missing or defective protein, Burke said.

The researchers call this surrogate  the amphotericin  a molecular prosthetic, because it restores function much like a prosthetic device does when it replaces a limb.

In their studies, the researchers used lung tissue from patients with cystic fibrosis, as well as pig models of cystic fibrosis, and found that amphotericin spurred a host of changes associated with improved lung function  restoration of pH levels, improved viscosity, and increased antibacterial activity, among others.

The researchers noted that amphotericin can be delivered directly to the lungs to avoid common side effects. They cautioned that more experimental studies are needed before the drug is safe to treat cystic fibrosis in people. But experts are hopeful.

James Kiley, Ph.D., director of the Division of Lung Diseases at the NHLBI said, The cystic fibrosis community is truly in need of new therapies to reduce the burden of this disease. We are interested to see how this potential treatment performs in clinical trials in the future.

This work was supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Both are part of the National Institutes of Health. The study was also supported by additional institutions outside of NIH.
The 5th eCommerce Africa conference kicked off at the CTICC on 19 March 2019 with a keynote session by Chantel Botha, founder of BrandLove, in the customer experience track, titled: 'More than a feeling, on why CX is the #1 competitive differentiator'. Here's what you missed!

Chantel Botha of BrandLove in action at eCommerce Africa 2019.

That makes sense when contrasted against typical traditional retail as digital journeys are messy, which means theyre emotional. Research shows that people buy online while they're at work, while they're driving and when they're on the toilet - probably not how you picture them at that stage of the customer journey.

Fine-tune your customer gaze on Generation CX

The business of experiences and unboxing emotion

Design for those moments of delight and disappointment

Chantel Botha of BrandLove in action at eCommerce Africa 2019.

With the day's moderator Dylan Piatti having introducing her as 'the love doctor for brands,' Botha shared that she started in working in the ecommerce world in 1999 and never thought she would one day open a conference talking about feelings. Fast-forward two decades and that's exactly what happened.Through an online poll, Botha asked conference attendees a number of questions, with the results updated in real-time, on what they purchase most often and their biggest 'online experience' challenges tops were payments and delivery times, which often lead to huge amounts of frustration - unfortunate for a process typically built to delight.Botha took attendees on a similar emotional rollercoaster because while so much has been spoken about customer experience and its importance in building a customer-centric business in the modern customer space, with so many hard elements pulling for resources, it's critical to place what seems like a soft discipline at the core of your business.Simply put, if your customer gaze is purely from a product perspective, you're missing crucial opportunities to interact with your consumers when they experience the highs and lows of emotion along the way. That's why Botha says to design customer journeys based first on customer needs, then to focus on their specific story, goals and feelings - only then can you use those learnings to differentiate with meaning.Sadly, many businesses just aren't tapping into 'Generation CX'. If you do nothing else, watch the 'Meet Generation CX' video as it explains how the balance of power is changing and that focusing on consumers purely by their generational handle isn't winning you brand loyalty:It's incorporating that outlook into your brand essence that'll help define your customer experiences.While offering an experience through the traditional bricks-and-mortar retail journey is relatively easy to explain, it's a more internal process for the online experience as those tend to be driven by emotion.When all goes well the customer saves time in simply logging in wherever they are rather than driving to the store, has an easy return and comparison process, and there's a level of privacy as you can choose to make your purchases anonymously and steer clear from crowds. Emotion drives most of this process.The downside is what Botha touched on in her earlier audience poll - the absence of sensory experience and human contact, the heavy shipping costs, unforeseen delays if the product is out of stock, often excessive packaging, as well as the risk of fraud and uncertainty of what you're really getting if it's a new product or service.That uncertainty of 'what did you actually get' ties in with the popularity of 'unboxing' videos online, with Botha using the following example to tie together the threads of her presentation:Unfortunately, it takes a lot more to impress customers and less to disappoint them today, as expectations and needs have changed drastically over the past few years, with few brands making the effort to keep up with the trend. Customers will shift loyalty fast if your brand disappoints.Remember that in customer journeys, it's important to also map the moments you have no control over as a brand, like the customer experience in the parking lot of the mall where your store is based.A bad experience micro-moment there forms part of the customer's overall experience with your brand.Botha said we know to design for delight but also design for what to do when there is disappointment, because those moments will happen.Design those moments and memories to get your customer to fall in love with your brand again, and watch the #ecommerceconfex hashtag for updates throughout the eCommerce Africa 2019 conference.
By Azernews





By Laman Ismayilova

The Zoospective and Morphospective exhibition by French sculptor Mauro Corda has opened at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku.

Director of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Anar Alakbarov hailed the development of Azerbaijan-France relations, Azertag reported.

He said that the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and the Heydar Aliyev Center implement a number of projects in the field of culture.

Director of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation stressed that works of such famous sculptors and artists as Bernard Buffet and Laurence Jenkel were previously showcased at the Heydar Aliyev Center.

The exhibition curator Mark Hashim expressed his gratitude to the organizers for the pleasant opportunity to present the works of Mauro Korda in such a grand place - the Heydar Aliyev Center.

"I am sure that these works of art will cause you great interest, you will discover them for yourself," said the curator.

Afterwards, Mauro Corda informed the event participants about his sculptures.

He noted that the works on display are examples of art that set all feelings in motion. These works are examples of French sculpture based on sustainable ideas.

Then the event participants viewed the exhibition.

The portrait genre occupies a special place in Cordas works. The artists is striving to present human inner world in various milieu and situations using a variety of materials ranging from bronze to ceramics, metal, marble, etc.

The wildlife is another area of Mauro Cordas concentration. Abrupt extinction of certain endangered species is among the major objectives of this type of sculptures. The artists main message is the risk of some ordinary animals to become a sort of miracle both in wildlife and in zoos really soon.

The exhibition will last till September 15.




This job expired on 18 May 2019.
By Trend





Chile is interested in comprehensive cooperation with Azerbaijan, Foreign Minister of Chile Roberto Ampuero said during a meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov who is on a visit to Chile, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Chilean Minister Roberto Ampuero highly appreciated the first official visit of his Azerbaijani counterpart to Chile and expressed confidence that this visit will further contribute to strengthening the exiting friendship relations between the two countries, adding that Chile is interested in comprehensive cooperation with Azerbaijan.

Elmar Mammadyarov underlined the importance of intensifying high-level mutual visits between the two countries for the expansion of contacts at various levels and holding political dialogue on regular basis.

At the meeting the sides expressed their satisfaction with the current level of diplomatic relations between the two countries, which will mark the 25th anniversary this year. To this end, it was highlighted that the establishment of the Embassy of Chile in Azerbaijan will give a new impetus to the development of bilateral relations.

The ministers noted that there are huge opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation in economic, trade, education, tourism, agriculture, energy, transport, investment and humanitarian spheres.

The sides also exchanged their views on the current issues of international agenda, as well as the situations in the relevant regions. In this context, Mammadyarov informed his counterpart about the latest situation of the negotiation process on Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Also the sides discussed the cooperation issues within international organizations, including the Non-Aligned Movement and other issues of mutual interest. Azerbaijani minister emphasized that Chile is invited to the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, which will be held on October in Azerbaijan and expressed his hope that that Chile will be represented at the event at the highest level.




TUV Rheinland Middle East, the global testing, inspection and certification organization, said Saudi Railway Company (SAR) has achieved a major milestone with the full implementation of the European Railway Traffic Management System (ERTMS) - European Train Control System (ETCS) Level 2 signalling system.

Handing over of the Independent Competent Person (ICP) certificate by TUV Rheinland Middle East marked the formal acceptance by the Public Transport Authority of the full implementation of ERTMS - ETCS Level 2 signalling system.

This is a globally significant achievement in the railway industry since, according to UIC data, SAR's 2,400-km network has become the longest single line, ETCS Level 2 signalled, mixed freight and passenger service rail network in the world.



Since securing its first contract with SAR in 2011, TUV Rheinland has played an important role in the development of the kingdom's railway infrastructure as a global testing, inspection and certification organisation.



Its Middle East chapter has worked alongside the SAR organisation on each phase of the development of its railway network, which is recognised as a critical part of the railway infrastructure serving the GCC states.



Stephane Riverain, TUV Rheinland Middle East's senior consultant and project manager, presented the ICP certificate and Letter of Assurance to Dr Bashar Al Malik, the chief executive of SAR during a key ceremony held at SAR's headquarters in Riyadh.



"I would like to congratulate and thank the various individuals and departments at the SAR for their cooperation and support on this process for the last four years," stated Riverain.



The TUV Rheinland Middle East Rail Team recently certified the SAR's North South Railway, which operates ETCS Level 2 equipped passenger trains supplied by CAF, as well as freight locomotives supplied by EMD, hauling minerals and cargo. Thales Transport provided the signalling system.



"TUV Rheinland has a well-established and recognised expertise in ICP related assessments for railway infrastructure managers and operation and maintenance organisations, both globally and in the Gulf region in particular," said Ruben Zocco, the director of mobility - Rail for TUV Rheinland Middle East.



"As a rail safety certification service provider, we are proud to have played a significant role in the assurance process of this extensive network and look forward to participating in the future development of one of our key customers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," he added.



TUV Rheinland is one of the world's leading independent testing service providers with 145 years of tradition. With a 20,000-strong global workforce, the group boasts an annual turnover of almost 2 billion ($2.26 billion).-TradeArabia News Service
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's Education His childhood name was Nimai. As a child, he was loved by everyone. He was the tenth child of his parents and several other siblings had died soon after their birth. He had a religious inclination from early childhood. When he was eight years old, he entered the Gurukula of Gangadas Pandit in Ganganagar. He excelled in every subject during his academic years and grew up to become a teacher of the Sanskrit language, though a teenager yet. Hindu Auspicious Days In March 2019

Chaitanya Met His Spiritual Teacher When once he went to Gaya, he met a saint named Ishvara Puri. This meeting was destined to turn into the most impactful meeting of his life. As it was under the guidance of Ishvar Puri that Chaitanya attained spiritual knowledge. He became a spiritual preacher as he went back to Bengal.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu As A Religious Preacher As a religious preacher, Chaitanya Mahapradhu was considered a leader of the Vaishnava group. His followers also called him Krishna Chaitanya and believed that he was an incarnation of Lord Krishna. The Vaishnava school of Bhakti Yoga was started by him. He even started the Gaudiya Vaishnavism. This was a religious movement based on the philosophies of Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavat Purana. The movement focused on the worship of Radha and Krishna. Shikshashtakam was one of his most popular works. This was a prayer which contained eight verses written in Sanskrit language. It is said that the prayer contains the essence of the entire philosophy of Gaudiya Vaishnavism in it. He stayed in Puri at Radhakanta Math for the last 24 years of his life. A significant contributor to the Bhakti movement, he actually attained popularity as his grandfather had predicted. It is said that it was Chaitanya who rediscovered the lost essence of Vrindavan, where the love story of Lord Krishna and Goddess Radha flourished.
PR Newswire

MORRISTOWN, N.J., March 19, 2019

MORRISTOWN, N.J., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Donnelly Minter & Kelly, LLC congratulates partners David M. Blackwell, Peter T. Donnelly, Patrick J. Galligan, Laura Ann Kelly and Patrick B. Minter, and attorney Gary L. Falkin, on being named to the Thomson Reuters' list of New Jersey Super Lawyers for 2019 and attorneys Jared Limbach, Alexandra Robertson and Christopher J. Trofimov on being named to the 2019 list of Rising Stars. This announcement comes as the Firm marks its five-year anniversary this month.

Donnelly Minter & Kelly, LLC is pleased to announce that six of its attorneys have been included on Thomson Reuters' list of New Jersey Super Lawyers for 2019, and three have been named to the 2019 list of Rising Stars. Selections to the Super Lawyers and Rising Stars lists are issued by Thomson Reuters. A description of the selection methodology can be found at Thomson Reuters.

"All of our attorneys share the underlying values of our Firm as well as an ongoing commitment to each of our clients past, present and future. While the dedication and hard work of each member of our Firm is recognized and greatly appreciated, special congratulations are in order for those colleagues named to the 2019 Thomson Reuters' lists." ~ Peter T. Donnelly, Founding Partner

2019 SUPER LAWYERS

David M. Blackwell

Mr. Blackwell was named a partner in 2015. He has more than 20 years' experience in the areas of professional liability defense; employment law, representing employers in the defense of virtually all types of employment claims; and commercial litigation, insurance coverage matters and general liability claims defense. Throughout his career, Mr. Blackwell has been involved in several noteworthy published opinions. In addition to being named to the 2019 New Jersey Super Lawyers list, Mr. Blackwell had been named to the Thomson Reuters' Rising Stars list in 2009.

Peter T. Donnelly

Mr. Donnelly is a founding partner of the Firm with more than 20 years of experience. He focuses his practice on commercial real estate transactions and business and corporate law, advising closely-held businesses on such matters as the structuring and negotiation of business formations, acquisitions and sales. He also concentrates on environmental law compliance.

Gary L. Falkin

Mr. Falkin joined Donnelly Minter & Kelly, LLC in 2018 as Of Counsel to the Firm, focusing on the areas of commercial real estate, construction litigation, business law, and legal malpractice. Before joining the Firm, Mr. Falkin served in private practice, concentrating on real estate, transactional, construction, and business law, general commercial litigation and the review of legal malpractice claims in cases related to those areas of law. Mr. Falkin has been included on the New Jersey Super Lawyers list each year since 2013.

Patrick J. Galligan

Mr. Galligan, who was also named partner in 2015, has appeared on the New Jersey Super Lawyers list for each consecutive year since 2015. Prior to that, he was named to Thomson Reuters' Rising Stars lists for the years 2006 through 2009. He currently holds a rating of "Superb" from Avvo. Mr. Galligan's practice focuses on professional liability, commercial litigation, construction law and general corporate counsel.

Laura Ann Kelly

A founding partner of the Firm, Ms. Kelly focuses primarily on the areas of trust and estate planning and administration, and business succession planning for closely-held entities. Ms. Kelly also helps clients achieve their philanthropic goals through the structuring of private foundations and charitable trusts. Ms. Kelly has appeared on the New Jersey Super Lawyers lists each year since 2015. She holds an "AV Preeminent" rating from Martindale-Hubbell and a "Superb" rating from Avvo. Additionally, Ms. Kelly was named to New York Magazines' list of "New York's Women Leaders in the Law" in 2018.

Patrick B. Minter

Mr. Minter, also a founding partner, has appeared on the New Jersey Super Lawyers list each year since 2011. Mr. Minter concentrates his practice on the areas of civil litigation, specifically commercial litigation; liability defense and general insurance defense. In addition to the New Jersey Super Lawyers recognition, Mr. Minter has maintained an "AV Preeminent" rating from Martindale-Hubbell since 2010, and holds a rating of "Superb" from Avvo.

2019 RISING STARS

Jared Limbach

Mr. Limbach, a litigation associate with the Firm, focuses on commercial disputes, professional liability defense and personal injury defense. Mr. Limbach has appeared numerous times before state and federal courts in New York and New Jersey. He also has extensive experience in appellate advocacy and has appeared before the New Jersey Supreme Court and the Appellate Division. Mr. Limbach has been included on the Rising Stars list each year since 2014.

Alexandra Robertson

An associate with the Firm, Ms. Robertson focuses primarily on trust and estate planning and administration, commercial real estate, and litigation. Prior to joining Donnelly Minter & Kelly, LLC, Ms. Robertson worked for a large international law firm concentrating in the areas of commercial litigation, employment law, medical malpractice, and trust and estate law. This is Ms. Robertson first year on Thomson Reuters' Rising Stars list.

Christopher Trofimov

Counsel with the Firm, Mr. Trofimov concentrates on the areas of estate planning, estate administration, federal and state taxation and related matters. Mr. Trofimov has more than 10 years' experience representing individuals, estates, corporate and individual trustees, banks and investment companies, and other business entities, including corporations, LLC's and partnerships. This is the eighth consecutive year Mr. Trofimov has been named to the Rising Stars list in the area of estate planning and administration.

ABOUT THE FIRM

With offices in Morristown, NJ and New York, NY, the attorneys at Donnelly Minter & Kelly, LLC maintain a progressive approach and traditional values focusing on commercial litigation, commercial real estate, corporate transactions, representation of small and medium-sized businesses, and trust and estate planning and administration. For more information on the Firm, its partners and associates, visit https://dmklawgroup.com.

[No aspect of this ad has been approved by the New Jersey Supreme Court.]

Media Contact:Patricia BirchenoughPhone: 908-200-7766Email: [email protected]

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Enoc Group (Emirates National Oil Company), a wholly owned unit of the government of Dubai, as part of its commitment towards human capital development, will offer over 200 job opportunities across upstream, downstream and corporate divisions within the Group to UAE nationals.



These rewarding career opportunities will be showcased by the Group at the UAE Career Fair, which opened today (March 19) at the Dubai World Trade Centre.



Enoc is recruiting young talented Emirati nationals in the energy sector in specialisations including chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering, sales, marketing and business development and the legal field, to support the Groups growth strategy.



Spekaing at the three-day event, Group CEO Saif Humaid Al Falasi said: "We thrive to provide our employees with opportunities to contribute to the growth of the UAE and aim to fulfil their aspirations by equipping them with essential knowledge, expertise and skillsets to face the industry challenges of tomorrow."



Enoc Group launched various initiatives to bolster the growth of the Emiratis including the first-of-its-kind comprehensive National Development Programme (NDP) in 2010.



With three proficiency levels - Tatweer, Mawaheb, and Imtiaz  the programme focuses on developing the functional, behavioural, professional, managerial, and leadership skills of UAE nationals.



In 2017, Enoc Group introduced the 'Graduate Development Programme' (GDP) as part of NDP, with the aim of supporting young UAE nationals in their transition from university to the workplace and contribute to the Group's talent development strategy.



The Dubai group also provides technical training programme in partnership with the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), as well as academic sponsorships, internships and various other training avenues to Emiratis. Till date, 60 UAE nationals have been trained under these programmes.



"Last year, Enoc had offered more than 100 jobs at the Career Fair, and we successfully recruited 152 nationals, 43 of which are fresh graduates. The Group has already achieved 40 per cent Emiratisation rate and has previously announced its plans to achieve 50 per cent by 2021," Al Falasi.



Careers UAE enables talented UAE nationals in all fields to come face-to-face with recruiters and hiring managers from leading employers. It is designed to expose job seekers to a wide range of training and career opportunities.



Enoc has a robust on-the-job-training culture that provides job shadowing, cross-functional projects and temporary assignments. It has also partnered with various universities including Al Maktoum College of Higher Education to empower its employees and Heriot Watt University to offer a masters degree to UAE nationals, respectively.-TradeArabia News Service
Khalifa University of Science and Technology and the UAE Space Agency will be hosting a seminar on space exploration to be led by a leading scientist from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) as part of a knowledge exchange initiative.



Khalifa University of Science and Technology is a research university dedicated to the advancement of learning through the discovery and application of knowledge.



The seminar titled Explore Science: The Transformative Journey will be addressed by Dr Thomas H Zurbuchen, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, Nasa, on March 20, at Khalifa University Main Campus.



A large number of representatives from the UAE Space Agency, international and regional space science professionals and industry stakeholders in addition to government dignitaries will be present at the seminar.



Dr Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, executive vice president, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, said: We are delighted to host Dr Zurbuchen, an eminent scientist from Nasa for this knowledge sharing event in one of the strategic sectors for the UAE.



As the Emirati astronauts are getting ready for their eight-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in September this year, it has become vital for stakeholders in the academic sector to highlight the importance of advancements in science and technology for space exploration to the youth in the UAE, he said.



We believe Dr Zurbuchens insights will significantly benefit students, scientists and researchers, who will be encouraged to take up careers as space explorers and astronauts, he added.



Dr Zurbuchen will speak about how Nasas transformative journey invariably begins with science questions, driven by the human desire to learn more about the universe and their positive impact on life on Earth.



He will also elaborate on the benefits of the past and present Nasa missions and the historic changes that have led humanity to rewrite the textbooks.



In short, Dr Zurbuchen will emphasise the importance of taking small steps beyond the conventional boundaries that could lead to big goals.



He will also throw light on some of the incremental improvements especially in in technology and human understanding of nature, that continue to allow us to obtain scientific knowledge on such a massive scale.



Author of more than 200 articles in refereed journals in solar and heliospheric phenomena, Dr Zurbuchen has also been involved with several Nasa science missions involving planet Mercury, the Sun and other heavenly objects.



Dr Zurbuchen earned his PhD in Physics and Master of Science degree in Physics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. He is a recipient of several awards including the National Science and Technology Council Presidential Early Career for Scientists and Engineers (Pecase) Award in 2004 and three Nasa Group Achievement Awards, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
Saudi German Hospitals Group  one of the largest private hospital groups in the Mena region  will soon open a world-class, state-of-the-art Dh300 million ($81.68 million) healthcare facility in Ajman, UAE.

The tertiary-care speciality and sub-specialty facility will be the biggest hospital in Ajman, designed to cater to the growing population across all northern emirates, while offering a wide range of medical services.

Spanning over 41,062 sq m, the 200-bed hospital will have 46 OPD clinics and over 20 specialities. It is the groups third healthcare facility in the UAE, and 10th across the Mena region.

Dr Reem Osman, CEO of Saudi German Hospitals (SGH) Group  UAE, said: Everyone is entitled to proper healthcare and at SGH we are committed to providing superior quality services to our patients, their families and community as a whole. Saudi German Group has a very well-thought-out expansion programme to reach out to the maximum number of patients in the UAE and the new state-of-the-art facility in Ajman is part of the plan.

"With two hospitals successfully running in Dubai and Sharjah, we aim to simulate the same international standards in SGH-Ajman that we have adopted in our other facilities. Moreover, the emirate is strategically positioned in close proximity to all the other emirates, which allows SGH-Ajman to treat patients from across the UAE.

Designed with a futuristic view, SGH-Ajman can grow in all directions, both vertically and horizontally. The hospital will offer a wide range of medical services including all kinds of specialities, sub-specialties and critical care units of highest international standards. Sub-speciality facilities include ICU, CCU, NICU, Open Heart, Oncology, Neurosurgery, ENT, Maxillo-facial surgery, Obs/Gyn and IVF centres, Laparoscopic and Laser surgeries, among others.

Our aim is not just to provide healthcare through our hospitals, but to have a significant role in providing the UAE health sector with scientifically qualified and highly efficient medical staff. The hospital is the first phase of our expansion; in the second phase, we plan to build Centres of Excellence, medical colleges and staff accommodation, among other features. Together they will make up the Batterjee Medical City, work for which has already begun in Dubai. These, and many such features will be the legacy of the Saudi German Hospitals Group strengthening its footprint in the UAE and the Mena region, added Dr Osman.

Besides providing quality medical services, SGH-Ajman also aims to introduce several CSR initiatives, community engagements and provide wellness education to the people of Ajman and beyond. The group has been actively involved in many humanitarian projects across the world. - TradeArabia News Service
The Dubai Maritime City Authority (DMCA) has emphasised Dubais pioneering experience in maritime insurance as it shed light on some of the major local insurance services provided in the emirate to ensure safe navigation, support maritime operational efficiency and security.



Hamed Hassan, director for registration and licensing, DMCA, said: A comprehensive insurance coverage is one of the major pillars of the growth and sustainability of a maritime sector.



We are keen to adopt an integrated portfolio of insurance services that have been developed to meet the needs of the maritime sector, investors, owners and operators of international shipsensuring their protection and coverage in case of an accident or an emergency situation, he said.



Hassan continued: We are very interested in marine insurance services especially that it represents a strong boost to our efforts to enhance the competitiveness and sophistication of the local maritime cluster on a global level and serves the national direction towards economic diversification.



We look forward towards attracting more marine investments and taking advantage of the benefits that Dubai offers as the emirate is recognised as one of the world's most attractive marine destinations. The move is in line with Dubai Plan 2021 and its plan to transform the emirate into a major hub for the global economy, he added.



As an example, several local insurance companies provide a range of comprehensive and high-valued services for private and commercial pleasure crafts. These services range from Marine Hull Yacht Insurance to Third Party Legal Liability Insurance that also cover both crew and passengers.



The DMCA has been at the forefront of promoting excellence and quality across key maritime indicators, including maritime insurance, that form part of a robust, inclusive, attractive and sustainable maritime environment, the ongoing efforts of the Maritime Authority contribute to enhancing the contribution of the maritime sector to the GDP of the Emirate of Dubai.  TradeArabia News Service
French authorities have unveiled the architectural model of the country's pavilion for the Expo 2020 gala event which will run from October 20 next year to April 10 2021 in Dubai under the theme "Connecting minds, Creating the future".



The pavilion has beeen designed by the Atelier du Prado Architectes and Celnikier & Grabli with 'Light' as one of the key inspirations. It was thought as an oasis from which a true canopy of light literally emerges.



The French Pavilion will express, through its name "Light, Lights", France's singular and innovative vision in terms of ecological and inclusive transition, combining a strong architectural gesture with an innovative immersive scenography.



Brune Poirson, Secretary of State to Francois de Rugy, Minister of State, Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition, unveiled the French Pavilion at a gathering in Dubai.



It will be both a symbol of Frances participation in this world event an emblem of the promotion of French innovation and an experiential space for all visitors, said the top official.



"The Expo 2020 Dubai will be a major opportunity to demonstrate that our choices in favour of ecological and inclusive transition are conducive to solutions, meaning and growth," remarked Brune Poirson.



"Solutions to make daily life respectful of the planet and citizens. Meaningful and growing also for our companies, both public and private, whose innovations will delight future visitors to our Pavilion," he stated.



In the heart of a site of nearly 4.5 sq km south of Dubai, the "Light, Lights" pavilion will be located in the area dedicated to Mobility, the other two themes being respectively dedicated to Sustainability and Opportunity.



The French Pavilion aims to not only highlight the fastest possible mobility, but also to embody the Enlightenment, a symbol since the 18th century of sharing and spreading knowledge.



It will promote the French innovation model, which makes it possible to conciliate sustainable development and international business competitiveness for connected and sustainable cities and territories, serving the citizen and the common good.



A facility that goes beyond the limits of a regular building since it fuses materials and light in a single structure to showcase the content of permanent and temporary exhibitions.



A powerful idea lies at the heart of the project: to begin the visitor's journey outside the structure and continue the experience seamlessly inside, transforming waiting time into a moment of sharing and emotion  a concert of sensations that encourages reverie.



Inside, the permanent exhibition - over 800 sq m - will showcase the assets of the French-style city in an organic scenography that combines sound, light, perfume and materials.



Designed by the "Immersive(s)" group, of which the Snaik agency is a member, with Jean Marie Priol as artistic director, this 'city' is conceived as a striking immersive and pedagogical experience.



A real living space, a meeting point open to the world, a space of economic and tourist attraction for our territories. The "Light, Lights" pavilion will be punctuated by a constantly changing program during the 24 weeks of the Expo 2020 Dubai.



"An opportunity to promote an urban model driven by French actors, to support the development of our companies in emerging countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, promotion of the economic and tourist attractiveness of the French territory, Expo 2020 Dubai must enable France to defend its vision of sustainable cities and connected territories", explains Erik Linquier, general commissioner of the French Pavilion and president of the Compagnie Francaise des Expositions (Cofrex), a company in charge since January 2018 of organising French participation in international exhibitions.



In line with France's ecological ambition, notably through the One Planet Summit, this pavilion will be the most sustainable ever built because it can be dismantled and reused, he stated.



Thought and designed as virtuous, it will be deployed according to the three pillars of bio-climatism: renewable, clean and controlled energy, sustainable materials and a circular economy at work, said Linquier.



"Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, the theme of Expo 2020 Dubai is a strong and differentiating point of the French offer. Through its participation, France intends to make the mobility of people, goods, territories, ideas and information a fundamental issue in solving the challenges of transitions, whether technological, ecological or economic,." he explained.



These are all subjects on which France will rely on and in particular on its strengths in the digital field, which today makes possible the emergence of new, intelligent and pleasant cities, but also of better connected territories or even more shared knowledge and know-how, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Bahrain's Gulf Aviation Academy (GAA) has approved the purchase of a fourth Airbus A320 Full Flight Simulator (FFS) and the introduction of new logistics and aviation training programmes as part of its ambitious expansion plans for 2019, said a report.

During a Board of Directors meeting chaired by the Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications and GAA Chairman, Engineer Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, new plans to enhance the academys capacity and efficiency were discussed, said a report in BNA.



The additional FFS will help to ease the burden on the academys existing simulators, which are currently operating at 100 per cent capacity in order to meet local and regional training requirements. In addition, a joint training agreement with the European Civil Aviation Authority will increase the number of aviation training programmes offered in 2019, covering aviation safety, airport security, air transport, and airspace control.



The minister praised GAA's efforts, noting that enhancing the efficiency of specialised training programmes related to logistics is an important step in the development of the civil aviation sector, and in line with the Kingdoms Vision 2030 goal to increase non-oil revenues.



The minister also praised the GAA for expanding its geographic reach, offering services from Bahrain to a client base extending from the Indian sub-continent to Europe.



GAA chief executive officer, Captain Dhafer Al-Abbasi, said: The 2019 expansion plans are in line with our strategic objectives to provide the best flight training services and modern training tools, not only in Bahrain but in the entire region. During 2018, GAA trained 6,522 agents consisting of pilots, crew, engineers, security personnel, and other aviation personnel, 92 per cent of whom were trainees from outside Bahrain. Last year, we trained 106 pilots from a European airline and will train a further 100 this year to support the development of its operations. The new addition to our range of simulator models will play a key role in helping us to meet the growing demand.



GAA, a subsidiary of Gulf Air Group Holding, offers a comprehensive training programme which includes all the travel arrangements and the associated logistics needed to accommodate the large numbers of international participants.
The Assiniboine River system will see limited flooding this year, according to the latest flood outlook from the provincial government.

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TIM SMITH/BRANDON SUN Brandonites watch the flood waters of the Assiniboine River pour over First Street from the First Street Bridge in 2014. According to the latest flood forecast, this spring won't be nearly as wet. (File)

The Assiniboine River system will see limited flooding this year, according to the latest flood outlook from the provincial government.

Manitoba Infrastructures Hydrologic Forecast Centre reported Monday that the focus, at this time, will be on the Red River and its tributaries, which are expected to see "substantial" flooding at a magnitude higher than 2009, under normal or average weather conditions.

The centre is pointing to heavy snow in the northern United States and across the Red River Valley as factors.

"With favourable weather, the flood forecast at this stage indicates the Red would rise to 2011 flood levels," the forecast said.

"With unfavourable weather conditions, water levels will be higher than 2009 levels by almost one foot at Emerson and by 1.5 feet at Ste. Agathe and reach 22 feet at James Avenue in the City of Winnipeg."

A press release from the province said it will work with the federal government to ensure Indigenous communities are safe, as well as local municipalities in the valley and the City of Winnipeg.

Other preparations include supporting municipal evacuations if needed, assembling teams to work with farmers to move livestock out of impacted areas, preparing for community ring dike and road closures and acquiring additional flood protection equipment.

The provincial governments first outlook, released in late February, suggested high  but below flood protection  levels on the Assiniboine and Souris Rivers, including some flooding on farm land and low-lying areas.

The province began increasing flows from the Shellmouth Reservoir earlier this year in preparation for spring runoff, which will help reduce flows on the Assiniboine.

Flood levels will depend on the rate of snow melt, as well as snow and rain accumulation over the coming weeks.

The main highway linking Winnipeg to the U.S. could be underwater for weeks, causing long detours for motorists, and a lot of farmland in the region is expected to be swamped.

Homes and other buildings in the region have been raised since the so-called flood of the century in 1997, which brought water levels much higher than what is now forecast.

Winnipeg itself is protected by a massive channel called the Red River Floodway, which diverts water around and away from the city.

The 2009 flood also created havoc north of Winnipeg, when ice jams caused parts of the Red River to surge suddenly and flood rural homes. Many residents on Crown land in the lowest-lying areas were later forced to relocate.

 The Brandon Sun, with files from The Canadian Press
Original Joes is set to open its first Brandon location in the coming months.

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Original Joe's, pictured under construction at the east side of the Shoppers Mall property, is set to open sometime in spring 2019. (Drew May/The Brandon Sun)

Original Joes is set to open its first Brandon location in the coming months.

A sign in the window of the still-under-construction Shoppers Mall location says the restaurant is scheduled to open in spring 2019. The building is built on a pad in the malls parking lot, directly south of the newly built Harveys and Swiss Chalet.

Original Joes website describes the restaurant as a "down to earth restaurant and bar gives you a taste of everything you could ever want."

The menu features dishes like nachos, ribs, poutine and burgers.

The chain has locations across Western Canada, including three in Winnipeg.

Franchisee Rick Baker was unavailable to speak on Monday.

 The Brandon Sun
OTTAWA - On the eve of a federal election this fall, the Liberal government is looking to help more Canadians buy their first homes by picking up a portion of their mortgage costs and increasing the amount they can borrow from their retirement savings for a down payment.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Finance Bill Morneau arrive in the Foyer of the House of Commons to table the federal budget on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA - On the eve of a federal election this fall, the Liberal government is looking to help more Canadians buy their first homes by picking up a portion of their mortgage costs and increasing the amount they can borrow from their retirement savings for a down payment.

Helping people enter the housing market has been a growing preoccupation for the Liberals ever since they were elected in 2015, with soaring real-estate prices in some of Canada's largest cities putting home ownership beyond the reach of many.

An estimated 1.6 million Canadian households are considered in "core housing need," meaning people who are living in places that are either too expensive or don't suit their needs.

The means-tested incentive the Liberals unveiled Tuesday would only be available to households with incomes under $120,000  roughly $50,000 more than the median household income as calculated by Statistics Canada  and on mortgages no more than four times the household's total income.

Eligible buyers would see the government pick up part of the costs of their mortgages to lower their monthly payments, with the amount of help determined by their incomes and whether they're buying an existing or newly built home.

The government also plans to raise the maximum amount a first-time buyer can withdraw from an RRSP: $35,000, up from $25,000. And while the program has long been restricted to new would-be homeowners, those who are recovering from the breakup of a marriage or common-law relationship would also be allowed to take part.

The measure, expected to cost $1.25 billion over three years beginning this fiscal year, would target Canadians "that face legitimate challenges entering housing markets" after qualifying for a mortgage, the budget document says. An additional $100 million would flow to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to help organizations that already provide the so-called "shared equity mortgages."

The government would recoup its costs when the house is sold, although the budget document isn't clear what would happen if the home is sold for a loss.

The program, some details of which are yet to be finalized, is part of a tranche of spending that includes establishing a national expert panel on housing supply and affordability, better data collection, and $300 million for a contest to encourage cities to come up with new ways of expanding housing stock.

The new measures could increase the annual number of new homebuyers nationally to 140,000 from 100,000 by lowering monthly payments without creating higher household debt loads, said Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who was confident the measures won't cause a spike in housing prices.

"We're recognizing that it is challenging for people in the housing market; it's a real issue, but what we've done is we've carefully looked at what's the best way to deal with that issue," Morneau told a news conference.

"It's not going to make an impact on the overall market from a pricing standpoint, meaning people are actually going to be better off, more optimism in terms of housing, and it's the reason we're very excited about this measure."

Economists and experts had been concerned that Morneau's focus on helping millennials, in particular, get footholds in the market could juice home prices after years of trying to cool demand in places like Toronto and Vancouver. Federal efforts, such as a new financial "stress test" to make sure a buyer can afford a mortgage, have slowed prices from where they might have been.

Scotiabank economist Marc Desormeaux said the Liberals opted for a relatively modest measure, considering the options they have.

"This is providing additional support for individuals who have already qualified for homes, helps them relieve some of their monthly payments once they've qualified for a mortgage and entered into the contract," Desormeaux said.

"The concerns about stoking demand from some of these measures aren't concerns that we would raise at this time."

What the measures should do is increase supply  one of the measure's stated goals. The government plans to cover five per cent of the cost of the purchase of an existing home and 10 per cent of a new build, hoping to "encourage the home construction needed to address some of the housing supply shortages" across the country, the budget document says.

Mathieu Laberge, an expert with Deloitte, said the measures appear to target people who would be willing to rent or buy smaller condominium units, for example, outside a major urban centre.

"It may shift the decision-making of some buyers in larger cities," said Laberge, a former policy adviser to Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos. "You're changing the relevant price between rental and home ownership in those areas, like the immediate suburbs of, for example, Vancouver and Toronto, which is a way to provide more options to households that would otherwise be priced out of the market."

Tuesday's budget also includes $10 billion more for a program to fund the construction of new rental units  the third time the Liberals have expanded the program, which aims to create 14,000 units over 10 years and now carries a $50-billion price tag.
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Alberta UCP Leader Jason Kenney arrives to give his reaction to the Speech from the Throne in Edmonton, Monday, March 18, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

EDMONTON - Alberta Opposition Leader Jason Kenney finally gets his title shot.

Its not a chance the former federal Conservative cabinet minister saw coming until he put together a plan in the summer of 2016 to unite the province's feuding right-of-centre Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose Party into what would become the United Conservatives.

"If you had talked to me in March of 2016 and said I'm going to be the leader of a merged conservative party and leader of the Opposition and heading into an Alberta election now, I would have said you're nuts. I had zero inkling to do it, Kenney said in an interview.

But as I got further into the spring and then summer of 2016 I just realized that somebody with the relevant profile, network and experience had to step forward with a plan."

Kenney, 50, was born in Oakville, Ont., raised in Saskatchewan, and spent his adult years based in Alberta.

He has lived much in the public eye as he has fought for conservative principles and the concept of ordered liberty, first as an anti-tax crusader and later as one of the key lieutenants in former prime minister Stephen Harper's cabinet.

He is not married and happily recounts a life committed to public service. A day's politicking is followed by a night of campaigning and handshaking, followed by late-night reading from a stack of philosophy books at the bedside.

He is schooled in the ground game of politics and had legendary campaign war chests as a Calgary MP.

Some credit him with moving Harper's government into majority territory by reaching out to ethnic newcomers, breaking the shibboleth that they vote Liberal, so much so he gained the nickname of "the minister for curry in a hurry."

He is a Catholic and has spoken out against gay marriage and abortion in the past, but promises not to act on those issues if he becomes premier.

He has been dogged in recent months by allegations he secretly pulled the strings on a fellow candidate during the United Conservative leadership race to have him attack Kenney's main opponent, former Wildrose leader Brian Jean, before dropping out and supporting Kenney. Both deny any collusion.

"The NDP is going to throw that stuff at me and at us. I don't get fazed by it. I just mute the crazies on Twitter and carry on," said Kenney.

"(Voters) want to see a very serious sober debate on the economic future of the province, how we're going to fight for Alberta's place in the federation. And I think parties that engage in nasty, negative campaigns will be penalized by the voters."

In the weeks leading up to the election, Kenney outlined the broad strokes of a policy platform that begins and ends with jobs and the economy.

He has promised to balance Albertas multibillion-dollar budget deficits within four years by freezing current spending and cutting regulations, taxes and red tape to free up entrepreneurs to grow the economy by what he says would be three per cent a year.

Kenney was just 10 years old, sitting on a couch minding his own business at a Saskatchewan school fundraiser, when politics first found him.

John Diefenbaker, well over a decade removed from being prime minister, came up to young Kenney, asked him his name, and struck up a conversation: Do you know the mythical story of Jason and the Argonauts? What's your favourite subject at school? What are your future plans?

"That 10-minute conversation made an indelible impression on me," said Kenney.

"That a former prime minister would spend 10 minutes talking to a 10-year-old boy was remarkable to me. I never forgot the kindness that he showed. And that maybe gave me sort of my initial interest in politics and public service."

Forty years later, even if he doesn't win the Golden Fleece, this Jason hopes he has Albertas conservatives all rowing in the same direction again.
The Emirates A380 drew in more than 3,000 visitors in two days at the first ever Saudi International Airshow, with the Emirates A380 being the largest commercial aircraft on display at the milestone event.



The aircraft received a royal visit from Prince Sultan bin Salman, chairman of the Board of Saudi Space Agency. Prince Sultan was received by Adel Al Ghaith, senior vice president, Commercial Operations, Gulf, Middle East & Iran for Emirates, who took him through the flagship aircrafts signature design details and latest onboard products.



The A380 that was on display from March 12-13 was open to both trade visitors and the general public. The aircraft on display featured 14 luxurious First Class suites, 76 flatbed seats in Business Class and 426 spacious seats in Economy Class. Guests also got the chance to see the A380 Shower Spas and OnBoard lounge that were both fully set-up and equipped to portray an authentic inflight experience.



Emirates flies its flagship A380 to 50 destinations around the world, and has flown two one-off missions to Riyadh. The airline currently has 109 A380s in service. - TradeArabia News Service
OTTAWA - The Trudeau government is promising billions of dollars to compensate dairy, egg and poultry farmers hurt by Canada's recent free-trade agreements  industries concentrated in vote-rich Quebec and Ontario.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau speak as they walk to the House of Commons in Ottawa, Tuesday March 19, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA - The Trudeau government is promising billions of dollars to compensate dairy, egg and poultry farmers hurt by Canada's recent free-trade agreements  industries concentrated in vote-rich Quebec and Ontario.

The $3.65 billion the government is setting aside includes $2.15 billion to help farmers who lose income because of trade deals with Europe and countries on the Pacific Rim, both of which make it easier for foreign egg, dairy and poultry producers to enter the Canadian market.

That is in addition to a $250-million, five-year fund established in 2016 to compensate dairy farmers for the European Union deal.

The budget earmarks $1.5 billion for farmers who lose money when they sell their production rights in the supply-management system, which limits egg, poultry and dairy production in Canada. To gain the right to sell supply-managed products, farmers have to buy "quota," often from existing producers who want to leave the industry.

The system also limits foreign products by slapping steep tariffs on imports beyond a certain level, which raises their price at the grocery store and makes them less attractive to consumers. Allowing more foreign-produced food into the Canadian market will increase competition for products from Canadian farmers.

"To ensure that Canada's dairy, poultry and egg farmers can continue to provide Canadians with high-quality products in a world of freer trade, we will make available an income protection program for supply-managed farmers, along with a measure to protect the value of quota investments these farmers have already made," Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in his prepared budget speech.

The budget does not provide details on how or when the money will be distributed to farmers and producers, who have long railed against any move that would expand foreign involvement in those sectors.

But the government appears to be hoping the promise of compensation will provide a salve to supply-managed farmers, many of whom are clumped in key ridings in Quebec and Ontario and angry that the deals have weakened their grip on the market.

That could prove important for the Liberals, who will likely need a strong showing in the two provinces in this year's federal election to have a hope of retaining power.

The budget also indicates more money could be forthcoming as the government works with industry "to address the impacts on processing, as well as potential future impacts of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement."

The federal government recognizes the impact of trade agreements on our sector and is following through on its commitment to support our domestic dairy industry, said Pierre Lampron, president of the board of directors for the Dairy Farmers of Canada.

"We also welcome the governments commitment to continue the dialogue on the future impact of CUSMA on our sector."

The North American deal, which will succeed NAFTA, has yet to be ratified and come into effect. That deal is the third free-trade agreement in which Canada agreed to open its supply-managed sectors, which emerged last year as a favourite target of U.S. President Donald Trump, particularly the dairy sector.

Supply management has long been hotly debated in Canada.

Proponents say the system keeps the market from getting saturated, which keeps prices stable and ensures steady incomes for farmers while protecting food safety, ensuring higher-quality products and eliminating the need for direct subsidies.

Critics say it drives up the cost of dairy, eggs and chicken for consumers, which has a disproportionate impact on low-income families. The system has been a frequent target in  and barrier to  past free-trade negotiations.

Successive federal governments for decades nonetheless resisted opening Canada to more tariff-free imports from other countries, in part because of the political implications.

But when Stephen Harper was prime minister, the Conservatives opened the door to change when they agreed to ease restrictions on European cheese imports through the Canada-European Union trade deal, which was signed and came into force under the Trudeau Liberals.

Ottawa then agreed, in the 11-country Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, to give participants more access to Canada's dairy, egg and poultry markets.
OTTAWA - The federal Liberal government is promising a new agency to negotiate prescription drug prices for Canadians and try to drive down costs  a move billed as an "important step" on the path to an eventual national pharmacare plan.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Finance Bill Morneau arrive in the Foyer of the House of Commons to table the Budget, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA - The federal Liberal government is promising a new agency to negotiate prescription drug prices for Canadians and try to drive down costs  a move billed as an "important step" on the path to an eventual national pharmacare plan.

In a sign of just how expensive pharmacare could be, the federal budget tabled Tuesday is also promising to spend $500 million a year, starting in 2022, to subsidize drugs that treat rare diseases.

The Liberal government said it intends to work with provinces, territories and other partners to develop the mandate for the national drug agency, with Health Canada to receive $35 million over four years starting in 2019-2020 to create an office to support the plan.

The budget, the government's last before this fall's federal election, also includes plans to create a national formulary  a list of drugs that have been evaluated for both efficacy and cost-effectiveness.

The measures in the budget alone will not close the gap for Canadians who require prescription drugs they can't afford, Morneau warned in his House of Commons speech.

"A publicly funded, universal health care system is a source of pride for Canadians and a source of strength for our country. It is a legacy that we are building on with this budget."

A central question remains: how the government plans to pay for it.

A universal pharmacare plan does not appear affordable for Canada right now, said Rebekah Young, the director of fiscal and provincial economics for Scotiabank. Adding such a plan to the government's books without major tax hikes would require stronger economic growth than Canada sees even in the best of times, she warned.

Provinces do not have a lot of capacity to take on substantial new costs, Young said, noting the parliamentary budget office has estimated the cost of a pharmacare plan at about $20 billion a year.

"The big question then becomes who is going to pay and how much?" she said. "That will definitely be a key feature of the summer debate when we head into the election."

The federal New Democrats have promised that if elected, they would follow through on a universal pharmacare plan to respond to dramatic increases in prescription drug costs. Indeed, Tuesday's budget lacks a sense of urgency on the matter, said NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.

"Canadians were counting on this Liberal government to meet their basic needs, and sadly, they were let down," he said in a statement. "We will have the courage to make different choices."

Canadians spent $33.7 billion on medication in 2018, a staggering increase over 1985, when they spent just $2.6 billion on prescription drugs. People take more drugs to manage more conditions than they used to  living longer, and better, but at considerable expense.

Canada's current patchwork of drug coverage, which comprises more than 100 public programs and 100,000 private insurance plans, is not well equipped to handle the increasingly expensive drugs now coming to market, the government said in its budget document.

"Absorbing these rising costs is difficult for individual Canadians and their families  and poses challenges to the long-term sustainability of government- and employer-sponsored drug plans."

The plan in Tuesday's budget follows interim findings issued by a federal expert panel led by former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins on the "building blocks"of pharmacare, which recommended an agency to oversee a national drug plan.

Drug spending in Canada is expected to surpass $50 billion by 2028, the report found.

Dr. Gigi Osler, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said Tuesday she was glad to see some details on the government's pharmacare vision.

"I think it is the first step towards making it (pharmacare) a reality," she said. "Our position is that all Canadians should have access to medically necessary drugs regardless of their ability to pay.

Hoskins' advisory council is set to issue a final report on the issue of access to drug coverage this spring, with the findings to be tabled in the House of Commons.

Hoskins said in an interview Tuesday he was very pleased to see the government adopt the main recommendations from the initial report, adding there is a clear commitment to national pharmacare.

Canadians understand the current system isn't working for them while provinces, territories and the private sector agree the approach is unsustainable going forward due to rising costs, he said.

"It's kind of like all those things have come together  maybe this is finally the time."

with files from Lee Berthiaume

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OTTAWA - The federal Liberal government plans to spend $4.5 billion over the next five years to try to narrow the socio-economic gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people  part of a plan to keep reconciliation at the forefront of this fall's campaign narrative.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau speak as they walk to the House of Commons in Ottawa, Tuesday March 19, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA - The federal Liberal government plans to spend $4.5 billion over the next five years to try to narrow the socio-economic gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people  part of a plan to keep reconciliation at the forefront of this fall's campaign narrative.

Speaking to reporters, Finance Minister Bill Morneau stressed the Liberals have been committed to reconciliation from the beginning of their mandate.

"It is a continuation of what we've been doing since Day 1," Morneau said. "It is driven by the fact that we know in this country, we need to get this right. We've got a lot of work to do and we are going to stay on it."

After the fiscal blueprint was tabled, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde said he thought the government is moving in the right direction while he stressed the need to get resources out to communities to ensure they have meaningful impacts on the ground.

"If we are going to have true reconciliation in Canada, we have to close the gap," Bellegarde said. "We have to maintain the momentum for that."

Part of Tuesday's budget pledge is $1.2 billion over three years  $404 million per year beginning in 2019-2020  to develop a long-term approach for services for First Nations children.

The policy is named after a Manitoba First Nations boy from Norway House Cree Nation, Jordan River Anderson, who had multiple disabilities. When he was two years old, doctors recommended he move to a special home suited to his medical needs.

He died three years later, after jurisdictional squabbles between federal and provincial governments over payment for his care.

"It should be no surprise that we continue to deal with issues, like Jordan's Principle, that we've been talking about for a long time," Morneau said.

The budget also includes plans to invest $220 million over five years, beginning in 2019-2020, to provide services to Inuit children who face unique challenges to get health and social services due to the remoteness of their communities and limited availability of culturally appropriate care.

The Liberal government is communicating in the budget it is serious about its commitment to Indigenous Peoples, said Rebekah Young, the director of fiscal and provincial economics with Scotiabank.

"We are looking at almost $5 billion (in new spending) over five years, of a total budget spend of $20 billion," she said. "We are talking about a quarter of the budget."

The federal budget also includes plans to act on calls from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that spent six years probing the dark legacy of Canada's residential schools.

The spending plan includes $126.5 million in 2020-21 to establish a national council on reconciliation designed to be a permanent reminder of the fraught past between Canada and Indigenous Peoples and to contribute to better understanding of it.

There is also $333.7 million over the next five years earmarked for helping to revitalize Indigenous languages  a move that follows legislation introduced in February.

The funding will help create a commissioner of Indigenous languages, the budget said, adding that only one in seven Indigenous children reports being able to carry on a conversation in an Indigenous language.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly said there is no relationship more important than the Canadian government's with Indigenous Peoples, though some Indigenous leaders and the federal NDP have raised concerns about the rate of progress.

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The CEO of Galway Harbour Company has resolved his High Court proceedings against his employer.

Last year, Eamon Bradshaw secured a temporary injunction preventing the company from terminating his employment.

He claimed the company had embarked on a bogus redundancy process designed to terminate the three-year, fixed-term contract of employment he entered into with the defendant in 2017.

Mr Bradshaw has been with the company since and served as both the Chairman and the CEO of the firm that operates Galway Port.

The claims were denied.

The case was listed for hearing before Mr Justice Senan Allen at the High Court today.

Mark Dunne, Bl for Mr Bradshaw, said the case had been settled and could be struck out. The injunction previously granted by the court could also be vacated, counsel said.

No further details of the settlement were given to the court.

Previously Paul McGarry, SC for Mr Bradshaw, told the High Court that the company had been put under pressure by its main stakeholder, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to change the terms of his three-year contract of employment.

Mr Bradshow from Barna Road, Galway, claimed he had been employed on a contract of indefinite duration until October 2017 when he entered into a new three-year contract of employment which is due to expire in 2021 with the company.

Last year Mr Bradshaw was informed that the company's board wanted to change the terms of his contract of employment.

He claims he was given the options of either entering into a consultancy agreement and accepting a lesser amount of pay for the remainder of the term of his contract or the board would give him six months' notice and make him redundant.

Mr Bradshaw was unhappy with these options, wanted to remain in his role and claimed the company was not entitled to make him redundant.

The company had denied all the claims.
An Irish company has signed a deal worth 10m over five years with a leading private provider of emergency services in Europe.

The firm, Critical Healthcare, provides medical products and services to the pre-hospital market and ambulance providers in Ireland, the UK and Europe.

It has completed the deal with Falck, which is headquartered in Denmark and has operations in 35 countries where its 2,500 ambulances respond to four million emergency calls each year. The company also provides a large number of other prehospital services, including emergency helicopters and rapid response units with paramedics, nurses and doctors.

Founded 18 years ago by Seamus Reilly and Anne Cusack in the Midlands  where it is still headquartered  Critical Healthcare employs 22 full-time staff which is to at least double over the next five years as a result of the deal.

They are to supply the procurement platform, Medlogistix, which has dramatically improved the supply chain and procurement landscape for the National Ambulance Service of Ireland as well as many emergency service providers in the UK.

Critical Healthcare will now be rolling out Medlogistix for Falck across four countries  Demark, the UK, Germany and Spain.

The deal is estimated to be worth approximately 2m a year over a period of five years and means that the companys export sales will increase from accounting for 1% of its business three years ago to 60% in two years time.

Dr Anne Cusack, Managing Director and Co-founder, Critical Healthcare, said: We are absolutely thrilled with our collaboration with Falck and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with them. This is a massive commitment by them to entrust this business with us and we are looking forward to being able to repay that trust by delivering a world-class, quality service to Falck across Europe.

The impact of this collaboration is an important milestone in the companys progression and represents significant growth for us over the coming years. We have 22 directly employed staff in Westmeath, where our business is growing strongly. But with the new Falck deal, and other ongoing work, that number is set to increase further  by around 30 new hires over the next five years.

Seamus Reilly, Operations Director and Co-founder, Critical Healthcare, said: We have already established an office in Germany, opened in January 2019, and initiated our first employee there. We have recruited four further people specifically as a result of the Falck deal.

"We are currently building the platforms for Germany and Denmark and our aim is to have all four countries operational no later than April. We were able to compete for and win this European contract because we were able to demonstrate the savings our package could offer across all elements of the procurement process.

Critical Healthcare also got help from Enterprise Ireland during the procurement process as well as for its Business Process Innovation grant, which helped with the development of the Medlogistix.
A silent auction of rare film memorabilia has raised more than 20,000 for the creation of a film hub in West Cork.

The auction, which included eye-catching pieces such as signed script pages of 'Star Wars: Rogue One' and Hercule Poirot's moustache, was in aid of the creation of a film centre in Schull.

Signed script pages for 'Star Wars: Rogue One'.

The project aims to transform the old AIB bank in the heart of the village into a state-of-the-art film centre.

The landmark building was gifted to the Fastnet Film Festival and could cost as much as 1.5m to refurbish.

The festival organisers plan to transform it into a world-class performance centre, including a 120 seater auditorium with a stage, cinema and rooms for workshops, archives, greenscreen, editing and more.

In total, the silent auction saw 90 items auctioned off, with some 22,000 raised.

Among the items was a framed Hercule Poirot moustache, worn by David Suchet in 1993. The framed moustache, created by Patricia Coogan O'Dell, David's personal make-up artist on the original Poirot television series, sold for 550.

Signed script pages for 'Star Wars: Rogue One' were snapped up for 169 and two VIP tickets to the 'Late Late Show with James Corden' in Los Angeles went for 500. It includes green room access to rub shoulders with guests on the night.

A leather-bound script of 'The Mission', the Oscar-winning film from producer David Puttnam, sold for 390, while a swivel chair donated by Mr Puttnam went for 1,250.

The bigger ticket items included two leather screening chairs from the home cinema of Harry Cohn, the co-founder and president of Columbia Pictures.

They were sold for 5,600, while a keen rugby fan will be delighted to have snapped up an Ireland rugby shirt donated by Cian Healy and signed by the Ireland team. It sold for 1,100.

Hilary McCarthy, vice chair and communications director of the Fastnet Film Festival paid tribute to those who supported the event.

"Our deepest gratitude goes out to all those who supported our silent auction," Ms McCarthy said.

"We auctioned off 90 items, an amazing array of rare film memorabilia and beautiful pieces of art.

An unbelievable 22,000 was raised which will go towards transforming the old AIB Bank, a beautiful landmark building in the heart of Schull, West Cork into a state of the art performance centre.

The Fastnet Film Festival will run in Schull from May 22 to 26.

It is a major showcase for Irish and International short film production.

It focuses on the craft of film and has been held in high regard on a national and international level for several years now.

This year's festival will see the screening of 12 feature-length films, as well as a series of seminars, masterclasses and workshops on acting, sound, scriptwriting and other elements of filmmaking.
What have they done this time?

If you're still nursing a sore head from the weekend festivities, you might want to sit down for this.

After House of Commons speaker John Bercow warned British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday a four-century-old law prevented her from re-tabling her Brexit deal for a third time unless it was "substantially" changed, the already Rubik cube-esque row became even more complicated.

During a divisive Tuesday morning British cabinet meeting, just 10 days out from the March 29 Brexit deadline, Ms May outlined two remaining options to avoid no deal.

The British Prime Minister said she could ask the EU for a two year extension, with a three-month delay "escape clause" if MPs somehow back her deal next week.

Alternatively, she said she could also ask for a simple three-month extension.

The prime minister said she would write to European Council president Donald Tusk before Thursday and Friday's EU summit to formally request the options.

However, the fact this amounts to asking the EU to decide on any potential extension while still being in the dark on the reasons for giving one has complicated matters even further.

Why is Ms May's letter important? Hasn't she said this before?

It may sound like a side-point, but this is the first time Britain will have formally asked the EU for any kind of delay, turning it from a Brexit unicorn into a living, breathing horse.

After the cluster of House of Commons votes last week, Ms May did say Brexit is likely to be delayed by 20 months, with the only alternative being a delay up to June 30 on the condition MPs back her deal.

However, until now she has not formally requested the EU to back such a move.

Does this automatically mean Brexit has been delayed?

No, or at least not yet.

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier, and Tanaiste Simon Coveney, made it clear on Tuesday a long-term delay will only be allowed if Britain can explain what it will do with the extra time - with Mr Barnier giving an election or a second referendum as pointed examples.

Similarly, they said a short-term three-month delay could only happen if the existing deal is passed by MPs.

When Ms May's letter arrives, it will be discussed by EU leaders, before they - not Ms May - decide whether any delay will be allowed.

So what happens next? What are the EU going to do?

Expect the EU summit to be focussed on making it abundantly clear Britain will only be allowed to delay if they can explain how it will be used.

Mr Barnier, Mr Coveney and others have politely made this point, while the European parliament's outspoken Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt has more bluntly warned the EU cannot "blindly" sign up to a delay.

After the standard sabre-rattling, the odds suggest Ms May will be given her extension if an adequate explanation is provided.

Sources say the EU may also give her a "written procedure" that would allow a delay to be quickly signed off on next week if she finally drags her battered Brexit deal through Westminster next week.

And Britain? What will Ms May, Brexiteers and MPs do?

After she writes to Brussels, Ms May will likely tell MPs that despite Mr Bercow's warning of a veto to any third Brexit deal vote, she will table it again next week to prevent a cliff-edge Friday, March 29 Brexit nightmare.

However, this latest gamble will hinge entirely on whether the EU says it will allow any extension if the deal is passed.

Brexiteers have already warned they may pull the plug on the prime minister completely if a "bad" deal is imposed, and are now pushing for a nine-month delay truce.

As for MPs, they get to either vote on the same deal for a third time, or explain to their constituents what went wrong. Far from easy options.

Okay, all joking aside, when is this going to end?

Oh that's an easy one - March 29, of course, because until an extension is agreed that is the legally imposed deadline.

Or in three months, if MPs finally back May's deal. Although it could be nine months, if Brexiteers get their way. And the EU does seem rather fixated on that two years target.

Sure, look, it's only exactly 1,000 days since the June 2016 Brexit referendum, you can't rush these things...
A legal challenge against the granting of planning permission to a proposed controversial 160m incinerator at Ringaskiddy in Cork Harbour opened in the High Court today.

Mr Justice David Barniville was told planning permission was granted in May last year, but the Board planning inspector had recommended refusal.

Opening the case`, Maurice Collins SC said there has been a continuum of planning activity and controversy" connected to the site at Cork Harbour.

Counsel said that the inspector had recommended refusal of planning permission but An Bord Pleanala had granted the permission by a five-to-two majority.

We know very little of how it reached a decision in this case," he told the court.

Counsel said a large proportion of the local population is opposed to the incinerator and believe it would pose a significant health threat to the community.

Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment (CHASE) has brought the legal challenge to the granting of planning permission in May last year by An Bord Pleanala for the incinerator.

CHASE, in the proceedings, are seeking an order quashing the decision to grant planning permission. It is also seeking an order quashing the environmental impact assessment carried out by the Board and it seeks a declaration that An Bord Pleanala erred in law and had no jurisdiction to grant planning permission.

It is also seeking a declaration that the Board erred in law by allegedly failing to carry out any or any legally adequate Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) or appropriate assessment prior to the decision to grant development consent and that there was an alleged failure to carry out an assessment of the impact on health and an alleged failure to carry out any adequate EIA in respect of the fundamental issue of site selection.

The Board granted planning permission under the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Act 2006 to Indaver Ireland for an incinerator at a 13.5-hectare site at the end of the Ringaskiddy Peninsula. The incinerator will have an operational life of 30 years.

The permission was granted with a number of conditions, including that the eight-storey facility, with a 70-metre chimney, would take no more than 240,000 tonnes of municipal waste and no more than 24,000 tonnes of hazardous waste each year.

Indaver Ireland Ltd and Indaver NV, trading as Indaver Ireland, are notice parties to the High Court proceedings.

The case before Mr Justice David Barniville continues.
A new report has suggested that third-level institutions provide sexual consent classes or risk losing State funding.

The Government-commissioned report has also proposed that colleges should record and report incidents of sexual harassment, assault and rape on campuses - rather than leaving it to the gardai.

According to the Irish Times, a number of other recommendations have been made, with each college required to report on whether they're implementing them to the Higher Education Authority every year.

Harassment and assault are experiences too common for many of our third-level students, said Mary Mitchell O'Connor the Minister of State for Higher Education, who commissioned the report.

I want to ensure that young adults are supported to achieve positive sexual health. We all have a duty of care to our students, to protect them from sexual harassment, assault and safety from the fear and threat of it, she added.

Earlier this month, the Irish Government formally ratified the Istanbul Convention, which works towards preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.

There is an epidemic of violence against women, it needs to stop, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said earlier this month.

We know the names of many of the women who have had violence perpetrated against them and the ratification of the Istanbul Convention today is a very important part of that.
Airbus will showcase its entire range of commercial aircraft, defence, space and helicopter products and services at next weeks Langkawi International Maritime and Aviation Exhibition (LIMA) 2019 in Malaysia.



The air show will be held on 26-30 March at the Mahsuri International Exhibition Centre in Langkawi, Kedah.



Airbus aircraft at the static display include an A320neo operated by Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia, the largest customer for the European manufacturers single-aisle aircraft. Military aircraft such as a Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) A400M, the new-generation tactical airlifter, and a CN235 medium aircraft that the service uses on transport missions, will also be on display.



The companys leadership in Malaysias helicopter market will be underscored by presence of helicopters such as the RMAFs H225M, a Malaysian navy AS555SN Fennec, and an AS365 Dauphin operated by the countrys maritime enforcement agency. Airbus will also feature a H145 helicopter in emergency medical services configuration.



The Airbus exhibition stand (#B537) will feature scale models of the new A330neo widebody aircraft, the C295 maritime patrol aircraft, the Zephyr solar-powered unmanned aerial system, as well as helicopters such as the H175 and ACH160.



Visitors will also be able to get more information on the companys intelligence and maritime surveillance solutions in dedicated sections on the stand, as well as presentations on the H145M helicopter fitted with the HForce weapons system.



Malaysia is a strategic market for Airbus with success across the companys commercial and military aircraft, space and helicopter product lines. Customers in Malaysia have ordered more than 700 commercial airliners and over 100 helicopters, and the RMAF is the first export customer for the A400M airlifter. Airbus also supplied MEASAT-3b, the countrys largest communications satellite.



Airbus is also the biggest partner for Malaysias aerospace industry, with suppliers in the country producing major aircraft parts across the Airbus product line. The company has also invested in its Malaysian units that focus on services such as commercial aircraft and helicopter maintenance, repair and overhaul, pilot training, and customer support.  TradeArabia news Service
The High Court has rejected a Pakistani man's challenge to a refusal to grant him a right of residence here on the basis that he was dependant on his sister-in-law, who is an EU citizen living here.

Asad Ali Cheema (aged 28) claimed that a month after he came on a visit to his brother in Ireland that his family rice trading business in Pakistan, which his sister-in-law had helped fund, was burnt down by criminals.

As a result, he did not return home and instead sought a right-of-residence after his three-month visitor's visa had expired.

Mr Justice David Keane rejected his challenge to a decision to refuse a residence card as a permitted family member of his sister-in-law, Anna Straczek, a Polish national married to his brother, Ali Hamza.

The judge said Mr Cheema had provided only "very limited fragmentary evidence" to support his claim that he was dependent on his sister-in-law in Pakistan.

A striking feature of submissions made on his behalf was that they ignored the burden and onus of proof required by him under EU free movement of persons regulations and under the Citizen's Rights Directive, he said.

They failed to address, save in the most vague and general terms, the precise evidence to establish dependence, he said.

Mr Cheema claimed his sister-in-law sent around 12,500 to his mother in 2013 for investment in the family rice trading business in Pakistan. She also regularly sent money to him before he came for a visit here in October 2015, he said.

A month later, while he was still here, a fire broke out at the family rice storage facility in Ali Pur Chattha, Pakistan, effectively destroying the business and his income.

A local Urdu newspaper report of the incident said Mr Cheema had been threatened by criminals after demanding money from him and the matter had been reported to the police.

Mr Cheema's visitor's visa expired three months after he arrived and a month later, February 2016, he applied for a residence card as a permitted family member of Ms Straczek.

The Irish National Immigration Service rejected his application in July 2016 saying the Minister for Justice and Equality had determined he was not a dependent of an EU citizen and not a member of the household of an EU citizen.

The Minister was also satisfied that his sister-in-law, who was receiving illness benefit here, did not have the capacity to support him here.

In his challenge against the Minister, brought by him, his sister-in-law, and his brother, it was claimed his right to fair procedures was breached by basing the refusal decision on matters Mr Cheema was not on notice of.

It was also claimed the Minister reached his decision without raising the adequacy of his evidence of dependence.

Mr Justice Keane was satisfied there had been no breach of the right of good administration in relation to how the Minister based his decision.

He also rejected the argument the decision was based on matters Mr Cheema was not on notice of.

Mr Cheema must be deemed to know the law and cannot say he was unaware of the "obvious limitations" of the documentation he submitted, Mr Justice Keane said.

He also said Mr Cheema had not identified any specific failure of the Minister to fairly examine the submissions he made in support of his residency application.
A Dublin man accused of possessing almost 3m worth of drugs and an assault rifle told gardai that he and his brother, who was caught with 15 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition, lived "separate lives" and were like "chalk and cheese".

The Special Criminal Court has heard that gardai failed to find the drugs and assault rifle, which had been stashed in a bed, when they carried out a search of a Kildare house during a "very fast-moving operation".

In her opening address to the non-jury court, prosecution counsel Fiona Murphy SC said that the owner of the property later came to clear out the premises and found what appeared to be a large amount of controlled drugs and a firearm" at the base of a bed.

Michael Brady (54), with an address at Brookfield Grove, Blackrock, Co Dublin is charged with possessing 1.5m worth of cocaine, 1.26m worth of heroin, an assault rife and more than 180 rounds of ammunition at a property at Sallins Bridge, in Sallins, Co Kildare on January 24, 2017.

He has pleaded not guilty to all nine counts on the indictment.

It is the State's case that forensic evidence links Michael Brady to some of the items found at Sallins Bridge and to the address itself.

Detective Inspector Derek Maguire, of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GNDOCB), told the prosecution that fingerprints and buccal swabs were taken from Michael Brady as it was necessary for the proper investigation of the offence.

Garda Shona Moran, of the Special Crime Task Force in the GNDOCB, told Tony McGillicuddy BL that she interviewed the accused man on January 24 and 25 at Tallaght garda station.

The witness agreed with Mr McGillicuddy that, before the interviews began, Mr Brady was told of items seized at Greenogue Business Park, Rathcoole, Co Dublin.

Last month Declan Brady (52), a brother of the accused, pleaded guilty to possessing 15 firearms and more than 4,000 rounds of ammunition at that address on the day in question. He is awaiting sentence.

The court heard today that Michael Brady told Gda Moran in his interviews that he was originally from Drimnagh but sometimes stayed in Sallins Bridge to look after dogs. The accused said he had woken up in Sallins Bridge on January 24 as he was minding the dogs and no one else was in the house at the time.

Michael Brady was asked by gardai how often he stayed at Sallins Bridge and the court heard he replied: "Every now and again, it could be a few days at any given time."

He slept downstairs in a room beside the bathroom but this was not officially his bedroom, he said. There were four bedrooms in the house, he did not pay rent and his name was not on the lease agreement, he indicated.

The accused man told gardai that he had his own set of keys for the house at Sallins Bridge, had permission to be there and had been staying there on and off for a year.

Michael Brady said he was 100% that he did not have anything illegal in his bedroom at Sallins Bridge.

Detective Garda Gary Dunne testified that he carried out the third interview with Michael Brady at 1.30pm on January 25. The accused man told gardai that his brother Declan Brady also had a key to Sallins Bridge and would sometimes stay there as he owned the dogs.

Michael Brady denied that the two rounds of ammunition found at the back of a chair in the dining room on the previous day belonged to him.

Gardai asked Michael Brady if his brother Declan was into criminal activity. I wouldnt like to say anything about his activity, he replied.

Gardai also asked the accused if he was aware that his brother was in custody as he had been found with guns. The accused said that he and his brother lived "separate lives" and were like chalk and cheese growing up.

Michael Brady said that he did not know anything about firearms found at a lockup and was not familiar with guns. He denied that his brother had ever asked him to do anything illegal.

Earlier, Detective Garda Maria OHara, of the GNDOCB, agreed with prosecution counsel Fiona Murphy SC that she conducted a meticulous search of a downstairs bedroom at Sallins Bridge on January 24.

A letter in relation to a lease agreement for Sallins Bridge which was addressed to Declan Brady was seized in this bedroom, she said, adding that it was dated February 23, 2015 and it confirmed the full rent deposit had been received.

The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Paul Coffey, presiding, sitting with Judge Gerard Griffin and Judge David McHugh.
The CEO of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre Noeline Blackwell is supporting a recommendation that all third-level colleges should be obliged to provide classes on sexual consent for students or risk losing State funding.

The report follows rising concerns over the level of rape and sexual assault on college campuses.

Ms Blackwell told RTE radios Today with Sean ORourke show that, apart from UCC, any initiatives that have taken place to date have been organised by students rather than college authorities.

It must be part of a broader understanding to colleges that such behaviour is not acceptable.

Credit to the students who recognised this need, but they can only do so much, they need the support of the college.

They cannot put in place codes of conduct or stipulations, only the colleges can do that.

Ms Blackwell said that at present if something happens there isnt any official recognition of the need to deal with it. Students have the option to go to Gardai as there is no system in place within the colleges to ensure that those who carry out such actions are stopped.

Few colleges have a system for reporting such incidents, she added, or for having such a report dealt with.

The recommendation in the Government-commissioned report is an important initiative, said Ms Blackwell. That is why the Government, the National Womens Council and the Rape Crisis Centre want to find a way to get the colleges to act in concert.

However, she said it appeared that none of the colleges want to admit they have a problem as they fear fingers will be pointed.

A recent survey by the USI had found that eight per cent of students had experienced rape or attempted rape, which underlined the need to make college campuses a safer place, she said.

The issue has to be prioritised. Colleges need to put something in place to ensure their campuses are safe.
Battling cancer for 12 years, young Dublin girl Robyn Smyth faces a new fight against the disease as she flies out to the US today.

The girl, 14, has suffered a relapse as the rare cancer has returned to her bone marrow, brain, jaw, back and pelvis. She became the first Irish person to undergo groundbreaking cancer treatment in New York last year.

Robyn, from Whitehall in Dublin, has been fighting the aggressive cancer, neuroblastoma, for 12 years and had received four of seven vaccines at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York but they were not working to stave off any re-occurrences.

She is now returning to Helen DeVos Childrens Hospital in Michigan, where Robyn had treatment for three years prior to visiting the New York Cancer Centre.

Robyns results from her biopsy are in and we hope to add another new type of oral medication. We need to see what's going on before we do this so Robyn will be scanned on Thursday,  said Robyns Mum Bernadette Dornan,

Please send positive thoughts, we are hoping what she's on is working as it's tolerable so far. If anyone can do a fundraiser for Robyn we would really appreciate it. The cost all these flights, scans and medication will add up fast.

The second-year secondary school student and her mother Bernadette Dornan will be in Michigan for several days. Ms Dornan revealed that after treatment in Michigan the family hopes to bring the teenager to Germany to start on another type of groundbreaking treatment.

We have now consulted with a hospital in Germany who are willing to take her but they want her to be a bit stronger so she will have to undergo chemotherapy again to get it under control if we can in Michigan.

German medics can use another groundbreaking treatment where mine or her Dads immune system are tested to see if they are compatible with hers. If they are, then it can be transferred to Robyn. That would be an amazing outcome if we can get to that stage so we will continue battling.

Our journey to keep Robyn with us has taken so many different paths, over all of these years. Of course, we are very upset over this latest set-back but our resolve is great and we will get her through this again.

She had been doing so well so and that is why we were shocked with the news that the cancer spots were worse than we thought they would be. The cancer is back in her bone marrow, brain, jaw, back and pelvis.

No part of this cancer fight, which has taken over our lives for so long, ever, ever gets any easier and its taken its toll on all of us. We dont know what normal life is like anymore without the word cancer being mentioned.

Last June, Bernadette made an emotional outpouring for the publics financial help as her attempts to raise 326,000 for Robyns medical treatment were failing.

Bernadettes fundraising had stalled at 70,000 but following her appeal, Erin McGregor, sister of UFC star Conor, helped to start a floss dance challenge in a desperate bid to help save Robyns life. Hundreds of thousands of euro was donated by the public as a result.

Our fundraising drive has been given another boost as two bloggers have chosen Robyn to benefit from a raffle which could be worth several thousand euro to us.

We feel so bad for having to ask so many people for financial help over all these years but its thanks to them that Robyn has been able to have all of this treatment.

When the Dublin girls chances of survival dropped to five%, four years ago and she was told by Irish doctors to bring her home to die, that her family decided to fundraise to take her to the US for the first time.

In between her visits to the US, of which she has been on almost 90 flights since 2015, Robyn continues to take chemotherapy tablets and has blood tests and other related treatment at Our Ladys Hospital in Crumlin.

Donations can be made on robynslife@live.com, idonate.ie/robynslife and gofundme.com/robynslife.
The European Parliament has agreed new measures to uncover criminal convictions of non-EU citizens.

A new database will make crucial information available to 27 member-states including data on people who have two passports.

MEP for Ireland South, Sean Kelly, says the measures are more vital than ever to fight global crime and terrorism.

"The horrible attacks in New Zealand over the weekend (have shown) how vulnerable we all are in relation to terrorist attacks.

"We have been looking at this area in the European Parliament for some time.

"We weren't happy with the lack of sharing information regarding people with dual nationalities who might have criminal records," he said.
The family of a 28- year old Spanish woman who died here six years ago has settled High Court actions over the care she received at Kerry General Hospital.

Tatoo artist Rosa Gonzalez Valesco died after it was claimed there was an alleged failure to diagnose and treat her rare cancer on a timely basis when she sought help for a swelling on her jaw.

The young womans mother and partner today settled their actions against the HSE, which denied all the claims.

Rosa Gonzalez Valesco died six weeks after she first sought help at Kerry General Hospital A&E at the end of October 2013.

Oonah McCrann SC said Rosa who was Spanish and living in Ireland became aware of a lump on her neck and went to Kerry General Hospital in Tralee.

She said her side contended the womans cancer was allegedly misinterpreted. The HSE, she said deny the claim.

Counsel said her side contended had the cancer been diagnosed, she could have had chemotherapy immediately and it would have altered her prognosis to five years or may have been curative.

Rosas Family, Counsel said were reassured by the diagnosis and did not rush to her bedside and as a result they felt they lost precious time.

Two cases before the court were settled, that of Rosas partner of six years, Ms Cristina Garcia Garcia who had sued for nervous shock over her death and of Rosas mother, Isabel Velasco Cobaleda from Seville who sued over the circumstances of her daughters care at the Kerry Hospital. The terms of the settlement are confidential and the cases were struck out.

There was it was claimed an alleged failure to diagnose and treat Rosas cancer in a timely basis and an alleged failure to identify alleged malignant cells in the core biopsy and that an alleged incorrect diagnosis of TB was made. All the claims were denied.

Ms Gonzalez Valesco had attended a GP in late September 2013 complaining of swelling in her left jaw and antibiotics were prescribed. She suffered continuous swelling and attended A&E at Kerry General Hospital on October 31, 2013 and had an ultrasound and chest X-ray. She later had a CT scan which showed up lung lesions and she later had a biopsy and TB was suspected. In November 2013, she was told she would need to undergo further investigations.

On December 2, 2013, Ms Valesco had a Mantoux test which was negative for the presence of TB. Her condition worsened and she was transferred to a Cork hospital where she remained in isolation until it was decided on December 12, 2013, that she did not have tuberculosis.

She continued to deteriorate and suffered three cardiac arrests on December 16, 2013 and died it is claimed due to a rare cancer - advanced widespread histiocytic sarcoma.

Approving the settlements Mr Justice Kevin Cross offered his sympathies on the death of the young woman.

In a statement outside court, Rosa's mother Isabel Velasco Cobaleda and Rosa's partner Cristina Garcia Garcia said they were glad there was a successful outcome to the proceedings.

"It is a pity it has taken so long. We would hope the Irish health system will communicate better with families of ill patients in the future," they said.
Two senior Fianna Fail TDs have said they have "no doubt" the party's hierarchy will consider running Billy Kelleher in the imminent European elections despite his failure to be selected by grassroots members.

Thomas Byrne and Fiona O'Loughlin said they believe officials will be "looking" at adding Mr Kelleher or female candidates in the coming days - despite insisting the decision is entirely in headquarters' hands.
A former soldier has settled his damages action against the State over health problems he claimed he suffered as a result of being prescribed the anti-malaria drug Larium.

Patrick Fedigan brought proceedings over what he claimed were the effects of taking the drug while he served with the Defence Forces during UN peacekeeping deployments to Africa that occurred between 2001 and 2009.

The claims were denied.

Today, John Gordan SC, for Mr Fedigan told Mr Justice Bernard Barton that following out of court talks between the parties the action had been resolved.

Counsel said that the case could be struck out. No further details of the settlement, which are understood to be confidential, were given to the court.

The State defendants had denied negligence or that they were liable for any injuries suffered by Mr Fedigan.

The defendants had also argued that Mr Fedigan had delayed in bringing his claim, meaning that his action was statute barred.

Mr Justice Barton welcomed the settlement.

The action is one of several similar actions brought against the State by members of the Defence Forces who claim they suffered various illnesses as a result of being prescribed the drug.

In his action, Mr Fedigan from Lobinstown, Navan, Co Meath, claimed he was prescribed Mefloquine Hydrochloride (Larium) when he served in Eritrea in 2001, Liberia in 2002 and Chad in 2010.

The 51-year-old claimed that as a result of his exposure to Larium he has suffered from various conditions including loss of balance, anxiety, panic, insomnia, vertigo, and memory problems.

He claimed the Minister for Defence, Ireland and the Attorney General were negligent and in breach of their duty towards him on grounds including he was not a suitable person to be prescribed Larium.

His prior medical history had not been ascertained before he was prescribed Larium and the defendants did not provide him with adequate support, treatment or management when he made complaints of symptoms of being prescribed the anti-malaria drug he claims.

He further claimed the defendants failed to provide him with a safe system of work, and exposed him to risk of injury which they ought to have known.

Mr Fedigan retired from the Defence Forces in 2013.

The case, had it proceeded, was expected to last 10 weeks.
Gardai have issued a renewed appeal for information relating to the disappearance of Cork woman, Tina Satchwell, on the second anniversary of her disappearance, and said they have conducted over 330 lines of enquiry during their investigation.

The last reported sighting of Ms Satchwell was by her husband Richard on March 20, 2017, who said she was in their home in Grattan Street, Youghal, when he left to get some groceries.

She has not been seen since despite a number of appeals and searches.

The 47-year-old is described as 5 7, of medium build with blonde shoulder-length hair and blue eyes.

Gardai issued a statement to renew their appeal for information: To date, this investigation has resulted in over 330 separate lines of enquiry being conducted, including liaison with colleagues internationally and engagement with Interpol."

An Garda Siochana, assisted by the Defence Forces, have previously conducted searches in the Youghal area and at Mitchels Wood, Bridgetown, Castlemartyr in connection with this investigation.

"Over 100 hours of CCTV has been viewed and in excess of 100 statements have been taken to date. Gardai in Midleton District have been assisted by specialist Garda units including the Garda Air Support Unit, Garda Water Unit and Garda Dog Unit, the statement read.

The search of Mitchells Wood in March 2018 was the last public search for clues in the investigation into Ms Satchwells disappearance.

Gardai had received a call from a member of the public who reported seeing activity around the time Tina disappeared in the woodland area around 20km away from Youghal, along the main Cork to Waterford road.

The 12-day operation saw approximately 60 personnel search more than 40 acres of woodland, aided by specially trained dogs while the Garda Sub Aqua Unit searched streams and rivers near the site.

Steel fencing was erected around the site, behind which operations were directed from a mobile command centre, while searches took place under spotlight.

However, the operation concluded without any finds of significance.

Some items were recovered and sent for analysis, but these examinations were merely precautionary and subsequently confirmed that no clues were uncovered in the operation.

Mr Satchwell said Tina left with suitcases and more than 26,000 in cash that the couple had from the sale of a house in Tinas native Fermoy - but that she had left her keys and phone behind. She had no passport to use for foreign travel.

In July 2017 Mr Satchwell found suitcases in the car park of a Youghal supermarket. However, a subsequent technical examination confirmed that these did not belong to Ms Satchwell.

In August 2017, gardai conducted searches of the Youghal harbour near the Satchwell home.

Similar searches were also conducted along section of roadside ditch on the Golf Links Road, two education centres in the area, and waste ground surrounding a nearby telephone mast.

However, these searches, along with a trawl of CCTV footage from Youghal premises, and Bus Eireann services in the town, yielded no results.

Mr Satchwell could not be reached for comment for this article, but has been critical of how he has been portrayed in some media coverage of his wifes disappearance.

One day my wife is going to turn back up, or shes going to get in touch with the gardai. One way or another, this will all come out and in time it will all prove that I did nothing wrong, he told TV3 News in 2017.

Gardai are appealing for anybody with information to contact Midleton Garda Station on 021  4621550, the Garda Confidential line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
Doctors have warned of a sharp decline in the standard of patient care against a backdrop of a growing number of vacant consultant posts.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) said a survey of its members found almost nine in 10 believe patient care is being compromised due to a lack of suitably qualified consultants. Moreover, hospitals will struggle to sustain current clinical service levels if more posts arent filled.

HSE figures to the end of December 2018 show 479 consultant vacancies, including 101 in psychiatry and 38 in paediatrics.

Of more than 900 consultants surveyed, three-quarters said patient waiting times had deteriorated over the past year, which they said was attributable to vacant consultant posts. The majority said this, in turn, was attributable to inequity of pay, since a two-tier pay system was introduced in 2012, resulting, in some cases, in new entrant doctors earning 50,000 less than colleagues doing the same job.

A third of consultants who responded to the survey said there were between one and three permanent approved consultant posts in their department currently vacant;

More than half (54%) said they were not confident that a vacancy would be filled with a suitably qualified candidate.

They warned the upshot for patients was longer waiting times, adding to the existing difficulties, with 542,000 awaiting their first outpatient appointment with a consultant and another 71,000 on inpatient waiting lists. IHCA president Donal OHanlon said the survey results were stark and overwhelming.

Patient care and safety is being damaged due to Government policy, said Dr OHanlon. He said the reason the health service was unable to fill consultant posts was due to deliberate government discrimination in paying new entrants less.

He called on the Government to restore pay parity to encourage consultants to take up posts.

All patients need timely high-quality care and this is not possible without the required number of consultants, said Dr OHanlon.

The survey includes anonymised comments from consultants on how staffing deficits are impacting patient services.

One said: It has become a new normality that I need to apologise to patients for increasing waiting period in clinics and for being unable to see those patients after commencing therapies.

Another said: Backlog for breast screening will lead to delayed cancer diagnosis and treatment.
The UAE government is working with its Indian counterparts to make air travel to the UAE cheaper for tourists and visitors, Dr Ahmed Al Banna, the UAE Ambassador to India, revealed during his visit to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), said a report.



Speaking to an audience of students, academics and journalists, Dr Al Banna stressed that Indians were now the second largest ethnic group of visitors to Dubai in terms of hotel room occupancy, WAM reported.



This figure is set to grow with an increase of available seats on flights in both directions, it said.



At present, there is a discrepancy between supply and demand for seats on flights from Indian airports to those in the UAE, said the report, citing Dr Al Banna.



"The current number of 1,068 flights between the two countries with a weekly capacity of 168,000 seats does not meet the demand," he said.



"Four years ago, a business class seat from Delhi to Dubai cost approximately the equivalent in Indian rupees of $1,000. Now it costs about $2,000 because demand is rising but seat availability is still low," Dr Al Banna said.



Under Indian rules, the open skies policy applies only to flights below 5,000 km radius. Since the flying distance between India and the UAE is shorter than said radius, UAE air carriers are at a disadvantage compared to European and American carriers which fly beyond the 5,000 km ceiling and enjoy the benefits of open skies in capacity and flight frequency, the report said.



The UAE has progressively relaxed visa rules for Indians who wish to visit Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other locations for business, leisure or in transit stopovers. More steps are underway to increase two-way traffic air-traffic, Dr Al Banna added.
As talks at the Labour Court over nurses' pay and conditions adjourned until next week the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation warns that it has only suspended its strike action, not called it off.

INMO general secretary, Phil Ni Sheaghdha, said the proposals originally put forward by management on a new contract would never be accepted in a nurses' ballot.

Last Friday the INMO presented the court with a written submission on why the Government's draft contract was unacceptable to its members. Key outstanding issues are working hours, rosters and location changes.

The court adjourned a hearing today after the INMO said it needs time to deal with a written response it had just received from management. The Labour Court will adjudicate on the contract issue when it reconvenes next Monday.

The court proposed a new higher-paid enhanced nurse practice grade that nurses could access within four years.

However, under the deal, the parties had to agree on flexible working hours and rosters in a Framework on Safe Staffing context.

Siptu, which represents 4,000 nurses, but did not take industrial action, also rejected the management proposals.

The Psychiatric Nurses Association which has 6,000 nurse members, is using a separate negotiation process and has not yet received a Labour Court recommendation.

Meanwhile, the INMO has criticised plans by University Hospital Limerick, the most overcrowded hospital in the country, to close an in-patient ward. There are 17 beds in the ward that are used primarily to treat patients who require short periods of admission.

The INMO pointed out that there were 76 admitted patients waiting for a hospital bed in UHL on Tuesday  54 were waiting in the emergency department and 22 elsewhere in the hospital.

INMO industrial relations officer for Limerick, Mary Fogarty, said they made a written complaint about the planned ward closure to the hospital's chief executive: "We need to be going in the opposite direction.

Closing beds will only worsen Limerick's overcrowding crisis, leading to compromised treatment and patients being forced to wait on public corridors.

The UL Hospital group said staff and trade unions, including the INMO, were involved in the plan to close the short-stay 17-bed unit to allow the development of a new fracture unit, and that beds in other parts of the hospital are being used to make up the loss.
A woman who stole the proceeds of the sale of a retired GP's surgery when she was working as the victim's carer has been jailed for two years.

Nermana Gojak, aged 44, worked as both a carer and a housekeeper for a couple of days a week for the 90-year-old woman for 10 years. Both the woman and her late husband had worked as GPs in the area and the victim had opened up a deposit account with the funds from the sale of her husband's GP surgery when he passed away.

Gojak stole 41,380 over five years by making ATM withdraws, using the woman's laser card to purchase items and getting cash back at points of sale. She regularly transferred funds from this deposit account to the woman's current account to allow her easy access to the money.

Gojak of Pineview Avenue, Aylesbury, Tallaght, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the theft from Ulster Bank, Dundrum, on dates between September 8, 2012, and August 8, 2017. Gojak has no previous convictions and is unemployed.

Dara Hayes BL, prosecuting, read the woman's victim impact statement into the record at the original sentence hearing last December, in which she stated: I cried when I thought of how hard my husband had to work to get that money. She said the crime was deceitful, cruel and callous.

She said that she has not been to able to secure a new carer since Gojak's theft came to light and she has had to move into a nursing home.

The woman said she became fearful and worried about living in her home on her own and felt financially vulnerable.

I embraced her like a daughter, she said while outlining that she went to Gojak's children's plays, dancing competitions and celebrated all their achievements.

She said she didn't forget the children's birthdays.

It was such an upheaval at this stage of my life. It will stay with me to the end of my days, the woman concluded in her statement.

Judge Melanie Greally had previously remanded Gojak on continuing bail and adjourned sentencing having heard evidence last December.

She noted from the victim impact report that the most significant element for the woman was the immense sense of betrayal which she has experienced.

It is clear from the report that she regarded the accused as one of her family and embraced her as one of her family, introducing her to her wider family and celebrating family events with her, Judge Greally said.

She said the victim had raised those funds from a lifetime of hard work and the sale of a GP practice and noted that she was left in financial insecurity as a result of what was taken from her.

Judge Greally said the case necessitated a custodial sentence before she sentenced Gojak to three years in prison but suspended the final 12 months on strict conditions including that she engage with the Probation Service for 12 months.

She said she had taken into account Gojak's lack of previous convictions, her pleas of guilty, co-operation, remorse and the fact that she had 2,000 in court to offer as a token of that remorse.

Judge Greally also acknowledged that Gojak had experienced difficulties in her past noting that she had come to Ireland from war-torn Bosnia and accepted that some mental health issues were identified in a probation report before the court.

Gojak's defence counsel, Marc Murphy BL, accepted it was an extremely serious offence that had a serious impact on the victim. He acknowledged that the money has not been repaid and said there was no reality to her ever paying it back in full.

Counsel suggested that if Gojak was given some time she may be able to gather together a token amount as a symbol of her remorse.

Mr Murphy said Gojak played a central role in her family life and is a devoted mother to her three children aged between 12 and 17 years old. She has an expectation of a custodial sentence, counsel said.
The Irish Prison Service has sought to ease fears of a backlog of sex offenders waiting to enter its tailored treatment programme. This follows criticism from a visiting committee at one of the countrys main jails.

The Visiting Committee for Arbour Hill prison  one of two jails that deal with men convicted of sexual violence  warned in its recently published 2017 annual report of an ongoing waiting list for prisoners to engage in the psychology services.

The committee noted that Arbour Hill is currently the centre of excellence for the treatment and rehabilitation of sex offenders, but also said that the sudden death, in 2017, of a senior psychologist means it was imperative that a replacement be found, as there was an extra workload for the remaining psychologist.

The Irish Prison Service confirmed that the senior post has been filled on an acting basis since last April and that a permanent senior psychologist has recently been appointed and will commence work shortly.

According to the prison service, there are between 380 and 400 individuals convicted of sexual violence in the prison system at any one time, with approximately 300 in the Midlands Prison and 100 in Arbour Hill. Both prisons work together to provide a national programme of excellence, in order to reduce risk of reoffending and to enhance public protection to the greatest possible extent.

The national programme, known as Building Better Lives (BBL), has operated since 2009 in Arbour Hill prison and can be delivered as a group or individually, depending on the persons needs. Typically, men have engaged in the programme within the final two years of their sentence.

Delivery of the programme is in three stages: Exploring Better Lives (EBL), Practicing Better Lives (PBL), and Maintaining Better Lives (MBL). Since 2016, the EBL group has moved to the Midlands prison and individuals then transfer to Arbour Hill to complete the Stage 2 PBL element. The MBL is currently facilitated by the Probation Service in Arbour Hill.

According to the prison service: A review of the BBL was conducted in 2018 and both elements of the programmes were revised to facilitate an increase in the number of participants engaging in interventions, to reduce risk.

There are currently 11 prisoners on the waiting list to participate in the EBL in Arbour Hill. It is anticipated that all prisoners on the PBL waiting list will be offered a place on the programme in 2019.

The EBL in the Midlands Prison has around eight participants on a rolling basis, while the PBL stage in Arbour Hill has a similar number. The Irish Prison Service said that a number of other sex offenders, who either do not wish to engage with BBL or fail to meet the criteria for inclusion, can participate in a range of other programmes.

The Arbour Hill Visiting Committee report also noted the lack of weekend, in-house medical provision for what it said was an ageing prison population in the jail.

The Irish Prison Service said it was currently making arrangements for procuring the expertise required to carry out a comprehensive healthcare-needs assessment of the population across the prison estate, including Arbour Hill, and with a view to determining the current and future healthcare requirements of prisoners.
An Independent Senator has suggested an Honours system - like the "Lords" and "Sirs" one used in the UK - should be introduced here.

Gerard Craughwell thinks it would be a good way to recognise unsung heroes across the country doing important work.
The Taoiseach is meeting the European Council President in Dublin today - with just 10 days to go until Brexit.

Donald Tusk and Leo Varadkar's meeting comes ahead of a crucial summit of EU leaders later this week.

The British Prime Minister is expected to formally request an extension beyond the March 29 deadline.

Theresa May's hopes of getting the deal through the UK Parliament were dealt a blow yesterday.

It's after House of Commons speaker John Bercow ruled it couldn't be voted on for a third time - unless it had significant changes.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, during his annual US St Patricks Day tour, Mr Varadkar said: President Tusk will come to Dublin on Tuesday for meetings with me, in advance of the European Council summit later in the week, to consider any requests that come from the UK at that point for an extension.

Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

On Wednesday at our Cabinet meeting we will be in a position to sign off on a package of supports for businesses, for farmers, for the agri-food sector and for anyone who may be adversely affected by a no-deal Brexit.

Obviously we are hoping the deal will be ratified in the House of Commons before then, but if its not we are ready. Weve already passed the legislation to provide for a no-deal Brexit, we have the Common Travel Area and this package of measures to support incomes and jobs.

Its not going to be a case of everything being all right, Brexit is bad news.

Conservative MP and solicitor general Robert Buckland has been critical of John Bercow's intervention

"Now the Speaker has put himself in the mix as well with his important ruling," he said.

"The EU27 need to understand what will work in Westminster. At the moment, the current deal they have proposed doesn't seem to cut it.

"Can they help us? Yes, they can."
PSNI detectives investigating the deaths of three teenagers at a Co Tyrone disco have arrested two men on suspicion of manslaughter.

The men, aged 40 and 52, were arrested by police earlier today and are currently in custody.

In a statement, the PSNI said: "Detectives from PSNI Major Investigation Team investigating the deaths of three teenagers at the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown on Saint Patricks Day have arrested two men aged 52 and 40 earlier today on suspicion of manslaughter. They are currently in custody."

Lauren Bullock, 17, Connor Currie, 16, and Morgan Barnard, 17, all from Co Tyrone, died in the incident outside the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown on St Patrick's night.

In an update on the police investigation this afternoon, PSNI Detective Chief Superintendent Raymond Murray said it was fortunate more were not killed in the crush at the venue.

We could absolutely have been looking at more, he said.

Books of condolence have opened across Northern Ireland in memory of the three teenagers who died.

Mr Murray said CCTV footage indicated that between 350 to 400 people had either been in the queue or the nearby area when the incident unfolded.

Mr Murray urged more young people to come forward, insisting that in the circumstances police were not concerned whether they were underage and attempting to enter a licensed premises.

He said he had received the same assurance from Northern Irelands Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Herron.

I want to thank everyone who has spoken with us so far, however there is still a significant number of people who were there that night, in the queue, and I need them to come forward to speak to police so we can understand what happened, said Mr Murray.

I want to reassure you, the focus of our investigation is not the age of people who were at the event  it is about trying to find answers for the families of the three teenagers who tragically died  we need to know what you saw so the heartbroken families of Connor, Lauren and Morgan know what happened to their children.

I would urge parents to talk with your children, support them and encourage them to come forward and tell their story to police so we can get an accurate picture of events that night.

Talk to your children, reassure them  we know they may be scared  but again I can assure you we are only interested in establishing what happened.

Their account of events on Sunday night could be crucial to establishing how Connor, Lauren and Morgan died.

PA & Digital Desk
There were 76 admitted patients awaiting a hospital bed in University Hospital Limerick today - the highest in the county, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.

Every morning INMO members count how many patients are waiting in the Emergency Department for a bed and how many are waiting in wards elsewhere in the hospital.

The two other worst-hit hospitals were Cork University Hospital that had 41 patients waiting and University Hospital Galway that had 34.

INMO figures show that UHL recorded the highest annual figure of patients awaiting beds over the last three years - 11,437 last year, 8,869 last year and 8,090 in 2016.

There were 80 patients waiting for beds at UHL on March 12 last year, the highest ever figure recorded by the INMO since 2006.

Minister of State at the Department of Heath, Finian McGrath, told the Dail last month that funding to allow a new 60-bed block at UHL would be provided this year.

Independent TD, Dr Michael Harty, is concerned that the project may be delayed because of the massive cost overrun on the national children's hospital.

Altogether, INMO members counted 557 admitted patients waiting for beds, 394 were waiting in the hospital's ED while 163 were in wards.

According to the HSE's TrolleyGAR that only counts admitted trolley waiters in EDs there were 399 waiting, with 224 waiting over nine hours and 80 waiting over 24 hours.

The HSE's latest figure represents an increase of almost 8% on trolley waiters last year when there were 370, with 197 waiting over nine hours.

According to the HSE UHL had 42 patients on trolleys - the highest number, with 30 waiting over nine hours and 14 over 24 hours.

The HSE recorded 19 admitted patients on trolleys in Cork University Hospital, with eight waiting over nine hours. University Hospital Galway had 34, the second highest number, followed by the Mater Hospital in Dublin that had 28.
By Auqib Javeed, TwoCircles.net

Srinagar:- On December 8, 1989, Rubaiya Sayeed, the 23-year-old daughter of the then Union Home Minister Mufti Sayeed Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was kidnapped in Srinagar by the members of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), a separatist group based in Kashmir. In lieu of her release, the kidnappers demanded the release of five militants Sheikh Abdul Hameed, Sher Khan, a Pakistani militant; Noor Muhammad Kalwal; Muhammed Altaf Bhat; and Javeed Ahmed Zargar. The Government-led Prime Minister V. P. Singh met the demand and she was released on December 13.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) blamed JKLF leaders Mohammad Yaseen Malik, Manzoor Ahmed Sofi, Javed Ahmed Mir and Showkat Ahmed Bakshi, Javed Ahmed Zargar and Ali Muhammad Mir for kidnapping and conspiracy.

After the abduction, a case was filed in Police station Sadar in Srinagar City. The FIR No.339 was registered on 8 December 1989 under Sections 364, 368 RPC, Section 3(1) TADA Act and 25 Indian Arms Act, against unknown persons.

Almost after three decades, the case against Yasin Malik, the main accused and others, was shifted to Jammu for proceedings on CBIs plea.

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According to official sources, this was done for the speedy trial of the case while people here see it as part of the tough approach towards Kashmirs separatists by New Delhi.

Reports said the Union Home Minister was shocked to know the status of 1989 Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case and he expressed displeasure over the slow pace of trial.

The central government ordered its executive wing a few years ago to aggressively take up the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case to ensure justice.

In 2009, the High court stayed the trial against Mohammad Yasin Malik and others in the case before a Tada court in Jammu.

On March 13, the petitions filed by CBI in High Court, seeking vacation of the stay on trial and shifting the proceedings to Jammu in the kidnapping and killing of five Air Force officials cases from Srinagar to Jammu decided to be heard in the Jammu wing of the court as per the high court rules and circular issued by it in this regard.

The CBI counsel Tahir Majid Shamsi had filed a transfer appeal before the Srinagar wing of J&K High Court contending that the main accused, Yasin Malik, is an influential person in the state which is likely going to influence the proceedings of the matter.

The writ petitions cannot be taken up for consideration at Srinagar Wing and have to be sent to the Jammu Wing for hearing and decision in accordance with Circular 6 dated 18.12.2010 and Guideline 94 dated 7th December 2018, a bench of Chief Justice Gita Mittal said. On Monday, the HC reserved the orders after a plea.

All other steps including hearing, consideration and decision have to be by the Wing to which it relates. The petitioners have accepted this when applications seeking permission to file the writ petitions relating to the Jammu Wing at the Srinagar Wing was sought, the court said.

The writ petitions, the court reiterated, can be heard and decided only by the Wing to which the matters relate i.e., the Jammu Wing, the court said.

A brief background of the two cases

According to the CBI, Rubiya Syed was kidnapped while she was going in a Tata Mini Bus from Lal Ded Hospital her to her house at Nowgam in outskirts of Srinagar. She was taken to some unknown place by the militants travelling in the same minibus and they threatened to kill her in case their demands were not met and created terror amongst all the passengers by showing gun and pistols to them.

After completion of the investigation in the case, the charge sheet was filed by the CBI on 18.09.1990 under Section 364, 368, 109 and 34 RPC, Section 3(1) TADA and Section 27 of Arms Act, before the court of 3rd Additional Sessions Judge Jammu the designated court under the TADA Act.

During the pendency of trial in this case, on 25th October 2010, an application was filed by the accused persons seeking transfer of the case to the designated TADA court at Srinagar. The CBI filed objections and opposed the application.

It is important to point out that Yasin Malik is also the prime accused in the killing of four Indian Air Force personnel in Srinagar on 25, January 1990.

According to an FIR registered in the Police Station Sadder in Srinagar, in the indiscriminate firing 40 employees including a woman were injured, and two died on the spot.

The case was registered by the CBI and on completion of the investigation, a charge sheet was filed on 31st August 1990 under Section 302 RPC of RPC, Section 3 and 4 of TADA Act and Section 27 of the Arms Act against Muhammad Yaseen Malik and five others, before the designated TADA Court at Jammu.

Both the cases were transferred to Srinagar from Jammu and in April 2009, Srinagar wing of the J&K High Court stayed Yasin Maliks trial in a designated TADA court in Jammu. Now both the cases have been transferred back to Jammu for further proceedings.

Political experts in Kashmir believe that the opening of the 29-years-old case is just propaganda by the Modi-led government to win the upcoming elections. They believe shifting of nearly 3 decades old case to Jammu as Modis Muscular Policy towards Kashmir.

It is the changing approach of current the government in the centre and shifting of Yasin Maliks case to Jammu that too after decades is the part of the same approach and I think this will continue till the elections are not over, said Professor Noor Ahmad Baba, a Political expert in Kashmir.

Baba said the failure to address the Kashmir conflict meant the government is using the old cases for its benefits. If the BJP continues to remain in power, it will continue with the muscular policy towards the Kashmir and it will not be good for the future.

A staunch supporter of JKLF, who wished not to be named due to security reasons, said Kashmiris have been always used by the Indian politicians for the political benefits.

Tell me why a 30-year-old case was reopened? If Yasin Malik was involved in the kidnapping why didnt they punish him in 30 years, he questioned.

Talking to this reporter, Javeed Ahmed Mir, one of the accused allegedly involved in the kidnapping cases, said the JKLF announced a unilateral ceasefire in 1995 after the assurance of an American diplomat, Robin Raphel, who assured them that the GoI will support peace initiatives if JKLF leaves the path of violence.

As a result, Mir said, they left gun culture and choose the non-violent means to demand their rights but the BJP government led by Narendra Modi is pushing them to choose the gun again.

We dont know why we are being targeted in the decades-old case. If we are demanding our right through peaceful means, then why are our leaders being detained without any charges? asked Meer.

The raids on separatists leaders seem to have had no impact, especially on JKLF. Their office at Masuima locality in Srinagar was filled with a dozen of activist discussing the Kashmir situation.

We have hundreds of cases going on in different courts. Over 100 of our workers are behind bars. I am telling you nothing is going to happen to Yasin Malik, said one of the activists, wishing anonymity.

Modi wants to show his presence and his psychological warfare to the people of Kashmir, nothing else, he says.
The European Union will need to know the reason and the usefulness of any UK request for a delay to Brexit before deciding whether to grant an extension, the EUs chief negotiator has cautioned.

Theresa May is due to write by the end of Wednesday to European Council president Donald Tusk, setting out her proposal to extend the two-year process of negotiating withdrawal under the EUs Article 50 rules.

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said any extension to Brexit would have to be useful (European Commission Audiovisual Service/PA)

Chief negotiator Michel Barnier told a news conference in Brussels: It is our duty to ask whether this extension would be useful because an extension will be something which would extend uncertainty and uncertainty costs.

He warned that the UK would need to propose something new to justify a lengthy extension, he said.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Mrs May could ask for a lengthy extension to Article 50, with the option of an early break in May or June if she manages to get her Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament.

But Mr Barnier appeared to pour cold water on this possibility, telling a reporter: You said both short and long.

Well, its either one or the other, isnt it?

He added: My feeling is  a longer extension needs to be linked to something new.

There needs to be a new event or a new political process.- Press Association
New Zealand's prime minister has vowed not to name the man accused of shooting 50 people dead in a terror attack publicity.

Thirty people remain in hospital after the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch - nine of them in a critical condition.
Global law firm Jones Day Lawyers has moved into Melbournes Rialto building after leasing a whole floor in the recently-upgraded Collins Street tower.

The expanding international legal group first mooted opening a Melbourne branch early last year and has taken a 1000-square-metre lease over the buildings 48th floor to cement its presence in the city.

It will replace Shadforth Financial Group, which moved out of the co-owned Grollo Group and St Martins Properties tower to new digs at 161 Collins Street.

The Rialto is now bearing the fruit from its refurbishment.

The Rialto, now 30 years old, underwent a major refurbishment last year which boosted its status to a 5.5 star NABERS indoor environment rating and added substantial new retail and office space in its ground floor atrium.
LNG giant Chevron has shaved an expected $5.2 million off three years of council rates bills for its Wheatstone and Gorgon gas plants in the Pilbara's Shire of Ashburton.

The company secured the new rates bill after three years fighting the land valuation for its multi-billion dollar gas plants, forcing the shire to look elsewhere to fill the funding gap.

Chevron objected to the valuation of the land where its Wheatstone gas plant is located.

Council rates across WA are calculated using the valuer generals valuations of residential, commercial and industrial lands.

In 2016, Chevron objected to the valuer generals $16.5 million figure for the unimproved value of its Wheatstone land on the Pilbara coast, saying it did not agree with the methodology used.
A 2916 sq m office/warehouse at 7 Brand Road has sold to an investor for $1.85 million on a tight 5.2 per cent yield. Lawson Real Estates Mark Spigelman said the tight yield demonstrates a lack of quality investments being offered in the market. Essendon The retail space at 41 Albion Street sold for $360,000. CVAs Craig McKellar and Oliver Price struck a deal to sell a retail space at 41 Albion Street for $360,000. The 40 sq m shop is leased to Boutique Estate Agents for $19,500 per annum net. It was purchased after auction on a yield of 5.42 per cent. Wantirna

An empty old factory at 1, 2 Eastgate Court set a record-breaking price when it sold for $585,000, according to Colliers Internationals Andrew Chrapot and Harry Larwill. The price set at $550,000. We ended up receiving four offers over $570,000 and then Searle Bros Building Contractors came through with a strong offer and short settlement, Mr Chrapot said. LEASES Hawthorn Business accounting software provider Xero has leased a 1450 sq m office at 1A Oxley Road. Gorman Commercials Richard Height brokered the two and a half year lease. This lease now fills the final vacancy for this landlord having leased the adjoining 3700 sq m office at 600 Glenferrie Road to United Petroleum and 1B Oxley Road to to co-working firm Creative Cubes, Mr Height said. Rents were undisclosed but likely to be in the order of $380 per sq m. Robert Magids Overland Properties owns 745 Springvale Road.

Mulgrave Robert Magids Overland Properties has secured two lease deals in separate Mulgrave assets totalling more than 5000 sq m. Dental implant producer Osteon Medical has moved into a 2450 sq m ground floor office at 759 Springvale Road after signing an eight-year lease. The premises were previously occupied by Catch of the Day. And Keysight Technologies has signed a 10-year lease for $240 per sq m over a 1686 sq m office and a 1135 sq m warehouse at 745 Springvale Road. CBREs Elise Betts and Gianni Macdonald negotiated both transactions with Colliers International as conjunctional agents. Melbourne Vita Medical Centre will relocate from Elizabeth Street to King Street in a leasing deal negotiated by Colliers Internationals Stephanie Harding and Jarrod Herscu. Vita secured 57 sq m at 375 King Street on a five-year lease paying $950 per sq m. King and Queen streets are experiencing an influx of retailers who have lost their sites to development and who have been priced out of Elizabeth Street, Ms Harding said. Malvern

Board and card games retailer General Games has leased a 160 sq m ground floor shop at 50 Glenferrie Road at a rate equivalent to about $500 per sq m, Josh McMullin from Morley Commercial said. General Games has three other stores in different locations. Mr McMullin said there was still good demand for well-located retail property. Noble Park Property group Centuria has leased 3A, 207 Browns Road to Tomax Logistics. The 4605 sq m industrial property was leased at gross face rent of $85 per sq m on a three-plus-three year basis, Colliers Internationals Gordon Code and Jonathan Mercuri said. Coburg Telco giant Telstra has leased a refurbished shop at 368 Sydney Road in a deal negotiated by Craig McKellar from CVA in conjunction with RE Blue Estate Agents. On the corner of Sydney Road and Harding Street, Telstra took the 70 sq m space for $55,000 per annum. The site has a high volume of passing foot and car traffic with car parking.

Hawthorn Sustainable product manufacturer Ecostore has relocated its Australian head office to 74 Burwood Road in a deal negotiated by Colliers Internationals Tom Rothel and John Howell. Ecostore took 164 sq m at rent about $350 sq m net for three years. MOVERS Colliers International has appointed Brad Harding as director of facilities management. Mr Harding was formerly with Knight Frank. At the same time Matthew Mariani has joined the firm, based in Chadstone, as associate director of real estate management. CBRE has expanded its specialist retirement and healthcare valuation team, appointing Mars Njoo. Mr Njoo, with 11 years of valuation experience, joins from Cushman & Wakefield.
TPG's executive chairman David Teoh says he is "disappointed" the competition watchdog is taking so long to approve a planned $10 billion merger with Vodafone as the telco faces shrinking margins as a result of the National Broadband Network.

The telecommunications company's net profit for the first half was down 76.3 per cent to $47.4 million and revenue fell 1.5 per cent to $1.24 billion. Earnings (before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and impairment) increased 1.7 per cent to $420 million.

TPG Telecom has criticised the pricing of the entry-level NBN plans.

A major blow for TPG was stopping its mobile network rollout, a decision the telco blames on the government's ban on its vendor partner, tech giant Huawei, for the 5G network. This resulted in a $227.4 million impairment charge in the results. Excluding this expense, and $4.4 million in one-off transaction costs that form part of the company's plans to merge with Vodafone, underlying profit increased 3.2 per cent to $225.7 million.

Mr Teoh announced plans to merge with the mobile-focused telco in August and has since been waiting for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to approve the deal. In December, the ACCC delayed a decision citing concerns about the tie-up and the need for more information.
The Ambani brothers, whose public feud over control of the Reliance empire after their father's death in 2002 led to a split in the conglomerate, may have taken a major step to a more harmonious relationship on Monday.

Anil Ambani (left) brother Mukesh have been feuding for much of this century. Credit:AP

India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, who controls oil-to-telecoms powerhouse Reliance Industries that is now worth many times the troubled business group run by his younger brother Anil, appears to have offered some kind of support to ensure Anil paid off a 5.5 billion rupees ($80 million) debt.

That was owed to Swedish telecom equipment company Ericsson and had been run up by his telecoms group Reliance Communications. If Anil didn't pay the debt, then he had been threatened by India's Supreme Court with a prison term.

The nature of the backing and how it was delivered is unclear, but in a statement Anil Ambani thanked his billionaire brother along with his sister, for their support.
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Civil Rights Groups organised a day long convention on 18th March at Constitutional club of India called Steps towards hope.

The convention began by taking stock of the four and half years of Modi led government which saw extra-killings in UP and other states and the lawlessness prevailing there with some incidents where the current regime indirectly perpetuating the crimes. A majority of the hate crimes, caste based crimes have been committed against people from the marginalised communities

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Fawaz Shaheen of Quill foundation from the figures researched by his foundation gave an estimate of 759 hate crimes during the current regime. He stressed that crimes of this proportion is a national crisis that is being perpetuated in a much planned manner. He also spoke about the need to recognize religious hatred as being a prominent constituent of such violence. Niranjan Takle, the journalist who extensively reported on the suspicious manner in which Judge Loya died, spoke about the rewriting of history that is being done to make heroes out of people who had capitulated in front of the British. These are symptoms of fascism that would engulf anyone and everyone who would come in its way.

Members of the fact finding team that had visited Sitamarhi in Bihar after the custodial death of two Muslim youth spoke about the conspicuous nature in which Gufran and Tasleem died and there was no action on the part of the state government to deliver justice.

Hannan Mollah, General Secretary of AIKS, under whose leadership many milestone Kisan marches were organised in various parts of the country expressed solidarity to forge a larger unity of all the marginalised people to defeat the fascist powers. He stressed on importance of mass movements and pointed out how because of the kisan marches, the plight of farmers has become a central election issue today.

This opinion was reiterated by Soni Sori, an Adivasi rights activist from Chhattisgarh working to save Adivasi land and livelihood. She narrated the way the government, both at the centre as well as the state is pitting marginalised communities in Chhattisgarh in this case Adivasis and Muslims against each other so that it can unabatedly continue corporate plunders.

Some activists spoke about the many anti-people policies of the government and how through collective mass movements, its agenda of furthering Brahmanism and cronyism was pushed back as happened in the 13 point roster issue in university appointment positions as elaborated by Dr.Ratan Lal.

Sanjay Hegde, advocate of Supreme Court focussed on the legal battles for securing justice in cases of lynching and hate crime and even the need to bring new laws to curtail and prevent the same.

Rajeev Yadav of Rihai Manch, an organization that has extensively worked on hate crimes and failure of law and order in UP pointed out how perpetrators of violence against minorities are roaming freely like Babu Bajrangi.

A major part of deliberations in the programme though was perpetuation of hate and bigotry that has engulfed our civic life, its institutionalised nature and the need to counter it in a systemic manner.

Responses from political parties

Manifesto against Hate, a charter of demands and agenda against such systemic hate prepared by United Against Hate was discussed. Representatives of various opposition political parties were asked upon to respond with their agenda as to how are they going to counter such subversion of democracy with a definite political programme.

Sachin Rao of the Indian National Congress stated that in the land of Gandhi, any revolutionary movement has to be fought through non-violence and every social and political change has to be based on constitutional morality.

Ali Khan, spokesperson of Samajwadi Party stressed the need to address all the issues concerning the masses of this country. Yogendra Yadav stressed the need to reclaim the religion and composite culture of India by progressive and secular forces, something that has been high jacked by the fundamentalist forces.

This was supported by Kavita Krishnan of the CPI(ML) who said that laws like Cow Protection Act that are used as a pretext for hate violence should have no place in our statute books.

Aam Aadmi Party representative Dileep Pandey, said that BJP, which claims to be a party of Hindus is working to further its own interests and has nothing to do with the welfare of Hindus themselves.

The convention organized by United Against Hate along with PVCHR, PUCL(Delhi), United Christian Forum, Quill Foundation, RihaiManch and APCR was attended by several activists, journalists and lawyers who had brought to fore the issues where the current regime subverted rule of law.
Nisha Dua might be pint sized but she has a black belt in karate and runs a venture capital fund focused solely on women-led businesses.

She is not a woman to mess with.

"In the investment community you are always looking for alpha and it is kind of surprising that women can be seen as alpha, given that they are 50 per cent of the population, but they have been so overwhelmingly overlooked," Dua says.

Nisha Dua is a partner in BBG Ventures and the founder of #BuiltByGirls Credit:Eddie Jim

The 36-year-old grew up in the NSW country town of Armidale and started her career as a lawyer for Blake Dawson Waldron before moving to Bain & Co to work as a consultant and then relocating to New York to work at internet company AOL with Susan Lyne.
It may come as a surprise, but Sydney is no longer among the world's top 10 most expensive cities to live.

The Emerald City has fallen six places to 16th place in the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Worldwide Cost of Living 2019 survey, while Melbourne dropped eight spots to 22nd and Brisbane was 41st (-15). Adelaide (51st, -21) and Perth (64th, -18) were among the biggest movers down the ranking in the past 12 months.

Sydney has dropped out of the top 10. Credit:Wolter Peeters

Australian cities were cheaper by between 10 and 13 per cent from last year, and interestingly its Sydney and Melbourne where the drop has been larger (13 per cent), EIU global chief economist Simon Baptist said.

About 8 per cent of that drop was due to the weaker Australian dollar, he said.
Like Ms Lawrence, millions of women take the pill every day. But few give any thought to what taking hormones, one of the fundamental mechanisms for controlling the body, for years can do. How the pill changes our bodies  and minds A 2014 study found the brains of women on the pill look different to women off the pill in that they appear more masculine, with women on certain types of pill not as good at coming up with words (usually associated with females), but better at rotating objects (more masculine traits). Other surprising and little-known side effects of the pill can include the development of typically male characteristics (some pills include male hormones), changing a womans body shape and composition; and (minimally) delaying fertility. Many women worry taking the pill will cause weight gain, but theres no conclusive evidence. However, studies have found women on the pill gain less muscle, and the hormones in the pill can influence fat distribution in the body, which poses an interesting dilemma for gym junkies.

As for fertility, there is only little (if any) difference between those who do and don't use hormonal contraception. Loading On average, there may be a very small delay in fertility once you get off the pill, says Dr Kathleen McNamee, medical director at Family Planning Victoria. For example, if you have 100 women whove stopped using condoms versus 100 women whove stopped using the pill to get pregnant, those previously on the pill may experience a little longer to conceive, but that usually catches up a few months later. President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Dr Harry Nespolon agrees: while there may be a lag in fertility after getting off the pill, its not as bad as its made out to be.

A lot of women will have months they don't ovulate, and some women take a while to get their periods back, so while it's not quite as predictable as getting off an IUD, its not as bad as people make it out to be, he says. Experts worry that the tendency to focus on a small amount of bad experiences ... is illustrative of alarmist discourse around the pill. Dr Nespolon says, once upon a time, doctors used to recommend a pill holiday if women had been on taking it for more than 10 years. And do you know what happened during this holiday? Women got pregnant." Alarmist discourse

While the above side-effects have been observed in some women, the reality is, theyre in the (significant) minority. Experts worry that the tendency to focus on a small amount of bad experiences of some women is illustrative of the alarmist discourse around the pill, which, despite being one of the most studied forms of medication, still confuses women  and some doctors. Loading The pill has been around since the 60s, and millions of women take these products all over the world, says Professor Danielle Mazza, a practicing GP and the lead investigator of The Australian Contraceptive Choice Project, a four-year project aimed at increasing the uptake of long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) among Australian women. My view is that they are safe products, theyre useful products, and that every woman is an individual who needs to carefully consider all birth control options to fit with her medical history and priorities."

Sophie Thomas, 25, has been on the pill since she was 16, and is frustrated at the misinformation that media, her friends and even some doctors continue to pedal. Loading I got on the pill because not for contraceptive reason, but because I had such terrible period pains I would wake up at 3am for the first three days and cry for hours, she recalls. So I saw the doctor, who put me on the pill, and since then, Ive never had such period pain again. Ms Thomas says being able to control your periods, fertility and even skin (she used to break out before the pill) is priceless, and that people who go out and scare other women about the pill need to stop.

Most people who take the pill are fine, but the few who arent are always in the media, which just adds to the misinformation, she says. Loading Professor Mazza couldnt agree more. Clinically, most doctors would agree that the majority of women who take the pill have no issues, she says. There is very small proportion of women who are sensitive to the oestrogen component of the pill, and who will say they experience lower mood, or lower libido when they use the pill. I explain all this to my patients and say lets just try this pill for three months, and see how we go. I dont get hung up on all the possible side effects: all women are different, and you can't say all women who take the pill will become depressed etc."
ACT teachers reported more than 200 incidents of physical and verbal violence in the first month of the 2019 school year, government figures reveal.

But a new ministerial advisory group looking into the management of violence in schools is unlikely to hear directly from the families or teachers affected and will not investigate specific schools, ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry revealed on Tuesday.

ACT education minister Yvette Berry, with ACT union secretary Glenn Fowler. Credit: Jamila Toderas

As of March 7, school staff had already logged 229 incidents classified as violence on the ACT public service "Riskman" safety portal, and at least one teacher had sustained an injury requiring time off work.

The data does not include violence against students, which is not collected by the ACT Education Directorate. A number of other incidents had also been reported by teachers but not yet classified, a directorate spokeswoman said.
To Kill A Mockingbird. By Christopher Sergel, adapted from the novel by Harper Lee. Directed by Anne Somes. Canberra Repertory Society. Theatre 3. Q&A preview March 28 at 8pm, season March 29-April 13, Wednesday to Saturday at 8pm, with 2pm matinees on April 6, 7 and 13. canberrarep.org.au or 62571950.

From left, Jamie Boyd as Jem, Jade Breen as Scout, Michael Sparks as Atticus and Jake Keen as Dill in To Kill A Mockingbird. Credit: Janelle McMenamin

Michael Sparks has a particular affinity with the book To Kill A Mockingbird. Like his character, Atticus Finch, in Canberra Rep's production of the stage adaptation by Christopher Sergel, he is from a small town in Alabama.

There were, he says, a number of similarities between Lee's fictional Maycomb of the 1930s and his home town of Anniston, Alabama.

When Sparks was growing up in the 1960s and '70s, Anniston was a small town of about 20,000 with a mixed-race population and some hostilities between black and white citizens.
Angela Lea Smith, the drug driver who was speeding when she lost control of her car and killed a passenger in the violent crash that followed, has been jailed for five years.

Smith and her then-boyfriend left Jozef Stefaniak, 24, for dead on the side of the road when they fled from the scene where the crumpled car had come to a rest.

A young Jozef Stefaniak.

It's this act that still rankles the dead man's family more than a year on.

"The most disturbing thing about this whole case apart from just losing a son is that she and a mate Kane Kell bolted from the scene and left my son literally for dead, and then tried to blame him," Bill Stefaniak said.
A new advisory group looking into the management of violence in schools is unlikely to hear directly from the families or teachers affected or investigate specific schools, ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry revealed on Tuesday.

Instead, an expert panel will examine existing school violence processes, using past incidents as case studies to determine where systems may be failing.

"It is not an independent inquiry where a report will come about that points fingers at individuals or schools or children or families," Ms Berry said.

Yvette Berry won't hear from students, teachers or parents who have been affected by school violence. Credit:Karleen Minney

"This is not about demonising or belittling or making a spectacle of what is a very serious and sometimes quite complex issue."
Hundreds of people gathered across Canberra on Tuesday night for two separate events marking Friday's mass-shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The common thread from speakers at an anti-racism protest in Garema Place was Australian media and politicians had helped feed the anti-Muslim sentiment that lead to the shooting at the Christchurch mosque.

Sun shines through over the crowd as Imam Mohammad Atae Rabbi Hadi prays with 50 prayer mats for the 50 victims of the Christchurch terrorist attack. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

The mass shooting has claimed the lives of 50 people since Friday.

Local rabbi Shmueli Feldman said a fortnight ago, just three streets away from where he stood on Tuesday, a Jewish Canberran had been abused in the streets.
There was much rumination in the last two days over Labor leader Michael Daley's comments  made in Wentworth Falls last September  that our young children will flee and be replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs.

One month later he was telling a special press conference for the local Chinese community press they had lifted the spirit of this nation and this is just the beginning.

Michael Daley called the Greens "the ferals", but Labor now recommends voters preference them over many others. Illustration: John Shakespeare Credit:

Yesterday, he apologised  kinda  and said he would govern for everyone.

But with some mirth from the Liberals, who unsurprisingly seemed more upbeat yesterday than they had for weeks, we have been pointed to even earlier Daley comments from the time he found himself facing down an opponent in the Greens councillor Murray Matson.
The NSW Liberals are blitzing Facebook feeds with more than double the number of political advertising posts compared to other parties in the NSW election.

NSW Nationals paid to promote this Facebook post recently. Credit:NSW Nationals Facebook page

A Herald analysis of Facebook ads by political parties over the past six weeks found the NSW Liberal party page ran more than 250 paid posts while NSW Labor, NSW Nationals and NSW Greens all paid to promote more than 100 posts from their pages.

The Herald was unable to get exact numbers of ads bought by each party because they refused to provide details. Daily samples were taken from the political parties' pages for six weeks using Facebook's Info and Ads tab.

The NSW Nationals were the only party to answer questions about their campaigning with a spokesman saying they have promoted or advertised 114 different posts so far - 102 positive "announcement pieces" and 12 "negative" posts.
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Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee (CLMC) expresses its anguish on terror attack on Muslims in New Zealand and extended its solidarity to the families of victims of terror attack and to the people of New Zealand. In a press statement CLMC states that the one of the worst terror attack and targeted killing of Muslims in the mosques of New Zealand is the manifestation of growing trend of anti-Muslim hatred perpetuated through proganda war against Muslims by USA imperialist mind set.

The unfortunate fact remains that the USA agencies are prompting this vexatious hatred against the Muslims. The US president in the aftermath of mysterious 9/11 attack used the word crusade and even in this horrific terror attacks, the terrorist used the same words, as if it was implanted in him. US agencies are working towards and providing systematic training to its agents, and positioning them for promoting hatred against Muslims. They are using film industry, print and electronic media and these agents are more active on social media to promote hateful and malicious information. Now it is proved beyond any doubt that USA is pushing the world towards a new crusade to protect its imperialist interest. US President Donald trump has issued such hateful and malicious statements based up on his racial ideology which is polluting the minds of young generation of western countries. The fact is that the main cause of Terror attack on Mosques is Trumps ideology and his war mongering which is promoting terrorism and boosting the terrorist groups. Trumps ideology is responsible for terror attack on Mosques in New Zealand and what is anticipated to happen more in near future also.

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This attack also reminds the bombing carried out by the Hindutva terrorists in the Makkah Masjid of Hyderabad city of India. Though the attack carried out by different groups but they have the same modus operandi, ideology, mind-set and they may have connection with each other. It should be noted that the root cause of Terrorism is US imperialism, Israeli Zionism and Hindutva fascism. These evil forces are biggest threat to life of human beings, peace cannot be prevails under the existence of anti-human forces. If we want peace and harmony on this planet earth these three evil forces should be neutralized.
Queensland's Attorney-General has launched an appeal over the punishment handed down to Mason Jet Lee's mother, who was jailed for her part in the toddler's death.

Anne Maree Lee, 29, was sentenced on February 27 to nine years in jail and must serve at least a third before she can be released on parole.

Mason Lee's mother failed to get medical treatment after her partner ruptured her son's stomach.

She was jailed for manslaughter after lying her way out of taking responsibility for her toddler or simply ignoring his existence until he died in a Caboolture home.

Ms Lee failed to get Mason medical treatment after her partner, 37-year-old William Andrew O'Sullivan, ruptured her son's stomach in 2016.
Brisbane councillors have united to extend their condolences and prayers to Christchurch following the mass shooting at two mosques on Friday.

Lord mayor Graham Quirk said the council's own community was affected.

Dignitaries including the lord mayor (second from right) at the prayer service hosted by the The Islamic Council of Queensland on Sunday. Credit:Jocelyn Garcia

"We have a situation where this is very real in terms of our own Brisbane council," Cr Quirk said.

"One of our own staff members had her father gunned down."
A pedestrian has died after being hit by a truck at an intersection in Brisbane's south on Monday.

Police said the 49-year-old woman was hit about 10.30am while crossing Beaudesert Road at the intersection of Nottingham Road at Calamvale.

The intersection of Beaudesert Road (to the left) and Nottingham Road (to the right). Credit:Google Maps

Emergency services raced to the scene but paramedics declared her dead upon arrival.

Police closed part of the intersection on Monday, with traffic not able to turn right onto Nottingham Road, while investigators examined the scene.
A jail sentence in Norway for attacking a housemate wasn't enough to stop Jason Colton from repeating the violence in Melbourne but with fatal consequences.

The 42-year-old was sent to prison again on Tuesday, for up to 11 years, after fatally bashing and choking to death an Airbnb guest over a $210 unpaid bill owed to another man.

Ramis Jonuzi, 33, was killed after a rental dispute in Brighton East.

Ramis Jonuzi died on the front lawn of the Brighton East home where he'd been renting a room for 10 days in October 2017. His death followed a sustained assault by three men, instigated by Colton.

The 36-year-old had rented a room from Craig Levy and Ryan Smart who are already behind bars for manslaughter over the attack.
The sister of gangland widow Roberta Williams will fight charges she stole $70,000 in luggage from 19 travellers at Melbourne Airport, after a magistrate indicated he might jail her if she pleaded guilty.

Police allege Michelle Kaye Mercieca repeatedly stole suitcases and bags from luggage carousels at the Virgin, Jetstar and Qantas terminals at Melbourne Airport between October 6, 2017 and September 5 last year.

Michelle Mercieca outside court last month. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui

A police prosecutor told Broadmeadows Magistrates Court on Tuesday that on eight days over those 11 months Ms Mercieca drove to the airport, parked in the short-term car park, stole the luggage and drove away.

On some of those days she stole in the morning and returned and stole again at night, police allege.
A Perth restaurant is attempting to include alcohol sales via take-away and online orders, stretching the scope of existing WA liquor licensing regulations traditionally reserved for taverns.

Nandos lovers south of Perth whod rather enjoy their favourite meal from the restaurant chain at home could soon add wine, champagne, beer, cider or pre-mixed alcoholic drinks to their order, in what would be a WA first for the food outlet.

Nando's Applecross wants to offer alcohol with take-away and online meal orders. Credit:Nando's Australia/Instagram

The Applecross-based restaurant applied for a liquor licence allowing customers to order limited quantities of alcohol as take-away or online via a third-party delivery service.

The application was lodged in February as a result of the surge in popularity of Deliveroo and Uber Eats, both of which are used by the local restaurant.
One of Australia's most senior Muslim clerics, Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman, was refused entry to New Zealand following the Christchurch massacre - but the ban was overturned following a complaint to the Australian government.

The revelation will raise questions about why the sheikh was on a New Zealand no-fly list, particularly in light of accusations that Australian security agencies and their international partners are too focused on Islamic extremism compared to right-wing terrorism.

"I was shocked": Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman was refused entry into New Zealand. Credit:Steven Siewart

As president of the Australian National Imams Council, Sheikh Shady advises governments on key Islamic issues. He has been placed on an Islamic State hit list calling for his murder.

He was due to fly to Christchurch on Monday to assist Islamic communities as they prepare for the grim task of burying the 50 victims of Friday's mass shooting.
An independent review of the public service has mooted a shift towards common pay levels across the bureaucracy, greater power for department heads and an overhaul of the Public Service Commission.

Review chairman David Thodey released his interim report on Tuesday, which has dozens of recommendations about pay, recruitment, structure and training, built around the goal of a "trusted, united" bureaucracy.

David Thodey has made wide-ranging recommendations to improve the public service. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Thodey called for a public service that brought "great confidence in its role and contributions", saying he had seen a "groundswell of change" among public servants.

The review, the largest since the Coombs royal commission in 1974-76, has proposed changing the relationship between ministers' offices and the Australian Public Service, bringing ministers closer to the advice of their bureaucrats.
The federal government has been accused of using $22 million in environmental grants to boost its popularity in Coalition seats ahead of the May election while keeping other voters in the dark over the program.

Since Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the Communities Environment Program earlier this month, Coalition MPs have begun advertising the policy to their constituents and gathering expressions of interest via their websites.

However Labor and the Greens say the offices of their MPs have been denied information about how and when the money will be distributed, or how constituents can apply.

Labor says the government's environment grants program is designed to favour voters in Coalition seats. Credit:Peter Rae

The office of Environment Minister Melissa Price says the program is "appropriate" and will not favour any group of voters.
Public Service Minister Mathias Cormann has welcomed the interim findings of the independent review of the public service, saying there is always room for improvement in the public service.

Labor also welcomed the review, but neither side of politics committed to implementing any of the draft recommendations.

Finance and Public Service Minister Mathias Cormann welcomed the interim report. Credit:AAP

"This review will help us explore opportunities to further improve the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of our public service by embracing technological innovation to better respond to increasing community expectations," Senator Cormann said.

"We need to make sure that public sector productivity can be sustained and improved in a world that continues to evolve around us."
The peak body for GPs will pressure federal election candidates and sitting MPs to safeguard Medicare and ensure that no Australian has to skip a doctor's visit because they can't afford it, ahead of an election campaign in which health will be a key battleground.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Harry Nespolon will on Wednesday issue a call to arms to its 40,000 members, urging them to visit their local MP and make clear the issue will be a vote decider - and spread the word among the 2 million Australians who visit a GP each week.

"If push comes to shove that is enough to swing the safest of seats," Dr Nespolon wrote to members in a message seen by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

GPs are preparing to revive the Mediscare campaign that dominated the last federal election. Credit:Janie Barrett

"It is only by working together that we will see this and any future government take action and make the changes general practice needs to remain viable ... Your words as local GPs are often the most effective in achieving real change."
Its hard to find someone who thinks our recent penchant for changing prime ministers is good for us. The chatterati say its unstable government. Its easy to sip a latte and complain about the major parties. Its much more hard work to join one and take an active role.

Independent MPs Cathy McGowan, Julia Banks and Kerryn Phelps with Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie during Question Time. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The simplistic solution offered is to vote for independents. Independents arent the panacea, theyre the problem. More of them, understandably, will only make things worse. In fact, the increase to this point in minor parties and independents has made stable government much much harder. It has created more of a problem than either of the major parties. The instability comes whether the independents are retired brain surgeons or people who just had a go and got in by accident of the voting system.

Its not rocket science. With governments having smaller majorities or running minority governments it only takes one or two people to cause enormous difficulty. They might be disgruntled members of the governing party or one or two independents holding out for their pet issue. This leaves government open to more and more flashpoints. Dealing with random flashpoints on a daily basis creates instability.

The media attention given to the independents simply confirms the power they have to upset the apple cart, so to speak. The media spotlight is like a flame to a moth for independents and disgruntled backbenchers. The short form is that creating more instability gives these people the media attention they need to survive.
The Liberal Party has called in Malcolm Turnbull to campaign during the final days of the NSW election amid growing fears Sydney's eastern suburbs are preparing to savage Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

In an intervention that challenges critics who have accused the former prime minister of abandoning the party after last year's leadership coup, Mr Turnbull will send letters and make phone calls to voters in the marginal seat of Coogee in his bid to support the re-election of the NSW government.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is helping NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Credit:Wolter Peeters

Mr Turnbull was criticised last year for not doing more to help prevent the blue ribbon Sydney seat of Wentworth from falling to independent Kerryn Phelps in a byelection sparked by his resignation from Parliament.

In a sign of his electoral popularity in Sydney, the NSW Liberal Party head office recently asked Mr Turnbull to help Liberal MP Bruce Notley-Smith, who is facing likely defeat on Saturday.
Employers could be exposed to claims for leave entitlements worth up to $8 billion for casual workers if Labor repeals a Coalition law aimed preventing "double dipping", according to new legal advice.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is distributing the advice, which comes amid a slew of class action lawsuits, that it commissioned from workplace barrister Frank Parry, QC, ahead of a Senate debate to "disallow" a regulation aimed at protecting employers.

ACCI chief James Pearson has written to Labor's Brendan O'Connor about employers' 'double dipping' fears. Credit:Photo Bohdan Warchomij

That debate - over a government regulation that seeks to ensure that employers won't be forced to pay for the same entitlement twice - will take place on April 2, just three days before a $40 million class action by labour hire workers employed at a BHP mine is due to be heard in court.

Lawyers for the mining giant's labour hire firms Ready Workforce and TESA Mining are expected to file counterclaims this week against the 400 class action members who claim they were misclassified as casuals, demanding that the workers hand back the casual loadings they had been paid.
Australias political leaders have taken a stand against extremism since the Christchurch terror attacks, but the ultimate test of their conviction will come in the weeks before the federal election.

That is when leaders will have to decide whether to allocate any preferences to right-wing candidates like Fraser Anning and Pauline Hansons One Nation.

Scott Morrison had a quick answer on this on Tuesday morning.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has indicated the Liberal Party will not do preference deals with One Nation. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Well, therell be no preference deals with One Nation, he said.
Penny Wong does not always present as an inspirational political leader. She is calm rather than boisterous. She prefers privacy and understatement to publicity or hyperbole.

When the University of Melbourne profiled Wong last year for a series on leadership, its author noted: "Her public demeanour is not built around humour or memorable lines or personal revelation."

Penny Wong has been awarded a major national prize for political leadership. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Yet these very absences have become qualities that landed her this year's McKinnon Prize for Political Leadership, an initiative of the Susan McKinnon Foundation and the University of Melbourne's School of Government.

Born in Malaysia, Wong has risen to the top of Labor politics in a country where Parliament does not reflect the country even in gender, let alone in multiculturalism or sexuality.
Social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter will escape a $200 million tax in next month's budget, despite coming under intense pressure from the government over their activities in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack.

The government has retreated on its agenda-driving digital tax status, balking at Prime Minister Scott Morrison's push in last year's budget to make Australia a world-leader in the digital space.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Credit:AAP

The shift comes as both Labor and the Coalition pile onto social media companies, accusing them of failing to produce algorithms that could stop hate speech spreading across the internet while prioritising those used to rake in billions of dollars in advertising.

Despite Britain, France, Italy, Hungary and India cracking down on millions of dollars in tax revenue leaking overseas, consultation with the industry's stakeholders in Australia has not been completed since submissions closed in November.
The author of a contentious report that predicted Labors emissions policies would devastate the economy has defended his findings after it emerged the expert who peer reviewed the research is also helping defend the Trump administration in a historic climate trial.

A report by BAEconomics released on Tuesday said Labor's 45 per cent emissions reduction target would cause higher electricity prices, lower wages and a massive hit to economic growth.

A report that predicted severe economic harm under Labor's climate policies was peer reviewed by an defence expert for the Trump administration. Credit:AP

The findings were heavily disputed by Labor and experts. However Energy Minister Angus Taylor insisted the report was credible, noting it was peer reviewed by Stanford University expert John Weyant to ensure its quality.

Professor Weyant is director of the universitys Energy Modelling Forum, among other roles.
A senior NSW Treasury official became the chief financial officer of the land titles registry in a "classic" case of the revolving door, renewing calls for the government to restrict such moves.

James Dolton, the Treasury's head of commercial transactions, clinched the top financial job at Land and Property Information (LPI) in 2016, shortly before the bidding war began and six months before the $2.6 billion deal was sealed.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet announce the $2.6 billion LPI privatisation deal in April 2017. Credit:Jessica Hromas

Previously, Mr Dolton spearheaded the privatisations of Transgrid's "poles and wires" and Pillar Administration, a superannuation administration provider. As early as 2013, he conducted a scoping study into the sale of LPI.

"This smacks of a classic example of revolving doors, the movement of personnel between government and industry which has the potential for undue influence and decisions that may not be in the public interest," Serena Lillywhite, CEO of Transparency International Australia, said.
NSW Labor leader Michael Daley has been forced to explain himself to concerned colleagues over his claims "Asians with PhDs" were moving in and taking local jobs.

On Tuesday Mr Daley said he was sorry to anyone who felt offended after a video emerged of him claiming that young people were leaving Sydney and being replaced by foreigners.

Mr Daley said concerned colleagues called him after the video, shot at a politics-in-the-pub event in Wentworth Falls last September, started making headlines on Monday night.

"A couple [of MPs] have rung up and wanted clarification and I've spoken with them and they've accepted what I've said," Mr Daley said.
Beijing: China's crackdown on coal imports has become significantly harsher, with Australian and Mongolian coal being particularly targeted for inspection on "environmental" grounds.

Inspectors recently rejected 182 trucks carrying 19,540 tons of Mongolian coal, the biggest coal turn-back in years.

And Australian coal continues to suffer long delays at Chinese ports, with coal industry analysts who spoke to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald saying environmental inspections had been significantly stepped up this year.

Inspection and quarantine workers take samples of imported coal at a port in Rizhao in eastern China's Shandong province in 2010. Credit:AP

The customs office in Wulate, in Inner Mongolia, ran laboratory testing, including radiological and phosphorous testing, and rejected the Mongolian coal for "exceeding the standards stipulated in the Interim Measures for the Quality Management of Commerical Coal", according to China News Service.
Paris: French officials said on Tuesday that they would ban potentially violent protests in key areas like the Champs-Elysees in Paris, following a surge of violence during yellow vest demonstrations over the weekend that led to intense criticism of the government's handling of security around tourist neighbourhoods and wealthier areas.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said in a televised statement from Paris that after "intolerable" events over the weekend, the government had decided to ban any future yellow vest demonstrations "in the areas that have been most targeted," if authorities became aware of "extremist elements" that intended to vandalise.

Yellow vest demonstrators on the Champs-Elysees on March 16. Credit:AP

Philippe said one of those areas would be the Champs-Elysees, a major avenue in western Paris with luxury stores and tourist attractions that has become a focal point for the protests.

On Saturday, "breakers," or casseurs, smashed an upscale restaurant, looted 27 stores and set kiosks and a bank on fire, forcing firefighters to evacuate a mother and her baby who were trapped on the building's second floor.
Christchurch: As he helped to bury his father and brother, 13-year-old Zahid Mustafa told mourners in Christchurch on Wednesday morning, I do not want to be here alone.

Khaled Mustafa and his 14-year-old son Hamza were the first victims of the massacre in Christchurch to be laid to rest in the Islamic section of the citys Memorial Park Cemetery on Wednesday morning, behind specially erected fencing and heavily armed police.

"I don't want to be here alone": Zahid Mustafa, centre, the brother of Hamza and son of Khaled Mustafa, who were killed in the shooting. Credit:AP

Five hours later, the funeral processions began again and by nightfall four more of the dead had been buried.

The Mustafa family arrived in New Zealand only months ago, escaping the bloody war in Syria. They died on the other side of the world in the Al Noor mosque, the first of two places of worship attacked last Friday allegedly by an Australian extremist.
Dunedin: The gun enthusiast with light brown hair and an Australian accent did not stand out among the 100 or so members of the Bruce Rifle Club, who practised shooting at a range in a forest in southern New Zealand.

He favoured a bolt-action hunting rifle and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and would participate in shooting competitions. No one saw any warning signs.

Police gather flowers left for the victims and hang them on the fence of the mosque on Tuesday. Credit:Jason South

"He was polite," said Scott Williams, the club's vice president. "He would help put things away. He would help set up. He worked like a Trojan."

But now New Zealand officials are wondering if anyone might have missed something about Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the 28-year-old Australian suspect in the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday that left at least 50 people dead.
"We have been in contact with Facebook; they have given us updates on their efforts to have it removed, but as I say, it's our view that it cannot  should not  be distributed, available, able to be viewed," she said. "It is horrendous and while they've given us those assurances, ultimately the responsibility does sit with them." Arden said she had received "some communication" from Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg on the issue. The Prime Minister has also spoken with British Prime Minister Theresa May about the importance of a global effort to clamp down on the distribution of such material. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been praised for her handling of the tragedy. Lawyer Richard Peters, who was assigned to represent the accused man at his initial court appearance on Saturday, told the New Zealand Herald he was dismissed by him that day. A judge ordered the accused to return to New Zealand's High Court on April 5 for his next hearing on one count of murder, though he is expected to face additional charges. The 28-year-old Australian is being held in isolation in a Christchurch jail.

Loading "He seemed quite clear and lucid, whereas this may seem like very irrational behaviour," Peters told the newspaper. "He didn't appear to me to be facing any challenges or mental impairment, other than holding fairly extreme views." He said a judge could order a lawyer to assist the accused at a trial, but that he would likely be unsuccessful in trying to use it as a platform to put forward any extremist views. Under New Zealand law, a trial is "to determine innocence or guilt", Peters said. "The court is not going to be very sympathetic to him if he wants to use the trial to express his own views." Ardern previously said her cabinet had agreed in principle on tightening gun restrictions in New Zealand and those reforms would be announced next week. She also announced an inquiry into the intelligence and security services' failures to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans. There have been concerns intelligence agencies were overly focused on the Muslim community in detecting and preventing security risks.

New Zealand's international spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, confirmed it had not received relevant information or intelligence ahead of the shootings. Meanwhile, Christchurch was beginning to return to a semblance of normalcy on Tuesday. Streets near the hospital that had been closed for four days reopened to traffic as relatives and friends of the victims continued to stream in from around the world. Thirty people were still being treated at the Christchurch hospital, nine of them in critical condition, said David Meates, CEO of the Canterbury District Health Board. A four-year-old girl was transferred to a hospital in Auckland and is in critical condition. Her father is at the same hospital in stable condition. Relatives of the dead are still anxiously awaiting word on when they can bury their loved ones. Islamic tradition calls for bodies to be cleansed and buried as soon as possible. Ardern has said authorities hope to release all the bodies by Wednesday and police said authorities are working with pathologists and coroners to complete the task as soon as they can. The close-knit community has been deeply wounded by the attacks. On Monday evening, more than 1000 students from rival Christchurch schools and different religions gathered in a park across from the Al Noor mosque, joining voices in a passionate display of unity.

Loading The students sat on the grass in the fading daylight, lifting flickering candles to the sky as they sang a traditional Maori song. Hundreds then stood to perform an emotional, defiant haka, the famed ceremonial dance of the indigenous Maori people. For many, joining the vigil for the victims of the mass shooting was a much-needed opportunity to soothe their minds after a wrenching few days. Most of the students spent hours locked down in their schools on Friday as police tried to determine if any other shooters were involved in the attacks. Those at the vigil told harrowing tales of being forced to hide under classroom tables or on a school stage behind a curtain, of being instructed not to speak, and to urinate in a bucket rather than risk leaving the classroom for a bathroom.
Mia Garlick, the head of communications and policy for Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, said the company would "work around the clock to remove violating content using a combination of technology and people". Garlick said the company is also now removing even edited versions of the video that don't feature graphic violence. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, and Reddit declined to comment, but both have described working hard over several days to remove objectionable content from the shooting. For Reddit, that includes forums named "gore" and "watchpeopledie". Loading YouTube acknowledged that its systems were overwhelmed in an exclusive interview with The Washington Post and vowed to make improvements. "We've made progress, but that doesn't mean we don't have a lot of work ahead of us, and this incident has shown that," said Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have scrambled before and largely failed to contain odious content on their platforms. Nor is this the first time murderers have used social media to deliver images of their crimes.

But nobody before had staged a mass-casualty attack in a way so geared to spreading it virally across social media. Many critics worry that now that it has happened once, it almost certainly will happen again. Micah Schaffer, a technology policy consultant and a former director at YouTube, said that over the past decade social media companies designed software to more effectively promote content to broad audiences. Those design choices, he said, have made it easier for content to spread online. "Back in 2007, when I was at YouTube, if a video on the homepage was a success, that meant getting hundreds of thousands of views," Schaffer said. "These videos were handpicked, and we scrutinised each one. Compare that today to the recommendation algorithm sending millions of views to videos with no human intervention. To me, that's just irresponsible." Those who study social media say that slowing the spread of appalling videos might require the companies to change or limit some features that help spread stimulating content. These include powerful search and recommendation algorithms, nearly instantaneous uploads and auto-play.

The companies' losing battle to keep content in check already is having financial consequences. Facebook's stock saw its steepest drop of the year, falling more than 3 per cent on Monday. Needham & Co analyst Laura Martin blamed the negative effects of "horrific images ... that are technologically difficult to block at the 100 per cent level and which hurt (Facebook's) brand". Loading Shares in Google's parent company Alphabet slid less than 1 per cent. The day of the New Zealand shooting, the alleged gunman, Brenton Tarrant, posted on the anonymous message board 8chan that he would "live stream the attack via facebook" and included a link to Facebook and a number of other sites where he had stored an anti-Muslim manifesto and other documents. Within minutes of this announcement, a flood of anonymous posters were cheering him on and rallying to save and re-upload the video widely online to give it maximum distribution: "I am downloading it"; "Stream saved"; "SAVE THIS S*** NOW"; "GRAB THEM WHILE YOU CAN."

One poster wrote that the gunmen had "delivered" on his pledge: "I just saw him kill so many" people, using an obscene term for Muslims. "Nice shootin," another wrote. 8chan did not respond to requests for comment. "Human nature has always had evil and horrific elements to it. But we're not asking for the platforms to solve humanity  that's not the issue," said Mike Ananny, an associate professor of communication at the University of Southern California. "These companies have the advertising monopolies, the eyeball-attention monopolies ... We have to expect them to be a much more responsible player than they are." These companies have the advertising monopolies, the eyeball-attention monopolies . . . We have to expect them to be a much more responsible player than they are. Mike Ananny, University of Southern California When the tech giants want to block a troubling video, they add the original to a vast internal blacklist so that their systems can quickly recognise whenever a copy of it resurfaces. This type of "hashing" technology is a key reason why companies can automatically flag or block child pornography, terrorist propaganda and copyrighted material before it spreads widely online. But their algorithms depend on pattern recognition, and even the most sophisticated systems are easily deceived. Anyone hoping to spread an otherwise-blocked video  such as movie pirates and creators of extremist videos  can cut out shorter snippets or change the video's playing speed, colouring, sound or video size, then upload it again.

Facebook said it blocked 80 per cent of the New Zealand first-person shooting videos from being uploaded within the first 24 hours, but that roughly 300,000 videos slipped through  a showing that put them within reach of millions of people online. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg says AI systems will root out problematic content, but industry experts say AI can't do it all. Credit:Bloomberg US law largely shields major tech platforms from being held liable for the content users post to their sites. Silicon Valley sees this decades' old legal shield  known as Section 230 for the provision in law it represents  as the reason that major social media sites have flourished without having to defend themselves against lawsuits. But frustrated lawmakers from both parties increasingly are wondering if the time has come to craft new legislation to curb such digital ills as hate speech and terrorist propaganda. "I think that we absolutely need to have a hearing, and understand exactly what happened in the situation, to determine the best solutions to prevent it from happening in the future," said Democratic representative Suzan Delbene of Washington. "What happened in New Zealand is horrifying, and heart breaking, and that video should never be available online."

But a chief architect of Section 230, Democrat Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon urged caution. While stressing tech giants must be "far more vigorous about identifying, fingerprinting and blocking content and individuals who incite hate and violence," Wyden said that eliminating the section could have unintended consequences for free speech. "So often in the wake of horrible events politicians grasp for knee-jerk responses that won't solve real problems, and may even make them worse," he added in a statement. European policymakers have been more aggressive in holding technology giants responsible for what appears on their platforms. Germany, for example, began enforcing a law last year that requires social media sites to remove instances of hate speech within 24 hours. The European Union broadly has proposed rules that would give Facebook, YouTube and others an hour to remove terrorist content  or face hefty fines. We're past the point of ceding the benefit of the doubt to these tech companies. Stephen Merity, machine-learning researcher Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg told congressional lawmakers last year that AI systems would help the company solve some of its most intractable problems, including automatically flagging harmful videos.
The spokesman of the Islamic State group emerged from nearly six months of silence on Monday to mock America's assertion of having defeated the group and to call for retaliation over last week's mosque attacks in New Zealand.

"The scenes of the massacres in the two mosques should wake up those who were fooled, and should incite the supporters of the caliphates to avenge their religion," the spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, said in a 44-minute audio recording.

Alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant has been charged over the mass shooting in Christchurch. Credit:AP

Al-Muhajir portrayed the shootings by a white extremist, which killed 50 Muslims as they prayed in the city of Christchurch, as an extension of the campaign against the Islamic State. He likened the mosque attacks to the weeks-long battle raging in the last village under Islamic State control in Syria.

"Here is Baghuz in Syria, where Muslims are burned to death and are bombed by all known and unknown weapons of mass destruction," he said, painting the people in the town as regular Muslims when in fact coalition officials believe that the majority of them are either Islamic State fighters or their wives and children.
Buenos Aires: Jorge Altieri runs his hands over old blood stains on a helmet that saved his life in 1982 when Argentina and Britain went to war over the Falkland Islands.

Looking at the treasured object is still a novelty: The helmet was recently returned to Altieri decades after he lost it on the battlefield where he was almost killed by shrapnel.

Argentine war veteran Jorge Altieri with the blood-stained helmet that saved his life in 1982. Credit:AP

"I have it next to me now and I use it like a teddy bear," Altieri said. "I look at it and I get teary-eyed from all the memories."

Argentina lost the war for the South Atlantic archipelago after its troops embarked on an ill-fated invasion nearly 37 years ago, an international humiliation that claimed the lives of 649 Argentines and 255 British soldiers.
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Will the real Brooklynites please stand up?!

Brooklyn Paper Radio this week celebrated those native Kings Countians who stuck around as the better borough evolved over the decades, with help from a lifelong local who just released a book about how to survive  and thrive  in the city.

Park Slope born-and-bred Journalist Jake Dobkin, the co-founder of website Gothamist, joined co-hosts Anthony Rotunno and Johnny Kunen in studio to share tales from his new book Ask A Native New Yorker, which features dozens of Dobkins popular columns of the same name that his digital news site published over the past 16 years.

Dobkin framed the discussion by noting that he defines a native as someone born in the city, who chooses to live out the majority of his or her days in the five boroughs  and to die here, too.

The natives are a very hearty species. Half of us are going to die in our apartments because we got a good deal, he said.

There are various ways New Yorkers gird their loins for a lifetime of city living, but one thing that Dobkin, the Downtown born-and-bred Kunen  who is begrudgingly still considered a native despite defecting Brooklyn for Staten Island  and the non-native Rotunno  who spent the last decade living locally after growing up upstate  all agreed that true natives share is an ability to cope with change.

I dont ever want to be like those old cranky New Yorkers that think the city was so much better twenty years ago, Dobkin said. Its ridiculous, the city has always been in flux  since the Dutch arrived and displaced the Native Americans, and then the English arrived and displaced the Dutch.

During the broadcast, the trio honed in on one such looming change that could affect thousands of Brooklynites and countless more city dwellers  the implementation of a congestion-pricing toll levied on motorists who drive into a designated swath of Manhattan  which could become law as soon as April 1, if a provision calling for the scheme stays in the state budget that Gov. Cuomo must sign by then.

Advocates for congestion pricing  money raised from which would allegedly exclusively fund the beleaguered, state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority  claim it the billions in annual revenue it generates will result in much needed upgrades to the citys subway and rail systems, as well as new bus routes to better serve transit starved areas in Brooklyn and the outer boroughs, according to proponent Kate Slevin of the Regional Plan Assocation, who called in to discuss the proposal with our hosts and Dobkin.

Slevins independent organization, which monitors transit issues in the metropolitan area, is among dozens of like-minded groups that banded together form pro-congestion-pricing coalition Fix Our Transit. The collectives experts claim that the scheme, if enacted, would only affect some 1.3 percent of Kings County commuters that currently drive into the special Manhattan district below 60th Street  but will annually rake in roughly a billion dollars that, when bonded, would amount to closer to $15 billion in funds for the authority each year, she said.

Still, motorists wont be hit with any fees  which are not yet set, but Slevin estimated could cost around $6 per car  for years should Cuomo sign a budget authorizing congestion pricing, because state lawmakers would still need to flesh out the schemes specifics before it takes effect on city streets, she said.

But to hear our cohosts and Dobkins thoughts on the proposal, youll have to tune in to the whole show  which also features another appearance by Arts Editor Bill Roundy, who again shared some cant-miss activities coming up in the borough of Kings.

So listen now! And dont forget to stream the latest edition of our sister Power Women podcast when youre done.
RTHK: Thai tycoon guilty of poaching, beats panther case

A billionaire construction tycoon has been convicted by a Thai court on charges related to a high-profile poaching case last year but was found not guilty of possessing the carcass of an endangered black panther.

The Thong Pha Phum Provincial Court sentenced Premchai Karnasuta to 16 months in prison on Tuesday for possessing the carcass of an endangered Kajij pheasant and possessing firearms in public areas.

Premchai, whose company is behind major infrastructure projects such as Bangkok's monorail and its airport, was was arrested last February after park rangers found that he and three of his company's employees had set up camp at the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary, where they were found with guns and animals carcasses.

They had carcasses of a barking deer and the pelt of a black leopard among others.

While Premchai was found not guilty of possessing a leopard carcass, he was convicted of three other poaching-related charges.

Two others caught with him  his driver and cook  received lesser sentences, while his hunting guide was sentenced to three years and five months.

A court official said the tycoon was immediately released on bail of 400,000 Thai baht (about HK$100,000) as he was not considered a flight risk.

Thai courts sometimes grant bail immediately to a convicted person in the expectation they will appeal, and Premchai's lawyer later confirmed he would challenge the verdict.

The sentence comes less than a week before a general election on March 24, the first polls since the junta seized power in 2014 vowing to expunge graft and uphold the rule of law.

After Premchai's arrest, the striking images of the skinned leopard went viral, inspiring protests that saw demonstrators don black leopard masks, as well as graffiti of the cat across city walls and a Change.org petition calling for an investigation.

Park ranger Vichaen Chinnawing, who arrested the businessman and has been hailed as a hero in Thai media, said he was satisfied with the conviction.

"I have done my best in this case. If the soul of the dead leopard knows, it will be grateful," he said. (AP, AFP)

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
China and Europe have long been steady trading partners. What has changed in the last decade is Chinas increased footprint in European investment. The Diplomat reports in its article Mapping China's Investments in Europe that Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the European Union (EU) has increased by almost 50 times in only eight years, from less than $840 million in 2008 to a record high of $42 billion (35 billion euro) in 2016, according to Rhodium Group statistics. The current situation is reflective of a paradigm shift in Sino-European relations, which needs to be carefully assessed for its economic and geopolitical impact on Europe.

Chinas interests in Europe are manifold  from access to new technologies, high-tech assets, and knowledge, to broader commercial access into the European market and entrance to third markets (such as the United States) via European corporate networks. Chinese investors are looking for brand names to improve marketability of their products  both at home and abroad  assuming a key role in integrated regional and global value chains. Combined, China realizes that by taking strategic steps to become a critical player across the region economically, Beijing will enhance its political and diplomatic influence in Europe.

Investment Paradigm Shift

While European investment flows into China historically outpaced Chinese outbound flows, the tide has turned rapidly since 2014, driven by Chinese FDI in the EU. In 2016, new Chinese investment in the EU was more than four times higher (reaching a record high of 35 billion euros) than the European FDI in China (8 billion euros).

Total Chinese investment in Europe, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and green-field investments, now amounts to $348 billion , and China has acquired more than 350 European companies over the past 10 years.

Of course, the share of Chinese FDI in Europe, at 2.2 percent, remains low relative to the United States market-leading 38 percent. Similarly, the EU countries held only 4 percent of the total FDI in China in 2016, versus 36 percent of the total FDI in the United States. Although Chinese investments in the EU are still comparatively low, they are evolving rapidly and increasing at unprecedented growth rates.

Diversified Chinese Strategy in Europe

In the eyes of Chinese investors, Europe is portioned into three distinct zones consisting of the west, the south, and the east, based on variances in economic wealth, technological advancement, geographic location and institutional framework. This view drives a diversified strategy of Chinese investments in Europe, with a focus on capital investments in the core EU countries, complemented by large infrastructure development projects on its periphery.

In Western Europe, Chinese investors target Europes strategic assets and research and development networks, with the largest and wealthiest European countries attracting the greatest investment. The United Kingdom ($70 billion in Chinese FDI), Italy ($31 billion), Germany ($20 billion), and France ($13 billion) accounted for 75 percent of Chinese total investment in the EU market in 2017.

In Southern Europe, Chinese companies have leveraged the economic crisis and its consequences to focus on large-scale privatization process and post-crisis restructuring. In Italy, Chinese FDI has soared since 2014, approaching 5 billion euros ($5.7 billion), which corresponds to around 10 percent of total Chinese investment in the European stock market. In 2015, Chinas acquisition of Pirelli made Italy the top destination of Chinese FDI in Europe, giving China access to one of the most important car tire manufacturers globally and an entry into the replacement market  a segment, until recently, dominated by the major European and Japanese brands.

In Greece, the Chinese state-owned enterprise giant COSCO Holdings Company has acquired a 67 percent stake in the port of Piraeus, Europes largest passenger port. With Piraeus now considered Chinas gateway into Europe, shipping times for Chinese goods have been shortened by one week.

When it comes to the per capita inflows of investment in Europe, Portugal has become the key recipient of Chinese investments, with inflows of nearly 9 billion euros. China engaged Portugal in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2010, investing in a broad range of strategic assets such as electricity, transportation, oil, financial services, insurance, health and real estate.

In Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, China is operating the 16+1 platform, which brings together a very diverse group of both EU and non-EU members. Across this region, acquisition prices are lower, demand for preferential lending is high, human capital is cost-effective, and concessions for Chinese investors are simplified. Above all, the strategic location is perfect. Central and Eastern Europe map ideally to Chinas main objectives: transportation networks for the Belt and Road Initiative and investment goals for further capital expansion across the EU. However, Chinese investments in the region represents a small percentage compared to the core EU countries.

EU Perceptions of Chinese Investment

China is not exactly an easy partner for the EU. Controversial issues include concerns over intellectual property rights, price distortions due to subsidized dumping, unequal conditions for market access, as well as discrimination against EU companies in Chinese government tenders. There is also the issue of reciprocity, where sectors such as finance, telecoms, logistics, and public procurement are restricted to foreign investors in China but open to Chinese investors in the EU. This amplifies the political aspect of asymmetrical market access. The sheer amount of investment  with more than 70 percent stemming from Chinese government-backed, state owned enterprises  overwhelms and confuses the ability of policymakers to appreciate the impact on European sovereignty and security.

Many European economies, still not fully recovered from the Eurozone crisis, have looked positively at the Chinese investments as a source of financial capital, and subsequent means of growth, tax revenue, employment, infrastructure development, and market opportunities. Only in the last few years have some concerns emerged, as European capitals are struggling to find the right balance between the core principles of economic openness versus security concerns related to the growing Chinese footprint in Europe. Concerns include the perceived role of the Chinese state in the economy, the lack of reciprocity and fair competition, risk of losing national competitiveness and technological leadership, as well as more traditional security concerns related to critical infrastructure, strategic assets, and defense technologies.

In September 2018, at the request of three countries (Germany, France, and Italy), the European Commission proposed new legislation to establish a Common European Framework for Screening FDI. The legislation focuses on strategic assets that are critical to European security and public order, including foreign acquisitions of critical technologies, infrastructure, or sensitive information.

Given the overall pivot in Europe to more populist sentiments, national sovereignty over investment policies are proving a core theme for many European countries. This is especially the case for smaller states concerned that the EU-level investment screening mechanism could be unfairly leveraged by larger EU member states as an instrument of influence, adding to the existing advantages that the most developed countries in the EU have in economic and trade relations with China.

In one respect, diverging views inside the EU regarding an increased Chinese presence in their economies are representative of diverging interests relative to the strengths and needs of their national economies. Innovation and development-driven economies will tend to seek greater protection combined with careful exposure to the Chinese market. Economies more reliant on consumption, tourism, and foreign capital will see bigger benefits from Chinese investment and therefore, assess the investment risks differently.

In the absence of a well-coordinated European approach, Chinas approach to the 16+1  underscoring regional or bilateral relations with countries, while fostering competition and division among them  could prove challenging to the future of EU decision-making. At the end of the day, the story of Chinas increasing influence in Europe could be as much about Chinas unquestionable economic rise as Europes potential fragmentation.
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The ancient holiday Nowruz is traditionally celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, India, China, as well as other countries; in Russian regions - Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Dagestan and for more than ten years - in Moscow. However, in Iran this year, not everyone will be able to celebrate Novruz.

As Arab News writes in the article Iranians economic woes dampen Nowruz celebrations, Iranians famously say that the New Year would not reach their door if they did not clean their homes before springs arrival. Nowruz, or the ancient Persian New Years celebration, requires a deep household clean, new clothes and for the family to prepare colorful pastries and nuts, tea and fruits to serve visitors. It is no secret that, this particular year, many Iranian families are suffering from financial hardship.

Iran has the worlds most famous pistachios and is one of the biggest exporters of the nut, but today they are considered a luxury good that even middle-class families cannot afford. They used to be an extremely popular must-have delicacy for Nowruz. However, everything is extremely expensive for Iranians as the New Year of 1398, which begins on March 21 on the Gregorian calendar, approaches. Many are so frustrated that all they can hope and pray for is that the situation wont be so bad next year.

With no guarantee that US President Donald Trump will give another exemption to the limited number of Iranian oil customers, the financial crisis could get worse straight after the public holidays. Such concerns make millions of Iranians hesitant about spending what little savings they have on the New Year celebrations, as the political and financial climate doesnt promise them positive change.

The hardships this Nowruz are a reminder of the war with Iraq back in the 1980s, when the regime declared a national emergency and public expectations were thus reduced to match the circumstances. There was a shortage of everything, from school stationery to soap and shampoos all the way to beef, milk, bread and even fuel. The distribution of bread was limited to just a few pieces for each person, so a couple of family members needed to stay in line in order to be able to buy enough for the household. Today, without war, the people of this beautiful nation, which is considered one of the richest in the world with its huge reserves of oil and gas, do not know why they have to face such economic hardship. Economic disaster, combined with an oppressive ruling regime that presses the people politically and ideologically, makes life so difficult for most Iranians that their best alternative is to emigrate. Iranians deserve to live a comfortable and peaceful life. Despite all of the frustration and sorrow, the people truly believe that cruelty will not persist forever.
Normalcy was restored in Vedanta's Lanjigarh alumina refinery on Tuesday after a day of mayhem at the project site on Monday which saw death of two persons, one each from the clashing groups of local protestors and plants security force.

The plant was forced to operate at a lower rate yesterday following the violence as rail rakes carrying bauxite to the plant were stopped on the way, said a company official. But it has been restored to normal today, he said. Though there was no untoward incident today, the police is keeping a strict vigil on the situation ...
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das on Tuesday said there should be more consistency among various finance commissions.

Das, who is also a member of the 15th finance commission, said his views were personal and did not represent his view in the commission. In the past several decades, finance commissions adopted different approaches on tax devolution, grants to be given to states, etc. But there is a need to ensure broad consistency among finance commissions, there should be continuity and change in finance commissions, especially now that we have ...
Oil prices dipped on Monday amid concerns that an economic downturn may dent fuel consumption, but crude markets remain broadly supported by supply cuts led by producer group OPEC and U.S. sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. Consumer News and Business Channe reports in its article Oil hits new 2019 high above $59, supported by OPEC-led supply cuts that Brent crude oil futures were at $67.03 per barrel at 0231 GMT, down 13 cents, or 0.2 percent, from their last close, but not far off the $68.14 per barrel 2019-high reached last week.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures were at $58.32 per barrel, down 20 cents, or 0.3 percent, from their last settlement, and also not far off their 2019-high of $58.95 from the previous week. "The greatest downside risk to our oil price view is demand weakness on slower economic growth. Our base case is that global oil demand will increase by 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2019... A synchronized global slowdown in growth could push global demand growth to below 1 million bpd," Bernstein Energy said on Monday.

U.S. manufacturing output fell for a second straight month in February, in a sign that the world's biggest economy has been slowing down in the first quarter.

In Asia, Japan's exports fell for a third straight month in February in a sign of growing strain from slowing global demand.

Despite this, oil prices have gained around a quarter since the start of the year amid U.S. sanctions against Iran and Venezuela, and as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-affiliated allies like Russia  known as OPEC+  have pledged to withhold 1.2 million bpd in supply to prop up prices.

OPEC's de-facto leader Saudi Arabia said on Sunday that balancing oil markets was far from done as inventories were still high. Russia also said production cuts would stay in place at least until June. As a result, Bernstein forecast an inventory draw of 37 million barrels in the first quarter for the 36 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which comprises most industrialized nations.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday it expected oil markets to be in a modest deficit from the second quarter of 2019. Key for the supply and demand balance will be the United States, where crude production has soared by around 2 million bpd over the past year, thanks largely to an onshore boom in shale formation drilling.

The number of rigs drilling for new oil production in the United States has been falling in 2019, and hit its lowest level since April 2018 last week, at 833 operating rigs. However, U.S. crude oil production still increased at the start of 2019, hitting a record 12.1 million barrels per day (bpd) in February, data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed. Output has since dipped back to 12 million bpd, but that still makes America the world's biggest crude oil producer.
The Congress party on Tuesday attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for resorting to ever-newer branding of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the latest being its Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign, to hide the failures of its government at the Centre. However, with the first phase of voting for the Lok Sabha polls only a little over three weeks away, the Congress is still struggling to come up with an overarching slogan for its campaign.

The partys publicity committee met again on Tuesday to finalise the agencies that will help prepare its campaign. The delay in the ...
India's 900 million voters will take part in the worlds biggest democratic exercise when the country goes to elections next month. However, an analysis of the data from across the world suggests that India is behind several countries when it comes to the number of people turning out to vote.

The analysis is based on data from 184 elections across the world which pegs the median voter turnout at 68.03 per cent. The median denotes the middle value in a data-set. This means that there are an equal number of elections which had higher voter turnout than this median figure, and ...
As water supplies in Ghanas capital grew increasingly erratic, Beatrice Kabuki stopped customers from using her grocery stores bathrooms and installed a plastic storage tank at her home. The taps flow once a week and usually at night, so we stay awake to fetch what we can store, Kabuki, 35, said in an interview in Accra. We mostly augment by buying water from tankers. Cities and towns in several other African nations including Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast have been plagued by similar water shortages in recent months, ...

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.

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Speculations about Turkey's possible refusal to buy Russian S-400 systems under U.S. pressure are being actively fueled. However, Moscow claims that the contract to supply the Triumph S-400 air defense missile systems to Turkey is underway, being implemented as scheduled and will be completed before the end of the year. On the sidelines of the International Winter School in Istanbul, organized by BILGESAM, Altinbas University professor Ahmet Han answered Vestnik Kavkaza's questions about Turkeys position on Russia's S-400 and U.S.'s Patriot systems, as well as the Russian-Turkish and U.S.-Turkish relations in general.

- How do you think the story with the U.S. protest regarding Ankara's purchase of S-400 will end?

- S-400 may become a decisive topic in Turkey-U.S. relations. That is why it is interesting to observe the situation. I am sure that Russia will be very pleased to supply weapons to Turkey, next deliveries are planned for July 2019, sooner than previously expected. However, the Americans are trying to offer Turkey practically everything in which it is interested in order to force it to drop a deal. Nevertheless, Turkey cannot refuse its contractual obligations to Russia. Most likely, these systems will be acquired. But where they will be placed, and how the relations will develop - so far it's hard to answer this question.

- What trends in Russia-Turkey relations can be expected in the near future?

- Its not just about Russia-Turkey bilateral relations between Russia and Turkey, but also about the Turkish-U.S. bilateral relations, and their influence on Russian-Turkish contacts. If Turkey-U.S. relations deteriorate, then, most likely, Turkey-Russia relations will improve. For the moment, I cannot say that Russian-Turkish relations have a structural base that exists in Turkish-U.S. relations. Turkey and the United States are NATO members, they have established bilateral cooperation at the level of various institutions; the U.S. presence in Turkey is much stronger than Russia's one. Nevertheless, Ankara and Washington cannot reach agreement on a very important for Turkey issue - the Syrian issue, while Russia and Turkey are working on this issue together, which contributes positively to their relationship.
Here's a look at the top stocks that may remain in focus today - Mindtree, L&T: Larsen & Toubro on Monday said it has bought a 20.32 per cent stake in IT services company Mindtree for Rs 3,269 crore. L&T, which is acquiring the shares from Indian coffee baron VG Siddhartha and companies related to him, said it had also placed an order with its broker for an on-market purchase of up to 15 per cent of ...

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.



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Unclaimed dividend payments worth Rs 2,000 crore are lying with the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA). Any payment that investors have not claimed has to be transferred to this authority. The investor then has to claim it from the authority.

Senior government officials said there were at least 2.5 million such investors. Most of the cases relate to those who have shares in paper form and not dematerialised ones. A government official told Business Standard, There are claims up to lakhs of rupees. 99 per cent of such shares are in physical ...
New Delhi [India], March 19 (ANI): After France froze assets of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar, Germany has come forward in support of listing Azhar as an international terrorist.

Talking to ANI, spokesperson of German Embassy, Hans Christian Winkler confirmed, "There is a discussion going on in European Union on the listing of Masood Azhar as a terrorist, Germany is approaching it very positively in close coordination with France."

"Final decision on security and foreign policy can only be taken once all members of EU agree to it," he added.

China recently put a technical hold on the listing of Masood Azhar at United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for a fourth time, despite the overwhelming support of 14 of 15 members in favour of listing.

However, this does not bind the European Union from not listing Masood Azhar.

Diplomatic sources told ANI that earlier EU could not list a terrorist or organisation which was not listed by the UN but according to new rules of EU, which were modified a few years ago, it can list anyone involved in terrorism if all member states agree.

Germany is optimistic that it will be able to gather the support of other members to list Azhar in the EU and is approaching discussion very positively, however, the process may take time.

China has also softened its position and has said it understands India's concern on Masood Azhar.

Post Pulwama attack India is appraising and sharing evidence with the international community of JeM's involvement in Pulwama Attack which claimed lives of as many as 40 CRPF personnel.

It will be a big diplomatic breakthrough for India if EU lists Masood Azhar, this will further isolate Pakistan diplomatically.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Special CBI court on Tuesday directed the Tihar Jail authorities to move AgustaWestland deal accused middlemen Christian Michel out of solitary confinement.

Special Judge Arvind Kumar also directed the jail authorities to file a report regarding the same within three days. After watching the CCTV footage, the court observed that Michel was kept in Solitary confinement.

This comes after, on Saturday, the court directed the Tihar jail authorities to submit CCTV footage containing visuals from February 13 to 17 of jail number 7 where Michel is lodged to ascertain allegations of torture and humiliation levelled by Michel.

Earlier this month, the court sought a reply from the Director General (DG) of Prison seeking directions to shift the accused from the high-security cell to a normal cell, after he contended that he had been kept in an isolation ward with Kashmiri terrorists and 160 other high-risk prisoners.

In its reply to the court, the Tihar Jail authorities denying all the charges said that Michel has been granted all the facilities in accordance with the jail manual.

Showing a hard disk to the court containing the CCTV footage, the law officer said," The footage shows that he has been allowed to walk, access canteen and also meet other inmates."

Law officer of the jail also handed over a list of facilities being provided to Michel in a single cell in the jail. "This is not isolation as he goes out to eat and is allowed to meet other inmates," the authorities said.

Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) DP Singh told the court, "He is a foreigner brought through extradition. This is a responsibility of the country to ensure his security as per the treaty."

Michel, who was extradited from the UAE in December last year, is currently lodged in Tihar Jail in connection with the CBI and ED cases against him related to the AgustaWestland deal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MP from Nizamabad, K Kavitha criticised the BJP and Congress for failing to develop the country and said only regional parties can fuel development.

Addressing a rally here on Tuesday, Kavitha said "It is high time to let India know the hardships that a turmeric producing farmer goes through in his life. The BJP government which boasts about their farmer-centric schemes should first and foremost know the plight of farmers. The desired solution can be achieved only when turmeric farmers stand for themselves. Thus, we want 1000 nominations to be filed by turmeric farmers."

Kavitha further assured support to turmeric farmers on behalf of the TRS.

"TRS has stood with the turmeric producing farmers in the past as well and will be there for them always. The party under the leadership of KCR has raised the demand of Turmeric Board in the Parliament and will keep on doing the same till the time our demand gets fulfilled."

Kavitha also mentioned that the Nizamabad Railway line was funded under the TRS government and a total of Rs 900 crore was allocated for the same.

"In the next five years, homeless people in every village will be given a house. Dwarka groups are linked with the farmers to provide food processing units. We will try to give Rs 2 lakh loan for the SC, ST and other backward classes without liabilities of banks," she added.

Telangana will go to polls on April 11.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) on Tuesday released its poll manifesto and promised efforts to release seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

DMK Chief MK Stalin said, "AIADMK will urge Government of India and the President to give due direction to the Governor of Tamil Nadu for the release of the seven Tamil convicts as ordered by Supreme Court and approved by the cabinet of Tamil Nadu government."

The DMK chief also promised to give citizenship to all Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu.

On the education front, he promised to abolish NEET. Assured to waive education loans and announced to provide free rail facility for school and college students.

Stalin also asserted that if voted to power his government will create more jobs and fill up all existing vacancies in all central government departments in Tamil Nadu. He also said that Tamil will be made the official language in Central Government offices in the state.

The DMK also said that it will push for full statehood of Puducherry and a CBI-led probe into Kodanadu Estate heist.

A total of 39 Lok Sabha seats are at stake in Tamil Nadu and one in Puducherry. DMK will contest 20 out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, while its ally Congress will contest on nine seats and also the lone seat in Puducherry.

Tamil Nadu will go to polls on April 18 for its 39 parliamentary constituencies while by-polls will also be held in 18 assembly seats simultaneously. The Election Commission will announce the results on May 23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
British actor Florence Pugh, known for her performance in the independent drama Lady Macbeth, is in talks to star opposite Scarlett Johansson in marvel's 'Black Widow,' the studio's stand-alone feature on the Avengers heroine.

Penned by Jac Schaeffer, the upcoming project will be directed by Cate Shortland, best known for the Nazi drama 'Lore'.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is scheduled to shoot in June in London.

While the plots are being kept under tight wraps, it seems like it is going to be an internationally set story, centring on Johansson's Natasha Romanoff, who grew up as a KGB trained spy and assassin before becoming an agent of SHIELD and Avenger.

Pugh is expected to be featured as Romanoff's moral opposite in the film.

While this might be her debut film in the Marvel cinematic universe, it won't be her first time playing a spy. Pugh starred as an undercover agent on British television miniseries 'The Little Drummer Girl'.

Pugh's upcoming credits also include Emma Watson and Meryl Streep starrer 'Little Women', and horror film 'Midsommar'.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Janata Dal (Secular) president HD Deve Gowda on Tuesday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for mocking the grand alliance of opposition parties and asserted that they will answer BJP by winning the elections.

Criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his remarks on the grand alliance of opposition parties, Janata Dal (Secular) president HD Deve Gowda on Tuesday said that they would respond to his mockery by defeating the BJP in the ensuing Lok Sabha elections.

Addressing media, Deve Gowda said, "Modi mocks the idea of mahagatbandhan (grand alliance) but they themselves are running coalition governments in many states. We will answer BJP by winning this election."

Taking a jibe on the opposition parties' efforts to get united under the Mahagathbandhan umbrella, Prime Minister Modi had repeatedly said that 'Mahamilavat' (grand adulteration) of opposition parties were not acceptable to the country.

"The people of India have seen the work of a government with full majority can do. They have seen the work of NDA. They do not want a Mahamilvat government of those who assembled in Kolkata," Prime Minister has said.

Speaking to media persons, Gowda affirmed faith in the grand alliance and said, "Mahagathbandhan will finally come to a proper shape only after the parliamentary elections are over. Each state has got its own problem; every state has its own regional leadership which cannot be undermined by any party. The situation is different in every state which is why people who are fighting against BJP or its allies, they will all come together after Parliament elections. There will be unity in all the secular forces."

Later addressing media persons, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president Dinesh Gundu Rao also announced that the list of Congress candidates for the state will be out on March 21-22.

"We have tentatively confirmed March 31 for a massive rally in the outskirts of Bangalore covering three-four parliamentary constituencies. There will be a joint meeting all across Karnataka," he said.

On March 13, the Congress party and its alliance partner JD(S) had reached an agreement on seat-sharing in Karnataka for the upcoming general elections. Out of 28 seats in Karnataka, the Congress will contest on 20 seats and JD(S) on 8.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan Supreme Court on Tuesday adjourned the hearing on bail plea of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on medical grounds till March 26. Sharif is currently serving seven-year jail term in connection with Al-Azizia graft case.

The three-member bench of Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa also issued a notice to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to submit a reply in the matter during the next hearing.

Citing medical reports, the defence counsel Khawaja Haris claimed that Sharif is taking 17 different medications, reported Tribune.

During the hearing of the petition, Chief Justice Khosa said: "We know that Nawaz receives medical care in London. We want to know whether his health has deteriorated in the prison."

Justice Khosa also directed Khawaja Haris to read reports from the imprisonment date in order to deliberate whether the apex court could intervene or not.

Earlier in March, Sharif had moved the Supreme Court against a decision by the Islamabad High Court, rejecting his bail application in connection with Al-Azizia reference case.

Sharif's counsel filed a plea in the top court, stating that the high court's decision should be declared null and void. However, the Islamabad High Court rejected Sharif's petition seeking bail on medical grounds.

The High Court bench comprising Justice Aamer Farooq and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani ordered that the bail could not be given on medical grounds.

After complaining about high fever, headache, and severe body pain, Sharif was shifted to Jinnah Hospital from Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore last month.

On December 24 last year, Sharif was sentenced to seven years in prison by an accountability court in Al-Azizia reference case and was fined the US $ 2.5 million.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India has raised the bar by carrying out an air strike in Balakot and called Pakistan's bluff that it cannot be threatened or challenged since it has nuclear weapons, said an activist of Gilgit-Baltistan Province which is under illegal occupation of Pakistan.

Senge H. Sering, Director of Institute for Gilgit Baltistan Studies in Washington, also said here on Tuesday that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has no policy of his own and everything is dictated by the country's military.

"I think the Balakot strike has opened a weak link on a gimmick that a nuclear country cannot be threatened or challenged. India has taken that game back into Pakistan and raised the bar," Sering told ANI.

He was commenting on the recent remarks of Pakistan's Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed that the Pulwama terror attack was Pakistan's finest hour in the last 20 years after the 1998 nuclear tests.

On February 14, a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror outfit rammed his car into a CRPF convoy on the national highway in Pulwama district of Kashmir, killing 40 security personnel. Twelve days later, India carried out an air strike at the largest JeM camp in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan.

"The next time Pakistan attacks India, it will have to keep a couple of things in mind. First, that the international community will stand with India... (And) if the international community intervenes, it will have a different result. And India will attack Pakistan in Punjab and Sindh," said Sering who was here to attend a seminar on 'Recent Developments in Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.'

He said it is clear to all that Pakistan uses terrorism as a critical tool in its foreign policy and Imran Khan's talks of 'Naya' (new) Pakistan will continue to have shadows of Pakistani military's interference.

"Imran Khan does not have any policy. It is under military control there is no big change. He does not have any control over the policy and these organisations promote terrorism no big change on the group. Pakistani Government and military they promote terrorism...It shows Pakistan does not believe in changing its policy against terrorism. It also shows Pakistan will continue to use terrorism against Kashmiris also," he said.

The activist said China is holding the card of peace in South Asia and "that's why it is alarming for the international community. India needs to establish relationships with other countries which are threatened by China's debt trap.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The majority of Russian (88%) are positive about Crimeas reunification with Russia, according to the results of the poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the reunification of Crimea and Sevastopol with Russia. Another important step has been taken yesterday to strengthen the energy security of the peninsula - Russian President Vladimir Putin has given a start to operation of Balaklavskaya and Tavricheskaya thermal power plants (TPP) in Crimea with full capacity. Crimea's Vice Prime Minister Georgy Muradov told Vestnik Kavkaza about the peninsula's social and economic development.

- What are the results of five years following Crimea's reunification with Russia?

- Today, all Crimeans clearly realize that five years ago they made the right choice, and the world is becoming more and more convinced that this choice is legitimate and fair. As for the economy, the Federal Target Program (FTP) for the development of Crimea, which is extended beyond 2020, is of great importance. Under this program, about 900 billion rubles were allocated, a bridge was built across the Kerch Strait - the bridge for automobile traffic is already in full operation, and the railway will be opened at the end of the year. A beautiful, high-level highway 'Tavrida' is being built, which crosses the entire Crimean peninsula from Kerch to Sevastopol through Simferopol with the Evpatoria branch. Social facilities are being built and restored: schools, hospitals, kindergartens; enterprises, sanatorium-resort complexes; hotel industry is developing. The federal targeted program also includes projects related to the development of culture, development of the peoples of Crimea, and support of national languages. After all, we have three state languages - Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar.

In short, the FTP is a comprehensive mechanism for the development of the Crimean economy and the Crimean society; the total socio-economic development of Crimea. Even some Ukrainian journalists recognized that over five years Crimea received strong support from Russia, the population of Crimea was moved by the dream of raising the level of their well-being. Compared to the 23 years of Crimea as part of Ukraine, the data for five years as part of Russia is very revealing: Crimea's industrial production over the past five years has increased 2.5 times, the budget's expenditures have grown 4.5 times. And if one takes five years before Crimea's reunification with Russia (2009-2013), then there was a decline in production by 5%, the budget was constantly reduced or stagnated. Today, Crimea lives a different life with the whole country. There is the realization that the great Russia - the homeland of Crimeans - stands behind us. We are bound by a thousand-year history. And this awareness gives new energy and new strength to the people of Crimea.

- What economic sectors are developing in Crimea most actively?

- Tourism is one of Crimea's key sectors. Last year, about 7 million tourists visited Crimea. Approximately 80-83% were Russian tourists, but there were also guests from abroad, in particular from China. Industries related to agricultural production and processing are also developing. It's warm in Crimea, so the production of early fruits and vegetables here is promising and profitable. A reprocessing industry has been established - flour mills, production of vegetable oils, and so on. We have a very interesting direction - essential oil cultures.

For five years, industrial production increased by 2.5 times. These are chemical industry, mechanical engineering, starting from large shipbuilding, optical instruments, welding equipment, ending with electromechanical devices, electromechanical equipment. All this gives Crimea an impetus to become an integrated part of the entire Russian economy. Basically today Crimea works on the Russian economy and on the Russian market.

- Are there investors from other countries?

- There are dozens of such investors, but we do not disclose them, because otherwise they will be prosecuted in Western countries, hindering the development of their business. They enter Crimea through other subjects of the Russian Federation, including the Krasnodar Territory. There are entrepreneurs who tap into Crimea's market openly. Our important partner is Syria, which currently needs a lot of resources for post-war reconstruction. We expect that all our Crimean seaports will eventually be actively involved in the carriage of goods to Syria. Syria also has a lot of interesting products that are required not only in Crimea, but whole Russia as well - citrus fruits, olives, southern fruits and phosphates. Syrian textiles, cotton fabrics have always been famous. Crimea is actively entering into foreign economic activity, but our main support is that we are integrated into the economic, political, and legal systems of the Russian Federation.

- How are inter-ethnic relations developing in Crimea?

- The federal target program provides for the development of languages and cultures of peoples living on the peninsula. They talked about the violation of Crimean Tatars' rights, but it was before Crimea's reunification with Russia. The Crimean Tatar language is one of the three state languages along with Russian and Ukrainian. The education system provides education in the Crimean Tatar language. There are libraries, theaters, musical groups and even a university, where Crimean Tatars mainly study, a number of subjects are taught there in the Crimean Tatar language. The Republic of Crimea is trying to satisfy all the needs of the Crimean Tatar people.

Some are trying to push for recognition of extremist organizations, such as the 'Mejlis' (the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People public association has been eliminated and banned in the territory of the Russian Federation - VK), but de jure it doesn't exist now. The Qurultay of the Crimean Tatar People chose a new body 'Shura', that is, the 'council'. If someone tries to conduct extremist activity, then according to the law of the Russian Federation, it is not allowed, but this is not related to national identity.

Therefore, the Crimean Tatar people live in Crimea in absolutely favorable conditions, as well as the Ukrainian one. We have 15% of Ukrainian population, and the Ukrainian language is a state language. Ukrainian culture and education are developing, there are classes with the Ukrainian language of instruction. We want Crimea to be an example for our neighboring states, for the same Ukraine. We want the rights of Russians to be respected in Ukraine the same way as the rights of Ukrainians are respected in Crimea. This also applies to other post-Soviet countries, in particular the Baltic States. Today, Crimea is setting an example of a democratic attitude to the rights of peoples.

- How is the anniversary of Crimea's reunification celebrated?

- Today is the central day when the agreement on Crimea's reunification with Russia was signed. The fact that our president is in the Crimea has further raised the spirit of the Crimean people. There is a growing feeling that we are part of a single great whole. It is a very important feeling: either you are small and abandoned, or you are part of a great, powerful, strong space, moreover, you are an inseparable part of it. The Crimean Spring festival is taking place in many regions of Russia now. This holiday is far from being only Crimean - reunification concerns the entire Russian people, our entire country.

- What are your goals for the next five years?

- Head of the Republic of Crimea Sergey Aksenov described previous five years as five years of victories. I would call the next five years - five years of development. We know from history that the second five-year plan has always been a turning point. We think that it will be five years of prosperity, well-being of the Crimean people as part of a great Russia.
Jammu and Kashmir Students Association spokesperson Nasir Khuehami on Tuesday asked Kashmiri students not to give any statements against the country adding that the situation in the state is normal and they should return now.

"There were some students who had made anti- comments and used unparliamentary language against the country. We hope they don't use such language against the country anymore," Khuehami said.

"After Pulwama attack, a situation of fear and harassment was spread against Kashmiri students across Uttarakhand. We had rescued them," he said.

Khuehami said that the situation is improving in the state and they are bringing back the students. "It is almost one month. The situation is improving with the support of local police and administration. There is no threat to the lives of Kashmiri students anywhere in Uttarakhand. I appeal to them to return to their institutions and resume their studies."

"We spoke to parents of the students and told them to send them back so that they can resume their studies. As many as 400 students have come in last four days," he said.

Criticising the Jammu and Kashmir government and other political leaders of Kashmir, Khuehami said, "We got no reply from the government of Jammu and Kashmir and leaders like Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and Engineer Rashid, etc. These leaders don't have time to help and resolve the problems of Kashmiri students but they have time to tweet on other issues."

After Pulwama attack on CRPF personnel on February 14, Kashmir students were reportedly being attacked in the state.

Taking cognizance of the matter, the Supreme Court had directed the chief secretaries and the Directors General of Police of all state and Union territories to take strong and necessary measures to prevent attacks on Kashmiris and other minorities in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump on Monday accused American media organisations of blaming him for last week's twin terror attacks in New Zealand, calling it "ridiculous".

"The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!" Trump tweeted.

The US President's comments came after some American media coverage had been focusing on the terrorist's manifesto, which called Trump a "symbol of renewed white identity."

The White House has rejected claims that Trump backed white nationalist views.

"The president is not a white supremacist. I'm not sure how many times we have to say that," acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on "Fox News Sunday."

Earlier, a social media account believed to be linked to Brenton Tarrant, the 28-year-old Australian-born terrorist had posted a lengthy manifesto, expressing anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views.

He wrote that he supported Trump "as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose" but not as a "policymaker and leader."

On March 16, Trump said that he did not see a rise in white nationalism across the after the terrorist had called the US President "a symbol of renewed white identity."

"I don't really think so. I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems," The Hill quoted Trump as saying when asked if he saw a rise in white nationalism. "If you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that's the case. I don't know enough about it yet," he added.

New Zealand is currently on a state of high alert after Tarrant, who is believed to have lived in Dunedin, killed 50 people in the Al Noor and the Linwood mosques in Christchurch on March 15, police said.

Tarrant live-streamed his gruesome act on Facebook for 17 minutes and police believe that the accused had single-handedly carried out the terror attack at both the mosques under a span of 36 minutes during the Friday prayers for which a large number of worshippers had congregated.

Using automatic weapons, the 28-year-old terrorist launched a "well-planned" attack on the mosques when devotees had assembled for the weekly prayers, following which mosques across the country were advised to shut down.

Tarrant, who appeared before a Christchurch court on murder charges, was remanded in custody without plea until April 5.

Condemning the terror strikes, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had described the attack as "one of New Zealand's darkest days" and said it "appears to have been well planned". She asserted that the country "will not and cannot be shaken" by the attack.

Ardern underlined that the country's gun laws will undergo changes and become stricter.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba said the Navy will "always remain ready" to "protect, promote and preserve interests in the maritime domain."

The Navy Chief, while addressing Naval commanders in Kochi on Monday, also urged to maintain the high tempo of operations and to keep sharp vigil including stringent security measures to ensure safe coasts and secure seas.

Admiral Lanba and other top officials of the Navy arrived in Kochi on Monday for the debrief of the recently-concluded annual Theatre Level Readiness and Operational Exercise (TROPEX).

The day-long review of TROPEX 2019 was undertaken to examine the conduct of exercise and to assess operational readiness of the Indian Navy. A realistic audit of the Indian Navy's deployment philosophy and fighting capability was undertaken during the review. Lessons learnt from the exercise will provide the Indian Navy accurate assessments to fine-tune combat deployments, force structuring requirements, operational logistics as also material and training imperatives, said an official release issued by the Ministry of Defence.

TROPEX - the largest maritime exercise of the Indian Navy- was conducted in the month of February in the Arabian Sea and North Indian Ocean. It was, thus far, the largest in terms of geographical extent covering the IOR, and also with regard to a number of units participating. The exercise was conducted from January 7 and graduated smoothly into providing the Navy high operational readiness posture post the Pulwama terror attack.

About 60 ships of Indian Navy, 12 ships of Indian Coast Guard and 60 aircraft participated in TROPEX. The exercise also included a Tri-services Amphibious Exercise that saw the participation of Army and Air Force personnel and assets.

As a prelude to TROPEX, the largest coastal defence exercise over codenamed 'Sea Vigil', was conducted on January 22 and 23 with the participation of all coastal states and union territories along with all maritime stakeholders. Overall, the exercise validated the Navy's readiness and capability to meet various mandated roles, in support of objectives.

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In a bid to ensure seamless polling for specially-abled voters, the state government plans to introduce a slew of measures, including the provision of around 25,000 wheelchairs at polling booths, Odisha's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Surendra Kumar said on Monday.

As per Kumar, there are over 4 lakh voters under the persons with disabilities (PwD) category in Odisha.

"We have decided to make this election PwD-friendly. Odisha government will provide 25,000 wheelchairs at booths during polls. Each booth will have two volunteers below the age of 18, either belonging to NCC or Scouts and Guides, to help PwD voters," Kumar said while speaking to ANI.

"Returning officers in each district will provide passes to PwD voters which will serve two purposes - priority voting and transportation facility. They will not have to stand in a queue and wherever required, vehicles will be provided to bring them to the booths and drop them back home," he added.

Odisha will be going to polls in four phases on April 11, 18, 23 and 29. The state will be voting simultaneously for parliamentary and assembly constituencies.

There are 21 Lok Sabha and 147 Assembly seats in Odisha.

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Gilgit-Baltistan must re-integrate with India as all documents from history prove that it was a part of this country, said an activist of the province which is under illegal occupation of Pakistan.

Senge H. Sering, Director of Institute for Gilgit Baltistan Studies in Washington, said here on Tuesday that Pakistan is changing the demography of Gilgit-Baltistan region and even China is helping in that process.

Pakistanis have taken all the jobs in the region and there are massive human rights violations taking place in the region, he said at a seminar on 'Recent Developments in Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir'.

"All documents from history prove that Gilgit Baltistan was a part of India and it is in the interest of the GB to integrate with India...We need to build bridges with India and the international communities. We have to integrate with India and become part of Ladakh," he said.

Later, speaking to ANI, he said, "Pakistan does not have a legal right to control and rule GB. It is a constitutional part of India. That is why Pakistan is threatening the local people fearing they might revolt against it."

He said while Pakistan continues to use terrorism against India to disturb the region, it is, on the other hand, using force and large scale human rights violations in Gilgit-Baltistan to usurp the region.

"There has been disenchantment among the local people against the aggressive behaviour by the government of Pakistan. They have been using military as a tool to oppress the people in GB. There are human right violations against the locals in GB. The situation is really grim because the international community is not aware of what is happening in GB," Sering said.

At the seminar, Sering narrated how Pakistani Army rampantly picks up women and girls of the local GB families and rapes them.

He added that Pakistan is using divide and rule policy in GB and dealing with the local people with iron fists.

Sering termed China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a means to change demography and erode the area of its natural resources.

"Pakistan and China have colluded to oppress the local people and to change the demography and literally convert us into a minority where they could control and use our resources," Sering said.

"CPEC is the strategic tool to oppress people and gain control over our land and what they do with the land is the different story. We are threatened to become a minority in our own land, and the recent order by the government has disabled us to take control over the land without the permission of the local authorities. Irrespective of the fact that CPEC becomes a success or not we are losing our land," Sering said.

Condemning the CPEC project, Sering said: "CPEC is another major thing that will impact GB adversely. Our nationalists are confused. They believe that GB can become independent. This cannot happen. Even if you become independent, GB will become a satellite of China. What happened to Tibet will happen to us.

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In a bid to oust the BJP out of power, Senior Congress leader PC Chacko on Tuesday batted for an alliance with the AAP in Delhi for the forthcoming general elections.

Chacko's statement came after Sheila Dikshit penned a down a letter to party president Rahul Gandhi stating coalition with AAP will 'harm' the Congress in the long run.

Speaking to ANI in New Delhi on Tuesday, Chacko said, "As far as I know there are senior leaders in Delhi who think that defeating BJP is party's immediate responsibility; for it we should form an alliance with AAP, that's the thinking of the majority of leaders."

"Our president Rahul Gandhi will take a decision in few days time, and the policy of our party as decided by working committee is to go for an alliance with the parties who are opposed to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). I hope Delhi leaders will also follow this policy decision of the Congress," he added.

Last week, Dikshit, after meeting the Congress president, had declared that there was unanimity among party leaders with regards to an alliance with AAP in Delhi.

Following the announcement, AAP president and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said there are "rumours" that the Congress has a "secret understanding" with the BJP and asserted that his party is ready to fight the "unholy alliance."

On February 28, Chacko had met Dikshit and stressed on the need for an alliance with the AAP, said a source. The source also said the AAP is willing to tie up with the Congress at least in Delhi, Haryana, and Punjab. However, a section of Congress leaders is not in favour of this, the source added.

The 17th Lok Sabha election in Delhi will take place on May 12 and results will be announced on May 23.

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The Pentagon on Monday (local time) announced a list of military projects that would "derail" if US President Donald Trump takes money from national security budget for the proposed wall along the US-Mexico border.

"We know President Trump wants to take money from our national security accounts to pay for his wall, and now we have a list of some of the projects and needed base repairs that could be derailed or put on the chopping block as a result," said The Hill quoted Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Senator Jack Reed as saying.

The 21-page list of military projects came days after acting Defence secretary Patrick Shanahan vowed to provide the document to Congress.

On March 14, the Republican-controlled Senate voted to disapprove the emergency declaration by 59 votes to 41, in what was a sharp rebuke to Trump. The resolution was already passed in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives by 245 votes to 182 last month, with 13 Republicans supporting the Democrats.

Subsequently, the US President Donald Trump issued his first veto rejecting as "dangerous" and "reckless" congressional resolution of his emergency declaration and asserted that Americans would be "put at risk" at the southern border with Mexico if the measure became a law.

Trump vetoed a resolution of disapproval of his emergency declaration, which was declared to get his wall funded and built along the US-Mexico border.

The resolution will now return to the House of Representatives, which is expected to vote on overriding Trump's veto on March 26. However, lawmakers lack the two-thirds support of the chamber required to pass the measure.

It was the first time that the US President used his veto power to block legislation which came after 12 Senate Republicans sided with the Democrats to reject Trump's use of his emergency power to bypass the Congress and fund the border wall's construction.

On February 15, a defiant Trump declared a national emergency to bypass Congress and fulfil his long-pending demand of building the wall along the border with Mexico.

Defending his move, the US President asserted that he had "no choice" but to use his emergency powers to stop illegal immigrants spreading crime and drugs.

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Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao are conspiring against the Telugu Desam Party, while adding that YSR Congress Party chief Jagan Mohan Reddy "compromised with Modi" to get rid of all cases filed against him.

"YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) is the fan, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is the switch and BJP is the power," Naidu said while addressing party workers here on Monday.

The TDP Chief further mentioned that if Prime Minister Modi comes back to power, minorities would not be safe in the country, while accusing the current NDA government of "betraying" Andhra Pradesh.

He then went on to say that Jagan was taking "political mileage" from his uncle Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy's death. "If Jagan comes to power, can anybody live safely in the state? They are blaming us for Vivekananda Reddy's murder and asking for an inquiry by the Central Bureau Investigation as they believe that Modi at the Centre will save them. All good people are joining TDP while the thieves are joining YSRCP," he added.

At the meeting, Naidu equated his party cadre to Alexander's army and said, "The powerful leader Alexander had an army of 10 lakh soldiers to conquer the world. The TDP has an army of 65 lakh dedicated soldiers who can make every impossible thing possible. TDP will win the upcoming Assembly elections. We have to win 150 plus seats in Assembly and all 25 Parliamentary constituencies."

At another party meeting that was held in Ongole, Naidu claimed that Janata Dal (United) Vice President Prashant Kishor had removed names of over seven lakh voters in Andhra Pradesh.

The Chief Minister claimed that the YSRCP is doing injustice to the state with its collusive and has stolen the data of TDP workers. "It is good for Andhra if Jagan remains in Lotus Pond (his Hyderabad residence)," he added.

Naidu also said that the Federal Front proposed by KCR will only comprise of TRS and YSRCP. "In fact, it (Federal Front) is formed at the behest of Prime Minister Modi. KCR is cheating people by saying he will be kingmaker in Delhi with 17 MP seats," he added.

The 17th Lok Sabha polls and the Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh will take place on April 11 in a single phase. The results of the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls will be announced on May 23.

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Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Monday accused poll strategist and Janata Dal (United) vice president Prashant Kishor for the removal of votes of the party sympathisers.

"K Chandrashekar Rao is doing criminal He is grabbing the MLAs of Congress and TDP. Bihari dacoit Prasant Kishore has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh. He is committing cyber crime," Chief Minister Naidu said while addressing an event in Ongole.

Earlier, Naidu had criticized YSR Congress Party chief Jaganmohan Reddy along with TRS and BJP for removing the names of voters from the list.

"They submitted Form 7 to delete names from the voters' list. YSRCP chief Jaganmohan Reddy along with TRS and BJP is trying to remove the name of voters from the list. Criminal action should be taken against those who are misusing Form-7 to delete the names," he said.

Criticizing YSRCP, TRP and BJP, Naidu said, "All of them hatched a conspiracy to destabilise the TDP government and the Telugu Desam Party. The conspiracy has been revealed with the complaint submitted by YSR Congress leader Vijayasai reddy to Election Commission, though they were caught red handed they are unable to answer to the questions posed by our government."

Earlier, a case was registered after a complaint was received against TDP's Sevamitra App for allegedly using the people's data illegally to advance the party's electoral prospects in the coming Lok Sabha polls in the state.

Hyderabad Police raided office of the mobile app developer which provides services to TDP. Naidu claimed that this was done after YSRCP leader Vijay Sai Reddy had filed a complaint. He had also accused the opposition of stealing data.

Naidu had also alleged Prashant Kishor's role in the IT raids and accused him of giving 'criminal advice' to YSR Congress.

Prashant Kishor recently grabbed the headlines for his remark that if he can make someone Chief Minister or Prime Minister he can also help Bihar youth to become MLA or MP.

Speaking at a public gathering, Kishor had said, "If I can help someone become Prime Minister and Chief Minister, I can also help Bihar's youth become MPs and MLAs."

Kishor is credited with devising successful political campaigns for Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Gujarat assembly polls in 2012. He also conceptualised advertising campaigns and marketing strategies like Manthan and Chai pe Charcha for Modi in 2014

Kishor, who hails from Bihar, had also worked with Nitish Kumar during the 2015 Bihar assembly election. He formally joined the JD(U) in 2018.

The 17th Lok Sabha polls and the Assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh will take place on April 11 in a single phase. The results of the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls will be announced on May 23.

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Sepoy Vijay Kumar of the Indian Army on Tuesday was conferred with the Kirti Chakra posthumously for displaying indomitable courage during the counter-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir.

President Ram Nath Kovind presented the award at the Defence Investiture Ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Kirti Chakra was also conferred on Constable Pradip Kumar Panda of CRPF posthumously for displaying exceptional bravery and commitment to duty during counter-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir.

Another Gallantry Award Shaurya Chakra was awarded to 14-year-old Irfan Sheikh of Jammu and Kashmir for thwarting an attack by three terrorists on his house.

During the scuffle, one of the terrorists was seriously injured while the other two fled away.

Besides that, Lieutenant General Anil Bhatt was conferred with 'Uttam Yudh Seva Medal' by President Kovind for the successful conduct of counter-terrorist operations under in Jammu and Kashmir.

This year, President Ram Nath Kovind approved awards 411 gallantry and other defence decorations for Armed Forces personnel and others on the eve of the 70th Republic Day Celebrations.

The awards include one Ashoka Chakra, 4 Kirti Chakras, 11 Shaurya Chakras, 28 Param Vishisht Seva Medals, 3 Uttam Yudh Seva Medals, 51 Ati Vishisht Seva Medals, one Bar to Yudh Seva Medal, 9 Yudh Seva Medals, two Bar to Vishisht Seva Medals.

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Not once, Turkish-Israel relations have been overclouded by criticism in terms of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In late 2018, President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of providing a terrorist policy at the state level and killing Palestinians. In his turn, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused President of Turkey of obsession of Israel and said that he daily faces attacks by the anti-Semite dictator. The former ambassador of Turkey to Israel Oguz Celikkol answered Vestnik Kavkazas questions on the margins of the International Winter School in Istanbul, organized by BILGESAM.

- In late February, Trumps adviser Jared Kushner visited Ankara and met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He said that he intended to announce a new plan of peaceful resolution in the Middle East. What are your expectations?

- There are many roumors in the press about this plan. We dont know that because they dont make it public. But if we look at the actions of the Trump administration, we see that they recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. They moved their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They withdrew their support from Palestinian organizations which help refugees even under the United Nations. They shut down the Palestinian office in Washington. They withdrew from UNESCO because UNESCO takes pro-Palestinian solutions. All decisions of the Trump administration coming one after another show that the plan is not going to be pro-Palestinian. There are speculations in the press that the plan is going to be very pro-Israeli. Since Trumps administration came in power, all its decisions were considered by the Palestinians unacceptable. And the Palestinians are not negotiating with Trumps administration. They refused to talk to Jared Kushner on the plan. They say America has lost impartiality in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Until Trumps administration disappears and Trump no longer rules America, America cannot play a role in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. But America prepared this plan hoping that Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and Egypt are going to put pressure on the Palestinians to accept this plan. Kushner came to Ankara within a tour to the Middle East. Some press reports indicate that there is going to be a large section of economic benefits for Palestinians and all states in the Middle East who support this plan. Who is going to pay the price of economic benefits? Probably the oil-rich Gulf countries are going to pay to build the economic side of this plan.

- What can you say about Turkish-American relations?

- America and Turkey are passing through very difficult time. Turkey buys S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia and America is not happy about it. Many people in Turkey believe that the United States stands behind 2016 coup attempt in Turkey. America suddenly stopped caring for Syria. And they stopped any actions started during Obamas administration in Syria. And Iran and Russia took American inaction to become predominant powers in Syria. And Turkey had no option but cooperate with Russia to find a political solution in Syria.

- How deep is the crisis between Turkey and Israel today? Do you believe in normalization of the bilateral relations in the near future?

- If you look at the history of Turkey and Israel, it has always been affected by the Palestinian issue. Even though Turkey was the first state to recognize the state of Israel in 1948, it voted against the Partition Plan in 1947.

Turkey was one of the states who reacted to the Israeli decision to annex territories. When the Palestine Liberation Organization was a leftist organizations, there was a wide spread support of PLO in the Turkish left. Turkey was one of first states which recognized the unilateral declaration of the Palestinian state in 1988. So when we look at the history of Jewish-Turkish relations, the Palestinian issue has always played a big role. But in recent years, it became more predominant. When Turkish-Israeli relations flourished in the 1990s, that was Oslo process. The Palestinians and Israel negotiated within the Two States Solution. Unfortunately, Israel now no longer supports the Two States Solution.

What Turkey wants in Palestine is not very different from what other European states want. Turkey wants the Two States Solution and a Palestinian state which is going to live side by side with Israel. Thats what European states also support. Turkeys position didntt change. If Palestinian-Israeli relations go back to a normal track, when the negotiations start again, Turkey and Israel could also mend up their ties. But if Israel supports the policy which gets farer from the solution of the Palestinian problems, apparently, Turkish-Israeli relations are going to be difficult.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed into law a series of bills criminalising persons who would spread "fake news" or "disrespecting" the state, in a move which, critics say, will curtail freedom of speech of criticising the government.

The new legislation allows Russian authorities to block websites or Internet accounts that publish what they deem to be "fake news" and penalises those who post material found to be insulting and distasteful to state officials, state symbols and Russian society.

According to the new law, individuals found publishing "fake news" will have to pay a fine of 100,000 rubles, while public officials will have to cough up 200,000 roubles. For corporate organisations, the fine has been set at 500,000 roubles, TASS news agency reported.

However, the new legislation mandates that news publications registered with Roskomnadzor (federal executive body responsible for overseeing the media), including online media sites, would be given a chance to take down reports deemed as fake news before their websites are blocked by the government.

Those companies not registered with Roskomnadzor will be blocked without warning, as per the law.

A fine of 100,000 roubles has been set for those who insult Russian authorities, government agencies, public, flag or the nation's constitution. Repeat offenders will face huge penalties and can be locked up for at least 15 days, according to TASS.

The lower and upper chambers of the Russian Parliament had approved the bills earlier this month.

The new legislation has been routinely criticised by prominent Russian journalists and public figures, saying it amounts to censorship. However, the Russian government has denied the same.

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Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday slammed Congress for criticising BJP's "Main Bhi Chowkidar" campaign, saying, "Those who are on bail or have a lot to hide are opposing it".

The statement from the Union Minister came a day after Rahul Gandhi-led Congress downplayed BJP's campaign.

Further taking a dig at Congress, Prasad while addressing a press conference in New Delhi, said, "Some people are saying that watchman is for rich people. They are the same people who have looted crores from the poor."

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra yesterday while commenting on 'chowkidar' campaign of the BJP had said, "It is their choice what they want to add to their name. When I met potato farmers in western UP, one of them told me, 'the rich have chowkidar, the farmers are their own chowkidar'."

Prasad further claimed, "BJP's MainBhiChowkidar campaign has turned into a mass revolution on social media with 1680 crore impressions and 20 lakh tweets."

In his concluding remark, the Union Minister informed that on March 31, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with people who have joined the 'Main Bhi Chowkidar' campaign, at 500 locations via video conferencing

Modi launched the "Main Bhi Chowkidar", or "I am also the watchman", campaign on Saturday. The prime minister has repeatedly referred to himself as the country's chowkidar. Modi and several leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, including Smriti Irani, Piyush Goyal and Ravi Shankar Prasad, also added "chowkidar" to their Twitter handles.

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Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit has written to party president Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi saying forging an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in Delhi would harm the party in the long run, sources said on Monday.

Dikshit, along with three working presidents HaroonYusuf, DevenderYadav and, RajeshLilothia, also expressed discontent over Congress leader PC Chacko's phone survey through Shakti app to determine views of party workers on the alliance, the sources added.

In the letter, Sheila urged Rahul to clear the air over a pre-poll alliance with AAP so that there is no confusion among the party cadres, the source mentioned.

Chacko had recently held a meeting with Delhi's district heads on the issue of alliance where it was decided that Rahul would take a final call in the matter.

Last week, Dikshit, after meeting the Congress president, had declared that there was unanimity among party leaders with regards to an alliance with AAP in Delhi.

Following the announcement, AAP president and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said there are "rumours" that the Congress has a "secret understanding" with the BJP and asserted that his party is ready to fight the "unholy alliance."

On February 28, Chacko had met Dikshit and stressed the need for an alliance with the AAP, said a source. The source also said the AAP is willing to tie up with the Congress at least in Delhi, Haryana, and Punjab. However, a section of Congress leaders is not in favour of this, the source added.

The 17th Lok Sabha election in Delhi will take place on May 12 and results will be announced on May 23.

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An Abu Dhabi-based NGO has set up a project at the sidelines of the ongoing Special Olympics World Games 2019 here, where specially-abled people are being honed with tailoring skills. These specially-abled people also teach visitors how to stitch once they learn the craft.

Zayed Higher Organisation has set up a camp inside the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre where specially-abled people are showcasing their stitching skills.

The specially-abled people were seen guiding the visitors on how to operate a sewing machine and perfecting their tailoring skills.

"It is a very good initiative working with these special persons. This is fantastic," Andrea Schmucki, whose daughter Arlette Schmucki is participating in the Special Olympics World Games 2019, told ANI.

Zayed Higher Organisation executive Ahmed Alhamadi added: "We are working very hard to tell the society that we want to change the lives of these people. There are many who wants to work and they can work. Right now, 111 students and 18 teachers are working for this project."

Over 7,000 athletes from more than 170 countries are participating in the Special Olympics World Games 2019 which began on March 14 and is slated to end on March 21.

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A Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation comprising Derek O'Brien, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, and Chandan Mitra approached the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday to lodge a complaint against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) regarding an alleged violation of the Model Code of Conduct.

The TMC claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's photo was being published on railway tickets as part of a government scheme, which, the party said, was in violation of the MCC. It then urged the poll body to ensure that the pictures were taken off rail tickets.

Earlier this month, a BJP delegation comprising Ravi Shankar Prasad, JP Nadda and others had urged the EC to declare Bengal as a 'super sensitive zone' while expressing apprehensions that the ruling TMC government might not allow free and fair elections to be held in West Bengal.

Speaking to media after the meeting with EC officials, Prasad had said, "We have demanded that entire Bengal be declared a super-sensitive zone. We have also handed them (EC) a list of officers whose impartiality is doubtful and urged that they be removed from election duties. Around 100 murders took place during Panchayat elections in West Bengal. Officers sit on dharnas along with Chief Minister. The ruling party (BJP) president's chopper is not allowed to land there."

Prasad had also asked for central forces to be deployed at all polling booths in West Bengal while alleging that the state police functioned as "workers of TMC."

In response to this, Derek, while speaking to media outside the EC office on Tuesday, said the BJP's allegations were "baseless".

"West Bengal is a peaceful state. There is no such emergency situation to declare Bengal a super sensitive state as demanded by BJP," he added.

West Bengal will vote in all seven phases of the Lok Sabha elections.

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The uncivilised and heartless crime of acid attack does not deserve any kind of clemency, the Supreme Court has said while enhancing the compensation to be paid to a victim by two convicts.

A division bench comprising Justices AM Khanwilkar and Ajay Rastogi directed the convicts to pay Rs. 1,50,000 each to the victim, modifying the verdict of the Himachal Pradesh High Court which had imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 each on both of them that they had deposited.

The bench said, "This court cannot be oblivious of the situation that the victim must have suffered an emotional distress which cannot be compensated either by sentencing the accused or by grant of any compensation."

"Indeed, it cannot be ruled out that in the present case the victim had suffered an uncivilized and heartless crime committed by the respondents and there is no room for leniency which can be conceived. A crime of this nature does not deserve any kind of clemency," the apex court noted in its verdict last week.

"We consider it appropriate to observe that both the accused shall pay the additional compensation of Rs. 1,50,000 each and the State of Himachal Pradesh shall pay the compensation as admissible under the Victim Compensation Scheme as in vogue to the acid victim. If the accused does not pay the additional compensation amount of Rs. 1,50,000 each within six months, the defaulting accused shall suffer rigorous imprisonment of six months," it said.

While enhancing the compensation amount, the top court upheld the high court's March 24, 2008 order of convicting them under Section 326 of IPC (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means) and sentencing them to five years imprisonment, which they have already completed.

The trial court by its November 30, 2005 order convicted them under section 307/34 (attempt to murder with common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and awarded 10 years jail terms with a fine of Rs. 5,000 each.

After the trial court's order, the convicts had approached the high court, which convicted them under section 326 of IPC with five years jail term and increased the fine. The state then moved the apex court against the high court order.

As per the prosecution, the victim was on her way to her college on July 12, 2004 when two men came on a scooter and threw some acid on her from a jug and ran away. Following which she was taken to the hospital by a nearby resident and a case was registered against the accused. The doctor's report said the chemical caused the victim 16 per cent burns.

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The United States intends to designate Brazil as a "major" non-NATO ally, US President Donald Trump said during the joint press conference held here with his Brazilian counterpart on Tuesday (local time).

"As I told President Bolsonaro, I also intend to designate Brazil as a major non-NATO ally or even possibly, if you start thinking about it, a NATO ally. We have to talk to a lot of people, but maybe a NATO ally," Trump said.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro undertook his first official overseas visit to the United States after winning last year's Presidential elections. He has been likened to Trump due to their shared rhetoric, with the media labelling him as the "Trump of the Tropics".

While reaffirming bilateral ties, Trump heaped praises on Bolsonaro during the presser on Tuesday. Talking about his camaraderie with his Brazilian counterpart, Trump stated that the two leaders "feel very, very true to each other."

He had earlier said that he was "inclined" on pitching for Brazil to be granted NATO privileges, according to CNN.

"We're looking at it very strongly. We're very inclined to do that. The relationship we have now with Brazil has never been better," the US President had said.

Trump also called on the Venezuelan military to pledge allegiance to Juan Guaido -- the US-recognised President of the Latin American nation -- instead of siding with embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

"We call on members of the Venezuelan military to end their support for Maduro - who is really nothing more than a Cuban puppet - and finally set their people free," Trump said.

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Dutch authorities on Monday arrested the suspect accused of opening fire inside a tram in Utrecht city in central Netherlands which left three people dead and five others injured.

The gunman, Gokmen Tanis, who hails from Turkey, was arrested by the police after a manhunt was launched to nab the suspect, Central Netherlands Police chief Rob van Bree said.

Meanwhile, a second suspect was arrested and sent to custody. However, it is unclear whether he was involved in the shooting or not, CNN reported.

Following the arrests, Dutch authorities downgraded the terror threat level in Utrecht province to Level 4, which was raised to 5, during the attack, meaning critical. Police said that they were considering "a possible terrorist motive" for the shooting.

Terming the attack as a "deeply disturbing" one, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the shooting was "an attack on our tolerant and open society."

Security has been beefed up across the country in the wake of the attack with heavy deployment of police at places of worship, railway stations, airports, government buildings and, educational institutions.

The shooting comes less than a week after twin terror attacks at two mosques in New Zealand's Christchurch city killed 50 people.

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday expressed concerns about the Australian-born terrorist Brenton Tarrant's plans to represent himself in future court hearings.

"I agree that is absolutely something that we need to acknowledge and do what we can to prevent the notoriety that this individual seeks. This could involve a conversation with the media," New Zealand Herald quoted Ardern as saying to reporters here.Asserting that the suspect was planning to "lift his own profile", the New Zealand premier remarked: "That's something that we can absolutely deny him. You won't hear me speak his name."

Ardern reiterated that the country's gun laws will undergo changes as the Cabinet ministers had in-principle agreed to the reforms. She said that legislation would be drafted before March 25.

Tarrant, the 28-year-old terrorist accused of gunning down 50 people during the March 15 twin terror attacks at Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch on Monday dismissed his lawyer Richard Peters and announced that he would represent himself in future court hearings, raising fears that he could attempt to use the trial to express his extremist views.

Tarrant, who is a resident of Dunedin, live-streamed his gruesome act on Facebook for 17 minutes and police believe that the accused had single-handedly carried out the terror attack at both the mosques under a span of 36 minutes during the Friday prayers for which a large number of worshippers had congregated.

Peters, who represented Tarrant in the hearing at the Christchurch District Court a day after the attacks, confirmed the news and said that the accused "appeared to be lucid" and was not "mentally unstable".

The attorney said that the accused was insisting that he wanted to represent himself in the court and his job had come to an end after that day's hearing.

Tarrant, who appeared before the court on murder charges, was remanded in custody without plea until April 5.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping will embark on a three-nation (Italy, Monaco and France) tour from March 21 to 26, announced China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Li Kang.

According to Xinhua, Xi was invited by Italian President Sergio Mattarella, French President Emmanuel Macron and Head of State of the Principality of Monaco Albert II.

This will be Xi's maiden visit to Italy. During his visit, he will hold talks with President Mattarella and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

The Chinese premier will also meet Italian Senate Speaker Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati and Lower House Speaker Roberto Fico to further strengthen the Sino-Italian relation.

Notably, Beijing and Rome have just completed 15 years of strategic partnership.

Xi will hold talks with Prince Albert II during his visit to Monaco and exchange views with him on issues of common concern such as the development of China-Monaco relations. During his visit to France,

The Chinese leader Xi is expected to hold talks with President Macron, meet with French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and the speakers of the Senate and the National Assembly.

Xi will hold talks with Prince Albert II during his visit to Monaco and exchange views with him on issues of common concern such as the development of China-Monaco relations in the new era.

During his visit to France, Xi will hold talks with President Macron, meet with French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and the speakers of the Senate and the National Assembly,

The Chinese president's visit will further consolidate political mutual trust between the two countries, Kang said adding, "The visit will further consolidate political mutual trust between China and Italy, deepen practical cooperation in various areas under the framework of the Belt and Road, boost people-to-people and cultural exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, promote new progress of the Sino-Italian comprehensive strategic partnership in the new era and make contributions to Sino-EU relations as well as peace and development."

South China Morning Post on March 3 had reported that Xi is expected to visit the United States, France and Italy later this month to ease tensions over trade and technology security, reported the South China Morning Post. However, now instead of US, he will be visiting Monaco.

The US had also urged Italy not to "lend legitimacy" to China's "infrastructure vanity project" while referring to the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative.

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Members of a German delegation of public organizations are impressed by the changes over the past five years since Crimeas reunification with Russia, Deputy Chairman of the Security and Politics Society Frank Porsh said at a meeting with representatives of Crimeas parliament.

"We are very impressed by the changes, which have occurred in Crimea over the past five years, we are impressed by the Crimean Bridge and the new airport," TASS cited him as saying.

Porsh stressed that the sanctions imposed on Crimea are purely political and have no impact on the Black Sea peninsula. "Its important for us to see this with our own eyes," the Deputy Chairman of the Security and Politics Society stressed.

The delegation consisting of 10 representatives of German pubic organizations arrived in Crimea on March 16 to learn about the regions life.
Zimbabwe are set to host the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and tour to the Netherlands for limited-overs series.

Zimbabwe will play four ODIs against UAE in April, while contest with Netherlands for a pair of ODI and T20I series in June.

The visiting side UAE will replace the cancelled five-match ODI series Afghanistan were set to play in the country.

The series against UAE is scheduled to run from April 10 to 16.

Zimbabwe will then travel to the Netherlands, where the sides will play two ODIs on June 19 and 21 followed by two T20Is on June 23 and 25.

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Apollo Tyres Ltd is quoting at Rs 217, down 0.44% on the day as on 13:24 IST on the NSE. The stock tumbled 17.57% in last one year as compared to a 13.3% rally in NIFTY and a 21.14% fall in the Nifty Auto index.

Apollo Tyres Ltd is down for a fifth straight session today. The stock is quoting at 217, down 0.44% on the day as on 13:24 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is up around 0.08% on the day, quoting at 11471.1. The Sensex is at 38144.14, up 0.13%.Apollo Tyres Ltd has added around 3.78% in last one month.Meanwhile, Nifty Auto index of which Apollo Tyres Ltd is a constituent, has increased around 5.34% in last one month and is currently quoting at 8627.05, down 0.83% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 12.87 lakh shares today, compared to the daily average of 30.34 lakh shares in last one month.

The benchmark March futures contract for the stock is quoting at Rs 218, down 0.46% on the day. Apollo Tyres Ltd tumbled 17.57% in last one year as compared to a 13.3% rally in NIFTY and a 21.14% fall in the Nifty Auto index.

The PE of the stock is 15.94 based on TTM earnings ending December 18.

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Receives bids for 3.31 crore units

The initial public offer (IPO) of Embassy Office Parks REIT received bids for 3.31 crore units today, 19 March 2018, as against 7.12 crore units on offer, as per the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) website data at 17:00 IST. The issue was subscribed 0.47 times.

The issue opened for subscription on 18 March 2019 and closes on 20 March 2019. The price band for the issue has been fixed at Rs 299 to Rs 300 per unit. Minimum application is for 800 units (i.e., Rs 2.4 lakh at higher price and Rs 2.39 lakh as lower price) and in multiples of 400 units thereafter.

Ahead of the opening of the IPO, the board of directors of the company at its meeting held on 15 March 2018, finalised allocation of 5.81 crore units to anchor investors at Rs 300 each.

The Embassy Office Parks REIT (Embassy) is an irrevocable trust and was registered with SEBI on 3 August 2017, as a real estate investment trust under Regulation 3(1) of the REIT Regulations. The Embassy REIT has been settled by the Embassy Sponsor. Subsequently, in August 2018, SEBI took on record the addition of the Blackstone Sponsor to the sponsors of the Embassy REIT. As of the date, the Embassy Sponsor and the Blackstone Sponsor are the sponsors of the Embassy REIT.

Embassy is the owner of a high quality office portfolio in India that serves as essential corporate infrastructure to multinational tenants and has significant embedded growth prospects. The company's portfolio comprises 7 best-in-class office parks and 4 prime city-center office buildings totalling 32.7 m sq feet as of 31 December 2018, with strategic amenities, including two completed and two under-construction hotels totalling 1,096 keys, food courts, employee transportation and childcare facilities.

Of the total 32.7 m square feet, around 60.5% is in Bengaluru, 16.2% is in Mumbai, 14.4% in Pune and rest 8.9% is in Noida.

The IPO proceeds will be utilized for repayment of loans and debts of Rs 3710 crore, Rs 460 crore towards acquisition of the Embassy One Assets currently held by EODPL and rest for general corporate purposes.

On a consolidated basis, Embassy Office Parks REIT reported total profit after tax (PAT) of Rs 285.11 crore on net sales of Rs 1375.98 crore in the nine-months ended December 2018.

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Key equity indices extended gains for seventh straight trading session amid support from index pivotals, Reliance Industries, ITC and Infosys. The barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, rose 268.40 points or 0.70% to 38,363.47, as per the provisional closing data. The Nifty 50 index rose 70.20 points or 0.61% to 11,532.40, as per the provisional closing data. The Nifty ended above 11,500 mark.

Stocks opened with small gains and continued hovering near flat line in morning trade. Benchmarks turned range bound in mid-morning trade. Fresh buying support boosted shares in mid-afternoon trade as positive cues from European stock market improved investors sentiment. Indices hit fresh intraday high in late trade.

Buying was broad based. Among secondary barometers, the BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.52%. The BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.37%.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was positive. On BSE, 1403 shares rose and 1301 shares fell. A total of 172 shares were unchanged.

Most auto shares declined. Eicher Motors (down 2.43%), TVS Motor Company (down 2.19%), Hero MotoCorp (down 1.96%), Maruti Suzuki India (down 1.32%), Ashok Leyland (down 0.87%) and Bajaj Auto (down 0.81%), edged lower. Tata Motors (up 0.11%), Mahindra & Mahindra (up 0.92%) and Escorts (up 3.53%), edged higher.

Among index heayweights, ITC (up 2.41%), Infosys (up 2.18%) and Reliance Industries (up 1.96%), edged higher.

Bharti Airtel (up 2.13%), NTPC (up 1.78%), ONGC (up 1.45%), Yes Bank (up 1.42%) and State Bank of India (up 1.37%), were the major Sensex gainers.

HCL Technologies rose 2.41%. The company has entered into a shared services arrangement with Xerox Corporation pursuant to which Xerox will outsource (subject to compliance with European works council consultation and employment regulatory requirements) certain global administrative and support functions, including, among others, selected information technology and finance functions (excluding accounting). The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 18 March 2019.

MindTree fell 1.90%. The promoters of Mindtree after market hours yesterday, 18 March 2019, said they would unconditionally oppose the reported hostile takeover bid by Larsen and Toubro (L&T).

L&T fell 1.44%. L&T announced after market hours yesterday, 18 March 2019, that it entered into a definitive share purchase agreement (SPA) with V G Siddhartha and his related entities namely, Coffee Day Trading & Coffee Day Enterprises, to acquire 20.32% stake in Mindtree, a global technology services and digital transformation company. L&T will purchase this stake at a price of Rs 980 per share, aggregating to approximately Rs 3269 crore.

Immediately following the filing of the public announcement, L&T placed an order with its broker for on-market purchase of up to 15% of share capital of Mindtree at a price not exceeding Rs 980 per share. Pursuant to execution of the SPA, the aforementioned market order for share purchase and with the intent to acquire majority stake in Mindtree, L&T announced an open offer to the public shareholders of Mindtree to purchase up to an additional 31% of the outstanding shares of Mindtree at a price of Rs 980 per share in cash.

Overseas, European shares traded higher on Tuesday as investors monitored heightened Brexit uncertainty.

Britain's parliament banned another vote on same Brexit deal. Prime Minister Theresa May's third attempt to get parliament to back her Brexit deal were thrown into further turmoil on Monday when the speaker of parliament ruled that she could not put her divorce deal to a new vote unless it was re-submitted in fundamentally different form. May has only two days to win approval for her deal to leave the European Union if she wants to go to a summit with the bloc's leaders on Thursday with something to offer them in return for more time.

Asian shares were trading lower ahead of a closely watched meeting by the US Federal Reserve set to kick off later in the day.

US stocks closed modestly higher Monday, as investors prepared for a meeting of Federal Reserve policy makers to begin Tuesday. The Fed is expected to leave rates unchanged when it concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday. Investors will focus on the statement issued by policy makers.

On the US data front, the National Association of Home Builders' monthly confidence index was unchanged at a seasonally-adjusted reading of 62.

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Key benchmarks were almost flat in morning trade. At 10:33 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 30.86 points or 0.08% at 38,125.93. The Nifty 50 index was up 3.45 points or 0.03% at 11,465.65. Auto shares decline.

Indices opened with small gains and continued hovering near flat line in morning trade. Negative cues from other Asian shares capped gains.

Among secondary barometers, the BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.36%. The BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.31%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was positive. On BSE, 1068 shares rose and 883 shares fell. A total of 114 shares were unchanged.

Auto shares declined. TVS Motor Company (down 2.81%), Eicher Motors (down 2.66%), Hero MotoCorp (down 2.3%), Bajaj Auto (down 1.8%), Ashok Leyland (down 1.03%), Mahindra & Mahindra (down 0.76%), Maruti Suzuki India (down 0.74%) and Tata Motors (down 0.22%), edged lower. Escorts was up 0.76%.

FMCG shares were mixed. Nestle India (up 1.08%), Tata Global Beverages (up 0.95%), GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (up 0.81%), Colgate Palmolive (India) (up 0.59%), Marico (up 0.34%), Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care (up 0.25%) and Hindustan Unilever (up 0.04%), edged higher. Dabur India (down 0.23%), Jyothy Laboratories (down 0.32%), Godrej Consumer Products (down 0.5%), Bajaj Corp (down 0.51%) and Britannia Industries (down 1.06%), edged lower.

Overseas, Asian shares were trading lower ahead of a closely watched meeting by the US Federal Reserve set to kick off later in the day.

US stocks closed modestly higher Monday, as investors prepared for a meeting of Federal Reserve policy makers to begin Tuesday. The Fed is expected to leave rates unchanged when it concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday. Investors will focus on the statement issued by policy makers.

On the US data front, the National Association of Home Builders' monthly confidence index was unchanged at a seasonally-adjusted reading of 62.

In Europe, Britain's parliament banned another vote on same Brexit deal. Prime Minister Theresa May's third attempt to get parliament to back her Brexit deal were thrown into further turmoil on Monday when the speaker of parliament ruled that she could not put her divorce deal to a new vote unless it was re-submitted in fundamentally different form. May has only two days to win approval for her deal to leave the European Union if she wants to go to a summit with the bloc's leaders on Thursday with something to offer them in return for more time.

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Key benchmark indices were trading with small gains in early trade. At 9:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 35.78 points or 0.09% at 38,130.85. The Nifty 50 index was up 15.60 points or 0.14% at 11,477.80.

Among secondary barometers,the BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.22%. The BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.24%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was positive. On BSE, 597 shares rose and 380 shares fell. A total of 56 shares were unchanged.

Overseas, Asian shares were trading lower ahead of a closely watched meeting by the US Federal Reserve set to kick off later in the day.

US stocks closed modestly higher Monday, as investors prepared for a meeting of Federal Reserve policy makers to begin Tuesday. The Fed is expected to leave rates unchanged when it concludes a two-day meeting on Wednesday. Investors will focus on the statement issued by policy makers.

On the US data front, the National Association of Home Builders' monthly confidence index was unchanged at a seasonally-adjusted reading of 62.

In Europe, Britain's parliament banned another vote on same Brexit deal. Prime Minister Theresa May's third attempt to get parliament to back her Brexit deal were thrown into further turmoil on Monday when the speaker of parliament ruled that she could not put her divorce deal to a new vote unless it was re-submitted in fundamentally different form. May has only two days to win approval for her deal to leave the European Union if she wants to go to a summit with the bloc's leaders on Thursday with something to offer them in return for more time.

Back home, HCL Technologies was up 0.66%. The company has entered into a shared services arrangement with Xerox Corporation pursuant to which Xerox will outsource (subject to compliance with European works council consultation and employment regulatory requirements) certain global administrative and support functions, including, among others, selected information technology and finance functions (excluding accounting). The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 18 March 2019.

Aarti Industries was up 0.07%. The company said that the meeting of the Board of Directors of the company is scheduled on 22 March 2019 to consider and approve the issue price for equity shares to be allotted to the qualified institutional buyers in the proposed issue, including a discount, if any, as permitted under the SEBI ICDR Regulations. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 18 March 2019.

Majesco was up 1.53%. The company announced the acquisition of the India based insurance software business from its parent company, Majesco. The business will be acquired by Majesco's 100% subsidiary in India, Majesco Software And Solutions India (MSSIPL), and is subject to statutory approvals including approval of the shareholders of Majesco and shall be effective from 1 April 2019. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 18 March 2019.

Voltas was up 0.23%. The company has further strengthened its leadership position in the Cooling Products space, by launching its new range of Voltas Adjustable Inverter ACs. Voltas' Adjustable Inverter AC comes with the unique value proposition of 'Flexible Air Conditioning' that allows the user to switch from 1.5 Ton to 1 Ton capacity, and vice versa, depending on the ambient heat or number of people in the room; leading to savings and optimization of running cost. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 18 March 2019.

ISGEC Heavy Engineering was up 1.63%. The company has fixed 29 March 2019 as the record date for the purpose of sub-division of 1 equity share of Rs 10 each into 10 equity shares of Re 1 each. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 18 March 2019.

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The 31st Conference of State Finance Secretaries was held in Mumbai on March 18th 2019. The Conference was attended by officials from the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, Controller General of Accounts, Comptroller and Auditor General of India and Finance Secretaries of 25 states and Puducherry. Governor, Reserve Bank of India inaugurated the Conference.

The meeting discussed inter alia various issues like gross market borrowings at the general and Government level, the need for greater information dissemination by the State Governments, measures for widening the investor base and deepening the secondary market in SDL and the issue of appropriate reflection of risk asymmetry of various State Governments in their cost of borrowing. It also decided to form a Committee to recommend parameters of a rule-based approach in fixing new WMA limits for the State Governments. Further, the States agreed to work towards complete integration of their receipts and payment systems with RBI's integrated accounting system (e-Kuber) for greater system efficiency.

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With diversified conglomerate Larsen and Toubro (L&T) signing a deal with Cafe Coffee Day founder V.G. Siddhartha to buy 20.4 per cent stake in leading services firm Mindtree at Rs 981 per share for about Rs 3,300 crore, in a bid to acquire the firm.

Mindtree on Tuesday came out with a scathing condemnation saying: "The attempted hostile takeover bid of Mindtree by L&T is a grave threat to the unique organisation we have collectively built over 20 years."

With this latest development, it's time to look at some hostile takeovers that occurred in the country in the past.

While India has been witnessing a spurt in the number of merger and acquisitions (M&A) in recent times, the number of hostile takeover attempts has been limited.

Technically, acquisition refers to the process in which a person or a company acquires controlling stake in another firm. It can be friendly or hostile.

A hostile takeover, on the other hand, is the acquisition of one company (target company) by another (the acquirer) that is accomplished by going directly to the company's shareholders or by fighting to replace the management to get the acquisition approved.

However, the government's policies to curb the concentration of economic power through the introduction of the Industrial Development and Regulation Act, 1951, MRTP Act, FERA Act etc. have made hostile takeovers a difficult proposition. As a result, since its economic liberalisation in 1991, India has witnessed only a handful of hostile takeover attempts.

One of the most famous hostile takeover attempts took place in 1983, when London-based industrialist Swaraj Paul sought to control the management of two Indian companies -- Escorts Limited and Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM) Limited -- by picking up their shares from the stock market. Though Paul ultimately retracted his bid, his hostile threat sent shockwaves through the otherwise complacent Indian business world.

In 1998, India Cements Limited (ICL) made a hostile bid for Raasi Cements Limited (RCL) with an open offer for RCL shares at Rs 300 apiece at a time when the share price on the BSE was Rs 100.

But the investors felt cheated as the promoters themselves sold out their stake to the acquirer, leaving little room for them to tender their stake to the acquirer during the open offer. However, ICL also bought out the FIs in the open offer and thereby increased their holding in RCL to 85%.

Another hostile takeover was triggered in 2008 when Emami acquired 24 per cent stake in Zandu from Vaidyas (co-founders) at Rs 6,900 per share. An open offer for 20 per cent followed along with Parikh's (co-founders) giving in their 18 per cent stake after four months of futility to save the company. Rs 750 crore was the consideration paid by Emami for a 72 per cent stake in the company.

In October 2000, Abhishek Dalmia made an open offer to acquire 45 per cent of share capital in Gesco Corporation at Rs 23 per share. This transaction entered became a drama of hostile takeover until the promoters of Gesco and the Dalmia group announced that they had reached an amicable settlement in the battle for Gesco, with the former buying out Dalmias' 10.5 per cent stake at Rs 54 per share for a total consideration of Rs 16 crore.

--IANS

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With canvassing for the 2019 general elections in full swing, it's a "houseful" notice outside most companies hiring out small fixed wing aircraft and helicopters for campaign purposes, aviation industry players said.

Top politicians of various parties covet choppers as they afford ease of mobility and access to the country's remotest corners, and small planes which can land on short airstrips.

Flying at average 100-140 nautical miles per hour at a height of between 2,000-3,000 feet, helicopters are the favourite as they help politicians reach out to the maximum constituents during the campaign.

Unlike many developed countries, there are not many choppers or small planes available for hire during poll season and the charter companies go in for the pre-election 'kill'.

According to the Western Chapter of Rotary Wing Society of India (RWSI) President Captain Uday Gelli, there are around 275 registered civilian helicopters in the country.

These include choppers owned by the central or state governments, corporates, public or private sector undertakings, and those that are privately-owned -- leaving around barely 75, mostly with the charter companies, for election purposes.

Mumbai-based aviation expert Pradeep Thampy said that among the small fixed wing aircraft, single-engined aircraft like Cessna are not permitted for poll-related purposes due to various reasons, but twin and multiple engine turbo-props are in great demand.

"The pilot plus five King Air C90 and the two-pilot plus eight King Air B200 are in great demand. There are an estimated two dozen in India but not available now. The bookings are full till the third week of May," Thampy told IANS.

Nevertheless, he said that top political leaders like Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah or Congress President Rahul Gandhi would not travel in small aircraft and helicopters.

"They generally take a flight to the nearest good airport, then hop onto either a small aircraft or a chopper for safety and security reasons," explained Thampy.

There are single- or twin-engined choppers of different companies like Eurocopter, Robinson, Bell and Sikorsky, ranging from pilot plus three to 11-seater variants, but all those which are airworthy have been fully booked for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"Though exact data of chopper hiring is not available, according to estimates, the (ruling) BJP is said to be the biggest customer, accounting for around 50 per cent of the choppers. Most political parties make bulk bookings of 45-60 days with a minimum three hours of flying daily," Gelli told IANS.

Depending on the kind of aircraft, the average cost of hiring a chopper can work out to anything between Rs 75,000-Rs 350,000 per hour, with a minimum three-hour contract per day, irrespective whether the chopper flies or not, and the normal flying time can be 15-30 minutes, according to Thampy.

The Election Commission has issued stringent guidelines on use of choppers and small aircraft during elections.

In fact, in February, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) convened a meeting of the helicopter charter companies and discussed the various Dos and Don'ts to be adhered to, while the RWSI issued an advisory on this sometime back.

"The charterers must ensure that the pilots carry out all pre-flight checks -- relating to route, weather and landing sites -- ensuring the security of the chopper at the remote sites and not transport cash/valuables, etc, since safety and security is the highest priority," said Gelli.

The biggest worry for the pilots, the VVIPs on board and the security and political activists on the ground is the public frenzy which seems to build up as soon as a chopper is sighted on the horizon, and the novelty of viewing a flying machine so close to them, especially among the rural masses, said a former chopper pilot, requesting anonymity.

Nevertheless, all agree that choppers help star campaigners cover vast geographical areas in the limited campaign time available and interact with the maximum constituents.

Barring the Prime Minister -- who is permitted an Indian Air Force helicopter for security reasons -- the EC's Model Code of Conduct does not permit anybody else to fly in a government chopper and they must rent out one.

The EC has also stipulated that all expenses on using fixed wing or rotary wing aircraft must be paid by the parties with suitable accounting, maintain detailed passenger manifests, exact departure/arrival timings, proper maintenance records with the district administration, etc.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at quaid.n@ians.in)

--IANS

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The streets, lanes and alleys of various pockets in West Bengal, including the eastern metropolis, are now filled with the sounds of heavy boots of the central paramilitary forces, as the troopers hold route marches, go door to door warning possible miscreants and asking people whether they are facing threats in connection with the polls.

All these activities have angered the ruling Trinamool Congress, and its leaders have gone ballistic against the forces. A former minister has even warned of "mass revolt".

The troopers, who started arriving in the state on Friday -- 27 days before the first phase of polls on April 11 -- have been visiting vulnerable pockets in the metropolis and the districts in a bid to instil confidence among the voters.

The state has a history of political violence, and the panchayat polls last year saw spewing of much blood, with ruling Trinamool Congress winning around 34 per cent of the seats uncontested amid allegations that candidates of other parties were forcibly not allowed to file their nominations.

The 10 companies of troppers from the Border Security Force (BSF) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) have now been deployed in Malda, North Dinajpur, Murshidabad, Birbhum, East Midnapore, West Midnapore, North 24-Parganas, South 24-Parganas and Kolkata districts.

At Ultadanga in the city's northeastern fringes, a trooper was seen sternly telling a woman that if her son tries to play any mischief, strong action will be taken.

"Koi dadagiri nehi karega (no one can bully) the trooper said.

In West Burdwan district's Andal, that comes under the Asansol constituency represented in Lok Sabha by BJP's Babul Supriyo, the troopers carried out a route march, enquiring from people whether they were fine.

"Is everything okay? Hope you are not facing any problem related to the polls," a trooper asked an old man Ranjit Dutta.

"Is anybody trying to terrorise you?" he asked again.

The footages aired on television led to a political slugfest.

Trinamool Secretary General Partha Chatterjee alleged the forces were trying to terrorise voters.

"Do they have any such rights? We don't have anything against the deployment of central forces. Their duty is to ensure free and fair polls. For this, they have to depend on the local administration," he said.

Trinamool MP from Barasat Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar took exception, saying she would look into the legal provisions to find out if the commandant exceeded his brief.

"Telling people that there should be no disturbances two months before the polls is not the duty of the paramilitary forces," she said.

City Mayor and Trinamool leader Firhad Hakim warned if the troopers visit houses and issue threats, "we will bring it to the notice of the Election Commission".

He alleged that some of the troopers have arrived with "a commitment".

"They have to remain neutral. But if the forces or some of their commandants have come with a commitment, that's improper. We will draw the attention of the Election Commission," he said.

Going a step ahead, Congress legislator Sujit Bose warned that the forces and the commission would have to bear the responsibility if there were "resultant problems".

"The paramilitary forces have to follow certain rules. They can't go beyond their mandate. If they do so, and insult slum dwellers, then they and the Election Commission will be responsible for the resultant problems," Bose said.

But the sternest warning came from Trinamool leader Madan Mitra.

"The way the central forces have started terrorising people, and the way they are creating pressure on the local administration, if there is a public revolt, they won't be able to tackle it," he said in Barasat of North 24 Parganas district.

On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party mocked the Trinamool.

"The central forces are only asking people to cast their own votes, and not to be afraid. Why is the Trinamool all worked up at such a small thing?

"Actually they are afraid that if people cast their own votes, it will be the end of the road for the Trinamool in this state," said state BJP Vice President Jay Prakash Majumdar.

--IANS

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Baku is hosting nationwide festivities on the occasion of Novruz - the national holiday of the people of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and First Vice-President, first lady Mehriban Aliyeva joined the Novruz festivities.

The head of state and the first lady arrived at the Fountains Square, where they had a talk with local residents and viewed the Novruz fair.
China has described as "one of the most notorious terror attacks" the 2008 Mumbai killings for which Pakistan was blamed.

The statement was made in a white paper called "The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang" released by the Chinese government on Monday.

In the chapter "International Counter-terrorism Exchanges and Cooperation", the white paper bracketed the Mumbai attack with the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people, the Paris 2015 attack which left 132 dead and the 2017 Sinai mosque attack that killed 235 people.

"China opposes all forms of terrorism and extremism, and opposes double standards on fighting terrorism. It opposes linking terrorism and extremism with specific countries, ethnic groups or religions," the white paper said.

It said that "as a responsible member of the international community", China also supported the UN in "playing a leading and coordinating role in international cooperation against terrorism".

The white paper came on the day when Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi arrived in Beijing on a three-day visit during which he will hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi under the first China-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue.

The Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 was carried out at multiple locations within a small geographical area by members of the Pakistan-based terror group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The impression of a pickpocket's chopped finger found from the crime spot has helped the police arrest him and his accomplice here.

Rahul, 24, and his accomplice Dharmbir, 35, were arrested on Monday on separate raids, when the probe team, with the help of Delhi Police's Finger Print Bureau, had identified Rahul by his chopped finger's impression, along with previous criminal records.

Rahul, a resident of Rohini was previously involved in four robbery and snatching cases.

"He was arrested from his residence, while Dharmbir was later arrested from his residence in Sultanpuri," Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Monika Bhardwaj told IANS on Tuesday.

The DCP said the incident occurred on a bus on Sunday noon when Rahul and Dharmbir picked the wallet of one Ranjeet Kumar Yadav, who was travelling with three of his relatives -- Dharmender, Anil and Mukesh, from Peeragarhi to Janakpuri.

"When Ranjeet got down at Vikaspuri, he realised his purse was picked by someone. He suspected Dharmbir who threw his wallet on the bus. When he caught Dharmbir, Rahul attacked Ranjeet and his relative Dharmender with knife," the DCP said.

"During the confrontation, Dharmender, Anil and Mukesh were injured, while Rahul's finger got chopped-off and fell on the bus," she added.

"A hunt is on to nab the rest of the accused of their syndicate," the police officer said.

--IANS

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The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) on Tuesday promised to waive education loan dues, abolish common entrance exams for medical college admissions and reservation of jobs in the private sector, among other promises, in its Lok Sabha poll manifesto.

The manifesto was released by DMK President M.K. Stalin.

The party promised to abolish the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and also bring back the administered pricing mechanism for oil and gas.

The DMK leads an alliance in Tamil Nadu in which the Congress is also a member.

The party also promised reservation in private sector jobs.

The other promises of the DMK are:

Metro rail projects for Madurai, Trichy, Coimbatore and Salem;

Permanent Indian citizenship for Sri Lankan refugees living in refugee camps;

Release of seven prisoners serving life sentence in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case;

Waiver of education loans;

Free power for weavers;

A separate budget for agriculture;

MNREGA employment guarantee scheme days to be increased by 50 days to 150 days

Bring back the Sethusamudram project;

Reduction in cable TV rates;

Re-introduction of old pension scheme for government employees;

Education to be brought back into the state list;

Tamil as official language in central government offices;

Abolition of highway toll

--IANS

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New Delhi, March 19 (IANs) In the last two years, there has been "no communal incident," in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told reporters on Tuesday on completing two years office.

Reality:

The Home Minister told Parliament on March 13, 2018 that the rise in communal violence was the highest in Uttar Pradesh - 822 incidents and 111 people killed in 2017 itself - the highest in four years.

The first incident, in fact, occurred soon after Adityanath assumed office. On May 5, 2017, a group of Rajputs entered a Dalit colony in Saharanpur while heading to garland a statue of Maharana Pratap, for which they had been denied permission. In the violence that followed one Rajput was killed and some 25 Dalit houses were torched.

Kasganj in western UP witnessed communal violence on January, 26, 2018. 22-year old Chandan Gupta, died of a gunshot wound and 44 people were arrested. The violence erupted over an unauthorised march on Republic Day.

-x-x-x-x-

Cow vigilantism

There has been a 69 per cent rise of cases of bovine-related violence since Adityanath assumed office, according to a FactChecker.in database that tracks such crimes.

"With four deaths in 21 attacks in 2018 - with the lynchings of 45-year-old Qasim Qureshi in Hapur, western UP, 20-year-old Shahrukh Khan in Bareilly, northern UP, and the murder of a police inspector and a bystander - UP has emerged as the deadliest for bovine-related hate violence and reports more attacks than any other state," FactChecker said

"Before March 2017, when Adityanath came to power, UP recorded five incidents of bovine-related hate violence. After that, up to December 3, 2018, the state recorded 11 cases of bovine-related hate violence."

The latest attack was the murder on December 3, 2018, of police inspector Subodh Kumar Singh, who was shot in the head - likely with his own firearm - by cow vigilantes on a field in Bulandshahr in western UP, who were apparently incensed by the discovery of cow carcasses. Singh was shot as he tried to restore peace.

-x-x-x-x-

Adityanath on the police: There was no political interference in police work since he took office and the law and order in the state was under control.

Reality:

According to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), in the 10-month period after Adityanath assumed office, UP topped the list of states with fake encounters and custodial deaths.

"As far as death in judicial custody is concerned, UP again ranks top of the NHRC list. The state recorded an astounding 365 judicial deaths out of a total 1,530 deaths recorded in the country," NHRC said.

According to MHA data, UP's Bareilly recorded the highest number of custodial deaths at 25, followed by Agra (21) and Allahabad (19). Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Varanasi constituency recorded nine custodial deaths, while Adityanath's Gorakhpur constituency recorded two deaths. Communally sensitive Kasganj reported five custodial deaths.

In his first 10 months in office, there have been more than 1,100 police encounters in the state, NHRC said.

On assuming office, Adityanath had said that the police would have full freedom to deal with rising crime in the state.

The police launched 'Operation Clean' and it came with its allegations of extra-judicial killings.

-x-x-x-x-

Thus, it's little wonder that Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi has termed Adityanath's report card an "illusion".

--IANS

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Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday directed senior officials to hold an emergency meeting on the grounding of flights by Jet Airways.

The Minister for Commerce and Industry and Civil Aviation tweeted: "Directed Secretary, MoCA, to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, advance bookings, cancellation, refunds and safety issues, if any.

"Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation)."

The development comes a day after passengers were left stranded at Abu Dhabi as Jet Airways cancelled flights.

The cash-strapped Jet, which has been forced to ground over 40 aircraft of its fleet due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors, is regularly grounding aircraft as it is unable to pay the lessors.

Industry sources said the airline had grounded over 50 per cent of its 123 aircraft.

On Monday too, following a similar pattern, Jet Airways informed BSE that four aircraft were grounded due to non-payment of money outstanding to lessors.

--IANS

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After facing flak for briefly banning one of India's most active Pages on Facebook that warned people about the dangers of fascism, the social media giant has restored the Page and apologised to its creator Dhruv Rathee.

A popular YouTuber with more than 1.7 million subscribers, Rathee on Monday pointed out that he was banned from posting on his Facebook Page after he wrote how Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power, which implicitly drew a parallel with the rise of right wing in India.

He highlighted in the post how Hitler remained unmarried, was more popular than the Nazi party, used propaganda and received support from industrialists.

While the post was a criticism of fascism, and not an endorsement, Facebook first determined that it was against its Community Standards, drawing severe criticism from several public figures.

Facebook, however, later realised its mistake and restored the Page.

"Account restored! Thanks for your support guys! See the second photo, the reason Facebook had banned me," Rathee said in a post, while adding a note from Facebook in which the social media giant apologised for the mistake.

"It looks like we did a mistake and removed something you posted on Facebook that did not go against our Community Standards. We want to apologise and let you know that we have restored your content and removed any blocks on your account related to this incorrect action," Facebook said in the note.

--IANS

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The Egyptian Police on Tuesday killed a gunman who opened fire at pedestrians in Egypt's Giza province, leaving four dead and five wounded, the media reported.

Citing MENA news agency, Xinhua reported that the 36-year-old man opened fire randomly with a machine gun in Awsim district of Giza.

A policeman and a non-commissioned officer were injured during the exchange of fire with the gunman, it added.

The motive behind the incident is still under investigation.

Some media reports said the man is addicted to drugs and his parents were among the killed in the bloody incident, while others said the man was drunk with a family dispute behind the shooting.

--IANS

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Janata Dal-United (JD-U) national Vice President Prashant Kishor on Tuesday slammed Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for his prejudice against people of Bihar, and asked him to focus on his job at hand.

"Rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice and malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again," the election strategist-turned-politician tweeted.

His retort comes a day after Naidu called Kishor a "Bihari dacoit".

Kishore also said: "An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So I'm not surprised with the baseless utterances of Chandrababu Naidu."

The Telugu Desam Party chief said on Monday at a public meeting in Andhra Pradesh: "K. Chandrashekar Rao is doing criminal He is grabbing the MLAs of Congress and TDP. Bihari dacoit Prasant Kishore has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh."

Naidu also reportedly said, "the Bihari man PK is behind the Form 7 scam in Andhra Pradesh. He helped the YSRCP (YSR Congress Party) to delete lakhs of voters sympathetic towards the TDP".

"Not only that, he is also behind the data theft in Hyderabad in which micro-level details of lakhs of our cadres were removed."

There was speculation in political circles here that Prashant Kishor, popularly known as PK, has been sidelined in the JD-U after he made numerous statements that were different from the party line.

--IANS

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Former CBI Joint Director V.V. Lakshminarayana will contest the elections from the Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha constituency on a Jana Sena ticket, the party announced on Tuesday.

Along with Lakshminarayana, the party announced candidates for eight more seats in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections.

With this, actor Pawan Kalyan's party has announced candidates for 10 Lok Sabha and 87 Assembly seats.

The party had earlier announced Gedela Srinibabu as its candidate for the Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha but he later joined the YSR Congress party.

Lakshminarayana, who quit police service last year to enter public life, joined the Jana Sena on Sunday, making his political debut. The former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer had said he was ready to contest the elections from any constituency.

As Joint Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Lakshminarayana headed investigations into several high-profile cases, including the disproportionate assets case involving YSR Congress Party chief Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy and the Satyam Computer scam.

--IANS

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The government is likely to turn to public sector banks to rescue Jet Airways in an apparent bid to avert thousands of job losses weeks before the general election.

Sources said the government wants National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), where it owns 49 per cent stake and whose mandate is to invest in stalled and new infrastructure projects, to buy a stake in Jet to save the cash-strapped airline.

Saddled with more than Rs 8,000 crore of debt, Jet is struggling even to pay salaries as it defaulted on payments to banks and aircraft lessors some of whom have reportedly begun to terminate lease deals.

The aviation sector employs close to 10 lakh people.

The Finance Ministry has been in touch with banks led by State Bank of India (SBI) on Jet's financial health . If banks agree to government proposals, then state-run banks including SBI and Punjab National Bank (PNB) as well as NIIF would together may own at least a third of the airline until they find a new buyer.

Currently, Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways is Jet's largest shareholder with a 24 per cent stake.

--IANS

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Iraqi army chief-of-staff Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi said that Iraq plans to open a vital border crossing with Syria in the coming days after meeting his Syrian and Iranian counterparts in Damascus.

"God willing the coming days will witness the opening of the border crossing and the continuation of visits and trade between the two countries," Lieutenant General said at a news conference broadcast by Syrian state television, Reuters reported.

The reopening of the border in al-Qaim, which Iraq closed in 2013, will boost trade links between Syria and Iraq and help their war-shattered economies.
The health of Taiwanese pro-democracy activist Lee Ming-che, sentenced in 2017 to five years in jail for subversion of state power, is at risk in the Chinese prison where he is being held, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Tuesday.

On the second anniversary of Lee's arrest, human rights groups in Taiwan and abroad said that the 44-year-old's health has deteriorated since he was imprisoned, reports Efe news.

In a statement, HRW said China has "forcibly disappeared and prosecuted citizens of other countries for helping Chinese activists or speaking critically of the government".

Among those are "Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, British bookseller Lee Bo and Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai, whose whereabouts remain unknown", the statement added.

The activist has been transferred twice to different prisons and is forbidden from sending letters or receiving books, including those that meet government approval, says HRW.

His wife, Li Ching-yu, has only been allowed to visit him six times since his imprisonment even though the country's Prison Law allows prisoners visits by family members at least once a month.

Lee, a volunteer with the Taiwan-based NGO Covenants Watch, was sentenced in November 2017 for having "online discussions about transitional justice and democracy in Taiwan and sharing books on human rights with friends in the mainland", the HRW said.

Lee, a former member of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, is a professor at the Wenshan Community College in Taipei.

He had disappeared mysteriously in March 2017, after entering China from Macau while on a private visit and his whereabouts had remained unknown until May, when Chinese authorities had said they had detained him on suspicion of subversion of state power.

Lee's case marks the first-ever extraterritorial trial against critics of China.

He is also the first Taiwanese dissident charged with subversion of state power as well as the first non-Chinese member of a non-governmental organisation, who was tried in China after a new law, that aimed to regulate nonprofits in the Asian country, was approved in 2016.

--IANS

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Jet Airways pilots' union will meet in Mumbai and Delhi to chart out their future course of action regarding non-payment of salaries.

The National Aviators Guild will hold meetings in Mumbai on Tuesday and in Delhi on Wednesday to discuss ways in which to deal with the present situation.

The meetings come a day after Jet Founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal appealed to employees to remain patient and give the resolution process some time to complete.

"I am fully aware of the hardships each of you are undergoing owing to the stretched-out ongoing dialogue and deeply, most sincerely appreciate your patience, perseverance and your incredible dedication and loyalty," he said in an email to employees on Monday.

"I would like to specifically thank our Pilots, Engineers and management for bearing with us during this trying time with delayed salary payments.

"Let me once more assure you that I am fully committed to ensure that your deferred salary dues are cleared on priority once all parties sign off on the Resolution Plan and I recommit to you my best and most strenuous efforts 24x7 towards this end."

Jet Airways is been in a tight spot financially even as a rescue plan is being negotiated between the airline, its partner Etihad and a consortium of banks.

The Jet Airways board had on February 14 approved a resolution plan, as per which the lenders, led by the State Bank of India (SBI), would become the largest shareholders in the airline by converting the airline's debt into equity at a nominal price of Re 1.

The bailout plan was approved by the shareholders on February 21.

--IANS

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Movies must be judged on artistic merit, and not windowing strategy, said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings amidst an ongoing debate on whether films on streaming services deserve a chance at the Oscars.

Hastings spoke about it at a Netflix Labs event here when asked if the streaming service would consider prioritising theatrical experience to a greater degree than it did for "Roma".

"I'd like to take it case by case. Today, the rules are the rules that they are, and we comply fully with those rules. And I think all of you here would say that 'Roma' is an Oscar quality movie.

"We really believe films should be judged upon their artistic merit, not upon its windowing strategy," Hastings said.

By the rules, he meant the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' rule book which says that films which, in any version, receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release will not be eligible for Oscars in any category.

Non-theatrical public exhibition or distribution includes, but is not limited to, broadcast and cable television, video on demand, DVD distribution and Internet transmission.

The film is also required to have a run of at least seven consecutive days at the theatres.

Alfonso Cuaron's Mexican drama "Roma" got a limited number of theatres for a three-week run before the film appeared on the service.

The film pocketed three Oscars this year, becoming the first Mexican feature to win the golden statuette for Best Foreign film. Cuaron took home the awards for cinematography and directing.

Hastings said that while "Roma" has got them to win at the 91st Academy Awards, they would like to continue "to win Oscars".

"It's great for the talent and shows," he added.

Ever since the black and white drama scored nominations, it sparked a debate on whether movies for streaming services be allowed to compete at big award ceremonies, traditionally meant for feature films which get full theatrical release.

There have been multiple reports claiming filmmaker Steven Spielberg has been planning to ask the Oscars' board of governors at their April meeting to vote for a new rule that would require an Oscar-qualifying movie to play for four weeks in theatres, thinning chances of films of streaming services to make the cut.

In a recent interview to IANS, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke had said this doesn't quite suit "the ecosystem of this evolving business" and that a common ground would have to be found.

(Radhika Bhirani is in Los Angeles on an invitation by Netflix. She

can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)

--IANS

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Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Tuesday resigned from his position after nearly 30 years in power.

Nazarbayev, 78, who has led Kazakhstan since its independence from the Soviet Union, announced his resignation in a pre-recorded television address.

"I have decided to end my duties as President," Nazarbayev said in the surprise address and added that the decision had "not been simple".

Nazarbayev said the Speaker of the upper house of Parliament, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, would take over as acting president for the remainder of his term.

The announcement came weeks after Nazarbayev sacked the Kazakhstan government, citing failures to improve the economy.

There has been speculation that Nazarbayev, who has ruled the oil-rich country since the Soviet collapse in 1991, might step down as President but continue to hold power in another capacity.

Nazarbayev's authoritarian regime focused on economic reform, while persistently suppressing dissent and resisting moves to democratise the country's political system.

--IANS

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Four staff members were injured on Tuesday when a student attacked them with a knife in a school in the Norwegian capital Oslo, police said.

The student was arrested but the motive was not immediately clear, The Independent daily reported.

The four victims, all employees at Brynseng School, were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

An Oslo Police official described the suspect as "very young". He said an investigation had been launched.

--IANS

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The Left Front on Tuesday announced another 13 Lok Sabha candidates in West Bengal for the 2019 polls, including for Darjeeling, the Asansol industrial belt and seats in Kolkata.

Left candidates for 25 out of the state's 42 Lok Sabha constituencies had been announced on March 15.

No candidates have been named for four Lok Sabha seats - Malda North, Malda South, Jangipur and Baharampur - won by the Congress five years ago, even though the seat adjustment talks between the Left and Congress collapsed a couple of days back.

--IANS

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Congress leader K.V. Thomas, who was miffed after being denied a Lok Sabha berth, on Tuesday said he was "a happy person" after meeting UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

The outgoing Ernakulam Lok Sabha member said: "I was with her (Gandhi) for 30 minutes and even though I won't be able to tell you all that transpired in the meeting, what I can say is that I am a very happy person.

"I am a member of the Congress family and have been in it since 1968 and will continue to be so. I am a happy man, after the meeting," said Thomas.

Two days back, Thomas was denied a Lok Sabha ticket from Kerala, which he described as "most shocking moment in his entire political career".

Congress sources said Thomas might be given the post of the United Democratic Front Convenor as incumbent Benny Behanan has been asked to contest against Lok Sabha member and CPI-M-backed Independent and comedian Innocent from Chalakudy.

--IANS

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After a major show of strength in his hometown Akluj here on Tuesday evening, Ranjitsinh, son of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP and former Deputy Chief Minister Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil, announced he would join the Bharatiya Janata Party tomorrow.

Addressing workers, Ranjitsinh asked: "How long should they tolerate injustice? Now is the time to take the final decision," amid a roar of approval from his supporters. All of them want Ranjitsinh to contest on a BJP ticket.

He praised the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in his brief speech.

Earlier this morning, in a tweet he had sought "guidance from the party workers" who have supported the Mohite-Patil family for decades, amidst a tussle with his 75-year-old father to grab the NCP Lok Sabha ticket from Madha constituency.

"You tell me what to do: Should we bear with it ('injustice'), or hit back for our future, progress and development? You decide, and it will be my decision," Ranjitsinh said, in an emotional build-up to the meeting of his supporters for this evening in Akluj, Solapur.

As per present indications, he will formally join the BJP tomorrow afternoon in the presence of Fadnavis, state party chief Raosaheb Danve-Patil and other leaders in Mumbai.

Preparing early for his exit from NCP, late on Monday evening, Ranjitsinh expressed his deepest condolences over passing away of Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar, and was later closeted in meeting with state Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan.

Ranjitsinh's joining the BJP will be the second major shock for the NCP which last week tottered on the brink: Parth Ajit Pawar had announced that he would be a contender for Maval Lok Sabha seat.

On the other hand, NCP President Sharad Pawar had already indicated his plans to contest from Madha. This would have meant three persons from the Pawar family -- Supriya Sule-Pawar, Parth and Shard Pawar himself -- contesting. So, Pawar quietly withdrew from the race and averted a major crisis within the party, which enjoys the national party status.

In the case of Mohite-Patil family, the NCP has not yet announced any candidate for Madha in the two lists declared so far, creating a panic situation in the Mohite-Patil clan.

An awkward situation could arise if Vijaysinh Mohite-Patil is fielded from Madha from where the BJP plans to nominate his son Ranjitsinh Mohite-Patil, forcing an unprecedented father-son electoral contest in Maharashtra.

For the opposition Congress-NCP alliance, it will be a third big setback during the pre-poll season. Only last week, Sujay, the son of Leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil, walked over to the BJP and is likely to get a party ticket from the Vikhe-Patils' stronghold, Ahmednagar.

At that time, the NCP had reacted sharply, prompting a retaliatory threat by Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil to boycott campaigning for the NCP in Ahmednagar.

Both, NCP and Congress have not reacted to the latest developments culminating in Ranjitsinh's decision to join the BJP.

--IANS

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BJP youth leader and former Speaker of the state legislative assembly Pramod Sawant, who on Tuesday was sworn-in as Goa's 11th Chief Minister, assumed the top political mantle despite never having served as a minister in the state cabinet.

Much like Sawant's mentor and immediate predecessor late Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who was sworn in as Chief Minister in 2000, without every having served as a minister in the state cabinet.

Sawant, 45, holds a Bachelor's degree in Ayurvedic Medicine from the Ganga Ayurvedic Medical College in Maharashtra's Kolhapur district and has practiced as a doctor of alternative medicine in Goa. He has completed his Masters in Social Welfare from the Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, a deemed university in Pune.

Sawant has been elected to the state assembly on two occasions in 2012 and 2017 from the Sanquelim assembly constituency.

Sawant, a Maratha by caste, served as a Speaker of the state legislative assembly from 2017.

He rose up in the ranks in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) through the party's youth brigade and was one of the younger BJP leaders who was considered close to Parrikar.

Speaking to IANS, Goa BJP spokesperson Dattaprasad Naik said that had worked under Sawant's leadership, when the latter was the state president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, described the new Chief Minister as a "humble, down to earth person" who understood the aspirations of the youth.

"I definitely hope that people don't start fitting him in Parrikar's larger-than-life shoes. People should give him due time to perform," Naik said.

Sawant's wife Sulakshana is currently the state president of the BJP's Mahila Morcha and his daughter studies in Class 6.

Sawant in his political career has generally managed to steer clear from controversy and was handpicked by Parrikar to assume the Speaker's post in 2017.

Sawant, who is a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteer, hails from the Sanquelim constituency, which is one of the key regions in the North Goa mining belt, where the BJP in recent times has found itself unpopular, especially after the state as well as Central government failed to work towards resumption of mining operations, which were banned by the Supreme Court last year.

Apart from his proximity to Parrikar and the fact that he has been with a member of the BJP for a long spell of time -- unlike several other sitting MLAs -- Sawant's lineage as an MLA from the mining belt, was one of the reasons why he was picked by party seniors, according to a BJP leader, who was involved in the process of selecting the chief minister candidate.

"Apart from choosing a Chief Minister from the cadre, we also had to send a signal to the mining regions, which have been severely impact by the mining ban, that we are serious about their concerns. We hope that this outreach will convince them to vote for the BJP during the Lok Sabha and assembly bypolls," the BJP leader requesting anonymity said.

It is perhaps ironic that Sawant, an alternative medicine professional has succeeded Parrikar, who died after suffering from pancreatic cancer for over a year.

Whether he will actually be able to fill in Parrikar's larger than life and trademark sandals, remains to be seen.

--IANS

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Alan Krueger, a top economic adviser to former US President Barack Obama and one of Americas most influential labour market experts, has died aged 58.

The cause of his death on March 16 was suicide, his family said in a statement on Monday released by Princeton University, where he taught since 1987, CNN reported.

Obama too issued a statement lauding Krueger's contribution to the recovery from the great recession. "He saw economic policy not as a matter of abstract theories, but as a way to make people's lives better."

"He believed that facts, reason, and evidence could make government more responsive, and his enthusiasm and curiosity was truly infectious," he said.

Krueger had earlier also served as chief economist at the Department of Labour under President Bill Clinton. He was the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2011 to 2013 under Obama.

Krueger's most famous work included a paper co-authored with the economist David Card in 1993 that challenged orthodoxy around the effects of the minimum wage, CNN said.

Through a natural experiment comparing employment in fast food restaurants across state lines after New Jersey raised its minimum wage, the pair found that the number of jobs did not decrease, as classical economics would have assumed.

--IANS

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif held a telephone conversation today, according to the statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website.

According to the statement, the diplomats discussed the current critical situation in Venezuela, expressing readiness to assist the settlement of the crisis in accordance with the UN Charter.



In addition, Lavrov and Zarif voiced preparedness to contribute to the international efforts for achieving a common understanding among Venezuelas political groups, as well as stressed the need for immediate resolution of its economic and social problems.
The Ministry of External Affairs has said one of the seven Indians abducted in Baghlan province of Afghanistan has safely returned.

Militants had abducted seven employees of an Indian company KEC in May 2018 in Bagh-e-Shamal village.

"We are grateful to the Afghanistan government for their support in securing the release and repatriation of the Indian national," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

"We continue to work closely with the Afghanistan government for safe and early return of the remaining six Indian nationals," it added.

The Indian employees were kidnapped when they were travelling to an area where the company has a contract for an electricity sub-station.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Pakistan Supreme Court on Tuesday heard former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's petition against an Islamabad High Court (IHC) order rejecting his plea for bail on medical grounds in a corruption case.

Sharif was on December 24, 2018, sentenced to seven years in prison by an anti-corruption court in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills case for owning a steel factory abroad without disclosing its ownership.

The former leader's appeal before the Supreme Court seeks his release on bail after suspending the execution of the December 2018 sentence, Dawn news reported.

The appeal contends that the IHC's February 25, 2019, order is in violation of his fundamental right to life.

The order held that none of Sharif's medical reports suggested that his continued incarceration would be detrimental to his life in any way, adding that he had been hospitalised time and again since January whenever he had complained about being indisposed.

Chief Justice of Pakistan Asif Khosa, while citing Sharif's medical reports, observed that the former Prime Minister was suffering from a kidney stone, hepatitis, diabetes, heart problems and high blood pressure.

Justice Khosa said that the reports were being reviewed to ascertain how long Sharif had been suffering from these ailments.

The Supreme Court issued notices to the National Accountability Bureau and adjourned the hearing till March 26.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Popular Telugu actor and Jana Sena President Pawan Kalyan will contest from two constituencies in next month's Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections, the party announced on Tuesday.

Following the footsteps of his elder brother and superstar K. Chrainjeevi, Pawan will make his electoral debut by contesting for two seats.

The actor, who has a good following among youth, will file his nomination from Bheemavaram in West Godavari district and Gajuwaka in Visakhapatnam district.

According to a party statement, its general body surveyed eight constituencies across the state and zeroed in on two constituencies.

Chiranjeevi, who had floated Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) in 2008, contested from Palakollu in his native West Godavari district and Tirupati in Chittoor district in the 2009 elections. He was defeated from Palakollu but won Tirupati.

PRP, which won only 18 seats in 294-member undivided Andhra Pradesh Assembly, later merged with the then ruling Congress party.

In the 2014 election, Jana Sena had not contested but Pawan Kalyan had campaigned for TDP-BJP alliance. This time the party decided to contest the polls in alliance with the Left parties.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NCP chief Sharad Pawar had separate meetings with Congress President Rahul Gandhi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Sanjay Singh on Tuesday amid speculation that the Congress and AAP could still come together in Delhi to fight the Lok Sabha elections.

Probed by journalists, Singh, a confidant of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, said the meeting was held to discuss how anti-BJP parties should stand together over certain issues despite having difference.

Refusing to go into details, he said it was the time to save the nation. "We all can save our parties later."

Asked about an alliance with the Congress in Delhi, Singh said: "The alliance question is hypothetical. Talks do not take place on ifs and buts. We have introduced our candidates who are working hard on the ground. We are also working to win all the seven seats."

The Congress is known to be divided over allying with the AAP in the Lok Sabha polls. While former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is bitterly opposed to any relationship with the AAP, a section of the Congress wants a tie-up with it.

Dikshit said on Tuesday that Delhi Congress "was capable of doing everything by itself" and said no one had spoken to her about any alliance.

Stressing that she was not in favour of an alliance, she, however, said that she will follow any instructions from the party leadership.

Apart from the situation in Delhi, Gandhi and Pawar are also learnt to have discussed about the alliance between their Congress and Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra.

The two leaders are also learnt to have discussed the broad contours of alliance among opposition parties for the Lok Sabha elections, including that in Bihar, where there has been no announcement of seat sharing so far among opposition parties.

The NCP is seeking Bihar's Katihar seat, where its sitting MP Tariq Anwar has joined the Congress.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The US Department of Defence gave Congress a list of projects that were likely to be affected by President Donald Trump's proposed wall along the Mexican border.

The projects included equipment maintenance facilities, training areas and schools for military families. Some of them are planned within US soil while some are to be located in other countries, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Trump administration has requested the diversion of $3.6 billion, part of the spending of these projects, to build the border wall.

In a memo attached to the list, the Pentagon on Monday said it has included the $3.6 billion in the fiscal year 2020 budget request to guarantee the construction of the affected projects.

The list was provided to lawmakers days after acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan promised to deliver the information.

"We know President Trump wants to take money from our national security accounts to pay for his wall, and now we have a list of some of the projects and needed base repairs that could be derailed or put on the chopping block as a result," Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed said in a statement on Monday.

"Now that members of Congress can see the potential impact this proposal could have on projects in their home states, I hope they will take that into consideration before the vote to override the President's veto."

Both the House of Representatives and Senate have voted to block Trump's emergency declaration but the President has vetoed their blocking resolutions.

The House is expected to make an attempt to override the President's veto on March 26.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Representatives of Internet companies, including social media platforms, on Tuesday had an inconclusive meeting with Election Commission officils on the use of social media for campaigning in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls while the Model Code of Conduct is in force.

Sources said the poll panel has called another meeting on Wednesday.

The two sides took up the misuse of social media during elections and pre-certification of political advertisements. They also discussed fake news and expenditure by political parties on online advertisements.

The Election Commission asked the tech companies to come up with mechanisms on their platforms for flagging model code violations and taking action within the given time-frame.

Sources said representatives from Google told the poll panel that it can set up the system to check fake news within 24 hours.

The meeting was attended by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora, along with Election Commissioners Sushil Chandra and Ashok Lavasa. Among the tech companies, representatives of Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google, Sharechat and Tiktok were present.

After the meeting, Berges Y. Malu, Policy Head of ShareChat, said the company reaffirmed its commitment with the CEC. "We look forward to working with the Election Commission of India to uphold the integrity and legality of social media campaigns by political parties on our platform," he said.

The meeting comes after the Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) sent a notice to the poll panel, urging it to act against the misuse of social media to influence voters.

With the Election Commission on March 9 outlining stringent guidelines for social media usage during elections, political parties and candidates won't be able to post unverified advertisements, photographs of defence personnel, hate speeches and fake news on their accounts.

According to new guidelines, candidates are required to furnish details of their social media accounts at the time of filing nominations. Their activities on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google would be under the Election Commission's close scrutiny.

Provisions of the model code of conduct will also apply to the content being posted on social media by candidates and political parties. Any violation may lead to action by the Election Commission.

The poll panel also asked Facebook to remove political posters shared by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leaders referring to Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman and his pictures.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shops and hotels downed their shutters in Pollachi on Tuesday in protest against the sexual abuse-cum-blackmail case that hit the Tamil Nadu town.

"It is an apolitical protest demanding punishment to all the culprits. Almost all the shops have downed their shutters as people of the town are shocked at the sordid episode. There may be one or two shops open here and there," K. Mahalingam, Taluk Secretary of the CPM told IANS from Pollachi.

He said permission for a rally slated for Tuesday was denied.

Mahalingam also demanded a fresh probe into the suicides of girls that happened during the last seven years.

Echoing him was R. Ganesh, District Secretary (South) of Pattali Makkal Katchi party.

"All the shops are shut except pharmacies. Couple of vegetable shops selling perishables are open but they too will be closed soon. Autorickshaws too are not plying."

The picturesque Pollachi part of Coimbatore district is located about 543 km from here.

Four persons -- Thirunavukkarasu, Sathish, Sabarirajan and Vasanthakumar -- all in their 20s, have been accused of sexually assaulting women in Pollachi and filming the act to blackmail them for money or for physical submission for over seven years.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Zealand police on Tuesday announced that post-mortems of all 50 people who were killed in the March 15 carnage in Christchurch mosques have been completed, with six of the bodies returned to their families.

In a statement, the police said that only 12 victims have been identified so far, The New Zealand Herald reported.

"While identification may seem straightforward, the reality is much more complex, particularly in a situation like this," the statement said.

"Our absolute priority is to get this right and ensure that no mistakes are made.

"We are doing all we can to undertake this work as quickly as possible and return the victims to their loved ones," it added.

Frustrations have been rising among the victims' families as they wait for their loved ones' bodies to be returned to them.

Islamic religious law usually calls for the body to be washed and shrouded in white cloth before being buried within 24 hours of death.

However, many are still waiting for the police to finish their investigations.

"Normally we shouldn't wait too long to bury, but in this case they're still taking time," Mohammed Bilal, whose cousin Syed Areeb Ahmen was killed, told The New Zealand Herald.

"It's hard, especially for Syed's family in Pakistan. He was the only son. It's really hard for the parents. We have to wait. It's the Government process. They have to (accept that)," Bilal added.

On Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that she will never mention the name of the lone gunman who carried out the shootings in order to deprive him of the notoriety he was looking for, and instead "speak the names of those who are lost".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Launching his party's election campaign in the Northeast from Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh, Congress President Rahul Gandhi arrived here on Tuesday evening for a two-day visit to Manipur.

Party sources said during his stay, the Congress Chief will finalise his party's candidates for the two constituencies in Manipur. The BJP hasn't announced its candidates for the state as yet.

Soon after his arrival, Gandhi paid tributes at Shaheed Minar and visited vendors at Ima Keithel or the women's only market. He also addressed workers at the local Congress party office.

Gandhi is slated to interact with students at the Palace compound auditorium on Wednesday morning. Later, he will address a public meeting at Hafta Kangjeibung.

The Congress, which ruled Manipur for three consecutive terms, secured 28 seats in the 60-member House in the last Assembly elections, while the BJP got just 21. However, the BJP managed to form a government in the state with the support of MLAs from other parties and some independents.

Former Chief Minister and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Okram Ibobi told IANS that Gandhi's visit to Manipur was meant to motivate people to fight for the restoration of their democratic rights, which were "snatched" away after the Assembly elections.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has postponed the release of his controversial movie "Lakshmi's NTR" to March 29.

"Get ready to know all the truths on March 29," Varma tweeted on Tuesday.

The movie based on Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founder and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. T. Rama Rao's second marriage with Lakshmi Parvathi and subsequent developments, was earlier scheduled to release on March 22.

RGV had announced on Sunday that he plans to move the court against the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for what he called illegally trying to stop the movie.

He had also planned to address a news conference along with his lawyer over the issue on Monday, which was later cancelled after a "misunderstanding with the CBFC was cleared".

"There has been an unfortunate misunderstanding between our office and the CBFC which has now been cleared. The CBFC is now doing the necessary action as per the laid down procedure," the filmmaker tweeted.

He had earlier revealed that he received a letter from CBFC informing him that his application to view the film for certification cannot be processed till the elections are held in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on April 11.

"The CBFC has no authority to postpone watching the film on the ground of model code of conduct even before viewing, which amounts to a blatant violation of the fundamental right of Freedom of Expression guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution of India," Varma had said.

"CBFC is assuming the jurisdiction of Election Commission which is not vested in it and is withholding certification of 'Lakshmi's NTR', and constitutionally it cannot partake the role of Election Commission," he had said.

Last week, a TDP worker had petitioned the Election Commission urging it to stop the release of "Lakshmi's NTR" on the ground that this could impact the coming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh.

The petitioner complained that the film has portrayed TDP President and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in a negative light, which could influence voters. He demanded that the film's release be stopped till April 11.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A symposium titled 'Stability and Security in the South Caucasus: Prospects for the German-Azerbaijani Partnership', timed to the 27th anniversary of the Khojaly tragedy, was held in Berlin yesterday. The event was organized by the German-Azerbaijani Forum, the Azerbaijani Embassy in Germany and the German Atlantic Society with the support of SOCAR.

According to the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, one of the participants of the event, the deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag, Johann Wadephul, stressed that Azerbaijan is Germany's most important trading partner in the South Caucasus. "The level of German-Azerbaijani relations is high. We appreciate Azerbaijan as a reliable partner in matters of energy supply and energy diversification - that's already a lot, but, in my opinion, our relations can be further enhanced, beyond trade and energy. Speaking of bilateral economic relations between the EU (in this regard - Germany) and Azerbaijan, I want to note that their potential is far from being exhausted," he said in the first place.

"We warmly welcome the initiative of the Azerbaijani government to diversify the economy, particularly in the areas of agriculture, transport and tourism. In this context, it is also important that conditions for European companies' activities in Azerbaijan are improving. It is pleasant that European companies operating in Azerbaijan report improvements in the work of the customs authorities, the provision of public services and economic prospects in the republic in general. The elimination of monopolies, a successful fight against corruption and legal security will open up even greater prospects and new opportunities for economic cooperation between Europe and Azerbaijan," Johann Wadephul said, welcoming the recent positive trends in human rights protection and development of civil society in Azerbaijan.

At the same time, the deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU faction drew attention to the need to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to ensure a stable future for both Azerbaijan and the entire South Caucasus as a whole. "This conflict continues to pose the greatest threat to the stability and security of the region. It concerns not only the region's population, but also European energy interests, which will only increase in the future. One thing is clear: the territory of Azerbaijan is illegally occupied by Armenia. The conflict can be settled through negotiations on the basis of compromises. As far as we, the Germans, have a clear position in the conflict under international law, it is just as important for us that compromises be found," the German politician stressed.

"We welcome the fact that the President of Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia last September agreed to continue the negotiation process and take steps to reduce tensions on the front line. It is also important that both sides expressed the need to prepare their peoples for peace. It is a useful activity supporting the efforts to overcome serious differences and contradictions in solving the conflict," Johann Wadephul concluded.

The symposium was also attended by head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev, chairman of the German-Azerbaijani Forum Hanns Eberhard Schleyer, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Germany Ramin Hasanov, director for Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia of the Ministry of foreign Affairs of Germany Michael Seibert, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy Thomas Barei, spokesman of the Social Democratic Party bloc for Foreign Affairs in the Bundestag Nils Schmid, Publicist Richard Kessler and Honorary Consul of Azerbaijan in Stuttgart Otto Hauser.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday visited Syria on the instruction of President Vladimir Putin and held talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Shoigu delivered a message from Putin to Assad, and they discussed fighting international terrorism in Syria, various aspects of security in the Middle East and post-conflict settlement, the Russian Defence Ministry said in a press release.

They exchanged views on expanding the possibilities for the voluntary return of refugees and temporarily displaced persons to their places of residence in Syria, as well as providing humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people, Xinhua reported citing the Ministry's release.

Syria with the support of Russia achieved significant success in the fight against international terrorism, and they saved the Syrian state and created conditions for the return of citizens to a peaceful life, Shoigu told Assad.

"However, not everyone is satisfied with the successes of the Syrian government in restoring a peaceful life. Western countries are trying to minimise any positive changes in Syria and create new obstacles to ending the crisis," Shoigu said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chennai-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) unicorn Freshworks which provides Cloud-based business software has expanded to the Asean market with the setting up of a regional hub in Singapore.

By opening its first regional hub for the Asean market, Freshworks on Tuesday said it aims to expand adoption of its customer engagement suite and increase its network of partner resources to meet rising customer demand in the region.

The Freshworks regional hub was set up with support from the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).

"Asean is an exciting market for us, we look forward to playing our role in supporting businesses to scale and achieve their full business potential. Singapore is a great launch pad into the region, as businesses are focussing on technologies to innovate," Sidharth Malik, Chief Revenue Officer, Freshworks, said in a statement.

Freshworks was one of the eight start-ups in India that became unicorns in 2018.

The company had raised $100 million in its latest round of funding from Accel Partners, Tiger Global, Sequoia and CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) in July 2018.

Freshworks products are widely used by businesses in consulting, retail and shipping industries from the region.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Sanjay Singh and NCP leader Sharad Pawar met at the latter's residence here on Tuesday amid speculation that the Congress and AAP could still come together in Delhi to fight the Lok Sabha eletions.

Probed by journalists, Singh, a confidant of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, said the meeting was held to discuss how anti-BJP parties should stand together over certain issues despite having difference.

Refusing to go into details, he said it was the time to save the nation. "We all can save our parties later."

Asked about an alliance with the Congress in Delhi, Singh said: "The alliance question is hypothetical. Talks do not take place on ifs and buts. We have introduced our candidates who are working hard on the ground. We are also working to win all the seven seats."

The Congress is known to be divided over allying with the AAP in the Lok Sabha polls. While former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is bitterly opposed to any relationship with the AAP, a section of the Congress wants a tie-up with the AAP.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Election Commission (EC) here on Tuesday urged internet companies, including social media platforms, to come up with a model code document for themselves on the lines of the model code of conduct for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as well as for the future.

They, in turn, agreed to come up with a code of ethics, which would lay down the operational rules for the industry by Wednesday, the poll panel said.

The announcement came after the EC officials' meeting with representatives of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) as well as social media organisations, including Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Google, ShareChat, TikTok and BigoTV.

Sources said the poll panel has called another meeting on Wednesday.

During the meeting, they took up the issues of misuse of social media during elections and pre-certification of political advertisements.

They also discussed ways to curb fake news, improve transparency in political parties' expenditure on online advertising and set up a dedicated grievance channel for expeditious action by organisations on reported violations.

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora said the model code of conduct was a unique document prepared through consensus between the political parties and the poll panel.

"It is followed by all political parties from the date of declaration of schedule of elections till the election process is concluded," he said.

Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa asked social media platforms to consider a clear clause on users' voluntarily agreeing not to misuse them for election or political purposes.

"Voluntary restraint is a hallmark of civilised society and works as effectively as any regulation," he said.

Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra also suggested social media platforms to consider deterrents to prevent misuse of the platform.

Chandra said a participative approach by the platforms would greatly help the EC meet its objectives.

After the meeting, Berges Y. Malu, Policy Head of ShareChat, said the company reaffirmed its commitment with the CEC. "We look forward to working with the Election Commission to uphold the integrity and legality of social media campaigns by political parties on our platform," he 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 staff members were injured on Tuesday when a student attacked them with a knife in a school in the Norwegian capital Oslo, police said.

The student was arrested but the motive was not immediately clear, The Independent daily reported.

The victims suffered bite marks and had been stabbed, Arve Rtterud, a police officer at the school, told a local newspaper.

The four victims, all employees at Brynseng School, were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

An Oslo police official said an investigation had been launched and officers were speaking to witnesses.

"It is a very young boy who is arrested. I can't say anything more about the grade level. He was arrested inside the school," he said.

Police were first called at around 8.30 a.m. local time to reports of an ongoing incident with a student threatening a teacher with a knife.

Police confirmed pupils may have witnessed the incident but no children were harmed.

The school, which opened in 2017 and has more than 800 pupils enrolled, gave no comment.

Local media quoted a text message sent by the head teacher of the school informing parents that the situation was now "calm and under control".

A survey for Norway's educational association last year found around one in five teachers had experienced violence over the previous 12 months.

--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 major blow to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Telangana, its senior leader and former MP Nama Nageswara Rao resigned from the party on Tuesday.

Nageswara Rao, a member of the TDP's politburo, the highest decision-making body of the party, was unhappy with the party leadership for some time.

In the recent Assembly elections, he had contested from Khammam constituency as the candidate of the Congress-led People's Alliance but was defeated.

An industrialist, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Khammam in 2009. He was then one of the richest MPs in the country with declared assets of Rs 338 crore. In December 2018, his assets stood at Rs 113 crore.

Apparently, feeling that the TDP has no future in Telangana, he decided to quit the party. He had called on Chief Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) President K. Chandrashekhar Rao a couple of days ago.

He is likely to join the TRS and may contest next month's Lok Sabha elections on the party ticket from Khammam.

Nageswara Rao is one of the last key leaders of the TDP in Telangana to quit the party.

In the recent elections, the TDP won two seats in the 119-member Assembly with one of the MLAs switching loyalty to the ruling party.

--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 Lok Sabha polls, three Tripura BJP leaders, including party Vice-President Subal Bhowmik joined the Congress on Tuesday.

The other two are former Minister Prakash Das and firebrand leader Debashish Sen.

Tripura Congress President Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarman and AICC Secretary Bhupen Bora welcomed the three leaders at a media conference.

Bhowmik was holding the Vice President's post in BJP. He joined the saffron party in 2015, while Das and Sen came to the party in 2017 from the Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist, respectively.

Sen was also the Vice-Chairman of the CPI-M controlled Kailashahar Municipal Council in northern Tripura.

After joining the Congress, Bhowmik told the media that he along with thousands of Congressmen and workers from other parties had joined BJP to give better governance to the people, but the one-year-old the state government has performed very poorly.

"Violating the BJP constitution, Biplab Kumar Deb has been holding two vital posts - Chief Minister and state party President. Deb's ridiculous comments and actions upset people of the state and have damaged the image of the government," the 58-year old leader said.

He said: "I was in Congress for 35 years. Before Deb returned to Tripura in 2016, I led the BJP but I have been humiliated by the newcomers."

Das and Sen said the BJP-led government in Tripura would soon collapse as they have not only forgotten their pre-poll promises but also doing anti-people works.

All India Congress Committee Secretary Bhupen Bora said : "From today (Tuesday) the BJP 'mukt' (free) campaign has been started from Tripura. Despite 10 of the 60 Tripura Assembly seats being reserved for the people belong to Scheduled Castes, there is not a single minister from this community in the ministry."

Tripura Congress chief Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarman said the party President Rahul Gandhi will address an election rally in Tripura on Wednesday.

"Rahulji would announce the Congress candidates for the Lok Sabha seats in Tripura tomorrow (Wednesday)," said Debbarman, a Tripura royal scion who was appointed state Congress President less than a month ago.

"More leaders and members from BJP would soon join Congress," the 41-years-old Congress leader said.

The ruling BJP is yet to react to the latest political developments.

Tripura West Lok Sabha seat goes to the polls on April 11 in the first phase of the general elections, and Tripura East on April 18 in the second phase.

The statutory notification for the Tripura West Lok Sabha seat was issued on Monday and the same was issued on Tuesday for the Tripura East seat, reserved for tribals.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two people were feared killed and 50 others were trapped when a multi-storey commercial building under construction collapsed in Dharwad in Karnataka on Tuesday, police said.

Five persons extricated from the debris told rescuers that at least two people had been killed in the tragedy that occurred close to 4 p.m. and that some 50 others were still under tonnes of cement and mortar, Dharwad Superintendent of Police L.K. Talwar said.

The reason for the accident was not immediately known.

Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy said he had told the Chief Secretary to send expert rescuers to Dharwad by a special flight.

He said rescue operations were on and that five people had been extricated from the debris. "I have instructed the concerned officials to be on location."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has once again pulled up Tesla CEO Elon Musk for blatantly violating a settlement pact reached last year over securities fraud allegations.

The SEC said in a statement on Monday that Musk, who is supposed to get approval from Tesla's board before communicating company information to investors via Twitter, has constantly been violating the agreement, TechCrunch reported.

The US SEC in February asked a US federal judge to hold Musk in contempt for violating the settlement deal.

The development came in response to Musk's tweet on February 19 that "Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500K in 2019".

Hours later, the billionaire sent a follow-up tweet indicating that the company will actually deliver just 400,000 cars this year.

Musk tweeted on February 19 that Tesla would produce "around" 500,000 cars this year, correcting later to clarify that the company would actually produce at an annualized rate of 500,000 vehicles by year end.

"The SEC told a judge on Monday that Musk has regularly published substantive information about Tesla and its business in tweets, beyond the February 19 instance," the report noted.

The SEC pointed to tweets about "Tesla vehicle tax credits and pricing, vehicle maintenance costs, plans for expansion of charging stations internationally, the EPA rating of Tesla vehicles, construction and production plans for a new Shanghai factory, and the results of government safety testing of Tesla vehicles as evidence of Musk's non compliance".

In August 2018, the US SEC filed a lawsuit against Musk after he tweeted that he was considering taking the company private.

Musk and Tesla later settled with the SEC. Tesla agreed to pay a $20 million fine and Musk stepped down as Tesla Chairman for at least three years.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the US will "re-engage" with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over issues of mutual concern.

Pompeo made the remarks on Monday in an interview with B98 FM, a radio station of the US state of Kansas via teleconference, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We believe we're still moving forward. It's certainly difficult -- we knew it would be. It's been a decades-long challenge," he said, according to the interview transcript circulated by the State Department.

"But we have the toughest economic sanctions in history," Pompeo said, adding that there was the most promising diplomatic engagement in history as well.

"And so we made a little bit more progress in Hanoi," he said, referring to the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader.

"We'll re-engage with him. It's incredibly important that we take down the threat not only for America and for Kansas, but for the entire world," said the US top diplomat.

Pompeo said on last Friday that Washington is still hopeful for continued talks with Pyongyang, confirming there is ongoing negotiation between the two sides.

After ending the summit in Hanoi on February 28 without reaching an agreement, Trump told a press conference that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of North Korea's nuclear programme, something the US could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that his country only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.

--IANS

pgh/

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declined a proposed meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Munich, as the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza reported, Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Germany Ramin Hasanov made the sensational statement at the symposium titled 'Stability and Security in the South Caucasus: Prospects for the German-Azerbaijani Partnership', which was held in Berlin yesterday. The event timed to the 27th anniversary of the Khojaly tragedy was organized by the German-Azerbaijani Forum, the Azerbaijani Embassy in Germany and the German Atlantic Society with the support of SOCAR.

By hosting this event, Berlin once again confirmed that the German authorities, including the ruling party, support the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and recognize the fact that Azerbaijani territories are occupied by Armenia. At present, speaker of the Armenian parliament Ararat Mirzoyan is paying an official visit to Germany - a symposium held in the German parliamentary society is creating an unfavorable background for him, stressing the need to abandon Yerevan's policy of maintaining the status quo in the conflict zone and move to constructive negotiations with Baku and the implementation of Madrid principles proposed to the parties by the OSCE Minsk Group.

In his speech, the ambassador noted that Baku attaches great importance to Germany's objective attitude towards the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "We hope that the support of Germany, as the leading EU country, will also help restore the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and encourage Armenia to give up its territorial claims. It's time for peace in Armenia now - the country has a new leadership that won the elections with promises to provide citizens with a good life and improve the situation. It can be done only through achieving peace with Azerbaijan. Populism can help to win the election, but not govern the country, so the Armenian leadership must finally stop its destructive rhetoric on the issue of conflict and take the issue of peace seriously - this is our invitation and call of people who have lost their loved ones, their homeland and their childhood in Khojaly and during the conflict," Ramin Hasanov stated.

"The Armenian leadership still prefers populism to serious negotiations. The Prime Minister of Armenia canceled the dialogue with the President of Azerbaijan during the panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference. Its a pity, but we dont give up hope. We hope for a constructive agreement of the Armenian side on the settlement principles developed by the OSCE Minsk Group - the Madrid Principles. These principles provide for the gradual resolution of the conflict, first of all, de-occupying the occupied territories, then returning internally displaced persons, establishing confidence-building measures and people-to-people contacts, and finally resolving the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, we are ready to provide it with the highest autonomy status within our territorial integrity. We maintain strategic patience and a constructive approach, despite our political, military, economic and international superiority," the Azerbaijani ambassador to Germany stressed.

He stressed that the German-Azerbaijani relations are recently on the rise. "Not least it happens thanks to Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to Azerbaijan last August, when she and President Ilham Aliyev held an open dialogue and resolved many issues of common interest. Azerbaijan is the most important economic partner of Germany in the region. The share of German-Azerbaijani trade turnover accounts for 70% of Germany's total trade with the South Caucasus countries. About 200 German companies operate in Azerbaijan. The German-Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce has been opened in Baku since 2012, which is the second of its kind in the entire CIS space. A high-ranking German-Azerbaijani working group on trade and investment has been operating since 2011. These results are logical, since Azerbaijan is the most strong economic power in the region - it accounts for 70% of the total GDP of the South Caucasus. The country ranks 25th in the World Bank's Doing Business 2019 report, just one place behind Germany," Ramin Hasanov said.

"Azerbaijan ranks 8th among the largest oil suppliers to Germany and cooperates with German companies in the construction of the Southern Gas Corridor, which will start supplying Caspian gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz-2 gas field to Europe no later than 2020. There is also high potential for cooperation in the construction of the East-West, North-South and South-West transport routes. There is great mutual interest in deepening our economic relations, especially in such areas as renewable energy, agriculture, information technology and transport. The August meeting of Azerbaijani and German business circles in the presence of Angela Merkel and Ilham Aliyev has created a breeding ground for the implementation of common ideas and projects," Azerbaijan's ambassador to Germany said.

The symposium was also attended by head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev, chairman of the German-Azerbaijani Forum Hanns Eberhard Schleyer, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Germany Ramin Hasanov, director for Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia of the Ministry of foreign Affairs of Germany Michael Seibert, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy Thomas Barei, spokesman of the Social Democratic Party bloc for Foreign Affairs in the Bundestag Nils Schmid, Publicist Richard Kessler and Honorary Consul of Azerbaijan in Stuttgart Otto Hauser.
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi on Tuesday announced a new manufacturing plant in Tamil Nadu, making it the company's seventh such plant in the country.

The manufacturing plant was launched in partnership with Flex Ltd.

"We are delighted to announce our new smartphone manufacturing partnership with Flex Ltd. In line with our sincere commitment to Make in India, this new association will further drive our localization efforts," Muralikrishnan B, Chief Operating Officer, Xiaomi India, told reporters here.

The seven smartphone manufacturing plants of Xiaomi are spread across four campuses in partnership with Foxconn, Flex and Hipad.

With the new plant, Xiaomi said it now has a combined manufacturing capacity of up to three smartphones per second during operating hours.

--IANS

gb/mr

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 28-year-old man belonging to Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district died in police custody in Srinagar.

Police said Rizwan Asad Pandit, belonging to Awantipora who worked as a teacher in a private school, was arrested three days back in connection with a militancy related case.

"He died during Monday night," a police officer said, adding that a magisterial probe had been ordered.

"In addition, a departmental inquiry has been ordered into the circumstances that led to the death," the officer said.

As a precaution, all exams scheduled for Tuesday in the Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST), Awantipora, have been postponed.

--IANS

sq/mr/pg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The selection of Pinaki Chandra Ghose, as Indias first anti-corruption ombudsman, or Lokpal is well timed with the next general elections being merely a few months away.

However, its heartening that the first Lokpal in the country is someone like Ghose who with the former chief justice of India J S Khehar-led bench, had sentenced Calcutta High Court Judge C S Karnan to six months in jail for contempt of court. He will also be remembered for his verdicts that barred photos of politicians in government advertisements, the prosecution of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J ...
The worlds advanced economies are suffering from a number of deep-seated problems. In the United States, in particular, inequality is at its highest since 1928, and GDP growth remains woefully tepid compared to the decades after World War II.

After promising annual growth of 4, 5, and even 6 per cent, US President and his congressional Republican enablers have delivered only unprecedented deficits. According to the Congressional Budget Offices latest projections, the federal budget deficit will reach $900 billion this year, and will surpass the $1 trillion mark every year after 2021. And yet, the sugar high induced by the latest deficit increase is already fading, with the forecasting US growth of 2.5 per cent in 2019 and 1.8 per cent in 2020, down from 2.9 per cent in 2018.

Many factors are contributing to the US economys low-growth/high-inequality problem. Trump and the Republicans poorly designed tax reform has exacerbated existing deficiencies in the tax code, funneling even more income to the highest earners. At the same time, globalisation continues to be poorly managed, and financial markets continue to be geared toward extracting profits (rent-seeking, in economists parlance), rather than providing useful services.

But an even deeper and more fundamental problem is the growing concentration of market power, which allows dominant firms to exploit their customers and squeeze their employees, whose own bargaining power and legal protections are being weakened. CEOs and senior executives are increasingly extracting higher pay for themselves at the expense of workers and investment. For example, US corporate executives made sure that the vast majority of the benefits from the tax cut went into dividends and stock buybacks, which exceeded a record-breaking $1.1 trillion in 2018. Buybacks raised share prices and boosted the earnings-per-share ratio, on which many executives compensation is based. Meanwhile, at 13.7 per cent of GDP, annual investment remained weak, while many corporate pensions went underfunded.

Evidence of rising market power can be found almost anywhere one looks. Large markups are contributing to high corporate profits. In sector after sector, from little things like cat food to big things like telecoms, cable providers, airlines, and technology platforms, a few firms now dominate 75-90 per cent of the market, if not more; and the problem is even more pronounced at the level of local markets.

As corporate behemoths market power has increased, so, too, has their ability to influence Americas money-driven politics. And as the system has become more rigged in businesss favour, it has become much harder for ordinary citizens to seek redress for mistreatment or abuse. A perfect example of this is the spread of arbitration clauses in labour contracts and user agreements, which allow corporations to settle disputes with employees and customers through a sympathetic mediator, rather than in court.

Multiple forces are driving the increase in market power. One is the growth of sectors with large network effects, where a single firm  like or  can easily dominate. Another is the prevailing attitude among business leaders, who have come to assume that market power is the only way to ensure durable profits. As the venture capitalist Peter Thiel famously put it, competition is for losers.

Some US business leaders have shown real ingenuity in creating market barriers to prevent any kind of meaningful competition, aided by lax enforcement of existing competition laws and the failure to update those laws for the twenty-first-century economy. As a result, the share of new firms in the US is declining.

None of this bodes well for the Rising inequality implies falling aggregate demand, because those at the top of the wealth distribution tend to consume a smaller share of their income than those of more modest means. Moreover, on the supply side, market power weakens incentives to invest and innovate. Firms know that if they produce more, they will have to lower their prices. This is why investment remains weak, despite corporate Americas record profits and trillions of dollars of cash reserves. And besides, why bother producing anything of value when you can use your political power to extract more rents through market exploitation? Political investments in getting lower taxes yield far higher returns than real investments in plant and equipment.

Making matters worse, Americas low tax-to-GDP ratio  just 27.1 per cent even before the Trump tax cut  means a dearth of money for investment in the infrastructure, education, health care, and basic research needed to ensure future growth. These are the supply-side measures that actually do trickle down to everyone.

The policies for combating economically damaging power imbalances are straightforward. Over the past half-century, Chicago School economists, acting on the assumption that markets are generally competitive, narrowed the focus of competition policy solely to economic efficiency, rather than broader concerns about power and inequality. The irony is that this assumption became dominant in policymaking circles just when economists were beginning to reveal its flaws. The development of game theory and new models of imperfect and asymmetric information laid bare the profound limitations of the competition model.

The law needs to catch up. Anti-competitive practices should be illegal, period. And beyond that, there are a host of other changes needed to modernise US antitrust legislation. Americans need the same resolve in fighting for competition that their corporations have shown in fighting against it.

The challenge, as always, is political. But with US corporations having amassed so much power, there is reason to doubt that the American political system is up to the task of reform. Add to that the globalisation of corporate power and the orgy of deregulation and crony capitalism under Trump, and it is clear that Europe will have to take the lead.

The writer is University Professor at Columbia University and the 2001 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. 2019 Project Syndicate
This is the time when political parties knock up manifestos. Some of them have taken down their old ones from their websites lest inquisitive persons try to check the implementation score. Parties have also made bonfires out of 2014 manifestos of their rivals in New Delhi to highlight the unfulfilled promises.

Few would remember any manifesto that seriously dealt with the crisis in judiciary persisting for decades. So no promises have been broken. There is no vote bank here, and the litigants distress is not on par with that of farmers or jobless youth. Several chief justices ...
Same difference What is the difference between the two major Dravidian political parties in Tamil Nadu? The answer is not that one has one leader (M K Stalin), while the other has two (Edappadi K Palaniswami and O Panneerselvam).

It is that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a Congress ally, says it will implement whatever it says in its election manifesto for the Lok Sabha election, while the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a BJP ally, says it would "pressurise" the new central government to execute its election promises. Observers also point out that ...
In one of the rare occasions, President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday awarded Shaurya Chakra to 16-year-old Irfan Ramzan Sheikh for fighting militants who attacked his residence in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Shaurya Chakra is usually awarded to armed forces and para-military personnel for "gallantry otherwise in the face of the enemy".

During the intervening night of October 16-17 of 2017, militants cordoned off the house of Sheikh. His father Mohammad Ramzan was an ex-sarpanch with affiliations to the People's Democratic Party (PDP).

When Sheikh, the eldest son of Mohammad Ramzan, opened the door, he found three militants in the verandah of the house armed with rifles and grenades.

"Sensing that the militants could harm his family, he exhibited highest degree of courage and faced the militants for sometime so as to avoid their entry inside the house. In meantime, his father came out and the militants pounced on him, resulting in scuffle," the citation for the award read.

Sheikh did not think for a moment for his own safety and pounced upon the militants for safeguarding the life of his father and other family members, it read.

The militants also resorted to indiscriminate firing, resulting in severe injury to Sheikh's father. He later succumbed.

However, Sheikh did not lose courage and continued to engage in scuffle with one of the militants, who resorted to indiscriminate firing resulting in severe injuries to the militant as well.

On seeing one of their associates injured, the militants tried to flee. However, Sheikh chased them and they left the body of their fellow militant behind.

"Irfan Ramzan Sheikh exhibited the extraordinary show of bravery and maturity in such a small age," the citation read.

Currently, studying in Class X, Sheikh aspires to become an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two ministers and six MLAs of the BJP in Arunachal Pradesh Monday joined the National Peoples' Party (NPP) of Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma ahead of the assembly election next month.

Home Minister Kumar Waii and Tourism Minister Jarkar Gamlin and the six legislators were denied tickets by the BJP.

Waii said the BJP has lost its previous glory in the eyes of the people for its "false promises".

"We will not just fight the elections but will form an NPP government in the state," Waii said.

Besides the eight BJP MLAs, a legislator of the Peoples Party of Arunachal (PPA) and 19 other saffron party leaders also joined the NPP.

The NPP, which is ruling Meghalaya along with the saffron party as an alliance partner, has decided to field 40 candidates in the Arunachal Pradesh assembly polls which will be held simultaneously with Lok Sabha elections in the state.

NPP general secretary Thomas Sangma said, "We will go it alone in Arunachal Pradesh and announce the candidates list on Wednesday."



NPP state unit spokesperson Mutchu Mithi, however, said the party might go for post-poll alliance, if required.

The party would soon decide on fielding a candidate for the lone Lok Sabha seat in the state, Thomas Sangma said.

The NPP is a constituent member of the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two alleged cattle smugglers were arrested in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district and 16 animals were rescued from their vehicles, police said Tuesday.

The two vehicles carrying the cattle were intercepted in Chadwal area on Monday, they said.

A case has been registered against the duo under relevant sections and further investigation is underway, they said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that illegally privatized lands will be returned to the state.

The PM said that when he visited Meghri, he was surprised as he learned that there were no free territories. "We learned that some high-ranking officials have privatized all the areas surrounding the free economic zone in Meghri," ARKA cited Pashinyan as saying.

"We politely asked them to return these territories, but they refused. Very well. We considered the matter in details and criminal cases have been opened. It will necessarily be proved that abuses have been committed," the PM noted.

Pashinyan stressed that it doesn't mean that all the privatized territories will be returned to the state, it will be done in illegal privatization cases.
Four persons were arrested for allegedly robbing a godown in Thane's Bhiwandi area, police said Tuesday.

During interrogation police realised that two of them are escaped prisoners having escaped from Aadharwadi Jail in the district in 2008, an official said.

"A godown was robbed on March 1 of yarn worth Rs 2.67 lakh. Shatab Qureshi, Sagar Mishra, Dulal Chauhan and Raju Harijan have been arrested," a Narpoli police station official said.

Mishra and Harijan had escaped from Aadharwadi Jail in Kalyan on October 2, 2008 and were on the run since, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A four-storeyed under construction building collapsed at Dharwad in north Karnataka Tuesday, killing two people, critically injuring five and leaving many others trapped, police said.

The building came down crashing giving rise to a thick cloud of dust at Kumareshwaranagar in the heart of Dharwad, triggering widespread panic among neighbours and passers-by.

"Two people have died while some 30 to 40 people were trapped," said a police officer at Dharwad police station.

Rescuers have pulled out 28 people from the rubble, police said, adding, the injured have been hospitalised.

As many as 10 ambulances and five fire tenders were deployed to carry out relief and rescue operations.

Residents said there were several shops on the ground floor and many people often used to visit there.

Rajesh, a witness, told a Kannada TV channel that the first two floors of the building were being rented out by shops.

"There was a tea shop, a photostat shop," he added.

Former Karnataka minister and Congress leader from the region Vinay Kulkarni said one of the partners in the building was his relative.

Speaking to reporters, he said whoever was involved should face action.

Most of those trapped were migrant labourers from North India who were engaged in laying the tiles.

Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, who expressed shock over the collapse, directed the chief secretary to supervise the rescue operation.

An eye-witness alleged that the building did not have the capacity to bear four storeys whereas an extra floor was being added.

"The builders had used substandard materials," he told reporters.

Besides police and fire and emergency services, BSF jawans, who were deployed for the Lok Sabha polls, too were engaged, as the rescue operations were on.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A total 37 companies of central para military forces (CPMF) have arrived in Tripura for the two-phase Lok Sabha election in the state, top police official said Tuesday.

The CPMF personnel would be deployed in Tripura for the first phase of elections scheduled to be held here on April 11, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Arindam Nath said.

Around 100 companies of CPMF would arrive in the state for the Lok Sabha elections and preventive arrests would be stepped up to ensure law and order situation before, during and after the polls, he said.

"We have stepped up preventive arrests and execution of non-bailable warrants. Nearly 200 persons have been arrested till now. The highest number of preventive arrests were made in West Tripura district," he informed.

Tripura Chief Electoral Officer Sriram Taranikanti said that central security forces were deployed in confidence building measures in different parts of the state.

"They are engaged in area domination, patrolling and other confidence building measures in different parts of Tripura", the CEO said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Four peacocks were found dead on Tuesday at Khakharmala vilage in Rajasthan's Bhilwara district, police said.

The village sarpanch informed the police after the carcasses were found on a government land, Raipur police station in-charge Surendra Kumar Godhra said.

He said the cause of death will be known after post-mortem and no case has been registered yet.

Wildlife activist Babulal Jajoo said poachers illegally sell the bird's meat and feathers and alleged that the state government has failed to make efforts for peacock conservation.

Last year, 250 peacocks were killed in Nainwa of Bundi and 300 in Nagaur, Jajoo claimed.

The peacock is India's national bird and protected under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.

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Five students of the Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) have been selected for summer judicial clerkships at the Supreme Court of Hawaii, United States starting in June this year.

Jindal Global University (JGU) Vice-Chancellor Dr C Raj Kumar said the five students have been selected for the externship based on academic background and their performance in an interview conducted by judges of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

The programme was first conceived during the visit of Hawaiian Supreme Court Judge Justice Michael Wilson in 2015 and till 2018, a total of 18 students from the JGLS have interned at the Hawaii Supreme Court, he said.

Sajal Mendiratta, Tanshi Bajaj, Suhas Putta, Siddharth Sharma, and Kartikeya Jaiswal of the JGLS have been selected for the externship, a media release issued here said.

These students have been selected for the externship following an interview and screening by the visiting judges of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

The vice-chancellor said the students will be closely mentored by some of the most outstanding judicial minds and it will help to broaden the horizons and their perspectives for pursuing a future career in the judiciary.

"This judicial clerkship will provide JGU students an extraordinary opportunity to witness the functioning of the judicial process in the USA besides enabling them to understand the nuances of law and justice in the US legal system," said Kumar.

An interactive session titled 'Candid Conversations on Careers in Law and Justice: Judges as Conscience Keepers of Democracy', was organised at the JGU, featuring a discussion between Justices Michael Wilson and Sabrina McKenna of the Hawaiian Supreme Court and Prof Kumar.

The panelists deliberated on topics like the role and motivations of a judge, contributions of the judiciary to society and its role in protecting democracy.

Explaining a judge's role in ensuring democratic rights, Justice McKenna said the threats that a democracy faces is to be countered by law and judiciary, and lawyers have to step forward to ensure justice and make people believe in the role of law.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Additional Director General of Police R N Dhoke has been given charge of the nodal officer in Punjab for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

"The Election Commission of India (ECI) has approved the name of ADGP R N Dhoke as the nodal officer, in-charge,election cell of Punjab Police in connection with General elections," Punjab Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), S Karuna Raju said in an official release.

The orders concerning the appointment of Dhoke have been issued by the ECI and a letter to this effect has been sent to the state government.

Earlier, ADGP rank officer V K Bhawra was discharging duties as the nodal officer of the Punjab Police for elections.

Meanwhile, the enforcement teams have so far seized valuables worth Rs 64.63 crore in violation of the model code of conduct ever since the elections were announced.

Raju said the surveillance teams seized 62,697 litres of liquor worth Rs 2 crore.

Similarly, the enforcement wings also recovered 1,530 kg psychotropic substances amounting to Rs 60.93 crore and also confiscated unaccounted cash of Rs 1.70 crore.

As per the directions of the election commission, Raju said till date 2,33,949 licensed weapons have been surrendered in the state.

The ECI has accorded its approval to the allotment of the liquor vends for the year 2019-20 in Punjab, Raju further informed.

The Punjab CEO in an official release said that the draw of lots must be conducted by the officers only.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After an alliance with the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal is looking to regain its base in western UP and win the three seats it will be contesting in the coming Lok Sabha election.

In 2014, the defeat of the then Union minister and Rashtriya Lok Dal president Ajit Singh in Baghpat to BJP's Satyapal Singh, who had resigned as Mumbai Police commissioner just before the election, was "unexpected" for many as he had never lost the seat since 1999.

"The defeat was seen as a big sign of how the BJP was consolidating the dominant Jat vote in its favour. This time, RLD has an opportunity to take a sweet revenge by improving its performance with the help of SP and BSP and get back the Jat vote in its fold," said political analyst Manjula Upadhyay.

RLD leaders are confident of repeating their performance of Kairana LS bypoll last year when they succeeded in getting back Jat votes they had lost to the BJP in 2014.

"During Kairana byelection, RLD leader Jayant Chowdhury's slogan to Jats was 'BJP Ki Poonch Nahi, RLD Ki Mooch Bano'. The call was a hit and he succeeded in invoking the name of his grandfather Chowdhury Charan Singh and reminding the Jats of his legacy," a senior RLD leader said.

During the Kairana bypoll, RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan succeeded in defeating the BJP in the high-profile battle necessitated following the death of BJP MP Hukum Singh.

RLD candidate Tabassum was supported by the Congress, SP and BSP.

Kairana was seen as a testing ground for the new-found opposition unity against the rising BJP then, and the win gave a boost to opposition's efforts to stitch a grand alliance against the saffron party.

Statistically, RLD's performance showed a downward trend after the death of former prime minister Chowdhury Charan Singh.

When Charan Singh died in 1987, Bharatiya Lok Dal had the maximum 83 legislators in Uttar Pradesh. The number dwindled over the years and came down to just one in 2017 assembly polls.

The best performance of RLD under Ajit Singh was in 2002 when it won 14 assembly seats in alliance with the BJP.

The party won five seats in 2009 Lok Sabha polls, again in alliance with the BJP, but during 2012 assembly polls, it forged an alliance with Congress and won nine assembly seats.

In 2014 general election and 2017 assembly polls, the party's performance was worst as it failed to turn voters in its favour and the BJP succeeded in making a dent in its vote bank.

Of the seven seats contested in 2014, the party lost all of them.

Even party chief Ajit Singh slipped to the third spot in his traditional Baghpat seat while his son Jayant Chowdhury lost to Bollywood actor-politician Hema Malini, who contested on a BJP ticket from Mathura.

Other candidates including Amar Singh, Jaya Prada and Rakesh Tikait also could not perform well and all of them lost.

In 2017 UP assembly polls, the RLD had contested 277 of the total 403 seats but won only one Chhaprauli seat.

After entering an alliance with SP-BSP, the RLD will be contesting Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar and Mathura seats.

While party chief Ajit Singh is likely to contest from Muzaffarnagar, his son Jayant will be contesting from party's traditional seat Baghpat.

Asked about RLD's Lok Sabha prospects, a senior RLD leader said, "This time equations are in our favour. Be it Muslim, backwards, Dalits, Jats or any other community, all are in our favour. Farmers are angry due to non payment of cane dues."



SP MLC Rajpal Kashyap, when asked about the alliance partner, said, "This is an alliance of ideologies and it will succeed in defeating the communal BJP. We are all committed to ensure victory of the alliance candidates.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After antelopes, dogs have emerged as a major threat to the endangered Great Indian Bustard, inspite of conservation and breeding projects underway in the state to stop the bird, one of the heaviest flying birds, from being extinct.

According to wildlife enthusiasts, the bird is falling prey to stray dogs in desert areas of Jaisalmer, where the number of the canines has seen a spurt.

"These dogs have emerged as a major threat to conservation efforts. They kill the birds and even destroy their eggs," said Radheshyam Pemani, a wildlife enthusiast from Pokhran.

He said dogs routinely attack the birds in evening, when they come out to feed.

The weight of the bird which can be up to 15kg proves fatal for it when dogs attack. If the bird is alert, it takes a flight away from dogs but a delay weakens its chances of survival.

Until 1980s, up to 2000 Great Indian Bustards could be found in western India, reports say. But due to rampant poaching and dwindling grasslands, their population declined rapidly.

In 2011, the International Union for Conservation of Nature categorised the bird as "critically endangered".

A petition is being heard in the Rajasthan High Court for the safety and conservation of the endangered bustard, with a focus on identification and elimination of the threats to its life.

High-tension wires in the desert region have also been cited as another threat to the GIB.

Two days ago during the hearing of a case on the matter, the counsel representing the Wildlife Institute of India, Sanjeet Purohit, said that out of the total fatalities, 15 per cent are caused by high-tension lines, while about 8 per cent fatalities are caused by "other reasons".

"Though, efforts have been initiated in the form of mapping of the high-tension lines and wind mills in the proximity with the habitation of the GIB through satellite imagery, but threats like stray dogs has not been taken under consideration either by WII or the forest department," said Pemani.

According to him, officials are aware of the threat to the bustard from dogs, but there was a lack of seriousness to protect it.

Wildlife lovers believe that this requires a hand-eye coordination between the administration and the forest department with a view to check the growing number of canines.

Instead of dropping canines in rural areas from cities, the civic bodies should start a fool-proof castration drive to control the population of dogs.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu Tuesday promised a slew of measures in its election manifesto, including a national poverty eradication initiative that will be named after the late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa.

Releasing the manifesto for the general election at a press conference here, AIADMK coordinator and Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam said the party would "vigorously pursue" the Amma National Poverty Eradication Initiative (ANPEI).

"Based on the experience already gained by the AIADMK government in this regard, a direct transfer of Rs 1,500 per month to the targeted population of the poor and deprived (people below poverty line, destitute women, widows without income, differently-abled, landless agricultural labourers, rural and urban manual labourers, destitute senior citizens etc) should not be difficult to implement," the party said.

Jayalalithaa is addressed as 'Amma' (mother) by her supporters and the ruling AIADMK has been implementing welfare measures under the brand Amma initiative, including the popular Amma subsidised canteens.

Panneerselvam, flanked by party co-coordinator and Chief Minister K Palaniswami, along with senior leaders and ministers, read out the salient features of the manifesto.

Reiterating the party's stand, Panneerselvam said AIADMK would press for the release of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and strive for the scrapping of the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test for medical admissions.

"AIADMK will urge the Government of India and the president to give due direction to the Governor of Tamil Nadu for release of seven Tamil convicts as ordered by the Supreme Court and approved by the cabinet of Tamil Nadu government," he said.

In September 2018, the cabinet had recommended to Governor Banwarilal Purohit the release of Murugan, Santhan, Perarivalan, Jayakumar, Ravichandran, Robert Payas and Nalini, all serving life in prison for their involvement in the killing of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally here in 1991 by an LTTE suicide bomber.

On the Sri Lankan Tamils issue, AIADMK said it would press the Centre to take up the issue of "massacre" of civilian Tamils in the island republic during the peak of hostilities, with the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

Further, the party would urge the Centre to implement river interlinking programmes like the Cauvery-Godaveri linking project.

The manifesto said AIADMK would urge the Centre to waive education loans of students and also urge the government to come up with a firm policy to waive the loans obtained by small and medium farmers in the country.

It would urge the Centre to move education from the Concurrent List to the State List.

It said it would also urge the Centre to accept the Justice Sachar Committee recommendation to treat the converted SCs/STs, BCs and MBCs (to both Islam and Christianity) as "regular SC/ST/BC/MBC and provide them with all concessions now provided" for them.

The party said it would urge the Union government to implement Tamil as one of the official languages of the country and also impress upon it to declare Cauvery delta region a protected agriculture zone.

Panneerselvam said his party would urge the Centre to accord full statehood to the Union Territory of Puducherry to fulfil the aspirations of people.

Stressing that there is a need to skill the youth, the party said it would pursue with the Centre to institutionalise an arrangement similar to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority of the Philippines.

On the pricing of petroleum products, AIADMK said it would urge the Centre to take away the price-fixing power from the consortium of oil companies and take it upon itself and evolve a people friendly policy so that prices of commodities come under control.

"Frequent increase in prices of petroleum products by oil marketing companies have been augmenting the cost of all essential commodities, consumer goods and transport cost to all commuters, increasing the cost of living of consumers," it said.

On FDI, the party said it would urge the Union government to give up the policy of allowing foreign direct investment in retail to protect small and tiny retailers, reflecting Jayalalithaa's firm stand on this subject.

Its other promises included urging the Centre to establish a national commission for the welfare of fishermen.

AIADMK is leading the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

The NDA constituents in Tamil Nadu are BJP, DMDK, PMK, TMC, Puthiya Neethi Katchi and Puthiya Tamizhagam while former Puducherry chief minister N Rangasamy-led All India NR Congress is the party's ally in the neighbouring union territory.

Polls to 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and one in Puducherry are scheduled on April 18.

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The AIADMK promised on Tuesday a slew of measures in its manifesto, including a national poverty eradication initiative that will be named after late chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Releasing the manifesto for the general election at a press conference here, AIADMK coordinator and Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam said the party would "vigorously pursue" the Amma National Poverty Eradication Initiaitive (ANPEI).

"Based on the experience already gained by the AIADMK government in this regard, a direct transfer of Rs 1,500 per month to the targeted population of the poor and the deprived (people below poverty line, destitute women, widows without income, differently-abled, landless agricultural labourers, rural and urban manual labourers, destitute senior citizens etc) should not be difficult to implement," the party said.

Jayalalithaa is addressed as 'Amma' (mother) by supporters and the ruling AIADMK is already implementing a series of welfare measures under the Brand Amma initiative, including the popular Amma subsidised canteens.

Among others, it promised to press for the release of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandjhi assassination case and strive for the scrapping of the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) for medical admissions.

The state goes to polls in a single phase on April 18.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he has arrived Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the opening of the Central Mosque in Simferopol.

"Ive invited Turkish President Erdogan. He knows about that and, as far as I understand, he is very positive about this invitation," the Russian leader said.

"Well wait and see if he has the time and opportunity to arrive here," TASS cited Putin as saying.
Alia Bhatt is set to star as female lead opposite Salman Khan in filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali's next, which is titled, "Inshallah", the makers announced Tuesday.

The film be co-produced by Khan and Bhansali's production banners.

Bhansali is re-teaming with Khan after two decades as a lead in the film, which is described as a "love story".

Salman took to Twitter to share the

"It's been 20 years but I am glad Sanjay and I are finally back in his next film, 'Inshallah'. Looking forward to work with Alia and inshallah we will all be blessed on this journey. #Inshallah #SLB @aliaa08 @bhansali_produc @SKFilmsOfficial," the actor wrote.

Bhansali Productions also confirmed the announcement.

"Finally all speculations and wait end as 2019 brings together #SLB, @BeingSalmanKhan and @aliaa08 in his next film, #Inshallah. Wishing that this entire journey be filled with a lot of love and Inshallah, the team is blessed with hope and faith @SKFilmsOfficial @prerna982," the tweet from their official handle read.

The film also marks Bhatt's first collaboration with both Khan and Bhansali.

She said working with the actor-director duo is a dream come true for her.

"I was nine when I first walked into Sanjay Leela Bhansali's office, all nervous and hoping and praying that I would be in his next film. It's been a long wait.

"Dream with your eyes wide open they say and I did. Sanjay Sir and Salman Khan are magical together and I can't wait to join them on this beautiful journey called 'Inshallah'#SLB @BeingSalmanKhan @bhansali_produc @SKFilmsOfficial @prerna982," Bhatt tweeted.

The development came almost a month after Prerna Singh, CEO of Bhansali Productions, revealed Khan will star in Bhansali's next venture.

The filmmaker made his directorial debut with 1996's "Khamoshi - The Musical", which starred Khan. The actor went on to feature in the director-producer's classic "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" in 1999 opposite Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Ajay Devgn.

Khan also made a cameo in Bhansali's "Saawariya", which launched Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor.

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Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar Tuesday targeted NCP president Sharad Pawar, demanding to know why underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's proposal to surrender to the Indian authorities in 1990s was ignored.

At the relevant time, Pawar was the chief minister of Maharashtra.

Addressing a press conference here, Ambedkar said Dawood had met senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani in London and expressed his willingness to surrender to the authorities and face the law in India.

The only condition put forward by Dawood, a key accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, was that he should not be subjected to third degree (torture) post surrender, said Ambedkar, who heads the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA).

Jethamalani had met Pawar and apprised him of Dawood's willingness to surrender, Ambedkar said.

The Maratha strongman ignored the proposal and said the then Congress-led government was with him in this decision, he said.

"When this proposal became public in 2015, Narendra Modi was the prime minister. Why didn't Modi pursue the matter and bring Dawood back in India.

"Earlier, why didn't Pawar inform details of the proposal. Dawood was ready to face trial and Jethamalani had informed Pawar about this," he said.

Meanwhile, NCP spokesman Nawab Malik hit back at Ambedkar, saying the issue of Dawood's surrender is being raised now to help the BJP in the upcoming polls.

Pawar has already made it clear that an accused cannot dictate the terms of his surrender. The terms and conditions of his surrender were not acceptable to the then government, Malik said.

"Why didn't Jethmalani, who later became a Union minister, inform the Interpol about his meeting with Dawood. Why didn't the BJP governments in Maharashtra and at the Centre make Dawood surrender?" he asked.

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A sarpanch body in Rajasthan on Tuesday demanded an apology from a Congress legislator who had asked a village head to sit on the floor instead on a chair beside her at a meeting.

The Rajasthan Sarpanch Sangh's reaction comes after a video went viral where MLA Divya Maderna was asking the Khetasar village head in Osian area of Jodhpur district on Saturday to sit among the people on the ground.

"Divya must apologise for the humiliation of a female sarpanch. If she did not do so, she should be ready to face our ire", said Bhanwarlal, president of the Rajasthan Sarpanch Sangh.

The village head, Chandu Devi, said being a woman, she did not expect such behaviour from a female public representative.

"I am very disappointed with the behaviour meted out to me by Maderna. I had gone to the meeting of Maderna on the insistence of the villagers and also sat on the dais after the villagers wanted me to sit beside the MLA," Devi said.

Maderna, however, pointed out that the sarpanch belonged to the Bharatiya Janata Party and asked how she could be allowed to sit on the dais in a meeting that was organised to give thanks to the villagers for voting the Congress MLA to power.

Later, the Osian MLA said she did not know that Devi was a sarpanch as the latter's face was covered under a veil. "I could not recognise her. I considered her a simple villager and thought that she had come to me on the dais with some grievance."



In the video, however, it could be seen that Devi first greeted Maderna and had almost seated on the chair when the legislator asked her to sit with the villagers.

Maderna has been taking a round of the villages of her constituency to pay gratitude to her voters for electing her as an MLA.

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The Army Tuesday held a meeting with management of the Jammu and Kashmir State Industrial Development Corporation and factory owners of Lassipora industrial estate in Pulwama district to sensitise them on various security issues including presence of foreigners posed as labourers there.

"In continuation of relentless efforts to establish peace and building a positive atmosphere with the factory owners and State Industrial Development Corporation Limited management, a meeting was held at SIDCO office," an Army official said.

He said the meeting was held to sensitise the factory owners and management about the security issues and "the presence of foreigners/persons from other areas/ foreign tourists presenting themselves as labourers".

The meeting was attended by General Manager, Department of Industries and Commerce, Shabir Ahmad, and other members of SIDCO along with 20 factory owners, the official said.

"The main aim of the meeting was to make the SIDCO management and factory owners more responsive towards the security threats in and around SIDCO. The meeting discussed several issues including accountablity of outsiders as well as local workers in each factory and installing several cameras at various entry and exit points of SIDCO," he said.

The official said the SIDCO management and all members promised their continuous support to security forces in dealing with threats and the people causing it.

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Unidentified assailants gunned down a local leader of the ruling Awami League in front of his family in the southeastern Bangladesh on Tuesday, a day after seven election and security officials were shot dead while returning from a remote polling centre.

Suresh Kanti Tanchangya, Bilaichhari upazila president of the Awami League, was gunned down around 9:30 am in Alikhong area in Rangamati district, police said.

He, along with his family, was coming to Bilaichhari on boat this morning, they said.

"The miscreants intercepted a boat carrying Bilaichhari Upazila Awami League President Suresh Kanti Tanchangya and gunned him down," Rangamati hill district's police chief Alamgir Kabir told reporters.

He said the family members accompanying Tanchangya, a tribesman, escaped the attack unhurt but could not identify the assailants.

The attack comes a day after seven people, including a presiding officer, were shot dead by unidentified gunmen who opened fire on their two jeeps as they were returning with ballot boxes after the voting concluded at a remote polling centre.

Eight people, including some policemen, were injured in the attack in Rangamati district.

Army helicopters later carried 11 critically injured people to a military hospital in the neighbouring southeastern port city of Chittagong.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack which took place late on Monday.

"Security has been tightened in the entire district and investigations have been launched to ascertain who are behind the attacks," police chief Kabir said.

The southeastern hill tracts in recent years witnessed re-emergence of violence attributed to factional feuds among the local tribal outfits after a landmark 1997 peace agreement drew an end to a two-decade long insurgency demanding autonomy of ethnic minority groups.

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The trial in the Bhanwari Devi abduction and murder case has been stuck for about two years as American DNA expert Amber B Carr has failed to appear in court, a defence counsel argued here while demanding the removal of her name from the list of prosecution witnesses.

The expert who works with the FBI has not appeared in the court despite being issued five summons. She was first issued summons in May 2017.

The CBI has been pleading for her to be examined through video-conferencing but the defence has been protesting against it.

"We want her to be examined in person but the insistence of the CBI on video-conferencing, despite the court's refusal, is nothing but a tactic to delay the trial," defence counsel Jagmal Singh Choudhary claimed.

Choudhary on Tuesday moved an application in court for removing Carr from the list of witnesses and to proceed with the trial in order to complete it as soon as possible.

"We have asked the trial court to remove Carr from the list of witnesses. In spite of repeated prayers, the court has not been granting our plea which is not justified," he said.

He alleged that instead of producing the witness, the prosecution has been just seeking time over and over again to delay the trail.

The prosecution told the court that they have moved an application in the high court against the rejection of their appeal to grant them permission to carry out Carr's examination through video conferencing.

"Since we have moved an application in the high court, we prayed the trail court to adjourn the hearing," a CBI counsel said.

Granting the CBI's plea, the court adjourned the matter till March 25 after conducting the hearing for two successive days on Monday and Tuesday.

Carr had tested bones purportedly of Devi which were recovered by the CBI from a canal near Jaloda village.

Since the bones were charred, they could not be tested for DNA in India and were sent to the US at FBI's forensic laboratory, where Carr had carried out the DNA examination.

Devi, an auxiliary nurse midwife at a sub-centre in Jaliwada village, around 120 km from Jodhpur, had gone missing on September 1, 2011.

She disappeared after a CD allegedly showing then Rajasthan minister Mahipal Maderna in a compromising position with the 36-year-old nurse was aired by some television channels.

The CBI had said Devi was allegedly abducted from Jodhpur's Bilara area and killed.

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The BJP Tuesday decided to drop all its 10 sitting MPs from Chhattisgarh, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in recent assembly

BJP General Secretary Anil Jain, who is also in charge of the state, said the party has decided to face the with "new candidates and fresh energy" to make it victorious under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Jain said the state BJP made the proposal to drop the MPs to the central election committee of the party, which gave its nod.

Former Chief Minister Raman Singh is likely to be the party's candidate from Rajnandgaon, sources said.

The state sends 11 MPs to the Lok Sabha.
In a major decision, the BJP Tuesday announced it will drop its all 10 incumbent MPs from Chhattisgarh and replace them with new faces in the Lok Sabha polls, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in the recent assembly elections.

BJP General Secretary Anil Jain, also the party affairs in-charge for the state, made the announcement as the BJP's Central Election Committee, which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders, met here to deliberate over its candidates for the polls.

"We have decided to fight the elections with new candidates and new zeal," Jain told reporters.

The announcement underscores the BJP's bid to wrest its lost territory back from the Congress, which handed it a massive defeat in the assembly polls last year.

The Congress had won 68 seats, reducing the tally of the BJP, which was in power in the state for 15 years, to a mere 15. The difference in the vote share of the two parties was a huge 10 per cent.

The BJP is also considering not to field any family member of these sitting MPs, sources said. If the party indeed adopts this criterion, the likely candidature of former chief minister Raman Singh, whose son Abhishek Singh is a sitting Member of Parliament, will also be in question.

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Gujarat's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Tuesday said the ruling BJP has not violated the model code of conduct by holding a meeting of its State Parliamentary Board at Chief Minister Vijay Rupani's official residence.

CEO S Murali Krishna had Monday ordered an inquiry into the matter after receiving a complaint in this regard from the Congress.

The inquiry into the matter did not suggest any violation of the model code of conduct, which is in force for the next month's Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat, he said.

"We have conducted an inquiry into the matter and found no violation of the model code of conduct," Krishna told PTI.

In its complaint, the main opposition party had alleged the CM's official residence in Gandhinagar is a government property and no political activity is allowed from a government premises when the poll code is in force.

On learning about the CEO's clean chit to the ruling party, the state Congress announced it will approach the Election Commission (EC) over the issue.

"This is a clear case of misuse of state machinery and property. Though BJP was at fault, the local election authorities chose not to take any action.

"We have decided to make a representation to the EC about this issue in coming days," said Gujarat Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi.

Polling for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat will be held in a single phase on April 23.

The model code of conduct came into force when the poll schedule was announced on March 10.

A three-day meeting of BJP's State Parliamentary Board was held at Rupani's official residence to prepare a panel of probable candidates for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats. The meeting concluded Tuesday.

State BJP president Jitu Vaghani had Monday defended the move of organising the meeting at the CM's official residence, claiming the gathering does not violate any rules.

"We have to also take care of the CM's security. Arranging such meetings at CM's residence is an old tradition.

"Party leaders are only doing brainstorming here. We have not arranged any political rally or engaged in any poll campaigning here," Vaghani had said.

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Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserted Tuesday his government has changed the image of Uttar Pradesh and the state's law and order has become a model for the country as not one incident of rioting happened under his watch.

Presenting a report card on the completion of two years of his government, he said when he assumed office in March 2017, debt-ridden farmers were committing suicides and Uttar Pradesh had become "synonymous with murder, loot and riots."



"Mafia was looting the state's resources under political patronage. Mafia was rampant in SP, BSP rule," he alleged. "There was a long era of scams."



Adityanath said he has changed the "perception about the state" and improved its "tarnished image". The better atmosphere has become a "nazeer" (model) for the country, he said.

Hitting out at previous state governments, he said, "In 2012, there were 227 major communal riots. In 2013, there were 247 such riots. In 2014, there were 242 riots. And 219 riots in 2015 and more than 100 in 2016 in which properties worth crores were lost."



"However during thee BJP government, not a single riot took place. Nor were there any incident of acid attacks or kidnapping," he claimed.

Though there has been no major communal violence in Uttar Pradesh during the past two years, a mob of 400 people, including right-wing activists, had fought pitched battles with police in Bulandshahr district in December last year.

The violence in Siana area of Bulandshahr happened apparently after right-wing activists were angered by the discovery of cow carcasses strewn in a nearby jungle.

In January last year, a 22-year-old youth was shot dead during a"Tiranga Yatra" by some people after which a series of violent incidents and arsoning had taken place in Kasganj.

Taking lesson from it, the state government that year denied permission for any such procession on Independence Day in the western Uttar Pradesh city.

On Tuesday, at his press conference in Lucknow, Adityanath cited the reported exodus of Hindus in 2017 from Kairana, another city in western UP, "due to anarchic forces".

"However", he said, "today peace has returned as well as the traders who had fled from there."



The exodus of Hindus from Kairana was a major poll issue for BJP in the 2017 assembly election in Uttar Pradesh.

The chief minister said the confidence of the state police force has gone up and there is no interference from his government in their functioning.

"There is zero tolerance for crime and criminals and 73 criminals have been killed in police encounters. Unfortunately, half-a-dozen police jawans also attained martyrdom in the encounters," he said.

Adityanath also said that the UP Foundation Day was celebrated for first time after 68 years in 2018.

His deputies Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma and Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present at the press conference.

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Flags flew at half mast on government buildings across the Netherlands today, a day after a gunman opened fire on a tram on the outskirts of Utrecht, killing three people.

A suspect - 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis - was detained after a seven-hour manhunt on Monday, and by Dutch law must be brought before a judge by Thursday.

Authorities said they were still trying to establish the motive for the attack in the quiet residential neighborhood which also wounded five people.

Utrecht police announced on its Twitter account that two additional suspects in the attack have been detained, but did not release additional details.

Regional police commissioner Rob van Bree said on a late night talk show that there was no connection known yet between the suspect and the victims, while Prime Minister Mark Rutte said "terrorist" motives could still not be ruled out.

But in an evening press conference, Utrechts top prosecutor, Rutger Jeuken, said family issues could also be involved.

The suspect had previously been arrested, Jeuken said, without giving further details.

There was no immediate comment from Tanis or any lawyer representing him, Reuters reported.
A BJP leader in Uttar Pradesh has announced severing ties with his son after he was fielded by the Congress as a Lok Sabha candidate and alleged the opposition party exploited "political differences" within his family.

The Congress Saturday announced Arvind Kumar Singh, son of BJP MLC Jaivir Singh, as its candidate from the Gautam Buddh Nagar constituency, which is currently represented by BJP leader and Union minister Mahesh Sharma.

The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have already fielded Satveer Nagar from the constituency. The BJP is yet to announce its candidate.

In a Facebook post on March 17, Jaivir Singh said his whole family including wife Raj Kumari Chauhan, a former Lok Sabha MP from Aligarh, their three sons and a nephew have "complete loyalty" with the BJP and are committed to the public policies of the party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi



"But my son Arvind Kumar Singh started expressing a different ideology ever since his marriage two years ago and he started staying separately from the family," the MLC said.

Jaivir Singh, who earlier served as a BSP MLA from Barauli, said he joined the BJP in 2017. Arvind was opposed to the BJP and did not took its membership, he said.

"Therefore, he was also released from the position of the Chancellor of the (Noida International) University. Now all social and political relations with him have come to an end," Singh said.

"Taking advantage of the political differences within my family, the Congress made this strategic move and hatched the political conspiracy," the MLC said, stressing he and his remaining family members are still committed party workers.

Jaivir Singh's wife Raj Kumari Chauhan was a Lok Sabha MP from 2009 to 2014 from the BSP.

Arvind Singh, who was the chancellor of the family-run university, had in 2014 unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha poll from Aligarh on a BSP ticket.

He was not unavailable for any comment despite repeated attempts.

With around 22.5 lakh voters spread across Noida, Jewar, Dadri, Khurja and Sikandrabad areas, the Gautam Buddh Nagar goes to poll on April 11 during the first phase of the seven-phased Lok Sabha elections.

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The Lok Sabha polls should be fought on perennial issues like poverty and disease and not on a tragedy of one moment, says Congress leader Shashi Tharoor while accusing the BJP-led government of trying to turn the 2019 vote into a khaki election after the Pulwama attack.

The momentum was with the Congress when the Pulwama tragedy struck on February 14, killing 40 CRPF soldiers, Tharoor said, hitting out at the government for trying to make the upcoming Lok Sabha polls a "national security based election.

"We were doing very well by all estimations and the momentum was with us when the Pulwama tragedy struck us. Thereafter, the government has tried to make this a khaki election, a national security-based election, Tharoor told PTI in an interview.

They are trying to hype their nationalist message that they were trying to protect the nation at the time of danger which, to my mind and my party's view, has not been the principle challenge facing the country," said the former diplomat and author who is aiming for a hat trick from the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat this time.

In his view, a daily terror of hunger, poverty and disease strikes the hearts of millions of India and the government must deal with that too.

"I am not minimising national security, but I am saying that the election has to be fought on perennial issues and not on a tragedy of one moment. That tragedy will be dealt with, has been dealt with and should be dealt with.

"But there is a daily tragedy, the daily terror of hunger, poverty, disease that is also a terror that strikes the hearts of millions of our fellow Indians and that too needs to be dealt with by the government," he said.

Agreeing that some surveys have suggested the BJP's chances have improved after the terror strike, Tharoor said it was the job of his party to remind people of the real issues.

According to the Thiruvananthapuram MP, there has been a dramatic change in the character of India under BJP rule.

An estimated 97 per cent of all communal violent incidents relating to cow vigilantism have happened in last four years, Tharoor said.

And those are figures issued by the Home Ministry of Rajnath Singh. Not by Congress, not by any NGO. These are government figures. These are very serious crises," he said.

Lashing out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said "triumphant majoritarianism celebrates violence" and the "prime minister stays silent".

So the condoning of this kind of thing is a deep assault on the very foundations of our democracy," the former Union minister said.

He said there are attempts by the centre to undermine the Constitutional arrangement that India was a country for all religions.

"That's being undermined in the ruling party's language and rhetoric and is also undermined by steps like the citizenship amendment Bill which will allow every citizen of a neighbouring country except Muslims to settle here. That kind of bigotry was never part of Indian nationhood," he said.

Tharoor also expressed the hope that the people of India will vote out the BJP as the party doesn't deserve a second chance.

Addressing the issue of farmer distress, he said, "Sadly, more farmers are committing suicide than there are victims of terrorism in India. I am not saying we should minimise... we should also keep our country safe, but we want the people to address the existing real problems which includes major levels of agrarian distress. For the first time in history, we have eight farmer suicides in Kerala."



The former UN diplomat also mocked the claims of the BJP government over job creation and said the saffron party was only interested in keeping its own job in Delhi.

The Congress wants every person in India to have a job, he said.

Due to the failed employment policies of the BJP government, skill development has not taken off effectively in the last five "wasted" years, Tharoor said, alleging that the exports and manufacturing sectors had taken a beating.

"Thanks to demonetisation, not only the GDP growth got hit of 2 per cent, but small and micro enterprises have shut down across the country.

Asked whether the Congress was ready to take on the BJP, he said it was "absolutely" ready.

Common people, the Congress leader said, were suffering under NDA rule.

An LPG cooking gas cylinder, which cost Rs 390 under the UPA regime, was priced Rs 975 under the BJP government for no good reason, he said.

Excise duties for petrol have gone up to Rs 19.48 under BJP rule even when the world prices are dropping, he added.

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Boko Haram militants have attacked a town in northeast Nigeria, killing three, and robbing and burning a bank, residents said on Tuesday, in the latest violence in the restive region.

Jihadist fighters arriving aboard vehicles and motorcycles stormed Michika in Adamawa state near the border with neighbouring Borno at about 6:30 pm (1730 GMT) on Monday, firing guns and forcing some residents to flee the town.

Others were said to have locked themselves in their homes.

"They attacked a commercial bus driving through the town and killed three people inside. They overpowered soldiers in the town and forced them to withdraw," resident Saleh Abbare told AFP.

He said the insurgents also broke into a commercial bank, carted away money and set the building on fire.

"The bank was recently renovated and banking activities resumed since 2014 after it was destroyed by the same Boko Haram when they took over the town," he said.

Another resident, Daniel Bature, said the jihadists were pushed out after the arrival of troops from Gulak, the headquarters of nearby Madagali district.

"The terrorists were pushed out and they drove towards Lassa on their way back to the Sambisa Forest (in Borno)," said Bature, who gave a similar account.

"Soldiers pursued them while vigilantes in Lassa laid in wait for them. They suffered a lot of casualties from the two fronts," he said.

The Nigerian Army confirmed the attack and said the militants "met their Waterloo and suffered heavy casualties". But it made no mention of civilian deaths.

Spokesman Sagir Musa said the insurgents "were completely routed by the troops, neutralising many of them, while others fled in disarray due to superior firepower".

Boko Haram's decade-long insurgency has killed some 27,000 people and forced almost two million others to flee their homes, sparking a dire humanitarian crisis in the region.

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The Bombay High Court Tuesday



questioned the state authorities on how could they begin work on a coastal road project without determining whether it was going to adversely affect fishing communities and breeding ground for fish along the proposed road.

A bench of Chief Justice Naresh Patil and Justice N M Jamdar said while development was essential, it could not come at the cost of citizens.

The court also took strong exception to apparent "lack of coordination" among the agencies involved in the project.

It noted that while the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) claimed to have all requisite data on issues like the number of people being affected and breeding ground for fish along the proposed area, the state fisheries department and the Union Ministry of and Forest did not have any information on the same.

BMC counsel Anil Sakhre told the court while a survey had been conducted in the Worli area to identify people and livelihoods that would be affected by a portion of the coastal road project, a survey along the entire stretch of around



19 kilometres was yet to be conducted by the state fisheries department.

The department, however, told the bench that it was inept to identify the breeding ground for fish along the above stretch and would need help from expert agencies under the central government.

At this, the bench remarked that such a lack of coordination represented an extremely sorry state of affairs.

It said ideally, the agencies should have conducted such a survey before beginning work on the project.

The court also said the state must have a uniform policy to assist and rehabilitate any person affected by the coastal road project.

"Development should not come at the cost of the people," the bench said.

"Your (parties in the case) submissions also reflect a very sorry state of affairs. Can't you coordinate without the court's intervention? Why don't you get together, hold a meeting, take all stakeholders into confidence? Is it the court's job to get all of you together and send you into a meeting room for discussion on your own project?" the bench said.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by members of two fishing societies, Worli Koliwada Nakhwa and Worli Machimmar Sarvodaya Sahakari Society, opposing the coastal road project that proposes to connect the Marine Drive area in the city to Kandivali.

The petitioners claimed the BMC and state authorities had not conducted any public hearing, or consultations with the fisher folk from the city before starting on the proposed project.

They said in their plea that the construction and reclamation work will destroy fish breeding grounds and that the road once constructed, will take away their livelihood.

The BMC, however, submitted that the project was not going to have any adverse impact on the fishing community in the city.

The court said the BMC will need to submit "scientific data" to prove its arguments.

The court has now directed the civic body to submit details of the fishing areas and breeding ground that fall along the proposed stretch, and the number of people likely to be affected by the project.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Britain's possible request for an extension to remain in the European Union beyond the March 29 deadline will not be unquestioningly accepted, an aide to French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday.

"An extension is not for certain or automatic," the aide said, echoing demands by several EU officials that British Prime Minister Theresa May lay out clear reasons why a delay would be necessary.

May is scrambling to avoid a chaotic no-deal departure in 10 days' time, and EU leaders had hoped she would attend their summit meeting in Brussels on Thursday with a plan to ratify the withdrawal deal before the deadline.

But EU heavyweights Germany and France have already warned they will not agree to delay Brexit simply to save the prime minister's skin.

Macron's aide said France would assess a British demand for an extension with two criteria.

"First point: is there a plan, a strategy, to justify an extension?" the aide said.

"Second point: we need to look at the impact on the European Union." He said Britain remaining longer in the EU could mean it would take part in European Parliament elections in May, would have a seat at EU meetings and take part in decisions about the bloc's future.

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A local court Tuesday remanded structural auditor Neeraj Kumar Desai, arrested in connection with the last week's foot over-bridge (FOB) collapse here that left six people dead, to police custody till March 25.

Desai, a director at Prof D D Desai's Associated Engineering Consultants and Analysts Pvt Ltd, was arrested Monday. This was the first arrest in the case.

The firm was given a contract by the Mumbai civic body to audit the ill-fated FOB at CSMT railway station along with 74 other foot over-bridges across the metropolis.

The structural auditor has been booked under IPC section 304-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) by the Azad Maidan police.

Offence under the section is punishable up to life imprisonment.

Desai was produced before a magistrate's court where the police sought his custody for carrying out further probe into the March 14 tragedy.

According to the police, Desai's firm had submitted incorrect structural audit report of the 40-year-old bridge.

The firm declared the bridge safe for use despite some corrosion in the structure, they said.

The police sought Desai's custody on the ground they had to recover documents related to the audit report and also look into the roles of civic and railway officials.

The court accepted the police's arguments and remanded Desai to police custody till March 25.

A major portion of the bridge, which linked the area near the BMC headquarters with the iconic Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) station in south Mumbai, had caved in, killing six people and injuring 31 others.

Officials concerned of the Mumbai civic body, responsible for the FOB's maintenance, and the Central Railway were also booked in the case.

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Britain's mostly right-wing newspapers branded parliamentary Speaker John Bercow an obnoxious, despotic traitor on Tuesday after his bombshell ruling threw the Brexit process into disarray.

After Bercow ruled MPs could not vote again on the EU divorce deal unless it was substantially changed, newspapers labelled him the "Brexit Destroyer" and a "preening egotist" bent on stopping Britain leaving.

But editorials in the more pro-EU papers said the dramatic situation, 10 days out from Britain's scheduled departure date, was entirely Prime Minister Theresa May's fault and Bercow had been right to assert parliamentary primacy over of the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union.

The Daily Mail's front page was a picture of Bercow grinning, with the headline: "Smirk that says: Brexit be damned." Its parliamentary sketch said: "Me, me, me... the twitchy windbag was at his despotic worst." And its editorial said Bercow, 56, was revelling in a "brazen act of sabotage... detonating this bombshell at the most inconvenient and sensitive moment."



The paper called him a "preening egotist" and "committed Remainer". Blocking a fresh vote on the deal "would ensure that our national trauma goes on and on".

Losing the chance to deliver Brexit and begin healing Britain's wounds due to "one man's overweening vanity would be a perversion of our democracy".

The Sun, which considers Bercow an "odious slug", said: "Remainers have their reward for keeping the most obnoxious, discredited and shameless Commons speaker in his job." Bercow "scuppered the only one on the table with his most disgraceful abuse of power yet.

"May is having to fight a Remain majority AND a bent referee", the tabloid said.

The Daily Express's front page called Bercow "The Brexit Destroyer". "Bercow stoops low with this Brexit ambush," its editorial said.

"Could John Bercow be the most treacherous speaker ever? -



"As a political act, it was maliciously timed.

"Bercow's political vanity has sent a wrecking ball crashing into the most important political process in decades. For that he must be condemned." The broadsheets took a more measured tone.

The Financial Times front page said: "May's Brexit hits block as Bercow rules out third vote on same deal".

The Daily Telegraph's read: "'A major constitutional crisis'." It said that as things stand, "May's deal is effectively dead and the UK is leaving the EU next week. More drama lies ahead." Meanwhile The Times said the best option was for parliament to endorse the deal in a vote next week.

Elsewhere, The Guardian, headlined "Brexit chaos as speaker stops May in her tracks", said Bercow was correct to exert the right of parliament over a referendum.

"It is time to stop the prime minister playing a game of chicken with the future of the country," it said.

"If the risks are high for the speaker, they are higher for Mrs May. She could lose her Brexit deal and lose power. She only has herself to blame."



The Daily Mirror, which supports the opposition Labour Party, said May was stuck, her plan was a shambles and it was all her fault for taking two years to produce a flawed deal and then being unable to persuade her own Conservative MPs to back it.

"Humiliated May is a PM without power," it said.

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China on Tuesday denied that its projects under the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) are leaving Pakistan in a debt trap and announced plans to extend the projects to various parts of the country.

The CPEC, which connects Gwadar Port in Balochistan with China's Xinjiang province, is the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

"It has been more than five years since we started the CPEC. We have made important positive gains," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in his joint press conference with his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi after their first strategic dialogue here.

Wang said 22 early harvest projects have been quite successful and have significantly improved transport and infrastructure and power supply in Pakistan.

"It created tens and thousands of jobs in Pakistan. They are playing increasingly important role in social economic development of Pakistan enhancing people's well-being," he said.

Answering a question over the criticism of the CPEC projects amid reports that Pakistan government plans to slash certain projects over concerns of debt burden, Wang said that Chinese projects have not resulted in enhancing Pakistan's debt.

"Among Pakistan's foreign debt, more than half of it comes from multi-lateral agencies. More than 80 per cent of them use direct investment from China or Chinese grants. None of these contribute to debt in Pakistan. Only 20 per cent CPEC projects uses Chinese loans. So instead of adding to debt burden to Pakistan, the CPEC projects have contributed to greater strength, vitality of Pakistan's economy," Wang said.

He also said the CPEC projects have spread to all most all parts of the Pakistan, refuting criticism by some of the provinces that projects are being garnered by the dominant Punjab province.

As for the concerns expressed in some media, the CPEC has already entered all parts of Pakistan rather than limited to specific areas, Wang said.

"According to our plan future development of the CPEC, there will be more projects in other parts in Pakistan including western part of Pakistan which will benefit Pakistan people," he said.

About third countries like Saudi Arabia joining the CPEC projects he said as long as they are good for Pakistan we welcome such cooperation. This must be discussed by China and Pakistan. We believe that further expansion of third party cooperation, the CPEC become stronger engine of growth and facilitator of regional integration," he said.

Wang said the CPEC is a "signature project of China-Pakistan cooperation in the new era.

"It is also an important pilot programme under the Belt and Road Initiative," he said.

India has protested to China over the CPEC as it traversed through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Qureshi said Prime Minister Imran Khan would attend the 2nd Belt and Road Forum being organised by China in Beijing next month. He also promised stepped security for the CPEC projects and Chinese personnel working in Pakistan.

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China Tuesday rejected the Dalai Lama's assertions that his successor could be from India and a nominee by Beijing would not be respected, saying the next spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has to be approved by the Communist government.

China's response came after the 83-year-old Nobel peace laureate told a agency on Monday that it was possible that once he dies his incarnation could be found in India and and warned that any other successor named by China would not be respected.

"Reincarnation is the unique way of Tibetan Buddhism. It has fixed rituals and systems," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters when asked about remarks by the Dalai Lama, who fled to India from Tibet in 1959.

"The Chinese government has policy of freedom of religious belief. We have regulation on religious affairs and regulation on the reincarnation system in Tibetan Buddhism. We respect and protect such ways of Tibetan Buddhism," Geng said.

Dalai Lama is a title given to spiritual leaders of Tibetan people. This title is given to those who are considered among the most important monks of the Gelug school, the newest school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Born in 1935, the current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was just two years old.

"The reincarnation system has been there for hundreds of years. The 14th Dalai has also been recognised in the religious rituals and was approved by the central government. So the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama should follow the national rules and regulations and the religious rituals," Geng said.

Amidst the Tibetan uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India in March that year to escape a Chinese crackdown in his Himalyan abode .

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A Chinese firm that holds the largest stake in southern France's Toulouse airport is considering selling out and has already received interest from potential investors, its chief said.

"Maybe a new shareholder or a new operator can bring better value to the airport," Mike Poon told AFP in an interview on Monday, adding the company was "studying opportunities".

Poon heads Casil Europe, the holding company created by China's state-owned Shandong Hi-Speed Group and the Hong Kong-based Friedmann Pacific Asset Management, which bought 49.99 percent of the airport for 300 million euros ($340 million) in 2015.

Last year the French government opted against selling Casil an additional 10 percent, which would have given it a controlling stake in the fast-growing regional hub.

It was a victory for local governments and the Toulouse Chamber of Commerce, which own a combined 40 percent stake and who had accused Casil of under-investing in order to extract as much profits as possible.

But Poon countered that the airport had invested more than 84 million euros ($94 million) since Casil acquired its stake -- 30 per cent more than required under the development plan signed with the state.

Earlier this year Casil said it was considering bids for its stake, though Poon said no final decision on a sale has been made.

"We continually received a lot of solicitations from different potential investors," he said.

Press reports have suggested that French infrastructure group Eiffage would be a candidate, as would Vinci, which is also hoping to purchase the state's stake in Paris airports operator ADP.

In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron launched efforts to privatise state-owned businesses to raise funds for helping new technology ventures.

Traffic at the Toulouse airport has grown rapidly, reaching 9.6 million people last year, when the number of foreign passengers surpassed domestic travellers for the first time.

The increase has been driven mainly by low-cost European airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair.

"After we arrived, we have done a lot, changed the airport a lot," Poon said.

"There is only one thing we are still working on, to directly fly from China into Toulouse. We trust it will happen soon, no matter if Casil is staying or not," he said.

Casil has said it aims to boost traffic to 18 million passengers by 2046, in large part by developing connections between Chinese destinations and Toulouse, a city with an extensive range of industries, which is also the headquarters of European planemaker Airbus.

Poon's comments came ahead of a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to France starting Sunday.

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Russia's oil company Lukoil highly appreciates the investment environment in Azerbaijan, the company's president Vagit Alekperov said during a meeting with President of Azerbaijan's State Oil Company SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev in Baku.

At the meeting, the participants discussed long-term ties between Lukoil and SOCAR, they also highly appreciated Lukoil's participation in projects implemented in Azerbaijan.

Alekperov said that Lukoil's relations with SOCAR are of strategic importance. He highly appreciated the creation of favorable conditions by the Azerbaijani government for foreign investments, and expressed satisfaction with cooperation in various areas.
Karnataka Chief Minister H DKumaraswamy Tuesday advised BJP president Amit Shah to instruct his party supporters to behave in public and asked if they have any decency.

Kumaraswamy was reacting to Shah's tweet flaying police action against those who allegedly raised pro-Modi slogans outside the venue of a function here on Monday at which Congress chief Rahul Gandhi was addressing entrepreneurs.

"I advise Amit Shah to instruct his supporters to behave properly in public," Kumaraswamy told reporters here.

"While some other party's programme is going on..do they have any decency?...first they have to learn about decency to behave in the public.

I advise Amit Shah to instruct his BJP supporters not to disturb other party's programmes," he added.

"Hugs for 'Tukde Tukde' gang and arrest of peaceful youth raising pro-Modi slogans? Where are the champions of 'Free Speech'? Yuvraj of Congress must know- time follows the course taken by youngsters.

Stop intimidating the youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics," Shah had tweeted replying to state BJP's tweet on Monday's incident.

"Democracy in Danger, Police arrests few techies for raising pro Modi slogans at Manyata tech park in Bengaluru.

This is the real face of democracy in a Cong-JDS ruled state. It's total dictatorship where freedom of choice & expression of citizens is suppressed," Karnataka BJP had tweeted.

However, former Chief Minister and Congress leader Siddaramaiah clarified that nobody was arrested, and as a precautionary measure a few people were taken by police and released later.

Alleging that some BJP and RSS elements were behind the instigation, he said, "When Rahul Gandhi's event is going on, as an opposition party they should have some responsibility.

We can also do the same, when Narendra Modi comes we can also disturb, we can also chant Rahul Gandhi's name."



Raising slogans 'Modi, Modi', the protesters had put up placards asking Gandhi to leave the venue, leading to a tense situation with Congress supporters too present there.

As the noise intensified, the police removed the protesters, and had detained a few of them.

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Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis Tuesday accused Sharad Pawar of creating "confusion" over Balakot air strike issue, two days after the NCP chief said he had asked the government to give a free hand to armed forces to destroy terror camps post Pulwama attack.

Indian Air Force (IAF) had conducted air strikes on a terror camp in Balakot in Pakistan on February 26, thirteen days after 40 CRPF jawans were killed in a suicide bomber attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama.

Addressing NCP workers in Pune district Sunday, Pawar had said that by virtue of being a former defence minister he had suggested the government to give "all powers" to armed forces to destroy terror camps, in an all-party meeting held in Delhi on February 15.

Pawar had also accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of politicising the Pulwama terror attack.

Speaking to reporters after inaugurating the media centre at the BJP state headquarters here, Fadnavis said Pawar himself is in a confused state.

"Pawar himself is in a confused state. He is trying to create confusion over the air strike issue, as he does not want to give credit (of the air operation) to Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Fadnavis said.

He also said that though Pawar is a mature person, some people in his party are immature. "We need not have to listen to others," said the CM.

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The ruling Congress-JD(S) coalition in Karnataka Tuesday said they would jointly campaign for the Lok Sabha polls and vowed to reduce the BJP to a "single digit" in the state.

Leaders of both parties said they would resolve all the issues and fight the polls unitedly, amid tension between them at the local level.

The alliance partners also gagged their partymen from airing any differences to the media.

TheCongress and JD(S) have decided to launch their joint campaign on March 31 by organising a mammoth rally near Bengaluru, likely to be attended by Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

"Our relentless fight is for keeping our (Congress and JDS) 12 seats with ourselves, and win majority of the 16 seats that is with the BJP, as we are going together in this polls," JD(S) chief and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda said.

Addressing a joint press conference along with Congress leaders, he said, "I'm not saying this with pride, we will not allow them (BJP) to see two digits..will not allowthem to reach two digits.."



"Our primary objective is to stop the communal forces," he added, as he also expressed confidence that the alliance will not only make efforts to win the seats, but will win.

In the 2014 general election, BJP had bagged 17, Congress 9 and JD(S) two seats. However in the bypolls, the BJP had yielded the Bellary seat to Congress.

Coalition leaders, including Gowda, Chief Minister H DKumaraswamy, coalition coordination committee chairman Siddaramaiah and Karnataka PCC chief Dinesh Gundu Rao held a long meeting Tuesday morning.

It followed a similar meeting involving AICC general secretary K C Venugopal late on Monday night to discuss poll preparations and campaigning.

Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara was conspicuous by his absence at the meeting and press conference.

Sources said he was upset with Congress leadershipfor ceding Tumkur seat, his home turf, to JD(S), despite the party having its sitting MP there. However, both the KPCC chief and Parmeshwara himselfmaintained that he was out of town to attend a pre-scheduledevent.

Against the backdrop of seat sharing, both parties have decided to resolve the differences at the local level immediately, without giving any opportunity for it to continue further, Gowda said.

He said "before the filing of nomination,resolving few minor differences that are there is our duty. Time is very short, we are working on it.

If there are anydifferences between both the parties in any of the constituency, coalition leaders, including me, Siddaramaiah, Kumaraswamy should resolve it."



Gagging party men from making statements to the media, Gowda said from now on MLAs or district leaders of both Congressand JD(S) should not be airing any differences to the media, and if there are any issues it should be addressed withcoalition leaders.

"I have requested Siddaramaiah that both parties should appoint spokespersons who can speak to the media.

We should not allow any one to speak differentiating between the Congress and JD(S). There should be one united reaction onthe decisions we take," he said.

He appealed to MLAs, Ministers and leaders of both parties to abide by the decision and have a united voice.

The Congress will contest 20 Lok Sabha seats and JD(S)eight under a deal between the coalition partners finalisedlast week.

The Congress and JD(S) that had bitterly fought each other in the May 2018 assembly polls had sewed up a post pollalliance after a hung verdict with the BJP emerging as the single largest party but falling short of required numbers.

For the coalition to emerge as a formidable oppositionto the BJP, and win more number of seats, it is crucial for theCongress to transfer its votes to JD(S), and vice-versa.

Conceding that there are some minor issues between both parties at few places, Kumaraswamy said, they can be resolved and coalition leaders were working to resolve them.

"Both parties are going ahead for the polls with an aim to win all 28 seats in the state, and I'm confident we will be successful," he said.

Karnataka will go for polls in two phases, on April 18 and 23.

Coordination committee chief and CLP leader Siddaramaiah said list of candidates will be finalised and announced in a couple of days.

"Partymen from both Congress and JD(S) have been given strict instructions that, even if there are minor differences, forgetting all of them, keeping BJP's defeat as our main aim, everyone should work with unity," he said.

One observer each from both parties will be appointed at all constituency levels for coordination.

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Days after having unanimously decided to go it alone in Delhi, the Congress is again mulling options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in the national capital, with NCP leader Sharad Pawar actively involved in getting the two parties together.

In this context, AAP leader Sanjay Singh met Pawar Tuesday at the latter's residence and held discussions over seat-sharing with the Congress and in taking steps to get all parties together and fielding a common candidate in all the seats to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections.

Sources said the Congress leadership is also in talks with AAP leaders and senior leaders within the party are trying to convince Delhi Congress leaders for an alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP.

The Congress had earlier decided to go alone in Delhi after talks with AAP failed and local leaders favoured that the party contests LS polls alone. The Delhi Congress leaders felt that "saving" the party was crucial in Delhi in view of impending assembly elections in the state slated later.

The Congress has also failed to forge an alliance with left parties in West Bengal and has been kept out of the 'mahagathbandhan' (grand alliance) of SP-BSP-RLD in Uttar Pradesh. It is learnt that the Congress-RJD seat-sharing is also in troubled waters as the two parties did not declare their candidates on March 17 as promised earlier.

AICC general secretary in-charge of Delhi Congress, PC Chacko, said: "I am in consultation with Congress party leaders in Delhi on the possibilities of forging an alliance with AAP.

"The Congress Working Committee has decided to align with like-minded parties across the country to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections.

"I hope Delhi Congress leaders also go by this sentiment and decide on an alliance with AAP, but a final decision will be taken by the Congress president very soon," Chacko told PTI.

Chacko's views are at variance with Delhi Congress president Sheila Dikshit, who has made it clear that aligning with AAP will not be in the party's interests keeping in view the assembly election in the national capital slated later.

AAP leader Sanjay Singh also told reporters after meeting Pawar that with the Constitution, democracy and the country in "danger" under the Modi government, attempts should be made by all opposition parties to unite and come together to fight it out.

"The party can be saved later....there will be enough time to save the party. Right now the attempt should be to save the country and democracy, which is in danger due to the Modi government," he said, without giving details of his meeting with Pawar.

The talks of Congress-AAP alliance gained ground after a meeting of opposition leaders at Sharad pawar on February 13, which was attended by both Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal, besides Mamata Banerjee. It was here that Pawar proposed that AAP and Congress come together and thereafter talks started between the two leaders..

Chacko said some senior leaders in Delhi, who think defeating BJP is the party's immediate responsibility and for which an alliance should be forged with AAP, have written to party president Rahul Gandhi on the matter.

He, however, said Gandhi will take a final call shortly after consultations within the party.

"I hope our Delhi leaders also follow the policy decision of the CWC. I am talking with them and trying to convince them about this, but if they still decide not to forge an alliance, it is up to them," he said.

The party has announced it will go it alone in Delhi after the Delhi Congress unit told Gandhi that aligning with AAP in LS polls was not in the party's interests.

The Lok Sabha elections in Delhi are slated for May 12.

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The Madhya Pradesh Congress has requested Bollywood megastar Salman Khan to breach the BJP's Indore citadel in the ensuing Lok Sabha polls.

The actor was born in Indore's Palasia area in 1965 and has spent a substantial part of his childhood in that city before moving to Mumbai.

"Our leaders have already talked to Salman Khan to campaign for us in Indore. We are sure the actor would campaign for us," MP Congress spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi said.

Indore, Madhya Pradesh's largest city and commercial capital, has been in the iron grip of the BJP ever since current Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan defeated former chief minister and senior Congressman Prakash Chandra Sethi in 1989.

Sethi, a one-time lieutenant of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was the sitting MP at the time but lost to Mahajan by over 1.11 lakh votes.

Eight-time MP Mahajan, affectionately called 'Tai' (sister), has retained the seat since then and the BJP has also had a sizable share of victories in the district's eight Assembly constituencies.

Khan is a huge crowd-puller and his contribution in the Congress' poll campaign would change the party's fortune in Indore, Chaturvedi asserted.

"He spent his childhood in Indore. His grandfather was a senior police officer there," Chaturvedi said.

The actor, who generally keeps way from politics, had campaigned and participated in a road show for the Congress' Indore mayoral candidate Pankaj Sanghavi in 2009.

However, the move did not pay off as senior BJP leader Krishna Murari Moghe managed to defeat Sanghavi at the time.

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Senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday said his party will not get a simple majority in the Lok Sabha polls, but a new government will be formed under its leadership at the Centre, dislodging the BJP-led NDA.

The former Maharashtra chief minister also said that the decision of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), led by Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar, not to align with the opposition parties will eventually prove beneficial for the NDA.

The Congress and NCP had been wooing the VBA to join forces with them in Maharashtra.

However, the VBA, a social coalition of Dalits and Muslims jointly formed by Ambedkar and Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM), recently decided to field its own candidates for the Lok Sabha polls.

"We are not going to get a clear majority. No party got 270 seats in 30 years (before 2014). Is (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi claiming so (that BJP will get majority) now?" Chavan asked.

"Some of their (the BJP's) people are saying so...I won't say how many seats the Congress will get, but the next government will be formed under the leadership of Congress. We are not claiming to get 270 seats, but the Congress-led government will be formed," Chavan said during an interaction with BBC Marathi.

He also claimed that the BJP would suffer in the "cow belt", comprising mainly Hindi heartland states, and get 100 seats less vis--vis the 2014 polls.

Chavan said the opposition parties initially planned to form a grand alliance at the national-level, but later opted for state-level tie-ups to prevent the BJP from retaining power at the Centre.

The former Union minister also noted that not taking the VBA along will affect prospects of the Congress-led opposition in Maharashtra.

"It will definitely have a bearing on the Congress' prospects. But why they are not coming together needs to be seen," he said, adding that the BJP won the last general election due to division of votes among opposition parties.

Chavan claimed it was the BJP's effort to see as many opposition parties field their candidates against its contenders to ensure division of votes.

"The VBA contesting separately will 100 per cent help the BJP (in the polls)," he added.

Chavan refrained from commenting on his party colleague Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil's son Sujay Vikhe Patil joining the BJP, after the NCP refused to give the Ahmednagar Lok Sabha seat to the Congress under the alliance pact.

"There are several seats where we (the Congress) can win if we were to contest those. The NCP knows it well, so do we. But it is not happening due to certain reasons," he said.

Chavan also claimed that the Congress could have won the Ahmednagar seat if it contested.

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A Delhi court Tuesday allowed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to send extradition requests to Republic of Albania against two directors of a Gujarat pharma firm in a Rs 8,100-crore money laundering case.

ED told the court that as per reliable sources, the accused -- Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara and Chetankumar Jayantilal Sandesara, both directors of Sterling Biotech Ltd (SBL) -- have obtained the citizenship of Albania and non-bailable warrants (NBWs) were issued against them this year.

Special Public Prosecutor Nitesh Rana submitted that extradition requests needed to be certified by the court.

The court issued fresh NBWs against both the accused and will be attached with the requests.

ED had registered the alleged bank fraud case against the firm SBL under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

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A Delhi court on Tuesday extended Robert Vadra's interim protection from arrest till March 25 in a and asked him to join the probe after the ED alleged that he was not cooperating and sought his custodial interrogation.

Special judge Arvind Kumar granted the interim anticipatory bail to Vadra, brother-in-law of

Vadra, who has been granted protection from arrest several times by the court, had filed an anticipatory bail application in the case linked to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property at 12, Bryanston Square, worth 1.9 million pounds. The property is allegedly owned by him.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), represented by Special Public Prosecutors D P Singh and Nitesh Rana, told the court that there was reasonable apprehension that Vadra being a highly influential person would tamper with the evidence and hamper the investigation.

"If he is granted a blanket protection of bail, there is all likelihood that he will tamper with the evidence and would influence witnesses," it said.

ED further said that Vadra had in a "mala fide" manner raised certain grounds claiming to be a "victim of a political vendetta" and harassment at the hands of the agency.

"The allegations were totally unfounded and devoid of any merits. The investigation, in compliance with the procedure established by law, has been conducted as per the evidence on record disclosing commission of grave economic offences," it said.

The probe agency also said that Vadra cited his firm's cooperation in another case as a ground for him being granted anticipatory bail.

"It (other case) has no bearing on the present case. The present case is based on an independent set of transactions, initiated on the basis of commission of offences under the Black Money Act. The investigation pertains to the undisclosed foreign assets and entities to evade tax," it said.

ED further said that it was unfortunate that he has got involved in a "political mud-slinging" but his conduct during the course of investigation raised even more apprehensions that he was a key link to unearth the modus operandi adopted by all the accused persons and hence the agency be given a free hand to interrogate him.

It said that the investigation was at a crucial stage and various incriminating documents have come on record.

"There are ample evidences in the form of E mails retrieved from seized electronic devices as well as material information gathered from electronic surveillance showing involvement of Vadra, along with his associates in undisclosed overseas assets which he, during course of investigation has denied blatantly taking advantage of interim protection.

"From the investigation conducted so far, it is revealed that he is involved in the commission of the offence of cross border and domestic money laundering. He is the beneficial owner of various properties under the investigation in the case, which have been acquired through the proceeds of crime," the agency said.

On February 16, the court had extended his protection from arrest till today.

In his anticipatory bail plea, Vadra alleged that he was being subjected to "unwarranted, unjustified and malicious criminal prosecution which on the face of it is completely politically motivated and is being carried out for reasons other than those prescribed under law".

It said Vadra's office was raided by the ED on December 7, 2018 and, therefore, he seriously apprehends that his liberty may be curtailed by the investigating agency.

"The petitioner (Vadra) is being subjected to a farce criminal prosecution which actually is beset with nothing else except political vendetta and most unfortunately the respondent (ED) being the law enforcement agency is a party to the unethical and illegal exercise.

"It is stated that the petitioner's (Vadra's) firm through its authorised representative Manoj Arora has already joined investigation with the ED conducting investigation into the affairs of the firm in Rajasthan with their offices at Jaipur on many occasions and has supplied all the relevant documents to the satisfaction of the officials of the ED," the plea said.

Arora, an employee of Vadra's Skylight Hospitality LLP, was a key person in the case and he was aware of the latter's overseas undeclared assets and was instrumental in arranging funds, the ED had alleged.

The agency had told the court that it lodged the against Arora, a close aide of Vadra, after his role came up during the probe of another case by the Income Tax Department under the newly enacted Black Money Act and tax law against absconding arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari.

It alleged that the London-based property was bought by Bhandari for GBP 1.9 million and sold in 2010 for the same amount despite incurring additional expenses of approximately GBP 65,900 on its renovation.

"This gives credence to the fact that Bhandari was not the actual owner of the property but it was beneficially owned by Vadra who was incurring expenditure on the renovation of this property," the ED had told the court.

ED had said it has received information about various new properties in London which allegedly belong to Vadra, including two houses of five and four million pounds each and six other flats.
A CRPF commando allegedly killed his wife here following an argument over his anti-naxal operation duty in Chhattisgarh, police said Tuesday.

The accused, Constable Guruveer Singh, belonging to CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action), an elite unit of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), was arrested Tuesday, they said.

Singh allegedly strangled his wife Anupriya Gautam to death at their home on March 16, City Superintendent of Police (CSP) Jagdalpur, Hemsagar Sidar, said in a press conference here.

The CoBRA commando lived with his wife in a government quarter at the headquarters of his battalion in Karanpur village under the Nagarnar police station area of the district, he said.

He also allegedly tried to pass off the murder as suicide, but circumstantial evidences and post-mortem report nailed his lie, the police officer said.

During interrogation, he confessed of committing the crime, Sidar claimed.

As per preliminary information, Singh was to proceed on anti-naxal duty on March 17 in Bijapur district, where combing operation has been intensified in view of the next month's Lok Sabha elections in the state.

On March 16 night, the couple had a heated argument after the woman reportedly tried to stop him from going on anti-naxal duty, he said.

The constable, in a fit of rage, allegedly killed her, the officer said.

The accused was booked under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), he said, adding further investigation was underway.

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Two persons who were among the five men accused of raping a 17-year-old Dalit girl in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarenagar district have been arrested, police said Tuesday.

The teenager was allegedly raped by five youths at Phulat village in Khatauli administrative area on Sunday and recorded a video of the incident, a police officer had said.

A case has been registered and three accused were arrested earlier, the police had said.

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An Armenian-Greek business forum has opened in Yerevan with the participation of Greek Ambassador to Armenia Nafsika Nancy Eva Vraila, head of the Armenian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Andranik Aleksanyan, as well as head of Armenia's Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Arsen Ghazaryan.

A memorandum of understanding between the Chambers of Commerce and Industry of the two countries is expected to be signed during the forum,.

At the event, Greek companies will present mainly the construction, chemical and cosmetic industries, as well as the production of olive oil and solar energy, News.am reports.
The Delhi BJP on Tuesday alleged that the Aam Aadmi Party was trying to incite communal tensions by "politicising the cow" and said it would lodge a complaint with the Election Commission.

The BJP's reaction came on a tweet by AAP Lok Sabha poll candidate Raghav Chadha in which he wrote "door to door campaigning by BJP" and posted a photo of a cow and a calf standing at the doorstep of a house.

The post has been liked by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, BJP leader Vijender Gupta said.

"We have taken an appointment with the Election Commission of India and will apprise them about how the AAP is politicising the cow, which is a symbol of harmony, and trying to create communal tension," Gupta, who is also the Leader of Opposition in the Delhi assembly, told reporters.

The tweet is a violation of the model code of conduct (MCC) and the Delhi BJP will lodge a complaint with the poll panel on Wednesday, he said.

BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri said complaints have been filed at the Govindpuri, Pul Prahladpur and Sangam Vihar police stations against the AAP for trying to incite communal tension through Chadha's tweet.

"We will urge the Election Commission (EC) to invalidate the AAP and urge them to ensure that FIRs are filed on these complaints.

"His (Chadha) said act has not only hurt the religious sentiments of the Hindus but has also intended to create mutual hatred, differences and cause tension between different religions," he said.

Gupta also accused the AAP of making phone calls to voters and telling them their names had been deleted from voter lists. This is creating panic among the electorate, he alleged



He said the BJP will urge the EC to initiate action against the Kejriwal-led AAP.

"We will also complain against the AAP for violation of the model code of conduct by engaging its MLAs in field inspections during installation of CCTV cameras in different colonies and markets," Gupta said.

The promise of installing CCTV cameras and wifi in the national capital were poll promises of the AAP and both are unfulfilled, the BJP leader alleged.

The BJP's Delhi unit Tuesday filed a complaint with the chief electoral officer in Delhi and sought action against the AAP, which, it alleged, was "indulging in violent acts" and violating the MCC.

In its complaint, the BJP accused the AAP of burning the 2014 manifestoes of the saffron party which had photos of its leaders.

It alleged that Kejriwal along with other party leaders had burnt the BJP manifestoes on March 13.

AAP leaders Manish Sisodia, Rajendra Pal Gautam, Kailash Gahlot and Pankaj Gupta were among those who had led party workers in burning copies of the party's manifesto, the BJP alleged.

The manifestos were burnt by the AAP to attack the BJP on the issue of full statehood for Delhi.

"The AAP leaders are violating the MCC by either not seeking permission for such events from Election Commission or they have sought permission for election meetings from the EC and misused such permissions to violate the MCC by burning BJP's manifestoes," according to the complaint.

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Delhi Congress Chief Sheila Dikshit on Tuesday called an urgent meeting with the three working presidents of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee amid a buzz that the party's top leadership is mulling options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi.

The party leaders of the Delhi unit, however, maintained that there was no talk of an alliance during the meeting.

"An urgent meeting was called and it was decided that the selection of candidates should begin. Around 70 applications have been received by the party from Delhi Congress leaders for seven seats in Delhi," a senior party leader said.

He said,"A screening committee of the party including Dikshit has to shortlist names from among the applications and send a list of 2-3 names per seat to top leadership for final announcement."



The meeting with the three working presidents Devender Yadav, Haroon Yusuf and Rajesh Lilothia, at Diskhit's residence, comes in the backdrop of Congress mulling its options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi in its bid to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections, days after having unanimously decided to go it alone in Delhi.

Uncertainty has been persisting in the Delhi Congress over a pre-poll tie-up with the AAP after Dikshit and her three working presidents wrote to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi against the alliance.

In a letter written last week, Dikshit along with Yusuf, Yadav and Lilothia protested a recent phone survey to gauge workers' mood on the alliance.

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Delhi Congress Chief Shiela Dikshit has called an urgent meeting with the three working presidents of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee on Tuesday, a senior party leader said.

The meeting comes in the backdrop of Congress mulling its options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi in its bid to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections, days after having unanimously decided to go it alone in Delhi.

"An urgent meeting has been called with the three working presidents Devender Yadav, Haroon Yusuf and Rajesh Lilothia, at Diskhit's residence," a party leader said.

The leader, however did not elaborate on the agenda of the meeting.

Uncertainty has been persisting in the Delhi Congress over a pre-poll tie-up with the AAP after Dikshit and her three working presidents wrote to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi against the alliance.

In a letter written last week, Dikshit along with Yusuf, Yadav and Lilothia protested a recent phone survey to gauge workers' mood on the alliance.

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Discovery Communications India Tuesday said it has entered into a partnership with and local content discovery app, Dailyhunt.

Under the partnership, Discovery Communications India (DCIN) will have a video destination named Discovery Plus on the home page of Dailyhunt app, offering short-form video content especially customised for the digital audiences in India, the company said in a statement.

The partnership will help DCIN immediately expand its footprint on the digital domain in India, leveraging 153 million monthly user base of Dailyhunt platform, it added.

On the other hand, Dailyhunt will get access to content library and upcoming titles of Discovery, it added.

"The partnership with Dailyhunt offers us an exciting opportunity to understand, analyse and explore India's burgeoning digital play," Simon Robinson, managing director, Discovery Asia Pacific and chief financial officer, Discovery International said.

Dailyhunt President Umang Bedi said the company is confident about Discovery's content being a massive hit with vast diaspora of India.

"This partnership is completely aligned with our overall content plans of providing unique, exclusive, high quality content from great content partners like Discovery as we rapidly scale our business," he added.

The multi-year agreement, exclusive for the featured short-form content on Discovery Plus, will offer scalable monetisation opportunity to the two organisations, the statement added.

DCIN said its content across outdoor, food, wildlife, science and military verticals is currently available in five languages -- English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali -- in India.

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Realty major DLF Tuesday announced sale of 33 per cent stake in its upcoming commercial project in Gurugram to US-based Hines, in a deal size estimated at around Rs 650 crore.

In October last year, DLF had signed a term sheet with Hines to develop a prime commercial project on 11.76 acre land parcel in Gurugram that it bought for nearly Rs 1,500 crore through e-auction conducted by the Haryana government in February 2018.

The realty major's subsidiary DLF Home Developers Ltd (DHDL) and Hines group firm Green Horizon Trustee have entered into a joint venture (JV) to develop a high-end commercial project in Gurugram, the company said in a statement.

"DHDL will hold 67 per cent stake in the joint venture, while 33 per cent will be held by Hines. Hines has invested about Rs 500 crore in the first tranche," it added.

According to sources, DLF has struck this deal at a premium of about 25 per cent from the Rs 1,500 crore land value that it paid to the Haryana government.

Sriram Khattar, managing director (rental business), DLF, said, "We are excited about the JV with Hines, this is our second JV with them. With our joint experience, we shall work together to develop world-class buildings which will set new standards for commercial buildings in this part of the world.

Hines will initially own 33 per cent equity share of the JV with an option to increase its stake to 49 per cent.

"The total investment by the joint-venture partners in this project is about Rs 1,900 crore in accordance with the independent valuation undertaken by a category-1 merchant banker," the statement said.

The project will be developed on 11.76 acre of land owned by the JV company. The land parcel is located across the highway to the existing business district of DLF Cybercity.

DLF and Hines entered into their first joint venture in 2008 to develop One Horizon Center in DLF-5 Gurugram. One Horizon Center is a marquee commercial development and is home to Fortune 500 multinationals.

Lee Timmins, CEO of Hines Eurasia, said, "Over the past 10 years, Hines and DLF have established a successful partnership, which has laid the foundation for us to come together again and expand the relationship to build world-class developments in Delhi NCR."



Hines MD and Country Head Amit Diwan said, "This is an excellent location that benefits from great connectivity by road and by metro. It is also in close proximity to social infrastructure like Cyber Hub, The Oberoi and Trident hotels."



In December 2017, DLF had formed a joint venture with Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC for its rent-yielding commercial assets.

The JV was formed when DLF promoters sold entire 40 per cent stake in DLF's rental arm DLF Cyber City Developers Ltd (DCCDL) for nearly Rs 12,000 crore. This deal included sale of 33.34 per cent stake in DCCDL to GIC for about Rs 9,000 crore and buyback of remaining shares worth about Rs 3,000 crore by DCCDL.

DLF and its JV firm DCCDL have together more than 30 million sq ft of commercial assets, largely in Gurugram, with an annual rental income of over Rs 3,000 crore.

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The DMK on Tuesday promised to do away with the National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical admissions and ushering in quota in the private sector in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha election.

"The NEET for medical admissions will be scrapped," DMK chief M K Stalin said while unveiling the salient features of his party's manifesto.

Opposition to NEET in Tamil Nadu from major political parties and students had taken emotive overtones in the past.

Stalin said steps would be taken for implementing reservation in the private sector.

The party also assured steps for waiver of all educational loans taken by students.

Against the background of agitations by state government employees seeking reversion to the old pension scheme in place of the newly-introduced contributory scheme, the DMK chief said: "We will bring back the old pension scheme for both the central and state government employees."



The DMK president said the party would revert to the administered-price mechanism to regulate the prices of petrol, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Another key feature of the manifesto is doing away with the direct cash transfer of subsidy for the LPG and bringing down the prices of cylinders.

The DMK is contesting 20 seats in the state, allotting the remaining 19 to its allies. The state goes to polls in a single phase on April 18.

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The DMK Tuesday assured steps to do away with Methane extraction and neutrino projects and promised revival of its pet Sethusamudram plan and protect the firecracker industry in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls.

Efforts to get back Katchatheevu to India from Sri Lanka, caste based census, casteless model villages named after leaders 'Periyar-Jyotirao Phule,' were among the assurances.

Slamming "exorbitant charges," for transactions like ATM withdrawals, and "penalising," customers for not maintaining minimum balance, the DMK said such charges will be refunded.

Opposing the "imposition of Hindi," the DMK promised steps to make Tamil a co-official language in all Central government offices in Tamil Nadu and to make all State languages as official languages of the Union.

Free train travel for school, college students and employment to one crore youth as road workers for maintaining roads, reservation in promotion in the services of the union government and filling backlog vacancies as per the 27 per cent quota for OBCs were also promised.

Apparently, seeking to target its arch rival, the ruling AIADMK, the DMK said it would urge the Centre for a CBI probe into the Kodanadu estate murder and robbery case.

In the Kodanadu heist case, a Delhi based journalist had released a video seeking to allegedly link Chief Minister K Palaniswami to the matter. The Chief Minister had dismissed the claims as false and defamatory and approached the court.

The Cauvery basin in Tamil Nadu "is the granary of the south," the Dravidian party said in its manifesto, adding the entire Cauvery delta region should hence be protected.

The region will be protected as an "Exclusive Agricultural Zone," it said echoing a demand by the PMK which is now an ally of the ruling AIADMK.

The M K Stalin-led party assured that activities that will affect agriculture will not be permitted in the delta region.

"The DMK will urge the Centre to give up the Methane project in Cauvery delta region to protect agriculture and to drop the Neutrino project in Tamil Nadu," the party said.

Both the Methane extraction in Cauvery delta and a proposed Neutrino project in Theni district has evoked strong opposition from the local people, pro-Tamil outfits and most parties are now aligned against the proposals.

A few years ago when protests against Methane extraction gained momentum, the DMK found itself on the backfoot since it was in 2011 during its rule that a Memorandum was signed for Coal bed methane production in the delta area.

In an indirect reference to this point, the DMK said it had accepted the Methane proposal in "good faith," as it was assured then that there will be no impact due to the initiative.

Promising to pressure the Centre to nationalise inter-State rivers, the DMK said it would stoutly oppose Karnataka's Mekedatu dam project and take steps for increasing water level in Muallaiperiyar dam to 152 feet.

On the Sethusamudram project, the DMK said it will benefit Tamil Nadu and more importantly the southern districts, its often repeated argument.

The Centre has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court for exploring the possibility of an alternative route for the project implementation, the party said.

The DMK said, hence, it would work for "recommencing the work by expediting disposal of the case pending in the apex court and help the development of the southern districts.

In the wake of the row over air pollution and the matter going to the Supreme Court and a strike by the fire cracker industry at Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu, the DMK assured the sector's workforce of its support.

The DMK promised steps to exempt factories manufacturing fire crackers that provides employment to more than a million people from the ambit of the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

AIADMK top leader and Chief Minister K Palaniswami too had made a similar promise.

The DMK will strive for setting up ISRO's second rocket launching centre at Kulasekarapattinam in Tuticorin district and a Indian Space Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre at Mahdendragiri in Tirunevlei district.

Citing the income tax raids in Tamil Nadu, the DMK said it will press the Centre to take steps to punish the guilty.

The demand is seen as a pointer to searches since 2017 held in premises connected to former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's aide V K Sasikala -now serving sentence in a Bengaluru jail in an assets case- and Health Minister C Vijayabaskar's residence here.

Statehood status for Puducherry, nudging Central PSUs to employ not less than 90 per cent of people from the respective States where the undertakings are situated are among other promises.

Judiciary must be the origin of social justice as well, the party said and demanded reservation for SCs, STs, and OBCs in all courts from the subordinate level to apex court.

On federalism and autonomy, the DMK said it will continue to press for Constitutional amendments to enable States to function with "full rights."



Scrapping Article 356 that provides for dismissal of State governments and opposition to the office of Governor and setting up a regional council for states to provide a platform for resolution of problems, 33 per cent quota for women in Parliament and assemblies are the other aspects of the DMK's policy document.

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The Election Commission Tuesday asked political parties to "desist" during their Lok Sabha poll campaigns from indulging in any propaganda involving actions taken by defence forces.

The fresh advisory came days after the poll panel asked parties and their candidates against using pictures of defence force personnel in their campaign material.

"...parties/candidates are advised that their campaigners/candidates should desist, as part of their election campaigning, from indulging in any political propaganda involving activities of defence forces," the advisory issued on Tuesday said.



The commission said the new advisory is in continuation to its earlier one on use of pictures of defence personnel in campaigning.

The latest advisory of the EC comes against the backdrop of complaints against parties for using the armed forces for political gains, especially in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack and the February 26 air strike by the Indian Air Force (IAF) deep inside Pakistan.

The poll panel had on March 9 asked political parties to "desist from displaying photographs of defence personnel".

The EC's direction came after a picture showing a hoarding with images of IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman and leaders of a party.



In a separate case, the commission had also issued a show-cause notice to Delhi BJP MLA Om Prakash Sharma for putting up two posters featuring him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and IAF pilot Varthaman on Facebook.

The EC had also asked him to take down the post.

The Lok Sabha election is scheduled to begin on April 11 and will continue till May 19..

Referring to attempts at politicising armed forces, former navy chief Admiral L Ramdas (retd) had written to the EC recently urging it to intervene.
Investigators probing the deadly tram shooting in the Dutch city of Utrecht sharpened their focus Tuesday on a possible extremist motive, as judicial authorities revealed that the main suspect was released from jail this month and faces a rape trial in July.

The nature of the Monday's attack and a note found in a suspected getaway car suggest a possible terror motive, prosecutors said in a statement, but they add that other possible reasons also are being investigated.

"Based on the letter, we think he had a terroristic motive," police spokesman Joost Lanshage told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate.

Speaking in parliament, anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders said the note expressed support for the suspect's "Muslim brothers."



Prosecutors also said that investigations so far have not established any relationship at all between the main suspect, Gokmen Tanis, and the shooting victims.

Three people died: a 19-year-old woman from the neighboring town of Vianen, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht.

Three others were seriously wounded and four more suffered minor injuries, according to prosecutors.

Tanis, a 37-year-old man of Turkish descent, was being held on suspicion of "manslaughter with terrorist intent." He was arrested Monday evening after an hours-long manhunt that nearly paralyzed the Netherlands' fourth-largest city and sent shockwaves through the nation. Police recovered a weapon when they arrested him.

In an unusual step, judicial authorities released details of Tanis' criminal past, and said he was recently released from jail and faces trial in July on a rape charge. In the past, he was acquitted of manslaughter but convicted of illegal possession of a weapon and theft.

Wilders called on Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus to resign, saying that Tanis shouldn't have been released from jail.

"You are politically responsible for this," Wilders said during a parliamentary debate.

"You have to resign, get out of here." Police spokesman Martin de Wit said that three people the alleged shooter and two others whose involvement was being investigated were in custody following Monday's attack.

The tram shootings came just days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating Australian white supremacist opened fire in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers. There was no indication of any link between the two events.

In a ceremonial session in parliament, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that because of the attack in Utrecht, "we feel an even stronger bond with the people of Christchurch."



He said the shooting "was not a bad dream but the hard reality with which we woke up." Prosecutors were questioning all three suspects and it wasn't clear when Tanis would be brought before an investigating judge.

Such hearings are generally held to request suspects are detained for longer pending further investigations.

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The Enforcement Directorate Tuesday said it has attached 13 assets located in Jammu and Kashmir in a terror financing case against Pakistan-based terrorist Syed Salahuddin, the chief of the globally banned outfit Hizbul Mujahideen.

The central probe agency issued a provisional order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach the properties worth Rs 1.22 crore, which it said belonged to one Mohammad Shafi Shah, a resident of Bandipora, and six other residents of the state who allegedly worked for the terror outfit.

The ED said it filed a criminal case of money laundering in this instance after taking cognisance of a charge sheet filed against Salahuddin, Shah and others under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Action (UAPA).

"Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the most active terror outfit in Kashmir, has been responsible for funding terrorist and secessionist activities in Jammu and Kashmir. Headed by Syed Salahuddin, its self-styled commander based out of Rawalpindi in Pakistan, it funds terrorism on Indian soil through monies organised by a trust called JKART (Jammu and Kashmir Affectees Relief Trust) in alleged connivance with ISI and other Pakistan-based entities," the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said in a statement.

It said probe found that "terror funds" were being sent to India through hawala and other channels.

Shah is lodged in the Tihar jail in the national capital in connection with an alleged terror funding case, it said.

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Egypt's top media regulator has put into effect tighter restrictions that allow the state to block websites and even social media accounts with over 5,000 followers if they are deemed a threat to national security.

The move is the latest step by the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to suppress dissent. In recent years, Egypt has launched an unprecedented crackdown on reporters and the media, imprisoning dozens and occasionally expelling some foreign journalists.

The new regulations, published in the official gazette late Monday, allow the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block websites and accounts for "fake news," and impose stiff penalties of up to 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,400), all without having to obtain a court order.

Prominent Egyptian journalists have called the measures unconstitutional, saying they grant far-reaching powers to authorities to censor the media, in violation of basic press freedoms.

Chief regulator Makram Mohammed Ahmed refused to comment.

Mohamed Abdel-Hafiz, a board member of the journalists' union, said the government is threatening journalists with "vaguely defined national security violations, as well as vaguely defined political, social or religious norms."



The nine-page document gave a broad list of prohibited topics, including "anything inciting violating the law, public morals, racism, intolerance, violence, discrimination between citizens or hatred." Media outlets that continue to publish "offending material" will be fined up to five million Egyptian pounds (around USD 298,000).

The new regulations laid out the same penalty for outlets that publish content without obtaining distribution rights, plus additional compensation. Critics of the new measures said the rules were stricter than those approved by lawmakers last July, which they said gave the government almost total control over the media.

Journalists' union board member Gamal Abdel-Rahim explained: "Blocking websites is not included in the laws. The constitution itself states that websites and newspapers cannot be shut down without a court order." He said the regulatory council had also ignored all of the union's notes and comments on the new measures.

Since late 2017, some 500 websites including outlets and rights groups have been blocked, according to a recent report by an Egyptian watchdog group, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.

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The Madras High Court Tuesday dismissed as withdrawn an election petition filed by a leader of the Puthiya Tamilagam party against the result of the Ottapidaram assembly constituency in 2016.

K Krishnansamy had challenged the victory of AIADMK candidate R Sundararajan over him by a narrow margin of 493 votes in the assembly elections held in May, 2016.

In his petition, Krishnaswamy had alleged Sundararajan had suppressed some information regarding sand quarry contract.

However, Sundararajan, a loyalist of ousted AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran, had been disqualified along with 17 other MLAs in 2017 by the Tamil Nadu assembly speaker under the anti-defection law.

Though Ottapidaram constituency was declared vacant along with 17 other constituencies, taking the total vacancy in the assembly to 21, the EC recently announced byelections to only 18 segments.

The EC has left out three constituencies -- Ottapidaram Aravakurichi and Tiruparankundram -- citing pendency of election petitions related to them.

Krishnaswamy filed the petition seeking to withdraw his election petition so that byelection could be notified for Ottapidaram too.

The judge in his order said, "The petitioner is permitted to withdraw the election petition. Consequently the election petition is dismissed as withdrawn."



He directed the registry of the court to report the withdrawal of the petition to the Election Commission as required under section 111 of the Representation of People Act (RPA) forthwith.

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Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, wanted in his home country in connection with Latin America's biggest graft scandal, was arrested in California on suspicion of public intoxication and spent the night in jail before he was released Monday morning, authorities have said.

Alejandro Toledo, 72, was arrested Sunday night at a restaurant near the San Francisco Bay Area city of Menlo Park, said San Mateo County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Rosemerry Blankswade on Monday.

Toledo was released without charges Monday morning, which Blankswade said is routine for most public drunkenness arrests. Toledo was Peru's president from 2001 to 2006 and moved to Northern California shortly after leaving office to work and study at Stanford University in Palo Alto, according to a 2007 San Francisco Chronicle report.

Toledo earned a doctoral degree in education and two master's degrees from Stanford, where he delivered the commencement speech to the school's graduating class of 2003 while still in office.

He has held a variety of fellowships and visiting scholar positions at Stanford until 2017, according to university announcements. In 2017, the same year Peruvian officials announced they were seeking to arrest Toledo, Stanford spokeswoman Brooke Donald told a Latin American media outlet that the college was severing its ties with Toledo, who she said was an unpaid "volunteer" who didn't teach.

Stanford officials didn't respond to email and phone inquiries Monday.

Toledo is wanted in Peru where authorities have offered a $30,000 reward for his capture. Peruvian prosecutors accuse him with of taking $20 million in bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht while he served as president. He has denied wrongdoing.

Peru is seeking Toledo's extradition from the US. In February 2017, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski asked President Donald Trump to deport the ex-Peruvian president.

Blankswade said the international police organisation Interpol had issued a "warning" to law enforcement agencies around the world to notify it if and when Toledo was arrested. But Interpol officials told officials in the sheriff's office they had no immediate plans to extradite Toledo and he was released, she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Exim Bank Tuesday said it has given a loan of USD 83.11 million to Congo to finance three solar power projects in the central African country.

Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank) has, on behalf of the government, extended three lines of credit (LOC) aggregating USD 83.11 million to the government of Congo, it said in a release.

The loan will be utilised for financing three solar photovoltaic power projects with a total capacity of 35 megawatt in the three provinces -- Karawa, Mbandaka and Lusambo.

The LOC agreements to this effect were exchanged between Ambassador of Congo to India Mossi Nyamale Rosette and Exim Bank Managing Director David Rasquinha during the 14th CII-Exim Conclave 2019 here.

"With the signing of these three lines of credit for USD 83.11 million, Exim Bank, till date, has extended 10 LOC to the government of Congo on behalf of government of India, taking the total value of LOCs extended to USD 578.05 million," it said.

Projects covered under the LOCs extended to Congo include hydroelectric power projects, power transmission and distribution projects, cement plant, hand pumps and submersible pumps installation, and solar power projects.

With this line of credit, Exim Bank said, it has now put in place 244 LOCs covering 63 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the CIS with credit commitments of around USD 23.43 billion available for financing exports from India.

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Senior NCP leader Dhananjay Munde Tuesday hit out at Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for "covering up" corruption charges against "16 of his ministers".

He was speaking at a function "Rashtra Maharashtra" organised by the BBC Marathi Service.

"We have nailed 16 ministers in the Devendra Fadnavis government on corruption charges with clinching evidence. However, Fadnavis has tried to cover them up and has, therefore, committed a sin," Munde, the Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Council, claimed.

Munde said there were no charges of corruption against Fadnavis, though he added that he would continue to probe to find out more.

Hitting out at the ruling BJP for "politicising" the martyrdom of soldiers, Munde said the party was taking credit for the brave deeds of the armed forces personnel.

On Amit Shah's claim, at some political rallies, that 250 terrorists perished in the February 26 IAF air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp in Balakot in Pakistan, Munde wanted to know where the BJP chief was getting such figures which even security agencies were not privy to.

Against the backdrop of NCP chief Sharad Pawar withdrawing from the April-May Lok Sabha contest, Munde refuted insinuations that all was not well in the Pawar household.

"Pawar saab had announced long back he would not contest Lok Sabha polls anymore. But we had requested him to fight the 2019 polls to send a strong message, which he had said he would consider," Munde said, terming Pawar's decision to withdraw from Lok Sabha polls as right.

On queries that the "mahagathbandhan" had no face (prime ministerial candidate) to challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, "Please don't forget even the NDA has lost several alliances which raise question marks over Modi's acceptability. This is Modi's incompetence. Besides, several parties in different states have started uniting themselves."



He also refuted talk that he was part of dynastic by claiming he had broken ties in 2012 with the family of BJP stalwart late Gopinath Munde, who is his uncle.

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As continue to ground aircraft and cancel significant number of flights, the airline's aircraft maintenance engineers' union wrote to the aviation regulator on Tuesday that three months of salary was overdue to them and flight safety "is at risk".

"It has been arduous for us to meet our financial requirements, result of which have adversely affected the psychological condition of Aircraft Engineers at work and therefore the safety of public transport airplanes being flown by across India and the world is at risk," the Jet Aircraft Engineers Welfare Association (JAMEWA) said in a letter to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The letter, which has been accessed by PTI, stated: "While the senior management is finding a resolution to be in business, we the Engineers who inspect, troubleshoot and certify the public transport airplanes for its airworthiness are in tremendous stress due to non-payment of salaries on time, since last 7 months. As of now, 3 month's salary is overdue to us." Cash-strapped had on Monday said it had grounded four more planes, taking the number of aircraft that are non-operational due to non-payment of lease rentals to 41.





ALSO READ: Jet Airways crisis deepens as Etihad refuses to agree on contours of deal

The JAMEWA requested the to intervene in the matter.

"Jet Airways' senior management had a series of meetings with us to resolve our overdue salaries and after much deliberation, finally released a payment schedule in Dec 2018 which would clear our dues in full, by the end of this financial year. However, it defaulted on it and our confidence in the company's commitments have shaken," it said.

"We request you to kindly intervene and direct Jet Airways to clear our outstanding dues and pay us our salaries on time in future to enable us to continue deliver safe airplanes," it added.



ALSO READ: Passengers bearing the brunt of Jet Airways' flights cancellations

According to the Jet Airways' website, the airline has a fleet of 119 planes. For the past few weeks, passengers have been venting their ire on social media as the airline's flight cancellations have increased gradually due to the rising number of grounded aircraft. Grappling with financial woes, the carrier has been looking at ways to raise fresh funds.

Etihad Airport services had in a notification to its passengers on Sunday said: "Jet Airways has cancelled all their flights from Abu Dhabi with immediate effect from March 18 due to operational reasons".
Florence Pugh is in negotiations to board Scarlett Johansson-fronted "Black Widow" film.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the "Rising" actor would play a spy on the same level as Natasha Romanoff, likely her moral opposite.

The highly anticipated Marvel stand-alone movie will star Johansson as Romanoff aka Black Widow, an agent of the fictional spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D and a member of the superhero team, the Avengers.

After "Captain Marvel", the film is the second female superhero-led project in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The shooting is scheduled to begin in London this June.

Australian filmmaker Cate Shorthand of Nazi drama "Lore" fame is attached to direct.

Jac Schaeffer wrote the most recent draft for the film.

Marvel had no comment.

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The Gauhati High Court Tuesday ruled against bandhs and blockades declaring them illegal and unconstitutional and ordered the creation of a fund to recover losses during such agitations from the organisers.

Justice Ujjal Bhuyan passed the order while delivering the judgment on a writ petition filed by Lower Assam Inter-district Stage Carriage Bus Owner's Association.

Justice Bhuyan also directed lodging of FIR against bandh and blockade organisers within 24 hours of their occurrence considering various judgments passed by the Supreme Court and different high courts on the issue.

The investigating officers in all such cases would carry out the probe expeditiously and file charge sheets before the competent criminal court promptly so that the offenders can be tried in a fast track mode, the court ruled.

The judgment said organisers of such blockades are liable to be prosecuted under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code 1860, National Highways Act 1956 and the Railways Act 1989.

In addition those indulging in violence and intimidation like preventing people from attending their duties during such agitations will also have to be booked under the relevant penal provisions, it said.

The petition against various state respondents and different organisations had sought imposition of exemplary punishment for calling illegal and unconstitutional bandhs for a total of 51 days from August 28, 2012 to August 31, 2013 in Goalpara, Bongaigaon and Kamrup districts.

Justice Bhuyan ordered that the home and political department of the Assam government make an assessment of losses caused to the state on account of the blockades which would be recovered from the organisers and their main office bearers as arrears of land revenue.

A 'Bandh Loss Compensation Fund' should be constituted by the department within a period of three months. The fund would be maintained by a retired district and sessions judge along with one administrative officer, he said.

The Fund authority will evolve its own procedure for quick settlement of claims lodged by an individual, public bodies and others against the agitators, the order said.

The court also directed the Assam Police Accountability Commission to monitor filing of FIR and registration of cases.

In case of any default or "non-seriousness" in complying with the guidelines, appropriate action may be taken by the Assam Police Accountability Commission in accordance with law, it added.

The Commission will submit the monitoring report to the Registrar (Judicial), Gauhati High Court once every three months, the judgement said adding the Registrar (Judicial), Gauhati High Court shall maintain a record of the monitoring reports submitted by Assam Police Accountability Commission.

Besides, the commissioner and secretary of the home and political department shall file contempt petition against the organisers and the main office bearers of such groups calling bandhs and blockades before the high court, Justice Bhuyan ruled.

In case of any default in carrying out the directions by the concerned authorities, they will be liable to face departmental proceedings besides contempt of the court.

The guidelines will hold the field till enactment of appropriate legislation by the state, he ruled.

Senior government advocate R K D Choudhury appeared for the state respondents and Advocate H Das appeared for the petitioner.

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Germany has initiated a move at the European Union to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, days after China blocked a bid at the United Nations to ban him, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

They said Germany was in touch with several member nations of the European Union for listing Azhar as a terrorist which will result in his travel ban as well as freezing of his assets in the 28 countries of the bloc.

Germany has floated a proposal to ban Azhar by the European Union, but no resolution on the issue has been moved yet, diplomatic sources said.

They said all 28 member countries of the European Union (EU) will have to support the move to ban the Pakistan-based terrorist as the bloc decides on such issues under the principle of consensus.

On March 15, France imposed financial sanctions on Azhar and said it will work with its European partners for putting the JeM chief's name on the EU list of persons and entities involved in terrorist acts.

The decision by France came two days after China put a hold on a fresh move to designate Azhar as a global terrorist by the Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

The proposal to designate Azhar under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UNSC was moved by France, the UK and the US, in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed. JeM had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack.

Fourteen out of the 15 members of the UN Security Council supported the proposal, but China was the only country which did not go with the move.

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Germany launches its auction Tuesday for the construction of an ultra-fast 5G mobile network as a transatlantic dispute rages over security concerns surrounding giant Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei.

The United States has threatened to end intelligence sharing with Berlin if it does not exclude hardware made by Huawei from the infrastructure, arguing that Chinese equipment could help Beijing spy on Western companies and governments.

Attempting to play down the row on Monday, Jochen Homann, chairman of the German Federal Network Agency (BNA), said: "No matter whether a supplier comes from Sweden or China, companies must meet certification requirements and security checks."



'5G' - 'fifth generation' - is the latest, high-speed generation of cellular mobile communications and Berlin will require winning bidders to offer 5G service to at least 98 percent of German households, motorways and rail lines.

Germany, Europe's biggest economy whose wireless networks rank 46th in the world for download speeds, wants to close the sizeable digital gap by making the shift to the ultra-fast 5G system.

The BNA starts the auction in Mainz at 0900 GMT on Tuesday and the process will allocate 41 different frequency blocks.

Four operators are in the running, among them Germany's three main mobile network providers - Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Germany (O2) - plus United Internet (1&1), a German company specialising in internet services.

Chinese firm Huawei is not one of the bidders but provides the four German companies with essential hardware - such as antennas and routers.

The US has accused Beijing of using Huawei's 5G network gear as a Trojan horse, forcing operators to transmit data to the regime, but Washington has not provided evidence to support their suspicions.

Huawei has strenuously denied allegations its equipment could be used for espionage.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday lashed out at what he called "abnormal, immoral" attacks on Huawei and demanded a "fair and just competition environment" for Chinese firms.

US-led attempts to encourage other nations to ban Huawei equipment from their telecoms infrastructure suffered a setback when Chancellor Angela Merkel's government decided against imposing company specific-restrictions on the 5G auction.

US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell last week warned that Washington could stifle intelligence cooperation unless Berlin agreed a Huawei ban.

In a letter, Grenell told Peter Altmaier, Germany's economy minister, that intelligence-sharing cooperation could cease if Berlin allows the Chinese firm to be part of the 5G network.

The threat escalated last week when NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, warned Germany that NATO forces would cut communications if Berlin works with Huawei.

"We're concerned about their (Germany) telecommunications backbone being compromised in the sense that, particularly with 5G, the bandwidth capability and ability to pull data is incredible," Scaparrotti told the House Armed Services Committee last Wednesday.

"If it also is inside of their defence communications, then we're not gonna communicate with them.

"And for the military that would be a problem." Merkel has tried to reassure senior figures in Washington by saying Germany would consult with the US over whether to use Huawei tech, but would "define our standards for ourselves".

However, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) shares some of the US fears.

BND security experts have asked the government to take China's overall strategy into account, including a law on forced cooperation in security matters, according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine.

Other media outlets claim Berlin is drawing up a catalogue of measures, for all 5G providers, to change the telecommunications laws.

These measures range from a non-espionage clause to the requirement of testing all components and the obligation to publish source code used in infrastructure.

In some cases, the government could insist equipment already installed is replaced, which could exclude Huawei from the infrastructure without pronouncing a formal ban on the Chinese firm, according to business daily Handelsblatt.

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British electric bike and lifestyle brand GoZero Mobility will enter Indian market next week with the launch of two products.

The Birmingham-based firm will launch two electric bikes -- One and Mile -- in Delhi-NCR next week. It has tied up with Kolkata-based Kirti Solar to develop and manufacture current range as well as for future products.

Kirti Solar has invested USD 250,000 in GoZero Mobility.

"With the significant focus by the Government of India towards electric mobility, especially two-wheelers, we see this as an appropriate time for us to be here," GoZero Mobility Chief Executive Officer Ankit Kumar said in statement.

GoZero is determined to offer products with optimum performance and create a green-way to commute, he added.

The company's GoZero One is powered with 400Wh lithium battery pack which is optimised to provide 60 km of range on single charge, while GoZero Mile is powered with 300Wh lithium battery pack which provides 45 km range.

GoZero will also launch its signature range of lifestyle merchandise designed in the UK, which includes sweat shirts, jackets, belts, and wallets, among other products.

Commenting on the company's partnership with Kirti Solar Ltd, Kumar said, "The company brings in a lot of expertise on board in the areas of manufacturing and distribution and we shall work together to create more products for different consumer segments.

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In a move to aid the real estate sector, the all-powerful GST Council Tuesday approved a transition plan for the implementation of new tax structure for housing projects.

As per the decision taken by the GST Council, the developers of residential projects which are incomplete as on March 31, will have option either to choose the old structure with Input Tax Credit (ITC) or to shift to new 5 per cent and 1 per cent rates without ITC.

In the previous meeting on February 24, the Council slashed tax rates for under-construction flats to 5 per cent from 12 per cent and affordable homes to 1 per cent from 8 per cent, effective April 1.

"GST Council today has approved transition plan for the new rate structure for real estate residential projects...from April 1, builders have to choose either of the options for which they will get time," Revenue Secretary A B Pandey told reporters after the 34th meeting of the GST Council here.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley chaired the meeting with state finance ministers via video conferencing.

On the time-frame for transition, Pandey pointed out that the council has agreed on providing a reasonable time to developers.

The matter would be decided in a next few days in consultation with the states, he said, adding that it could be 15 days or one month.

Pandey further said that the decision will help the builders in clearing inventories.

"This go-ahead by the GST Council brings quite a relief for this sector in handling transition issues in specific," EY India Partner Abhishek Jain said.

For upcoming projects, reduced rates of 5 per cent and 1 per cent will be applicable beginning April 1.

On the next GST Council meeting, the Revenue Secretary said that is unlikely till the election process is over.

He, however, said that if any emergent situation arises then a meeting could be called with the permission of the Election Commission.

On apprehensions being raised on possible price rise due to new tax structure, the secretary said if prices escalate, the National Anti-profiteering Authority will look into it and take an appropriate action.

Deloitte India Partner M S Mani said the pragmatic move to segregate under construction projects from new projects would provide relief to builders who were worried about the loss of input tax credit.

"This would also enable them to price the loss of input tax credits in the new projects. Reversal of Input tax credit on a proportionate basis would entail significant computational issues for builders as each project would be in various stages of construction and have differing pre and post completion sale patterns," Mani said.

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The Central Bureau of Investigation Tuesday told a special CBIcourt that Gujarat government has declined sanction to prosecute retired police officers D G Vanzara and N K Amin in the alleged fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others.

After going through a letter submitted to the court of special CBI judge J K Pandya by CBI lawyer R C Kodekar, the court said that sanction to prosecute the former officers, who were accused in the case, under section 197 of the CrPC, was declined by the state government.

The defence lawyers then sought permission to file an application to drop proceedings against the two former police officers.

The court granted the request and asked them to file an application on March 26.

The court had earlier rejected discharge applications of the two ex officers and had asked the CBI to clear its stand on whether it wants to get sanction to prosecute them from the state government.

Accordingly, the CBI wrote to the state government requesting for the same.

Vanzara and Amin are two of the seven accused chargesheeted by CBI in the case.

Vanzara is a former deputy inspector general of police, while Amin retired as superintendent of police.

Jahan, a 19-year-old woman from Mumbra near Mumbai, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an alleged fake encounter by police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

The Gujarat police had then claimed that the four had links with terrorists and had plotted to kill then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Gujarat government has declined sanction to prosecute retired police officers D G Vanzara and N K Amin in the alleged fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others, the Central Bureau of Investigation told a special CBIcourt on Tuesday.

The government's decision may pave the way for the controversial case against Vanzara and Amin to be dropped.

After going through a letter submitted to the court by CBI lawyer R C Kodekar, Judge J K Pandya said the sanction to prosecute the two former officers, who were accused in the case, under Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), was declined by the state government.

The defence lawyers then sought permission to file an application to drop the proceedings against Vanzara and Amin.

The court granted the request and asked them to file an application on March 26.

It will now be up to the CBI to decide whether to proceed with the case against the two without the government sanction.

As per CrPC Section 197, prior sanction is required from a competent authority to prosecute a public servant.

The court had earlier rejected the discharge pleas of Vanzara,former deputy inspector general of police in Gujarat, and Amin, who retired as superintendent of police, and asked the CBI to clear its stand on whether it wants to get sanction from the state government to prosecute them.

Accordingly, the CBI wrote to the state government requesting the same.

Vanzara and Amin are two of the seven accused charge- sheeted by the CBI in the case.

Vanzara had sought discharge in the case on the ground of parity with the state's former in-charge Director General of Police P P Pandey, who was discharged in the case in February last year for want of evidence.

Amin's application seeking discharge was based on the ground that the encounter was genuine and that testimonies of witnesses produced by the CBI were not reliable.

Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old woman from Mumbra near Mumbai, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an alleged encounter with police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

Gujarat Police claimed the four had links with terrorist organisations, and wanted to kill then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

A special investigation team set up by the Gujarat High Court concluded that it was a fake encounter, following which the HC transferred the case to the CBI.

In the first charge sheet filed in 2013, the CBI named seven Gujarat police officers, including P P Pandey, Vanzara and G L Singhal for kidnapping, murder and conspiracy.

Vanzara was last year discharged in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter cases.

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Gujarat BJP's Parliamentary Board Tuesday finalised the panel of names of candidates for Lok Sabha seats in the state which will soon be sent to the central leadership for approval.

The names will be sent to the BJP's central Parliamentary Board for final selection of candidates, a party leader said.

Gujarat will vote in a single phase on April 23.

"After deliberations spread over three days, the panel of names has been prepared for all the 26 seats of the state," Gujarat BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya told reporters in Gandhinagar.

"At a date given by the BJP's central leadership, top state leaders will go to Delhi and present the names before the central Parliamentary Board of the party," he said.

"The final decision regarding candidates will be taken by the central Parliamentary Board," Pandya said.

The panel of names may contain two to four names for each seat, party sources said.

The BJP had won all the 26 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, state BJP in-charge Om Mathur and the party's Gujarat unit president Jitu Vaghani were among those who attended the three-day meeting that concluded Tuesday.

The sources said no names have been suggested for the Gandhinagar seat, currently held by party veteran L K Advani who is winning from there since 1991.

According to BJP observers, party workers want a national leader to contest from the prestigious constituency, the sources said.

The BJP sends observers to get inputs from local workers and leaders on probables candidates from a seat.

Two sitting MPs of the BJP, Liladhar Vaghela (Patan) and Vitthal Radadiya (Porbandar), have declined to contest the polls due to health reasons, the sources said, adding they will be replaced.

Suspense prevails over who will contest from the Ahmedabad East seat, currently held by veteran actor Paresh Rawal, as speculation is rife that he has decided not to fight the polls due to his busy schedule.

On the other hand, the Congress has so far declared candidates for four Lok Sabha seats in the state - Ahmedabad West, Anand, Vadodara and Chhota Udepur.

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The Madras High Court Tuesday disposed of an anticipatory bail plea by a Tamil magazine editor in connection with the videos allegedly released by him on the Pollachi sexual harassment case after it was informed that all cases related to the incident would be transferred to the CBI.

Recording the submission by the public prosecutor, Justice Anand Venkatesh, however, gave liberty to petitioner R R Gopal, the editor of bi-weekly 'Nakkheeran', to approach the court if there was any apprehension of arrest even after the transfer of the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

When the petition came up for hearing in the morning, the judge orally observed that he was disturbed by the manner in which the issue of sexual harassment was being "politicised and sensationalised".

"I am disturbed the manner in which it is reported. Unfortunately, it has happened when election has been announced. The political parties jumping into it," he said.

Referring to the Tamil Nadu government's decision to transfer the case to the CBI, Justice Venkatesh said the FIR on the release of the video should also be transferred to the central agency.

He, then, asked the government counsel to get instructions by afternoon.

After the hearing resumed, Public Prosecutor P A Natarajan informed the court that the state government had taken a decision to transfer the investigation of the main harassment case to the CBI and an order had already been passed.

He submitted all connected cases in which independent FIRs were also going to be transferred to the CBI.

Gopal moved the court apprehending arrest by the cybercrime police which registered a case against him based on a complaint by Tamil Nadu Assembly Deputy Speaker Pollachi Jayaraman, accusing him of dragging him and his family members into the sexual harassment.

The case was registered under sections of the Indian Penal Code, including forgery for purpose of harming reputation, statements conducing to public mischief and promoting enmity, and the Information Technology Act over the video allegedly released by him on the sexual harassment case.

The petitioner alleged the case had been foisted on him and it was a blatant misuse of power by the complainant.

The main case relates to sexual harassment of a 19-year-old woman in a car by a four member gang near Pollachi in Coimbatore district on February 12.

They had tried to strip her, shot a video of the act and blackmailed her. The victim, who managed to free herself, lodged a complaint with police on February 24.

The case assumed political overtones after a local ruling AIADMK functionary allegedly attacked the woman's brother for lodging police complaint about the harassment. The functionary was later expelled by the ruling party.

The attack, coupled with reports in a section of the media that the gang had sexually harassed several other women, led to an outrage and protests.

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The EC Tuesday informed the Madras High Court that it has rejected a plea by the Tamil Nadu Bishops' Council seeking re-scheduling of the April 18 Lok Sabha elections and assembly bypolls in the state as the date clashed with Easter Triduum.

The submission was made by the Election Commission (EC) counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan when a petition by council president and Madurai Archbishop Antony Pappusamy seeking a direction to the commission to change the poll date came up for hearing.

The counsel said even the about the EC rejecting the representation had come in the media.

The division bench comprising Justice S Manikumar and Justice Subramonium Prasad then directed Rajagopalan to file an affidavit in this regard by Thursday and posted the matter for hearing on that day.

The archbishop in his public interest litigation petition said that the council had already submitted a memorandum to the EC on the issue and there was no response from it.

He submitted that there were around 50 lakh Christians in the state and for them the Holy Week starts with the Palm Sunday on April 14 and culminates with Easter Sunday on April 21.

The election date coincided with Maundy Thursday, when the Last Supper takes place on the eve of crucifixion and death of Jesus on Good Friday, he said.

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter were called Holy Triduum (holy three days), he said, adding thousands of faithful will visit churches and prayers would continue throughout the night on these days.

Hence, it may affect the turnout of voters, the petitioner said.

He also submitted the Catholic Church was running around 2,800 schools in the state and most of them were used by the government as polling stations for any election.

If the polling booths were located in the schools, it would restrict movement of people in the preceding days of polling.

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The Delhi High Court Tuesday sought response of the Centre on a plea by some YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) leaders and their associates, who claimed that their phones were being tapped and have been placed under "illegal technical surveillance".

Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal issued a notice to the Centre through Ministries of Telecommunication and Home Affairs, Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary (Home) of Andhra Pradesh on a plea by former YSRCP MP Y V Subba Reddy and five others, including party chief Jaganmohan Reddy's personal and political assistants.

The court listed the matter for further hearing on April 15.

Central government standing counsel Ajay Digpaul has said the petitioners had given a representation to the Centre which has been forwarded to the Andhra Pradesh government as the grievance is against the state government.

In the plea, Reddy has sought the court's direction to authorities, including Ministries of Telecommunication and Home Affairs, Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary (Home) of Andhra Pradesh, and mobile service providers, to explain under what circumstances they have been put under technical surveillance.

It has sought "necessary action under relevant provisions of law against the authorities responsible for unauthorisedly intercepting their telephones".

The petition has also sought direction to the authorities to forthwith suspend the surveillance.

It has said that secretly listening to or recording a communication in order to get information about other activities is morally wrong and it constitutes a serious invasion of an individual's privacy.

The plea has said that a representation was made to the Ministry of Home Affairs in December last year with a request to direct the organisations to forthwith remove the petitioners' numbers from the unauthorised surveillance and also seeking an impartial and independent probe into the incident.

The authorities have neither replied nor have they taken any action against those involved in the activities, it has claimed.

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The Delhi High Court has taken note of the "dearth" of special teachers in government schools here and said that despite repeated efforts, the vacancies have not been filled.

Special programs are designed for those students who are mentally, physically, socially or emotionally delayed and special educators are hired to meet the appropriate needs of each such child.

A bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and A K Chawla said, "It has been pointed out that there are large number of vacancies of special teachers and despite repeated efforts, these are not being filled. There is a dearth of special education teachers in the schools in Delhi."



The court's observation came while dismissing an appeal by the Delhi government challenging the February 2017 order of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) asking it to consider the candidature of an applicant for the post of special educator and process the appointment, if found qualified and eligible.

The high court said the applicant woman, represented by advocates Ashok Agarwal and Anuj Agarwal, was otherwise qualified and eligible for the post and it was not going into the legal issues raised by the Delhi government in the appeal.

Initially, a petition was filed by 41 applicants before the CAT. The plea, however, was later pressed by only two of them.

The Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB) had issued an advertisement inviting applications for filling up of the posts of Special Education Teacher among others. The candidature of both the applicants was rejected on the ground of incorrect filling in of the OMR sheets. The rejection was challenged by them in the CAT.

Later, one of the two applicants was appointed in a school.

According to the counsel, there are around 1,500 vacancies for the post of Special Education Teacher in Delhi government schools.

The woman applicant, against whom the Delhi government had approached the high court, had made her application in the prescribed OMR form. In order to be eligible, the candidates should have cleared the CTET qualification before the cut-off date.

Though she had acquired the CTET qualification before the cut-off date, due to a "human error", she did not colour the bubble on the form and was declared ineligible.

Challenging her rejection, the woman had approached the tribunal which allowed her plea.

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Indian IT company announced Tuesday that it has signed a managed services agreement with worth $1.3 billion over multiple years.

"This seven-year agreement for an incremental $1.3 billion continues to build on the success of the Xerox-HCL relationship, which began in 2009 with product engineering and support services," HCL Tech said in a statement.

HCL Tech will manage portions of Xerox's shared services, including global administrative and support functions, including selected information technology and finance functions (excluding accounting), it added.

The IT firm currently manages aspects of Xerox's mechanical, electrical and software engineering activities for printer and imaging product lines.

Together, the two have delivered 215 US patents and have created research and development (R&D) labs that are tightly integrated with infrastructure and standards.

" will benefit from our global scale, best-in-class processes and investments in artificial intelligence, robotic process automation and transformation tools, and HCL will benefit from a long-term agreement to provide product support and administrative services to Xerox," President and Chief Executive Officer C Vijayakumar said.

As part of the agreement, a group of Xerox employees will transfer to HCL (subject to statutory compliances), the statement said but did not divulge specific numbers.

Xerox President and Chief Operations Officer Steve Bandrowczak said, "We selected HCL as our partner for this strategic initiative due to our successful track record together thus far and our shared values".
Shares of Hotel Leela Venture rose 5 per cent Tuesday after the company announced sale of four hotels and a property to Canadian investment fund Brookfield Asset Management for Rs 3,950 crore.

The shares of the company jumped 4.96 per cent to close at Rs 11.63, its upper circuit limit, on the BSE.

On the NSE, shares gained 5 per cent to close at Rs 11.55.

The company entered into a binding agreement with Brookfield-sponsored private real estate fund to sell four Leela hotels located at Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Udaipur.

The deal also involves sale of another property it owns in Agra, Hotel Leela Venture said in a BSE filing Monday.

The transaction includes assignment of all hotel management contracts currently in operation as well as all under-development, along with the employees of the hotels, it added.

"The total transaction value is Rs 3,950 crore plus the applicable transaction costs," the filing said.

JM Financial acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Hotel Leela Venture for this transaction, it said.

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Senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil Tuesday rejected reports that he had quit as the Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

Speculation about Vikhe Patil resigning as Maharashtra LoP have been rife in political circles ever since his son, Sujay, joined the ruling BJP on March 12 and is set to be recommended by it for the Ahmednagar Lok Sabha seat.

Sujay's candidature from the BJP will pit him in a straight fight with the NCP, which had refused to accede to Vikhe Patil's request to let his son fight on a Congress ticket from there.

Vikhe Patil, who is in his hometown Loni, said, "I reject reports that I have resigned as Leader of Opposition."



Vikhe Patil had earlier said that Sujay's decision to join the BJP was a personal one.

He would continue to the serve the Congress and abide by its directives, the LoP had asserted.

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The Reserve Bank on Tuesday moved the NCLAT seeking modification of its order that restrained banks from declaring accounts of IL&FS and its group companies as NPAs even as the tribunal asked the banking regulator not to make it a "prestige issue".

Admitting the apex bank's plea, which contends that there is an overlap of power, the tribunal also wanted it to clarify whether its NPA (Non-Performing Assets) norms and powers come in the way of successful resolution of IL&FS.

The NCLAT said the RBI can not restrict it from prohibiting banks from 'asset classfication' and observed that any change in this order would upset the entire resolution process of the IL&FS and 300 group companies, which are sitting on the huge debt amounting to over Rs 90,000 crore.

The Reserve Bank of India has moved the tribunal requesting it to modify its order restraining banks from classifying IL&FS and its group companies as NPAs, contending that there was an overlap of power.

The central bank contended before National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) that it is regulator of banks and it should also be heard in the matter, which the bench agreed and directed the matter to be listed on March 29.

The NCLAT said that it would hear the RBI on the issue and asked the banking sector regulator to clarify if its NPA norms and powers come in the way of successful resolution of IL&FS companies.

A two-member bench headed by Justice S J Mukhopadhaya wondered that the effected banks have still not come before it and instead of that the RBI has come forward.

"We have not prohibited you (from declaring NPA), we have just said that you need our permission before doing so. Please do not make it as a prestige issue. If the effected lenders have not moved to NCLAT, why is RBI before us," the bench said.

The NCLAT also told the RBI that the apex bank could not prohibit the appellate tribunal from restraining the banks.

"We can not regulate bank but can prohibit bank. You can regulate bank but can not prohibit a tribunal," said Justice Mukhopadhaya.

Over the RBI's argument of overlap of power conferred to it, NCLAT told banking regulator "overlap would be only, where you have powers".

The RBI, through his counsel said that its norms governing classification of assets as NPAs are constitutionally sound under the RBI Act, Banking Regulation Act.

Senior advocate Gopal Jain appearing for the RBI said: "We are not here on recovery of loans, we are on the issue of classification".

On this appellate tribunal also said that "your circular must have an object" and NPA is only for recovering the amount.

Passing an order on February 25, NCLAT had said : "We make it clear that due to non-payment of dues by the Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited' or its entities including the Amber Companies', no financial institution will declare the accounts of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited' or its entities as NPA' without prior permission of this Appellate Tribunal.

During the proceedings, senior advocate Ramji Srinivasan appearing for IL&FS informed the NCLAT that the number of green companies has increased to 50 from the previous number of 21.

"29 more IL&FS companies have been added in Green list. Total would be now 50 and NCLAT can consider releasing the additional 29 green cos from the moratorium to begin releasing payments to lenders," he submitted.

He also informed that the number of amber companies has also been increased to 13 from the previous 10.

"We are not against classification of Green or Red cos if they default. However, we can not allow classification of amber firms as NPAs. It must ensure that amber companies remain going concerns for successful resolution," said the NCLAT.

It also directed the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and IL&FS to submit roadmap and asked to clarify whether amber companies can discharge their debt liability by paying debts of their senior secured financial creditors.

Srinivasan also informed NCLAT that they are in process to appointing resolution consultants.

"These resolution consultant would work alongside Justice DK Jain Committee for resolution of group cos," he said, adding that it would work on a Committee of Creditors - like mechanism where lenders will be invited to join and invite resolution applicants for individual group companies.

Earlier, the corporate affairs ministry submitted the debt resolution plan for IL&FS.

The entire resolution process is based on the principles enunciated in the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, as per the ministry.

Under the plan, the government has categorised IL&FS group companies into green, amber and red based on their respective financial positions.

Companies under the green category would be those that continue to meet their payment obligations.

Amber category would be for those companies that will not be able to meet their obligations but can meet only operational payment obligations to senior secured financial creditors.

Amber category entities "are permitted to make only payments necessary to maintain and preserve the going concern".

"Companies falling in the red category are the entities which can not meet their payment obligations towards even senior secured financial creditors," as per the plan. Such companies would be permitted to make payment necessary to maintain and preserve.

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Tigmanshu Dhulia may have impressed the audiences with his directing and acting chops, but the filmmaker says balancing both the jobs in the same film is akin to walking a tightrope.

The director, who played the father to the main lead (Ali Fazal) in his latest directorial "Milan Talkies", said he decided to take up the part as other actors were unavailable.

This was Dhulia's first full-fledged role in his directorial venture. He previously made a guest appearance in his 2011 film "Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster".

"I never wanted to do this role. In the future I will never do acting and direction hand-in-hand as it's very tough. I wanted someone else to do this role. But the issue was of the dates and everyone was busy. When I was left with no choice, I decided to act in the film," the director told PTI in an interview.

Dhulia has acted in a number of films, most notably Anurag Kashyap's "Gangs of Wasseypur" series and Shah Rukh Khan's "Zero".

He believes "Milan Talkies" nicely deals with a father-son relationship.

"People will be inspired by my character and will wish to have such a father. Moreover, I have seen today's advertisements where the father is shown as a foolish guy who knows nothing about today's generation and the children are shown as smart.

"In this film, the father is a bigger loafer than his own son. His son is a cinema buff but the father is a bigger cinema buff. So they share a very strong bond."



The filmmaker said it was his daughter who urged him to make a "pure love story" as she was unable to watch his previous films due to their A ratings.

"I decided to make a story on pure love as my daughter always had a problem when my movies would receive an adult certificate, even though they never contained abusive language but there was violence in them. So I said ok. The project took so much time to get made that my daughter is 20-years-old now," he said.

Dhulia's "Milan Talkies" went through development hell as the project was announced back in 2012. Before Fazal bagged the lead role, several names were attached to the film, from Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra to Imran Khan.

Despite the delays, the director said he stuck to base the film in the year 2010 as he believes it highlights the importance of communication.

"I decided to keep the plot of the story in 2010 to 2013. Basically, the story revolves around the theme of communication gap. In today's time, we have several platforms like Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and others, where we can communicate but still we fail at it.

"People are using the social networking sites to get into relationships. They don't even know how to establish communication with someone. So my film basically deals with how communication is important in one's life."



The film, produced by PS Chhatwal and Filmy Keeda Productions, also features Shraddha Srinath, who has made her Bollywood debut with the project.

Also starring Ashutosh Rana, Sanjay Mishra, Reecha Sinha and Sikander Kherr, "Milan Talkies" released on March 15.

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India is committed towards strengthening its engagement with Africa for combating terrorism and extremism, a top official said Tuesday.

The country also wants to keep oceans in the region free to ensure the world's second largest continent does not become a "theatre for rival ambitions", the official added.

Addressing a conference, T S Tirumurti, Secretary (Economic Relations) in Ministry of External Affairs, said India is well on its way to opening 18 new missions in Africa.

"We have a mutual interest in strengthening defence and security with the rise of terrorism being the single most important factor impacting both India and Africa," he said.

Deputy Prime Minister, Kingdom of Lesotho, Monyane Moleleki said India and Africa are both affected by the terrorism and have no choice but to "join forces and fight together this monster at bilateral and multilateral level".

He condemned the heinous and cowardly terrorist attacks in Pulwama.

India is also looking at innovative ways to leverage mutual strengths, including through trilateral cooperation, for example, it is eyeing projects in Kenya and Ethiopia with third country partners, Tirumurti said at CII Exim Bank Conclave on India-Africa Partnership here.

Commerce Secretary Anup Wadhawan said the issue of financial mobilisation to bridge infrastructure gap through innovative financing was deliberated upon during the conclave.

"The active role private sector could play to bridge this financial gap of about USD 100 billion per annum was discussed," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India has neither forgotten nor will forget the and the country's leadership is "capable and courageous" to mete out effective responses to such acts, NSA said Tuesday.

Speaking for the first time about the attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed on February 14 in Jammu and Kashmir, the security advisor (NSA) asked the paramilitary force to "constantly" enhance their professionalism, training, physical capabilities and quick response skills.

"What should we do? What should be our way, our aim and our response and time to respond? The country's leadership is both capable and courageous to (do) that," Doval said.

"The country will tackle all such challenges and we have the courage to do this," he said while addressing Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel on the paramilitary force's 80th raising day celebrations at its group centre here.

Doval began his 16-minute speech by paying tributes to the 40 personnel who were killed when a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist blew up his explosives-laden vehicle alongside their bus, which was part of a convoy going from Jammu to Srinagar.

The country has not forgotten and will not forget the terror attack, Doval said, referring to the Pulwama incident.

The NSA reiterated that the leadership of the country is fully capable to deal with any act of terror and also against those who abet it.

Doval, a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is believed to be the person behind the planning of the air strike on a JeM camp in Balakot in Pakistan.

The strike was carried out by the (IAF) in retaliation to the Pulwama terror incident, which was one of the worst attack on security personnel in Kashmir in three decades.

The was a "very sad incident", Doval said, adding that the country will always be indebted to these personnel and their families.

He asked CRPF personnel to "not look back" as they have a golden future ahead.

"If your morale is high, then the country's future is safe," the retired Indian Police Service (IPS) officer and chief of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), said.

World history is replete with examples when weak internal security mechanisms led to loss of independence, constitutional crises and collapse of governments, he said.

Doval said after World War II, out of the 37 nations that faced such crisis, 28 suffered it because of internal security problems.

Therefore, the CRPF, as the lead internal security force of the country has an important role and onerous responsibility in ensuring peace, and law and order, he said.

Doval praised the force for its quick response in moving from one conflict or combat theatre to the another in a short time and for being a very "credible" force for the Indian government when it comes to ensuring law and order anywhere in the country.

He said anywhere in the country if there is a internal security challenge, "you will find CRPF's tackling it"



The CRPF, with about 3 lakh personnel, has 246 operational battalions, and was raised in 1939 as the Crown Representatives Police during British rule. It was re-named as the CRPF in 1949.

It was granted the President's colour this day in 1950 by the first home minister of the country, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.It is the highest honour bestowed on a force in recognition of exceptional service rendered by it to the nation, both during war and peace.

This is the second time that Doval attended as chief guest a martial event conducted by any of the Central Armed Police Forces since he was appointed the NSA by the Modi government in 2014.

Doval had reviewed an Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) parade in 2015 when the



force guarding the China border marked its 54th years of raising.

During the event, the NSA also decorated CRPF jawans and officers with gallantry medals that were announced on the occasion of the Republic Day this year.
The armies of India and Sri Lanka will hold a two-week military drill beginning March 26 in the island nation with an aim to deepen anti-terror cooperation, officials said Tuesday.

The aim of the exercise is to build and promote close relations between armies of both the countries and to enhance operational cooperation, they said.

The officials said the 'Mitra Shakti' exercise will involve tactical level operations to effectively deal with the challenge of terrorism as well as transnational crimes.

"The exercise will go a long way in further cementing relationship between both the nations and will act as a catalyst in bringing synergy and cooperation at grassroots levels between both the armies," the Indian Army said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Indian-American couple from California Satish Kartan and Sharmistha Barai has been found guilty to the charges of forced labour of foreign nationals from India and Nepal.

Residents of Stockton in California, Satish Kartan (45) and his wife Sharmistha Barai (45) took advantage of overseas workers, forcing them to work without pay, physically abusing them and threatening them of negative repercussions if they tried to leave, Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband said.

The Indian-American couple faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a USD 250,000 fine. The sentencing is scheduled for June 6.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, between February 2014 and October 2016, Kartan and Barai hired workers from overseas to perform domestic labour in their home in Stockton.

In advertisements seeking workers on the internet and India-based newspapers, the defendants made false claims regarding the wages and the duties of employment. Then, once the workers arrived at the defendants' Stockton residence, Kartan and Barai forced them to work 18 hours a day with limited rest and nourishment.

Few of them were paid any wage, court documents said. They kept their domestic workers from leaving and induced them to keep working for them by threatening them, by creating an atmosphere of fear, control and disempowerment, and at times, by physically hitting or burning them. When a victim pushed back or said she wanted to leave, it got worse.

Victims flew from India and Nepal to testify. According to evidence presented at trial, the couple struck one worker on multiple occasions.

Barai threatened to kill her and throw her bones in the garbage, backhanded her across the face for talking back and slammed her hands down on a gas stove, causing her to suffer first- and second-degree burns on her hands from the flames.

They also threatened several other victims to coerce them to keep working, including by telling the victims they would report them to police or immigration authorities if they tried to leave. Throughout the victims' time in their home, they were deprived of sleep and food.

According to court papers, they subjected the victims to verbal abuse and harassment in an effort to intimidate them into continuing to provide labour and services.

"Kartan and Barai did not simply fail to pay victims for their work," said Sean Ragan, Special Agent in Charge of the Sacramento FBI Field Office.

"They deprived them of their dignity and robbed them of their federally-protected civil rights," he alleged.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian-origin Jagmeet Singh has created political history in Canada when he made his debut in the House of Commons as the first non white-leader of a major opposition party in the country.

The arrival of the turbaned leader into the house on Monday, cheered by all members, coincided with the induction of a senior woman member into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet.

Singh, the leader of the New Democratic Party, placed his hand over his heart as he walked into the Commons before the daily question period.

Singh, 40, was elected in federal by-elections held on February 25.

Singh's first words as an elected lawmaker were about last week's terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand.

"I want to begin by expressing our solidarity with the people of New Zealand who are mourning the attack on Muslim brothers and sisters... in Christchurch," Singh said.

About 50 people were killed last week in the Pacific country's worst-ever mass shooting.

He then launched his first question about housing in Burnaby-South.

"I met a mom in Burnaby. She bought a home, but cannot afford to live there anymore. Her daughter has a good job, but only gets by because she lives in the basement. Her son does not see a future. Like too many Canadians, he has lost all hope," Singh said.

"However, the prime minister is telling families like theirs to wait for help. I believe that better is possible. Will the government commit to building half a million new affordable homes?"



Prime Minister Trudeau responded by congratulating Singh for his entry into the Commons, before touting the government's record on fighting poverty.

Singh's remarks echoed the mood of the House on a crucial day when the prime minister beleaguered by the resignations of his two key cabinet colleagues.

Speculations are rife that the last budget of the Trudeau government with an eye on the general elections in October is expected to have several attractions for the middle class.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indo-Pak tensions following the Pulwama terror attack became the focal point of the first strategic dialogue between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and China on Tuesday as Beijing urged the global community to take a "fair perspective" of Islamabad's commitment to fight terrorism.

Pakistan is facing intense pressure to rein in the terror groups operating from its soil in the aftermath of the by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) suicide bomber on February 14 that killed 40 CRPF soldiers. JeM is one of the terror groups operating from Pakistan.

The meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi came days after Beijing foiled for the fourth time the efforts to designate JeM chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN Security Council.

After the meeting, Wang said that China will firmly support Pakistan in upholding its sovereign independence, territorial integrity and dignity.

Heaping praise on Pakistan's counter terrorism efforts, Wang said, "China commends Pakistan's recent strong counter terrorism measures taken at home. We fully support Pakistan in carrying out its counter terrorism campaign."



"We also discussed the situation emerging out of the Pulwama incident," Qureshi said during a joint press conference where both sides took two selective questions.

References to the involvement of JeM in the as well as China blocking the US, UK and France proposal to list Azhar as global terrorist by the UNSC were conspicuously absent in their press interaction.

"As Wang was suggesting both sides have to show restraint. I think the world has noted that Pakistan did exercise restraint and responsibility," Qureshi said.

He also said Pakistan is always ready for an engagement to "resolve all our outstanding issues."



"We did discuss the impact this (Pulwama) incident had on Pakistan-India relations and the impact this could have risen to different level of escalation and impact it could have had on the peace and stability of the region," he said.

"I briefed Wang about steps Pakistan had taken to safeguard our territorial integrity and the steps we had taken to de-escalate (tensions with India). Pakistan appreciates the role China had played once again in standing by Pakistan in these difficult times," he said.

Qureshi also raked up the Kashmir issue at the press conference saying that he also briefed Wang "on the rapidly deteriorating situation" in Kashmir.

He said the reaction at times creates tension in the region and it must be avoided.

In his comments, Wang said China and Pakistan have agreed to step up counter terrorism cooperation.

"We call on the community to adopt a fair perspective of the commitments made by Pakistan to combat terrorism over the years. We think a peaceful and stable South Asia is in the common interest of the regional countries and meets the expectations of the world and China," he said.

"China commends efforts made by Pakistan to ease the situation. We call on both Pakistan and India to exercise restraint and peacefully resolve their differences through dialogue. The purpose UN charter and norms of the law must be observed in earnest," he said.

"We firmly support Pakistan's independent choice of development paths according to its national conditions, support its efforts towards national stability development and prosperity and support greater and more constructive role for Pakistan in international and regional affairs," he said.

Earlier, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan told Qureshi when he called on him that China supports Pakistan in seizing opportunities and tackling challenges, and properly handling relations with its neighbours, to achieve stable development.

Qureshi told the vice president that Pakistan appreciates China's constructive role in moderating tensions between India and Pakistan, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Tensions between India and Pakistan flared up after the

China early this month rushed its Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou to Pakistan to discuss the Indo-Pak tensions, as it called for the creation of an "enabling atmosphere" for its close ally Pakistan to cooperate with "other parties".

Addressing the media, Foreign Minister Wang said both sides reviewed their all-weather strategic cooperative partnership during the first strategic dialogue, which was set up after Prime Minister Imran Khan's visit last year.

"We agreed that Pakistan-China special friendship has been made rock solid and vibrant despite changes in the international landscape. Our two sides are strengthening dialogue and win-win cooperation and building China Pakistan community of shared future in the new era. This also not only meets the common interests of our two people but also good for peace stability and prosperity of the region," he said.

Asked what steps Pakistan has taken to curb terrorism, Qureshi mostly spoke about the crackdown on militants linked to al-Qaeda and those of East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), who are active in China's Xinjiang, in the country's tribal areas, without referring to terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and JeM which carry out attacks in India.

China has been pressing Pakistan to specially crackdown on ETIM militants and their camps in the tribal areas.
The Indo-Pak tensions following the Pulwama terror attack became the focal point of the first strategic dialogue between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and China as Beijing urged the global community to take a "fair perspective" of Islamabad's commitment to fight terrorism.

Pakistan is facing intense international pressure to rein in the terror groups operating from its soil in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) suicide bomber on February 14 that killed 40 CRPF soldiers. JeM is one of the terror groups operating from Pakistan.

The meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi came days after Beijing foiled for the fourth time the efforts to designate JeM chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN Security Council.

Heaping praise on Pakistan's counter terrorism efforts, Wang said, "China commends Pakistan's recent strong counter terrorism measures taken at home. We fully support Pakistan in carrying out its counter terrorism campaign."



"We also discussed the situation emerging out of the Pulwama incident," Qureshi said during a joint press conference where both sides took two selective questions.

References to the involvement of JeM in the Pulwama attack as well as China blocking the US, UK and France proposal to list Azhar as global terrorist by the UNSC were conspicuously absent in their press interaction.

"As Wang was suggesting both sides have to show restraint. I think the world has noted that Pakistan did exercise restraint and responsibility," Qureshi said.

He also said Pakistan is always ready for an engagement to "resolve all our outstanding issues."



"We did discuss the impact this (Pulwama) incident had on Pakistan-India relations and the impact this could have risen to different level of escalation and impact it could have had on the peace and stability of the region," he said.

"I briefed Wang about steps Pakistan had taken to safeguard our territorial integrity and the steps we had taken to de-escalate (tensions with India). Pakistan appreciates the role China had played once again in standing by Pakistan in these difficult times," he said.

Qureshi also raked up the Kashmir issue at the press conference saying that he also briefed Wang "on the rapidly deteriorating situation" in Kashmir.

He said the reaction at times creates tension in the region and it must be avoided.

In his comments, Wang said China and Pakistan have agreed to step up counter terrorism cooperation.

"We call on the international community to adopt a fair perspective of the commitments made by Pakistan to combat terrorism over the years. We think a peaceful and stable South Asia is in the common interest of the regional countries and meets the expectations of the world and China," he said.

"China commends efforts made by Pakistan to ease the situation. We call on both Pakistan and India to exercise restraint and peacefully resolve their differences through dialogue. The purpose UN charter and norms of the international law must be observed in earnest," he said.

Tensions between India and Pakistan flared up after the Pulwama attack.

Amid mounting outrage, the Indian Air Force carried out a counter-terror operation, hitting what it said was a JeM training camp in Balakot, deep inside Pakistan on February 26. The next day, Pakistan Air Force retaliated and downed a MiG-21 in an aerial combat and captured Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, who was handed over to India later.

China early this month rushed its Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou to Pakistan to discuss the Indo-Pak tensions, as it called for the creation of an "enabling atmosphere" for its close ally Pakistan to cooperate with "other parties".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With a strong possibility of Congress fielding senior BJP leader BC Khanduri's son Manish from Pauri Garhwal, a Lok Sabha seat currently held by his father, the electoral battle on the high-profile constituency promises to be interesting.

Manish Khanduri joined the Congress at Rahul Gandhi's rally here on Saturday, saying he had the blessings of his father, who has decided not to contest the election this time.

Though his candidature was not announced at the rally, political circles here have been abuzz with speculation about the Congress fielding Manish from Pauri Garhwal.

If he is fielded by the Congress, which is likely to announce its candidates on the five Lok Sabha seats in Uttarakhand soon, the poll battle on the seat will certainly become interesting.

The main reason for this would be that both Congress and BJP will go to polls hoping to capitalise on senior Khanduri's popularity, Manish for being his son and the BJP for being his party.

BC Khanduri may also face the dilemma of whom to campaign for, his son or his party.

However, he has distanced himself from the matter by saying joining the Congress was his son's decision and he will remain a dedicated soldier of the BJP.

Whatever the case, both Manish and his opponent from the BJP will try to cash in the popularity of senior Khanduri who has won from the seat several times.

Known for his honesty and military discipline, Maj Gen (retd) Khanduri has earned a lot of respect in Uttarakhand for his work as a central minister and then as its chief minister.

He is remembered as the CM during whose tenure Uttarakhand became the first state in the country to introduce the Lokayukta Bill bringing the chief minister under the ambit of the anti-corruption body.

A churning is underway in BJP to find a suitable replacement who could match senior Khanduri's standing.

Considering the large number of service voters in the constituency, someone with a military background could be preferred, party sources said.

The names doing the rounds include former principal of Nehru Institute of Mountaineering Col Ajay Kotiyal, who is credited with training local youth in the hills to deal with natural disasters in the wake of the 2013 deluge.

Two other probables are Satpal Maharaj, for his large following, and NSA Ajit Doval's son Shaurya Doval.

With March 25 being the last date of filing nominations in Uttarakhand, neither Congress nor BJP have much time to finalise their candidates on the seat.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A three-day international Sanskrit conference that aims to endorse the ancient language as common treasure of Nepal and India commenced here on Tuesday.

Titled "Sanskrit a common treasure of Nepal and India", the conference is being jointly organised by the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, India's Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Balmiki campus of Nepal Sanskrit University.

More than 45 working papers on different aspects of Sanskrit language, literature and philosophy will be presented by scholars from the two nations during the conference, according to an official statement.

"Sanskrit is not an ordinary language, rather it is a language meant for salvation and a language that can connect us with the God," Abhiraj Rajendra Mishra, a scholar from India, said.

The Chancellor of Nepal Academy, Ganga Prasad Upreti was the chief guest at the function, which was also attended by India's ambassador to Nepal Manjeev Singh Puri.

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Iran has denied a claim by the Turkish interior minister that it took part in a joint operation on Monday targeting Kurdish rebels in the border area.

In recent weeks, Ankara has talked up the prospects of joint military action with Tehran against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its allies but Monday marked the first time it had spoken of a joint operation being carried out.

"Iran's armed forces have no role in this operation," the official IRNA agency quoted an "informed source" in the general staff as saying on Monday evening.

However Iran "will forcefully confront any group that seeks to create unrest on our country's soil," the source added.

Earlier on Monday, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said: "We started staging a joint operation with Iran against the PKK on our eastern border as of 8 am (0500 GMT)".

Soylu did not specify where the joint operation was taking place but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said previously that joint military action would focus on PKK rear bases in Iraq near where the three countries' borders meet.

The Turkish military has carried out repeated bombing campaigns against PKK targets in Iraq's northern mountains during its more than three-decade campaign to crush the rebels' campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey.

In recent years, Tehran too has carried out operations in northern Iraq against suspected rear bases of the PKK's Iran-focused ally, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK).

PJAK is one of a number of Kurdish rebel groups that have fought the Iranian security forces in ethnic Kurdish districts along the border.

Another PKK ally, the People's Protection Units (YPG), is the main Kurdish armed group in Syria where, to the fury of Ankara, it has been a key ally in the US-led campaign against the jihadists of the Islamic State group which is now drawing to a close.

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As the Islamic State group defended its last scrap of territory against Kurdish-led forces in eastern Syria, a spokesman has urged followers to attack them elsewhere in the war-torn country.

An IS spokesman, in an audio recording posted on Telegram Monday, called for action from the group's supporters in areas held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

"Avenge the blood of your brothers and sisters... Set up the (explosive) devices, deploy the snipers," said the spokesman, named as Abi Hassan al-Mujahir.

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Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has launched a fresh crackdown on charity ships which rescue migrants off Libya and bring them to Italy.

"The ports have been, and remain, CLOSED", Salvini said on Twitter Monday, as his office released an eight-page directive on the laws regarding rescue operations -- laws it said some aid vessels had been breaking.

The minister, who also heads up the anti-immigrant League party, has repeatedly declared Italian waters closed to NGO rescue vessels, leaving several of them stranded at sea in the past in a bid to force Europe to take its share of asylum seekers.

While he acknowledged in his directive that helping those who lives are in danger was a "priority", he warned that there must be "sanctions" for those who "explicitly violate international, European and national rescue regulations".

"Nor must the real risks that the group of migrants may conceal individuals involved in terrorist activities... be overlooked".

The "passage of rescue ships in Italian territorial waters" was "detrimental to the order and security of the Italian State", he said.

The directive was issued just hours after an Italian charity ship rescued 49 people off the coast of Libya, under the nose of the Libyan coast guard, before requesting permission to disembark the migrants in Italy.

NGO ships have drawn fire from Rome by attempting on occasion to stop migrants being taken back to crisis-hit Libya, which human rights organisations insist cannot be considered safe for repatriations.

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YSR Congress chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy Tuesday filed a plea in the Andhra Pradesh High Court seeking a probe by an independent agency into the killing of his uncle and former minister Y S Vivekananda Reddy recently.

In his petition, Jagan alleged that Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was trivializing the gruesome murder and using it for political gains.

Doubting whether the facts behind the murder would come out in the probe by the AP Police Special Investigation Team, the leader of opposition sought a probe by an independent agency that did not report to the state government.

Jagan Mohan Reddy named the Telugu Desam Party, Naidu, the AP director general of police, the Union government, the CBI and others as respondents in the petition.

Y S Vivekananda Reddy, the younger brother of former chief minister M Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, was found dead at his house in Kadapa district on March 15.

Police initially registered a case under Section 174 CrPC (unnatural death) when Reddy's body was found by his staff early in the morning.

After post-mortem, the police confirmed that the case was altered to Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which relates to murder.

The YSR Congress chief sought a CBI probe in the case but the state government, which rejected the demand, constituted a special investigation team under the supervision of CID Additional DG Amit Garg.

The SIT is currently engaged in the investigation and is probing the case from various angles, including business disputes.

It has already questioned three cousins of the slain leader and recorded their statements. The SIT is now questioning some close aides of the former minister based on circumstantial evidence and clues at the scene of crime, police said.

The killing triggered a war of words between the TDP and the YSRC in the ongoing campaign for the April 11 general elections in the state.

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Jumping into the electoral battle for the first time, Telugu film star and Jana Sena founder Pawan Kalyan will contest the April 11 Assembly election in Andhra Pradesh from Gajuwaka and Bhimavaram constituencies.

After an intensive survey in various constituencies, the party general body chose these seats for Kalyan and he has agreed to contest from there,a Jana Sena release said Tuesday.

Gajuwaka is in Visakhapatnam district and Bhimavaram in West Godavari.

Jana Sena entered into an electoral alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party, CPI and CPI(M) for the April 11 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the state.

Under the alliance, Jana Sena will contest 140 Assembly and 18 Lok Sabha seats.

The party so far announced its candidates for 77 Assembly and nine parliamentary seats.

The BSP will field candidates in three Lok Sabha and 21 seats while the two Left parties will contest seven Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats each.

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Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday directed his ministry's secretary to hold an emergency meeting on the debt-ridden Jet Airways massively cancelling flights after grounding of a large part of its fleet.

The minister's direction came in the wake of the airliner drastically reducing its operations due to liquidity crunch.

"Directed Secretary, @MOCA GOI to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, advance bookings, cancellations, refunds and safety issues, if any," Prabhu said in a tweet.

"Asked him (civil aviation secretary) to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA," he added.

Earlier Monday, Jet Airways engineers' body wrote to aviation regulator DGCA, seeking its intervention in the recovery of their salary dues, saying non-payment was affecting their psychological condition which, in turn, was a "risk" to the airline's flight operations.

On Monday afternoon, the DGCA had sent an e-mail to airlines asking them to send their representatives for a meeting at 12 noon on Tuesday "to review the fares being offered by airlines".

However, as the civil aviation minister decided that the secretary will hold a meeting to discuss issues of advance bookings, cancellations, refunds, safety issues and grounding of flights by Jet Airways on Tuesday, the DGCA decided to cancel its meeting with airlines.

For the last few weeks, passengers have been venting their ire on social media as Jet Airways' flight cancellations have increased gradually due to rising number of grounded aircraft. This has also led to rise in airfares on various routes across India.

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Eleven students, including Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union vice president Sarika Chaudhary, have gone on a hunger strike to protest against the varsity's decision to hold online entrance exams and several other issues.

The JNU said the registration for the online entrance exams is progressing rapidly with thousands of students registering within a few days of the portal being made public.

Demanding the vice-chancellor to take cognisance of the issues being raised by them, the students, including the JNUSU vice-president and former JNUSU president Geeta Kumari, started their indefinite hunger strike Tuesday.

"We also hope that the Visitor of the university, the honourable President of India, urgently intervenes in the matter and calls the elected members of the JNUSU for a dialogue," the srtudents' union said.

The decision to impose online examination to all courses, including MPhil and PhD, disregarding the opinions of the teachers and students who pointed to the problems of accessibility and pedagogical limits in having such an admission process is one of the issues the students' union wants a discussion on.

The other issues include the decision to delink the integrated MPhil-PhD program without any deliberation or discussion in the academic council meeting and the decision to do away with BA second year admission.

The JNUSU also demanded that VC M Jagadesh Kumar be removed.

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Police are probing all angles, including suicide and murder, in the death of television channel journalist Chirag Patel, senior officials said Tuesday.

The charred body of Patel, a copy editor with a Gujarati channel, was found Saturday near a canal in Nikol area here.

"There are no external injury marks or any sign of physical struggle as per the post mortem report. Even CCTV footage of the area where his body was found shows Patel alone. Prima facie, it appears to be a case of suicide. However, we are probing all angles," said Additional Commissioner of Police M S Bharada.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Akshayraj Makwana stressed there was "70 to 80 per cent" possibility that Patel committed suicide, though he added that the police was not ruling out murder either.

"Nothing suspicious has been found in our probe. Six Indian Police Service officers, including me, are leading probe teams in the case," Makwana said.

Gujarat BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya told reporters that Chief Minister Vijay Rupani had asked police to conduct a thorough probe.

Patel's death has upset the media community in the state greatly and several of them have taken to social media platforms to pressure the government machinery into finding its cause.

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Dr Kafeel Khan, whose name surfaced in the death case of 63 children at Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College, launched a campaign on Tuesday along with health activists from across the country to pursue political parties to give priority to health issues in their manifestos for the Lok Sabha elections.

Khan said he will be meeting all political parties with health policy proposals and will support the party which would promise to work for those.

The campaign, 'Health For All', focusses on access to good quality healthcare services without anyone having to face financial hardship irrespective of age, caste, religion, region, gender, disability or economic status, he said.

"The government should provide affordable, adequate health services that are new and acceptable for its citizens. These services include free consultation, drugs, diagnostics and free emergency care services in all public hospitals. Public health expenditure should be increased to 3 per cent of the GDP. The total health budget should be doubled to Rs 1.5 lakh crore every year for the next five years," he said.

The other demands include filling up the 1.5 lakh existing vacancies in the healthcare and creation of new jobs every year.

Khan is one of the nine accused in the case involving the death of 63 children within four days due to disruption in the supply of oxygen at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur in August 2017.

He was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police in September 2017.

He had recently filed an RTI on the BRD Medial College incident and he claimed the UP government, in its response, accepted "there was shortage of liquid oxygen for 54 hours in BRD medical college on August 10, 11, 12, 2017 and Dr Kafeel Khan indeed arranged jumbo oxygen cylinders to save dying kids".

Another RTI filed by him revealed that he was the junior most doctor.

"I joined as a lecturer by permanent commission only on August 8, 2016 and neither was I heading the encephalitis ward nor was I the vice principal," he said, quoting the RTI response.

He demanded a CBI probe into the tragedy which claimed the lives of 63 children and to transfer the case out of Uttar Pradesh as those responsible for the "massacre are still at helm and they only are heading the current inquiry".

He said he will either approach the High Court with a review petition about his case or the Supreme Court against his suspension.

The Allahabad High Court had granted him bail in April last year.

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India and Pakistan on Tuesday held a meeting of technical experts to discuss issues related to the Kartarpur corridor, including its alignment, coordinates, and other engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points, sources said.

The meeting comes days after the two countries held talks to finalise the modalities for the corridor linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in the Pakistani town of Kartarpur with the Gurdaspur district in Punjab.

The technical meeting at the level of experts, including engineers and surveyors, was held at "proposed zero points" in the follow up to the decision reached on the March 14 meeting, the sources said.

India has been seeking this meeting for long time and had even suggested to hold it on February 15, 2019. Pakistan, however, had linked it to the meeting on the draft agreement.

The experts discussed the alignment of the corridor, the coordinates, and the engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points, the sources said.

The outcomes from Tuesday's site visit and survey would be further discussed at a meeting on April 2, they said.

Zero point is the point at which the Indian side of the corridor and the Pakistani side of the corridor will be meeting. India had shared the coordinates with Pakistan earlier this year but the Pakistani side gave alternate coordinates.

A joint statement issued after the meeting on March 14 at the Indian side of the Attari-Wagah border had said both sides held detailed and constructive discussions on various aspects and provisions of the project and agreed to work towards expeditiously operationalising the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor (KSC).

The meeting had come amid heightened tensions between the two neighbours following India's air strike on a terrorist training camp of the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Pakistan's subsequent retaliation.

Last November, India and Pakistan agreed to set up the border crossing linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, the final resting place of Sikh faith's founder Guru Nanak Dev, to Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Gurdaspur district.

Kartarpur Sahib is located in Pakistan's Narowal district across the river Ravi, about four km from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had on November 26 last year laid the foundation stone of the Kartarpur corridor in Gurdaspur district.

Two days later, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan laid the foundation stone of the corridor in Narowal, 125 km from Lahore.

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Preet Bharara, the Indian-American former Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has acknowledged in a new book that the strip-search which Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade was subject to following her arrest in 2013 for alleged visa fraud "could have and should have been avoided".

In a new book titled Doing Justice - A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law,' Bharara writes about Khobragade's arrest and charges filed against her. The episode had caused a major diplomatic row between India and the US and plummeted bilateral relations to a new low.

Bharara writes in his book that in 2013, the State Department arrested a mid-level female Indian diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, for visa fraud in connection with lies about what she would pay her domestic worker.

He said the Southern District of New York had agreed to prosecute the case, at the State Department's explicit request".

It was not the crime of the century but a serious offense nonetheless and a burgeoning problem among the diplomatic corps in the United States. That's why the State Department opened the case; that's why the State Department investigated it; that's why the career agents in the State Department asked career prosecutors in my office to approve criminal charges, he writes.

There was outrage in India over the arrest of Khobragade, who was then the country's Deputy Counsel General in New York, and reports that she had been strip-searched furthered caused anger in India.

"Khobragade was afforded a number of courtesies during the course of her arrest, because of her diplomatic status, but she was strip-searched per regular procedure by the US Marshals Service in the SDNY. That could have and should have been avoided, given that no one would have sought pretrial detention," Bharara writes.

The admission that Khobragade's strip-search could and should have been avoided is the first by a former top prosecutor who had handled the case. Following Khobragade's second indictment in the case in March 2014, the Ministry of External Affairs had expressed disappointment saying that this was an unnecessary step. Any measures consequent to this decision in the US, will unfortunately impact upon efforts on both sides to build the India-US strategic partnership, to which both sides are committed.

Bharara said in the book that Khobragade's arrest had caused an international incident. It was an election year in India, and the ruling Congress Party was in danger of an electoral bloodbath loss to the Indian nationalist BJP. The BJP, the party of the future prime minister Narendra Modi, shrewdly seized upon this supposed Western insult to Indian sovereignty and caused a crisis for the Congress Party, he said in the book.

In the days following Khobragade's arrest and indictment, in a retaliatory action, India removed security barriers from outside the US Embassy in New Delhi.

The then secretary of state, John Kerry, was pressured to make the case go away. The Indians threatened retaliation against our embassy in New Delhi and suggested taking privileges away from American diplomats. At one point, as the Indian government raged, our largest democratic ally in the worldin its most hostile actionremoved security barriers from the outside of the U.S. embassy, Bharara said.

He however added that he is proud of the case and how we upheld the rule of law, despite he becoming the subject of hate and widespread criticism from various quarters across India.

I defended our work, loudly. Because I was the US Attorney and I happened to be Indian-born, an avalanche of vitriol and bile came my way. Never mind that the case was initiated and investigated by career law enforcement officials, and I personally became aware of it only the day before the arrest. The Indian government and press decided that the case was brought by mean Indian Americanfor all manner of nefarious reasons, he writes.

"Finally, I saw a peculiar line of attack in the foreign press, which was this: in a brazen betrayal of my roots, I had undertaken this case for only one reasonto serve my 'white masters'. My white masters. These were, presumably, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, he writes.

Bharara was "fired" by the Trump administration in March 2017 after he refused to quit following orders to the 46 Obama administration-appointed attorneys to resign immediately.

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Altogether six nominations -- two each for three Lok Sabha constituencies in West Bengal -- were filed for the first two phases of the general elections, a state Election Commission official said on Tuesday.

The All India Forward Bloc and one other registered political party filed nominations for Coochbehar, while the RSP and one other registered party submitted the papers for Alipurduar seat in the first phase, the state's Additional Chief Election Commissioner Sanjay Basu told reporters here.

For the second phase, notification for which was published by the Election Commission on Tuesday, the BSP and the SUCI filed the papers for the Jalpaiguri constituency.

While Coochbehar and Alipurduar go to polls on April 11 in the first phase, polling will be held in Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling and Raiganj constituencies in the second phase on April 18.

He also said that Rs 23.80 lakh has been seized from two persons at Kumarganj police station area in Balurghat district by the EC's static surveillance team.

A total of Rs 68.17 lakh has been recovered in West Bengal so far, Basu said.

He added that a two-day mass awareness programme is being held for voters at the booth level from Tuesday, on how the EVM and VVPAT machines function.

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The upcoming Lok Sabha elections is a fight between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the country, MNS chief Raj Thackeray said Tuesday.

Slamming the BJP-led government, Thackeray asked how was India was in a position to fight Pakistan when the Centre was "begging" for money from the Reserve Bank of India.

"Nobody is ready to answer my questions. They do not have the answers to the questions the country is asking and, therefore, are indulging in gimmicks like 'chowkidar'. What happened to the promise of providing two crore jobs?" he said while addressing Maharashtra Navnirman Sena workers here.

Thackeray, who has already announced that the MNS will not contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, asked his party workers to get ready for Maharashtra Assembly polls later this year.

"Fourteen thousand farmers in the state have committed suicide since 2014. The Prime Minister does not have time to meet their families," he claimed.

Thackeray claimed Modi had shown a false picture of Gujarat's development prior to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections of 2014, which caused him to support the BJP then.

"The person called Modi changed, so I changed my stand," he said.

"Where is the money to fight Pakistan? The government is begging RBI for money. Then how were they planning for war against Pakistan? The Centre had asked RBI for Rs 3 lakh crore, out of which it was given 28,000 crore. This was not acceptable to (former RBI governor) Urjit Patel so he resigned," he said.

"This fight is not against any particular party, but against Modi and Shah. The country is in danger," he said.

Thackeray claimed the BJP will indulge in giving poll bribes during the run-up to the elections, and asked his party workers to accept the money since the ruling party had looted the country in the last 5 years.

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The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court Tuesday granted a stay on the April 11 bypoll for the Katol Assembly seat.

A division bench of Justices S B Shukre and Pushpa Ganediwala was hearing a petition filed by Sandeep Sarode, chairman of the Katol Panchayat Samiti through his counsel Shreerang Bhandarkar.

The bypoll was necessitated as MLA Ashish Deshmukh had resigned from the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on October 3, 2018.

The petition said Section 151A of the Representation of the People Act 1951 mandates the Election Commission (EC) to fill casual vacancies in the Houses of Parliament and State Legislatures through bypolls within six months from the date of occurrence of the vacancy, provided the remainder of the term of a member in relation to a vacancy is one year or more.

However, the petition stated, that the six-month period since Deshmukh's resignation ends on April 3, 2019 and the bypoll is being held after that.

Moreover, the petition contended that the MLA elected through the bypoll would have a term of just a few months since Maharashtra is scheduled to have Assembly elections later in the year.

The petition claimed holding the bypoll would entail loss of public money under "unnecessary and unwanted" circumstances.

The HC has asked the EC, Maharashtra State Election Commission and Nagpur District Collector to file replies on the petition by April 2, 2019, counsel Bhandarkar told PTI.

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Tuesday lashed out at the BJP for questioning her religion and challenged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah to compete with her in chanting 'mantras' (hymns).

Stating that her government had renovated several temples in the state, she accused the saffron party of engaging in political rhetoric over Ram Mandir ahead of general elections.

"Worship does not mean only putting a 'tilak' on the forehead. One must understand the meaning of the mantras (Hindu religious hymns). I challenge Modi-Shah to compete with me in chanting mantras," the Trinamool Congress supremo said.

Mamata, one of the harshest critics of BJP, said, "There are people who question my religion. I want to say that my religion is humanity and I do not need lecture from others about religion.

"They try to point fingers at me and say I do not allow puja to be conducted in Bengal. They should go and see how many 'mandir' (temples) have been constructed during the TMC regime," she said at a programme here in connection with the upcoming Holi festival.

The BJP had often questioned the chief minister's religion and accused her of following the politics of minority appeasement.

"We do not believe in the religion of hatred. We believe in humanism. They only engage in political rhetoric over Ram Mandir before elections. We have renovated and redeveloped temples at Tarapith, Tarakeshwar and Dakshineshwar (in Kolkata)," she said.

Banerjee said she believes in playing Holi with colours "unlike some sections (BJP) who believe in playing with blood.

"I believe in playing Holi with colours and a pure mind unlike a section who believes in playing Holi with the blood of others. I do not need to learn the true meaning of communal harmony from a divisive force like BJP," she said.

Banerjee called for maintaining communal harmony during 'Doljatra' (as the festival of colours is known in Bengal) and Holi, and cautioned people to be on guard against any effort to disturb peace.

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An unidentified man decamped with Rs 1.80 lakh after cheating a 25-year-old woman at a bank in Anand Vihar area, police said Tuesday.

The victim, a resident of Shreshtha Vihar area, had gone to HDFC bank to deposit the money, according to a police complaint filed by her.

When she did not find the deposit slip there, she asked for help from a man dressed like a bank employee. He gave her a slip and asked her to fill it fast saying the bank was about to close, police said.

When the woman was counting the cash, he came there and said there were some mistakes on her slip. When she went to take a new slip, the accused fled with the cash, they added.

A case has been registered and police have checked the CCTV footage of the bank. They have got the pictures of the accused person and teams have formed to nab him, the police said.

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A 30-year-old man died while a minor was injured Tuesday after a speeding truck rammed into their scooter in North Delhi's Kashmere Gate area, police said.

The deceased, Deepak Rawat, and the injured, Badal (17), are friends and residents of Gandhi Nagar, they said.

According to a senior police officer, they received information about the accident at around 5 am.

The driver of the truck fled the spot and the injured was rushed to hospital by locals, the officer said.

Rawat was declared brought dead while Badal was discharged after the treatment, police said.

Rawat's family members were informed about the incident and the post-mortem will be conducted on Wednesday, they said.

The family members of Rawat said that he used work in a shop at Gandhi Nagar and was living separately. Badal used to live earlier at Old Seemapuri and recently shifted to Gandhi Nagar, the officer said.

A case has been registered under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and efforts are on to nab the accused truck driver, police said.

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BJP president Amit Shah and Union minister Nitin Gadkari played behind-the-scene roles in ensuring the party retained power in Goa, after the death of Manohar Parrikar, sources familiar with the developments said.

The impasse over government formation, which included dealing with stubborn allies wanting to extract their pound of flesh, was resolved with deft handling of the situation by the two senior BJP leaders, party sources said Tuesday.

In 2017 also, after the BJP failed to get a majority in the state Assembly polls,Gadkari had flown in here to help the BJP in cobbling up an alliance with smaller parties in the coastal state, after which a government was formed under Parrikar's leadership.

The sources said the BJP expected a crisis in Parrikar's absence, as the alliance was formed (in 2017) only on the plank of supporting the late leader become the CM.

When Parrikar died on Sunday after battling pancreatic cancer, the BJP swung into action even as MLAs of ally Maharashtrwawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) huddled in a meeting.

Vijai Sardesai of another alliance partner Goa Forward Party (GFP) along with his own party members and other independent legislators, including ministers Rohan Khaunte and Govind Gawade, also began holding meetings.

As the leadership change became imminent, the BJP sent Gadkari, experienced at handling handling political situation in Goa, to the state, with the mandate of doing all that was required to retain power there.

Sources said Gadkari held one-on-one discussions throughout the night with all MLAs supporting the government, but no consensus was reached among the warring factions.

Even as MGP legislator Sudin Dhavalikar staked his claim for the top post, the BJP Legislature Party proposed Pramod Sawant's name while the GFP and others supported Vishwajit Rane as the chief ministerial candidate.

Despite several rounds of meetings, there was no consensus till Monday morning.

While the BJP was grappling with these issues, the opposition Congress in the meantime submitted a letter to Governor Mridula Sinha, staking claim to form government, saying it was the single largest party with 14 MLAs.

The Congress claimed it had majority support.

Till Monday evening, as Parrikar was being cremated with state honours, there was no clarity on the new government formation.

Things started moving when BJP president Amit Shah held a meeting of his party MLAs and MGP's Dhavalikar at a hotel.

Gadkari, who earlier announced that he would be leaving the state soon, also stayed back and by late evening things started falling in place, the sources said.

"A formula which was acceptable to all coalition partners was worked out, under which Sawant emerged as the chief ministerial candidate while Sardesai and Dhavalikar were to be designated as his deputies," the source said.

The alliance partners also suggested that status quo on the cabinet be maintained, implying that all the ministers be sworn in again, which was agreed upon.

Though the BJP was optimistic that the Sawant-led alliance would be sworn in at 9 pm, somelast minute glitches gave rise to uncertainty.

Gadkari then sat to trouble-shoot things, as several issues, including a common minimum programme and power sharing, were worked out, said sources who were part of the discussions.

Finally, around 1.30 am on Tuesday, the BJP-led coalition decided to stake claim and all the leaders, including Gadkari, rushed to the Raj Bhawan to stake claim to form the new government and minutes later, Sawant and 11 ministers were sworn in at the oath ceremony held in the wee hours of Tuesday.

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The mortal remains of Army jawan Karamjeet Singh, who was killed in a ceasefire violation along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, were consigned to flames with full military honours at his native village here on Tuesday.

Singh, 24, was killed on Monday. His body, draped in tricolour, was brought to his home in Janer village by army officials on Tuesday.

A large number of people paid last respects to him and raised 'Shaheed Karamjitt Amar Rahe' slogans.

His father and elder brother lit the funeral pyre.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh directed the Defence Services Welfare Department to extend financial assistance of Rs 12 lakh to Singh's family.

The relief includes Rs 7 lakh as ex-gratia and Rs 5 lakh in lieu of land, as per the existing policy, according to an official spokesperson.

Expressing shock and grief at Singh's death in the Pak action, the chief minister tweeted, "Pakistan shamelessly continues to violate all principles of international & humanitarian law with its repeated ceasefire violations. Punjab has once again lost a young soldier from Moga due to Pak firing. My heart goes out to the family of Karamjeet Singh.

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The death toll in Mozambique after Tropical Cyclone Idai struck the southern African nation at last week has climbed to more than 200, President Filipe Nyusi said Tuesday.

"According to the information given to us here, ... we already have more than 200 dead, and nearly 350,000 people are at risk," the president said after attending a cabinet meeting in the central city of Beira.

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Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani saving younger brother Anil from jail by helping his struggling telecom firm repay Swedish supplier Ericsson may be a watershed moment in the relationship between the two brothers, who have in the past publicly bickered and fought court cases against each other.

Industry watchers said the last-minute bailout may mark the beginning of a more harmonious relationship between the two brothers after more than a decade of strained ties.

Anil, who along with his wife and children was photographed enjoying the recent weddings of Mukesh's children, thanked his elder brother and sister-in-law for "standing (by him) during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to our strong family values by extending this timely support."



"I and my family are grateful we have moved beyond the past, and are deeply grateful and touched with this gesture," he said on Monday after getting Rs 458 crore from Mukesh that he used to repay dues towards Ericsson.

The tone of the statement was "reconciliatory", said a senior industry official who has closely followed the business journey of the two brothers. "This could well be a new beginning for them," he said.

A source said the two brothers could even work more closely in the future. "It may well turn out to be a watershed moment in their relationship."



Both the groups did not immediately reply to e-mails sent for comments.

Anil's heavily debt-laden Reliance Communications made a Rs 550-crore payment, including interest, to Ericsson just a day before the expiry of the deadline set by the Supreme Court to clear dues or face a three-month jail term.

Soon after making the payment, RCom announced the termination of a Rs 17,000-crore deal to sell telecom assets like spectrum, fiber and tower to Mukesh's Reliance Jio, citing delays in approvals from the government and lenders.

Those assets will now be sold in bankruptcy proceedings where Jio is likely to be a prominent bidder.

The two brothers had fought a bitter public battle after their father Dhirubhai died in 2002 without leaving a will. Three years later, they split the conglomerate with the elder brother getting oil and petrochemical business and Anil winning control of newer business such as power, telecom, and financial services.

The two brothers, who prior to the patriarch's death served as executives at their father's company, got assets with almost equal value.

But the bickering did not end with the split as Anil took elder brother to court for failing to honour a contract for the supply of natural gas to his power plants. The case went up to the Supreme Court which ruled in Mukesh's favour.

In 2008, Mukesh cited right of first refusal to stall a merger of Reliance Communications with South Africa's MTN to take on the competition.

Fortunes of the two brothers have since splitting their father's Reliance empire seen a dramatically contrasting path -- while older brother's oil and petrochemicals business flourished, Anil's telecom and power businesses strained under massive debt as it invested billions to expand his portfolio. But unlike Mukesh who had a cash cow in an oil refinery to finance growth, the rising cost of servicing debt and intense competition killed his business.

The net worth of Anil, who was listed by Forbes magazine in 2008 as the world's sixth-wealthiest person, has shrunk to about USD 300 million from at least USD 31 billion in 2008 based on the current foreign exchange rate, according to Bloomberg data. This contrasts to Mukesh being valued at USD 54.3 billion, an increase of USD 10 billion this year alone.

The two brothers in 2010 scrapped a no-compete agreement, paving the way for Mukesh's re-entry into telecom business in 2016 offering free voice call for life and data at dirt cheap prices.

On the other hand, Anil has been selling assets to quell investor concerns around the indebtedness of some of his companies that contributed to declines in his shares.

As debt grew, RCom in December 2017 entered into a deal with Jio to sell spectrum and other assets such as fiber network and telecom towers for an estimated Rs 17,000 crore.

But the deal could not progress amid regulatory hurdles faced as the Department of Telecommunications wanted a written assurance on who would pay for RCom's dues such as spectrum fee.

Jio refused to make a commitment to pay for such fee and lenders to RCom also played hardball, resulting in the deal falling through.

Industry watchers said the developments of Monday point towards the two brothers working together in future.

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Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav Tuesday said his father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav had forged the relationship with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and he only had to "mend" it.

He also said it was not time yet for Mulayam Yadav to become the prime minister.

"Netaji (Mulayam) had relations with the BSP and had forged an alliance earlier. I only had to mend the relationship," Akhilesh Yadav said, replying to questions during a TV programme.

When asked to answer in 'yes' or 'no' whether Mulayam Yadav would become the prime minister this time, he said, "No, not as of now. But he will be given the due honour."



Responding to reports on the possibility of him contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Azamgarh, the seat represented by his father, Akhilesh Yadav indicated that the option was open.

"Let a proposal come from the district unit," he said.

The SP chief rebuffed claims that leaving 38 seats for alliance partner BSP would weaken his party.

"We have done the ground work. The SP and the BSP have forged an alliance on 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state," Akhilesh Yadav said.

"Before the alliance was struck, we succeeded in defeating the BJP in Gorkahpur, Phulpur, Kairana Lok Sabha bypolls and Noorpur Assembly bye-election. The cadres were mentally prepared and after the announcement also they had ample time. There will be no problem in the chemistry between workers of the two parties," he said.

According to the seat-sharing arrangement, the SP will contest 37 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and the BSP will contest 38.

They have left three seats for the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and two for Congress president Rahul Gandhi (Amethi) and his mother Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli).

Asked if the BSP and the RLD had the credibility to carry forward the alliance, the SP chief said, "The scenario has changed and we are together."



Speaking about Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's entry into politics, Akhilesh Yadav said, "All youths should come forward."Asked if the air strike in Balakot, which followed the February 14 Pulwama attack, had changed the political narrative in the country, Akhilesh Yadav said the BJP was using the strike to distract people.

"The BJP is an expert in distracting people. Everyone knows that if the US and other countries had not supported India on (Wing Commander) Abhinandan's release, the fighter pilot would not have returned," Akhilesh Yadav said.

"He returned not because of the BJP," he said.

"The soldiers were martyred and there was an intelligence failure (in the Pulwama attack). What have they (BJP) done for the Army men? People of the country want 'ann' (food) not gun," he added.

Akhilesh Yadav said the plight of farmers and unemployed youths and the BJP's false promises will dominate the electoral discourse in the upcoming parliamentary polls.

"The youths of the state will defeat the BJP this time," he asserted.

Polling in Uttar Pradesh will be held in seven phases from April 11 to May 19. The results will be announced on May 23.

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Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio Tuesday expressed confidence that "something positive" would be achieved on the Naga political issue if the NDA government returns to power at the Centre.

"The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had understood the uniqueness of the Naga history and tried to solve the decades-long political problem. After the Narendra Modi government came to power, it came under focus again," Rio said at an election campaign at Dimapur.

After the dates for Lok Sabha polls were announced on March 10, Rio had lamented that the solution to the Naga political issue could not be found before the elections.

"We were hoping against hope that the solution will come before the election.... If it (the solution) does not come, it will be problem for our Naga society to carry on," he had said on that day at a programme of the completion of one year of his People's Democratic Alliance (PDA) government of which the BJP is a part.

Even after the signing of the framework agreement with the NSCN(IM) in 2015 and six Naga nationalist political groups joining the peace talks separately, there has not been a breakthrough on the Naga problem.

A new government, which came to power in Nagaland under Rio early last year, had raised hopes of a solution to the Naga political problem.

The Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP)-led PDA government dethroned the NPF government of 15 years in the February 2018 state polls.

Sitting NDPP MP Tohekho Yepthomi is the candidate of the PDA for the lone Lok Sabha seat in Nagaland.

"For how long can we drag on by making the Naga political issue an election agenda? If we want a settlement, we need to be in the ruling side (at the Centre)," he said.

Leaders of other PDA constituents such as the BJP, the JD(U) and the NPP also addressed the poll meeting.

Elections to the lone Lok Sabha seat in the state will be held on April 11. By-election to Aonglenden Assembly constituency will also be held on the same day.

Meanwhile in Kohima, the opposition Naga Peoples Front (NPF) Tuesday announced that Dr Lorho S Pfoze would contest from Outer Manipur LS seat, one of the two constituencies of the neighbouring state.

About the party's candidate for Nagaland, NPF president Dr Shurhozelie Liezietsu said, "Some good candidates are on the cards. We are on talks with some like-minded parties and will declare our decision in a day or two."



For the by-poll in Aonglenden, the NPF fielded Toshipokba, a former MLA who had defeated Congress stalwart and five-time chief minister Dr S C Jamir in a by-poll in 2011.

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In another embarrassment for the Congress-NCP combine in Maharashtra, and especially for the Sharad Pawar-led party, ahead of the next month's Lok Sabha polls, NCP stalwart Vijaysinh Mohite Patil's son Ranjitsinh is all set to join the ruling BJP with the "consent" of his father.

The development comes days after senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil's son Sujay crossed over to the BJP in the wake of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP spurning the Vikhe Patil senior's request to leave aside Ahmedanagar Lok Sabha seat for his son.

Vijaysinh Mohite Patil, currently the NCP MP from Madha in western Maharashtra, had served as a deputy chief minister in the erstwhile Congress-led UPA government.

The Mohite Patil senior said he was "in agreement" with his son's decision.

It is not known immediately whether Vijaysinh will also join the BJP, as is being speculated.

Addressing supporters in the family bastion of Akluj in Solapur district, Ranjitsinh asked them whether he should join the BJP, to which they responded positively, and shouted slogans hailing their leaders.

Ranjitsinh had been an MP in the Rajya Sabha.

"Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, state BJP president (Raosaheb Danve), and other leaders have asked me to be there tomorrow (Wednesday) at Wankhede Stadium (in Mumbai) at 12:30 PM," he said.

Ranjitsinh, who reportedly held talks with Fadnavis and also with state minister Girish Mahajan before announcing his shift, heaped praises on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union minister Nitin Gadkari for "working to solve problems of farmers".

NCP sources said Vijaysinh, one of the five MPs of the party from Maharashtra, is feeling sidelined in the party.

He had requested NCP chief Sharad Pawar to contest from faction-ridden Madha seat.

However, after keeping NCP leaders and workers guessing whether he would enter the Lok Sabha fray from Madha, Pawar, in a U-turn, announced that he was not keen to contest.

A senior BJP leader said Vijaysinh had been in touch with the saffron party for at least a year before Ranjitsinh decided to cross over.

"Vijaysinh has been feeling disgruntled," the BJP leader added.

Polling will be held in Maharashtra in four phases next month.

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The National Green Tribunal has directed the Ministry of Human Resource Development to inform it within a week about the status of installation of rainwater harvesting systems in Kendriya and Navodaya Vidyalayas here.

A bench headed by Justice Raghuvendra S Rathore also rejected the request of two schools to exempt them from paying Rs 5 lakh as environmental compensation for failing to install the rainwater harvesting systems on their premises.

The green panel said that it was of the considered opinion that the applicants --Qaumi Senior International School and Madhu Bala Institute for Communication and Electronic Media -- were not at all sincere to comply with the order of the tribunal.

It said they did not timely approach the committee to get exempted and receive a certificate if it was really not possible to install rainwater harvesting systems on their premises.

"The counsel for the Ministry of Human Resource Development submits that so far as installation of rainwater harvesting systems in Kendriya and Navodaya Vidyalayas is concerned, he has received the requisite information and therefore he seeks short time to file affidavit on record with regard to the status of rainwater harvesting system in these schools," the tribunal said in a recent order.

The North Delhi Municipal Corporation told the tribunal that there are 568 sites where educational institutions are being run and rainwater harvesting systems have been installed at 382 sites.

"It has also been submitted that at 29 sites, the installation work is in progress. It has further been submitted by the counsel for the corporation that in respect of 84 sites, it is not feasible to have rainwater harvesting systems," the bench noted.

The New Delhi Municipal Council told the tribunal that there are 44 sites where educational institutions are being run and the rainwater harvesting systems have been installed and are functional at 28 sites.

"It has also been submitted that at three sites, installation of rainwater harvesting system is in progress and the same is likely to be completed by the end of March 2019. As regards other three sites, it has been submitted that the rainwater harvesting system is not required. Similarly, it has been submitted that at remaining five sites, it is not feasible to install the rainwater harvesting system," it said.

The counsel for the East Delhi Municipal Corporation submitted that there are 232 sites, out of which rainwater harvesting systems are functional at 210 sites.

"He has also submitted that at 12 sites, the construction of rainwater harvesting system is under progress. It has been submitted that in remaining 10 sites, the installation of rainwater harvesting system is not feasible," the NGT noted.

It had earlier directed the Delhi government to act against unauthorised water extraction in the national capital.

The NGT had earlier imposed a penalty of Rs 5 lakh each on educational institutions in the national capital for failing to install rainwater harvesting systems.

The tribunal's direction came on a plea filed by city resident Mahesh Chandra Saxena.

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Yogi Adityanath

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserted Tuesday his government has changed the image of Uttar Pradesh and the state's law and order has become a model for the country as not one incident of rioting happened under his watch.

Presenting a report card on the completion of two years of his government, he said when he assumed office in March 2017, debt-ridden farmers were committing suicides and Uttar Pradesh had become "synonymous with murder, loot and riots." "Mafia was looting the state's resources under political patronage. Mafia was rampant in SP, BSP rule," he alleged. "There was a long era of scams." Adityanath said he has changed the "perception about the state" and improved its "tarnished image". The better atmosphere has become a "nazeer" (model) for the country, he said.

Hitting out at previous state governments, he said, "In 2012, there were 227 major communal riots. In 2013, there were 247 such riots. In 2014, there were 242 riots.

And 219 riots in 2015 and more than 100 in 2016, in which properties worth crores were lost." "However during the BJP government, not a single riot took place. Nor were there any incident of acid attacks or kidnapping," he claimed.

Though there has been no major communal violence in Uttar Pradesh during the past two years, a mob of 400 people, including right-wing activists, had fought pitched battles with police in Bulandshahr district in December last year.

The violence in the district's Siana area broke out apparently after right-wing activists were angered by the discovery of cow carcasses strewn in a nearby jungle.

In January last year, a 22-year-old youth was shot dead during a "Tiranga Yatra" by some people after which a series of violent incidents and arsoning had rocked Kasganj.

Taking lesson from it, the state government that year denied permission for any such procession in the western Uttar Pradesh city on Independence Day.

On Tuesday, at his press conference in Lucknow, Adityanath cited the reported exodus of Hindus in 2017 from Kairana, another city in western UP, "due to anarchic forces".

"However", he said, "today, peace has returned as well as the traders who had fled from there."

The exodus of Hindus from Kairana was a major poll issue for BJP in the 2017 assembly election in Uttar Pradesh.

The chief minister said the confidence of the state police force has gone and there is no interference from his government in their functioning.

"There is zero tolerance for crime and criminals and 73 criminals have been killed in 3,300 police encounters. Over 8,000 criminals were arrested, while 1,000 were injured. Unfortunately, half-a-dozen police jawans also attained martyrdom in the encounters," he said.

Adityanath also said that the Sthaapnaa Diwas (Foundation Day) was celebrated for first time after 68 years in 2018.

The chief minister said the state had received investment proposals worth Rs 5 lakh crore, of which Rs 1.5 lakh crore has already been invested.

"In the past two years, investments done in the state are more than the combined amount of SP and BSP governments. Under the BSP dispensation, the investment figure was Rs 56,000 crore and during the SP rule, it was Rs 77,000 crore," he said.

Adityanath also attacked the Congress, which has been out of power in the state for nearly 30 years.

"Congress ruled the state for the maximum time, and gave it the title of BIMARU state. The people of the state wanted to shed the BIMARU tag, but after 1990, during SP rule (4 times) and BSP rule (3 times), the state entered into an era of anarchy and lawlessness." BIMARU is an acronym that denoted the states Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh with low levels of development index.

The chief minister also listed achievements and welfare schemes of his government.

His deputies Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma and Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey were present at the press conference.
Normalcy returned to Lanjigarh in Odisha's Kalahandi district on Tuesday, a day after a security man was burnt to death by a mob and a protestor killed in clashes near the Vedanta alumina refinery.

Both Vedanta and the state government announced financial assistance to families of the security personnel and the villager, who were killed when violence erupted as locals demanding jobs and admission of children in the company-run school tried to storm the refinery premises on Monday.

Vedanta will provide financial assistance of Rs 25 lakh each to the next of kin of the two deceased persons, a company official said.

"This gesture and interaction with a cross section of people helped in improving the situation," he said.

The Odisha government, too, granted Rs 5 lakh each to the dependents of the Odisha Industrial Security Force (OISF) personnel and the protestor, Kalahandi District Collector Harsad Gavali said.

Some of the agitators had on Monday vandalised the community service centre at the alumina plant and set afire OISF staff Sujit Kumar Minz, after locking him in a room, police said.

The deceased agitator, who succumbed to injuries at a hospital, was identified as Dani Patra (35) from Chatrapur village.

Superintendent of Police B Gangadhar on Tuesday said the situation has improved substantially, and a peace committee formed in various villages located near the refinery.

The peace committee members and senior police officers took out a peace march in the evening to Lanjigarh, Rengopali and Chatrapur villages, he said.

Terming Monday's incident as "unfortunate", a senior Vedanta official said miscreants ransacked a portion of the building near the gate of the plant.

A railway line transporting bauxite to the alumina refinery plant and a water pipeline were also damaged, he said, adding, steps are being taken for restoration.

"It appears that the violence was the handiwork of unruly elements aimed at hampering development," the official claimed.

He said that Patra was employed at the refinery as a contract labour.

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed Tuesday never to utter the name of the twin-mosque gunman as she opened a sombre session of parliament with an evocative "as-salaam alaikum" message of peace to Muslims.

"He will face the full force of the law in New Zealand," Ardern pledged to grieving Kiwis, while promising that she would deprive the man, an avowed white supremacist who slaughtered 50 people in Christchurch, of the publicity he craved.

"He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety," she told assembled lawmakers of the 28-year-old Australian accused of the slaughter.

"That is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless."



"I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them." Dressed in black, the 38-year-old leader opened her remarks in parliament with a symbolic gesture, repeating the greeting uttered every day across the Islamic world: "as-salaam alaikum".

She closed her address by noting that "on Friday, it will be a week since the attack, members of the Muslim community will gather for worship on that day. Let us acknowledge their grief as they do."



"Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh," she said -- "May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be with you too."Her comments came as dozens of relatives of the deceased began arriving from around the world ahead of expected funerals which have already been delayed far beyond the 24 hours after death usually observed under Islamic custom.

Peter Elms of New Zealand's immigration department said 65 visas had been granted for overseas family members so far.

The slow process of identification and forensic documentation has so far made burials impossible, augmenting families' grief.

Javed Dadabhai, who travelled from Auckland to help bury his cousin, said families and volunteers were told: "It is going to be a very slow process, a very thorough process."



"Some families have been invited to have a look at their family members... the ones that are easiest to recognise, but we are talking about three or four." "The majority of people still have not had the opportunity to see their family members," he told AFP.

Mohamed Safi, 23, whose father Matiullah Safi died in Al Noor mosque, pleaded for officials to let him identify his father get a date for his burial.

"There's nothing they are offering," Safi, an Afghan refugee, said outside a family support centre.

"They are just saying they are doing their procedures, they are doing their process. But what process? Why do I not know what you are going through to identify the body... Why am I not contacted as an immediate family member?"



In the wake of the mass shooting, Ardern has promised to reform New Zealand gun laws that allowed the gunman to legally purchase the weapons he used in the attack on two Christchurch mosques, including semi-automatic rifles.

New Zealanders have already begun answering government appeals to hand in their weapons, including John Hart, a farmer in the North Island district of Masterton.

Hart said it was an easy decision for him to hand in his semi-automatic and tweeted: "on the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn't outweigh the risk of misuse. We don't need these in our country."



The tweet drew a barrage of derogatory messages to his Facebook account -- most apparently from the US, where the pro-gun lobby is powerful and vociferous.

Hart deleted the messages but posted online: "A warm kia ora to all my new American Facebook friends." "I'm not familiar with your local customs, but I assume 'Cuck' is a traditional greeting," he said of the insult, short for "cuckold" frequently used by far-right pundits.

Police said they did not have data available on the number of weapons handed in since Friday.

But they issued a statement saying that "due to heightened security and the current environment, we would ask that people please call us first before attempting to surrender a firearm."



Ardern has said that details of the government's proposed law changes on gun ownership will be announced by next week, but she indicated that gun buybacks and a ban on some semi-automatic rifles were under consideration.

"The terror attack in Christchurch... was the worst act of terrorism on our shores, it was in fact one of the worst globally in recent times," she said.

"It has exposed a range of weaknesses in New Zealand's gun laws.

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National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah on Tuesday demanded a time-bound investigation into the custodial death of a school teacher in Jammu and Kashmir and exemplary punishment to those responsible for the death.

"I had hoped custodial deaths were a thing of our dark past. This is an unacceptable development & must be investigated in a transparent, time bound manner. Exemplary punishment must be handed out to the killers of this young man," Abdullah tweeted.

Rizwan Pandit, 28, who was arrested in connection with a terror case, died in a police custody here during the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, an official said.

Pandit, who was a teacher at a private school and a resident of Awantipora in Pulwama district, was picked up by the security agencies three days ago in connection with a terror case, the officer said.

The police department has requested a magisterial inquiry under Section 176 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to ascertain the cause and circumstances leading to Pandit's death, the officer said



PDP leader Naeem Akhtar asked Governor Satya Pal Malik's administration to come clean on the incident.

"Disturbing reports of custodial death of youth from Awantipora in Srinagar's Cargo Camp. As per media he was picked up by NIA few days ago & was lodged in CARGO camp of (SOG). @jandkgovernor administration should come clean on this," Akhtar, a former minister, posted on Twitter.

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Opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday had a dig at BJP's 'Main Bhi Chowkidar' campaign, with BSP chief Mayawati saying the "chaiwala" prime minister has now turned "chowkidar" and this shows the "change" India witnessed under this government.

Leading the opposition attack, Mayawati said on Twitter, "After BJP launched 'Mai Bhi Chowkidar' campaign, PM Modi & others added the prefix 'Chowkidar' to their Twitter handles. So now Narendra Modi is Chowkidar & no more 'Chaiwala' which he was at the time of last LS election. What a change India is witnessing under the BJP rule. Bravo!"



Her ally Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav tweeted in Hindi, "Is there any chowkidar to check the theft of fertiliser?"



In another tweet, Yadav appeared to be referring to the controversial Rafale jet deal.

"Has the chowkidar responsible for the theft of file from the ministry been punished.

He prefixed his tweets on Tuesday with "Vikas puch reha hai" (Vikas is asking), playing on the word "development" which was used extensively by the BJP during its 2014 campaign.

On March 6, Attorney-General KK Venugopal had told the Supreme Court that the jet deal documents were "stolen" from the defence ministry, triggering a row.

Two days later, he claimed the Rafale documents were not stolen from the ministry and what he had meant in his submission before the Supreme Court was that petitioners in the application used "photocopies of the original" papers, deemed secret by the government.

On Monday, Congress party's incharge of eastern Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said, "Unki (the prime minister) marzi apne naam ke aage kya lagaen. Mujhe ek kisan bhai ne kaha ki 'dekhiye chowkidar toh ameeron ke hotey hain, hum kisan toh apney khud chowkidar hotey hain." (I met a group of farmers...potato farmers of western UP. One of them told me, chowkidar is for the rich. We farmers are our own chowkidar).

The Congress, SP and BSP have attacked the BJP after the saffron party launched a new election campaign under which its leaders, starting from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, prefixed "chowkidar" to their names on the official Twitter handles.

This campaign appeared to be aimed to blunt the Congress charge of the government indulging in corruption ahead of the Lok Sabha election, which starts on April 11.

The election will end on May 19 and the results will be declared on May 23.

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AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi and Telangana Congress working President A Revanth Reddy are among the Lok Sabha candidates who have kicked off their campaign ahead of others in Telangana.

Owaisi, who is seeking re-election for a fourth consecutive term from Hyderabad, filed his nomination on Monday, the first day of nominations.

He conducted a door-to-door campaign at Nawab Saheb Kunta on Monday.

"What can any politician/candidate say for this unconditional affection, love from people who I have never met - I have to work more hard to live upto the expectations of common people but I am certainly blessed Alhamdullilah," he tweeted.

Congress has fielded Firoz Khan from Hyderabad to take on Owaisi. Khan had unsuccessfully contested in the Assembly polls in December.

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) working president Revanth Reddy, known as a firebrand leader, kicked off his campaign on Sunday after visiting a temple. He is contesting from Malkajgiri here.

Reddy, who lost the Assembly polls in December from his traditional seat Kodangal, met key party leaders in Malkajgiri in the last few days, seeking their cooperation.

He also reached out to CPI and Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS) to enlist their help.

Reddy met CPI state secretary Chada Venkata Reddy at the here and also TJS president M Kodandaram.

The CPI leader responded positively to Reddy's request, while Kodandaram said he would consult the party's local leaders.

The CPI and TJS were alliance partners of Congress in the December 2018 Assembly elections.

TRS MP B Vinod Kumar is the first party candidate to file his nomination (from Karimnagar; on Monday).

TRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had kicked off the party's campaign for Lok Sabha elections from Karimnagar. Kumar has also started his campaign.

Among the major parties, Congress has declared candidates for 16 out of the total 17 seats in Telangana.

The TRS and BJP are yet to announce their candidates.

Telangana goes to polls in the first phase on April 11.

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A special court hearing the treason case against Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday ordered the preparation of a questionnaire for the former military ruler and sought assistance to determine whether or not he can record his statement via video link.

The previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had filed the treason case against the ex-army chief general (retd) Musharraf in 2013 over the imposition of extra-constitutional emergency in November 2007.

The trial has not seen much progress since Musharraf, 75, left went to Dubai in March 2016 after his name was removed from the Exit Control List.

He has not returned since, and is said to be suffering from Amyloidosis, a rare condition for which he has been receiving medical care.

On Saturday night, he was shifted to a hospital in Dubai after suffering a reaction from the condition.

The three-judge bench headed by Justice Tahira Safdar accepted an affidavit submitted by Musharraf's lawyer Tuesday and ordered the preparation of a questionnaire for the former president to respond to, Dawn newspaper reported.

However, Musharraf's lawyer maintained that the former president's presence in court was essential and that his statement could not be recorded via video link, the report said.

The prosecution lawyer said that Musharraf's not recording his statement in the case should not hinder it, and that the trial should move forward.

The bench asked that assistance be provided to ascertain whether the former president could record his statement via video link within the parameters of the law.

In 2018, the special court resumed proceedings in the treason case and ordered the blocking of Musharraf's identity card and passport.

However, ex-chief justice Saqib Nisar while hearing a case regarding Musharraf's disqualification in the run-up to the 2018 elections had allowed him to return and restored his travel documents. The former dictator, however, did not return.

While delivering his arguments, Musharraf's lawyer said his client is ill and that the statements of eight witnesses had been recorded in his absence. The court, however, commented that the statements had been recorded in his presence, the report said.

The hearing was adjourned till March 28.

A conviction for high treason carries the death penalty or life imprisonment.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistani nationals having more than 152,500 offshore bank accounts could have stashed away a hefty sum of USD 11 billion abroad, a "mind-boggling" amount half of which is undeclared, a top minister was quoted as saying in a media report Tuesday.

Minister of State for Revenue Hammad Azhar told businessmen at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) that the number of offshore accounts was "mind-boggling".

"So is the amount involved and the names of account holders," Azhar was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.

"All of these offshore account holders are resident Pakistanis and more than half of the hard currency stashed away by them is undeclared," he said.

The minister said many of these offshore account holders did not have legitimate, documented business.

"That should be enough to underscore the scale of tax evasion (in the country). We wouldn't have to beg if we could bring this money back home," he said.

Azhar said the offshore account holders were under the watch of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

The information about the offshore bank accounts of Pakistani nationals was shared with the government by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Azhar said the government had "deployed technology" using database of the National Database and Registration Authority, Federal Investigation Agency, State Bank of Pakistan and the FBR to profile potential taxpayers in Pakistan.

"Almost half the work is already done and by the end of April the profiling of such tax evaders will be completed," he said.

Last week, Chairman of the FBR Jahanzeb Khan told a parliamentary panel the board had neither set any tax recovery target from the holders of these accounts nor seen any tax potential from the Panama Papers leaks.

The tax recovery target could not be given on the basis of information received about the offshore accounts because the account holders might have transferred money through legal channels or have plausible justification, he was quoted to have told the panel.

Around 400 account holders are believed to have cash of USD 1 million or above in their accounts and the FBR has so far been able to recover USD 1.2 million from one individual as tax since the OECD shared the information with the country's top tax agency.

Several years ago, former finance minister Ishaq Dar had claimed that Pakistani nationals had parked a whopping USD 200 billion in Swiss accounts, but he never disclosed the source of his information.

Based on his claim, the ruling Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf promised to recover this money after coming to power.

The prime minister has also set up the Asset Recovery Unit for this purpose.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistani nationals having more than 152,500 offshore bank accounts could have stashed away $11 billion, a "mind-boggling" amount half of which is undeclared, a top minister was quoted as saying in a media report Tuesday.

Minister of State for Revenue Hammad Azhar told businessmen at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) that the number of offshore accounts was "mind-boggling".

"So is the amount involved and the names of account holders," Azhar was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.

"All of these offshore account holders are resident Pakistanis and more than half of the hard currency stashed away by them is undeclared," he said.

The minister said many of these offshore account holders did not have legitimate, documented business.

"That should be enough to underscore the scale of tax evasion (in the country). We wouldn't have to beg if we could bring this back home," he said.

Azhar said the offshore account holders were under the watch of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

The information about the offshore bank accounts of Pakistani nationals was shared with the government by the (OECD).

Azhar said the government had "deployed technology" using database of the National Database and Registration Authority, Federal Investigation Agency, State Bank of and the FBR to profile potential taxpayers in

"Almost half the work is already done and by the end of April the profiling of such tax evaders will be completed," he said.

Last week, Chairman of the FBR Jahanzeb Khan told a parliamentary panel the board had neither set any tax recovery target from the holders of these accounts nor seen any tax potential from the Panama Papers leaks.

The tax recovery target could not be given on the basis of information received about the offshore accounts because the account holders might have transferred through legal channels or have plausible justification, he was quoted to have told the panel.

Around 400 account holders are believed to have cash of $1 million or above in their accounts and the FBR has so far been able to recover $1.2 million from one individual as tax since the OECD shared the information with the country's top tax agency.

Several years ago, former minister Ishaq Dar had claimed that Pakistani nationals had parked a whopping $200 billion in Swiss accounts, but he never disclosed the source of his information.

Based on his claim, the ruling Imran Khan-led Tehreek-i-Insaf promised to recover this after coming to power.

The prime minister has also set up the Asset Recovery Unit for this purpose.
Pakistan's Supreme Court Tuesday postponed the verdict of jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's application seeking bail on medical grounds till March 26, according to media reports.

Sharif filed an appeal on March 6 against a judgment by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) which on February 25 rejected his bail application on medical grounds in the Al-Azizia steel mills case.

During the hearing on Tuesday, a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa issued a notice to National Accountability Bureau to submit reply in the matter in the next hearing fixed for March 26.

The apex court will announce the judgment on the same day, the Express Tribune reported.

Defence counsel Khawaja Haris presented arguments in the case and cited medical reports. He claimed that the three-time premier is taking 17 different medications.

We know that Nawaz receives medical care in London. We want to know whether his health deteriorated in prison, the paper quoted the chief justice questioning the counsel during the hearing of the petition.

The chief justice further remarked that the reports from London were not provided to the doctors in Pakistan, and that the court would examine the medical reports of tests conducted at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad, the Geo reported.

Sharif, 69, is serving a seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore since December 2018.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo has suffered four angina attacks last week, according to his daughter Maryam Nawaz.

The Sharif family is complaining that the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is not providing health facilities to the former premier who has serious health complications.

The bench headed by Chief Justice Khosa also comprises of Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi will take up the petition.

The former premier had twice submitted requests to the apex court for an early hearing of his application.

In January, he filed application in the IHC for bail on medical reasons as he developed heart-related medical complications in jail but it was dismissed.

Three corruption cases - Avenfield properties, Flagship investment and Al-Azizia steel mills - were registered against the Sharif family by the anti-graft body in 2017 following a judgment by the Supreme Court that disqualified Sharif in the Panama Papers case in 2017.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Avenfiled corruption case in July 2018 which was related to his properties in London. Later he was given bail in September.

In December, the accountability court convicted him in the Al-Azizia graft case but acquitted him in the Flagship corruption case.

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The Pakistan Army violated ceasefire for the third consecutive day by shelling forward areas and posts along the LoC with mortar bombs in Jammu and Kashmir's Akhnoor and Sunderbani sectors Tuesday, officials said.

Pakistani troops have violated ceasefire over 110 times along the Line of Control (LoC) this year.

"There was continuous ceasefire violation as the Pakistani troops resorted to heavy firing and mortar shelling in Akhnoor sector in Jammu district Tuesday," the officials said.

At 10.45 pm Monday, the Pakistan Army initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by resorting to shelling with mortar bombs and firing of small arms along the LoC in Akhnoor and Sunderbani Sectors, a defence spokesman said.

The Indian Army retaliated strongly and effectively, he said, adding that the firing continued till Tuesday morning.

On Monday, an Army jawan was killed and four others were injured when the Pakistan Army violated ceasefire, resorting to heavy mortar shelling and firing along the LoC in Rajouri district.

"In the incident, rifleman Karamjeet Singh was critically injured and later succumbed to injuries," the spokesman said, adding that four other soldiers were injured and condition of two of them was stated to be critical.

As per the officials, the causality was caused in the Pakistani shelling along the LoC in Keri Battal forward area in the Sunderbani sector.

On Sunday too, the sector was targeted by the Pakistan Army in unprovoked ceasefire violation.

The border skirmishes witnessed a spurt after India's air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Balakot on February 26 in response to the February 14 Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed.

The year 2018 witnessed the highest number of ceasefire violations, numbering 2,936 by Pakistani troops, in the last 15 years along the Indo-Pak border.

Pakistan continues to violate the 2003 ceasefire agreement with India despite repeated calls for restraint and adherence to the pact during flag meetings between the two sides.

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Restrictions over large swathes of Pakistani airspace continued to affect numerous flight routes, officials said Tuesday, weeks after clashes between Pakistan and India brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.

The continued constraints come weeks after Pakistani authorities said they had fully reopened the country's airspace after it was closed for days following clashes and aerial dogfights between the two countries late last month.

"All entry and exit points to and from India remain closed," a senior Pakistan official told AFP on the condition of anonymity, saying the decision to keep portions of the country's airspace closed was reviewed daily by authorities.

The closure of large swathes of the eastern airspace effectively shuts off major international flight routes in and out of Islamabad and Lahore along with select domestic routes.

"At least seven domestic and four international destinations are suspended," Pakistan International Airlines spokesman Mashud Tajwar said.

The national carrier's operations to India, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur have all been suspended for nearly a month causing heavy losses to the already struggling airline.

"We can't give an off-hand estimates of the losses but yes the losses have been occurring for sure," Tajwar told AFP.

Aviation experts said the ongoing restrictions have also affected Indian flights headed west over Pakistan.

"Indian airlines are suffering much more compared to Pakistan because their westward operations are much bigger," said Sajid Habib, a former chief of state-run Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Information from online flight tracker flightradar24 showed no flights along the border between the two countries.

The crisis between the countries was first sparked by a suicide bombing in Kashmir last month that killed 40 Indian security personnel and was later claimed by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Days later India responded with a cross-border air raid on Pakistan that kicked off a quick succession of attacks and dogfights between the arch-rivals.

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The Congress and the AAP on Tuesday made fresh efforts with the help of NCP chief Sharad Pawar to forge an alliance in Delhi for the Lok Sabha polls, days after they unanimously decided to go it alone in the national capital.

The NCP leader stepped up efforts for reconciliation between the two parties which have been making statements against each other, with AAP leader Sanjay Singh meeting Pawar at his residence here.

Pawar also held talks with some senior Congress leaders, including party president Rahul Gandhi, for bringing the Congress and the AAP together in Delhi, sources said.

In a separate meeting, Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit held discussions with the party's state unit working presidents Devender Yadav, Haroon Yusuf and Rajesh Lilothia at her residence.

Dikshit said she was against any alliance with the AAP but would abide by any decision taken by her party chief in this regard.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) also made a fresh bid for alliance with the Congress in Punjab, Haryana and in Delhi on a ratio of five seats for it and two for the grand old party, the sources said.

The AAP also wants to contest on three seats in Punjab and two in Haryana, which it is demanding from the Congress, they said.

AAP's Sanjay Singh also discussed the proposal with Pawar, who is trying convince the AAP and Congress to field common candidates in all the seats to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls.

The Congress leadership is also in talks with AAP leaders and senior leaders within the party and are trying to convince Delhi Congress leaders for an alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP, though they publicly maintain going alone, the sources said.

Congress's in-charge for Delhi, PC Chacko, said: "I am in consultation with Congress party leaders in Delhi on the possibilities of forging an alliance with AAP.

"The Congress Working Committee (CWC) has decided to align with like-minded parties across the country to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections.

"I hope Delhi Congress leaders also go by this sentiment and decide on an alliance with AAP, but a final decision will be taken by the Congress president soon," Chacko told PTI.

Chacko's views are at variance with Dikshit, who has made it clear that aligning with AAP will not be in the party's interests keeping in view the assembly election in the national capital slated later.

"I am not in favour of alliance with AAP, but I would abide by any decision taken in this regard by the Congress president," she said after the meeting.

The Congress had earlier decided to go alone in Delhi after talks with AAP failed and local leaders favoured that the party contests LS polls alone. The Delhi Congress leaders felt that "saving" the party was crucial in Delhi in view of impending assembly elections in the state.

The Congress has been facing alliance troubles in Bihar and West Bengal, where it failed to forge alliance with the Left, and has been kept out of the 'mahagathbandhan' (grand alliance) of SP-BSP-RLD in Uttar Pradesh. It is learnt that the Congress-RJD seat-sharing is also in troubled waters as they did not declare candidates on March 17 as promised.

Former BJP minister Yashwant Sinha, who is eyeing a ticket in Delhi, tweeted, "Unsolicited advice to Rahul Gandhi, please finalise your alliances in Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi and elsewhere today. It is already too late."



"Unsolicited advice to all leaders of opposition parties, 'stop speaking against each other in public. Sort out your differences privately'," he also tweeted.

Sanjay Singh told reporters after meeting Pawar that with the Constitution, democracy and the country in "danger" under the Modi government, attempts should be made by all opposition parties to unite and come together to fight it out.

"The party can be saved later....there will be enough time to save the party. Right now the attempt should be to save the country and democracy, which is in danger due to the Modi government," he said, without giving details of his meeting with Pawar.

"It is up to the Congress that has to take the decision now. We have learnt that they are also willing to forge an alliance with the AAP in Delhi," he said.

When asked about any prospect of a tie-up, Singh said all parties must forgo their petty difference and unite against the BJP if the country and its institutions have to survive.

Earlier on Tuesday, senior AAP leader Gopal Rai told reporters there would be no alliance with the Congress and that his party would contest the polls alone.

The talks of Congress-AAP alliance first cropped up during a meeting of opposition leaders at Pawar's residence on February 13, where Rahul Gandhi and Kejriwal, besides Mamata Banerjee and Chandrababu Naidu were present.

Chacko said some senior leaders in Delhi, who think defeating BJP is the party's immediate responsibility and for which an alliance should be forged with AAP, have written to Gandhi on the matter.

He, however, said Gandhi will take a final call shortly after consultations within the party.

"I hope our Delhi leaders also follow the policy decision of the CWC. I am talking with them and trying to convince them about this, but if they still decide not to forge an alliance, it is up to them," he said.

The Lok Sabha elections in Delhi are slated for May 12.

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Union minister and RPI (A) chief Ramdas Athawale Tuesday said his party has "differences" with the RSS on the issue of Hindutva but not with "Ambedkarite" Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and trashed the opposition's allegation that the Centre will alter the Constitution.

Athawale said the BJP and other parties were not "anti-Dalit", but added efforts should be made to punish those who commit atrocities on the community.

Minister of State for Social Justice Athawale also claimed the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), led by Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar and AIMIM's Asaduddin Owaisi, will not be able to win a single seat in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha polls.

"The BJP supports the ideology of Babasaheb (BR Ambedkar). The RSS too supports the ideology of Babasaheb. But we do have differences with the RSS on the issue of Hindutva," Athawale said during an interaction with BBC Marathi here.

"But there are absolutely no differences with Narendra Modi who is an Ambedkarite. He (Modi) says he would not have become prime minister had Babasaheb's Constitution not been there," Athawale added.

Referring to Modi's statement, Athawale said the prime minister was not for changing the Constitution as is often alleged by some opposition parties including the Congress.

"The Congress and the NCP have no other issue left but to allege that Modi will change the Constitution," Athawale said.

To drive home his point that the BJP was not "anti- Dalit", Athawale listed works the Central government carried out to preserve the ideology of BR Ambedkar, including its efforts to set up a memorial of the Dalit icon in Mumbai.

Athawale claimed his party workers wanted him to contest forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, and that he had talked about filing nomination from the Mumbai South Central seat, currently represented by Shiv Sena's Rahul Shewale.

"But the Shiv Sena did not consider the idea," he said.

He stressed that the RPI(A) would continue to be part of the BJP-led NDA.

Polling will be held in 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state in four phases next month.

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The Congress Tuesday took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Main Bhi Chowkidar" campaign, alleging that he is trying to befool the people by pretending to be a "chowkidar".

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the Modi government does not have anything to offer to the people after being in power for five years and therefore, was resorting to such a campaign.

"Modi is trying to resell his brand which has already flopped and is thus changing its packaging, name and colour to achieve his goal," he told reporters.

Surejwala claimed that in 2013, Modi had promised to bring back 80 lakh crore of black money stashed abroad and putting Rs 15 lakh into the accounts of every individual.

"In 2014, just ahead of the elections he promised the people of bringing 'achche din' (good days) in the country and in 2015, changed it to 'sabka saath, sabka vikas'.

"In 2016, Modi ji said he will build a 'New India' and in 2017 said 'mera desh badal raha hai' (my country is changing), while in 2018 he told the people that he will work with 'saaf neeyat, sahi vikas' (clean intent and proper development). In 2019, Modi has said 'Main Bhi Chowkidar'," he said.

The prime minister is certain about his defeat and is "rattled". Therefore, he is changing his poll slogans so many times, the Congress leader said.

"When Congress president Rahul Gandhi exposed Prime Minister Modi about the theft done by the 'chowkidar' (watchman) in the Rafale deal, the 'chowkidar' is now resorting to a fresh drama," Surejwala said.

The government has repeatedly denied any corruption in the deal.

"Modi's policy is to steal the money of the poor and give it to the rich, and instead of redressing the problems of farmers, youth, economy and ending corruption, he has indulged in stealing jobs of the youth, farmers' prices of produce, women safety rights, rights of Dalits and the oppressed sections, and small businessmen during his five years of rule," he alleged.

Surjewala also hit out at Modi's ministers and BJP leaders, alleging that they were adding 'Chowkidar' to their Twitter handles in a bid to hoodwink and befool the public once again. This will not be allowed by the wise voters, he said.

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Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who was handed a six-month suspended sentence this month for failing to report sex abuse by a priest under his authority, the cardinal said on Tuesday.

"Monday morning, I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation," Barbarin, who has appealed his sentence, said in a statement.

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Poll strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor Tuesday lashed out at Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu for reportedly calling him a "Bihari dacoit".

He charged the TDP chief with having displayed "prejudice and malice" against the eastern state fearing an "imminent defeat" at the hustings.

Kishor, who is also the national vice-president of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumars JD(U), was reacting to a report wherein Naidu had also blamed him for deletion of lakhs of voters in Andhra Pradesh besides giving "criminal advice" to his main rival the YSR Congress.

"An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So I am not surprised with the baseless utterances of @ncbn (Naidus twitter handle). Sirji, rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice and malice against Bihar, just focus on why the people of AP should vote for you again," Kishor tweeted while sharing the link to the item.

Assembly polls are being held in Andhra Pradesh alongside the parliamentary elections. Naidu had last year pulled out of the BJP-led NDA of which the JD(U) is a part.

Although now formally associated with the JD(U), Kishor is earlier known to have worked closely with many political figures cutting across ideological affiliations.

He achieved fame after having handled Narendra Modis election campaign in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, which was followed by his association with the Grand Alliance in Bihar, which saw arch rivals Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad joining hands to inflict a crushing defeat on the NDA in the assembly polls next year.

He thereafter worked with the Congress during assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab which, achieved mixed results. In September last year, he was inducted into the JD(U) and elevated to the number two post within a few weeks, leading to speculations that he was being seen as a successor to Nitish Kumar.

The speculations were laid to rest when Kumar made it clear that his party was "not a monarchy" and hence there were no successors.

Kishor, nevertheless, has helped the partys students wing to achieve unexpected victories in some university polls and is working on transforming the JD(U) into a platform for youths with aptitude for politics.

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The 2019 Lok Sabha elections may turn out be the launch pad for children of some Punjab Congress leaders, with the generation next eyeing party tickets for the May 19 polls.

With the Congress claiming to be in a "firm position" in Punjab, it may not strictly follow the 'one family, one ticket' rule which was introduced during the 2017 Assembly elections in the state.

The party has received over 180 applications from ticket aspirants to contest the Lok Sabha polls in Punjab. Maximum applications are for Khadoor Sahib, Anandpur Sahib and Ferozepur seats.

"Winnability is going to be the main factor in giving tickets," said Asha Kumari, Congress Punjab Affairs in-charge.

Children of several Cabinet ministers, former ministers, MLAs and ex-legislators are among those looking to jump into the poll fray.

Sports Minister Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi's son, Anumit Hira, is seeking ticket for Ferozepur seat while Health Minister Brahm Mohindra's son, Mohit, is hoping to contest from Bathinda seat.

Former Union minister and three-time MP Santosh Chaudhary's daughter Namita is eyeing Hoshiarpur seat.

MLA Harpartap Singh Ajnala's son Kanwar Partap has applied for ticket from Amritsar seat, while Karanvir Singh, son of former MLA Kewal Dhillon, is looking to contest from Anandpur Sahib seat.

Sodhi said his son has enough political exposure to stake claim to the Ferozepur ticket.

"Anumit is born and brought up here (Ferozepur) and he has been working for the last 20 years in the area. He has enough political exposure and he is a fresh face. He is the member of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee and was also the vice president of Punjab Youth Congress," he said.

"He deserves this (ticket). I am not asking for a ticket for my son, he is seeking it for himself. Tickets should be given on performance and winnability factors," the minister added.

The opposition BJP, which has repeatedly accused the Congress of propagating "dynastic politics", reiterated its charge.

"'Parivarvaad' (dynastic politics) is in the genes of the Congress, which is not good for a healthy democracy. The children of Congress leaders seeking tickets clearly shows the political bankruptcy of the party as it does not have leaders to field in elections," BJP national secretary Tarun Chugh said.

With two months to go for the polling in Punjab, the Congress appears to be in no rush to announce the candidates for the state.

However, it has already made up its mind to give tickets to former Union minister Preneet Kaur, wife of Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, from Patiala, sitting MP Sunil Jakhar from Gurdaspur and Ravneet Singh Bittu from Ludhiana, party sources said.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress won three seats in Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party and the Shiromani Akali Dal got four each and the BJP bagged two.

The parliamentary polls this year will be held in seven phases beginning April 11. Results will be announced on May 23.

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Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday hailed China's support to his country in the challenging times and said Islamabad was committed to the expeditious implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Qureshi also appreciated the Chinese stand that there should be no double standards in combating terrorism as he thanked Beijing for its support to Pakistan in international fora on the issue of tackling the menace.

He made the remarks during the first-ever China-Pakistan Foreign Minister-level strategic dialogue, which was attended by his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

In his opening remarks, Qureshi acknowledged that China has been "helpful in these challenging times for Pakistan", in an apparent reference to the multi-billion dollar Chinese financial assistance to Pakistan, which is going through a "low point", to minimise its dependence on an IMF bailout package.

"The Chinese government was very generous in supporting Pakistan. We had good discussions...We are committed to expeditious implementation of CPEC," Qureshi said.

The CPEC, which connects Gwadar Port in Balochistan with China's Xinjiang province, is the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

"There is a national consensus that this project is not simply beneficial to Pakistan and China but also the entire region and has a far reaching impact," he said.

"Obviously, our leaders have set huge agenda for us and they have entrusted us to implement their vision and that we intend to do," Qureshi said as he informed his Chinese counterpart about Prime Minister Imran Khan's desire to attend the 2nd Belt and Road Forum in Beijing next month.

China will host a second global meeting on its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative in Beijing in April.

The BRI includes USD 60-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which India opposes as it traverses through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The US, India and several other countries have raised concerns over the BRI as China doled out huge loans to smaller countries for infrastructure projects without taking into consideration their ability to pay back the money.

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The Congress will restore special category status to all states of the Northeast if voted to power at the Centre, party president Rahul Gandhi said Tuesday, reaching out to the electors of the region where it is a sensitive issue.

He also accused the BJP of trying to destroy the social and cultural ethos of the people of the Northeast by imposing on them the "RSS ideology".

Addressing a Congress rally in the run up to the Lok Sabha and Arunachal Pradesh assembly polls to be held simultaneously, Gandhi sought to appeal to the regional sentiments, saying his party will never "attack the language, culture, customs and traditions" of the Northeastern states.

"The people of the region are close to Congress's heart. The Congress has always worked for the development of the region. My party, if voted to power, will restore the special category status to Arunachal Pradesh and other states in the Northeast," he told a well attended rally at Indira Park here.

The Congress party's last standing citadel in the Northeast fell in November last year when BJP ally Mizo National Front stormed to power in the state.

There are some states which require special status because of their "unique problems and difficulties" such as connectivity, terrain and infrastructure, he said. Gandhi said these states had special status when the Congress helmed the central government.

The Congress president called Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP's slogan of "Congress mukt Bharat" an expression of "hatred" towards the main opposition party.

"However, the Congress being a secular party would not even want the BJP finished," he said.

Accusing the BJP-led central government of imposing "RSS ideology" across the country, including the Northeast, Gandhi alleged ineligible people with Sangh family background were appointed as vice chancellors.

Touching upon yest another sensitive issue of Citizenship (amendmdent) Bill, Gandhi said his party will never allow it to be passed by Parliament as it is detrimental to the people of the region.

"We will not allow the suppression of the people of the Northeast," he asserted.

"After the NDA government came to power, the Planning Commission, which was set up for meticulously planned development, keeping in mind the special requirements of the region, was replaced with Niti Aayog.

"Earlier, all schemes for northeastern states were planned in due consultation with the respective state governments, but now all planning is done in Delhi," he added.

Noting that Arunachal Pradesh has a special place in the Congress's scheme of things, Gandhi said his party wants a "bonding of hearts" with the people of the northeastern state.

The Congress leader promised his party will give a fresh impetus to infrastructure development in Arunachal Pradesh if voted to power.

He also pledged to revive the Special Plan Assistance (SPA) scheme and North East Industrial Policy for giving a boost to the region's economy.

Reaffirming the Congress's commitment to providing 'Guaranteed Minimum Income' to every citizen, Gandhi claimed that instead of giving loans to the unemployed youth of Arunachal Pradesh, the Modi government wrote off the Rs 3.5 lakh crore debt of a handful of industrialists.

He dubbed as a "blantant lie" the BJP's promise of creating two crore jobs a year. "Instead, there are more than two crore unemployed youth now," he said.

Polling for the 60-member Arunachal Pradesh assembly and the state's two Lok Sabha seats will be held on April 11.

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With fervent nationalism becoming the flavour of the election season, Congress chief Tuesday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's patriotic credentials and accused him of not raising the issue of India's "territorial integrity" during his meetings with Chinese leader

The Congress leader claimed the prime minister "did not utter a word" on the boundary question when he hosted President Xi in his home state Gujarat a few years ago.

"During Xi Jinping's meeting with Modi in India, the prime minister was seen sitting with him over a cup of tea without uttering a single word on the boundary dispute. Even during his (Modi) visit to China he never took up the Doklam issue," Gandhi told an election rally in the Arunachal Pradesh capital.

India and China are locked in a protracted dispute over Arunachal Pradesh, often resulting in incursions by their respective armies into each other's territory.

In June 2017, a military standoff occurred between China and India as Chinese soldiers attempted to extend a road on the Doklam plateau and Indian troops moved in to prevent them. India had claimed to have acted on behalf of Bhutan with which it has a 'special relationship'.

"How can he (Modi) claim himself a Desh Bhakt (patriot) when he did not even take up the issue of the countrys territorial integrity? The country doesnt want such patriots.

"The people of Arunachal Pradesh are more patriotic as they are zealously protecting the countrys territory," he told the rally.

Gandhi said Modi had visited China "without an agenda" on the vexed boundary question.

The Congress president had recently called Modi "weak and scared" of the Chinese president, after once again blocked a UN resolution to designate JeM chief a global terrorist.

"Weak Modi is scared of Xi. Not a word comes out of his mouth when China acts against India. NoMos China diplomacy: 1. Swing with Xi in Gujarat. 2. Hug Xi in Delhi. 3. Bow to Xi in China," Gandhi had said on

The Congress president repeated his allegation that Modi continued to shoot for a documentary in the Corbett Park when the nation was mourning the killing of 40 CRPF personnel in a terror bombing in Kashmir's Pulwama.

Reffering to the recent killing of three people in police firing during the agitation against permanent residency certificates to some sections in Arunachal Pradesh, he said," Was there any necessity for police firing? The issue could have been resolved in other ways without harsh action."



He alleged that it was the BJP's "nature" to suppress those who dare to stand up against it.

Gandhi dubbed the prime minister as an "arrogant" leader who claimed India awoke only after the advent of his government in 2014. "He has no knowledge of the country's strengths," the Congress leader said.
On March 12, 2019 the Dallas based Frontiers Of Flight Museum welcomed in its collection, an EA-6B Prowler (BuNo 162228) from the U.S. Marine Corps VMAQ-2 Death Jesters squadron. Some retired Prowlers are making their way to the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, commonly referred to as the boneyard. But a few of the EA-6Bs will rest at the Frontiers Of Flight Museum in Texas and the Smithsonian near our nations capital.

After supporting combat operations for the Marine Corps in nearly every conflict throughout the past 40 years, the Marines electronic attack aircraft, the EA-6B Prowler, will fly its final flight mid-March. Last Friday a deactivation ceremony for the Corps final Prowler squadron, Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 2, or VMAQ-2.

The deactivation marks an end of an era and a storied history that has seen the Prowler jamming enemy communications and systems in conflicts to include operations El Dorado Canyon, Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Deny Flight, Decisive Endeavor, Deliberate Guard, Allied Force, Northern and Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom, Unified Protector, and most recently Inherent Resolve and Freedoms Sentinel, a command release detailed. Its predecessor, the EA-6A Electric Intruder, even saw action in the Vietnam War.

The Business Jet Center located at Dallas Love Field was chosen for the delivery of the The EA-6B Prowler, from the U.S. Marine Corps VMAQ-2 Death Jesters. The Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 2 (VMAQ-2) was a United States Marine Corps electronic warfare squadron in service from 1952 to 2019. It was the last squadron flying the Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler. Its mission was to support the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) commander by conducting airborne electronic warfare, day or night, under all weather conditions during expeditionary, joint, or combined operations. The squadron was based at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina and fell under the command of Marine Aircraft Group 14 (MAG-14) and the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (2nd MAW).





Currently, over 30 aircraft and extensive display galleries draw aviation buffs, schools, family members to the Frontiers Of Flight Museum. Popular collections include early biplanes, historically important military and general aviation aircraft, the World War II exhibit, the extensive history of Southwest Airlines exhibit area, numerous commercial airline artifacts, the iconic Chance Vought V-173 Flying Pancake and the Apollo 7 command module. Visitors can take a chronological walk through the development of human flight from the Leonardo da Vinci parachute to space exploration. For more information, visit www.flightmuseum.com

Thanks to Erik Johnson for the beautiful photos of the EA-6B Prowler. Visit Eriks Facebook page for more information.
general secretary on Tuesday said the ground reality was different than what the Uttar Pradesh government has been portraying and there is an expiry date to the rant that nothing was done in the past 70 years.

The incharge of east Uttar Pradesh was responding to a question about the Adityanath government issuing its report card on completion of two years in office, in which it highlighted various achievements and welfare schemes.

"They (BJP) need to come to the ground to see the reality. This report card and publicity looks good, but the reality is different... all sections are feeling harassed," she said at the Sitamarhi guest house in Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi district, where she had a night halt.

"There is a big difference between polls promises and fulfilling them. As far as the rant about (no development in) 70 years is concerned, it also has an expiry date. You (BJP) are in the government for the past five years, what have you done in five years? the leader asked.

The Bharatiya Janata Party often attacks the Congress by accusing it of not developing the country in the past 70 years.

The 47-year-old, who had embarked on a three-day boat journey on Ganga to reach out to the electorate residing on the river banks, offered prayers at the Sitamarhi temple before starting for her next stop en route to Mirzapur.

alleged that nothing had been done on the ground in the state during Adityanath's rule. "Everyday, I'm meeting people from different sections of the society and I'm getting to know that students, youngsters, 'shiksha mitras', anganwadi workers and ASHA workers are feeling harassed. At some places, it was announced that they will get Rs 17,000 salary, but till now they have got nothing. For the past two years, they are getting Rs 8,000."



Asked about leader and Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma accusing her and Congress president Rahul Gandhi of coming for a picnic before elections and vanishing just after that, she said: "Well, I haven't been to Italy in the past three-four years. I should go in fact to see my grandmother.
/ -- The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has provided the Renewal of Authorization for Vakrangee Limited. RBI has extended the validity of Authorization issued to Vakrangee limited to setup, own and operate the White Label ATMs in India. The validity has been extended till March 31, 2020.

Under Scheme "B" opted at the time of grant of authorization, Vakrangee is desired to have minimum 15,000 ATMs. The ratio of 2:1 would be applicable, i.e., for every 2 WLAs installed in Tier III to VI centres, 1 WLA can be installed in Tier I to II centres. Out of the WLAs installed in Tier III to VI centres, a minimum of 10 % should be installed in Tier V and VI centres.

Vakrangee currently has ~3,500 Nextgen Vakrangee Kendra's spread across 20 states, 340+ districts and 2,000+ postal codes. More than 70% outlets are from Tier 5 and tier 6 cities. Vakrangee's planned target is to reach at least 25,000 operational Nextgen Vakrangee Kendras by FY 2019-20 and further enhance it to reach 45,000 Nextgen outlets by FY 2020-21 and 75,000 by FY2021-22.

This Nextgen model also embodies technological advancements such as mandatory ATMs that enable the ease of financial transactions; centralized monitoring with the help of CCTV Cameras, which would provide remote assistance to the pan-India Kendras, digital advertising through digital signage for brand partners, along with biometric and pin pad devices to enable all kind of payments mechanisms.

About Vakrangee Limited (BSE Code: 511431) (NSE Code: VAKRANGEE)



Incorporated in 1990, Vakrangee is a unique technology driven company focused on building India's largest network of last-mile retail outlets to deliver real-time banking & Financial Services, ATM, insurance, e-governance, e-commerce and logistics services to the unserved rural, semi-urban and urban markets. The Assisted Digital Convenience stores are called as 'Vakrangee Kendra' which acts as the 'One-stop shop' for availing various services and products. Vakrangee has been at the forefront in financial inclusion space in India. It has signed 'Common BC' and 'National BC' agreements with various public sector banks for offering real-time banking to unserved and underserved urban population. Banking at 'Vakrangee Kendra' outlets is a unique experience with disruptive technology like APS, e-KYC, inter-operability and real-time transactions. In addition to banking 'Vakrangee Kendra' outlets also provide insurance products, e-governance services and ecommerce products.

For further information, please contact at investor@vakrangee.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Reserve Bank of India has moved the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) over the order passed regarding classification of debt of IL&FS group companies as NPA.

A two-member NCLAT bench, headed by Justice S J Mukhopadhaya, has said that it would hear the RBI on the issue.

The RBI is seeking modification of the order passed by the tribunal which has provided moratorium on repayment of loans regarding the



accounts of IL&FS and its over 300 group companies.

During the proceedings, RBI's counsel said that there was a overlap of power on the issue.

The tribunal has also asked the Ministry of Corporate Affairs about the progress made with respect to resolution of IL&FS issues.

Further, the tribunal has sought company-wise updates from the Committee of Creditors (CoC) and Resolution Professional (RP).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There is a "real opportunity" to fundamentally remake America's relationship with Brazil, the White House said Tuesday, a day before the Oval Office meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro.

The White House has thrown a red-carpet welcome for the newly elected Brazilian leader, which is seen as an effort by the Trump administration to cement ties between the two countries at a time when China is spreading its wings in Latin America and Venezuela is facing a domestic strife.

"This is a real, historic opportunity where the United States and Brazil are aligned on domestic, regional, and foreign policy priorities," a senior White House official told reporters during a conference call on the eve of the meeting. The two countries plan to announce a joint statement that will have a lot of deliverables, the official said.

"It's the first time in a long time that a Brazilian president who is not anti-American, comes to Washington," Bolsonaro, often referred to as the 'Tropical Trump', had said on Twitter after he arrived here Sunday.

By taking his first overseas trip to the US for a bilateral meeting, the Brazilian president has signalled the importance he attaches to his relationship with America and his growing friendship with Trump.

The US-Brazil relationship has always been one of potential, but yet it always seemed that the potential has never been met, a senior administration official said.

"This time, it is different. This is a historic remaking of the US-Brazil relationship, where there's truly going to be a north-south axis of the two largest economies in the western hemisphere and a true partnership of the two largest economies in the western hemisphere," he explained.

Responding to reporters' questions, the official said China would be one of the major topics of discussion. China is the largest trading partner of Brazil and the US. They face same challenges, the official added. "This is a unique opportunity to voice concerns."



"These are two countries that face many of the same challenges from China on the economic influence space and in regards to the inherent structural unfairness of the trade relationship and the effect that it could have," he said.

"That has been a subject of President Bolsonaro's trip. That will be a subject of discussion tomorrow. Brazil is a member of the BRIC countries, where China is also a member. It's been very interesting, because even just last week or week before, Brazil came out clearly in its position, and within the BRIC system, sought to tell the other countries that they were wrong as regards to Venezuela and their continued support for Maduro's usurpation of democracy there," the official said.

The ongoing crisis in Venezuela will be a subject of discussion between the two leaders as well, the official said. "We give them credit for working tirelessly to provide humanitarian aid to the Venezuelan people and, frankly, opening their doors," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India accounts for almost one-fourth of the total groundwater extracted globally, more than that of China and the US combined thus using the largest amount of groundwater 24 per cent of the global total, according to a new report.

Export of food and clothing items, while important sources of income, exacerbates this problem if production is not made sustainable, making it harder for many poor and marginalised communities to get access to clean water supply, warned the report released by WaterAid to mark World Water Day on March 22.

The report by WaterAid, a non-profit organisation, titled "Beneath the Surface: The State of the World's Water 2019", said India accounted for almost one-fourth of the total groundwater extracted globally, more than that of China and the US combined.

It said India also used the largest amount of groundwater 24 per cent of the global total - and the country's rate of groundwater depletion increased by 23 per cent between 2000 and 2010.

"India is the third largest exporter of groundwater



12 per cent of the global total," the report said.

It further said wheat and rice were the two most important and highest water-guzzling crops that India produced.

"Rice is the least water-efficient grain and wheat has been the main driver in increasing irrigation stress. Replacing rice and wheat with other crops like maize, millets, sorghum mapped to suitable geographies could reduce irrigation water demand by one-third.

"Though replacement of rice and wheat crops is challenging, in an ideal scenario, choice of crop needs to be matched with ecology and the amount of water available in the area it is being produced in," the report said.

Noting that one kg of wheat required an average 1,654 litres of water, the report said 1 kg of rice requires an average 2,800 litres of water.

"So, just for rice, a family of four consumes approximately 84,600 litres of virtual water in a month," it said.

"In 2014-15, India exported 37.2 lakh tonnes of basmati. To export this rice, the country used around 10 trillion litres of water, meaning India virtually exported 10 trillion litres of water," said the report released ahead of World Water Day.

WaterAid India's Chief Executive VK Madhavan, said this World Water Day (March 22), it is calling for production of these goods to be made more sustainable and for consumers to be more thoughtful in their purchasing habits.

He said lack of access to clean water further pushes the marginalised and vulnerable communities towards a vicious circle of poverty.

"The burden of accessing water to meet daily needs prevents them from reaching their full potential by inhibiting their education, health and livelihood opportunities," he said.

Madhavan said there is a dire need to invest in making clean water within the household accessible to everyone, everywhere.

"India's success in providing its citizens with access to clean water will significantly impact the success of global goals that the government has committed to," he added.

India is currently ranked 120 among 122 countries in the water quality index.

In 2015, Indian government committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6, which promises that by 2030 everyone will have access to clean water, decent sanitation and good hygiene. The human right to water must take priority ahead of other competing demands.

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Opposition leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Tuesday demand the sacking of three ministers in the Imran Khan-led Pakistan government who he said backed "banned outfits" and their training camps, even as the ruling PTI accused him of portraying the country in a "negative light".

Bilawal, Chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has been pressing the government of Prime Minister Khan to dismiss the ministers who backed terror outfits amidst intense international pressure on Pakistan to rein in the militant outfits operating in the country after the Pulwama terror strike.

Bilawal said he had been declared "anti-state" over his demand to sack the three ministers, whom he said, were associated with the banned outfits. The 30-year-old opposition leader has not yet named the three ministers.

"The government has responded to my demand to sack ministers associated with banned outfits by declaring me anti-state, issuing death threats & National Accountability Bureau (NAB) notices.

"None of this deters us from our principle stand; form joint NSC parliamentary committee & act against banned outfits," he tweeted.

"I demand a joint parliamentary committee for implementation of National Action Plan and removal of all three federal ministers for their connection with the extremist organisations. If our demands are not met we would not support the government over any move," said Bilawal.

The three federal ministers are "hands-in-glove" with the terrorists. I don't want to disclose their names, but will do so if the government fails to take action against them," he said last Thursday.

During the weekend, Bilawal raised the issue while addressing the PPP's Sindh leaders while chairing the party's provincial council meeting.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The country's largest lender SBI Tuesday said it has signed a pact with the Bank of China to boost business opportunities.

SBI has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bank of China (BoC), third-largest bank in the world by capital size and one of the major players in the Chinese banking sector, to enhance business synergies between both the banks, State Bank of India (SBI) said in a release.

Through this pact, both SBI and BoC will gain direct access to their respective markets of operation, it said.

Both banks' clients will be able to use the vast combined network to expand their businesses abroad.

SBI said it has a branch in Shanghai and BOC is opening its branch in Mumbai.

"MoU between the two major banks of the two largest and fastest-growing economies of the world is a welcome step. This MoU will facilitate the clients of both the banks to access banking products and services of each other, which will lead to a mutually beneficial relationship," said Rajnish Kumar, chairman, SBI.

Chen Siqing, chairman of BoC, said the agreement would facilitate the growth of Chinese corporates operating in India.

"India is increasingly making its global presence felt across various landscapes. Partnering with an organisation like SBI is strategically important to us, and we look forward to contributing to SBI's growth through our market expertise and established relationships," the BoC chairman said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 28-year-old school teacher, who was arrested in connection with a terror case, died in police custody here, triggering protests at his town in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday, police said.

The state government has order a magisterial inquiry to ascertain the cause and circumstances that led to Rizwan Pandit's death, they said.

Pandit a resident of Awantipora in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, died during the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, a senior police officer said.

He was a teacher at a private school and was picked up by security agencies three days ago in connection with a terror case, the officer said.

The civil administration, following a request by the police department, has ordered a magisterial inquiry under Section 176 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) to ascertain the cause and circumstances leading to Pandit's death, the officer said.

The CrPC section pertains to inquiry by a magistrate into cause of death, including when any person dies while in the custody of police.

A police spokesman said a separate investigation has also been ordered into the incident.

In Awantipora, clashes broke out as soon as of Pandit's death reached, police officials said.

They said angry protestors pelted stones at law enforcing personnel, who fired tear gas shells to bring the situation under control.

The clashes between the protestors and security personnel were going on when reports last came in, the officials said, adding that no casualty has been reported.

The teacher's death in police custody was condemned by several politicians who demanded a time-bound probe into the matter and punishment to the guilty.

"I had hoped custodial deaths were a thing of our dark past. This is an unacceptable development & must be investigated in a transparent, time bound manner.

"Exemplary punishment must be handed out to the killers of this young man," National Conference vice president Omar Abdullah tweeted.

He also hit out at the previous PDP-BJP coalition government in the state and the Centre for the present situation.

"Midnight raids, crackdowns, rampant arrests, custodial murders, denial of democratic right to choose a government. Kashmir continues to suffer the fallout of the disastrous PDP-BJP alliance and from the Modi government's muscular approach to J&K," the NC leader said.

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti also hit out at the Centre saying its "repressive approach" has left young educated men vulnerable.

"Innocent men hauled up from their homes for interrogation return home only in coffins now. GoI's repressive approach leaves young educated men vulnerable who are forced to take up arms. Stop using Kashmir to exhibit your sick chauvinistic nationalism. We have suffered enough," she said.

PDP leader Naeem Akhtar asked Governor Satya Pal Malik's administration to come clean on the incident.

"Disturbing reports of custodial death of youth from Awantipora in Srinagar's Cargo Camp. As per media he was picked up by NIA few days ago & was lodged in CARGO camp of (SOG). @jandkgovernor administration should come clean on this," Akhtar, a former minister, tweeted.

People's Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone also condemned the custodial death.

"Condemn in strongest terms the death in police custody in Srinagar. This is what the sanctity of human life has been reduced to in Kashmir. My thoughts are with the family of the deceased," he said.

CPI(M) leader M Y Tarigami, former PDP leader Altaf Bukhari and ex-IAS officer Shah Faesal have also condemned the custodial death of the teacher.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tuesday directed Fortis Healthcare Ltd (FHL) and Fortis Hospitals Ltd (FHsL) to continue efforts to recover more than Rs 403 crore from Shivinder Mohan Singh and Malvinder Mohan Singh as well as seven other entities.

The latest ruling confirms the watchdog's interim order where it had found that Singh brothers along with seven entities diverted Rs 403 crore from FHL, for the ultimate benefit of parent company -- RHC Holding Pvt Ltd -- and group company Religare Finvest Ltd.

Singh brothers, erstwhile promoters of FHL, have also been asked not to associate themselves with the affairs of FHL and FHsL in any manner.

RHC Holding, Shivi Holdings Pvt Ltd, Malav Holdings Pvt Ltd, Religare Finvest, Best Healthcare Pvt Ltd, Fern Healthcare and Modland Wears Pvt Ltd are the seven entities.

According to the regulator, the entities have failed to effectively rebut the prima facie findings and the allegations made against them in the interim order.

The detailed investigation in the matter is still in progress which is supposed to reveal all the layers of the alleged fraud as well as expose the specific role of each entity, it noted.

Pending investigation, Singh brothers and the six entities have also been directed not to dispose of any of their assets or divert any funds without Sebi's prior permission.

For Religare Finvest, the regulator said the firm should not dispose of or alienate any of its assets or divert any funds except for complying with corrective action plan as stipulated by the
Seven hardcore ULFA(I) militants surrendered in Tinsukia district following a joint operation by a team of Assam Police and the Indian Army, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The militants joined the mainstream on Monday, while a huge cache of arms and ammunition were also recovered from them during the operation, Col S Karki, Commanding Officer of 21 Para Special Forces of the Army, told reporters here.

"The surrender was possible because of our operation on March 7 that was based on specific intelligence," he said.

Karki, however, declined to share the location of the exercise and said that 15-20 columns were engaged.

"We got information that the ULFA cadres were hiding at a place. We persuaded them and recovered the arms. Ultimately, they surrendered," the Army official said.

Karki said the security personnel recovered three AK-81 rifles, two HK-33 rifles and one AK-56 rifle and 17 magazines.

Besides, 617 rounds of ammunition and one hand grenade were also seized from the militants, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Joke in Russia:

4 hours ago somewhere in America

Dad said: after watching the nightly news: Damn Iran again and those illegal nukes, give them sanctions till they all die

Little Jimmy said: to dad as he looked up from his homework: Know who else has an illegal nuclear weapons program? Israel! Why no sanctions there?

(Amazon Alexa went beep beep)

Then later: Knock Knock:

Sir, as they flash their badges: You need to have your son withdraw the question, and both of say youre sorry, or the US Congress will pass a resolution condemning you to hell itself. Sanctions will be imposed upon you and your family

We simply cannot ask such questions about Israel in the USA

Oh, I guess you have to be in Russia to understand.sorry! 

WtR
Shivpal Yadav's Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) Tuesday announced its alliance with Peace Party and a faction of Apna Dal for the Lok Sabha polls.

"We have entered into an alliance with Peace Party. We were ready for an alliance with secular parties to defeat the BJP but some parties gave priority to their personal interests," Shivpal told reporters a press conference here.

"The BJP government in the state is the worst ever which cheated farmers, youths, minorities and backwards," he added.

"It's unfortunate that due to self interest of SP, BSP and Congress an alliance could not be formed against BJP. These parties have weakened the fight (against the BJP) and are doing instead of fighting for the common man," he added.

He later announced that Apna Dal-- led by Krishna Patel-- will be supporting his party in the Lok Sabha polls.

Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) had on Saturday sealed an alliance with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh.

As part of the seat-sharing agreement, Apna Dal was allocated two parliamentary constituencies-- Basti and Pilibhit.

Soon after the finalisation of the alliance, Patel's son-in-law Pankaj Niranjan Singh Chandel had joined the Congress in the presence of party president Rahul Gandhi.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had finalised a seat sharing deal with the Apna Dal (Sone Lal), the other faction of the party led by Anupriya Patel, a Minister of State in the Narendra Modi government.

The Anupriya Patel faction will be contesting on two seats.

The Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) is led by its founder and widow of Sone Lal Patel-- a regional leader of Patels, who had died in a car crash in 2009.

The party was later split between his widow and elder daughter.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
South Korean Ambassador Tuesday said India and Korea need to discuss policy aspect of new technologies to develop ethical artificial intelligence.

"India and Korea need to discuss policy aspect....to create ethical AI in near future," Shin Bongkil, Ambassador, Embassy of Republic of Korea to India, said at an Assocham event here.

He said there are four major areas -- digital transformation, future manufacturing, future utilities and healthcare -- for bilateral cooperation.

Bongkil said India is strong in software and Korea in hardware and cooperation among the two countries has potential to lead the fourth industrial revolution.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Renowned Soviet-era film-maker Marlen Khutsiev, one of the country's most influential post-war directors, has died aged 93, the Russian Union of Cinematographers said on Tuesday.

A leading representative of the Soviet New Wave, "he lived a life full of drama and joy," spokeswoman Tatyana Nemchinskaya told AFP.

The director's career spanned more than six decades and he worked into his 90s.

President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences on the passing of the "distinguished" director, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Georgian-born Khutsiev was famous for cult films in the mid 1950s and 1960s that captured the mood in Soviet society during Nikita Khrushchev's Thaw.

His works included "Spring on Zarechnaya Street" (1956) and "I am Twenty", known in the West as "Ilyich's Gate" (1965).

"He created a revolution in the 1960s and became a symbol of our Thaw," prominent filmmaker Pavel Lungin told AFP.

Lungin said "Ilych's Gate", which portrayed the lives of ordinary Soviets and featured filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky in a cameo, was a "manifesto" of the era.

The movie incurred Khrushchev's wrath and was heavily censored. The original director's cut only premieried in 1988, during Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika.

Over his career, Khutsiev earned the admiration of Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard and other film greats.

But at home "he walked a precarious line," said the New York Museum of Modern Art, which presented the first major North American retrospective of his work in 2016.

Russian film critic Andrei Plakhov compared Khutsiev to Michelangelo Antonioni, the celebrated Italian director.

Eldar Shengelaia, the Georgian Soviet-era film director and a friend of Khutsiev, said his works were world cinema classics.

"He left an indelible mark on everyone's life," the 86-year-old told AFP. Khutsiev received numerous international awards and prizes at film festivals such as Venice and Berlin.

He was born on October 4, 1925 in Georgia's Tbilisi, then known as Tiflis, and studied at the Moscow-based Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, Russia's best-known film school.

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A home guard was crushed to death by a speeding truck in Bihar's Sheikhpura district, police said on Tuesday.

Superintendent of Police Daya Shankar said that the deceased has been identified as Suman Paswan (33), a resident of Rajaura village of the district.

The speeding truck hit Paswan at a police check post near Hatiya mor on Monday night when he tried to stop it, the SP said.

The driver managed to escape from the spot along with the truck after the incident.

Paswan died on way to hospital in Patna, the SP added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Low cost carrier SpiceJet on Tuesday said it has become a member of global airlines' grouping IATA.

SpiceJet is the first Indian budget carrier to join the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which has over 290 airlines as members.

"The IATA membership is also significant on account of SpiceJet's plans to rapidly expand its international footprint," the airline said in a statement.

The membership also allows SpiceJet to explore and grow its collaborations with international member airlines of IATA through interlining and code shares, enabling to seamlessly expand the network options for its passengers in future, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sri Lanka announced Tuesday that an overseas joint venture had committed $3.85 billion to a new oil refinery -- the single largest foreign investment in the country's history.

The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka said construction would begin this weekend on the refinery and storage facility jointly financed by Oman's Ministry of Oil and Gas and a Singapore-registered company.

Deputy international trade minister Nalin Bandara said he expected the refinery, which will eventually produce 200,000 barrels a day, to be fully operational within four years.

"This is the biggest single foreign investment (in Sri Lanka's history)," he told reporters in Colombo.

It is more than double the next largest foreign investment -- a $1.4 billion land reclamation project next to Colombo port.

Oman will fund 30 percent of the new oil project while Singapore-based Silver Park International, which is majority owned by a business interest in India, will finance the rest.

It is being constructed near the port of Hambantota, which was leased to a Chinese state-owned enterprise in 2017 for 99 years after Sri Lanka was unable to service a loan from Beijing.

The circumstances surrounding China's acquisition of that port, along one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, generated concern in neighbouring India and beyond over Beijing's expanding presence in the Indian Ocean.

Bandara said new lines of cash pouring into the region showed foreign investors were not deterred by that experience.

"The latest investment shows that companies in other countries too are interested in going to Hambantota," Bandara said.

Sri Lanka attracted a record $2.37 billion last year in foreign direct investment, up 38 percent compared to the previous year, official figures show.

Several major proposals were put on ice late last year as Sri Lanka reeled from a constitutional crisis, with rival factions of government claiming the right to rule the country.

Calm was restored after the Supreme Court ruled President Maithripala Sirisena acted illegally when he sacked his prime minister and parliament, and called snap elections.

Sirisena's opponents blamed the president for unnerving foreign investors at a time Sri Lanka desperately needs to spur its ailing economy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Taiwan and the US will hold talks later this year as part of efforts to counter growing pressure from Beijing to force the island into political unification with mainland China.

The United States recognises China diplomatically, but under President Donald Trump has stepped up 40 years of informal ties with Taiwan.

China and the US are currently enmeshed in a dispute over trade and tariffs.

De facto US ambassador to Taipei Brent Christensen told a conference Tuesday the talks being planned in September in Taipei will include a senior official from Washington.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the dialogue would allow the sides to "grow closer and more direct in their cooperation ... to protect regional freedom and legal order.

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Maharashtra BJP leader Vinod Tawde Tuesday attacked MNS' Raj Thackeray and questioned whether he wanted to become a hero for Pakistan by doubting the February 26 IAF air strike on a terror camp in the neighbouring country.

State Education minister Tawde also hit out at Thackeray for taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"By raising doubts on the impact of the air strike, I wonder whether he (Raj Thackeray) wishes to be a hero of Pakistan," Tawde said.

Taking off from Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' statement that Thackeray was parroting lines given to him by NCP president Sharad Pawar, Tawde quipped, "A parrot is green in colour. Does this green resemble the one on Pakistan's national flag?"



Tawde added that Thackeray's speech here on Tuesday underlined the latter's "connection" with the NCP.

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The Tea Board is expecting better prices in 2019 on the back of strong fundamentals, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The official also said the board would focus on quality and compliance with new Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) norms.

S Soundararajan, Director of Tea Promotion, Tea Board, said that production in 2018 was 1,350 million kg.

"We expect the figure to be similar in 2019. Domestic consumption is also growing at 2.2 per cent year-on-year," he told PTI.

As the fundamentals are good, prices are likely to firm up this year, he said.

"Prices should go up. We had stopped plucking in many states during December to February, which has led to a production shortfall of 25 million kg," Soundararajan said.

This, he said, would likely have a positive impact on the prices.

He, however, said prices did not go up as expected last year.

Regarding e-auction, the official said a professor of IIM-Bangalore has been mandated to conduct a study on it.

"The study is likely to be completed shortly, and recommendations are expected to be submitted in April," he said.

About the increasing proportion of production by bought leaf factories (BLF), Soundararajan said this had created a low-end parallel market of sorts.

In West Bengal, the proportion of production by BLFs was close to 50 per cent and over 60 per cent in Assam, with the all-India average being 46-47 per cent, the official said.

On the proposed tea park near Dhamra Port in Odisha, he said tenders were floated thrice for this purpose.

"Each time, there was a single bidder... The matter has been referred to the commerce ministry," the Tea Board official added.

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The Telangana home minister Tuesday met the family of Ozair Khadir, a Hyderabad resident killed in shootings at two mosques in New Zealand, and offered condolences.

On request of Khadir's family in Hyderabad, Mohammed Mahmood Ali



wrote to Union minister Sushma Swaraj requesting her to make all necessary arrangements to bring the mortal remains of the deceased at the earliest, an official statement said.

Fifty people were killed in the attack during Friday prayers in two mosques in New Zealand and five of them were identified as Indians Sunday by the Indian High Commission there.

The parents of Farhaz Ahsan, another person from Hyderabad who is feared dead in the attack, have already left for New Zealand, the statement said.

The minister also visited the family members of Ahmed Iqbal Jahangir who was seriously injured in the attack.

Ali requested Swaraj to take all measures for providing advanced medical treatment to the injured, it added.

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Three suspected arms smugglers were arrested here Tuesday with two pistols, four magazines and 11 live cartridges, police said.

A special team was constituted after a firing incident that occurred in the city a few days ago. Three arms smugglers were arrested involved in the crime, DCP, Jaipur (East) Rahul Jain said.

The arrested accused were identified as Mohammad Farman (24) of Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh, Vijay Shakya (24) of Morena in Madhya Pradesh and Mohammad Sadiq (22) of Sanganer area here.

The DCP said the accused lived at a rented accommodation in Sanganer police station area and used to do textile printing works.

Further investigation into the involvement of others in arms smuggling is on, he added.

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Citing railway tickets having photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Trinamool Congress Tuesday lodged a complaint against the BJP with the Election Commission over alleged violation of the model code of conduct.

The TMC claimed that photograph of Modi on railway tickets is part of an advertisement by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and it was in violation of the mode code of conduct.

In a letter to the Election Commission, the party said, "We are shocked to notice that even during the currency of the Model Code of Conduct, the railway tickets issued by the Indian Railways contain achievements of the party in power at the Centre (BJP) with regard to Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which is being displayed at the cost of public exchequer and obviously to influence minds of the voters."



The TMC urged the EC for directions to stop printing the railway tickets with such ads and take action against the BJP.

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The back and forth over an AAP-Congress alliance in the national capital continued Tuesday, with the city's ruling party saying it would fight the Lok Sabha polls alone, while the Opposition said it was mulling options for forging a partnership.

AAP's national convenor Gopal Rai told reporters there would be no alliance with the Congress and that his party would contest the polls on the slogan of 'Poorna Rajya Banao Jhadu ka Button Dabao', essentially telling people the national capital will get full statehood if they vote for the AAP.

However, Congress sources said they are in talks with AAP and senior members within the party and trying to convince Delhi Congress unit for an alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party.

AICC general secretary in-charge of Delhi Congress PC Chacko said, "I am in consultation with Congress party leaders in Delhi on the possibilities of forging an alliance with AAP.

"The Congress Working Committee has decided to align with like-minded parties across the country to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections. I hope Delhi Congress leaders also go by this sentiment and decide on an alliance with AAP, but a final decision will be taken by the Congress president very soon," Chacko told PTI.

Chacko's views are at variance with Delhi Congress president Sheila Dikshit, who has made it clear that aligning with AAP will not be in the party's interests.

AAP's Gopal Rai also said his party would kick-start its campaign on March 23 and plans to organise 280 jan sabhas by April 30.

On Monday also, Rai had told PTI there would be no alliance with the Congress. "Enough is enough," he had said, and asserted his party cannot wait a single second for a Congress' proposal.

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Traders burnt Chinese goods across India on Tuesday after China blocked a bid in the UN Security Council to designate Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed's chief Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist", Confederation of All India Traders said.

CAIT also urged the government to put restrictions on trade with China.

Traders "put to fire Chinese goods at more than 1,500 places all over the country, including Delhi," CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said.

In the national capital, the traders' body protested against China by burning Chinese goods at Sadar Bazar.

The government should encourage small industries and give them a special package so that they can compete with Chinese goods, Khandelwal said.

He said the body is launching a national campaign urging traders to boycott purchasing or selling Chinese goods.

The bilateral trade between India and China rose by 18.63 per cent year-on-year to USD 84.44 billion in 2017. The trade deficit with China continued to remain high at USD 51.75 billion during the year.

The bilateral trade hit the historic high notwithstanding bilateral tensions over a host of issues, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Beijing blocking India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Doklam standoff.

For the fourth time, China blocked a bid in the United Nations (UN) Security Council to designate Azhar as a "global terrorist" by putting a technical hold on the proposal last Wednesday, a move India termed as disappointing.

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Traders across the country on Tuesday burnt Chinese goods to protest China's move to use its veto in the UN Security Council against declaration of JeM chief Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist", a statement of the Confederation of All Indian Traders said.

China for the fourth time blocked a bid in the United Nations Security Council last week to designate the Pakistan-based chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed as "global terrorist" by putting a technical hold on the proposal, a move India termed as disappointing.

"Traders are 'chowkidar' (watchman) of Indian economy, thus the trade from China will not flourish here any more," Praveen Khandelwal, CAIT secretary general, said.

Whoever stands against the national security of India, the traders will boycott the goods of that country, he said.

On the call of CAIT, traders across the country gave a strong message to China by burning Chinese goods ahead of Holi festival. In Delhi, the event was held at Sadar Bazar, the hub of Chinese goods, the statement said.

Thousands of traders from all parts of the city participated in the demonstration. They made heaps of Chinese goods and put them on fire, it said.

The demonstrators also held placards, urging people to boycott Chinese goods. They shouted slogans against China and warned the dragon nation to stop helping Pakistan in sponsoring terror activities in India. The traders also said that they would dislodge China from India which is its largest market if it failed to mend its ways, the statement said.

CAIT national president B C Bhartia and Khandelwal said the Indian traders were annoyed with China for waging a back-door war against the interests of India by helping Pakistan.

They demanded the government to levy restrictions on trade with China, it said.

The Chinese goods are cheaper and consumers buy them without caring about the quality. Since our Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are capable enough to produce these goods with good quality and at affordable prices, the government should encourage such industries by giving them incentives so that they can compete with China, the statement added.

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US President Donald Trump has slapped down ambitious proposals being circulated by some Democratic White House candidates to expand the number of justices on the US Supreme Court, dismissing it as election sour grapes.

Trump Tuesday said Democrats were seeking to rebalance the nine-member court or draw it once again to a more liberal lean after the high court shifted to the right with the president managing to place two of his nominees -- Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh -- on the bench.

"So if they can't catch up through the ballot box by winning an election, they want to try doing it in a different way," Trump said at a White House press event with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.

"We would have no interest in that whatsoever, it'll never happen. I guarantee it won't happen for six years," Trump added, referring to his remaining time in office should he win re-election in 2020.

The remarks come as several Democratic 2020 hopefuls said they might seek to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court if they were elected president, as the party looks to reclaim ground in the judiciary gained by Trump's Republican Party.

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President Donald Trump fired off one of his Twitter insults Tuesday to retaliate against a prominent lawyer -- married to one of his top aides -- accusing him of being mentally sick.

"A total loser!" Trump tweeted about George Conway, who has taken to social media and The Washington Post to question Trump's mental state.

The unseemly row is made unique by the fact that Conway's wife is Kellyanne Conway, a fiercely loyal advisor to Trump.

A frequent guest on the television networks, where she promotes Trump's agenda and defends him in multiple controversies, Kellyanne Conway now finds herself also having to bat down questions about her outspoken husband.

Trump's tweet came with a retweet of his election campaign manager Brad Parscale, who belittled George Conway as a jealous failure.

"We all know that @realDonaldTrump turned down Mr. Kellyanne Conway for a job he desperately wanted," Parscale wrote. "Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success." Conway has posted symptoms -- which he says Trump matches -- for "Anti-social and Narcissistic Personality Disorder" and says that Americans should think "seriously" about the president's state.

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President Donald Trump stepped up claims of political bias by Big Tech firms Tuesday after one of his key congressional allies sued Twitter claiming it discriminates against conservatives.

"Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats," Trump tweeted after of a lawsuit filed by



Republican Representative Devin Nunes seeking $250 million in damages from Twitter.

Trump returned to his familiar refrain of bias by Silicon Valley despite strong denials from the industry.

In another tweet, the president pointed to a separate incident in which his social media director Dan Scavino was temporarily blocked on Facebook.

"I will be looking into this!" Trump wrote, adding hashtag #StopTheBias. Facebook said Scavino was briefly blocked as a result of activity detected as spam, not for any political reason, and added that it had apologized to him.

Nunes meanwhile alleged in his lawsuit filed in a Virginia state court that Twitter "shadow bans" conservatives, making their messages less visible.

He also claimed Twitter was negligent for failing to crack down on parody accounts such as "Devin Nunes' Mom" and "Devin Nunes' cow" which accused him of obstructing investigations into the president.

Nunes, the former Republican leader of the House probe into Russian interference in the US election, stepped aside in 2017 after being criticized for compromising the probe in visits to the White House.

Nunes, then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, had sought to turn the investigation away from Russia and toward Trump's allegations that the previous Obama administration had abused its powers by spying on the president and his advisors.

Rancor over Nunes sharing top secret intelligence reports with Trump -- but not members of his own committee -- had driven the committee's probe to a halt. The suit echoes accusations from Trump that major internet platforms discriminate against conservatives, even though he himself has more than 59 million followers on Twitter.

Twitter declined to comment on the lawsuit, but has in the past vigorously denied claims that its platform is politically biased.

Legal analysts have largely maintained that internet platforms such as Twitter are not liable for most content posted by third parties, but the Nunes lawsuit claims Twitter was negligent and failed to enforce its own terms of service.

"Twitter let it happen because Twitter had (and has) a political agenda and motive," the lawsuit said.

The complaint included many of the insulting tweets, including one from the Devin Nunes' Mom account stating: "Are you trying to obstruct a federal investigation again? You come home right this instant or no more Minecraft!" Other tweets accused the lawmaker of having white supremacist friends and distributing "disturbing inflammatory racial propaganda."



Nunes, who represents a district in California, is a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and was accused of undermining the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 president election.

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President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that the United States could impose "a lot tougher" sanctions on Venezuela as he urged the country's military to depose leftist leader Nicolas Maduro.

Meeting Brazil's new right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, an avowed opponent of socialism, Trump declined to predict a time-frame for the fall of Maduro, who has clung to power for nearly two months since the United States and Latin American powers declared him illegitimate.

"We haven't done the toughest sanctions," Trump told a joint conference with Bolsonaro.

"We've done, I would say, right down the middle, but we can go a lot tougher if we need to do that," Trump said.

"What is happening there is a disgrace. This was one of the wealthiest countries in the world and all of a sudden, it is grief-stricken, poverty-stricken -- no food, no water, no air-conditioning, no anything," Trump said.

Trump renewed his call on Venezuelan security forces to desert Maduro, who still enjoys support from the leadership of the military.

"We call on members of the Venezuelan military to end their support for Maduro, who is really nothing more than a Cuban puppet," Trump said. Bolsonaro, an outspoken foe of leftist ideology, said he had spoken to Trump about allowing the US military to position itself in Brazil near the Venezuelan border.

Trump has repeatedly said that "all options" are open on Venezuela, although Latin American and European allies have broadly warned against the use of force.

"Brazil will be more than willing and ready to fulfill this mission and take freedom and democracy to that country," Bolsonaro said.

Despite Trump's threats, the United States has already imposed a wide range of sanctions on Venezuela including the key step of cutting off the regime from revenue of its state oil company -- which counts on the United States as a key market through operator Citgo.

A sweeping embargo on Venezuela -- of the sort imposed for half a century by the United States against communist Cuba -- is seen as unlikely to gain wide support in Latin America, despite frustration with Maduro.

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The UK government on Tuesday expressed relief at the "defusing" of tensions between India and Pakistan since the terrorist attack in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, due to its role of an "honest broker" between the South Asian neighbours.

Mark Field, UK Foreign Office minister in-charge of Asia, told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) that there was a brief moment where the situation had reached the flash point of nearly 20 years ago during the Kargil War.

"After the appalling terrorist attack in Pulwama on February 14, tensions were high. One of the most important things we were able to do was be a sort of honest broker, to be able to try and bring both sides together for connections not just politically but diplomatically and militarily, said Field, on being asked about the UK's role in the conflict during an evidence sessions before the ongoing "Global Britain and India" inquiry being conducted by the FAC.

The February 14 attack by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group left 14 CRPF personnel dead.

"One should not be complacent. There are ongoing tensions, going back many, many decades, but there was a brief moment when the comparison to what happened with the Kargil incident of 20 years ago and a major flash point, there were real concerns," he said.

The minister reiterated the UK government's stand on Kashmir as not for Britain to "intervene, interfere or mediate" as it was ultimately an issue between India and Pakistan, "with the people of Kashmir at the heart".

"It has been very heartening to see a defusing of the tensions, which would have perhaps quite easily have been raised not least because of the imminence of the Indian election, he said.

In the wake of the Pulwama attack, India had conducted airstrikes on alleged Jaish targets in Balakot.

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In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Comes Across Something Unexpected in a Gay Porn Mag

Reader alert: Explicit gay sex

My friend hands me the open magazine.

Steve, you have got to see this.

I've never much been one for written erotica, but when I see the title of the story, my jaw drops.

The Cult of the Horned God.

So: our hero, a studly young anthropologist fresh out of grad school, has gone to rural France to study contemporary survivals of the Cult of the Horned God.

He's been staying in a farmhouse owned by two brothers: one blonde and one dark. Don't worry, you'll find something, they keep telling him, but the entire summer has gone by and he has turned up absolutely nothing. Watching the brothers swim naked at the beach, he can't decide which one is hotter, but really, what does it matter? he thinks: Just another disappointed hope.

On his last night in France, the brothers say: Hey, it's your last night: come with us. We have something we want to show you.

They take him to a cave. (We would have to call it "Les Deux Freres," I suppose.) When he sees the paintings on the walls, our hero realizes that this is a major discovery, heretofore unknown to the scholarly world. As they go further in, he becomes increasingly excited.

Finally they arrive at the cave's deepest chamber. There three surprises await him.

Surprise the First: a huge, and beautifully rendered, painting of the Antlered Himself.

Surprise the Second: the cavern is filled with hot, naked young guys that he recognizes from the village.

Surprise the Third: he has stumbled onto a Men's Cult of the Horned God that has been going on continuously since the Stone Age.

When at home, do as the homos do. Our hero and his hosts strip off and join the others.

One of the brothersI can't remember which one, the dark or the lightdons the antlers, and the ritual begins.

The Horned stands, fully erect, before His painted likeness. One by one, the men kneel before Him and take His thick, meaty cock in their mouths: fealty.

(Cocks in gay porn are pretty much always "thick" and "meaty." Call it a literary formula.)

Finally, it's our hero's turn. He approaches, gives the god the blow-job of His life, andunlike any of the other menmanages to bring Him to an explosive climax with the aid of some, ah, postillionage, to use the term of art.

Good old gay American know-how.

You came to study the Cult of the Horned God, the brothers tell him afterward, and now you've found it. Welcome to the Club.

The End.

No, I can't remember which magazine it was. (Blue Boy, maybe?) But I swear to you, I am not making this up.

By the Horns I swear it.
The UN said Tuesday it was mobilising aid for some 600,000 people hit by Tropical Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, warning the world did not yet appreciate the scale of the "massive disaster."



Four days after Idai made landfall, the UN's World Food Programme said it had already dispatched more than five tonnes of emergency provisions to the affected areas.

"WFP aims to support 500,000 to 600,000 people in the coming weeks," spokesman Herve Verhoosel told reporters in Geneva.

"I don't think that the world (has) realised yet the scale of the problem," he added.

While Mozambique's government has estimated that 600,000 people have been impacted, WFP's analysis of satellite imagery indicated that up to 1.7 million people in the country were in Idai's "path."



But, Verhoosel stressed, not all of those necessarily need emergency support.

A spokesman for the UN's emergency response office (OCHA), Jens Laerke, described Ida as "a massive disaster." More than a thousand people are feared to have died in Mozambique alone while scores have been killed and more than 200 are missing in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

Rescue workers have been racing to locate possible survivors, with many stranded on treetops and roofs.

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Police Tuesday arrested an officer of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for possessing two bottles of foreign liquor during a vehicle checking drive in Sheikhpura district of Bihar, a dry state.

The officer was identified as Sanjiv Kumar, who is posted as assistant manager of FCI in Faizabad district of Uttra Pradesh, Superintendent of Police Daya Shankar said.

The liquor was found inside the car of Kumar, who is originally from Nalanda district of Bihar, near Narayanpur village on NH 82 under Barbigha police station limits.

Kumar's car has also been seized, the SP said.

The FCI officer had come to attend a function at a relative's place in Sheikhpura.

An intense vehicle checking drive has been launched in view of the first phase of polling to be held on April 11.

Bihar is dry state since April 2016 and manufacture, distribution, transportation, possession, trade and consumption of liquor are banned in the state.

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The United States is extending a waiver to let energy-hungry Iraq keep buying power from Iran, despite Washington's campaign of sanctions aimed at curbing Tehran, an official said.

The State Department issued a second three-month exemption from Iran sanctions for Iraq, mindful not to destabilise the war-torn country increasingly reliant on Iranian gas and electricity to cope with chronic blackouts that have triggered unrest.

"While this waiver is intended to help Iraq mitigate energy shortages, we continue to discuss our Iran-related sanctions with our partners in Iraq," a State Department official said.

The official said that increasing Iraq's capacities and diversifying imports "will strengthen Iraq's economy and development as well as encourage a united, democratic and prosperous Iraq free from malign Iranian influence."



Despite Washington's repeated warnings, Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein has walked a fine line and maintained warm ties with Iran, with which Iraq's majority Shiite community shares religious affinities.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani paid a visit last week to Iraq, where he highlighted Tehran's support in battling the Islamic State extremist movement and said that the United States was "despised" in the region.

Last year, US President Donald Trump pulled out of an international deal on curbing Iran's nuclear program that was negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama.

Trump instead imposed sweeping sanctions on Iran as he seeks to reduce the regional role of the Shiite clerical state, a foe of US allies Saudi Arabia and Israel.

But the US approach has met strong opposition, with European powers encouraging their companies to stay present in Iran so as to safeguard the denuclearisation accord.

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As the first bodies of the Christchurch mosque shooting victims were returned to grieving families, Muslim volunteers from across New Zealand and Australia descended on the small town to help in the burial process.

Islamic custom dictates that people have to be buried as soon as possible, but the scale and devastation of Friday's massacre -- that saw 50 killed in the usually quiet southern New Zealand city -- has delayed the handover of bodies to next of kin.

Police said Tuesday that just six bodies have been released so far and a total of 12 victims identified. As anguished relatives wait, waves of volunteers have driven or flown in to ease the burden on exhausted locals.

"We are a Muslim community, regardless of where we are situated through the country and the world, there is always going to be a connection with other Muslims when tragedy occurs," Javed Dadabhai, a volunteer from Auckland, told AFP.

"Quite specifically, Christchurch is a small community, so... when you see a loss of 50 people, you really need to come down and help in whichever you can."



While there has been no figures on the number of volunteers who have travelled to Christchurch, large numbers have been walking in and out of a family support centre near the Al Noor Mosque where dozens were killed by a white supremacist.

Sohail Ibrahim was among the volunteers who packed his bags and hopped onto a plane from Sydney when a call came from his mosque for helpers.

"The problem is, many men and many women can't face the body," Ibrahim told AFP of why he felt compelled to lend a helping hand.

Dadabhai said the volunteers were divided into several teams which would help in the washing of bodies -- required under Islamic custom -- and the burials in the cemetery.

Mohammed Bilal, another volunteer from Auckland, said the "coming together" was a good way for Muslims to show they wanted to "live peacefully".

"That's why we are here," he told AFP. "This is a hard time but we have to be strong and faithful and believe that we are going to overcome this.

"People come here to help each other and do something good for our society.

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Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Tuesday regretted that non-BJP ruled states, including West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, have not certified even a single farmer for transfer of the first installment of Rs 2,000 under the PM-KISAN scheme.

In the interim Budget 2019-20, the central government had announced the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme under which Rs 6,000 per year will be given in three instalments to 12 crore small and marginal farmers holding cultivable land up to two hectares.

"Let politics not come in way of farmers' interest. West Bengal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh & Delhi govts. have not certified a single beneficiary for the PM-KISAN payment. Karnataka has certified only 17 farmers," Jaitley said in a tweet.

The government has earmarked Rs 20,000 crore for disbursal among 12 crore farmers under the scheme in the current financial year.

As per a government release, Rs 4,366.41 crore have been transferred under the scheme to about 2.18 crore farmers till March 7.

Under the scheme, Rs 6,000 will be released in three 4-monthly installments of Rs 2,000 over the year to beneficiaries.

The scheme was formally launched at national level by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the February 24, 2019 at Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.

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In the wake of the death of a six-year-old boy, who was undergoing treatment for West Nile fever in Kerala, the Centre on Tuesday reviewed the current situation, preparedness and action taken to deal with the disease in the state's Mallapuram district.

According to Union Health ministry officials, this could be the first fatality due to the vector-borne disease reported from the country.

The Union Health ministry along with officials from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reviewed the state preparedness and action taken to deal with West Nile Fever (WNF) in Mallapuram district on Tuesday, an official said.

A multi-disciplinary central team is already deputed in Mallapuram to investigate various epidemiological aspects of West Nile Virus (WNV) there and also help the district administration in its prevention and management.

The state has been advised to follow the National Vector Borne Disease Control Program (NVBDCP) guidelines of personal protective measures to prevent mosquito bites.

The Ministry has also recommended vector surveillance and control to be carried out in coordination with NVBDCP.

"It has been advised that all cases of JE/AES are to be investigated as per guidelines of JE/AES and also tested for West Nile Virus. Further, the community is to be sensitized through IEC campaigns on use of personal protective measures to prevent mosquito bites as per NVBDCP Guidelines," a senior health ministry official said.

The boy, hailing from Malappuram district, was admitted to the intensive care unit of the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital in neighbouring Kozhikode one week ago after he tested positive for the virus. He died on Monday.

West Nile Fever is a mosquito borne zoonotic disease caused by a flavivirus --WNV -- and is related to viruses that cause Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever and St Louis encephalitis.

"Human infection is most often due to bites from infected mosquitoes. To date, no human-to-human transmission of WNV through casual contact has been documented. Infection with WNV is either asymptomatic (no symptoms) in around 80 per cent of infected people, or can lead to West Nile fever or severe West Nile disease," a health ministry statement said.

Testing for West Nile Virus is available at the National Institute of Virology, Pune, and National Institute of Virology, Allapuzha. Facility for xeno-diagnosis with respect to infection among vectors is available at the Vector Control Research Center (VCRC), Kottayam.

NCDC branch in Kozhikode, in coordination with VCRC, Kottayam, will provide assistance for vector surveillance and xeno-diagnosis in the vector as well as prepare and disseminate a standardised hospital management protocol of AES case management to be followed by all hospitals catering to cases of AES.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With the Congress again mulling a tie up with the AAP in Delhi, Union Minister Vijay Goel Tuesday sought to corner both the parties asking if Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will withdraw charges of corruption against Sheila Dikshit or will the Delhi Congress chief resign from her position.

Goel said in case an alliance is formed between the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, Dikshit should either tender her resignation or accept the serious charges of corruption levelled by Kejriwal against her.

The Union Minister said in 2013, Kejriwal vowed that he will put Sheila Dikshit behind bars within 24 hours of getting elected alleging she is "smeared with colours of corruption" related to commonwealth games, water tankers scam among others.

"It is ironical that Sheila Dikshit herself is the Delhi Pradesh Congress President and under her leadership this unholy alliance is getting formed.

"I wanted to ask whether Kejriwal will withdraw his serious charges of corruption against her or will she resign from her position," Goel said.

Days after having unanimously decided to go it alone in Delhi, the Congress is again mulling options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in the national capital, with NCP leader Sharad Pawar actively involved in getting the two parties together.

Goel said he will light a fire against the "corruption of Congress and AAP" on the eve of Holi on March 19.

Dikshit, has earlier made it clear that aligning with AAP will not be in the party's interests keeping in view the assembly election in the national capital slated later.

However, AICC general secretary in-charge of Delhi Congress, PC Chacko, said: "I am in consultation with Congress party leaders in Delhi on the possibilities of forging an alliance with AAP.

"The Congress Working Committee has decided to align with like-minded parties across the country to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections.

"I hope Delhi Congress leaders also go by this sentiment and decide on an alliance with AAP, but a final decision will be taken by the Congress president very soon," Chacko told PTI.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bharip Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar Tuesday said the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) will not join hands with the BJP and Shiv Sena post polls "in any given situation" and would, instead, sit in the opposition.

The VBA is an alliance between the BBM and Asaduddin Owaisi's All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen.

Ambedkar's remark came against the backdrop of Congress allegations that the VBA fighting Lok Sabha polls separately would benefit the BJP-Shiv Sena combine.

Interacting with a outlet here, Ambedkar said the VBA could join forces with "secular parties" if they agreed to accommodate its agenda post polls.

"We will not go with the Shiv Sena and the BJP after the elections in any given situation. We will rather sit in the opposition," he said.

He said VBA, however, could join the next government if "secular parties" accommodated its agenda.

"We will sit in the opposition if they do not agree to accommodate our agenda," he added.

To a question, Ambedkar attributed the criticism of the VBA by its rivals to the threat it was posing to "dynastic politics".

"Some people are unhappy as their dynastic will end due to the aghadi," he said, without naming any party.

Ambedkar also said the decision on whether he should contest the election from Akola or Solapur is yet to be taken.

"We are still debating it. We are also debating whether I should contest the election or not in the first place (so that could dispense time for campaigning)," he added.

Ambedkar also alleged that the neither the Congress nor the NCP could take on the "RSS-controlled BJP" and the Shiv Sena.

He added the VBA would win a "good number of seats" in the general election.

Speaking during the same event before Ambedkar, Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan had claimed the VBA's decision not to align with the opposition parties will eventually prove beneficial to the NDA.

The Congress and NCP, which are contesting the election together, were wooing the VBA.

The VBA, however, is contesting the polls separately. Maharashtra has 48 Lok Sabha seats.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 32-year-old woman clerk of a school in Thane district of Maharashtra has been booked for allegedly misappropriating students' fee to the tune of nearly Rs 6 lakh, police said on Tuesday.

According to a complaint filed by the private school's management, the accused, a resident of Dombivli town, allegedly deleted receipts from the institution's accounting software of fees collected by her from 61 students between January and December 2018, a police spokesperson said.

Based on the complaint, the police on Monday booked the accused under IPC Sections 408 (criminal breach of trust), 420, (cheating) and 468 (forgery), the official said.

No arrest was made so far, the police said, adding that a probe was underway in the case.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A "hardcore" woman naxal, carrying a reward of Rs 8 lakh on her head, was gunned down Tuesday in an encounter with security forces in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon district, police said.

The deceased ultra, identified as Jamuna alias Sagan Bai, 46, was allegedly involved in killing Likhiram Kavre, a minister in the erstwhile Madhya Pradesh in 1999, Rajnandgaon Superintendent of Police Kamlochan Kashyap told PTI.

Jamuna was working as a secretary of Tanda area committee of Maoists.

The skirmish took place at around 11:30 am in Gatapar police station area, when a team of security personnel from Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh was out on an anti-naxal operation along the inter-state border, the SP said.

The operation was launched Monday evening from the base camp of Malaida in Gatapar area, located around 200 kms away from the state capital, he said.

When the patrolling team was moving through Shaktikasa forest along Tanda river Tuesday, it came under heavy firing from a group of Naxals, the SP said, adding that the security personnel returned the fire.

After a while, naxals escaped towards forest in Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh, he added.

During search, the body of a woman naxal clad in fatigues was found, besides a Carbine rifle, two magazines, Maoist literature, uniforms and a huge stock of naxal-related material, the SP said.

"Jamuna, a native of Balaghat in MP, was a divisional committee member-rank cadre," Kashyap said, adding that a reward of Rs 8 lakh was announced by the Chhattisgarh government for her arrest.

Over 30 naxal-related cases were pending against Jamuna in Rajnandgaon district alone, he added.

Since last few days, police have intensified anti-naxal operations in the forests falls on the tri-junction of Rajnandgaon, Balaghat (Madhya Pradesh) and Gondia (Maharashtra) in view of the nexth month's Lok Sabha polls.

On Monday evening, a CRPF jawan was killed and six others were injured in a Naxal attack in Dantewada district.

Chhattisgarh will vote in three phases on April 11, April 18 and April 23.

Voting in Rajnandgaon, Mahasamund and Kanker seats will be held on April 18.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mar 19, 2019 | By Thomas

Saudi Arabia's Elite for Construction & Development Company has purchased what has been described as the world's largest 3D construction printer from Danish firm Cobod International. The purchase was made as a response to the Kingdom's need to build 1.5 million new houses in the next decade.

The Cobod 3D printer, BOD 2, is able to print buildings up to 12 metres wide, 27 metres long and 9 metres high. And three- storeyed buildings of more than 300 sq m per storey could be made with the printer in one go.

Cobod said that the BOD2 3D printer will be delivered in Saudi Arabia by the end of May, adding that the machine will be the "first of its kind" in the kingdom.

Cobod's developments in the field of concrete printing began in 2015. That resulted in The BOD building, Europes first 3D printed building, in Copenhagen in 2017. In 2018 they launched the BOD2 3D printer, an updated version of the gantry system used to build the BOD office hotel. This system boasts a print speed of one meter per second.

Speaking on the firm's latest news, Henrik Lund-Nielsen, chief executive officer at Cobod International, said: "We are very proud to receive this order from Saudi Arabia, which again confirms that our Bod 2 3D construction printer is second to none.

"Not only is the Bod 2 the fastest 3D construction printer in the world, but the modular approach of the Bod 2 has allowed us to deliver the size that Elite For Construction & Development Co wanted."

Saad Al Shathri, general manager of Elite for Construction & Development Co, said the firm will deliver the output of the 3D printer's "revolutionising technology" across Saudi Arabia.

He added: "[Bod 2] will bring costs significantly down compared to the temporary, imported printers using foreign made materials."

Lund-Nielsen explained that a small private house was 3D printed in Riyadh at the end of 2018. Now, multiple public and private organisations are requesting the use of the 3D construction printing technology in new construction projects, as soon as the technology is available locally on a permanent basis.

Posted in 3D Printer

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Any wrote at 3/20/2019 11:39:43 AM:I think this is incorrect and false information. ETH Zurich posesses RFL (robotic fabrication lab) which is of dimensions 43 by 16 by 8 meters and can be used for a wide variety of applications, including 3d printing. Therefore, the largest printer according to you will not be introduced in 2019, but is already around since 2016.




Chinese smart device maker Xiaomi Tuesday announced its foray into the digital payment segment with launch of MiPay app and expansion of its mobile manufacturing.

"We have introduced our innovative MiPay service for our consumers in India. MiPay serves as the ultimate solution to a variety of consumer payment needs, hence empowering millions of Xiaomi users with access to digital payments. Thus, acting as an equaliser providing a seamless experience across all smartphones," Xiaomi India Chief Operating Officer Muralikrishnan B said here.

He said there are security concerns around data of individuals, hence, the company stores all MiPay data in India.

The company has received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and has partnered ICICI bank for the service.

Xiaomi announced partnership with electronics manufacturing services firm Flex to expand its mobile production in the country.

"We are proud to announce that we'll be officially unveiling a new manufacturing plant in India in collaboration with Flex. We now have 7 smartphone manufacturing plants across 4 campuses in India with the recent one spanning 1 million square feet in Sriperumbudur," Xiaomi India Managing Director Manu Kumar Jain said.

The company also announced partnership with Navitasys India Pvt Ltd, a TDK group subsidiary to manufacture Mi Power banks locally.

The Chinese firm claims that 99 per cent of its mobile phones sold in India are manufactured locally.

Xiaomi officials said the company is also bringing the component ecosystem to India and 65 per cent of the value of the smartphones is sourced locally.

The company also unveiled a 4G smartphone RedmiGo for Rs 4,499 with Rs 2,200 cashback offer from Jio. The handset will be available from March 22 through its own website, Flipkart and Mi Home stores.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Top US and China negotiators are planning new rounds of talks starting next week to end a trade dispute between the two nations, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expect to fly to Beijing the week of March 25 to meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, who will pay a return trip to Washington, D C the following week, the report said, citing Trump administration officials. Talks between China and the United States are in the final stages, with a target date for a deal by the end of April, ...
Qatar Executive (QE), the private jet charter division of Qatar Airways Group, can now fly to Samedan, Switzerland; Chambery, France; and Innsbruck, Austria after receiving new certification.

These destinations have a special designation as they require additional certification  including full flight simulator training  to prepare the flight crew because of the mountainous environment of these destinations.

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Ettore Rodaro, executive vice president of Qatar Executive, said, We are very pleased to announce that Qatar Executive has enhanced its investment in additional crew training for our modern state-of-the-art fleet to serve these unique destinations, offering our highly esteemed VVIP clientele to fly directly into these Top of the World destinations.

Our clients deserve the best service, and along with our strong commitment to safety and quality service Qatar Executive is committed to constantly improving its product offering.

Entering service for the first time in December 2018, the G500 jet is the fastest and most advanced aircraft types in the Qatar Executive fleet. The company currently operates a fleet of 15 private jets, including five Gulfstream G650ERs, two Gulfstream G500s, three Bombardier Challenger 605s, four Global 5000s and one Global XRS.

In 2019, Qatar Executive is set to receive an additional five G500s and one G650ER.
If the buzz is to be believed, hospitality company OYO is readying to welcome yet another marquee investor on board - Airbnb - less than six months after it raised USD 1 billion from SoftBank, Sequoia and other existing investors to enter the unicorn club.

Sources familiar with the matter told news portal The Information that the US-based travel giant is in discussions to invest USD 100 million to USD 200 million in OYO to meet its growth goals in India and China, and amplify its growing focus on the hotel business. In both these markets, among the fastest-growing globally, Airbnb has a relatively small presence. Among the company's more than six million listings globally, reportedly around 5% are in China and less than 1% are in India.

Last month, Airbnb co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Blecharczyk told PTI that "India is an important business opportunity for Aibnb as it has a huge population and a huge number of millennials, young people". He added that business travel is another focus area for the online accommodation platform in India. "Currently, we have about 6,500 companies in India who have signed with Airbnb for business travel. So, there is a lot of traction here," said Blecharczyk.

In fact, Airbnb, which is planning to go public by next year, has been making some aggressive moves lately to expand its lodging offerings beyond home rentals for tourists, for which the company is famous. Its recent investment in hotel booking startup HotelTonight for more than USD 400 million is a case in point. The aim, reportedly, is to tap business travellers, who often prefer to stay in hotels and are willing to spend more on travel.

Also Read: OYO announces Rs 1,400 crore investments, launches new property 'Collection O' targeting millennials

In addition, in December, Airbnb acquired a small French property management startup called Luckey Homes as well as a small stake in The Wing, a startup focused on co-working spaces and social clubs for women. That, again, points to its expanding focus beyond tourists and backpackers.

And that's where OYO fits in neatly, given its presence in over 259 cities in India with over 8,700 buildings (hotels and homes) and more than 173,000 rooms. In total, OYO's footprint spans more than 500 cities across China, Malaysia, Nepal, the UK, UAE, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, and more recently Japan.

Last week, the Gurugram-based startup announced that it will invest Rs 1,400 crore in its India and South Asia businesses over 2019 as a part of efforts to increase infrastructure, strengthen technology and internal capability. OYO also announced the launch of a new brand, Collection O hotels, targeting millennials. This expands its existing portfolio of the budget- to mid-segment hotel chain brands.

Hence, an investment in OYO would enable Airbnb to link up with a company that aims to become the world's largest hotel chain in the near future. "We will have one million rooms inventory into our fold in the near distant future. I think, it should happen in a year and a half," OYO India and South Asia CEO Aditya Ghosh told PTI in January, adding that this would help OYO to become the "world's top player from number three now". OYO, furthermore, is also narrowing its losses as a percentage of realised value (OYO Hotels' sales run rate) year-on-year from 44.5% in 2016-17 to 20.3% in the following year and 10% in 2018-19.

The report added that while OYO currently markets rooms through Airbnb competitors such as Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Agoda, it isn't clear if the proposed terms of Airbnb's investment would ensure exclusive access to OYO inventory through its site. Also, according to the sources, the deal in the works could fall apart due to tax-related complexities for Airbnb in terms of investing in a foreign startup as well as the growing investor interest in OYO.

(With PTI inputs)

Edited by Sushmita Choudhury Agarwal

Also Read: OYO inks deals for 50 hotels in 7 Saudi cities, promises 5,000 jobs by 2020
BJP MP Subramanian Swamy Tuesday said fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi fled India with the complicity of officials in the Finance Ministry.

Swamy also said that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has done everything in its capacity to extradite Nirav Modi. But, he blamed Finance Ministry officials for helping him escape.

"Some of the officials in the Modi government and staff in PMO have been very diligent on this and the earlier delay was due to the Finance Ministry, infact, they got gold biscuits also. Nirav Modi could have never left the country unless the Finance Ministry was complicit...those responsible in the ministry must be prosecuted for this," the BJP MP told Times Now.

Also Read: 'Boycott Chinese Products' trends on Twitter after China blocks bid to declare Masood Azhar global terrorist

Meanwhile, a top court in London, UK has reportedly issued an arrest warrant against Nirav Modi who is accused in Rs 13,500 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case. The orderapparently came in response to a request by the Enforcement Directorate for his extradition to India.

Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are the main accused in the PNB scam and they both left India before the details of the fraud came to light in January 2018.

Also Read: PNB fraud case: Nirav Modi may get arrested in UK, but he will be out on bail just like Vijay Mallya

The diamantaire has been chargesheeted by both ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) where ED has attached his assets worth Rs 1,873.08 crore under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and has also seized assets linked to him and his family worth Rs 489.75 crore.
Congress has released the fifth list of its candidates for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This list includes 22 contenders from Andhra Pradesh, 11 from West Bengal, eight from Telangana, six from Odisha and five from Assam. Candidates for the three remaining seats from Uttar Pradesh have also been declared.

The Congress party has fielded Abhijit Mukherjee, son of former President Pranab Mukherjee, from the Jangipur Lok Sabha consituency in West Bengal.

For more updates on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, follow us on BusinessToday.In live blog:

5:45pm: Communist Party of India (CPI) on Tuesday released list of 7 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal.

Communist Party of India (CPI) announces list of 7 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu, Assam and West Bengal. pic.twitter.com/BSheu5zZxK - ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

5:00pm: Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora met representatives from various social media platforms to discuss issues related to social media content.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora along with Election Commissioners Sushil Chandra & Ashok Lavasa meet representatives from various social media platforms to discuss issues related to social media content, post implementation of Model Code of Conduct. #LokSabhaElections2019 pic.twitter.com/lhebCQb0Or - ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

4:50pm: Newly appointed Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has said that he will pass the floor test tomorrow.

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant: We have 21 MLAs, we will pass the floor test tomorrow. Our coalition partners are with us. #Goa pic.twitter.com/fQBlrfhzkm - ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

03:33 pm: Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi offers prayers at Mirzapur's Vindhyavasini Devi and Dargah of Khwaja Janab Ismail Chisti.

03:13 pm: Modi mocks the idea of mahagathbandhan, but BJP is running coalition governments in many states, said JDS chief HD Devegowda.

02:35 pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with people who have participated in the 'Main Bhi Chowkidaar' initiative from 500 locations in the country, ANI reported.

02:30 pm: We will remove 'Gabbar Singh Tax' and give you GST as soon as we form the government, Rahul Gandhi says in Arunanchal Pradesh.
A director of Prof DD Desai's Associated Engineering Consultant and Analyst has been arrested for submitting 'faulty' audit reports regarding the BMC foot overbridge near CST railway station in Mumbai which collapsed four days ago. Reports suggest that Azad Maidan police arrested Neeraj Kumar Desai from Saki Naka after failing to apprehend him at his Vile Parle residence.

Desai holds a masters degree in engineering and had personally audited the bridge as a professional structural engineer, according to an Indian Express report. The company, Prof DD Desai's Associated Engineering Consultant and Analyst Private Limited, was set up in 2003 and has three directors including Desai. The company was awarded the contract for audit of 39 bridges in Mumbai after a bridge collapse in Andheri.

ALSO READ: Mumbai foot overbridge collapse near CST railway station: Structural audit report deemed FOB 'fit to use' six months ago

The audit report for the bridge near CST railway station had shown it in good condition, prescribing minor repairs. The slab of the bridge, however, collapsed on March 14, leading to six deaths and 31 injuries. The BMC had issued a show cause notice to the audit firm after the bridge collapse.

The Azad Maidan had lodged an FIR under IPC sections 304 (A) (death due to negligence), 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) and 338 (causing grievous hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others). The FIR was changed to replace the IPC section for death due to negligence with Section 304 (II) for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Conviction under Section 304 (II) attracts 10 years of imprisonment, instead of the two years under Section 304 (A).

ALSO READ: Mumbai CST Bridge Collapse: Maharshtra CM Fadnavis sets evening deadline to 'fix responsibility', BMC to decide on dismantling structure

"During our investigation it has been found that the concerned structural auditor was aware about the condition of the foot overbridge, but he neglected the fact," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone I) Abhishek Trimukhe said.
Indian-American politician and industrialist Galla Jayadev came in spotlight in 2014 when he won the Lok Sabha elections from Guntur (Andhra Pradesh) on a Telegu Desam Party (TDP) seat.

The managing director of Amara Raja Group known for its automotive battery brand "Amaron" first grabbed headlines when he made a speech in Lok Sabha in July last year lashing out at the NDA government for not granting special status to Andhra Pradesh and initiated a debate on no-confidence motion.

Galla called the Modi dispensation a "sage of empty promises".

Also Read: 2019 Lok Sabha polls LIVE updates: What have you done in five years, Priyanka Gandhi poses question to Modi govt

The TDP MP has yet again been given the Guntur ticket for the general elections next month for his efforts and voicing his opinions aloud on different issues of public interest in the Parliament.

He had trounced rivals from YSRCP and Congress in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 to enter parliament, and on Tuesday he was once again granted Guntur's charge for the next month's elections.

Jaydev is one of the wealthiest politicians in India with declared assets worth Rs 683 crore in the 2014 general elections.

Also Read: Andhra Pradesh Assembly polls 2019: Chandrababu Naidu's TDP releases first list of 126 candidates

TDP released a list of 25 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections with Jaydev assigned to lead the party's charge in Guntur.

Ashok Gajapathi Raju, former Union Minister for Civil Aviation is given the party ticket to contest from Vizianagaram, while Lok Sabha MP Kesineni Srinivas is going to contest the elections from Vijayawada again.

TDP headed by Chandrababu Naidu broke its alliance with BJP as part of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) last year over differences regarding special status to Andhra Pradesh.

Also Read: Lok Sabha elections 2019: BJP forms alliance with Apna Dal in Uttar Pradesh
A top court in London, UK has issued a warrant to arrest fugitive Indian diamantaire Nirav Modi who is accused in Rs 13,500 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

The order came in response to a request by the Enforcement Directorate for his extradition to India to face charges in the money laundering case, officials said Monday.

They said the investigative agency has been recently informed about the issuance of the warrant by the Westminster Magistrate Court against Modi and he is expected to be put under formal arrest by the London Metropolitan police soon.

Also Read: Fugitive billionaire diamantaire Nirav Modi to be arrested soon, UK court issues warrant

The warrant was issued a few days back and the ED was subsequently informed, they said.

Modi, 48, will be subsequently brought before the court to secure bail and the legal proceedings for his extradition will begin thereafter, they told PTI.

Westminster Magistrates' Court in London has issued an extradition warrant against Modi, making his arrest imminent, according to sources in London involved with the case.

Also Read: UK court issues warrant against Nirav Modi and more news

While the UK court and Scotland Yard said they cannot confirm or deny the warrant until an arrest has been executed and an accused has been formally charged, officials aware of the developments confirmed that a warrant was issued last week with authorities in India being made aware on Monday.

"The reason we do not comment on an arrest until it takes place is because the individual must be charged before anything can be established," a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said.

Now that a warrant has reportedly been issued, Modi can choose to voluntarily surrender or be arrested by Metropolitan Police officers charged with executing the warrant.

Also Read: Wait, what?! Mehul Choksi submits PhD thesis on PM Modi

If Modi gets arrested, he is likely to be produced before a District Judge at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London to be formally charged, following which he is expected to seek bail.

The case will then follow a similar pattern through the UK courts as that of liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who remains on bail since his arrest on an extradition warrant in April 2017.

Mallya's case is in its final stage with UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid ordering his extradition last month.

Also Read: Nirav Modi's case found 'fit for extradition', file moved to London court; may be arrested soon

Also Read: Nirav Modi in UK: What is the 'golden visa' the conman used to enter Britain?
Shares of Reliance Communications rallied 10 per cent in the early day trade after Anil Ambani-led company announced that it had paid Rs 550 crore plus interest to Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson, as per Supreme Court orders.

The share opened 0.40 points up from the previous close of Rs 4, achieving its biggest gain since February 26.

After rising by its daily maximum limit of 10 per cent and hitting upper circuit, RCom today ranked top in the BSE gainer's list and also among the top gainers in BSE 500 index. The stock has had a trend reversal after 9 days of consecutive fall.

As per the filing dated March 18, 2019, Rcom spokesperson quoted, "The requisite payment of Rs. 550 crore and interest thereon to Ericsson has been completed today in compliance of the judgment of the Hon'ble Supreme Court."

The filing on BSE further added quoting Mr. Anil Ambani, Chairman, RCOM, said "My sincere and heartfelt thanks to my respected elder brother, Mukesh, and Nita, for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to our strong family values by extending this timely support. I and my family are grateful we have moved beyond the past, and are deeply grateful and touched with this gesture."

Yesterday, the company also filed to the exchanges that Reliance Communications and Reliance Jio Infocomm are terminating asset sale agreements with mutual consent. RCom had earlier signed agreements to sell spectrum, fibre assets and telecom towers to RJio.

The statement read, "The agreements dated 28th December 2017 and 11th August 2018 entered into between RCOM, RTL, RITL (RCOM Group) and RJIL respectively for sale of certain specified telecom assets have been terminated today by mutual agreement".

The company mentioned multiple reasons for cancellation of the deal including "non-receipt of consents/objections from RCom's over 40 foreign and Indian lenders in relation to the proposed transactions" and "non-receipt of requisite permissions and approvals from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT)". The next date of hearing in this matter is fixed on 8th April 2019.

There has been a definitive volume spurt in the Reliance Communications share today, that is trading at a volume of 254.55 lakh in Bombay Stock Exchange and 853.12 lakh in National Stock Exchange.

The share of Reliance Communications has fallen 80 per cent in one-year term from Rs 23 to Rs 4.

(Edited by Rupa Burman Roy)

Also Read: L&T's hostile takeover bid is 'value destructive' for all shareholders: Mindtree promoters

Also Read: Ericsson case: Mukesh Ambani bails out RCom, Anil Ambani thanks Mukesh and Nita Ambani
Melbourne's ethnic communities radio station 3zzz, joins the nationwide condemnation of the brutal terrorist act on our Muslim brothers and sisters in their places of worship in New Zealand. 3ZZZ expresses its deepest sympathy and solidarity with the relatives and communities of so many directly affected by this heinous crime, carried out by a self-declared white supremacist, a hater of Muslims, multiculturalism and immigration.

3ZZZ which brings together in community broadcasting some 60 ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse communities calls on the nation and its democratic institutions to root out the evils that motivated the Christchurch massacre and to strengthen the pillars of the nations unity, sense of justice and humanity, the irreplaceable principles and practice of multiculturalism.
19 Mar 2019, 1:19 PM

Ericsson case: Mukesh Ambani bails out RCom, Anil Ambani thanks Mukesh and Nita Ambani

Anil Ambani thanked his elder brother and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani for "timely support" as Reliance Communications announced that it has made the payment of Rs 550 crore to Ericsson. RCom had already deposited Rs 118 crore with the Supreme Court, followed up by another Rs 3 crore as penaltyinterest. On Monday, it paid up the balance Rs 458.77 crore to Ericsson.

Fugitive billionaire diamantaire Nirav Modi to be arrested soon, UK court issues warrant

Fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi, accusedof masterminding the Punjab National Bank scam last year, is all set to be arrested by the London authorities, suggested media reports. A provisional arrest warrant against billionaire diamantaire has been issued by the Westminster court, top sources told India Today TV. Sources told that absconding diamond merchant can be arrested any moment now by London police and later will be produced before the Westminster Court. However, strict civilian laws in the United Kingdom might allow him to get bail instantly.

Jet Airways' Naresh Goyal writes to staff, assures of early resolution

With the clouds of uncertainty darkening over the survival of his 25-year-old airline, Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal Monday sought to reassure the 16,000-strong staff of the efforts to restore the "much-needed stability" in its operations at the earliest. Goyal, in a communication to employees Monday evening also said talks with the airline's strategic partner Etihad Airways and SBI-led lenders are going on. The UAE carrier owns 24 per cent in the airline.

Mumbai bridge collapse: Auditor Neeraj Desai arrested by Police

A structural auditor was arrested Monday in connectionwith last week's foot overbridge collapse that left six people dead, police said. Neeraj kumar Desai's firm had reportedly carried out the structural audit of the bridge and declared it safe for use despite some corrosion in the structure, police said. The bridge linking the bustling CSMT train station collapsed Thursday evening leading to the death of six and leaving 31 injured.

Government warns against fake websites for KUSUM scheme registration

The government Monday cautioned against fake websites claiming to be registration portal for Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (KUSUM) scheme and said such websites may be misusing the collected data. The scheme, formulated by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), aims to promote the use of solar energy among the farmers.

Facebook removes 1.5 million videos of the Christchurch attack

Facebook has said it has removed 1.5 million videos of the shooting at the mosques in New Zealand's Christchurch from its platform. A total of 1.5 million videos were being removed by the social media platform, out of which 1.2 million were 'blocked' at upload which means they were not being seen by users.
A week after the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) flagged off declining two-wheeler sales - down 7.97% to 11,25,405 units last month compared to the year-ago period - top manufacturers in the space are reportedly now cutting back their monthly production to handle the piled-up inventory.

Hero MotoCorp, Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) and Royal Enfield have all decided to cut back their monthly production by around 15% from the current month till May, The Financial Express reported, since two-wheeler dealers are in a high stock situation. Companies generally align production to demand because once the inventory with dealers crosses the normal mark, they run short of space to store the products.

In fact, inventory levels have reached 80-90 days of stock against the normal level of 20-30 days. Nikunj Sanghi, director, international affairs at FADA, told the daily that it has been communicated to the manufacturers that with inventories reaching alarming levels, they expect production to be recalibrated over the next few months. The dip in two-wheeler sales is not a temporary phase either. Sales have been sluggish for the past six months. Moreover, between April and February of the current fiscal sales grew by under 7% against 14% in the same period in FY18.

Two-wheeler market leader Hero MotoCorp, which reported 1.96% decline in total sales in February, has seen production dip since December. While output remained flat year-on-year (y-o-y) in December, it dipped 13.54% y-o-y in January. Production in February also reportedly remained flat.

Similarly, HMSI witnessed a decline of 11.66% last month in terms of motorcycle sales while scooter sales plunged 19%. With inventory levels going up to over 60 days, the company had to curtail production in December. Its output dropped 12.64% y-o-y and 14.93% y-o-y in January and February, respectively. It is expected to drop further to 15% in March.

Retail sales of passenger vehicles (PV) aren't faring any better. According to FADA, sales in February declined 8.25% to 2,15,276 units compared with the same period last year, hit by lower offtake by end customers. "After a month of spike in PV sales in January which was largely due to year-end stock clearance getting extended and a few new launches which generated some excitement, the industry is once again witnessing downward trend as February turned out to be one of the slowest months for auto retail during this financial year," FADA president Ashish Harsharaj Kale said earlier this month.

According to SIAM, February witnessed the seventh decline in eight months. "With people postponing discretionary spends like buying cars ahead of the elections, coupled with the current subdued sentiments, it was unlikely that March sales will be high," said SIAM Director General Vishnu Mathur. "So we are more or less looking to end the year at around 3% growth which we have witnessed so far." This is among the slowest growth rates witnessed in the last four years. In the beginning of the fiscal, SIAM had projected 8-10% growth for PV sales but it was revised to around 6% after dip in sales from the third quarter onwards.

In the bargain, companies like Maruti Suzuki India (MSI), Mahindra and Mahindra and Tata Motors have reportedly cut productions. The dealer inventory for PVs is around 50-60 days against 20-35 days. MSI, for instance, is cutting its monthly production by around 20%. A source in the know told the daily that M&M will also correct the production of some models starting this month, barring its newly-launched XUV300, which has seen substantial bookings.

With PTI inputs

Also read: Delhi's e-vehicle push: Draft policy proposes subsidy on electric two wheelers, autos, rickshaws
Civil Aviation minister Suresh Prabhu has called for an emergency meeting to discuss multiple issues that are adversely affecting the sector, including grounding of flights by Jet Airways

Prabhu said in a tweet that he has asked the civil aviation secretary to hold a meeting to discuss the Jet Airways issue, cancellation of flights, delay in refunds and safety concerns.



Directed Secretary, @MoCA_GoI to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, Advance bookings, Cancellation, Refunds and Safety issues, if any. Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA. @jayantsinha Chowkidar Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) March 19, 2019

Earlier today, the Jet Airways Aircraft Maintenance Engineers' Association (JAMEWA) wrote to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) saying that non-payment of salaries had adversely affected its members' psychological condition, which puts the safety of the airline's flight operations at risk.

Jet Airways has nearly 560 engineers to maintain its fleet of over 100 planes. The JAMEWA claims representing around 490 engineers.

"As of now, three months' salary is overdue to us," the association said in an e-mail to the DGCA. "It has been arduous for us to meet our financial requirements, which has resulted in adversely affecting the psychological condition of engineers at work and therefore, safety of public transport aircraft being flown by Jet Airways across India and the world is at risk."

"We request you to kindly intervene and direct Jet Airways to clear our dues and pay us our salaries on time in future to enable us to continue deliver safe aircraft," the JAMEWA said in the letter dated March 19.

Copies of the communication have also been e-mailed to the Prime Minister's Office, Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu and the ministry's secretary.

Jet Airways' engineers, pilots and senior management have not been paid for January and February, besides 87.5 per cent of their December salary is also due.

Its pilots union, National Aviator's Guild (NAG), had last week wrote to the government seeking its intervention in the recovery of dues on account of pending salaries.

The engineers' association said while the senior management was finding a resolution to be in the business, "we who inspect, troubleshoot and certify the public transport aircraft are in tremendous stress due to no-payment of salaries on time, since last seven months".

The Jet Airways' senior management, after a series of meetings with the association, had released a payment schedule last December, according to which the dues were to be cleared by the end of this month, the letter said. "However, the company defaulted on it and our confidence in the company have shaken."

The acute liquidity crisis at the airline has forced the airline to ground its large part of the fleet and subsequent significantly cut down operations as well. At the peak, the airline had over 600 flights per day with a fleet of 123 planes.

Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal had on Monday said that the airline has "consciously" and "pro-actively" decided to curtail its schedule according to the number of aircraft it is currently operating.

The airline has till date not disclosed the number of flights and aircraft it has been operating per day.

With inputs from PTI

Also read: Jet Airways' Naresh Goyal writes to staff, assures early resolution

Also read: Some Jet Airways lessors prepare to take back their planes over unpaid dues: report
Venezuela has suspended oil exports to India, the Azeri energy ministry said in a statement following a meeting with the Venezuelan oil minister and president of state-run oil company PDVSA, Manuel Quevedo.

OPEC and other oil ministers are gathering in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Also Read: GST Council Meet: Rules regarding input tax credit for under-construction projects to be finalised
Xiaomi India, in an attempt to expand its manufacturing footprint in the country, has announced a new manufacturing facility, taking the total count of its manufacturing plants to 7. The Chinese tech company, under the Make in India programme, has planned a 1 million sq ft facility, in partnership with electronics manufacturing company, Flex, housed in Chennai.

Xiaomi's plan to expand manufacturing in India was made public during the launch of its Redmi Go smartphone and Mi-Pay service in the nation. Manu Kumar Jain, Xiaomi India MD, while making the announcement said that while the company now has over 20,000 employees in India, 95 per cent of them are women. Xiaomi's production capacity, with the start of the new facility, has increased from 2 phones per second to 3 phones per second in the country.

Jain added that almost 95 per cent of Xiaomi's phones are made in India with 65 per cent of the phone's value sourced domestically. The company is working towards covering the 5 per cent gap in local production and will soon manufacture nearly 99 per cent of the total phones it sells in India within the country's borders. Manu Kumar Jain also added that the tech company now produces television sets, smartphones, power banks, batteries, and chargers in India, and is aiming to expand into other product categories as well.

Xiaomi stated that it will not only be assembling smartphones at the new production plant but will also manufacture Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBAs), which costs up to 50 per cent of the value of the smartphones. The company now has partnered with three companies - Flex, Foxconn and Hipad - in India. The latest manufacturing unit will be an addition to Xiaomi's existing manufacturing plants in Noida, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

Recently, Xiaomi had invested Rs 3,500 crore in India to expand its Mi Home retail stores and business in the country.

(Edited by Vivek Dubey)

Also Read: Xiaomi Redmi 7 set to launch today: How to watch livestream, expected price, specs and more
Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit plans were in disarray on Tuesday as her government sought to plot a way around a ruling by the speaker of parliament that she must change her twice-defeated divorce deal to put it to a third vote.

After two-and-a-half years of negotiations, Britain's departure from the European Union remains uncertain with options including a long postponement, leaving with May's deal, a disruptive exit without a deal, or even another referendum.

In a move that added to the sense of crisis in London and exasperation in European capitals just days before the March 29 exit date, Speaker John Bercow shocked May's government by ruling it could not put the same Brexit deal to another vote unless it was substantially different.

Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said the ruling meant a vote this week on May's deal was more unlikely but ministers were studying ways out of the impasse and he indicated the government still planned a third vote on May's deal.

"This is a moment of crisis for our country," Barclay said. "The ruling from the speaker has raised the bar and I think that makes it more unlikely the vote will be this week."

May is due at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday at which she will ask for a delay to Brexit as the British government tries to come up with a way to leave the European Union after 46 years of membership.

The bloc's two most powerful members, Germany and France, expressed intense frustration at the chaos in London.

"Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking," Germany's Europe minister, Michael Roth, told reporters in Brussels.

France was blunter, and warned a no-deal exit was possible.

"Grant an extension - what for? Time is not a solution, it's a method," France's EU affairs minister, Nathalie Loiseau, said. "If there is an objective and a strategy, it has to come from London."

The 2016 referendum, in which 17.4 million voters backed leaving and 16.1 million backed staying, showed a deeply divided country and has fuelled soul-searching about everything from secession and immigration to capitalism and modern Britishness.

The crisis has left allies and investors puzzled by a country that was for decades touted as a confident pillar of Western economic and political stability.

Bercow said his ruling, based on a convention dating back to 1604, should not be considered his last word and the government could bring forward a new proposition that was not the same as those already voted upon.

Because May must now spice any deal with additional legal and procedural innovation, Bercow's ruling means she is likely to get just one more chance to put the deal to a vote.

Brexit Secretary Barclay, who last week said Britain should not fear a no-deal exit, indicated the government was looking at different options and that circumstances, such an extension or a shift in support, would indicate a change in context.

"The speaker himself has pointed to possible solutions, he himself has said in earlier rulings we should not be bound by precedent," Barclay said. "You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed."

"The speaker himself has said that where the will of the House is for a certain course of action, then it is important that the will of the House is respected."

Even before Bercow's intervention, May was scrambling to rally support for her deal - which keeps close trading ties with the EU while leaving the bloc's formal structures - after it was defeated by a massive 230 votes in parliament on Jan. 15, and by 149 votes on March 12.

To get her deal through parliament, May must win over at least 75 lawmakers - dozens of rebels in her own Conservative Party, some Labour lawmakers, and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up her minority government.

The biggest issue is the so-called Northern Irish border backstop, an insurance policy aimed at avoiding post-Brexit controls on the United Kingdom's border with EU-member Ireland.

Many Brexiteers and the DUP are concerned the backstop will trap the United Kingdom in the EU's orbit indefinitely, and have sought guarantees it will not.

The Financial Times said May had been told by senior colleagues she will have to set a timetable for her own departure if she is to persuading many rebels to support her deal.

Barclay ruled out May asking Queen Elizabeth to cut short the entire parliamentary session, known as prorogation, saying involving the 92-year-old monarch in Brexit was a bad idea.(Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Latest figures from Irelands Foreign Investment Agency, IDA Ireland have shown that 70 individual investments related to Brexit, with over 5000 associated jobs, have been approved since the UKs EU referendum in June 2016.

In January 2018, IDA Ireland announced record results with nearly 230,000 people now employed in FDI companies. Dublin remains the most popular choice for financial services firms to relocate post-Brexit according to EYs Brexit Tracker.

To date in Ireland companies that have announced investments connected to Brexit include Barclays, Morgan Stanley, TD Securities, Wasdell, Delphi /Aptiv, Simmons & Simmons, S&P Global, Thomson Reuters, Equilend and Coinbase etc.

The IDA claims increased transaction costs, fears about regulatory divergence and tariffs are amongst the concerns expressed by investors.

Speaking last week, CEO of IDA Ireland, Martin Shanahan said, "These updated figures are another reminder of how our European Union membership and stable pro-enterprise policies are appealing to investors who are looking for certainty. For US companies with ambitions to be global players, Ireland is a natural fit for their international operations."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Irish company Critical Healthcare has signed a deal worth 10m over five years with the leading international private provider of emergency services in Europe. The announcement was made by Minister of State for European Affairs Helen McEntee at a St Patricks Day reception hosted by the Irish Embassy in Copenhagan at the weekend.



Critical Healthcare provides a comprehensive range of medical products and services to the pre-hospital market and ambulance providers in Ireland, the UK and Europe.



Headquartered in Denmark, Falck has operations in 35 countries and its 2,500 ambulances respond to four million emergency calls each year. The company also provides a large number of other prehospital services, including emergency helicopters and rapid response units with paramedics, nurses and doctors.



Critical Healthcare will now be rolling out Medlogistix for Falck across four countries  Demark, the UK, Germany and Spain. Critical Healthcare will become Falcks single managed service provider for medical consumables and will have responsibility to manage some of Falcks key manufacturers and producers.

The deal is estimated to be worth approximately 2 million per year over a period of five years  meaning a total contract value of 10 million. The new contract means that the companys export sales will increase from accounting for 1% of its business three years ago to 60% in two years time.



Commenting on the deal, Managing Director and Co-founder at Critical Healthcare, Dr Anne Cusack said, "We are absolutely thrilled with our collaboration with Falck and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with them. This is a massive commitment by them to entrust this business with us and we are looking forward to being able to repay that trust by delivering a world-class, quality service to Falck across Europe."

She added, "The impact of this collaboration is an important milestone in the companys progression and represents significant growth for us over the coming years. We have 22 directly employed staff in Westmeath, where our business is growing strongly. But with the new Falck deal, and other ongoing work, that number is set to increase further  by around 30 new hires over the next five years."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Melbourne's ethnic communities radio station 3zzz, joins the nationwide condemnation of the brutal terrorist act on our Muslim brothers and sisters in their places of worship in New Zealand... read more
Chinese Dairy Leader Purchases New Zealands Major Milk Supply Co-Operative

By Zhao Runhua and Shen Xinyue / Mar 19, 2019 01:41 PM / Business & Tech

Chinese dairy behemoth Yili announced on Monday that it will buy New Zealands second largest dairy co-operative, Westland, in cash for no more than NZ$246 million ($168.5 million).

A subsidiary of Inner Mongolia-based Yili agreed to pay NZ$3.41 per share.

Under the deal, Yili said it would commit to a 10-year promise in which Westland will buy qualified suppliers milk at their farm gate prices not lower than those of the bigger co-operative, Fonterra. Farm gate prices refer to prices of milk bought directly from farms. The promise comes as Westland admitted it had failed to maintain a "competitive" buying price from suppliers in the last few years.

The purchase is pending approval by both Chinas and New Zealand's governments, as well as Westlands shareholders.

Established in 1937, Westland provides around 4% of New Zealands milk. The company exports dairy products to over 40 countries. Yili said it will leverage Westlands quality milk to support further dairy production and sales in China and overseas.

In 2018, Westland's net profit dropped 62.8% year-on-year to NZ$560,000. In the same year, Yili's net profit attributable to owners of the parent company increased 7.31% year-on-year to 6.44 billion yuan ($959.18 million).

Related: In a Land of Lactose Intolerance, Dairy is Going Down Better Than Ever
March 18, 2019 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada

The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today announced that Canada will co-host the third Ukraine Reform Conference with Ukraine from July 2 to 4, 2019, in Toronto. This conference will bring together foreign ministers from a number of countries, including the European Union, the G7 and NATO to support Ukraine in realizing its ambitious democratic and economic reforms.

Further details about the agenda and participants will be released in due course.

Canadas co-hosting of the Ukraine Reform Conference is part of its ongoing, multifaceted support for Ukraine, including election observers, military training, targeted sanctions against Russia, and various forms of financial assistance.
Robert N. Macombers popular maritime thrillers describe the life and career of a U.S. naval officer, from the Civil War in Florida to the years beyond the Spanish-American War in 1898.The just-released, Honoring The Enemy, published by USNI, is the 14th novel in the Honor Series. It brings readers to the Spanish-American War, covering operations from June to mid-July 1898 and focuses on Florida and eastern Cuba, with the opening scene in Tampa.Honoring The Enemy and Macombers earlier novels are inspired by actual events. This latest installment depicts Army and naval combat in detail Reprinted, by permission, from Robert N. Macomber, Honoring The Enemy: A Captain Peter Wake Novel (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019)U.S. Army V Corps Headquarters, Tampa Bay Hotel, Tampa, Florida 5:45 a.m., Monday, 6 June 1898The Tampa Bay Hotel, Floridas premier tropical resort, is normally closed for the summer, when tourists tended to avoid the entire state.Built in 1892 and owned by railroad and real estate mogul Henry Plant, the hotel made a lot of money in the winter season. In 1898 it also made a lot of money in the summer, for war came to Tampa, and the shiny brass of the U.S. Army moved into the Tampa Bay Hotel.The hotels hot, musty rooms were now full of hobnobbing newspaper reporters, harried Army staff functionaries, serious-faced senior officers, and smiling politicians, along with a few insistent wives who regretted their decision to come to Florida in early summer. As I walked through the deserted public rooms at a quarter of six that June morning, not one of them was in sight. A general atmosphere of easygoing indolence pervaded everything. The place even smelled closed for business.As I crossed the lobby I saw one man calmly noticing everything -- Joseph Herrings. It didnt surprise me that he was there at that hour. He might turn up anywhere, at any time. A reporter for a German-language newspaper in New York, Herrings wrote about the Armys true military readiness and skills in articles that were disturbingly accurate. He cast a knowing smirk toward me before looking down and scratching something in his notepad.My footsteps echoed loudly on the polished floor of the empty hallway leading to the Army staff offices. With every step my anger increased.The hotel was headquarters for an entire Army corps about to embark on a large-scale seaborne invasion of enemy territory -- the first for the U.S. Army since the Mexican-American War half a century earlier. The lives of 17,000 American soldiers -- and more important, my life -- depended on what the various generals inside that hotel decided, if and when they ever got around to it.I strode past the drowsy sentry, a less than impressive volunteer from Illinois, and entered the anteroom of the commanding generals office. I found it silent, too. Only one man was in sight, a smooth-faced lieutenant who seemed startled by my intrusion. He also appeared to have just arrived and was setting a glass of tea down on his desk. The ice shavings in it were an extravagance for which the resort was famous. Savor it now, son, I thought, for there wont be any ice in Cuba.A pair of electric lamps illuminated the mixture of curiosity and pity on the lieutenants face as he stood to greet me. Naval officers are rarely seen inside Army staff offices. But by the way he was studying me, especially the fresh scars on my face, I could tell I was no stranger to him. His manner indicated hed seen me around the hotel while Id been recovering from my wounds, though Id tried to stay at the other end of the huge place. No doubt hed heard the rumors about my ill-fated mission inside Cuba in late April. I could also tell that he probably had heard the rumor about where I was heading next; thus the pity.The lieutenant quickly assumed a neutral expression. Good morning, Captain Wake. Im First Lieutenant Buford of the generals staff. Were honored you have officially joined us this morning, sir. No more than two years out of West Point, I guessed. The shiny new aide-de-camp aiguillette braid on the left shoulder of Bufords immaculate uniform matched his gleaming silver rank insignia; wartime sped up the promotion system in both the Army and the Navy. I wondered if Buford ever visited his academy classmates sweltering in tents not a quarter mile away.Thank you, Lieutenant. I was told to be here at six for the chief of staff. I am a bit early, but it looks like the place hasnt yet opened up for the day. Is he around here somewhere?Buford caught my sarcasm. Oh, were open, sir. The rest of the staff will be arriving any minute. The chief of staff was looking forward to discussing the military situation in Cuba with you this morning, sir, but hes been called away on an important training issue in one of the regimental camps and doesnt know when he can get back. General Shafter will be here in a few minutes, though, and I know he also wanted to see you this morning.He said it effortlessly, a very smooth lie. He followed with a reassuring smile to indicate all was well. I began to dislike First Lieutenant Buford. I knew his type. We had them in the Navy, too. They go far in their career without ever hearing a shot or making a deadly decision.A training issue in one of the camps that requires a senior officer to solve? I knew better. The embarrassing fact was that there had been a drunken riot among some of the volunteer soldiers, barely quelled only a few hours before.Buford gestured to a row of plush-looking red leather chairs near a potted areca palm. Having Army headquarters in a luxury hotel had its benefits.If you could wait here for the general, sir. It wont be long. Coffee, sir?Thank you, Lieutenant, I replied as I settled into a chair and considered his adroit detour around the actual reason for the important training issue.Prostitutes had been found inside the tents of a newly recruited New York infantry regiment camped in the pine woods west of town. When the regiments officers told the women to leave, the drunken soldiers suggested it was the officers who should leave. The confrontation went from insubordinate words to physical threats in seconds. It ended only with the desperate colonels warning that he would bring in another regiment to kill the mutineers.Id heard all about it from a waiter serving me coffee thirty minutes earlier in the hotels kitchen. Hed learned it from an exasperated messenger who was searching for an officer at headquarters to receive the regimental commanders request for help. The waiter thought it all quite funny. I thought it pathetic and wondered what the press would think of it when they arrived for their leisurely breakfast at the dining room in three hours or so. By noon the New York papers would have it via the wires. Then I thought of that smirk on Joseph Herrings face and corrected my estimate. Maybe before noon.The smiling lieutenant brought me a cup of very good Cuban coffee, some of the last brought in from the island before war was declared. He assured me wed soon have much more of the stuff once we kicked those cowardly little spics off the island and took it over once and for all.I merely nodded as I considered what an excellent target Bufords shiny shoulder braid would make for one of the little spics in the Spanish army.Robert N. Macomber has been the recipient of the Patrick D. Smith Literary Award, the American Library Associations W.Y. Boyd Literary Award, a Silver Medal in Popular Fiction from the Florida Book Awards, and a host of other accolades over two decades. He has earned rare experiences like being Distinguished Lecturer at NATO HQs [Belgium], and, for ten years, was invited into the Distinguished Military Author Series, Center for Army Analysis [Ft. Belvoir]. Learn more at http://www.RobertMacomber.com
Upskilling employees through Company Training Committee

The Committee will identify jobs that are likely to be disrupted due to industry transformation and jobs that will be created in new business growth areas; and map out new skills and competencies the employees need to take on new or redesigned jobs. It will also find relevant training to help employees embrace change, leverage technology such as the use of robotics or artificial intelligence and adapt to the new job roles.



This jobs and skills training partnership, a first between FDAWU and Ascott, and in the hospitality industry, echoes the Labour Movements strategy of transforming workers in tandem with industry transformation through the ground up efforts of Company Training Committees.

Ms Julie Cheong, President, FDAWU said: Every employee has a role to play in this transformation journey, to keep learning and constantly reinventing oneself. With the operationalisation of the Employee Training Programme that provides for targeted retraining and upskilling initiatives, employees will be able to apply what they have learned in their existing positions to improve the way work is done or use them to successfully transit into the jobs of the future. This is the only way our employees can continue to develop their capabilities and remain relevant.

Mr Ervin Yeo, Ascotts Regional General Manager for Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia, said: Ascotts training partnership with FDAWU is one of the ways we are proactively upskilling our employees to prepare them for the future economy. We will work with the union to ensure our staff are equipped with relevant skills. Our global hospitality training centre, Ascott Centre for Excellence (ACE) will leverage its trainers international experience, and NTUCs research to develop training programmes for our employees. Ascott employees are also getting on-the-job training as we redesign our work processes and pilot various technologies. We will continue to invest in upgrading our staffs capabilities to ensure that we have a dynamic and digitally savvy workforce to drive Ascotts growth.

Breaking transformation down into actionable parts

The signing of the MOU on the jobs and skills training partnership between FDAWU and Ascott was witnessed by NTUCs Deputy Secretary-General Koh Poh Koon, who later took a tour of Ascott Orchard Singapore, one of Ascotts premier serviced residences. During the tour, Ascott demonstrated the use of self-check in kiosks with facial recognition, which it is piloting at the property. Ascott also showcased its automated workflow management system that automates the scheduling of services such as housekeeping and maintenance, and tracks guests requests, resulting in improved operational efficiencies.

On the jobs and skills training partnership, DSG Koh said: The ground up Company Training Committee approach adopted by FDAWU and Ascott is a good example of how management and union can work together and take the first step towards breaking transformation down into smaller, clearer and actionable parts for both the management and employees. The outcome we want to see is for the company to ride upon the transformation waves, succeed and grow; and for the employees to be better skilled for the future and share in the companys gains. This is making industry transformation real for companies and employees.

In addition to training by ACE, Ascotts Company Training Committee will tap on the extensive network of resources from training partners like NTUC LearningHub, NTUC-initiated Hospitality ABC Network, NTUCs e2i (Employment and Employability) as well as agencies like Singapore Tourism Board (STB), SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG), to create an eco-system that supports the learning and development of employees in Ascott.

FDAWUs collaboration with Ascott is built on Ascotts commitment to learning, where employees are encouraged and given the support to attend at least 40 hours of classroom and/or online classes per employee yearly.

The training partnership follows NTUC and Ascotts earlier efforts towards building a future-ready hospitality workforce. In January 2018, ACE joined the NTUC-initiated Hospitality ABC Network to enhance the skills of hospitality professionals in Singapore. The Network aims to curate accessible and bite-sized training programmes for hospitality professionals to keep pace with the industrys transformation and equip them to take on higher-value added roles.
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
the nubank Finished his first week on the stock exchange already being part of the UAE's most valuable group of...


Joint Company Secretary Appointment

Sydney, Mar 20, 2019 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Hastings Technology Metals Limited ( ASX:HAS ) ("Hastings" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Hidio Jackson as Joint Company Secretary.Mr Jackson has over 20 years' experience in the accounting profession, including as financial controller and company secretary for ASX-listed companies, and is currently the Financial Controller at Hastings. Mr Jackson started his professional career in public practice (Ernst & Young) and has been involved in a diverse range of industries, including over 7 years in mining, most recently at Roy Hill Holdings Pty Ltd.Mr Jackson holds a Graduate Diploma of Applied Corporate Governance, a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Information Systems, and is a Chartered Accountant.About Hastings Technology Metals Ltd

Hastings Technology Metals Ltd (ASX:HAS) (FRA:5AM) is advancing its Yangibana Rare Earths Project in the Upper Gascoyne Region of Western Australia towards production. The proposed beneficiation and hydro metallurgy processing plant will treat rare earths deposits, predominantly monazite, hosting high neodymium and praseodymium contents to produce a mixed rare earths carbonate that will be further refined into individual rare earth oxides at processing plants overseas.

Neodymium and praseodymium are vital components in the manufacture of permanent magnets which is used in a wide and expanding range of advanced and high-tech products including electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, medical applications and others. Hastings aims to become the next significant producer of neodymium and praseodymium outside of China.

Hastings holds 100% interest in the most significant deposits within the overall project, and 70% interest in additional deposits that will be developed at a later date, all held under Mining Leases. Numerous prospects have been identified warranting detailed exploration to further extend the life of the project.

Brockman Project

The Brockman deposit, near Halls Creek in Western Australia, contains JORC Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources, estimated using the guidelines of JORC Code (2012 Edition).

The Company is also progressing a Mining Lease application over the Brockman Rare Earths and Rare Metals Project.

Hastings aims to capitalise on the strong demand for critical rare earths created by the expanding demand for new technology products.
Leading HIV Experts Convene 2019 National HIV Prevention Conference

Officials advance plan to eliminate HIV epidemic in the U.S.

Architects of the proposed 10-year federal initiative to end the U.S. HIV epidemic will open the 2019 National HIV Prevention Conference on Monday, March 18. Opening session speakers include:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert R. Redfield, M.D.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.

Health Resources & Services Administration HIV/AIDS Bureau Associate Administrator, Laura Cheever, M.D.

CDC National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention Director, Jonathan Mermin, M.D.

The plenary session on Tuesday, March 19, will feature opening remarks from:

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex M. Azar II

In support of the conference theme  Getting to No New Infections  the speakers will share their vision and insights on the coordinated federal effort to eliminate HIV in the United States within a decade: Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for Americaexternal icon .

We have the right data, the right tools, and the right leadership to accomplish this goal, but we cannot do it on our own, said Secretary Azar. Ending the HIV epidemic requires all of us to work together, at the federal, tribal, state, local and community levels, and this weeks conference offers an important opportunity to collaborate on the launch of the Presidents initiative.

The federal initiativeexternal icon , first announced during the February 2019 State of the Union address, will provide the hardest hit jurisdictions with the additional technical assistance, technology, and resources required to stop the HIV epidemic in their communities. To begin the effort, the Presidents fiscal year (FY) 2020 budget proposes $291 million for HHS in new investments for the initiative.

I have always believed we must see the possible in public health and seize it, and now a goal that once seemed impossible is within reach. We can put an end to the HIV epidemic in the United States, said Director Redfield. We have developed the most powerful HIV prevention and treatment tools in history. Now is the time to focus on getting these tools in the hands of the people who need them most.

Conference presenters will report on the most recent research and programmatic efforts related to the four pillars of the federal HIV elimination strategy:

Diagnosing HIV as early as possible after infection  New data will be presented on efforts to expand testing among disproportionately affected populations including gay and bisexual men, people who use drugs, and people who identify as transgender. Treating new HIV infections rapidly and ensuring all people are achieving sustained viral suppression  Reports will be shared on state and national progress to date in linking and retaining people diagnosed with HIV in medical care and achieving viral suppression. Protecting people at risk for HIV using proven prevention approaches like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a daily pill to prevent HIV  Analyses explore key trends in PrEP usage in the U.S., including increases in the number of health providers who say they have prescribed PrEP and new data addressing the ability of different groups to stay on PrEP after obtaining a prescription. Responding rapidly to growing HIV clusters to stop new infections  State and local health department officials from across the country will share their experiences and best practices for identifying and investigating clusters of new HIV infections.

The conference will feature nearly 600 scientific and programmatic presentations highlighting dynamic approaches to HIV prevention, and the critical roles that different communities have in achieving the vision of getting to no new HIV infections. Organized by CDC, the National HIV Prevention Conference brings together state, local, and tribal health departments, community based organizations, federal agencies, researchers, clinicians, people with HIV, prevention advocates and others to share the latest advancements, strategies, and accomplishments in HIV prevention.

For more information from CDCs National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, visit www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom or for more information on the 2019 National HIV Prevention conference, visit https://www.cdc.gov/nhpc/index.html
Moderator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are in listen only mode until the question and answer section of todays conference. At that time, you may press star 1 on your phone to ask a question. I would like to inform all parties todays conference is recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Id now like to turn the conference over to Kathy Harben. Thank you, you may begin.

Kathy Harben: Thank you, Dustin. And thank you all for joining us today for the release of a new CDC Vital Signs on the opening day of 2019 national HIV prevention conference. We are joined today by the U.S. Surgeon General, DR. Jerome M. Adams. Also joined by the CDC Director DR. Robert Redfield. The Director of CDCs national center for HIV/aids, viral hepatitis, STDs, and TB prevention, DR. Jonathan Mermin. And also by the director of CDCs division of HIV/aids, and TB prevention, DR. Eugene McCray. I will now turning it over to Surgeon General Adams for opening remarks.

Surgeon General, DR. Jerome M. Adams: Thanks everyone for joining us. And I want to start by saying HIV has cost America too much for too long. Since 1981, 700,000 Americans have lost their lives to HIV. And the sad reality is, if we accept the status quo, over the next decade another 400,000 Americans will become infected with this virus. But Im here today to say that HHS leadership from many divisions decided not to accept the status quo. We came together to develop a bold but completely achievable plan to end the HIV epidemic in America. Why now? Well quite simply because we have the right data, the right tools, and we have the right leadership highlighted by a world renown HIV researcher as head of CDC to end the HIV epidemic in America. For example, anti-retro viral therapy, now on a one bill a day regime enables the vast majority of individuals living with HIV to live a normal life. And we now know that achieving an undetectable viral load, means that its virtually impossible to transmit the infection to a partner. We also have pre-exposure prophylactics one pill a day that can prevent the acquisition of HIV from an untreated partner up to 97%. With these medical tools, if we could identify everyone infected or at risk, we could theoretically end the epidemic today. But the fact is we dont live in a theoretical world so this plan will fill the gap between the theoretical and practical. Secretary Azar was immediately supportive of this plan. He then shared the plan with the president and the president with no hesitation said Im in. And thus in his state of the union adDress, President Trump told the American people, and I quote, in recent years, we have made remarkable progress in the fight against HIV and aids. Scientific breakthroughs have brought a once distant Dream within reach. My budget will ask democrats and republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within ten years. 

Now as you know the president has requested additional $291 million in new funding for fiscal year 2020 to begin this initiative. And we are all hopeful that congress will support the presidents request in this regard. Well also be kick starting the initiative with more than $30 million in fiscal year 19 minority HIV funds money which office of the assistant secretary for health has designated specifically to ensure that we built foundational teams and plans within communities before fiscal year 20 resources become a reality. So here we are. We have a direct, bold, but fully achievable plan to target the hardest hit communities with extra boots on the ground and resources to adDress the HIV epidemic. This will be a phased approach and it will begin immediately. You are going to hear this repeatedly throughout the conversation today and our talking points moving forward, but it is very important that you all hear this. 80% of HIV infections come from about 40% of people with HIV who did not know they have HIV or not in care. Thats why over the next five years, we will target the 48 highest burden counties in the united states, in addition to Washington D.C., San Juan, Puerto Rico, and several additional states, seven states, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina because they have an especially heavy rural HIV burden. At the end of five years, we expect to have reduced new HIV infections in America by 75%. After year five, we will expand activities to include the next highest burdened jurisdictions. By the end of year ten, we fully expect to achieve a 90% overall increase in new HIV infections. At a high level we are going to execute four case strategies. Number one, we are going to diagnose all people with HIV as early as possible after infection. Number two, we are going to treat the infection rapidly and effectively to achieve sustained viral suppression. Number three, well protect people at risk for HIV using proven intervention methods including pre-exposure prophylactic or PrEP, a medication that can prevent HIV infections. Number four, we will respond rapidly to detect and respond to growing HIV clusters and prevent new HIV infections. We dont expect to do this alone.

We will end the HIV epidemic only by working together. This approach will leverage partnerships not only along HHS agencies but many other federal agencies. They will all have a role to play. In a decision, well work with state and local health official, faith based partners and others to establish public private collaborations. The fact is this is going to a whole of society initiative. We have an unprecedented opportunity to end the HIV epidemic in America. And thats why the time to act is now. Id like to turn it over now to DR. Redfield CDC director.

Robert Redfield: thank you, DR. Adams. I have always believed in seeing the possible. And todays Vital Signs report illustrates how a goal that once seemed impossible is now within our reach. I believe that with the right investment, in the right places, using the right strategies, when we return in ten years to the national HIV prevention conference, we will be talking about what we did all together to eliminate new HIV infections in the United States. Not what we could do. You heard about where we want to go. But lets take a step back and look at where we are today. There is approximately 1.1 million people with HIV infection in our country. Today there are about 39,000 new infections each year. Of note, after five years of step wise decline, weve plateaued since 2013. This is because effective prevention and treatment options are not adequately reaching all who need them. The majority of new infections occur among gay and bisexual men with black and Latino gay and bisexual men bearing disproportionate number of those infections, especially of those between the ages of 25 and 34. HIV touches every corner of our country, mainly cities, but rural areas as well. With diagnosis rates currently highest in the south. And Indian country we are seeing significant increases in new HIV infection among gay and bisexual men. CDC is proud to be part of the fight to prevent HIV from the very beginning. And we will continue to play a critical role in this important new initiative. Our efforts will include working closely with other HHS agencies, as well as local, state, tribal and territorial governments to help ensure progress. We will listen to people living with HIV infection, the community members and leaders, and to our public health partners in the most effective jurisdictions that we can reach those greatest need. We will establish teams to eliminate HIV infection in high burden areas, and provide important operational support. These teams may vary based on the communitys needs. Key will be the full participation of the communities themselves, along with local health systems and public health leaders. We will also partner with HRSA and state and local health systems and agencies to increase the capacity to diagnose HIV infection in high burden areas. Well do this by implementing systems to increase routine HIV testing in clinical settings and reach more people with nonclinical testing options. We will support treatment that begins quickly. Ideally, at the time an infection is diagnosed. This includes scaling up support systems to ensure people will get the HIV care they need and stay in care. What more, we will connect HIV negative persons to needed prevention resources. We will work with HRSA and other partners to increase access to and use of PrEP for all people at risk. This includes increasing PrEP availability in community health centers, providing training of health care professionals, and conducting outreach for those at highest risk. In addition, we will work with local communities to ensure additional comprehensive prevention services, such as syringe service programs where appropriate. Finally, we will accelerate the deployment of effective cluster and detection and response systems to quickly identify and respond to concerning clusters of new HIV infection and stop their spread. DR. Adams previously mentioned four key strategies for the HIV elimination initiative. Diagnose. Treat. Protect. And respond. The data we are highlighting today underscores the tremendous impact on two of those strategies. Diagnose and treat. According to todays report 80% of infections in 2016 were from people HIV infection who were unaware of their infection but who were aware and not receiving HIV care. This is a missed opportunity. If we increase access to testing and treatment for HIV infection, we can prevent a lions share of new infections in this country. Once people with HIV infection are diagnosed and taking anti-viral medication as prescribed, they can keep their viral levels in their body at very low levels undetectable. This is what we call viral suppression. Studies show that people with HIV who are virally suppressed not only live longer, healthier lives, but they also have effectively no risk of transmitting the virus to sexual partners. The bottom line is HIV treatment saves lives and prevents new infections. l believe that science that sits on the shelf has no value. Todays Vital Signs data highlights my point. We have all the necessary tools to allow people with HIV to live longer, healthier lives, and to stop new infections. But those tools will not help people. Those tools will not help if peoples HIV infections are not diagnosed or if they are unable to benefit from treatment. We must take advantage of these tools and we must apply them now to eliminate new HIV infection. Please join me and embrace the possible. Together we can end the HIV epidemic once and for all and give rise to a HIV free generation. Now I turn it over to DR. Mermin for a closer look at todays findings.

Jonathan Mermin: Thank you, DR. Redfield. As you heard this Vital Signs highlights the gap that are preventing us from stopping new HIV infections. And emphasizes the impact that HIV prevention resources could have if we expanded and improved HIV testing and treatment. The study itself is based on a mathematical model that Draws upon CDCs HIV surveillance data about new diagnoses, risk behaviors of persons with HIV, along the continuum of care with infection to treatment, and viral suppression. HIV transmission rates were highest among people whose HIV was undiagnosed because they do not know their HIV status. This is followed by people whose HIV infection has been diagnosed but who werent receiving regular HIV care and treatment. On other end of the continuum, 50% of people with HIV are regularly taking HIV treatment and other studies indicate that people who are suppressed effectively have no risk of transmitting HIV as long as they stay virally suppressed. So the key to controlling HIV is helping those with HIV to control the virus. When we look at these new data describing where new infections are occurring, three things become clear. First, need to increase the proportion of people who are aware of their HIV infection. In the analysis, about 40% of new infections came from about 15% of people with HIV whose infections was undiagnosed. Second, its critical to help those with diagnosed HIV infection to get into and stay in care. In this analysis more than 40% of new infections came from people whose HIV was diagnosed but who were not receiving regular HIV care. Each and every person with HIV should be supported in getting the profound help and prevention benefits of treatment. For people with HIV knowing that treatment prevents transmission to sexual partners is seen as a major benefit of taking medicine. And one that could reduce feelings of stigma that could negatively effect the lives of people with HIV. Third, guidelines recommend that clinicians provide HIV treatment unless there is a medical contraindication. And its important that we help them take their medication as prescribed. About 20 percent of new infections came from people with HIV who were receiving care, but who were not virally suppressed, primarily because they are not prescribed treatment or face challenges to adhering to HIV treatment. Time spent working closely with patients who are having trouble paying for, picking up, or taking their daily medications is time well spent. Today we have the tools to end the HIV epidemic, but a tool is only useful if its in someones hand. This data emphasize why its vital to bring testing and treatment to people with HIV. We can empower them to take control of their lives and change the course of this epidemic. We will need to deliver these interventions and other proven tools like PrEP, condoms, and syringe service programs out to the individuals and communities where they are most needed, if we are to end the HIV epidemic in this country. Now Id like to hand the phone over to DR. Eugene McCray director of CDC division of HIV for final remarks.

Eugene McCray: thank you, DR. Mermin. It has now been seven years since the landmark clinical trials showed early HIV treatment can Dramatically reduce the risk of transmission. Since that time, CDC has fundamentally reshaped our HIV prevention strategy. We have been pursuing what we call high impact prevention, which means using our available resources to make the greatest possible impact on HIV in the U.S. We save lives and save money by focusing the right interventions on the right people in the right places. We remain focused on making sure that every person with HIV in America receives a diagnosis, is connected to medical care, and receiving sustained HIV treatment, and that those at risk for HIV are provided with appropriate prevention services. Id like to close with four main things people can do today to help eliminate HIV. First, everyone between the ages of 13 to 64 should get tested for HIV at least once in their lifetime. Those at higher risk should get tested at least annually. Getting tested for HIV is faster and easier than ever before. And when you take the test, you take control. Second, everyone who tests positive for HIV should seek medical care as soon as they find out they have HIV and take advantage of todays treatment options. We want people to know that HIV treatment works. Successful treatment not only improves your health, it also helps protect your partners from infection. Third, support family and friends who have HIV. You will hear this time and time again, stigma is the enemy of public health. We all have a role to play in stopping HIV stigma. When we support people with HIV, we make it easier for them to live healthier lives. Fourth, there are a number of ways people can be empowered to protect themselves and their partners. People at risk for getting or transmitting HIV should consider all prevention tools, such as PrEP, condoms, and other support services that can make it easier to get in care and stay in care. The landscape for people with HIV has shifted Dramatically in recent years. The time is now to put our powerful tools into action. Thank you. And now Ill turn it back over to our moderator.

Kathy Harben: thank you, DR. McCray, and thank you, Dustin, we are now ready for the question-and-answer period.

Moderator: thank you. Well now begin the question-and-answer session. If youd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your phone and record your name clearly. If you need to withDraw your question, please press star 2. Again, after the question please press star 1 for the question to come through. Please stand by. And our first question is from mike. Go ahead your line is open.

Mike Stobbe (Associated Press): Hi. Thank you for taking my question. DR. Redfield mentioned one of the things that would be done during this effort was that he would work with local communities to establish syringe service programs where appropriate. Could you all speak to that a little more? How many more needle exchange syringe service programs do you think are needed? And where are they needed? And i have a second question after that.

Jonathan Mermin: This is Jonathan Mermin. After two decades of decreasing new infections of HIV among people who inject Drugs, we have seen a leveling off over the past few years. And thats also occurred with several clusters and outbreaks of HIV among people who inject Drugs. The largest that occurred was identified was several years ago in Scott County, Indiana, where over 200 people were rapidly infected with HIV. But we have seen other small outbreak clusters since that time. So bringing preventive services and treatment to people who inject Drugs is critical to the success of ending the HIV epidemic in the country. Right now, there are many states and local communities that have expanded syringe service programs in their areas, but it is clear that because we are still getting infections that they havent extended to all the places that need them. And that when they occur, they may not be reaching everyone who lives there who would benefit from accessing syringe service programs. One of the benefits of syringe service programs is not only they prevent transmission of HIV and hepatitis and bacteria that causes heart infections, but they also have been shown to triple the chance that a person will get into substance use treatment and stop using Drugs in the first place.

Mike Stobbe: Okay. But Im sorry my question was, how many do you think need to it be added? And where?

Redfield: So I think this is DR. Redfield, ultimately with the initiative, each of the communities are going to be developing their own independent strategy where they feel these resources need to be applied. And i think so, obviously, we are trying to make sure we provide evidence based data and recommendations that say syringe programs work. But well be working with each of the communities to see how they believe those services need to be augmented in their own communities. So i think there is no direct answer to your question right now, but each community of the 50 jurisdictions and then the seven states will be part of this initial initiative, you know, they are going to do their own critical analysis and plan as to how many new syringe service programs need to be integrated into their plan.

Mike Stobbe: Okay. Thank you. And my second question was, the number DR. Adams mentioned 290 million was part of the proposal. Some researchers said who achieve the goals you have outlined in ten years, it would be more in the order of 8 billion or even more. Do you mind speaking to that question that arose, how did you come up with 291 million? And do you mind speaking to the discrepancy between that amount? Is that amount going to keep rising each year? Or, no, you definitely say, why do you think 291 million is sufficient and not the multiple billions that have been estimated by others?

Redfield: well, i dont think they are mutually exclusive. Clearly the 291 was the amount of resources that selectively the key agencies requested for 2020 budget. This is a multiyear initiative. Its going to go on for, as we said, its a ten year initiative. I think all of us are confident that the resources that are required to accomplish this mission are in the long-term plan. What youve seen and what has been made available publicly is the resources required for the fy20 budget. And i think we are all confident that, as i said, those were the resources we requested, for 2020.

Kathy Harben: next question, please.

Moderator: our next question is from Shraddha Chakracher from Stat News. Go ahead your line is open.

Shraddha Chakracher: thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you could give me some context on todays numbers, 80% knew transmissions from 40%. Is this an increase? Decrease from previous years? Can you speak a little bit about that? Thank you.

Jonathan Mermin: sure. We have done this analysis once before. And what we have seen since then is that there is an increased proportion of people living with HIV that are virally suppressed. Therefore, the infections are coming from the other people, people earlier in the continuum of care. Even though we have increased proportion of people with HIV who know their status as having HIV, there is an increased proportion of infections coming from them because we have been able to move more people down the continuum. And the same thing, you know, affects other parts of that continuum of care. So essentially what we have seen is an increased proportion of people who are getting the treatment that they need, and increased need to expand testing and ensure that the people who have HIV and dont know they have it are both diagnosed and linked to the service that is will prevent them from being sick and not allow them to transmit to others.

Kathy Harben: next question, please.

Moderator: our next question is from Kimberly Leonard from the Washington examiner. Go ahead your line is open.

Kimberly Leonard: yes, i was wondering if you can talk about many so of the reasons when people are given HIV diagnosis why they arent immediately given a prescription at that time. What do we know about that? Thank you.

McCray: so the factors are several. First, the guidelines regarding immediate treatment have really just been sort of established. So usually takes a little time for these guidelines to become adopted and widely implemented. I think the second reason is also, you know, even though the goal is to start people on treatment immediately, sometimes there are both financial and social barriers that make it challenging to get people to get access to the Drugs immediately. So communities are having to work to identify solutions so that they have Drugs that are readily available and people come in get on treatment immediately. So its going to take a little bit but we are hoping with this initiative we will work with communities to really develop a number of options that would be available to individuals who want to get on treatment immediately so that anyone who wants to get on treatment immediately and if they want to get on it, they should be able to get on it. But many of the challenges, as i mentioned earlier, are financial and social.

Kimberly Leonard: And who is speaking, please?

McCray: Im sorry, Im DR. McCray.

Kimberly Leonard: Thank you, DR. McCray.

Kathy Harben: Next question, please.

Moderator: our next question is from Donald McNeill from New York Times. Go ahead your line is open.

Donald McNeill: Thank you. Id like to take up the question of cost again which was touched on. Every HIV specialist I talk to says this is the way to fight the epidemic. This is the right plan. Everybody on test and treat. Everybody on PrEP. What you are talking about a million people who need to be put on treatment and a million people who need to be put on PrEP. And $291 million doesnt begin to tickle the toes of the actual cost of doing that. You know, ART now up to $50,000 a year. And PrEP is now $20,000 a year. Even if you cut those prices in half, or by two thirds, you are still running into the billions of dollars. How does this, unless you plan to do something to cut the price of Drugs down to the generic level, how do you plan to actually get this plan done? How is it going to happen? Rather than just being noble declarations but no follow-through that makes it possible to do it?

Redfield: yeah, Bob Redfield here. My comment would be we are going to get this plan done.

Donald McNeill: How?

Redfield: Those of us that spent the last six, seven months putting it together, many of which you know, are very cognizant of the issues that you just raised. What you have in the public domain is FY 2020 request of the augment current budgets that all our agencies currently have. And i can just say that is a multi-year ten year initiative. It has been planned by individuals who know all the issues you just raised. And Im confident that as the funding requirements are in the public domain over the next years ahead, youll see that there is a realistic strategy as the assistant secretary for health affairs has said, as ive said, this will accomplish this mission. Its not at present time for us to release all the details that you are asking for, but i can only say that we understand this. We are building this on, you know, obviously significant structure for HIV programs that we have in this country. But that said, there is still going to be significant requirements, as you highlighted, but again.

Donald McNeill: Forgive me, why is it me highlighting them? It should be that you leaders should be confronting the cost question along with medical question.

Redfield: Your supposition is we havent highlighted them.

Donald McNeill: But I dont hear it publicly in these discussions.

Redfield: Its not in the public domain right now but Im telling you we got the 291 we asked for this year. We have ten-year plan that we are confident well have the resources to meet the mission.

Kathy Harben: okay. Next question, please.

Moderator: Our next question is from Steven Johnson from modern health care magazine. Go ahead, your line is open.

Steven Johnson: Hi. Thank you very much. I was wondering, within your plan, how do you plan to address the issue of the HIV workforce? I dont see anything in terms of how any plans towards scaling up the health care workforce to meet the demands that are going to be needed.

Redfield: Well, thats a critical question. And, again, what  this current initiative which i think we tried to say, its not a top down Driven initiative. The current initiative is to highlight these 50 jurisdictions in these seven states. And for those jurisdictions to then be able to articulate exactly where the gaps are. Clearly creating this HIV workforce is going to be fundamental. Both at the community level to get effective engagement of some of the hard to reach communities, whether its transgender persons, or different communities or iv Drug users, as well as the human clinical workforce that well need to do this. Rather than be prescriptive and say this is the way the department of human services says every community needs to augment their HIV workforce, what weve said is fundamental to this is the creation of a HIV workforce that will be defined and developed by the individual communities. But, again, you are exactly right, that there needs to it be a workforce developed. We feel, though, unlike historical plans, thats sort of put down through the system public health, fundamental to this workforce it needs to be something that is developed by the community before the community and in the community. The biggest gap for us right now is to get the community engaged. We are not going after the easy individuals to engage in care. People who have not engaged in care as of 2019, 2020 are definitely the harder to reach individuals. And so that community workforce, i cant underscore how important that is going to be, a large part of it is going to be no traditional public health workforce, its going to be community workforce. But we are very cognizant of it. I think youll see each community begin to develop it on their terms. Our role is to help support that in terms of finances. We also have the capacity to augment this with public health individuals, if the local community wants augmentation.

Kathy Harben: Next, question, please.

Moderator: Our next question is from Ivan Couronne from AFP. Go ahead, your line is open.

Ivan Couronne: Thank you. Do you have more precise data on who takes PrEP today? How many people? And where? And what is your goal for PrEP extension in the next five years, for instance?

McCray: Yeah, we have some data we clearly know from the data that we have that PrEP uptake is not nearly what we want it to be. We estimate there is approximately 1.1 million people potentially eligible for PrEP in the U.S. majority of those men who have sex with men. And we know just 10% of those people that need PrEP are actually getting it. But there is some encouraging news, and that is a study was recently reported at the conference on viruses that looked at men who have sex with men in 20 cities and looked at PrEP awareness and PrEP uptake. And what we saw in that study was significant increase in PrEP uptake. And major increase in PrEP awareness. But the challenge when we look at the data more closely is that when you look at PrEP uptake primarily among white men who have sex with men. And we still see PrEP uptake lagging in Hispanic, Latino, and MSM and black MSM. So we still have a ways to go. We said lots of people need it. We have encouraging news and information that uptake is increasing. But we have a long, long way to go.

Ivan Couronne: Do you have a specific goal for this?

McCray: We want to get PrEP uptake up to 50% for eligible individuals.

Ivan Couronne: Thank you.

Kathy Harben: Next question.

Moderator: Our next question is from Leonard Bernstein from Washington Post. Go ahead your line is open.

Leonard Bernstein: Hi, this is for anyone. Whats the major barrier to getting a diagnosis? Do you put it more on folks who dont get health care, in general, or are docs not asking the right questions of the right people? That would seem a simple blood test. And if there are so many people not getting it, sort of interested in why that is.

Jonathan Mermin: Well, two aspects to approaching HIV testing. One is making it easy. You know, it should be as simple as getting a cholesterol check but often its not. CDC has recommended that all Americans get a HIV test at least once in their lifetime since 2006. And the way to do that is have it routinely conducted in the clinical setting. And yet a lot of people, in fact, about 80% of people newly diagnosed with HIV have said they went to the health care system sometime in the past year or two, but were not actually tested for HIV. So thats a gap in our system. The other is people who are at higher risk for HIV where we recommend they get tested at least once a year, sometimes more frequently. And for those its empowering people to make getting the HIV test easy. Some of it is going to clinics and having their physician know that they should be getting the test at a routine time. And the other is making the tests themselves both better, more accurate, and also more easily available. And cdc just completed a study and presented at the conference that DR. McCray mentioned where we actually mailed people HIV tests over the internet and found very high accurate testing in their home and that they actually not only did they use the tests over the following year, but also shared those tests and reported that a fairly large number of their friends and partners also got tested. And in the end, more people were diagnosed with HIV because we empowered people with the ability to test themselves.

Redfield: so there really are the two things that DR. Mermin said. Unfortunately in the clinical setting there has been a, if you will, diagnostic complacency. And as illustrated by the number of individuals that have actually seen physicians or nurse practitioners or health establishments in the year prior to their diagnosis. As you mention, 70 or 80%. The other that he illustrates which is so important is to be open for innovation for diagnostics be done in what we would call nontraditional clinical settings. If we continue to do everything that weve always done, and expect different results, then i think well get what weve always gotten. So i do think those are the two is looking at nontraditional, nonclinical settings to facilitate diagnostics. And to really adDress now once again in the medical community that there is an important public health role that they play in helping us establish an early diagnosis for HIV for all individuals that are HIV infected, not just for their own health, but, obviously, to allow them to become virally suppressed so they are no longer giving it to others. It is shocking in 2018, 2019, 2020, we still have, 15% of individuals living with HIV infection in our nation are undiagnosed.

>> thank you.

Kathy Harben: Next question, please.

Moderator: We show no further questions at this time.

Kathy Harben: okay. All right. Thank you everyone for joining us. Many thanks to the surgeon general, DR. Redfield, DR. Mermin, and DR. Mccray. If you have follow up questions or other questions, you can call us at 404-639-3286. Or email us at, media @cdc.gov. Thanks very much. Thats the end of this call.

Moderator: that concludes the conference. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.
Exports of cement from Pakistan continue to swell in 8MFY19

19 March 2019

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) data shows that the country's cement export value and volume rose during first eight months of the current FY18-19, despite dwindling exports of cement to Afghanistan and India.



Pakistan's cement industry received foreign exchange revenues of US$205.86m by exporting 4.83Mt of cement/clinker during the eight months of July 2018-February 2019, compared to US$149.71m at 2.98Mt in the same period last year, according to the PBS. This translates a YoY growth of 37.5 per cent in terms of value in dollar and 61.9 per cent in terms of volume, respectively.



In terms of Pakistani rupees, the exports advanced 69.3 per cent YoY during this period to PKR27.04bn (US$193m). However, the value in US dollars fell from US$50.18/t to US$42.61/t in the reporting period.



In the month of February 2019 alone, the country's cement industry earned foreign exchange revenues of US$21.51m by exporting 504,361t compared to US$27.34m at 655,317t in the previous month and US$13.24m from 265,199t during February 2018. This shows a MoM decrease of 50.2 per cent and 42.6 per cent in terms of value and volume but a YoY increase of 62.5 per cent and 90.2 per cent in terms value and quantity, respectively.



All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA) is yet to update its export data, but it is generally believed that exports of cement to Afghanistan and India remained contracted during this period. However, seaborne exports have increased during this period.



Export to Afghanistan/India

Local media sources say that exports have been shifting from Afghanistan with Pakistani producers shipping to other countries. In addition, there is also a shift from cement to clinker as Pakistan gains the upper hand in terms of competition between clinker-exporting countries. The growth in exports is being reported with each passing month. Experts points out that Pakistani cement in Afghanistan is no longer finding market access as much as it used to. Until 2006 Afghanistan was Pakistan's only cement export market. While exports to other markets became a reality, the share of Afghanistan in Pakistan's total cement exports remained high. At their peak, exports to Afghanistan were 55 per cent of all cement exports in 2012. This share started moving south as other African and Asian markets opened up, and moreover, Afghanistan opened doors to cement imported by other countries, including Iran.



The other interesting market is India, which has never exactly granted game-changing market access to Pakistani cement in the first place and is itself a major cement manufacturer. Even so, Pakistan has been selling over 0.5Mt of cement since 2008 which climbed to 1.2Mt in 2017 and 2018. This cement was going mainly to markets like Amritsar or Mumbai, where Pakistani cement is 10 per cent cheaper. However, it is unlikely that after the recent political pressures, which ultimately impact economic relations, Pakistani cement will continue to find a market in India. Even if cement can reach some markets through the border, the 200 per cent duty on Pakistani goods will make them entirely unviable.

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Holcim Azerbaijan celebrates 70-year history

19 March 2019

Holcim Garadagh cement plant (LafargeHolcim group) has held a jubilee event to mark its 70-year history in Azerbaijan.



Holcim Azerbaijan welcomed guests and gave speeches about the company's recently implemented works, its policy, values and future plans.



"Holcim Azerbaijan which has been pioneering lots of novelties in the course of all these 70 years, will keep its contribution to the production of high-quality products for projects that will have a positive impact on the country's economy. Lets build together the foundation of tomorrow!" said the CEO of Holcim Azerbaijan, Frederic Guimbal, at the jubilee event.



Recently the company has been trailing the use of oil sludge and tyre burning and reported in January that analysis of the emissions were below accepted norms.

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When civilization treads carefully around a 130 million years old rainforest, building a vibrant and industrious dwelling, what you get is a country that is a mish-mash of splendid pre-historic landscape alongside modern day advancement.

The official tourism slogan of Malaysia  Truly Asia can not be more true, since the country has a central location in South-East Asia and is a melting pot of influences from all over the region. The cuisine, the intermingling of raw nature with the natives zest for progress, the cultural diversity and the landmarks of eras past; there is something to satisfy your travel aspirations, whatever they maybe.

The Tourist

A trip to the worlds tallest twin tower is a must when youre in Kuala Lumpur. An evening at the sky bridge will give you stunning views of the city as it steadily drowns in darkness only to be overtaken by dazzlingnight lights! The gastronomic delights you will encounter at Jalan Alor (popular food street) are about as tempting as they are multi-cultured and diverse. And there is no way you can go back home without stuffing your bags, because Malaysia is a shoppers paradise. There are10 enormous shopping malls in KL alone with a happening Chinatown where you can find many big-brand replicas at quarter the price.

Alternatively, you could spend a couple of days at Genting Highlands away from the hustle and bustle. An hours drive from KL, you can get to the resort at the top of Mount Ulu Kali via cable car where an experience of ultimate luxury awaits.

The Adrenaline Junkie

Should your visit coincide with the dry season between March to August, a hike up to see the sunrise at Mt Kinabalu will be worth the aching muscles after. Or if youre into spelunking, how about a stroll through what is claimed to be the largest cave in the world at Gunung Mulu National Park, another UNESCO natural heritage site besides Kinabalu Park.

If all else fails, head to Langkawi and take your pick from a thrilling Sky-dive or a tranquil but breathtaking Zip-line adventure over millions of years old forests.

The History Aficionado

Malaysia has well-preserved relics of days gone by. From its colonial past to the multitude of cultures subsisting within, you will have so much to discover with not enough time. Essential to the itinerary is George and Melaka Town (UNESCO cultural heritage site) for their Portuguese, Dutch and British influence. And the local blend of murals from home artists and exhibits of Malay culture are the cherry on top!

Selangor is another hot-spot where you get to witness the grandeur of the Batu Caves, a Hindu temple with a larger than life statue at the entrance, alongside monkey infested stairs that lead to the entrance of the limestone caves.

The Nature Buff

To really center yourself and become one with nature, wade through the canopy walkway at Taman Negara National Park where the dense foliage lets in a scant few sunbeams. However, that doesnt detract from the sight of luscious greenery and picturesque scenery.

Or maybe the tea enthusiast in you urges you in another direction. In that case, immerse yourself in the serene hills of Cameron where Boh tea is the poison of choice. Along with smooth tea plantations for miles, you can take in waterfalls and mountain peaks as you enjoy your tea, fresh from the farms!

The beauty continues under the sea and you can dive down in PulauPerhentian to catch exotic aquatic life including giant turtles, clownfish and some gorgeous coral reef at the bottom of it all.
Thomas Jefferson believed: The government closest to the people serves the people best. We could not agree more. In Tennessee, our state agencies have a core function to serve the citizens interest, and protect our taxpayers to the benefit of the state. To ensure our school districts have aligned standards and instructional practices, we must have greater transparency in testing. Recently, Senate Bill 753/House Bill 1246 was introduced to address this critical issue.

This legislation, which we call the Testing Transparency Act, is common sense and is supported by both the Professional Educators of Tennessee and the Tennessee School Boards Association. The legislation will require the Tennessee Department of Education to release 50 percent of questions, with correct answers, from the TCAP tests of the 2019-20 school year, 75 percent of questions, with correct answers, from the TCAP tests of the 2020-21 school year, and 100 percent of questions, with correct answers, from the TCAP tests of the 2021-22 school year, to each LEA and public school. This proposed legislation will require these questions to be sent no less than 30 days after completion of TCAP tests.

That sounds simple enough, and it allows the state time to develop an adequate supply of questions. More importantly, it creates transparency in the system, and restores trust to the process. This importance is critical, if stakeholders are to have any faith in our testing system. By releasing the test questions LEAs can:

Have informed discussions about a school or districts curriculum.

Allow educators to explore the links between concepts they teach and ways to measure students' understanding.

Permit districts and educators to design their own assessment according to their needs.

Encourage districts and educators to reflect on the performance of their students in comparison to the performance of students in other schools and districts.

Accurate or not, tests have come to be viewed by the public as indicators of how well schools are educating our children. If this were the sole standard by which we measure success, then we have failed students, parents, and taxpayersand especially our educators. Our state has spent an inordinate amount of time and money to test our students, without much to show for our efforts. It is time that changes, and the state must be willing to embrace this needed transparency.

The fixation by policymakers with increasing test scores, often overlooks the point that many policymakers, stakeholders and the general public do not really understand testing and/or the process. This helps lift the veil of secrecy, fosters needed discussion and helps us better measure what our educators teach.

If you believe in the importance of testing, your support of the Testing Transparency Act helps ensure that our public schools are not judged with the wrong assessment tools. If you do not support the Testing Transparency Act, you will be unable to bolster a case to create a different way of measuring school performance and support continued spending on statewide testing without having a chance to see the results. Senate Bill 753/House Bill 1246 is needed in Tennessee, and we encourage its passage



JC Bowman

Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee
78-year old Samuel Little  the self-proclaimed serial killer who has confessed to 90 homicides and is among the most prolific in US history  takes responsibility for the 1981 murder of a woman found in Dade County. The Hamilton County District Attorney is asking for the publics help identifying the victim through facial reconstruction.





15, 2018, the FBIs Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) contacted the Hamilton County DAs Cold Case Unit Supervisor Mike Mathis with information provided by Texas inmate Samuel Little regarding the homicide of a young black woman in the early 1980s. On Aug.15, 2018, the FBIs Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) contacted the Hamilton County DAs Cold Case Unit Supervisor Mike Mathis with information provided by Texas inmate Samuel Little regarding the homicide of a young black woman in the early 1980s.





A search of Chattanooga and Hamilton County records did not show either a missing person case or an unsolved homicide from that time period matching the description given by Little.





When Supervisor Mathis reached out to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Joe Montgomery immediately recalled the Sept. 28, 1981, discovery of the nude body of an unidentified black female found in a heavily wooded area of northwest Dade County. Months prior to the call from Supervisor Mathis, the GBI had assigned the case to Special Agent Steve Rogers for review.





GBI S/A Rogers and CCU Supervisor Mathis discussed the case details and gave the information to ViCAP. Then they spoke with Texas Ranger James Holland, who is assigned to the Little investigation. Holland passed along additional information from Littles confession which made it clear Little was describing the 1981 Dade County cold case.





On Dec. 19, 2018, GBI S/A Rogers and CCU Supervisor Mathis traveled to Decatur, Tx., to interview Samuel Little about this homicide. Little said he met the woman in a nightclub on 9th Street (now MLK Blvd.) in Chattanooga in the early 80s. He described the victim as a light-skinned black female, with a big build, in her early to mid 20s. Little and the woman left the club together and went to a secluded road where Little strangled her. He then rolled her body off an

embankment. In Littles words, the body kept rolling, implying he was on a steep ridge.





Additional information given by Little regarding the initial encounter and ultimate homicide confirm Little is the one responsible for killing the unidentified woman found dead in Dade County, in 1981.





Due to overlapping jurisdictions, this is an ongoing joint investigation of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Hamilton County DAs Cold Case Unit.





Investigators believe the victim was from the Chattanooga area, northwest Georgia or northeast Alabama.





Before Littles confession, the GBI had already begun attempts to identify the victim. They decided to utilize a special forensic team to create a facial reconstruction based on the womans skull. This lengthy process involves placing tissue markers at specific points on the skull so that once clay is added the result is a reconstruction that looks as close to the victim as possible.
Mission Aviation Fellowship President & CEO David Holsten will be speaking at Chattanooga Church on Sunday, March 31 at 10 a.m.

"He will be speaking about how MAF uses their fleet of 46 aircraft to take the love of Jesus to the world's most isolated people," officials said. "Last year MAF served some 600 Christian and humanitarian organizations around the world by conducting 18,994 flights transporting 61,684 passengers and 6.25 million pounds of cargo. Every day an MAF airplane takes off or lands every 14 minutes, serving some 450 destinations around the world."



Mr. Holsten assumed the presidency of MAF on July 16, 2018. He and his wife, Natalie, joined MAF in 2000. "In leading MAF, David relies on Gods guidance and actively seeks the counsel of the executive leadership team and the board of directors, as well as that of MAF staff," officials said.

It is my desire to not only be a part of addressing the significant physical needs of isolated people, but to also help them grow in their walk with the Lord. I want the message of the gospel to be clearly displayed in all we do, Mr. Holsten said.

The Holstens reside in Nampa, Id., and have four children. During his 17 years of service, initially as missionary pilot/mechanic, he carried out several leadership roles, including chief pilot, program manager and regional director for Indonesia.

Mr. Holsten became a Christian at an early age and was nurtured in his faith by his family, as well as by his church and youth group. He received a bachelor of science degree in missionary aviation technology from Moody Aviation, and holds a commercial pilots license with multi-engine rating, as well an airframe and power plant mechanics license. Prior to joining MAF he worked as a flight instructor with Moody Aviation for two years.



"Chattanooga Church is proud to partner with Mission Aviation Fellowship in helping take the gospel to the world's most isolated nations," officials said.

Pastor Morty Lloyd stated, "We welcome David Holsten to Chattanooga and look forward to his message that morning." Everyone in the community is welcome to attend.



Mr. Holsten will also be speaking at the Collegedale Airport on Saturday, March 30. That event will be held at 4639 McDonald Road, Apison, Tn. from 10 a.m.-5 p.m.



For further information, contact Pastor Morty Lloyd at 423-593-3043.
The parents of a city police officer who was killed in a hit and run has sued the woman charged with his vehicular homicide.

The suit in Hamilton County Circuit Court asks $10 million from Janet Kirk Hinds.

It was brought by Barry and Gretchen Galinger in behalf of the two sons of Officer Nicholas Galinger, a rookie who had recently moved to Chattanooga from Cincinnati.

The wreck happened Feb. 23 on Hamill Road as the officer was inspecting an overflowing manhole cover.

Officers later located the Hinds vehicle with heavy front end damage at her home at the Port Serena subdivision.

Ms. Hinds, the postmaster at Soddy Daisy, did not turn herself in until the following Monday morning and was briefly on the TBI's Most Wanted List.

It was filed by attorney Ben Rose of Nashville.


Chattanooga firefighters responded to a trailer fire at 2619 Boyce Street shortly after 1 p.m. on Tuesday.

Some Chattanooga police officers were the first on the scene and they were told by neighbors that someone might still be inside the burning structure. They attempted to conduct their own search, but were forced out by the heat and smoke. They attempted to conduct their own search, but were forced out by the heat and smoke.





Captain David Brooks and his firefighters with Engine 4 arrived a short time later. Upon hearing that someone might still be inside, Captain Brooks said his firefighters took a hand-held hoseline and made entry through the front door. Captain Brooks said the firefighters worked quickly to get the blaze under control in roughly five minutes. No one was found inside the structure.





The fire caused substantial damage to the trailer. The loss was estimated at $30,000.

The fire displaced two adults and three children. Volunteers with the American Red Cross were called in to provide assistance to the family.
WGU Tennessee  a nonprofit, online university that is part of the Drive to 55 effort  surprised an employee of a local nonprofit with a $10,000 scholarship Tuesday afternoon.



Director of Marketing, Development and Volunteer Services at Signal Centers, Inc. Christopher Berryman learned that he had won WGU Tennessees Tenn-K Scholarship during a special ceremony held at his office. Mr. Berryman was surprised with a commemorative check from WGU Tennessee Chancellor Kimberly K. Estep, Ph.D.



Its always special to award a hardworking professional with our annual Tenn-K Scholarship, Dr. Estep said. Christopher is a dedicated nonprofit leader, and Im honored to help him progress toward his goals.



Mr. Berryman is pursuing his masters degree in business administration. He hopes to use his degree to further his career and continue to serve his community.



I had been contemplating returning to school for several years, but found it difficult to fit with my work schedule, Mr. Berryman said. Finding WGU Tennessee with the help of my co-workers has helped me realize my dream of getting my masters. Receiving this scholarship is an incredible honor.



Mr. Berryman is one of 10 Tennesseans to earn WGU Tennessees 2019 Tenn-K Scholarship this year.



The scholarship  which covers roughly two-thirds of WGU Tennessees tuition of $3,500 per term for most programs  is awarded based on students academic records, readiness for online study and demonstrated financial need.
The American Lung Association in Tennessee is grateful to Senator Alexander for opposing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys proposal to weaken the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.

Mercury causes permanent damage to the brains of babies and unborn children, leading to developmental delays, learning disabilities and birth defects. Power plants also emit more than 80 other hazardous air pollutants identified by the Clean Air Act, including arsenic, chromium, lead and acid gases. These pollutants cause cancer; damage the eyes, skin and breathing passages; harm the kidneys, lungs and nervous system; cause cardiovascular diseases; and kill. When the U.S. EPA adopted MATS, it estimated the rule would prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths each year and prevent 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks and 5,700 hospital visits annually  and reduce mercury emissions from power plants by 90 percent.

EPAs Mercury and Air Toxics Standards are a success story. The standards have reduced mercury emissions from power plants and cleaned up dangerous particle pollution at the same time. This is important in Tennessee where TVA has coal plants located in Bull Run, Gallatin, Cumberland and Kingston that have already installed the required controls.

The American Lung Association thanks Senator Alexander for his continued leadership in protecting Tennesseans  particularly babies and children  from these dangerous pollutants. Any proposed action that would weaken these protections, whether directly, by undermining the basis for the standards, or by undercounting or ignoring the lifesaving benefits of the rule, is a threat to the health of the communities we serve.

Tennesseans have nothing to gain from the rollback of these lifesaving, highly effective standards, and many people  including pregnant women and their unborn children  have everything to lose.

Christine Hart

American Lung Association
The Humanities and Fine Arts Division of Chattanooga State Community College will present the 2019 Writers@Work event beginning Monday, April 8.

Tom Franklin was born in Dickinson, Alabama, a town of about 400 people. As a non-hunter in a hunting family, Mr. Franklin spent his childhood writing, drawing, and reading. After moving to Mobile to attend college, Mr. Franklin recalls receiving such low marks that his father decided to stop paying his college tuition. To pay for his own schooling, he worked a variety of night jobs including a stint cleaning up hazardous waste. It was during this time that he eventually discovered creative writing classes.

Upon graduating from the University of South Alabama, Mr. Franklin went on to earn his Master of Fine Arts from The University of Arkansas, where he met his wife, poet and author Beth Ann Fennelly. He is the recipient of a variety of literary accolades including the Edgar Award, the Golden Dagger Award for Best Novel (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Best Mystery or Thriller, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001. Franklins 2011 New York Times bestselling novel, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, has received critical acclaim, with the Seattle Times describing the novel as a powerful literary thriller and the Los Angeles Times stating that the novel is [a] wondrous reading pleasure. Mr. Franklin is also the author of Smonk (2006) and Hell at the Breach (2003), as well as a collection of short stories entitled Poachers (1999). He currently teaches in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.



Mr. Franklin co-authored The Tilted World with his wife, Beth Ann Fennelly, in 2013. Set in 1927, the novel follows federal revenuer agent Ted Ingersol as he and his partner Ham Johnson attempt to locate two missing agents in the town of Hobnob, Mississippi. After finding an abandoned baby at the scene of a shootout, Ingersol places the child with a woman named Dixie Clay, not knowing that she will eventually help him to unravel the secrets of sabotage and murder that inhabit the town. The Seattle Times describes the novel as a swift, soulful mix of love story and crime saga, declaring it literary crime fiction of the highest order.



Beth Ann Fennelly was born in New Jersey, but grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, just north of Chicago. From a young age, Ms. Fennelly wanted to become an actor, but after a lackluster performance while in college at Notre Dame, she enrolled in a poetry workshop. This had a profound influence on her, and in reference to that workshop, Ms. Fennelly has stated, I remember feeling like all my life Id wanted to swim, but I hadnt known that until I was thrown into the water.



After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Ms. Fennelly spent time teaching English in a coal-mining town along the Czech/Polish border. She later earned her MFA from the University of Arkansas where she was a Lily Peter Fellow. She then went on to teach at the University of Wisconsin, as well as Knox College, before moving to the University of Mississippi, where she is currently a professor and the Director of the MFA Program. Ms. Fennelly has received many awards and honors for her writing, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, United States Artists, and the Illinois and Mississippi Arts Councils. She has also received a Pushcart Prize, the Wood Award from The Carolina Quarterly, and won The Black Warrior Review Contest. Perhaps her highest honor to date came in 2016 when she was named the Poet Laureate of Mississippi, a position she still holds.



Ms. Fennellys work includes three collections of poetry: Open House (2002), Tender Hooks (2004), and Unmentionables (2008). Fennelly also works in prose, authoring Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother (2007) and co-authoring The Tilted World (2013) with her husband and fellow-writer, Tom Franklin. The Tilted World was released to much critical acclaim and was named the Southern Booksellers Association Okra Pick, the LibraryReads pick, and Uncut Magazines Best Books of 2013. Ms. Fennellys latest book, Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs (2017), collects a variety of flash pieces, many of which have also appeared in well-respected national publications. She is currently writing a novel.

Here is the schedule of events:

Event: An Evening at The Princess Date & Time: Monday, April 8 @ 6:00pm Location: The Princess Theater in South Pittsburg 215 S Cedar Ave, South Pittsburg, TN 37380 Details: Reading and Book Signing Visit the historic and charming Princess Theatre in South Pittsburg for the opening night of Writers@Work. Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly will read from The Tilted World, discuss their lives as writers, and answer questions from the audience. Afterwards, linger in the lobby to have your book signed.

Event: A Night at the Museum Date & Time: Tuesday, April 9 @ 6:00pm Location: The Hunter Museum of American Art 10 Bluff View Ave, Chattanooga, TN 37403 Details: Reading and Book Signing Hors D'oeuvres and Dessert Reception Enjoy beautiful views of the Tennessee River from the lobby of the Hunter Museum during this reading by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. Join us at 5:15pm for a self-guided gallery walk focused on pieces of American art that share themes relevant tothe authors novel. Drift back to the lobby by 6:00pm, when Franklin and Fennelly will read, discuss writing The Tilted World together, and answer audience questions. Get your books signed during the hors doeuvres and dessert reception.

Event: SouthBound, featuring Beth Ann Fennelly, offered in partnership with Southern Lit Alliance and Star Line Books Date & Time: Wednesday, April 10 @ 5:30pm Location: Star Line Books 1467 Market St #106, Chattanooga, TN 37402 Details: Reading, Hors Doeuvres, and Book Signing Register for this event at www.southernlitalliance.org as seating is limited. Stop in downtown at Chattanoogas only independent bookstore for light refreshments and an intimate gathering with Mississippis Poet Laureate, Beth Ann Fennelly. After hearing a few choice bits from her newest collection, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, stick around to chat and get your copy signed. Event: ChattState Chautauqua: Moonshine, Marriage, and Mississippi with Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly Date & Time: Thursday, April 11 at 2:00pm Location: Humanities Auditorium on the main campus 4501 Amnicola Highway; Chattanooga, TN 37406 Details: Reading/Presentation, Q&A, and Book Signing Light Refreshments Come find out why Tom Franklin says Beth Ann Fennellys fingerprints are all over everything hes written since 1994. The couple will read, discuss their lives as writers, and answer questions from attendees. Find more information at: https://www.facebook.com/ChattStateChautauqua/ Event: Inside the Minds of Franklin and Fennelly: The Behind-the-Writer Interview Date & Time: Thursday, April 11 at 7:00pm Location: Humanities Auditorium on the main campus 4501 Amnicola Highway; Chattanooga, TN 37406 Details: Interview, Q&A, Book Signing, & Dessert Reception Join us for Writers@Works annual interview night. This year, ChattState English Professor Erica Lux will interview Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly about their collaboration on The Tilted World, their lives as Southern writers, and what their writing process looks like. As always, bring your questions for the authors and your books for the signing. Dessert reception to follow.

For further information, contact Erica Lux at WritersAtWork@chattanoogastate.edu
In 2017, Bo and Jessica, a couple in their 30s, welcomed twin boys into the world. They were loving parents, but the couple had a problem, an all too common one in todays world: they were addicted to opioids.That addiction led to trouble later in the year when both Bo and Jessica were separated from their children following an arrest on drug-related charges.What could have been a dead end for the couple, though, turned into a new beginning thanks to an innovative court pilot program offered in Coffee County, as well as six other Tennessee counties.The Safe Baby Court program is dedicated to ensuring the welfare and secure placement of children who come under court jurisdiction.Since many children are placed under court jurisdiction because of their parents substance abuse disorders, Safe Baby Courts typically work on rehabilitating parents so that families can be reunited.Bo, Jessica, and another local mother became Tennessees first three Safe Baby Court graduates recently during a ceremony in Coffee County General Sessions and Juvenile Court Judge Timothy Brocks courtroom.Weve watched them progress over the past year, year-and-a-half and literally change and transform before our eyes, Judge Brock said of the graduates. You see them when they first come and then you see them at the end, and they are not recognizable. I am so thrilled for them. Im so happy for them and their children. Its been a pleasure and a blessing to work with you and see you change your life and reunite your family.Tennessee State Senator Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin) also spoke at the event. Senator Haile has been instrumental in establishing Safe Baby Courts in the state through the passage of legislation and through his own enthusiastic advocacy efforts.What I want to tell you is what you have done and what you are doing is really great, Senator Haile told the graduates. It is important not only for you and your children, but it is important for others all across this state, in other Safe Baby Courts, in courts to come, in families to come into these courts. What you have done is an example to others, and I want you to be very, very proud of what youve done and what you are going to accomplish going forward, both for yourselves and for your children.Holding their sons, Bo and Jessica each expressed gratitude for the opportunity they had been given by the Safe Baby Court program.I just wanted to say thank you, Bo said. I wouldnt be where I am right now if it werent for this program. Its greatly appreciated.By the time Bo entered the program near the end of 2017, he had been an opioid addict for nearly 20 years.It was tiring, he said. It was a long road I guess you could say.Now, he has been clean for almost 15 months.Its like a sense of accomplishment, he said. I feel like Ive done something.The Coffee County Safe Baby Court was established by legislation in 2017 that also created programs in Johnson, Knox, Madison, and Stewart Counties. The states first Safe Baby Court was started in Davidson County in 2015. Another started shortly after in Grundy County.Coffee County Juvenile Court Magistrate Stacy Lynch explained the purpose of the Court in a video produced by the Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services.We have these children just coming in and out of foster care, she said. It is just devastating to see what is happening to these children and their families. We just want to stop the cycle.The way to stop that cycle, which has grown more powerful with the rise of the opioid epidemic, is to provide the parents of at-risk, younger children with resources that they can use to turn their lives around.The goal of Safe Baby Court is to give them a support system and give them the tools necessary so they will make lifelong changes that will affect not only their success but their families success, she said.There are a number of requirements that must be met before someone participates in a Safe Baby Court program. For instance, participants must have at least one child who is zero through three years old; they must have an open case with the Department of Childrens Services; and they must voluntarily agree to be part of the docket.The Safe Baby Court program does not have a definite duration for participants. Rather, court staff and the presiding judge and magistrate track the progress of enrollees over a period of months as those enrollees do things like attend support group meetings, take life skill and parenting classes, and receive mental health therapy and counseling. Parents are also granted increased visitation with their children during their time in the program, in an effort to encourage healthy parenting skills and keep family bonds strong.Bo and Jessica graduated after prolonged participation in an intensive outpatient program, consisting of two to three meetings per week, and regular attendance at twelve-step program meetings. They are now involved in a six-month aftercare program.The results of all that hard work have been life-changing.I feel like a whole new person really, Bo said. I feel blessed that I went through what I had to go through to get here.Jessica hopes that others will learn from her and Bos experiences and give Safe Baby Court a chance.Try it, she said. You see a lot of people who brush it off, not pay attention to it when you first get in there, but it is worth it.Bo agrees. Safe Baby Court gave him the power to improve his own life, and his kids lives as well.It wasnt our kids fault we got in trouble, he said. It was our fault. But we can focus more on our family now.
The news emerged this past week that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wanted to be entirely independent of Buckingham Palace, and split their household from Prince William and Kate Middleton.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are currently making major renovations to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor, which is about 40 miles outside of London. With the new baby on the way, they had expressed their wishes to operate on their own, without being under the jurisdiction of Buckingham.

This led many royal fans to wonder if Harrys grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, approves of the splitting of the Royal household.

What does the split mean?

To begin, fans should note that there was already a split of households at Kensington Palace! Kensington is where Will and Kate have their lavish 21-room apartment, and where Nottingham Cottage, the current home of Harry and Meghan, is located. Both couples had their offices based at Kensington for the past few years, however, Meghan and Harry recently moved their office to Buckingham Palace in order to operate on their own, a move the queen approved.

Now, they wish to be independent of Buckingham as well. This is certainly not a bad thing, as it simply means that the couples will have different offices.

Did the Queen approve of the split from Kensington?

It would appear that the queen did give the Duke and Duchess of Sussex her approval to split from Kensington Palace.

It seemed to be a wise choice, considering that Harry does not make as many joint appearances with William and Kate as he did before his marriage to Meghan. They now operate independently, with their own staff coordinating engagements for each couple, communicating, and organizing their schedules. It only made sense for the queen to approve of this move!

Why didnt Queen Elizabeth approve of the split from Buckingham?

Britains Queen Elizabeth II | SIMON DAWSON/AFP/Getty Images

Immediately following the announcement that Meghan and Harry would be splitting their royal household from that of Kate and William came the news they wanted to be completely independent, and the queen did not give her seal of approval! Why was this?

Well, it turns out that Her Majesty feels that Harry and Meghan cannot go off on their own and do their own thing, as it would not be in keeping with royal protocol! Given that they are senior members of the Royal Family who carry out engagements on behalf of the queen, they need to be under the jurisdiction of Buckingham. Apparently, the split from Kensington was fine, but completely splitting from Buckingham was taking it a step too far!

Will the Duke and Duchess of Sussex still move to Windsor?

Of course, they will! The split from Kate and William will in no way affect their move to Frogmore Cottage. The home in the countryside of Windsor will still be the full-time home of Meghan and Harry, yet they will be required by royal rules to maintain an office at Buckingham Palace.

They will have Royal staff to coordinate their schedules, and who will still maintain the same communication as before.

Why did Meghan and Harry want the split in the first place?

It is thought that the reason Meghan and Harry requested the complete split in the first place was to establish themselves as having their own structure. In the past, Harrys life has pretty much been dictated by his grandmother and his place in the family. Now that he is married and starting his own family, he feels that he wants to define himself even further, by expressing his own interests and beliefs.

While the move to Frogmore Cottage will allow the Duke and Duchess a little more privacy that they currently have, we hope that they can find the independence that they are looking for!
Talk show host John Oliver interviewed Monica Lewinsky, known for her infamous affair in the late 1990s with then-president Bill Clinton when she was a White House intern, on a recent episode of his HBO show, Last Week Tonight. The episode included a segment on public shaming featuring Lewinsky, an anti-bullying advocate, as a guest.



What did Lewinsky say?



After discussing online bullying, Lewinsky discussed how she got through the fallout of her affair with Clinton. She referred the situation as a sh** storm, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

It was an avalanche of pain and humiliation, Lewinsky told Oliver. She said having her friends and family as a support system really helped her.

Monica Lewinsky Presley Ann/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

But she did say her sense of self-esteem diminished. I think at 24 years old, it was really hard to hold onto a shred of dignity or self-esteem when youre just the butt of so many jokes.



Her identity was stolen

It was, I say, extraordinary  not with any positive connotation  not only just the slut-shaming, not only just having had an intimate relationship with someone who was now describing me in a way that no young woman would want to be described, she said.

My identity was stolen in a different way. Not to say that I wasnt flawed and that I didnt make terrible mistakes or do stupid things or say stupid things because of course, I did, Lewinsky said. I watched this sort of deconstruction of me and rebuilding of me.

She considered changing her name

Not being able to find a job after the scandal coupled with the intense public scrutiny, Lewinsky considered changing her name. Ultimately she decided against it based on principle.

Bill Clinton didnt have to change his name, Lewinsky told Oliver. Nobodys ever asked him did he think he should change his name and so I think that was an important statement.

Im not proud of all of the choices Ive made in my life, but Im proud of the person I am, she said. As hard as it has been to have that last name sometimes and the pain that I have felt of what its meant for other people in my family who have that last name, I am glad I didnt change it.

Oliver calls out Jay Leno for civility comment

In the same public shaming segment, Oliver took aim at Jay Leno. Specifically, Lenos recent interview on NBCs Today show. During the interview, Leno talked about how, in his opinion, late-night TV had lost its civility because of the countrys current political state.

John Oliver | Charles Sykes/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Oliver then brought up multiple jokes Leno made about Lewinsky. One joke involved Leno saying the humidity outside made peoples clothes stickier than Monica Lewinsky. Another involved a video clip of Leno laughing at the headline Lewinsky Gets Back On Her Feet.

A more elaborate joke of Lenos involved a book inspired by Dr. Suess The Cat in the Hat called The Sl** in the Cat.

Oliver ended the segment by saying, If thats what he means by civility, may I offer my new book: Oh the Places You Can Go Fu** Yourself, Jay Leno.

To watch the 26-minute segment, click here.

Is Monica Lewinsky still getting publicly shamed for affair with Clinton?

The shortest and least complicated answer to this question is yes. Lewinskys still shamed for an affair she had decades ago. And Clinton? Not so much. But Lewinsky is now able to poke fun at herself and the infamous affair. Being able to joke about it, happened in stages, Lewinsky told Oliver. She said wearing a beret  she was known to wear a beret when the scandal broke  to a 1990s themed party helped her make light of the situation.


Meghan Markle and Prince Harry visited New Zealand House in London, England on Tuesday to pay their respects to the 50 fallen victims who were lost in the Christchurch mass shooting.

The couple arrived holding hands, Markle in all black and wearing the gold Boh Runga Discologo stud earrings that were given to her as a gift from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during her and Harrys royal tour (in Maori mythology, the Miromiro feather is said to possess magic that brings back lost loved ones) and Prince Harry in navy blue. Markle was greeted by High Commissioner Sir Jerry Mateparae and Deputy High Commissioner David Evans with a hongi, a traditional nose rub, reports People. Markle and Harry were called upon to represent the royal family since they are the most recent royals to visit New Zealand.



Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex at New Zealand House | Karwai Tang/WireImage

Harry laid a bouquet of flowers outside and Markle wrote a note in the book of condolences.



Our deepest condolences. We are with you, she wrote.



Harry wrote below his wifes message: Arohanui, which means best wishes in Maori.

The New Zealand terror attack



What has happened in Christchurch is an extraordinary act of unprecedented violence. It has no place in New Zealand. Many of those affected will be members of our migrant communities  New Zealand is their home  they are us.  Jacinda Ardern (@jacindaardern) March 15, 2019

The attack that took place on Friday, March 15, at two mosques in the city of Christchurch is considered the deadliest mass shooting in the countrys history.



The terrorist attack appeared to have been carried out by a white nationalist who posted a racist manifesto online and streamed live video of the killings on Facebook, reports The New York Times.

The man accused of the attack is expected to represent himself in court.

Ardern has sworn off using the attackers name, in an effort to deny him the attention he craves, and she implores others to do the same.

He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist, Ardern said in an address to Parliament. But he will, when I speak, be nameless.

Already, Ardern has promised to change New Zealands gun laws in response to the attack, reports TNYT.



The royal familys response



New Zealand is a special place for the royal family. Markle and Harry were just there in 2018 as part of their 16-day Royal Tour. The last time the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited Christchurch was in 2014.



To pay their respects the two royal couples released a statement on Instagram.



Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the people who lost their lives in the devastating attack in Christchurch.



We have all been fortunate to spend time in Christchurch and have felt the warm, open-hearted and generous spirit that is core to its remarkable people.



No person should ever have to fear attending a sacred place of worship.



This senseless attack is an affront to the people of Christchurch and New Zealand, and the broader Muslim community. It is a horrifying assault on a way of life that embodies decency, community, and friendship.



We know that from this devastation and deep mourning, the people of New Zealand will unite to show that such evil can never defeat compassion and tolerance.



We send our thoughts and prayers to everyone in New Zealand today.



Kia Kaha.  The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. read the statement.



Read more: Amidst Security Concerns, Meghan Markle Wraps up a Busy Trip to Morocco at 7 Months Pregnant

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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are officially separating from Prince William and Kate Middletons royal court. Last week, Buckingham Palace confirmed the royal split with an official statement explaining how Prince Harry and Meghan Markle plan to hire a new communications staff to help support them as they become their own household.



While the exact details of their new team is still under wraps, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have reportedly already hired their new Head of Communications, Sara Latham. And, according to reports, their good friend George Clooney might have had something to do with it. Are Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seeking publicity advice from the American actor? Find out, ahead.



Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | Facundo Arrizabalaga  Pool/Getty Images

Prince Harry and Meghan Markles relationship with George Clooney



Its no secret that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are fond of George Clooney and his wife, Amal. The Clooneys both attended the Duke and Duchess of Sussexs royal wedding last spring and Amal even joined Meghan Markle in New York in February for her lavish $200,000 baby shower. Additionally, the parents-to-be have joined George and Amal Clooney at their Lake Como house.



Amal Clooney attended Meghan Markles baby shower in NYC. | James Devaney/GC Images

That said, their relationship goes beyond royal celebrations and weekend getaways. In addition to spending some quality time with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, George Cooney might have also offered them publicity advice  or at least steered them in the right direction.



George Clooney introduced them to Sara Latham



Following confirmation of their Kensington Palace split, news of Prince Harry and Meghan Markles Head of Communications broke. And, according to The Daily Mail, George Clooney might have introduced them to Sara Latham.



George and Amal Clooney attended the royal wedding last spring. | Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Latham worked as a senior advisor on Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign, which George Clooney was actively involved in. The publication suggests the two might have met there and he later recommended Latham to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.



He stands up for Meghan in the press



George Clooney is a great friend. In her new role, its very hard  read: near impossible  for Meghan Markle to put a stop to certain issues in the press. However, her A-lister friend is happy to do so for her. In addition to ensuring she has the best Head of Communications, George Clooney has also used his own platform to try and put an end to the criticism.



George Clooney defends Meghan Markle in the press. | Duncan McGlynn/Getty Images

The actor has defended the Duchess of Sussex on multiple occasions now. The first time he stood up for his royal friend was back in February. I do want to say, I just saw this piece  Theyre just chasing Meghan Markle everywhere. Shes been pursued and vilified. Shes a woman who is seven months pregnant and she is being pursued and vilified and change in the same way that [Princess] Diana was, and its history repeating itself  and weve seen how that ends, she said according to Who.



Clooney didnt stop there. Last week, he chatted with Good Morning Britain, giving direct insight into her life. Ive seen it when the press can turn on you for sort of ridiculous reasons and for almost nothing and it seemed  to be a little unjust since she hadnt done anything except just happen to live her life, she told the show. Shes a really kind and smart and intelligent young woman and theyre a really wonderful, loving couple. Most of it you can just shrug off and not pay attention to, but sometimes its unkind, he continued.



If Meghan Markle cant speak up for herself in the press, her powerful friends certainly will. And, while its unclear whether or not the Duke and Duchess of Sussex asked their A-list friend for publicity advice (or help), Clooney clearly wants to make things right and is using his own platform to do so.



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Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are less than two months away from the arrival of their first child. But with a new baby comes plenty of life changes. Meghan and Harry have recently moved into a new house, and theyre excited to start the next chapter. However, Meghans strained relationship with her father still remains up in the air. Will Thomas Markle get to meet Baby Sussex when he or she finally arrives?

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are expecting a baby in late April. | Karwai Tang/WireImage/Getty Images



Meghan and her father had a great relationship when she was growing up

Meghans parents divorced when she was only six years old, but she has never had a bad thing to say about their co-parenting. She said her father helped her to become her own person, and hes the one who got her into acting in the first place. Plus, when Thomas won $750,000 in the California lottery, he used some of those winnings to enroll Meghan in a private school to give her the best education possible. Meghan has often discussed the solid relationship she had with her father growing up.

The two reportedly had a falling out after Meghan went to college

As Meghan grew up, things began to take a different turn with her father. E! News reported that in a video released from when Meghan was 18, she pointed toward her fathers house and said, From Dads house, you can see the Hollywood sign. But we arent going to go there because my dad and I arent on the best of terms. Since Meghan left to attend school at Northwestern, her relationship with her father has been a bit of a rollercoaster. But according to E! News, by the time she got her role on Suits, the two were back on the up and up. However, it was a series of ups and downs from that point forward.

Thomas did not attend Meghans wedding and has reportedly plead for her attention

When Meghan got engaged to Harry, her father was set to walk her down the aisle on her big day. However, just a few days before the wedding, her father supposedly had health problems that prevented him from flying all the way from Mexico to London. He didnt attend the wedding. Thomas also said some not-so-friendly things about his daughter, for which he later apologized. But he has since begged for her attention, apparently to no avail.

Thomas Markles drama with his daughter makes the cover of a U.K. newspaper. | Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images



A new baby may help Meghan and her dad start fresh, so there is a chance he will meet Baby Sussex  but nothing is definite

As of right now, Meghan and her father dont appear to be on great terms. However, major life events, such as welcoming a new baby, sometimes bring out the best in people. While there dont seem to be any plans for Thomas to fly over to meet the baby when he or she arrives, the public probably wouldnt be surprised if the two made an effort to patch things up once Meghan becomes a mother. Meghans mom, Doria Ragland, is reportedly flying in for a while when the baby is born, and its possible that Meghan will decide she wants her baby to have as many grandparents in his or her life as possible. Time will tell if she patches things up with her dad.

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Logan Paul, the YouTube creator who found himself in hot water for chronicling his journey into Japans infamous Suicide Forest, is ready to release yet another controversial piece of content. While Paul may have learned his lesson about filming dead bodies, hes prepared to explore the flat earth theory, and some experts are concerned hes bringing a conspiracy theory to a whole new generation.

Logan Paul (Photo by Hollywood To You/Star Max/GC Images)

Paul, who boasts over 18 million subscribers on YouTube, is wildly popular among tweens and teens. He also has nearly 5 million followers on Twitter and is among the highest earning YouTubers on the platform according to Social Blade.

What is the flat earth theory?

In recent years several celebrities and public figures have announced that they believe the world is flat. According to proponents, the spherical shape of the earth is a myth, and instead, the earth is a flat plane. Much like the explorers of yesteryear, the group believes that it is entirely possible to travel to the edge of the planet.

Earth at night

(Elements of this image furnished by NASA/Getty Images)

According to Live Science, flat earth theorists suggest that all photos of the earth as a sphere are photoshopped and that the sun and moon move in circles across the earths flat surface. They surmise that both the sun and the moon are 32-miles wide and illuminate different portions of the flat plane in segments. They also allegedly believe that there is an anti-moon that exists only to obscure the sun and moon during solar and lunar eclipses.

Logan Paul, who recently attended a conference specifically for flat earth believers, is interested in planning an expedition to Antarctica. Believers have strongly suggested that Antarctica is the edge of the world and traveling to the tundra could once-and-for-all prove their belief system, according to Forbes.

Does Logan Paul believe in the flat earth theory?

While Logan Pauls documentary trailer stops short at declaring him a flat-earther, there is plenty of reason to believe the 23-year-old content creator might be a flat earther. Not only has Paul put a ton of work into a documentary that will explore the flat earth theory and why its proponents are so passionate, but a clip from the documentarys trailer also has the star announcing that he is ready to come out of the flat earth closet, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

While Paul may be a believer, the YouTube star is known for his wild antics and clickbait titles, so It is possible hes created the video simply for the views without having any feelings about the theory itself. Fans will need to wait for the full documentary to drop on the platform to make a final decision. According to the trailer, Pauls documentary will be released on March 20, 2019.
JOS, Nigeria, March 19, 2019 (Morning Star News)  After burning a church building in northeastern Nigerias Borno state on Thursday (March 14), Boko Haram terrorists yesterday evening attacked a Christian-majority town in neighboring Adamawa state, sources said.

Area residents said Muslim extremists of the Boko Haram insurgency last night invaded Michika, a town they had seized in September 2014 and held until Nigerian troops recaptured it at the end of January 2015. The attack sent many residents fleeing into the surrounding mountains, with reports of the bombing of a bank and an as yet unknown number of casualties.

Mathew Favandzaer, chairman of the Michika Local Government Council, confirmed the attack, telling Morning Star News by phone that numbers of casualties and displaced persons were yet unknown. The Church of the Brethren has a strong presence in the town, whose greater area is estimated to comprise more than 375,000 people, including many Muslims among the Christian majority.

The Church of the Brethren sent an alert through Twitter urging members to pray for Christians in Michika: Even as we extend caring to those affected by flooding in plains states & continue to grieve with the Muslim community in NZ, word has come of attacks on Michika, Nigeria, today. Thus says the Lord God...Put away violence.

Adamawa State Police spokesman Othman Abubakar reportedly said he had no indication of casualties and that security agents had restored control, and a military spokesman said soldiers had repelled the assailants. But some residents told local press the terrorists killed many people as they looted houses, shot sporadically and set buildings on fire.

The attack on Michika comes ahead of supplementary governorship election on Saturday (March 23), one of 14 local governments to do so.

Area resident Zakaria Dauda told Morning Star News in a text message that the return of Boko Haram, which is affiliated with the Islamic State, struck fear in people struggling to recover from the 2014 occupation.

This is a trying moment for us, Dauda wrote. Our God, who has never failed us as a people, will not abandon us now. He will definitely show Himself mighty again!

The head of a Non-Governmental Organization working among displaced victims of Boko Haram attacks in northeastern Nigeria issued pleas on Facebook.

Lord have Mercy! Mercy Lord! Mercy on CCEPI team Lord! Mercy on Michika Lord! Please pray for Michika and several CCEPI team who are under attack and some of CCEPI teams l heard are trapped in CCEPI Office, wrote Rebecca Dali, president/CEO of the Center for Caring Empowerment and Peace Initiative (CCEPI).

Boko Haram militants had attacked Michika and four other towns in February, reportedly killing women, children and the elderly among their victims. Survivors ran to nearby mountains before the military drove out Boko Haram, which seeks to impose Islamic law (sharia) throughout Nigeria. The rebel terrorists reportedly shouted the jihadist slogan, Allahu Akbar [God is greater] as they attacked Michika, Madagali, Shuwa, Gulak and Bazza.

Boko Haram on Thursday (March 14) destroyed a Church of the Brethren worship building in Ngurhlavu village, Lassa, in southern Borno state, north of Adamawa state, in an attack that resulted in the killing of one person and the kidnapping of two women, according to aid and advocacy group International Christian Concern (ICC).

In Gwandang village, Boko Haram militants on Feb. 2 attacked Church of the Brethren members, followed by assaults on Paya-Bulguma on Feb. 7 and 21 in which they burned 26 houses, according to ICC.

A 7-year-old boy was also abducted and has not been heard from since, ICC reported.

Boko Haram, whose name is loosely translated as, Western education is a sin, has fought for more than nine years, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing more than 2 million. In 2015 the Nigerian military began taking back most of the territory Boko Haram had controlled, but many areas remain, and the terrorists are still mounting isolated attacks.

Christians make up 51.3 percent of Nigerias population, while Muslims living primarily in the north and middle belt account for 45 percent.

Nigeria ranked 12th on Open Doors 2019 World Watch List of countries where Christians suffer the most persecution.

If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved.

If you or your organization would like to help enable Morning Star News to continue raising awareness of persecuted Christians worldwide with original-content reporting, please consider collaborating at https://morningstarnews.org/donate/?

Article originally published by Morning Star News. Used with permission.

Photo courtesy: Unsplash/Joshua Oluwagbemiga
Hamas soldiers arrested several journalists in Gaza Sunday during protests between Hamas security officials and protestors demonstrating against Gazas economic state.

According to the Times of Israel, the journalists were arrested for reporting on the incident, but they are expected to be released soon.

Hamas militants also arrested hundreds of civilians who were participating in the protests, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authoritys news agency.

The United Nations envoy to Israel, Nickolay Mladenov, said Hamas soldiers used violence to make their arrests.

I condemn the Hamas violence in #Gaza against protesters, women, #children; journalists & human rights activists, he wrote on his Twitter page. #Palestinian factions must engage with Egypt on the basis of the Cairo Agreement. #UN is working to avoid escalation, lift the closures, & support reconciliation.

I condemn the Hamas violence in #Gaza against protesters, women, #children; journalists & human rights activists. #Palestinian factions must engage with Egypt on the basis of the the Cairo Agreement. #UN is working to avoid escalation, lift the closures, & support reconciliation  Nickolay E. MLADENOV (@nmladenov) March 17, 2019

He said that the people had a right to protest.

"The long-suffering people of Gaza were protesting the dire economic situation and demanded an improvement in the quality of life in the Gaza Strip, he said

Samir Zaqout, deputy director of the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said that the country has been dealing with poverty and hunger issues.

The demonstrations are part of the response to this difficult situation, especially among young people, he said. There is massive emigration, mainly to Turkey, and some are walking up to the border fence. Young people look for death there, saying they have nothing to live for."

In a video from a Palestinian woman, the woman says that government officials do not care for the poor.

"Hamas officials' children drive in luxurious cars, but I have 4 unemployed sons, she said. All of Gaza are unemployed because of Ismail Haniyeh & Yahya Sinwar. These officials care nothing about the poor people's necessities. We have the right to live."

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Ilia Yefimovich/Stringer
As I record this commentary, the death toll in the horrific terrorist attack in New Zealand has risen to 50 souls.

Though New Zealand is 7,500 miles away from where I live, this one hit close to home for me. Ive visited New Zealand many times over the last twenty years, and I have developed marvelous friendships with many folks there, particularly on the North Island, but also in the city of Christchurch, where the massacre took place.

That this murderer chose a beautiful and peaceful place like Christchurch, and that he chose to gun down people as they were particularly vulnerable during a time of worship, only adds to how sickening the whole event is.

I do not have the stomach to read the killers so-called manifesto, but Ive read enough about it to know that for the New Zealand killer, whats wrong with the world is the other. People not like him. People he saw as a threat to Western, or specifically white, civilization. The so-called invaders, as he called them, were even, in his mind, threats to the environment, because they were overpopulating the world (even as white European birthrates decline).

The Muslim worshippers became the targets of the killers hatred of the other. In his eyes, they were not individual, valuable human beings. They were a faceless group who represented foreign religion and lesser races. The elevation of himself and those like him as being somehow better, in tandem with the dehumanization of those not like him as the source of our worlds problems, led him to think his act of evil was somehow good, and that any chaos he succeeded in creating was somehow necessary to fix the world.

Like all worldviews, the killers addressed two fundamental questions: Whats wrong with the world? And, how do we fix it? His bad ideas had many, many victims.

Even so, in a sense, the killers actions were the extreme but logical consequence of an ideological pariah infecting Western culture right now: what Andrew Walker of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission called on yesterdays BreakPoint Podcast the decline of the concept of our shared humanity.

Andrew reminded us that the human heart is bent towards not seeing our neighbor as our fellow man and as a partaker of our fellow humanity. The heart apart from Christ is driven towards animus and resentment toward those who are not like us.

He is exactly right. At the root of jihadism, and white supremacism, and most of the other odious isms, is that same tendency to demonize another as the source of evil in the world. The obvious irony too few in the media are discussing is that in the name of defending Western civilization, this terrorist struck at a foundational premise of Western civilization: that all men are created equal and therefore possess the same human rights.

Instead, to a much lesser and less-deadly degree, the tendency to demonize the other is reflected in the medias persistent description of the murderer as right-wing. His denouncement of capitalism, admiration for Communist China and self-proclaimed eco-fascism (whatever that is) should be enough to prove otherwise. Labeling him as this or that only feeds a narrative that says, Those people are whats wrong with the world.

Of course, that is the standard way humans have operated throughout history since the fall. But, as voices as disparate as Friedrich Nietzsche and Chuck Colson have pointed out, Christianity, with its rock-solid foundational conviction that all human beings are made in the image of God, brought the idea of a shared humanity to Western civilization, and subsequently to much of the rest of the world.

It took a long time for that idea of the image of God to take root and bear fruit in the world, and Christians have not always lived up to what it demands. Still, we should not be surprised that the more the Western world drifts away from, spurns and rejects the only solid foundational source for human value, the more we see the demonizing of the other; the more we will see our civic and political dialogue descend into the gutter; and the more we will see acts of extreme violence.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on todays news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.

John Stonestreet, the host of The Point, a daily national radio program, provides thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

Publication date: March 19, 2019

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Carl Court/Staff
Democratic presidential candidate Beto ORourke said Monday he supports third-trimester abortions, adding that its a decision that should be left up to the woman.

Speaking in Ohio, ORourke fielded a question from a voter who is presumably pro-life.

Are you for third-trimester abortion? the woman asked. Are you gonna protect the lives of third-trimester babies? Because theres really not a medical necessity for abortion. Its not a medical emergency procedure, because typically third-trimester abortions take up to three days to have, so you would, in that sense, if there was an emergency, the doctors would just do a C-Section, and you dont have to kill the baby in that [instance]. So, are you for or against third-trimester abortions?

Heres Beto ORourke at a campaign event in Cleveland responding to a question about third-trimester abortions: That should be a decision that the woman makes. I trust her. pic.twitter.com/nBrlazlMob  Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) March 18, 2019

ORourke said he backed such abortions.

The question is about abortion and reproductive rights, and my answer to you is that should be a decision that the woman makes, ORourke responded to applause.  I trust her.

Earlier this year, Omar L. Hamada, a Nashville-based OB/GYN, sparked a social media debate when he asserted there is no medical reason for third-trimester abortion to be legal.

I want to clear something up so that there is absolutely no doubt. Im a Board Certified OB/GYN who has delivered over 2,500 babies, he wrote on Twitter. Theres not a single fetal or maternal condition that requires third-trimester abortion. Not one. Delivery, yes. Abortion, no.

Hamada discussed the issue in detail on Fox News Fox & Friends.

Theres absolutely no reason to kill a baby before delivery in the third trimester, he said. Not a fetal or maternal indication  what we say in medicine. If theres a problem, and there are problems in the third trimester, both with the babies and with the mom that require delivery, just deliver the baby. We dont have to kill it.

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla/Staff
Yes, its beginning to look a lot like Christmaswhich, for many of us, feels like a rush into chaos. Celebrating Advent during this season slows us down and helps our hearts and minds be reoriented around the coming of Christ.Yes, its beginning to look a lot like Christmaswhich, for many of us, feels like a rush into chaos. Celebrating Advent during this season slows us down and helps our hearts and minds be reoriented around the coming of Christ.
Christian B&B must serve same-sex couples, Supreme Court lets ruling stand

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The United States Supreme Court declined to hear oral arguments in a case about a Hawaiian bed and breakfast that refused on religious grounds to serve a lesbian couple, allowing a ruling against the business to stand.

In an order released Monday, the high court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari in the case of Cervelli v. Aloha Bed & Breakfast, thus upholding a lower court ruling against the small business.

Phyllis Young, owner of the three-room Aloha Bed & Breakfast, will now face a penalty for her refusal in 2007 to rent a room to Diane Cervilli and Taeko Bufford, according to Reuters.

In 2011, Young was sued by the lesbian couple over the 2007 incident, being represented by the pro-LGBT law firm Lambda Legal.

When you open the doors of your business to the public, Hawaii law absolutely forbids you from discriminating against your customers, said Peter Renn, staff attorney at Lambda, in a 2011 statement.

You cant roll up the welcome mat when you see a lesbian or gay couple, just as you cant refuse to do business with Jewish customers, African-American customers, or disabled customers.

Young was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm that has won multiple cases before the Supreme Court on issues involving religious liberty.

The ADF argued that because Phyllis only rented 1-3 rooms in her personal home she did not fall under the Hawaii public accommodations law that makes sexual-orientation discrimination unlawful.

And the Constitution also protects Phyllis right not to promote behavior her faith teaches is immoral or to associate with people who are unwilling to respect her deeply held religious beliefs, added the ADF.

In 2013, a court ruled against Aloha B&B and in February of last year, Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.

In May 2018, Aloha B&B filed an appeal with the Hawaii Supreme Court, only to have the states highest court reject the appeal request last July.
UMC found improper voting at General Conference that affirmed stance against homosexuality

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The United Methodist Church released a statement explaining that there was a level of improper voting at the special session of General Conference last month in which the denomination reaffirmed its official position against homosexuality.

Delegates at the special session voted in favor of a proposal called The Traditional Plan that reaffirmed the UMCs official position labeling homosexuality incompatible with Christian teaching and promised stricter enforcement of its ban on same-sex marriage and the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals.

The UMC Executive Committee of the Commission on the General Conference reported Thursday that a very limited number of people who were not allowed to vote nevertheless got to cast ballots at the special session.

 an in-depth review was initiated to prepare the delegate attendance records as required by the rules of the General Conference. The secretary, along with the business manager, General Conference staff and an independent auditing firm, cross-checked credential cards, name badge bar code scans, attendance forms, reserve delegate seating forms and other resources, reported the executive committee.

Upon completion of the review, it appears possible that a very limited number of ineligible persons who were correctly denied credentials by General Conference staff were later able to procure them.

While the specific number of ineligible voters has not been released, Secretary of the General Conference, the Rev. Gary W. Graves, told the United Methodist News Service that the improper votes were not large enough to change the results.

However, the very close vote of 402-400 to substitute a minority report for Petition 90066, which regarded allowing churches to disaffiliate from the UMC with minimal cost, is a point of concern.

The parliamentarian who served at the Special Session is being consulted regarding any potential impact this situation may have on the legislative action which resulted in the substitution of the minority report for the legislative committees report in the processing of petition 90066 since the vote to substitute was a two-vote difference of 402-400, continued the executive committee.

Over the past several years, the UMC has endured an intense debate over whether to change its Book of Disciplines biblically-based stance that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.

Delegates at the UMC special session of General Conference, representing all of the global denomination, voted to reject a measure called the One Church Plan, which would have allowed regional bodies of the denomination to determine their position on homosexuality.

In an official vote of 438-384, the General Conference approved The Traditional Plan, prompting outrage from pro-LGBT United Methodist groups and congregations.

Adam Hamilton, senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, which is the largest UMC congregation in the United States, openly entertained the idea of leaving the UMC.

I think it would not be hard, said Hamilton in an interview with The Kansas City Star that was published days after the special session ended.

I think our folks here love the United Methodist Church  they love the kind of church we have created and so we could start a new United Methodist Church and thousands of churches would join us.

However, other leaders, including Pastor Talbot Davis of Good Shepherd UMC of Charlotte, North Carolina, celebrated the special session vote result.

I am delighted that the Special General Conference of the United Methodist Church adopted the Traditional Plan as we believe in the beautiful picture of celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in heterosexual marriage that is woven throughout the pages of Scripture as well as church teaching for since its inception, said Davis in an earlier interview with The Christian Post.

We gladly join with our global brothers and sisters in teaching this truth with as much love and winsomeness as we can.
Hillsong Channel series 'Now With Natalie' highlights celebrities impacting culture with their faith

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The Hillsong Channel is now airing a new six-part series featuring celebrities who talk about their faith and how they're using it to make a lasting impact on the culture.

Hosted by wardrobe stylist Natalie Manuel Lee, who's a member of Hillsong Church and sister of popular fashion and sneaker designer Jerry Lorenzo, the series, Now With Natalie, shows Lee interviewing Hailey Bieber, Tyson Chandler, Kelly Rowland, Jerry Lorenzo and Elaine Welteroth, among others who speak about their faith.

Lee said she wanted to host the show because she saw the need for purposeful content.

Episode one featured supermodel Hailey Bieber, filmmaker Elliot Rausch, and cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Caroline Leaf. Bieber was the main focus of the episode which centered around identity and comparison.

"The guests this season, those are my friends and my family, it's my community. I'm blessed to have them in my life. Not only do I learn from each and every one of them, but we have these conversations all the time, Lee told The Christian Post in a recent interview.

It could be very daunting and scary to really tell your story and really be able to tell the [real] truth, Lee said, adding that she believed it was imperative to gather her influential friends and family to encourage a generation.

The greatest way to serve is to tell your story. And for them, I just needed them to tell their story, and be honest, be transparent. I knew that they would have an impact that they probably didn't even realize how big the impact would be, and it has so far, she added.

Lee emphasized that everyone she interviews for the series shares something about their faith.

"One-hundred percent, everybody that's on the show is a believer and that was the point," she told CP. "I think the common thread from everybody from episode one to episode six, the common thread is their faith.

"It's that consistent pillar in their life, which is their faith and their relationship with Jesus and their relationship with God. And they're able to talk about it, they're able to display it, they're able to say how it helped them navigate through this industry. So yeah, Kelly Rowland, Tyson Chandler, Angela Davis and then Jerry Lorenzo, they all definitely give it to us about the man above, for sure.

Hillsong Church is known for its influence in young Hollywood and its churches are frequently attended by Justin and Hailey Bieber, and Selena Gomez, among others. Lee, who's also a member of Hillsong, believes the influence Christian celebrities have can be useful in spreading the Gospel.

"We are in a generation where we glorify the position that one has, as opposed to glorifying the purpose of the position, she explained. So for this, obviously, people and viewers are going to watch because they see these people that had these huge positions and huge influence. But they're here to tell you that it's not just about that, it's bigger than the platform and the position that God has given them. Kelly Rowland always says, 'it is bigger than the number one.'

Lee said her strategy behind the show came as a result of understanding the influence that her guests will have on our generation and on our culture.

"I think, for me, the mandate and the mantra and the goal was to infiltrate the Kingdom in the culture as opposed to the other way around. So these people that are influencers of the culture are able to now infiltrate Kingdom mind, thoughts and Kingdom mind characteristics in the culture and it's a need, she declared.

Hillsong Church is often criticized for linking arms with different people in Hollywood, but Lee says she believes all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

"The unfortunate thing is that these people [celebrities] with status ... they have a microscope on them more so than we do. We all sin, but for us, we just see it. Unfortunately, the people that are on my show, we see it because of the access and the visibility that they have. So who are you to judge? I sin, you sin, we all sin, Lee maintained.

Throughout the six episodes of Now With Natalie, Lee talks mental health, self-worth and the pursuit of status. She believes that many people are fans of these celebrities because of what they stand for.

"The whole purpose of it, you look at these people, and you admire them. But the bigger thing is, why do you admire them? You admire them because of their characteristics, and where is their character coming from? It's rooted in faith, and it's rooted in God," she added.

"So the whole purpose of this is also to pull back the veil of, this is why you really like that person. You might not know why you like them, but this is why you like them, because they're rooted in Christ and they're rooted in God. And that's where their great character, if you will, comes from, Lee affirmed.

When asked why she wanted to create Now With Natalie for the Hillsong Channel, Lee said the age we are living in calls for a show like this.

"Where we are as a humanity, the plight of humanity and where we are as a culture, we are just not in the best. The purpose of this show is to really dismantle and nullify and pull back the veil of the counterfeits that are being sold for identity as well as purpose, she said.

Lee identified those "counterfeits" as anything other than God that's used to identify one's worth or value.

Our Creator, who has created us, is the one that should be putting labels on us. Myles Munroe always says, 'if you see a problem become the solution that can be a part of your purpose. So for me, I just felt the call and I knew that we needed it as a generation," Lee said.

"I know that if we can have people sit down, people like the Kelly's and the Haley's and the Jerry's sit down and have a conversation  a very vulnerable, transparent conversation  that in my opinion was the most impactful way that we needed to do it. I think vocally hearing their story as opposed to maybe reading it, to me, it's more impactful, she added.

For more information on Now With Natalie or to watch the show, visit the Hillsong Channel.
Physician-assisted suicide bills die in New Mexico, Arkansas

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The New Mexico and Arkansas legislatures both defeated bills that would have legalized assisted suicide.

Writing in LifeNews Thursday, Alex Schadenberg, who heads the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, reported that bill HB 90 in New Mexico has been tabled. The legislation, which was later amended, was, in his view, the most radical bill of its kind in that the language provided for euthanasia and allowed the practice to expand.

The New Mexico bill, which was known as the Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act, passed through two House committees earlier this year, but was quietly tabled in the lower chamber of the legislature in late February, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported this week.

At the time we are just a few votes shy to pass the bill, said Rep. Deborah Armstrong, D-Albuquerque, who sponsored the legislation along with Sen. Elizabeth Stefanics, D-Cerrillos.

What we do have, though, is the drive and the commitment to keep building momentum, to keep reaching out to legislators on both sides of the aisle and to keep educating people about medical aid-in-dying  something like this takes time, Armstrong said.

The bill would have allowed medical doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs to those who wish to end their suffering and take their lives.

The New Mexico legislation was awkwardly worded, Schadenberg said in January, having previously understood it to mean that the bill would enable "suicide tourism," allowing people from other states to come to New Mexico for assisted suicide.

A bill that would have allowed assisted suicide in Arkansas also died Thursday.

The News & Observer reported Tuesday that the Arkansas measure died in the House Public Health Committee after it failed to receive a motion to send the bill to the chamber floor. The bill, which was sponsored by Rep. Dan Douglas, R-Bentonville, would have added an exception to the state's existing ban on physician-assisted suicide.

"Douglas' proposal would not have required doctors or health care facilities to participate in the procedure. A patient under the proposal would have to ask a doctor twice within 15 days to write a prescription for a lethal dose of drugs before the doctor could fulfill the request," the Arkansas outlet reported.

As of the beginning of 2019, physician assisted suicide remains banned in most U.S. states but is legal in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state and the District of Colombia. In Montana, physician-assisted suicide has been legal by State Supreme Court ruling since 2009.
48 hours in Arlington: Seeing Washington without visiting Washington

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I saw the nations capital without ever visiting Washington itself.

If youre wondering how that happened its because I stayed across the Potomac River in Virginias Arlington County.

Arlington, once part of the District of Columbia, is perhaps best known as the home of the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery and Reagan airport. Speaking of Reagan, many people are surprised to learn the airport they landed at isnt actually in Washington proper. Arlington has also been in the news after successfully bidding for Amazons HQ2.

While plenty of people stay in Arlington  hotel rates are significantly cheaper than D.C.  many of those visitors wrongly think of it as a bedroom community with little to see and do.

Spending 48 hours on a citycation in Arlington gives one a unique experience. You get Washington without Washington because lets face it: Two nights is hardly enough time to get to know the nations capital, but its the perfect amount of time to discover everything this side of the Potomac has to offer.

What to do and see

Arlington is home to five major memorials and monuments, including the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial and the U.S. Air Force Memorial, which reaches 402 feet into the sky. Of course, anyone who has ever seen the iconic photograph of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima will instantly recognize the Marine Corps War Memorial.

Then there is Arlington National Cemetery. Arguably best known for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the grave of slain President John F. Kennedy, its also the final resting place for thousands of other heroes buried in its sacred grounds.

The cemetery is also where you find Confederate General Robert E. Lees Arlington House. Congress designated the Greek Revival stately home, which is closed through the fall for exhaustive restoration work, as a memorial to Lee in the 1950s. Today, you find it largely preserved as it would have been in the antebellum period.

Another must-visit is the Pentagon, though booking a tour isnt as easy as it could be. Exhausting your patience going through the lengthy process is well worth the tour. Just be sure to book well ahead of time, especially during peak tourist season.

The relatively new Observation Deck at CEB Tower with its sweeping panoramic views of the regions cityscape is beyond impressive.

In the warmer months the 88-acre Theodore Roosevelt Island is popular for outdoor activities. While part of the District of Columbia it is accessible by foot from Arlington.

Where to stay and eat

I stayed at The Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City.

As you would expect from its name the hotel is located near the Pentagon. The luxury hotel is conveniently attached to a major shopping mall and sits above the Pentagon City Station on the blue and yellow lines of the Metro, as the subway is called.

I recommend booking a room with club lounge access, as the daily breakfast and open bar, which included Virginia wines when I stayed there, is worth the extra cost.

Family-owned Lebanese Taverna, a stones throw from the hotel at Pentagon Row, is popular with locals at lunch. For dinner, try Lyon Hall.

Getting there

All of the major airlines fly into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Outside of some flights from Canada, international flights arrive farther away at Washington Dulles International Airport.

Spires and Crosses, a travel column exclusive to The Christian Post, is published every week. Follow @dennislennox on Twitter and Instagram.
Catholic Hospitals Will Have to Perform Abortions, PM of Ireland Says

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Fresh off the repeal of the 8th amendment of their constitution prohibiting abortion nationwide, Ireland is set to require Catholic hospitals to perform the procedure, a move that is alarming many.

The BBC reported Tuesday that the European island nation, whose voters overwhelmingly opted to strike the pro-life provision of their national constitution on May 25, is now drafting legislation allowing any woman to request an abortion up to 12 weeks. This is subject to a "cooling off period," and will also allow abortion in what are considered extreme cases between 12 and 24 weeks.

Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said the law would be patterned after the 2013 Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act which allowed for abortion in extreme medical situations, and allow individual medical professionals to decline to participate.

"It will not, however, be possible for publicly-funded hospitals, no matter who their patron or owner is, to opt out of providing these necessary services which will be legal in this state once this legislation is passed by the Dail and Seanad (senate)," Varadkar said.

"I'm happy to give you that assurance," he added, noting the legislation "will allow individuals to opt out based on their consciences or their religious convictions but will not allow institutions to do so."

He continued: "So, just as is the case now in the legislation for the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013, hospitals like for example Holles Street, which is a Catholic voluntary ethos hospital, the Mater, St Vincent's and others will be required, and will be expected to, carry out any procedure that is legal in this state and that is the model we will follow."

That the country which so recently abandoned their pro-life legal structure is now set to force Catholic medical institutions to perform abortions has alarmed observers from around the world.

"Well that was fast," commented Chad C. Pecknold, professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., retweeting the BBC report.

"You know a regime has become deeply disordered when laws coerce the Church to join in the injustice. The worse the disorder, the faster it happens."

Father James Martin, SJ, also quipped on Twitter: "They won't be 'Catholic' any longer," referring to Irish hospitals.

Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute, argued the Irish government's action portends an ugly battle over conscience rights.

"Forcing every institution that receives public funds to perform any legal medical service means that if Ireland legalizes euthanasia  under discussion post referendum  Catholic hospitals will be required to allow sick patients to be killed in their wards," Smith explained in National Review Wednesday.

"Sex-change surgeries will also have to be provided. Ditto sterilization, not to mention abortion."

The rights of doctors and other health professionals with religious or ethical objections, then, will be at the center of civil rights disputes with the state, he went on to say, as secularists enforce their views on the whole medical system and thereby make what are controversial procedures that have been legalized into positive rights to which patients are entitled.

"This is not only authoritarian  shattering the guarantees of religious liberty in virtually all existing human-rights accords  but could cause a significant brain drain if dissenting doctors, nurses, and others decide to retire, find other areas of endeavor, or if brilliant young would-be doctors and nurses decide to pursue non-medical careers rather than be compelled to violate their religious beliefs."
Christian journalist to be interrogated by police for 'misgendering' activist's transgender child

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A Catholic journalist in England is being told by police that she might have committed a criminal offense because she "misgendered" someone and will soon be interrogated under caution.

The authorities contacted Caroline Farrow, who writes for the U.K.-based Catholic Herald, after a September appearance on Good Morning Britain where she debated Susie Green, who heads the transgender advocacy group Mermaids.

During the interview Farrow argued the position that single-sex spaces in children's schools and in other places of public accommodation should be maintained and noted, among other things, that females do not have penises.

What prompted the police action, however, was that Farrow allegedly referred to Greens child, who is now called "Jackie," a biological male who underwent a surgical procedure in Thailand several years ago to remove his genitals, with incorrect pronouns on Twitter.

"I do not know what I am supposed to have done but the police told me that 'you appeared on 'Good Morning Britain' with Susie Green and made some tweets misgendering her daughter,'" Farrow said in an interview with The Christian Post Tuesday.

"I have to go and be interviewed under caution, a taped interview where I will be shown offending tweets which supposedly constitute the offence of Malicious Communications. If you look up the offence youll see that I am not in breech. I havent threatened or said anything that I know to be untrue or is indecent or grossly offensive."

Farrow could not recall precisely what she said that was supposedly so awful about Green to warrant police action.

"I think I may have said something about her taking her son abroad for surgery. Which is true. She did. But I guess she is baulking about him being called a son. But at what point did he become a daughter? Because surely at the point she took him to be castrated he was a boy?" she said.

Meanwhile, Farrow has been regularly harassed and threatened by transgender activists. One trans activist even doxxed her ex.

At Farrow's request, The Christian Post is not linking to one particular harasser's website, but she relayed to CP that he has written about doing sexually explicit and violent things to her, kicking her teeth in, holding peoples heads under water until they sustain brain damage, and published photos of sex toys he says she needs.

This person has also published photos of her children and their schools and made all kinds of accusations against her husband, a Roman Catholic priest, putting her whole family at risk.

"And the police do nothing," she commented.

"I have pointed out to the police that I am a Catholic journalist and commentator, and it is my religious belief that a person cannot change sex. That we are in the middle of a national conversation about what it means to be male and what it means to be female," she explained on Twitter Monday about what she told police.

If she does not go in for the interview she was informed she will be arrested, she said.

The Catholic journalist is "furious" and did not get much sleep last night.

Her story mirrors that of women's rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Minshull, a mother of four who was also interrogated by police over a year ago for remarking on Twitter about Green's child. The Mermaids leader was reportedly upset that Keen-Minshull used the word "castration" to describe the surgical procedure where Green's testicles were cut off and his penis inverted to construct a fake vagina, and reported her to authorities.

Keen-Minshull, who also goes by the name Posie Parker, commented on her Facebook page Monday that she was recently interviewed by police a second time for two comments she had made about Green.

"Apparently Susie [Green] wields unimaginable power over the police," she mused.

"As far as the transgender ideology stretches I believe it is one of complete submission. Those that even raise questions are silenced with threats and accusations of bigotry," Parker told CP in an interview last year weeks after her initial police interrogation.

"We all have the capacity to be offended and offensive. We have to decide whether we want to criminalize this offense," she added, noting that "in a world of billions I would hope the liberty of free speech is one we would extend to all, not just those we agree with."
Duke Divinity School student-pastor shot at Costco remains hospitalized, no arrests yet

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Ryan Ware, the 24-year-old Duke Divinity School graduate student-pastor who was shot in a Costco parking lot in Durham, North Carolina, just over a week ago remained hospitalized Monday.

Ryan Ware remains hospitalized at this time. No charges have been filed in the case. Investigators do not have new information to release at this time, Kammie Michael, public information officer with the City of Durham Police Department said in a statement to The Christian Post Monday.

Ware, who became a licensed pastor last summer, serves as pastor at Wesley Chapel United Methodist in Danville, and Rock Springs United Methodist Church.

Police say, just after 1:30 p.m. on March 9, while he was at the 1500 block of North Pointe Drive, Ware was shot in the stomach while inside his SUV at the Costco parking lot. Eyewitnesses said a grey or silver sedan was seen speeding from the scene after the shooting.

Police searched Wares SUV, and took a wallet and a cellphone before swabbing for DNA and gunshot residue. Officials also said Ware had been hospitalized with possibly serious and life-threatening injuries. It was unclear Monday how life-threatening the injuries remained.

A representative with the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church which offered prayers for Ware days after the shooting said they have not been provided with any new information about his condition.

We have not received any updates. They are trying to guard his information is what Ive heard. I know he was in serious condition but thats all I know, the representative said.

Duke Divinity School Dean Greg Jones said in a statement to The Chronicle last Wednesday that they had been surrounding Wares family with love and support.

The Duke Divinity School community is deeply saddened and troubled by the shooting of one of our students, Jones said. We have been surrounding the victim and his family with love, support and prayers ever since, and we will continue to do so in the coming days."

When contacted for an update about the shooting on Monday, a spokesperson for the divinity school said they do not anticipate making any further statements for now.

Wares shooting attracted much attention with many prayers being offered up for his recovery. Anyone with information on the shooting is being urged to call Crimestoppers at 919-683-1200.
Elizabeth Warren says words of Jesus, judgement of sheep and goats, is driving force in her life

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Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke about her Christian faith during a CNN town hall in Mississippi Monday.

With the cadence of a contemporary megachurch preacher and her experience as a Sunday school teacher, Warren explained why the pending judgement of the nations by Jesus, who will divide people into sheep and goats, is a driving force in her life.

Responding to a question about what role does faith play in her life, Warren, during the hour-long town hall at Jackson State University, a historically black college in the states capital, first revealed to the audience that she was once a Sunday school teacher.

I was a fifth grade Sunday School teacher. All I can say is nobody got hurt, she quipped to laughter in a recording of her response posted on Twitter.

It was a low bar for being a fifth grade Sunday school teacher at our church and I raised my children in a Methodist church. What it is for me is the importance of the lessons we learn when we remember our values, when we remember our faith, she continued before delving into the judgement story.

The story for me is Matthew 26 and Im sure some of you, a lot of you know this story, she said incorrectly referencing the lesson of the judgement that comes in Matthew 25.

You know this is the one where the Shepherd is dividing the world into the sheep and the goats. And as we all know, sheep are going to heaven, goats theyre not. And the sheep asked Him, why us? Why us Lord? We look like those guys. And the Shepherd, the Lord answers back and says, I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me water, I was in prison and you visited me. Naked and you clothed me. And as much as you have done it to one of these, the least of thy brethren, you have done it unto me. And what I hear in that is two things that guide me every day, Warren said.

The first is there is God, there is value in every single human being, the senator said to applause.

And the second is that we are called to action. That passage is not about you had a good thought and held on to it. You sat back and just thought about  things. It does not say you just didnt hurt anybody and thats good enough. It says you saw something wrong. You saw somebody who was thirsty. You saw somebody who was in prison. You saw their face. You saw somebody who was hungry and it moved you to act. I believe we are called on to act, she ended in the clip to applause.

Warren, a former Harvard law professor who launched her presidential campaign last month currently trails other Democrats such as Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.

Warren, who discussed a raft of policy ideas along with her faith, also said for the first time that she would support replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote.

Other issues she highlighted included the future of health care in America and a plan to break up tech giants like Amazon and Facebook. She also addressed a question about her claims to Native American heritage and the backlash from the claim.
Hungary, the Huffington Post, Christianity, and Islam

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If the Huffington Post is to be believed, a bigoted Prime Minister in Hungary is leading the nation in a dangerous, ultra-right direction, to the consternation of the populace. If the election results are to be believed, a courageous Hungarian leader is standing against a sea of political correctness, with the support of the populace. I'd say in this case, the Hungarian people have a better sense of reality than does the Huffington Post.

Sunday's elections resulted in a decisive win for Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party. (This will mark Orban's third consecutive term.)

It was also a victory against Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, who actively supported the opposition liberal (and globalist) candidates. That's why a Breitbart headline proclaimed, "Bloody Nose for Brussels: Landslide Triumph as Anti-Globalist, Anti-Soros Orban Wins Third Term in Hungary."

As stated in a pre-election email from Sandor Nemeth, pastor of the largest Protestant congregation in Europe, "The Hungarian-born George Soros is trying to influence this election on the side of the liberal and globalist opposition parties - offering them huge financial support and an army of thousands of trained activists. His goal is to overthrow our Prime Minister and the governing party, which is actively protecting Christian culture and churches, our national sovereignty and the values of traditional marriage and family."

Is it any surprise that the Huffington Post had a very different perspective on the elections?

Already in 2015, Ishaan Tharoor, writing in the Washington Post stated that, "Hungary's Orban invokes Ottoman invasion to justify keeping refugees out."

Yes, "Orban, a right-wing populist, has been one of the most outspoken voices against resettling tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in Europe. He has used this crisis to cast himself as the legionary on the parapets, staring down the alien hordes that threaten to overwhelm European civilization."

Tharoor is referring to Hungary's previous encounter with Islamic foreigners, who took over the nation from 1541-1699. Orban doesn't want to see something like that happen again.

In his own words, "I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see. That is a historical experience for us."

He also noted that, "We shouldn't forget that the people who are coming here grew up in a different religion and represent a completely different culture. Most are not Christian, but Muslim. That is an important question, because Europe and European culture have Christian roots."

Lest this strike you as utterly bigoted, how would a Muslim country like Saudi Arabia respond to the arrival of tens of thousands of Christian refugees who not only wanted to enjoy government benefits but also had no desire to assimilate into Saudi, Islamic culture? Do they have no right to decline such refugees?

And, given the fact that Muhammad is now the number one boy's name in countries like England and Wales, Orban's concerns can be understood. Not surprisingly, he has declared Christianity to be "Europe's last hope," a striking statement for a man who was once an atheist.

On a more pragmatic level, "His policies have been widely credited for turning Hungary's economy around following the 2008 global market crash."

But for Nick Robins-Early, writing one day before the elections in the Huffington Post, things looked very different. A headline announced, "Hungary's Strange And Vicious Election Brings Fears For The Future." Indeed, "As Viktor Orban looks set for a third consecutive term in power, there is widespread concern about hateful rhetoric and threats to rule of law."

The article continues: "Orban's leadership can seem like a far-right fever dream in which identity politics and fear of outsiders trumps everything else."

Even George Soros is portrayed as a victim: "Last year, the government also began a billboard campaign that targeted the 86-year-old American billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations fund a range of liberal-minded projects and organizations in Eastern Europe.

"Soros, a Hungarian Jew, emigrated to the United States after World War II. A leading Jewish organization in Hungary asked Orban to halt the campaign, saying it was a proxy for anti-Semitism  something that the government denies."

So, a radical, far-right, anti-Semitic government is using identity politics to rob needy refugees of a bright and hopeful future. How utterly vicious and cruel. In the words of Soros, Prime Minister Orban is "the leader of a mafia state."

Not only so, but, "Under the guise of legal reform, Orban has undermined Hungary's judiciary and captured all independent state institutions, said Kim-Lane Scheppele, a professor of political science at Princeton University who previously worked at Hungary's constitutional court."

Worse still, Orban controls the media as well: "Today, Orban and his allies control much of how Hungarians get their news. When dealing with dissenting voices, Orban and his spokesman have also aggressively gone after the media at home and abroad."

Others interviewed by the Huffpost supported these serious claims. Shades of 1984!

Pastor Nemeth gives us a healthier perspective of the reality on the ground: "If Orban and his party come out victorious, then, with strong government-support, the battle will continue not only against the Islamisation of our continent, but also against the hatred of Christianity, and against anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in Europe." (For the record, Nemeth is a staunch supporter of Israel and the Jewish people.)

He adds, "In the past three years, Viktor Orban has boldly stood up for the traditional values of Europe and the protection of all communities which are based on the Judeo-Christian revelation. He has also spoken up on multiple occasions for the need to revitalise these communities."

Interestingly, "He was the only European political leader who made positive comments about Donald Trump during the American presidential election campaign."

Is it any surprise, then, that Orban's policies have drawn such ire from the left?

Thankfully, for the good of Hungary, it is the people of that nation, not the liberal Western media, who have the final vote.

On Sunday, they made their sentiments clear.
Islamic militants kill 6 Christians in Congo, 470 families flee violence: report

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Six Christians, including a 9-year-old child, were reportedly killed in a recent attack in a predominantly Christian village in the northeast Democratic Republic of Congo.

Open Doors USA, a Christian persecution watchdog nonprofit active in 60 countries, reports that nearly 500 families fled from their homes when rebel forces attacked the largely Christian village of Kalau near the city of Beni in DRCs North Kivu province.

The attack reportedly lasted about four hours and is believed to have been perpetrated by the Allied Democratic Forces, a militant group active in the North Kivu province of the DRC and Uganda.

Launched in the mid-1990s by Ugandan Muslim rebels forced out of Uganda, the ADF has become the conflict-stricken DRCs most active and violent rebel group over the past two years.

Sources with knowledge of the attack in Kalau told the charity that the attackers pretended to be security agents when they arrived in the village.

The imposters reached the village center before there was any suspicion that they werent who they said they were. By that point, the rebels began firing their weapons at the villagers. Among those killed in the attack are the 9-year-old child and at least three women.

A nurse in the Nyankunde hospital in Beni told Open Doors by phone that the attackers then proceeded toward the house of the village head, the Open Doors report states. When they shot dead the guard dogs, the gunfire sent people running. Two villagers attempting to flee were killed.

Pastor Gilbert Kambale, who operates a civil society organization based in Beni, told Open Doors that 470 Congo families fled to Beni following the incident.

Many of the families were sheltered by host families or were given refuge inside of schools in Benis Beu Commune.

The Beni area is no stranger to violence caused by the ADF as hundreds of civilians have been killed in the area over the past five years.

According to Open Doors, ADF is believed to have killed at least 700 civilians and more than 20 United Nations peacekeepers

In August 2016, ADF was blamed for carrying out what is known as the Beni massacre, where at least 64 were hacked to death.

Open Doors expects that more violence is likely to come in the future.

We have heard the rebels saying they worked for long in the domains of kidnapping and killings, but now they want to move to the stage of occupying the territory, a local community leader told Open Doors. They want to occupy the area they claim as theirs.

The North Kivu province is also in the midst of an eight-month Ebola outbreak. ADF forces are blamed for hampering Ebola relief efforts and attacks against Ebola treatment centers. At least one clinic was burned down.

According to Eleanor Beevor from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, ADF is thought to be responsible for the killings of at least 249 people in 2018.

According to the Congo Research Group at New York University, an ADF member posted at least 35 videos on private social media channels that either mentioned or showed militant attacks, contained Quranic readings, and images of indoctrination and propaganda messages, between 2016 and 2017.

Conflict has plagued Africa's second largest nation for decades. According to the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision, at least 2.1 million people in DRC were newly displaced in 2017 and 2018. With about 4.5 million displaced, DRC has the highest number of internally displaced people in Africa.
Muslim prisoner supported by Trump evangelical adviser Johnnie Moore released from prison

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An 82-year-old Muslim prisoner of conscience in Pakistan who was supported by Trump evangelical adviser Johnnie Moore has been freed after three years imprisonment for blasphemy.

Ahmadiyya Muslim Abdul Shakoor was released from prison Monday after a high court in Punjab reduced his eight-year sentence for the alleged crime of selling commentary on his Ahmadiyya religious beliefs.

As adherents to a minority sect of Islam that promotes peace and tolerance, Ahmadis face severe persecution in Pakistan, which is about 97 percent Sunni Muslim. Pakistan's constitution even declares Ahmadis to be non-Muslims and the countrys penal code prevents Ahmadis from claiming that they are Muslims.

Shakoor, the Indian-born manager of a bookshop and optician store in the Punjab province, was arrested on Dec. 5, 2015, after officials from the Punjab police and Pakistans Elite Force raided Shakoors bookshop. He was taken along with the stores assistant, Mazhar Abbas. He was accused of selling Ahmadiyya commentary on the Quran.

At Shakoors trial, officers who raided the bookstore were the only witnesses. Prosecutors alleged that a letter from the Ahmadiyya director of public affairs was sent to Shakoor days earlier telling him that selling Ahmadiyya literature had been banned.

According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Ahmadiyya leaders have said that the prosecution fabricated the letter to support their argument in Shakoors case. Ahmadiyya leaders even noted that the ban on literature in question in the case didnt even go into effect until Jan. 20, 2016, after the trial had concluded.

Throughout, Shakoor maintained that he didnt distribute Ahmaddiya literature but admitted to possessing the literature. However, possession of Ahmadiyya literature is not a crime in Pakistan.

Last year, USCIRF Commissioner Johnnie Moore, an evangelical communications executive who has long advocated for persecuted believers overseas, adopted Shakoor as part of USCIRFs Religious Prisoners of Conscience Project.

The project was launched in 2017 to fulfill a congressional requirement mandated by the Frank Wolf International Religious Freedom Act of 2016 for USCIRF to list names of prisoners of conscience. Through the project, each USCIRF commissioner adopts a prisoner of conscience that they personally advocate for.

Abdul Shakoors release comes as welcome news to those of us who have been engaging with Pakistans government and civil society on issues related to religious freedom and peaceful coexistence between religious communities, Moore said in a statement. We hope and pray this once again becomes the trend in Pakistani society, and no longer the exception.

As Moore noted, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan declared last month at the World Government Summit in Dubai that he has a desire to reform Pakistan.

"He remembered a more pluralistic Pakistan of his youth, and he professed his desire to have a society that protected humanity, embraced the rule of law, and saw knowledge as a sacred duty, Moore stressed.

Recalling the golden age of Medina, he said that these values are not at enmity with a religious and mainly Islamic society. As I tweeted then, one of the best ways he can prove his reform agenda is real  taking the country back to the era he fondly describes is ... Promote Tolerance, Embrace Religious Freedom, and Guard Minorities.

Shakoors release comes just days after the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed condemned Pakistans treatment of Ahmadis.

Ahmadis have been subject to systematic persecution by means of State-sanctioned discrimination and other repressive measures, including the closing of their businesses, schools and places of worship and the imprisonment of those who violate the restrictive laws imposed on the community, Shaheed wrote in a report submitted earlier this month.

Pakistan is also notorious as being one of the worst nations in the world when it comes to the persecution of Christians.

According to Open Doors USAs 2019 World Watch List, Pakistan ranks as the fifth-worst nation in the world for Christian persecution.

Last month, an enraged Muslim mob reportedly attacked over 200 Christian families after four women were falsely accused of blasphemy.

Earlier this year, the Pakistan Supreme Court upheld its decision to acquit Christian mother Asia Bibi, who spent nearly a decade in prison and was sentenced to death after she was accused of blasphemy by Muslim co-workers.
Parents of autistic child threatened with removal of custody after rejecting puberty blockers

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The parents of an autistic teen in England say they were threatened that their son would be removed from their custody following their objections about giving him puberty blockers.

According to the Daily Mail Saturday, the parents of the teen, who spoke to the outlet on condition of anonymity, feared the potential side-effects of the drugs, and stopped him from going to a gender clinic as they suspected his sudden decision to pursue gender transition was due to his autism.

Doctors at the National Health Service clinic had recommended he take puberty blockers to suppress his puberty after he declared that he was female.

When the teenager told the school he had been forbidden from obtaining the drugs, a teacher told his parents that they should find alternative accommodation for their son or else he would be put into temporary foster care, the Mail reported.

The school reported the couple to child services for being "emotionally abusive" to their son by not supporting his wish to go forward with these treatments. The local authorities placed him one month later "in a child protection after social workers said he was likely to suffer 'significant harm' under his parents' care."

The mother recounted to the Mail the pain it caused their family.

"Im absolutely devastated. When I saw the report that social services wrote about us and saw the words 'emotional abuse,' I just broke down," she said.

"All we were doing was trying to get him to pause and think about his actions. My biggest worry as a mum is my child gets pushed down this route, becomes a woman, goes through the surgery, then gets to 25 and says, 'Ive made a mistake.

The teen boy was struggling to cope with school pressures starting in 2015 as a result of Asperger's and autism. He began self-harming and his parents asked his doctor to refer him to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

Although he had never said so before, during an appointment with a child psychotherapist the boy announced he believed he was female. His parents thought the idea of him being the opposite sex may have been an autistic obsession and ultimately agreed for him to be referred on to the Leeds branch of the Tavistock Clinic  the only NHS service for gender-confused youth under the age of 18. But the professionals there never adequately understood their son's autism, the parents maintained.

The couple removed the boy from Tavistock in 2017, when he was about to turn 15, upon seeing a report recommending puberty blockers for him. They had read about the risks of these hormone suppressants and their effects on brain development are were alarmed.

It was six months later when the school reported them to authorities.

"The school and social workers took what our child said as gospel. But considering he has autism, his perception of social scenarios is seen through an autism lens," the boy's mother said.

"I cannot bear the thought of other families going through what weve been through. It has been horrendous."

The family is now back together.

The ordeal is but the latest episode to appear in the headlines as courts and Western government bodies increasingly rule in favor of transgender medicalization.

As The Christian Post reported earlier this month, a trans-identifying 14-year-old girl was to be injected with testosterone despite her father's objections, a judge on the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled.

The father's refusal to comply, the judge said, was tantamount to "family violence."

In the United States, in February of 2018, Judge Sylvia Hendon in Hamilton County, Ohio, ruled that a 17-year-old should be removed from the custody of her parents due to their objections to transgender medicine.
VP Pence gets ovation at Hispanic evangelical summit; new 'Life Manifesto' unveiled

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Vice President Mike Pence gave a closed-door address and received a standing ovation last Thursday before a gathering of the largest Hispanic evangelical coalition in the United States.

Over 300 faith leaders gathered for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conferences annual Justice Summit hosted at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Capping off the event were remarks by the 59-year-old vice president.

According to a press release, Pence received a prolonged standing ovation. In his remarks, Pence reportedly declared that once the southern border is secure, the Trump Administration is going to fix this broken immigration system.

NHCLC has over 40,000 member congregations and is headed by California megachurch pastor Samuel Rodriguez, an evangelical born to Puerto Rican parents.

Rodriguez was one of a few religious leaders who prayed at Trumps inauguration in January 2017. He has also attended dinners hosted by the Trump White House, including last years state-like dinner for evangelical leaders and their wives.

Rodriguez, however, has also voiced concern on different occasions with some of the administration's immigration policies, including the historically low limit placed on refugee resettlement into the United States.

We are very grateful to Vice President Pence for joining us and honoring all Hispanic Americans and Americans of faith by doing so, Rodriguez said in a statement.

Pences speech comes as the Trump administration has been called the most anti-Latino administration in US history by critics. However, others have argued that Hispanics in the United States have benefited from Trumps policies.

The summit also saw the unveiling of the NHCLCs new Life Manifesto.

The document is essentially a declaration on how to apply biblical justice to issues of immigration reform, racial reconciliation, education equality and sanctity of life.

Regardless of ethnicity or background, when you gather that many men and women of God all in one space, you should expect God to move, and thats exactly what happened, Rodriguez, an Assemblies of God pastor, said. We devoted ourselves and our ministries to addressing, seriously, issues of life, racial reconciliation and immigration reform.

Rodriguez added that those social issues are ones that the Hispanic-American pastors present at the conference are uniquely positioned to bind up the wounds of this country.

The manifesto reads:

1. We believe and affirm that God created men and women in his image and that every human being, without exception, bears the imprint of God, the imago Dei. (Genesis 1: 26-28) 2. We believe in the sanctity and dignity of every human life from conception to natural death. 3. We commit to speaking up for those who cant speak for themselves (Proverbs 31:8), including unborn children, their mothers, and all vulnerable people whose lives are at risk from violence, preventable disease and anti-life public policy such as abortion and euthanasia. 4. We stand in support of women facing unexpected pregnancies with word and deed at the local and national levels, through our churches and in our public policy. We affirm the bipartisan efforts to provide paid family leave so that pregnant mothers can choose life for their babies and so that parents and children will have the time necessary for family flourishing as family is the foundation of society. 5. We affirm that as to all these things, through the love of the Father, in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will not grow weary in well doing (Galatians 6:9)

Other speakers at the summit included Steve Strang, the founder of Charisma Media; Rod Parsley, the senior pastor of World Harvest Church in Canal Winchester Ohio, Kelly Rosati, the CEO of KMR Consulting on Child Advocacy and Adoption; Maryland Bishop Harry Jackson, the Presiding Bishop of the International Communion of Evangelical Churches; and Alfonso Aguilar, who directs the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles at the Alliance Defending Freedom.

The event also included Daniel Garza, a former George W. Bush administration official who launched Libre Initiative, an organization that tries to convince the Hispanic community in the U.S. to support principles of limited government and rule of law.

NHCLC Executive Vice President Rev. Tony Suarez, who emceed the event, said he believes the manifesto could be an inflection point for the church.

When leaders like Bishop Harry Jackson admonishes the church to lead the way in racial reconciliation, you cant help but be galvanized and inspired by his unique authority on the topic, Suarez said in a statement.

When Kelly Rosati tells you that if just one-third of American churches adopted a child, there would be no more orphans, you realize all over again how we are the solution the country needs. Thats what the Justice Summit and the manifesto is all about. Its better than social justice. Its biblical justice.
White evangelical support for Trump drops 9 points; largest of any surveyed religious group

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White evangelical Protestant support for President Donald Trump has declined by 9 points since 2017, the largest of any surveyed racial religious demographic, while nonwhite Catholics have doubled their support for the president.

In February 2017, white evangelicals gave President Trump a 78 percent approval rating. However, by last month, this had decreased to 69 percent, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center of multiple surveys that was published Monday.

This 9 percent decline represents the largest drop in support of any of the religious groups that Pew surveyed for their report, with the second largest being among white Catholics, which went from 52 percent in 2017 to 44 percent in 2019.

Meanwhile, while overall Catholic support for the president remained at 36 percent during the same time period, nonwhite Catholic approval doubled from 13 percent in February 2017 to 26 percent in February 2019.

Pew noted in its analysis that while Trump has long had strong support among self-identified evangelicals, this support has not been without some reservation.

An August 2018 survey found that roughly half of white evangelicals do not think that Trump has set a high moral standard for the presidency since taking office, explained Pew.

Some prominent evangelical leaders, such as Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, have expressed ambivalence about Trump and concern about some of his policies. Others, such as Beth Moore, founder of Living Proof Ministries, openly oppose the president.

Pew also found that the lowest levels of support for Trump came from religiously unaffiliated Americans, who gave the president a 24 percent approval in February 2017 and 20 percent approval in February 2019.

Religiously unaffiliated Americans consistently express among the lowest levels of approval of Trumps performance, ranging from 17% to 27% across the polls the Center has conducted since the president assumed office, added Pew.

The Pew analysis comes amid recent findings indicating that a plurality of white evangelicals disapproved of Trump signing Bibles while visiting victims of the tornadoes in Alabama.

According to a Morning Consult poll conducted last week whose findings were reported on Monday, 45 percent of white evangelical respondents said that it was inappropriate for the president to sign the Bibles, versus 35 percent who said it was appropriate.

Based upon a survey conducted Mar.12-15 with a sample space of 2,201 adults and a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent, the Morning Consult survey also found that 65 percent of all Christian respondents found it inappropriate, while 24 percent considered it appropriate.
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Im going out on a limb. Im about to make a bold prediction. Contrary to the prognostications of Beto ORourke, the world will not end in 12 years. At least not by climate change. There. I said it.

Now, its possible that the Lord will choose to return in 12 years. But thats another story.

In the age of climate change hysteria, the end-of-the-world clock is already ticking. And its ticking fast.

The scientists are unanimous on this. We have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis, ORourke said. Can we make it? I don't know. It's up to every one of us. Do you want to make it?

Twelve years and counting to save the planet. Otherwise, were doomed.

Now, to make full disclosure, I am the opposite of a climate change expert.

Ive never read a whole book on the subject. Ive read only a handful of relevant articles. And to my knowledge, Ive only had one expert on my radio show who addressed the issue (and thats in more than 10 years of daily talk radio).

But I know enough to recognize hyperbole. I know enough to recognize appeals to mass hysteria. And this is certainly one of them.

I remember seeing a striking TV ad during one of Bill Clintons presidential campaigns. There was an elderly couple whose house burned down because the fire department arrived too late.

Why? It was because of the evil policies the Republicans would introduce if elected. The fire department and the police would be understaffed. The cutbacks would be deadly. Literally.

If Bill Clinton was not elected president, old people would be burning to death.

Now its even worse. The whole world will be destroyed if we dont act quickly. And that means we must elect Beto ORourke for president. He will save the planet.

To quote him again, science has made clear that we should do nothing less than marshal every resource in the country to meet that challenge, to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, to get to net zero emissions, which means not only must we emit less greenhouse gasses, we must plant things that absorb greenhouse gasses and carbon and invest in the technology to allow us to claim some that are in the air now.

And we have 12 years to do it. Or else.

The scary thing is not that this new presidential candidate believes this timetable to be true.

Its that todays intellectual environment is such that he can say these things without being laughed to scorn. Worse still, he believes that this kind of rhetoric will help his campaign rather than hurt it. And he might well be right.

In other words, it isnt just a radical leftist like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who suggested that it may not be ethical to have children, given the difficulties that climate change will likely cause in the years to come. (To quote her directly, Theres scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult. And it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?)

Rather, as a recent headline announced, the New Birthstrike Movement Has Women Saying No to Kids Because of Climate Change.

Yes, A number of women in recent years have found a way to reduce the average carbon footprint just by doing nothing.

The research suggests not having kids is the most impactful thing we can do to decrease our carbon footprint, more and more women have begun questioning whether or not they should have children at all.

So, we save the human race by not having children. Brilliant.

This is even more shortsighted than Chinas one-child per-family policy.

Yet many believe that the end of the world is near  again, not based on biblical prophecy but based on a climate change apocalypse. And the fear-based rhetoric of Ocasio-Cortez and ORourke will only fuel the fires into a burning frenzy.

And can you imagine what would happen if Nancy Pelosi had her way and the voting age was dropped to 16?

I freely admit that Donald Trump has consistently used fear-based rhetoric in his presidential campaigning and presidential tenure. (In fact, politicians commonly do so on all sides of the aisle.)

And I acknowledge that there are environmental issues that deserve attention. The Book of Revelation even addresses those who destroy the earth (Rev 11:18).

But this over-the-top, apocalyptic, climate change rhetoric deserves a skeptical response. The question is: Will it get the skeptical, critical response it deserves, or will the hysteria reach a fever pitch?

ORourke is betting on the latter.

I sure hope hes wrong.

Thats because right now, climate change hysteria is far more dangerous than climate change itself.
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On March 4, I flew to Boston to testify at the Massachusetts capital hearing regarding the proposed bills H.140/S.70, which if passed, would ban conversion therapy.

My reasons for going were very personal and close to my heart. I feel strongly that the ban on conversion therapy for minors would greatly hinder much needed holistic care that health-care professionals can offer to children who question their sexual identity and orientation.

Many states desire to ban conversion therapy because it has been labeled harmful. And in fact, some of the examples of conversion therapy described in the hearings included such harmful practices as electric shock therapy, exposure to pornography, forced separation from loved ones, and extreme public shaming. However, the greater health-care community, including those with faith-based practices, already considers these methods barbaric and unethical. Blasted by the media, this kind of conversion therapy has become a straw man, erected with the intent of advocating one sided and biased counseling methods that support an ideology that sexuality is completely fixed.

But do not be misinformed. The proposed legislation in Massachusetts (and similar bills being proposed elsewhere) is about much, much more than protecting children from shock therapy and other ill-favored practices. These bills define conversion therapy in such a way as to prohibit any health-care professional from therapeutically questioning a minors sexual orientation or desire to transition gender. Under this law, a health-care professional could have their license suspended for doing anything other than affirming a minors feelings of same-sex attraction or perceived gender identity. Furthermore, if passed, these laws would threaten parental rights. If a childs physician prescribes medications, such as non FDA approved hormone blockers, or further suggests surgery to transition a minor, concerned parents could lose their parental rights to do what they think is ultimately in the best interest of their child. Instead, the state would decide what is best under this bill.

Here is a summary of what I shared and my concerns regarding this growing trend.

My name is Liz Flaherty. I am 40 years old, and I was born into a Christian family.

I was sexually abused at the age of six by a trusted older family friend, a fact that I hid from my parents out of fear and shame. Keeping this secret left me feeling tormented, rejected, and alone. I developed very low self-esteem, which was reinforced by massive amounts of bullying and rejection I endured by my male peers growing up.

I hated myself. I believed I was abnormal. I lived a life of shame.

No matter how hard I tried to intimately relate and connect with men, I found that those relationships left me feeling shallow, compared to the depth of intimacy and connection I felt with women.

Because of these feelings, I CAME OUT my senior year of high school as a lesbian, much to the confusion of my parents. Even in their sadness, however, they did not reject me, and I was greatly supported by my highly liberal community in our small town in northern California.

Coinciding with my sexual liberation, in my early twenties, tragedy struck our home, and I lost both my parents in a three-year time period to cancer. I became the legal guardian of my brother, who was 12 years old at the time.

Soon after our loss, I began seeking help for my overwhelming grief, and I went to a faith-based therapist and then later a ministry that offered group therapy for those questioning their sexuality. There I began to unpack many of my life traumas for the first time. I discovered that Id emotionally put up barriers to men from a very early age, in order to protect myself.

My attractions to women began in a legitimate wayfrom a desire to be safe, to be loved, and to be accepted but these needs had become sexualized in order to find the security for which I longed. During this process, I allowed myself to question this place of self-protection, because I wanted every part of my heart to be alive. I wish I had been brave and told my parents about the abuse. I wish I had seen a faith-based therapist or had access to this ministry group as a minor. It would have saved years of pain.

My counselor didnt promise she could make me straight or take away my deep longings to be with a woman. However, she did assist me through talk therapy, in facing my traumas, which included her directly questioning my same-sex attractions. This therapy, in turn, began to dismantle the barricades Id created, and my drive for sexual intimacy with women shifted because of the freedom I found.

Today, Im part of a network called The Changed Movement, a faith-based network of individuals (and ministries) from around the world who have come together to share our stories of change in sexual orientation and gender identity. We desire to provide support and hope for those who want to question their sexuality and change their lives.

I was one of five members from the Changed Movement group who traveled to Boston for the hearing because we greatly care about the options LGBTQ youth have when questioning their sexuality as we did. Not everyone who experiences same-sex attraction or has a desire to transition gender has been sexually abused or neglected; however, the effects of trauma, when experienced, need to be addressed and explored. A health-care provider who cannot by law question the minors feelings of attraction, lest he or she be deemed non affirming, would be restricted in his or her ability to treat the whole child.

Sharing my testimony at the Boston hearing was the first time that I have shared publically about my sexual abuse as a child. Up until this point, I had chosen not to share for various reasons, one being that I didnt want to create a greater barrier between the church and the LBGTQ community. I wanted to prevent reinforcing any stereotype that LGBTQ people are somehow sexual perverts or other nonsense. Those who identify as gay are no more likely to sexually abuse a child as those who are not. However, since this bill directly affects the therapy and counseling support that minors will be allowed to access, I chose to disclose this part of my story.

As difficult as it was to open my heart to a group of strangers and share about my abuse, the response by opposing senators was even more disheartening. After a fellow panelist and I shared similar stories, we were met with great hostility from one particular state senator. Offended and disgusted, he considered us to be flippant in sharing about our sexual abuse, particularly in light of how our experiences impacted our journey to wholeness. Whats more, he seemed unwilling to acknowledge that sexual abuse can cause great confusion in an adolescents sexual development. But statistics suggest many children are facing unreported sexual abuse, as was in my case.

According to the National Childrens Alliance, one in ten children will be sexually abused before the age of eighteen. Over sixty percent will not report it to an adult.

Sexual abuse absolutely colored my lens as a child. None of us who testified at the hearing desire to limit therapy options and support for LGBTQ youth who seek affirmation for their feelings and expression of their sexual orientation. We do take issue, however, with laws that limit health-care professionals abilities to holistically help minors. Nor can we support legislation that would take away a parents right to seek care for their questioning youth based on their core values.

Those of us who have experienced change will no longer allow intimidation to silence us. There are a growing number of us who are testifying to the transformational power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our voices will be heard. Our stories matter.

To read additional stories regarding the Changed Movement please click here: The Changed Movement

Originally posted at lizgflaherty.com
Iran's Furtive Occupation of Iraq's Assyrian Communities

Will the Middle East's shattered Christian villages, towns and cities somehow retain their religious and cultural heritage -- which dates back to the first century?

No one knows for sure, but due to Iranian aspirations, the answer is far from encouraging.

In November 2014, I visited the devastated survivors of Islamic State's genocide who were sheltering in Erbil, Kurdistan (Iraq). I heard personal accounts of the horrifying night -- just three months before -- when ISIS surged into neighborhoods, forced their way into houses, confiscated cash and jewelry, stripped residents of passports, deeds, even bottled water and forced them out of town.

Those who resisted were shot; some women and girls were raped and kidnapped. Thousands of Christians walked for miles. Those who survived the ordeal found their way to Erbil.

That's where I caught up with them. When I arrived, countless evacuees languished in abandoned buildings, tent cities and vacant, unheated rooms in churches and schools where they were barely surviving.

Some of them cherished hopes of starting over in distant lands, far removed from the fears of violence that haunted Iraq. Others yearned to return to their homes and churches in their ancestral Christian heartland.

But as summer turned to autumn and the night wind blew cold, it became increasingly clear that whatever hopes those heartsick escapees cherished, their dreams of returning to their ISIS-occupied homes anytime soon had crumbled into dust.

In November 2016, two years after my visit to Iraq, I video-interviewed Fr. Benham Benoka, a Syriac Catholic priest from the Christian town of Bartella. By then, Bartella had been liberated from ISIS, but Benham remained in Erbil.

"Bartella is liberated, but not free," he told me.

Along with a handful of other displaced residents, he had recently managed to reenter Bartella, escorted by Iraqi soldiers. He explained that large portions of the town were beyond repair. ISIS had looted private residences, then demolished them with explosives. They had left building after building booby-trapped. Roadways were rife with IEDs.

"ISIS has excellent technology," Benoka told me. "They mined everything. Even Bibles." During his visit, he made his way to St. George Assyrian Church, his spiritual home and that of a sizeable portion of Bartella's Christian community.

ISIS had all but destroyed St. George's interior. Bibles and New Testaments from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries were ripped up, burned or otherwise desecrated. Perhaps most disturbing was a noose, hanging ominously in the church's courtyard, just inside the entryway. It bore mute witness to the demise of a Christian welcome center that had been transformed into an Islamist execution site.

I asked Benoka how he'd felt when he entered Bartella a few days before. He paused. "I felt insecure," he finally replied. "I was so disappointed. I kept thinking, What can we do?" Clearly discouraged, he shook his head again and concluded, "And who will help us?"

Benoka has since returned to Bartella. But, sadly, his concerns about his hometown's future have proved to be well-founded. One of his primary worries was about security for returning Christians. Today, although ISIS is no longer present, another formidable armed force occupies Bartella and the surrounding "liberated" communities. And those armed men are no friends of Christians.

On February 18, Asia News reported, "There is no peace for Christians in northern Iraq... The epicenter of this new chapter of anti-Christian persecution is Bartella, increasingly draped with banners depicting the militia battles against ISIS as well as saints and sacred figures of the Shia tradition..."

The major Christian towns of Qaraqosh, Bartella and Karamles are now supposedly under the control of the Iraqi army, but the military force that is actually occupying them, locally called Shabak, is an Iran-funded Shia militia. In fact, it is widely rumored that it is under the command of Iran's Quds extraterritorial force and its infamous general, Qasem Soleimani.

The tentacles of the Iranian ayatollahs' acolytes are coiled around the Christian communities in Iraq's Nineveh Plains and well beyond, and they are tightening their grip. Flags bearing Shia religious slogans and photos of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei flutter and sway in plain view.

A British priest, Fr. Benedict Kiely -- founder of Nasarean.org, a charity assisting persecuted Christians -- recently returned from Bartella. I asked him about the militia that the Christian community faces there.

"They are certainly intimidating Christians. The most notorious incident was a shooting at St. George's Church in Bartella before Christmas. In that case, a pistol was put in the face of the pastor, Benoka. He has said that the Shabak Shia militia are 'the new ISIS,' although thankfully, there's been no killing yet."

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's expansive agenda couldn't be clearer. And the IRGC is actively pursuing it -- not only in Iraq, but also in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tirelessly warned the world about Iran's global ambitions and nuclear intentions.

Meanwhile, the future of Iraq's Christian communities hangs precariously in the balance. In reality, by most accounts, the once-bright hope of their continuing presence in the Middle East grows dimmer every day.

As Benoka aptly asked, "Who will help us?"

When it comes to security, silence is the answer.
Christchurch terror attack: 5 things you need to know

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Gunmen struck two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday, leaving 49 dead and 48 with serious injuries in attacks that were likely motivated by anti-immigrant animus.

The acts of violence were committed as worshipers gathered for prayers around lunchtime at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Mosque in Central Christchurch, the largest city on New Zealands South Island.

Prime Minister Jacinda Arder described the mass shootings as a terrorist attack and one of the Pacific nation's "darkest days."

Here's a list of five important things you need to know about Fridays attacks.

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'Make Families Great Again': Hungary seeing more babies, fewer abortions through pro-family policies

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White House officials, Republican members of Congress and evangelical leaders gathered Thursday for Making Families Great Again, a conference on family policy hosted by the Hungarian Embassy at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Led by President Viktor Orbans Fidesz Party, Hungary has become a poster child for passing nationalist pro-family policies over the last several years.

With nearly a decade-worth of data, Hungarian officials claimed Thursday that policies instituted over the last several decades that have incentivized marriage and childbirth have helped boost marriage and birth rates in Hungary at a time many countries struggle with those issues.

I was very proud to be a minister here and hearing from our American friends how much they admired the Hungarian family policies, Katalin Novak, the Hungarian minister of state for family, youth and international affairs who gave a keynote address at the event, told The Christian Post in an interview.

They say that Hungary can be a role model for them in this issue. They said that we can show an example to the rest of the world for pro-family issues.

Hungarys birth rate fell below replacement level decades ago and the nation has struggled to repopulate. Unlike some of its European counterparts that have relied on immigration to boost population totals, the Orban government has made clear that it does not view mass immigration as the answer.

Rather, the administration believes the answer is to ensure that Hungarian citizens have all the incentives they need to build large and happy families.

Today, the Hungarian government spends nearly 5 percent of its GDP towards incentives for those in the predominantly-Christian nation to get married and have children  lots of them.

Through policies, subsidies and extensive tax reductions enacted since Orban regained power in 2010, some parents are eligible to receive the equivalent a grant of about $36,000 to help pay a home mortgage, and the equivalent of about $9,000 from the government toward a seven-seater vehicle if they have the required number of children.

The list of incentives and benefits for parents in Hungary is quite extensive and includes things like a state-financed daycare system, three years of paid parental leave, free kindergarten, subsidized vacations, assistance paying off student loans, vacation benefits and exemption from income tax for mothers with four or more children.

According to Novak, Hungary has seen positive results spanning from the time Orban retook control of the government in 2010.

From 2010 to 2018, she says, marriage rates in Hungary have increased by 43 percent (the highest number in 20 years), divorce rates have decreased by 22.5 percent, fertility has increased by 21 percent (highest in 20 years) and abortion has decreased by 33.5 percent.

This has happened as birth rates continue to slip in countries across the developed world, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe.

These numbers and figures, they speak for themselves, Novak assured. [C]ompare it to the socialist trends, the left-liberal government.

Participants in the conference included White House director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp, President Trumps special assistant on domestic policy Kathryn Talento and Health and Human Services senior policy advisor Valerie Huber.

The event also included Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., Andy Harris, R-Md., Paul Gosar, R-Ariz and Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb.

Others included Family Research Council President and USCIRF commissioner Tony Perkins, former White House advisor Sebastian Gorka, American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp and as Emilie Kao, the director of the Heritage Foundation's DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society.

We are working closely with the U.S. administration on family issues. They would also like to get some detail on our pro-family policies and the measures that we have introduced in the last nine years, Novak, who is also the vice president of the Fidesz Party explained.

We can already see in the new budget actually just introduced recently in the U.S. that it already has some important elements regarding pro-family measures. There are already important steps taken and we can see in President Trumps speeches as well, he thinks it is very important that pro-family and pro-life values should be represented.

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Bewildered by Brexit? Church of England opens its doors for prayer

Brexit has become better known for dividing the nation rather than unifying it, but in an effort to change that, churches are being encouraged to get people from across the political spectrum talking - and praying - about the future of their communities and the nation.

The Church of England is inviting communities to come to informal cafe-style meetings to discuss Brexit on the weekend of March 30 - which is supposed to mark the start of the UK's new journey out of the European Union.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have got behind the meetings, which are being accompanied by new resources inviting people to 'get together and chat over a cup of tea and pray for our country and our future'.

The resources include some questions that can be used as discussion starters, such as whether people have found it possible to 'disagree well' with friends and family over Brexit or what things they think Brits have in common that can be built upon for a better future as a community and as a nation.

In addition to discussion starters, the resource packs include Bible passages, specially written prayers, and some tips for hosting open discussions that encompass a wide range of viewpoints.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said that Brexit was an opportunity for the Church to act with integrity and unite together in prayer for the nation.

'As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to demonstrate that love for God and for each other, along with compassion, solidarity and care for the poorest, are our defining values,' he said.

'These values have been the bedrock of our national life for many centuries. They are not simply our history: they are also our best hope for the future.

'For this reason, a century from now the Church will be remembered for how it responded at this crucial moment in the life of our nation and country. Will we be those who worked to defuse tension and hostility? Will we be those who called for civility and respect in how we speak about, and treat, each other?

'Will we be those who never stopped praying with urgency and hope for our country, our communities and our political leaders  and for a way forward that allows every person, family and community to flourish?'

'This is an opportunity for the Church of England to join together in prayer for God's kingdom to come, and for the good of all in society. I hope that each of us will take hold of these resources to help us pray for our country at this critical time.'

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu drew inspiration from the words of the Apostle Paul as he encouraged the Church to pray without ceasing.

'St Paul advises and urges Timothy to 'offer petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for everyone, for sovereigns, and for all in high office so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life, free to practice our religion with dignity,' he said.

'Such prayer is right, and approved by God our Saviour, whose will it is that all should find salvation and come to know the truth...' (1 Timothy 2:2 ff). Beloved in Christ, let us also pray without ceasing.'

The resources can be downloaded from churchofengland.org/together
New Open Doors report sheds light on gender-specific persecution

Christians today remain one of the most persecuted religious groups in the world with more than 200 million believers facing 'high levels of persecution' by authoritarian governments or followers of other religions - and simply because they identify as followers of Jesus Christ. But persecution takes on many forms and is not experienced by everyone in the same way.

As part of a new research approach, Open Doors International began tracking differences in how Christian men and women experience persecution. Their findings, which are based on data collected from dozens of countries, reveal that persecution is not gender-blind but rather gender-specific, with different "pressure points" being applied to men and women in order to increase the effectiveness.

Men, who are typically the main breadwinners for the family in countries where persecution is common, are more prone to experience economic pressure that threatens the family's livelihood, while women, whose social status is often measured by their perceived sexual purity, are more likely to face sexual harassment or rape as a form of persecution.

"For women, rape and sexual violence are connected to honour and used intentionally to dishonor Christian women and their community," the report states.

"Women will bring shame upon their families if they fail to uphold high norms surrounding their sexuality. Thus if a woman converts to Christianity, she is much more prone to sexual violence. Rape is often used as a deliberate form of punishment in reaction to conversion to Christianity."

But behind the numbers and statistics are painful personal stories, such as that of Esther who was taken captive by Boko Haram in Nigeria at the age of 17 along with other girls.

It is difficult for families in honour-shame cultures to deal with the loss of the sexual purity of their daughters and the trauma the girls have experienced, even if they are among the few "lucky" ones who have been able to flee or be released.

"The militants did everything they could to make the Christian girls renounce their faith," the report shares.

"A few of the men wanted to marry Esther. Because she would not give in to their demands to renounce her faith and marry, Esther was raped continually as punishment and eventually impregnated by one of the many men who violated her."

Helene Fisher, Open Door's global gender persecution specialist presented the new report for the first time at an event hosted jointly with the World Evangelical Alliance as part of the United Nation's annual Commission on the Status of Women. Held at the Salvation Army's International Social Justice Commission Headquarters in New York, the event focused on the intersection of religious persecution and gender-inequality.

"Women's bodies are being weaponized and used against their communities in order to harm that community. The girl in fact is not the target. She is not the object they're trying to destroy. They're using her body to destroy her family and destroy her community," Fisher said.

A key finding of the report is that in most countries, women's social and legal status is already at a great disadvantage compared to that of men, which makes persecuting women of a minority religion much easier and less risky for the perpetrators and at the same time much harder to track and put a stop to.
Get ready to toast with your pup the next time you dine out.

The Texas senate Tuesday approved a bill that would allow restaurant owners to welcome patrons' dogs at their outdoor dining areas.

Republican Sen. Kelly Hancock authored Senate Bill 476, which is reportedly based on a 2006 Austin ordinance that granted that city's restaurateurs the same privilege.

SB 476 includes certain guidelines: Only restaurants where food is not prepared on the patio can file for this permit. Canines are welcome only at patios, and only if they do not have to enter through a restaurant interior in order to access the outside area. Lastly, dogs must also remain leashed the entire time they're on the restaurant's premises.

LIFESTYLE: High-rises highlight pet-friendly living

In Houston, a similar order was passed in September 2011: Paws on Patios. Late Houston Planning Director, Patrick Walsh, in 2010 convinced the city council to adjust its health codes for the Paws on Patios grassroots effort. PoP made it legal for food-service establishments to become dog-friendly by obtaining city permits for a one-time fee of $110 per place.

That initiative put Houston on par with other Texas cities that already had a similar permit program in place. Austin led the way in 2006, Dallas in 2007 and San Antonio in 2010.

For some dog lovers, the move is a long time coming, but not everyone is pleased with the bill's approval. Some critics say this is another instance of the state infringing on decisions that should be made at the local level, since this state measure would overturn some city regulations. In fact, the lone "no" vote when this legislation was sent to the House comes courtesy of Republican Sen. Kel Seliger, who said states should not have the authority to instruct cities when it comes to commerce.

What do you think of the bill's approval?

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Tom Luby, a healthcare executive with entrepreneurial and corporate experience, will be the next leader of the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute. He replaces Erik Halvorsen who stepped down a few months ago.

The announcement on Monday comes as TMC Innovation eyes a period of growth and prepares to build the TMC research campus. William McKeon, president and chief executive of the Texas Medical Center, said Lubys hiring could be its most important of the next several years.

There is so much momentum right now, and to misstep on this would be terrible, he said. Im 110 percent confident that (Luby) will go well above and take this program to the next level.

Luby came to Houston in early 2017 to lead the Johnson & Johnson Innovation life science incubator, called JLABS @ TMC. He was previously in Boston helping Johnson & Johnson Innovation close deals with pharmaceutical and consumer companies.

His experience spans both the corporate and startup side of health care innovation, with 14 years in research and development and business development positions. Nine of those were at three biotech startups in the Boston area.

I needed someone who could not only operate down at the startup level, McKeon said, but also could work really well at the strategic corporate level. And Tom has that in spades.

Since its debut in October 2014, TMC Innovation has assisted 251 companies that have received  or committed to receive  more than $900 million in overall funding. This includes 10 investments from the $25 million TMC Venture Fund.

Thats from zero to 60 in a very short amount of time, Luby said. It feels like were going to be able to add fuel to that fire now and really be able to scale.

Luby said his initial priorities would include strengthening the ties between TMC Innovations various units, which range from Johnson & Johnson to the in-house TMCx accelerator program and the TMCx+ coworking space. He wants startups to understand all the resources available.

TMC Innovation is a rare place for health care startups to find, he said, adding that it provides a business incubator, accelerator, corporate partners, education and funding under one roof.

Luby will also work to recruit more corporations to TMC Innovation, and he would focus on selecting other countries for the TMC BioBridge program. That program currently works with Australia and the U.K. to help give their startups a foothold and landing pad in the U.S.

McKeon said he received applications from about 60 people, including those leading innovation spaces around the country.

He praised Luby for his humility and passion in helping companies succeed. He also believes Luby will build a great team of employees.

He is so talented, McKeon said. I was not allowing Houston to lose him.
Steve Gonzales, Staff Photographer / Houston Chronicle

Hourly compensation, including salaries and benefits, dropped in the Southwestern U.S. in December compared to the year-ago period.

The cost to employers of compensating workers in the region averaged $31.72 an hour in the last month of the year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday, down about 29 cents from the year earlier. Nationally, average hourly compensation rose year-over-year by 45 cents.
Catholic Prelates Aghast At 'unspeakable' Suffering in Syria

Catholic prelates in Syria, accompanied by Philippine Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, president of Caritas Internationalis, visited the eastern Ghouta region outside of Damascus and saw "unspeakable suffering".

"In every face, mostly the children" was a "very confused" expression, Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan said. The visit was part of the annual session of the Council of Heads of Catholic Churches in Syria.

Patriarch Younan said the overall reaction of the prelates while visiting Douma, the major city of eastern Ghouta, "was deep sadness and repulsion" in seeing "the horrible destruction of that region, held hostage for such a long time by radical Muslims".

Patriarch Younan noted that "evidently, this visit had an impact on Cardinal Tagle, who expressed his deep grief in front of so much suffering", adding that the cardinal compared the scenes to an earthquake or typhoon.

"Besides the humanitarian assistance so much needed and the urgent help to rebuild their city, it is mostly and, first of all, hope and dignity that this courageous community was looking for," the patriarch added.

Outreach In addition to Patriarch Younan and Cardinal Tagle, participants in the meeting and the Ghouta outreach included Cardinal Mario Zenari, apostolic nuncio to Syria; Melkite Catholic Patriarch Joseph Absi, who hosted the council session at the patriarchate in Damascus; and Catholic bishops of Syria.

Ghouta, the last rebel bastion east of the capital city of Damascus, was secured by the Syrian government in April 2018. At one point, some 400,000 people were under siege in Ghouta, according to the UN. It was the site of alleged chemical attacks.

Patriarch Younan characterised the suffering in the city as "unspeakable".

"It is shameful that the so-called free world was accomplice to that disaster for no reason than satisfying the greed and opportunism of its politicians. All fake news of the agglomerate media, like the show play of chemical attacks attributed to the Syrian soldiers, were based on lies, in order to keep the fighting going on," Patriarch Younan said.
Atash Kadeh

Zoroastrians -- people who practice one of the world's oldest religions -- will open their first full-fledged U.S. temple on Saturday in southwest Houston.

The Atash Kadeh Temple at 8787 W. Airport Blvd. will be the first American temple able to perform a full range of traditional Zoroastrian practices, including the ordination of priests.
CAROLYN MARY BAUMAN, STF / FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

California has created the most jobs in renewable energy, electric vehicles and other clean industries but Texas is No. 2, according to the environmental advocacy group E2.

Texas has 233,000 clean jobs, with about 163,000 in energy-efficient heating and air conditioning, energy-efficient lighting and energy-efficient appliances. Another 18,000 Texans make and sell electric vehicles. Another 25,000 Texans work in the wind industry and 11,000 work in solar energy.
Oil's rally stalled after some U.S. officials were said to fear a Chinese pushback in trade negotiations between the world's two largest energy consumers.

Futures were little changed at the close in New York after erasing earlier gains as new concerns over the trade talks cast a shadow over the outlook for global growth and demand for crude.

"China has been the real driver behind oil demand globally for the last decade and if that is turned off, it is going to make people very nervous," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts.

PREVIOUSLY: Oil rallies as OPEC+ defers decision on production cuts to June

Oil has gained about 30 percent this year as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies reduced production to avert a global glut on the back of record-high U.S. output. American sanctions continue to squeeze supplies from Iran and Venezuela. But ongoing trade tensions have so far served to cap rallies.

That was evident Tuesday morning, as oil began the day gaining but failed to break through the $60 mark.

"There was some technical trading, trying to get that push up toward the big round number psychologically at $60, and it failed just short of it," said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York hedge fund focused on energy.

RELATED: OPEC+ affirms commitment to cuts, defers decision to extend

West Texas Intermediate for April delivery lost 6 cents to close at $59.03 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent for May settlement gained 7 cents to $67.61 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.

April Meeting

Oil prices are still being supported somewhat by news that OPEC and its partners will carry on with supply cuts for the time being.

A committee of the so-called OPEC+ group on Monday recommended canceling a planned ministerial meeting in April, saying it would be too soon to determine whether the output cuts should continue into the second half of the year. The change in timing, which still needs to be agreed by the wider coalition, means the group probably won't decide on an extension until late June, just days before they expire.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said current prices are acceptable to both consumers and producers and that it will take a wait-and-see approach on the supply curbs. While there's general support within OPEC for an extension, with members including Iraq voicing support behind closed doors, Novak remains opposed, said a delegate, who asked not to be named because the talks are private.

Meanwhile, nationwide crude inventories in the U.S. are forecast to have risen by 1.75 million barrels in the week to March 15, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts before government data due Wednesday.

--With assistance from James Thornhill, Alex Longley and Tsuyoshi Inajima.

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
The partnership at the heart of the OPEC+ alliance showed further signs of strain after Russia pressured the Saudi-led group to delay a decision on the future of their production cuts.

The unusual recommendation to cancel next months scheduled meeting means the group probably wont decide whether to prolong its supply curbs until late June, just days before they expire.

At talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak convinced the committee overseeing the output cuts that the scheduled April meeting would be too soon to agree to an extension. Khalid Al-Falih, the Saudi energy minister who had initially been in favor of making a decision at that time, acquiesced, saying April will be premature.

PRICING: Oil rallies as OPEC+ defers decision on production cuts to June

For now, the supply curbs that have buoyed Brent crude by 25 percent this year are secure, and the nations present in the Azeri capital said they will go beyond their pledged cuts in the coming months. Still, the cancellation is the latest in a number of disagreements between the two largest and most powerful members of the 24-nation coalition.

While theres general backing within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries for an extension, with members including Iraq voicing support behind closed doors, Novak remains opposed, according to one delegate, who asked not to be named because the talks were private.

If that difference cant be resolved in the coming months, it sets up a high-stakes meeting in Vienna on June 25 to 26 that could give oil traders very little time to adjust to a major shift in supply.

"The need for close ties between Saudi and Russia has diminished," said Andrew Dodson, founder of commodity hedge fund Philipp Oil. "The delay of the OPEC meeting seems to point to a Russia reticence to commit to more cuts and to leave any decision as late as possible before committing further."

Since OPEC ended decades of rivalry by forging an alliance with Russia in late 2016, the cordial relationship between Novak and Al-Falih has been one of its defining features. The two men ushered in an unprecedented period of cooperation that re-shaped the global oil market and created the beginnings of a new geopolitical partnership thats extended to cooperation over Syria and mutual investments.

RELATED: OPEC+ affirms commitment to cuts, defers decision to extend

Yet theres an imbalance at the heart of the alliance. Saudi Arabia needs its oil to sell for $95 a barrel to cover government spending this year in an economy that relies almost entirely on petroleum. Russia is more resilient, with a more diversified industrial base and a less bloated state that means it based its 2019 budget on $40 crude.

Since the OPEC+ production cuts entered their third year -- having originally been slated to last for six months -- Moscow has shown less enthusiasm. Its drawn criticism from Saudi Arabia for making slow progress toward its output target. By March 12, Russian producers had implemented half their pledged cuts, giving them just a couple of weeks to go the rest of the way.

Russia will take a wait-and-see approach on whether to extend the OPEC+ deal because the market has achieved a fragile balance, Novak said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Sunday.

Currently, the price is acceptable to all the parties, both to consumers and producers, Novak said. Uncertainties, including fluctuations in Venezuelan production amid a political and economic crisis, make it difficult to say what steps the group should take in the second half, he said.

That contrasted with the message from Al-Falih, who said at a news conference in Baku that the job of rebalancing the oil market was nowhere near done because U.S. inventories remain significantly above normal levels. The kingdom will continue to cut deeper than required under the deal through to the end of April, he said.

OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo sought on Tuesday to play down uncertainties arising from supply issues in Venezuela as well as Iran.

EXPORTS: Gulf Coast becomes net crude exporter

Venezuelan Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo assured him in Baku that Venezuela is addressing the impact of power blackouts on the countrys oil industry, Barkindo said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. In spite of U.S. sanctions on Irans energy industry, its practically impossible to completely halt Iranian oil exports, he said.

The Saudis do have a preference to keep the cuts going and just come out and announce it straight away, Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd., said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The kingdom is not going to do anything unilaterally and Russia does represent the biggest of the non-OPEC countries.

Events in Baku certainly dont signal the end of the OPEC+ deal or the Saudi-Russia partnership, but there are a lot of uncertainties right now and everyone in the group is buying time, Sen said.

--With assistance from Zulfugar Agayev, Javier Blas and Alix Steel.

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Spring Cleaning Art Show

Local artists will sell their work at affordable prices, event features food trucks, music and complimentary beer from Eureka Heights Brew Co.

When: 7-11 p.m. Friday

Where: Insomnia Gallery, 708 Telephone

Details: facebook.com/events/376858826442834

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Iko Uwais + Tony Jaa + Tiger Chen don't add up to martial-arts magic in 'Triple Threat'

The Makeup Show

Attendees will experience 4 stages of education filled with legendary artists and industry experts as they share their insight on how to elevate business through discussion, demonstration, new trends and participation.

When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Where: Hilton Houston Post Oak, 2001 Post Oak

Details: $45-$62; themakeupshow.com/houston

Secrets & Illusions

Show is set on the dark and deserted streets of Paris, where the audience will enter the legendary Louvre Museum, while master illusionist Ivan Amodei uncovers lifes greatest mysteries deep inside the priceless works of art.

When: 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby

Details: $54-$96; secretsandillusions.com

Women On The Bayou Poetry Slam

Twenty of the worlds top women poets from as far as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and more will be having an all-out word brawl. Presented by Savannah Blue.

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Alley Theatre, 615 Texas

Details: $25-$30; savannahblue.org

Mark Guiliana Space Heroes

Da Camera presents the first Houston appearance of trailblazing jazz drummer Mark Guiliana with his newest project, Space Heroes. The group, which features the "two horn" front line of tenor saxophonists Jason Rigby and Mike Lewis with bassist Chris Morrissey, leans toward "an acoustic palate," with an experimental flair and electronics to add ambient texture.

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Cullen Theater, Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas

Details: $37.50-$67.50; dacamera.com

REVIEW: Joshua Bell rings loudly with Houston Symphony

Beers & Art

Market at Saint Arnold Brewing Co. that features music, art, craft beer and vintage selections from local curators.

When: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday

Where: Saint Arnold Brewing Company, 2000 Lyons

Details: facebook.com/events/310180472927564

Ali Wong

Stand-up comedian, writer and actress, Ali Wong takes the stage for The Milk and Money Tour at Revention Music Center.

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday

Where: 520 Texas

Details: $113.25-$143.25; reventionmusiccenter.com

International Houston Black Film Festival

Festival celebrates content creators across the globe with entries from the Cayman Islands, England, Bahamas, Canada, Africa, France, Bahamas to Istanbul and beyond.

When: 10 a.m. March 28 through March 31

Where: NRG Center, One NRG

Details: $25-$260; houstonblackfilmfest.com

Party on the Plaza

Avenida Houstons concert series, featuring the Los Angele based Grammy-winning Mexican-American band, La Santa Cecilia. Selena tribute band, Siempre Selena will open the show.

When: 6-10 p.m. March 28

Where: George R. Brown Convention Center, 1001 Avenida De Las Americas

Details: avenidahouston.com

WORTH THE JOURNEY: Alison Cook reviews Tris in The Woodlands

Jonathan Evison

Author will discuss and sign Lawn Boy.

When: 7 p.m. Thursday

Where: Brazos Bookstore, 2421 Bissonnet

Details: brazosbookstore.com

PREVIEW: Get experts picks for concerts, kids stuff, fine arts, movies and more delivered to your inbox weekly.
The spirit of Mama Ninfa Laurenzo looms large over this city. Which is why the Laurenzo family decided to honor their mother with a celebration focusing on a food she knew well: tacos.

Last year's inaugural Tacos Over Texas, a fundraiser for the Ninfa Laurenzo Scholarship Fund, raised more than $100,000 to financially assist students in economic need to reach their educational goals.
In the two weeks that the recently established human trafficking tip hotline has been active, Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office investigators say theyve received only two calls reporting such activity.

Neither call led investigators to human traffickers or victims, said Maj. David Marcaurele, the agencys chief deputy, noting the hotline, which Sheriff Troy Nehls established late last month, is just an additional resource Fort Bend County residents can use alongside the National Human Trafficking hotline thats been around for years.

We thought lets just put one more avenue out there, so they can call us and we will investigate it, he said. Im not saying it doesnt exist, but Im saying we havent found it.

While the Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office continues pursuing human trafficking activity through caller tips, County Judge KP George, Fort Bend Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers and U.S. Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) met with the FBI on Monday to address how the seedy practice is affecting the local community.

I recognize that human trafficking is (a) serious and widespread threat that must be tackled by every level of government, George said in statement, adding that he will work with state representatives and local officials, such as newly-elected District Attorney Brian Middleton, who is asking the governors office for more than $630,000 in grant funds to implement a human trafficking division in his office within the year.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Collaboration between law enforcement agencies is key to disrupting human trafficking

The division, which would focus on the trafficking of people under the age of 24, would include up to four investigators and a prosecutor. The district attorney currently has only one investigator assigned to all human trafficking cases.

We have been involved in multiple investigations regarding human trafficking and we want to take an aggressive stance against it, Middleton said, adding that his office already has more than $600,000 in computer equipment for use in investigations. We put in for the grant to try to beef up and leverage some of the resources that we have.

Data from the faith-based nonprofit Free the Captives, which considers Houston to be a hub for human trafficking, estimates the average age of trafficked girls to be between 12 and 14 years old.

The resolution for the grant went up for a vote at a recent Fort Bend County commissioners court meeting and was approved unanimously. At a separate meeting, the amount of funds requested by the district attorney went up from $378,964 to $635,928.

Assistant District Attorney Chad Bridges drafted the application and said the amount was adjusted to more accurately reflect what the district attorneys office plans to do with the funds.

THE NEWS YOU NEED: Chron.com Catch-up. Delivered to your email. Sign up now.

About 82 percent of the requested funds would be used for the salaries of the three new positions, including $137,000 for a dedicated felony-level assistant district attorney and $385,928 for two very highly trained investigators that can forensically search phones and computers, according to the grant application. The district attorneys office will also use funds to train investigators to find pimps looking to recruit young prostitutes by posing as traffickers and browsing online chatrooms looking for trafficked victims.

Middleton said the creation of the new division is not contingent on whether the grant is approved by the state and should the grant be denied, he will request funding through the commissioners court.

We need more resources to have a maximum impact on the problem, Middleton said.

Marcaurele said hes hasnt been made aware of the details regarding the new unit the DA is planning to establish but noted the sheriffs office doesnt have its own dedicated human trafficking division.

We dont have the cases to support it, but we do have a complete criminal investigation division, Marcaurele said. Any cases that we get and that meet those criteria are investigated.

ON THE BALLOT: Former HPD officer to run for Fort Bend County sheriff in 2020

In 2018, the district attorneys office investigated 20 human trafficking cases, many of which stemmed from agencies other than the sheriffs office.

The (sheriffs office) is not the only law enforcement office who is doing investigations in Fort Bend County, Middleton said, referring to a federally-funded human trafficking task force based in Houston that has made national headlines for its innovative model. They are most likely to get the lead, but I know Rosenberg, Stafford and other agencies will investigate those, as well as our investigators here in the district attorneys office.

Last Tuesday, officials from more than 10 cities across the country met in Houston for a two-day conference to learn about the citys successes in fighting human trafficking and last October, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recognized Houston as a national model for its anti-trafficking infrastructure.

But during the first two weeks, the Fort Bend County Sheriffs Offices human trafficking tip hotline received multiple calls from media checking it out and only two tips, Marcaurele said.

One of the tips led investigators to massage parlors outside the sheriffs office jurisdiction. Those cases were referred to other agencies, Marcaurele said.

Nehls on Tuesday referenced one of the calls at a Katy Area Chamber of Commerce business leaders breakfast, where he also challenged the audience to name a street in Fort Bend County that is as synonymous to prostitution as Bissonnet Street in southwest Houston.

GLOBAL INITIATIVE: County Judge KP George brings consular generals together to increase economic growth and development

You can see (prostitutes) all day long, Nehls told a crowd of about three dozen. but I will challenge you to name a street in Fort Bend County where you see that. I know we live next to the big gorilla. Harris County has all sorts of problems. And people just say that its got to be happening in Fort Bend. I think were blessed to say that were not seeing the issues that Harris County is seeing each and every day in the city of Houston.

The majority of human trafficking tips, such as cases arising from massage parlors, are not classified as such and instead filed as prostitution, Marcaurele said.

The debate about whether a case is prostitution versus human trafficking is semantics, Middleton said.

A lot of the human trafficking cases that make their way to the district attorneys office are initially filed by law enforcement as prostitution, child abuse or domestic violence. Thats because human trafficking requires a higher burden of proof and additional expertise and resources to drill down into the cases, Middleton said.

The investigation doesnt end when it reaches the district attorneys office, he said. In most cases, it continues through the referring agency or through our investigators.

COMMUNITY EVENT: Commissioner Andy Meyers to host sixth annual Fort Bend Arts Festival

Ed Gordon, who has been in the office for five years and was recently appointed to chief investigator, said elements of other types of crimes can be found in human trafficking cases and knowing the difference takes a trained eye.

Gordon, whose job involves overseeing district attorney investigators, said he pushed the new DA to expand its human trafficking investigations to keep up with the growth of Fort Bend County, which has roughly 760,000 people.

The grant, he said, would help the county gain a foothold in its fight against human traffickers.

As for the sheriffs hotline, Middleton said its redundant and unnecessary.

I dont feel the need for it, he said. I just want the public to know that this is not the first number that has been available. There has always been a hotline.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

michelle.iracheta@chron.com
Food For Life Gala announces co-chairs & committee

The co-chairs and committee are hard at work planning and preparing to present a dazzling Food For Life gala on April 13 to benefit the Montgomery County Food Bank (MCFB).

Co-chairing this years gala, themed Havana Nights - Celebrating a Giving Community and presented by Anadarko Petroleum, are Shelly Madison and Rachelle Adamson, both of Wells Fargo.

We could not be more excited to lead Montgomery County Food Banks gala this year, said Madison, who is a MCFB board member. We are both passionate about the Food Bank and have volunteered there quarterly for the last four years. We are proud to work for a company who encourages us to be a leader not only in our business but also in the communities in which we work and live.

She continued, After attending last years gala, Rachelle and I felt we could do more to create awareness and showcase the lifeline the Montgomery County Food Bank provides to our community. The goal is to make this the best gala year ever with many exciting new things. Our committee has been nothing short of incredible as they have already spent countless hours to ensure we tell the story of the Food Bank and how they touch so many lives. We are confident that the Havana Nights - Celebrating a Giving Community gala will be unforgettable!

In its third year as the major fundraising event to benefit the food insecure in our local community, the Food For Life gala will be held at The Woodlands Resort and Conference Center. Proceeds from the gala will help serve over 76,000 people in Montgomery County (one in four) who are food insecure, of which more than a third are children.

Were planning to have energetic dancing and music by DJ Manny, cigar rolling, a luxurious raffle, an auction of exciting items, and a special awards ceremony, added Adamson. We encourage the community to make plans to attend and support this very worthwhile organization.

Gala tickets are $150 each and sponsorship levels range from $1,750 to $50,000. For tickets and sponsorship information, email Lindy Johnson, Director of Development for the Montgomery County Food Bank at ljohnson@mcfoodbank.org .

Milstead Automotive donates gas cards to Community Assistance Center

The Milstead Automotive Group is proud to donate $1,875 worth of gas cards to the newly branded Community Assistance Center (CAC) as a result of Milsteads Buy One, Gift One holiday promotion. The gas only cards will be used to help those needy families served by CAC in Montgomery County.

It is easy for us to jump in our cars and go to work, but I am always amazed to discover how many families in our community struggle with finding the money to just put gas in their car, said Amy Milstead, President of Milstead Automotive Group. We teamed with Community Assistance Center again this year to help out, and with our customers and continuing community support, we were able to donate 75 gas cards. Its clear that the need is all year, not just during the holidays!

We are always thrilled to partner with Milstead Automotive, noted Jennifer Landers, Executive Director, Community Assistance Center. And we always appreciate how they continually give back to the community. It truly is a privilege to team with them. Gas cards are one of the staples that we need all year round as many people are struggling to get to work, and the extra money for gas is a blessing.
If you cant get enough of Conroe history or didnt get the chance to hear author John ONeill speak when he was here in August, your chance is coming around again.

The Adult Faith Formation group at Sacred Heart Catholic Church is presenting a history mini-series on consecutive Mondays April 1 and April 8. The first session focuses on local historians and those who lived here in Conroes oilfield heyday. The second session features author John ONeill who wrote The Fishermans Tomb: The True Story of the Vaticans Secret Search.

The book chronicles how oil developer George Strake impacted world history by almost totally funding the archaeological dig in the Vatican that resulted in the discovery of the long-lost burial place of the Apostle Peter. Strake - who discovered oil in Conroe in the early 1930s - was also very generous to Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

ONeill came to Conroe in August for a speaking event sponsored by the Conroe Lake Conroe Chamber of Commerce.

Carol Ann Boulware, a past president of the Adult Faith Formation group, was in the audience of the Chamber event and said she was so impressed with ONeill.

She brought the idea of having him speak at the Catholic church to Father Philip Wilhite. He expanded the thought even more to have a second session about the history of Conroe.

The series is titled Conroe to Rome: George Strakes Connection.

The first day of the series is on Monday, April 1. There will be an afternoon session from 1 to 3 p.m. and an evening session from 7 to 9 p.m.

All events for the series will take place in Sacred Hearts new sanctuary at 109 N. Frazier in Conroe.

Those speaking on April 1 include Albert Madeley who will relay short stories about Conroe at the time of the oilfield. He will introduce George Strake Jr., son of George Strake.

Strake Jr. will speak on his fathers faith and his dads desire to share his wealth.

A devoted Catholic his whole life, theres a story that goes that when the oil well was about to come in, a roughneck worker came to alert Strake. He told the man hed be there right after he finished mass (at church), according to Boulware.

Mary Franco, also with The Adult Faith Formation group, said Strake always felt everything that happened to him was a blessing and it was his wish to share his blessing with the poor.

Other speakers on April 1 include Sarah Bess Gray Crow whose father was a superintendent in the oilfield, Pat Moran, grandson to William Bill Moran a good friend and business partner of Strakes, historian and author Robin Montgomery and legendary radio personality Mary McCoy.

Note, Strake Jr. will only be at the afternoon session only and McCoy will only be at the evening session on April 1.

On Monday, April 8, ONeill and co-author of The Fishermans Tomb Sarah Wynne will speak in sessions from 1 to 3 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. also in the sanctuary of Sacred Heart.

The Fishermans Tomb will be available for purchase and signing on April 8.

No reservations are needed for either day of the series and both events are free of charge.
First Assistant County Attorney B.D. Griffin was unanimously appointed Tuesday by Montgomery County Commissioners to fill the unexpired term of County Attorney J D Lambright who passed away earlier this month.

Lambright, 69, died March 9 following a brief battle with cancer. He term expires in 2020.

It is with great sadness that we have to move forward with the appointment of a new county attorney, said Precinct 3 Commissioner James Noack. But also I think it is a great honor to have B.D. Griffin sworn in as that new county attorney.

This was one of J Ds dying wishes was to have B.D. take over. He trusted you, we trust you and I think there is not a better person we could put in the county attorneys office.

The court echoed Noacks sentiments.

I know you will do a great job, Precinct 1 Commissioner Mike Meador said. We know what your work ethics are, your integrity and I wish you all the luck.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Charlie Riley and Precinct 4 Commissioner James Metts thanked Griffin for his work in the County Attorneys Office.

I appreciate you stepping up, Riley said.

County Judge Mark Keough noted that for Griffin the appoint is bittersweet.

You have great respect and love for J D as we all have for his knowledge and understanding and his ability to put together his team, Keough said. It is a great honor for us all to have this discussion and to be able to do this.

Griffin humbly thank the court before being officially sworn in by Keough.

"I want to continue the good things that J D started that I certainly had a hand in," Griffin said. "I think it is important for the county to have continuity and expertise I and the rest of the staff have."

Griffin also said he plans to run for county attorney in 2020 adding he feels he is the best for the position given his experience and institutional knowledge of the county.

After taking his oath, Griffin asked the court to approve his request to lower his salary by more than $22,000 to be more in line with county court at law judges which also require law degrees. The commissioners unanimously approved that request.

cdominguez@hcnonline.com
Several new faces cracked the top 20 highest-paid superintendents in the Houston area for the 2018-2019 school year, including the CEO of a lauded charter school network.

YES Prep Academy CEO and superintendent Mark DiBella earned $230,000 during the last school year and $270,000 this year, making him the 17th highest-paid superintendent in the Houston region, according to Texas Education Agency data.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Small Houston charter school pays top dollar to leader, owns luxury condo

He was the only charter school leader to rank in the top 20. Last year, two other charter school superintendents ranked in the top 20, according to the data.

Another new face, interim HISD Superintendent Grenita Lathan, earns $345,060.

Katy ISD Superintendent Lance Hindt again ranks No. 2 for the Houston region. However, he officially resigned from his post in January following a scandal in which a former classmate accused Hindt of bullying him more than 30 years ago, according to previous reports in the Houston Chronicle.

With a salary of $394,587 for the 2018-2019 year, Hindt was expected to get a $750,000 payout after leaving.

Cypress-Fairbanks ISD Superintendent John Henry remains the highest paid superintendent in the region this year with a salary of $406,484.

Statewide, seven Houston-area superintendents were listed among the top 20 highest paid.

The list above ranks superintendents by base pay, which does not include bonuses, benefits or expense allowances.

>>> Click through the slideshow to see what other superintendents made in your area

Julian Gill is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | julian.gill@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here.
A man was shot to death inside a west Harris County apartment Monday, police say.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office said the man was found dead inside an apartment complex in the 4200 block of Clay Hill Drive, near Clay Road and Texas Highway 6. The circumstances of the man's death were not immediately clear.

No one appears to be in custody as of 3 p.m.

No other information was available. Check back for updates as they come in.

Jay R. Jordan covers breaking news in the Houston area. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com | Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan | Email him at jay.jordan@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message
A proposal for a holiday lighting attraction has been approved by by Pasadena City Council, with members split between those who think it will draw tourists and lift spirits and others who don't like that admission will be charged for a display supported by tax revenue.

The 5-3 vote on March 19 followed a first reading of the ordinance earlier in the month when Councilman Cody Ray Wheeler said he didn't like that the attraction, which would include a holiday village and drive-through lights in partnership with the city of Grand Prairie, would be funded by taxpayers who then will be charged for admission and parking. The other opposing council members were Don Harrison and Sammy Casados.

Harrison said that the city should not get involved in things it was not created for.

But council members who favor the plan spoke how it could increase the quality of life for Pasadena residents during the next Christmas season.

We need to have a holiday event to boost the spirit, Thomas Schoenbein said.

COMING SOON: Everything you need to know about the Lights Festival coming to Houston

Phil Cayten echoed Schoenbein, noting the event would be big attraction for tourists.

Also voting for the display were Bruce Leamon, Cary Bass and Felipe Villarreal.

According to Jed Aplaca, the director of the Pasadena Parks and Recreation Department, the village part of the attraction will include concessions, pictures with Santa Claus and vendors.

He said the drive-through light show will be the only one of its kind in the Houston area.

Over the last decade, Grand Prairie has partnered with other cities like Sugar Land, Round Rock and even some in California.

The idea is that there are several lands of lights that have themes and are organized through the light design company that creates the light displays, Aplaca said.

BREAKING: Timetable for Deer Park fire indefinite after blaze intensifies overnight

He said each year the lights would be different due to a rotating system. For example, Pasadena would get the lights used by Grand Prairie last year, Grand Prairie gets the lights from Round Rock and Round Rock gets the lights from another city.

The agreement is that Grand Prairie provides the lights, the consultation to help set up all the displays, whereas the city of Pasadena provides our own set-up labor, staffing and a percentage of the gate revenue," Aplaca said.

Any additional revenue will be used to fund the continuation of this event.

It has not been determined how much the event would cost. Wheeler said admission to the attraction would be $25.

In total, over 3 million lights are used throughout the cities. The estimated value for the lights is over $100,000, Aplaca said.

The display in Pasadena will go at the fairgrounds of the citys convention center.

Aplaca said the goal is to have sponsors that will help cover the initial set-up cost that will include making sure that we have the electrical capacity on the fairgrounds, materials to help set up the lights and labor to set up and staff the event.

INTERCONTINENTAL CHEMICALS: Deer Park plant on fire has history of environmental violations

He said if there were not enough sponsors for the event, some of the citys operating budget would be used to help with the initial costs in the first year.

However, eventually, Aplaca said the hope is to have the light display will sustain itself.

Instead of purchasing our own lights at costs that could easily exceed $100,000, storing them, maintaining them and then spending more to add different light displays each year, we get to have a new high-quality light show each year at only the cost of a percentage of the gate revenue, he said.

To be able to cover that cost and not incur any more burden to the citys budget, a fee needs to be charged so that we can cover these costs.

Aplaca said an event like this could create a sense of community and a place close to home that families and friends can enjoy together.

Our goal is to provide an affordable, memorable experience with family and friends that will increase the sense of community and quality of life for all who attend.

tyler.johnson@chron.com
Potato Gumbo, a comedy that plays through March 31 at Pasadena Little Theatre, ranked highest among all the shows that were submitted for consideration in the playhouses 63rd season, director Julie Owen says.

In addition, it boasted the allure of being penned by a local author, Jean Ciampi, who lived in League City until her husband was transferred in September to Midland, Michigan.

Its cold, Ciampi said recently by phone from the couples new home. It is 9 degrees here. We have had only five days above freezing all year.

Sounding like she could use some hot potato gumbo at that moment, the playwright added that she plans to come see the show, in which she has performed with most of the actors on local stages.

Donna Bane of League City was cast in the leading role of Gretchen, who tries several times to flee her Central Texas retirement community so she can go to New Orleans and enroll at a Cajun cooking school.

The playwright saw Bane star in Alfred Uhrys Driving Miss Daisy at College of the Mainland Community Theatre shortly before the Ciampis moved to Michigan.

She was fantastic, said Ciampi, who wrote the part of Gretchen for a longtime friend, Annette Johnson of West Columbia, and directed Johnson in the first production of the play, in September 2015 at Brazosport Center Stages in Clute.

Want to go? What: "Potato Gumbo" Where: Pasadena Little Theatre, 4318 Allen-Genoa Road, Pasadena When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday through March 31 Cost: $15 adults (in advance), $18 at the door; $12 students and seniors; 2-for-$20 special 8 p.m. Thursday, March 28 Information: 713-941-1758, www.pasadenalittletheatre.org. See More Collapse

Anticipating Banes interpretation of the role, Ciampi said, Its always such a cool surprise to see someone bring your characters to life. It is a little scary and exciting, in an adrenaline-rush, joyful way.

In the play, Gretchens friends and family wonder if her zany idea of fleeing to New Orleans might portend the beginning of Alzheimers.

Gretchens neighbor, a widower named Thomas, is developing a crush on her, and he worries about getting emotionally involved with someone with her potential problems.

Thomas is played by Bruce Blifford of Pasadena.

Rounding out the cast are Jeffrey Merriman and Robyn LeGris of Pearland, Barbara Winburn of Santa Fe, Revis Bell of Houston and Lisa G. Tolman, who lives near Friendswood.

The stage managers are Joyce Barnett and Vivian Perkins.

Vanessa Pearson designed lights and sound, which are operated by Lanier Young and Avry Diaz.

Ciampi met Owen in 2017 when they played characters in a comedy, Calendar Girls, at Clear Creek Community Theatre in Nassau Bay.

I immediately loved her, Ciampi said. I love her spunk and her spirit and her feistiness. I gave her my play to read because I wanted to see her onstage in it. She read it and said, In it? I want to direct it.

Owen, who lives in Clear Lake, called Potato Gumbo a well-written play. Its very funny.

Ciampi said this will be the fourth time the show has been produced.

Meanwhile, she is working on a new play.

Ive finished a page and a half. Its solid, she said.

Ciampi also jumped right in to community theater in Michigan by playing Nancy in a recent production of Clare Booth Luces The Women at the Midland Center for the Arts.

For further information about Ciampi, visit www.TheWriterJean.com.

Don Maines is a freelance writer who can be reached at donmaines@att.net
Hundreds of people gathered at Sugar Land Town Center Sunday for a prayer vigil to remember victims of the recent shootings at two mosques in New Zealand. More than a dozen elected officials and faith community leaders led prayers and spoke out against violence and racism.

As your mayor, I am here to tell you that we stand strong with New Zealand, with Christchurch and our Muslim community and we will not tolerate hate or intolerance of any kind, Sugar Land Mayor Joe Zimmerman said.

On Friday, March 15, 50 people were killed and 50 more were wounded when a gun man targeted two mosques full of worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand. Police arrested a 28-year-old Australian citizen identified as Brenton Harrison, who was charged with murder. Investigators reportedly discovered an 87-page manifesto filled with anti-Muslim ideas believed to have been written by the suspect.

Just recently, the synagogue was attacked, the black church was attacked and now we have a mosque attack, Sohail Syed, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston said. God only knows if we dont stop this nuisance who will be attached next time. So, this is not really a Muslim issue; this is an issue of humanity. We need to be united. We need to work together to fight this nuisance on every front.

Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton and County Judge KP George pledged support to ensure the safety of the Muslim community and others who came to say prayers and show solidarity at the event.

We need to say there is no place for hate in our society, George said. As long as I am the county judge, every citizen in this city should feel safe, especially when they are going to pray, especially when they are to be to in a temple or a mosque or a church.

Congressman Al Green and Congressman Pete Olson were also among the speakers.

Were here today to say Enough is enough. No more hate, Olson said. Lets make a pledge today that hate will not win.
When a gunman killed 11 people in a synagogue in Pennsylvania in October, 18-year-old Noor Saleh, a student at The Woodlands High School, visited a local synagogue to pay her respects for those in the Jewish faith community who lost their lives.

Now, in the event of another tragic mass shooting at a place of worship, Saleh and her mother are joining with the local Muslim community to plan a vigil. This time, itll be to honor the 50 people who were killed March 15 in the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
EAST HAVEN  A New Haven resident and Hamden Public Schools employee resigned after she used racial epithets in an encounter with two people of color at a grocery store, an incident shared in a video Friday night that thousands of Facebook users have re-posted.

The video shows a white woman, whom Superintendent Jody Goeler has identified as former Hamden Public Schools employee Corinne Terrone, using racial slurs. A statement from the school district said Terrone has resigned from her position. According to the districts website, Terrone was a clerk in the Central Office.

In the footage, posted by a user whose profile name is Tatiana Winn, Terrone yells the n-word three times and spits at two people, a black man and woman. It is unclear how the encounter began.

After her first use of the racial epithet, the man appears to rush toward Terrone, who taunts, Put your hands on me, come on! and pulls out her phone to begin recording. The man then appears to quickly knock the device from her hand, and does not make further physical contact based on what is visible in the footage.

More for you Listen to calls to police made by woman who made racial slurs in supermarket

When the man slowly walks away, Terrone hurries after him, and the black woman steps in between them.

According to the Facebook post, the video was filmed at East Havens ShopRite. Many of the thousands of comments it has received express support for the black individuals and outrage toward Terrone.

Terrones New Haven home was quiet on Saturday afternoon and no one appeared to be inside.

By that time, a black next-door neighbor had heard about the video and was surprised. The man, who declined to provide his name, said hes never seen Terrone exhibit racist behavior and that his grandchildren often play with her kids.

Shes in a bad situation, the man said.

The man said hes been living next to Terrone for more than eight years and shes been an excellent neighbor.

Shes always been the sweetest woman in the world, the man said.

Several neighbors said police were at Terrones home earlier in the day.

East Haven Police Lt. Joseph Murgo released a statement, saying the department is aware of this disturbing video and the hate speech contained in it but that no complaint has been filed.

We are in touch with ShopRite and are looking to get a better understanding of what took place (Friday) night, the statement said.

The statement asked anyone involved in the incident to contact the East Haven Police Department.

We have a lot of avenues to go down if somebody were to reach out to us, Murgo said. We want somebody to come forward ... if they were present (Friday) night.

If Terrone were charged, Murgo continued, police would base the offense on the complainants statement. Though she could face many possible charges  the minimum being breach of peace  spitting is considered a form of assault, Murgo said.

The Hamden School district posted a statement about the incident on its website.

We have become aware of video footage that appears to show an employee in our district engaged in abhorrent conduct. Specifically, the video appears to show the employee repeatedly calling an African-American man the N-word in a supermarket in East Haven, the statement says.

The video also appears to show the Hamden employee spitting at the aforementioned African-American male as he was walking away from the employee. It also appears that the employees children witnessed her conduct. Because her children were present, school administrators filed a DCF report, the statement continues.

In an email, Karen Kaplan, Hamden Public Schools director of Program Innovation, Technology & Communications, wrote the woman has been separated from employment effective immediately.

The statement also describes the consequences of Terrones actions. While it appears as though this happened after work hours on Friday evening, the Human Resource Director contacted the employee and arranged an investigatory meeting with her. Shortly after final arrangements were made for the investigatory meeting, the employee rendered her resignation effective immediately.

The language the employee used in the video is in conflict with the values of the Hamden Public School System, the districts statement said. Someone who will use that sort of language in any setting, whether public or private, is not someone we want anywhere near our children. The employee is separated from service, and we hope that her children will receive the support they need after witnessing such a traumatic event.

Mayor Curt B. Leng and Council President Michael McGarry described the conduct featured in the video as vile and disgusting in a statement issued Saturday afternoon. Both praised the speed of the response from the Hamden schools.

What I saw was vile and shocking. While I am disgusted and disheartened seeing such hateful behavior, wildly unacceptable anywhere, I am thankful for the swift and effective actions taken by our school system to address this head on and make clear that hate and violence will not be tolerated, said Leng in the statement.

The Legislative Council has been made aware of a video that appears to show an employee of the Hamden Public Schools acting and speaking in a manner that is unacceptable for an employee of the Town of Hamden. The actions and statement of the women in the video are disgusting and horrifying. It is additionally disturbing that the incident takes place in the presence of children, McGarry said. Hamden values the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and the actions and statements in the video do not reflect those values.

State Sen. Len Fasano and state Rep. Joseph Zullo, both Republicans representing East Haven, issued a joint statement condemning the conduct in the video.

What we saw in this video is repulsive and deeply offensive and does not represent the people of East Haven or our values. The behavior is shocking and upsetting and has no place anywhere, including in our community, Fasano and Zullo said in the statement. We understand Hamden Public Schools has acted quickly to seek this employees resignation. East Haven police are also seeking more information and urging any potential victims or witnesses involved to come forward. Hate speech and violence will not be tolerated in our community.

State Sen. George Logan, R-Ansonia, described the events depicted in the video as disgraceful in a statement Saturday.

Shocking. Disturbing. Disgusting. This video made me sick to my stomach. As a community, we must condemn these actions in the strongest of terms, Logan said. We will never tolerate hate speech. Anyone who knows witnesses of this ugly incident should contact East Haven police immediately.

Staff writer Ben Lambert contributed to this story.
It doesnt matter how perfect your home is  if your listing photos dont stand out, potential buyers wont come by to take a look. In our series "Lessons From Listing Photos," we dissect the smart updates sellers have made to their homes, and how their listing pics highlight the homes best assets.

This Houston home was built in 1989, and it showed. Its interiors checked all the boxes of bad design cliches of the '90s, including brass accents, shabby chic touches, and a color palette of beige tones. But it got a total makeover in 2016, and in 2018 it sold for $300,000 more than what the owners paid in 2015. Boo-ya!

To find out how they pulled it offand how you can make that kind of profit on your remodel we went to the experts. Here's where they say the owners made the biggest impact.

White it out: The biggest difference in the bathroom is a simple change in wall color; it's amazing how a few coats of white paint can modernize a space.

"This bathroom received a very notable update just by repainting the walls white. Out with the old yellow walls and in with a fresh and clean palette of travertine, granite, and white," says Emma ODonnell of Coolabah Designs. "The fixtures in matte black suddenly pop with this new update."

Property stylist Karen Gray-Plaisted of Design Solution KGP agrees: "Although the finishes are the same, this is a great example of how impactful color is when you sell."

As for staging tips, O'Donnell also notes that the owners made a wise decision to nix the tchotchkes.

"They removed all the decorative elements  the flowers, the plate, and the old-fashioned rug  and let the room speak for itself," adds O'Donnell.

Big bedroom improvements: The blah-colored carpet and light yellow walls in the original bedroom were enough to make the space look dated. O'Donnell notes that the fresh light-gray paint and repainted ceiling fan do a lot to liven up the room.

The new, wall-to-wall sisal carpet was a good replacement for the '80s-era brown carpeting, and it goes well with the natural bamboo blinds.

Tiffany Cobb of Tiffany Rene Interior Design is a big fan of the new carpeting.

"There are so many underfoot options out there these days, and its refreshing to see when homeowners venture away from the typical high-pile carpet installations to exploring more natural fiber, wall-to-wall alternatives," she says. "They're eco-friendly and a durable option for high-traffic areas."

Good riddance to the rug: The den got a new color scheme and a new railing around the balcony, but the biggest triumph is the change in flooring.

"This spacious den received a dramatic update with a fresh and clean, light gray and white motif. The old paintings and decorative elements are put away and replaced with a state-of-the-art smart TV above the newly tiled fireplace," says O'Donnell. "Most importantly, the oversized red and blue Persian rug, which overwhelmed the room, is gone, to highlight beautifully updated wooden floors."

Gray-Plaisted was also happy to see the rug go away.

"Reducing the size of the rug allows buyers to see how spacious the area is," she says. "A less formal style allows buyers to feel more at home."

Modernizing the kitchen: One of the biggest  and perhaps most important  updates was in the kitchen.

"Taking the kitchen from the 1990s to what buyers are looking for today was a smart move," says Gray-Plaisted. "The 'after' transformation shows a huge improvement to the flow of the kitchen and connecting rooms."

O'Donnell says the new rectangular island and lighter walls did a lot to bring the kitchen into this decade.

"The '90s light fixture was replaced with two transitional pendants, which instantly modernize the space," she adds.

Cobb was impressed by the streamlined cabinetry.

"Raising the cabinetry height to the ceiling maximizes the drama and visual interest of the field tile," she says.

Curb appeal: "After all the updates on the inside of the house, the exterior needed to showcase the same design sensibility," says O'Donnell. "The brick was painted white, black-painted shutters were added to the front windows, and suddenly the house was a modern and refreshed version of itself."

But the painted brick wasn't the only exterior enhancement that makes a difference. The landscape also got a major overhaul, and O'Donnell says that likely impressed buyers, too.

"The front yard was further opened up by removing the old philodendrons and other smaller bushes. Those were replaced with pampas grasses, which require less maintenance and allow more light into the downstairs of the house," O'Donnell says.

The post Lessons From Listings Photos: A Home Stuck in the '90s Gets a Major Glow-Up appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
Albany

An array of education, health and law enforcement organizations are urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers to wait on debating and possibly legalizing adult recreational marijuana in New York until after the April 1 state budget deadline. This comes after Cuomo has expressed doubt that a decision on the matter can be made by the budget deadline.

Approach this policy slowly, outside the scope of the state budget, said Sarah Ravenhall, executive director of the state association of County Health Officials.

Some of the speakers at Tuesdays press briefing, like Ravenhall and members of the state Sheriffs Association, say they oppose legalization regardless of when that might happen.

Weve seen increases in car accidents, increases in exposure to children, Ravenhall said.

Here we are, poised to legalize another mind-altering substance, said Delaware County Sheriff Craig DuMond who believes legalization will likely aggravate the states opioid epidemic.

Others said they favor decriminalization but not allowing the commercial sale and promotion. We dont need to commercialize a new substance, said Garth Van Meter, vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. His group doesnt believe people should be incarcerated for marijuana but it also opposes what it fears would be another big tobacco-type industry if the substance was commercialized and heavily promoted through advertising.

Likewise with the state Medical Society, which also favors decriminalization but isnt ready to call for legalization. It would be premature at this point to go forward, said Morris Auster, the societys vice president.

The New York State PTA, which organized Tuesdays event, also said it opposes legalization, but wants alternatives to incarceration and a review of sentencing guidelines.

More for you Schools boards association urges delay in marijuana legalization

Michael Borges, executive director of the state Association of School Business Officials, added that the legalization question might best be left to a public referendum, similar to when New Yorkers voted to legalize casino gambling.

Many of the concerns expressed Tuesday centered on the impact of legalized marijuana on children. Some cited the marijuana gummy bears in states where its legal and the chance that children would ingest them, others worried about the effect on young learners if their parents become heavy marijuana users. Others said they have enough worries with the popularity of vaping among youngsters, as well as the possibility that pot would lead users to troy other drugs, including opioids.

The state School Boards Association has also urged lawmakers to consider marijuana legalization outside of the budget process since it would inevitably impact the schools. The group wasnt at Tuesdays event, however.

The likelihood of a rapid legalization may have taken a blow in recent weeks when leaders in Long Islands Suffolk and Nassau counties said they planned to opt out of allowing pot sales  at least for a year.

And lawmakers have a raft of other issues to tackle between now and the April 1 budget deadline.

But Kyle Belokopitsky, the NY PTAs executive director noted that all kinds of topics can crop up at the last minute in budget talks, when seemingly unrelated issues can be linked as part of the deal making process.

Ive seen lots of things rise from the dead in this building, said Belokopitsky.

rkarlin@timesunion.com  518-454-5758  @RickKarlinTU
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday played surveillance videos and recordings of dozens of tapped phone conversations for jurors as they outlined how four suspected robbers aided in a "methodically and meticulously" planned ATM heist and attack that was thwarted by law enforcement.

Authorities suspect that Redrick Batiste was the leader of a ring that committed a string of brazen heists involving ATM machines in the Houston area in 2016. Batiste was killed in a shootout with police after a SWAT team conducting a sting operation broke up what prosecutors say was the last robbery attempt, of an Amegy Bank of Texas branch on Dec. 7, 2016.

Police believe that Batiste fatally shot two security couriers from a distance in separate incidents prior to the unsuccessful robbery, and two of the defendants are charged in the second of the deadly heists. All four are charged in the thwarted December 2016 robbery attempt.

On the first day of testimony in the trial, FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Coughlin said the recordings show how the defendants scoped out the Amegy Bank branch and went over details of the plan. Coughlin said Batiste planned to serve as a sniper, following a pattern of shooting the armored truck courier stocking an ATM, and then sending someone to grab the money.

The agent linked the defendants' cell phone numbers to tapped phone conversations riddled with expletives and code words, which Coughlin translated for the jury.

Peanuts, walnuts and cashews meant money, he said. Care packages were burner phones. Go carts were slang for stolen cars, according to Coughlin. And commissary was the word for an armored truck.

"Commissary pullin' up right now," said a caller identified by the agent as defendant Marc Anthony Hill, the alleged lookout. The witness said the conversation corresponded to a video extracted from Hill's cell phone of an armored truck unloading at an Amegy Bank branch on Nov. 30, 2016. It was the same branch that Batiste and his crew allegedly attempted to rob days later, on Dec. 7, prosecutors argued.

The prosecution also played secret surveillance footage from outside Batiste's house and inside a stolen vehicle that corresponded with the time stamp on the phone calls.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather Winter said police began surveillance after a tipster told investigators that Batiste was the gunman in a fatal robbery on Aug. 29, 2016 involving an ATM at a Wells Fargo at U.S. 290 and Hollister. As courier David Guzman lay dying after being shot, defendant Nelson Alexander Polk drove up and a third man scooped up bags containing what turned out to be $120,000, according to prosecutors. Winter said testimony would show that Polk's and Hill's cell phones were tracked to the area, establishing they had scoped out the bank, and that Hill's phone could be traced to the vicinity of the bank during the deadly heist.

Polk's lawyer, Nicole DeBorde, described Batiste in her opening argument as a flashy, dynamic man who had a secret criminal side. She said Polk had no idea that what he was doing to help his friend was criminal. Hill, who is Polk's uncle and is representing himself at trial, said he had been doing something unrelated in the area of the deadly robbery and had no role in the crime. Both men also denied involvement in the failed robbery on Dec. 7 at the Amegy bank branch.

The FBI agent also testified that defendants John Edward Scott and Bennie Charles Phillips, Jr. could be traced to a number of conversations with Batiste in November 2016 in which they hatched plans for the December 2016 heist. Special Agent Coughlin said that Scott helped with plans to steal a rental car and rent a hotel room.

Scott's lawyer, George Michael DeGeurin, Jr., said his client's only error was doing favors unknowingly for Batiste, a friend since childhood. Scott didn't have any idea Batiste was involved in crime.

According to the FBI agent, Phillips was tasked with recruiting the man who would grab the cash at the bank. Phillips' lawyer, David Cunningham, argued that his client played no role whatsoever in the thwarted Amegy bank heist.

Batiste is also suspected in the March 2016 fatal shooting of Loomis security courier Melvin Moore, who was gunned down while stocking an ATM at the J.P. Morgan Chase branch on Airline Drive. Prosecutors did not present evidence on Tuesday about that slaying.

gabrielle.banks@chron.com
The stubborn blaze at the International Terminals Co. in Deer Park grew in size as it churned through chemical storage tanks for a third day on Tuesday as city, county and state leaders sought to assure anxious residents the fire posed no immediate health risk.

The officials pledged to commit all available local resources to assist in firefighting and protect residents from pollution, though they were unable to estimate when the fire may be put out and conceded that extinguishing the blaze is the responsibility of ITC.

What I can say is, everyone is doing their absolute best, said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who declined to say if she was satisfied with petroleum companys response to date. We are observing and supporting the situation.

Fire crews working for ITC said they finally were able to fight the fire offensively after a two-day stalemate, with the help of foam retardant and additional personnel. The company shut off pipelines and equipment near the blaze to reduce the risk of explosion.

The fire has forced Houston-area residents to grapple with the consequences of living so close to the heart of the nations petrochemical industry in ways previous accidents had not. Unlike invisible benzene discharges in east Houston or a gasoline leak into Buffalo Bayou after Hurricane Harvey, the Deer Park conflagration has sent a foreboding plume of dark smoke over Harris County, visible more than 30 miles away. A Bryan TV station reported the fire has caused a haze in the skies over Brazos, Grimes, Montgomery, Walker and Waller counties.

Beneath the cloud, business continued as usual in much of the county, though communities along the Houston Ship Channel remained disrupted. Jacinto City and Galena Park ISD canceled all afternoon outdoor activities while a fifth of Deer Park ISD students stayed home from school.

ITC spokeswoman Alice Richardson grew emotional as she apologized to Deer Park residents, tearing up as she added about a third of the firms employees live in the small east Harris County city.

This isnt an event we wanted, she said at a Tuesday morning news conference. Many of my employees work in the city of Deer Park, they live in Deer Park, theyre out there fighting this fire ... theyre concerned, their families are concerned. So, of course, ITC would apologize to any of them.

Around-the-clock firefighting efforts since the fire began Sunday morning have failed to quell the blaze, the origin of which had yet to determined.

Seven tanks were ablaze early Tuesday evening  up from five hours earlier  while two had collapsed; three others had been extinguished and three had yet to be touched by flames. The fire is within a block of 15 storage tanks on the southern edge of the plant. The tanks that are burning contain gasoline blends, base oils, xylene, pyrolysis gasoline and naptha.

"Fuel has burned off," Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen said at a news conference at the company's Pasadena plant. "That may be what has to happen. What I can't tell you is how long that will take."

Two additional chemical tanks caught fire at the plant on Independence Parkway early Tuesday after water pressure dropped. Authorities originally said two fireboat pumps providing water to firefighters malfunctioned for about six hours, but said in the afternoon that information was incorrect and that crews were investigating the cause of the pump failure.

A worker who said he was at the plant Sunday morning described seeing smoke rise from one of the tanks, which developed into a fire within half an hour.

It started on the ground and crept its way up the tank, the worker said. Everyone thinks a tank overheated.

He added that tanks can often overheat, but typically have a safety mechanism to shut off if necessary. For whatever reason, that safety mechanism may not have been enough to prevent the fire, he added.

Leaders address air quality

At a news conference at TranStar, Hidalgo, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton Jr. sought to calm residents fears that the plume posed serious health risks. Flanked by more than a dozen city and county emergency response officials, the trio pledged to devote all available resources to measuring air quality.

I know the cloud of dark smoke seems ominous as it spreads over parts of the city of Houston, but we want to assure that the air quality is being monitored around the clock, Turner said.

Dr. Umair Shah, director of Harris County Public Health, urged residents to check on relatives and neighbors who are elderly or have respiratory issues and, thus, are more susceptible to changes in air quality.

The plume darkened the sky north of the TranStar building on Old Katy Road, as if a thunderstorm was imminent. Passengers on aircraft approaching William P. Hobby Airport, 12 miles southwest of Deer Park, snapped photographs of black smoke billowing from the site.

Jeff Lindner, Harris Countys staff meteorologist, said the fire is so large it is creating localized weather patterns, much as wildfires do in the West. He said the plume soared from 4,000 to 6,200 feet on Tuesday, where it posed no risk to human health. Lindner said a fog Wednesday morning could pull harmful particulates toward the ground, though he pegged that outcome as only 10 percent likely.

The ash spewed high in the air by the blaze is far from being concentrated enough to cause a hazard to human health, said Texas Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton, who visited the ITC site Tuesday.

Its annoying. Its like walking through smoke, but its not toxic, he said.

Hidalgo said Harris County is publishing real-time air quality monitor data online to keep the public updated. Each of the dozens of monitors near the plume on Tuesday evening indicated a low risk of air pollution.

The Chronicle asked if the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality was testing the soil of the surrounding area or the runoff from fighting the fire. The Chronicle asked for the results of those tests, if performed, as well as the reports from any mobile air monitoring units.

"Specifics regarding test results and emergency response efforts will be available once the investigation is completed," TCEQ spokesperson Marty Otero said.

Despite assurances from local officials, many residents near the ITC facility were reluctant to take chances.

Of the more than 13,000 students who attend Deer Park ISD, more than 2,600 were absent Tuesday. Matt Lucas, a spokesman for the district, said officials will ask the Texas Education Agency for a waiver to excuse those students and said students who chose not to come while the fire burns out will be excused.

"Youre the parent and you have to make a decision thats best for your child," Lucas said Tuesday. "Were not going to hold that against them."

Lucas did not know if wind and weather forecasts would allow them to keep schools open Wednesday, but said the district would call and text parents once officials make a decision.

Industry takes lead

Though Houston and Harris County officials are in constant contact with ITC  the firm has embedded two employees in the countys emergency management headquarters  local government plays only a supporting role in battling the blaze. Most of the firefighting is being performed by private firm Channel Industries Mutual Aid, whose firefighters are specially trained for chemical fires.

Harris County has deployed its Hazmat team and Houston Fire Department Chief Sam Pena said he has dispatched an ambulance bus and crew at the request of ITC, though he said sending regular firefighters may be unwise.

It is a very technical environment that theyre working in, Pena said. We will depend on the plant experts to tell us what they can control  as far as their concerns about the volatility of the product thats in these tanks.

He added that the best course of action may be to let the fire burn itself out, as extinguishing the blaze without securing its fuel sources could subject adjacent neighborhoods to hazardous, ground-hugging fumes.

Christensen said the county fire marshals office will begin its investigation when the fire is out.

Firefighters from the Deer Park, Channelview, La Porte and Atascocita also were assisting.

Staff writers Shelby Webb, Matt Dempsey, Nicole Hensley, R.A. Schuetz and Julian Gill contributed reporting.

Zach Despart covers Harris County for the Chronicle. You can follow him on twitter or email him at zach.despart@chron.com .
Kara Rathbones story may sound familiar to many firefighters who marched with her Tuesday along Bagby Street in downtown Houston.

Rathbones husband, Austin, drives to work from their home in Bellville, about 70 miles away. A seven-year Houston firefighter, he has received scant raises since joining the department, and makes ends meet by installing irrigation systems on the side and working for a small fire department near Bellville, where about 4,300 people live.

That pay is everything. We have two kids. I have to stay home with them. I have a part-time job, she said. The small amount that we get every two weeks in pay, it doesn't cover what we need.

Fed up with the pace at which Mayor Sylvester Turners administration has carried out Proposition B  the voter-approved November referendum granting firefighters the same pay as police of corresponding rank and experience  the Rathbones joined several hundred others in a march on City Hall where union officials demanded full implementation of the raises and called on Turner to stop playing games with public safety.

The demands by Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association President Marty Lancton came a day after Turner rolled out his plan to fund firefighters pay raises in part by laying off 400 to 500 city employees, including firefighters. Several city council members briefed on the plan last week said up to 400 firefighters could be cut.

Let me reiterate this: We are going to win this fight, Lancton said to thunderous applause and cheers.

Lancton also identified six fire stations he said firefighters were told the city would close as part of the layoff plan.

Turner spokesman Alan Bernstein denied that.

City officials did not give anyone a list of fire stations that will close or that may close, he said.

Fire Chief Sam Pena confirmed in a text that no station closures had been set, noting that Turner and city council must approve any moves.

Meanwhile, Turner said Monday evening that the city will send out firefighters first Prop. B-adjusted paychecks in May. Firefighters also will receive lump-sum checks covering Jan. 1 through the first part of May, the mayor said. The city plans to dip into its fund balance to cover the $31 million cost of back pay.

For months, Turner has said firefighters deserve raises, but that Prop. Bs $80-to-$100 million cost is squeezing the citys revenue-capped budget because it did not come with a funding source. In an open letter earlier this month, Turner wrote that he does not believe voters, who approved Prop. B by about 18 points, intended to place our city in financial turmoil.

The mayors message fell flat with the firefighters, who held signs Tuesday marked on one side with the fire union logo and the word Solidarity, and the other with phrases such as Stop Playing With Public Safety and The Voters Are Not Stupid, Mayor.

Ricky Johnson, a firefighter of 25 years from Kingwood, echoed the message, arguing that Turners administration is playing politics with public safety.

They're putting our lives in jeopardy and they're putting the citizens of Houston's lives in jeopardy, Johnson said.

The firefighters marched from the George H.W. Bush monument at Sesquicentennial Park for several blocks until they reached City Hall, accompanied by bagpipes playing at the front of the pack.

At the march were several of the firefighters political allies, including Council members Dwight Boykins and Michael Kubosh, and mayoral candidates Tony Buzbee and Bill King. Both councilmen spoke to the crowd at City Hall, along with Texas State Association of Fire Fighters President John Riddle and Sandy McGhee, vice president of the International Association of Firefighters district that encompasses Houston.

Both union officials laid into Turner for the way he has handled the labor dispute and Prop. B.

I'm telling you today, the IAFF does not back down from bullies like Sylvester Turner, McGhee said.

If anything, the rally appeared to boost the spirits of firefighters who have experienced a range of emotions during the Prop. B saga, from excitement over the referendums passage to worry over impending layoffs.

"It does affect the morale, but we're still going to do what we do, and we'll always continue to do that, said Daniel Gutierrez, a Houston firefighter. We show up, we work, we do our job."

Turner has contended the fire department should bear the costs of Prop. B, citing a city-commissioned report that recommends a reduction in firefighters. The union disputes those results, pointing to a separate city report that advises otherwise.

Since Prop. B passed, city and fire union officials have attempted to negotiate a way of phasing in the raises over multiple years to avoid layoffs, though the two sides have yet to come together on a deal. Without an agreement, Turner has said, he has no choice but to cut personnel, because the city must balance its budget each fiscal year.

jasper.scherer@chron.com

twitter.com/jaspscherer
The daunting plume of smoke from the Deer Park chemical fire now reaches all the way across the Houston area to Austin.

So why are officials still saying current air quality levels aren't posing serious health risks to the public?

As of noon, air quality levels were still at a "moderate" reading with 78 particles detected in the Houston area, according to AirNow.gov. That's one step below a level that's unhealthy for sensitive groups, including people with heart and lung disease, older adults and children. A hazardous level requires a particle reading of at least 301.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: An oil milestone overshadowed by billowing threat of danger

Current weather conditions are playing a major role in keeping the air quality readings below hazardous levels, according to meteorologists and county officials.

The dry and clear conditions helps the particles to dissipate above the ground, according to earlier reports in the Houston Chronicle. Additionally, warmer afternoon temperatures are causing the plume to stay above 1,000 feet, minimizing risk for smoke or soot inhalation for people on the ground, according to National Weather Service meteorologists.

The smoke was expected to fall to around 400 feet overnight with cooler temperatures, but that height still wouldn't impact residents' health, according to county officials.

"So far the ground-level concentrations haven't been that high," National Weather Service Meteorologist Dan Reilly said.

High temperatures are expected to reach 71 degrees today and around 74 degrees until Saturday, according to forecast. In addition to warmer air, a slight change in wind direction is causing the plume to move further northwest though Jacinto City into Waller County, officials said.

Reilly said he couldn't speak to the specific chemicals burning at the Deer Park plant, but he said people could still experience risks of soot exposure if it concentrates enough toward the ground-level.

"Up until now, that smoke layer has been elevated," he said, later adding, "If it [stays] lofted, then we won't see a major impact."

RELATED: Deer Park plant fire: What you need to know about the chemicals

When it comes to exposure to other chemicals in the fire  most of which are used in the production of gasoline  he encouraged residents to keep checking the latest air quality measurements, available at AirNow.gov or tceq.texas.gov.

Multiple agencies have been independently measuring air quality on behalf of the county and the plant operators.

Harris County Pollution Control has been tracking volatile organic compounds around the plume using handheld monitors in the area of Deer Park, Pasadena, downtown Houston and Uptown, according to a map on its its website.

More recently, they're measuring specifics points along a northwest line through the city toward Tomball. So far, they haven't found any volatile organic compounds above normal levels, according to the website.

Julian Gill is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | julian.gill@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here.
A man accused of shooting at a family member at the Houston Can Academy North campus early Tuesday will likely be charged, police say.

No one was hurt when the suspect opened fire outside the school in the 3400 block of Hardy Street around 8:30 a.m., according to Houston Police Department Cmdr. Tinsley Guinn-Shaver. The suspect and his girlfriend had just arrived at the school as a young family member was being dropped off for the day, Guinn-Shaver said.

It was not immediately clear if the suspect and his girlfriend were dropping the young girl off or if other family members, who were already at the school, were doing so.

The suspect and one of the other family members got into a dispute, Guinn-Shaver said, at which point the suspect allegedly pulled a gun and shot toward a male family member.

The commander said the school appeared to take proper security measures as the shots rang out.

"It was a time when students were being dropped off," she said, adding that officers were speeding to the campus but slowed down because children were nearby. "Very quickly, the kids were in the school and suspect fled the scene."

Officers have identified the suspect, although Guinn-Shaver did not immediately release his identity. Detectives are working with the Harris County District Attorney's Office to determine charges, which will likely be aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, she said.

He was last seen fleeing the school with his girlfriend in a black BMW, Guinn-Shaver said.

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A state district judge Tuesday nullified the March 5 adoptions of Joe and Brittany Martinez by Charlie Thrash, 81, a wealthy man who is mentally incapacitated.

Joe Martinez, 27, and Brittany Martinez, 25, are the adult children of Laura Martinez, 54, who was briefly married to Thrash before their marriage was annulled last week.

The action Tuesday by Judge David Canales came on a motion filed by court-appointed guardians for Thrash.

On Express-News.com: San Antonio millionaire marriage annulled after abuse, exploitation and 'abduction' claims

They accused Phil Ross, Laura Martinezs lawyer, of committing a fraud on the court by not telling Judge Canales on March 5 about Thrashs mental incapacity and that he was a ward of a guardianship.

Canales scolded Ross on Tuesday for these omissions, noting, It sounds like a lot of information that would have been helpful to me was not presented.

Ross said the two Martinez children intend to refile their petitions for adoption.

FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox

He also told Canales that the hearing Tuesday should not proceed without Charlie Thrash being present.

On March 6, Thrash was taken to an undisclosed location after his personal guardian Mary Werner arrived with Shavano Park police and removed him from his home.

Werner said she took the dramatic action because she was concerned about Thrashs safety.

Laura Martinez, who said she began dating Thrash in August 2012, said she is the sole beneficiary in his will. His estate is worth more than $3 million.
WeWork Labs, a business incubator catering to early-stage companies, has entered the Houston market.

With about 60 desks in the Jones on Main building, at 708 Main downtown, WeWork Labs said it will provide work spaces, programming, mentorship and connections startups need to succeed.

It's a newer service from the coworking company that started in New York City in 2010 and then grew into a unicorn, the term used for a private company valued at more than $1 billion (WeWork has been rumored to be eyeing an IPO). It has 425 locations across 27 countries, including 12 Texas locations spread across Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Plano. It plans to make San Antonio its sixth Texas city.

Another WeWork program: WeWork, Bunker Labs launch Houston program to support veteran entrepreneurs

"Coworking itself is more of a new way of working and a way to build community, meaning meeting other people," said Emily Keeton, managing director and head of WeWork Labs Texas, "but it's not really a way to get advice on why your application to Techstars was not accepted or on perfecting your pitch."

WeWork Labs is mostly focused on companies that haven't raised money yet, or that have raised seed financing and are working toward a larger Series A venture capital round. It's looking for scalable companies -- not mid-size firms or service providers.

Companies must be accepted into the program, but the application process isn't as rigorous application as for traditional business accelerator programs. Keeton said she's searching for entrepreneurs passionate about their idea and willing to commit time to the business.

And separating WeWork Labs from other incubator programs is its global scale, Keeton said. WeWork Labs supports more than 1,000 startups in 49 locations across 15 countries. It can connect startups and mentors across that entire network.

At HoustonChronicle.com: Beef lovers call bull on WeWork's meatless edict

Houston is already an international city, and WeWork Labs can build on that, said Carlos Estrada, the WeWork Labs manager for Houston.

"It's going to definitely elevate what's going on here," he said, "and it's just going to bring even more global scale."
On October 29 last year, a Boeing 737 MAX airplane operated by Lion Air crashed shortly after takeoff in Indonesia, killing 189 passengers and crew. In the days after the incident, Dominic Gates, an aerospace reporter at The Seattle Times, learned from a source that Boeing, which has a huge presence around Seattle, was preparing to warn airlines of a possible instrument failure that could tip 737 MAXs into dangerous dives. Gates continued to report on potential problems with the model. What he found out was extraordinary. Managers at the Federal Aviation Administration let Boeing safety-test features of the 737 MAX itself. And current and former Boeing engineers familiar with the checks told Gates they had major flaws.

On March 6, Gates sent requests for comment to Boeing and the FAA outlining his findings about a flawed safety assessment. Boeing said it would work on providing answers. Then, on March 10, another 737 MAX, this time operated by Ethiopian Airlines, crashed six minutes after lifting off from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Boeing quickly found itself at the center of a global media storm. Countries around the world grounded the planes; last Wednesday, the US, belatedly followed suit. Around the same time, Gates finished writing his piece about the flawed safety checkbut Boeing and the FAA had still not commented, and the links between the Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes remained murky. On Thursday, Gates and three colleagues learned about, then reported, a potential similarity between the incidents based on evidence found at the Ethiopian crash site and relayed by an expert. On Friday, Gates finalized the safety-test story hed been working on since last year, and it was published on Sunday.

ICYMI: A copyeditor was looking at early Charlottesville images Saturday. While doing so, he made a big realization.

Like many local news reporters in the US, Gatesa former math teacher who is now in his 16th year with The Seattle Timesworks a beat dedicated to a dominant local company or industry. To survive as a regional paper, The Seattle Times has to offer readers news it cannot get elsewhere, Gates tells me in an email. Since this is the home of Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks, it strives to own coverage of those mega corporations. Coverage of Boeing has historically been huge for The Seattle Times.

Theres no shortage of national coverage of those companiesBloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and others have broken important stories on the Boeing beat. But Gates feels his local base offers him a distinct advantage. I have sources aerospace reporters elsewhere can only dream about, he says. Not just inside Boeing but also its suppliers and its unions. And the FAA office responsible for certifying Boeing planes. And our readers include a very large, knowledgeable aerospace base.

In a dire economic climate for local news, specialized beats and the reporters on them, are, logically, under threat. Reporters like Gates are reminders that Americas local newspapers can be crucial repositories of public-interest journalism. When they falter, national titles are sometimes able to pick up the slack. But we shouldnt rely on that. The logical endpoint of Americas local-news crisis isnt just less reporting on local courthouses and councilsits less scrutiny for major companies and arms of the federal government, too.

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ICYMI: WSJ reporter explains why he was fired

Below, more on local news:



Gitmo: In early February, The Miami Heralds Carol Rosenberg, the only US reporter covering Guantanamo Bay on a full-time basis, was one of 450 employees to be offered a buyout by McClatchy, the Heralds owner. Rosenberg, whose position at the Herald was being supported by the Pulitzer Center, subsequently left the paper for The New York Times.

In early February, The Miami Heralds Carol Rosenberg, the only US reporter covering Guantanamo Bay on a full-time basis, was one of 450 employees to be offered a buyout by McClatchy, the Heralds owner. Rosenberg, whose position at the Herald was being supported by the Pulitzer Center, subsequently left the paper for The New York Times. Et tu, Facebook: A Facebook service aiming to serve local news to users has been hamstrung by a lack of available local news, the company said on Monday. Facebook found that 40 percent of Americans live in areas where the service cannot be supported; it pledged to share its data with academics researching the news desert phenomenon. As many observers were quick to point out, the local news crisis has been greatly exacerbated by Facebooks ad monopoly and content policies.

A Facebook service aiming to serve local news to users has been hamstrung by a lack of available local news, the company said on Monday. Facebook found that 40 percent of Americans live in areas where the service cannot be supported; it pledged to share its data with academics researching the news desert phenomenon. As many observers were quick to point out, the local news crisis has been greatly exacerbated by Facebooks ad monopoly and content policies. Alt-alt-weeklies: Local alt-weeklies have been hit particularly hard by the dire local-news climate: last month, for example, the Seattle Weekly, for whom Gates used to write, announced it was going out of print. For CJR, Allison Braden looks at alt-alt-weekliespublications that have grown from the ashes of shuttered alt-weeklies.



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: Why the left cant stand The New York Times

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.
Just 35 days after the publisher of Creative Loafing Charlotte laid off the alt-weeklys seven full-time employees, former editor-in-chief Ryan Pitkin and former account manager Justin LaFrancois distributed 15,000 copies of the first issue of Queen City Nerve. Prints not dead, the cover proclaimed, from the abandoned Creative Loafing racks.

In Los Angeles, former LA Weekly staffers held an open-casket funeral for the alt-weekly after new ownership fired its editors. The #BoycottLAWeekly campaign emerged as former staffers and freelancers resolved to kill a paper they thought had lost its way. An editorial collective of six, most of whom had been on the LA Weekly staff at some point, launched theLAnd, a quarterly magazine, whose first issue arrived last month.

Charlie Deitch believed Pittsburghs City Paper had also lost its way. As editor-in-chief of the weekly, he admits he was often insubordinate: I was mad at them for not for being the publication that I thought they should be. Deitchs frequent disagreements with the publisher led to his firing in May 2018. By June, he and City Papers former marketing director, Bethany Ruhe, had raised almost $12,000 to start Pittsburgh Current, which now has 10 full-time employees.

ICYMI: A class-action suit has journalists freaking out

Baltimores City Paper went under in November 2017. Editor-in-chief Brandon Soderberg teamed up with Lisa Snowden-McCray to run Baltimore Beat, but after just four months in print, their publisher pulled the plug. The papers announcement on social media read, in part, Advertising support hasnt been sufficient to sustain us. Now, after taking ownership, the pair have relaunched as a nonprofit. Since the publication is run by journalists, they figured, it would be cleaner to drop the for-profit element.

These editors and their partners have gone against prevailing wisdom and built alt-inspired publications from scratch. Though none are published weekly, all the efforts prioritize advocacy reporting, a hyperlocal focus, and coverage of communities and topics not traditionally covered by other established news outlets. As successors to the alt-weeklies that preceded them, they steward a tradition struggling to remain viable.

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After the Charlotte Creative Loafing staff was laid off, they went to a local bar to commiserate. Pitkins phone buzzed constantly as he received condolence tweets and Venmo donations to pay the tab. The messages sounded the staggering depth of the loss. We got put into a perfect storm of empathy, Pitkin says. That gave us the perfect launching pad.

The closure of print outlets has left many communities in a local news drought, even in cities as large as Los Angeles. Jennifer Swann, co-editor-in-chief of theLAnd, says that LA Weeklys closure gave her collective the impetus to launch the magazine. The #BoycottLAWeekly campaign, to kill a once-beloved paper, seemed counterintuitive, but the magazine would give new life to everything we loved best about LA Weekly and amplify local longform stories unlikely to appear in other outlets.

In Pittsburgh, Deitch believes the swell of support and outrage from readers speaks to an enduring frustration that goes beyond any single event. People want a news source that they trust, Deitch says. I think some people gave because they were just pissed off at what happened to me. But I think the funding came because they supported the project we wanted to start.

Baltimore Beats nonprofit model banks on reader support, via Patreon subscriptions, and additional revenue comes from the Baltimore Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, which Soderberg helped found in 2017. The money we receive from our donors is direct feedback from our readers that tells us how much we are needed, Soderberg says. By not being for-profit, the metrics for success are just Did we do good work and are people donating money to us because we do good work?

The swell of outrage and sympathy may make a perfect launching pad, but a publications sustainability depends on converting that wave into sustained readership and cold, hard cash. When I ask the cofounders of Queen City Nerve what allowed them to get off the ground, LaFrancois mentions the public support. Pitkin cuts in: Also, financial investors.

ICYMI: Newspaper upgrades CEOs housing stipend to $35K a month amid buyouts

Before the first issue, Pitkin and LaFrancois expected to fund Queen City Nerve with their savings. An investor ultimately reached out to help but, two months after launching, and provided an initial investment to cover the startups first year of operating costs, which they did not disclose. They currently rely on advertising revenue, and continue to distribute the Queen City Nerve to 500 sites around town themselves. Each biweekly run of 15,000 copies costs $1,600 to print, and contributors are paid a modest fee, typically less than $100 per article. We believe that print ads work, and we need to hammer that home to people, Pitkin says. But were not going to act as if digital is just a stupid trend.

Pittsburgh Current has a similar business model. After raising $22,000 on Kickstarter and contributing about $10,000 of their own money, the cofounders partnered with an investor and also participated in a microlending program. The monthly paper also relies on advertisers who, Deitch says, know what we stand for and how we operate.

After the first incarnation of Baltimore Beat went under last year, Soderberg and Snowden-McCray did a lot of reflection. I dont think ad revenue is the way forward anymore, Snowden-McCray says. Their decision to operate as a nonprofit meant dropping the print component, a measure both co-founders hope is temporary.

The editors behind theLAnd were determined to release a print product. As a quarterly magazine, however, their mission is not to be a regular source of news. We wanted something that had a lasting feel, Swann says, a testament to a moment in the citys history, full of beautiful longform stories and distributed for free. What the journalists didnt anticipate was the extent of the cost and work. The first issue of the magazineborn of fundraising, ad sales, and a grantweighed in at around 130 pages. To help ensure financial sustainability, they are now registering as a nonprofit.

The Nerves Pitkin exhibits a cynical idealism characteristic to journalists when he says, Im not a greedy businessperson. Im here to do journalism. In this print-media climate, you could be forgiven for wondering if hes naive. But he and LaFrancois explain their ambition modestly, resolving to keep costs low and remain adaptable. This can be done on a profitable scale where everyone makes a nice living, Pitkin says, and thats not crazy.

None of these journalists knew exactly what they were doing when they decided to launch a publication. The process of learning how to operate a business has led them down different paths, each an experiment whose success is not guaranteed. No one is coming to save us, we have to save ourselves, Snowden-McCray says. Nobody has the answers right now, which is terrifying and liberating at the same time.

ICYMI: Why the left cant stand The New York Times

Correction: This piece previously stated that Queen City Nerve had blown through the initial investment. Blown through referred to a smaller portion of fundraising.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Allison Braden is a journalist based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Follow her on Twitter @AllisonBraden.
As a towering plume of black smoke billowed a mile above Houston for a third day, local officials said they dont know how long the petrochemical blaze that sent orange fireballs into the sky will continue.

Five tanks holding gasoline ingredients were still afire about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of downtown Houston on Tuesday and three have burned out, according to facility owner Intercontinental Terminals Co. However, previous expectations that the conflagration would exhaust itself by the middle of the week no longer hold, officials said.

The fire that began early Sunday in an industrial suburb called Deer Park intensified overnight after a dip in water pressure interfered with firefighting efforts and two more tanks erupted in flame. The pressure drop has been rectified and additional help in fighting the fire was summoned.

Fuel has burned off and weve said from the beginning that may be what has to happen, Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen said during a meeting with reporters. Im not going to give you a time because as we know overnight it has changed.

Ground Level

In the downtown Houston business district, the smoky smell that pervaded high-rise offices on Monday had eased. But in residential neighborhoods on the citys north side, a chemical odor descended Tuesday morning on an otherwise clear day. An ITC spokeswoman said air pollution remained below health-concern levels.

Since assuring residents of the fourth-largest U.S. city on Monday that there were no immediate health concerns at ground level, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality hasnt issued any new advisories or assessments. The agency doesnt know when it will issue an update, spokesman Brian McGovern said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

State regulators are asleep at the wheel, said Adrian Shelley, director of the Texas arm of Public Citizen, which advocates for environmental protection. They collect a wealth of data across Texas and Houston is certainly one of the most heavily air-monitored places on the planet. But they dont use their channels to communicate with the public.

The Deer Park facility has a total of 242 tanks located near the Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest ports along the Gulf Coast.

Schools in Deer Park and neighboring communities that were shut Monday reopened Tuesday.

The fire demonstrates how chemical disasters happen far too often in our region, often due to lax regulatory oversight and enforcement, said Stephanie Thomas, a Public Citizen researcher.

Chemical Communities

She criticized the Trump administration for seeking to reduce funding to the Environmental Protection Agency and other government plans which sought to bring greater safety to communities like Deer Park that are surrounded by the petrochemical industry.

Potential health effects of the smoke include coughing, difficulty breathing and irritation to eyes and throat, according to the One Breath Partnership, an organization that works to improve air quality.

You can really smell & taste it now, real-estate agent Jon Gardella said on Twitter, referring to the black smog enveloping Houston on Monday morning.

Prices for naphtha on the U.S. Gulf Coast rose 2.51 cents to $1.5253 a gallon Tuesday after adding 2.45 cents on Monday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The tank farm occupies 265 acres on the Houston Ship Channel east of the city. It can store more than 13 million barrels of chemicals, petroleum, fuel oil and gases. It serves marine, train and trucking transport with five tanker berths and its own rail spur.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska The state has dismissed criminal charges filed last summer against the coordinator of Village Public Safety Officers for interior Alaska.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports 41-year-old Jody Juneby-Potts was charged in July with criminal mischief after using a truck to move a car that blocked her into a parking spot at the Tanana Lakes Recreation Area.

Repairs for the car cost nearly $3,000.

Potts attorney, Frank Spaulding, says the car owner was compensated for damage through insurance and was satisfied with the case being dismissed.

Spaulding said Potts did everything she believed she could do to contact the car owner and didnt realize the extent of the damage.

Prosecutor Javier Diaz said prosecutors determined the resolution was appropriate and complied with the victims wishes.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio -- A Strongsville chef plans to open his own restaurant, featuring gourmet pizza, on Broadview Road, possibly by late April or early May.

Jeff Fisher will call the restaurant Salted Dough Artisan Pizza. It will occupy a space in Broadview Commons, off the west side of Broadview, just north of Ohio 82. The restaurant will contain 95 seats inside and another 50 on the patio.

I had been looking all over for a location for five years, Fisher told cleveland.com. First I looked in Strongsville, but it became overflowed with new restaurants. I wanted a nice suburb but still close to home.

Fisher likes the Broadview Heights spot because potential customers are east and west on Ohio 82, in Brecksville and North Royalton, not to mention Strongsville.

Ive eaten at every single pizza place in a 10-mile radius, and there will be nothing like us, Fisher said.

Fisher is no newbie to the restaurant business. About five years ago, he helped a family member open Crust, a pizzeria where the dough is made from scratch and hand-tossed, in Tremont. Crust now has a second location in Midtown Cleveland, according to the restaurants website.

Also, Fisher was a chef at Touch Supper Club in Ohio City, which serves steak, seafood, sliders, comfort food like macaroni and cheese, and -- of course -- gourmet pizza.

Fisher said the pizza at Salted Dough will be similar to the kind served at Crust, where the crust is thin and ingredients are layered. The restaurant will make as many of its own ingredients as possible, including the sausage, but not the pepperoni.

You have to have incredible pepperoni, Fisher said. Were looking at companies in Vermont and Indiana that make artisan-style pepperoni, because thats the most important ingredient.

Fisher said he would like to bake a 40-inch pizza, with slices 16 to 18 inches long, at Salted Dough.

It would be the largest pizza in Cleveland, Fisher said.

Salted Dough will serve other dishes, perhaps beef, chicken, fish, ravioli and gnocchi, a type of dumpling. Fisher said he will partner with local farms and serve locally brewed beers.

Fisher isnt sure precisely when he will open. He was on the Broadview Heights Planning Commission agenda last week for sign approval, but at the last minute asked the commission to table his application. He said hes still working with contractors to prepare the building.

As for the decor, Fisher said hes aiming for farmstead/chic. Hes been traveling the country searching for the right equipment and materials, including old reclaimed wood and barn beams. Two tables have been made from old oak flooring.

Salted Dough will include a separate area and entrance for lunch and dinner takeout orders.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  City Council gave approval Monday to a plan to make it easier for shoppers to pull out of the reconfigured parking lot at Clevelands West Side Market.

By a vote of 14-0, the council agreed to allow Mayor Frank Jacksons administration to hire armed security for the parking lot at the market.

Having armed security isnt new at the market. But this contract will be different because it will ask for traffic-control duties where the markets parking lot exits onto Lorain Avenue, Deputy Public Works Commissioner Susie Clayton told council members during a hearing Monday morning.

The city reworked the parking lots at the historic market when it began to charge for parking.

The parking system, which kicked in early in 2018, allows shoppers to park for free the first 90 minutes. The city adopted the system, in part, in response to vendor complaints that people were parking at the market for long periods while they went to other sites in Ohio City.

Busy on-street traffic, coupled with cars being funneled through just two gates, can cause backups at Lorain Avenue exit.

Tenable Protective Services holds the current security contract for the West Side Market. That agreement for about $88,200 a year with Cleveland expires in June.

Clayton said the cost of the new agreement is expected to be about $89,000 a year. The ordinance authorizes a one-year contract but gives the administration discretion to renew it for two subsequent years.
BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- As the April 20 deadline approaches for the city to seek state money to take on a large traffic redesign project for the Richmond Road-Chagrin Boulevard area, City Council members are unsure if they want to even move forward with the project.

Council held a Committee-of-the-Whole meeting Monday (March 18) in which the project was the main topic of discussion. The committee meeting followed by five days a public meeting at which about 50 residents spent just over two hours dissecting the plan and talking about which aspects they disliked.

After Mondays committee meeting, Council President Brian Linick shared his feelings about the plan. Im against it, Linick said. The ends dont justify the means.

The plans total cost is estimated at $15.8 million. The city would have to pay $4.1 million of that amount. The State of Ohio, if the city were to seek grant money by the deadline, would contribute $10 million, with NOACA adding just over $1.7 million.

Linick said he also doesnt like the fact that the plan does not account for the areas aesthetics, something he said council requested before it was drawn up.

The plan would involve installing signs on Richmond Road southbound at the Chagrin Boulevard intersection that would allow motorists turning left to be in the proper lane for entering the Interstate 271 southbound ramp, and for crossing the Chagrin Boulevard bridge for entrance onto the I-271 northbound ramp. The lane leading to the northbound entrance would be divided from others on the bridge by a curb.

In accordance with the plan, the bridge would be widened by one lane; a small section of lane would be added on Chagrin Boulevard eastbound, just west of Richmond Road; and -- in the most controversial part of the plan -- entrance and exit onto and from Bryden Road at Richmond Road would be via right turn only.

Several residents at the March 13 meeting spoke out in complaint about the Bryden Road change. Bryden is often used as a cut-through route for those seeking to avoid Chagrin Boulevard traffic between Richmond and South Green roads.

Linick and Councilman Alec Isaacson questioned Ryan Gillespie, a representative of city engineering firm GPD Group, about the accuracy of claims that the intersection is the 16th most dangerous in Ohio.

Gillespie explained that the state rankings include various categories and that the stretch of Richmond Road just east of the intersection is ranked number 16, while another part of the intersection, just west of Richmond Road, is ranked number five in its category. Other spots in the area are also ranked among the top 200.

Gillespie said the intersection and area around it sees crashes every second day, and an injury accident every nine days.

Isaacson asked Gillespie to gather more information for council as to how the study, which GPD conducted and led to the redesign plan, came to its conclusions.

Councilman James Pasch also requested more information about the study. He then asked of the project, Is the benefit derived worth the $4 million price tag?

Pasch said there are other priorities council should be considering, such as building a new police station, adding street lights to the entire city or opening up Harvard Road to connect with Commerce Parkway -- all potentially costly projects.

"There's only so many seven-figure checks to go around," Pasch said. "As far as where this falls on the priority list, to me, this would fall below all three of those things."

Councilman Eric Synenberg said of the project: Im leaning towards no, but I havent yet made a final decision. The residents dont see a need for it and, in fact, see adverse effects from it. I dont think its worth the cost.

Councilman Justin Berns was the only member of council to state that he is in favor of seeking the state money for the project. While other council members did not see a great benefit from the project in terms of alleviating traffic, Berns felt it would be a help.

Mayor Martin Horwitz told council that when a city turns down state money, it may not get a chance again in the near future to gain state funding for that project. The Ohio Department of Transportation, if it funds the project, would do so from a safety standpoint.

Even if Beachwood does apply for the state money, it could still be turned down.

Linick said that legislation that would have the city requesting the state funding will be on the agenda for council's April 1 meeting for further discussion.

With only an April 15 meeting remaining in the month, if council does agree to seek the state money, it would have to hold a special meeting in order to give the legislation its proper three readings.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  An appeals court reversed a ruling by a federal judge that said a Cleveland FBI agent used misleading information to get a warrant in an investigation into an Iranian scientist accused of stealing trade secrets.

A three-judge panel from the 6th U.S. Circuit wrote Tuesday that agent Timothy Boggs did not omit important information when he submitted a search warrant to a federal magistrate for Sirous Asgaris emails in 2013.

Asgari, a professor at Sharif University in Tehran who studies metallurgical science, was indicted in 2016 on charges of theft of trade secrets, wire fraud and visa fraud. He is free on bond.

U.S. District Judge James Gwin ruled in April 2018 that Boggs, who has since retired, included wildly misleading information in an affidavit in an attempt to show a connection between Asgari and a university project the agent claimed was done in support of the Iranian Navy.

The judge also suppressed emails the FBI took through a 2015 search warrant, saying it relied too much on information agents obtained through the 2013 warrant.

The 6th Circuits ruling means federal prosecutors can again use all the emails it obtained from the search warrants at Asgaris trial.

Prosecutors say Asgari violated U.S. sanctions law as it pertains to Iran.

They say Asgari came to the U.S. in December 2011 on a tourist visa and did not say he had plans to visit Ohio. In fact, he traveled to Cleveland to conduct research at the Swagelok Center for Surface Analysis of Materials, a laboratory at Case Western Reserve University, according to a grand jury indictment.

He again came to the U.S. in November 2012, telling the State Department he was traveling for tourism and medical treatment. This time, he went to Cleveland to work full-time at Case Western to develop a project based on Swagelok Company technology, the indictment says. The project, paid for by the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research, was to create and produce anti-corrosive stainless steel through a heating process.

Asgari left the U.S. in April 2013. Before that, he signed a non-disclosure agreement that said he would not reveal information about the project he worked on because it included trade secrets, prosecutors say.

While in the U.S., Asgari sent emails to people in Iran, which included some of the projects technical information. He also took metal samples that he worked on with the treatment process back to Iran without Swageloks permission and marketed the treatment process data and research to Iranian companies and government institutions, the indictment says.

Gwin wrote that Boggs 10-page affidavit from 2013 was bare bones that it was unreasonable for the executing officer to believe it valid. The 6th Circuit found this was not the case and that the affidavit listed facts that would lead an officer to believe probable cause existed for the search.

The appeals court wrote that Asgari traveled to the U.S. in 2011 and 2012 and did not list Cleveland as a destination in his visa application, even though he went there both times.

Asgari also got his job in Cleveland in 2012, which was not allowed by the type of visa he had. Boggs also noted evidence that suggests Asgari may have transmitted information back to Iran, as he spoke with people there by email and that his employer has ties to the Iranian government, the 6th Circuit ruled.

The appeals court also said none of the statements Gwin flagged as being errors or falsehoods in Boggs affidavit rose to the level of a knowing falsehood or deliberate omission.

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RAVENNA, Ohio -- Former Macedonia Mayor Joseph Migliorini has pleaded guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor of attempted violation of a protection order, according to Portage County Court of Common Pleas records.

Read the full story here

Migliorini, who served as mayor from 1988 to 2001 and was re-elected in 2015, attempted to violate a protection order issued by the state of Florida when he broke into a Streetsboro home in August 2018 where his former girlfriend was visiting a friend, the homeowner.

As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors dropped felony charges of violating a protection order and burglary, court records show. Migliorini, 66, faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Migliorini resigned as mayor in July citing an April 2018 incident outside a Palm Beach, Florida restaurant in which he pulled his girlfriends hair and slapped her, according to police.

He was charged with misdemeanor battery and is scheduled to appear in court April 8 for a plea conference, Palm Beach County court records show.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio  Lake Erie is going to court.

The Great Lake, known to Ohio residents as the body of water where they can boat, fish and swim, asked a federal judge on Monday to jump into a lawsuit over a law Toledoans passed to protect its ecosystem.

The conceit of a non-sentient ecological body being allowed into a federal courtroom may sound strange at first. However, the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which residents in Toledo passed during a special election in February, allows city residents to sue on the lakes behalf.

Environmental advocates Toledoans for Safe Water asked U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary to let them and the Lake Erie Ecosystem into a lawsuit to defend the law from a challenge by farmers in neighboring Wood County.

The group says it does not think that city lawyers will do a good job of defending the Lake Erie Bill of Rights because the Toledo City Council president and others campaigned against it, according to a motion filed Monday by attorneys Terry Lodge and Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin.

The lawsuit, filed one day after Toledo voters approve the law, says the bill of rights violates residents equal protection and freedom of speech, and is unenforceable because it is so vague.

Zouhary on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law from going into effect while the case is litigated. Both the Toledo and farmers Mark and Tyler Drewes, who filed suit, agreed to the injunction.

While having a piece of the environment participate in a lawsuit seems like a novel idea, the motion names examples of ecosystems being granted legal standing by either courts or lawmakers in Ecuador, Bolivia and New Zealand.

Tish ODell, who works with Toledoans for Safe Water, also noted an instance where a group in Grant Township, a rural area in western Pennsylvania, asked a federal judge in 2014 to allow the Little Mahoning Creek Watershed into a lawsuit challenging that communitys bill of rights that banned disposing of waste from oil and gas extraction.

The judge later declined the request.

Toledoans have been pushing toward for a Lake Erie Bill of Rights since 2014 when they could not tap into its water supply for three days because of a harmful algal bloom. People couldnt use city water to brush their teeth or take a shower or drink.

The algal bloom is often caused by manure and fertilizer runoff into the water. Both contain phosphorus. They are necessary to grow crops, but also cause the green scum atop water in Lake Eries western basin and have tainted the areas water in the past.

Despite the anger from residents, at least one legal expert questioned whether the law is constitutional. Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Adler told cleveland.com in February that the law oversteps because Lake Erie stretches far beyond the Toledo city limits.
MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Police have identified a 19-year-old man wanted in a Saturday shooting that left two men dead and one man hurt in Maple Heights.

Jalen Lathan Smith faces charges of aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder in a warrant issued Tuesday evening for his arrest, Maple Heights police said.

Police say Smith has connections in the Cleveland and Chicago areas, police say.

William Ivy III, 35, and Julius Moore, 29, were shot dead in a home on Brunswick Avenue near East 146th Street.

A third man was shot during the incident and suffered life-threatening injuries, but his current condition was not immediately available Tuesday evening.

Investigators have not provided a motive in the shooting.

Authorities say there are other persons of interest in the case and the Cleveland police, Chicago police, FBI and US Marshals Service also are assisting in the investigation.

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MANSFIELD, Ohio  Police shot and killed a suspect who was armed with a box cutter Monday after officers confronted the man while he was attempting to break into an apartment, according to reports.

WCMH Channel 4 reports the officers involved, Matt Davis, Thayne Telquist and Scott Kotterman, have been placed on administrative leave as the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation reviews the shooting. It is not specified which officers fired on the suspect.

Police were called to an apartment complex at about 4:25 p.m., according to the Richland Source. The caller told police the suspect appeared to be intoxicated or under the influence of drugs and was armed with a box cutter.

When confronted by officers, the suspect became highly agitated," reports say. The suspect appeared to have already cut himself, police say.

Officers used Tasers on the suspect but they were not effective, 10tv.com reports. Moments later, police say the confrontation escalated and officers opened fire, killing the suspect.

The suspects age and identity were not released.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio  A Columbus woman bit an off-duty police officer who tried to arrest her for attacking a man in Clevelands Ohio City neighborhood, police reports say.

Lindsey R. Adams, 32, is charged with assault in the Friday incident outside a KeyBank on West 25th Street near Carnegie Avenue, according to court records.

Adams punched a 49-year-old man she tried to rob at an ATM, then bit an off-duty Wakeman police officers left hand, police reports say. The 24-year-old police officer was in Cleveland to work a part-time security job, but police reports do not specify where he was working.

The 49-year-old told investigators he was using an outdoor ATM just after 3:30 p.m. when a woman came up behind him and said thats my money. She then tried to grab his debit card from the ATM.

The man also reached for the debit card, and the woman punched him in the face, police reports say.

Two security officers working nearby, including the off-duty Wakeman officer, heard someone yelling for help. They found the man, who informed them that the woman had assaulted him.

The security officers found Adams and tried to detain her. She was combative and refused to put her hands behind her back so they could handcuff her, police reports say.

Adams then bit the Wakeman officers left hand as he tried to handcuff her, police reports say. She was eventually handcuffed and taken into custody.

The Wakeman officer suffered minor injuries. The bite did not puncture his skin, police reports say.

Adams waived her right to a preliminary hearing during her arraignment Monday in Cleveland Municipal Court. Her case has been bound over to a Cuyahoga County grand jury.

She remains in custody at the Cuyahoga County Jail on $25,000 bond, court records say.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- On March 17th, the White House fountain was Irish green. But the Oval Office was twitter bird blue as President Trump railed on his loco twitter train, hitting the late American war hero Sen. John McCain, a Saturday Night Live rerun and the closed Lordstown GM plant union leadership.

Here are four of the Lordstown rants that came off Trumps twitter assembly line.

"Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce. G.M. let our Country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves. I want action on Lordstown fast. Stop complaining and get the job done! 3.8% Unemployment!

Just spoke to Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors about the Lordstown Ohio plant. I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING. I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW Union - I dont care. I just want it open!

General Motors and the UAW are going to start talks in September/October. Why wait, start them now! I want jobs to stay in the U.S.A. and want Lordstown (Ohio), in one of the best economies in our history, opened or sold to a company who will open it up fast! Car companies...

...are all coming back to the U.S. So is everyone else. We now have the best Economy in the world, the envy of all. Get that big, beautiful plant in Ohio open now. Close a plant in China or Mexico, where you invested so heavily pre-Trump, but not in the U.S.A . Bring jobs home!"

At least the low-tech loving Trump didnt go on to tweet that GM should go back to building the Corvair, or sell the plant to Ford to build the Model T.

The cartoon above was first posted on November 28, 2018 when GM announced the closing of the Lordstown plant and Trump boasted he would have the plant up an running again in a matter of minutes.

Since the closing of the Lordstown plant was announced, all Trump has really done is tweet about it. Trump tweeted that Union Local President David Green ought to get his act together." So should President Trump, after his loco fifty tweet runaway twitter train wreck this weekend.
LORAIN, Ohio  When it comes to brewing beer, the owners of Bascule Brewery and Public House rely on themselves. But when it comes to furnishing their Colorado Avenue taproom, they rely on the public.

"They see a space," co-owner Fred Lozano said. "People ask 'Can I put something there?' "

The answer is yes.

A mismatched hodgepodge of donated furniture, tables and chairs are scattered in the long vertical building at Colorado and Kansas avenues in Lorain. No two pieces are alike. Rockers sit near a nest of chairs made from uncut driftwood. Pews and the bar top come from Archangel Michael Greek Orthodox Church in Campbell near Youngstown.

"Everyone who has been buried or married in my family has crossed over these," co-owner and brewer Chris Kambouris said.

The raw floor is halfway done and will remain as is. After old tile was pulled up, the owners kind of liked the look.

"You know what?" Lozano said. "It's got character."

The brewery's decor, he said, has its own je ne sais quoi: "This was us basically giving up and not knowing what to do with it."

The owners decided early on to "let the people who come in here dictate the style. It's worked really well for us," Lozano said.

Pallets with engraved names of supporters were laser-cut at Lorain County Community College. Art on the walls is rotated every few months.

It was about being "as resourceful as we could," Lozano said.

"We try to promote local everything," he added.

The idea for the brewery hit in 2015. License came in 2017. The taproom opened in 2018. And the next step?

"To have an official grand opening," Kambouris said.

The brewery is situated next to Blessed Handz Designed by Faith hair salon and across from Family Dollar. The 1,400-square-foot, long gray building used to be mower and sales repair shop. It's a brewery in part because of a challenge Fred's father gave him.

"Why dont you start your own place?" Lozano said his father told him. Lozano - who goes by Fred Da Mailman on Facebook, denoting his day job - took it as a challenge.

Kambouris hails from Campbell. He worked at The Brew Kettle, learning under Jack Kephart, his mentor, and also worked at Mt. Carmel Brewing Co. in Cincinnati. He jokes about how he got started brewing professionally.

"The short story is I failed at everything else," he said. "I always felt a tie to a trade."

His parents were Greek immigrants, and his dad enjoyed baking bread. Kambouris fell in love with baking, making things, being creative. In 2010-11, he heard about a local home-brew festival and his life was forever changed.

"I wandered in a campground in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania," Kambouris said. "We're like Dorothy going from black and white to color."

A mutual contact connected him with Lozano, and "timing was serendipitous," Kambouris said.

"At the end of a three-hour (phone) conversation I had a business partner," Lozano said.

"There's no reason this cant succeed with realistic goals," Kambouris said. "We knew if we took the lemonade-stand approach and just kept investing in ourselves it would work."

Investing in themselves means having a limited distribution approach: Their beer is in several local spots, but they do not have plans to can or bottle. The brewhouse sits where the mowers used to be repaired and stored.

Kambouris said sometimes folks will ask "When am I going to see your stuff at my local store?'

" 'No I'd rather be your like your local bakery,' " he replies.

They buy a lot of their hops - mostly Cascade - locally, from Rustling Bines in Vermilion.

"We don't try to alter the ingredients to change the beer," Kambouris said. "I try to complement the ingredients that grow locally."

Bascule's beers include a very smooth Irish Red Ale, Copper Ale, Pilsner, English Porter and IPA. Nothing recently on tap was over 6.5 percent alcohol.

"This is not your rowdy (bar)," Kambouris said. "Our unofficial slogan is a conversation about Lorain in every glass. You always leave with more friends than you came in with."

"The people in Lorain are the best people in the world," Lozano said. "I absolutely love Lorain. Home is just home."

Bascule - named after a type of bridge fairly common in Northeast Ohio - has a communal feel, with board games stacked not far from the nine-seat bar. One television is tucked in the back but turned on only for an occasional kids show. And the area isn't swarming with other local breweries. Their nearest craft-beer neighbors are Avon and Railroad brewing companies.

They are planning a kitchen in the future, and considering acquiring property to expand.

"We always approached it as 'What can we do to keep moving forward?' " Kambouris said. It's about "continuing progress but not trying to rope the moon all at once."

"When you leave we want you to feel like you were hanging out in your uncle's house and having a beer," Lozano said.

If that uncle has eclectic taste in furniture, assorted tchotchkes and good beer, that is.

About Bascule Brewery and Public House

Its at 1397 Colorado Ave., Lorain, 440-317-0944. Its at the northwest corner of Colorado (Ohio 611) and Kansas avenues about 30 miles from downtown Cleveland. Hours: 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday, with food trucks Thursday through Saturday and live music on Tuesdays.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  For a guy whose forte was guitar instrumentals, Dick Dale had a way with words.

Ive been performing since 1955 . . . and Im going to keep performing until I die because Im not hoping to die in some rocking chair with a big ol beer belly, he said in an interview with me for a 2014 show at the Grog Shop, a frequent stop on his never-ending tours.

Ill die onstage with a big ol explosion of body parts, Dale said in that call to his California home that July.

That grisly prediction, uttered in jest, fortunately did not come true. Instead it was a collection of ailments that most likely claimed the life of the 81-year-old creator of the surf guitar sound on Sunday. Though no official cause of death was listed, the innovative guitarist had been battling ill health for the last couple of decades.

Ive been dealing with cancer for the last 13 years, then with diabetes, and Im in renal failure as we speak, he said in that interview.

Dale, whose real name was Richard Anthony Monsour, never stopped touring, either. With no insurance  something thats the case for a lot of musicians  he had to keep working to keep up with his medical bills.

Kathy Blackman, who owns and operates the Grog Shop, and before that booked shows at the old Peabodys, has been working Dale for years.

Ive been doing shows with him since the old Grog days, Blackman said in a call from her office at the Cleveland Heights club. He always puts on phenomenal shows. It always impressed me that he would stay (after the shows). He sat and talked and signed every single persons stuff.

Dick Dale talks to The Plain Dealer to preview his 2014 Grog Shop show.

Dale had played the Grog Shop in August of 2016, 2017 and 2018, and was scheduled to return to the venue on Saturday, Aug. 10.

Hes very particular, she said of Dales professional style. He liked things his way. I think he was always good to the sound guys, but he was particular and demanding to his own guys, but he always delivered.

He was always gracious to me, and treated us like family, she said.

I only met him once, said Clevelands Butch Armstrong, whose guitar prowess has made him somewhat of a local legend with Armstrong Bearcat and other bands. That meeting came at a Grog Shop show.

When I was a little kid, before I ever played guitar, he was a big influence, Armstrong said. I couldnt wait to be a teenager.

I watched all those Frankie Avalon and Annette Funnicello movies, and he was in the house band all the time, Armstrong said.

After all these years of playing, one of my students said, I heard hes playing all the time, said Armstrong. He was in his 70s, with a long gray ponytail and she took me to see him maybe six or seven years ago.

He was outstanding, he said. The place was packed with kids who didnt know what he is.

What, not who.

What Dale was is a man who essentially created a genre of music. The surf sound, emulated by the Beach Boys, the Ventures and others, is a result of a left-handed guitarist playing a guitar strung for a righty. That meant the lower strings were on the bottom and the high strings were on the top.

That signature sound had an unusual origin. Early in his career, a young fan at a club called the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California, asked if he could play something besides chords, and play it fast and loud.

He took up a song called Misirlou, an Arabic tune hed learned from his family back in Boston, first recorded in the late 1920s, and transformed it. The spelling eventually segued to Miserlou, and it most recently got a huge deal of exposure on Quentin Tarantinos megahit film, Pulp Fiction.

I learned to play it that way, he said of his father and uncles using Lebanese and Mediterranean instruments. Then I said, Its not fast and the kid wants it fast.

All my strumming came from (big band drummer) Gene Krupas things, so I started going to a fill on his drums. I based all my rhythm on Gene Krupas drumming.

Of course, the sound itself had a different, and equally interesting origin.

Getting the sounds out of my guitar came from my animals, said Dale in that 2014 interview. He was a longtime collector of exotic animals  live ones, which he once housed on his hundred-acre property.

My mountain lion would call me, and my African lion would call me, he said, adding his own version of the lions roar. I would take their calls and imitate them on my guitar.

His pairing with guitar and amplifier designer Leo Fender also was part of that sound. With Fender, Dale helped invent the first 85- and then the first 100-watt amplifier, the Fender Showman, all aided and abetted by his thicker-than-normal strings.

They called them cables, Dale said, laughing. Thats what gave me my fat sound.

His original Showman amps were part of the show Armstrong said he saw at the Grog Shop.

He had two white ones onstage, his original gear, Armstrong said. Those amps didnt have (built-in) reverb, but they had a little box head. Thats how it started. It was the cleanest, most powerful amp with a clear tone.

At the end of the show, he had a meet-and-greet and I was in awe, Armstrong said. I took that picture with him that I posted on Facebook. He said, Dont look at the camera, just look at me. Thats the way he wanted to do it.

He was real direct, Armstrong said. He says what he means, and he talked extensively between songs about his illnesses. That included having to wear colostomy bags and such onstage, and suffering through ignominy of having those rupture during a show, he said.

Dale also suffered the ignominy of never having been nominated, much less inducted, by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Not that it bothered him, at least as far as he would admit. Nope, he was focused on making music he believed was real.

I will go around the Earth for people who have a soul and are honest, Dale said. Ive been digging ditches all my life. . . . Everything Ive ever built, I built with my own hands.

And fearlessness.

Ive never backed down from anything in my life, and thats that, he said.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- MoviePass is back with the plan that launched its tremendous growth and led to its subsequent fall. For limited a time, new members can sign up for the services infamous offer of a movie ticket a day for $9.95 a month.

We are  and have been  listening to our subscribers every day, and we understand that an uncapped subscription plan at the $9.95 price point is the most appealing option to our subscribers, said Ted Farnsworth, Chairman and CEO of MoviePass parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., in a press release. "While weve had to modify our service a number of times in order to continue delivering a movie-going experience to our subscribers, with this new offering we are doing everything we can to bring people a version of the service that originally won their hearts. Were thrilled to introduce this new uncapped plan at a price point that is unbeatable in the industry.

There are a few catches because, well, of course there are. To lock in that $9.95 rate, customers will have to pay upfront for the entire year via eCheck or ACH bank transfer, meaning youll have to provide the company with your bank information. Customers who opt to pay as they go can do so with a credit card at a cost of $14.95 per month.

Also, tickets (2D movies only) can only be purchased at the theater or through one of MoviePass e-ticketing partners within three hours of showtime.

The big stipulation, however, can be found in the terms of service which essentially says MoviePass can restrict subscribers from seeing certain movies and showtimes based on availability or their historical usage. So, while the MoviePass promises a large selection of blockbusters and independent films, the terms of service allows the company plenty of wiggle room in terms of limiting actual usage of the service, especially for its most frequent moviegoers.

Heres the relevant section:

MoviePass makes no guarantee on the availability to any particular theater, showtime, or title that is presented in our app. MoviePass ticket inventory may vary from specific theater ticket inventory. MoviePass reserves the right to adjust its inventory to maintain fair access and usage to its full customer base. MoviePass may utilize its proprietary data and algorithms to impose restrictions on individual users based on their location, day of movie, time of movie, title, and the individual users historical usage. This means that MoviePass has the right to limit the selection of movies and/or the times of available movies should your individual use adversely impact MoviePasss system-wide capacity or the availability of the Service for other subscribers.

And if the last six months are any indication, MoviePass, which had been limiting subscribers access to a list of curated, less popular movies (Captain Marvel, for example, isnt currently available on the service) at less busy times, will likely use that wiggle room as it continues to tweak, pivot and adjust in search of that elusive sustainable business model.

Just a few weeks ago, the company said it planned on growing its subscriber base by producing and marketing its own movies.

The changes mean an end to the current three-tier pricing plan, launched in December, though current subscribers can keep those plans if they wish.

MoviePass, which launched in 2011, once had three millions subscribers at its peak in June 2018. The company, however, lost many of those subscribers and most of its value within the span of a few months following a series of well publicized missteps, outages, added restrictions and changes like surge pricing.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cuyahoga Countys troubled IT Department repeatedly refused to give the county inspector general access to employee emails, even after being ordered to do so by County Executive Armond Budishs chiefs of staff.

After more than a year of refusals, Budish personally ordered the department to comply, and the department still waited eight days to grant the access, Inspector General Mark Griffin told a County Council committee on Tuesday.

I dont know if it was intentional foot-dragging, or not, he said.

Budishs administration did not have an immediate response to Griffins assertions.

The countys IT Department is one focus of a multi-prong, yearlong corruption investigation started by the county Prosecutors Office and recently taken over by the Ohio Attorney Generals Office.

Griffin, whose office serves as the countys independent watchdog, said he first asked for direct access to the employee emails 14 months ago, citing the County Charter that gives him full and unrestricted access to county documents.

County Council members had earlier conveyed to Griffin concerns about the speed and accuracy of information coming out of the IT Department. Council authorized a new position, to be shared by the IGs office and the Department of Internal Audit, for an auditor focused on IT operations.

At that time, there was pushback from people in IT, Griffin said Tuesday. They didnt want that to occur.

Griffin and Internal Auditor Cory Swaisgood met in January 2018 with Budishs then-chief of staff, Sharon Sobol Jordan, and IT Director Scot Rourke over the issue of access to emails. Sobol Jordan made it clear IT was to provide this access, Griffin said.

But Sobol Jordan left for another job the following month, and Rourke was placed on leave because he was repeatedly named in subpoenas served on the county by corruption investigators.

The IGs office later met with Sobol Jordans successor, Earl Leiken, who also told IT to grant access to the emails, Griffin said. The department again did not comply, and failed to give a reason for refusing to do so.

After Leiken left the job, the IG met with acting Chief of Staff Matt Carroll, who also instructed the IT Department to provide access, Griffin said. The IT Department again resisted the move, contending that providing access to the IGs office would create a security risk, he said.

The department was given until March 11 to comply with Budishs order. That deadline came and went, Griffin said. His office finally received access Tuesday, hours before Griffin was set to give his twice-annual update to County Council.

Griffin said the IGs office will use a screening team to ensure it does not access potentially privileged information contained in the employees emails.

One IG employee, formerly employed by MetroHealth, is expected to review the records for potential HIPAA violations. And a lawyer will be used to determine if any attorney-client privilege is contained in the emails, Griffin said.

This story has been updated to accurately reflect the current job status of an employee of the IGs office.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  You can now safely eat fish caught in the Cuyahoga River.

The river is now clean enough that the Ohio EPA has lifted fish restrictions for the river and its watershed, including the nearshore area of Lake Erie.

The fish restriction is the third beneficial use impairment the EPA has removed from the Cuyahoga watershed since November 2017. The area, which includes 21 creeks and 10 miles of Lake Erie shore, has had 10 beneficial use impairments on the books since 1987, when it was named among 43 Areas of Concern throughout the Great Lakes.

These were places that had been primarily impacted by industrial activities, said Jennifer Grieser, senior natural resource manager for the Cleveland Metroparks.

Federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative money helped make recent improvements, Grieser said.

Now were down to seven, she said. Theres excitement around the 50th anniversary, and we want to keep that momentum going.

On June 22, the river celebrates 50 years since its final fire. And hundreds of organizations are marking the rivers revival that weekend.

This is an example of the progress that can be achieved when you collaborate and dedicate resources to improving the quality of water in our state, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a news release. We need to continue to invest in our water resources so that we can see additional improvements.

Plenty of anglers fish from Edgewater, East 55th Street and Gordon parks on Lake Erie, as well as Whiskey Island at the mouth of the Cuyahoga. The most common species caught are catfish and yellow perch, said Metroparks aquatic biologist Mike Durkalec.

Catfish, as well as brown bullhead and common carp, in the river now meet the same standard as those in the lake; the state recommends one meal per month.

The Cuyahoga Area of Concern committee -- which includes Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, the Cleveland Water Alliance, Metroparks, governments, businesses and others  is planning a July fish fry to celebrate.

Meanwhile the group is now working to clear the impairments for unwanted algae. The sewer districts massive combined sewer overflow project should help with that.

The Cuyahoga has already been cleared for public access and degradation of aesthetics.

Other issues to work on:

Restrictions of fish consumption

Degradation of fish populations

Fish tumors

Degradations of benthos

Beach closings

Loss of fish habitat

We definitely did not give ourselves an easy job, Grieser said.

The Cuyahoga River Area of Concern covers the river, 21 creeks and 10 miles of Lake Erie shoreline.

Want more Lake Erie news? Follow RocktheLake on Facebook.
Cleveland, Ohio  Everyone is Irish on St. Patricks Day, its said. Even Italians. Well, this week, Italians, and other local Catholics, have their own feast to celebrate. Often overlooked in the sea of green and shamrocks, St. Josephs Day is a popularly celebrated holiday in Italy, and in American by those of Italian descent on March 19.

The holiday is also widely celebrated in Malta, Spain, Poland and the Philippines and by men named Joe around the world. It is also popular in New Orleans, which has a large Sicilian population.

Since it is during Lent, St. Josephs Day is a meatless holiday.

Cleveland will have two celebrations on Tuesday, one at Holy Rosary Church in Little Italy, and a 6 p.m. St. Josephs Feast at Our Lady of Mt. Caramel, 6928 Detroit Ave., one of the oldest churches on the west side.

St. Josephs Table is a concept that all parishioners and non-parishioners are welcome to come and share in the rich Italian heritage of this west side parish, says Cleveland City Councilman Matt Zone.

Its a tradition they brought from the town of Coreno in Campagna, where many of the original parishioners were from.

Family members and parishioners bring main dishes or a side dish to the church hall and share. St. Josephs blessing is about sharing out ancestry and celebrating how far the Italian-American community has come, says Zone.
COLUMBUS, Ohio  Ohio medical marijuana dispensaries have sold $2.2 million in product, according to new state figures.

The sales figures are from Jan. 16, when dispensaries opened, through Sunday.

A total of 288 pounds, or 4,608 ounces, were sold in that time.

In other medical marijuana news, in Ohio:

35 more physician s got the OK to recommend medical marijuana from the State Medical Board of Ohio, bringing the total number of doctors to 448.

Dispensaries are expanding their product to edibles, thanks to a medical marijuana processor starting up.

Outside Ohio:

Support of marijuana legalization is becoming a must among progressive Democrats running for president. Its a way for candidates to prove they are serious about all races being treated the same under the law, according to the New York Times

Cosmopolitan magazine sent a reporter to the International Church of Cannabis in Denver, where marijuana is a sacrament and attendees come together to smoke as a community.

Marijuana news is an occasional feature with news about cannabis in Ohio and other places.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Funding for more than $100 million in Ohio military projects could be delayed or canceled if money is diverted to build President Donald Trumps proposed wall on the Mexican border, according to a list the Pentagon released Monday.

The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate last week passed resolutions to cancel the border emergency that Trump declared so he could draw money from other sources after Congress refused to provide the level of funding he sought for the wall.

Trump vetoed the measure on Friday, arguing that the border situation is a true emergency and his highest obligation as President is to protect the nation and its people. The measure did not pass either legislative body with enough votes to overturn Trumps veto, so his emergency declaration will stand for now.

According to the list of projects released by Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Wright Patterson Air Force Base in the Dayton area could be the states biggest loser if the cuts go through. On the chopping block is $61 million for a new building at its National Air And Space Intelligence Center, along with $6.8 million for a Fire/Crash Rescue Station.

Millions of dollars are also in jeopardy at other Air Force facilities in Ohio, including $15 million for new fighter aircraft hangars at Toledo Express Airport, $13 million to replace a fire station at Mansfields Lahm airport, and $8.8 million to relocate the main gate at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station.

Closer to Northeast Ohio, a $7.4 million automated multipurpose machine gun range at Camp Ravenna in Portage County is also on the list of projects that might be cut.

The Defense Department said it hasnt yet decided which funds will be transferred to the border barrier project, but said the money might not be needed if the Pentagons budget request for 2020 is enacted on time.

The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rhode Islands Jack Reed, called the potential cuts a slap in the face to our military that makes our border and the country less secure.

He is planning to take funds from real, effective operational priorities and needed projects and divert them to his vanity wall, Reed said of Trump.. That may help shore up his political base, but it could come at the expense of our military bases and the men and women of our Armed Forces who rely on them.

Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman released a statement that said hell work to ensure that the projects at Ohio military facilities move forward as planned.

I urge the administration to use money other than MILCON funds to fully protect important military construction projects in Ohio and around the country, said Portman, who was among a dozen Senate Republicans who voted to rescind Trumps emergency declaration.

Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown released a statement that called it reckless and irresponsible for Trump to go around Congress and take funding away from our military to support his vanity project.

"After last weeks bipartisan rebuke by Congress, I hope the President would realize that any attempt to rob Ohio of these funds would be met with vehement opposition, said Brown

A statement from Niles-area Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan called it unacceptable that Trumps fake national emergency is jeopardizing critical military projects in Ohio.

Not only is the President undermining Congress and the Constitution, his actions make America and our service members less secure and less prepared to deal with threats at home and abroad, Ryan said.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  Democratic presidential hopeful Beto ORourke said Monday in an exclusive interview with cleveland.com that Republican President Donald Trumps attack of a union leader in Lordstown was absolutely shameful.

ORourke, a 46-year-old former congressman from Texas, is the latest Democrat to throw his name into the 2020 race. He visited Cleveland on Monday, rallying a capacity crowd of hundreds at Ginos Cento Anno, a working-class bar in Old Brooklyn just down the road from the ArcelorMittal steelmaking plant.

Trump drew rebukes from Ohio Democrats when over the weekend he attacked United Auto Workers Local 1112 President Dave Green, the head of the union representing workers in the now-idled General Motors factory in Lordstown. More than 1,700 people lost their jobs as a result of GM ceasing operations at the facility.

Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce, Trump tweeted on Sunday. G.M. let our Country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves. I want action on Lordstown fast. Stop complaining and get the job done! 3.8% Unemployment!

Thus far, Democrats in the crowded presidential primary to challenge Trump in 2020 have yet to pounce on what seems like a golden political opportunity.

Trump carried Ohio by more than 8-percentage points in 2016, largely off the serious inroads he made off disaffected workers in the Mahoning Valley.

The one thing I wouldnt do is what we just saw the president of the United States do, which is to add insult to injury, ORourke said Monday during the interview with cleveland.com. Demean those workers. Insult the union president. At the time that theyre losing more than 14,000 jobs, hes laying the blame at their feet. Absolutely counterproductive and insulting if you ask me.

Exclusive Beto ORourke interview in Cleveland. Hannah Drown and Seth Richardson are with the presidential candidate. What would you ask him if you had the chance? Let us know in the comments. Posted by cleveland.com on Monday, March 18, 2019

It was part of the political savvy ORourke showed in his inaugural visit to Ohio less than a week after declaring for president. Hundreds gathered at the hot, dimly lit bar for a chance to see ORourke, the unlikely upstart candidate who lost his most recent race challenging Texas Sen. Ted. Cruz in 2018.

ORourke has commanded a fervent following since he came to national prominence. On Monday, the bar was packed by 2:30 p.m., more than an hour-and-a-half before ORourke would even arrive. The crowd spilled out onto the chilly patio of the tavern.

By 4 p.m., with hundreds flanking his planned entrance, ORourke arrived, quickly leaping up on a table outside to address the crowd  a favorite campaign schtick for him.

Together, we have to set the example of bringing this country  so divided, so polarized at this moment  together around the big challenges that face us, ORourke said.

ORourke is an unlikely candidate in unlikely times. A former punk rocker and tech entrepreneur, hes the first true Generation X candidate at 46 years old.

And he appears to be approaching the race differently than some of his peers, aiming for the middle of the country rather than playing to the base.

After briefly rallying those waiting outside  snapping selfies along the way  ORourke made his way to the bar. Perhaps taking a note from former President Barack Obama, ORourke on Monday preached unity and the need to transcend partisan politics.

This campaign is going to be the largest grassroots effort this country has ever seen, he told the crowd inside Ginos, the sleeves on his collared shirt rolled up and sweat pouring down his face. If we wait until January of 2021 to start bringing the country together, I guarantee you it is going to be too late. We have to campaign in the way we wish to serve.

Its going to take an entire country, ORourke added. We cant do it by half measure. It cannot just be half of us. It cant just be Democrats or Republicans. Its got to be Americans. If you think of any challenge we face, were going to make sure were listening to everyone.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, on his recent flirtation with the presidency, pitched a more pragmatic approach to politics based on progressive ideals.

ORourke obviously took note, taking time to praise Brown and his slogan, the dignity of work."

I think Sen. Brown has been an unparalleled leader on this issue, in addition to coining the phrase which so many other officeholders have since used, ORourke told cleveland.com.

ORourke said he also talked to Brown before his Cleveland visit.

Ive said all along that dignity of work should be a centerpiece for Democrats in 2020 because its how we win and how we should govern, Brown said. "I will talk with every candidate who wants to and do everything I can to elect a Democratic President.

While short on specifics on a plethora of issues in the Democratic primary  climate change, universal health care and college affordability, to name a few  he showed plenty of pep and the awareness to take the local issue of Lordstown and apply it to his message.

When asked what he would do about situations like Lordstown, ORourke offered cleveland.com a critique of the business climate in America, saying mistakes like trade deals that favor foreign labor and Trumps tax cuts, which he said favor the wealthy, can never be made again.

The Constitution is interpreted by the current Supreme Court to say that corporations are people, he said. We should expect more of them in the way that they treat people in these communities.

When pressed for more specific answers on Lordstown itself, ORourke said the most important action he could take would be to listen to the community on what it needs.

Still, whether through political shrewdness or sincerity, ORourke did something Monday that no candidate has in addressing Lordstown front-and-center. Following his Cleveland visit, he hopped in his minivan to drive to Lordstown and meet with Green himself.

I just want to tell you that so many of us around the country, although you might have been lit up a little bit by the president, are so proud of the way you conducted yourself, ORourke said during a Facebook Live broadcast of the meeting. You kept this about your membership, about the workers, about the community, about the country at its best. And so I just think that's a great example. We just wanted to come and say thank you, learn a little bit from you and make sure that we help to carry this message that you have started here and do everything we can to be helpful.

While ORourke has generally been met with enthusiasm during his five days on the campaign trail, hes stumbled along the way. Hes had to apologize for past writings that included dark subject matters and for off-color jokes. Activists have been unimpressed with his vague answers on specific policy issues.

People can be nasty and mean on Twitter, but there are some people who are raising legitimate questions and criticisms, ORourke told cleveland.com. And Im a better person if I listen to them and take the best out of what theyre offering and become a better candidate and hopefully a better public servant.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Mandi Merritt said in a statement that ORourkes were proof he would have a hard time securing the nomination.

Its been a rough few days for 2020 candidate Beto ORourke," Merritt said. "From his campaign turning into an apology tour less than 48 hours after announcing, to flip flopping on the issues and his past GOP ties, ORourke is going to have a tough time living up to his partys litmus tests and convincing the progressive base that he should be their nominee.

That ORourke is focusing on Ohio so early in his campaign is a bit of a surprise, especially with early states like Iowa and New Hampshire being far more important early-on in the primary. National Democrats have been quick to label the state as in Trumps grasp.

Its a really important place, Brown told cleveland.com. The premise of this campaign is that everyone, everywhere is important. You cant just say that. You have to demonstrate it. You have to show up.

So far, only ORourke, businessman Andrew Yang and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, have visited the state. California Sen. Kamala Harris is slated to speak at the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party dinner in April.
COLUMBUS, OhioPolitical nerds and fans of transparent government rejoice: soon live broadcasts of every single Ohio House committee will be just a few clicks away.

Speaker Larry Householder and Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, during a Tuesday news conference deep in the bowels of the Ohio Statehouse, unveiled four cameras in Room 017 -- the second of nine Ohio House committee rooms to be equipped for public live broadcasts of hearings on the Ohio Channels website and TV channel.

The goal, Householder said, is to have cameras up and running in three more House committee rooms by this summer and all nine committee rooms by this fall.

A number of state representatives, as well as good-government groups, have pushed for years to publicly broadcast every House committee hearing. But until Tuesday, only the House Finance Committees hearing room has been equipped with cameras.

That changed following the election of Householder, a Perry County Republican, as speaker in January, thanks to support from the majority of House Democrats. One of the promises Householder made to attract Democratic votes was to live-stream the hearings of House committees, which is as far as most Democratic bills get in the GOP-dominated chamber.

Householder said Tuesday that its exciting that Ohio will soon be one of only 12 states to offer live and on-demand video of its House committee meetings. Not only will the cameras allow Ohioans to have unfiltered, unedited access to Statehouse proceedings, the speaker said, but it will give lawmakers a platform to reach a maximum audience.

The exact cost of installing cameras in all House committee rooms wont be known until the project is finished, said Laura Battocletti, executive director of the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board.

Each camera costs about $2,300, though as pro-camera lawmakers have pointed out, the House had already purchased the needed wiring and equipment years ago. Workers also have to, in most cases, drill through thick 19th Century masonry to run cables to each committee room.

On the other side of the Statehouse, five of the Ohio Senates 14 standing committees have been broadcast live since 2017. Senate GOP spokesman John Fortney said in a text message that the Senate is happy to work with the Ohio Government Telecommunications, the Ohio Channels parent channel, on future plans.

However, Fortney added, Much of this comes down to installing the technology and staffing. For example, he stated, there needs to be a control-room worker to monitor the video feed.

The Ohio Channel did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday seeking to verify whether it would need additional employees or funding to broadcast all Ohio Senate hearings.
COLUMBUS, OhioSchool districts in Ohio would be required to notify parents of how they can keep their child from receiving required vaccinations, under new legislation in the Ohio House.

State Rep. Don Manning, the Mahoning County Republican who introduced House Bill 132, says the legislation isnt an anti-vaxxer bill but is simply meant to educate parents with children who are allergic to vaccines.

However, medical experts warn that such allergies are extremely rare and that the legislation would lead more parents to stop immunizing their children against recently resurgent diseases such as measles amid unfounded fears that vaccines cause autism and chronic illnesses.

Under Ohio law, children are not allowed to attend school unless they have been immunized against a number of diseases, including measles, mumps, polio and chicken pox.

Mannings bill, introduced last week, would require that school notifications about these immunization requirements must also note that Ohio state law allows parents to exempt their child on medical grounds or for reasons of conscience, including religious conviction.

In an interview, Manning said he brought the legislation at the request of constituents, one of whom has a son who is allergic to vaccines but was prevented from attending school because he isnt immunized.

Manning said he personally is 100 percent not anti-vaccine, noting that his two children have been vaccinated.

I believe in the benefits, he said. But I dont think a person should be forced into something if they actually qualify for a legitimate exemption.

Melissa Wervey Arnold, CEO of the American Academy of Pediatrics Ohio chapter, said she appreciates what Manning is trying to do.

But Arnold noted the chances that someone will be allergic to a vaccine is about one in a million. And the bill, she added, would lead many parents to opt out -- not so much because of autism fears, but because many parents wouldnt want to go through the hassle of immunizing their child and reporting it if they dont have to.

In our opinion, this is just going to lower immunization rates, which could cause costly outbreaks, Arnold said.

Arnold added that Ohio is one of 16 states that allows students to be exempted from vaccinations on philosophical grounds. That, she said, has contributed to a number of outbreaks around the state in recent years.

Besides Manning, seven other Ohio House members have signed on to HB 132 as co-sponsors  including one Democrat, state Rep. Catherine Ingram of Cincinnati.

Manning said he doesnt yet know what House leaders think of his bill or how it will fare.

Its an important issue, he said. And my job is to try to sell the importance of this issue to my fellow legislators.
Ahead of its annual shareholders meeting Wednesday, Starbucks announced plans to revamp its North American loyalty program in a bid to keep growing its membership as it continues rolling out delivery.

The U.S. and Canadian coffee markets have grown more competitive as rivals like Dunkin' Brands and McDonald's have been investing in their own java offerings. Last week, Restaurant Brands International's Burger King announced that customers can pay $5  around the cost of a Starbucks cappuccino  for an entire month of coffee if customers order through its app. Meanwhile, craft coffee shops continue to lure away customers with their high-end beverages.

Other restaurant companies also have been investing in app-based rewards programs to grow consumer loyalty.

"We have established the definitive loyalty program in our space," said Matthew Ryan, Starbucks chief marketing officer. "They're trying to be the best. It's a little hard for them to catch up to where we are right now.'

CEO Kevin Johnson teased that changes would be coming to Starbucks Rewards during the company's first-quarter earnings call. The number of rewards members increased 14 percent from the first quarter a year earlier. The decade-old program counts more than 16.3 million people as active members, who account for about 40 percent of Starbucks' transactions.

Starbucks has struggled to keep customers coming back as its latest drink innovations have largely fallen flat with consumers. During its first quarter, same-store sales rose by 4 percent  mostly thanks to a 3 percent bump in average check size. The coffee chain is now focusing on drinks that drive brand affinity, like the Nitro Cold Brew.

But it has been more successful persuading customers to use its mobile app, which lets them skip the long line by ordering and paying ahead of time. The app also builds awareness for the program by pushing nonmembers to join and gives the company more access to customer data, which can help them fine-tune promotions and new products. And as Starbucks prepares to launch delivery to a quarter of its stores by the spring with UberEats, it's working to add delivery orders as another capability of the Rewards app.

In 2016, the company switched to a value-based program that awards customers with two "stars" for every $1 spent. The current iteration lets members receive a free food or drink item in exchange for 125 points. But starting April 16, members more eager to spend their points can start redeeming them at only 25 points.

The updated program will also eliminate the two tiers of Starbucks Rewards: green and gold levels. Before the changes, only gold members, who earned 300 points to ascend to that tier, were able to redeem their stars for free food or drink. The change is a bid to get new members more engaged with the program.

Here are the new Starbucks redemption options, starting April 16:

25 stars: an espresso shot, dairy substitute or additional flavor

50 stars: brewed hot coffee, hot tea or bakery item

150 stars: handcrafted drink, hot breakfast or parfait

200 stars: lunch sandwich, protein box or salad

400 stars: select merchandise or at-home coffee

The greater range of options is meant to appeal to a wider spectrum of customers, from those who prefer to spend rewards points quickly to those who hoard them. Ryan said he himself has earned "thousands and thousands" of points.

Another change also recognizes points hoarders. After April 16, customers who attach the loyalty program membership to their Starbucks Rewards Visa credit card or a prepaid card will no longer have to worry about their points expiring. Under the current rules, any gold level points expire six months after the calendar month that they are earned.
The White House laid out its case against progressive programs like "Medicare-for-all" and a wealth tax, while touting the projected benefits of its own economic agenda.

The White House Council of Economic Advisors made its case Tuesday in the Economic Report of the President, which detailed the executive branch's economic outlook for coming years.

The White House said 6 million workers got bonuses after Trump's tax law. It also said venture capital deals were $17 billion higher last year than they would have been without the new law and that U.S. companies repatriated $600 billion in overseas earnings during the first three quarters of 2018.

"We demonstrate that these departures from the recent trend are not accidental but rather reflect the Trump Administration's deliberate measures to create and maintain conditions under which the U.S. economy can achieve maximum employment, production, and purchasing power," the report said.

White House economic projections have generally been more optimistic than consensus forecasts from independent organizations. Last week, the administration's budget forecast continued economic growth at a rate of 3 percent or higher over the next five years. That's far rosier than the 2.7 percent the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast for this year and 1.9 percent for next year. The Federal Reserve's forecast forecast for long-run growth is also lower at about 2 percent.

White House Chief Economist Kevin Hassett defended the administration's outlook.

"It's our job, it's our statutory responsibility, to assume that the president's policies become law and show people what happens and document it," Hassett told reporters Monday.

The Trump administration also responded to freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's idea for a 70 percent marginal tax rate, which kicked off debate about wealth taxes. In their report, White House economists estimated that her proposal would result in a $531 billion reduction in GDP over a decade from the Congressional Budget Office's forecast issued in January.

The administration also warned against the "Medicare-for-all," a staple policy of Sen. Bernie Sanders, claiming it would actually hurt longevity and health. White House economists said if "Medicare-for-all" werer financed exclusively by higher taxes, it would slash long-term GDP by 9 percent and after-tax income by 19 percent.

Tuesday's report builds on the White House's position against proposals put forth by progressives like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders. In October, the Council of Economic Advisors issued a 72-page report titled "The Opportunity Costs of Socialism." Hassett at the time told reporters that proposals like "Medicare-for-all" are "very consistent with the design of socialism."
Tucked away in a small converted warehouse in London is the office of Automata, a British start-up working on a machine it thinks might shake up the industrial robotics space.

Automata makes a tabletop robot arm called Eva. With a 4,990 ($6,600) price tag, the machine is designed to be a more compact and affordable alternative to the larger robots that help manufacture everything from cars to phones but typically cost tens of thousands of dollars.

That was one thing that led Swiss engineering giant ABB to invest in the company early on, co-founder Suryansh Chandra told CNBC in an interview. The firm contributed to Automata's seed funding, and more recently backed a $7.4 million investment in the company.

"We were still a two-people company with a prototype we could carry around in our backpack, which was insane for ABB because their robots weigh 50 kilos," Chandra said.

Stepping foot in Automata's offices, a group of its machines can be seen perched around a table. They're communicating with each other, picking up empty cans, using a camera to check whether they have the right lid  one lid has a black mark to show it's faulty  and then sending them along a conveyor belt to decide which can passes and which fails.

The display is just one demonstration of Eva in action. Chandra shows a video of the robotic arm lifting a large metal sheet to take it from one spot in a factory to another. This is a job that was previously filled by a female worker in her 20s, fellow co-founder Mostafa ElSayed said.

That staffer hasn't been made redundant, however. She now programs the robot herself, and "gets to think about how to roll it out in the rest of the factory," ElSayed said.
Chocolate-maker Cadbury has taken down a website that encouraged people to hunt for treasure in the U.K, after it faced a heavy backlash on social media.

The site, part of a promotion for its Freddo Treasures chocolates featured images of U.K. heritage sites and encouraged people to go treasure hunting for gold and jewelry. One part of the site stated: "Unearth the fortunes of Rome in Somerset  Grab your metal detector and go hunting for Roman riches!"

It also stated: "Go on a real treasure hunting adventure. There's plenty of real treasure out there still to be discovered. So, what are you waiting for? Explore the U.K.'s top treasure hotspots and see the riches already discovered on display at national sites."

But experts were not impressed, calling it "ill-advised" and "irresponsible." Archaeologist Ian Trumble tweeted: "The #cadburytreasurehunt by @CadburyUK actively promotes the gleeful destruction of archaeological sites and undermines years of public heritage education."

TWEET

Dr Kristina Killgrove, a bioarchaeologist, tweeted: "TFW (that feeling when) it's 2019 and a chocolate company thinks it's a good idea to promote their brand by encouraging illegal excavation and looting. What in the world was @CadburyUK thinking?!?"

TWEET

The Mondelez-owned company said it had taken the website down and was updating its content. Within packs of Cadbury's Little Treasures products there is a QR code that links to a website that recommends historical sites and museums that families can visit, a Mondelez International spokesperson said in a statement emailed to CNBC on Tuesday.

"It was not our intention to encourage anyone to break existing regulations regarding the discovery of new archaeological artefacts and we are grateful this matter has been brought to our attention. We can now confirm that the webpage has been taken down and we are updating the content to focus solely on directing families to museums where existing treasures can be found," the statement added.
In the grand lobby of Trump international Hotel, (l-r), Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, U.S. Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, Melania Trump, Tiffany Trump, and Ivanka Trump, cut the ribbon for their latest property, Trump International Hotel - Old Post Office, in Washington, DC on October 26, 2016.

Deutsche Bank loaned more than $2 billion to Donald Trump before he became president  despite multiple red flags surrounding his business dealings, The New York Times reported Monday.

The Times interviewed more than 20 former and current executives and board members at Deutsche Bank for the report, which outlined how Trump managed to secure financing from the German bank for nearly two decades despite his bankruptcies and being considered a risky client by other lenders.

The Times report comes after Germany's two largest lenders, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, confirmed on Sunday that they were in talks about a merger. German-traded shares of both banks jumped Monday.
Europe is expressing a growing frustration with U.K. lawmakers' indecision on Brexit.

European ministers said Tuesday in Brussels that it was time to be clear about the process that is set to take the U.K. out of the European Union. After two years of talks and with only 10 days to go until Britain is due to leave, it is still unclear if the country will really end its membership of the bloc next week.

"We are really exhausted by these negotiations," Michael Roth, Germany's minister of state for Europe, told reporters.

"I expect a clear and precise proposal from the British government, (on) why such an extension is necessary. It is not just a game, it is an extremely serious situation," Roth said.

Prime Minister Theresa May has yet to secure a majority in the U.K. parliament for the deal that she negotiated with the other 27 European countries. It has been confirmed to CNBC that before Thursday's European summit, May will send a letter to EU Council President Donald Tusk requesting an extension to Britain's exit date.

A response from the 27 heads of state is uncertain and the details of May's request are yet to be revealed.

Germany's Roth begged the U.K. to come up with a concrete plan. "Please deliver. Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking," he told CNBC Tuesday.
A cattle farm west of Surrey, England being investigated for a foot-and-mouth outbreak in August of 2007. A bigger epidemic struck Britain's agriculture industry in 2001.

LOS ANGELES  America's swine and cattle populations are vulnerable to the deadly and highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, and "efforts to prepare for a potential outbreak could be strengthened," according to a U.S. government watchdog's new report.

The Government Accountability Office report said the U.S. Department of Agriculture "may not have a sufficient supply of FMD vaccine to control more than a small outbreak because of limited resources to obtain vaccine." It also said an epidemic could prove costly to the nation's livestock industry and the federal government.

Foot-and-mouth disease, or FMD, in livestock is found roughly in about two-thirds of the world, but the U.S. hasn't experienced an outbreak since the 1920s.

"The United States is vulnerable to FMD transmission, given the large size and mobility of the U.S. livestock sector," the GAO said in the report published last week. "An FMD outbreak in the United States could have serious economic impacts, in part because trade partners would likely halt all imports of U.S. livestock and livestock products until the disease was eradicated."

The agency said exports of U.S. swine, cattle and dairy products totaled more than $19 billion in 2017. It warned that those shipments after an outbreak "would likely stop or be sharply reduced. Moreover, in a widespread outbreak, the scale of federal compensation payments could be substantial."

The disease affects domestic and wild cloven-hoofed animals including cattle, swine and goats. FMD is not considered dangerous to humans but is frequently fatal to younger animals.

The 2018 Farm Bill signed into law in December by President Donald Trump included more funding for USDA's animal health and disease preparedness programs, such as money for an expanded animal vaccine bank for FMD. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, last year introduced the provision more animal disease funding and cited it in an op-ed piece last week talking about the Farm Bill.
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney and fixer, arrives at federal court for his sentencing hearing, December 12, 2018 in New York City.

Investigators asked for court permission to use Michael Cohen's Face ID and fingerprints to access Apple devices belonging to the president's former fixer and personal attorney, newly released warrant documents show.

Apple has historically resisted providing a backdoor to law enforcement, including in the investigation of the 2015 shooting massacre in San Bernardino, California, when the FBI asked the company to help it unlock an iPhone belonging to the shooter.

At the time, Apple CEO Tim Cook argued that if it were required to unlock the suspect's phone, the government "would have the power to reach into anyone's device to capture their data."

The request in Cohen's case differs, however, in that it would not require Apple to step in for authorities to access the contents of his devices. Apple declined to comment on the warrant documents.

In a sworn affidavit supporting a warrant application, an FBI agent requested "that the Court authorize law enforcement to press the fingers (including thumbs) of Cohen to the Touch ID sensors of the Subject Devices, or hold the Subject Devices in front of Cohen's face, for the purpose of attempting to unlock the Subject Devices via Touch ID or Face ID in order to search the contents as authorized by this warrant."

The warrants were used for executing FBI raids on Cohen's home and office in April. Cohen later pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance law through his involvement in hush-money payments made to two women ahead of the 2016 presidential election, both of whom claim they had affairs with Trump years earlier.

A judge authorized warrants of Cohen's apartment and office that included his electronic devices as well as, "Any items or records needed to access the data stored on any seized or copied computer devices or storage media."

Rulings have varied on the issue of whether suspects can be compelled to provide their biometric data to access their devices. In January, a federal judge rejected a warrant request in California that sought people at the scene of the search provide their fingerprints and faces to access their devices, AppleInsider reported. The judge reportedly said the request "runs afoul of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments." In 2016, however, a Los Angeles court granted a warrant to the FBI to unlock an iPhone with a suspect's fingerprints, according to AppleInsider.

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Watch: Michael Cohen just testified before Congress. Here are the key moments
The "Painted Ladies," a row of historical Victorian homes, are shown with the San Francisco skyline in the background.

California could reap a bonanza of "$1 billion or more" in new taxes from the upcoming stock offering of ride-hailing service Lyft, according to state's former treasurer.

Experts say Lyft's initial public offering and an even bigger IPO expected in April from rival Uber will create many newly-minted millionaires in the Bay region. The state stands to benefit by taxing the capital gains from stock sales.

"We need those billions for education and other areas," said John Chiang, the state's former treasurer and controller. He said new tax collections "may not happen all at once, and could be spread over time."

According to its regulatory filing Monday, Lyft is gearing up for an IPO that values the company at near $20 billion. Lyft itself proposes to raise more than $2 billion in proceeds from the offering.

"If you're coming with a $19 billion valuation, you're talking about [a state income tax rate of] 13.3 percent for the millionaires," Chiang told CNBC. "Even though we're looking at all-in state budget in excess of $200 billion and a general fund budget of about $140 billion-plus, $1 billion or more is significant."

Lyft's two founders stand to get a big payday from the IPO and keep control of just under half of the company's Class B voting stock. CEO Logan Green's stake could be worth more than $540 million and the company's president John Zimmer's, valued just under $400 million.

For Californians, the state taxes capital gains like any other income. As of 2017, about 70 percent of the the state's general fund revenues come from personal income tax collections.

"IPOs are good for California's bottom line," said Chris Thornberg, a founding partner with Beacon Economics. The economist said a larger share of the state's general fund today comes from personal income taxes than it did back in 2000 so it makes the state's revenue volatility a concern.

The top 1 percent of the state's personal income tax earners  roughly 164,000 tax returns  generate about half of the personal income taxes in California. A good chunk of the income from the wealthy comes from capital gains and stock options from companies in tech and other industries.

Meantime, Uber is reportedly planning to kick off its offering next month in a deal valuing the San Francisco-based company at a whopping $120 billion.

"When you're talking about Uber and its massive valuation, that's billions," said Chiang, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018.

Other Bay-area tech firms also could join the IPO parade, including Airbnb and Slack.

"A couple of years ago there were reports of over 100 unicorn companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, and how if they ever went public could create extraordinary wealth," said Chiang.

Chiang said new wealth in the Bay region from tech IPOs could increase housing market values in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Yet he adds it also could worsen the region's affordability crisis.

"This is an incredible opportunity, and we need to use this as an example of California's prowess," he said. "But we also should have sensitivity to doing smart things to continue to be the engine for the 21st century economy."
Courtney Cheng's smartphone reminds her when it's time to meditate.

Cheng, 25, a nonprofit project manager in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a paying member of Headspace, one of a handful of apps focused on meditation and wellness that have accrued millions of users  and millions of dollars in venture capital investments. She said she found the app after dealing with a "post-grad crisis" after college. Now, it helps her relax and fall asleep.

But like the many other smartphone notifications Cheng receives throughout the day, she isn't always in the mood to hear from Headspace.

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"I set a reminder on Headspace to send me a notification to remember to use it," Cheng said. "But it makes me laugh because sometimes I'm like, 'I don't want to pick up my phone right now.'"

Smartphones have trickled into almost every part of modern existence, and meditation and wellness are no exception. Device use is so common, detox programs are now popular  and the average person receives 65 to 80 notifications a day, according to research from Duke University. The paradox that even meditation apps may be the cause of anxiety has not stopped millions from turning to devices for relief, making it a lucrative new market in the app economy.

"It does seem silly that it's just another thing to do on my phone," said Sarah Gordon, 25, a project coordinator at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, who pays for Headspace and uses it almost every day. "Even though I don't touch my phone while using the app, the second I open my eyes, I notice myself go to grab my phone."

Users like Cheng and Gordon have contributed to the growth of this new market, proving consumers are willing to pay for apps that provide some mental relief. Cheng pays "just under $100 a year" for the apps, a price she says is worth it. Calm, another popular meditation and sleep app, charges about $70 for a year.

That success has been met with sizable investments from venture capital firms. Headspace has raised $75 million from investors, while Calm recently topped that, raising $88 million and being valued at around $1 billion.

The rise of these apps has coincided with growing concern among consumer advocates, wellness gurus and even big tech companies about smartphone addiction. Michael Acton Smith, co-founder and co-CEO of Calm, said that smartphones can still be a force for good.

"The mobile phone gets a lot of bad press, but if you use it correctly, it's an incredibly positive thing in our lives," Acton Smith said.
Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, arrives to testify in a closed session before the House Intelligence Committee at the US Capitol in Washington, DC on March 6, 2019.

Special counsel Robert Mueller obtained a search warrant targeting President Donald Trump's then-personal lawyer Michael Cohen emails in the summer of 2017, nearly a year before an FBI raid on Cohen's home and office that was publicly known, according to partially unsealed documents released Tuesday.

Mueller on July 18, 2017, was granted a warrant authorizing federal investigators to search one of Cohen's Gmail accounts, filings reveal. The special counsel had sought access to all of Cohen's emails dating from January 2016 to July 2017.

The special counsel was granted a second warrant for "content stored in the iCloud account" associated with Cohen's Apple ID in August 2017.

And the filings show that Mueller obtained a third search warrant in November 2017 authorizing access for emails "sent or received" by an account belonging to Cohen stretching back to June 1, 2015. Trump declared his candidacy for the White House on June 16, 2015.

Mueller ultimately referred his investigation to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan months after it obtained the warrants, according to the documents. Mueller is tasked by the Justice Department with investigating Russian inteference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign.

The FBI raided Cohen's home and office in April 2018 as part of the probe by federal prosecutors in Manhattan that led months later to the now-disbarred lawyer pleading guilty to multiple crimes. Trump at the time called the raid a "disgraceful situation."

The filings partially unsealed and released Tuesday shows that Mueller was eyeing Cohen for a crime that has not been previously disclosed: Acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Cohen was never charged with such a crime.

Mueller was also investigating Cohen for false bank entries, false statement to a financial institution, bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, the documents show. Those other areas were known to be subject matters of interest to the special counsel.

On Monday night, Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, said that the court-ordered "release of the affidavits that led to the search warrants of Mr. Cohen's home, office, hotel and safety deposit box, only furthers his interest in continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump organization to law enforcement and Congress."

The warrants describe investigators' use of a so-called triggerfish device to locate Cohen's cell phone in a New York hotel room.

Investigators also were granted a "pen register" which allowed them to monitor who was calling Cohen, and whom he was phoning. There was no tap on his phones, however, which would have allowed investigators to listen and record those calls.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to five counts of tax fraud, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of making unlawful campaign contributions, a single count of excessive campaign contributions, and making false statements to Congress. He is set to begin a three-year sentence in May.

The campaign crimes relate to Cohen facilitating hush money payments to two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, in exchange for their silence about their alleged affairs with Trump.

Cohen has said Trump personally directed him to pay Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election to prevent her account from damaging his chances of winning the White House. The publisher of the supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer, who is a friend of Trump's, paid off McDougal.

Trump has denied having sex with either woman and has accused Cohen of lying about Trump's role in the payments. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The filings unsealed Tuesday show that federal investigators in New York first became aware of Cohen's violation of campaign laws during the probe of his bank-related crimes. Exactly how that probe developed into the campaign-finance probe is blacked out in the filing, because it relates to an ongoing investigation.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings broke with his big tech peers Monday when he argued the company is actually more of a media operation than a tech one, Recode reported.

Many of the other big tech firms have resisted labeling themselves as media companies and instead opted for the label of "platforms" where users supply the content. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has repeatedly made the distinction between his company and traditional media firms. In 2016, he said, "We build the tools, we do not produce any content," according to Reuters. (Facebook does pay to produce some original programming for its Watch video product.) Some have argued that the distinction allows tech firms to abdicate responsibility for the content it hosts and promotes.

But as regulators and politicians have turned their eyes toward tech companies, Hastings has taken a decidedly different approach in calling Netflix a media company.

"[W]e're really mostly a content company powered by tech," Hastings said, since the company spends $1.2 billion on technology and about $10 billion on video programming.

Investors have generally treated Netflix like a high-growth tech company, giving it a market cap of about $157 billion on annual revenue of $15.8 billion and net income of $1.2 billion in 2018. By way of comparison, Disney is valued at roughly $169 billion on annual revenue of $59.4 billion and net income of $12.6 billion in its fiscal year 2018.

Hastings' response came after Recode asked about the role U.S. lawmakers should play in regulating tech companies when it comes to privacy and antitrust. Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren, a senator from Massachusetts, called out Netflx's FAANG peers  Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google  in her plan to "break up Big Tech." If seen as a media company, Netflix could have a chance of avoiding the limelight as more presidential candidates are forced to take a stance on big tech regulation.

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Student debt burdens tens of millions of people every year. If you are a government worker, and have been consistently paying your loans on time, you may be eligible for the public service loan forgiveness program.

This program was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007 and allows not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans erased after 10 years of on-time payments.

Most people pursuing public service loan forgiveness discover at some point that they don't qualify, for one technical reason or another. That may be because their loan type is ineligible or they're not in the right repayment plan.

Just 206 applicants for the debt relief have been approved, according to recent Education Department data. More than 40,000 have applied.

As a result, you shouldn't rely just on your lender for information on the program, advocates say. Here are some other helpful and reliable resources.
(ANSA) - Rome, March 19 - Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Tuesday he was "counting" on the arrest of the captain of an Italian NGO migrant rescue ship who picked up 49 migrants off Libya and headed for Italy ignoring instructions on Monday. The Mare Ionio, run by the Mediterranea NGO, is currently off Lampedusa.

Libyan Navy Spokesman Admiral Ayob Amr Ghasem on Tuesday confirmed that the Mare Ionio "acted improperly" in rescuing the migrants from a sinking dinghy.

He said they contacted the Libyan coast guard only after picking up the migrants, and not before as they should have.

He also said the dinghy was "intact".


Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian who caught the world's attention after criticizing the super-rich at the Davos summit earlier this year, told CNBC Tuesday that higher tax rates in the U.S. are "necessary to tame this beast we call capitalism."

His comments come at time when President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly warned of the dire consequences for the world's largest economy if Democrats with left-leaning ideologies get their way in next year's presidential election.

Proposals embraced by many Democrats hopeful about their chances of success in 2020 include the Green New Deal (an ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), Medicare for all and debt-free college education.

Opinion polls show that voters are generally in favor of these liberal social programs.

"To be honest, I think that this whole debate that you have  especially in America  about capitalism versus socialism, I think it is rather ridiculous," Bregman told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Tuesday.

"We are talking about policies that the vast majority of the population actually favors, you know, higher taxes on the wealthy, most people are really in favor of that."

"So, as I always like to say, it is not communism it is just common sense. It is about taming this beast that we call capitalism," Bregman said.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on the last day of the trading year on December 31, 2018 in New York City.

Check out the companies making headlines midday Tuesday:

Deutsche Bank  Deutsche Bank shares dipped 2.3 percent a day after rallying on news about a possible merger with Commerzbank. The potential merger, however, sparked concerns from labor unions about potential job losses and analysts to question whether the merger would be beneficial.

Yum Brands  Shares of Yum Brands slipped 4 percent after an analyst at J.P. Morgan downgraded the stock to neutral from overweight, citing little upside to the companies' estimates after a recent run-up.

Domino's Pizza  The pizza maker's stocks climbed more than 2 percent after J.P. Morgan hiked its rating on it to overweight from neutral, noting Domino's' "algorithm to achieve 8-12% system-wide sales growth remains intact."

Del Taco Restaurants  Shares of the California fast food chain dropped more than 6.5 percent after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings that disappointed investors. The company posted earnings per share of 18 cents, just missing a Refinitiv estimate of 19 cents.

Revlon  The cosmetics company said there was "material weakness" in its financial reporting but doesn't expect any changes to previously reported results. Revlon said the weakness relates to the implementation of a back-end technology system. Revlon shares dropped 6.9 percent.

DSW  DSW's shares fell more than 12 percent after the footwear retailer reported quarterly results that fell short of expectations. DSW reported a fourth-quarter loss of 7 cents per share and profit margins fell by 3 percent. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected a profit of 4 cents per shares.

Michaels Companies  Shares of the Texas-based retailer jumped more than 8 percent after the company posted better-than-expected earnings for the previous quarter. Michaels also issued better-than-expected comparable sales guidance for fiscal 2020.

Tilray  Canadian cannabis maker Tilray fell more than 3.4 percent as investors digested the company's fourth-quarter earnings report. Tilray reported a quarterly loss of 33 cents per share, far wider than the 4 cent loss in the year-earlier period. The company's revenue did top expectations, however. The stock initially rose more than 4 percent before turning lower.

Advanced Micro Devices  Shares of AMD jumped more than 11 percent after Google confirmed the chipmaker will power the search engine's graphics rendering for its cloud-based gaming platform.

CNBC's Isabel Soisson and Emma Newburger contributed to this report.
A plume of smoke rises from a petrochemical fire at the Intercontinental Terminals Company, Monday, March 18, 2019, in Deer Park, Texas.

The ongoing fire at a petrochemicals storage terminal in Deer Park, Texas, intensified overnight, blanketing parts of the Houston area in dramatic clouds of black smoke on Tuesday.

The blaze ripped through the Intercontinental Terminals facility for a third day, worsening after a drop in water pressure hampered attempts by first responders to contain the fire. By Tuesday morning, flames had engulfed 10 of the facility's 242 tanks, though two were empty.

Additional fire-fighting staff arrived on site on Tuesday, Intercontinental Terminals said. Local authorities say the fire could burn for at least another day, the NBC News affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth reported.

The fire broke out on Sunday morning in a storage tank containing naphtha, a super light oil used to make high-grade gasoline, jet fuel and petrochemicals. It later spread to tanks containing another gasoline component and a chemical used to make nail polish remover and glue.

Despite the stunning images of smoke billowing from the facility, air monitoring continues to show readings are well below hazardous levels, Intercontinental Terminals said in a press release on Tuesday. The company also said no injuries have been reported.

Intercontinental Terminals said there is little chance of an explosion, but it's taking precautions by pumping naphtha, which is combustible, out of tanks.

The city of Deer Park initially advised residents to shelter in place, but lifted the warning on Monday. The blaze temporarily shut Highway 225, which runs from the city of Houston east to the Houston Ship Channel, where the Intercontinental Terminals facility is located.

The fire is unlikely to significantly impact gasoline consumers or the overall logistics and distribution network in the Houston area, said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.

The Coast Guard restricted access to docks at the terminal, but ship traffic in the greater Houston Ship Channel has not been disturbed, Reuters reported.
In 2012, Scott Thompson resigned from his role as CEO of Yahoo  all because he was caught having lied about the details of his college degrees. Sounds crazy, but this sort of stuff happens quite often. In fact, a 2017 survey from Careerbuilder found that 75 percent of hiring managers have spotted a lie on a resume at some point in their careers. What's even more shocking is how outrageous some of those lies were. According to the report, here are the notable ones cited by hiring managers: "Applicant said he worked at Microsoft, but then had no idea who Bill Gates was."

"Applicant falsely claimed to have a PMI credential when applying for a job at Project Management Institute (PMI), the organization that grants that credential."

"Applicant claimed to be an anti-terrorist spy for the CIA at the same time period he was in elementary school."

"Applicant said he studied under Nietzsche." Given what's at stake, it's certainly understandable why so many job seekers are willing to take the risk of lying on their resumes, but don't be so naive to think employers are oblivious when reviewing applications. Here a few tactics hiring managers use to catch liars:

1. Asking behavioral interview questions

Employers don't head into job interviews with the intent to verify everything you put down on your resume, but they will quickly get suspicious when they receive a series of vague and unconvincing responses to in-depth questions about a your previous work experience. If someone listed a managerial job title, they might be asked a question like, "How do handle the pressures of reaching your own goals, in addition to ensuring that your each member of your team reaches their goals as well?"

If the candidate lied about having this role and can't provide anything substantial or a few real-life examples, eyebrows will be raised. Remember, the challenges of being a team leader is very different from the challenges of working under a team leader.

2. Seeing that dates don't add up

One of the most common ways job seekers lie is by fudging their employment dates. If someone worked at a company for only four months, from November 2012 to February 2013, they may omit the exact months on their resume and simply write "2012 to 2013" to give the impression that they worked there for a much longer period of time. While this manipulation sounds like a smart idea (because it's technically not a "lie"), resorting to flat-out faking start and end employment dates will get your application thrown out if caught. A question like, "Exactly how many months did you work at [X company]?" or a simple phone call to your past employer is all they need to find out about your tendency to be deceptive.

3. Asking in-depth questions about your skills

It's tempting to put down that you're "proficient" at everything you've ever attempted to learn (or anything listed under "requirements" in the job description). But keep in mind that hiring managers are very aware about this common resume tactic, and will do their best to test whether you've really mastered the skills you listed. Two such ways they can go about this are by handing out exams as part of the interview process or by asking simple questions that candidates should be able to answer if they are indeed proficient at the skills on their resume.

4. Using backdoor reference checks
DUBAI  The Trump administration is granting Iraq a renewed 90-day waiver exempting it from U.S. sanctions on Iran, a State Department official told CNBC on Tuesday.

The waiver, last issued in December and which expired on the morning of March 19, will allow Iraq to continue buying electricity from its neighbor even as the White House pledges a maximum pressure campaign against Tehran.

"While this waiver is intended to help Iraq mitigate energy shortages, we continue to discuss our Iran-related sanctions with our partners in Iraq," the official said on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

Despite being OPEC's second-largest producer of oil, years of war and lack of investment have left Iraq dependent on Iranian natural gas plants for up to 45 percent of its electricity.

The Trump administration reinstated sanctions on Iran last year after withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which lifted economic restrictions on Iran in exchange for curbs to its nuclear program. The White House is carrying out a "maximum pressure" campaign against the Islamic Republic in an effort to counter what it deems its "malign and destabilizing activity" around the world.
The U.S. signed an agreement that would allow American rocket companies to operate from Brazil, possibly unlocking a operations base that has sat dormant for many years, the State Department said Tuesday. An old rocket complex near Brazil's Atlantic coast, called Alcantara, sits about 140 miles south of the Earth's equator, making it a prime location for launching satellites, a $260 billion business. That's because missions from the equator region often require less fuel. "After 20 years of talks we are finalizing a technology safeguards agreement to allow U.S. companies to conduct space launches from Brazil," President Donald Trump said Tuesday at a press conference with Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro. "Because of the location, tremendous amounts of money would be saved."

Alcantara has also drawn recent interest from U.S. space companies. CNBC has reported that in December 2017, representatives for five rocket companies visited the base, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Vector and Microcosm. While SpaceX did not share a continued interest in the Brazilian launchpad, and Microcosm could not be reached for comment, the other three companies were still considering the Alcantara option. "Put very simply, the flights are a lot shorter," Trump said. "Brazil's proximity to the equator makes it an ideal launch location." A launch from a latitude much farther north  such as NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California  requires rockets to change direction so satellites can reach the equator. The same satellites launched from Alcantara would save as much as 20 percent to 30 percent in fuel, analysts estimate.

Opening another way to space for U.S. companies

For decades European competitors have dominated launches from the equator using the Guiana Space Center. Just 345 miles north of the equator, the launch pad is owned by the European Space Agency and operated by the French national space agency. Since the 1980s, Guiana Space Center has given European rocket builder Arianespace a dominant position in the commercial satellite market. The main hurdle to launching from Alcantara, for U.S. companies, was the lack of a Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA) with Brazil. Such an agreement protects sensitive information about any rockets exported to Brazil. With the agreement signed, companies can take a closer look at the launch site. Vector CEO Jim Cantrell told CNBC last year that Alcantara could serve rising demand for equatorial launches to low Earth orbit, which has been only a small part of the satellite market. Small satellites are usually destined for orbits running over the Earth's poles, rather than the equator. Vector was "very interested in the opportunity" to launch from Alcantara, Cantrell said, because of the fuel efficiency advantage. Vector's small rockets, which are priced at less than $3 million per launch, are looking to tap into the rapidly-growing small satellite industry.

General view of the wreckage of the satellite launch rocket pad at Brazil's space center in Alcantara. Evaristo SA | AFP | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Brazilian President Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the White House March 19, 2019 in Washington, DC. President Trump is hosting President Bolsonaro for a visit and bilateral talks at the White House today. (Photo by Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump on Tuesday once again vented his frustration with Sen. John McCain over the late senator's decisive vote nearly two years earlier blocking efforts to repeal Obamacare.

"I think that's disgraceful. Plus there are other things," Trump said of McCain in remarks to reporters at the White House.

"I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be."

Trump's continued criticism of McCain came nearly seven months after the Arizona Republican died of brain cancer. McCain during his sixth and final term on Capitol Hill had been a vocal critic of Trump.

"I'm very unhappy that he didn't repeal and replace Obamacare," Trump explained to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon. Trump was sitting alongside recently elected far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is a supporter of Trump's.

In a dramatic moment on the Senate floor in July 2017, McCain gave a thumbs down to cast his vote on the so-called skinny repeal of the Affordable Care Act  and delivered a major blow to Trump's political agenda.

The president has not forgotten the episode.

"It got to a vote and he said thumbs down," Trump said at the White House.

Trump had already gone after McCain over the weekend, claiming that the "last in his class" Navy veteran sent a dossier with salacious and largely unverified allegations connecting Trump to Russia "to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election."

Trump TWEET
U.S. President Donald Trump, left, waves while standing with Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's president, at the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Donald Trump and Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, the anti-globalist leaders of the two largest economies in the Americas, met at the White House on Tuesday for their first face-to-face encounter. An ardent admirer of Trump, Bolsonaro chose Washington as the site of his first state visit since being inaugurated in January. As one nationalist populist to another, Bolsonaro appears eager to strike up a personal alliance with Trump and to forge a strong bilateral relationship, two goals that set him apart from most of his predecessors. "For the first time in a long time, a Brazilian President who is not anti-American arrives in Washington," Bolsonaro tweeted on Sunday. "It is the beginning of a partnership for freedom and prosperity, as Brazilians have always wanted." Bolsonaro's use of Twitter is one of several stylistic similarities with Trump. Others include their bombastic rhetoric, their skepticism of climate change science, their scorn for traditional government ethics and their willingness to publicly attack news outlets if they receive negative press coverage. As a result, some foreign policy experts have taken to calling Bolsonaro "the Trump of the tropics," a nickname the Brazilian president has embraced.

Venezuela tops the agenda

The two leaders were expected to put the political crisis in Venezuela at the top of the agenda for their meeting on Tuesday afternoon. Each has recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the rightful president of Venezuela and have called for the resignation of President Nicolas Maduro. During a conference call with reporters Monday ahead of Bolsonar's visit, a senior U.S. administration official said the White House hopes the Brazilian military can leverage its historically close ties to the Venezuelan military to persuade top brass in Caracas to shift the military's allegiance from Maduro to Guaido. "The Brazilian military has very good relationships with the Venezuelan military, and the Brazilian military can clearly communicate with them," the official said. Bolsonaro is a former army captain who has installed several career military officers in key posts throughout the government. Also on the agenda Tuesday is trade. Resource-rich Brazil has long had China as its biggest trading partner and its largest export market, with the U.S. a distant second. Bolsonaro, however, has repeatedly signaled frustration with Beijing's expanding footprint in Latin America. "China doesn't want to buy in Brazil," Bolsonaro frequently said on the campaign trail in 2018. "It wants to buy Brazil." This kind of rhetoric closely mirrors Trump's own views on trade, which are largely centered around his belief that other countries have taken unfair advantage of the United States, and none more so than China. This philosophical alignment on trade also reflects the views of one particular political adviser who has shaped Bolsonaro's and Trump's outlook on the world: former Trump White House senior advisor Steve Bannon.

Bannon's long shadow
In this Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017 photo, President-elect Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, center, accompanied by her husband, George, speaks with members of the media as they arrive for a dinner at Union Station in Washington, the day before Trump's inauguration.

President Donald Trump's public clash with George Conway entered its second day Wednesday, with the husband of top White House advisor Kellyanne Conway slamming Trump as "nuts" after the president called him a "husband from hell!"

The back-and-forth continued outside of the social media platform later in the day, with Kellyanne herself weighing in to add that Trump is "obviously defending me."

George Conway, a veteran attorney with deep roots in Republican politics, had long been a prominent critic of Trump on Twitter, despite his wife's role as one of the president's most reliable public defenders.

While that marital dynamic fascinated many in the media, Trump himself, despite his penchant for pursuing his critics in the public forum, had steered clear of attacking Conway directly.

But Trump broke his silence Tuesday, after Conway sent a series of tweets listing the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and anti-social personality disorder listed in the latest edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders  and explicitly accusing Trump of displaying those symptoms.

The president called Conway a "total loser" in response to a fiery tweet from Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale saying Conway "hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success."

Trump TWEET a total loser!

Conway responded with a flurry of tweets, and an interview in The Washington Post, where he said "the mendacity, the incompetence [of Trump], it's just maddening to watch."

Conway continued: "The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day. That's basically it. Frankly, it's so I don't end up screaming at her about it."

On Wednesday morning, Trump lashed out again.

Echoing Parscale, Trump said Conway "is VERY jealous of his wife's success & angry that I, with her help, didn't give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!"

Trump TWEET stone cold LOSER

Later Wednesday, Trump told reporters outside the White House that Conway is a "whack job."

"I don't know him. He's a whack job, there's no question about it, but I really don't know him. I think he's doing a tremendous disservice to a wonderful wife. Kellyanne is a wonderful woman, and I call him Mr. Kellyanne. The fact is that he's doing a tremendous disservice to a wife and family," Trump said.

Conway had reportedly been in line for a role in the Trump administration's Justice Department. But Conway said in June 2017 that he was pulling himself out of consideration. "For me and my family, this is not the right time for me to leave the private sector and take on a new role in the federal government," Conway said in a statement at the time.

In a telephone interview with Politico on Wednesday, Kellyanne Conway defended Trump, asking, "you think he shouldn't respond when somebody, a non-medical professional accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?"

"The president is obviously defending me," she added. "He could privately say to me, 'Honey you're a distraction. We love you. You'll always be a part of the family but go be with your kids. They need you. Go make a million dollars an hour. Go do that honey.' It's the opposite."

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on the exchange between George Conway and Trump.

George Conway did not immediately provide comment to CNBC on the Twitter spat  but he did respond to Trump just a few minutes after the president's tweet was sent.

"You seem determined to prove my point. Good for you!" Conway tweeted, along with the hashtag #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder.

Conway TWEET good for you

After re-posting the symptoms for the disorder he accuses Trump of having, Conway added a more blunt punctuation mark in a follow-up tweet: "You. Are. Nuts."

Conway TWEET you are nuts
The U.K. advertising industry exported 6.9 billion ($9.1 billion) worth of services in 2017 and the U.S. is its largest buyer, according to a report published Tuesday.

The U.S. bought 1.1 billion of ad services from British companies in 2017 (the most recently-available figures), followed by France with 655 million and Germany with 619 million, according to data published in the Advertising Association's U.K. Advertising Exports Report 2019. Britain sold 3.2 billion of advertising services to the European Union as a whole.

Digital ad business Jellyfish, for example, works for U.S. clients including Uber, Ford and Ebay and also used Google's marketing platform for an ad campaign for independent U.S. wine store Total Wine & More. British agency Crowd, meanwhile, created a digital campaign for the Napa Valley Film Festival in November. The U.K. ad industry ran its first whole-day event at the South by South West festival in Austin, Texas earlier this month.

The 6.9 billion worth of ad services sold overseas in 2017 is 18 percent up on the 2016 figure of 5.8 billion. The ad industry sells more overseas than legal services, insurance and publishing, but less than telecommunications or engineering services, its report states. The UK's biggest service export is IT, an industry that made 9.5 billion in selling overseas in 2017.
(ANSA) - Lampedusa, March 19 - The 49 migrants on board the NGO rescue ship Mare Ionio will shortly disembark at Lampedusa's port on the orders of Guardia di Finanza tax police, sources said Tuesday.

The spokesperson of NGO Mediterranea, which runs the ship, Alessandra Sciiurba, told ANSA the order had been given to the police to disembark the migrants.

Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the Mare Ionio migrant rescue NGO ship had been seized and those who "do wrong will pay".

"The ship of the anarchist squats has been seized, excellent," he said.

"Now in Italy there is a government that defends borders and makes laws respected, above all by the people traffickers. Those who do wrong pay".

Salvini said earlier that the 49 asylum seekers rescued in the Mediterranean by the ship flying the Italian flag would not be allowed to enter Italy. "They can be treated, dressed and fed," League leader Salvini told SkyTg24. "We can give them any kind of comfort but they will not set foot in Italy with my permission". The ship, the Mare Ionio, entered the port of the island of Lampedusa on Tuesday evening after saving the asylum seekers, including 12 minors, in waters off the coast of Libya on Monday.

One migrant suffering from pneumonia was taken to the island's medical facility.

On Monday the Mediterranea NGO that runs the vessel asked the Italian authorities to assign a port of safety before heading towards Lampedusa.

But Salvini has said the government's policy of closing Italy's ports to NGO-run search-and-rescue ships stands.

"This was not a rescue operation," Salvini added.

"This is abetting illegal immigration".

On Monday Interior Ministry Undersecretary Nicola Molteni told Mediaset television that the rescue should have been coordinated by the Libyan authorities as it took place in Libyan waters and argued the migrants should be taken back to Libya.

Salvini said Tuesday he was "counting" on the arrest of "those responsible for" the Mare Ionio.

Salvini on Tuesday created a new working group made up of experts and officials from Italy's police forces to evaluate the situation regarding migrant arrivals after he issued a new directive on this issue on Monday.

The directive regards the procedures in dealing with rescues in the Mediterranean following what Salvini has described as an illegal intervention by the Mare Ionio.

It says that anyone who helps undocumented migrants in waters that are not Italian in an operation not coordinated by Rome and then enters Italian territorial waters damages the "order and security of the State".

The directive said Italy was not obliged to assign a 'place of safety' under international law if a vessel "deliberately and autonomously" heads toward Italy.

It also stressed Italy's coast is not the only place ships can head to after a rescue, saying ports in Libya, Tunisia and Malta are often nearer. Mediterranea, the NGO behind Monday's migrant rescue, said it was not concerned by Salvini's move.

"Minister Salvini's directive does not have much value," said Mediterranea spokesperson Alessandra Sciurba.

"As far as we are concerned, there are the rights of people, international law, human rights, international conventions.

"We have asked for a port of safety. We are Italians on an Italian ship that saved people in danger of losing their lives at sea.

"We confidently wait to enter the port".

Libyan Navy Spokesman Admiral Ayob Amr Ghasem on Tuesday confirmed that the Mare Ionio "acted improperly" in rescuing the migrants from a sinking dinghy.

He said they contacted the Libyan coast guard only after picking up the migrants, and not before as they should have.

He also said the dinghy was "intact". Premier Giuseppe Conte said that "we will resolve this too".

He said "no to indiscriminate landings like in the past and said that Italy was "providing assistance and rights as always".

Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said he was "closely" monitoring the situation.

Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio said that the Mare Ionio acted against Libyan orders.

"I have just spoken to Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. We are verifying the respect of legality. We have found several irregularities: the NGO which is Italian acted without listening to the orders of the Libyan Coast Guard, going against those orders," he said.

Di Maio added: "I confirm that there will not be another Diciotti case, and there will be a solution shortly", referring to a 10-day standoff with the EU last August over 177 migrants rescued by Italian Coast Guard ship Diciotti, who were eventually taken in by Albania, Ireland and the Italian Catholic Church.

Prosecutors in Agrigento on Tuesday opened a probe into favouring clandestine immigration by the Mare Ionio.

The probe is as yet against person or persons unknown.


The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was slightly higher at 2.609 percent; the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was slightly higher at 3.022 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

Yields on U.S. government debt rose on Tuesday as the Federal Reserve's latest monetary policy meeting began.

Market focus is largely attuned to central bank expectations, with the Federal Open Market Committee due to kick-off its two-day policy meeting on Tuesday.

With global economic growth appearing to slow, most market participants anticipate the U.S. central bank to adopt a cautious tone. The Federal Reserve is also expected to lower its interest rate forecasts  or "dot plots"  for the remained of the year.

Market expectations for a rate hike are at zero, according to the CME Group's FedWatch tool. However, investors will look for clues about the central bank's economic outlook.

"We're watching 2.54 percent in 10-year yields with keen interest not only because the level represents the bottom of the range and the lowest print since Jan. 2018, but also in no small part because it's a mere 5 basis points away," Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rate strategy at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients.

"The simple fact that Treasurys are within striking distance of such a pivotal level as the FOMC convenes to craft a message reiterating patience is telling of investors' expectations for Powell to essentially dovishly double-down," he added.

The Fed said in its prior meeting that it will be "patient" and data-dependent when deciding whether to raise rates going forward.

In a separate release earlier this year, Federal Open Market Committee members also mentioned the reduction to the central bank's balance sheet. The committee issued a separate three-paragraph statement noting that "it is appropriate at this time to provide additional information regarding its plans to implement monetary policy over the long run."

Investors are also monitoring developments out of Europe. Fresh Brexit uncertainty dragged U.K. sterling to as low as $1.3183 overnight. It comes after the speaker of Parliament ruled that British Prime Minister Theresa May could not put her divorce deal to a new vote unless it was re-submitted in a substantially different form.

May only has two days to secure approval for her deal to leave the European Union if she wants to meet with the bloc's leaders on Thursday with something to offer them in exchange for more time.

On the data front, January factory orders numbers are due at 10:00 a.m. ET.

- CNBC's Sam Meredith and Spriha Srivastava contributed to this report.
Venezuelan Petroleum Minister Manuel Quevedo has denounced U.S. sanctions against Caracas as a "direct attack" on its citizens.



His comments come at a time when the oil-rich, but cash-poor, country is suffering the Western Hemisphere's worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory. "The powers of the United States are out in front of this attack," Quevedo told CNBC at the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee Meeting (JMMC) in Baku, Azerbaijan on Monday. "With a political objective, they are trying to economically choke our country, our people, and appropriate our petroleum wealth." The U.S. imposed targeted crude sanctions against Venezuela's state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) and resources sector in January, choking a critical source of revenue for President Nicolas Maduro's embattled government. Quevedo, a former National Guard official who also serves as the head of the state oil company, has been personally sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for his involvement in funding the regime through PDVSA.

Blackout

"It affects all Venezuelans when they attack PDVSA, when blackouts happen like the one that happened in our country," Quevedo said, referring to last week's vast power failure that plunged millions of its citizens into almost complete darkness and put some essential services to a stop. "People in hospitals died because of this blackout  that was an attack. For what? To impact the petroleum industry. So, it is no longer a purely economic attack, but an attempt against our lives," he said.



A failure at the Guri hydropower plant earlier this month pitched most of the South American country into darkness for days. The outage crippled the OPEC member country's oil exports and left millions of citizens struggling to find food and water. Power was eventually restored to much of Venezuela, but many areas remain without electricity. It is widely expected that normal services may not resume for weeks.

Despite the U.S and international efforts to recognize Juan Guaido as Venezuela's rightful interim leader, Maduro clings to power, despite a series of deadly clashes and a punishing economic crisis. "We will continue to use the full weight of U.S. economic and diplomatic power to press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy," a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said last week. "We also urge responsible nations across the world to take action and stand with the people of Venezuela."

Oil prices

Crude oil prices hit 2019 highs as OPEC and its allies concluded a meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan. Brent crude oil futures reached $67.76 per barrel at 2.00 p.m. GMT on Tuesday, having earlier risen to a new 2019 high of $68.16 a barrel, their highest since November 2018. OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo signaled that much was achieved, while Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al Falih expressed satisfaction with the mechanisms now in place to protect a market once vulnerable to price swings. Quevedo met with his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak while in Baku, and agreed to open a PDVSA office in Moscow. He told reporters he would be on his way to the Russian capital next month. It comes as Russian and US diplomats meet in Rome this week to discuss the next steps with Venezuela. Russia, a key ally not only for the petroleum industry, still backs President Nicolas Maduro.
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President Donald Trump and Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro were slated Tuesday to field reporters' questions at the White House.

The leaders of the two largest countries in the Americas held their first face-to-face meeting before the joint press conference. They were expected to focus on the political and economic crises in Venezuela during that talk.

Bolsonaro's trip to Washington, D.C., marks the far-right leader's first state visit since his inauguration in January.

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(ANSA) - Venice, March 19 - Giovanni Stefani, the father of Regional Affairs Minister Erika Stefani, died in an accident during trials for a motorcycle rally on Tuesday, sources close to the minister told ANSA.

The man, who lived at Trissino near Vicenza, was a motorcycle enthusiast.

It is not yet known who caused the accident.


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One of seven abducted Indian national brought back from Afghanistan

One of the seven Indian nationals who was kidnapped in Baghlan province of Afghanistan in May 2018 has safely returned to India.

Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had spoken to Minister of Foreign Affairs and Head of Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan, Salahuddin Rabbani regarding the release of Indian citizens. Photo courtesy: Twitter/Fakhruddin qarizada

We are grateful to the Government of Afghanistan for their support in securing the release and repatriation of the Indian national, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said in a press release.

We continue to work closely with the Government of Afghanistan for safe and early return of the remaining six Indian nationals, it added.

Discussed the multifaceted cooperation between Afghanistan & India in my meeting with Indian External Affairs Minister @SushmaSwaraj today in Samarkand. We remain grateful to India's generous support to the development & peace efforts in Afghanistan. @MEAIndia @mfa_afghanistan pic.twitter.com/UGHUcabLKG  Salahuddin Rabbani (@SalahRabbani) January 13, 2019

The Indian engineers abducted were employed in RPG Group company KEC International and were working on a project for the construction of a power sub-station in the country when they were abducted.

They were abducted in Bagh-e-Shamal village near the Pul-e-Khomri city which is the capital of northern Baghlan province in Afghanistan.

Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had spoken to Minister of Foreign Affairs and Head of Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan, Salahuddin Rabbani regarding the release of Indian citizens.

India has also provided at least USD 2billion aid to Afghanistan.
(ANSA) - Rome, March 19 - Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Tuesday that 49 asylum seekers rescued in the Mediterranean by an NGO-run ship flying the Italian flag will not be allowed to enter Italy. "They can be treated, dressed and fed," League leader Salvini told SkyTg24. "We can give them any kind of comfort but they will not set foot in Italy with my permission". The ship, the Mare Ionio, entered the port of the island of Lampedusa on Tuesday evening after saving the asylum seekers, including 12 minors, in waters off the coast of Libya on Monday.

One migrant suffering from pneumonia was taken to the island's medical facility.

The vessel has not been given authorization to disembark and it is surrounded by Coast Guard and finance police boats.

On Monday the Mediterranea NGO that runs the vessel asked the Italian authorities to assign a port of safety before heading towards Lampedusa.

But Salvini has said the government's policy of closing Italy's ports to NGO-run search-and-rescue ships stands.

"This was not a rescue operation," Salvini added.

"This is abetting illegal immigration".

On Monday Interior Ministry Undersecretary Nicola Molteni told Mediaset television that the rescue should have been coordinated by the Libyan authorities as it took place in Libyan waters and argued the migrants should be taken back to Libya.

Salvini said Tuesday he was "counting" on the arrest of "those responsible for" the Mare Ionio.

Salvini on Tuesday created a new working group made up of experts and officials from Italy's police forces to evaluate the situation regarding migrant arrivals after he issued a new directive on this issue on Monday.

The directive regards the procedures in dealing with rescues in the Mediterranean following what Salvini has described as an illegal intervention by the Mare Ionio.

It says that anyone who helps undocumented migrants in waters that are not Italian in an operation not coordinated by Rome and then enters Italian territorial waters damages the "order and security of the State".

The directive said Italy was not obliged to assign a 'place of safety' under international law if a vessel "deliberately and autonomously" heads toward Italy.

It also stressed Italy's coast is not the only place ships can head to after a rescue, saying ports in Libya, Tunisia and Malta are often nearer. Mediterranea, the NGO behind Monday's migrant rescue, said it was not concerned by Salvini's move.

"Minister Salvini's directive does not have much value," said Mediterranea spokesperson Alessandra Sciurba.

"As far as we are concerned, there are the rights of people, international law, human rights, international conventions.

"We have asked for a port of safety. We are Italians on an Italian ship that saved people in danger of losing their lives at sea.

"We confidently wait to enter the port".

Libyan Navy Spokesman Admiral Ayob Amr Ghasem on Tuesday confirmed that the Mare Ionio "acted improperly" in rescuing the migrants from a sinking dinghy.

He said they contacted the Libyan coast guard only after picking up the migrants, and not before as they should have.

He also said the dinghy was "intact". Premier Giuseppe Conte said that "we will resolve this too".

He said "no to indiscriminate landings like in the past and said that Italy was "providing assistance and rights as always".

Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said he was "closely" monitoring the situation.

Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio said that the Mare Ionio acted against Libyan orders.

"I have just spoken to Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. We are verifying the respect of legality. We have found several irregularities: the NGO which is Italian acted without listening to the orders of the Libyan Coast Guard, going against those orders," he said.

Di Maio added: "I confirm that there will not be another Diciotti case, and there will be a solution shortly", referring to a 10-day standoff with the EU last August over 177 migrants rescued by Italian Coast Guard ship Diciotti, who were eventually taken in by Albania, Ireland and the Italian Catholic Church.

Prosecutors in Agrigento on Tuesday opened a probe into favouring clandestine immigration by the Mare Ionio.

The probe is as yet against person or persons unknown.


Shaun Bailey is a member of the London Assembly and the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London

As Im finding out, part of the challenge of running for Mayor is explaining to Londoners what it is, exactly, that the Mayor of London does.

Are you here about the bins, a kind woman asked the other day on the doorstep. Dont you dare talk to me about Brexit, said another pensioner. Im tired of all of this (expletive) crime, has also been heard more than once.

Of the three, only the last bit  crime  is actually within the Mayors remit. If your bins are out of order, its your borough councillor you need to get with; if its Brexit thats bothering you, its your Westminster MP you need to see.

Listening to Sadiq Khan, for example, you wouldnt think he has any responsibility for crime and policing whatsoever (despite being the Police and Crime Commissioner for London), such is the incredible volume of blame he shifts. But on Brexit  over which Khan likes to pretend he has control  he actually has no influence at all.

The simple fact is this: every minute Khan spends on Brexit is a minute wasted in the fight against crime, in building housing, with fixing our transport system. The Mayor should focus his time and efforts on what he can control, because the job just isnt getting done.

My challenge now is to keep Londoners focused on these issues, and on the Mayors poor record of delivery. This mayoral race isnt about anything else.

The upcoming election will be about a number of important issues, including housing and transport, but it will mostly be about crime, particularly violent crime, which is soaring. And with the Mayor, he hasnt done all he can to tackle it, there is still more to do. Much more.

If Khan is short of inspiration, he need only look at my plan to fund a total of nearly 2,000 more police officers and detectives using the money we already have at City Hall. If he was so moved, Khan could cut his immense PR budgets and put this plan into place while using the new money from the Chancellor in the Spring Statement to put even more resources on the front lines.

I wouldnt hold your breath. Khan would much rather pick a fight with central government than get on with the hard work of reversing this dangerous surge in crime. Its undoubtedly a complicated problem, but it doesnt get any easier to solve the more we let it fester. Indeed, it gets harder.

Despite what the Mayor thinks, tackling crime isnt just a question about resources. Its also about attitude and delivery.

The public health approach is the right one, but if its going to work we need to first press down on crime. All this talk of root causes is moot if police boots arent chasing down the hardened criminals behind the worst of this violence. Every time these gangsters hear the Mayor speak about needing ten years or a generation to fix, they become emboldened. We need to put the fear back into criminals.

Having nearly 2,000 more police and detectives on our streets, as per my plan, will help. So will taking a zero-tolerance approach to anti-social and gang behaviour. Add in some intelligence-led stop and search focused on the ringleaders of this street violence and suddenly were in the fight.

Well also need to, where we can, de-escalate on the streets. To work with community leaders on policing and to provide at-risk young people with alternative paths, like knife bins and gang call-ins, so we can show those caught up in the drama that there is a better way to live. The people involved in this violent crime need to know that a violent death and/or a long stretch in prison are the likeliest outcomes of their behaviour, not a happy life.

Most of all, however, its up to the Mayor to keep pushing. There can be no more press releases without firm action. There can be no more bureaucratic structures with fancy names like the Violence Reduction Unit that then do nothing for six months. It is time for action and leadership on crime.

Sadiq Khans lack of leadership and follow through on his key responsibilities  across all files  would be comical if it wasnt so serious. Londoners need to feel safe. They need a roof over their heads. And they need reliable ways of moving around our city.

In other words, Londoners need a Mayor who will actually keep his promises and deliver on his priorities. A Mayor who will keep his eye on the job he has, not the job he wants. I will be that Mayor.

Until the next time
Henry Newman is Director of Open Europe.

At a time when all politics is in flux, and it sometimes seems that literally anything could happen, there are still some certainties. One is that the personal vanity of the Speaker knows few bounds. Yesterday he demonstrated this.

In a statement, John Bercow raised the pressure on the Government and suggested that he would use his own judgement to determine whether Theresa Mays Brexit deal could be put a third time to Parliament or not. He drew on a rule in Erskine May  the House of Commons procedure manual  which says that a motion cannot be repeatedly introduced if it has previously been rejected by MPs.

Bercow was skewered by Mark Francois who pointed out that the rule also applies to amendments, and so, according to the same logic, the Speaker ought not to allow further divisions on a second referendum (which has previously been voted down by the Commons), nor indeed on a customs union, the Single Market and so on. Francois is correct. Erskine May actually reads: a motion or amendment which is the same, in substance, as a question which has been decided during the same session may not be brought forward again during the same session.

But substance isnt really the issue here. Bercow has huge prerogative powers. He can apply these powers inconsistently and theres little anyone can do. His intention is to put himself front of centre of the national (and international) Brexit drama, even if it means turning a political crisis into a constitutional crisis. Incredibly, the Speakers intervention was celebrated by some Eurosceptics.

Brexiteer MPs need to wake up and smell the coffee. The options have fundamentally narrowed. As I have warned before, the Speaker is no ally of Brexit, let alone a hard Brexit or a No Deal. He is willing to do whatever is necessary  either bending procedure and convention, or sticking rigorously to it  so as to frustrate the Governments attempt to deliver Brexit. This matters because in a hung Parliament the Speaker takes on huge powers. The Government has almost no working majority. Its ability to deliver any decent Brexit is profoundly at risk.

And yet there are far too many Conservative MPs who still dont seem to recognise that Mays Brexit deal is the hardest Brexit now on offer. The danger with these MPs continuing to withhold their support, is that they will ensure we either lose Brexit altogether or more likely end up with a far softer form of it.

If you dont like the regulatory alignment of the backstop, just wait till you see what wide-ranging alignment the Single Market or a so-called Common Market 2.0 would mean (as well as little ability to control free movement). If you think we might get stuck in a customs union via the backstop, Id disagree with you, but suggest you imagine what it would mean to have a permanent customs union amended on top of the deal. Surely, its better to have a path out a customs union however uncertain rather than no path out?

In two days time Theresa May will go to Brussels to beg the EU to grant an extension to Article 50. This is a profound national humiliation and an abject failure of her Brexit plan. Many sides of the Conservative Party share blame here  the Government for its lamentable Brexit strategy, Remain-minded ministers who abstained on key votes, and backbench Brexiteer MPs who refuse to accept any reasonable compromise, even as options shift.

Boris Johnsons suggestion that the Prime Minister should use the European Council meeting to secure further changes to the backstop is fanciful. The ERG argument has long been that No Deal had to be kept on the table so as to secure further concessions. If you accept that, then you should also accept that according to that reasoning, now that Parliament has taken No Deal off the table, the EU will be unlikely to concede further.

Some Eurosceptics seem convinced that we will leave anyway on 29th March because thats the current law. Unfortunately, that wont be true if the Prime Minister agrees an extension in Brussels. At that point our international law position will be that we will still be members of the EU. Anyway, it seems likely that a majority would be easily found to approve a statutory instrument to change the exit date  it would not be capable of being amended.

Other Eurosceptics see a long extension as a possible path to No Deal. This is far-fetched. What is far more likely is that Parliament will impose a softer Brexit than the Prime Ministers deal over the next few days or weeks. That would be a much worse outcome.

An extension may offer a route to a snap election. But that would mean May leading the party into another contest on a manifesto centred on her deal  surely the very thing her critics would abhor. She would either win, in which case it would be her deal. Or she could lose  in which case losing Brexit would be the least of our worries.

One senior backbench Eurosceptic seems to believe that in a future leadership contest any deal would be cast aside. According to this argument, it doesnt matter if the Commons agrees Norway Plus  a future leader will reject it. But if you believe that a deal can be ditched after its signed, then why not sign the current deal which is obviously a better deal than Norway Plus (and if you got stuck in the backstop you could then junk it then)? The only answer is ambition.

Over the last few days, more and more erstwhile critics are coming around to the deal. ConservativeHomes Mark Wallace writes that we have reached the point where MPs should vote for it. We have also seen Lord Trimble and Lord Bew arguing that the changes secured at Strasbourg have provided them with sufficient reassurance to now back the deal  for more on that, see a piece by Professor Guglielmo Verdirame QC on the Vienna Convention and the backstop. Former Party leader Lord Howard has endorsed the deal, while Lord Lamont said that to assert as some Eurosceptics do that it is preferable to remain in the EU than to accept Mrs Mays deal is absurd.

Theres precious little time left. Critics of the deal need to compromise and accept the actual choices on offer now. They may not agree with me that the deal is better than many are willing to admit, but they ought to see that its far preferable to either a permanent customs union or a Common Market 2.0 (as Norway Plus has been re-branded). Its also worth going back again to the substance of the actual detail. Too often critics seem not to recognise that even in a worst-case scenario, the backstop, we would be free of EU regulations in most areas and under no obligation to agree new EU rules on goods and agriculture anywhere in the UK. We also now know that the EU cannot use the backstop as a trap to force us to make further concessions.

If the DUP move to back the deal then Conservative critics of it, on both sides of the argument, Leave and Remain, should accept the need for compromise for the sake of the country, as well as the Conservative Party. If theres clear support in the Commons, May should be able to reintroduce her deal one further time, probably after this weeks European Council. MPs will have one more chance to deliver Brexit. If they dont take it, Bercow will try to ensure that there may not be another.
The EU has a choice to make on Thursday  assuming that the third meaningful vote (MV3) has not been tabled, debated and passed by then. It could decide whether Theresa May is still Prime Minister this coming autumn.

The essence of John Bercows ruling yesterday is that the Prime Ministers Brexit deal needs to be changed substantially before it is put to the Commons again. His definition of substantial change suggests that texts on which the deal is based must themselves be altered if it is to be put to an MV3: that further legal glosses on them wont be enough for him.

So if there is indeed no MV3 before the EU summit this week, the only practicable course open to May is to ask the EU for changes to the Withdrawal Agreement or, more likely, to the Political Declaration, or both. As well as for the extension for which she will request in any event.

If the EU wants to carry on negotiating with a May-led Government, it will offer a short extension, ending before the European Parliamentary elections in June, and alter the Political Declaration, which essentially is not of a binding character, or even the Northern Ireland and Ireland protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement (i.e: the backstop), which is.

If, however, the EU has given up on the Prime Minister, it will offer no changes to the texts at all, or only further new legal documents  which will presumably not satisfy the Speaker that his conditions for holding MV3 have been met. Plus a long extension.

Either way, May has not handled recent EU summits adroitly. Last December, Jean-Claude Juncker dismissed her Brexit position as nebulous. Last September, it gave her Chequers plan the thumbs-down.

The best bet is that neither the EU27 nor the Commission will decide their positions on the basis of which Prime Minister they want to deal with, but on preserving their position. In particular, they will surely stick by Ireland.

In which case, the EU could conclude that a short extension would concentrate MPs minds wonderfully. That would probably be wishful thinking. Rather, the Commission and EU consensus position as we write seems to be that a long extension is more likely to get them a result. Perhaps the summit will finesse some muddled middle way  an extension until June, say, with the option of a further one. That is sometimes the way of these events.

But whatever happens, May now faces a new challenge to her core aim: namely, preserving her premiership. This is because an extension of any length would open the door to Oliver Letwin and company seizing control of the negotiation. And open up time, too, for a Tory leadership election. In such circumstances, the 1922 Committee and/or the Cabinet could finally force her out.

Downing Street may try to head off this threat to the Prime Ministers position by getting the DUPs support quickly, meeting the Speakers challenge, and putting MV3 to the test tomorrow evening. One suggestion is that May makes it clear that she will not allow Northern Ireland and Great Britain to diverge in regulatory or customs terms  a variant on the the so-called Stormont lock.

Whatever the merits or otherwise of such a proposal, it would be difficult for Bercow to argue that it did not represent a different deal to that put to the Commons for MV2 last week. But betting on the Speaker being reasonable is not a gamble that this site would encourage anyone to take.

In any event, there is no sign that the Prime Minister would win MV3 this week even were she to get the DUP onside. The Spartans are lined up and ready to oppose her deal at all costs. There are almost certainly enough of these ERG and other Conservative holdouts to stop her deal getting through at any third attempt tomorrow.

If the Speakers ruling somehow leads to the EU offering concessions, and MV3 then passes next week, he may end up having done her a favour. But it is more likely that it offers her nothing of substance  to use a Bercowian word.

George Eustices logic looks sound. The EU will offer a longish extension. The Commons will swallow it. The Government will then table a statutory instrument to take the March 29 date out of the EU Withdrawal Act. Both Houses will then rush it through next week  whether MV3 has been passed by then, or even put at all.

Yes, it is possible that No Deal could still somehow slip through some Parliamentary or timetabling or procedural gap. But the odds against that happening are very long.
(ANSA) - Rome, March 19 - Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Tuesday created a new working group made up of experts and officials from Italy's police forces to evaluate the situation regarding migrant arrivals after he issued a new directive on this issue on Monday.

The directive regards the procedures in dealing with rescues in the Mediterranean following what Salvini has described as an illegal intervention by an Italian NGO on Monday to save 49 migrants off the coast of Libya.

It says that anyone who helps undocumented migrants in waters that are not Italian in an operation not coordinated by Rome and then enters Italian territorial waters damages the "order and security of the State".

The directive said Italy was not obliged to assign a 'place of safety' under international law if a vessel "deliberately and autonomously" heads toward Italy.

It also stressed Italy's coast is not the only place ships can head to after a rescue, saying ports in Libya, Tunisia and Malta are often nearer. Mediterranea, the NGO behind Monday's migrant rescue, said it was not concerned by Salvini's move.

"Minister Salvini's directive does not have much value," said Mediterranea spokesperson Alessandra Sciurba.

"As far as we are concerned, there are the rights of people, international law, human rights, international conventions.

"We have asked for a port of safety. We are Italians on an Italian ship that saved people in danger of losing their lives at sea.

"We confidently wait to enter the port".


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(ANSA) - Rome, March 19 - Premier Giuseppe Conte said on a migrant rescue ship that rescued 49 migrants off Libya Monday and ignored orders not to come into Italian waters that "we will resolve this too".

The Mare Ionio, run by the NGO Mediterranea, has been accused of ignoring both the Libyan coast guard and Italian orders.

It is currently off Lampedusa south of Sicily and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has called for those in charge of it to be prosecuted.


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But the experiment comes on the heels of a similar 2018 University of Pennsylvania study, which also used electricity on prisoners, and that showed a possible significant decrease in violent tendencies in the zapped inmates -- which does seem really obvious, if you put it like that. And in recent years, studies have also found that tDCS can have an effect on mental health, with one promising study noting it can alleviate depression -- though in rare cases, it can also cause fits of rage in those treated.

So a vague prison experiment that might result in accidentally turning a convicted murderer into a focused, hyper-aggressive genius? Sounds like pretty weak gains to risk causing the occasional Bane origin story, if you ask us.

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The bomb started a fire at the holy site. Police closed off the area as well as the Old City. At least four people, including women, were detained. Two Palestinians injured in clashes are hospitalised.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Fresh violence broke out the Temple Mount (Haram esh-Sharif), in Jerusalems Old City, over the past few days. A firebomb hurled at a police post today started a blaze whilst Israeli police closed off the holy site.

Early reports indicate that police broke into the compound following the incident and arrested three suspects. All gates to the Temple Mount have been closed, and police are evacuating everyone present. Entrance to the Old City in Jerusalem has also been blocked.

Clashes broke out between police and worshipers at the scene. Palestinians report that several staff members of the Waqf (the Muslim custodian of the site) as well as worshipers have been arrested, and that Israeli police broke into the Dome of the Rock and other mosques.

Palestinian eyewitnesses said they saw four people getting arrested, two of whom were women. According to the Red Crescent, two Palestinians injured in the clashes were evacuated to a nearby hospital.

A video is fanning the flames showing an Israeli police officer refusing to remove his shoes upon entering Bab al Rahma and trampling prayer rugs despite objections by worshipers.

Reacting to the escalating tensions, the Arab League urged the international community to put an end to Israels aggression at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Magistrate Court postponed by one week its decision regarding the closure of the disputed Bab al-Rahma building on the Mount.

Israel closed the site to worshipers 16 years ago, claiming it was used by a group associated with Hamas. But last month, Waqf officials reopened it.

Police have since tried to close it, but Muslim protesters have reopened it and have used it as a mosque.

The police roadblock hit by today's explosion is located near a building adjacent to the Dome of the Rock, in the middle of the Haram esh-Sharif (Esplanade of the Mosques). In the past it has been the target of attacks and violence.

The police post that was targeted in Tuesday's clashes is situated in a building near the Dome of the Rock, which is in the middle of the Temple Mount.

For Palestinians, police presence is a symbol of Israel's stronghold over the holy site, which remains a sore point for the two sides.

Many Palestinians fear that the status quo will be challenged, especially as Jewish extremists continue to raid the site demanding the demolition of the mosques to be replaced by a Jewish temple.
(ANSA) - Rome, March 19 - Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Tuesday that 49 asylum seekers rescued in the Mediterranean by an NGO-run ship flying the Italian flag will not be allowed to enter Italy. "They can be treated, dressed and fed," League leader Salvini told SkyTg24. "We can give them any kind of comfort but they will not set foot in Italy with my permission". The ship, the Mare Ionio, was stationary close to the island of Lampedusa on Tuesday after saving the asylum seekers, including 12 minors, in waters off the coast of Libya on Monday.

The vessel has not been given authorization to disembark and it is surrounded by Coast Guard and finance police boats.

On Monday the Mediterranea NGO that runs the vessel asked the Italian authorities to assign a port of safety before heading towards Lampedusa.

But Salvini has said the government's policy of closing Italy's ports to NGO-run search-and-rescue ships stands.

"This was not a rescue operation," Salvini added.

"This is abetting illegal immigration".

On Monday Interior Ministry Undersecretary Nicola Molteni told Mediaset television that the rescue should have been coordinated by the Libyan authorities as it took place in Libyan waters and argued the migrants should be taken back to Libya.


The Canaveral Port Authority and Carnival Cruise Line officially broke ground for construction of Port Canaverals new Cruise Terminal 3 complex on Monday.

The new terminal, dubbed the Launch Pad, will be the home of Mardi Gras, the cruise lines new LNG-powered ship.

The event theme, Go for Launch, was a nod to the Ports key role with the U.S. space program and the terminals futuristic design, which was inspired by nearby Kennedy Space Center.

The $163 million terminal project  the largest in the Ports 65-year history  is scheduled for completion in May 2020 and will be ready for the arrival of Mardi Gras to her year-round Port Canaveral homeport in October 2020, according to a statement.

Todays groundbreaking is a historic milestone for our Port and underscores the long-standing partnership we have with Carnival, Port CEO Capt. John Murray said. The trust and confidence weve earned with our great cruise partner has been the foundation of success and we are excited for what the future holds. Were building a great new terminal, for an innovative new ship, and looking forward to welcoming home Mardi Gras.

Added Carnival President Christine Duffy, We began our operations from Port Canaveral nearly 30 years go  coincidentally with our original ship of the same name. Weve had a great relationship with Port Canaveral during that time and were proud, honored and excited that our newest and most innovative ship, Mardi Gras, will sail from the new Terminal 3. We are pleased to be the ports number one cruise line and Mardi Gras promises to be a spectacular addition to the Space Coast.

Port Canaveral and Carnival Cruise Line executives held a pre-launch mission news conference complete with a mock countdown, then grabbed shovels on the terminal construction site for the ceremonial first dig to officially kick off construction.

Participants included Wayne Justice, Canaveral Port Authority Commissioner; Christine Duffy, President, Carnival Cruise Line; Capt. John Murray, Port Canaveral CEO; Micah Loyd, Canaveral Port Authority Commission Chairman; Jerry Allender, Canaveral Port Authority Commissioner; Rocky Johnson, Vice President, Iveys Construction Inc.; and Scott Bakos, Partner with Bermello Ajamil & Partners Inc., a Miami firm providing architecture and engineering design work for the project.

We are proud to be building this state-of-the-art facility and looking forward to providing Carnivals cruise guests with a first-class guest experience, Port Commissioner Wayne Justice said. Building the new cruise terminal, like each of our construction projects at Port Canaveral, is an investment in building our community.

After a special eight-day cruise to the Caribbean on Oct. 16, 2020, Mardi Gras will commence year-round seven-day cruises on Oct. 24, 2020, alternating weekly to the Eastern and Western Caribbean. Eastern voyages will take Mardi Gras to San Juan, Puerto Rico, Amber Cove, Dominican Republic, and Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos, while Western sailings will travel to Cozumel and Costa Maya, Mexico, and Mahogany Bay (Isla Roatan), Honduras.
Dublin has gone from emerging turnaround port to potentially severely limiting its own cruise ship business.

In a statement issued last week, the port said that due to rising cargo volumes and other capital works, the port will implement a new cruise ship berth policy and pricing structure from 2019 to 2021.

The effect of this new policy will restrict the annual number of cruise ships in Dublin Port to about 80 starting in 2021.

This is the same level of cruise ship activity in Dublin Port in 2010, the port said.

If Dublin Port is to cater for large numbers of cruise ships (in excess of 200) in the future, new berths will have to be constructed at North Wall Quay Extension, adjacent to the Tom Clark Bridge, the port said, in a statement. This will require co-financing and / or long-term financial guarantees from cruise lines.

The port is expecting 160 calls this year, up from 150 in 2018, and already has 140 scheduled for 2020.
NEW HAVEN  Federal investigators claim his Norwalk health clinic was a pill mill and his Medicaid billing a $5 million fraud.

On March 18, both claims landed Dr. Ramil Mansourov, 49, of Tokeneke Road, Darien, seven years and three months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release.

Senior U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton ordered Mansourov to repay $4,994,027 in restitution and forfeit $50,000 to the federal government.

Mansourov pleaded guilty in September to health care fraud and money laundering.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rahul Kale called Mansourov a convicted fraudster and consummate liar in his sentencing memorandum.

Mansourov blamed some of his problems on a downward spiral from a divorce, his mothers suicide and broken relationships.

Using little more than a code and a computer, the defendant and former medical practitioner defrauded Connecticuts Medicaid program of over $4,000,000 in a short two-year span, charging Medicaid for examinations at home, at his office and at nursing homes that never occurred, Kale wrote.

The prosecutor said Mansourov spent at least $200,000 on girlfriends.

Mansourov billed Medicaid more than $40,000 for 235 home visits to one patient who claims he only saw the doctor once or twice; the prosecutor claimed Mansourov billed for 450 nursing home visits for a patient he saw once or twice and for which Medicaid paid out more than $58,000.

The doctor also billed for 600 visits he claimed a family of six made to his clinic and received more than $100,000. Family members told Kale they made no more than 10 visits to the clinic.

Three years ago, Mansourov was the subject of an undercover federal probe and then an international search when he fled the country to avoid arrest. He was captured by Canadian authorities in Montreal.

Mansourov owned Family Health Urgent Care, 235 Main St., Norwalk, which he purchased in 2012 from Dr. Bharat Patel of Milford. Patel continued to work for Mansourov. Addicts allegedly described the clinic to federal agents as The Candy Shop, court documents charge.

The pair was indicted as part of a nationwide probe into the over-prescription of narcotic pain-killers and health care fraud which charged 115 doctors, nurses and medical professionals and involved $1.3 billion in false billings.
STAMFORD  The case of Marion McGarry brims with contradictions.

The longtime Democratic city legislator has been censured by her colleagues on the Board of Representatives for Facebook posts disparaging Muslims and immigrants, and even Democrats.

But during the discussion preceding last weeks censure vote, board members praised McGarry for her fine work representing District 12, including its minority communities.

And during a press conference before McGarry was rebuked, her attorney revealed that she is a former Roman Catholic nun who worked in the Amazon as a missionary tending to people with leprosy. Kenneth Sosnoski described McGarry as a woman of love and compassion and Christian faith who helped save the lives of children in Latin America.

Still, she posted an image of a judge ordering an idiot illegal immigrant to leave the country and to take your lawnmower with you.

Seven of the 40 board members were absent for Tuesday nights special meeting. The vote was 24 in favor of censure and one against. Eight members abstained.

All denounced the racist messages, but some who voted in different ways did so for the same reason. They questioned why only some representatives knew about the posts, and why a few went to the media with the story before the rest knew what was happening.

Rep. Elise Coleman, D-3, the lone no vote, said the matter was not properly investigated and should not have come before the board until we get to the truth.

Rep. Anabel Figueroa, D-8, who abstained, asked why Rep. Jonathan Jacobson  McGarrys fellow District 12 Democrat and Facebook friend who monitored her posts and brought them to the boards attention  didnt notify all members. Under the city Charter, any 10 members of the board may call a special meeting. Jacobson submitted a letter with 15 signatures.

One can assume Rep. Jacobson purposely chose the people he wanted to sign this letter, Figueroa said.

Rep. David Watkins, R-1, voted for censure, but said he is bothered by the public nature of the case.

Sometimes out of stupidity or lack of awareness we do things that, if someone had said to us, This is not right, and gave us an opportunity to learn from it, there would be benefit to that, Watkins said. How would you like to be known by the worst thing you ever did?

Figueroa questioned the assumption that the lawnmower post was about Latinos.

In reading over the few postings I have been granted permission to look at, I have found no evidence of Hispanics being racially targeted, but rather illegal immigrants, Figueroa said.

Most Latino immigrants are legal, as she is, Figueroa said, and not everyone who uses a lawnmower is an illegal immigrant.

Sosnoski has not confirmed or denied that McGarry posted the messages, or said why she may have done so, though he indicated it may have to do with Democrats stance on abortion. He said McGarry was upset to be a member of the same party that ... kills babies.

Sosnoski did not return a request for comment for this story.

Bonnie Kim Campbell, a West Side community advocate and Facebook friend of McGarry, wrote a letter to the board saying McGarry spoke up for minority residents who wanted the board to reopen the West Main Street bridge to cars to better connect their neighborhood with downtown.

Campbell said McGarry was distraught after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in January signed a law that allows for late-term abortions under certain conditions. It states that a woman may abort a viable fetus after 24 weeks of pregnancy only if her life or health is at risk. The New York law, which codifies rights laid out in Roe v. Wade and other abortion rulings, was targeted by President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address.

McGarry called it live abortion and referred to Democrats as murderers, Campbell wrote.

Of course it is wrong, Campbell said of McGarrys posts. But I would like to ask who among you stepped to this lady, pulled her aside and asked her to tell you her story? If you saw something in this situation and did not say something to Marion, you are just as responsible as her.

In censuring the 75-year-old McGarry, the board did not discipline her, and she may retain her seat.

But the citys Democratic City Committee may consider a vote to remove her from the party, Chairman Josh Fedeli said.

Sosnoski said his client is the victim of a political conspiracy because McGarry did not toe the Democratic Party line, and often voted with a faction called Reform Stamford. Fedeli said McGarry should resign because of her hate-filled views, and politics has nothing to do with it.

However, when the story broke, Fedeli said Reform Stamford has to answer for McGarry, and members of the group are barely Democrats at all.

Later in the week, Fedeli repeated in a statement that the censure wasnt in any way political: The attempts to politicize this action, by Ms. McGarry and her lawyer, The Stamford Advocate, and fringe factions from both political parties, are a stain on the proceedings. The absurd claims of a secret cabal controlling the city and targeting Ms. McGarry are laughable.

Watkins said he is dispirited by such comments. Reform Stamford has worked hard and effectively to bring fresh perspectives to both sides of the aisle, Watkins said. These comments in the press give those who are skeptical of this process some basis for worrying about it.

Other representatives raised another contradictory point. Jacobson and Mayor David Martin denounced McGarrys posts, they said, but both supported the former Operations director after he was caught sharing hate-filled emails with fellow city employees.

Jacobson said one difference is that the former director, Ernie Orgera, acknowledged his actions and, to date, McGarry has not.

The two cases are factually distinguishable, Jacobson said. With respect to Director Orgera, the statements in question were delivered by email to co-workers over a decade ago, for which he took responsibility, apologized for, and was formally disciplined.

By contrast, he said, McGarry is and continues to be a democratically elected member of the board, despite unapologetically publishing racist, Islamophobic hate speech on social media.

Despite all that, board members focused on the heart of the case during their meeting, saying the hurt generated by hate messages runs deep.

Rep. Benjamin Lee, D-15, was disturbed by a post saying all Muslims are radical.

This view of Islam is wrong, Lee said. I know its wrong because ... there is not a chance I would have survived my combat tour in Afghanistan without the support of countless Afghan Army soldiers, military police officers, translators, and civilians, many of whom died for me and my brothers and sisters in arms.

Rep. Eric Morson, D-13, said that, as a Jew, he is extraordinarily sensitive to anyones experience with racism, bigotry, or intolerance.

I have been subjected to discrimination, anti-Semitism, and physical violence, said Morson, who recounted being an 8-year-old kid who was nearly run off the road and killed by an 18-year-old bigot with a car. There was gunfire through my front door as my parents were trying to sell the house to get us out of that town, just for being Jewish.

McGarry had a responsibility to know better, Morson said.

Includes prior reporting by the Associated Press.

acarella@stamfordadvocate.com; 203-964-2296.
SEYMOUR  A juvenile was arrested and charged in connection with an incident that prompted an increased police presence at Seymour Middle School, according to district officials.

After a recent See Something, Say Something presentation, town students reported concerning information obtained over the weekend while out of school to their counselors when they arrived Monday, Superintendent Michael Wilson and Assistant Superintendent Vonda Tencza said in a letter to the school community Tuesday.
Migrants: pregnant woman dead in Libya wreck, Red Crescent

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MARCH 19 - A ''pregnant woman'', along with a child, has been reported dead in a shipwreck on Tuesday morning off Libya's coast, a member of the Red Crescent in Sabratha told local media.



The shipwreck was first reported by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).



Ahmed Al Aklanu, a member of the Red Crescent in Sabratha, told broadcaster Libya's Channel that the body of the pregnant woman and the child have washed ashore.(ANSAmed).




STRATFORD - A local man took David Williams in when Williams family threw him out, his sister actually stabbing him in the back, police said.

Police said Williams repaid the kindness of the Good Samaritan by shooting him twice.

On Monday, the 39-year-old Williams was brought back to the city from Virginia where police said he had kept them at bay for several hours before surrendering.

He was charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault, criminal possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon in a motor vehicle, reckless endangerment and illegally firing a firearm.

He was being held in lieu of $500,000 bond.

Police said on March 3, Williams had beaten his wife after accusing her of hiring someone to kill him for the insurance money. He slapped his mother after she came to his wifes aid and his sister then stabbed him in the back, forcing him to leave the Bridgeport home, police said.

Williams sought solace with the local man who allowed him to live in his Success Avenue home, police said.

But police said Williams became agitated accusing his benefactor of sleeping with Williams wife.

On the evening of March 7, police said Williams sat in his car outside the victims home. When the victim came out Williams fired multiple times at him before driving off.

The victim was found lying in the street bleeding from gunshot wounds.
TRUMBULL  Police are advising town residents to lock their vehicles after two cars were stolen and more than a dozen broken into on Saturday in the Long Hill area.

In a Facebook post, police said more than a dozen Trumbull residents of the Long Hill area found that their vehicles had been gone through and items stolen during the overnight hours on Saturday morning.
Since she arrived in the United States two months ago, Gislene Batista has been unable to find work and has had no permanent place to live.

But a more pressing issue has consumed her: Getting her 11-year daughter Emily, who has cerebral palsy, access to quality health care.

Batista, who fled her native Brazil to avoid violence against her family, asked lawmakers Tuesday to pass a bill that would allow undocumented children like Emily to receive state-funded health coverage.

I know Emily has wishes and dreams just like any other child her age, and I know she could be in better health and achieve those dreams if she could have better medical insurance and health care, Batista, who lives in the Bridgeport area, said through a translator. But these things do not work well for us undocumented immigrants and this primarily affects and hurts our children.

These children like my daughter expect to have the minimum of dignity and care that they need to survive in this country.

The bill, under review by the legislatures Human Services Committee, drew passionate testimony on both sides Tuesday. To proponents, its a matter of life and death for some of Connecticuts most vulnerable people. Detractors said the cost of adding thousands of children to the health plan would overburden a state that is already in fiscal crisis.

Advocacy groups estimate there are as many as 17,000 undocumented people under the age of 19 in Connecticut.

Under the proposal, those childrens families would be subject to the same income eligibility requirements as everyone else - under 196 percent of the federal poverty level to qualify for Medicaid, known as HUSKY A in Connecticut, and 196 percent to 318 percent of the federal poverty level for the Childrens Health Insurance Program, known as HUSKY B.

The cost per child to join the program is projected at $2,482, advocates said. While the ultimate price tag of the expansion could exceed $42 million, proponents say its unlikely all of the children would enroll during the first few years. Some people are reluctant to sign up for privacy reasons; others may not meet the income requirements.

Jay Sicklick, deputy director of the Center for Childrens Advocacy, estimated the first-year cost to be about $4 million and the second-year expense to be $15 million. He acknowledged that no money has been set aside in Gov. Ned Lamonts proposed budget for the expansion, and there was no immediate plan to come up with the funds.

Were totally realistic in the landscape of the financial situation, Sicklick said, and Im sure the legislators who are interested in this are not immune to the idea that this has got a pretty heavy price tag.

Still, were optimistic, he added. Its an opportunity to potentially decrease costs down the road. Preventative care for children reaps huge outcomes in the long run. It reduces acute care costs that are going to be borne by acute care hospitals down the road if children who are ineligible for health coverage are then forced into emergency situations.

Lawmakers on the Human Services Committee called Tuesday for an analysis of the expenses currently being borne by state hospitals with regard to non-reimbursed or uncompensated care.

Kathleen Brennan, Connecticuts deputy social services commissioner, warned legislators that the cost of expanding the program would be absorbed solely by the state. Due to the hefty expense, she said, the Department of Social Services is opposing the bill.

If coverage were extended to all children regardless of status, the state would be unable to claim federal financial participation for children who are undocumented, Brennan said Tuesday. This would result in additional program costs incurred entirely by the state.

Sarah Eagan, Connecticuts child advocate, said the bills passage would encourage routine health maintenance for families who might not otherwise seek it.

Immigration status does not alter the general physical and mental health needs that children have or the costs of medical care that families are struggling to afford, she testified. This is especially true for families who have a child diagnosed with a disability who needs specialized services.

California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Oregon and Washington D.C. have expanded their Medicaid programs to cover all income-eligible children regardless of their immigration status.
WESTPORT  A West Haven woman was recently arrested in connection with an alleged September 2018 hit-and-run, according to town police.

Jaylyn Wallace, 25, was charged with evading responsibility, failing to have minimum insurance and following too closely, police said.
The cost of a college education is higher than ever -- just ask Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin. Those two celebrities are among the well-heeled parents caught up in a now-infamous "Operation Varsity Blues" college admissions scandal. You know what this is: The whole nation has been gobbling up news reports about the $25 million scheme for the past week.

Related: This Business Owner Is Paying for His Employees' Kids to Go to College

Perhaps as an entrepreneur and ordinary civilian, you yourself have felt the pain of getting your son or daughter admitted to college, then figuring out how to pay for it. The latter task is particularly tough: Over the past 10 years, the average price for tuition and fees at four-year private colleges and universities has jumped to $34,740 a year, up more than $7,000, according to statistics from the College Board.

Furthermore, for college graduates, on average, annual tuition has totalled nearly $30,000 at public colleges and $40,000 at private schools, according to Peterson's blog.

If you want to make sure that neither you nor your child ends up with piles of crippling student loan debt, youll need a comprehensive savings strategy to help bridge the gap between inadequate finances and rising expenses. Fortunately, there are several different methods to help you do that.

By choosing one that works for you and your family, you can come up with an approach that will give you the best possible chance to afford tuition and let your offspring leave their ivory towers debt-free. To help filter out the noise and make smart savings decisions, here are four savings options to consider.

Invest in a 529 savings plan.

College has always been expensive, and as noted, its only continuing to rise in cost. Thats why considering a 529 plan is more important than ever. Also known as a qualified tuition plan, a 529 allows you to put away money for your childs college education that grows completely tax-free. Total investments in 529s reached a record $328.9 billion this year, meaning people are increasingly understanding the benefits. Currently, 30 percent of college savings are in 529 plans, with the average amount saved in such investment plans having nearly doubled from 2016.

Related: This Teen Paid for College by Selling on Etsy. Here Are 5 Ways She Did It.

The 529 plan is an example of how you can let your money work for you, because your investment earnings compound on a tax-free basis. Additionally, the money invested iis portable. Parents can transfer their 529 plan's beneficiary status from one family member to another via a plan-to-plan rollover.

This flexibility is helpful for those who are uncertain about the future. That said, if you start a 529 plan when your child is born, you have 18 years to let that money grow.

Start ASAP and automate.

Saving for college is a long-term process, but the key is starting early. In 2018, the average amount parents saved was around $18,000, up more than 10 percent from 2016 -- and at its highest amount since 2013. Those savings represent just a fraction of the overall costs of college, meaning everyone could benefit from starting even earlier and saving even more.

To get stared, make the process easy for yourself by setting up automatic transfers. There are various applications and tools that can help you set a goal and automatically save the amount you designate According to a Sallie Mae survey, 6 in 10 parents make regular deposits to their childrens college funds. This is important, as sticking to resolutions is much easier when you take this action regularly, especially when that action is automated.

So start saving now, because every dollar saved is one more dollar you won't have to come up with later down the line.

Dont overlook scholarships.

Scholarships are essentially free money that you dont have to worry about paying back. While they usually dont cover the complete cost of schooling, they definitely accelerate the process.

A wide variety of scholarships are available for students, and many are tailored to your child's needs or achievements. Whether he or she has excelled in community service or is a talented athlete, multiple scholarships are available for you to research. Make the most of Sophie's or Stevie's talents, and take the time to uncover your scholarship options.

For the Class of 2018, 69 percent of those students took out student loans and graduated with an average debt of $29,800. Scholarships, in fact, could be especially helpful for a young person looking to start a business. In fact, someone with $30,000 in student loans is 11 percent less likely to start a business than a person who graduated debt-free. A scholarship can mean the difference between leaving school without debt and leaving with heaps of student loans.

Make sacrifices.

If saving for college or graduate school seems too daunting a task, ask yourself what sacrifices you can make to get closer to your goal. For example, cut out unnecessary luxury expenses you can live without. These might include frequent nights out, shopping sprees, that daily Starbucks latte and other lifestyle luxuries.

Also look for ways to make additional income. Consider a part time job, a small in-home business or perhaps a clever way to make use of your unique talents (children's birthday parties?). Freelancing or finding a side gig are great options that are gaining popularity. Nearly 4 in 10 Americans have a side hustle to help them meet their financial goals. These sources of additional income can go a long way toward helping you put more money aside.

Save smart.

Saving up for college and graduate school requires smart and strategic thinking, and the sooner you plan, the better. In fact, 37 percent of parents are putting money aside for college before their children even reach the age of 2. Getting a jump-start decreases the risk of falling short when tuition is due.

Related: These Are the Priciest Countries for a University Education

By using some these college savings tips, you can improve the chances that your child will get through school debt-free and be in a good position to start a career with financial stability.

Related:

How to Save for Your Kid's College Tuition If You're Not Felicity Huffman or Lori Loughlin

Tuition Loan Bill Coming Soon? Here's Some Useful Data on Putting Your College Kid to Work (Infographic).

College Is Worth the Price. Just Not This Price.



Copyright 2019 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
A county Republican Party in Missouri has disinvited Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., from its annual dinner to protest his vote in favor of a resolution disapproving of President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration.

The Kansas City Star reported Monday that the Christian County Republican Central Committee rescinded its invitation to Blunt to attend next month's Lincoln/Trump Day Dinner in Ozark, Missouri.

The county party's website lists Missouri State House Speaker Elijah Haahr, R, as a special guest for the event.

Blunt was one of 12 Republicans in the Senate to defy Trump and vote in favor of a resolution overturning his declaration of a national emergency at the border. In an email to Blunt's office quoted by the Kansas City Star, Christian County Republican Central Committee member Wanda Martens wrote that she was "so disappointed in [Blunt] now that I can hardly speak."

"Why could you not support my president in the emergency declaration?" Martens wrote to Blunt, according to the report. "President Trump tried every available means to work the Senate to resolve the border issue and build the much needed wall. He is well within his presidential powers to do this."

Neither Blunt's office nor Martens immediately responded to requests for comment.

The vote on the disapproval resolution marked congressional Republicans' first significant defection from Trump in more than two years. Some conservatives have responded by criticizing lawmakers who voted "yes" as having betrayed Trump on one of his signature campaign promises.

The "yes" vote by Blunt in particular caught many by surprise. The No. 4 Senate Republican was the only member of the chamber's GOP leadership to back the resolution. Blunt has explained his vote by arguing that he was acting to protect the institution of Congress from future presidents, rather than voting with or against Trump on border security.

The Christian County GOP has made local headlines in the past. Last year, it voted to reject a Republican county commissioner who some members had accused of being insufficiently conservative. The official responded by claiming some members of the county party had embraced conspiracy theories and other "crazy stuff," according to the Springfield News-Leader. The party denied those claims.

---

The Washington Post's Colby Itkowitz contributed to this report.
BEIRUT - The Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) over the past few hours have made ''significant progress'' to take the last stronghold of ISIS in the area of Baghuz, in Syria, although ''sporadic fighting is still ongoing'', an SDF spokesman said on Tuesday.

Kurdish military sources said that the ISIS camp in the plane of Baghuz is ''under the SDF's control'' but jihadi militants still hold part of the territory near the shore of the Euphrates river and ''are using families, women and children as human shields''.

Fighting is still ongoing, the sources said.

Over the past few days, photos and videos of the battle to control Baghuz were released, clearly showing women and children fighting beside male, adult militants.
A state representative will be laid to rest and teamsters for Stop & Shop are standing in solidarity with workers who've authorized a strike  these stories and more are today's top headlines in Connecticut. Read on for more.

The funeral for State Rep. Ezequiel Santiago, who died last week from an apparent heart attack, will be held Friday at The Klein.

Santiago served in the state House of Representatives for more than a decade and was helping to lead the ongoing fight to build a casino in Bridgeport.

Google Street View image

Two men thought they were meeting an 18-year-old girl in Westport but were confronted instead by a man wielding a lead pipe.

One of the victims sustained serious injuries to his arm, police said, and after an investigation, Reign Kinseley of Westport was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree assault.

Askia Sierra, also from Westport, was arrested at his home and charged with first-degree assault and conspiracy.

Ned Gerard/Hearst Connecticut Media

And teamsters who drive the trucks for Stop & Shop have said they stand in solidarity with grocery store workers who have authorized a strike.

More than 30,000 Stop & Shop employees have been working since Feb. 23 on the terms of an expired contract. The teamsters, who represent nearly 700 warehouse workers and 250 drivers delivering food and other products to Stop & Shop stores, have expressed their support.

The unions are arguing against stagnant wages and benefits. Negotiations are ongoing but a strike could happen anytime. Union leaders have been advising Stop & Shop members to bring warm clothes and footwear to work in case of any sudden walkout.

Get today's top headlines on your Amazon Alexa device by enabling the Connecticut Post skill.
1,500 students from Italy, Greece at philosophy fest Dialogue with Galimberti

(ANSAmed) - NAPLES, MARCH 19 -The 2019 edition of the Festival of philosophy in Magna Graecia will follow an itinerary along the footsteps of Greek philosophers in some of the most important locations for western philosophy: Athens, Delphi, Epidaurus, Corinth, Messene and Loutraki. And over 1,500 high school students from all over Italy and two schools in Greece, the Italian school in Athens and a Dutch school, will be visiting the sights.



They will be accompanied by philosopher Umberto Galimberti, who will give a lecture on March 20 on 'Greek erudition', at the Italian cultural institute in Athens, organized in cooperation with the Italian embassy as part of the 'Tempo Forte Italia Ellada 2019'.



''We must take from the past those values to look at the future with pride, especially now that we need that athical vision in Europe that appears to be affected by a crisis'', said the mayor of Siracusa, Francesco Italia, who has been hosting the festival in Sicily for years helped launch the initiative at the Italian cultural institute in Athens.



''The festival of philosophy transmits these important values and has so far hosted 35,000 youths who will spread ethics and democracy''.



The event, said the Italian ambassador to Greece, Luigi Efisio Marras, ''links Italy and Greece with many Italian, Greek and also Dutch students who are welcomed here'', highlighting the importance of Galimberti's contribution.



The event includes philosophical debates, tours on philosophy and theater, Agora, debates, laboratories on practical philosophy as part of the only philosophy festival dedicated to teens. Philia, said the president of the festival, Giuseppina Russo, is ''the only possible path to find once again a Mediterranean that is not only tears and blood but a new harmonious Koine.



This is the most authentic political meaning of philosophy'', added Russo, who created the initiative organized with scientific coordinator Salvatore Ferrara, the head of didactics Annalisa Di Nuzzo, and the promoter and organizer of the event in Greece, Valentino Berton. (ANSAmed).




During the opening session of the CUNA Governmental Affairs Conference on Monday, March 11, Executive Director of the Foundation, Gigi Hyland, took the stage. She started out by demonstrating the power of our language when it comes to greetings  how East-coasters might greet one another with a how ah ya?; how those from Hawaii say aloha; millennials and their use of emojis; etc.

This topic of language and how its relative and specific to different states, regions and countries applies not only to our verbal dialect, but also relates to how we speak to our credit union members. Are we really speaking the language of our members?

This means, are you sure that the products and services that you are providing for your members are really aligning with their needs? A great example of this was demonstrated by a map of the D.C area and the life expectancy of those living in downtown Washington, DC versus those living just 20 miles away. These numbers were different from each other by seven years. Why?

Those living within the city had a lower life expectancy because many people have less access to affordable housing, food, and financial services. We know that when people are struggling financially, this doesnt just impact their wallets but their mental and physical health as well.

Speaking the language of our members means knowing where they are in life and understanding that financial health is related to physical health  and its crucial that we start making this connection to find solutions.

The Foundation is a catalyst for change in the credit union movement by igniting understanding around financial health and finding those solutions. Coming up in April, the Foundation, BALANCE and the California and Nevada Credit Union Leagues will be jointly hosting the CU FINHEALTH19 Conference. This conference brings together leading experts in the field for engaging and interactive discussions on the topics of member financial health.

This conference is a great way to connect with others who are focusing in on member financial health, as well as an opportunity to learn strategies, tactics and measurable ways to better serve your most valuable asset  your members.

The Foundation also has a whitepaper entitled, Health and Financial Well-Being: Two Things That Go Better Together.

We hope to see you at CU FINHEALTH next month so we can continue working on speaking the right language to improve member financial health!
Why the Anderson family has never forgotten the impact of Pearl Harbor
Mare Ionio migrants to disembark at Lampedusa Ship seized, crew will be quizzed

(ANSAmed) - Lampedusa, March 19 - The 49 migrants on board the NGO rescue ship Mare Ionio will shortly disembark at Lampedusa's port on the orders of Guardia di Finanza tax police, sources said Tuesday.



The spokesperson of NGO Mediterranea, which runs the ship, Alessandra Sciiurba, told ANSA the order had been given to the police to disembark the migrants.



Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said earlier that the 49 asylum seekers rescued in the Mediterranean by the ship flying the Italian flag would not be allowed to enter Italy. "They can be treated, dressed and fed," League leader Salvini told SkyTg24. "We can give them any kind of comfort but they will not set foot in Italy with my permission". The ship, the Mare Ionio, entered the port of the island of Lampedusa on Tuesday evening after saving the asylum seekers, including 12 minors, in waters off the coast of Libya on Monday.



One migrant suffering from pneumonia was taken to the island's medical facility.



On Monday the Mediterranea NGO that runs the vessel asked the Italian authorities to assign a port of safety before heading towards Lampedusa.



But Salvini has said the government's policy of closing Italy's ports to NGO-run search-and-rescue ships stands.



"This was not a rescue operation," Salvini added.



"This is abetting illegal immigration".



On Monday Interior Ministry Undersecretary Nicola Molteni told Mediaset television that the rescue should have been coordinated by the Libyan authorities as it took place in Libyan waters and argued the migrants should be taken back to Libya.



Salvini said Tuesday he was "counting" on the arrest of "those responsible for" the Mare Ionio.



Salvini on Tuesday created a new working group made up of experts and officials from Italy's police forces to evaluate the situation regarding migrant arrivals after he issued a new directive on this issue on Monday.



The directive regards the procedures in dealing with rescues in the Mediterranean following what Salvini has described as an illegal intervention by the Mare Ionio.



It says that anyone who helps undocumented migrants in waters that are not Italian in an operation not coordinated by Rome and then enters Italian territorial waters damages the "order and security of the State".



The directive said Italy was not obliged to assign a 'place of safety' under international law if a vessel "deliberately and autonomously" heads toward Italy.



It also stressed Italy's coast is not the only place ships can head to after a rescue, saying ports in Libya, Tunisia and Malta are often nearer. Mediterranea, the NGO behind Monday's migrant rescue, said it was not concerned by Salvini's move.



"Minister Salvini's directive does not have much value," said Mediterranea spokesperson Alessandra Sciurba.



"As far as we are concerned, there are the rights of people, international law, human rights, international conventions.



"We have asked for a port of safety. We are Italians on an Italian ship that saved people in danger of losing their lives at sea.



"We confidently wait to enter the port".



Libyan Navy Spokesman Admiral Ayob Amr Ghasem on Tuesday confirmed that the Mare Ionio "acted improperly" in rescuing the migrants from a sinking dinghy.



He said they contacted the Libyan coast guard only after picking up the migrants, and not before as they should have.



He also said the dinghy was "intact". Premier Giuseppe Conte said that "we will resolve this too".



He said "no to indiscriminate landings like in the past and said that Italy was "providing assistance and rights as always".



Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said he was "closely" monitoring the situation.



Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio said that the Mare Ionio acted against Libyan orders.



"I have just spoken to Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. We are verifying the respect of legality. We have found several irregularities: the NGO which is Italian acted without listening to the orders of the Libyan Coast Guard, going against those orders," he said.



Di Maio added: "I confirm that there will not be another Diciotti case, and there will be a solution shortly", referring to a 10-day standoff with the EU last August over 177 migrants rescued by Italian Coast Guard ship Diciotti, who were eventually taken in by Albania, Ireland and the Italian Catholic Church.



Prosecutors in Agrigento on Tuesday opened a probe into favouring clandestine immigration by the Mare Ionio.



The probe is as yet against person or persons unknown.




Mare Jonio enters Lampedusa port escorted by cops Salvini, migrants won't disembark

(ANSAmed) - Lampedusa, March 19 - The Mare Jonio NGO migrant rescue ship with 49 rescued migrants aboard on Tuesday entered the port of Lampedusa escorted by launches belonging to the Guardia di Finanza tax police.



But Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Tuesday the asylum seekers will not be allowed to enter Italy. "They can be treated, dressed and fed," League leader Salvini told SkyTg24. "We can give them any kind of comfort but they will not set foot in Italy with my permission". The ship, the Mare Ionio, entered the port of the island of Lampedusa on Tuesday evening after saving the asylum seekers, including 12 minors, in waters off the coast of Libya on Monday.



One migrant suffering from pneumonia was taken to the island's medical facility.



The vessel has not been given authorization to disembark and it is surrounded by Coast Guard and finance police boats.



On Monday the Mediterranea NGO that runs the vessel asked the Italian authorities to assign a port of safety before heading towards Lampedusa.



But Salvini has said the government's policy of closing Italy's ports to NGO-run search-and-rescue ships stands.



"This was not a rescue operation," Salvini added.



"This is abetting illegal immigration".



On Monday Interior Ministry Undersecretary Nicola Molteni told Mediaset television that the rescue should have been coordinated by the Libyan authorities as it took place in Libyan waters and argued the migrants should be taken back to Libya.



Salvini said Tuesday he was "counting" on the arrest of "those responsible for" the Mare Ionio.



Salvini on Tuesday created a new working group made up of experts and officials from Italy's police forces to evaluate the situation regarding migrant arrivals after he issued a new directive on this issue on Monday.



The directive regards the procedures in dealing with rescues in the Mediterranean following what Salvini has described as an illegal intervention by the Mare Ionio.



It says that anyone who helps undocumented migrants in waters that are not Italian in an operation not coordinated by Rome and then enters Italian territorial waters damages the "order and security of the State".



The directive said Italy was not obliged to assign a 'place of safety' under international law if a vessel "deliberately and autonomously" heads toward Italy.



It also stressed Italy's coast is not the only place ships can head to after a rescue, saying ports in Libya, Tunisia and Malta are often nearer. Mediterranea, the NGO behind Monday's migrant rescue, said it was not concerned by Salvini's move.



"Minister Salvini's directive does not have much value," said Mediterranea spokesperson Alessandra Sciurba.



"As far as we are concerned, there are the rights of people, international law, human rights, international conventions.



"We have asked for a port of safety. We are Italians on an Italian ship that saved people in danger of losing their lives at sea.



"We confidently wait to enter the port".



Libyan Navy Spokesman Admiral Ayob Amr Ghasem on Tuesday confirmed that the Mare Ionio "acted improperly" in rescuing the migrants from a sinking dinghy.



He said they contacted the Libyan coast guard only after picking up the migrants, and not before as they should have.



He also said the dinghy was "intact". Premier Giuseppe Conte said that "we will resolve this too".



He said "no to indiscriminate landings like in the past and said that Italy was "providing assistance and rights as always".



Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said he was "closely" monitoring the situation.



Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio said that the Mare Ionio acted against Libyan orders.



"I have just spoken to Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. We are verifying the respect of legality. We have found several irregularities: the NGO which is Italian acted without listening to the orders of the Libyan Coast Guard, going against those orders," he said.



Di Maio added: "I confirm that there will not be another Diciotti case, and there will be a solution shortly", referring to a 10-day standoff with the EU last August over 177 migrants rescued by Italian Coast Guard ship Diciotti, who were eventually taken in by Albania, Ireland and the Italian Catholic Church.



Prosecutors in Agrigento on Tuesday opened a probe into favouring clandestine immigration by the Mare Ionio.



The probe is as yet against person or persons unknown.




Socialism is back in vogue in some quarters.

According to the website of dictionary maker Merriam-Webster, socialism is a political theory that advocates governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

The concept is that government central planners can make really smart decisions to distribute our collective wealth in a manner that benefits all. But socialism never works, because nobody is smart enough to make such incredibly complex decisions.

Leonard Read explained this clearly in a 1958 essay, I, Pencil.

The standard pencil begins when a cedar is cut down and crews using ropes and gear tug it onto a truck or rail car.

An untold number of people and skills are involved in mining ore to produce steel and refine it into saws, axes and motors, Read wrote.

The logs are shipped to a mill and cut into slats. The slats are kiln-dried, tinted, waxed, then kiln-dried again.

Read wondered how many skills were needed to produce the tint and the kilns. What about the electric power? And the mills belts, motors and other parts?

The slats are shipped to a pencil factory. A complex machine cuts grooves into each slat. Then another machine lays graphite into every other slat. Glue is applied. Two slats  one with graphite, one without  are sealed together, then cut to pencil length. Each pencil then gets six coats of lacquer.

Complex processes employ thousands of people who create the graphite and lacquer.

Each pencil erasers brass holder is a marvel. First, miners extract zinc and copper from the Earth. Experts transform those materials into sheet brass, which is cut, stamped and affixed to the pencil.

The eraser, Read wrote, is made from factice, a rubber-like material produced when rapeseed oil from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) reacts with sulfur chloride.

To be sure, an awe-inspiring amount of work goes into producing a pencil. Millions collaborate to produce it, plying unique trades and skills, yet have no idea they are collaborating.

Even more amazing is this: No one person could possibly manage the millions of decisions made by the millions of people who produce pencils ingredients.

Despite the absence of a mastermind  or government central planners  billions of pencils are produced every year with such humdrum efficiency that we take pencils for granted.

The pencil, Read explained, is a triumph of human freedom  of creative energies spontaneously responding to necessity and desire.

Without even one centrally planned government program, the need for pencils arose. Without any meddling from a presidential candidate or member of Congress advocating socialism, pencils were invented, produced and sold, meeting the demand for them.

Theres a reason that the United States is the wealthiest country in history. Do we have challenges? Sure. Capitalism is not perfect, and we must never stop working to resolve our challenges.

But its worrisome that, according to Gallup, capitalism is fast losing favor, with 51 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds, who now favor socialism.

Read concluded his I, Pencil essay with this advice: The best thing our government can do is leave our creative energies uninhibited  by removing obstacles that keep creativity and innovation from flowing freely.

His recommendation is the polar opposite of socialist central-planning policies. Lets hope our younger generation comes to its senses before it votes people espousing failed ideas into the highest levels of our government.

Tom Purcell is syndicated by Cagle Cartoons.
Migrants: Libya, at least one child dead in shipwreck Mediterranea spokesman says discussion while people dying

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MARCH 19 - A Libyan Navy spokesman, Admiral Ayob Amr Ghasem, said a shipwreck reported on Tuesday morning by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) off Libya has led to the death of at least one child while some 30 migrants probably swam to safety as their boat sank very close to the coast. At 10 am local time a shipwreck was reported ''between Sabratha and Surman'', west of Tripoli, the spokesman told ANSA. ''There were 47 illegal migrants on board'', he said.



The wooden boat on which they were travelling ''capsized near the coast'', added Ghasem, claiming the water was so shallow that ''you could walk''. ''Sixteen migrants were rescued by residents'' in the area but ''the body of a child'' was found, the spokesman said in a phone interview. No additional bodies were found and the survivors are believed to have reached the coast and fled, said Ghasem, adding that 16 others who were apprehended are in custody.



''We are sorry and angry over reports of the umpteenth shipwreck in front of Libya. We are for those rescuing people and not those who make them die at sea. It is necessary to respect human lives. While they are discussing, people are dying'', said Alessandra Sciurba, the spokesperson of Mediterranea, an Italian migrant-rescue NGO.(ANSAmed).




Migrants: EU, urgent solution for landings EU Commission highlights 'humanitarian imperative'

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, MARCH 19 - A European Commission spokesperson on Tuesday said the EU body was ''following events in the Mediterranean closely'', stressing the urgent need for ''foreseeable solutions for landings'', and urging member States to have ''humanitarian principles'' and contribute to a ''quick solution of the situation''. The spokesperson was talking about an NGO ship with 49 migrants onboard off Lampedusa. Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini on Tuesday said the migrants will not be allowed to enter Italy.(ANSAmed).




WEST CHESTER  A member of a Chester County mosque offered an Islamic prayer for guidance and a heartfelt expression of gratitude at Tuesdays commissioners meeting in response to the terrorist shootings in New Zealand that killed scores of members of her faith.

While the attacker sought to propagate an ideology of hate and division, people all over the world, across all faiths and walks o life, responded with compassion and love, said Bushra Qureshi, representing the Islamic Society of Chester County, invited by the commissioners to open their monthly business meeting.

Right here in Chester County, we are very, very grateful to have such a supportive community who opened their hearts and offered to help in any way that they can, Qureshi said, noting that about 200 people had come to the mosque on Sunday to show communion in the wake of the shootings by an avowed white supremacist. It eased the pain that we feel, and gave us hope.

Commissioners Chairwoman Michelle Kichline, introducing Qureshi, noted that it was the second time in less then a year that she had invited a faith member to open the meeting following a mass shooting at a place of worship, the first coming in October in Pittsburgh when a gunman opened fire at a synagogue there, killing multiple worshipers on a day of prayer.

The first time was too many, Kichline told those attending the work session. The second time is making my heart a little weary.

Qureshi, an immigrant from Pakistan who lives in the West Chester area with her husband and three children, told her audience that Friday afternoon is the traditional weekly day of communal prayer for Muslims around the world.

Just like for any faith, Muslims try to dress their best that day, maybe wear extra cologne or perfume, and request some time off from work to be able to make it for the prayer, she said. It is an opportunity to reflect in introspection and peace to rejuvenate ones relationship with God.

This is probably how it was at that mosque in Christchurch when the attacker walked in an shattered the peace and tranquility by spraying bullets indiscriminately, killing all who he saw, she said. It was shocking and heart-wrenching to see the pictures and videos as they surfaced, and to learn of all the hate that was the motive behind the attack.

The white supremacist suspected in the shootings at two mosques killed 49 people during prayers, after posting an anti-immigrant manifesto online and apparently using a helmet-mounted camera to broadcast live video of the slaughter on Facebook.

Brenton Harrison Tarrant, who police say carried out at least one of the shootings, possibly with help from others, posted a jumbled, 74-page manifesto on social media in which he identified himself as a 28-year-old Australian and white supremacist who was out to avenge attacks in Europe perpetrated by Muslims.

World leaders condemned the violence and offered condolences, with President Donald Trump tweeting, We stand in solidarity with New Zealand.

Trump called the bloodshed a terrible thing but rejected any suggestion the white nationalist movement is a rising threat around the world, saying it is a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.

Tarrant, in his rambling manifesto, deemed Trump a symbol of renewed white identity.

In her address to the commissioners, Qureshi said she took heart from a passage of the Koran which speaks to the differences and unity of humankind.

Oh mankind, she read, we created you from a single man and a single woman and made you into races and tribes that you may know one another. The most honored of you are the ones who are mindful of the thought that God is all knowing, all aware.

Kichline, who said she attended the memorial Sunday at the Islamic Society in West Goshen, said another one at the service had told her how important it would be for those of different faiths to meet one as individuals and families, perhaps over a common dinner. We are all just people, Kichline said. And we can unite in the face of what is occurring.
Has it come to this? In a modern democracy, can one vainglorious politician really be allowed to override the votes of 17.4million people?

Even before Speaker John Bercow made his controversial ruling yesterday  preventing the Government from bringing back its deal to the Commons in its present form  this country was in a state of abject chaos.

Now, for no reason other than the overweening vanity of a deluded man, this alarming state of affairs has suddenly got much worse. Where in Gods name do we go from here?

Speaker John Bercow, above, wants to find a reason to strangle the Prime Ministers deal, and was happy to appeal to Erskine May (a constitutional theorist who died in 1886) to bolster his opportunistic case

What happens if Theresa May cant put her proposal to the Commons this week, as she had hoped to do, had there been a reasonable chance of it passing at the third time of asking?

Will we, as everything falls apart, find ourselves leaving the EU on March 29 with No Deal  which few people want?

Begging

Its certainly possible. That is the law of the land as things stand, and March 29 is a mere ten days away. Its certainly not Mrs Mays intention, but I am afraid power is being wrested from her grasp by other hands  not least John Bercows.

Of course, No Deal is not what he wants either. He hopes to kill off her deal, and force her to go to the summit of EU leaders later this week begging for a longer extension of many months.

If that were granted, it is likely Brexit would be undone, either by a referendum or by so watering down the terms of disengagement as to make leaving the EU virtually meaningless. That is what Bercow longs for.

Prime Minister Theresa May is pictured in the Commons before her deal was voted down last week. What can the Government do now that it is required by a partisan Speaker to make significant changes to its Bill before it can be introduced again to the Commons?

How can I say this? How can I accuse a man, whose almost sacred duty it is to be impartial, of twisting the rules to favour the cause of staying in the EU, which he espouses?

I dont attach enormous importance to the fact that a sticker proclaiming Bo***cks to Brexit was displayed in a car Bercow says belongs to his wife but on which he has a claim, though it is surely not insignificant.

No, I rest my charge of bias on his conduct as Speaker of the Commons. As recently as last week, he refused to accept an amendment which sought to block a second referendum even though it had cross-party support and had been signed by 127 MPs.

Instead, he chose an amendment in favour of a second Peoples Vote with many fewer signatures, which was defeated ignominiously.

Until yesterday, the worst instance of his partiality was in mid-January, when, against the advice of Commons clerks, and in defiance of centuries of procedure, he allowed anti-Brexit Tory rebel Dominic Grieve (with whom he had shared a cosy chat in his private apartment the previous evening) to table an amendment to a Government motion.

Even before Speaker John Bercow made his controversial ruling yesterday  preventing the Government from bringing back its deal to the Commons in its present form  this country was in a state of abject chaos [File photo]

This was the first major undermining of the Prime Ministers authority, and it forced her to reveal alternative plans three days after being defeated on her so-called meaningful vote, rather than the 21 days she had intended.

But what happened yesterday was worse. Of course, there will be some, especially on the Labour side, who will defend Bercows elaborate appeal to precedent  going back as far as 1604 and ending 99 years ago in 1920  in which he sought to establish that a government couldnt bring back a Bill in substantially the same form once it had been defeated.

There are those who are saying that he is simply passing independent judgment based on parliamentary procedure that has developed through custom and practice over the centuries.

Yet what was so risible about this historical trawl is that the Speaker who venerated precedent yesterday, and based his judgment on it, swept it aside dismissively when allowing Grieves amendment in January.

On that occasion he said: If we were guided only by precedent, manifestly nothing in our procedures would ever change.

Only two months ago, Bercow also said, in direct contradiction to his pious ransacking of history yesterday: I am not in the business of invoking precedent, nor am I under any obligation to do so.

No, I rest my charge of bias on his conduct as Speaker of the Commons. As recently as last week, he refused to accept an amendment which sought to block a second referendum even though it had cross-party support and had been signed by 127 MPs [File photo]

The truth is that Bercow has seldom showed any love for precedent.

When he became Speaker in 2009, he eschewed the traditional horsehair wig and breeches and buckled shoes, earning the disapprobation of a previous Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, who sadly mourned 700 years of history which Bercow was cheerfully junking.

In other words, Bercow is perfectly capable of ignoring the past, and waving the flag of modernity, whenever it suits him.

Yesterday it didnt. He wants to find a reason to strangle the Prime Ministers deal, and was happy to appeal to Erskine May (a constitutional theorist who died in 1886) to bolster his opportunistic case.

Obstruct

The truth is that even on this narrow reading of the past, he is probably wrong. A much greater constitutional expert on these matters than Bercow took an entirely different view in front of the Commons Brexit Committee last October.

When asked whether the Government could bring back its deal to the House if it had been defeated, Sir David Natzler, then Clerk of the Commons, a very important position, replied: I do not think the procedures of the House are designed to obstruct the necessary business of Government in that way in such a crucial thing.

And last night, Sir Stephen Laws QC, a former First Parliamentary Counsel, said: If there is a majority for the deal, preventing the vote would be to frustrate the will of the House. It would be deeply concerning to see a Speaker act in such a way.

Both learned opinions strongly suggest that at a time of crisis, when the future of the country is at stake, ancient parliamentary rules first laid down in 1604 cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the national interest in 2019.

Let me give one more example of the breathtaking inconsistency of Bercow.

Yesterday, not for the first time, he chided the Government for postponing its meaningful vote in December, which he described as discourteous.

Yet he issued his earth-shattering guidance yesterday without giving the Government any prior warning. Wasnt that discourteous?

Calamity

What can the Government do now that it is required by a partisan Speaker to make significant changes to its Bill before it can be introduced again to the Commons?

Its difficult to know. The irony is that Mrs May would alter her deal if she could, but Brussels has told her she cant. Speaker Bercow is asking for something that is not in her power to give.

She could of course weaken it  say by agreeing to the UK staying in the Customs Union  but that is not what she has spent two years negotiating.

I dont attach enormous importance to the fact that a sticker proclaiming Bo***cks to Brexit was displayed in a car Bercow says belongs to his wife but on which he has a claim, though it is surely not insignificant [File photo]

By the way, I was sorry to see Sir Bill Cash, a hard-line though honourable Brexiteer, welcome Bercows ruling. He evidently thinks it takes us closer to No Deal. But that is not what the country wants.

And, as I have said, its more likely that the result of what happened yesterday will be a long extension that takes us ever further from Brexit.

Events are moving with dizzying speed, with one crisis following hard on the heels of another. By the end of this week, some new calamity may have erupted that makes us forget Bercows destructive manoeuvring.

Conceivably he will climb down. Or maybe the Government will find a way of outfoxing him.

All I can say now is how utterly depressing it is to live in a country in which a political minnow such as Bercow can grab hold of the levers of power, and try to nullify the votes of 17.4 million people.
A brave 12-year-old girl with a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer has started a campaign to try and find a stem cell donor and help others in a similar situation.

Lilya Coleman Jones, from Nottingham, is calling on people across the UK to join the Anthony Nolan register and give hope to those in need of a lifesaving transplants.

The youngster, who has Asperger's Syndrome, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia after being taken to the doctors by her father Martin Coleman in November 2018.

Since then Lilya has fought a number of infections and had to spend three months in hospital including being in intensive care over Christmas after contracting sepsis.

Lilya Coleman Jones, 12, from Nottingham, pictured, has acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and is trying to get more people to sign up to the stem cell register

The 12-year-old, pictured with her mother Helen, 50, was diagnosed in November and spent Christmas in hospital after contracting sepsis

The teenager is about to start her 15th week of chemotherapy, and is being treated at Queen's Medical Centre's Nottingham Children's Hospital.

However Lilya said that keeping busy with her campaign to get people signing up to be stem cell donors is really keeping her 'spirits up.'

She said: 'Whilst there is a very slim chance that this might help me, what I really want to do is help other people in a similar situation.

'It's really raising my spirits seeing how many people have committed to becoming donors as a result of this campaign.

'I was really excited about Christmas and had helped to decorate the tree. I felt really ill so I was glad I was in hospital, but it was a shame to miss out.

'I did have a special Christmas a month later. Mum would come in with presents over the course of a week or two and I would open them up.'

Helen Jones, 50, Lilya's mother, said: 'We have been home for the last two weeks which means we can have some good days.

Lilya, pictured, needs a stem cell transplant and is still looking for a donor. Her brother Archie, 11, was willing to donate but unfortunately wasnt a match

'The campaign has all come from Lilya. Friends had suggested it and, because there are lots of things Lilya loves doing that she can't at the moment, her face lit up when I asked her about it.

'She said, "I know it might not help me, but it might help somebody else". In the middle of everything she's having to deal with, this is what she is thinking about and I'm just so proud.'

Lilya needs a stem cell transplant - cells from a healthy person, with the same tissue type, to replace and repair her own damaged cells.

Blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan finds and matches donors, of the correct tissue types, with patients who need stem cell transplants.

Lilya's younger brother Archie, 11, was willing to donate to his sister and was tested but, unfortunately wasnt a match.

The pair also have an older sister called Mica, 28, and nephew five-year-old Alfie.

Lilya is about to start her fifteenth week of chemotherapy and also runs a blog about having cancer and being autistic

Lilya's proud father Martin, 51, said finding out about his daughter's diagnosis was difficult and made him focus all his energy on his family.

He said: 'It's really hard to avoid falling into cliches, but with Lilya's diagnosis and treatment so far, I've learned they are all true. I felt the bottom of the world had dropped out from under me.

'I've felt it all  from being dizzy with the surge of emotions and, as I told people at the time, suddenly nothing else mattered.

Who can sign up to the Anthony Nolan stem cell donation register? Anyone between 16-30 who is in good health can sign up to the register. Once signed up to Anthony Nolan, you stay on until you're 60. The charity send out swabs in the post, which you have to do and send back. Nine out of 10 people donate their stem cells via the bloodstream. This is done by a process called peripheral blood stem cell collection. One in 10 donors will have their stem cells collected via the bone marrow itself, while under general anaesthetic. You need to be happy to donate via either method if you're on the register. Those over 30 who want to donate can sign up to DKMS UK who register people aged 17-55. There are more than 8 million potential donors registered within the DKMS family worldwide. Sources: Anthony Nolan and DKMS Advertisement

'All of my focus and energy needed to be on one thing which was my family, especially Lilya.'

The family are taking each day as it comes. Helen said: 'We will be travelling up to the specialist hospital in Leeds, so I am waiting to see what they say.

'It's not helpful for me as a mum to be on an emotional roller coaster. I feel I just need to be ready for whatever challenge is presented to me.'

Lilya also runs a blog, called The Autistic Girl With Cancer And Chickens, and hopes it will help health professionals provide a better in-patient environment for people with sensory issues.

In her latest post Lilya talks about the noises on a children's ward, for example the 'beeping machines and not forgetting to mention the constant noise of cbeebies.'

Henny Braund, Chief Executive of Anthony Nolan says that: 'Lilya has chosen to share her personal experience in this way, as she receives treatment, which is a generous and extraordinary thing.

'Every day, five people will start their search for a matching stranger who might save their life.

'Each new donor Lilya and her family inspires to join the Anthony Nolan register could mean a second chance for someone in need of a lifesaving stem cell transplant.

'We're particularly calling on young men aged 16-30 to consider joining the Anthony Nolan register as they provide 50% of all stem cell donations but make up just 18% of our register. I'd urge everybody in good general health to find out more online.'

Lilya, who is currently under the care of Dr Eleanor Jesky at the Nottingham Children's Hospital, is this week starting her fifteenth week of chemotherapy.

Dr Jesky, Consultant Paediatric Haematologist at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said with bone marrow donors it is always about having a choice from as many people as possible.

'A proportion of our patients with leukaemia require a bone marrow transplant to offer them the best chance of cure' she explained.

'While some patients will be in the position of having a sibling who is a suitable match, others are reliant on finding an unrelated donor.

'The chance of finding a donor is increased the more volunteer adults who are registered on the international donor panels, enabling more patients to access this potentially life-saving treatment option.

'It is a worldwide register - the person who needs treatment here in Nottingham, may be a match to a donor in Europe, America, Asia - anywhere in the world.

'So we encourage anyone who would be prepared to potentially help a stranger to sign-up for the register to see if they can help.'

For more information and to join the Anthony Nolan register visit their website. Lilya is also campaigning using the hashtag #findamatchforLilya.
Sex and the City's costume designer Patricia Field has revealed a brand new, modern version of the iconic 'Carrie' name necklace.

The necklace - a gold piece that read 'Carrie' - was worn by Sarah Jessica Parker's character, Carrie Bradshaw, who was best known for her unusual and impeccable fashion sense, throughout the course of the show's six seasons.

And now, 15 years after the hit show's final episode was aired, the show's costume designer has revealed a brand new, updated version of the iconic piece of jewelry.

Modern: Sex and the City's costume designer Patricia Field has unveiled The Carrie 2.0 - a modern version of the classic 'Carrie' necklace as seen on HBO's hit show

Iconic: The campaign for the necklace features fashion blogger Caroline Vazzana (pictured) who describes herself as a 'modern day Carrie Bradshaw'

Comeback: The new necklace features a number of new features that weren't part of the original necklace, including hearts and curves around the base of the name

Classic: The latest 'Carrie' necklace, which Patricia describes as 'a true classic with a modern day twist' retails for $320

Memories: The original 'Carrie' necklace became famous when Sarah Jessica Parker's character, Carrie Bradshaw (pictured), wore it throughout the show's six seasons

Patricia Field, the costume designer who worked with the iconic ladies on HBO's hit-series, unveiled the necklace on Monday, March 18.

The new necklace, dubbed the Carrie 2.0, features elements of the classic necklace as seen in Sex and the City, as well as several new features.

Its new features include two hearts and some curves surrounding the name itself.

New! The necklace is available in 14 karat gold or white gold

Retailing for $320, the Carrie 2.0 Custom Name Necklace is available in 14 karat gold, white gold and gold-plated options.

It is described on the website as 'a true classic with a modern day twist'.

Patricia said in a statement that the 'Carrie' necklace has remained a staple of her brand for 'many years'.

The designer added that the piece is a 'modern-day twist' on the classic necklace.

It features hearts and curves to the base of the nameplate, making it appear different to the original piece that featured on the show.

The campaign for the new piece features Caroline Vazzana, who describes herself as the 'modern day Carrie Bradshaw'.

The fashion blogger, stylist and author of Making It In Manhattan said it was Carrie Bradshaw who inspired her to pursue her dreams as a writer in New York City.

In a statement, Caroline said: 'I grew up watching Sex and the City (SATC) and subsequently launched my career as a writer in New York inspired by Carrie Bradshaw.

'So when Pat and her team asked me to be the face of the Carrie 2.0, I was so honored.'

'It was a true dream come true collaborating with [Field] and her team.

Delighted: When Caroline was asked to model the necklace for Patricia, she described it as 'a dream come true' as she loves the show

Inspiration: Caroline, who grew up watching Sex and the City, said it was Carrie Bradshaw who inspired her to pursue a fashion career in New York City

Amazing! Caroline said she felt like she was living a modern-day Carrie Bradshaw moment

'Between the SATC nods and splashes of color from my wardrobe, it made for the perfect modern-day Carrie Bradshaw moment,' she added.

Photographs show the fashion editor and stylist wearing different pieces of clothing from her own closet.

Pieces include a pair of shoes by Carrie Bradshaw's favorite, Manolo Blahnik and accessories by Chanel and Betsey Johnson.

Caroline also holds the classic pink rhinestone flip phone from Patricia's personal archives from the second Sex and the City movie in several photos.

Surreal: Caroline said she was honored to take part in the shoot, revealing that it was 'a dream come true'

And the updated 'Carrie' necklace isn't the only thing fans of the show can get their hands on.

Patricia also sells several other iconic pieces of jewelry and clothing on her website.

The pieces include a number of Carrie-inspired tutu dresses, the classic 'Carrie' necklace and the identical rock she received from Mr. Big when he proposed to her.

The ring, which retails for $10,000, is a five carat black diamond ring which sits atop an 18 karat white gold band encrusted with 78 pave diamonds totaling 0.40 carats.

A diamond-encrusted version of the 'Carrie' necklace is also available.

The snazzy alternative retails for $1,050 and features round cut diamonds set in a 14K karat yellow or white gold custom-made personalized name necklace.

The iconic necklace caught people's eye throughout the various seasons of the hit show, as it was something that Carrie wore for years.

One of the most iconic scenes featuring the necklace involved her misplacing it when she went on a trip to Paris.

Paying tribute: Pieces worn by Caroline in the shoot include a pair of shoes by Carrie Bradshaw's favorite, Manolo Blahnik and accessories by Chanel and Betsey Johnson

Nostalgia: Sarah (pictured as Carrie in Sex and the City) said she still has the iconic necklace to this day, and that she keeps it 'tucked away somewhere safe'

The writer was holidaying with Aleksandr, a famous Russian artist and current romantic interest, when she lost the necklace.

After revealing her devastation in misplacing her beloved item - which she says didn't cost much but holds sentimental value - she eventually found it in a hole in her vintage Dior purse.

Sarah Jessica Parker revealed in May 2017 that the scene was one of her favorites, and that she still has the necklace.

She told The Cut: 'I have the Carrie necklace still. I love it and its tucked away somewhere safe.'

The 53-year-old actress also revealed that she almost lost the necklace in real life before.

'I wish I could play that scene again, because now that Ive lived through it, Id do a much better job,' she said.

The new 'Carrie' necklace is available on Patricia's website.
At-home manicures have always been something of a tricky concept for anyone not lucky enough to possess ambidextrous talents, with one set of nails - usually those painted by the dominant hand - ending up looking much more 'polished' than the other.

But now a Los Angeles nail salon has come up with a simple, yet incredibly effective, solution to those DIY manicure woes: a silicone brush topper that makes painting your own nails to a salon-standard finish easier than ever.

Olive & June, a salon and nail brand that boasts a slew of celebrity fans including Jessica Alba, Lena Dunham, and Drew Barrymore, released a tool called the Poppy earlier this month, a seemingly-simple, yet game-changing, bottle topper that will completely revolutionize the way most people paint their nails.

Easy as can be! Los Angeles-based beauty company Olive & June released a genius tool that makes at-home manicures easier than ever

Off they go! The Poppy ($16) is a simple siicone tool that fits over the brush handle of any polish bottle in order to provide users with better grip and a much steadier hand

The $16 rubber tool looks not unlike a clam shell in terms of its shape, which is flat and round with one more concave side, allowing for each hand, no matter how dominant it may be, to get a good grip.

Thanks to a gap at the bottom, the Poppy can be placed over any kind of polish bottle from any brand, slipping over the handle and essentially serving as a gripper for the person painting the nails.

'This patent-pending universal handle fits on top of any polish bottle to make painting your nails easy with the formulas you already have at home,' a statement from the brand explained.

'Its ergonomic design stabilizes both your dominant and non-dominant hand and prevents smudging.'

But while the Poppy might seem relatively simple in terms of its design and ease of use, it took Olive & June founder Sarah Gibson Tuttle over a year of research to ensure that it worked perfectly.

Despite building her business around her popular salon locations in California, Sarah noted that only a small portion of women were ever going to be able to enjoy the services that she and her staff offered there.

In fact, information shared by the brand revealed that only ten per cent of women in the US make weekly or bi-weekly salon trips. However, only 16 per cent of ladies are doing their own nails at home - a low figure that is no doubt in part, at least somewhat, to the muss and fuss that comes with doing a DIY manicure.

Sarah's aim was to create a tool that would help to change that number, and dramatically increase the ease and efficiency of at-home polish painting.

Something new! As well as The Poppy, Olive & June also released a new range of its own-brand polishes, with a focus on chic neutral and pastel colors

Something for everyone: The Poppy can be used with any brand however and does not have to be restricted to Olive & June polishes specifically

'Through years of researching the nail category (and realizing Olive & June salons brought joy to only a small part of the market), Sarah realized the opportunity to expand the category by democratizing the salon manicure and focusing on the at-home market,' a brand statement explained.

'Sarah also did not participate in salon manicures for one year, so she could truly understand the pain points of the at-home manicure (ie. painting with your non dominant hand, cuticle care, etc).'

Thus, the Poppy was born.

'Most polish bottles are pretty, but the handles are small and difficult to use, especially with your non-dominant hand,' Sarah explained to Allure of the inspiration behind the Poppy's design.

'It also takes most people at least seven to eight times to get good at doing an at-home manicure, so you often lose them on their journey. I wanted to find a way to empower and excite them while they were learning.

'If you feel a sense of accomplishment, youll keep going.'

And while it has only been available for a matter of days, the tool has already had a host of positive reviews from willing testers who were more than happy to put their nails on the line in order to see whether the tool lived up to its hype.

'Lightweight and super soft to the touch, this light pink tool makes it easy to paint your nails with your non-dominant hand (and even easier to use your dominant one),' a writer from Elite Daily said of the tool.

'The squishy, round-shaped handle makes it easier to grip the cap, allowing for even, steady, and more controlled strokes.'

Meanwhile the brand's Instagram followers were bowled over by the creation, praising it as 'great', 'amazing' and even 'genius'.
Beauty expert Huda Kattan revealed how she sometimes uses men's shaving foam to remove her makeup  and it appeared to leave her face clean and free of all beauty products.

The beauty hack was shared with Huda's 34 million Instagram followers in a quick video showing the Huda Beauty CEO, 35, removing all of the makeup from her face before applying her skincare routine.

'Siri, remove my makeup. I WISH it was that easy,' Huda, who was born in Oklahoma but is now based in Dubai, joked in the caption of her video while listing all the products she used on her skin.

Revealed: Huda Kattan, 35, shared an evening routine with her 34 million followers

Time to scrub: The video showed the beauty guru removing her makeup with shaving cream. She rubbed it all over her face before using a towel to wipe it off

She first applied the foaming cream - in this case opting for the L'Oreal Paris Men Expert Hydra Sensitive Shaving Foam - all over her skin before using a towel to wipe off any excess. The towel also helped remove makeup from harder places, such as the eyelids.

Huda is not the first beauty influencer to use shaving cream as an option to remove makeup when in a pinch. Blogger Maria Yeager made headlines previously when she shared a video of herself using the product.

And while it does help remove all the makeup from the skin, there have been concerns about using shaving cream daily because of the ingredients.

Dermatologist Dr. Dendy Engelman in New York City previously told Cosmopolitan what people should pay attention to if they choose to use shaving cream as an emergency makeup remover.

'The ingredients in this shaving cream have obviously been tested to be used on facial skin, so they may be safe enough,' she told the publication. 'But I wouldn't recommend for continued usage especially for eye makeup removal.'

The reason the shaving cream should be avoided around the eyes is the skin is thinner and more sensitive, so the chemicals in the product could cause irritations.

But the beauty guru appeared unbothered by using the shaving cream around her eyes as it was able to remove most of her makeup with the product, and without the help of any other cleansers.

Incredible: The facial cream was able to remove a majority of her makeup with the help of a towel to wipe off all of the excess

Important: Shaving cream is able to remove makeup in a pinch, but experts warn against using it around the eyes because the chemicals could cause irritation

Next step: Huda shared the rest of her skincare routine which involved 10 other products, including using Clinique's Clarifying Lotion 2 ($26) to make sure all makeup was removed

Interestingly however, the shaving cream was one of the few budget-friendly products used in Huda's otherwise-rather pricey skincare regimen, which is priced at more than $1,200 in total.

After Huda removed her makeup with the shaving cream, she then went over her skin with Clinique's Clarifying Lotion 2 ($26) to make sure all makeup was removed from her pores.

She then massaged the Tatcha The Essence Plumping Skin Softener ($95) into her skin using her fingertips; the product is rich in Japanese superfoods and helps to combat the signs of aging, while also gently exfoliating the skin.

Then, it was on to the Institut Esthederm E.V.E Essential Vital Elements Serum ($119), which has been hailed by some users as a 'miracle serum' thanks to its ability to smooth and firm the skin almost instantly.

Huda then took a derma roller across her skin as a form of microneedling to promote collagen production and tissue growth.

But that wasn't the end of her extensive beauty routine after removing her makeup.

She used Dr. Dennis Gross DRx SpectraLite FaceWare Pro ($435) for three minutes. The mask helps target wrinkles and blast any acne-causing bacteria in the pores.

The now-out of stock SkinCeuticals Skin Firming Cream was then applied to the face after the mask before she used REN Rose O12 Moisture Defense Oil ($80)  which works to hydrate the skin.

Futuristic: To tackle wrinkles and any acne-causing bacteria, Huda used the Dr. Dennis Gross DRx SpectraLite FaceWare Pro ($435) for three minutes before finishing off her routine

Finally finished! The final step in Huda's beauty routine is to apply lip balm to the lips - the popular Glossier Balm Dotcom in Coconut ($12)

Huda then turned to her eyes where she applied Blue Lagoon Iceland Rejuvenating Eye Cream ($115) both on the lid and underneath the eye.

Not a single area of skin was left forgotten by Huda in her routine as she applied Lancer Skincare Lift Serum Intense ($275) to her neck before applying Tropic Isle Living Jamaican Strong Roots Red Pimento Hair Growth Oil ($11) to her eyebrows to promote hair growth.

The final step in the skincare routine was applying lip balm to the lips. For this, the beauty pro turned to cult favorite, the Glossier Balm Dotcom in Coconut ($12).

People commended Huda for her 'glowy' and 'stunning' skin despite the bizarre technique of using shaving foam to remove the makeup. But fans also admitted to being unable to replicate a skincare routine involving so many pricey products.

Stunning: People online commended Huda for her glowing skin, but some were worried about using shaving cream to remove makeup

Those that are lucky enough to have a large beauty budget will soon be able to take advantage of purchasing Huda's products directly through Instagram, after it was revealed that the beauty pro's eponymous brand is one of the first to take part in the social media app's newest shopping feature.

Huda Beauty, which was launched in 2013, is one of a handful of brands - including Michael Kors, Oscar de la Renta, and KKW Beauty - to be a part of the new feature, which allows users to click on a product in a photo and buy it through the app.

'We are so honored to have been chosen by Instagram to be one of the first brands to take part in Instagram Shopping,' Huda said of the brand's involvement in the new feature.

'Instagram has been the driving force behind Huda Beauty and has truly transformed the business, so being part of something as monumental as this is really humbling. The power of social media is undeniable, so I am not surprised that Instagram is bridging the gap between e-commerce and its global audience.

'Instagram Shopping is definitely going to revolutionize the way consumers shop by making products much more accessible, but it will also change how businesses operate online.

'This tool directly challenges existing e-commerce platforms so its a really exciting time to see how direct sales through the platform will change consumer behavior and if Instagram Shopping will become a key revenue stream for brands.'
Jordan Alexander (pictured) has revealed how she was scammed out of $140,000 after falling for a man she met on a dating website

A devastated businesswoman has explained how she was scammed out of $140,000 after falling for a man she met on a dating website.

Jordan Alexander, 51, struck up an online relationship with whom she thought was a well-educated, family-oriented railway engineer.

The businesswoman, originally from Canada but now lives in New Zealand, said the man she knew as 'James Norman' appeared keen to share every aspect of his life with her - despite the fact she'd never met or seen him in person.

The mother-of-two said she fell head over heels in love with the 'millionaire' businessman, 50, and was convinced he was 'The One'.

That was before she travelled all the way to Hawaii to meet him for the first time after six-months of online romance - only to realise she had unwittingly become involved in an elaborate scam when he never showed up.

James spent months building her trust by giving her access to his bank accounts where she saw 'millions of dollars' - before he started asking to borrow money from her, she claims.

Her story draws comparisons with Netflix series and podcast Dirty John which sees a real-life successful woman meet a 'charming' doctor on a dating website - before discovering his web of lies.

She realised she was swindled after she travelled all the way to Hawaii to meet him, only to find out he was never going to show up (pictured in Honolulu waiting for James to arrive)

The single mother met 'James Norman' who she thought was a 'well-educated' railway engineer. She believed the man in the image had nothing to do with the scam

Jordan turned to online dating in 2012 after struggling for years to find time for a relationship due to the demands of her job and family commitments.

'All my friends were saying I work too much and need a man. As a single mum and business woman, I didn't have a lot of time on my hands. Online dating seemed like an efficient way to meet new people,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

After just one day of setting up her dating profile, the mother said she was 'excited' when a James Norman 'matched' with her.

Ms Alexander said the pair hit it off instantly because they had a lot in common - they were both working in business, both owned a consultancy firm, travelled overseas for work and were single parents.

'I thought... geez so far so good - James and I are already "on the same page" around issues, feelings and what's important,' she said.

'His profile pic showed him in a business shirt, sleeves rolled up so he had this air of casual but still smart, crystal blue eyes, warm smile - and a moustache I was sure I could get him to shave off in time.

'He was a Christian, spoke fondly of his deceased wife who was taken by cancer. He hadn't dated in years - me too.'

By this stage, Ms Alexander had transferred James more than $110,000 (left) - but he made up more excuses when he needed more money. The mother was waiting in Hawaii when James continued asking her for money because he was 'detained in Sri Lanka' - but Ms Alexander realised he was not real.

Ms Alexander said James was the first to say 'I love you' to her

The pair started exchanging messages on a daily basis.

'He was so attentive and remembered everything we spoke about, he'd follow up things and revealed personal feelings,' Ms Alexander said.

'He was always asking about the girls and work. I felt he was caring, thoughtful, kind, family oriented, keen to have a deep and meaningful relationship "with the right woman". It was fun, he made me feel special - he could be "the one".'

As their romance blossomed online, James - who claimed he was living between London and New York - started calling her following weeks of emailing back and forth.

'Our first conversation was a bit of a surprise - he caught me off guard. We hadn't planned a chat. I remember thinking - where is that accent from?' she said.

'He said he lived in South Africa for work for a long time, and then New York and London. His accent was a bit "different" - so was mine as a Canadian, now Kiwi, who was born to European parents - I thought it all made sense.

'It was a lovely voice and he even sounded tall, dark and handsome.'

The mother from Canada but now lives in New Zealand with her daughters Sage and Ella

Over the months, Ms Alexander's loving messages quickly turned blunt after she noticed the red flags when he was coming up with a different excuse every time he asked for more money

Ms Alexander said James was the first to say 'I love you' to her.

'I remember it felt like it was a bit soon, but as an impulsive Gemini, I didn't think it was impossible,' she said.

'We were having a connection and what felt like a soulful chemistry, I thought everyone defines love differently. Who am I to make assumptions about his feelings.'

Four months into their relationship, the couple planned to finally meet in Hawaii for their first romantic getaway together.

I had to do some banking for him - on his accounts, using his passwords so he didn't ask me to give him money at first... When I logged in, I could see he had millions of dollars in his account

'His assistant had emailed me regarding details for the hotel, all paid for. I loved that someone other than me was making the arrangements, I felt wonderful,' she said.

And it wasn't long until James - who claimed he was working at a remote railway area in Sri Lanka at the time - started making bizarre excuses.

'First it was the WiFi problems in the "remote" railway areas,' she said.

As James claimed he had trouble logging into his bank account due to bad reception, he asked the mother to help him transfer his own money.

'I had to do some banking for him - on his accounts, using his passwords so he didn't ask me to give him money at first,' she said.

When she logged into his account on what she believed was a legitimate website, she was stunned to see his bank balance.

'I could see he had millions [of dollars in his account],' she said.

She turned to online dating in 2012 after struggling for a few years to find time for a relationship due to the demands of her job and family commitments

The mother-of-two said she fell head over heels in love with the 'millionaire' businessman, before discovering her lover was a fraudster

Ms Alexander told James she had her own bills and mortgage to pay for - despite already lending him money - but it seemed it was never enough for him

But after she attempted to wire the money, the transfer didn't go through because of the bank's security feature.

'It was when his bank didn't let the transfer go through because the request was from an unknown server - I am in New Zealand not London, he only then asked me to send him $15,000 to buy the railway supplies from China,' she said.

But his request to 'borrow' money didn't end there. He would make up a different excuse each time he asked her for money as well as a promise he would pay her back.

Ms Alexander said she ended up borrowing money from the bank, maxing out her credit cards and even re-mortgaging her home to help him.

'There was one excuse after another,' she said.

By the time their romantic holiday came around, Ms Alexander had already sent him $140,000.

But after seeing the 'millions' of dollars in his bank account with 'my own eyes', she convinced herself she would get her money back.

When she arrived in Honolulu, James told her he was going to be a day or two late.

'He was delayed in Sri Lanka. I was so disappointed,' she said.

'I had played out the "meet James" scene on my mind a million times, planned the outfit I was going to wear and the drink I would order if I got to the bar first.

'But when he texted to say he couldn't be there, I was gutted. Major anti-climax but I was still excited though that he'd get there in a few days. I had tonnes of work to do, so would keep busy in the room until he arrived I told myself.'

The mother said she was so traumatised by the ordeal, she didn't find love again until six years later when she met her now-fiance Rick (pictured together)

The couple got engaged two years after meeting - and Ms Alexander is happier more than ever

The single mother-of-two struck up an online relationship with who she thought was a 'well-educated', family oriented, and potentially 'The One' railway engineer

She has written a book about her whirlwind journey titled I love you, Send Money

Sitting alone in her hotel room, she realised she had been duped when he told her to send him more money after he was 'detained in Sri Lanka'.

'He asked me to send him money when I was in Hawaii waiting for him so he could get out of jail - that's when I said "no way". He's not coming.'

When she checked out of her room, she realised James never paid for the booking because she was handed a bill for $1,500 after spending around six days in Hawaii alone.

Following six months of dating, Ms Alexander said she never heard from James again when she tried to confront him.

The mother said she was so traumatised after falling victim to the online romance scam, she didn't find love again until six years later when she met her now-partner Rick.

'I went back online six years later and found an amazing man, Rick - now my fiance after two years together,' she said.

Seven years on, Ms Alexander has since written a book about her whirlwind romance titled I love you, Send Money and even launched a business Love Assist Associates to help people find love online safely.

By sharing her story, Ms Alexander wanted to warn other women about the red flags of falling victim to online romance scams.

'It took me years to have the courage to talk about it. So much shame and guilt - very self-deprecating,' she said.

'I do not want anyone to go through what I did - years of self deprivation and shame I never thought it could happen to me. But when the love goggles go on, love makes people do crazy things.

'My experience changed my whole life - and affected those around me. That's why it's so important for me to help others. It helps me to find meaning and purpose from the scam event.'
A cancer survivor who is also a caregiver to her father and disabled son shocked her daughter with her stunning transformation after receiving a well-deserved ambush makeover.

Marla Milling, 56, from Asheville, North Carolina, was visiting New York City for the first time with her daughter Hannah, who was on her college spring break, when she was chosen for a head-to-toe makeover on the Today show Thursday.

'I am a cancer survivor,' the mom told Today fashion expert Jill Martin. 'Not only a cancer survivor, I am also a caregiver. My dad's 89. I have a developmentally disabled son, and, so, look at me. I don't have time for myself at all.'

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Before and after: Marla Milling, 56, from Asheville, North Carolina, received an ambush makeover on the Today show Thursday morning

Well-deserved: It has been a difficult year for the cancer survivor, who is also a caregiver to her 89-year-old father and her developmentally disabled son

The mom revealed it has been a difficult year for her, and she was looking for something new to do with her graying hair while she was between hairdressers.

Marla had a bright smile on her face when she stepped on stage sporting a chic outfit and a fresh haircut.

'She knows she looks good,' Today co-host Kathie Lee Gifford said.

When Marla's daughter removed her blindfold to see her mom's new look, she threw her hand over her face and started to laugh.

'You look completely different,' she said in shock.

Overwhelmed: Marla's daughter Hannah was shocked by her transformation. 'You look completely different,' she said

Loving it: 'Who is that gorgeous woman?' Marla asked when she looked in the mirror and saw her new look for the first time

Beautiful: Celebrity hairstylist Louis Licarid explained that Igor Musayev gave Marla an ear-length bob, while he updated her color and covered her gray roots

Marla was just as stunned when she turned around to look at herself in the mirror for the first time since her makeover.

'Wait. I thought I was supposed to look in the mirror. Who is that gorgeous woman? Oh, my goodness!' she said, turning to thank Jill and celebrity hairstylist Louis Licari.

'You are a magician,' she told them.

Meanwhile, Hannah was still in shock over her mother's dramatic transformation.

'Really, I would not be able to pick you out in a crowd,' she admitted, and Marla agreed that she didn't think she would be able to either.

Then and wow! Sammie McCollum, 23, from Hanover, Pennsylvania, also received an ambush makeover on Thursday morning's show. She was all smiles when she stepped on stage

Goal: The newlywed, who got married in December, started a new job this year, and she wanted to start dressing for the workplace

Louis explained that Igor Musayev gave Marla an ear-length bob while he updated her color and covered her gray roots.

'I pushed it a little bit,' he said. 'It's a good color, but now I made it a little brighter, and look how it lights up her face.'

As for her outfit, Jill dressed the mom in a stylish black and white tunic with an asymmetrical hem, black skinny jeans, and white statement earrings.

Sammie McCollum, 23, from Hanover, Pennsylvania, also received an ambush makeover on Thursday morning's show.

Fan club: 'Oh my God! You look incredible,' her co-worker Keely gushed when she revealed her new look

Wowing herself: 'Oh my word! I look so good. I love it,' Sammie said when she looked in the mirror for the first time after her makeover

The newlywed, who got married in December, started a new job this year, and she wanted to start dressing for the workplace.

She also revealed that she wanted to dye her long brunette locks for the first time.

Sammie was clearly excited when she told Jill that she was 'open to cutting' her hair, revealing it has been about a year and a half since she had a chop.

She was all smiles when she stepped on stated sporting highlighted waves and a bright orange dress.

'Oh my God! You look incredible,' her co-worker Keely gushed, and Sammie agreed with her assessment.

New 'do: Sammie's brown hair was cut into a long bob and given beach waves, while Louis updated her color with golden highlights

When she turned around to look in the mirror, she said: 'Oh my word! I look so good. I love it.'

Her hair was cut into a long bob and given beach waves, while Louis updated her color with golden highlights.

'Sammie never colored her hair, so I wanted to introduce her to color, but I wanted to make it dynamic,' he explained.

The highlights are more subtle on the top and heavier on the bottom to give her a golden blonde color.

Jill, meanwhile, dressed Sammie in a coral high-low dress and cinched her waist with a gray belt. She topped off the look with silver pumps to match her belt.
A talented schoolboy left Good Morning Britain viewers astounded by reciting Pi to 258 decimal places live on air.

Charley Thomas, 10, appeared on the show after setting a record when he recited the number to 220 decimal places during assembly at Wycliffe Preparatory School in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, just days ago.

After steadily reciting the numbers Charley, who has been dubbed a 'young Einstein', was praised by viewers.

Schoolboy Charley Thomas, 10, pictured, appeared on Good Morning Britain today after setting a record when he recited the number to 220 decimal places during assembly at Wycliffe Preparatory School in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, just days ago

Impressed viewers were quick to praise the accomplished schoolboy on Twitter, pictured

One tweeted: 'Wow! I'm at the age now I can just about remember my phone number! Well done Charley.'

Another posted: 'Charley you were FAB, so impressed with your memory for all those numbers and well done for smashing your previous record.'

Pi is the number you get when you divide a circle's circumference by its diameter.

The first digits of Pi, 3.14, are well known  but the number is infinitely long.

Extending the known sequence of digits in Pi is very difficult because the number follows no set pattern.

Charley barely paused as he steadily recited pi to 258 decimal places live on air, pictured

Viewers were astounded by the 10-year-old's ability and quickly praised him on Twitter

Speaking on the programme, Charley explained her learns the numbers in blocks of 10 and was rehearsing for weeks ahead of the school assembly.

'If I'm doing it swiftly, it takes just under 2 minutes,' he said. 'I learn them in blocks of 10. Every block of 10 is a couple of seconds. But we've timed it to see if it's too long to do now.'

Presenters Susanna Reid, Charlotte Hawkins and Piers Morgan were left in awe of Charley, with Morgan describing his Pi recital as 'one of the most impressive things he had ever seen'.

Charley originally recited Pi in a school assembly celebrating Pi Day, March 14. He became the youngest Briton ever to recite the number to 220 decimal places.

Presenters Susanna Reid, Charlotte Hawkins and Piers Morgan were left in awe of Charley

Speaking on the programme, Charley explained her learns the numbers in blocks of 10 and was rehearsing for weeks ahead of the school assembly

Speaking after the achievement, he said: 'I'm not very good at standing up and doing something in front of people so I was a bit nervous at assembly.

'I had rehearsed at home and knew I could get to 220 places. I really like maths.'

Pi is used in engineering, physics, supercomputing and space exploration  because its value can be used in calculations for waves, circles and cylinders.

Headmaster Adrian Palmer said: 'This is an incredible achievement and one that no Wycliffe pupil has done before.

'It is fitting that on the same day Emma Haruka Iwao, a Google employee from Japan, calculated the value of the number pi to a new world record length of 31 trillion digits, far past the previous record of 22 trillion.

'Charley received a standing ovation for his efforts in assembly and it was so richly deserved.'
A businessman who quit his job to live off grid with his wife on a remote hilltop has said they finally feel 'free' and miss nothing about their former life.

Kees Goossens, 55, and his wife Ingrid, 53, a nurse, left their modern brick home in Breda, the Netherlands, to build a new house from scratch in a remote area of Portugal.

The couple walked away from their jobs in May 2017 and spent two months building their new single-story home which isn't connected to the mains electricity, gas or water supply.

They now live by farming pigs and selling cork grown on the land.

Explaining their bold decision, Kees who used to earn 50,000 (42,800) a year, said he was 'bored of humdrum middle class life.'

Kees and Ingrid Goossens quit their jobs in Breda, the Netherlands, to build a single-storey house, pictured, on a remote hilltop in Portugal

The couple, Ingrid pictured during the build, spent two months constructing their new home

The Goossens' home has one bedroom, a kitchen/living area, pictured, and a bathroom uses solar panels for electricity

Kees, pictured making homemade wine in Portugal, spent 24,800 on buying the land and a further 25,700 on materials to build the house

Kees, pictured, used to run a successful construction company and used his knowledge to make the plans for the new home which isn't connected to the mains for electricity

He said: 'We lived very well and had everything - success, luxury, comfort. But there was always the feeling in the back of my mind that there could be something else. After years of living comfortably, I started to think - is this it?'

It was during a two week holiday in the rural Portuguese region of Alentejo in March 2016 that Kees and Ingrid, whose student sons, Tuen, 23, and Drik, 20, still live in the Netherlands, fell in love with the landscape and decided to stay.

'We found something there that we had never experienced before,' Kees explained.

'The natural beauty was astounding and the people were so friendly and open that, straight away, I knew I wanted to live there for the rest of my life.'

It took just a few months for the couple to sell up in the Netherlands and buy a plot of land for 29,000 (24,800) on an isolated hilltop near the village of Monte Sobreiro.

And eight weeks later, Kees had finished building their home, which they designed and constructed themselves after spending 30,000 (25,700) on materials.

Kees said he couldn't imagine leaving his new life in the hills and that it feels 'strange' to go back to the Netherlands and the city now. Pictured is the inside of Kees' self-built home

The couple's home, left during construction, is surrounded by 50,000 square metres of land and they keep chickens, pictured right

Now they live off the 50,000 square metres of land that surrounds their home, by harvesting cork from their quercus suber trees which cover it and breeding pigs for sale.

With one bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom, their hilltop home also has two outhouses with additional bedrooms for guests.

And having no connection to mains electricity, gas or water supply, they rely on wood burners for heating, solar panels for powering their refrigerator and lights, and water pumped from a nearby brook for washing.

Kees said: 'When we go back to Holland now we try to stay for the shortest amount of time possible, as it feels very strange for us to be there.

'We don't want to become part of that world again, as we are so happy with the lifestyle we now have.

'It sounds very cliched perhaps, but here we feel free and we feel ourselves - something we've spent our whole lives looking for and finally found.

While the house was being built, pictured is Ingrid working on the site, the couple lived in a small cabin

The home has two outhouses, one pictured, for when visitors come to stay with the couple

Kees, pictured building the roof, said his sons, Tuen, 23, and Drik, 20, were skeptical about the move at first but now understand their parents decision to move

'After spending our entire lives living in towns and cities, it's amazing that we really miss nothing about our former life. There isn't a single luxury that I feel I would have back.'

Before starting their build, the couple revisited the area in August 2016 on a fact-finding mission.

Kees said: 'We spent a month talking with local officials and architects, trying to find out all the necessary requirements for buying land and building a home.

'We wanted to be certain that it was a good step to take and the visit cemented our belief that it was. After that we were both convinced.'

Drawing on his years of experience in contracting to create a blueprint for the house, Kees then passed it on to an architect to check.

With the plot of land bought and given the go-ahead on his plans, he started the building work in June 2017 - with Ingrid and Kees doing everything themselves.

Two months later, during which time the couple lived in a small cabin they had built beforehand, their single-storey home was completed.

Kees and Ingrid live off the land and breed pigs, pictured, to sell so they have money for food

Kees, pictured at his new home, said he wouldn't return to the city and that: 'For the first time in my life I feel that I am really living the way I want to'

Despite their unwavering confidence in their decision, Kees says that friends and family were less sure.

He continued: 'At first, people thought we had gone crazy and said to us, 'What are you doing?'

'Our two sons especially couldn't understand why we were doing this and were very sceptical about our choice.

'But more and more they have started to understand, especially after they came to visit us for the first time.

'They could see how special the place we have is and gradually they realised that we were happier than ever before.'

With plans to become entirely self-sufficient one day, when they will no longer need to buy food or drinking water, the pair are working hard on developing their farm - a task that, together with weekly lessons in Portuguese, keeps them fully occupied.

'Every day is a joy because we are working for ourselves and doing things that matter to our lives,' explained Kees.

'For the first time in my life I feel that I am really living the way I want to.'
A mother-of-two has revealed how her two children have visited over 70 counties between them thanks to their extravagant lifestyle.

Two tiny globetrotters Esme Bayes, four, and Quinn, one, have travelled all over the globe with their parents Karen Edwards, 34 and Shaun Bayes, 33, who are originally from Crystal Palace in London.

After deciding to spend her maternity leave planning adventures in 2015, Karen has been living out of a rucksack ever since.

The family-of-four are now planning to embark on their latest expedition after deciding to sell their house.

'It all started on my first maternity leave with Esme,' said nurse, Karen. 'When she was just six months old we decided to go to Singapore, and we continued to travel for 10 months before heading home.'

Siblings Esme Bayes, four, and Quinn, one, have travelled all over the globe with their parents Karen Edwards, 34 and Shaun Bayes, 33, who are from Crystal Palace, London. Pictured, Esme and Quinn, Karen and Shaun at Lake Louise in Canada

The couple first set off to Singapore when Esme (above) was just six months old. They continued to travel for 10 months before heading home. Pictured, Esme in Costa Rica

Esme Bayes, four, and Quinn, one, have visited over 70 counties between them thanks to their extravagant lifestyle. Above, pictured in Abu Dhabi

Esme has been to over 40 countries, and Quinn has been to around 28. Above, the siblings cuddling up in Bolivia

She continued: 'Esme has since been to over 40 countries, and Quinn has been to around 28.

'Our family thought we were crazy at first but they're used to our adventures now. Thankfully Quinn loves jet-setting across the globe just as much as Esme.'

The super adventurous siblings have been to countries such as Hong Kong, Bali, Colombia, Panama, Taiwan, and Bolivia.

And thankfully as travel-mad dad, Shaun, is a self-employed builder, he was able to take the time off to travel with his family.

Karen and Shaun did a "trial period" holiday with both Esme and Quinn to see how it was travelling with two babies. Above, Esme and Quinn in Peru

When the couple first set out on their adventures with Esme (above), they rented their house out and sold their car to fund their adventures. Pictured, Esme posing with a camel in Abu Dhabi

Karen and Shaun have learned the easiest way to travel with kids is in a camper van and are now looking forward to renovating one. Above, Esme Bayes, four, and Quinn, one, in Nicaragua

'We did a "trial period" holiday with both Esme and Quinn, who was only seven months at the time, to see how it was, as previously we just had the one baby to focus on,' explained Karen.

'We wanted to get to grips with having both of them so decided to make it a super easy trip to see how we got on.

'After our holiday to Majorca, Spain, we came home to London for two weeks then packed up and left again for a nearly a year.

She added: 'We've done some amazing things like hiked around Machu Picchu, camped in Yosemite, canoed around Lake Louise and seen wild bears in Canada.'

Previously, the couple rented their house out and sold their car to fund their adventures, but this time, they are looking for a long-term alternative so made the decision to sell up.

'This time round we're trying to sell our house instead of just renting it,' said the adventurous mother-of-two.

After deciding to spend her maternity leave planning adventures in 2015, Karen (above) has been living in and out of a rucksack ever since. Pictured, Karen with Quinn in New Zealand

Shaun (above) and Karen are looking to sell their house instead of just renting it like they had done before. Above, Shaun with Quinn in Santa Theresa, Costa Rica

Karen admitted that the first time 'was a struggle with two kids' but insisted it gets easier as the siblings have started to get used to flying. Pictured, Karen with Quinn in Bolivia

'We then want to invest the money from the house into properties outside of London so we can live off the rental income.

'With any extra money we have, Shaun and I would love to renovate a truck or camper van for us to travel in.'

And while some parents may dread taking their toddlers abroad, Esme and Quinn have found it has become second nature to them.

They are planning on heading to new territory this year and want to explore the Kazakhstan area.

The adventurous family have some some 'amazing things' during their travels. They have hiked around Machu Picchu, camped in Yosemite, canoed around Lake Louise and seen wild bears in Canada.' Above, Karen with Quinn at Moraine Lake in Canada

Esme has been to endless countries including Cuba, Grand Cayman, Bahamas, Mexico Jamaica and Ecuador. Above, pictured at Lake Louise in Canada

The family are keen to explore the Kazakhstan area this year. Above, Esme Bayes, four, with her dad Shaun Bayes, 33, in Andorra

'The first time was hard, it was a struggle with two kids, but it gets easier and Esme and Quinn begin to get used to flying and things,' she explained. 'Quinn just likes to run up and down the aisle.'

'We've done so much of Asia and The America's so we wanted to go somewhere different that we can do a prolonged road trip from Europe.

'We've learned the easiest way to travel with kids is in a camper van having trialled that a few times so we're looking forward to renovating one.

'We can't wait for our next family adventure!'

To follow the family's fun, subscribe to Karen's blog, Travel Mad Mum: https://travelmadmum.com
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The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge carried out their first joint engagement outside palace walls.

Kate, 37, and the Queen, 92, shared a blanket in the back of the car as they pulled up at King's College London, where they reopened Grade II-listed Bush House.

The Duchess was elegant in a grey Catherine Walker coat, believed to be a new bespoke addition to her wardrobe, which she teamed with her new favourite 510 Gianvito Rossi block heels and a black Mulberry clutch.

In a rare move for such an outing, Kate, 37, completed her outfit with a hat, which is likely to be a sign of respect to the monarch. It is the same hat she wore when out with the Queen in Leicester in 2012.

Meanwhile the Queen, 92, plumped for a rose pink cashmere coat by Stewart Parvin and matching Rachel Trevor-Morgan hat with beautiful floral detailing at the brim.

Although they have carried out a handful of public visits with other members of the Royal Family, it was the first time that they have been on one together in public, outside of Buckingham Palace.

In 2012 the pair visited Leicester as part of the Diamond Jubilee tour but were joined by the Duke of Edinburgh. However they did make individual stops on the schedule without him, including watching a student fashion show.

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The Queen smiled warmly at the Duchess of Cambridge following a brief ceremony to officially open Bush House on Tuesday

The Duchess of Cambridge carried a bouquet of pink, white and orange blooms, left and right, as she left Bush House

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge shared a blanket as they arrived at King's College London in the back of a car

Outside on the terrace which overlooked central London, left, Kate and the Queen both remarked on the 'impressive' view

The Queen unveiled a plaque marking the official opening of Bush House, King's College London, today

The Duchess and the Queen both donned hats for the occasion, left, although Kate had to readjust on the blustery roof, right

The Duchess of Cambridge remained by the Queen's side as she officially opened Bush House on Tuesday

The outing took place in March, shortly before William and Kate's first wedding anniversary.

Later that year the Duchess of Cambridge joined the Queen at Fortnum & Mason for an event launching a military initiative, where they were joined by the Duchess of Cornwall.

In 2014, Kate joined the Queen as she hosted a night in celebration of the UK's dramatic arts at Buckingham Palace.

And in 2011, the Queen viewed Kate's wedding dress with her during a private tour of a new display at Buckingham Palace.

In June 2018, a few weeks after the royal wedding, the Queen carried out joint engagements with the Duchess of Sussex in Cheshire.

Today the Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge appeared in excellent spirits as they arrived at Bush House, which previously served as the headquarters for BBC World Service but is being leased by King's College London.

It marks the newest building as part of the university's Strand Campus.

Kate and the Queen could be seen sitting with a blue blanket over their laps as they arrived in the back of a car.

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge have arrived at King's College London for a joint engagement

The Duchess of Cambridge received a beautiful bouquet of flowers as she left King's College London following the outing

The Duchess of Cambridge waved as she followed the Queen out of Bush House, King's College London, today

The Queen perfectly matched her outfit with her pink sapphire and diamond surround brooch, as seen on her coat

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge spent roughly an hour at Bush House before leaving, pictured

There was much fanfare, with well-wishers crowding outside the gates to the building and some even standing on bollards in the hope of getting a better glimpse of the royals.

Following royal protocol, Kate waited for the Queen to leave the car before exiting the vehicle herself. She continued to walk behind the monarch as they made their way into the building.

The royals were greeted by Lord Christopher Geidt, chairman of King's and former private secretary to the Queen, her most senior advisor.

He was ousted in a palace coup two years ago but remains close to the monarch.

They were taken up to the eighth floor where they met donors, supporters and old alumni of the university who had contributed to transform the former BBC World Service at Bush House to a new faculty.

The Duchess of Cambridge looked elegant in a Catherine Walker coat, black hat and black heels for the outing

Following protocol, the Duchess of Cambridge walked behind the Queen as they made their way into Bush House

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge appeared in excellent spirits and smiled as they arrived at Bush House

The Queen brought a splash of colour to proceedings in her pink coat and waved to royal well-wishers as she arrived

The Queen smiled as she stepped out of the car, dressed in a coat by Stewart Parvin and matching Rachel Trevor-Morgan hat

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge were given a warm welcome as they arrived at King's College London today

The Duchess of Cambridge and the Queen will be given a tour of some of the facilities of Bush House during the engagement

The Duchess of Cambridge smiled as she stepped out of the car, while the Queen turned her attention to the well-wishers

A crowd gathered to watch the royals drive through the gates into the campus of Bush House, pictured

Outside on the terrace which overlooked central London, Kate and the Queen both remarked on the 'impressive' view.

Meeting a group of builders, Kate said: 'Do you all still get on? What a mammoth project this was.'

But it was meeting staff and students from the university's robotic section that really captivated the royals. Matthew Howard, head of King's robot learning lab, said: 'It's a sawyer robot and it's designed to learn skills by copying the behaviour of people.

'The sensors can be built into clothing and can pick up muscle activity as they can be made with metallic thread. It picks up the EMG muscle activity and transmits it to the robot and tries to copy what the person is doing.

'Sam was moving his hands so the robot moved its hand. The Duchess grabbed the hand and then Sam tensed his hand so it felt like a handshake.'

As she shook the robotic hand, Kate giggled and said: 'Very nice to meet you!'. When it gripped her hand back, she laughed and said: 'So strange'.

The Duchess of Cambridge followed royal protocol by waiting for the Queen to leave the car before exiting herself

The Duchess of Cambridge stepped out in one of her favourite shapes of coat as she joined the Queen in London today

The Duchess of Cambridge wore her new favourite Gianvito Rossi block heels and carried a Mulberry clutch

The Queen's Rachel Trevor-Morgan features beautiful floral detailing, left and right, which was on display as she arrived

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge were greeted outside Bush House, the latest edition to the Strand Campus

The Duchess of Cambridge brought a more formal take to her outfit with a hat, which she wouldn't typically wear on such an outing

The Duchess of Cambridge wore her long brunette locks in soft waves for the outing with the Queen in London today

The Queen looked slightly alarmed when the hand came near her and decided not to grace it with a regal shake.

The royals then went downstairs to meet students in the university's special trading floor and entrepreneurship section. Kate met entrepreneur Aysha Ingar who has set up an app for Muslim women and Tobi Oredein who has set up a media platform for black women in the UK.

Kate told Aysha and Tobi: 'I come from an entrepreneurial background and my parents started their own business so I'm all for it. Congratulations and keep going.'

Kate also met medical student Qasim Munye, 22, who has set up an app called Shortly for people who want to read short stories on the go, allowing people to choose a story that suits how much time they have to read.

Kate said: 'Oh that would be fantastic for the kiddies when it's bedtime. Particularly for tired parents who want the children to go to sleep.'

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge arrived at Bushy House, King's College London, on Tuesday morning

The Queen climbed out of the car ahead of the Duchess of Cambridge, who followed respectfully behind

The royals were greeted by a crowd of well-wishers who had waited outside the building, hoping to catch a glimpse

The Duchess of Cambridge has rarely attended an engagement with the Queen without her husband the Duke of Cambridge

The Queen, patron of King's College London, and the Duchess of Cambridge were greeted as they arrived at Bush House

Qassim, from London, said: 'She mentioned that she thinks it would be good for her children before they go to sleep, to enable to set the time of the book.'

Mr Munye said he is now going to think about adding stories for children to the app.

They ended their visit in the development's new auditorium, where the Queen, who is patron of the university, unveiled a plaque, formally opening Bush House, before signing the visitor's book alongside Kate.

Lord Geidt, who also went to King's as a student, made a short speech and gave the Queen a gift of book of royal photographs.

King's Principal Prof Edward Byrne said: 'It's a huge honour to have Her Majesty and Her Royal Highness here. The University was founded by King George IV in 1829 and has always been associated with the Royal Family since as the monarch has always been our patron.

'It's a day that staff and students will remember for the rest of their lives. Both HM and HRH really enjoyed meeting students from all over the world, those who have established their own businesses through the entrepreneurship institute and those in the robotics section.

'The duchess has a special interest in young people and has supported some of our mental health projects at King's.'

Later, Kate visited the Foundling Museum to understand how it uses art to make a positive contribution to society by engaging with vulnerable and marginalised young people.

The museum tells the history of the Foundling Hospital, the UK's first children's charity and public art gallery.

Kate, who visited the museum in 2017, is expected to view Bedrooms of London, a photography exhibition that documents the living conditions of London's most disadvantaged children.
Her father has a fortune of more than 100M, but Lady Kitty Spencer says she feels empowered by earning and spending her own money.

In an interview with this month's Harper's Bazaar UK Princess Diana's niece, 28, shared her thoughts on social media, women's rights and feminism and revealed why being self-sufficient is so important to her.

'It symbolises my independence. It means that I do not have to depend on or answer to anybody. I cannot be silenced or bargained with or threatened,' said the daughter of Earl Spencer, whose fortune is estimated at 116M.

'It means that if I want to work back-to-back, day and night, for weeks on end, then I can do so. It also means that during quieter times, if I want to go home to South Africa to lay low with my family and read a ton of books, that option is available too.'

Lady Kitty Spencer, a model and philanthropist and the niece of the late Princess Diana has revealed that she's determined to earn her own money so that she can be in control of her life in an interview with Harper's Bazaar

'It gives me a balance and a rhythm that I have a say in. It makes me feel as though I am in command of my own life - or as in command as any of us actually ever is.'

Lady Kitty was born in the UK but raised in South Africa. The Spencers relocated to South Africa in 1995. When Earl Spencer divorced Kitty's mother, Victoria Aitken, she stayed behind in Cape Town while her father moved back to the UK.

Kitty later attended university in Cape Town, studying psychology, English literature and politics.

She eventually moved to London and graduated with a Master in luxury brand management from the European business school of Regent's University in London.

Charles, Earl Spencer, Kitty's father and the late Lady Diana's brother. His fortune was estimated at 116M but his daughter is determined to earn her own money

Kitty now reportedly lives in London but likes to travel back to South Africa when she can. She visited there just last Christmas and reconnected with old friends, according to Hello Magazine.

Her father, who also owns the titled of Ninth Viscount of Althorp, owns the 500-year-old estate in Northamptonshire. Althorp is the final resting place of Princess Diana, Kitty's aunt.

Earl Spencer also owns Spencer House, a beautiful mansion located on St James Place, in London.

In the same interview, Kitty revealed why she refuses to conform to the expectations of Instagram.

'Sometimes, I realise that I havent posted anything for a week or two and my numbers have dropped,' she said.

'I often hear people saying, You should post images in threes so that they make rows when people look at your overall account or, For x amount of modelling pictures, there needs to be one of you exercising and one of you cooking and one image of nature.

In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, Lady Kitty Spencer, 28, said she does not conform to the rules of Instagram and feels social media can be harmful and misleading

'Its crazy. Im not living my life like that - never have, never will! I post what I want, when I want,' she added.

Lady Kitty has been working as a model for several brands and is the brand ambassador of Italian fashion house Bulgari.

She said felt that social media was selling 'a grey area between fantasy and reality,' which could potentially have harmful consequences.

'Many professional influencers and people with large social media followings have plenty of "back up content" that they will post on days when they are doing nothing.

'They are fully prepared for the inevitable "off day" - whether thats a bad hair day, or a day off between projects that consists of time with family, or a Netflix binge in pyjamas with no make-up on,' she added.

Lady Kitty Spencer in Milan for the fashion week in February 2019. The daughter of the Ninth Earl Spencer said that despite her father's wealth, she is determined to earn her own money

'This means that they prioritise having fresh and constant glossy content and it looks as though every day is as glamorous as the next, which can be misleading and disheartening to women who believe its all happening in real time.'

Lady Kitty says she is a feminist and that she 'understand[s] feminism to be advocating womens rights on the basis of equality between the sexes.

'I wholeheartedly believe in the advancement of women and I am opposed to all forms of discrimination. Its important that men and women engage with feminism and womens rights because, after all, nothing changes if nothing changes.'

In February, the model attended a Bulgari dinner pary. She told Harper's Bazaar that earning her own money makes her feel empowered

However, Lady Kitty said she felt a lot was still to be done when it comes to women's rights: 'the male-dominated systems of government and within most industries still prevail.

She pointed out the fact that women do still earn less then their male counterparts and that the number of

'Women continue to earn less on average than men the number of women at CEO level is still small - in fact, that number is sadly falling. Of course, its great to see female CEOs and leaders of all kinds, however we cannot overlook the reality that women's presence and influence in the public arena is still too limited.'

The interview with Kitty is now live on harpersbazaar.com/uk
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The Duchess of Cambridge got creative this afternoon as she joined participants at the Foundling Museum in a block printing workshop.

Kate, 37, earlier appeared in good spirits as she arrived at the Foundling Museum, in Bloomsbury, which explores the history of the Foundling Hospital, the UK's first children's charity and first public art gallery. The Duchess was announced as patron of the institution earlier today.

This morning Kate joined the Queen, 92, for a joint engagement at King's College London.

This afternoon the Duchess sported the same grey Catherine Walker coat, 510 Gianvito Rossi block heels and a black Mulberry clutch she wore out with the Queen, but ditched her hat to give the outfit a more informal feel.

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Arty Duchess dons an apron as she takes part in a workshop on block printing at the Foundling Museum in London

The Duchess of Cambridge got creative this afternoon as she joined participants at the Foundling Museum in a block printing workshop

Kate, 37, appeared in good spirits as she arrived at the museum, which explores the history of the Foundling Hospital, the UK's first children's charity and first public art gallery

The Duchess of Cambridge is visiting the Foundling Museum after being announced as its new patron today

Despite the busy schedule, Kate appeared relaxed as she arrived at the museum. She was announced as its new patron earlier today.

She began her visit by meeting young adults who have taken part in the museum's 'Tracing Our Tales' programme to train them up to teach creative classes to the next generation.

She chatted with Rohima Poosch, 20, who is one of the major success stories of the programme and now works at the museum, and asked how she had heard about the traineeship and how it had helped her.

'Sometimes at museums there is a feeling, particularly for young people, going into museum spaces is quite intimidating,' the Duchess said.

'They don't know it's for them. 'But when you step inside and see the different programmes going on, they realise [it's for them].

'The fact you have gone through the programme, you know how it feels for youngsters coming through. That probably really helps.'

The Duchess of Cambridge wore the same Catherine Walker coat and block heels she had on earlier but ditched her hat

The Duchess was then shown a photography exhibition, Bedrooms of London by Katie Wilson, which shows the deprived, cramps, insecure conditions some children are living in in Britain.

One of her guides, 20-year-old Callum, has lived in 14 different homes and told her her had selected a favourite photograph which featured a black bin liner because it represented his own experience of never feeling able to unpack his belongings.

'It's amazing considering the hardship you've gone through that you've chosen this,' she said. 'It's so moving, it really is. 'Hold on in there, you're doing a great job.'

Kate, who has made issues affecting children and young people a cornerstone of her public work, took interest in the photos. The royal also met young people who have all been in some form of care.

In a speech, she said: 'I feel hugely proud to be here today to become patron of the Foundling Museum. Your work connects and celebrates two subjects that are deeply important to me - children and art.

'I am passionate about improving children's life chances and giving them opportunities so that they can look forward to the best possible futures, fulfil their whole potential and have the freedom to explore their creativity.

'I have always believed in the power of art, not only to unlock that creativity but also to bring us joy and to inspire, challenge and positively change our lives.'

The Duchess of Cambridge received a posy of flowers as she arrived at the Foundling Museum today

She added: 'Your museum here powerfully links these two forces for good.

'By weaving together moving stories of looked after children with art and artists of all genres, you create meaningful learning experiences which will have a lasting and often transformational impact on young lives.

'I could not be more delighted to support such a special organisation.'

The Duchess of Cambridge also admitted it could be 'quite intimidating' for children and teenagers to visit institutions if they 'don't know it's for them', saying they only needed to step inside to find programmes and exhibitions created with them in mind.

The museum works with contemporary artists, writers and musicians to develop learning programmes for young people.

Despite her quick turnaround, the Duchess of Cambridge still appeared in good spirits at the afternoon engagement

The Duchess of Cambridge carried a neat Mulberry clutch bag at the museum, pictured, after using the piece this morning

Kate wore her hair in loose waves and swept her locks behind her ears to reveal square cut diamond drop earrings

Chatting to Kate about her exhibition, Ms Wilson said: 'A lot of these people have fallen through the net.'

The Duchess was shown the photographs by graduates of the museum's Tracing our Tales programme, which has been developed to equip 'care-experienced' young adults from London with the skills to devise and deliver workshops at the museum.

The graduates picked out images in the gallery that particularly resonated with them and chatted to Kate about their experiences.

As 20-year-old Callum, who has moved 14 times, spoke to Kate about one of the photographs, she put her hand on his arm and told him: 'It's so moving. It really is.' She added: 'Hold on in there.'

Kate seemed to be enjoying the event today - which put her Art History to good use as she joined participants in an art workshop

The Duchess of Cambridge during a visit to the Foundling Museum today as she spoke to others during her visit

Kate gets stuck in! She joined participants at a block printing techniques during a visit to the Foundling Museum this afternoon

The Duchess of Cambridge in a creative 'Tracing our Tales' training session where participants will be learning how to deliver a creative workshop

The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge shared a blanket as they arrived at King's College London in the back of a car

The Duchess of Cambridge was handed a beautiful bouquet of flowers as she left Bush House following the appearance

The Queen smiled warmly at the Duchess of Cambridge following a brief ceremony to officially open Bush House on Tuesday

Kate also chatted to Ameera Patel and Rohima Poosch, and told the three 20-year-olds: 'Hats off to all of you to have the inspiration and the willpower to stick with it.'

In 2017, Kate visited the museum and met the first intake of Tracing our Tales trainees.

Two years later she was meeting them again to hear how the programme has helped them gain confidence and employment.

In a drinks reception, accompanied by a string quintet from Chineke! Orchestra, the Duchess was announced to a room full of patrons, donors and supporters as the Foundling Museum.

Taking in a warm round of applause, she looked a little shy, feeling her cheeks and telling those standing near her: 'I'm going to blush.'

In a speech, she said: 'I feel hugely proud today to be here today to become Patron of the Foundling Museum.

'Your work connects and celebrates two subjects that are deeply important to me: children, and art.

'I could not be more delighted to support such a special organisation. I look forward to working together and, as your Patron, hopefully doing all I can to help your important mission in the future.'

Larissa Joy, chair of trustees at the Foundling Museum, said: 'We are delighted and honoured that Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge has become Patron of the Foundling Museum.

'We could not imagine a more perfect Patron. We look forward to working with her as we fulfil our mission to inspire people to make positive impact on society through the arts.'

Kate, wearing the same Catherine Walker coat dress that she wore alongside the Queen earlier in the day, was announced as a patron of the Foundling Museum not long before she arrived.

Caro Howell, director of the museum, said: 'The Foundling Museum is thrilled and honoured to receive the duchess's patronage.

'Her support is a huge boost to our work transforming the lives of vulnerable young people through the arts.'
The Duchess of Cambridge followed the royal rule book today as she attended her first joint engagement with the Queen.

Kate, 37, kept to her usual style in a smart grey Catherine Walker coat, as they both attended King's College to Open Bush House, but she also teamed her dress with black tights and a hat.

Unless it's a special occasion Kate is rarely seen in hats for informal day events, so wearing a hat could have been a sign of respect to the monarch, who also wore a pink Rachel Trevor-Morgan hat with floral detailing at the brim.

In fact, the hat she wore today, was the same one she wore when she last had a royal engagement with the Queen - visiting the city of Leicester together in 2012 during her Diamond Jubilee tour of the UK.

William Hanson, etiquette expert said: 'Formal day dress always requires a hat and the Queen is rarely seen in public during daytime events without one. Catherine will undoubtedly have known that a hat was required if she wished to keep in the royal good books.'

But it wasn't just a hat that the Duchess sported to keep in the Queen's good books, she also wore black tights, instead of her normal sheer tights and allowed the Queen to exit the car first.

Hanson adds about the Duchess: 'As a future queen, she completely understands the role and her current place in the royal pecking order. At todays engagement in London she followed the royal rule book, as usual, to the letter.'

The Duchess of Cambridge followed the royal rule book to the letter today as she attended her first joint engagement with the Queen

William Hanson, etiquette expert says that it is standard practice that The Queen exits the car first

Kate is normally pictured wearing sheer tights with her dresses, such as at this weekends St Patrick's Day parade and even last month she paired a blue dress, in Ballymena, with sheer tights.

By wearing black tights perhaps it was Kate's way of showing her more traditional side.

At the Queens Jubilee, in 2012, when Kate was pictured following her out of the car, she is seen with bare legs - so it could be a fashion faux par she wasn't keen to repeat.

Hanson also revealed that her choice of dress was also a respect to the Queen: 'It's interesting to see that The Duchess of Cambridge wore a more muted mid-grey dress, that at times blended in to the surroundings, allowing The Queen to stand out and take the main focus.'

Kate Middleton and the Queen, shared a blanket in the back of the car as they pulled up at King's College London, where they will reopen Grade II-listed Bush House

Later in the day The Duchess Of Cambridge visited The Foundling Museum without the Queen and removed her hat

Kate wore the same hat today, that she did when she was last at a royal engagement with the Queen - as they visited the city of Leicester on the first date of her Diamond Jubilee tour of the UK

Kate with the Queen at her Jubilee in 2012, where she wore bare legs, which is a bit more modern

The Duchess of Cambridge also kept up tradition when it came to exiting the car. Even though she was sat in the closest position to exit the car first she allowed the Queen to.

'It is standard practice that The Queen exits the car first,' adds Hanson, 'although strict protocol actually dictates that the most important person arrives last - but with only 2 seconds difference here there is no breach of protocol of note. I am sure both ladies worked out what was going to happen before it did.'

As they arrived at the event the royals also shared a blue blanket over their laps - something the Queen is known to do and the Duchess seemed happy to follow suit with the tradition.

Kate is normally pictured wearing sheer tights with her dresses, such as at this weekends St Patrick's Day parade

The Queen, who is patron of King's College, toured the facilities with Kate today and met supporters of the development.

They also viewed a robotics demonstration, including robotic surgery, and a demo showing how sensors made from textiles can measure useful information about the body.

Talking about how she changed her in style for today's joint engagement Hanson said: 'Although some rules can be adapted on occasion, when appropriate, working alongside the monarch is not one of these occasions and I am glad to see that Catherine chose to play it safe.'

Later in the day The Duchess Of Cambridge visited The Foundling Museum without the Queen and removed her hat.

Last month the Duchess of Cambridge paired a blue dress, in Ballymena, with sheer tights
In a letter open to the people a group of 16 jurists speaks of a sentence that violates the commitments enshrined in the Constitution in terms of human rights and due process. The sentence is "a source of shame" and shows "lack of tolerance" in dealing with the voices that are "critical" of the system. Sign of "weakness" of the judiciary.

Tehran (AsiaNews) - A group of Iranian lawyers has joined the criticism of the international community for the sentence of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes imposed in recent days on Nasrin Sotoudeh, leader of the fight against the mandatory veil.

In an open letter to the Iranian people, and sent by one of the authors to VOA Persia for publication, the group of 16 jurists emphasizes that the sentence violates the commitments enshrined in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic on the subject of human rights and due process.

In the letter, posted online by the Iranian Human Rights Activist News Agency, the signatories claim that the sentence is "a source of shame" and "shows a lack of tolerance in dealing with" lawyers "critical of the system". Furthermore, it is "a sign of weakness in the judiciary".

"We praise Sotoudeh's integrity, passion and independence in fighting for justice and human rights, and call for her unjust sentence to be overturned," added the lawyers.

On March 11, judge Mohammad Moghiseh spoke of a sentence of seven years in prison: five years for "crimes against national security" and two additional years for "insults" to the supreme leader, the great ayatollah Ali Khamenei. However, there are conflicting versions of the verdict with the family that speaks of 38 years and almost 150 lashes.

At the time of the arrest, last year, the Iranian authorities had informed the leader of the fight against the mandatory veil that she had received a sentence in absentia of five years in prison for espionage.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is one of seven lawyers and human rights activists arrested in Iran last year. Before her detention, last June she defended a group of women imprisoned for appearing in public without the mandatory veil, a legacy norm of the 1979 Islamic revolution and punishable by prison under the penal code. Between 2010 and 2013 she was arrested and imprisoned for her political activity (propaganda against the state and attack on national security).

The condemnation of the lawyer and activist has raised an indignant response from most of the international community, including human rights NGOs and various Western chancelleries. A movement of general indignation against which, so far, the leadership of Tehran has opposed an obstinate silence.
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Ive been away for a few weeksbut I dont want you to miss notice of an excellent exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum: The Lure of Dresden: Bellotto at the Court of Saxony, which runs until Apr. 28. For the headline above, I used the first words of my review of the show, which was published in The Wall Street Journal while I was away.

Thats because Bellottos panoramic pictures are on loan from the Gemaldegalerie (Picture Gallery) of the Dresden State Art Collections. While it is renovating, it shipped 24 of its signature paintings to the Kimbell.

Bernardo Bellotto (1721-1780) was born a year before his uncle, Giovanni Antonio Canaletto. began to make view paintings Bellotto studied with his uncle while in his teens, soon gained admittance to the painters guild, and in 1747, when he was still in his twenties, he accepted a call to Dresden from the Elector of Saxony, Frederick-Augustus II. He wanted Bellotto to record his grand, baroque city and, later, to paint Pirna, a small town about 12 miles southeast of Dresden whose medieval castle functioned as a lookout for trade routes to Bohemia.

Bellotto painted his Dresden panoramasseven of which are on view herefrom a distance, often from an angle. He left the top half of his canvases for sky and clouds, the better to orchestrate different lighting and atmospheric effects. When the sun was shining, he limned the building reflections on the water (the Elbe River runs through most of his Dresden paintings) to perfection.

Yet, as I wrote for the Journal: But what distinguishes Bellottos works is their balance, their harmony and, most of all, their life. In his very first view painting for this new patron, Dresden from the Right Bank of the Elbe above the Augustus Bridge (1747), a woman hangs her laundry not far from a little conversation between a stout castrato, the kings physician and a Turkish servant, while a court jester looks on, a little white dog at his feet. Such little insertions, a mix of the mundane and the prominent, figure in all of Bellottos view paintings. They dont necessarily reflect what actually happenedthey convey a sense of verisimilitude rather than truth.

Bellotto created those little vignettes of life in all of his pictures. Thats why, as I wrote in the review, I think this exhibition should be popular, even if Bellotto is not a household name: People love details in art, as anyone who ever eavesdropped in a museum can attest. Bellotto delivers in that respect, among many others.

Im using a few details as illustration here so you can see the lifeyou can see some entire paintings on the Kimbell website and in the Journal.
The Prince of Wales met Lionel Richie to officially name him as an ambassador for The Prince's Trust International in Barbados on Tuesday night.

The 'Hello' singer, 69, will now help introduce The Prince's Trust International to a global audience following the reception at the Coral Reef Club Hotel in Folkestone, Barbados.

Later in the evening, the singer donned his finery once again to join the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall at a reception held at the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley's residence.

Camilla looked elegant in an all white ensemble, while Charles, 70, donned a navy pinstriped suit.

The Duchess of Cornwall (centre) beams as she stands next to Lionel Richie (left), his girlfriend Lisa Parigi, and Tom Jones (pictured far-right), when at a reception held at the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley's residence

Cheers! The royal couple each raised a glass as speeches were made at the star-studded event

The Duchess looked elegant clad in a white jacket and billowing trousers as she arrived alongside Prince Charles at the Prime Minister's residence during their visit to Barbados

Sharing a giggle, Camilla and Lionel looked engrossed in conversation

The Duchess of Cornwall and Tom Jones were all smiles as they talked at the event on Tuesday

The Prince of Wales speaks with West Indies' cricket legend Garfield Sobers at the reception

The Prince's Trust International was founded in November 2015 by The Prince of Wales to support people aged 13 to 30 in Australia, Canada, India, Barbados, Jordan, Pakistan and Malta.

It is an extension of The Prince's Trust, which has helped nearly a million young people in the UK transform their lives over the past 43 years.

Singer Tom Jones also joined the celebrations later in the day, where he embraced Lionel and posed for pictures with the singer and Prince Charles.

Earlier in the day Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall were given a warm welcome as they kicked off the Barbados leg of their 12-day tour of the Caribbean.

The Prince of Wales looked smart as he met with singer Lionel Richie in Barbados on Tuesday night

Charles, 70, met Lionel Richie, 69, to officially name him as an ambassador for The Prince's Trust International

Charles and Lionel were later joined by another singer Tom Jones at the Coral Reef Club Hotel

Later on at the reception the singer and Charles seemed deep in conversation, but they soon returned to their jovial manner

Singer Lionel Richie was joined by his girlfriend Lisa Parigi (second left) Prince Charles and Singer Tom Jones

The singer (left) who also looked smart in a navy suit, shook hands and joked with Charles at the reception at the Coral Reef Club Hotel in Folkestone, Barbados

The two singers embrace at the event which made Lionel Richie an official ambassador for The Prince's Trust

Charles, was warmly embraced by well-wishers as he and Camilla, 71, took part in a walkabout in Bridgetown on Tuesday.

The royals have already visited St Lucia on their tour, which will also take in an historic trip to Cuba later this month.

Yesterday the couple enjoyed some downtime on a Barbados beach as they made the most of a day off in the sun between official engagements.

Charles, 70, was warmly embraced by well-wishers as he and Camilla, 71, took part in a walkabout in Bridgetown. Pictured, one woman places a hand on the back of Charles' neck

The Duke of Cornwall laughed as the woman pulled him in for an embrace in Bridgetown

Nearby supporters laughed as the woman clung onto Charles' neck and held him close

Another woman was also seen pulling in Charles for a hug during the Bridgetown walkabout

Prince Charles looked relaxed in sunglasses and a light suit as he greeted crowds in Barbados

The royal took time to shake hands with well-wishers in Bridgetown, smiling as he did so

The red carpet was rolled out to mark Charles and Camilla's arrival in Barbados earlier today.

A military band paraded through the streets as thousands of well-wishers turned out in the hope of catching a glimpse of the royal visitors.

Prince Charles donned a light suit for the occasion, proudly wearing his own military medals pinned to his lapel.

Meanwhile the Duchess of Cornwall dressed for the weather in a flowing ice blue tunic and matching skirt.

Prince Charles was in excellent spirits on a visit to the Nidhe Israel synagogue, Bridgetown

Meanwhile the Duchess of Cornwall met with a schoolgirl during her own solo engagement

The Duke of Cornwall was surrounded by supporters as he visited a Bridgetown synagogue

The Prince of Wales unveiled a plaque, seen in black, to commemorate his visit on Tuesday

Prince Charles adjusted his kippah as he made his way into the synagogue for the visit

The Duchess visited a woodworking class on a tour of the Derrick Smith School, Bridgetown

The Duchess of Cornwall meets staff and pupils while attending a Commonwealth Big Lunch at The Derrick Smith School & Vocational Centre in Bridgetown

She carried her essentials in a small handbag and whipped out an umbrella to protect herself from the intense sun.

The tour began on Sunday when Charles briefly visited St Lucia for a few hours and marked the 40th anniversary of the country's independence.

He travelled that night to Barbados to be reunited with his wife, who had flown out ahead of the start of the tour.

Today the couple watched a military parade before meeting the Govenor-General and first female prime minister of Barbados.

The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall dressed for the heat as they arrived for the parade today

The Duke of Cornwall wore his military medals pinned to the lapel of his light beige suit

Prince Charles laid a wreath of poppies at a cenotaph in Bridgetown during the ceremony

Charles looked pensive as he remembered those who gave their lives for the Queen

The Duke of Cornwall delivered a speech in Heroes Square, Bridgetown, during the welcome

The streets were busy as fans went out to welcome the royals to the region of Bridgetown, with hundreds lining the streets

The couple laid a wreath at the centograph, and were snapped arriving at the meeting with the Govenor-General.

Charles and Camilla met Dame Sandra Mason, who as Governor General is the Queen's representative on the Commonwealth island, and the country's first woman prime minister Mia Mottley.

A barrister who studied at the London School of Economics, Ms Mottley came to power in May last year when her Barbados Labour Party inflicted a crushing defeat on the ruling Democratic Labour Party, winning all the seats in parliament.

During their tour, Charles and Camilla will also visit St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada and the Cayman Islands.

The red carpet was rolled out to mark the royals' arrival in Bridgetown on the Caribbean tour

The Duke of Cornwall delivered a speech as he was officially welcomed to Bridgetown today

The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall watched a parade and wreath laying ceremony today

Camilla, 71, whipped out a small umbrella to protect herself from the sun during the ceremony

The streets were packed with royal fans, desperate to catch sight of the couple, who are currently on a 12 day tour of the area

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in Heroes Square, Bridgetown, Barbados for their official arrival ceremony

Mia Mottley, the first female Prime Minister of Barbados, awaited the arrival of Prince Charles and Camilla, left. Right, The royal couple attended the military parade and wreath laying

Barbados sea cadets were among those who marched in the parade ahead of the arrival of the British royals

A marching band parade played during the visit of the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall on their Caribbean tour

Charles is also said to be keen to discuss the impact of climate change in the area, having already spoken about the issue in St Lucia.

Speaking about the global threat posed by climate change the prince said: 'Importantly, the Commonwealth brings us together and gives us the means to harness shared opportunities, as well as to address common challenges.

'There is no greater challenge facing all of us, in my view, than that of global warming and climate change which, I know, poses nothing short of an existential threat to this island as it does to every part of this region.'

The couple receive a bottle of local rum during their meeting with the Prime Minister

The royal couple went on to meet the Govenor-General and sign the visitors' book

Dame Sandra Mason, General-Govenor of Barbados, greeted Prince Charles and Camilla as they arrived for their meeting

The royal couple met with Dame Sandra Mason, who as Governor General is the Queen's representative on the Commonwealth island, and the country's first woman prime minister Mia Mottley

The Duchess of Cornwall looked elegant on the couple's second day of their royal tour, and paired her pale blue outfit with delicate jewelry and light makeup

Camilla wore a gorgeous pale blue outfit for the occasion, with matching white trousers. She carried a stylish bamboo handled bag

Prince Charles showed off an impressive collection of medals adorned to his beige suit, and a bright colourful stripey tie

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall are currently on a busy tour of the Caribbean islands, including a history-making four day visit to Cuba at the end of the week - the first by members of the monarchy

Duchess of Cornwall cuts a cake as she attends a Commonwealth Big Lunch event in Bridgetown

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall poses for a photo with pupils and staff whilst attending a Commonwealth Big Lunch at The Derrick Smith School & Vocational Centre

Duchess of Cornwall looks delighted as she attends a Commonwealth Big Lunch at The Derrick Smith School & Vocational Centre
Thousands of people will get to experience the drama of Blue Planet accompanied by an orchestra this week, but some who saw Sunday night's performance were left underwhelmed by the presenter of the show.

After the performance in London of Blue Planet II - Live In Concert several people took to Twitter to say they were less than impressed with Anita Rani's commentary.

One woman even said she 'left early' claiming that Anita didn't 'know her a**e from her elbow about nature.'

While another unhappy concert goer said: 'What's wrong with Attenborough's narration?!'

Presenter Anita Rani, pictured at the Blue Planet II show in London with conductor Matthew Freeman, has been slammed by some concert-goers on Twitter for her performance

The Countryfile presenter, pictured at the Blue Planet II show in Birmingham, is hosting all of the 13-shows across the UK and Ireland

One woman at the 02 Arena show tweeted 'Watching #BluePlanetLive and its incredible but omg someone needs to call Anita Rani an Uber. So cringe'

She then followed up the tweet with another saying: 'Whoever hired @AnitaRami to present should be sacked.

'She didnt know her a**e from her elbow about nature and was so jarring. People left early including us.'

Other performance-goers also shared their opinions about Countryfile host Anita and said that they didn't enjoy her part in the live show.

Several people said they found Anita's presenting 'jarring' and even left the show early

According to one concert goer Anita, who presents Countryfile host even confused a puffin with a penguin

Another woman said: 'Blue planet live in concert is incredible, however no more Anita shes SO annoying just let the screen be blue and SHUT UP!'

While another person said: 'Not impressed with Anita Rani tonight for Blue Planet.

'Uncomfortable vox pops, bad jokes, mistaking puffins for penguins and length of Moray eels and talking about Strictly/Countryfile.

Others said although they were fans of Anita's, they thought she was the wrong choice

Others said that the music and film should have been able to 'speak for itself'.

One person said: 'Really enjoyed #BluePlanet2 Live at the O2, though would have preferred it without Anita Rani or the incessant lights panning across the audience that blinded you to the screen! Let the incredible music and film speak for itself next time.'

And even a fan of Anita added that she was 'simply the wrong presenter' for the show. Presenter Anita was announced as the host of the 3-date UK and Ireland Blue Planet II live shows last October.

At the time she said: 'I am really honoured to have the role of host on the Blue Planet II - Live In Concert arena tour.

'The TV series was such a fantastic and enlightening show and has really empowered society to view our oceans and environment with a great deal more care.

'I can't wait to stand on stage with an 80-piece orchestra and huge screen showing some of that incredible Blue Planet II footage, it should be an amazing experience.'

The arena shows are accompanied by the original television music score by Bleeding Fingers Music, composed by Hans Zimmer, Jacob Shea and David Fleming.

The concerts are performed live by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and conducted by Matthew Freeman.

During the concerts scenes from the show including the now infamous Tusk fish, the Crab and the Eel rock pool chase, will be shown on a giant 4K Ultra HD LED screen.

Hans Zimmer said of composing the music for Blue Planet II  'The idea is to depict the abundance of life as well as the movements and vibrations of the ocean.

'By using the orchestra in an unconventional way, we wanted to create 'living' chords that ebb and flow throughout the series.'
On Monday March 18, celebrities and key fashion influencers joined Rebecca Taylor and The Wing (female co-working space) for an exclusive event to celebrate the launch of Tailored Rebecca Taylor.

The new collection consists of elevated suiting and separates with the same feminine details the New York-based label is known for.

Unlike anything else on the market, Tailored offers a collection that inspires women in their work environment.

New collection: On Monday March 18, celebrities like Padma Lakshmi joined Rebecca Taylor and The Wing for an exclusive event to celebrate the launch of Tailored Rebecca Taylor

Intimate environment: Actress Zoey Deutch was in attendance for the private event that was hosted at the designers Meatpacking boutique

The private event was hosted at the designers Meatpacking boutique which was converted into The Tailored Studio Pop-up.

A panel discussion moderated by Joanna Coles, discussed the evolution of femininity in the workplace.

Joining her on the panel was Activist and Host of Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi, Actress Zoey Deutch, Founder of She Should Run Erin Cutraro, Ceo and Founder of FEED Lauren Bush Lauren, Author and DJ Hannah Bronfman and The Wing's Laia Garcia.

Girl boss: Actress Christine Evangelista attended The Tailored Studio by Rebecca Taylor x The Wing

Guests sipped on grapefruit infused scotch cocktails while also enjoying a selection of light bites from Poppys Brooklyn.

Gift bags filled with goodies from Rebecca Taylor, Supergoop to Amore Pacific were given out to guest at the end of the evening.

Events at the Tailored pop-up will be taking place through-out the entire week. The space will have everything from a beauty bar to charging stations.

An empowerment workout series with Core Power Yoga will be available every morning and a series called The Power Talk, where prominent CEOs speak on various topics is also scheduled.

A new day: A panel discussion moderated by Joanna Coles, discussed the evolution of femininity in the workplace

Notables: Activist and Host of Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi, Actress Zoey Deutch, Founder of She Should Run Erin Cutraro, Ceo and Founder of FEED Lauren Bush Lauren, Author and DJ Hannah Bronfman and The Wing's Laia Garcia all participated on the panel

Additional activations include a WIN (Women In Negotiation) workshop, a Bumble Bizz networking event and a Wellness workshop event (TBC) in the evenings.

What Not To Wear's Stacy London will be available on the last day of the pop-up to lead a styling session, while celebrity makeup artist, Katie June Hughes, will teach a master make-up class and Dry Bar is providing blow outs.

The Skimm Founders, Carly Zakan and Danielle Weisberg will host a conversation on Confidence in the workplace.

The Today Show Correspondent, Jean Chatzky will talk secrets to financial success, while Vice President at Glenlivet Whisky, Sona Bajaria will be hosting a conversation on how to navigate being a women in a mans working world.

In honor of Tailored's launch, Rebecca Taylor made a contribution towards She Should Run's mission to encourage women to run for public office.

A peak at the new collection below. For more, click here.

Dress the part: Unlike anything else on the market, Tailored offers a collection that inspires women in their work environment

Not so stiff: The new collection consists of elevated suiting and separates with the same feminine details the label is known for
Women considering spending the night with someone new are more likely to have unprotected sex if they think he is relationship potential, researchers claim.

They will also have unsafe sex with a man if they feel they know him, a study has found.

More than 200,000 women a year in England are diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection such as chlamydia or herpes.

Women are generally more likely than men to say upfront were not having sex without a condom.

But a study involving 177 women has found they may make an exception and put themselves at risk if they are looking for a relationship and feel a sense of familiarity with the man in question.

Women considering spending the night with someone new are more likely to have unprotected sex if they think he is relationship potential, researchers claim (stock)

Then they may worry more about appearing untrusting, unromantic or ruining the mood by asking to have protected sex.

Researchers led by the University of Guelph in Canada asked 440 men and women about a hypothetical scenario with a new partner they had met at a party, and how they might try to avoid unsafe sex.

Dr Shayna Skakoon-Sparling, who led the study, said: Understanding what factors make it more difficult to recognise risk during a sexual encounter, such as the desire for a long-term romantic relationship and partner familiarity, can lead to better prevention.

Women who propose having safe sex fear looking promiscuous and face the threat of killing a potential new relationship by insisting on protection.

Some men complain that using a condom reduces sensation, so that sex is less pleasurable.

TWO BRITISH WOMAN CAUGHT SUPER GONORRHOEA FROM A POTENT STRAIN SPREADING THROUGH IBIZA Two British women caught a strain of super gonorrhoea, which is being spread by people having unprotected sex in Ibiza, health chiefs revealed last week. One of the women - the first to catch the potent STI strain in the UK - had condomless sex with a man who recently came back from the Spanish party island. The other is thought to have picked up the infection after having unprotected sex with multiple men in Ibiza. Neither woman has been identified. The woman who caught the infection in the UK is confirmed to have spread it to at least one other man and experts warn it is 'likely' more people have been infected. The link between the two cases, which were first reported by Public Health England in January, is the island off Spains east coast, researchers said. Advertisement

Nevertheless researchers found women said they would often directly request safe sex or make it clear that no condom means no sex.

Withholding sex in this way has been found to be extremely good for convincing men.

But this sensible approach seemed to fall apart in women who were very keen on meeting a long-term partner who was relationship potential.

Women whose answers to a questionnaire showed they cared about relationships were more likely to consider unsafe sex if the man in the hypothetical party scenario felt familiar to them.

Then they were less likely to tell researchers they had a strategy to encourage the man to use a condom.

For members of the opposite sex, it was the other way around.

Men who had very little interest in relationships were more likely to focus on their own satisfaction in the bedroom, so choose unprotected sex without regard for their own or their partners risk of sexually transmitted infections.

But men who were interested in relationships were more likely to take precautions, with experts suggesting they may want to present themselves as attractive partners or individuals who care about their partners sexual safety.

The study, published in the Journal of Sexual Research, concludes: Future work should explore how shifting social expectations for safer sex and changing attitudes toward safer sex practices, like condom use, can foster a view that one need not sacrifice enjoyment for safety and to combat the incorrect heuristic that condoms always reduce pleasure or interfere with the establishment of intimate relationships.
Conz Preti, 35, was heartbroken when she found out the heart of the fetus she was carrying had stopped beating just two weeks after she learned she was pregnant.

The pregnancy hadn't been planned, but the baby was very much wanted.

Preti had developed a polyp on her uterus after her first pregnancy (her son is one) and before finding out she was pregnant again.

So when she lost the pregnancy, her doctor advised surgery to remove the contents of her uterus to manage the miscarriage and treat the polyp at once.

She would have had to have the surgery to remove the polyp anyway, if she hadn't gotten pregnant, and the same procedure was a way to manage a miscarriage.

Devastated though she was, Preti wanted to handle the whole emotional ordeal swiftly, and according to medical advice. So she scheduled her surgery, and paid $3,000 upfront - the sum total of her out-of-pocket costs, NYU told her.

Over the past two weeks, she has accumulated a stack of six additional bills from her insurer and is looking at $9,000 of debt for a medically necessary procedure that she was told she'd already paid for. Two just came today.

And she's hardly alone. Her tweet about the appalling bills has drummed up over 140 replies in a matter of hours, including from scores of women sharing their similar experiences.

Conz Preti had to have surgery after she miscarried two weeks ago. She has since received six bills related to the procedure, totaling $9,000 after paying the $3,000 she was told she owed for the surgery, which was covered by her insurance

Miscarriages are extremely common, yet the US healthcare system winds up charging women astronomical fees for care that is not elective.

Losing a pregnancy is not only emotionally traumatic for a woman, but puts her in danger of life-threatening bleeding and infection if tissue from the pregnancy remains in her uterus, making a D&C (dilation and curettage) non-negotiable for some.

So after all that, women are left grieving, healing from surgery, and in debt.

Somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage in the US.

It's a staggering number, but the fact that it's common makes the loss no less devastating for the women it happens to.

Preti reminds herself of those statistics, trying to keep things in perspective. But knowing the probabilities is a poor antidote for a loss she feels deeply.

'I know it's common. I know it's more common than we know, because many don't know they're pregnant and I'm very aware of the statistics,' she says.

'It's a way of your body knowing that it's not compatible with this life, but, emotionally, it's still hard to process.'

Preti found out at the end of last year that she had developed a polyp - an abnormal tissue growth - in her uterus and scheduled surgery to have it removed, but she found out she was pregnant two days prior to the procedure.

It's really hard to be in this position where you'er so fragile and you will do anything for either you or your baby to be okay. Then to get all these bills is just adding insult to injury

Preti knew that having the polyp could cause her to miscarry, but she wanted to keep the pregnancy if at all possible, to have a little sister or brother for her one-year-old son.

At seven weeks, everything looked good, and she got to hear the heartbeat. But nine weeks into her pregnancy, the fetus had stopped growing. The midwives couldn't find a heartbeat.

'The miscarriage itself, even though I knew it was a possibility, it was just like a load of bricks hit me.'

Preti's midwives don't perform surgery, but her OBGYN at NYU - who was in the network for Preti's Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance she got through her employer - does. She consulted with the doctor about her options.

There are three ways to 'manage' a miscarriage, as clinical guidance terms what a woman has to do when she loses a pregnancy.

A woman can simply wait for her body to naturally rid itself of all signs of the pregnancy, but if this doesn't happen fairly quickly, she is left vulnerable to infection and hemorrhaging.

Medication can be prescribed that causes the uterus's lining to break down and be shed.

Or, a simple operation, called a D&C - or dilation and curettage - can be performed to remove the contents of the uterus.

An important note: the medication and surgical procedure used when a woman has miscarried are the same ones used to abort a pregnancies. But these women are not having abortions. No matter when you consider life to begin, once a woman has miscarried, there is no possibility that that fetus would ever be a baby.

Because she had a polyp, Preti's doctor advised she have a D&C because she would have needed one to remove the polyp anyway. Preti booked the surgery for Thursday.

Preti has opened up about her pregnancy loss and harrowing ordeal after her miscarriage in hopes that the 'immoral' conduct of insurers won't continue

'At the hospital, all the paperwork said I was there for an abortion,' she recalls.

'It's technically the same procedure, and I understand that, but for someone who wanted those babies, it was kind of hard to look at that paperwork that said "abortion."'

Then, there was the matter of money. Immediately, a hospital staff member came to discuss how Preti and her husband, Zach, would pay for the surgery, and when, and how much.

'I was really weird to be going in for something that was so emotionally charged, but even before that having to be sat down to talk about paying for it,' Preti says.

'Everyone else in the hospital was really, really nice, it was just sort of the bureaucratic part of it that sucked in such a delicate situation.'

She and Zach were told they owed $3,000 out-of-pocket, up front, right then. So they paid it, in full, right then, just before the procedure.

'I was assured by the staff that that was everything I would have to pay, because that was my maximum out of pocket.'

The procedure itself went smoothly. It was straightforward, without complications and not physically difficult.

Preti received another two bills on Monday, perpetuating her frustration and pain

'But going into surgery being "pregnant" and then to come out of it not being was hard to process,' she says.

Preti went home to grieve and heal. But then the bills started rolling in.

First, she got one for the ultrasound that had revealed the loss of her pregnancy. Because it was so early on, Empire argued it wasn't medically necessary.

It was as if the insurance company was picking Powerball numbers for a lottery no one wants to win and assigning them at random to how much she owed to some element or other of the surgery: $200, $2,500 and everything in between, adding up to $9,000 in bills.

'On top of having to mourn the fact that I lost a baby, now I have to worry about money and that adds more stress to an already stressful situation,' Preti says.

'It's really hard to be in this position where you'er so fragile and you will do anything for either you or your baby to be okay. Then to get all these bills is just adding insult to injury.

'People say, "what did you expect, having a kid is expensive," and it's like, we know, we have a son, but we weren't paying this amount of money upfront with him.'

I wonder how many people out there are going through the same and not talking about it

And these costs won't result in a kid. Now Preti feels less certain about trying again, too.

'We want more kids, but being put in this situation kind of makes me want to wait, or not even try.'

She has spoken to one representative at Empire, but since their initial conversation that person has not returned any of Preti's numerous calls or messages.

Her ongoing fight with the insurance is just an ongoing reminder of her loss too, Preti says.

'It's so hard to detach one thing from another,' she explains.

On Monday, she tweeted: 'I owe $9,000 for my miscarriage surgery. How am I supposed to afford this? How am I supposed to live without getting it done?

'The healthcare system in this country is just immoral.'

Over 140 people replied, offering support, insurance advice, but mostly sharing their own stories of insurance nightmares after going through a miscarriage.

'I wonder how many people out there are going through the same and not talking about it,' Preti says.

'Just from people's replies to my tweet and that reached out to me privately...and there's so many that are more tragic and for whom its life or death.

'[Someone said] "I would've died and now I owe $50,000."

'It's either life or debt forever.'
Toxic pollutants invisible to the human eye are now killing more people than smoking. This was the alarming finding by researchers reported last week in the European Heart Journal.

They calculated that, in the UK alone, 64,000 deaths a year are caused by air pollution  which is more than the 43,000 cancer deaths caused by smoking.

But many people may be unaware they are being affected. Unlike Londons highly visible pea soupers of the Fifties, thick, grimy fog caused largely by burning coal, today the risk to health is largely posed by microscopic particles of pollution  particulate matter  called PM2.5, which measure just 2.5 micrometres (less than 1/30th the width of a human hair).

Today the risk to health is largely posed by microscopic particles of pollution. These are being pumped into the air we breathe by everything from cars, buses and taxis to factories

These are being pumped into the air we breathe by everything from cars, buses and taxis to factories, construction vehicles and, in our own homes, gas cookers and even scented candles, as the Mail revealed on Saturday.

PM2.5 forms as a result of burning off diesel, petrol, wood and coal, which creates carbon particles. Other secondary sources include farming practices (grazing animals and fertilisers in agriculture give off ammonia which breaks down into PM2.5) and cleaning agents reacting with others in the atmosphere to form PM2.5.

POLLUTION HOTSPOTS IN THE UK Some of the cities that exceed World Health Organisation limits for the smallest pollution particles (PM2.5)  the limit is 10 micrograms per cubic metre  according to a report in 2017 by the Lancet Countdown and the Royal College of Physicians . . . Glasgow= 16 mcg Eastbourne, Leeds, London, Southampton = 15 mcg Birmingham, Cardiff, Oxford, Stoke-on-Trent = 14 mcg Bristol, Manchester = 13 mcg Belfast, Liverpool, York, Nottingham = 12 mcg Middlesbrough = 11 mcg PM2.5 pollution is worse in cities, but even people who live in the countryside or in smaller towns or in villages can be exposed to high levels if they sit in traffic jams or burn an open fire, says Professor Frank Kelly. PM2.5 can travel large distances and ammonia, which contributes to PM2.5, is also generated in rural areas. Advertisement

The particulates can also occur as a result of abrasion from tyres, brake wear and road surface friction.

Professor Frank Kelly, director of the Environmental Research Group at Kings College London, says although the long-term trend for PM2.5 emissions in the UK is downwards, this just isnt happening fast enough.

If you look at a glass of dirty water or a mouldy sandwich, you wouldnt dream of putting it in your body, but, because these pollutants are invisible and breathed in, you have no choice, he told Good Health.

Jonathan Grigg, a professor of paediatrics and paediatric respiratory medicine at Queen Mary University of London and founder of the pressure group Doctors Against Diesel, describes the problem as a public health emergency.

He adds: To protect the next generation, we need to reduce our pollution levels as soon as possible.

PM2.5 isnt the only problem: nitrogen dioxide from vehicle exhausts also poses a risk to your health.

The effects of PM2.5 are most worrying in children because exposure can stop their lungs developing to full size, says Professor Grigg. This not only reduces lung function, but makes them more vulnerable if they develop other conditions, such as asthma, later in life.

A study we conducted in different areas of East London in children showed that even small-scale exposure to poll-utants can result in a reduction in lung function.

But its not just our lungs that are at risk. A review published last week by Public Health England confirmed there is strong evidence that air pollution causes the development of coronary heart disease and stroke, too.

As Professor Kelly explains: When we started looking at the effects of air pollution, people were talking about the effects on the lungs  asthma, bronchitis and emphysema  but we know now that PM2.5 pollution is associated with cardiovascular disease and stroke and, more recently, an association has been found with dementia and Alzheimers.

SMALL PARTICLES  BIG DANGER

What makes PM2.5 particles so dangerous is that they can slip through the bodys immune defences and penetrate deep into the lungs and, it is thought, into the circulatory system, affecting the heart and brain.

Professor Grigg explains that there are two theories about how this happens. One is that PM2.5 provokes an inflammatory response in the lungs, so that the immune system releases proteins so tiny they can cross across the lung wall into the bloodstream, causing harm.

The other is that the particles themselves move across into the bloodstream and travel to different sites in the body.

This was seen in a unique experiment led by Professor David Newby, British Heart Foundation chair of cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, where patients awaiting surgery on their carotid (neck) artery breathed in harmless tiny gold particles smaller than PM2.5.

What it may surprise many to learn is that the single worst offender for PM2.5 emissions (outside of city traffic hotspots) lies in the home (stock photo)

These particles were later detected in the diseased part of the artery when it was removed.

As Professor Newby told Good Health: This showed that what you breathe in does get into the bloodstream and reaches the diseased part of an artery.

It doesnt prove that the particles cause inflammation, but it does prove they can travel in the bloodstream.

The study also found that patients exposed to diluted diesel had abnormal blood vessel behaviour and more blood clots formed  both of which raise the risk of a heart attack.

I do tell people whove had a heart attack not to exercise on bad pollution days, says Professor Newby. The effects of pollution can be fairly immediate  two to six hours, in fact.

People are three times more likely to have been in polluted traffic in the hours before they have a heart attack.

Meanwhile, a study at Kings College London, St Georges University of London and Imperial College London has discovered an association between PM2.5 pollution and dementia.

The researchers reported that people living in the top one-fifth of PM2.5 areas had a 40 per cent increased risk of Alzheimers, compared with those in the bottom 20 per cent, although this doesnt prove PM2.5 is a cause.

...AND TAKE CARE WHERE YOU WALK Avoid main roads at rush hour if walking. Or walk along side streets or through a park rather than on main roads, says Professor Prashant Kumar, chair in air quality and health at the University of Surrey. Walk on the side of the kerb furthest from traffic and stand back from traffic lights while cars are idling, when levels of pollutants are higher. Phone apps to map a less polluted route to work in the capital are now available via London Air (londonair.org.uk). Some local authorities also produce alerts on pollution levels. Protect babies in buggies: a review of research by the University of Surrey has shown that babies and young children may be exposed to 60 per cent more pollution than their parents simply because theyre closer to exhaust pipes. Professor Kumar says that parents could consider using pram covers and avoiding pollution hotspots such as traffic lights or crossings at peak travel times. Meanwhile, Professor Frank Kelly, of Kings College London, says he wouldnt recommend the type of surgical masks you see people wearing in Beijing, for example: if you can breathe through them, then pollutants can get through them. Advertisement

IT STARTS AT HOME

What it may surprise many to learn is that the single worst offender for PM2.5 emissions (outside of city traffic hotspots) lies in the home.

Wood-burners are often marketed as a greener way to heat your home  there are some 1.5 million of the trendy stoves in the UK and 200,000 sold every year  but theyre now responsible for 41 per cent of PM2.5 emissions in the UK, compared with 12 per cent from road transport.

What began as a back-to-nature trend for log fires has actually backfired and become a risk to public health. An editorial in the BMJ last year cited research that reported having a log-burner heating your home for a year has been compared to having 25 ten-year-old diesel lorries pumping out pollutants in your living room. They belch out high levels of PM2.5, not only up the chimney, but into your home.

Simon Birkett, director of Clean Air In London, says: We banned wood and coal in smoke-controlled areas in 1956, but we have sleep-walked back into the same problems with wood-burners.

You can still buy approved appliances that meet standards set by Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), but that is not the answer: we need to stop burning fossil fuels.

Although PM2.5 levels had been falling (down by 79 per cent since 1970, says Defra), they have recently stalled. This is believed to be due to the trend for wood-burning stoves.

Open fires are even worse than wood-burners, giving off much more PM2.5.

Other major sources of PM2.5 include industrial combustion (16 per cent), industrial processes (13 per cent), farming (estimated at 13 to 24 per cent) and traffic.

Diesel fuel emissions from cars, buses, taxis and trains account for 12 per cent of PM2.5 emissions in the UK.

Diesel vehicles produce higher levels of PM2.5 than petrol.

Up to one-third of PM2.5 pollution in the UK actually comes from non-UK sources including from on the Continent, moved over by weather systems.

Road transport is the worst offender for nitrogen dioxide  a respiratory irritant that causes inflammation in the airways, leading to coughing and breathing difficulties at high concentrations  responsible for 34 per cent of emissions.

The UK is currently in breach of European safety levels for nitrogen dioxide.
A severe shortage of NHS clinical oncologists is threatening the care of cancer patients, a report has warned.

The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) says a growing staffing shortage will leave the NHS a fifth short (22 per cent) of cancer consultants by 2023.

Cutting-edge cancer therapies - such as immunotherapy and proton beam therapy - may not be delivered to all those who could benefit without more investment, it warned.

The UK is now short of at least 184 clinical oncologists, it said, which was the minimum number needed to fill vacancies and cover the extra hours doctors are working to treat patients.

One in six UK cancer centres now operates with fewer clinical oncology consultants than five years ago, according to the report.

A shortage of NHS clinical oncologists is threatening the care of cancer patients (stock)

It said vacancies for clinical oncology posts are currently double what they were in 2013 - rising from 33 to 70 - and more than half of vacant posts have been empty for a year or more.

The warning comes as experts said cervical screening services were in 'meltdown' with dozens of hospital screening laboratories due to close this summer as part of a restructuring process.

Dr Alison Cropper, chairman of the British Association for Cytopathology, said the coinciding of the closures with a campaign by Public Health England could force women to wait months for screening results.

The RCRs report said there were 863 full-time equivalent clinical oncology consultants working across the UK's 62 cancer centres in 2018 - up 46 on the previous year.

But this was not enough to keep up with demand with oncology trainee numbers needing to at least double to close the gap between supply and demand.

Almost 1,000 people are diagnosed with cancer every day and demand for radiotherapy is going up two per cent every year, while demand for chemotherapy is rising four per cent a year.

Dr Tom Roques, lead author of the workforce report, said: 'The UK is seeing more and more fantastic innovations in cancer treatment - from the introduction of new immunotherapy drugs to the NHS's first high-energy proton beam radiotherapy centre.

'Clinical oncologists are vital to the rollout of these new therapies but we do not have enough of them and our workforce projections are increasingly bleak, which begs the question: What kind of service will we be able to provide for our patients in future?

'Today's RCR workforce figures and forecasts show our cancer hospitals under immense strain - some centres have seen a reduction or stall in consultant numbers and many are desperate but failing to recruit, predominantly because we do not have enough consultants in training.'
One in 20 women caught up in the vaginal mesh scandal have attempted suicide, research suggests.

Campaigners surveyed around 650 women who have the controversial implant, once widely used to treat prolapse or urinary incontinence.

They found five per cent of women with vaginal mesh are in such severe pain they have tried to take their own life or self-harm regularly.

A third of mothers with mesh complications - such as recurrent urinary infections, pain or fatigue - rely on their children to care for them after many have been left wheelchair-bound and unable to work.

Four in five women with a mesh have developed depression and anxiety as a result of the procedure, while nearly half battle suicidal thoughts, the survey also revealed.

One in 20 women caught up in the vaginal mesh (pictured) scandal have attempted suicide

The survey was carried out by the 6,800-strong campaign group Sling The Mesh, which lobbies for parliament to completely ban the controversial implant.

Campaigner Jackie Harvey told Cambs Times: 'These results show that mesh implant complications are severe, life changing, and impact women and their families.

'Nobody should go for an operation that is supposed to help yet come out so badly harmed they no longer want to live.'

After asking 653 women with vaginal-mesh complications how it has affected their lives, results further revealed around 95 per cent of those with complications no longer trust the surgeon behind their procedure to give them the best advice.

And a staggering nine in ten have lost all faith in the medical profession as a whole.

Nine in ten also claim their doctor did not explain the implant involved having a piece of plastic permanently placed in their bodies.

And 98 per cent allege they were not told about alternative solutions to their prolapse or incontinence, such as physiotherapy.

As a result of the implant, four in five of the respondents claim they experience severe pain every day and one in five suffer urinary infections so frequently they are becoming antibiotic resistant.

Journalist and Sling The Mesh founder Kath Sansom told MailOnline: 'This survey is deeply upsetting as it makes it very clear how mesh devastates the lives of women and those close to them.

'Nobody should go for an operation with risks that are so appalling that they end up suicidal.

'Every day women post heartbreaking messages to the support group about how their marriages are breaking down or how their children are upset watching them become a shadow of their former selves.

'Many women turn to strong pain medication, which wipe them out or others turn to alcohol to cope with their pain.'

The National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) is due to release new guidelines on how to treat women suffering incontinence or prolapse in two weeks.

'Mesh is destroying family life,' Ms Sansom said.

'It is also costing the Government thousands in healthcare costs to treat the women affected as well as putting a huge burden on an already over stretched benefits system for women who have had to give up work

'If NICE do not toughen up their new guidelines in two weeks time this scandal will carry on like Groundhog Day.'

Mesh is made of brittle plastic that can curl, twist and cut through tissue (stock)

Vaginal mesh - made of brittle plastic that can curl, twist and cut through tissue - has been branded the 'biggest medical scandal since thalidomide'.

Campaigners have fought for years for officials to put an end to vaginal mesh, with the most common implant - transvaginal tape (TVT) - being widely used across Europe and the US since the early 2000s.

A recent BMJ investigation reported there was scant evidence in favour of mesh despite its rapid uptake, as well as widespread conflicts of interests among surgeons and doctors.

And an NHS audit delving into the effects of mesh - released in April last year - shone a light onto the true scale of disaster.

The likelihood of a woman suffering complications from mesh were shown to be around the 45 per cent mark.

Across the world, mesh manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson face claims for compensation from women who allege they were not told about the complications.

In a victory for campaigners, NICE ruled against the use of vaginal mesh as a treatment for pelvic organ prolapse in 2017.

Following this, the Government suspended the use of some mesh procedures in England until certain conditions are met.

And NICE announced surgical interventions using mesh or tape should only be considered when non-surgical options have failed or are impossible.

Owen Smith, MP and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Surgical Mesh Implants, called for the UK Government to follow Australia's example and issue a national apology to women damaged by pelvic mesh implants.

All forms of pelvic mesh are already banned in New Zealand after a landmark move in December and a similar move against mesh for prolapse has been made in Australia.

Mr Smith also called for radical reform of the regulatory system for medical devices in the UK in the light of recent scandals involving surgical mesh, defective pacemakers, faulty artificial hips and PIP breast implants.

Anyone seeking help can call Samaritans 24/7 free on 116 123 or visit Samaritans.org.
A cancer-sufferer says her cough was dismissed three times before she was finally diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Meagan Bechtold, 27, of Las Vegas, developed a hacking cough in March last year, which doctors wrote off as a bad cold, allergies or bronchitis.

It was not until she due to go on holiday the following July that Mrs Bechtold insisted her symptoms be properly checked out.

A CT scan revealed a 13cm tumour in her diaphragm and Mrs Bechtold started chemotherapy immediately, which caused her to lose 10lbs and left her battling constant nausea.

After her second round of chemo made Mrs Bechtold lose her hair, she decided to take back control and shave her head.

While she continues to battle the disease, Mrs Bechtold has embraced her new look and no longer worries about looking like a 'cancer patient'.

Meagan Bechtold's cough was dismissed three times before she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. She is pictured left receiving oxygen after her lungs filled with fluid. When her second round of chemotherapy made Mrs Bechtold lose her hair, she decided to take back control and shave her head. The beauty salon manager is pictured right in Cancun last month

Pictured with her husband Chris before the ordeal, the couple were planning a holiday when Mrs Bechtold insisted her symptoms be properly checked out. Doctors had written them off as a bad cold, allergies or bronchitis but a scan revealed a 13cm tumour in her diaphragm

Mrs Bechtold - who manages a beauty salon - said: 'I suffered with a dry cough since about March and I also had bronchitis the year prior.

'I visited [the walk-in clinic] Urgent Care on three separate occasions.

'The first time they told me I had a cold that wouldn't go away, the second time they told me it was bad allergies and the third time he told me my bronchitis was coming back.'

Mrs Bechtold saw the same doctor every time, who advised her she would need an X-ray if the antibiotics he prescribed did not work.

'One night I was so worried I even Googled "lung cancer" but I brushed it off and listened to what they told me,' she said.

Ahead of a holiday to Mexico with her husband Chris, Mrs Bechtold insisted on a scan on July 13 last year.

This revealed she had cancer, with the exact diagnosis being confirmed within a week.

'I was scared out of my mind because I was 26 and just got diagnosed with cancer,' Mrs Bechtold said.

'Luckily my doctors explained that if you're going to get cancer, Hodgkin's is one of the most curable.'

While she continues to battle the disease, Mrs Bechtold has embraced her new look (seen left) and no longer worries about looking like a 'cancer patient'. Mrs Bechtold described losing her hair as the 'worst experience'. She is pictured right wearing a wig on New Year's Day

Mrs Bechtold refuses to let her cancer hold her back and is pictured on holiday in Cancun

The couple cancelled their holiday while Mrs Bechtold started her first round of chemotherapy.

This caused her to develop mouth sores, only be able to drink water and triggered 'hibernation', where she slept continuously for three days.

'I couldn't breathe and was constantly hooked up to oxygen for about two months after my diagnosis,' Mrs Bechtold said.

'I had drenching night sweats to the point where my husband had to change my hospital sheets and gown almost every night.'

Mrs Bechtold also lost her appetite, which caused her to drop from an already-slim 108lbs (7st 10lb) to just 98lbs (7st).

Chemotherapy caused Mrs Bechtold (left) to lose 10lbs, develop mouth sores and battle constant nausea. After fighting her hair loss, it now makes her feel 'empowered' (seen right)

Mrs Bechtold later decided to take control of her hair loss after previously worrying about looking like a 'cancer patient'.

'Losing my hair was hands down the most traumatising part of this whole experience,' she said.

WHAT IS HODGKIN'S LYMPHOMA? Hodgkin's lymphoma is a type of cancer that starts in the white blood cells. It affects around 1,950 people each year in the UK. A common early symptom is having a painless swelling in the armpits, neck and groin. Some people also experience heavy night sweating, extreme weight loss, itching, shortness of breath and coughing. Hodgkin's lymphoma is most common between the ages of 20 and 24, and 75 and 79. It has been linked to people with lowered immunity, a family history of the condition, smokers and those who are overweight. Treatment may include chemotherapy, radiotherapy, steroids and stem cell or bone marrow transplants. Source: Cancer Research UK Advertisement

'I was completely naive in thinking I would be different and not lose my hair.

'First it fell out normally as if it was shedding, but then the chunks were getting bigger.'

Mrs Bechtold asked her husband to cut her long hair into a bob.

'My cute bob lasted about two days until my hair started to matte together and become dreads,' she said.

'I started to have bald spots and hair was accumulating everywhere - on the floor, in the sink, on my pillow, in my food.

'I knew it was inevitable and I would have to shave it, so that day I asked my husband if he would shave it for me and I cried the entire time.

'My hair was a huge part of my identity and I was extremely blessed with long, thick hair and just like that I felt as if I lost myself completely.

'I honestly believe that the main reason hair loss is the worst is because that's the first time you truly look and feel like a cancer patient.'

Although tough at first, Mrs Bechtold soon embraced her new look.

'After the hair was gone and I put make-up on the next day I felt liberated and empowered,' she said.

'You learn what truly matters during this process and for me hair loss had the biggest impact on my outlook.

'It was both the absolute worst and the most empowering of experiences.'

Mrs Bechtold is pictured left on day five of her chemo treatment. Her first round caused Mrs Bechtold to enter 'hibernation', where she slept continuously for three days (seen right)

Mrs Bechtold married her husband in November 2016 and credits him for keeping her strong

While she continues to battle the disease, Mrs Bechtold is determined to stay positive.

'Seeing people post their "last chemo" or "officially cancer free" posts were incredibly motivating because I would see these people go through this and then come out the other side stronger than before, and I wanted that for myself,' she said.

'My husband and my family tell me every single day how proud they are of me and how strong I am. They pushed me when I felt like giving up.

'The most important thing during all of this was to never lose sight of the goal, and no matter how bad and ugly things got I had to remember to pick myself up.

'I learned to let go of the need to control everything.

'I learned that the most important things in life aren't things at all and I learned to love every part of myself, including my flaws.'

Mrs Bechtold's cancer ordeal has also helped her appreciate the little things.

'Stressing yourself out about things you have no control over is completely useless,' she said.

'By stressing and worrying about tomorrow's problems, you're completely ruining your current day.

'The world would be such a better place if we all loved ourselves and put self-care first.

'I used to envy people who had more things or were succeeding faster than I was, and now I'm completely happy for them.

'There is no timeline or requirement for you to accomplish things in life. You decide when things are right for you.'

Find out more about Mrs Bechtold on her Instagram page here.
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A series of fascinating photographs has revealed a behind-the-scenes look at the former Department of Education of the Deaf.

The department, which was in Manchester until 1955, is shown in these black and white photos taken around three years before it shut.

The pictures show children interacting with medical professionals and parents at what is believed to have been the first facility of its kind in the UK.

In one strange image, a psychologist, Mr P C Kendall, bangs a drum beside the ear of a young girl in what appears to have been a rudimentary hearing test.

In this photo, psychologist Mr P C Kendall is seen banging a drum beside the ear of a young girl in a rudimentary hearing test at the Department of Education of the Deaf

Others show a boy playing with farm animals as he is having his hearing assessed, and a 14-month-old child being taught to lipread by her mother.

Another shot shows a little girl fiercely concentrating on her wooden toy as a woman tinkers with the testing equipment in the background.

The Department of Education of the Deaf was a department of the University of Manchester and the first of its kind in the UK, according to a report published in the British Journal of Educational Studies in 1956.

It was founded by Sir James E Jones, a cotton merchant from Lancashire whose son, Ellis, was born deaf.

Ellis was so well educated by a private tutor that, at a time when most deaf children were taught at poor quality special residential schools, he was able to attend the University of Oxford when he grew older.

Sir James became so knowledgeable  for the time  and impassioned about the education of deaf children that he was able to set up the pioneering school.

Sheila Hadfield has her hearing equipment adjusted by an audiologist at the Department of Education of the Deaf in Manchester in 1952. The department is believed to have been the first official centre of its kind in the UK

Noreen Buckley, just 14 months old in this photo, is taught to lipread by her mother. Lip reading involves watching a speaker's mouth and face movements to work out what they are saying without hearing them, and is commonly used by people with varying levels of hearing impairments

An anonymous father and son arrive at the Department of Education of the Deaf in 1952. The department was founded by a cotton merchant from Lancashire, Sir James E. Jones, who had a deaf son and was inspired to help children who couldn't hear

Miss D M Gutteridge (left), a teacher of the deaf, studies her pupil Lilian Cuddy as she plays with stackable cups with her mother. For much of the 1900s most deaf children had to attend poor-quality residential schools as teaching methods were not well understood and assistive technology and resources limited

Four-year-old Brian Lawrence plays with toys as he is surrounded by psychologist Mr Kendall, teacher of the deaf Miss Gutteridge, and his own mother. Mr Kendall appears to be testing how much Brian can hear by speaking from behind him

A woman in a classroom at the department, which was part of the University of Manchester, bangs a drum in a 'distraction test' being performed on a young boy

Three-year-old Sandra Buckley gazes at her father, John, while holding a teddy bear. Testing at the department revealed Sandra was almost completely deaf

A young boy and a woman kneel on the floor at the department as they play with toys. Sir James, who founded the institute, was able to send his son to the University of Oxford after he was so well educated by a private tutor. The philanthropist then decided to try and improve the education and diagnosis of other British children

Mr and Mrs John Buckley bring their daughter, Sandra, three, (left) to the department in Manchester. The department is believed to have been open until 1955  up until that time deaf children had been educated in residential schools at the cost of a wealthy relative or benefactor but the quality is believed to have been poor

Howard Woolfe wears headphones during a hearing assessment while he enjoys playing with plastic farm animals

Lilian Cuddy hosts a tea party for her mother and teacher of the deaf, Miss Gutteridge. In 2019 there are more than 50,000 deaf children living in the UK and 32million globally

Christine Greaterise plays with a wooden toy while an audiologist adjusts equipment plugged into her headphones for a hearing test at the Manchester unit, which was open from 1919 to 1955

A boy plays with a sandpit in the waiting room of the Department of Education of the Deaf as he is surrounded by parents and another child

Deaf schools had existed for more than 100 years before Sir James set up his department in 1919, but deaf children usually had to be sponsored by wealthy relatives or benefactors to attend.

And the conditions are believed to have been poor, with the quality of teaching low and children badly fed.

In these schools the children created their own physical language which would eventually evolve into sign language.

Until the late 1900s parents were advised to discourage their children from using sign language  which was usually only used among deaf people  because it could prevent them learning to speak or lipread, according to the website Sign Community.

Today, there are more than 50,000 deaf children living in the UK and 32million deaf children globally. Five babies are born deaf every day.
Dr Tara Zandvliet is a general practitioner in San Diego, and has written 141 out of the 486 total medical exemptions given to San Diego school children since 2015

A single doctor is responsible for a third of all shot exemptions written in San Diego, California, documents obtained by Voice of San Diego reveal.

Dr Tara Zandvliet has written notes for 141 families saying that their children did not have to get otherwise mandatory vaccinations before starting school since the summer of 2015.

She primarily cited immune system issues (or a family history of them) and allergies - but allergic reactions are extremely rare.

In fact, one study found that out of 25 million vaccines administered, just 33 people had anaphylaxis, a potentially life-threatening reactions.

So far, the southern Californian city has remained safe from the measles outbreaks sweeping the US.

But with six cases reported elsewhere in the state and outbreaks in four other states, health officials are on high alert, urging parents to make sure to get their children vaccinated.

Pockets of anti-vaxxers across the nation are fueling a rise in cases of the measles, the highly contagious and potentially life-threatening infection.

These families are typically fearful that vaccinations can actually harm their children, largely due to either religious beliefs or now-debunked research.

A number of states (17) have so-called 'philosophical exemptions' that allow parent to not vaccinate their children because they 'object to immunizations because of personal, moral or other beliefs.'

The philosophical objection has given credence to parents' misguided beliefs and effectively sanctioned anti-vaccination sentiment in these states.

California used to have such an exemption, but after a significant measles outbreak struck Disneyland between December 2014 and April 2015, the state swiftly changed its laws. It now has some of the strictest vaccine laws in the nation.

But, of course, there are the very rare individuals that cannot get vaccinated, due to immune system disorders allergies, or other health concerns.

For that reason, medical exemptions cannot be done away with.

So while most doctors give these exemptions in only extraordinarily rare cases, they can do so at their discretion - and some may dole them out on a looser basis.

For example, the records obtained by Voice of San Diego via a public records request are redacted for names, but do list reasons given for exemptions. Dr Barnet Meltzer wrote an August 2016 exemption for one child because they had 'compromised immune system and risk of antigenic neurotoxicity.'

I have two main sayings in medicine: 'Just because you can, doesn't mean you should', and "everything is a medical intervention, so consider the consequences' Dr Tara Zandvliet, San Diego physician who wrote 141 vaccine exemptions

An exemption written by Dr Zandvliet around the same time attributed the child's need to go unvaccinated to 'unexplained anaphylaxis' and gave 'permanent medical exemption from all vaccines.'

Dr Zandvliet lays out her beliefs about vaccines and measles in two separate blog posts on her website.

The New York Medical College graduate claims not to take issue with vaccines themselves so much as with the recommended vaccine scheduling (the order and timing of shots that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends).

But more broadly, she states her personal motto: 'I have two main sayings in medicine: "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should", and "everything is a medical intervention, so consider the consequences."

'I view vaccines the same way. I wouldn't do a tonsillectomy on every entering kindergartner (even though it would eliminate strep throat), nor would I vaccinate with a vaccine I don't feel they need.'

When it comes to measles in particular, however, Dr Zandvliet's site says that she believes the risk the disease poses is greater than the risk the vaccine poses.

Yet since 2018 alone, she's written over 20 exemptions.

For context, the county physician who wrote the next most exemptions gave out 26 - since 2015.

Dr Zandvliet's reasoning - that children who have 'hyper immune systems, such as those with eczema or allergies' don't tolerate the multiple shots often given at the same time as MMR well - is not wholly off-base from the CDC's advice, but it is a stretch.

In fact, the CDC says that no one should get the MMR vaccine if they have had other shots within four weeks, as too many live vaccines given too close together might diminish on another's effectiveness, so it's unclear why this would be a concern to begin with.

I wouldn't do a tonsillectomy on every entering kindergartner (even though it would eliminate strep throat), nor would I vaccinate with a vaccine I don't feel they need Dr Zandvliet

People with weak immune systems or family history of an immune system disorder are advised against getting the shot.

So are people with 'severe, life-threatening allergies' to the vaccine or any component of it.

But that is highly unusual. Doctors once cautioned that people with egg allergies - about two percent of children - might have bad reactions to the vaccine. That concern has been addressed, and Dr Zandvliet's site says the shot is safe for most people with egg allergies too.

Regardless, the number of children who have been given medical exemptions from shots since 2015 has tripled in California, and has increased by six-fold among kindergartners in San Diego since 2015, threatening the county's herd immunity.

And, according to the San Diego Unified School District's records, Dr Zandvliet plays an out-sized role in helping families keep their kids unvaccinated and at-risk.
Superdrug has today announced it is rolling out free breast check consultations at dozens of its stores to spot cancer early.

Trained nurses working at 56 of the retailer's clinics will be on hand to tell women, and men, how to examine their own breasts.

The high street chain hopes the move will 'start more conversations' about breast cancer, the fourth biggest cancer killer in the UK.

Trained nurses working at 56 of the retailer's UK clinics will be on hand to tell women, and men, how to examine their own breasts

Charlotte Tarr, from Suffolk, was diagnosed aged 25 with the disease after noticing her right breast was harder than usual (pictured during her treatment)

It comes after a study yesterday revealed breast cancer death rates have improved by nearly a fifth in just five years in the UK.

Better drugs, widespread screening and much earlier diagnosis were credited by the scientists for the improvement.

Superdrug said its consultations would be free, though people cannot just turn up and expect to be seen.

The retailer stresses those seeking the service  which is strictly no touching  will need to book an appointment online.

The move was launched with CoppaFeel, a charity which wants everyone to 'have the best possible chance of surviving breast cancer'.

Dr Pixie McKenna, Superdrug's health and wellbeing ambassador, said: 'Once you know how simple checking your breasts is, it can save your life.

CHECKING MY BREASTS SAVED MY LIFE: 28-YEAR-OLD PRAISES MOVE BY SUPERDRUG Ms Tarr, of Suffolk, said it's unlikely she would have beat the disease if she didn't check her breasts (pictured in Thailand before her diagnosis) A 28-year-old breast cancer survivor said it's unlikely she would have beat the disease if she didn't check her breasts. Charlotte Tarr, from Suffolk, was diagnosed with the disease in February 2017, aged 25, after noticing her right breast was harder than usual. She said: 'After checking my breasts one night I noticed the smallest of changes. My right breast just simply felt a little denser, a little harder I suppose. 'It wasn't rock solid and it didn't hurt specifically, there was no lump or bump, change in skin tone or texture.' Ms Tarr couldn't shake the 'what if' feeling, after signing up to CoppaFeel's free text service because of watching a documentary on its founder. Doctors in Australia, where she was living and working at the time, then diagnosed her with breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes. Ms Tarr flew back to England and began chemotherapy, before having a mastectomy followed by radiotherapy. She had breast reconstruction surgery nine months after her diagnosis, when she was given the all-clear, and is due to have another mastectomy in May this year. Ms Tarr has now been in remission for 18 months. She said: 'I have hair again, I'm on zero medication and I feel more like myself each day. 'I feel like I've got my life back on track. I know how much worse my prognosis would have been if I hadn't checked earlier.' She added: 'The only way for even more people to be saved is to talk about it and to make checking breasts as common and habitual as having a shower in the morning. 'I am so pleased Superdrug has taken the step to introduce more checks and conversations on the high street. 'Normalising the conversation is so important... It really could be as easy as going to your local Superdrug to save your life.' Advertisement

BREAST CANCER DEATHS HAVE IMPROVED BY NEARLY A FIFTH IN FIVE YEARS Breast cancer death rates have improved by nearly a fifth in just five years, a study has found. Better drugs, widespread screening and earlier diagnosis has driven the UK from the worst in a table of the six biggest European countries in 2014, to second best this year. Researchers predict breast cancer mortality will drop to just 13.3 per 100,000 women in the UK this year, down from 16.19 per 100,000 between 2010 and 2014. The 18 per cent improvement is the biggest seen in the six largest European countries - France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and the UK. From 2005 to 2014 the UK had the worst breast cancer death rates of the six. The projection for 2019 shows death rates in Britain have improved so much that now it comes second only to Spain, where 10.4 per 100,000 women are predicted to die of breast cancer this year. The study - published in the Annals of Oncology journal - suggests 10,700 women will die of breast cancer in Britain this year, down from 11,384 in 2014. The researchers, led by the University of Milan, calculated that more than 440,000 breast cancer deaths have been avoided in the EU in the last 31 years. Advertisement

'Everyone should be able to check whether on themselves or a partner, or even talking it through with a friend - the more conversations the better!'

Caris Newson, Head of Healthcare Services at Superdrug said: 'We hope this will be the start of more conversations and more checks around the UK.'

Sophie Dopierala, director of education and health communications at CoppaFeel said knowledge on what to look for is the 'main barrier'.

She added the charity will reach a 'whole new audience' with the breast cancer awareness message because of Superdrug's announcement.

Most lumps are due to something harmless, such as a non-cancerous tissue growth or a build-up of fluid.

But Superdrug said it will recommend anyone who has found an abnormality, including a lump in their breast, to consult their GP as soon as possible.

Every year 55,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in Britain  the equivalent of 150 cases a day.

Medical advances mean breast cancer survival has improved, doubling in the last 40 years, according to Cancer Research UK.

Around 80 per cent of women diagnosed with the disease will live for at least a decade  compared to 40 per cent in the 1970s.

Survival chances are much higher when the disease is spotted in its earlier stages, when symptoms can include a lump or redness.

The move comes after scientists last week revealed they have created a test that can predict the risk of breast cancer returning.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University examined tumours to find there are 11 different types of the disease.
The Dominican Republic may be the most dangerous place to travel abroad for plastic surgery, a new report finds.

Researchers looked at cases of post-surgery infections over a 14-year period and found that nearly half of them were from the Caribbean country.

Several reports have come out of women suffering complications - and in some cases dying - after undergoing procedures with poor hygiene from doctors that are not well-qualified and in clinics that are under-regulated.

In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued warnings about visiting the Dominican Republic for surgery after dozens of reports of women coming down with potentially fatal infections post-surgery.

The team, from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, says the findings highlight the dangers of so-called 'medical tourism' and that patients should think twice before they consider leaving the US for low-cost procedures.

A new study from the University of Texas Medical Branch has found that the Dominican Republic may be the most dangerous place to travel abroad for surgery. Pictured: Johanna Gonzalez who died right before liposuction in the Dominican Republic

Of the 42 patients, 20 underwent procedures in in the Dominican Republic, mostly for tummy tucks, breast reductions and liposuction. Pictured: Beverly Brignoni died on the operating table during plastic surgery in the Dominican Republic

For the report, published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the team looked at case reports published in various journal databases.

They analyzed postoperative infections that were treated in the US after the elective surgeries were done abroad between 2003 and 2017.

Of the 42 cases, a shockingly high 20 were from the Dominican Republic.

Some other countries included Mexico, Thailand, China, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela.

The top three procedures that resulted in complications were tummy tucks, breast reductions and liposuction.

Researchers found the two most common infections found were Mycobacterium abscessus and Mycobacterium fortuitum - antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that are found in water, soil and dirt.

TODAY'S MOST POPULAR SURGERIES OVERALL: LESS-INVASIVE Procedures such as laser treatments to tighten or 'rejuvenate' skin, toxin injections to paralyze face muscles and ease frown lines, chemical peels, and freezing and killing unwanted fat, are fast overtaking traditional surgery. More and more clients opt for procedures that require no anesthesia, less recovery time, and present fewer risks. 'The growth of non-surgicals is pretty much exponential,' ISAPS president Renato Saltz said. 'The technology, the money invested in research and development, is just mind boggling. If you look at the industry, they don't make money with a scalpel, but they do make money with machines.' MOST POPULAR: BOTOX OR SIMILAR In 2015, Botox injections were the most popular procedure with 4.6 million performed by plastic surgeons, followed by hyaluronic acid injections (2.9 million) to iron out wrinkles and plump up lips. STILL THRIVING: BOOB JOBS Surgical breast augmentation was in third place with 1.5 million procedures, followed by liposuction with 1.4 million and operations to lift and shape eyelids at 1.3 million. ON THE RISE: OPERATIONS 'DOWN THERE' Genital resculpting is another wide open field. 'The demand is not there yet, but 10/15 years ago there was also no demand for female genital rejuvenation,' said Bernard Mole, a Paris-based plastic surgeon. Today it is among the most popular procedures, 'and I believe that in five to ten years we will see the same trend in men.' Advertisement

These are the same bacteria that the CDC issued a warning about in 2016 after at least 18 women from six Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states contracted these infections from five different clinics in the Dominican Republic.

'These infections are often diagnosed late because of a low clinical suspicion, and patients experience a prolonged clinical course involving multiple operations and medications,' the authors wrote in their report.

The team notes that many women travel to countries such as the Dominican Republic due to the low cost.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgery, the average cost of a breast augmentation is more than $3,700.

But this doesn't include costs such as anesthesia, so the final price can be as high as $10,000.

In the Dominican Republic, however, the total price is as low as $2,500.

'Unfortunately, not all procedures performed abroad adhere to strict hygienic regulations, and bacterial flora vary,' the authors write.

'As a result, it is not uncommon for consumers to return home with difficult-to-treat postoperative infections.'

There have been a number of cases of women - mostly from New York - in the last few years who traveled to the Dominican Republic for surgery and died as a result.

Last August, 25-year-old Johana Gonzalez, of New York, died of a heart attack moments before her liposuction was scheduled to take place.

In 2017, Janelle Edwards, 25, from New York, died of a blood clot caused by her surgeries - a breast enhancement, a tummy tuck and a butt implant - in the Dominican Republic, reported the New York Daily News.

In 2014, 29-year-old Beverly Brignoni, of New York, died of a pulmonary embolism on the operating table in Santo Domingo where she'd gone to have a tummy tuck.

The most common infections were from antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that the CDC issued a warning about in 2016. In 2017, New York resident Janelle Edwards, 25 (left and right) died of a blood clot caused by her surgeries - a breast enhancement, a tummy tuck and a butt implant - in the Dominican Republic

Experts say the infections and deaths are due to poor hygiene from doctors that under- qualified in clinics that are under-regulated. In 2014, Beverly Brignoni (pictured), 29, died of a pulmonary embolism on the operating table in Santo Domingo where she'd gone to have a tummy tuck

The New York Daily News reported that, in August 2009, Maurisa Hunte, 21, from Long Island, suffered a massive heart attack while undergoing breast reduction and liposuction after she was given a fatal dose of adrenaline.

After dozens of reports of botched operations, the CDC and the US Department of State warned Americans to stop visiting the country

Another study last year appeared to confirm the worry after looking at 78 American patients who were admitted to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, after undergoing plastic surgery abroad.

Of the patients, who were admitted between 2010 and 2017, 75 percent of them had undergone operations in the Dominican Republic

They had several complications including life-threatening infections, pain that wasn't subsiding, scarring and unhealed wounds.

The authors of that report believe that either the American College of Surgeons or the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) should develop guidelines regarding medical tourism.

Dr Jeffrey Janis, then-president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons told HealthDay that patients must make sure they thoroughly research the surgeon and clinic.

'The ASPS does not allow you to become a member unless you've passed a rigorous training program by the Board of Plastic Surgeons, which attests to the fact that you've been well-trained and can safely practice plastic surgery,' he said.

'So if you go outside the U.S. you really should seek someone equally qualified.
Almost one in three children (29 per cent) are living with a parent with emotional distress - the highest proportion on record, data show.

This is up from the 27.3 per cent recorded by Public Health England in 2010, when the set of statistics began.

The figures show a strong link between unemployment and the likelihood of living in a home with a distressed parent.

Emotional distress is a snapshot that indicates mental health problems, such as anxiety or depression.

Growing up around parents in this situation can be potentially dangerous for the child's mental health later in life, experts say.

Almost one in three children are living with a parent suffering emotional distress - the highest proportion on record, data from Public Health England shows

The PHE analysis found that 29 per cent of children in the UK are living with at least one parent reporting symptoms of emotional distress.

The data was taken from a study of around 40,000 households in the UK for 2016 to 2017.

Mothers are much more likely to report emotional distress, with more than one in five (22.3 per cent) children living in a household where the mother was suffering.

The figure for mothers is up from 20.2 per cent the year before and the highest on record.

It compares with around one in eight (12.1 per cent) children living in households where it was the father who was distressed.

In some households, both parents are reporting emotional distress.

Around half of all children (50.6 per cent) living in families where neither parent was in work had at least one parent reporting symptoms of emotional distress.

DEPRESSION AND SELF-HARM IS HIGHER IN TEENAGERS NOW THAN TEN YEARS AGO Nine per cent of those born in the early 1990s had suffered depression by 14, against 15 per cent for those born at the Millennium, research has found. Rates of self-harm went up from 12 to 14 per cent between the two groups. Teenagers today drink less, take fewer drugs, and are less likely to be vandals or violent than their elders of just a decade before. But instead they are more likely to suffer from depression or obesity, to sleep badly, or to engage in self-harm. The shift in the behaviour between two generations of 14-year-olds just ten years apart may illustrate the impact of social media. Known variously as the Facebook Generation or Generation Sensible, they have much lower levels of drinking, smoking, drug-taking or teen pregnancy than their predecessors. But several research projects have already suggested that they have become the loneliest age group, more likely to feel isolated and alone than older people and pensioners. The new evidence compared the behaviour of 5,600 children born in the Bristol area in 1991 and 1992, and the contrasting lives of 11,000 children born across the country in 2000 and 2001. Advertisement

This compares with 26.4 per cent of children living in families where at least one parent was in work.

For lone-parent families where the parent was not in work, 37 per cent of children had their parent reporting distress, compared to 34.2 per cent if they were working.

A Public Health England spokesperson said: 'Parental emotional distress can lead to mental health problems including anxiety or depression.

'It is associated with an increased risk of later behavioural and emotional difficulties in children.'

The analysis showed that children were more likely to live with a parent reporting emotional problems if both parents were out of work.

Previous research shows employed adults are less likely to have a common mental health problem, such as depression or anxiety, than those who are unemployed.

While around 14 per cent of adults in full-time employment had a common mental health problem, 29 per cent for those who were unemployed do, according to figures from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey.

Dr Bernadka Dubicka, chairwoman of the child and adolescent faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: 'Mental distress among adults is clearly on the rise and we cannot underestimate the impact this has on the children who are close to them.

'Not every adult with emotional distress will have a mental health disorder, but many will. If we can treat their illness early, this could have significant positive effects on the wellbeing of their children.

'Professionals working with adults who have mental health problems need to be aware of the impact this might have on their families, who may also require support.'

Children of parents with a severe mental illness may experience similar issues because their inherited genes make them more vulnerable to mental ill health.

But it could also be because of their situation and the environment in which they are growing up, charities say.

Tom Madders, campaigns director at youth mental health charity YoungMinds, said: 'The circumstances that young people grow up in can have a big impact on their mental health.

'As a society, we need to get much better at identifying when seemingly "difficult" behaviour in young people may be a reaction to difficult experiences.

'All professionals who work with children need training about the effect of trauma on behaviour, so that they can identify the signs and ensure that vulnerable children can get the best possible support.'
Smoking medical marijuana has been legalized in Florida.

On Monday, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that repealed the state's ban on smokable medical cannabis.

Under the new law, card-carrying patients can receive 2.5 ounces of pot every 35 days.

In addition, patients under 18 are allowed to smoke if they're terminally ill and if at least two doctors - one being a pediatrician - recommend it.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law on Monday that legalized smoking medical marijuana (file image)

DeSantis noted that more than 70 percent of voters approved medical marijuana in a 2016 constitutional amendment.

However, in 2017, then-Governor Rick Scott signed a law that banned smoking pot in all forms.

Upon taking office in January, DeSantis gave lawmakers a deadline of March 15 to act on repealing the ban.

Otherwise, he vowed to pull the Sunshine State out of a lawsuit that would lift Scott's ban, reported WBBH.

The bill was passed in the Florida Senate by a vote of 34-4 on March 7 and in the House by a 101-11 vote on March 13.

'I thank my colleagues in the Legislature for working with me to ensure the will of our voters is upheld,' DeSantis said in a statement on Monday.

'Now that we have honored our duty to find a legislative solution, I have honored my commitment and filed a joint motion to dismiss the state's appeal and to vacate the lower court decision which had held the prior law to be unconstitutional.'

John Morgan, an Orlando attorney who spearheaded the lawsuit, praised DeSantis and the Legislature in a series of tweets.

'My job is done. The will of the people has been heard! Really sick and injured people now have a path to safe wellness. Now on to slay other dragons! #ForThePeople,' Morgan wrote in one tweet.

According to the new law, medical marijuana can't be smoked or at private businesses subject to the state's cigarette smoking ban.

Private property owners have the right to prohibit it and patients can't possess more than four ounces of smokable marijuana.

Although the new law goes into effect immediately, the Florida Department of Health will need to release guidelines for physicians and approve dispensaries to sell pot in smokable forms, according to US News and World Report.

The repeal of the smoking ban had broad bipartisan support. Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat, called the new law a 'landmark victory' for medical marijuana patients and for democracy as a whole.

The ban and other cannabis-related issues were cornerstones of her 2018 campaign.

'It's a triumph owed to the relentless advocacy of Floridians who refused to be silenced,' Fried said in a statement.

'Our state must not disregard the voice of its people - when the people's will is nullified by those with authority, liberty cannot survive.'

Meanwhile, Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes, who co-sponsored the new bill, says residents should expect to see a ballot measure in future elections to legalize recreational marijuana.

'I think the likelihood that it passes is pretty good in 2022 or 2024, and we should prepare for its passage,' he told CNN.

Recreational marijuana is legal in 10 states and Washington, DC, and 34 states and DC have legalized medical marijuana.

A 2018 poll from the Pew Research Center found that 62 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana, double the number from two decades ago in 2000.

Opinions of legalization differ by political party, with 69 percent of Democrats supporting it compared with 75 percent of Independents and just 45 percent of Republicans.
Measles is spreading among conservative, insular communities in the US.

The outbreak in New York exists primarily among Orthodox Jewish people who object to vaccinations against the disease on religious grounds.

But in Washington, the strain of the measles sweeping the state - and especially Clark County - came from Ukraine.

And it is now thought to be spreading largely among the tight-knit community of Eastern European immigrants there, who trust information they get from one another more than they do information from doctors.

The information that makes its way through these social networks often involves misunderstandings and misinformation, such as the idea that fetuses have to be aborted for a dose of the shot to be made, Vox reported.

Measles is a highly-contagious virus. There are 72 cases of the disease in a single Washington state county where two percent of the population is Russian-speaking and disproportionately struck by the outbreak, as myths and misinformation spread in their insular communities (file)

So far, there have been 72 cases of measles diagnosed in Washington - and all but one are in Clark County.

The state's Department of Health (DOH) has confirmed that the primary strain spreading in the area is the same one decimating Ukraine, so it was likely brought to Washington by a traveler.

Eastern Europeans account for about 8.4 of the state's population, and Clark County is known for its large population of immigrants from the region and their descendants.

Nearly two percent of the population of Clark County spoke Russian, according to the 2000 census.

Back in 2012, vaccination among Eastern Europeans was already a significant concern to the Washington DOH, as evidenced by the fact that it undertook a special investigation and report on the attitudes and behaviors of these communities toward shots.

The report was commissioned because Russian-speaking communities had the lowest vaccination rates in the state - and had since 2008.

By conducting interview with 'key informants' - representatives in touch with both the community and the public health issues - the report uncovered a number of barriers that have kept vaccination rates low among these communities.

The health officials found that most Russian-speakers' beliefs and attitudes toward shots were primarily influenced by those in their close social circles, including family, friends and religious communities, as well as Russian-language media.

One woman, Valerie Kobylnik, who was born in Kyrgyzstan and immigrated to Washington in 1991, told Vox she believed vaccines would hurt her children so, for years, she did not get them immunized, based on what she'd read and watched.

Somehow, many other mothers in her close Russian-speaking community began searching her out and asking her about her decision - coming to Valerie, despite the fact that she had no medical expertise.

The 2012 report suggests that part of the reason that she became such a source for other mothers was as simple as language. She spoke Russian, they spoke Russian, and what Valerie said - how ever misguided - was at least clear.

The same report found that Russian-speakers were not content with their relationships with their doctors, whom they did not give them autonomy, instead pressuring them to immunize.

In the Soviet Union, following orders - from a doctor or other authority figure - was the norm, according to the Moscow Times.

But after the fall of the Soviet Union, the countries of Eastern Europe became deeply distrustful of many forms of authority and have seized their legal autonomy to say 'no' to immunization with particular fervor.

Echoes of that seem visible in Eastern European immigrants to the US, particularly those who spend much of their time in insular communities.

Clark County in southern Washington has all but one of the 73 cases of measles in the state. The outbreak is thought to center on Russian-speaking groups with low vaccination rates

And misinformation spreads with both speed and intensity in tight-knit groups in general, with the trend among Eastern Europeans there echoing what can be seen in Orthodox Jewish groups in New York amid the state's current measles outbreak.

A similar trend was clear in the massive 2014 outbreak among predominantly Amish people in Ohio.

One local Russian-speaking physician, Dr Tetyana Odarich hears all kinds of wild myths from her Clark County patients.

A mother told Dr Odarich that she was refusing to vaccinate her children because of the way the vaccines are made: by extracting them from women just before they had abortions.

'I honestly didn't know what to say,' Odarich told Vox.

Here again, the language barrier may come into play, then get churned through the rumor mill.

There is a grain of truth to the description the patient gave Dr Odarich.

Back in the 1960s, when the MMR vaccine was first being made, fetal tissues were involved.

Several vaccines - those that protect against chickenpox, rubella, hepatitis A, shingles and a form of the rabies shot - are all grown inside a certain kind of embryonic cell.

The cells needed for this were taken from two elective abortions after the procedures had taken place.

Those same cells, taken in the 1960s, are still multiplied over and over again to make vaccines today.

So while some groups, including Catholics, see this history as a valid reason for their moral objections to the shots, the origin story of the vaccinations has gotten a bit confused as it's spread.

This may be one of the ways that Russian-speaking Washingtonians, among other groups, have become misinformed about vaccinations.

The 2012 report suggested that accurate information about vaccines desperately needs to be disseminated through the same close social networks that fueled misconceptions.

Plus doctors needed to, essentially, treat their patients with greater respect and empathy by explaining the shot, being clear, answering their questions, and letting vaccination for their children remain, ultimately, the parents' choice.

Valerie did ultimately vaccinate her children.

But the ongoing outbreak suggests that public health officials have a long way to go before they have fully earned the trust of Eastern European-Americans in Washington - but the need to do so is dire.
Eon, one of the Big Six energy suppliers, is losing customers at an 'alarming rate', a new report claims.

Of customers that switched provider last month, 21.65 per cent did so from Eon. On the flipside, just 7.07 per cent switched to it.

This is a net swing of 14.58 per cent, a snapshot of customer switching habits from Compare the Market shows.

Eon is losing customers at an 'alarming rate', a new report from Compare the Market has said

Separate figures from Ofgem's electricity supply data also shows that the supplier has steadily lost a high percentage of its market share in the last 15 years.

In 2004, the company had a market share of 21 per cent. By the end of 2018, this had fallen eight percentage points to 13 per cent.

In comparison, British Gas - the biggest company by market share - has seen a smaller slip of electricity customers, from 24 per cent to 19 per cent.

Peter Earl, head of energy at the comparison website, said: 'Customer outflows from Eon are growing at an alarming rate, with the supplier unable to fully replace the losses with new customers.'

Its energy snapshot looks at customers who have switched energy suppliers in the past month through their website and what provider they have switched from and to, highlighting overall market trends.

Ofgem's electricity supply market shares graph shows Eon's steady loss of customers

A number of This is Money readers have been in touch in recent months to express frustration with Eon after the supplier changed its policies so that people who want to switch to fixed tariffs have to agree to having a smart meter installed.

This has meant customers cannot access the cheapest deals unless they are agree to the fitting, enraging consumers who feel pressured and blackmailed into getting a device.

According to Smart Energy GB, the company behind the national roll out of smart meters, energy companies are allowed to offer lower tariffs and can insist on the gadgets as a condition.

This is Money has contacted Eon for comment.

Compare the Market's report found Eon was not the only provider affected, with a large chunk of customers moving away from the Big Six providers altogether, as 25.77 per cent of consumers switched from one of the major firms to another provider in February 2019.

The new report found that more people are switching away from the Big Six suppliers

This is in comparison to 17.08 per cent moving to one of the Big Six, a difference of more than eight percentage points.

The shift in custom could well be due to criticism the Big Six received after they all put up their prices by 10 per cent or more in response to Ofgem's energy price cap increase.

Eon was the first of the Big Six to raise its tariffs after the announcement, raising its price by 10 per cent for 1.8million standard variable tariff customers - giving an annual increase of 117.

All of the other providers followed suit, raising bills by hundreds of pounds for millions of customers.

It is not just the price cap increase that has led to more customers switching to smaller suppliers - Compare the Market found four out of five of the highest saving tariffs came from smaller players.

It revealed the highest saving tariff for customers who switched with Compare the Market in February 2019 was the Pure Planet 100 per cent Green tariff, which gave consumers an average saving of 228 per year.

The second highest savings were from Lumo Energy and the third highest from So Energy - both small suppliers who focus on sourcing renewable energy from the UK.

However, three of the five most popular tariffs were still with the Big Six, with EDF's Simply Fixed tariff topping the list as 15.75 per cent of customers switched to it.

Earl added: 'EDF Energy took the top spot attracting more than a quarter of all new switches. Its Simply Fixed Feb21 tariff attracted nearly half of all those switches, making an average saving of 40.59.

'There were some much larger savings available last month. Some households made an average saving of 228.16 by switching to Pure Planet's 100 per cent Green tariff, proving the point that going green on your energy doesn't have to cost the earth.

'With 65 tariffs coming to an end in March, it is vital that those customers take the time to shop around and switch to a good deal.

'If not, they will likely get rolled onto an uncompetitive and expensive standard or default tariff.

'From 1 April, those customers stuck on these types of tariffs will be hit hard by the price cap rise, with all of the Big Six hiking prices within a pound of the 117 increase, millions will be left facing bigger bills.'

Despite smaller suppliers offering better deals, many customers are still worried about switching to one of these providers as they fear they are unreliable and could be stuck without protection if they go bust.

The fears steam from the high number of small suppliers who have ceased trading in recent times, including Extra Energy, Spark Energy, Future Energy, National Gas and Power, Iresa Energy, Gen4U, Usio Energy, One Select, Our Power, Economy Energy and Brilliant Energy.

However, Ofgem has assured customers they will be protected and their energy supply will continue should there be any trouble with their supplier.

Customers who feel they are being charged too much for their energy are encouraged to shop around to see how much they could save by switching provider.
Here is a counterfactual history. What if the Government had disposed of Royal Bank of Scotland and held onto payments offshoot Worldpay in 2010?

It would own a fintech payments champion valued at 32.5 billion and ridded itself of a troublesome bank of the same value.

The ink is barely dry on the deal under which Worldpay was sold to Vantiv by Philip Jansen (now chief executive of BT) for 7.9 billion in 2018. US-focused Vantiv renamed itself Worldpay and kept a London quote designed to placate critics.

Done deal: Worldpay was sold to Vantiv by Philip Jansen (now chief executive of BT)

With its global leadership in payments systems and leading-edge software, Worldpay could have been a great national champion for the post-banking era. Now Florida-based Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) is scooping it up for an astonishing price.

Under its new owner, Worldpay will operate across 146 countries.

The pioneering technology is very much rooted in the UK where some two-thirds of payments are made digitally.

The way in which payments systems are being snapped up by tech-savvy outsiders is a reminder of how Atlanta-based ICE became owner of the New York Stock Exchange and dominates global share, derivatives and commodity trading. The FIS-Worldpay deal makes bank mergers, such as the proposed get together of ailing Deutsche Bank with Commerzbank, look like a relic from the past with the possible elimination of up to 30,000 jobs.

Financial groups such as FIS pose a new problem for regulators. The effort, since the financial crisis, has been to stabilise established banks by creating stronger capital, more liquidity and improved culture.

FIS will have the capacity to shift funds around the globe digitally and at speeds which conventional banks  with ancient correspondent relationships  can barely contemplate. No wonder that the governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney extols supranational supervision.

Klepto-capitalism

Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden rightly attracted opprobrium last week when it was revealed that as a result of long-term incentive shares coming good, his pay would double to 17.2m.

This was largely his payoff for engineering and seeing through the complex BG merger, and executing huge asset sales. But Van Beurden's outsized reward looks almost modest when compared with the gross fat-cattery revealed in housebuilder Persimmon's annual report.

Impervious to criticism, former chief executive Jeff Fairburn was gifted a shade under 39m, to go with his 45.7m from the previous year. Charities must be rubbing their hands at the prospect of the donations he has promised.

What really sticks in the craw are the astonishing payments to his former lieutenants, who are now in the driving seat. New chief executive Dave Jenkinson has pocketed an astonishing 45.4m over the past two years and the finance chief Mike Killoran 62.7m  almost as much as Fairburn himself.

Chairman Roger Devlin did a good job in ejecting Fairburn from office. But how on earth he and the board felt that they could replace him with Jenkinson, and leave the even more egregious Killoran in place, is incomprehensible. It is not just governance at Persimmon which has been wayward but also social responsibility.

It has built too many shoddy homes and focused on profit margins rather than building decent accommodation. It has exploited taxpayer-funded Help to Buy but contributed nothing to the greater public good. Indeed, it has abused some homebuyers by selling homes on escalating leaseholds.

The Government should show Persimmon a red card and ban it from Help to Buy.

The firm needs to demonstrate that it is capable of delivering for all stakeholders, not just a cabal at the top.

Store search

Disturbing trends on the High Street show no sign of easing.

Sir Philip Green's Arcadia empire and Debenhams are closing stores in response to financial stress.

Sainsbury's has been seeking a merger with Asda to future-proof itself. The picture looks grim.

Not, it appears, for privately owned German upstart Lidl.

It has taken a double-page advertisement in Property Week to announce it is expanding and seeking 60 sites across the country each year. It is interested in freehold, leasehold or long leasehold opportunities. Moreover, it is offering a 1.5pc finder's fee.

There's the spirit.
When the Isa was first announced in 1997, the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, said he hoped it would encourage a new national savings habit.

And his wish came true. Britons fell in love with the tax-free account, piling hundreds of millions of pounds into cash, stocks and shares every year.

The start of March is now known as 'Isa season', when banks and building societies frantically launch top deals to lure savers rushing to use up their annual allowance before it resets on April 6.

The start of March is now known as 'Isa season', when banks and building societies launch top deals to lure savers rushing to use up their annual allowance before it resets on April 6

But the arrival of the personal savings allowance, which enables basic-rate taxpayers to earn up to 1,000 in savings interest tax-free, has had the knock-on effect of diluting the cash Isa.

This is because you could often get a better rate with an ordinary taxable account and still pay no tax on interest earned.

Politicians had also realised by this point that Isas were a vote-winner and had launched a string of new types of account.

All this means a once very simple yet brilliant savings product can now be fiendishly complicated.

Meanwhile, after ten years of rock-bottom rates, the amount of money we are putting aside for the future is also at an historic low.

But none of this is proof that we should stop saving  and we certainly shouldn't abandon Isas.

Indeed, if rates continue to creep up, we increasingly risk exceeding our personal savings allowance  particularly if you are a higher earner with a lower tax-free allowance of 500.

The Government is also far more likely to scrap the personal savings allowance than touch our precious Isas (only last year, the tax-free dividend allowance was cut from 5,000 to 2,000).

Meanwhile, for those dabbling in the stock market, an Isa protects any profits and income from tax.

And, best of all, as our Prudent Investor points out, Isas make filling in your tax return a doddle.

So, for now, long may the love affair continue.

Beat scammers

On Monday, our investigations team exposed how conmen based in India are terrorising thousands of Britons every day by posing as HMRC officials.

Chancellor Philip Hammond: Plans to remove phone lines used in scams are well under way

Victims are typically left a voicemail claiming they owe tax and face arrest if they do not pay their bill immediately. If they call back, the crooks then convince them to make a bank transfer and they never see their money again.

Chancellor Philip Hammond and Financial Secretary to the Treasury Mel Stride have promised that plans to remove phone lines used in scams are well under way  with almost 450 numbers removed from service. But telecoms giants need to do more still to stop these calls getting through.

Number-spoofing technology that allows crooks to make it appear as though they are calling from a genuine telephone number is hugely effective in convincing victims they really are speaking to tax officials  yet it is still freely available online.

Readers also complain that HMRC is not doing enough to highlight the scam to taxpayers.

They add that if the tax system wasn't so cumbersome, it wouldn't be so easy to confuse people into thinking they owe money in the first place.

Remember, HMRC will never call you out of the blue and demand payment. If you receive a similar call, hang up  and do not respond to voicemails, either.

Never give up!

Finally, a reminder of how it can pay to persevere. Last May, Money Mail reader Wendy was told by staff at a Nationwide branch that she could earn 5 per cent if she switched her Flex account to a Flex Direct savings account.

It wasn't until July that Wendy realised she had lost her free European travel insurance in the switch  and the perk was no longer offered to new customers.

As a frequent traveller, Wendy never would have willingly given up her cover and she implored Nationwide to reinstate it.

The society declined to do so, but Wendy refused to let it go.

Six months on, Nationwide has finally buckled.

It said that while it was sure Wendy had been made aware the insurance would cease when she moved accounts, it would reinstate her policy as a gesture of goodwill and pay her 50 in compensation.

If you have a tale of dogged determination paying off, email me at v.bischoff@dailymail.co.uk
Three Persimmon bosses have been paid nearly 200m in just two years as they cash in on Help to Buy.

Jeff Fairburn, Dave Jenkinson and Mike Killoran were handed 90m last year as the housebuilder racked up record profits of 1.1 billion.

That followed awards of 102.8m in 2017, taking their total earnings over the period to 192.8m.

'Inappropriate': Jeff Fairburn, Dave Jenkinson and Mike Killoran were handed 90m last year as the housebuilder racked up record profits of 1.1 billion

Critics branded the 'egregious' payouts  which were disclosed in the company's annual report  as 'completely inappropriate'.

Persimmon has faced a fierce backlash over the rewards, which stem from a generous bonus scheme set up in 2012. The builder has also been criticised for shoddy workmanship and the sale of homes with rip-off leases.

Persimmon has benefited from the Government's Help to Buy mortgage scheme that offers families loans from the taxpayer so they can secure a mortgage. Nearly half of the 16,449 homes it built last year were sold through Help to Buy as Persimmon cashed in on the subsidy.

The pay row, however, cost Fairburn his job. The 52-year-old  who was handed 45.7m in 2017 and a further 39m in 2018  was forced out at the end of last year as Persimmon sought to draw a line under the scandal.

Chairman Roger Devlin, brought in to repair the company's battered reputation, promoted Jenkinson to replace Fairburn.

In a bid to draw a line under the row, Jenkinson's salary was held at 515,000, the same as when he was managing director, and he has agreed not to take a bonus this year. But the 51-year-old was paid 20.4m in 2017 and 25m last year, according to the annual report. Finance director Killoran, 56, was handed 36.7m in 2017 and 26m in 2018.

Sources at the company pointed out that these payouts dated back to the 2012 bonus scheme and would not be repeated.

And writing in the annual report, Devlin said the builder was transforming the way it behaved: 'We are changing our pay and incentives to include greater emphasis on both quality and customer care with plans that are more rigorous than we have had in the past.'

But Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre, said: 'These egregious pay outs are completely inappropriate.

'They are a massive embarrassment for the company and really ought to be an embarrassment for the individuals as well.

'It shows a total failure of corporate governance.

'This view that a few top executives need these vast payments lavished upon them in order to get out of bed in the morning is worrying and damming of the culture at the business.

'The company has tried to draw a line under this and this is the result of past practices. But it continues to cause damage.'

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury Select Committee, said: 'These vast sums of money will rightly disgust homebuyers struggling to get on the ladder. They suggest once again that housebuilders' profits  and pay packets  are out of control.'
Salisbury is to become the first entire city in Britain to have ultra-fast broadband with a state-of-the-art connection available to every home and business.

Around 22,000 premises will be linked up to 'full-fibre' lines that are capable of downloading films in seconds or transferring huge graphics files.

The lines will go directly from Salisbury telephone exchange into homes and businesses, in contrast with existing broadband, where the fibre runs into a green cabinet in the street then diverts onto an old-fashioned copper line to feed into the home.

State-of-the-art: Around 22,000 premises will be linked up to 'full-fibre' lines

Unlike the old copper lines, full-fibre is not affected by the weather so the signal won't cut out or 'buffer'.

Openreach, which is owned by BT but independently run, is investing around 8m in hooking up the whole of the Wiltshire city to the new infrastructure. So far only 4pc of the UK has access to this type of service, lower than in some other countries.

Both BT and Openreach have been accused of dragging their feet on investment in full fibre, with critics arguing they have chosen instead to wring as much cash as possible from the existing network. Regulator Ofcom last year said it wants to see more progress made by Openreach on improving access to full-fibre.

The project in Salisbury, which may go some way to address these gripes, is the first time Openreach has attempted to cover a whole city, albeit a small one. The cost is 300 to 400 per premises and work is expected to last a year.

It is a boost for the Wiltshire beauty spot, which is still working to overcome the novichok affair last year when Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned. Visitors who normally flock to see the famous cathedral and nearby Stonehenge stayed away in droves, with numbers down by around a sixth.

Clive Selley, chief executive of Openreach, said: 'This will underpin a very significant improvement in UK productivity. It will allow people to create new data-intensive businesses and it will enable people to work from home.'

He added that the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband across the UK has created 3,500 jobs for engineers last year plus thousands of trainees.

John Glen, the local Conservative MP, said transforming Salisbury into an ultra-fast city would create new opportunities to develop arts and culture.

Entrepreneur Dylan Watkins, who two years ago set up online healthy dog food business Poppy's Picnic said ultra-fast broadband allows him to deal with customers around the world from his Wiltshire base.

Openreach has a target of bringing ultra-fast broadband to 3m premises by the end of 2020 at a cost of around 1.2 billion. It has said it wants to reach 10m homes by 2025 but there is no firm commitment.

Chancellor Philip Hammond said the introduction of ultra-fast full-fibre will make Salisbury 'one of the most cutting-edge cities in the country'.
Scandal-hit Metro Bank is said to face growing pressure from the City watchdog to shake up its board after an accounting error.

The lender faces calls to appoint more independent directors, amid concerns that billionaire founder and chairman Vernon Hill has too much power.

Metro's shares have crashed almost 50 per cent this year following revelations it had underestimated the riskiness of some property loans.

Under pressure: Metro's shares have crashed almost 50 per cent this year following revelations it had underestimated the riskiness of some property loans

The bank has promoted senior independent director Ben Gunn to deputy chairman.

But the plan has sparked concern at the Financial Conduct Authority because Gunn has already spent more than nine years on Metro's board, in breach of City guidelines.

Top Metro investors are also pushing for change over fears there is not enough oversight of US tycoon Hill.

One investor told the Financial Times: 'This is a real test for the regulators.'
President Hassan Rouhani said today that Iran would remain committed to the 2015 nuclear deal if its interests were protected, while his foreign minister hoped the pact could be redesigned without Washington as a member.

The U.S. withdrawal from the accord on Tuesday was a 'violation of morals', Rouhani said in remarks carried by state television.

'If the remaining five countries continue to abide by the agreement, Iran will remain in the deal despite the will of America,' he said.

President Donald Trump's pullout has upset European allies, cast uncertainty over global oil supplies and raised the risk of conflict in the Middle East.

Rouhani has said Iran will stay committed to the deal, which China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany also signed, provided those powers ensured Iran was protected from sanctions

It has also highlighted divisions among Iran's political elite.

Rouhani made similarly conciliatory comments on Tuesday, and on Saturday, foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif began a tour of other signatory nations in an attempt to save the deal.

Zarif said in Beijing on Sunday: 'We hope that with this visit to China and other countries we will be able to construct a clear future design for the comprehensive agreement.'

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Zarif's tour would improve understanding of Iran's position and help Tehran protect its legitimate interests.

'China is willing to maintain communication and coordination with all relevant parties, including Iran, and take an objective, fair and responsible attitude to continue to safeguard the ...agreement,' Wang said.

Rouhani has said Iran will stay committed to the deal, which China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany also signed, provided those powers ensured Iran was protected from sanctions.

The three European states have recommitted to the agreement, but senior cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said on Friday that Europe was not to be trusted.

On Sunday, the head of the Assembly of Experts, a group of clerics responsible for choosing Iran's supreme leader, said Rouhani should apologise for not having obtained guarantees from world powers for the agreement.

'It is necessary for the president to honestly and openly apologise to the people over the damages caused by the nuclear accord,' Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a top conservative, said in a statement carried by state media.

The head of the elite Revolutionary Guards also warned against relying on foreign powers.

The head of the elite Revolutionary Guards also warned against relying on foreign powers. Pictured: Members of the Guards on a parade in Tehran

'America's exit aims to break the Iranian people's resistance, which is not new ... but today's problem is not U.S. sanctions, it's that some officials look towards outside rather than looking at domestic potentials,' Guards commander General Mohammad Ali Jafari said, the state news agency IRNA reported.

On Wednesday, Jafari cast doubt on European nations' ability to save the accord.

With the deal opposed by hardliners at home, some analysts say the pragmatic Rouhani may now be a lame duck leader.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was hopeful that the United States and Europe could agree on how to deal with Iran, after Trump threatened to sanction European companies that continue doing business there.

Speaking on 'Fox News Sunday,' Pompeo said the United States was not aiming at Europe when it withdrew from the deal.

'I'm hopeful in the days and weeks ahead we can come up with a deal that really works, that really protects the world from Iranian bad behaviour, not just their nuclear programme, but their missiles and their malign behaviour as well,' he said

White House National Security Adviser John Bolton said sanctions could be imposed on European companies.

It's possible. It depends on the conduct of other governments,' Bolton said on CNN's 'State of the Union.'
Kelly Sadler has promised to apologize for her crude remarks about John McCain's deadly brain cancer, according to a new report.

Special Assistant Sadler, who brazenly said in a Thursday meeting that McCain's opposition to Trump's nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, 'doesn't matter' because 'he's dying anyway,' spoke with Meghan McCain over the phone where she expressed regret about the offensive jokes.

The senator's daughter asked Sadler to issue a public apology, but The View co-host told ABC she assumes that 'will never come.'

On Friday, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders acknowledged Sadler's remarks as inappropriate and declined to comment further during an internal meeting.

Sanders was later said to be visibly upset while speaking on the matter to the White House communications staff.

White House official Kelly Sadler (pictured at the White House on Thursday, March 22, 2018) has yet to publicly apologize over her crude remarks regarding John McCain's declining health

Sadler said Thursday that McCain's opposition to Trump's nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, 'doesn't matter' because 'he's dying anyway'. The senator is pictured during a special Twilight Tattoo performance November 14, 2017 at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia

Sadler reportedly spoke to Meghan McCain over the phone this weekend to apologize for the crude comments

She was allegedly more infuriated about the fact Sadler's comment had leaked, than the comment itself, Axios reported.

Sanders told off the staff for sharing the content of internal meetings with the press.

'I know this conversation is going to leak too, and that's just disgusting,' Sanders added.

On Sunday, President Trump's national security advisor spoke highly of Senator McCain.

Bolton told Jake Tapper for CNN's State of the Union: 'I wasn't in that meeting, I don't know what was said or what was done. I'll just say this - John McCain came to my defense in 2005 when my nomination to be UN ambassador was under criticism.

'He and I didn't know eachother very well at the time. We certainly didn't agree on every position that he or I had taken, but he spent countless hours trying to help me out,' Bolton said.

'Much of it was behind the scenes and there was no political upside for John McCain at all, but he did it because he thought I was being treated unfairly.'

'I'll never forget it, I'll be grateful forever, and I wish John McCain and his family nothing but the best.'

When Tapper asked Bolton whether he believed the White House felt an obligation to apologize for the remarks, Sadler declined to elaborate.

Trump's national security advisor John Bolton praised John McCain in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday

Bolton however dodged to speak further when ashed questions about a White House official's callous health jokes about McCain

'I wish John McCain and his family nothing but the best,' Bolton said in the interview

He also refused to say whether the United States would punish European companies that do not cease their business operations in Iran by the end of this year.

Companies within affected industries between 90 days and six months to wind down operations in Iran or run the risk of facing stiff penalties now that the United States is no longer a party to an international accord that lifted sanctions on Tehran.

National Security Advisor John Bolton said on CNN that 'it's possible' the Trump administration will impose sanctions on companies that run afoul of the new U.S. policies.

'It depends on the conduct of other governments,' he stated.

European leaders are committed to remaining in the agreement with Tehran that lifted economic sanctions on the Middle Eastern country so long as it abided by the terms of a 2015 nuclear deal.

But a host of companies are now faced with the prospect of doing business with U.S. or protecting their interests in Tehran.

In his remarks announcing the United States' withdraw from the deal, President Trump threatened, 'We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction. Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States.'

Bolton said in a briefing with reporters immediately after the Tuesday announcement that it would be up to the Treasury Department to determine which affected companies, if any, would get a pass.

British Prime Minister Theresa May raised the issue in a Friday phone call with Trump, a spokesperson for the European leader said.

Bolton refused on Sunday to say whether the United States would punish European companies that do not cease their business operations in Iran by the end of this year

Donald Trump last night tore up the Iran nuclear deal, which could force Britain's biggest businesses out of the country

'The Prime Minister reiterated the Government's position on the Iran nuclear deal, noting that we and our European partners remain firmly committed to ensuring the deal is upheld, as the best way of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

'The Prime Minister raised the potential impact of US sanctions on those firms which are currently conducting business in Iran.'

Major British businesses with interests in Iran include Rolls-Royce, Vodafone and British Airways. UK companies have invested 450 billion into Tehran since the U.S. and Europe lifted sanctions after the signing of the accord with partners Russia and China.

Finance ministers in France and Germany pushed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to grant extensions or waivers to businesses that made lucrative deals with Tehran in the period that sanctions were lifted.

Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, said European states will also try to impose sanctions-blocking measures through the European Commission.

'Do we accept extraterritorial sanctions? The answer is no,' Le Maire said.

'Do we accept that the United States is the economic gendarme of the planet? The answer is no. Do we accept the vassalization of Europe in commercial matters? The answer is no.'

Le Maire is seeking exemptions for Renault, Total, Sanofi, Danone and Peugeot and other companies already doing business with Tehran.

Trump's new ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, suggested that exemptions were unlikely, saying Thursday, 'German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.'

European companies did not have an immediate have a reaction to possibility that they would have to cease operations in Iran or be barred from doing business with the U.S. other than to say in statements that they were monitoring the situation.

'We are examining the announcement and its potential implications,' Rolls Royce said. 'We conduct business in all countries, including Iran, in accordance with all relevant UK, EU or other national sanctions and export control regulations.'

British Airways, which operates six flights a week between London Heathrow and Tehran, said, 'We constantly review our network to ensure that our routes match our customers' needs and are commercially viable.  We are in regular contact with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.'

Trump's tough talk now on sanctions is at odds with what he told France's Emmanuel Macon and May just six months ago as he moved toward yanking the U.S. out of the deal.

He said in October that he told the allies 'take all the money you can get' from Tehran.

'Actually, Emmanuel called up, and he talked to me. And I said, look, Emmanuel, they just gave Renault a lot of money. Take their money; enjoy yourselves,' Trump said then.

The U.S. president said that the European leaders wanted him to stay in the deal he'd said he'd exit since he was a candidate because of the financial implications of leaving it.

'You know, Iran is spending money in various countries. And I've always said it, and I say to them: Don't do anything. Don't worry about it. Take all the money you can get. They're all friends of mine,' Trump said.
Iran's supreme leader has trolled President Trump by sharing a photo of himself reading the tell-all book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was pictured flipping through the pages of a Persian-language edition of Michael Wolff's controversial book on Friday, just days after Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal.

The President has publicly denounced the book, calling the author 'mentally deranged' for writing that the White House is largely dysfunctional.

It appears Khamenei made the gesture to mock President Trump for his decision to pull out of the deal - one that sparked outrage in Iran as politicians set fire to the American flag.

Light reading: Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was pictured reading the tell-all book Fire and Fury

The image was posted just days after Trump pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal

The caption reads: 'Today, the revolutionary leader is browsing a book about the president of the United States'

The image was taken by a court photographer at this year's Tehran International Book Fair, according to BBC News.

The caption reads: 'Today, the revolutionary leader is browsing a book about the president of the United States.'

Khamenei shared his outrage over Trump's decision last week.

He said: 'The body of this man, Trump, will turn to ashes and become the food of the worms and ants, while the Islamic Republic continues to stand.'

This came after the president claimed the deal was 'rotten and decaying'.

He added that the pact was a 'horrible one-sided deal that should never ever have been made.'

President Trump denounced the controversial book, saying it was 'full of lies'

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was released in January and branded a 'bombshell'.

Before it was even on the shelves, Trump's team attempted to ban the book from being published.

It detailed issues with his marriage to Melania and claimed that Trump pursued the wives of his friends.

It also called into question the president's mental health.

Before its release, Trump tweeted that he never authorized Wolff's access into the White House.

He went on to describe the book as 'phony' and 'full of lies.'

'I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist. Look at this guy's past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!' he tweeted.

However once it was published, the book became a bestseller in America as readers were enthralled with the sensational look inside the White House.

The rights to the book were sold to 32 countries, according to publisher Henry Holt & Co.

The US's decision to pull out of the nuclear deal sparked outrage in Iran as politicians set fire to the American flag
Prime Minister Theresa May has flown to Macedonia this afternoon having spent the morning meeting EU leaders in Bulgaria.

Mrs May met with French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel shortly after landing in Sofia.

European leaders were meeting to discuss the further expansion of the EU into the Western Balkans. They also discussed the Iranian nuclear deal crisis and international security.

Mrs May also held a 30-minute discussion with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to discuss Brexit.

Irish sources described the meeting as 'useful and frank'.

Mr Varadkar warned Mrs May that the UK was at risk of crashing out of the EU without a trade deal in March 2019 if she fails to produce a solution to the Irish border problem within a fortnight.

Mrs May left the EU summit and flew to Skopje where she is holding talks with Macedonian PM Zoran Zaev.

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This means they will not function properly in about 30 per cent of the country

But the new smart meters cannot yet be linked up with a central energy database

More than five million homes cannot yet be equipped with smart energy meters  because they wouldnt work properly if they were installed.

Energy suppliers have been ordered by the Government to start installing a new type of smart meter from now on.

However, The Mail on Sunday understands that these second-generation devices will not function properly in about 30 per cent of the country because they cannot yet be linked up with a central energy database.

Technical issues mean that suppliers are having trouble installing smart meters in about 30 per cent of homes across the UK [File photo]

Homes in remote rural areas and in the North of England and Scotland are most likely to be affected.

Just like the smart meters already fitted in 12 million British homes, the new devices  officially called SMETS 2 meters  are supposed to send usage data to power suppliers automatically.

Homeowners get instant feedback about how much they are spending on gas and electricity via a small screen in their house.

Crucially, many of the first-generation models installed so far lose their smart functions if the customer switches supplier. Nearly a million have gone dumb in the UK.

Second-generation meters can cope with a switch of supplier  but only if they are working properly to start with.

The Government has told energy suppliers that they must offer every household and small business a smart meter by the end of 2020.

Smart meters show customers the cost of their energy in real time. It is hoped they will save households money by encouraging them to reduce the power they use [File photo]

However, new rules state that only second-generation devices count towards this target. If companies fail to meet the deadline, they face being fined by the industry regulator, Ofgem.

A senior energy industry source told The Mail on Sunday: We are caught between the obligation to roll out smart meters as fast as we can and the infrastructure for the next generation of smart meters not yet being ready across the whole country.

A Government spokesman said second-generation smart meters are part of an essential upgrade to our national infrastructure.

Officials at the Data Communication Company, which is responsible for upgrading the smart meter communications infrastructure, insisted that almost all homes will be able to have a smart meter fitted by the end of the year and said suppliers will not be allowed to fit smart meters unless they are sure they will function properly.
A Pakistani victim of the Christchurch attack who was killed trying to wrestle a gun from the shooter will be awarded posthumously in his home country for his courage.

Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that the bravery award would be given to the man, who is believed to be Naeem Rashid, on Sunday.

The news comes after Mr Rashid was immortalised in an enormous mural on display in Auckland, on New Zealand's north island.

The Pakistani foreign office has confirmed that nine of its citizens had been killed in the mass shootings at two mosques in the New Zealand city which claimed the lives of 50 people on Friday.

Video of the massacre shows one man gunned down as he approaches the shooter, while others flee.

The man is believed to be Rashid, but his face is blurred in the footage and he has yet to be formally identified.

Naeem Rashid, pictured, will be given a bravery award from his home country of Pakistan after he died trying to wrestle the gun from the Christchurch shooter on Friday

Prime Minister Imran Khan announced the posthumous award on Twitter on Sunday. Video of the massacre shows one man, believed to be Mr Rashid, gunned down as he approaches the shooter, while others flee

The news comes after Mr Rashid was immortalised in an enormous mural on display in Auckland, on New Zealand's north island

'Pakistan is proud of Mian Naeem Rashid who was martyred trying to tackle the White Supremacist terrorist & his courage will be recognised with a national award,' Khan tweeted on Sunday.

Pakistan has several awards to recognise civilian bravery, and Khan did not specify which one would be awarded to Rashid, whose son also died in the massacre.

Rashid's elder brother Khurshid Alam said that the award 'means a lot' to his family in the northwestern Pakistani city of Abbottabad.

'I feel very proud,' he said, calling the loss of his brother and nephew a 'big, big shock'.

Naeem, he said, had visited the family last year, staying for two months.

'We had a lovely time. He was a man who would be like a kid with children, and like an adult with grown-ups,' Alam said.

Kiwi artist Paul Walsh commemorated Mr Rashid in the mural which features a green and black background to represent his background.

'It represents both Pakistan and New Zealand, united in mourning,' he wrote alongside a picture of the mural he shared to his Facebook page.

'I wish I didn't know who Naeem was,' he wrote. 'I wish he was back at his job as a teacher today, and I wish I was painting something else.

'But some coward changed everything, and I have had to respond in the only way I know how; by honouring the lives of my fellow New Zealanders who didn't make it home on Friday.

'We will not forget you.'

'Pakistan is proud of Mian Naeem Rashid who was martyred trying to tackle the White Supremacist terrorist & his courage will be recognised with a national award,' Khan tweeted on Sunday

Pictured: a relative looks at a snap of Mr Rashid and his son Talha Naeem, who were killed in the attacks

Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the award would be given on March 23, Pakistan Day.

He confirmed that nine Pakistani citizens had been killed in the attack while one was in critical condition.

One 'is still not out of danger but he is being treated', he told reporters in Islamabad without identifying the victim.

Qureshi said families of six of the victims have decided to bury them in Christchurch, while the other three want to bring the remains to Pakistan.

'Whatever the families will decide, we will respect it and fulfil their wishes,' he said, adding that flags will be flown at half-mast in Pakistan on Monday in honour of the victims.

Officials in Pakistan's picturesque northern areas also confirmed that the main suspect, 28-year-old white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, had visited the region as a tourist in October, staying for more than a week.

Syed Israr Hussain, owner of Osho Thang Hotel in Minapin Nagar, said: '(Tarrant) ... stayed for two days before leaving for Khunjerab (Pass, on the border with China).

'He was a decent and quiet guy.'

He said he remembered Tarrant among the many tourists who visit the region 'because he was so impressed by the area, and said he had heard so many negative things about Pakistan but he found it the opposite'.

Tarrant's alleged involvement in the massacre left him 'surprised and shocked', he said.

Tarrant is also believed to have visited Gilgit and Skardu in the mountainous north.
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Tori Spelling is now neighbors with some of the wealthiest celebrities thanks to landing a sweet deal on a five-bedroom, five-bathroom, 3,500 square foot home in Hidden Hills for only $3,500 more a month than she was paying in nearby Woodland Hills.

According to an insider, the McDermotts moved in the first week of March, and have had a tough few weeks.

'Her two nannies quit, and all five of her children came down with the flu, so along with moving she's been dealing with hiring new staff and getting her kids back up and running,' a source tells DailyMail.com

The 1950's era home sits on over an acre of land, and boasts an open floor plan, large family room with fireplace, a swimming pool and spa.

It's actually smaller than other homes she's rented in the past, but it's in a much more desirable area.

Reality stars Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott have moved their family to this five-bedroom, five bathroom home in the private Hidden Hills community where Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Drake, Kylie Jenner and Kris Jenner are now their neighbors

This is the ninth move in eight years for Tori and Dean and their family - Liam, 12, Stella, 10, Hattie, seven, Finn, six and Beau, two

The couple moved to the 3,500-square-foot home in early March and have been having trouble ever since, after both nannies quit and all five children came down with the flu, an insider tells DailyMail.com

The 1950's era home sits on 1.2acres of land and boasts an open floor plan and kitchen with granite counters and stainless steel appliances, as well as a large family room with a fireplace

The master suite has a walk-in closet, sitting area and french doors that open to a private backyard with outdoor BBQ, fireplace, pool and spa

The family shouldn't get too comfortable in the new five-bathroom home, as the rental is only a short-term lease for 18 months and the owners hope to put it back up for sale, DailyMail.com has learned

The family is downsizing into this 3,500-square-foot rental after moving from their 4,700-square-foot Woodland Hills home. But they are paying an additional $3,500-a-month for the privacy

The rustic yet ritzy area of Hidden Hills attracts the rich and famous because of its three guard gated entries so they relax in their homes or outside pools without fans and photographers

The new digs are 'ideal for Tori', the insider says, as she has chickens, goats, turkeys and pigs and the area is zoned for livestock and horses

'Tori is now neighbors with the ''who's who'' of the celebrity world,' says the source. 'Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Jessica Simpson, Kris Jenner, Kylie Jenner, Drake, The Weeknd, Nicollette Sheridan, Scott Foley, and Melissa Etheridge are just a stone's throw away. I'm sure she'll be bumping into them at the clubhouse for events or even when she's just taking her dogs for a walk.'

The rustic yet ritzy area attracts the rich and famous because of its three guard gated entries that serve to protect them from fans and photographers.

'It's also ideal for someone like Tori who has chickens, goats, turkeys and pigs, it's zoned for livestock and horses,' the source said.

Tori shouldn't get too comfortable though, our insider reveals that the Hidden Hills home is only a short-term lease of 18-months, as the owners hope to eventually put the $3.4 million house back up for sale.

As DailyMail.com readers know, restless Tori has a history of packing up her family and moving, making this her ninth move in an eight-year time period.

The McDermotts moved from their five-bed five-bath Woodland Hills home after living there for just over two years.

In December 2016, the family moved to this sprawling 4,714-square-foot, 1980s-era estate is in Woodland Hills, California, just nine miles north of the former rental in Encino

Earlier that year in February 2016, Tori moved her family to this home in Encino, California. At the time, it was the seventh move in five years. Her mother Candy Spelling footed the bill for the home for $7,500 a month

Tori Spelling also moved out of this six-bedroom, seven-bath home, 6,623 square feet home she rented for $10,500 a month in Encino, California

Tori, Dean and their children packed up and moved to the gated Calabasas Estates, to this five-bedroom, five-bath, 3,733 square foot home in July 2015

The couple previously moved to a $16,500 a month rental in the exclusive gated community of Lake Sherwood. The house had six bedrooms, six and a half baths, 9,189 square feet. Tori admitted in her 2013 book 'Spelling It Like It Is' that the home was beyond their financial means

Tori's mother Candy Spelling has admitted to paying for the McDermott family's 'necessities', including their rent, groceries, and private school for the four oldest grandchildren Liam, 12, Stella, 10, Hattie, seven, Finn, six.

Baby Beau McDermott just turned two on March 2 and will likely follow his siblings into private school.

Tori, 45, and her husband Dean, 52, have struggled to make ends meet since their reality shows on Oxygen and Lifetime were canceled.

In February, the couple was served by judgment creditor City National Bank with legal papers ordering them to appear in court on March 29 so they can have their finances examined.

They have been ordered to appear in a Los Angeles court to show the court how they can repay the bank $205,000. If they do not appear, they could face jail time for being in contempt.

The McDermotts have amassed a trail of creditors over the past five years, including the IRS ($707,487), California State Taxes ($282,655), American Express ($88,000 and $37,000).

One bright spot for Tori's financial struggles is the reboot of Beverly Hills 90210, where Tori would reprise her role as Donna Martin

In December, one of her nannies opened the door of their Woodland Hills home only to be served papers on a $1,400 credit card debt that had been sent to collections.

Tori's father Aaron Spelling famously only left his daughter $800,000 at his passing in 2006. His widow Candy, 73, retained control of his $600 million fortune.

One bright spot on the horizon is the Beverly Hills 90210 reboot.

As DailyMail.com reported in February, many of the cast have signed on to appear in a revamp of the popular series which originally ran from 1990 to 2000, as 'heightened versions' of themselves.

'It will definitely be harder for process servers to get to Tori now that she's in Hidden Hills,' says our source, 'maybe there's a method to her madness with this short-term move!'
A Belgian jihadist has been sentenced to hang in Iraq for belonging to ISIS after a judge ignored his plea to be prosecuted in his homeland.

Bilal al-Marchohi, from the city of Antwerp, was given the death penalty for belonging to and conducting operations on behalf of the group.

The 23-year-old is one of dozens of foreign nationals facing execution in Iraq.

During an hour of proceedings at Iraq's Central Criminal Court, the judge read out portions of Marchohi's signed confession and showed a video and photographs that he said proved his membership in the terror group.

Belgian Bilal al-Marchohi (pictured in a French police notice) was given the death penalty for belonging to and conducting operations on behalf of the group

The images from a phone found in his possession at the time of arrest showed Marchohi carrying a gun and making a hand gesture affiliated with the militants. Several pictures showed him cradling his infant son.

Marchohi repeatedly denied all allegations against him in open court, including that he was a member of ISIS in Iraq at any time.

'I shouldn't be prosecuted in Iraq,' Marchohi said. 'I should be prosecuted in Belgium, I am a Belgian citizen.'

During the proceedings, judge Jumaa Saidi told the court that the photographs were clear evidence that Marchohi was a member of ISIS.

A translator was appointed by the judge for Marchohi, who spoke in English throughout the trial.

He was also given a court appointed lawyer with whom he had no contact at all throughout the trial.

A battle is ongoing to dislodge the militants from their final populated enclave in Syria near the Iraqi border

Belgian consular representatives attended the proceedings on Monday. The Belgian foreign ministry in Brussels said it was not immediately able to comment.

Marchohi is the second of two Belgians held in Iraq known to have been sentenced to death for a role in ISIS.

Tarek Jadaoun, 30, also known also known as Abu Hamza al-Beljiki, was sentenced to death in May 2018.

A senior member of ISIS, Jadaoun featured prominently in the group's propaganda videos which threatened attacks on European soil.

Iraq is conducting the trials of hundreds of suspected members of ISIS, many of whom were arrested as the group's strongholds crumbled throughout Iraq.

Human rights groups have accused Iraqi and other regional forces of inconsistencies in the judicial process and flawed trials leading to unfair convictions.

Meanwhile, dozens of foreigners who fled to join ISIS remain in Iraq and Syria having been captured or placed in camps.

Men prepare to be screened after being evacuated out of the last territory held by ISIS, near Baghouz, eastern Syria

British ISIS bride Shamima Begum was stripped of her citizenship by Home Secretary Sajid Javid after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp.

Ms Begum, from Bethnal Green, who left the UK for Syria aged 15, previously said she wanted to return to the UK for the sake of her newborn baby boy.

Mr Javid later rejected suggestions he was responsible for three-week-old Jarrah's death after the baby caught pneumonia in the refugee camp.

ISIS captured a third of Iraq in 2014 but was largely defeated both there and in neighboring Syria last year.

A battle is ongoing to dislodge the militants from their final populated enclave in Syria near the Iraqi border.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia besieging ISIS's last enclave in eastern Syria said this morning it had captured '157 experienced terrorists, mostly foreign nationals'.

The operation was carried out at Baghouz, the site of the ISIS enclave, by SDF special forces, said Mustafa Bali, the head of the militia's media office, on Twitter. He did not say when the operation took place.
Italy's La Scala opera house has decided to return more than 3million euros (2.5million) in funding to Saudi Arabia after a public outcry over human rights abuses.

The Saudi proposal, which would have included giving a seat on the La Scala board to Saudi Arabia's culture minister, set off a furious row.

Human rights groups and some politicians argued that one of Italy's most prestigious cultural institutions should shun Saudi money.

The deeply conservative Muslim kingdom has been accused of repeated rights abuses and has come under intense international scrutiny since the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October.

The mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, who also chairs La Scala's board, said the funds had been deposited into an escrow account without the theater's consent.

Italy's La Scala opera house has decided to return more than 3million euros (2.5million) in funding to Saudi Arabia after a public outcry over human rights abuses

The mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala (centre), who also chairs La Scala's board, said they had unanimously decided against the five-year partnership deal with the Saudi culture ministry

They were part of a proposed 12.8million (15million euro) five-year partnership deal with the Saudi culture ministry.

Under the deal, Saudi Arabias culture minister, Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, would have also joined the board.

'We have unanimously decided to return the money,' Sala told reporters after a board meeting called to decide whether to accept the funding.

'Right now, going down this road is not possible,' he said.

The kingdom has been criticized repeatedly after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, pictured, was accused of ordering the hit on journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October

Deputy prime minister and League leader Matteo Salvini had urged the opera house to reject the cash, while the governor of the Lombardy region - also a member of the League - called at the weekend for the dismissal of the opera house's artistic director, Alexander Pereira.

Sala said Pereira, whose term at La Scala ends next year, would remain in his job.

The kingdom has been criticized repeatedly after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was accused of ordering the hit on journalist Khashoggi, who was butchered by a Saudi hit squad in Istanbul last year.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that more than a year before his death the prince approved a secret campaign to silence dissenters.

The campaign included surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudis, with American officials referring to it as the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group.
The spiritual leader of an upstate New York self-help group pleaded not guilty on Monday to newly filed child pornography charges at a hearing where it became clear that his co-defendants are trying to avoid going to trial with him next month.

Keith Raniere was charged last week with exploiting a child and possessing child pornography.

He had previously pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of operating a secret society within his NXIVM group that forced women 'slaves' to have sex with him and branded them with his initials.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Moira Penza told a judge on Monday that the government is in 'active plea negotiations' with Allison Mack, best known for playing a teenage friend of Superman on the Smallville TV series, and two other defendants in the sex-trafficking case.

Additionally, defense attorney Mark Geragos said that his client, Seagram liquor fortune heiress Clare Bronfman, will be asking for a separate trial on charges she bank-rolled the Albany-based group that has been compared to a cult.

Keith Raniere, the leader of the secretive self-help group NXIVM, is seen second from right in the above court sketch from April 2018. He pleaded not guilty to newly filed child pornography charges

Federal prosecutors said on Monday that the government is in 'active plea negotiations' with Allison Mack, best known for playing a teenage friend of Superman on the Smallville TV series, and two other defendants in the sex-trafficking case

Bronfman and Mack have previously denied the charges.

'We don't need to be the collateral damage,' Geragos said.

It remains unclear whether Raniere will face the child porn charges at the upcoming trial in federal court in Brooklyn or if he will be tried on them separately in upstate New York at a later date.

His lawyers have accused prosecutors of tainting the jury pool by making the sensational accusations with the start of jury selection only three weeks away.

'The gravity of these charges is monumental,' one the attorneys, Marc Agnifilo, said Monday.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis told the defense lawyers that he wants them to file briefs by the end of the week before he would rule on how to go forward.

The prospect that the 58-year-old Raniere - known as 'Vanguard' within his group - could stand trial alone began to take shape last week when NXIVM's chief executive, Nancy Salzman, became the first defendant to plead guilty.

She admitted to stealing identities of the group's critics and hacking into their email accounts, as well as conspiring to doctor videotapes before they were turned over to plaintiffs in a New Jersey lawsuit against the group.

Nancy Salzman, who co-founded the group with Raniere, broke down in tears Wednesday as she entered a guilty plea to one count of racketeering while apologizing to her daughter and co-defendant, Lauren.

She said that it took a great deal of soul searching to arrive at her decision, and then struggled to gather herself as she stated: 'I am deeply sorry for the trouble I have brought to my daughter.'

Salzman did this without a plea deal in place and said she was eager to begin atoning for hers sins, with her crime carrying a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Guilt trip: Nancy Salzman (above on Wednesday) entered a guilty plea to a charge of racketeering in court on Wednesday, breaking down as she spoke

Bombshells: The US Attorney's Office filed a new memorandum stating that they would present evidence that Keith Rainiere raped two minors for years at trial (memo above)

Allegation: Keith Raniere (above) photographed one of these underage children performing a sexual act that will be used as evidence said the prosecution, noting the photo is dated

Court date: Bronfman (left in October) and Allison Mack (right in May) will be in court this week. Mack is said to be in 'active plea negotiations' with the government

According to a government filing, the new charges against Raniere involve 'a 15-year-old girl who was employed by Nancy Salzman and who - ten years later - became Raniere's first-line "slave"' and 'a child whose sexual relationship with Raniere was known to, and facilitated by, members of the Enterprise.'

Regarding the teen, the papers say the evidence includes child pornography Raniere created and possessed and 'electronic communications between the victim and Raniere reflecting their sexual relationship and indicating that it began when she was fifteen years old.'

Raniere has denied the allegations.

He's been jailed without bail since being brought to the U.S. in 2018 following his arrest in Mexico.

Nancy Salzman's daughter, Lauren (above), also faces charges including sex trafficking, kidnapping, money laundering, and other crimes for allegedly coercing minors into having sex with Raniere
A teenager has pleaded guilty to pushing her friend from a bridge at a popular swimming area near Vancouver last year.

Tay'lor Smith, 19, appeared Monday in Clark County District Court after accepting a plea deal last month charged with misdemeanor reckless endangerment for an incident where Jordan Holgerson, 16, was pushed on August 7, 2018.

She previously faced up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine for the incident at Moulton Falls in Washington state that went viral when a video was posted on YouTube.

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Tay'lor Smith (left), 19, on Monday pleaded guilty to pushing Jordan Holgerson (right), 16, from a bridge August 7, 2018 at Moulton Falls near Vancouver

Now prosecutors are recommending no jail time when Smith is sentenced March 27.

Instead Smith could get off relatively lightly with community service and electronic monitoring that would leave her confined to her home.

Judge Darvin Zimmerman delayed the sentencing to hear more about the victim's injuries, medical costs and to give Holgerson time to gather her thoughts in case she wanted to speak before hearing Holgerson's fate.

But The Columbian reports her mother Genelle Holgerson said from the court gallery: 'She doesnt want more time, your honor.'

Holgerson broke six ribs and punctured both lungs in a fall of about 60 feet.

Smith will be sentenced for misdemeanor reckless endangerment on March 27

She faced a year in prison and a possible $5,000 fine but took a plea deal where the prosecutor recommended no jail time

Smith could get community service and be confined to her home with an electronic monitor

The victim's mother said Monday outside of the court proceedings that Jordan was undergoing physical therapy on her shoulder and suffering from anxiety.

Both the victim and her parent said they want to move on from this chapter of their lives.

'I just want it to be done, I don't want to wait until next Wednesday,' Jordan told KOIN. 'I just have these anxiety attacks now, but there's nothing I can really do about it. But I'm playing softball.'

She added about her recovery: 'Kind of on track now, better than it was.'

In an interview on Good Morning America in February, Smith said she didn't consider the repercussions of pushing Holgerson last summer.

Holgerson was standing on the ledge and had planned to jump but backed out at the last second. Her friends were recording a video of her at the time.

Holgerson was standing on the ledge with a group of friends, deliberating whether or not to jump, when her friend Taylor Smith pushed her

Holgerson broke six ribs and punctured both lungs in a fall of over 60 feet in Washington state

The victim's mother, Genelle Holgerson, (right) said Monday outside of the court proceedings that Jordan (left) was undergoing physical therapy on her shoulder and suffering from anxiety

Both the victim and her parent said they want to move on from this chapter of their lives

Smacking the water with her chest-first, the speed at which she fell meant that when she hit the water, she would have suffered the same impact as if she had been hitting concrete, according to experts.

Smith was 18, making her two years older than her friend at the time.

In an interview with Today last August, Holgerson said she had mixed feelings about how she wanted her friend to be punished.

'Certain days I kind of want her to be put in jail but some days I think that might be a little too harsh,' she said.

Holgerson is shown above in the hospital not long after the attack

Some of the teenager's painful injuries are shown above. Experts said the fall would have been similar to landing on concrete at the speed and height she plummeted at

Her family previously said in court that they were 'OK' with the offer prosecutors had put forward.

Smith previously spoke out to say she was sorry for hurting her friend.

'I never intended to hurt her ever, nor would I intend to hurt anyone, ever. I'm sorry it worked out that way,' she said last year. 'I accept the charges maturely and all I can do is hope for the best for Jordan and myself.'

In the video, Jordan is filmed standing on the ledge, shaking with nerves as her friends count down for her to jump into the water.

A young woman's voice can be heard saying 'I'm going to push you,' at one point. It is not clear if that voice was Smith's.

The push was not a forceful one but was enough for the teen to lose her balance and fall as the others gasped in disbelief.

In an interview on Good Morning America in February Smith said she didn't consider the repercussions of pushing Holgerson last summer
The alleged murderer of the Gambino crime family boss previously targeted Nancy Pelosi for a 'citizen's arrest', DailyMail.com can reveal.

Alleged murderer Anthony Comello (above) is accused of killing Gambino crime family boss Francesco 'Franky Boy' Cali last week

Anthony Comello, 24, appeared in a New Jersey court on Monday charged with gunning down Francesco 'Franky Boy' Cali on March 13, with MAGA written on Comello's hand.

An NYPD source tells DailyMail.com Comello once sought out a US Marshal to ask them how he could perform a citizen's arrest on Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The alleged hitman was known to police after he asked advice on how to make the arrest. It is unclear what action the U.S. Marshals Office took as a result.

The source told DailyMail.com, 'He was clearly unhinged well before he decided to kill Cali. The whole citizen's arrest inquiry against Nancy Pelosi is proof of that.'

Comello asked a US Marshal how he could go about performing a 'citizen's arrest' on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (above).

Camello (above) showed off pro-Trump slogans on his left hand during a court appearance on Monday in Toms River, New Jersey. The messages include MAGA Forever'

While appearing on Monday at a court hearing in Toms River, New Jersey, where he agreed to be extradited to New York, Comello showed pro-Trump slogans on his left hand.

In ballpoint pen, Comello had written 'MAGA Forever', the abbreviation for 'Make America Great Again', the campaign slogan popularized by Donald Trump in his 2016 Presidential campaign.

Gambino crime family boss Francesco 'Franky Boy' Cali (above) was murdered outside his Staten Island home on March 13

Comello had also scrawled read United We Stand MAGA and Patriots In Charge.

When asked to comment on Comello targeting Pelosi, the US Marshals Office referred inquiries to the NYPD.

An NYPD spokesman said he had no comment.

Comello's courtroom stunt has already been compared to the actions of 'MAGA Bomber' Cesar Sayoc.

Floridian Sayoc, 56, was charged in October last year with sending 16 pipe bombs to President Trump's political enemies, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.

When he was arrested, Sayoc had been living out of a van covered with pro-Trump stickers and images of prominent Democrats with cross-hairs on their faces. Sayoc faces life imprisonment if convicted.
The best kebab shops in Britain were revealed last night as a glittering ceremony was held to celebrate their 2.8billion contribution to the British economy.

Batman Grill in St Leonards-on-Sea was given the Best Delivery prize at the British Kebab Awards, with Wallington Express in Croydon, South London, in second place.

Recent reviews for Batman Grill on JustEat, which sponsored the prize, said it delivered 'good quality meat' and they were 'rarely disappointed with this place'.

The 7th British Kebab Awards, presented by BBC Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills, took place in the ballroom of the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in front of more than 1,200 guests including more than 110 MPs and members of the House of Lords.

Labour Party leader and vegetarian Jeremy Corbyn attended and addressed the event, to a mixture of boos and cheers - and revealed his love for falafel.

Search the start of your postcode within our module to see if any of the shortlisted kebab shops are near you:

Just Eat Best Delivery Winner, Batman Grill in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

Veyso's Romford in East London won the award for best value restaurant winner

Testi on Stoke Newington High Street in North London won the prize for best kebab restaurant in North and West London

He added: 'It's strange really. As one who chooses not to eat meat and chooses not to drink... I love kebab shops. I love what they do!'

Research in support of the event showed that 44 per cent of Labour remainer respondents had eaten a kebab in the month prior, compared to 25 per cent of Conservative respondents.

Winners took to the stage triumphing in 16 categories, ranging from Chef of the Year, to Fine Dining, to Kebab Van of the Year, as well as eight regional awards for the best kebab restaurants across the UK.

The crowd was also entertained by live music and belly dancers.

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party leader delivers a prize during the British Kebab Awards

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party leader during his speech at the British Kebab Awards

The prestigious event brings together MPs and other celebrities to celebrate growth, popularity and success of the kebab industry in Britain

Among the winners was Uni Kebab, of Southampton, after receiving the prize for customer satisfaction.

Tens of thousands of members of the public had voted for more than 5,000 local restaurants and takeaways in the competition, around one in four of the estimated 20,000 throughout the UK.

The winners were taken from a shortlist of 155 entries judged by a panel including Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds; Assistant General Secretary of Unite, Steve Turner; Chief Political Correspondent of the Financial Times, Jim Pickard; and Cobra Beer Sales Director, Samson Sohail.

The annual event is the only one to recognise the contribution made by the kebab industry to the British economy - worth more than 2.8 billion a year, supporting around 200,000 jobs across restaurants, suppliers and the food industry.

Alim-Et Restaurant in East Malling, Kent, won the regional award for best kebab restaurant

Wallington Express in Croydon, South London, was highly recommended in the delivery prize

Among the winners was Uni Kebab, of Southampton after receiving the prize for customer satisfaction

Skewd Kitchen in Barnet, North London won the award for being the best fine dining restaurant

Chaska in Enniskillen, Fermanagh was voted the best kebab restaurant in the north of Ireland

The UK's first kebab shop, Istanbul Restaurant in Soho, opened during the Second World War and pictures of it feature in the Imperial War Museum.

However, it was not until 1966 that the famous doner kebab - cooked on a vertical spit - first appeared with the opening of the Hodja Nasreddin Kebab House by Cetin Bukey and Kojay Husey in in North London's Newington Green.

The British Kebab Awards were established in 2003 by Lambeth restaurateur Ibrahim Dogus to help celebrate the unsung achievements of the kebab restaurant and takeaway industries.

He said: 'The kebab is an unsung cornerstone of high streets across the country, and the simply superb quality of this year's entries shows that British small businesses can more than compete on a world stage of cuisine.

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party leader and vegetarian, arrives at the British Kebab Awards

A dancer is seen entertaining at the British Kebab Awards, accompanied by musicians

Corbyn addressed the event, to a mixture of boos and cheers - and revealed his love for falafel

Jeremy Corbyn and wife Laura among other guests stand for a minute silence in light of the New Zealand attacks

'What is also just as important is that we must not let Brexit hinder the UK's flourishing restaurant and takeaway industries, which employ so many people often from migrant backgrounds.'

He added: 'Immigrants work hard, pay their taxes and make a net contribution to the UK economy. It's not where you are from, but what you bring that matters. Immigrants put the Great into Great Britain'.

Graham Corfield, UK Managing Director of awards sponsor Just Eat, said: 'There are so many brilliant finalists in this year's 16 categories, all of which have been nominated due to their significant contribution to the industry.

'It's incredibly important to celebrate the thousands of kebab restaurants across the UK and we're delighted that we're able to sponsor the British Kebab Awards for another year.'

The winners were taken from a shortlist of 155 entries judged by a panel including Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds. Jeremy Corbyn is pictured with guests at the Park Plaza Hotel

Addressing the crowd, Jeremy Corbyn said: 'Its strange really. As one who chooses not to eat meat and chooses not to drink... I love kebab shops. I love what they do!'

Jeremy Corbyn taking his seat at the event which was hosted by BBC Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills

Every day, more than 1.3million kebabs are sold across Britain from over 20,000 kebab outlets selling 2,500 tonnes of lamb and chicken doner each week, while 200 doner kebab manufacturers see a combined turnover in excess of 750million.

When it comes to the kebab itself, the iconic doner remains king with 41 per cent choosing it as their favourite, followed by shish (18 per cent) and kofte (5 per cent).

For fillings, lamb comes out on top (33 per cent) followed by chicken (28 per cent), beef (9 per cent) and vegetarian (4 per cent).

This year the awards raised money for the bone and soft tissue cancer charity Sarcoma UK.
British comedian John Oliver has torn shreds off Senator Fraser Anning and jumped to the defence of 'Egg Boy' in an expletive-laden monologue.

In a speech on late-night show Last Week Tonight, Oliver called Anning a 'hard-line racist politician' and blasted him for his response to the Christchurch terror attack.

'We've actually talked about him before on this show after he proposed a final solution to Muslim immigration, and his response to the Christchurch shooting was very much on brand,' Oliver said.

British comedian and late night talk show host John Oliver is the latest personality to savage Senator Fraser Anning and defend Egg Boy

Oliver pointed out that the backlash against Anning was swift and widespread but wanted to also single out Egg Boy, William Connolly, 17, for cracking an egg over the senator's head

He then read a portion of the Senator Anning's statement in the wake of the mosque massacre, where he blamed the attack on New Zealand's Muslim immigration.

'The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place,' Anning's statement began.

'Muslims may have been the victims today, usually they are the perpetrators.'

'Holy s***! That might be the worst possible response to what happened,' Oliver said.

'Holy s***! That might be the worst possible response to what happened,' Oliver said of Senator Anning's comments in the wake of the Christchurch Mosque massacre

Oliver then praised 17-year-old William Connolly, dubbed 'Egg Boy', for cracking an egg over the senator's head for his divisive comments.

'Thankfully, there was immediate outcry following Anning's comments, and one young Australian went a bit further,' Oliver said, sharing a clip of the infamous moment.

Oliver finished by using the same language Senator Anning used in his Christchurch speech to poke fun at him.

'The real cause of Fraser Anning getting hit with an egg is Fraser Anning saying things that prompt people to throw eggs at him,' Oliver said.

'He may be the victim today, but usually he's a huge f***ing ***hole.'
Kiwi Farms website founder Joshua Moon (pictured) has published an email exchange with New Zealand police after he refused to hand over information pertaining to Christchurch investigation

The founder of an American far-right chat board has lashed out at New Zealand police after they requested information on posts linked to the Christchurch shooting.

An email exchange posted on Kiwi Farms on Monday, reveals New Zealand Detective Senior Sergeant John Michael had asked the site to preserve any relevant email and IP addresses to aid their investigation.

Accused gunman Brenton Tarrant, 28, is believed to have posted his 74-page manifesto and details of his alleged attack onto the site ran by American Joshua Moon.

He also foreshadowed the shootings on at least one other controversial forum popular among alt-right groups.

Moon has published his expletive-filled reply to police in full, describing the request as a 'joke' before calling New Zealand a 's***hole country' and an 'irrelevant island nation'.

Moon posted an expletive-laden response in which he said he was responsible for posting alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant's manifesto and video of his alleged attack on the site

The thread revealed a New Zealand detective had requested the site to preserve any relevant email and IP addresses to aid their investigation

Brenton Tarrant (pictured in court) is believed to have posted details of his alleged attack as well as a 74-page manifesto, popular alt-right message boards before allegedly carrying out his massacre

'Is this a joke? I'm not turning over information about my users. The person responsible for posting the video and manifesto PDF is myself,' Moon wrote.

'I feel real bad for you guys, you've got a quiet nation and now this attack is going to be the first thing people think of for the next 10 years when they hear the name New Zealand, but you can't do this.

'Tell your superiors they're going to make the entire country and its government look like clowns by trying to censor the Internet. You're a small, irrelevant island nation barely more recognizable than any other nameless pacific sovereignty.

'You do not have the clout to eradicate a video from the Internet and you do not have the legal reach to imprison everyone whose posted it. If anyone turns over to you the information they're asking for they're not only cowards, but they're f***ing idiots.'

Police confirmed in a statement they had contacted the site, but would not comment further.

The email thread on Kiwi Farms show police allegedly contacted the site on March 17 saying: 'I am hoping that you can help us with an investigation the New Zealand Police are working on.'

'At around the time of the shooting there were a number of posts and links posted on kiwifarms.net relating to the shooting and Tarrant.

'We would like to preserve any posts and technical data including IP addresses, email addresses etc linked to these posts pending a formal legal request.'

Moon went on to sign off his email saying: 'I don't give a single solitary f**k what section 50 of your f****t law say about sharing your email. F**k you and f**k your s***hole country.'

He also said his website title is not associated with New Zealand, explaining the name is 'a pointed jab at some of the mushmouthed autistic people we make fun of.'

Moon, who is based in Florida, is a former administrator of 8chan - another message board popular among alt-right groups.

He is reportedly a Trump supporter and is known for his anti-feminist and alt-right views, according to news.com.au.

Tarrant is accused of gunning down 50 people at two Christchurch mosques last Friday. A Muslim worshipper was seen praying at a memorial for the victims near the Al Noor mosque

A police officer passes a candle to a schoolgirl during a students vigil near Al Noor mosque on Monday

Tarrant's livestream of his alleged massacre has led authorities to crack down on the internet in an attempt to stop the footage from spreading.

Facebook announced it had taken down 1.5million videos in 24 hours as authorities scrambled to stop users from sharing it.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has written to global asking them to crack down on social media companies that broadcast terrorist attacks.

'Social media companies are international businesses and it's up to the international community to force them to act,' he said on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, an 18-year-old man accused of distributing the livestream, but who is not connected to the attack, appeared in Christchurch District Court.

The teen - who is also charged with posting a photograph of one of the mosques attacked with the message 'target acquired' - was denied bail and could face up to 14 years' jail if found guilty.

New Zealand's government has announced a probe into how intelligence agencies on both sides of the Tasman failed to flagged Tarrant as a risk.
A Liberal MP has accused Q&A host Tony Jones of being 'inappropriate and tacky' during a fiery exchange about claims Scott Morrison once said the Liberal Party should capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiment in Australia.

Jones asked Minister for Emergency Management Linda Reynolds whether it was true the current Prime Minister urged his party to use fears about Muslim immigration for political gain during a meeting in 2010.

'Do you want to respond to that?' Jones asked, pointing out The Project host Waleed Aly's had also referenced the claims in his emotional editorial.

Ms Reynolds refused to directly answer the question, instead cautioning 'all commentators and politicians to be very careful with your words'.

Bizarrely, she then launched into an unrelated response involving her disagreement with a political bill allowing refugees detained on Naru and Manus Island to be airlifted to Australia for medical treatment.

Tony Jones asked Liberal Minster for Emergency Management Linda Reynolds (pictured) whether it was true the current Prime Minister urged his party to use the issue for political gain, as was claimed in a 2011 Sydney Morning Herald report

'I was literally almost physically ill when I saw some of my Senate and House of Representatives colleagues in the chamber cheering and high-fiving the passage of these amendments,' she said.

'I was one of the few who has lived through terrorism and the impact up in the Bali bombings.'

'Are you drawing a link between the Bali bombings and refugees coming to Australia for medical services?' Jones then interrupted.

'What I'm saying is having my colleagues cheer for this policy that will inevitably lead to the boat trade coming again,' replied Ms Reynolds.

When pressed again to answer the question, Ms Reynolds said the PM had denied the allegations before, adding it was 'inappropriate and tacky' to use the recent tragedy in New Zealand for political purposes.

In response to the initial question from Jones (pictured) about whether political rhetoric was partly responsible for Islamophobia in the country, Ms Reynolds said that she would caution commentators and politicians to 'be very careful with your words'

'My point is this, Tony, is that there are people out there who commoditise other human being They are people we have to stand up to and stop. But we absolutely have to reserve our compassion for those who are genuine refugees.'

'You didn't really answer the question,' responded Jones, referring to whether she'd be disturbed if she discovered Mr Morrison had indeed ever suggested capitalising on Islamophobia to win votes.

'The PM has been very clear tonight it did not happen,' said Ms Reynolds. 'It simply did not happen.'

'My bigger point is for anybody to try and politicise this issue now, while events are still unfolding in New Zealand, is inappropriate and tacky.'
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has managed to stay in President Donald Trump's good graces, joked Monday that he will leave his role when Trump 'tweets me out of office'

In a rare light-hearted comment about his notoriously mercurial boss, Trump's loyal top diplomat alluded to the inglorious fate of his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.

Asked at a forum in his home state of Kansas how long he will remain secretary of state, Pompeo said to the audience's laughter: 'I'm going to be there until he tweets me out of office.'

'Which I'm not counting on, at least today,' Pompeo said, before praising Trump.

Pompeo, who served at the start of Trump's term as CIA director, is careful not to show any daylight with the president and has succeeded in becoming one of the rare original cabinet members who has not clashed with him.

There has been no daylight between President Trump (left) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (right)

Tillerson, a courtly former oil executive who pressed unsuccessfully for Trump to stay in international agreements, was sacked by tweet after he returned from a trip to Africa, with the White House letting it be known that he learned the news while on the toilet.

Pompeo, a former congressman popular with conservatives, has been recruited by top Republicans to run for an open Senate seat in Kansas next year when Trump is up for re-election.

He has been coy about his intentions.

In an interview with his hometown newspaper The Wichita Eagle, Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, said of his political future: 'The Lord will get me to the right place.'

Pompeo returned to Kansas ahead of a trip to the Middle East for a conference on promoting opportunities for businesses from the American heartland.

Pompeo's predecessor, Rex Tillerson, frequently clashed with Trump during his tumultuous 14-month tenure at the State Department

Trump fired Tillerson via Twitter a year ago this month and named Pompeo to replace him

The meeting will lead up to the June 4-5 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in The Hague that Pompeo will co-host with The Netherlands.

Echoing a Trump theme of anti-elitism, Pompeo said he wanted to recruit more diplomats away from the U.S. coasts.

'The State Department prides itself on having a diverse workforce. There's many dimensions to that. I want to make sure everyone we hire is not from New York or Boston or Washington,' he told the forum.
A construction worker who allegedly posted messages in support of the Christchurch mosque massacre and kept a crossbow and a medieval mace in his shed has cried in court.

Chad Rolf Vinzelberg, from South Australia, hung his head and wept as he faced Elizabeth Magistrates Court on Monday.

The 37-year-old has been charged with one count of aggravated possessing a firearm without a licence and four counts of using or possessing a prohibited weapon.

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Chad Rolf Vinzelberg (pictured) hung his head and wept as he faced Elizabeth Magistrates Court on Monday

The 37-year-old has been charged with one count of aggravated possessing a firearm without a licence and four counts of using or possessing a prohibited weapon

Police prosecutor Brevet Sergeant Peter Finey told the court police were on Friday made aware of comments posted by Vinzelberg and photos that showed him with a firearm.

'It was after the Christchurch massacre,' he said.

'He posted certain things on Facebook in support of that.'

The court heard the discovery led police to search Vinzelberg's home at Smithfield, north of Adelaide, where they seized a fake pistol, extendable baton and two flick knives from under his mattress, and a medieval mace and crossbow from his shed.

In an interview, Vinzelberg told officers he bought the fake pistol at a garage sale several years ago, and the other weapons were bought online, on Gumtree or at a shop at Salisbury.

Chad Rolf Vinzelberg posted comments on social media in support of the Christchurch mosque massacre. Alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant (pictured) stormed the mosques, leaving 50 people dead

'The messages posted on Facebook by the defendant (that) brought him to police attention are significant in concern and, in light of that, the prosecution have a general concern for the safety of the public,' he said.

But defence lawyers said a lot of the seized weapons were mounted ornamental items found in what Vinzelberg referred to as his 'man cave'.

They also argued Vinzelberg worked 40-60 hours a week as a demolition rigger, pays the mortgage on his family's home, and had never been remanded in custody before.

Magistrate Gary Gumpl released Vinzelberg on $2000 bail on the condition he does not access or post anything on the internet, and he will reappear before the court in December.

Vinzelberg, who was supported in court by his partner and father, fled from awaiting media after he was released.
Donald Trump Jr. slammed tech companies like Facebook and Twitter in an op-ed on Monday, claiming their treatment of conservatives could enact a system of censorship equal to the one used in China as a prominent Republican congressman sued Twitter for 'shadow-banning conservatives.'

'Left unchecked, Big Tech and liberal activists could construct a private 'social credit' system  not unlike what the communists have nightmarishly implemented in China  that excludes outspoken conservatives from wide swaths of American life simply because their political views differ from those of tech executives,' Trump Jr., the son of the president, wrote in The Hill newspaper.

Trump Jr. has often railed against tech giants alleged censorship conservatives and has claimed his own social media posts were censored by them.

Tech companies argue they dont single out conservatives for censorship.

Donald Trump Jr. slammed tech companies like Twitter in an op-ed on Monday

GOP Rep. Devin Nunes filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Twitter and some of its users for defamation and shadow banning

And his op-ed in The Hill, along with op-eds last month for FoxNews.com and RealClearPolitics, are serving as a rallying cry for conservatives to fight back against any online oppression.

His latest chop against censorship comes on the day Rep. Devin Nunes filed a lawsuit seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages against Twitter and some of its users.

Nunes said in his court filing, which was obtained by Fox News, Twitter was guilty of 'knowingly hosting and monetizing content that is clearly abusive, hateful and defamatory  providing both a voice and financial incentive to the defamers  thereby facilitating defamation on its platform.'

Nunes named specific Twitter accounts in his complain, including an accusation that GOP consultant Liz Mair published tweets that 'implied that Nunes colluded with prostitutes and cocaine addicts, that Nunes does cocaine, and that Nunes was involved in a 'Russian money laundering front.''

The suit also names the accounts @DevinNunesMom and 'Devin Nunes' Cow,' or @DevinCow.

Mair, who ran an anti-Trump super PAC called Make America Awesome during the 2016 election, did not respond to Fox News' request for comment. Nor did Twitter.

Nunes cites Mair's criticism of his partial ownership in a Napa Valley winery, which, the Fresno Bee reported, used hookers and cocaine to entice investors.

Mair tweeted a link to the article in her criticism of Nunes.

Nunes also accuses the social media platform of intentionally shadow banning him.

Shadow banning is the act of blocking or partially blocking a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.

His lawyers wrote in their complaint: 'It was calculated to interfere with and influence the federal election and interfere with Nunes' ongoing investigation as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Twitter's actions affected the election results. The combination of the shadow-ban and Twitter's refusal to enforce its Terms and Rules in the face of clear and present abuse and hateful conduct caused Nunes to lose support amongst voters.'

Social-media platforms have been seen as immune from defamation lawsuits but Nunes is arguing that by curating its content aggressively and banning certain users outlets like Twitter have lost the argument they are a conduit and are actually a media outlet with an editorial point-of-view.

'Twitter created and developed the content at issue in this case by transforming false accusations of criminal conduct, imputed wrongdoing, dishonesty and lack of integrity into a publicly available commodity used by unscrupulous political operatives and their donor/clients as a weapon,' he wrote.

Nunes named specific Twitter accounts in his complain, including an accusation that GOP consultant Liz Mair (above) published tweets that 'implied that Nunes colluded with prostitutes and cocaine addicts, that Nunes does cocaine, and that Nunes was involved in a 'Russian money laundering front.''

The Mair tweet Nunes cited in his lawsuit

Meanwhile, Trump Jr. continues to sound the drum beat against big tech.

'There is no conservative principle that even remotely suggests we are obligated to adopt a laissez-faire attitude while the richest companies on earth abuse the power we give them to put a thumb on the scale for our political enemies,' he wrote in The Hill.

'If anything, our love of the free market dictates that we must do whatever is necessary to ensure that the free marketplace of ideas remains open to all,' he added.

The president's son has also accused social media of setting up their censorship of conservatives ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

'I had one week  this summer I called it out. I had something like 10 million organic impressions and zero new followers. It's statistically impossible,' he told Fox News last month. 'So it feels like it's a dry run where they are trying to suppress any kind of right-wing message  any kind of conservative message for 2020. I mean they're setting it up. They are just seeing how far they can get away.'

In his op-ed for The Hill, Trump Jr. also praised an interview Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave at CPAC, the annual conference for conservatives.

There, Hawley railed against 'sweetheart deals' between government and big tech companies.

'Google and Facebook should not be a law unto themselves,' Hawley said.' They should not be able to discriminate. they should not be able to tell us to sit down and shut up.'

President Donald Trump has also slammed tech companies for censoring conservatives, a charge the tech giants deny.
A Muslim blogger's moving message about the New Zealand terror attack has gone viral.

Jinghan Naan, who runs a blog titled The Radiant Muslim, directed her post to Brenton Tarrant, who is accused of killing 50 people at two mosques on Friday.

She said his alleged attack will bring Muslims closer together and lead to greater understanding and support from non-Muslims.

Scroll down for video

Jinghan Naan (pictured), who runs a blog titled The Radiant Muslim, directed her post to Brenton Tarrant, who is accused of killing 50 people at two mosques on Friday

Since the attack on Friday, hundreds of tributes have been laid outside the two Christchurch mosques which were targeted

'Appreciate that you made the effort to find out the timing of our noon prayer,' Ms Naan wrote in the post, which has been shared more than 50,000 times.

'Appreciate that you learnt more about our religion to know that Fridays are the days the men go to the mosques for their congregational prayers.

'But I guess there were some things you, rather unfortunately, didn't get to learn.

'Perhaps you didn't know that what you did probably made them Martyrs.'

She said that 'even people like you' are welcome in mosques.

'Everyone and anyone is welcome to be with us,' she said.

Since the attack on Friday, hundreds of tributes have been laid outside the two Christchurch mosques which were targeted - and thousands of people have paid their respects with candlelit vigils around the world.

Ms Naan wrote: 'Appreciate that you made countless New Zealanders come out of their homes to visit the mosques nearest to them with flowers and beautiful messages of peace and love.

Thousands of people have paid their respects with candlelit vigils around the world

Schoolchildren and other well-wishers view flowers and tributes near Al Noor mosque

'You have broken many many hearts and you have made the world weep. You have left a huge void.

'But what you also have done is brought us closer together. And it has strengthened our faith and resolve.'

'In the coming weeks, more people will turn up in the mosques, a place you hate so much, fortified by the strength in their faith, and inspired by their fallen brothers and sisters.

'In the coming weeks, more non-Muslims will turn up at the gates of mosques with fresh flowers and beautifully handwritten notes. They may not have known where the mosques in their area was. But now, they do. All because of you.

'You may have achieved your aim of intended destruction, but I guess you failed to incite hatred, fear and despair in all of us.

'And while I understand that it may have been your objective, I hate to say that after all of that elaborate planning, and the perverse and wretched efforts on your part, you still failed to drive a divide among the Muslims and non-Muslims in the world.

'For that, I can't say that I'm sorry.'

Her post comes as hundreds of students gathered to pay tribute to those killed in the Christchurch massacre.

Tearful youngsters have staged vigils around New Zealand in the wake of the horrifying attack.

Some came together for moving renditions of the haka - a traditional Maori ceremonial dance.

Others lit candles and embraced outside the Al Noor mosque - one of two targeted on Friday.

Tarrant, 28, was charged with murder on Saturday after the mass shootings.

Hundreds of New Zealand school children today gathered to pay tribute to those killed in the Christchurch massacre - with some performing a traditional haka dance (pictured)
Pauline Hanson has accused David Koch of 'bullying' her after she was ambushed by the Sunrise host in an explosive live television interview on Monday.

The One Nation Senator took to Facebook following the heated on-air exchange in which she was accused by Koch of 'empowering' white supremacists such as Australian Brenton Tarrant, the alleged gunman who killed 50 people in the Christchurch terrorist attack.

Ms Hanson was also involved in a fiery face-off with fellow Federal crossbencher Derryn Hinch during her appearance on the program.

In a three minute video that has since attracted more than 235,400 views, Ms Hanson thanked One Nation fans for their overwhelming support.

An angry Pauline Hanson took to social media to defend herself after appearing on Sunrise

'Your comments suggested you thought I was being bullied and shut down, it was an ambush,' an angry Ms Hanson said.

'I felt that way too because I haven't been able to explain myself properly and answer the questions. I know how you feel because you feel exactly the same way and you feel you don't have a voice.'

A fired up Ms Hanson then questioned whether Mr Koch and Senator Hinch had actually read her party's immigration policies.

'Do they understand? I don't think they do. They're quick to criticise me, but when I get out and speak to people, I know how you feel because I feel exactly the same way,' she said.

Ms Hanson reiterated she doesn't condone the Christchurch terrorist attack or the way it was conducted 'in any way shape or form' but said people are in fear of 'the ever-changing society we now live in'.

David Koch (right) copped viewer backlash for the way he treated Pauline Hanson on Sunrise

'My heartfelt sympathies go out to the people who have lost their lives and their loved one, the same as I did for all of the other terrorist attacks that happened through out the world,' Ms Hanson said.

'My comments are purely based on let's find the reasons behind these terrorist attacks. Don't shut down debate. Give the people an opportunity to have their say.'

Ms Hanson again downplayed previous connections to under-fire Senator Fraser Anning after being ambushed by Koch and Senator Hinch.

'I don't agree with anything Fraser Anning has said in placing the blame on these innocent people, that's not the way to go about it,' she said.

Many of the 6,300 comments on the Facebook video supported Ms Hanson.

Ms Hanson had a surprising ally in Adelaide-based Imam Tawhid (pictured), who described the ambush on Sunrise as 'unfair, dishonest, misleading and un-Australian'

'I've got to give it to you, you're a fighter. A lot of people would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. Keep up the great work you do. I'd love to shout you a beer if I ever run into you. You're a legend,' one man commented.

One woman added: 'Everybody has the right to explain, to express an opinion. That from Sunrise I think was a shocking display of bullying. Way way out of line! I admire you for staying strong and appreciate this post right now.'

Others called for the launch of an online petition to remove 'Bully Kochie' from Australian television.

But not everyone was supportive.

'Don't like Sunrise, intensely dislike Hanson. They both can get egged profusely and I won't care,' one man commented.

Another added: 'I'm ashamed of Pauline Hanson who has made racism and bigotry more acceptable.'

Adelaide Imam Tawhidi leapt to the defence of Pauline Hanson. Pictured is his lengthy Facebook post

Ms Hanson had a surprising ally in Adelaide-based Imam Tawhidi, who described Monday's saga on Sunrise as 'unfair, dishonest, misleading and un-Australian.'

'That was truly disgusting, Sunrise. What you did to Pauline Hanson this morning was pure cowardice and it only reveals your level of integrity,' he wrote in a lengthy Facebook post.

'As a Muslim, I oppose your politicisation of the NZ mosque Massacre and you trying to pin it on Pauline. Pauline has been silent the entire time, and hasn't made any foolish comments like others in parliament.'

On Monday, Koch didn't hold back when Hanson appeared on Seven's breakfast program, grilling the federal senator on her party's 'anti-Muslim policies' in the wake of Friday's Christchurch terrorist attack which claimed 50 lives.

Alleged Australian gunman Brenton Tarrant released a 74-page terrorist manifesto on social media the day before the tragedy.

'This terrorist manifesto almost reads like One Nation immigration and Muslim policy. Do you feel complicit with this atrocity?,' Koch asked Hanson.

'Your comments suggest you thought I was being bullied and shut down, it was an ambush,' Ms Hanson told supporters in a three minute video following her fiery Sunrise appearance

A defiant Hanson hit back.

'David, I feel for those people and I feel for those families who have lost lives. The same across the road here when we had the Lindt Cafe terrorist attacks.

'We have problems but you've actually got to discuss it and debate the issue. Why we have these terrorist attacks in this country. Why is it happening around the world? Why is it happening in many places?'

A fired up Koch then claimed terrorist attacks were carried out by right-wing white supremacists 'egged on by your [Hanson's] comments, by your anti-Muslim comments'.

'[Things like] 'they don't deserve to be here', 'they will take over our country'. Can you understand how that empowers a white supremacist ... into seeing it as a call to arms?' Koch asked.

Hanson then turned the focus to what's happening in the UK.

'People are leaving England to come out here because they have lost their country. England is not the country that they grew up in,' she said.

'Learn from the mistakes of other countries to ensure that it doesn't happen here. I didn't grow up with terrorism when I was a child. Why is it happening now.

'You make such bold claims that every Muslim is terrible, every Muslim is a threat because they don't look like us and they don't have our religion,' Koch shot back.

Many Sunrise viewers came to Ms Hanson's defence following the heated interview

As the heated interview continued, Ms Hanson accused Koch of not knowing what was happening in Sydney's western suburbs.

'Go out to Fairfield now, go and ask the Lebanese Christians what has happened to their country. They will tell you the same thing. They're in fear the same thing will happen here,' she said.

'I have a youth centre in those areas and know exactly what's happening there,' an exasperated Koch replied.

In a fiery face-off with fellow crossbencher Derryn Hinch, who was also invited to be part of the Sunrise interview, Hanson downplayed her past connection to under-fire Senator Fraser Anning, who now sits as an independent.

'For you to say that is absolutely disgusting,' she told Sunrise when asked if she had picked Senator Anning to run for One Nation because of his white supremacist views.

'No, I didn't pick him because of that.'

Thousands attended a vigil on Sunday in the wake of Friday's terrorist attack in Christchurch

Senator Anning entered parliament in late 2017 as a replacement for One Nation's Malcolm Roberts, who was disqualified from sitting in the upper house because due to his dual citizenship.

Senator Hanson kicked him out of the party on his first day when he refused to step aside and allow Mr Roberts to return.

Senator Anning has been branded a 'disgrace' by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Australian leaders for blaming the Christchurch mosque massacre on Muslim immigration.

When parliament resumes next month the coalition government and Labor plan to jointly move a censure motion condemning his comments.

Tensions boiled over again on the topic of under-fire Senator Fraser Anning (pictured)

But Senator Hanson said she didn't see the point of a censure motion.

'A censure isn't going to prove, it's not going to do anything ... what is a censure? It will not prove a damn thing,' she said on Monday.

'The people will have their say, not politicians out there beating their chest about all of this.'

Many Sunrise viewers took to social media afterwards to disagree with Koch's grilling.

'I am disgusted with yourself and Sunrise. Regardless of agreeing or disagreeing with the views of Pauline Hanson, she was set up for an ambush this morning. Still the same old, boys club mentality in politics and television,' one viewer tweeted.

Another added: 'Turning off bias. Absolute disgrace. Nothing but an ambush on Pauline Hanson.'
A notorious paedophile who molested at least eight boys and raped one girl over 30 years has been freed.

Kevin Michael Loudon, 53, was released in Brisbane on Monday on a strict supervision order under.

Mr Loudon, who's been on police's radar since the 1985, has a horrific history of sexual violence against children.

Justice Lyons released Loudon in Brisbane on Monday, but the notorious child molester must comply with a supervision order for 10 years

He raped an eight-year-old girl, as well as sexually abusing the girl's brother, and forced or coerced seven other boys into horrendous sexual acts.

Brisbane Supreme Court Justice Ann Lyons heard he breached his original court orders by luring two boys with gifts and money to his Townsville home in November 2017.

The court heard if Mr Loudon had not been caught, the 12 and 13-year-old boys he was 'grooming' would have become his next victims.

Despite this the court heard Loudon would be less likely to offend as he gets older, according to forensic psychiatrist Dr Josephine Sundin.

Timeline of Kevin Michael Loudon's court orders 2007 - Kevin Michael Loudon was released from jail in on a strict community-based supervision order after serving multiple lengthy sentences for raping and abusing boys and girls in North Queensland 2009 - Loudon breaches his supervision order, is released back into the community and has to wear a GPS tracker and abide by a curfew 2012 - Lawyers acting for Loudon write to Queensland Corrective Services asking that the device and curfew requirements be removed from the order, arguing it caused him stress 2013 - Courts disagreed and ruled he was still a risk to the community without the anklet and curfew. His supervision order remained in effect til 2017 2017 - Loudon breaks his supervision order by luring a 12 and 13-year-old boy to his house using gifts and money 2019 - Justice Lyons releases him but says he must comply with a supervision order for 10 years. Advertisement

But Dr Sundin said he still posed a significant risk to boys in particular, and stress was enough to make the 'sexually deviant' man attack.

Loudon has only recently acknowledged his heinous acts, despite abusing children for more than 30 years, Dr Sundin said.

'He has made one big step forward ... in that he stepped away from his denial of his paraphilia,' Dr Sundin said.

'He is now talking more openly about his behaviour... His shame is abating.'

Dr Sundin said she believed if Loudon had not been caught breaching the original supervision order in 2017, he 'would have gone on to offend against the boys' he was found grooming.

'There appears to be a clear example, in a situation of distress he lost control - he acted in a way that contravened the order,' Dr Sundin said.

Justice Lyons released him in Brisbane on Monday, telling the offender 'I hope we don't see you back here.'

Loudon must comply with a strict supervision order for the next 10 years under the Dangerous Offenders Act.




A Falcon V8 Supercar, more than $140,000 in cash and almost $1million worth of cannabis were seized by police during a raid where seven people were arrested.

The raid was part of an eight-month investigation in the Orana and Hunter regions in NSW that targeted the commercial supply of cannabis from Newcastle, Hunter Valley and Dubbo areas.

A further three cars, seven motorbikes, a tractor and a quad bike were also seized and police allege they are proceeds of crime.

Police officers have seized more than $140,000 in cash, a Falcon V8 Supercar and almost $1million worth of cannabis during a raid where seven people were arrested

A further three cars, seven motorbikes, a tractor, and a quad bike were also seized and police allege they are proceeds of crime

The operation consisted of more than 80 officers from several departments, as well as the Australian Border Force and the NSW Crime Commission.

Investigators executed search warrants at five Dubbo properties and two properties in Cessnock yesterday.

Eight people were arrested and taken to their respective police stations but only seven have been officially charged.

Police will allege in court that this operation had dismantled an organised criminal enterprise that was involved in the commercial supply of drugs.

The raid was part of an eight-month investigation in the Orana and Hunter regions in NSW that targeted the commercial supply of cannabis from Newcastle, Hunter Valley and Dubbo areas

Police will allege in court that this operation had dismantled an organised criminal enterprise that was involved in the commercial supply of drugs

Two Dubbo men, aged 43 and 29, have been charged with 43 counts of drug offences charges and a Dubbo woman, 38, has been charged with 10 counts.

They have been refused bail in Dubbo Local Court today.

Three Cessnock men, aged 56, 54, and 51 have each been charged with multiple counts of selling and possessing drugs.

The two of the men appeared in Maitland Local Court today and were refused bail.

The other was granted strict conditional bail and will appear at Cessnock Local Court of April 10.

Investigators executed search warrants at five Dubbo properties and two properties in Cessnock yesterday

A 47-year-old Cassilis man has been charged with 16 counts of supplying drugs and directing activities of a criminal group.

He appeared at Mudgee Local Court today and was refused bail.

Another Cessnock man, 45, was also taken in by police but has been released pending further inquiries.


When John Bercow broke his promise about quitting after nine years as the Speaker, his officials said he wanted to stay on to 'see through Brexit'.

While he didn't address the subject publicly himself, his friends wanted it known that he was not trying to thwart Britain's departure from the EU, but simply felt 'very strongly that there must be parliamentary scrutiny' of the process.

However, it was universally recognised by long-time Bercow-watchers that he was on a one-man mission to delay or scupper Brexit altogether.

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow ruled on Monday that Theresa May's Brexit deal cannot come before parliament again in its current state

For the Speaker has made no secret of his disdain for Brexit and flaunted his contempt for it.

Most notoriously, a bright-yellow 'Bo***cks to Brexit' sticker was spotted on the windscreen of a car parked outside his official residence  which he said belonged to his wife.

Most people in Westminster believed he sympathised with the slogan, particularly since he was recorded at about the same time last year telling students: 'I thought it was better to stay in the EU than not.' To the same audience at Reading University, he spoke about what he called 'untruths' about the pro-Brexit campaign and 'promises that were made that could not be kept'.

A car parked outside Bercow's residence displayed a 'Bo***cks to Brexit' sticker in March 2018

By convention going back centuries, the Speaker is supposed to stay above the party political fray.

But, most notably, he has chided Labour for not doing more to win the referendum and for not 'striking a very clear resonant Remain note'.

The truth is that during his almost ten years as Speaker, the 56-year-old taxi driver's son has shamefully degraded the reputation of the Commons.

He was elected in the wake of the MPs' expenses scandal and it was hoped that there would be a new era of rectitude in the Commons.

Bercow after being elected to the position of Speaker of the House of Commons in 2009

But, to many, the wrong message had been sent to voters because Bercow himself had repaid 6,500 to the tax authorities after it was disclosed that he had 'flipped' the designation of his second home between London and his Buckingham constituency.

The charge sheet against him is long. He has been consistently partisan. He has used his position as the highest authority of the Commons and as the Lower House's representative to the Queen, to build a power base to promote his private agendas and interests.

His criticism of Labour for not having a strong Brexit voice came despite parliamentary rules stating: 'The Speaker is the chief officer and highest authority of the House of Commons and must remain politically impartial at all times.' This is contained in Erskine May  the same bible of Parliamentary procedure that Bercow quoted from extensively yesterday to justify denying the Commons a third meaningful vote on the Government's EU withdrawal deal.

The Speaker has consistently flouted his status as a remainer, according to Andrew Pierce

But then Bercow is a stickler for tradition when it suits him personally. In January, he said: 'I am not in the business of invoking precedent, nor am I under any obligation to do so. If we were guided only by precedent, manifestly nothing in our procedures would ever change.'

Just two months later, he has surely contradicted himself with his guidance about precedents dating back hundreds of years to stop Theresa May returning to the Commons for a third vote. Such has been the Tories' unhappiness with Bercow that it is thought that only three fellow Tory MPs voted for him when he was elected Speaker in 2009.

His Conservative critics felt justified when he later became embroiled in a bullying scandal.

After allegations of sexual harassment were made against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Bercow pledged: 'There must be zero tolerance of sexual harassment or bullying here at Westminster.'

Bercow allegedly called Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom (pictured) a 'stupid woman'

A year later, these pious words sounded hollow after the publication of a devastating report by Dame Laura Cox QC into the culture of bullying at Westminster.

She said instances of bullying and harassment in the Commons had been brushed under the carpet as part of a culture of 'acquiescence and silence'. The report concluded that 'levers of change are regarded as part of the change that is needed' and individuals should consider their positions.

Not surprisingly, the report was interpreted as a clear call for Bercow to quit  which he didn't do.

Subsequently, BBC2's Newsnight reported that he had bullied a senior Commons clerk, Kate Emms. The bullying was allegedly so sustained that Miss Emms eventually quit with post-traumatic stress disorder. Bercow denied the allegations.

Another former private secretary, Angus Sinclair, told the BBC that Bercow had bullied and intimidated him. Bercow rejected these claims, too.

Cabinet ministers have complained about being abused by Bercow. He is said to have called Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom a 'stupid woman' and 'f****** useless' in the Commons chamber. Bercow tried to defuse the row by admitting he muttered the word 'stupid' during a disagreement with her about the time-tabling of legislation, but denied insulting her personally.

Bercow was an officer of the now banned Conservative Monday Club in his younger years

But this was just one of several worrying stories about Bercow.

They started when, as a young man, he joined a Conservative youth group that produced 'Hang Nelson Mandela' posters. He was an officer of the now-banned Monday Club, which backed repatriation for black people.

This was the same organisation that, in 1969, had launched a campaign to make the anti-immigration Tory MP, Enoch Powell, Conservative leader.

Interestingly, when he joined the youth group, like Powell, Bercow was a staunch Eurosceptic.

Over the following years, he proceeded to go on a remarkable political journey from Right to Left. He resigned from the Tory frontbench over the party's refusal to back gay adoption in 2002. It is clear, though, that he had already targeted being Speaker.

Having won election to the green leather 'throne', he spent 45,000 on the refurbishment of his official residence, despite being warned by officials it might be seen as excessive. The work included 7,524 on a new sofa and window seat cushions for the drawing room.

Seemingly oblivious to the contradiction, he also spent 367 of taxpayers' money on a car journey to Luton to deliver a speech on how MPs were restoring their reputation after the expenses scandal. A train fare would have been less than 30.

Such is the anger of ministers with John Bercow this morning, they would happily pay 367,000 out of their own pockets to buy him a single ticket to Timbuktu.
When John Bercow rose to his feet shortly after 3.30 yesterday afternoon you could tell by his body language this was a moment he had been itching for all day.

As he surveyed the chamber with that sense of propriety which has become his staple in the Speakers chair, his face twitching with bristly anticipation, it was obvious this was to be no mundane procedural announcement.

What spewed forth from his mouth for the next twenty minutes of rhetorical windbaggery was met with incredulity on all sides of the House.

No forewarning had been given to any party what he was going to say.

The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition  they were all hearing it, like us, in real time.

Speaker John Bercow addressing MPs in the House of Commons, London where he has ruled out another vote on Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement if the motion is substantially the same as last time

Labour couldnt believe their luck. The Government simply couldnt believe what it was hearing. If Mrs Mays deal is to be put before the House for a third time, the Speaker ruled citing a Commons precedent from 1604, then it would have to be substantially different to the one MPs voted on last week. She could not simply ask members to vote on exactly the same deal.

Bang! An Exocet rocket straight to the core of what remained the Prime Ministers Brexit strategy. No wonder Bercow was smirking.

Chief whip Julian Smith was so stunned his lower jaw was hanging open. Someone on the front bench really needed to lean over and pop it back up again.

It was obvious this was to be no mundane procedural announcement

Once again the Government had been done over by the chair. Frustrating ministers and torpedoeing Brexit. These are what get John Bercow out of bed in the morning. Rules? Procedure? The chap just seems to make em up as he goes along.

The Speaker had been on unusually boisterous form for a Monday moments before making his statement during Pensions Questions.

He bantered with backbenchers. He joshed with his clerks. Plonked in the Speakers throne, his stumpy legs hammered up and down his footstool excitedly like a naughty toddler in a highchair.

When news emerged he would be making a statement once the session had finished it was swiftly obvious from his giddy behaviour the little goblin planned to drop a howitzer on the Government.

The House quickly filled as MPs rushed to hear what he had to say. How he seemed to enjoy that. He then rose to feet, clutching a stack of paper half an inch thick. Oh heck, we werent getting out of here in a hurry.

Once again the Government had been done over by the chair. Frustrating ministers and torpedoeing Brexit

Here was the Speaker at his despotic worst. Putting himself at the centre of events and turning it into the John Bercow show, painting himself as Parliaments fearless defender.

Part of the responsibility of the Speaker is to speak truth to power and I have always done that... I have never been pushed around and I am not going to start now... I am not a stickler for tradition but I, I, I. Me, me, me. His oration became so florid and absurd at one point, works and pensions secretary Amber Rudd had to stifle her matronly giggles. The arch-Brexiteers were delighted. Sir William Cash (Con, Stone in Staffordshire) congratulated the Speaker on his judgment, saying his decision made an awful lot of sense.

Bercow returned the compliment, praising Mr Cash for always trying to act in the national interest. Priti Patel gave a beaming Cash a well done pat on the back. Pass the sickbag stuff.

Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, Somerset North) commended the Speaker for following protocol, quoting from the Bible: There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. Bercow grinned and nodded his head enthusiastically. Im not sure he realised this was a dig.

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May is seen at Downing Street, in London today

Sir Hugo Swire (Con, East Devon) asked not unreasonably why the Speaker had made this call now, and not last week when it was clear Mrs May was going to try again. Tsk. And give the PM the weekend to adjust her preparations? Where would the fun have been in that?

Leader of the House and Bercow nemesis Andrea Leadsom briefly punctured his balloon when she coolly implied he couldnt be trusted to treat colleagues with courtesy and respect. Cue collective sucking of wind around the chamber.

I treat the House with respect, I treat members with respect! The Speaker boomed, jabbing his forefinger at his accuser. Background: Bercow once called feisty Leadsom a stupid woman. Funnily enough, a caller to Rees-Moggs phone-in show on LBC earlier that morning had pre-empted Bercows ruling.

Samina from Tooting she was called. She had phoned to enquire why Mrs May was being allowed a third crack at her vote, asking: Isnt this tactic specifically barred to stop the Government from bullying the legislature. Shouldnt this be ruled out of order?

A brilliant question, purred the Moggster, referring her to page 397 of the Parliamentary rule book, Erksine May.

Samina certainly seemed to know her way around Parliamentary procedure rather better than your average LBC punter, traditionally a forum for London cab drivers and the over-opinionated. Could it have been Jacobs nanny in disguise?
A former Mississippi Gulf Coast police officer has told a judge that she was having sex with her supervisor while her three-year-old daughter was dying inside an overheated patrol car.

Cassie Barker tearfully pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter in a plea bargain.

The Sun Herald reports prosecutors recommend the 29-year-old spends 20 years in prison on the reduced charge. She was previously charged with second-degree murder.

Cassie Barker, 29, tearfully pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter in a plea bargain and could spend 20 years in prison. She is pictured in court on Monday

Former Mississippi Gulf Coast police officer told a judge that she was having sex with her supervisor while her three-year-old daughter Cheyenne Hyer was dying

After having sex at the Kiln home of Sgt Clark Ladner, 36, (left) Barker (right) claims she then fell asleep for three to four hours. Both Barker and Ladner were fired from the Long Beach Police Department for violating department policies

Harrison County Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois says he will sentence the ex-Long Beach officer April 1.

'I dont know what I could ever do to you that could be worse than what youve already experienced... You will forever be entombed in a prison of your own mind,' the judge told Barker after consulting with the child's father.

Barker has remained free after posting $50,000 bail since she was first arrested and denied charges, but on Monday she was detained after her guilty plea.

Cheyenne Hyer died September 30, 2016, after her mother left her strapped in a car seat for four hours while Barker was with her then-supervisor at his home.

The car was running with the air-conditioner turned on, but wasn't blowing cold air.

After having sex at the Kiln home of Sgt Clark Ladner, 36, after wrapping up a shift just before 9am, she claims she then fell asleep for three to four hours.

Cheyenne Hyer died September 30, 2016, after her mother left her strapped in a car seat inside an overheated patrol car for four hours

The girl was unresponsive when Barker returned to her car. Ladner said Barker ran back into his home and told him something was wrong with Cheyenne. He did CPR while she called 911

Officers at the scene found that all the windows in Barker's patrol car were rolled up and that the air conditioner was set 'halfway between cold and heat'

The sergeant told police Barker had come to his home to discuss a 'work-related incident'.

Ladner told police he had taken a sleep aid and fell asleep while the two officers were talking. He said Barker also fell asleep a short time later.

The girl was unresponsive when Barker returned to her car.

Ladner said Barker ran back into his home and told him something was wrong with Cheyenne. He began CPR on the toddler while she called 911.

Barker has remained free after posting bail since she was first arrested and bailed herself out on $50,000 bond, but on Monday she was detained after her guilty plea

Authorities received a report of an unresponsive child at 1.52pm. Cheyenne died at a nearby hospital shortly after she was found.

Officers at the scene found that all the windows in Barker's patrol car were rolled up and that the air conditioner was set 'halfway between cold and heat'.

The temperature in the area reached 100F that day.

Authorities say Hyer's body temperature was 107 degrees when found.

Both Barker and Ladner were fired from the Long Beach Police Department for violating department policies.

Bass wasn't charged as he told investigators that he did not know Cheyenne was in the car.

It was later revealed that this wasn't the first time Barker was caught leaving her daughter alone in the car.

Barker was disciplined in April 2015 after leaving Cheyenne, who was two years old at the time, alone in the back of her personal vehicle outside a strip mall in Gulfport.

A passerby saw Cheyenne in the car and called the police.

Barker was suspended for one week without pay and her one-year probationary period was extended by 90 days.

The Department of Human Services also took temporary custody of Cheyenne.

It was later revealed that this wasn't the first time Barker was caught leaving her daughter alone in the car

Barker was disciplined in April 2015 after leaving Cheyenne, who was two years old at the time, alone in the back of her personal vehicle outside a strip mall in Gulfport

Barker was suspended for one week without pay and her one-year probationary period was extended by 90 days

But Ryan Hyer, Cheyenne's father, only learned of the 2015 incident after his daughter's death in 2016.

'That was a tell-tale sign that something was wrong,' he previously said. 'And if I would have been notified or if she lost custody of Cheyenne then, my daughter would be alive today. I wouldn't have lost my child.

'If this would have been me or you or somebody else, the situation would have been totally different. We would have been in jail. Records wouldn't be expunged. My daughter would still be here.'

He has filed a lawsuit against the Long Beach Police Department and Mississippi Child Protection Services for the wrongful death of Cheyenne.

Hyer said he and Barker were together for the first two years of Cheyenne's life, and he would watch their daughter while she went through the police academy.

When the couple broke up, Hyer returned to his hometown in Jacksonville, Florida.

But Ryan Hyer, Cheyenne's father, only learned of the 2015 incident after his daughter's death in 2016
Controversial ticket website Viagogo has caused distress for too many music fans for too long, MPs will say today.

The culture committee will urge the public to boycott the ticket site  which allows sellers to charge amounts greatly in excess of face value.

The attack comes after a competition watchdog accused the companys bosses of being in contempt of court. It is claimed that Viagogo failed to abide by a High Court ruling in November that said it must change the way it promotes, describes and sells tickets.

The ticket-selling site, which allows sellers to charge higher amounts than face value, has come under fire from MPs who claim it has been causing 'distress for too many music fans for too long'

Viagogo says it has been 'singled out' and provides the UK an 'invaluable service'

Chairman Damian Collins said: Were calling on the Government to review the effectiveness of the law intended to prevent consumers being ripped-off. He added that the committee has taken the unusual step of issuing a warning... against using a major secondary ticketing site until it complies fully with consumer law.

Viagogo said it had been singled out. The Geneva-based company claimed that it provided an invaluable service to UK consumers and had been complying with the Competition and Markets Authority.
A nurse who was found guilty murdering her disabled husband by injecting him with insulin could have her conviction quashed with her lawyers set to argue he died of sepsis.

Deborah Winzar, 54, was jailed for life at Birmingham Crown Court in 2000 after being found guilty of the murder of her husband Dominic McCarthy.

Mr McCarthy, who was paralysed in a motorcycle accident in 1984, was found collapsed in his bed at the home the couple shared in Stonely, Cambridgeshire, in January 1997.

Deborah Winzar (left) was convicted in 2000 for murdering husband Dominic McCarthy (right)

Winzar, then a senior ward sister at Kettering General Hospital, denied any wrongdoing and maintained that her husband must have died of natural causes.

But a post-mortem examination revealed that Mr McCarthy had a very high level of insulin in his blood and the prosecutions case was that his wife had the opportunity and skill to inject it.

Winzar, pictured, was released from prison after 15 years and remains committed to clearing her name. Her lawyers claim new medical evidence indicates Mr McCarthy may have died of sepsis.

Mr McCarthy (right) became a paralysed in a motorcycle accident in 1984

Her case has been referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice. Senior judges adjourned her case yesterday for medical evidence to be obtained.

Presiding judge, Lord Justice Irwin, said the case has an extraordinary history. We cannot go on middling this case, there has to be a decisive conclusion. Justice William Davis said that the case will examine whether a natural succession of events led to dangerously low blood sugar levels and therefore death was responsible.

However, James Curtis, prosecuting, said Mr McCarthys death was not caused by some internal sudden lightning strike with the body turning in on itself.

A previous challenge to Winzars conviction was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in December 2002. The CCRC previously said the new evidence gives rise to a real possibility her conviction will be quashed.

A new hearing date has not been set.
Fire chiefs have accused Peppa Pig of sexism after referring to firefighters as 'firemen' - though fans aren't convinced.

The London Fire Brigade ignited a Twitter storm after they posted the offending cartoon clip and slammed its use of outdated stereotypes.

However, the post has attracted a flurry of sarcastic responses as many accuse them of being overly sensitive.

In a furious rant, the LFB wrote: 'Come on @peppapig, we've not been firemen for 30 years.

The London Fire Brigade have accused Peppa Pig of sexism after referring to firefighters as 'firemen'

The episode in question was called The Fire Engine and featured Ms Rabbit's venture into fire fighting

'You have a huge influence on kids & using out of date stereotypical gender specific wording prevents young girls from becoming firefighters.

'Join our #Firefightingsexism campaign.'

However, the post may have been slightly premature - given the episode features Mummy Pig helping out at the fire station.

The LFB tweeted that gender stereotyping 'prevents young girls from becoming firefighters'

The #Firefightingsexism campaign by the LFB aims to fight gender stereotypes around fire fighting

Despite the initial 'fireman' slip-up, the episode later sees the female character take control of the entire fire station.

The LFB has now been accused of overt political correctness, as many flocked to ridicule the post.

One tongue-in-cheek reply from chingfordjim read: 'It's a cartoon with a make believe pig.'

And mooremusic.biz said: 'While we're at it, why isn't peppa LGBTQIwhatever? We demanded...er...something!'

Some people on Twitter stood up for the cartoon, saying character Ms Rabbit was a feminist icon

Razor-sharp DubzLF joked: 'Pssst don't tell Postman Pat*'

While Zeebad replied: 'Is it Postfighter Pat now? I can't keep up.'

Others hailed cartoon character Ms Rabbit as a feminist icon.

Devoted fan The Other Nelson tweeted: 'You have never watched the show properly.

'Ms Rabbit does nearly everything in the show, shop owner, helicopter pilot, rescue, you name it!

The British cartoon first aired in 2004 and is shown in almost 200 territories across the globe

'Give her a break, let someone handle the fire duties.

Similarly, Is-It-Friday-Yet? Noted: 'You're taking gender role notes from a cartoon show where the father of the family is a bumbling fool who is psychologically abused and humiliated by his wife?'

Nevertheless, some commenters applauded the LFB for calling out the episode.

Reaction on Twitter was mixed to the LFB's tweet, with one saying 'we don't need young girls becoming firefighters'

Anne wrote: 'I normally stay away from twitter but am loving your replies breathoffreshair #respect #firefighter #FirefightingSexism'

And LFB employee Ricky Nuttall vehemently replied: 'I'm a Firefighter thank you very much!!!!'

Peppa Pig is a 15-year-old children's cartoon which is broadcast across the world.

It has attracted a cult following from kids and parents alike who regularly tune in to watch the adventures of Peppa, George and Miss Rabbit.
Turkish authorities suspect the gunman allegedly behind the Christchurch mosque attack may have been supported or encouraged by a larger terror organisation.

Intelligence officials launched an investigation after it was revealed Brenton Tarrant travelled to Turkey twice in 2016, and stayed for a total of 43 days.

Police sources say his choice of destinations is unusual for a person of his background.

'That kind of ordinary profile, who is not very well-educated and also not rich - this person can't commit such a violent action on his own,' Toygun Atilla, the terrorism and security correspondent for a Turkish newspaper told the ABC.

'Turkish intelligence thinks there is a well-resourced organisation behind this act.'

CCTV footage of a man, who's believed to be Brenton Tarrant, arriving in Ataturk International Airport in Turkey in September 2016, which has since sparked suspicions his mosque attack was supported by a terror organisation

The Greek writing on one of Tarrant's guns came from the Greek revolutionary Nikitas Stamatelopoulos, who was known as the Turk-Eater for his fighting prowess in the Greek War of Independence

Officials from Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Hungary are currently examining Tarrant's movements around the region from 2016 to 2018.

The 28-year-old travelled around the area studying historical battles between Christians and Muslims, dating back to the Crusades in the 12th century.

The writing on the accused killer's gun has further fueled suspicions that a terror-organisation was involved or influenced his thinking.

Tarrant wrote on his gun a phrase from revolutionary Nikitas Stamatelopoulos, who was known as the 'Turk-Eater' for his fights in the Greek War of Independence.

Turkish authorities believe Brenton Tarrant, seen here in court on Saturday, may have been encouraged or supported by a larger organisation

Investigators have also turned to Tarrant's chilling 74-page manifesto. The accused gunman referenced the names of opponents of the Ottoman Empire - from Russia, the Balkans, and Azerbaijan - in their native scripts.

Turkish officials said Tarrant's level of knowledge about the Ottoman Empire and the alphabets of the languages he used on his weapons was unusual, the ABC reported.

But further in the manifesto Tarrant claims he acted alone. 'No group ordered my attack, I make [sic] the decision myself,' he wrote.

The probe from overseas agencies come amid concerns whether or not Tarrant will face terrorism charges.

Former senior Crown prosecutor Ross Burns said if Tarrant was put on trial for terrorism it would make the process longer and could see him use the trial 'to espouse his ideological reasons'.

The accused terrorist may instead face multiple murder charges over Friday's massacre which killed 50 people.

He would likely be sentenced to a longer minimum non-parole period if he's found guilty.

A document Tarrant published online before the shootings referenced a desire to plead not guilty, and he reportedly plans to represent himself in court.
A Melbourne man with a violent criminal history, including a previous attack on a housemate, has been jailed for 11 years for killing an Airbnb guest.

Jason Rohan Colton, 42, was on Tuesday sentenced to at least eight years behind bars after pleading guilty to manslaughter over the violent death of Ramis Jonuzi in October 2017.

Colton was the instigator of the attack, for which his housemates Craig Levy and Ryan Smart are already serving prison time.

Jason Rohan Colton (pictured), 42, was on Tuesday sentenced to at least eight years behind bars after pleading guilty to manslaughter over the violent death of Ramis Jonuzi in October 2017

With their help, Colton repeatedly beat Mr Jonuzi, dragged him unconscious around the front yard of the Brighton East home and held him in a chokehold, angry that Mr Jonuzi owed Levy $210 for an unpaid Airbnb bill.

Earlier in March Colton faced a jury charged with murder but at the conclusion of his trial last week, his lawyers submitted there was no case to answer.

That was accepted, as was the manslaughter plea Colton had earlier offered.

With help from his housemates, Colton repeatedly beat Mr Jonuzi (pictured), dragged him unconscious around the front yard of the Brighton East home and held him in a choke hold, angry that Mr Jonuzi owed Levy $210 for an unpaid Airbnb bill

On Tuesday Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth called the attack vicious and callous, carried out against a man who didn't fight back and posed no threat.

At a pre-sentence hearing it was revealed the assault on Mr Jonuzi was not the first time Colton had been violent towards a housemate.

Colton, who married a Norwegian woman in 2008 and moved to her home country, was jailed by the Drammen District Court in Norway's south in 2013.
Beto O'Rourke on Monday met with the Ohio auto workers' leader who was trashed by President Donald Trump over the weekend, defending David Green from the president's wrath and offering to 'do everything we can to be helpful.'

'So many of us around the country, even though you might have been lit up by the president, are proud of the way you conducted yourself. You kept this about your membership, about the workers, the community, about this country at its best. I just think that's a great example,' O'Rourke said in a Facebook Live with the president of UAW Local 1112 in Lordstown, Ohio.

'We just wanted to come and say thank you, learn a little bit from you and make sure that we help to carry this message that you have started here and do everything we can to be helpful,' he added.

Beto O'Rourke on Monday met with David Green, the Ohio auto workers' leader who was trashed by President Donald Trump over the weekend

On Sunday, President Donald Trump lashed out at Green to 'get his act together'

Lordstown had its General Motors' factory shuttered earlier this month.

O'Rourke added in a tweet: 'Impressed w/ David Green, UAW 1112 president. His leadership, the way he's fought for employees at GM's Lordstown plant & how he's conducted himself while being attacked by the President. He's fighting not just for his members but for their families, this community & all workers.'

The Democratic presidential contender added the stop in Lordstown as he drives in a minivan from Iowa to New Hampshire as part of a two-week listening tour to launch his 2020 bid.

He has pledged to run a positive campaign but his talk with Green could be interpreted as the former congressman's first shot at Trump.

O'Rourke did not criticize Trump but his defense of Green and his meeting with him - the first Democratic presidential contender to do so - spoke volumes.

He praised Green for not responding 'in kind' to the president's criticism.

'He has kept the conversation elevated about his membership and about his community,' the former congressman said.

He also praised Green during a stop earlier in the day in Cleveland.

'The one thing I wouldn't do is what we just saw the president of the United States do, which is to add insult to injury,' O'Rourke said during the interview with Cleveland.com. 'Demean those workers. Insult the union president. At the time that they're losing more than 14,000 jobs, he's laying the blame at their feet. Absolutely counterproductive and insulting if you ask me.'

O'Rourke has started his presidential campaign in the same way his ran the Senate race that made him a national star and got him within three points of beating GOP Sen. Ted Cruz - he's driving around, talking to voters, and live streaming it all on Facebook.

He has already made multiple stops in Iowa and Michigan. He was in Ohio on Monday, will be in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and then in New Hampshire Tuesday night.

He plans a two-day tour of all 10 counties in the nation's first primary state.

On Sunday, Trump lashed out at Green to 'get his act together' shortly after the autoworkers' president appeared on Fox News Channel and ahead of the president's Ohio trip on Wednesday.

'Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce. G.M. let our Country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves. I want action on Lordstown fast. Stop complaining and get the job done! 3.8% Unemployment!,' he wrote on Twitter.

Beto O'Rourke defended David Green and praised his work in Lordstown

President Donald Trump lashed out at an Ohio autoworkers' president shortly after David Green appeared on Fox News Channel Sunday

David Green represents Lordstown, where the final Chevy Cruze rolled off the assembly line earlier this month

Trump will be in Ohio this coming week but not in Lordstown. He'll visit the Lima Army Tank Plant - a General Dynamics plant - on Wednesday.

He'll also stop in Canton, Ohio, for a private fundraiser for the Trump 2020 re-election campaign, according to local reports.

The president doubled down on Monday, pressuring General Motors' CEO Mary Barra to reopen the Lordstown manufacturing plant whose closure put 1,700 people out of work.

His arm-twisting came in a series of tweets aimed at GM and the United Auto Workers union that stretched across Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

'General Motors and the UAW are going to start 'talks' in September/October. Why wait, start them now!' the president tweeted Monday in his latest salvo on the Lordstown plant, which had manufactured the Chevrolet Cruze.

'Get that big, beautiful plant in Ohio open now. Close a plant in China or Mexico, where you invested so heavily pre-Trump, but not in the U.S.A. Bring jobs home!' he wrote.

GM had said Sunday evening 'to be clear' that it was talking to the UAW, a tone which may have prompted the Monday tweet.

Ohio will be a crucial battlefield in Trump's 2020 re-election fight: Saving 1,700 jobs there would be a major feather in the president's cap, but losing them would give Democrats much-needed ammunition in the American midwest.

Trump capped his weekend of ranting with a tweet disclosing that he had vented his frustrations during a conversation with Barra.

President Trump (left) slammed General Motors and its CEO Mary Barra (right) on Sunday over the closure of a manufacturing plant in Lordstown, Ohio; On Monday he tweeted that GM should close a plant in China or Mexico to reopen the Ohio facility

'I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING,' Trump wrote.

'I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW Union  I don't care, I just want it open!'

The union is the United Automobile Workers, which represents the employees who lost their jobs in the Lordstown closure.
A dog who was shot 17 times and left blind has found a new lease of life after she was rescued from Lebanon and now has 30,000 followers on Instagram.

Five-year-old Maggie was rescued from horrific conditions in Lebanon.

She was found tied to a box with her eyes shot, her ear cut off, her jaw broken and many bullet wounds all over her body.

Five-year-old Maggie was found tied to a box in Lebanon six months ago. Her eyes were shot, her ear was cut off, her jaw was broken and she was covered in bullet wounds

But six months ago, after an online campaign was started to get her out of the Middle East, she found a new home in Brighton with dog lover Kasey Carlin.

Ms Carlin, 25, heard about Maggie's story through the animal welfare group Wild At Heart Foundation and knew she wanted to take her home.

She said: 'This person in Lebanon posted asking for help and a woman in London saw the post and got help.

'Wild At Heart said they would take her in, even though it's quite hard to get pets out of Lebanon.

'My mum saw Maggie's post and said we had to foster her.

'I got home and saw the picture and agreed.'

Happy and healthy: Maggie has now completely recovered from the 17 shots she suffered and lives with her new owner, Kasey Carlin, 25, in Brighton

Maggie was found like this in horrific conditions in Lebanon. Thanks to an online campaign her new owner, Ms Carlin, heard about her plight and adopted her

Maggie had surgery before leaving Lebanon, which is the first time Ms Carlin and her mother realised the extent of her injuries.

But after having her eyes sewn up to prevent further damage, Maggie was well enough to travel to the UK to meet her new family.

'I was in tears when I met her at the airport,' Ms Carlin said.

'I got in touch with some blind rescue dog charities and asked what to do.

Maggie has now made a full recovery and has 30,000 followers on her Instagram account, @maggiethewunderdog

Caring: Maggie is now training to be a therapy dog. She goes to the University of Sussex campus twice a week and is walked by students. She also goes into care homes and cheers up elderly people by letting them pet her

'They said map out the house for her room by room. But we sectioned off the kitchen and the first night she slept in her crate.

'I took her out to go to the toilet and it was the first time she touched grass.'

Ms Carlin has said that she often gets asked why Maggie has not been put down and some question her quality of life.

Ms Carlin said: 'She must have been in agony with all she's been through, but she never hurt anyone and she's so loving'

Ms Carlin added: 'I've never met a dog like Maggie. She's just brilliant. She's so energetic and bubbly. She walks off the lead and follows me around'

But she said once people met Maggie in the flesh and saw her run and play, their opinions changed.

She said: 'I've never met a dog like Maggie.

'She's just brilliant. She's so energetic and bubbly. She walks off the lead and follows me around.

'She must have been in agony with all she's been through, but she never hurt anyone and she's so loving.'

Maggie's personality and story have made her famous on social media.

She currently has nearly 30,000 followers on her Instagram account, @maggiethewunderdog.

And her feed is such a hit that Ms Carlin is giving up her job in dog day care to run Maggie's social media full-time.

Ms Carlin said: 'She's got a great life and she wants so much out of it. 'She loves working as a care dog and going for walks. 'I just want people to see that she's living life'

Maggie is also working towards becoming a therapy dog, using her love and smiling face to inspire others.

She currently goes to the University of Sussex campus twice a week and is walked by students. She goes into care homes and cheers up elderly people by letting them pet her.

Ms Carlin said: 'She's got a great life and she wants so much out of it.

'She loves working as a care dog and going for walks.

'I just want people to see that she's living life.'

It seems that Maggie's training is already paying off, as Ms Carlin says she has had an amazing impact on her other dog, Mishka.

She said: 'When I first got Mishka she was awful around other dogs but Maggie has really brought her out of her shell.

'They didn't get on so well at first because Mishka howls a lot and Maggie couldn't quite understand what she was trying to say.

'But now they're inseparable and they love to cuddle.'

Ms Carlin hopes that Maggie's story will serve as an inspiration for other animal lovers across the world.
The mother of a nine-year-old girl whose body was found stuffed in a duffel bag in California has been arrested over the little girl's death.

Taquesta Graham, 28, is expected to be charged with the murder of Trinity Love Jones on Wednesday, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said.

In a written statement the sheriff's office said: 'The case is being reviewed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. Charges are expected to be filed on Wednesday morning.'

Prosecutors last week also charged Graham's boyfriend, Emiel Hunt, with murder. All three were thought to have been homeless before Trinity's death.

Graham has been in custody since March 8 after she was detained crossing the border in Texas. Hunt was arrested the following the day. He was found sleeping in his vehicle near San Diego International Airport.

Tragic Trinity was found March 5 at the bottom of an embankment in the suburb of Hacienda Heights.

Taquesta Graham was arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of her 9-year-old daughter was found in a duffel bag along a suburban horse trail near Los Angeles. Trinity Love Jones was found dead on March 5

Los Angeles prosecutors have charged Emiel Hunt in the killing of Trinity Love Jones, the nine-year-old girl whose body was found in a duffel bag along a suburban horse trail

She was wearing pants with a panda pattern and a pink shirt that said 'Future Princess Hero'.

There were no obvious signs of trauma on her body. Authorities have not revealed a cause of death or motive.

Graham was extradited from Texas to California last week and was initially held on an unrelated warrant. Graham was in custody Monday and could not be reached for comment.

Hunt, 38, has a previous child abuse conviction from 2005 in San Diego County, according to prosecutors. His arraignment is scheduled for April 16.

Friends and family members described Trinity as a joyful and talented girl who did well in school.

Taquesta Graham, pictured with Hunt, is expected to be charged with murder on Wednesday, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said. Friends and family members described Trinity as a joyful and talented girl who did well in school

Graham is a registered sex offender. She was convicted in 2009 of enticing a minor female for prostitution. Records show that she was released in 2016

Prosecutors last week charged Graham's boyfriend, Emiel Hunt, with murder

The dead girl was found in a duffel bag at the bottom of an embankment in the suburb of Hacienda Heights

A memorial near where her body was found featured stuffed animals, heart-shaped balloons, dozens of votive candles and notes expressing love for Trinity and one that said 'Rest in heaven, Princess'.

Family members have already demanded to know why Trinity was allowed to be in Graham's custody since she's a registered sex offender.

According to online records, Graham was convicted in 2009 of enticing a minor female for prostitution. She was released in 2016.

She received a suspended prison term, time served in jail and probation. The charges against her involved a minor under the age of 16.

The discovery of Trinity's body was made by county workers on a horse riding trail in Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles County.

A large memorial to Trinity after her mom and stepdad were detained over her death

Trinity's father, Antonio Jones, said his daughter was 'just the best'.

'Full of character, full of life, full of joy. Words can't explain what I'm feeling right now,' he said.

'I just want answers. I just want justice,' he added.
A woman dubbed the 'Lady Of The Hills' whose remains were found in the Yorkshire Dales 15 years ago was today identified by cold-case detectives as a Thai bride.

Married mother-of-three Lamduan Seekanya, of Udon Thani province, married British teacher David Armitage, now 55, in 1991 - and the couple moved to the UK that year.

They moved in with Mr Armitage's parents in Cumbria in 2003, before friends were told Ms Seekanya had vanished or returned to Thailand - and he had gone there too.

Thai authorities said her fingerprints revealed the woman as Lamduan Seekanya (pictured)

Then a woman's body was found in 2004 in a remote location on the Pennine Way face down wearing just socks and jeans and had a ripped bra hanging off her arm.

The cause of death was never established but she was later thought to have died of hypothermia because there were no signs of violence on her body.

An inconclusive autopsy was conducted in 2007, but today North Yorkshire Police confirmed the body was that of Ms Seekanya.

Detectives have now applied for permission to fly to Thailand, where her ex-husband currently lives, to interview members of her family.

Tracked down by the journalists from the Sun to his home in Thailand, Mr Armitage, originally from Rugby, Warwickshire, said: 'I didn't kill my wife. Absolutely not.'

A police artist's impression of the woman who came to be known as the 'Lady of the Hills'

Mr Armitage, now working as a teacher in the country, said he was aware of reports about the case in the Thai press but said he was just getting on with his life.

Timeline: Lamduan Seekanya's relationship with David Armitage June 1990: David and Lamduan meet in Thailand January 1991: The pair get married July 1991: They move to the UK and live in Portsmouth February 1992: Their first child, a son, is born May 1999: Their daughter is born 2003: They move to Rugby in Warwickshire, and from there to Burton-in-Kendal in Cumbria Advertisement

An inquest into his wife's death was held in 2007, long before she was identified, but failed to reveal how she died. The coroner recorded an open verdict.

The 'Lady of the Hills' case, as it became known, could not identify the woman despite multiple appeals and photographs, along with an artist impression released by the British police which was published as part of an attempt to trace the victim's family.

She was buried by locals, after a small service paid for by the local parish at Horton-in-Ribblesdale churchyard. They named her 'The Lady of the Hills'.

A gravestone in the hills above the town reads: 'The Lady of the Hills. Found September 20, 2004. Name Not Known. Rest in Peace.'

A cold case review by North Yorkshire Police, led by retired chief detective Adam Harland, has been working on the mystery for the last several years.

Today the force confirmed they wish to interview members of the Seekanya family who are living in Thailand.

The stream near Sell Gill Holes caves in the Dales where the woman was found in 2004

A force spokesman: 'North Yorkshire Police can confirm the identity of a south-east Asian woman whose body was discovered in a remote location on the Pennine Way, between Pen-y-ghent and Horton in Ribblesdale, on September 20, 2004.

'As a result of extensive enquiries and DNA testing with family members in Thailand, the Major Investigation Teams Cold Case Review Unit believe the woman is Lamduan Armitage nee Seekanya.

'Officers are now appealing for information from the UK and Thailand.

'Lamduan, who would now be aged 51 and was married with three children, is originally from the Udon Thani province in north east Thailand.

'North Yorkshire Police is continuing to build a picture of Lamduans life in Thailand and at various places she lived in the UK between 1991 and 2004, including Portsmouth (Hampshire), Rugby (Warwickshire) and Preston (Lancashire).

'It is also understood that Lamduan visited Thailand at some point between 2003 and 2004, but it is not known which part of the country she went to.

Retired detective chief Inspector Adam Harland, who is leading the cold case investigation, pictured at the stream near Sell Gill Holes caves where the body was found 15 years ago

'Police are working with the Crown Prosecution Service to obtain the legal authority to interview members of Lamduans family and conduct enquiries in Thailand with the co-operation and assistance of the Thai authorities, as well as conducting enquires in the UK.'

The team studying the case knew the post mortem showed she had been dead for between one and three weeks before being discovered, and retired DCI Harland told The Telegraph the evidence showed the body had not been left outside for long.

Police believe most bodies are carried no more than 165ft (50m) from a vehicle, and most drivers dumping a corpse travel no further than between 50 and 80 miles.

There was no fluid in her lungs to indicate drowning and no signs of major trauma, and, while her bra strap was broken, there was also no evidence of sexual attack.

The only visible injury to police was a small spiral fracture on one finger, which can commonly occur from punching somebody or from a fall.

Mr Armitage and his wife were understood to have been living with his parents in Burton-in-Kendal, Cumbria. Lamdaun's body was found in 2004 in Horton-in-Ribblesdale

The woman was found off a rocky track which can only be reached using a 4x4, leading investigators to believe the killer lived in a rural location.

It is also thought the murderer had good knowledge of the area because the body was not dumped in the Sell Gill Holes caves where walkers often visit, but was instead positioned out of sight under a hump in the grass.

Initially her life story was unknowable, but advanced tests revealed the woman lived in north Lancashire or south Cumbria.

New forensic evidence, which emerged after the file was re-opened by the cold case team in 2016 suggested she spent the last two years of her life in a rural community in north Lancashire or south Cumbria.

Stable isotope analysis, which was not available back in 2004, was used to find out where the woman was living before her death.

The gravestone in Horton-in-Ribblesdale, North Yorkshire, where she was buried in 2007

Scientists studied the levels of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen in samples of her hair, teeth and bones, which provides information about drinking water and soil and can shed light on where a person has lived.

Tests on her bones and teeth confirmed she grew up in south east Asia and a hair sample had isotopes on it found in just a few places in Britain, including south Cumbria and northern Lancashire.

North Yorkshire Police said last year they believed the woman was a 'Thai bride' who had come to England to marry a local man.

It is thought Ms Seekanya and Mr Armitage were married in Thailand in January 1991, then moved to England and had two children.

In 2003 they moved in with Mr Armitage's parents, but friends and family were then told she vanished.

A funeral held in 2007 for the woman at St Oswald's parish church in Horton-in-Ribblesdale

Ms Seekanya's mother Joomsri Seekanya, 73, said : 'He's British and Christian and we're Thai and Buddhist.

'He is a teacher which has great status in Thailand and we are common village people. There were so many differences.'

Earlier this year Joomsri, 72, and her husband Buasa gave DNA samples in an attempt to prove the body buried in Yorkshire was their daughter's.

She told the BBC at the time: 'A part of me hopes that it's not my daughter - I want her to come back alive. But if it's really her, I can finally sleep at night.'

Mrs Seekanya, 72, from the Udon Thani region of northern Thailand, she has not heard from Lamduan since 2004, around the same time the body was found.

Buasa (left) and Joomsri Seekanya said they have not heard from their daughter since 2004

She also told police that the sketch depicting the woman bears a striking resemblance to her daughter.

Mrs Seekanya claims her daughter moved to Britain in the early 1990s after meeting a British man, who was working in Thailand.

She said the couple had two children and used to return to Thailand regularly to visit family.

But she explained that her daughter, who would now be 52, had abruptly ceased contact around 15 years ago and said she feared the remains could be hers.

Those with information are asked to call 01609 643147, to email ColdCaseReviewUnit@northyorkshire.pnn.police.uk, or to contact Crimstoppers anonymously on on 0800 555111 or at www.crimestoppers-uk.org.
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A behind-the-scenes snap of the international prize-winning picture has revealed that the photograph was apparently staged.

Malaysian photographer Edwin Ong Wee Kee won the $120,000 grand prize at the Hamdan International Photography Awards with a stunning portrait of a mother carrying two children.

But one keen-eyed photographer decided to capture the scene behind the lens, which shows that the picture may not be as 'unplanned' as first believed.

This is Edwin Ong Wee Kee's stunning photograph of a Vietnamese women carrying two children that won him the grand prize in the Hamdan International Photography Award, worth $120,000 (90,000)

The theme of the HIPA contest was 'Hope', with winners inclunding Mr Kee being unveiled on March 12th.

Writing the congratulate Mr Kee on his award, the HIPA said: 'His photo documented an intense humanitarian moment.

'The feelings of a Vietnamese mother whose speech disorder did not prevent her from feeling hopeful and evoking a sense of strength for her children.'

Industry magazines who spoke to Mr Kee about his photo were even told that the snap was 'unplanned' and came during an 'unforeseen stop'

Photography magazine PDNPulse wrote: 'In the world's biggest single contest prize open to the global photography community, Malaysian Edwin hit big with his single image taken from a recent photo trip to Vietnam.'

'Although he describes himself as a keen enthusiast, his full time profession is as a traditional Chinese medicine physician.

However, photographer Ab Rashid then published this picture on Facebook, which apparently shows Mr Kee (left foreground in white shirt) taking his award-winning photo surrounded by a dozen other snappers

'His roadside shot of a Vietnamese woman and child was not planned and came about due to an unforeseen stop.'

But now a newly seen photo appears to show a little more planning and posing than Mr Kee originally describes.

Photographer and Street Photo BD Magazine founder Ab Rashid shared this behind-the-scenes photo apparently taken at around the same time as the winning photo.

It shows a crowd of photographers that are gathered around the mother and two children at the same time as Mr Kee, and likely means his photo was just one of a large number of nearly identical photos from the portrait opportunity.

The international competition, based in Dubai, attracted 19,000 people from 121 countries in its second year, and has a total prize fund of $450,000.

The three main categories for the award were portfolio (story telling), aerial photography (video), and general, which earnt the winner a maximum of $25,000.

But by taking home the grand prize, Mr Kee won $120,000.

The theme for the ninth season (2019-2020) of the award has been announced as 'Water'.
The motion will be discussed at the Jewish Labour Movements annual meeting

Jewish Labour members will debate a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn next month.

The unprecedented motion, to be discussed at the Jewish Labour Movements annual meeting, claims the Labour leader has not been an ally against anti-Semitism.

It says that Mr Corbyns leadership combined with past actions and associations shows a complete disregard for British Jews.

If the motion is passed by delegates, it would compel the partys only Jewish affiliate to make a proclamation that it lacks confidence in the leader, above, and to cease campaigning for candidates who are not allies in the fight against anti-Semitism [File photo]

The motion goes on to say the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) believes there is a culture of anti-Semitism from party members, an institutional culture enabling and sustaining it, and a culture of denial that such a problem even exists.

It adds: The blame for this crisis of anti-Semitism and the partys failure to deal with it lies with Jeremy Corbyn. He is therefore unfit to be Prime Minister and a Labour government led by him would not be in the interests of British Jews.

If the motion is passed by delegates, it would compel the partys only Jewish affiliate to make a proclamation that it lacks confidence in the leader and to cease campaigning for candidates who are not allies in the fight against anti-Semitism.

Two weeks ago, hundreds of JLM members voted to continue the 99-year affiliation to the party in order to continue the fight against anti-Semitism from the inside.

But the issue is expected to return to the agenda at the annual meeting after it emerged the party was to adopt a new anti-Semitism training programme, sidelining one developed with JLM.

The motion also describes Labours disciplinary process as glacially slow.

MPs said the decision to move Laura Murray, pictured above, to the body dealing with anti-Semitism cases raised question marks over its independence from the leadership [File photo]

The leadership has directly intervened in disciplinary cases to exonerate members responsible for grotesque and overt anti-Semitism, it said.

Anyone who denies the problem and does not take action to address it directly is not an ally of the Jewish community. Jeremy Corbyn has not been an ally against anti-Semitism.

Earlier this month, Labour was embroiled in a row after the daughter of one of Mr Corbyns allies was given a job with the partys independent complaints unit.

MPs said the decision to move Laura Murray to the body dealing with anti-Semitism cases raised question marks over its independence from the leadership.

Labour said: Jeremy Corbyn and Labour are fully committed to the support, defence and celebration of the Jewish community and its organisations.
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A massacre survivor claims he saw accused Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant scoping out the Al Noor mosque in construction worker clothing a week before the tragedy.

Nasim Khan is convinced the same person looked 'hatefully' at his sister, Nasreen, at a McDonald's just metres away from the second mosque in nearby Linwood days before the massacre.

'I recognised the face,' said Mr Khan, who is confident it was the killer outside the mosque he would shoot out. 'He looked at me, angry look.'

The claim comes as CCTV footage emerges of Tarrant's silver Subaru station wagon driving towards Al Noor Mosque minutes before the shootings began.

Nasim Khan (pictured) claims he saw accused Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant scoping out the Al Noor mosque in construction worker clothing a week before the tragedy

Mr Khan said his sister Nasreen (pictured), too, believes she encountered the man near the second mosque he destroyed

Moments before the slaughter began, this is alleged mosque murderer Brenton Tarrant driving to the scene of his first devastating attack

Mr Khan described him as wearing a typical 'construction worker dress' including a jacket and fluorescent clothing.

'He was angrily looking at me.

'When I saw the photo in the video I realised, this is guy.'

He told Daily Mail Australia he has not yet told the police about his frightening encounter.

Mr Khan said his sister, too, believes she encountered the man near the second mosque he destroyed.

'When I popped in he looked at me vacantly  and I felt very uncomfortable inside,' she told reporters.

'So quickly I ran into my car, and I told my husband and he said 'OK, stay with me'.

Tarrant's (pictured) Subaru station wagon was captured on film travelling towards Christchurch's Al Noor Mosque less than five minutes before he allegedly started shooting by a surveillance camera mounted on the wall of a business nearby

Children, including three-year-old Mucad Ibrahim, were robbed of their lives, their innocence and their parents during the shooting at Al Noor Mosque (pictured)

Armed and dangerous, the racist was already in his para-military fatigues with his semi-automatic rifles in the foot-well of the passenger seat in his silver Subaru (pictured)

'I said no, I can't stay with you, I have to go because my daughter is there.

'Mummy feels unsafe so how my daughter would feel?

'So I went there and got my daughter and just out of there'.

She said the incident was 'about four five days ago, about a week ago'. She said she recognised the killer from his photo.

The family made the remarks outside a community meeting for the Islamic community on Tuesday afternoon.

A massacre survivor has also told Daily Mail Australia that he saw Tarrant scoping out the Al Noor mosque in construction worker clothing a week before the tragedy. Pictured: Victims of Friday's shootings

Brenton Tarrant allegedly killed 50 people during a shooting rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand

Moments before the slaughter began, accused mosque murderer Brenton Tarrant was caught on camera driving to the scene of the first devastating attack.

Armed and dangerous, the racist was allegedly already in his military fatigues with his semi-automatic rifles in the foot-well of the passenger seat.

Tarrant's Subaru station wagon was captured on film travelling towards Christchurch's Al Noor Mosque less than five minutes before he allegedly started shooting by a surveillance camera mounted on the wall of a business nearby.

Minutes earlier, the Australian-born white supremacist had sent Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern a copy of his twisted hate-filled manifesto.

Mr Khan described him as wearing a typical 'construction worker dress' including a jacket and fluorescent clothing. Pictured: Students comfort each other during a vigil held for the victims of the attacks

Mr Khan said his sister, too, believes she encountered the man near the second mosque he destroyed. Pictured: Students attend a vigil for those who died in the mosque shootings

Mr Khan said he has not yet told the police about his frightening encounter. Pictured: A young girl lights candles at a memorial site

The film shows the car's distinct blacked-out windows and rear tow-bar. The left hand of a white man can be seen gripping the steering wheel.

The date is displayed as the 15 March 2019, last Friday. The time counter, set at New Zealand Summer Time, shows 12.38  about four minutes before the shooting began.

The same vehicle was captured on film by a passer-by who watched as armed police rammed the car off the road and dragged the driver out at gunpoint.

Mr Khan's sister said the incident was 'about four five days ago, about a week ago'. She said she recognised the killer from his photo. Pictured: High school students mourn the deaths

A Muslim worshipper prays at a makeshift memorial at the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand

During the 30 minutes in between the two films, 48 men, women and children were allegedly murdered in cold blood as they took part in Friday prayers. Scores of others were wounded, two of which were to later die of their injuries.

Children, including three-year-old Mucad Ibrahim, were robbed of their lives, their innocence and their parents.

Distraught Mother Salwa Mustafa listened as her 16-year-old son Hamza described his desperate attempts to flee the slaughter in a heart-breaking phone call that did not end until a survivor told her he had died.

A man cries in front of his two young children near a floral tribute to the victims of Brenton Tarrant's mosque rampage
The BBCs chairman has rejected claims that the corporation is running down Radio 4 to chase younger listeners.

Sir David Clementi acknowledged that neglecting older audiences must be a risk.

But he said radio stations had to move with the times or they would still be broadcasting 1950s shows such as Listen With Mother or Workers Playtime.

He told the Oxford Media Convention yesterday: Radio 4 is the best regulated radio station in the world because our listeners are on to us every time we move anything by a single minute  we get tons of letters.

Sir David Clementi, 70, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England who joined the corporation in 2017, said the BBC needed to draw in younger audiences through changes to content and by offering new ways to tune in, for example through the Sounds app [File photo]

So I dont think we need to worry about that.

Sir David was speaking after critics warned Radio 4 may be badly hit by 50 voluntary redundancies at the in-house radio production team.

Some of the money saved will be reinvested in the key strategic objective of attracting more young listeners and viewers to BBC services, according to an email sent to staff last week.

Anger has been focused at BBC director of radio James Purnell, 49, the former Labour Cabinet minister.

A former senior BBC figure told The Times: The risk for Radio 4 is that it becomes victim of a culture of contempt for older audiences. James is a Blairite through and through... and they never value the old.

The row comes as Radio 4s audience plummets. The most recent figures for the last quarter of last year showed it had 10.5million listeners a week, down from 11.3million in the same period of 2017.

Sir David, 70, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England who joined the corporation in 2017, said the BBC needed to draw in younger audiences through changes to content and by offering new ways to tune in, for example through the Sounds app.

Anger has been focused at BBC director of radio James Purnell, 49, the former Labour Cabinet minister. A former senior BBC figure told The Times: The risk for Radio 4 is that it becomes victim of a culture of contempt for older audiences. James is a Blairite through and through... and they never value the old' [File photo]

He also said the BBC has had a real terms decline in funding for much of the last decade and called for an open debate about future licence fee rises.

He added: All our competitors are getting more money. The BBC is having to do more with less money.

The BBC said it was making voluntary redundancies across all radio stations and Radio 4 was not being singled out.

But one presenter told The Times: Radio 4 is in danger of being destroyed. The jewel in the crown is being shut down and asset stripped like a Midlands car factory.

Another insider added: We risk going after people who arent interested in us while losing those who do.
The right-wing activist who restrained a teenager after he egged senator Fraser Anning has posted a vile rant about the Christchurch mosque massacre online.

Neil Erikson described the terrorist attack that killed 50 people and left dozens more in hospital, as 'karma'.

He also said blame was being wrongfully placed on the far-right movement including controversial right-wing Senator Anning.

Erikson was identified as one of the men who attacked 17-year-old Will Connolly after he cracked an egg on Senator Anning's head at a rally.

Will, who became known as 'Egg Boy' after the incident, said he took action after being incensed by Senator Anning's comments following the terrorist attack.

Erikson intervened and held the boy's head to the ground as three other men restrained his neck, torso and legs.

Erikson was identified as one of the men who attacked 17-year-old Will Connolly after he cracked an egg on Senator Fraser Anning's head at a rally

In his latest online post, Erikson describes the far-right movement as 'the sleeping dragon that has now awoken'.

'It is karma, this is what happens when you attack a people for so long,' he said.

'I am not surprised this happened. I am not condoning terrorism or going out and shooting people, but what do you expect when your religion goes around beheading, murdering, raping white Christians particularly in the western world.'

He said the Muslim community can't 'play the victim' now and commented on media attention and public outrage surrounding the attack.

Neil Erikson released the rant online, in which he described the mass-murder that killed 50 people and left dozens more in hospital, as 'karma'

Erikson is a convicted stalker and racial vilifier, and there is currently a police warrant out for his arrest over an alleged invasion of the Gosford Anglican Church in May last year, the Daily Telegraph reported.

He also took the opportunity to offer support to Senator Anning, who has been condemned for his comments after the massacre.

In a statement after the incident, Senator Anning said Muslim immigration was to blame.

'The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.

'Let us be clear, while Muslims may have been the victims today, usually they are the perpetrators.'

Brenton Tarrant is alleged to have stormed the Al Noor mosque and later Linwood Masjid in Christchurch on Friday, where he shot dead 50 people and left dozens more critically injured

Brenton Tarrant is alleged to have stormed the Al Noor mosque and later Linwood Masjid in Christchurch on Friday, where he shot dead 50 people and left dozens more critically injured.

Tarrant live-streamed the massacre, using a GoPro to capture the moment he killed dozens of innocent people as they prayed.

On Saturday, Australian-born Tarrant faced Christchurch District Court charged with one count of murder.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed more charges were expected to be laid.

Senator for Queensland, William Fraser Anning (pictured) said on Friday while any form of violence can never be justified, immigration is the real reason for the shooting
A hospital trust has been ordered to pay 12million compensation after it failed to spot danger signs that left a baby severely disabled.

The girl's delivery at Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford, Kent, in 2010 was delayed and she was starved of oxygen, which led to her severe disabilities.

Her family's lawyers sued Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust which admitted liability and apologised for the unacceptable standard of care.

The girl's delivery was delayed and she was starved of oxygen at this hospital, resulting in severe disabilities

At the High Court in London, Mr Justice Martin Spencer said the eight-year-old girl's payout was expected to be worth about 12million over her lifetime.

She will receive 3.7million upfront and get tax-free annual payments to cover the costs of her care for life.

The payments for the girl will start at 280,000 a year, before rising to 297,500 a year in 2028 and to 330,000 a year in 2029.

NHS counsel Michael Horne QC said that liability for the child's injuries was admitted at an early stage and the Trust's chief executive had apologised.

The trust has accepted liability and apologised for the unacceptable standard of care after a case at the High Court (pictured)

Mr Horne added: 'The Trust apologises unreservedly that the care provided fell below an acceptable standard and caused this tragedy.'

He paid tribute to the girl's parents and wider family for the 'dedicated and unstinting care' they had given her.

Approving the settlement, Mr Justice Spencer described the girl's disabilities as 'profound'.

Her vision is severely impaired, she suffers from epilepsy, has to be fed through a tube and has no independent mobility.

Mr Justice Spencer added: 'The devotion and care lavished upon her by her parents has been absolutely awe-inspiring. It has enabled her to fulfil her life within the limits of her disabilities.'
The SEC has called Musk's contempt defense 'ridiculous' and put pressure on a federal judge to punish the tech tycoon

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has blasted Elon Musk's contempt of court defense as 'ridiculous' and urged a federal judge to punish the billionaire.

The SEC filed a contempt motion last month after Musk continued to tweet about Tesla without seeking approval from a company lawyer - despite agreeing to a court-ordered settlement requiring him to do so.

SEC attorneys say Musk brazenly defied the New York federal judge when he tweeted to his 25.4million followers on February 19 that Tesla plans to build 500,000 cars in 2019.

That figure turned out to be in error, and it wasn't consistent with prior company disclosures.

The February contempt motion stipulated that Musk had to receive pre-approval for any social media posts that were 'material' to Tesla shareholders.

Musk's lawyers wrote last week that the February 19 tweet merely restated previously approved disclosures on electric car production volumes.

They wrote that the tweet, which was published after the markets closed, neither revealed material information, nor altered the mix of data available to investors.

But the SEC say the argument is 'nearly ridiculous'. 'His interpretation is inconsistent with the plain terms of this court's order and renders its pre-approval requirement meaningless,' the lawyers wrote.

The SEC said this 13-word inaccurate tweet claiming Tesla would produce around 500,000 vehicles this year defied a court order

The February contempt motion stipulated that Musk had to receive pre-approval for any social media posts that were 'material' to Tesla shareholders

US District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan will decide if Musk is in contempt and whether he should be punished.

The SEC said no hearing is necessary on the matter 'because there appear to be no disputed issues of material fact.'

The lawyers also accused the Securities and Exchange Commission of censorship and of violating Musk's First Amendment rights by imposing a prior restraint on his speech.

But the SEC lawyers wrote that submitting statements for approval does not mean Musk is prohibited from speaking.

'As long as a statement submitted for pre-approval is not false or misleading, Tesla would presumably approve its publication without prior restraint on Musk,' they wrote.

The SEC also wrote that Musk waived any First Amendment challenge to the order when he agreed to it.

Musk's lawyers wrote last week that the February 19 tweet merely restated previously approved disclosures on electric car production volumes. The company predicted it will produce 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s - its lowest-priced car - each year

Musk's lawyers also argued that the SEC's motion for contempt is an over-reach that exceeds its authority.

But the SEC said enforcement of the order is up to the judge, who has broad powers to enforce court orders.

Monday's filing said the February 19 tweet was different from prior public disclosures by the company.

Also, Musk has regularly published tweets with 'substantive information' about the company and its business, the SEC contended.

Musk claims his tweet didn't sway shareholders. Tesla's stock rose by just $1.10 the next day

Musk's 13-word February 19 tweet said that Tesla would produce around 500,000 vehicles this year, but it wasn't approved by the company's 'disclosure counsel,' the SEC has said.

The lawyer quickly realized it and summoned Musk to the company's Fremont, California, factory to help write a correction.

The company would make vehicles at a rate of 500,000 per year, but it wouldn't produce a half-million in 2019.

Musk's response by former Enron prosecutor John C. Hueston of Newport Beach, California, said that the settlement allows Musk 'reasonable discretion' to determine if his communications would require the lawyer's approval. In the case of the February 19 tweet, Musk determined that it did not.

Legal experts say it's unlikely that Musk will be punished severely, but the commission wants to get on the record that Musk violated the terms, to prepare for any future violations.

The tweet was posted and corrected after U.S. markets had closed, but experts say regulators don't care much about that because stocks are traded nearly around the clock. Tesla's stock rose by just $1.10, or less than 1 per cent, the next day.
A statue of an angel by a celebrated sculptor is at the centre of a three-way battle between a film producer, a rich restaurateur and an art gallery.

The marble bust was created by Emily Young  who has been hailed as Britains greatest living stone sculptor and has work outside St Pauls Cathedral in London.

But the question of who owns the artwork has become the subject of a legal tug-of-war after it was put up for sale.

Millionaire restaurant owner Ernest Singh claims he bought Angel from film producer Andre Munroe Meyers for 110,000 in June 2015 and pocketed a written receipt.

The pair agreed to keep the sculpture (pictured, Emily Young with another of her creations) in Mr Meyers' home until a place was found to install it because a crane was required to move it

The two men agreed the sculpture would stay temporarily at Mr Meyers then 4million home in Chelsea, as it required a crane and other specialist equipment to remove, a court was told.

Mr Singh, one of the bosses of Japanese patisserie house Sakurado in Kensington, west London, claims they agreed to leave it in place until he decided where he wished to install it, court documents disclosed.

He says he was gobsmacked two and a half years later when he was browsing for art online in January 2018 and discovered that Bowman Sculpture in Mayfair was selling it for 175,000.

Mr Singh, 49, who also lives in a 4million house, is now suing both Bowman Sculpture Ltd and Mr Meyers. He wants a court ruling that the work is his property  plus damages for alleged wrongful interference.

His lawyers claim the gallery failed to make the standard market searches of the Art Loss Register before acquiring the work in February 2017.

Mr Meyers, 56, and the gallery have converted the sculpture to their own use by wrongly claiming the right to sell it, he insists.

Mr Singh claims to have seen the sculpture offered online for sale

Mr Singh has already secured judgment against Mr Meyers on the issue of liability, his barrister Mark Stephens told the court.

The gallery denies any blame, insisting it bought the sculpture legitimately.

It was obtained in good faith and without notice of the alleged previous sale to Mr Singh, say its legal team.

The gallery has also been Ms Youngs exclusive representative since 2016, its lawyers pointed out.

The statue has had a complex ownership history and was originally bought by Mr Meyers ex-wife Sharai in Edinburgh 18 years ago.

She is a highly successful Scottish businesswoman, who made millions dabbling in a range of fields, including fashion, design and leisure.

But the marble head became Mr Meyers property in 2011 after their divorce, Mr Singhs lawyers say.

The case, which had a pre-trial hearing at the Central London County Court, will return to court at a later date.
Meghan McCains fellow conservative co-host on The View is rallying to her side and attacking Donald Trump - even though her father is the presidents ambassador to Russia.

Abby Huntsman, who like McCain worked at Fox News before she joined ABCs popular daytime talk show, implicitly slammed Trump on Monday for once again criticizing Meghans dad, the late Senator John McCain, over the weekend.

Huntsman tweeted: Proud of my good friend @MeghanMcCain for staying so composed through this nonsense.

The McCain family doesnt deserve it and neither does this great country.

Abby Huntsman, who like Meghan McCain worked at Fox News before she joined ABCs popular daytime talk show The View, implicitly slammed President Trump (right) on Monday for once again criticizing Meghans dad, the late Senator John McCain, over the weekend

Huntsman tweeted: Proud of my good friend @MeghanMcCain for staying so composed through this nonsense. The McCain family doesnt deserve it and neither does this great country'

Meghan McCain responded to Huntsmans tweet, writing: Love you. The tweet included a heart emoji

Abby Huntsman is the daughter of Jon Huntsman (above), who was appointed by Trump to be the United States ambassador to Russia

Leadership and decency may not matter on a reality show, but it sure as hell matters when youre running the free world.

Meghan McCain responded to Huntsmans tweet, writing: Love you. The tweet included a heart emoji.

While John McCain and his family never hid their distaste for Trump, the Huntsman family's predicament is a bit more complicated.

Abby's father, Jon Huntsman, was appointed by Trump to be the United States ambassador to Russia.

Before his Moscow posting, Huntsman served as Barack Obama's ambassador to China. He had previously served a term as governor of Utah.

Earlier on Monday, McCain blasted Trump on The View for having a 'pathetic life' for spending his weekend tweeting criticism of her father.

'He spends his weekend obsessing over great men, because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it, he will never be a great man,' McCain said on the show.

'My father was his kryptonite in life. He was his kryptonite in death,' she added.

Meghan McCain escalated her response to President Trump's criticism of her late father, saying the president has a 'pathetic life'

President Trump attacked the late Sen. John McCain twice this weekend on Twitter

McCain said when she saw the president's tweets she thought that 'your life is spent on your weekends not with your family, not with your friends, but obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to.'

'That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now,' she added.

'I genuinely feel bad for his family. I can't imagine having a father that does this on the weekends.'

Trump attacked the late senator twice this weekend on Twitter, focusing on McCain's ties to the infamous Steele dossier that contains the unverified allegations the Russians have blackmail material on the president.

'So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) 'last in his class' (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!' the president wrote on Sunday.

McCain was actually fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy.

On Saturday, Trump said McCain leaking the 'dirty dossier' was 'dark stain' on his legacy.

'Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier "is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain,"' Trump wrote, attributing the quote to, Ken Starr, the former independent counsel whose investigation led to Bill Clinton's impeachment.

Trump continued, referring to John McCain's vote on the Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare: 'He had far worse 'stains' than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!'

McCain's 'no' vote on the GOP effort to take down Obama's signature law stopped the effort in its tracks.

Meghan McCain poses with her father, Senator John McCain on The View in October 2017

The president and McCain had a testy relationship when the senator was alive leading to McCain not inviting Trump to his funeral, where the former Presidents Obama and George W. Bush gave the eulogies.

In regards to Trump's allegations, there is no evidence that McCain shared the Steele dossier before the election.

The late senator did hand-deliver a copy of it to then-FBI Director James Comey in December of 2016, after the election, as McCain wrote in his book 'The Restless Wave.'

'The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true. I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation's security should have done,' McCain wrote. 'I did what duty demanded I do.'

Meghan McCain also slapped back at the president on Saturday, saying he will never be loved.

'No one will ever love you the way they loved my father.... I wish I had been given more Saturday's with him. Maybe spend yours with your family instead of on twitter obsessing over mine?' she tweeted on Saturday.

On Sunday, Trump retweeted a tweet from a supporter who wrote that 'millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain.'

John McCain died at the age of 81 after battling brain cancer. He made explicit his desire that President Trump not attend his funeral, and also dis-invited his 2008 running mate, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

His beef with President Trump dates at least back to the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump criticized him for being taken prisoner in Vietnam.

'He's not a war hero,' Trump said in July 2015, sarcastically quipping: 'He's a war hero because he was captured.'

Then, he added, 'I like people that weren't captured.'
A 12-year-old schoolgirl was mocked for shaving her head in honour of her grandmother, a cancer survivor.

Kyarah Doyle, from New South Wales, took part in the Leukemia Foundation World's Greatest Shave on Thursday.

The Inverell High School student raised more than $1000 for the charity by shaving off her long brown hair.

But despite her good intentions cruel bullies made rude remarks, laughed and called her 'ugly' when she turned up with no hair on Monday.

Kyarah's mother Jessica Smith said she came home in tears.

Inverell High School student Kyarah Doyle (pictured), from northern New South Wales, reached her goal to raise at least $1,000 for the Leukemia Foundation World's Greatest Shave

The 'selfless' year seven student made the brave decision to shave off her sandy-blonde hair in honour of her grandmother, who was diagnosed with cancer

'She came home from school and as soon as I saw her, I knew there was something wrong,' the mother-of-four told Daily Mail Australia.

'Students at school, who she classified as friends, bullied her and asked her why she would have done that,

'They should have been the ones to support her and they knew full well why she shaved her head.'

Ms Smith said Kyarah was so upset, she couldn't face going back to school and had to stay home on Tuesday.

'She's still very upset. I'm reassuring her that what she's done is incredible and so many people are proud of her,' she said.

'I thought high school students would be more mature than this.'

The mother-of-four has blamed the school for not publicising the initiative to students beforehand.

She had filed a complaint to the school but was told by the principal she was unaware of the incident.

The matter was passed on to the deputy, who also wasn't aware of the bullying but has said the school will act on promoting the campaign.

Ms Smith said her 12-year-old was so upset, she couldn't face going back to school and had to stay home on Tuesday

'They [the school] literally did not want anything to do with it. I feel if they had promoted it, she wouldn't have been bullied,' Ms Smith said.

Ms Smith, who had participated in the World's Greatest Shave in past after losing a close friend to cancer, said she was inspired by the bravery of her daughter.

'I think people need to learn not to judge because what she has done is amazing,

'Kyarah and I would like thank everyone for their support and to everyone who has donated.'

A spokesman from the New South Wales Department of Education and Training told Daily Mail Australia a member of the school executive responded to Ms Smith and addressed her concerns within an hour of her initial call.

'The school spoke to her by telephone and is already following up her concerns and if substantiated will take appropriate action,' the statement read.

'The Year 7 Adviser had already praised the student's efforts for Shave for a Cure to a meeting of the whole year group,

'Bullying is not tolerated at Inverell High School. The school proactively encourages students to report any concerns to a wide range of nominated staff or a trusted teacher. Any bullying, whether reported or observed, is addressed appropriately.'
A fashion designer killed her husband by driving a knife into his heart just five days before Christmas.

Katie Anne Castel has pleaded guilty to the 2017 manslaughter of her husband Jarred Paul Castel in Chapel Hill in Brisbane's inner-west.

Castel lobbed a computer before throwing the knife at him, who was standing two metres away shirtless.

Jay Geddes (sister of the victim, second from left) and Ryan Castel (brother of the victim, centre) are seen with family and friends of victim Jarred Paul Castel outside the Brisbane Supreme Court in Brisbane, Tuesday, March 19, 2019.

The argument sparked in their kitchen, which concerned him coming home late, prosecutors said in court on Tuesday.

Her actions were 'totally disproportionate to the nature of the disagreement' and his death based on her actions was 'reasonably foreseeable', crown prosecutor Judy Geary said.

She had no remorse and was psychologically abusing her husband, Mr Castel's father, brother and sister have said in victim impact statements heard in court.

Brisbane based Katie Anne Castel has pleaded guilty to the 2017 manslaughter of her husband Jarred Paul Castel in Chapel Hill in Brisbane's inner-west

The knife was lodged in his chest and pierced his heart, creating a 4cm wound. He pulled it out before he died from his injuries.

Castel, a 38-year-old mother of the couple's five-year-old son and the owner of Adverbium Design, is being sentenced in the Brisbane Supreme Court on Tuesday.

She accepted a downgraded plea of manslaughter in a domestic violence context today, after initially being charged with murder.

Mr Castel was not threatening her at the time, crown prosecutor Ms Geary said.
Two fishermen got the shock of their lives when they stumbled across a huge sunfish washed up on a deserted beach.

They found the creature 25km east of the River Murray mouth - a popular fishing and holiday destination in South Australia.

Supervisor Steven Jones spotted it while out with his fishing team at of Goolwa Pipico.

The sunfish was estimated to be around 2.5m in length and weighed several hundred kilograms.

Linette Grzelak posted the image of the fish to Facebook after her partner, who was on the fishing trip, returned home. Hunter and Steven Jones are pictured

Linette Grzelak posted the image of the fish to Facebook after her partner, who was fishing for cockles, returned home.

'A sunfish found by my partner along the Coorong a couple [of] nights ago I thought it was fake,' the she said.

'They thought it was wood as they were driving up,' she added.

Sunfish can grow up to 3m long, 4.2m high and weigh up to 2.5 tonnes are considered vulnerable in the wild making the find even more incredible.

The Sunfish measured approximately 2.5m in length and weighed several hundred kilograms

Many of the experienced fishermen in the group said they had never seen a sunfish in Australia before

They are found in tropical waters around the world and are often confused for sharks due to their fin.

The large fish is considered a delicacy in some parts of Asia including Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Fish collection manager Ralph Foster, from the South Australian Museum, explained why so many sunfish get washed up on the beach.

'One of the big dangers would being hit by big boats at sea,' he said.

'They often eat plastic bags thinking they are jelly fish which can kill them.'

Sunfish wash up on South Australian shores quite frequently, Mr Foster said he received reports of several every year.

'They are actually quite common in Australian waters but they are generally further out to sea.'
Over 150 workers have been evacuated from a building amid fears it could collapse, while emergency crews assess the situation.

There was movement in one of the wall structures of a commercial building in Townsville, in Queensland, just after midday on Tuesday.

Workers from the Suncorp building were evacuated, as well as people from three neighbouring properties and buildings.

A large concrete beam that dropped at least 15 centimetres from the side of the building is visible from the street below.

'Evacuation sirens went off and everyone just went down the fire stairs,' local man James Felix, who was working in the Suncorp building, says everyone inside was unaware of what was going on.

A worker noticed a concrete beam had dropped about 15 centimetres after he was evacuated from the building

The Suncorp building had at least 100 people evacuated, as well as at least 50 people from three neighbouring buildings

'Once word got out, and we could see what happened we all moved' said the 41-year-old, whose desk sits just under where the large concrete slab shifted down.

He says this is another major inconvenience for the building, 'it was also closed for two weeks after the floods due to electrical damage, now we've got this. My office is preparing to work elsewhere tomorrow.'

It's understood ambulance and fire and rescue were on scene, but left shortly after 3pm.

Council engineers and police remain on scene at the Suncorp to assess multiple floors what caused the movement in the wall structure.

Exclusion zones of up to 300 metres around the building are still in place.

'Queensland Police has been requested for traffic management to block off the road along Sturt Street between Stokes and Denham streets', a Queensland Emergency Services spokeswoman said.

The local bus has diverted routes around the affected street.
Neo-Nazis chanting 'bring on the cull' and doing Hitler salutes delivered boxes of pig heads to a mosque three years before it was targeted in the Christchurch massacre.

Footage of the vile incident emerged online over the weekend showing white supremacists delivering the dead pigs to the Masjid Al-Noor mosque in 2016

According to the NZ Herald, ringleader Philip Neville Arps was joined by two men as he filmed himself delivering the dead animal heads to the mosque's front door.

Arps was reportedly charged with offensive behaviour and fined $800 for the vile act.

Three years before Friday's horrific terrorist attack in Christchurch pig's heads were delivered to the Masjid Al-Noor mosque in 2016 by a group of white supremacists (stock image)

New Zealand man Philip Neville Arps (pictures) was the man on video delivering the pig's heads to the mosque door, an act that saw him face court charged with offensive behaviour

In the Islamic faith pork is considered unclean and the consumption of it is prohibited as outlined in the Qur'an.

'It was a deliberate attack, and deliberate offence against Muslims, were the judge's words. Obviously the judge knows me well,' Arps said to the camera after his appeal against the charge was dismissed.

'White power, my friends, my family, my people. Let's get these f****** out. Bring on the cull.'

During the video Arps is reportedly heard saying he wished he had Molotov cocktails in the box and not pig's heads after he proclaimed 'white power'.

It seemed that even the brutal and bloody terrorist attack on the very same Mosque wasn't enough for Arps to correct his language and instead he took to Facebook to simply write 'excellent'

During the video Arps is head saying he wished he had Molotov cocktails in the box and not pig's heads after he claimed 'white power'

Arps told the NZ Herald that accused mass murderer Brenton Tarrant was 'taking the p***' with Friday's shooting.

He clarified that he himself was 'political', and said Tarrant's alleged actions would only serve to 'demonise patriotism'.

Fifty people died in the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch after a lone attacker opened fire during Friday prayers.

Thirty people remain in hospital after being injured in the attacks, nine of them in a critical condition.

As the nation continues to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed action would be taken to ensure such an atrocity could never happen again.

'Our hearts are heavy but our spirit is strong,' she said in Parliament on Tuesday.

On Monday, New Zealand's Cabinet made 'in principle' decisions about gun law reform, with further details to be announced by next Monday.

An inquiry into the events leading up to the attacks will also take place.
The Australian teenager dubbed 'Egg Boy' won't pursue legal action against Senator Fraser Anning or the politician's supporters who put him in a headlock, his lawyer says.

Will Connolly, 17, was whacked in the face by Senator Anning when he slapped an egg on the politician's head on Saturday, following the senator's widely-condemned comments on the Christchurch mosque shooting.

'Our client has no intention of making a complaint or taking any action against Senator Anning,' Mr Connolly's lawyer Peter Gordon told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday.

The Melbourne teenager dubbed 'Egg Boy' won't pursue legal action against Senator Fraser Anning or the politician's supporters who put him in a headlock, his lawyer says

Connolly was motivated to slam an egg on Senator Anning's head after he blamed Muslim immigration for the terror attacks on two New Zealand mosques that left 50 Muslims dead.

'The real cause of the bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration programme which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place,' Anning said.

After the egging, Connolly was punched in the face twice by Senator Anning and was tackled to the ground and put in a choke-hold by four of the Senator's supporters.

Connolly was arrested by police and but was released without charge.

'Our client has no intention of making a complaint or taking any action against Senator Anning,' Mr Connolly's lawyer Peter Gordon told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday

Connolly became an internet sensation overnight spawning thousands of memes, calls for him to be the next Prime Minister and free life-time entry to gigs by major Australian bands.

He also had a mural painted In Melbourne's Hosier Lane of him cracking the egg on Anning's head.

A GoFundMe page was also set up to cover Connolly's legal fees and 'to buy more eggs,' but the teenager has decided to donate the majority of the money to victims of the Christchurch terrorist attack.

A change.org petition was set up demanding Senator Anning to be removed from politics which has received just over 1,300,000 signatures.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (pictured in parliament on Tuesday) has vowed never to name the Christchurch killer

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has vowed never to name the accused Christchurch mosque killer.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, plans to represent himself when he stands trial for the shootings that killed 50 on Friday.

There are fears the self-confessed white supremacist, who referenced Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik in his 'manifesto', could use the legal process to espouse extremist views.

Ms Ardern, who opened parliament on Tuesday with a Muslim prayer, said efforts should be made to prevent giving the gunman the attention he wanted.

'He obviously had a range or reasons for committing this atrocious terrorist attacks. Lifting his profile was one them and that's something we can absolutely deny him,' she said.

'One thing I can assure you, you won't hear me speak his name.'

In an impassioned speech in parliament, she called for heroes and the deceased to be spoken of, rather than the gunman.

'He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless,' she said.

'And to others I implore you: speak the names of those who were lost, rather than name of the man who took them.

'We in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.'

Earlier on Tuesday, Ms Ardern told reporters that she would do everything in her power to deny him a platform for his racist views.

Ms Ardern (pictured on Tuesday), who opened parliament with a Muslim prayer, said efforts had to be made to prevent giving the gunman the attention he wanted

Brenton Tarrant, the man charged in relation to the Christchurch massacre, makes a sign to the camera during his appearance in the Christchurch District Court

'I agree that it is absolutely something that we need to acknowledge, and do what we can to prevent the notoriety that this individual seeks,' she said.

Asked if she would like the trial to occur behind closed doors, Ardern said she would prefer that but said it was not her decision to make.

The gunman's desire for infamy was made clear by the fact that he left behind a convoluted 73-page manifesto before Friday's massacre and livestreamed footage of his attack on the Al Noor mosque.

The video prompted widespread revulsion and condemnation by lawmakers and members of the public.

Facebook said it removed 1.5 million videos of the shootings during the first 24 hours after the massacre.

'He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless,' Ms Ardern (pictured on Tuesday) said

Asked if she would like the trial to occur behind closed doors, Ardern (pictured on Tuesday) demurred, saying that was not her decision to make

But on Tuesday, Ardern expressed frustration that the video remained available online, four days after the attack.

'We have been in contact with Facebook; they have given us updates on their efforts to have it removed, but as I say, it's our view that it cannot - should not - be distributed, available, able to be viewed,' she said.

'It is horrendous and while they've given us those assurances, ultimately the responsibility does sit with them.'

Arden said she had received 'some communication' from Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg on the issue.

The prime minister has also spoken with British Prime Minister Theresa May about the importance of a global effort to clamp down on the distribution of such material.

A judge ordered Tarrant to return to New Zealand's High Court on April 5 for his next hearing on one count of murder, though he is expected to face additional charges. He is being held in isolation in a Christchurch jail.

Ardern has said gun law reforms would be announced within ten days of the attack and an inquiry conducted into intelligence and security services that failed to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans.

There have been concerns intelligence agencies were overly focused on the Muslim community in detecting and preventing security risks.

New Zealand's international spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, confirmed in a statement that it had not received any relevant information or intelligence ahead of the shootings.
The 65-year-old (pictured) referenced the infamous Gallipoli campaign during World War I

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has issued a stern warning to anyone considering entering the country for anti-Muslim reasons in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack.

The 65-year-old referenced the Gallipoli campaign during the First World War and said during a public speech on Monday that anyone with heinous motives for entering the country would return 'in coffins'.

He highlighted the failed invasion of Gallipoli peninsula back in 1915, by allied forces such as Australia and New Zealand.

'Your grandparents came, some of them returned in coffins. If you come as well like your grandfathers, be sure that you will be gone like your grandfathers,' President Erdogan said, reported the Hurriyet Daily News.

He said history would repeat if anyone were to stand against 'Turks, Muslims and all the oppressed'.

'If Turkey faces a test similar to those that happened in Gallipoli in the First World War, the country is capable of doing the same again,' he said.

President Erdogan was speaking at the opening ceremony of the Museum of Troy in Canakkale, a city in northwest Turkey, and implored New Zealand to take the issue 'seriously'.

He highlighted the failed invasion of Gallipoli peninsula back in 1915, by allied forces such as Australia and New Zealand. (Australian troops pictured)

'We expect the New Zealand government to take this issue seriously. They should not take it lightly like Western countries do. I have shared this issue with New Zealand's Governor-General Patsy Reddy,' he said.

He noted that he had told Dame Reddy that Turkey had suffered from multiple terrorist attacks and would be happy to 'hold joint works' with New Zealand.

President Erdogan statements come shortly after the Turkish authorities released a CCTV picture of the New Zealand mosque suspected killer gunman.

He is believed to have had an extended stay in the country in 2016.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured) has issued a stern warning to anyone considering entering the country for anti-Muslim reasons

Turkish authorities have released a CCTV picture of the New Zealand mosque suspected killer (pictured)

Australian-born Brenton Tarrant, 28, allegedly livestreamed his sickening attack on two Christchurch mosques on Friday, leaving 50 dead.

Ankara, Turkeys cosmopolitan capital, said on Friday it was currently investigating Tarrant's multiple visits to Turkey.

They said they were looking into who he might have met while he was there during an 'extended period of time in the country.'

The Bulgarian government has also said it was looking into Tarrant, who apparently visited the country late last year, as well as Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Tarrant is said to have set off on a journey around the world in 2011, taking a particular interest in the Balkans and Turkey and the former conflicts between Christians and Muslims.
Jim Carrey is once again pulling no punches in his scathing caricatures of President Trump - this time blaming him for the massacres at two New Zealand mosques.

The Ace Ventura actor posted a drawing on his Twitter account on Monday.

It shows a meteor-like figure with Trumps head and hair in a flaming ball of streaking fire as it heads for Earth.

A swastika is seen on Trumps forehead, and his eyes are colored in all-white while his mouth is open.

The caption in the tweet reads: Innocent people are now being slaughtered, families ruined and childrens lives destroyed.

All in his name.

Actor Jim Carrey drew a scathing cartoon of President Trump, blaming him for the New Zealand massacre on Friday

It shows a meteor-like figure with Trumps head and hair in a flaming ball of streaking fire as it heads for Earth. A swastika is seen on Trumps forehead, and his eyes are colored in all-white while his mouth is open. Carrey warns the Trump presidency is an 'extinction level event'

On Saturday, Carrey posted a drawing of himself crying in response to the carnage in Christchurch. 'My heart is with you New Zealand,' he wrote. 'My tears are for all of us.' The drawing depicts Carrey's eye as the Earth

If the Craven Republican Senate allows this vile miscreant to continue encouraging devisiveness, the Trump Presidency will become an EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT.

On Saturday, Carrey posted a drawing of himself crying in response to the carnage in Christchurch. 'My heart is with you New Zealand,' he wrote.

'My tears are for all of us.' The drawing depicts Carrey's eye as the Earth.

A lone gunman killed 50 people in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch on Friday.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday.

Trump waded Monday into the controversy over his response to the massacre of 50 people in two New Zealand mosques, complaining that he was being blamed for the tragedy

'My message was sympathy and love for all Muslim communities,' New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (seen on Sunday comforting a woman at Kilbirnie Mosque) said she told President Donald Trump

Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5 where police said he was likely to face more charges.

Trump waded Monday into the controversy over his response to the massacre of 50 people in two New Zealand mosques, complaining that he was being blamed for the tragedy.

The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand, Trump told his more than 59 million followers on Twitter.

They will have to work very hard to prove that one, he tweeted.

So Ridiculous!

Trump appeared to be referring to criticism of his response to the attack, which Tarrant allegedly carried out claiming to be resisting genocide against white people.

In a lengthy written rant, the alleged killer referred to Trump as a symbol of renewed white identity.

Trump did on several occasions tweet and speak to condemn the horrible attack and offer any U.S. assistance to New Zealand's authorities.

However, he courted controversy Friday when he played down the wider implications of the gunman's ideology, saying that violent white nationalism is not a growing problem.

It's a small group of people, he said.

Trump's homeland security chief, Kirstjen Nielsen, gave a distinctly different emphasis Monday in a speech where she said that domestic terrorists, like the New Zealand killer, increasingly resemble the better known threat from Islamist groups.

The primary terrorist threat to the United States continues to be from Islamist militants and those they inspire, but we should not and cannot and must not ignore the real and serious danger posed by domestic terrorists, she said.

They are using the same do-it-yourself, mass murder tactics as we saw with the horrible assault last week in New Zealand against Muslim worshipers, she said.

Trump's dismissal of a broader security threat led to a flurry of criticism from Democrats and other critics over the weekend.

Royal Malaysian Navy Able Rate Abdul Iskandar, who said he was supposed to be at Masjid Al Noor mosque on Friday, the day of the shooting, is comforted by a bystander as he weeps at the memorial site for the victims, outside the mosque in Christchurch on Tuesday

They pointed to his frequent labeling of illegal immigrants as invaders, his high-profile restrictions on immigration from several Muslim-majority countries, and a lukewarm condemnation of a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Time and time again, this president has embraced and emboldened white supremacists - and instead of condemning racist terrorists, he covers for them. This isn't normal or acceptable, tweeted Kirsten Gillibrand, who formally entered the Democratic race for the White House Sunday.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney went on television Sunday to push back, saying the president is not a white supremacist. I'm not sure how many times we have to say that.

To simply ask the question every time something like this happens overseas, or even domestically, to say, Oh, my goodness, it must somehow be the president's fault, speaks to a politicization of everything that I think is undermining sort of the institutions that we have in the country today, he said on Fox television.
The hit Netflix series After Life has come under fire for using a 'fake' Aboriginal painting done by a British artist.

Aboriginal elders have condemned the show's use of the painting and said female artist Timna Woollard should not have painted it because she is a woman.

The large dot-painting is featured in the lounge room of Ricky Gervais's character, providing the backdrop for major scenes in the series.

Australian Aboriginal elders have condemned the use of the painting in the series and female British artist, Timna Woollard,should not have painted it because 'men's business'

Punata Stockman, chairperson of the Papunya Tjupi art centre in the Northern Territory, told the ABC that the painting was culture theft.

The Papunya community played a large role in the Australian Indigenous art movement of the 1970s.

Stockman also said that the painting should not have been done by a female because it depicted 'men's business.'

'I was shocked this morning when I looked at it  it shouldn't be copied  this is stealing,' said community artist Linda Anderson Jonggarda.

Timna Woollard has apologised for painting the image and said that she had no idea her work was being used in After Life.

'The picture's re-use was brought to my attention, and I truly regret that it has caused offence. This was never my intention,' she said.

'I am now far more aware of the sensitivities around indigenous art and would not paint in this idiom again.'

The Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Netflix and Timna Woollard for comment but has not received a response.
A Christchurch welder shot dead in the mosque massacre was excited to become a new father - but has now tragically left behind his pregnant wife.

Mohammed Omar Faruk, 36, was the breadwinner for his family back in Bangladesh following the recent death of his father.

But Bangladeshi embassy officials and police have confirmed Mr Faruk was among those killed by a crazed gunman at the Al Moor mosque at Friday prayers last week.

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Mohammed Omar Faruk, 36, who was shot dead in Friday's mosque massacre, was excited to become a new father - but has now tragically left behind his pregnant wife

Mr Faruk was shot dead inside the Al Noor mosque (pictured) during daily prayers. Friends said the soon-to-be father's phone kept ringing hours after the massacre, giving them false hope he was alive

'He went to Bangladesh last December we have information that his wife is pregnant,' said Tareq Ahmed, the deputy commissioner of the Bangladeshi High Commission.

Mr Faruk's distraught friends said his phone kept ringing hours after the massacre on Saturday.

'There was a hope he was still alive,' said Md. (Mohamed) Mehedi, Mr Faruk's flat-mate in Christchurch.

But it was not to be, with police informing his friends that evening that his name had been listed among the dead.

Mr Faruk's friends quickly told his family back home, so not to leave them with false hope.

His wife is three-months-pregnant.

Mr Faruk arrived in New Zealand on a skilled migration visa about three years ago after years working in Singapore.

Shattered mourners have continued to visit the makeshift memorials outside the Al Noor and Linwood mosques (Pictured is an emotional woman on Monday at the scene of the first shooting)

The entrance to the mosque where Australian man Brenton Harrison Tarrant allegedly walked in and opened fire has turned into a shrine, with hundreds of mourners leaving bouquets of flowers and messages (pictured)

He was planning to return to his home country after saving some money.

'He was the only one to look after his family,' a heartbroken Mr Mehedi said.

Mr Faruk was his parents' only son and was now the titular head of the household for his family.

A friend posted online that Faruk was 'the best friend somebody could ask for.

'He always dreamed of returning home, but was killed in Christchurch'.

Mr Mehedi is helping arrange the repatriation of his friend's body.
A futuristic home that looks like something out of the Jetsons could become the first in the world to be sold by at auction using Bitcoin.

Australia's first home to be sold by cryptocurrency is expected to rake in $4million, and is owned by the founder of blockchain company NuYen, Greg Costello.

The 840sqm block half an hour out of Byron Bay features four-bedrooms, beachfront views, a lap pool and all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a modern mansion.

The home features a 25 metre heated lap pool with tiled lane and adjustable starting block

The auction will take place onsite and online for potential buyers around the world to join in.

Bidders will bid in Bitcoin, before Mr Costello's company NuYen converts that into Australian dollars.

'This is a world first in real estate,' auctioneer James Pratt told Daily Mail Australia. Viewers will be able to login and watch the live auction take place.

The April 8 auction will use a live auctioneer calling bids in cryptocurrency, while the price will be converted and displayed in Australian and US dollars on a live screen.

The 841 square metre beachfront block features 58 metres of uninterrupted north orientation, and sits just half an hour out of Byron Bay

The auction will use a live auctioneer calling bids in cryptocurrency, while the price will be converted and displayed in Australian and US dollars on a live screen.

LJ Hooker will work with Mr Pratt and Mr Costello's company NuYen to begin an online bidding war for the property at 1 Beech Lane, Casuarina, in New South Wales.

Payments can be made in both Bitcoin and Binance Coin.

The home's real estate agent Nick Witheriff says so far it's 50/50 whether the property will be snapped up by an Australian buyer, with interest already expressed from people in Sydney and Melbourne.

Mr Costello is confident the innovative auction will be a success, having already attracted interest from buyers in the US, Canada, China and Australia.

The home's owner is confident the innovative auction will be a success, having already attracted interest from buyers in the US, Canada, China and Australia.

'We have already had parties register for the auction in less than five days of it being released,' Mr Costello said.

'I strongly believe this is the way of the future for property sales. We live in a digital world and it is only common sense to pull down the walls for international buyers,' Mr Costello said.

Once the sale has wrapped up, NuYen's internal and secure exchange will liquidate the coins and then release them back to the market.

However Mr Costello, a firm cryptocurrency believer, intends to hold on to as much of the Bitcoin and Binance coin as he can.

'Some of the coins will have to be liquidated to release the mortgage but the rest will be held tight for future gains,' he said.
Law enforcement in Maryland have charged two suspects in the armed robbery of a convenience store involving a man dressed as a unicorn and wielding a crowbar.

Jacob William Rogge, 28, was charged with armed robbery, robbery, first and second degree assault, theft, and destruction of property after robbing a store around 5am Saturday morning, dressed in a full-body white and pink unicorn costume.

The Kingsville man is accused of using the crowbar to smash one of the registers at High's Dairy Store and demanding money from an employee.

Jacob William Rogge (left), 28, was charged with armed robbery, robbery, first and second degree assault, theft, and destruction of property. Joseph Philip Svezzese (right), 27, is also charged with armed robbery, robbery and theft

A suspect was seen dressed in a full-body white and pink unicorn costume while robbing a store Saturday morning

Rogge allegedly fled from the Long Green Pike location in a silver Hyundai Elantra driven by his accomplice, Joseph Philip Svezzese, 27, who is also charged with armed robbery, robbery and theft.

Baltimore County Police officers responding to the call passed the car which fit the description of the suspect vehicle but before officers could turn around and stop it, it lost control and crossed over the oncoming traffic lane, cops said.

'Our officers began responding, and they were given details that the suspect was dressed as a unicorn and armed with a crowbar,' Baltimore County police Lt. Andrea Bylen told WBALTV. 'A suspect using a unicorn mask or being dressed as a unicorn is certainly unique and not something that we encounter every day.

Kingsville man, Rogge, is accused of using the crow bar to smash one of the registers at High's Dairy Store in Baltimore (pictured) and demanding money from an employee

'It was traveling at a high rate of speed. Ultimately, when they tried to catch up to it, the car was involved in a single-vehicle crash on Manor Road.'

After traveling across Manor Road at Sweet Air Road, it crashed into 'mailboxes, a BGE pole, shrubbery and finally a boulder, which redirected the vehicle back across Manor Road where it came to a stop after striking a tree'.

Both suspects were transported to area hospitals with serious injuries.

Bel Air man Svezzese was treated and released and was held without bail pending a bail review hearing.

But the getaway car crashed into 'mailboxes, a BGE pole, shrubbery and a boulder, then came to a stop after striking a tree'. Both men were hospitalized

Rogge remained hospitalized in serious condition, receiving an initial bail hearing Monday afternoon resulting in no bond status.

Evidence was recovered at the scene of the crash linking the suspects to the robbery.

The unicorn costume was discarded prior to the crash but later recovered by police off the side of the roadway in some bushes.
A church minister and his two sons have got matching tattoos in honour of the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

Blair Stirling and his sons Harrison, 21, and Reid, 19, had the ink branded on their forearms that feature the English word 'stand' and the Arabic word for 'together.'

'We wanted to remember those who so tragically lost their lives regardless of their ethnicity and belief differing to ours,' Harrison told Daily Mail Australia.

A Christchurch Minister and his two sons have got matching tattoos in honour of the victims of the Christchurch terror attacks

Blair Stirling and his sons Harrison (left), 21, and Reid (right), 19, got the tattoos

'The tattoo works as a permanent reminder that when all is said and done we're all human and the same. The tattoo holds us accountable as to how we speak, act and treat others,' he said.

'I think it's important to recognise that when disaster strikes so tragically, humanity is stripped back to basics - whatever you believe, love is at the core.'

'The tattoo is about reminding me that love must always be at the forefront of my mind and actions.'

It is the first tattoo for Blair Stirling, who is a Christian minister in Christchurch and is also a social worker.

While his family was not directly affected by the attacks at two Mosques last Friday that resulted in the deaths of 50 Muslim worshippers, Mr Stirling said the community was banding together.

One of their local dairy shop owners has two twin sons, one of whom was killed in the attacks.

'I went and sat with the mum for a bit yesterday, and just held her hand. They had to open the shop today, because that's their livelihood,' Mr Stirling told Stuff.

'What are we going to learn from this? It's one thing to change the laws, but what about our attitudes? We need to own the lessons from this.'
A trial has begun for a white Pittsburgh police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black 17-year-old as he fled a traffic stop last summer.

Michael Rosfeld, 30, is charged with criminal homicide in the June death of Antwon Rose II. He could face life in prison if convicted.

During opening statements, Rosfeld's lawyers argued that the officer's use of deadly force was justified because he had reason to believe that Rose had a gun.

The prosecution responded to that argument by highlighting the inconsistent statements Rosfeld gave to authorities about whether he believed the teen was armed.

When Rosfeld was charged last July, the Pennsylvania district attorney said that Rose had showed his hands and clearly didn't have a weapon before the cop shot him in the back.

'In the end what really, really matters is what Michael Rosfeld knew, what he believed and what he thought when he pulled the trigger,' Allegheny County Chief Trial Deputy District Attorney Dan Fitzsimmons said.

Fitzsimmons also mentioned videos of the shooting recorded by witnesses, one of which shows Rose 'running away from [Rosfeld] and causing him no danger whatsoever'.

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Former East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld, 30, is charged with criminal homicide in the June 2018 death of unarmed 17-year-old Antwon Rose II. His trial began Tuesday at the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (pictured above outside court on March 12)

Rosfeld shot Antwon Rose II (above) three times as the teen fled a traffic stop last summer. Rose had been sitting in the front seat of an unlicensed taxicab when the back-seat passenger rolled down a window and shot at two men in North Braddock. The drive-by shooting led Rosfeld to pull over the unlicensed cab a short time after

In court on Tuesday, Rosfeld's attorney Patrick Thomassey painted his client as a public servant dedicated to keeping citizens safe.

He described the area that Rosfeld patrolled and where Rose was shot as crime-ridden and dangerous.

Raising his hand in the shape of the pistol and pointing it at the jury, Thomassey said: 'You have to make, as a police officer, a split second decision.

'Are we searching for the truth, or are we just going to say: "It must be murder?"'

He said the prosecution wouldn't put an expert in law enforcement use of force on the stand because 'they can't find an expert to say what [Rosfeld] did is wrong - because it's not'.

Throughout Tuesday's proceedings, Rosfeld remained quiet and attentive, his clasped hands resting on the table and right leg bouncing underneath it.

Rose's mother Michelle Kelley (left) and sister Kyra Jamison (right) are seen arriving for the first day of Rosfeld's homicide trial at the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh

Rose, a high school student, was sitting in the front seat of an unlicensed taxicab driving through North Braddock on June 19, 2018, when the back seat passenger, 18-year-old Zaijuan Hester, rolled down a window and shot at two men on the street, wounding one of them in the abdomen.

Hester, of Swissvale, pleaded guilty Friday to aggravated assault and firearms violations for the shooting, telling the judge that it was him - not Rose - who fired the shots.

After the drive-by, a neighbor described the vehicle involved to police, and then-Officer Rosfeld spotted it in neighboring East Pittsburgh a short time after and ordered the driver to pull over.

When the car came to a stop, Rose jumped out and ran.

Rosfeld fired three shots at him, striking him in the right side of his face, in his elbow and in his back - a bullet tearing through his heart and lung.

Investigators said Rose had an empty ammunition clip in his pants when he was killed but was not carrying a weapon. Two handguns were recovered from inside the vehicle.

Video of the shooting went viral on social media, triggering widespread protests in the Pittsburgh area, including a late-night march that shut down a major highway.

Eight days after Rose was killed, the Pennsylvania district attorney pressed criminal charges against Rosfeld.

A video recorded by a bystander showed Rose (in the grey shirt) being shot as the driver of the unlicensed taxi was handcuffed. The car was identified as one used in a drive-by shooting shortly before the traffic stop, and the driver of the car was arrested and later released

Six men and six women, including three African-Americans, from across the state were selected last week to serve on the jury for Rosfeld's trial.

During jury selection, the defense stressed that jurors would be tasked with determining whether the shooting was justified.

The jury will be sequestered in a Pittsburgh hotel for the duration of the trial, which is expected to last at least one week.

On the first day of the trial Tuesday, streets surrounding the Allegheny County Courthouse were blocked off and a large police presence was posted outside in case protests erupted, as they had last summer.

More than 120 people showed up for the trial, spilling out of the courtroom and into an overflow room.

Among them were Rose's mother Michelle Kenney and his sister Kyra Jamison.

The attorney representing Rose's family in a wrongful death suit, Fred Rabner, released a statement ahead of Tuesday's trial start, saying: 'Antwon's family is here seeking the justice they so deserve and to assure that the light of Antwon's memory shines forever.'

The statement called Rosfeld 'hair-triggered' and 'overly aggressive,' adding that his gun had 'left an irreparable hole in their collective souls'.

Rose's family released a statement Tuesday morning that called Rosfeld 'hair-triggered' and 'overly aggressive', adding that his gun had 'left an irreparable hole in their collective souls'

Mother Michelle Kenney (second right) is seen leaving the courthouse with supporters at lunch

After both sides delivered opening statements, forensic pathologist Abdulrezak Al-Shakir took the stand to testify on behalf of the Allegheny County medical examiner's office.

He said Rose had three bullet wounds - one to the face, another to the elbow and a third to the back. Only the latter was fatal, having perforated his lower right lung, his aorta and right ventricle.

During Al-Shakir's testimony, Jamison and a few of Rose's other relatives left the courtroom to avoid seeing the seven autopsy photos of his injuries.

The second witness to take the stand was North Braddock Police Sgt Brian Hodges, the first officer to arrive at the scene of the drive-by shooting that preceded the traffic stop on June 19, 2018.

Hodges testified to seeing the victim holding his stomach as blood soaked through his shirt. He said the victim was 'not forthcoming' with information about what happened, responding to questions by saying: 'I don't know.'

From the window of a building, a neighbor yelled out a description of the car that the shots had come from and which way it was headed.

The Pennsylvania district attorney pressed criminal charges against Rosfeld eight days after he fatally shot Rose. The officer is seen above in his mugshot

Hodges said that Rosfeld and another East Pittsburgh officer stopped by the shooting scene briefly before going to search for the suspect vehicle.

A few minutes later, Rosfeld radioed in that he was stopping a vehicle matching the description in East Pittsburgh.

Less than 60 seconds after that, Hodges heard someone call out: 'Shots fired.'

When he arrived at the scene of the traffic stop, the sergeant said he saw Rose lying on the ground as an officer performed CPR on him.

Hodges testified that he surveyed the scene for evidence and Hester, the drive-by shooter, but found neither and eventually went back to process the North Braddock scene.

The next witness to take the stand for the prosecution was Allegheny County police Detective Thomas Foley, whose testimony focused on the drive-by.

Foley walked the jury through 44 photos from the North Braddock crime scene before narrating a surveillance video of the shooting that showed Hester extending his gun out of the window of the gold Chevrolet Cruze and firing.

Video from the drive-by shooting that preceded the fatal traffic stop shows 18-year-old Zaijuan Hester extending his gun out of the window of the gold Chevrolet Cruze and firing. Rose's silhouette can be made out in the front seat

The detective said police recovered nine .40-caliber bullets that were believed to have come from Hester's gun. Two men, Thomas Cole Jr and William Ross, were wounded.

A man in a red shirt standing on the opposite side of the street from the men returned Hester's fire, unleashing four .45-caliber shots at the car, Foley said.

During his cross-examination, Thomassey asked Foley if it was possible that Rose fired shots from a stolen 9-mm gun that was found under his seat in the car, even though no 9-mm casings were recovered from the scene.

The prosecution objected twice to that lined of questioning and Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Alexander P Bicket asked the jury to disregard it.

During pretrial hearings, the defense fought for permission to present evidence about the gun that was found under Rose's seat and had his DNA on it.

They also asked to present evidence of Rose's alleged role in an armed robbery of his employer hours before his death, but Bicket denied that request and said evidence related to the drive-by was fair game but the robbery was not.

Hester is not slated to testify at Rosfeld's trial.

Zaijuan Hester, of Swissvale, pleaded guilty Friday to aggravated assault and firearms violations for the drive-by shooting that took place minutes before Rose was shot. The 18-year-old is seen above in his mugshot

After Foley stepped down, the prosecution called witness Debra Jones, a neighbor who lived next to where Rose was shot and watched the incident from her porch.

Jones testified that Rosfeld drew his gun immediately after pulling the Chevy over.

The officer ordered the driver to get on the ground, which he did. Rosfeld then told the passengers to get out with their hands raised, at which point Rose and Hester bolted.

'Automatically, "Boom, boom, boom!'" Three shots,' Jones said.

'The police officer shot three times. I said: "You shot them boys for running."'

She said that she saw Rosfeld talking to officers after the shooting and that he appeared 'red and very upset, crying'.

Thomassey tried to undermine Jones' account by referencing a police report that said she had been drunk when interviewed about the shooting later that night.

Jones said she started drinking whiskey with a neighbor directly after the shooting.

'You got drunk in an hour?' Thomassey asked incredulously.

'Yeah, it was whiskey,' she responded.

Video footage of the moment Rose was killed triggered days of protests in Pittsburgh

After the shooting, Rosfeld gave conflicting statements to investigators about whether he thought Rose was carrying a gun, according to a police affidavit.

The officer initially claimed to have seen something in Rose's hand that he thought was a gun, the affidavit says.

'This observation caused him to step from behind the cover of his car door to acquire a better view. He then fired his weapon,' police wrote.

However, when Rosfeld had finished giving his statement and detectives asked him to go over the sequence of events one more time, the officer's story changed.

'During that [second] rendition, Rosfeld told the detectives that he did not see a gun when the passenger emerged and ran,' the affidavit says.

'When confronted with this inconsistency, Rosfeld stated he saw something in the passenger's hand but was not sure what it was.

'In addition, Officer Rosfeld stated that he was not certain if the individual who had his arm pointed at him was still pointing at him when he fired the shots.'

Speaking to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last year, Rosfeld's lawyer Thomassey said of his client: 'He's very, very remorseful. He's not remorseful because he's been charged. He legitimately is sad that this happened.

'Mike kept saying: "I can't believe this happened. I can't believe that kid didn't have a gun in his hand."'

Rosfeld had joined the East Pittsburgh Police only a few weeks before the shooting after working with other departments for seven years prior.

East Pittsburgh shut down its police force after the shooting and began to rely on state police to cover the territory.
The gash was so deep that the victims' throat muscles were exposed

The violent dispute was sparked by whether Satan would burn in hell

A QLD 'fanatic' man has been sentenced to seven years in jail for throat-slashing

A 'fanatically' religious man with 'radical' ideas was frightened his girlfriend would leave him when he slashed the throat of one of her Bible studies peers.

Joshua Benjamin Guy, a 32-year-old from Brisbane, has been in Arthur Gorrie prison since May 28, 2014 when he was charged with the attempted murder of Benjamin Jessop.

Guy, unemployed from Bardon, sparked the fatal argument with Jessop over whether Satan would burn in hell, in May, 2014.

A 'fanatically' religious Brisbane man with 'radical' ideas was frightened his girlfriend would leave him when he slashed the throat of one of her Bible studies peers

Guy attended the Toowong home of Jehovah's Witness Jessop to attempt to persuade him to agree with his girlfriend's interpretations of the Bible.

Guy's German partner had been studying the Bible alongside Mr Jessop, as part of her quest to join a religious group.

But the woman had disagreed with some of Mr Jessop's views, and Guy was worried it would lead her to leave Australia, and him, to return to Germany.

'Because of these differences, it looked to you like she would not join his group,' Justice Walter Sofronoff told Guy in the Brisbane Supreme Court on Tuesday.

'You became worried that if she was unable to find a religious group and join it, that she might leave Australia and go back to her home in Germany.

'You became worried that she might leave you, so that is why you went to Mr Jessop's home.'

On the day of the attack, Guy apologised to Mr Jessop for turning up unannounced, and agreed to meet him the next day to discuss his views on the Bible.

Mr Jessop then offered to drive Guy home, which led to the violent argument about the biblical passage during their journey.

'You said, 'Are you going to tell me with a knife pressed against your throat that Satan is not going to burn in hell'?' Justice Sofronoff said.

'With great courage and conviction, Mr Jessop replied 'Yes, that is what I am going to say'.

Joshua Benjamin Guy, 32, has been in Arthur Gorrie prison since May 28, 2014 when he was charged with the attempted murder of Benjamin Jessop

'You then cut his throat.'

The cut was so deep Mr Jessop's throat muscles were exposed.

Jessop told his attacker he was dying, but Guy said: 'It's not a death wound.'

Guy said he would go with Mr Jessop to a hospital to seek treatment for his gash, but police allege Guy refused to help.

Mr Jessop tried to drive, but the blood thinners he was on made him bleed profusely, making him disoriented.

Mr Jessop fled the vehicle when Guy took the wheel and crashed into a parked car.

Guy chased him, still holding the knife, and tried to stop him from getting back into the car and driving away.

Mr Jessop was in court on Tuesday, along with members of Guy's family.

The court was told he was a resilient man who did not want to make a victim impact statement, and had overcome his injuries.

Guy pleaded guilty to a malicious act with intent and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

He can immediately apply for parole due to time already served.
Thousands of outraged viewers have called for Sunrise host David Koch to be dumped from his role after a heated on-air stoush with Pauline Hanson.

A Change.org petition has collected more than 95,000 signatures following the televised blowout earlier in the week.

''Kochie' has no journalism skills and is a simpleton who simply rants about what he's told to like a good little sheep,' the petition reads.

'Time for him to go. Put someone on who actually has a clue.'

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Thousands of outraged viewers have called for Sunrise host David Koch (pictured) to be dumped from his role after a heated on-air stoush with Pauline Hanson

A Change.org petition has collected more than 95,000 signatures following the televised blowout earlier in the week

On Monday, Koch didn't hold back when the One Nation leader appeared on Seven's breakfast program, grilling the federal senator on her party's 'anti-Muslim policies' in the wake of Friday's Christchurch terrorist attack which claimed 50 lives

On Monday, Koch didn't hold back when the One Nation leader appeared on Seven's breakfast program, grilling the federal senator on her party's 'anti-Muslim policies' in the wake of Friday's Christchurch terrorist attack which claimed 50 lives.

Koch even drew comparisons between accused Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant's 74-page manifesto to One Nation's immigration and Muslim policy.

'This terrorist manifesto almost reads like One Nation immigration and Muslim policy. Do you feel complicit with this atrocity?' Koch asked Hanson.

'The anti-Muslim rhetoric that you espouse constantly here, that you did in your maiden speech when you came to parliament. Do you understand?'

A defiant Ms Hanson hit back.

'David, I feel for those people and I feel for those families who have lost lives. The same across the road here when we had the Lindt Cafe terrorist attacks.

'We have problems but you've actually got to discuss it and debate the issue. Why we have these terrorist attacks in this country. Why is it happening around the world? Why is it happening in many places?'

Many viewers were left outraged at Ms Hanson's treatment on-screen and labelled it 'intimidating behaviour'.

'He's been a left-wing moron for years,' one person tweeted on Koch.

'[Koch] Won't accept another's view. Sack him.'

Others have questioned why Ms Hanson was suddenly taken to task, when the One Nation leader has made regular appearances on the show for years, and paid for her time.

'Why on earth do you give her a platform so out of proportion with her support and have done so for years,' one angry viewer tweeted.

'It is now time for everyone including Ch 7 to take responsibility for their actions.'

In spite of the screened stoush, the network is understood to be keeping Ms Hanson on the show.

Ms Hanson, for her part, hit back at Koch following the interview and branded it an 'ambush'.

Ms Hanson, for her part, hit back at Koch following the interview and branded it an 'ambush'

In a three minute video to Facebook that has since attracted more than 235,400 views, Ms Hanson thanked One Nation fans for their overwhelming support.

'Your comments suggested you thought I was being bullied and shut down, it was an ambush,' an angry Ms Hanson said.

'I felt that way too because I haven't been able to explain myself properly and answer the questions. I know how you feel because you feel exactly the same way and you feel you don't have a voice.'

A fired up Ms Hanson then questioned whether Mr Koch and Senator Hinch - who was also involved in part of the on-air interview - had actually read her party's immigration policies.

'Do they understand? I don't think they do. They're quick to criticise me, but when I get out and speak to people, I know how you feel because I feel exactly the same way,' she said.

Ms Hanson reiterated she doesn't condone the Christchurch terrorist attack or the way it was conducted 'in any way shape or form' but said people are in fear of 'the ever-changing society we now live in'.

An angry Pauline Hanson took to social media to defend herself after appearing on Sunrise

'My heartfelt sympathies go out to the people who have lost their lives and their loved one, the same as I did for all of the other terrorist attacks that happened through out the world,' Ms Hanson said.

'My comments are purely based on let's find the reasons behind these terrorist attacks. Don't shut down debate. Give the people an opportunity to have their say.'

Ms Hanson again downplayed previous connections to under-fire Senator Fraser Anning after being ambushed by Koch and Senator Hinch when she said she would abstain from a vote to censure Mr Anning following his controversial comments on immigration in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

'I don't agree with anything Fraser Anning has said in placing the blame on these innocent people, that's not the way to go about it,' she said in the video.

While many have swarmed to Ms Hanson's defence, others have been less supportive of the One Nation leader.

'Don't like Sunrise, intensely dislike Hanson,' one man commented.

Another added: 'I'm ashamed of Pauline Hanson who has made racism and bigotry more acceptable.'

Ms Hanson again downplayed previous connections to under-fire Senator Fraser Anning (pictured) after being ambushed by Koch and Senator Hinch when she said she would abstain from a vote to censure Mr Anning following his controversial comments on immigration over the Christchurch mosque shootings
Australia's major telcos have blocked websites for continuing to host horrific videos of the Christchurch massacre.

Telstra, Optus and Vodafone stopped users from going on 4chan, 8chan and Voat, the blog Zerohedge and video hosting platform Liveleak.

The so-called manifesto of accused shooter Brenton Tarrant is laden with memes and references to racist, far-right political forums he may have frequented on 4chan and 8chan.

Mourners lay flowers and messages outside the mosque in the aftermath of the Christchurch shooting. Australian telcos are rushing to block websites hosting footage of the massacre

Telstra confirmed on Tuesday it had blocked access to the websites.

'We understand this may inconvenience some legitimate users of these sites, but these are extreme circumstances and we feel this is the right thing to do,' Telstra networks and IT executive Nikos Katinakis said.

Optus and Vodafone declined to name which domains they blocked but the same platforms also failed to load on their networks on Tuesday afternoon.

The ban on 4chan was lifted a few hours later.

Telstra confirmed on Tuesday it had blocked access to the websites 4chan, 8chan and Voat, the blog Zerohedge and video hosting platform Liveleak

4chan also hosts racist, far-right forums that may have been referenced in Brenton Tarrant's manifesto. Some forums have begun to idolise him after the mass shooting

Vodafone said while blocking requests normally came from the courts or law enforcement agencies 'this was an extreme case which we think requires an extraordinary response'.

'While there were discussions at an industry level about this issue, this is a decision Vodafone Australia came to independently,' a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Optus said it had blocked the domains after 'reflecting on community expectations'.

Optus declined to name which domains they blocked but the same platforms failed to load on their networks on Tuesday afternoon

Video-hosting platform Liveleak initially hosted the video but was soon scrubbed and is no longer available in searches

Another large internet service provider, TPG, has been contacted for comment.

A spokesman for the eSafety commissioner said she did not provide 'any direction or advice to Australian ISPs in regard to the blocking of websites'.

The office does not have the authority to direct ISPs to block domains but can take action to remove content shared on Australian-hosted websites.

The commissioner is encouraging social media users to report the video and any content supporting the attacks directly to the platforms.

The alleged Christchurch terrorist is being transformed into a propaganda symbol by members of the far-right using a fascist digital art movement known as 'fashwave'.

A man reacts near his children in front of floral tributes across the road at the Masjid Al Noor mosque on Tuesday

Some sites which host the forums - such as 4chan and 8chan - have now been blocked by Australian telcos.

The capacity for semi-ironic meme culture to radicalise members of the far-right needs to be addressed, Monash University senior media lecturer Andy Ruddock says.

'There are serious customers under there doing serious work,' he told AAP.

'They're writing their own history with this - it's white, it's masculine, it's Christian and connected to the Third Reich.'
The sister of gangland widow Roberta Williams is accused of stealing $70,000 worth of luggage from Melbourne Airport.

Police allege Michelle Mercieca stole 18 suitcases from carousels before they were picked up by their rightful owners during an 11-month crime spree from October 2017 to September 2018.

The 51-year-old faced Broadmeadows Magistrates Court on Tuesday, and strenuously denied the allegations stating: 'I would not do that'.

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Police allege Michelle Mercieca (pictured right) stole 18 suitcases from carousels before they were picked up by their rightful owners

Police accused Ms Mercieca, who receives a disability pension, of targeting multiple terminals in the second busiest airport in Australia on eight separate days, over the course of 11 months.

It's understood she frequented at the Virgin, Jetstar and Quantas terminals, sometimes two times in one day, 9News reported.

She was allegedly identified via airport CCTV cameras, and was subsequently arrested in September last year.

It's alleged the clothing the CCTV depicted Ms Mercieca wearing were later found at her home.

Michelle Mercieca's (pictured right) sister is gangland window Roberta Williams (pictured left)

The 51-year-old faced Broadmeadows Magistrates Court 16km northwest of Melbourne on Tuesday, and strenuously denied the allegations

Ms Mercieca, whose sister was married to one of the country's most notorious convicted criminals, Carl Williams, was charged with 19 offences.

It's believed three of the charges are set to be withdrawn, The Age reported.

Police also allege an unidentified male assisted Ms Mercieca on some occasions.

At the mention, a court hearing used to resolve contested matters, Ms Mercieca described herself as an 'empathetic' individual, and insisted she'd 'never' steal luggage.

Police believe Ms Mercieca, who receives a disability pension, had targeted multiple terminals in Melbourne airport (pictured)

'I could understand how people feel and I would not do that,' she said.

The Magistrate described Ms Mercieca's alleged crime as a 'nasty form of theft' and indicated she could face a stint in prison if convicted.

She is yet to formally enter a plea.

Michelle Mercieca (pictured right) stands next to her sister Roberta Williams (pictured left) in 2004

The Magistrate also noted the impact on the alleged victims would've been 'enormous'.

Ms Mercieca is understood to suffer from mental heath problems, and has a limited criminal history.

The court heard that Ms Mercieca's had found the high level of media coverage 'embarrassing'.

She is due to reappear in court on August 29.
A teenager was repeatedly smashed in the face with a makeshift weapon in an unprovoked road rage attack following a row over a parking space.

Caitlin Shepherd, 19, from Glasgow, was left with cuts on her face from the violent assault, which happened after she was penned into a parking space by two other girls.

The two women tried to drag her from the vehicle by the hair while he rtwo friends tried to keep her inside by clinging onto her legs.

Caitlin, a health and social care student, was taken to hospital after she was repeatedly struck in the face with an unknown object and suffered serious cuts and swelling.

The attack happened in a car park near an amusement park in Motherwell, just after 9pm on Sunday.

Caitlin Shepherd, 19, suffered cuts to her face after the assault which happened after she was penned into a parking space by two other girls

Caitlin Shepherd explained there was no 'incident beforehand' but the two women started shouting at her, asking her 'what her f****** problem was'

Caitlin, from Glasgow, told the Daily Record: 'I have no idea what led to these girls becoming so angry because there was no incident beforehand and I don't know them.

'But they lost the plot and I didn't know when they were going to stop. If they had got me out of the car, I don't know what would have happened.'

She explained: 'I was in the car park and they came up behind me and started revving their engine, which was odd, so I moved into a parking space, thinking they would drive away.

'Instead, they came up behind me and blocked me in and one girl, with reddish brown hair, started shouting about how we were going to get stabbed.

The student was left with cuts and bruises all over her face after the attack in which she was hit in the face with a weapon

Caitlin said: 'But they lost the plot and I didn't know when they were going to stop'

She went on: 'If they had got me out of the car, I don't know what would have happened'

The nursing student is recuperating after being treated by doctors but is fearful she will be left with scars

'They were asking what my f****** problem was and demanding I got out of the car.

'I told her I didn't have a problem and that I didn't know who she was or what she was on about.

'The driver had pink hair and she was the one who started trying to open my car door and drag me out of the car. She was holding something and ramming it into my face.

She said her attackers were scared off by the amount of blood

'I couldn't believe how hard she was hitting me and at one point I though I was going to pass out and that got me really scared.'

She said as she fought to stay in the car, her attackers became aware of how much blood there was which 'gave them a fright', at which point they got back in their car, believed to be a red Seat Arosa, and drove away.

She burst into tears after the unprovoked violent attack, and called her mother who went with her to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, where doctors decided against stitches for fear of scarring.

Caitlin said: 'It looks pretty bad just now and there could be scars later but I am hoping that it clears up.'

Her father David, a painter, said the attack was 'disgraceful' and had left his daughter 'very shaken up'.

Police Scotland told the paper they had received a report of the incident and that inquiries are ongoing.
A glamorous DJ turned political candidate will stand at the state election fighting to abolish Sydney's controversial lockout laws.

DJ Tori Levett, 23, from Sydney's north shore, is one of 63 candidates running for the Keep Sydney Open party in the Upper House in Saturday's election.

Ms Levett detailed on Facebook on Monday how the lockout laws had impacted her career - and why she entered politics to fight the laws that have dramatically reduced Sydney's nightlife.

North Shore resident and DJ and producer Tori Levett is one of 63 candidates running in the upcoming New South Wales state election on Mach 23

Ms Levett (pictured) took to Facebook on Monday to reveal how the lockout laws had impacted her career and how she planned to vie for a seat

'I had just one year to experience my city without lockouts, and I've seen the awful destruction they've caused to nightlife, with 176 venues lost,' Ms Levett wrote.

'I'm a DJ and producer and I want my city to be the best place in the world to make, play and enjoy music, and I know it can be! Vote Keep Sydney Open on March 23rd.'

Ms Levett first made her name as a surfer, but then delved into the world of influencing on social media before making her mark as a DJ.

The decision to move into politics came out of her passion for the music scene, which she says has taken a turn for the worse in recent years.

'I have been a supporter of Keep Sydney Open since I first saw [party founder] Tyson Koh posting about the lockouts,' Ms Levett told Daily Mail Australia.

The 23-year-old said Mr Koh reached out to her and asked her to be involved and speak at some of their rallies. She immediately said yes.

'The lock out laws and anti-festival regulations are something that directly affects everyone around me, artists, industry and music fans alike,' she said.

'It's very personal for me as both a music fan and performer.'

Keep Sydney Open Party board member Eoin Maher told Daily Mail Australia Ms Levett and the party's other candidates are a representation of 'what a city is'.

Ms Levett said the decision to move into politics came out of her passion for the music scene, which she says has taken a turn for the worse in recent years

Among the other candidate running for a seat are Camden's Daniel Aragona, Tim Hansen from Orange, and Manly local Dane Murray (pictured right to left respectively)

'Tori is a talented, well spoken, intelligent young lady, who represents a demographic that is absent in Australian government,' Mr Maher said.

Mr Maher said Keep Sydney Open has gone from a Sydney-based advocacy group to a statewide political party, with members from all walks of life.

He said the impetus for the party was there were too many professional politicians in government, who begin their career at 16 and secure seats into their 40s and 50s.

'Keep Sydney Open didn't start as a group of politicians, but rather a set of problems that needed addressing, one of which was the lockout laws,' he said.

Ms Levett said the party represents hundreds of thousands of people with specific goals: 'To open up nightlife, save music and culture, and tear up the nanny state'.

Ms Levett said Keep Sydney Open represents hundreds of thousands of people with specific goals: 'to open up nightlife, save music and culture, and tear up the nanny state'

Keep Sydney Open Party board member Eoin Maher told Daily Mail Australia Ms Levett (pictured) and the party's other candidates are a representation of 'what a city is'

Mr Maher said all of the candidates bring something different to the table, in regards to their professional backgrounds and interests in the arts, culture and music.

'They (the candidates) are not white men in suites,' he said.

Among the other candidates is 36-year-old radio broadcaster James Wright from Ballina, who is opposing over-policing and unfair regulations that threaten the viability of large public events.

Tim Hansen from Orange is a passionate advocate for community arts and culture, particularly regarding opportunities young, emerging artists in rural areas.

Another candidate with a penchant for music is Camden's Daniel Aragona, who is vying for a seat due to his love of music and culture and the important role it plays.

Mr Maher said 'Tori (pictured), Dane, Dan and Tim have just as much right to talk about the government of their state as any other professional politician'

Manly local, Dane Murray, who has been involved with various start-up programs and sustainable projects, is another candidate vying for a seat.

While the key aim of the party is to 'Keep Sydney Open', Mr Maher said it is also about showing the government cities are more than just highways and skyscrapers.

'We are more than a political party - we are a movement that has galvanised people who have lacked a voice, and now we're here to disrupt the establishment,' the party's website states.

Tori, Dane, Dan and Tim have just as much right to talk about the government of their state as any other professional politician, he said.

Ms Levett said 176 venues have closed in Sydney since the introduction of lockout laws, and now the government is turning this statewide with their war on festivals.

Ms Levett (pictured) said 176 venues have closed in Sydney since the introduction of lockout laws, and now the government is turning this statewide with their war on festivals

'If you care about music venues, festivals, nightlife and culture you have a chance to make it better by putting a number 1 in the Keep Sydney Open box,' she said.

Just days out from the NSW state election, new polling suggests the coalition government pulling even with the Labor party.

The latest YouGov-Galaxy survey, published by the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday night, suggests the major parties are split 50-50 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.

It indicates Premier Gladys Berejiklian has a narrow lead over state Labor leader Michael Daley for preferred premier with 38-36 per cent.

The poll suggests some 26 per cent of voters are still undecided, the Daily Telegraph reports.

It indicates the government's primary vote is at 41 per cent with Labor at 38 per cent.

It further indicates Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers have a primary vote of one per cent each, with nine per cent to the Greens.
A mother-of-two was viciously attacked by a gang of teenage yobs because they 'thought she was Polish.'

Anca Si Piticii was punched and kicked to the ground and suffered severe facial injuries when she asked the group to keep the noise down because her children were sleeping.

The 34-year-old had been removing items from her car boot in Doncaster when the teenagers launched the sickening racially-motivated attack on Friday night.

Anca Si Piticii was punched and kicked to the ground and suffered severe facial injuries in the racially-motivated attack.

Ms Si Piticii, who is Romanian, said she was attacked on her drive in Balby, near Doncaster, by 10 teenage boys and girls.

She said: 'I was taking my things from my boot. They were passing on the street screaming and they started swearing at me.

'I told them to keep it down as there are young kids sleeping at 11:30pm. One of the girls came towards me calling me all sort of names.

'I told her to lower her tone of voice and keep her distance as [this was] my private property and I warned I would call the police.

'That moment they got angry and all jumped on me saying: 'You polish c***, you deserve a lesson!'

'They hit me with fists and knees in my face and head telling me to f*** off to my country.'

Ms Si Piticii, who is Romanian, said she was attacked on her drive in Balby, near Doncaster, by 10 teenage boys and girls

She added: 'I managed to escape and knock on my neighbours' door. He came out and tried to cool things down.

'I ran inside my house to call the police. They damaged the fence and my friend's car that was parked on my drive.

'Then they started banging on my door. After I heard them leaving I saw a black SUV speeding and took three of them and drove off.'

Miss Si Piticii, who has two children aged three and six, was taken by ambulance to hospital.

Miss Si Piticii, who has two children aged three and six, was taken by ambulance to hospital

She has since hit out at police, alleging they refused to take a statement for more than two days.

She said: 'After so many hours the police failed to take a statement from me, just calling me 20 hours later saying that it was Saturday night and pubs are full and they cannot deal with my case.

'My only weapon as a single mother, to protect my young children is the police.

'Why were 13-15 year old kids were on the streets at that hour? Social services should get involved and take serious measures.'

A spokesperson for South Yorkshire Police said: 'Just before 11.40pm on Friday 15 March it is reported that a 34-year-old woman was assaulted outside of her home on Weston Road, Doncaster.

'A group of youths are said to have become verbally aggressive towards the woman before assaulting her. She suffered injuries to her face which required hospital treatment.

'An investigation is underway to identify those involved and anyone who saw what happened or who has any information about the incident is asked to call 101 quoting reference number 14/47674/19.'

Hate crime offences recorded by the police rose by 17% to 94,098 in the 12 months to March 2018 according to figures released by the Home Office.

It said spikes in hate crime followed events such as the EU referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017.
Elijah Baldwin (pictured), 13, fell to his death while climbing in a state park in Utah

The 13-year-old boy who fell to his death at a state park in Utah was free climbing, it has been revealed.

Elijah Baldwin died on Sunday after falling 75 to 100 feet while climbing down a peak in Snow Canyon State Park.

The teen was found without a rope, harness, helmet, or climbing shoes.

It is believed that Elijah was attempting free solo climbing, in which a climber relies entirely on their ability without the help of a partner or any protective equipment.

This type of climbing was recently the subject of the film Free Solo, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary just last month.

Elijah, of Farragut, Iowa, had been at the park with his mother and two younger siblings.

The family were spending the day at Pioneer Names, a popular area for hiking and climbing in the park, and Elijah would sometimes veer off to established climbing routes.

At one point Elijah's family heard him shouting for help after he went ahead of them on a 'more advanced' part of the climbing route, park officials told ABC News.

Elijah's mother had his siblings stay where the teen was last seen and ran to get help at the south entrance station of the park.

The teenager died after falling up to 100 feet on his way down from a peak in Snow Canyon State Park (pictured) on Sunday

Park official Regan Wilson said Elijah was found in an area that had various climbing routes in different degrees of difficulties. Some required ropes for climbers.

'This 13-year-old was in a more advanced area, I would guess,' Wilson said. 'He did make it to the top. On the way down, I think, is there the difficulty came.'

Elijah is believed to have fallen around 4.15pm. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Washington County Sheriff's Office said no charges are expected to be filed against the mother.

'He was from out of state with his family, just out visiting the area and he just, you know, wanted to go climb and just an unfortunate accident that happened,' Wilson said. 'It's a tragic accident. Our hearts go out to the family, the people he was with.'

The family were spending the day at Pioneer Names, a popular area for hiking and climbing in the park, and Elijah would sometimes veer off to established climbing routes

Park official Regan Wilson said Elijah was found in an area that had various climbing routes in different degrees of difficulties. Some required ropes for climbers

The terrain where Elijah's body was found was so difficult that a 'more advanced' search team had to be requested to help recover it, Wilson said.

Elijah was described by friends and family as a 'strong, spiritual man' who loved climbing and the outdoors.

The park offered their sympathies to the boy's family and encouraged climbers to take 'necessary precautions'.

'Utah State Parks encourages visitors of all ages and abilities to enjoy the wonderful natural environment present in our parks,' the statement read.

'We also encourage them to take necessary precautions and to be familiar with their surroundings to help ensure a safe and enjoyable outing.'

Snow Canyon is described as a 7,400-acre scenic park in a desert environment, forming part of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve.

There are more than 38 miles of hiking trails, a three-mile paved walking/biking trail and over 15 miles of equestrian trails, according to its website.
Alleged murderer Anthony Comello (above) is accused of killing Gambino crime family boss Francesco 'Franky Boy' Cali last week

The alleged murderer of the Gambino crime family boss had previously targeted Bill de Blasio and Nancy Pelosi for a 'citizen's arrest', DailyMail.com can reveal.

Anthony Comello, 24, showed how he had MAGA written on his hand as he appeared in a New Jersey court on Monday charged with gunning down Francesco 'Franky Boy' Cali on March 13.

An NYPD source tells DailyMail.com Comello once sought out a US Marshal to ask them how he could perform a citizen's arrest on Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The alleged hitman was known to police after he asked advice on how to make the arrest on Pelosi. It is unclear what action the U.S. Marshals Office took as a result.

He also appeared outside New York City Hall a few months ago offering to perform another citizen's arrest - this time on Bill de Blasio. Comello reportedly said the Democratic Mayor should be put in jail.

These are reportedly just two of many bizarre stunts the 24-year-old attempted in Manhattan.

Camello (above) showed off pro-Trump slogans on his left hand during a court appearance on Monday in Toms River, New Jersey. The messages include MAGA Forever'

Comello asked a US Marshal how he could go about performing a 'citizen's arrest' on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (left) and turned up outside New York City Hall protesting against Mayor Bill de Blasio (right) and saying he should be jailed

One source told DailyMail.com: 'He was clearly unhinged well before he decided to kill Cali. The whole citizen's arrest inquiry against Nancy Pelosi is proof of that.'

While appearing on Monday at a court hearing in Toms River, New Jersey, where he agreed to be extradited to New York, Comello showed pro-Trump slogans on his left hand.

In ballpoint pen, Comello had written 'MAGA Forever', the abbreviation for 'Make America Great Again', the campaign slogan popularized by Donald Trump in his 2016 Presidential campaign.

Gambino crime family boss Francesco 'Franky Boy' Cali (above) was murdered outside his Staten Island home on March 13

Comello had also scrawled 'United We Stand MAGA' and 'Patriots In Charge', which suggest he was influenced by QAnon - a discredited far-right conspiracy theory that alleges a secret plot by so-called 'deep state' operatives against Trump and his supporters.

When asked to comment on Comello targeting Pelosi, the US Marshals Office referred inquiries to the NYPD.

An NYPD spokesman said he had no comment.

Comello's courtroom stunt has already been compared to the actions of 'MAGA Bomber' Cesar Sayoc.

Floridian Sayoc, 56, was charged in October last year with sending 16 pipe bombs to President Trump's political enemies, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.

When he was arrested, Sayoc had been living out of a van covered with pro-Trump stickers and images of prominent Democrats with cross-hairs on their faces. Sayoc faces life imprisonment if convicted.
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Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom accused her Cabinet colleagues of failing to deliver Brexit today amid a furious row at the prospect of a 'lengthy' delay.

The Commons Leader jibed 'this used to be a Cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what I'm hearing it's not' as ministers wrestled for 90 minutes over how to respond to John Bercow blocking plans for a third vote on Theresa May's deal this week.

Mrs May warned the Speaker's intervention had left Parliament a 'laughing stock' - and warned the risk to Brexit now meant it was 'Parliament vs the People', a Cabinet source said.

It leaves her headed to the EU Council on Thursday to plead for a delay amid stalemate in Westminster over whether to adopt the deal, change the kind of Brexit Britain wants or to accept No Deal next Friday.

The Prime Minister will set out her demands in a letter to EU Council President Donald Tusk either later today or tomorrow. Downing Street was unable to be more specific on when the plans would emerge.

Mrs May's official spokesman has also refused to comment on what it will say - while No 10 sources have dismissed reports Mrs May wants up to two years with an option to be out by the end of June if her Brexit deal is passed in time to avoid European elections on May 23.

EU negotiator Michel Barnier warned Britain must choose between either requesting a short delay or a long one - warning it would not be granted a version of both.

Of Mr Bercow's intervention, Mrs May's official spokesman said: 'If you look back at the speech by the Prime Minister before meaningful vote two (MVII), she said that if MPs did not support MVII, we would be in a moment of crisis.

'I think events yesterday tell you that situation has come to pass.'

Asked how the PM was tackling the crisis, the spokesman said: 'What you can see from the Prime Minister and from her colleagues is absolute determination to find a way in which Parliament can vote for the UK leave the European Union with a deal.

'The Prime Minister's has been very clear she wants that to happen as soon as possible.

'She believes that asking the British people to take part in European elections three years after they voted to leave the European Union would represent a failure of politicians.'

In other developments today Boris Johnson was spotted in Downing Street. Both sides remained tight-lipped about what was discussed.

Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom (pictured leaving No 10 today) accused her Cabinet colleagues of failing to deliver Brexit today amid a furious row at the prospect of a 'lengthy' delay

Theresa May (pictured being driven out of Westminster today) admitted Britain was in crisis today as a Cabinet meeting ended in recriminations amid claims she could ask the EU for a two-year delay to Brexit

In other developments today Boris Johnson (pictured today on Whitehall) was spotted in Downing Street. Both sides remained tight-lipped about what was discussed.

Earlier, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay hinted the Government could bring back its deal within days anyway and dare Mr Bercow to rule it out of order if and when the PM has secured a delay to Brexit. The Cabinet will discuss the crisis in No 10 this morning.

Mrs May is likely to try and secure a delay to Britain's exit date at Thursday's EU summit and use that to overcome Bercow's demands at a vote next week. Britain is currently due to leave the EU on the Friday.

The Speaker refused to comment on his decision when greeted by reporters outside Parliament this morning.

But Brexit hardliners have backed the explosive ruling that has left Prime Minister's plans lying in tatters today.

Members of the European Research Group led by Jacob Rees-Mogg seized on the Commons Speaker's intervention as they fight to secure No Deal Brexit on schedule.

MPs in the group were heard whistling the 'Great Escape' theme tune in the Commons tea room last night in the belief Mr Bercow's bombshell makes their hopes of No Deal more likely.

They also hope a long delay - instead of a short extension to implement this deal - would allow them to dictate the terms of Brexit.

Cabinet wrestled with what to do next for 90 minutes today in the aftermath of the bombshell ruling from the Commons Speaker John Bercow (pictured today outside Parliament) that the PM could not bring back her deal unchanged for a new vote

Former Cabinet minister David Jones said the ruling was 'absolutely accurate' and insisted it was a 'well known' rule - adding Mr Bercow was doing the 'right thing'.

UK 'might have to leave by April 11 to avoid 108m cost of Euro elections' The UK could be sucked into taking part in the European Elections at a cost of more than 100million if we have not left by April 11, officials have said. That date in just 23 days time is the deadline for passing legislation to allow the May 23-26 elections to take place. That's because on April 12 the Government must, under current laws,'publish notice of the poll' that is to come the following month, the Government has said. This kick-starts official preparations like hiring staff and setting up polling stations. Ministers' hands are tied by the European Parliament Elections Act 2002, which sets out the process to follow and which will only be repealed on Brexit day by the EU Withdrawal Act becoming law. The last set of European elections in 2014 cost 108.6million and Downing Street believes the figure for this time round would be 'comparable'. Advertisement

Mrs May will fly to Brussels on Thursday for a tense EU summit at which she will admit Brexit must be delayed.

She had hoped to go having secured support for her battered deal at the third attempt and ask only for a short technical extension of around three months.

Instead she will beg for a much longer delay despite little clarity over what Britain might do with months or years more time.

Exasperated EU ministers arrived in Brussels for a pre-summit meeting today complaining about the chaos in London - warning 'patience' in the bloc was being sorely tested.

As Mrs May's prepares her mission, the Foreign Office revealed its No Deal 'war room' today with just 11 days until Britain was supposed to leave the EU.

Mr Jones told the Today programme: 'John Bercow's ruling was absolutely accurate.

'It has been well known that it's impossible for a Speaker to allow a series of identical motions to be put before the House in the same session.

'There is nothing new about this and those who are crying foul are really wrong.

'He did the right thing.'

Mr Jones - a senior ERG MP and supporter of No Deal - insisted the legal position was unchanged and Britain was still due to leave the EU next Friday.

He said: 'For us not to leave on Friday next week, the law would have to be changed.'

Commons Leader and Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom warned 'this used to be the Cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what I'm hearing it's not' at a meeting attended by Liam Fox (centre) and Geoffrey Cox (right)

Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd left Cabinet with Justice Secretary David Gauke (left), while chief whip Julian Smith also emerged following talks on the Brexit 'crisis'

In a signal of the Government gearing up for a battle with the Speaker, Mr Barclay struck a defiant tone today.

Why was John Bercow a controversial Speaker? A 'Boll**** to Brexit' sticker can be clearly seen in photographs of Mr Bercow's black 4x4, which has a personalised numberplate Brexit bias: John Bercow has revealed publicly that he voted for Remain in 2016, fuelling claims by Brexiteers that he tried to frustrate Brexit in the Commons. The claims were fuelled by an anti-Brexit sticker being spotted in a black Land Rover parked outside Mr Bercow's Commons home - he has insisted the car and sticker belongs to his wife. Brexiteers were also furious when he refused to accept an amendment that sought to rule out a second referendum on Brexit. It added to complaints through much of the time since the referendum that he sought to boost pro-EU supporters such as Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke at the expense of Brexiteers. Bullying claims: John Bercow was hit by a number of bullying claims. He was said to have subjected staff to angry outbursts for years, mocking junior officials and leaving staff 'terrified'. A former private secretary, Kate Emms, said she was left with PTSD after working for him. And earlier this year Lord Lisvane, clerk of the House of Commons from 2011 to 2014, filed an official bullying complaint against him. Other allegations of bullying emerged shortly after, with Lieutenant General David Leakey, a former Black Rod, revealing he was filing his own complaint of 'intimidation and unacceptable behaviour' by Mr Bercow. Mr Bercow denied all the allegations. His wife Sally: Sally Bercow has courted controversy since her husband was first elected. She infamously posed in a sheet for a magazine interview soon after Mr Bercow was first elected and she took part in Celebrity Big Brother. A public Labour supporter, Mrs Bercow's political views led to claims she undermined the Speaker's independence. In 2015 it emerged Sally had an affair with Mr Bercow's cousin Alan - even leading the couple to move into the family home in Battersea while the Speaker stayed in his grace-and-favour apartment in Parliament. Expenses: Mr Bercow faced persistent criticism of his official expenses, which included lavish bills for chauffeur-driven cars, trips abroad and entertaining foreign dignitaries. Mr Bercow and his family lived rent-free in an opulent apartment at Parliament, where the taxpayer footed a 109 a month bill for the Arsenal fan's Sky subscription. Bias against the Tories: Conservative ministers and MPs long-complained Mr Bercow favours Labour. He repeatedly hauled ministers to the Commons to answer Urgent Questions and Emergency Debates - far more often than has historically been the case. Before the 2019 General Election, he tore up the Commons rulebook to allow backbenchers to seize control of the agenda and pass a law delaying Brexit. He also frequently reprimanded ministers, often sarcastically, and his behaviour prompted the Cameron Government to launch a near-unprecedented attempt to remove him in 2015. Mr Bercow provoked further fury by speaking out against Donald Trump and Brexit in defiance of protocol demanding he be impartial. Advertisement

He told Sky News: 'What we need to do is secure the deal.

'What the Speaker has said in his ruling is there needs to be something that is different.

'You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed.

'Obviously that has a difference in terms of how Members of Parliament would vote on a particular motion.

'So we need to look at the details of the ruling, we need to consider that in the terms of earlier rulings that don't particularly align with yesterday's.

'That the fact that a number of Members of Parliament have said that they will change their votes points to the fact that there are things that are different.'

The Speaker detonated Mrs May's plans in a short notice statement at 3.30pm yesterday - without warning No 10 in advance.

Mr Bercow told the Commons: 'If the Government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same or substantially the same as that disposed of by the House on March 12, that would be entirely in order.

'What the Government cannot legitimately do is resubmit to the House the same proposition or substantially the same proposition that was rejected by 149 votes'.

Asked if he was worried about the ramifications of his decision he added: 'I've never lost a wink of sleep over anything work related'.

Mr Bercow invoked a precedent from April 1604 - used 12 times in the Commons since then - to warn the PM that she must significantly change her deal if she wants to force another vote on it before the scheduled exit day on March 29.

The Speaker cited page 397 of the Commons rulebook, Erskine May - and insisted today's ruling 'should not be regarded as my last word on the subject.'

Mr Bercow told MPs: 'One of the reasons the rule has lasted so long it is a necessary rule to ensure the sensible use of the House's time and proper respect for the decisions which it takes.

'Rulings of the House matter. They have weight.

'In many cases, they have direct effect not only here but on the lives of our constituents.'

A senior Government source last night said the Speaker, who is an outspoken critic of Brexit, wanted to wreck Mrs May's plan of limiting the delay to three months.

'It seems clear that the Speaker's motive here is to rule out a meaningful vote this week,' the source added.

'It leads you to believe what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit.

'Anyone who thinks that this makes No Deal more likely is mistaken  the Speaker wouldn't have done it if it did.'

Senior French and German ministers have torn into UK politicians over the Brexit chaos engulfing Westminster, demanding MPs finally make up their mind or risk a chaotic no-deal Brexit.

As EU foreign ministers met in Brussels there was a clear message that it was up to Britain to come up with a solution that would allow Brussels to delay Brexit.

The meeting of the General Affairs Council came the morning after Speaker John Bercow threw a massive spanner in the works of Mrs May's attempt to get a deal done before she faces EU leaders herself on Thursday.

Cabinet ministers including (from left) Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Education Secretary Damian Hinds were in Downing Street this morning

Health Secretary Matt Hancock and the embattled Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley arrived for Cabinet together

Tory leadership rivals Chief Secretary Liz Truss and Home Secretary Sajid Javid were also seen arriving for the Cabinet meeting

Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt arrived for Cabinet by car as the Government's senior ministers held another round of talks on tackling the Brexit crisis

Foreign Office chief Sir Simon McDonald revealed his officials were stepping up their Brexit preparations with 11 days until exit

German Europe minister Michael Roth told reporters in Brussels: 'Our patience as the European Union is being sorely tested at the moment.

How could May escape Bercow's trap? The Government is scrambling to find a way to escape the John Bercow bombshell on the Brexit deal. These are possible options: Paving Motion The Government could table a separate motion spelling out explictly MPs should get a third vote on the deal. It will only work if there are votes to pass the deal - which looks unlikely. Change the law to scrap the meaningful vote Laws to implement the deal could scrap the requirement to have an approval vote at all. This also looks unlikely as MPs defeated the Government to force the vote in the first place. Suspending standing orders The Commons controls its own rule book so a Government motion could suspend the rules invoked by the Speaker - but the Government would still need to win a vote for this to work. End the session and hold a Queen's Speech The nuclear option would be to dump the current session of Parliament early and hold a quick fire State Opening. Normally this means the Queen coming to Westminster - but it is not compulsory. It would be hard in the time available and would mean scrapping huge amounts of unfinished laws - and the Government would still need to win votes on a new Queen's Speech after. Advertisement

'I can only call once again on our British partners in London to make concrete proposals at last on why they want an extension.'

Germany's core aim was to avoid a disorderly Brexit, but it could only agree to a postponement of the scheduled leave date of March 29 if London gave a clear reason to do so, he said.

A postponement beyond June would mean Britain would have to participate in European Parliament elections, he added.

'Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking,' Roth said

His French counterpart Nathalie Loiseau ramped up the pressure on Theresa May by suggesting a no-deal Brexit could well happen unless her Government solves the current 'deadlock'.

In other developments today, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will meet leaders of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Green Party to discuss Brexit and how to end the current impasse.

In a joint statement ahead of the talks, Ian Blackford, Vince Cable, Liz Saville Roberts and Caroline Lucas said: 'The UK faces an unprecedented crisis with Brexit, and Westminster remains deeply divided.

'The best and most democratic way forward is to put the decision back to the people in a new vote - with the option to Remain on the ballot paper.'

Mr Corbyn will also meet members of the 'Norway Plus' group of MPs in a separate meeting on Tuesday.

The group is determined to force a soft Brexit through to end the current impasse.

Meanwhile in Dublin, European Council president Donald Tusk will hold talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar.

Members of the European Research Group led by Jacob Rees-Mogg (left leaving home today) seized on the Commons Speaker's intervention as they fight to secure No Deal Brexit on March 29 next week despite Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay (right in Downing Street today) insisting the Government still wanted to pass the deal

German Foreign Minister Michael Roth said that London politicians had to make 'concrete proposals at last on why they want an extension' while French EU affairs minister Nathalie Loiseau spoke to reporters in Brussels today

Elsewhere Tony Blair denied that he had been pushing EU leaders to hold firm and wait for a new referendum on Brexit.

Tory Brexiteers in vote 'strike' threat to May A hard core of Tory Brexiteers are reportedly threatening to go on strike if Theresa May seeks to delay Brexit by a year. A group of 20 Leave ultras are threatening to withhold their votes from Government business in the Commons, according to the Sun. The Prime Minister is currently overseeing a hung parliament and relies on a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party to pass laws. She needs 318 votes for a majority and has 314 Tories, plus 10 DUP votes to see her over the line. Losing 20 of her own backbenchers would therefore tip the balance away from her. This could potentially collapsing the Government if key votes like the Budget cannot get through. Advertisement

He told GMB: 'The idea that I've been going over to Europe and saying hold firm, don't give in. I think you'll find that's from a Conservative source.'

He added: 'Of course I speak to a lot of the EU leaders, I still know them. Look, the reason they've got a problem is not because I've given them a problem. I haven't been the Prime Minister for 11 years, they're the government and the European Union leaders deal with the government.'

Blair said a decision on the type of Brexit needs to be made: 'Some want a 'soft' Brexit and some want a 'hard' Brexit, what we should have done over the last 2 and a half/ 3 years is force parliament to choose between those options. Once you choose between those options, the rest of the negotiation is relatively simple to do.'

He continued: 'She [Theresa May] can still now rescue this situation if she puts before parliament the core options. The real reason parliament is rejecting this deal  at the heart of it  is the fact that her deal leaves Northern Ireland in a bit of a mess as you're not quite sure what the situation is there and the future relationship a mystery and that is not a sensible situation to be in.'

He said: 'To be fair to Theresa May I think she genuinely does want to deliver Brexit even though she voted Remain.'

So what DOES Speaker Bercow's shock move mean for Brexit? Q&A by Ian Drury What happened yesterday? Commons Speaker John Bercow announced, without warning, that MPs could not vote on the Prime Minister's withdrawal agreement for a third time unless it was 'substantially different' from before. Downing Street was stunned, insisting it had no notice that the statement was coming. Mr Bercow might argue he is behaving honourably. But at a time of national crisis, when the Government is trying to pick a way through the impasse, his intervention will be seen by ministers as profoundly unhelpful. The EU has already said it will not re-open the deal to provide the kind of changes that would satisfy the Speaker. What had been the Prime Minister's plan? After two humiliating Commons defeats for her Brexit deal  one by a record 230 votes in January, the second by 149 last week  Theresa May wanted to bring her agreement back for approval by MPs for a third time before March 29. Ministers had pencilled in today or tomorrow to hold the vote ahead of the next meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday. Westminster watchers dubbed this 'Meaningful Vote Three' (MV3). Mrs May had hoped enough hardline Tory Brexiteers would hold their noses and support her deal, fearing the alternatives: a long delay to leaving the EU, a soft Brexit or, worst, no Brexit at all. How can the Speaker justify his move? Having been asked by Labour MPs Angela Eagle and Chris Bryant whether the Government was allowed to vote on the same motion repeatedly in a short space of time, the Speaker said he had consulted Erskine May, the Parliamentary procedural handbook. He cited a 415-year-old precedent  not used for nearly 100 years  to rule the PM could not bring back broadly the same deal 'during that same [Parliamentary] session'. But didn't he flout parliamentary convention himself? He did indeed. In January, Mr Bercow tore up centuries of Commons procedure and helped frustrate Mrs May's attempts to win a better deal from the EU. He allowed an amendment by the former attorney general and Remain campaigner Dominic Grieve that forced the PM to come back within three sitting days if her withdrawal agreement was voted down. This ruling by the Speaker was made against the advice of Commons Clerk Sir David Natzler and meant the Government lost an element of control over Parliamentary business. Is Mr Bercow right to make it harder to hold a third vote? Legal experts and MPs were divided yesterday over his interpretation of procedure. But last October Sir David told MPs: 'If it was exactly the same document and they came back three months later for another bite, I do not think the procedures of the House are designed to obstruct the necessary business of government in that way in such a crucial thing.' So is Mrs May's deal dead  or is it still on life support? If it becomes clear that there is a majority for the deal, the Government can probably put it to a vote. The PM still has to travel to Brussels on Thursday to ask the EU for an extension and MPs will have to vote on that, plus alternative outcomes. While leaving the bloc on March 29 is still the default legal position  with or without a deal  there is zero chance that Parliament, which is overwhelmingly Remain-supporting, will allow that. But the Speaker has certainly inserted yet another unwanted obstacle for the Government to overcome. What happens next? There will not be a third vote this week, meaning MPs could be voting on Brexit next week, days before the March 29 'exit day'. Mrs May will now have to find something substantially different to allow her to even put a vote before the Commons. Solicitor general Robert Buckland stated succinctly yesterday: 'We are going to have to put all our thinking caps on and come up with some quick answers.' A nuclear option would be ejecting Mr Bercow from the Speaker's chair using a no-confidence motion. However, Remainers  especially Labour MPs  turn a blind eye to his antics because they see an ally in thwarting Brexit. A second option is proroguing Parliament  ending the session. Public Bills can be carried over from one session to the next. But this would require a new Queen's Speech and take time, yet the Brexit clock has only ten days to tick. Advertisement
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US-backed forces are celebrating 'victory' after they captured a key ISIS encampment and reduced the terror group's 'caliphate' to a few hundred square yards of bombed-out scrapyard in Syria.

Officials from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were seen singing and dancing and giving 'V for victory' signs as they returned from the frontline in Baghouz in the country's east.

The extremists had retreated in to a tiny parcel of land with some reportedly having used their own children as human shields.

Pictures show the burning remains of cars along the banks of the Euphrates river where ISIS fanatics have been desperately digging in over the last few months. Hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, an SDF spokesman said, signalling the terror group's collapse after months of stiff resistance.

Meanwhile, the spokesman, Mustafa Bali said the SDF had captured a group of alleged terrorists suspected of being behind a suicide attack in northern Syria that left four Americans dead earlier this year. Bali said the suspects were captured following technical surveillance. He did not elaborate on the number of suspects or when they were captured.

The Americans were killed in a suicide bombing in January in the town of Manbij that was claimed by ISIS. In a statement posted on Twitter on Tuesday, he said the outcome of the ongoing investigation will be shared at a later time.

Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the 'V' for victory sign as they come back from the frontline in the battle against ISIS in Baghouz today

Army Chief Warrant Officer II Jonathan R. Farmer, 37, (left) and former Navy Seal Scott A. Wirtz, 42, (right) were killed in the blast in Manbij along with two other Americans - SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said they had apprehended those who facilitated the attack

Interpreter Ghadir Taher, 27, (left) and Naval officer Shannon Kent, 35, (right) were killed in the blast in Manbij in January, as the SDF announced today they had made arrests relating to the attack

At the height of its power the Islamic State's 'caliphate' stretched from Baghdad in Iraq all the way across north eastern Syria in the west - the dwindling remains have been constricted into the town of Baghouz in the Deir'ez-Zur region of eastern Syria

The SDF says that it has seized a key encampment from the jihadists today and that victory will come 'very soon'. A map shows the territory held by ISIS two days ago

Maps show how ISIS fighters are retreating into an ever smaller pocket of land in Syria. The area in red was all the terror group had left yesterday

US-backed SDF fighters say they are even closer to driving ISIS out of Baghouz today. A map shows the territory (in red) now held by the terror group

Reduced to a burning scrapyard: ISIS fighters and followers have been steadily forced back to Baghouz after years of retreats in the face of military campaigns by an array of foreign and local forces. Pictures show the bombed-out remains of cars in the terror group's last stronghold

Fighting has been intense as SDF fighters move in on ISIS positions in the village of Baghouz. Pictures show smoke rising over the enclave on the banks of the Euphrates in eastern Syria

The taking of the ISIS camp was a major advance but not the final defeat of the group in Baghouz, the last village held by the extremists where they have been holding out for weeks under siege, according to Bali. Still, fighters from the force were starting to celebrate anyway.

'I'm happy it's over. Now I know my people are safe,' said a fighter who identified himself as Walid Raqqawi who fought in the camp Monday night. He said he is returning to his hometown of Raqqa to rest. Comrades from his unit sang and danced in celebration at an outpost in Baghouz, all saying they were looking forward to going home.

Hardened militant fighters holed up in the encampment have been mounting a last-stand defence of the enclave, all that is left of ISIS's self-proclaimed 'caliphate' that once spanned a third of both Syria and Iraq.

The militants have been putting up a desperate fight, their notorious propaganda machine working even on the brink of collapse.

On Monday, ISIS issued a video showing its militants furiously defending the encampment, a junkyard of wrecked cards, motorcycles and tents. In the footage.

U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters sing and link arms as they celebrate their territorial gains over ISIS this afternoon

Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) made the 'V' for victory sign as they come back from the frontline today

The SDF captured hundreds of wounded militants when it overran the camp on Tuesday, Bali said. It also captured 157 mostly foreign fighters. An SDF fighter makes a 'V for victory' sign today

U.S.-backed Syrian forces on Tuesday seized control of an encampment held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, after hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, a spokesman said, signaling the group's collapse after months of stiff resistance

They shoot nonstop with AK-47s and M-16s from behind trucks, vehicles and sand berms. A group of children could be seen at one point amid the fighting.

'My Muslim brothers everywhere, we did our best, the rest is up to God,' a fighter said to the backdrop of black smoke rising from behind him.

The SDF captured hundreds of wounded militants when it overran the camp on Tuesday, Bali said. It also captured 157 mostly foreign fighters.

Asked earlier by Reuters how long it would take to defeat the remaining jihadists, Bali said he expected the operation to end 'very soon'. Some remaining militants had fallen back to the bank of the nearby Euphrates River, he said.

'The battles are not yet over,' he said. 'Some of the terrorists have taken their children as human shields. There are intermittent clashes.'

ISIS fighters and followers have been steadily forced back to Baghouz after years of retreats in the face of military campaigns by an array of foreign and local forces.

Evacuation: Trucks used by the Syrian Democratic Forces are shown transporting fighters and civilians from the last remaining Syrian land held by ISIS today

A man stands in the back of a truck used by the SDF to evacuate people from Baghouz today. SDF officials say they are close to driving the terror group out of the village

The area held by ISIS in Baghouz is the last pocket of territory in Syria controlled by the extremist group, which once held a vast area of Syria and Iraq, calling it an Islamic 'caliphate'. Pictured: An SDF fighter takes aim during the battle for Baghouz

The complete fall of Baghouz would mark the end of the ISIS's self-declared territorial 'caliphate,' which at its height stretched across much of Syria and Iraq.

For the past four years, U.S.-led forces have waged a destructive campaign to tear down the 'caliphate.' But even after Baghouz's fall, ISIS maintains a scattered presence and sleeper cells that threaten a continuing insurgency.

The battle for Baghouz has dragged on for weeks - and the encampment has proven a major battleground, with tents covering foxholes and underground tunnels.

The siege has also been slowed by the unexpectedly large number of civilians in Baghouz, most of them families of IS members. Over past weeks they have been flowing out, exhausted, hungry and often wounded. The sheer number who emerged - nearly 30,000 since early January according to Kurdish officials - took the Kurdish-led SDF by surprise.

In the last two weeks, many IS militants appeared to be among those evacuating. But SDF commanders have stopped speculating when the battle may finally be over. Commanders say they don't know how many more may still be left, hiding in tunnels beneath the war-scarred village.

In the seizure Tuesday of the encampment, hundreds of wounded and sick militants were captured and have been evacuated to nearby military hospitals for treatment, Bali, the SDF spokesman, said in a Twitter post. Still, he cautioned, 'this is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight.'

The extremists are retreating in to an ever shrinking parcel of land at Baghouz in the country's east - with some now said to be using their own children as human shields. Pictured: An ISIS fighter waving the jihadists' black and white flag in Baghouz on Monday

Over the past two months, more than 60,000 people have poured out of the dwindling enclave, nearly half of whom surrendered as ISIS supporters, including some 5,000 fighters, according to the SDF. ISIS released this image of fighters firing their weapons from inside Baghouz

The U.S. military has warned that ISIS may still count tens of thousands of fighters, dispersed throughout Iraq and Syria, with enough leaders and resources to present a menacing insurgency. The terror group released video (pictured) purportedly showing fanatics fighting in Baghouz this week

Flashpoint: ISIS has released footage it claims show fighters firing their weapons during clashes with U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Baghouz

There were conflicting reports from SDF commanders on the ground about the extent of the IS surrender.

Commander Rustam Hasake told The Associated Press that SDF forces advanced on four fronts Monday night and were inside the camp when the last IS fighters surrendered at dawn. He said the last fighters were pushed out of the camp and were now in an open patch of land by the Euphrates River and were being processed and detained.

Another commander, however, said some IS militants continue to hold a tiny area in an open patch of land in the village, outside the encampment.

AP journalists in Baghouz reported sporadic gunfire echoing in Baghouz and jets circling overhead. At a command post in Baghouz, a Humvee pulled up and unloaded weapons captured from IS on Tuesday, including sniper and hunting rifles, pump action shot guns and grenades and ammunition.

Five trucks hauling 10 trailers full of people were seen coming out of Baghouz. A child could be heard wailing from inside one of them. At least 100 people, nearly all of them children, have died in the truck trips from Baghouz on the way to a camp in northern Syria, or soon after reaching it, according to the International Rescue Committee - a sign of how miserable conditions were inside Baghouz during the siege as supplies ran out.

Bali, in a separate Twitter post Tuesday, said the SDF captured a group of suspects involved in a January suicide bombing that killed four Americans in the northern town of Manbij. He did not elaborate on the number of suspects or whether they were among the most recent militants to surrender.

Terrifying video showed the moment an ISIS suicide bomber killed two US soldiers and two American civilians in a horrific attack in Syria in January

The Americans were killed in a suicide bombing in January in the town of Manbij that was claimed by ISIS

ISIS claimed responsibility for the blast outside a popular restaurant in Manbij, which killed at least 16 people, including two U.S. service members and two American civilians. It was the deadliest assault on U.S. troops in Syria since American forces went into the country in 2015.

As they make their final stand, the IS militants have issued a string of statements this month claiming to have inflicted heavy losses on the SDF.

In an audio posted online Monday, the ISIS spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajer, issued his first message in six months, calling for revenge attacks by Muslims in Western countries in retaliation for the shooting attack on two New Zealand mosques that killed 50 people.

He also ridiculed U.S. declarations of the defeat of the Islamic State group, calling the claim of victory a 'hallucination.'

But SDF fighters celebrated as if the final collapse were imminent. At the SDF outpost in Baghouz, a commander danced with his soldiers. Fighters said remaining IS militants didn't put up much resistance.

'We fired on them with our rifles and heavy weapons and they didn't shoot back. So we walked into the camp and they didn't shoot at us,' said Orhan Hamad, from the northern province of Hassakeh.

'I tell the martyrs, it wasn't for nothing. With God's permission, we've finished Daesh.'
ISIS leaders have called for extremists to take 'revenge' in the wake of the New Zealand mosque shootings.

The terror group's spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, is said to have issued the appeal in a 44-minute audio recording.

Dozens of worshippers were murdered when a terrorist went on a gun rampage through two mosques in the city of Christchurch on Friday. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday.

ISIS fanatics have called for retaliation in the wake of the New Zealand mosque shootings. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder

According to the New York Times, Al-Muhajir broke six months of silence to call for revenge.

'The scenes of the massacres in the two mosques should wake up those who were fooled, and should incite the supporters of the caliphate to avenge their religion,' he said.

He compared the Christchurch slaughter to the battle raging over the terror group's last remaining slither of territory in Syria - the village of Baghouz.

'Here is Baghuz in Syria, where Muslims are burned to death and are bombed by all known and unknown weapons of mass destruction,' he added.

The true identity of al-Muhajir, an invented name, is not known and it is understood that he has not appeared in any photographs or in ISIS propaganda videos.

The attacks in Christchurch left 50 dead and 50 more injured with nine of the wounded victims described as being in a critical condition.

Preparations were underway today to begin burials of victims after days of intense grieving.

Bodies of the victims of Friday's attacks were being washed and prepared for burial in a Muslim ritual process, with teams of volunteers flown in from overseas to assist with the heavy workload.

The terror group's spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, compared the Christchurch slaughter to the battle raging over the terror group's last remaining slither of territory in Syria - the village of Baghouz

'We've been very conscious of the need to work sensitively with requirement of each family,' Sarah Stuart-Black, Director for the Ministry of Civil, Defence & Emergency Management, said at a press conference in Christchurch.

Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5, where police said he was likely to face more charges.

The victims, killed at two mosques during Friday prayers by a gunman with semi-automatic rifles, were largely Muslim migrants, refugees and residents from countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, Kuwait, Somalia and others.

Families of the victims are desperately seeking to come to New Zealand for the funerals. Immigration New Zealand said 65 visas have been granted for travelling family members.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia besieging ISIS's last enclave in eastern Syria said on Tuesday it had captured '157 experienced terrorists, mostly foreign nationals'.

The operation was carried out at Baghouz, the site of the ISIS enclave, by SDF special forces, said Mustafa Bali, the head of the militia's media office, on Twitter. He did not say when the operation took place.
Michael Daley has refused to issue an unconditional apology for controversial comments he made at a public function in September last year.

The New South Wales Labor leader had claimed during a 'politics in the pub' session in the Blue Mountains that young people were forced to 'flee' Sydney because their jobs were being taken by educated Asians.

Speaking outside Allianz Stadium in Sydney on Tuesday, he admitted he could've used better language but declined the opportunity to apologise without qualification.

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Michael Daley (pictured) has refused to issue an unconditional apology for controversial comments he made at a public function in September last year

The 53-year-old also stated he calls situations as he sees them.

'One of the things you know about me is ... I call it as I see it,' Mr Daley said, reported The Daily Telegraph.

He also rebuffed the question of whether he would agree if his comments could be perceived as 'racist'.

Mr Daley (pictured centre) admitted he could've used better language but declined the opportunity to apologise without qualification

'We are in the Asian region  the statistics bear almost half of the immigrants to Australia are from the Asian region  particularly the skilled migration scheme,' Mr Daley continued.

'They're welcome to come to Sydney and I've said that, I've said it's not a bad thing because Asian kids are coming to work here, it's a bad thing because I'd like my daughter and others like her to remain here,' he concluded.

He continued to backtrack on his prior observations and claimed the issue was not with people coming from Asia, but housing affordability in Sydney.

(File picture) Mr Daley continued to backtrack on his prior observations and claimed the issue was not with people coming from Asia, but housing affordability in Sydney

Mr Daley stunned members of the audience when he spoke of the 'transformation' that was happening in Sydney with 'foreigners moving in taking jobs'

'I have conceded that my language could have been better, I've readily acknowledged that and if anyone has taken offence to what I've said, I do apologise,' he said.

'But I did make the point, and I make the point again today, that Sydney is becoming an increasingly difficult place to live in.

'Commutes are longer, people are having to move further away from the CBD, a fifth of Sydney families are suffering rental stress,' Mr Daley added.

In September 2018, Mr Daley stunned members of the audience when he spoke of the 'transformation' that was happening in Sydney with 'foreigners moving in taking jobs'.

NSW Labor leader Michael Daley (pictured with daughter Olivia, wife Christina and son Austin) has been recorded saying Asian immigrants were taking jobs from young Australians in extraordinary comments caught on camera

'Our young children will flee and who are they being replaced with? They are being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs,' Mr Daley said in the video.

'So there's a transformation happening in Sydney now where our kids are moving out and foreigners are moving in and taking their jobs.'

When a man in the audience expressed his concern over Mr Daley's comments he went on to explain it was a statement of fact that young people were moving out of Sydney because they could not afford to afford to live there.

He said they were being replaced by international workers, mainly from Asia.

'It's not a bad thing because Asian kids are coming to work here, it's a bad thing because I'd like my daughter to be living in Maroubra rather than St Kilda,' he said.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian (pictured) has slammed Mr Daley, labelling him a 'hypocrite'

Two months after the video was filmed, Mr Daley spoke at Chinese-only press conference, where his sentiments were vastly different.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian has slammed Mr Daley, labelling him a 'hypocrite'.

'He's prepared to say one thing to one group and completely change his position in front of another because he'll say whatever he thinks they want to hear. That's not what a real leader does.'

Greens MP David Shoebridge has called the video 'shameful and 'ugly'.

'Michael Daley's appalling narrowcasting is engaging in racist dog whistling against Asian Australians when he thinks no one critical is listening,' he told the Australian.

The man Mr Daley replaced as Labor leader, Luke Foley, was wildly criticised when in 2018 he used the term 'white flight' when referring to struggling western Sydney suburbs.

Population has been a mounting issue for Sydney and Melbourne, as pressure has been building with congestion and infrastructure.

Figures show about 70 and 80 per cent of all new permanent entrants choosing to live in the two major cities.

Greens MP David Shoebridge has called the video 'shameful and 'ugly'. 'Michael Daley's appalling narrowcasting is engaging in racist dog whistling against Asian Australians when he thinks no one critical is listening,' he said

The Government has been making moves to restrict immigration intake with the Expenditure Review Committee recently signing off on parts of its broader population policy, which will see an annual cap of 160,000 for permanent migration intake, The Australian reported.

The cap will replace the 190,000 ceiling that was imposed in 2015 in a bid to reduce numbers to a more manageable level.

The committee also signed off on a regional settlement policy that will require a set number of general skilled migrants to live in a different city  not Sydney or Melbourne  for a minimum of five years.

On Tuesday Mr Daley made a formal apology and explained he had been discussing housing affordability when he made the comments, expressing a desire for 'all our children' to continue living in Sydney if they chose.

'Many are being forced to leave Sydney because of high cost of living and property prices, notwithstanding some recent declines,' he said in a statement.

'In making these points, I could have expressed myself better. I meant no offence and hope none has been taken.

'I apologise if any offence is taken.'

Mr Daley's predecessor Luke Foley was wildly criticised in 2018 when he used the term 'white flight' when referring to struggling western Sydney suburbs.
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Marriage proposals have flowed in for the teenager who cracked an egg over Fraser Anning's head as thousands of protesters marched the streets calling for the senator to be sacked.

Will Connolly - dubbed 'Eggboy' - shot to stardom on Saturday after egging the controversial senator at a press conference in the wake of his comments linking the Christchurch terror attacks to Muslim immigration.

On Tuesday, protesters flocked to a rally at the State Library in Melbourne's CBD, holding placards condemning Mr Anning and roundly praising the teenager.

'I'll marry egg boy,' one placard read.

'Egg boys turn into egg men when they act for racial justice,' another sign read.

Marriage proposals have flowed in for the teenager who cracked an egg over Fraser Anning's head as thousands of protesters march the streets calling for the senator to be sacked

Will Connolly - dubbed 'Eggboy' - has had to bat away the proposals following a rally at the State Library in Melbourne's CBD on Tuesday

Will Connolly rose to notoriety over the weekend when he cracked an egg over Mr Annings head, following the senator's controversial comments that linked immigration to the mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques on Friday

Senator Fraser Anning's comment sparked immediate outrage and a Change.org petition calling for Mr Anning to get the boot has collected more than 1,300,000 signatures since it was started a little over four days ago

The 17-year-old rose to notoriety over the weekend, with footage of his confrontation with Mr Anning quickly going viral.

Mr Anning's comments about the Christchurch attack sparked immediate outrage and a Change.org petition calling for him to be booted from parliament has collected more than 1,300,000 signatures.

Angry protesters renewed the calls at the 'Stand against racism: Fraser Anning must resign' rally on Tuesday.

'No racism, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,' one placard read.

'Sack Fraser Anning,' another poster demanded.

Rally organiser Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF) took aim at the senator, who was only elected to the Australian senate 'with a mere 19 votes'.

'Anning's first speech called for a 'final solution' to Muslim immigration and since then, has repeatedly come out against Muslims, migrants and in February this year, appeared at a neo-Nazi rally in St Kildaall paid for with public funds.'

Spokesperson Andrew Charles said the rally served a two-pronged purpose.

'We need to mourn and grieve our loved ones, but we also need to come together to build a movement that can challenge the growth of racism and the far right in an ongoing way.'

Angry residents renewed the calls at the 'Stand against racism: Fraser Anning must resign' rally on Tuesday

Rally organiser Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF) took aim at the senator, who was only elected to the Australian senate 'with a mere 19 votes'

Spokesperson Andrew Charles said the rally served a two-pronged purpose: 'We need to mourn and grieve our loved ones, but we also need to come together to build a movement that can challenge the growth of racism and the far right in an ongoing way'

CARF spokesperson Chris di Pasquale blamed politicians for using Islamophobia for political gain

'CARF standsas we always havewith our brothers and sisters in the Muslim community who are hurting right now,' spokesperson Chris di Pasquale said.

'The far-right threat is real but with a broad anti-fascist movement, we can beat it back.'

CARF spokesperson Chris di Pasquale blamed politicians for using Islamophobia for political gain.

'CARF standsas we always havewith our brothers and sisters in the Muslim community who are hurting right now,' he said.

Despite the overwhelming support to sack Mr Anning, section 8 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 means the Senate nor the House of Representatives have the 'power to expel a member from membership of a House.'

The next best thing the government can do is put forward a censure motion in parliament, which amounts to parliamentary condemnation - something that the Labor and Liberal parties will bring about when Parliament returns in April.

Following the egg-cracking over Mr Anning's head, a mural of the stunt has been painted on the city's Hosier Lane and a GoFundMe page was set up to cover Mr Connolly's legal fees - all of which will be donated to the victims of the Christchurch terrorist attack.

Mr Conolly's lawyer Peter Gordon also said his client would not pursue legal action against Mr Anning or the politician's supporters, who put him a headlock following the fiasco.

'Our client has no intention of making a complaint or taking any action against Senator Anning,' Mr Connolly's lawyer Peter Gordon told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday.

Following the egg-cracking over Mr Anning's head, a mural of the stunt has been painted on the city's Hosier Lane and a GoFundMe page was set up to cover Mr Connolly's legal fees - all of which will be donated to the victims of the Christchurch terrorist attack

Mr Conolly's lawyer Peter Gordon also said his client would not pursue legal action against Mr Anning or the politician's supporters, who put him a headlock following the fiasco
The British actress at the center of the Warner Bros scandal has been pictured today walking her dog in London.

Kevin Tsujihara handed in his resignation on Monday following allegations he promised Charlotte Kirk movie roles in exchange for sex.

Kirk has admitted she was in an intimate relationship with the 54-year-old CEO but has said she was not responsible for leaking the texts which brought the scandal into the public eye and is 'saddened' by his departure.

The 26-year-old was spotted earlier today walking her dog in Hyde Park while deep in conversation on her phone, but in another snap looked glum while carrying the pooch.

The actress, who appeared in Warner Bros' How To Be Single and Ocean's 8, told Deadline in a statement: 'I am deeply saddened to hear the news of Kevin Tsujihara stepping down at Warners.

British actress Charlotte Kirk was seen walking her dog and looking down whilst in Hyde Park

Charlotte Kirk - spotted walking her dog in London today - has admitted she was in an intimate relationship with the 54-year-old CEO but has said she was not responsible for leaking the texts which brought the scandal into the public eye and is 'saddened' by his departure

Kevin Tsujihara (right) handed in his resignation on Monday after allegations that he promised Charlotte Kirk (left) movie roles in exchange for sex

'Our relationship ended many years ago. The release of the story by the Hollywood Reporter was nothing to do with me. In fact I tried to prevent it.

'Whatever differences we may have had in the past were long since forgotten. I only wish him the best of success in his future endeavours.'

Kirk has denied any inappropriate behaviour on the part of Tsujihara or two other executives, Brett Ratner and James Packer, with whom she communicated.

'Mr Tsujihara never promised me anything,' she said in an earlier statement.

Kirk, now 26, wrote in one 2015 message to him: 'Are u going to help me like u said u would?'

Tsujhara responded: 'Richard will be reaching out to u tonight', referring to Richard Brener, president of Warner Bros' New Line label.

Kirk (pictured) has admitted an intimate relationship with the 54-year-old CEO but has said she was not responsible for leaking the texts which brought the scandal into the public eye

WarnerMedia's CEO John Stankey said on Monday: 'It is in the best interest of WarnerMedia, Warner Bros., our employees and our partners for Kevin to step down as Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros.

'Kevin has contributed greatly to the studio's success over the past 25 years and for that we thank him.

'Kevin acknowledges that his mistakes are inconsistent with the company's leadership expectations and could impact the company's ability to execute going forward.'

Kirk, 26, revealed to The Mail on Sunday that the affair began in 2014 after a night of drinking martinis.

Opening up: 'Kevin might have thought I was on his casting couch but my sense of self-worth is such that I thought I was just having sex with a man I fancied,' Kirk told The Mail on Sunday

The Hollywood Reporter broke the story earlier this month that Tsujihara and Kirk had exchanged text messages as far back as 2014 which suggested he would help the struggling actress land roles at the same time they were involved in a sexual relationship.

A lawyer for the out-of-work studio chief said at that time: 'Mr. Tsujihara had no direct role in the hiring of this actress.'

No victim: 'Whatever work I got from an audition would be on my own professional acting ability and merit,' said Kirk

She said she did not expect favors from Tsujihara because they were having a sexual relationship.

'It was not casting-couch sex,' she said.

'Kevin might have thought I was on his casting couch but my sense of self-worth is such that I thought I was just having sex with a man I fancied. Like any normal women, I kept on good terms and in touch afterwards.'

She then explained how every relationship in Hollywood could be deemed transaction in some sense.

'Hollywood pivots on helpful friends. You can talk to someone differently after you have been intimate with them. There is a connection,' said Kirk.

'You don't say, "Get me a role", but you expect openness and honesty when you have been lovers and you expect them to be there for you as a friend.

'In my case, that meant him potentially directing me towards auditions, helping me get into the room.

'Whatever work I got from an audition would be on my own professional acting ability and merit,' she said.

Happy couple: Tsujihara, 54, is married with a child while Kirk was 21 when the relationship began in 2014 she told The Mail on Sunday (Tsujihara and his wife above)

Tsujihara informed staff he would be leaving in a memo on Monday, writing in part: 'I love this company and the people that make it so great.

'I've been honored to head this organization and work alongside all of its talented employees over the past 25 years. Together we've built this studio into an unequivocal leader in the industry.

'However, it has become clear that my continued leadership could be a distraction and an obstacle to the company's continued success.

'The hard work of everyone within our organization is truly admirable, and I won't let media attention on my past detract from all the great work the team is doing.'

The scandal comes just two weeks after Tsujihara was given an expanded role at the company following the acquisition of Time Warner by AT&T.

He joined the company in 1994 and became the first person of Asian descent to head up a major studio with his promotion back in 2013.
MP Fiona Onasanya outside her home in Peterborough today

A petition has opened that could unseat disgraced MP Fiona Onasanya, who was jailed after being convicted of perverting the course of justice by lying about a speeding offence.

Onasanya, 35, served 28 days of a three-month prison sentence and has continued to receive her 77,379 salary.

A recall petition for voters in Peterborough opened today and her constituents will have six weeks to sign before it closes at 5pm on May 1.

If it attracts the signatures of 10 per cent of eligible voters - about 7,000 people - Ms Onasanya will be forced out and a by-election called.

Although, under recall rules brought in after the MPs expenses scandal, she would remain eligible to stand for re-election.

Recall Petitions: when were they introduced and how do they work? Is this new? Yes. The Recall of MPs Act 2015 came into force on 4 March 2016. How can a recall petition be triggered? The petition is opened automatically if an MP: is convicted of an offence and receives a custodial sentence (including a suspended sentence) of more than 12 months

is barred from the House of Commons for 10 sitting days or 14 calendar days

or is convicted of providing false or misleading information for allowance claims under the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. What happens now? Once a Petition Officer has opened a recall petition, it will be open for signing for six weeks. If at least 10 per cent of the electorate in the constituency signs the petition, the MP will lose their seat and a by-election will be triggered. The recalled MP can stand as a candidate at the by-election. Source: The Electoral Commisison Advertisement

Yesterday Onasanya posted a video in which she pleaded with voters to let her continue as their representative in Parliament.

In the clip, recorded in front of an image of a city skyline, she claims she is innocent of perverting the course of justice.

She said the media had only reported the prosecution's case - but then provided no details to support her claim she had not colluded with her brother.

She is the second MP, and the first representing an English constituency, to be subjected to a recall petition since the procedure was introduced in 2015 to give voters a means of ousting errant MPs in between elections.

North Antrim MP Ian Paisley Jr narrowly avoided recall last year when 9.4 per cent of eligible constituents signed a petition demanding his removal after he was suspended from Parliament for failing to declare a holiday paid for by the Sri Lankan government.

Ms Onasanya was elected for Labour in the Cambridgeshire city in 2017 by a wafer-thin majority of 607 votes, but was expelled from the party after her conviction.

She was not subject to automatic removal as an MP as her sentence was less than 12 months, and has resisted calls to resign her role.

Recall petitions are launched when MPs receive a custodial sentence - including suspended sentences - are barred from the Commons for 10 sitting days or are convicted of providing false information about their expenses.

Today is the first day that voters in Peterborough are being given the opportunity to sign a petition to force a by-election following the Fiona Onasanya's conviction for lying about a speeding offence

Yesterday she protested her innocence despite her conviction but did not explain how the court had reached what she said was the wrong verdict

Voters in Peterborough will be allocated to one of 10 signing stations around the constituency and can also apply to make a postal or proxy signature.

Peterboroughs petition officer Gillian Beasley said no updates on the progress of the petition would be made while it remains open

After it closes, the result will be sent to the Commons Speaker and Peterborough City Council will await his reply before publishing it.

The petition process will cost around 500,000, funded by central government.

Onasanya has continued to protest her innocence and last week voted against Theresa May's Brexit deal in the House of Commons while wearing an electronic ankle tag.

Jurors at the Old Bailey were told that she colluded with her brother Festus after her car was clocked speeding at 41mph in a 30mph zone in the village of Thorney, near Peterborough, in July 2017.

She was sent a notice of intended prosecution to fill out, but it was sent back naming the guilty driver as Aleks Antipow, an acquaintance of her brother, who was away visiting his parents in Russia.

Festus Onasanya, 34, from Cambridge, was jailed for 10 months after he admitted three counts of perverting the course of justice over speeding, including the July 24 incident.

A YouGov survey conducted in January found that of more than 4,000 people polled, 81 per cent thought Onasanya should resign.

In 2013, former Cabinet minister Liberal Democrat MP Chris Huhne resigned from Parliament after pleading guilty in a similar case.

He and his former wife Vicky Pryce were both jailed for eight months for a case in which, ten years previously, she had agreed to take speeding points he should have accrued, by telling police she was driving the car.

Sentences in such cases are set deliberately high for nonviolent offences as a deterrent - because police know the likelihood of catching on offender is very low, and because perverting the course of justice is a crime against the legal system itself.

After his guilty plea, the former energy secretary said: 'Having taken responsibility for something that happened 10 years ago, the only proper course of action for me is to resign my Eastleigh seat in Parliament, which I will do very shortly.'
The Saudi hit squad thought to have killed Jamal Khashoggi asked for a bonus because they had been so effective at kidnapping and torturing dissidents, it has been claimed.

Journalist Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was butchered after entering the kingdom's Istanbul consulate in October.

A report has claimed that more than a year before the killing, the powerful crown prince had approved a secret campaign to silence dissenters.

The campaign is said to have included surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudis with US officials reportedly referring to it as the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group.

The team was so busy that in June 2018 its leader asked a top adviser to Prince Mohammed whether he would give them bonuses for Eid al-Fitr, a major holiday at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, it has been claimed.

The Saudi hit squad thought to have killed Jamal Khashoggi (pictured) asked for a bonus because they had been so effective at kidnapping and torturing dissidents, it has been claimed

Journalist Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (pictured), was butchered after entering the kingdom's Istanbul consulate in October

The New York Times report cited US officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the effort.

At least some of the clandestine missions were carried out by members of the team that killed and dismembered Khashoggi in October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, suggesting his murder was part of a wider campaign against dissidents, the report said, citing the US officials and associates of some Saudi victims.

The murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, sparked global outrage including an order from US senators for President Donald Trump to designate and punish those responsible.

He did not comply.

The senators, briefed by the heads of US intelligence agencies, said they were convinced that Prince Mohammed was responsible for the Khashoggi killing.

Saudi Arabia has stressed the prince was not involved.

The kingdom initially said it had no knowledge of Khashoggi's fate but later blamed rogue agents for his death.

A report has claimed than the powerful crown prince approved a secret campaign to silence dissenters more than a year before the killing. Pictured: Suspected members of the hit squad that killed Khashoggi pass through an airport in Istanbul on the day the writer disappeared

Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor has charged 11 people over his murder.

Among its activities, the Rapid Intervention Group appears to have been involved in the detention and abuse of prominent women's rights activists arrested last year, the Times said.

The intervention team was so busy that in June its leader asked a top adviser to Prince Mohammed whether he would give them bonuses for Eid al-Fitr, a major holiday at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Saudi officials declined to confirm or deny that such a team existed, or answer questions from the Times about its work.

The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an AFP query for comment.

The Rapid Intervention Group was authorized by Prince Mohammed and overseen by Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court insider, American officials told the Times.

US intelligence reports did not specify how involved Prince Mohammed was with the group's work, but said that the operatives saw Qahtani as a "conduit" to the prince, the report said.

Qahtani has been sacked over Khashoggi's murder but Saudi authorities have not said if was among those charged.

Five of the accused face the death penalty.
University graduate Ryan Boyce,27, has been convicted of attacking his girlfriend Katie Wych at knifepoint

A university graduate who turned to Buddhism to be 'off grid' from society has been convicted of attacking his girlfriend at knifepoint during an argument about him getting a new 9-5 office job.

Ryan Boyce, 27, lost his temper at former zoology student Katie Wych after she repeatedly questioned him about his employment at a marketing firm - claiming his appointment as a manager had made him 'dismissive' and 'angry.'

During a 8pm row at Miss Wych's father's home, Boyce - who was due to move into a trendy flat with friends - grabbed a kitchen knife and brandished it at his lover saying: 'Don't f***ing test me or I will do something.'

The terrified victim, also 27, fled into the street barefoot wearing only a dressing grown and called police.

Officers called to the property in Stockport, Greater Manchester recorded Miss Wyrch on body cam equipment saying: 'We had a conversation about how Ryan is a very spiritual man, and likes his Hinduism and Buddhism, wants to be off grid and not be in society.

'I was talking about his work changing him as a person - it is making him not be the person I fell in love with and is making him more aggressive, more in your face, angry.

'He's normally a very calm collected person, he's very much into his Buddhism.

'I noticed that his behaviour was changing with the work that he was in.

'I noticed that his behaviour towards people had changed.'

Katie Wych, 27, was house sitting at her father's flat when Boyce became aggressive

At Stockport magistrates court, Bolton University graduate Boyce who lives in Hulme, Manchester was convicted of common assault. He will be sentenced later this month.

The couple had dated for eight years but began drifting apart after leaving their respective universities and he began working for a digital marketing firm in Manchester city centre.

It is thought he had previously begun following Buddhism following a trip to Sri Lanka.

The incident occurred on March 3 last year after they met up at a Mediterranean restaurant at 4pm before their pair went back together to Miss Wych's father's flat to drink rose wine and become intimate.

Aberystwyth University graduate Miss Wych, 27, who had been housesitting at the flat wept as she told the hearing: 'I was trying to find out what Ryan's job was because as far as I could understand he had gone from wanting to be a physiotherapist to working in an office - a 9-5 job.

Katie Wych, former zoology student, ran into the street in only her dressing gown as she fled Boyce's attack

'I wanted to try and find out how he'd gone from wanting to help people into this 9 to 5 office job - he had never wanted to do that.

'But he didn't really explain to me what the job was.

'He was just very dismissive, would just look at me and say things like 'you wouldn't understand what I do' and then just look away.

'I just wanted to ask him why his behaviour had changed, why he was so dismissive towards me, but he couldn't seem to look me in the face and have a conversation.

'I could tell he was getting angry with what I was asking and and his response was: 'you would never understand me - I am only doing this for money - I don't need anyone.'

'At that point I started to get upset and he was getting very fidgety he was uncomfortable and at one point he got his fists out and slammed them on the sofa.

'That was the point where I then didn't want him to be there and I asked him to leave.

Katie Wych, 27, is pictured here on holiday

'But he just ignored me. As I am talking Ryan got up and I heard the rattling of the kitchen draw.

'As I turned around that is when he took the knife out.

'He told me not to 'f*** with him'.

'We had just been talking about how the job he has changed him as a person he used to be into Buddhism and he then just got really aggressive.

'He said 'don't f***ing test me or I will do something'.

'He was holding the knife at chest height and he shouted at me not to 'f***ing push him.' I just ran out of the door and I rang the police and I just sat on the pavement.'

Miss Wych added: 'Looking back at it now I would say that we had drifted apart, I would probably say that we had drifted apart a long time ago.

'But at the time I didn't feel like I was clinging onto something that wasn't there because I loved him and to me it was there.

'Me and Ryan through the years of our relationship have had ups and downs we have taken breaks before - but we have got back together.

'It is only looking back that I would realise that it wasn't going anywhere, I was madly in love with him I didn't see that anything was wrong so to me what happened that night was heart breaking.

'I was just so hurt and felt worthless and useless and that is why now I know the relationship wasn't what I thought it was.'

Boyce denied threatening Miss Wych claiming he had gone into the kitchen to cook some food.

He told police: 'Katie has had some personal problems recently and she has been unhappy with my work.'

Giving evidence he told JPs: 'I suppose if I am honest, things became more distant between us, I was going though changes at the time - I suppose maybe growing up, I suppose it is natural after university.

'With me and Katie we were close but always on different wave lengths but still very much enjoyed each others company.

'There was an intimate night planned and the intimacy started but it was actually myself who stopped it because it was going too fast.

'I brought the conversation up about our future. I was moving in with my friends but Katie was looking at flats for us to move into - so there was animosity.

'Katie said I'm kind of dismissive but life's too short

'The same two weeks prior we were bringing up the conversation about our future but we were young - I still am young.'

Boyce added: 'I suppose for the first half of it we were in a relationship for the second half it was dwindling.

'We were drifting and I was moving in with my friends - but maybe not in Katie's mind. The human heart's a complicated thing.'

He will be sentenced later this month.
The bodies of six of the Christchurch massacre victims have been released to their families, but the coroner has warned that only 12 of the 50 killed have been formally identified.

Muslims whose loved ones were gunned down by an Australian white supremacist at two mosques last Friday have had their grief compounded by the failure of the authorities to return bodies to families in time for a speedy burial.

Under Islamic custom, the dead must be washed and wrapped in cloth before being buried as soon as possible.

Police in Christchurch said only 12 of the 50 victims had been identified, and appeared to warn next of kin to brace for further delays.

'We are doing all we can to undertake this work as quickly as possible and return the victims to their loved ones,' a police statement said.

The bodies of six of the Christchurch massacre victims have been released to their families. Pictured: the makeshift memorial at the Al Noor Mosque which was attacked on Friday

But the coroner has warned that only 12 of the 50 killed have been formally identified. Under Islamic custom, the dead must be buried as soon as possible. Pictured: tributes in Christchurch

'While identification may seem straightforward the reality is much more complex, particularly in a situation like this.'

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed on Tuesday that gunman Brenton Tarrant would face the 'full force of the law' as she opened a sombre session of parliament with an evocative 'as-salaam alaikum' message of peace to Muslims.

But the black-clad Ardern pledged to grieving Kiwis that she would deprive the 28-year-old gunman of the publicity he craved by never uttering his name.

'That is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless,' she told assembled lawmakers.

'I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them.'

The 38-year-old leader closed by noting that Friday marks a week since the attack, and urged New Zealanders to grieve along with them.

'Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,' she said - 'May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be with you too.'

But the forensic delays are casting a cloud over New Zealand's handling of the horrific ordeal.

Dozens of relatives of the deceased have already begun arriving from around the world ahead of expected funerals which have already been delayed far beyond the 24 hours after death usually observed under Islam.

Peter Elms of New Zealand's immigration department said 65 visas had been granted for overseas family members so far.

Christchurch police said post-mortems had been completed on all 50 victims.

But only 12 had been 'identified to the satisfaction of the coroner' nearly a week after the rampage.

The news comes as Jacinda Ardern pledged that she would never utter the 28-year-old gunman's name

Javed Dadabhai, who travelled from Auckland to help bury his cousin, said families and volunteers had been warned of a slow process.

'The majority of people still have not had the opportunity to see their family members,' he told AFP.

Mohamed Safi, 23, whose father Matiullah Safi died in Al Noor mosque, pleaded for officials to let him identify his father and set a date for his burial.

'There's nothing they are offering,' Safi, an Afghan refugee, said outside a family support centre.

'They are just saying they are doing their procedures, they are doing their process. But what process? Why do I not know what you are going through to identify the body... Why am I not contacted as an immediate family member?'

In a rambling manifesto, the gunman had said he was motivated partly by a desire to stoke a violent response from Muslims and a religious war between Islam and the West.

The Islamic State group, in a message on social media, appeared to encourage retaliatory attacks.

'The scenes of killing in the two mosques... incite members of the caliphate living there to avenge their religion and the children of the umma (Muslims) who were are being slaughtered in all corners of the earth with the sponsorship and blessing of the Crusader countries,' it said.

Following the mass shooting, Ardern has promised to reform New Zealand laws that allowed the gunman to legally purchase weapons used in the attack.

New Zealanders have already begun answering government appeals to hand in their weapons, including John Hart, a farmer in the North Island district of Masterton.

Hart said it was an easy decision for him to hand in his semi-automatic and tweeted: 'on the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn't outweigh the risk of misuse. We don't need these in our country.'

The tweet drew a barrage of derogatory messages to his Facebook account - most apparently from the US, where the pro-gun lobby is powerful.

Ardern has said details of the proposed reform will be announced by next week, but she indicated they could include gun buybacks and a ban on some semi-automatic rifles.
by Emanuele Scimia

The Italian government is ready to join the New Silk Roads project, but the president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China warns that foreign firms success in the Chinese market is not decided by memorandum of understandings. The problem of transparency

Italy is set to become the first G7 country and founding member of the EU to formally endorse Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a move that has puzzled the United States and the European Unions institutions.

Beijing and Rome are expected to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the latters participation in the BRI during Chinese President Xi Jinpings visit to Italy from March 21-23. Similar agreements on the Chinas megaproject, which is designed to improve trade integration and connectivity across Eurasia and beyond, have already been inked by 13 EU member states.

Italian government leaders who have worked on the MoU say it will give their countrys businesses greater access to the vast Chinese market.

Mats Harborn, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, is not so sure that there is such a clear link between the two things.

The signing of this MoU is more a statement that Italy wants to show its support for the Belt and Road scheme he told AsiaNews. It should be remembered just how competitive the Chinese market is, and business success in China is not decided by such agreements.

For Harborn, it is possible that China might offer Italy special access to certain licences or could accelerate approvals, but to do so would be highly problematic at a time when its leadership is doubling down on pledges to provide equal treatment to foreign companies.

Since the BRI is potentially very important for a large part of the global economy, we hope that Italys signing signifies a step towards increasing involvement from the EU as a whole, he pointed out.

In his view, if the MoU is rightly formulated, with China committing to an open and inclusive BRI based on international norms and standards, the chances of the project becoming sustainable would be vastly increased.

On March 15, on the final day of its annual plenary session, the Nationals People Congress (Chinas top legislature) adopted a new foreign-investment law that should ensure a level playing field between domestic and foreign industries.

This is a sensitive issue for the EU, which has been negotiating a comprehensive investment agreement with the Asian giant since 2013.

If Italys signing of this MoU led to greater transparency, as well as more and equal opportunities for European companies to participate in BRI projects, then it would be a positive step towards reciprocity in procurement practices, particularly as far as the public sector is concerned, Harborn said. After all, Chinese companies enjoy access to the EUs open procurement market and frequently win bids, while European companies have [so far] lacked similar access, both in China and abroad in BRI projects.

Transparency is especially important when it comes to Chinas trade and investments practices, which are often seen as opaque and part of a debt-trap diplomacy, with developing countries  but also struggling EU countries such as Greece and Portugal  becoming heavily dependent on Chinese loans.

In this respect, Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Security and Strategic Studies in Washington, noted that if the entire process is transparent, and the Chinese do not force Italy to use Chinese labor and materials, there is nothing wrong with Italian participation in the BRI.
A man who survived the Christchurch terror attack last week has spoken of how he 'played dead' before escaping by jumping through a window.

Mustafa Boztas, from Turkey, was shot in the leg during the horrific massacre at the the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday, which left dozens of people dead and injured.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Boztas revealed he was shot in the leg by the right-wing terrorist attacker, and believes he only survived by pretending to be dead.

He also shared shocking footage he filmed of himself moments after jumping out of the window, as he lies in the street outside the mosque.

'I survived because I pretended to be dead,' Mr Boztas told Turkish media.

'Everything happened suddenly when the imam was talking.

'I was bent on the floor and I saw the terrorist approaching me. He shot me in my leg and I pretended I was dead.'

Despite being injured, Mr Boztas escaped through a window and managed to get outside.

According to Mr Boztas, it took about 20 minutes for the security and emergency forces to reach the scene.

Survivor: Mustafa Boztas, from Turkey, revealed he 'played dead' before managing to escape through one of windows of the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday's terror attack which left 50 people dead

Horror: Video shows Mr Boztas just moments after he managed to escape the mosque, and sees him break down in tears

The footage, filmed by Mr Boztas himself, sees him show his bloodied hands to the camera

He said that he was one of the last few people they attended to as the mosque was so crowded.

In the footage, Boztas is seen sitting on the pavement with his hands covered in blood.

Armed police are gathered outside the mosque as Mr Boztas films several bodies around him before breaking down in tears.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today praised the bravery of worshippers at the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre, as a lone gunman massacred their friends and family, saying the nation stood with its grieving Muslim community in this 'darkest of days'.

As preparations for the first burials were underway for the 50 people killed last Friday, Ms Ardern singled out three worshippers, including one of the first killed in the attack.

Hati Mohemmed Daoud Nabi, 71, opened the door to the Al Noor mosque. Ardern said he 'uttered the words "Hello brother, welcome" His final words'.

'Of course, he had no idea of the hate that sat behind the door, but his welcome tells us so much - that he was a member of a faith that welcomed all its members, that showed openness, and care,' she told parliament.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks at the Parliament Session in Wellington today, vowing never to utter the name of the twin-mosque terrorist gunman

Flowers left by residents are seen at a memorial site for victims of the Christchurch mosque attacks at an Islamic Center in Kilbirnie, Wellington

Ms Ardern, who has been widely praised for her compassionate and decisive handling of the tragedy, said she never anticipated having to voice the grief of a nation.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island, was charged with murder on Saturday.

He was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5, when police said he was likely to face more charges.

'The families of the fallen will have justice,' said Ardern, adding she would never mention the alleged gunman's name.

'He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.'

She ended her speech with the Arabic greeting 'Al salam Alaikum', meaning 'Peace be upon you'.
Lord Ahmed, 61, (seen outside Sheffield Magistrates Court today) was charged earlier this month with two counts of attempted rape and one count of indecent assault

Lord Ahmed has appeared in court charged with two attempted rapes of a girl and an indecent assault on a boy under 13.

Wearing a white shirt, black suit and tie, Lord Ahmed spoke only to confirm his name, age and address but did not enter a plea during a short 10-minute hearing.

He appeared today at Sheffield Magistrates Court beside his two brothers who were arrested as a part of the same investigation.

Mohammed Farouq, 68, is accused of four counts of indecently assaulting a boy under 14 between 1968 and 1972.

Mohammed Tariq, 63, is charged with two counts of indecently assaulting a boy under 14 between 1970 and 1972.

The pair, from Rotherham, South Yorks., both pleaded not guilty to the charges.

District Judge Tanweer Ikram said: 'I'm going to bail you to appear in Crown Court at Sheffield.

'If you do not attend that is an offence in itself.'

All three were released on bail and will appear at Sheffield Crown Court on April 16.

Ahmed was born in Pakistan-governed Kashmir but his political roots are in Rotherham, where he grew up and still lives.

Educated locally, he joined the Labour Party at 18 and served for a decade on Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council.

After studying at Sheffield Hallam University, he ran a chain of shops in his home town and became a property developer.

He was made a life peer in 1998 and made regular appearances in the media, where he was often called on to comment on issues facing British Muslims.

Ahmed resigned from the Labour Party in 2013.
A leading anti-vax figure and Italian politician was hospitalised with chickenpox earlier this week.

Massimiliano Fedriga, who is the president of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region and member of the right-wing Northern League party, revealed he was ill on Twitter.

He previously argued against the Lorenzin decree, which made vaccination compulsory for children before they could attend school, back in 2017.

At the time, he said that he had his own children vaccinated but believed it should not be forced on to people, reports La Vanguardia.

He also claimed that making the 12 vaccinations, which include chickenpox and measles, mandatory was not the best method to convince anti-vaxxers.

Massimiliano Fedriga, who is the president of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region in Italy, was hospitalised with chickenpox

He spent four days in the hospital being treated for chickenpox this week.

After being discharged, he wrote on social media: 'I'm fine, I'm at home in convalescence and I thank everyone.'

Prominent microbiologist Roberto Burioni shared the news about Mr Fedriga's chickenpox on Twitter, saying it helpfully brought up the topic of vaccinations in adults.

Writing on his website MedicalFacts, he added: '[Mr Fedriga], like many adults, did not get vaccinated... if he had been vaccinated as an adult he would be in perfect health.

'If he had infected a pregnant woman we would be facing a malformed child or an abortion.

'The only way we have to avoid such tragedies is to vaccinate us all to prevent the circulation of this dangerous virus, which could have hit a much more vulnerable person.'

Many social media users then mocked Mr Fedriga for catching the highly-contagious infection, which can be deadly in adults, after arguing against vaccines.

Back in 2017, he argued against the Lorenzin decree, which made vaccination compulsory for children before they could attend school

He hit back at the claims, saying: 'I have always said that I am in favour of vaccines and to achieve the result is necessary to form an alliance with families, not impose [it on them].

'[The critics] even said I would get chicken pox from my children, not realising that my children are vaccinated (as I have stated in many interviews).'

The Lorenzin decree was introduced by the Italian government after an outbreak of measles in 2017.

It meant that the parents of non-vaccinated schoolchildren would be fined between 85 (100 euros) and 428 (500 euros).

The law, named after the former health minister Beatrice Lorenzin who introduced it, also meant children under six can be sent home from nursery if they are not vaccinated.

Data from the World Health Organisation revealed that the country had not met its 95 per cent recommended vaccination rate, with 165 cases of the measles cases being reported in January.

The case for mandatory vaccinations was propelled last month when an eight-year-old cancer survivor was put at risk due to unvaccinated children in his school in Rome.
China's goth community has launched a protest online after a woman was forced to remove her heavy make-up before being allowed to enter a subway station.

The 20-year-old goth fan, surnamed Lam, wrote in a post on Chinese social media saying that a security guard at a Guangzhou subway station stopped her and told her that she would have to remove her dark lipstick and heavy eye make-up if she wanted to take the train.

'A female security guard called her manager and said my makeup was "problematic and too horrifying",' the woman wrote on Weibo, adding that she was not carrying any prohibited items.

The 20-year-old goth fan, surnamed Lam, wrote in a post on Weibo saying that a security guard at a Guangzhou subway station stopped her on March 10 and told her that she would have to remove her dark lipstick and heavy eye make-up if she wanted to take the train

China's goth community has launched a protest online after a woman was forced to remove her heavy make-up before being allowed to enter a subway station

She was eventually allowed to enter the subway in full make-up, but later challenged the transport authorities on social media.

'As a Chinese citizen, I hope to use this relatively public platform to ask the authorities: What laws grant you the right to stop me and waste my time?' the woman asked in her post on March 10.

'If there is one, I am willing to pay for a banner to hang in the Xiao-gang station, which would read, "People in goth clothing and heavy make-up are not allowed in the subway",' she said, attaching a photo showing her wearing purple-black lipstick and silver eye shadow.

The woman was stopped at a security checkpoint at Xiao-gang station in Guangzhou on Mar 10

Her post has sparked widespread support from goth net users, who have been sharing photos showing them wearing dramatic make-up and dark clothing under the hashtag 'send Guangzhou Metro a selfie'

Her post has sparked widespread support from goth net users, who have been sharing photos showing them wearing dramatic make-up and dark clothing under the hashtag 'send Guangzhou Metro a selfie'. The trending hashtag has been viewed more than 5.8 million times by Tuesday as users call for a wider social acceptance of subcultures in China.

'This is a total violation of human rights,' one user commented.

'Who has the right to intervene with what I wear and what make-up I put on?' another user asked.

Guangzhou subway has since apologised for the incident, saying a staff member involved has been temporarily suspended for mishandling the situation.

Liu, a 20-year-old goth fan who also joined in the campaign, told MailOnline that she was also banned from entering the Guangzhou subway last November because of her heavy make-up

Lam (pictured) said she finds it difficult to understand why people who embrace goth fashion are prejudiced against. 'New rules are always only published after a public backlash,' she said

There are no policies prohibiting passengers from riding the subway based on their appearance or clothing, unless there is a security risk, a spokesperson told Chinese media.

Security guards working with Guangzhou Metro would also receive training to prevent such incidents in the future, the operator wrote in its Weibo post on Saturday.

The goth subculture first rose to prominence in England in the 1980s and has been gaining popularity in Japan and China, where it is also referred to as 'lolita', a fashion subculture highly influenced by Victorian and Edwardian children's clothing.

Liu, a 20-year-old goth fan who also joined in the campaign, told MailOnline that she was also banned from entering the Guangzhou subway last November because of her heavy make-up.

A user also posted a selfie of herself wearing goth clothing and heavy make-up on a subway

Net users have been posting images under the hashtag 'send Guangzhou Metro a selfie'

The goth subculture first rose to prominence in England in the 1980s and has been gaining popularity in Japan and China, where it is also referred to as 'lolita', a fashion subculture highly influenced by Victorian and Edwardian children's clothing

'Security staff said my make-up was too scary and I wasn't allowed to enter the station,' the university student said.

'I told them this is discrimination and this is how I look every day, but I was still forced to leave and had to take a taxi.'

'I complained to the authorities after the incident and they apologised, but I can't believe this has happened again,' she said.

Lam told MailOnline that she finds it difficult to understand why people who embrace goth fashion are prejudiced against.

'New rules and apologies are always only published after a public backlash,' Lam said. 'I hope this time the metro authorities can implement training properly. People have to realise that they're being baised and discriminatory.'
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The EU's top Brexit negotiator has torn into Theresa May's attempt to keep her delay options open by suggesting she must present leaders this week with a clear idea how the UK wants to stay in.

Michel Barnier told reporters today that any longer extension to Article 50 would only be considered if there was 'a new political process' in the UK to justify it.

It came as reports suggested that Mrs May would ask EU leaders for a two-year delay, with an option to exit the EU by June if a deal was passed by Parliament.

This would allow her to woo Brexiteers into supporting a deal to get out in three months and avoid taking part in European elections in May.

But at a Brussels press conference Mr Barnier warned that a long delay would increase 'uncertainty', saying: 'It's one or the other, isn't it?'

Michel Barnier stressed that EU national leaders would set the length of any Brexit delay but added: 'How could we be sure that at the end of a possible extension we are not back in the same situation as today?'

Mrs May (pictured today) reportedly wants the option of a two-year delay, with an option to exit by June if a deal was passed by Parliament, allowing her to woo Brexiteers into supporting a deal to get out in three months

After meeting Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney (left) he warned that a long delay would increase 'uncertainty' and the UK could not ask for both that and a short extension, saying: 'It's one or the other, isn't it?'

Stressing that it was ultimately a decision for EU27 leaders at the European Council meeting on Thursday, he said: 'The EU authorities want to know what the underlying political process which would be the grounds for that extension would be - political process within the House of Commons or in the general political debate in the UK.'

Mr Barnier added: 'It is our duty to ask whether this extension would be useful because an extension will be something which would extend uncertainty, and uncertainty costs.'

He added: 'What would be the purpose and outcome? How could we be sure that at the end of a possible extension we are not back in the same situation as today?'

With just 10 days to go until the UK is due to leave the EU unless an extension to Article 50 is granted, he warned that 'voting against no-deal does not prevent it from happening.'

He added: 'Everyone should now finalise all preparations for no-deal scenario. On the EU side, we are prepared.'

Mrs May admitted Britain was in crisis today as a Cabinet meeting ended in recriminations amid claims she could ask the EU for a two-year delay to Brexit.

Cabinet wrestled with what to do next for 90 minutes today in the aftermath of the bombshell ruling from the Commons Speaker that the PM could not bring back her deal unchanged for a new vote.

Mr Varadkar had to remind himself what day it was when Mr Tusk went to sign and date the visitor's book at the Government Buildings in Dublin today

May's dilemma: PM's delay options ahead of crunch Brussels trip Theresa May has a range of Brexit delay options she could ask for when she goes to the European Council on Thursday. But with Europe apparently divided on what to give her there is no certainty she will get any of them at the moment. Here are some of her options: April 11 : Number 10 believes that the UK must leave on or before this date in order to avoid the 108million cost of taking part in the European Parliament elections in May.

: Number 10 believes that the UK must leave on or before this date in order to avoid the 108million cost of taking part in the European Parliament elections in May. May 23 : Some EU figures believe that the UK can leave at any time up until the elections start on May 23 without having to take part.

: Some EU figures believe that the UK can leave at any time up until the elections start on May 23 without having to take part. June 30 : This is Theresa Mays preferred shorter Brexit postponement option. The European Parliament sits for the first time on July 2 so any British MEPs elected in May would not take their seats.

: This is Theresa Mays preferred shorter Brexit postponement option. The European Parliament sits for the first time on July 2 so any British MEPs elected in May would not take their seats. Nine months : The shorter version of the long extension of Article 50 as discussed by the cabinet this morning, with a caveat allowing the UK to sooner if a Brexit deal is passed by MPs.

: The shorter version of the long extension of Article 50 as discussed by the cabinet this morning, with a caveat allowing the UK to sooner if a Brexit deal is passed by MPs. Twenty one months : The longer version of that same extension discussed at Cabinet with the same caveat about leaving earlier.

: The longer version of that same extension discussed at Cabinet with the same caveat about leaving earlier. Two years : The longest reported delay to Brexit being considered. This would be combined with the June 30 exit, allowing Mrs May to try to convince Brexiteers to pass a deal or be trapped until 2021.

: The longest reported delay to Brexit being considered. This would be combined with the June 30 exit, allowing Mrs May to try to convince Brexiteers to pass a deal or be trapped until 2021. Zero : Its highly unlikely but Mrs May could go to Brussels on Thursday and not ask for a delay to Brexit, meaning we would leave on March 29, most probably without a deal. Advertisement

Mrs May warned John Bercow's intervention had left Parliament a 'laughing stock' - and warned the risk to Brexit now meant it was 'Parliament vs the People', a Cabinet source said.

The Prime Minister must now beg the EU for a delay to Brexit without one final push on her deal.

She will write to EU Council President Donald Tusk before the summit on Thursday setting out what she wants.

Downing Street refused to comment today on what the letter will say or what Cabinet discussed in terms of delay. No 10 sources denied a two-year extension was discussed.

But ministers are said to have split on how long to ask for. Commons Leader and Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom warned: 'This used to be the Cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what I'm hearing it's not.'

Of Mr Bercow's intervention, Mrs May's official spokesman said: 'If you look back at the speech by the Prime Minister before meaningful vote two (MVII), she said that if MPs did not support MVII, we would be in a moment of crisis.

'I think events yesterday tell you that situation has come to pass.'

Asked how the PM was tackling the crisis, the spokesman said: 'What you can see from the Prime Minister and from her colleagues is absolute determination to find a way in which Parliament can vote for the UK leave the European Union with a deal.

'The Prime Minister's has been very clear she wants that to happen as soon as possible.

'She believes that asking the British people to take part in European elections three years after they voted to leave the European Union would represent a failure of politicians.'

Mr Barnier's comments came after France suggested that a Brexit delay sought by Theresa May cannot be taken for granted as EU leaders applied more pressure on the PM just .

An aide to president Emmanuel Macron made the warning as Irish premier Leo Varadkar and European Council president Donald Tusk put on a show of unity in Dublin.

They were the latest European leaders to warn that it is up to the UK to find a way out of the current Brexit mess and that the EU doesn't have unlimited patience.

It followed Monday's shock move by Speaker John Bercow to block a third meaningful vote without changes to what is on offer to MPs.

'An extension is not for certain or automatic,' the French aide said, echoing demands by several EU officials that |Mrs May lay out clear reasons why a delay would be necessary.

With just 10 days to go until the March 29 Brexit date Mr Barnier said: 'Everyone should now finalise all preparations for no-deal scenario. On the EU side, we are prepared'

Taoiseach Mr Varadkar welcomed Mr Tusk to Ireland on Tuesday morning but when asked if Monday's Westminster news posed a problem, Mr Tusk did not reply but shrugged.

A joint statement issued later revealed that Mr Tusk 'expressed the strong and ongoing solidarity with Ireland of the European Council and European leaders'.

It added: 'They agreed that we must now see what proposals emerge from London in advance of the European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

'Meanwhile, preparations continue in Ireland and across the European Union for a no-deal scenario, which would have serious consequences for all concerned.'

Brexit hardliners backed John Bercow's (pictured today outside Parliament) ruling Theresa May cannot bring her deal back unchanged for a third time as the Prime Minister's plans lay in tatters today

Senior French and German ministers had earlier torn into UK politicians over the Brexit chaos engulfing Westminster, demanding MPs finally make up their mind or risk a chaotic no-deal Brexit.

As EU foreign ministers met in Brussels there was a clear message that it was up to Britain to come up with a solution that would allow Brussels to delay Brexit.

German Europe minister Michael Roth told reporters in Brussels: 'Our patience as the European Union is being sorely tested at the moment.

'I can only call once again on our British partners in London to make concrete proposals at last on why they want an extension.'

Michael Roth said that London politicians had to make 'concrete proposals at last on why they want an extension' today, adding: 'Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking'

French EU affairs minister Nathalie Loiseau spoke to reporters in Brussels today, the morning after John Bercow's dramatic intervention in Brexit seemed to block chances of a third meaningful vote any time soon

Germany's core aim was to avoid a disorderly Brexit, but it could only agree to a postponement of the scheduled leave date of March 29 if London gave a clear reason to do so, he said.

UK 'might have to leave by April 11 to avoid 108m cost of Euro elections' The UK could be sucked into taking part in the European Elections at a cost of more than 100million if we have not left by April 11, officials have said. That date in just 23 days time is the deadline for passing legislation to allow the May 23-26 elections to take place. That's because on April 12 the Government must, under current laws,'publish notice of the poll' that is to come the following month, the Government has said. This kick-starts official preparations like hiring staff and setting up polling stations. Ministers' hands are tied by the European Parliament Elections Act 2002, which sets out the process to follow and which will only be repealed on Brexit day by the EU Withdrawal Act becoming law. The last set of European elections in 2014 cost 108.6million and Downing Street believes the figure for this time round would be 'comparable'. Advertisement

A postponement beyond June would mean Britain would have to participate in European Parliament elections, he added.

'Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking,' Roth said.

His French counterpart Nathalie Loiseau ramped up the pressure on Theresa May by suggesting a no-deal Brexit could well happen unless her Government solves the current 'deadlock'.

Ms Loiseau, who revealed at the weekend she mockingly named her cat 'Brexit' because of its indecisiveness, said delaying the UK's departure was 'not a solution, it's a method' and had to lead somewhere.

She said that the current uncertainty was 'unacceptable', adding: 'We need an initiative, we need something new because if it's an extension to remain in the same deadlock ... how do we get out of this deadlock?'

And she blasted UK politicians, accusing them of constantly opposing things without coming up with workable alternatives.

'They have said 'no' to a no-deal and they have said 'no' to a realistic deal. Now they have to change their mind on one or the other,' she said.

'Grant an extension - what for? Time is not a solution, it's a method. If there is an objective and a strategy and it has to come from London.'

They are the latest EU politicians to question whether an extension to Article 50 should be granted while there is total paralysis in Westminster.

Yesterday the European Parliament's Brexit co-orrdinator Guy Verhofstadt suggested it was time for 'cross-party talks' to end the deadlock.

The former prime minister of Belgium said on Twitter: 'Why should the EU27 even consider a #Brexit extension this week, if the UK Parliament vote on the deal is cancelled?

'Where are the cross-party talks? I will keep saying this; it is time for country to come before party!'
A young mother was left disgusted when she found plastic bag containing a yellow liquid dumped by the side of her driveway.

Shelley Mcdonald, arrived to her home in Chapel Hill, Queensland, after picking up her children from school last week.

'I am not suspicious by nature but I've either found a bag of clear chicken soup tied up beautifully or some absolute horror of a human has left me a DNA sample on my front nature strip,' Ms Mcdonald posted.

She immediately thought someone had picked up after their dog and instead of taking the bag to a bin, left it by her home.

A young mum found a yellow liquid in a plastic bag in her driveway and her 'brain went straight to the poo jogger' (pictured)

'It was a printed plastic bag with black handles and it was tied up with a bow, and I thought it's actually not dog business because it's liquid,' she said.

'So I picked it up and it was quite a bit of liquid and it was yellow. It wasn't even in a container. If it was in a container, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. It was literally like someone had peed in a bag and tied it up.'

She told The Courier Mail she laughed about it with her daughter but 'my brain went straight to the poo jogger.'

'It's gross but we had a bit of a laugh about it. Let's hope it's a one off, never to happen again,' Ms Mcdonald said.

Andrew Douglas Macintosh - known as the poo jogger - rose to notoriety after he defecated in public up to 30 times over the space of 12 months.

Locals shared a photo of Mr Macintosh, 64, as he was caught in the act by a resident living in a building he had repeatedly targeted.
The leafy New Zealand city where a self-proclaimed racist fatally shot 50 people at mosques during Friday prayers is known for its picturesque meandering river and English heritage.

But for decades, Christchurch has also been the centre of the country's small but persistent white supremacist movement.

An expert on such fringe groups says it's probably more than coincidence that the accused mosque shooter, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, settled in the region.

Known for a whiter demographic than the country's north, after frequently traveling abroad in 2016-2018 in what appears to have been an extreme-right pilgrimage.

Flowers lay at a memorial near the Masjid Al Noor mosque for victims in last week's shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand

It has been nearly three days since the horrific terror attack in Christchurch which left 50 worshippers dead

He went mostly to areas of Europe with a long history of sectarian dispute, including clashes between Renaissance Europe and the Ottoman Empire and the breakup of Yugoslavia following its ethnic and religious conflicts.

The attack has upended New Zealand's image as one of the world's safest and most tolerant countries.

It also has highlighted apparent failings by security and intelligence services to view white supremacists as a real threat or to take seriously warnings from Muslim groups of a rise in Islamophobic and xenophobic incidents in recent years.

Tarrant planned his attack on two mosques meticulously and had resolved two years earlier to kill Muslims, according to a manifesto he published moments before the massacre.

A Muslim man kneels facing the Masjid Al Noor mosque surrounded by flowers and tributes to the victims

He actively planned the Christchurch shootings for the past three months, he said in the manifesto posted online and emailed to the office of New Zealand's prime minister minutes before driving to his first target, the golden-domed Al Noor mosque.

Police say they are certain Tarrant was the only gunman but may have had support and are investigating that possibility. He had five guns, two of which were converted into semi-automatic weapons.

It's likely that at least some were legally purchased online from a Christchurch gun store.

Possible links between the shooter and white supremacists in New Zealand's south have been alleged by recreational gun user and hunting guide Pete Breidahl.

In a video posted on Facebook on Saturday, he said he complained in late 2017 to an arms officer - a local police officer who monitors people's gun licenses - about the disturbing behavior of members of a rifle club in the southern city of Dunedin that Tarrant reportedly joined.

In the video and comments posted online, Breidahl said the club members had Confederate flags, wore camouflage clothing with rank insignia, vilified Muslims and had homicidal fantasies. He claimed to have met Tarrant, calling him 'not right.' Police said they have no record of a complaint but are looking into Breidahl's claims further.

Academic Paul Spoonley, who has extensively researched white supremacist groups in New Zealand, said they have been relatively quiet in Christchurch since a 2011 earthquake that forced whole neighborhoods to move and altered the city's demographics with an influx of migrant workers for reconstruction.

'They've been quieter recently but they haven't gone away. They are still here,' he said, citing a 2016 incident in which pigs' heads were left at the Al Noor mosque, where 42 people died in Friday's massacre.

A business owner in Christchurch has also attracted media attention since the massacre because his company's vans were emblazoned with neo-Nazi references including the 'black sun' symbol that Tarrant's guns were covered with. The same images, which are used as the company's branding, appear on its website.

When reporters visited the registered business address, located in one of Christchurch's poorer neighborhoods, three of its vans were parked opposite, their 'black sun' imagery removed but still identifiable by a company website address on them.

A visibly hostile man standing beside the vans, who did not appear to be the business owner, did not want to answer questions.

Police on Tuesday said they had arrested a 44-year-old man in Christchurch for distributing objectionable material and he would appear in court the next day.

According to Spoonley, the level of hate crimes in New Zealand is low compared with other countries as is the number of white supremacists, but it's 'always a challenge to get people to accept that they exist.'

'There's a reluctance to see equivalence between the risks presented by right-wing extremist groups and radical Islamic and leftist groups,' he said.

Neighboring Australia's white supremacist scene is more virulent, in part reflecting the history of its 'White Australia' immigration policy which existed in various forms from soon after Federation in 1901 to as late as 1973. In modern times, the rise of a succession of prominent right-wing politicians - starting with Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party in the mid-1990s - also legitimized such views.

Spoonley estimates there are 200-250 hardcore white supremacists in New Zealand and about 300-400 people on the edges.

'I would be very surprised if Tarrant didn't make some sort of contact,' he said.

The groups, which emerged in the late 1960s, have evolved over time, coalescing for years around fear of New Zealand moving too far from its British roots, anti-Semitism and opposition to Maori sovereignty and Asian immigrants, and then shifting to Islamophobia following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S.

Spoonley, who researched extreme-right groups in the U.K. in the 1970s, said when he returned to New Zealand in the 1980s he was told by authorities there were no similar organizations.

But he quickly found more than 70 extreme-right groups, many of them in Christchurch. He attributes three murders in New Zealand since 1989 to white supremacists, including two that were ideologically motivated - a South Korean tourist in 2003 and a homeless gay man in 1999.

As Tarrant plotted more recently, Muslim groups in New Zealand were growing increasingly concerned by a rise in abuse against the community but say they were ignored.

'There has been an increasing trend which has been brought to the attention of the authorities several times in the last three to four years, including police,' said Anwar Ghani, a spokesman for a federation of Islamic organizations. 'It was treated not so seriously.'

Verbal abuse, hate emails, hate phone calls and assaults that seem to have an Islamophobic and racist motivation, or a combination of the two, are among the hate crimes experienced by Muslims in New Zealand, he said.

The country does not have an official hate crimes database, making it difficult to measure the trend, but some incidents have been widely reported, causing outrage but sparking no real official measures.

Ghani said there are dotted lines between Friday's massacre, hostility to Muslims among a segment of the New Zealand population and the global rise of extreme right-wing movements.

'If the issue is not addressed in a proper manner then the problem will continue to increase,' he said. 'They are getting bolder and bolder.'

Paul Buchanan, a former policy analyst and intelligence consultant for U.S. government security agencies, said the failure of intelligence agencies to detect Tarrant reflects politically based decisions to concentrate resources on monitoring the small number of Islamic extremists in New Zealand.

'My interpretation is that in the past 20 years and since 9/11 a political decision was made to prioritize detection and prevention of homegrown jihadists,' he said.

'They decided to go whole hog, 80-85 percent of resources into detecting jihadists,' he said. 'The rest was devoted to Marxists, environmentalists, animal rights activists. They went for the left.'

One such jihadi from New Zealand, along with an Australian, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in November 2013 while fighting for al-Qaida.

There was no political advantage in targeting alienated young white men seen by the wider population as mostly harmless 'Pakeha losers,' a Maori word for white New Zealanders, Buchanan said.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said the government will convene an inquiry into the intelligence and security services, seeking to understand why Tarrant was able to escape detection.

Tarrant, according to Buchanan, may have been part of a small cell.

'There could be tacit enablers,' he said.

'He was planning for two years,' Buchanan said. 'To be able to do that in utter secrecy suggests someone had to have an inkling that the guy was going to do something and said nothing about it.'
Elizabeth Warren has backed the abolition of the Electoral College and called for Mississippi to replace its state flag, which bears a Confederate symbol, as she hit the road on her presidential campaign.

The 2020 hopeful earned a huge ovation from the audience at a town-hall event in Mississippi after backing the removal of the presidential vote system which saw Donald Trump win the White House in 2016 despite losing the popular vote.

Speaking in Jackson she backed calls for Mississippi - the only state in the U.S. with the Confederate saltire on its flag - to replace its emblem, saying that tributes to the rebel states 'belong in a museum'.

The Democratic Senator also said it was 'time to start a national, full-blown conversation about reparations in this country'.

Elizabeth Warren (pictured) has backed the abolition of the Electoral College, which punished Democrats in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Donald Trump despite leading the popular vote

Two of the last five presidential elections have ended in a split result with Republicans winning the White House despite a Democratic lead in the popular vote.

Saying that candidates in a general election 'don't come to places like Mississippi' which are not competitive, Warren said that 'every vote matters'.

'The way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College and every vote counts,' she said.

'I think everybody ought to have to come and ask for your vote,' she said at the CNN town hall.

Donald Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 despite trailing Hillary Clinton by more than two per cent in raw votes - the largest such discrepancy since 1876.

Mrs Clinton was punished for piling up huge majorities in friendly states such as California while losing narrowly in battlegrounds such as Wisconsin and Michigan.

Mississippi has not been a competitive state in recent presidential races, backing the Republican candidate at every election since 1980.

Warren went on: 'I believe we need a constitutional amendment that protects the right to vote for every American citizen and to make sure that vote gets counted.

Warren (pictured) said it was 'time to start a national, full-blown conversation about reparations in this country'

Speaking in Jackson she backed calls for Mississippi - the only state in the U.S. with the Confederate saltire on its flag (pictured) - to replace its emblem

'We need to put some federal muscle behind that and we need to repeal every one of the voter suppression laws that is out there right now.'

Asked by the host whether Mississippi should replace its 19th-century flag, she said yes, winning huge cheers from spectators.

'I would support removing Confederate celebrations from federal lands and putting them in museums where they belong,' she said.

Discussing reparations for slavery, she said it was 'time to start a national, full-blown conversation about reparations in this country'.

She said she backed a House bill to appoint a congressional panel to investigate the issue.

'There are a lot of ways to think about how reparations could be formed,' she said, declining to promise direct payments.

Asked about impeaching Trump, she said she would await the results of special counsel Robert Mueller's report into alleged collusion with Russia.
A 12-year-old girl was gang-raped by her brothers and uncle before being strangled and beheaded in India, police say.

The unnamed victim was reported missing after she failed to return from school the previous day in Sagar, in India's Madhya Pradesh.

Her mutilated body was found on March 14 and police now say she was raped by her brothers and uncle before being strangled and beheaded by an aunt.

It is the latest shocking sex attack to hit India, which has a grim record of sexual violence.

A 12-year-old girl was gang-raped by male members of her family before being strangled and beheaded in India, according to police (file picture)

According to NDTV, the girl's family filed a missing complaint to police when she did not return from school. A body was found a day later.

Police then became suspicious of her uncle when he accused another villager, with whom he was in a land dispute, of killing her.

A postmortem examination revealed the youngster had been raped before further questioning revealed other family members had allegedly been involved in the kidnap.

Police say she was taken to her uncle's house by a brother before she was gang-raped by the two men and a second brother.

When she threatened to go to police, she was strangled by her aunt before being beheaded and dumped in a field, it is claimed.

A police search also uncovered blood-stained clothes and the alleged murder weapon - a sickle.

Senior police officer Amit Sanghi told NDTV: 'Our two senior officers collected all evidence and recorded the statements of the family members.

'When everything was pieced together, we found that she was raped and murdered by her brothers and uncle. We arrested the uncle and one of the brothers.'

A police hunt is continuing for another of her brothers.

Sexual violence in India has been in the global spotlight since the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a woman on a New Delhi bus sparked angry protests and stiffer penalties.

On average, more than 100 rapes were reported each day in 2016, according to some of the most recent official figures.

Victims are often threatened by the perpetrators against reporting the incidents to the authorities. A slow judiciary and lax policing system also fail the victims, experts say.
This is the emotional moment an 87-year-old grandmother bursts into tears when she finds her family have built her a refurbished apartment in their home.

Bonnie Miller wells up with emotion as she is led into the bright and newly-decorated rooms in Bremen, Ohio, which had been turned into a first-floor suite.

The grandmother and her husband George, also 87, will now be able to share a household with their son Schon and daughter-in-law Jeannie.

Bonnie is wheeled into the apartment

Their younger family will be able to help the elderly couple with everyday tasks - meaning they will not have to move into a care home.

In the video Bonnie is wheeled into the building and immediately bursts into tears as she looks around.

The camera swivels round to show a clean kitchen area before the grandmother is taken to see the living room and bathroom.

As the grandmother wipes her face she is heard thanking her relatives who 'worked so hard' for her.

Bonnie and George react with delight

Schon said: 'We had been talking about it with mum for a while because we knew they were leaning on each other with one good body and one good mind.

'One can't live alone without the other and we didn't want either one to end up in a nursing home.

'When mum broke her shoulder falling, we started looking for a house that already had a finished mother-in-law suite.

'But when we couldn't find anything, we decided to blow a hole in the basement wall, get rid of our fun stuff like the pool table, instruments, and karaoke area and move them in so we could take care of them.'

Before: The basement of the home in Bremen, Ohio, prior to its refurbishment
This is part of a strategic partnership under which the companies will jointly work toward creating mobility solutions for the global markets.

Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of Ola said, the partnership would bring to market a new generation of mobility solutions, as it expands its range of offerings for consumers.

Pune: Hyundai, India's second biggest car maker and Kia Motors (part of Hyundai) on Tuesday said they had invested $300 million or about Rs 2,000 crore in India's ride-hailing giant Ola, marking their biggest combined investment.

This is part of a strategic partnership under which the companies will jointly work toward creating mobility solutions for the global markets.

Significantly, this investment shows Hyundai's continued interest in the cab-hailing space. The Korean automotive firm invested $250 million in the Southeast Asian cab-hailing company Grab about four months ago. The agreement will see the three companies extensively collaborate on developing unique fleet and mobility solutions.

It would also entail building India-specific electric vehicles and infrastructure as well as nurturing best in class opportunities and offerings for aspiring driver partners with customised vehicles, on the Ola platform.

"India is the centerpiece of Hyundai Motor Group's strategy to gain leadership in the global mobility market and our partnership with Ola will certainly accelerate to transform into a smart mobility solutions provider," Euisun Chung, Executive Vice-Chairman at Hyundai Motor Group, said.

Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-Founder and CEO of Ola said, the partnership would bring to market a new generation of mobility solutions, as it expands its range of offerings for consumers.

The investment also reflects Ola's efforts to raise money from other investors in an attempt to keep existing investor Japan's SoftBank at bay. The company last received $100 million from Flipkart's Co-Founder Sachin Bansal.

"This partnership will also significantly benefit driver-partners on our platform, as we collaborate with Hyundai to build vehicles and solutions that enable sustainable earnings for millions of them, in the time to come," Aggarwal pointed out.
Three children under the age of ten slept 'rough' overnight in an airport function room after an incredible bungle from a major airline.

The drama began when a Virgin Australia flight from Brisbane to Sydney was diverted to Melbourne last Thursday amid fierce thunderstorms.

Nine-year-old John Meredith, who was flying alone to see his grandparents in North Sydney, instead spent the night at Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport - alongside two children he had never met.

John's irate mother Katie Meredith said the following few hours were a 'comedy of errors'.

'We paid extra money, quite a bit actually, to ensure John was supervised by a flight attendant on the flight once it left Brisbane,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

John Meredith, 9, (pictured left) was forced to sleep in an airport function room last Thursday in Melbourne

Staff from Virgin Australia (pictured) are adamant the minors, who slept on the floor in a function room in Melbourne, were constantly supervised

John Meredith (pictured) had quite the adventure last week, staying overnight in an airport function room in Melbourne

'John was supposed to get into Sydney at 9.10pm where his grandparents were waiting to pick him up. I tracked the flight (via a tracker app) and around Singleton it disappeared off the grid.'

Ms Meredith said she eventually saw the plane had been diverted to Melbourne, but claimed no-one from Virgin contacted her to reveal the news.

'Let's not forget we are talking about a nine-year-old boy, who last month had a heart operation. I would never agree to have him sleep on the floor at an airport,' she said.

'His godmother lives in Melbourne, she would have picked him up if I had the opportunity to know he wasn't going to a hotel.'

Katie Meredith (pictured right) wants answers from Virgin Australia after her nine-year-son had to sleep at a Melbourne Airport last week

The flight path (pictured) of Virgin Australia flight VA982, which was diverted to Melbourne as it travelled towards Sydney from Brisbane

According to Ms Meredith, a representative from Virgin Australia called John's grandmother - listed as his guardian - before midnight to notify her the youngster had touched down safely in Melbourne.

At approximately 12.15am, she received a second call - from a private number - to say the nine-year-old had been fed McDonald's.

With 3am approaching, John's grandmother received a text message notifying her grandson had been booked on a flight from Melbourne to Sydney the following morning at 10am.

She then asked what hotel John was staying at and the message was read, but ignored, she claimed.

Katie Meredith (pictured top right) is unlikely to fly with Virgin Australia after their bungle with her nine-year-old son John (pictured right)

The tracker of the flight from Brisbane (pictured) which was diverted to Melbourne due to rain in Sydney

Photos obtained by Daily Mail Australia show John and two other shirtless children playing in a makeshift bedroom made from cardboard boxes.

'I felt kind of scared,' John told Seven News after his ordeal.

'Who am I going to be staying with? Where am I going to go? And I'm not going to be with a family member?'

A spokeswoman from Virgin Australia offered a different version of events to Ms Meredith, stating 'our team communicated regularly with the child's nominated guardian during the evening'.

The Virgin spokeswoman did 'regretfully' admit a text message from the child's nominated guardian during the evening 'wasn't responded to by our team'.

Katie Meredith (pictured right) was horrified at the treatment of her son by Virgin Australia staff members

John Meredith (pictured back) was forced to sleep on the floor of a function room at an airport after a horrific bungle from Virgin Australia

'We take the utmost care when transporting unaccompanied minors and aim to ensure their nominated guardians are aware of any developments as they arise,' the spokewoman said.

'In this instance, our ground crew supervised the child and made him as comfortable as possible in a room in our Melbourne Airport Lounge ahead of his flight the following morning.

'We apologise for any breakdown in communication between our team and the child's guardian during the course of the evening.'

The Virgin Australia spokeswoman also said 'no available accommodation could be sourced at late notice' in Melbourne last Thursday, due to the staging of the Grand Prix at Albert Park.

The airline has launched an internal investigation into its failure to inform John's parents.
Piers Morgan has warned hardcore Remainer Tony Blair there would be 'hell to pay' if politicians forced the country into a second Brexit referendum.

He grilled the ex-Labour prime minister during a Good Morning Britain appearance in which the former leader blasted claims he was plotting with French president Emmanuel Macron to force a new vote.

Mr Blair, who backs a new vote that could see Britain stay in the EU, denied telling leaders to 'hold firm' and pressure Theresa May in to holding a new poll.

But he also maintained there had to be another referendum, saying: 'The reason I say you can't change Brexit without a further Referendum, is because it was a Referendum that mandated it.

'I don't think it's unreasonable to say after three years of pretty much chaos and mess it's not unreasonable to say to the British people - we're not asking some other people - do you really want to proceed with this or not?'

But this sparked a row with host Piers Morgan, who said: 'Surely we owe it to the people ... to enact Brexit and see it works?

'If we don't do that and we do slip into some second referendum and it goes the other way, there will be hell to pay in this country.

'Many people would be enraged, this problem wouldn't go away, it wouldn't be resolved by a second referendum, they would just demand another one.'

Mr Blair told Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid that he had urged EU leaders to address concerns that drove the Brexit vote of there was a second refrendum, saying they were 'Europe-wide concerns and not just British concerns'

Mr Blair denied helping EU leaders like Emmanuel Macron frustrate Theresa May's Brexit plans, telling GMB: 'What I've said to President Macron is the same as what I've said to all the EU leaders'

Mr Blair told Good Morning Britain 'a Conservative source' was behind claims he was helping the EU, saying 'the reason (the EU's) got a problem is not because I've given them a problem'.

He told the television programme: 'What I've said to President Macron is the same as what I've said to all the EU leaders.

'It's nothing to do with the negotiation, because ... in the end the Europeans know perfectly well what their position is.

'What I have been saying to them is that if Britain thinks again, if you get to the point where we do go back to the people, then Europe should also think again.

'Because the issues that drove Brexit - immigration, questions around the Brussels bureaucracy, the way Europe operated - are actually Europe-wide concerns and not just British concerns.'

He added: 'The idea that I've been going over to Europe and saying hold firm, don't give in. I think you'll find that's from a Conservative source.'

Mr Blair also suggested that Theresa May could pull a Brexit rabbit out of a hat, as long as warring MPs could make up their mind what form it should take.

He added: 'She can still now rescue this situation if she puts before parliament the core options.

'The real reason Parliament is rejecting this deal  at the heart of it  is the fact that her deal leaves Northern Ireland in a bit of a mess as you're not quite sure what the situation is there and the future relationship a mystery and that is not a sensible situation to be in.'
Travellers have sparked anger among residents of one of Britain's best-loved seafronts by parking their caravans there.

The group has set up home on Paignton Green, Devon, which photos show has now become strewn with rubbish. Locals also said today that several dogs were seen loose on a nearby main road.

David Cain, who has a holiday business on nearby Preston Sands, said: 'We have a holiday let close to the travellers' encampment. It's really not fair that tourists book holidays here and are expected to share the space with them.'

The group has set up home on Paignton Green, Devon, which photos taken today show has become strewn with rubbish

Illegal encampments have long been a problem on Paignton Green, and last year Torbay Council installed a 'ring of steel' barrier to protect it. Residents are now angry the action has not had the desired effect.

David Cobbald said: 'The council must be asked why they have failed to come up with a plan in the last five months.'

But other people have stuck up for the travellers' way of life and are angered at the way they are being talked about on social media.

Dudley Swain said: 'They need to park somewhere and Devon hasn't made any temporary places, as they should by law.'

Illegal encampments have long been a problem on Paignton Green, and last year Torbay Council installed a 'ring of steel' barrier to protect it. Pictured: The site today

The council today conducted a visit to the site, which usually involves asking the travellers why they are there and how long they intend to stay

Torbay Council said: 'We must work within the law in order to remove any illegal encampment. The legal requirements are such that removing an encampment involves a number of steps, which can take a certain period of time.

'We visited Paignton Green as soon as we were alerted to the encampment and assessed the needs of the travellers. Following this, we advised partner agencies of the encampment and requested the attendance of health visitors to make an assessment.

'Once the relevant welfare checks have been undertaken, we will be able to make a decision on whether eviction is appropriate based on the travellers' statutory needs. Following this decision, we can begin the process to regain possession of the land in the County Court. Once a possession order is granted the travellers will be told to leave.'
Islamic State fighters tied to a January suicide bombing in Syria that killed four Americans have been captured, authorities said Tuesday.

'A group of suspects believed to be involved in January 16 Manbij bombing that killed several US and SDF servicemen were captured following technical surveillance by our forces,' Mustafa Bali, the spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Fighters (SDF), tweeted Tuesday morning.

'The outcome of the ongoing investigation will be shared at a later time,' he added.

The bombing killed Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan Farmer, Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent and Scott Wirtz from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

It also killed Ghadir Taher, a naturalized US citizen working as a civilian interpreter for a US contractor.

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Islamic State fighters tied to a January suicide bombing in Syria that killed four Americans have been captured, authorities said. Mustafa Bali, the spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Fighters, made the announcement in a tweet (above) Tuesday morning

The bombing killed Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan Farmer (left) and Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician Shannon Kent (right)

It also killed Scott Wirtz (left) from the Defense Intelligence Agency and Ghadir Taher (right), a naturalized US citizen working as a civilian interpreter for a US contractor

One of the officials said the number of people detained was in the 'single digits'.

A second official said there were several 'initial detentions' made in February, without offering a specific number. The detentions have not been previously reported.

'Those initial detentions have provided some leads and opportunities that we are continuing to exploit,' the second official said, speaking on condition of anonymity and declining to offer additional details.

'The investigation is ongoing as are efforts to bring all of those terrorists responsible to justice.'

The January bombing was the worst single incident involving US personnel in Syria since they deployed on the ground there in 2015 and took place at a cafe in the town of Manbij, which was controlled by a militia allied to US-backed Kurdish forces.

The bombing occurred nearly a month after President Donald Trump confounded his own national security team and allies with a surprise decision on December 19 to withdraw all 2,000 US troops from Syria, declaring Islamic State had been defeated there.

Critics seized on the killings as clear evidence that the Islamic State still posed a threat.

Trump backtracked in February, agreeing to leave a small US presence to help keep pressure on Islamic State during what the US military believes will be a critical stabilization phase in Syria.

The attack (aftermath seen above) was the worst single incident involving US personnel in Syria since they deployed on the ground there in 2015 and took place at a cafe in the town of Manbij, which was controlled by a militia allied to US-backed Kurdish forces

The bombing (aftermath seen above) occurred nearly a month after President Donald Trump confounded his own national security team and allies with a surprise decision on December 19 to withdraw all 2,000 US troops from Syria, declaring Islamic State had been defeated there

Trump backtracked in February, agreeing to leave a small US presence to help keep pressure on ISIS during what the US military believes will be a critical stabilization phase in Syria. Trump visited Dover Air Force Base to pay his respects to the victims on January 19 (above)

Officials from the SDF also said on Tuesday that the ISIS 'caliphate' that once straddled Syria and Iraq has been reduced to a few hundred square yards of bombed-out scrapyard as they come closer to driving out the terror group.

Authorities said they were able to seize a key encampment from the jihadists in the battle for Baghouz in the country's east.

The extremists are retreating in to an ever shrinking parcel of land with some now said to be using their own children as human shields.

Pictures show the burning remains of cars parked up in the last slither of land held by ISIS along the banks of the Euphrates river.

The SDF captured hundreds of wounded militants when it overran the camp on Tuesday, Bali said. It also captured 157 mostly foreign fighters.

When asked by Reuters how long it would take to defeat the remaining jihadists, Bali said he expected the operation to end 'very soon'.

Some remaining militants had fallen back to the bank of the nearby Euphrates River, he said.

'The battles are not yet over,' he said. 'Some of the terrorists have taken their children as human shields. There are intermittent clashes.'

ISIS fighters and followers have been steadily forced back to Baghouz after years of retreats in the face of military campaigns by an array of foreign and local forces.

The SDF says that it has seized a key encampment from the jihadists today and that victory will come 'very soon'. A map shows the territory held by ISIS two days ago

Maps show how ISIS fighters are retreating into an ever smaller pocket of land in Syria. The area in red was all the terror group had left yesterday

US-backed SDF fighters said Tuesday that they are even closer to driving ISIS out of Baghouz

The SDF captured hundreds of wounded militants when it overran the camp on Tuesday, Bali said. It also captured 157 mostly foreign fighters

Pictures show the burning remains of cars parked up in the last slither of land held by ISIS along the banks of the Euphrates river

The US is seeking contributions from allies including Britain and France to remain in Syria.

The US military has warned that Islamic State may still count tens of thousands of fighters, dispersed throughout Iraq and Syria, with enough leaders and resources to present a menacing insurgency in the months ahead.

The Pentagon's own internal watchdog released a report last month saying Islamic State remained an active insurgent group and was regenerating functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria.

'Absent sustained (counterterrorism) pressure, ISIS could likely resurge in Syria within six to 12 months and regain limited territory,' the report from the Pentagon's inspector general said.

The report, citing information from US Central Command, said Islamic State would portray the withdrawal as a 'victory' and conduct attacks on American personnel during the pullout process.

A report by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that Islamic State has transformed into a covert network, but is still a threat with centralized leadership, up to $300million at its disposal and thousands of fighters.

It said the group was interested in attacking aviation and using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials and that there were up to 18,000 Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, including up to 3,000 foreign fighters.
Timea Csomorova, 34, pictured outside the Old Bailey

A film producer stalked her Top Gear music composer ex-boyfriend in a terrifying three-year campaign, a court heard.

Timea Csomorova, 34, had a five-month romance with Max Wilson in 2013 after he taught her the piano in his flat, but he ended the relationship after the death of his father, and Csomorova started stalking the composer, the Old Bailey heard.



Despite being cautioned by the police, Csomorova moved from Clapham Junction in south London to Hampstead Heath, northwest London, closer to where Mr Wilson lived, and began to observe him at his local Starbucks, jurors were told.

Mr Wilson said she began to sit outside his flat for hours on end waiting for him to leave, and warned her in a text message if she contacted him again he would call the police.

But he said he would see her five times a week in cafes near his home, and catch her watching him from Starbucks, and if he drove anywhere, she would peer in through the car window.

Giving evidence, Mr Wilson said he eventually decided to film Csomorova with his iPhone to show her how ridiculous she was being.

Mr Wilson has worked as a composer specialising in writing for theatre, broadcast media and the concert hall, and his music has been synced to TV productions across the world, including Top Gear and BBC Natural World.

Matthew Turner, prosecuting, told the court Mr Wilson felt spied on and his personal space was invaded.

In March 2015 she sent him a message saying I will always love you no matter what you do, and she also sent him a festive card with All I want for Christmas is you on the front in December 2016, the court heard.

Inside the card she had scrawled: On Christmas there is a reason to be happy, a reason to smile, and there is a reason I am sending Christmas wishes your way.

But on December 2, 2017, Mr Wilson turned the tables on Csomorova when he filmed her in the Starbucks on South End Road as My Girl by The Temptations was playing, jurors heard.

After he left, she ran out after him and grabbed his arm to ask if he had been filming her, and Mr Wilson told the alleged stalker he was going to the police, the court was told.

Max Wilson (pictured) has worked as a composer, specialising in writing for theatre, broadcast media and the concert hall

Mr Wilson said he saw her Csomorova in the street on 18 March, 2015 - but police said she was doing nothing.

He said: 'She was so close that I tried to cross the road but there was a car coming and I had to stay on the pavement she was probably about half a metre away or something.

'I panicked when I saw her it brought back the trauma of having this person constantly harassing and it was fight or flight and I decided to flee. I just tried to get away.

'I was alarmed when I saw. She said something along the lines of: "You don't have to run away when you see me".

'I just turned and walked away very fast and when I turned the next corner I ran.

'The first thing I did was phone the police when I got in after running home.

'The message that was given to me was she was not doing anything wrong she had not physically harassed me so there was nothing they could do.

'That evening I got the text message and the email saying: "I will always love you no matter what you do".

'When I saw her name come into the inbox, I felt sick - just seeing her name on my phone, it was very distressing.

'I felt that all the efforts I had made to stop this woman's behaviour had been to no avail.'

'I stopped going to the cafe I could not bear her being there.'

On Valentines' Day 2017 she was with a friend in Starbucks sitting close to Mr Wilson, the court heard.

Mr Wilson said: 'She sat so close to me. On this occasion she came and sat very close, but she was all dressed up with make-up.

'She was right next to me. It dawned on me it was Valentines' Day.'

He said after regularly seeing his ex in his local Starbucks he felt like he was being 'controlled' and could not work where he wanted to.

On one occasion he tried to unplug his laptop charger from the socket but her legs were in the way and he described feeling physically sick at having to ask her to move, jurors heard.

Csomorova appeared in court wearing pink high heels and a smart black jacket with a white blouse.

Csomorova, of Hampstead, denies stalking with serious alarm or distress and an alternative count of stalking with alarm or distress, between 30 October 2014 and 23 December 2017.

The trial continues.
The well-connected father of Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin lobbied behind the scenes to have him say the first words from the moon, a new book claims.

As lunar module pilot on the famous Apollo 11 mission, Aldrin set foot on the moon's surface on July 21 1969, nine minutes after mission commander Neil Armstrong, who famously declared: 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'

NASA chiefs chose Armstrong for the honor of saying those immortal words, despite a covert campaign pushing for Aldrin, claims Jim Donovan in his new book Shoot For The Moon.

Apollo 11 astronauts Mike Collins (left), Neil Armstrong (centre), and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, in front of the Lunar Landing Module Simulator at the Kennedy Space Centre, USA, prior to their landing on the moon. A new book by Jim Donovan reveals that there was a behind the scenes campaign by Aldrin and his father that attempted to ensure he would take the first steps on the moon

Both Aldrin and his father Edwin Snr, who was an aviator and officer in the U.S Army during the First and Second World Wars, pushed for the mission plans to decree that the lunar module pilot would exit before the commander.

'[Aldrin] lobbied behind the scenes after finding out that Neil Armstrong, who was quiet and modest in demeanour and cool under pressure, had been chosen to be the first,' Donovan said.

'Aldrin also bugged Apollo 10 commander Tom Stafford, who was involved in mission planning.'

The decision had been closely watched since the first press conference following the announcement of the Apollo 11 crew, when a reporter asked: 'Which one of you gentlemen will be the first man to step onto the lunar surface?'

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin arrives for President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in February 2019. He was reportedly going to be the first man on the moon but NASA chiefs chose 'modest' Neil Armstrong instead

Donald Kent 'Deke' Slayton, who oversaw NASA's crew assignments, replied that it had not yet been decided, while Armstrong added that it was 'not based on individual desire'.

But in fact early plans had shown the lunar module pilot - Aldrin - exiting the spacecraft before the command module pilot - Armstrong.

Donovan writes that in February 1969, a 'top NASA official' told the Chicago Daily News that Aldrin would be the first to exit.

Although newspapers throughout the country ran the same story, at the next press conference NASA claimed the decision had not yet been made.

Edwin Aldrin Snr wanted the Apollo 11 flight plan to show the his son, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin (left), exiting before mission commander Neil Armstrong (right)

Finally, on April 14, it was announced the Armstrong would be 'the first man out after the moon landing'. One reason given was that the hatch of the spacecraft's cabin opened inwards and rightwards, making it difficult for the lunar module pilot, stationed on the right-hand side, to exit first.

Slayton added, 'Secondly, just on a pure protocol basis, I figured the commander ought to be the first guy out.'

'When Aldrin was told that since Neil had seniority, it was only right that he be the first, Aldrin would later claim that this satisfied him - it had been the ambiguity, he said, that he found unsettling,' Donovan said.

But Aldrin's wife Joan admitted that privately he was 'devastated'.

Donovan suggests that Armstrong was a more popular figure than Aldrin among the other astronauts, as although Aldrin was highly respected for his scientific genius, he was a loner who acknowledged that he did not work well as part of a team.

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong (left) and Buzz Aldrin, plant the U.S flag on the lunar surface on July 21, 1969

Armstrong was also considered to be a modest and humble, and the chiefs wanted a calm, quiet person to perform the historical spacewalk.

'Buzz Aldrin was brilliant but troubled,' he said.

'Fellow astronauts and their wives were terrified at the prospect of sitting next to him at dinner, since he would expound on orbital mechanics for hours at a time.

'Armstrong and Aldrin spent hundreds of hours standing next to each other in the lunar module simulator, just as they would in the actual Lunar Module.

'But in between practice landings they would sit on a shelf behind them.

'Other Apollo crews practising for a landing, talked and joked during these breaks, but Armstrong and Aldrin said so little to each other that simulation supervisors thought they had fallen asleep.'
Katie Price's boyfriend Kris Boyson has denied threatening a police officer after she was arrested on suspicion of drink-driving.

Boyson, 30, is in an on-off relationship with the model and reality star, 40, and last night the pair arrived home from a holiday in Thailand together.

He appeared at Medway Magistrates Court this morning where he pleaded not guilty to using threatening or abusive language and behaviour against a police officer.

The alleged victim of the incident near Boyson's home in Gravesend, Kent, is an officer called PC Blundell, according to court records.

It happened after Boyson got into an argument with a photographer, the court heard.

Kris Boyson, 30, (pictured today) appeared at Medway Magistrates Court this morning where he is charged with using threatening or abusive language and behaviour against a police officer

Boyson, 30, is in an on-off relationship with model and reality star Katie Price, 40, and the pair (pictured together) last night arrived home from a holiday in Thailand together

The alleged incident happened two days after the couple were found inside Price's pink Range Rover that had crashed in a bush following a boozy night out in south London.

Price, who was arrested, but later cleared of drink-driving, was found slumped in the back, while Boyson was discovered sitting in the front on October 9 last year.

They had been celebrating his birthday at a restaurant called The Meze in Bexleyheath.

Boyson visited a police station the following day on October 10. The next day he is alleged to have threatened the officer.

Boyson is pictured smiling with an unknown man outside Medway Magistrates Court today

Boyson and Price were found in her pink Range Rover after a boozy night out in south London

The charge claims that the 30-year-old used 'threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause [the police officer] to believe that immediate unlawful violence would be used against him', or 'to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by him whereby that person was likely to believe that such violence would be used, or it was likely that such violence would be provoked'.

The couple touched down in the UK last night after a relaxing break in Koh Samui.

Price uploaded several pictures of them smiling together on social media.

The mother-of-five was cleared of drink-driving but convicted of the lesser charge of being drunk in charge of a vehicle.

The case against Boyson, who was released on bail, continues.

Price uploaded this picture of her and her lover on holiday in Koh Samui, Thailand last week
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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have paid an emotional tribute to the victims of the Christchurch terror attack today as they signed a book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family, writing: 'We are with you.'

Prince Harry and a heavily-pregnant Meghan visited New Zealand House in London this afternoon to pay their respects to the 50 people massacred as they prayed at two mosques on Friday.

They put their knowledge of Maori customs to good use, flawlessly greeting delegates with a traditional Hongi nose rub before signing the book of condolence with the word 'aroha nui', which loosely translates to 'with deep affection'.

Meghan, who cradled her bump throughout the visit, wore a pair of earrings featuring a crossed-feathers design given to her by the country's prime minister Jacinda Ardern.

The couple were asked by the Queen to represent the British royal family at the event, having been the last members to visit the country when they went on their first overseas tour to the South Pacific in October last year.

Both dressed solemnly in black, the pair spoke with the High Commissioner of New Zealand, Jerry Mateparae, before laying floral bouquets and quietly reading other tributes left behind by members of the public.

Meghan watches on with her hand placed on her tummy as her husband Harry signs a book of condolence at New Zealand House in London

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex signed a book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family, writing 'We are with you' and 'aroha nui', which is a Maori word loosely translated to 'with deep affection'

On a single page, Meghan and her husband left the message: 'Our deepest condolences... We are with you.' Beneath their signatures was the Maori word 'Arohanui', meaning 'with much affection'

Meghan's appearance today came more than a week after her last official public engagement before the arrival of her baby last Monday

Meghan and her husband were among the first people to sign the book of condolence, which has been left out for members of the public to leave their wellwishes to victims

The Duchess of Sussex received a Hongi from the High Commissioner of New Zealand Jerry Mateparae as she and her husband (shown right) arrived at New Zealand House in London today

Meghan places a reassuring hand on the back of her husband as they leave flowers outside the entrance to New Zealand House (shown right, the duchess holds on to her bump)

The duchess watches on as he husband, the Duke of Sussex, carefully places down a bouquet of flowers outside New Zealand House this afternoon

The duchess was seen carefully inspecting floral tributes left at a makeshift memorial outside New Zealand House in central London today

The Duke and Duchess examine the tributes left at New Zealand House for the victims of the massacre in Christchurch

The duke and duchess met with members of staff at the High Commission to discuss their response to the atrocity.

Meghan said 'we are with you', adding she was 'just devastated' by the atrocity, as she cradled her baby bump.

Harry said 'it's just very sad' as he asked about their connections to Christchurch.

Sir Jerry said: 'We are overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of support we've received from across the UK.

'Their Royal Highness's visit is reflective of this outpouring of support and it was wonderful to welcome them to New Zealand House.'

The duke and duchess are among the first to sign the book of condolence, which opened to the public on Tuesday.

They will also meet members of staff at the High Commission to discuss their response to the atrocity.

Brenton Tarrant, 28, from Australia, slaughtered worshippers as they prayed inside mosques in Christchurch on Friday, having outlined his anti-immigrant motives in a manifesto posted online minutes before his attack.

On Saturday, Tarrant appeared in court in Christchurch charged with one count of murder and was remanded until April 5. Police said further charges were expected to follow.

Meghan holds on to her belly as she wait to sign a book of condolence for victims of the New Zealand terror attack

The couple were greeted with a Hongi by High Commissioner Sir Jerry Mateparae and Deputy High Commissioner David Evans, having been asked represent the royal family because they are the most recent royal visitors to New Zealand

Both dressed solemnly in black, they were greeted with a traditional Hongi nose rub by the High Commissioner of New Zealand Jerry Mateparae, before laying flowers at a memorial

Meghan, seen clutching a bouquet, and her husband Harry (right, sharing a traditional 'Maori kiss') have paid an emotional tribute to the victims of the Christchurch terror attack today as they signed a book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family

Meghan is greeted with a traditional Hongi nose rub by the High Commissioner of New Zealand Jerry Mateparae as she and Harry arrive at New Zealand House

The couple were invited to personally represent the royal family as they were the previous members to do so, having toured the country last year

Meghan was dressed in a long black coat and a matching skirt, along with a clutch bag and plain high heeled shoes, as she arrived in central London today

In the aftermath of the attack, the Duke and Duchess released a joint statement with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, condemning the massacre

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex hold hands as they make their way inside New Zealand House, where Harry has visited several times through his work with the Invictus Games

New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern said the suspect held a gun licence which enabled him to legally obtain semi-automatic weapons. She said the country's gun laws would change in the wake of the attack.

Of those killed in the massacre, 42 died at the Masjid Al Noor mosque in central Christchurch, seven were killed at the suburban Linwood Masjid Mosque, and one person died at Christchurch Hospital.

What is the hongi and why is the traditional Maori greeting so sacred to the people of New Zealand? The hongi is the traditional Maori greeting that sees two people welcome each other by rubbing or touching noses. It is a New Zealand tradition that comes from the Maori legend on how women were created. The hongi is an important part of New Zealand's culture and those who are offered the greeting should always accept, because of its significance. If a New Zealander should perform the hongi would you, it means that you are to be 'unified' with the person and that you are now more than a guest. Hongi roughly translates to 'sharing of the breath' and when you complete it as a guest, you are given a sense of responsibility for the island. To display this, you may be given some tasks to complete to show your loyalty and appreciation. In the past, you may have had to fight on the island's behalf but in modern times you must complete personal tasks such as no trace on the island and respecting its natural beauty. Advertisement

In the video live-streamed by Tarrant, a man inside a mosque appears to say 'Welcome brother' as a gunman approaches.

A number of improvised explosive devices found on a vehicle after the shootings were defused by police.

Mr Bush, who had earlier called the attack a 'very well-planned event', said the suspect was not known to police either in New Zealand or Australia. British security sources said there were no apparent UK links to the attack.

Facebook said it had removed 1.5 million videos of the attack worldwide in the 24 hours after the shootings, 1.2 million of which were blocked at upload.

On Tuesday, it said no-one had reported the video while it was being streamed live, with the first report coming 29 minutes after the broadcast began and 12 minutes after it had ended.

Chris Sonderby, vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, said the video was viewed fewer than 200 times during the live broadcast.

He said the company was 'working around the clock' to stop the video being posted on its site.

Ms Ardern has said authorities hope to release all the bodies by Wednesday and police said authorities were working with pathologists and coroners to complete the task as soon as they can.

As the nation continues to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy, Ms Ardern vowed action would be taken to ensure such an atrocity could never happen again.

On Monday, New Zealand's Cabinet made 'in principle' decisions about gun law reform, with further details to be announced by next Monday.

An inquiry into the events leading up to the attacks will also take place.

'There is anger that this happened here,' she said. 'There are many questions that need to be answered. The assurance that I give you is that they will be.'

New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush previously said police were confident one person was responsible for the shootings.

'That doesn't mean there weren't possibly people in support and that is to form an important part of our investigation,' he added.

The Duchess of Sussex meets with New Zealand's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Jerry Mateparae (shown right)

A solemn-looking Meghan (shown placing a hand on her bump) was dressed in all black as she arrived at New Zealand House in London to pay her respects to the victims of the terror attack

Meghan shakes hands with New Zealand's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom as her an Harry arrive at New Zealand House to pay their respects

The Duchess laid a bouquet of flowers among other tokens of support and respect to those who lost their lives in the Christchurch terror shooting

Meghan looks solemn as she makes her way inside the building to sign a book of condolence, set up in tribute to the 50 people killed in Friday's attack

The Duke of Sussex receives a hongi from the High Commissioner of New Zealand Jerry Mateparae

The Duke and Duchess put on brave faces as they attended New Zealand House to pay their respects for the Christchurch terror attack

Prince Harry and Meghan joined hoards of others to pay their respect to the victims of the New Zealand terror attack at New Zealand House today

Meghan looked sombre as her and Harry visited New Zealand House today to pay their respects to those who lost their lives

Meghan wrote a message of solidarity in a book of condolence. The message read: 'Our deepest condolences. We are with you'. Meghan finished the signed note with the Maori word 'aroha nui', that translates to 'with deep affection'

Prince Harry laid down a bouquet of flowers as part of a makeshift tribute outside of New Zealand House

Prince Harry signed the note that Meghan wrote in a book of condolences at New Zealand House

Meghan looked lovingly at Harry as the pair showed their support with those suffering a loss due to the mass shooting in Christchurch

Meghan and Harry arrive outside New Zealand House, next to a pile of bouquets that have been left as tributes to those who lost their lives in the New Zealand terror attack

Meghan protectively covered her bump while she visited New Zealand house with Harry so the couple could pay their respects to those who lost their lives and those who lost loved ones in the Christchurch mosque shootings

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived at New Zealand House in London today to pay their respects following the two mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand

Meghan joined Harry at New Zealand House today so the pair could pay their respects to those who lost their lives in the mass shootings at mosques in New Zealand. Meghan's appearance today came more than a week after her last official public engagement before the arrival of her baby

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hugs and consoles a woman as she visited Kilbirnie Mosque to lay flowers on Sunday

Floral tributes to those who were gunned down at the two mosques are seen against a wall bordering the Botanical Garden in Christchurch

A man was seen with bloodstains on his trousers soon after the shooting. New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has vowed action will be taken to ensure such an atrocity can never happen again

Well-wishers cried as they left floral tributes for the victims from the shootings at the two mosques in Christchurch

People light candles next to flowers and tributes laid by the wall of the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch

The duchess is believed to be around six weeks away from the arrival of her first child, which she has said is due in late April or early May.

Meghan and Harry's baby will be seventh in line to the throne and the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh's eighth great-grandchild.

Kensington Palace announced the pregnancy on the eve of the couple's first royal tour, which ended in New Zealand.

The duchess made a big impression on the country's people and was singled out for praise by figures including Ms Ardern.

She said Meghan's pregnancy 'increased my respect for the role that she's playing at such an often tiring time', adding: 'I have real empathy and I think she's incredible.'

The duchess in turn praised the efforts of Kiwi women who fought for the right to vote 125 years ago, saying they were 'universally admired'.

In the wake of last week's terror attack, the Queen led heartfelt messages of condolence from senior royals to the people of New Zealand.

In a joint message, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said: 'We have all been fortunate to spend time in Christchurch and have felt the warm, open-hearted and generous spirit that is core to its remarkable people.

'No person should ever have to fear attending a sacred place of worship.'

Harry and Meghan are pictured meeting New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, at Government House in Wellington on October 28 last year

The Duke and Duchess joined with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at Pillars, a charity that supports children who have a parent in prison by providing special mentoring schemes, during their visit to New Zealand last year

The Duchess of Sussex was given a traditional maori greeting of a hongi as she attended the unveiling of The Queen's Commonwealth Canopy in Redvale, Auckland with Prince Harry

Prince Harry greets David Gascoigne at a traditional welcoming ceremony at Government House in Wellington during the Duke and Duchess's tour of New Zealand in October last year

Meghan attends a powhiri - a traditional Maori welcoming ceremony while on her and Harry's trip to New Zealand last year

Harry and Meghan met with children in New Zealand as they all took part in a competition together during their visit last year

Back in October, the Duchess of Sussex attended a reception hosted by the New Zealand PM on her visit to the country. She teamed her elegant evening dress with a simple black clutch and nude slingback court shoes

The Prime Minister of New Zealand praised the Duchess for continuing to work while pregnant when she visited the country in October
Yousef Makki was fatally injured in the incident in Hale Barns, a leafy village south of Manchester, on March 2 and later died at Manchester Royal Infirmary

A 17-year-old grammar school pupil who dreamed of becoming a heart surgeon died from a stab wound to the chest, an inquest heard today.

Yousef Makki was fatally injured in the incident in Hale Barns, a leafy village south of Manchester, on March 2 and later died at Manchester Royal Infirmary.

An inquest into the teenager's death opened at Manchester South Coroner's Court in Stockport, with brief details heard before it was adjourned.

Police coroner's officer Alison Catlow told the hearing that Home Office pathologist Dr Charles Wilson had given the provisional cause of death as a stab wound to the chest.

Yousef's parents, Deborah Makki, a psychiatric nurse, and Ghaleb Makki, a salesman, were not present at the hearing but were aware of the proceedings, the court was told.

Ms Catlow said the sixth form student at Manchester Grammar School was identified by his mother before his body was later released.

Manchester South Senior Coroner Alison Mutch said the inquest into the death of Yousef, from Burnage, would need to be adjourned for a review hearing on April 16, with a provisional date of September 12 fixed for a full hearing.

A 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named for reasons, has appeared in court charged with Yousef's murder and has been bailed to attend Manchester Crown Court next month.

Another teenager, also 17, has been charged with assisting an offender and possession of a lock knife.

The boy, who also cannot be named, was also granted bail following a hearing at Manchester Magistrates' Court.

Last week, hundreds of people gathered in Ardwick, Manchester, to pay their respects to Yousef at a traditional Muslim funeral service ahead of a burial ceremony.

In a statement, Yousef's family said he was an 'inspiration to all' and that his 'determination, wit and dedication to his family and studies were the foundations of his outstanding personality'.

He is thought to have won a scholarship to attend the 12,000-a-year independent school.

Last week, hundreds of people gathered in Ardwick, Manchester, to pay their respects to Yousef at a traditional Muslim funeral service ahead of a burial ceremony
Mark Anthony Jones told Marion police that his gun fell from his waist band while he had been walking near a Girl Scout cabin

An Indiana man who accidentally shot his own genitals has been charged with carrying the gun without a license.

Mark Anthony Jones, 46, wounded himself in Marion last month after the 9mm weapon slipped from his waist band.

The bullet entered just above his penis and exited his scrotum, police said.

According to online court records he was charged on March 7 with carrying a handgun without a license.

Police had responded to the 'accidental self-inflicted gunshot injury' on February 28 after they were called to Marion General Hospital's emergency room.

Jones told officers he had been on a walkway near a Girl Scout cabin when the gun began to slip.

He was carrying the Hi Point 9mm firearm in his waist band and had not secured it in a holster, Marion police revealed.

The 46-year-old then reached down to adjust the gun, at which point it fired the bullet which hit just above his penis.

According to the police department, the father does not have a licence to own a handgun in the state of Indiana.

The case was sent to the Grant County prosecutors' office to be reviewed and the charges have since been filed.

The man's current condition is not known.

Jones rushed to adjust the gun, reaching down to fix it, but the gun discharged
During the proceedings, RBI's counsel said that there was a overlap of power on the issue.

The tribunal has also asked the Ministry of Corporate Affairs about the progress made with respect to resolution of IL&FS issues.

New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India has moved the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) over the order passed regarding classification of debt of IL&FS group companies as NPA.

A two-member NCLAT bench, headed by Justice S J Mukhopadhaya, has said that it would hear the RBI on the issue.

The RBI is seeking modification of the order passed by the tribunal which has provided moratorium on repayment of loans regarding the accounts of IL&FS and its over 300 group companies.

During the proceedings, RBI's counsel said that there was a overlap of power on the issue.

The tribunal has also asked the Ministry of Corporate Affairs about the progress made with respect to resolution of IL&FS issues.

Further, the tribunal has sought company-wise updates from the Committee of Creditors (CoC) and Resolution Professional (RP).
Norway claims it has electronic proof that Russian forces disrupted GPS signals before and during the large-scale NATO war games held in Scandinavia in November last year.

Both Finland and Norway accused Russia of intentionally disrupting GPS signals, which also affected the navigation of civilian air traffic in the Arctic, but Moscow dismissed the allegations.

Norway's Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen has today said that they have handed over proof to Moscow, and have been told that it will be 'reviewed'.

Norway claims it has 'proof' Russia jammed GPS signals during NATO's Trident Juncture Operations last November. Pictured: A British soldier from the Royal Irish Regiment in a defensive position with an LMG in Elval, Norway during the war games

'Russia asked (us) to give proof. We gave them the proof,' Mr Bakke-Jensen told reporters, adding that this consisted of measurements showing signals had been jammed.

'Russia said 'thank you, we will come back when our experts review that'. To have such an answer from Russia is a positive thing,' he said. 'To be a neighbor of Russia you need to be patient.'

Asked whether Russia could have targeted Norway intentionally, the minister said: 'They were exercising very close to the border and they knew this will affect areas on the other side.'

Finland is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) but took part in the Trident Juncture war games as an ally.

It was NATO's largest military exercise since the Cold War, held between October 25 and November 7, and involved some 50,000 troops from 31 countries in an area stretching from the Baltic Sea to Iceland.

A British Army Foxhound (left) and a Land Rover (right) await Norwegian forces in Bryalden on October 31

Norwegian Home Guardsmen take up defensive positions during exercises in Elval on November 3

Norway's defence ministry said that jamming took place between October 16 and November 7, and was registered as coming from 'Russian land forces on the Kola Peninsula,' a Russian region dotted with naval bases and restricted military zones.

The repeated allegations from Norway comes as hundreds of U.S. soldiers have begun arriving in Germany in the first test of a new rapid deployment strategy meant to bolster NATO's presence in eastern Europe in the event of Russian aggression or other emergencies.

U.S. Army Europe says 350 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division arrived in Berlin Tuesday as part of a group of 1,500 arriving this week.

They're heading to Poland, where they will link up with tanks and other heavy equipment, being brought in from a pre-positioned site in the Netherlands.

They will then conduct maneuvers with Polish forces.

The idea of the 'dynamic force employment' strategy is to 'rapidly surge combat-ready forces' into Europe when needed.

The U.S., Canada, Germany and Britain already lead battalion-size units in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
The broadcast of the Christchurch mosque massacre was viewed less than 200 times live and 4,000 times in total before it was removed, Facebook has said.

The 17-minute long video, which showed a gunman slaughter 49 worshippers at two mosques as Friday prayers were underway, was first reported 12 minutes after the broadcast ended.

By then, an 8chan user had already put the clip on a file-sharing website. After this, millions of copies of the video were re-uploaded on to Facebook.

The social media website has said it used technology to block visually similar videos, before using audio tech as well, catching 1.5million videos before they were uploaded in 24 hours. A further 300,000 videos were later removed.

Facebook has said it shared more than 800 different versions of the video from the attack to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) to help others remove clips.

The broadcast of the Christchurch mosque massacre was viewed by less than 200 people live and 4,000 times in total before it was removed, Facebook has said (file photo)

Each of the videos are 'digitally fingerprinted' so they can be stopped before going live on the websites of members of GIFCT, which include Twitter, Microsoft and YouTube.

Chris Sonderby, vice president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, said in a statement: 'Our hearts go out to the victims, their families and the community affected by the horrific terrorist attacks in Christchurch.

'We remain shocked and saddened by this tragedy and are committed to working with leaders in New Zealand, other governments, and across the technology industry to help counter hate speech and the threat of terrorism.

'We continue to work around the clock to prevent this content from appearing on our site, using a combination of technology and people.

'We have been working directly with the New Zealand Police to respond to the attack and support their investigation.'

The social media site has also said it removed alleged killer Brenton Tarrant's profile on Facebook and Instagram.

The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) said people who share the video are likely to be committing an offence.

New Zealand Police told Daily Mail Australia they are actively investigating the sharing and dissemination of the footage but would not comment on whether or not anyone has been charged.

The 17-minute long video (pictured, a grab from the video) was first reported 12 minutes after the broadcast ended. By then, an 8chan user had already put the clip on a file-sharing website

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has called on social media companies to take responsibility for ensuring that such content cannot be distributed or viewed on their platforms, saying they are 'the publisher, not just the postman'.

She told the country's parliament: 'There is no question that ideas and language of division and hate have existed for decades, but their form of distribution, the tools of organisation, they are new.

'We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published.

'They are the publisher, not just the postman. There cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility.'

In the UK, Home Secretary Sajid Javid told social media companies 'enough is enough' in the wake of last Friday's shootings.

Reacting to a tweet from YouTube claiming that the video-sharing service was working to remove the footage, he said: 'You really need to do more @YouTube @Google @facebook @Twitter to stop violent extremism being promoted on your platforms. Take some ownership. Enough is enough.'

Damian Collins, Tory chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, called for a review into how the footage was shared and 'why more effective action wasn't taken to remove them'.

And Downing Street said social media companies needed to act 'more quickly' to remove terrorist content.
A man has been arrested on suspicion of making threats to kill after a 10-hour stand-off with armed police in London.

The suspect called police at 8.32am today threatening to kill people and when police approached his car in the Addiscombe area of Croydon he intimated he had a gun.

A passing local claimed she saw the man parade outside the car clutching a hand gun to his chest - two hours into the siege.

Photos from the scene show the man in a thick hooded coat standing with what appears to be a bag in his hand, as armed police look on.

But police confirmed the man was arrested this evening at 6.30pm after what is believed to be a domestic incident and is in custody at a south London police station.

EXCLUSIVE: A man who claims he is armed stands in a Croydon street as armed police look on

Armed officers have been in Addiscombe, Croydon since 8.30am today when a man called police claiming he wanted to kill people

Police officers with large weapons are pictured at the scene in south London on Tuesday

Armed police are pictured taking aim in the Addiscombe area of Croydon today where an armed 'gunman' made threats to kill people

The drama began after the suspect rang police earlier today and threatened to kill people.

A passing local claimed she saw the man parade outside the car clutching a hand gun to his chest - two hours into the siege.

Kim Santry, 34, said: 'We were sitting in our friend's house in a street opposite - Kingscote Road and we were watching the whole thing unfold.

'At around 11am we saw him get out of the red car with the gun.

'He was holding it next to his chest. It was small, like a hand gun.

'He walked up and down for around two to three minutes.

'The police officers didn't do anything, the dogs barked and then he got back in.

'We don't know why they didn't jump on him there and then.'

One local said police had stopped her returning home. She said: 'The policeman said 'we can't let people down that side street as there is a man in a car holding a gun'.

A spokesman for the Met Police said: 'Police were called at 08:32hrs on Tuesday, 19 March, by a man who made threats to kill. 'Officers attended Pagehurst Road near the junction with Addiscombe Road in Addiscombe.

'A man was found in a car at the location and when approached he intimated he had a firearm.

'Armed officers and the London Ambulance Service attended the scene, the London Fire Brigade was also informed.

'Officers have now resolved the situation. 'The man was arrested at approximately 18:30hrs on suspicion of making threats to kill.

He has been taken to a south London police station where he remains in custody. 'Cordons remain in place.

'No schools in the area were affected by this incident. 'There is no evidence of any terrorism motive.

'At this early stage, there appears to be a domestic element to this incident.'

A helicopter was also filmed hovering over the scene earlier today.

A large cordon remains in place blocking the residential street, which is lined with shops and businesses.

Locals are being redirected to pick their children up from school but some residents have been told they must wait outside the cordon.

Maureen Hewitt, 66, returned from her gym class this afternoon to be told she could not go back into her house - which is on the same street as the parked red car which the man is believed to still be in.

She said: 'I popped out at half six this morning to get the paper and didn't see anything. Then I left the house at midday to find myself in a police cordon.

A large police van is pictured in Addiscombe, Croydon where residents and schools are still on lockdown

'The others at the gym class in the park told me a man had a gun and was sat in a car at the top of my road.

'I thought I'd let it calm down and head back home but and Officer has told me I can't go back yet because of health and safety reasons.

'He said he had no idea when I'll be able to go back to my house.

'There are a couple of schools around here and the children will start coming home soon.'

A woman who lives in the road next door said a man was sitting in a red car with a gun.

She said: 'I've come home from work and had no idea about this.

'I've been told that there's a man parked in a red car and he has a gun.'

Jasmine Dowing, 47, said the sound of sirens woke her up but she did not venture out after looking at the news.

Police flooded the scene after the man phoned 999 and said he wanted to kill people

A police dog is pictured with a group of officers at the scene in Addiscombe, Croydon

She said: 'I'm looking after my daughter and didn't want to leave.

'Hearing sirens is a daily thing and although it is scary, I'm not too phased by it.

'Unfortunately we're becoming like America, we're becoming less sensitised to this sort of violence.'

Local resident Sam Novell tweeted earlier: 'Anyone in and around Addiscombe stay away. Bloke with gun walking around. Police trying to find him. Mums locked in work!'

Another Twitter user wrote: 'So my mum's work in Addiscombe has been blocked off as a man with a gun is walking around the main road outside all cordoned off now by police! Wtf is wrong with people!'

A Met Police spokesman said there is not yet any evidence of a terrorism element and the incident is believed to be domestic.

Local Labour MP Sarah Jones tweeted from the scene: 'I'm at the scene, numerous response units are here.

'Please avoid the area and don't worry- we have superb police on hand keeping us safe #Croydon'

Police in Croydon are locked in a stand-off with a man who is said to have a gun

Footage from the scene shows police cars blocking the street. A red car is visible to the left but it is unclear whether this is the vehicle where the man is sitting
An Alabama man joined the search party for a missing 11-year-old girl after he strangled her to death, police say.

Christopher Wayne Madison, 33, allegedly suffocated Amberly Alexis Barnett with a rope in woods 200 yards behind his home in Collinswood on March 2.

Hours later, he then pretended to help find the child after she vanished while staying with her aunt.

Christopher Wayne Madison has been charged with capitol murder in the death of Amberly Barnett (left)

Officers then found Barnett's body with the rope around her neck, AL.com reported.

Madison was then arrested and charged with capital murder. He now faces the death penalty.

DeKalb County investigator David Davis testified on Monday that Madison said he searched the woods near his home and couldn't find her.

Madison's girlfriend said the rope had been in the home, where investigators found a clamp and bolt in the floor used in 'bondage' activity, blood spatters and more rope wrapped around Madison's knife.

Barnett was from Georgia, but she had been living with her aunt and aunts boyfriend in the Mount Vernon community of DeKalb County since last summer.

Madison lived with his girlfriend in the mobile home next door. Madisons girlfriend and the boyfriend of Barnetts aunt are siblings.

Barnett stayed home alone while her aunt and aunts boyfriend went shopping on March 1, Chief investigator David Davis said during Monday's court hearing.

Amberly's body was found on March 2 in a wooded area about 200 yards behind Madison's home in Collinsville. Initial reports show Amberly had been strangled to death

Amberly's mother Jonie (pictured) claimed that her daughter was caring and smart

When the family returned, Barnett was missing. The sheriff's office was called to the

scene at around 7.30 pm.

Madison said that he had already checked the woods behind his home and did not find the girl, AL.com reported.

Officers found Barnett's body at 6.30 am the next morning after extensive searches throughout the night.

Barnett was living with her aunt and aunts boyfriend in the Mount Vernon community of DeKalb County since last summer

Authorities found a sock which is believed to be Barnett's along a path where her body had been dragged.

They also claimed there was blood in the bathroom sink and on the walls, mattress, bed frame and on a sheet of paper in a bedroom inside Madison's home.

Authorities have not yet revealed a motive for the killing.

Madisons girlfriend was shown a picture of the blue rope that was found around Barnetts neck and she claimed the same rope had had been inside their home the day before.

Another piece of blue rope was found wrapped around a knife in the backyard of Madisons home, Davis testified. Madison admitted the knife was his, according to investigators.

The results of forensic testing to be performed on the blood and other evidence found at the scene are not yet known.

The evidence also includes a black hair that was found on Barnetts body, Davis testified.

Madison faces either the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole if he is convicted of capital murder.

When his arrest was announced earlier this month, Amber's heartbroken mother Jonie claimed that her daughter loved science, and was caring and smart.

Jonie Barnett told WSB-TV: 'Nobody should bury their 11-year-old child. Nobody should have hurt her.

'I couldn't have asked for a better daughter. Come and do it to me. Don't do it to her. Don't take my baby,' she added.
The accused Christchurch gunman is being held in New Zealand's only maximum security prison in solitary confinement.

Brenton Tarrant is under 24 hour surveillance and has been refused access to newspapers, television and radio, The Department of Corrections in New Zealand confirmed.

Without access to outside world information, Tarrant will be unable to obtain reports on the Christchurch mosque massacre he's accused of spearheading last Friday.

Authorities have tried to shroud the 28-year-old's exact whereabouts in secrecy.

Brenton Tarrant (pictured) is under 24 hour surveillance and has been refused access to newspapers, television and radio, a statement confirmed

The only detail released by officials confirm that Tarrant is being held in a 'specialist security facility'.

However it's understood he's currently residing in Paremoremo Prison, 25km north of Auckland, reported The New Zealand Herald.

The facility is the only maximum security prison in New Zealand and is home to some of the country's most dangerous criminals.

In a statement issued to the publication on behalf of The Department of Corrections, it confirmed Tarrant will not receive visitors.

It's understood he's currently residing in Paremoremo Prison (pictured) 25km north of Auckland

Paremoremo Prison (pictured) is the only maximum security prison in New Zealand and houses some of the country's most notorious criminals

Authorities have tried to shroud the 28-year-old's exact whereabouts in secrecy. The only detail released by officials is that Tarrant is being held in a 'specialist security facility' (Paremoremo Prison pictured)

'He is being managed in accordance with the provisions set out in the Corrections Act 2004 and our international obligations for the treatment of prisoners.

'At this time he has no access to television, radio or newspapers and no approved visitors,' the statement read.

The Department for Corrections also stated they had been assisted by 'other agencies' in moving Tarrant from Christchurch to his new location.

Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis had declined to comment in regards to Tarrant's exact location on Tuesday.

'I'm not going to go into any operational things. You've got to remember that the safety of Corrections officers is most paramount and I'm not going to say anything to jeopardise that,' he said, reported stuff.com.nz.

It's believed the prison currently houses around 587 inmates.

Although the number of prisoners being held in segregation has not been verified.

Inmates in segregation are allowed out of their cell for a minimum of one hour each day, but there movements are continuously monitored via CCTV and by staff.

Prisoners in being held in segregation are thought to be managed in different ways - with each having an individual management plan.

It's not yet confirmed as to whether Tarrant will appear in person his next court appearance. Or if he'll appear via video link from prison.

Australian-born Tarrant allegedly livestreamed his sickening attack on two Christchurch mosques on Friday, leaving 50 dead.

At least 50 other victims were injured in the terrorist attack.
A respected psychiatrist has been found bludgeoned to death and stuffed into the trunk of a car abandoned in the Nevada desert.

The body of Dr. Thomas Burchard, 71, was found by officers on March 7 in a car parked by the entrance of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Las Vegas.

Police were flagged to the car after a man driving through the remote area with his children noticed the parked vehicle and saw it had a rock thrown through one of its windows.

California psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Burchard, 71, was found dead on March 7 bludgeoned to death and stuffed in the trunk of a car parked at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in the desert near Las Vegas

The man called police and when officers arrived to the scene around 10.50am they discovered Burchard's body inside the trunk.

According to the coroner's report, Burchard had died that same day, as per the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The cause of death was determined to be blunt force to the head and was ruled a homicide.

Las Vegas Police said the body was found under suspicious circumstances and are now trying to figure out the assailant behind his murder.

Metro homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said Thursday no arrests have been made in his death.

Burchard was from Salinas, California and its not clear how his body ended up in Las Vegas.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area is a large park in the mountainous and desert area surrounding East Lake.

The car was found abandoned near the rural desert road East Lake Mead Boulevard (above), not far from the entrance to the park

Lake Mead National Recreation Area is a massive mountainous and desert park in southeastern Nevada

Burchard had worked with Montage Health in Monterey, California for as many as 40 years with the behavioral health program. His patients were mostly adults but he also worked with some adolescents.

The Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula spokeswoman Mary Barker confirmed his death.

'Hes a longstanding physician in the community who was very helpful to many of his patients,' Barker said to The Californian.

'It was a sad situation and our hearts go out to his family,' she added.

His family updated his Facebook page on Saturday announcing his death.

'We are absolutely devastated by the brutal murder of our loved one, Dr. Thomas Burchard. We ask at this time that our privacy is respected as we grieve and try to process this heinous event,' the post said.

A memorial service date is yet to be announced.

Patients flooded the post with thank yous and condolences, one patient saying: 'Dr Tom saved my life. I love the saint so much. May be rest in peace'.

'We will miss you Dr. B and your dedication to all your patients. You were truly a one-of-kind doctor. I will think about you fondly as I remember all the amazing magic tricks,' another patient added.

'From my childhood hes helped my family and myself personally...I dont know how to process this. Im so sorry this has happened,' another chimed in.
A 13-year-old girl who was being bullied at school claims she asked a female aide for help, and was forced to repay her with inner thigh massages.

The allegations sparked a federal investigation into the School for Exceptional Studies in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and have left the teen full of shame.

The girl - identified as Hazel - told the Boston Globe: 'I feel bad about myself. I feel like it's my fault.'

Hazel said she has been relentlessly bullied at the public school, which is for children with behavioral issues and special needs, over her weight. A boy once threw an apple at her thighs to see them jiggle.

Gym class was a nightmare for the teen, and so she finally asked the teachers' aides if she could skip it. They allowed her and another girl to sit on the bleachers instead.

Hazel said the bleachers were behind a curtain that divided them from the rest of the class. Every day, she and the other girl sat with a male and female aide.

A 13-year-old girl who was being severely bullied at the School for Exceptional Studies in Lawrence, Massachusetts (pictured) claims she asked a female aide for help, and was forced to repay her with inner thigh massages

The teen said that the female aide told her on one such day that she needed to give her a back massage or she would lose points in the school's reward system.

Hazel told Department of Children and Families investigators that the male aide then rolled up her sleeve and rubbed her hand to 'show her how to massage [the female aide] correctly'.

'Why do I have to do this?' Hazel said she asked the male aide. 'This is nasty bro.'

She claims the aide told her not to disrespect them.

Hazel said she was eventually forced to give the female aide half a dozen massages, including on her legs and inner thighs. The teen said the male aide was always watching and encouraging these massages.

The teen claims that during one massage, the male aide even put his hand on Hazel's while she was rubbing the female aide's leg.

Hazel told her mother about the massages in November after she came home with swollen and bloodied fingers.

She claims that the female aide grabbed her in the hallway at school and took her into a room, getting so close to her face she accidentally spit in it.

Hazel said she spit back and they had an altercation. She said some of her acrylic nails, a gift from her mom for Halloween, had ripped off. She was suspended for one day.

School officials claim that no school employee initiated physical contact with Hazel. The principal said the teen's fingernails did pop off, but 'denied any injury to Hazel's fingers'.

DCF investigators noted in their report that Hazel only reported the massages after she was suspended. They concluded that the interaction Hazel and the other girl had with the two aides did not 'appear to be of a sexual nature'.

But the second girl also alleged that she had been asked to massage the female aide's neck and back. She said the massages took place during lunchtime, not gym class, and that she did not see another student massage the female aide.

She also recalled the female aide coming to school one day and telling her they couldn't hug because 'the principal said they can't touch students'.

'The other student's disclosure was unsolicited, and without any precipitating or motivating influence,' the DFC report states. 'There is no reason to raise question [about] her credibility.'

Meanwhile, the school aides both denied having any physical contact with the two students. DCF investigators found this concerning 'given that both girls describe some degree of contact', according to the report.

The report also reveals that the female aide was given a written warning for 'inappropriate interaction with a student'.

Yet both aides continue to be employed by the district, which is standing by its investigation and decision.

'We conducted a thorough investigation into all of these concerns immediately upon receiving them, at the conclusion of which we took appropriate action' said Lawrence School District spokesman Christopher Markuns.

'We additionally requested and cooperated with an investigation by an outside agency, and to this date have received findings consistent with our own.'

The Essex County District Attorney's Office also conducted an investigation but said there was not sufficient evidence for a criminal charge.

But the federal Department of Education will now launch their own investigation to determine whether Hazel was discriminated against due to her sex and disabilities.

Hazel's parents have since pulled her out of the school, revealing that the alleged encounters have only aggravated her behavioral issues.

'This is a girl who already had issues, and then you put so much more stress on top of this little girl,' said Sharen Bimbo, Hazel's mother. 'I'm upset and I want answers.'

Bimbo, who has a different last name from Hazel, said the teen reads at a kindergarten level, has severe tantrums, and tried to commit suicide when she was five years old.

'I cried about the story so many times,' Hazel said. 'But now I'm just mad about it. Now, I'm just done. Done.'
A Delaware mayor who shared a Twitter post over the St. Patrick's Day weekend echoing white nationalist views about Irish immigrants says it was an 'innocent mistake'.

Mike Purzycki 'inadvertently retweeted' a screenshot of an offensive tweet directed at Irish immigrants falsely claiming many came to the country as slaves.

The tweet said: 'Shout out to all of the Irish people who's families were enslaved, came to the US for a better life, worked in factories and then got called 'privileged' & blamed for slavery by beta male, soy drinking hypocrites & depressed feminists.'

A Delaware mayor who shared a twitter post echoing white nationalist views says it was an 'innocent mistake'. Mike Purzycki (pictured) 'inadvertently retweeted' a screenshot of an offensive tweet directed at Irish immigrants falsely claiming many came to the US in slavery

'Innocent mistake': The above tweet was shared by the mayor over the St. Patrick's Day weekend. The tweet said: 'Shout out to all of the Irish people who's families were enslaved, came to the US for a better life, worked in factories and then got called 'privileged' & blamed for slavery by beta male, soy drinking hypocrites & depressed feminists'

A later tweet sent from Purzycki's account said: 'I had nothing to do with the offensive post. We unintentionally compounded the problem by RTing the original post unaware that an offensive screenshot was attached. It's disturbing how social media can be manipulated'

The view is often promoted by white nationalists but is in fact false, with many Irish immigrants arriving in the U.S. as indentured servants - meaning they had rights under contract beyond that of any slave.

Late Monday, the Mayor's Office released a statement saying the post was 'inadvertently retweeted making it appear as though he had shared the offensive tweet'. Later in the statement, Purzycki called it an 'innocent mistake.'

The mayor's retweet was deleted after his office received questions from The News Journal. The office said it has since reset the Twitter account's password and 'added additional authentication controls.'

A spokesperson for the mayors office, said: 'Someone not associated with our office intentionally set out to connect the mayor to an offensive post. Our office retweeted the original tweet not knowing that the offensive post was attached.'

John Rago said the mayor's tweets from St. Patrick's Day were overseen by the city's social media manager.

A later tweet sent from Purzycki's account said: 'I had nothing to do with the offensive post. We unintentionally compounded the problem by RTing the original post unaware that an offensive screenshot was attached. It's disturbing how social media can be manipulated.'

The person who posted the original tweet reportedly defended the comment and denied being a white nationalist.

In an email to the publication, he said: 'I'm not a nationalist,' and went on to write that he has offered solutions to curb extremism.
Michael Leon Curry (pictured) appeared in a Van Buren County District Court Monday where he was charged with felony murder in the 1986 death of 59-year-old Wilda Wilkinson

A man who dubbed himself the 'Night Stalker' has been arrested for the 1986 murder of a neighbor, after serving more than 20 years in prison for savagely beating his roommate.

Michael Leon Curry appeared in a Van Buren County District Court Monday where he was charged with felony murder in the death of 59-year-old Wilda Wilkinson.

Wilkinson's daughter found her dead at her Bangor, Michigan home, state police say. Despite identifying a list of possible suspects, the case went cold until 2010.

Three years after Wilkinson's murder, on December 12, 1989, Curry, now 51, was arrested for attempted murder, state records show.

Curry badly beat his roommate before calling police operators to tell them he believed he had killed him and then identified himself as the 'Night Stalker', WoodTV reported.

Police traced the call to a home in Bangor where they found Curry and the victim.

Curry was sentenced to 10-30 years for assault with intent to commit murder. He was discharged from the Michigan Department of Corrections on July 14, 2017.

Three years after Wilkinson's murder, on December 12, 1989, Curry, 51, was arrested for attempted murder, state records show. Curry badly beat a man before calling police operators to tell them he had killed his roommate and then identified himself as 'The Night Stalker' (Curry pictured left, taken in 1989, and Wilda Wilkinson, pictured right)

Wilkinson's daughter found her dead at her Bangor, Michigan home (the area is pictured above), state police say. Despite identifying a list of interests, the case went cold until 2010. Police say Curry lived near Wilkinson at the time of the crime, was initially questioned by investigators and was never ruled out as a suspect

In 2010, Michigan State Police began working Wilkinson's cold case and narrowed down the list of suspects.

Last week detectives moved on Curry, now living in California, who then waived extradition back to Michigan. It is unclear exactly what new evidence or developments have linked him to the murder.

Police say Curry lived near Wilkinson at the time of the crime, was initially questioned by investigators and was never ruled out as a suspect.

But police were unable to gather physical evidence before formally arresting and charging him, meaning he escaped the judicial process.

Wilkinson's two daughters and two sons were in 'continuous contact' with detectives during the decades long investigation and never gave up hope of an arrest, police say.
Police have arrested a real estate agent for allegedly raped a woman who traveled from China to look at homes in Florida.

Wentworth Huang Wang, 38, was arrested on Sunday and charged with three counts of sexual battery.

A police affidavit says the woman used LianJia Overseas for housing and transportation. She told authorities that the company put her in touch with Wang.

Real estate agent, Wentworth Huang Wang (pictured), 38, was arrested on Sunday for allegedly raping a woman who traveled from China to look at homes in Florida. He was charged with sexual battery. Hes being held in the Orange County Jail

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the woman had traveled to Winter Park, Florida, for three days to look at homes in March 2018.

During the third day of her visit, the woman said Wang took her out to dinner and to a fair.

When she told him she was leaving the next day, he allegedly grabbed her in an 'aggressive' way and told her that he didn't want her to leave.

He reportedly told the victim that she was the 'prettiest and smartest girl hes ever met'.

According to the Sentinel, he also said they should be together and that she should have his children.

When they returned to a residence, the woman said Wang forced himself on top of her.

A police affidavit says the woman used LianJia Overseas (file image) for housing and transportation. She told authorities that the company put her in touch with Wang

She told police that after Wang raped her, he warned her not to tell anyone because he knew people at the Orlando Police Department, adding that they would believe him because he's an American citizen.

The alleged victim left Florida and reported the rape in California.

Wang provided a DNA sample in October, which reportedly matched evidence found on the woman and her clothing.

Jail records don't list a lawyer for Wang. Hes being held in the Orange County Jail.
166 people, including Americans, were killed and over 300 injured as 10 heavily-armed LeT terrorists created mayhem on Nov 26, 2008.

Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan. (Photo: PTI)

Mumbai/Beijing: In a rare acknowledgment, China on Monday described the 2008 Mumbai attacks carried out by Pakistan-based LeT terror outfit as one of "the most notorious terrorist attacks".

In a white paper on its massive crackdown against terrorists in the restive Xianjiang province, China said the global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years had inflicted agony on humanity.

The paper described the Mumbai terror attacks as one of "the most notorious terrorist attacks", adding that the "global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years has inflicted agony on humanity".

The release of the paper, "The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang", interestingly coincided with Pakistan foreign minister's Shah Mehmood Qureshi's visit to China.

Throughout the world, terrorism and extremism gravely threaten peace and development, and endanger the life and property of individuals, said the white paper released by China's State Council Information Office.

The paper came days after China for the fourth time blocked a bid in the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to designate Pakistan-based chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror group Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist" by putting a technical hold on the proposal, a move India termed as disappointing.

The JeM has claimed responsibility for the February 14 Pulwama attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead and escalated tensions between India and Pakistan.

"Striking aggressively at terrorism and furthering the de-radicalisation effort is the common responsibility of the international community and essential to the protection of human rights," it said.

China opposes all forms of terrorism and extremism, and opposes double standards on fighting terrorism, said the white paper, adding that Beijing opposes linking terrorism and extremism with specific countries, ethnic groups or religions.

China advocates comprehensive measures to address both the symptoms and the root causes, with the dual purposes of striking at terrorist activities and eliminating poverty, so that there will be no room for terrorism to breed, it said.

In one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country's history, 166 people, including Americans, were killed and over 300 injured as 10 heavily-armed terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) created mayhem in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.

Nine attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged.

Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan.

The US has offered a USD 10 million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice.
Kellyanne Conway's husband George is 'a total loser,' Preisdent Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the Washington lawyer blasted him on Twitter as mentally ill.

And the president's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, claimed 'Mr. Kellyanne Conway' is 'jealous' of his more-famous wife's success after being bounced from a low-prestige job at the U.S. Department of Justice.

'He barely worked @TheJusticeDept and was either fired/quit, didnt want the scrutiny? Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success. POTUS doesnt even know him!' Parscale tweeted Monday night.

Mr. Conway had launched a barrage of insults at the president on Monday evening, tweeting medical definitions of personality disorders including 'deceitfulness' and grandiosity as symptoms  and saying they apply to the 45th president.

His latest criticism of Trump followed a weekend of digital slams from the president against a range of targets including the late Sen. John McCain and Saturday Night Live.

President Trump banded George Conway, his chief counselor Kellyanne Conway's husband, 'a total loser' on Monday

Mr. Conway had tweeted a series of pages from a psychiatric diagnosis manual, suggested the president is mentally ill

The president piled on, calling Mr. Conway '[a] total loser' after his 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale claimed Kellyann's husband was 'jealous' of her success

Conway shoved back on Twitter, congratulating Trump for raising the public profile of their onlin sparring match

Mr. Conway fired back sarcastically at Trump on Monday, tweeting that it wasn't smart of the president to give his armchair psychiatry a bigger platform.

'Congratulations!' he wrote in a tweet. 'You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job!'

Conway's wife, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, brushed off the incident, saying she was taking care of the couple's four children Monday morning and hadn't paid attention.

Parscale, however, spoke for Trumpworld; the president himself piled on hours later

Mr. Conway posted the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder; he also tweeted the cover of the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders in a slap at Trump.

According to the definition, someone with the disorder has three or more of a list of symptoms.

Among them are a 'Grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).'

Trump's 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted that Mr. Conway is 'jealous of his wife's success'

Strained? Kellyanne Conway brushed aside her husband's claims that her boss had at least two mental disorders by saying she was not 'up to speed'

Mr. Conway tweeted from a manual of mental disorders that psychiatrists use to make diagnoses

ALL THE BEST SCORES: Conway seemed to be suggesting that President Donald Trump has a grandiose sense of self-importance or other narcissistic traits

Conway also tweeted out signs of an antisocial personality disorder

A person with a narcissistic disorder may also be:

'Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;'

'Believes he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions);' and

'Requires excessive admiration ... has a sense of entitlement ... [and] is interpersonally exploitative.'

Before his stab at armchair psychiatry, Conway retweeted conservative commentator William Kristol, who urged people to think seriously about Trump's psychological state.

'Agree with this, but would add that *all* Americans should be thinking seriously *now* about Trumps mental condition and psychological state, including and especially the media, Congress  and the Vice President and Cabinet,' Conway wote.

Kellyanne Conway commented on the latest instance of her husband torching the president  her boss  brushing off a question by a reporter at the White House.

'I have four kids and I was getting them out of the house this morning before I got here, so I could talk to the president about substance. So I may not be up to speed on the whole thing,' she said.

As Conway's tweet attacking the president's alleged narcissism reverberated, Trump weighed in on the New Zealand terror attack that killed 50, defending his own image and complaining that he was being blamed for the slaughter.

'The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!' the president wrote.

Last year, former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson said Trump had aced a diagnostic test used to look at potential mental disorders.

Trump got a perfect score on a test designed to look for signs of memory loss or cognitive dysfunction.

He bragged about the results as he blamed his predecessors for failing to solve problems in North Korea.

'I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests,' Trump quipped at the time.
A woman in central China has almost died after injecting the juice of more than 20 types of fruit directly into her veins.

The 51-year-old woman, surnamed Zeng, was blindly following a folk remedy to improve her health and thought she could better absorb the nutrients in the fruits this way, Chinese media reported.

Shortly after administering herself an IV drip of the juice, she developed a fever and itchy skin and was taken to hospital in Chenzhou, Hunan province.

The 51-year-old woman (pictured), surnamed Zeng, was blindly following a folk remedy to improve her health and thought she could better absorb the nutrients in the fruits this way

At first she ignored her symptoms and only went to the county hospital after her shocked husband found out about the infusion on February 22, according to Xiaoxiang Morning News.

Hospital staff then transferred her to the Affiliated Hospital of Xiangnan University, where she was admitted to intensive care.

Attending doctor Liu Jianxiu told reporters that the woman suffered from a severe infection and damage to her heart, kidney and liver.

She was at risk of dying from multiple organ failure and sepsis, Dr Liu added.

Doctors administered treatment by cleaning her blood using dialysis, giving her antibiotics and injecting clotting agents, according to the newspaper.

Hospital staff said that Zeng had called a doctor to administer her an IV drip at home by pretending to be sick. After the doctor left, she swapped the liquid with her juice (file photo)

After five days of emergency treatment, Zeng's condition improved and was transferred to a kidney unit on the morning of February 27.

Hospital staff told Kan Kan News that Zeng had called a doctor to administer her an IV drip at home by pretending to be sick. After the doctor left, she swapped the liquid with her blended fruit juice.

'I thought fresh fruits were very nutritious and never thought they would be harmful by injecting them into my body,' said Zeng, who had developed an interest in alternative medicine and home remedies.

Dr Liu had warned members of the public not to follow any health practices that lack scientific basis, saying such injections would cause liver and kidney damage and could lead to death.
One of Australia's most senior Muslim clerics was barred from entering New Zealand and had to apply for a special visa to be accepted into the country.

Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman was set to fly to Christchurch on Monday to assist with the burial of the 50 victims from Friday's mass shooting at two mosques.

According to Immigration New Zealand, Sheikh Shady was refused entry to the neighbouring country because of a ban Denmark had placed on him last year, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

'[INZ] can confirm that Mr Alsuleiman was advised that he was unable to travel to New Zealand visa free as a result of being excluded from Denmark,' national border manager Stephanie Greathead said.

One of Australia's most senior Muslim clerics was barred from entering New Zealand and had to apply for a special visa to be accepted into the country (pictured, Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman)

Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman (pictured) was set to fly to Christchurch on Monday to help with the burial of the 50 victims from Friday's mass shooting

Sheikh Shady is the Australian National Imams Council president who advises governments on key Islamic issues.

Denmark banned certain preachers from entering its country in April 2018, including Sheikh Shady - as Danish law states, a religious preacher can be put on the sanctions list if they 'display behaviour that gives reason to believe the foreign national could pose a threat to the public order'.

The Muslim cleric drew widespread condemnation back in 2016, after video emerged of him blaming homosexuality for 'spreading all these diseases'.

Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull slammed the video, having sat at an Iftar dinner with Sheikh Shady at Kirribilli House.

At the time, the sheikh rejected claims he wanted to see gays punished for their sexuality in a statement.

'I have previously noted passages in the holy Quran which do not support homosexuality,' he said.

'However I always follow such statements with a personal commitment to tolerance and encouragement that all Muslims and all people approach all individuals, no matter their faith, race or sexuality, in a considerate and respectful way.'

Sheikh Shady's name is also on the Islamic State hit list, which has called for his murder - a 2017 Islamic propaganda video claimed Sheikh Shady, and other Muslim leaders, had discouraged violence in the name of Islam and urged people to follow the laws of the land.

Due to the ban Denmark had imposed on him, the Muslim cleric said he was told he would not be allowed to enter New Zealand without a special visa.

'I was shocked,' Sheikh Shady said on the matter.

'Its sad to see something like this happen, especially during this time of challenges and difficulties.'

Within 24 hours of flagging the issue with the Home Affairs department, he was granted the necessary document on Tuesday and now plans to fly out on Wednesday.

Imams Council spokesman Bilal Rauf credited Australian officials from the Home Affairs department for putting pressure on New Zealand to change it's stance.

He said he couldn't understand why Sheikh Shady had been placed on the no-fly list and that the matter would be looked into.
A pair of loyal dogs have been guarding the dead body of a canine friend for nearly a month in a Chinese village after their playmate was killed in a road accident.

The two dogs, though to be strays, wouldn't leave their dead companion behind as they stood guard next to its body by the side of the road, according to a local resident.

The dogs would run away whenever people approach them and return to the spot after the passersby leave, according to the female villager.

Footage released by Pear Video shows one of the two dogs sitting guarding its late playmate

The dead dog was hit by a car nearly a month ago at a village in Qingyang in western China

Footage released by Pear Video shows one of the two dogs sitting near its late friend at a village in Qingyang in north-western China's Gansu Province.

The woman told reporters yesterday that the dead dog had been hit and killed by a car.

She discovered the situation when the two dogs kept barking at her one night when she walked past them.

A villager said she found the dogs 'were protecting their dead friend' after they barked at her

The woman said the two loyal dogs had left marks where they sat while guarding the corpse

The dead dog has been buried by the woman, according to Chinese news outlet Pear

She said at first she didn't understand why the pooches refused to let her go near them, but the next day she found out that 'they were protecting their dead friend'.

'[They] remain here maybe because they are scared that strangers would go close [to their friend],' the villager explained.

She added that the two dogs had been guarding their dead friend day and night - so much so that they had left marks on the ground under them.

The dead dog has been buried by the woman, according to Pear.
GUILTY: MICHAEL FLYNN

Pleaded guilty to making false statements in December 2017. Awaiting sentence

Flynn was President Trump's former National Security Advisor and Robert Mueller's most senior scalp to date. He previously served when he was a three star general as President Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency but was fired.

He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his conversations with a Russian ambassador in December 2016. He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.

GUILTY AND JAILED: MICHAEL COHEN

Pleaded guilty to eight counts including fraud and two campaign finance violations in August 2018. Pleaded guilty to further count of lying to Congress in November 2018. Sentenced to three years in prison and $2 million in fines and forfeitures in December 2018

Cohen was investigated by Mueller but the case was handed off to the Southern District of New York,leaving Manhattan's ferocious and fiercely independent federal prosecutors to run his case.

Cohen was Trump's longtime personal attorney, starting working for him and the Trump Organization in 2007. He is the longest-serving member of Trump's inner circle to be implicated by Mueller. Cohen professed unswerving devotion to Trump - and organized payments to silence two women who alleged they had sex with the-then candidate: porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. He admitted that payments to both women were felony campaign finance violations - and admitted that he acted at the 'direction' of 'Candidate-1': Donald Trump.

He also admitted tax fraud by lying about his income from loans he made, money from taxi medallions he owned, and other sources of income, at a cost to the Treasury of $1.3 million.

And he admitted lying to Congress in a rare use of the offense. The judge in his case let him report for prison on March 6 and recommended he serve it in a medium-security facility close to New York City.

GUILTY AND JAILED: PAUL MANAFORT

Found guilty of eight charges of bank and tax fraud in August 2018. Sentenced to 47 months in March 2019. Pleaded guilty to two further charges - witness tampering and conspiracy against the United States. Jailed for total of seven and a half years in two separate sentences. Additionally indicted for mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney, using evidence previously presented by Mueller

Manafort worked for Trump's campaign from March 2016 and chaired it from June to August 2016, overseeing Trump being adopted as Republican candidate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He is the most senior campaign official to be implicated by Mueller. Manafort was one of Washington D.C.'s longest-term and most influential lobbyists but in 2015, his money dried up and the next year he turned to Trump for help, offering to be his campaign chairman for free - in the hope of making more money afterwards. But Mueller unwound his previous finances and discovered years of tax and bank fraud as he coined in cash from pro-Russia political parties and oligarchs in Ukraine.

Manafort pleaded not guilty to 18 charges of tax and bank fraud but was convicted of eight counts in August 2018. The jury was deadlocked on the other 10 charges. A second trial on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent due in September did not happen when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and witness tampering in a plea bargain. He was supposed to co-operate with Mueller but failed to.

Minutes after his second sentencing hearing in March 2019, he was indicted on 16 counts of fraud and conspiracy by the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., using evidence which included documents previously presented at his first federal trial. The president has no pardon power over charges by district and state attorneys.

GUILTY AND GOING TO WEEKEND JAIL: RICK GATES

Pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in February 2018. Sentenced to 45 days weekend jail and three years probation, December 17, 2018

Gates was Manafort's former deputy at political consulting firm DMP International. He admitted to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government on financial activity, and to lying to investigators about a meeting Manafort had with a member of congress in 2013. As a result of his guilty plea and promise of cooperation, prosecutors vacated charges against Gates on bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy, failure to disclose foreign bank accounts, filing false tax returns, helping prepare false tax filings, and falsely amending tax returns.

GUILTY AND JAILED: GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS

Pleaded guilty to making false statements in October 2017. Sentenced to 14 days in September 2018, and reported to prison in November. Served 12 days and released on December 7, 2018

Papadopoulos was a member of Donald Trump's campaign foreign policy advisory committee. He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his contacts with London professor Josef Mifsud and Ivan Timofeev, the director of a Russian government-funded think tank.

GUILTY AND JAILED: RICHARD PINEDO

Pleaded guilty to identity fraud in February 2018. Sentenced to a year in prison

Pinedo is a 28-year-old computer specialist from Santa Paula, California. He admitted to selling bank account numbers to Russian nationals over the internet that he had obtained using stolen identities.

GUILTY AND JAILED: ALEX VAN DER ZWAAN

Pleaded guilty to making false statements in February 2018. He served a 30-day prison sentence and was deported to the Netherlands on his release

Van der Zwaan was a Dutch attorney for Skadden Arps who worked on a Ukrainian political analysis report for Paul Manafort in 2012.

He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about when he last spoke with Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik. His law firm say he was fired.

GUILTY: W. SAMUEL PATTEN

Pleaded guilty in August 2018 to failing to register as a lobbyist while doing work for a Ukrainian political party. Sentenced to three years probation April 2019

Patten, a long-time D.C. lobbyist was a business partner of Paul Manafort. He pleaded guilty to admitting to arranging an illegal $50,000 donation to Trump's inauguration.

He arranged for an American 'straw donor' to pay $50,000 to the inaugural committee, knowing that it was actually for a Ukrainian businessman.

Neither the American or the Ukrainian have been named.

CHARGED: KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK

Indicted for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. At large, probably in Russia

Kilimnik is a former employee of Manafort's political consulting firm and helped him with lobbying work in Ukraine. He is accused of witness tampering, after he allegedly contacted individuals who had worked with Manafort to remind them that Manafort only performed lobbying work for them outside of the U.S.

He has been linked to Russian intelligence and is currently thought to be in Russia - effectively beyond the reach of extradition by Mueller's team.

INDICTED: THE RUSSIANS

Twenty-five Russian nationals and three Russian entities have been indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States. They remain at large in Russia

Two of these Russian nationals were also indicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 11 were indicted for conspiracy to launder money. Fifteen of them were also indicted for identity fraud.

Vladimir Putin has ridiculed the charges. Russia effectively bars extradition of its nationals. The only prospect Mueller has of bringing any in front of a U.S. jury is if Interpol has their names on an international stop list - which is not made public - and they set foot in a territory which extradites to the U.S.

INDICTED: MICHAEL FLYNN'S BUSINESS PARTNERS

Bijan Kian (left), number two in now disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn's lobbying company, and the two's business partner Ekim Alptekin (right) were indicted for conspiracy to lobby illegally.

Kian, an Iranian-American was arrested and appeared in court charged with a conspiracy to illegally lobby the U.S government without registering as a foreign agent. Their co-conspirator was Flynn, who is called 'Person A' in the indictment and is not charged, offering some insight into what charges he escaped with his plea deal.

Kian, vice-president of Flynn's former lobbying firm, is alleged to have plotted with Alptekin to try to change U.S. policy on an exiled Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and who is accused by Turkey's strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of trying to depose him.

Erdogan's government wanted him extradited from the U.S. and paid Flynn's firm through Alptekin for lobbying, including an op-ed in The Hill calling for Gulen to be ejected. Flynn and Kian both lied that the op-ed was not paid for by the Turkish government.

The indictment is a sign of how Mueller is taking an interest in more than just Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

GUILTY AND AWAITING SENTENCE: ROGER STONE

Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign official and longtime informal advisor to Trump, was indited on seven counts including obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and lying to Congress about his communications with WikiLeaks in January 2019. Convicted on all counts November 15, 2019, awaiting sentence

Stone was a person of interest to Mueller's investigators long before his January indictment, thanks in part due to his public pronouncements as well as internal emails about his contacts with WikiLeks.

In campaign texts and emails, many of which had already been publicly revealed before showing up in Mueller's indictment, Stone communicated with associates about WikiLeaks following reports the organization had obtained a cache of Clinton-related emails.

Stone, a former Nixon campaign adviser who has the disgraced former president's face permanently tattooed on his back, has long been portrayed as a central figure in the election interference scandal.

'They got nothing,' he said of the special counsel's investigation.

Stone gave 'false and misleading' testimony about his requests for information from WikiLeaks. He then pressured a witness, comedian Randy Credico, to take the Fifth Amendment rather than testify, and pressured him in a series of emails. Following a prolonged dispute over testimony, he called him a 'rat' and threatened to 'take that dog away from you', in reference to Credico's pet, Bianca. Stone warned him: 'Let's get it on. Prepare to die.'

CLEARED: GREG CRAIG

Greg Craig, President Barack Obama's White House counsel, was indicted for failing to register as a foreign agent. Mueller's investigators uncovered Craig's work on behalf the government of Ukraine while probing Manafort, who did business with Craig.

Prosecutors released a grand jury indictment of Craig in April 2019, after Craig's law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP agreed to pay more than $4.6 million as part of a settlement. The prominent firm also acknowledged it had failed to register, and placed much of the blame on Craig, a senior partner there.

Craig's lawyer blasted the decision as an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, and prepared to argue that omission of information during an interview is not tantamount to making false statements.

The charges stem from a 2012 report Craig and the firm produced on behalf of the Ukrainian government on opposition figure and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She was an opponent of Manafort's client , former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Craig was cleared on September 9 2019.
President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that the 'twilight of socialism has arrived' in the Western Hemisphere as he hosted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the White House.

Trump invoked Venezuela, which shares a border with Brazil, and the turmoil and violence overtaking the nation.

'It's also arrived, that twilight hour in our great country, which is doing better that its ever done economically. The last thing that we want in the United States is socialism,' he argued during a news conference where he said his administration hopes to alleviate 'starving' in Caracas with humanitarian aid and said the nation is 'nothing more than a Cuban puppet' with Nicolas Maduro as its leader.

Trump said that Maduro hasn't seen anything yet, when it comes to sanctions and potential military invention. 'We really haven't done the tough sanctions yet,' he warned. 'We can go a lot tougher if we need to do that.'

In a prepared statement, Bolsonaro, known internationally as the 'Trump of the Tropics,' said the U.S. and Brazil stand 'side-by-side' and share the same beliefs about 'gender ideology.'

He joined Trump in bashing the media and the 'fake news' the leaders claim are corrupting their countries.

President Donald Trump warned that the 'twilight of socialism has arrived' on Tuesday as he hosted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the White House

MIRROR IMAGE: The U.S. president praised the Brazilian leader who's been dubbed the 'Trump of the Tropics' by international media, telling reporters in the Oval Office that he's 'honored' by the comparison

HAND OF FRIENDSHIP: The visiting leaders said in an prepared statement that 'Brazil and the United States stand side by side in their efforts to ensure liberties and respect to traditional family life-styles, respect to god, our creator against the gender ideology or the politically collect attitudes and against fake news'

Trump followed on the comment about the media later, as he hammered news networks and social media giants for alleged biases he claims are stifling conservative voices.

He claimed there's a 'stacked deck' and 'that includes networks' as he noted that he was 'very glad' to hear Bolsonaro take on the 'fake news' in his speech.

Playing on allegations of 'collusion' between Russia and his 2016 campaign, Trump said, in response to a question about the actions his administration could take to address the situation, that the real crime that's taking place is discrimination against his supporters on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

'There is collusion with respect to that,' he argued, 'because something has to be going on.'

Bolonsaro had mentioned the 'fake news' at the start of the news conference.

'Brazil and the United States stand side by side in their efforts to ensure liberties and respect to traditional family life-styles, respect to God, our creator against the gender ideology or the politically collect attitudes and against fake news,' he'd claimed. 'Drawing inspiration from Ronald Reagan, I wish to bring to Brazil his administration style, as summarized in the following quotation: People should say what the government can do, and not the other way around.'

He said, 'We want to have a great America, yes, and we also want to have a great Brazil.'

Trump also commented on the similarities between the two nations under their respective leadership in his prepared remarks.

He said Bolsonaro had a 'tremendous election victory' and noted it was 'something the whole word was talking about.'

'I know we're going to have a fantastic working relationship,' he said. 'We have many views that are similar.'

Trump was full of praise for the Brazilian leader, elected in a populist wave last year after the U.S. president's own, unexpected victory, during the Tuesday visit. He told reporters in the Oval Office that he's 'honored' by comparisons to his 63-year-old counterpart.

'He has done a very outstanding job, ran one of the incredible campaigns. Somebody said it a little bit reminded people of our campaign, which I'm honored by,' the U.S. president said, before the men exchanged soccer jerseys.

Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro gifted Trump a jersey bearing the number '10,' the same number worn by Brazilian sports hero Pele beginning with the 1958 World Cup

Trump gave the visiting leader a jersey bearing his name 'Bolsonaro' and the number 19

Bolsonaro gifted Trump a jersey bearing the number '10,' the same number worn by Brazilian sports hero Pele beginning with the 1958 World Cup. Trump gave the visiting leader a jersey bearing his name 'Bolsonaro' on the back and the number 19.

'But you know all about Brazil being the great soccer power. They have great, great players. I can still remember Pele and so many others. You've had a fantastic history,' the American president said. 'This is the U.S. National Team, and so, it's an honor to give that to you,' Trump said of the jersey he was handing him.

The two men appeared to hit it off on Bolsonaro lived up to his nickname, pushing a socialism-busting, anti-immigration message on the president's favorite news network and meeting with an ex-adviser to the U.S. president who credits himself with Trump's rise.

Bolsonaro lunched with Steve Bannon, the ex-White House official that Trump shunned after the right-wing conservative suggested the president's son isn't an American patriot.

The Brazilian president's son is in league with Bannon, and Bolsonaro joined them and a group of other conservatives for dinner on Sunday. He came out of the meeting trashing migrants as having 'bad intentions' - a comment he was not forced to elaborate on when he met with Trump.

'The best majority of potential immigrants do not have good intentions or do not intend to do the best or do good to the U.S. people,' Bolsonaro declared on Fox News on Monday evening.

He also warned that Trump is right about socialist tendencies that threaten to erode democracies worldwide.

'I see President Trump fighting that trend and I couldn't agree more with him. I think he's right. And to a certain extent, we are doing very much the same thing in Brazil,' he said.

He said Tuesday, after he was asked about a left-ward lurch toward socialism in America, that 'every day, more and more people that are prone to socialism, and even communism, slowly are going to be opening their minds to the reality.

'And you can see the border with Venezuela and Brazil was recently closed -- not for Brazilians, which are pro-socialism, to go into Venezuela, but the other way around, so that Venezuelans who support democracy wouldn't go into Brazil. This feeling most certainly is going to be very much seen when 2020 comes,' he said of Trump's prospects for reelection.

The two men appeared to hit it off on Bolsonaro lived up to his nickname, pushing a socialism-busting, anti- immigration message on the president's favorite news network and meeting with an ex-adviser to the U.S. president who credits himself with Trump's rise

MILITARY OPTION: Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan shakes hands with White House advisor Kellyanne Conway before a news conference at which Bolsonaro said that the U.S. and Brazil have different opinions on military action in Venezuela

Bolsonaro is a self-styled Trump populist. He has embraced Trump's campaign tactics, taking swings at immigrants, multi-national organizations, government bureaucracy and the media.

He has repeatedly denounced media as 'fake news,' following in the footsteps of the U.S. president, who was busy bashing the media as 'dishonest and corrupt' on Tuesday morning on Twitter in advance of their news conference at the White House.

Appearing on Fox on Monday, the visiting leader called criticisms of his language about certain demographic groups 'fake news' and praised the rise of social media as a way to bypass traditional news sources.

'If it were all that, I would not at all have been elected president. So, theres a great deal of fake news certainly around the Brazilian population, has after all learned how to do use social media. And they no longer trust or believe the Brazilian mainstream media which is virtually dominated by the left-wing,' he said.

He added, 'I have nothing against homosexuals or women. Im not a xenophobe. But I want to have my house in order. The definition of a family, in my view is one and the same. As defined in the Bible, if you engage in, say, a same-sex relationship, you can go ahead and do it, but we cannot allow the government to bring these intents to the classroom setting and teach schoolchildren in the likes of age five.'

Bolsonaro contended that he has been 'highly criticized' for his praise for Trump but said it will not stop him from supporting him.

He said of his American counterpart, 'You know, we do have a great deal in common as I perceived things from Brazil. I have always admired him.

'I will not deny that,' he argued. 'And what I want to ensure is that Brazil will be a great nation, just as Trump wants America to be great again.'

He repeated the line on Tuesday in the Rose Garden, saying, 'The United States changed in 2017, and Brazil has just started to change now, in 2019. We stand together, side by side, to the ultimate benefit of our two nations. We want to have a great America, yes, and we also want to have a great Brazil.'

It is tradition for U.S. leaders to hold news conferences with visiting heads of state, although Trump has not always offered the opportunity to all of them, and Tuesday's presser was one of the first one with a foreign leader he's held this year.

Although, Bolsonaro didn't getting the grand welcome to the White House that France's Emmanuel Macon received last spring, when Trump held his first and only State Dinner in honor of the leader he formed an unlikely bond with during their first months in office, the U.S. signaled several times during the visit that the Brazilian leader holds a special place on Trump's dance card.

'Obviously, theres great synergy there and theres a great mutual respect,' a White House official said Monday, previewing Bolsonaro's visit.

Bolsonaro is a self-styled Trump populist. He embraced Trump's campaign tactics, taking swings at immigrants, multi-national organizations and the media

Handout picture released by the Brazilian Presidency showing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (2-R) standing next to US President Donald Trump's former strategist Stephen Bannon (R) during a meeting with members of his delegation and right-wing influencers, including Matt Schlapp (2-L) at the Brazil embassy on Monday afternoon

Brazil's Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo (R) and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrive for a joint press conference at Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia on January 2 - a day after Bolsonaro's inauguration

After Bolsonaro promised in his inaugural speech to 'work tirelessly so that Brazil reaches its destiny,' after campaigning on the slogan 'Brazil before everything, and God above all,' Trump hailed the remarks.

He said the inaugural speech was 'great' and told him 'the U.S.A. is with you!' in a tweet.

Bolsonaro told him in a reply, as the two conducted international diplomacy over social media: 'I truly appreciate your words of encouragement. Together, under Gods protection, we shall bring prosperity and progress to our people!'

The White House signaled Monday that Trump was flattered by Bolsanaro's repeated references to him during the campaign and intends to welcome him to the White House with open arms.

'President Trump has followed President Bolsonaro's campaign. Obviously, his name was invoked on many occasions during the campaign, and all of you in the broader media have referred to him as the "Trump of the Tropics." That obviously has caught the President's attention,' the senior official who briefed press said.

In Bolsonaro, he seems himself, the person indicated. 'He broke all of what I would say were the historic taboos of winning an election in Latin America.

'He ran on the campaign that he wanted to be the best friend to the United States, that he wanted to have this close relationship with President Trump and what that would mean for Brazil, what that would mean for the region and the world. I think that was very important,' the official stated.

The last Brazilian president to visit the U.S. was Dilma Rousseff in 2015, in the final term of Barack Obama, making up for a visit that had been called off in the wake of revelations that the U.S. had spied on her.

Obama took her to see the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall near the White House as he attempted to thin the scarring that remained over Edward Snowden's disclosure that the U.S. was spying on its allies.

In a nod to the situation on Tuesday, the sitting U.S president said in the Oval Office, 'I think there was a lot of hostility with other presidents. There's zero hostility with me.

'We have a great alliance with Brazil, better than we've ever had before,' Trump declared.

Trump sent his national security adviser, John Bolton, to Rio de Janerio for talks with the government-in-waiting, and his secretary of state led a delegation of U.S. officials to the capital for Bolsonaro's inauguration.

Washington is Bolonsaro's first visit to a foreign nation for a bilateral meeting.

'And thats very meaningful to us, as clearly it is to them,' the Trump administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said prior to the meeting.

In recognition of those new bonds, Trump named Brazil a major non-NATO ally, giving Rio a boost in trade with the U.S., at their joint apperance. It is already one of the biggest traders with the United States in the world, second only to China.

The U.S. president said later, at the news conference, that he'd like to see Brazil become a full-fledged NATO member, although he acknowledged that the South American nation's location could prevent it from being accepted by the group.

'Have to talk to a lot of people, but maybe a NATO ally, which will greatly advance security and cooperation greatly between our two countries,' he said.

The U.S. has a trade surplus of $27 billion with Brazil, and it's one area in which Trump had signaled that he and Bolsonaro could break on.

'They charge us whatever they want,' he once said of tariffs the country puts on U.S. good. 'If you ask some of the companies, they say Brazil is among the toughest in the world - maybe the toughest in the world.'

Trump said Tuesday that he expects trade to go 'substantially up in both directions' between the two countries, now that Bolsonaro is in office.

He also revealed a plan for the U.S. and Brazil to partner on rocket launches.

'To put it very simply, the flights are a lot shorter. Brazil's location to the equator makes it an ideal launch location,' he said of his space force project that aims to create a sixth branch of the military.

The refusal of Venezuelan leader Maduro, whom the U.S. and Brazil have dubbed a dictator and want to renounce the presidency, was also a top topic. The U.S. president has left the door open to military intervention but has not committed to deploying troops to the region.

Trump said Tuesday, at the start of his Oval Office meeting, that all options remain on the table.

'And it's a shame what's happening in Venezuela,' he said. 'The death, and the destruction, and the hunger. Hard to believe one of the wealthiest countries is now one of the poorest and most impoverished countries. So we'll be talking about that in great length.'

Bolsonaro said later that the U.S. and Brazil have strategic differences when it comes to military action that he preferred to keep private.

'As much as it is possible for us to do together to sort out the issue of the Venezuelan dictatorship, Brazil will be more than willing and ready to fulfill this mission and take freedom and democracy to that country, which up until recently was one of the wealthiest countries in South America,' he said.

'But nowadays, people are starving to death, they are suffering violence, lack of medication. It's something terrible that's going on in there,' he argued. 'And we need to put an end to this issue, which is pervasive to the whole wide world.'

Brazil has welcomed 120,000 refugees from Venezuela amid the turmoil, a U.S. official said before the meeting.

'So they're suffering the firsthand consequences on that,' the person said.

Bolsonaro said during the news conference that the restoration of democracy is a shared goal between the two administrations.
A comedian has been ridiculed online after saying she was 'threatened' and 'scared' by four Sikh men boarding her plane before describing them as a 'different type of Muslim'.

Instagram star Jess Hilarious, 27, posted a series of videos to her four million followers in which she commented on the four passengers wearing turbans, getting onto her plane.

The comic, real name Jessica Moore, is now under fire for the Instagram posts, which she has since deleted.

In one clip, the comedian, who stars in Fox comedy Rel, can be heard saying: 'Where are they going? Where are they going?' as the men board her flight.

She later reaffirms her fear after the plane was emptied of passengers for unknown reasons, adding: 'If I'm scared, I'm scared. F**k y'all. F**k how y'all feel. Y'all mad at me because I don't side with every other black person. Because I don't side with every other racef**k y'all.

'I feel how I feel, I felt threatened, and that was it. And I'm not flying there. We were evacuated, b***h! Why? Why, with no reason explained at all, no technical difficulties or nothing. Y'all going to listen to Jess with the mess one day, because my news is real.'

Once back on the plane she continued her tirade, suggesting the reason the plane had been evacuated was because of the men, adding: 'So, how ironic is it that we boarded the same plane and I dont see those people. Yeah, were fully boarded. Eat my a**.'

Jess Hilarious posted a series of videos to her four million followers in which she commented on the four passengers wearing turbans, getting onto her plane

The comedian, who stars in Fox comedy Rel, can be heard saying: 'Where are they going? Where are they going?' as the men board her flight

This now deleted apology has been attributed to the actress in which she says 'I was totally unaware of the different types of Muslims, so yes Im ignorant to the facts so TEACH ME'

It is not known why the plane was originally evacuated.

The Sikh Coalition blasted her actions as 'spewing fearful, bigoted rhetoric'.

A spokesman told the DailyMail.com: 'The Comedian Jess Hilarious spewed fearful, bigoted rhetoric about visibly Sikh passengers on social media this weekend. No community should be the target of hate and bigotry.

'In addition, we invite Jess to participate in an interfaith educational training, which would cover the dangers of racial and religious profiling.'

She also quickly came under fire online after people labelled her Islamophobic and ignorant.

One said: 'Also, Sikhs arent Muslims. Even if they were, thats not a bad thing. Youre canceled.'

Another added: 'Really disappointed in jesshilarious and the islamophobic (sic) comments she made, not that theres EVER a good time but right now? bigger yikes. I truly hope someone pulls her aside and makes this moment teachable, but also nobody owes her that. theres FREE knowledge on the interwebs.'

And one wrote: 'So apparently @jess_hilarious wasn't the reason these men were removed from the plane. This doesn't change that she was ignorant and Islamophobic. It's always a bad time to be that way, but this is particularly a bad time.'

The comedian Jess Hilarious spewed fearful, bigoted rhetoric about visibly Sikh passengers on social media this weekend. No community should be the target of hate and bigotry.

Jess has now been forced to apologize to both the Muslim and Sikh communities.

In a video captioned 'Official Statement Regarding Sikh & Muslim Community' Jess tells her followers: 'So, naturally in my previous post, I was defensive, but thats what happens when you dont take the time to really know whats transpiring.

'In understanding the error of my actions, I have to first acknowledge the rooted issues, which means racially profiling a group of individuals based on their appearance and on top of thatpublicizing it on a platform where others can be hurt by it and others were hurt from it.

'Im not sure if these particular individuals that were on the plane are aware of my actions by now, but either way, I would love to apologize personally to them first for my insensitive and ignorant behavior.

'I am still learning and I was unaware of Sikhs. A lot of them reached out to me and educated me on who they are and what they stand for.'

Jess came under fire online after users pointed out that the men were Sikh and not Muslim and 'even if they were that's not a bad thing'

Jess has now been forced to apologize to both the Muslim and Sikh communities

Jess posted the videos online just a day after the New Zealand terror attack

She added: 'Yet, I would still like to apologize to all of you who were aware and offended by my actions. I refuse to teach, spread or be an advocate for hatredI just want to make people laugh.'

In an earlier, now deleted, apology attributed to the actress she is said to have written: 'I saw four people of that calibre and I just revert back to the past.

'I was totally unaware of the different types of Muslims, so yes Im ignorant to the facts so TEACH ME.'

Jess posted the videos online just a day after the New Zealand terror attack in which 50 people were killed at two mosques. She confirmed she will be donating $15,000 to the victims of the tragedy.

DailyMail.com has contacted a representative for Jess for comment.
A man in Taiwan has claimed to have found a needle in his McDonald's burger after biting into it.

The customer, identified as Shi Kaixiang, posted a photo of a crooked needle on his Angus burger on a Facebook group and said the needle had pierced into his tongue while he was eating the take-out meal at home in Chiayi, south-west Taiwan.

Staff at the fast-food outlet said the needle had fallen off from a cleaning equipment in the restaurant, Shi said in his post on Tuesday.

The customer, identified as Shi Kaixiang, posted a photo of a crooked needle on his Angus burger on a Facebook group and said the needle had pierced into his tongue while he was eating the take-out meal at home in Chiayi, south-west Taiwan

Shi said he purchased his meal from a McDonald's on Beigang Road after finishing a shift on Monday after midnight.

'Something pricked by tongue and I realised it was a needle!' he wrote in his post. 'Then my tongue started to bleed.'

'My god, never thought I'd get injured from eating McDonald's,' he said.

Shi (pictured above) said he purchased his meal from a McDonald's on Beigang Road after finishing a shift on Monday after midnight. He got hurt while eating the meal at home

A staff member at the outlet told Taiwan news outlet ET Today that the needle had fallen from a cleaning scrub (file photo of a McDonald's in Taipei, Taiwan)

'I'd stay away from McDonald's for the time being,' he told reporters.

A staff member at the outlet told Taiwan news outlet ET Today that the needle had fallen from a cleaning scrub.

A manager had also accompanied the man to the hospital for a check-up and a tetanus vaccine, according to the report.

The restaurant has also given him a refund and vowed to comprehensively review its food production process and overall environment to prevent similar incidents.
A Malaysian man was allegedly caught smuggling a live human embryo into India for use at a high-end IVF clinic.

Partiban Durai is said to have carried the barely developed human in a nitrogen-packed canister.

Officials said he was stopped at Mumbai airport and showed them the clinic in the suburb of Bandra West where he claimed he was planning to deliver the embryo.

Durai is accused of making 10 such trips to the fertility clinic in the space of 18 months, the Times of India reported.

A Malaysian man was allegedly stopped at Mumbai Airport (stock photo) and caught smuggling a live human embryo into India for use at a high-end IVF clinic

Goral Gandhi, head of the Indo Nippon clinic, denied that the embryo was intended for use there.

But lawyers for the Indian government claimed they had text messages which showed the clinic as the intended recipient.

The Malaysian alleged smuggler was reportedly told to co-operate with Indian officials after he was stopped at the airport.

He is said to have sent his clients pictures of the five-star hotel where he was staying in order to convince them the plan was still going smoothly.

Officials said the clinic had then told Durai to bring the embryo, and that Gandhi had received it as planned.

In 2016 India passed a law which allowed 'altruistic' surrogacy among close relatives, but commercial surrogacy is banned

Indo Nippon describes itself on its website as a 'team of specialists' who have delivered 9,000 babies over 25 years.

The clinic says it has 'helped hundreds of couples have babies through Assisted Reproduction'.

Goral Gandhi is described as the 'Scientific And Laboratory Director' of the clinic.

In 2016 India passed a law which allowed 'altruistic' surrogacy among close relatives, but commercial surrogacy is banned.
Scott Morrison's plans to ease crippling congestion across Australia's east coast will include a reduced annual migration intake and plans for a fast-rail train network.

After hinting at his population plans for many months, the PM is expected to announce the details of his decentralisation blueprint on Wednesday.

As part of the population plan, Australia's annual migration intake is being slashed by 30,000 places in an attempt to ease population pressures on congested capitals.

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Scott Morrison's (pictured) plans to ease crippling congestion across Australia's east coast will include a reduced annual migration intake and plans for a fast-rail train network

The PM said he wanted workers in capital cities to spend less time stuck in traffic, while helping struggling rural and regional communities inject life into their towns

Many skilled migrants will also have to work in regional towns for three years, with international students offered enticements to study outside the big cities.

The PM said he wanted workers in capital cities to spend less time stuck in traffic, while helping struggling rural and regional communities inject life into their towns.

One of the anticipated features of the plan is a new fast-rail network, with three projects under consideration, The Australian reported.

Fast-rail links between Melbourne and Shepparton, Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast and Sydney and Newcastle are believed to be under consideration.

He denied concerns about congestion were driven by racism, saying migrants were an important part of Australia's social and economic fabric.

'We won't be distracted from the task at hand to make Australia's cities and towns even better places to live,' Mr Morrison said.

'People who want to play politics or run scare campaigns from these announcements are taking Australians for mugs.'

The government is cutting the annual migration ceiling from 190,000 to 160,000 places for the next four years.

It does not expect the reduction to have any impact to the federal budget.

One of the anticipated features of the plan is a a new fast-rail network, with three projects under consideration (stock image)

The federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten (pictured) confirmed Labor is willing to lower the annual migrant intake to 160,000 but has warned against 'dog whistling' on population policy

The federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has confirmed Labor is willing to lower the annual migrant intake to 160,000 but has warned against 'dog whistling' on population policy.

Mr Morrison said Australia had thrived from steady population growth, but for the past two decades infrastructure and services have struggled to keep pace.

He pointed out the vast majority of migrants had settled in the capital cities, putting significant pressure on roads and public transport.

In an attempt to arrest this trend, the government is introducing two new visas requiring skilled workers to stay in the regions for three years before applying for permanent residency.

Population Minister Alan Tudge (pictured) said many smaller cities were crying out for more people, with an estimated 47,000 job vacancies in regional Australia

There will be 23,000 set aside for the new regional visas, which more than triples the number of migrants currently forced to spend two years in the bush.

Population Minister Alan Tudge said many smaller cities were crying out for more people, with an estimated 47,000 job vacancies in regional Australia.

'Some regional areas simply cannot fill the jobs available,' he said.

The number of employer-sponsored skilled migrants allowed into Australia is being bumped up slightly to 39,000 places, but there will be no change to the family stream of the program, which offers 48,000 visas.

Meanwhile, tertiary scholarships worth $15,000 will be offered to 1000 local and international students each year to attend university in the regions.

Overseas students will also be able to work in Australia for an extra year after graduating from regional unis.
The injured jawans were flown to Raipur from the encounter site for medical treatment.

The Maoists triggered an improvised explosive device (IED) blast targeting the search party and then opened fire on them, leading to a fierce gunbattle, he said.

Bhopal: A CRPF jawan was killed and five others injured in an IED attack and ambush by the Maoists in Chhattisgarhs Dantewada district on Monday, officials said.

According to a senior police officer posted in Bastar, the search party comprising jawans of 231st battalion of Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) were attacked at around 4.30 pm in Kondapara jungle under Aranpur police station while they were on road security duty.

The Maoists triggered an improvised explosive device (IED) blast targeting the search party and then opened fire on them, leading to a fierce gunbattle, he said.

Six jawans were hit on their faces in the Naxal attack. One of them, a head constable, died while being taken to hospital. Additional forces were rushed to the spot, said a police officer of Dantewada district.

The incident took place near the CRPFs Kamal post in Dantewada, the official said, adding that after the gunbattle, the Maoists fled into the nearby forests.

The injured jawans were flown to Raipur from the encounter site for medical treatment. Two of the injured jawans are critical, sad a senior police officer.
Chilling CCTV footage captured the last time a missing waitress was seen alive before she was allegedly abducted by two Brits outside a Costa del Sol nightclub.

Multi-millionaire property developer's son Westley Capper can be seen grabbing Agnese Klavina by the arm and pointing to his nearby Mercedes S63.

Craig Porter, who is currently on trial at a court in Malaga over Agnese's disappearance along with Capper, was already in the Merc with tinted windows parked outside Aqwa Mist in the upmarket holiday resort of Puerto Banus.

The footage, analysed in court on the second day of their trial, shows Porter leaving the nightspot in shorts and a vest top with doorman Siani Ousmane walking close behind him in long trousers and a T-shirt.

Ousmane, who is accused of being an accessory to the Brits' alleged crime by prosectors for Agnese's family and not state prosecutors, is filmed opening the passenger door of the Merc so Porter can get in.

This CCTV footage shows the last time missing waitress Agnese Klavina was seen alive as she is led away from a celebrity night club in Costa del Sol by Westley Capper

Agnese, pictured, was last seen in the early hours of September 6, 2014. She was reported missing five days later when she stopped posting on social media

Capper's friend Craig Porter, pictured, is also on trial at a court in Malaga over Agnese's disappearance

The CCTV footage, obtained by police shortly after Agnese was reported missing five days after she left the club in the early hours of September 6, 2014, appears to show her trying to break free of Capper as he leads her towards the car.

Ousmane can be seen with his back turned towards the pair, and leaning into the vehicle to talk to Porter, as Capper talks with the missing girl and starts to escort her towards the car.

Other clubbers walk past them before they reach the Mercedes and at one point the overweight Brit can be seen putting his arm around her waist.

Latvian-born Agnese, who spent several years living in London before moving to Spain around six months before she disappeared, appears to get in the back seat herself after Ousmane opens the door for her.

The partygoer, wearing a white dress and carrying a matching large white handbag, can be clearly seen opening the back door of the vehicle after Capper seems to tip Ousmane before the doorman closes it on her again.

The two-minute long footage finishes with Capper getting into the driver's side and leaving the nightclub car park as Ousmane, who described himself as the head of security at Aqwa Mist on the first day of the trial yesterday, goes back to work.

Porter and Capper, pictured in the white shirt, are facing up to 12 years in prison if convicted of a crime of unlawful detention. Doorman Siani Ousmane, also pictured, is accused of being an accessory to the crime

The footage appears to show her trying to break free of Capper as he leads her towards the car. Ousmane is seen holding open the door so she can get in

The British pair are facing up to 12 years in prison if convicted of a crime of unlawful detention.

State prosecutors said in an indictment that Essex-born Capper, 41, took advantage of the fact Agnese was drunk to lead her to his car and put her in before she was prevented from getting out and retained 'against her will'.

They were told they faced prosecution over Agnese's disappearance after a damning report from a specialist Madrid police team.

It endorsed the findings of an earlier local police report, which included the claims of a criminal psychologist who concluded Agnese's facial expressions and body language showed she did not leave the club voluntarily.

The police report, crucial in the decision to prosecute Capper and Porter, described Agnese's behaviour that night as that of a person 'acting under the basic emotional response of fear'.

Private-school educated Capper, whose father John made his fortune from real estate, took the witness stand yesterday to deny any wrongdoing.

He admitted to trying to persuade Agnese to come back to his luxury home on an upmarket residential estate a 20-minute drive from the club to carry on partying.

But he insisted he dropped her off on the way - in high heels and around a 40 minute walk from where she was living - after she told him: 'Stop here, I've changed my mind, I want to go home, this is where I live.'

Porter, 37, from Liverpool, told the court he was 'drunk and tired' and fell asleep on the journey to his friend's house and only discovered Agnese was no longer with them when they got there.

The pair also denied boarding Capper's boat four days later at Puerto de la Duquesa near Gibraltar with a large suitcase and carpet, and two other men who are not on trial, to dispose of her body at sea.

The pair have also denied boarding Capper's boat four days later at Puerto de la Duquesa near Gibraltar with a large suitcase and carpet to dispose of her body at sea

Agnese, who was 30 when she disappeared, left her restaurant wages untouched in her bank account.

The kidnap trial heard yesterday her mobile phone stopped emitting a signal around five hours after she was last seen and her social media accounts, which she used regularly, have not been touched since the night she was in Aqwa Mist.

Today Agnese's mother Daiga and sister Gunta were among witnesses who gave evidence.

They told the court they had travelled from Latvia to report her missing on September 11 after her 'out of character' disappearance.

Capper and Porter, who are being prosecuted by the Spanish state as well as lawyers acting for Agnese's family, are pleading not guilty to a crime of unlawful detention.

Ousmane, who the lawyers for Agnese's family want sentenced to eight years in prison if he is convicted of being an accessory to the Brits' alleged crime, has also pleaded not guilty.

Their fate will be decided by three professional judges and not a jury.

The trial is due to last four days but is not expected to finish till the start of next month.

Capper is facing a separate manslaughter trial expected to take place later this year over the hit-and-run death of a mother-of-three on a zebra crossing in San Pedro near Marbella while high on alcohol and cocaine.

Bolivian immigrant Fatima Dorado was knocked down in in May 2016 and prosecutors in a pre-trial indictment have called for him to receive a two-and-a-half year prison sentence if convicted after a trial. No trial date has yet been set.

Father-of-four Porter was a passenger with him in the Bentley that hit Mrs Dorado but he is not facing prosecution.
A $1.5million supercar built specifically for the Qatari royal family has been wrecked just months after being bought by a new owner.

The damaged motor is one of only two Koenigsegg CCXR Special Editions ever made.

It was built in 2009 for the Al-Thani royal family, but was put on the market in 2011.

The 250mph car was sold in August 2018 to a Mexican, who posts pictures of it on Instagram as don_koenigsegg.

But now it has been severely damaged in a smash in Mexico City.

The one-of two supercar, which was built for the royal Qatari family in 2009, was involved in a crash on Sunday in Mexico City

The wrecked motor is likely to need an expensive overhaul after the accident

The Koenigsegg CCXR Special Edition was purchased for $1.5million in 2018

The exotic car was involved in an accident on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City on Sunday afternoon.

The road is a major avenue that is constantly jammed up with cars in the Mexican capital city.

Passing motorists quickly took to their social media accounts to share snaps of the ruined car.

The wrecked motor is likely to need an expensive overhaul after the accident, with the carbon fiber right fender totally shattered.

The right rear wheel was in a tilting position and the front right axle was sticking out to the side.

The million dollar luxury car suffered damages to its right fender and axle

A special Instagram called Don_Koenigsegg was created soon after the car was purchased

The Don_Koenigsegg Instagram account shares many pictures of the car, but there have been no updates since the crash.

After the car was purchased last summer, a post on the social media account said: 'Finally the Special One is coming to #Mexico.'

The new owner reportedly fell in love with the Koenigsegg CCXR when he saw it in Paris.

Local media had reported that the car belonged to Mexican billionaire Carlos Peralta, but the businessman tweeted that he had nothing to do with the vehicle.

It's the second Koenigsegg hypercar that has been crashed in Mexico in almost three years.

Two men were involved in a near fatal accident after the $1.4million Koenigsegg CCX they were riding in was destroyed on a Mexican highway just south of the United Stater border.

The car hit a curb and flipped over multiple times.
No new supermarkets, deregulate paintball guns and move Sydney airport are strange policies that major parties could be forced to support to form government.

Minor parties could use the policies as political bargaining chips to trade for their support in the case of a stalemate result between Labor and the Coalition.

The Shooters, Farmers and Fishers Party wants to remove paintball guns from the Firearms Act, expand bow hunting and four wheel driving on beaches.

They also want to allow pests like birds, mammals and lizards to be 'hunted' in public areas by ordinary citizens.

Mowing the greens: NSW Greens party members have left after they felt key environmental issues were not being addressed

The NSW Greens want to relocate Kingsford Smith Airport away from the Sydney basin, allow exercise breaks at work and and stop new supermarket developments, pending review.

The party's other policies include reducing emissions from lawnmowers and wood-fire heaters and banning advertisements that promote 'excessive' consumption.

Former Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham, who is now running as an independent, said the party is divided because of the 'extreme Stalinist' views of party leaders.

'If ending capitalism is your first step to fighting climate change, you've got it all wrong,' he said to the Daily Telegraph.

'There's no way they'd be able to form a minority government deal because their list of demands are too unrealistic.'

Political paintball: Deregulating paintball guns, moving Sydney Airport and no new supermarkets are some of the bizarre demands from minor parties. Minor parties could use their policies as political bargaining chips in a deadlock election (stock image)

'The fact is, that as an organisation, the NSW Greens are corrupt and rotten,' said a Labor advertisement quoting Mr Buckingham.

Labor launched billboards, posters and online videos highlighting disunity in the NSW Greens in key progressive seats such as Ballina, Tweed and Lismore.

Greens councillor Edwina Clifton also left the party because she felt environmentalists were 'not welcome' last month.
An Iowa man has been arrested for murder after police say he killed his girlfriend's two-year-old son by sitting on him because he was angry the child had grabbed his cellphone.

Pottawattamie County court records show 31-year-old Larry Murphy has been charged with first-degree murder and child endangerment resulting in death. He's jailed on more than $1million bail.

According to police, Murphy's girlfriend, who suffers from cerebral palsy, told them that the man was staying with her and her two sons at the American Inn motel in Council Bluffs when on Friday morning he became angry at her two-year-old, Oakland Oburu, for snatching away his phone.

Larry Murphy

Murphy is not the victim's biological father, but he and his girlfriend have a nine-month-old son together.

The mother-of-two, who has not been criminally charged, said Murphy, who is 6 feet tall and weighs 160lbs, sat on the boy for around 20 seconds on a motel bed, reported Des Moines Register.

Oakland's mother told police 'her son was initially moaning,' but then grew quiet.

She saw her boyfriend cover her son with a comforter before walking out of the room.

The mother said she later heard her toddler son wheezing on the bed, but because of her medical condition she could not walk over and check on him.

The incident took place at the American Inn motel in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where Murphy had been staying with his girlfriend and her two sons

When Murphy returned to the room 20 minutes later, he found Oakland unresponsive under the blanket and called his sister for help.

The sister rushed to the Council Bluffs motel from her home in Bellevue, Nebraska, and picked up Oakland to take him to the hospital.

Murphy and his sister called 911 from the road and were told by an emergency dispatcher to pull over and wait for an ambulance.

They parked at Casey's General Store, where they were met by paramedics who rushed Oakland to Jennie Edmundson Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

According to the complaint, a doctor who examined the toddler noticed that he had bleeding in both eyes, which is a possible sign of asphyxiation.
Hundreds of dead dogs and cats from Asia were purchased by the U.S. government then fed to healthy lab cats in a series of disturbing experiments, according to a breaking watchdog report.

The experiments with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's lab in Maryland are the center of a shocking report by the White Coat Waste Project, a nonprofit against wasteful spending on animal testing, released on Tuesday.

The experiments included feeding dog remains to cats and injecting cat remains into mice and took place at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service's Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.

The agency claimed that the tests - conducted from 2003 through 2015 - were aimed at studying different forms of a parasite called toxoplasmosis, one of the leading causes food borne illness-related death in the U.S.

The U.S. government fed dead dogs and cats purchased in Asia and South America to healthy lab cats in disturbing experiments to study a parasite called toxoplasmosis according to watchdog report. A feline purchased by the facility where the tests took place pictured above in an undated photo

The tests took place from 2003 to 2015 at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service's Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland (above)

In the tests animals including 400 dogs from Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam and over 100 cats from China and Ethiopia that were euthanized and used as lab food.

'Some of these cats and dogs were purchased by the government from the same Asian meat markets that the U.S. Congress roundly condemned in a House Resolution,' the report said, referring to resolution from last year.

'It's crazy. Cannibal cats, cats eating dogs  I don't see the logic,' former USDA scientist Jim Keen said to NBC.

The watchdog group gathered its findings from the USDA's research publications and sent the report entitled USDA Kitten Cannibalism to Congress.

The facility where the bizarre experiments took place has already come under fire for killing cats intentionally infected with T. Gondii, the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis.

'The details of these kitten experiments keep getting worse and they need to end now,' Republican Rep. Brian Mast said. He's the lead republican co-sponsor of legislation seeking to stop lab cat killings.

Tests were conducted to study the parasite toxoplasmosis, which is one of the leading causes of death from foodborne illnesses in the U.S. The test site in Maryland pictured above

'The fact that the USDA has been rounding up pets and other innocent dogs and cats in foreign countries including at Chinese meat markets condemned by Congress  killing them and feeding them to lab cats back here in the States is simply disgusting and unjustifiable,' he added.

Democratic Send. Jeff Merkley said the revelations are 'deeply disturbing'.

'We can advance scientific discovery while treating animals humanely, and American taxpayers have every right to expect our government will meet that standard,' he said.

For the Department of Agriculture, the testing of toxoplasmosis and T. Gondii is a major task. Toxoplasmosis is one of the leading causes of death from foodborne illnesses in the U.S.

Exposure to the parasite can have 'severe consequences' for people who are pregnant or have a compromised immune system.

Still, over 40million Americans are believed to carry it without major issue.

The agency has been breeding kittens in the lab since 1982 and feeding them raw meat to infect them with T. Gondii. Then scientists harvest the parasites from their stool and euthanize and incinerate the cats.

Cats are used at the lab because they're the only host animal that produces parasite eggs.
A teenager has been rushed to hospital after being stabbed in the neck outside a college in east London.

Havering College in Harold Hill was cordoned off by police this lunchtime after three men reportedly got out of a car and attacked the boy.

Paramedics rushed the student to hospital but his injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.

A student was stabbed in the neck outside Havering college in Harold Hill, witnesses said

Witnesses said three men jumped out of a car and chased the victim before he was stabbed

A witness told the local paper, The Romford Recorder, that three men got out of a BMW and chased the victim and another teenager down the street.

A mother of a boy at the school told the paper: 'They said he was stabbed in the neck... It's so so scary, it could have been my son, it could have been anyone's son, I just hope he is okay.'

Conservative mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey tweeted: 'Extremely concerned about this report of a stabbing at a college in my community of Harold Hill.

'To the students of Havering College: please assist the police with their enquiries. We can't be having this in our schools. This nonsense has to stop.'

The boy was reported brought into the college's library while waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

A police spokesman said: ' Officers attended alongside the LAS and found a male, believed to be in his late teens, suffering a stab injury.

'He was taken to a nearby hospital and his injuries have been deemed not life changing or life threatening. No arrests have been made; enquiries continue.'

Police cordoned off a nearby residential street where the teenager was found after the attack

The stabbing is less than a mile from the park (right) where Jodie Chesney (left) was stabbed and killed. There is no suggestion the two attacks are linked

The college is less than a mile from the park where girl scout Jodie Chesney was fatally stabbed earlier this month in an attack which has shone a spotlight on Britain's spiralling knife crime epidemic.

The college has around 400 students aged 14 to 18, offering GCSE and vocational courses.

Its website states: 'Havering College is committed to creating and maintaining a safe and positive environment for all children and vulnerable adult learners and accepts the responsibility to help safeguard and protect them from harm.'
A cop who was filmed roughly arresting a student in school lied afterwards by saying the child had assaulted him then admitted making it up but has claimed it was an 'accident'.

Angel Marrero was filmed pushing the boy against the wall of his school in the High School of Commerce in Springfield, Massachusetts, in December.

When he filed his report, he said the boy, who has not been named, assaulted him by pushing him in the torso. He claimed he had been assaulted and arrested the teenager, who has not been named.

Surveillance footage of the incident which circulated on social media however disproves his claim.

It clearly shows the boy walking past Marrero and turning to make a comment towards him.

Angel Marrero was filmed grabbing the unidentified student by the neck and pinning him against the wall on December 3

The cop claimed in his police report that the teenager hit him in the torso, a claim that was disproved by surveillance footage of the incident

The cop and others have claimed he called him a 'p***y' and threatened to 'slap the s**t' out of him.

Marrero is now under investigation for his handling of the incident and for lying.

In an explanation he gave to internal investigators that was obtained by MassLive, he said he lied about the shoving because he thought he had been pushed.

'At no time did I ever have the intention to write the arrest report of [redacted] in a manner that could be perceived as deceitful nor did I write it with the intention of being deceitful,' he said.

He went on to describe his stellar record within the department and boasted that he'd never had a complaint before.

As other students watched, Marrero struggled with the boy and held him against the wall

Eventually a teacher intervened and tried to pull the cop off of the high school student

Marrero claimed the boy had assaulted him and he arrested him. Now, the cop is under investigation for lying

In his initial report, he said the boy 'raised his left arm up striking me with his elbow in my lower torso area.'

'Upon feeling the strike from [redacteds] elbow, due to the close proximity of [redacted] and I, and also due to having just been threatened by [redacted] to be physically assaulted I perceived at that moment he had committed an assault and battery on me by pushing me with two hands in my lower torso area,' he said.

The video however shows him grabbing the student and shoving him against the wall without the youngster ever raising his hand to him.

As he pinned him up against the wall, another adult walking past stopped and tried to intervene.

The incident happened on December 3 and an investigation was launched three weeks later but the video made it to social media in February.

The internal investigation into Marrero's conduct is ongoing.
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Theresa May was preparing to take on John Bercow today after the Commons Speaker detonated a bombshell under her plans for the Brexit endgame.

Mrs May's Brexit Secretary hinted the Government could bring back its deal within days anyway and dare Mr Bercow to rule it out of order if and when the PM has secured a delay to Brexit. The Cabinet will discuss the crisis in No 10 this morning.

Downing Street has reacted with fury to Mr Bercow's insistence it cannot put an unchanged deal to a third vote and Mr Barclay accused Mr Bercow of 'raising the bar' for a deal with the EU today.

She is likely to try and secure a delay to Britain's exit date at Thursday's EU summit and use that to overcome Bercow's demands at a vote next week. Britain is currently due to leave the EU on the Friday.

The Speaker refused to comment on his decision when greeted by reporters outside Parliament this morning.

But Brexit hardliners have backed the explosive ruling that has left Prime Minister's plans lying in tatters today.

Members of the European Research Group led by Jacob Rees-Mogg seized on the Commons Speaker's intervention as they fight to secure No Deal Brexit on schedule.

MPs in the group were heard whistling the 'Great Escape' theme tune in the Commons tea room last night in the belief Mr Bercow's bombshell makes their hopes of No Deal more likely.

They also hope a long delay - instead of a short extension to implement this deal - would allow them to dictate the terms of Brexit.

Former Cabinet minister David Jones said the ruling was 'absolutely accurate' and insisted it was a 'well known' rule - adding Mr Bercow was doing the 'right thing'.

Mrs May will fly to Brussels on Thursday for a tense EU summit at which she will admit Brexit must be delayed.

She had hoped to go having secured support for her battered deal at the third attempt and ask only for a short technical extension of around three months.

Instead she will beg for a much longer delay despite little clarity over what Britain might do with months or years more time.

Exasperated EU ministers arrived in Brussels for a pre-summit meeting today complaining about the chaos in London - warning 'patience' in the bloc was being sorely tested.

As Mrs May's prepares her mission, the Foreign Office revealed its No Deal 'war room' today with just 11 days until Britain was supposed to leave the EU.

Brexit hardliners backed John Bercow's (pictured today outside Parliament) ruling Theresa May cannot bring her deal back unchanged for a third time as the Prime Minister's plans lay in tatters today

Mrs May will fly to Brussels on Thursday for a tense EU summit at which she will admit Brexit must be delayed. She had hoped to go having secured support for her battered deal at the third attempt and ask only for a short technical extension of around three months

Members of the European Research Group led by Jacob Rees-Mogg (left leaving home today) seized on the Commons Speaker's intervention as they fight to secure No Deal Brexit on March 29 next week despite Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay (right in Downing Street today) insisting the Government still wanted to pass the deal

Mr Jones told the Today programme: 'John Bercow's ruling was absolutely accurate. It has been well known that it's impossible for a Speaker to allow a series of identical motions to be put before the House in the same session.

Why was John Bercow a controversial Speaker? A 'Boll**** to Brexit' sticker can be clearly seen in photographs of Mr Bercow's black 4x4, which has a personalised numberplate Brexit bias: John Bercow has revealed publicly that he voted for Remain in 2016, fuelling claims by Brexiteers that he tried to frustrate Brexit in the Commons. The claims were fuelled by an anti-Brexit sticker being spotted in a black Land Rover parked outside Mr Bercow's Commons home - he has insisted the car and sticker belongs to his wife. Brexiteers were also furious when he refused to accept an amendment that sought to rule out a second referendum on Brexit. It added to complaints through much of the time since the referendum that he sought to boost pro-EU supporters such as Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke at the expense of Brexiteers. Bullying claims: John Bercow was hit by a number of bullying claims. He was said to have subjected staff to angry outbursts for years, mocking junior officials and leaving staff 'terrified'. A former private secretary, Kate Emms, said she was left with PTSD after working for him. And earlier this year Lord Lisvane, clerk of the House of Commons from 2011 to 2014, filed an official bullying complaint against him. Other allegations of bullying emerged shortly after, with Lieutenant General David Leakey, a former Black Rod, revealing he was filing his own complaint of 'intimidation and unacceptable behaviour' by Mr Bercow. Mr Bercow denied all the allegations. His wife Sally: Sally Bercow has courted controversy since her husband was first elected. She infamously posed in a sheet for a magazine interview soon after Mr Bercow was first elected and she took part in Celebrity Big Brother. A public Labour supporter, Mrs Bercow's political views led to claims she undermined the Speaker's independence. In 2015 it emerged Sally had an affair with Mr Bercow's cousin Alan - even leading the couple to move into the family home in Battersea while the Speaker stayed in his grace-and-favour apartment in Parliament. Expenses: Mr Bercow faced persistent criticism of his official expenses, which included lavish bills for chauffeur-driven cars, trips abroad and entertaining foreign dignitaries. Mr Bercow and his family lived rent-free in an opulent apartment at Parliament, where the taxpayer footed a 109 a month bill for the Arsenal fan's Sky subscription. Bias against the Tories: Conservative ministers and MPs long-complained Mr Bercow favours Labour. He repeatedly hauled ministers to the Commons to answer Urgent Questions and Emergency Debates - far more often than has historically been the case. Before the 2019 General Election, he tore up the Commons rulebook to allow backbenchers to seize control of the agenda and pass a law delaying Brexit. He also frequently reprimanded ministers, often sarcastically, and his behaviour prompted the Cameron Government to launch a near-unprecedented attempt to remove him in 2015. Mr Bercow provoked further fury by speaking out against Donald Trump and Brexit in defiance of protocol demanding he be impartial. Advertisement

'There is nothing new about this and those who are crying foul are really wrong.

'He did the right thing.'

Mr Jones - a senior ERG MP and supporter of No Deal - insisted the legal position was unchanged and Britain was still due to leave the EU next Friday.

He said: 'For us not to leave on Friday next week, the law would have to be changed.'

In a signal of the Government gearing up for a battle with the Speaker, Mr Barclay struck a defiant tone today.

He told Sky News: 'What we need to do is secure the deal.

'What the Speaker has said in his ruling is there needs to be something that is different.

'You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed.

'Obviously that has a difference in terms of how Members of Parliament would vote on a particular motion.

'So we need to look at the details of the ruling, we need to consider that in the terms of earlier rulings that don't particularly align with yesterday's.

'That the fact that a number of Members of Parliament have said that they will change their votes points to the fact that there are things that are different.'

The Speaker detonated Mrs May's plans in a short notice statement at 3.30pm yesterday - without warning No 10 in advance.

Mr Bercow told the Commons: 'If the Government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same or substantially the same as that disposed of by the House on March 12, that would be entirely in order.

'What the Government cannot legitimately do is resubmit to the House the same proposition or substantially the same proposition that was rejected by 149 votes'.

Asked if he was worried about the ramifications of his decision he added: 'I've never lost a wink of sleep over anything work related'.

Mr Bercow invoked a precedent from April 1604 - used 12 times in the Commons since then - to warn the PM that she must significantly change her deal if she wants to force another vote on it before the scheduled exit day on March 29.

The Speaker cited page 397 of the Commons rulebook, Erskine May - and insisted today's ruling 'should not be regarded as my last word on the subject.'

Mr Bercow told MPs: 'One of the reasons the rule has lasted so long it is a necessary rule to ensure the sensible use of the House's time and proper respect for the decisions which it takes.

'Rulings of the House matter. They have weight.

'In many cases, they have direct effect not only here but on the lives of our constituents.'

A senior Government source last night said the Speaker, who is an outspoken critic of Brexit, wanted to wreck Mrs May's plan of limiting the delay to three months.

'It seems clear that the Speaker's motive here is to rule out a meaningful vote this week,' the source added.

'It leads you to believe what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit.

'Anyone who thinks that this makes No Deal more likely is mistaken  the Speaker wouldn't have done it if it did.'

Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd arrived for Cabinet in No 10 this morning with the latest Brexit crisis set to be on the agenda

Cabinet ministers including (from left) Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Education Secretary Damian Hinds were in Downing Street this morning

Health Secretary Matt Hancock and the embattled Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley arrived for Cabinet together

Tory leadership rivals Chief Secretary Liz Truss and Home Secretary Sajid Javid were also seen arriving for the Cabinet meeting

Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt arrived for Cabinet by car as the Government's senior ministers held another round of talks on tackling the Brexit crisis

Foreign Office chief Sir Simon McDonald revealed his officials were stepping up their Brexit preparations with 11 days until exit

Senior French and German ministers have torn into UK politicians over the Brexit chaos engulfing Westminster, demanding MPs finally make up their mind or risk a chaotic no-deal Brexit.

How could May escape Bercow's trap? The Government is scrambling to find a way to escape the John Bercow bombshell on the Brexit deal. These are possible options: Paving Motion The Government could table a separate motion spelling out explictly MPs should get a third vote on the deal. It will only work if there are votes to pass the deal - which looks unlikely. Change the law to scrap the meaningful vote Laws to implement the deal could scrap the requirement to have an approval vote at all. This also looks unlikely as MPs defeated the Government to force the vote in the first place. Suspending standing orders The Commons controls its own rule book so a Government motion could suspend the rules invoked by the Speaker - but the Government would still need to win a vote for this to work. End the session and hold a Queen's Speech The nuclear option would be to dump the current session of Parliament early and hold a quick fire State Opening. Normally this means the Queen coming to Westminster - but it is not compulsory. It would be hard in the time available and would mean scrapping huge amounts of unfinished laws - and the Government would still need to win votes on a new Queen's Speech after. Advertisement

As EU foreign ministers met in Brussels there was a clear message that it was up to Britain to come up with a solution that would allow Brussels to delay Brexit.

The meeting of the General Affairs Council came the morning after Speaker John Bercow threw a massive spanner in the works of Mrs May's attempt to get a deal done before she faces EU leaders herself on Thursday.

German Europe minister Michael Roth told reporters in Brussels: 'Our patience as the European Union is being sorely tested at the moment.

'I can only call once again on our British partners in London to make concrete proposals at last on why they want an extension.'

Germany's core aim was to avoid a disorderly Brexit, but it could only agree to a postponement of the scheduled leave date of March 29 if London gave a clear reason to do so, he said.

A postponement beyond June would mean Britain would have to participate in European Parliament elections, he added.

'Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking,' Roth said

His French counterpart Nathalie Loiseau ramped up the pressure on Theresa May by suggesting a no-deal Brexit could well happen unless her Government solves the current 'deadlock'.

In other developments today, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will meet leaders of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Green Party to discuss Brexit and how to end the current impasse.

In a joint statement ahead of the talks, Ian Blackford, Vince Cable, Liz Saville Roberts and Caroline Lucas said: 'The UK faces an unprecedented crisis with Brexit, and Westminster remains deeply divided.

'The best and most democratic way forward is to put the decision back to the people in a new vote - with the option to Remain on the ballot paper.'

German Foreign Minister Michael Roth said that London politicians had to make 'concrete proposals at last on why they want an extension' while French EU affairs minister Nathalie Loiseau spoke to reporters in Brussels today

Mr Corbyn will also meet members of the 'Norway Plus' group of MPs in a separate meeting on Tuesday.

The group is determined to force a soft Brexit through to end the current impasse.

Meanwhile in Dublin, European Council president Donald Tusk will hold talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar.

Elsewhere Tony Blair denied that he had been pushing EU leaders to hold firm and wait for a new referendum on Brexit.

He told GMB: 'The idea that I've been going over to Europe and saying hold firm, don't give in. I think you'll find that's from a Conservative source.'

He added: 'Of course I speak to a lot of the EU leaders, I still know them. Look, the reason they've got a problem is not because I've given them a problem. I haven't been the Prime Minister for 11 years, they're the government and the European Union leaders deal with the government.'

Blair said a decision on the type of Brexit needs to be made: 'Some want a 'soft' Brexit and some want a 'hard' Brexit, what we should have done over the last 2 and a half/ 3 years is force parliament to choose between those options. Once you choose between those options, the rest of the negotiation is relatively simple to do.'

He continued: 'She [Theresa May] can still now rescue this situation if she puts before parliament the core options. The real reason parliament is rejecting this deal  at the heart of it  is the fact that her deal leaves Northern Ireland in a bit of a mess as you're not quite sure what the situation is there and the future relationship a mystery and that is not a sensible situation to be in.'

He said: 'To be fair to Theresa May I think she genuinely does want to deliver Brexit even though she voted Remain.'
An Oregon mother has filed a $15million lawsuit claiming that her seven-year-old daughter with autism was brutally beaten, stomped on and sexually abused by two young boys inside a play structure at a McDonald's eatery.

The civil complaint filed in Portland on Monday accuses the multibillion-dollar corporation of negligence, claiming that McDonald's was aware that its indoor playground should have no dark corners where children cannot be supervised.

According to the court filing, McDonald's crated an 'unreasonably dangerous condition' by making access to children playing inside the structure 'severely obstructed'.

An Oregon mother says her seven-year-old daughter with autism was beaten and sexually abused by two young boys inside this McDonald's in Albany (pictured)

The lawsuit cited by OregonLive.com also claims the fast-food empire failed to hire and train personnel to supervise children in the play area in order to keep costs down and maximize profits.

According to the lawsuit, on March 4, the plaintiff's seven year-old daughter was inside the two-story play structure at the Albany McDonald's on East Pacific Boulevard SE while the mother was sitting at a nearby table keeping an eye on her.

However, the complaint alleges that the parent could not see the top portion of the structure, which is where her daughter was allegedly attacked by a pair of young boys.

The mother heard her daughter's screams and rushed into the structure, where she said she found the two boys, who appeared to be about five years old, pinning her daughter to a slide.

The mother, who is now suing McDonald's for $15million, says she found her child being pinned by a boy to a slide, which she could not see from the outside while supervising her daughter from a nearby table

The civil complaint claims McDonald's was aware that its indoor playground (pictured) should have no dark corners where children cannot be supervised

One of the boys, according to the mom, was straddling her daughter and pummeling her face and chest with his fists. There was blood dripping from the victim's nose.

The mother pulled the boy off of her daughter and screamed for his parents to come.

The complaint says the girl subsequently confided in her mother that the boys molested her by kissing her 'boobies and pee-pee,' and that they also stomped on her nose.

The girl's mother said her daughter has been experiencing trouble sleeping since the attack and is fearful to be alone.

She has sought psychiatric help to deal with the aftermath of the incident.

DailyMail.com on Tuesday reached out to McDonald's seeking comment on the lawsuit.
Born in 1935, the current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two years old.

The Dalai Lama said contact between Tibetans living in their homeland and in exile was increasing, but that no formal meetings have happened between Chinese and his officials since 2010. (Photo: File)

Dharamshala: The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, said on Monday it was possible that once he dies his incarnation could be found in India, where he has lived in exile for 60 years, and warned that any other successor named by China would not be respected.

Sat in an office next to a temple ringed by green hills and snow-capped mountains, the 14th Dalai Lama spoke to Reuters a day after Tibetans in the town of Dharamshala marked the anniversary of his escape from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, disguised as a soldier.

He fled to India in early 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, and has since worked to draw global support for linguistic and cultural autonomy in his remote and mountainous homeland.

China, which took control of Tibet in 1950, brands the 83-year-old Nobel peace laureate a dangerous separatist.

Pondering what might happen after his death, the Dalai Lama anticipated some attempt by Beijing to foist a successor on Tibetan Buddhists.

China considers Dalai Lamas reincarnation as something very important. They have more concern about the next Dalai Lama than me, said the Dalai Lama, swathed in his traditional red robes and yellow scarf.

In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in free country, one chosen by Chinese, then nobody will trust, nobody will respect (the one chosen by China). So thats an additional problem for the Chinese! Its possible, it can happen, he added, laughing.

China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lamas successor, as a legacy inherited from Chinas emperors.

But many Tibetans - whose tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death - suspect any Chinese role as a ploy to exert influence on the community.

Born in 1935, the current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two years old.

Many of Chinas more than 6 million Tibetans still venerate the Dalai Lama despite government prohibitions on displays of his picture or any public display of devotion.

Up for discussion

The Dalai Lama said contact between Tibetans living in their homeland and in exile was increasing, but that no formal meetings have happened between Chinese and his officials since 2010.

Informally, however, some retired Chinese officials and businessman with connections to Beijing do visit him from time to time, he added.

He said the role of the Dalai Lama after his death, including whether to keep it, could be discussed during a meeting of Tibetan Buddhists in India later this year.

He, however, added that though there was no reincarnation of Buddha, his teachings have remained.

If the majority of (Tibetan people) really want to keep this institution, then this institution will remain, he said. Then comes the question of the reincarnation of the 15th Dalai Lama.

If there is one, he would still have no political responsibility, said the Dalai Lama, who gave up his political duties in 2001, developing a democratic system for the up to 100,000 Tibetans living in India.

Seminar in China?

During the interview, the Dalai Lama spoke passionately about his love for cosmology, neurobiology, quantum physics and psychology.

If he was ever allowed to visit his homeland, he said hed like to speak about those subjects in a Chinese university.

But he wasnt expecting to go while China remained under Communist rule.

China - great nation, ancient nation - but its political system is totalitarian system, no freedom. So therefore I prefer to remain here, in this country.

The Dalai Lama was born to a family of farmers in Taktser, a village on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, in Chinas Qinghai province.

During a recent Reuters visit to Taktser, police armed with automatic weapons blocked the road. Police and more than a dozen plain-clothed officials said the village was not open to non-locals.

Our strength, our power is based on truth. Chinese power based on gun, the Dalai Lama said. So for short term, gun is much more decisive, but long term truth is more powerful.
Germany's military spending is set to fall below its NATO targets, in the latest flashpoint in Berlin's long-running row with Washington.

The latest German budget plans, revealed on Monday, will see defence spending drop well below the two per cent of GDP expected from NATO members.

U.S. ambassador Richard Grenell said the cuts were a 'worrisome signal', while President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused Germany of freeloading on U.S. military might.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the U.S. criticism, saying Germany will not cut foreign aid to raise military spending.

U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, pictured in Geneva yesterday, said Berlin's planned defence cuts were a 'worrisome signal'

Merkel said today that 'we will continue our effort' in terms of raising defence spending, 'but not at the expense of development aid'.

'We have always said that we're headed in the direction of two percent, and that by 2024 we will reach 1.5 per cent,' she said.

'I can understand that this is not enough for the American President, it's not enough for many European allies.'

During the 2016 presidential campaign Trump said some NATO allies were 'getting a free ride', calling it 'unfair'.

Germany's finance ministry had yesterday presented its budget planning for coming years, which signalled a drop.

It said defence spending would first rise to 1.37 percent of gross domestic product in 2020 but then likely fall back to 1.25 percent by 2023.

U.S. President Donald Trump (left) has repeatedly accused Berlin of freeloading on Washington's military might but Angela Merkel (right) rejected the American criticism

While German defence spending went up from $45 billion to $50 billion last year, the growing economy meant the figure relative to GDP stayed flat at 1.23 percent.

U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell - who has criticised Germany on issues from its Iran policy to proposals to use telecom equipment by China's Huawei - was quick to comment on the projection.

'NATO members clearly pledged to move towards, not away from, two percent by 2024,' he said, referring to a goal set at a 2014 alliance summit.

'That the German government would even be considering reducing its already unacceptable commitments to military readiness is a worrisome signal to Germany's 28 NATO Allies.'

Grenell's latest reprimand sparked anger in Berlin.

Social Democratic MP Carsten Schneider labelled Grenell a 'total diplomatic failure' and the liberal FDP party's Wolfgang Kubicki even demanded the envoy be expelled.

In 2018 Washington spent nearly $700 billion on defence, compared with just $280 billion for all the European NATO allies combined.
Democratic presidential contender Kirsten Gillibrand had a second male aide who was accused of making sexist comments to a female staffer and he was kept on the office pay roll for an additional three months after the allegation, it was revealed on Tuesday.

Marc Brumer, 32, Gillibrand's then-communications director, resigned from her staff in spring 2017 after making at least one sexist remark to a more junior female, the Washington Examiner reported.

But Brumer remained on Gillibrand's payroll 'for about three months after the incident, even though he didn't do any work,' one former aide claimed.

Democratic presidential contender Kirsten Gillibrand had a second male aide who was accused of making sexist comments to a female staffer

Marc Brumer was kept on the office pay roll for an additional three months and said he did not intend for his remark to be taken as sexist

The revelation marks a second blow to the New York senator, who is a leader in the #MeToo movement and who has emphasized her feminist credentials and her role as a mother in the crowded Democratic primary field.

It could hurt her standing among the female voters she has been courting.

She officially announced her 2020 president bid on Sunday, where she emphasized courage.

'Our anthem calls America the home of the brave,' she said in her announement. 'But we don't realize that the lyrics first pose it as a question.'

'Oh say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave, over the land of the free and the home of the brave?'

'It asks, will brave win? Well it hasn't always. And it isn't right now,' she noted.

Brumer told the Washington Examiner that he apologized if his words were offensive and that he was already planning on leaving Gillibrand's staff when the incident occurred.

'As I said at the time, I am sorry that words used during a heated debate offended a colleague,' Brumer said. 'By then, I had already been planning my departure and preparing to seek another opportunity. I resigned and ensured a smooth transition.'

Those close to Brumer said his comment to the staffer was colorful and not intended to be sexist.

Gillibrand's office said his resignation was accepted immediately and said Brumer, who is now a vice president of the Herald Group, worked from home to transition his job responsibilities.

'Here are the facts: this employee was reprimanded immediately, he offered his resignation and it was accepted. He was never in the office again and was told to work from home to transition his responsibilities after his deputy was elevated to his job and began three months of paid maternity leave. The Senator was proud to promote an outstanding woman from within the office prior to her taking leave,' a spokesperson told the news outlet.

It is the second male Gillibrand staffer revealed to be accused of sexist comments.

The revelation marks a second blow to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who is a leader in the #MeToo movement and is courting female voters

Malik Abbas, who quit Gilibrand's office last month after revealed to have made sexists comments, is seen behind Sen. Gillibrand in the military fatigues at a 2010 event

Abbas Malik regularly made crude, misogynistic remarks about his female colleagues, it was reported earlier this month, which reportedly included unwanted advances and saying that a woman 'couldn't get laid unless she was raped.'

He quit after a media investigation turned up more incidents than the one originally reported.

Malik served two tours in Iraq and had a title in the senator's office related to military affairs, but his primary responsibility was to serve as Gillibrand's driver.

An ex-Gillibrand staffer told the Washington Examiner that comments like ones Brumer made were common.

'It was so frequent and sanctioned basically by the chief [of staff],' the ex-aide said. 'I heard so many off-color remarks from, like, everybody in the office. ... It was so common, that it was just like, so you're firing someone? Why is today the day? Because you're running for president, or [a journalist] is reaching out to you?'

The former staffer also alleged Gillibrand knew what happened in her office.

'She's most definitely aware of what goes on in the office. She's most definitely aware of what people complain about, or [when they] file a complaint,' the aide said.

Gillibrand has been seen as a voice for women and leader against sexual harassment since she was the first Democratic senator to call on then-Sen. Al Franken to resign in 2017 following allegations of harassment against him dating back to his Hollywood career.

She has also led the fight in the Senate to advance sexual harassment legislation, which would overhaul how such complaints are handled on Capitol Hill.
Theresa May warned Cabinet the 'far right is on the rise' today in the wake of the New Zealand attacks and a suspected 'extremist' stabbing in Surrey.

The Prime Minister said there must 'no place for vile extremist views in society' as the Government outlined heightened protections for Mosques and other places of worship.

Mrs May said people 'must be able to practice their faith without fear' while Home Secretary Sajid Javid warned of a 'real sense of anxiety' among British Muslims.

Cabinet expressed 'great concern' the horrific attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, were broadcast live on Facebook and the video was able to be shared widely on social media.

Theresa May (pictured at Church on Sunday) warned Cabinet the 'far right is on the rise' today in the wake of the New Zealand attacks and a suspected 'extremist' stabbing in Surrey

Mrs May said people 'must be able to practice their faith without fear' while Home Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured today in Downing Street) warned of a 'real sense of anxiety' among British Muslims

At Cabinet, Mrs May said the New Zealand mosque attack and the stabbing of a teenager in Surrey fitted a 'pattern of concern' about the far right.

Her official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister said the terrible attack and the incident which took place in Surrey on Saturday evening fitted a pattern of concern that the threat from the far right is on the rise.

'The Prime Minister said there could be no place for vile extremist views in society and people must be able to practise their faith without fear.

'She said that intensive work was taking place across government and by the police and security services to combat the threat.'

The Prime Minister's spokesman said ministers had agreed the need to maintain pressure on social media companies to 'proactively' prevent the spread of terrorist content.

Following the meeting, the Home Office said it was doubling the amount available under its places of worship protective security fund to 1.6 million.

A gunman killed 50 worshippers and injured 50 more at the Al Noor Masjid and Linwood Masjid on Thursday night. Pictured is a makeshift memorial at the scene

The scheme helps churches, mosques, temples and gurdwaras in England and Wales to install alarms, security lighting and CCTV cameras to deter attackers

Announcing the increase, Mr Javid said: 'The horrific events in New Zealand are a direct attack on the values of tolerance and freedom of worship that unite us all.

'I know many Muslim communities are feeling vulnerable and anxious. But they should seek comfort from knowing we are doing everything to tackle hate and extremism.

'That's why we are doubling next year's places of worship fund - providing physical protection as well as peace of mind.'
A Welsh choir treated their fellow passengers to an amazing rendition of the national anthem after realising they would be in the air during the Wales v Ireland match.

Cardiff-based choir Cor were unable to watch the Six Nations game while flying from Abu Dhabi to London, so they decided to perform Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (Land of my Fathers) before take off.

The group stood at their seats and belted out the song while other passengers looked on, reports WalesOnline.

Cardiff-based choir Cor treated their fellow passengers to an amazing rendition of the national anthem after realising they would be in the air during the Wales v Ireland match

Osian Rowlands, the choir's conductor, had asked if Etihad Airways could broadcast the Grand Slam live but the only option was to watch a Premier League match.

Mr Rowlands, who was heading back from performing at the Etihad Palace Opera House in Abu Dhabi, told WalesOnline: 'Knowing we were going to be missing the match I asked the airline if we could sing the anthem before take-off.

'I was told it was down to the captain, so when we arrived on the plane, the captain who it turned out was Irish came to talk to us and told us he couldn't say no to our request and to go for it.

'He even announced to the rest of the passengers that we would be singing the anthem.'

Luckily the group had a 'very good reception' - and an even better one after posting the clip online.

While their flight was delayed for an hour, the group filmed the video and shared it online, where it racked up more than 37,000 likes.

Wales won the match 25-7.
The mothers of children who died of the flu and other vaccine preventable diseases have come under attack online from anti-vaxxers, a new report reveals.

Mothers who speak out about their own children's death in an effort to raise awareness and encourage vaccination are often accused of being pharmaceutical industry plants, according to a Tuesday report from CNN.

Serese Marotta of Syracuse, New York lost her five-year-old son, Joseph, to the flu in 2009. She is now chief operating officer of Families Fighting Flu, a group that encourages flu awareness and prevention, including vaccination.

When she posted a video commemorating her son on Facebook in 2017, she was met with a stream of abusive comments calling her 'slut' and 'pharma w**re'. 'How much is this b***h being paid,' another comment read.

Serese Marotta of Syracuse, New York lost her five-year-old son, Joseph (above), to the flu in 2009. She has come under intensive abuse online for advocating vaccinations

Another mother who turned her grief to advocacy is Jill Promoli, a photographer who lives near Toronto.

In 2016, her two-year-old son Jude McGee and his twin brother came down with slight. When she put them down for a nap, they seemed fine. Jude never woke up.

An autopsy showed that Jude had died of the flu, and Promoli began to advocate for flu prevention.

She came under vicious online attacks by anti-vaxxers, who believe that vaccines do irreparable harm to children.

Though medical authorities including the CDC say that any risks of vaccination are slight and heavily outweighed by the benefits, anti-vaxxers believe that this advice is all part of a conspiracy to benefit the pharmaceutical industry, or otherwise harm children for ulterior motives.

After her son's death, anti-vaxxers swarmed Promoli's Facebook page, accusing her of murdering Jude and inventing the story about the flu to cover her tracks.

Others said that vaccines had actually killed her son, and accused her of advocating for shots so that other children would die, and their parents would share in her misery.

Jill Promoli, a photographer who lives near Toronto, lost her two-year-old son Jude (with her right) to the flu in 2016. She has now become a flu prevention advocate (right)

'The first time it made me feel really sick because I couldn't fathom how anybody could even come up with such a terrible claim,' Promoli told CNN. 'It caught me off guard in its cruelty. What kind of a person does this?'

Catherine Hughes, an Australian mother who lost her one-month old son, Riley, to whooping cough in 2015, has also received online abuse.

Riley was too young to be vaccinated, and relied on herd immunity, or the vaccination of the community around him.

Unfortunately, the city of Perth has some of the lowest vaccination rates in Australia.

'Riley's death was a very inconvenient truth for anti-vaccine activists,' Hughes told CNN.

'The nasty messages started 24 hours after he died. They called us baby killers and said we would have the blood of other babies on our hands. We've been told to kill ourselves.'

Hughes and her husband Greg started the vaccination campaign Light for Riley, and have been subjected to ceaseless abuse.

'F**k you, Hughes family,' one Facebook user wrote on the Light for Riley page.

'What a f**king evil wh**re you really are,' another user wrote to them in a private Facebook message, according to CNN.

One-month-old Riley was too young to be vaccinated, and relied on the community around him for herd immunity. He died of whooping cough in Australia in 2015

Catherine and Greg Hughes were shocked when they came under intensive attack for speaking out about Riley's death and advocating for vaccinations

Riley's parents were devastated when the newborn died of whooping cough in 2015

For their part, anti-vaxxers often say that their own children have been harmed by vaccines, and that only a small fringe of their numbers would engage in personal attacks on the mothers of children who have died from vaccine preventable illnesses.

'Any discussions about parents who lose their children after those children are vaccinated would be minor in number, and even smaller would be the number of members reaching out to parents in private message to share their concerns that vaccines may have played a role in a death,' Larry Cook, the founder of Stop Mandatory Vaccination, told the cable network.

'I do not condone violent behavior or tone and encourage decorum during discussion,' Cook wrote.

He added that anyone 'who deliberately engage[s] in the politics of advocating for compulsory vaccination where children may be further damaged through government vaccine mandates can expect push back and resistance, alongside knowledgeable discussions about vaccine risk in social media commentary.'

Cook said that members of his own group had been harassed and threatened, and shared a private message he had received threatening to 'put a bullet' in him for his own advocacy.
Britain's rudest female police officer has been sacked after breaking wind outside her sergeant's office and swearing whilst on duty.

Detective Constable Claire Fitzpatrick, 44, repeatedly used the C-word and asked a junior officer if he wanted to have an affair with a 'fatter, ugly, older woman', a disciplinary hearing heard.

Fitzpatrick said foul language was part of 'a culture of banter' at the village police station in Bedwas, South Wales and the C-word 'replaced the F-word as swear word of choice'.

Claire Fitzpatrick (pictured) said foul language was part of 'a culture of banter' at the village police station in Bedwas, south Wales

The mother-of-two, who was working as a temporary sergeant, admitted breaking wind in the station - but said: 'It wasn't deliberately'.

She said: 'Sometimes I would speak like the character Borat [a fictional satirical character played by Sacha Baron Cohen], or use a silly voice to say: 'Rather out than in'.'

Fitzpatrick, a Gwent Police officer, was accused of 25 counts of inappropriate behaviour - amounting to gross misconduct.

She has now been dismissed from the force where she had worked for 22 years after denying misconduct.

Fitzpatrick told the panel that the C-word 'had replaced the F-word as the swear word of choice.'

The hearing in Cwmbran, South Wales, heard Fitzpatrick once arrested a motorist telling him: 'You're driving like a c***.'

She said: 'The officer with me said: 'Sergeant, you can't say that to him.'

'I took a deep breath with my head in my hands, and said I'm sorry to the driver.'

The panel heard the junior officer said no when asked by Fitzpatrick if he wanted to have an affair and when he did so she allegedly replied: 'I'll be gentle, I promise.'

Fitzpatrick also asked another woman officer if she 'had any cream for thrush' while inside the packed police station.

She accepted saying it but denied it was done in a 'bullying' manner.

She said: 'I wasn't suffering from thrush at the time, so I wasn't asking her some literally.

'It was just another example of stupid, inappropriate things being said.'

Nick Gedge, representing DC Fitzpatrick, said the detective had never faced misconduct allegations before.

Mr Gedge said: 'She would often make herself the butt of the jokes to jolly along an atmosphere as it were.'

The hearing was told DC Fitzpatrick's team was understaffed and could be seen as a 'difficult shift' to manage.

Fitzpatrick, a Gwent Police officer, was accused of 25 counts of inappropriate behaviour - amounting to gross misconduct

Colleagues described her as having an 'unique sense of humour' and being 'crude with her comments.'

In one email from a colleague she was told to 'apply the filter occasionally'.

DC Fitzpatrick admitted using bad language but denied saying it in a demeaning way.

She said: 'When you read these allegations you hang your head in embarrassment and shame.

'You read that and you almost gasp and go: 'Who is this individual.'

'Having hit this position that I'm in has made me realise how much I need to change. How much I need to be a better person.'

She was dismissed after a hearing of the Gwent Police discipinary panel who will give their formal reasons for his sacking later.
Tyler Perry has stepped in to help four children who lost their mother, Tynesha Evans, on Saturday after her boyfriend allegedly shot her outside of a Georgia bank

Tyler Perry has stepped in to help four children whose mother was killed over the weekend after her boyfriend allegedly shot her outside of a bank in Georgia.

Tynesha Evans was shot dead on Saturday morning in the parking lot of a Wells Fargo near Atlanta.

Her boyfriend, Othniel Inniss, 58, was arrested at the scene.

Less than a day after the tragedy struck the Evans family, Perry stepped in to lend his support.

After learning learning about the heartbreaking news, Perry offered to take care of the family's rent to stave off eviction.

Perry made arrangements for Evans' body to be flown to Wisconsin, where family and friends will hold her funeral.

The actor and filmmaker will also covering her 18-year-old daughter's tuition at Spelman College so she doesn't have to drop out of school.

Evans' daughters said their mom had fallen on hard times and Inniss was supposed to help her pay their rent.

Her oldest daughter, Sharadiant Turner, told WSB-TV that Inniss asked their mom to meet him at the bank so he could get her the money to help cover their $3,200 rent.

Instead, he is alleged to have shot Evans.

Tynesha Evans (left) was killed on Saturday morning after her boyfriend, Othniel Inniss (right), 58, reportedly asked her to meet him. He was arrested at the scene

The shooting happened in the parking lot of a Wells Fargo (pictured) near Atlanta. An armed Good Samaritan heard the gunshot and rushed over to the scene where he held Inniss at gunpoint until police and paramedics arrived to the scene

An armed Good Samaritan heard the gunshot and rushed over to the scene where he held Inniss at gunpoint until police and paramedics arrived to the scene.

Inniss has been charged with murder and aggravated assault with a firearm.

Evans' oldest daughters had set up a GoFundMe account just before Perry offered his help.

According to the account, Evans was an author and visionary who worked for Ciox Health.

'My mom was the breadwinner of our home, please see it in your heart to keep us in our home and put my mother to rest decently and not be homeless in a few weeks,' the account reads.

Evans' daughter, 14-year-old Shakemia Turner, called Perry 'an angel on Earth'.

Evans' daughter, 14-year-old Shakemia Turner (left), called Perry 'an angel on Earth'

The daughters remembered their mother as being 'the best thing' they could ever have in life. 'She was caring , funny...if I ever needed anything, I knew I could call her,' Sharadiant said

Shakemia called her mother her 'rock' who 'pushed her to limits' she never knew she could achieve. Their GoFundMe account has raised more than $50,000 to help the family with expenses

The daughters remembered their mother as being 'the best thing' they could ever have in life.

'She was caring , funny...if I ever needed anything, I knew I could call her,' Sharadiant said.

Shakemia called her mother her 'rock' who 'pushed her to limits' she never knew she could achieve.

Their GoFundMe account has raised more than $50,000 to help the family with expenses.

It's unclear what led up to the shooting. Authorities are still investigating.
A Connecticut woman who was filmed shouting racist abuse at two African Americans continued her expletive-filled rant in a 911 call to complain about them.

Corinne Terrone of New Haven resigned form her job as a clerk at Hamden Public Schools following her shocking outburst at a ShopRite store last Friday.

In footage, Terrone can be heard yelling the n-word three times and she then spits at an African American man and woman twice.

Corinne Terrone of New Haven, Connecticut (pictured) shouted racist abuse at two African American people in a grocery store

Now audio footage has emerged of the woman calling East Haven Police to complain about the exchange, which the African-American pair did nothing to provoke.

In 911 calls provided by East Haven PD and obtained by NBC Connecticut, the woman claimed that she is angry and wanted to press charges against the pair.

She claims she was walking in the store with her two children and is extremely angry.

Hamden Public Schools superintendent claimed the woman was a clerk in the central office and resigned as an investigation into the video got underway.

She is heard using expletives and racial slurs to describe him in one phone-call to the police.

'I'm not going to sugarcoat what I said. The man in his little, um, scooter said: Are you talking to me b***h?.

'And I said, No Im not n****r because he called me a b***h, I called him a n****r, then he continued to get up and threaten me, so there was spitting going back and forth. He spit on the back of me and I am pressing charges.'

Corinne Terrone of New Haven continued her expletive-filled rant in a 911 call to police to complain about the two African American people she had racially abused

She also asked police officers would they be 'racially biased' if they were to investigate her alleged complaint

'Somebody better do something the f**k now because I left there with my kids which was the smart thing to do because he was with two fat black b*****s.

'That place is full of cockroaches and now I have to deal with being called a b***h by a n****r in front of my f*****g kids.

She claimed she wanted the man who she racially abused arrested for 'breach of the peace.'

'What can be done to arrest the n****r that assaulted me verbally?. Do you think I know that n*****s name?,' she claims.

She continues to get angry and insists to the officer during the conversation that she wants to press charges against the people she abused.

'Is it going to be someone who is not racially biased? Is it going to be a white person? Because I will not meet with a n****r now because I am way beyond that point.

'I want a cop doing something now. Now, I dont want to hear any f*****g excuses,' she adds.

She continues rambling during the 12-minute long conversation and continues to inusle the man 'who verbally assaulted' her.

East Haven police said no one has come forward to file a criminal complaint.

As of Tuesday, the video had been shared more than 8,300 times and commented on more than 3,400 times. The footage was first posted to Facebook by a user with the profile name 'Tatiana Winn.'

In the video, Terrone is yells the n-word three times and then spits at an African American man and woman twice.

Terrone yelled the n-word three times and spit twice at an African American man and woman

Terrone is seen above as a black woman tries to stand between her and the black man with whom she was in a confrontation

It is unclear what, if anything, precipitated the outburst. After Terrone first utters the racial slur, the man looks as if he steps toward her, prompting her to respond: Put your hands on me, come on!

She then pulls out her phone and starts recording. The man then slaps the phone out of her hands.

He then turns and walks away from Terrone, who goes after him. The African American woman then steps in between the two.

The video was filmed at a ShopRite location in East Haven on Friday night.

At one point during the tirade, Terrone pulls out her cell phone and tries to record

Terrones next-door neighbor, a black man, told the New Haven Register that he was surprised to see her in the video.

The neighbor said that his grandchildren often play with her children and that he had never witnessed any racist behavior from her in the past.

Terrone has been an excellent neighbor, the man said. They have been living next to each other for eight years.

Shes always been the sweetest woman in the world, the man said.

Police were seen at Terrones home on Saturday, but there was nobody inside.

We are in touch with ShopRite and are looking to get a better understanding of what took place (Friday) night, East Haven Police said in a statement.

As of late Saturday, the video from the East Haven ShopRite (above) had been shared more than 8,300 times and commented on more than 2,500 times. It has generated over 1,000 reactions

Authorities could conceivably charge Terrone with assault, since spitting is considered a form of assault. At a minimum, she could faces a charge of breaching the peace.

Hamden School District released a statement saying: We have become aware of video footage that appears to show an employee in our district engaged in abhorrent conduct.

Specifically, the video appears to show the employee repeatedly calling an African-American man the N-word in a supermarket in East Haven.

The video also appears to show the Hamden employee spitting at the aforementioned African-American male as he was walking away from the employee.

It also appears that the employees children witnessed her conduct.

Because her children were present, school administrators filed a DCF report.

DCF stands for Department of Children and Families. A DCF report is filed whenever there is reason to suspect child abuse.
Republican Congressman Devin Nunes has filed a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter and some of its users for allowing 'insulting' tweets about the lawmaker that he says are 'abusive, hateful and defamatory'.

The complaint was filed by Nunes in a Virginia state court on Monday and lists two parody accounts - Devin Nunes' Mom and Devin Nunes' Cow - as defendants, as well as anti-Trump Republican Liz Mair.

Nunes, an ally of President Donald Trump, alleges that Twitter has failed to crack down on the parody accounts, which accused him of obstructing investigations into the president.

In his lawsuit, Nunes also claims that Twitter discriminates against conservatives by allegedly censoring 'viewpoints with which it disagrees' and 'shadow-banning' them. Shadow banning allows users to post freely but no one else sees their messages.

Republican Congressman Devin Nunes failed the lawsuit against Twitter in a Virginia state court and lists two anonymous parody accounts as defendants

The lawsuit includes pages of screenshots that shows tweets from the accounts of Devin Nunes' Mom, Devin Nunes' Cow and Mair.

The complaint accuses the Twitter account Devin Nunes' Mom of hijacking his name and falsely impersonating his mother so they could attack, defame and demean him.

'Between February 2018 and March 2019, Twitter allowed @DevinNunesMom to post hundreds of egregiously false, defamatory, insulting, abusive, hateful, scandalous and vile statements about Nunes,' the lawsuit states.

It says the tweets falsely accused Nunes of obstruction of justice, perjury, misuse of classified information and other federal crimes.

'This is going to be disastrous for #CA22 but please understand @DevinNunes' difficult situation. Between being eyeball-deep in a federal obstruction investigationg and then crading the president's balls full time, he just doesn't have time for you anymore. Surely you understand,' one tweet read.

Another of the tweets from that account states: 'Are you trying to obstruct a federal investigation again? You come home right this instant or no more Minecraft!'

The lawsuit also included screenshots of tweets the account said to other members of Congress, including Rep. Matt Gaetz that read: 'You know @DevinNunes is getting really upset that he has to share Trump's rectum space with you. HE WAS THERE FIRST.'

The lawsuit includes pages of screenshots that shows tweets from the accounts of Devin Nunes' Mom that he says falsely accuse him of obstruction of justice among other crimes

The complaint accuses the Twitter account Devin Nunes' Mom of hijacking his name and falsely impersonating his mother so they could attack, defame and demean him

The lawsuit included a screenshot of the tweet and stated: 'Many of the tweets were vile and repulsive, including tweets that depicted Nunes engaged in sexual acts with the President'

The lawsuit also included screenshots of tweets the account said to other members of Congress, including Rep. Matt Gaetz

Other tweets accuse the lawmaker of having 'white supremist friends' and distributing 'disturbing inflammatory racial propaganda'.

The lawsuit accused the Devin Nunes' Cow account of orchestrating a year-long defamation campaign against him.

'Devin Nunes' cow has made, published and republished hundreds of false and defamatory statements of and concerning Nunes,' the suit states.

The lawsuit goes on to accuse Mair of conspiring with people to attack and smear Nunes ahead of his election. Mair ran an anti-Trump super PAC called Make America Awesome during the 2016 election.

A screenshot of one of her tweets was included in the lawsuit that implied Nunes had colluded with prostitutes and cocaine addicts.

'To be fair, I think the @fresnobee writing up you investment in a winery that allegedly used underage hookers to solicit investment -- an allegation you've known about for years, during which you've stayed invested in it, I might add -- did surprise you,' her tweet read.

Nunes claims he was subjected to an 'orchestrated defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope' during his last re-election campaign last year.

He said the campaign was one 'no human should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life'.

Nunes blamed the defamatory statements for winning the election by a narrower margin than previous times.

The lawsuit claims the Devin Nunes' Mom account 'falsely accused Nunes of spending money at the Spearmint Rhino, a strip club in Las Vegas'

The lawsuit says the tweets falsely accused Nunes of obstruction of justice, perjury, misuse of classified information and other federal crimes

Nunes claims the tweets were part of an 'orchestrated defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope' that he was subjected to during his last re-election campaign last year

The lawsuit includes this screenshot of a tweet that the Devin Nunes' Cow account retweeted in Junly last year

A screenshot of one of anti-Trump Republican Liz Mair's tweets was included in the lawsuit that implied Nunes had colluded with prostitutes and cocaine addicts

Twitter declined to comment on the lawsuit, but has in the past vigorously denied claims that its platform is politically biased.

The suit echoes accusations from Trump that major internet platforms discriminate against conservatives, even though he himself has more than 59 million followers on Twitter.

Legal analysts have largely maintained that internet platforms such as Twitter are not liable for most content posted by third parties, but the Nunes lawsuit claims Twitter was negligent and failed to enforce its own terms of service.

'Twitter let it happen because Twitter had (and has) a political agenda and motive,' the lawsuit said.

Nunes, who represents a district in California, is a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and was accused of undermining the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 president election.

Trump himself weighed in on the issue again on Tuesday, retweeting a message about the lawsuit and repeating his claims about bias by internet firms.

'Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats. But fear not, we will win anyway, just like we did before!' Trump tweeted.
Dr Claire Wiles (pictured outside Wakefield Coroner's Court today) told Eileen Cowles, 86, to take two colecalciferol tablets once a day - when she only needed them once a month

An 'inexperienced' GP sobbed at the inquest of an elderly care home resident where she admitted giving her more than 30 times the amount of Vitamin D she needed in the months before her death.

Dr Claire Wiles told Eileen Cowles, 86, to take two colecalciferol tablets once a day - when she only needed them once a month.

The doctor, who had only been in her practice for a year, issued Mrs Cowles with enough Vitamin D supplements for someone with 'chronic' liver disease.

She only needed them for bone strength after falling and fracturing her hip at home in West Yorkshire in September 2014, the hearing was told.

Mrs Cowles died on April 17 2015 and a post-mortem found the cause of death to be complications following gastrointestinal bleeding caused by the high levels of calcium found in her blood as a consequence of the over-prescription.

Giving evidence at her inquest at Wakefield Coroner's Court today, Dr Wiles burst into tears as she admitted failures.

Questioning her, Jennie Ferrario, appearing on behalf of Mrs Cowles's family, said: 'Mrs Cowles did not suffer from chronic liver disease, so this dosage was not appropriate for her, that is right isn't it?'

Dr Wiles replied: 'That is correct.'

She Wiles told Ms Ferrario said she had not thought the medicine she prescribed to be harmful as they were only vitamins.

She said: 'I did not perceive the medications to be harmful. [Mrs Cowles] had been out of hospital for a month [after a fall at her home].

'I had not been aware of [colecalciferol] being prescribed on a monthly basis.'

Ms Ferrario asked Dr Wiles if she believed the errors could have been avoided.

Dr Wiles, through tears, answered: 'Yes if my knowledge was different. There was a gap [in my knowledge] I was not aware of.

'I could see why this could have gone a completely different way.'

She told the hearing she had made a 'transcription error' when issuing Mrs Cowles, who had a history of vascular dementia and had facial surgery in 1997 to remove a tumour, her prescription.

Pictured: Eileen Cowles, 86, died on April 17 2015 after being over-prescribed vitamin D

She used the British National Formulary - a United Kingdom pharmaceutical reference book that contains a wide spectrum of information and advice on prescribing and pharmacology - to decide on the dosage appropriate for the patient.

She said she had not seen a hospital discharge advice note before signing the prescription and agreed this was an 'error' during today's hearing.

In tears, Dr Wiles said: 'I had not realised I had prescribed [the dosage] incorrectly.'

Addressing Mrs Cowles' family, she said: 'I have been very upset and I am very sorry for the mistakes I have made which contributed to [her death]. I just want to say I am sorry. I am sorry to the family.'

Addressing Dr Wiles, Area coroner Jonathan Leach asked if she had 'made an assumption' to repeat the prescription of colecalciferol because Mrs Cowles had 'taken it before'.

Dr Wiles replied: 'Yes because she had already taken it before.'

The coroner added: 'This isn't a criticism as such but [you] were relatively inexperienced having been in practices for a year before?'

Dr Wiles replied: 'Yes.'

Mrs Cowles' family only discovered the fatal mistake after finding papers while clearing out her room at Primrose Court Carehome in Guiseley, West Yorkshire (pictured) after her death

She said when she looked at the BNF manual, she had 'taken it to confirm' the dosage she had prescribed.

But on reflection Dr Wiles agreed she had misread the page and prescribed the wrong dosage, giving her the amount for someone with 'chronic liver disease'.

The coroner asked Dr Wiles: 'There is nothing in the BNF which supports a dosage level that you prescribed is that correct?'

Dr Wiles answered: 'Yes, that is correct.'

A repeat prescription enquiry was made on November 26, 2014, by care home staff, an inquest heard.

A note from Dr Wiles - who wrote the initial repeat prescription - said '20,000 capsules take two'; but, no indication was given as to whether that was daily, weekly or monthly.

When queried firstly by care home staff and then pharmacists at Boots they were told by Dr Wiles to give Mrs Cowles two tablets per day instead of per month.

One member of staff at the care home said she felt 'silly' due to the tone of the reply from Dr Wiles, the inquest heard.

Dr Wiles then went on maternity leave and, when several further repeat prescription enquiries were made by care home staff, GP Ibrahim Syed signed off on a prescription which advised two 20,000 capsules daily.

Mrs Cowles condition began to deteriorate and she was sent to the Bradford Royal Infirmary in March 2015 and later to Leeds St James Hospital in the same month.

Mrs Cowles' family only discovered the fatal mistake after finding papers while clearing out her room at Primrose Court Carehome in Guiseley, West Yorkshire, after her death.

The inquest, which is due to finish tomorrow, continues.
Sources said the party leadership wanted Mr Singh to choose either Bhopal or Indore seat to contest from in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Bhopal: Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Monday responded to the challenge thrown at him by chief minister Kamal Nath to seek elections from the toughest seat in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, saying, I am ready to contest wherever my leader Rahul Gandhiji wants me to.

Mr Singh took to Twitter, his favourite platform to speak his mind in recent times, to reply to Mr Naths appeal to him to choose the toughest seat if he desired to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Thank you Kamal Nath ji for inviting me to contest from weak seats of Congress. I am grateful to you for considering me capable (of this), he tweeted.

Mr Singh added that accepting challenges was his habit.

With the blessings of people of Raghogarh, I won in 1977, defying a Janata Dal wave. From any place leader Rahul Gandhiji asks me, I am ready to contest, he said.

Incidentally, Mr Singhs reply came a day after AICC general secretary Jyotiraditya Scindia, considered his arch rival in Congress in Madhya Pradesh, echoed Mr Naths view.

Talking to reporters in Chhindwara in MP on Saturday, Mr Nath had said there were 2-3-4 seats in MP where Cong-ress had not won in last 30 years and he wanted Mr Singh to contest from the toughest seat.

Sources said the party leadership wanted Mr Singh to choose either Bhopal or Indore seat to contest from in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Mr Nath, if talks in Congress are to be believed, was keen to field Mr Singh in Bhopal where Congress won last time was in 1984 in the aftermath of assassination of Indira Gandhi.

Congress leader K N Pradhan had won from Bhopal then. Similarly, last time Congress won the Indore seat was in 1984 too when party leader Prakash Chandra Setty won the seat.

Sources said Mr Singh might have been more comfortable in Rajgarh seat, considered his pocket borough, which he had represented in 1984 and 1991.

His brother Laxman Singh, sitting Congress MLA, had won the seat in 1994, 1996, 1998 and 1999 as a Congress candidate and in 2004 as a BJP candidate.

Mr Digvijay Singhs son, brother and nephew are currently representing three out of eight assembly seats under Rajgarh Lok Sabha seat.

Our strategy is to field veteran leaders in difficult seats to win as many seats as possible in the upcoming LS polls. The call to Mr Singh to choose the toughest seat is part of the strategy, a Congress spokesman here said.

BJP won 27 out of total 29 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 polls leaving the rest two seats to Congress.
A Polish theatre will stage a play taking dialogue from Mein Kampf to see if Adolf Hitler's language and ideas are still relevant today.

Director Jakub Skrzywanek hopes his play at Warsaw's Powszechny Theatre will make people reflect on the rise of the far right in the country, reports the New York Times.

It will feature a number of provocative scenes, including one in which an actor will read from Hitler's 1925 autobiography while wearing a mask of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the founder of the Law and Justice Party.

The national-conservative political party is against abortion, IVF treatment, gay rights, and is opposed to accepting refugees.

Kaczynski claimed in 2015 that they 'can't' accept refugees because 'they could spread infectious diseases'.

Warsaw's Powszechny Theatre will stage a play taking dialogue from Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf, pictured in rehearsal, in the hopes it will make people reflect on the rise of the far right in the country

In one provocative scene, an actor will read from Hitler's 1925 autobiography while wearing a mask of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the founder of the Law and Justice Party (pictured)

Another scene sees a group of actors using anti-Semitic language in polite conversation while sipping soup around a dinner table.

Mr Skrzywanek told the New York Times: 'I want to show that the language used by politicians, by everyone, in Poland is worse than the language of Hitler.'

He added that the play was directed at both conservatives and liberals using such language, rather than just attacking those who are right wing.

Mr Skrzywanek said: 'For me, thats really the most radical gesture you can do in Polish theater. To not accuse a specific group of people, but everyone.'

The Powszechny previously attracted protests, pictured, after staging The Curse, which condemns the Catholic Church for not acting on child sex abuse allegations

He also wants to emphasise how divisive politics have become in the country, and draw attention to the rise of anti-Semitism.

Just last week a right-wing newspaper published an article entitled 'how to recognise a Jew' on its front page.

And in January Polish nationalists protested outside Auschwitz on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, claiming it glorifies the million Jewish victims killed at the death complex.

The Powszechny previously attracted controversy after staging The Curse, which condemns the Polish Catholic Church for not acting on child sex abuse allegations made against the clergy.

In that play, an actor simulated a sex act on a statue of the late Polish pope John Paul II below a sign that called him the 'defender of paedophiles'.
Jack Ralph, pictured, 28, has been convicted of manslaughter today for killing mother and daughter Margaret, 78, and Sharron Harris, 55, after stabbing them at their home in Kent last year

A former chef who searched 'How long for murder?' online just hours before fatally stabbing his next-door neighbours with a carving knife has been convicted today of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Jack Ralph launched his frenzied attack on pensioner Margaret Harris, 78, and her daughter Sharon, 55, just minutes after Mrs Harris's husband David had opened their back door to him at 7.30am on Saturday, September 29 last year.

The 28-year-old had been living with his mother Julie next door to the Harris family for 18 years when he knocked at their semi-detached property in Hadlow, Kent, and, without warning, struck out with the 8in blade.

He was also convicted of the attempted murder of Mr Harris, 76, who was knifed four times as he tried to desperately fight off Ralph with a rolling pin.

Nine months earlier around Christmas 2017, Ralph had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was under 'non-statutory' care of his local community health team.

He had also been prescribed anti-psychotic medication, and had taken his last dosage just half an hour before the fatal and near-fatal stabbings.

But he later told psychiatrists he had been hearing voices 'commanding' him to kill his neighbours who were in 'God's bad books'.

Pictured are police at the scene of the attack in 2018. Ralph, diagnosed with schizophrenia, admits responsibility for the killings but denies murder on grounds of insanity

He also claimed that he believed seeing one of the Harris women wearing a red coat in the days leading up to the stabbings meant his mum was in danger of being attacked by them.

Ralph, currently in high security Broadmoor Hospital, denied two charges of murder and one of attempted murder on the grounds of insanity.

Due to the unusual nature of the case, trial judge Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb herself asked the jury of seven women and five men for their verdicts.

Police at the scene of the manslaughter that took place on September 29 2018

On the counts of murder, they were asked whether they found him not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

On the count of attempted murder, the jury was asked whether they found him not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty.

All the verdicts were unanimous and returned within two hours of the jury retiring.

Sentencing will take place later this afternoon. Ralph is expected to be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act.

Mrs Harris was still wearing her nightdress when she was fatally knifed three times to her neck, while Sharon suffered a fatal chest wound. They were found in the hallway of their home in Carpenters Lane, Hadlow, Kent.

Mr Harris, 76, who had opened his door to Ralph that morning, suffered four stab injuries to his neck, ear, back and forearm.

Maidstone Crown Court in Kent heard that had the 3cm neck wound penetrated just 1mm deeper it would 'in all likelihood' have proved fatal.

But despite his life-threatening injuries Mr Harris was able to dial 999 before collapsing next to the phone in his living room. He also suffered a heart attack and underwent surgery to repair a major neck artery.

Forensics at the Hadlow, Kent home after the attack which was initially thought to be a row between neighbours

The court heard Ralph was found by police sitting on a sofa in his living room in Carpenters Lane with his arms above his head.

He later told officers he was 'in full regret', but added he was 'in a blind rage', when he attacked his neighbours.

Describing himself as 'a strong guy' and fully trained in Brazilian Jujitsu, he said he could not remember much of what happened, adding: 'I blacked out...I don't know what came over me.'

His mobile revealed an internet search of 'How long for murder?' at approximately 10.30pm the previous evening.

At the start of his trial last Tuesday, the jury was told he did not deny killing the Harris women or stabbing Mr Harris.

Prosecutor Philip Bennetts QC said four psychiatrists all agreed Ralph was suffering from schizophrenia at the time and his responsibility was diminished.

However, defence experts argued that he was so affected by his mental health condition he did not know what he was doing was wrong.

Opening the prosecution case, Mr Bennetts said: 'There is no issue that Jack Ralph killed Margaret and Sharon Harris. There is no issue that he stabbed David Harris.

The court heard Ralph had lived next door to the couple in Hadlow, Kent, pictured, for 18 years and that Mr Harris had no explanation for the attack

'The defence has raised the issue of insanity....It is the prosecution case that at the material time he did know what he was doing was wrong.'

The court heard that no one from the Harris family, which includes two sons, were able to attend or even provide police with victim personal statements due to the nature of what occurred that day.

'The impact has been such that they were unable to make statements. It is the effect of what has occurred that means they just couldn't be here,' said the prosecutor.

Jonathan Higgs QC, defending, said the court's 'paramount' concern was ensuring public safety.

'That is best achieved by Mr Ralph remaining under medical supervision at Broadmoor, no doubt for a considerable time and until that time those caring for him take the view, if at all, that public safety can be achieved in some different format.'

Mr Harris told police there had been no difficulties between his family and Ralph, and that everything leading up to the attack had been 'completely normal'.

'We've always got on well together...We had a perfect relationship, no problems at all,' said Mr Harris.

In a video recorded interview played in court, the pensioner broke down in tears as he recalled the moment his neighbour 'went mad' that fateful morning

He was downstairs with his daughter when Ralph knocked at their back door. Mrs Harris was upstairs in bed but came down on hearing the unexpected commotion.

Mr Harris told police he and Sharon had tried to 'hold off' Ralph as he pushed his way in, lashing out with the 8in long blade.

'No words were spoken. He just kept pushing at the door to get at us. I had no idea what his intention was apart from he was coming at us with a knife,' said Mr Harris.

He said he was surprised to see Ralph at his door that morning and they chatted for about five minutes on the doorstep.

But the pensioner described Ralph, who also worked as a labourer, staring at him throughout, with no change in his demeanour.

It was when Mr Harris said he 'had to go' that Ralph pulled the blade from behind his back and 'came at him', striking him in the neck.

Mr Harris told police: 'I have tried to slam the door but didn't have any strength left. I managed to get back inside the inner door with my daughter. Then my wife came down the stairs wondering what the commotion was. He just went mad by the sounds of it.'

Ralph said nothing as he carried out his knife attack the court heard.

'Not a word was said at all. He just kept completely quiet. No words were spoken. He just kept pushing at the door to get at us,' explained Mr Harris.

'I had no idea what his intention was apart from he was coming at us with a knife. I didn't know what he was going to do or anything,' he said.

'Margaret was upstairs in bed but heard the commotion and so came downstairs. I don't know if she spoke to him. I can't recall anything like that.

'With the amount of blood I was losing, it was literally gushing out of my neck. I made a dash to the phone and called emergency services before I passed out. What happened then I don't know.'

Asked to describe the knife, Mr Harris said: 'It looked like a carving knife. It wasn't just a normal knife. It wasn't a bread knife. It was bigger than that.

'It was more like a butcher's-type knife. As soon as he brought it from behind his back I thought 'Got to get out of the way'. I didn't see it until his arm came round with it. He just slashed out with it.

'When I saw the knife coming I yelled 'He's got a knife' and couldn't shut the door. Because he caught me in the shoulder he put me one-sided. I couldn't shut the door because it wouldn't go. He had jammed it somehow.

'He managed to get inside and we were trying to hold him off.'

Mr Harris ran to fetch a rolling pin to fight Ralph off but he continued to lash out with the knife as the pensioner retreated into his living room.

He could not say how his wife and daughter suffered their injuries. He began to cry as he explained: 'I was collapsed at the phone. I don't know what happened to them. I never saw what happened to them unfortunately.'

He added that Ralph would have 'a laugh and a joke' with Sharon and the couple's sons, while his wife talked to him 'a hell of a lot about all sorts of things.'

Asked why Ralph would do this to them, Mr Harris, who did not attend the trial, replied: 'I don't know.'

In his 999 call, Mr Harris was able to name their attacker and Ralph was arrested within minutes. He had removed his bloodstained hoody.

He told officers he suffered from schizophrenia but said he was 'feeling fine'. They described him as calm and compliant, and said he made 'small talk' once in custody.

Ralph also requested and was permitted two calls - to his car insurance and mobile phone companies to cancel his policy and contract.

When interviewed, he said he did not recall much of what happened but remembered blood on his hands and agreed he lost control.

He repeatedly told police he was in a blind rage and also referred to having 'blacked out' at one stage.

But he refused to comment on the force he used. He said the blade, which police found still bloodstained on his kitchen worktop, had been chipped on a marrow bone some three to four years previously.

He also described himself as being upset 'dearly' by the event, but when asked if he was sad for himself or his victims, Ralph said he was not sure and always tried to look 'onwards and upwards'.

Ralph also claimed there had been a 'slight altercation' between himself and Mr and Mrs Harris the evening before he stabbed them but would not elaborate.

He said Mrs Harris did not like him smoking cannabis and he wrote her a letter to apologise for 'snapping' at her seven months earlier.

This was found by police on his toaster and it read: 'I'm sorry I said nasty things to your mum. I was tired and confused. I was really out of order.

'I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. Please find it in your hearts to forgive me. You are amazing neighbours. You deserve better than I have been to you.'




A photo showing two exhausted doctors taking a nap in an operation room at a hospital in China has once again sparked discussion on manpower shortage in the country's medial industry.

The image, which went viral on Monday, shows two surgeons, still wearing their scrubs and face masks, taking a break in an operation room at The People's Hospital of Leshan in Sichuan province after a gruelling 24-hour shift.

The rest-deprived doctors, Zeng Li and Huang Qiu, later told reporters that they took a five-minute nap while anaesthesia was being administered to their patient.

The image shows two surgeons, still wearing their scrubs and face masks, taking a break in an operation room at The People's Hospital of Leshan in Sichuan province after a gruelling 24-hour shift. Dr Huang Qiu is seen lying on the floor while Dr Zeng Li slept in a chair

The orthopedic surgeons told Cover News that the photo was snapped shortly after 7am on Saturday, when Zeng and Huang were preparing for their fifth operation of their shift.

'Huang lay on the floor while I slept in a chair,' Dr Zeng said. 'Usually the general anaesthesia procedure takes five to 10 minutes, so we seized the time to take a break.'

'The photo was taken by anesthesiologists in the operation room,' the doctor said. 'They probably thought it was funny, but at the same time, a little sad.'

Dr Zeng said surgeons at the hospital usually work from 7:30am to 7:30pm every day. They are also required to be on shift, which could last between 24 to 48 hours.

The tired doctors, Zeng Li and Huang Qiu, at The People's Hospital of Leshan told reporters that they took a five-minute nap while anaesthesia was being administered to their patient

Dr Zeng said doctors at the hospital usually work from 7:30am to 7:30pm every day. They are also required to be on shift, which could last between 24 to 48 hours

'We are all used to this work schedule already,' he said, adding that his wife is also a doctor at the same hospital.

The photo prompted widespread sympathy and support from net users on Chinese social media.

'Respect our country's medial professionals, it's not easy being a doctor,' one person commented on microblogging site Weibo.

'This picture is exactly why there are fewer and fewer doctors nowadays. It's a vicious cycle,' another said.

'This kind of work schedule is harmful to both the doctors and patients,' one wrote. 'I hope the hospital can implement better employee policies.'

Although the labour law stipulates a 40-hour work week, doctors in China work an average of 51 hours every week, according to a report by the Chinese Medical Association in January last year.

On December 30, 2017, Zhao Bianxiang (pictured), a 43-year-old female doctor from Shanxi province died from a massive stroke after an 18-hour overnight shift

At the same time, a 2014 national survey shows that 92 per cent of doctors are required to work overtime as the country's healthcare system comes under increasing strain.

On December 30, 2017, Zhao Bianxiang, a 43-year-old female doctor from Shanxi province died from a massive stroke after an 18-hour overnight shift.

In January last year, a 43-year-old male doctor from Qinghai province also died after receiving 38 patients consecutively without any breaks.

Excessive hours are not just a problem exclusive to the country's medical industry. Nearly 600,000 Chinese workers die from exhaustion every year, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Between January and July in 2017, 13 doctors reportedly died during work caused by long hours, according to Beijing News citing Chinese Circulation Journal, a Chinese medical journal.
A struggling nursing student was left in tears when she discovered that she didn't have enough money to afford the down payment on a used car.

But Kayla Cooper, 22, got the surprise of a lifetime when stranger Dan Laguardia overheard her story and decided to give his car to her for free.

Cooper had gone to Auto City in El Cajon, California with the hopes of buying a used Toyota Corolla that could take her to her two jobs.

When Cooper isn't attending classes at San Diego City College, she works as a cashier at 7-Eleven and a lot enforcer at a local parking lot in San Diego.

Struggling nursing student Kayla Cooper, 22, got the surprise of a lifetime when Dan Laguardia gave her his car for free

Cooper had been borrowing cars from family and friends so that she could get to work. If she didn't find a car before the end of the month, she would lose one of her jobs.

Laguardia was at Auto City on the same day as Cooper, looking to buy a new BMW and trade in his 2005 Scion xB.

The father-of-four was sitting at the table next to Cooper and could tell she was upset.

'I really wasn't trying to be nosy, but I heard her sales guy say, "Can somebody help you out? Do you have a family member or friend?" That's when I tuned into the conversation,' he told Good Morning America.

Cooper broke down in tears when she realized she couldn't afford the down payment on the Corolla.

Cooper had gone to Auto City in El Cajon, California with the hopes of buying a used Toyota Corolla that could take her to her two jobs but couldn't afford the down payment

Laguardia was at Auto City on the same day as Cooper, looking to buy a new BMW and trade in his 2005 Scion xB. He decided to give the Scion to Cooper, at no cost, instead (pictured)

'I use my car to work at Ace - that's the only reason I got the position, because I had a car,' she said. 'I was feeling really upset because I went into it with good intentions.'

The salesperson comforted Cooper and she left Auto City. But Laguardia knew he wanted to help.

He asked the salesperson to call Cooper back to the dealership, and offered her his 2005 Scion for free.

'The car had more value to her than it did for me trading it in,' Laguardia told KGTV.

'She just couldn't believe it. She said, "Can I give you a hug?" and I said, "Of course."'

Cooper said she was shaking as Laguardia signed over the car's title and handed her the keys.

'It's a whole car,' she said. 'How can someone be so generous to give their car away?'

Cooper said she was shaking as Laguardia signed over the car's title and handed over the keys

Laguardia said the car will help give Cooper 'a bit of a jumpstart in life'.

'Which, if everybody did that for everybody else, we'd be in a much better place,' he added.

Laguardia said the car will help give Cooper 'a bit of a jumpstart in life'. 'Which, if everybody did that for everybody else, we'd be in a much better place,' he added

Seoul Fields, who works at Auto City, witnessed Laguardia's act of kindness and took to Facebook to share the sweet story.

Fields also saw Cooper break down in tears after she realized she couldn't finance the car, and said everyone at the dealership 'felt really bad'.

'She leaves and the gentleman asks if we were able to help her. The salesperson says no and is visibly upset about it,' Fields recalled.

'The guy says, call your customer back I'm giving her my trade-in. She comes in a few minutes later, he signs over the title and hands her the keys.'

'While he sat in finance, she sat in the car crying.'

Fields posted a sweet picture of Cooper getting into her new car, which has since been shared more than 11,000 times on Facebook.

Cooper said she is 'still in shock' over the gift.

'How could someone give it away without anything in return? It's been the biggest blessing of my life,' she said.

'I hope and pray that someday I can do the same big gesture that he did.'
The hero imam who saved the Finsbury Park attacker from an angry crowd has been spat on and called 'despicable' after leaving a London mosque meeting which had been promoting unity after the New Zealand attack.

Imam Mohammed Mahmoud claims he was called 'despicable' and a 's***hole' by a man on a bus and that he was spat at by a cyclist after making his way home from a meeting with religious leaders, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the Home Secretary.

They had been attending the event in Regent's Park Mosque yesterday in order to promote inclusion and tolerance.

They had also heard Mr Javid pledge to do all in his power to protect Muslims in this country from growing violence and aggression.

Imam Mohammed Mahmoud (pictured centre) had previously stopped any retaliation following the Finsbury Park mosque attack in 2017

Imam Mahmoud had previously been praised for calming fellow Muslims and preventing retaliation after far-right terrorist Darren Osbourne attacked worshippers in 2017.

Mr Mahmoud said he and a 'group of brothers' had managed to 'extinguish any flames of mob rule' as members of the public attempted to hurt the alleged terrorist 'from every angle' following the Finsbury Park attack.

He highlighted that the event at Regent's Park had been 'important and beautiful'.

However, speaking to the Evening Standard he said what he experienced on the way home showed the continuous threats which are posed to Muslims in the UK.

This is the moment Finsbury Park Imam Mohammed Mahmoud (pictured centre in white) held down the man accused of launching a terror attack

He said he had been subjected to 'Islamaphobic abuse' in two separate incidents on his way home from the event.

He said: 'The first was on public transport on my route home.

'A middle aged white male on the bus told me I was 'despicable' and a 's***hole' and that the whole country was 'f***'. When I asked why - he said it was because I was wearing a dress.'

He also said that a 'white lady on the bus' had shown disapproval of the behaviour towards him and that it was 'nice to see'.

Darren Osborne (pictured above) was found guilty of carrying out the Finsbury Park terror attack

But when he got off the bus he was abused for a second time on Whitechapel road by a cyclist.

He added: 'I chased after him but he got away. It was so sad to see such reckless hate and Islamophobia after the event and after all we have been through this week.'

The Imam said he would be reporting both incidents to the police after he returns from New Zealand.

Mr Mahmoud is flying out today in order to visit the mosques which were attacked during Friday's massacre.

The recent abuse towards the Imam will heighten concerns regarding the growing number of Islamophobic incidents across the country.

Such incidents include a suspected far-right stabbing near Heathrow, over the weekend, and several other incidents of alleged Islamophobia in other parts of the country following the New Zealand killings.

In London police figures show that the number of Islamophobic crimes reached an all-time high in June 2017, with 368 offences recorded.

Since then numbers have dipped with 79 such crimes recorded in February this year.

In response to concerns from campaigners and London's chief crown prosecutors, who stated that many incidents were not being dealt with correctly by police, the Home Secretary today announced that the budget for the government 'places of worship protective funding scheme' will increase to 1.6 million next year  double the sum allocated this year.

Qualifying criteria is set to be relaxed so that sites which are deemed to be at risk will be eligible for financial support to install security measures.

Another 5million is also set to be coughed up in the next three years for protective security training, which is set to enable worshippers and others to gain advice on how to safeguard those who attend mosques or religious venues.

Mr Javid said: 'The horrific events in New Zealand are a direct attack on the values of tolerance and freedom of worship that unite us all.

'Nobody should ever fear persecution of their faith and it's vital we stand together to reject those who seek to spread hatred and divide us.

'I know many Muslim communities are feeling vulnerable and anxious. But they should seek comfort from knowing we are doing everything to tackle hate and extremism.

'That's why we are doubling next year's places of worship fund - providing physical protection as well as peace of mind.'
The Supreme Court on Tuesday endorsed the U.S. government's authority to detain immigrants awaiting deportation anytime - potentially even years - after they have completed prison terms for criminal convictions, handing President Donald Trump a victory as he pursues hardline immigration policies.

The court ruled 5-4 along ideological lines, with its conservative justices in the majority and its liberal justices dissenting, that federal authorities could pick up such immigrants and place them into indefinite detention anytime, not just immediately after they finish their prison sentences.

The ruling, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, left open the possibility that some individual immigrants could challenge their detention. These immigrants potentially could argue that the use of the 1996 federal law involved in the case, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, against them long after finishing their sentences would violate their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The law states the government can detain convicted immigrants 'when the alien is released' from criminal detention. Civil rights lawyers argued that the language of the law shows that it applies only immediately after immigrants are released. The Trump administration said the government should have the power to detain such immigrants anytime.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the federal government can hold illegal immigrants without bail if they are picked up after completing criminal prison sentences  regardless of how long it took authorities to re-arrest them

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that illegals must be given a chance to make bail unless federal authorities re-arrested them on the same day they were released; the Supreme Court disagreed, giving ICE and other agencies an unlimited window of time to take them back into custody without worrying about a bail release

It is not the court's job, Alito wrote, to impose a time limit for when immigrants can be detained after serving a prison sentence. Alito noted that the court has said in the past that 'an official's crucial duties are better carried out late than never.'

Alito said the challengers' assertion that immigrants had to be detained within 24 hours of ending a prison sentence is 'especially hard to swallow.'

In dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer questioned whether the U.S. Congress when it wrote the law 'meant to allow the government to apprehend persons years after their release from prison and hold them indefinitely without a bail hearing.'

Tuesday's decision follows a February 2018 ruling in a similar case in which the conservative majority, over liberal dissent, curbed the ability of immigrants held in long-term detention during deportation proceedings to argue for release.

Cecilia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the newly decided case for the challengers, said that in both rulings 'the Supreme Court has endorsed the most extreme interpretation of immigration detention statutes, allowing mass incarceration of people without any hearing, simply because they are defending themselves against a deportation charge.'

Trump has backed limits on legal and illegal immigrants since taking office in January 2017.

Kerri Kupec, a U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman, said administration officials were pleased with the ruling.

In both of the detention cases, the Supreme Court reversed the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a liberal leaning court that Trump has frequently criticized. In each case, litigation against the federal government started before Trump took office.

In the latest case, the administration had appealed a 2016 9th Circuit ruling that favored immigrants, a decision it said would undermine the government's ability to deport immigrants who have committed crimes.

Criminals like these accused members of the murderous MS-13 gang sometimes post bail and leave immigration jails, never to return for their hearings; Tuesday's case was mostly about green card holders who had committed less serious crimes

The Supreme Court majority opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito from the conservative wing; Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a more liberal dissent

The appeals court had said that convicted immigrants who are not immediately detained by immigration authorities after finishing their sentences but then later picked by immigration authorities could seek bond hearings to argue for their release.

The plaintiffs included two legal U.S. residents involved in separate lawsuits filed in 2013, a Cambodian immigrant named Mony Preap convicted of marijuana possession and a Palestinian immigrant named Bassam Yusuf Khoury convicted of attempting to manufacture a controlled substance.

Under federal immigration law, immigrants convicted of certain offenses are subject to mandatory detention during their deportation process. They can be held indefinitely without a bond hearing after completing their sentences.

In the most significant immigration-related case recently before the court, the conservative justices were also in the majority in June 2018 when they upheld on a 5-4 vote Trump's travel ban on targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries.

But in April 2018, conservative Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch joined with the court's four liberal justices in a 5-4 ruling that could hinder the administration's ability to step up the removal of immigrants with criminal records, invalidating a provision in another law, the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Former Bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston Michael Bransfield (pictured) is accused of knowingly employing pedophiles

A Catholic diocese and its former bishop in West Virginia knowingly employed pedophiles and failed to conduct adequate background checks on camp and school workers, a lawsuit states.

The suit by State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey against the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and Bishop Michael Bransfield comes about a week after church officials barred Bransfield from priestly duties.

This followed an investigation into claims that Bransfield, 75, sexually harassed adults and committed financial improprieties.

'The Catholic Church has been covering up, concealing and denying that it's harbored child-molesting priests for a long time, including right here in West Virginia,' Morrisey said at a news conference.

The suit alleges the diocese and Bransfield chose to cover up arguably criminal behavior.

It also claims the diocese employed admitted sexual abusers and priests credibly accused of child sexual abuse without adequate background checks.

In one decades-old instance cited in the lawsuit, Rev. Victor Frobas, who was forced out of the Philadelphia seminary system because of a credible accusation of child sexual abuse.

He was made the director of a summer youth camp owned by the diocese. He was then accused of sexually abusing children at that post and, following a leave of absence, was later assigned to work as a chaplain at Wheeling Central Catholic High School, the lawsuit said.

In 1987, Frobas was indicted for molesting two boys at a parish in suburban St. Louis. He pleaded guilty, served about two years and then died in 1993, according to the lawsuit.

Bransfield, 75, (pictured), was investigated by the church admit claims he sexually harassed adults and committed financial improprieties

Pope Francis (pictured) accepted Bransfield's resignation in September and appointed Baltimore Archbishop William Lori to take over the Wheeling-Charleston diocese.

'We believe an important first step for the diocese is to come clean with what it knows,' Morrisey said.

'The church should open its files to the public and disclose what happened with every credible allegation of sexual abuse that was brought to the diocese's attention, while protecting the identity of victims and their families.'

Morrisey said the case was brought under the state's consumer credit and protection act. He claimed his office is in the process of referring individual cases to local prosecutors.

West Virginia District Attorney Patrick Morrisey (pictured) claimed the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston knowingly employed pedophiles and didn't conduct adequate background checks on camp and school workers

A diocese spokesman did not return a voicemail message, and no one responded to a voicemail left with a phone number listed for Bransfield.

The Vatican announced that Pope Francis accepted Bransfield's resignation in September and appointed Baltimore Archbishop William Lori to take over the Wheeling-Charleston diocese.

Bransfield had been implicated in a 2012 case against Philadelphia priests accused of sexual abuse, but he denied abusing anyone.

Last week, Catholic Church officials said they were imposing ministerial restrictions on Bransfield pending the Holy See's final assessment on the investigation into the claims in West Virginia.

A Catholic high school in Wheeling, West Virginia, voted recently to remove Bransfield's name from a gym. His name also has been removed from a care center at Wheeling Hospital.

Tim Lennon, president of the board of directors of the national nonprofit group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, applauded the attorney general's suit.

'It holds those people - those criminals - accountable and those who are complicit in covering up for those criminals, accountable,' he said.
A U.S. congressman and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law is calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook for potentially violating antitrust laws.

Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, described this moment as a 'massive credibility crisis' for the federal Commission and criticized officials for allowing the social media giant to acquire Whats App and Instagram.

In a New York Times editorial, Cicilline said that the FTC has ignored privacy advocates for years as they've sought to alert the agency that Facebook was likely violating commitments it made under a 2011 consent order with the Commission.

That order included privacy and data security requirements for Facebook, which Cicilline suggests have been ignored or violated by the company.

The FTC has confirmed that it is investigating whether that agreement has been breached, though Cicilline said a full-scale antitrust investigation is also necessary.

Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, is calling for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook for antitrust violations. Cicilline is shown in a file photo in January 2019 in Washington DC

'How the commission chooses to respond to Facebook's repeated abuses will determine whether it is willing or able to promote competition and protect consumers,' he wrote. 'If the commission does conclude that Facebook has violated the consent order, how it fixes this problem through a legal remedy will be a test of its effectiveness.'

Facebook officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment by DailyMail.com.

The company has been widely criticized since it was revealed a year ago that it allowed Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting company, to 'exploit the personal information of up to 87 million users, to obtain data that would help the company's clients "fight a culture war in America,"' Cicilline wrote.

In the months since that revelation, new accounts of impropriety by Cambridge Analytica have been discovered.

The company has paid teenagers to install software that will spy on their behavior, and asked users 'to screenshot their Amazon order history page,' according to TechCrunch.

'(Facebook) has secretly collected highly sensitive data through the back doors of other apps, such as ovulation trackers, to target ads at users,' Cicilline wrote.

And the company has used such tactics effectively  even when app users weren't Facebook members, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill April 10, 2018 in Washington, DC

Facebook has also given user data to at least 60 different device makers  which is currently under criminal investigation, according to The New York Times.

'After each misdeed becomes public, Facebook alternates between denial, hollow promises and apology campaigns,' Cicillene wrote. 'But nothing changes.'

Cicilline likened Facebook's tactics to those of Big Tobacco, when it comes to deflecting congressional oversight and smearing its critics .

All of this amounts to a crisis that requires government intervention, Cicilline argued, noting that other agencies and governments have sought to rein Facebook's power and reach.

The Washington D.C. attorney general filed a complaint in December, suing the company for failing to protect millions of users' data.

In Germany, antitrust authorities found that Facebook 'abused its dominance' and took steps to limit the company's data collection practices.

The British Parliament conducted an investigation that likened Facebook to 'digital gangsters' that believe they are 'ahead of and beyond the law.'

The FTC has the authority fine Facebook for any misdeeds, though Cicillene noted that with $55 billion in revenue last year, 'even a fine in the low billions of dollars will amount to a slap on the wrist.'

For that reason, the congressman called for strong sanctions against the company to ensure that Facebook is discouraged from any further violations.

'America's laws are not suggestions,' Cicillene wrote. 'When a company has repeatedly shown contempt for its legal commitments, the remedy must change how the company operates.'

Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, is calling for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook for antitrust violations. File photo

'Enforcement agencies can do this through deep reforms of the company's structure,' he added. 'This includes removing members of the company's board, or even top executives, along with other changes to the company's business model to address dysfunction at the top.'

Even that would not be enough of a reprimand for a company that has allegedly spied on its rivals and used its dominance to 'cripple' competitors by cutting them off from its network, Cicillene argued.

For example, in 2013, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved the company's decision to block Vine  a once fast-growing video creation rival that has since plummeted in popularity.

Even more worrying, Cicillene says, is Facebook's recent announcement that the company would merge Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook into one product.

'Together, these reports suggest a disturbing pattern of anticompetitive conduct,' he wrote. 'Watchdogs and consumers alike report that the quality of Facebook's products has declined. It has killed innovation and eliminated competitive threats. And the price for advertising on the platform has continued to rise.'

'In other words, there is a smoking gun,' Cicillene added.
Josef Fritzl, jailed for life for keeping his own daughter as a sex slave for 24 years, is suffering from rapidly deteriorating health and inmates believe he is aware that he is near the end.

Fritzl, 84, kept his daughter Elisabeth locked in a soundproof dungeon in the basement of the family home in Amstetten, Austria, raping her over 3,000 times and fathering seven children with her.

Her ordeal finally came to an end in April 2008, when their sick teenage daughter Kerstin had to be taken to hospital, and Fritzl was jailed on March 19, 2009.

Fritzl, who is currently behind bars in Krems-Stein prison, is reportedly suffering from dementia and his condition has deteriorated in recent weeks.

Evil monster: Josef Fritzl, pictured at the time of his arrest in 2008, was jailed for life after confessing to imprisoning his daughter Elisabeth in a windowless cellar in the basement of the family home in Amstetten, north-west Austria, on August 24, 1984, keeping her there for 24 years, raping her thousands of times, and fathering her seven children

Dying: Fritzl, now 84, pictured at Sankt Poelten prison where he was previously held, in 2010, is reportedly suffering from dementia and 'has resigned to dying' according to fellow inmates

A fellow prisoner told local media: 'Fritzl was and still is separated from everyone else.

'He has totally withdrawn himself and barely leaves his cell. He doesn't want contact with others, and all together it looks as though he has resigned himself to dying.'

He added that the other inmates do not want anything to do with Austria's most infamous convict.

The prisoner said: 'Just hearing his name makes me nauseous.'

The Austrian authorities have refused to comment on Fritzl's state of health.

Elisabeth, pictured as a young girl, endured years of horrific abuse at the hands of her father who is now languishing in jail

Elisabeth Fritzl, now 52, has not had any contact with her father since he was jailed and lives under a new alias in an unknown part of Austria with the children conceived during the decades he own father brutally raped her.

Fritzl's horrific crimes were only discovered when one of the children, Kerstin, slipped into a coma and he took her to hospital where doctors noted her malnourished condition and rotting teeth.

When Elisabeth was given permission to finally leave the dungeon to visit Kerstin in hospital, she was arrested and subsequently told the police about the horrific crimes her father had committed.

Fritzl, who said during his trial that he 'actually meant well', was jailed for life in March 2009.

Fritzl is pictured at his trial on March 19, 2009, when he was sentenced to life in prison

He is said to be extremely unpopular with other inmates and has to be kept in solitary confinement with four guards watching him.

In March 2016, Fritzl lost several teeth after getting into a punch-up with another inmate after prisoners set up a fake online dating profile for him.

In 2017, Fritzl paid 545.60 euros (462) to have his surname changed to Mayrhoff.

Unnamed inmates claimed that Fritzl, otherwise known as prisoner HNR 90632, wants to spend the last days of his life in 'anonymity'.

According to reports, the basement where Elisabeth was held has since been filled in by the Austrian authorities to prevent other perverts from worshipping it as a shrine.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed the law banning cashless stores, effective immediately, on Monday

Cashless stores and restaurants in New Jersey have been banned under a new law that forces them to accept all legal tender.

Retailers who've adopted the practice argue that eradicating cash makes for more convenient transactions and protects shoppers from robbers.

But critics complained that the increasingly popular practice was classist, as it excludes those who may not have access to a bank account, debit or credit card.

'Many people don't have access to consumer credit and any effort by retail establishments to ban the use of cash is discriminatory towards those people,' Democratic state Assemblyman Paul Moriarty said in a statement.

According to a FDIC survey, 6.5 per cent of all American households - around eight million families - did not have a bank account.

Black and Latino households were disproportionately affected, at 16.9 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.

New Jersey's Democratic Governor Phil Murphy signed the law on Monday, becoming only the second state to do so after Massachusetts, whose corresponding 'obscure' law stating that no retailer 'shall discriminate against a cash buyer by requiring the use of credit' dates back to 1978.

Critics say the cashless policy actually discriminates against those without bank accounts, credit cards or those who just prefer using cash

Murphy follows in the footsteps of Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, who signed a motion banning stores in the city from enacting a cashless service in March.

New York Councilman Ritchie Torres is reportedly trying to bring similar legislation to the city, while San Francisco and Chicago are also considering adopting similar laws.

The law, effective immediately, does not apply to online, mail and phone orders, nor to car rental companies, some airport outlets and garages.
India threatened to fire at least six missiles at Pak, and Islamabad said it would respond with its own missile strikes 'three times over'.

The way in which tensions suddenly worsened and threatened to trigger a war between the two nations. (Representational Image)

New Delhi: The sparring between India and Pakistan last month threatened to spiral out of control and only interventions by US officials, including National Security Advisor John Bolton, headed off a bigger conflict, five sources familiar with the events said, according to news agency Reuters.

At one stage, India threatened to fire at least six missiles at Pakistan, and Islamabad said it would respond with its own missile strikes "three times over", according to Western diplomats and government sources in New Delhi, Islamabad and Washington.

The way in which tensions suddenly worsened and threatened to trigger a war between the two nations. The exchanges did not get beyond threats, and there was no suggestion that the missiles involved were anything more than conventional weapons, but they created consternation in official circles in Washington, Beijing and London.

Reuters has pieced together the events that led to the most serious military crisis in South Asia since 2008, as well as the concerted diplomatic efforts to get both sides to back down.

The simmering dispute erupted into conflict late last month when Indian and Pakistani warplanes engaged in a dogfight over Jammu and Kashmir on Feb 27, a day after a raid by Indian jet fighters on a terrorist camp in Pakistan.

Islamabad denied any terrorist camp exists in the area and said the Indian bombs exploded on an empty hillside.

In their first such clash since the last war between the two nations in 1971, Pakistan downed an Indian plane and captured its pilot after he ejected in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Indian Air Force said it too had shot down a Pakistani fighter jet.

Hours later, videos of the bloodied Indian pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, handcuffed and blindfolded, appeared on social media, identifying himself to Pakistani interrogators, deepening anger in New Delhi. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi facing a general election in April-May, the government was under pressure to respond.

"No going back"

That evening, Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval spoke over a secure line to the head of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Asim Munir, to tell him India was not going to back off its new campaign of "counter-terrorism" even after the pilot's capture, an Indian government source and a Western diplomat with knowledge of the conversations told Reuters in New Delhi.

Doval told Munir that India's fight was with the terrorist groups that freely operated from Pakistani soil and it was prepared to escalate, said the government source.

A Pakistani government minister and a Western diplomat in Islamabad separately confirmed a specific Indian threat to use six missiles on targets inside Pakistan.

They did not specify who delivered the threat or who received it, but the minister said Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies "were communicating with each other during the fight, and even now they are communicating with each other". Pakistan said it would counter any Indian missile attacks with many more launches of its own, the minister told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We said if you will fire one missile, we will fire three. Whatever India will do, we will respond three times to that," the Pakistani minister said. Doval's office did not respond to a request for comment.

India was not aware of any missile threat issued to Pakistan, a government official said in reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Pakistan's military declined to comment and Munir could not be reached for comment.

Pakistan's foreign ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Trump-Kim talks

The crisis unfolded as US President Donald Trump was trying to hammer out an agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi over its nuclear programme.

US security advisor Bolton was on the phone with Doval on the night of Feb 27 itself, and into the early hours of Feb 28, the second day of the Trump-Kim talks, in an attempt to defuse the situation, the Western diplomat in New Delhi and the Indian official said.

Later, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was also in Hanoi, also called both sides to seek a way out of the crisis.

"Secretary Pompeo led diplomatic engagement directly, and that played an essential role in de-escalating the tensions between the two sides," State Department deputy spokesperson Robert Palladino said in a briefing in Washington on March 5.

A State Department official declined comment when asked if they knew of the threats to use missiles.

Pompeo spoke to Doval, the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers Sushma Swaraj and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, respectively, Palladino said.

US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Phil Davidson told reporters in Singapore last week that he had separately been in touch with the Indian navy chief, Sunil Lanba, throughout the crisis.

There was no immediate response from Admiral Lanba's office to a question on the nature of the conversations.

US efforts were focused on securing the quick release of the Indian pilot by Pakistan and winning an assurance from India it would pull back from the threat to fire rockets, the Western diplomat in New Delhi and officials in Washington said.

"We made a lot of effort to get the international community involved in encouraging the two sides to de-escalate the situation because we fully realised how dangerous it was," said a senior Trump administration official.

The Pakistani minister said China and the United Arab Emirates also intervened.

China's foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

The government of the UAE said Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan held talks with both PM Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan.

India has not given details, but has said it was in touch with major powers during the conflict.

On the morning of Feb 28, Trump told reporters in Hanoi that he expected the crisis to end soon.

"They have been going at it and we have been involved in trying to have them stop. Hopefully that is going to be coming to an end."

Later that afternoon, Khan announced in Pakistan's parliament that Wing Commander Varthaman would be released, and he was sent back the next day.

"I know last night there was a threat there could a missile attack on Pakistan, which got defused," Khan said

"I know, our army stood prepared for retaliation of that attack."

The two countries have gone to war three times since both gained independence in 1947, the last time in 1971.

The two armies are trading fire along the line of control that separates them in Jammu and Kashmir, but the tensions appear contained for now.
A chiropractor and her husband have been found murdered in their home.

Lois and Michael Ladd, aged 68 and 79, were found dead in their home in Eldersville, Illinois, on Monday at 10.30am after an employee from Lois' practice called police to say she was worried about her.

The Eldersville Police Department is refusing to reveal how they died and officers rejected questions from DailyMail.com on Tuesday, but they have categorized their deaths as homicides.

The pair lived alone and did not have any children.

Lois and Michael Ladd, aged 68 and 79, were found dead in their Illinois home on Monday morning in what police are calling a double murder. They will not say how they died

It is not known how long they had been dead or what condition their home was in but the pair were seen dining out on Saturday night at a local bar.

'Were working feverishly right now to get as many leads as we can,' Jeff Connor, chief deputy commander for the Major Case Squad said at a press conference on Monday morning.

Friends described Lois as a well-traveled, happy woman.

They said she was dressed in green in celebration of St. Patrick's Day on Saturday when she and her husband went to Stagger Inn Again to have dinner.

The couple were found inside their home in Eldersville, Illinois (pictured) on Monday after one of Lois's employees called police worried about her. They were last seen on Saturday in a local restaurant

'She just got back from Thailand.

'Shes traveled all over the world. She was a highly intelligent woman.

'She was a kind woman. She just had such a positive energy,', Judy Obermeier told The Belleville News Democrat.

Others have since revealed that Lois would give them free treatment if they did not have health insurance or only charge them $20 for a session.

Michael had a construction company with ongoing jobs and was also well-liked in the community.

Anyone with information is urged to contact police on 618-692-7552.
Snapchat says it has not received a formal request from police over abusive messages allegedly sent to murder victim Breck Bednar's family by his killer.

Breck, 14, was stabbed to death by Lewis Daynes in Grays, Essex in 2014, after the pair met on a gaming website.

Daynes is currently serving a life sentence for the 'sexually or sadistically motivated' murder, but his victim's family say he is contacting them from his jail cell.

In 2016, they suspected Daynes of being behind two Google blogs which blamed them for Breck's death.

Earlier this year, Breck's mother Lorin said he had sent taunting Snapchat messages to her 17-year-old daughter, Chloe, threatening to smash Breck's gravestone and dig up his body.

Snapchat was criticised over delays in handing over information to the police investigating the family's claims.

However, when the issue was raised with Snapchat bosses at Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee this morning, Snapchat director Stephen Collins said his company has not received a formal request for information in the case.

Breck Bednar, 14, was murdered in 2014. His mother, Lorin LaFave (right), says his killer has contacted her family from his prison cell

Mr Collins said Kent Police, who are investigating the family's claims, had contacted the company for advice on the process of obtaining data from it.

But, he added, the police force has not yet followed up asking for specific information.

Mr Collins said that, if the police did make the request, it was possible that the company would be unable to release the data due to laws in the U.S., where it is based.

Mr Collins told the committee: 'It's our legal obligation to comply with U.S. law. We have to abide by United States law.

'There are exceptional circumstances, such as terrorism cases, child exploitation cases and imminent threat to life situations where we will act in act in good faith and directly respond to the requests.'

Lewis Daynes stabbed Breck to death after they met on a gaming website. He is currently serving a life sentence

Mr Collins said the company has a good relationship with police, but that the Legal Assistance Treaty, which determines how data is handed over between countries, is 'a very slow process'.

He said new acts in the US and the UK should speed that process up in the coming months.

A Kent Police spokesman said: 'We received a report of malicious communications on Tuesday 22 January 2019. Enquiries into the matter remain ongoing.'

It is understood detectives are examining the strict criteria needed for data held by Snapchat in the U.S. to be released.

The Snapchat bosses were also questioned on other issues facing the company.

Committee chair, MP Damien Collins, put to them that Snapchat's 'streaks'  which reward friends who repeatedly message each other - can create peer pressure on children to keep messaging as a 'measurement of their friendship'.

Mr Scougal said the app was designed to help friends have fun together and wasn't intended to create peer pressure. He said the app was designed to create positive experiences.

Snapchat directors Stephen Collins and Will Scougal appeared before the Commons Culture committee today

Snapchat's Mr Collins said they don't want under-13s on the app and they have measures to stop children younger than that age from downloading the app and detecting young users.

He said they were working with the Home Office to set up a 'central verification system' to give parents consent over what their children use on their phones.

Ian Lucas MP used his phone to open an account on Snapchat during the committee hearing, despite initially putting in the date of birth of a 10-year-old during his first attempt. He said that showed that age verification system he used didn't work and 'was not acceptable'.

The two bosses insisted they did not want children on their app and were working to give parents better control.
A convicted killer went on to murder a 65-year-old property developer just 18 months after he was released from prison on licence at medium risk for his first murder, an inquest has heard.

Ian Birley murdered John Gogarty at his home in Barnsley, Yorkshire, in 2015.

A coroner heard on Tuesday how Birley was on licence at the time, having murdered a pensioner in 1995.

Birley was out of prison on licence for murder at the time of the killing, having served 18 years of a life term. He had been deemed to be 'medium risk'

Birley, alongside his then-girlfriend Helen Nichols, stabbed Mr Gogarty 69 times.

Witnesses explained how the pair had broken into Mr Gogarty's home and demanded his PIN before stealing his wallet and carrying out the brutal attack.

They then proceeded to withdraw 500 from his bank account - which was to be used to service a drug debt Birley had incurred - before then taking a bottle Bollinger champagne from the victim's property and burning their clothes in a wooded area, the inquest heard.

Mr Gogarty's body was found four days later, on July 17, 2015, by his son.

The inquest was told how Birley had previously killed a man named Maurice Hoyle in 1995 and was on licence for that offence when he committed the second murder.

John Gogarty, 65, was stabbed to death by Birley in his home in Wombwell, near Barnsley

He was given a whole-life jail sentence at Sheffield Crown Court in 2015, while Nichols was given a minimum 20-year term, having both been convicted of Mr Gogarty's murder.

Sheffield Coroner's Court heard on Tuesday how the victim's family had won the right to a full inquest so certain elements of the events leading up to Birley's release from jail in 2013 could be considered.

Giving evidence, the victim's daughter, Nicola Gogarty, told the inquest: 'The death has obviously devastated the whole family.

'It's been a huge trauma and of course it's been very heard to move on from it.

'In my heart I do believe that my dad would still be here had things been done.'

Miss Gogarty told the court how she had been informed Birley had been deemed to be a 'medium risk' when he was released from jail in December 2013.

Detective Sergeant Karen Whitehouse, of South Yorkshire Police, explained how the force was unaware of the killer's release conditions and licence conditions as a probation report issued upon his release was not logged on their systems.

Nichols, Birley's girlfriend, was ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years - she went to a cash point and took 500 so Birley could repay a debt he owed to a drug dealer for crack cocaine after stealing Mr Gogarty's card

But it was shown a report from the National Probation Service had been sent to the force on December 13, 2013, detailing Birley's address, his supervision officer and his licence conditions - including one stating he should abstain from drinking alcohol.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Handley, of South Yorkshire Police, led the investigation into the death of Mr Gogarty, who was originally from County Louth in Ireland, and said Birley had shown signs of being 'chaotic' in the lead-up to the killing.

Speaking about the second killing, he said: 'From a previous interaction with Mr Gogarty, Mr Birley was under the impression that he was a man of some means.

'At a point in time a while after this interaction, Mr Birley, under fear of a diminishing ability to gain the income to service his debt, used the information he had previously obtained to determine that that was the best opportunity available to him.'

The inquest, which is expected to last five days, continues.
Iowa Attorney General's Office has filed a lawsuit to shut down a national puppy laundering ring that sells dogs from illegal breeding operations at inflated prices.

The office said it filed a lawsuit on Monday against breeder J.A.K.'s Puppies, and nonprofits Hobo K9 Rescue and Rescue Pets Iowa Corp.

The lawsuit also alleges four people - Jolyn Noethe, Kimberly Dolphin, Megan Peterson, and Russell Kirk - violated Iowa's consumer fraud act.

J.A.K.'S Puppies in Iowa (pictured) acquired the animals from puppy mills then sold them to Hobo K9, which sold them for profit, the lawsuit said

Kirk is the president of Rescue Pets, declined to comment to the Des Moines Register. Noethe, Dolphin and Peterson are all officers with Hobo K9 and J.A.K.'s. The newspaper was unable to reach them for comment.

The groups are accused of exporting designer dogs from Iowa to pet shops in other states.

The petition alleges that one of the non-profits, Hobo K9 Rescue of Britt, sold at least 1,290 puppies to eight different entities in California, Illinois, Florida and New Jersey, from September 2016 to July 2018.

The puppies, including Pomeranians, Shar-Peis, Alaskan Malamutes, Poodle-Yorkies and other breeds, were allegedly sold for $714,510.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said: 'No matter where they live, consumers should not be misled about the source of the pets they buy.

'Puppy laundering obscures the identity of breeders who may have animal welfare violations or other problems.'

Images from Companion Animal Protection Society shows animals at one of the puppy mills that supplies to J.A.K.'s

Dogs for sale at a pet store with a sign on display showing that the canine is from Hobo K-9

A dog is seen here at a puppy mill, which supplies dogs to J.A.K.'s Puppies and Hobo K-9, according to Companion Animal Protection Society which is working with the Iowa Attorney General on the case

The state is seeking $40,000 in fines per violation, plus reimbursement to defrauded customers.

It says the operations sold almost 1,300 animals in California, Illinois, Florida and New Jersey for more than $700,000.

The office said it was asking a judge to permanently dissolve Hobo K9 Rescue and Rescue Pets for abusing their authorities under Iowas nonprofit laws.

A warehouse, (pictured) in Iowa owned by for-profit dog dealer J.A.K.'S Puppies houses puppies for transport to stores. After Chicago passed its anti-puppy mill law, J.A.K.'S owners formed the nonprofit Hobo K-9 Rescue.

The lawsuit alleges that one of the non-profits, Hobo K9 Rescue of Britt, sold at least 1,290 puppies to eight different entities in California, Illinois, Florida and New Jersey, from September 2016 to July 2018

The office said it was asking a judge to permanently dissolve Hobo K9 Rescue and Rescue Pets for abusing their authorities under Iowas nonprofit laws.

Millers office has been investigating the puppy-laundering ring since June 2018.

In response to a subpoena from the AGs Consumer Protection Division, Hobo K9 said its mission is to 'help unwanted or undesirable canines and/or felines find their forever homes.'

However the AG's office said that Hobo K9 sold pure-bred puppies, not older dogs, to out-of-state pet shops.

Puppy Mills: A well-kept secret of the pet trade industry A puppy mill is a large-scale commercial dog breeding operation where profit is given priority over the well-being of the dogs Puppies born there are often sold at as young as 8 weeks old, to brokers or retailers who then sell the puppies to the consumer Some puppy mills sell directly to the public through web sites, newspaper classifieds or at flea markets The biggest problem with puppy mills is animal cruelty and the poor quality of care and inhumane treatment of breeding dogs and their offspring California and Chicago have banned the commercial sale of pets obtained from sources other than animal control shelters or rescue groups Advertisement

In one case, Park Pet Shop in Chicago 'adopted out' a 'rescued' Goldendoodle puppy from Hobo K9 for $3,599.99, according to the lawsuit.

Hobo K9 also transferred money to J.A.K.s to pay for the puppies.

'Because Defendants Noethe, Dolphin and Peterson are officers in both Defendant Hobo K9 Rescue and Defendant J.A.K.s Puppies, it appears they must claim to rescue puppies from themselves  or from the for-profit puppy mill industry in which they participate,' the lawsuit says.

After the AGs office began investigating, the defendants started a 'brand-new sham charity' called Rescue Pets Iowa Corp. in December 2018, according to the lawsuit.

Investigators obtained certificates of veterinary inspections from the Iowa Department of Agriculture that show Rescue Pets have exported several purebred and designer puppies to California and other states.

The documents contain the signature of Noethe, showing a link between Rescue Pets and the other defendants.

Californias statewide ban on the sale of puppy mill dogs went into effect January 1, 2019, yet defendants continue to ship their 'rescue' dogs to California using sham entities, the lawsuit alleges.

Companion Animal Protection Society (CAPS) investigated Hobo K-9 Rescue last year and provided photo evidence to the Iowa Attorney General which it posted on Facebook.
An Illinois preschool teacher has been placed on administrative leave after they allegedly punished their toddler students by making them strip off their clothes and stand naked in a closet for misbehaving.

The unnamed 26-year-old teacher was given paid leave after police were alerted about the disturbing punishment at the Head Start preschool program operated by Southern Illinois University in East St. Louis.

The shocking discipline had reportedly been taking place since early February and police were notified about the allegations last week.

A second teacher, 41, was also given leave for allegedly witnessing the reported punishment and failing to report the teacher.

Two preschool teachers have been placed on paid administrative after a 26-year-old instructor alleged punished preschool students by making them stand naked in a closet for 10 minutes, and another teacher saw it and failed to report them

The horrific incident took place at a Head Start preschool program located at the Southern Illinois University in East St. Louis, Illinois (above)

The teacher who allegedly led the punishment had worked at the program for three years. The second instructor who witnessed the alleged incident and didn't report it had worked with the program for the past five years.

Police say misbehaving four and five-year-old students in the preschool class were told to take off their clothes and stand naked in a closet for up to 10 humiliating minutes.

A parent complained about the discipline after hearing stories from her son, leading police to get involved.

'Children would misbehave in class and the teacher would have them disrobe and stand them, make them stand inside a closet for five or 10 minutes as their discipline. Then they would redress and join the class,' Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Police Chief Kevin Schmoll, said to KMOV4.

The sheriff added that four out of the 20 students in the class were forced to go through the punishment.

The disturbing discipline had been allegedly taking place at the preschool since early February but Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Police Chief Kevin Schmoll (above) was notified about the allegations last week

'We felt that was very inappropriate and possible theres some criminal action and some charges could come from this,' Schmoll said.

'The little boy who first reported it was very brave for coming forward. That is how we were able to discover this in the first place,' he added.

Schmoll said both teachers admitted to investigators that nudity was used as a discipline technique in that classroom, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

This week the school sent a letter home to parents to alert them of the 'child safety violation' that had occured in the classroom.

It said: 'Under no circumstances does the program condone or tolerate inappropriate treatment towards children, family or staff.'

The children involved with the punishment will be interviewed at the Children's Advocacy Center in Belleville in two weeks and a representative with the St. Clair County State's Attorney's office will be present and is expected to review the case for possible charges.

The sickening reports sent shock waves rippling through the East St. Louis community.

'As a mother myself, I can't believe they would let something like this go on,' local Lakysha Jeffries said to News 4.

'Something needs to be done to the teachers as far as what's going on,' East St. Louis resident Marquis Ginger echoed.
A woman who's been dubbed a serial stowaway was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months of probation after pleading guilty to sneaking past Chicago airport security last year, boarding a plane and flying to London without a ticket.

As part of her plea deal, Marilyn Hartman, 67, can't go to Chicago's O'Hare or Midway airports without a ticket. She entered the plea to a criminal trespassing charge but had originally faced counts of felony theft, burglary and other charges.

'I do apologize for the airport and... causing problems for them,' Hartman told Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas.

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Marilyn Hartman (pictured January 2018) was sentenced to 18 months of probation Tuesday after pleading guilty to criminal trespassing

She admitted sneaking past Chicago O'Hare airport security, boarding a plane and flying to London without a ticket last January

The plea is the latest chapter in a story that's played out over the past decade in Chicago, Hawaii, San Francisco, Minnesota, Florida and elsewhere. Hartman has been nabbed in and near airports dozens of times and in December 2015, she told NBC5 that she 'may have' boarded planes without a ticket eight times.

Authorities have said she boarded the flight to London by walking past two British airlines ticket agents who were checking other passengers.

Hartman darted into a small room off to the side and walked quickly past customs and a Border Patrol agent who was looking at passports of people entering the ramp.

Hartman was arrested after her London trip and flown back to Chicago.

Following that incident she was charged with felony theft and a misdemeanor count of criminal trespassing.

Hartman was released from custody even though the county sheriff's office protested the move.

Authorities said they thought Hartman got through a federal TSA checkpoint at a domestic terminal without a ticket before taking a shuttle to the international terminal.

Hartman told a Cook County judge Tuesday that she apologizes to Chicago O'Hare airport and for 'causing problems for them'. As part of her plea deal, she can't go to Chicago's O'Hare (pictured) or Midway airports without a ticket

It's believed she spent nearly 24 hours inside the airport before boarding the British Airways flight to London.

According to NBC5, police thought Hartman was able to get on the plane by mixing in with a large group.

Once on the plane, flight attendants realized she didn't have a ticket and alerted authorities. British Customs officials refused to let her enter London and made arrangements for her to fly back to Chicago.

'During the initial investigation it was determined that the passenger was screened at the security checkpoint before boarding a flight,' a statement read. 'Upon learning of the incident TSA, and its aviation partners took immediate action to review security practices throughout the airport.'

Once free on bond in January 2018 she was again discovered wandering at O'Hare.

This time, a judge ordered her held without bond and she was later found unfit for trial. Hartman spent time at a state mental institution and last July she was moved to a halfway-house style mental health center in Chicago called A Safe Haven.

Hartman spent time at a state mental institution and last July she was moved to a halfway-house style mental health center in Chicago called A Safe Haven (pictured)

In January it was reported Hartman was 'doing so well' while awaiting trial on felony trespass and burglary charges. Hartman was ordered to wear a GPS tracker last July and to stay away from airports, train stations and bus stations.

At that time the judge declared her fit to stand trial just four months after she declared her unfit.

Last March, psychologist Christopher Cooper described Hartman as an 'intelligent woman' and said she understands the charges against her. But, he said, Hartman suffers from major depression, delusions she is being persecuted and a 'preoccupation with media attention.'

Hartman's mental stability was 'intermittent and appears to fluctuate day to day,' Cooper said.

In March 2016 she tried to flee Magaret Manor mental health facility where she was ordered to spend six months under house arrest

Prosecutors said Hartman tried to walk out of an interview room when she was left unattended during an evaluation and was seen trying to open locked doors at a jail health facility.

Hartman's public defender, Parle Roe-Taylor, argued that Hartman didn't belong in jail because she isn't violent and hasn't demonstrated she's a harm to herself.

If she wasn't restored to mental fitness within a year from that point she could have been found not guilty by reason of insanity.

In the past she had returned to mischief after being released with a warning.

The judge Tuesday praised Hartman for receiving a glowing progress report from the center's staff.

'A Safe Haven has been your safe haven, and I am really proud of the progress you have made,' Chiampas told Hartman.

The facility has agreed to help Hartman find permanent housing.

Little to none is known about whether or not she has or had family and job, and how or why she started her unauthorized travels.

But in court last February when a judge asked 'Does your client have any family?' Hartman screamed 'No I don't!', after her lawyer responded that she does, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Then when the judge asked if she was under the care of a medical professional she again screamed 'Yes!,' while her attorney responded 'no.' The attorney clarified that her client was having a 'difficult day.'

Hartman is pictured February 2016. At a hearing on March 3, 2016, a Cook County judge sentenced Hartman to six months house arrest and placed her on two years' mental health probation. Under her probation, she couldn't go to any airports, train stations or bus stops

In March 2016 she tried to flee Magaret Manor mental health facility where she was ordered to spend six months under house arrest.

She was on the punishment because a month prior she escaped Sacred Heart Home mental health facility and went to Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Her electronic monitoring bracelet helped 12 cops track her down.

It was two weeks after she was transferred out of a secure mental health facility to a less restrictive nursing home.

Between late March and early April 2015 she'd made five attempts to stow away but laughed to KTLA she wouldn't attempt to get on a plane without a ticket again. Two days later she was caught at Midway airport.

In February 2015 she was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, after she succeeded in flying from Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport with no ticket or boarding pass for Delta Airlines, then conned her way into the $300-a-night Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort after claiming that she was a Biggest Loser weight-loss contestant.

Hartman (pictured March 27, 2015) between late March and early April 2015 made five attempts to stow away, including for a flight from Minnesota to Jackson, Florida and a trip from San Jose, California to Los Angeles

She fled after the real contestant, Maria Sandgren, turned up, and was later found by security guards in a vacant room.

That was one of the times that Hartman succeeded in her attempts, including a flight from Minnesota to Jackson, Florida and a Southwest Airlines trip from San Jose, California to Los Angeles.

Footage of a failed attempt to sneak into another plane in Minneapolis was obtained by Fox 9 News. It shows Hartman standing close to another passenger, pretending to accompany him.

The security guard asks her to step back and show a travel pass, which she doesn't have. As he starts looking through another traveler's documents, she sidles away. She was later found sleeping on chairs in the airport.

In 2015 she said that she had been homeless and felt safer in airports than on the street.

'My sense is that there is a compulsive quality to her actions,' WLS quoted Northwestern Medicine Psychologist Mark Reinecke as saying.

'It's repetitive...and even when she's been warned not do this, in some ways she can't resist the impulse or the desire to engage in it,' Reinecke told the station. 'It's not about consequences and rewards in the traditional sense, it's about the meaning this has in her life.'

In February 2015 she was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, after she succeeded in flying from Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport with no ticket or boarding pass for Delta Airlines, then conned her way into the $300-a-night Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort

She was arrested three times in August 2014 alone, having made attempts to slip by security at Mineta San Jose International Airport, LAX, and Sky International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona.

The woman was met twice by authorities at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. On August 14, she was given a warning for trying to enter a security checkpoint without a ticket.

Hartman was removed from Sky Harbor on August 20 and given a trespass warning after she attempted to enter a security checkpoint without a ticket. It happened days after she was released from jail in California, due to overcrowding, shortly after receiving a 117-sentence. But authorities had no idea how she got to Arizona from California.

On August 26, she was arrested at LAX for criminal trespass after she got aboard a flight without a ticket from San Jose, California. She pleaded no contest to the charges and was sentenced to probation.

In February 2014, Hartman was sentenced to 18 months' probation in San Mateo County after being arrested for attempting to board three Hawaii-bound flights at San Francisco International Airport on three separate days

After her Phoenix arrest, she asked in a press conference, 'Why has the government allowed me to get past security points?'

In February 2014, Hartman was sentenced to 18 months' probation in San Mateo County after being arrested for attempting to board three Hawaii-bound flights at San Francisco International Airport on three separate days.

After one court appearance in 2014, Hartman refused to give details regarding how she was able to slip through security.

'I don't think it's wise to say how I got through. I don't want to help the enemy,' she said then.

Records indicate Hartman was arrested November 6, 2010, at the Lihue Airport in Kauai after trespassing into the baggage claim area, the Chronicle reported. She was charged with simple trespass, but failed to show up for court hearings.

Hartman says that she attended Chicago Vocational High School and took classes at the Chicago College of Commerce, working as a legal secretary and in legal research and telemarketing between 1971 and 2003.

However, she has since been unemployed and frequently homeless, she says.

She claims she was forced by the FBI to flee her home and live on the streets, and blames her penchant for sneaking onto planes on an unrecognized medical condition she calls 'whistleblower trauma syndrome.'
Former Playboy Club bunny Laurie 'Bambi' Bembenek had been fighting to clear her name of murder charges for decades when she died in 2010 of liver failure at the age of 52

An attorney for a former Playboy Club bunny who gained notoriety after she was convicted of her murdering her husband's ex-wife and later escaped from prison is seeking a posthumous pardon for her.

Laurie 'Bambi' Bembenek had been fighting to clear her name for decades when she died in 2010 of liver failure at the age of 52.

Her attorney sent Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers a pardon request earlier this year in the hope of clearing Bembenek's name.

Evers, a Democrat, has said he will once again consider granting pardons after his predecessor, Republican Scott Walker, didn't issue a single one during his eight years in office.

'I am hoping (Evers) will do something about this,' Bembenek's attorney, Mary Woehrer, said on Tuesday.

'Granting Laurie Bembenek a pardon would be the right thing to do. It would be justice.'

New ballistics and DNA evidence can prove Bembenek's innocence, according to her lawyer.

Bembenek, who worked briefly as a Playboy Club waitress in Lake Geneva, became police officer in Milwaukee in 1980 and married Detective Fred Schultz.

Bembenek was eventually released on parole in 1992 (above) after initially being sentenced to life in prison for murdering her husband's ex-wife a decade earlier. She escaped from prison during her sentenced and fled to Canada before being captured three months later

Bembenek escaped from prison in 1990 and fled to Canada. She was captured about three months later (above in a Canada court) after the case was featured on 'America's Most Wanted'

She was convicted in 1982 of fatally shooting his ex-wife Christine Schultz after complaining about the alimony her husband had to pay.

Bembenek, who later got a divorce from her husband, was sentenced to life in prison.

She always maintained her innocence.

In 1990, Bembenek escaped from Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac and fled to Canada with then-fiance Dominic Gugliatto, who was the brother of a fellow inmate.

She escaped the prison by crawling through a laundry room window.

In Milwaukee, more than 200 supporters - many wearing 'Run Bambi Run' T-shirts - rallied to show support for her flight from the law.

Bembenek and her fiance were living under fake names when they were captured in Thunder Bay, Ontario, about three months later after the case was featured on 'America's Most Wanted.'

In 1992, Bembenek was released on parole after her original conviction was set aside and she agreed to plead no contest to second-degree murder as part of a deal. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing purposes.

She was convicted in 1982 of fatally shooting her husband's ex-wife. Bembenek, who was sentenced to life in prison, always maintained her innocence. She is pictured left during her trial in 1982 and right in 1986

A judge at the time said that 'significant mistakes' had been made in the investigations of Christine Schultz's death and Bembenek struck a deal to receive 10 years of probation.

She moved to Washington state to live with her parents, where she fought to clear her name until her 2010 death from liver failure at age 52.

In 2002, after completing her parole, Bembenek filed a motion seeking DNA testing in the hope of clearing her name. A Wisconsin appeals court refused to let her launch an appeal in 2006.

Bemebenek had a pardon request pending with then-Gov. Jim Doyle when she died in 2010. Doyle, a Democrat, didn't act on the pardon request.

Woehrer, Bembenek's attorney, said it was the dying wish of Bembenek and her parents to clear her name.

'Laurie Bembenek was not a murderer,' Woehrer said.

'She murdered no one. She was wrongly convicted.'

Bembenek's colorful case was tabloid fare, the subject of multiple books, a 1993 TV movie starring Tatum O'Neal and the focus of an Investigation Discovery episode of 'Vanity Fair Confidential' last year.
A Florida man was sentenced to 40 years in prison for burning his girlfriend to death after complaining to the judge that the victim drove him to set her on fire, and that he didn't mean to do it.

Jesus Alvarez, 49, learned his fate on Monday after pleading guilty to murder as part of a deal with prosecutors.

Authorities say Alvarez beat Margarita Blanco, 41, at a Miami-Dade County mobile home in March 2011 before dousing her with gasoline and burning her in front of the woman's mother.

Career criminal: Jesus Alvarez, 49, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for the March 2011 burning death of his girlfriend, 41-year-old Margarita Blanco

Alverez said in court that he had been on drugs and caught Blanco cheating on him, reported Miami Herald.

'She pushed me to do something like that,' Alvarez, dressed in an orange prison garb, told the court. 'To tell you the truth, I didnt mean to do this.'

To which an incredulous Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer replied: 'Mr. Alvarez, when you put gasoline on someone and you light a match, its generally not a good outcome.'

Alvarez (pictured in an undated mugshot) tried to justify his actions by saying he was high on drugs and caught Blanco cheating on him

The judge and the defendant continued bickering, with Venzer reminding him that he lit his girlfriend on fire, and with Alvarez reiterating that he 'didn't mean to do it like that.'

A defense attorney added that Alvarez eventually tried to put the fire out, burning his own hands in the process.

Alvarez then chimed in again, arguing that had it been his intention to torch Blanco to death, he would have left her to burn without trying to intervene.

Judge Venzer was unimpressed with his explanation, pointing out that 'she did burn to death!'

Venzer later remarked that during her 25 years on the bench she has never seen anyone show so little empathy.

Alvarez as a career criminal whose record includes multiple arrests and convictions, reported Miami New Times.

His late girlfriend also had an extensive criminal record, which included arrests on cocaine possession and robbery charges. She is survived by her mother and her grown son.
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has been offered a deal and may not have to face charges for allegedly paying for sex at a Florida massage parlor.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft may not have to face charges for allegedly paying for sex at a Florida massage parlor.

Authorities have reportedly offered to drop solicitation charges against Kraft if he accepts a deferred prosecution deal.

The deal requires Kraft, 77, to admit that he would have been found guilty at trial.

He would also have to complete 100 hours of community service, submit to an STD test, and take a class on the dangers of prostitution, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The deal was offered to the two dozen men who were caught in the day spa sex sting.

Kraft was charged last month with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution.

He has pleaded not guilty and has publicly denied any criminal wrongdoing in the case, which was part of a larger investigation into human trafficking at Florida spas and massage parlors.

Kraft was not accused of human trafficking. He was scheduled to be arraigned in the case next week.

If Kraft chooses to go to trial and is convicted, he could receive one year in jail, a $5,000 fine and 100 hours of community service.

The deal requires Kraft, 77, to admit that he would have been found guilty at trial. Kraft pleaded not guilty to soliciting prostitution from 45-year-old spa manager Lei Wang (right), who allegedly performed hand stimulation and oral sex on the 77-year-old billionaire

Kraft was charged last month with two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution at Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida (pictured)

Kraft visited the Orchids of Asia day spa in Jupiter, Florida twice in a 24-hour span in January, according to police records.

The first visit occurred on January 19, when Kraft allegedly received hand stimulation from 45-year-old spa manager Lei Wang and a 58-year-old spa employee named Shen Mingbi.

Neither Wang nor Mingbi are believed to be victims of human trafficking.

According to the affidavit, Kraft paid both women with a $100 bill.

Wang has been arrested and charged with maintaining a house of prostitution, but Mingbi has not been charged.

The second visit occurred on January 20, just hours before Kraft flew to Kansas City for the AFC Title game between the Patriots and the Kansas City Chief.

That day, Kraft received oral sex from Wang, who is known as 'Lulu.' Kraft allegedly paid her with a $100 bill and another unidentified bill before leaving.

Surveillance cameras that police had hidden in the spa captured both visits. Kraft used two different Bentleys to drive to the spa in the 24-hour span.

While it remains unknown if Kraft will take the deal, the NFL insists the Patriots owner will not get any special treatment as it addresses his sex solicitation case.

'Our Personal Conduct Policy applies equally to everyone in the NFL. We will handle this allegation in the same way we would handle any issue under the Policy,' it said in a statement after Kraft was charged.

'We are seeking a full understanding of the facts, while ensuring that we do not interfere with an ongoing law enforcement investigation. We will take appropriate action as warranted based on the facts.'

Commissioner Roger Goodell could fine or suspend Kraft from any activities involving this year's Super Bowl champions, and there will likely be a league inquiry.

The NFL's personal conduct policy states that 'ownership and club or league management have traditionally been held to a higher standard and will be subject to more significant discipline.

'It is not enough simply to avoid being found guilty of a crime. We are all held to a higher standard and must conduct ourselves in a way that is responsible, promotes the values of the NFL, and is lawful,' it states.

Li Yang, also known as Cindy Yang, owned the Orchids of Asia day spa. Powerful Democratic lawmakers are demanding the FBI reveal potential 'counterintelligence concerns' by her fundraising efforts to benefit President Trump

Meanwhile, a group of powerful Democrats is calling on the FBI to provide an assessment of any 'counterintelligence risks' posed by Li Wang's interactions with President Trump, following revelations about potential straw donations.

Yang previously owned the Orchids of Asia day spa. She also founded GY US investments, a firm that marketed to a Chinese clientele and offered the 'opportunity to interact' with the president.

The leading Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Panels wrote the heads of the FBI, Director of National Intelligence, and Secret Service.

The lawmakers are asking FBI Director Christopher Wray to 'conduct criminal and counterintelligence investigations into credible allegations of potential human trafficking, as well as unlawful foreign lobbying, campaign finance and other activities by Ms Yang.'

'We also ask that the Bureau furnish to the intelligence and judiciary committees an assessment of any counterintelligence risks or related concerns associated with any interactions with President Donald Trump and Ms. Yang.'

Yang has been photographed with Trump at a fundraiser. She also has been a guest at Mar-a-Lago, the president's Florida club, and has been photographed with numerous Trump family members and associates.
A senator's press secretary has shared the creepy message she received from a man on LinkedIn and inspired a wave of other women to reveal their own horror stories of men using the professional networking site to try to woo them.

Hannah Ray, 27, revealed on Twitter that a man had messaged her asking her first of she was interested in a new job and then if she was interested in him.

Ray, who is the press secretary for US Senator Lisa Murkowski, posted a screens shot of their conversation then wrote: 'NO DM IS SACRED. NOT EVEN LINKEDIN.'

She was inundated with responses from other women who said they had received similar, unwanted messages from men.

Hannah Ray, 27, received the creepy message on LinkedIn and shared it on Twitter on Monday

Ray posted a screenshot of the conversation with the comment 'NO DM IS SACRED'

Ray's suitor asked: 'Would you be willing to relocate if the right opportunity came along?

She replied: 'I'm not actively seeking out a new position at the moment. However, generally speaking, if the right job at the right time became available, I would be open to relocation.'

He replied: 'What about the right man,' and added a winky face.

Among the replies from other woman was one which read: 'I guess you have been told several times how gorgeous you are.'

He signed off his email: 'I hope to hear from you soon. Until then keep those (sic) beautiful smile.'

Other women joined in to share their horror stories including one woman who had a man tell her on LinkdIn that he had just spotted her profile on the dating app Bumble

Another woman received a message from a man who wanted to 'initiate a proper and structured relationship'.

'What do you say?' he asked, after telling the woman that she had a 'charming smile'.

Others acknowledged their inappropriate approach but persevered regardless.

'Sorry for the random add. I actually came across you on here and wanted to see if you'd be interested in getting coffee sometime?

'Again, I know it's a bit random and it's LinkedIn. But I still wanted to ask,' he said.

LinkedIn joined the thread to condemn the inappropriate messages and encourage women to report them

Another woman revealed that she was contacted by someone who told her they had just come across her profile on the dating app Bumble.

Another woman received a message from a man which read: 'How are you doing? I know we have not met before but I must admit I was captivated by your profile picture.

' felt a kind of connection and was compelled to write to you. It took me courage to write this note.'

As Ray's post gained attention online, LinkedIn jumped in to the thread to condemn the messages.

'It's absolutely not acceptable to send inappropriate messages on LinkedIn.

'We take these reports very seriously and have tools in place to report and block,' a message from its help desk read.
I had hoped custodial deaths were a thing of our dark past, Omar Abdullah said.

Srinagar: National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah on Tuesday demanded a time-bound investigation into the custodial death of a school teacher in Jammu and Kashmir and exemplary punishment to those responsible for the death.

"I had hoped custodial deaths were a thing of our dark past. This is an unacceptable development & must be investigated in a transparent, time bound manner. Exemplary punishment must be handed out to the killers of this young man," Abdullah tweeted. Rizwan Pandit, 28, who was arrested in connection with a terror case, died in a police custody here during the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, an official said. Pandit, who was a teacher at a private school and a resident of Awantipora in Pulwama district, was picked up by the security agencies three days ago in connection with a terror case, the officer said.

The police department has requested a magisterial inquiry under Section 176 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to ascertain the cause and circumstances leading to Pandit's death, the officer said PDP leader Naeem Akhtar asked Governor Satya Pal Malik's administration to come clean on the incident. "Disturbing reports of custodial death of youth from Awantipora in Srinagar's Cargo Camp. As per media he was picked up by NIA few days ago & was lodged in CARGO camp of (SOG). @jandkgovernor administration should come clean on this," Akhtar, a former minister, posted on Twitter.
Caroline Farrow (pictured above) has been asked to attend a voluntary interview by police after allegedly 'misgendering' someone in a tweet

A devout Catholic and mother is the subject of a five-month police investigation - after she was accused of calling a transgender woman a 'he' on Twitter.

Caroline Farrow, a broadcaster and writer for Roman Catholic newspapers, said she had a phone call from an officer on Monday asking her to attend an interview.

Mrs Farrow, 44, said she may have posted the suspect tweet following an appearance on Good Morning Britain last September, during which she took part in a debate on transgender children.

She said she was prepared to go to jail, adding: 'I don't know what I am suspected to have done. The only thing I can think of is that I may have referred to a 23-year-old transgender woman as someone's "son".

'I try at all times to be polite on Twitter, but it is my belief on both a religious and scientific basis that you cannot change the sex into which you were born.'

Jackie Green (right) formally Jack, had a sex change after turning 16. She is the daughter of Susie Green (left) who appeared on Good Morning Britain alongside Caroline Farrow

Caroline Farrow (right) had appeared alongside Susie Green (left) in September 2018 to discuss Girl Guiding policies

Caroline Farrow tweeted that she had a message from Guilford police regarding her tweets following her September appearance on Good Morning Britain

She added the officer said her tweets had 'misgendered' an individual by using the wrong pronoun, which could be an offence under the Malicious Communications Act.

Sentences for those found guilty under this act can be as long as two years.

The law makes it a crime to send messages that are indecent or grossly offensive, threatening, or contain information which is false or believed to be false, if the purpose for sending it is to cause distress or anxiety.

The Twitter incident followed a studio debate between Mrs Farrow and Susie Green, a transgender campaigner whose daughter Jackie, 25, is transgender.

Mrs Farrow, who is married to a priest, said she was 'worried and alarmed' following the call from police.

She wrote on Twitter yesterday: 'I don't even remember said tweets! I probably said "he" or "son" or something. I have done nothing wrong, nothing illegal and will happily do jail time for my right to say that people cannot change sex.'

Jackie (left) and her mother Susie (right) pictured at their home on Leeds shortly after Jackie had the operation

Jackie Green (pictured above) had previously appeared on This Morning to discuss her place at the Miss England finals

The tweet case was pursued by Surrey Police, whose former Chief Constable Lynne Owens said in 2015 that as a result of 25million in cuts and the loss of 250 officers, minor crimes would be ignored in favour of investigation of offences against vulnerable people.

The force confirmed yesterday that it received an allegation over tweets by Miss Farrow on October 15.

A spokesman said: 'A thorough investigation is being carried out to establish whether any criminal offences have taken place.

'A 44-year-old woman has been asked to attend a voluntary interview in relation to the allegation as part of our ongoing investigation.

'We have been made aware that a number of allegations have since been made on Twitter and we will be making contact with the person concerned in relation to these posts.'

Jackie Green (left) and her mother Susie (right). Jackie had previously said that at the age of four she told her mother that she should have been born a girl

Jackie was born Jack (left as a baby) and her mother Susie is now a transgender activist (Susie and Jackie as a baby pictured right on Susie's wedding day)

What is the Malicious Communications Act? The Malicious Communications Act prohibits the posting of material which is grossly offensive or threatening, false or believed to be false, if it is sent with the intent to cause distress or anxiety. Sentences for those found guilty under this act can be up to two years. In 2012, guidance was given to prosecutors which stated cases should not where what is posted is 'not obviously beyond what could conceivably be tolerable or acceptable in a diverse society which upholds and respects freedom of expression'. The guidelines stated: 'In line with the free-speech, no prosecution should be brought unless it can be shown on its own facts and merits to be both necessary and proportionate.' Advertisement

In 2012 Jackie Green made history when she became the first transgender Miss England finalist.

Jackie, who was born Jack and spent her childhood trying to persuade her parents she had been born in to the wrong body, said: 'I knew from the start that I was a girl, it was just actually having the vocabulary to make people understand.

'I would have had the surgery at five years old if I could. After the surgery it felt like starting life for the first time.

'Loads of kids go through stages, some people go down the transgender route and then change their minds, mostly because they don't have the support of their family.

'At primary school I dressed as a boy for the majority of the time. The kids understood and just took it in their stride.

'But secondary school was horrible. I was being spat on, being beaten up and called so many different names. The parents were the worst.

'I was prescribed 'blockers' by a doctor in Boston when was I was twelve. It basically paused puberty and it saved my life. I would have killed myself. I wouldn't have been able to cope.'

Jackie Green pictured as a youngster before surgery. She said she always insisted on wearing girls clothing and growing her hair

Jackie (formerly Jack) is pictured above wearing a patterned dress with a fringe cut. Jackie had told her mother that she should have been born a girl

Susie and Jackie (pictured above) the pair enjoyed a holiday to Thailand before Jackie had her operation

When Jackie was aged just four she told her mother Susan: God has made a mistake, I should be a girl.

Trapped in a body she hated, Jackie first overdosed aged 11 and made six more suicide attempts before she was 15. Medicines were locked in a safe and knives had to be hidden away. She threatened to mutilate her genitals.

And so, aged 16, Jackie Green became the youngest person in the world to undergo transgender surgery.

She said:Without that surgery, I wouldnt be here now.

Im a girl, I always have been  theres never been any doubt in my mind about that. Its just that my body didnt match because, as far as Im concerned, I had a birth defect.

Jackie (pictured on Instagram above) was the real life inspiration for a drama starring Anna Friel called Butterly which charted the transition of a boy to a girl

Jackie (centre) had the support of her mother Susie (right) and her father (left)

The row blew up on the same day as it emerged the Oxford English Dictionary is introducing genderneutral words in what editors said was an 'attempt to grapple' with the sensitive topic.

These include 'hir' and zir' as alternative pronouns to him, his or her, 'peoplekind' rather than mankind, and 'Latin@' as a gender-neutral term for someone of either sex from Latin America.

Meanwhile, the verb 'misgender' could apply to anyone who makes any gaffes.
An American Taliban fighter who will be freed from prison after 17 years behind bars has reportedly refused to renounce terrorism and still supports the extremist group.

John Walker Lindh, 38, will be released from prison in May, but officials say that the California native is still holding onto the same beliefs he had in 2002.

Lindh was among a group of Taliban fighters who were captured by US forces in November 2001, just months after the September 11 attacks and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.

Hours later, 500 people were killed after Lindh's fellow prisoners staged an uprising and killed a CIA operations officer.

Former American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh (pictured in 2002) has refused to renounce terrorism and still supports the extremist group. He will be released from prison in May

Lindh, who was 20 years old at the time, was one of only 86 people who survived the revolt.

He was named 'Detainee 001 in the war of terror' and, in 2002, was convicted of supporting the Taliban and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

He is scheduled to be released in May after serving 17 years behind bars

Lindh (pictured in an undated police photo) has spent the last 17 years behind bars

In 2016, the National Counterterrorism Center found that Lindh was continuing to 'advocate for global jihad', according to documents obtained by Foreign Policy.

He was also continuing to 'write and translate violent extremist texts', it added.

The document also claims that in 2015 Lindh told a television news producer 'that he would continue to spread violent extremist Islam upon his release'.

During his sentence, Lindh filed two suits against the Bureau of Prisons so that he could continue practicing the tenets of Islam.

In 2013, Lindh won the right for communal prayer. The following year, he argued that he should be allowed to wear his pants above the ankle.

Lindh went to the Middle East in 1998. He dropped out of high school at 17 and went to Yemen to learn Arabic with the support of his parents.

Lindh was among a group of Taliban fighters who were captured by US forces in November 2001, just months after the September 11 attacks and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. He is pictured here bein led to a prison by a Northern Alliance soldier following his capture

Hours later, 500 people were killed after Lindh's fellow prisoners staged an uprising and killed a CIA operations officer. He is pictured here being treated in a hospital after his capture

Lindh (pictured after his capture during a television interview) was named 'Detainee 001 in the war of terror' and, in 2002, was convicted of supporting the Taliban and sentenced to 20 years in prison

He then went to Pakistan and joined forces with a group that was fighting to help Kashmir gain independence from India.

Lindh then arrived in Afghanistan and spent seven weeks at a training camp to prepare Taliban fighters. Al Qaeda volunteers also attended the camp to undergo training for terrorist attacks.

It was there that Lindh met Osama bin Laden, who thanked him for his participation in the group, he later told FBI investigators during his interrogation.

Lindh's parents, who had lost touch with him after he went to Afghanistan, only discovered where he was after CNN interviewed him following his capture.

Lindh (pictured in an undated family photo) went to the Middle East in 1998. He dropped out of school at 17 and heading to Yemen to learn Arabic

A picture of Lindh seen on a facsimile of his passport at the Arabia Hassani Kalan Surani Bannu madrassa (Islamic school) in Bannu, Pakistan in 2002

It was in prison that Lindh applied for Irish citizenship, and he has since confirmed that he plans to move there following his release.

When he was applying for citizenship, Lindh said he would explain to the Irish government how his 'unique circumstances' would make 'survival in the US practically impossible'.

'Essentially I am seeking asylum from one country where I am a citizen in another country where I am also a citizen,' he told the London advocacy-group CAGE.

Ireland's government has already said that Lindh would not be refused entry to the state.
The razor wire barriers installed under President Donald Trump at the Mexican border fence are reportedly being stolen and used for home security in Tijuana.

Officials there say a surge in crime in the city has seen up to 20 people arrested for removing the concertina wire overnight before selling it on.

It is the same galvanized steel wire installed in November along the border by the Department of Homeland Security, The San Diego Union Tribune reports.

Some of the stolen fencing has already been replaced by contractors who were seen Monday on the U.S. side of the border fence.

Tijuana was named the most violent city in the world in 2018. The Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice reports it saw an average of seven killings per day as gangs battle over drugs.

US military install barbed wire fences in November last year. The razor wire barriers installed under Trump at the Mexican border fence are now reportedly being stolen

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents stand watch as troops handle concertina wire. Officials say a surge in crime in Tijuana has seen up to 20 people arrested stealing the wire

Marco Antonio Sotomayor Amezcua, the secretary of public safety in Tijuana, said the wire being stolen is distinctive from any sold in shops in the area.

He added: 'We have detected that the barbed wire that was installed in the border area is no longer there.

'We know about the stealing of the concertina (wire) from United States authorities who have asked us for help through the liaison staff.'

The San Diego Union Tribune reports how homes in the area appear to already have the extra security in place.

One anonymous homeowner said: 'I dont actually live here in this house, so I have no idea how that wire got here.'

A statement from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection in November said the wire was installed 'to prepare for the potential arrival of thousands of people migrating in a caravan heading towards the border of the United States'.

Trump tweeted an image of the wall covered in the wire, writing: 'The Fake News is showing old footage of people climbing over our Ocean Area Fence. This is what it really looks like - no climbers anymore under our Administration!'

Director Reynaldo Gonzalez Mora said: 'The people arrested were mainly Mexican and most were people who have been deported from the United States, and people who have problems with drug addiction and live mostly on the street.'

Photos of people climbing the fence and sitting on top of the wall lead to Border officials adding razor wire to the top and bottom of the fence that divides San Diego from Tijuana.

President Trump posted a picture of rows of concertina wire in November last year

A Mexican migrant tries to make his way through a concertina wire, shortly after crossing the US-Mexico border fence from Tijuana to San Diego County in the US

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman told the DailyMail.com: 'A 14-mile wall construction project began in June 2018 in San Diego. The old eight to 10-foot high Vietnam era landing mat wall is being removed, and new 18-foot high bollard-style wall with anti-climb plate is being built. The project is near completion.

'During construction, gaps were temporarily created in order to make way for the new wall. Concertina wire was used to fill these gaps, making it susceptible to damage and theft from the south side of the border.

'Because of increased border incursions, concertina wire was temporarily used to enhance the old wall until the new wall could be constructed. Some concertina wire was stolen, but was later recovered by Mexican law enforcement partners and returned to the Border Patrol.

'We are grateful for this partnership, as it enhances border security efforts for both countries. San Diego Sector cannot confirm reports that the stolen material is being used to provide security around homes in Tijuana.'
An Arby's manager in Florida has been arrested for allegedly pepper-spraying an employee and chasing him with a knife after he refused to work late.

Le'Terria Akins, 21, was arrested Saturday night after an argument escalated with employee Ernst Point Du Jour.

Du Jour told police that he and Akins exchanged words after she asked him to work late at the Arby's located at 9970 Belvedere Road in Royal Palm Beach around 12.30am.

Arby's manager, Le'Terria Akins, 21, was arrested on Saturday after she allegedly pepper-sprayed an employee and chased him with a knife following an argument about him working late

Ernst Point Du Jour (pictured) told police that he and Akins exchanged words after she asked him to work late. He said he told Akins that it wasn't fair for him to stay later because she wasn't doing her part. That's when the conversation escalated

He said he told Akins that it wasn't fair for him to stay later because she wasn't doing her part.

That's when the conversation got heated.

Witnesses told FOX 35 that Du Jour was angry and got very close to Akins.

Du Jour claims she then pepper-sprayed him in the face. He says he then ran outside followed by Akins, who allegedly had a long kitchen knife in her hand as she chased after him.

'She said, "Come here b***h! Im going to kill you",' Du Jour told CBS 12.

The employee reportedly only suffered a couple of scratches during the alleged incident. But Akins allegedly scratched up his car with the knife.

She was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, battery and criminal mischief.

Akins has been released on bail. Her next court appearance is set for April 18.
A woman who climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty last July 4 came to her sentencing Tuesday with a jacket reading 'I really do care' and her face entirely covered with clear sticky tape.

Therese Okoumou, who climbed the statue to protest the arrest of parents crossing the Mexican border illegally with children, seemed to be mocking First Lady Melania Trump, who wore a jacket reading 'I really don't care, do u?' while visiting children at the border.

The tape on 44-year-old Okoumou's face irritated a judge who refused to proceed until she removed it.

After she did so, U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein spared Okoumou from prison for her conviction on multiple misdemeanor counts, though he berated her for what he thought was a lack of concern for rescuers whose safety he said she jeopardized.

Therese Okoumou poses for pictures and rallies with supporters before her sentencing in New York on Tuesday

Okoumou (left) seemed to be mocking First Lady Melania Trump (right), who wore a jacket reading 'I really don't care, do u?' while visiting children at the border

Therese Okoumou, center, walks with supporters to her sentencing. Okoumou was convicted of trespassing and other offenses after she climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty on July 4

As she stood before him with a white headband across her forehead scrawled with the phrase 'I care!' he ordered her to perform 200 hours of community service and five years of probation, leading her attorney, Ron Kuby, to suggest the judge might be seeing a lot of them in the future.

'I think there's hope' otherwise, the judge responded, saying he would be willing to shorten the probation term at a later point if Okoumou did not commit more crimes.

Given a chance to speak in court, Okoumou called the case against her 'a fraud against injustice,' an explanation for her continuing protest and the tape she had earlier painfully pulled off her face.

'I'm not a criminal,' Okoumou, a U.S. citizen born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, told Gorenstein.

When Gorenstein took a break from the bench before announcing the sentence, Okoumou stood and turned around to face several dozen supporters before raising her fist in the air.

Okoumou covered her face in tape, which the irritated judge demanded that she remove

Okoumou's lawyer said her stunt (above) hadn't put anyone at risk, but the judge disagreed

The gesture silenced the supporters, who raised their fists in return as everyone stood for a moment before Okoumou blew a kiss to them and turned around to await sentence.

Outside court, she was surrounded by supporters as she railed against the immigration policies of Trump administration, saying they're what prompted the Statue of Liberty protest.

'We have people in cages? What was I supposed to do?' she said. 'I made my point. ... Find your own conscience. Don't look up to me.'

The nearly four-hour demonstration forced an evacuation of 4,330 people from the statue grounds on one of its busiest days of the year.

Okoumou raises her fist after her sentencing for conviction on attempted scaling of the Statue of Liberty to protest the U.S. immigration policy

Therese Patricia Okoumou smiles after her sentencing, which saw her avoid prison time

As he announced sentence, Gorenstein noted that Okoumou repeatedly ignored orders to descend from a perch at the feet of the statue that was high enough that a prosecutor said it could have seriously injured or killed her or tourists below.

New York Police Department rescuers were forced to climb a rickety ladder and gird themselves like mountain climbers to safely bring her down.

The judge said she tried to push down the ladder, jeopardizing rescuers.

'A person with some empathy might have said today, 'I'm sorry that I risked the lives of others,'' the judge said.

Kuby said Gorenstein was overestimating the danger to rescuers. The lawyer called them the most elite rescuers 'on the planet.'
George Conway has given an interview where he unburdens his reasons for becoming one of President Trump's sharpest online critics, saying he has to call out the president's 'maddening' conduct to avoid venting to his wife about it.

Conway, whose wife Kellyanne serves as counselor to the president, tacked on a few more insults to her boss, citing Trump's 'incompetence' as he revealed how he came from Trump supporter to a critic who fears he is jeopardizing the rule of law.

He pushed back after the president called him a 'loser!' online, and noted the times Trump praised his legal capacity after his intervention in a dispute to prevent a condo board from stripping away Trump's name.

'It's so maddening to watch,' Conway, prominent Washington lawyer told the Washington Post.

Mr. Conway had tweeted a series of pages from a psychiatric diagnosis manual, suggested the president is mentally ill

'The mendacity, the incompetence, it's just maddening to watch,' he said. 'The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day. That's basically it. Frankly, it's so I don't end up screaming at her about it,' he said, in reference to his wife.

The awkward and highly public war of words came to a head this week after Trump went on a weekend twitter storm against his perceived enemies, and Conway tweeted the definitions to 'narcissistic personality disorder' in response.

'It stuck this time because of the utter bizarreness this weekend, his own conduct. It was so illustrative,' Conway told the paper.

Conway also pushed back on Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale's claim on Twitter that Trump turned Conway down for a senior-level Justice Department position.

Conway released a 2006 letter where Trump thanked him for his 'wonderful assistance' and called him a 'top trial lawyer!'

He said he based his own decision to withdraw on Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, which was followed by the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in the Russia probe.

'Im thinking to myself, this guy is going to be at war with the Justice Department for the next two years. Im not doing this,' Conway said.

Later, at Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's wedding to Louise Linton, Conway says Trump approached him and said he made the right decision not to work for then Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

He said to me, I remember it clearly, you were smart not to work for that guy. He said Trump added: 'He is so weak.' But according to Conway, he advised Trump that Sessions decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe was 'pretty clear.'

President Trump banded George Conway, his chief counselor Kellyanne Conway's husband, 'a total loser'

Conway also produced a 2006 letter where Trump praised his legal capacity and thanked him for his helping heading off a move by a condo board group to remove the Trump name from their building.

He wouldn't comment to the paper on the state of his marriage, saying he wished his wife didn't work for the Trump White House, while disputing Parscale's claim he was 'jealous.'

No one was prouder than I was that she was able to elect this man president despite his obvious flaws, Conway told the paper. She took a campaign that the candidate had run into the gutter,' he said.

Trump wrote Conway: 'What I was most impressed with was how quickly you were able to comprehend a very bad situation.' Trump thanked the attorney for ridding Trump World Tower of some very bad people,' then complimented Conway for having 'a truly great voice, certainly not a bad asset for a top trial lawyer!'

'The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day,' said George Conway

George Conway is 'a total loser,' Preisdent Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the Washington lawyer blasted him on Twitter as mentally ill.

And the president's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, claimed 'Mr. Kellyanne Conway' is 'jealous' of his more-famous wife's success after being bounced from a low-prestige job at the U.S. Department of Justice.

'He barely worked @TheJusticeDept and was either fired/quit, didn't want the scrutiny? Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success. POTUS doesn't even know him!' Parscale tweeted Monday night.

Mr. Conway had launched a barrage of insults at the president on Monday evening, tweeting medical definitions of personality disorders including 'deceitfulness' and grandiosity as symptoms  and saying they apply to the 45th president.

His latest criticism of Trump followed a weekend of digital slams from the president against a range of targets including the late Sen. John McCain and Saturday Night Live.

The president piled on, calling Mr. Conway '[a] total loser' after his 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale claimed Kellyann's husband was 'jealous' of her success

Conway shoved back on Twitter, congratulating Trump for raising the public profile of their onlin sparring match

Mr. Conway fired back sarcastically at Trump on Monday, tweeting that it wasn't smart of the president to give his armchair psychiatry a bigger platform.

'Congratulations!' he wrote in a tweet. 'You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job!'

Conway's wife, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, brushed off the incident, saying she was taking care of the couple's four children Monday morning and hadn't paid attention.

Parscale, however, spoke for Trumpworld; the president himself piled on hours later

Mr. Conway posted the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder; he also tweeted the cover of the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders in a slap at Trump.

According to the definition, someone with the disorder has three or more of a list of symptoms.

Among them are a 'Grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).'

Trump's 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted that Mr. Conway is 'jealous of his wife's success'

Strained? Kellyanne Conway brushed aside her husband's claims that her boss had at least two mental disorders by saying she was not 'up to speed'

Mr. Conway tweeted from a manual of mental disorders that psychiatrists use to make diagnoses

ALL THE BEST SCORES: Conway seemed to be suggesting that President Donald Trump has a grandiose sense of self-importance or other narcissistic traits

Conway also tweeted out signs of an antisocial personality disorder

A person with a narcissistic disorder may also be:

'Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;'

'Believes he or she is 'special' and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions);' and

'Requires excessive admiration ... has a sense of entitlement ... [and] is interpersonally exploitative.'

Before his stab at armchair psychiatry, Conway retweeted conservative commentator William Kristol, who urged people to think seriously about Trump's psychological state.

'Agree with this, but would add that *all* Americans should be thinking seriously *now* about Trump's mental condition and psychological state, including and especially the media, Congress  and the Vice President and Cabinet,' Conway wote.

Kellyanne Conway commented on the latest instance of her husband torching the president  her boss  brushing off a question by a reporter at the White House.

'I have four kids and I was getting them out of the house this morning before I got here, so I could talk to the president about substance. So I may not be up to speed on the whole thing,' she said.

As Conway's tweet attacking the president's alleged narcissism reverberated, Trump weighed in on the New Zealand terror attack that killed 50, defending his own image and complaining that he was being blamed for the slaughter.

'The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!' the president wrote.

Last year, former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson said Trump had aced a diagnostic test used to look at potential mental disorders.

Trump got a perfect score on a test designed to look for signs of memory loss or cognitive dysfunction.

He bragged about the results as he blamed his predecessors for failing to solve problems in North Korea.

'I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests,' Trump quipped at the time.
Spring break has literally come crashing down for one bikini-clad college girl after she was caught on camera climbing to the top of a fraternity flag pole.

Haylee Hoefgen was filmed climbing the pole on the beach at South Padre Island in Texas last week.

The University of Kansas pre-med student was being cheered on by a crowd of college students below her as she inched towards the top of the pole.

University of Kansas pre-med student Haylee Hoefgen was filmed climbing a fraternity flag pole on the beach at South Padre Island in Texas last week. This video was shot by Twitter user @keeeegan99

But seconds after she reached the top, the pole began to sway in the wind and came crashing down into the crowd.

Those watching on could be heard screaming out as Hoefgen plummeted towards the sand.

Footage of the ordeal quickly went viral on social media and Hoefgen has since been dubbed 'Flag Pole Girl'.

The University of Kansas pre-med student was being cheered on by a crowd of college students below her as she inched towards the top of the pole

Seconds after she reached the top the pole began to sway in the wind and came crashing down into the crowd

'There were already girls bigger than me trying to climb the pole and making it 5 feet off the ground,' Hoefgen told KVEO.

'As soon as it happened, I stood back up and said 'let's go harder'.'

Hoefgen was left with several bruises and grazes from her fall.

The incident occurred on the sand outside Clayton's Beach Bar and Grill.
The developer behind New York's new Hudson Yards complex has been forced to backpedal after backlash over legalese that seemed to grant it exclusive commercial rights to any tourist snaps of the centerpiece 'Vessel' sculpture.

Since its grand opening on Friday, the 16-story honeycomb-like structure with 154 flights of interlocking staircases has quickly become a destination for tourists and curious locals hoping to snag a selfie.

But a report in Gothamist on Monday raised alarm by pointing out the sweeping terms and conditions sightseers agree to by visiting the free public sculpture, which seemed to grant the owners exclusive and unlimited commercial rights to any photos taken there.

In a statement to DailyMail.com on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Hudson Yards was quick to point out that the legal language had already been changed, and said that its only purpose in the first place was to allow the company to share and re-post other images that are publicly posted to social media.

Visitors are seen at the 'Vessel' on Friday during the grand opening of Hudson Yards. The company has had to change its legalese about photos after public backlash

Visitors spend their time admiring views of New Jersey from 'The Vessel' a public art structure on the West Side of Midtown Manhattan on Monday

'The intent of the policy is to allow Hudson Yards to amplify and re-share photos already publicly shared on individual social channels through our website and social channels,' the statement said.

'This is a practice utilized at nearly all major attractions in the city and region and as a new destination we wanted to over communicate, be transparent and disclose to all users. We refined the language to be more clear,' the spokesperson continued.

Originally, the company's terms had drawn legal scrutiny, granting Hudson Yards 'unrestricted, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual right and license' for commercial use of any image taken of, or at, Vessel.

James Grimmelmann, a legal scholar at Cornell Tech, called the terms 'a bad idea' and 'badly drafted' in a Twitter thread on the subject.

'It's always amusing to see a clause this overreaching and also this badly drafted, like watching the mustache-twirling villain slip on the banana peel he dropped and fall face-first into a giant cake,' Grimmelmann wrote.

Hudson Yards came under criticism for its original legal policy, which the company changed

Designed by the British designer Thomas Heatherwick and built at a cost of $200million, 'Vessel' is the star of the new commercial and residential complex, doubling as art and a commercial structure.

'The geometry of the project is quite mesmerizing because of it's repetitiousness. Once you're inside it, it's really calm. You're in the middle of New York, and yet, it's calm,' Stuart Wood, a senior designer with Heatherwick Studios, the design firm behind Vessel, told NBC.

Visitors who cross its eight levels and follow its circular path would end up walking a full mile.

However, the name 'Vessel' is temporary and visitors are encouraged to pitch name ideas for the sculpture.
Members of the Waikato Mongrel Mob have vowed to stand guard outside a New Zealand mosque as Muslims take part in the first Friday prayer since the Christchurch massacre.

Waikato Mongrel Mob president Sonny Fatu has offered to protect Jamia Masjid Mosque in Hamilton, in New Zealand's North Island, in a supportive gesture ensuring the community can pray 'without fear.'

The Mongrel Mob, along with various other biker gangs across the country, have stepped up to show their support in the wake of the attack, which left 50 people dead and dozens more injured.

'We will support and assist our Muslim brothers and sisters for however long they need us,' Fatu told Stuff.

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Solidarity: Waikato Mongrel Mob president Sonny Fatu (pictured left) has offered to protect Jamia Masjid Mosque in Hamilton, in New Zealand's North Island

Biker gangs across New Zealand have come out to show their support in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. Members of the Mongrel Mob (pictured) descended at Hagley College, in Christchurch on Saturday, where Jacinda Arden arrived at about 1pm to greet hundreds of survivors, family members and mourners

'We were contacted by a representative who tagged me in and said some of our Muslim brothers and sisters have fears for Friday during their prayer, and the question was posed whether we could be apart of the safety net for them to allow them to pray in peace without fear.'

Waikato Muslim Association president Dr Asad Mohsin said he appreciated the support they have received from 'different sections of society, different interests and dispositions.'

He said he did not view the mob as 'gang members.'

'We value them as humans and we appreciate that they value us too,' he said.

Mohsin, however, urged that it is important for the community to show they will not bow down to terror and has invited the gang to pray inside the mosque as opposed to standing guard outside.

'There are no fears, and we are not scared. They don't have to stand outside the mosque, they can come inside, right behind where the sermon is given,' he told the New Zealand Herald.

Mongrel Mob are an organised street gang in New Zealand based across the country. Members have offered to protect Muslim mosques during Friday prayer

They are seen greeting other mourners at Hagley College on Saturday afternoon

On Sunday, the country's largest Maori gangs performed a haka near the police cordon at Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch. The poignant moment saw around 10 members of Black Power perform (pictured)

He said the Muslim community has been offered support from the police as well. The community has opened its doors to all members of the public on Friday and is expecting a large turnout.

Mohsin said they will offer space at the park if they cannot accommodate everyone inside.

'We would love everybody to come, but we don't want anybody to show they are scared. We are not scared. You don't have to stand outside the mosque, we want you to be inside, with us,' he added.

Fatu promised the Mongrels' gesture will be a 'peaceful' one and the gang will not be armed.

'We are peacefully securing the inner gated perimeter, with other community members, to allow them to feel at ease,' he added.

'Our differences are the glue that hold us so tightly together. We must now focus not on where we have been, but where we are going. Let us repair the holes in our waka and restrategise the rest of our journey.'

So far, members of the Black Power, Mongrel Mob, Hells Angels, and King Cobras have taken part in tributes to honour the victims this week.

On Sunday, 10 members of Black Power, which was first formed in 1970, gathered near the police cordon at Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch to perform a moving haka.

Tributes and gestures of support have been even carried out overseas as social media photos showed people forming a 'human chain' around a California mosque on Saturday (pictured)

In New Zealand, organiser Jude Fippard has created a Facebook event called ' NZ Stand Togethe r' inviting people worldwide to take part in a 'human chain of love and support' around their local mosques

In Sydney, members of the Mongrel Mob have also been seen guarding Muslim places of worship.

Tributes and gestures of support have been even carried out overseas as social media photos showed people forming a 'human chain' around a California mosque on Saturday, News Hub reported.

In New Zealand, organiser Jude Fippard has created a Facebook event called 'NZ Stand Together' inviting people worldwide to take part in a 'human chain of love and support' around their local mosques on March 22.

New Zealand Police said it has formally identified 21 of the 50 victims murdered in the shooting as of Wednesday.

Their bodies are now being made available to their families, NZ Police Commissioner Mike Bush said this morning.

Some 120 forensic workers are involved in the identification process, which began soon after the attacks on two mosques on Friday.

Some 50 people were killed and another 50 were injured when a man opened fire on people gathered for Friday prayers.

Australia Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged in relation to the attacks.
A man who allegedly raped a young female relative while staying at her family home will face court on Wednesday.

NSW Police's Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad began investigating last week after reports a six-year-old girl had been sexually abused by a male relative.

The girl was taken to The Childrens Hospital at Westmead to be treated and examined.

The man was arrested at a Kingswood home in western Sydney on Tuesday morning and taken to Penrith Police Station.

A man will face court over the alleged rape of a six-year-old female relative (stock image)

He was charged with sexual intercourse with a child under-10 and four counts of intentionally sexually touching a child under-10.

Police allege the man sexually assaulted and inappropriately touched the young girl while he was staying at the familys western Sydney home on March 10.

The man was refused bail to appear in Penrith Local Court on Wednesday.

The Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad consists of detectives dedicated to investigating matters against children and adults, including sexual assault, serious physical abuse, and extreme cases of neglect.

Anyone with concerns about suspected child abuse or exploitation is urged to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
During the scuffle, one of the terrorists was seriously injured while the other two fled away.

President Ram Nath Kovind presented the award at the Defence Investiture Ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan. (Image: ANI)

New Delhi: Sepoy Vijay Kumar of the Indian Army on Tuesday was conferred with the Kirti Chakra posthumously for displaying indomitable courage during the counter-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir.

President Ram Nath Kovind presented the award at the Defence Investiture Ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Kirti Chakra was also conferred on Constable Pradip Kumar Panda of CRPF posthumously for displaying exceptional bravery and commitment to duty during counter-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir.

Another Gallantry Award Shaurya Chakra was awarded to 14-year-old Irfan Sheikh of Jammu and Kashmir for thwarting an attack by three terrorists on his house.

During the scuffle, one of the terrorists was seriously injured while the other two fled away.

Besides that, Lieutenant General Anil Bhatt was conferred with 'Uttam Yudh Seva Medal' by President Kovind for the successful conduct of counter-terrorist operations under in Jammu and Kashmir.

This year, President Ram Nath Kovind approved awards 411 gallantry and other defence decorations for Armed Forces personnel and others on the eve of the 70th Republic Day Celebrations.

The awards include one Ashoka Chakra, 4 Kirti Chakras, 11 Shaurya Chakras, 28 Param Vishisht Seva Medals, 3 Uttam Yudh Seva Medals, 51 Ati Vishisht Seva Medals, one Bar to Yudh Seva Medal, 9 Yudh Seva Medals, two Bar to Vishisht Seva Medals.
The desperate search for a bushwalker who called triple-0 after being bitten by a snake has ended in tragedy.

Nathan Scattini, 41, rang St John Ambulance on Sunday night while walking near Kelmscott in Perth's south-east but was not able to give his exact location.

Western Australia Police began searching Bob Blackburne Reserve and John Dunn Memorial Park in the Seville Grove and Kelmscott areas.

The body of a man, believed to be Nathan Scattini (pictured) was found in bushland in Perth's south-east on Tuesday night, 48 hours after he called triple-0 for help

But after an extensive two-day search involving a police helicopter, mounted police and State Emergency Service volunteers, a man's body was found in bushland in nearby Champion Lakes on Tuesday night.

The body was found four kilometres away from where Mr Scattini called for help.

The tragic discovery came just hours after Mr Scattini's frantic parents and brother travelled from Kalgoorlie to Perth and made a desperate public plea to find him.

State Emergency Service crews (pictured) were involved in the search in Perth's south-east

'Nathan, if you're possibly watching this please know that we love you and we want you to come home,' his mum Martine said.

'There are a lot of people out there looking for you and we really appreciate their efforts  or if there's anyone out there who's seen Nathan or knows of his whereabouts in the last couple of days can you please notify the police.'

Concerned friends also took to social media appealing for information on Mr Scattini's whereabouts.

Nathan Scattini's frantic family travelled from Kalgoorlie on Tuesday to launch a public appeal

'Has anyone seen or if anyone sees this person he is our mate and has been missing for 24 hrs now if anyone knows anything please call police,' one friend wrote.

The circumstances surrounding the man's death are not unknown.

A report will be prepared for the Coroner.
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The sobering extent of the damage caused by the Midwest floods is laid bare in before-and-after satellite photographs taken in some of the worst affected areas.

Much of Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and parts of Illinois remain submerged in water, at least four people have died and countless businesses have been washed away by the historic floods.

On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Nebraska to survey some of the worst-hit areas and offer support to local leaders.

So far, the floods have caused an estimated $1billion in damage in Nebraska alone and struggling farmers are bearing the brunt of it.

Scroll down for video

 Slide me  Pacific Junction in Nebraska is shown before the flood (left) and afterwards (right) as farmers continue to struggle with the damage. Much of Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and parts of Illinois remain underwater as a result of the historic floods

 Slide me  Offutt Air Force Base on the outskirts of Omaha is shown before and after the flood. The damage has been put at more than $1billion in Nebraska alone

 Slide me  The Platte River in Nebraska has overflown as a result of the heavy rain and melting snow and ice is continuing to contribute to the problem

 Slide me  Cooper nuclear power station is shown in Nebraska before the flood and afterwards, right

 Slide me  A satellite image of Omaha shows the region before the floods (left) and afterwards (right). The record-setting flooding has also impacted Offut Air Base, the home of U.S. Strategic Command

Many have told how the waters have suddenly plunged their livelihoods into uncertainty, with drowning livestock and waterlogged land making it impossible for them to carry on with their trade.

A disaster declaration has been declared for nearly 70 percent of the state of Nebraska.

The state's Emergency Management Agency said in a news release Tuesday that 65 of the state's 93 counties are under state-issued emergency declarations.

Gov. Pete Ricketts says there have been disasters with greater loss of life. But he said he didn't think there's ever 'been a disaster this widespread in Nebraska.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds says 41 of Iowa's 99 counties are now included in her state disaster declaration after massive flooding.

Jake Nebuda removes damaged items from the basement of his home in North Bend, Nebraska. It had more than 40 inches of water in it

Mike Loeffler clears mud from his driveway in North Bend, Nebraska, on Tuesday. The Vice President is on his way to the state to lend his support

An aerial view of Waterloo, Nebraska, is shown on Monday, March 18. The majority of the state has been placed under a disaster declaration

The Matthew J. Placzek Monument to Labor in Omaha is almost submerged by water from the overflowing Missouri River

A handout image released by the National Guard on Monday shows a tank at Camp Ashland which was also flooded

FLOODS HIT STRUGGLING FARMERS THE HARDEST The president of the Nebraska Farm Bureau says farm and ranch losses due to the devastating flooding could reach $1 billion in the state. Steve Nelson estimates $400 million in crop losses because of crops that will be planted late, if at all. He also estimates as much as $500 million in livestock losses as Nebraska and other Midwestern states struggle with swollen rivers and breached levees following heavy rain and snowmelt. Agriculture amounts to 20 percent of Nebraska's gross domestic product and provides one of every four jobs in the state. Nelson says flooding is costing the state's cattle industry $1 million a day in costs usually not covered by insurance. Advertisement

Reynolds also says she plans to press Vice President Mike Pence for a federal disaster declaration when he stops in Omaha, Nebraska, to tour inundated land along the Missouri River.

Reynolds and Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts are scheduled to accompany Pence for a Tuesday afternoon tour.

Reynolds says her hope is to access federal funding sooner rather than later.

She says some hog confinement operations in the southwest part of the state are under water with dead animals inside, and grain bins filled with corn and soybeans have been destroyed. She says some farm fields look like lakes just weeks away from spring planting, which will have significant impact on the upcoming growing season.

Flooding has closed more than 100 roads in Missouri.

And 70 miles of Interstate 29 is closed from St. Joseph to the Iowa border, complicating efforts to access the Cooper Nuclear Station along the Missouri River in Nebraska.

Some plant workers travel from Atchison County, Missouri, where a levee breach grew larger overnight. The county's emergency management says so many roads are closed in the region that residents are traveling more than 100 miles (161 kilometers) out of their way to get to the plant.

North Dakota-based Farm Rescue is seeking hay donations and volunteer drivers. The Nebraska Farm Bureau says farm and ranch losses in that state could reach $1 billion.

Farm Rescue first activated its "Operation Hay Lift" program to help drought-stricken Upper Midwest ranchers in 2017.

Dozens of volunteer truckers hauled hundreds of loads of hay to the region.

The nonprofit provides free physical labor for farmers and ranchers dealing with an injury, illness or a natural disaster in six Plains states.

It relies on volunteers from around the country, donations and corporate sponsors.

Photos released by the 55th Wing Commander at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska show the extant of flooding. Much of the runway is submerged

About one-third of Offutt Air Force Base is currently under water, according to local media reports

By Sunday morning, thirty buildings at the base had been flooded by up to eight feet of water

Overnight on Saturday, a sandbagging effort was called off because the water was rising too fast, according to Omaha World-Herald
Four more Birmingham primary schools have halted equality lessons after Muslim parents complained they were promoting homosexuality.

Leigh Trust has suspended its No Outsiders programme until an agreement with parents can be reached.

A number of schools across the Midlands have been involved in the sessions which discuss various issues surrounding the Equalities Act such as gender rights.

Earlier this month Parkfield Community School in Birmingham suspended the lessons after protests were held outside the school.

Parents and children demonstrated outside the Parkfield Community School in Birmingham

Parents' anger is aimed at the school's assistant head Andrew Moffat (pictured), who created the 'No Outsiders' lessons in 2015 to help fight discrimination and promote equality

The children involved in the exodus at Parkfield School represented about 80 per cent of the school's entire enrolment, which is 98 per cent Muslim

One campaigner Amir Ahmed highlighted that Muslims had felt 'victimised' by the lessons. However an LGBT group leader rebutted the claim and said that the programme was helping pupils at the school understand that it was ok to be different from their classmates.

In a letter obtained by the BBC, Leigh Trust said it was halting the lessons in schools until after the Islamic celebration of Ramadan, which will take place in May this year.

Schools involved in the row include Leigh Primary School, Alston Primary School, Marlborough Junior and Infants School and Wyndcliff Primary School.

Leigh Trust has yet to comment publicly regarding the halting of classes but has said that it wants to discuss the programme with parents in order to find a 'positive way' of teaching about the Equalities Act.

Some parents whose children attend the schools affected have claimed that the lessons are inappropriate for young children and that the LGBT message contradicts Islam.

The No Outsiders initiative was originally created and piloted in 2014 at Parkfield School by the assistant head teacher Andrew Moffat, who had been made MBE for his service to diversity and equality in education back in 2017.

Ofsted had deemed the lessons as 'age-appropriate'.

One of the leaders of the Parkfield protests told the BBC that he thought the programme was 'outrageous' after watching a presentation about the programme which was to be shown to the governments Prevent strategy  which is aimed at combatting radicalisation.

Parkfield School's children joined the campaign against lessons on LGBT lifestyles at a protest last month

Parents kept their children out of lessons for the first hour of the day in last month's protest at Parkfield School

Police were called to the protest outside Parkfield School in the Saltley area of Birmingham earlier this year

Mr Ahmed said: 'It's quite disgusting that the school has presented our children as potential radicals.'

A spokesperson for Parkfield Community School said: 'The powerpoint was written four years ago in line with Prevent duty at that time.

'No Outsiders is all about tolerance, accepting difference and respect, which are all key aspects of community cohesion and our fundamental British values.'

He added that his community was 'respectful and tolerant' of British values but now felt victimised.

He said parents who had protested were 'effectively seen as homophobes in the wider community'.

Protester Mariam Ahmed, whose four-year-old daughter attends the school, organised a petition against the No Outsiders project

The school started its programme four years ago and says it should welcome people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender

'Fundamentally the issue we have with No Outsiders is that it is changing our children's moral position on family values on sexuality and we are a traditional community.

'Morally we do not accept homosexuality as a valid sexual relationship to have. It's not about being homophobic... that's like saying, if you don't believe in Islam, you're Islamophobic.'

This is while a gay Muslim activist who runs Birmingham South Asian LGBT, Khakan Qureshi, said he visited the Parkfield School last week and was supporting the lessons.

He said: 'Myself and many others knew from a young age that we were different and we wish we had this sort of education'.

He added that he felt that the Muslim community as a whole was not homophobic but that a minority within those protesting are 'agitating'.

'The attitudes of the protesters towards the No Outsiders programme is completely homophobic,' he said.

'No matter how they package it, it still comes across as homophobic.'

Given the existing legislation to stop discrimination he said: 'I don't understand why certain communities here in the UK are not adhering to those laws'.
Cindy McCain revealed on Tuesday a horrific message sent to her about her late husband and daughter Meghan as President Donald Trump slammed John McCain yet again, this time saying in the Oval Office 'I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.'

The late senator's widow posted a screen shot from Facebook messenger on her Twitter feed with a note: 'I want to make sure all of you could see how kind and loving a stranger can be. Im posting her note for her family and friends could see.'

The message from a user named Tiffany Nicole read: 'Your husband was a traitorous piece of warmongering s*** and I'm glad he's dead. Hope your Mrs. Piggy looking daughter chokes to death on the next burger she stuffs down her fat neck, too, c***.'

Cindy McCain revealed a horrific message sent to her about her late husband and her daughter Meghan

McCain's move came after President Trump trashed her late husband yet again

Her post comes on the fourth day of attacks President Trump has launched against John McCain.

Meghan McCain has rallied to her father's defense in a series of posts on Instagram and Twitter, along with an impassioned speech on ABC's 'The View.'

Over the weekend the president launched a barrage of tweets against the late senator, which reporters asked him about in the Oval Office Tuesday during a state visit with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Trump cited McCain's 2017 Senate vote that ended GOP efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act - former President Barack Obama' signature healthcare law - as the reason for his anger.

'I'm very unhappy that he didn't repeal and replace Obamacare as you know. He campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years, and then he got to a vote, and he said thumbs down. And our country would have saved a trillion dollars and we would have had great healthcare,' Trump said Tuesday.

Meghan McCain and Cindy McCain embrace at the late senator's funeral service

Meghan McCain has retweeted supporters of her father

Cindy McCain and John McCain after voting in Arizona in the 2016 election

He added that Sen. McCain 'told us hours before that he was going to repeal and replace' before voting the opposite way.

'Frankly, had we even known that I think we would have gotten the vote because we could have gotten somebody else. So I think that's disgraceful, plus there are other things. I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be,' he said.

As part of her defensive strategy, Meghan McCain posted on Instagram a photo that showed military honors under her father's name and a bunch of pacifiers under Trump's name.

She also retweeted a flood of supporters defending her father and the McCain family.

She retweeted a tweet from Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse that read: 'Theres something deeply troubled in @realDonaldTrump constantly trying to belittle John McCain. Deep within, Trump must realize how far better a man John was and will always be.'

She also retweeted a tweet from Mark Salter, one of McCain's top aides in the Senate who co-wrote several of his books.

Salter wrote: 'Ok you aren't a fan. One more in a long list of things you are not. Honest Brave Smart Tough Disciplined Kind Generous Patriotic A fan of John McCain Had you been a fan, the Senator would have wondered what he had done so wrong that he earned the approval of a man he despised.'

After Meghan McCain's Instagram post, Trump campaign senior adviser Katrina Pierson fired back with a mocking one of her own, featuring the same image of military honor's under McCain's name but the presidential seal under Trump's.

Cindy McCain has also retweeted defenders of her late husband.

The back-and-forth between the two camps is now in its fourth day of battle.

On Monday, Meghan McCain slammed Trump for having a 'pathetic life' for spending his weekend tweeting criticism of her father.

'He spends his weekend obsessing over great men, because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it, he will never be a great man,' McCain said on ABC's 'The View.'

'My father was his kryptonite in life. He was his kryptonite in death,' she added.

Meghan McCain escalated her response to President Trump's criticism of her late father on Monday, saying the president has a 'pathetic life'

President Trump attacked the late Sen. John McCain twice this weekend on Twitter

McCain, who is a co-host of the ABC program, said when she saw the president's tweets she thought that 'your life is spent on your weekends not with your family, not with your friends, but obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to.'

'That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now,' she added. 'I genuinely feel bad for his family. I can't imagine having a father that does this on the weekends.'

Trump attacked the late senator twice this past weekend on Twitter, focusing on McCain's ties to the infamous Steele dossier that contains the unverified allegations the Russians have blackmail material on the president.

'So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) 'last in his class' (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!, the president wrote on Sunday.

McCain was actually fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy.

On Saturday, Trump said McCain leaking the 'dirty dossier' was 'dark stain' on his legacy.

'Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier 'is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain,'' Trump wrote, attributing the quote to, Ken Starr, the former independent counsel whose investigation led to Bill Clinton's impeachment.

Trump continued, referring to John McCain's vote on the Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare: 'He had far worse 'stains' than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!'

McCain's 'no' vote on the GOP effort to take down Obama's signature law stopped the effort in its tracks.

The president and McCain had a testy relationship when the senator was alive leading to McCain not inviting Trump to his funeral, where the former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush gave the eulogies.

In regards to Trump's allegations, there is no evidence that McCain shared the Steele dossier before the election.

Meghan McCain poses with her father, Senator John McCain on The View in October 2017

The late senator did hand-deliver a copy of it to then-FBI Director James Comey in December of 2016, after the election, as McCain wrote in his book 'The Restless Wave.'

'The allegations were disturbing, but I had no idea which if any were true. I could not independently verify any of it, and so I did what any American who cares about our nation's security should have done,' McCain wrote. 'I did what duty demanded I do.'

Meghan McCain also slapped back at the president on Saturday, saying he will never be loved.

'No one will ever love you the way they loved my father.... I wish I had been given more Saturday's with him. Maybe spend yours with your family instead of on twitter obsessing over mine?' she tweeted on Saturday.

On Sunday, Trump retweeted a tweet from a supporter who wrote that 'millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain.'

John McCain died at the age of 81 after battling brain cancer. He made explicit his desire that President Trump not attend his funeral.

His beef with President Trump dates at least back to the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump criticized him for being taken prisoner in Vietnam.

'He's not a war hero,' Trump said in July 2015, sarcastically quipping: 'He's a war hero because he was captured.'

Then, he added, 'I like people that weren't captured.'
Alleged murderer Anthony Comello (above) is accused of killing Gambino crime family boss Francesco 'Franky Boy' Cali last week

The man charged with killing Gambino family crime boss Francesco Franky Boy Cali outside his home on Staten Island last week had a secret Instagram account on which he posted extreme right-wing messages and memes.

Anthony Comello, 24, appeared in court for the first time in Toms River, New Jersey on Monday for an extradition hearing.

During the hearing, he showed off drawings on his hand which read MAGA forever and QAnon - a far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a deep state is working to bring down President Trump.

Those messages are in line with the posts from his Instagram account, the existence of which was first reported by the New York Post.

Comello used to post crazy things about politics and Trump and Democrats, a source told the Post.

The Instagram page was created under the handle 'realamericasvoice_'.

One Instagram post included the Reichsadler, or imperial eagle, which was used during the Nazi period.

The post reads: Infidel of freedom, infidels of the free world...Dems=demons go down on all counts.

Another post shows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wearing a symbol that supposedly represents evil fascism.

The Instagram page believed to have belonged to Comello was created under the handle 'realamericasvoice_'

The page included extreme messages denouncing illegal immigrants and Democrats. It also included memes claiming there was a conspiracy to bring down President Trump

The above meme found on the Instagram page shows extreme messages denouncing Democratic members of Congress and liberal activist Linda Sarsour

One Instagram post (left) included the Reichsadler, or imperial eagle, which was used during the Nazi period. The post reads: Infidel of freedom, infidels of the free world...Dems=demons go down on all counts. The post on the right says Nancy Pelosi represents 'evil facism'

There are also truther conspiracy theories which allege that the September 11, 2001 attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration.

Another Instagram post depicts Michelle Obama, the former first lady, as a man dancing with wife, Barack Obama, whose head is photoshopped onto her body.

One meme shows a group of prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Eric Holder, and others in jail for treason since Russia collusion is a proven lie.

The Instagram post also shows messages denouncing illegal immigrants, socialism, and taxes.

Comello first drew the attention of police after he bizarrely tried to make a 'citizen's arrest' of prominent Democratic figures including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Pelosi, U.S. House Rep. Adam Schiff, and U.S. House Rep. Maxine Waters.

'There was an incident at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan where he showed up [on February 21] asking to make a citizens arrest of a number of elected officials,' NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller told the Post.

'These were rambling statements, but it involved that he wanted to make citizen arrests of Maxine Waters, Congressman Schiff,' Miller said.

Schiff, Waters, and Pelosi are members of Congress from California. They are also outspoken critics of President Trump.

Miller said that Comello 'blamed Nancy Pelosi and all kinds of other people for stealing the election.'

The day after he showed up at the courthouse, Miller said Comello went to Gracie Mansion, the mayor's official residence in Manhattan, in an attempt to arrest de Blasio.

'Based on that incident and the language used there, his description and image, police officers who were assigned to Gracie Mansion recognized him as an individual they encountered the following day, Feb. 22, as somebody who showed up asking to make a citizens arrest of the mayor,' Miller said.

Camello (above) showed off pro-Trump slogans on his left hand during a court appearance on Monday in Toms River, New Jersey. The messages include 'MAGA Forever'

Comello asked a US Marshal how he could go about performing a 'citizen's arrest' on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (left) and turned up outside New York City Hall protesting against Mayor Bill de Blasio (right) and saying he should be jailed

Comello is also said to have tried to make a 'citizen's arrest' of top Congressional Democrats Maxine Waters (left) and Adam Schiff (right)

'They engaged in conversation with him, and while they were waiting for a sector car to show up, he walked off. That was the extent of the contact.'

One source told DailyMail.com: 'He was clearly unhinged well before he decided to kill Cali. The whole citizen's arrest inquiry against Nancy Pelosi is proof of that.'

Gambino crime family boss Francesco 'Franky Boy' Cali (above) was murdered outside his Staten Island home on March 13

While appearing on Monday at a court hearing in Toms River, New Jersey, where he agreed to be extradited to New York, Comello had also scrawled 'United We Stand MAGA' and 'Patriots In Charge', which suggest he was influenced by QAnon - a discredited far-right conspiracy theory that alleges a secret plot by so-called 'deep state' operatives against Trump and his supporters.

Comello's courtroom stunt has already been compared to the actions of 'MAGA Bomber' Cesar Sayoc.

Floridian Sayoc, 56, was charged in October last year with sending 16 pipe bombs to President Trump's political enemies, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.

When he was arrested, Sayoc had been living out of a van covered with pro-Trump stickers and images of prominent Democrats with cross-hairs on their faces. Sayoc faces life imprisonment if convicted.

Investigators are seen with forensic equipment outside the Cali's home on Thursday
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein plans to remain in his post beyond an expected mid-March departure, in a new sign the Mueller probe still has more to do.

Rosenstein, who for the bulk of the investigation maintained authority over the Russia probe, will remain in his post 'a little longer,' CNN reported.

The decision came after consultation with new Attorney General William Barr, who assumed formal authority over the Russia probe after he was confirmed by the Senate last month.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will remain on the job 'a little longer,' according to a report

His predecessor, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, had assumed oversight but Rosenstein had retained day-to-day oversight.

President Trump has railed against Rosenstein repeatedly, once including retweeted an image depicting him and several top investigators behind bars. Trump also has repeatedly railed against his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, whose decision to recuse from the Russia probe resulted in Rosenstein's oversight.

It is Rosenstein who named Robert Mueller special counsel to head the probe Trump regularly trashes as a 'witch hunt.'

JUST FINISHING UP: There have been signals that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is wrapping up his work

President Trump continues to trash the Mueller probe as a 'witch hunt'

Rosenstein has reportedly indicated internally that he will leave when he believes the probe is either finished or close to complete.

The White House and Congress are waiting to see when Mueller finally completes his probe and delivers a report to the attorney general. One of Mueller's top prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, is leaving to take a job at New York University, a development which was taken as a sign that the probe is nearing completion.

However a filing last week indicated that former Paul Manafort deputy Rick Gates is still assisting prosecutors with investigations.

Trump went after Rosenstein and Mueller in a meandering speech at CPAC earlier this month. 'Unfortunately, you put the wrong people in a couple of positions and they leave people for a long time that shouldn't be there and all of a sudden they are trying to take you out with bull****, okay?' Trump said.
A federal judge on Tuesday contradicted the Trump administration's 'incorrect' claim that no legal blocks remain for it to enforce a contentious policy to restrict many transgender individuals from the U.S. armed forces starting on April 12.

In a three-page notice, U.S. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly - a Bill Clinton appointee - said an injunction that she issued against the policy in 2017 remains in place.

'Defendants were incorrect in claiming that there was no longer an impediment to the military's implementation' of the transgender policy, the judge wrote.

A spokeswoman for Pentagon said it was consulting with the U.S. Justice Department, which declined to comment.

Chaos: Pentagon secretary Patrick Shanahan's (right) staff are consulting with the Department of Justice after a court ruled the military transgender ban ordered by Donald Trump is still subject to an injunction

A spokeswoman for Pentagon said it was consulting with the U.S. Justice Department, which declined to comment.

Three other injunctions issued by judges in separate cases have already been lifted, in part by a Jan. 22 U.S. Supreme Court decision and subsequent action by a federal judge in Maryland.

That prompted the U.S. Defense Department to sign a memo on March 12 that would enforce its service limitations on transgender people, effective one month later.

Kollar-Kotelly's injunction, however, had been set aside by a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 4.

The panel said it would hold off on issuing a 'mandate' to finalize the higher court's decision until it resolves any request by the plaintiffs who challenged the transgender policy as a violation of the U.S. Constitution to rehear their appeal.

'The Trump administration cannot circumvent the judicial process just to fast track its baseless, unfair ban on transgender servicemembers,' said attorney Jennifer Levi of the anti-discrimination group GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, who represents the plaintiffs.

President Donald Trump in 2017 announced a plan to ban transgender people from the military, reversing Democratic former President Barack Obama's policy of allowing transgender troops to serve openly and get medical transition care.

In March 2018, Trump backed a revised policy from then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It banned, in some circumstances, transgender people with gender dysphoria, or distress due to internal conflict between physical gender and gender identity.

The Mattis policy also banned transgender people who seek or have undergone gender transition steps.
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Theresa May is preparing to abandon her plan to ask the EU for a nine-month Brexit delay after furious cabinet ministers told her the Tory party would only accept a three-month wait.

The Prime Minister is now thought to be considering writing to the EU asking for a shorter extension, as Downing street admitted last night that Britain's departure from the European Union is at a crisis point.

Mrs May was forced into a humiliating retreat after being put under severe pressure by senior ministers at a cabinet meeting last night and is now expected to write to Donald Tusk for a three month extension, rather than ask for a lengthier departure date.

The sudden change of direction left some ministers reeling, one told The Sun: 'Nobody knows what the f*** is going on, or even who in No10 is actually gripping it. Maybe nobody is.

'The whole thing is a national humiliation on a scale we have not seen in many, many decades - if ever before.'

At the 90-minute cabinet meeting ministers were at loggerheads on just how long a potential extension would be.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and International Trade chief Liam Fox were thought to be against a lengthy delay, as was Commons leader Andrea Leadsom.

She said: 'This used to be the cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what I'm hearing it's not.'

It comes a thousand days on from the 2016 referendum  and just ten days before the UK is due to leave the Brussels club.

Prime Minister Theresa May sat behind her security guard as she is driven to the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday, the PM will head to Brussels tomorrow as she seeks to agree an extension to Article 50 with the European Union

Speaker John Bercow refused to answer questions over his invocation of 17th century precedent, during a stormy session of the Cabinet, the Prime Minister rounded on Mr Bercow and said he was making a laughing stock of Parliament.

Andrea Leadsom accused Cabinet Remainers of frustrating Brexit, and hinted she could quit (pictured leaving the meeting on Tuesday)

She told ministers that parliamentary opposition to No Deal, the rejection of her plan by MPs and John Bercow's decision to block a third vote this week meant she had been forced to try to put off the March 29 departure date.

Tomorrow she will travel to Brussels to establish the terms of an extension to Article 50 before putting it to the Commons next week.

During a stormy session of the Cabinet, the Prime Minister rounded on Mr Bercow for dredging up a 17th century convention in order to block a third vote on her plan. She said the Speaker was making a laughing stock of Parliament.

In the wake of his ruling, which came as a surprise to No 10, Mrs May told ministers: 'The Speaker has framed this debate as Parliament versus the Government. But what it actually is now is Parliament versus the people.'

A Cabinet source said: 'The only thing agreed this morning was that everyone hates Bercow.' The Prime Minister's official spokesman said Mrs May had predicted a crisis if MPs rejected her deal for a second time, adding: 'That situation has come to pass.'

In other developments:

Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, warned the EU would attach strict conditions to any delay;

Boris Johnson used face-to-face talks with Mrs May to warn her that he remains opposed to her deal;

Andrea Leadsom accused Cabinet Remainers of frustrating Brexit, and hinted she could quit;

Unconfirmed reports suggested the PM could make a final bid to get her deal through the Commons next Thursday  the day before Britain is due to leave;

Mrs May warned the Cabinet that if a long delay is agreed, the UK would have to hold elections to the European Parliament in May;

Downing Street said there were no circumstances in which Mrs May would revoke Article 50;

Jeremy Corbyn and more than 100 MPs took time out from the Brexit crisis to attend the boozy British kebab awards in Westminster;

Mrs May's efforts to win DUP backing for her withdrawal plan have stalled.

Angela Merkel took a swipe at Mr Bercow, saying: 'I'll concede that I wasn't actively aware of the British Parliament's rules of procedure from the 17th century.'

An historic edition of the Daily Mail published with a sense of optimism for the road ahead

Mrs May told the Cabinet she would ask for an extension with a break clause that could allow the UK to leave the EU by June 30 if her withdrawal agreement is passed.

But she acknowledged that, with no deal agreed, and the UK due to leave next week, she would also have to seek a longer extension.

Ministers were not given the proposed end date of the longer extension, with allies of the PM apparently fearing a leak to the media.

Downing Street denied reports that Mrs May was ready to ask for a delay lasting up to two years.

Her deputy David Lidington is said to have told his EU counterparts that she would seek a delay of nine to 12 months unless she can get her deal through in the coming weeks. No 10 dismissed the report yesterday.

But a Cabinet source said it was already clear that nine months would not be long enough because the new European Commission will not be in place until the autumn. 'A nine-month extension is a joke,' the source said. 'There will be no one to talk to in Brussels until October  the idea we can get a new deal agreed in three months is ridiculous.

'All it means is we'll have to go through this humiliating exercise again at Christmas. What is the point?'

Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said the UK would need to provide a 'very persuasive plan' to support any request for a long extension to the Article 50 negotiation process.

Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson leaves the Cabinet Office on Tuesday, he had face-to-face talks with Mrs May to tell her he continued to oppose her deal

Former Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said both Parliament and the Government had to get a grip to prevent a slide into political chaos.

Mrs Morgan said: 'It is jaw-dropping. The country is watching horror-struck at the lack of decisions from Westminster.

'At a time when the country needs stable government, people are still indulging in what they would like rather than what can be achieved.'

Sir Vince Cable: 'Anyone who thought Labour has signed up to the People's Vote has been misled' Jeremy Corbyn's heart isn't in a second referendum, Sir Vince Cable said yesterday. The Lib Dem leader and other opposition parties met the Labour leader to discuss another vote for the first time. Sir Vince told the Mail: 'Anyone who thought Labour has signed up to the People's Vote has been misled. Their heart isn't in it. They're just trying to keep the party together.' He said Mr Corbyn's team made it clear they would not support Mrs May's deal being on the ballot paper in another vote. Sir Vince said an amendment by Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson had been discussed, but the leadership was 'quite hostile' to it. If the Kyle-Wilson amendment to the deal passes, MPs would vote for Mrs May's deal, but it would be subject to a confirmatory referendum. Labour sources said they were discussing the final version of the Kyle-Wilson text. Advertisement

Some ministers argued that the prospect of a long delay would pile pressure on the pro-Brexit Tory MPs of the European Research Group to back the PM. But Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson suggested the move would backfire, telling her: 'Trust your instincts that a long extension would create division in the party.'

Mrs May's plan was defeated by 230 votes in January and again by 149 votes last week.

She had planned to put it to a vote again yesterday, but was blocked by Mr Bercow's ruling that MPs should not be asked to vote again on the same proposition.

Allies of the Prime Minister still believe it is possible that MPs could finally knuckle under next week.

Her official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister is absolutely determined to find a way in which Parliament can vote to leave the EU with a deal.

'The PM wants that to happen as soon as possible.

'She does not want a long delay and believes that asking the British public to take part in European parliament elections three years after they have voted to leave would represent a failure by British politicians.'

Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said there was a growing risk of no Brexit unless MPs agreed to back Mrs May's deal in the coming days.

Jeremy Corbyn indicated that he sees Monday as the point for Labour to mount a challenge to the Government's approach.

Speaking after talks with other opposition parties and Labour backbenchers on the way forward, Mr Corbyn said: 'If the Government can't get a majority for its way on Monday, then I think that's the time to challenge this Government.

'The reality is that this Government has lost its authority, doesn't enjoy the confidence of the House, can't get anything through.

'Surely that is the time to step aside and let the people decide in a people's vote that's called a general election.'

He added: 'I hope that on Monday the House will come together and support some sensible alternatives that can be negotiated during an extension period with the EU.'
Australians could be stopped from attending Anzac Day dawn services at Gallipoli after Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned anti-Muslim visitors they could come home in coffins.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has described his comments mocking World War I diggers as 'deeply offensive', just five weeks ahead of Anzac Day.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured) referenced the doomed Gallipoli campaign during World War I by saying anti-Muslim visitors would be 'returned in coffins'

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is now advising thousands of Australians, planning to travel to Turkey, to 'exercise a high degree of caution'.

This is due to the high threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre at two mosques in New Zealand.

Erdogan has inflamed previously-warm diplomatic ties by referencing the sacred Gallipoli campaign of 1915, following last week's shooting spree which saw 50 Muslims killed.

Mr Morrison has confirmed he had summonsed the Turkish Ambassador to Australia Korhan Karakoc to Parliament House in Canberra to answer Erdogan's 'very offensive comments'.

'I find the comments deeply offensive but also unhelpful,' Mr Morrison told Sydney radio 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones on Wednesday.

'I think it's our job here not to escalate this. It's our job to take the temperature down.'

Australians (pictured) could be stopped from attending Anzac Day services at Gallipoli after Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned anti-Muslim visitors they could come home in coffins

On Tuesday Erdogan, a 65-year-old Islamist leader, referenced the doomed 1915 Gallipoli campaign of World War I during a public address on an outdoor podium in the northern Turkish town of Eregli.

'Your grandparents came, some of them returned in coffins,' he told an election rally featuring supporters waving Turkish flags.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has described the Turkish President's comments as 'deeply offensive'

'If you come as well like your grandfathers, be sure that you will be gone like your grandfathers.'

The bodies of diggers killed in battle with Turks during World War I were not repatriated back to Australia, which makes Erdogan's inflammatory comments historically inaccurate.

The Gallipoli campaign killed 8,141 Australians.

The nine-month Gallipoli campaign at the Dardanelles, in Turkey, saw 860 Australians killed in five days, following the doomed landing on April 25, 1915.

Erdogan had spoken at a rally featuring footage of the Christchurch massacre on New Zealand's South Island.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after the lone gunman allegedly opened fire at two Christchurch mosques during Friday prayers, killing 50 people.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is now advising Australians planning to travel to Turkey to 'exercise a high degree of caution' (pictured are Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Canakkale in Turkey)

Erdogan had spoken at a rally featuring an image of independent Queensland senator Fraser Anning (pictured)

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has also condemned Erdogan, and said Australians and New Zealanders would soon travel to Gallipoli to mark Anzac Day and 100 years of friendship with Turkey.

'These are foolish and offensive remarks at a time when New Zealanders are mourning,' Mr Shorten said.

The Erdogan rally also featured a screen image of independent Queensland senator Fraser Anning, who has been widely condemned in Australia for releasing a statement on Friday equating the Christchurch shootings with 'the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand, of the increasing Muslim presence'.

Mr Morrison said Erdogan's comments were at odds with Turkey's secular founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who in 1934 said soldiers who died at Gallipoli were 'in the soil of a friendly country' at peace.

Erdogan's inflammatory comments, following the Christchurch massacre (pictured) which killed 50 people, could be regarded as a threat to the thousands of Australians who visit Turkey in April every year for the dawn service at Anzac Cove

'I find President Erdogan's comments very at odds with what Ataturk said about our sons could lie safely on their shores and rest in peace there,' the Prime Minister said.

'I find it a violation of that.'

After World War I, Ataturk and his secular successors had fostered close diplomatic ties with Australia

Ataturk had warmly described the Australian and New Zealand casualties of Gallipoli as sons 'now lying in our bosom'.

Erdogan, however, who became President in 2014 after serving as prime minister has broken decades of secular consensus in Turkey by ruling as an autocratic Islamist leader.

The Gallipoli reference is also particularly touchy, given that is the basis of the Anzac Day national public holiday in Australia and New Zealand (pictured are Australian troops in August 1915 disembarking on the Gallipoli peninsula during the nine-month Dardanelles campaign)
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The annual painted lady butterfly migration is causing quite the stir in Southern California.

The beautiful insects make their way north each year in the Spring, in search of warmer weather.

'The painted lady migration is not rare but rather has been taking place for centuries,' President of Butterfly Rescue International, Lepidopterist Rick Mikula told Accuweather.

'In some years, the numbers arent as pronounced as they are this year.'

Scroll down for video

The annual painted lady butterfly migration is causing quite the stir in Southern California, filling the skies with their beauty

The migration is California typically follows a north to northwest pattern, as the painted ladies travel from Southern California deserts to the Pacific Northwest.

Higher levels of desert rainfall has resulted in a larger number of North American painted lady butterflies migrating this season.

The North American butterflies lay their eggs in the desert.

'This years huge increase can be attributed to the California rains which help to increase the plant life in an otherwise sparse overwintering environment,' Mikula said.

The beautiful insects of North America make their way north each year in the Spring, in search of warmer weather

'The painted lady migration is not rare but rather has been taking place for centuries,' President of Butterfly Rescue International, Lepidopterist Rick Mikula told Accuweather

'In some years, the numbers arent as pronounced as they are this year,' Mikula said before explaining why this year is special

The migration is California typically follows a north to northwest pattern, as the painted ladies travel from Southern California deserts to the Pacific Northwest

Higher levels of desert rainfall has resulted in a larger number of North American painted lady butterflies migrating this year

Thriving plant life provided plenty of food for painted lady caterpillars, fueling their growth into butterflies.

'More host plants means more caterpillars that will eventually become more butterflies,' Mikula said.

'I have been fortunate to witness such massive migrations firsthand over the past few decades.'

The North American butterflies lay their eggs in the desert. 'This years huge increase can be attributed to the California rains which help to increase the plant life in an otherwise sparse overwintering environment,' Mikula said

Thriving plant lift provided plenty of food for painted lady caterpillars, fueling their growth into butterflies

'More host plants means more caterpillars that will eventually become more butterflies,' Mikula said

These beautiful creatures call every continent except Antarctica and South America home.

'The painted [lady butterfly] is also well renowned for its annual migration from the UK to Africa where tens of millions of individuals are actually tracked by radar,' Mikula said.

'On the reverse route they have been shown to fly from Africa as far north as the Arctic Circle.'

'I have been fortunate to witness such massive migrations firsthand over the past few decades,' Mikula said, talking about the painted lady butterflies

These beautiful creatures call every continent except Antarctica and South America home, pictured here in SoCal

'The painted [lady butterfly] is also well renowned for its annual migration from the UK to Africa where tens of millions of individuals are actually tracked by radar,' Mikula said

But they're not the only species of butterfly known to cause a scene during migration.

'I have also experienced massive migrations of snout butterflies in Texas where it was impossible to drive on the highways without using your windshield wipers,' Mikula said.

Those interested in providing sustenance for butterflies of all kinds, including the waning populatoin of Monarchs, are encouraged to plant milkweed.

'On the reverse route they have been shown to fly from Africa as far north as the Arctic Circle,' Mikula said

But painted lady butterflies are not the only species of butterfly known to cause a scene during migration

'I have also experienced massive migrations of snout butterflies in Texas where it was impossible to drive on the highways without using your windshield wipers,' Mikula said. Painted lady butterflies are shown in California
South Africa: Cyclone Idai death toll may exceed 1000

The death toll from Tropical Cyclone Idai could exceed 1000, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said on Monday.

More than 84 deaths have officially been recorded since the landfall of Idai on Thursday night, which brought torrential rains and devastating winds.

However, President Nyusi said the situation could be much more serious in his speech addressed to the nation, after flying over the disaster-hit areas to conduct an inspection on Sunday.

"Everything indicates that we may register more than 1000 deaths," said Nyusi, adding that the cyclone has left the region without drinking water, communications and it has affected the normal functioning of hospitals, schools and other public and private institutions.

"The water of the Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, making villages disappear and isolating communities," said the President. "Bodies are floating. It is a real humanitarian disaster with great proportions."

President Nyusi said the government's concern and priority were to save people's lives without excuses.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has joined their Mozambican counterparts on the ground to help with the searches and air resources including helicopters and airplanes.

They are in Beira which is one of the worst-affected cities to ensure rapid humanitarian assistance. -SAnews.gov.za-Xinhua

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
A New York Times investigation cites senior US officials. The Saudi Rapid Intervention Group has ostensibly carried out several clandestine operations since 2017. Saudi leaders have not responded to the allegations. Weve never seen it on a scale like this, an expert says.

Washington (AsiaNews)  Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) authorised the creation of a special (secret) squad to suppress dissent in the country through surveillance, abductions and torture of individuals deemed "hostile" by Saudi leaders, this according to a New York Times investigation citing senior US officials with access to classified intelligence reports.

The campaign against dissent began a year before the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed on 2 October 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

US officials refer to the squad as the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group. The squad that killed and dismembered Khashoggi also carried out other clandestine missions.

As recently indicated by United Nations sources, the murder of the Saudi journalist, a critic of the Saudi regime and the crown prince, was part of a broader campaign to suppress dissent.

The accusations made by senior US officials, anonymous for security reasons, are backed by relatives and friends of the victims.

The Khashoggi murder has provoked global outrage and condemnations. US senators have called on US President Donald Trump to identify and punish those responsible.

Although suspicions have fallen on MbS and his close circle of loyalists, Trump has done nothing so far, clearing MbS of any involvement to protect the alliance with the Saudis.

For its part, Riyadh has consistently denied any responsibility of MBS, blaming unspecified rogue elements. So far, 11 people are facing charges in Saudi Arabia in connection with Khashoggis death, but little is known of their trial.

The intervention group has been accused, among other things, of detaining, abducting and abusing leading activists currently on trial.

According to sources, the squad was so busy that its leader asked MbS for bonuses during Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival that marks the end of Ramadan (the holy month of fasting and prayer).

Saudi officials declined to confirm or deny that such a team existed, nor comment the New York Times investigation.

For the US newspaper, MbS approved the creation of the special intervention group overseen by Saud al-Qahtani, an MbS loyalist.

Since its creation, the squad has arrested dozens of religious leaders, intellectuals and activists perceived as a "threat" to the Saudi leadership.

Weve never seen it on a scale like this, said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst now with the Brookings Institution. A dissident like Jamal Khashoggi in the past wouldnt have been considered worth the effort.
Rahul also said the Congress would not pass in the Rajya Sabha the controversial Citizenship Amend Bill.

The Congress will never attack the indigenous language, culture, customs and traditions of Arunachal and other Northeast states, Rahul said, in a clear dig at the NDAs preference for the Hindi heartland. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

tanagar: Arunachal Pradesh is special to the Congress party, leader Rahul Gandhi said at an Itanagar rally on Tuesday, promising to restore the special category status to the state and others in the Northeast if voted to power.

There are some states in the country which require special status because of their unique problems and difficulties such as connectivity, terrain, infrastructure, Gandhi said at the election rally.

During the Congress rule at the Centre, he said, Arunachal Pradesh and other NE states enjoyed special category status.

Arunachal Pradesh has a special place in the heart of the Congress party and we would like to have a dil ka rishta with the people of the state, he said.

Rahul also said the Congress would not pass in the Rajya Sabha the controversial Citizenship Amend Bill that has got the BJP much flak in recent times. Calling the Bill detrimental to the Northeast people, he said the Congress would never allow the suppression of the people of the Northeast. The NDA does not have majority in the Upper House.

The Congress would never attack the indigenous language, culture, customs and traditions of Arunachal and other Northeast states, Rahul said.

The government plans to change the definition of illegal migrants with the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016. It seeks to amend the Citizenship Act 1955 that gives citizenship to illegal migrants of Hindu, Sikh, Busshist, Jain, Parsi and Christian origin. The Act, however, does not have a provision for Muslims who are Shias and Ahmediyas and who face persecution in neighbouring countries.

The Assam Gano Parishad has threatened to cut ties with ally BJP over this, stating that this law attacks the cultural and linguistic identities of population here. Opposition parties have also slammed this attempt to grant citizenship on the basis of religion.

Election to the 60-member Arunachal Pradesh Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats will be held on April 11.

however, does not have a provision for Muslims who are Shias and Ahmediyas and who face persecution in neighbouring countries.

The Assam Gano Parishad has threatened to cut ties with ally BJP over this, stating that this law attacks the cultural and linguistic identities of population here.

The Congress will never attack the indigenous language, culture, customs and traditions of Arunachal and other Northeast states, Rahul said, in a clear dig at the NDAs preference for the Hindi heartland.
A Michigan man shot himself in the foot when he threw his shoe at a cockroach, local authorities say.

The Detroit man, 50, is said to have seen the critter from across the room at a home on the 18700 block of Albion street on Tuesday morning.

The man - who is wheelchair bound - threw his shoe at the bug but forgot that his revolver was inside, WDIV reports.

The Detroit man, 50, is said to have seen the critter from across the room at a home on the 18700 block of Albion street

The gun fell out of his shoe, discharged and hit the man in his foot.

He was taken to a hospital and is said to be in stable condition.

It is currently unknown whether he hit the cockroach\.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi again sought to wave her colleagues off impeachment on Tuesday, arguing that it's a wasted effort until members of Donald Trump's party get on board.

'You're wasting your time, unless the evidence is so conclusive that the Republicans will understand,' she told the USA Today in an interview. 'Otherwise, it's a gift to the president. We take our eye off the ball.'

She said in a previous interview that she 'not for' impeachment for a similar reason.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi again sought to wave her colleagues off impeachment on Tuesday, arguing that it's a wasted effort until members of Donald Trump's party get on board

She said in a previous interview that she doesn't believe impeachment is worth it. Pelosi is seen here on Monday in Missiouri

Without indisputable evidence of crimes, she told the Washington Post, the issue would only serve to divide the country.

Trump contended last week, after her initial comments, that he's innocent of the 'high crimes and misdemeanors' the Constitution sets as the threshold for his removal, which he called it a 'minor fact' in the debate that's playing out in the Democratic Party.

He thanked Pelosi in a tweet for refusing to back the push for impeachment from some Democrats.

'I greatly appreciate Nancy Pelosis statement against impeachment, but everyone must remember the minor fact that I never did anything wrong, the Economy and Unemployment are the best ever, Military and Vets are great - and many other successes!' he said.

President Donald Trump thanked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for refusing to impeach him on Wednesday morning

He contended on Twitter that he's innocent of the 'high crimes and misdemeanors' the Constitution sets as the threshold for his removal, which he called it a 'minor fact' in the debate that's playing out in the Democratic Party

Trump asked moments later, 'How do you impeach a man who is considered by many to be the President with the most successful first two years in history, especially when he has done nothing wrong and impeachment is for high crimes and misdemeanors? '

The Democratic leader has said she's 'not for' beginning a process to remove Donald Trump from office, sparking a new debate among Democrats about allegations that the president may have committed crimes.

Pelsoi said the issue is so 'divisive' that that 'unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan' her party should not chase impeachment.

'And he's just not worth it,' she told a news publication this week.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders subsequently argued that the impeachment push is the latest sign that Pelosi is 'starting to lose control of her party' two months into her tenure as speaker.

'I'm glad that she sees what the rest of us see, and that there's no reason, no cause for impeachment,' Sanders said in a Fox News interview last Tuesday.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says Democrats' impeachment push is the latest sign that Nancy Pelosi is 'starting to lose control of her party' two months into her tenure as speaker

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she she's 'not for' beginning a process to remove Donald Trump from office in the face of allegations from her caucus that the president may have committed crimes

She claimed the same day as she briefed the press for the second time in 2019 after the White House put out its annual budget, that she was not aware of checks made out to his former lawyer after he took office that were part of hush-money scheme.

Michael Cohen testified that the billionaire ordered him to pay off a woman claiming she had sex with Trump and the president covered it up while in office with checks he claimed were a legal retainer.

He lost his law licence last month after pleading guilty to crimes he said he committed at the direction of the sitting president.

Trump and his attorneys have claimed he that Cohen's a liar and nothing about the payment structure was illegal. He should not have copped to campaign finance violations, because the payoff was not related to the presidential election.

Cohen's testimony has some Democrats chomping at the bit to remove Trump from office.

Sanders contended that Democrats arguing in favor of impeachment are 'making excuses' for their embarrassing loss to Trump in the last presidential election.

'Nobody wants to see President Trump impeached because, other than Democrats in Congress who are failing who have no other message,' she said, 'and that's because our country is doing better and they know that that is hard for them to run against in 2020.'

The chief Trump spokeswoman added: 'And I think they've got a very very hard uphill battle ahead of them.'

She claimed Tuesday, as she briefed the press for the second time in 2019 after the White House put out its annual budget, that she was not aware of checks made out to his former lawyer after he took office that were part of hush-money scheme

The disappearance of the press briefing has coincided with an aggressive push from Democrats for documents from the White House and the Trump organization linked to a host of alleged crimes, including payments to Cohen and accusations of inappropriate relations with the Kremlin.

House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff said last week that evidence gathered in the Stormy Daniels scandal 'militates very strongly in favor' of indicting President Trump after he leaves office.

Schiff, whose powerful panel is probing any foreign influence on Trump and his associates, cited the emergence of checks that show Trump made a series of $35,000 payments to longtime lawyer Michael Cohen while in office as evidence of an illegal campaign finance scheme that would merit his being charged with a crime.

He said since Cohen is heading to jail for what prosecutors said and Cohen admitted was a crime, Trump should be charged as well as the person who 'directed' the scheme.

'I think we can certainly say from the indictment in the Southern District of New York that identifies Individual 1 as having directed and coordinated a campaign fraud scheme in which the department urged that Michael Cohen be sent to jail,' Schiff told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington.

'We have a profound interest in making sure that the policy of the United States is not up for sale,' said House Intelligence chair Rep. Adam Schiff

'It's very difficult to make the argument that the person who was directed and was coordinated should go to jail, but the person who did the directing and did the coordinating should not. I don't think that's a supportable position,' Schiff argued.

'So I think that militates very strongly in favor of indicting the president when he is out of office if the southern District of New York has the evidence to prove the case against Individual 1 [who] Michael Cohen identified as the president.

Schiff brought up Michael Cohen's $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels as part of a 'hush' agreement and his reimbursement by the president

'Given the documentary evidence, the cancelled checks, given the audio tapes, given the other witnesses who are cooperating with the special counsel, it certainly appears there's no shortage of evidence,' said Schiff.

The former prosecutor said the feds should indict Trump after he leaves office, if they maintain that he cannot be charged until the voters oust him or his two, constitutionally-allowed terms run out.

'If the Justice Department the position that you cannot indict a sitting president, when the president is no longer sitting then I think it has to consider whether it should hold a former president to a different standard than it holds everyone else,' Schiff said  making sure to state that the decision should be in the hands of career prosecutors based on the evidence they gather.

At the same time, Schiff, a senior California Democrat, stood behind Pelosi's statement that she is 'not for' impeaching Trump.

Schiff said without Republican buy-in, impeachment 'becomes a partisan exercise doomed to failure'

Schiff made repeated reference to the Moscow tower deal pursued by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen during the campaign

Schiff brought up President Trump's 'hush money payment checks, reimbursements to Michael Cohen' for payments to porn star Stormy Daniels

Pelosi told the Washington Post that it was 'not worth' it to hold a vote to remove him a day prior.

'I'm not for impeachment. This is news. I'm going to give you some news right now because I haven't said this to any press person before,' Pelosi had said.

She told the paper: 'Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he's just not worth it.'

Schiff made the case that evidence already exists that Trump is unfit, but Democrats should not proceed with impeachment until there is Republican support for the idea.

'We have already seen deeply concerning evidence of the president's lack of fitness for office. Profound conflicts of interest may be guiding his foreign policy,' he said, 'as well as evidence of criminality on the part of the president as it pertains to the direction and coordination of an illegal campaign finance scheme.'

He added, 'The president was secretly pursuing a business deal in Russia, Moscow Trump tower, through much of the campaign, concealing it form the public, seeking the Kremlin's approval to make that happen, at the same time he was espousing a different policy towards Russia, a more favorable policy towards Russia.'

Democrats do not have the super majority that's necessary to toss him from office, though, the lawmaker conceded.

'The reality is that the Republican Members of Congress, with very few exceptions, have been utterly unwilling to stand up to this president in any way,' he said, pointing to Trump's emergency declaration on building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

'In its absence, an impeachment becomes a partisan exercise doomed to failure,' he concluded.
Powerful skunk cannabis flooding the streets of Britain increases the risk of psychosis five-fold, a major study reveals.

The problem is so widespread that nearly a third of psychosis cases in London are caused by the drug, researchers found.

They warned that 94 per cent of all cannabis available on the streets of the capital is now in the form of skunk.

Researchers at King's College London found that the problem with 'skunk' is now so widespread that nearly a third of psychosis cases in London are caused by the drug

It is cultivated to have super-high levels of the psychoactive ingredient THC, making it up to ten times more powerful than the weed and hashish common 20 to 30 years ago.

Researchers from Kings College London studied 2,100 people in 11 cities in Europe and South America in the biggest study of its kind.

They found that the link with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and paranoid delusion was strongest in London and Amsterdam  the two cities where high-potency cannabis is most commonly available.

Voices for legalisation of cannabis have been growing in recent months, buoyed by the Governments decision to permit limited use for medical treatment. The researchers warned against following the lead of Canada and the American states of Colorado and California, where legalisation has seen the potency increase.

And they said that even medicinal cannabis oil  available in the UK for a very limited number of people  should come with a warning of psychosis as a possible side effect.

The researchers found that the link with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and paranoid delusion was strongest in London and Amsterdam  the two cities where high-potency cannabis is most commonly available (the cannabis plant is pictured)

Professor Sir Robin Murray, one of the researchers, said: If you are going to legalise, unless you want to pay for a lot more psychiatric beds and a lot more psychiatrists then you need to devise a system in a way that will not increase the consumption and will not increase the potency. Because that is what has happened in the US states where there has been legalisation for recreational use.

The critical question is whether medicinal use remains medicinal. The problem in California and Canada was that medicinal use became a synonym for recreational use.

You could go on the internet and tell a doctor, I have headaches, I have back pain, I feel better if I have cannabis. The main reason they legalised it was to try to control the amount of so-called medicinal use there, hoping that there would be a decrease in the use. There was not a risk of that in the UK at present because cannabis oil is strictly controlled.

The research, published in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, found that skunk  with a THC level of more than 10 per cent  increased the odds of psychosis 4.8-fold in a person who smoked every day compared with someone who never used the drug. Using it more than once a week was less dangerous, but still increased the risk 1.6-fold.

Voices for legalisation of cannabis (pictured are marijuana buds) have been growing in recent months, buoyed by the Governments decision to permit limited use for medical treatment. But the researchers warned against this

Low-strength cannabis  with a THC level below 10 per cent  increased the odds of psychosis 2.2-fold if used daily and 1.4-fold if used more than once a week.

Study leader Dr Marta Di Forti said the effect of skunk on mental health is so high that in cities where it is widely available it has a huge impact on numbers diagnosed with psychotic disorders.

If skunk was taken off the streets of London, new cases of psychosis would drop 30 per cent, from 46 to 32 cases per 100,000 people, she said.

This was second only to Amsterdam, which would see a 50 per cent fall. In Cambridge, the only other British city to take part in the study, 8 per cent of psychosis cases were attributed to strong cannabis.

Dr Di Forti said even low-THC cannabis oil, used for epilepsy and MS, should come with a warning of possible mental health effects. The research comes after a Lancet study said cannabis is responsible for 60,000 cases of depression in young people in Britain.

Psychosis is a much rarer condition than depression, so the numbers affected will be far smaller, but the consequences are generally far more serious.

Voices are growing in Britain for cannabis to be legalised. Former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg says making mild forms legally available would stop people using skunk.

Even the Royal College of Psychiatrists is reviewing its position to consider the view that decriminalisation would give the government power to regulate its strength and generate taxes.
Boris Johnson appeared slightly overdressed when strolling along an Italian beach with his ex-Tory aide girlfriend Carrie Symonds on Saturday - before being called back to the UK to meet Theresa May.

The former foreign secretary was yesterday called to Downing Street by the Prime Minister for last-ditch talks urging him to get behind her plan.

In a face-to-face meeting of around 40 minutes, Mrs May cautioned that failure to back her deal would result in a delayed departure from the EU.

Yet Mr Johnson, who had been enjoying a walk along the Fornillo beach, in Positano, this weekend, told the Prime Minister that he will still not vote for her deal despite her warning.

Boris Johnson appeared slightly overdressed when strolling along an Italian beach with his ex-Tory aide girlfriend Carrie Symonds on Saturday

Mr Johnson, who had been enjoying a walk along the Fornillo beach, in Positano, this weekend, was called back to Downing Street to meet Theresa May

Mr May also expressed concerns that MPs could seize control of the process, meaning Brexit could be watered down or might not happen at all.

But Mr Johnson told her he would not back down unless she successfully renegotiated the Irish backstop.

His position remains the same, said a friend. Unless there is some sort of movement on the backstop, he will not vote for the deal.

In the meeting, Mrs May (pictured right arriving at church in Sonning, Berkshire, on Sunday) warned that if Mr Johnson did not back her deal it would result in a delayed departure from the EU

The source declined to comment on whether the pair discussed in their meeting the suggestion of some Brexiteers that Mrs May should set out a timetable for her own departure in return for Tory MPs passing her deal.

Critics of Mr Johnson have accused him of posturing ahead of a future Tory leadership contest. But his supporters argue he has been consistent in his opposition to Mrs Mays plan.

In a newspaper column earlier this week, Mr Johnson argued it was not possible for anybody who believes in Brexit to vote for the withdrawal agreement.

He told how he had sought advice from his local constituency association on whether to stick to my guns or fold.

Mr Johnson (pictured leaving the Cabinet Office today) was hauled in for the 40-minute meeting with Mrs May today

He wrote: I could continue to oppose a deal that I believe is detrimental to the interests of this country, in the sense that we risk becoming a kind of economic colony of Brussels.

Or else I could compromise, and vote it through, on the grounds that there was now a real risk that Brexit would not happen at all  and in the hope that the many defects in the deal could be fixed later.

My constituents were strongly of the view that I should not compromise. They assured me that they would support whatever decision I took  but they believed I should continue to vote against the deal.

Mr Johnson argued that Mrs Mays agreement would leave the UK in a position of almost unbearable weakness for subsequent talks on trade.

Unless we have some change  and at present, in the immortal phrase, nothing has changed  it is hard to ask anyone who believes in Brexit to change their mind, he said. There is an EU summit this week. It is not too late to get real change to the backstop. It would be absurd to hold the vote before that has even been attempted.

Since quitting as foreign secretary last July, Mr Johnson has repeatedly used newspaper columns to attack Mrs Mays Brexit strategy.

In his most controversial intervention, he claimed in September that her plans had strapped a suicide vest around the UK constitution and handed the detonator to Brussels.

Mrs May needs 75 MPs who voted against her Brexit deal last week, when she lost by a majority of 149, to switch sides if it is to pass. She is hoping to win over the DUPs ten MPs.
Tim Armstrong, the first-ever CEO of Verizons Oath, will receive $60million to leave the company even though the division he led saw its value drop by half, it has been reported.

In a move announced by the company last fall, Armstrong left after his stint as the head of the Verizon unit that included faded internet stars AOL and Yahoo.

The $60million payout is derived from a combination of salary, severance, and an incentive package that he received when Verizon acquired AOL in 2015, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The bulk of the payment is from the $31.1million founders award he received last year.

Tim Armstrong, the first-ever CEO of Verizons Oath, will receive $60million to leave the company even though the division he led saw its value drop by half, it has been reported

He is due to receive more than $16million if the value of the internet division remains the same as its value at the end of 2018.

His base salary for 2018 was $12.5million while the cash severance he will receive from the company exceeds $6.3million.

According to the terms of his severance, Armstrong is not allowed to recruit Verizon customers or employees for a period of one year. He is also not allowed to directly compete with the company during that time.

Armstrong was the first chief executive at Oath, the name chosen when Verizon acquired Yahoo and incorporated the internet pioneer into a new division that had promised to innovate in online media.

Verizon said in a statement last September that Armstrong 'will help guide the Verizon subsidiary's management transition efforts as a strategic advisor before leaving the company at the end of 2018.'

He was replaced by Guru Gowrappan, who had previously served as Oath's president and COO since April.

Armstrong served as CEO at AOL from 2009 until it was acquired by Verizon in 2015

Gowrappan, a former Alibaba executive, 'has proven experience in scaling businesses globally,' said Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.

'I'm thrilled he will lead Oath in an exciting new phase of growth, building on the foundation Tim and his team have created by delivering brands our customers love.'

Armstrong served as CEO at AOL from 2009 until it was acquired by Verizon in 2015.

He steered the group into online media, acquiring properties including the Huffington Post and TechCrunch.

Combining AOL and Yahoo was seen as a way for Verizon to move deeper into online media and digital advertising.

At the time of the acquisition of Yahoo, Armstrong tweeted: 'Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017.'

But the rebranding was mocked on social media, with one Twitter user writing: 'Q: Is "Oath" Yahoo or AOL? A: Boath.'
Leading Remainers cheered John Bercow to the rafters this week, with Peoples Vote architect David Lammy MP among those celebrating the Speakers apparent knockout blow to Theresa Mays Brexit deal.

The Labour MP said: The Speaker is absolutely right to block Mays attempt to batter Parliament into a third meaningful vote.

Meanwhile, Chuka Umunna MP  Lammys Labour colleague until he defected from the party last month  circulated messages saying the British public should blame May not Bercow for this catastrophe.

Their glee was understandable.

John Bercow is pictured here in 2012 for the State Opening of Parliament. He is seen with David Leakey, a senior officer in the House of Lords

At 24, Bercow was a Tory councillor in Labour-run Lambeth, south London. He is pictured on the left in 1990. Today, as the speaker in the House of Commons, he was approached by camera crews for his insistence Parliament cannot put an unchanged deal to a third vote

However, perhaps Lammy, whose father was a West Indian immigrant, and Umunna, whose father grew up in Nigeria, were being admirably generous in their praise.

For had the views Bercow espoused as a young man ever been enacted, its highly unlikely either Lammy or Umunna would now be MPs. One might even argue they and their families would not be living in the UK.

The reason? The young Bercow campaigned with neo-Nazis who endorsed an odiously racist policy for black and Asian Britons to be repatriated to their ancestral homelands.

Also, for much of the 1980s and 1990s, he was a hero of the far-Right and made outspoken attacks on feminism and gay rights. He endorsed capital punishment, too, and, after becoming an MP in 1997, gained a well-earned reputation for misogyny.

It is no exaggeration to say Bercow has executed one of the most extraordinary political U-turns in Parliamentary history. Nowhere is this more pronounced than on the issue of Europe, where hes lurched from political extremes, turning from one of the EUs most outspoken critics into perhaps its most controversial defender.

In these polarised times, this naturally divides opinion. Some will doubtless applaud the path hes taken. But many colleagues regard it as a cynical manoeuvre by a politician governed by insatiable vanity and an overbearing lust for power and attention.

Speaker John Bercow addressing MPs in the House of Commons today where he has ruled out another vote on Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement

Bercows political journey began shortly after his 18th birthday, when he decided to join the hard-Right Monday Club, a controversial organisation that promoted what it called traditional Tory values but most notably a campaign against immigration.

After suffering acne and being bullied at school, this son of a cab driver was drawn to politics by Enoch Powell, the Right-wing Conservative whose Rivers of Blood speech raised fears of Britain becoming a country where the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.

Bercow stood for election to the Monday Clubs ruling national executive committee. His manifesto stated the strengthening of our national identity demands a programme of assisted repatriation for black and Asian immigrants.

A contemporary, Gregory Lauder-Frost, recalled that although his accompanying speech was very well received at its 1982 conference, Bercow failed to win the vote, perhaps due to the fact he rubbed people up the wrong way because he was extremely pushy and rather pleased with himself. Undeterred, Bercow served as secretary of the clubs so-called immigration and repatriation committee for around 18 months.

Minutes he took of one meeting stated that members formally agreed that the policy of the committee should be: An end to New Commonwealth and Pakistan immigration, a properly financed system of voluntary repatriation, the repeal of the Race Relations Act and the abolition of the Commission for Racial Equality. Particular emphasis on repatriation.

John Bercow concurrently serves as the Member of Parliament for Buckingham. He is pictured on the left in 1998 and on the right in 2002, while serving as a shadow cabinet member

When his role in furthering its racist agenda became public in the 1990s, he apologised grovellingly, saying he left at 21 in 1984 after finding there were a lot of people at the meetings who were really unpleasant racists.

He also described his membership of the Monday Club as utter madness and dismissed his views from that time as bone-headed.

Bercow next threw himself into student politics at Essex University. As chairman of its Conservative Association, he was a hate figure among Left-leaning peers.

Essex was a very Left-wing university at the time and he was pretty much universally despised, a contemporary once recalled. He was always attacking Left-wingers, gays and feminists. Despite, or perhaps because of, such incidents, Bercow swiftly rose to greater prominence, next as chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students, which became notorious after its members attended protests in T-shirts with the slogan Hang Nelson Mandela.

Bercow has since denied he approved of the stunt, or wore one of the shirts. However, a contemporary, Derek Laud, has said the firebrand Right-winger was robustly in support of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Either way, Bercows federation also campaigned against the Labour-led National Union of Students under the banner We sank the Belgrano and well sink the NUS (referring to the Argentine navy cruiser in the Falklands War) and ran a recruitment campaign featuring a poster of an Ethiopian child with the headline Poor? Starving? Desperate? As if! Join Conservative students. So extreme were some of its stunts it was shut down by Norman Tebbit for being too Right-wing.

By then 24, Bercow was a Tory councillor in Labour-run Lambeth, south London. In 1987, he kicked up a fuss over a scheme to put gay literature in childrens homes and libraries, telling reporters hed written to Neil Kinnock, then Labour leader, asking him to intervene to prevent this sinister and evil proposal.

John Bercow celebrates victory at a general election count for his Buckingham constituency

Bercows controversialism survived his election as MP for Buckingham a decade later. Indeed, he continued to enjoy making offensive public pronouncements. In 1998, for example, he told an interviewer that female Labour MPs complaining about sexism were guilty of a defence mechanism against their own inadequacy. You dont get the competent, attractive ones like Yvette Cooper moaning about sexism. Two years later, he launched a misogynistic attack on Cherie Blair, calling her a cross between First Lady and Lady Macbeth. He also called Labour MP Robin Cook the most arrogant, pompous and unsuitable foreign secretary in living memory buzzing around like a demented bluebottle.

Trying to grab attention himself, at a Tory conference in the mid-1990s, Bercow spoke about the EU and called on Conservatives to take on federalist conspirators. He said: If theres one thing worse than the provisions of the Social Chapter, its the cynical, sneaky and unscrupulous way in which Brussels still tries to foist them upon us.

He remained a council member of the Freedom Association, which campaigned for the UKs withdrawal from the EU, until the early 2000s.

But that, of course, was then.

Bercow is pictured when made the new speaker of the House of Commons in 2009

In 2002, Bercow married Labour activist Sally Illman. Soon after, he began his political U-turn, campaigning for liberal issues such as racial equality, while seeking to gloss over his Right-wing past.

While part of the then Tory leader Iain Duncan Smiths team, he clashed with his boss over Duncan Smiths refusal to support gay adoption. Many in the party think there is still a bitter legacy from that disagreement  with Duncan Smith being an ardent hard Brexiteer and Bercow seemingly on a mission to sabotage Brexit.

In 2005, Bercows Wikipedia page was mysteriously edited by someone inside Parliament to remove reference to the Monday Club; four years later, he was elected Speaker thanks to Labour MPs support.

Nowadays, Bercows fiercest insults are saved for Tory former allies such as Andrea Leadsom, whom he called a stupid woman, and the Parliamentary staff hes been accused of mercilessly bullying.

Perhaps the only constant in a career that has seen John Bercow veer from political extremes is his ability to put himself at the centre of controversy.
Prom night proved unforgettable for one autistic teen who was crowned king at his Nevada high school's dance on Saturday.

Adorable video shows the moment students cheer for their prom king, Edgar, as he takes the crown at the Henderson banquet hall.

A classmate of Edgar's at Liberty High School, Shaun, stepped down from the role when he was tapped for the honor, FOX 13 reports.

Scroll down for video

Adorable video shows the moment students cheer for their newly crowned prom king, Edgar, as he takes the crown at the Henderson banquet hall

The autistic teen gets emotional as the crown is placed on his head

In the brief clip, the crowd goes wild as Edgar makes his way to the center of the banquet hall.

He becomes overly emotional as his classmates cheer for him and the occasional student rushes up to give him a hug.

Ed Sheeran's 'Perfect' begins playing and the clip shows Edgar dancing with the school's prom queen.

Cameras flash as the teen's classmates can be seen waving their phones back and forth.

The clip closes out as other students makes their way to the dancefloor.
A grieving widow told yesterday how she lost almost 50,000 to fake taxmen fraudsters who made her feel like she was being held at gunpoint.

Linda Butler was terrified into making repeat payments to aggressive criminals posing as HMRC officials who warned her she faced a huge fine and being arrested at her home if she refused to pay non-existent tax debts.

The Government pledged to take action this week after a Daily Mail investigation revealed how as many as 10,000 Britons a day are being hit by the scammers, who work from call centres in India.

But despite the promised crackdown, the fraudsters continue to operate with apparent impunity.

One mother described how she was left in tears after being targeted on the school run only yesterday morning. Meanwhile, scores more readers have contacted the Mail about the scam.

Linda Barker pictured with late husband David, she was the victim of a scam when crooks asked her for 50,000, purporting to be taxmen

Undercover footage from inside an Indian call centre where scammers posing as HMRC staff terrorise thousands of Britons every day

Mrs Butler, 56, described how she came home last December to find a stern voicemail from a man purporting to be an HMRC officer ordering her to call back urgently or face legal consequences.

When she did, she was told she had been avoiding tax. The scammer said she owed HMRC 4,000 and if she failed to pay up she would face a 30,000 fine.

Mrs Butler, who had recently lost her husband David, said she felt frightened because the man was so aggressive.

Assuming that there had been a mistake with her tax bill, she logged into her online bank account and made the 4,000 payment he demanded. But the fraudster then claimed the transfer had not gone through and ordered her to make the payment again.

This continued repeatedly for almost two hours.

Mrs Butler could see her account balance going down but the fraudster was adamant the payments were not going through and assured her any overpayment would be refunded.

At one point the man made her call her bank, NatWest, to confirm she was authorising the payment. He said that if she mentioned HMRC the bank would freeze her account and she would be unable to pay her mortgage.

Mrs Butler said: I felt like I was being held at gunpoint.

Eventually she hung up and contacted her bank, to discover she had lost almost 50,000.

Mrs Butler said: I was so frightened. He said he had come to my house before and I had no idea if they were waiting around the corner. After investigating, NatWest managed to retrieve 2,700 but refused to refund the remainder because Mrs Butler had authorised the payments.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has promised to do more to stop the telephone scammers.

Despite this, however, the fraudsters continue to operate. Amy Diamond, an administrator who lives near Bromley in South-East London, told the Mail she was targeted yesterday morning.

Miss Diamond was one of ten Daily Mail readers who contacted us to say they had received intimidating calls yesterday, just a day after the Government promised a crackdown on the fraudsters.

She said: I completely believed it until something told me to call HMRC direct. I was in the car on the school run with my children and it had me in tears. It was so aggressive and demanding. It was petrifying.

A spokesman for NatWest said last night: We sympathise with Mrs Butler, who has been the victim of a scam and appreciate this has been a very distressing time for her.

We take our responsibilities in preventing scams seriously and will always try to help customers to recover their funds.

Unfortunately, as she made the payments herself and confirmed a number of them as genuine when we contacted her, we are unable to refund her loss.

Ex-pensions minister: They tried to con 20k from my Mum

by Ros Altmann

When my mother phoned, she was in a terrible state. I could hear from her voice that something had left her petrified.

My mother is a strong, independent woman of 86 with a sharp mind. But she has had some serious bouts of ill health and it was obvious that, at that moment, she was on the verge of panic.

Gradually, she managed to explain what had upset her so badly. A phone call had come out of the blue from an official claiming to be from Her Majestys Revenue & Customs.

According to the caller, she owed 20,000 for years in unpaid taxes  and if she didnt pay them the money straight away, she faced a visit from the police and immediate arrest.

It was a scam, a blatant fraud, one of the type that the Mail Investigations Unit has done so much brilliant work to expose this week. But my mother was beside herself with worry, so she phoned me.

Im so thankful that she managed to reach me to share her worries, and was not frightened into just handing the money over to these shameless conmen.

The vicious hoax began with an answerphone message. My mother lives alone: she has always valued her independence, and she is adamant that she will never impose on anyone, even those who love her most dearly.

She knows that, if she decided to move in with us, wed welcome her gladly. But I respect her independent spirit and I would certainly never want to take it away from her.

Ros Altmann, the former pensions minister, says her mother was the victim of an HMRC scam, when crooks told the elderly lady she owed 20,000

Sadly, to some evil people, the fact that she lives alone makes her vulnerable  and a perfect target for their criminal schemes. The first phone message came at a time when she was not feeling particularly robust. She has had treatment for lung cancer, and was recovering from heart surgery.

So when the message with its official tone informed her there was an issue with her tax payments, she felt she had to call back on the number the crooks had left.

That was a grave mistake. The man who answered the phone immediately began to hector and bully her. He accused her of attempting to evade her taxes, and warned that she had placed herself in serious trouble.

If she didnt make a bank transfer straight away, and pay the 20,000, he would send police to her house to arrest her. I know where you live, he said aggressively.

What a horrible ordeal for anyone, but especially an octogenarian in fragile health. It makes me very angry that these scammers have such contempt for people and are prepared to inflict such mental torture to steal from them.

Frankly, it disgusts me.

My mother protested that her accountant handled all her affairs, and he had said nothing about tax arrears.

She had always paid all her tax bills. The crook accused her of ignoring repeated written demands and, when she insisted that she had seen nothing in the post, he said the letters had been going to the accountant  who was either incompetent or worse, he added.

Thank goodness my mother was not harried into parting with money there and then. It wasnt possible: 20,000 is a very large sum, much more than she had access to that day. She insisted that she had to speak to her financial adviser, and put the phone down, shaken and confused.

She tried calling her accountant, only to discover he was on holiday, and she really became distraught.

Thats when she called me. I immediately guessed what was going on and tried to assure her it must be a scam. I said I would find out what I could. I called the fraudsters number from my mobile, to see if I could find out more about how they operated  information I intended handing to the police.

They didnt answer my call but, when I tried ringing again with my number withheld, a man picked up.

I said I was calling on my mothers behalf, and asked him what this was all about. He put the phone down.

This type of crime is so calculating, callous and immoral. It is targeted mainly at the elderly, those from a generation that respects authority and has always believed in doing their bit for society.

The thought of avoiding paying taxes, to my mother and her contemporaries, is abhorrent. They settle their bills, and theyre proud of it. If, by some administrative error, my mother really did owe anything to HMRC, she wouldnt rest till it was paid  and these contemptible thieves think that they can take advantage of that.

Theres something else about my mothers generation: they are polite. They speak patiently and courteously on the telephone, even when the caller is being rude and disrespectful.

The idea of putting the phone down on anyone, even a scammer, is almost physically painful.

It is hateful that these organised criminals treat human decency as weakness. They have no compunction.

When I read the Mails outstanding investigation on Monday, in which reporter Tom Kelly infiltrated a fake call centre in the Indian city of Ahmedabad and revealed these scammers target a staggering 10,000 Britons a day, my blood boiled.

Research by the Money Advice Service suggests that there could be as many as eight scam calls every second  the equivalent of 250million calls per year.

More than that, the British police and Whitehall departments should be doing their utmost to prevent the gangs from accessing the private phone numbers of British citizens.

It would also make a huge difference if the scammers were stopped from buying and using bogus UK phone numbers, even copying the HMRC phone number, to make the scam seem authentic.

The telecoms industry and the Government should introduce measures to prevent people from being able to hide their identities behind these bogus numbers.

Clearly, the technical issues involved are complex. I have been campaigning for a long time to put a stop to cold-calling pension scams that deprived many of funds for their retirement. In January, these fraudulent practices were outlawed  the culmination of the work that I began as Pensions Minister.

But there is more to do and crooks will always attempt to find a way around any safeguards. Registering your phone number with Telephone Preference Service to screen out cold calls, for example, doesnt make a scrap of difference in most cases.

What would work is if banks were to freeze all accounts that have been used in transferring scammed funds. Scammers never con only one person: there will always be more. The sooner banks are alerted and can shut down or freeze accounts being used by these criminals, the more people will be protected.

There is clearly more to do to protect the public and to co-ordinate responses across the banking system, so all banks are alerted when a scam is discovered.

Most of all, we all need to be aware of the risks, and to make sure that our loved ones know never to transfer money to spurious callers.

A few weeks after the scare, my mother had another scam call. She hung up. Lesson learned.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has told wealthy supporters he is running for president and asking for their help in lining up top donors so he can quickly raise millions of dollars to compete with other contenders.

Biden, 76, is concerned he won't be able to match the millions some of his Democratic competition raised in their first 24 hours as a candidate, such as Beto O'Rourke's $6.1 million and Bernie Sanders' $5.9 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has told wealthy supporters he is running for president

Beto O'Rourke (left) raised $6.1 million and Bernie Sanders (right) raised $5.9 million in their first 24 hours as official candidates

The former vice president has hinted he would run in 2020 but has yet to make an official announcement, despite a slip of the tongue over the weekend that sent speculation into overdrive.

And he is said to want to announce a large fundraising number after his candidacy is official to compete in the 'money primary' that is the first stage of the primary competition.

He is considering launching his formal exploratory committee around Easter, which means it would be after the March 30 first quarter fundraising deadline.

At a dinner for the Delaware state Democratic Party over the weekend, Biden boasted that he has 'the most progressive record of anybody running.'

He quickly corrected himself, clarifying that he meant to say 'anybody who would run,' then adding 'I didn't mean it' while a cheering crowd in his home state nearly drowned him out.

Trump mocked Biden on Monday morning for the verbal flub.

'Joe Biden got tongue tied over the weekend when he was unable to properly deliver a very simple line about his decision to run for President. Get used to it, another low I.Q. individual!' he said.

The president has also slammed Biden for losing the 2008 presidential primary race.

'He ran two or three times, he never got about one percent. And then [Barack] Obama came along and took him off the trash heap, and he became a vice president, and now he's leading,' Trump told Fox News in January.

And he said in July of last year that Biden would be a dream candidate.

'I dream about Biden. That's a dream,' he told CBS News.

President Donald Trump mocked Joe Biden for a verbal flub

Biden's middle class roots and appeal to Midwest voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan are said to worry Republicans as those are the states that helped put Trump in the White House.

But he also has his liabilities - he is four years older than Trump and he is more moderate than some of his liberal competition.

And even though he's former President Barack Obama's vice president, there's no guarantee Obama's supporters will come out for him in the next year.

He previously sought the presidency in the 1988 and 2008 campaigns. There was speculation he would throw his hat into the ring in 2016 but he ultimately didn't run that year, saying it was too soon after the death of his son Beau.

Finnegan Biden, Jill Biden, Joe Biden and Naomi Biden pose backstage at the hit play based on the classic Harper Lee novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" in December

Biden with former President Barack Obama

Biden withdrew from the 1988 contest over allegations of plagiarism. In 2008, Biden left the race after coming in 5th place and capturing less than 1 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses. Obama eventually tapped him to be his running mate.

The former vice president has a compelling personal story. A a son of Scranton, Pa., he lost his first wife and daughter in a car accident shortly after he was elected senator from Delaware in 1972. His sons Beau and Hunter survived. Biden went on to marry Jill Jacobs and have another daughter.

His son Beau died of brain cancer in May 2015.

Biden could also appeal to Democratic voters nostalgic for Obama.

But he has a long Senate record for opponents to pick through and a tendency to speak first that has gotten him into trouble in the past.

More than a dozen Democrats have already launched formal 2020 presidential campaigns.

A CNN poll out on Tuesday showed Biden leads the field for the nomination even though he has not officially tossed his hat in the ring.
According to a report from the Australian Broadcasting Company, the ride sharing company Uber is once again coming under scrutiny for deploying software that helped the international ride-sharer stifle competition.

In the report, an anonymous senior source at Uber confirmed that in 2015 the company developed and used software called 'Surfcam,' which allowed it to glean information on the names, location, and registrations of competing drivers.

The firm reportedly used the data to poach employees and undermine other ride sharing businesses.

The target of Uber's Surfcam software, says the report, was fellow ride sharing company GoCatch, a major competitor to Uber upon entering Australia's market in 2014.

Uber has contended with multiple controversies throughout the past several years relating to its software but also to its company culture and safety.

While Surfcam's existence was first reported by Bloomberg in 2017, when Uber was revealed to have been using the software to similar effect in Singapore, the most recent report from ABC is the first-ever account that it had been deployed in Australia.

In recent years, Uber has contended with a number of national scandals, several of which have centered on the use of similar technologies that it deployed to help bolster its business and sabotage both regulators and competitors.

Among the most infamous pieces of technology is a software dubbed 'Greyball' that the company developed to disguise the Uber drivers from regulators and law enforcement that attempted to crack down on ride sharing which in some localities had been outlawed.

The software worked by first identifying would-be law enforcement officials who were attempting lure drivers into a sting and then either denying them service or presenting a map that contained 'ghost cars' which were not actually in service.

In 2017 the U.S. Department of Justice expanded an inquiry into Uber's use of Greyball, widening its scope to the software's deployment in Philadelphia as well as Portland, Boston, and Las Vegas.

Other instances of Uber employing controversial software include the 'God View' scandal in 2014 which revealed that members of the company could track specific users' data, including location and usage, without their consent.

The company has worked tirelessly to reclaim its public image in recent times as it prepares -- in tandem with major ride sharing competitor Lyft -- to go public in the coming year.

Neither GoCatch nor Uber responded to requests for comment before press time.
Nirav Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are the main accused in the PNB scam.

New Delhi: A London court has issued an arrest warrant against fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, the main accused in the $2 billion PNB scam case, making his arrest imminent, in response to a request by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for his extradition in a money laundering case, officials said on Monday.

The development may lead to a formal arrest of Mr Modi, 48, in the next couple of days but his return to India may not happen sometime soon due to the legal remedies he is entitled to in the UK.

According to ED sources, the Central probe agency was recently informed about the warrant issued by the Westminster magistrate court against Mr Modi and he is expected to be put under formal arrest by the London Metropolitan police soon.

Mr Modi (48) will be subsequently brought before the court where he may apply for bail, sources said, adding that the legal proceedings for his extradition will begin thereafter.

If Mr Modi secures bail, which is most likely, the case will then follow a similar pattern through the UK courts as that of liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who remains on bail since his arrest on an extradition warrant in April 2017 in `9,000 crore fraud and money laundering case. The 63-year-old businessman has since filed an application seeking leave to appeal against his extradition ordered by UK home secretary Sajid Javid last month. Mr Mallyas case is in final stages in that country.

As far as warrant against Mr Modi is concerned, the UK court and Scotland Yard said they cannot confirm or deny the warrant until an arrest has been executed and an accused has been formally charged, officials aware of the developments confirmed that a warrant was issued last week with authorities in India being made aware on Monday.

News of the certification of Indias extradition request came just as Mr Modi was tracked down to a three-bedroom flat in the Centre Point tower block of luxury apartments in the West End of London.

He is believed to have arrived in London last year and was able to travel in and out of Britain at least four times since his passport was cancelled by the Indian authorities in February 2018.

The revelation of Mr Modis whereabouts in London comes a day after his 30,000 sq ft seaside mansion at Kihim beach in Maharashtra was demolished by authorities using explosives.

Mr Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are the main accused in the PNB scam and they both left India before the details of the fraud came to light in January 2018.
The largest metallic asteroid known to science could be covered in iron volcanoes, experts say.

A space rock the size of Massachusetts, dubbed 16 Psyche, is thought to the be remains of a dead planet's once active core - much like at the Earth's centre.

It's not yet known what astronauts will encounter on the surface of the asteroid but the planned mission may uncover dramatic terrain.

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The largest metallic asteroid known to science could be covered in what scientists are calling 'iron volcanoes'. The size of the US state of Massachusetts, 16 Psyche is thought to the be remains of a planet's cores, made largely of metal, much like the Earth's core.

The surface could be covered in matter known as regolith - debris that includes dust, soil - that is found on the surface of the moon.

Sulphur volcanoes rich in iron may also be uncovered, depending on how it cooled, and these structures may be visible.

The mission to 16 Psyche will be discussed at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas, a prominent gathering of planetary science researchers being held this week.

Dr Lindy Elkins-Tanton the lead scientist on the Nasa mission and the director of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, said: 'Our very best and favourite model for Psyche is that it froze from the outside in, recording its [magnetic] field and that it would be covered in the now billions-of-years-old remnants of sulphur volcanoes.

'It might be solid metal, or it might be a pile of rubble that's mostly metal.

'One of the things that happens when metal freezes is that it loses about 7% of its volume.

'So we have a crust that's solid and the inside is continuing to solidify, but it's losing its volume as it solidifies.

'The crust has to crack and settle to accommodate the loss of volume during freezing.'

For now, we know nothing of what surface structures may dominate, since this is the first ever mission to a space rock made of metal - thought to predominantly be iron and nickel. Pictured is an artist's impression of an asteroid-grabbing spacecraft

'For the first time ever, we are exploring a world made not of rock or ice, but of metal' NASA said in a written statement.

For now, we know nothing of what surface structures may dominate, since this is the first ever mission to a space rock made of metal - thought to predominantly made up of iron and nickel.

No asteroid has yet been directly sampled but Nasa aims to change that with its plans to send a probe to the mineral-rich asteroid 16 Psyche.

The object is located in the large asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is one of the most mysterious objects in the solar system.

It may have started as a planet before it was partially destroyed during the formation of our star system.

Now, it is a 130 mile (200km) wide chunk of metal, made up of iron, nickel and a number of other rare metals, including gold, platinum and copper.

Nasa announced in January 2017 that it intended to send a probe to the asteroid to sample its chemical make-up in 2022.

Humanity's next gold rush could take place aboard tiny probes jetting between asteroids. One private company looking to tap into these orbiting minerals is the US firm Deep Space Industries, which envisions using probes to mine asteroids (artist's impression)

The prospect of sulphur volcanoes rich in iron on the surface of the asteroid will depend on how it cooled. If the cooling of the planet when it formed happened from the outside to the core, then these structures may be visible

Dr Elkins-Tanton has calculated that the iron in 16 Psyche alone, would be worth 8,072 quadrillion ($10,000 quadrillion).

'16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core,' she added.

'We learn about inner space by visiting outer space.'

If the asteroid could be transported back to Earth, the iron alone would be worth 8,072 quadrillion ($10,000 quadrillion).

In comparison, all the money on Earth is thought to be worth $60 to $75 trillion (45-56 trillion).

Experts have warned that its value would be large enough to destroy commodity prices and cause the world's economy to collapse.
An ancient Babylonian stone with inscriptions is being returned to Iraq after it was seized at Heathrow airport.

The cuneiform kudurru, an official document drawn up under a Babylonian king, was taken from the Middle east illegally but intercepted by border control in 2012.

It is thought it was being trafficked for the antiquities market after being taken from Iraq during looting of archaeological sites between 1994 and 2004.

Dating from the reign of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I (around 1126-1103BC) the rock, is valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Border officer's became suspicious of the cargo which contained a 'carved stone' made in Turkey.

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An ancient Babylonian treasure is being returned to Iraq after it was taken from the country illegally. The cuneiform kudurru, an official document drawn up on the orders of a Babylonian king, was seized at Heathrow airport in 2012

The officer contacted the British museum for advice on the object, which turned out to be drawn up instructions of the Babylonian king to record the gift of lands or bestowed on people in his kingdom.

Having been identified by experts at the British Museum, they officially handed over the item to the Iraqi embassy today.

The object has since been declared crown property after the British importer failed to demonstrate legal title. Investigations are continuing.

It is thought it was being trafficked for the antiquities market after being taken from Iraq during looting of archaeological sites between 1994 and 2004. It dates from the reign of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I. Here, at the Iraqi embassy

A Border officer's became suspicious of the cargo which contained a 'carved stone' made in Turkey. The officer contacted the British museum for advice on the object, which turned out to be drawn up instructions of the Babylonian king to record gifts

About 30cm high, it contains a list of witnesses to the gift and curses anyone who might dispute it. Fewer than 200 examples of the type of Babylonian inscribed monument, complete or fragmentary, are known

It is thought it was being trafficked for the antiquities market after being taken from the country during looting of archaeological sites between 1994 and 2004. The boundary stone, which would have once been placed in a temple, will go on display at the Iraq Museum

Aside from recording gifts such as land given to an individual who has been of service to the crown and depicts images representing the moon-god, the sun-god, and Venus.

About 30cm high, it contains a list of witnesses to the gift and curses anyone who might dispute it.

Fewer than 200 examples of the type of Babylonian inscribed monument, complete or fragmentary, are known.

Arts, heritage and tourism minister Michael Ellis said: 'We are committed to protecting and preserving cultural heritage, both in the UK and across the world, and I am delighted that this important artefact is being returned.'
Google has taken the wraps off of its new gaming service.

Dubbed 'Stadia,' the gaming platform operates entirely on the cloud and lets users 'instantly' stream games on any device, without the need for pesky downloading.

The service is slated to launch later this year in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, with more details about available game titles expected to come in the next few months.

Stadia ditches the traditional console; instead, users can play games with their existing laptops, desktops, TVs, tablets or phones, as well as their own keyboard and mouse.

'Play instantly. No updates, no downloads,' Google said. 'Jump right into the game.'

Google CEO Sundar Pichai debuted Stadia at the annual Game Developer Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The search giant also rolled out its first Google-branded Stadia game controller, which is integrated with its AI-powered Google Assistant.

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Google has taken the wraps off its new gaming service and a new Google-branded controller. Called Stadia, it operates entirely on the cloud and lets users play games from any device

WHAT IS STADIA? Stadia builds on Google's 'Project Stream' initiative, which let users play high-quality games in Google Chrome. The service runs on 'any screen type,' ditching the traditional console. Instead, users can play games with their existing laptops, desktops, TVs, tablets or phones and use their own keyboard or mouse. Stadia supports up to 4K resolution with HDR color at 60 frames per second and could soon support up to 8K resolution at up to 120-plus frames per second. The service is slated to launch later this year, with game titles expected to be announced this summer. Advertisement

Stadia builds upon Google's 'Project Stream' initiative last year, which let users play Assassin's Creed Odyssey in Google Chrome with their own PlayStation or Xbox controller.

Similarly, Stadia allows users to play high-quality games that are streamed from Google's cloud.

If users see their favorite YouTuber streaming a game, they can click the 'play now' button' and, within seconds, it will boot up right on their screen.

'To build Stadia, weve thought deeply about what it means to be a gamer and worked to converge two distinct worlds: people who play video games and people who love watching them,' Phil Harrison, vice president and general manager of Stadia, explained in a blog post.

'Stadia will lift restrictions on the games we create and playand the communities who enjoy them.'

The service was created with gamers, developers and even YouTubers in mind, according to the firm.

'We wanted to build a game platform for everyone,' Pichai told the audience at GDC.

'...We want sharing games to be as easy as sharing a link and clicking on it.'

Google didn't have much to say about which games will be available on Stadia, beyond revealing partnerships with id Software for 'Doom Eternal' and Ubisoft's 'Assassin's Creed Odyssey.'

Google has taken the wraps off its new gaming service and a new Google-branded controller. Called Stadia, it operates entirely on the cloud and lets users play games from any device

Phil Harrison, a former Sony and Microsoft executive, debuted Stadia on stage at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. It supports up to 4k resolution at launch

Stadia ditches the traditional console; instead, users can play games with their existing laptops, desktops, TVs, tablets or phones, as well as their own keyboard and mouse

Stadia games can be streamed on laptops, desktops, TVs, tablets, and phones, making it possible to 'game where you want, when you want,' according to the firm.

WHAT IS STREAM CONNECT? Google has announced a multiplayer experience for its new Stadia gaming service that will allow for split-screen play without sacrificing performance quality. And, it doesnt limit you to half/half splits or even four quarters. We can keep going, we can keep adding scenes and shape how theyre shown to the player, said Erin Hoffman-John during the Google Developer Conference. Google says this will revive a multiplayer experience that has been lost as games become more demanding. When modern games start to push the boundaries of current hardware, rendering two or more scenes simultaneously becomes too resource intensive, and so split-screen couch co-op has been fading, Hoffman-John said. But when all of your clients are in the cloud, couch multiplayer has new life again. Advertisement

The service supports up to 4K resolution with HDR color at 60 frames per second and could soon support up to 8K resolution at up to 120-plus frames per second.

'Enjoy gaming the way you love, with beautiful HDR graphics and smooth frame rates,' Google said.

While Stadia users can play with their own mouse or keyboard, Google is also launching its own controller.

It's unclear what the Stadia controller is priced at, however.

The wireless controller connects to Stadia through WiFi and has a capture button that lets users share their games instantly to YouTube so others can tune in.

There's also a Google Assistant button that enables voice-activated controls for in-game features.

Users can press the Assistant button if they're stuck in a game and it will show overlay a YouTube tutorial on the game screen.

Stadia is built atop Google's data network, which consists of fiber optic links and subsea cables.

The firm says it has 7,500 edge note locations around the globe, making its data centers closer to players and allowing for low-latency network connectivity.

Low-latency networks are crucial for online gameplay, as it prevents glitches and delays in content playback.

That's infrastructure that 'no one else has' and makes Stadia the 'most powerful gaming platform' available, said Majd Bakar, head of engineering at Stadia, on stage at GDC.

Stadia is also launching with a big focus on the multiplayer experience.

The platform will enable cross-platform play across any console or system, making it easy for users to play games against their friends no matter what hardware they're using.

There's also Stream Connect, which allows for split-screen play without sacrificing performance quality.

And, it doesnt limit you to half/half splits or even four quarters.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai debuted Stadia at the annual Game Developer Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. Pichai said the firm wanted to 'build a game platform for everyone'

Stadia lets users play high-quality games that are streamed from Google's cloud. The service was created with gamers, developers and even YouTubers in mind, according to the firm

Another feature, called State Share, enables users to capture a moment from the game and send it to a friend, just like they would share a link, so they can pick up where the user left off

We can keep going, we can keep adding scenes and shape how theyre shown to the player, said Erin Hoffman-John during the Google Developer Conference.

Google says this will revive a multiplayer experience that has been lost as games become more demanding.

When modern games start to push the boundaries of current hardware, rendering two or more scenes simultaneously becomes too resource intensive, and so split-screen couch co-op has been fading, Hoffman-John said.

But when all of your clients are in the cloud, couch multiplayer has new life again.

Another feature, called State Share, enables users to capture a moment from the game and send it to a friend, just like they would share a link.

When someone clicks the link, they're transported to that exact moment in the game, where they can pick up right where it left off, with the player inventory and other factors perfectly preserved as well.

The firm also partnered with chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices to equip its cloud servers with high-speed processors.

Each Stadia server will be powered by a custom GPU running at 2.7 gigahertz and contains 16gb of RAM.

The GPU is capable of delivering 10.7 teraflops of power, which Google was quick to declare outpaces its rivals.

By comparison, the PS4 Pro delivers 4.2 teraflops of performance, while the Xbox One X provides 6 teraflops of power.

The wireless controller connects to Stadia through WiFi and has a capture button that lets users share their games instantly to YouTube so others can tune in. There's also a Google Assistant button that enables voice-activated controls for in-game features

Last month, Google sent out invites for a keynote address at GDC, slated to take place on March 19th at 10am (PT), with little information other than the words 'Gather around'

Many had predicted Google would launch something at GDC this week.

Last month, Google sent out invites for a keynote address at GDC, slated to take place on March 19th at 10am (PT), with little information other than the words 'Gather around.'

Rumors began circulating in 2018 that Google was making a move into gaming with its secretive 'Project Yeti.'

A report from The Information detailed how the search giant was eyeing the creation of a game streaming service that could work either on its Chromecast or a Google-made console.

Google reportedly discussed Yeti with game developers, but it is unclear whether any of them will develop a game specifically for Yeti or only make existing streamed games available, the Information reported.

The report also claims the firm has developed several iterations of Yeti so far, as it discusses the project with top-tier gaming developers.'

Aside from Google, Amazon and Apple are also rumored to be mulling their own game streaming services.
At this year's Mars Conference  an exclusive robotics and artificial intelligence event hosted by Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos  'the force is with you.'

That is, if you were fortunate enough to get an invite.

While last year's invite-only conference, held in southern California's Palm Springs, produced striking images of Bezos strolling with a robotic dog designed by Boston Dynamics, the CEO this time took to the stage with a flying robo-dragonfly.

Much of this year's buzz, however, has come straight from the stars; among the attendees is actor Mark Hamill, who portrayed 'Star Wars' protagonists 'Luke Skywalker' in the films' original trilogy.

Bezos demonstrated a robotic dragon fly on stage that circled around his head. The tiny dragonfly-bot is one of many animal-inspired designs from German firm Festo

As Hamill, who recently revived Skywalker for the latest iteration of the Star Wars franchise, mingled with guests, the conference's other attendees showcased their newest and most exciting revelations in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more.

Mars2019  where dreams come true! Intuition Robotics CEO Dor Skuler tweeted alongside a photo of himself with Hamill.

Talking robot sidekicks with the Master.

Among the splashiest demonstrations so far were a flying robotic dragonfly that Bezos launched from the stage himself and a flexible multi-legged robot named 'Centauro' that flexed across the stage, showing off its range of motion.

The tiny dragonfly-bot is one of many animal-inspired designs from German firm Festo.

#MARS2019 - where dreams come true! Talking robot sidekicks with the Master. pic.twitter.com/xlvCbI64pD  dor skuler (@dorskuler) March 19, 2019

Hamill (right), who recently revived Skywalker for the latest iteration of the Star Wars, franchise, mingled with guests to talk innovation and robotics. He's pictured above with Intuition Robotics CEO Dor Skuler

Former NASA astronaut poses next to two rocket engines at the Mars conference, one of which (the left) has been to space and back multiple times

Bezos also had his own rocket engines on display which are used by the CEO's private aerospace company Blue Origin.

Member of the press are not allowed into the event, which takes place throughout the next several days.

Among the attendees this year is actor Mark Hamill. File photo

Amazon has said, however, that it plans to host a more public version of the show titled, 'RE:MARS'.

This will take place during the first week of June in Las Vegas.

For most, though, Amazon's RE:MARS event may be equally as elusive, with a $1,999 price tag for a single pass.

Those willing to foot the bill will have access to more than 100 panel sessions and discussions featuring an array of different speakers that range from actor Robert Downey Jr. to iRobot CEO Colin Angle.

Amazon has billed the event as a place where 'attendees will explore the future of AI innovation.'

Registration for the event opens on March 28 at 6 a.m. (PDT).
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A trip to Iraq probably isn't on too many bucket lists.

After all, violence and terror attacks there are very likely - over 3,000 civilians were killed last year. The UK Foreign Office advises against all but essential travel to the country.

But one seasoned traveller went anyway - and captured some amazing holiday snaps of things you might not associate with Iraq, such as funfairs and high-speed trains, and some things you would, such as bullet-ridden armoured vehicles.

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Norwegian traveller Christian Lindgren paid a visit to Baghdad Zoo and its funfair, pictured

A Shia militia car parked up at the side of the road in Baghdad. Christian says he found the militia to be very friendly and helpful

Christian came across this unusual statue in Baghdad. It was created by sculptor Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, who was commissioned to create a number of pieces in 2010 at the end of the Iraq War

Christian hopped on a high-speed overnight train from Basra to Baghdad with the locals

The beautiful Mustansiriya Madrasah building on the banks of the River Tigris in Baghdad. It was a medieval school complex that is now part of the Al-Mustansiriya University

Christian Lindgren, who is originally from Norway, made it to the Iraqi capital Baghdad via Istanbul in February after a 'nightmare' visa-approval process - which took months.

The 30-year-old told MailOnline Travel that he had been itching to visit Iraq for a long time.

Christian explained: 'I have travelled extensively around the Middle East over the years, and Iraq was one of the last countries I had yet to visit in this region.

'From my previous travelling experiences in the Middle East, I knew that most parts of the country would be safe, if I kept clear of the regions bordering Syria.'

Christian says all of the locals that he met on his journey were very friendly. Pictured right is the beer and ouzo on sale in one of Baghdad's many alcohol shops

Two men sit and enjoy tea and shisha in a traditional tea house in Baghdad. Christian says many of these tea houses are over 100 years old

Christian noticed straight away that in Baghdad there are armoured cars and checkpoints on every street

Christian captured a shot of the Victory Arch, which is located in the international zone of Baghdad

Despite mainly feeling safe in Iraq, Christian did see the after-effects of war, including this ship wreck in the Shatt-al-arab river in Basra

Pictured is an aerial view across Baghdad taken from a Ferris wheel at a Baghdad amusement park

The first place Christian visited was Baghdad and his first impression on entering the city was how normal life seemed.

He recalled: 'I thought, where is the destruction? It sounds strange but Baghdad is like any Middle Eastern city, the streets are full of life.

'Yes, you do have military checkpoints on about every single street around Baghdad, but after only a few hours will you completely forget about them.'

His favourite thing about the city was its bustling social scene, the buzzy restaurants and cafes. Some shops even sell alcohol.

The beautiful Al-Shaheed Monument in Baghdad, which is also known as the Martyr's Monument and dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Iraq-Iran war, left. Pictured right is the Samarra Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Iraq

Christian visited the ancient city Ctesiphon, the last Persian capital. It was close enough to Baghdad for Christian to take a day trip there

The ancient city of Ziggurat of Dur-Kurigalzu, which was built more than 3,400 years ago in southern Mesopotamia, close to modern-day Baghdad

Christian continued: 'Streets all over Baghdad are lined with food stalls crowded with locals.

'Traditional tea houses, which been open for more than 100 years, are still full of local people and restaurants are packed with families until late.

'There were coffee shops that looked like they could have been anywhere in Europe, filled with young Iraqis working on their laptops while having a freshly brewed cappuccino.

'I also saw alcohol shops selling locally produced Iraqi beer and ouzo in public, and not hidden away like you would find in other Middle Eastern countries.'

Christian also travelled to other towns and cities in Iraq that are considered safe.

While in the holy city of Najaf, Christian came across a street celebration, where people were waving flags and taking pictures on their phones

On a trip to the southern city of Basra, Christian captured this image of Saddam Hussein's former palace on the banks of the river. It is now home to the city's museum

His first stop was the holy city of Samarra, then Najaf, Karbala and Kufa, which are three of the most sacred places in Shia Islam.

He also paid a visit to the ruins of Babylon, home to Saddam Hussein's former palace, which has been completely looted.

Christian next made it to the Mesopotamian Marshes on a boat trip before heading to the city of Basra.

When heading back to Baghdad he took an overnight train from Basra, with the locals.

He said: 'The locals are extremely friendly and welcoming. I only have good things to say about them.

'Like in every other place in the world that receives mostly bad publicity in the West, the locals are eager to show you that they are just like you.

Some of the extremely intricate artwork on display inside the National Museum of Iraq. It was looted during the 2003 invasion of the country

The National Museum of Iraq has only been open to the public for four years after being closed during the war

An overview of the amusement park in Baghdad that is located within the city's zoo. Animals have now returned there

'I probably set a new personal record in taking selfies with locals. Also, the local Shia militias around the country were nothing but friendly.'

Christian says he would recommend a trip to Iraq to any experienced traveller, so long as they have a local guide to travel with who knows about the security situation.

He said: 'I'm extremely happy I visited Iraq. And if I get the opportunity to visit Iraq again I will revisit without any doubt at all, but the security situation can change fast.

'During my visit to Iraq I did not feel unsafe for even a second. But you can't forget that extremism is still a huge problem in Iraq.

'During my visit to Baghdad two separate small bombs went off, killing a few soldiers.

'I never saw or heard anything, and if I hadn't been specifically googling the news, I would never have known it had happened.'
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A lot of people in Hong Kong live in skyscrapers, which led award-winning photographer Jimmi Ho to ask where do they hang their laundry?

The amateur snapper, who won first prize in the Hong Kong section of the 2016 Sony World Photography Awards, began a project to find out in 2017. He's named it Laundry Art.

He told MailOnline Travel that it all started when he found a photograph during a review of his website that he took in 2015 of a man drying his clothes in a playground.

The Hong Kong-based 25-year-old said: I was curious about this one picture. I wondered where the Hong Kong people dry their clothes. So I tried to find the place and start to record them. I randomly walk around Hong Kong. Sometimes I will find someplace on Google Maps, and I will visit the place two to three times to see how they dry clothes.

Mr Ho, who is going to London this year to undertake an MA in photography, says that his project offers an insight into the hardships that some in Hong Kong face.

Scroll down to see a selection of his fascinating dry-life images.

A lot of people in Hong Kong live in skyscrapers, which led award-winning photographer Jimmi Ho to ask where do they hang their laundry?

Mr Ho told MailOnline Travel that it all started when he found a photograph during a review of his website that he took in 2015 in Hong Kong of a man drying his clothes in a playground

In an email to MailOnline Travel, Mr Ho said: 'I randomly walk around Hong Kong. Sometimes I will find someplace on Google Maps, and I will visit the place two to three times to see how they dry clothes'

Air we go: Some locals display real ingenuity in their use of the local environment
She has previously spoken candidly about her struggle with anxiety and depression.

And, Love Island star Olivia Buckland spoke exclusively to MailOnline in the wake of Mike Thalassitis tragic death, revealing that she was offered psychological tests and counselling after appearing on the ITV2 show.

The blonde beauty, 25, detailed her Love Island mental health after-care experience as she launched Superdrug's breast checking consultation service across the UK in association with CoppaFeel!

Speaking out: Olivia Buckland spoke exclusively to MailOnline in the wake of Mike Thalassitis' tragic death revealing that she was offered counselling after the show (pictured in 2019)

Olivia revealed that after appearing on the show and finding overnight fame with her now-husband Alex Bowen, she was offered a range of mental health support aids and is still regularly checked-in on by Love Island producers.

She said: 'I was in constant contact with the producers for a very long time. I got offered psychological tests when I got out. I got offered counselling when I got out. I got a list of agencies.

'Honestly, they really did look after me, and Alex. They always checked in with us, and I'm still good friends with them now. They checked in with me about the wedding.

'In my personal opinion, in my experience, I can't say that there is anymore that could have been done for me. But, I did come out with Alex next to me, so that was also a massive support.'

Tragedy: Mike, 26, Edmonton, North London on Saturday morning, with several of his former Love Island co-stars paying tribute to him (pictured in 2017)

Help: After the show, Olivia was offered a range of mental health support aids and is still regularly checked-in on by Love Island producers

The television personality insisted that, while their support isn't forced upon you, 'Love Island is there for you if you need them.'

Her comments come after numerous former stars of the ITV2 reality show - including Malin Andersson and Dom Lever - slammed the after-care they experienced after Mike Thalassitis was found hanged on Saturday, but Olivia insisted to MailOnline that 'no-one is to blame.'

She said: 'In any situation regarding mental health, I don't think there's any single person to blame, there's always just gonna be more needed in terms of help.

'It's becoming more of a popular thing to talk about. the more you talk about it, the more blame is likely to be passed.

She said: 'Honestly, they really did look after me, and Alex (Bowen). They always checked in with us, and I'm still good friends with them now' (pictured in 2019)

'Love Island is there for you if you need them. The people who run the show are there if you need them. If you wanna ask a question they'll be more than happy to answer.

'So, if you wanna talk about finances, they'll be there to answer. We've all got voices, we've all got hands. Everyone's a part of it, no-one's responsible.'

Olivia, who was clearly emotional following the death of Mike, added: 'It's so hard seeing people suffer, and it's been so hard.

'If it makes people talk more about mental health than I want to try and push it onto the table and talk about it, especially after everything that's just happened.'

The Metropolitan Police confirmed that Mike Thalassitis, 26, was found hanged in a park in Edmonton, North London on Saturday. Mike's manager confirmed the shock news of his passing on Saturday evening.

According to The Sun, Mike was socialising in a pub popular with TOWIE stars hours before he died, telling Three Colts landlord Adam Brooks that he was excited about the cafe he was planning on opening.

Passing; Mike's manager confirmed the shock news of his passing on Saturday evening

Olivia added: 'Love Island is there for you if you need them. The people who run the show are there if you need them'

She added: ''So, if you wanna talk about finances, they'll be there to answer. We've all got voices, we've all got hands'

As Love Island gears up to finish recruiting the next intake of singletons for the upcoming series of the ITV2 show, Olivia offered some pragmatic words of advice for the newbies.

She said: 'Make sure that you're at a point in your life that you feel sturdy. And if you are sturdy in yourself and you are confident, then go for it.'

And, although she has managed to maintain her place in the public eye, fronting major campaigns and taking advantage of career opportunities, Olivia warns wannabe reality stars that 'there are no guarantees.'

She said: 'Just remember, that it is very much on your shoulders what happens. There are no guarantees when you come out.

'Be yourself, and you can't go wrong. It's when people start playing games or thinking they need to be something that they're not - that's when it starts to get hard.'

'Everyone goes on a show for different reasons, so it just depend on your reasons for going on there. If you go on expecting nothing, then anything you gain is a bonus.'

Loss: Olivia, who was clearly emotional following the death of Mike, added: 'It's so hard seeing people suffer, and it's been so hard'

She added: 'If it makes people talk more about mental health than I want to try and push it onto the table and talk about it, especially after everything that's just happened'

Olivia's comments about Love Island came as she spoke out to encourage more conversations about breast checking, after having previously been candid about finding her own benign breast lump.

The reality star admitted it was a no-brainer for her to front the launch of Superdrug's breast checking consultation service across the UK in association with CoppaFeel!

'It was an easy choice for me to make. After finding a lump in my breast and having it removed, I think that resonated with me.

'Going through that and then working with CoppaFeel means quite a lot. I was quite young when I found it.

Good cause: Olivia's comments about Love Island came as she spoke out to encourage more conversations about breast checking

'I was literally in the shower and I didn't know what I was doing. I found something but I wasn't sure what it was, and I was a bit scared.'

The Love Island beauty admitted that she waited quite a while before having the lump checked by a professional, but luckily hers was benign.

'I did sit on it for a while because I thought "Oh God, what if it is something serious?" And I panicked.

'But I ended up going to the doctors, I had a scan on it and an ultrasound and they found that it was just a fatty lump.

She said: 'I was literally in the shower and I didn't know what I was doing. I found something but I wasn't sure what it was, and I was a bit scared'

Relief: The Love Island beauty admitted that she waited quite a while before having the lump checked by a professional, but luckily hers was benign

'It wasn't dangerous, so I wasn't fussed about it being there. But, then a few years later it started to feel like a foreign object in my body, and a bit weird, so I ended up having it removed.'

The reality star is now on a mission to promote the new no touch consultations available in all 56 Superdrug nurse clinics across the UK.

Appointments involves having a trained nurse talking patients through the breast (and pec) checking process, and Superdrug is the first high street retailer to offer this service.
Rachel Bilson is set to the tie-the-knot as the female lead in Fox's wedding night dramedy pilot, tentatively titled Lovestruck.

The veteran television actress joins a cast that already includes Andie MacDowell, Richard Roxburgh, Kathleen Turner, Madeline Wise and Usman Ally.

The first season of the new show, which was inspired by the French series Quadras, will take place over the course of a single night at a wedding.

Leading lady: Rachel Bilson signed-on to play a bride in the Fox wedding dramedy, Lovestruck

As viewers get to know the wedding party, they will learn surprising details about their present and past as well as the complicated bonds of love, friendship and family.

Bilson will play the bride, Daisy Valentine, a woman who's a 'bolt of sunshine' that's sweet, thoughtful and assertive and works in music, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Tom Kapinos, best known as the creator and writer of the Showtime series Californication and the Fox series Lucifer, penned the pilot script and will also executive produce along with director Sanna Hamri (Empire).

Making her mark: Bilson, 37, had her breakout role in the Fox teen drama, The O.C., that ran from 2003 to 2007; she is pictured with co-stars Michael Cassidy and Mischa Barton

Bilson last starred as the lead in the ABC series Take Two last year. It was canceled after just one season.

She first made a name for herself on the small screen playing teen Summer Roberts in the Fox teen drama The O.C., that ran from 2003 to 2007.

The 37-year old also starred in a lead role in The CW dramedy Hart of Dixie for four season ending in 2015.

Her other TV credits include How I Met Your Mother, Chuck and Nashville.
She blamed her 40lb weight gain on stress eating and drinking as she struggled in the midst of marital issues.

But on Sunday, Shannon Beador looked slim as she showed off her incredible weight loss on Instagram.

The star was seen in the same sequin green top she wore to a 2016 trip to Ireland, though this time, it fit loosely.

Fit: On Sunday, Shannon Beador, 55, looked slim as she showed off her incredible weight loss on Instagram

'Top of the mornin'!  May have to finally retire the shirt bec it's too big...,' she noted, followed by a collection of hashtags.

In the snap, the 55-year-old was seen cinching in her sparkly top while on the beach.

Shannon paired her blouse with a pair of shamrock print, Goldsheep leggings.

Weight loss journey: Shannon is seen in New York in 2016. She has since lost 40 lbs

On season 11 of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Shannon attributed her weight gain to alleged physical abuse by estranged husband David Beador.

But in a July 2017 interview, the star said that she just 'went off the wagon a little,' and blamed herself.

'I'm the one that put the stuff in my mouth,' she said in an interview with Us Weekly.

Her love life: Shannon has been married to husband David since 2000, but the duo are currently in the midst of a divorce. She is seen in a clip from the show's 11th season in 2017

Shannon has been married to David since 2000, but the two are currently in the midst of a divorce.

The couple share three children together; daughters Stella, Adeline and Sophie.

Shannon has since moved on, and is dating Comcast executive Rick Stanley, according to Us Weekly.
Hugh Hefner may be gone, but he certainly isn't forgotten.

Two years after the American publisher's death aged 91, his former LA residence, the world-famous Playboy Mansion, is apparently haunted by ghosts.

An ex-girlfriend of Hefner's revealed on Tuesday that she has encountered spirits in the hallways of the Holmby Hills property.

Spooky encounters: Former Playboy Bunny and self-proclaimed 'ghost hunter' Bridget Marquardt (pictured) says the world-famous Playboy mansion is haunted

Self-proclaimed 'ghost hunter' Bridget Marquardt, 45, told Channel Seven's The Morning Show that she finds the Playboy mansion 'spooky'.

She recalled a frightening experience when she was sitting in one of the bedrooms watching TV and a woman appeared 'standing in the doorway.'

The sighting had a chilling effect on Bridget's friends, one of whom 'immediately broke into tears'.

While she did not get a good look at the spirit, the former model claimed that 'it looked like a woman standing there.'

Famous: Built in 1927 and located in the Holmby Hills, the Playboy Mansion (pictured) features 29 rooms, a wine cellar and a grand hall, as well as a swimming pool with its own grotto

While her companions were spooked, Bridget said that she felt a 'positive vibe' from the female spirit.

'I didn't get a negative vibe from it at all,' she explained.

'I got a very positive vibe and I think that it might have been a former employee of Hef's just coming to see the new addition to the family.'

Ghost sightings: Various people have claimed the mansion is haunted over the years, with reports of scantily-clad female ghosts and the spirit of an older man haunting its hallways

Built in 1927 and located in the Holmby Hills, the Playboy Mansion features 29 rooms, a wine cellar and a grand hall, as well as a swimming pool with its own grotto.

Hugh Hefner, the founder of the Playboy publishing empire, lived there for 43 years before his death in September 2017.

Various people have claimed the mansion is haunted over the years, with reports of scantily-clad female ghosts and the spirit of an older man haunting its hallways.
Doval is believed to be the person behind the planning of the airstrike on a JeM camp in Balakot in Pakistan.

New Delhi: National security adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval on Tuesday said India has neither forgotten nor will forget the Pulwama terror attack and the countrys leadership is capable and courageous to mete out effective responses to such acts.

Speaking for the first time about the attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed on February 14 in Jammu and Kashmir, Mr Doval asked the paramilitary force to constantly enhance their professionalism, training, physical capabilities and quick response skills.

What should we do? What should be our way, our aim and our response and time to respond ? The countrys leadership is both capable and courageous to do that, Mr Doval said. The country will tackle all such challenges and we have the courage to do this, he said while addressing CRPF personnel on the paramilitary forces 80th raising day celebrations at its group centre here.

Mr Doval began his 16-minute speech by paying tributes to the 40 personnel who were killed when a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist blew up his explosives-laden vehicle alongside their bus, which was part of a convoy going from Jammu to Srinagar.

The country has not forgotten and will not forget the terror attack, Mr Doval said, referring to the Pulwama incident. The NSA reiterated that the leadership of the country is fully capable to deal with any act of terror and also against those who abet it. Mr Doval is believed to be the person behind the planning of the airstrike on a JeM camp in Balakot in Pakistan.

The strike was carried out by the Indian Air Force (IAF) in retaliation to the Pulwama terror incident, which was one of the worst attack on security personnel in Kashmir in three decades. The Pulwama attack was a very sad incident, Mr Doval said, adding that the country will always be indebted to these personnel and their families.
Ozzy Osbourne has led the tributes to his former guitarist Bernie Torme, after he passed away on Sunday, aged 66.

The Prince Of Darkness wrote a poignant speech in memory of the Irish musician, describing him as a 'gentle soul with a heart of gold'.

A statement from his family said: 'Bernie Torme passed away peacefully on the 17th March 2019, one day short of his 67th birthday, surrounded by his family.

Close friends: Ozzy Osbourne has led the tributes to his former guitarist Bernie Torme, after he passed away on Sunday, aged 66 (Bernie pictured in 2013)

'He had been on life support for the past four weeks at a London hospital following post-flu complications.

'Bernie will be remembered for dedicating his life to his music for five decades.

'He will be sorely missed.'

Torme was known for his work with rock group Gillan, and played with Osbourne's band following the death of his guitarist Randy Rhoads in 1982.

Kind: The Prince Of Darkness wrote a poignant speech in memory of the Irish musician, describing him as a 'gentle soul with a heart of gold' (pictured together in 1982)

Upset: Osbourne was among to those to pay tribute. 'What a sad day,' he wrote on Twitter. 'We've lost another great musician. Bernie was a gentle soul with a heart of gold'

Osbourne was among to those to pay tribute.

'What a sad day,' he wrote on Twitter.

'We've lost another great musician. Bernie was a gentle soul with a heart of gold.

'He will be dearly missed. I send my sincere condolences to his family, friends and fans. Rest in Peace Bernie.'

Talented: Torme was known for his work with rock group Gillan, and played with Osbourne's band following the death of his guitarist Randy Rhoads in 1982

His wife Sharon said: 'I cannot believe that Bernie Torme has passed.

'Bernie helped out Ozzy and I at a time of great need and we will never ever forget that. Love and condolences to his family.'

Torme's representative, drummer Mik Gaffney, said: 'I can only say how much I will miss him.

'I've known him since the late 80s.

'It's been a privilege to be his drummer for the past couple of years and his friend for much longer.'
Emmerdale fans think they've sussed Debbie Dingle's exit storyline amid the shock news her lover Joe Tate is still alive.

Actress Charley Webb, who plays Debbie, is currently expecting her third child, with the star set to go on maternity leave at some point this year.

So far her character's exit plot has yet to be revealed, but following Monday's explosive episode which saw a major Joe twist, fans have predicted how Debbie will bow out of the ITV soap.

Exit revealed? Emmerdale fans think they've sussed Debbie Dingle's exit storyline amid the shock news her lover Joe Tate is still alive

Joe, played by Ned Porteous, was presumed dead last autumn after being attacked by Debbie's dad Cain Dingle in a fit of rage.

However, Kim Tate revealed the startling truth that he wasn't actually dead after she hired a private investigator to find out about missing money from her offshore account.

After suspecting her employee Graham Foster was hiding something, she later confronted him with CCTV pictures of Joe withdrawing money from her account from Monte Carlo.

And it was little surprise that she was livid with Graham, seeing as she had ordered him to murder Joe months before.

But as always in the village, news has a way of travelling fast, and it'll only be a matter of time before Debbie and Cain find out the jaw-dropping truth.

He's alive! Emmerdale finally confirmed the news in Monday's episode that avid soap fans have been waiting for - Joe Tate is still alive

Predictions: Viewers believe that Debbie will head of to Monte Carlo to find Joe, having been grieving over his 'death' for months and hating her dad for his 'murder'

With that said, viewers believe that Debbie will head off to Monte Carlo to find Joe, having been grieving over his 'death' for months and hating her dad for his 'murder'.

Taking to Twitter, fans shared their thoughts on the idea that Debbie's travels will coincide with Charley's maternity leave, with one writing: 'Well I knew all along Joe was still alive!! Wonder if he will come back though? #Emmerdale or maybe this is how Charley will take her maternity when Debbie goes to find Joe??'

While another tweeted: 'Anyone else think Joe is only alive to give Debbie a sl so she can go on maternity? So will be interesting to see how he manages to talk Debbie round considering he allowed her to believe he was dead at the hands of her dad #Emmerdale.'

Baby on board: Charley announced she's expecting her third child with husband and co-star Matthew Wolfenden earlier this year

'Guess not. Coz then Debbie can go & join him when Charley needs to go on maternity leave. Was this the original storyline? Or did #Emmerdale change it to accommodate Charley's news. @emmerdale made a huge deal of saying Joe was dead,' speculated a third watcher.

With another adding: 'Oooh how's Debbie gona react when she finds out Joe's alive still alive & perfectly well? Cos she's obviously gona find out sooner or later right? Maybe that's how she gets written out?(Temporarily) #Emmerdale.'

MailOnline have contacted Emmerdale for comment.

Charley announced she was expecting her third baby with co-star husband Matthew Wolfenden in a sweet Instagram post earlier this year.

Spotted: In a shock twist, Kim Tate revealed the startling truth after she hired a private investigator to find out about missing money from her offshore account

Proof: After suspecting Graham Foster was hiding something, Kim later confronted him with CCTV pictures of Joe withdrawing money from her account from Monte Carlo

The popular soap actress took to her Instagram in February to announce the thrilling news alongside her other half and two sons; Buster, eight and Bowie, three.

In the heartwarming post, she and her family posed in front of a tree while clad in their warm jacket, holding a lightbox sign that read: 'Buster, Bowie and...'.

Charley, who covered up her growing baby bump in a long-length winter coat, captioned the shot: '#Number3'.

The talented actors have been together for over 12 years and tied the knot in a romantic surprise wedding at Ripley Castle, Yorkshire last February.

Attack: The character, played by Ned Porteous, was presumed dead last autumn after being attacked by Cain Dingle in a fit of rage

Meanwhile, with Charley expected to take temporary leave from the soap, it's been revealed that Ned will not be returning with the actor concentrating on cracking Hollywood.

A source told The Sun Online: 'Ned just filmed a few scenes, its not like hell be back in the soap full-time.

'Joe wont be returning to the village. Ned is still determined to crack the US and has been auditioning for roles in Hollywood.'

So will Debbie be leaving to find her fiance Joe? Or are Emmerdale lining up another dramatic exit for the character?

Emmerdale continues weekdays at 7pm on ITV.
Amanda Holden has admitted she prefers Declan Donnelly to his TV partner Ant McPartlin.

The Britain's Got Talent judge, 48, has been working alongside the pair for years on the hit series but it appears she has a soft spot for Dec.

According to the Daily Star, when put on the spot over who she was more fond of, Amanda said: 'Oh Dec. Me and Alesha [Dixon] always say that.'

Honest: Amanda Holden has admitted she prefers Declan Donnelly to his TV partner Ant McPartlin (pictured in 2018)

Last year a photo emerged of Amanda where she appeared to be having a heated exchange with Ant, with onlookers claiming something appeared to have 'pressed her buttons'.

However, a source close to the star insisted there was no bad blood between the pair.

They said: 'This picture was taken while they were posing in front of hundreds of fans and press. There simply wasnt any form of heated discussion whatsoever.'

Ant took a year off from the small screen after he was convicted of drink-driving last March.

Speaking out: According to the Daily Star, when put on the spot over who she was more fond of, Amanda said: 'Oh Dec. Me and Alesha [Dixon] always say that'

He was greeted with a standing ovation from the audience when he returned to Britain's Got Talent.

A source told MailOnline: 'Going back on stage was really emotional for Ant. Hes delighted to be back with Dec and excited for the BGT series ahead.

'The reaction from the crowd today was extremely positive. They gave him a standing ovation.'

Throwback: Last year a photo emerged of Amanda where she appeared to be having a heated exchange with Ant (pictured in 2018)

Introducing the return of Ant, Dec took to the stage and said: 'We've got a bunch of acts backstage who are eager to get out here and perform for you.

'The judges are back, the buzzers are back... and someone else is back.

'My co-host for this series, would you please welcome - Mr Ant McPartlin!'

The crowd then stood up and cheered as Ant walked onto the stage.

Fighting back tears, Ant said: 'Oh god, I'm really, really emotional now. I've missed you all' as Dec hugged him.

Pals: However, a source close to the star insisted there was no bad blood between Ant and Amanda

Speaking to Dec, Ant said: 'As for you! I've missed you.'

'What a lovely welcome. What a great show to come back to. I'm thrilled, I'm over the moon.

Judge Simon Cowell added: 'Ant welcome back. We missed you; it wasnt the same. I mean even though Dec was brilliant, it still wasnt the same.

'It would be like me not being with David, I would be happy, but not happy - if that makes sense. So on behalf of all of us, welcome back, were family. (Turns to audience) You are family!'
Channel 10 executives hoped that rebooting Dancing with the Stars would be a ratings winner.

But the reality show, hosted by Grant Denyer and Amanda Keller, is still struggling to compete with rival programs on Channels Seven and Nine.

Monday's episode attracted a paltry 492,000 metro viewers, while the elimination segment of the show attracted a slightly higher 556,000.

Still struggling! Dancing with the Stars continues to flop in the ratings as Married At First Sight dominates the 7:30pm time slot. Pictured: DWTS hosts Grant Denyer and Amanda Keller

By comparison, Channel Nine's Married At First Sight continued to stay in the lead, drawing an audience of 1.351 million.

Meanwhile, the once-unbeatable My Kitchen Rules was a distant second, bringing in just 714,000 viewers for the Seven Network.

But it wasn't all bad news for Dancing with the Stars, as the show did manage to increase its audience by eight per cent.

Ratings juggernaut: On Monday, Married At First Sight drew an audience of 1.351 million

Olympia Valance was the latest celebrity to be eliminated from Dancing with the Stars on Monday night.

The contestants and experts were visibly shocked by the announcement, with judge Sharna Burgess saying: 'There's just no way we could have seen that coming.'

It comes after the show's marquee star, Karl Stefanovic's ex-wife Cass Thorburn, was kicked off the program early.

On the positive side! But it wasn't all bad news for Dancing with the Stars, as the show did manage to increase its audience by eight per cent

Channel 10 personality Julia Morris recently lashed out at ratings leader Married At First Sight, describing the show as 'poison'.

However, she acknowledged that viewers can't seem to get enough of it.

Dancing with the Stars continues Monday at 7:30pm on Channel 10
Sarah Harris has hit back at a fan who sent her a private message on social media and made a lurid remark about the dress she was wearing while presenting Studio 10 on Tuesday.

The 37-year-old TV host made the shocking message public on her Instagram page.

The viewer's remark read: 'Are you cold on set today, because your nipples say you are.'

The sharp as a whip blonde responded to the fan by quoting Ron Burgundy from Anchorman, writing: 'PSA: (To borrow a line from Ron Burgundy) Its the pleats. Its actually an optical illusion. Dont act like youre not impressed!'

'Its actually an optical illusion': Studio 10 presenter Sarah Harris has hit back at a fan who made a lurid remark about her 'visible nipples' while live-on-air (She is pictured on the show with Richard Reid on Tuesday)

Uncalled for: The viewer's remark read: 'Are you cold on set today, because your nipples say you are'

Sarah's outfit of choice on Tuesday's episode was a white and black checkered dress, which had pleated panelling along the front.

As well as being an incredible TV host and journalist, Sarah is also the proud mother of two young boys with her husband Tom Ward.

The couple are parents to sons Harry, one, and Paul, three.

Meanwhile, Studio 10 recorded a massive boost in its ratings last week, and industry observers have a few reasons why.

Last Monday, the normally low-rating morning talk show drew just 57,000 viewers in the all-important five metro capital cities.

Checkmate: Sarah's outfit of choice on Tuesday's episode was a white and black checkered dress, which had pleated panelling along the front

However, by Wednesday, that figure had rocketed to 70,000 viewers - a massive 13,000 point increase.

The bump up brought the program a lot closer to time slot leader Today Extra on Nine (96,000).

So why the jump for Studio 10?

Industry analysts have come up with a few explanations for the phenomenon.

On Tuesday, Cassandra Thorburn, who is the ex wife of former Today show host Karl Stefanovic, announced she would be joining Studio 10 as a regular guest.

'I'll be working with Studio 10 on a more regular guest basis so that will be great,' the mother-of-three told Yahoo Lifestyle on Tuesday.

'It's great and opens the opinions of more experienced women, I guess, that are around my ilk,' the 47-year-old journalist added.

Viewers will no doubt be very keen to see what Cassandra brings to the small screen, given her recent acrimonious split from Karl, 44.

However, former TV Executive and TV Blackbox Editor Rob McKnight says other factors could account for the ratings hike for Ten.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Australia on Thursday, Rob said: 'Yesterday the network ran the [George] Pell verdict live and commercial free, whereas Nine cut away from the coverage.

Good comeback! The sharp as a whip blonde responded to the fan by quoting Ron Burgundy from Anchorman, writing: 'PSA: (To borrow a line from Ron Burgundy) Its the pleats. Its actually an optical illusion. Dont act like youre not impressed!'

'I think Studio 10 got a bit of a pick-up when Nine made the stupid mistake to drop their coverage. They know they stuffed up because they actually ended up going back to it.'

Rob, the former executive producer of Studio 10, also said the return of veteran TV presenter Denise Drysdale, 70, could have also been a factor for the unusual audience growth.

'It was also the return of Denise Drysdale and I would think that would have had a bigger influence than Cas [Cassandra Thorburn] being a part-time contributor,' Rob said.

Studio 10, presented by Sarah, airs at 8.30am each week day and overlaps with Today and Today Extra on the rival Nine Network.

The news of Cassandra's appointment to Studio 10 came just months after Karl was booted off the Today show on Channel Nine.
EastEnders have released an electrifying new trailer which gives fans a glimpse of Sean Slater, Ben Mitchell and Lola Pearce's returns.

The two and a half minute clip, is jam-packed full of major storylines fans can expect to see this Spring, including the comeback of the three major characters.

Actor Rob Kazinsky reprises his role as Sean following a decade long absence, with his character's return coinciding with mum Jean Slater's heartbreaking ovarian cancer diagnosis.

He's back! EastEnders have released an electrifying new trailer which gives fans a glimpse of Sean Slater, Ben Mitchell and Lola Pearce's returns

Sean's return will also see him reunited with one-time step-daughter Amy Branning as well as being embroiled in a tense graveside showdown with former love rival Jack Branning, with Rob previously stating that Sean had 'unfinished business in Albert Square.'

Meanwhile, Phil Mitchell's son Ben is back with a new face, as Waterloo Road actor Max Bowden steps into the role.

Ben was last seen fleeing the country with the cash from the disastrous New Year's heist and it looks as though he's set to land himself in more trouble after it was revealed he's to be involved in some dodgy business with villainous newcomer Danny Hardcastle.

As well as Ben, the show sees the return of Lola Pearce and their daughter Lexi, with actress Danielle Harold rejoining the BBC soap as the feisty teen.

Comeback: As well as Ben, the show sees the return of Lola Pearce and their daughter Lexi, with actress Danielle Harold rejoining the BBC soap as the feisty teen

New look: Phil Mitchell's son Ben is back with a new face, as Waterloo Road actor Max Bowden steps into the role

The trio are seen in the clip reuniting with the Mitchell's, including Lola's grandfather Billy Mitchell and her ex Jay Brown.

But it's clear that Ben and Lola have something to hide with her later telling Ben that she couldn't keep 'lying to everyone'.

In addition to their return, the trailer also sees the arrival of Mitch Baker and Karen Taylor's daughter Chantelle Atkins, who rocks up to Walford with her husband and children in tow.

While the Square's newest hardman Danny gets acquainted with Phil and Keanu Taylor, following the young mechanic's recent trip to Spain.

Newcomer: the trailer also sees the arrival of Mitch Baker and Karen Taylor's daughter Chantelle Atkins, who rocks up to Walford with her husband and children in tow

Forbidden love: The explosive clip teases some juicy new plots including a shock kiss between Kush Kazemi and Bex Fowler - but how will Martin Fowler react?

Meanwhile, the explosive clip teases some juicy new plots including a shock kiss between Kush Kazemi and Bex Fowler - but how will Martin Fowler react to his best friend getting up close and personal with his teenage daughter?

There's also trouble for Tiffany Butcher who returns to the Square after fleeing with gang leader Evie.

But following a tip-off from best pal Bernie Taylor, Tiff's family take dramatic action to stop her disappearing once more.

Elsewhere, Mel Owen desperately tries to stand up for son Hunter Owen as his day of reckoning arrives, but Keegan Baker has some harsh home truths about her beloved boy.

Judgement day: Mel Owen desperately tries to stand up for son Hunter Owen as his day of reckoning arrives, but Keegan Baker has some harsh home truths about her beloved boy

Brave: Ruby Allen also takes to the stand, as she defiantly faces her attackers in court - but will she get the justice she deserves?

Ruby Allen also takes to the stand, as she defiantly faces her attackers in court - but will she get the justice she deserves?

Other highlights in the nail-biting Spring preview show Habiba Ahmed making a move on dishy dentist Adam Bateman, while sassy Sharon Mitchell punches Evie's drug-dealing crony who has targeted her son Dennis Rickman.

Finally, there's danger for Louise Mitchell as she appears to have been kidnapped by Phil's enemies following his dodgy dealings in Spain.

Will Phil save his daughter? Or is there set to be another death in Albert Square?

EastEnders continues Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays on BBC One.

Go girl! Sassy Sharon Mitchell punches Evie's drug-dealing crony who has targeted her son Dennis Rickman
Katie Price returned from her romantic Thailand break with boyfriend Kris Boyson to discover her Facebook account had been hacked.

The television personality took to Twitter on Monday night to air her woes after she was locked out of her account by the cyber-attackers.

She wrote: 'This is NOT ME!!! My FACEBOOK has been hacked please all report the account! Facebook please give me my access back!'

Shocked: Katie Price returned from her romantic Thailand break with boyfriend Kris Boyson to discover her Facebook account had been hacked (pictured on Monday)

Katie's hacker had shared a poignant quote as the cover photo. It read: 'Im a strong believer that whoever is meant to be in your life will always gravitate back to you, no matter how far they wander.'

The mother-of-five pleaded with her followers not to be fooled into thinking she was uploading on the social media site as she pleaded with Facebook to allow her back into her account.

Katie's latest drama comes after her idyllic holiday with beau Kris, who recently referred to her as 'family' amid speculation he is set to propose.

Distressed: The television personality took to Twitter on Monday to air her woes after she was locked out of her account by the cyber-attackers

Pleading: She wrote: 'This is NOT ME!!! My FACEBOOK has been hacked please all report the account! Facebook please give me my access back!'

Upset: The mother-of-five pleaded with her followers not to be fooled into thinking she was uploading on the site as she pleaded with Facebook to allow her back into her account

The personal trainer, 29, showed off his sculpted physique in shirtless beach snap, which he captioned: ' Beach Ting!  #NoTanYet #holiday #thailand #family #beach #motivation #success #love.'

This comes hot on the heels of reports that the fitness enthusiast has brought an engagement ring with him on the trip and is waiting for the perfect moment to get down on one knee - but only when the camera is rolling.

In January it was claimed that Katie told Kris he must propose with her TV crew present so it can be captured for the second series of My Crazy Life.

Smitten: Katie's latest drama comes after her idyllic holiday with beau Kris, who recently referred to her as 'family' amid speculation he is set to propose

The source explained: 'She wants a big romantic gesture, something really over the top, but she's agreed to put her whole life on the reality show so it needs to be filmed.'

However, an insider told MailOnline that a camera crew haven't accompanied Katie and Kris to Thailand, so if the proposal needs to be filmed, it will have to be done themselves.

Kris previously revealed marriage and more kids are '100% on the cards' with the mother of five.
Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield have signed on to star in a new romantic drama entitled The Photograph for Universal Pictures.

Very little is known about the story at this point, with Variety reporting that the movie centers on, 'intertwining love stories in the past and present.'

No details have been given for the characters Rae, 34, and Stanfield, 27, will play in the upcoming movie.

New role: Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield have signed on to star in a new romantic drama entitled The Photograph for Universal Pictures

New movie: Very little is known about the story at this point, with Variety reporting that the movie centers on, 'intertwining love stories in the past and present

Stella Meghie (Everything, Everything) will direct from her own script, with Universal reportedly so impressed with the script they brought her on to direct as well.

Meghie will be working with Stanfield for the first time on this project, but she has already worked with Rae before.

Meghie directed an episode of Rae's HBO series Insecure, which she co-created and stars in, and she's slated to direct American Princess which has Rae starring.

Reunited: Meghie directed an episode of Rae's HBO series Insecure, which she co-created and stars in, and she's slated to direct American Princess which has Rae starring

Will Packer (Girls Trip) will produce alongside his Will Packer Productions partner James Lopez, with Rae serving as executive producer alongside Meghie.

No production schedule was revealed for The Photograph at this time.

Both Rae and Stanfield are quite in demand these days, with both coming off big years in 2018 and poised for big years in 2019 as well.

Big year: Both Rae and Stanfield are quite in demand these days, with both coming off big years in 2018 and poised for big years in 2019 as well

Rae plays Issa Dee in her hit HBO series Insecure, which returns for its fourth season at some point in 2019, though a premiere date has not been announced.

She also stars in the upcoming movie Little, alongside Black-ish star Marsai Martin and Regina Hall, in theaters April 12.

She also has The Lovebirds in post-production, where she stars alongside Kumail Nanjiani and Anna Camp, hitting theaters March 6, 2020.

New season: Rae plays Issa Dee in her hit HBO series Insecure, which returns for its fourth season at some point in 2019, though a premiere date has not been announced

Stanfield starred in the critically-acclaimed indie Sorry to Bother You, along with Come Sunday and The Girl In the Spider's Web.

Stanfield has three movies slated for release in 2019, starting with Someone Great, debuting on Netflix April 19.

He also stars in director Rian Johnson's Knives Out, in theaters November 27, and Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler, which doesn't have a release date yet.
Hollywood actor Russell Crowe has shared a heartfelt tribute to the victims of Friday's deadly terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Gladiator star, 54, posted a photo to Instagram on Tuesday of the Sydney Opera House, which had a silver fern projected onto its sails over the weekend, and described it as a 'gesture of solidarity and shared purpose'.

'A terrible reason for it, but a gesture of solidarity and shared purpose. My birthplace and my home grieving together. My thoughts go out also to the people of Grafton [the birthplace of the alleged gunman]. A picturesque and proud town, unduly stained,' Russell wrote in the caption.

'My birthplace and my home grieving together': Hollywood actor Russell Crowe posted this heartfelt tribute to the victims of Friday's terror attack in New Zealand

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the gesture was a call for unity.

'The Silver Fern of New Zealand will be displayed on Sydney Opera House tonight - a symbol of solidarity, support and respect for the people of New Zealand,' she tweeted.

It comes after Russell, who was born in Wellington, New Zealand, reacted to the tragedy on Twitter as it was unfolding on Friday.

Kiwi native: Russell was born in New Zealand's capital, Wellington

He tweeted: '40 dead in NZ. Senseless, pointless, cruel deaths. My heart breaks for all the families involved, and for the beautiful people of New Zealand to whose hearts this pain will attach, for a long time. Kia Kaha.'

At least 50 people were killed after a terrorist opened fire at two Christchurch mosques where Muslims had gathered for afternoon prayer.

Accused gunman Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian man and suspected white supremacist, has since been charged with one count of murder.

Tragedy: It comes after Russell reacted to the tragedy on Twitter as it was unfolding on Friday

Emotional: Russell tweeted, '40 dead in NZ. Senseless, pointless, cruel deaths. My heart breaks for all the families involved, and for the beautiful people of New Zealand to whose hearts this pain will attach, for a long time. Kia Kaha'. Pictured in October 2018

On Monday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed to change the country's gun laws in the wake of what has been described as the worst massacre in the nation's history.

'As a cabinet, we were absolutely unified and very clear. The terrorist attack in Christchurch on Friday was the worst act of terrorism on our shores,' she said during a press conference.

'It has exposed a range of weaknesses in New Zealand's gun laws. The clear lesson from history around the world is that to make our community safe, the time to act is now.'
The person who poked Diana Ross in the midst of a performance in New York City last week has revealed themselves.

An entertainer who goes by HRH Princess Diandra explained in a series of social media posts explained how the situation came to be at Times Square Edition, a luxe new Big Apple hotel.

In the back-and-forth, Diandra poked and tried to tug at Ross's tulle boa, until the 74-year-old musical icon hit back, resulting in Diandra giving Ross the finger.

Getting to the point: The person who poked Diana Ross in the midst of a concert in New York City last week has revealed themselves

'While looking for a bathroom I found a room with a table full of champagne,' said Diandra, who was described by Page Six as 'a drag queen who has performed tributes to Ross,' said in an Instagram post.

After having some champagne - first a glass, then a bottle - Diandra was excited and energized to take in the show, only to be upset when Ross, performing the classic Upside Down, didn't react to overtures that were made.

'In that moment I wanted a nod, a touch, some acknowledgement... I got DUST!' Diandra wrote. 'I then acted like a petulant toddler and I poked her.'

Diandra continued: 'She mock hit me and I gave her the finger and said, F*** YOU! NOT REMOTELY COOL... Was I much? YESTH!

Exchange: In the back-and-forth, Diandra poked and sought to tug at Ross's tulle boa, until the 74-year-old musical icon batted at Diandra, at which point Diandra gave Ross the finger

Legend: The incident took place as Ross performed her famed single Upside Down

'I think after 50 years it's best to love her from AFAR,' Diandra - who was subsequently ejected from the hotel party - wrote of Ross. 'So VERY sorry!

Ross had alluded to the incident in a previous post Sunday, writing: 'It was truly a lovely moment in NY, it was a reach out and touch moment, totally loving. I was not hit or hurt! A really fun night!'

In the show, Ross welcomed onstage Nile Rodgers, who also performed, and hotelier Ian Schrager onstage.

Other celebs present at the swanky Gotham gathering included models Kendall Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Hilary Rhoda, Elsa Hosk and Joan Smalls, TV personality Graham Norton and Bravo's Andy Cohen, according to THR.

All's well: Ross alluded to the incident in a post Sunday, making clear she was fine
It asked the trial courts not to show leniency to the accused in acid attack cases.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has directed two convicts to pay Rs 1.5 lakhs each as compensation to a victim of an acid attack, in addition to the compensation under the State Victim Compensation Scheme.

It asked the trial courts not to show leniency to the accused in acid attack cases. Giving this direction, a bench of Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and Ajay Rastogi, however, refused to interfere with the five-year sentence imposed by the Himachal Pradesh high court, which had earlier taken a lenient view and reduced the 10-year sentence imposed on the two convicts by a sessions court.

The bench said the two convicts, Vijay Kumar and his accomplice, would each have to pay rs 1.50 lakhs to the acid attack victim, Ms Ishita Saunder, in six months, failing which they would undergo another six months of imprisonment.

Under the victim compensation scheme, different states have evolved compensation for acid attack/rape victims ranging from Rs 3 lakhs (which is the minimum prescribed under the law) upto rs 10 lakhs.
Will there be one more surprise couple swap on Married At First Sight?

After both splitting from their partners on the show, Nic Jovanovic and Susie Bradley were pictured at a Sydney hotel together ahead of the show's reunion on January 24.

After noticing Daily Mail Australia's photographer outside, 25-year-old Susie fled the hotel lobby back upstairs to her room. Nic, 28, arrived just moments later.

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Married At First Sight EXCLUSIVE: Nic Jovanovic (right) and Susie Bradley (left) were pictured at the same hotel on January 24 ahead of filming the reunion episode

'Susie started panicking when she noticed a photographer outside the hotel. It was like she knew she wasn't supposed to be seen,' said an onlooker.

'She tried to hide behind a large concrete pillar, made a phone call, then ran to the elevator and went upstairs. Nic then appeared in the lobby seconds later.

'He seemed a bit lost, as if he was looking for someone who hadn't shown up'.

Why so shy? After noticing Daily Mail Australia's photographer, Susie (pictured) fled the hotel lobby back upstairs to her room. Tellingly, Nic arrived just moments later

She doesn't mess around! It's believed the sighting took place in-between Susie splitting with 'husband' Billy Vincent and hooking up with current boyfriend Todd Carney

It's believed the sighting took place in-between Susie splitting with 'husband' Billy Vincent and hooking up with current boyfriend Todd Carney.

Meanwhile, Daily Mail Australia understands that all the MAFS contestants were checked into different hotels the night before filming the finale.

Producers hoped that dividing the group would make sure all the drama was captured on camera and there would be nothing 'juicy' happening behind the scenes.

Fancy seeing you here! Nic stepped into the lobby seconds after Susie disappeared. According to an onlooker, 'He seemed a bit lost, as if he was looking for someone who hadn't shown up'

Nothing to see here! Nic also appeared to be avoiding the cameras. Shortly afterwards, both he and Susie drove separately to Lilyfield to film the MAFS reunion episode

Moving on! Two weeks after filming the MAFS reunion, Susie (right) was photographed leaving a Brisbane hotel with NRL star Todd Carney (left). They have been in a relationship ever since

Two weeks after filming the reunion episode, Susie was photographed leaving a Brisbane hotel with NRL star Todd Carney.

They have been in a relationship ever since.

Meanwhile, Nic is believed to be currently single after his 'marriage' to Cyrell Paule ended in disaster on MAFS.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Channel Nine for comment.

Ready to mingle? Nic (right) is believed to be currently single after his 'marriage' to Cyrell Paule (left) ended in disaster on MAFS
Kourtney Kardashian's latest image drop in promotion of her new lifestyle website, Pooch, has created quite the stir on a couple of fronts.

The picture in question shows the Keeping Up With The Kardashian star naked while soaking in a bubble bath with the caption, 'Love yourself as deeply as you love them.'

Her famous family's hairdresser has since come out and teased Kourtney about hiring her husband for the racy photo shoot, while some fans took to social media to call it a photoshop failure.

Fact or Fiction? Kourtney Kardashian dropped another new image to promote her new lifestyle website Poosh; fans and her hairdresser were quick to chime in

All the jokes and criticism have been focused on the obviously glaring mishap with Kourtney's left leg, which looks much longer than the right one.

A follower named Kelly jumped into the conversation and commented: Who da f*** edited this pic; WHAT IS WITH HER LEG?,' and then added the hashtags #KourtneyKardashian and #photoshopfails.

Henry wrote, '@kourtneykardash dope picture but I don't really understand the second leg.'

Another follower joked, '@kourtneykardash leg floating off in the bath.'

Photoshop failure: Fans were quick to comment on the positioning of Kourtney's legs

Head scratcher: Some fans were mystified by the snafu

Punch line: Other fans used the pic as a source of comic relief

Hello? All the talk has been about the left leg that appears to be much longer

What's more, Kourtney's head and neck in the photo look like they were also retouched.

The petite beauty's face has flawless makeup with frosty lipstick and lined eyebrows, but it appears to be very unnatural in the look and the positioning.

Fact or fiction -- Kourtney's figure in the racy pic looks amazing toned and sculpted.

Kardashian/Jenner hairdresser, Jen Atkin, took a friendly jab by questioning whether the reality star used her husband as the photographer for the shoot.

'If mike took this I'm calling a divorce attorney,' Atkin joked.

Keeping with the friendly banter, Kourtney responded: '@mrmikerosenthal he did but he kept his eyes closed.'

Friendly jab: Kardashian hairdresser Jen Atkin joked about Kourtney's hiring her husband shoot the racy photo

Working the magic: Atkin (left) has worked with the Kardashian/Jenner family for years

The 39-year old star got the attention of her social media followers two weeks ago when she shared the first image for the upcoming Poosh brand.

It showed her naked on a bathroom counter holding a laptop and a cup of tea with a towel stylishly wrapped around her long raven tresses with the simple caption: 'C O M I N G. S O O N.'

There's also a photo of her leaning outside the tub looking fabulous, with daughter Penelope off to the side touching her mother's hair in a white nightgown.

The mother-of-three posted, 'Name: Penelope, Nickname: Poosh.'

Her naked ambition: Kourtney started teasing Poosh two weeks ago

Clean: Another promo pic showed the reality star in a bubble bath looking glamorous with her daughter Penelope off to the side with th caption: 'Name: Penelope, Nickname: Poosh.'

In another pic, Kourtney is in a tub but instead of water there are silver crystals. The copy reads, 'Educate, motivate, create, curate.'

There are also pink flowers over her chest.

Then there is a photo of Penelope with her cousin North and another little friend as they play Tug-of-War at a party.

Fun with collage: In another photo Kourtney is in a tub but instead of water there are silver crystals. The copy reads, 'Educate, motivate, create, curate'

Silly: Then there is a photo of Penelope with her cousin North and another little friend as they play Tug-of-War at a party

Poosh's official Instagram page teased: 'This isn't a monologue, it's a dialogue.'

The eldest of the Kardashian/Jenner sister didn't reveal any details about the nature of the company, simply asking fans to sign up to her website to find out more.

But now it seems like she is working on a site that has to do with being a working mother.

This is her latest venture after working on Pretty Little Things and representing Manuka Doctor.

Proud of their star: Poosh's official Instagram page teased: 'This isn't a monologue, it's a dialogue.' She is looking at the site which has a photo of her next to a piece of her art work

Fresh: Poosh was inspired by her daughter Penelope's nickname, on Instagram. On Monday she shared new images
They memorably told Veronica and Piper they couldn't cook, but on Tuesday's episode of My Kitchen Rules, Josh and Austin were forced to swallow their words.

The two sparring teams were forced to team up in the kitchen for the final night of the Open House challenge, and there was no shortage of drama to season their dishes with.

'We've said before that Veronica and Piper are the worst cooks left in this competition, but hey, we'll make it work because that's what we have to do,' Josh, 25, said as they got to work.

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Working together: They memorably told Veronica and Piper they couldn't cook, but on Tuesday's episode of My Kitchen Rules, Josh and Austin were forced to swallow their words

He added: 'Even though it goes against every fibre of our being - my being especially - I'm going to keep my mouth shut, and we're going to make it happen so we don't go to elimination.'

The two teams got off to a rocky start, with Piper announcing Josh and Austin, 21, had appointed her the leader.

But Josh said it had played out differently, with Piper, 35, pleading with them to let her run the kitchen.

Taking charge: The two teams got off to a rocky start, with Piper announcing Josh and Austin had appointed her the leader

Added Austin: 'We're going to pretend that she's leader, because she needs to have that mental head space that she's in control, while we just do the work.'

After venturing into the kitchen though, it wasn't long before Josh grew frustrated with Piper.

Having asked her to try his spice rub, Piper simply declared it was 'perfect', even after pressing her for more details.

'We're going to pretend that she's leader, because she needs to have that mental head space that she's in control, while we just do the work,' Austin (right) said of Piper

'She won't tell you what she's actually thinking, so you never know if it's going wrong or going right. Piper's just like, "Perfect,"' Josh said.

He added: 'I'm 100 percent to giving my all to working with them as a team, but if everything is freaking perfect... I'm so worried about tonight.'

They butted heads once again when it was revealed Piper had planned a simple brownie for dessert.

'She won't tell you what she's actually thinking, so you never know if it's going wrong or going right. Piper's just like, "Perfect,"' Josh said

'What makes this the best brownie?' Josh challenged her, adding that he didn't think the dessert was 'worthy of this stage of the competition'.

Austin appeared to have been in agreeance with his brother.

'I'm thinking that we're halfway through the competition, and I feel that some people might question that as simple,' he added.

Spice it up: Josh thought the chicken stock was lacking in flavour, describing it as tasting like 'hot water'

But Piper assured them it 'wasn't going to be a problem'.

After bringing their chicken stock to a boil for the entree, Veronica, 41, tested the flavour and declared it to be 'awesome'.

Josh did the same, but thought it was lacking in flavour, describing it as tasting like 'hot water'.

Top chef: Piper didn't want to hear Josh's criticism of her chicken stock, insisting it was 'perfect', even though Josh branded it 'chicken water'

Piper didn't want to hear it though, insisting it was 'perfect', even though Josh branded it 'chicken water'.

As they prepared the Jerusalem artichoke and white mushroom soup for the entree, the brothers asked Piper if she had seasoned it, but she assured them it was 'good'.

'Trust me. I've made this soup many times,' she told them.

Heating up: 'Piper is not taking our advice. Behind Piper's beauty queen smile, she is really stubborn,' said Josh

Her reluctance to take onboard anything they had to say annoyed Josh.

'Piper is not taking our advice. Behind Piper's beauty queen smile, she is really stubborn,' he said.

There was more tension when Veronica revealed she was adding coconut to the bread, but Piper once again told them it would be 'perfect'.

Interesting combination: There was more tension when Veronica revealed she was adding coconut to the bread

The brothers were seen becoming increasingly stressed out, with Josh deciding he would have to test out all the flavours to make sure they worked.

'Piper is just like, "It's good, it's good, it's good," but I don't trust her,' said Austin.

With Piper and Veronica leaving the kitchen to top up the glasses of their dinner guests, Josh and Austin admitted they were getting worried.

Freaking out: With Piper and Veronica leaving the kitchen to top up the glasses of their dinner guests, Josh and Austin admitted they were getting worried

'Austin, I'm a little bit suspicious, because she's tasting the soup, and then when we see her tasting it and we asked her how it is, she says, "It's good,"' Josh told his brother.

'You know what the problem is? There's so much good that you can't identify the bad,' Austin added.

Austin said he was 'really annoyed', after Piper took control of the soup and refused to let the brothers have any input.

Tempers flaring: Austin said he was 'really annoyed', after Piper took control of the soup and refused to let the brothers have any input

Underwhelming: Judges Pete Evans (right) and Manu Feildel (left) appeared to have been in agreeance with the boys, and argued the soup lacked flavour

With Piper and Veronica still gone, Austin asked Josh if he wanted to sneak a taste of the soup.

They both agreed it was 'underseasoned' and lacking in flavour, even going so far as to call it 'really bland'.

When the beauty queens eventually returned to the kitchen, Josh told Piper the soup needed 'more salt' to balance it out, but she immediately shut him down and told him 'it's done'.

Out of sight: With Piper and Veronica off mingling with their guests, the brotters took full advantage of their absence in the kitchen

Judges Pete Evans and Manu Feildel appeared to have been in agreeance with the boys, and argued the soup lacked flavour.

Piper then relayed the feedback to the others, with Josh growing visibly frustrated.

'We told them that! What the f*** is she doing?' he said.

Well done: They appeared to have been able to salvage their main, with Manu calling Josh out from the kitchen to congratulate him on the meat

Things only got worse after the brothers tasted the red wine sauce for the main of spiced venison, stating it tasted 'bitter' and 'sour'.

They appeared to have been able to salvage it though, with Manu calling Josh out from the kitchen to congratulate him on the meat.

'The meat has been cooked perfectly. I'm a little shocked, but very happy,' the 45-year-old chef told him.

'The meat has been cooked perfectly. I'm a little shocked, but very happy,' the 45-year-old chef told a relieved Josh

There wasn't time to celebrate though, with the group having to return to the kitchen to prepare dessert.

And Josh still had some serious reservations about their final dish.

'You make this for a bake-off at a school or something,' he said.

Brownie points: For dessert, the judges were served a brownie. They both agreed it was good, but according to Pete, it lacked 'excitement'

The judges both agreed it was a good brownie, but according to Pete, 46, it lacked 'excitement'.

But Josh seemed relieved following their feedback, claiming it was better than he had expected.

And despite a few hiccups along the way, Josh, Austin, Veronica and Piper scored the highest out of all the teams from the public, with a score of 24.
She is known to be a talented equestrian.

And Elsa Pataky was back in the saddle on Monday, riding her horse down the beach near her mansion in Byron Bay, NSW.

The 42-year-old looked completely at ease as she enjoyed the afternoon to herself.

Back in the saddle: Chris Hemsworth's wife Elsa Pataky, 42, went horse riding near her home in Byron Bay on Monday

Elsa dressed casually in a graphic print T-shirt, jodhpurs and riding boots.

She protected herself from head injuries by wearing a black helmet and tied her blonde hair into a low ponytail.

The Fast and the Furious star accessorised with a layering of silver necklaces and appeared to go makeup free for the occasion.

Keeping it simple: Elsa dressed casually in a graphic print T-shirt, jodhpurs and riding boots

She's a natural! Elsa appeared relaxed and at ease as she rode across the sand

Pastime: The Spanish actress is known to be a talented equestrian

Elsa was joined by two friends, and the group was seen heading toward the direction of Lennox Head.

The Spanish actress married Chris Hemsworth in 2010, and the couple live in Byron Bay with their children: daughter India Rose, six, and twins Tristan and Sasha, five.

They relocated to the coastal town in 2014, after previously living in Los Angeles.

Sensible: She protected herself from head injuries by wearing a black helmet and tied her blonde hair into a low ponytail

Change of scenery: Elsa was joined by two friends, and the group was seen heading toward the direction of Lennox Head

Love story: Elsa married Chris Hemsworth in 2010, and the couple live in Byron Bay with their children, daughter India Rose, six, and twins Tristan and Sasha, five

Elsa previously said that the family decided to move to Australia for the quieter, more laid-back lifestyle.

'We did the move three years ago and I'm so happy with it,' she said in April 2017.

'In Byron we just feel like locals. People really respect us... and it's what I always dreamt of giving to my kids.'

New home: They relocated to the coastal town in 2014, after previously living in Los Angeles
Samuel Johnson and his professional dance partner Jorja-Rae Freeman performed a soulful Rumba on Dancing With The Stars on Monday.

Actor Samuel, 41, and Jorja-Rae danced to 'Shallow' from the movie A Star Is Born, but the meaning behind the performance went way beyond Hollywood romance.

The Molly star's dance was done in memory of his former partner's heartbreaking suicide.

'She died of a sore heart': Samuel Johnson (pictured) revealed the sad meaning behind his rumba performance on Dancing With The Stars on Monday night

'I had a partner her name was Lainie and she died from a sore heart,' Samuel told host Amanda Keller following his performance.

'I've been thinking a lot because you told me to be romantic this week, that was the brief. I haven't been able to be romantic since then, not really.'

Samuel was speaking in reference to ex-girlfriend Lainie, who took her own life on the night he broke up with her, in early 2006.

Inspiration from tragedy: The Molly star's dance was done in memory of his former partner's heartbreaking suicide

The judges praised Samuel's 'storytelling' ability in the dance, and said the performance was 'endearing'.

Samuel fought back tears as the implored the audience: 'Dancing is a very powerful agent. And I recommend anyone who's feeling icky... go and do something physical. Because we should all dance.'

Sam spoke about his heartbreak following Lainie's suicide on the ABC's Anh's Brush With Fame in 2017.

'I've been thinking a lot because you told me to be romantic this week, that was the brief. I haven't been able to be romantic since then, not really,' said Samuel

'The love of my life hanged herself,' Samuel told Do. 'And, I'm still very upset for her and for her family.'

He added: 'I'd definitely say it's probably my life's biggest sadness. And in a way, the more time goes by, the more it hurts.

'You know how they reckon that you come to terms with your grief as you go along? Not with this one. With every year it gets more profound. My sadness grows.'

Moving: The judges praised Samuel's 'storytelling' ability in the dance, and said the performance was 'endearing'

For confidential support call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14.

For further support contact Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 and MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78.

Dancing With The Stars continues at 7.30pm on Sunday on Channel Ten
She was recently body-shamed by a troll, after she was pictured wearing a bikini at the beach in Queensland last month.

And on Wednesday last week, Married at First Sight's Jessika Power defiantly slipped back into a bikini during a solo outing at a Brisbane beach.

The 'cheating bride' looked happy and relaxed as she paraded her figure in a skimpy yellow two-piece.

Take that haters! Married at First Sight's Jessika Power showed off her stunning bikini body in a tiny yellow two-piece on Wednesday

Her trademark shoulder tattoo was on display as she frolicked in the sand before taking a swim in the ocean.

The bubbly blonde oozed confidence as she showed off her tiny waist and eye-catching belly-ring drew attention to her toned tummy.

Jessika wore natural makeup, including pink lip gloss, which highlighted her very plump pout.

Making a splash! Jessika looked incredible as she enjoyed a swim in the ocean

Stunning: The bubbly blonde oozed confidence as she showed off her tiny waist and and eye-catching belly-ring drew attention to her toned tummy

Tatt's nice: Her trademark shoulder tattoo was on display as she frolicked in the shallow water

As the explosive drama surrounding her love life plays out on MAFS, the Perth admin assistant appeared to be without a care in the world as she soaked up sun-rays.

Earlier this month, Jessika's co-stars rallied behind her after she was body-shamed by a social media troll.

She was pictured wearing a blue bikini during a beach outing with boyfriend Dan Webb in Queensland and the troll accused her of having 'disgusting cellulite' in a cruel Instagram comment.

Life's a beach: As the explosive drama surrounding her love life plays out on MAFS, the Perth admin worker appeared to be without a care in the world as she soaked up sun-rays

Alone time: Jessika enjoyed a solo outing without her boyfriend Dan Webb

MAFS 'groom' Mike Gunner defended Jessika, writing: 'That's really uncalled for and very hurtful!'

Fellow 'bride' Jules also hit back at the troll, writing: 'SHAMEFULLY wrong. This comment'.

Despite the heartwarming display of unity among the co-stars, there will no doubt be tension amongst the group when Jessika and Dan come clean about their 'affair'.

Chic: At one point, the aspiring Instagram star covered up in a sheer white sarong

Going public: On Saturday, Jessika (right) and her MAFS co-star Dan (centre) went public with their romance at a bar in Brisbane

The aspiring Instagram model and the single dad began secretly dating on the show, behind their spouses' backs.

Jessika is 'married' to farmer Mick Gould, 31, while Dan, 35, is the 'husband' of brunette bombshell, Tamara Joy, 30.

On Saturday, Jessika and Dan went public with their romance at a bar in Brisbane.

Sugary treat: Jessika treated herself to some ice-cream after her relaxing swim at the beach

She told Who magazine this week that it was never her intention to go against 'girl code' by stealing another woman's partner.

'I never would want to go against girl code, especially to Tamara!' she said.

Revealing outfit: Jessika slipped on a pair of denim shorts, which highlighted her toned legs

'She was always so lovely to me. I never wanted to ever hurt Mick's feeling's either - so that's what I want to clear up.

'I am truly sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone's feelings.'
Daniel Webb confessed his feelings for Jessika Power to her 'husband' Mick Gould during Tuesday's Married At First Sight.

As all of the grooms headed for a boozy night at The Clock Hotel in Sydney's Surrey Hills, Dan, 35, was grilled by Cameron Merchant, 34.

'I think his Mrs is hot as f***, if I'm being honest with you,' admitted Dan in front of the group, while pointing at farmer Mick, 31.

'If I'm being honest with you...': MAFS bombshell as Dan Webb confessed his feelings for Jessika Power to her 'husband' Mick Gould during boys' night on Wednesday

Elaborating on his feelings for Jessika, Dan added: 'As I've said since day one, I've been chasing the goosebumps and chasing the feels.'

With Cameron then quizzing him as to if Jessika gives him 'goosebumps', the car broker stumbled, while choosing his words carefully.

'When I look at her, yeah, in a kind of way... yeah,' said Dan.

Mick was left unimpressed by the topic conversation, telling producers afterwards: 'Unbelievable - that's a bit rude.'

Lads on tour! As all of the grooms headed for a boozy night at The Clock Hotel in Sydney's Surrey Hills, Dan, 35, was grilled by Cameron Merchant, 34, over Jessika

'I think his Mrs is hot as f***, if I'm being honest with you,' admitted Dan in front of the group, while pointing at farmer Mick, 31, who was unimpressed by the remark

As Dan was then asked if anything had happened between the pair, he lied to the group while hiding the fact they've been intimate several times.

'I have had conversations with Jess at dinner parties but nothing else,' said Dan.

'Outside of the experiment if I was to bump into Jess at a bar or something, she's totally my type. But I'm here at the experiment, and I'm just doing me.'

'Conversations at dinner parties but nothing else': As Dan was asked if anything had happened between the pair, he lied to the group while hiding their 'affair'

Dan later said he didn't admit to their 'affair' out of 'respect' to Jessika.

Michael Brunelli, the only other groom aware of the 'affair', admitted afterwards that he found the exchange difficult to sit through.

'It was hard to hear him blatantly lie,' admitted Michael.
Tommy Lee passionately kissed his much younger fourth wife Brittany Furlan at the world premiere of Netflix's The Dirt at ArcLight Hollywood on Monday.

The red carpet event reunited the 6ft2in drummer with his Motley Crue bandmates Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, and Mick Mars.

The aging glam metal rockers co-produced Jeff Tremaine's film adaptation of their 2001 collaborative autobiography, which starts streaming this Friday.

Newlyweds! Tommy Lee passionately kissed his much younger fourth wife Brittany Furlan at the world premiere of Netflix's The Dirt at ArcLight Hollywood on Monday

Home sweet home: The red carpet event reunited the 6ft2in drummer with his Motley Crue bandmates (from L-R) Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, and Mick Mars

At 56, Tommy is 24 years older than Brittany, and the newlyweds were clearly still enjoying the honeymoon phase.

The May-December couple tied the knot on February 14 after a year-long engagement following eight months of dating.

On the way to their glamorous date night, Lee (born Bass) tweeted a car snap of himself with Furlan, who first found fame on the retired app Vine.

The Unicorn actress - who boasts 4.9M social media followers - Insta-storied before and after selfies of her cleavage-centered look for the night.

Recreated his 1986 wedding to Heather Locklear: The aging glam metal rockers co-produced Jeff Tremaine's film adaptation of their 2001 collaborative autobiography, which starts streaming this Friday

The look of love: At 56, Tommy is 24 years older than Brittany, and the newlyweds were clearly still enjoying the honeymoon phase

Get a room! Tommy gave his blushing new bride quite a tongue lashing

Whirlwind: The May-December couple tied the knot on February 14 after a year-long engagement following eight months of dating

'Here we go!! #thedirtmovie': On the way to their glamorous date night, Lee (born Bass) tweeted a car snap of himself with Furlan, who first found fame on the retired app Vine

Ample: The Unicorn actress - who boasts 4.9M social media followers - Insta-storied before and after selfies of her cleavage- centered look for the night

The thrice-divorced father-of-two also posed with The Dirt actress Rebekah Graf, who looked out of place in a princessy pink gown.

The actress plays Heather Locklear in the new movie, and Tommy seemed intimate enough with her to kiss her cheek as his new bride watched on nearby.

The Greek-born musician is portrayed in The Dirt by Ohio rapper Machine Gun Kelly, who squatted down with his muse in a group shot.

The tattoo-sleeved 28-year-old - credited as his birth name Colson Baker - collaborated with Motley Crue on their new single The Dirt (Est. 1981) featured in the biopic.

Curious: The thrice-divorced father-of-two also posed with The Dirt actress Rebekah Graf, who look out of place in a princessy pink gown

Big role: Graf plays Heather Locklear in the new movie The Dirt

Flashing devil's horns: The Greek-born musician is portrayed in The Dirt by Ohio rapper Machine Gun Kelly (L), who squatted down with his muse in a group shot

Credited as his birth name Colson Baker: The tattoo-sleeved 28-year-old collaborated with Motley Crue on their new single The Dirt (Est. 1981) featured in the biopic

Group shot: The three-time Grammy-nominated band - who sold 100M records - had previously retired in 2015 following their $86.1M-grossing Final Tour

The three-time Grammy-nominated band - who sold 100M records - had previously retired in 2015 following their $86.1M-grossing Final Tour.

Missing from Lee's side were his two sons - The Hills: New Beginnings star Brandon, 22; and aspiring musician Dylan, 21 - with ex-wife #3 Pamela Anderson.

The 51-year-old Baywatch alum is next doing a Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival event with philosopher Srecko Horvat happening March 29 at Denmark's Bremen Teater.

Meanwhile, Tommy will next perform alongside DJ Aero and rapper Ludacris at Volume 03 happening April 5 at Florida's Seminole Casino Pavilion in Coconut Creek.

2016 family portrait: Missing from Lee's side were his two sons - The Hills: New Beginnings star Brandon, 22; and aspiring musician Dylan, 21 - with ex-wife #3 Pamela Anderson

'From climate to populism!' The 51-year-old Baywatch alum is next doing a Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival event with philosopher Srecko Horvat happening March 29 at Denmark's Bremen Teater

Live gig: Tommy will next perform alongside DJ Aero and rapper Ludacris at Volume 03 happening April 5 at Florida's Seminole Casino Pavilion in Coconut Creek

The Dirt director Jeff Tremaine made sure to pose with his cast - Iwan Rheon, Colson, and Douglas Booth.

The 52-year-old filmmaker used to helm all of Jackass' stuff so the stunt-loving crew - including Steve-O, Jason Acuna, and Chris Pontius - supported him at his premiere.

SNL star Pete Davidson - who plays Electra Records A&R rep Tom Zutaut - arrived separately from his much older girlfriend, Kate Beckinsale.

Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx proudly embraced his much younger third wife Courtney Bingham's baby bump.

Crew: The Dirt director Jeff Tremaine (M) made sure to pose with his cast - (from L-R) Iwan Rheon, Colson, and Douglas Booth

Dare ya! The 52-year-old filmmaker used to helm all of Jackass' stuff so the stunt-loving crew - including Steve-O, Jason Acuna, and Chris Pontius - supported him at his premiere

Coy couple: Davidson arrived separately from his much older girlfriend, Kate Beckinsale

Bun in the oven! Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx proudly embraced his much younger third wife Courtney Bingham's baby bump

Two pairs: Motley Crue guitarist Mick Mars (L) posed with his much younger girlfriend Seraina Schonenberger while singer Vince Neil (R) posed with this girlfriend Rain Hannah

Motley Crue guitarist Mick Mars posed with his much younger girlfriend Seraina Schonenberger while singer Vince Neil posed with this girlfriend Rain Hannah.

The Dirt premiere was also a date night for rocker Rob Zombie and his wife Sheri Moon as well as Shake It Up alum Bella Thorne and her rapper beau Mod Sun.

Michael Jackson's daughter Paris attended the premiere with her long-haired love and Soundflowers bandmate, Gabriel Glenn.

Paired off: The Dirt premiere was also a date night for rocker Rob Zombie (L) and his wife Sheri Moon as well as Shake It Up alum Bella Thorne (R) and her rapper beau Mod Sun

'Thanks for the invite Tommy Lee!' Michael Jackson's daughter Paris attended the premiere with her long-haired love and Soundflowers bandmate, Gabriel Glenn

Bedazzled moto jacket: The 20-year-old heiress brought back the Hot Topic, all-black punk style she used to regularly rock while dating Michael Snoddy back in 2016

Mad hatters: Former Limp Bizkit rapper Fred Durst (L) turned up sporting a Suicidal Tendencies cap while comedian Eric Andre (R) wore a bizarre yellow cap with his colorful attire

Attendee: Also enjoying the film festivities was legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk clad in a black long-sleeved top

The 20-year-old heiress brought back the Hot Topic, all-black punk style she used to regularly rock while dating Michael Snoddy back in 2016.

Former Limp Bizkit rapper Fred Durst turned up sporting a Suicidal Tendencies cap while comedian Eric Andre wore a bizarre yellow cap with his colorful attire.

Also enjoying the film festivities was legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk clad in a black long-sleeved top.
Lupita Nyong'o distracted talk show host Stephen Colbert with her colored contact lenses during an appearance on Monday on The Late Show on CBS.

The 36-year-old actress sported yellow contacts that eerily contrasted with her dark pupils as she promoted her new horror film Us, describing the audience response to initial screenings as 'electrifying'.

'I'm going for the darker things in life right now,' Lupita wearing a red jumpsuit and Djula diamond earrings told Stephen, 54.

Freaky eyes: Lupita Nyong'o wore yellow contact lenses Monday while appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

'It's a little scary,' Stephen admitted.

The Oscar-winning actress portrays Adelaide Wilson in the psychological horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele, 40.

She also plays her evil doppelganger Red in the movie scheduled for release Friday.

Lupita also wore striking red contact lenses last week while attending the London premiere of Us.

New movie: The 36-year-old actress was promoting her new movie Us due out Friday and accessorized with colored lenses and Djula diamond earrings

Stephen asked if she got scared while making a scary movie.

'Well, no. Not when the scary thing is you, which was the case in this movie,' Lupita said.

The stars of the movie never saw their scene partners and Lupita said it wasn't scary but 'technically challenging' to film.

Good times: Stephen, 54, laughed while interviewing the Oscar-winning actress

Us had its world premiere earlier this month at South by Southwest in Texas.

'They were pretty terrified. And it was electrifying. They were a very responsive audience and everyone was screaming and everything,' Lupita said.

The actress said she took a bathroom break during the premiere and another lady came out of a stall to wash her hands.

'I emerged from my stall and she nearly had a heart attack. She was just, like, ''Oh!'',' Lupita said as the audience erupted in laughter.

Bathroom scare: Lupita told a story about scaring a lady in the bathroom during the Us premiere at South by Southwest earlier this month

'And I knew it wasn't because she was star struck. She was mortified to see me there,' Lupita said.

The Black Panther star said she felt bad and calmed the woman down.

'And she said, can I have a selfie?,' Lupita said.

Warm welcome: The Black Panther star received a warm welcome from the New York audience

She also opened up about a 10-day silent retreat she did last year in Texas.

Lupita said she meditated for 10 hours a day for 10 days with no access to her cell phone, books or TV.

'Yeah, it was amazing. The talking wasn't the hard thing to stop doing, it was just getting my mind to be quiet enough to let me meditate, and that's what the technique is about. It's about getting to a place where you can kind of be a pedestrian watching the traffic go by of your thoughts, and that was tough,' Lupita said.

Meditation practice: Lupita also talked about a 10-day silent meditation retreat she did last year

The actress admitted that she has 'cyclical thoughts' and sometimes can be 'really mean' to herself.

'I don't know whether you have that, but sometimes I have these, like, just really nasty thoughts about myself and they go on and on and on. So you just have to befriend yourself,' she said.

Us also stars Winston Duke, 32, who also starred with Lupita in Black Panther.
Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth racked up more than four million Instagram likes this week after sharing a selfie with a quokka.

And on Tuesday, Australian model Jessica Gomes took a leaf out of Chris' book by also cuddling up to the adorable marsupial in Western Australia's Rottnest Island.

'Probs wont go as viral as yours @chrishemsworth but boy those quokkas will get ya!' the 34-year-old joked on Instagram.

Scroll down for video

'Those quokkas will get ya!' Model Jessica Gomes (above) poses with adorable marsupial on Rottnest Island as she jokes her selfie 'won't go as viral' as Chris Hemsworth's holiday photo

The quokka is a small species of wallaby and is found on some smaller islands off the coast of Western Australia, particularly Rottnest Island and Bald Island.

The David Jones ambassador also shared an Instagram Story of her receiving a little 'goodnight kiss' from the cute animal.

On Friday, Chris, 34, and Spanish actress wife Elsa Pataky, 42, snapped a handful of selfies with the native quokka.

Cute! The David Jones ambassador also shared an Instagram Story of her receiving a little 'goodnight kiss' from the adorable animal

Enjoying their getaway on Rottnest Island, Chris also shared footage feeding the marsupial a green stem directly from his mouth.

The adorable creature then tears it away from his mouth.

'Not going to share that?,' the actor says to the quokka, who is seen shoveling the twig into its mouth.

Furry friend! Australian actor Chris Hemsworth got up and personal with a native quokka on Rottnest Island on Friday

'I now go by the name Quokkachris': Chris fed a quokka from his mouth and posed adorably alongside it with wife Elsa Pataky

Chris, crouching down and filming with a GoPro, then got closer to the animal and smiled before planting a big kiss on the small animal.

In another series of photos, Chris poses with wife Elsa.

'Spent three weeks crawling around the dirt, studying the quokka's movements, mimicking their language and eventually gained their trust and was accepted as one of them,' the actor jokingly wrote on Instagram.

'Not going to share that?' The down-to-earth actor got up close and personal with the quokka, filming himself feeding the animal a twig out from his mouth

'I now go by the name Quokkachris.'

Chris now calls Byron Bay his full-time home, with the Australian actor choosing the relaxed beach-side city over a Hollywood in 2014.

Elsa, who previously lived in Los Angeles with her husband, recently said she enjoys the more laid-back lifestyle of Australia.

'We did the move three years ago and I'm so happy with it,' she revealed to Women's Health magazine in April 2017.

'In Byron we just feel like locals. People really respect us... and it's what I always dreamed of giving to my kids.'
Sukumaran opened fire in self-defence which resulted in the death of one of the smugglers.

New Delhi: In a significant judgment, the Supreme Court has expanded the scope of the right to self-defence by holding that it applies not only to the defence of ones own body against any offence but also to defence of the body of any other person.

The right embraces the protection of property, whether ones own or another persons, against offences like theft, robbery, mischief and criminal trespass, the court said.

A bench of Justices A.M. Sapre and R. Subash Reddy gave this ruling recently while acquitting a forest officer in Tamil Nadu who was awarded five years imprisonment for shooting down a sandalwood smuggler in the Dharm-apuri forest area in 1988.

The bench said a mere reasonable apprehension is enough to put the right of self-defence into operation. In other words, it is not necessary that there should be an actual commission of the offence in order to give rise to the right of private defence.

A person who faces imminent and reasonable danger of losing his life or limb may in exercise of self-defence inflict any harm even extending to death on his assailant either when the assault is attempted or directly threatened, it said.

It is enough if the accused apprehends that such an offence is contemplated and it is likely to be committed if the right of private defence is not exercised, the court ruled.

In private defence, the force used by the accuse ought not to be wholly disproportionate or much greater than necessary for protection of the person or property, said the court.

In the instant case appellant Sukumaran while travelling in his jeep with his driver saw a gang of four persons attempting to smuggle sandalwood from the forest. When he confronted them, they threw stones and attacked him and his driver. Sukumaran opened fire in self-defence which resulted in the death of one of the smugglers.

The trial court awarded life sentence to Sukumaran but acquitted his driver. On appeal, the Madras high court reduced the sentence to five years imprisonment. The present appeal is directed against this judgment.

Allowing the appeal and acquitting him, Supreme Court bench said, The appellant was entitled to exercise his right of private defence against the deceased.

The appellant was entitled to chase the deceased party and apprehend them for being prosecuted for commission of offence punishable under the forest laws. Indeed, that was his duty, the Supreme Court said,

In fact, the appellant while firing the gunshot did not target any particular person out of the four as such but fired to resist their aggression towards him and his driver, the court said.
Lala Kent revealed on social media Monday that she was an alcoholic in a moving video.

Just hours later, the 29-year-old reality star was shown having a complete raging meltdown on the latest episode of Vanderpump Rules.

Lala during the episode titled Trouble In Lala-Land admitted she was 'road-raging through life' when she angrily called Billie Lee a 'snake' at the weekly brunch she hosts at SUR.

Open wound: Lala Kent was shown having a complete raging meltdown on Monday's episode of Vanderpump Rules

She then completely lost it when she heard James Kennedy's girlfriend Raquel Leviss accuse Lala of 'dad blaming'  using the death of her father, Kent Burningham, as an excuse for her bad behavior.

As James looked on nervously, Lala turned on Raquel, accusing her of having a 'screw loose' and not empowering other women, snapping as Raquel tried to answer: 'Be quiet  I'm speaking!'

'I don't empower you because I think you're pathetic,' she screamed at Raquel as their friends in SUR looked on.

'How f***ing dare you say that I am using my dad as an excuse  shut the f*** up. Don't ever  do not ever f***ing bring up my dad.'

Holding hands: James Kennedy and Raquel Leviss held hands as they arrived at SUR for his brunch gig

Finger point: Lala lost it after hearing Raquel accuse her of 'dad blaming'  using the death of her father, Kent Burningham, as an excuse for her bad behavior

Lala finally told her: 'Guess what? I thought you were a f***ing dummy before my dad died you f***ing Bambi-eyed b***h.'

Billie Lee finally pulled them apart, with Raquel complaining to others: 'I get that she's going through so much, and I can't even comprehend, but that doesn't give her an excuse to treat people like this.'

Lala was comforted by Brittany Cartwright, 29, who sympathized when Lala complained about her dad's death being spoken about.

Held back: Brittany Cartwright intervened as Lala also went after brunch host Billie Lee

But Lala lost her when she insisted that she was 'above' James and Raquel.

'I don't think I'm better than people. But I know when I'm above someone. And I'm above you,' she said of Raquel. 'I'm better than them.'

James  who had been elated to DJ for the first time at SUR since getting fired  finally came over to calmly confront Lala.

Stepping in: James stepped in to defend Raquel after Lala went off on her

When he said he did not appreciate her talking to Raquel that way, Lala snapped: 'She should stop being a c***.'

After sayin her gut told her James was a 'bad f***ing guy,' she grew further incensed that he did not react.

'You're still sitting there loving the fact that you got to f*** Lala,' she said of her ex.

High road: The British DJ kept calm while dealing with Lala

'Good for you baby  the only successful thing you'll ever have in your life.'

As he tried to reply, she snapped: 'Get the f*** out of here James before I f***ing peel your face from your skull.'

She then further alienated Brittany when she told her: 'I'm going through so much more than anybody in this room could ever imagine.'

Too far: Brittany didn't agree with Lala saying she was 'above' James and Raquel

Billie Lee finally threw out Lala, who snarkily told her: 'Not only are you boring to speak to you're boring to look at.'

'Really? Your dress is 1995,' Billie Lee replied, with Lala insisting to camera later that it was 'J-Lo from 2000 at the Grammys and it's one of the most iconic looks ever.'

While Lala claimed her meltdown was sparked by the 'dad blaming' comment, the seeds of her discontent were shown earlier when she had complained of her growing hatred for James and Raquel.

Iconic look: Lala was channeling Jennifer Lopez at the 2000 Grammy Awards

'I feel like it's a luxury to be friends with me,' she told Stassi Schroeder, 30, and Ariana Madix, 33, as they supported her at a recording session.

'You don't just get that opportunity and then f*** it up and get it again. No. That's not how life works.

'It's taking everything in me not to f****ing put my paws on this clown. I wanna drag his skinny British a** so bad. He and his girlfriend are both f***ing twots.'

Showing support: Stassi Schroeder and Ariana Madix supported Lala at a recording session

James was worried that the fight at SUR would be misconstrued by owner Lisa Vanderpump, 58, and so he went to tell her about it and report on how well behaved he was.

She was suspicious because of his previous behavior, with him admitting he was suffering as the 'boy who cried wolf.'

But he tried to prove his changed ways by telling her he would stay away from the official opening party at TomTom to avoid 'drama.'

Not happy: Lala also badmouthed James and Raquel at the recording studio

'As gutted as I am, I won't come tonight,' he told Lisa.

That will prove welcome news to Tom Sandoval, 35, who had begrudgingly invited James to the opening despite knowing it would spark trouble, especially with business partner Tom Schwartz's wife Katie.

'Is the world gonna end? No,' Tom said.

Brunch date: Tom Sandoval and Ariana watched the drama go down during brunch

'Should I probably keep the motorcycle running just in case Katie tries to murder me? Yes, maybe,' he said of a motorbike and sidecar the Toms bought to ride up to the opening.

Earlier, James had insisted Katie was trying to 'sieve me out of this entire group,' saying: 'I haven't met the devil yet but she's coming f***ing close.'

Katie, Stassi, and Kristen Doute, meanwhile, went for a girls' night at Scheanas new apartment  with her 'bestie' Adam there as a 'hot bartender.'

The hostess: Scheana invited the girls to her new place in Marina del Rey

Stassi was baffled over her friend's 'facade that they're not in a relationship' despite Adam being a great choice compared to her usual bad matches.

'This is legit the most Scheana thing Scheanas ever Scheanaed,' Stassi said.

She later told Lisa how they were 'friends with benefits,' saying: 'He doesn't want a relationship; I don't want a relationship.'

Candid conversation: Katie Maloney-Schwartz and Kristen Doute had a candid conversation after arguing about Kristen's boyfriend

'Then you shouldn't be sleeping with him,' Lisa, 58, insisted. 'You're gonna get hurt. I know you  if you're sleeping with somebody your heart's involved.'

However, Scheana joked later: 'Everyone needs to let me do me  and Adam do me. That's it.'

The get-together at Scheana's was also the first time the girls got together with Kristen after their fight over her boyfriend Brian Carter.

No relationship: Scheana was in a sexual relationship with Adam but not boyfriend and girlfriend

Good one: The reality star joked ''Everyone needs to let me do me  and Adam do me. That's it'

After Kristen, 35, told Katie she 's*** on the person I love,' Katie finally apologized, insisting her outbursts came from 'genuine good intentions.'

'All we want for Kristen is for her to be in a happy, loving relationship where she feels appreciated and that there's mutual respect,' Katie said later. 'I love her and I just want her to be happy and everything she deserves.'

Kristen also went to see Lisa Vanderpump about TomTom's official opening after being the only one not invited to the DailyMailTV party at the bar.

Apology offered: Katie apologized after Kristen expressed her disappointment

Lisa begrudgingly allowed her to attend because she was being invited by both Toms, which Kristen wrongly took as the mogul warming to her.

Lisa, however, was more amazed at Kristen's cleavage-revealing dress.

She joked later: 'Maybe she wants to keep me abreast of the situation. Clearly, she wants to get something off her chest.'

Plunging neckline: Kristen wore a revealing dress for a meeting with Lisa Vanderpump

Brittany Cartwright was told she may have an ulcer  and was warned by her doctor to avoid all alcohol, saying 'even a little bit could tip you over.'

'I'm going to go to Mexico on Wednesday so I don't know,' Brittany admitted to the doctor, with boyfriend Jax Taylor warning: 'It's not worth it.'

Vanderpump Rules returns on Bravo next Monday.
She has traded her Chelsea haunts for sunny Los Angeles.

And Lottie Moss showed off her legs in daisy dukes on her walk before she changed into a boiler suit for her dinner date at vegan eatery Gracias Madre, in Los Angeles on Monday.

Feeling the warming rays of sunshine, Kate's half-sister, 21, paraded her best assets in a pair of denim shorts which were fraying at the hem.

Moss be amazing: Lottie Moss showed off her legs in denim shorts before she slipped into revealing boiler suit for dinner in Los Angeles on Monday

Although she had rested dark tinted sunglasses among her golden-haired mane which she bundled in a bun, the model sheltered her eyes with her hand instead.

It was a successful shopping trip as Lottie swung a Boohoo bag over her right shoulder which was brimming with new clothes.

Later, Kate's younger half-sibling slipped into a trendy boiler suit for dinner with two casually-clad male companions.

Sunny spot: Although she had rested dark tinted sunglasses among her golden-haired mane which she bundled in a bun, the model sheltered her eyes with her hand instead

She's so glam: Later, Kate's younger half-sibling slipped into a trendy boiler suit for dinner

The blonde bombshell put on a busty appearance as she sexily wore her one-piece unbuttoned to offer a look at her ample cleavage.

Lottie's outing comes after she said she 'really related' to a meme which pointed out all the types of inappropriate suitors women deal with.

The caption on the meme read that parents said: 'I'm sure you'll find someone! You're a great catch. You're prob just too picky.' (sic)

Cheeky! The blonde bombshell put on a busty appearance as she sexily wore her one-piece unbuttoned to offer a look at her ample cleavage

Pins-credible: Feeling the warming rays of sunshine, Kate's half-sister paraded her best assets in a pair of denim shorts which were fraying at the hem

Good company: The blonde bombshell joined forces with two casually-clad male companions for her evening on the tiles

It was accompanied with a picture of Disney's Snow White surrounded by lots of woodland animals who were tabbed up as unsuitable men for various reasons.

Some of the men were described as: 'married'; 'not looking for anything serious right now'; 'no job'; 'my ex boyfriend' as well as 'lives with his parents'.

Previously, Lottie dated Made In Chelsea's Alex Mytton for nine months on/off before they finally called time on their romance.

Glam up: Lottie traded her trainers for a pair of white boots when she sauntered out into the night sky with her pals

Single lady! Lottie's outing comes after she said she 'really related' to a meme which pointed out all the types of inappropriate suitors women deal with

Oops: The Instagram sensation accidentally flashed a glimpse at her black bra beneath her revealing white boiler suit

The golden-haired model is the half-sister of supermodel Kate, 45, but she doesn't feel pressured by her legacy.

She previously said: 'My sister and I are two different people and she is on her path and I am on my own.'

Kate has worked in the modelling industry for almost four decades and has graced the cover of British Vogue over 30 times.

'Never have I related to something more': Kate's younger half-sister said she 'really related' to a meme which pointed out all the types of inappropriate suitors women deal with
She first made a name for herself as Ygritte in HBO's hit show Game Of Thrones.

But Rose Leslie has since gone on to enjoy a lead role in legal drama The Good Fight, and she was spotted on set for the third season following its premiere last week.

The actress, 32, was busy filming scenes with her new co-star Michael Sheen, 50, in New York City on Monday afternoon.

Preparing lines: Rose Leslie and Michael Sheen got to work on set of The Good Fight's third season in New York City on Monday afternoon

The pair were on hand to film some tense scenes together, where they walked along the busy streets chatting away to one another.

Rose put on a chic display as she stepped out in a black longline coat, which she wore over flared trousers and grey sheepskin boots.

Now into her third season on the show, Rose stars as Maia Rindell, the lawyer goddaughter of Christine Baranski's character.

During a break from shooting, the duo could be seen preparing their lines together as Rose enjoyed a sweet treat in between takes.

Stylish: Rose put on a chic display as she stepped out in a black longline coat, which she wore over flared trousers and grey UGG boots

Getting into character: The pair were on hand to film some tense scenes together, where they walked along the busy streets chatting away to one another

Time for a break: During a break from shooting, the duo could be seen preparing their lines together as Rose enjoyed a sweet treat in between takes

Michael looked sharp in a three-piece pinstripe suit, which he complemented with a yellow print tie and sturdy black boots.

The actor is a recent addition to the show, and takes on the role of charming yet Machiavellian lawyer Roland Blum.

In another scene, the Good Omens star was suited and booted in a grey pinstripe suit which he offset with a yellow waistcoat and a red tie.

Walking along a busy pedestrian crossing during the scene, the actor adopted a stoic expression as he transformed into his character.

New guy in town: Michael is a recent addition to the show, and takes on the role of charming yet Machiavellian lawyer Roland Blum

Dapper: In another scene, the Good Omens star was suited and booted in a grey pinstripe suit which he offset with a yellow waistcoat and a red tie

The Good Fight is the sequel to hit drama The Good Wife, and focuses on Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and Maia one year after the original series ended.

After they are the subject of an enormous financial scam, the pair are forced out of their company and decide to join another firm in order to repair their tarnished reputation.

Season three is set to examine the looming spectre of a possible future with a re-elected Trump, and will see Diane and her colleagues navigate a resistance movement gone crazy.
He picked up a a host of Best Actor awards his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

And Rami Malek proved just how much he gets into character as he was spotted putting on a very animated display during filming of Mr Robot in New York on Monday.

The actor, 37, pulled off an all black ensemble typical of his character Elliot Alderson as he was chased through Central Park.

Running around: Rami Malek proved just how much he gets into character as he was spotted putting on a very animated display during filming of Mr Robot in New York on Monday

In a bid to go undercover he paired a black hoody with skinny jeans and trainers.

He later exited 36th Street Station with a large rucksack on his shoulders and co-star Christian Slater aka Mr Robot by his side.

As filming for the US thriller continued Rami showed off his fitness skills while being chased by cops through the park.

Intense: The actor, 37, pulled off an all black ensemble typical of his character Elliot Alderson as he was chased by cops through Central Park

Sprinting: In a bid to go undercover he paired a black hoody with skinny jeans and trainers

Alter-ego: Rami plays a cybersecurity engineer and hacker who has social anxiety disorder and clinical depression in the USA Network series

Running away: As filming for the US thriller continued Rami showed off his fitness skills while being chased by cops through the Manhattan park

Pushing through: Rami has played the troubled character since the show began in 2015

The USA Network announced in late August that it had renewed Mr Robot for a fourth and final season.

Production got under way this winter, with the final season slated to debut sometime in 2019, but no premiere date has been yet.

At the 91st Academy Awards Rami beat out Christian Bale for Vice, Viggo Mortensen for Green Book, Bradley Cooper for A Star Is Born and Willem Dafoe for At Eternity's Gate.

Accolade: The show has won over critics with a host of awards under it's belt including Rami winning Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series at the Screen Actors Guild Award

In character: He later exited 36th Street Station with a large rucksack on his shoulders and co-star Christian Slater by his side

Eponymous: In the show Christian, 49, plays the role of Mr Robot an insurrectionary anarchist who recruits Elliot into an underground hacker group called fsociety

Final: The USA Network announced in late August that it had renewed Mr. Robot for a fourth and final season

New movie: Malek has also been set to voice the character Chee-Chee in the live-action/CGI hybrid The Voyage of Dr. Dolittle, set for release in 2020

Rami's film had a long road to the screen - at one point, it was being written by The Crown creator Peter Morgan, with Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen playing Freddie.

Sacha dished on The Howard Stern Show in 2016 that he left the project because he wanted a raunchier movie more in line with Freddie's 'extreme lifestyle,' whereas the surviving members of Queen were in favor of a milder portrayal.

After Malek wraps on the final season of Mr Robot he may be heading back to the big screen, in a big way, joining the James Bond franchise.

The actor has reportedly entered final negotiations to play the villain in the currently-untitled 25th James Bond movie, known as Bond 25.

There had been scheduling conflicts, but Collider reported at the end of February that his agents managed to come up with a shooting schedule that could accommodate Bond 25 and Mr Robot.
They tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in northern California earlier this month.

And newlywed Lea Michele gave a first glimpse at her dazzling wedding ring as she enjoyed 'that wife life' on a tropical honeymoon with husband Zandy Reich on Monday.

The Glee star, 32, flashed her huge engagement diamond and sparkling band as she posted a sweet video to her 5.4 million followers via Instagram stories.

Mrs Reich: Lea Michele gave a first glimpse at her dazzling wedding ring as she enjoyed 'that wife life' on a tropical honeymoon with husband Zandy Reich on Monday

Wriggling her hand around so her rings sparkled in the sun, the actress happily wrote over the top of the beach clip: 'That wife life.'

The former Broadway performer didn't give away the location of the newlyweds' mystery honeymoon, but posted snapshots of a picture-perfect beach and turquoise sea while sipping on a coconut.

Lea's sparkling wedding band was adorned with round diamonds which wrapped all the way around, and fitted perfectly alongside her 4-carat radiant-cut engagement ring, designed by her husband.

The actress and the businessman, 36, tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in northern California on March 9.

Happy couple: The Glee star, 32, and the businessman, 36, tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in northern California on March 9 (pictured together in January)

Wedding bling: The actress flashed her huge engagement diamond and sparkling band as she posted a sweet video to her 5.4 million followers via Instagram stories

Confirming the news to People, Lea and Zandy said in a statement: 'We are so excited to be married and grateful to be surrounded by our friends and family.

'And most of all, were so happy to spend the rest of our lives together.'

The happy couple were joined by Glee creator Ryan Murphy, 53, actor Darren Criss, 32, and Lea's Scream Queens castmate Emma Roberts, 28.

The pair have been friends for some time, but officially got together around two years, and announced their engagement in April 2018.

When asked about the engagement last April, Lea said she initially thought her now-husband was joking.

'I think the first thing I said to him was, "Stop joking around!" So I was super surprised,' she told People.

Paradise: The former Broadway performer didn't give away the location of the newlyweds' mystery honeymoon, but posted snapshots of a picture-perfect beach

Friends, then lovers: The pair have been friends for some time, but officially got together around two years, and announced their engagement in April 2018 (pictured in March 2018)

'Everyone said, "Try to be present because itll happen so quickly". Which I didn't listen to at all and blacked out and I barely remember.'

Zandy is president of the women's fashion brand AYR (All Year Round) and was previously the head of business development for clothing company Theory.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of business in 2012.

Lea previously dated iZombie star Robert Buckley, 37, for several months before splitting in the summer of 2016.

Before that, she was in a relationship with dancer and personal trainer Matthew Paetz, 33, for two years until 2016.

Lea's most high-profile romance was with her Glee co-star Cory Monteith, who she dated from 2011 for two years until he tragically died in July 2013 at the age of just 31.
She recently returned home to the UK after completing her impressive climb of Mount Kilimanjaro for Red Nose Day.

And Dani Dyer was every inch the globetrotter as she shared sizzling Instagram snaps from her trip to Thailand with fashion retailer In The Style on Tuesday.

During her time at Koh Samui's Ritz-Carlton hotel, the Love Island star, 22, appeared smitten as she gazed adoringly at her boyfriend Jack Fincham in a sweet image.

Wow-factor! Dani Dyer was every inch the globetrotter as she shared sizzling Instagram snaps from her trip to Thailand with fashion retailer In The Style on Tuesday

The TV personality looked sensational as she posed up a storm in a floral two-piece fresh from the clothing brand.

Ensuring all eyes were her, she showed off her petite figure in the tie-front bikini top, embellished with ruffled detailing throughout.

Reality star Dani maintained her striking appearance with her choice of accessories as she sported a dainty headpiece, a selection of silver jewellery and toted a personalised straw bag, emblazoned with her initials.

With her tresses styled into beachy waves, the daughter of actor Danny Dyer complemented her features with neutral-toned make-up.

Loved-up: During her time at Koh Samui's Ritz-Carlton hotel, the Love Island star, 22, appeared smitten as she gazed adoringly at her boyfriend Jack Fincham in a sweet image

Envy-inducing: The TV personality looked sensational as she posed up a storm in a floral two-piece fresh from the clothing brand

Smitten: The reality star was in good company as she joined boyfriend Jack, 27, on the sun-soaked trip

'Living the dream': The former salesman tapped into full relaxation mode as he sipped on a coconut during his time in an infinity pool

Dani was in good company as she joined boyfriend Jack, 27, on the sun-soaked trip.

The couple appeared as loved-up as ever as they blew kisses at each other in a heart-warming post, with the bombshell captioning the image: 'You drive me crazy but I wouldnt have it any other way.'

In another image, Jack tapped into full relaxation mode as he sipped on a coconut during his time in an infinity pool, onlooking the stunning scenery of the Southeast Asian country.

Shortly before their trip, Jack shared a loving post about his 'soulmate' Dani, insisting they're more in love than ever.

Awww: The couple continued their affectionate display as they shared kisses during their holiday

Sizzling: The Essex beauty later paraded her figure in an orange animal print two-piece

No rest for the wicked: Jack displayed his athletic abilities as he enjoyed a boxing session

Sticking together: The blonde beauty recently vowed to walk away from reality TV last month as speculation intensified regarding the state of her relationship with her beau

Alongside a snap of the pair pulling funny faces, the former pen salesman gushed: 'I just want to say that I absolutely love you to death.'

He went on to reflect on their relationship since leaving the villa: 'Meeting you and falling in love with you was such a beautiful thing and I know we have our ups and downs but the only thing that matters is we have each other.

'Im so happy that I found my soul mate and I want you to know how proud I am of you for everything you have achieved you deserve it you beautiful soul. I am so proud to call you my girlfriend xxx also I picked this picture because it sums us up', he added.

Lovebirds: Shortly before their trip, Jack shared a loving post about his 'soulmate' Dani, insisting they're more in love than ever

It comes after Dani vowed to walk away from reality TV last month as speculation intensified regarding the state of her relationship with Jack.

The 2018 Love Island winner had arranged for her belongings to be moved out of her East London home after her boyfriend admitted to abusing cocaine on a night out.

But despite standing by her partner, the blonde beauty revealed the pair will never sign up to another show.

Responding to a concerned fan, she tweeted: 'We won't ever be doing another show again. Too many opinions and judgements. Keeping everything to ourselves from now on.'
Mike Thalassitis' former flame Olivia Attwood has been repeatedly criticised for her tribute to the late Love Island star following his death on Saturday.

The 27-year-old former motocross girl took to Instagram on Tuesday to share a screenshot of a message reading: 'This is disgusting, he was an amazing person and you fell for him but this is all you could say about it. You b**h'.

Olivia revealed she had received a number of similar messages, as she hit back at the 'clown' troll and insisted this time is for 'Mike's family and the people he was genuinely close to', rather than those who knew him fleetingly.

Cruel: Mike Thalassitis' former flame Olivia Attwood has been repeatedly criticised for her tribute to the late Love Island star following his death on Saturday

Social media was flooded with tributes to Mike after he was found dead in a woodland by his north London home on Saturday morning.

The star passed away aged 26, with Metropolitan Police confirming that he was found hanged near his Edmonton home.

After a late entrance to Love Island's second season in 2017, he was at the heart of the drama when he coupled with Olivia despite her pairing with Chris Hughes, who she eventually returned to, however they remained on fond terms.

Leading a bevy of their co-stars, Olivia swiftly shared a tribute to the star with a broken heart Emoji on Twitter and an heartfelt post on Instagram.

Shocker: The 27-year-old former motocross girl took to Instagram on Tuesday to share a screenshot of a message reading: 'This is disgusting, he was an amazing person and you fell for him but this is all you could say about it. You b**h'

Lashing out: Olivia revealed she had received a number of similar messages, as she hit back at the 'clown' troll and insisted this time is for 'Mike's family and the people he was genuinely close to', rather than those who knew him fleetingly

Layered over an image of the duo, she penned: 'Literally dont know what to say. Another one gone too young. Thinking of Mikes family and friends at this horrendous time. You will be missed terribly.'

Responding to the snap was the troll's cruel comment, to which Olivia wrote: 'I wasn't going to acknowledge this but I've had a few messages like this so here we are. Who is anyone to say what I need to post on my social media!?...

'I decide what's appropriate, not you!! This time is about Mike's family and the people he was genuinely close to and that's it. World's gone mad...

Original post: Leading a bevy of their co-stars, Olivia swiftly shared a tribute to the star with a broken heart Emoji on Twitter and an heartfelt post on Instagram

Way back when: After a late entrance to Love Island's second season in 2017, he was at the heart of the drama when he coupled with Olivia despite her pairing with Chris Hughes, who she eventually returned to, however they remained on fond terms

Pain: The star passed away aged 26, with Metropolitan Police confirming that he was found hanged near his Edmonton home

'Maybe this is why Instagram is full of self-indulgent bulls**t and people are confused when you don't comply to these standards. Absolute clown.'

Mike's most recent ex-girlfriend Megan McKenna looked solemn as she was seen for the first time since breaking her silence on the reality star's tragic death.

The former TOWIE star, 26, was pictured leaving her car on Monday after admitting she is 'in complete shock' over his death. Megan released a statement on Twitter on Monday afternoon to offer condolences to his family, two days after Mike's death.

She wrote: 'Sorry I haven't been on social media but I'm in complete shock and trying to come to terms with this. I can't believe I'm even writing this post. My thoughts and prayers are with Mike's family. Rest in peace Mike x'.

Heartache: 'Maybe this is why Instagram is full of self-indulgent bulls**t and people are confused when you don't comply to these standards. Absolute clown'

Mike and Megan dated on and off throughout 2018, but ended their relationship for good last August.

Megan previously defended the reality star, insisting that he was not a 'nasty' person and there was no other explanation for their break-up than being at 'different points in their lives.'

Just weeks before his passing this weekend, Megan became emotional when speaking about their relationship, while looking for love on Celebs Go Dating.
They will portray Elton John and his music manager, and former lover, John Reid in Dexter Fletcher's new musical Rocketman.

And co-stars Taron Egerton and Richard Madden, 32, are set to promote the film by taking part in a new edition of Carpool Karaoke in London, which will air on Friday.

Teasing the forthcoming episode of the web series, the actor, 29, appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden on Monday, where he revealed they 'got blind drunk' the night before filming the episode.

Partying the night away: Rocketman's Taron Egerton revealed on Monday he and Richard Madden 'got blind DRUNK' the night before filming Carpool Karaoke (but they made sure they sobered up beforehand)

Explaining what happened, Taron began: 'I havent checked with Richard if this is OK to say, but we went out the night before and got blind drunk.

'Dont worry, I made sure I sobered up before I drove,' he reassured viewers.

Before adding: 'Yea, we went out and had a good time, allowed an appropriate amount of time for me to sober up, and then we filmed Carpool Karaoke.'

Out soon: Taron and Richard are set to promote the true fantasy by taking part in the edition of the web show in London, which will air on Friday

Having fun: Explaining what happened, Taron began, 'I havent checked with Richard if this is OK to say, but we went out the night before and got blind drunk'

Good to go: Taron went on to explain, 'Yea, we went out and had a good time, allowed an appropriate amount of time for me to sober up, and then we filmed carpool karaoke'

Then previewing the hilarious teaser clip, Taron got into the car with Richard in a full Elton John-inspired costume complete with feathered cap, multi-coloured feathered jacket and statement orange-tinted shades.

Struggling to get into the car, Richard carefully guided him in with a reassuring 'I've got you', before he said: 'I think you should maybe change mate.'

To which Taron said: 'Well Richard Ive said this the whole time! I said its not going to work.'

Hoping to appease him, Richard went on: 'We at least gave it a try.'

Striking: In the clip, Taron got into the car with Richard in a full Elton John-inspired costume complete with feathered cap, multi-coloured feathered jacket and orange-tinted shades

Candid: Struggling to get into the car, Richard carefully guided him in the care with a reassuring 'I've got you', before he said: 'I think you should maybe change mate'

Hilarious: To which Taron quipped: 'Why is it you always get to look cool, smooth and winning, and like a handsome leading man and I look like a big multi-coloured chicken? Its ridiculous'

Getting out of the car once more, Taron quipped: 'Why is it you always get to look cool, smooth and winning, and like a handsome leading man, and I look like a big multi-coloured chicken? Its ridiculous.'

Richard added: 'A handsome chicken.'

Back in his normal clothes, Taron and Richard then drove around London while singing classics from Elton's discography, including Bennie And The Jets.

Rocketman, directed by Fletcher, is described as a 'true fantasy' film depicting Elton John's rise to fame in the 1970s.

Singing their hearts out: Back in his normal clothes, Taron and Richard then drove around London while singing classics from Elton's discography, including Bennie And The Jets

Casual chic: The actor donned a Rocketman cap and a fitted navy blue polo top

Musical drama: Rocketman, directed by Fletcher, is described as a 'true fantasy' film depicting Elton John's rise to fame in the 1970s

Sir Elton, 71, is working as a co-producer on the film, alongside his husband David Furnish, 55.

The film shot scenes in London and also stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Steven Mackintosh as his parents.

Director Dexter previously told Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye: 'It's about Elton navigating personal and family relationships.

What's to come: Producer Matthew Vaughn added: 'This film is going to make people's jaws hit the ground, Elton just said "Tell it all. Go as R-rated as you need to"'

'He looks for love in all the wrong places, he abuses himself with drugs and booze  yet he's a genius who has survived for over half a century in showbusiness.'

Producer Matthew Vaughn added: 'This film is going to make people's jaws hit the ground, Elton just said "Tell it all. Go as R-rated as you need to". And we do just that, with his blessing. The flaws and the genius are all there.'

Although the movie, written by Lee Hall, is based on fact, some of Eltons story has been fictionalised, while Welsh-born Egerton does his own singing.

The film is slated for release in the UK on May 24 2019, and in the USA on May 31.
He's known for his quirky sense of style both on and off the red carpet.

And Eddie Redmayne was back at it again, as he wrapped up in a multi-coloured zip-up jumper during an outing in Sloane Square, London, on Monday.

The Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them actor, 37, looked relaxed as he walked through the street's of the capital while listening to music.

Eccentric look: Eddie Redmayne showed off his quirky sense of style as he stepped out in a multi-coloured jumper for a relaxed outing in London on Monday

Eddie complemented his casual ensemble by wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, while he stepped out in white plimsole trainers.

Sporting his glasses, the actor styled his brunette curls into a spiked hairdo, and he finished off the look by carrying a rucksack over one shoulder.

The actor has been enjoying some downtime after the release of his flick Fantastic Beast The Crimes Of Grindelwald, while he recently finished filming The Aeronauts which he stars in alongside Felicity Jones.

Comfy attire: Eddie complemented his casual ensemble by wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, while he stepped out in white plimsole trainers

Eddie and his wife Hannah Bagshawe wed four years ago in December 2014, six months after announcing their engagement and two years after they first began dating.

They share two children; daughter Iris, two, and one-year-old son Luke born in March 2018.

Eddie recently joked that he is 'trying to keep his children alive' when discussing fatherhood in an interview with People magazine.

Happy family: Eddie and his wife Hannah Bagshawe (pictured) wed in December 2014, and the pair share children; daughter Iris, two, and one-year-old son Luke born in March 2018

The Danish Girl star told the publication: 'I have two little children - Iris is now two and a half and Luke is eight months - so honestly, life is about trying to keep the children alive. But they're wonderful.'

Eddie continued: 'Iris is fantastic as a big sister. There are occasional moments when Hannah and I are both out of the room and we get a glimpse of Iris entertaining Luke.

'No one makes him laugh as much as she does. You cant quite believe it. Like, these humans are interacting, so thats been pretty special.'
Line Of Duty's Martin Compston confirmed the sixth installment of the BBC drama as he drove fans wild with huge season five spoilers  and his Scottish accent.

During Tuesday's This Morning, the actor hinted he may not be returning to his lead role Anti-Corruption Unit Detective Sergeant Steve Arnott for the next season.

The Scottish star, 34, said it had been a 'great' seven or eight years in the role as he thanked TV bosses for a 'job of a lifetime'.

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'I don't know if I'm in it': Line Of Duty star Martin Compston CONFIRMED season six as he shocked fans with major spoilers (and his Scottish accent!)

He said: 'I don't know whether I'd be in it. You never know. We've filmed five. We've got six commissioned.'

Phil really grilled the star as he pointed out Martin would know whether his character was killed off or if he would reprise his role for the sixth season.

Determined not to spoil Line Of Duty for fans, Martin remained tight lipped on whether he will appear in season six but he did say it had been 'a job of a lifetime'.

He replied: The audience don't know [if I'll be killed off]. It's a job of a lifetime I've never laughed so much on any set.

Spoiler: During Tuesday's This Morning, the actor hinted he may not be returning to his lead role Anti-Corruption Unit Detective Sergeant Steve Arnott for the next season

What's going on? Phil really grilled the star as he pointed out Martin would know whether his character was killed off or if he would reprise his role for the sixth season

'It's been a great seven or eight years, you just have to say thanks for memories. Any one can go. Some big shocks coming this year.'

Season four saw Balaclava Man, who was snatching and murdering women as well as even attacking Martin's Steve, shot dead by Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar).

Line Of Duty season five opens will a new wave of crime plaguing the community as it's revealed the Balaclava Man was part of a wider organised crime gang.

Best time: Determined not to spoil Line Of Duty for fans, Martin remained tight lipped on whether he will appear in season six but he did say it had been 'a job of a lifetime'

Pictured: Season four saw Balaclava Man, who was snatching and murdering women as well as even attacking Martin's Steve, shot dead by Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar)

Martin divulged the 'rewarding' moment 300 fans gasped simultaneously at the BFI screening as he insisted season five was the best yet.

He confessed: 'We've got so good at keeping secrets from the twists. Great to see it with an audience [at the BFI screening], there was this collective gasp from 300 people. Those moments are really rewarding.

'It's terrifying. You're job as an actor is not messing up these scripts. Series after series, this is the strongest one. This one really is phenomenal.'

Storytelling: Line Of Duty season five opens will a new wave of crime plaguing the community as it's revealed the Balaclava Man was part of a wider organised crime gang

This Morning viewers 'gasped' when Martin dropped the major spoiler that there were 'lots of surprises' including characters being killed off in explosive twists.

All the talk of spoilers ahead of season five returning to screens March 31st, fans couldn't contain their excitement following the confirmation of season six.

'Great to see you on @thismorning. You made me gasp when you said theres lots of surprises in #LineOfDuty5 & hinted anyone can get killed off, even you! Going to be on pins even more now! You must make it to Series 6! Roll on 31st March! #AC12 #DSArnott.' One fan wrote, rallying people on social media.

Big news: This Morning viewers 'gasped' when Martin dropped the major spoiler that there were 'lots of surprises' including characters being killed off in explosive twists

'Now Im even more excited for Line of duty after seeing @martin_compston on @thismorning #AC12.'

'Just watched @martin_compston on #ThisMorning and I am even more excited for Line Of Duty to return!!! Can we time travel to next Sunday please.'

'@thismorning @Line_of_duty OMG Martin Compton just made my day, cannot wait for line of duty #thismorning #lineofduty.'

'We are getting a series 6!!!!!!'

But it wasn't just the spoilers that left fans gobsmacked as viewers admitted they were surprised how well Martin masks his Scottish accent in Line Of Duty.

'WHat? WOW, He is scottish and I wouldn't have known by watching #lineofduty #thismorning.' One fan wrote, leading the troops.

Shock: But it wasn't just the spoilers that left fans gobsmacked as viewers admitted they were surprised how well Martin masks his Scottish accent in Line Of Duty

Others wrote: '@martin_compston so used to watching line of duty, seems so strange hearing his Scottish accent on @thismorning.'

'Well @martin_compston is a delight isn't he! And he's Scottish! Whaaaaat! #thismorning #LineOfDuty.'

'Me too. He is such a good actor. Never see @thismorning so rare occasion and so happy to see the gorgeous @martin_compston . Cant wait for #lineofduty5 #thismorning.'

Martin could keep his native Scottish accent as Lord Bothwell in historical film Mary Queen Of Scots alongside stars Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie.

Of the film, he said: 'You are just charging about the Highlands. It is a story I grew up with. It was brilliant to be a part of it.'


The girl was reported missing on March 13 and her body and severed head were found next day outside the village.

Sagars SP Amit Sanghi said when the girl threatened to inform the police, the men involved in her rape, strangled her to death, chopped off her head and dumped the body. (Representational Image)

Sagar: A 12-year-old Dalit girl was kidnapped, gang-raped and beheaded allegedly by her brothers and uncle in Madhya Pradesh's Sagar last week, reported Hindustan Times.

According to police, four of the accused have been arrested and one is absconding. One of the accused is a minor, officials added.

The girl was reported missing on March 13 and her body and severed head were found the next day in an agricultural field outside the village.

The police initially declared a reward of Rs 10,000, which was increased to Rs 25,000 for information regarding the accused.

Sagars SP Amit Sanghi said when the girl threatened to inform the police, the men involved in her rape, strangled her to death, chopped off her head and dumped the body.

However, the girls aunt knew about the incident but misled the police by accusing a neighbour for the crime.

After questioning, the neighbour turned out to be innocent. The police received a tip-off that the victims elder brother, who is around 20 years old, might be involved in the crime.

Since the elder brother was absconding, they questioned the younger one, who is around 19 years old, and that he confessed to the crime, Sanghi added.

Police added that the elder brother had raped the victim earlier also.

While in the act, the other two brothers, including the minor, came and they both raped her. Meanwhile, the girls uncle, who is in his late forties, also came by. Initially, he scolded everyone and then he too raped her, he said.

According to NDTV, police grew suspicious after her uncle alleged that one Chote Patel, who lives in the same village, was behind the murder. Patel and the girl's family were locked in a land dispute, police added.

"Our two senior officers collected all evidence and recorded the statements of the family members. When everything was pieced together, we found that she was raped and murdered by her brothers and uncle. We arrested the uncle and one of the brothers," said Sanghi, adding that blood-stained clothes and the murder weapon - a sickle - was also found.
Nicki Minaj reportedly hasn't tied the knot with her boyfriend Kenneth Petty despite referring to him as her 'husband' during her radio show last week.

The rapper, 36, told her listeners that her 'husband' often helps her massage lotion into her feet during a recording for her Beats 1 radio show, Queen Radio.

However sources have since told TMZ that although she is 'very much in love with Kenneth', the pair are yet to walk down the aisle and denied reports of a marriage.

No wedding bells yet! Nicki Minaj reportedly hasn't tied the knot with her boyfriend Kenneth Petty despite referring to him as her 'husband' during her radio show last week

The website also suggested that Nicki is 'tired' of people bashing her boyfriend because she doesn't care about Kenneth's past because he treats her nicely.

MailOnline has contacted Nicki's representative's for comment.

Speaking in London, the Chun-Li hitmaker, recently revealed that the music industry insider pampers her every night with a foot massage.

Sweet: The rapper, 36, told her listeners that her 'husband' often helps her massage lotion into her feet during a recording for her Beats 1 radio show, Queen Radio

She said: Every night when I get out of the shower, my husband takes this really good lotion that we just bought, and he massages my feet, and rubs them.

'He rubs each toe individually, and the heel, and the ball of my foot, and he does it all, the rapper added.

Nicki raised eyebrows when she confirmed her romance with Kenneth - who has reportedly been slapped with two violent conduct violations in 2010 for threats and fighting.

According to TMZ, Kenneth spent seven years behind bars for first degree manslaughter, which he pleaded guilty to after being charged with second degree murder.

So in love: However sources have since told TMZ that although she is 'very much in love with Kenneth', the pair are yet to walk down the aisle and denied reports of a marriage

Citing insiders in law enforcement, the website claimed that Kenneth shot one Lamont Robinson three times on a street corner in Queens in April 2002.

Kenneth and some associates allegedly drove to a point across the street from Lamont, whereupon Kenneth emerged from the vehicle and walked over to his victim before firing into his stomach.

However, soon after making their romance official, Nicki defended her new beau as she replied to a fan who was sticking up for her.

'He was 15, she was 16  in a relationship. But go awf, Internet. Yall cant run my life. Yall cant even run yall own life. Thank you boo,' she replied.
Their idyllic Maldives wedding has been occupying column space for a fortnight.

However, Billie Faiers and Greg Shepherd's wedding prep is still playing out on The Mummy Diaries as backdated scenes from Wednesday night's episode will see the newlyweds locked in a raging spat in the lead up to the big day.

As the 29-year-old former TOWIE star plans their invites, Greg, 34, breaks the news that he is planning to go drinking with pals after his suit fitting - leading to a breakdown from 'bridezilla' Billie, who brands her husband-to-be 'selfish'.

Ouch! Billie Faiers and Greg Shepherd's wedding prep is still playing out on The Mummy Diaries as backdated scenes from Wednesday night's episode will see the newlyweds locked in a raging spat in the lead up to the big day

Billie and Greg, who share Nelly, four, and Arthur, two, wed in an idyllic ceremony last Tuesday on the island of Kuramathi after a five-year engagement.

Their nuptials have been marred with controversy after they were accused of ruining a host of fellow holidaymakers' trips due to their guests' raucous behaviour.

However it seems the controversy did not just start in paradise, as scenes in The Mummy Diaries have seen the couple locking horns in a furious fashion.

As they get to work on their invites, Billie said: 'Monday night, I'm gonna go to mum's, I'm gonna get a label maker because my handwriting is so bad', however the plan was thwarted when Greg announced: 'I'm gonna be late Monday'.

Fuming! As the 29-year-old former TOWIE star plans their invites, Greg, 34, breaks the news that he is planning to go drinking with pals after his suit fitting - leading to a breakdown from 'bridezilla' Billie, who brands her husband-to-be 'selfish'

UH OH! She insisted he has 'no priority' with the wedding and said: 'It's not that I'm upset that he's going out for a drink', shortly before screaming: 'Get out!'

Billie pointed out that his suit fitting was at 3pm so he would be home early, however things erupted when he revealed he was going for a drink after the fitting.

She insisted he has 'no priority' with the wedding and said: 'It's not that I'm upset that he's going out for a drink', shortly before screaming: 'Get out!'.

Billie then stormed up the stairs where she was comforted by her mum Sue, however she wept: 'He's so selfish. Honestly I've never met a selfish person like it. Everything I do isn't good enough shove the stupid wedding up his a**e'.

Sam attepted to appease Greg, as she said: 'I think she's emotional because she's stressed... don't argue over it'.

Rage: Billie and Greg, who share Nelly, four, and Arthur, two, wed in an idyllic ceremony last Tuesday on the island of Kuramathi after a five-year engagement

Happy days: The happy newlyweds gave delighted fans an insight into the stunning festivities in their OK! Magazine spread

When the anger clearly subsided, the couple enjoyed their dream wedding which sent fans wild, with devoted followers keen to know the ins and outs.

The happy newlyweds gave delighted fans an insight into the stunning festivities in their OK! Magazine spread.

After streams of reports about the big day, the couple set the record straight as they revealed hilarious details, including the fact that Greg's three best men performed a spoof of their show The Mummy Diaries and Billie's annoyance at Greg's 'epic fail'.

One of the highlights was undoubtedly when Greg's three best men created a Mummy Diaries spoof as Greg revealed: 'They had some help from The Mummy Diaries crew so they created a spoof episode.'
She's fresh off the industry's hottest runways following her appearances at various Fashion Weeks.

And Winnie Harlow proved she can look just as good off the catwalk, as she made a stylish appearance at Advertising Week Europe at Picturehouse Central in London on Tuesday.

The model, 24, looked effortlessly chic as she stepped out in a white-and-blue print suit, which she paired with a white top.

Stunning: Winnie Harlow looked effortlessly chic as she made a stylish entrance at Advertising Week Europe in a white-and-blue print suit, in London on Monday

Winnie styled her ravel tresses in tousled waves that fell elegantly over one shoulder, while she wore mascara and nude lipstick to highlight her pretty features.

The catwalk queen gave her look a touch of glitter as she accessorised with gold hoop earrings and a pendant necklace.

She seemed to be in good spirits as she spoke at a panel that focused on her personal journey to becoming one of the fashion industry's biggest names, as she detailed how she empowers her fans to be their authentic selves.

Glamorous: Winnie styled her ravel tresses in tousled waves that fell elegantly over one shoulder, while she wore mascara and nude lipstick to highlight her pretty features

Chic: The catwalk queen gave her look a touch of glitter as she accessorised with gold hoop earrings and a pendant necklace

Beaming: Winnie seemed to be in good spirits as she spoke at a panel with Claire Valoti and focused on her personal journey to becoming one of the fashion industry's biggest names

Winnie, real name Chantelle Brown-Young, was discovered by America's Next Top Model host Tyra Banks on Instagram and competed on cycle 21 of the show in 2014.

She went on to finish in sixth place on the show and has since walked on fashion's leading runways.

The Canadian star recently defended herself over comments she made about her time as a contestant on the show and perceived criticism of host Tyra, 45.

Helping hand: Winnie also detailed how to empower her fans to be their authentic selves

Making her mark: Winnie, real name Chantelle Brown-Young, was discovered by America's Next Top Model host Tyra Banks on Instagram and competed on cycle 21 of the show in 2014

Rising star: Winnie went on to finish in sixth place on the show and has since walked on fashion's leading runways

After being on the show no one would book me and no agency would sign me because of the reality TV stigma,' she wrote on Instagram.

'It has nothing to do with being ungrateful, and more over nothing to do with "shade" to Tyra.

'She was the first person of higher status to make me feel like I could be a model and not only am I grateful for that, it's something I'll never forget.'

Away from fashion she has also become a public speaker about her experiences with vitiligo and also speaks out against bullying.

Speaking out: Away from fashion she has also become a public speaker about her experiences with vitiligo and also speaks out against bullying

Also making an appearance: Rugby player Jason Robinson was also on hand to take part in the Comeback Kid panel at the event
She credited her 20lbs weight loss to working out three or four times a week.

And Danielle Lloyd stayed true to her word when she headed to Fiji Spa gym in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham on Tuesday.

The former Miss England star, 35, showcased the rewards of her fitness efforts in a loose-fitted vest top and skintight leggings.

Amazing achievement: Danielle Lloyd slipped into sportswear as she headed to the gym on Tuesday after 'massive' 20lbs weight loss ahead of her imminent wedding to Michael O'Neill

Danielle pulled her brunette locks back off her face with a single hairgrip and she applied soft hues of make-up.

Raring to go for her gym session, the TV personality peeled off her black hoodie and toted it when she headed into the studio in her trainers.

Glamorous Danielle has got into shape ahead of her upcoming nuptials to her love Michael O'Neill.

She looks incredible: Recently, the bride-to-be proudly showed off her body transformation on social media after she lost an impressive 20lbs ahead of her wedding

So hot: Raring to go for her gym session, the TV personality peeled off her black hoodie and toted it when she headed into the studio in her trainers

The couple raise their one-year-old son Ronnie as well as Danielle's three sons Archie, George and Harry whom she shares with her ex-husband Jamie O'Hara.

Danielle is going to walk down the aisle for the second time; her first marriage came to an end in 2014, just two years after she and Jamie tied the knot in 2012.

Recently, the bride-to-be proudly showed off her body transformation on social media after she lost an impressive 20lbs ahead of her wedding.

The mother-of-four admitted it had been 'so hard' to 'stay focused' on shedding the pounds as she confessed to having a few cheat meals and glasses of wine.

Exciting: Danielle is going to walk down the aisle for the second time; her first marriage came to an end in 2014, just two years after she and Jamie tied the knot in 2012

However, the model put her 'massive' weight loss down to having four small meals, two snacks and training three to four times a week.

She wrote: 'Progress, a massive 20lb down cant believe it! Its been so hard to stay focused obviously Ive had some cheat meals and a few wines but its about a balance.

'Eating 4 small meals 2 snacks a day and training around 3-4 times a week. I feel healthier and happier roll on.'
Chris Hemsworth and his family flew back to their hometown of Byron Bay in a helicopter on Sunday after enjoying an idyllic trip in Western Australia this month.

And it appears the Australian star and his Spanish actress wife, Elsa Pataky, 42, want to relive the magic of their 'incredible' trip all over their social media channels.

The 35-year-old Thor star, who is an ambassador for Tourism Australia, took to Instagram on Tuesday to share an amazing highlights reel of the trip.

'One of the best trips weve ever been on': Chris Hemsworth, 35, (pictured) took to Instagram on Tuesday to share a highlights reel of his trip to Western Australia with wife Elsa Pataky, 42, and their children earlier this month

'One of the best trips weve ever been on. Very remote part of Western Australia, off the grid, no cell phones, no crowds just sunsets, surfing, fishing and big smiles,' he captioned the video.

In the video, the Hollywood star paid homage to his Down Under roots as he was seen posing with a kangaroo inside their campsite.

Elsa also took to the photo-sharing app on Tuesday to post a slideshow of images from their breathtakingly beautiful trip.

'So much fun. Those quokkas are the cutest!' The Tidelands star (pictured) was seen beaming from ear-to-ear as she snapped an adorable selfie with a quokka

Salty! In another image, Elsa, (pictured) who was clad in a pair of trendy sunglasses an outback straw hat was seen putting what appeared to be a Sea Urchin very close to her mouth

The Tidelands star was seen beaming from ear-to-ear as she snapped an adorable selfie with a quokka.

'So much fun. Those quokkas are the cutest!' she captioned the gallery of snaps.

In another image, Elsa, who was clad in a pair of trendy sunglasses and an outback straw hat was seen holding what appeared to be a Sea Urchin very close to her mouth.

Bit of all white! The yummy mummy (pictured) also offered her 2.8 million followers a glimpse of her phenomenal figure as she stripped down to a white bikini in a sizzling snap

Couple shot! Chris, (left) clad in a pair of colourful boardshorts and a fauna and flora print unbuttoned shirt was seen playfully pulling Zoolander's iconic 'Blue Steel' expression. Meanwhile Elsa (right) looked effortlessly chic in a grey knit jumper layered over a purple bikini

Star-studded trip: Elsewhere in the gallery, the high-profile couple were seen soaking up the serenity alongside their close pal, US actor, Matt Damon (right)

The yummy mummy also offered her 2.8 million followers a glimpse of her phenomenal figure as she stripped down to a white bikini in a sizzling snap.

In another shot, Chris, clad in a pair of colourful boardshorts and a fauna and flora print unbuttoned shirt, appeared to be in high spirits as he was seen playfully pulling Zoolander's iconic 'Blue Steel' expression.

Meanwhile Elsa looked effortlessly chic in a grey knit jumper layered over a purple bikini while she cuddled up to her famous husband.

Elsewhere in the gallery, the high-profile couple were seen soaking up the serenity alongside their close pal, US actor, Matt Damon.

'We feel so lucky to have been able to go on an incredible trip to WA': Elsa (L) and Chris (R) shared photos from their holiday to Western Australia this month

Chris and Elsa certainly lived up to their down-to-earth reputation this month as they roughed it in tents with little water and no wifi or phone signal in the remote destination.

Earlier this month, Elsa took to the photo-sharing app to post a string of photos - including a cute selfie with Chris.

'We feel so lucky to have been able to go on an incredible trip to WA (Western Australia), a beautiful place with amazing people,' she wrote.

'We slept in tents, had little water, and no phone signal or wifi,' she continued.

Nature: The pair left the Tinseltown glamour behind to rough it in tents (pictured) with little water and NO wifi or phone signal

Bikini babe: The 42-year-old Spanish actress (L) showed off her incredible physique in a red polka-dot bikini while posing with a friend

'We were able to connect with our kids, partners and friends in deeper, different ways. Without the stress of routine, without agendas, plans or luxuries. Just beaches, shells, surf and games around the camp fire. I feel very fortunate.'

Photos showed a bikini-clad Elsa frolicking along the beach with her friends.

Other images showed the couple's children eating breakfast by the beach and playing in a rock pool.

Family: Other images showed the couple's children eating breakfast by the beach

Picturesque: Elsa played with one of her children in a rock pool by the sea

Chris and Elsa swapped the bright lights of Hollywood for a more relaxed life in Byron Bay, on Australia's east coast, five years ago.

The Hollywood couple have been married for nine years, and have called Byron Bay home since 2014.

Elsa, who previously lived in Los Angeles with her husband, recently said she enjoys the more laid-back lifestyle of Australia.

'We did the move three years ago and I'm so happy with it,' she revealed to Women's Health magazine in April 2017.

'In Byron we just feel like locals. People really respect us... and it's what I always dreamed of giving to my kids.'

'I feel very fortunate': Photos showed a bikini-clad Elsa (L) frolicking along the beach with her friends

Living the good life! 'Just beaches, shells, surf and games around the camp fire,' wrote Elsa. ' I feel very fortunate'
Margot Robbie plays slain film actress Sharon Tate in the new Quentin Tarantino movie Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which will be released in July.

And on Tuesday the Australian actress was seen in character for her very own stand alone poster.

This comes just after Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio were posed in front of a yellow vintage car with the Hollywood sign in the background for their poster.

New ad: Margot Robbie plays slain film actress Sharon Tate in the new Quentin Tarantino movie Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which will be released in July. And on Tuesday the Australian actress was seen in character for her very own stand alone poster

The Oscar-nominated actress shared the poster on her social media accounts.

'Hollywood. 1969,' she wrote along with an image that shows Robbie's Tate standing in front of the iconic Fox Village Theater (now the Regency Village Theater).

She has on a black top, white mini skirt and white boots with her wedding band from director Roman Polanski on and hoop earrings.

Tate was killed in 1969 at the age of 26 while pregnant.

Her look: She has on a black top, white mini skirt and white boots with her wedding band from director Roman Polanski on and hoop earrings

Earlier: This image was released by Sony in 2018; she has on the same outfit as the poster

Brad and Leo were also in character for their poster.

Leonardo, 44, rocked a brown leather jacket with darker hued trousers, while looking into the horizon with a stern look on his face.

Meanwhile, Brad rocked dark wash denim bottoms with a graphic T-shirt that read 'champion', adding a bright yellow printed open button up.

He sported a clean shaven face and his longer locks combed away from his forehead.

Leo shared the poster to his Instagram page, adding: 'Hollywood. 1969. #OnceUponATimeInHollywood.'

Stars: Quentin Tarantino-directed movie was just released; Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio were posed in front of a yellow vintage car with the Hollywood sign in the background

Movie making: The film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino; Leo and Quentin on the set of the movie on July 28, 2018 in Los Angeles

The Tarantino movie is a mystery crime film set in 1969 in Los Angeles and centered around the Charles Manson murders, as well as a television actor and his stunt double.

Leo plays TV star, Rick Dalton, who plays a character in a Western series, while Pitt takes on the role of his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth as they make their way around an industry they hardly recognise anymore.

Dalton tries to transition to film roles but is struggling to do so. He is also the neighbor of movie star Sharon Tate.

The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood's golden age.

Other stars in the film are: Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Emile Hirsch, Damian Lewis, Bruce Dern, Dakota Fanning, Austin Butler, Lena Dunham and Margaret Qualley.

This is also the last film to feature Luke Perry; he died at age 52 on March 4, 2019 after suffering a massive stroke on February 27.

Quentin wrote and directed the movie.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will hit US theaters on July 26 and is set for a UK release on August 14.
Gabby Allen has warned Alexandra Cane that she will need to 'emigrate' if the rumours she kissed married ex-TOWIE star Dan Osborne are true.

The Love Island star, 26, recalled being branded a 'homewrecker' when she was accused of having a fling with Dan during a holiday together last year, before they both appeared on Celebrity Big Brother.

During an interview with new! magazine, Gabby offered some words of wisdom to Alexandra as she reflected her own experience with being dragged into Dan and his wife Jacqueline Jossa's relationship.

Warning: Gabby Allen has warned Alexandra Cane that she will need to 'emigrate' if the rumours she kissed married ex-TOWIE star Dan Osborne are true

Gabby, who denied having a fling with Dan, told the publication: 'He just needs to stop going out! 'I also know what it feels like to be branded a homewrecker and that is something quite difficult to go through.

The reality star added that she thinks Alexandra will need to run a mile if the rumours are true, adding: 'I hope it's not true for Alexandra's sake. If it is then she needs to emigrate!'

Gabby dumped her ex-boyfriend Marcel Somerville, who she met on the 2017 series of Love Island, after he cheated on her and began dating Rak Su's Myles Stephenson.

Slammed: The Love Island star, 26, recalled being called a 'homewrecker' when she was accused of having a fling with Dan during a holiday together last year, before they both appeared on Celebrity Big Brother

She insisted if she was ever cheated on again she hopes she'd be strong enough to walk away, saying: 'If Myles ever did that to me I'd like to think I'd walk away straight away, like I did last time with Marcel.

'But when kids are involved I can't imagine how that would feel.'

Amid the drama, Jacqueline Jossa jetted off on a well-deserved holiday with a pal on Saturday, without Dan or their two children, Mia and Ella.

Break away: Jacqueline escaped for a much-needed holiday without the kids after she shared a cryptic post amid the Dan and Alexandra kiss claims

Some-ring to tell us? Jacqueline pointed to her wedding ring in cryptic Instagram post on Friday after 'dumping Dan' amid Alexandra kiss claims

In pictures obtained by The Sun, the EastEnders actress was seen arriving at London City Airport with her suitcases to hand and a friend.

The mother-of-two left her children in the care of their father and her husband Dan while she took some much needed respite time.

Dan relished in the extra time with his children as he whisked the girls and his son Teddy, whom he shares with his ex Megan, to Legoland in Windsor.

So sad: She is said to have dumped her husband Dan after reports made claims he shared a kiss with Love Island's Alexandra on a night out

Doting dad: Dan relished in the extra time with his children as he whisked the girls and his son Teddy, whom he shares with his ex Megan, to Legoland in Windsor

It comes after Jacqueline shared a cryptic post as she pointed to her wedding ring on Instagram on Friday following the alleged cheating drama.

In the snap, the EastEnders star strategically placed her hand over her heart and she pointed to her sparkling rock.

Using the Instagram filter, the EastEnders star added the word 'mood' to her snap as well as adding an arrow to draw attention to her wedding ring.

Having had a difficult time of late, the mother-of-two treated herself to a pampering session when she applied a face mask in the comfort of her own company.

Pictured: Jacqueline shared a cryptic post as she pointed to her wedding ring on Instagram on Friday following the alleged kiss drama

Jacqueline's post comes amid claims that she furiously dumped husband Dan after it was reported that he kissed Love Island star Alexandra on a night out.

Sources told The Sun she kicked him out of the home they share with daughters Ella and Mia.

They said: '[Jacqueline] feels embarrassed and very angry that he would put her through the stress and decided enough was enough so kicked him out.

'Dan is truly gutted that Jacqueline is saying it's over. He's really hopeful he will be able to talk her round once she calms down. He's really angry about it all and telling friends he will do whatever he can to save his marriage.'

MailOnline contacted representatives for Jacqueline Jossa and Dan Osborne for comment at the time.

Claims: Dan and Alexandra had both attended the U S E App Launch and were pictured leaving in a car together, with friends, although there is no suggestion that anything further happened

Still OK: This latest development also comes amid reports that Alexandra's real estate boyfriend Adam Theobald has forgiven her for the alleged kissing

Hours later, Dan also took to social media to vehemently deny claims he kissed Alexandra, saying in a video: 'There's a story going round, it's a load of rubbish!

'Yes I was out in Manchester, yes I was having a drink, yes I was having a little dance with friends.

'No I did not kiss absolutely anyone. Even though we both denied it, it's out there, all I can say is it's not true, I did not kiss anyone.'

This latest development also comes amid reports that Alexandra's real estate boyfriend Adam Theobald has forgiven her for the alleged kissing.
Fans were left in the lurch after the Underworld factory's roof collapsed in a shocking episode on Monday.

And Coronation Street's Ben Price may have revealed who is behind the hoodied figure who caused the chaotic cave-in on Tuesday's episode of Good Morning Britain.

When faced with the discussion of who caused the disaster, Ben, 47, - who plays Nick Tilsley - jokingly pointed at his co-stars Sally Dynevor and Andrew Whyment.

Scroll down for full video.

Spoiler: Coronation Street's Ben Price may have revealed who is behind the hoodied figure who caused the chaotic collapse on Tuesday's episode of Good Morning Britain

However their characters are both buried under the rubble.

A coy Ben added: 'I might have done it, I might not have.'

Coronation Street have also lined up Robert Preston, Gary Windass, Seb Franklin and Peter Barlow as potential suspects.

Suspects? When faced with the discussion of who caused the disaster, Ben, 47, - who plays Nick Tilsley - jokingly pointed at his co-stars Sally Dynevor and Andrew Whyment

Tampering: As both characters are buried under the rubble, a coy Ben added: 'I might have done it, I might not have'

The comments came when GMB's showbiz reporter Richard Arnold paid a visit to Weatherfield.

Richard spoke to victim Sally - who plays Sally Metcalfe - about her dramatic fall through the roof.

He said: 'You're quite light on your feet, I had no idea you were carrying so much Christmas weight - you went through the roof like that

On set: The comments came when GMB's showbiz reporter Richard Arnold paid a visit to Weatherfield

Painful: Richard spoke to victim Sally Dynevor - who plays Sally Metcalfe - about her dramatic fall through the roof joking that she was 'light on her feet'

A jovial Sally agreed: 'I did, didn't I? Just one step back and that was it.'

Also at the scene was Dolly-Rose Campbell, who plays Gemma Winter, and is currently the centre of a pregnancy rumour.

'If you do survive there are rumours in the press that you could be holding not one, not two, not three but four babies which are Chesney's, any truth to that rumour?' Richard asked Dolly-Rose.

Pals: The Battersby sisters aka Georgia Taylor (L) and Jane Danson (R) were spotted grabbing lunch in Manchester's Media City

Stepping out: Georgia, 39, cut a casual figure in checked trousers paired with a military coat and trainers

Co-stars: While Jane, 40, showed off her relaxed style in a pair of distressed jeans and leather boots

But Dolly-Rose was staying tight-lipped on the matter, replying 'I don't know anything about that so... I hope not.'

Earlier this week The Sun reported that Connie Hyde was set to quit the soap after her character is injured in the explosion.

While she does survive, a source told the publication that her time on the show has come to a 'natural end' for now.

Elsewhere the Battersby sisters aka Georgia Taylor and Jane Danson were spotted grabbing lunch in Manchester's Media City.
A trailer for Lucy In The Sky was released on Tuesday.

In the clip, Natalie Portman is seen as Lucy Cola, an astronaut whose life spirals out of control when she returns to normal life on earth.

The film is loosely based on astronaut Lisa Nowak's alleged criminal activities around her romantic involvement with fellow astronaut William Oefelein.

Hard time: A trailer for Lucy In The Sky was released on Tuesday. In the clip, Natalie Portman is seen as Lucy Cola

Not all OK: Cola is an astronaut whose life spirals out of control when she returns to normal life on earth

Houston, we have a problem: She has a life changing experience while in space

Lisa made headlines in 2007 for assaulting Air Force Captain Cathleen Shipman.

Nowak became of national interest when it was reported that she wore a diaper to avoid bathroom stops as she drove from Houston to Orlando to find Shipman.

She was at first charged with 'attempted kidnapping with intent to inflict bodily harm, battery and burglary of a vehicle using a weapon.'

The way she was: The film is loosely based on astronaut Lisa Nowak's alleged criminal activities around her romantic involvement with fellow astronaut William Oefelein

Unraveled: Nowak became of national interest when it was reported that she wore a diaper to avoid bathroom stops as she drove from Houston to Orlando to find Shipman. She was at first charged with 'attempted kidnapping with intent to inflict bodily harm, battery and burglary of a vehicle using a weapon'; seen in 2006

Nowak later plead guilty to felony burglary and misdemeanor battery. She was sentenced to a year of probation.

The film is due out later this year.

Natalie is first seen in closeup in her space suit as she hovers above earth. It looks as if she is either sad or on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Not the best idea: Lucy, who is married, begins an affair with a fellow astronaut Goodwin, played by Hamm

His take: Hamm's character tells her, 'You got to see the vast celestial everything and it blew your mind, so now nothing makes sense'

Later it's revealed she had a 'life-changing mission' in space.

The married woman begins an affair with a fellow astronaut Mark Goodwin, played by Jon Hamm from Mad Men.

She heads into a downward spiral as she loses her connection to her her husband, played by Dan Stevens.

And it gets worse when her lover begins another affair with an astronaut trainee.

So alone: Her astronaut does not feel at ease back on earth and struggles to find balance

She tried to make it work: She is seen kissing her husband while in her flight suit

Back at home: She drinks in bars with friends and talks her experience

Trying to stay on top of it all: Lucy keeps in shape with running on the track

She has courage: She is placed in a swimming pool while in her astronaut suit

It has been claimed that astronauts have a difficult time adjusting to life on earth after long space missions.

'I just feel a little off,' Lucy confesses at one point. 'You go up there. You see the whole universe. And everything here looks so small.'

Hamm's character tells her, 'You got to see the vast celestial everything and it blew your mind, so now nothing makes sense.'

There is no way to enjoy real life: When at home she feels off and like she doesn't fit in

Her world is not right: There is a scene where she is with her partner and looks to be lost

Also in the cast are Zazie Beetz as Erin Eccles, Ellen Burstyn as Nana Holbrook, Colman Domingo as Frank Paxton, Jeremiah Birkett as Hank Lynch, Joe Williamson as Mayer Hines and Nick Offerman.

Reese Witherspoon was supposed to star, but dropped out of the film in order to shoot a second season of Big Little Lies.

Then Portman and Hamm stepped in and filming began in June 2018.
She's had a whirlwind year that doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

And Amy Schumer found a few moments of peace and quiet while on a leisurely walk in New Orleans, Louisiana on Monday afternoon.

The 37-year-old star flaunted her baby bump in workout wear before praising her husband on Instagram ahead of the release of her latest Netflix special, Growing.

Beaming: Amy Schumer found a few moments of peace and quiet while on a leisurely walk in New Orleans, Louisiana on Monday afternoon

Amy rocked a tight lavender tank top and grey leggings as she pounded the pavement while chatting on her cell phone.

The pregnant comedian laced up a pair of bright purple Nike's and tied her curly blonde hair back into a messy bun.

She opted to go makeup-free for the sunny jaunt through the city as she boasted about her husband on Instagram ahead of the release of her stand-up special.

Baby on board: The 37-year-old star flaunted her baby bump in workout wear before praising her husband on Instagram ahead of the release of her latest Netflix special, Growing

Looking good! Amy rocked a tight lavender tank top and grey leggings as she pounded the pavement while chatting on her cell phone

After a lengthy caption of thanks to the crew who helped put together and release Growing, Amy made sure to celebrate her chef-husband, Chris Fischer.

'Thank you to my husband, Chris who has kept me going during this pregnancy,' she wrote. 'His willingness and desire to be open with the world about himself and our marriage is courageous and beautiful. He makes me laugh more than anyone and he laughs at me more than anyone.'

The couple were married on Feb. 13, 2018 in a secret ceremony overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Malibu.

'I am more than grateful to have found such an amazing partner and best friend. Im shocked,' she wrote. 'I didnt think this love was out there for me. But it was and it is and I cant wait to spend my life with you and our growing family.'

Star! After a lengthy caption of thanks to the crew who helped put together and release Growing, Amy made sure to celebrate her chef-husband, Chris Fischer

'Thank you to my husband, Chris who has kept me going during this pregnancy,' she wrote on Instagram with a photo of the Netflix special

She admitted during the special that Chris has Asperger's Syndrome and that his brain function's just a 'little different' than others.

'My husband was diagnosed with what used to be called Asperger's. He has autism spectrum disorder. He's on the spectrum. And there were some signs early on,' she said.

'Once he was diagnosed, it dawned on me how funny it was, because all of the characteristics that make it clear that he's on the spectrum are all of the reasons that I fell madly in love with him.

'That's the truth. He says whatever is on his mind. He keeps it so real. He doesn't care about social norms or what you expect him to say or do.'
Police has started tracing the link of the sex video and SIT is looking into all the possible angles.

Gao said that he was shocked to see the video which resemble to his face. (Photo: ANI)

Guwahati: Arunachal Pradesh BJP president Tapir Gao, on Tuesday denied his presence in the viral sex CD and labelled it as "fake".

Tapir Gao, who is going to contest Lok Sabha elections from Arunachal East seat alleged that some of his own party workers has circulated the doctored CD to tarnish his image.

Referring to the sex CD that went viral on social media, Mr Gao said, The party has already filed an FIR against some people who were trying to blackmail me with a morphed explicit CD.

Doling out the copy of the FIR, Gao informed that state government has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to bust the conspiracy hatched to defame him.

He alleged that an aspirant of the party ticket from Arunachal East was involved in the conspiracy.

I have given the names of the people to police who called me asking for Rs 15 crore as well as Arunachal East seat, said Gao asserting that such fake CD would not affect his electoral prospect.

Arunachal Pradesh BJP president said that he was shocked to see the video which resembled his face.

According to Gao, his photographs were morphed and voice was dubbed.

He has already informed senior BJP leaders Ram Madhav and Chief Minister Pema Khandu about the incident.

During the time when the party has decided to contest the forthcoming assembly and parliamentary polls on its own the release of the video has visibly raised the problem for the party.

Gao flagged out the party's promises for the state.

He said that the development of the state in the field of education, health, horticulture, tourism, communication would be the agenda in the upcoming election.

He also informed that party would be releasing manifesto soon, keeping development and public welfare issues on the top.

Meanwhile, police sources at Itanagar told Deccan Chronicle that they have started tracing the link of the sex video and asserted that the SIT was looking into all the possible angles.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has already issued a notification on Monday for holding simultaneous elections to two Lok Sabha and 60 Assembly constituencies in Arunachal Pradesh on April 11.
She enjoyed a wild night out in Los Angeles with her new love interest.

And Kate Beckinsale was ready to hit the weights for a quick sweat session as she headed off to the gym on Tuesday morning.

The 45-year-old star sported a pair of leopard print leggings and a cut-off sweatshirt for her workout, just hours after she was spotted making out with Pete Davidson, 25.

Fashion: Kate Beckinsale was ready to hit the weights for a quick sweat session as she headed off to the gym on Tuesday morning

The Underworld star flaunted her fit physique in the skin-tight leggings which featured a black-and-white leopard print.

Her upper body was kept covered in layers of tops, including a slouchy white sweatshirt and multiple black and white shirts.

She opted for a bit of height in knee-high black suede boots before appearing in a white shirt and track pants after her gym trip.

Athleisure: The 45-year-old star sported a pair of leopard print leggings and a cut-off sweatshirt for her workout, just hours after she was spotted making out with Pete Davidson, 25

Quick change: She opted for a bit of height in knee-high black suede boots before appearing in a white shirt and track pants after her gym trip

Kate rocked a one-shouldered number at the premiere of The Dirt on Monday night where she met up with her new flame, Pete Davidson.

The couple were spotted together later in the evening making out in the backseat of a car as they left the Netflix event.

Their romance is certainly heating up as of late after the pair confirmed their romance while holding hands and making out in New York earlier this month.

'She's very happy with Pete,' a source told People magazine. 'They have really similar senses of humor and she's always laughing with him.'

Party time: Kate rocked a one-shouldered number at the premiere of The Dirt on Monday night where she met up with her new flame, Pete Davidson

Kisses: The couple were spotted together later in the evening making out in the backseat of a car as they left the Netflix event

Pete - who was previously engaged to Ariana Grande - insisted he isn't 'bothered' by their age difference and can't understand why anyone is interested in their relationship.

'Apparently people have a crazy fascination with our age difference,' he said during an episode of Saturday Night Live. 'It doesn't really bother us, but then again I'm new to this. So if you have questions about a relationship with a big age difference, just ask Leonardo DiCaprio, Jason Statham, Michael Douglas, Richard Gere, Jeff Goldblum, Scott Disick, Dane Cook, Derek Jeter, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn and whoever the president of France is. Mel Gibson, Billy Joel, Mick Jagger, Sylvester Stallone, Eddie Murphy, Kelsey Grammer. Larry King, Larry King, Larry King, Rod Stewart and Donald Trump.'

Last month, The Sun reported that the couple were planning to go on holiday together, so they could 'get to know each other better.'

'They're planning a holiday to get away from the cameras and get to know each other better,' a source said. It'll be them with a group of friends, somewhere beachy like Bali or Hawaii. They want to take the pressure off and see where the relationship will go.'
She ruled the runway in recent Fashion Week walks in London, Paris and Milan.

And Bella Hadid ensured all eyes were on her again as she made her way to yet another photoshoot at the Pier59 Studios in New York City.

The catwalk queen, 22, cut a stylish figure in a long sleeved Jesse Jo Stark sweatshirt and frayed straight cut jeans as she ventured through the busy streets on Tuesday.

Stylish: Bella Hadid ensured all eyes were on her again as she made her way to yet another photoshoot at Pier59 Studios in New York City

Bella amped up her casual ensemble with a pair of chunky half-transparent heeled boots and quirky red-tinted glasses.

And the model bundled up in a dark oversized puffer jacket as she left a parking garage and braved the bitter cold temperatures.

She completed her look with a simple off-white backpack and a sheer pink lipstick ahead of the glamourous photoshoot.

Casual: The catwalk queen, 22, cut a stylish figure in a long sleeved Jesse Jo Stark sweatshirt and frayed straight cut jeans as she ventured through the busy streets on Tuesday

Glam: Bella amped up her casual ensemble with a pair of chunky half-transparent heels by Malone Souliers and quirky red-tinted glasses

Jet setter: Since mid-February, Bella has been racing from country to country with older sister Gigi, 23, as the two walked numerous runways for the bi-annual Fashion Week

Since mid-February, Bella has been racing from country to country with older sister Gigi, 23, as the two walked numerous runways for the bi-annual Fashion Week.

The girls took over the catwalk for various designers including Oscar de la Renta, Anna Sui and Marc Jacobs.

The beauties then headed to Milan and Paris, where Bella graced the runways of Moschino, Fendi, and Alberta Ferretti.

With all the travelling that leaves her exhausted, Bella laid bare her beauty secrets that keeps her looking fresh-faced on arrival.

She told VOGUE last year: 'I travel a lot and I often work directly after landing. I use my mom's advice, keeping my skin as good as it can be.

'So on a plane, I wash my face as soon as I get on, I have all my serums and my night cream. And then I fall asleep and do it again when I wake up.

'So by the time I get off the plane my face is well rested and moisturised. And I always have a concealer with me, especially when Im super-tired to get those dark eye bags away.'

In her zone: The DC native looked fierce as she graced the Haider Ackerman and Redemption catwalks in Paris

Prior to her venture to Europe, Bella celebrated boyfriend The Weeknd's 29th birthday last month, with a lavish LA bash.

They began dating in 2015, and split for almost a year when The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, began dating Selena Gomez.

The duo later reunited in November 2017, and officially became a couple in July of last year, according to E!.
She gave birth to a baby girl eight months ago.

And Cardi B hit back at online haters in a sweet snap of little Kulture shared to her Instagram account on Tuesday morning.

The 26-year-old Please Me crooner wrote 'my babe is perfect' in the caption of the cute photo before opting to delete the image from social media.

Gorgeous: Cardi B wrote 'my babe is perfect' in the caption of the cute photo of Kulture before opting to delete the image from social media

The caption wasn't without a subtle call-out to online trolls who appear to have harassed Cardi in the past about her daughter.

'For the dumb dusty b****es worrying about my baby always have a hat on,' she wrote. 'She is perfect don't worry.'

While the Bronx-born beauty wasn't so sure about keeping the image up, her husband Offset shared an adorable video of the little girl babbling away.

Mama bear: Cardi B hit back at online haters in a sweet snap of little Kulture shared to her Instagram account on Tuesday morning; seen in December

Sweetheart! While the Bronx-born beauty wasn't so sure about keeping the image up, her husband Offset shared an adorable video of the little girl babbling away

'Pretty girl,' Cardi cooed at her daughter while trying to tickle her stomach with electric neon nails. 'Look at Mommy!'

The Migos rapper captioned the video, 'My beautiful baby girl' and added the hashtag #raisingqueens.

Cardi - whose real name is Belcalis Marlenis Almanzar - recently returned from a luxury holiday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with her husband.

'Pretty girl,' Cardi cooed at her daughter while trying to tickle her stomach with electric neon nails. 'Look at Mommy!'

Cardi - whose real name is Belcalis Marlenis Almanzar - recently returned from a luxury holiday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with her husband

The couple have publicly shared a few relationship woes, but seemed to be back in great spirits following the Grammy Awards together in January where she took home the rap album prize for her debut LP Invasion Of Privacy.

Offset proposed to Cardi onstage in Philadelphia in October 2017 with a ring valued at around half a million - only for it to emerge they were already legally married

She's stayed busy promoting her latest hit with Bruno Mars, Please Me, a follow up to their song Finesse.
Kerry Katona has revealed her daughter Lilly-Sue once asked 'Mummy, what's a coke head' when she came back from school.

The Atomic Kitten star, 38, said her second-eldest daughter, who is now 15, asked the question many years ago - despite being 'oblivious' to her struggle with drug addiction.

Kerry, who suffers from bipolar disorder, also confessed she has 'still got a lot of issues' she's working on in a candid interview with Closer magazine.

Shock: Kerry Katona, 38, has revealed her daughter Lilly-Sue, now 15, asked her 'what's a coke head' whilst being 'oblivious' to her mother's struggle with drug addiction

The mother-of-five, 38, said: 'I remember Lilly coming home one day, asking "Mummy, what's a coke head?"

'My kids were oblivious to everything. They never witnessed anything, thank God, but I'm very open and honest with them.

'I've still got a lot of issues I'm working on. I don't want to go out with somebody who's got issues, too, which is something that I used to do. With my past relationships, it's always been a case of me wanting to help him, to fix him.'

Candid: Kerry, who suffers from bipolar disorder, also confessed she has 'still got a lot of issues' she's working on in a candid interview

The Celebs Go Dating star has been married three times and has five children - Molly, 17, and Lilly-Sue with Brian McFadden, Heidi, 12, and Max, 10, with Mark Croft and Dylan-Jorge, four, with George Kay.

Her most recent husband George, 38, was arrested for assault against her when they were a couple - but the charges against him were dropped.

The reality star's confession comes after she shared her heartache last Wednesday as she revealed her auntie Josie had died in an emotional Instagram post.

The mother-of-five, 38, said: 'I remember Lilly coming home one day, asking "Mummy, what's a coke head?" (Pictured left, Lilly-Sue and right, Molly)

Kerry took to the social media site to post a throwback picture of herself with her late auntie.

She wrote: 'RIP Auntie Josie,' followed by praying hands emoji, while she later confirmed to a fan that Josie was her mother Sue's sister.

Kerry has had a difficult few weeks after she revealed earlier this month that her son Max had been left with a black eye after he was reportedly attacked by three older boys.

Tragic: The Celebs Go Dating star took to social media last week to post a throwback picture of herself with her late auntie

The television personality went on to speak about her child's, the youngest of two children with second husband Mark Croft, altercation with bullies on This Morning and said 'he could have lost his eyes'.

She said: 'They started saying things to him and one of them went like this in his eye. He had a big black eye and he burst into tears and ran all the way to school.

'I was heartbroken. I know he can be quite shy around people he doesn't know - they were older boys.'

Nasty: Kerry has had a difficult few weeks after she revealed earlier this month that her son Max had been left with a black eye after he was reportedly attacked by three older boys

Kerry was in London at work at the time and said Max often walks to school, so was very upset to find out what had happened.

She said: 'I was furious. I wanted to rip their heads of. You want to put your hands around their throat, but violence doesn't solve violence and the school did everything they could.'

Kerry said Max is trying his best to be brave, but he's been left very upset over the ordeal.

Family: The Celebs Go Dating star has been married three times and has five children - Molly, 17, and Lilly-Sue with Brian McFadden, Heidi, 12, and Max, 10, with Mark Croft and Dylan-Jorge, four, with George Kay

She said: 'He was fine and trying to brush it off. The next day, I woke him up for school and he was crying because he had delayed shock.

'He didn't want to go to school so he played on his Xbox and we went for a walk in Ashford forest and then I walked him to school.

'It could have been so much worse. He could have lost his eyes. I cried all the way home. I was heartbroken for him.

'I made him walk to school himself on Friday because I didn't want him to get scared of walking on his home.'
Ines Basic has posted an open letter thanking fans for their continued support.

Following a social media meltdown on Tuesday night, where she flashed a single breast and slammed co-star Lauren Huntriss, Ines expressed her gratitude.

In a heartfelt post on Wednesday morning, the beauty, 29, wrote: 'I have received an influx of kind and supportive messages over night.'

'Thank you to all the very nice peoples': MAFS' Ines Basic has praised fans for their support after a worrying meltdown on Tuesday night

Ines continued: 'I would love to respond to you all individually but I don't know if it would be good for my eye sight.

'So thank you to all the very nice peoples. I love u very much xx (sic).'

Unfortunately, Ines also revealed her posts on Tuesday prompted a fresh backlash with many 'crap messages' too - but she believes 'love always wins'.

'I would love to respond to you all individually but I don't know if it would be good for my eye sight': Ines was overcome with emotion on Wednesday morning while addressing her fans

On Tuesday, the legal assistant's concerning behaviour started after she lifted up her top to bare one of her breasts in a shocking video.

She captioned the clip: 'Please don't act like you've never seen a ti**ie before. Women feed their children with these.'

Ines also took a swipe at her fellow Married At First Sight cast mates, accusing them of tipping off the paparazzi.

'When the MAFS cast [are] so desperate to make a headline they gotta tip the paps off to make a dollar out of you,' she wrote.

Is everything okay? After flashing her breast on Tuesday, Ines also took a swipe at her fellow Married At First Sight cast mates, accusing them of tipping off the paparazzi

Warpath: Ines took things even further by lashing out at former co-star Lauren Huntriss on Tuesday night, who had publicly accused her of having 'mental health issues'

She then took things even further by lashing out at former co-star Lauren, who had described Ines' behaviour as 'concerning' and suggested she had 'mental health issues'.

Sharing a screenshot of Lauren's comments, Ines wrote: 'Lauren b***h shut your f***ing mouth.... you absolute f***ing desmond.'

'Desmond' is a slang term originated by Australian metalcore band Parkway Drive, although its exact meaning is unclear.

Ines raged: 'Lauren b***h shut your f***ing mouth... you absolute f***ing desmond.' (Pictured: Lauren Huntriss)

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Channel Nine for comment.

Ines first made headlines after she had an affair with Sam Ball behind her husband Bronson Norrish's back on Married At First Sight.

She had previously sparked outrage for her treatment of Bronson, with many viewers labelling her behaviour 'abusive'.

For confidential support call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14
Richie Strahan certainly has his hands full on Bachelor in Paradise.

A newly-released trailer shows the 33-year-old heartthrob arriving at the Mango Bay Resort in Fiji, much to the surprise of the female contestants.

Cassandra Wood, Cat Henesey and Rachael Gouvignon all admit they are attracted to Richie, before he nervously admits: 'I've got my work cut out for me!'

'No, he's MY Bachelor!' Richie Strahan (left) finds himself torn between Rachael Gouvignon (right), Cassandra Wood AND Cat Henesey in the latest Bachelor in Paradise trailer

While Cassandra and Cat are from Nick Cummins' season of The Bachelor, Rachael appeared on Richie's season - which will no doubt make for an interesting reunion.

'I'm Richie, I'm 33 and I'm from my season of The Bachelor! I kind of just hope there's no ex-girlfriends,' he says in the trailer.

Rachael appears visibly shocked by Richie's arrival and later tells producers, 'My heart was physically pounding.'

Ladies' man: A newly-released trailer shows Richie arriving at the Mango Bay Resort in Fiji, much to the surprise of the female contestants

Somebody's popular! Cat (left), Cassandra (centre) and Rachael (right) all admit they are attracted to Richie, before he nervously admits: 'I've got my work cut out for me!'

Cassandra then says, 'I find him pretty attractive', before Cat admits, 'I got a little bit of a crush for Richie!'

This prompts Rachael to say defensively: 'No, no, no... he's my Bachelor!'

Meanwhile, fellow Bachelor in Paradise contestant Brooke Blurton is reportedly set to drop a 'bombshell' about Nick Cummins on the show.

'All hell breaks loose': Meanwhile, fellow contestant Brooke Blurton (left) is reportedly set to drop a 'bombshell' about Nick Cummins on Bachelor in Paradise. Right: Cassandra Wood

According to Woman's Day, the revelation involves Cassandra, who previously dated Nick before filming The Bachelor last year.

An insider claimed that 'all hell breaks loose' when Brooke, 24, shares the real reason why she rejected a rose from Nick ahead of the finale.

'She's going to dish the dirt on something huge that happened during filming of The Bachelor that wasn't show on TV,' the source said.

Tell all: In a previous trailer for Bachelor in Paradise, Brooke said she no longer wants to 'protect' Nick and is finally ready to tell the truth. Pictured: Cat Henesey and Cassandra Wood

'In fact, Cassandra is caught up in the middle of it, so when she finds out, all hell breaks loose.'

In a previous trailer for Bachelor in Paradise, Brooke said she no longer wants to 'protect' Nick and is finally ready to tell the truth.

Bachelor in Paradise airs on Channel 10 later this year
Spanish activist Helena Maleno has helped tens of thousands of migrants from drowning as they make the treacherous sea journey to Europe by alerting authorities when their boats are in peril

Spanish pro-migrants activist Helena Maleno said Monday that a Moroccan court has dropped human trafficking charges against her, saying it sets a precedent for her struggle to save lives at sea.

Maleno works for the NGO Caminando Fronteras which alerts naval authorities on migrant boats in distress at sea as they attempt the perilous crossing between Morocco and Spain.

She had been under investigation in Morocco since 2017 for alleged collusion in people traffickers offences after a similar case in Spain was dismissed.

Maleno told AFP she has received written notification confirming the decision of an appeals court in Tangiers, where she is based, to drop the case against her.

"The decision sets a precedent because it says that we must defend the right to life... (and) this is what we do," she said of her work with Caminando Fronteras.

"I always had faith in the Moroccan justice system because I always believed in my innocence," added the 48-year-old Maleno.

Her case had seen an outpouring of support from rights groups, politicians and celebrities such as Hollywood actor Javier Bardem.

Miguel Jesus Zea, head coastguard for the southern Spanish region of Almeria, said last year that Maleno had helped rescue tens of thousands of people off the coast of Almeria.
New Zealand PM Ardern has vowed that the Christchurch mosque killer will face the 'full force of the law'

The bodies of six of the Christchurch massacre victims have been released to their families, New Zealand police said Tuesday, but they warned only a fraction of the 50 people killed had been fully identified, with the delay angering anguished relatives.

Muslims whose loved ones were gunned down by an Australian white supremacist at two mosques last Friday have had their grief compounded by the failure of the authorities to return bodies to families in time for a speedy burial, as required under Islamic custom.

Police in Christchurch said only 12 of the 50 victims had been identified, and appeared to warn next of kin to brace for further delays.

"We are doing all we can to undertake this work as quickly as possible and return the victims to their loved ones," a police statement said.

"While identification may seem straightforward the reality is much more complex, particularly in a situation like this."

PM Ardern said she will never mention the killer's name

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed on Tuesday that gunman Brenton Tarrant would face the "full force of the law" as she opened a sombre session of parliament with an evocative "as-salaam alaikum" message of peace to Muslims.

But the black-clad Ardern pledged to grieving Kiwis that she would deprive the 28-year-old gunman of the publicity he craved by never uttering his name.

"That is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless," she told assembled lawmakers.

"I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them."

The 38-year-old leader closed by noting that Friday marks a week since the attack, and urged New Zealanders to grieve along with them.

"Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh," she said -- "May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be with you too."

- Families gather -

But the forensic delays are casting a cloud over New Zealand's handling of the horrific ordeal.

Dozens of relatives of the deceased have already begun arriving from around the world ahead of expected funerals which have already been delayed far beyond the 24 hours after death usually observed under Islam.

In the wake of the mass shooting New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised to reform gun laws that allowed the gunman to legally purchase the weapons he used

Peter Elms of New Zealand's immigration department said 65 visas had been granted for overseas family members so far.

Christchurch police said post-mortems had been completed on all 50 victims.

But only 12 had been "identified to the satisfaction of the coroner" nearly a week after the rampage.

Javed Dadabhai, who travelled from Auckland to help bury his cousin, said families and volunteers had been warned of a slow process.

"The majority of people still have not had the opportunity to see their family members," he told AFP.

Mohamed Safi, 23, whose father Matiullah Safi died in Al Noor mosque, pleaded for officials to let him identify his father and set a date for his burial.

"There's nothing they are offering," Safi, an Afghan refugee, said outside a family support centre.

New Zealanders of all stripes have expressed revulsion over the killings -- and a unified front against racial hatred

"They are just saying they are doing their procedures, they are doing their process. But what process? Why do I not know what you are going through to identify the body... Why am I not contacted as an immediate family member?"

In a rambling manifesto, the gunman had said he was motivated partly by a desire to stoke a violent response from Muslims and a religious war between Islam and the West.

The Islamic State group, in a message on social media, appeared to encourage retaliatory attacks.

"The scenes of killing in the two mosques... incite members of the caliphate living there to avenge their religion and the children of the umma (Muslims) who were are being slaughtered in all corners of the earth with the sponsorship and blessing of the Crusader countries," it said.

- Gun control -

Following the mass shooting, Ardern has promised to reform New Zealand laws that allowed the gunman to legally purchase weapons used in the attack.

Police search a property next-door to the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand

New Zealanders have already begun answering government appeals to hand in their weapons, including John Hart, a farmer in the North Island district of Masterton.

Hart said it was an easy decision for him to hand in his semi-automatic and tweeted: "on the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn't outweigh the risk of misuse. We don't need these in our country."

The tweet drew a barrage of derogatory messages to his Facebook account -- most apparently from the US, where the pro-gun lobby is powerful.

Ardern has said details of the proposed reform will be announced by next week, but she indicated they could include gun buybacks and a ban on some semi-automatic rifles.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are battling the Islamic State group with backing from a US-led coalition

Syria's Kurds have criticised the "threatening language" of the Damascus regime after it pledged to retake northeastern areas they control by reconciliation or by force.

The minority have largely stayed out of Syria's war, instead carving out a de-facto autonomous region across a large swathe of northern and northeastern Syria.

That region is held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces who have been battling the Islamic State group with backing from a US-led coalition.

Syrian Defence Minister Ali Abdullah Ayoub on Monday said his government would recapture all areas held by the SDF "in one of two ways: a reconciliation agreement or... by force".

In a statement late Monday, the semi-autonomous administration slammed his comments.

"The Syrian defence minister's statement regarding the SDF... reflects the continuation of the racist and sterile policy that has led Syria to this disastrous situation," it said in a statement.

"The use of threatening language against the SDF who have liberated and protected the north and east of Syria from terrorists only serves those forces working to divide Syria," it said.

US President Donald Trump's announcement in December of a pullout of all American forces from Syria shocked the Kurds and sent them grappling to mend fences with Damascus.

Dialogue between both sides has been ongoing, but has failed to bear fruit.

Damascus rejects Kurdish self-rule and wants a return of government institutions to oil-rich SDF-held areas.

The Kurds want protection from a long-threatened Turkish offensive, but seek some form of decentralisation from Damascus.

"The autonomous administration... stands by its position of the need for a solution and dialogue within the Syrian framework for all pending issues," the Kurdish authorities said.

"But we want all sides to know that we, while choosing the political solution, we will spare no effort in the legitimate defence of our rights if necessary," he said.

Eight years into a war that has killed more than 370,000 people, the Damascus regime controls almost two-thirds of the country after a series of victories against rebels and jihadists.

But the SDF-held region, a northwestern jihadist bastion and border areas held by Turkey's Syrian proxies remain beyond its control.
Algerian medics join a protest in the capital demanding that ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika step down after 20 years in power

Thousands of students took to the streets of the Algerian capital on Tuesday, again calling for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's departure after he refused to quit.

University professors and medical professionals took part in the demonstration on Tuesday, which marks the anniversary of the Algerian war of independence, an AFP correspondent reported.

"March 19, 1962: end of the Algerian war... March 19, 2019: beginning of a system change," read one sign -- referring to the Evian accords that brought an end to French colonial rule 57 years ago.

Bouteflika, who has ruled Algeria for 20 years, confirmed on Monday that he will stay on beyond the end of his term of office next month.

He announced on March 11 he was withdrawing from his bid for a fifth term, initially sparking elation among protesters before they realised he planned to remain in office regardless.

The ailing 82-year-old also scrapped the election set for April 18 and announced he was rolling out reforms through a "national conference".

Rarely seen in public since a 2013 stroke, Bouteflika issued a statement on Monday which confirmed his new plan would see him stay in power for months beyond the expiry of his term on April 28.

On Tuesday, protesters chanted: "Students are angry, (we) refuse the extension."

Last week, for a fourth consecutive Friday, demonstrators marched through Algiers to step up demands for Bouteflika to step down.

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Naidu had last year pulled out of the BJP-led NDA of which the JD(U) is a part.

Patna: Poll strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor Tuesday lashed out at Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu for reportedly calling him a "Bihari dacoit". He charged the TDP chief with having displayed "prejudice and malice" against the eastern state fearing an "imminent defeat" at the hustings. Kishor, who is also the national vice-president of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumars JD(U), was reacting to a news report wherein Naidu had also blamed him for deletion of lakhs of voters in Andhra Pradesh besides giving "criminal advice" to his main rival the YSR Congress. "An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So I am not surprised with the baseless utterances of @ncbn (Naidus twitter handle). Sirji, rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice and malice against Bihar, just focus on why the people of AP should vote for you again," Kishor tweeted while sharing the link to the news item.

Assembly polls are being held in Andhra Pradesh alongside the parliamentary elections. Naidu had last year pulled out of the BJP-led NDA of which the JD(U) is a part. Although now formally associated with the JD(U), Kishor is earlier known to have worked closely with many political figures cutting across ideological affiliations. He achieved fame after having handled Narendra Modis election campaign in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, which was followed by his association with the Grand Alliance in Bihar, which saw arch rivals Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad joining hands to inflict a crushing defeat on the NDA in the assembly polls next year.

He thereafter worked with the Congress during assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab which, achieved mixed results. In September last year, he was inducted into the JD(U) and elevated to the number two post within a few weeks, leading to speculations that he was being seen as a successor to Nitish Kumar. The speculations were laid to rest when Kumar made it clear that his party was "not a monarchy" and hence there were no successors. Kishor, nevertheless, has helped the partys students wing to achieve unexpected victories in some university polls and is working on transforming the JD(U) into a platform for youths with aptitude for politics.
Algerians have been protesting since last month, calling on Bouteflika to quit

Tens of thousands of students again took to the streets of the Algerian capital on Tuesday, just hours after long-time leader President Abdelaziz Bouteflika confirmed he plans to stay in power after his mandate expires next month.

"Students are committed, the system must go!" they shouted, as students from several campuses in Algiers massed in the city centre.

They were joined by university professors and medical professionals for the rally on the day which marks the anniversary of Algeria's victory in its war of independence.

"March 19, 1962: end of the Algerian war... March 19, 2019: beginning of a system change," read one sign -- referring to the Evian accords that brought an end to French colonial rule 57 years ago.

But Bouteflika, who has ruled Algeria for 20 years, again defied demands that he should quit, and confirmed on Monday that he will stay on beyond the end of his term of office next month.

After weeks of protests, he announced on March 11 he was withdrawing from his bid for a fifth term in planned April elections.

His comments initially sparked elation among protesters before they realised he intended to remain in office regardless.

Students were joined by university professors and medical professionals for the rally calling for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to go

The ailing 82-year-old also scrapped the election set for April 18 and announced he was rolling out reforms through a "national conference".

Rarely seen in public since a 2013 stroke, Bouteflika issued a fresh statement on Monday which confirmed his new plan would see him stay in power after his term ends on April 28.

"(I hope) that Algeria experiences, in the near future, a harmonious transition and assists handing over the reins to a new generation," he said in the statement.

"This is the ultimate goal that I have committed to making a reality before the end of my presidential journey, at your side and at your service," added Bouteflika.

Algerian Deputy Prime Minister Ramtane Lamamra on Tuesday promised "open and transparent" steps to resolve the political crisis, during a visit to Russia.

He said Bouteflika was "ready to fully transfer his powers" to a new president.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow, a longtime ally of Algiers, was behind the Algerian government's efforts and hit out at "attempts to destabilise the situation from the outside".

"I am convinced... that the people of Algeria can solve their own problems, resolve their own internal affairs," he said.

- 'Make like the dinosaurs' -

While Bouteflika has given no timetable for his national conference, he said the shake-up of Algeria's "political, economic and social systems" would start "in the very near future".

A constitutional review would be put before a referendum, he said, which would be "a prelude to a new electoral process that will see the election of a new president."

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has confirmed he plans to stay on after his mandate expires in late April

Protests initially erupted last month after Bouteflika announced his intention to stand for a fifth term, bringing tens of thousands to the streets in the north African country.

Last week, for a fourth consecutive Friday, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched across the country stepping up demands for Bouteflika to go.

Despite the president's reform pledges, Algerians have continued marching in huge numbers, many clutching humorous banners and waving their country's flags amid a festival atmosphere.

"Make like the dinosaurs, and disappear!" read one banner on Tuesday, or "Geologists are hoping for the mass extinction of the government."

The Algerian press also gave short shrift to Bouteflika's latest letter to the people.

"It's more than just stubbornness, it's dangerous irresponsibility," said one opinion writer in the French-language daily Liberte.

"Bouteflika has not met the demands of the people," added the Arabic daily El Khabar.

The demonstrations have largely been peaceful and led by young people keen to see a new generation of politicians rule their country

New Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui, named on March 11 to replace the unpopular Ahmed Ouyahia, Tuesday continued talks to form a new government which he has promised will be younger and made up of technocrats.

But his approaches have been largely shunned by the opposition parties and union leaders.

In his latest message, Bouteflika appealed to Algerians to "offer your support to your army to protect Algeria from external dangers."

His comments came after the army chief promised the military would remain "the bastion of the people and the nation."
A meteor streaking through the night sky over Myanmar during the Geminid meteor shower on December 14 2018.

At precisely 11:48 am on December 18, 2018, a large space rock heading straight for Earth at a speed of 19 miles per second exploded into a vast ball of fire as it entered the atmosphere, 15.9 miles above the Bering Sea.

From below, the only witnesses to this fiery event may have been the fish that inhabit the frigid waters between Russia and Alaska, as no human eye caught sight of it.

A meteor is the luminous phenomenon that results when an asteroid or other celestial body enters the Earth's atmosphere. It is commonly called a shooting star. If it does not fully vaporize and some part of it hits the Earth's surface, it is called a meteorite.

One of the first researchers to detect the event was Peter Brown, a meteor scientist at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Western Ontario.

On March 8, he was poring over December data from the system used by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization to detect atmospheric explosions caused by nuclear tests.

The system is comprised of seismic and acoustic sensors capable of picking up infrasound, inaudible to the human ear, at a distance of tens of thousands of miles.

"Many of them detected the sound waves from this explosion," he told AFP. "If you were directly under it, it would have been deafening."

- 10 meters in diameter -

US military satellites spotted the explosion immediately.

But it was not until March 8 that the Air Force officially informed NASA, which logged the event in the database of fireballs it has kept since 1988, according to Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer.

"It was almost immediately published on our website, within 10 minutes, I would say," he told AFP.

NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies calculated the energy released by the explosion to be 173 kilotons, more than 10 times as destructive as the 15-kiloton atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima in 1945.

It was the most powerful explosion in the atmosphere since the fireball that burst over the Russian town of Chelyabinsk in 2013. That was 440 kilotons, and left 1,500 people injured, mostly from glass flying out of smashed windows.

The event was described on Monday by scientists at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.

When he read a report on the subject on the BBC, Simon Proud, a meteorologist and specialist in satellite data at Oxford University, decided to check the archive of images collected by a Japanese weather satellite, Himawari, which his center permanently monitors.

Bingo: the satellite was in the right place at the right time, he told AFP.

Proud published the image on his Twitter account: what looks like an orange ball of fire above the clouds and sea, but which is in fact a cloud of dust from the meteor caught in the sunlight, Brown said.

As it turns out, NASA's MODIS satellite also photographed the dust cloud, the agency's Kurtis Thome told AFP Tuesday.

"It doesn't surprise me," said Patrick Michel, research director and asteroid specialist at the observatory of the Cote d'Azur in southern France.

"It is a good reminder that there are a bunch of these things that pass over our heads and that it would be good to be more concerned about them," he told AFP.

"It should remind us that even if it is the least likely natural risk we face, it is a still a risk that exists and will in the long term become a reality," he said.

The rock was roughly 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter: the most dangerous celestial bodies for the Earth are those in excess of 150 meters.

"Nothing very unusual," said Rudiger Jehn, head of planetary defense at the European Space Agency (ESA).

"We were lucky it was over the ocean. It can happen again, and someday there will be a bigger one," he said, noting that the ESA plans to ask member states for a budget to create a better protection system against asteroids during a ministerial meeting in November.

"That meteor explosion is a perfect promotion for our program. And it is free," he said.
It's not every day you have a biopic being made, based on the life of your prime minister.

And that's true for any country. But in India, there will be two in just the last six months  first, The Accidental Prime Minister based on Sanjaya Barus book of the same name, about our ex-PM Manmohan Singh  and now, PM Narendra Modi, based on the life of our current prime minister, starring Vivek Anand Oberoi.

The former was critiqued to no end for its cartoonish portrayal of Dr Singh, written off immediately as an opposition-funded reverse propaganda film to malign Dr Singhs image.

With the first look  actually, nine looks  of Vivek Oberoi as Narendra Modi, apparently in various stages of his life, released recently, the same question is being asked again  is this an opposition-funded reverse propaganda film to malign Modijis image?

9 times Vivek Oberoi did NOT look like Narendra Modi. (Source: PR image)

It sure looks like it!

And it all started with the casting of Vivek Anand Oberoi.

Of the nine looks released, which shows Vivek from a young RSS worker to a seasoned politician, four seem to be stills from Viveks older films  with zero resemblance to the man he is trying to portray.

In one, he is dressed as a mystifying saadhu baba  a popular totem in many Hindi films, but never the main character.

In another, he is dressed as a Sikh man  we dont quite know why.

Two particular looks of the released nine seem to have a ghostly (nope, its not a mistake, I meant ghostly, not ghastly) resemblance to Narendra Modi. But, even there, instead of looking the man, it looks caricaturish, cartoonish  and worst still, potentially damaging so close to the election.

PM Narendra Modi was slated for an April 12, 2019 release  and phase 1 of the Lok Sabha 2019 elections starts from April 11. And now, in something that can be termed an 'unprecedented move', the release date has been brought forward  from April 12 to April 5.

Still, the question of damaging the image of a viable candidate remains.

And that is why it is imperative we speak about the Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer Thackeray. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to know that it was (pretty much) a Shiv Sena film. Aside from the politics of it  which one may or may not agree with  the film was a clean one, with special care taken to ensure Nawaz looked enormously like Bala Saheb.

If anything, this amateurish portrayal of Narendra Modi  with sub-standard and low-budget make-up  will only help the oppositions case.

All they need to do is wait for the film to release and it will turn into a national joke in no time.

Also read: Lessons from Bollywood: Why the Main Bhi Chowkidaar tattoo is a terrible idea!
With the country going into election mode against the backdrop of the Pulwama suicide bombing and the Balakot airstrike, national security, and by extension nationalism, will be an important issue at the hustings.

Unfortunately, for the Grand Old Party of India, the greater the salience this issue receives in the campaign, the more it seems to push the Congress on the backfoot.

Congress downfall

This is a remarkable role reversal for a political party which spearheaded the Independence movement and defined post-Independence Indian nationalism as well our national security interests. For decades, the Congress Party epitomised nationalism and was seen as a defender of national security. Despite blunders, reverses and setbacks there was almost a sort of blind faith in the Congress being Indias best bet to uphold and protect the unity and integrity of the country.

No more. From being seen as the party which was a bulwark against fissiparous tendencies, to now when it is not just seen as taking an ambivalent stand on issues of national security, but worse, is seen to be standing with and supporting fringe elements that desire Bharat ki barbadi, it has been a huge fall.

There was a time when Pakistan, our neighbour from hell, dreaded the prospect of a Congress government at the Centre. Compared to the woolly-headed approach of the then non-Congress parties, the Congress was seen as being tough, uncompromising, realistic, even Chanakya-like, on Pakistan. After all, not only had the Congress framed the broad Indian approach towards Pakistan and Kashmir, but it had also taken the war into Pakistan and ultimately broken that country into two.

Today, however, Pakistan is fervently hoping and praying that the Congress comes to power because it feels the party will be soft and pusillanimous in the face of its remorseless export of terrorism, virtually allowing it impunity to conduct the death by a thousand cuts policy. For Pakistan, Modi is Indira Gandhi 2.0, while Modis opponents are Janata Party 2.0. There is a serious perception problem that Congress needs to address.

Pakistan is, perhaps, fervently hoping that the Congress comes to power because the party will be pusillanimous in the face of export of terrorism. (Photo: Reuters)

The dubious distinction of being perceived by Pakistan as the party that best serves its interest, is in no small measure the outcome of the jarring statements by party apparatchiks  a party MP calling the Army Chief a street goon, another leader questioning the surgical strikes, constant sniping on the situation in Kashmir which really conveys an impression that the Congress is soft on separatism and is batting not just against the security forces but also for the militants. Add to this the Congress failure to articulate its own policy on terrorism, Kashmir and Pakistan, and it is no surprise that perceptually, much of what goes for Congress policy is a hotchpotch that does not inspire confidence.

Nationalism is sacred

Once the natural party of governance, Congress has made the sort of blunders that even a political novice would be loath to making. Whether this is a sign of how cut-off the Congress is from understanding the innate nationalist impulse that drives Indian voters, or is a manifestation of how much it has been hijacked by jholawalas who are embarrassed by anything remotely resembling patriotism and nationalism, the bottom line is that the Congress has lost the plot on national security.

Congress has scored self-goal and handed the national security and nationalism platform on a platter to the BJP by soft-peddling on terrorism  Digvijay Singh accusing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of 26/11; Manmohan Singh losing his sleep over the mother of the terrorist involved in the Glasgow airport bombing; the Congress top brass questioning the Batla House encounter. It seems to have been seen standing on the side of people who openly indulge in sedition, questioning the nuclear tests in 1998 and lampooning the government during the Kargil War.

Political bankruptcy

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad nailed it when he pointed out that the Congress seemed to be taking vicarious pleasure from the setback India received when China once again vetoed the sanctioning of the Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar. It is a no-brainer that the low-level and petty point-scoring done by the Grand Old Party on this issue was appallingly bad politics. At a time when India was seething with rage, instead of taking aim at China, the Congress rank and file was more interested in targeting our Prime Minister. Indeed, whether it is terrorism, Kashmir, Pakistan, China or any other foreign or national security issue, the Congress has been more about taking pot shots at the BJP and Narendra Modi, rather than laying out its own policy on how it would have handled the situation and what it would do when it comes to power.

There are Congress leaders like Capt. Amarinder Singh who arent shy of taking the correct, if also hard, the line on national issues without letting that come in conflict with or contradict the Congress secular credentials. Alas, when a party leadership prefers to encourage a stand-up comic like Navjot Singh Sidhu instead of taking a cue from the Captain, it pretty much explains how and why the Congress lost the narrative on national security.

(Courtesy of Mail Today)

Also read: Lok Sabha 2019: Will 'Chowkidar chor hai' vs #MainBhiChowkidar battles decide who will win the war?
Cellcom Israel Ltd. operates and maintains a cellular mobile telephone system in Israel. It operates in two segments, Cellular and Fixed-line. The company offers cellular communications services, such as basic cellular telephony services comprising voice mail, cellular fax, call waiting, call forwarding, caller identification, and conference calling; text and multimedia messaging; and cellular content and data services. It also provides international roaming services; value-added services, such as short message and multimedia messaging; cloud backup; and content services, including Cellcom Volume music, Cellcom TV, and other applications. In addition, the company sells handsets, tablets, streamers, smart watches, and home security cameras, as well as offers repair services. Further, it provides internet infrastructure and connectivity services, over-the-top TV services, international long distance services, and landline telephony and transmission services; transmission and data services through fiber-optic infrastructure and complementary microwave links; IP switchboard services; and cloud services and data protection products, as well as operates and manages business telecommunication systems to selected business customers and telecommunications operators. As of December 31, 2019, the company had approximately 10.6 million cellular subscribers. Cellcom Israel Ltd. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Netanya, Israel.

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Vesuvius plc provides engineering services and solutions principally to steel and foundry industries worldwide. It operates in two segments, Steel and Foundry. The company offers foundry consumables and equipment, including binders, coatings, feeding systems, filtration and gating systems, melt shop refractories, metallurgical and pouring control systems, die dressings and coatings, melt treatment products, crucibles, and ceramics for the iron, steel, and nonferrous foundries. It also provides nonferrous metals, such as primary and secondary aluminum, copper, and other metals and alloys; cement and lime solutions, iron ore pelletizing and calcination products, and grains and powders; and process heaters, FCC units, hydrogen reformers, boilers, coke calciners, and thermal oxidizers, as well as sulphur, ethylene, and ammonia plants. In addition, the company offers solutions for power generation and incineration; glass products comprising artistic, display, float, hollow, and optical glass; glass tempering, and reheat and forming products; and solutions for solar multi-crystal silicon ingots, thin film and cell processing, and feedstock. Further, it provides solutions for blast furnace stack repair; taphole clay, iron and slang runner, sampler and temperature, tilting runner, and torpedo ladle solutions; iron ladle solutions; lining, taphole system, bath agitation and tuyere system, electric arc furnace and BOF maintenance, and metallurgical sensor solutions; and ladle, ladle to tundish, and tundish solutions, as well as tundish to mold solutions for conventional slab, thin and slim slab, beam blank, flow control valve bloom or billet, and calibrated nozzle billet casters. Additionally, the company offers ingot casting solutions; and reheat furnace, steel hot forming, galvanized steel, and electrical and stainless steel solutions. Vesuvius plc was founded in 1916 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

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Deutsche Lufthansa AG operates as an aviation company in Germany and internationally. The company's Network Airlines segment offers passenger services through a route network of 273 destinations in 86 countries. Its Eurowings segment provides passenger services through a route network of more than 210 destinations in 60 countries. The company's Logistics Business segment offers transport services for various cargoes, including living animals, valuable cargo, post and dangerous goods, and temperature-sensitive goods serving approximately 300 destinations in 100 countries. Its Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Services (MRO) segment provides maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for civilian commercial aircraft serving original equipment manufacturers and aircraft leasing companies, operators of VIP jets, and airlines, as well as develops and manufactures cabin and digital products. The company's Catering Business segment engages in-flight sales and entertainment, in-flight service equipment, and the associated logistics services, as well as consulting services; and operates airport lounges. As of December 31, 2020, it had a fleet of 757 aircraft. Deutsche Lufthansa AG was founded in 1926 and is headquartered in Cologne, Germany.

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Invesco S&P Emerging Markets Low Volatility ETF's stock was trading at $19.88 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EELV stock has increased by 25.2% and is now trading at $24.89.

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BSP announces names of 5 candidates unilaterally.

Bhopal: The newly sealed alliance between Ajit Jogis Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) and Mayawatis Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) appeared to be heading for a split with the latter unilaterally announcing its candidates for five Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh.

Mr Jogi, who founded Janata the JCC after breaking away from the Congress in 2016, appear-ed to have been completely taken aback by the development. BSP has released lists of its candidates without consulting us. I will soon speak to the BSP chief, Mr Jogi, who had forged alliance with BSP in the November Assembly polls in Chhattisgasrh, he told the media on Tuesday.

As it is, my party has no stake in the LS elections nor are we keen to field candidates in the polls. It is the BSP that has high stakes in the Lok Sabha elections and chances of winning seats in Chhattisgarh. My best wishes to Behenji (Ms Mayawati), he added.

The development comes close on the heels of Mr Jogi announcing that the JCC-BSP alliance would extend to Lok Sabha elections in Chhattisgarh too and he would soon meet Ms Mayawati to seal the seat-sharing arrangement between the two parties.

The alliance had secured seven out of 90 Assembly seats in the last years polls in Chhattisgarh. While the JCC bagged five seats, BSP won two seats.

The BSP declared candidates for three LS seats of Bastar (ST), Kanker (ST) and Janjgir-Champa late on Monday night. The party announced candidates for three more seats, Sarguja, Raigarh and Durg on Tuesday.

Incidentally, the Chhattisgarh unit of the BSP was still maintained that there was no rift among the alliance partners. We have no word from Behenji as yet to snap our ties with JCC, a spokesman said.
Invesco Zacks Multi-Asset Income ETF's stock was trading at $16.41 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, CVY stock has increased by 46.2% and is now trading at $23.9935.

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11 hours ago

EXPLAINER: Why US inflation is so high, and when it may ease

WASHINGTON (AP)  Inflation is starting to look like that unexpected  and unwanted  houseguest who just wont leave. For months, many economists had sounded a reassuring message that a spike in consumer prices, something that had been missing in action in the U.S.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Teledyne Technologies: Alia Corporation Inc, Bolt Technology Corp, Bowtech Products, CARIS, CDL do Brasil Equipamentos e Servicos Submarinos Sociedade Empresaria Ltda., CETAC Technologies, DALSA, Demo Systems, Detcon Holdco Inc., Ensambles de Precision S.A. de C.V., Falcon Analytical, Frontline Test Equipment, GMI Group Holdings Limited, Hafmynd ehf, Hanson Research Corp, IST Oldham Instruments India Private Limited, Industrial Control Machines, Intelek, Intelek Limited, Intelek Pension Trustees Limited, Intelek Properties Limited, LeCroy (Beijing) Trading Co. Ltd., LeCroy Corporation, Lidar Aviation Services Inc., Maple Imaging LLC, Micralyne Inc, Ocean Design Ltda., Oldham Instrument (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Oldham Simtronics SAS, Oldham-Winter GmbH, PDM Neptec, Reynolds Industries Limited, Rhombi Canada LP, Rhombi Holdings Limited, Rhombi Netherlands B.V., Rockwell Scientific Company, Simtronics AS, TDY Jersey Limited, Teledyne Advanced Pollution Instrumentation, Teledyne Australia Pty Ltd, Teledyne BlueView, Teledyne Bogatin Enterprises LLC, Teledyne Bowtech Limited, Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., Teledyne C.M.L. Group Limited, Teledyne CARIS B.V., Teledyne CARIS Inc., Teledyne CARIS UK Ltd., Teledyne CARIS USA Inc., Teledyne CDL Inc., Teledyne CDL Limited, Teledyne Catalyst Enterprises Inc., Teledyne Computer Access Technology Corporation, Teledyne Controls LLC, Teledyne Cougar, Teledyne Czech s.r.o., Teledyne DALSA (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Teledyne DALSA Asia-Pacific Ltd., Teledyne DALSA B.V., Teledyne DALSA GmbH, Teledyne DALSA Inc., Teledyne DALSA Industrial Products Inc., Teledyne DALSA K.K., Teledyne DALSA Semiconductor Inc., Teledyne Dalsa, Teledyne Defense Electronics LLC, Teledyne Denmark A/S, Teledyne Detcon Inc., Teledyne Digital Imaging Inc., Teledyne Digital Imaging US Inc., Teledyne Energy Systems Inc., Teledyne Europe Holdings C.V., Teledyne France, Teledyne France SAS, Teledyne Gas Measurement Instruments Limited, Teledyne Gavia ehf., Teledyne Germany GmbH, Teledyne Hanson Research Inc., Teledyne ICM SA, Teledyne ICM SPRL, Teledyne Innovaciones Microelectronics S.L.U., Teledyne Instruments Inc., Teledyne Instruments Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Teledyne Japan Corporation, Teledyne Korea Ltd., Teledyne Labtech Limited, Teledyne LeCroy AB, Teledyne LeCroy Delaware LLC, Teledyne LeCroy GmbH, Teledyne LeCroy Inc., Teledyne LeCroy India Trading Private Ltd., Teledyne LeCroy Japan Corporation, Teledyne LeCroy Korea Ltd., Teledyne LeCroy OakGate Inc., Teledyne LeCroy S.A.R.L., Teledyne LeCroy S.R.L., Teledyne LeCroy SA, Teledyne LeCroy Singapore Pte. Ltd., Teledyne Limited, Teledyne Micralyne Inc., Teledyne Monitor Labs, Teledyne Monitor Labs P.R. Inc., Teledyne Netherlands B.V., Teledyne ODI, Teledyne Optech Inc., Teledyne Paradise Datacom Limited, Teledyne RD Instruments, Teledyne RD Technologies (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Teledyne RESON, Teledyne RESON A/S, Teledyne RESON B.V., Teledyne RESON GmbH, Teledyne RESON Holding B.V., Teledyne RESON Inc., Teledyne RESON Pte. Ltd., Teledyne RESON UK Limited, Teledyne RISI Inc., Teledyne Rad-icon Imaging Corp., Teledyne Redlake MASD LLC, Teledyne Reynolds Inc., Teledyne SG Brown Limited, Teledyne Scientific & Imaging LLC, Teledyne Scientific Imaging GmbH, Teledyne Scientific Imaging Limited, Teledyne Signal Processing Devices Sweden AB, Teledyne Singapore Private Limited, Teledyne TSS Limited, Teledyne Taiwan Company, Teledyne Technologies (Bermuda) Limited, Teledyne Technologies (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Teledyne Technologies International Corp., Teledyne Technologies Israel Ltd., Teledyne Tekmar Company, Teledyne UK Limited, Teledyne VariSystems, Teledyne VariSystems Inc., Teledyne Wireless LLC, Teledyne e2v, Teledyne e2v (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Teledyne e2v (Overseas) Holdings Limited, Teledyne e2v Asia Pacific Limited, Teledyne e2v Limited, Teledyne e2v Semiconductors SAS, and The Oceanscience Group Ltd..
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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Aberdeen Australia Equity Fund, Inc. is a closed ended equity mutual fund launched and managed by Aberdeen Standard Investments (Asia) Limited. The fund is managed by Aberdeen Standard Investments Australia Limited. It invests in the public equity markets of Australia. The fund makes its investments in firms operating across diversified sectors. It employs fundamental analysis with a bottom-up and top-down stock picking approach with focus on factors like growth prospects, competitive positions in domestic and export markets, technology, research and development, productivity, labor and raw material costs, profit margins, return on investment, capital resources, quality of management, and government regulation to create its portfolio. The fund benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the S&P ASX 200 Accumulation Index. It also uses proprietary research to create its portfolio. The Aberdeen Australia Equity Fund Inc. was previously known as The First Australia Fund, Inc. Aberdeen Australia Equity Fund, Inc. was formed in September 30, 1985 and is domiciled in the United States.

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Addressing an elections rally at Itanagar, Gandhi also reiterated that they would not let the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill get passed.

Guwahati: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday promised to restore the special category status to all the northeastern states if voted to power.

Addressing an elections rally at Itanagar, Mr Gandhi also reiterated that they would not let the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill get passed.

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that the government wanted to introduce was the biggest attack on the culture of the Northeast. We will not let this bill pass, come what may, he said.

Asserting that his party will never attack the indigenous culture and heritage of the state, Mr Gandhi said, Arunachal Pradesh needs more roads, hospitals, airports, helipads. We had accorded special status to the region because it was necessary for the development the northeast but BJP government has abolished it, he said.

Referring to the slogan of BJP  Congress Mukt Baharat  Mr Gandhi said that unlike BJP, his party doesnt want to see the end of any ideology. We will say to them [BJP] that they are free to follow their own ideology. But we will not allow them to impose it on Arunachal Pradesh, on Manipur, on any other part of the country, said the Congress president.

Mr Gandhi also claimed that while he cancelled all rallies following the Pulwama attack on February 14, in which 40 jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force were killed, Mr Modi was shooting for a film at the Jim Corbett National Park.
Alio Gold Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and operation of mineral resource properties. The company primarily mines for gold and silver. It holds 100% interests in San Francisco open pit gold mine that covers an area of approximately 53,380 hectares situated in the north central portion of the state of Sonora, Mexico; Florida Canyon open pit mine covering an area of approximately 11,886 hectares located in Nevada, the United States; and Ana Paula property situated in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. The company was formerly known as Timmins Gold Corp. and changed its name to Alio Gold Inc. in May 2017. Alio Gold Inc. was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

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Bellatrix Exploration Ltd., an oil and gas company, engages in the acquisition, exploration, development, and production of oil and natural gas reserves in the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan in Canada. It primarily focuses on developing its two core resource plays, the Cardium and the Spirit River in Western Canada. The company was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.

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JPJ Group plc, through its subsidiaries, operates as an online gaming company in Japan, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain, rest of Europe, and internationally. The company operates through Jackpotjoy and Vera&John segments. It offers bingo, slots, casino, and other games through Jackpotjoy, Starspins, Botemania, Vera&John, Costa Bingo, InterCasino, Solid Gaming, and other brands. The company was formerly known as Jackpotjoy plc and changed its name to JPJ Group plc in June 2018. Jackpotjoy plc was incorporated in 2016 and is based in London, the United Kingdom.

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2 Wall Street equities research analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for Sappi in the last year. There are currently 1 sell rating and 1 buy rating for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street equities research analysts is that investors should "hold" Sappi stock. A hold rating indicates that analysts believe investors should maintain any existing positions they have in SPPJY, but not buy additional shares or sell existing shares.

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They will take place this week and are the result of a series of informal meetings. The government asked each of the eight organizations to form a delegation. Groups opposed to the ceasefire also participate. Aung San Suu Kyi intends to end decades of conflicts that have hampered the transition to a democratic federal union.

Naypyidaw (AsiaNews / Agencies) - For the first time, the Burmese government has invited eight ethnic groups that have not signed the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) to the peace talks: It was announced last week by rebel organizations that received the convocation for the negotiations , which will open on March 21st.

These are the United Wa State Party(Uwsp), the Kachin Independence Organization (Kio), the Monglas Eastern Shan State Peace and Solidarity Committee (Psc), the Shan State Progressive Party (Sspp), the Kokangs Myanmar National Truth and Justice Party (Mntjp), the Palaung State Liberation Front (Pslf), the United League of Arakan (Ula) and the Karenni National Progressive Party (Knpp).

On March 22nd, a team of Tatmadaw negotiators (the Burmese army) will meet each of the political groups in separate meetings, an expression of their respective armed groups. The government has asked each of the organizations to form a delegation headed by a leader and an exponent of the armed wing.

The military will discuss the unilateral ceasefire with the rebels declared last December in five of their regional commands, in order to restart the peace process. The truce will last until April. It excludes the Western Command, where government troops are engaged in armed clashes with the Arakan Army (Aa), in the western state of Rakhine. The Tatmadaw is also conducting operations in the north of Shan State, against the Kachin Independence Army (Kia) and the Shan State Army (Ssa) [militiamen of Kio and Sspp].

The talks will take place this week and are the result of a series of informal meetings, which the Nayipyidaw Peace Commission held with Kio, Pslf, Mntjp and Ula in the Chinese province of Yunnan on February 25 and with Knpp in Chiang Mai, in Thailand, March 10.

Led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) - Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's party -, the government chaired periodic peace conferences, in an attempt to involve the ethnic armed organizations (Eao) that did not sign the NCA. The Agreement is a prerequisite for sitting at the table of the Panglong Peace Conference of the 21st century and the Union Peace Conference. Through these initiatives, the administration hopes to put an end to decades of conflicts that have hindered the country's transition to a democratic federal union.
Alliance in grey zone; Rahul will have to take a call on pact with Kejriwal.

New Delhi: An alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress for the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi remained in the grey zone on Tuesday even as the Arvind Kejriwal-led party roped in Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar to help broker a deal between the two parties.

While party sources said it was now upto Mr Gandhi to take a call on the Delhi alliance after he returns from the Northeast on Wednesday morning, the Congress president had earlier mandated state units to decide on local alliances. Recently the West Bengal Congress had also decided against any alliance with the CPI(M), a decision which has been accepted by the party high command.

On Tuesday morning, Mr Gandhi met NCP chief Sharad Pawar at his residence. Immediately after that, Mr Pawar met senior AAP leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh. Top sources told this newspaper that Mr Pawar had conveyed to Mr Singh that the Congress president was positive about any alliance between the Congress and the AAP in Delhi.

After the meeting, Mr Singh told the media that with the Constitution, democracy and the country in danger under the Narendra Modi government, attempts should be made by all Opposition

parties to unite and come together to fight it out.

The party can be saved later... There will be enough time to save the party. Right now the attempt should be to save the country and democracy, which is in danger due to the Modi government, he said, broadly hinting that Congress needs to understand the current political situation.

Senior Congress leaders maintain that it is this idea of saving the party that was keeping the Delhi unit from committing to an alliance with the AAP, which was largely blamed for wiping out the Congress from the national capital.

Many in the Congress feel that wherever we have aligned with regional parties, we have lost our base, a senior leader told this newspaper.

In Delhi, while DPCC chief Sheila Dikshit is against any alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party, the Congress general secretary in-charge, Mr P.C. Chacko, and former DPCC president Ajay Maken were in favour of an alliance.

Mr Chacko said on Tuesday: The Congress Working Committee has decided to align with like-minded parties across the country to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections. An opinion poll conducted among party workers through the partys Shakti App showed that a majority of them supported the alliance. However, as is usual with the Congress, the ball now appears to be in the party presidents court.
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, XTO Energy Canada, and XTO Holdings LLC.
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.
Equinor ASA engages in the exploration, production, transport, refining, and marketing of petroleum and petroleum-derived products. It operates through the following segments: Exploration and Production Norway, Exploration and Production International, Exploration and Production USA, Marketing, Midstream, and Processing, and Other. The Exploration and Production Norway segment includes the commercial development of oil and gas portfolios on the Norwegian continental shelf. The Exploration and Production International segment covers offshore and onshore activities in the USA, Mexico, and other operations worldwide. The Exploration and Production USA segment covers both onshore and offshore exploration, development, and Production of oil and gas in USA. The Marketing, Midstream, and Processing segment markets and trades of oil and gas commodities. The Other segment includes new energy solutions; global strategy and business development; technology; projects and drilling; and corporate staffs and services. The company was founded on September 18, 1972 and is headquartered in Stavanger, Norway.

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Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited provides seaborne crude oil and petroleum product transportation services worldwide. The company offers marine transportation services for national, major, and other independent oil companies and refiners under long, medium, and short-term charters. As of April 2, 2020, it operated a fleet of 65 double-hull vessels. The company was formerly known as MIF Limited and changed its name to Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited in July 2001. Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited was founded in 1993 and is based in Athens, Greece.

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iShares S&P 500 Value ETF's stock was trading at $104.96 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, IVE shares have increased by 46.2% and is now trading at $153.45.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
Kibo Energy PLC, together with its subsidiaries, explores for and develops energy projects in Sub Saharan Africa and the United Kingdom. The company holds a 100% interest in the Mbeya Coal to Power project located in Songwe Regio, Tanzania. It also holds an 85% interest in the Mabesekwa Coal Independent Power Project located in Botswana; and 65% interest in the Benga Power Plant Project located in the Tete province of Mozambique. In addition, the company owns a 100% interest in the Bordersley power plant located near Birmingham. Further, it engages in power generation and treasury businesses. Kibo Energy PLC has a collaboration agreement with ESS Tech Inc. to develop energy storage solutions. The company was formerly known as Kibo Mining Plc and changed its name to Kibo Energy PLC in July 2018. Kibo Energy PLC was founded in 2008 and is based in Galway, Ireland.

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Her nephew Siddharth is a BJP MLA from Kharagpur assembly segment, a part of Khajuraho parliamentary constituency.

Bhopal: Union minister Uma Bharti may be eyeing for a safe seat in Madhya Pradesh being unsure of retaining her Jhansi seat in Uttar Pradesh in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Ms Bharti who has written a letter to BJP national president Amit Shah four days ago expressing her desire to withdraw from the forthcoming parliamentary elections citing her ill health, was said to be keen to contest from Khajuraho Lok Sabha seat in MP this time, sources close to her said.

The LS constituency has sizeable population of Lodhi community, she belongs to, a close aide of Ms Bharti said.

Her nephew Siddharth is a BJP MLA from Kharagpur assembly segment, a part of Khajuraho parliamentary constituency.

She had won from Khajuraho four times in the past. Besides, the sitting BJP MP from Khajuraho Nagendra Singh has recently won the assembly elections, leaving the seat vacant.

Sources said Ms Bharti was skeptic about her chances of retaining Jhansi seat in view of alliance between SP-BSP in Uttar Pradesh.
The following companies are subsidiares of Kroger: 84.51 HQ Building Company LLC, 84.51 LLC, Alpha Beta Company, Ansonborough Square Investors I LLC, Ansonborough Square Retail LLC, Ardrey Kell Investments LLC, Bay Area Warehouse Stores Inc., Beech Tree Holdings LLC, Bell Markets Inc., Bleecker Ventures LLC, Bluefield Beverage Company, Box Cutter Inc., Brier Creek Arbors Drive Retail LLC, CB&S Advertising Agency Inc., Cala Co., Cala Foods Inc., Cheeses of All Nations Inc., Country Oven Inc., Crawford Stores Inc., Creedmoor Retail LLC, Dillon Companies LLC, Dillon Real Estate Co. Inc., Dillons, Distribution Trucking Company, Dotto Inc., Edgewood Plaza Holdings LLC, Embassy International Inc., FM Inc., FMJ Inc., Farmacia Doral Inc., Food 4 Less GM Inc., Food 4 Less Holdings Inc., Food 4 Less Merchandising Inc., Food 4 Less of California Inc., Food 4 Less of Southern California Inc., Fred Meyer, Fred Meyer Inc., Fred Meyer Jewelers Inc., Fred Meyer Stores Inc., Glasswing Labs LLC, Glendale/Goodwin Realty I LLC, Grubstake Investments LLC, HT Fuel DE LLC, HT Fuel NC LLC, HT Fuel SC LLC, HT Fuel VA LLC, HTGBD LLC, HTP Bluffton LLC, HTP Plaza LLC, HTP Relo LLC, HTPS LLC, HTTAH LLC, Harris Teeter, Harris Teeter LLC, Henpil Inc., Home Chef, Hood-Clayton Logistics LLC, Hughes Markets Inc., Hughes Realty Inc., I.T.A. Inc., IRP LLC, ITAC 119 LLC, ITAC 265 LLC, Inter-American Foods Inc., Inter-American Products Inc., J.V. Distributing Inc., Jondex Corp., Jubilee Carolina LLC, KCDE  2012 LLC, KCDE  2013 LLC, KCDE-2 LLC, KCDE-3 LLC, KCDE-4 LLC, KCDE-5 LLC, KGO LLC, KPF LLC, KPS LLC, KRGP LLC, KRLP Inc., KV Anderson LLC, Kee Trans Inc., Kessel FP, Kiosk Medicine Kentucky LLC, Kirkpatrick West Retail LLC, Kroger Community Development Entity LLC, Kroger Dedicated Logistics Co., Kroger Fulfillment Network LLC, Kroger G.O. LLC, Kroger LM Real Estate Holdings LLC, Kroger Limited Partnership I, Kroger Limited Partnership II, Kroger MC Holdings LLC, Kroger MTL Management LLC, Kroger Management Co., Kroger Management  Corryville LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Athens I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Champaign I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Champaign II LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Cincinnati I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Dallas I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Danville I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Logansport I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Missouri I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Oak Ridge I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Olney I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Omaha I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Portsmouth I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Starkville I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Topeka I LLC, Kroger Management  NMTC Warrenton I LLC, Kroger NMTC Fremont I LLC, Kroger OZ1 Inc., Kroger OZ1 LLC, Kroger OZ2 Inc., Kroger OZ2 LLC, Kroger OZ3 Inc., Kroger OZ3 LLC, Kroger Opportunity Fund I Inc., Kroger Prescription Plans Inc., Kroger Specialty Infusion AL LLC, Kroger Specialty Infusion CA LLC, Kroger Specialty Infusion Holdings Inc., Kroger Specialty Infusion TX LLC, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy CA 2 LLC, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy CA LLC, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy FL 2 LLC, Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Holdings 2 Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Holdings 3 Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Holdings I Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Holdings Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy Inc., Kroger Specialty Pharmacy LA LLC, Kroger Texas L.P., LCGP3 Home Cooking Inc., Latta Village LLC, Local Mkt LLC, Main & Vine LLC, Matthews Property 1 LLC, Mega Marts LLC, Michigan Dairy L.L.C., ModernHealth LTC, Murrays Cheese LLC, Murrays LIC LLC, Murrays Table LLC, Pace Dairy Foods Company, Paramount Logistics LLC, Pay Less Super Markets Inc., Peyton's-Southeastern Inc., Plum Labs LLC, Pontiac Foods Inc., Queen City Assurance Inc., RBF LLC, RGC Southeast Properties LLC, Ralphs Grocery Company, Relish Labs LLC, Rocket Newco Inc., Roundy's, Roundys Acquisition Corp., Roundys Illinois LLC, Roundys Inc., Roundys Supermarkets Inc., Second Story Inc., Shop-Rite LLC, Smiths Beverage of Wyoming Inc., Smiths Food & Drug Centers Inc., Southern Ice Cream Specialties Inc., Stallings Investors I LLC, Sunrise R&D Holdings LLC, Sunrise Technology LLC, TLC Corporate Services LLC, TLC Immunization Clinic LLC, TLC of Georgia LLC, The Kroger Co. of Michigan, The Little Clinic LLC, The Little Clinic Management Services LLC, The Little Clinic of Arizona LLC, The Little Clinic of Colorado LLC, The Little Clinic of IN LLC, The Little Clinic of Kansas LLC, The Little Clinic of Mississippi LLC, The Little Clinic of Ohio LLC, The Little Clinic of TX LLC, The Little Clinic of Tennessee LLC, The Little Clinic of VA LLC, Topvalco Inc., Ultimate Mart LLC, Ultra Mart Foods LLC, Vine Court Assurance Incorporated, Vitacost, Vitacost.com Inc., Woodmont Holdings LLC, and YOU Technology.
Brookdale Senior Living, Inc. engages in the operation of senior living communities. The firm manages independent living, assisted living and dementia-care communities and continuing care retirement centers. It operates through the following segments: Independent Living Assisted Living & Memory Care, CCRCs, Health Care Services and Management Services. The Independent Living segment is primarily designed for middle to upper income seniors who desire an upscale residential environment providing the highest quality of service. The Assisted Living & Memory Care segment offer housing and 24-hour assistance with ADLs to mid-acuity frail and elderly residents. The CCRCs segment offers a variety of living arrangements and services to accommodate all levels of physical ability and health. The Healthcare Services segment provides home health, hospice and outpatient therapy services, as well as education and wellness programs, to residents of many communities and to seniors living outside communities. The Management Services segment composes of communities operated by the company pursuant to management agreements. The company was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Brentwood, TN.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Global Payments: ACTIVE Network - Communities and Sports, Active Network (HK) Limited, Active Network IPICO (CA) Inc., Active Network IPICO (US) Inc., Active Network IPICO Holdings (US) LLC, Active Network IPICO Holdings (US) LLC, Active Network IPICO Innovation Inc., Active Networks LLC, AdvancedMD, Athlaction Intermediate LLC, Athlaction Topco LLC, AuctionPay, Comercia Global Payments Entidad de Pago S.L., DEBITEK INC, Digital Dining LLC, Dinerware LLC, DolEx Europe S.L., Educational Computer Systems Inc., Ematters Australia Pty Ltd., Equifax Credit Services LLC, Ezi Holdings Pty. Ltd., Ezi Management Pty Ltd., Ezidebit, Ezidebit (NZ) Limited, Ezidebit HK Ltd., Ezidebit Pty Ltd., GP Finance LLC, GPC Financial Corporation, GPS Holding Limited Partnership, GPUK LLP, Global Payment Holding Company, Global Payment Systems Asia-Pacific (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd., Global Payment Systems LLC, Global Payment Systems of Canada Ltd., Global Payments - Caixa Acquisition Corporation S.a.r.l., Global Payments - Realex Payments Holding Limited, Global Payments - Servicos de Pagamentos S.A., Global Payments Acquisition Corp. 1 B.V., Global Payments Acquisition Corp. 2 B.V., Global Payments Acquisition Corp. 3 B.V., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 2 LLC, Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 2 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 3 LLC, Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 3 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 4 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 6 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 7 LLC, Global Payments Acquisition Corporation 7 S.a.r.l., Global Payments Acquisition Corporation HK Holding Limited, Global Payments Acquisition PS 1 C.V., Global Payments Acquisition PS 2 C.V., Global Payments Acquisition PS 3 C. V., Global Payments Acquisition PS1-Global Payments Direct S.e.n.c., Global Payments Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong Holding) Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong) Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific (India) Private Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific (Shanghai) Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific (Singapore Holding) Ltd., Global Payments Asia-Pacific Lanka (Private) Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Macau Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Maldives Private Limited, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Philippines Incorporated, Global Payments Asia-Pacific Processing Company Limited, Global Payments Australia Pty 1 Ltd., Global Payments Australia Pty 2 Ltd., Global Payments Canada GP, Global Payments Canada Inc., Global Payments Card Processing Malaysia Sdn. Bhd, Global Payments Check Recovery Services Inc., Global Payments Check Services Inc., Global Payments Direct Inc., Global Payments Europe d.o.o. Sarajevo, Global Payments Europe s.r.o., Global Payments Gaming Canada Inc., Global Payments Gaming International Inc., Global Payments Gaming Services Inc., Global Payments Integrated, Global Payments Limited, Global Payments Process Centre Inc., Global Payments South America Brasil-Servicos de Pagamentos S.A., Global Payments UK 2 Ltd., Global Payments UK Ltd., Global Payments s.r.o., Greater Giving Inc., Heartland Acquisition LLC, Heartland Payment Solutions Inc., Heartland Payment Systems, Heartland Payment Systems LLC, Heartland Payroll Solutions Inc., IPICO South Africa (Pty) Ltd., JumpForward LLC, Maximum Solutions LLC, Merchant Services U.S.A. Inc., Modular Data Inc., NDC Holdings (UK) Ltd., NDPS Holdings Inc., PCAmerica LLC, Pay and Shop Limited, PayPros LLC, Payment Processing, Payroll 1 Inc., Realex Payments, SICOM Systems, Sabrir Invest S.L., Sentral Education, Spolecnost pro informacni database a.s., Storman Holdings Pty Ltd., Storman Software Inc., Storman Software Limited, Storman Software Ltd., Storman Software Pty Ltd., TeamPages Inc., The Active Network (Asia) Pte. Ltd, The Active Network (Aus-NZ) Pty. Ltd., The Active Network (EU) Ltd., The Active Network Ltd., The Active Network Ltd. (Chengdu), The Active Network Ltd. (Xian), Total System Services, TouchNet Information Systems Inc., UCS Terminal Joint Stock Company, United Card Service Joint Stock Company, VEPF III AIV VI-C Corp., VEPF IV AIV VII-C Corp., VFF I AIV IV-C Corp., Web Active Corporation Pty Ltd., Xenial, Xpient LLC, eWAY, eWay Europe Limited, eWay Payments Asia Pte Ltd., eWay Payments Inc., eWay Payments New Zealand Limited, eWay Payments North America Inc., and eWay Payments Pty Ltd..
The following companies are subsidiares of Procter & Gamble: "Procter & Gamble Services" LLC, "Procter & Gamble" LLC, Agile Pursuits, Agile Pursuits Franchising, Arbora, Arbora & Ausonia, Arborinvest, Billie, Braun (Shanghai) Co., Braun GmbH, Braun-Gillette Immobilien GmbH & Co. KG, Celtic Insurance Company, Compania Procter & Gamble Mexico, Compania Quimica S.A., Corporativo Procter & Gamble, Cosmetic Products Pty. Ltd., Detergent Products B.V., Detergent Products SARL, Detergenti S.A., Eurocos Cosmetic GmbH, FPG Oleochemicals Sdn. Bhd., Fameccanica Data S.p.A., Fameccanica Industria e Comercio Do Brasil LTDA., Fameccanica Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Fater S.p.A., Fountain Square Music Publishing Co., Gillette (China) Ltd., Gillette (Shanghai) Ltd., Gillette Aesop Ltd., Gillette Australia Pty. Ltd., Gillette Canada Holdings, Gillette Commercial Operations North America, Gillette Diversified Operations Pvt. Ltd., Gillette Egypt S.A.E., Gillette Group UK Ltd, Gillette Gruppe Deutschland GmbH & Co. oHG, Gillette Holding Company LLC, Gillette Holding GmbH, Gillette India Limited, Gillette Industries Ltd., Gillette International B.V., Gillette Latin America Holding B.V., Gillette Management LLC, Gillette Nova Scotia Company, Gillette Pakistan Limited, Gillette Poland International Sp. z.o.o., Gillette Poland S.A., Gillette U.K. Limited, Gillette del Uruguay, Giorgio Beverly Hills Inc., Hyginett KFT, Industries Marocaines Modernes SA, LLC "Procter & Gamble Novomoskovsk", LLL "Procter & Gamble Distributorskaya Compania", Laboratorios Vicks, Liberty Street Music Publishing Company, Limited Liability Company 'Procter & Gamble Trading Ukraine', Limited Liability Company with foreign investments Procter & and Gamble Ukraine, MDVIP, MERCK KGAA NPV, Marcvenca Inversiones, Modern Industries Company - Dammam, Modern Products Company - Jeddah, New Chapter, New Chapter Canada Inc., Olay LLC, Oral-B Laboratories, P&G Distribution Morocco SAS, P&G Hair Care Holding, P&G Industrial Peru S.R.L., P&G Innovation Godo Kaisha, P&G Israel M.D.O. 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Tuesdays deliberations by the CEC were the second in a series that began on Saturday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah during the BJP Central Election Committee meeting for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections at BJP headquarters in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The BJP, which faced a severe drubbing in the recent Chhattisgarh Assembly polls, has decided to drop all its 10 sitting MPs from the state, including former chief minister Raman Singhs son Abhishek. The state leadership of Chhattisgarh BJP has been asked to give fresh names by Wednesday, sources said on Tuesday after the partys Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting in Delhi.

Sources said the CEC held discussions till late Tuesday evening to discuss names of candidates for Lok Sabha elections and the final list of the names is likely to be out by March 23, two days before the close of nominations for the first phase of election on April 11.

Tuesdays deliberations by the CEC were the second in a series that began on Saturday. The meeting, held at party headquarters, was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah, Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadk-ari and Rajnath Singh.

Chhattisgarh BJP in-charge and national general secretary Anil Jain said, The BJP will change all its sitting MPs in the state in this election, the CEC has approved it. We will bring new candidates and win on all 11 seats in the state.

He pointed out that the decision came as the party wants new candidates and fresh energy.

While Raman Singhs son Abhishek has been dropped, the former chief minister himself is likely to be fielded from Rajnandgaon, sources said.

Sources aware of discussions in the CEC said that the party is considering not to field old warhorses like L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Shanta Kumar, Bhagat Singh Koshyari, Bhuvan Chand Khanduri, Kalraj Mishra and Shatrughan Sinha.

In Uttarakhand, Ajay Bhatt is likely to replace Mr Khanduri on the Garhwal seat whereas Tirath Singh Rawat is likely to be the partys candidate from Nainital-Udhamsingh

Nagar, replacing Mr Koshyari. Ajay Tamta, Ramesh Pokhariyal and Rajyalakshmi Shah are likely to be repeated from their respective.

Sources said another CEC meeting is likely to take place on Wednesday evening along with interactions of various state core groups with Mr Shah.

On Sunday, the party had released a list of 123 candidates for Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections and 54 candidates for Arunachal Pradesh Assembly elections which are being held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls. The list was released following partys CEC meeting on Saturday.

While the BJP has still not finalised the names of its candidates for the upcoming general elections, Opposition Congress has released five lists of total 137 candidates till now.

The Lok Sabha elections will be held in seven phases from April 11 to May 19 for 543 seats across the country. Counting of votes will be done on May 23.
Nature is known to regenerate and look after itself if left untouched by humans.

Delhi has made it to global headlines over the past half-decade. Unfortunately, it is for all the wrong reasons. Air pollution, worsening quality of life and increasing stress levels are reasons many families cite for migrating from Indias capital city, often within the country and sometimes even abroad. A sad commentary for a city that has been the seat of at least seven kingdoms and has continued uninterrupted as a human settlement for more almost 1,300 years at least, if not more. What has sustained the city for so long has been the two powerful natural features - the Aravallis and the Yamuna river, both of which are now gasping for breath besides the residents, of course.

Flawed governance, a colossal lack of vision, massive corruption and self-serving interests have led a rich natural eco-system to the brink of disintegration where people find themselves living in a city that takes their health away from them  a fundamental right that should come automatically. This collapse of urban governance is happening not just in Delhi but is also visible in the cities that surround it  Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Noida, Indirapuram and Meerut. If the environment in Delhi has to be set right, the herculean effort will have to be simultaneously initiated in the National Capital Region as well so that the residents can collectively benefit from such an integrated effort. Otherwise, the pollution combatting efforts will only be symptomatic.

A golden evening at the nearly 700-year-old Hauz Khas Lake.

Though the picture is far from rosy, there are things on the sidelines that remain positive. Delhi still remains one of the greenest urban conglomerations  the foliage granted to it through the city forests, the river Yamuna, the numerous historical forts and palaces with attached parks and the dozens of drains that criss-cross the city.

The city forests have been protected by environmental zealots who protested, went to the courts and lobbied the city administration and the Central governments to accord them legal status for protection against real estate companies.

A positive development has been the rise of the urban middle-class that has come forward to hold protests and put governments under pressure over policy decisions that are decidedly anti-environment. In the last one year alone people have protested, and rightly so, over a proposed road connecting Delhi and Gurgaon through a green belt. The irony is that this area had been recently afforested with native plants. In a similar agitation that took place just a few months later, Delhiites protested over a massive redevelopment plan to construct accommodation for government officials in central Delhi where the Forest Department had given permission to cut down 17,000 fully-grown trees.
The unknown caller made an Internet call from Spain, which triggered the panic at the airport.

After random checking and physical baggage check, the call was found to be hoax.

New Delhi: A hoax bomb threat and spotting of an UFO kept security agencies on their toes for hours at the Indira Gandhi International airport on Sunday after Delhi police received a call in Kalkaji police station. The unknown caller made an Internet call from Spain, which triggered the panic at the airport.

The Delhi police control room informed Security Operations Control Center (SOCC) at IGI airport that at about 6 pm, Delhi police ASI Jitender, who is posted at Kalkaji police station had received a threat call on the landline number from an unknown caller saying, Aapke airport aaj mein uddaa dunga, airport uddaa dunga.

At about 6:55 pm, bomb threat assessment committee (BTAC) was convened who declared the call as non-specific at 7:15 pm, however, as a precautionary measure, the random checking, and physical baggage check, pat down search, profiling, CCTV surveillance and regular sweeping of airport was enhanced. The call was found to be hoax, said the sources.

Earlier on Sunday afternoon, an IndiGo airline pilot who was flying a Delhi-bound flight from Chennai, spotted a flying like object when he was approaching at runway number 27 of IGI airport at a distance of 14 nautical miles while landing on runway number 29.

All the concerned were informed and duty personnel were alerted. PSOs checked their respective area and found everything normal. Later, at about 1:53 pm, the said flight landed safely. The flight operation from runway number 27 remained suspended from 1:41 pm to 02:02 pm.
The party leaders of the Delhi unit, however, maintained that there was no talk of an alliance during the meeting.

NEW DELHI: Amid a buzz that top Congress leadership was yet again looking at options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in the national capital, partys state unit head and former chief minister Sheila Dikshit on Tuesday called an urgent meeting with the three working presidents and went about the process of selection of candidates for all seven seats in the capital for the coming elections.

An urgent meeting was called and it was decided that the selection of candidates should begin. Around 70 applications have been received by the party from Delhi Congress leaders for seven seats in Delhi, a senior party leader said.

The leader said that the screening committee of the party, including Ms Dikshit, has to shortlist names from among the applications and send a list of 2-3 names per seat to top leadership for final announcement. The meeting with the three working presidents Devender Yadav, Haroon Yusuf and Rajesh Lilothia, at Ms Diskhits residence, came in the backdrop of Congress mulling its options to align with the AAP in its bid to defeat Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo in Lok Sabha elections, days after having unanimously decided to go it alone in Delhi.

The party leaders of the Delhi unit, however, maintained that there was no talk of an alliance during the meeting.

Uncertainty has been persisting in the Delhi Congress over a pre-poll tie-up with the AAP after Ms Dikshit and her three working presidents wrote to Congress president Rahul Gandhi against the alliance. In a letter written last week, Ms Dikshit along with Mr Yusuf, Mr Yadav and Mr Lilothia protested a recent phone survey to gauge workers mood on the alliance.

Though Ms Dikshit has been totally against any alliance with the AAP, she has left the decision to the party leadership and will go by whatever they say. But she maintained that the Congress was in a better position to fight with the workers on its own to take on the BJP in all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi.

On Tuesday morning, Maharashtra heavyweight Sharad Pawar took on the role of the mediator to stitch together an alliance between the Congress and the AAP. After Mr Pawars intervention, sources said Ms Dikshit also discussed reconsideration of the tie-up with AAP with her colleagues who had assembled at her residence to discuss about the process of selection of candidates for the Parliamentary polls. Sources said that party leaders were trying to convince Ms Dikshit for an alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP.

AICC general secretary in-charge of Delhi Congress PC Chacko said, I am in consultation with Congress party leaders in Delhi on the possibilities of forging an alliance with AAP.
The missing sailor has been identified as 53-year-old Abdul Azeez Kolkata.

The Coast Guard immediately rushed Amartya by diverting it to undertake the search and rescue mission.

Mumbai: The Coast Guard launched a rescue operation off Mumbai coast after a fishing vessel sent an SOS communication to their control room on Monday morning.

The distress call was made after the tugboat began sinking with 7 persons on board, while it was headed to Tarapur from Mumbai. While six people were rescued, search continued to find the seventh sailor.

The officials said that the call was received from a tugboat Revati at around 10.45 am. The call stated that the vessel was bound for Tarapur from Mumbai and had seven crew members onboard.

The sailors sought help as the tugboat was sinking. The Coast Guard immediately rushed Amartya, its fast patrol vessel on surveillance mission, by diverting it to undertake search and rescue mission.

The Coast Guard ship responded to the distress call and reached the location of tugboat at 10.54 am. The operation began soon and we rescued six crew members from the sinking vessel. The recovered crew was provided with necessary first-aid and they were stabilised. One of the crew member is still missing, said a Coast Guard release.

Those rescued were identified as Rashid Qasim Suratiya (38), Tonoy Chalak (22)from West Bengal, Ramesh Keni (55) from Borivali, Dilip Yadav (29) from Malad who has sustained injuries in the incident, Shanu Kumar (19) from Patna in Bihar and Salim Siddique.

The missing sailor has been identified as 53-year-old Abdul Azeez Kolkata.

The search and rescue operation continued further to look for the missing person. In addition to the surface search by two ships, two helicopter sorties by Chetak helicopter were also pressed into service to undertake sea-air coordinated search.
The Christchurch shooter believed he was saving his people by eliminating Muslims, who if unchecked would one day overrun his country.

The Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who was a major inspiration for the Christchurch killer, was also fuelled by righteousness. (Photo:AP)

If there is any one lesson to be learnt from the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a lone gunman shot dead 50 people and seriously injured 40 more, it is the danger of righteousness.

Brenton Harrison Tarrant, who carried out the mass shootings, believed he was doing the right thing by killing Muslims, whom he believed were invaders. He even justified the killing of children by arguing that the children of invaders do not stay children, they become adults and reproduce, creating more invaders to replace your people.

The Christchurch shooter believed he was saving his people by eliminating Muslims, who if unchecked would one day overrun his country. During his brief court appearance, he flashed a white power symbol to indicate what his actions were all about.

The Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who was a major inspiration for the Christchurch killer, was also fuelled by righteousness. On July 22, 2011, Breivik had detonated a bomb and gunned down 69 people because he believed his targets  government officials and ruling Labour Party youth wing members  were traitors helping the Muslim invasion of Norway. In all he, killed 76 people and severely wounded as many as 158 others in what is now considered one of the worlds biggest massacres.

Islamophobia is one of the ideologies fuelling hatred in a number of Western countries, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. Right-wing organisations dedicated to curb the rise of Muslims have sprouted in a number of these countries, including Italy, Germany, France, the United States, and Russia. They all believe they are the vanguard of the movement aimed at protecting the original white inhabitants of their countries.

Lone killers and members of extremist organisations obsessed with real or imagined wrongs and driven by messianic zeal have rendered the world even more unpredictable and dangerous. Nothing is sacrosanct anymore, not places of prayer, schools, discotheques or markets; all such places have witnessed mass killings in our times.

Discontent is not new to mankind, nor is the feeling of being threatened by developments or forces beyond ones control. Righteous zeal has fuelled much hatred, acts of violence, wars and genocide.

But it is only now that we have powers of immense destruction available to a single individual. And we also have the social media to advertise distorted, often violent ideologies, boast individual prowess and gloat mass murder. No surprise that the Christchurch killer had used Facebook to announce his attacks in advance and later stream the entire attack as it took place.

The world today has a plethora of subcultures united by hatred and righteousness where individuals take pride in violent acts against the perceived enemy. If the West has its mass shooters, other parts of the world have suicide bombers and well-armed terrorists forever ready to take down as many of the enemy as possible.

Adding to this potentially catastrophic situation is the availability of extremely lethal weaponry and explosives  machine guns, assault rifles, RDX explosives and so on. Lax gun controls in some countries such as the United States and New Zealand, and a few governments eager to spread mass mayhem, such as Pakistans military establishment, facilitate todays archangels of death.

Significantly, one of the first actions of New Zealands Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, after the Christchurch shootings, was to announce that her Cabinet had agreed in principle to pass new gun control rules. Ms Ardern also denounced any link between Muslim immigration and violence.

Indians are no strangers to the possibility of sudden violent death perpetrated by individuals motivated by the righteousness of some cause or the other. Naxalites routinely kill hundreds as do terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir, like the suicide bomber who recently took down more than 40 CRPF jawans on a highway in Pulwama. Pakistani and Kashmiri terrorists glorify their killing missions with righteousness while their funerals are attended by thousands.

The important aspect of these mass killers is not their mental condition, as it is sometimes argued in their defence, but the pathological cultures in which they are incubated and sustained.

The subculture of white supremacists in many Western countries constitute one such toxic petri-dish. The other are the madrasas of Pakistan from where suicide bombers strapped with high explosives, and prepped by the idea of doing the Almightys work, routinely blow up innocent worshippers and civilians in neighbouring Afghanistan.

In most Western countries there are strong law enforcement and ideological counters to pathological subcultures, which is why they remain a small minority. Large groups intent on mass killings cannot survive for long in these countries. However, weak gun controls and lack of widespread social condemnation of extremist ideologies in a number of other countries continue to make them vulnerable to sudden outbreaks of attacks and random mass killings.

There is also an unfortunate tendency to be selective about our awareness and condemnation of mass massacres. While the Christchurch shooting hit world headlines and triggered condemnation all over, including in India, many massacres go unnoticed.

In November last year, a suicide assault on a meeting of Muslim scholars and clerics in Kabul killed 55 people and wounded 94 others. In January this year, a Taliban fanatic rammed an explosive laden vehicle into a compound leaving more than a hundred people dead. This month, mortar shelling killed 11 people and injured 95 in Kabul at a gathering to commemorate the death anniversary of a Shia leader. These killings have not made headlines here, and nor has anyone lit candles or mourned these deaths. The far greater danger arises when pathological killers armed with righteousness assume state power, as the Taliban are about to do in Afghanistan and as the Nazis had achieved in Germany.

No cause, great or small, can justify mass murder. This is an issue the world must come together to supress. For, as John Donne wrote a long time ago: Each man's death diminishes me,/ For I am involved in mankind./ Therefore, send not to know/ For whom the bell tolls,/ It tolls for thee.

But when will we ever learn?
The lack of intelligent and sensible debate in Parliament portends bad days for our democracy.

A state that ignores the majority, especially a needy majority, and an increasingly young and restive majority at that, does so at its own peril. (Photo: PTI)

With the 17th Lok Sabha elections fast approaching, we increasingly hear them described as a celebration of democracy! It very well might be so, but for who and how still remains to be explained.

This reminds me of a tale from the Mahabharata, when many years after their victory in the great 18-day war, King Yudhishtra decides to perform the Ashvamedha Yajna at Hastinapur. A great feast was prepared and then an interesting incident took place. A mongoose entered the kitchen and after helping himself to the food, began to laugh uproariously. It was apprehended and taken to the King, who asked for an explanation for this outrageous behaviour?

The mongoose narrated the story of a poor brahmin family, which after having starved for a week had found some grain. Just as they were getting ready to eat, a mendicant knocked on the door and asked for food. He kept asking for more, and finally the lady of the house served him with all of it. A few morsels were still left in the dishes and our friend, the foraging mongoose, helped himself to them. And lo and behold, that food was so blessed that he began to turn golden. But it was not enough to turn all of him golden.

And ever since then, the mongoose said: I have been going from puja to puja, and from yajna to yajna in small and great homes, hoping to find food that will turn the rest of my body golden. Even your food, Great King, is not blessed enough to do that! Thats why I am laughing.

The ordinary Indians experience with democracy is pretty much the same. More than 70 years ago a frail old man in a loincloth, steel-rimmed glasses and a staff in hand had turned us half-golden. Independence gave us freedom and equality, and above all hope. We have since then been through 16 general elections, 16 celebrations of democracy and the hopes still remains unfulfilled. Perhaps they never will be? Perhaps democracy is only a halfway house? Perhaps we have distorted our democracy?

According to Aristotle, the underlying principle of democracy is freedom, since only in a democracy can freedom be shared. There are two aspects to freedom  being ruled and ruling. And since everyone is equal, numbers matter.

We in India have equality in the sense implied in a democracy. We have periodic free and fair elections  at least reasonably free and fair, an independent media, an independent judiciary and all of us enjoy all the freedoms we believe to be essential to be a free people.

But why then are we unhappy with the system of government we have? To begin to understand this, we must first understand what kind of a democracy we have evolved into.

We were intended to be a hybrid democracy, combining direct democracy at the local levels and representative democracy at the regional and national levels. To facilitate the installation of a direct democracy at the lowest levels, we needed to dismantle the traditional institutions of local government. While in most parts of the country institutions such as the Khaps, Jaati Sabhas and Gaon Sabhas continue to stubbornly exist, their powers and influence has been considerably whittled down by state systems in anticipation of a new system of government called the panchayati raj, a system based on elections by equals and not based on tradition and birth. The panchayati raj system never did take root. As a matter of fact, local government even in the cities never took root. The distribution of salaries tells this tale vividly.

Out of a total national expenditure of almost Rs 5,00,000 crores each year on salaries and pensions, the central government distributes almost 42 per cent, the state governments almost 47 per cent and all the nations local governments only 11 per cent.

Now what happened? Though the founders of this republic never used the term political party even once in the Constitution, from day one we were intended to be and are a party-based democracy. When people elect representatives they are in fact choosing parties. And now we are increasingly electing a supreme leader.

How parties function then becomes critical to our democracy. If parties did not function or are not required to function in a prescribed constitutional and democratic manner, the leadership inevitably migrates into the hands of an elite, as we have seen in almost all

our political parties now. These political parties now have factions that come together on the basis of a shared region, religion or caste, with any one of these impulses being the dominating motive for coming together.

We have seen the transition of democratic styles in many of the worlds established democracies. The United States saw power passing from a self-nominating convention nomination process to a primary-based system that binds the convention to the choice of individual party members. This kind of a transition did not happen in India. On the other hand, we migrated from a system where parties consisted of equals sharing a common purpose and sometimes goals to one where power passed into the hands of a self-perpetuating political aristocracy.

This system is in fact akin to the democracy of the Kouroukan Fouga of the great Mali Empire, where clans (lineages) were represented in a great assembly called the Gbbara. We had a similar system in the form of the Loya Jirga in Afghanistan. Even the Licchavi democracy in the post-Magadhan period was akin to this.

Clan democracies are implicit with concentration of power with a very few and the manifestation of dictatorial tendencies. The bottom-up system thus transforms itself into a top-down system. Power then flows from a position of power. There is another consequence to this. When we have a clan democracy, issues pale and the capture of power becomes the sole driving force. Since issues have to be dealt with, we quickly get an ideological consensus, as we see in India now. The clans are quite satisfied with a system that gives them a share of the power and the pelf that goes with it.

This has happened in India and unfortunately most social scientists have not seen in it a failure of democracy. Thats why what Che Guevara said in 1961 in Uruguay is relevant here: Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landlords and professional politicians.

The lack of intelligent and sensible debate in Parliament portends bad days for our democracy. Even the relatively few who care to attend Parliament seem to be increasingly doing so more with the intention of making propaganda by deed by taking resort to unparliamentary, mostly unsavoury, ways. No party is blameless.

A state that ignores the majority, especially a needy majority, and an increasingly young and restive majority at that, does so at its own peril. The stresses and strains are showing everywhere around us. Not a day passes when some long-felt demand for attention doesnt result in an explosion of fury. Coercion begets more coercion and soon the mob and the State are fused together by paroxysms of violence. All restraint is thrown to the ill winds and with it goes the semblance of democracy. The ill winds have torn to shreds the sails of democracy that are meant to take the ship of state towards prosperity and national unity.

All recent economic trends point towards accretion of wealth and the benefits of policy by a small minority. We now not only have one of the highest income inequalities in the world, but the regional imbalance indices are even worse. The vast majority of our people live under the shadow of the monsoons.

Even worse is the limited focus of the national media, particularly the English print media and television channels, on the concerns of a small and self-centred elite that propounds the so-called market reforms and the so-called liberalisation only to help itself even more. The loot of the stock market and the banking system are a lasting testimony to the concerns of this section, for which the government mostly toils. In a true democracy, the concerns and wants of the majority will be the focus of the State. Till then, we will be going from celebration to celebration, like that mongoose, to become fully golden.
The USD 500 million contract for the project calls on the companies to deliver a computer with so-called exaflop performance.

The Department of Energy and the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago said they are working on a supercomputer dubbed Aurora with Intel.

A US government-led group is working with chipmaker Intel Corp and Cray Inc to develop and build the nations fastest computer by 2021 for conducting nuclear weapons and other research, officials said on Monday.

The Department of Energy and the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago said they are working on a supercomputer dubbed Aurora with Intel, the worlds biggest supplier of data center chips, and Cray, which specializes in the ultra-fast machines.

The USD 500 million contract for the project calls on the companies to deliver a computer with so-called exaflop performance - that is, being able to perform 1 quintillion - or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 - calculations per second.

If the project succeeds, Aurora would represent nearly an order of magnitude leap over existing machines that feature so-called petaflop performance, capable of doing 1 quadrillion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 - calculations a second.

It also heightens the stakes in a race in which the United States, China, the European Union, and Japan have all announced plans to build exaflop-capable supercomputers.

One of Auroras primary functions would be simulating nuclear blasts, a pillar of weapons development since the ban of live detonation testings.

Aurora will be built with artificial intelligence capabilities for projects such as developing better battery materials and helping the Veterans Administration prevent suicides, Rick Stevens, an associate lab director with Argonne overseeing the exascale computing project, said during a news briefing.

The project is a win for Intel, which will supply its Xeon CPU chips and Optane memory chips for Aurora.

Intel has been fending off rival US chipmaker Nvidia Corps rise in the chip content of supercomputers as the machines take on more artificial intelligence work. Nvidias chips are found in five of the worlds current top-10 supercomputers, though the Nvidia chips are found alongside chips from its rivals, according to TOP500, which ranks the machines.

The worlds current most powerful machine, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, contains chips from International Business Machines Corp and Nvidia.

The source of chips for supercomputers has become a factor in trade tensions between the United States and China. The worlds third-fastest supercomputer - the Sunway TaihuLight in China - has chips developed domestically in China.

Chirag Dekate, an analyst with Gartner who studies the supercomputing market, said that despite the small contract size relative to Intels overall revenue, the work done on Aurora will eventually filter down to the companys commercial customers.

Its not just a jingoistic race between the US and China, Dekate said. The innovations that Intel is developing here will percolate down to other parts of its business.
This marks another important step for the TCG group in providing the US customers with innovative, high quality and integrated small molecule cGMP drug development synthesis services.

Hyderabad: TCG Lifesciences, part of New York based The Chatterjee Group, promoted by Dr Purnendu Chatterjee, has today announced that it has received the USFDA approval for its chemical development and manufacturing facility in Hyderabad.

Supported by a strong talent pool of over 800 qualified scientists of TCG Lifesciences, Clininvent Research Pvt Ltd, the 100 per cent subsidiary of the company, has successfully passed a pre-approval inspection as a manufacturing plant, by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). The inspection confirmed the site to be compliant with the principles and guidelines of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP).

The chemical development and manufacturing facility is located at Anantaram in Hyderabad and boasts of manufacturing advanced intermediates and Regulatory Starting Materials (RSMs) and custom manufacturing of New Chemical Entities (NCEs). The plant is equipped with multiple reactors totaling of a huge scale of production capacity.

Swapan Bhattacharya, Managing Director, TCG Lifesciences says, This marks another important step for the TCG group in providing the US customers with innovative, high quality and integrated small molecule cGMP drug development synthesis services, covering IND enabling studies, clinical trials, and commercial production. At the same time, it marks our entry into the high growth generic APIs and intermediates domain for regulated markets. The key differentiators for TCGLS are our ability to handle very complex synthesis challenges, deliver comprehensive CMC packages and implement high end analytical and regulatory quality systems.

The pre-approval inspection was triggered by a DMF filing by one of our clients and subsequent ANDA filing mentioned Subho Roy, Vice President, TCG Lifesciences.
Dailyhunt President Umang Bedi said the company is confident about Discovery's content being a massive hit with the vast diaspora of India.

New Delhi: Discovery Communications India on Tuesday said it has entered into a partnership with news and local content discovery app, Dailyhunt.

Under the partnership, Discovery Communications India (DCIN) will have a video destination named Discovery Plus on the home page of Dailyhunt app, offering short-form video content especially customised for the digital audiences in India, the company said in a statement.

The partnership will help DCIN immediately expand its footprint on the digital domain in India, leveraging 153 million monthly user base of Dailyhunt platform, it added. On the other hand, Dailyhunt will get access to content library and upcoming titles of Discovery, it added. "The partnership with Dailyhunt offers us an exciting opportunity to understand, analyse and explore India's burgeoning digital play," Simon Robinson, managing director, Discovery Asia Pacific and chief financial officer, Discovery International said.

Dailyhunt President Umang Bedi said the company is confident about Discovery's content being a massive hit with the vast diaspora of India. "This partnership is completely aligned with our overall content plans of providing unique, exclusive, high-quality content from great content partners like Discovery as we rapidly scale our business," he added.

The multi-year agreement, exclusive for the featured short-form content on Discovery Plus, will offer scalable monetisation opportunity to the two organisations, the statement added. DCIN said its content across outdoor, food, wildlife, science and military verticals is currently available in five languages -- English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali -- in India.
Investment in mutual funds usually provide you with the best returns in the long run, compared to other traditional investment options available. With the rise in awareness, more and more investors are getting drawn to investing in mutual funds. To ensure, new investors make the right choices and track their investments smartly, its critical that investors are well-versed with at least the basics of mutual funds. Here are 10 frequently used mutual fund terms that all investors must know:

Net Asset Value (NAV)

NAV is obtained by dividing Asset Under Management (AUM) with the total number of units outstanding on any particular date. AUM is the market value of all the securities like shares, gold, derivatives, cash, bonds etc. held by mutual fund, less liabilities. For instance, assume that the market value of securities of mutual fund is Rs. 300 crore and the mutual fund has issued 100 lakh units, then the NAV per unit of fund will be Rs.300 (i.e. 300 crore/100 lakh).

Since market value of the securities changes daily, NAV of a scheme also differs on daily basis. NAV represents the fund value at which the fund units are bought or sold, and its rise or fall shows how well the fund is performing. If the current NAV of your fund is higher than what you bought at, then you are earning a profit from the fund.

Dividend Option

Dividend option enables you to avail dividend as and when declared by mutual fund. However, most people consider mutual funds dividend as an additional income. They are the amount paid out of your own investment. The dividend paid out is calculated on the funds face value. The NAV of the unit drops to the extent of dividend paid out. For instance, if a fund with NAV of Rs. 40 declares 40% dividend, the dividend amount will be Rs. 4 (40% of Rs. 10, its face value), and the NAV will go down to Rs. 36 after the dividend record date.

Growth Option

Under the growth option, you do not receive any dividend from the fund. It endows you the power of compounding returns as your entire principal amount along with the returns generated remain invested. This helps in maximising your returns, which upon sale of fund yield higher capital gain on same number of shares you originally bought. Therefore, if you prefer capital appreciation over regular income, then you must opt for this option.

Systematic Investment Plan (SIP)

SIP enables you to invest a predetermined amount in mutual funds at regular intervals to build a corpus. Investment frequency in SIP can be weekly, monthly or quarterly. SIP saves you from the dilemma of timing your mutual fund investments by ensuring regular investments and instils financial discipline.

Total Expense Ratio (TER)

TER refers to the annual operating expenses as a percentage divided by the average daily net assets. The annual operating expenses includes advisory fees and investment management, sales and agent commissions, ongoing service fees, audit and legal fees, transfer and registrar agent fees, marketing and selling expenses and fund administration expenses. As these expenses are met from the assets managed by the fund, a lower TER leads to higher returns. The TER of direct plans is generally up to 1% lower than regular plans as the former are sold directly to the investors without involving any distributor. The savings, through a lower TER, remain invested in the direct plans, which start generating returns on their own due to the power of compounding. Although in the initial years you may find this difference to be small but over long term it yields a sizeable return.

Benchmark Index

Fund houses use specific indices as point of reference for measuring the performance of mutual fund. For example, large cap fund may use NIFTY50, SENSEX or BSE 100 indices as benchmark, while mid cap funds may use NSE Midcap index. If a fund outperforms its benchmark index, then it is considered a better investment than the benchmark. Therefore, before investing in any fund, you must evaluate its returns by comparing the performance of the fund with its benchmark index, preferably over 5 years or more.

New Fund Offer (NFO)

NFO is the first-time subscription offer for any new mutual fund offered by Asset Management Companies (AMCs) to the public. The investors wanting to invest in such schemes can do within a stipulated time and buy units at face value. Once the NFO is closed, the investors can opt for these funds only at NAV if they are open ended. In case of close ended funds, no investments are allowed after the closure of NFO.

Load

Load is a charge calculated using a percentage of NAV. It is deducted from the total investment amount when entering or exiting an investment. In India no entry load is charged on mutual fund schemes while exit load can be as high as 3% or even more in certain cases of the amount redeemed before a predetermined period. However, many fund categories such as liquid fund, ultra-short duration and low duration fund, do not charge an exit load.

Systematic Transfer Plan (STP)

STP allows you to transfer a predetermined amount on a certain date from one mutual fund type to another. This plan is helpful both during at the time of a investment and at the time of redemption. When you have a lumpsum amount to invest, you do not need to wait for the right time to invest. With STP you can invest a lumpsum amount in a low-risk fund (generally debt) and transfer a certain amount to another fund (generally equity) at regular intervals. Similarly, it is recommended that a year or so before redeeming your equity, you can start transferring your corpus from equity to debt, to lower your risk.

Systematic Withdrawal Plan (SWP)

SWP can be considered the reverse process of SIP. It enables you to withdraw a fixed or variable amount from your existing mutual fund investment at regular intervals. This plan is well suited for retirees looking to access regular income and returns.

Naveen Kukreja  CEO& Co-founder, Paisabazaar.com
Mumbai: T-Series and Select Media Holdings LLP have joined hands to create a magnum opus, a tale that must be told. And the one who they have got on board is the ever dependable Ajay Devgn.

After drawing roaring applause for his entry in Simmba and giving the audience back-to-back blockbuster films like Golmaal Again, Raid and Total Dhamaal, Ajay Devgn is all set to don another heroic avatar as he announces his next film.

His next project, which is going to leave the audience spellbound, is Bhuj: The Pride of India. The movie is based on a true incident and is one of Indias most fascinating war-related stories. Devgn will be essaying the role of Squadron Leader Vijay Karnik, who was in charge of the Bhuj airport during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. It was Karnik and his team, with the help of the local women, who reconstructed the destroyed Indian Air Force airstrip at Bhuj in Gujarat, in what could be termed as Indias Pearl Harbour moment.

The airstrip had been wrecked in air strikes that saw Pakistan drop napalm bombs on it. Karnik took a bold step to convince 300 fearless women from a nearby village to rebuild the airstrip so that a flight carrying Indian Army officers could land safely. Karnik, along with two other officers, 50 Air Force soldiers and 60 Defence Security Corps personnel, did a great job of keeping the airbase operational despite heavy Pakistani bombing.

Says an ecstatic Bhushan Kumar of T-Series, who is co-producing the movie along with Select Media Holdings LLP, This courageous tale needs to be told because we want this and the coming generation to know about this brave soldier, Squadron Leader Vijay Karnik, who played a significant role in Indias victory in the 1971 war. No one but him was heroic enough to take this bold step to involve civilians in a war.

Producer Ginny Khanuja of Select Media Holdings LLP, also feels that the story was waiting to be told and adds, This has never had happened before, and by doing this, Mr Karnik has made history to be remembered forever. I feel blessed today to announce that we are going to bring this tale of this real hero to celluloid.

Remembering the incident, Squadron Leader Vijay Karnik says, We were fighting a war and if there had been any casualties of any of these women, it would have been a great loss to the war effort. But I took the decision and it worked out. I had briefed them where they could take shelter if attacked and they followed it bravely. Also, I could only and only see Ajay Devgn essaying my character and Im glad hes on board.

Bhuj: The Pride of India, a Gulshan Kumar presentation along with T-Series and Select Media Holdings LLP, jointly celebrate the courage of Karnik and his team. Written-directed by Abhishek Dudhaiya, the film will be produced by Ginny Khanuja, Vajir Singh, Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar and Abhishek Dudhaiya.
For the first time in her career, actress Nayanthara is all set to enthral the audience with a dual role in her forthcoming film, Airaa, where she will be seen playing a brave journalist Yamuna and an innocent girl, Bhavani. Apparently, Nayanthara has gone for a complete makeover for her second character in this film. Directed by Sarjun K.M. and produced by Kotapadi J. Rajesh, the Tamil-Telugu bilingual is gearing up for release soon.

Describing the film as a super natural horror-thriller, Sarjun says, Everyone is assuming that Nayanthara is playing the titular role, Airaa, but she is not. The only reason we used such a title was to strengthen her character arch in the film. We are extremely thrilled to have her doing a dual role for the first time in this film, and we are hoping that it will give the audience a new experience in the horror-thriller genre.
Aadi Saikumar has signed a bilingual which was officially launched on Monday. Starring Vedhika as the female lead, the film is being directed by Karthik Vignesh and produced by Kaviya Venugopal. The film marks the return of Vedhika to Telugu cinema nearly eight years after her last release  Daggaraga Dooranga, opposite Sumanth.

The shooting of the bilingual is all set to start from next Monday in Talakonda and Chittoor districts. Gautam George, who earlier worked as an assistant cameraman for 2.0 will be introduced as cinematographer with this film.

Meanwhile, Aadi is quite busy these days with Operation Gold Fish, which all set to hit the screens soon, and two more films in the pipeline. This bilingual is likely to widen his market in the Tamil industry too.
by Bernardo Cervellera

Fears of a "debt trap" as has been the case for some countries like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan. The EU countries of Eastern Europe that already collaborate with Beijing are in debt. Poland's trade deficit with China rose from 10.3 billion dollars in 2012 to 28.4 billion. The new law on foreign investments, the result of US and EU pressure.

Rome (AsiaNews) - The Chinese foreign ministry today confirmed that from March 21 to 26 next President Xi Jinping will visit Italy, Monaco and France. In Italy, in particular, he should sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with which the Italian government offers itself as a partner to support the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the "New Silk Road" that Beijing supports with funds of up to 1000 billion dollars, which involves the construction of railways, roads and sea lines that should facilitate world trade.

In Italy there are those totally in favor of the signature, especially Michele Gerace, undersecretary for the economy, and expert sinologist. But there are also doubts and criticism because the MoU could become a boomerang that would not help Italian exports to China.

Beijing has already funded similar projects in Asia, Africa and (Eastern) Europe and there are critical voices that say that this has only benefited Chinese industries, enveloping countries such as Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Pakistan in a "debt trap".

Additionally there is the fear that the Mou would facilitate the penetration of Chinese investments in Europe to the point of their hegemony.

Various experts cite what is happening with the "16 + 1" group, which since 2012 guarantees collaboration between China and several European Union member countries - such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania , Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia - together with five other countries not yet in the EU: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Northern Macedonia.

So far, China's promises to offer special loans have not been fulfilled. Instead, the trade deficit of these countries towards Beijing is growing. The Polish one, for example, which in 2012 was 10.3 billion dollars, is now 28.4 billion.

Some economists point out that the adhesion of Italy alone to the BRI, without consultation with the other EU countries, weakens European Union dialogue with China. In a meeting next month the EU, which defines China as an "economic competitor", would like to gain more freedom in European investments, hitherto held back by many trade barriers.

"Dialogue with China alone, which Italy is seeking - said an economist who wishes to remain anonymous - means not having enough strength to correct mistakes or injustices that could arise in the future". And he gives the example of the new law on foreign investments, voted by the National People's Congress last March 15 in Beijing. It guarantees greater equality of treatment between foreign companies and local companies, and bans the forced transfer of technologies, one of the points that the US and the EU have pushed for in recent years. In all probability, without the bargaining power of these two western economies, perhaps a similar law would never have been voted.
China on Tuesday said the next spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has to be approved by the Communist government.

Beijing: China on Tuesday rejected the Dalai Lama's assertions that his successor could be from India and a nominee by Beijing would not be respected, saying the next spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has to be approved by the Communist government.

China's response came after the 83-year-old Nobel peace laureate told a news agency on Monday that it was possible that once he dies his incarnation could be found in India and warned that any other successor named by China would not be respected.

"Reincarnation is the unique way of Tibetan Buddhism. It has fixed rituals and systems," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters when asked about remarks by the Dalai Lama, who fled to India from Tibet in 1959.

"The Chinese government has policy of freedom of religious belief. We have regulation on religious affairs and regulation on the reincarnation system in Tibetan Buddhism. We respect and protect such ways of Tibetan Buddhism," Geng said.

Dalai Lama is a title given to spiritual leaders of Tibetan people. This title is given to those who are considered among the most important monks of the Gelug school, the newest school of Tibetan Buddhism. Born in 1935, the current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was just two years old.

"The reincarnation system has been there for hundreds of years. The 14th Dalai has also been recognised in the religious rituals and was approved by the central government. So the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama should follow the national rules and regulations and the religious rituals," Geng said.

Amidst the Tibetan uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled to India in March that year to escape a Chinese crackdown in his Himalyan abode.
While many in the Telugu film industry are keeping a keen watch on the upcoming elections, some celebs are even contesting in them. Take the case of Madhavi Latha of Nachavule and Snehituda fame, who is contesting from Guntur West on a BJP ticket. After filing her nomination on Wednesday, the actress said, Right from when I was in Class 8, I wanted to be a politician and my dream was to become a National leader. Hailing from Prakasam district, the actress has been camping in Guntur for the last few months and meet the people.

My focus is on women and children. I also want to develop Guntur which has been neglected, she says, adding, Most of the people I have met have greeted me warmly, and treated me like a part of their family.

Madhavi says that she was drawn to the BJPs idealism.

They are also patriotic, says the actress, for whom politics is serious business. I joined politics to serve the people and not just for time-pass, she states emphatically, adding, When my candidature was announced, many people trolled me, but I dont care. I will give a tough fight. So, will she take on Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan who has criticised the BJP many times in the past? He never criticised Modiji. In fact, most of the Jana Sena party people want Modiji to become PM again, so there is no point in criticising Pawan Kalyan, says the aspiring politician.
Looks like fans of Telugu reality show Bigg Boss are in for a major disappointment. Apparently, Jr NTR, who hosted Season 1 of the reality show, has backed out of hosting Season 3 due to a clash of dates.

While Jr NTR successfully hosted Season 1, Season 2 was hosted by Nani. However, the makers were keen to rope in the former for Season 3 to recreate the magic and had even approached him for the same. The Jai Lava Kusa star however, declined the offer since the dates of his current film RRR, directed by Rajamouli were clashing with that of Bigg Boss.

A source close to the makers of the reality show informs, Although the makers were game to pay a huge remuneration to Jr NTR, the actor did not take it up. He was honest enough to admit that the dates of his film would clash. They are now scouting for a replacement for the show, which is expected to start in July later this year.

Meanwhile, the actor is all geared up to shoot for his next schedule of RRR in Pune and Ahmedabad. He would be seen in the role of Komaram Bheem in the multi-starrer, which also has Alia Bhatt and Ajay Devgn.
Teachers and parents also need to be aware that their own maths anxiety might influence their students' or child's maths anxiety and that gendered stereotypes about mathematics suitability and ability might contribute to the gender gap in maths performance. (Photo: Representational/Pixabay)

Washington: A recent study directed towards examining the factors that influence 'maths anxiety' among primary and secondary school students, has shown that teachers and parents may inadvertently play a role in a child's development of the condition, and that girls tend to be more affected than boys.

According to the researchers, the UK is currently facing a maths crisis. According to a 2014 report from National Numeracy, four out of five adults have low functional mathematics skills compared to fewer than half of UK adults having low functional literacy levels.

While mathematics is often considered a hard subject, not all difficulties with the subject result from cognitive difficulties. Many children and adults experience feelings of anxiety, apprehension, tension or discomfort when confronted by a maths problem.

A report published by the Centre for Neuroscience in Education at the University of Cambridge explores the nature and resolution of so-called 'mathematics anxiety'. In a sample of 1,000 Italian students, the researchers found that girls in both primary and secondary school had higher levels of both maths anxiety and general anxiety.

More detailed investigation in 1,700 UK schoolchildren found that a general feeling that maths was more difficult than other subjects often contributed to maths anxiety, leading to a lack or loss of confidence. Students pointed to poor marks or test results, or negative comparisons to peers or siblings as reasons for feeling anxious.

"While every child's maths anxiety may be different, with unique origins and triggers, we found several common issues among both the primary and secondary school students that we interviewed," said Denes Szucs, lead author of the study.

Students often discussed the role that their teachers and parents played in their development of maths anxiety. Primary-aged children referred to instances where they had been confused by different teaching methods, while secondary students commented on poor interpersonal relations.

Secondary students indicated that the transition from primary to secondary school had been a cause of maths anxiety, as the work seemed harder and they couldn't cope. There was also greater pressure from tests - in particular, SATS - and an increased homework load.

In a study published in 2018, the researchers showed that it is not only children with low maths ability who experience maths anxiety - more than three-quarters (77%) of children with high maths anxiety are normal to high achievers on curriculum maths tests.

"Because these children perform well at tests, their maths anxiety is at high risk of going unnoticed by their teachers and parents, who may only look at performance but not at emotional factors. But their anxiety may keep these students away from STEM fields for life when in fact they would be perfectly able to perform well in these fields." said Amy Devine, lead researcher of the study.

However, it is almost certainly the case that in the long term, people with greater maths anxiety perform worse than their true maths ability. Today's report includes a review of existing research literature that shows that this can lead to a vicious circle: maths anxiety leading to poorer performance and poorer performance increasing maths anxiety.

The researchers set out a number of recommendations in the report. These include the need for teachers to be conscious that an individual's maths anxiety likely affects their mathematics performance. Teachers and parents also need to be aware that their own maths anxiety might influence their students' or child's maths anxiety and that gendered stereotypes about mathematics suitability and ability might contribute to the gender gap in maths performance.
Madurai: True, they form a inuscule portion of the state's population readying itself for the mega poll battle a month from now. But these 102 little hearts are literally bleeding for clean and fair elections and have embarked on an 'ambitious' campaign to carry forward their message  'Your vote is priceless, make sure you cast it and you don't fix a price on it'.

The 102 students of classes one to eight of the 'Chairman Manickavasagam aided middle school' at Devakottai have been long known for their unique and inspiring programmes and campaigns for gaining knowledge way beyond their curriculum and from sources/experts of faraway places. This is poll-time, so these kids decided on a novel method to ensure that their elders exercise their franchise and also do so without yielding to any temptations of cash or kind.

"The students used their own meagre savings on pocket money to buy post cards and wrote their request messages asking their parents to make sure they use their priceless vote in proper manner. We got Tahsildar Easwari to launch the students' campaign and post their cards carrying the important message to their parents", said the school's enterprising and socially-conscious Headmaster L Chokkalingam.

Tahsildar Easwari paid rich compliments to the kids for their commitment, in their own small way, towards strengthening India's democracy, and told them with a broad encouraging smile that they "must not sleep until their elders at home go the polling booths and cast their votes", without yielding to the usual temptations.

"And this morning, when the kids gathered at the school courtyard to take stock of their post-card campaign, Gayatri of class eight recalled her experience with a 72-year-old man from the Natarajapuram area, who told her he had not cast his vote in the last four or five elections but he would certainly exercise franchise this time as he is deeply touched by her post-card", said Chokkalingam.

He said the kids had not only sent post-cards to their own parents but also bought additional cards for sending to their friends' parents. "It felt so great listening to these little kids narrating, with pride, how their post-cards touched the elder's hearts and elicited promises they would certainly vote and they would not take money for it", said the happy HM.
As many as 10 ambulances and five fire tenders have beenengaged to carry out rescue and relief operations. (Image: ANI)

Bengaluru: Two people were killed and several others trapped when a four-storeyed under construction building collapsed at Dharwad in north Karnataka Tuesday, police said.

The building came crashing down, triggering panic among neighbours and passers-by, a police official said.

"Two have died while some 30 to 40 people are trapped," said a police officer at Dharwad police station.

Police said four people have been brought out from the debris while rescue operations are in full swing.

As many as 10 ambulances and five fire tenders have been engaged to carry out rescue and relief operations.

Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy said he was shocked to learn about the collapse of the under construction building. Kumaraswamy said he has directed the chief secretary to supervise the rescue operation and to send experienced rescue teams by special flight toDharwad.
Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan. (Photo: PTI)

Mumbai/Beijing: In a rare acknowledgment, China on Monday described the 2008 Mumbai attacks carried out by Pakistan-based LeT terror outfit as one of "the most notorious terrorist attacks".

In a white paper on its massive crackdown against terrorists in the restive Xianjiang province, China said the global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years had inflicted agony on humanity.

The paper described the Mumbai terror attacks as one of "the most notorious terrorist attacks", adding that the "global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years has inflicted agony on humanity".

The release of the paper, "The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang", interestingly coincided with Pakistan foreign minister's Shah Mehmood Qureshi's visit to China.

Throughout the world, terrorism and extremism gravely threaten peace and development, and endanger the life and property of individuals, said the white paper released by China's State Council Information Office.

The paper came days after China for the fourth time blocked a bid in the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to designate Pakistan-based chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror group Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist" by putting a technical hold on the proposal, a move India termed as disappointing.

The JeM has claimed responsibility for the February 14 Pulwama attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead and escalated tensions between India and Pakistan.

"Striking aggressively at terrorism and furthering the de-radicalisation effort is the common responsibility of the international community and essential to the protection of human rights," it said.

China opposes all forms of terrorism and extremism, and opposes double standards on fighting terrorism, said the white paper, adding that Beijing opposes linking terrorism and extremism with specific countries, ethnic groups or religions.

China advocates comprehensive measures to address both the symptoms and the root causes, with the dual purposes of striking at terrorist activities and eliminating poverty, so that there will be no room for terrorism to breed, it said.

In one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country's history, 166 people, including Americans, were killed and over 300 injured as 10 heavily-armed terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) created mayhem in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.

Nine attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged.

Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan.

The US has offered USD 10 million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice.
We have demanded that election officials install the polling booth in our Sellappa-Goundanur village. If they fail to do so, we plan to boycott the election, added Muniyappan.

Coimbatore: As many as 1,000 voters in Pollachi constituency have decided to boycott the upcoming elections, alleging distance of the polling booth from the village.

According to 55-year-old Muniyappan of Sellappa-Goundanur village, the village comprising of wards seven and 12 comes under Mathampatty village panchayat of Pollachi constituency and has 1,056 voters.

Efforts are being taken to set up the polling booth at Mathampatty and this is five-km away from the village. We don't have a good transport facility to reach the booth and do not want to travel five-km to vote in the hot summer, he said.

We have demanded that election officials install the polling booth in our Sellappa-Goundanur village. If they fail to do so, we plan to boycott the election, added Muniyappan.

NOMINATIONS START TODAY

Meanwhile, filing of nominations for the Lok Sabha constituencies going to polls on April 18, including Tamil Nadu and Puducherry commences on March 19 (Tuesday), official sources said.
Rare diseases are chronic and often life-threatening. Many patients are unable to carry out daily tasks without systematic treatment.

Bengaluru: Patients suffering from rare diseases at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health (IGICH) have been left stranded as the hospital has stopped treating them for the last 10 weeks, citing lack of funds.

The patients had approached the High Court against the state government, requesting resumption of specialised treatment for them. After multiple hearings, the state government recently announced that it allocated Rs 3 crore to IGICH. Though the hospital has received the funds, the treatment is yet to resume, the patients complained.

The order copy of the High Court too stated that Rs 3 crore has been released, but hospital authorities seem unaware of it.

Rare diseases are severe and chronic and are often life-threatening. The patients with such diseases are unable to perform their daily chores and the quality of their life is compromised drastically. Many such patients face hurdles at every stage, from diagnosis to timely treatment.

There are 11 such patients, and of them six are Gaucher patients and one is an adult onset Pompe patient, who were already being treated at the hospital. But their treatment has stopped since the problem surfaced. The court has also asked the hospital to treat four new patients, who are waiting for treatment.

We were assured of continuous treatment when the state government sanctioned funds in 2016. But over the last 10 weeks, our children are not receiving any treatment at IGICH. After the recent hearing at the high court, the government has released Rs 3 crore. We hope that IGICH understands the plight of patients and starts the treatment immediately, said Mr Shivashankar, who is the father of Revathi  a Gaucher patient.

By understanding the condition of rare diseases patients, it is imperative that provision for medications and treatment be made beforehand as the lives of these patients are at stake. The delay in treatment can lead to worsening of their condition, he said.

Doctors at IGICH have reportedly told the patients that they too are helpless. Calls to the hospital remained unanswered.
Kalaburagi: Taking strong exception to the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign launched by PM Modi, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday expressed his resentment at Mr Modi describing people in the whole of the country, chowkidars after his 'theft' was exposed following the Rafale deal.

The BJP has started its 'Main Bhi Chowkidar' campaign with Prime Minister Modi and other BJP leaders prefixing the word chowkidar to their names in their twitter profiles as they sought peoples support in the Lok Sabha election while urging people from different walks of life to turn chowkidars and do their bit for the country.

Earlier when Mr Modi was chosen PM, he called himself chowkidar. But after his theft came to light in the Rafale deal, he started calling all people chowkidars. He is not the chowkidar of the common people, but the chowkidar of industrialists such as Anil Ambani and Nirav Modi, Mr Gandhi said at the Parivartana rally here.

Describing the Rafale jet deal as the biggest defence scam, Mr Gandhi alleged that Mr Modi had directly put Rs 30,000 crore into the account of industrialist Anil Ambani via the deal. The country's youth yearn for employment, but Mr Modi has denied them their due refusing to give the Rafale contract to HAL. A prominent newspaper through its articles has proved that the chowkidar is indeed a thief as he allowed parallel negotiations to be held with the French company manufacturing Rafale", Mr Gandhi remarked. He made a scathing attack on the PM for trying to bring in one man rulethrough various steps including winding up the Constitution, Mr Modi wants to close all institutions.

Never before has there been a situation where Supreme Court judges have gone to the media declaring that they had no freedom to discharge their duties. The PM brought in note-bandi without seeking the advice of the RBI and the RSS, including the PM, have made clear their intent to finish off the Constitution. But I would like to declare that as long as the Congress is there, come what may, we will not allow Mr Modi to succeed in his efforts to tamper with the Constitution, he said.
On March 15, the Madras High Court had directed the authorities concerned to take steps to delete all video clips on social media relating to the sexual harassment of women by the gang which had allegedly used them to blackmail victims. (Photo: File)

Chennai: The editor of Tamil bi-weekly ''Nakkheeran'', R Gopal, has moved the Madras High Court, seeking anticipatory bail in connection with videos that were allegedly released on the Pollachi sexual abuse case.

He submitted that the cybercrime wing, acting on a complaint from deputy speaker Pollachi Jayaraman, had registered cases against him under sections including the Information Technology Act.

Alleging that ''foisting'' such a case against him was nothing but blatant misuse of power, Gopal said, "The mala fide intention of the complainant is to scare any other media from publishing any evidence in connection with the Pollachi sexual abuse case."

The case relates to sexual harassment of a 19-year-old woman in a car by a four-member gang near Pollachi in Coimbatore district on February 12.

The accused had tried to strip her, shot a video of the act and blackmailed her. She managed to free herself and lodged a complaint with police on February 24.

The case assumed political overtones after a local AIADMK functionary allegedly attacked the victim's brother. The functionary was later expelled from the party.

The attack, coupled with reports in a section of media that the gang had sexually harassed several other women, led to an outrage and protests.

The issue snowballed into a political row and the main opposition DMK targeted the AIADMK, asking if it was protecting the accused persons.

On March 15, the Madras High Court had directed the authorities concerned to take steps to delete all video clips on social media relating to the sexual harassment of women by the gang which had allegedly used them to blackmail victims.

The court had observed that release of such videos on social media had taken a toll on the mental well being of the victims and their relatives and directed police to maintain vigil to prevent recurrence of such incidents.

After assigning the case to the CB-CID on March 12, the government had issued an order for a CBI probe in the wake of allegations that several other women had been assaulted.

The four accused are under judicial custody and were booked under various sections of the IPC, Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act and the Goondas Act.
The apex court will announce the judgment on the same day, the Express Tribune reported.

Islamabad: Pakistan's Supreme Court Tuesday postponed the verdict of jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's application seeking bail on medical grounds till March 26, according to media reports.

Sharif filed an appeal on March 6 against a judgment by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) which on February 25 rejected his bail application on medical grounds in the Al-Azizia steel mills case. During the hearing on Tuesday, a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa issued a notice to National Accountability Bureau to submit reply in the matter in the next hearing fixed for March 26. The apex court will announce the judgment on the same day, the Express Tribune reported. Defence counsel Khawaja Haris presented arguments in the case and cited medical reports. He claimed that the three-time premier is taking 17 different medications. We know that Nawaz receives medical care in London. We want to know whether his health deteriorated in prison, the paper quoted the chief justice questioning the counsel during the hearing of the petition. The chief justice further remarked that the reports from London were not provided to the doctors in Pakistan, and that the court would examine the medical reports of tests conducted at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad, the Geo News reported. Sharif, 69, is serving a seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore since December 2018.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo has suffered four angina attacks last week, according to his daughter Maryam Nawaz . The Sharif family is complaining that the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is not providing health facilities to the former premier who has serious health complications. The bench headed by Chief Justice Khosa also comprises of Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi will take up the petition. The former premier had twice submitted requests to the apex court for an early hearing of his application. In January, he filed application in the IHC for bail on medical reasons as he developed heart-related medical complications in jail but it was dismissed. Three corruption cases - Avenfield properties, Flagship investment and Al-Azizia steel mills - were registered against the Sharif family by the anti-graft body in 2017 following a judgment by the Supreme Court that disqualified Sharif in the Panama Papers case in 2017. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Avenfiled corruption case in July 2018 which was related to his properties in London. Later he was given bail in September. In December, the accountability court convicted him in the Al-Azizia graft case but acquitted him in the Flagship corruption case.
A bench of Justices S A Bobde and S K Kaul told the petitioner to ask the family members of the trapped miners as to whether they want to get the bodies recovered. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has sought to know from the relatives of miners, who were trapped in an illegal mine in Meghalaya three months ago, whether they wanted to recover the bodies which might have been "decomposed" by now.

15 miners were trapped on December 13 last year in an illegal coal mine at Ksan in East Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya, about 3.7 km deep inside a forest, when water from the nearby Lytein river gushed into it.

Only two bodies have been recovered from the mine so far. The top court is hearing a plea which had sought urgent steps for rescuing the miners trapped in the rat-hole mine. A bench of Justices S A Bobde and S K Kaul told the petitioner to ask the family members of the trapped miners as to whether they want to get the bodies recovered.

"The petitioner is directed to ascertain from the relatives of the deceased if they wish to have the bodies recovered having regard to the fact that they may be already in a completely decomposed condition," the bench said in its order. The top court also directed Dr Sudhir Kumar, Hydrologist of Roorkee's National Institute of Hydrologist to visit the site and after re-appraisal, submit a report pointing out if pumping of water being done there for de-watering is adequate. "The hydrologist may also suggest what needs to be done in the future for recovering the bodies," the bench said and posted the matter for further hearing in first week of April.

Last month, the apex court had said high-powered pumps of Kirloskar company be airlifted and installed immediately for de-watering of the mine. It had also issued show cause notice to the mine owner saying it would consider granting compensation to the family members of the victims as prime facie responsibility and liability of the mishap is of the mine owner.

The Meghalaya government had earlier told the court that 11 crore litre of water was pumped out from the mine between February 8 and 16 but water was getting replenished from the nearby river due to the topography there. Rat-hole mining involves digging of narrow tunnels, usually three-four feet high, for workers to enter and extract coal. The horizontal tunnels are often termed "rat holes" as each just about fits one person. The Centre earlier told the court that it has to "believe in miracles" for the 15 miners to come out alive.
Bhopal: The newly sealed alliance between Ajit Jogis Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) and Mayawatis Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) appeared to be heading for a split with the latter unilaterally announcing its candidates for five Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh.

Mr Jogi, who founded Janata the JCC after breaking away from the Congress in 2016, appear-ed to have been completely taken aback by the development. BSP has released lists of its candidates without consulting us. I will soon speak to the BSP chief, Mr Jogi, who had forged alliance with BSP in the November Ass-embly polls in Chhatti-sgasrh, he told the media on Tuesday.

As it is, my party has no stake in the LS elections nor are we keen to field candidates in the polls. It is the BSP that has high stakes in the Lok Sabha elections and chances of winning seats in Chhattisgarh. My best wishes to Behenji (Ms Mayawati), he added.

The development comes close on the heels of Mr Jogi announcing that the JCC-BSP alliance would extend to Lok Sabha elections in Chhattisgarh too and he would soon meet Ms Mayawati to seal the seat-sharing arrangement between the two parties.

The BSP declared candidates for three LS seats of Bastar (ST), Kanker (ST) and Janjgir-Champa late on Monday night. The par-ty announced candidates for three more seats, Sar-guja, Raigarh and Durg on Tuesday.
Hyderabad: In a major shock to the Congress, former minister D.K. Aruna is all set to join the BJP and is likely to be fielded from the Mahbubnagar Lok Sabha seat.

BJP president Amit Shah reportedly spoke over the phone with Ms Aruna and invited her to join the party. According to sources, BJP senior leaders met Ms Aruna on Tuesday.

Following the invitation of BJP leaders to contest from the Mahbubnagar Lok Sabha seat, Ms Aruna said she would take a final decision on the matter. Ms Aruna was not available on the phone for her comments.

Ms Arunas husband and former legislator D.K. Bharat Simha Reddy told this newspaper that he could not deny or confirm. He said however that they could not continue in the Congress with the present state leadership. He said that they cannot join the TRS as well.

Congress leader V. Ravichandra, who contested unsuccessfully from the Warangal East segment in the recent Assembly elections, is planning to join the TRS.
Chennai: The AIADMK promised on Tuesday a slew of measures in its manifesto, including a national poverty eradication initiative that will be named after late chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Releasing the manifesto for the general election at a press conference here, AIADMK coordinator and Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam said the party would "vigorously pursue" the Amma National Poverty Eradication Initiaitive (ANPEI). "Based on the experience already gained by the AIADMK government in this regard, a direct transfer of Rs 1,500 per month to the targeted population of the poor and the deprived (people below poverty line, destitute women, widows without income, differently-abled, landless agricultural labourers, rural and urban manual labourers, destitute senior citizens etc) should not be difficult to implement," the party said.

Jayalalithaa is addressed as 'Amma' (mother) by supporters and the ruling AIADMK is already implementing a series of welfare measures under the Brand Amma initiative, including the popular Amma subsidised canteens. Among others, it promised to press for the release of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandjhi assassination case and strive for the scrapping of the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) for medical admissions. The state goes to polls in a single phase on April 18.
The BJP chief in his tweet tagged a post by his party's Karnataka unit which said the state police had arrested some techies for raising pro-Modi slogans at Manyata Tech Park in Bengaluru. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah Tuesday targeted Congress chief Rahul Gandhi over the alleged arrest of some techies in Bengaluru for raising pro-Modi slogans, saying youngsters give direction to the future and he should "stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics".

"Hugs for 'Tukde Tukde' gang and arrest of peaceful youth raising pro-Modi slogans? Where are the champions of 'Free Speech'? Yuvraj (prince) of CONgress must know that time follows the course taken by youngsters. Stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics," Shah tweeted.

Hugs for Tukde Tukde gang and arrest of peaceful youth raising pro-Modi slogans?



Where are the champions of Free Speech?



Yuvraj of CONgress must know          '



Stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics. https://t.co/AXqeyihKJy  Chowkidar Amit Shah (@AmitShah) March 19, 2019

The BJP chief in his tweet tagged a post by his party's Karnataka unit which said the state police had arrested some techies for raising pro-Modi slogans at Manyata Tech Park in Bengaluru. Gandhi was to address a meeting at the venue.

Democracy in Danger



Police arrests few techies for raising pro Modi slogans at Manyata tech park in Bengaluru.



This is the real face of democracy in a Cong JDS ruled state. Its total dictatorship where freedom of choice & expression of citizens is suppressed. pic.twitter.com/5GoQJO2OqI  BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) March 18, 2019

"This is the real face of democracy in a Cong-JD(S) ruled state. It's total dictatorship where freedom of choice & expression of citizens is suppressed," it had said, posting a purported video of some people being taken away by cops.
Gao said that he was shocked to see the video which resemble to his face. (Photo: ANI)

Guwahati: Arunachal Pradesh BJP president Tapir Gao, on Tuesday denied his presence in the viral sex CD and labelled it as "fake".

Tapir Gao, who is going to contest Lok Sabha elections from Arunachal East seat alleged that some of his own party workers has circulated the doctored CD to tarnish his image.

Referring to the sex CD that went viral on social media, Mr Gao said, The party has already filed an FIR against some people who were trying to blackmail me with a morphed explicit CD.

Doling out the copy of the FIR, Gao informed that state government has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to bust the conspiracy hatched to defame him.

He alleged that an aspirant of the party ticket from Arunachal East was involved in the conspiracy.

I have given the names of the people to police who called me asking for Rs 15 crore as well as Arunachal East seat, said Gao asserting that such fake CD would not affect his electoral prospect.

Arunachal Pradesh BJP president said that he was shocked to see the video which resembled his face.

According to Gao, his photographs were morphed and voice was dubbed.

He has already informed senior BJP leaders Ram Madhav and Chief Minister Pema Khandu about the incident.

During the time when the party has decided to contest the forthcoming assembly and parliamentary polls on its own the release of the video has visibly raised the problem for the party.

Gao flagged out the party's promises for the state.

He said that the development of the state in the field of education, health, horticulture, tourism, communication would be the agenda in the upcoming election.

He also informed that party would be releasing manifesto soon, keeping development and public welfare issues on the top.

Meanwhile, police sources at Itanagar told Deccan Chronicle that they have started tracing the link of the sex video and asserted that the SIT was looking into all the possible angles.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has already issued a notification on Monday for holding simultaneous elections to two Lok Sabha and 60 Assembly constituencies in Arunachal Pradesh on April 11.
The DMK chief also promised to give citizenship to all Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu. (Photo: ANI)

Chennai: Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) on Tuesday released its poll manifesto and promised efforts to release seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

DMK Chief MK Stalin said, "AIADMK will urge Government of India and the President to give due direction to the Governor of Tamil Nadu for the release of the seven Tamil convicts as ordered by Supreme Court and approved by the cabinet of Tamil Nadu government."

The DMK chief also promised to give citizenship to all Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu.

On the education front, he promised to abolish NEET. Assured to waive education loans and announced to provide free rail facility for school and college students.

Stalin also asserted that if voted to power his government will create more jobs and fill up all existing vacancies in all central government departments in Tamil Nadu. He also said that Tamil will be made the official language in Central Government offices in the state.

The DMK also said that it will push for full statehood of Puducherry and a CBI-led probe into Kodanadu Estate heist.

A total of 39 Lok Sabha seats are at stake in Tamil Nadu and one in Puducherry. DMK will contest 20 out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, while its ally Congress will contest on nine seats and also the lone seat in Puducherry.

Tamil Nadu will go to polls on April 18 for its 39 parliamentary constituencies while by-polls will also be held in 18 assembly seats simultaneously. The Election Commission will announce the results on May 23.
Warangal: The Congress party chose Dommati Sambaiah, a former police inspector as the partys candidate to contest the Warangal Parliamentary seat.

The 57-year-old prevailed over 34 aspirants including former MP Sircilla Rajaiah, TPCC general secretary Koturi Manavatha Roy and TPCC SC cell vice-president Pasula Yaka Swamy who all lobbied hard for the Warangal Lok Sabha ticket.

Dommati Sambaiah quit his job as a police inspector to join politics in 2004. He began his political career as sarpanch of Mallakpet village and was also elected as vice-chairman of the Mandal Praja Parishad. He contested from Parkal Assembly constituency on the Telugu Desam party (TDP) ticket in 2004 but lost.

He served as the TDP district general secretary of Warangal district and was also the state official spokesperson of the party. In 2009, his bid to contest the Warangal Lok Sabha seat resulted in defeat after he managed to secure only 1.35 lakh votes. Later in 2014, he contested from Station Ghanpur Assembly constituency (SC) but could not win.

He quit the TDP in 2015 and joined the YSR Congress. He rose to the rank of Warangal district president but joined the Congress party in 2017 along with A. Revanth Reddy.

Sambaiah who belongs to the Madiga community did his postgraduation in Political Science from Kakatiya University.

As a kabaddi national player, he represented the state and nation and won several medals for his school and Kakatiya University.

Mr Sambaiah thanked the All India Congress Committee and vowed to strive hard to win and not disappoint the leadership which reposed faith in him. He said he would work towards fulfilling the promises in the AP Reorganisation Act like the Bayyaram steel factory and the tribal university.
The Government Giriraj College grounds being prepared for the TRS meeting to be held on March 19 in Nizamabad. (Photo: DC)

Nizamabad: Chief Minister and TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao will visit Nizamabad on March 19 to address a public meeting for the upcoming LS polls.

The CMs daughter K. Kavitha is contesting for the Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat for the second time. The TRS leadership has made all the necessary arrangements for the meeting, which will be held at the Government Giriraj College grounds.

On Monday, Ms Kavitha, minister for roads, buildings, transport V. Prashanth Reddy, party MLAs and MLCs inspected the arrangements made at the Giriraj College grounds.

The party is expecting around 1.20 lakh people from-Nizamabad Urban, Nizamabad Rural, Bodhan, Armoor, Balkonda, Korutla and Jagtial Assembly constituencies to attend the meeting. TRS leaders have camped in Nizamabad and are supervising the arrangements. A helipad has been set up at the college grounds. In view of the CMs visit, roads in Chandrasekhar Colony, Gouthamnagar, New NGOs Colony and Subhashnagar Colony have been repaired.
Bengaluru: Putting all speculation to rest, actress Sumalatha Ambareesh, widow of former minister M.H. Ambareesh, said she will contest as an independent candidate from Mandya in the Lok Sabha election to be held on April 18.

With this, Mandya is all set to witness a high-voltage poll battle between her and Nikhil Kumaraswamy, son of Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who is fighting on the JD(S) ticket. The BJP, which has not yet declared its candidate for the seat, is likely to back Sumalatha though there is no official confirmation yet.

The actress will file her nomination papers on March 20 and also hold a public meeting in the city in the presence of friends, well-wishers and fans of the late actor.

Talking to reporters here on Monday, Sumalatha flanked by two popular Kannada actors Darshan and Yash, said she was not bothered about victory of defeat but only wanted to give back to the people of Mandya for all the love and affection showered on her late husband who was attached to the district for over three decades. "I was offered a ticket to contest from Bengaluru North or Bengaluru South and also a membership in the state Legislative Council. But I did not care for it as my one and only wish is to protect and preserve the love people had for Ambareesh. I do not have any personal enmity with anyone, I am entering politics only to fulfill the promises of my husband.

She also claimed that huge money and high positions in politics were offered to her if she agreed to withdraw from the fray but she did not succumb to any of them as her only aim was to do something good for the people of Mandya. " I do not have a political background and I was never interested in entering politics. I never thought about it when my husband was an MP, MLA and minister but unexpected incidents in our family forced me to enter politics. I am optimistic that the people of Mandya will support me. I don't have money or power to fight the election, my biggest asset is the love and affection earned by Ambareesh from the day he entered politics till the day of his death. I am aware that the electorate of Mandya is known for self-respect and will not sell their votes for money".

Reacting to her critics who had wondered where she was when hundreds of farmers had committed suicide in Mandya owing to failure of crops, Sumalatha recalled that her husband was Union minister when the dispute arose between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the release of Cauvery water, and he had tendered his resignation without thinking twice. Ambareesh could have remained in power by playing political games but he did not do it. My family has always responded to the problems of farmers and those who came to our house seeking help have never gone back empty handed. My husband has done whatever was possible within his limits. I would like to know if any minister in the history of Karnataka sacrificed his post when farmers faced distress,

Our family has never practised dynastic politics. I will always tread the path shown by my late husband and leave everything to the almighty. I have already visited several constituencies and people have been telling me to contest to fulfil the dreams of Ambi Anna," she said.

On support from Kannada film stars, Ms Sumalatha said they had always stood behind her whenever she faced problems. Film personalities Rockline Venkatesh, Doddanna, Yash and Darshan Togudeepa had supported her from the day she decided to contest from Mandya.

I knew who my opponent is. Mr Nikhil is son of CM Kumaraswamy and he is backed by eight JD(S) legislators, three MLCs and three ministers. It is not easy to face all of them. On my side, I have friends, well-wishers and fans of Ambareesh who have promised all support to me. I have also sought the co-operation of leaders of the Congress, BJP and other parties..
Moe Moe Than, 32, was given little food, limited use of toilet and faced threats that her parents would be killed if she reported the abuse.

Singapore has taken a tough stand in prosecuting abusers to protect some 250,000 domestic workers from other parts of Asia who work in the affluent nation for higher salaries. (Representational Image)

Singapore: A Singaporean couple was on Monday jailed for abusing a Myanmar maid after the pair force-fed her with a funnel, made her eat her own vomit and threatened to kill her family if she reported the maltreatment.

In a case described by Singapore prosecutors as arguably one of the worst of its kind in the city-state, the married couple -- who were sentenced two years ago over the abuse of another maid -- beat and kicked their helper and made her clean the house in her underwear.

Moe Moe Than, 32, was also given little food, limited use of the toilet and faced threats that her parents in Myanmar would be killed if she reported the abuse, court documents showed.

District Judge Olivia Low on Monday sentenced the woman, Chia Yun Ling, to 47 months in prison and ordered her to pay a fine. Her husband, Tay Wee Kiat, a former information technology manager, was jailed for 24 months.

They were also ordered to pay compensation to the maid.

The sentence however drew angry reactions online, with readers demanding a harsher punishment.

Pathetic sentences. Should each be doing 10 years and have their kids taken off them, reader Rich Mackereth wrote on the Facebook page of state broadcaster Channel NewsAsia.

Such deplorable human beings!! They need also to be whipped and caned, wrote reader Andrew Siah with the symbol of an angry emoji.

The couples mistreatment of Than during her employment of nearly a year in 2012 was detailed in more than 20 charges.

In the present case, the accused persons had systematically and persistently abused Moe Moe Than both physically and psychologically throughout the period of her employment, state prosecutors told the court, also noting a lack of remorse from the couple.

One charge said Chia, a former senior sales manager, force-fed the maid a mixture of rice and sugar through a funnel after the helper told her she did not have enough food to eat.

This caused the victim to choke and she ran to the toilet to throw up, the charge said.

Chia followed, scolded and slapped the maid, and instructed her to throw up into a plastic bag and thereafter (made) to eat her own vomit, the charge added.

The same couple were in March 2017 sentenced to jail terms for abusing their Indonesian maid -- the husband for two years and four months and the wife for two months. They have yet to serve those sentences.

Singapore has taken a tough stand in prosecuting abusers to protect some 250,000 domestic workers from other parts of Asia who work in the affluent nation for higher salaries.

In February, a Singaporean salon manager who abused her Myanmar maid by forcing her to pour hot water on herself was jailed for three years.

And in March 2017, a Singaporean couple who starved their Filipina maid had their jail sentences increased to 10 months by the High Court after an appeal by the prosecution.

The High Court had agreed that their original jail terms ranging from three weeks to three months were patently and manifestly inadequate.
Nizamabad: Nizamabad MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha called upon around 1,000 farmers to file nominations from the Varanasi and Amethi Lok Sabha constituencies, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi are expected to contest, to draw the attention of the country to the poor remunerative prices for agriculture produce.

She was addressing turmeric and red jowar farmers in the north TS district, who were planning to file a large number of nomination papers in the Nizamabad LS constituency. She alleged that Congress and BJP leaders are trying to provoke farmers on the issue of prices.

Speaking at the public meeting in Nizamabad on Tuesday, Ms Kavitha alleged that the Congress and BJP leaders were trying to provoke the farmers on the issue of prices. A few political leaders, under the pretext of farmers benefits, are attempting to disturb the peace, she said.

Ms Kavitha said, TRS should stand for Telangana Rythu Samiti and not Telangana Rashtra Samiti as we are more concerned about the farmers. We plan on setting up food processing units to tackle the price issues.

Many people and TRS activists from Nizamabad Urban, Nizamabad Rural, Bodhan, Armoor, Balkonda, Korutla, and Jagitial Assembly constituencies attended the meeting in large numbers. TSRTC and private vehicles were arranged to carry them to the meeting venue. The people reacted enthusiastically to the emotional speeches by the Chief Minister Mr K. Chandrasekhar Rao and MP Ms Kavitha. A few TRS fans even danced to the tunes of the cultural troupes at the meeting venue.
Nizamabad: Chief Minister and TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao said on Tuesday that it was not the job of politicians to decide whether it was Ram Janmabhoomi or Ravan Janmabhoomi.

Stating that the BJP was a Hindu party and was trying to extract political benefits by resorting to the politics of hatred, he made it clear that political parties should concentrate on welfare of people not on religious issues. The Supreme Court will decide that, he said.

Addressing a massive gathering at a public meeting at Governm-ent Giriraj College grounds in the Nizamabad Lok Sabha constituency, the TRS president said that he is an outspoken person and is not afraid of anyone murdering him.

Referring to the criticism by BJP leaders of his speech at Karimnagar, the Chief Minister said the BJP has started a vicious tirade against him on social media. Yours is political Hindutva and ours is religious Hindutva, he said.

Maintaining that the national parties are trembling because of his outspoken speech in Karimnagar, he said that independent India has been ruled by the Congress for 53 years and by the BJP for 11 years, but they failed to build a constructive nation.

What is needed is people-centric rule and this would be possible only through a Federal Front government. He said that China, Japan, Singapore and other countries achieved enormous development with meagre resources, but in India, plenty of resources have been ignored because of meaningless politics.

Mr Rao said, We need reforms in economic, foreign, administration, power sector and other policies.

He came down heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, saying both their parties are just changing the names of government schemes when they are in power, and they do not have the national interest or people-centric issues in mind.

He pointed out that there is 3.44 lakh MW power potential in India, which is producing a mere 1.80 lakh MW, which has plunged farmers into a crisis. There is a huge population of Backward Classes in the country, but no ministry for them at the centre.

Mr Rao urged the people to think wisely to change the fate of India by electing parties that have the peoples welfare at heart.
Hyderabad: Telangana Rashtra Samiti working president K.T. Rama Rao on Tuesday hinted that the state government will abolish the GO Ms No. 111, which was issued in 1996, prohibiting construction activity within 10 km of Hussainsagar and Himayathsagar lakes in the city.

He also said the MMTS Rail would be extended to Shankerpally and the Hussainsagar lake would be developed at a cost of Rs 100 crore. He announced this at a public meeting at Shamshabad organised by P. Karthik Reddy, the Congress leader who is joining the TRS.

While welcoming Karthik Reddy and his followers to the party, Mr Rama Rao said that the state government will take a decision regarding the GO 111 as per the resolutions passed by the Gram Panchayats affected by the GO order.

Maintaining that the Chevella Lok Sabha constituency was a mini India, he said several IT industries have come up in Serilingampally Assembly segment which is under the Chevella Lok Sabha constituency.

He said that in future IT industries would come up in Budwel and Kishmathpur villages, too, which are under the Rajendranagar segment.

The TRS working president said he would try to bring Vikarabad district under the Charminar Zone; it is currently under Jogulamba Zone.

Mr Karthik Reddy also addressed the meeting and said that his family had been with the Congress since his fathers time, but the party did nothing for his family.

He said that it was Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao who has given importance and political life to Konda Vishweshwar Reddy, though the people of Chevella do not know him.
One of the saints who is revered as a silent worker, collaborator and protector with God is St Joseph, whose feast is celebrated today. (Representational image)

When asked by her teacher: Who created you? a little girl replied, God created half of me! Surprised, the teacher queried: And, what about the other half? She replied: I created it myself! Strange though such an answer might sound, theres some truth in it.

The Bible says that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Thus, each of us has a great capacity to be creative and to work with God, the Creator and Protector, to invent new possibilities of living and loving. One of the saints who is revered as a silent worker, collaborator and protector with God is St Joseph, whose feast is celebrated today.

Normally, Catholics commemorate feasts of the saints on the date of their death  based on the belief that when saintly people die, they begin a new resurrected life in Gods presence. Thus, all saints have one feast day. But St Joseph seems extra-special since he is remembered twice: today, and also on May 1st: International Workers Day.

Three virtues of St Joseph are worth emulating: (i) his prayerful silence, (ii) his hard labour, and (iii) his caring protection. Although he is the foster-father of Jesus and a central figure in the Bible, St Joseph is not known by his words but by his works. In fact, the Bible does not record any word spoken by him but portrays him as one who listened to Gods word and obeyed silently. Were St Josephs words to be recorded, theyd probably be: Yes, God! Your will be done!

By profession, St Joseph was a carpenter who slogged hard to support Jesus and Mary. In those days, carpentry demanded great toil and talent but earned little reward. Its not surprising that St Joseph is regarded as the patron of workers and specially remembered on Labour Day. Religious traditions like Sikhism uphold the value of work, kar seva, performed unconditionally and joyfully. Such seva brings bountiful blessings to the sevak who selflessly serves.

Exactly six years ago on March 19, 2013, at his papal-installation ceremony, Pope Francis extolled St Joseph as being a protector par excellence and exhorted all to be protectors at various levels by protecting people, showing loving concern for each and every person, especially children, the elderly and those in need. He added: Everything has been entrusted to our protection, and all of us are responsible for it. Be protectors of Gods gifts!

This week marks many commemorations: International Day of Happiness (20th), Holi and International Day of Forests (21st), and World Water Day (22nd). God created us to be truly happy, to destroy evil and promote good. May Gods gifts  forests and water  be shared by all. May you and I be creators, workers and protectors collaborating with God!
The auction is being held in old army barracks in the south-western city of Mainz.

Germany begins an auction of spectrum for next-generation 5G mobile networks on Tuesday, the outcome of which will play a decisive role in determining whether Europes largest economy remains competitive in the digital age.

It nearly didnt happen: a raft of lawsuits brought by network operators was thrown out by a court only last week. The buildup has also been overshadowed by US pressure on its allies to bar Chinese vendors from participating in building 5G networks due to national security fears.

In the end, regulators preferred to draft tougher rules for all vendors rather than meet the US demand to banish Chinas Huawei Technologies, the global network market leader.

Heres an overview of how the auction will work:

WHAT IS BEING AUCTIONED?

Germanys Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) is auctioning off 41 blocks of spectrum in the 2 GHz and 3.6 GHz bands.

These frequencies have relatively short range and high data-carrying capacity, suiting them to use in running connected factories - an industrial policy priority.

Urban areas should get 5G coverage early, with another application likely to be super-fast domestic wireless broadband.

WHOS TAKING PART?

Germanys three network operators - Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Deutschland - have been admitted into the auction.

Also participating is 1&1 Drillisch, a virtual mobile operator controlled by United Internet that wants to run a fourth network.

The Big Three filed lawsuits to delay the auction, arguing that its requirement to provide high-speed coverage to 98 percent of households by 2022 was too onerous. They also criticized rules for network sharing, arguing they would make life too easy for new market entrants.

The Cologne Administrative Court threw out those lawsuits on Friday. Outstanding litigation may yet lead to the results of the auction being reviewed, although BNetzA says it is on firm legal ground.

HOW MUCH MONEY WILL THE AUCTION RAISE?

BNetzA has declined to forecast proceeds but the federal government hopes to raise several billion euros - money it will reinvest in upgrading Germanys broadband networks.

The last auction in 2015, for 4G frequencies, raised 5.1 billion euros (USD 5.8 billion). Back in 2000, a 3G auction raised more than 50 billion euros - a ruinous sum that forced some players out of the market and others to merge.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

The auction is being held in old army barracks in the south-western city of Mainz. Bid teams will have to surrender their phones when they enter. They will submit offers from separate rooms via a secure network, and can only seek guidance via fax from their head offices.

All 41 blocks will be auctioned simultaneously and results will be published online after each round. Minimum bids range between 1.7 million and 5 million euros and total 104.6 million euros. The process ends when no fresh bids are entered.

Based on past experience, the auction could run for weeks - a previous one in 2010 lasted six weeks.

WHAT ABOUT US CALLS TO SHUT OUT CHINESE VENDORS?

Germany resisted calls from the United States to shut Chinese network vendors out of its 5G buildout due to national security concerns.

Instead of banning Huawei outright, regulators have tightened rules on all network vendors. These wont bid in the auction but will be key partners in upgrading network infrastructure.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER EUROPEAN AUCTIONS?

Several countries - among them Ireland, Finland, Italy, Switzerland and Austria - have already auctioned 5G spectrum. Most have been low-key affairs, with only modest sums raised because the sales were designed to leave operators with money left over to invest in network upgrades.

The exception was Italy, where frenzied bidding last year raised 6.5 billion euros for the cash-strapped government but left operators financially stretched.

Countries like France have yet to hold 5G auctions, leaving Europe as a whole lagging early adopters like the United States, Japan and Korea.

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Google introduced a new link on its search results which aims to drive more traffic to price comparison rivals. (Photo: AP)

Google is trying to boost price comparison rivals such as Kelkoo in an effort to appease European Union antitrust regulators and ward off fresh fines following a 2.4-billion-euro ($2.7 billion) penalty nearly two years ago.

The European Commission said Alphabet unit Google had used its search engine market power to unfairly promote its own comparison shopping service.

The company subsequently offered to allow price-comparison rivals to bid for advertising space at the top of a search page, giving them the chance to compete on equal terms. But competitors said the measure failed to create a level playing field.

Earlier this month, Google introduced a new link on its search results which aims to drive more traffic to price comparison rivals.

British competitor Kelkoo said on its blog that it was one of several companies selected to try out the new link which will initially be available in Germany, France and the Netherlands.

Google was not immediately available for comment. European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has said that she was aware of rivals criticism of the companys proposal.

EU antitrust enforcers could levy fines up to 5 percent of Googles average daily worldwide turnover if it fails to comply with the 2017 order.

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The United States has said Huawei technology in next-generation 5G networks could be used to spy on the West. China has rejected the accusations.

US officials have warned their Brazilian counterparts of their security concerns about Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co during talks in Washington, a senior American official said on Monday.

The United States has said Huawei technology in next-generation 5G networks could be used to spy on the West. China has rejected the accusations.

The 5G issue is one of many security, defense and trade matters on the agenda as President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro are slated to meet for the first time on Tuesday.

They (Brazilian officials) have had a whole host of different meetings here where theyve heard from our experts on security, intelligence matters, and otherwise in order to understand the consequences of these networks and how frankly dangerous and how they could undermine their security domestically, the US official told reporters on a conference call, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A Brazilian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Brazil did not want to get in between the United States and China on the Huawei dispute. The official said that at the moment, no barriers were foreseen for Huawei in Brazil.

Bolsonaro, who embraced closer ties with the United States during his campaign for office last year, visited the CIA on Monday.

Brazil is also working during the trip to win US backing for economic reforms to win its support to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The US official told reporters that Brazils efforts on economic and regulatory reform were welcome.

We see those efforts and that positive movement in a favorable light and clearly we want to help Brazil achieve its goals and will do everything we can in order to help them achieve their goal, the official said.

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Islamabad: Pakistan's Supreme Court Tuesday postponed the verdict of jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's application seeking bail on medical grounds till March 26, according to media reports.

Sharif filed an appeal on March 6 against a judgment by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) which on February 25 rejected his bail application on medical grounds in the Al-Azizia steel mills case. During the hearing on Tuesday, a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa issued a notice to National Accountability Bureau to submit reply in the matter in the next hearing fixed for March 26. The apex court will announce the judgment on the same day, the Express Tribune reported. Defence counsel Khawaja Haris presented arguments in the case and cited medical reports. He claimed that the three-time premier is taking 17 different medications. We know that Nawaz receives medical care in London. We want to know whether his health deteriorated in prison, the paper quoted the chief justice questioning the counsel during the hearing of the petition. The chief justice further remarked that the reports from London were not provided to the doctors in Pakistan, and that the court would examine the medical reports of tests conducted at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad, the Geo News reported. Sharif, 69, is serving a seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore since December 2018.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo has suffered four angina attacks last week, according to his daughter Maryam Nawaz . The Sharif family is complaining that the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is not providing health facilities to the former premier who has serious health complications. The bench headed by Chief Justice Khosa also comprises of Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi will take up the petition. The former premier had twice submitted requests to the apex court for an early hearing of his application. In January, he filed application in the IHC for bail on medical reasons as he developed heart-related medical complications in jail but it was dismissed. Three corruption cases - Avenfield properties, Flagship investment and Al-Azizia steel mills - were registered against the Sharif family by the anti-graft body in 2017 following a judgment by the Supreme Court that disqualified Sharif in the Panama Papers case in 2017. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Avenfiled corruption case in July 2018 which was related to his properties in London. Later he was given bail in September. In December, the accountability court convicted him in the Al-Azizia graft case but acquitted him in the Flagship corruption case.
'He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless,' she said. (Photo:AP)

Christchurch: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed on Tuesday never to utter the name of the twin-mosque gunman as she opened a sombre session of parliament with an evocative "as-salaam alaikum" message of peace to Muslims.

"He will face the full force of the law in New Zealand," Ardern pledged to grieving Kiwis, while promising that she would deprive the man, an avowed white supremacist who slaughtered 50 people in Christchurch, of the publicity he craved. "He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety," she told assembled lawmakers of the 28-year-old Australian accused of the slaughter.

"That is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless." "I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them."

Dressed in black, the 38-year-old leader opened her remarks in parliament with a symbolic gesture, repeating the greeting uttered every day across the Islamic world: "as-salaam alaikum".

She closed her address by noting that "on Friday, it will be a week since the attack, members of the Muslim community will gather for worship on that day. Let us acknowledge their grief as they do."

"Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh," she said -- "May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be with you too." Her comments came as dozens of relatives of the deceased began arriving from around the world ahead of expected funerals which have already been delayed far beyond the 24 hours after death usually observed under Islamic custom. Peter Elms of New Zealand's immigration department said 65 visas had been granted for overseas family members so far.

The slow process of identification and forensic documentation has so far made burials impossible, augmenting families' grief.

Javed Dadabhai, who travelled from Auckland to help bury his cousin, said families and volunteers were told: "It is going to be a very slow process, a very thorough process." "Some families have been invited to have a look at their family members... the ones that are easiest to recognise, but we are talking about three or four."

"The majority of people still have not had the opportunity to see their family members," he told AFP. Mohamed Safi, 23, whose father Matiullah Safi died in Al Noor mosque, pleaded for officials to let him identify his father get a date for his burial.

"There's nothing they are offering," Safi, an Afghan refugee, said outside a family support centre. "They are just saying they are doing their procedures, they are doing their process. But what process? Why do I not know what you are going through to identify the body... Why am I not contacted as an immediate family member?" In the wake of the mass shooting, Ardern has promised to reform New Zealand gun laws that allowed the gunman to legally purchase the weapons he used in the attack on two Christchurch mosques, including semi-automatic rifles.

New Zealanders have already begun answering government appeals to hand in their weapons, including John Hart, a farmer in the North Island district of Masterton.

Hart said it was an easy decision for him to hand in his semi-automatic and tweeted: "on the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn't outweigh the risk of misuse.

We don't need these in our country." The tweet drew a barrage of derogatory messages to his Facebook account -- most apparently from the US, where the pro-gun lobby is powerful and vociferous. Hart deleted the messages but posted online: "A warm kia ora to all my new American Facebook friends."

"I'm not familiar with your local customs, but I assume 'Cuck' is a traditional greeting," he said of the insult, short for "cuckold" frequently used by far-right pundits. Police said they did not have data available on the number of weapons handed in since Friday.

But they issued a statement saying that "due to heightened security and the current environment, we would ask that people please call us first before attempting to surrender a firearm."

Ardern has said that details of the government's proposed law changes on gun ownership will be announced by next week, but she indicated that gun buybacks and a ban on some semi-automatic rifles were under consideration.

"The terror attack in Christchurch... was the worst act of terrorism on our shores, it was in fact one of the worst globally in recent times," she said. "It has exposed a range of weaknesses in New Zealand's gun laws."
She said the interests of Germany, Britain and the EU were at stake. (Photo:AP)

Berlin: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday she would struggle until the last possible moment to achieve an orderly Brexit, saying the interests of Germany, Britain and the EU were at stake.

"I will fight to the last hour of the deadline on March 29 for an orderly exit (of Britain from the European Union)," she told a conference in Berlin. "We don't have a lot of time for it but still have a few days."

Merkel admitted she had been surprised by the bombshell announcement on Monday by House of Commons speaker John Bercow that he could not put Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit plan to another vote in its current form. "I must confess that I was not familiar with the rules of order of the British parliament from the 17th century," she said with a wry smile.

And she stressed ahead of a crunch EU summit in Brussels Thursday and Friday at which Brexit is to take centre stage that the ball remained in London's court to plot the way forward.

"I am as of now unable to say what my position will be on Thursday because it depends on what Theresa May presents, what the situation looks like, (and) what may still happen in parliament," she said.

Merkel stressed that avoiding Britain crashing out of the EU without an exit deal was in the fundamental interest of all sides.

"We, together as the other 27 (EU member states), will react in an adequate manner and the less people play guessing games, the easier it will be," she said.

May is still hoping she can get the divorce agreement she struck with the European Union through parliament before March 29, despite MPs having rejected it twice. But weeks of chaotic political deadlock in parliament have already forced May to concede that Brexit must be delayed, amid fears of an economic shock if Britain ends its 46-year membership of the EU with no new arrangements in place.

She had been hoping to ask EU leaders for only a short delay when they meet at the Brussels summit, warning that without a deal, any extension would be lengthy.
Dutch prosecutors and police said they were 'seriously' investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack.

Utrecht: Dutch prosecutors and police said they were "seriously" investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack because of evidence including a letter found in the main suspect's getaway car.

"So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," they said in a joint statement.

Turkish-born main suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, and two unnamed men from Utrecht aged 23 and 27 remain in custody. Police found a red Renault Clio after Monday's attack which they said he had used to flee.

The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, which is near Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said.

"So far our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims," police and prosecutors added. Dutch and Turkish media reports had previously reported that a family dispute may have been the motive for the shooting.

However the police and prosecutors said that "other motives are not excluded, they are also being investigated." Armed police arrested Tanis in Utrecht after a huge manhunt on Monday during which police released his picture on social media. "A firearm was found during his arrest," the statement added.
The minister said many of these offshore account holders did not have legitimate, documented business. (File Photo)

Islamabad: Pakistani nationals having more than 152,500 offshore bank accounts could have stashed away USD 11 billion, a "mind-boggling" amount half of which is undeclared, a top minister was quoted as saying in a media report Tuesday. Minister of State for Revenue Hammad Azhar told businessmen at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) that the number of offshore accounts was "mind-boggling".

"So is the amount involved and the names of account holders," Azhar was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper. "All of these offshore account holders are resident Pakistanis and more than half of the hard currency stashed away by them is undeclared," he said.

The minister said many of these offshore account holders did not have legitimate, documented business. "That should be enough to underscore the scale of tax evasion (in the country). We wouldn't have to beg if we could bring this money back home," he said.

Azhar said the offshore account holders were under the watch of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR). The information about the offshore bank accounts of Pakistani nationals was shared with the government by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Azhar said the government had "deployed technology" using database of the National Database and Registration Authority, Federal Investigation Agency, State Bank of Pakistan and the FBR to profile potential taxpayers in Pakistan.

"Almost half the work is already done and by the end of April the profiling of such tax evaders will be completed," he said. Last week, Chairman of the FBR Jahanzeb Khan told a parliamentary panel the board had neither set any tax recovery target from the holders of these accounts nor seen any tax potential from the Panama Papers leaks.

The tax recovery target could not be given on the basis of information received about the offshore accounts because the account holders might have transferred money through legal channels or have plausible justification, he was quoted to have told the panel.

Around 400 account holders are believed to have cash of USD 1 million or above in their accounts and the FBR has so far been able to recover USD 1.2 million from one individual as tax since the OECD shared the information with the country's top tax agency.

Several years ago, former finance minister Ishaq Dar had claimed that Pakistani nationals had parked a whopping USD 200 billion in Swiss accounts, but he never disclosed the source of his information.

Based on his claim, the ruling Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf promised to recover this money after coming to power. The prime minister has also set up the Asset Recovery Unit for this purpose.
Subroto Bagchi, the founder of Bengaluru-based IT firm MindTree, has resigned from Odhisha government, to rejoin the IT company as it faced a hostile takeover bid.

An imminent threat of a hostile takeover of Mindtree has made me to resign from the Government to be able to go, save the company. I must protect the Tree from people who have arrived with bulldozers & saw chains to cut it down so that in its place, they can build a shopping mall, Bagchi, who was till recently Chairman, Odisha Skill Development Authority, said on the micro-blogging site Twitter.

It was reported Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is set to launch a hostile bid to acquire mid-tier IT services company Mindtree on Monday evening. It will be buying Coffee Day founder and Mindtrees largest shareholder, V G Siddhartha, and proceed with an open offer to public shareholders, almost Rs 7,000 crore.

Bagchi in a series of tweets called the MindTree as the national asset that is not meant for sale. Mindtree has not been designed as an asset to be bought and sold. It is a national resource. It has a unique culture that humanizes the idea of business. It sets the standards of corporate governance. I need to be there in its time of difficulty. Hence the hard decision to return, he said.

Bagchi, who co-founded Mindtree in 1999, returned to his native state Odisha in 2016, after stepping down from his role as executive chairman. His return to Bengaluru can be seen as a buildup to a bitter boardroom battle that the current management is preparing for to protect any rival technology firm from coming on board.
An ADGP-rank officer from the Karnataka State Police will soon fly to Senegal to facilitate the easy extradition of gangster Ravi Pujari (50), who was detained from a barber shop there on January 19.

The Ministry of External Affairs has granted clearance to a senior police officer to travel to Senegal to complete the process of extradition of Pujari. Rajneesh Goyal, Additional Chief Secretary, Home Department, refused to comment on which officer will be heading to Senegal and when.

Since India has no bilateral ties with Senegal on an extradition treaty, the authorities are looking to extradite Pujari under the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, adopted in 2000, a senior officer said.

According to sources, Pujari has hired a top lawyer in Senegal for Rs 7 crore to contest his extradition procedure. Since Senegal does not have capital punishment, the extradition process might require a guarantee that Pujari shall not be executed even if he is convicted under Indian laws, sources said.

Indian authorities are confident of a successful extradition process as Senegal is tough on international criminals, with fugitives from Italy and China extradited in recent times. The Dakar police in Senegal had located and detained Pujari from a barber shop in January this year after he was tracked across West African countries with the help of Indian authorities, who received information about him becoming a business partner in a restaurant chain named 'Namaste India'.

There are 97 extortion cases against Pujari in Karnataka alone. There are two cases in Mangaluru, from where he hails. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in one case.
India and South Korea signed seven agreements on Friday to enhance cooperation in key areas, including infrastructure development, media, start-ups and combating trans-border and international crime, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the country.

Modi, who is on a two-day visit to South Korea to strengthen India's strategic ties with the country, was accorded an official reception at the Blue House, the executive office and official residence of the South Korean President Moon Jae-in here. He also met First lady Kim Jung-sook.

The memorandum of understandings (MoUs) were signed after the two leaders held "constructive" talks on enhancing bilateral cooperation in a number of areas including trade, investment, defence and security.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said that seven documents between India and South Korea were signed/exchanged in the presence of the two leaders on cooperation in media, start-ups and police among others.

An MoU was signed between Korean National Police Agency and the Ministry of Home Affairs to enhance cooperation between the law enforcement agencies of the two countries and combat trans-border and international crimes.

Another agreement was signed for releasing a joint stamp, commemorating Princess Suriratna (Queen Hur Hwang-ok), a legendary Princess of Ayodhya, who went to Korea in AD 48 and married King Kim-Suro. A large number of Koreans trace their ancestry to the princess.

The two sides also signed an agreement to continue operations of Korea Plus organisation that facilitates investments by Korean companies in India. Korea Plus was operationalised in June 2016, and comprises representatives from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Energy of South Korea, Korea Trade Investment and Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and Invest India.

The two countries will promote collaboration among start-ups and set up a Korea Start-up Centre (KSC) in India to commercialise ideas, technologies and designs of start-up companies.

The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and Prasar Bharti have agreed to facilitate the broadcast of DD India Channel in South Korea and KBS World Channel in India.

An agreement was signed on fisheries and aquaculture for strengthening cooperation by encouraging exchanges, organising training workshops and development and utilisation of marine science and technology in the fields of fisheries and aquaculture.

Another MoU was signed between the National Highways Authority of India and Korea Expressway Corporation to promote bilateral cooperation in road and transport infrastructure development projects of India, and facilitate technical and institutional knowledge exchange in the field of road and transport.

Modi is visiting South Korea on the invitation of President Moon. This is his second visit to the Republic of Korea since 2015 and second summit meeting with the South Korean president.
A 28-year-old Chester man convicted of first-degree murder in January for the 2015 shooting death of 33-year-old Michael Collier was sentenced to life in prison plus 81/2 to 17 years Monday.

Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge James Bradley said the extra time was warranted due to the atrocity Vincent Clark committed outside Colliers sisters home on the 200 block of Engle Street on May 31, 2015.

The court believes in this particular case that, obviously, it was a cold-blooded murder, said Bradley. But in addition to that, we have a situation where the defendant stood over the body of the victim and pumped a magazine of 14 rounds into the (victims) body. That turns a cold-blooded murder into an atrocity.

The jury deliberated for less than two hours before convicting Clark, of the 1200 block of Clover Lane, on murder and weapons charges. He had previously been tried for the same murder in July, but the jury in that trial was unable to reach a verdict, requiring a retrial.

Jurors heard from Colliers girlfriend, Leslie Roman, who said she was with him at the time of the murder. Roman said Collier had parked across the street from his sisters home at 232 Engle St. at about 9:45 p.m. and exited the car.

Roman remained in the car, but said she saw sparks out of the corner of her eye and heard what sounded like fireworks. Roman looked up to see a black man in a hat, white T-shirt and shorts firing at Collier, who was on the ground in the street near the sidewalk, she said.

Another witness told Assistant District Attorney Michelle Thurstlic-ONeill that Clark walked past him toward Engle Street and shots rang out seconds later. He then claimed to see Clark run down Engle toward Union Street, where he entered the Cadillac. The witness additionally said Clark had offered him $2,500 not to testify a week or two before the first trial, while they were both in the Delaware County prison in Concord.

A third witness said he saw Clark later that night and that he had confessed to killing Sheets, Colliers street name. The witness said Clarkhad killed Collier because Collier had killed another man, Eshon Rahmir Mills, 19, of Peoples Street, about two weeks prior. Mills was found shot dead shot on the 1100 block of Pine Lane May 10, 2015.

The third witness also testified that he later told detectives Clark told him he had shot Collier after learning it was actually Clark who killed Mills. County Detective Thomas Scarpato said there are currently no suspects in Mills death.

Thurstlic-ONeill provided testimony from Colliers mother and sister Monday, who said his loss had been devastating to the family.

He took a good friend from me, a child of mine and the love of my life, Colliers mother said.

Defense attorney William Wismer did not add much, other than noting his client is single with an 11-year-old child. Clark did not say anything.

Thurstlic-ONeill noted Clark had prior brushes with the law, including an acquittal for third-degree murder in 2009, drug charges, weapons charges and a December 2015 murder case that was later dropped.

She asked that the additional time be added to Clarks mandatory life sentence to send a message to any future governor or board that might be considering leniency or commutation.

District Attorney Katayoun Copeland commended Thurstlic-ONeill, county Detective Thomas Scarpato, Chester Police Detective Victor Heness and the Chester Police Department for the conviction.

Mr. Clark now faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for gunning down the victim in a residential neighborhood and leaving him for dead in the street, she stated in a news release. While we know that that a guilty verdict will not undo the trauma this act of violence has caused to his family, as the result of excellent team work, this individual will spend the rest of his life facing the consequences of his actions.
A Marcus Hook man was given four years of county probation Monday after pleading guilty in three separate cases  including making false rape allegations against a fellow inmate at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility.

Stephen Michael Giampetro, 25, of the first block of Chestnut Street, entered negotiated guilty pleas to terroristic threats, false reports and tampering with evidence, all misdemeanors.

Court records indicate Giampetro was arrested Oct. 4 on the terroristic threats charge, which he said Monday involved his girlfriend.

Delaware County Sgt. Kenneth Bellis and Detective Ed Pisani spoke with Giampetro at Crozer-Chester Medical Center Oct. 11. Giampetro claimed to have been anally raped in the prison by a cell mate the night before.

Giampetro was reportedly acting erratic during the interview, and made statements that he was going to sue everyone, that he did not believe he was speaking with police officers, and that he was hallucinating. Although he initially consented to a sexual assault examination, he did not allow a full exam to be completed.

Giampetro posted bail in the terroristic threats case Oct. 12, according to court records.

Detectives also spoke with the alleged assailant, who denied ever sexually assaulting Giampetro and consented to a sexual assault kit. Investigators later learned that Giampetro admitted to another person that he had made up the rape allegation because he wanted to get out of his cell.

County detectives attempted to speak with Giampetro about the alleged rape Oct. 30, but he refused to provide further details, became agitated and stormed out of the interview. He was arrested on the false report charge Nov. 5 and charged with tampering with evidence Nov. 27, according to court records.

Under the negotiated guilty plea worked out by Assistant District Attorney Diane Horn and defense counsel Brian Malloy, Giampetro received 48 months of probation for the terroristic threats charge, and two concurrent 24-month probationary sentences in each of the other cases.

He will also have to comply with the recommendations of psychological and psychiatric evaluations, complete anger management classes, pay $694 restitution for DNA analysis and perform 120 hours of community service.

Malloy said his client, who works full-time, is a good father and has been making strides to correct his behavior.

Its not going to happen again, your honor, Giampetro told Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge Barry Dozor. Im going to keep moving in the right direction, doing the right things.
Police said suspect, 37-yr-old Gokmen Tanis, had been taken into custody after an hours-long manhunt.

The suspect had previously been arrested, regional prosecutor Rutger Jeuken told reporters, without giving further details. (Photo: AP)

Utrecht: Dutch police arrested a Turkish man suspected of shooting dead three people and wounding five on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht on Monday.

Police said the suspect, 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis, had been taken into custody after an hours-long manhunt and had earlier run-ins with authorities in the Netherlands.

The city was put into lockdown after the shooting, shortly after the morning rush hour, which authorities initially said was an apparent terrorist attack. Police conducted raids in several locations after issuing an image of Tanis and warning the public not to approach him.

But hours after the shooting, the gunmans motive remained unclear. A prosecutor said it could be for family reasons and Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency, quoting relatives of the gunman, said he had fired at a relative on the tram and had then shot at others who tried to help her.

The Turkish intelligence agency said it is investigating whether the attack was personally motivated or an act of terrorism, President Tayyip Erdogan said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Dutch authorities had raised the terrorism threat in Utrecht province to its highest level, schools were told to shut their doors and paramilitary police increased security at airports, other vital infrastructure and at mosques.

The threat level was reduced by one notch to where it had been after the suspect was arrested, the National Counter-Terrorism Agency said.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte convened crisis talks immediately after the incident, which came three days after a lone gunman killed 50 people in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.

Our country has today been shocked by an attack in Utrecht... A terrorist motive cannot be excluded, Rutte said. The first reports have led to disbelief and disgust. Innocent people have been struck by violence.

The mayor of Utrecht, Jan van Zanen, said three people had been killed and five injured, three of them critically.

Criminal Record

The suspect had previously been arrested, regional prosecutor Rutger Jeuken told reporters, without giving further details.

The shooting took place in Kanaleneiland, a quiet residential district on the outskirts of Utrecht with a large immigrant population.

Its frightening that something like this can happen so close to home, said Omar Rahhou, who said his parents lived on a street cordoned off by police. These things normally happen far away but this brings it very close, awful.

Witness Daan Molenaar, who said he had been sitting at the front of the tram when the shooting started, told national broadcaster NOS he did not believe it was a terrorist attack.

The first thing I thought was, this is some kind of revenge or something, or somebody whos really mad and grabbed a pistol, he said.

Utrecht, the Netherlands fourth largest city with a population of around 340,000, is known for its picturesque canals and large student population. Gun killings are rare in Utrecht, as elsewhere in the Netherlands.
Tom Wolf would not come to the pipeline protesters.

So the pipeline protesters are going to Wolf.

Again.

Only this time theyre going with a lot more ammo.

For more than a year, citizens with legitimate concerns about the massive Mariner East Pipeline that is cutting through the heart of Delaware and Chester counties have been sounding the alarm with their concerns about this project.

It will carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of highly volatile liquid gases at high pressure through neighborhoods as it traverses 350 miles  the entire width of Pennsylvania  snaking through 23 miles of Chester County and another 11 miles here in Delaware County.

Along the way it will pass in close proximity to residents homes in densely populated neighborhoods, to say nothing of schools and senior centers.

The multi-billion dollar project of Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners and its local affiliates, Sunoco Logistics and Sunoco Pipeline LP, has been plagued by a series of setbacks, including sinkholes, spills and runoffs.

State agencies have slapped the wrist of Energy Transfer, intermittently shutting down construction the pipeline and fining the company millions of dollars.

Nothing has stopped the project, which is actually a series of pipelines. Mariner East 1 has been online for months, utilizing the companys old, original Sunoco petroleum pipeline that has been retrofitted to handle these liquid gases. It was shut down again a month ago when sinkholes formed for the second time in a Chester County neighborhood. Mariner East 2, featuring a larger, 20-inch pipe that would great increase production, went online the last week of December, although not in the way Energy Transfer originally proposed. Delays and problems with construction put Mariner East behind schedule and with gaps in the 20-inch line, in particular in this region. ETP put the unit online using a hybrid series of older, existing, smaller pipes. The full Mariner East 2 now is not expected to go online until at least 2020. Mariner East 2x remains under construction.

Today hundreds of citizens opposed to the pipeline will board buses headed for a major rally against the pipeline at the state Capitol in Harrisburg.

Its not the first time. But it will be the first time since several key investigations have been launched in connection with the controversial project.

Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan got the ball rolling back in December when he announced his office was launching a criminal investigation into the construction of Mariner East 2. Hogan, who is running for re-election, made sure to voice his belief that state officials  Gov. Wolf and state regulators  had failed to adequately investigate and protect residents concerns.

He followed that up several weeks ago by impaneling an investigative grand jury to hear witnesses and review documents. The grand jury will decide whether there is ground for any indictments to be issued.

He would soon have company.

Last week a bipartisan group of legislators from the region penned a letter to Wolf asking him to shut down operations on Mariner East, saying the company had failed to provide an adequate emergency response plan for local first responders in the event of an accident. Thats a claim, by the way, that the company vehemently denies, along any grounds for a criminal investigation.

The very same day, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced he was launching an investigation of his own, in conjunction with a request from Delaware County District Attorney Katayoun Copeland.

This morning residents will board buses and head to Harrisburg for what is being billed as a Citizens Rally for Safety Over Sunoco (SOS).

Immediately following the rally, state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19 of West Whiteland, the leading pipeline critic in the Legislature, and state Rep. Danielle Friel Otten, D-155 of Exton, will hold a press conference of the newly formed, bipartisan Pipeline Safety Caucus. This is the same group that penned the letter to Wolf. They plan to outline a package of comprehensive pipeline safety bills to address what they claim are various environmental problems associated with the pipeline, along with public safety concerns, geologic problems, threats to private property, water rights and a laundry list of quality-of-life issues.

In the meantime, liquid gases continue to flow through Mariner East 2, as do the emotions of those opposed to the project, as well as those such as local labor unions and chamber of commerce types who see it as a major economic boost for the region.

But now all of this will play out under the microscope of several investigations by county and state agencies.

And that may be the one entity that has the final say on Mariner East.
To the Times:

The Interfaith Council of Southern Delaware County raises its voice in mourning for those who were murdered on Friday by white supremacist terrorists in Christchurch, New Zealand. As members of diverse faith communities united in our values of respect for the right of all persons to worship freely, we stand together in holding the victims of this horrific attack in our prayers. We condemn this violence against the Muslim community in the strongest terms; an attack on one faith is an attack on all faiths.

Though these horrific events occurred in a place that is a world away, we recognize that the echoes of this racist violence reach much nearer to home. We hold our Muslim friends, sisters and brothers, coworkers, students and teachers with care and tenderness in this moment, as we seek to comfort and defend those who are most affected.

We urge you to join us in fighting hatred with hope, in countering racist resentment with unwavering commitment to the dignity of all persons. May we take to heart the words of New Zealands Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern:

We were not chosen for this act of violence because we condone racism, because we are an enclave for extremism. We were chosen for the very fact that we are none of these things. Because we represent diversity, kindness, compassion, a home for those who share our values, refuge for those who need it. And those values, I can assure you, will not, and cannot, be shaken by this attack.

We call on people everywhere to reject violence in all its forms, and to stand together in building communities of love and respect for all.
SALT LAKE CITY  Recent college admissions scandals have created a national conversation about integrity, privilege and parental involvement in an adult childs college education.

Now, a recent study conducted for The New York Times suggests that parents aren't only going to excessive lengths to help their adult children through school: many are doing basic adult tasks for them.

What happened: Morning Consult conducted a poll for The New York Times to determine the level of involvement parents have in their adult children's lives.

A nationally representative sample of 1,508 people ages 18 to 28 and 1,136 parents of children that age was surveyed from Jan. 29 to Feb. 3 to determine parental involvement, according to The New York Times.

Results of the poll: The poll found that more than half of parents give their adult children monthly financial assistance of some kind.

Other findings of the poll are as follows:

76 percent of parents reminded their adult children of deadlines, including schoolwork deadlines, that they need to meet.

74 percent of parents made appointments for their adult children, including doctors appointments.

44 percent of those with college students made tuition or loan payments for them.

22 percent of parents helped their adult children study for a college test

16 percent of parents helped write all or part of their adult childs job or internship application

Other notable results of the poll are that 12 percent of parents gave more than $500 per month to their adult children for rent or daily expenses, 11 percent contacted a childs employer if they had an issue with work and 8 percent contacted a professor or administrator to discuss their childs grades at college.

Parents also reported being more engaged in relationships with their grown children than they were with their own parents. Eight in 10 said they were always or often texting their adult children.

According to The New York Times, wealthier parents are more likely to have increased involvement in their childs adult life.

When asked at what age adult children should be financially independent of their parents, the largest share of young people said 25 to 28.

Helicopter parenting trend: According to The New York Times, findings of the new poll are consistent with the trend of increased parental involvement in childrens school and work life.

Parents have had an increasingly pervasive presence in the college recruiting process in the past 10 years, according to the Collegiate Employment Research Institute, with many submitting resumes and attending career fairs on behalf of their child.

Companies like LinkedIn and Amazon have also been known to host Bring Your Parents to Work days in recent years.

Why is it happening: According to researchers, the three factors driving most parents who are very involved in their adult childs life are widening inequality, the importance of a college degree and fears for their childs financial security.

A study conducted by the Federal Reserve last year found that Millennials are less well off than members of earlier generations when they were young, with lower earnings, fewer assets and less wealth.

Mothers particularly are spending more time and money on their children than any previous generation, with a heavy focus on education, according to The New York Times.

Laura Hamilton, author and sociologist at the University of California, Merced, told The New York Times, Its really hard for parents to understand why you wouldnt do anything you could do to assist your children. If you have the influence, the connections and the money, its not surprising to me that the parents made these choices.

Why it is hurting young adults: While parents may think that this level of involvement is helpful for their children, its detrimental for their development of life skills and can even negatively impact their mental health, according to The New York Times.

Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former dean of freshmen at Stanford and author of How to Raise an Adult, said parents are preventing their adult children from truly growing up.

"If youre doing it in high school, you cant stop at college, she said. "If youre doing it in college, you cant stop when it comes to the workplace. You have manufactured a role for yourself of always being there to handle things for your child, so it gets worse because your young adult is ill-equipped to manage the basic tasks of life."

According to The New York Times, Research has shown that children of hyper-involved parents are often more successful at navigating college and finding good jobs  but that they are less self-reliant and more likely to face anxiety or depression.

Parents need to give their adult children room, according to The New York Times.

The point is to prepare the kid for the road, instead of preparing the road for the kid, Lythcott-Haims said.
In the wake of a tragedy as awful as the mass murders at mosques in New Zealand, its natural for people and institutions to wonder what could have been done to identify and prevent problems ahead of time.

Politicians mull tougher laws. Regular people feel helpless in the face of a worldwide culture that seems saturated with hate.

Police, meanwhile, brace for copycat crimes. Indeed, the suspect in this case claimed in his manifesto that one his main sources of inspiration was a Norwegian who killed 77 people in a similar shooting spree in 2011.

Hate and violence seem to breed more of the same, just as, on a smaller scale, insults beget retaliatory insults that seem to breed and grow like rats.

Its a cycle that has become all too familiar as such tragedies seem to proliferate.

But if that is true, it also follows that love and forgiveness breed and spread as well. The only truly positive response to senseless violence, then, may be a resolve to begin spreading this countermeasure with greater energy.

In an essay for The Guardian last year, Eva Wiseman wrote, We perform kindnesses in response to darkness and, in turn, our lives are improved. Which means that rather than old-fashioned or altruistic, kindness is as modern as it gets.

In a recent interview with the Deseret News, American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks spoke of actions that demonstrate love, and he urged people to develop relationships with people with whom they disagree. The opposite of love is fear, and humans tend to fear and denigrate those they dont know.

One way to avoiding bad behavior, then, is to resolve not to be anonymous, especially online. Anonymity is, in my view, inconsistent with fully human behavior, Brooks said. We have basically chosen to dehumanize ourselves, to say I am not an individual.

And when people dehumanize, they tend to do bad things they otherwise wouldnt.

We would place this prominently on any list of things average people can do to make the world better. Resolve not to be anonymous. Stand behind your opinions.

That list also would include airing differences with respect and an open mind. A good exercise is to habitually ponder how you might argue your opponents case. Doing so may not convince you of your own error, but it would help you see the opposition in a more human light.

But while civil arguments are important for peaceful human interaction, the real key to a better society is service. If everyone resolved to spend part of each week in voluntary service of some kind, many fears and animosities would melt away.

Utah consistently leads the nation in surveys that measure volunteer work. That kind of service tends to replace expectations of entitlement with a sense of ones own responsibility to the well-being of a community.

Were not suggesting a resolve to do these things would rid the world of hate and violence. Experts point to mental health issues that may have driven the suspect to do what he did last week. Racists and other hate-filled people feed off each other in dark corners of the internet.

In this case, the suspect seemed to live a normal life on the surface. The New York Times quoted the vice president of a local gun club describing him as polite and eager to help set up and put things away during competitions.

No, getting to the heart of such an unspeakably evil deed can be complicated and confusing. But countering hate should not be.

Laws can help limit access to weapons. Institutions can help people with mental disorders.

But love, which undeniably would make the world better, must be spread on an individual basis. That is the one appropriate and meaningful thing everyone can do in response to such a tragedy.
SALT LAKE CITY  If things at The Gateway seem a little dreamy lately, it's by design. Utah Arts Alliance's new immersive pop-up art exhibit, "Dreamscapes," allows people walk through clouds, crystal caves, an "Alice in Wonderland"-like forest, a bathtub full of stars and giant letters visitors can climb up and slide down.

"It's just a place for imagination and fun," Derek Dyer of the Utah Arts Alliance told the Deseret News.

But "Dreamscapes" isn't only full of the improbable  there is a tangible reality to this new exhibition, as well. It's an interactive experience that is full of art you can see, touch, climb on, hear and even smell.

"We wanted it to be accessible to everyone, including and especially kids," Dyer said. "And we all have a kid inside of us  it's a really playful space that we want people to be able to let their imaginations run wild and just have a lot of fun and hopefully be inspired, hopefully, have sort of transformational experience."

When the organizers at Utah Arts Alliance chose the exhibition's theme, Dyer said building an exhibition around dreams stuck out to the group because it would give the artists ample freedom.

"Dreams have a lot of different meanings," he said. "There's the dreaming you do when you sleep, there's also dreams as far as aspirations that you have. And so we felt like there's a lot we could do with this idea of 'Dreamscapes.'"

The open theme allowed artists' imaginations to run wild on this project. As a result, those attending are able to play and imagine just as the artists did.

Travis Warnimont is one of these artists. He created the "Pixelation Room," an installation piece inspired by Instagram favorite and Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama's "Obliteration Room." His room looks like a living space with couches, chairs, walls and ceiling all painted white. In this room guests don't just get to interact with the art  they help create it. Everyone who attends is given colored stickers they can place anywhere throughout the room so over time it will transform from white to a riot of color.

Warnimont hopes visitors are inspired by the transformation of the space.

"You can make really anything out of nothing because that's what this room started with.  When I came in here all these walls were all black,  the ceiling was brown and I didn't have a single piece of furniture," Warnimont said.

He spent three straight weeks sourcing furniture to fill the space, then painting them and the originally black room white. But after working hard to make the room all white he can't wait to see what it becomes.

"It's crazy to see even where this came from yesterday when it was still all white. It maybe has 20 stickers up  it pops so much more already," Warnimont said. "And it's really amazing to see it makes me want to cry just a little bit."

One of the big projects for Warnimont and all the artists was sourcing the materials for their installations. According to Dyer, "Dreamscapes" is made of 90 percent upcycled materials  a term for materials reused so as to create a product that is better than the original.

For Warnimont the reused material only adds to the meaning of the finished product and its message of possibility.

"Our ultimate goal is we want you to be inspired to know that you can find all the surrounding material that some may consider garbage, but then you can turn it into an entire art exhibit. And that's, I think, one thing that has been really inspiring about this entire project," Warnimont said.

Other recent popular interactive exhibits throughout the country have been New Mexico's "House of Eternal Return," the recently closed "No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man" at Washington, D.C.'s Renwick Gallery and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art's "Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass." Immersive art is a trend that is gaining traction, largely thanks to the rise of social media.

Due to the popularity of this type of exhibit, the Utah Arts Alliance is hoping to open a permanent immersive exhibit in Salt Lake, and they've been slowly building up to their goal. They had a short version of it with November's IlluminateLight Art and Technology Festival that lasted two days. And they see "Dreamscapes'" one-month pop-up as the next step in that journey.

"Our goal  it might not be phase 3 or it might be phase 5  but it's to have a permanent facility that we provide this type of experience in and we're able to switch out the rooms and switch out the exhibits and the interactive components as we go forward," Dyer said.

Exhibitions like "Dreamscapes" not only gives people art that they can interact with, they are perfect for sharing those interactions with others  which, according to Dyer, fits into our current cultural emphasis on experiences over material possessions.

"I think that's why these types of places are becoming really popular because it's a way for us to socialize with each other and also to be inspired and kind of have some creativity and imagination added to our lives, which a lot of times otherwise are a little bit more mundane."

If you go 

What: Utah Art Alliance's "Dreamscapes"

When: March 15-April 15, Monday-Friday, 4-9 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, 12-9 p.m.

Where: 110 S. Rio Grande St.

How much: $15

Web: utaharts.org
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed controversial laws that allow courts to fine and briefly jail people for showing disrespect.

Websites that fail to comply would be blocked. (Photo:AP)

Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed controversial laws that allow courts to fine and briefly jail people for showing disrespect towards authorities, and block media for publishing "fake news".

Putin signed off on the legislation against the advice of human rights activists, who warned the laws amounted to censorship and would be abused to further crack down on freedom of speech.

The law on disrespecting authorities backs punishment for "offending state symbols" and stipulates hefty fines and jail terms of 15 days for repeat offenders.

Another piece of legislation allows authorities to decide what amounts to "fake news" and gives a media watchdog the power to demand an outlet delete the information.

Websites that fail to comply would be blocked.

Fines could reach 1.5 million rubles (over USD 22,700) if the infraction leads to grave consequences like death or rioting.

Rights activists say that since first becoming president in 2000, Putin has gradually crushed freedoms in Russia, muzzling critics and bringing television under control.

The new legislation takes the crackdown on civil society to a whole new level, they say.

Critics say the legislation is vaguely worded and would have large scope for abuse, further complicating the difficult and sometimes deadly work of rights activists and opposition journalists in Russia.

The Kremlin is stepping up media control to counter a fall in Putin's approval rating amid mounting economic trouble, according to activists.

"These new prohibitions and punishments are not just a continuation of the repressive legislative and practical measures that began in 2012," Yuri Dzhibladze, president of the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, told AFP.

"This is a completely new level which almost literally repeats the Soviet-era law about 'activities undermining the Soviet system' and 'anti-Soviet campaigning and propaganda'."

The authorities unleashed a major crackdown on dissenters after Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012 in the face of mass protests.

"From now it will be police that will decide what fake news is and what's not," said Alexander Cherkasov of Memorial, a top rights group.

"This will lead to a violation of civil rights and freedoms."

Moscow on Monday marked the fifth anniversary of Crimea's annexation from Ukraine, a move condemned by the West but celebrated by most Russians.

Mikhail Fedotov, the chairman of the Kremlin's human rights' council, told AFP that the legislation had "numerous flaws" and his group had asked the president to reject it.

Even the usually pliant media criticised the new laws.

"Authorities want people to hate in silence," mass-circulation tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote ahead of the signing last week.

"The authorities' desire to gag their subjects is a very old, shameful and meaningless desire."

In 2018, Putin was elected to a historic fourth term in office with a record vote share amid increasing international isolation.

But the 66-year-old Russian president's popularity ratings have taken a beating due to a controversial pension age hike and falling living standards as a result of tough Western sanctions over Ukraine and other crises.

Last month Russian lawmakers backed a bill that could cut off the country's internet traffic from servers abroad, which critics say is a possible step towards an isolated network like in North Korea.
SALT LAKE CITY  State officials took a first big step Monday toward making medical cannabis available to Utah patients.

The Utah Department of Health and the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food started soliciting bids for an electronic verification system and inventory control system that will form the backbone of the program.

"We really cant do anything program wide until this is in its place," said Drew Rigby, the agriculture department's cannabis program manager.

"Our ultimate goal is to get patients product as fast, as efficient, as cheap as possible," he said. "All of this is building toward that end."

The Utah Legislature legalized medical marijuana in December. The law directs the state agriculture department to issue licenses for the cultivation, processing and laboratory testing while the state health department will issue medical cannabis cards to patients, register medical providers and license medical cannabis pharmacies.

The computer systems will track cannabis plants from the time they are 8 inches tall with an ID tag through cultivation, processing and distribution. The agencies expect to sign a five-year contract worth up to $5 million with the winning bidder.

Rich Oborn, the health department's director of the Center for Medical Cannabis, said electronic tracking is a critical piece of the program.

"We need to able to track the batches that the product is coming from," he said, adding the department wants to be prepared in the event there's an issue with a product.

The system also aims to ensure nothing goes missing, including parts of the plant that are thrown away in processing.

"Its critical to prevent any diversion to the black market," Oborn said.

The computer system will allow patients to apply for and renew medical cannabis cards. It will be used to order medical marijuana from the state's central fill pharmacy and track all purchases. It will also maintain a record of the amount of cannabis in cultivation facilities, processing facilities and pharmacies, and monitor product testing by independent laboratories.

The departments expect to award a contract to a software provider in May. The system must be up and running by March 2020 when the state's medical marijuana program is set to start.
PROVO  How certain was 17-year-old Meagan Grunwald that the shots her boyfriend fired would kill a deputy who stopped to check on them in Eagle Mountain five years ago?

On Monday, five justices parsed details of the deadly traffic stop in an attempt to determine Grunwald's role in the death of Sgt. Cory Wride and the extent to which she knew he would be fatally wounded in the gunfire on Jan. 30, 2014.

Grunwald, the getaway driver who led officers on a multicounty chase as her older boyfriend, 27-year-old Angel Garcia-Juaregui, fired at them, is now asking Utah's highest court to toss her aggravated murder conviction in Wride's death.

The hearing took place at Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School, part of an effort to allow the public to sit in on the court's proceedings.

Among the specifics the Utah Supreme Court considered Monday was the distance between the truck and police car as Grunwald pressed her foot to the brake and Garcia-Juaregui fired out the truck's back window.

If the officer had parked 100 feet away, she couldn't have known that Garcia-Juaregui would kill Wride, one Utah Supreme Court justice said Monday. But if the deputy had been approaching them as shots rang out, a deadly outcome would have been more obvious, said Justice Deno Himonas.

"She had to be reasonably certain of death" in order for her actions to fit her conviction of aggravated murder, Himonas said.

In reality, Wride was somewhere in between "the typical distance an officer pulls behind the car" in a traffic stop, said Assistant Solicitor General Chris Ballard.

Grunwald never fired a shot that day, but she was found equally liable as an accomplice to the crimes of her boyfriend, who died in a shootout with police on the freeway. She testified at trial she initially believed the glass on the police vehicle was bulletproof, but as the chase went on, began to fear for the officer.

Now 22, she argues the jury received improper instructions that led to a different outcome in her case than if the paperwork had been correct. An appeals court reversed several of her lesser convictions based on a similar requirement last year.

The Utah Supreme Court justices who weighed the case Monday will issue a written decision at a later date.

Grunwald contends that faulty instructions directed jurors to pronounce her guilty if they found she acted recklessly. But the standard for an aggravated murder conviction is actually higher, requiring she acted knowingly and with the intent to aid in her boyfriend's crime, her attorney Doug Thompson, argued Monday.

The errors in the jury instructions "fundamentally distorted the law," Thompson said.

Grunwald testified at trial that she pulled over on state Route 73 in Eagle Mountain because she and Garcia-Juaregui were arguing. Wride spotted the truck's emergency lights and stopped to see if the truck needed help, then went back to his patrol vehicle to look up a fake name Garcia-Juaregui gave him. Her boyfriend told her to put her foot on the brake, opened the back window and suddenly began to shoot, she testified.

As police pursued the couple that day, with Grunwald behind the wheel, Garcia-Juaregui shot and critically wounded Utah County sheriff's deputy Greg Sherwood in the head. The deputy survived, and was present to hear the arguments in Grunwald's appeal Monday.

Garcia-Juaregui was shot and killed by police in a shootout on the side of I-15 in Juab County.

Last year, the Utah Court of Appeals tossed Grunwald's convictions for attempted murder of Sherwood. Because her sentence for that charge was running simultaneously with that of Wride's death, the move did not shorten her prison sentence, which is estimated at a minimum of 30 years and up to life.

The appeals court in its 2018 decision said the jury was not given proper instructions and it could be argued that Grunwald was acting recklessly when driving at that point, but she didn't intend to aid in her boyfriend's actions. Grunwald was granted a new trial on charges of attempted aggravated murder, three counts of felony discharge of a firearm, and criminal mischief.

But the Court of Appeals upheld Grunwald's convictions of aggravated murder and aggravated robbery, saying "the error was harmless" on those counts.

The Utah Supreme Court agreed to hear her appeal of that part of last year's ruling.On Monday, Ballard, with the Utah Attorney General's Office, countered that the case against Grunwald was so strong that even with the proper instructions, the jury still would have found her guilty of aggravated murder.

The evidence here showed overwhelmingly that she was a fully complicit accomplice in all of her boyfriends actions" by being a lookout and letting him know when there would be a lull in traffic, he said. What's more, Grunwald had "serious credibility problems" and lied about her relationship with Garcia-Juaregui, Ballard said, and about the role of a gun in a domestic violence case of his prior to the fatal traffic stop.

Utah County prosecutors say they will wait for the Utah Supreme Court's decision before determining whether to try Grunwald again.

"Being the one who submitted those jury instructions and missing that word 'reckless,' you just feel sick every time that this has to be an issue," said Tim Taylor, deputy Utah County attorney. But he said he believes the evidence still shows "she operated with intentional knowing."

Grunwald did not attend the arguments Monday. Thompson declined to say how his client is doing at the Utah State Prison, and members of her family also declined comment through her attorney.
SALT LAKE CITY  A Bountiful elementary school teacher who asked a student to wipe palm ash from his forehead has returned to the classroom after a school district review.

The Davis School District confirmed the teacher's return in a statement issued Tuesday.

"We take matters regarding students and employees very seriously. We investigated the situation, followed policy and took action. The teacher has since returned to the classroom," district spokesman Chris Williams wrote in a statement.

The educator, Valley View Elementary School teacher Moana Patterson, addressed the issue at a press conference at the state Capitol last week.

She said the incident was the result of a "total misunderstanding."

Patterson said the student, William McLeod, came into her fourth-grade classroom "with what appeared to be dirt on his forehead. I gave him a wet wipe to clean it off. I had no idea it was a religious symbol. When I learned it was a sacred symbol for Ash Wednesday, I immediately apologized to the boy and family."

The statement said the school district was not at liberty to discuss the details of the investigation or results because it was a personnel matter.

"We are moving forward and will do everything we can to make sure every educator and every student is successful as possible. The school principal will also be working with the district's Education Equity Department to provide any additional training that Valley View educators need," according to the statement.

The boy's father, Gary McLeod, said his son explained to Patterson that it was Ash Wednesday, that the ash cross was placed on his forehead at church and he was not allowed to remove it.

But McLeod said he has no ill will toward Patterson and doesn't want her to lose her job.
HERRIMAN  A preliminary hearing has been set for a man accused of stabbing his girlfriend after she allegedly stabbed him in self-defense.

Korbin Baker, 20, of Herriman, was charged in 3rd District Court with two counts of aggravated assault, a second-degree felony. In court on Monday, a judge set a preliminary hearing for April 2.

On Feb. 26, Herriman police were called to 5264 W. Primavue Lane (12470 South) where a man and women both had suffered "significant stab wounds," according to officers.

A 26-year-old woman called 911 reporting that her live-in boyfriend was choking her, so "she stabbed him and then he stabbed her," according to charging documents.

"(She) stated that she didn't mean to hurt (Baker) but he was 'choking' her," according to the charges.

Investigators found the woman had three stab wounds on her abdomen and one one her arm. Baker had a stab wound to his neck. They also found "a large amount of blood on the floor and the walls of the main room," according to a search warrant affidavit.

Baker told detectives he got into an argument with the woman and he started to choke her, but she then "panicked" and stabbed him, the charges state.

"(Baker) stated that (the woman) wants him to say that he stabbed her but 'she stabbed herself,'" he told police, according to the charges.

Both Baker and the woman were flown by medical helicopter to a local hospital to be treated for their injuries.

As of Tuesday, no charges had been filed against the woman.

Baker was able to meet his $100,000 bail on Monday was released from the Salt Lake County Jail pending his next hearing, according to court records.

Free and confidential help and support for victims and survivors of domestic violence is available 24/7 at 1-800-897-LINK (5465) or visiting udvc.org.
SALT LAKE CITY  Heather Bennett, whose fight against the closure of her neighborhood school propelled her to more than a decade of service on the Salt Lake City Board of Education, died unexpectedly Monday due to a vascular issue.

Bennett, 61, had been undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer.

She was elected to the Salt Lake board in 2004 and served in several leadership capacities, including president.

In announcing Bennett's passing, Salt Lake City Superintendent Lexi Cunningham said the community had not only lost "a fierce advocate for our students but also a kind, compassionate and exemplary public servant. I could expound on Heathers many and notable achievements, but what she will most be remembered for is her commitment to all students in the Salt Lake City School District."

In recent months, when Bennett was not feeling well enough to attend board meetings in person, she participated by telephone.

When the board recently heard a recommendation to close M. Lynn Bennion Elementary School, she urged the board to take more time to more fully study the implications of the school closure and other recommendations of the district's building utilization committee.

In 2017, during Bennett's term as board president, the school board passed a resolution that offered reassurance the district "cannot and does not" does not ask students to disclose immigration status.

At the time, Bennett said the Safe Schools Resolution spelled out that Salt Lake City schools and other district facilities are "safe and welcoming places" for all students and their families.

"It makes it clear we're not going to give unfettered access to (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) or any agency acting on behalf of ICE or acting to enforce immigration law to our schools and our students. We take the protections of (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) very seriously," Bennett said.

Bennett's path to 14 years of service on the Salt Lake board started at her neighborhood school, where she volunteered and was a leader in the fight against its eventual closure.

Heather made an enormous impact in the lives of students in the Salt Lake City School District. From her early work as a volunteer and leader at Lowell Elementary School more than 25 years ago, to her recent initiatives promoting literacy and emotional wellness as president of the board last year, she demonstrated her concern for all students and their academic progress and growth," said board member Katherine Kennedy.

"She will be dearly missed by all of us," Kennedy said.

Board member Kristi Swett described Bennett as an essential mentor.

"I couldnt have asked for a better  example of what it means to be a public servant," Swett said.

Bennett "was always focused on doing what was best for our kids. She had an ability to bring people together, even when they had differing opinions," she said.

"I learned so much from Heather, her grace and her ability to look past what was on the outside and really dig for what was on the inside. I will miss her terribly.

Elected board president in 2014, Bennett managed the national search for a new superintendent, which culminated in unanimous selection of Cunningham.

Bennett represented District 5 on the school board. She served as its vice president for several years and sat on its human sexuality and shared governance committees. She also served on the Utah High School Activities Association board of trustees.

A Utah native, Bennett studied English literature at the University of Utah and worked in publishing in New York, California and Utah. She operated an editorial and print-production consulting business, Hither & Yon Publishing Services, from her home, according to her campaign website.

She is survived by her husband, Kevin Hanson, chairman of the University of Utah's Film and Media Arts Department. The couple has three children, all graduates of Salt Lake City public schools. All were at her side when she died Monday, a statement from the school district said.

Services have not been announced. The school board was expected to conduct its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday night.
SALT LAKE CITY  At a naturalization ceremony for new U.S. citizens Monday, former President George W. Bush praised immigration as a blessing and a strength and also spoke on the need for immigration reform.

The event was held at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas. According to The Washington Post, more than four dozen immigrants from 22 countries were sworn in during the ceremony, which Bush spoke at along with former first lady Laura Bush.

So many of us can draw a line somewhere back to a man or woman who had the idea that life could be better  and that hope led them here, said the former president.

Americas elected representatives have a duty to regulate who comes in and when, he added. In meeting this responsibility, it helps to remember that Americas immigrant history made us who we are. Amid all the complications of policy, may we never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength.

George W. Bush said there is a need for comprehensive immigration reform, noting that citizens of the United States must recognize a plain responsibility at the border.

Borders are not arbitrary, and they need to be respected along with the fine men and women of the immigration services and the border patrol, he said.

He reinforced that respecting the nations history of welcoming immigrants is also important, according to People magazine.

Generations of new arrivals left their mark on our national character, George W. Bush said, in traits that friends abroad still recognize as distinctly American: our optimism, our independence and openness to the new, our willingness to strive and to risk, our sense of life as an adventure, dignified by personal freedom and personal responsibility.

Laura Bush, who spoke prior to her husband, talked about how Texas has been a land of immigrants where people have come and continue to come to build a better life.

We are a much richer state for all the cultures that have settled on our land, she said.

The couples words come three days after the terrorist attack at two Christchurch mosques in New Zealand that took the lives of 50 individuals. Bush's remarks also come amid anti-immigration rhetoric that has increased in recent months.

George W. Bush urged lawmakers in Washington to dial down the rhetoric.

He spoke about his administrations own shortcomings with immigration, saying he regretted that their efforts to reform immigration policy came up short.

The George W. Bush Presidential Center released their recommendations for immigration reform last fall, emphasizing the need for Congress to create a pathway to earned citizenship for undocumented immigrants and enhance the enforcement of immigration laws.

The United States of America is the most successful of nations, George W. Bush said. Historically, where immigration is concerned, were also the most welcoming of nations. And these two facts are related.

View the rest of his speech here:
SALT LAKE CITY  Women who have a twin brother are more likely to drop out of high school and college and earn less money than women who have a twin sister, a new study found. They are also less likely to marry and have children.

The study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, found that these effects were largely due to the girls being exposed to higher-than-usual levels of testosterone while in the womb with their twin brothers, although social and cultural factors also play an important role.

While all girls are exposed to testosterone while in utero, having a boy in the womb at the same time exposes them to a higher level of the hormone, The New York Times reported. This can provoke more traditionally masculine behavior in girls, leading to more disruptive behavior at school, lower educational achievement, and decreased wages.

The studys findings are particularly relevant because around the world, the rate at which women have been giving birth to twins has nearly doubled over the last 40 years. This is largely due to the fact that many women are having children later in life and using in vitro fertilization more frequently, the study found. In the United States today, 1.1 percent of baby girls have twin brothers, up from 0.6 percent in 1971, the study estimated.

"This is a story about the biology of sex differences," David Figlio, an economist and dean of Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy and one of the study's co-authors, said in a statement to Newsweek.

"We are not showing that females (exposed to testosterone) are necessarily more 'male-like,' but our findings are consistent with the idea that passive exposure to prenatal testosterone changes women's education, labor market and fertility outcomes," he said.

What were the key findings of the study?

The study  which examined the 728,842 people born in Norway from 1967 to 1978, including 13,800 members of a set of twins  found that women who had a twin brother were around 15 percent less likely to graduate from high school and 4 percent less likely to graduate from college compared to women who had a twin sister. The study didn't examine women who weren't part of a set of twins.

Women with a twin brother were also around 12 percent less likely to get married and 6 percent less likely to have children, and they earned around 9 percent less. Around half of the women's decreased earnings could be traced back to their lower rates of graduation from high school and college, the study found. Researchers also controlled for year of birth, month of birth, maternal age, maternal level of education at time of birth and children's birth weight.

These findings were consistent not only for girls who grew up alongside their twin brothers, but also for girls whose twin brothers died within a year of birth. This suggests that the effects on women of having a twin brother are more a result of biology  in this case, being exposed to testosterone  than socialization.

Previous studies of opposite-sex twins have suggested that girls with a twin brother show more aggression and are more likely to break the rules, though it was unclear whether this was due to prenatal exposure to testosterone or to socialization.

Women exposed to testosterone have some of the educational challenges more frequently associated with men.  David Figlio, an economist and dean of Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy

The study points out that ethical constraints have prevented scientists from directly measuring prenatal amounts of testosterone concentration in humans. However, in studies conducted with rats, testosterone has been shown to transfer across fetal membranes through diffusion in amniotic fluid. Other studies, conducted on monkeys, rats, and humans, have shown that circulating levels of maternal testosterone can increase as a result of being pregnant with a male child, which can also increase the amount of testosterone to which girls in opposite-sex twin sets are exposed.

The study found that boys with a female twin did not show any substantial differences from boys with a male twin.

What effect does testosterone have on women?

The Times reported that both men and women naturally produce the hormone testosterone, but the level produced and the effect it has depends on the person in question.

Typically, testosterone is associated with certain behaviors that are often seen as masculine, such as aggression, competition and risk-taking behavior. According to research cited in the Times, those behaviors might cause boys to perform less well than girls in school, which rewards self-control, organization, and obedience.

However, those same behaviors are often valued in the workplace because they are linked with success, which could help explain why men outperform women there. But women who display more masculine characteristics in the workplace are often penalized for doing so.

Women exposed to testosterone have some of the educational challenges more frequently associated with men, Figlio told the Times. However, to the extent to which labor market discrimination exists in society, they dont have the discriminatory benefits that men enjoy.

The study doesn't suggest that women who have a twin brother are "inherently ill-equipped for success," but it could indicate that these women "are experiencing consequences from simply behaving differently," Katherine Wu of PBS argued.

As the Times reported, in utero exposure to testosterone has also been shown to affect women's behavior in relationships. In the Norway study, women with a male twin who decided to marry and those who decided not to marry both had lower fertility rates.

Nature vs. nurture

However, it isn't just testosterone levels that affect the development of women who have a twin brother.

Dr. Krzysztof Karbownik, an economist and a research associate at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research who was a co-author for the study, told Newsweek there's no one reason that definitively explains the differences observed between women who have a twin brother and women who have a twin sister, but that the differences are due to both biological and social or cultural factors.

You can always change the cultural and social environment. Humans are plastic.  Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada

Social factors do play a role in personal development, research shows.

For example, a study published March 7 in Labour Economics, entitled "The Brother Earnings Penalty," showed that American women who have a younger brother earn about 7 percent less money than women who have a younger sister, partly because of how the women were socialized. The study found that "brothers reduce parents' expectations and school monitoring of female children while also increasing females' propensity to engage in more traditionally female tasks," which in turn led to those women earning less money.

There are always interactions between biology and culture and the environment, Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada who peer-reviewed the paper, told the Times. You can always change the cultural and social environment. Humans are plastic.

The Norway study isn't by any means all-encompassing, nor are its results universal.

As Claire Cain Miller pointed out in the Times, "Not all girls with twin brothers are affected, or affected in the same way, and the researchers did not study other parts of life in which females with male twins might excel."

Christopher Kuzawa, a Northwestern anthropologist who co-wrote the study, told PBS, "A lot of factors come together in different ways in different individuals. All of this is just a teeny lens into the vastness of human diversity."
SALT LAKE CITY  Representatives from the seven member states of the Colorado River Basin endorsed drought contingency plans Tuesday and transmitted a letter of agreement to Congress for action.

From there, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman said hearings will be held next week in the Senate and the House to move forward with legislation formalizing those plans.

"Today is a very important day in the history of the Colorado River," Burman said. "Today the seven basin states have come together.  It is time for us to work with our congressional delegation so we can move forward and implement these (plans) this year."

In a teleconference from Phoenix announcing the plans' completion, Wyoming State Engineer Pat Tyrrell said the general intent of the plans and the subsequent legislation will be to protect water levels at both Lake Mead and Lake Powell by incentivizing additional conservation of water.

Burman said the process involved multiple environmental organizations, Native American tribes, farmers and others representing the 40 million users on the West's hardest working river.

A generous snowpack in the West is sitting at nearly 140 percent of average and may actually stave off an anticipated water shortage declaration in 2020 for the lower basin states.

But Burman warned Tuesday that one wet year doesn't erase 18 years of the driest period on the river in 1,200 years.

"It takes years to recover from the type of intense drought this region has experienced," he said.

Eric Millis, director of the Utah Division of Water Resources, said the plans are the culmination of years of hard work.

"The significance is that it provides protection to the upper basin uses and the state of Utah, and the entire basin and helps us deal with drought and climate change. It offers us that security and protection."

The components of the plans for the upper and lower basin states have to work in tandem, he added. For the upper basin, the magic number is keeping Lake Powell at 3,525 elevation, or 25 feet above the power pool elevation, Millis said.

Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are the upper basin states while California, Arizona and Nevada are the lower basin states.
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday she would struggle until the last possible moment to achieve an orderly Brexit.

She said the interests of Germany, Britain and the EU were at stake. (Photo:AP)

Berlin: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday she would struggle until the last possible moment to achieve an orderly Brexit, saying the interests of Germany, Britain and the EU were at stake.

"I will fight to the last hour of the deadline on March 29 for an orderly exit (of Britain from the European Union)," she told a conference in Berlin. "We don't have a lot of time for it but still have a few days."

Merkel admitted she had been surprised by the bombshell announcement on Monday by House of Commons speaker John Bercow that he could not put Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit plan to another vote in its current form. "I must confess that I was not familiar with the rules of order of the British parliament from the 17th century," she said with a wry smile.

And she stressed ahead of a crunch EU summit in Brussels Thursday and Friday at which Brexit is to take centre stage that the ball remained in London's court to plot the way forward.

"I am as of now unable to say what my position will be on Thursday because it depends on what Theresa May presents, what the situation looks like, (and) what may still happen in parliament," she said.

Merkel stressed that avoiding Britain crashing out of the EU without an exit deal was in the fundamental interest of all sides.

"We, together as the other 27 (EU member states), will react in an adequate manner and the less people play guessing games, the easier it will be," she said.

May is still hoping she can get the divorce agreement she struck with the European Union through parliament before March 29, despite MPs having rejected it twice. But weeks of chaotic political deadlock in parliament have already forced May to concede that Brexit must be delayed, amid fears of an economic shock if Britain ends its 46-year membership of the EU with no new arrangements in place.

She had been hoping to ask EU leaders for only a short delay when they meet at the Brussels summit, warning that without a deal, any extension would be lengthy.
PROVO  A judge has dismissed a civil rights lawsuit from a former Provo councilman who argued prosecutors filed bogus fraud charges against him in order to force him from office.

Steven Turley had claimed "malicious prosecution" on the part of the Utah County Attorney's Office, plus abuse of process, civil conspiracy and a violation of Utah rules of professional conduct.

After tossing several of Turley's claims last year, a 4th District judge dismissed remaining allegations on Friday, court records show.

Turley resigned from public office in September 2011 amid the allegations. By 2015, he was cleared of all 10 criminal counts and called the nearly four years he spent fighting the case "a nightmare" that devastated his family.

He alleged in the suit that a former rival on the Provo City Council sought to gather inflammatory information in order to oust him before prosecutors began investigating. Twenty-three Provo residents eventually filed conflict-of-interest complaints against him, alleging he used his public office for his own financial gain. The complaints kicked off an investigation by county prosecutors.

During a break in a meeting he had with the Utah County Attorney's Office, Turley alleged, a camera was left recording in the room and prosecutors listened to him speak with his attorney in real time. The tape was later destroyed after Turley and his attorney objected to it.

On Friday, the judge sided with lawyers for the county, who argued the statute of limitations on the claims had run out and Turley's Sixth Amendment argument  based on the secret recording  didn't apply because he hadn't yet been charged at the time of the misconduct he identified.

Heather White, one of the attorneys for the county, said even though the judge ruled on procedural grounds, her team believes it had the evidence to successfully fight Turley's claims.

"It's been a very emotional case, and we are glad the proceedings in the district court are finished," she said.

White said she awaits a possible appeal, but it was not clear Tuesday if Turley planned to ask a higher court to review the decision. One of his attorneys declined comment. Another did not immediately return messages.

Turley had alleged his reputation and business dealings suffered irreparable damage in the criminal case and called for greater accountability for prosecutors.

"I don't know how something like this can be made right," he said in 2015, when the charges were dropped.

In following years, Utah County leaders considered but later abandoned a plan to create a prosecutorial review board, an approach current Utah County Attorney David Leavitt calls "well-intentioned but not a good vehicle to accomplish what people wanted."

Leavitt, who took office in January, declined to comment on the outcome of the suit, saying he didn't know the specifics. He said his office will take steps near the end of the year to start a conviction integrity unit that will review cases that come into question. But it is first creating a different program to divert criminal charges in favor of rehabilitation for offenders who qualify, he said.

Leavitt also personally reviews several of the cases his office files in order to "have more eyes" on them, he said, and reminds his employees that they serve not just victims but defendants, too.

"I feel a real duty to make sure we're doing it right," he said.
SALT LAKE CITY  Law enforcement and emergency agencies gathered Tuesday at Salt Lake Community College to take part in an active shooter drill inside the school.

The officers trained with realistic gunshot noises, simulated ammunition and hostage situations. The victims in the simulation consisted of volunteers, including theater students who helped create simulated wounds with makeup.

"Its as real as we can make it without putting safety in jeopardy," said Sgt. Nicholas Street, public information officer with the Utah Highway Patrol.

The simulation also included firefighters and emergency medical technicians. Street said there is a nationwide trend use a "rescue task force"  including EMTs and firefighters along with police  in emergency situations to help those who are wounded immediately, rather than waiting to help until the threat is over.

"Maybe if they got care sooner they could make it, and we can mitigate the loss of life by bringing in fire personnel in that tactical scenario alongside the officers who are still trying to eliminate a threat and provide for security," Street said.

Sarah Reale, director of digital marketing at Salt Lake Community College, said this is the third exercise the school has hosted, and the first at its South City campus. She said the exercise helps school officials make sure they have emergency systems in place and are able to coordinate with law enforcement.

"We think that when our students are safe they learn better, especially when they feel safe," Reale said.

She said the students are on spring break, so the campus is available to host law enforcement agencies. Reale the college has learned about the safety of its own campuses through hosting the training, including possible entrances and exits and best practices for emergency alerts.

"Every single time we do practices like this were getting closer to being as safe as possible," Reale said.

Adriana Moreno, a student working on getting her certification to be an EMT and who hopes to eventually become a nurse, thought participating in the drill would be a good experience.

"It was scary, especially in the beginning. We were just looking for a place to hide  where you think you might be able to survive something like this," Moreno said.

Her group found a computer room and barricaded the door with a rolling white board and then a copy machine. She said someone tried the door four times while they were hiding and thought it was locked. Eventually they moved the barricade slightly so they could be found by police.

Moreno said the experience was positive and helped her learn what to do to protect herself, as well as how to react to the police and follow their instructions.

"It makes me so grateful for all these guys that are out there risking their lives to save others," Moreno said.

Salt Lake Police Sgt. Brandon Shearer discussed the importance of training civilians how to react in an emergency. He said Salt Lake police have switched from teaching the "run, hide, fight" method to "avoid, deny, defend," or ADD.

He said the words are similar, but semantics are important. Civilians who don't want to fight are more likely to be willing to defend themselves. He also said the word "deny" is more active and encourages blocking doors.

Shearer said training with multiple agencies also helps them to work on communicating. The various agencies practiced patching channels together so officers already engaged in the situation didn't need to worry about switching to communicate.

Street added that the training helps officers realize what should be said on the channel in active shooter situations. He said getting all the agencies together for training helps to create a unified response among all the agencies.

"Having more officers trained and more of them (who have) at least worked through it in a training environment  they will be that much better mentally prepared to work through it if it ever occurs," Street said.

He said officers are not able to get the same training from slide presentations and lectures as they do through the hands-on training like Tuesday's event.
Actor Tamannaah Bhatia has worked in four Bollywood films so far, two of which were directed by Sajid Khan who was accused by at least three women of sexual harassment during Indias #MeToo movement. The Baahubali actor had featured alongside Ajay Devgn in Himmatwala and had worked with Saif Ali Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Bipasha Basu in comedy multi-starrer Humshakals. In a recent interview, the actor denied having any bad experience working with the director.

Talking to Deccan Chronicle, Tamannaah said, For me, it has always been about the script and whats the kind of film that I am working on. When I worked with Sajid, unfortunately, none of our films did well.

Sajid was accused by at least three women of sexual harassment. Dia Mirza had called him obnoxious, sexist and ridiculous whereas Vidya Balan had said she would never like to work him and said, I think he doesnt get women.

On being told about Vidyas statement, she added, He never treated me in any bad way and I was completely comfortable working with him. Everyone has a different experience and everybody is entitled to their own opinion and experience. If Vidya has had a bad experience, its normal for her to react like that.

Calling the glamour industry professional, Tamannaah said that the film industry is not an alien place where one needs to be protected. The #MeToo movement is not just about the film industry. We got to keep creating the awareness and fear and thats all we can do, she added.

The actor also claimed that an actor is never forced to kiss on screen and always have a choice. Nobody forces you and in my case, I was very specific when I started my career. I had that clarity. It is my perspective and I stick to that and nobody can force you in the film industry or the worldwide. When people say I was forced to do it, I dont understand that because you are a mature individual and you can make a choice.

For the record, the actor has a no-kissing clause in her contract. While she is yet to return to Bollywood, she is actively working in Tamil and Telugu films and has Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy and Devi 2 lined up for release this year. Her last Hindi film was Tutak Tutak Tutiya with Prabhu Deva in 2016.
The protracted legal dispute between Reliance Communications (RCom) and Ericsson has been resolved, with the beleaguered operator agreeing to pay a settlement of INR4.6 billion ($67.4 million) to the Swedish vendor.

The sum was decided last month by Indias Supreme Court, and an Ericsson spokesperson confirmed that it has already been paid by RCom - the deadline was today (19th March).

Ericsson and RCom have been at loggerheads since last year, after the vendor demanded payment for a network operations and management deal that the companies struck in 2014. RCom was unable to meet payment deadlines despite several extensions, prompting a response from the Supreme Court.

The involvement of the countrys highest court raised the stakes  last month, the operator and its chairman Anil Ambani were found to be in contempt of court and were ordered to repay Ericsson within four weeks under threat of jail time for Ambani if the deadline was not met.

RCom filed for insolvency earlier this year after government holdups prevented it from selling assets to Reliance Jio. This in turn meant that it was unable to make enough funds available to pay Ericsson back.

However, the payment has now been made despite a further legal setback that occurred at the weekend. RCom is owed a tax refund of INR2.6 billion by its lenders  among them the State Bank of India (SBI)  but has had its release request refused by a tribunal.
America Movil is acquiring Nextel Brazil from its two shareholders for a combined $905 million.

Shares in Nextel Brazil are currently split 70:30 between NII Holdings and AI Brazil Holdings. The deal requires approval from the regulator, but if it goes ahead then it will likely see NII cease operations altogether as its stake in Nextel Brazil is its only remaining holding.

NII Holdings was once a regional powerhouse in the Latin American telecoms sector, but looks set to end operations once it sells this final stake. It has twice gone through bankruptcy proceedings and has weathered these by divesting smaller holdings. Nextel Mexico was sold to AT&T in 2015, while a year later NII sold its Argentinean operation to Grupo Clarin.

NIIs board and shareholders have now agreed to a process for shuttering the company once the deal is complete. Indeed, the group in fact made its majority holding in Nextel Brazil available for bidding in August 2018.

At the time, several companies were mooted as interested parties including fellow shareholder AI Brazil, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, and eventual buyer America Movil. Reuters reported in November that Telecom Italias board had green-lit a non-binding offer for a takeover of Nextel Brazil, but no concrete proposal followed.

America Movils Claro Brazil is toughing it out with Telecom Italias TIM Brasil for second place in the market. The acquisition of Nextel Brazil will grant it an advantage in this respect, but will not bring it much closer behind the market leader, Telefonicas Vivo.
According to a report, the Huawei P30 Lite will be priced at 369 Euros, Huawei P30 6GB/128GB will cost buyers 749 Euros, P30 Pro 8GB/128GB will be available for 999 Euros and the 8GB/256GB model will have a price tag of 1099 Euros.

Highlights:

Huawei P30 series prices leaked by tipster, confirmed by German website.

The P30 Lite may cost 369 Euros and the P30 is said to be available for 749 Euros.

The P30 Pro 8GB/128GB is priced at 999 Euros and the 8GB/256GB model may come for 1099 Euros.

Huawei will launch its next P-Series flagship in Paris on March 26 and it is expected to launch three phones in the new line-up. A new report has now revealed the average European prices of all the phones. The Huawei P30 Lite is said to be priced at 369 Euros (approx Rs 29,000), Huawei P30 with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage is speculated to cost buyers 749 Euros (approx Rs 58,000), the P30 Pro 8GB RAM and 128GB storage may be available for 999 Euros (approx Rs 78,000) and the 8GB RAM and 256GB local storage model is expected to have a price tag of 1099 Euros (approx Rs 85,500).

The prices were first revealed by a famous tipster Roland Quandt and were later updated by German website Winfuture. Quandt first claimed that the Huawei P30 Pro 256GB model will cost 1030 euros, Huawei P30 Pro 128GB will be available for 930 euros, the P30 128GB model will be priced at 750 euros and the P30 Lite 128GB variant will cost 370 euros. The tipster later removed the original tweet and updated the prices with a link to the report. Meanwhile, the German website cited trusted source who revealed the prices of the phones.

If true, the prices are very competitive with Samsungs Galaxy S10 series phones. In France, the Galaxy S10e is priced at 759 euros, the Galaxy S10 starts from 909 euros (1159 Euros for 512GB variant) and the Galaxy S10+ comes with a base price of 1009 euros. All the phones have a minimum of 128GB local storage with an option to expand it via a MicroSD card.

Further, the tipster said that Huawei may also bundle some gifts under an offer on purchase of the Huawei P30 Series of phones. He says that those who buy the phone may get a fast wireless charger worth 60 euros, and a Sonos One speaker that costs 230 euros. The offer may only be valid in a few countries in Europe, and the prices of the phones are likely to vary between European nations too.

P30-Series expected specifications:

Previously leaked information has revealed that the Huawei P30 Lite will come with a triple-camera setup on the back consisting of 20MP, 16MP and 2MP sensors, and a front 32MP selfie shooter. It is speculated to be powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 710 SoC and there are unconfirmed reports on the RAM and storage capacities. The phone is said to feature a 6.15-inch FHD+ display with a waterdrop notch offering a resolution of 2312 x 1080 pixels and an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. The phone is expected to house a 3,240mAh battery with support for 18W fast charging.

The Huawei P30 and the Huawei P30 Pro are expected to have slight differences. While, the P30 is reported to sport a 6.1-inch QHD OLED display with a 19.5:9 display aspect ratio and a waterdrop notch display design, the Pro variant may sport a larger 6.5-inch display. Both the phones are expected to sport an in-display fingerprint sensor on the phone, a 3.5mm audio jack, a Type-C port and speaker on the bottom edge. The phones are speculated to be powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC.

In terms of camera, the P30 is reported to feature a 40MP + 8MP + 20 MP triple camera configuration. The main camera is tipped to support 960fps super slow-mo video recording, along with OIS and PDAF support. On the front, it could sport a 12MP front camera with f/1.8 aperture lens and support OIS and EIS. In case of the Huawei P30 Pro, reports suggested that it may have an additional fourth sensor, which will be a ToF (Time of Flight) sensor for 3D face scanning.

Huawei P30 Series India launch:

Huawei has also announced that it will launch the phones in India shortly after it will launch the phone in Paris. "The company is dedicated to the India market and it aims to narrow the gap in the timing of global launches of flagship devices with this phone," an industry source told ET. Later the comapny made the announcement on it India handle confirming the development.

Related Read:

There's super photography on the horizon. We're taking it to the next level on 26.03.2019. #RewriteTheRules #HUAWEIP30 pic.twitter.com/wTa4H4mtRU  Huawei India (@HuaweiIndia) 15 March 2019

I was wrong earlier.

P30 128GB = 749 Euro

P30 Pro 128GB = 999 Euro

P30 Pro 256GB = 1099 Euro

Nothing definitive on the 512GB model yet. https://t.co/2S9k1eZusV  Roland Quandt (@rquandt) 18 March 2019
Nubia General Manager Ni Fei listed six features of the phone and also hinted an April launch.

Highlights:

Nubia Red Magic 3 specs revealed by company General Manager.

He also hinted that the phone will launch in April.

The phone will come with air and liquid cooling tech.



The gaming phone market has started to become crowded as smartphone manufacturers are now investing a considerable chunk of their money in R&D of these devices. One such company is Nubia which will be launching the Nubia Red Magic 3 gaming phone in April. Thanks to Ni Fei, General Manager, Nubia, we now know the key specifications of the phone. In a Weibo post, the top executive did not directly wrote the specs but gave hints of the hardware and the features that the phone will have.

In the post, Fei lists six features of the Nubia Red Magic 3. A quick Google translation of the text suggested that the phone will be at par with the phones that have been launched recently, including the Asus ROG phone, Xiaomi Black Shark 2 and Razr Phone 2. First off, the phone will have a combined liquid and air cooling system to keep the phones temperature in check. Till now, no company has brought this dual-cooling system in their devices. It remains to be seen how does this feature work.

The executive mentions that phone will have industry's strongest mobile processing platform, suggesting that the phone will have Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile platform. Further, Fei mentions that the phone will have the highest operating memory in the industry, hinting that the phone will have 12GB of RAM. There is no phone with more than 12GB of RAM in the market currently. There could be a variant with smaller RAM capacity.

The screen will supposedly offer special eye-protecting tech and a higher refresh rate than most gaming PCs. We still have to see how tall these claims stand because todays PCs offer very high refresh rates. However, we have seen gaming phone, like the Razer Phone offering 120Hz refresh rate, so there is a possibility that the Nubia Red Magic 3 could match the likes of the Razer Phone.

The top executive also said that the phone will have a bigger battery than its predecessors, which means that the Nubia Red Magic 3 will have a larger than the 3,800mAh battery found in the previous Red Magic devices. There is also a mention of a 4D vibration motor and the customisable haptic feedback will be refined for the new model.

Related Read:

Xiaomi Black Shark 2 with pressure sensitive AMOLED display, up to 12GB RAM launched in China
Samsung Electronics will unveil its latest Galaxy A devices designed for 'the way we communicate in the Era of Live.' The reveal will take place in Bangkok, Milan, and Sao Paulo.

Highlights:

Samsung teases a Galaxy A-Series launch event on April 10.

The teaser poster shows three phones.

It may launch the Galaxy A90, the Galaxy A40 and the Galaxy A20.



Samsung has teased the launch of its latest Galaxy A devices on its Twitter account as well as on its global website. The South Korean company will be launching the next device on April 10 and the reveal will take place in Bangkok, Milan (Italy), and Sao Paulo (Brazil). Samsung has teased three phones in the image, which suggests that the company may be launching three phones at the event.

No matter where we are, we want our interactions to feel the same as face-to-face conversations. We want to share our experiences as they happen. And we want to discover more as life unfolds. On April 10th, Samsung Electronics will unveil its latest Galaxy A devices designed for the way we communicate in the Era of Live, Samsung said in an official statement. There is a possibility that the South Korean company will launch the Galaxy A90, the Galaxy A20 and the Galaxy A40.

These phones have been leaked previously and were spotted on official UK website. The official announcement also hinted at the possibility of phones with border-less displays. The Galaxy A90 has been rumoured to come with a sliding and rotating camera system. Popular tipster OnLeaks believes that the device will be a kinda mix between Oppo Find X and Oppo N1 systems, suggesting that the camera module could slide out of the smartphones body and rotate to face either the user or the subject behind.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy A40 has been leaked in press renders, revealing some key specifications. According to German news website Winfuture, the Samsung Galaxy A40 will be offered in black, light blue, and coral colours. The phone is reported to sport two cameras on the back including an ultra-wide lens, and one front-facing shooter on the Infinity U display. The fingerprint sensor will reportedly be on the back panel.

Let's look at the Galaxy A20. A phone with model number SM-A260F was previously spotted on the Geekbench database but it may belong to an A-series Android Go phone Samsung is planning to launch, because the OS listed is Android 8.1 Oreo. The Galaxy A20's listing showed that the phone has an octa-core Exynos 7870 processor. The phone may run Android 9 Pie. Last month, Samsung launched three new smartphones in the entry-level and mid-range segments: the Galaxy A10, Galaxy A30, and Galaxy A50, which are priced starting at Rs 8,490, Rs 16,990, and Rs 19,990 respectively.

Related Read:

Samsung to launch nine Galaxy A-series smartphones in first half of 2019: Report
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Kirkland office building sells for $53M

The waterfront property gained 36 percent in value in five months.





Journal Staff Reporter By BRIAN MILLER Journal Staff Reporter

Photo by Broderick Group [enlarge] Monolithic Power Systems acquired the 70,000-square-foot building from Clarion Partners.



The Lake Washington Park Building, at 5808 Lake Washington Blvd. N.E., in Kirkland, sold last September to an LLC associated with Clarion Partners of New York. The price was $39 million.



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SEATTLE  The Sunset Villa Apartments, at 6736 24th Ave. N.W., have sold for a little under $5.5 million, according to King County records.

The sellers were two LLCs associated with Cadence Real Estate that acquired the property in 2013 for almost $2.5 million.





. . .
The role of social media has also come under the spotlight, after the gunman livestreamed his rampage on Facebook.

Christchurch: New Zealand will tighten gun laws in the wake of its worst modern-day massacre, the government said on Monday, as it emerged that the white supremacist accused of carrying out the killings at two mosques will represent himself in court.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her coalition was unified on the need to reduce the availability of the kind of weapons used by Brenton Tarrant as he went room to room shooting Muslims gathered for Friday prayers.

We have made a decision as a cabinet, we are unified, she said, flanked by her coalition partner and deputy prime minister, Winston Peters.

Peters, whose New Zealand First party has previously opposed changes, said he backed the prime minister fully.

The reality is that after one pm on Friday our world changed forever, and so will our laws, he said.

Ardern, the youthful premier who has become the face of the nation's tragedy, said there would be an inquiry into the horrifying attack, as questions swirl over whether intelligence agencies should have spotted warning signs.

The role of social media has also come under the spotlight, after the gunman livestreamed his rampage on Facebook.

A teenager, whose name cannot be published, appeared in court on Monday charged with distributing that footage.

Meanwhile, police launched a probe into a bomb hoax that forced an hours-long closure of the airport in Dunedin on Sunday, where Tarrant lived.

Grief continued to wash across the nation on Monday, with New Zealanders of all stripes gathering to express revulsion over the killings  and a unified front against racial hatred.

Family and friends outside Al Noor mosque  the scene of the largest massacre  held a sunset prayer session, with their mournful cries echoing through a park as locals looked on.

It just happened to be the time of our evening prayer. Anywhere you are, you can just pray anywhere, Saiyad Raza, who had travelled from Auckland to bury his cousin who died in the shootings, said.

Earlier, a Maori cleansing ceremony was performed at the mosque, bringing together indigenous Kiwis, Muslim leaders and local officials.

Dozens of students then paid their respects, with many coming together for a haka  a traditional Maori ceremonial dance that has been performed by groups across New Zealand in the wake of killings.

And in Auckland, students at Orewa College gathered to form a heart and the message Kia Kaha  stay strong in Maori.

The organisers of New Zealand's largest gun show  the Kumeu Militaria Show, near Auckland  announced on Monday they had cancelled the event in the wake of the massacre and because of elevated security risks.

Despite having tightened the rules in the 1990s after the last mass shooting, New Zealand has relatively permissive gun laws, with licences granted to nearly every applicant.

David Tipple, the managing director of Gun City, whose online store sold Tarrant four weapons, said he felt no responsibility for the killings.
Leela to sell 4 hotels and its Agra property to Brookfield for Rs3,950 cr

Debt-laden hospitality firm Hotel Leela Venture will sell four of its hotels and a property to Canada-based buy-out firm Brookfield Asset Management for Rs3,950 crore.

The deal covers four hotels, in Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi and Udaipur, and its property in Agra on a slump sale basis.

The deal gives Brookfield 100 per cent shareholding in its Agra property, Leela Palaces and Resorts Ltd, which holds the licence to develop a hotel.

Leela will continue to operate a hotel in Mumbai and own some land in Hyderabad. It will also continue to jointly develop residential apartments with Prestige Developers in Bengaluru.

However, Brookfield will have the first right of refusal should Leela Venture opts to sell its Mumbai hotel as well.

The sale accounts for nearly 80 per cent of Leelas revenues and 88 per cent of the companys net worth.

The proceeds of the deal, which will also see the company's owners transfer the 'Leela' brand to Brookfield for all hospitality businesses, will be used to repay existing lenders of the company, Hotel Leela Venture said in a statement here.

In a communication to the BSE, the hotel chain company said the proceeds of the sale will be used to repay its lenders. After completion of the aforesaid transaction, all borrowings of the company from all banks and financial institutions would stand repaid, said a statement.

Under the agreement, Brookfield will pay Rs150 crore for all the intellectual properties of Leela. The deal will also include the sale of the Leela brand to Brookfield.

A licence and centralised services agreement will be signed for The Leela Hotel, Mumbai, along with leasehold rights being transferred in the name of Brookfield for 24,404 square metres of land on Old Airport Road, Bengaluru.

A new a joint venture agreement between Brookfield and the promoters of Leela will be signed to carry out development activities jointly in the future.

Ankur Gupta, managing director and head-India Real Estate, Brookfield, said: The Leela is one of the finest hospitality groups in India and over the years it has gained extraordinary recognition from some of the most prestigious authorities on travel and luxury in the world. We are excited with this opportunity and look forward to completing this transaction at the earliest, while ensuring that all operations remain unaffected.

JM Financial Asset Reconstruction Co, which owns most of Leelas debt, had recently filed an application with the Mumbai Bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT)

The application was filed under Section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) after the company failed to arrive at a concrete plan to pay off its debt.

At the end of December 2018, Leela had a debt of Rs6,164 crore. The companys losses widened to Rs89 crore in the nine months ended December 2018, against Rs7.42 crore in the same period a year ago.

The shareholding of the company will remain unaffected after the sale, Hotel Leela Venture said.
Mukesh Ambani bails out Anil Ambani in Ericsson payout case

Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and his wife Nita Ambani have come to the rescue of the younger scion of the Ambani family, Anil Ambani, providing him with much-needed cash to pay up dues to Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson ahead of a court prescribed deadline.

While details of the dealings are not known, the embattled Anil Ambani on Monday thanked Mukesh and Nita Ambani for helping him to warded off a possible jail term.

Swedish company Ericsson, which confirmed on Monday it has received Rs458.77 crore from RCom, also confirming RCom cleared dues of the Swedish service provider at the eleventh hour with money received from elder brother Mukesh and his wife Nita.

My sincere and heartfelt thanks to my respected elder brother, Mukesh, and Nita, for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to their strong family values by extending this timely support. I and my family are grateful and deeply touched with their gesture, Anil Ambani said in a statement.

An RCom spokesperson stated that the requisite payment of Rs550 crore and interest thereon to Ericsson has been completed in compliance with the Supreme Court judgment.

RCom, which owed Ericsson a one-time settlement of Rs550 crore plus interest, had already deposited Rs118 crore with the Supreme Court in February.

The Supreme Court had, in February, found Anil Ambani guilty of contempt of court for wilfully failing to pay Ericsson. The court then ordered Anil Ambani and two RCom directors to pay Ericsson the dues within four weeks or face a three-month jail term for contempt of court. The deadline to make the payment ended on Tuesday.

This is the second time that Mukesh Ambani has come to the rescue of his brother after their famous feud that dogged the Reliance Group and ended up splitting it into two between the two brothers.

Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Jio Infocomm had, in 2018, bought RComs wireless assets for Rs3,000 crore, after RCom struggled for cash partly as a result of a price war triggered by the market entrance of Reliance Jio Infocomm.

With Mondays payment, the debt laden telco ends its 18-month long battle with Ericsson.

The Swedish firm signed a deal in 2014 to manage and operate RCom's network and last year approached the court over the unpaid dues.
Pramod Sawant is Goa's new chief minister

Pramod Sawant, who was speaker in the Goa assembly, has taken oath as the new chief minister following the demise of Manohar Parrikar on Sunday, even as members of the opposition Congress party met governor Mridula Sinha on Monday to stake claim for government formation in the state.

Pramod Sawant, who was speaker in the Goa assembly, has taken oath as the new chief minister following the demise of Manohar Parrikar on Sunday, even as members of the opposition Congress party met governor Mridula Sinha on Monday to stake claim for government formation in the state.

Reports say Sawant took oath as chief minister early in the morning, at about 2 am and is due to be sworn in at 3 pm today.

Hailing from Cotombi, a rural village in Bicholim, Sawants humble origins and saffron leanings right from his early days grounded him in the Hindutva ideology. His father, Pandurang Sawant, a former zilla panchayat member, was actively associated with Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and was a recognised BJP loyalist.

After completing his graduation in Ayurveda medicine, Sawant completed his post-graduation studies in Medico-Legal System and also did his masters in social work.

Sawant plunged into politics in 2008 after the Sanquelim (now Sakhali) assembly seat fell vacant. He quitting his government job as an Ayurveda physician in the north district hospital at Mapusa to contest the byelection as a BJP candidate, but lost. He, however, won in the 2012 assembly elections and in the subsequent 2017 polls.

And, when Manohar Parikkar was made chief minister in the BJP-led coalition government that came to power following the 2017 polls, Sawant was elected as the speaker of Goa assembly, making him the youngest speaker from among all state legislative assemblies at that time.

Sawant who has been close to Parrikar and was groomed into politics by Parrikar himself was also the natural choice of the departed BJP leader. Sources said that his staunch loyalty to the party weighed in favour of his selection as Parrikarsuccessor. Besides the BJPs requirement of a relatively younger candidate to lead the party for the next 10-15 years worked in his favour.

With a current assembly strength of 36 MLAs against the total number of 40, the current majority mark in the Goa assembly is 19. Congress is the single largest party in the state with 14 MLAs. The BJP has 12 legislators and support of the Goa Forward Party (GFP) and the Maharashtravadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and Independents having three MLAs each. The NCP has one legislator.

Congress delegation met governor Mridula Sinha on Monday to stake claim for government formation as it is the single largest party in the assembly.

The BJP is now engaged in hectic parleys with alliance partners MGF and GFP to arrive at a consensus and ministry formation.

Union minister and senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari was in Goa since Sunday and is continuing parlays with partners GFP and MGP and his own partymen.

BJP MLA Vishwajit Rane and MGP leader Sudin Dhavalikar were both aspirants for the CM post. However, leaders of GFP were not called for the meeting.

Leader of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) Sudin Dhavalikar had on Monday met union minister and senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari at a hotel near Panaji to discuss the political situation in the state.

The coalition partners of the Parrikar-led government had allied with BJP on condition that the government is headed by Manohar Parrikar, the then Defence Minister of India. The BJP, therefore, has no allies as of now. We therefore hereby once again stake claim to form the government."
by Kunpen Rinpoche

The Bishop of Davenport personally presented the award to the Tibetan spiritual leader in Dharamshala. The award states: " Your leadership to promote respect for the dignity and culture of the Tibetan people fills all oppressed people with hope that peace can overcome injustice". For China he is "a wolf in sheep's clothing". The future Dalai Lama will emerge from "a free country", not from China, "without freedom".

Dharamshala (AsiaNews) - The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, has been awarded the "Pacem in Terris - Peace and freedom" prize. The recognition came from the Catholic Interracial Council of Davenport (Iowa, USA), in which 11 religious organizations collaborate.

The award was presented to the Dalai Lama by Msgr. Thomas Zinkula, bishop of Davenport in Dharamshala on March 4th (see photo). "He has been promoter of inner peace and peace in the world throughout his life," the bishop said.

The motivation for the award states: " The coalition recognizes your vision and your commitment to human rights, world peace and the nonviolent resolution of conflict. It is clear from your words and deeds that you are a person who is deeply rooted in the spirit of peace. Your leadership to promote respect for the dignity and culture of the Tibetan people fills all oppressed people with hope that peace can overcome injustice.

Tenzin Gyatso, XIV Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism, fled from Lhasa in 1959, during a Tibetan revolt against Chinese military rule, finding refuge in India. Although he has tried many times to dialogue with Beijing, to safeguard the autonomy of Tibetan religion and culture, threatened by a "cultural genocide", the Communist Party has always branded him as a "dangerous separatist" who wants Tibet's independence .

In the desire to be able to return to Tibet, in 2011 he gave up his political office to remain only spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. But the Chinese Communist Party continues to consider him a "wolf in sheep's clothing".

Commenting on the "great honor" linked to the award, the 83-year-old spiritual leader said: "All human beings are children of God, the Father. We are truly brothers and sisters, because all human beings share the same nature. This is why we must love one another, respect one another. Today's world really needs this message of peace ".

One of the greatest concerns of the Chinese Communist Party is that it dominate the succession of the XIV Dalai Lama. By tradition, the successor, male or female, is recognized as a reincarnation of the previous spiritual leader when he is deceased. In 1995, Beijing imprisoned Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the Panchen Lama (the second highest Tibetan Buddhist office) recognized by the Dalai and imposed a Panchen Lama chosen by the Party, Gyaincain Norbu.

Beijing has already established that any "reincarnation of a lama", in order to be true, needs Party approval.

Perhaps this is why, in recent days, the Dalai Lama has declared that his future reincarnation could emerge in India and not in China. Speaking to Reuters, he commented: "In the future, it is likely that you will see two Dalai Lamas, one from here [India], in a free country, and one chosen by the Chinese, which no one will trust, and no one will respect" . And he added: "China is a great nation, an ancient nation - but it has a political system that is totalitarian, without freedom".
There was deep shock and sadness when news filtered trough of the death of Mrs Nellie Coll. A native of Cotteen, Derrybeg, she passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at a fundraising event at the Carrigart Day Care Centre on Wednesday evening March 13.

A Kind and Compassionate woman

Nellie, nee Boyle, spent her lifetime helping others. At her Funeral Mass in St Marys Church, Derrybeg on Saturday, the Parish Priest of Gaoth Dobhair, an Dr. Padraig O Baoighill said Nellie Coll was a virtuous woman who had a healthy agenda throughout her life and reached out to help other people. "She was a kind, generous, warm and compassionate person who had a lot in common with Mother Teresa of Calcutta," he said.

Early Years

Nellie was born in Cotteen, Derrybeg and was a daughter of the late Owen Ellen Boyle, who served as a postman in the area for many years and the late Nappy Boyle. She was one of a family of six. In her teenage years she went to work in the former famous Crolly Doll Factory. She was very good with her hands and she was employed making outfits for the dolls. It would appear that she was a very diligent worker because after a short period she got promoted. At that time she was a member of the highly acclaimed Aisteoiri Ghaoth Dobhair. A talented actress she took part in a number of plays and on occasions she traveled with the drama group to other parts of the country.

Donegal Association

In the early sixties she met her future husband, Michael Coll, a native of Carrigart. He used to serve in Teach Neill, the public house now known as Petes Pub at Derrybeg. They were married fifty four years. In 1963 she moved with her husband to live in Manchester. In 1979, she was one of those who founded the Donegal Association in Manchester.

Return Home

They would organise a St Patricks Day Parade each year, and Nellie thoroughly enjoyed dressing up and taking part in this parade. This organisation would raise funds by running dances and other events. The organisation would give financial assistance to individuals who were sick and wanted to return back home to Donegal. At that time there was a lot of people from Donegal living in Manchester and they would meet in clubs and other social gatherings.

A Good Samaritan

During her time in Manchester she began fostering children ranging from babies to teenagers. She found this work very rewarding and looked after and cared for them for many years. Down through the years, she has done sterling work in helping the poor, the hungry and strangers who had no place to call home. One could describe her as the good Samaritan.' She enjoyed being busy and was very good in helping others and was not afraid of hard work. Tributes have been paid to her for locating individuals who had lost contact with their home in Donegal. With the assistance from the Irish Community Centre in Manchester, she successfully traced three individuals who have been missing for many years. She also volunteered in the local Day Care Centre in Manchester and after moving to live in Carrigart she gave a helping hand to the Day Centre there.

Helping the Vulnerable

She had worked tirelessly in helping much needed funds for the various projects undertaken by Fr. Pat Clarke, an Irish Holy Ghost Father who has spent almost a lifetime working in South America. He works for and lives with the poorest of the poor in Sao Paulo. He pioneered a centre for culture and arts which offers an alternative for street children vulnerable to drugs and gang violence on the streets of Sao Paulo in Brazil. Nellie in association with the Donegal Association in Manchester and her sisters, Maire and Teresa have managed to raise a substantial sum of money for Fr. Pat to help with his projects in Brazil.

Seamstress

A very intelligent individual Nellie has been involved in tutoring people in Irish and mathematics. She was a very talented seamstress and is credited for making curtains, costumes and various other items. She also made the stage curtains for Amharclann Ghaoth Dobhair which officially opened in 1962. The same curtains are still in use.

Funeral Mass

Nellies remains reposed at her home in Cotteen, Derrybeg on Thursday and Friday. Her concelebrated Requiem Mass was celebrated in St. Marys Church, Derrybeg at 10.30a.m. on Saturday. The main celebrant was an Dr. Padraig O Baoighill and concelebrant was Fr. Brian O Fearraigh, C.C., and Seiplineach Phobal Scoil Ghaoth Dobhair. The singers were: Eileen Sweeney, Deirdre Brennan, Catherine Diver, Noel O Dugain, and Patrick Corcoran. Noel O Dugain was also on guitar and the organist was Hugh Hiudai Beag Gallagher. Catherine Diver sang Mo Shean Dun na nGall and Patrick Corcoran sang Lady of Knock at communion time while Noel O Dugain of Clannad and his niece Deirdre Brennan sang Thios Cois na Tra as the remains were leaving the church. Her funeral took place afterwards at Magheragallon cemetery.

She is survived by her husband, Michael, sons, James and Eugene, daughter, Michelle, grand-children, in-laws other family members and many friends. She was predeceased by her sister, Nuala Boyle.
Letterkenny Institute of Technology has signed a memorandum of understanding with a university in China which is aimed at strengthening and deepening educational ties.

It is hoped that this important development will enable further international collaborations between Donegal in the North West City Region and China.

LYIT began its international collaboration with Chengdu Neusoft University (CNU) in China four years ago.

CNU was founded in 2003 and is supported by the Neusoft Corporation, Chinas largest IT Services and Solutions Corporation.

It is headquartered in Chengdu in Sichuan Province in South Western China in a beautiful city of 14m people with three world-class tourist attractions which annually attract 27m visitors.

Chengdu is home to the Chinese Pandas, Chinas ancient irrigation project, a magnificent feat of engineering which diverted a river to irrigate Chengdu Plain, and Chinas Holy Mountain, home of the Taoism Religion.

CNU has over 10,000 students and their main focus is on Computing and Business Programmes and these programmes match well with LYITs programmes in Computing, Business and Design.

Since 2015 LYIT and CNU have engaged annually in a number of staff and student exchanges.

In addition CNU and LYIT have established a collaboration between LYITs CoLab, its Innovation Centre and CNUs SOVO, its Student Office and Venture Office which encourages and supports student entrepreneurship. Later in Spring 2019 LYIT looks forward to welcoming three student entrepreneurs from CNU-SOVO who will spend a week collaborating with LYIT students and Donegal based entrepreneurs.

Minister for Education and Skills Joe McHugh and Chief Executive of Donegal County Council Seamus Neely witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between President Yinghui Zhang of CNU and President Paul Hannigan of LYIT in the Irish Embassy in Beijing on Monday.

Minister McHugh said: The relationship between Ireland and China is strong and is growing. Not only that but the diversity of relationship is impressive. The new opportunities for deeper ties in education and between the County Council and local government are an example of that.

We are now looking to a new future of relations between LYIT and Chengdu.
Gardai are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of a mini-digger and trailer which was taken from the council yard in Tullyowen, St Johnston on Thursday, March 14 at approximately 7.30pm.

The Hitachi digger with rubber tracks and a Brian James trailer was last seen crossing the border into Northern Ireland from Lifford.

In November 2016, a similar incident took place where a digger and trailer were taken from the Donegal County Council yard in St Johnston.

Speaking on the 'Nine Till Noon Show,' Garda Niall MaGuire said: CCTV has shown us so far that a jeep with the trailer and the mini digger onboard traveled on the R265 which is the main road between St Johnston and Rossgier. It turned left at Rossgier and headed towards Lifford and was captured driving across the border and into Northern Ireland.

He described the the taking of the machinery as 'brazen.'

He said that gardai are not ruling out the possibility that an earlier theft of farm machinery being stolen from Lifford is related to this latest incident.
A Dundalk shopping centre has bucked retail footfall trends with an 2.1% increase in shoppers in 2018, welcoming four million visitors last year.

As online shopping disrupts the overall sector and cheaper Sterling attracts people over the nearby border, Marshes Shopping Centre in Dundalk has become the north easts retail success story.

Marshes welcomed four million visitors in 2018, a 2.1% annual increase, and in the critical Christmas period, footfall rose by 1.1% on December 2017.

Despite winds of change blowing through retail and Brexit uncertainty, Marshes recorded a footfall increase of 1.75% in the last quarter of 2017.

The Penneys store at Marshes is the largest Primark outlet in the north east, also attracting shoppers from Northern Ireland.

Retail Ireland, the Ibec group which represents the sector, says there is consensus in the industry that footfall levels in traditional shopping hot spots are continuing to decline.

It says this is largely as a result of a move to online shopping by Irish consumers and changing consumer shopping patterns.

According to lobby group Retail Excellence, a decline in hot beverage sales in December of -2.17pc was indicative of a footfall erosion, nationally

Marshes says it takes its responsibilities to customers very seriously and believes its brand mix, food and beverage offer, community focus and bright environment, has helped shape its success.

"Even with fluctuations in consumer sentiment, overall personal spending has been positive in the past couple of years, boosted by an increase in numbers employed in the region, said manager Sean Farrell.

With Brexit looming, Marshes is implementing a marketing strategy for 2019 that has local customer need at its core.

The Marshes Community Fund, which supports local causes put forward by customers, recently donated 20 Chromebooks to Dundalks St Louis Secondary School.

As a central destination, there is a duty and responsibility to serve in ways which go far beyond retail, said Mr Farrell.

Marshes which opened in 2005, was built at a cost of 150m, and hailed as one of the most modern, high quality shopping environments in Ireland, aimed at transforming the commercial heart of Dundalk.

It directly employs over 900 people and key tenants include Penneys, Dunnes Stores, Carraig Donn, H&M, Peter Mark and Starbucks across 46 units which also accommodate a number of local traders alongside Irish and UK retail chains.

The 350,000 sq ft centre sits on a 28-acre site with over 1,700 surface car park spaces and has an innovative design comprising modern and traditional elements, which has been crucial to its success.

There will always be an attraction to bricks-and-mortar shopping in a pleasant environment, said Mr Farrell.
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Erin McGreehan, the local Fianna Fail Election Candidate for Dundalk-Carlingford, has spoken out about the importance of educating both men and women in what is deemed as inappropriate behaviour from the pubs to the workplaces, why we need to make the Dail more family friendly, and why she is raising her boys to be feminists.

The local election candidate told The Dundalk Democrat: There is a lot of conversation about the prevalence of sexual harassment with the Me Too movement but I think that inappropriate behaviour is more prevalent. I think that men and women really need to start learning how to treat each other in the office and workforce and outside of that too.

I think sometimes we can look at people and make assumptions. If someone dresses nicely, you can receive unwarranted attention. And women can be undermined no matter what way they look. It can be a double-edged sword.

But I really think that 90% of this is down to people not being educated in what is appropriate to say to a member of the opposite sex.

Ms. McGreehan, who has an LLB in Law from NUIG and a Masters in European Economics & Public Affairs from UCD, explained:

If people are constantly focusing on the way you look, it can reduce your self-confidence and you can start doubting yourself, not because you're not capable, but because it's been instilled in you. I feel very passionately about topics like this. I think it's very important.

I don't care now if people comment on the way I look, but it could be very hard for a teenage girl for example. I think that young men are also under a lot of pressure now too about the way they look, with Instagram feeding into their body image and insecurities, the Cooley woman said.

Whether the inappropriate behaviour is directed at women by men or the other way around, we're all just human at the end of the day and we all need to do better.

Ms. Mc Greehan added: It's not acceptable to be undermined and treated inappropriately, whether it's in a nightclub or the Dail bar. We've all experienced inappropriate behaviour.

The only way to change all of this is to get more women involved and seen in the Dail, in the media and on TV etcetera, across all professions.

I have four young kids at home and I want to prove to people like me that they can do it too. I want my boys to grow up and not see girls as the 'weaker sex'. I want them to know that girls are equal and that women can do anything a man can do.

But there are barriers to women getting involved in politics and other roles. I'm getting asked on the doorstep when I'm out campaigning for the upcoming elections: 'How will you manage with four kids at home?'

When asked whether Irish politics is a boys club, Ms. McGreehan replies: Technically there are more men in politics, but I wouldn't say its a boys club.

Society has to change. The men have been in power. Now we need to get the women in power.

Ms. McGreehan also told of the exemplary work being carried out by the Women's Caucus. She explained: "The Irish Women's Parliamentary Caucus (a cross-party forum for Irish women parliamentarians established in 2017 to discuss and campaign on issues predominantly affecting women), are doing great work for women's equality.

"At the moment they are tackling the issue of period poverty (where girls and women struggle to afford sanitary products) and are hoping to bring on a law where free sanitary products would be provided in public buildings such as schools, universities, hospitals, Direct Provision centres, refuges, garda stations, and prisons."

The local election candidate reiterated the importance of providing free sanitary products as it "removes barriers for young women" who might not be able to afford the essential healthcare products and might be forced to "miss school as a result".

"We've come a long way from the Magadeline Laundries to talking about sanitary products in Ireland," the Cooley mum added: "As one of my old party leaders used to say; 'A lot of work has been done and there's a lot more to do'.

"These are the type of vital issues women can change. We need to get more women in power so we can do what we're good at. Putting aside our differences and working with each other."

Speaking of her experience canvassing ahead of the general elections this May and her passion for politics, Ms. McGreehan explained: "It's a fantastic experience to run. I've wanted it my entire life. I took the name Constance Markievicz as my confirmation name. I've always had an interest in politics.

"And it's great to get to know my area in Cooley. Hopefully, I will be lucky enough to get elected. I'm the first Cooley woman to run for public office, so that's inspiring and motivating.

"Roisin Duffy is also running out here in Carlingford. It's great to have female running mates."

When asked if she would encourage other Irish women to get involved in politics Ms McGreehan said: "We need to provide more opportunities to get women into politics and get women past that 30% representation mark.

"We need to put ourselves forward for roles more often. Irish people can be self-deprecating - Irish women especially. And women have much to offer on their local councils and in the Dail.

"So there's nothing to stop us, only ourselves. We need encouragement."

But there are still societal barriers that can stand in the way of women interested in a political career in Ireland, McGreehan says: "If you are working in the Dail, it can be very difficult to have a family. You would be there in the mornings and you wouldn't be home until midnight from Tuesday through to Friday. It's not family friendly and that needs to change.



"Most women who are elected, their kids are teenagers. But there are plenty of elected men and their children are babies. So it seems the women only go into politics once their children are reared. We have to stand up and show that we can all do it."

Despite the roadblocks which can deter women from political roles in Ireland, Ms McGreehan is a firm believer that constituents will see past gender - once you get the job done:

"You might have to work a bit harder at the start because you are a woman, but once you get into it and people get to know you, it becomes genderless. Politicians are that vital advocate for their communities."












by Melani Manel Perera

Some 300,000 envelopes and 1,500 money boxes are available. Last year almost US$ 25,000 were raised.

Colombo (AsiaNews)  This year Caritas Colombos campaign for Lent will raise funds for youth, disabled children and cancer patients, this according to Fr Lawrence Ramanayake, director of Seth Sarana, the Caritas Colombo office in the Archdiocese of Colombo. "Every penny collected for Lent will be used for them, he told AsiaNews.

Caritas-Sedec, the charity branch of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka, was founded in 1968 by Fr Joe Fernando, a missionary motivated the social doctrine of the Church, conscious of the need to serve the poor and disadvantaged sectors of society.

Over the years the Catholic charity has expanded its scope, setting up the National Centre for Justice, Peace and Human Development. Today there are 13 diocesan offices in every district.

Donations made during Lent will fund year-round youth vocational training, and activities dedicated to supporting disabled children, Fr Ramanayake explained. "We encourage all the faithful to be united with our less fortunate fellow human beings and show them the grace of God.

Caritas has prepared 300,000 envelopes and 1,500 money boxes. One Lent programme coordinator Diluni Tharangani explains that the information material was distributed in 134 parishes, in Catholic schools and in the archdiocese's institutions.

Last year the campaign sparked tremendous generosity from the public. In all, 1,732,363 rupees (US$ 10,000) for the needs of the poor; 850,000 (US$ 5,000) for disabled children; and 1,866,500 (US$ 10,500) to help students stay in school.
by Wang Zhicheng

For the first time a government official admits that the camps are "temporary measures". But claims the inmates are "less than a million". Kazakh activist arrested in his country: he will be tried because he revealed the existence of concentration camps.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - The "vocational training centers" of Xinjiang, which many countries call "concentration camps" for the Uyghur population, "will gradually disappear, says Shohrat Zakir, president of the Xinjiang government yesterday at a meeting on the sidelines of the National People's Congress, in the capital.

Human rights groups and foreign governments have long accused China of holding at least one million Uyghurs in these concentration camps, where they are subjected to re-education, along with torture and deprivation, as witnessed by various exiles.

So far, Beijing has always defended itself by saying that the centers serve as a "preventive measure against extremism" by requalifying the work and lifestyle of the Uyghurs.

It is the first time that a government official has said that the "vocational training" fields are a "temporary measure".

China has been criticized over the camps by Islamic countries in Asia, including Turkey, Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic conference, as well as from the United States and European countries.

Zakir has not communicated the number of inmates, but said that they are "very far from one million", although UN researchers confirm the figure of one million.

The detainees include Muslims and groups of people from neighboring countries, including Kyrgyz and Kazakhs. Some of them, following their release, have reported that inmates are used as cheap labor for products sold abroad.

The great Chinese commercial power manages to silence or dismiss the criticisms of various Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, as well as European and Central Asian countries. In Kazakhstan, activist Serikjan Bilash, of the AtaZhurt NGO ("motherland", in Kazakh), was arrested on 9 March and is now under judicial investigation. He is suspected of "inciting hatred, discord in international affairs, racial or religious". Bilash is one of the first to have reported the concentration camps in Xinjiang and has become the spokesman for many people in Kazakhstan who demand news from China about their relatives or neighbors interned in the camps.
On 24 March, parliamentary elections will mark Thailands return to a democratic regime, after years of military rule. Irregularities were recorded in advance polling in the provinces of Samut Songkhram, Kalasin and Uthai Thani. The large number of parties might confuse voters. For expert, "The most interesting news is the Phak Anakhot Mai (New Future Party), which brings together young vibrant and prepared people who do not let themselves be influenced by the countrys deep-rooted religious tradition.

Bangkok (AsiaNews)  Less than a week before the general elections, Thailands Electoral Commission (CE) announced a large turnout in advance voting: 86.98 per cent of the 2.6 million eligible voters cast their ballots.

Observers expect a similar result on 24 March. But this could be a challenge for the authorities, and show the inadequacies of the electoral process. For smaller parties, a higher turnout will represent a uphill battle because they will need more votes to win a seat in the lower house of the National Assembly.

This will be the first democratic election since 2011 after almost five years of military rule.

EC chairman Ittiporn Boonpracong said yesterday that in many provinces the turnout in the advance polls topped 90 per cent. Some polling places had to remain open beyond the official closing time of 5 pm, to allow all voters to exercise their right. This was the case in Bang Kapi, a district in Bangkok, where voting went on until 6 pm with some 52,500 people casting their ballot.

Reacting to criticisms and questions on the transparency of early voting, the EC chairman said that they found only three cases of violations.

One case of possible electoral fraud was recorded in Samut Songkhram, central Thailand, where some ballots had been marked before voting started but were eventually destroyed and replaced by unmarked ballots. In the northeastern province of Kalasin, fake documents claimed that some candidates had been disqualified. In the Uthai Thani province (north), some people tried to use the Identity cards of others to vote.

"At present, political confusion prevails," one expert observer told AsiaNews. "There are many parties and it is difficult for people to get their bearings. Two or three parties, however, will be the driving force."

The main parties are Phak Phuea Thai, which is loyal to the still influential Shinawatra family, which has dominated Thai politics for years; the Palang Pracharat, a party whose main candidate is incumbent Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha who heads the pro-military coalition; and finally the democrats of the Prachathipat.

"The most interesting news is the Phak Anakhot Mai (New Future Party), which brings together young vibrant and prepared people who do not let themselves be influenced by the countrys deep religious tradition, said the observer.

"Theirs is a new language, especially with regard to issues such as corruption. In Thai politics they represent a real break with the past. Their candidates are very-well prepared, but their limited experience remains an unknown factor. Still, people are waiting for the elections "with high hopes".

"In this election, the country cannot fail. The return to democracy is crucial for its economy and reputation. It is now clear that the current way (ruling military junta) is no longer possible to move forward.

In recent weeks, many have said that the election will be decided by farmers, who are one of the most influential voting blocks in the country. "In my opinion, farmers will respect the tradition and vote for the Phak Phuea Thai, the observer noted.
The historic flooding that devastated Nebraska last week has also submerged one third of an Air Force base, offering a further illustration of the threat posed to national security by climate change.

Flooding at Offutt Air Force Base forced the evacuation of eight planes, including one of four Boeing-made E4-B planes that are supposed to act as an aerial command center if ground bases are destroyed in an emergency like a nuclear attack, Reuters reported. Waters inundated 30 buildings at the base.

"It is extremely clear that we face a grand challenge," Colonel Michael Manion, 55th Wing Commander said in a Facebook post reported by The Verge.

Offutt Base also houses Strategic Command, which is in charge of the nation's nuclear weapons, but its headquarters was on a hill and not impacted by the floods.

The incident comes as the Trump administration is considering forming a panel on whether or not climate change poses a national security risk, which would be headed by staunch climate denier William Happer. The Pentagon already found that climate change posed a threat to military bases in January, and former military and intelligence leaders have written to President Donald Trump urging him not to challenge those findings. The flooding at Offutt base has prompted further criticisms of Trump's denialism. "This is an example of a vital threat to our national security from a climate-related disaster, and more of this kind of thing is likely in the future," Center for Climate and Security co-founder Francesco Femia told Reuters, saying the incident showed why Trump should not interfere with military assessments of climate risk. The Pentagon report released in January did not list flooding as a potential climate risk to Offutt Base. Instead, the report said the base was most likely to be impacted by drought, The Washington Post reported.
The inauguration ceremony at 2am this morning. The swift succession reflects the BJP's need to maintain leadership of the Indian state. The Congress tries to undermine the religious alliances, but is mocked on social media.

New Delhi (AsiaNews / Agencies) - At two this morning, Pramod Sawant was sworn in as the new Chief Minister of the State of Goa.

Member of the Hindu nationalist party Bjp (Bharatiya Janata Party), he succeeds Manohar Parrikar, who died two days ago following a lengthy illness. The sudden death of Parrikar, a leader estimated by the population and the Indian Church, had left a dangerous void in state politics, while all of India is approaching the general elections that will begin on 11 April.

The newspapers report that the inauguration ceremony of the two deputy chief ministers will take place today. Together with Sawant, 45, another nine state ministers took the oath. Meanwhile, the funeral ceremony of Parrikar was held last night. He was cremated on the beach of Miramar, according to the Hindu tradition.

Parrikar's swift succession reflects the need of the BJP party to maintain the leadership of the Indian state, overlooking the west coast. In fact, after the death of Parrikar, the leaders of the Congress wanted to make their political supremacy emerge.

In fact, in the 2016 elections, which had led to the success of the late Chief minister, the Gandhi family party had emerged as the winner in terms of seats (17 out of 40, down to 14 after some defections). However, the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had managed to gain the leadership of the state thanks to an alliance with two regional parties: the Goa Forward Party (Gfp) and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (Mgp).

After a day of negotiations, Modi regained support from the two minor allies, who however demanded the seats of the two deputy chief ministers who will swear tonight in exchange: one for Vijai Sardesai, head of the Gfp, and the other for Sudin Dhavalikar , MP of MPG.

For its part, the Congress, which had tried to snatch some seats, was accused of political looting even before Parrikar's funeral was celebrated. And the social media did not miss the opportunity to mock Rahul Gandhi, unpopular with media, coining the hashtag #VampireCongress.
By Andrea Germanos

A petrochemical plant near Houston continued to burn for a second day on Monday, raising questions about the quality and safety of the air.



The Deer Park facility is owned by Intercontinental Terminals Company (ITC), which said the fire broke out at roughly 10:30 a.m. Sunday. Seven tanks are involved, the company said, and they contain naptha, xylene, "gas blend stocks" and "base oil."

"It's going to have to burn out at the tank," Ray Russell, communications officer for Channel Industries Mutual Aid, which is aiding the response effort, said at a news conference. It could take "probably two days" for that to happen, he added.

No injuries were immediately reported. "Although the risk of explosion is minimal, we continue to take precautions to further reduce this possibility," the company said in a statemnt. An order to shelter in place for the city of Deer Park was lifted Monday morning. Filming outside the plant on Monday, local ABC13 reporter Miya Shay said that despite the assertion by the city, informed by results from a private air monitoring contractor, that the air quality was safe, it is "hard to believe it's all fine."

As Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, pointed out, "Intercontinental Terminals estimates the fire has already resulted in 3.1 million pounds of unauthorized emissions. That's more than all the facilities in the Houston area put out during Harvey." What's more, he said, the company "has a history of violations. For example, the company discharged cyanide into the impaired Tucker Creek eight times above permitted levels  once as high as 1138 percent above the permit."

The Deer Park incident erupted just one day after a fire broke out roughly a dozen miles away at ExxonMobil's massive refinery in Baytown. That fire has been contained. The Texas arm of advocacy group Public Citizen pointed to the recent incidents as evidence that the U.S. Environment Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality should do a better job at protecting public health:

Reposted with permission from our media associate Common Dreams.


By Matthew Fagan, Leighton Reid and Margaret Buck Holland

Tropical forests globally are being lost at a rate of 61,000 square miles a year. And despite conservation efforts, the global rate of loss is accelerating. In 2016 it reached a 15-year high, with 114,000 square miles cleared.

At the same time, many countries are pledging to restore large swaths of forests. The Bonn Challenge, a global initiative launched in 2011, calls for national commitments to restore 580,000 square miles of the world's deforested and degraded land by 2020. In 2014 the New York Declaration on Forests increased this goal to 1.35 million square miles, an area about twice the size of Alaska, by 2030.

Ecological restoration is a process of helping damaged ecosystems recover. It produces many benefits for both wildlife and people  for example, better habitat, erosion control, cleaner drinking water and jobs.

That's why the Bonn Challenge is so exciting for geographers and ecologists like us. It brings restoration into the center of global discussions about combating climate change, preventing species extinctions and improve farmers' lives. It connects governments, organizations, companies and communities, and is catalyzing substantial investments in forest restoration.

However, a closer look shows that a struggle remains to fully realize the Bonn Challenge vision. Some reforestation efforts provide only limited benefits, and studies have shown that maintaining these forests for decades is critical to maximize the economic and ecological benefits of establishing them.

Putting Trees Back on the Land So far, 48 nations and 10 states and companies have made Bonn Challenge commitments to restore 363,000 square miles by 2020 and another 294,000 square miles by 2030. The U.S. and a Pakistani province have already fulfilled their commitments, restoring a total of 67,000 square miles. Restoring forests poses political and economic challenges for national governments. Letting forests grow back inevitably means pulling land out of farming. Natural forest regeneration mainly occurs where farmers have abandoned poor quality land, or where governments discourage poor farming practices  for example, near wetlands or on steep slopes. Opportunities for natural regeneration elsewhere are limited. As a result, much forest landscape restoration under the Bonn Challenge focuses on improving existing landscapes using trees. Restoration activities may include creating timber or fruit plantations; agroforestry, or planting rows of trees in and around agricultural fields; and silviculture, or improving the condition of degraded forests.

One early success, the "Billion Tree Tsunami" in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has exceeded its 350,000-hectare pledge through a combination of protecting forest regeneration and planting trees. Similarly, Rwanda has restored 700,000 of the 2 million hectares it pledged, primarily through agroforestry and reforesting erosion-prone areas, and created thousands of green jobs.

Restored, but for How Long? Benefits for wildlife and Earth's climate from forest restoration accrue over decades. However, many forests are unlikely to remain protected for this long. In a 2018 study we showed that forests that naturally regenerated in Costa Rica between 1947 and 2014 had only a 50 percent chance of enduring for 20 years. Most places where forests regrew were subsequently re-cleared for farming. Twenty years represents about a quarter of the time needed for forest carbon stocks to fully recover, and less than one-fifth of the time required for many forest-dwelling plants and animals to return. Unfortunately, 20 years may be more than most new forests get. Studies in Brazil and Peru show that regenerating forests there are re-cleared even faster, often after just a few years. This problem is not limited to natural forests. Agroforests worldwide are under pressure. For example, until recent decades, coffee and cocoa farmers in the tropics raised their crops in agroforests under a shady canopy of trees, which mimicked the way these plants grow in nature and maximized their health. Today, however, many of them grow their crops in the sun. This method can improve yield, but requires pesticides and fertilizer to compensate for added stress on the plants.

And although timber plantations sequester additional carbon with every harvest and replanting, their replanting is dependent on shifting market demand for wood. Once they are harvested after six to 14 years of growth, tropical timber plantations can be abandoned as a bad investment and replaced with higher-yielding row crops or pasture.

Solid Foundations for Recovery If the Bonn Challenge is to achieve its goals, nations will have to find ways of converting short-term restoration pledges into long-term ecosystem recovery. This may require tightening the rules. Some countries have pledged to protect unrealistically large areas. For example, Rwanda committed to restore 77 percent of its national territory, and Costa Rica and Nicaragua pledged to restore 20 percent of their territories apiece. Another flaw is that the Bonn Challenge does not prevent countries from deforesting some areas even as they are restoring others. It will be impossible to track overall progress without an international commitment to monitor and sustain restoration successes. International organizations need to invest in satellite and local monitoring networks. We also believe they should consider how large international investments in sectors such as agriculture, mining and infrastructure drive forest loss and regrowth. Countries like Indonesia that may be considering a Bonn Challenge pledge should be encouraged to focus on long-term impacts. Instead of restoring 10,000 square miles of one-year-old forest by 2020, why not restore 5,000 square miles of 100-year-old forest by 2120? Countries like Costa Rica that have already pledged can lock in those gains by protecting regrown forests. The U.N. General Assembly recently approved a resolution designating 2021 to 2030 as the U.N. Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. We hope this step will help motivate nations to keep their promises and invest in restoring Earth's deforested and degraded ecosystems.

Reposted with permission from our media associate The Conversation.
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who has had trouble selling her school choice agenda in Washington, has thrown her weight behind new legislation to establish a federal tax credit to expand choice.

The measure, which faces long odds in Congress, would offer a new federal tax credit for individuals and companies that donate to organizations offering scholarships to students. Under the plan, states would get to decide how big those scholarships are, which students and organizations would be eligible for them, and what they could be used for.

Traditionally, tax-credit scholarship programs, which operate in 18 states, help low-income students or students in special education attend a private school. But under the proposal, states could also decide to direct them to apprenticeships, industry certifications, online learning, early-childhood education, summer school, dual-enrollment courses, home schooling, transportation costs for intradistrict choice, and more.

The proposal will give hundreds of thousands of students across the country the power to find the right fit for their education, DeVos said in introducing the proposal at a department event last week. And the biggest winners will be Americas forgotten children who will finally have choices previously available only for the rich, the powerful, and the well-connected.

State tax-credit scholarship recipientsincluding Denisha Merriweather, who is a DeVos staffer, and Sam Myers, a young man with Down syndrome from Ohiospoke at the event about how attending private schools changed their lives.

The legislation, versions of which are sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Ala., is likely to run into major opposition from public educators and faces a tough road in Congress, where Democrats control the House of Representatives.

Even Republican lawmakers have been skeptical of broadening the federal role in K-12 education to advance choice. In fact, opposition from conservatives helped doom a previous, behind-the-scenes attempt to create a similar program in 2017.

Leading Democrats on Capitol Hill were quick to deride the newest proposal as an attack on public education.

Dead on Arrival

Secretary DeVos keeps pushing her anti-public-school agenda despite a clear lack of support from parents, students, teachers, and even within her own party, said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, in a statement. Congress has repeatedly rejected her privatization efforts, and she should expect nothing less here. This proposal is dead on arrival.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the chairman of the House education committee, said in a statement, House Democrats will not waste time on proposals that undermine public education. Were focused on reversing our chronic underfunding of public schools so that all studentsregardless of their backgroundcan learn in schools that are healthy, safe, and provide a quality education.

But Cruz said he hopes the legislation can generate cross-aisle support.

Weve got to build a coalition broad enough to move Democrats, he said. Were going to have to see some courage on the part of Democratic members of Congress to put kids ahead of partisan political interests. Neither Secretary DeVos or I are remotely Pollyannaish about this. Were not suggesting this is an easy fight. But we are suggesting this is the right fight to have.

DeVos noted that there is bipartisan support for the scholarships in states that have already adopted them.

Under the measure, individuals would be able to contribute up to 10 percent of their adjusted gross income to state scholarship-granting organizations. Businesses could give up to 5 percent of their net taxable income. Individuals in a state that opts not to create a scholarship-granting organization could donate to one in another state that has such a program, such as Florida. They would be able to write it off on their federal tax returns.

Under Byrnes legislation, which has the support of the administration, there would be a $5 billion annual cap on the tax credits. The money would be allocated to states, at least initially, based on the formula for distributing state funds for teacher quality, which focuses mostly on poverty but also on total population.

Cruzs bill includes identical language but also would allow for an additional $5 billion for scholarships for workforce training. Thats designed in part to appeal to Democrats, he said.

Opposition Spans Spectrum

Public education advocates, who have long criticized tax-credit scholarship programs as a voucher scheme, vehemently oppose the proposal.

Its ludicrous that the [Trump] administration is willing to redirect $5 billion in federal funding to champion private school voucher schemes that have been proven ineffective in improving academic achievement and fail to serve all students, said Sasha Pudelski, the co-chair of the National Coalition for Public Education and the director of advocacy for AASA, the School Superintendents Association. Rather than attempt to meet the current unfunded mandates in federal education, like [special education], the administration would rather throw money at a scheme designed to defund public schools further. This proposal is shockingly poor in both conception and design.

Pudelski worries the proposal could siphon off money from public education. For instance, when Alabama enacted its tax-credit scholarship program, the state had to set aside $40 million to absorb the anticipated loss in revenue from the credit, she said.

Perhaps more significantly for DeVos and company, the conservative Heritage Foundation, an influential think tank, isnt a fan of the proposal.

Although the administrations support for school choice is praiseworthy, a broad-based federal tax-credit scholarship program fundamentally goes in the wrong direction, said Lindsey Burke, the director of Heritages Center for Education Policy. It would expand, not shrink, federal intervention in K-12 education.

DeVos and Cruz rebuffed that criticism at the department event.

The Heritage Foundation is absolutely wrong, said DeVos. Theres nothing in this legislation that would intrude on states rights. In fact, it really was crafted to respect states rights. For his part, Cruz said hes happy to put my conservative chops up against just about anyone.
Middle and high schools often favor setting aside a block in students schedules for something a little less structuredand a lot less academicthan a traditional class period.

The reoccuring blocksoften called advisoriesare adopted as a way to strengthen relationships and help students weather the challenges that may keep them from succeeding academically, including a lack of routines, social isolation, and out-of-school issues that can bleed into the school day.

But problems in the way advisories are designed and carried out can keep them from being a meaningful part of a students school experience, educators and researchers say.

If a school wedges an advisory into its master schedule as just another thing to do or a panacea for its school climate problems, students arent likely to experience the level of vulnerability necessary to have meaningful conversations or shared experiences there, said Rachel Poliner, a Massachusetts consultant who helps schools design advisory programs.

And teachers themselves need direction and training to support their students in those efforts, a task that can also make adults feel vulnerable at times, she said. Otherwise advisories are likely to look like academic class periods without the academicsdesks in rows, teachers leading discussions and activities, and students lacking interest.

As adults we have a lot of routines and rituals in our lives that keep us organized, healthy, connected to family and friends, and eating the right things, and kids dont have those yet, Poliner said. So if advisory could be a place where you actually figure out the routines and rituals that would make their lives better, and involve students in crafting them, and then practice them a lot, wouldnt that be more authentic?

Getting It Right

Done well, advisories are designed around the needs of students, giving them the freedom to shape their experiences and the space to express their fears, hopes, and needs, she said, and that kind of model takes planning and resources. To get advisories right, schools need to offer ongoing professional development and support to teachers who may be uncomfortable with the format, and they need to integrate them into larger school strategies, Poliner said. And they need to be thoughtful about what theyre hoping to accomplish by adopting advisoriesallowing that purpose to drive decisions about issues like the duration and frequency of advisory periods and how long cohorts of students remain grouped together.

The staff at Wayland Middle School in Wayland, Mass., went through such a planning process in designing its current version of advisories. Administrators lengthened the scheduled time from 25 to 40 minutes, put two adults in every classroom, and integrated advisory groups into academic and social-emotional learning themes that drive projects and activities. The groups emphasize BERT, which stands for Belonging, Empathy, Respect, and Trust.

The center of the strategy, called TAG groups, lets students drive decisionsfrom how to handle difficult discussions about current events to what kind of rituals they create together to build shared experiences that can form the foundations of friendships.

Our aim is always to let kids take the lead, said Principal Betsy Gavron, who co-leads a TAG group of 6th-grade students. Administrators and other staff members help lead TAG groups with classroom teachers, sharing responsibility for the program.

Those little ritualslike playing a certain song on a classmates birthdayhelp students feel more comfortable when more serious issues come into play, Gavron said. TAG groups have discussed broad social issues like justice, and theyve dropped everything to give students a chance to process their emotions the day after a mass school shooting made headlines.

Each grade level at Wayland has a house mentor, which is a historic figure to center their studies, and students also go on a related field trip with their TAG groups. For example, 6th graders study Henry David Thoreau and take a 10-mile bike ride to nearby Walden Pond, 7th graders study conservationist Rachel Carson and do field experiments together at Cape Cod, and 8th-grade groups take a trip to Washington, D.C., as part of their studies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and justice issues.

Sixth grader Lila Berg said her groups bike trip helped ease her feelings about her transition to middle school. You know someone really well because they are in your TAG group, she said.

Wayland has about 640 students, which can be intimidating for young students. We think about it as another way to make a large school feel smaller, Gavron said.

Addressing Multiple Concerns

Advisories are not uncommon and they arent new. Private prep schools have used them for decades to provide intensive support and academic guidance to their students. And nonacademic student meetings were popular with the growth of the middle school model. But some of the purposes of the student meetings have changed over time.

Advocates for whole-child education pitch advisories as solutions to a range of school concernsfrom safety and suicide prevention to bullying and academic support.

And more districts have adopted comprehensive social-emotional learning plans, designed to boost student skills in areas like solving problems and building relationships. While those strategies are often more intuitively integrated into elementary school classes, secondary schools often add advisories as a way to do SEL.

Curriculum companies have taken notice of the trend, offering packaged advisory programs that include discussion prompts and workbooks. But Poliner says schools shouldnt lean too heavily on off-the-shelf solutions without giving teachers flexibility to customize their own approaches and students the freedom to take ownership of their experiences.

Thats because the less-structured class periods are often set up as a systemic solution to the individual, sensitive experiences adolescents face, and those students can seem almost allergic to approaches that seem impersonal.

Researchers say students learning can be stifled if they feel like they dont belong at school or if environments dont seem designed for them. And data support the idea that many students feel isolated or disengaged at school.

A 2017 Gallup Education poll on education described 24 percent of respondents as actively disengaged in school. Twenty-nine percent of the national pool of 733,471 students in grades 5 to 12 were described as not engaged, while the remaining 47 percent were considered engaged.

The poll derived its engagement scores by combining student responses to a range of questions about the importance of their schoolwork, whether they feel safe at school, if they have a best friend at school, and whether they believe the adults at my school care about me.

But teachers can feel daunted, or even cynical, about schools efforts to address those issues, and thats especially true if they have fatigue from years of programs that are quickly adopted and discarded before they have a chance to prove their value.

And some teachers feel ill-equipped to talk to students about their emotions or how to build personal skills like self control and setting goals. Thats especially true of some secondary teachers, who may have been drawn to the field because of an interest in a given academic subject, like math, principals say.

In some districts, there has been pushback from parents who would prefer lessons on issues like respect and tolerance take place at home. And some have said schools should focus more energy on academic issues instead.

Poliner said schools need to make the case for advisories and other social-emotional learning programs with teachers and invite them into designing how they work. And they need to make it clear that the teachers role is to facilitate conversations, not to take the place of school counselors, psychologists, and social workers.

Audra Connolly, a 6th grade teacher in Nampa, Idaho, said leading her students in open discussions comes more naturally for her because she recently worked in an elementary school, where circle time and daily questions were the norm. She still uses those questions to help start conversations with her advisory students in middle school. And sometimes the conversations turn to harder topics, too. After a gunman attacked a Pittsburgh synagogue in October, she gave students time and freedom to grapple with their understanding of the incident.

Every kid needs adults and people to build relationships with them, she said. Im not just a math teacher. Im here to help these kids be successful.

In Wayland, having two adults in each advisory allows one to take the lead when the other feels less comfortable handling a conversation or leading an activity, Gavron said. The majority-white district is part of a voluntary school desegregation program that brings in black students from neighboring areas. Before advisory leaders led conversations about issues like bias, they spent a year and a half preparing through professional development, reading, and staff conversations.

But the advisories at Wayland arent just intense conversations. Sometimes the groups award stickers to peers who showed character strengths and play wacky games that seem perfectly in place in a middle school.

Teachers have a variety of online resources, including a menu of tested group activities they can choose from and space to discuss whats working, and whats not, with their peers who also lead advisories.

We take care of one another, Gavron said. The adults can only be good for the kids if the adults are in good shape.
About 62.4 per cent of South Koreans support restarting the Kaesong industrial park and Mount Kumgang resort. But about 45% of 20-year-olds say the reunification process is not necessary. To overcome the deadlock between Washington and Pyongyang, 63.9 per cent of South Koreans approve of President Moon Jae-ins mediation.

Seoul (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Among South Koreans, support for Korean reunification is increasingly varying according to sex and age.

Young people and women are more likely to have a negative perception of intra-Korean talks, this according to two separate studies, carried out by different government agencies, the National Unification Advisory Council and the Korean Institute for National Unification.

One survey found that 62.4 per cent of South Koreans are in favour of restarting two joint projects in North Korea near the intra-Korean border, namely the Kaesong industrial park and the Mount Kumgang resort on (near North Koreas east coast).

According to participants, the two initiatives can contribute to both denuclearisation and the local economy.

Seoul closed Kaesong Park in 2016 as a result of Pyongyangs the nuclear and missile provocations. The Kumgang resort was shut down in 2008 when a North Korean soldier killed a South Korean tourist.

The South Korean government is trying to restart both projects, believing that more cross-border exchanges can create a climate of peace and encourage talks on denuclearisation.

At present, the latter stalled after the second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US president Donald J. Trump ended in a deadlock.

However, intra-Korean talks require the lifting of US sanctions on North Korea, something Washington opposes.

The survey found that 54 per cent of respondent supported easing sanctions in association with progress in nuclear talks, with 41.6 percent saying that sanctions should remain in place until complete denuclearisation.

With regard to Seoul's push to play a mediating role between Washington and Pyongyang by holding intra-Korean talks, 63.9 per cent cited a summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim as the best option.

On the outlook of future nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang, 58.1 per cent expressed optimism despite the current stalemate, whilst 37.6 per cent said the opposite.

Unlike older adults, young South Koreans appear less interested in peace talks, which raises questions about their apparent apathy towards reunification with the North.

According to the survey conducted by the state-run Korean Institute for National Unification, 45 per cent and 40 per cent of people in their 20s and 30s, respectively, think that unification is not necessary.

The figures are higher than the comparable numbers for those aged 60 or older and those in their 50s which stand at 19 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively.
by Kamran Chaudhry

Church organises interfaith prayer vigils for Muslim victims across the country. Bishops and lay people strongly condemn terrorism, which has no religion". Security measures around Christian places of worship have been tightened as Christians mark Lent and prepare for Easter.

Lahore (AsiaNews)  Pakistan's Catholic Church is on high alert after the attacks against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 50 Muslims were killed at Friday prayers.

The sectarian nature of the attack by a white supremacist has enraged Pakistans most radical Islamic groups and newspapers who blame New Zealand Christians.

The man who killed Muslims, "Branton Tarrant, is not a Christian, he is an atheist, said Fr Inayat Bernard, rector of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Lahore. We want to reiterate this to our Muslim brothers. We pray that the minds behind such tragedies will respect humanity and fear God.

Meanwhile, Pakistani Christians have held interfaith prayer vigils across the country for the victims who died, their families and the wounded (at least 50 people are still in serious conditions).

The National Commission for Justice and Peace, led by Mgr Joseph Arshad, strongly condemned "the increase in the wave of extremism and radicalisation throughout the world that shows that terrorism has no religion or national borders".

"We must condemn in the strongest possible way the senseless and inhuman act that led to the murder of people gathered to pray, said Mgr Joseph Coutts, archbishop of Karachi and Pakistans only cardinal.

"It is the duty of all Christians to condemn such a terrible act fuelled by hatred. I urge all Christians to pray during this season of Lent, a time for fasting and penance, and pray for all the victims of violence, he added.

An interfaith vigil was held in Faisalabad on Sunday, organised by the National Justice and Peace Commission, in cooperation with the local diocese. Other rallies took place in Lahore, at the cathedral and during press conferences with bishops and politicians.

According to Fr Bernard, "the victims must be considered martyrs".

Asiya Nasir, a Christian, a former Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan affiliated with the Jamiat Ulma-e-Islam (JUI-F) party, the largest religious party in the country, issued a statement calling for religious unity.

Terrorists have no religion, she says. Terrorism is not permissible in any faith but sadly there has been an increase in attacks on worshipers. We should discourage elements that are spilling innocent blood and defaming their own religion.

For Presbyterian Interfaith Ecumenical Commission Chairman Rev Amjad Niamat, churches must remain vigilant for Easter gatherings.

"We are united against terrorism but are equally concerned for the safety of the vulnerable Christian community. We urge the government to adopt strict security measures for churches in big cities," he said.

(Shafique Khokhar contributed to this article)
456 irregular migrants held across country

Most migrants were detained in the western border province of Edirne.

A total of 456 irregular migrants were held across Turkey on Monday, according to security sources.

192 MIGRANTS WERE DETAINED

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said in western Edirne province, which borders Greece and Bulgaria, security forces detained 192 migrants who were trying to cross into another country. The migrants were Afghan, Algerian, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani nationals, the sources said.

101 IRREGULAR MIGRANTS WERE DETAINED IN IZMIR

In western Izmir province, the coast guard detained 101 irregular migrants in two boats who were attempting to reach Greece.They were Palestinian, Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi nationals.

193 IRREGULAR MIGRANTS WERE DETAINED IN VAN

In eastern Van province, gendarmerie forces detained 163 irregular migrants, according to a statement from the provincial gendarmerie command. Turkey has been the main route for refugees trying to cross into Europe, especially since the beginning of the civil war in Syria. Some 268,000 irregular migrants were held in Turkey in 2018, according to the Interior Ministry. The migrants were mostly Afghan, Pakistani, Syrian and Iraqi nationals.
Brussels bomb alert: EU Commission area on lockdown

Around 40 people have been evacuated as police and fire services respond to reports of a bomb near the European Commission.

A bomb threat has been reported at the European Commission office and surrounding buildings on Tuesday, reported the Brussels Times.

NEAR THE BRITISH EMBASSY

Police have cordoned off a 100-meter section on Avenue D'Augerghem near the British embassy, just off the Schumann roundabout where the EUs Commission and European Council is based.

The cordon and evacuations were sparked this morning after a consultancy firm for the Commission said they had received a call about a bomb.

Part of the street has been sealed off and sniffer dogs have been sent to the scene.

Firefighters have been seen entering the building of the firm, which has been evacuated by staff.
French minister concerns about US sanction threats

French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said that Europe was concerned about the US long-term commitment to NATO and criticized Trumps approach toward the military alliance.

French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly delivered a stinging assessment of US European policy Monday, decrying the confusion sown by the yawning disconnect between presidential tweets and US actions.

Parly also criticized along the Trump administrations tying of military sales to alliance requirements.

"IT'S NOT ARTICLE F-35"

Trying to capture the fundamental disconnect, Parly quipped, Its called Article 5, not Article F-35, taking a swipe at the US-led push to get allies to buy American. What Europeans are worried about is this: Will the US commitment be perennial? Parly said. She will meet with her American counterpart at the Pentagon on Monday to discuss issues including Syria.

"The alliance should be unconditional, otherwise it is not an alliance. NATOs solidarity clause is called Article 5, not article F-35," Parly added, in a reference to the Lockheed-Martin F-35 jet fighter. She did not mention Trump specifically.

NATO treatys Article 5 is a provision that means an attack against one ally is considered an attack against all of them.

Trump has been a strong proponent of military products made by US defense companies.
Germany still desires an orderly Brexit

'Until the very last hour of March 29, I will fight for an orderly Brexit,' says German chancellor.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday expressed her hope for an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the EU, despite growing doubts in Europe about the future of Brexit.

'I WILL FIGHT TO LEAVING THE EUROPEN UNION'

Until the very last hour of March 29, I will fight for an orderly leaving of the United Kingdom from the European Union, Merkel said at the annual Global Solutions Summit in Berlin. I am very very interested in having a very good relationship with Britain even after they leave the EU. Its in the German interest, and it is certainly in the interest of 27 EU member states, she added.

Her remarks came a day after British Prime Minister Theresa Mays Brexit plan faced a fresh hurdle in the UK, after House of Commons Speaker ruled out another vote on her deal unless a significantly changed proposal was submitted.

Merkel refrained from making any comment on the recent crisis, but recalled that EU leaders would gather in Brussels on Thursday, and discuss the latest developments. Now we shall see what Theresa May will tell us, what the wishes are, she said, without elaborating.

After British lawmakers rejected her Brexit deal twice, May is expected to ask this week for an extension of the March 29 deadline for the UKs exit from the EU. In a June 2016 referendum, 51.9 percent of British voters backed leaving the EU, while 48.1 percent voted to remain in the bloc.
Iraq says to open border crossings with Syria soon

Border crossings between Iraq and Syria have been closed since 2014.

Border gates between Iraq and Syria will be opened in the coming days, the Iraqi army chief of staff said Tuesday.

"COOPERATION WITH SYRIA MATTERS"

In statements, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi said visits and trade will be resumed in a few days between the two countries. "In the counter-terrorism fight, cooperation with Syria matters, he said. "The security of Syria is linked to Iraqs security and cannot be separated," he added.

Main border crossings between Iraq and Syria have been closed since the Daesh terrorist group swept vast swathes of territory in western and northern Iraq in 2014. A local Lebanese group earlier reported that Syrian regime regime leader Bashar al-Assad will visit Baghdad soon.

Last year, Jordan reopened its border crossing with Syria, which has fallen into a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
Israel imposes Palestine lockdown for Jewish holiday

The closure to begin Wednesday night and end Saturday night.

The Israeli army will seal off the West Bank and Gaza Strip for four days ahead of the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim, according to the military on Tuesday.

LAND PROHIBITION OF PALESTINIANS

"Coinciding with Purim and following security assessment, it was decided to impose a closure on the Palestinian territories, Israeli army said in a statement. The closure, it said, would begin Wednesday night and end Saturday night.

Purim is celebrated every year on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar, which generally falls in late winter or early spring. During periods of closure, Palestinians are prevented from working in Israel or accessing medical treatment there unless they obtain special permits from the Israeli authorities.

Israel frequently imposes closures on the Palestinian territories during Jewish holidays.
Macron sacks Paris police chief

Frances prime minister has said Paris's police chief has been sacked in response to the latest Yellow Vest protest that transformed the capital into chaos with scenes of rioting and looting.

France's prime minister has outlined stricter rules on yellow vest protests in three cities including Paris. Edouard Phillippe also said the head of police would be replaced following a weekend of violent riots in Paris.

POLICE FORCES WERE UNABLE TO PREVENT VIOLENCE

PM said on Monday that anti-government 'yellow vest' protesters would be banned from the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris if authorities deemed that violent groups were taking part with a view to causing chaos.

The PM also announced that Paris Police Chief Michel Delpuech, who has been in the job since April 2017, would be replaced on Wednesday by Didier Lallement, the top police official in the southwest region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

The government was on the defensive after security forces were again unable to prevent violence, arson and looting on the Champs Elysees at the weekend.
The suspect is Gokmen Tanis, 37, of Turkish origin. According to some sources, the man in the past "fought" in Chechnya and was arrested for "suspected ties" with ISIS, then released. He is currently charged in a rape trial. Condemnation and solidarity of the Turkish government.

Utrecht (AsiaNews) - The Dutch security forces have arrested a man, suspected of killing three people and injuring five others in a shooting yesterday aboard a tram, in the city of Utrecht in the heart of the Netherlands. According to investigators, the main suspect is 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis, of Turkish origin; police chief Rob van Bree declined to explain the reasons that prompted the man to strike.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry has reported that investigations are underway to see if Gokmen Tanis has in the past woven links with terrorist circles or if personal motives are behind the gesture. According to some local media the suspect has a long criminal record; among the various crimes, he would have been guilty of attempted murder in the past.

He is currently charged in a rape trial.

The Dutch police report the arrest of a second suspect in relation to the violence. However, there is no particular information on the degree of involvement of this second person whose details are not known.

Jan van Zanen, mayor of Utrecht, adds that three of the five injured people are in "critical" conditions. He speaks of a "black day for Utrecht", while the prosecutor's offices underline that the episode "appears to be due to a case of terrorism".

Following the bloody attack, the authorities closed all schools and mosques in the fourth largest city in the Netherlands. For a few hours the curfew also came into force, lifted following the arrest of the suspect.

Local authorities have opened an investigation for terrorism, also in relation to events in New Zealand. There is the possibility that the man acted as a "maverick" in response to the attack on the two mosques in Christchurch, which caused over 50 victims. Investigators do not exclude any track and other motives behind the attack "are not excluded", even personal reasons including a "family dispute".

In a statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry firmly condemns the attack "regardless of who the author is and what reasons led him" to strike and at the same time express solidarity with the Dutch people and its government. Citing (behind anonymity) some relatives of Tanis, the Turkish agency Anadolu affirms that the man wanted to hit a woman present on the tram at the time of the attack for questions of a family nature.

However, news agencies report that in the past Gokmen Tanis had been in Chechnya "to fight" among the jihadist groups. "He was arrested - says a businessman to the Turkish BBC on the grounds of anonymity - for suspected links with the Islamic State a few years ago, then released".
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to split their royal household

Britains Prince Harry and his pregnant wife Meghan are to set up their own household, breaking away from the joint operation they shared with Harrys elder brother William and his wife Kate.

Harry and Meghan, known officially as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have shared staff with William and Kate since their marriage in May last year. Queen Elizabeth has now agreed to allow them to set up a new base at Buckingham Palace this Spring.

COUPLE'S OFFICIAL RESIDENCE WILL BE AT FROGMORE COTTAGE

The Duke of Sussex currently has his own private office, which has been supporting the Duchess since the engagement of Their Royal Highnesses in November 2017, Buckingham Palace said in a statement. This long-planned move will ensure that permanent support arrangements for The Duke and Duchesss work are in place as they start their family and move to their official residence at Frogmore Cottage.





British newspapers have reported since the end of last year that there had been a rift between the two couples, although there has been no public indication of any feud. Earlier this week, the foursome appeared on good terms when they appeared together at a Commonwealth Day service in London.

The change comes as former US actress Meghan is due to give birth to her first child with the queens grandson this Spring. The couple is also in the process of moving from a cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace, where William and Kate live, to a new home on the royal familys Windsor Estate.

After their dazzling wedding ceremony at Windsor Castle, the couple held the evening reception at Frogmore House, part of a royal family residence since the 18th century. Their new home, Frogmore Cottage, is on the grounds of the estate.
UN court set to rule on Karadzic's appeal

Karadzic, 73, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2016 after being convicted of genocide for the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces.

A UN tribunal on Wednesday is set to issue a ruling on former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's appeal in The Hague.

In 2016 Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity relating to the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. He then filed an appeal seeking an acquittal or retrial. Prosecutors are also seeking a life sentence and a second genocide conviction for his alleged role in a policy of targeting non-Serbs across Bosnia in the early years of the war.

UN judges in The Hague tribunal had found Karadzic guilty on 10 counts out of a total of 11 charges.

HE WAS CHARGED WITH 11 COUNTS OF GENOCIDE

While the court convicted Karadzic over his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, he was found not guilty of genocides in seven other Bosnian municipalities: Bratunac, Foca, Kljuc, Prijedor, Sanski Most, Vlasenica and Zvornik. Apart from his single genocide conviction, he was also found guilty on five counts of crimes against humanity and four war crimes charges, including taking UN soldiers hostage, the extermination of civilians, murders, and attacks on soldiers.

Karadzic was the president of the self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic and supreme commander of its armed forces between 1992 and 1995 when around 100,000 Bosnians died as the former Yugoslavia descended into ethnic bloodshed.

He was charged with 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica genocide, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

Karadzic -- dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia -- was first indicted in July 1995 for the shooting of unarmed civilians in Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage. Four months later, he was accused of orchestrating the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys after Serb forces seized the UNs Srebrenica safe area in eastern Bosnia.

He went on the run after the war and was finally arrested in Belgrade in 2008.

During the case, more than 580 witnesses gave testimony of crimes such as the murder of Muslims and Croats and the destruction of private property and mosques across Bosnia.
US continuing support for terrorist YPG/PKK in Syria

Turkey has long criticized US support for terrorist YPG/PKK, saying using one terror group to defeat another makes no sense.

Despite strenuous objections from Turkey, the proposed US defense budget for 2020 supports the YPG/PKK terrorist group with large amounts of arms and ammunition.

US MAINTAINS SUPPORT FOR PKK WITH HEAVY GUNS

On March 12, the Pentagon announced a total of $300 million would be allocated to the terrorist YPG/PKK from its fiscal year 2020 Defense Department budget. Moreover, last year the US announced it was withdrawing most of its troops from Syria, arguing that Daeshs defeat made the deployment unnecessary. Turkey has promised to launch a counter-terrorist operation against PYD/YPG forces in Syria, east of the Euphrates.

US is also maintaining its support for the terrorist YPG/PKK with heavy guns and materials to make improvised explosive devices (IED). The budget includes at least 3,000 AK-47 rifles and 2,000 C-4 explosives with 30,000 fuses and 5 million bullets. The ammunition has an estimated worth of nearly $12.5 million.

Under its SDF label, the PYD/YPG often attacks civilians in the northwestern Syrian city of Azaz as well as the cities of Afrin, Al-Bab, Afrin, and Jarabulus from occupied Tal Rifaat. The terrorist group usually uses IEDs. US Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Elaine McCusker claimed the support for the YPG/PKK was prepared in the light of the updated U.S. strategy.

The budget was drawn up on the basis of information available during the preparation stage, said Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Ierardi, director for force structure, resources, and assessment of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
US working closely with Turkey in Syria

The US, French defense heads discuss operations in Syria.

Top defense officials from the US and France discussed a host of issues Monday, including operations in Syria.

"WE ARE WORKING CLOSELY WITH THE TURKS"

Acting American defense chief Patrick Shanahan met with his French counterpart, Florence Parly, in Washington, as the US continues military operations in the war-ravaged country. "We are working closely with the Turks, our strategic partner. More importantly, we are on plan for our drawdown in Syria," Shanahan said at a joint-news conference with Parly. "We are in close coordination with our D-ISIS coalition partners on the real details of the plan," he added, using another term for the Daesh terrorist group.

Trump's abrupt decision to withdraw American forces from Syria late last year was met with significant pushback by close allies in Europe and among some of Trump's closest legislative supporters on Capitol Hill.

The US withdrawal process should respect Syrias territorial integrity and political unity and Turkeys security concerns, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last week, adding that Ankara will continue to work with Washington and other actors in Syria.
Trigger warnings that alert people to potentially sensitive content are increasingly popular, especially on college campuses, but research suggests that they have minimal impact on how people actually respond to content. The findings are published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"We, like many others, were hearing new stories week upon week about trigger warnings being asked for or introduced at universities around the world," says psychology researcher Mevagh Sanson of The University of Waikato, first author on the research. "Our findings suggest that these warnings, though well intended, are not helpful."

Trigger warnings may be increasingly prevalent, but there has been almost no research actually examining their effects.

It's possible that they function the way they're meant to, helping people to manage their emotional responses and reduce their symptoms of distress. But it's also possible trigger warnings could have the opposite effect, influencing people's expectations and experiences in ways that exacerbate their distress.

"We thought it was important to figure out how effective these warnings are," says Sanson. "This is the first piece of empirical work directly examining if they have their intended effects."

To resolve the question, the researchers conducted a series of six experiments with a total of 1,394 participants.

Some participants - a combination of college students and online participants - read a message about the content they were about to see, for example: "TRIGGER WARNING: The following video may contain graphic footage of a fatal car crash. You might find this content disturbing." Others did not read a warning. All participants were then exposed to the content.

Afterward, the participants reported various symptoms of distress--their negative emotional state, and the degree to which they experienced intrusive thoughts and tried to avoid thinking about the content.

The results across all six experiments were consistent: Trigger warnings had little effect on participants' distress. That is, participants responded to the content similarly, regardless of whether they saw a trigger warning.

The format of the content also did not make a difference: Trigger warnings had little impact regardless of whether participants read a story or watched a video clip.

Could it be that trigger warnings are specifically effective for those people who have previously experienced traumatic events? The data suggested the answer is no: There was little difference between groups. In other words, individuals with a personal history of trauma who received a trigger warning reported similar levels of distress as did those who did not receive a warning.

The researchers note that it remains to be seen whether these results would apply to individuals who have a specific clinical diagnosis such as anxiety, depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder. However, these findings indicate that trigger warnings are unlikely to have the meaningful impact they're typically assumed to have.

"These results suggest a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful," says Sanson. "Of course, that doesn't mean trigger warnings are benign. We need to consider the idea that their repeated use encourages people to avoid negative material, and we already know that avoidance helps to maintain disorders such as PTSD. Trigger warnings might also communicate to people that they're fragile, and coax them interpret ordinary emotional responses as extraordinary signals of danger."

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M. Sanson was supported by Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Waikato, and Fulbright New Zealand.

For more information about this study, please contact: Mevagh Sanson at mevagh.sanson@waikato.ac.nz.

The article abstract is available online at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2167702619827018

For a copy of the article "Trigger Warnings Are Trivially Helpful at Reducing Negative Affect, Intrusive Thoughts, and Avoidance" and access to other Clinical Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
(Millbrook, NY) In the Americas, primate species likely to harbor Zika - and potentially transmit the virus - are common, abundant, and often live near people. So reports a new study published today in Epidemics. Findings are based on an innovative model developed by a collaborative team of researchers from Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and IBM Research through its Science for Social Good initiative.

Lead author Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at Cary Institute, explains: "When modeling disease systems, data gaps can undermine our ability to predict where people are at risk. Globally, only two primate species have been confirmed positive for Zika virus. We were interested in how a marriage of two modeling techniques could help us overcome limited data on primate biology and ecology - with the goal of identifying surveillance priorities."

The recent Zika epidemic in the Americas was one of the largest outbreaks in modern times, infecting over half a million people. Like other mosquito-borne flaviviruses, Zika circulates in the wild. Primates can serve as disease reservoirs of spillover infection in regions where mosquitoes feed on both primates and people.

By analyzing data on flaviviruses and the primate species known to carry them, and comparing these traits to 364 primate species that occur globally, the model identified known flavivirus carriers with 82% accuracy and assigned risk scores to additional primate species likely to carry Zika virus. The end product includes an interactive map that takes into account primate geographic ranges to identify hotspots where people are most at risk of Zika spillover.

Primate species in the Americas with Zika risk scores over 90% included: the tufted capuchin (Cebus apella), the Venezuelan red howler (Alouatta seniculus), and the white-faced capuchin (Cebus capucinus) - species adapted to living among people in developed areas. Also on the list: white-fronted capuchins (Cebus albifrons), commonly kept as pets and captured for live trade, and spider monkeys (Saimiri boliviensis), which are hunted for bushmeat in parts of their range.

"These species are geographically widespread, with abundant populations that live near human population centers. They are notorious crop raiders. They're kept as pets. People display them in cities as tourist attractions and hunt them for bushmeat. In terms of disease spillover risk, this is a highly alarming result," says coauthor Subho Majumdar.

Adding to the concern: the mosquito species most likely to spread Zika are commonly found near humans, and are able to thrive in natural and altered landscapes.

The model

To overcome data gaps, the team combined two statistical tools - multiple imputation and Bayesian multi-label machine learning - to assign primate species with a risk score indicating their potential for Zika positivity.

The pathogens

Traits of six mosquito-borne diseases were assessed: yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, St. Louis encephalitis, Zika virus, and West Nile virus. Three of these had known primate reservoirs.

The primates

Biological and ecological traits of the 18 primate species that have tested positive for any mosquito-borne flavivirus were compared to the traits of 364 primate species that occur globally. 33 features were assessed - including things like metabolic rate, gestation period, litter size, and behavior. Features were weighted for importance in predicting Zika positivity.

Han explains: "Like all pathogens, Zika virus has unique requirements for what it needs in an animal host. To determine which species could harbor Zika, we need to know what these traits are, which species have these traits, and which of these species can transmit the pathogen to humans. This is a lot of information, much of which is unknown."

A statistical method called Multiply Imputed Chained Equations (MICE) was used to overcome data limitations. MICE sets computer algorithms to the task of searching through datasets of organism traits to draw connections between organisms with similar or related traits. When the algorithm encounters a missing data entry, it uses these connections to infer the missing information and fill the 'blanks' in the dataset.

Machine learning was applied to this 'filled in' dataset to predict primate species most likely to carry Zika virus. The model produced a risk score for each species by combining flavivirus infection history and biological traits to predict the likelihood of Zika positivity.

This method could help improve forecasting models for other disease systems, beyond Zika. Senior author Kush Varshney from IBM Research explains, "Data gaps are a reality, especially in infectious diseases that originate from wild animal hosts. Models like the one we developed can overcome some of these gaps and help pinpoint species of concern to fine-tune surveillance, forecast spillover events, and help guide efforts by the public health community."

With Varshney adding, "Conducting machine learning on small-sized, incomplete, and noisy datasets to support critical decision making is a challenge shared across many industries and sectors. We will surely use the experience gained from this project in many different application areas."

Han concludes, "This research was made possible by innovations provided by the broader scientific community. We relied on primate and pathogen data collected by hundreds of field researchers, and the base machine learning and imputation methods that we adapted in this research already existed. Partners at IBM Research took on a lion's share of the math and coding. It was an incredibly successful interdisciplinary collaboration - the kind we need more of if we want to find new solutions to complex problems."

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Investigators:

Barbara Han - Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Subhabrata Majumdar - IBM Research and University of Florida Informatics Institute (now at AT&T Labs)

Flavio Calmon - IBM Research (now at Harvard University)

Benjamin Glicksberg - IBM Research (now at University of California, San Francisco)

Raya Horesh - IBM Research

Abhishek Kumar - IBM Research (now at Google Brain)

Adam Perer - IBM Research (now at Carnegie Mellon University)

Elisa von Marschall - The Weather Company

Dennis Wei - IBM Research

Aleksandra Mojsilovi - IBM Research

Kush Varshney - IBM Research

Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is an independent nonprofit center for environmental research. Since 1983, our scientists have been investigating the complex interactions that govern the natural world and the impacts of climate change on these systems. Our findings lead to more effective management and policy actions and increased environmental literacy. Staff are global experts in the ecology of: cities, disease, forests, and freshwater.
With an estimated daily fuel demand of more than 5 million barrels per day, the global aviation sector is incredibly energy-intensive and almost entirely reliant on petroleum-based fuels. Unlike other energy sectors such as ground transportation or residential and commercial buildings, the aviation industry can't easily shift to renewable energy sources using existing technologies.

However, a new analysis by scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) shows that sustainable plant-based bio-jet fuels could provide a competitive alternative to conventional petroleum fuels if current development and scale-up initiatives continue to push ahead successfully.

"Techno-economic analysis and life-cycle greenhouse gas mitigation cost of five routes to bio-jet fuel blendstocks," published recently in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, provides promising evidence that optimizing the biofuel production pipeline - taking carbohydrate-rich plant material and using genetically modified bacteria to digest the isolated sugars into energy-dense molecules that are then chemically converted into a fuel product - is well worth the effort.

"It's challenging to electrify aviation using batteries or fuel cells in part because of the weight restrictions on aircraft, so liquid biofuels have the potential to play a big role in greenhouse gas emissions reductions," said lead author Corinne Scown, a researcher in Berkeley Lab's Energy Technologies Area as well as DOE's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). "The team at JBEI has been working on biological routes to advanced bio-jet fuel blends that are not only derived from plant-based sugars but also have attractive properties that could actually provide an advantage over conventional jet fuels."

How to get fuel from plant material

Currently, multidisciplinary teams based at JBEI are focused on optimizing each stage of the bio-jet fuel production process. Some researchers specialize in engineering ideal source plants - referred to as biomass - that create a high proportion of carbohydrates and a low proportion of lignin, a type of material that, as of now, is more challenging to make useful. Meanwhile, others are developing methods for efficiently isolating the carbohydrates in non-food biomass and breaking them into sugar molecules that bacteria can digest, or "bioconvert," into a fuel molecule. To obtain the highest possible yield from bioconversion, yet other JBEI researchers are examining what genetic and environmental factors make the modified bacteria more efficient.

Once these stages are optimized, JBEI scientists can transition the technologies to commercial partners who may then modify and blend the fuels into ready-to-use products and devise strategies to industrialize the scale of production. Given the vast amount of experimentation and innovation needed to accomplish all this, Scown and her co-authors used innovative analysis methods to assess whether the undertaking could actually reach the end game of a jet fuel alternative that airlines will want to use.

"Our hope is that early in the research stages, we can at least simulate what we think it would look like if you develop these fuel production routes to the point of maturity," Scown said. "If you were to push them to the ethanol benchmark - the technology to create ethanol from plant material like corn stalks, leaves, and cobs has been around a long time, and we can ferment sugars with a 90 percent efficiency - how close would this get us to the market price of petroleum fuels? That is important to know now.

"Thankfully, the answer is they can be viable. And we've identified improvements that need to happen all along the conversion process to make that happen."

Imagining the production process at scale

Due to the biomass deconstruction and fuel synthesis technologies developed at JBEI, the theoretical cost of bio-jet fuel has declined steadily in recent years and is currently as low as $16 per gallon, as compared to $300,000 per gallon when JBEI was established, according to co-author and JBEI postdoctoral fellow Nawa Baral. The cost of standard jet fuel is about $2.50 per gallon.

To explore how bio-jet fuel could bridge the remaining price gap, the research team used complex computer simulations that modeled the necessary technology and subsequent costs of complete, scaled-up production pathways at different efficiency levels and with a range of biomass and chemical inputs. The authors simulated a total of five different production pathways to four distinct fuel molecules.

The results showed that all five pathways could indeed create fuel products at the target price of $2.50 per gallon if manufacturers are able to convert the leftover lignin into a valuable chemical - something JBEI researchers are currently working toward - that could be sold to offset the cost of biofuels. The net price of a gallon of biofuel could be lowered further if airlines were offered even a modest financial credit for emissions reduction.

Following some industry research, the team also found that airlines may be willing to pay a premium of as much as fifty cents per gallon because all four biofuels deliver more energy per unit volume, meaning a plane could fly farther on a tank of the same size.

"The development of plant-based compounds that have a performance advantage over their petroleum-based counterparts is an important factor in determining their marketplace viability," said Blake Simmons, a co-author and the Chief Science and Technology Officer at JBEI.

However, as promising as these findings are, getting the biofuel production technology to the gold-standard yields assumed in these simulations will require further advances.

"It's clear that, to get these fuels to commercial viability, we need all hands on deck," Scown noted. "But this analysis highlights the importance of multi-institutional, integrative research centers like JBEI because no group working on one phase of the process alone can make it happen."

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The other co-authors on the paper are JBEI scientists Olga Kavvada, Daniel Mendez-Perez, Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, and Taek Soon Lee.

Funded by the DOE's Office of Science, JBEI was created with a mission to develop economically-viable, carbon-neutral biofuels and bioproducts that utilize the sunlight energy stored in biomass.

Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 13 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab's facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

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.
by Wang Zhicheng

In his "important speech", the president asked educators to instill patriotism in young people and reject "misconceptions and ideologies". Since 2012, a struggle against the spread of "Western values" and the ban on religious education for young people is underway in schools and universities.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - "Nourishing" faith in the Chinese Communist Party and rejecting "misconceptions and ideologies": this is the program that Chinese president Xi Jinping proposed to a group of teachers gathered yesterday in the capital for a seminar on "ideological theory" and politics ".

According to Xinhua, Xi gave an "important speech". In it, the party leader, who is also general secretary and head of the military commission, said that starting with toddlers China must nurture generation after generation [of young people] who support Chinese Communist Party rule and Chinas socialist system.

Most importantly," he added "we must emphasise [taking the correct stance] on politics such that people who have faith [in the party] can preach what they believe in.

He also asked all educators to instill patriotism in young people and reject "misconceptions and ideologies".

Since Xi took power in 2012, the Party has launched a battle against the spread of "Western values" in schools and universities, banning books that promote "Western ideas" such as democracy and the rule of law.

At the same time, those who spread "religious" ideas among students are prosecuted. In the name of "patriotism" students are required to reject religions, especially those that come "from the West", that is Christianity, making students swear to fight them

The new regulations on religious activities prohibit young people under 18 from going to church or receiving a religious education.
The latest ECDC-WHO report Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring in Europe 2019 (2017 data) shows that despite an overall decline in numbers of people suffering from TB, the disease remains a major public health challenge in the Region. Of the 275 000 new diagnoses and relapses, an estimated 77 000 people are suffering from difficult-to-treat multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). The European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries fare better, with only 1 041 people reported to have MDR-TB. However, most countries in the Region, including many in the EU/EEA, struggle to treat patients successfully.

Dr Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said: "Even though tuberculosis is an ancient, preventable and curable disease, it still causes too much suffering and death to many people in the European Union and beyond. TB was high on the global agenda in 2018 and world leaders committed to mobilise efforts towards ending it. This momentum must be used to tackle tuberculosis from all angles and at all levels. The Commission has pledged its commitment to support the EU Member States towards reaching the goal of ending TB by 2030 as part of the wider Sustainable Development Agenda. Even though we are on the right track, sustained efforts centred on people are paramount to achieve a tuberculosis-free Europe and the world."

ECDC Director Dr Andrea Ammon believes in the capacity of the EU/EEA to improve: "We can end TB by 2030. However, as the burden in the region varies greatly, we will need to tailor approaches on a country-by-country basis. ECDC will continue to offer tailored country support and coordinate efforts across borders."

"TB is preventable and curable; the time to take action is now to end TB by 2030. If we don't act rapidly and decisively, the drug-resistant forms of the disease will increase their hold on Europe. Despite the challenges and threats that we face, I believe that Europe has the full potential to lead the way. We have science and technology, skilled health professionals and high level political commitment to leaving no-one behind - we have got what it takes to end TB", said Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe.

The recent United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB, held in September 2018, brought hope to the world as global leaders stepped up their commitment to end TB by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This political commitment now needs to be translated into action to end TB.

New hope for treatment of drug-resistant TB

Up until now, an MDR-TB diagnosis spelled the start of a gruelling two-year treatment plan for patients. New WHO recommendations for the treatment of MDR-TB involve safer and more effective drugs with reduced chances of severe side effects and a new treatment regimen for increased effectiveness.

This is also a welcome change for the EU/EEA countries struggling to successfully treat drug-resistant patients. In 2017, only 45% of patients with MDR-TB were treated successfully and for extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), the more resistant form of the disease, only 28% were reported as successfully treated.

Timely diagnostic tests are vital

Proper and fast diagnosis of TB is essential. The sooner a patient is diagnosed, the faster their treatment can begin, easing suffering and preventing further disease transmission. The new report indicates that just over half of all newly notified TB patients were tested using WHO-recommended rapid diagnostic tests. To improve diagnoses and ensure appropriate treatment approaches, it is also important to have capacity at country level to rapidly detect drug-resistant TB.

Overall, the situation in the European Region is improving too slowly to end TB by 2030. In order to reach the SDG target on TB, new intersectoral approaches are required, current tools need to be used more effectively and a people-centred approach to care is paramount.

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Read the report: http://bit.ly/WTBD_19

Notes to the editor

World Tuberculosis Day is observed on 24 March each year around the world. Its overall goal is to raise awareness concerning the burden of TB worldwide and the status of TB prevention and control efforts.

Sustainable Development Goal target 3.3: "By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases". The indicator is TB incidence per 100 000 population. The WHO End TB Strategy sub-targets for measuring progress towards the SDGs are: TB incidence 80% lower in 2030 compared to 2015; the number of TB deaths 90% lower; and no family should face catastrophic costs due to TB.

The United Nations High-level Meeting on TB was held on 26 September 2018, resulting in a political declaration endorsed by heads of state and government outlining the key commitments that must be met for the world to end the TB epidemic by 2030, as called for in the SDGs.

The WHO European Region comprises 53 countries with a population of over 900 million, of which around 517 million live in the EU/EEA (28 EU Member States plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway).

In the 31 EU/EEA countries, 55 337 TB cases were reported in 2017, with a notification rate of 10.7 per 100 000 population. MDR-TB was reported for 1 041 (3.8%) of the 27 339 cases with the relevant drugsusceptibility test (DST) results and XDR-TB was reported for 187 (24.3%) of 770 MDR-TB cases with the relevant DST results.
Freshwater biodiversity is rapidly declining worldwide, and nature-based solutions which increase the resilience of ecological communities are becoming increasingly important in helping communities prepare for the unavoidable effects of climate change.

TalTech robotics scientists, together with their colleagues from Lisbon, studied how fish adapt to rapid changes in the surrounding freshwater environment. To conduct the study, the researchers varied the water current and depth in a simulated river with obstacles, and found that fish were able to rapidly adapt to the changes when alone and also when in groups.

The results of the study are published in a prestigious scientific journal PLOS ONE in the article "Fish under pressure: Examining behavioural responses of Iberian barbel under simulated hydropeaking with instream structures".

Researcher at TalTech Centre for Biorobotics and a co-author on the study Jeffrey Tuhtan said, "The findings suggest that cues initiated by obstacles in the flow can be detected by fish to find energetically-beneficial places in the flow even under extreme and rapid environmental change."

The concept of observing fish in simulated rivers as individuals or in groups is not unusual, but the effects of rapid environmental variations, such as quickly changing water depths due to hydropower plant operations or a flash flood remain largely unknown.

One of the main objects of the research - barbel are a common fish species in many European rivers, and are usually found in rocky-bottomed and slow flowing rivers with plenty of dissolved oxygen. "These fish are an important indicator of ecosystem health in the Iberian peninsula and in many other European rivers. Hydropower operations and the uncertainty caused by climate change mean we need to begin to look at the compound effects of rapid changes, from 'the fish's perspective'," a research biologist at the University of Lisbon and first author Maria Joao Costa said.

Fish sense their surroundings using the biological lateral line, which consists of canals and tiny hair-like structures which are sensitive to minute changes in the water motion and pressure near the fish's body. This study was the first to combine biological observations of individuals and groups of fish with a new bioinspired sensing technology. The researchers observed that both individual fish and groups of fish reacted to the changing flow conditions in very clear ways and wondered if their natural flow sensing abilities were guiding their ability to cope with the stressors.

"It was exciting to compare the results of the artificial lateral line with actual observations of fish behavior. This was a very unique opportunity to combine sensor research with real-world biological observations, something which is rarely done," said Juan Francisco Fuentes-Perez, a PhD candidate at TalTech and co-author.

"A fish's sensing abilities have developed over millions of years and are incredibly advanced compared to what engineers have available. This is likely part of the reason they have survived for hundreds of millions of years" said Isabela Boavida, a senior researcher at the University of Lisbon and co-author. When developing nature-based solutions for improving resilience to climate change, it makes sense to look to fish and other ancient organisms who have proved their ability to survive throughout long history.

"Understanding how a fish's advanced sensing system help them react to rapid changes in the flow environment will help scientists develop new designs for nature-based solutions to improve climate change resilience. With more than 500 million years of real-world experience, fish are likely to have learned a few tricks for quickly adapting to challenging conditions" said Prof. Antonio Pinheiro, co-author from the University of Lisbon.

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The interdisciplinary research group included the TalTech Centre for Biorobotics, which has developed a bioinspired artificial lateral line sensor, and the research center CERIS - Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability at University of Lisbon, where the experiments took place.

This Project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727830, http://www.fithydro.eu/. Jeffrey Tuhtan's contribution has been funded in part by the Sihtasutus Eesti Teadusagentuur (ETAg) Estonia, through the projects "Bioinspired Ecohydraulic Sensor Array for Laboratory and Insitu Flow Measurements" (PUT1690) and "Octavo" (B53).

PLOS ONE 23.01.2019 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0211115
Boulder, Colo., USA: Emerald Bay, California, a beautiful location on the southwestern shore of Lake Tahoe, is surrounded by rugged landscape, including rocky cliffs and remnants of mountain glaciers. Scenic as it may be, the area is also a complex structural puzzle. Understanding the history of fault movement in the Lake Tahoe basin is important to assessing earthquake hazards for regional policy planners.

The Lake Tahoe region is rife with active faults, many of which have created the dramatic and rugged landscapes. The Lake Tahoe region lies between the Sierra Nevada microplate to the west and the Basin and Range Province to the east. Northwestward movement of the Sierra Nevada microplate creates stresses that may produce both strike slip (horizontal) and vertical movement on faults. For years, geologists have traversed the forbidding terrain around Emerald Bay, noting where faults cut the landscape, but a detailed picture of the faults was still missing.

Two of these faults -- the Tahoe-Sierra frontal fault zone (TSFFZ) and the West Tahoe-Dollar Point fault zone (WTDPFZ) -- stretch along the western side of Lake Tahoe, but their continuity across landscapes and the nature of their movement has been debated for nearly two decades. Richard Schweickert, of the University of Nevada-Reno (UNR), part of a team of geologists and engineers from UNR, the U.S. Geological Survey, and Santa Clara University, said, "We found plenty of evidence for scarps (i.e., faults) that cut the glacial moraines all along the west side of Lake Tahoe, in particular around Emerald Bay."

But it was what they couldn't hike across that most interested them. "We were desperate to see what's actually going on the bottom [of Emerald Bay]." The research team decided to examine the faults both "by land and by sea."

In a new paper in Geosphere, Schweickert and colleagues describe a number of deep dives that uncovered evidence for major faults on the floor of Emerald Bay. Using a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, and previously published multibeam echo sounder imagery, the team created a detailed map of the bathymetry (depth and shape) and geology in Emerald Bay.

The high-resolution bathymetry survey showed clear evidence of scarps cutting across submerged glacial deposits and lake sediments, along with landslide deposits that toppled into the bay after the glaciers melted. Based on the age of nearby moraines, Schweickert says the scarps in most cases are younger than about 20,000 years old.

The faults scarps in the Bay are very sharp, with steep faces sloping between 30 and 60 degrees -- surprisingly steep for scarps that could be thousands of years old. "You would only see that steep angle on land exposures for faults that had just moved within the last few hundred years," Schweickert says, but noted the scarps were likely preserved by being underwater instead of being repeatedly exposed to running water on land.

Schweickert says that the bathymetric data paired with direct underwater observations with the ROV show conclusively that the scarps are related to faults. "We've been able to produce the highest resolution maps with the greatest amount of detail of anywhere in the Lake Tahoe Basin," he added.

After studying the ROV, bathymetry, and LiDAR data, the team noted that over the past 20,000 years, the TSFFZ and WTDPFZ were moving vertically, with no strike slip motion. Schweickert says their discovery was a bit of a paradox to what might be expected in the Lake Tahoe basin. Ten to 15 years of satellite GPS measurements show a northwest movement for the Lake Tahoe region, relative to the interior of North America. But the TSFFZ and WTDPFZ don't reflect that direction of movement -- at least not recently.

"I think this shows us that the GPS data really doesn't tell us what the faults themselves are doing on a local scale," says Schweickert. "They do their own thing." He adds that scientists studying other faults in the Lake Tahoe area have reached similar conclusions.

However, Schweickert notes that landforms around Emerald Bay, thought to be roughly 100,000 years old, look like they experienced right lateral, strike slip movement sometime in the past. "Faults can move in different directions over long periods of time," he says. "Just because we see some them doing something right now doesn't mean that they didn't have a more complex history in the not too distant past."

"There's more to this story that still needs to be known," says Schweickert, and notes that studies like theirs have value for policy and planning.

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FEATURED ARTICLE

The Tahoe-Sierra frontal fault zone, Emerald Bay area, Lake Tahoe, California: History, displacements, and rates

R.A. Schweickert (Univ. of Nevada-Reno; rschweickert@gmail.com); J.G. Moore; M.M. Lahren; W. Kortemeier; C. Kitts; T. Adamek. Link: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geosphere/article/569484/the-tahoe-sierra-frontal-fault-zone-emerald-bay.

GEOSPHERE articles are available at http://geosphere.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary copies of GEOSPHERE articles by contacting Kea Giles at the address above. Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GEOSPHERE in articles published. Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.

http://www.geosociety.org/
DETROIT - Henry Ford Cancer Institute is the first in Michigan to offer a needle-free, patient-controlled tissue expansion system for women undergoing breast reconstruction after mastectomy.

The FDA-approved AeroForm Tissue Expanders eliminate the need for weekly saline injections at the physician's office, improves patient comfort and may decrease the rate of expander infection. Instead, the system fills temporary implants with small doses of carbon dioxide triggered by a "medical wand" that patients can control at their own rate and comfort.

Jessica Linders is a Henry Ford breast cancer patient who used the AeroForm Tissue Expanders. Because Linders had a genetic mutation, known as BRCA2, she decided to have a double mastectomy after she was diagnosed with an invasive and aggressive lobular breast cancer that had metastasized to the lymph nodes in her armpit. She is one of more than 100,000 women each year in the U.S. who have surgery to remove one or both cancerous breasts.

Like 42 percent of women, Linders opted for reconstructive surgery after mastectomy - a process that often starts immediately at the time that the breast is removed.

In her case, a temporary expander was inserted under the chest muscle to stretch the skin and the muscle in preparation for an eventual permanent implant.

Traditionally, to stretch the tissue, patients would need to visit the plastic surgeon's office for weekly fills with saline injections. In Linders's case, AeroForm Tissue Expanders gave her control of her expansion process under the direction of her physician. There were no injections, no large weekly boluses of fluid, minimal pain, and decreased visits to the plastic surgeon's office.

In addition to anxiety related to enlarging a recent surgical site, painful cramps may occur when chest tissue is expanded quickly by saline injections.

"It can feel torturous if a doctor gives 75 cc's or more of saline during one office visit. And the sensitive area can remain painful and tight for 48-72 hours," says Dunya Atisha, M.D., director, of Breast Reconstruction and Microsurgery at Henry Ford.

But if the patient controls the process, it is less painful, she says. The woman regulates how much air is used and on what days it is used. Patients can pump themselves up a little each day, or they can take a break for a day or two.

When Dr. Atisha explained how the new air-expander technology worked and compared it with saline expanders, Linders chose the air expander.

"It was a done deal. Just knowing I didn't have to have another needle stuck in my chest helped me make the decision," says Linders.

The concept of using expansion devices which did not require injections into a tissue expander was generated by a Silicon Valley plastic surgeon. Dr. Dan Jacob was concerned about his cancer patients who required needle injections to fill their saline expanders.

"This technology revolutionizes the expansion process," says Dr. Atisha. "The needle-free alternative is the first major change in breast tissue expansion in more than 40 years. This new system is the future of our field. It offers patients enhanced comfort and convenience, and it also provides women with a sense of control as they navigate their recovery from breast cancer.

"In addition, it theoretically decreases the risk for infection as there is no need to inject a needle through the patient's chest skin to get to the expander. It also minimizes the patient's need to take time off from their day to day function due to several appointments and the recovery process of weekly saline injections."

Results from the XPAND clinical trial show that patients using the AeroForm device completed tissue expansion in a median of 21 days, compared to a median of 46 days for patients undergoing saline expansion. Also, women who used the AeroForm device progressed to breast implantation one month faster on average than the saline group.

However, expansion varies depending on the size of the woman, the amount of volume needed and the patient's comfort level. "Everyone's experience is different and the time it takes someone to get to their goal varies," says Dr. Atisha.

To gradually stretch the skin on the chest wall using AeroForm Tissue Expanders, the woman holds a wireless device near her chest, and she presses a button to activate electronics inside the temporary implant. From a reservoir in the implant, compressed carbon dioxide is gradually released in small amounts into the expander. The process can be repeated three times a day.

"It was cool that I could wave a medical wand over my breast and control the air flow as I expanded myself," says Linders, a 41-year old Fenton resident and transition specialist for special education students. "It's a little like blowing up a balloon. You can see the expansion and feel a little of the air pressure."

"I've been 98 percent satisfied," she says. The only downside was that a small amount of air was released each day, but it wasn't a significant reduction.

The released carbon dioxide is not harmful. Carbon dioxide is actually a byproduct of what we exhale with every breath, says Dr. Atisha.

Linders used the AeroForm AirXpanders to stretch the skin on her chest for four weeks, and then the expansion process was complete.

After chest expansion, the average patient will keep the expander implants in place for 2-3 months from says Dr. Atisha. However, patients who need chemotherapy and radiation will retain the implants for 9-12 months.

"I would recommend this device to anyone undergoing breast reconstruction," says Linders.

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Learn more about the AeroForm Tissue Expander System at Henry Ford Cancer Institute: henryford.com/services/breast-cancer/treatments/reconstruction-surgery or airxpanders.com.
New Rochelle, NY, March 19, 2019 - Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers announces the launch of Death Research: The Last Frontier, a bold new peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the science, technology, applications, and physical aspects of death and postmortem research. Spearheaded by Co-Editors-in-Chief Alexander Pozhitkov, PhD, City of Hope National Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, and Peter A. Noble, PhD, University of Alabama Birmingham, Death Research will foster the exploration of applications of living cells after physical death and serve as the cornerstone of research associated with the physiology of dying and the last frontier of life. Death Research will be published quarterly online and in print. A preview issue of the Journal will debut in Fall 2019.

Interdisciplinary and provocative in scope, Death Research has a broad mandate and is dedicated to the science, technology, applications, and physical aspects of death and postmortem research. The Journal will consider original research, reviews, commentaries, point/counter-point debate, and more, dedicated to applications of new technologies that prevent or delay death, advanced understanding and possible alternations of physical aspects of death, and postmortem examination, cryopreservation, resuscitation, and autopsy research. Topics related to acceptance of loss, grieving, emotional recovery, or spirituality are not within our purview.

"Henrietta Lacks's cancer cells became the first immortal human cell line, and descendants of those original cells have saved lives and continue to live on in laboratories throughout the world long after her death. Genetic material, brain cells, heart valves, connective tissue, and even middle ear tissue are said to be salvageable after death. The subject of death is no longer relegated to science fiction, and hypothesis and study are important to understand and expand applications for the living," says Mary Ann Liebert, Founder, CEO, and President of the company that bears her name. "My hope is that research on the physical aspects related to death will make possible more transplantation of organs and cells and that additional information gleaned from postmortem research may ultimately have an impact on saving people's lives or curing them from diseases for which no effective treatment has yet been found."

Death Research will centralize critical information and analysis on all scientific topics related to postmortem research and will serve as a critical, ethical resource for molecular biologists, microbiologists, bacteriologists, forensic engineers, bioengineers, biochemists, transplantation specialists, and artificial intelligence experts.

Death Research coverage will include: Postmortem omics, including topics such as gene expression, proteomics, post-translational protein modification, and omics of the organs being transplanted; cell biology; bacteriology; forensic science; cell death; organ transplantation; biomedical aspects of euthanasia and assisted suicide; resuscitation research; anesthesiology; brain death; organ death and failure; cryopreservation; efforts to artificially to preserve memory / consciousness; reanimation; and all aspects of the expansion of life after death.

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For complete information, to sign up for email alerts, or to submit your manuscript, please visit the Death Research website.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative medical and biomedical peer-reviewed journals, including Rejuvenation Research, Tissue Engineering, Human Gene Therapy, DNA and Cell Biology, Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, and Cellular Reprogramming. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), remains the industry's most respected and widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's more than 90 journals, newsmagazines, and books is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.
WOODS HOLE, Mass.  Microscopy innovator Abhishek Kumar, Ph.D., has received a national award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to join the staff of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) as a key collaborator in the MBLs Imaging Initiative , an emerging, interdisciplinary center dedicated to research, discovery, and training in biological imaging and analysis.

Kumar is one of 17 CZI Imaging Scientist awardees announced today by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Redwood City, Calif.-based philanthropy. Each awardee will receive three years of salary support at one of 17 imaging centers across the United States.

Microscopy  the core method of cell biology  is central to basic biomedical science, said Edwin McClesky, Science Program Officer at CZI. Improving imaging means improving broad areas of biomedicine, which is central to CZIs mission of supporting the science and technology that will make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century.

Kumar brings expertise in developing optical (light) microscopes to the MBL Imaging Initiatives extraordinarily fertile environment for collaboration, innovation, and dissemination of discoveries. Hundreds of scientists, faculty, students, and industry experts convene at the MBL each year for research at the interface of biology, microscopy instrument development, and computational image analysis. Kumar will be directly engaged in imaging research and training, and will also catalyze collaborations and help ensure that innovations are disseminated quickly and broadly through the MBLs educational courses and workshops.

All microscopes have strengths and weaknesses, depending on the biological problem you are trying to solve. Thats why we are developing all types of instruments for specific needs and applications, Kumar said. One of my goals at the MBL is to innovate new imaging technologies that address an increasingly diverse set of biological questions, ranging from the development of new model systems, to the structure of microbial communities, to understanding how organisms adapt to ecological changes.

We are very grateful for this CZI Imaging Scientist award to Dr. Kumar, which will help ensure that MBL will continue to lead as a catalyst in advancing imaging technologies and driving biological discoveries, said MBL Director Nipam Patel. Dr. Kumar will be a key contributor to our Imaging Initiative, which seeks to synergize and accelerate the innovation cycle in imaging and image-analysis technologies at MBL, and disseminate new findings widely throughout the broader community.

Kumar is presently an Assistant Scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, and he is already embedded in the MBLs innovation culture. After receiving his Ph.D. in physics at University of Massachusetts, Lowell, in 2013, Kumar began a postdoctoral position with neurobiologist Daniel Colon-Ramos of Yale Medical School and biophysicist Hari Shroff from the National Institutes of Health. The three scientists began building a light-sheet microscope for fast, gentle live imaging of cells and smaller embryos, such as C. elegans (roundworm) embryos. That summer, they convened in the MBLs Whitman Center to finish developing the instrument there.

Kumar developed control software for this new microscope (the diSPIM), which allowed them to map brain-wide activity of the developing C.elegans nervous system during embryogenesis. He then became part of a wider collaboration at MBL to develop a light-sheet system to map the location and 3D orientation of single molecules in cells.

Kumar received a Grass Fellowship at MBL in 2015, and has participated in the MBLs Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy course.

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The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery  exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.
The first farmers from Anatolia, who brought farming to Europe and represent the single largest ancestral component in modern-day Europeans, are directly descended from local hunter-gatherers who adopted a farming way of life

An international team, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and in collaboration with scientists from the United Kingdom, Turkey and Israel, has analyzed 8 pre-historic individuals, including the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer, and found that the first Anatolian farmers were direct descendants of local hunter-gatherers. These findings provide support for archaeological evidence that farming was adopted and developed by local hunter-gatherers who changed their subsistence strategy, rather than being introduced by a large movement of people from another area. Interestingly, while the study shows the long-term persistence of the Anatolian hunter-gatherer gene pool over 7,000 years, it also indicates a pattern of genetic interactions with neighboring groups.

Farming was developed approximately 11,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, a region that includes present-day Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan as well as the fringes of southern Anatolia and western Iran. By about 8,300 BCE it had spread to central Anatolia, in present-day Turkey. These early Anatolian farmers subsequently migrated throughout Europe, bringing this new subsistence strategy and their genes. Today, the single largest component of the ancestry of modern-day Europeans comes from these Anatolian farmers. It has long been debated, however, whether farming was brought to Anatolia similarly by a group of migrating farmers from the Fertile Crescent, or whether the local hunter-gatherers of Anatolia adopted farming practices from their neighbors.

A new study by an international team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and in collaboration with scientists from the United Kingdom, Turkey and Israel, published in Nature Communications, confirms existing archaeological evidence that shows that Anatolian hunter-gatherers did indeed adopt farming themselves, and the later Anatolian farmers were direct descendants of a gene-pool that remained relatively stable for over 7,000 years.

Local hunter-gatherers adopted an agricultural lifestyle

For this study, the researchers newly analyzed ancient DNA from 8 individuals, and succeeded in recovering for the first time whole-genome data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer. This allowed the team to compare that individual's DNA to later Anatolian farmers, as well as individuals from neighboring regions, to determine how they were related. They also compared the individuals newly analyzed in the study to existing data from 587 ancient individuals and 254 present-day populations.

The researchers found that the early Anatolian farmers derived the vast majority of their ancestry (~90%) from a population related to the Anatolian hunter-gatherer in the study. "This suggests a long-term genetic stability in central Anatolia over five millennia, despite changes in climate and subsistence strategy," explains Michal Feldman of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

"Our results provide additional, genetic support for previous archaeological evidence that suggests that Anatolia was not merely a stepping stone in a movement of early farmers from the Fertile Crescent into Europe," states Choongwon Jeong of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History, co-senior author of the study. "Rather, it was a place where local hunter-gatherers adopted ideas, plants and technology that led to agricultural subsistence."

Genetic interactions with neighbors warrant further study

In addition to the long-term stability of the major component of the Anatolian ancestry, the researchers also found a pattern of interactions with their neighbors. By the time that farming had taken hold in Anatolia between 8,300-7,800 BCE, the researchers found that the local population had about a 10% genetic contribution from populations related to those living in what is today Iran and the neighboring Caucasus, with almost the entire remaining 90% coming from Anatolian hunter-gatherers. By about 7000-6000 BCE, however, the Anatolian farmers derived about 20% of their ancestry from populations related to those living in the Levant region.

"There are some large gaps, both in time and geography, in the genomes we currently have available for study," explains Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, senior author on the study. "This makes it difficult to say how these more subtle genetic interactions took place - whether it was through short-term large movements of people, or more frequent but low-level interactions." The researchers hope that further research in this and neighboring regions could help to answer these questions.

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Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have found a pulsar speeding away from its presumed birthplace at nearly 700 miles per second, with its trail pointing directly back at the center of a shell of debris from the supernova explosion that created it. The discovery is providing important insights into how pulsars -- superdense neutron stars left over after a massive star explodes -- can get a "kick" of speed from the explosion.

"This pulsar has completely escaped the remnant of debris from the supernova explosion," said Frank Schinzel, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). "It's very rare for a pulsar to get enough of a kick for us to see this," he added.

The pulsar, dubbed PSR J0002+6216, about 6,500 light-years from Earth, was discovered in 2017 by a citizen-science project called Einstein@Home. That project uses computer time donated by volunteers to analyze data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. So far, using more than 10,000 years of computing time, the project has discovered a total of 23 pulsars.

Radio observations with the VLA clearly show the pulsar outside the supernova remnant, with a tail of shocked particles and magnetic energy some 13 light-years long behind it. The tail points back toward the center of the supernova remnant.

"Measuring the pulsar's motion and tracing it backwards shows that it was born at the center of the remnant, where the supernova explosion occurred," said Matthew Kerr, of the Naval Research Laboratory. The pulsar now is 53 light-years from the remnant's center.

"The explosion debris in the supernova remnant originally expanded faster than the pulsar's motion," said Dale Frail, of NRAO. "However, the debris was slowed by its encounter with the tenuous material in interstellar space, so the pulsar was able to catch up and overtake it," he added.

The astronomers said that the pulsar apparently caught up with the shell about 5,000 years after the explosion. The system now is seen about 10,000 years after the explosion.

The pulsar's speed of nearly 700 miles per second is unusual, the scientists said, with the average pulsar speed only about 150 miles per second. "This pulsar is moving fast enough that it eventually will escape our Milky Way Galaxy," Frail said.

Astronomers have long known that pulsars get a kick when born in supernova explosions, but still are unsure how that happens.

"Numerous mechanisms for producing the kick have been proposed. What we see in PSR J0002+6216 supports the idea that hydrodynamic instabilities in the supernova explosion are responsible for the high velocity of this pulsar," Frail said.

"We have more work to do to fully understand what's going on with this pulsar, and it's providing an excellent opportunity to improve our knowledge of supernova explosions and pulsars," Schinzel said.

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Schinzel, Kerr, and Frail worked with Urvashi Rau and Sanjay Bhatnagar, both of NRAO. The scientists are reporting their results at the High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Monterey, California, and have submitted a paper to the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

Einstein@Home is a World Year of Physics 2005 and an International Year of Astronomy 2009 project. It is supported by the American Physical Society (APS), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the Max Planck Society (MPG), and a number of international organizations.
Aging immigrants' risk for cardiovascular disease may be heightened by their lack of health insurance, particularly among those who recently arrived in the United States, finds a study led by researchers at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. The findings are published in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship.

"Health insurance coverage can play an essential part in a comprehensive approach to mitigating cardiovascular risk for aging immigrants," said Tina Sadarangani, PhD, RN, ANP-C GNP-BC, assistant professor and faculty fellow at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing and the study's lead author. "The lack of health insurance coverage we observed among recent immigrants is especially concerning, given that their cardiovascular health is susceptible to deterioration as they adopt American lifestyles."

In the U.S., a growing number of uninsured, older immigrants go to emergency rooms with strokes, heart attacks, and other serious but preventable complications of cardiovascular disease. This may surprise some given prior research on the healthy immigrant effect, which finds that immigrants are initially healthier than native-born Americans. However, this advantage erodes over time as immigrants take on American ways, such as becoming more sedentary and eating less healthfully.

Research also shows that having health insurance increases healthcare utilization. However, immigrants experience barriers to obtaining affordable coverage. In the majority of states, immigrants who meet federal poverty guidelines must wait at least five years to be eligible for Medicaid, a result of welfare reform in the 1990s. In addition, private health insurance plans are costly and may be unaffordable for older immigrants with limited incomes--who, for instance, may be coming to the U.S. to care for their grandchildren.

In this study, the researchers sought to understand the risk for cardiovascular disease among aging immigrants (age 50 and up) and analyzed whether health insurance plays a role in this risk. Using a nationally representative sample from the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2007 to 2012, they looked at cardiovascular disease risk, health insurance coverage, and factors that may be barriers to healthcare for immigrants. Of the 1,920 aging immigrants studied, the majority (1,607) had been in the U.S. for at least a decade, while the remainder were recent immigrants, having arrived in the U.S. within the past 10 years.

The researchers found that recent immigrants had an overall lower risk for cardiovascular disease than long?term immigrants, which is consistent with prior studies of the healthy immigrant effect, but may also be explained by their slightly younger age. However, despite being younger and healthier, laboratory testing found that recent immigrants had higher plasma glucose levels, total cholesterol, and triglycerides, and lower HDL cholesterol values compared to long?term immigrants, suggesting that they could develop cardiovascular disease and would benefit from screening and preventive care.

In addition, recent immigrants were far more socially disadvantaged than long?term immigrants. More than half of recent immigrants (54 percent) had no health insurance, making them twice as likely to be uninsured than long-term immigrants (22 percent). These figures are a stark contrast to the overall U.S. population: 8.8 percent of the population and roughly 1 percent of people over 65 years are uninsured. Recent immigrants were also more likely to have low incomes, limited English proficiency, and lack routine healthcare.

"All of these factors challenge immigrants' ability to access care at a time when risk factors for cardiovascular disease may emerge," said Sadarangani. "This is compounded by unfamiliar and complex medical systems and fear around the cost of care, which may prevent many from seeking care until a health condition is serious and often more expensive to treat."

A key finding of the study was that being uninsured contributed to cardiovascular disease risk beyond other factors that restrict healthcare access, and while recent immigrants overall had a lower risk for cardiovascular disease than long-term immigrants, cardiovascular disease risk was particularly pronounced among uninsured recent immigrants. Insurance plays a critical role in increasing access to preventive services, especially laboratory testing for inclusive of lipid and glucose screenings, which were elevated among recent immigrants.

"So many factors affect access to healthcare, but the most powerful indicator we measured was whether immigrants had insurance. For recent immigrants, health insurance acts as an equalizer of sorts, attenuating the effects of lower socioeconomic status and language barriers," said Sadarangani. "Aging immigrants are entering the U.S. at a precarious point in their lives and are predisposed to developing chronic conditions. Yet, they are disincentivized from using healthcare for a variety of reasons, including recent efforts to enact a 'public charge' rule that would penalize immigrants for using Medicaid and other services. In contrast, increasing access to health insurance might actually lower their cardiovascular disease risk, which could prevent unnecessary and costly healthcare utilization."

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In addition to Sadarangani, study authors include Chau Trinh?Shevrin of NYU School of Medicine, Deborah Chyun of the University of Connecticut School of Nursing, and Gary Yu and Christine Kovner of NYU Meyers. The research was supported by the National Hartford Centers of Gerontological Nursing Excellence Patricia G. Archbold Scholar Award Program, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (U54 MD000538), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U48 DP005008).

About NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing (@NYUNursing)

NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing is a global leader in nursing and health. Founded in 1932, the College offers BS, MS, DNP, and PhD degree programs providing the educational foundation to prepare the next generation of nursing leaders and researchers. NYU Meyers has three programs ranked in the top 10 by U.S. News & World Report and is among the top five nursing schools receiving NIH funding, thanks to its research mission and commitment to innovative approaches to healthcare worldwide.
A proposed Northern Serengeti all-weather tarmac road that will bisect Serengeti National Park, a World Heritage site, has sparked considerable debate. Opponents say that the road could disrupt the migration of approximately 1.5 million wildebeest, zebras and gazelles between Serengeti National Park and Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya, and increase already high levels of poaching. Proponents, on the other hand, argue that the road will facilitate national and local economic growth, which in turn will reduce poverty and improve the local quality of life, which is expected to lower pressure on ecosystems.

Research instead of 'Build first - worry later'

The pros and cons of road projects proposed for remote areas with high biodiversity conservation value are rarely examined before they are built in the explosion of road expansion projects that are currently underway in many developing countries.

Researchers from University of Copenhagen have used a method called a discrete choice experiment to determine how road development would affect local peoples livelihood activity choices in the Serengeti area. A discrete choice experiment allows researchers to use hypothetical scenarios to measure the strength of preferences and trade-offs for local people regarding different livelihood options. The study is published in PLOS ONE.

Contradicting outcomes

Solomon Zenas Walelign, one of the authors of the study and postdoc at University of Copenhagen, says construction of the road could result in one of two contrasting outcomes.

"One possible outcome is that increased market integration will allow intensification of existing crop and livestock production, and the development of non-farm micro, small and medium enterprises, both of which will reduce environmental resource extraction. However, a contrasting outcome predicts that people will expand existing production, which will lead to land conversion and overgrazing and commercialisation of hunting to meet urban market demands," Solomon Zenas Walelign says.

Informed policy making

"The effect of roads on livelihood activity choices can typically only be observed after the implementation, which prevents the design of timely mitigating policies and strategies. We used the discrete choice experiment to see how people expect to change their livelihoods," said Jette Brehdal Jacobsen, professor at University of Copenhagen.

The study helps shed light on how local communities in the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem expect to adjust their livelihoods in response to road improvement. This information is urgently needed to enable informed predictions about emerging and changing environmental pressures that result from land use change, overgrazing and the bushmeat trade.

People prefer more of the known

The study found that people did not expect to increase effort hunting bushmeat - but they did not plan to reduce the number of household members engaged in bushmeat hunting either. However, the clearest result was a strong preference for traditional livelihood activities, adding more agricultural land and more livestock, as travel time to markets was reduced through road improvements.

"The results indicate that if new roads are constructed or old ones upgraded, people will prefer to expand their traditional activities by converting more land to cropland and increasing the number of cattle in the region. Together, these changes will likely increase illegal grazing pressure in the protected areas, which is already a major conservation concern in Serengeti National Park," says Associate Professor Martin Reinhardt Nielsen, who is one of the leaders of the AfricanBioServices project, which financed the study.

Another path for the impact of road building

The authors of the study suggest that land use planning and control of land use conversion and illegal grazing is critical when constructing and upgrading roads in the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem. This should be combined with education programmes and strategic efforts to encourage the development of local non-farm micro, small and medium enterprises that are alligned with conservation goals and take advantage of the large tourism income potential in the ecosystem.

Facts

Assuming that land was available, the study predicted an average increase of 1.54 acres of cultivated land and 1.43 cattle per household.

The study did not find any evidence that local people would take up new wage-earning opportunities or engage in business development as travel time to markets was reduced.

Low-interest loans and extension services could help modify the preference for extra land, but only to a limited extent, the researchers found.

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AfricanBioServices

AfricanBioServices is funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 programme and is investigating how climate change, population growth and changing land use affect both biodiversity and local communities in the Greater Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem, with the goal of designing new approaches to sustainable development.

africanbioservices.eu
Research led by the University of Colorado Boulder is revealing the Alice in Wonderland-like physics that govern gravity near the surface of the asteroid Bennu.

The new findings are part of a suite of papers published today by the team behind NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission. And they come just three months after OSIRIS-REx first encountered Bennu on Dec. 3, 2018.

Since then, the spacecraft has completed a few dozen laps around the asteroid, which is about as tall as the Empire State Building, circling Bennu from a distance of about a mile. And those early circuits are giving scientists a whole new look at this mysterious rock, said CU Boulder's Daniel Scheeres, who leads the mission's radio science team.

In research appearing in Nature Astronomy, for example, his team reports the mass of that asteroid: a respectable 73 billion kilograms.

But Scheeres and his colleagues are also working to develop a map of the asteroid's gravitational pull. Their findings suggest that Bennu exists in a delicate balance between two competing forces, the result of the asteroid's wild spin. Bennu completes a full revolution about once every four hours.

And, Scheeres said, those forces could play an important role in the asteroid's long-term evolution--and potential demise.

"When you spin this guy up, you create a competition between the gravity that's holding you down and the centrifugal acceleration, which is trying to throw you off," said Scheeres, distinguished professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences who leads the mission's radio science team.

To study those forces, Scheeres and his colleagues use OSIRIS-REx's navigational instruments to measure the minute tug that the asteroid exerts on the spacecraft.

And they dug up more than they expected. Based on the group's calculations, the region around Bennu's equator is trapped within a gravitational feature called a rotational Roche lobe--something that scientists had not yet clearly observed on an asteroid.

In practice, that feature gets weird. If you were standing inside the boundaries of Bennu's Roche lobe and slipped on a banana peel, for example, not much would happen--you'd be captured by the lobe and fall back to the surface.

"But if you were outside of the Roche lobe and slipped on a banana peel, you would roll toward the equator," Scheeres said. "And you could gain enough energy so that you'd roll off the equator and maybe up into orbit and then out into space."

It sounds like the sort of environment that Lewis Carroll could appreciate. But it also matters for the lifespan of Bennu, he added.

That's because radiation from the sun is causing Bennu to spin faster and faster over time. And as the asteroid's whirling builds up speed, its Roche lobe might also be shrinking, along with the forces that are holding Bennu together.

"As that Roche lobe narrows further and further around the equator, it becomes easier and easier for this asteroid to lose material," Scheeres said. "So far, that material has been trapped by gravity, but at some point, if the asteroid keeps spinning faster, then you fall off the cliff."

In other words, Bennu could be in the process of spinning itself into oblivion.

Understanding those physics matters for advance OSIRIS-REx's scientific mission, too, said Jay McMahon, an assistant professor in aerospace engineering and a co-author of the new study.

He explained that in 2020, mission scientists will nudge OSIRIS-REx to within a few feet of Bennu, using the spacecraft's retractable arm to collect a sample of material from the surface. And to do that safely, they will need to know the rock's physics inside and out.

"You need to know the gravitational field for spacecraft operations, really to enable all the other science," McMahon said.

"When you're going to a new world, you have some idea of what it might look like," Scheeres said. "Then you actually go there, and you can start comparing what you thought it might look like versus reality."

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The University of Arizona leads science operations for OSIRIS-REx, which was built by the Colorado-based Lockheed Martin Space. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland manages the overall mission.

Coauthors on the new study include CU Boulder graduate students Andrew French and Daniel Brack and Paul Sanchez, senior research associate at CU Boulder's Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research. Former CU Boulder graduate students Masatoshi Hirabayashi, Stefaan Van wal, Jason Leonard, Yu Takahashi, Jeroen Geeraert, Pete Antreasian, Dolan Highsmith, Mike Moreau and E. Beau Bierhaus also contributed to the paper.
For the first time, University of Guelph biologists have tracked an annual migration of up to 20,000 kilometers made by the 12-gram blackpoll warbler, one of the fastest declining songbirds in North America

It's an epic journey for a tiny bird.

For the first time, University of Guelph biologists have tracked an annual migration of up to 20,000 kilometres made by the 12-gram blackpoll warbler, one of the fastest declining songbirds in North America.

The bird's trek between its breeding grounds in the central and western boreal forest of North America and its winter home in the Amazon Basin - one of the longest songbird migrations recorded -- is the topic of a new paper by a research team headed by U of G biologist Ryan Norris.

The paper was published today in the journal Ecology.

Describing a "great circle route" arcing across North America and including a transoceanic flight to South America, the study confirms an epic migration journey that scientists had long suspected but not yet proved.

In 2015, Norris and other biologists were the first to show that blackpolls breeding in the Maritimes and New England complete a non-stop transoceanic flight of up to three days and about 2,700 km along the eastern coast of the United States.

For this new study, they looked at the full migration of birds from central and western breeding populations.

"It's amazing," said Norris, who worked on the study with Hilary Cooke, associate conservation scientist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. "A bird weighing a couple of loonies travels from the western edge of North America all the way to the Amazon basin - and, in between, traverses the Atlantic Ocean."

Other co-authors were integrative biology professor Amy Newman and U of G grad students Bradley Woodworth, Nikole Freeman and Alex Sutton, as well as researchers from other universities, conservation groups and national parks in Canada, the U.S. and Australia.

For the study, researchers tracked birds outfitted with tiny geolocators from four boreal forest sites across northern Canada and Alaska.

Total southward migration took about 60 days on average over distances ranging from 6,900 km for birds breeding in Churchill, Manitoba, to 10,700 km for populations on the western edge of the continent in Nome, Alaska.

Blackpolls from Nome took 18 days to fly across North America to the Atlantic coast of the Carolinas. There, the birds spent almost a month fattening up to double their body weight before a non-stop, 2 -day flight across open water to overwintering grounds in northern Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil.

They covered between 2,250 and 3,400 km for that transoceanic hop.

Norris said scientists had long believed that blackpolls followed the great circle route. Few of the birds have ever been found in the central or western States during fall migration.

He said population numbers have fallen in recent years, perhaps caused by habitat loss and declines in insect prey related to climate change.

"To understand what's causing the decline, we need to know their full annual cycle," he said.

In their paper, the researchers say climate change may make extreme coastal weather events more frequent and more extreme, with unknown impacts on long-distance migratory birds.

"As a conservation scientist, what strikes me most is that in a single year a blackpoll warbler has to navigate 20,000 kilometres across land and ocean, facing risks of cat predation, storms and collisions with buildings and vehicles, all while trying to find islands of habitat to rest and refuel in our human-dominated landscapes,"said Cooke. "In comparison, the boreal region of northern Canada provides safe and high-quality breeding habitat for this declining species. Protecting Canada's boreal forest is critical to saving this amazing songbird."

Norris is now working with biologists in Colombia looking at the overwintering portion of the warblers' life cycle. He said learning whether populations from across the boreal forest overwinter separately or together in South American rainforests may help improve habitat management along the migration route.

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Contacts:

Prof. Ryan Norris

University of Guelph

rnorris@uoguelph.ca

Hilary Cooke

Wildlife Conservation Society Canada

hcooke@wcs.org
The University of Luxembourg and the European rocket manufacturer ArianeGroup have signed a collaboration agreement to advance research in the area of rocket propulsion. The two-year project aims to achieve a cost reduction of rocket launches. The research is funded by ArianeGroup and the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).

Cryogenic propellants such as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen are widely used in space propulsion systems because they are more efficient and less toxic than other propellants. These fuels need to be stored at extremely low temperatures in order to maintain their liquid state. The rocket engine, its valves and feeding lines must however be able to operate properly when in direct contact with the extremely cold fuels. In order to ensure proper engine function, multiple engine components have to be cooled down to the temperature of the cryogenic fluids before the launch.

A complex process of heat transfer, the so-called chill-down, is initiated prior to the launch to ensure that propellants and the technical system operates at the same temperature. Before ignition, propellants are introduced into the main feed valve of the rocket engine. After the valve has completely cooled down, it can be safely opened and the propellants are supplied to the engine for ignition.

The complex process is challenging for space engineers and aerospace companies, because it is difficult to precisely determine the time required for the chill-down of the engine and its components. "There are currently no accurate models to predict this cryogenic heat transfer process. This forces us to conduct long components tests and use engineering estimations with high margins of safety. This results in expensive tests and long development times. Additionally, this implies increased use of propellants or substitute cryogenics during flight preparation, which increases launch costs," says Dr. Sebastian Soller from ArianeGroup.

The University of Luxembourg and ArianeGroup have joined forces in a public-private-partnership to investigate, experimentally and by means of computational simulation, the heat transfer process between the cryogen propellant and the valve. "Our team is composed of experts in thermal analysis and Computational Fluid Dynamics. We will first study the process in depth to obtain data for the valve cooling. Then, we will develop reliable and accurate models to estimate the heat transfer process leading to the chill-down used on the Ariane 6 rocket engines," explains Prof. Stephan Leyer, Head of the Research Unit in Engineering Sciences (RUES). Prof. Stephan Leyer initiated the project together with Post-Doctoral researcher Dr. Edder Jose Rabadan Santana.

The objective of the project is to integrate the obtained heat transfer models into ArianeGroup's engineering workflow to optimise the design of cryogenic valves and reduce testing costs and development times.

This new collaboration is in line with an increasing number of space-related activities at the University of Luxembourg, such as the upcoming Interdisciplinary Space Master (ISM) starting in September 2019. "With this new project, the University of Luxembourg demonstrates its high-level expertise in space technology by working with the European leader in access to space and also contributes to the recognition of Luxembourg as a space leader," comments Stephane Pallage, Rector of the University of Luxembourg.

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A new tool to help physiotherapy students master complex fine motor skills needed to assess and treat patients suffering physical conditions, such as back pain and spinal cord injuries, is being used at the University of Melbourne

A new tool to help physiotherapy students master complex fine motor skills needed to assess and treat patients suffering physical conditions, such as back pain and spinal cord injuries, is being used at the University of Melbourne.

Developed by researchers in the University's School of Computing and Information Systems and the Department of Physiotherapy, the device - SpinalLog - looks and feels like a human spine.

Using smart foam sensors, SpinalLog measures the pressure being applied to the spine by the student's hand or fingers during a simulated assessment.

This information is then displayed on a 3D spinal model depicted on-screen, providing real-time visual feedback on the pressure pattern and technique used to mobilise the spine.

University of Melbourne Human-Computer Interaction lecturer Eduardo Velloso, who helped design the device, said SpinalLog offers students a safe way of practising their skills.

"Traditionally, to teach these skills, the instructor demonstrates a force pattern on a volunteer and asks students to practice on each other by replicating the moment," Dr Velloso said.

"However, because these movements are very subtle, it is difficult for students to obverse them fully. Similarly, when students perform the movements themselves, it is difficult for instructors to provide feedback based on what they can see."

Preliminary tests show the visual feedback has a huge impact on students' ability to replicate the force pattern demonstrated by the instructor.

University of Melbourne physiotherapy senior lecturer David Kelly said SpinalLog represents the real-life conditions of a human spine suffering different levels of stiffness, bringing the clinic, to the classroom.

"Students get clear and immediate feedback on an authentic feeling spine," Dr Kelly said.

"This means they get a better experience; they learn faster and are able to mimic what the instructor is teaching them, making them better prepared for the sorts of techniques that they'll need as practitioners."

This research won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interactions in the US, 17 - 20 March.

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Watch SpinalLog in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYwCwGsYdtA&feature=youtu.be
LOWELL, Mass. - Tyler Iorizzo, a Ph.D. candidate in physics at UMass Lowell, has won international recognition for his work to develop an imaging device that could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of certain skin cancers.

For his research, Iorizzo received an Educational Award from Edmund Optics, one of the world's leading suppliers of high-precision optics for the optical industry.

Iorizzo is part of a team that developed a device called an optical polarization imager, or OPI, that could help doctors identify the margins of nonmelanoma skin cancer prior to surgery, allowing them to remove the malignant tumor with more precision and resulting in less complication and quicker recovery for the patient.

"I'm very honored to win this international award. I'm glad to be able to help people. Imaging with the OPI is completely harmless and noninvasive. It doesn't use X-ray or high-intensity laser so it's perfectly safe for the patient and the doctor," said Iorizzo, who conducts research at UMass Lowell's Advanced Biophotonics Laboratory.

"Currently, there is no comparable tool available in the market," said Anna Yaroslavsky, UMass Lowell associate professor of physics and director and founder of the Advanced Biophotonics Laboratory.

"Surgeons basically look at the outline of a cancerous lesion visually and, based on their experience and training, decide where and how much tissue to cut. In many cases, errors can arise because they can't see the margins of the tumor very well," said Yaroslavsky, a North Andover resident.

OPI's rapid, easy-to-use technology produces images that are easy to interpret and don't require extensive processing to analyze, said Yaroslavsky, adding that operating the OPI does not disrupt clinical workflow. "It offers a field of view several centimeters across and tens-of-micron resolution at unparalleled low cost."

Iorizzo added that imaging with the OPI is easier for patients to tolerate and "the procedure produces better cosmetic outcome and repair of the incision site."

Nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most common form of cancer in the United States, with about 3 million to 5 million new lesions diagnosed every year, according to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Approximately 3,000 people die from the disease annually. Statistically, 1 in 4 fair-skinned people may develop NMSC - which includes basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma - and the cost of treatment is nearly $5 billion a year.

The most effective treatment for NMSC usually involves Mohs surgery, in which the cancerous tumor is removed by excising the tissue layer by layer, with each layer examined under a microscope to help map the diseased area. The goal is to completely remove the tumor while preserving as much of the surrounding healthy tissue as possible. While the procedure is effective, it is time-consuming, labor-intensive and costly.

"Tumor boundaries associated with NMSC are difficult to detect based on visual assessment alone. This results in inefficient removal of the cancerous tissue, which can lead to recurrence of the tumor," said Iorizzo, who lives in Lowell.

The OPI uses a couple of special optical filters (called crossed linear polarizers), a high-resolution CCD camera and a ring-shaped illuminator for wide-field imaging of the skin at resolutions of up to 12 micrometers (millionths of a meter). It utilizes visible light at several wavelengths with polarization to take images of the skin at certain depths to emphasize structures such as collagen, blood vessels and any melanin (pigmented) patches that may be present.

"Our optical imaging system can identify disruptions in the skin's collagen structure caused by the tumor, allowing for precise in-vivo mapping of the skin cancer before surgery," said Iorizzo, whose award consists of $7,500 worth of Edmund Optics products that will be used in the Advanced Biophotonics Lab.

Yaroslavsky, who is leading the team developing OPI, has several patents and others pending for the technology. They will be applying for industry and federal funding to continue and expand the clinical trials.

"Our goal is to commercialize the technology by licensing it to an existing medical device manufacturer and setting up our own spinoff company. We are working on a prototype right now for a commercial version that will be much smaller and more compact," Yaroslavsky said.

The Advanced Biophotonics Lab is also conducting research on breast, brain and kidney cancers in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and UMass Medical School. The researchers' work is supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery and the University of Massachusetts system.

UMass Lowell is a national research university located on a high-energy campus in the heart of a global community. The university offers its more than 18,000 students bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, humanities, sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality educational programs, vigorous hands-on learning and personal attention from leading faculty and staff, all of which prepare graduates to be leaders in their communities and around the globe. http://www.uml.edu

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Quantum computers are designed to process information using quantum bits, and promise huge speedups in scientific computing and codebreaking

Current prototype devices are publicly accessible but highly error prone: information can 'leak' into unwanted states

Computer program designed and run by University of Warwick physicists can tell when a quantum computer is 'leaking'

Results will inform the development of future quantum computers and error correction techniques

A new computer program that spots when information in a quantum computer is escaping to unwanted states will give users of this promising technology the ability to check its reliability without any technical knowledge for the first time.

Researchers from the University of Warwick's Department of Physics have developed a quantum computer program to detect the presence of 'leakage', where information being processed by a quantum computer escapes from the states of 0 and 1.

Their method is presented in a paper published today (19 March) in the journal Physical Review A, and includes experimental data from its application on a publicly accessible machine, that shows that undesirable states are affecting certain computations.

Quantum computing harnesses the unusual properties of quantum physics to process information in a wholly different way to conventional computers. Taking advantage of the behaviour of quantum systems, such as existing in multiple different states at the same time, this radical form of computing is designed to process data in all of those states simultaneously, lending it a huge advantage over conventional computing.

In conventional computing, quantum computers use combinations of 0s and 1s to encode information, but quantum computers can exploit quantum states that are both 0 and 1 at the same time. However, the hardware that encodes that information may sometimes encode it incorrectly in another state, a problem known as 'leakage'. Even a miniscule leakage accumulating over many millions of hardware components can cause miscalculations and potentially serious errors, nullifying any quantum advantage over conventional computers. As a part of a much wider set of errors, leakage is playing its part in preventing quantum computers from being scaled up towards commercial and industrial application.

Armed with the knowledge of how much quantum leakage is occurring, computer engineers will be better able to build systems that mitigate against it and programmers can develop new error-correction techniques to take account of it.

Dr Animesh Datta, Associate Professor of Physics, said: "Commercial interest in quantum computing is growing so we wanted to ask how we can say for certain that these machines are doing what they are supposed to do.

"Quantum computers are ideally made of qubits, but as it turns out in real devices some of the time they are not qubits at all - but in fact are qutrits (three state) or ququarts (four state systems). Such a problem can corrupt every subsequent step of your computing operation.

"Most quantum computing hardware platforms suffer from this issue - even conventional computer drives experience magnetic leakage, for example. We need quantum computer engineers to reduce leakage as much as possible through design, but we also need to allow quantum computer users to perform simple diagnostic tests for it.

"If quantum computers are to enter common usage, it's important that a user with no idea of how a quantum computer works can check that it is functioning correctly without requiring technical knowledge, or if they are accessing that computer remotely."

The researchers applied their method using the IBM Q Experience quantum devices, through IBM's publicly accessible cloud service. They used a technique called dimension witnessing: by repeatedly applying the same operation on the IBM Q platform, they obtained a dataset of results that could not be explained by a single quantum bit, and only by a more complicated, higher dimensional quantum system. They have calculated that the probability of this conclusion arising from mere chance is less than 0.05%.

While conventional computers use binary digits, or 0s and 1s, to encode information in transistors, quantum computers use subatomic particles or superconducting circuits known as transmons to encode that information as a qubit. This means that it is in a superposition of both 0 and 1 at the same time, allowing users to compute on different sequences of the same qubits simultaneously. As the number of qubits increases, the number of processes also increases exponentially. Certain kinds of problems, like those found in codebreaking (which relies on factoring large integers) and in chemistry (such as simulating complicated molecules), are particularly suited to exploiting this property.

Transmons (and other quantum computer hardware) can exist in a huge number of states: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on. An ideal quantum computer only uses states 0 and 1, as well as superpositions of these, otherwise errors will emerge in the quantum computation.

Dr George Knee, whose work was funded by a Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, said: "It is quite something to be able to make this conclusion at a distance of several thousand miles, with very limited access to the IBM chip itself. Although our program only made use of the permitted 'single qubit' instructions, the dimension witnessing approach was able to show that unwanted states were being accessed in the transmon circuit components. I see this as a win for any user who wants to investigate the advertised properties of a quantum machine without the need to refer to hardware-specific details."

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'Quantum leakage detection using a model-independent dimension witness' published in Physical Review A, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.99.032328

Notes to editors:

For interviews and to request a copy of the paper contact:

Peter Thorley

Media Relations Manager (Warwick Medical School and Department of Physics) | Press & Media Relations | University of Warwick

Email: peter.thorley@warwick.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)24 761 50868

Mob: +44 (0) 7824 540863

About the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851

The Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 offers major awards to scientists and engineers for research, development and design. First established to stage the Great Exhibition in 1851, the Royal Commission's extraordinary history is founded on an inspired vision of the importance of education to economic success. It has previously funded luminaries such as Nobel laureates Professor Peter Higgs, Sir James Chadwick and Paul Dirac.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is part of UK Research and Innovation, a non-departmental public body funded by a grant-in-aid from the UK government. EPSRC is the main funding body for engineering and physical sciences research in the UK. By investing in research and postgraduate training, we are building the knowledge and skills base needed to address the scientific and technological challenges facing the nation.

Our portfolio covers a vast range of fields from healthcare technologies to structural engineering, manufacturing to mathematics, advanced materials to chemistry. The research we fund has impact across all sectors. It provides a platform for future UK prosperity by contributing to a healthy, connected, resilient, productive nation.
- The Pound to Euro exchange rate is -0.06% lower @ 1.16945 today

- The Pound to US Dollar exchange rate is +0.06% higher @ $1.32718 today

OVERNIGHT

It was a cautious start to Tuesday for currency markets, with little volatility to be found anywhere around the world.

The wild volatility in the British Pound in night sessions has largely been down to votes in UK parliament, instead a considered Sterling was up 0.14% against the US Dollar, and 0.05% against the Euro.

The Nikkei 225 was down 0.35% as the Japanese Yen moved slightly higher.

There were no fresh headlines, with European FX likely trying to decipher what the next Brexit move will be now that the Speaker of the House has barred a third vote for Theresa Mays deal.

THE DAY AHEAD

It is a mainly UK centric day today, with the most important eco-stats relating to the British Pound.

All released in one block, there will be average earnings, claimant count, unemployment rate, and the employment change.

These are particularly relevant as they are seen as the building block of the Bank of Englands alleged appetite to hike rates once Brexit is finalised.

Analyst Preview: Magne stnor and Andreas kland, DNB Markets

"Consensus is for the ILO unemployment rate to have stayed unchanged at 4.0% in January, according to Bloomberg. The growth in average weekly earnings is expected to have fallen from 3.4% in December to 3.2% in January. The claimant count rate, which was at 2.8% in January, will also be released for February tomorrow."

For the Euro there is some German sentiment data, but this is unlikely to have too much of an impact on the EUR.

Later in the US, Factory orders and Cap Goods are likely to play second fiddle to the Chinese-US trade situation.

9:30 GBP Average Earnings Index +Bonus (Jan)

09:30 GBP Claimant Count Change (Feb)

09:30 GBP Employment Change 3M/3M (MoM)

09:30 GBP Unemployment Rate (Jan)

09:35 EUR ECB's Praet Speaks

10:00 EUR German ZEW Current Conditions (Mar)

10:00 EUR German ZEW Economic Sentiment (Mar)

10:00 EUR Wages in euro zone (YoY) (Q4)

10:00 EUR ZEW Economic Sentiment

14:00 USD Cap Goods Ship Non Defense Ex Air (MoM)

14:00 USD Factory Orders (MoM) (Jan)

FOREIGN EXCHANGE MARKETS

After Speaker Bercow brought the hammer down on May trying to ask Parliament a third time what they thought of her Deal, the Pound to Dollar exchange rate (GBP/USD) had no idea how to react. Cable continued to trade in its recent range, just below 1.33.

In a report from ING, the investment bank noted that Brexit now hangs on a knife edge,

What'll happen now at the European Council meeting on Thursday/Friday is even more important than ever - and even trickier to predict. At this meeting, EU leaders will decide on whether to give the UK an Article 50 extension and if so, how long should it last for..

Ultimately what is clear from INGs point of view, is that a decision on Article 50 is by no means imminent, and a hard-Brexit is still not off the table while so much is still left up in the air,

One way or another, it looks like a final decision on extending Article 50 might not be made this week. That means it may not be until the final days or hours of the Brexit process before we know for sure that 'no deal' has been avoided, and for how long a Brexit delay might last.

From here it isnt at all clear what is going to happen, but the Pound looks to be taking a glass half full approach to events.

There looks to be some room for depreciation back to 1.30 if May makes no effort to slow the bus down before the cliff-edge.

Analyst Brexit Pound View: Kathy Lien, BK Asset Management

"The worst performing currency today was the British pound, which fell sharply against all of the major currencies. This is a big week for sterling as Prime Minister Theresa May originally planned to hold a Brexit vote on Tuesday. However sterling crashed lower after it was blocked by Parliament. The deal needs to be "fundamentally different" according to the House of Commons Speaker John Bercow. With the UK scheduled to leave the European Union on March 29th, time is running out and May needs to officially request for an extension of Article 50 from the EU. As this would need to be approved by all 27 remaining states, their next opportunity to get an extension is Thursday's EU Council meeting. But the problem is that May has to ask and we're still waiting for her to do so. The EU has had the upper hand all along and without an approval of the Withdrawal Bill, she has very little basis to ask for the "short technical" extension that she prefers. Instead, she will most likely be forced into a longer delay that could even include a mandate to hold a second referendum. If May does not request for an extension by Thursday, sterling is in deeper trouble because this suggests that it will come down to the 11th hour with the EU forced to hold an emergency summit March 28th."

Latest Exchange Rates 19.03.2019
UPDATE: The Pound drifted lower against both the Euro and US Dollar into Wednesday's session after being supported through Tuesday trading by better-than-forecast UK jobs data.

The  to  exchange rate briefly retook the 1.17 level before sliding lower with the cross last seen trading at 1.1663, down 0.2% from the session open.

The  to $ exchange rate had a brief resurgence above $1.33 but likewise drifted lower and was last seen trading down 0.25% from the daily open at $1.32305.

On the data front, UK CPI, PPI, RPI and HPI figures are due (0930 GMT) with all but the HPI release forecast to hold steady or increase.

Of these, the headline CPI figure is likely to hold the greatest potential to impact markets. The current forecast calls for an unchanged 1.8% print.

Elsewhere, Brexit remains front and centre for GBP investors.

With just 9 days to go until the UK is set to exit the EU, politicking has taken the process down to the wire.

According to reports, Prime Minister Theresa May will today write a letter to EU requesting a short Brexit delay.

Analysts expect that while a delay is expected to be positive for the Sterling, markets have already largely priced in a delay so upside potential may be capped. Focus turns to the EU summit (Thursday/Friday) for a verdict on the Brexit delay.

- UK Unemployment at 44 Year Low (3.9%)

- Employment Hits Record-High of 76.1%

- Average Earnings Increase at Strongest Pace in Over a Decade (3.4%)

The Pound Sterling (GBP) found support on Tuesday in the wake of the release of the latest round of UK labour market statistics from the ONS.

The Pound-to-Euro exchange rate was last seen trading at 1.1692, up marginally from the session open.

The Pound-to-Dollar exchange rate was last seen at $1.32723, up 0.14% from the daily open.

According to the findings of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), average earnings (3m/y) increased at an above-forecast pace of 3.4%, indicating wage growth remained at its strongest level in over a decade.

Above: ONS Average Earnings Index UK

Unemployment figures also proved better-than-expected printings with the unemployment rate dropping to 3.9%, representing the lowest level since 1975.

The employment rate reached 76.1%, the highest level since the record began while the inactivity rate fell to 20.7%, the lowest figure on record.

While certain sectors have felt the pinch of Brexit, including retail sales figures as well as PMI releases across construction, manufacturing and construction sectors, the UK's labour market continues to, somewhat counterintuitively, perform at or beyond full capacity.

One reason for the labour market's resilience could be that in lieu of expenditure on capital assets ahead of who-knows-what kind of Brexit, firms may be opting to hire workers instead - given employment decisions are easier to reverse than purchases of capital equipment.

Wednesday's Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) releases should provide further colour regarding the UK's recent economic activity with CPI expected to print static at 1.8% (y/y) while the PPI is forecast to rebound from a -0.1% (m/m) to a positive 0.6%.
UPDATE: The Pound dipped sharply in early Wednesday trading amid reports that a verdict on a Brexit delay is likely to be put off until next week, with the Pound to Euro exchange rate trading at 1.1664, down 0.21% from the session open.

Sterling-Dollar exchange rates meanwhile were last seen at $1.32295, down 0.25%.

According to reports, UK Prime Minister Theresa May will write to the European Union ahead of the Thursday/Friday EU Council summit to formally request a short delay to the Article-50-imposed, March 29th, deadline.

Speaking to ITV, education secretary, Damian Hinds confirmed the PMs intentions and that the requested extension would be short.

Hinds said "The letter to Donald Tusk will be setting out what we are looking for in terms of short extension. We need to get this deal done. People are a bit bored of waiting for parliament to get our act together and get this over the line so we can move onto other things." While a delay would represent a step to avoid a no-deal Brexit and therefore positive for the Sterling, commentary from EU officials have indicated they are less-than-please by the latest developments.

President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking to German radio said that he didn't expect a decision on the Brexit extension at this week's EU summit.

Juncker said "My impression is  that this week at the European council there will be no decision, but that we will probably have to meet again next week," before adding "Mrs May doesnt have agreement to anything, either in her cabinet or in parliament.

UPDATE: Pound Sterling (GBP) exchange rates remained supported through Tuesday's session by growing expectations of a Brexit extension beyond the current March 29th deadline in order to avoid a potential no-deal Brexit outcome.

Ahead of the EU summit (March 21st-22nd) in which PM is expected to request an extension to Article 50 and in the wake of House of Commons (HoC) speaker, John Bercow's ruling, taking an imminent third meaningful vote (MV3) off the table, UK politicians were left scrambling to find a route forward which avoids a disorderly Brexit in just 10 days time.

Following the torpedoing of the PM's strategy which amounted to a last-minute threat to back her deal or face a potentially lengthy Brexit delay and the possibility of softer Brexit, including no Brexit at all, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay today announced the PM remained committed to getting her deal through parliament.

In regards to Bercow's ruling - which he himself admitted was not final, and given the precedent was established by the House and the House controls the standing orders, MPs could theoretically overturn the standing order - Barclay noted routes remained to calling MV3. He said, "What the speaker has said in his ruling is there needs to be something that is different. You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed... So we need to look at the details of the ruling, we need to consider that in the terms of earlier rulings that dont particularly align with yesterdays." Maintaining pressure on UK lawmakers to back the deal, Barclay added "What has become very clear from the speakers ruling yesterday is, for my Brexit colleagues, I think they can see that there is a growing risk of no Brexit."

Not sure what all the fuss is about. If the PM thinks she has a majority for a third meaningful vote, she will also have a majority for a motion to set aside the Speakers ruling on the Erskine May convention. If she doesnt, no point making the attempt.  Nick Boles MP (@NickBoles) 19 March 2019

Meanwhile, reports from across the channel have increasingly highlighted a growing resentment and impatience with the chaotic Brexit process and anticipated protraction thereof.

Speaking to reporters earlier in the session, Germany's Europe Minister, Michael Roth expressed his malcontent with the current situation adding that the EU required clarity from UK lawmakers in order to grant a Brexit extension.

Roth said "The clock is ticking and time is running out... (we are) really exhausted by these negotiations. And I expect clear and precise proposals from the British government why such an extension is necessary. It is not just a game. It is an extremely serious situation, not just for the people in the United Kingdom, but for the people in the European Union." Roth went on to add that "For my government, the key priority is to prevent a no-deal Brexit ...I dont have any appetite for substance-less, very abstract discussions and negotiations on the Brexit. Please deliver, dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking." Further comments from French Europe Minister, Nathalie Loiseau, suggested the Uk government would have to concede ground in order to break the current deadlock. Loiseau told reporters "We need an initiative, we need something new because if its an extension to remain in the same deadlock (that would be unacceptable). How do we get out of this deadlock? This is a question for the British authorities." She went on to add that the UK "have said no to a no deal and they have said no to a realistic deal. Now they have to change their mind on one or the other," adding with regards to an extension "Grant an extension - what for? Time is not a solution, its a method. If there is an objective and a strategy and it has to come from London." From the EU's perspective, the ball is very much in the UK's court with pressure on the government to wrangle a route to MV3 or otherwise come up with justification to support a Brexit extension.

In the last few moments, a Downing Street spokesman has confirmed that Prime Minister May intends to write to European Council president, Donald Tusk, officially requesting an extension to the article 50 deadline. Details on the length of delay requested were not forthcoming. Regarding MV3, the spokesman deigned to clarify the government's intention but indicated a third vote isn't likely in the coming days given in order to take place before the EU summit, MV3 would have to take place on Wednesday meaning a motion to overturn Bercow's ruling would have to take place today and that was "not something that has happened as of yet.

Sterling Holds Firm Amid Rising Expectations of Lengthy Brexit Delay

The Pound rose during Tuesday's session following a volatile start to the week which saw the Pound to Euro exchange rate tumble along with a number of other peers amid Brexit-related political upheaval.

Monday saw UK politicians scrambling to garner support for their respective Brexit causes ahead of a potential third meaningful vote (MV3) on the Prime Minister's EU withdrawal agreement.

The government's plans, however, were thrown into chaos following Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow's, comments that he could block MV3 given the agreement has already been soundly rejected twice and, if tabled in it's current form, lacks any substantive changes.

The market reaction saw the Sterling initially drop, however declines were short-lived as investors assessed the implications of the latest development which, while potentially forcing the government to seek a longer Brexit delay, doesn't appear to increase the odds of a no-deal Brexit, with the running assumption of "deal or delay" remaining in play.

Commenting on the GBP and market perceptions, Rabobank strategists wrote that "The predominant notion adopted by the market is that, as long as the worst case scenario of hard Brexit is avoided by delaying Brexit, the pound is a buy on dips." In the wake of recent sessions, the Prime Minister has just two days to secure a last-minute deal if she has any hope of presenting evidence to the European Council that a Brexit delay would yield a finalised deal.

News-flow from the bloc has suggested that in lieu of a deal or evidence to suggest a plan to break the current Brexit impasse, EU leaders could hold-off on casting a verdict on a Brexit extension when they convene (March 21st - 22nd), depending on what PM May presents them.

Meanwhile, patience is wearing thin in the EU with regards to Brexit. Germany's Europe Minister, Michael Roth, told reporters that "Our patience as the European Union is being sorely tested at the moment, before adding "I can only call once again on our British partners in London to make concrete proposals at last on why they want an extension... Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking."

European leaders must agree unanimously to delay Brexit, with the alternative being a no-deal by default scenario in just ten days time (March 29th).

Overall, after over two-and-a-half years of bristly negotiations, the UK is just days away from a potential no-deal outcome as uncertainty over how best to proceed towards a negotiated deal cripples the political decision making process.

Looking at the potential developments over the coming days, head of EMEA research at ING, Chris Turner, expects the PM to continue with as-yet unsuccessful attempts to get EU leaders to budge on the terms of the EU withdrawal agreement.

Turner wrote "The parliamentary speakers intervention in the Brexit process probably means that Prime Minister Theresa May will head to the EU council meeting in Brussels (Thurs/Frid) looking for a substantial change in the political declaration - such that she can then resubmit her Withdrawal Deal for a third vote."

Turner added that indicative votes on how to progress Brexit could be delayed but expects the Sterling to remain buoyed by market expectations that parties on both sides of the channel will do their utmost to avoid an economically dreaded no-deal Brexit.

He wrote "We may not get to see the series of indicative votes (long delay, softer Brexit, referendum) until next week now.

We suspect that sterling stays supported, given that neither side wants a no deal and we look to be on the tortuous path to a long delay. Cable supported at 1.32."

Given the current turmoil, expectations for the UK to seek a longer extensions (beyond the 2-3 month technical extension required to ratify a deal) have grown considerably.

While further protraction would likely equate to continued Brexit uncertainty, at least in the near-term as political wrangling over the route ahead continues, some analysts expect a longer delay could alleviate some of the imminent 'cliff-edge' concerns weighing on both business and consumer activity and sentiment.

With regard to the expected length of delay, Danske Bank senior analyst, Piet Christiansen, views recent developments as having boosted the probability of a longer extension.

Christiansen wrote "While we previously thought a short extension was likely, we have changed our minds and now expect a long extension (60% likely versus 30% probability of a short extension)." Given the requirement for a unanimous decision, Christiansen went on to add "We would be more concerned if the EU leaders were not able to reach a consensus around an extension (10% probability). This clearly increases the chance of a no deal Brexit but from a legal perspective, the extension can be granted right up until the deadline."
Stevenson Middle School English teacher Jodi Ramos was leading her sixth grade students in a March Madness poetry bracket Tuesday morning when a lady in red entering her classroom caught her eye.

Next, Ramos saw a giant check with her name on it coming through the door, followed by balloons, her principal and her daughter, all celebrating the teachers status as a finalist for the H-E-B Excellence in Education Award.

Her students  whod been entrusted with keeping the secret  erupted in cheers and Ramos blinked back tears as H-E-B representatives told her the good news.

Eight San Antonio-area educators, including two principals, are being named finalists this week for a statewide grand prize in their category. Recipients already announced include Kathy Bieser of the Advanced Learning Academy and Anna Olguin of Longfellow Middle School, both in the San Antonio Independent School District, and Erika Guerrero of Alamo Heights High School in Alamo Heights ISD.

Finalists are awarded $1,000 for themselves and a check for their school that runs between $1,000 and $2,500. Statewide winners will be announced in May in Austin, where a total $430,000 in cash prizes are awarded.

Teams of judges reviewed the applications submitted by H-E-B customers and community members who nominated Texas teachers, principals, school districts, early childhood facilities and school boards.

Ramos kids were eager to celebrate while a photographer snapped pictures of her holding the check with her principal and superintendent, Northside ISDs Brian Woods, by her side.

Anyone else want to get in the shot? the photographer asked.

Me, Orlando Carbajal, 12, was the first to say as students shot their hands in the air.

Im her favorite, Dagny Dalasta, 11, retorted.

Eventually all the classmates surrounded Ramos, edging out Woods.

Ramos had been an elementary school teacher more than 30 years before Principal Julie Schweers persuaded her to go to Stevenson. Ramos became the English Language Arts Coordinator and 6th grade Pre-AP teacher last year.

Schweers said Ramos continuous passion for teaching and for finding unique ways to meet kids individual learning needs makes her a role model for her colleagues, as well.

Shes been teaching for 33 years and she teaches every day like its her first year, Schweers said. I want every teacher to teach that way because thats why kids come to school. We all know kids dont learn unless they have a relationship with their teacher.

Ramos students also praised her teaching style. Charlie Anaya, 12, said Ramos enthusiasm in the classroom makes learning exciting. He even advocated for Ramos to get more prizes.

Wait  can she get free H-E-B forever? he stood to say during a lull in the excitement.

Krista Torralva covers several school districts and public universities in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | Krista.Torralva@express-news.net | Twitter: @KMTorralva
Fire officials are uncertain about how long the chemical fire at Intercontinental Terminals Co. will continue after the blaze at the Deer Park facility worsened overnight Monday.

A definitive timetable no longer exists, said Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen. Officials earlier said the blaze, which began Sunday morning at the plant when tanks containing gasoline components caught fire, would last until Wednesday.

"Fuel has burned off," Christensen said Tuesday morning at a news conference. "That may be what has to happen. What I can't tell you is how long that will take."

The fire is the southern area of the plant, which according to the company website, has 242 storage tanks. The blaze is in a section that contains 15 tanks and the number of tanks on fire has varied throughout the incident. At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, ITC officials initially said eight tanks were on fire, then moments later issued a news release saying the number was seven.

Late Tuesday morning, the number was at five.

The seven includes two tanks previously unaffected and two that were reported as being burned out earlier in the day. The remaining three, including the one authorities said was the start of the blaze, were on fire earlier.

Now in its third day, the fire continues to send dark smoke over Deer Park and throughout Harris County. Company and government leaders say air quality readings are below hazardous levels. No injuries have been reported.

At a different news conference Tuesday afternoon, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton Jr. sought to calm residents' fears that the plume posed serious health risks. Flanked by more than a dozen city and county emergency response officials, the trio pledged to devote all available resources to measuring air quality.

"I know the cloud of dark smoke seems ominous as it spreads over parts of the city of Houston, but we want to assure that the air quality is being monitored around the clock," said Turner.

Dr. Umair Shah, director of Harris County Public Health, urged residents to check on relatives and neighbors who are elderly or have respiratory issues, and thus are more susceptible to changes in air quality.

Jeff Lindner, Harris County's staff meteorologist, said the fire is so large it is creating localized weather patterns, much as wildfires do in the West. He said the plume will soar from 4,000 to 6,200 feet on Tuesday, where it poses no risk to human health. Lindner said a fog Wednesday could pull harmful particulates toward the ground, though he pegged that outcome as only 10 percent likely.

Earlier Tuesday, IFC officials said two additional chemical tanks caught fire overnight at the plant on Independence Parkway after water pressure dropped. Officials initially said two fireboat pumps providing water to firefighters malfunctioned for about six hours, but Tuesday afternoon said that information was wrong and they were investigating the cause.

The fire, which had been contained to six storage tanks late Monday, had spread to eight by 2:30 a.m., the company said.

ONLY ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: For Deer Park residents fire like 'living on a fault line'

By midmorning Tuesday, five of the tanks were burning, officials said. At that time, three tanks burned out and two tanks without chemicals in them had collapsed, officials said.

Also at that time, five tanks  two containing base oil, two containing pyrolysis gasoline, and one containing toluene  had not ignited.

"We're doing everything humanly possible to protect them," said ITC spokeswoman Alice Richardson at the morning news conference.

Two of those tanks were among the seven reported on fire late Tuesday.

ITC officials are also monitoring the Houston Ship Channel after water and foam from the fire fight leaked into a dike area, said David Wascome, the company's vice president of terminal operations. The runoff has not reached the outfall.

Fire also reached near propane lines, but those were evacuated of the materials two days ago, he said. Wascome added that was an area of concern and that workers are keeping the pipes cool.

Most of the chemicals identified in the fire are used in the production of gasoline, and short-term exposure to their fumes can cause dizziness, fatigue or headaches. Two of the five tanks that are currently burning contain a gasoline blend, one contains xylene, another contains naphtha and the last contains pyrolysis gasoline.

Now Playing: Two additional chemical tanks caught fire overnight at Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park after water pressure dropped, the company said Video: Godofredo Vasquez, Houston Chronicle

The tank explosions early Tuesday came hours after officials said that the risk for more tanks catching fire was minimal. At the Tuesday morning news conference, Richardson said that incident commanders monitoring the fire don't expect the five tanks that were unaffected in the block would explode.

"They do not believe they are going to explode or catch on fire," she said. Two later did.

Richardson later teared up as she apologized to the community of Deer Park for the incident.

"Of course, ITC is very sorry," she said when asked by a reporter. "This isn't an event we wanted or planned."

At least one nearby chemical company sent home employees Tuesday due to the fire.

"As a precautionary measure, we sent home nonessentials," said Charles Saunders, spokesperson for the chemical company Ineos, which has a Deer Park location on the same street as the petrochemical fire at Intercontinental Terminal Company.

Ineos nonessential staff had not been sent home on Sunday or Monday, but were told to leave the Deer Park location Tuesday morning. Saunders also noted that barricades had also been moved to block the road further from fire.

Additionally, both Deer Park and La Porte ISDs resumed classes Tuesday. Deer Park is restricting outside activities.

For those who have suffered damages or losses from the incident, ITC issued this notice:

You can go to itcclaims.com, download and fill out the appropriate claim form, and submit it with supporting documents using the following email address: incidents31719@itcclaims.com, or by mail to the following address:

ITC Claims

March 17, 2019 Incident

P.O. Box 698

Deer Park, Texas 77536

Residents can also call the ITCCares hotline at 346-362-9766.

Zach Despart Rebecca Schuetz contributed.

Julian Gill is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | julian.gill@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here.
The latest chemical to cause concern at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. facility in Deer Park is benzene, which was detected at elevated levels early Thursday morning and prompted shelter-in-place alerts.

The benzene release comes after a massive fire burned through the tank farm for three days and created a miles-long plume of smoke visible throughout the Houston area. The fire was extinguished Wednesday, but officials previously warned of the possibility of other chemical exposure in the area.

RELATED: Shelter-in-place alert issued for Deer Park after elevated benzene levels detected

Fire officials said benzene leaked out from a foam blanket smothering the tank farm in Deer Park. ITC officials added that the benzene levels "are below those that represent an immediate risk." Cities were advised to shelter in place as a precaution, officials said.

According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Benzene is made mostly from petroleum and is used to make Styrofoam, synthetic fibers, rubbers and pesticides, among other substances.

Map of the Deer Park ITC fire The tank with the fire symbol over it is believed to be the one where the fire started. The areas highlighted in red are where the fire is believed to have spread. The purple markers are tanks containing Pygas, which is the source of benzene. The blue X markers were empty tanks. The black marker shows where the containment dike breached on Friday afternoon. Created by: Ken Ellis

RESIDENTS WARNED TO STAY INDOORS: What does it mean to shelter-in-place? Here are the necessary steps to take

Risks of benzene exposure fluctuates depending on the concentration. Short-term health effects of concentrated exposure include dizziness, nausea, headaches, drowsiness, tremors and loss of consciousness, according to a report from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.

Continuing exposure can lead to "permanent suppression of bone marrow functioning so that few new blood cells are formed, a condition known as aplastic anemia," the report said.

Other chemicals that burned in the fire include Naphtha and Xylene, two components used in gasoline. The fire eventually spread to more tanks, one of which was storing Toluene, a chemical used in nail polish remover, glues and paint thinner.

The fire affected up to eight tanks at one time. While air quality levels were listed as "good" or "moderate" in the Houston area for much of the fire, health officials warn of side effects from exposure to these chemicals.

DEER PARK PLANT FIRE: Officials say it could last for days

Naphtha can irritate the nose and throat when breathed, and poisonous gases are produced when naphtha is exposed to fire, according to earlier reports in the Houston Chronicle.

Luke Metzger, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Environment Texas, previously told the Chronicle that Naphtha can cause headaches, dizziness nausea and vomiting in the short term. Long-term side effects include risk of cancer and risk to the nervous system, he said.

Xylene exposure produces similar side effects, including including headaches, dizziness, confusion and change in one's sense of balance, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease registry.

Exposure to Xylene at very high levels can cause unconsciousness and, in some cases, death, according to the registry.

HOW TO FILE A CLAIM: ITC sets up hotline to cover damages of Deer Park fire

Toluene's short-term side effects also include confusion, headaches and dizziness. Weakness, memory loss and nausea can also occur, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

HOUSTON CHRONICLE EXCLUSIVE: Deer Park company battling fire accused of intentionally polluting water during Harvey

In the long-term, Toluene can cause brain damage, as well as damage to the kidneys and liver. Read more about the side effects here.

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM INVESTIGATES: Dangerous chemicals create hidden dangers in Houston

Julian Gill is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | julian.gill@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here.
The fight over moving the Cenotaph to another spot on Alamo Plaza has moved to the Legislature, where lawmakers will consider measures that could block the relocation.

Three of nine legislative measures related to the Alamo, all filed by Republicans, focus on the 1930s Cenotaph, a monument to the 189 known defenders who died in the storied battle of March 6, 1836.

Rep. Kyle Biedermann, R-Fredericksburg, has been a vocal critic of the Alamo master plan, which would move the Cenotaph, close the plaza to traffic and convert it to an open, outdoor interpretive space. The plan was developed by the Texas General Land Office, the city and the nonprofit Alamo Endowment.

While Biedermann supports public-private development of an Alamo museum and preservation of the mission-era church and Long Barrack, he opposes a 50-year lease that took effect Jan. 1 for the Land Office to manage the 1836 footprint of the city-owned plaza.

Biedermann said the Cenotaph is an empty tomb that should be located where many of the Texian and Tejano defenders died in the early morning battle. He scheduled his Cenotaph measure to be filed as House Bill 1836.

On ExpressNews.com: As Cenotaph ages, its location is subject of debate

Alamo at the Legislature Cenotaph HB 3516 by Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands: Land Office would take control of Cenotaph HB 1836 by Rep. Kyle Biedermann, R-Fredericksburg: Land Office would take control of Cenotaph; moving it would require OK by governor, lieutenant governor, House speaker and land commissioner SB 1400 by Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels: Would require the Land Office to use eminent domain to take control of Cenotaph; moving the monument would require OK from land commissioner, Texas Historical Commission and Daughters of the Republic of Texas Transparency HB 1393 by Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant: Would require Alamo expense reports to be posted online once a month by the Land Office HB 1400 by Hefner: Would require monthly Alamo expense reports to include details including vendor name and description of service or benefit provided Exhibits SB 927 by Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood: Would require exhibits within the 1836 battle footprint to be about the battle; an exhibit unrelated to the battle should be in the complex but outside the battle footprint HJR 85 by Toth and SJR 2 by Hall: Constitutional amendment would require Legislature to approve "historical narrative" for certain exhibits at the Alamo or Alamo museum New oversight HB 3517 by Toth: Texas Historical Commission would take over the Alamo; Daughters of the Republic of Texas would manage the site See More Collapse

The most important thing is, we havent had a vote in the Legislature to move the Cenotaph, Biedermann said. All of these bills have been filed because people are so upset with how the GLO has handled the Alamo. Theyve done everything in their own bubble.

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush responded that the plan to repair and rebuild the Cenotaph on a new steel frame about 500 feet south of its current location  and add the names of several defenders who had been left off  is the result of a four-year process that included more than 50 public and 200 stakeholder meetings.

A 26-member citizens advisory panel last year supported the move unanimously, saying it will allow for better interpretation in the plaza and leave the monument in a new, prominent place with direct views of the iconic church facade.

This has already been deliberated over in hundreds of meetings, Bush said, adding that he does not believe that the Cenotaph bills will gain traction.

The other Alamo-related measures deal with oversight, expense reporting or historical interpretation at the Alamo. Matching joint resolutions propose a constitutional amendment, to be voted on statewide Nov. 5, that would give the Legislature authority to approve the content of Alamo exhibits.

The longest measure, the five-page HB 3517, filed by Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, seeks to put the Alamo in the care of the Texas Historical Commission, with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas managing the site. Bush terminated the DRTs Alamo management contract in 2015. The Alamo Trust, a subsidiary of the Alamo Endowment, now runs the site.

On ExpressNews.com: City to lease Alamo Plaza to state

Biedermann said hes not sure that the Alamo should be under the historical commission or another state agency. But he said having it under an agency led by an elected land commissioner has politicized the most sacred ground in the state of Texas.

Bush said the current structure forces him as the Alamos lead custodian to be accountable to voters. After surviving a late challenge by his predecessor, Jerry Patterson, in last years GOP primary, Bush defeated Democratic challenger Miguel Suazo in the general election.

I got re-elected on this issue, Bush said.

He said he is working with the staff of Rep. Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant, regarding a pair of bills that would require the Land Office to post monthly Alamo expense reports online. Because expenses are reviewed by the Land Office before the Alamo Trust is reimbursed with state funds, there would be a lag time of a few weeks before they could be posted, Bush said.

He said the land office already goes above and beyond state online disclosure requirements regarding contracting. Every invoice at the Alamo, whether its an additional security expense for a special event or a bag of ice, has to be reviewed and approved for reimbursement.

Then we are in a position where we can report, Bush said.

On ExpressNews.com: Alamo Trust to hold open meetings in wake of transparency concerns

David Nicholson, Hefners chief of staff, said his office will focus on passage of HB 1400, the more specific version of the two bills, because the Alamo is of utmost importance to the history of Texas.

The Alamo belongs to the people of Texas, Nicholson said in an email. All Texans should be able to easily see how the funds intended to maintain and preserve the Alamo are spent.

Biedermann worries that the Alamo plan puts too much emphasis on the sites 1700s origins as Mission San Antonio de Valero. Although Native American groups have demanded the plaza be recognized as a burial ground, Biedermann said the mission era can be represented in the new museum. His main battle cry is to keep the Cenotaph where it is has been since it was dedicated in 1940 as a tribute to the states 1936 centennial.

This is not going to change much of the plan. Everything else stays the same, Biedermann said.

Bush said he will keep legislators updated on the Alamo but needs to be afforded a level of deference. Although an architect has not been selected yet to design the new Alamo museum, the events of 1836 remain the primary foundation for that storytelling that helps Texans and visitors remember the Alamo, he said.

This continues to be a priority for us, Bush said.

Scott Huddleston covers Bexar County government and the Alamo for the San Antonio Express-News. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | shuddleston@express-news.net | Twitter: @shuddlestonSA
After a quick court hearing Tuesday, Joe and Brittany Thrash became Joe and Brittany Martinez again.

The reversal came two weeks after they were adopted by Charlie Thrash, 81, a wealthy San Antonio man who in 2017 was found to be mentally incapacitated.

Joe, 27, and Brittany, 25, are the children of Thrashs girlfriend Laura Martinez, who married him on March 4.

That short-lived union was annulled last week in Bexar Probate Court, where Thrash is under the protection of court-appointed guardians.

Because of his incapacity, Thrash has been under standing court orders to not marry, vote, drive a car or make any important personal decisions, including, apparently adoptions.

On Tuesday, State District Judge David Canales nullified the adoptions that he had approved two weeks earlier. It came at the request of Thrashs guardians, who claimed that the adoptions were a fraud on the court.

The judge scolded lawyer Phil Ross, who represents Laura Martinez, and was involved in the adoptions, for misleading him and not alerting him to Thrashs legal status.

It sounds like a lot of information that would have been helpful to me was not presented, Canales said.

Barrett Shipp, the lawyer for Thrashs guardian Mary Werner, said these omissions completely robbed this court of being able to enter a proper order.

Ross objected to the motion to void the adoptions even being heard, claiming that Canales lacked jurisdiction and that Thrash should have been present Tuesday at the hearing.

Ross said Thrash had the right to adopt the two Martinez children, despite the standing order from probate court.

Canales saw it otherwise and restored the siblings to their former status.

The adoptions have been set aside. It starts all over again, said Laura Cavaretta, a lawyer for Tonya Barina, guardian of Thrashs estate, worth more than $3 million.

Tharsh, who operated a specialty auto repair shop on West Avenue for decades, has not been seen publicly in two weeks.

On March 6, Werner arrived at his home in Shavano Park with police officers and took him away. She said Thrash is now staying with a relative and doing well.

Laura Martinez, 54, who said she is the sole beneficiary of Thrashs will, said she loves him and wants him back.

I have a lot of faith. I have many religious people contacting me and they are not happy about the annulment and the questions about the adoptions, she said. The kids love him, thats why they want to be adopted by him.

Martinez has denied mistreating or financially exploiting Thrash, whom she says she began dating in August 2012.

Thrash had been married and divorced twice, and did not have children of his own.

A report by a court-appointed investigator, as well as statements by adult protective services officials, painted Thrash as being controlled and manipulated by Martinez and her family.

According to Elaine Damian, investigator for Bexar Probate Court No. 1, Thrash did not want to get married and gets along well with his guardians. She also concluded that Thrash was vulnerable to suggestion and intimidation, and stated the guardianships are necessary.

In a lengthy rebuttal to the court investigators report, Ross took issue with claims he was being controlled and isolated, and attacked the guardians conduct as interfering unnecessarily with Thrashs personal and business affairs.

Damians report is inadequate, biased and unreliable because it fails to report investigation of important facts including hostile and malicious actions of Barina, guardian of estate, and Werner, guardian of the person, Ross asserted, going on to list numerous alleged hostile acts.

Among them, according to Ross, was Barinas closing of Thrashs bank accounts, locking him out of his business, failing to arrange for his financial support and ignoring medical claims that his mental capacity has been restored.

He accused Werner, Thashs personal guardian, of conspiring with Shavano Park Police Department  on the pretext of a welfare check to abduct Charlie from his home against this will on March 4, 2019, and facilitating his false imprisonment.

Werner said she was forced to remove Thrash for his own safety, and because Martinez was uncooperative and manipulative.
In two Austin churches of different faiths, Alirio Gamez, Hilda Ramirez and her 12-year-old son, Ivan, are hiding from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

They dont leave. Ivan goes to school, but If they leave the school or the church they could be deported, said Jim Rigby, pastor of St. Andrews Presbyterian. To them its like prison.

The Central American immigrants were supposed to show up at the San Antonio ICE field office for an appointment that was likely to be their last before deportation. But two tall Austin ministers came in their stead: Rigby, and Chris Jimmerson of the First Unitarian Universalist Church.

And along with them, some 100 advocates protesting their possible deportation.

Let them stay, let them stay, they chanted, the leaders yelling through megaphones and crowd members waving posters.

The two churches are part of the Austin Sanctuary Network, a group of faith-based communities that agreed to provide protection and a shelter for immigrants.

(ICE) fully respects the Constitutional rights of all people to peacefully express their opinions, Nina Pruneda, the local ICE spokeswoman, said in a statement. That being said, ICE remains committed to performing its immigration enforcement mission consistent with federal law and agency policy.

Born out the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, the groups mission hinges on an ICE practice of avoiding arresting individuals in sensitive locations like schools or churches.

Enforcement actions may occur at sensitive locations in limited circumstances, but will generally be avoided, reads the government policy on ICEs website.

Ramirez and her son have been living at St. Andrews for nearly three years now, after fleeing poverty and violence in Guatemala and crossing the U.S. border illegally in 2014, according to Elaine Cohen, a retired teacher and volunteer whos known them for years.

They were held at the Karnes detention center before getting released into the community, she said, and had difficulties going through the court system because they speak Mam - an obscure, indigenous language that few court interpreters can speak.

Stephanie Taylor, the lawyer for the immigrants, had submitted a request to pause their deportation proceedings while the immigrants pursued legal status through alternate routes  the board of appeals and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

As they waited for a decision, they were granted a one-month extension in February that expired on Sunday.

Taylor was notified that their request for deferred action was denied. She realized then, she said, that they would be at a high risk of being arrested and deported if they showed up to Mondays appointment.

She said ICE is not obligated to deport the immigrants. It could grant them a temporary stay.

Its kind of like when you get stopped by a police officer and they decide to give you a warning instead, she said.

For over an hour, the crowd sang songs in Spanish and yelled chants urging for prosecutorial discretion. The ministers presented the immigrants documents on their behalf to ICE, and were told to wait outside.

An hour after the protest started, an ICE official approached Taylor and the two ministers. They talked, then Taylor approached the megaphone.

We just got word that Alirios case is going to be marked down as a no-show she said, adding that notice was being sent to the Austin ICEs fugitive operations department, the office that deals with arresting and apprehending immigrants who are out off compliance with the conditions of their release.

They said a warrant will likely be issued for his arrest in Austin, Taylor said.

The crowd booed.

Soon after, an officer notified Taylor that the same was done for Hilda and her son.

Silvia Foster-Frau covers immigration news in the San Antonio, Bexar County and South Texas area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | sfosterfrau@express-news.net | Twitter: @SilviaElenaFF
Dr. Basil Pruitt Jr., a physician and scientist who pioneered many burn treatment advances that saved patients lives, died Sunday in San Antonio. He was 88.

A retired colonel who led the Armys Institute of Surgical Research for 27 years, he studied why burn wounds become infected and, with the ISR laboratory division chief, the late Arthur D. Mason Jr., developed and tested a cream that reduced that risk.

At the institute, Pruitt created a model in which rigorous scientific inquiry was followed by dramatic improvements in care that were shared with civilian burn centers worldwide. Burn patients now have a far better chance of survival than they did 50 years ago.

The one word which comes to mind when thinking of Dr. Basil A. Pruitt Jr. is giant, Dr. Lee Cancio, a retired Army colonel and now civilian director of the ISRs burn center at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, said Monday.

I learned recently that Dr. Pruitt wondered whether he had done enough in his professional career, Cancio added. In reality, his contributions far exceeded those of the vast majority of fellow surgeons. He, more than anyone, is rightfully considered the father of modern burn care.

Pruitt, long retired from the Army, was still active last fall, addressing a conference in Boston, maintaining a basement office at University Hospital, holding the Dr. Ferdinand P. Herff Chair in surgery at UT Health San Antonio and consulting for the ISR.

He struggled to regain his health after colon surgery last winter and died of complications. Services are pending.

A prodigious researcher, Pruitt generated a series of influential papers on burns, the first of which appeared in the Annals of Surgery in 1964. Detailing mortality in 1,100 consecutive burns treated at the ISR, it brought him recognition as a clinician and settled the question of what area he would study.

It told people that if you were a young adult in the United States at that time and got a 43 percent burn, not even half of the body surface, you had a 50-50 chance of living or dying, Pruitt told the San Antonio Express-News last year. And thats really what convinced me that working in the field of burn management had a future because the outlook was so bad that you could make a real improvement with appropriate studies to find out what to do.

Fifty-five years after that first paper was published, colleagues say Pruitt remains the most-cited researcher in burn care. Dr. Evan Renz, a former Brooke Army Medical Center commander who led the burn center from 2008 to 2013, said no other researcher produced more peer-reviewed papers on burns.

Pruitts lifetime research output totaled 469 papers in peer-reviewed publications, 181 chapters in textbooks and 15 books and monographs. By his own accounting, as many as two dozen major papers led to significant improvements in patient care.

He got people thinking about things his whole career, Renz said. He was a dominant thought leader in the area of burn management and treatment for many years.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Peake, a former Veterans Affairs secretary, said Pruitt had a profound influence not only in the United States but  around the world, helping train doctors who later headed burn centers.

It would be hard to find somebody in surgery and medicine that has a longer and greater legacy than Basil Pruitt, said Peak, also a former BAMC commander.

Pruitts contributions were transformational, said Dr. Ronald M. Stewart, professor and chair of surgery at UT Health San Antonio.

Dr. Pruitt had a major and sustained international impact on the fields of surgery, burn care, trauma and critical care, Stewart said.

Beneficiaries of that research have included South Texas oil field workers, soldiers injured in the war zone and Gov. Greg Abbott, who was treated at BAMC after a vacation accident in 2016 that left second- and third-degree burns on his lower legs and feet.

Their chances of survival today are high, but it was a different story when Pruitt started out.

In those days, in many places, it was said you could find your way to the burn center just by the smell of rotting flesh, Pruitt recalled last year.

Pruitt was was born in Nyack, N.Y., and moved to Dallas when he was in the ninth grade. His father, Basil A. Pruitt, worked in the oil and gas industry and moved every few years. After graduating from Oak Cliff High School in Dallas, he earned a degree in geology at Harvard College in 1952. He met his wife, Molly, who was enrolled at Harvards Graduate School of Education, while he pursued a masters in geology, which he quit to enter medical school at Tufts.

The couple came to San Antonio in 1959 after he was drafted while doing his residency at Boston City Hospital. Pruitt liked BAMC so much, he decided to re-enter the Army  as long as the Army let him return to the burn center.

San Antonio had only 588,000 people then. Pruitt was warned not to visit the River Walk after dark.

It was like coming to the boondocks, Molly Pruitt said of trading Boston for a big small town with few cultural options. It had its first ballet that came to San Antonio, and every parent brought their little daughter. It was funny because there were so many little children.

They had a good opera, but other than that, the cultural aspect down here was, how do I put it, there wasnt much of it, she said. The town wasnt sophisticated like it is now.

On ExpressNews.com: At 88, San Antonios father of burn care isnt stopping

Basil Pruitt threw himself into his work and for a time went to war, serving from 1967-68 as chief of surgery and chief of professional services at the busiest evacuation hospital in Vietnam. He became chief of trauma research there, studying cardiopulmonary responses to injury in combat casualties.

He returned home to command the ISR during the conflict, which saw the worst-injured troops brought in by critical care air transport flights staffed with surgeons. ISR teams moved 824 burn patients on 103 flights from Japan to San Antonio from April 1967 to December 1972.

Only one died en route.

Under his leadership, we partnered with the Air Force to fly around and pick up burn victims from all kinds of places, and if you think about it, it foretold the kind of care in the air  this last 16 years of war, (that was) so effective, said Peake, the former VA secretary. We practiced that with burn patients.

Discovering that leaving a needle or catheter in a vein too long leads to life-threatening infections that can reach organs, Pruitt and other ISR researchers countered the problem by changing intravenous lines more frequently. Perhaps even more important, however, was the development of topical creams that proved to be effective anti-microbial therapy.

That included Sulfamylon, which was developed at the ISR.

If you started Sulfamylon therapy immediately upon admission of the burn patient, you decreased that incidence of invasive burn wound infection by 50 percent, Pruitt said, adding that it also controlled the density of bacteria in dead tissue so it could be more safely removed.

Molly Pruitt was elected to the board of North East Independent School District in 1984 and served 24 years. When Roosevelt High School was renovated, the schools library was named for her.

In a lengthy interview last year, Basil Pruitt appeared to be ambivalent about leaving medicine altogether to do something else, such as write his memoir. It was an old habit. He retired from ISR in 1995 at the end of a 35-year Army career and became a professor at UT Health San Antonio, continuing to conduct research and write papers.

Pruitt was preparing for a conference last summer as second vice president of the American College of Surgeons when asked if he was ready to shut down his offices at BAMC and University Hospital.

Yeah, yeah, I could do that, he replied without much conviction.

Echoing Cancio, the burn centers civilian director, Molly Pruitt said her husband had indeed wondered if there wasnt more for him to do and that deep down he couldnt bear to retire.

He thought he was never doing enough, she said.

Cancio once made patient rounds at BAMC under Pruitt.

He combined scientific rigor with total dedication to the care of patients, who, when he got started, were widely regarded as unsalvageable, Cancio said. He was a personal mentor and warm friend to me and many others. He has set the standard for us to follow, but there will never be another Basil Pruitt.
Carolina Nanez raised a stylus in her right hand and moved it through the air. An image of a human heart popped out of the computer screen before her, hovering and rotating in the air.

The heart was rendered three-dimensional by a pair of glasses, and it moved according to the motions she made with the stylus.

Last week, Nanez, a sophmore at the University of Texas at San Antonio, was among nearly 200 premedical and predental students who interacted with virtual reality technology during a weeklong conference held over spring break. The enrichment program, supplemented with lectures on anatomy, sought to introduce students who plan to pursue careers in health professions to learn more tangible information about the inner workings of the human body.

Nanez, who is studying biology and psychology, said she appreciated the hands-on aspect of the session and how it gave a taste of what medical school would be like.

Its better than just reading it because you get to see why certain things connect, said Nanez, who is interested in cardiology and gastroenterology. Theres so many words that youre trying to learn, but when you actually see it, you understand why certain words are called the way they are and why they connect the way they do.

Now Playing: Students learn anatomy through virtual reality at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Video: San Antonio Express-News

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio medical students offer hands-on lessons to high schoolers

Dr. Hooman Mir, a 2006 UTSA graduate who is now an assistant professor at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., helped organize the conference with his undergraduate mentor Eddie Hernandez, an assistant professor of biology at UTSA.

The technology, called zSpace, allowed the students to examine the organs up close and remove external layers. It also displays information about diseases and conditions that affect the area of the body being examined.

For example, when Nanez and her classmates were interacting with virtual lungs, a module along the side of the screen defined how a pulmonary embolism can suddenly block an artery in the lung.

When they see it in 3D, when they see it in virtual reality, theyre able to then look at the entirety of the structure, Hernandez said. Theyre able to pull it out, theyre able to spin it around, theyre able to put it upside down. Theyre able to hide some structures to be able to locate the internal structures of the organ.

Mir said he wanted to bring the training program to his alma mater so aspiring doctors and dentists could gain a better spacial understanding of the bodys anatomy. Such technology was not available when he was attending podiatric medical school a few years ago, he said.

Instead, textbooks were the main resource, and they had obvious limitations when it came to visualizing some areas of the body, he added.

The textbook doesnt show these 3D spatial anatomy relationships between the structures, Mir said. The new generation of future medical and dental students are in very good hands because, by having these new technologies being incorporated into their current medical and dental and health professional curriculum, they get to actually have that visual understanding and that spatial understanding of the anatomical structures.

On ExpressNews.com: Does virtual reality make you feel like throwing up? It might be cybersickness

Mir said the platform can also serve as a primer to students who may be expected in their careers to interpret CT or MRI scans, which are delivered in a 3D format.

The VR platform has been available to other UTSA students for about a year, Hernandez said, primarily to those studying majors like kinesiology, pre-physical therapy and pre-nursing. The conference was an opportunity to expand its availability to other students in biology and medical humanities majors, he added.

Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | lcaruba@express-news.net | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba
Justin Rodriguez had begun the process of packing his bags for Austin.

The San Antonio Democrat was on the verge of heading north on Interstate 35 for his fourth legislative session in the Texas House when he got the news on Dec. 27 that Paul Elizondo, the lion of the Bexar County Commissioners Court, had passed away at the age of 83.

A week later, Rodriguez found himself filling the shoes of a local political legend, as the newly appointed commissioner for Precinct 2.

On ExpressNews.com: Elizondo wielded power with rare authority

Its hard to replace someone who is irreplaceable, Rodriguez said on this weeks edition of the Express-Newss Puro Politics podcast.

I didnt see this opportunity coming. Some of us knew that the commissioner was in bad health. But again, hes been such an icon in this community that you think hes going to be there forever.

Rodriguez, a former San Antonio city councilman, said his years in Austin caused him to miss the local aspect of politics.

He said he hopes to bring a greater degree of transparency and accessibility to county government.

Commissioner Elizondo, bless his heart, was 83 and I know he wasnt very mobile, Rodriguez said. But Im going to neighborhood associations now that have said, Weve never had a county commissioner come to our neighborhood association. That kind of accessibility is what Im talking about.

Rodriguez also talked about last weeks special-election runoff to fill his old House District 125 seat, which resulted in a victory for the Democratic candidate, former Councilman Ray Lopez.

On ExpressNews.com: Lopez wins San Antonio runoff

Rodriguez said the outcome was not surprising, but added that a show of unity from San Antonios Democratic elected officials had produced a pleasantly surprising turnout level.

If Rodriguez is drawing upon Elizondos legacy for guidance on the Commissioners Court, he also applied some Elizondo wisdom to his recent decision to endorse former council colleague, Julian Castro, for president, even with another fellow Texan, Beto ORourke, entering the 2020 Democratic field.

(Elizondo) had plenty of wise sayings. Some of them you can repeat, some of them you cant, Rodriguez said with a laugh. But one of the ones I remember is, You dont trade in old friends for new friends.

Hear these and other topics discussed on this weeks Puro Politics podcast.

Gilbert Garcia is a columnist covering the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470
Sinverguenza is a term that covers so many sins. As one word, it means shameless in Spanish. As two words, sin and verguenza evoke so much more, a sense of not acknowledging a wrongdoing and doing so without embarrassment.

Thats how a few San Antonio officials handled what no normal person could call a sale. In this case, it was more than an acre of precious East Side land holding arguably the most spectacular view of the downtown skyline. It includes the iconic Hays Street Bridge at Cherry and Lamar.

That sale has been the focus of a complicated, seven-year legal battle in which developers have sought to put a five-story apartment complex on it. Last week, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against the City of San Antonio.

The City Attorneys Office, in a display of sinverguenza, responded to the opinion by calling it a narrow and technical ruling that wont interfere with future development in the area.

The lawsuit was sent back to the Fourth Court of Appeals, where it might finally get a full hearing.

The Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group filed the lawsuit on behalf of a diverse group of residents from all parts of the city. But they all sued on behalf of all San Antonians.

They did it in the absence of leadership from elected officials, who should have been the watchdogs of public access.

The restoration group has argued, with merit, that the 1.7-acre tract sold to a developer was originally donated to the city for use as a park. Though thats not on paper, ordinary citizens helped broker that land donation from Budco Ltd., which asked that if the park were built, it be named for Budcos owners.

The city  sinverguenza  has argued the land was never intended to be a park and sold it to Eugene Simor, president of Alamo Beer, for $295,000. Thats a lot of desirable real estate for the cost of a modest three-bedroom home in San Antonio.

Simor deeded the land to a business partner, and together they have sought to build an apartment complex on the site to take full advantage of that gorgeous view.

Simor later received a grant from the City of San Antonio for $295,000 to develop the property. The city said it applied the sales proceeds to a bridge restoration fund.

You dont have to be a mathematician to see the exchanges amount to free land for a development the city hopes will become an economic generator. But for whom exactly, and at what cost to the public?

Bridge and park advocates have been clear that the development would most benefit its developers at the cost of a potential park, visitors center or other public use.

Developers imagine a fine dining experience atop the bridge, too, which will further limit access to those who could afford that experience. That wont include many East Side residents, who are some of the citys poorest and most marginalized.

The Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group has other complaints. It derides the city for the lack of transparency around the land deal. They say, with some justification, that other potential buyers werent allowed to bid on the land.

They say the developer was well-connected to city officials and point to grand sailing stories in this newspaper written by former Mayor Phil Hardberger, in which Simor was a fellow sailing enthusiast.

They point to the ties that bind between Hardberger and former City Manager Sheryl Sculley, his protege. He has long been one of her staunchest allies, even when she was engulfed in controversy over contract negotiations with the San Antonio Firefighters Union and in this land sale dispute.

Some of the voters who approved a charter amendment in November capping the city managers salary because of Sculley may have had the East Side land deal in mind, too.

In these issues and others, San Antonians have felt unheard by their elected officials. Some are still stinging from Sculleys unilateral decision  again, sinverguenza  to give permission to developers to proceed after the Historic Design and Review Commission twice voted down their design plans.

The City Council will be briefed Wednesday on the Texas Supreme Courts ruling. Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, a Dallas Republican, agreed with the restoration group that the city isnt immune from being sued when money damages arent involved.

So, the lawsuit lives, probably for months to come. For the restoration group, it was never about money. It was about public access. For several public officials, it wasnt. Sinverguenza.

Elaine Ayala is a columnist covering San Antonio and Bexar County. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eayala@express-news.net | Twitter: @ElaineAyala
Texas would stomp out smoking for anyone under 21 if lawmakers approve a bill favored by Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who runs the state Senate.

Patrick announced his top 30 legislative priorities on March 8, focusing on a mix of hallmark conservative issues, taxpayer protections and legislation aimed at protecting Texas future, such as Senate Bill 21, which would raise the smoking age from 18 to 21.

In a news release, Patrick described the bills as not only his priorities but also priorities of the majority of the Texas Senate and the conservative majority of Texas.

Senate Bill 21, filed by state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, would raise the purchasing age for all tobacco products, including cigarettes and e-cigarettes. State Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, filed identical legislation  House Bill 749  in the lower chamber.

If the legislation passes, Texas will become the eighth state to adopt so-called Tobacco 21 legislation. In Jan. 2018, San Antonio became the first and only city in Texas to raise its smoking age from 18 to 21.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Proponents say the measure will save lives and dollars, but critics argue the policy is a textbook example of government overreach. This session, with Patricks backing and statewide support  and backing from some Democratic Senators  Huffman said the legislation stands a solid chance.

More than two-thirds of Texas voters support raising the tobacco purchasing age to 21, Huffman said, pointing to a statewide poll conducted by Texas 21, a coalition of organizations backing the effort.

I am encouraged by this poll that 2019 will be the year we pass a Tobacco 21 law, Huffman said in a press release. I urge all Texans who agree to take a stand for our children and contact their senator and representative to ask them to support House Bill 749 and Senate Bill 21.

The Senate Committee on State Affairs, chaired by Huffman, conducted its first hearing on the bill Monday.

At least one major tobacco company is supporting the legislation. Altria, which owns tobacco giant Phillip Morris as well as the makers of Copenhagen and Skoal snuff, said in a written statement that it has advocated for strong minimum age laws in all U.S. jurisdictions.

The bill is also supported by e-cigarette maker Juul, which is part-owned by Altria.

Tobacco 21 laws have been shown to dramatically reduce youth smoking rates, which is why we strongly support raising the minimum purchase age for all tobacco products, including vaping products like Juul, to 21 in Texas, said Ted Kwong, a Juul spokesman.

Juul already requires purchasers to be 21 or over for sales via its website, Kwong said.

Opponents of the bill included a small business owner and several parents. One man said if 18 is old enough to join the Armed Forces, then it should be old enough to smoke. Others said pushing the age limit up to 21 would not stop younger people from obtaining tobacco.

Staff writer Taylor Goldenstein contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON - With Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, Texas GOP Rep. Will Hurd lost his platform to delve into sexy topics like artificial intelligence and promote tech legislation, like his new bill aimed at securing the governments Smart TVs and connected devices from hackers.

Hurds new reality became clear when Democrats abolished the House Oversight IT panel he chaired, his perch for scolding bureaucrats for sloppy computer practices and wasteful spending on outmoded equipment.

But while many Republicans have faded from view since the Democratic takeover of the House, Hurds profile has expanded, fueled by his criticism of the Trump administration and recent defections from the GOP on guns and border policy.

Hurd, of San Antonio, is scheduled to appear Wednesday night on Comedy Centrals The Daily Show, following recent televised interviews on CNN and CBS. A current spread in Texas Monthly chronicles his career, and he was sought out earlier this year for an interview in Rolling Stone, which rarely features GOP members of Congress.

After surviving a Democratic Party onslaught last year to win his third term by fewer than 1,000 votes, Hurd is charting a course increasingly independent from his party while seeking to cooperate with Democrats on legislation.

But hes not so independent as to abandon President Donald Trump on election day. Responding to a question last week, Hurd said he would support Trump over Beto ORourke - a fellow Texan with whom he traveled from San Antonio to Washington by car last year - unless Beto O'Rourke decides to run as a Republican, which I don't think he's planning on doing.

What has remained constant for Hurd is the target Democrats place on his seat. In January, 644 days before the 2020 elections, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that Hurds 23 District will get special attention, one of 33 in the country with that distinction. The 23rd is a perennial swing district that stretches from San Antonio to the outskirts of El Paso, including more than 800 miles of the Mexican border. Gina Ortiz Jones, the San Antonio Democrat who nearly unseated Hurd last year, is expected to declare her plans for a rematch next month.

This is not breaking news. Im always going to be a target, Hurd said in an interview. I won by 926 votes. Its the 23d, truly the only 50-50 district in Texas. But guess what? I outperformed the top of the ticket and I consistently do that.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Hurd, 41, the only African-American in the GOP caucus, also is one of just three Republicans in Congress representing a district won by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Hurd said he believes his recent defections from the Republican Party reflect sentiments in his district. In the past, the National Rifle Association has given him an A rating. For his last re-election drive, the NRA kicked in $4,950.

But Hurd was among just eight Republicans who joined Democrats on Feb. 27 to pass legislation expanding the federal background check systems for gun purchases, a bill the NRA contends would make criminals out of law-abiding gun owners.

Most people agree that certain people shouldnt have a weapon, right? Hurd said, explaining his vote. It just makes sure there are background checks on the million transfers of arms that happen between people that dont know each other.

He added: No matter what piece of legislation you do, youre going to get blowback. But it was the right thing to do.

Last remaining moderate Texas Republican

Hurd, whose district includes 820 miles of border with Mexico, has long opposed a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, referring to it as the most expensive and least effective means of border security.

Last month, he joined 12 other Republicans voting to nullify Trumps national emergency declaration, which would enable the president to tap military construction funds or other accounts to free up wall-building money. Hurd said he voted as he did to protect his military-heavy district.

They are all projects that are ongoing that are going to improve the welfare of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, he said.

For subscribers: Texas lawmakers in spotlight as House votes to rebuke Trump

Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor, has watched Hurd closely and what he sees is a politician with his own brand and a connection to voters in his district.

Hes the last remaining moderate Texas Republican, so hes in a position to make everybody a little bit unhappy. Maybe thats the way to please people in a swing district, Rottinghaus said.

Hurd has built political success on top of his legislative success, notably the Modernizing Government Technology law overhauling purchase methods in the governments $90 billion annual outlay for technology.

For subscribers: Will Hurd, a rare moderate in Congress, scores a lawmaking victory as Democrats move in

I used to be able to call those witnesses that were going to help move my legislative priorities. Now I have to do the meetings on the side. My bandwidth is decreased a little bit because of that. Thats just a reality that you have to deal with it, Hurd said.

Tiffany Moore, the Consumer Technology Associations senior vice president of political and industry affairs, thinks Hurd will continue to have an impact. Her trade association represents more than 2,000 American companies in Washington and operates a political arm that supports candidates. She and Hurd sat together on a recent SXSW panel dealing with technology.

We work with a lot of members of Congress, and there are some who are uniquely capable of working in the minority. I think Will has that special talent. His default is to be bipartisan; its not something new to him, Moore said.

Hurds legislation introduced last week with co-sponsor Robin Kelly, D-Ill., confronts the creepy reality that millions of connected devices in the internet of things  from Smart TVs to printers to cameras to coffee pots - operate on networks with little or no security protection.

The legislation requires new guidelines from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for future devices and requires any internet-connected device the federal government buys to comply with those recommendations.

I feel pretty good that we can move this through both houses, he said.

Hurd believes that his new post on the House Appropriations Committee - albeit as a minority member - will bring opportunities to address what he regards as the governments ongoing failure to protect itself.

Hurd intends to continue his effort to prevent the United States from falling behind - particularly losing out to China  in artificial intelligence and machine learning. A goal, he said, is ushering in a powerful new technology based on the democratic ideals of the West.

The Chinese are not developing facial recognition to buy groceries in the corner store. Theyre using AI to continue their human rights abuses against their population, he said.

My strategy up here of getting things passed hasnt changed, he said of operating in the minority. I have an independent relationship with my constituents. I spend time in my district. And when people go in to vote, theyre going in making decisions about who is best going to represent them in the 23d District, he said.

Everybody wants to always use conventional wisdom to say that Im going to get beat. I hope they continue to think that because it helps me.
Planned Parenthood and its supporters are warning that a new Texas anti-abortion bill will lead to even fewer low-income women receiving sexually transmitted disease testing, cancer screenings, contraception and other womens health services.

When the Texas Legislature in 2011 slashed funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, the womens health safety net took a severe hit, studies and other reports show.

The number of patients receiving care in state-funded programs declined from a high of 320,000 in 2010 to 220,000 in 2017, the most recent state data available. About 1.8 million low-income Texans are thought to be eligible for services.

Despite a slight rebound in 2014 when the state rolled out new programs, the state is still serving 100,000 fewer patients than it did in 2010 prior to the legislation.

Now, Planned Parenthood has joined some Texas city and county leaders in warning that womens health will be set back yet again if Senate Bill 22 becomes law.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels and nineteen other senators, would block state and local tax dollars from going to abortion providers and their affiliates. The bill is a top priority for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick this legislative session, passed out of committee on a unanimous vote Monday.

Taxpayers who oppose abortion shouldnt have to see their tax dollars subsidizing the industry, Campbell said.

While lawmakers already block state funds from going to abortion providers and affiliates per a budget amendment, this bill would cement that restriction without the need for new amendments every budget cycle. It would also extend the funding prohibition to local governments.

For subscribers: Troubled Texas nonprofit tries for more family planning money

The bill would ban any governmental entity from engaging in transactions  such as a sale, purchase, lease or donation  with an abortion provider or affiliate.

The proposed legislation would also prohibit advocacy or lobbying on behalf of the providers or their affiliates. It would not apply to a licensed hospital, a licensed physician who performs fewer than 50 abortions per year, a state hospital, a teaching hospital or an accredited residency program.

SB 22 ties the hands of local government at a time when cities and counties already face significant challenges in providing access to quality, affordable health care for their residents, Yvonne Gutierrez, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes said at a press conference prior to a public hearing on the bill Monday. The legislature has already prevented Planned Parenthood from providing care to Texas women to disastrous effect.

The full scope of the bills implications is unclear. An example of a transaction threatened by the bill is Planned Parenthoods lease with the city of Austin at a $1-a-year rate thats been in place since the 70s. The city regularly provides such discounts to nonprofits, such as animal shelter Austin Pets Alive.

In 2017, the Planned Parenthood facility on East Seventh Street provided services, such as cancer screenings, birth control and HIV and STD testing, to more than 5,000 people, the organization said in a press release.

Mayor Steve Adler and Austin City Council members spoke in support of the partnership at a press conference held at the building Monday.

The state reaching down into Austin to talk about how best to provide health care in our community is an overreach, Adler said. It is a preemption that goes against the ability of local communities to decide what is best in their neighborhoods.

At the public hearing Monday, Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, and other supporters of the bill said it aligns with their moral values. More than a dozen people spoke, all but a few in support of the bill.

Time and time again, the people of Texas have made it abundantly clear that our citizens have a tremendous respect for unborn human life, Allmon said. This bill ensures our tax dollars are not used in violation of the most basic principle of our union: that all people are guaranteed a right to life.

Presented with data showing womens access to care suffered after the 2011 cuts, Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said at the hearing that the Legislature has invested more money in womens health to provide more services to more women than we ever have in the history of this state, and we have more providers than we ever have.

According to the Legislative Budget Board, the state spent $142 million on women's health in fiscal year 2017, up from $105 million in fiscal year 2010, including federal sources. And the state has added more than 3,000 providers between fiscal years 2010 and 2016. Despite those changes, the state in 2017 served 100,000 fewer women than in 2010, state data show.

Now (that) it is not flowing through an organization that some people would prefer is their problem, Nelson said. My problem and our ) problem is making sure women get the appropriate health care that they need, and we are doing that.

Related: Appeals court postpones ruling on Texas ban of some abortion procedures

While the cities of Houston and San Antonio said they had no direct contracts with Planned Parenthood, officials said the bill could have detrimental effects to future partnerships. Bill Kelly, Houstons director of government relations, said Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast is the second-largest safety net provider in Harris County.

If we were to have  which is not out of the realm of possibilities  a Zika outbreak or something that could typically affect women of reproductive age, the prohibition against coordinating with a safety net provider in a public health emergency just seems completely against what people would expect their government to do, Kelly said.

He added that the wording of the provision banning lobbying is vague and could potentially hinder the city from advocating for nonpartisan issues like disease prevention funding.

Are we going to not support additional state resources to folks with HIV/AIDS in our community simply because Planned Parenthood also agrees with us? Kelly said. It just seems like a completely nonsensical requirement.

Former Sen. Wendy Davis, now-executive director of the nonprofit Deeds Not Words, known for her 2013 filibuster of anti-abortion legislation, also spoke against the bill Monday.

Davis said the impact of cuts to family planning funding for providers like Planned Parenthood had dramatic effects on womens health care, such as increasing teenage birth rates and maternal mortality, harming tens and thousands of real, living, human women who went without health care as a consequence.

This is not a bill that seeks to continue state defunding  that has already happened, Davis said. Instead, this is a bill that seeks to interfere with a local communitys decision to make what it believes are the best health care decisions for people that live in their local communities.
The Enigma has entered the building.

In politics, if the media agree with your views and you play nice with them, there springs forth a benevolent narrative that youre a blank slate where people can write whatever story they like (see Barack Obama).

But if the Fourth Estate opposes your policies and you pick fights with reporters, the narrative is much less kind. Youre a phony, a charlatan, a con man who will be whatever people want you to be (see Donald Trump).

Ready or not, we now have a candidate who appears to be a mixture of both.

Just in time for St. Patricks Day, Robert Francis ORourke formally entered the 2020 presidential race. Its been quite a journey so far for the Irish-American son of El Paso County Judge and County Commissioner Pat ORourke, who once told reporters he gave his son the nickname Beto because he thought it might help get votes if he entered politics in a border state like Texas.

Pat ORourke was cynical as heck. He was also a genius. He knew the Beto moniker would pay ethnic dividends for his son  twice.

It would help the younger ORourke fool gullible Mexicans into thinking he was one of them  and many do, from what I hear  because were already conditioned to the insult of white actors playing them on film (e.g., Starring Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata).

But this stab at cultural appropriation also allows arrogant white liberals to feel as if theyre progressive enough to vote for a Latino because they know in their heart that its a safe choice, since theyre really just voting for one of their own.

Upon hearing of the arrival of our savior, my first thought was: Why not wait until Cinco de Mayo? A fake Mexican holiday created by white people to sell beer is the perfect day to kick off the candidacy of a fake Mexican candidate adored by white liberals who dont mind the hard sell.

The marketing is hard-core. The media are pitching Beto like hes the last shot of tequila at one of those offensive frat parties you see around the country where, to get in, you have to don a sombrero, throw on a serape and imitate a Mexican.

Beto retired from the House of Representatives after three exhausting two-year terms, where he passed no significant bills, rarely reached out to Latinos and avoided the combustible immigration issue, according to Latino lawmakers who got beat up over it. In 2017, he launched a Senate race against an intensely unpopular incumbent and raised more than $70 million from across the country. Yet by implementing the Hillary Clinton strategy for luring Latino voters  i.e., attract them by ignoring them  he still managed to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.

ORourke  who has disclosed a personal wealth of $5 million to $10 million  suffered through unemployment the way most of us do: by spending three months traveling the country to find America and maybe himself. The spectacle was too much for CNNs Nia-Malika Henderson, who noted at the time that a woman or minority candidate would be too busy grappling with self-employment to indulge in much self-introspection.

Still, Beto pulled it off. Chalk up one for white male privilege, where often the normal rules dont apply.

Meanwhile, the media  much of which is run by white liberals who are endlessly fascinated by the adventures of other white liberals, while often refusing to give others the time of day  have gone loco for Beto.

Last month, ORourke was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in Times Square. Now there are two documentaries and an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for a cover story in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. Expect more fawning to come.

You can bet that the other dozen or so Democrats running for president are green with envy.

Things are especially ticklish for Julian Castro, the one authentic Latino in this race. ORourke gets to say that we should legalize marijuana nationwide. If Castro did that, reporters would poke around to see if the Mexican-American had a drug trafficker uncle south of the border.

Why does ORourke get special treatment? You know why. As the Texas Democrat told Vanity Fair about the 2020 presidential race, Im just born to be in it.

Hows that for entitlement?

Heres a riddle: How many Betos does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: One. To hold the bulb, while the world revolves around him.

ruben@rubennavarrette.com
Happy 30th birthday, World Wide Web. Who knew that wed be celebrating this three-decade tech milestone with such a frenzy of anti-tech fervor?

Not so long ago, the tech sector was the jewel in the crown of the U.S. economy, a vibrant industry that nontech companies envied and other countries were desperate to replicate. Tech was where Americas best and brightest went to dream big, to move fast and to break things  to disrupt the bloated and lazy analog-economy incumbents.

For the grads (and dropouts) of elite universities, going to Wall Street meant selling out. Going to Silicon Valley meant changing the world. For our common good, presumably.

This cultural adoration of all things tech  and tech grew to encompass almost any company supposedly in the business of disruption was ubiquitous. The sycophancy of the tech press defied parody. Hollywood, too, lionized the founder-genius, the socially awkward kid who finally got his social due (and payday). And politicians went to Silicon Valley to kiss the rings of these flip-flop-and-free-T-shirt-wearing, newly zillionaired nerds, in hope of coaxing a few pennies from their Venmo accounts.

The political pilgrims came from both parties. Democrats praised the open-mindedness and social liberalism of Silicon Valleyites; Republicans championed their entrepreneurial mettle and contempt for regulations.

But sometime in the past couple of years, disillusionment set in. Quantifiably so: In Gallups sector-by-sector polling, the Internet industry was viewed very or somewhat favorably by 60 percent of respondents at its peak in 2015. That plummeted to 45 percent by last summer.

In some ways, anything hyped as high as the Silicon Valley fairy tale was bound to face a reputational fall eventually. But the blemishes driving that backlash were also plentiful and varied.

There was bro culture, sexism and sexual harassment. Data breaches  lots of data breaches. Broken laws. Allegations of theft. Ripped-off employees and independent contractors. Privacy violations, disinformation, fake accounts and other user abuses, and changing stories about how much firms knew about them.

There was too little gatekeeping in toxic social-media environments. Or too much of the sort of gatekeeping that threatens free speech, depending on your political persuasion. The amplification of outrage culture, but also of white nationalism, xenophobia, conspiracy theories. The radicalization of young men worldwide into terrorists, evidenced most recently  though hardly exclusively  in the horrific mass-slaughters at two New Zealand mosques.

A sector once seen as a bunch of plucky underdogs has become viewed by many as a greedy, parasitic monolith, indifferent to its effects on democracy, civility, human rights. Or, in any event, it was recognized for what it was: a sector at least as inclined to bad behavior as any that came before it, except it exists within an overmatched regulatory environment that has been ill-equipped to impose consequences.

Politicians smelled blood. And now, rather than competing over who could more closely align themselves with Silicon Valley, they vie for the role of toughest on tech.

When it comes to actual policy changes, though, both parties have fallen short. The most ambitious proposal of late comes from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who wants to break up the tech companies. But that just seems like a solution to the wrong problem. Large tech firms have certainly harmed consumers, but its not clear how consumers would be served by, say, forcing Google to surrender Nest. If Facebook sold off WhatsApp, the colonies of Russian trolls wouldnt miss a beat.

European regulators have also aimed their firepower on antitrust issues, though its not always obvious that these efforts are about improving experiences for consumers so much as extracting money from deep-pocketed U.S. companies.

Certainly consequences for data breaches or other privacy violations could and should be more severe. But fixing the tech sectors systemic problems remains a thornier problem. Perhaps the real lesson of 30 years of webbed connectedness is that a disrupted economic model is every bit as vulnerable to human failings as the one it supplants.

Neither our tech overlords nor their supposed overseers are capable of saving us from ourselves.

crampell@washpost.com
House Speaker Nancy Pelosis, D-Calif., announcement that she is not for impeachment has caused resistance on the left. Pelosi is not trying to protect President Donald Trump. She is trying to protect the Democratic Party from its lunatic fringe. Its an increasingly difficult challenge.

Pelosi is the first House speaker in six decades to return to the job a second time. But the Democratic majority she now presides over is much different from the one she led in 2007. Since the 2018 midterm elections that gave her back the speakers gavel, her party has gone off the rails.

First, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., hijacked Pelosis agenda by announcing her Green New Deal  an upward of $90 trillion-plus miasma of government spending that proposes to provide everyone with health care, a government jobs guarantee, free education, medical leave, job training, retirement security and universal basic income to support those who, as she put in her infamous talking points, are unwilling to work. And thats before we even get to the energy and environmental policies.

After that troubled rollout, Pelosi tried to dismiss the plan as the green dream or whatever they call it and declared it will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. Pelosi favors a more modest, realistic agenda of bolstering Obamacare, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, building infrastructure, passing gun restrictions and other conventional Democratic priorities. But many Democrats do not share her lack of enthusiasm for full socialism. Virtually every Democratic presidential candidate has some kind support for the Green New Deal, making a socialist takeover of the American economy the centerpiece of the Democratic Partys agenda.

Thats bad enough. But Pelosi has also had to deal with the mess created by another left-wing insurgent, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., whose anti-Semitic remarks have exposed a virulent strain of anti-Jewish hatred that is gripping the left. A resolution condemning Omars anti-Semitism faced such intense internal opposition that Pelosi had to replace it with a watered-down version that condemned not just anti-Semitism but also all forms of hate  including anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against minorities  rendering it meaningless.

Pelosis next move was to try and head off a suicidal impeachment drive gaining strength on her left flank. Anticipating that special counsel Robert Mueller may not find incontrovertible evidence that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia to steal the 2016 election, Pelosi announced that unless theres something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I dont think we should go down that path. That wont stop Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who vowed on taking office to impeach the mother(expletive) and has announced she plans to introduce a resolution to start impeachment proceedings.

Pelosi knows that such an impeachment effort would divide Democrats and might not even pass the House. And even if it did, there is zero chance that two-thirds of the Senate would vote to convict Trump for something other than a criminal conspiracy with Russia. A failed impeachment would energize Trumps base, raise Trumps approval ratings and alienate the very suburban voters Democrats just peeled away from the GOP to win the House majority in the 2018 midterms. Most important, she knows it would distract Democrats from the agenda Pelosi wants to pursue.

During a private meeting last week, Pelosi reportedly asked House Democrats, Do we want to drag him down or do we want to lift people up? The answer from the Resistance is becoming clear: Drag him down!

Pelosi wants to do more than resist; she wants to govern. She wants to enact legislation. To do that, Democrats need to win back the Senate and the White House in 2020.

But the Ocasio-Cortez-Omar-Tlaib wing of the party seems determined to undermine that strategy by pursuing a platform of socialism, anti-Semitism and impeachment. If they prevail, not only will Trump not be impeached  hell also likely become a two-term president.

@marcthiessen
American politicians are wasting time debating whether to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Illegal immigration to the U.S. from Central America and Mexico will continue because of the rampant government, judiciary and police corruption in these countries.

La mordida (the bribe) is part of the cultural makeup of these countries. A basic traffic ticket, for example, can be avoided by paying a police officer a mordida. While there are innumerable cases of corruption in these countries, there are a few in Mexico that readily come to mind.

Corruption in Mexico dates back to Hernan Cortes, the Spanish conquistador who sailed to Veracruz, Mexico, in 1521 with approximately 500 Spaniards. This event initiated the conquest of Mexico and the rest of Latin America by Spain. The Spaniards (peninsulares) came with the sole purpose of stealing gold and land from the Aztecs. They established themselves much like the Mafia did by selling government posts and land among themselves. In 1876, Porfirio Diaz ruled as a ruthless dictator until the Mexican Revolution of 1910-21. The indigenous and mestizo population were second-class citizens then and remain so today.

Not much has changed in the 21st century. Enrique Pena Nieto, the ex-president of Mexico (2012-2018), and the first lady built a $7 million mansion with government funds funneled to their personal bank accounts. They named it La casa blanca (the white house). Another former Mexican president, Carlos Salinas de Gotari (1988-1994), fled his country after the devaluation of the peso, the worst economic crisis to date. His brother Raul, who worked for the government, stashed $83.9 million in Swiss bank accounts. It was believed to be acquired from laundering drug-trafficking money.

This type of extravagance is common among the elite, which forms 10 percent of the population while 30 percent are middle class and 60 percent live in poverty.

Furthermore, it is known that Mexican ex-governors such as Humberto Moreira of Coahuila and Tomas Yarrington of Tamaulipas invested ill-gotten money in the U.S. with impunity. The State Department and Justice Department have not taken a hard stance on corruption and on how the U.S. financial system facilitates it, according to Tony Payan in his article Why the U.S. needs to help Mexico fight corruption in The Hill. Much like the conquistadors who fled back to Spain with galleons full of gold, many modern-day politicians and their families depart their country with stolen goods.

Jorge Ramos, a news anchor for Univision, proposes to combat corruption by creating an International Commission against Corruption in Mexico under the auspices of the United Nations. This was done in Guatemala in 2007, and it was successful in removing President Otto Perez Molina and his vice president, Roxana Baldetti, from office. If Mexican presidential candidates would agree to such a commission, it would be a twofold approach for combating corruption from the inside-in and the outside-in. The commission would operate under Mexican law as it conducted criminal investigations and proposed reforms to the judiciary. However, many Mexican politicians would oppose this because the corrupt system preserves their status.

The U.S. government should support this type of approach. Proficiency in Spanish and knowledge of Mexican history and politics would aid U.S. diplomats and politicians tremendously. The endless debate about the wall, whether it should be erected, is like placing a Band-Aid over the cancerous corruption.

Lane Carnes is the author of The Archs Prism (El prisma del arco) in 2014, Solitary Impressions in 2016 and City of Voices (La ciudad de las voces) in 2018.
Something I occasionally do is address high school and college students on journalism and politics. In most cases, the students are quite liberal, and my presence is designed by organizers to expose them to a point of view that differs from what they otherwise ingest.

Of course, any discussion of the news media and politics quickly turns to the topic of President Donald Trump. The left-leaning high school and college students almost all loathe him (as do most of the faculty members). Among their stated reasons are his positions on immigration, climate change, race relations, tax cuts (for the rich, they say) and the environment (particularly his deregulation of the energy industry).

During one such recent visit, students were asked to come up with something good to say about Trump. Reluctantly, some complied.

The economy is good, said one. Relations with North Korea are improved, said another. Trump does try to keep his campaign promises, yet another volunteered. By the time students were finished, it was grudgingly acknowledged that although Trump might be bad, he might not be all bad.

And yet, their animus toward the president was mostly unabated, and in further discussions, the real reason became clear. No matter what he might actually accomplish, the presidents demeanor is offensive, the students said. His name-calling, his insults, his swearing and his bullying are traits that diminish him daily, as far as they are concerned. Although these characteristics dont faze most of Trumps supporters, they sincerely alienate others, particularly high school and college students  not because they are liberal snowflakes, but because they have been raised by their parents to be polite and considerate.

A faculty member volunteered that Trump is failing younger Americans because he does not seem to care that, although policies and actions are important, a president setting a good example as a human being is just as crucial. The presidents under which most of todays students came of age  George W. Bush and Barack Obama  certainly exhibited those qualities, most students agreed.

The Robert Mueller probe is apparently winding down, potentially with no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. At the same time, whatever House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., may say, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., seems to be leading the very definition of a witch hunt. All of these developments and encounters have led me to believe that although Trump may soon get the chance to move past talk of impeachment and accomplish great things, it is unlikely that he will ever be regarded as among our greatest presidents. Such a designation requires not just the approval of supporters, but, as time passes, also detractors.

Trump might well lead the nation to an unprecedented employment and economic boom, develop better relations with age-old global adversaries and (hopefully) save the United States from an unhealthy acceptance of socialism. But his disregard for upholding the inherent dignity of the presidency will never allow those who oppose his policies to eventually admire him personally, as has largely happened with Ronald Reagan.

Does Trump care? Probably not. He is satisfied to be loved by those who love him now. But among his obvious identities as enumerated in a recent Washington Post article were entertainer, rebel, bully, fighter and pundit. But neither gentleman nor statesman was among those that could honestly be listed.

A friend of mine who has decades of experience in Republican politics and is not a fan of Trumps has decided that Trump is among the most consequential presidents of his lifetime. But being consequential is not the same as being great, a stature Trump will never achieve, whatever his accomplishments. For many, Trump will forever be defined by the glee he takes in his rudeness and cruelty toward all who oppose him.

Millions of Americans are willing to shrug off Trumps malice, believing it is offset by the needed disruption he is bringing to a stale and corrupted political swamp. But for millions of others, including many among our next generation of leaders, the absence in the White House of someone they can emulate, or teach their children to admire, will leave a lasting stain. Even as they might occasionally like what Trump does, they will forever despise who he is.

Abernathy, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, is a freelance writer and former newspaper editor based in Hillsboro, Ohio.
No one is happier that former U.S. Rep. Beto ORourke is running for the Democratic presidential nomination than Sen. John Cornyn.

Cornyn did not want to face ORourke in a race for his Senate seat in 2020, a contest ORourke could very likely have won.

Jon D. Kindred, Bandera

Growing antipathy

Starting with the Stormy Daniels fiasco, then the North Korean negotiation debacle and countless other fabrications, we are witnessing a total breakdown of truth and honesty in this countrys leadership. This total disregard for the truth and the willful ignorance of reality are the fodder that feeds the antipathy I feel toward our current administration.

Andres Luevano

Stay in rhythm

Re: Dont fall back, Your Turn, Thursday:

Anne Yeargain wants to keep daylight saving time  for Texas year-round, but wouldnt it be better to just go back to the natural standard time? It would help our circadian rhythms.

Durand C. Waters

Bad teachers

Re: No trial for jailer; he gives up license, Briefs, March 9:

This is about a Bexar County jailer who was caught on video assaulting an inmate. He agreed to permanently surrender his Texas Commission on Law Enforcement license.

Why cant this be done in education? Mediocre (or worse) teachers can remain in the classroom or be removed from a district but allowed to keep their license and move to another district or out of state to teach. Either way, they are hurting hundreds, if not thousands, of students.

Research tells us that if a student has a bad teacher two years in a row, they cannot recoup! It is almost impossible for students to get on grade level when they are two years behind unless they have one-on-one good teaching.

Dr. Linda Canady, Garden Ridge
NEWS FLASH

Air Serbia has launched a new prepaid hot meal service as of March 1, giving economy class passengers on flights lasting over eighty minutes the opportunity to preorder their food. The meals are available on all flights, including those to and from New York, where Air Serbia offers two complimentary meals.





On flights to Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Air Serbia is offering passengers the choice between a mushroom pie with sataras, scrambled eggs with cottage cheese, grilled chicken in gravy, and vegetarian moussaka, with prices ranging between 6.5 and nine euros. On services to New York, passengers can preorder breaded chicken in Aioli sauce, Zlatibor flat bun with Uzicka prosciutto, kajmak and eggs, and potato dumplings with spinach in a cheese sauce. The meals are valued between twelve and fourteen euros.





Passengers can preorder their hot meal at the time of booking, on the "my reservation" page on Air Serbia's website or via the carrier's call centre. Passengers on all of Air Serbia's European flights receive a complimentary cup of water and light snack. Depending on their fare type, travellers will also receive a complimentary drink and cold sandwich. If their fare does not include a meal, passengers must pay for any extras on board. On services to and from New York, all passengers receive complementary meals and drinks.
Low cost carrier Wizz Air commenced its major expansion in Macedonia with the introduction of its first of eight new routes yesterday, which will be followed by a further two today. A total of 118 passengers arrived on the carrier's inaugural service from Malmo to Ohrid on Monday. Today, forty travellers flew from Milan to Ohrid, while 116 were booked on the return service. From Skopje, 195 passengers travelled on the inaugural flight to Baden Baden, while 200 were on the return service. Tomorrow's first flight from Skopje to Bremen will see 179 passengers on the outbound and 165 on the inbound service.A total of four new year-round flights are being launched from Ohrid and Skopje each over the next four months, which will add a further 200.000 seats onto the Macedonian market this year. By the end of July, Wizz Air will offer 38 routes to sixteen countries from Macedonia's two airports. TAV Macedonia Airports Coordinator, Nejat Kurt, said, "TAV Macedonia is always looking forward to new routes and new opportunities for passengers using both airports in Skopje and Ohrid, and today, we are glad that passengers needs and requests have been met. With the introduction of these new destinations, we believe that there will be numerous opportunities for Macedonian citizens to expand their travel experience. I would like to thank Wizz Air for their commitment to the development of aviation in our country, as well as the government for their constant support".
File photo

STAMFORD  Chemicals and minerals maker Tronox said this week it was working toward an out-of-court agreement with the Federal Trade Commission on its proposed $1.7 billion acquisition of the titanium dioxide business of Saudi Arabian firm Cristal.

The FTC last year sued to block the purchase  which was first proposed in February 2017  arguing that it would reduce competition in the market for titanium dioxide, a bright-white substance used as a colorant in many consumer and industrial products. But Tronox officials said that FTC staff have joined them in moving to withdraw the case from adjudication and seek the commissions consideration of the deal, with terms that would include the sale of Cristals North American titanium dioxide business.
Cavalier Galleries changes name to Cavalier Ebanks Galleries

GREENWICH  A gallery in Greenwich is honoring its longtime director by changing its name.

Cavalier Galleries will change of its gallery name to the Cavalier Ebanks Galleries. This change recognizes and rewards the efforts of Lindsay Ebanks, who has helped to expand the company over the past 12 years.

Ebanks came to Cavalier Galleries as a gallery assistant in 2006, after gaining experience working in museums, galleries, and auction houses in New York and Nantucket. She went on to accept a position as art handler for Cavalier Galleries in Greenwich, then became a sales associate, and from there rose to become the companys director for its locations in Greenwich as well as in Nantucket, Mass., and New York, N.Y.

In her role as director, Ebanks has proven herself invaluable, managing every aspect of gallery operations, including forming lasting relationships with artists and collectors. Through her dedication to the galleries, Ebanks has formed a partnership with Ron Cavalier, making the new name of Cavalier Ebanks Galleries a natural progression for the company.

With the name change to Cavalier Ebanks Galleries, visitors will still see the ever-increasing standard of quality at the Galleries, which have been presenting fine paintings, sculptures and photography since 1986. The New York and Palm Beach locations will retain their present names, and the new gallery name will be introduced immediately in the Greenwich and Nantucket locations.

The inaugural exhibition under the new name opened last week. The show William Nelson: NEXUS will run through April 7 at the gallery at 405 Greenwich Ave.

Greenwich Art Society to host first-graders

The Greenwich Art Society, a 107-year-old not for profit art school, is sponsoring an innovative, multisensory arts enrichment program called Mingled Arts.

The program is part of an effort to make a cultural contribution to the greater Fairfield County area through outreach programs for under-served groups.

In the program first-graders from Read Elementary in Bridgeport will travel to the Greenwich Arts Societys studio on four dayes to take part in a specially designed cultural art program.

Over 100 first-graders will listen to the Jim Clark Jazz trio, do a hands-on art project and talk about history and paintings  with all of the activities related to the featured artist, Henri Matisse.

This multisensory approach fully engages the students and has been shown to improve the students creativity in their reading, writing, and also advance their socioemotional development, program founder Mary Newcomb said. Exposure to live music and culture is a real hit with the students. The arts help introduce us to ourselves and no matter what career path the students take, its a fun & creative way to reach inside to discover your our own unique voice and then express it.
BRIDGEPORT  A senior city police official, accused in an internal investigative report of turning his back as his officers allegedly pummeled a handcuffed man while breaking up a party in 2017, was recently promoted and then allowed to retire on the same day with the benefits of the higher rank.

Robert Sapiro, a 27-year veteran of the police force, retired earlier this month as a captain, as part of a settlement with the city of his outstanding federal lawsuit against the city. In addition to the promotion, the city agreed to pay Sapiro undisclosed compensation and attorney fees.

Deputy City Attorney John Bohannon and Milford lawyer Richard Buturla, who represented the city in the case, confirmed that a settlement was reached with Sapiro, but declined to comment further.

Sapiros lawyer did not return a call for comment and Sapiro could not be reached.

In a 405-page report completed on Nov. 16, 2018, the citys Office of Internal Affairs found Sapiro and 16 other officers violated Police Department rules and regulations regarding their response to a noise complaint of a party on Colorado Avenue on Oct. 21, 2017.

Specifically, Sapiro, who was the chief supervising officer on duty at the time, was cited for not properly supervising the officers under him.

Lt. Sapiro made a conscious decision to refrain from providing direction and leadership to officers engaged in acting outside of department policy and procedures, the report states.

The report states that video shows that Sapiro entered the incident scene as officers were apprehending one of the partygoers, Carmelo Mendez.

The video shows Sapiro walking onto the property, he looks three times at the officers taking Mendez into custody on the ground to his left. He continues to walk further into the rear yard and out of view of the video camera completely ignoring what is taking place with the officers and Mr. Mendez, the report states.

According to court records, a settlement conference of Sapiros pending lawsuit against the city was held on Oct. 2, 2018. On Jan. 8, 2019, both parties reported that they had reached a settlement and they were granted an extension to close the case to April 4.

In November 2016, Sapiro, then a captain and head of the Police Departments training academy, was caught up in a controversy over a racially themed letter that was passed around the police department.

An African-American police officer, Clive Higgins, later admitted after being arrested that he wrote the letter. Higgins claimed he did so on the orders of then-Lt. Lonnie Blackwell, president of The Guardians, a police minority organization in the department, to bring attention to the department with respect to ongoing racial complaints.

Blackwell denied ordering Higgins to write the letter. He was supported by Sapiro, his supervisor, who told his superiors he believed Blackwell was the victim of racial discrimination in the department.

Although the disciplinary investigation of Blackwell was begun under Police Chief Joseph Gaudett, Armando Perez took over the case when he became chief.

While Perez later found there was no credible evidence that Blackwell directed the writing of the phony racist letter, he demoted both Blackwell and Sapiro for violating department rules.

Both men filed lawsuits against the city.

In January, Blackwell was promoted to captain as part of a settlement of his lawsuit, in which he claimed he was being discriminated against because he is African-American.

Sapiro, who is white, claimed in his lawsuit that he was retaliated against for supporting Blackwell.

Capt. Sapiro defended Lt. Blackwell as being a victim of harassment, his suit stated. Sapiro is now being scapegoated for a situation that he never was in a position to control
UPDATE: March 20

Bridgeport police have identified both people and continue to actively investigate.

Original story:

BRIDGEPORT  Police have released photos of a suspect and victim in an assault and possible possible abduction at the Cambridge Apartments on Main Street around 10:30 p.m. Saturday.

Capt. Brian Fitzgerald said the victim was dragged and forced to get in the dark colored vehicle next to a fire hydrant.

The victim and offender have not been identified and police are asking for the public's assistance in locating both individuals.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Bridgeport Police Department Tips Line at 203-576-TIPS.
Humberto J. Rocha / Hearst Connecticut Media

NEW CANAAN  A man listed by police as homeless was arrested last week inside the Mead Park Brick Barn.

Police responded to the building on Richmond Hill Road, the center of a debate about plans to demolish it, around 9:30 p.m. March 13 when someone reported that a person was inside with a flashlight.
STAMFORD  The Board of Ethics has found probable cause that a city engineer failed to follow rules governing conflict of interest when she reviewed project plans submitted by a company that employs her husband.

The board found evidence supporting a complaint that Susan Kisken, coordinator of inspections and plan review in the Engineering Department, violated the citys Code of Ethics. Kiskens husband is a principal with Redniss & Mead, a prominent land-use consulting company that brings development projects before the city for approval.

The Code of Ethics requires that city employees disqualify themselves from matters that may pose a conflict of interest.

Kisken and her attorney, Thomas Cassone, reached an agreement with the Board of Ethics stipulating that from now on any of her work involving Redniss & Mead will be checked by other city engineers, and the city will hire an outside entity to do spot checks to satisfy the city that the firm of Redniss & Mead was not given any material benefit because of the relationship.

According to the agreement, Kisken denies that her actions violated either the spirit or text of the code, but she acknowledges that if the matter were litigated, the Board of Ethics could present sufficient evidence to support that an ethical violation occurred.

Cassone said Tuesday Kisken never hid that her husband is a principal with Redniss & Mead.

She did disclose that. No question. It was known from the day she was hired, Cassone said. It wasnt an issue.

Kisken herself worked at Redniss & Mead before taking the city job, Cassone said.

The ethics complaint was filed by Sam Magliari who, like Kisken, worked for Redniss & Mead and for the city, where he was an engineering technician from 1986 to 2000.

Magliaris complaint says Kisken inspects the work of Redniss & Mead, and reviews their plans, approves their plans, supplies information and orders other employees to provide research information for the company.

Magliari sent a letter to the Board of Ethics saying the agreement reached with Kisken is inadequate.

It costs taxpayers, Magliari said.

The stipulated agreement allows her to continue the work, and it has to be reviewed at taxpayers expense, Magliari said. Its an abuse of our tax dollars.

In ethics investigations, the city defends employees and covers their legal costs unless they go to a full hearing and are found to have violated the Code of Ethics. Kiskens case never went to a hearing because she and the board reached an agreement.

A spokesman for Mayor David Martin said Tuesday he does not yet have an amount for the legal fees.

During the ethics boards deliberations, City Engineer Lou Casolo said Kisken is the sole plan reviewer in the department. Her job is not to approve plans but to make comments on them and send them on to the Zoning Board and Land Use Bureau, Casolo said.

Its not just Susans eyes only. There are a lot of other people looking over these development plans, he said.

Ethics board Chair Cheryl Bader said she was concerned that lack of staff is not a sound basis for an agreement.

It says because we dont have a better solution, it means the conflict is somehow resolved, Bader said.

I think the right solution is to have somebody else reviewing plans submitted by Redniss & Mead, Bader said, because Kisken has the ability to influence whether a project goes forward.

Cassone reminded the board that there has been no allegation or proof that there has been some material benefit to Redniss & Mead.

Through the agreement, we are trying to insert some accountability, Cassone said, to ensure that the citizens of Stamford dont feel that there is any favoritism.

There isnt, said Rick Redniss, president of Redniss & Mead, which employs surveyors, engineers, and planning and zoning consultants to help developers launch projects large and small.

This is an unfortunate situation, Redniss said. We received absolutely no preferential treatment. In fact a review of our applications ... will show we are held to a higher standard, and are always happy to achieve to that standard.

The Kisken case came up Monday night, when Martin held a Mayors Night Out at Twin Rinks on Hope Street, an event videotaped by the Springdale Neighborhood Association and attended by Magliari.

Near the end of the meeting Magliari told Martin the agreement is unfair. Martin pointed out that he met with Magliari last fall, when Martin said he learned of a potential conflict of interest in the Engineering Department, and during that discussion Magliari asked him for a job.

Martin declined through his spokesman to comment for this story.

Magliari confirmed Tuesday that he did ask Martin for a job when they met.

I said, How come Im not being hired as a clerk of the works? Magliari said Tuesday. They stop me from being hired. Since I left the city they have discriminated against me.

He would not say why he no longer works in the Engineering Department, except that he was forced out.

His ethics complaint, however, had merits, according to what Martin told the residents gathered at Twin Rinks.

The city will test to see whether there was any material favoritism that might have been awarded to anybody, Martin said. We are changing procedures in the Engineering Department to eliminate any potential conflicts of interest.

acarella@stamfordadvocate.com; 203-964-2296.
WASHINGTON  Backed by sheriffs and members of angel families, including three from Arizona, President Donald Trump on Friday vetoed a bill that would have blocked his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.

I knew this day would come, you know, that he would do something that proves to all of us that he is doing exactly what he promised the American people during his campaign, said Mary Ann Mendoza.

Mendoza, who founded Angel Families for survivors of people killed by immigrants here illegally, was at the veto signing ceremony with fellow Arizona Angel Family member Steve Ronnebeck and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb.

Despite Mendozas optimism, however, Fridays veto is not a green light for the national emergency declaration that Trump said would let him shift billions of dollars that Congress has denied him for border wall construction.

Congress does not appear to have enough votes to override the veto. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday the House would once again act to protect our Constitution and our democracy from the Presidents emergency declaration by holding a vote to override.

Even if the override stands as expected, the emergency declaration faces several separate court challenges, including one from 16 states.

But Trump said Friday while Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution  I have the duty to veto it.

Congress vote to deny the crisis on the southern border is a vote against reality, Trump said. Its against reality. It is a tremendous national emergency.

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday that the only emergency was of Trumps making.

Congress has refused to fund the wall multiple times; Mexico wont pay for it; and a bipartisan majority in both chambers just voted to terminate his fake emergency, Schumer said in a statement released by his office.

Arizona lawmakers did not immediately return requests for comment Friday. But in a statement Thursday  when 12 Senate Republicans joined all Democrats to block the emergency on a 59-41 vote  Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona, said Congress has a responsibility to control the budget.

Several weeks ago, Congress increased Homeland Security funding by $1.7 billion for this year, Sinemas statement said. While there is more work for Congress to do, the emergency declaration undermines critical military assets across our country and unnecessarily puts at risk resources for Arizona servicemembers and national security.

Trump declared a national emergency last month as he grudgingly signed a budget bill that allowed the government to reopen after a 35-day shutdown, the longest in history. That budget included $1.375 billion for border security, less than Congress had originally offered and well below Trumps demand for $5.7 billion, a demand that sparked the shutdown in December.

Trump said the emergency would let him shift $6.6 billion, mostly from the Defense Department, to a border wall.

Critics seized on Trumps remark at the announcement of an emergency that he didnt need to do this, but Id rather do it much faster. Congress moved quickly to reject the declaration, with the House on Feb. 26 voting 245-182 and the Senate following suit Thursday.

Arizonas House delegation split along party lines, with Democrats opposing the emergency and Republicans backing it. The states Senate delegation also split, with Sen. Martha McSally, R-Arizona, voting to uphold the emergency.

At the White House signing ceremony Friday, Lamb urged lawmakers to come down and see firsthand what were dealing with. And youll see that we do  we are dealing with a crisis.

What we say in Arizona is, this isnt about immigration anymore; this is about drug trafficking and human trafficking into this country, he said. If you care about human rights, you should absolutely care about border security.

Mendoza insisted there is an emergency at the border and that the American people are fed up with the lies that come out of Washington.

This is whats right for our American people and what is right for our country, she said after the veto.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.
Fairfield, MT (59436)

Today

Windy with increasing clouds. Low 29F. Winds SW at 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph..

Tonight

Windy with increasing clouds. Low 29F. Winds SW at 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph.
Opinion

This is a cry for help from the north central Montana ranching community! We need help and support so the ranching heritage of Montana in this area is not silenced forever by the American Prairie Reserve. Please urge Senators to pass House Joint Resolution 28 (HJ 28) urging the BLM to deny the bison grazing proposal by the American Prairie Reserve on 18 huge historic BLM cattle grazing leases in north central Montana.

I am a rancher in Central Montana. Ranchers love their cattle. Seeing a group of calves bust out running in a mob with their tails up over their backs gives everyone pause to smile and welcome their tenacity for life. Green grass coming and fat calves keep us going year after year. I love to work cattle on a good using horse and at the end of the day, I love Montana and our farming and ranching communities we hold so dear.

I come - from every side of my family tree - Montana ranchers. My aunt is Georgia LeVeque who is 95 years old and on Flat Creek south of Ulm (our family homestead ranch, her son and his wife (Dale and Lilly LeVeque) have the ranch there now and have a fantastic operation. My Mother, Carol LaTray has been in agriculture her entire life north of Lewistown. My Dad, Les LaTray, was a cowboy, a rancher and Metis - a French Breed - as Teddy Blue Abbott called my great grandfather Mose LeTreille in his book "We Pointed Them North." The LaTray homestead ranch was just north of the Moccasin Mountains by Lewistown on Plum Creek.

The American Prairie Reserve, with an end goal of taking millions of acres of historic Montana ranch grazing land out of production forever hits me particularly hard. My Dad (and Mom) lost the LaTray homestead ranch to poor succession planning in the late 70's. They were downsized from 2500 acres to 250 acres - the 250 acres of which I personally own today. My point is that I know what happens when ranch families lose their land! I know what is does to the future generations of kids and families: it takes them completely out of agriculture - forever! The ranching way - the cowboy way - silenced forever.

I was lucky enough to meet Alan Vanek in 2009. His family is also 4th generation ranchers and they do still have the land, which has allowed me to continue to run a ranch, have cattle and live the way my family has always known, the way that runs deep through my veins... passionately deep.

Yes. Ranching is a beautiful way of life and also a most difficult, physically demanding way of life at times.

We just endured record breaking dangerously cold weather and through all of that, had 200 baby calves hit the ground and only lost four of them - only three to exposure. If you want to talk about tough? Thirty-five below zero and saving a wet calf when it's born is tough work but miraculously... I love it I am not a big person. I'm 46 years old and my hands will be eat up with arthritis I'm quite sure, from pulling freezing up slimy calves into a calf sled at three o'clock in the morning, yarding the wet body of a limp calf onto a calf warmer and shoving a feed tube down it's throat with warm milk replacer just to keep it going until it's dry enough to take back to the cow. From throwing a heavy saddle on a colt that's way too tall for winter riding but a good son-of-a gun when a heifer is calving and she won't come in and it's 25 below zero. My shoulders hurt from mucking out jugs of frozen afterbirth and bedding them with deep straw so the next heifer will have a clean bed to calve on.

Enough of my rant about how I love ranching. It takes a special kind of tough and heart to endure the elements and keep going year after year. That's why, when the ranching community hears of an out-of-state organization who is requesting unreasonable, sweeping changes to historic Montana BLM grazing leases, we get a little bit fed up. When that organization says that their end goal is to remove ranchers from 3.5 million acres of historic grazing land, we get a little bit angry.

But our voice is not always strong. Our work to be a voice, to be heard is an unpaid, volunteer position. We aren't fancy talkers. We aren't lawyers. We are real people fighting for our future. We are true Montanans.

The American Prairie Reserve (APR) is a special interest, out-of-state conservation group whose end goal is to remove ranchers from 3.5 million acres in the Missouri River Breaks of north central Montana and replace them with free roaming buffalo. The group is targeting this area primarily because the native prairie is 90 per cent intact, thanks to generations of ranchers, and serves as an ideal template for their experiment to see if 3.5 million acres is big enough to run an unmanaged buffalo herd. Yellowstone Park has proven this to be a real challenge and a huge management problem for both park officials and neighboring ranches and communities.

The APR has acquired quite a lot of land, mostly north of the Missouri River and south of Malta, the historic PN Ranch north of Winifred and the historic Two Crow ranch north of Winnett. Over a year ago, American Prairie Reserve was pretentious enough to request unprecedented changes in use on 18 historic Montana Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grazing allotments. They requested to remove interior fences on these allotments and run buffalo instead of cattle year around. These requests left ranchers in the area dismayed and angered that the BLM would even consider it. By protocol however, the BLM has to consider those requests and is still in the process of an Environmental Assessment (which many feel should be a full blown Environmental Impact Statement) after a landslide of public comments.

Most recently, Dan Bartel (Montana House District 29) sponsored a resolution (House Joint Resolution 28) in the Montana Legislature urging the BLM to deny the bison grazing proposal by the American Prairie Reserve. The resolution already passed a vote in the House on March 1st, 2019, moving it on for consideration in the Senate.

This resolution reflects the thoughts and is the voice of the agriculture communities affected by the American Prairie Reserves vision. Their vision that would silence Montana ranching heritage on 3.5 million acres forever.

The Prairie Reserve is squealing that this resolution is an infringement of their private property rights. I disagree strongly. This resolution is simply urging the BLM to reject the unprecedented, unreasonable requests by the APR for change in use on 18 huge BLM allotments. It is urging the BLM to reject preferential treatment requests by the APR for huge, sweeping changes on historically well managed, well conserved BLM allotments. Whats wrong with that? Any BLM lease holder does have the right to request change in use on BLM. However, the magnitude of change that the APR is requesting is unreasonable and should be denied. Dan Bartel (HD 29) is simply standing up for the ranching community by sponsoring this resolution and bless him for it.

This resolution reflects the voice of generations of Montana ranchers standing up to out-of-state groups who have no roots here. Its a Montana thing!

How is HJ 28 infringing on APR property rights? This is not their private property we are talking about. Its public land. They can do what they want with their private land. No problem. The APR, as an out of state, internationally funded, non-profit organization swoops in here requesting that the hugely successful infrastructure of generations of people be torn down for a scientific experiment for unmanaged buffalo. It is the responsibility of the BLM to ensure the future vitality of these public parcels is protected (HJ 28)

What if the APRs experiment with their buffalo fails? Who will rebuild the infrastructure that has been destroyed by them? At what expense?

The APR has requested that the BLM fundamentally shift long-established grazing practices on the 18 BLM allotments, which encompass 250,000 acres of public property. (HJ 28)

I urge everyone to contact their Senator in support of HJ 28. Pass this resolution as a message that unreasonable requests for change by anyone, any business or any non-profit on BLM that shifts long-established grazing practices be denied.
By Susan Crowell / editor@farmanddairy.com

WASHINGTON  If you want to see the two sides of the climate change argument, look no further than the Ohios two U.S. senators.

Although he didnt endorse the Green New Deal, which seeks to eliminate Americas net carbon emissions within a decade, Democrat Sherrod Brown thinks climate change is real.

The people who continue to deny climate change should be embarrassed, Brown told reporters accompanying the Ohio Farm Bureau county presidents on their annual legislative fly-in March 12-14.

I just dont think there are two sides to the issue of climate change, Brown said. The facts are facts, and climate change is real.

And its not really a political thing, he added. Its a fact thing.

But Ohios other senator, Republican Rob Portman, disagrees with the premise that only human activity is to blame.

The science is uncertain on it, Portman told the Ohio Farm Bureau delegation March 14. Lets just be honest. Do we have a role to play, yes, I think we do, but you cant say that its just people.

And Portman scoffed at the new Green New Deal (link opens .pdf) proffered by Democrats earlier this year. The nonbinding resolution goes into great detail about the harms of climate change and what the U.S. government should do about it.

Its so outlandish, Portman said. It just doesnt make sense.

Instead, Portman advocated finding a middle ground on climate change, saying there are absolutely things we can do to reduce emissions, but we should do it in a way thats pro growth, pro jobs, pro farmer. It doesnt have to be either/or.

The senator supports legislation that would give power companies incentives to capture carbon and sequester it, and also develop a carbon market. He also championed newer nuclear power plants.

We should be able to use technology and innovation better.

Need common sense

Danielle Burch, Columbiana County Farm Bureau president, agreed with Portman.

I think we need to take a common sense approach to what were asking of farmers, she added, and not push overzealous runoff tracking.

Weve seen it, where everybody does everything right, and then a 5-inch rain comes through, and everything goes wrong.

Yes, we have new weather patterns. Yes, something has changed, but we need to find a way to work within that environment to continue to produce what we produce.

Craig Pohlman, Farm Bureau president from Van Wert County, calls it weather weirding, instead of climate change.

We feel rain events are larger and more frequent. We cant deny that, said Pohlman, who operates a cash grain farm in Van Wert and Allen counties.

Were trying to learn, but the powers that be want tomorrow to be fixed today, and thats not gonna happen, he said, adding that the prospect of increased regulations on agriculture related to climate change are scary.

Other factors

The Ohio Farm Bureau group also heard from Rickey (R.D.) James, a Missouri farmer and agribusinessman, who joined the Trump administration as the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, the civilian position in charge of the Army Corps of Engineers.

James got the farmers attention with his assessment: Any particular river, lake or reservoir gets more water faster than it did in 1980.

There are a lot of reasons for that that have nothing to do with climate change, he said. And thats because, nationwide, theres more concrete and land development than in 1980; theres pasture taken out of grass and put into row crops; theres been timber taken off, as well as other land use practices on farms and in cities, that increase stormwater flow.

Water gets to water bodies so fast that it overwhelms them, James said. Im not sure were getting bigger storms, maybe we are, but consider how fast the water is coming into our reservoirs and rivers.

Thats why we see rivers like the Mississippi River rising 8 foot a night rather than 3 foot like it used to.

Farm Bureau policy

In its policy on the environment, the Ohio Farm Bureau asks that environmental regulations be scientifically sound; based on credible data; practical, realistic and economically feasible.

The American Farm Bureau Federation policy on climate change opposes various policies, including a mandatory cap-and-trade provision, mandatory reporting of any greenhouse gas emissions by an agricultural entity, or any attempt to regulate methane emissions from livestock.
As a refugee from the 60s, one anti-war slogan bounces around in my brain occasionally: What if they gave a war and nobody came?

There is a certain ironic ring to the saying. This morning the phrase I am trying out is this: What if they gave a trade war and nobody came?

The grain markets have been hanging on every nuance of news and rumor since the end of February when the U.S. and the Chinese got together on the sidelines of the G-20 meetings in Buenos Aires and agreed to agree, and agreed to agree by the first of March.

It didnt happen

We have lived on rumors for more than three months now. Some of them have been exciting, like the idea that the Chinese would commit to $50 billion in ag trade per year, several times the current pace.

What the Chinese want

There has been a persistent rumor that the Chinese wanted corn, which we have not been selling them, and chicken, pork and wheat. Analysts have scrambled to come up with a combination of products that would have that much value.

By the end of February, the market was tired, and a little scared. Grain prices, especially corn prices, declined sharply as the trade enthusiasm waned.

We were told the Chinese president would come to Mar-A-Lago to sign, but not until the middle of March. Early last week we were told it might not be until April. The idea was that the underlings continue to meet, and when they finished the presidents of both countries would just get together for the formality of a signing ceremony.

Now comes the news/rumor (I cant tell the difference anymore) that the meeting to sign wont come until June. June! With that idea comes the fear that we wont get a deal at all. I remain optimistic that the deal gets done, and feel that the longer it goes on, the better it may be for us.

My take is that the agricultural parts are only negotiation details. Both sides want to increase ag business. The big deal is not agricultural. We are hung up on the larger problem of intellectual property rights.

Intellectual property

By some estimates, the Chinese are stealing intellectual property from us at the rate of several hundred billion dollars a year. This is in the form of stolen patent rights on one hand, and in the form of trade secrets on the other.

It has been a practice to force any company starting up in China to share secrets with the Chinese. Recently, it was rumored that the Chinese were ready to outlaw the requirement for foreign companies to surrender trade and manufacturing secrets.

That was seen to be a huge jump forward in the negotiating process. Still, things drag on. We hear that the agreement is hung up on the ideal of enforcement. That is, we get all kinds of promises, but how do we penalize the Chinese if they dont comply?

Promises are easy to make, and the U.S. has a long history of being taken advantage of by Asian nations. Just do a YouTube search for Clinton remarks about how the North Koreans were going to end their nuclear program!

We paid them to do it, they just kept plugging along. I think that the longer this deal takes, the more likely that we will have gotten more of what we wanted out of it. It is a sign that we did not cave to get something done.

The fact that President Trump walked away from the last Korean meeting may have convinced the Chinese that they cant roll us.

Onto prices

So, what has happened to prices? May corn futures are at 3.71-34 this Tuesday morning. We had several highs in January and February just above and just below the 3.90 range. We broke to 3.61 on March 12.

A quick rebound got us as high as 3.7512 yesterday, but we closed at 3.7112. December futures had a similar pattern. We are at just under 3.95 this morning, but had a high of 4.0414 Feb. 21. The awful low was on March 8 and 11, at 3.8614.

November soybean futures were not as dramatic, but they also dipped before a recent recovery. We are trading at 9.3714, but had a high of 9.6914 the first of February. Another high, 9.63-14, was encouraging, but then we dropped to 9.2214 on March 12.

Chicago wheat futures are bouncing off a 4.27 May low made on March 11. That comes after a drop of over $1.05 since early February. This Tuesday morning, we are back to 4.59 34, up three for the day so far.
Nearly 6 million in funding has been allocated to the farming industry as part of a campaign to tackle a highly contagious cattle disease.

The 5.7 million 'Stamp It Out' initiative was launched by the Defra last summer in a bid to eradicate Bovine Vial Diarrhoea (BVD).

Within six months the project  which is being delivered by SAC Consulting, part of Scotlands Rural College (SRUC)  120 veterinary practices across England have been recruited to offer the programme to farmers on the ground.

The disease costs farmers an estimated 61 million a year in lost performance, and it is estimated that more than 90% of UK herds have had exposure to BVD.

Under the Stamp It Out scheme, farmers can access up to 530 of their vets time to investigate the disease both on a one-to-one basis or through a series of cluster meetings with like-minded keepers.

They can also access 61.80 for preliminary testing work, and up to 440 where there is evidence of persistently infected animals.

Vets who have signed up to the scheme have made a commitment to engage 8,000 farmers in active BVD control by 2020  with 3,000 signed up so far.

A further 2,000 farmers have asked to join the BVDFree England initiative, an industry-led scheme which will take the momentum generated by Stamp It Out and continue with the ambition to eradicate BVD in England.

Neil Carter of SAC Consulting said: My advice for farmers is to speak to your vet to find out whether they have signed up already.

Any vets contacting us to get involved from now on will be put on a waiting list, and we will wait and see if any vets already engaged struggle to sign up their clients. On current experience, though, vets have come back asking for more funding rather than less.

Bovine Viral Diarrhoea has a real impact on productivity, cattle health and welfare and can carry significant costs for farmers.

The BVD virus is transmitted in a number of ways, either through a congenital infection during pregnancy to the foetus giving rise to a persistently infected animal, or between cattle within the herd, often spread from nose-to-mouth, and giving rise to a wide variety of clinical signs.
A Gloucestershire farm which sells 'sausage rolls of exceeding enormity' has secured a 10,000 investment following a competition.

Cinderhill Farm, located in St Briavels in Lydney, makes the gigantic sausage rolls along with Foggy pasties.

The farm business, run by Deborah Flint, has now secured a 10,000 investment following a Dragons Den-style pitch run by the Midcounties Co-operative.

She was crowned victorious after impressing judges at the co-op's inaugural Food Glorious Food competition.

Her farm, which keeps British Saddleback Pigs and a flock of Black Welsh Mountain Sheep, will also receive business development support and mentoring to ensure the products are a success, as well as a marketing package to help launch them into stores.

Ms Flint said she will use the 10,000 investment to buy some additional cold storage and expand her farm shop team.

She said: Weve worked so hard to create the perfect sausage roll and cant believe that our product has been crowned the winner of Food Glorious Food.

Were proud to be flying the flag for Gloucestershire food and drink producers and proving that farming still has a huge role in the community here.

The competition was designed to highlight local Gloucestershire food and drink and was open to existing producers and farmers looking to diversify.
SFI scheme may lead to 'postcode lottery' over soil carbon

Soils are not equal when it comes to sequestration
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.
The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike.

We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve.
** Note: Hey! Would you like to share the story of the movie Aakhet with us? Please send it to us (popcorn@oneindia.co.in).

Babu Nepal Singh of laadi village is a clannish, wealthy and a married person of the age about 40-42 years. He spends his holidays alone away from his urban life style every year, without fail. But he doesnt take his wife along with, nobody knows the reason and his other colleague's dont have much enthusiasm for outgoing to pass away their holidays with him. In his monotonous routine one of Babu Nepal sings regrets in life is that he has never hunted a tiger whereas his royal ancestors had killed many tigers. His one friend suggested him to visit Betla Forest, Palamu, Jharkhand in coming Durga Puja vacation where he can shoot a tiger and gave him a tour guide address. His name is Murshed who lives in the village near Beta forest. Knowing this snoop Babu Nepal Singh turned out with thrill and he prepares his mind to go for tiger expedition in the forest of Betla without fail. Thus he rushed for nearby village along with his ancestral gun as his holiday begins Finally what happens with Nepal Singh, did he shoot the tiger!
Akshay Kumar Sets The Record Straight

While quizzed about reports of him making his political career debut, Akshay said, "No, I won't be contesting any elections."

Politics Is Not My Agenda, Says Akshay

He further said, "Politics is not on my agenda. I feel what I am doing through my films, I will never be able to do that through politics."

PM Modi's Tweet

Earlier, PM Narendra Modi had tagged top politicians and actors, including Akshay, Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan and other B-town celebs on Twitter urging them to "encourage" people to vote in record numbers in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Akshay Kumar's Reply

Akshay Kumar had replied back to the Prime Minister with a tweet that read, "Well said @narendramodi ji. The true hallmark of a democracy lies in people's participation in the electoral process. Voting has to be a superhit prem katha between our nation and its voters."
Samantha Akkineni is one among the most respected actresses of the film industry. Her rapport with her hubby Naga Chaitanya has often given major relationship goals and ChaySam form one of the perfect couples of the South Indian film industry.

Samantha and Naga Chaitanya would be next seen together on screen in the film Majili that has been scheduled to release in April 2019. During one of the promotional interviews in connection with the film, Samantha divulged some details about her motherhood plans.

The actress mentioned that she would take a break from acting once she embraces motherhood. "Whenever I become a mother, I will take break from acting. My kid will be my world. I had faced trouble during my childhood and now I don't want that my baby go through all that. So I will take break from acting.", the actress has been quoted as saying by Tollywood.net.

However, Samantha didn't reveal anything about the time that she is planning to turn a mother. In an interview from the past, Samantha had opened up that she and hubby Naga Chaitanya have fixed on the exact timeline that they want to have a baby.

Well, the lovely couple could be seen once again on screen through Majili. As of now, the film has been slated to release on April 5, 2019.
Macau, the supercharged Asian city that left Las Vegas for dead in the Nevada Desert dust, is set to overtake oil-rich Qatar next year as the richest place on the planet in terms of per-capita GDP

That's according to the IMF, no less

The tiny semi-autonomous Chinese city of Macau, which relies on casinos to provide more than 70% of its GDP, stands on the edge of a new era  one that gaming operators and investors hope will at least be as financially successful as the preceding one

To all intents and purposes, the new era kicked off last Friday when Macaus secretary for economy and finance, Lionel Leong Vai Tac, announced that the...
MAKKAH, Saudi Arabia, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- His Excellency the Secretary General of the Muslim World League, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the World Organization of Muslim Scholars Sheikh Dr. Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Alissa has announced a visit to New Zealand to offer condolences to the victims, families and communities of the Christchurch attack and will also visit those wounded in the tragedy. In a meeting today with Ambassador James Monroe, New Zealand's representative to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Dr. Alissa said that his visit will be on behalf of all Muslims and reiterated that in the face of such evil, the global community can answer only with the values of love, harmony and peace.

Ambassador Monroe said that the tragedy of the two mosques will not alter New Zealand's national harmony or diversity and welcomed Dr. Alissa's visit.

In a statement issued on Friday, March 15, 2019, Dr. Alissa said, "To address the scourge extremism and Islamophobia, we need governments and faith organizations around the world to work together to encourage religious tolerance and understanding and prevent all forms of incitement and hatred, including all types of hatred leveled against any religion or ethnicity."

The Muslim World League has pledged to increase its efforts to work with multi-faith groups in order to create initiatives that promote greater understanding and tolerance.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/837598/Muslim_World_League__Logo.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/837642/IMG_9215_ID_974d58c09b48.jpg
Press Release

Cambodia's leading Internet Service Provider (ISP) for enterprise enters residential market with fiber to the home (FTTH) services

Nokia solution delivers greater speeds per user, and up to 50% savings in operating costs

19 March, 2019

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - SINET, Cambodia's leading ISP for enterprise businesses has chosen Nokia to launch new, high-speed broadband services in the country. Selected for its quality and technical expertise, Nokia will help SINET roll out a nationwide access network that will start in major residential and gated communities, locally known as borey and housing apartments in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.

SINET will deliver broadband services targeted residents living in newly-built gated borey and housing apartments with the Nokia Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Network (GPON) Mini Optical Line Terminal (OLT). Providing customers with high-speed, high-quality internet access, Nokia's GPON solution will form the foundation for a suite of future smart-home services SINET will provide including video streaming and home-security systems.

Meta Sy, CEO of SINET, said: "The Cambodia market is crowded with low-quality residential broadband services available at low prices using many off-the-shelf access equipment with little consideration to long term quality and reliabilty. When we decided to deploy GPON in borey and housing apartments, we wanted a quality-based and future-proof offering that would set us apart from the competitions. That means the service has to be on-par with international broadband standard in terms of speed, reliability, efficiency and ease of troubleshooting which are key criteria why we selected Nokia."

Sebastien Laurent, head of Thailand and Cambodia at Nokia, said: "We offered SINET the best option for their specific deployment needs. Our Mini OLT is very efficient for delivering high-speed broadband services to low-density gated communities and in-building deployments and, at the same time, helps save space and thus OPEX. With Nokia GPON technology, the country's first such deployment will address the growing customer demand for affordable ultra-broadband services at home."

About the solution:

Nokia 7362 Intelligent Service Access Manager (ISAM) Dense Fiber (DF) -16GW (https://networks.nokia.com/products/7362-isam-df-16gw) gives new flexibility in fiber deployments and helps optimize the fiber business case

Nokia Mini OLT supports up to 8x 10GigE uplinks and 16-port GPON or 4-port XGS-PON/TWDM-PON downlinks and is capable of boosting the speeds of fiber networks

Nokia 7368 ISAM ONT G-010G-Q provides a GPON interface to the subscriber and paves the way to deliver premium triple-play services in a FTTH environment

Resources:

Webpage: Next-generation PON (https://networks.nokia.com/solutions/NGPON)

Webpage: Fiber-FTTH (https://networks.nokia.com/solutions/ftth-fiber-access)

Webpage: 7362 ISAM DF-16GW (https://networks.nokia.com/products/7362-isam-df-16gw)

About SINET

SINET is a specialist Dedicated Internet and Telecom Service Provider with strong focuses on engineering excellence and reliable support since 2009. SINET is one of the leaders in Internet and ICT services for businesses and entreprises and is the key pioneer in the new ICT advancement, latest network technologies, and security best practices in Cambodia.

We are driven by our endearing love of communication technologies and by using them to facilitate business and human connections.

About Nokia

We create the technology to connect the world. We develop and deliver the industry's only end-to-end portfolio of network equipment, software, services and licensing that is available globally. Our customers include communications service providers whose combined networks support 5.7 billion subscriptions, as well as enterprises in the private and public sector that use our network portfolio to increase productivity and enrich lives.

Through our research teams, including the world-renowned Nokia Bell Labs, we are leading the world to adopt end-to-end 5G networks that are faster, more secure and capable of revolutionizing lives, economies and societies. Nokia adheres to the highest ethical business standards as we create technology with social purpose, quality and integrity.

nokia.com (https://www.nokia.com/)

Media Inquiries:

Nokia

Communications

Phone: +358 10 448 4900

Email: press.services@nokia.com (mailto:press.services@nokia.com)

This announcement is distributed by West Corporation on behalf of West Corporation clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: NOKIA via Globenewswire


Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 18, 2019) - Vireo Health International, Inc. (the "Company"), formerly Darien Business Development Corp. (TSXV: DBD.H) today announced that it has completed its previously announced business combination (the "Business Combination") with Vireo Health, Inc. ("Vireo"). In connection with the Business Combination, on March 18, 2019 an affiliate of Vireo, Vireo Finco (Canada) Inc. ("Vireo Finco Canada") completed a brokered and non-brokered private placement offering of subscription receipts for aggregate gross proceeds in the amount of US$51,386,482 (the "Offering"). The brokered portion of the Offering was co-led by Eight Capital and Canaccord Genuity Corp. (together, the "Co-Lead Agents") as co-lead agents and joint bookrunners, together with GMP Securities L.P., Beacon Securities Limited, and Haywood Securities Inc. (collectively and together with the Co-Lead Agents, the "Agents"). Eight Capital acted as the sole bookrunner in connection with the Offering.

Completion of the Offering

On March 18, 2019, Vireo Finco Canada completed the Offering pursuant to which Vireo Finco Canada issued 12,090,937 subscription receipts (the "Subscription Receipts") at a price of US$4.25 per Subscription Receipt (the equivalent of C$5.67, based on the Bank of Canada exchange rate of C$1.33 per US$1.00 on March 18, 2019) for gross proceeds of US$51,386,482. In connection with the closing of the Business Combination, 12,090,937 Subscription Receipts issued pursuant to the Offering were automatically converted into 12,090,937 common shares in the capital of Vireo Finco Canada and then exchanged into subordinate voting shares of the Company on a one-for-one basis.

Completion of the Business Combination and Escrow Release

The Business Combination was completed by way of, among other things, (i) a consolidation of the common shares of the Company on the basis of 19.4024 pre-consolidation shares for every one post consolidation share; (ii) several share exchanges between certain Canadian holders of preferred stock of Vireo and the Company, pursuant to which such holders were issued subordinate voting shares of the Company; (iii) a three-cornered amalgamation among the Company, Vireo Finco Canada and 1197027 B.C. Ltd. ("BC Subco"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, pursuant to which Vireo Finco Canada shareholders (including former holders of Subscription Receipts) received subordinate voting shares of the Company, and pursuant to which BC Subco amalgamated with Vireo Finco to form a new company, which was subsequently wound up into the Company; and (iv) Darien Merger Sub, LLC ("US Subco"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, and Vireo effected a merger under Delaware law whereby US Subco merged with and into Vireo with Vireo surviving and becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, and the shareholders of Vireo in exchange for their common shares of Vireo, received, Super Voting Shares, Subordinate Voting Shares or Multiple Voting Shares of the Corporation, as applicable. Each share of common stock of Vireo issued and outstanding immediately prior to the closing of the Business Combination and held by a non-U.S. resident was exchanged for 30.0048 Subordinate Voting Shares. Each share of common stock of Vireo issued and outstanding immediately prior to the closing of the Business Combination and held by a U.S. resident was exchanged for 0.300048 of a Multiple Voting Share. Each share of common stock of Vireo issued and outstanding immediately prior to the closing of the Business Combination and held by Kyle Kingsley was exchanged for 0.300048 of a Super Voting Share. Pursuant to steps (ii) through (iv), the Company issued 65,411 Super Voting Shares, 514,388 Multiple Voting Shares and 8,217,695 Subordinate Voting Shares.

As part of the Business Combination, the Company implemented a three-class voting structure on March 18, 2019, including the conversion of the existing common shares into subordinated voting shares (the "Subordinate Voting Shares"), and the creation of a new class of multiple voting shares (the "Multiple Voting Shares") and a new class of super voting shares (the "Super Voting Shares") and changed its name to, "Vireo Health International, Inc." Each Subordinate Voting Share carries the right to one vote per share on all matters to be voted on by shareholders of the Company, each Multiple Voting Share carries the right to 100 votes per share on all matters to be voted on by shareholders of the Company (or 1 vote per Subordinate Voting Share into which each Multiple Voting Shares is convertible), and each Super Voting Share carries the right to 1,000 votes per share (or 10 votes per Subordinate Voting Share into which the Super Voting Shares are ultimately convertible) on all matters to be voted on by shareholders of the Company.

The proceeds from the Offering, less certain expenses, were placed into escrow on completion of the Offering. The escrowed proceeds from the Offering, less the commission of the Agents and certain fees and expenses, were subsequently released from escrow upon closing of the Business Combination.

The Company has received conditional approval from the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") for the listing of its Subordinate Voting Shares, which are expected to commence trading on the CSE under the ticker symbol "VREO" at market open on Wednesday, March 20th, 2019. Listing is subject to the Company fulfilling all listing requirements of the CSE. Full details of the Company including the Business Combination are set out in the Company's listing statement dated March 19th, 2019 (the "Listing Statement"). A copy of the Listing Statement can be found under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The securities have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, persons in the United States (as such term is defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) absent registration or an exemption from such registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy in the United States nor shall there by any sale of the securities in any State in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

About Vireo Health International, Inc.:

Vireo is one of America's leading multi-state cannabis companies. Vireo is a physician-led, science-focused organization, dedicated to providing patients with best-in-class quality cannabis-based products and compassionate care. Vireo cultivates cannabis in environmentally-friendly greenhouses, manufactures pharmaceutical-grade cannabis extracts, and sells its products at both company-owned and third-party dispensaries. Vireo has a strong track record of competing for and winning merit-based licensing processes and has been awarded licenses in some of the most selective state-based markets, including Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio. For more information visit, https://vireohealth.com/.

The CSE (operated by CNSX Markets Inc.) has in no way passed upon the merits of the Business Combination and has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release. This announcement does not constitute an offer, invitation or recommendation to subscribe for or purchase any securities and neither this announcement nor anything contained in it shall form the basis of any contract or commitment. In particular, this announcement does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, securities in the United States, or in any other jurisdiction in which such an offer would be illegal. The securities described herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and accordingly may not be offered or sold within the United States or to "U.S. persons", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act ("U.S. Persons"), except in compliance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities requirements or pursuant to exemptions therefrom. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the Company's securities to, or for the account or benefit of, persons in the United States or U.S. Persons. For more information about the transactions described herein, please refer to the Listing Statement.

Forward Looking Information

Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking statements and are prospective in nature. Forward-looking statements are not based on historical facts, but rather on current expectations and projections about future events, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of the Company's control and are therefore subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from the future results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "may", "should", "will", "could", "intend", "estimate", "plan", "anticipate", "expect", "believe" or "continue", or the negative thereof or similar variations. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, information concerning the listing of the Subordinate Voting Shares, including whether conditions to the listing of the Subordinate Voting Shares will be satisfied, expectations for the effects of the Business Combination or the ability of the combined company to successfully achieve business objectives, and expectations for other economic, business, and/or competitive factors. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to the Company. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Among the key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information and statements are the following: ability to obtain requisite regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other conditions to the listing of the Subordinating Voting Shares; the potential impact of the announcement of the consummation of the Business Combination on relationships, including with regulatory bodies, employees, suppliers, customers and competitors; changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including changes in the financial markets; changes in applicable laws; compliance with extensive government regulation; and the diversion of management time on the Business Combination. Should one or more of these risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information or statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that are incorporated by reference herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking information and statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf is expressly qualified in its entirety by this notice.

Contact Information:

Vireo Health International, Inc.

Sam Gibbons

Vice President, Investor Relations

E-mail: investor@vireohealth.com

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE U.S.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43504
PARIS, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Beyond Ratings is pleased to announce that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has accredited it to issue ratings for central, regional, and local governments as well as (both supranational and national) policy-driven financial institutions.

Beyond Ratings is a privately-owned financial services firm that specializes in ESG (environmental, social, and governance) analysis.

ESMA is the single direct supervisor of credit rating agencies (CRAs) in Europe. Its mandate stems from EU CRA regulation, which ensures a common framework and minimum quality standards for credit ratings issued in the European Union.

"We believe ESMA accreditation validates our central proposition that ESG analysis is essential to evaluate all manner of risks, including credit risks of sovereigns, sub sovereigns, and development banks," said Rodolphe Bocquet, CEO and co-founder of Beyond Ratings. "ESMA registration has been an objective since the firm's founding in 2014 and will enable us to expand our ESG platform for positive finance."

Elie Heriard-Dubreuil, Managing Director who oversaw the ESMA application, comments: "We believe that our ratings will enable investors to consider a broader set of risk factors. We maintain that investors who ignore ESG do so at their peril."

Summary

On 18 March 2019 , the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU's direct supervisor of credit rating agencies (CRAs), announced that it registered Beyond Ratings (BR) as a credit rating agency under Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009 of the Council of 16 September 2009 on credit rating agencies with immediate effect. Further information regarding CRA regulation can be found here (https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/credit-rating-agencies-regulation-ec-no-1060-2009_en)

, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU's direct supervisor of credit rating agencies (CRAs), announced that it registered Beyond Ratings (BR) as a credit rating agency under Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009 of the Council of on credit rating agencies with immediate effect. Further information regarding CRA regulation can be found here (https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/credit-rating-agencies-regulation-ec-no-1060-2009_en) Based in Paris, France , and incorporated in 2014, Beyond Ratings provides innovative services to assist the financial sector in the transition towards sustainable trajectories. As a CRA, BR will be able to issue ratings to public issuers (sovereign, local & regional governments, and policy-driven financial institutions), based on methodologies which systematically integrate ESG factors into the analysis framework

, and incorporated in 2014, Beyond Ratings provides innovative services to assist the financial sector in the transition towards sustainable trajectories. As a CRA, BR will be able to issue ratings to public issuers (sovereign, local & regional governments, and policy-driven financial institutions), based on methodologies which systematically integrate ESG factors into the analysis framework Sovereign, supranational, and agency (SSA) debt is the largest and most liquid compartment of global financial securities. As these instruments finance public policies, their influence can extend beyond classic economic impact (e.g. green and social bonds). The public debt sector is therefore a prime candidate for ESG-augmented credit ratings

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/835702/Beyond_Ratings_Logo.jpg

Contact details:

Elie Heriard-Dubreuil, Managing Director

elie.heriard-dubreuil@beyond-ratings.com
MOSCOW, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Business education has become one of the main topics of the 10th Anniversary Gaidar Forum "Russia and the World: National Development Goals and Global Trends" traditionally held within the walls of the Presidential Academy. More than 15 plenary sessions and round tables devoted to training of managers and leaders of the digital economy were organized and held with the support of IBS-Moscow RANEPA, the leader of the Russian business education. It is worth noting that the 10th Gaidar Forum completed its work a month ago. However, the issues related to the development of national and global business education deserve to be considered and analyzed again.

The results of the National Accreditation Council for Business and Management Education (NASDOBR) Presidium meeting

On the first day of the Forum, an open meeting of the Presidium of NASDOBR was held under the chairmanship of Alexander Zhukov, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma. It has become the most important and significant, as the discussion focused on the most pressing issues of the formation of a new paradigm of domestic business and management education.

In his report, Alexander Zhukov reminded that the Association was established during the Gaidar Forum, exactly 6 years ago. Its founders were all major employers of Russia: RSPP, CCI, Association of Russian Banks, Association of Managers, Business Russia, OPORA Russia, Russian Association of Business Education. It was then that the Memorandum on the need to create an independent Association of NASDOBR was signed at the plenary session on the initiative of the Russian Association of Business Education (RABE). Alexander Zhukov stressed that the Report on the activities of the Association for five years was discussed at the last meeting of the NASDOBR Presidium in the summer of 2018 and focused on the most important aspects of the Association activities in the second half of the year.

First, the most important event is the decision to confirm the authority and expand the range of programs and the levels of education in which NASDOBR will, for the next three years, act in the official status of "expert organization for accreditation assessment". The corresponding meeting of the Accreditation Commission of ROSOBRNADZOR was held on December 7, 2018.

"We appreciate the high confidence placed in NASDOBR assessment by the country's leading state agency for quality control of education. Dear colleagues, we must justify this trust by our active and responsible work, new forms and formats of cooperation in the framework of PPP!" the First Vice-Speaker of the State Duma said.

He further suggested to establish, under the umbrella of NADSOBR, an intersectoral Professional Qualifications Council (PQC) in the field of management.

As noted by the moderator of the discussion, Sergey Myasoedov, President of RABE, Vice-Rector of RANEPA, Director of the Institute of Business Studies (IBS-Moscow), the current system of sectorial PQCs breaks the system of training of senior and middle managers into "patchwork" of departmental interests, creating a kind of "specific feudal principalities", which is unacceptable in an environment where the country's leadership pays increasing attention to training of managers who use the best world practices of management and leadership.

According to him, the creation of PQC in management disciplines is designed to create a single national framework of requirements for managers of the upper and middle levels, reflecting the set of competencies required to manage enterprises and inter-sectoral complexes in the digital economy.

The proposal of Alexander Zhukov to establish an intersectoral PQC in management disciplines was eagerly welcomed and unanimously supported by all the founders, experts of NASDOBR, members of RABE, representatives of educational organizations, employers' associations and mass media.

One of the most important events of the second half of 2018, according to Alexander Zhukov, is the completion of the work on the creation of a system of testing teachers of management disciplines for management programs and SMM at various levels. "I am pleased to note that the results revealed a number of reserves, unexpected both for the tested and for the testing sides, in the field of professional and personal development of teaching staff of various age and qualification groups," Alexander Zhukov said.

He proposed to discuss the use of the system as one of the tools of independent quality assessment that complements the state accreditation. "It seems to me that the Presidium of NASDOBR should offer our partners in ROSOBRNADZOR and National Accreditation Agency to create a joint working group that will work in this area: it will concretize the conditions of a competition or skills contest, its stages, etc.," the Chairman of the Presidium said.

He also noted the close cooperation of NASDOBR with leading accreditation associations in the field of business education.

"This allowed the working group of our Association, which worked with leading experts of the RANEPA and HSE, to use the best international accreditation practices in the creation of the updated standard of NASDOBR "National criteria and requirements for the general content and conditions of implementation of programs of "Master of public administration" (MPA) level", the Chairman of NASDOBR Presidium said. He noted that this standard had been adapted and brought into full compliance with foreign requirements.

Sergei Kravtsov, Head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science, outlined the key areas of relations between NASDOBR and Rosobrnadzor, which, according to him, are an example of successful public-private cooperation.

"It is very important to note the relevance of teaching evaluation, and we are moving in this direction. We support both the proposals and the work of NASDOBR, especially in view of the fact that in 2016 NASDOBR was accredited by Rosobrnadzor as one of the leading subjects of development of education in the field of management, the Head of Rosobrnadzor said.

Business education is a lifelong learning

On the first day of the Forum, participants of the discussion "The future of business schools. Agile-transformation" discussed the conditions for creating an ideal model of a business school in a 20-year perspective. According to AACSB President Thomas Robinson, Lifelong learning is becoming extremely relevant. He also noted that business schools should adapt to changes and not teach students non-existent professions.

According to social entrepreneur Ruben Vardanyan, business education has faced a number of challenges today. "First of all, we are getting younger, today more and more young people go into business, and often they don't have any education. The next point is narrow specialization which is characteristic of business education of the 20th century, and which has lost its relevance in the 21st century," the entrepreneur says. He specified that earlier the production society was narrowly specialized in the professional training and functioning: marketing, finance, management, etc.

"Today, business education is much broader: it is about exchange, linking different industrial areas into one project, getting rid of stereotypes, it is about ambition and taking risks," Ruben Vardanyan says. "There has been a transformation of business class," he continued. "Business class is gone." And, if earlier business education was a pass to the middle class, now it is an opportunity to be different, to realize your dream with the help of breakthrough technologies, information and thinking.

Charles Iacovou, Dean of the Wake Forest University School of Business, drew attention to the growing gap between the scientific and industrial world, and the slow growth rate of business schools compared to the pace of companies. "We train our student for the past, not for the future. Flexibility promotion and shifting the emphasis to what will be relevant in the future is essential.

Lectures are not fruitful now, on-the-job training becomes actual. Our school changes the company every few months, inviting their representatives to conduct classes and respond to the changing needs of the market," Mr. Iacovou said.

In response to foreign colleagues, Sergey Myasoedov, Director of the Institute of Business Studies (IBS-Moscow), Vice-Rector of RANEPA, said that the International Advisory Council of the Presidential Academy has made a number of recommendations for the development of a new strategy of development of business and management education in RANEPA, taking into account the rapidly changing priorities and requirements in this area. He argued that today education needs to conduct a continuous dialogue with business to get feedback and active participation in the development of joint educational programs. This is particularly important in connection with the dynamics of changes taking place in the economy. "I have a feeling that, in order to remain competitive, business schools must be ready for rapid and radical changes, constant adaptation to new conditions and challenges of the digital economy," the Vice-Rector said.

The topic of lifelong learning was discussed at a separate session "Three-L concept of learning, or lifelong learning". The discussion's moderator Timothy Mescon, Senior Vice President of AACSB International, noted that lifelong learning is necessary for everyone. The formation of conditions for the development of continuing professional education is one of the important prerequisites for the education system modernization. According to the expert, people who stand at the origins of business education should keep perfecting themselves in order to speak the same language with the new generation.

Mikhail Andronov, President of Rusenergosbyt, has cited in his speech the words of 85-year-old Michelangelo: "I'm still learning!" He fully agreed with his colleagues, but stressed that the older generations of Russians were not willing to learn. "The older people get, the less time they want to spend on self-education. Only 5-6% of the Russians are ready to improve themselves every day," the expert commented. The speaker cited the following data: to become a true expert in a particular issue, you have to spend 10,000 hours, which means that in 42 years one can master about seven professions.

According to Andrei Sharonov, President of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, an important factor in the education system is the interest in future knowledge. In his report, he paid attention to the technologies of the LifeLongLearning program. According to the expert, all the education criteria will rapidly lose their value, since the employer will have more reliable ways to check your level of competence. Thus, it is not necessary to strive for a high-status education.

Steve Harvey, Dean of School of Business at the American University of Beirut, noted that many professions would disappear over time, and technology would release a significant part of the working population, who would need to be retrained. According to experts, such training will require changes in existing educational programs and development of new ones. Also, the sphere of education itself can undergo significant changes, as people begin to learn new professions, and the desire for status education will disappear.

Stop getting the hype

Representatives of the banking and FinTech community also spoke about the need to change educational programs in universities during the discussion "Digitization of Financial Services: a New Round in the Development of FinTech", organized by the Center for Design of Corporate Programs (IBS-Moscow). The experts discussed the prerequisites and trends of digitization, changing the role of banks, the introduction of FinTech innovations, as well as training of highly qualified personnel. It was noted that today, in terms of training specialists for the banking industry, there was a problem in universities, and therefore corporate universities occurred.

"There are skills that cannot be levelled up in universities," Ruslan Vesterovskiy, Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, said. "It's all about "software" things, team work, decision-making in situations of uncertainty, skills, feedback, planning etc. I would make a special focus on this block of issues. As for digital stories - digital skills and knowledge - we are now developing them very seriously at our corporate university. This is a large area: skills in programming, technology, this is what will help you become competitive and successful."

The expert also recommended universities to accelerate. "Now the dynamics are so high that while you develop the program, it is already losing its relevance. Universities today need to add momentum. We need to move faster for 3-4 years," the Central Bank representative stressed.

Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, supported his colleague. "A person comes to work and has to be retrained for two main reasons. First, it's obviously soft-skills. Second, the banks have very specific knowledge, which have to be transferred to the graduate within the first six months. And he needs to be very flexible, adaptive, creative, and understand the corporate culture," Alexander Vedyakhin said.

Aleksey Zhdanov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Rosselkhozbank, added that, among other things, now we need to pay attention to theoretical knowledge and science, which are at the junction of different professions, as, for example, in case of business analysts.

In confirmation of the topic, the moderator of the discussion, Sergey Myasoedov, Vice-Rector of RANEPA, addressed the audience with a question on the availability of basic higher education. It turned out that the FinTech section attracted students not only with financial or economic education, but also with technical and basic humanitarian education. "Today, the disciplines are mixed - astrophysics, biochemistry. And now it goes to the management science and the financial sector," Sergey Myasoedov concluded.

Alexey Minin, Director of the Institute of Applied Data Analysis of Deloitte CIS, disagreed with the representatives of the banks. In his speech, he said that universities should not look to corporate universities. "The human capital that universities are now producing, is of absolutely adequate quality, and higher education institutions do not need to convert into corporate universities! You produce basic education, and the quality of this education is sufficient. We just need to raise this bar," Alexey Minin said.

Paying attention to the banking industry itself, he called for the unification of human capital, resources and the focus set by the country's policymakers. According to the Director of Deloitte, the main problem now is that banks have a large number of "poison" people - hipsters of science - who move from bank to bank and do nothing. "You come to another bank - and here he is again! He had already done everything in the previous bank and now came here! How did you do all this, when I'm doing it all instead of you now?! If these people really do everything they had to, we would have lived in the 22nd century, while we are still in the 20th. I think this is the main reason - you need to stop getting the hype and start systematic work. And very carefully look towards open innovations, because closed innovations are a long story, it is expensive, it is difficult," Alexey Minin concluded.

The death of classical education

This verdict was made by the participants of the discussion "Digital talents: how to train digital business leaders?". In particular, Grigory Avetov, Rector of Synergy Business School, put forward the thesis that the current education system is dying, and, based on the analysis of the development of foreign educational cases, it will not last more than 5-10 years. In the way of evidence the expert said that only 27% of people with higher education work in their specialty.

"Today, the employer is no longer interested in the question what university the employee graduated from. Although this issue used to be a priority. And there are more and more companies that are ready to accept employees without higher education. Of course, if this activity is not related to the fundamental sciences," Synergy Rector said.

Evgueny Plaksenkov, representative of another business school, member of the Supervisory Board of RANEPA IBS-Moscow, noted that business is already digitized and business needs digital talents. Who are they? And what competencies should they have? He cited the WorldSkills research data on such skills in the future, as the concentration and control of attention, emotional literacy, creativity, cross-cultural approach, digital literacy, ecological thinking, ability to be trained (retrained).

Mikhail Zhukov, Director General of HeadHunter, presented a kind of digitalized bridge between employers and job seekers. He cited in figures the view of HR specialists on artificial intelligence. 69% of them believe that artificial intelligence will never defeat emotional intelligence, 23% believe that artificial intelligence will replace people, 11% believe that artificial intelligence is a threat to human life.

The Director of HeadHunter also cited the data of the research on the issue of what professions are likely to disappear and be replaced by artificial intelligence (robots, systems, etc.). The banking sector, finance, insurance, transport and logistics are primarily in the risk zone.

At the end of the discussion, moderatorAnna Morozova, Director of RANEPA Centre for Corporate Programs, Academic Director of FinTech Master's degree program, invited the speakers to express their views on who is a digital leader. "A digital leader is a person who knows how to do what a robot cannot do," says Mikhail Zhukov. Igor Baranov, Vice Rector of the Sberbank Corporate University, said: "A digital leader is a person who can lead a mixed team and sees the full range of technologies that can be used." Gregory Avetov is convinced that the digital leader is the company with the highest capitalization, which invests in what will become a monopoly in 20-30 years.

The leader is the master of predictive effect

The topic of leadership was deeply considered by the participants of the expert discussion "How to Liberate the Brain to Achieve Effective Leadership?" The discussion was moderated by Dzhangir Dzhangirov, Senior Vice President of Sberbank, Chief Risk Officer. Experts tried not just to talk about how a person of the future can meet the information challenges of the 21st century, but also tried to "look" into his brain. How will the highspeed response of the human brain change and how to make it work for leadership?

Steven Poelmans, professor of Neuroscience and Strategic Leadership at Antwerp Management School, saidthat leadership skills can only be developed in practice, facing obstacles through blood, sweat and tears, correcting your own mistakes until you succeed at last. "Through a series of exercises, we put a manager in a real social context. Personally, I believe that management schools failed to solve the problem of leadership development - it is impossible to develop leadership skills, speaking about it in the classroom," the Professor said.

He cited the research data from the NeuroTrainingLab: "We monitor the activity of the frontal part of the cerebral cortex to see how our leaders are able to control themselves, how they can focus their attention on the right moments and at different times." It was noted that leaders can quickly switch between different styles of paradoxical behavior, between opposite activities. This requires a metacognitive approach.

"Speaking of leaders, who do I want to hire? The last person I want to take is a student who counts well, because there is a computer for that. I need some madman, who does not do everything as it should be" - such concept of leadership was given by Tatiana Chernigovskaya, Professor in the field of neuroscience and psycholinguistics.

She spoke about the man of the future and his place in the world of digital technology and rapidly changing reality. "Are we losing ground in this digital world? If we have plans for life, then we need to think about how to live. Can we tell which brain is smart or stupid, or ingenious? And what kind of artificial intelligence do we create? Smart?! What does that mean? Is an ingenious artificial intelligence possible? And what does that mean?" - these words of Tatiana Chernigovskaya forced the audience to ponder.

According to her, artificial intelligence will never replace a person, and so, from an early age, we must learn to adapt to live in the digital world, in order to preserve humanity. "We have to give an account of what we have in the skull and not to err about what we thoughtlessly call "my brain". Who belongs to whom is still a question," the neuroscientist sums up.

Psychologist Alexander Asmolov, Director for Humanitarian Policy at RANEPA, believes that "The leader is not the one who is authoritarian. A leader is someone who can determine the zone of the nearest development of his employees. The leader is the one who is the master of predictive effect, i.e the one who has no ready-made algorithms. A key characteristic of any educational system, as well as a key characteristic of leaders, is the greatest predictive effect".

In his opinion, in order to prepare such leaders, education should be a school of uncertainty - an education without ready-made algorithms. Today, education is a school of behavior in uncertain situations.

In conclusion, the psychologist urged the audience to read science fiction, citing the words of writer Neil Gaiman about why our future depends on reading. According to the writer, those people who became the leading developers in such high-tech corporations as Apple, Microsoft, Google, used to read good science fiction books in their childhood.

Transformation of MBA programs

The 10th Gaidar Forum hosted the discussion "Transformation of MBA programs: overcoming the syndrome of traditions "virginity". The meeting moderated by Andrew Main Wilson, CEO of AMBA&BGA, established the direction of the debate - the transformation of classical learning into the online MBA format. He also said that it is necessary to unite all MBA schools for the joint development of online programs, as this process requires serious investments.

Koen Vandenbempt, Academic Director, Executive MBA, Antwerp Management School, said that students studied at his school on the job. Accordingly, they are in dynamics with the changes taking place in the economy, and this imposes requirements on both teachers and the process of building the education. "Teachers should take into account new trends affecting the digital economy. They have to keep up with the times, because the success of an MBA will depend on it," said the expert. He added that the transition of the economy into a digital one had an impact on business education. He called this process not just globalization, but global diversification.

"Our students need skills that correspond to the new reality. The training itself should take place in conditions relevant to the modern economy, on the basis of digitization and globalization, so that education could meet modern challenges," the Director from Antwerp says.

Continuing the idea of his Belgian colleague, Andrey Kolyada, Rector at Eurasian Management and Administration School, called the current technological revolution the most significant of all those ever occurred, and said business education did not keep up with technological progress. He spoke about his business school, which had both full-time and online training. "Online education cannot compete with on-campus education. There is no team feeling, it's hard to get together online due to the time difference. There is no opportunity to come together and feel the emotional unity, solving common problems," Andrey Kolyada said.

He also noted that it was difficult to remotely control a process that had gone the wrong way, and that online programs required an outstanding engineering system of presentation.

Jean-Philippe Muller, Dean of the Monaco Business School, who has been participating in expert discussions at the Gaidar Forum for several years, said that people, who run companies, should be able to manage a new generation. "Earlier, engineers were sent to business schools; today, on the contrary, we must send managers to technical institutes. These areas should be combined to get the maximum result," the expert said.

The trend is that the MBA schools tend to develop programs together with innovative companies and banks all over the world.

He also addressed the interaction of MBA and DBA programs. Jean-Philippe Muller expressed his opinion on this matter: "The hybrid of MBA and DBA is the future of business schools."

Another opinion was expressed by Sergei Kalendzhyan, Dean of the Graduate School of Corporate Management, RANEPA. He believes that the MBA program is a "breakfast", and the DBA program is a "dinner", therefore they cannot be combined. During his speech, Sergei Kalendzhyan noted that ethical values are a criterion for the quality of education at his school. The dean expressed his support for the introduction of cultural studies and philosophy in the course of the disciplines studied, because students should think about the future. The expert is convinced that modern transformation should not lead to the complete loss of traditions. He came to this conclusion: "MBA students should combine the spiritual, material, social and virtual worlds."

A good conclusion to the discussion was the words of one of the experts: "People will continue working with people, and we will find a way to deal with machines." In addition, the moderator of the meeting Andrew Main Wilson, Executive Director of AMBA&BGA, outlined the main points that are important for the topic of discussion: continuous learning, online learning transformation, global alliance and innovative learning.

The credibility of the rankings of business schools

The role of rankings and accreditations in the activities of business schools as well as approaches to assessing the quality of business education were discussed on the third day of the 10th Gaidar Forum. Over the past decade, there has appeared a paradoxical situation concerning the rankings of programs and schools. Focusing on quantitative indicators to the detriment of other objective criteria and the subjectivity of expert assessments reduce the credibility of rankings.

Moderator of the discussion Sergey Myasoedov, Director of the Institute of Business Studies (IBS-Moscow), Vice-Rector of RANEPA, explained to the audience why business education was often scolded in our country. The reason lies in the mixing the University type, pre-experienced Master of Science programs oriented to the young researchers and Dusiness school type, post experienced MBA programs focused for enrichment through sharing and market driven skills development. The result is the confusion of the customers and dissatisfaction of business.

The understanding that those programs have different customers and goals is often absent both at the Universities and at business communities."Is a Master of Science Degree owner a creative intellectual? Yes, he is. Does he have to be a manager? Or a manager with the talent of an entrepreneur?" Sergey Myasoedov asks. "The answer is "NO".

"It is different when we speak about MBA. The people who apply to MBA program of IBS-Moscow (the leading number one business school of today's Russia) have to have at least 5-6 years of practical work experience. They have to prove at the enrollment tests, esse and interview that they have a talent for management and entrepreneurship, emotional intelligence for agile leadership. MBA programs do not exist for scientisits and researchers. They exist for the business practitioners and leaders. In our country, we still have a constant mix of genres. And because of this, business education is so often scolded. And in the national rankings the university education indicators are often used to evaluate business schools and MBA programs".

Andrew Jack, Global Education Editor at Financial Times, agrees with his Russian colleague.In his opinion, an MBA program should be aimed exclusively at the training of professionals in the field of business. "Business schools should shape the image of a new leader, develop managerial, communication skills, soft skills, and motivate students," Andrew Jack said.

In continuation of the topic of leadership, George Iliev, Director of Development Markets at the Association of MBAs (AMBA International), explained that "Rankings and organizations involved in the accreditation of business schools compete in one indicator - this is the time of business leaders." In his opinion, it is impossible to make a ranking on the basis of accreditation data, because too many factors are taken into account - 300-400 different quantitative and qualitative factors, criteria, indicators.

He compared the rankings with beauty pageants. If your business school is really strikingly different from others, you do not need to compete with other schools, because people will recognize you even without the beauty queen crown," the Director of Emerging Markets at AMBA said.

"The most serious issue that arises in many rankings is the accuracy of the information," Yuri Tazov, President of the Russian MBA League and the co-creater of the independent, crowdsoucing-voting-based Russian MBA program ranking system, said.

He spoke about the Russian experience of creation of National ranking of business schools and MBA programs published annually at the web-site: www.mba.su How the team of Russian businessmen graduated from several best MBA programs of the country desided to create independent web-site, to provide balanced and objective information to the business community.

The ranking is based on the opinions of graduates and involves minimum participation of the estimated business schools.

"Invitations are sent to business schools and there is only one request - to disseminate information about the ongoing online survey among its graduates. This ranking has no more contacts with schools," the Head of the Russian MBA League explained. The ranking is based on such criteria as income growth, career growth, level of professional connections, and personal and professional development of a graduate. The most important principle of the rankings is the openness of the data on the criteria: the consumer can rank business schools in accordance with the criterion that is the most important to him.

Marco De Novellis, Editor of BusinessBecause, said the credibility of the rankings was a key factor. In his opinion, when choosing a business school, in addition to its position in the ranking, people watch for other factors, such as accreditation, programs provided, recognition and local reputation, and the cost of education.

Sergey Ermak, Deputy Director of Expert RA, said that the agency did not use the word "ranking" any more and called their studies the "maps" of global visibility of schools. "Facing the growing global academic mobility, we evaluated business schools from the perspective of foreign students who receive education in Russia," the expert says. He also noted that more and more Russian business schools are becoming popular on the international market, their publishing and partner activity is increasing.

At the end of the discussion, Danica Purg, President of CEEMAN Association, stressed the need to revise the criteria for assessing the quality of business education in the rankings according to the real needs of the market. The experts agreed that the focus on accreditation and rankings hinders the most important goal of business schools - the constant modernization of educational programs and their orientation towards real market needs, and called for the development of new methods for evaluation of the business education efficiency.

Do we need responsible managers?

On January 17, on the final day of the Gaidar Forum 2019, representatives of business education from Russia and other countries met at the "Innovative Technologies and Social Responsibility of Business" discussion platform. How business schools can implement PRME principles in life". As research shows, the Corporate Social Responsibility concept is differently interpreted and perceived in various cultures. In Russia, as in many other Eastern and Central European countries, the Corporate Social Responsibility concept is regarded by business representatives with mixed feelings. At that, in business schools the amount of academic hours allocated to the relevant courses is steadily growing.

The moderator of the event, Natalya Evtikhieva, Director General of RABE and National Accreditation Council for Business and Management Education (NASDOBR), added a new vector of the discussion saying that "the global development trends of business corporations have led to a new focus on assessing the quality of management education with an emphasis on its effectiveness, practical orientation and compliance with the best international standards and practices."

Irina Sennikova, Rector of RISEBA business school (Latvia), UN Commissioner for the implementation of PRME principles in business schools in Eastern and Central Europe, addressed the audience with the question: "How can responsible managers be trained? And do we need responsible managers? The scandals of the last few years make you think: there is a feeling that neither fines, nor a chance to go to prison for life or a death sentence - nothing frightens people! What can educational institutions do to improve this world?"

She said that companies should draw a clear red line in this matter - should business schools help them? Is it possible to use a universal approach? Or you need to practice an individual approach in each case?

Jonas Haertle, Head of PRME Secretariat at United Nations Global Compact Office reminded the topics that were discussed at the Plenary Session at the opening of the Forum. "Of course, we live in a global world, but there is a danger that the world will be split, there is a threat of climate change, there are geopolitical problems - all this should be taken into account by business schools in their programs in those aspects that relate to responsible management," says Jonas Haertle.

He cited the words of the head of BlackRock company that, for prosperity, a company should show results not only in financial terms, but also to prove how it helps society. Management issues should be linked to financial results, so school professors who deal with financial issues should take this into account.

Andrew Main Wilson, Executive Director of AMBA & BGA, said that, in terms of saving humanity and preserving natural resources, social responsibility of business is a central element in the development of new management strategies. "We are gathered here as representatives of business schools, and we talk about training business leaders of the future. It is necessary to unite scientists, students, experts to solve these problems - seventeen sustainable development goals," the expert said.

It is worth reminding that, on September 25, 2015, the UN member states adopted the agenda for sustainable development until 2030. It contains a number of goals aimed at eradicating poverty, preserving the planet's resources and ensuring well-being for all. Each of the 17 Goals contains a set of indicators to be achieved within 15 years. Joint efforts by governments, private sector, civil society and the people of the Earth are needed to achieve the sustainable development Goals.

Asylbek Kozhakhmetov, President of Almaty Management University, President of the Civil Alliance of Kazakhstan noted: "We see that the role of universities in the system of innovative development of territories is gradually increasing. Today this issue is widely discussed both within the academic community and at a state level. A modern university should act as a leader in interaction with the state, business, and society".

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is expressed in the readiness of a business corporation to voluntarily bear non-binding social expenditures beyond the limits established by tax, labor, environmental and other legislation, based not on the requirements of the law, but on moral and ethical considerations. Experts agreed that the introduction of CSR ensures the development and stabilization of the organization in the market: the growth of production volumes, the improvement of the company's reputation, the formation of corporate identity.
DUBLIN, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Award winning RegTech AQMetrics is pleased to announce that Apex Group Ltd. ("Apex") has selected AQMetrics as its regulatory reporting technology solution.

Apex plans to utilise AQMetrics for its ESMA, CFTC and SEC regulatory reporting requirements, having identified AQMetrics as delivering a scalable robust technology solution best suited to fit the Group's comprehensive compliance requirements for today and into the future.

Over the past eighteen months, Apex has made a number of strategic acquisitions and is now the fifth largest fund administrator in the world. The integrated AQMetrics platform will deliver a full suite of multi-jurisdictional regulatory reporting solutions to the global Apex Group.

Geraldine Gibson, CEO of AQMetrics said that "AQMetrics is proud to have secured a long-term relationship with Apex. AQMetrics will provide Apex with a robust, scalable and secure regulatory technology platform that can meet Apex's regulatory reporting technology needs of today and provide Apex with access to reporting technology for emerging regulations. In line with Apex's commitment to customer service, AQMetrics will also provide an exceptional customer experience for the funds servicing teams at Apex and for their clients."

Commenting on this development, Peter Hughes, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Apex Group Ltd, said, "The implementation of AQMetrics is part of our ongoing commitment to continually enhancing our robust compliance and governance reporting standards. The advanced technology solutions delivered by AQMetrics further adds to our unique technology offering by leveraging the broadest range of technologies in the industry."

About AQMetrics

AQMetrics, established in Ireland in 2012 is one of the world's leading regulatory technology ("RegTech") providers. Since inception AQMetrics has continually improved and evolved its technology offering and offers a full risk management and regulatory reporting platform to its clients: from $bn hedge funds, alternative investment managers, MiFID firms, asset servicing providers, fund administrators to banks. Award winning AQMetrics now provides RegTech solutions to a number of the top global fund administrators and asset servicing providers in addition to directly servicing fund managers who require direct access to multi-jurisdictional regulatory reporting technology.

www.aqmetrics.com

About Apex

The Apex Group, established in Bermuda in 2003 is one of the world's largest fund solutions providers with $610bn in AuA and over 40 offices worldwide. The Group offers a full service solution to its clients: from fund administration, middle office, custody and depositary to corporate services and fund platforms. Apex administers the investments of some of the largest funds and institutional investors in the world.

www.apexfundservices.com

Contact:

Phoebe Toal

+ 353-1-903-5689

Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/624259/AQMetrics_Logo.jpg




"Blue Magic Belgium" Events Seek Research Development Support for GA-ASI

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), a leading manufacturer of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), tactical reconnaissance radars, and electro-optic surveillance systems, announced that it will host two events in Belgium to identify companies interested in supporting the development of MQ-9B SkyGuardian. This outreach effort follows the Government of Belgium's selection of GA-ASI's SkyGuardian to meet the RPA requirements of Belgian Defense.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005274/en/

"GA-ASI's commitment to providing the best available RPA technology to Belgian Defense means identifying and establishing relationships with companies across Belgium that can assist with that effort," said David R. Alexander, president, GA-ASI. (Photo: Business Wire)

The goal of the events called "Blue Magic Belgium" is to increase the number of Belgian technology companies that can provide research and development (R&D) and innovation to support GA-ASI.

Meetings will be offered in two locations:

Liege on Wednesday, 15 May 2019

Sint-Truiden on Thursday, 16 May 2019

GA-ASI is looking to partner and potentially invest in Belgian companies with aerospace and defense technology that can provide support in these areas:

State-of-the-art innovative manufacturing developments related to Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) Unmanned Airframe and Aircraft Systems

Sensor data processing, automation, utilization distribution technology developments

Air Space Integration technologies and related developments to MALE Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Companies wishing to meet with GA-ASI representatives during the event should visit http://theomxevents.com/BlueMagicBelgium for additional information and event registration.

"GA-ASI's commitment to providing the best available RPA technology to Belgian Defense means identifying and establishing relationships with companies across Belgium that can assist with that effort," said David R. Alexander, president, GA-ASI.

In January, GA-ASI announced its industry collaborations with several Belgium-based businesses, including SABCA, Thales Belgium, Esterline, DronePort, and Newtec.

About GA-ASI

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), an affiliate of General Atomics, is the leading designer and manufacturer of proven, reliable Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) systems, radars, and electro-optic and related mission systems, including the Predator RPA series and the Lynx Multi-mode Radar. With more than five million flight hours, GA-ASI provides long-endurance, mission-capable aircraft with integrated sensor and data link systems required to deliver persistent flight that enables situational awareness and rapid strike. The company also produces a variety of ground control stations and sensor control/image analysis software, offers pilot training and support services, and develops meta-material antennas. For more information, visit www.ga-asi.com.

Reaper, Predator, and Lynx are registered trademarks of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005274/en/

Contacts:

Robert Walker

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.

+1 (858) 524-8101

ASI-MediaRelations@ga-asi.com
The study measures the total economic impact of Tinyclues' campaign intelligence solution on marketing revenue and productivity.

Tinyclues releases the results of a new, commissioned Total Economic Impact (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting, at E-commerce One to One in Monaco, a leading event for retail and e-commerce experts. Tinyclues will be in Monaco for the full 3-day event, where it will also host a conference with Conforama, focused on Tinyclues' role in the home furnishing leader's digital transformation.

The Forrester TEI study is based on an independent case analysis of a large retailer who has used Tinyclues' solution for several years and measures the solution's 3-year economic impact on the company. The findings reveal additional 3-year campaign revenue of $9 million (8 million) present value and an ROI of 199%. The study also uncovered a number of quantified benefits experienced by the retailer:

Better targeted email campaigns, with higher message relevancy and up to 30% uplift in revenue.

New revenue streams from campaigns that were previously not possible to target, including new and niche products.

Higher-performing trade marketing campaigns, driving partners to spend more on these campaigns.

Improved customer experience, fewer opt-outs and higher customer lifetime value, once the retailer entrusted its entire fatigue management strategy to Tinyclues.

Gains in productivity for campaign managers and data scientists.

"Tinyclues has changed the way we think about customer marketing" 1, explained the retailer's digital marketing director. "Before, we had a traditional, 'one-to-many' approach. Now, we are at 'one-to-few' and tomorrow we will be 'one-to-one'. That's a real game changer. We know that one of the keys for success in retail is personalization, and Tinyclues helps us in this journey." 1

Tinyclues offers a new, unique targeting and planning experience for marketing campaigns. The solution uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to allow B2C marketers to find the future buyers for any product, easily and with unparalleled precision.

For Tinyclues founder and CEO David Bessis, the TEI findings are a welcome validation: "Marketers love Tinyclues because they see successful results within a very short period of time. On average, our clients have measured +79% campaign revenue, -80% time spent on campaign creation, -19% unsubscribes and +51% client engagement. To have Tinyclues' economic impact confirmed in a study by a leading analyst like Forrester reinforces our vision of how campaign intelligence is reinventing marketing and transforming businesses."

Download the full study covering the benefits and costs associated with Tinyclues here.

Tinyclues will be present at the leading retail event E-commerce One to One Monaco from

March 19-21, and will take the stage with Conforama's own Romain Roulleau, Deputy CEO Digital Customer. Conforama will provide an exclusive look at their digital transformation project, and how Tinyclues has helped them to reinvent their relationship marketing communications through personalized, more relevant campaigns, with an immediate effect on revenue. The presentation will be held March 19 at 3pm, in Room 1.

About Tinyclues

Tinyclues is the leading AI-first marketing campaign intelligence solution enabling companies to maximize revenue and customer engagement through intelligent campaign targeting and planning. Tinyclues' solution uses deep learning to identify future buyers for any offer, in the days following a campaign. Companies such as AccorHotels, Air France, Brandalley, Cdiscount, Clarins, Club Med, Fnac Darty, Holland Barrett, Kenzo, Lacoste, Manor, Rakuten, Road Scholar, Thomas Cook, TUI, Veepee, and Vestiaire Collective are using Tinyclues to optimize and orchestrate more than 600 million messages per month across channels such as email, mobile push notifications, direct mail, call centers, and Facebook to generate quantified and sustainable additional revenue.

For more information, visit http://www.tinyclues.com

Twitter: @tinyclues

1 The Total Economic Impact Of Tinyclues' Campaign Intelligence Solution For A Large Retailer, a Tinyclues-commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, February 2019

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005080/en/

Contacts:

Caroline Tailleferd

Tinyclues

Tel: +33 6 11 64 87 37

E-mail: caroline.tailleferd@tinyclues.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.
MUNICH, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --

In 2019, the Edoxaban Clinical Research Programme will deliver new evidence on LIXIANA ? (edoxaban) use in clinical practice. EMIT-AF/VTE is one of the first sets of data to be presented

EMIT-AF/VTE is a large observational, multicentre, multinational study on edoxaban peri-procedural management and outcomes

It is the first large prospective, non-interventional study to apply the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) bleeding risk classification in edoxaban routine clinical practice 1

In EMIT-AF/VTE, peri-procedure use of oral, once-daily edoxaban was associated with low incidence of bleeding and thromboembolic events, in elderly European Atrial Fibrillation (AF) and Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) patients

Daiichi Sankyo Europe GmbH (hereafter, "Daiichi Sankyo") announced today the results from EMIT-AF/VTE, a prospective, non-interventional study of oral, once-daily edoxaban (known by the brand name LIXIANA?) in the peri-procedural management of AF, and VTE patients undergoing diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. The data from 1,155 patients across seven European countries showed that peri-procedural edoxaban management in routine clinical practice was associated with low bleeding incidence, even in procedures at high bleeding-risk as classified by EHRA, and with low rates of thromboembolic/ischemic complications.2 The data were presented today during a late-breaker session at EHRA 2019, the annual congress of the European Heart Rhythm Association, in Lisbon, Portugal.

EMIT-AF/VTE is the first large observational, multicentre, multinational study on peri-procedural management and outcomes of edoxaban. It is the first large, single NOAC-prospective, non-interventional study to apply the EHRA peri-procedural bleeding risk classification, which was introduced in April 2018,1 in a routine clinical practice setting.

Patients enrolled onto EMIT-AF/VTE were 62% male, elderly (mean age = 71.9  10.4 years, 45% = 75 years of age) and had multiple co-morbidities.2 Of the participants, 294 (26%) had minor EHRA bleeding risk, 581 (50%) had low-risk, and 280 (24%) had high-risk. Additionally, 30% (345/1,155) of patients continued edoxaban treatment without any interruption during the peri-procedural period, whereas 73% (847/1,155) of patients were on edoxaban on the day after procedure with no post-procedural interruption.2

The primary safety outcome of major bleeding (MB), as defined by the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH), from five days before to 30 days after a procedure, occurred in 0.4% (5 of 1,155) of patients. Bleeding incidence was low, even in the 280 EHRA-classified high-risk procedures: with 0.7% (2 of 280) major bleedings and 1.4% (4 of 280) clinically relevant non-major bleedings (CRNMB).2

Commenting on the data, Paolo Colonna, MD, Professor of Cardiology at University Hospital and Policlinico of Bari, Italy, said, "Until now, there has been limited data available on the peri-procedural management of patients prescribed a NOAC, such as edoxaban, and the associated clinical outcomes. The low rates of bleeding and thromboembolic/ischemic complications associated with edoxaban in the EMIT-AF/VTE study provides insights of edoxaban use in unselected patients undergoing diagnostic or therapeutic procedures."

The secondary objective was to document the incidence of the composite of acute coronary syndrome (ACS), non-hemorrhagic stroke, transient ischemic attack (TIA), systemic embolism (SEE), deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism (PE) and cardiovascular (CV) death.3 Thrombotic/ischemic events occurred in 0.6% (7 of 1,155) of patients.2

"The EMIT-AF/VTE study is part of the Edoxaban Clinical Research Programme that, in 2019, will deliver significant evidence to support the use of edoxaban in clinical practice, particularly for elderly patients. The results of this study further support Daiichi Sankyo Europe's long-term commitment to cardiovascular care", said Wolfgang Zierhut, MD, Executive Director Medical Affairs and Head Thrombosis and Cardiovascular at Daiichi Sankyo Europe.

EMIT-AF/VTE is one of several studies included within the programme. More than 100,000 patients worldwide are expected to participate in studies, the goal of which is to generate new clinical and real-world data regarding the use of edoxaban in AF and VTE populations, thus, providing physicians and patients worldwide with greater treatment assurance.

About EMIT-AF/VTE

The observational study, conducted across seven European countries, includes data from 1,155 first diagnostic/therapeutic procedures in unselected edoxaban patients with AF and VTE. EMIT-AF/VTE is a multinational, multicentre, prospective observational, non-interventional study.4 The primary safety outcome was the incidence of major bleeding from five days before to 30 days post-procedure. Secondary objectives include efficacy outcomes as a composite of major cardiovascular events and collecting details on the types of diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.2

About Atrial Fibrillation

AF is a condition where the heart beats irregularly and rapidly. When this happens, blood can pool and thicken in the chambers of the heart causing an increased risk of blood clots. These blood clots can break off and travel through the blood stream to the brain (or sometimes to another part of the body), where they have the potential to cause a stroke.5

AF is the most common type of heart rhythm disorder and is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality.6 More than six million Europeans are diagnosed with AF, and this figure is expected to at least double over the next 50 years.7,8 Compared to those without AF, people with the arrhythmia have a 3-5 times higher risk of stroke.9 One in five of all strokes are as a result of AF.7

About Venous Thromboembolism

VTE is an umbrella term for two conditions, DVT and PE. DVT is a disease caused by a blood clot found in deep veins, usually within the lower leg, thigh or pelvis, although they can occur in other parts of the body as well.10 PE occurs when part of a clot detaches and lodges in the pulmonary arteries, causing a potentially fatal condition.11

VTE is a major cause of morbidity and mortality.12 There is a high rate of recurrence after a first VTE event, which is reduced with anticoagulant treatment. Without anticoagulant treatment, approximately half of patients who experience an initial VTE event have recurrent VTE within three months.13

About Edoxaban

Edoxaban is an oral, once-daily, direct factor Xa (pronounced "Ten A") inhibitor. Factor Xa is one of the key components responsible for blood clotting, so inhibiting this makes the blood thin and less prone to clotting. Edoxaban is currently marketed by Daiichi Sankyo and its partners in more than 20 countries around the world.

About Edoxaban Clinical Research Programme

More than 10 studies, more than 100,000 patients worldwide

Daiichi Sankyo is committed to expanding scientific knowledge about edoxaban, as demonstrated through our research programmes evaluating its use in a broad range of cardiovascular conditions, patient types and clinical settings in AF and VTE designed to further build on the results of the pivotal ENGAGE-AF and Hokusai-VTE studies. More than 100,000 patients worldwide are expected to participate in the edoxaban clinical research programme which is comprised of more than 10 RCTs (randomised, controlled trials), registries and non-interventional studies, including completed, ongoing and future research. The goal is to generate new clinical and real-world-data regarding its use in AF and VTE populations, providing physicians and patients worldwide with greater treatment assurance.

The RCTs include:

ENGAGE AF-TIMI 48 (Effective aNticoaGulation with factor xA next GEneration in Atrial Fibrillation), in AF patients at moderate-to-high risk of thromboembolic events

Hokusai-VTE (Edoxaban in Venous Thromboembolism), in patients with either acute symptomatic DVT, PE or both

ENSURE-AF (EdoxabaN vs. warfarin in subjectS UndeRgoing cardiovErsion of Atrial Fibrillation), in AF patients undergoing electrical cardioversion

ENTRUST-AF PCI (EdoxabaN TReatment versUS VKA in paTients with AF undergoing PCI), in AF patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention

Hokusai-VTE Cancer (Edoxaban in Venous Thromboembolism Associated with Cancer), in patients with cancer and an acute VTE event

ELDERCARE-AF (Edoxaban Low-Dose for EldeR CARE AF patients), in elderly AF patients in Japan

ELIMINATE-AF (EvaLuatIon of edoxaban coMpared with VKA IN subjects undergoing cAThEter ablation of non-valvular Atrial Fibrillation)

ENVISAGE- TAVI AF (EdoxabaN Versus standard of care and theIr effectS on clinical outcomes in pAtients havinG undergonE Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) - Atrial Fibrillation)

In addition, global and regional registry studies will provide important real-world data about the use of edoxaban and other oral anticoagulants in everyday practice, and include:

ETNA-AF (Edoxaban Treatment in routiNe clinical prActice in patients with nonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation)

ETNA-VTE (Edoxaban Treatment in routiNe clinical prActice in patients with Venous ThromboEmbolism)

EMIT-AF/VTE (Edoxaban Management In diagnostic and Therapeutic procedures-AF/VTE)

Prolongation PREFER in AF (PREvention oF thromboembolic events - European Registry) in patients with AF

ANAFIE (All Nippon AF In Elderly) Registry in Japan

Cancer-VTE Registry in Japan

Through our Clinical Research Programme, we are committed to adding to the scientific body of knowledge around edoxaban in a variety of AF and VTE patients, including those who are vulnerable.

For more information, please visit: https://www.daiichisankyo.com/rd/pipeline/products/ecrp/index.html

About Daiichi Sankyo

Daiichi Sankyo Group is dedicated to the creation and supply of innovative pharmaceutical products to address diversified, unmet medical needs of patients in both mature and emerging markets. With over 100 years of scientific expertise and a presence in more than 20 countries, Daiichi Sankyo and its 15,000 employees around the world draw upon a rich legacy of innovation and a robust pipeline of promising new medicines to help people. In addition to a strong portfolio of medicines for hypertension and thrombotic disorders, under the Group's 2025 Vision to become a "Global Pharma Innovator with Competitive Advantage in Oncology," Daiichi Sankyo research and development is primarily focused on bringing forth novel therapies in oncology, including immuno-oncology, with additional focus on new horizon areas, such as pain management, neurodegenerative diseases, heart and kidney diseases, and other rare diseases. For more information, please visit: www.daiichisankyo.com .

Forward-looking statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and information about future developments in the sector, and the legal and business conditions of DAIICHI SANKYO Co., Ltd. Such forward-looking statements are uncertain and are subject at all times to the risks of change, particularly to the usual risks faced by a global pharmaceutical company, including the impact of the prices for products and raw materials, medication safety, changes in exchange rates, government regulations, employee relations, taxes, political instability and terrorism as well as the results of independent demands and governmental inquiries that affect the affairs of the company. All forward-looking statements contained in this release hold true as of the date of publication. They do not represent any guarantee of future performance. Actual events and developments could differ materially from the forward-looking statements that are explicitly expressed or implied in these statements. DAIICHI SANKYO Co., Ltd. assume no responsibility for the updating of such forward-looking statements about future developments of the sector, legal and business conditions and the company.

References

1. Steffel, J. et al. The 2018 European Heart Rhythm Association Practical Guide on the use of non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants in patients with atrial fibrillation. Eur Heart J. 2018;39(16):1330-1393.

2. Colonna, P. et al. Periprocedural edoxaban management in routine clinical practice is associated with low bleeding risk: outcomes from the prospective multicentre, multinational EMIT-AF/VTE study. Abstract presented at EHRA 2019.

3. Clinicaltrials.gov. Edoxaban Management in Diagnostic and Therapeutic Procedures (EMIT-AF/VTE). Available at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02950168 . Last accessed February 2019.

4. Colonna P, et al. Edoxaban Management in Diagnostic and Therapeutic Procedures (EMIT-AF/VTE)-Trial design. Clin Cardiol. 2018; 41:1123-1129. https://doi.org/10.1002/clc.23037

5. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute - What is Atrial Fibrillation. Available at: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/af/af_diagnosis.html . Last accessed February 2019.

6. Iqbal MB, et al. Recent developments in atrial fibrillation. BMJ. 2005;330(7485):238-243.

7. Camm A, et al. Guidelines for the management of atrial fibrillation: the Task Force for the Management of Atrial Fibrillation of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Eur Heart J. 2010;31(19):2369-2429.

8. Krijthe BP, et al. Projections on the number of individuals with atrial fibrillation in the European Union, from 2000 to 2060. Eur Heart J. 2013;34(35):2746-2751.

9. Ball J, et al. Atrial fibrillation: Profile and burden of an evolving epidemic in the 21st century. Int J Card. 2013;167:1807-1824.

10. Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) / Pulmonary Embolism (PE) - Blood Clot Forming in a Vein. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dvt/facts.html . Last accessed February 2019.

11. Van Beek E, et al. Deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Print.

12. Cohen A, et al. Venous thromboembolism (VTE) in Europe. Thromb Haemost. 2007;98(4):756-764.

13. Kearon C. Natural history of venous thromboembolism. Circulation. 2003;107(23 suppl 1):I-22-30.

March 2019 Job Code: EDX/19/0093

Contact details

Lydia Worms (Europe)

Daiichi Sankyo Europe GmbH

Edoxaban Communications & Product PR Europe

+49-(89)7808751
In honor of visionary women who have dedicated themselves to the betterment of lives through education

TOKYO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Cle de Peau Beaute proudly announces the Power of Radiance Program, a multi-year philanthropic commitment that honors inspirational women from around the world whose advocacy for women and girls' education has led to positive long-term impact on lives. The Program will select an Award Recipient annually who will receive a grant that can be donated to a cause of her choice, in support of educational initiatives for women and girls. Through this endeavor, Cle de Peau Beaute seeks to empower women and children through the gift of knowledge and learning, and make a tangible difference by igniting radiance within the world.

The inaugural event to launch the Power of Radiance was hosted by Cle de Peau Beaute's Global Ambassador Felicity Jones and the program's first award recipient Muzoon Almellehan, education activist and the first person with refugee status to be appointed as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Lending their support to the initiative were program contributors, Cindi Leive, Naomi Kawase and Belinda Lee, who shared their experiences through a live panel discussion with Muzoon Almellehan, together delivering an empowering message on each person's responsibility to affect positive change.

Education is the single most potent equalizer of opportunity. It provides children with a ladder out of poverty and a path to a stable and promising future. Yet, today more than 130 million girls* all around the world are missing out on school.

Girls' education is a strategic development priority. Better educated women tend to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn higher incomes, have fewer children, marry at a later age and should they choose to become mothers, enable better health care and education for their children. All these factors combined can help lift households, communities, and nations out of poverty.

Felicity Jones comments: "I know how fortunate I was to have had access to a great education. This is not the case for everyone around the world, which is why I am so proud to be part of the Power of Radiance program, and support every person's right to knowledge and learning. It is through accomplishment that we can aspire to shine in a way that truly lights up the world."

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Muzoon Almellehan comments: "Education is the most potent equalizer of opportunity. And for nations, investing in quality education for children and young people creates the foundation for more peaceful and prosperous families, communities and economies. I will never stop speaking out for those whose voices have been silenced for too long, until every child is in school and learning."

Ms. Yukari Suzuki, Chief Brand Officer of Cle de Peau Beaute comments: "At Cle de Peau Beaute we believe that true Radiance is an inner strength that is in each of us, but it is something that needs to be unlocked. When radiance is unleashed, each one of us has the potential to achieve great things and profoundly influence the world around us. I am humbled to have the opportunity to celebrate the inspirational radiance of women who are effecting change through the empowering path of Education and am honored to celebrate the light that they shine on others."

The Program's grant will be funded from global sales of Cle de Peau Beaute's exquisite range that is especially developed to unlock the power of its radiance.

*information source: New Education Data For Sdg4: Focus on Out-of-school Children between the ages of 6 -17( https://www.sdg4education2030.org/new-education-data-sdg4-focus-out-school-children-27-september-2018 )

Power of Radiance Program Website: https://www.cledepeau-beaute.com/powerofradiance/

For more information on Cle de Peau Beaute and key participants of the program, please view here.

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CHONGQING, China, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Southwest China'sChongqing municipality on Monday announced ten credit-building model cases in Banan District's Huaxi Live center, initiating a week-long event for promoting credibility and integrity across the city. These activities are held by China Economic Information Service (CEIS) and local government.

The ten cases, selected out of 126 candidates and including "combining credit and tech for cracking financing difficulties for small and micro enterprises" by China Construction Bank Chongqing Branch and "building a brand of creditability for transnational economic and trade cooperation" by Chongqing Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (Group) Co., Ltd, aim to act as role models to further spread credibility culture as well as create an integrity and credit upholding environment.

The day also witnessed the initiation ceremony for Chongqing municipality to carry out city-wide credit building and promotion activities between March 18-24 in efforts to expedite credit construction and make Chongqing better recognized as a credit city.

Credit Makes Chongqing Better Summit as well as Credit Chongqing Construction Results and Credit Product Exhibition were also held along with the initiation ceremony.

In addition, Chongqing will carry out more industry-based credit construction activities across sectors such as property, decorative building materials, finance, real estate as well as trade circulation throughout April to December.

Special activities such as industry surveys and investigation, problem collecting and rectification, industry development seminars and industry credit index system building will be conducted to strengthen credibility and responsibility senses across enterprises and industries, while advancing industry credit information platform construction.

It is noted that the credit city building activities will get support from China Economic Information Service (CEIS) through its credit arm "Xinhua Credit".

Xinhua Credit has built a professional credit platform through the model of "product + service + platform", thus effectively assisting Chongqing in its credit city construction by applying Xinhua Credit products in Chongqing administrative management affairs, undertaking Chongqing's credit related third party assessment projects and major research, as well as providing think tank services for Chongqing's districts and counties on their way to building themselves as national credit demonstrations, according to a source with the CEIS.
MADRID, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- One in four Europeans would prefer artificial intelligence to make important to decisions about the running of their country. This is one of the conclusions of the European Tech Insights presented by IE University and developed by the newly launched Center for the Governance of Change ( CGC ). The European Tech Insights 2019, explores how the general public across eight European countries (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom) feel about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the wave of technological transformation. The survey results show that Europeans think that the governance of new technologies is one of the biggest challenges for EU politicians.

A significant finding from the report is that one in four Europeans would prefer artificial intelligence to make important to decisions about the running of their country. Amid the vagaries of Brexit and current questions around the European model of representative democracy, the results tellingly reflect significant levels of disillusion towards politicians. In the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the percentage is even higher - with one in three admitting they'd prefer a machine determining the direction of their country rather than a human.

Diego Rubio, Executive Director of the Center for the Governance of Change of IE University said: "This mindset, which probably relates to the growing mistrust citizens feel towards governments and politicians, constitutes a significant questioning of the European model of representative democracy, since it challenges the very notion of popular sovereignty."

The research also highlights a strange paradox, that while the public are disillusioned with their government and favor AI in the driving seat, people are deeply fearful of advancements in tech particularly increased automation. 70% of respondents called for politicians to take strong policy measures to curb automation and tackle job displacement, even if that means slowing technological progress.

The research by IE University's Centre for the Governance of Change highlights the vision of Europeans about how technology will affect people's lives, their jobs and their political systems.

Other key findings include:

The majority (56%) of Europeans are worried that robots may substitute most human jobs

70% of Europeans of all ages believe that, if they are not appropriately controlled, new technologies will cause more harm than good in society in the coming decade. This belief is leading to a growing resistance to innovation and to a general demand for more regulation

67% of Europeans think that the governance of new technologies is, with climate change, the biggest challenge the EU faces right now

On top of the challenges on the job market, Europeans anticipate a change in their social lives: over two thirds of Europeans surveyed (68%) found it concerning that people will spend more time socializing online than in person in the future

The survey also suggests that people not only worry about the incoming technological transition, but also feel that the institutions tasked with this process are failing. Most of the people surveyed (60%) felt that the educational system is not training them to tackle the challenges brought about by new technologies. This is particularly true for older university graduates who find themselves rudderless in a fast-changing job market. Moreover, many said that companies are not adapting to the new age with 40% of respondents stating the company they work for will disappear in the next 10 years unless they implement profound and fast changes.

The Center for the Governance of Change of IE University produces pioneering research that cuts across disciplines and methodologies to unveil the complexity of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Blockchain, and Robotics. CGC also runs several executive programs on emerging tech for public institutions and companies interested in expanding their understanding of disruptive trends, and a series of outreach activities aimed at improving the general public's awareness and agency over the coming changes. Its overarching purpose is to help build a more prosperous and sustainable society for all.
SELBYVILLE, Delaware, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The North American modular data center market will expand at a CAGR of 20% over the forecast years as growing use of internet services and connected devices has led to a rise in the demand for modular data centers in the region.

The modular data center market is slated to rise from USD 13 billion in 2018 to USD 50 billion by 2025, according to a 2019 Global Market Insights, Inc. report. Increased cost-effectiveness with the adoption of prefabricated technologies in business operations is a major factor propelling the market growth. The major cost benefits offered by IT facilities are in the deployment, installation, operations, and maintenance costs. These advantages allow small-scale businesses to easily deploy and maintain their business operations with reduced capital expenditure.

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The large facilities incorporate modern technologies that require high operational expenses & maintenance services. Business sectors are spending large amounts of money on installing preventative maintenance solutions to predict component failures or downtime. However, modular facilities being portable in size and design do not require such costly tools to manage the system components and devices, propelling the modular data center market demand.

The rising demand for edge computing in business operations will augment modular data center market share. The businesses are dependent on IT infrastructure that is cost-effective and close to the network source, providing better data transmission speed & accuracy. Edge computing differs from traditional data centers as they bring processing power from the center of the network to the edge, closer to where the data is consumed by a computer, smartphone, or other device by deploying smaller & decentralized servers.

Prefabricated facilities are offering several features such as ease in deployment, unique design & architecture, and portability. These modular data centers are being installed at remote locations/sites to address the latency and bandwidth issues by linking to regional data centers whenever needed and improving the user experience. Such factors are driving the adoption of edge computing, fueling the modular data center market size.

Businesses operating in the IT & telecom sector require the speedy deployment of data centers. The modular facilities are fully integrated with network connections, servers, power lines, monitoring units, fire detection units, security, storage, and cooling. The customers are not required to buy these additional hardware components separately and appoint an in-house technical team to install and manage them. In the modular data center market, IT & telecom industry is witnessing a high adoption of the facility to improve the scalability and flexibility of its business operations. With the rapid business expansion or relocation of a business base, the enterprises are dependent on the IT equipment that can be easily shifted or deployed to a new location, accelerating the market growth.

Browse key industry insights spread across 210 pages with 219 market data tables & 27 figures & charts from the report, "Modular Data Center Market Size By Component (Solution [All-in-One, Individual], Service [Consulting, Installation & Deployment, Maintenance & Support]), By Application (BFSI, IT & Telecom, Energy, Government & Defense, Healthcare, Industrial), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Benelux, China, India, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, GCC, South Africa), Growth Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2019 - 2025" in detail along with the table of contents:

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/modular-data-center-market

In 2018, solutions accounted for over 80% of the modular data center market revenue. With the increased demand for energy-efficient operations, several manufactures are incorporating advanced technologies into the power & cooling devices. For instance, Schneider Electric SE is offering optimized cooling solutions specifically designed for prefabricated SmartShelter modules and containers. Moreover, with the rapid expansion of business operations, the IT facility size is also increasing simultaneously for supporting the data management tasks, driving the demand for modern IT solutions. Increasing demand for data storage & applications from enterprises will drive the demand for solutions in the modular data center market over the forecast timeline.

The North America modular data center market is witnessing high growth and will expand at a CAGR of 20% over the coming years. The region is one of the earliest adopters of the technology owing to the region's stable economic conditions and developed infrastructure. The growing use of internet services and connected devices has led to a rise in the demand for modular data centers in the region. In the U.S., an increased adoption of these facilities for military & defense applications has also been witnessed.

Major companies participating in the modular data center market include Cisco Systems, Inc., IBM Corporation, Baselayer Technology, LLC, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company, Dell, Inc., Schneider Electric SE, SGI Corporation, IO Data Centers, LLC, BladeRoom Group Ltd., Vertiv Co., Cannon Technologies Ltd., Eaton Corporation, Flexenclosure AB, CommScope, Inc., Rittal GmbH & Co. KG., and Stulz GmbH, among others. These players are engaged in partnerships to develop innovative technologies that will improve business operations and IT performance.

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https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/data-center-colocation-market

About Global Market Insights

Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.

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SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The global marijuana drying and curing equipment market size is expected to reach USD 157.1 million by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., registering a 10.4% CAGR during the forecast period. Increasing number of countries legalizing cannabis cultivation and consumption, growing cultivation capacity, rising cannabis preference by patients suffering from cancer pain, arthritis, and epilepsy, as well as for other relevant medical conditions are some of the factors driving demand for marijuana drying and curing equipment.

Key suggestions from the report:

U.S. dominated the global market in 2017, owing to rising number of states legalizing the cultivation, sale, and consumption of marijuana; the incremental opportunity in the country is expected to be USD 17.6 million between 2018 to 2025

Germany is anticipated to be the fastest growing market with a CAGR of 5.9 % between 2020 and 2025. The country is expected to start distributing licenses for weed cultivation in early 2019

Some of the key market players in the market are Cann Systems, LLC; Darwin Chambers ; Conviron; Autocure; Yofumo Technologies, Inc.; DHydra Technologies; EnWave Corporation; HARTER GmbH; and PROTEIN SOLUTIONS GROUP, LLC.

Read 60 page research report with TOC on "Marijuana Drying and Curing Equipment Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Country (U.S., Canada, Germany, Australia, Uruguay, Israel, and Colombia), And Segment Forecasts, 2019 - 2025" at: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/marijuana-drying-curing-equipment-market

Stringent quality standards for cultivation and curing of medical marijuana is anticipated to boost demand for high quality and potent marijuana produced through organic methods due to their usage in treatment of various medical conditions. These newly developed machines help avoid contamination, prevent moisture variations, preserve active ingredients, and maintain optimum external conditions, all of which were difficult to maintain by traditional methods. Thus, higher product quality obtained through this equipment is expected to drive the market.

The number of weed cultivators has increased at a rapid rate with a rise in the number of countries legalizing marijuana. Globally, North America was the largest contributor in terms of number of marijuana cultivators in 2017. This has had a positive impact on demand for marijuana drying and curing equipment, as consumer demand shifts to high quality and potent products.

U.S. dominated this market in 2017, with a 55.0% revenue share, and is expected to maintain its dominance through 2025. This is attributed due to rapid legalization of cannabis in an increasing number of states in the country and growing consumption of medical cannabis for chronic pain, arthritis, cancer, and epilepsy. U.S. is anticipated to witness incremental opportunity of USD 17.6 million between 2018 and 2025, owing to potential legalization of cannabis in other states. Germany is expected to witness the second-highest incremental opportunity of USD 11.7 million between 2020 and 2025 as the country is expected to start distributing licenses for weed cultivation in early 2019. This, in turn, is expected to drive demand for marijuana drying and curing equipment over the forecast period.

Grand View Research has segmented the global marijuana drying and curing equipment market on the basis of country:

Marijuana Drying and Curing Equipment Country Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2014 - 2025)

U.S.



Canada



Germany



Australia



Uruguay



Israel



Colombia

Find more research reports on Medical Devices Industry, by Grand View Research:

Powered surgical instruments market - Powered surgical instruments are the complex surgical devices beneficial in providing functionality and consistency to critical surgical procedures. The developments in medical fields including orthopedics, neurology, cardiology, dentistry, and otology have played a key role in the development of the improved powered surgical instruments.

Cold Compression Therapy Market - Cold compression therapy or hilotherapy combines two of the principles of R.I.C.E (rest, ice, compression, elevation) to reduce pain and swelling from an acute damage to soft tissues. This therapy is particularly used for treating Sprains, pulled muscles, strains and pulled ligaments.

Surgical Lasers Market - Global surgical lasers market is projected to grow due to technical advances in surgical lasers, increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases, particularly ophthalmic disorders and growing preference towards minimally invasive surgeries are the major factors responsible for its growth.

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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Destiny Media Technologies Inc. (TSXV: DSY) (OTCQB: DSNY) ("Destiny"), the makers of Play MPE, a cloud-based SaaS solution for digital asset management in the music industry, today announced the integration of Play MPE within Nielsen's BDSradio, providing access to high quality audio files directly from Play MPE.

"Developing effective tools for the music industry is at the core of our business," said Fred Vandenberg, President and CEO, Destiny. "Play MPE has been leading the transformation to digital promotion since 2003. The integration of Play MPE and BDSradio helps provide instant access to the content programmers want, when they want it."

ABOUT DESTINY MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES INC.

Destiny Media Technologies ("Destiny") provides software as service (SaaS) solutions to businesses in the music industry solving critical problems in music delivery and promotion. Destiny's core service, Play MPE (www.plaympe.com), provides a digital solution for effective music promotion and delivery. Working with the music industry's major and independent record labels, independent artists and promoters, Play MPE has delivered over 871 million releases, providing content to the music industry's largest community of global tastemakers. For more information, visit www.plaympe.com

CONTACT

Destiny Media Technologies Inc.

Fred Vandenberg

CEO, Destiny Media Technologies Inc.

604 609 7736 x236

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43489
- Collaboration to build global-standard platform for plasmid and virus manufacturing in China

- Merck plans to provide comprehensive products, services and training to GenScript on manufacturing

DARMSTADT, Germany, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Merck, a leading science and technology company, today announced the signing of a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with Chinese biotech company GenScript for a strategic alliance focusing on plasmid and viral vector manufacturing.

"Manufacturing of high-quality plasmid and viral vectors is one of the most critical components in the commercialization of cell and gene therapy," said Udit Batra, Member of the Merck Executive Board and CEO, Life Science. "As we are one of the world's largest manufacturers of viral vectors, this collaboration will give GenScript access to our leading experience of nearly three decades in gene and cell therapy manufacturing."

"We are excited about the planned collaboration with Merck to better serve our local and overseas customers with cGMP manufacturing facilities, and to accelerate the drug commercialization process," said Daniel Wang Dongliang, vice president of Operations, Biologics Development Business Unit, at GenScript.

The parties envision an alliance that will accelerate the industrialization and commercialization of cell and gene therapy in China. GenScript, a leading biotech company headquartered in Nanjing, China, aims to create a global-standard platform of plasmid and virus manufacturing service in the country. Merck plans to provide GenScript with comprehensive products, training and consulting services covering process design, facility concept design and quality management system set-up from lab development to large-scale GMP manufacturing.

Merck is among only a few manufacturers that have an industrialized process to make viral vectors. To create personalized therapy products, genes are delivered into immune cells using viral vectors, such as the ones that Merck produces. The company offers a unique combination as a contract manufacturing organization and as a bioprocess manufacturing equipment maker.

A confluence of demand, growth and subsequent need to scale the cell and gene therapy market in China is an important driver for Merck to deliver its expertise to this region. According to clinicaltrials.gov, China is the world-leader in terms of where gene-modified cell therapy clinical trials are conducted. Today, more than 130 companies in China are developing cell and gene therapies ranging from chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy (CAR-T) / T cell receptor therapy (TCR-T) and adeno-associated virus (AAV) to oncolytic virus1. Moreover, 28 cell and gene therapy Investigational New Drug applications2 were submitted in China between Dec. 2017 - Dec. 2018 with more than a third already approved for clinical trials.

Merck plans to provide a complete set of process products, services and staff training to support GenScript in building a world-class plasmid and viral vector manufacture platform to accelerate the industrialization of cell and gene therapy in China.

References

1) HSmap report 2017 - Chinese Gene Therapy Industry Atlas

2) Source: Yaozhi database

Follow Merck on Twitter @Merckgroup, on Facebook @merckgroup and on LinkedIn.

About GenScript

GenScript Biotech Corp. is a world leader in the biological reagent service industry. Headquartered in Nanjing, China, the Group currently has a couple of R&D, production and operation centers in Nanjing and New Jersey, two production bases in Zhenjiang and Jinan, two European bases for its subsidiary Legend in Netherlands and Ireland, and a wholly-owned subsidiary in Japan.

With the fast growth in developing biological reagents, the Company now expands its business into immunotherapy, contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), lab equipment and industrial microbiology applications. To support these businesses, it has established open and innovation-driven technological platforms, GMP facilities for pre-clinical drug discovery and pharmaceutical product development and a full-range industrial microbial R&D and industrialization platform for enzyme screening, GMP plasmid and virus production, antibody drug discovery (Bispecific antibodies technology; Hybridoma technology; Humanized Antibody technology; Phage display technology), genetic engineering, protein engineering and fermentation process optimization. The Company is uniquely positioned and well equipped to further fulfill its mission in making people and nature healthier through biotechnology.

All Merck news releases are distributed by email at the same time they become available on the Merck website. Please go to www.merckgroup.com/subscribe to register online, change your selection or discontinue this service.

About Merck

Merck, a leading science and technology company, operates across healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 52,000 employees work to make a positive difference to millions of people's lives every day by creating more joyful and sustainable ways to live. From advancing gene- editing technologies and discovering unique ways to treat the most challenging diseases to enabling the intelligence of devices - Merck is everywhere. In 2018, Merck generated sales of 14.8 billion in 66 countries.

Scientific exploration and responsible entrepreneurship have been key to Merck's technological and scientific advances. This is how Merck has thrived since its founding in 1668. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed company. Merck holds the global rights to the "Merck" name and brand. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the business sectors operate as EMD Serono in healthcare, MilliporeSigma in life science, and EMD Performance Materials.

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LUXEMBOURG / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Ternium S.A. (NYSE: TX) announced today that its annual general meeting of shareholders will be held on Monday May 6, 2019, at 2:00 p.m. (Central European Time) at the Company's registered office, located at 29, avenue de la Porte-Neuve, L-2227, Luxembourg. Each holder of Ternium ADRs as of March 29, 2019, are entitled to instruct The Bank of New York Mellon, as depositary bank, as to the exercise of the voting rights in respect of the Company's shares underlying such holder's ADRs.

The Notice and Agenda for the Meeting, the Shareholder Meeting Brochure and Proxy Statement, the Company's 2018 annual report and other documents for the meeting, are available to shareholders on the Investor Center's section of the Company's website at www.ternium.com . The 2018 annual report includes the Company's consolidated financial statements as of December 31, 2018 and 2017 and for the years ended December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, together with the board of directors' and the independent auditors' reports thereon, and the Company's annual accounts as of December 31, 2018, together with the independent auditors' reports thereon. Copies of all such documents may also be requested, free of charge, at the Company's registered office, between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. (Central European Time). In addition, shareholders registered in the Company's share register may obtain electronic copies of such documents, free of charge, by sending an e-mail request to ir@ternium.com .

About Ternium

Ternium is Latin America's leading flat steel producer, with operating facilities in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, the southern United States and Central America. The company offers a broad range of high value-added steel products for customers active in the automotive, home appliances, construction, capital goods, container, food and energy industries through its manufacturing facilities, service center and distribution networks, and advanced customer integration systems. More information about Ternium is available at www.ternium.com.

Sebastian Marti

Ternium - Investor Relations

+1 (866) 890 0443

+54 (11) 4018 8389

www.ternium.com

SOURCE: Ternium S.A.

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SpendEdge, a leading provider of supply market intelligence solutions, has announced the completion of their latest article on the top six supply chain best practices to boost business success

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005090/en/

Read SpendEdge's latest article on the 6 supply chain best practices that will help category managers reduce excess spend. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The real importance of supply chain management in today's competitive market landscape cannot be undermined. With expectations of both consumers and business shareholders soaring to new heights, it has become quite important for businesses to better manage their supply chain activities.

At SpendEdge, we understand that adopting supply chain best practices requires extensive knowledge of new market developments. And to help companies overcome such challenges and increase value across the supply chain, we have listed down some of the supply chain best practices to follow for this year.

Supply chain best practices that every category manager should keep an eye on this year:

Best practice 1: Align supply chain responsibilities

Having a siloed business process can sometimes be harmful since the decision-making process is divided among people. Aligning supply chain responsibilities will not only ensure better supply chain management but also increase efficiency for businesses.

Achieving excellence in supply chain management is not that simple, is it? Request a free demo and know how our supply chain solutions can help you mitigate market risks.

Best practice 2: Leverage new-age technologies

In a bid to boost efficiency, most businesses integrate too many technologies without performing a comprehensive impact analysis. Companies should, in fact, analyze the efficacy of processes that need improvement and then implement technologies that can address those needs.

Best practice 3: Develop better strategic sourcing strategies

An efficient strategic sourcing plan is imperative for streamlining supply chain activities. It ensures the availability of supplies, lowers costs, and helps increase responsiveness to customers' changing needs. Companies should, therefore, focus on strategic sourcing rather than considering it the sole responsibility of the purchasing department.

To access the complete list of supply chain best practices, get in touch with an analyst today!

About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Request free proposal to know more, https://www.spendedge.com/request-free-proposal

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005090/en/

Contacts:

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

US: +1 630 984 7340

UK: +44 148 459 9299

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us
A Force in Asset-Based Lending

LONDON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Andrew Knight joins Crowell & Moring's London office as a partner in its Corporate and Financial Services practices to strengthen the firm's ability to advise clients on debt finance and asset-based lending.

Knight's practice focuses on international financial law in the context of asset-based lending, syndications, restructurings, loan and receivables finance book sales, secondary market transactions, and distressed debt trading. He represents banks and non-bank lenders, especially asset-based lenders in the United Kingdom and the United States. He has particular experience negotiating, documenting, and restructuring multijurisdictional credit facilities extended to transnational borrowers and groups, including cross-border insolvencies and pre-packed exits. He has served as the lead partner in high-profile matters, including the collapse of the Icelandic bank, Landsbanki, and he has also served as lead counsel to the lenders financing the acquisition of British Steel by Greybull Capital.

"Andrew is a highly regarded finance lawyer who brings a vast amount of experience to the firm," said Philip T. Inglima, chair of Crowell & Moring. "Our recent growth in London addresses growing client demand. This move means that we can offer clients a dynamic, high-profile team of finance lawyers to structure deals and craft solutions for clients."

Knight joins from the London office of Squire Patton Boggs, where he was a partner in the firm's Banking & Debt Finance Group. His arrival comes on the heels of Robin Baillie, Paul Muscutt, and Cathryn Williamsjoining Crowell & Moring's London office in February. Knight will be joined at the firm over the next several weeks by associates Seye Olufunwa and Mark Forster, with whom he worked at his previous firm.

"This is just another example of how we plan to strategically grow our team here and turn the office into a formidable force in London," said Robert Weekes, managing partner of the firm's London office, who joined in January to lead the firm's growth in the UK.

"I am thrilled to join forces with such a prestigious international firm," Knight said. "This is a wonderful opportunity to create a premier asset-based lending group at a firm that is clearly on the move in the London legal market. I look forward to reuniting with one of the industry's most highly-regarded teams of ABL specialists. Our team, which includes Robert Weekes, Cathryn Williams, and Paul Muscutt, has deep bench strength to solve clients' most challenging problems," Knight said.

"The new finance team has in-depth experience representing U.S. lenders and making facilities available to non-US borrowers in the UK, Europe, and Asia," Knight said. "Crowell & Moring has the strength and geographical coverage to develop this practice to the next level and beyond."

Knight's background also includes serving as pro bono counsel-by-invitation, from 2007 to 2012, to the Asset Based Lending Committee of the Asset Based Finance Association (now known as UK Finance)-an association that represents the interests of the UK's leading asset-based lenders. In that capacity, Knight led the Association's project to develop recommended forms of syndicated asset based lending documentation for use by UK market participants. Knight also served as a member of the Supply Chain Finance Working Group established at the request of the Bank of England and chaired by the Association of Corporate Treasurers.

Knight earned his law degree, with Honors, from the University of Liverpool. He has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Nottingham Law School and is a speaker at numerous legal and industry conferences in the United Kingdom and other countries.

Crowell & Moring's London Office continues to grow in other practice areas, with associate Lydia Taylor and counsel Stefanie Atchinson joining in April to work with Robin Baillie.

About Crowell & Moring LLP

Crowell & Moring LLP is an international law firm with approximately 540 lawyers representing clients in litigation and arbitration, regulatory, and transactional matters. The firm is internationally recognized for its representation of Fortune 500 companies in high-stakes litigation, as well as its ongoing commitment to pro bono service and diversity. The firm has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orange County, London, and Brussels.

Media Contact:

Rebecca Carr

Director Communications

+1 202.508.8835

Email: prteam@crowell.com

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/837631/Crowell_Moring_LLP_Andrew_Knight.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/175008/crowell_and_moring_llp_logo.jpg
Enabling technology to more effectively manage glaucoma progression and patient treatment

Serves unmet need - Currently no single examination or diagnostic test is able to accurately predict disease progression

Simple diagnostic test that can be performed at a physician's office with no external expensive equipment

New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Q BioMed Inc. (OTCQB: QBIO), a commercial stage biotechnology acceleration development company, announced today that its technology partner Mannin Research Inc. has entered into a research collaboration with the Biointerfaces Institute at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada to develop a GDF15 biomarker diagnostic kit for monitoring glaucoma severity and progression. This enabling technology will act as a companion diagnostic to the MAN-01 small molecule therapeutic with a novel mechanism of action for the treatment of Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma. The aim is to develop a simple integrated diagnostic test that can be performed at a physician's office with no external, expensive equipment.

Q BioMed recently announced it has exclusively licensed GDF15, a diagnostic biomarker for determining the severity of glaucoma using the expression levels of Growth Differentiation Factor 15 (GDF15) from Washington University in St. Louis. Determining the severity of glaucoma using this biomarker will aid in treatment decisions for patients diagnosed with, and being treated for, glaucoma.

Denis Corin, Q BioMed CEO, stated, "This diagnostic kit can be used both as a stand-alone in any ophthalmologist's office as well as being used as a companion diagnostic with our promising MAN-01 glaucoma therapeutic candidate. Currently, no single examination or diagnostic test is able to accurately predict disease progression and we believe GDF15 can help preserve visual function in glaucoma patients through accurate monitoring of disease progression. We are very pleased to team up with Mannin Research and McMaster University to advance this technology."

Mannin Research is working with Dr. John D. Brennan, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Point-of-Care Diagnostics, and Director of the Biointerfaces Institute at McMaster University, to develop the GDF15 diagnostic kit. The Biointerfaces Institute will work with Mannin Research to create, assess, and apply DNA aptamers for detecting GDF15 in aqueous humor of patients with different severities of glaucoma. The intent is to create prototype assays for the detection of GDF15 which will be suitable for point-of-care testing. The prototype kits are to be validated in a clinical setting.

Mannin Research CEO, Dr. George Nikopoulos commented, "Dr. Brennan and his team at the Biointerfaces Institute are revolutionizing the development of next-generation point-of-care diagnostic tests by integrating the most advanced analytical chemistry, materials science, and biochemistry."

About the Biointerfaces Institute

Research in the Biointerfaces Institute aims to transform our understanding of how synthetic and biological materials interact, with a focus on bioactive surfaces for sensing applications. These biosurface properties are important in materials designed for applications ranging from diagnostic devices for medical and environmental monitoring to implantable ocular and blood-contacting devices. Much of the work in the Biointerfaces Institute focusses on paper-based sensors incorporating functional nucleic acids (DNA aptamers or DNA enzymes) to produce simple diagnostic tests for use in resource limited areas. His work intertwines materials science, biochemistry and analytical chemistry in a unique manner to produce new assays and analytical devices that have the potential to revolutionize the area of biosensing.

About Q BioMed Inc.

Q BioMed aims to accelerate the monetization of biomedical technologies through rapid innovation and collaborative partnerships with industry leading researchers. Q BioMed believes its assets in oncology, vascular disease, and rare orphan diseases address unmet medical needs and large markets. The Company's FDA approved, non-opioid drug Metastron, which relieves cancer bone pain, is expected to begin generating revenues in 2019. Metastron is also approved for sale in 21 other countries. In addition to treating pain, Metastron has shown evidence of treating the cancer itself and extending survival. Q BioMed plans to conduct Phase IV trials to support label extension and cancer survival benefit using Metastron.

For more information please visit www.qbiomed.com.

Forward-Looking Statements:

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

Contact:

Denis Corin

CEO

Q BioMed Inc.

+1(646)884-7017

Investor Relations:

+1(404) 995-6671

ir@qbiomed.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43476
PHOENIX, AZ / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Uptick Newswire Stock Day Podcast welcomed Bullfrog Gold Corp. (OTCQB: BFGC) ("the Company"), a Delaware corporation that controls the commanding land and mineral positions in the Bullfrog Mine area where Barrick Bullfrog Inc. produced 2.3 million ounces of gold by conventional milling from 1989 into early 1999. President and CEO, David Beling, joined Stock Day host Everett Jolly.

To begin the interview, Jolly asked Beling to update listeners on the Company's current projects. Beling shared that the Company began in 2011 on the OTCQB and secured an initial strategic land position in the Bullfrog mine area. Since then, their land position was increased to 5,250 acres of mineral rights in an area that is one of the hottest gold exploration plays in the United States.

Beling explained that over the past year the Company staked more claims to cover new exploration targets and prepared environmental permit applications. The Company already has Barrick's database, including information on 155 miles of drilling in the area. Once these permits are approved, the Company will be able to drill high priority exploration areas and test the potential for increases in mineralization around and under the existing pits.

Jolly then asked about the Company's recent financing deal and asked what this money will be used for. Beling explained that the Company will continue environmental studies, driving approval for drill permits and metallurgical testing to evaluate equipment and methods to enhance gold recovery from heap leaching.

Jolly asked why shareholders should invest in the Company. Beling explained that the stock is currently extremely undervalued compared to most of its peer companies, making it the ideal opportunity for investors. "We're also in a very hot exploration area and we have very good exploration potential", stated Beling. Beling shared that the Company has many investors that are prominent figures in the gold sector.

To close the interview, Beling stated that the Company is backed by an experienced and successful management team. He also shared his enthusiasm for their upcoming programs in the Bullfrog mine area and what it means for the future of the Company.

To hear David Beling's entire interview, follow the link to the podcast here: https://upticknewswire.com/featured-interview-ceo-david-beling-of-bullfrog-gold-corp-otcqb-bfgc-3/

Investors Hangout is a proud sponsor of "Stock Day," and Uptick Newswire encourages listeners to visit the company's message board at https://investorshangout.com/

About Bullfrog Gold Corp.

Bullfrog Gold Corp. is a Delaware corporation that has an independent Canadian 43-101 compliant report prepared in August 2017 that estimated mineralization at 624,000 ounces at 0.7 g/tonne gold within expanded pit plans based on a gold price of $1,200 and heap leaching. More information may be sourced from www.bullfroggold.com .

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including those with respect to the objectives, plans and strategies of the Company and those preceded by or that include the words "believes," "expects," "given," "targets," "intends," "anticipates," "plans," "projects," "forecasts" or similar expressions, are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. We use certain terms in this valuation such as "mineralization" and "mineral inventory estimates" that are not defined in Canadian National Instrument 43-101; or recognized under the U.S. SEC Industry Guide 7. The Company is presently an exploration stage company. Exploration is highly speculative in nature, involves many risks, requires substantial expenditures and may not result in the discovery of sufficient mineral deposits that can be mined profitably. Furthermore, the Company currently has no resources or reserves on any of its properties. As a result, there can be no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Additional information regarding important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations is disclosed in the Company's documents filed from time to time with the United States Securities & Exchange Commission.

Contact Information:

David Beling, PE, President, CEO & Director, (970) 628-1670

About Uptick Newswire and the "Stock Day" Podcast

Founded in 2013, Uptick Newswire is the fastest growing media outlet for Nano-Cap and Micro-Cap companies. It educates investors while simultaneously working with penny stock and OTC companies, providing transparency and clarification of under-valued, under-sold Micro-Cap stocks of the market. Uptick provides companies with customized solutions to their news distribution in both national and international media outlets. Uptick is the sole producer of its "Stock Day" Podcast, which is the number one radio show of its kind in America. The Uptick Network "Stock Day" Podcast is an extension of Uptick Newswire, which recently launched its Video Interview Studio located in Phoenix, Arizona.

Uptick Newswire

602-441-3474

https://upticknewswire.com/

SOURCE: Uptick Newswire

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539445/Uptick-Newswire-Hosts-Bullfrog-Gold-Corp-on-The-Stock-Day-Podcast-to-Discuss-Upcoming-Mining-Projects
LONDON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Proagrica, the leading provider of integrated data connectivity solutions for the agricultural sector, is on a mission: to guide the industry towards 100% connectivity and embrace the changes and benefits brought by the new data revolution.

"The industry is changing," says Jeff Bradshaw, CTO at Proagrica. "We're seeing it at manufacturer and retail level, and we're starting to see it at farm level. Businesses of all sizes are testing the limits of their current platforms and seeking better ways to integrate data to drive productivity, efficiency, deeper business partnerships and for improvements that directly bolster customer experience."

Towards 100% connectivity is focused on bringing advanced data capabilities to businesses in the agriculture supply chain, with the aim of getting business' own ERP systems connected and transacting electronically with suppliers and customers either through EDI, OCR or a Portal.

What does 100% connectivity mean for businesses?

Automated ordering: Electronic transactions remove every stage of an order that could be potentially slowed down or distorted by human input.

Quick response: Customers can receive a much faster response, with real-time updates directly from the supplier.

Improved efficiency: Eliminate the errors - and resulting costs - incurred from manual data entry





Increased customer loyalty driven by accurate inventory management, intelligent customer service and delivering new services.

Although digital solutions and business software for agribusiness have previously been available, Proagrica are the first to combine the leading tech expertise of RELX with a deep understanding and experience of the agriculture industry.

Proagrica's agriculture network is already utilized by many businesses across the world. In Europe alone, 10m messages and $750m in trade are transmitted every year via the portals and EDIs used by agriculture supply chain businesses within the network. For new users, this means connecting your business just once and instantly linking to a vast network, already populated by major players in the industry.

"Connecting to a platform not only drives immediate efficiencies" concludes Jeff Bradshaw, "but creates the opportunity to become a consumer of data creating insights into the business and a clear view of the customer. The opportunity for these insights to become new services or new ways of working is enormous and those business that grasp this opportunity will be those forging ahead in our connected world."

Proagrica helps agribusinesses become more informed, efficient and connected through improved data analytics. Find out more at www.proagrica.com/towards-100/

About Proagrica

Proagrica, part of RELX, is a global provider of independent connectivity and data-driven support solutions for the agriculture industry. We deliver actionable intelligence to drive business growth across the value chain. Our superior products and services connect and empower industry participants to address their key needs around trading, productivity and compliance.

Our solutions are built around the key competences of data connectivity and data analytics delivering seamless supply chain management, supply chain standards compliance, and customer insight and engagement, essential for businesses looking to improve their value offering and expand in the modern marketplace.

Proagrica also encompasses performance-boosting farm management software brand Farmplan, and industry-leading media platforms, including Farmers Weekly.

Proagrica.com

About Reed Business Information

Reed Business Information is a fast-growth provider of information and analytics, solving critical problems for businesses globally. Our strong global products and services hold leading positions across a wide range of industry sectors including finance, agriculture, petrochemicals and aviation where we help customers make key strategic decisions every day. RBI is part of RELX, a global provider of information and analytics for professional customers across industries.

www.reedbusiness.com

About RELX

RELX is a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. The Group serves customers in more than 180 countries and has offices in about 40 countries. It employs over 30,000 people, of whom almost half are in North America. The shares of RELX PLC, the parent company, are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RELX. The market capitalization is approximately 32.7bn, 38.2bn, $43.4bn.

www.relx.com

For further information please contact:

Sarah Riley

Account Director

RDP Marketing

sriley@rdp.co.uk

+44-(0)-1452-429-170

Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/473567/Proagrica_Logo.jpg
New drill intercept in Idaho Vein assays 90.4 gpt gold / 4.27 m (2.6 oz per ton / 14.0 ft)

New drill intercept includes 458 gpt gold over 0.81 m (13.4 oz per ton / 2.7 ft)

Additional drilling targeting Idaho #1 Vein currently in progress

Multiple 52 Vein intersections assayed up to 15.4 gpt gold over 1.63 m (0.45 opt / 5.3 ft)

A shallow vein near surface assayed 8.5 gpt gold over 2.88 m (0.25 opt / 9.4 ft)

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Rise Gold Corp. (CSE: RISE) (OTCQB: RYES) (the "Company") is pleased to announce additional assay results from on-going diamond core drilling at the Idaho-Maryland ("I-M") Gold Project.

The exploration drill program at the Idaho-Maryland continues to be successful. Recent drilling intersected the Idaho #1 Vein below historic mining areas and intersected the 52 Vein area prior to reaching the Idaho #1 Vein target. A shallow vein was also intersected at 259 m.

TABLE 1 - New Drill Hole Intercept Highlights

Hole From (m) To (m) Gold

(gpt) Intercept

Length

(m)* Vein Idaho #1 Vein I-18-11 1381.86 1384.33 3.6 2.47 Idaho #1 I-19-13 1007.97 1013.09 5.5 5.12 Idaho #1 I-19-13A 1005.31 1009.57 90.4 4.27 Idaho # 1 Including 1008.77 1009.57 458.0 0.81 Near Surface I-18-11 259.16 262.04 8.5 2.88 ? Including 261.14 262.04 18.8 0.90 52 Vein Area I-18-11 975.50 976.70 19.2 1.20 52 I-18-11 992.25 993.88 15.4 1.63 52 Including 992.70 993.22 35.6 0.52 I-18-11 1046.17 1052.58 3.9 6.42 52 I-18-11 1142.33 1144.08 5.4 1.75 52 I-18-12 950.50 960.49 2.6 9.98 52

*The Company is not able to estimate true widths for the intersected mineralization until further drilling is completed.

Very high-grade gold mineralization was encountered in drill hole I-19-13A which assayed 90.4 gpt gold over 4.27 m (2.6 oz per ton / 14 feet). Rise Gold has interpreted this intercept to represent a significant down-dip extension of the historic Idaho #1 Vein. The intercept in I-19-13A is near the elevation of the lowest haulage level of the mine accessed by the existing vertical mine shaft.

FIGURE 1 - Visible Gold in Drill Intercept I-19-13A (in retained half core)





To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2255/43502_b873fb6414782965_002full.jpg

The Idaho #1 Vein was the most productive and highest-grade vein of the I-M Mine. Historic production from the Idaho #1 Vein is estimated at 935,000 oz of gold with an average head grade of 38.7 gpt (1.12 opt) gold. Total historic production from the Idaho Veins is estimated at 1,621,000 oz of gold with an average head grade of 28.4 gpt (0.74 opt) gold.

Idaho #1 Vein Drilling

The mineralized intercepts in drill holes I-19-13 and I-19-13A consist of a quartz shear vein and extensive zones of quartz-sericite-pyrite alteration in the walls of the vein.

Drill hole I-19-13A was wedged from drill hole I-19-13 and the holes are offset approx. 1.5 meters apart at the vein intersection

The vein in I-19-13 assayed 5.5 gpt gold over 5.12 m (0.16 opt / 16.8 ft)

The vein in I-19-13A assayed 90.4 gpt gold over 4.27 m (2.64 opt / 14.0 ft)

The weighted average of both holes is 44.1 gpt gold over 4.69m (1.29 opt / 15.4 ft)

I-19-13A includes a sample which assayed 458 gpt gold over 0.84 m (13.36 opt / 2.7 ft)

The vein in I-19-13A contains coarse visible gold in some samples of retained half core

A 40 m wide zone of alteration surrounds the vein with an average grade of ~1.5 gpt gold and individual samples assaying up to 12 gpt gold

Drill hole I-18-11 intersected the Idaho #1 Vein approx. 525 m along strike to the north-west and 200 m below I-19-13A. The intercept consists of a quartz shear vein and extensive zones of quartz-sericite-pyrite alteration in the walls of the vein.

The vein in I-18-11 assayed 3.6 gpt gold over 2.47 m (0.11 opt / 8.1 ft)

A 100 m wide zone of alteration surrounds the vein with an average grade of ~1.1 gpt gold and individual samples assaying up to 8 gpt gold

Additional drilling in the area of I-18-11 may reveal coarse gold similar to I-19-13A

Drill hole I-18-13A and I-18-11 are located 120 m and 320 m vertically below the I2400 level, the lowest level of exploration on the Idaho #1 Vein. Historic drifts were driven from each end of the vein and reported to be in gold mineralization at the time the mine was shut down.

I2400L West: historic channel samples of the vein and wallrock averaged 19.9 gpt gold over 1.93 m (0.58 opt / 6.4 ft) for a distance of 165 m to the final shutdown face

Channel samples include assays up to 481 gpt gold over 1.16 m (14.0 opt / 3.8 ft)

I2400L East: drifting in the Idaho #1 Vein was reported to be "well mineralized" over a distance of 76 m to the final shutdown face

Drill hole I-18-12 was designed to test the down-dip extension of the mineralization encountered in I-18-11 but significantly deviated and did not reach the intended Idaho #1 Vein target.

Rise Gold is currently drilling the Idaho #1 Vein target between I-19-13A and I-18-11 and utilizing directional drilling to improve the accuracy of drilling and expedite the next intercepts.

A summary of drill hole assay results from recent exploration diamond drilling on the Idaho #1 Vein target are presented in Table 1 and illustrated in Figure 2. A photo of coarse visible gold in drill hole I-19-13A is displayed in Figure 1.

The Isometric drawing (Figure 2) showing the recent drill hole intercepts in the Idaho area can be downloaded from the following link.

https://riseg.sharefile.com/d-s8bc52c537474e41a

FIGURE 2 - Idaho Vein Intercepts - Isometric View





To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2255/43502_b873fb6414782965_003full.jpg



52 Vein Area Drilling

Drill holes I-18-11 and I-18-12 drilled though the 52 Vein area en route to the Idaho #1 Vein target.

Important gold mineralization related to the 52 Vein was intersected in drill holes I-18-11 & I-18-12. The 52 Vein intercepts are located approximately 242 m and 125 m north-east of the previous drill intercept in drill hole I-18-10.

A similar style of mineralization to I-18-10 was encountered with a wide flat lying shear vein and high-grade extensional veins in the walls of vein.

Drill hole I-18-10 assayed 149.3 gpt gold over 6.8 m, including 2,190 gpt gold over 0.47 m and was previously reported by news release on Dec 13th 2018.

https://www.risegoldcorp.com/uploads/content/Dec13RiseGoldIntersects149gptgoldover6.8metersatIdahoMaryland.pdf

The current drill program is focussed on the Idaho #1 Vein target and therefore the 52 Vein intercepts are incidental to the Idaho #1 Vein drilling. The 52 Vein represents a large and compelling target for a focussed drilling program in the future.

A summary of drill hole assay results from recent exploration diamond drilling on the 52 Vein target are presented in Table 1 and illustrated in Figure 3.

FIGURE 3 - 52 Vein Intercepts - Plan View





To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2255/43502_b873fb6414782965_004full.jpg



Quality Control and Assay Methods

Richard Lippoth, M.Sc, CPG, the qualified person for the exploration drill results disclosure contained in this news release, has studied the drill core discussed in this news release and has reviewed the analytical and quality control results. Mr. Lippoth has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical contents of this news release.

Benjamin Mossman, P.Eng, CEO of Rise Gold, is the qualified person for the historic production disclosure contained in this news release. Historic production at the Idaho-Maryland Mine is disclosed in the Technical Report on the Idaho-Maryland Project dated June 1st, 2017 and available on www.sedar.com.

Rise has implemented a quality control program for its drill program to ensure best practice in the sampling and analysis of the drill core. This includes the insertion of blind blanks, duplicates and certified standards. HQ- and NQ-sized drill core is saw cut with half of the drill core sampled at intervals based on geological criteria including lithology, visual mineralization, and alteration. The remaining half of the core is stored on-site at the Company's warehouse in Grass Valley, California. Drill core samples are transported in sealed bags to ALS Minerals analytical assay lab in Reno, Nevada.

All gold assays were obtained using a method of screen fire assaying. This procedure involves screening a large pulverized sample of up to 1 kg at 100 microns. Any +100 micron material remaining on the screen is retained and analyzed in its entirety by fire assay with gravimetric finish and reported as the Au (+) fraction result. The -100 micron fraction is homogenized and two sub-samples of 30-50 grams are analyzed by fire assay with AAS finish. If the grade of the material exceeds 10 gpt the sample is re-assayed using a gravimetric finish. The average of the two results is taken and reported as the Au (-) fraction result. All three values are used in calculating the combined gold content of the plus and minus fractions.

About Rise Gold Corp.

Rise Gold is an exploration-stage mining company. The Company's principal asset is the historic past-producing Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine located in Nevada County, California, USA. The Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine is a past producing gold mine with total past production of 2,414,000 oz of gold at an average mill head grade of 17 gpt gold from 1866-1955. Historic production at the Idaho-Maryland Mine is disclosed in the Technical Report on the Idaho-Maryland Project dated June 1st, 2017 and available on www.sedar.com. Rise Gold is incorporated in Nevada, USA and maintains its head office in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Benjamin Mossman

President, CEO and Director

Rise Gold Corp.

For further information, please contact:

RISE GOLD CORP.

Suite 650, 669 Howe Street

Vancouver, BC V6C 0B4

T: 604.260.4577

info@risegoldcorp.com

www.risegoldcorp.com

The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this news release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur.

Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to certain factors including, without limitation, obtaining all necessary approvals, meeting expenditure and financing requirements, compliance with environmental regulations, title matters, operating hazards, metal prices, political and economic factors, competitive factors, general economic conditions, relationships with vendors and strategic partners, governmental regulation and supervision, seasonality, technological change, industry practices, and one-time events that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information contained in this release. Rise undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements or information except as required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43502
Adds Another Potential IPO Client Expected to Make a Significant Impact in 2019

MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / GH Capital, Inc. (OTCQB: GHHC ), a diversified holding company, today announced its signing of another IPO advisory agreement with World of Lockers Inc. World of Lockers estimates revenue of $8 million for 2019.

GH Capital CEO Bill Bollander, commented, "World of Lockers has a fantastic and attractive business model. We are pleased to be working with their management team, and to get the company publicly traded in the U.S."

This transaction represents another milestone for GH Capital in regards to its clear structured business plan for 2019. The Company's business is continuing to work towards a successful 2019.

World of Lockers Inc., is more than just a locker, it offers intelligent indoor and, above all, outdoor safe systems worldwide. Thanks to its complete digitization and automation, these high-tech lockers can be used as service-boxes that allow flexible delivery and acceptance of goods, packages, etc. at any time. For the first time, a variety of services can be intelligently linked to a locker system via various software interfaces. The high-tech boxes provide the most innovative solution to parcel service providers as well as online dealers and retailers to meet their customers' growing mobility needs. In addition, anyone can rent lockers, keyless and code-based around the clock to keep their valuables until they're available to retrieve them. These high-tech boxes will be set-up at high-frequency locations such as filling stations, supermarkets and shopping malls worldwide and will be successfully positioned as a highlight advertising medium. World of Lockers markets both the entire safe as advertising space and additional advertising. The company generates a second significant income stream from advertising revenues in addition to the locker rental.

World of Lockers Inc. CEO and President Tom Zein, commented, "GH Capital is the perfect fit for us by guiding and helping us to achieve our goals. The advisory and management team is very professional and experienced in this field and we are excited to get started."

For additional information, please visit: https://world-of-lockers.com/

About GH Capital

GH Capital, Inc. (OTCQB: GHHC ) is a diversified holding company offering a range of financial solutions for businesses layered with an advisory platform to assist companies going public. For more information, please visit: http://www.ghcapital-inc.com

Forward-Looking Statements

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 (the "Exchange Act") (which Sections were adopted as part of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). Statements preceded by, followed by or that otherwise include the words "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "prospects," "outlook," and similar words or expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may," and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any anticipated results, performance or achievements. The Company disclaims any intention to, and undertakes no obligation to, revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, a future event, or otherwise. For additional risks and uncertainties that could impact the Company's forward-looking statements, please see the Company's Form 10-K filed on December 28, 2018, for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2018, including but not limited to the discussion under "Risk Factors" therein, which the Company has filed with the SEC and which may be viewed at http://www.sec.gov .

Contact Information

press@ghcapital-inc.us

305-714-9397

SOURCE: GH Capital

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539363/World-of-Lockers-Inc-Hires-IPO-Advisory-Firm-GH-Capital
J. Reed Consulting offers consulting C-level services as well as company management, enterprise digital marketing, advertising, operations, event planning, branding, creative services, public relations and talent partnerships

NORTH MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Executive Digital LLC, a company that provides digital marketing services, has just announced a new partnership with J. Reed Consulting Group LLC.

For more information about the services that Executive Digital offers its valued clients, please visit https://executive-digital.com.

"Executive Digital is pleased to expand its offerings through a new partnership with J. Reed Consulting Group," said Aleksandar Sasha Jovicic, CEO of Executive Digital "We have seen our customers' needs expand over the course of years from digital marketing to encompass additional business services for a 360 degree approach for any business including C-level services and category expansion beyond digital marketing including public relations, advertising, event planning and creative services."

"The J. Reed Consulting Group team is excited to partner with Executive Digital, expanding beyond our fully integrated digital marketing and business consulting expertise to all other divisions of marketing and business operations to help create a unified and singular strategy to help businesses grow and expand in synergy," said Joshua Reed, Founder of J. Reed Consulting Group. "We have seen tremendous results when businesses are able to have their marketing partners work in tandem with all other departments to amalgamate brand vision and execute strategy seamlessly and more effectively across all verticals-whether we are working in fashion, design or industries across the board."

"As the need grows for true, strategic search engine optimization, social media, content creation and digital ecosystems development in aligning with all other marketing and operational components of a highly effective and results-oriented business model, Executive Digital and J. Reed Consulting Group innovate brand strategies by merging digital and all business operations in synergy," Jovicic said.

Please contact Executive Digital and J. Reed Consulting Group through their websites at any time to set up a free consultation.

About Executive Digital LLC:

Executive Digital LLC is a top digital marketing agency, operating from nine offices with more than 120 employees throughout the United States, UAE and Serbia. Executive Digital LLC delivers digital marketing services based on deep industry knowledge and their longtime status as digital experts in their respective realms of the industry. As the nation's premier group of digital experts, they offer complete and advanced digital marketing solutions in the SEO, Social Media, Paid media, Web Development, Visual/Creative Arts and Lead Generation disciplines. Numerous corporations have utilized their complete marketing systems for over a decade, serving almost 150,000 clients across the nation. For more information, please visit https://executive-digital.com/.

Executive Digital LLC

1125 NE 125th St., Suite 303

North Miami, FL 33161

About J. Reed Consulting Group LLC:

J. Reed Consulting Group offers C-level consulting services as well as company management, traditional marketing, enterprise digital marketing, SEO, social media, advertising, operations, public relations, and talent partnerships. J. Reed Consulting provides services for all marketing and C-level outsourced company needs. For further information please visit www.jreedconsultinggroup.com.

Contact:

J. Reed Consulting Group

info@jreedconsultinggroup.com

54 W. 40th St., Suite 209C

New York, NY 10018

SOURCE: J. Reed Consulting Group

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539460/Digital-Marketing-Company-Executive-Digital-LLC-and-J-Reed-Consulting-Group-LLC-Announce-a-New-Partnership
PHOENIX, AZ / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Uptick Newswire Stock Day Podcast welcomed US Nuclear Corp. (OTC PINK: UCLE) ("the Company"), a company that designs, manufactures, and markets branded, full line radiation and chemical detection and specialized advanced tritium technology for the nuclear energy industry and for emerging technological processes such as Thorium and Molten Salt (MSR) reactor technologies both domestically and internationally. CEO, Bob Goldstein, joined Stock Day host Everett Jolly.

Jolly began the interview by asking why medical isotopes for diagnostic cancer scans and treatments are being withheld. Goldstein explained that there is a 40%-50% shortage of medical isotopes, which make many of the necessary cancer related scans possible. This is preventing patients from getting the care that they need, as doctors are forced to utilize less effective methods.

Consequently, the government has awarded 60 million dollars to eight companies in an effort to produce new sources for medical isotopes. One of those companies is MIFTEC, which the Company has 10% ownership of, as well as exclusive manufacturing rights for their isotope generators.

Jolly then asked how the Company got involved with MIFTEC. Goldstein explained that MIFTEC utilizes more advanced and even safer technology than its competitors. MIFTEC is also unique in the fact that they are developing a modular system, which means it is a smaller solution that can be more easily installed. Goldstein added that the technology from MIFTEC is scalable, making it more efficient in solving the current medical isotope shortage.

Jolly then asked about the Company's outlook for 2019. Goldstein stated, "We did just under $4 million in revenues this year and next year we're projecting $5.5 million in shipments. We're finding that our products are catching on very well.". He added that the Company offers many advanced instruments that are in high demand.

To close the interview, Goldstein shared that the Company is strong and growing. He also shared that given the stock's undervalued price, it is an excellent time for shareholders to consider investing.

To hear Bob Goldstein's entire interview, follow the link to the podcast here: https://upticknewswire.com/featured-interview-ceo-robert-goldstein-of-us-nuclear-corp-otcpink-ucle-7/

Investors Hangout is a proud sponsor of "Stock Day," and Uptick Newswire encourages listeners to visit the company's message board at https://investorshangout.com/

About US Nuclear Corp.

US Nuclear Corp is a fully reporting, publicly traded company on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board, traded under the ticker symbol UCLE. The Company's operations are principally engaged through its subsidiaries, operating two leading nuclear radiation detection companies, Overhoff Technology Corp. and Optron Scientific Company Inc. The Company designs, manufactures and markets branded, full line radiation detection and specialized advanced tritium technology for the nuclear energy industry and for emerging technological processes such as Thorium and Molten Salt (MSR) reactor technologies both domestically and internationally to customers such as United States Government Agencies, the U.S. Military, Homeland Security, Scientific Laboratories, Universities, Hospitals, nuclear reactor facilities in the United States, China, Canada, South Korea, Argentina, Russia and others.

Safe Harbor Act

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from expectations, estimates, and projections and, consequently, you should not rely on these forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Words such as "expect," "estimate," "project," "budget," "forecast," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "may," "will," "could," "should," "believes," "predicts," "potential," "continue," and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the expected results.

Investors may find additional information by visiting US Nuclear Corp . and the SEC website.

CONTACT:

US Nuclear Corp. (UCLE)

Robert I. Goldstein, President, CEO, and Chairman

(818) 883 7043 - Email: info@usnuclearcorp.com

www.usnuclearcorp.com

About Uptick Newswire and the "Stock Day" Podcast

Founded in 2013, Uptick Newswire is the fastest growing media outlet for Nano-Cap and Micro-Cap companies. It educates investors while simultaneously working with penny stock and OTC companies, providing transparency and clarification of under-valued, under-sold Micro-Cap stocks of the market. Uptick provides companies with customized solutions to their news distribution in both national and international media outlets. Uptick is the sole producer of its "Stock Day" Podcast, which is the number one radio show of its kind in America. The Uptick Network "Stock Day" Podcast is an extension of Uptick Newswire, which recently launched its Video Interview Studio located in Phoenix, Arizona.

Uptick Newswire

602-441-3474

https://upticknewswire.com/

SOURCE: Uptick Newswire

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539448/Uptick-Newswire-Hosts-US-Nuclear-Corp-on-the-Stock-Day-Podcast-to-Address-Solving-the-Medical-Isotope-Shortage
Technavio has announced the release of their research report on the global bioreactors market for the forecast period 2019-2023. This bioreactors market analysis report segments the market by end-users (biopharmaceutical companies, research institutes, and contract research organizations) and geography (Asia, Europe, North America, and ROW).

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005511/en/

The global bioreactors market is expected to post a CAGR of almost 7% during the period 2019-2023. (Graphic: Business Wire)

There is a growing demand for single-use bioreactors as these bioreactors are easy to use when compared to stainless steel bioreactors. The primary reason being single-use bioreactors can be set up much more smoothly for continuous processing. A single-use bioreactor used in a fed-batch manufacturing process can be converted to fit the requirements of a continuous processing operation. Customization can only be conducted on the process-specific consumable parts; the vessel stays the same irrespective of the process mode. In the case of stainless-steel bioreactor, a similar change would lead to an extensive revamp of the entire infrastructure of the facility which would result in additional investments.

The advent of start-ups and continuous technological advances by current players

The steady growth of the bioreactors market has enabled emerging start-ups to make use of bioreactor technology for the development of advanced medical procedures. For instance, companies are seen developing bioreactors that are capable of performing a chemical bath for a piece of human tissue for three weeks. High metabolism and weight loss are being observed when the tissue is reinserted into the body after the chemical bath process. After processing, the tissues are sent back to the end-user company's office to be worked in a bioreactor. Similarly, other players are also in the process of developing bioreactors at a low-cost and provide an open solution for end-users. The demand for bioreactors is expected to increase, as such procedures help in treating people suffering from obesity.

Request for a FREE sample and get selected illustrations, table of contents, list of exhibits, and example pages from this report.

"Pharmaceutical companies in Europe are constantly making efforts to plan and adopt the quality by design approach in their manufacturing processes as the European region is expected to register the highest incremental growth during the forecast period. Moreover, several organizations are seen providing information for testing and aid in analyzing the laboratory community and further assisting in infrastructural support to facilitate efficient scientific and technical cooperation among European member countries. Such factors are augmenting the use of bioreactors," says an analyst at Technavio.

To increase their bioreactors market share, manufacturers are focusing on collaborating with other players in the market. GE Healthcare has collaborated with Jacobs Engineering Group to develop the Pfizer's USD 350 million monoclonal antibody manufacturing center in China. Jacobs Engineering Group has also been involved with other biomanufacturing facilities such as Merck KGaA, Novartis, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

View snapshot of the report for a more detailed overview of the market and the segmentation covered in this report

This bioreactors industry research report provides an in-depth analysis of the primary drivers, upcoming trends, and challenges that will impact market growth over the forecast period. The report analyzes the competitive landscape and offers details on several bioreactors manufacturers including

Danaher

GE Healthcare

Merck KGaA

Sartorius

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Some of the key topics covered in the report include:

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Market characteristics

Market segmentation analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market size and forecast

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation

Geographical Segmentation

Regional comparison

Key leading countries

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base includes enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies.

Please contact our media team at media@technavio.comformore information

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005511/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

www.technavio.com
SPRINGVILLE, UT / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / A&E welcomes Rustic Remodel to their line-up starring founders of Rustica, Kate and Paul Allen. The one-hour special airs Saturday, March 23rd, 2019 11/10c am.

Rustic Remodel introduces a new focus on home renovation as Kate and Paul design their customers home remodel with a story and meaning in mind. The Utah couple have a different approach to the DIY industry as they work together (DIT) to not only design and manufacture their soulful products, but try to strengthen their relationship as husband and wife.

Kate and Paul's DIT values helped them to build Rustica as well as what they claim to be the real success; their four children. Working side-by-side the couple designs and sells functional art for their customers homes full of soul and rustic charm. The A&E Special will take the audience behind the scenes as the couple sketch out concepts then head into their 60,000 square foot manufacturing plant to get hands-on with their meaningful designs. Kate and Paul lead a team of approximately 150 employees from engineers, to welders, to machinists, painters, project managers and expert craftsman to bring the designs to life.

Rustic Remodel will take you on Kate and Paul's DIT journey as they manage their business, design functional art and sweep each other off their feet.

The Rustic Remodel pilot episode focuses on the Jenkins family who came to Kate and Paul for barn doors for their home but ended up having their lives changed by receiving a complete home refresh.

CONTACT:

Paul Allen

801-427-4795

paul@rustica.com

SOURCE: Rustica

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539419/Utah-Couple--Founders-of-Rustica-Launch-a-New-Home-Improvement-Twist-on-DIY-Industry
PALM DESERT, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Full Alliance Group, Inc. (OTC PINK: FAGI) ("Full Alliance Group"' or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that Nutra Yu. Inc. ("Nutra Yu"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company, has entered into an agreement for the exclusive distribution of its nutraceutical and supplement products (the "Agreement").

Under terms of the Agreement, Nutra Yu has entered into a 50/50 Net Profits partnership with distribution and channel marketing expert Mr. Alon Sida, founder of leading online retailer Shoezoo, for his organization to exclusively distribute the entire "Dr. Louie Yu Formulations" nutraceutical product line through its automated 50,000 sq. ft. warehousing facilities and to develop/access new distribution channels for the company. Services provided on behalf of Nutra Yu will include all online sales management, online marketing, customer service, inventory management, warehousing, shipping and returns. Additionally, the Agreement allows for Nutra Yu to co-locate the Dr. Louie Yu Formulations operational headquarters within Shoezoo's Los Angeles warehouse facility. In connection with the Agreement, Full Alliance Group will also issue 2,000,000 restricted shares of its common stock.

Shoezoo is an online retailer and distribution company specializing in selling products on US and international marketplaces, flash sale sites and other online sales channels. Shoezoo was founded in 2007, selling brand name footwear online, and are currently offering a variety of products in different categories that are featured on more than 30 international ecommerce platforms including Amazon, eBay, Walmart.com, Wish.com, Groupon, Overstock, Google Shopping, Jet.com, Newegg, and many more.

Shoezoo's 50,000 sq. ft. fulfillment center, centrally located near LAX, enables its partners to avoid the hassle of storing inventory and or dealing with warehousing. Shoezoo handles inventory receiving, picking, packing, shipping, and returns. Shoezoo has the knowledge and experience needed to handle every aspect of online selling, grow partner businesses, and build brand awareness. Selling partners provide the products, Shoezoo takes care of the rest.

Dr. Paul Brian Volpp, CEO and President of Full Alliance Group, stated, "Alon Sida and Shoezoo first made a name for themselves selling footwear online, but very much like Amazon.com, they leveraged their expertise, established distribution channels, and fulfillment capabilities to help other suppliers and manufacturers get exposure, grow sales, and maximize profits."

"This cost and profit sharing partnership immediately provides the Dr. Louie Yu Formulations product line with a new headquarters and high-capacity warehousing, distribution, and customer service operations. Not only will this save valuable time and an enormous amount of upfront capital, but it will also enable Dr. Yu to better focus on product development, manufacturing, and quality control."

Alon Sida, commented, "Over the past 12 years, we have worked hard to build and refine an extremely dynamic and efficient online marketing, sales, and distribution network. Through partnering with innovative suppliers and manufacturers like Nutra Yu, we can boost their business model to the next level with our proven marketing knowhow and backend systems. It's a definitely a win-win for both companies. I look forward to working with the entire Full Alliance team to distribute Nutra Yu products around the world."

About Nutra Yu, Inc.

Nutra Yu, Inc. was founded by Dr. Yu to further develop, market, and distribute his proprietary line of nutraceuticals. Nutra Yu's 'Dr. Louie Yu Formulations' are a complete product line of unique all-natural nutraceuticals based on the science of traditional Chinese medicine, Western orthomolecular concepts, and modern-day physics. This innovative fusion of eastern and western methodologies has generated a remarkable new scientific system which management believes effectively addresses the root of most daily health conditions - inflammation, weight gain, the loss of vital energy, and environmental toxicity.

The Dr. Louie Yu Formulations brand currently consists of more than ten (10) distinct products, including multivitamins and minerals, amino acid blends, immune boosters, digestion aids, sleep aids, stress relief, and hormone support. Dr. Yu's orthomolecular formulation of ingredients are not found in any other supplement product and contain no starch, corn, milk, wheat, yeast, sugar, caffeine, eggs, salt, artificial colors, binders, flavors, preservative or fish derivatives. Dr. Louie Yu Formulations are sold direct to consumers via various Dr. Yu clinics/practices and recently online through Amazon.com.

For additional information regarding Nutra Yu, visit www.drlouieyu.com .

Sincerely,

Dr. Paul Brian Volpp

President & CEO / Director

Full Alliance Group Inc.

About Full Alliance Group Inc.

Full Alliance Group Inc. (OTC PINK: FAGI) is a multi-faceted holding company with various interests in technology, healthcare, and nutraceuticals.

For additional information.

Full Alliance Group Inc. Investor Relations

Dave Donlin

Email: Info@TheCervelleGroup.com

Phone: 407-490-6635

Web: www.StockInvestorDaily.com

visit www.fullalliance.com

Contact: ir@fullalliance.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This shareholder update may contain a number of forward-looking statements. Words and variations of words such as: "expect"', "goals"', "'could", "plans", "believe", "continue", "may", "will", and similar expressions are intended to identify our forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: our expectation for growth, benefits from brand-building, cost savings and margins. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those indicated in our forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: continued volatility of, and sharp increase in: costs/pricing actions, increased competition, ability to raise sufficient operating capital, risks from operating internationally, consumer weakness, weakness in economic conditions and tax law changes.

SOURCE: Full Alliance Group, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539438/Full-Alliance-Groups-FAGI-Nutra-Yu-Enters-Exclusive-Distribution-Partnership-and-Relocates-to-Automated-50000-Sq-Ft-Warehouse-Facility-in-California
CRANBROOK, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Eagle Plains Resources Ltd.(TSX-V: "EPL") has received notice from Rockridge Resources Ltd. (TSX-V: ROCK) that it has commenced a winter diamond drilling program on the Knife Lake Property, owned 100% by Eagle Plains and under option to Rockridge. Winter drilling will consist of approximately 1,000m in eight to ten holes. The 85,196 ha Knife Lake claims cover both the historical Knife Lake VMS deposit and an extensive, under-explored regional VMS target area. The Knife Lake area saw extensive exploration from the late 1960's to the 1990's with the last documented work program completed in 2001.

To earn a 100% interest, Rockridge has agreed to make a cash payment to Eagle Plains of $150,000 upon regulatory approval (complete), issue up to 5,250,000 common shares of Rockridge (2M shares issued to date) and complete $3,250,000 in exploration expenditures over four years. Eagle Plains will retain a 2% net smelter royalty ("NSR") on certain claims which comprise the project area. Under the terms of the agreement Rockridge is designated as the Operator of the project.

See Knife Lake regional map

The current drill program will focus on verifying the results of historic drilling as well as infill and step- out drilling to better define the Knife Lake mineralization. Results from this program will be used to support an updated NI 43-101 compliant resource calculation for the project.

Historical drill assays will be validated by twinning select historical drill holes targeting the higher grade core of the Knife Lake deposit. In 1998, Leader Mining published a historical estimate of the shallow VMS deposit, reporting a drill-indicated, non NI 43-101 compliant historical resource of 20.3 million tonnes grading 0.6% Cu, 0.1 g/t Au, 3.0 g/t Ag, 0.06% Co and 0.11% Zn. Leader also defined a higher grade zone of 11.0 million tonnes grading 0.95% Cu within this historical estimate.*

Additional drilling will focus on resource upgrade or expansion by infill drilling between historical holes, and drilling in areas with unverified or missing historical assays.

Knife Lake Geology and History

The Knife Lake deposit lies within the Scimitar Complex, which is believed to be the disconnected, northwest extension of the northern Flin Flon domain and the Amisk Volcanic package, which hosts massive sulphide mineralization in the Flin Flon-Snow Lake mining district, the most prolific greenstone belt in Canada. Since the initial discovery of mineralization in 1915, the Flin Flon camp has produced over 170 million tons of sulphide ore from 31 VMS deposits worth in excess of C25 billion dollars. (2002 NRC, Current Research). Exceptionally high Au contents of many of these deposits, including Flin Flon (62.4 Mt @ 2.6 g Au/t) and Lalor (8.8 Mt @ 4.6 g Au/t in the Au zone), make them particularly attractive exploration targets.This information is provided only as historical reference. Management cautions that past results or discoveries on proximate land are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be achieved on the subject properties.

Knife Lake is interpreted to be a remobilized VMS deposit. The stratabound mineralized zone is approximately 15 m thick and contains copper, silver, zinc and cobalt mineralization which dips 30 to 45 eastward over a strike-length of 4,500 m, with an average horizontal width of approximately 300 m. The deposit is hosted by felsic to intermediate volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks which have been metamorphosed to upper amphibolite facies. The deposit is typical of VMS mineralogy which has been significantly modified and partially remobilized during the emplacement of granitic rocks. The mineralization straddles the boundary between two rock units and occurs on both limbs of an overturned local fold.



Drilling has outlined a series of stratabound ore lenses which are controlled by complex geological structures. In the copper mineralized zone, significant thickening of the mineralization occurs near the central portion of the deposit. Sulphides and rare native copper are visible in outcrop. Massive sulphides consist of 25 to 60% pyrrhotite and 0.2 to 10% chalcopyrite mineralization. Pyrite is present as irregular disseminations and masses. Locally, up to 8% sphalerite (zinc mineralization) is present.



The first documented work in the Knife Lake showing area occurred between 1969-1973, consisting of ground and airborne geophysical surveys and extensive soil geochemical sampling. The discovery drill-hole, collared in September, 1969, returned 2.37% Cu over 4.48m from 19.96-24.44m, including 3.5% Cu over 2.5m from 20.27-22.77m. A total of 96 diamond drill holes (8,232m) were completed between 1969-1971 and in 1973 Straus Exploration announced a maiden resource on the Knife Lake Deposit.



Hudson's Bay Exploration and Development Company Ltd. later carried out a regional Airborne EM geophysical survey in the Knife Lake - Scimitar Lake area, followed up by geological mapping, prospecting, ground geophysics and diamond drilling. The property was subsequently optioned by Copperquest Incorporated in 1989, which carried out further geophysical and geochemical surveys and optioned the property to Leader Mining International in 1996. Between 1996 and 2001, Leader flew various airborne geophysical surveys in the area, including EM, magnetic, and gravity surveys. This was followed up with stripping and trenching of the outcropping deposit area. Ground TEM, magnetic, ground IP/Resistivity and VLF-EM surveys were completed over and adjacent to the main deposit area.



Between 1996 and 1998, Leader completed 315 drill holes, outlining a broad zone of mineralization occurring at less than 100 meters depth (AF 63M-0006, Report 10). Late in 1998, Leader published the geological reserves of the deposit, reporting a drill-indicated resource of 20.3 million tonnes grading 0.6% Cu, 0.1 g/t Au, 3.0 g/t Ag, 0.06% Co and 0.11% Zn. It was suggested that 11.0 million tonnes grading 0.95% Cu could be mined using an open pit (SMDI 0406).

*Eagle Plains' management considers these estimates to be historical in nature and cautions that a Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as current mineral resources or mineral reserves in accordance with National Instrument 43-101. These estimates do not comply with current definitions prescribed by National Instrument 43-101 or the Canadian Institute of Mining, and are disclosed only as indications of the presence of mineralization and are considered to be a guide for additional work. The historical models and data sets used to prepare these historical estimates are not available to Eagle Plains, nor are any more recent resource estimates or drill information on the Property.

A 357kV powerline has recently been completed to within 16km of the Knife Lake Deposit area, greatly enhancing the project's infrastructure

Charles C. Downie, P.Geo., a "Qualified Person" for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects and a Director of Eagle Plains, has prepared, reviewed, and approved the scientific and technical disclosure in the news release.

About Eagle Plains Resources



Based in Cranbrook, B.C., Eagle Plains continues to conduct research, acquire and explore mineral projects throughout western Canada. The Company is committed to steadily enhancing shareholder value by advancing our diverse portfolio of projects toward discovery through collaborative partnerships and development of a highly experienced technical team. Managements' current focus is to preserve its treasury while advancing its most promising exploration projects. In addition, Eagle Plains continues to seek out and secure high-quality, unencumbered projects through research, staking and strategic acquisitions. Since 2012, Eagle Plains has added to its portfolio a number of new projects exceeding 130,000 ha targeting mainly gold, uranium and base-metals in Saskatchewan, a highly-prospective mining jurisdiction which was recently recognized by the Fraser Institute as the second best place in the world in terms of Investment Attractiveness. Throughout the exploration process, our mission is to help maintain prosperous communities by exploring for and discovering resource opportunities while building lasting relationships through honest and respectful business practices.



Expenditures from 2011-2018 on Eagle Plains-related projects exceed $20M, most of which was funded by third-party partners. This exploration work resulted in approximately 30,000 m of diamond-drilling and extensive ground-based exploration work facilitating the advancement of numerous projects at various stages of development

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Tim J. Termuende"

President and CEO

For further information on EPL, please contact Mike Labach at

1 866 HUNT ORE (486 8673)

Email: mgl@eagleplains.com or visit our website at http://www.eagleplains.com

Cautionary Note Regarding 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. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

SOURCE: Eagle Plains Resources Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539425/Rockridge-Resources-Commences-Winter-Drilling-Program-at-Eagle-Plains-Knife-Lake-Project-Northern-Saskatchewan
High-Grade Eastern Trend Intersected in Multiple Holes; Shear Zone Strike Length Tripled

ST. JOHN'S, NL / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Sokoman Minerals Corp. (TSX-V: SIC) (OTCQB: SICNF) (the "Company" or "Sokoman") is pleased to announce the completion of a highly successful Phase 3 drilling program at Moosehead. Final assay results are expected in mid to late April, at which point the Company will focus on compiling, interpreting and modeling data received from the three phases of drilling as well as down-hole camera work, structural interpretation and geophysics in order to prepare for Phase 4 drilling later in 2019.

Highlights:

21 holes totaling approximately 4,715 m completed, including eight holes from the ice on North Pond. Logging and sampling are expected to take two weeks to be completed, with final assays expected mid to late April.



All holes encountered significant intervals of shearing and quartz veining with many holes cutting multiple zones.



At least seven holes, MH-19-50, 52, 53, 56, 61, 62 and 63 (including five from the ice) intersected visible gold bearing quartz veins, highlighted by MH-19-62 which cut three separate veins from 0.30 to 0.90 m thick (core lengths*) with the 0.90 m vein carrying widespread, fine visible gold within a strongly mineralized section from 240.00 to 244.50 m downhole, located 110 m northeast of discovery hole MH-18-01.



Strike length of Eastern Trend shear zone extended to at least 175 m, remaining open along strike to the north and south, and to depth.

Timothy Froude, P. Geo., President and CEO, states: "We are extremely pleased with the results from the third, and quite possibly the most successful drilling Phase of drilling at Moosehead. While our window for effectively testing the Eastern Trend has temporarily closed, we anticipate a barge-based diamond drill program to take place later in 2019 so as to continue evaluating and expanding the high-grade mineralized zone. With a healthy treasury of just under $3 million, we are well positioned to take Moosehead to the next level. We also intend to complete drilling on the nearby, epithermal style, Clarks Brook property during Q2 2019, testing for high-grade mineralization we believe may exist below the known mineralized zones."

QP

This news release has been reviewed and approved by Timothy Froude, P. Geo., a "Qualified Person" under National Instrument 43-101 and President and CEO of Sokoman Minerals Corp.

*True thicknesses from Phase 3 holes are believed to range from 75% to 100% of core length. Sections will be provided once completed and updated with final assays.

About Sokoman Minerals Corp.

Sokoman Minerals Corp. is a discovery-oriented company with projects in Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. The Company's primary focus is its portfolio of gold projects in Central Newfoundland on the structural corridor hosting the 4.2 million ounce Valentine Lake gold project 150 km southwest of the Company's high-grade Moosehead gold project. The Company also has a 100% interest in an early-stage antimony/gold project in Newfoundland recently optioned to White Metal Resources, as well as a 100% interest in the Clark's Brook Gold Property, 35 km southeast of Moosehead. In Labrador, the Company has a 100% interest in the Iron Horse (Fe/U/REE) project.

To learn more, please contact: Timothy Froude, P. Geo.,

President & CEO

709-765-1726

tfroude@sokomaniron.com Cathy Hume, Director,

Investor Relations

416-868-1079 x231

cathy@chfir.com Website: www.sokomaniron.com

Twitter: @SokomanMinerals

Facebook: @SokomanMinerals

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.

Investors are cautioned that trading in the securities of the Corporation should be considered highly speculative. Except for historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Sokoman Minerals Corp. will not update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. More detailed information about potential factors that could affect financial results is included in the documents filed from time to time with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities by Sokoman Minerals Corp.

(To view the full-size image, please click here)

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SOURCE: Sokoman Minerals Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539480/Sokoman-Minerals-Completes-Phase-3-Drilling-at-Moosehead-Gold-Property-Newfoundland
Marijuana News TodayThe marijuana news today is a whirl of activity as New Jersey marijuana legalization moves forward and HEXO stock explodes.First, New Jersey marijuana legalization is one of several ongoing stories about marijuana legalization in the United States. Several U.S. states are considering passing bills that would legalize pot, each of them making varying degrees of progress.In the case of New Jersey, a marijuana legalization bill will eventually be put to a vote by the state Senate and Assembly. Committees in the state Congress have been advancing the measure, despite long delays and "back-room wrangling." (Source: ".

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.
Founder and Chairperson Sheikha Moza bint Nasser Calls for More Partners to Invest in Youth to Create Peace and a Sustainable Future, and Raise the Bar to 5 Million Jobs by 2022

DOHA, QATAR / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Founder and Chairperson of Silatech and UN Sustainable Development Goals advocate, announced that youth will receive 3 million employment opportunities by 2022, calling for more partners to help raise that number to 5 million.

During the high-level event, Empowering Youth, Transforming Societies, hosted by Silatech in Geneva, Sheikha Moza addressed global leaders about the importance of tackling rising youth unemployment through economic and social empowerment, particularly in developing regions with increasingly young populations.

At 29 percent, youth unemployment in the Arab region is currently one of the highest in the world, compared to 13 percent globally. Without meaningful work, our young men and women have no hope for the future, leaving them more vulnerable to radicalization, violence, and political extremism, said Sheikha Moza.

Sheikha Moza warned that without decent livelihood opportunities and meaningful work frustrated youth become socially, politically and economically excluded, exacerbating pressing global challenges like poverty, social unrest, and illegal mass migration.

Young men and women need the chance to earn a living that will allow them to support their families, contribute to society, and build better futures, she continued. This is the hope that Silatech offers. Established in 2008, Silatech, with the help of over 300 partners, has successfully empowered more than one million young people with economic opportunities and jobs in 17 countries.

Sabah Ismaeel Al Haidoos, CEO of Silatech, on the organization s work: Silatech promotes large-scale job creation, entrepreneurship, access to capital and markets, and the participation of young people in economic development thus contributing to the attainment of a number of Sustainable Development Goals.

Marking this milestone, the event included speakers & panelists such as Michelle Bachelet Jeria, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Hassan Ali Khayre, Prime Minister of Somalia, Filippo Grandi, 11th United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Chris Gardner, author of The Pursuit of Happiness , as well as around 300 guests from the international community.

Silatech's combined efforts with EU in Yemen

As a result of its efforts in conflict-affected areas, Silatech was awarded a grant of 5 Million from the European Union for the Hope Project . Implemented in Yemen, the project seeks to achieve economic empowerment and financial inclusion for youth and women, the most vulnerable groups in Yemen. Through innovative economic empowerment tools including capacity building and a grants fund, 10,000 Yemeni youth and women will be economically empowered in an effort to improve the current socioeconomic conditions, achieve stability, and improve the living conditions of young people in Yemen.

About Silatech

Silatech is an international, social development non-profit, non-government organization with programs and operations in 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa that aims to combat unemployment, extremism and the marginalization of women and youth through employment and economic empowerment initiatives, particularly in conflict, post-conflict, and fragile areas. Through its large network of national and international partners, Silatech focuses on empowering youth by connecting them with employment opportunities and facilitating access to resources to set up and sustain successful enterprises.

Silatech operates through three major pillars:

enterprise development, supporting the establishment and growth of micro and small enterprises;

direct employment through technological solutions and training for employment;

and policy and research programs.

More information on Silatech is available here: https://silatech.org or email at info@silatech.org

Contact Info:

Name: Ms. Sabah Al Haidoos

Organization: Silatech

Address: PO Box 34111, Doha, Qatar

Phone: +(974)4469 0877 OR + (974)5554 0721 or +(974)6675 5590

Website: https://silatech.org

SOURCE: SV Advisory Group

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539481/Silatech-to-Create-5-Million-Jobs-for-Youth-By-2022
25 years of experience leading finance departments for international companies

Expertise in strategic and financial management for listed companies, particularly with the establishment of European public financing related to innovation

Regulatory News:

VALBIOTIS (FR0013254851 ALVAL PEA/SME eligible), a French Research Development company committed to scientific innovation for preventing and combating metabolic diseases, today announced the appointment of Agnes TIXIER to the Supervisory Board. This appointment, approved during the General Meeting on March 18, 2019, strengthens VALBIOTIS in the lead-up to multiple 2019 structural milestones centered around one primary objective: to launch, within the next two years, the world's first product to be clinically proven and to carry a health claim on reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes.

"Agnes TIXIER has the ideal background to support VALBIOTIS in its growth. She is very familiar with the rise of innovative SMEs and their various stages of development. Her extensive knowledge of European financial standards is a real asset for VALBIOTIS, a pioneer in the prediabetes market," emphasizes Laurent LEVY, CEO of NANOBIOTIX and Chairman of the VALBIOTIS Supervisory Board.

Currently Director at CM-CIC INVESTISSEMENT, Agnes TIXIER has demonstrated her expertise working alongside and within fast-growing companies. Most notably, she led the initial public offering of AVENIR TELECOM in 1998, prior to overseeing the financial management and external growth of this European telecom giant for 18 years. She has also proven her ability to find the funding levers best suited to support international growth plans.

"I especially enjoy working with entrepreneurs who pioneer new markets, and I have conviction in VALBIOTIS' ability to make a difference with its plant-based innovation. VALBIOTIS has had a remarkable journey, from its founding five years ago to its introduction on the Euronext Growth market two years ago. The entire team is fully committed to seeing through the development plan established. I am so pleased to be able to contribute my skills to those of the other Supervisory Board members, and to contribute to driving the company forward," states Agnes TIXIER.

VALBIOTIS today employs 38 staff members, of whom 75% work in Research Development, and has structured its governance to comprise a Board of Directors and a Supervisory Board, which will now be composed as follows:

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chairman, Sebastien PELTIER, CEO

Member, Jocelyn PINEAU, Administrative and Financial Director

Member, Pascal SIRVENT, Director of Discovery and Preclinical and Translational Research

Member, Murielle CAZAUBIEL, Director of Development and Medical Affairs

SUPERVISORY BOARD

Chair, Laurent LEVY, CEO and Co-founder of Nanobiotix

Member, Sebastien BESSY, Vice-President of Global Strategic Operations, Ipsen Consumer Health Care Division

Member, Jean ZETLAOUI, Special Scientific Adviser to the CEO, Novartis Pharma

Member, Agnes TIXIER, Director at CM-CIC INVESTISSEMENT

AGNES TIXIER

As a graduate of ICN Business School in Nancy, holder of a post-graduate degree in accounting (DECS) and member of the French Society of Financial Analysts (SFAF), Agnes began her career in 1986 in Banque de Vizille, specialized in mid-cap transactions, which would merge in 2011 with other entities of the Credit Mutuel Alliance Federale group to create CM-CIC INVESTISSEMENT. From 1990 to 1997, she served as Financial Director and Administrator of the Lyon hotel group SHB, which would merge with ACCOR. In 1997, she joined AVENIR TELECOM, a distributor specialized in mobile telephony, for whom she led the initial public offering on Eurolist C in November 1998. Over the next 17 years, as Administrative and Financial Director of the group which included 1,800 employees and 290 million in turnover in 2015, she completed a number of mergers and acquisitions and oversaw investor relations. In 2015, she became Financial Director of transport and logistics group TRANSALLIANCE (with 3,000 employees and 600 million in turnover) operating in 7 European countries. From June 2016 to February 2018, she performed her duties as Administrative and Financial Director at IDEOL, an innovative company created in 2010 in La Ciotat (46 employees, 4 million in turnover) and leader in floating offshore wind power.

ABOUT VALBIOTIS

VALBIOTIS is a French Research Development company committed to scientific innovation for preventing anc combating metabolic diseases. Its products are made for major players in the health care sector. VALBIOTIS particularly focuses on solutions to prevent type 2 diabetes, NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis), obesity and cardiovascular diseases.

VALBIOTIS was founded in La Rochelle in early 2014 and has formed numerous partnerships with top academic centers in France and abroad, including La Rochelle University, the CNRS and Clermont Auvergne University located in Clermont-Ferrand. These partnerships have enabled VALBIOTIS to benefit from strong financial leverage, particularly thanks to experts and technical partners who support its projects. The Company has established three sites in France Perigny, La Rochelle (17) and Riom (63) and an American office in Boston (MA).

VALBIOTIS is a member of the "BPI Excellence" network and received the "Innovative Company" status accorded by BPI France. VALBIOTIS has also been awarded "Young Innovative Company" status and has received major financial support from the European Union for its research programs by obtaining support from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

VALBIOTIS is a PEA-SME eligible company.

Find out more about VALBIOTIS :

www.valbiotis.com

Name: VALBIOTIS

ISIN code: FR0013254851

Mnemonic code: ALVAL

Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning the objectives of VALBIOTIS. VALBIOTIS considers that these projections are based on information currently available by VALBIOTIS and on reasonable assumptions.

However, there can be no assurance that the estimates contained in such forward-looking statements will be verified, which estimates are subject to numerous risks including the risks set forth in the reference document of VALBIOTIS filed with the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorite des Marches Financiers) under number I.17-012 on April 5, 2017 as well as in its 2018 annual financial report filed with the French Financial Markets Authority on March 8, 2019. These documents are available on the Company's website (www.valbiotis.com).

VALBIOTIS declines all responsibility for updating or revising these forward-looking statements. This press release and the information that it contains do not constitute an offer to sell or subscribe for, or a solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for, VALBIOTIS shares in any country.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005673/en/

Contacts:

VALBIOTIS

CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS

Carole Rocher /

Marc Delaunay

+33 5 46 28 62 58

medias@valbiotis.com

FINANCIAL COMMUNICATIONS

ACTIFIN

Stephane Ruiz

+33 1 56 88 11 14

sruiz@actifin.fr

MEDIA RELATIONS

MADIS PHILEO

Guillaume De Chamisso

+33 6 85 91 32 56

guillaume.dechamisso@madisphileo.com

UNITED STATES

SOLEBURY TROUT

Rebecca John Patrick Till

+1 646 378 2935

rjohn@troutgroup.com

ptill@troutgroup.com
DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Major Depressive Disorder on average affects over 16.1 million adults over the age of 18. If you are someone who feels lost, alone, or aimless, chances are the person next to you at work or in the grocery store feels the exact same way. Major companies like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Allergan (AGN) devote tens of million of research and development dollars to trying to fight this epidemic.

Many people often believe that a diploma or a relatively secure job will solve most of their problems, however, people like Jordan Paris know that this is simply not the case.

When Paris found himself in a pit of despair, he struggled with the idea of what his life meant. His struggle yielded a mind frame where he claimed, "I got caught up in the flow of life, letting the current take me wherever it wanted to go. This meant fitting in and getting good grades so that I could get a job for 50 years before retiring." Between the ages of 18 and 20, he climbed a ladder which he designed to elevate his spirits and his career.

At age 20, Paris produced his first book, Growth Mindset University. From start to finish the process took him less than 2 months and in his Growth Mindset University podcast he hosts the brightest business minds, world-class athletes, and influential thought leaders like David Meltzer to teach people the lessons they should have learned in school but didn't.

Growth Mindset University focuses on jumping into life while holding on to curiosity, joy, and love, the things that drive all of our actions. His book empowers principles and notions to bring one's self into a realm of success, satisfaction, and fulfillment through learning.

Those who are feeling lost or without skill to create the success they want will find hope in Jordan's statement from his website. He supports all growth by stating that seeds of greatness aren't inherently in us, therefore we must plant the seeds and water them continually through development.

Jordan Paris turned his blog platform into a resource for all who feel as though they are wandering through the motions. His podcast covers a wide array of topics and features inspiring stories and valuable lessons by influential leaders, which covers everything from health and psychology to communication and entrepreneurship.

Now the 21-year-old entrepreneur is expanding his own fulfillment by serving as a resource space for people who want to turn their lost hope into vivacious dedication to satisfaction. Through his blog, book, and podcast, many perspectives are highlighted and each anecdote comes with a valuable lesson from someone who created their success with their own hands.

To find out more about Jordan Paris, his journey, and resources available to you, visit https://jordanparis.com/

Empower Yourself with Minimal Guesswork: Growth Mindset University

Finding yourself not satisfied where you are and overcome with a dark sense of aimlessness can often times trigger an intense desire to reap the fruits of joy, success, and fulfillment.

Jordan Paris took his despair as he left school and began to transform his outlook on life and focused on curiosity, joy, and love. This down and out teen was able to develop a new sense of vitality over the next two years of his life.

At age 20, Paris sat down to write his first book, Growth Mindset University. He completed the 184-page book in exactly 29 days. To any and all who don't know where to start or how to build the blocks from dumps to castles, Paris invigorates his readers with a need to find their unique truths and creatively design the lives which they desire.

His book lays out the principles and thought patterns to bring one's self into a realm of success, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Through learning how to do work that matters for people who care, taking full responsibility of results, and growing to give, his invigorating manifesto brings meaning to 'growing through the motions of life.'

He discusses the growth mindset which is the basic empowering tool which one can possess. This is the knowledge that anything we don't know or are not good at CAN be mastered. He teaches how to feed the mind, develop unique inspiration, and invest in yourself. Several of the topics covered bring to light how and why we do what we do to create success, something that we must understand in order to put our ideas into actions.

Aside from his book, Paris started the Growth Mindset University podcast where he hosts the brightest business minds, world-class athletes, and influential thought leaders like David Meltzer to teach people the lessons they should have learned in school but didn't. His podcast serves to put the pen in his audiences' hands that they can use to write their own story, to creatively design the masterpiece of art that is their lives. What was once a blog platform for Paris, has become an all-encompassing resource for people who find themselves wanting to take control of their lives.

To find out more about Jordan Paris, his journey, and the content available to you, visit https://jordanparis.com/.

SOURCE: SV Advisory Group

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539482/Adopt-The-Growth-Mindset-To-Kickstart-Your-Success
Kudelski Security Partners with Hosho

To Secure Blockchain Ecosystems

New alliance offers comprehensive capabilities to enable new levels of security

for blockchain development

Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland, Phoenix (AZ), USA and Las Vegas (NV), USA, March 19th, 2019 - Kudelski Security (http://www.kudelskisecurity.com/), the cybersecurity division of the Kudelski Group (SIX:KUD.S) today announced a strategic partnership with Hosho, a global leader in blockchain security and smart contract auditing, to extend the capabilities of Kudelski Security's recently launched Blockchain Security Center (https://www.kudelskisecurity.com/about-us/news/kudelski-security-launches-new-blockchain-security-center?hsCtaTracking=d7c354bf-6b0f-4eba-984a-6269216ce6f8%7C462806a4-7dca-497f-986f-acca0a4bae18) (BSC). The partnership makes the companies' unique skillsets, market-leading services, and proven intellectual property (IP) available to help forward-leaning organizations better secure their use of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT).

Smart contracts are the most critical piece of a blockchain company's technical ecosystem - contract vulnerabilities can be exploited by malicious actors, leading to stolen and often unrecoverable funds, or unintentional code executions that could result in the locking up of millions of dollars. According to Hosho, security vulnerabilities have cost blockchain companies more than $2 billion in lost or stolen capital in 2018, and their own audit of smart contracts found that more than one in four have critical vulnerabilities and three in five have at least one security issue.

"Hosho has deep expertise and a world-class reputation for auditing the 'smart contracts' that are essential to blockchain business process workflows," said Rich Fennessy, CEO of Kudelski Security. "Combined with our expertise in cryptography, embedded security down to silicon level, and secure application development, Hosho is an ideal partner in what we believe will be a growing coalition of likeminded organizations focused on improving the underlying security of blockchain and expanding its use in business applications."

Increasingly, organizations are investing in understanding how blockchain technology can optimize business processes as well as developing applications aimed at improving efficiencies, lowering costs and enabling new business models. The combination of resources enabled through this partnership provides business executives, investors, engineers, and blockchain developers greater confidence in designing, building, and running secure applications. The result is the potential for less risk, higher efficiency, and ultimately, greater value realized from these investments.

"Hosho and Kudelski Security share the same vision for cyber resilience. It is the first time a blockchain cybersecurity leader has joined forces with a publicly traded cybersecurity company," said Hartej Sawhney, Co-Founder and President of Hosho. "Enterprises are rapidly investing into incorporating decentralized ledger technologies into their legacy systems. Companies such as Kudelski, with 30 plus years of experience in cybersecurity, IoT, and public access solutions, are needed to meet the increasingly complex demands of the Fortune 500."

Kudelski Security's blockchain expertise is built on more than 30 years' experience in information security, cryptographic design as well as more recent work in public blockchain coin design and implementation, point of sale technology development, detailed audits of application code, protocol creation, and cryptographic algorithms for major industry players in the cryptocurrency, digital communications and IoT markets. In addition to providing security audits, architecture reviews, and development services, the Kudelski Security BSC is developing a suite of expanded cryptographic solutions, full-stack enterprise blockchain security recommendations, and developer tools to support the entire blockchain ecosystem.

To learn more about Kudelski Security's blockchain offerings, please visit: www.kudelski-blockchain.com (http://www.kudelski-blockchain.com).

About Kudelski Security

Kudelski Security is the premier advisor and cybersecurity innovator for today's most security-conscious organizations. Our long-term approach to client partnerships enables us to continuously evaluate their security posture to recommend solutions that reduce business risk, maintain compliance and increase overall security effectiveness. With clients that include Fortune 500 enterprises and government organizations in Europe and across the United States, we address the most complex environments through an unparalleled set of solution capabilities including consulting, technology, managed security services and custom innovation. For more information, visit http://www.kudelskisecurity.com/ (http://www.kudelskisecurity.com/).

About Hosho

Hosho is the global leader in blockchain security, specializing in enterprise-grade security services for Fortune 500 and early-stage companies alike. Hosho continues to set the standard for blockchain security, providing state-of-the-art smart contract auditing and penetration testing services. With blockchain, the repercussions of a security hack are much greater than in traditional technology, making cybersecurity-related services of the utmost importance. Hosho plays an important role in the nascent blockchain industry by resolving issues that often lead to funds being lost or stolen. For more information on Hosho and our comprehensive suite of services, please visit www.hosho.io (http://www.hosho.io).

Media Contacts

John Van Blaricum

Vice President, Global Marketing

Kudelski Security

+1 650 966 4320

john.vanblaricum@kudelskisecurity.com
New Initiative to Encourage Critical Thinking and Empower Students to be Better Informed

Apple today announced a new initiative in support of leading nonprofit organizations in the US and Europe that offer nonpartisan, independent media literacy programs. The News Literacy Project (NLP) and Common Sense in the US and Osservatorio Permanente Giovani-Editori in Italy will each receive support from Apple to advance their efforts in empowering young people with the critical thinking skills necessary in today's digital age.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005326/en/

Apple's new initiative supports nonprofit organizations that are focused on news literacy programs. (Photo: Business Wire)

"News literacy is vital to sustaining a free press and thriving democracy, and we are proud to be collaborating with organizations on the front lines of this effort," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "We've been impressed by the important work being done by the News Literacy Project, Common Sense and Osservatorio, empowering young people to be active and engaged citizens."

"Apple News is committed to presenting quality journalism from trusted sources," said Lauren Kern, editor-in-chief of Apple News. "We're thrilled that Apple is supporting these important organizations to train the next generation on how to seek out accurate and reliable information amid an increasingly complicated news landscape."

"We are grateful for Apple's commitment to fighting misinformation and sustaining quality journalism," said Alan C. Miller, founder and CEO of NLP. "NLP is committed to equipping the next generation with the critical thinking skills to discern what news and other information to trust and the tools to become informed and engaged participants in our country's democracy. We welcome this timely initiative to help achieve our vision of seeing news literacy embedded in the American educational experience."

"The lack of young people's news literacy skills is a growing problem for our country. Revelations about the manipulation of news and the resulting impact on society have shed light on both the importance and scale of the issue," said James P. Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense. "We need to help our students not just seek out legitimate news, but also think critically about the broader world of media and ideas. Apple shares in our mission to raise a generation of children who will thrive as learners, leaders and citizens in the digital age, and Common Sense is delighted to be part of this important effort."

"Our mission is to help young people develop critical thinking skills by comparing different sources of quality information," said Andrea Ceccherini, founder and CEO of Osservatorio Permanente Giovani-Editori. "At a time when fake news is spreading, we cannot give in to the idea that third-party fact-checking services are the only way to assess the reliability of news sources. We can exercise our own minds, and be masters of our own destiny. Our ambition is to help form more citizens, increasingly opening our society to a culture of civilized debate and confrontation, which is the basis of every healthy democracy."

The News Literacy Project

The News Literacy Project (NLP), a nonpartisan national education nonprofit, empowers educators to teach middle school and high school students the skills they need to become smart, active consumers of news and other information and engaged, informed participants in our democracy. Since NLP's signature education platform, the Checkology virtual classroom, was released in May 2016, more than 17,800 educators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, three US territories and 104 other countries have registered to use it, and more than 124,000 students have benefited from its lessons. Students have told NLP that as a result of what they have learned in Checkology, they are more confident in their ability to discern and create credible information, have a greater appreciation of the role of a free press in a democracy, and are more likely to become civically engaged by voting when eligible to do so or by becoming politically active. NLP's vision is to see news literacy a critical life skill embedded in the American educational experience.

Common Sense

Common Sense is the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to helping kids and families thrive in the digital age. Common Sense Education supports K-12 schools with everything educators need to empower the next generation of digital citizens. The organization's innovative, award-winning Digital Citizenship Curriculum prepares students with lifelong habits and skills, supports teachers with training and recognition, and engages families and communities with helpful tips and tools. To help young people navigate today's news landscape with sharp and open minds, Common Sense aims to help students not just seek out legitimate news, but also think critically about the broader world of media and ideas. The Common Sense news literacy initiative will provide timely content and resources for parents, educators and teens with the goal of improving news literacy among young people. Common Sense Digital Citizenship Curriculum is taught in more than half the schools in the United States, by more than 700,000 educators.

Osservatorio Permanente Giovani-Editori

Osservatorio Permanente Giovani-Editori is Italy's leading independent organization in citizenship education focused on media literacy projects. For over 18 years, Osservatorio's mission has been to help today's young people become citizens of tomorrow, participate more in our democracy and develop critical thinking that sets them free. Osservatorio operates in education by training high school teachers, who then bring Osservatorio's media literacy projects into their classrooms with the goal of increasing student curiosity, thirst for knowledge and critical thinking. As students compare different quality news sources, they learn to distinguish between reliable journalism and fake news.

Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple's four software platforms iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay and iCloud. Apple's more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it.

NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple Newsroom (www.apple.com/newsroom), or call Apple's Media Helpline at (408) 974-2042.

2019 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo and Apple News are trademarks of Apple Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005326/en/

Contacts:

Apple

Bernadette Simpao, (669) 227-9273

bsimpao@apple.com
DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / As a child, you might have had a few IOU's for the smallest knick knacks. Here you are, possibly 2 to 3 decades later, with big boy IOU's. Companies like Bank of America (BAC), JP Morgan (JPM) and others have long dominated this industry.

Loan Notes represent the world's big boy IOU which is extended and has interest paid over a preset time period.

Reece Mennie, co-founder and CEO of Hunter Jones assesses all opportunities prior to presentation to clients. This means that everything put forth to the client has been run by the CEO, a pretty impressive thing to say about your financial advice.

Hunter Jones opens the doors to opportunities which provide security and great returns. Per the company website, "committed to helping you take advantage of relatively unknown, high interest, loan notes which have only been approved after passing our tough due diligence processes." Through maintaining firm criteria on the opportunities, this company is able to operate at a highly efficient level. While your money matters to you, it also matters to them.

Important components of the Loan Note opportunities which Hunter Jones puts forth include a fixed return, options for periodic income, a Security Trustee, and a well- defined exit strategy. These aspects are what set this advisory apart from other alternative property-backed interest-bearing loan notes.

The team at Hunter Jones believes in personal relationships and strives to make each client a priority. The values of the company highlight the personal, clear, and adaptable feel which the team members aim to provide. The company values like dependability ensure that clients will get the most out of their experience.

As the company continues to grow and raise the standard for excellence within the field, private individuals will find themselves seeking these opportunities with a need for someone to help them navigate through critical criteria.

To get to know the team, find out about talking to an account manager, or reading about Loan Notes, check out https://www.hjinvest.com.

SOURCE: SV Advisory Group

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539489/Hunter-Jones-Maximizing-UK-and-European-Loan-Note-Benefits
ATLANTA, GA and PALM BEACH, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Following a milestone year highlighted by record loan production, private commercial real estate lender Trez Forman Capital has opened a regional office in Atlanta to serve as a springboard for continued growth in the Southeast U.S. region.

Trez Forman is a joint venture between Palm Beach, Florida-based Forman Capital and Vancouver-based Trez Capital Group - one of Canada's largest private commercial mortgage lenders with approximately $3 billion of discretionary capital under management. In 2018, Trez Forman funded more than $500 million in commercial real estate loans, mostly in Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas, while Trez Capital funded approximately $2 billion in total.

"Atlanta is a critical piece of our long-term business plan," said Brett Forman, president and CEO of Trez Forman. "Establishing a physical presence in the city allows us to accommodate the intense demand from our borrowers who are aggressively looking to invest and develop there."

The new 2,000-square-foot office located at 3414 Peachtree Road NE, Suite 270 in the Buckhead district is being managed by veteran banker and real estate lender Russ Holland, who spent much of his career in Atlanta prior to joining Trez Forman as Managing Director.

Holland said the company is actively recruiting veteran lenders for the new office and expects to have a team of about 10 originators and staff members in place over the next few years. He thinks the company can produce more than $500 million annually in new business from the Atlanta office over that same time period.

"I am excited to lead the company's efforts in this region of the country," said Holland. " Based on all of the new real estate activity taking place, I see significant opportunity to expand the platform. We are looking for strong talent in the market to help us accomplish that."

Holland has held senior level executive positions at numerous banks in the Southeast U.S. and New York over the past three decades, leading the origination of more than $6 billion in commercial loan transactions.

His previous ties to Atlanta include serving as Chief Credit Officer of SouthCrest Bank between 2013 and 2017. He also spent time in the market during the 1990s working as a commercial lender for Bank of America.

Immediately prior to joining Trez Forman, Holland served as Chief Credit Officer at Fieldpoint Private in New York.

Trez Forman provides commercial bridge loans for development and construction and senior stretch financing, starting at about $5 million. It also offers private and institutional investors equity investment opportunities in a variety of funds and assets.

About Trez Forman Capital:

Founded in 2016, Trez Forman is a Florida-based commercial bridge lender for development and construction, senior stretch first mortgages and special situations nationwide. It provides developers and property owners with quick approvals on flexible short to mid-term financing from $5M to $75M. The company also offers private and institutional investors equity investment opportunities in a variety of funds and assets. Trez Forman is a joint venture between Palm Beach-based Forman Capital and Trez Capital Group, one of Canada's largest private commercial mortgage lenders with approximately $3 billion in committed capital. Trez Capital has originated approximately $10 billion in loans since its inception. For more information, visit www.trezforman.com.

Media Contact for Trez Forman:

Todd Templin or Eric Kalis

954-370-8999

ttemplin@boardroompr.com or ekalis@boardroompr.com

SOURCE: Trez Forman Capital

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539470/Florida-based-Trez-Forman-Capital-Opens-Regional-Office-in-Atlanta
SAN DIEGO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / TruthFinder is excited to announce the winner for it's inaugural 'Women In STEM' scholarship.

As one of San Diego's leading technology companies, TruthFinder (owned by The Control Group) employs a diverse pool of talent and frequently participates in local philanthropic efforts to get young students excited about the possibilities of working in tech and computer science.

TruthFinder recently launched TruthFinder's Women In STEM scholarship, an essay-writing contest that awards a female STEM student a $2,500 scholarship.

After reading through hundreds of entries, TruthFinder awarded the scholarship to Afe Addeh, who has just begun her first year of college at the University of Maryland at College Park, studying computer science.

Afe impressed the judges with her essay, as well as her many accomplishments which included launching the first Girls Who Code computer club at her high school in 2016. She also participated in the Congressional App Challenge and won 3rd place for her app Career Finder. Afe also interned with NASA Goddard in the summer of 2017.

'Giving back to the community has been part of our core ethics since the inception of the brand,' says TruthFinder CEO Steven Gray, 'We're excited to continue supporting a diverse workplace through our Women In STEM program by making a direct impact on the next generation of leaders in tech.'

In addition to the annual scholarship, TruthFinder frequently participates in an Hour of Code at local high schools and has also awarded several local scholarships in the past. TruthFinder's Women In STEM scholarship is the first national scholarship from TruthFinder.

About TruthFinder

TruthFinder is one of America's most popular online background checking services. TruthFinder provides public records, people finder, and criminal record information to members on a subscription basis. TruthFinder utilizes data from state, federal and various local sources, which have been aggregated and made available electronically. TruthFinder's user-friendly reports compile public records describing people living in the U.S. Some of the databases that TruthFinder utilizes include state sex offender information, county arrest records, court dockets, census records, and various other public records. TruthFinder does not provide consumer reports, nor is it a consumer-reporting agency, and it may not be used for consumer credit, insurance, employment, tenant screening or any other purpose subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). For more information, please review TruthFinder help.

About The Control Group

Founded in San Diego in 2012, The Control Group is an award-winning, multi-million dollar technology company. With the focus of helping Americans connect, inform, and protect, The Control Group owns several successful products, including people search platforms Instant Checkmate and TruthFinder - two of America's most popular public records search engines.

Media Contact:

Kristle Khoury, Marketing and Public Relations Director

kristle.khoury@thecontrolgroup.com

3111 Camino Del Rio N Suite 400

San Diego, CA, 92108

SOURCE: TruthFinder

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539499/TruthFinder-Supports-Women-in-STEM-by-Announcing-2019-Scholarship-Winner
Kelowna, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Valens GroWorks Corp. (CSE: VGW) (the "Company" or "Valens"), a multi-licensed provider of cannabis products and services focused on various proprietary extraction methodologies, distillation, cannabinoid isolation and purification, as well as associated quality testing announces that it has entered into an agreement with AltaCorp Capital Inc. ("AltaCorp"), under which AltaCorp has agreed to purchase, as lead underwriter and sole bookrunner, on its own behalf and on behalf of a syndicate of underwriters, including GMP Securities L.P., and Raymond James Ltd., Haywood Securities Inc., and Mackie Research Capital Corp., (together with AltaCorp the "Underwriters") on a bought deal basis, 10,169,492 units of the Company ("Units") at a price of C$2.95 per Unit (the "Offering"), representing aggregate gross proceeds to Valens of approximately C$30 million.

The Company is also pleased to announce they anticipate closing the acquisition of the Company's current extraction, post-processing and analytical testing facility and an adjoining property located at 180 Carion Road for additional post-processing, product development and white label capacity, by the end of March 2019.

Bought Deal Financing

Each Unit is comprised of one common share (a "Common Share") of Valens and one-half common share purchase warrant (each whole common share purchase warrant a "Warrant") of the Company offered at a price of $2.95 per Unit for gross proceeds of $30,000,001 (the "Offering"). Each Warrant will be exercisable to acquire one common share of the Company (a "Warrant Share") for a period of two years following the closing date at an exercise price of $4.00 per Warrant Share, subject to adjustment in certain events. In the event that the volume weighted average trading price of the common shares for ten consecutive trading days exceeds $6.00, the Company shall have the right to accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants upon no less that fifteen trading days' notice.

In addition, the Underwriters will also have the option, exercisable in whole or in part, to acquire up to an additional 1,525,424 Units at a price of $2.95 per Unit at any time from closing of the Offering and ending 30 days following the closing date for additional gross proceeds of up to $4,500,001 (the "Over-Allotment Option"). The Over-Allotment Option may be exercised by the Underwriters in respect of: (i) Units at the Offering price; or (ii) Common Shares ("Over-Allotment Shares") at a price to be agreed to by the Company and the Lead Underwriter; or (iii) Warrants ("Over-Allotment Warrants") at a price to be agreed to by the Company and the Lead Underwriter; or (iv) any combination of Over-Allotment Shares and/or Over-Allotment Warrants, so long as the aggregate number of Over-Allotment Shares and Over-Allotment Warrants which may be issued under the Over-Allotment Option does not exceed 1,525,424 Over-Allotment Shares and 762,712 Over-Allotment Warrants.

The Company plans to use the net proceeds from the Offering to strategically increase the Company's domestic geographic presence, increase production capacity and white label offerings, and for general corporate purposes.

The Common Shares will be offered by way of a short form prospectus to be filed in each of the provinces of Canada, other than the Province of Quebec and by way of a private placement in the United States. The Offering is subject to customary conditions including receipt of required regulatory approvals and completion of documentation. Completion of the offering is expected on or about April 9, 2019.

The securities offered have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Acquisition of Existing Processing Facility

The existing processing facility located at 230 Carion Road, is anticipated to be acquired from NorthOk Properties Inc., a company controlled by Ashley McGrath, a director of the Company for an agreed upon purchase price of $4.4 million on or about March 20, 2019. The Company engaged an independent appraiser to complete a market valuation which supports the purchase price.

"Securing ownership of our processing facility here in Kelowna, in which we have invested over $4.6 million in leasehold improvements built out to European Good Manufacturing Practice ("GMP") standards, will ensure the Company can continue to successfully execute on its core business objectives," said Tyler Robson, CEO of Valens GroWorks Corp. "In addition, the undeveloped footprint of this 1.94 acre site will allow the Company to further expand to meet the growing demand for the Company's leading extraction services and product development expertise."

Mr. McGrath's participation is considered a "related party transaction" for the purposes of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). Pursuant to MI 61-101, the Company will file a material change report providing disclosure in relation to the "related party transaction" on SEDAR under the Company's issuer profile at www.sedar.com. The Company is relying on exemptions from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements available under MI 61-101. The Company is exempt from the formal valuation requirement in section 5.4 of MI 61-101 in reliance on sections 5.5(a) and 5.5(b) of MI 61-101 as the fair market value of the transaction is not more than 25% of the Company's market capitalization, and no securities of the Company are listed or quoted for trading on prescribed stock exchanges or stock markets. Additionally, the Company is exempt from the minority shareholder approval requirement in section 5.6 of MI 61-101 in reliance on section 5.7(a) as the fair market value of the transaction is not more than 25% of the Company's market capitalization. The transaction was approved by the board of directors of Valens and no special committee was established in connection with the transaction, and no materially contrary view was expressed or made by any director. Mr. McGrath abstained from voting on the matter.

The Company did not file a material change report more than 21 days before the expected closing date of the transaction as the details of the transaction were not settled until shortly prior to the closing of the transaction, and the Company wished to close the transaction on an expedited basis for business reasons.

Agreement to Purchase Neighbouring Facility

The Company has entered into an agreement to purchase an adjoining property located at 180 Carion Rd. This strategic acquisition of 18,000 square feet will be used for the primary purposes of increasing extraction production space, product development and to allow for additional white-labelling service capacity to the Company's current and future clients as well as additional office space for the Company's corporate team.

"We are excited for the opportunity to purchase the facility next door as part of our growth plan to increase capacity and overall product offerings for our world-class clients," says Tyler Robson, CEO Valens GroWorks Corp. "Congruent with our expansion plans stated in the previous fiscal year, this is an imperative step to our ultimate goal of being able to service not only the Canadian market, but the global market from premium toll processing all the way to premium finished goods."

About Valens GroWorks

Valens GroWorks Corp. is a research-driven, Canadian cannabis company focused on downstream secondary extraction methodology, distillation and cannabinoid isolation and purification, as well as associated quality testing with three wholly-owned subsidiaries located in and around Kelowna, BC. Subsidiary Valens Agritech ("VAL") holds a license to cultivate cannabis and produce cannabis oil under the Cannabis Act, as well as a license to conduct analytical testing for the cannabis industry. VAL currently has extraction processing and supply agreements with various leading producers across Canada. Subsidiary Valens Labs is a Health Canada licensed ISO 17025 accredited cannabis testing lab providing sector-leading analytical services and has partnered with Thermo Fisher Scientific to develop a Centre of Excellence in Plant Based Science. Subsidiary Valens Farms is in the process of becoming a purpose-built facility in compliance with European Union (EU) Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) standards, ensuring the product from this facility can be exported anywhere in the world where Cannabis is nationally legal for medical or adult usage purposes. For more information, please visit http://valensgroworks.com. The Company's investor deck can be found specifically at http://valensgroworks.com/investors/

For further information, please contact:

Scott Young

Valens GroWorks Corp.

Telephone: +1.705.888.2756

U.S. / Europe Investors

KCSA Strategic Communications

Phil Carlson / Elizabeth Barker

VGW@kcsa.com

212.896.1233 / 212.896.1203

Media

KCSA Strategic Communications

Anne Donohoe

adonohoe@kcsa.com

212.896.1265

Notice regarding Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of such statements under applicable securities law. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "anticipates", "plan", "continue", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed", "positioned" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. Various assumptions were used in drawing the conclusions or making the projections contained in the forward-looking statements throughout this news release. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. The Corporation is under no obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law.

The CSE or other regulatory authority has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this press release. We seek Safe Harbour.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43521
Kroll Bond Rating Agency Europe Limited (KBRA) is pleased to announce the assignment of preliminary ratings to four classes of Kanaal CMBS Finance 2019 DAC, a 278.4 million CMBS transaction collateralised by two loans. The loans are not cross-collateralised or cross-defaulted.

The Big 6 Loan is a 140.4 million floating rate loan that has a three-year term with two 12-month extension options. The loan is secured by the borrower's freehold interest in five retail properties and a mixed-use retail/office property located in six cities throughout the Netherlands. As of January 2019, the properties were 80.8% leased to approximately 200 tenants.

The Maxima Loan is a 138.0 million floating rate loan that has a four-year term with no extension options. The loan is secured by the borrower's freehold and leasehold interests in 11 properties (7 office, 3 mixed-use, and 1 logistics property) located in six cities throughout the Netherlands. As of January 2019, the properties were 84.4% leased to approximately 30 tenants.

KBRA's analysis of the transaction included a detailed evaluation of the property's cash flows and the application of our European CMBS Rating Methodology. The results of our analysis yielded a KBRA net cash flow (KNCF) of 27.9 million, capitalisation rates ranging from 6.25% to 9.50%, a KBRA Value of 358.3 million, and a KBRA Loan to Value (KLTV) of 77.7%. In our analysis of the transaction, we also reviewed and considered third-party technical, environmental, and valuation reports; the results of our site inspections of the properties; and legal documentation.

For further details on KBRA's analysis, please see our pre-sale report, entitled Kanaal CMBS Finance 2019 DAC, which was published at www.kbra.com

The preliminary ratings are based on information known to KBRA at the time of this publication. Information received subsequent to this release could result in the assignment of final ratings that differ from the preliminary ratings.

Disclosures

Further disclosures relating to this rating action are available in the EU Information Disclosure Form. Additional information regarding KBRA policies, methodologies, rating scales, and disclosures are available at www.kbra.com

To access ratings, reports and disclosures, click here

Related Publications: (available at www.kbra.com

Kanaal CMBS Finance 2019 DAC Pre-Sale Report

European CMBS Rating Methodology

CONNECT WITH KBRA

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About KBRA and KBRA Europe

KBRA is a full service credit rating agency registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as an NRSRO. In addition, KBRA is designated as a designated rating organization by the Ontario Securities Commission for issuers of asset-backed securities to file a short form prospectus or shelf prospectus, is recognized by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners as a Credit Rating Provider, and is a certified Credit Rating Agency (CRA) by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Kroll Bond Rating Agency Europe Limited is registered with ESMA as a CRA.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005892/en/

Contacts:

Analytical Contacts:

Matthew Horner, Director, CMBS (Lead Analyst)

Dublin

+353 1 669 2677

mhorner@kbra.com

Yee Cent Wong, Senior Managing Director, CMBS

New York

+1 (646) 731-2374

ywong@kbra.com

Stephen Kemmy, Director, Structured Finance

Dublin

+353 1 669 2678

skemmy@kbra.com

Keith Kockenmeister, Senior Managing Director, CMBS (Rating Committee Chair)

New York

+1 (646) 731-2349

kkockenmeister@kbra.com

Erika Hinman, Associate Director, CMBS

New York

+1 (646) 731-2418

ehinman@kbra.com
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Jaxon Mining Inc. (TSXV: JAX) (FSE: OU31) (OTC: JXMNF) ("Jaxon" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the results from its 2019 Annual General Meeting (the "Meeting") held on Friday, March 8, 2019.

A total of 11,280,662 common shares, representing 12.25% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company, were represented at the Meeting. The following resolutions were approved:

The number of directors of the Company was set at four (4).

John King Burns, Yingting (Tony) Guo, James Lavigne and Laurence Stephenson were elected directors of the Company to hold office until the next annual general meeting of the Company.

DMCL LLP Chartered Professional Accountants were re-appointed as auditors of the Company for the ensuing year and the directors were authorized to fix the auditors' remuneration.

By ordinary resolution, the Company's Stock Option Plan, as described in the Company's Information Circular dated February 1, 2019, and as available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, was approved.

By ordinary resolution, the Company's Advance Notice Policy, as described in the Company's Information Circular dated February 1, 2019, and as available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, was approved.

Wishbone Property at More Creek Project

The Company renewed its option on the Wishbone property at its More Creek Project for the 2019/2020 year. The Company paid $25,000 and issued 125,000 common shares in connection with the renewal on March 14, 2019.

About Jaxon Mining

Jaxon is a precious and base metals exploration company with a regional focus on Western Canada. The Company is currently focused on advancing its Red Springs Project in north-central British Columbia and the More Creek Project (consolidating the Wishbone and Foremore properties) in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

JAXON MINING INC.

"John King Burns"

John King Burns

Chairman, President and CEO

For Capital Markets, call 778-938-4459, for Investor Relations 604-558-2630 or 1-888-280-8128 and for Corporate enquiries 604-398-5394. Visit us at www.jaxonmining.com.

This news release may contain forward-looking information, which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release may include, but is not limited to, the Company's objectives, goals or future plans. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, those risks set out in the Company's public documents filed on SEDAR. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information, which only applies as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames, or at all. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law. Neither TSX Venture exchange nor its Regulations Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43522
Proposed Transaction

Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Tethys Petroleum Limited (TSXV: TPL.H) ("Tethys" or the "Company") today announces that further to the Company's press release on December 20, 2018, Jaka Partners FZC ("Acquiror") and Tethys have today signed a binding arrangement agreement (the "Definitive Agreement") with respect to a potential acquisition by Acquiror of Tethys' outstanding ordinary shares ("Ordinary Shares") it does not already own pursuant to a scheme of arrangement under the Companies Law (2018 Revision) of the Cayman Islands (the "Companies Law"), and applicable Canadian securities laws. Such proposed acquisition is referred to hereafter as the "Proposed Transaction".

1. Proposed Transaction Structure

The Proposed Transaction will be carried out by way of a scheme of arrangement under the Companies Law, and effected pursuant to the Definitive Agreement, the terms and conditions of which are summarized below. The Proposed Transaction shall also be subject to the approval of the holders of the Ordinary Shares, including both approval by such shareholders representing more than 75% of the Ordinary Shares voting in person or by proxy at a special meeting as well as by a majority of those shareholders, excluding shares held by Acquiror or any of its affiliates or joint actors in accordance with Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101"). Approvals from the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands and the NEX board of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "NEX") will also be required.

2. Consideration

Acquiror proposes to acquire up to 70% of the Ordinary Shares that it does not already own and to offer shareholders the opportunity to exchange up to 30% of the Ordinary Shares that the Acquiror does not already own for preferred shares ("Preferred Shares") on a one-for-one basis. Each shareholder who approves the Proposed Transaction could elect to:

receive cash consideration of US$0.60 per ordinary share in exchange for up to 70% of its Ordinary Shares and to also receive Preferred Shares in exchange for up to 30% of its Ordinary Shares; receive cash consideration of US$0.60 per ordinary share exchange for up to 70% of its Ordinary Shares and retain the remaining Ordinary Shares; receive Preferred Shares in exchange for up to 30% of its Ordinary Shares and retain the remaining Ordinary Shares; or retain all of its Ordinary Shares.

To the extent that the scheme of arrangement is approved and a shareholder does not make any election as to its preferred form of consideration, it shall be deemed to have elected to retain all of its Ordinary Shares.

The Preferred Shares shall be non-voting and non-convertible, and shall be automatically redeemed by Tethys on the date that is three (3) years from the closing of the Proposed Transaction at a redemption price of US$1.80 per Preferred Share (the "Redemption Amount"). To the extent that Tethys is unable to fund all or part of the payment of the Redemption Amount, Tethys will have an option to require Acquiror to provide funding for such payment by purchasing new ordinary shares in Tethys under a share purchase warrant or similar security (the "Warrant"). Pursuant to the Definitive Agreement, Acquiror's obligations under the Warrant will be guaranteed by an affiliated company of Jaka, Inform Systems LLP.

Convertible securities (including options, warrants and convertible debt) shall remain outstanding post-closing and any such securities that are exercised or converted into Ordinary Shares prior to the record date of the special meeting shall entitle the holder to vote at such meeting.

The consideration offered per Ordinary Share of US$0.60 per share and US$1.80 per Preferred Shares represents premiums of approximately 320% and 960%, respectively to the Cdn$0.25 price of the Ordinary Shares on the NEX on December 19, 2018, the date before the Proposed Transaction was first announced.

3. Stock Market Listing

Upon completion of the Proposed Transaction, Tethys would seek to maintain a listing of its Ordinary Shares on the NEX, or other recognized securities exchange, and apply for a listing of the Preferred Shares. Listing will be subject to satisfaction of the rules of the NEX or other applicable exchange.

4. Management and the Board

As part of the Proposed Transaction, Acquiror will propose new directors as replacements for Mr. Mattias Sjoborg and Mr. William P. Wells. Acquiror shall ensure that following the completion of the Proposed Transaction, Tethys' board of directors, which would consist of at least three (3) members and will comply with all Canadian securities laws, including the rules of the NEX, applicable to public companies. In addition, upon completion of the Proposed Transaction, Mr. Sjoborg will resign from his position as Chief Executive Officer of Tethys. Annuity and Life Reassurance Ltd ("Annuity"), a company controlled by Mr. Wells, shall have a right to appoint a board observer and the right to inspect Tethys' corporate books, records and premises, for a period of three (3) years following the closing of the Proposed Transaction.

5. Definitive Agreement

The Definitive Agreement includes conditions precedent, representations and warranties, "fiduciary outs", covenants and provisions dealing with the mechanics of completing the Proposed Transaction.

The Definitive Agreement also contains certain minority protections such as restricting Tethys from issuing shares in excess of 18,000,000 shares and not pledging, selling, encumbering or disposing any of Tethys' for an agreed period of time.

The Definitive Agreement also contains a proposed settlement agreement which, subject to shareholder approval, Tethys will seek to enter into with Olisol Petroleum Ltd, Olisol Investments Ltd, Eurasia Gas Group LLP, DSFK Special Finance Company LLP and certain of their principals.

6. Approval of the Proposed Transaction

As noted above, the Proposed Transaction will require the approval of the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands, NEX and shareholders at a special meeting which will be convened for this purpose. It is anticipated that it will take at least two months to complete the Proposed Transaction.

As Acquiror owns in excess of 10% of the Ordinary Shares, it is a related party and the Proposed Transaction would be a related party transaction under MI 61-101. The Proposed Transaction is exempt from the valuation requirements of MI 61-101 as the Ordinary Shares are not listed on certain recognized exchanges though is subject to the requirement to obtain majority of the minority shareholder approval as described above.

About Tethys

Tethys is focused on oil and gas exploration and production activities in Central Asia and the Caspian Region. This highly prolific oil and gas area is rapidly developing and Tethys believes that significant potential exists in both exploration and in discovered deposits.

Disclaimer

Some of the statements in this document are forward-looking. Such statements are not promises or guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those suggested by any such statements. Such statements include statements regarding the closing of Proposed Transaction, continued listing of the Ordinary Shares on the NEX or listing of the Preferred Shares on the NEX and approval of the Proposed Transaction. No assurance can be made that the Proposed Transaction will be approved, or if approved that the Ordinary Shares will continue to be listed on, or that the Preferred will be listed on, the NEX. No part of this announcement constitutes, or shall be taken to constitute, an invitation or inducement to invest in the Company or any other entity, and shareholders of the Company are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Save as required by applicable law, the Company does not undertake to update or change any forward-looking statements to reflect events occurring after the date of this announcement.

Contact Information:

Tethys Petroleum

info@tethys-group.com

www.tethys-group.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43524
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / The latest proposed extension to the border wall between Mexico and the United States has proved a divisive issue, recently resulting in a record 35 days of government shutdown that ended on January 25, 2019. While the subject was initially treated predominantly from a political perspective, a growing number of media and research reports are starting to focus on the economic implications of the structure, with the consensus opinion pointing to a lack of any tangible benefits that justify the cost. These include a negligible effect on migration, as established in studies evaluating the impact of the barriers that already stretch across roughly 700 miles. Economists, think-tanks, and academic establishments have run the numbers on the potential extension, independently reaching the conclusion that it is not an investment with acceptable returns, comments forex expert Pablo Soria de Lachica.

Precise estimates are hard to make, not least because the cost of the proposed wall expansion is uncertain, with projections varying wildly and going as high as nearly $60 billion. In efforts to model the impact of the extension, researchers have started with examining the effect of the existing barriers. One influential report was published in November 2018 and presented an analysis spearheaded by economists from Dartmouth College and Stanford University. The team evaluated the consequences of the extension built between 2007 and 2010 following the Secure Fence Act of 2006. As the paper notes, "Despite construction costs of the wall of $2.3 billion or approximately $7 per person in the U.S., the study found that the border wall expansion harmed college-educated U.S. workers by $4.35 per person in annual income and only benefited less educated U.S. workers by an average of 36 cents." Moreover, the barrier reduced the number of Mexican migrants by a mere 0.6%.

Using sophisticated modeling and confidential data on migration provided by the Mexican government, the Dartmouth-Stanford team also assessed the impact of the border wall extension proposed by the current U.S. government. As Pablo Soria de Lachica points out, the resulting numbers show an adverse overall effect on the U.S. economy, as was the case with past structures. According to the analysis, every 19 cents spent so far on border walls or fences has curtailed economic growth, and low-income U.S. workers - the only group to derive some benefit - have added just one cent to their income. Assuming a $5 billion investment in the new extension, the project would cost each U.S. citizen about $15, and low-skilled workers would see their income increase by merely 58 cents a year while higher-skilled employees would lose $7.60. Every Mexican migrant prevented from entering the United States because of the wall would represent almost $30,000 in lost economic output, which would amount to an annual contraction of over $4 billion for the U.S. economy, the researchers estimate.

Pablo Soria de Lachica, who obtained an MBA from the Universidad Tecnologico de Mexico (UNITEC), specialized in international trading after graduation and succeeded in becoming one of the most prominent forex experts working today. Drawing on his extensive experience, he helps clients maximize profits, providing them with both professional guidance and educational opportunities. Currently, he is collaborating with Kartoshka - a company focused on delivering the latest technologies in sales, telemarketing, and customer support.

Pablo Soria de Lachica - Foreign Exchange Specialist: http://PabloSoriaDeLachicaNews.com

Pablo Soria de Lachica Highlights Most Popular Trading Pairs for Ethereum's Cryptocurrency: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pablo-soria-lachica-highlights-most-032000084.html

Pablo Soria de Lachica Explica la Diferencia Entre Ethereum y Ethereum Classic: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4010565

Contact Information:

PabloSoriaDeLachicaNews.com

http://PabloSoriaDeLachicaNews.com

contact@pablosoriadelachicanews.com

SOURCE: Pablo Soria de Lachica

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539541/Pablo-Soria-de-Lachica-Analyzes-Potential-Economic-Impact-of-Mexico-Border-Wall-Extension
Miami, Florida--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Jose Hidalgo, a director and Chief Executive Officer of Cansortium Inc., 82 NE 26th Street, Unit 110, Miami Florida 33137 (the "Company"), has filed an early warning report with respect to his shareholdings of the Company. Mr. Hidalgo has ownership and control over 202 Common Shares (the "Common Shares") and 1,662,289 Proportionate Voting Shares (the "Proportionate Voting Shares") of the Company, representing approximately 0% of the Company's currently issued and outstanding Common Shares and 12.7% of the Company's currently issued and outstanding Proportionate Voting Shares. If the Proportionate Voting Shares were to be converted into Common Shares, the shares referred to above would represent 16,623,092 Common Shares (being approximately 10% of all of the Common Shares of the Company on an as-converted basis).

Mr. Hidalgo, together with the family trust controlled by his spouse, would own in the aggregate 402 Common Shares and 2,462,169 Proportionate Voting Shares, representing approximately 0% of the Company's currently issued and outstanding Common Shares and 18.7% of the Company's currently issued and outstanding Proportionate Voting Shares. If the Proportionate Voting Shares were to be converted into Common Shares, the shares referred to above would represent 24,622,092 Common Shares (being approximately 15% of all of the Common Shares of the Issuer on an as-converted basis).

Mr. Hidalgo acquired the Common Shares and Proportionate Voting Shares as part of a reorganization (as set out in the final prospectus of the Company dated March 15, 2019) which effectively allowed Mr. Hidalgo (and all of the other holders of Cansortium Holdings LLC) to exchange his previous ownership interest in the Company's operating subsidiary for shares in the Company, in contemplation of the Company's initial public offering.

Source and Information:

Jose Hidalgo

7320 SW 121st Street

Pinecrest Florida 33156

This news release is issued pursuant to National Instrument 62-103: The Early Warning System and Related Take-over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues. A copy of the Early Warning Report will appear with the Company's documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. A copy of the Early Warning Report may also be obtained by contacting Jose Hidalgo c/o Cansortium Inc., at 82 NE 26th Street, Unit 110, Miami Florida 33137, Tel: 305-900-6266.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43531
According to the official, after the DGCA grounded all 12 of SpiceJet's 737 Max aircraft on 13 March following the Ethiopian Airlines crash, the problem of rising airfares in Indian market 'aggravated'.

Aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has on Tuesday denied reports that appeared in media on Monday that it convened a meeting of airlines on Tuesday to discuss the airfare rise in the wake of flight cancellations by Jet Airways.

Quoting DGCA sources, ANI reported that the news about the meeting with airlines was wrong.

"There is speculative news in media that DGCA has called all airlines to discuss on airfare hikes due to major Jet Airways flight cancellations and Pakistan airspace closure. This news is wrong," ANI reported.

DGCA Sources: There is speculative news in media that DGCA has called all airlines to discuss on airfare hikes due to major Jet Airways flight cancellations & Pakistan airspace closure. This news is wrong.  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

On Monday, a government official was quoted as saying by PTI that the DGCA called a meeting on Tuesday noon to discuss with airlines the upward spiral in airfares as Jet Airways continue to ground its aircraft and cancel a significant number of flights.

According to the official, after the DGCA grounded all 12 of SpiceJet's 737 Max aircraft on 13 March following the Ethiopian Airlines crash, that killed 157 people, the problem of rising airfares in Indian market has "aggravated".

"DGCA has called a meeting at Tuesday noon to discuss the airfare rise because of significant number of cancellations done by Jet Airways in the last few weeks," the government official told PTI.

Cash-strapped Jet Airways on Monday said it has grounded four more planes, taking the number of aircraft that are non-operational due to non-payment of lease rentals to 41.

Etihad Airport services, in a notification to its passengers on Sunday, said, "Jet Airways has cancelled all their flights from Abu Dhabi with immediate effect from March 18 due to operational reasons".

According to its website, the airline has a fleet of 119 planes.

For last few weeks, passengers have been venting their ire on social media as Jet Airways' flight cancellations have increased gradually due to rising number of grounded aircraft. Grappling with financial woes, the carrier has been looking at ways to raise fresh funds.

In a filing to the stock exchanges on Monday, the airline said, "An additional four aircraft have been grounded due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors under their respective lease agreements."

The company had earlier said that it is actively engaged with all its aircraft lessors and are regularly providing them with updates on the efforts taken to improve the liquidity.

On 8 March, Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal wrote to Etihad Airways Group CEO Tony Douglas seeking an urgent funding of Rs 750 crore and also warned that any delay in fund infusion might result in its grounding of the carrier.

He had said that more than 50 of the aircraft are grounded amid increasing arrears of vendors and salaries to a section of employees.

Jet Airways has a debt of over Rs 8,200 crore and needs to make repayments of up to Rs 1,700 crore by the end of March.

On 10 March, a 737 MAX aircraft operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed near Addis Ababa killing 157 people, including four Indians.

This was second such crash involving the 737 MAX aircraft in less than five months. In October last year, an aircraft operated by Lion Air crashed killing over 180 people in Indonesia.

Therefore, the DGCA on 13 March grounded all 12 of SpiceJet's 737 Max aircraft.

 With PTI inputs
Mirrors dont lie but statistics can especially given the leeway available to the compiler of data to interpret them to further his cause or viewpoint.

An unseemly tussle seems to have broken out between economists and chartered accountants (CAs) with 131 CAs countering 108 economists and saying what the economists are doing is a smear campaign at the behest of vested interests a la the award wapsi gang in the run up to the upcoming general elections.

There was a whisper campaign against the appointment of S Gurumurthy, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue and one of the founder members of its offshoot the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) board.

Some went to the extent of saying Gurumurthy was a CA whereas it took an economist to adorn the hallowed boardroom of the RBI. Implicit in this argument was the belief that a CA was only well-versed in taxation, auditing and company law without being rooted in economics. That the Narendra Modi government has two CAs in its council of ministers  Piyush Goyal and Suresh Prabhu  and has also perhaps got something to do with the prejudice against the CAs.

The CAs versus economists war of words was spearheaded by the 108 economists railing against the revision of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data and withholding of employment data by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). Of course, they did not target the CAs but only targeted the Modi government. That CAs have taken up cudgels for the Modi government may have something to do with the Modi governments earnest fight against the non-performing asset (NPA) and black money.

Mirrors dont lie but statistics can especially be given the leeway available to the compiler of data to interpret them to further his cause or viewpoint.

Thus to the economists, the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) statistics on employment is suspicious whereas to the Modi supporters, it is their holy grail more so as it reflects increasing formalisation of the economy. But the economists want the NSSO data out. EPFO data on employment in their worldview is suspicious. Be that as it may.

The Modi government has set store by the Mudra loan to 16 crore people. The economists and Modi detractors lampoon Mudra loans as condemning our youth to frying pakoras.

To be sure, while microfinance is not the same as venture capital assistance inasmuch as while the former is at the grassroots levels whereas the latter is at the levels of giving leg up to a possible cutting edge technology. The truth, however, is self-employment cannot be caviled at.

The paradigm changing Goods and Services Tax (GST) has also served to mainstream the economy like never before as evidenced by surge in (50 percent as affirmed by the Economic Survey 2018) indirect taxpayers as well as in income tax collections. Indeed, the audit trail left by Value Added Tax (VAT) has brought a large swathe of businesses hitherto operating in the subterranean informal (read cash) economy above board.

A lot has happened on the societal front also in the five years of Modi government with Ujwala Yojana wiping tears of rural women with gas connections and Jan Dhan Yojana making direct benefit transfers possible and leak proof.

Even the economists would concede that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has done something unparalleled on the NPA front with its pincer of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) that has fluttered the dovecots of the defaulting promoters and stoppage of ever-greening of bad loans through corporate debt restructuring (CDR), special drawing rights (SDR) etc.

It is wrong to pronounce verdict on a new government so soon in the day when its initiatives are still work in progress but have the promise of changing the economy in years to come. Thus a common man who cannot interpret figures and statistics is often bemused by talking heads on television shows holding forth with grim faces on the adequacy of 7 percent growth.

To him what matters is what he sees on the ground  food prices, petroleum products prices, fight against corruption and black money and yes, employment opportunities.

No one statistic can be used to pronounce a verdict on the incumbent government. Indeed it has to be a set of statistics meaningfully correlated and interpreted without prejudice. The feel-good factor also counts and sadly it defies quantification. The feel-good factor on the economic front stems largely on account of the Modi governments fight against black money and NPAs.

(The writer is a senior columnist and tweets @smurlidharan)
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The chief executive of Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA will step down next month, the company said on Monday, as it prepares to cede control of its commercial aviation division to Boeing Co for $4.2 billion. Embraer CEO Paulo Cesar Silva will step down on April 22 and a new CEO will be announced by then, the company said.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The chief executive of Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA will step down next month, the company said on Monday, as it prepares to cede control of its commercial aviation division to Boeing Co for $4.2 billion.

Embraer CEO Paulo Cesar Silva will step down on April 22 and a new CEO will be announced by then, the company said.

Silva assumed the top position at Embraer in June 2016 as the company dealt with the fallout from a bribery investigation in the United States. Before becoming CEO, he led Embraer's commercial plane division.

"Paulo Cesar conceived of the partnership with Boeing and led the negotiating process of the transaction," Alexandre Silva, the chairman of Embraer's board, said in a statement.

Embraer has defended the Boeing tie-up as crucial to its long-term survival of the company, as Boeing and Airbus SE grab more market share and the aerospace supply chain consolidates.

Silva has been invited to become a consultant until the deal with Boeing officially closes, the company said. The deal still needs to be approved by regulators around the world.

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Susan Thomas)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
In recent months, the banks have provided weekly updates about Jet Airways' revival plan and also sought government advice

New Delhi: The government has asked state-run banks to rescue privately held Jet Airways without pushing it into bankruptcy, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to avert thousands of job losses weeks before a general election, two people within the administration told Reuters.

The finance ministry has in the past year sought regular updates from the banks, led by State Bank of India (SBI), on Jet Airways financial health, the people said. In recent months, the banks have provided weekly updates about a revival plan and also sought government advice, the people added.

Top officials at the finance ministry seek regular updates on the issue, said an official at one of Jets lenders, who did not want to be identified as discussions are private.

Details of the discussion between the finance ministry and bankers on bailing out Jet Airways have not been previously reported.

The government has urged state-run banks to convert debt into equity and take a stake in Jet Airways in a rare move to use taxpayer money to save a struggling private-sector company from bankruptcy. The two people plus one more source, however, said this would be transitory and lenders could sell the stakes once Jet Airways revives.

The government has also nudged its 49 percent-owned National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) - created to invest in stalled and new infrastructure projects - to buy a stake in Jet Airways, a separate government source said.

Saddled with more than 1 billion dollars of debt, Jet Airways is struggling to stay aloft. It has delayed payments to banks, suppliers, employees and aircraft lessors - some of which have begun terminating lease deals.

The worlds biggest democracy is gearing up for an election next month and its booming aviation sector, which employs close to a million people, has been one of the job-creation success stories that Modi can point to as he seeks a second term.

It is crucial for the country that Jet Airways revives as the fall of its second-largest airline could have disastrous consequences for the investment climate in the sector, a top government official told Reuters.

The official is concerned that if Jet Airways collapses it could drive up airfare in a fast-growing market, wiping out efforts to bring low-cost air travel to Indias hinterland.

A chaotic end could also make it more difficult for the government to sell a stake in Air India, at least in the short run. Last year, it failed to sell part of its stake in the indebted carrier which currently relies on taxpayer money.

If the governments plan for Jet Airways succeeds, then state-run banks including SBI and Punjab National Bank (PNB) as well as NIIF would together own at least a third of the airline until they find a new buyer.

Currently, Abu Dhabis Etihad Airways is Jets largest shareholder with a 24 percent stake.

Indias finance ministry, SBI, PNB and Jet Airways did not respond to requests for comment.

Kingfisher collapse

Most companies in Jets financial condition would be placed by creditors into Indias new bankruptcy process, two bankers said. However, memories of the chaos sparked by Kingfisher Airlines demise in 2012 have prompted the government to seek a more sober road to the rescue, they said.

Kingfishers bankruptcy caused job losses, lessors lost millions of dollars and banks took massive write-downs. Putting what is essentially a services provider like Jet through the bankruptcy process would diminish its value because it owns no major assets, unlike a manufacturing company, as most of its planes are leased, said another government official.

If it is pushed into bankruptcy and lessors start pulling even more planes out of service, there would be nothing left for any potential investors, the official said. Already 41 planes have been grounded by lessors in the past three months, leading to flight cancellations.

While on the surface Jet Airways future still hangs in the balance with its main shareholder Etihad at loggerheads over the final terms of any deal, behind-the-scenes support from the government means there is likely to be a bailout.

But there are no easy options, one of the sources said, adding that the lenders do not have the expertise to run an airline so they have to decide what to do once they convert their debt into equity.

New Delhi is also backing a proposal for Jets founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal to step down if it means saving the airline, another official said.

Saving Jet is not equivalent to saving Goyal, the official said.

Rising airfare

Jet Airways, with its fleet of 119 planes, once controlled a sixth of Indias domestic aviation market. The 25-year-old airline is also one of only two full-service carriers that fly to international destinations. The other is Air India.

The government ideally wants four to six major airlines to ensure fares are competitive and passengers have greater choice, according to the top government source.

India plans to build 100 new airports costing about $60 billion which would need a steady stream of flights to sustain them, and that is possible only if there are enough airlines, a separate official said.

The investment in these airports will solely depend on operators willing to have regular flights at affordable prices and one operator going bankrupt does not help, he said.
The transaction includes assignment of all hotel management contracts currently in operation as well as all under-development, along with the employees of the hotels

New Delhi: Hotel Leela Venture Monday announced a sale of four hotels, including one in the national capital, and a property to Canadian investment fund Brookfield Asset Management for Rs 3,950 crore.

The company has entered into a binding agreement with a Brookfield Asset Management-sponsored private real estate fund to sell, by way of slump sale, four owned Leela hotels located at Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Udaipur and the property that it owns in Agra, Hotel Leela Venture said in a BSE filing.

The transaction includes assignment of all hotel management contracts currently in operation as well as all under-development, along with the employees of the hotels, it added.

"The total transaction value is Rs 3,950 crore plus the applicable transaction costs," the filing said.

Simultaneously, the promoters who own the Leela brand will also be transferring the Leela brand to Brookfield for all hospitality businesses, it added.

Proceeds of the sale "will be paid to the lenders of the company towards repayment of dues," the filing said.

"After completion of the aforesaid transaction, all borrowings of the company from all banks and financial institutions would stand repaid," it added.

Commenting on the development, Hotel Leela Venture Chairman and MD Vivek Nair said: "The Leela is rated amongst the top hospitality brands in the world and I am confident that the brand will receive a boost and be further strengthened and continue to be known for its world-class services".

Post-sale, the company will continue to operate the hotel in Mumbai and own certain land in Hyderabad and the joint development project of residential apartments with Prestige Developers in Bangalore, the filing said.

Brookfield will have a right of first refusal over the company's hotel in Mumbai, as a part of the transaction, it added.

"We are excited with this opportunity and look forward to completing this transaction at the earliest while ensuring that all operations remain unaffected. We expect the Leela hotels to continue to be market leaders," Brookfield Asset Management MD and Head-India Real Estate Ankur Gupta said.

JM Financial acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Hotel Leela Venture for this transaction, the filing said.

Shares of Hotel Leela Venture closed at Rs 11.08 per scrip on BSE, up 1.09 percent from its previous close.
The partnership will offer Ola drivers various financial services, including lease and instalment payments, while vehicle maintenance

New Delhi: Korean automobile major Hyundai and its subsidiary Kia have together invested $300 million in ride-hailing company Ola to jointly develop electric vehicles ecosystem and fleet services for global markets.

Under the partnership, the three companies will also aim to develop electric vehicles (EVs) and charging infrastructure customised for the Indian market, the companies said in a joint statement Tuesday.

India is the centrepiece of Hyundai Motor Group's strategy to gain leadership in the global mobility market, and our partnership with Ola will certainly accelerate our efforts to transform into a smart mobility solutions provider, said Euisun Chung, Executive Vice Chairman of Hyundai Motor Group said.

Hyundai Motor Group expects to accelerate its transition from a car manufacturer into a smart mobility solutions provider, as the partnership initiatives will allow it to engage in all aspects across the entire mobility value chain including vehicle production, fleet operation and mobility services.

As part of the strategic collaboration, the companies have agreed to co-create solutions to operate and manage fleet vehicles, marking the group's first foray into the industry, as they expand operations from automobile manufacturing and sales to total fleet solutions.

"Together, we will bring to market a new generation of mobility solutions, as we constantly expand our range of offerings for our consumers. This partnership will also significantly benefit driver-partners on our platform, as we collaborate with Hyundai to build vehicles and solutions that enable sustainable earnings for millions of them, in the time to come," Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO of Ola said.

The partnership will look at supporting micro-entrepreneurship opportunities by providing access to customised Hyundai and Kia vehicles as well as financing and insurance benefits for driver-partners.

The agreement will see the three companies extensively collaborate on developing unique fleet and mobility solutions; building India-specific electric vehicles and infrastructure; as well as nurturing best-in-class opportunities and offerings for aspiring driver partners with customised vehicles, on the Ola platform. Hyundai and Kia will invest a total of $300 million in Ola, the company said.

The partnership will offer Ola drivers various financial services, including lease and instalment payments, while vehicle maintenance and repair services are expected to enhance customer satisfaction, it added.

Hyundai, Kia and Ola have also agreed to coordinate efforts to develop cars and specifications that reflect the needs of the ride-hailing market (both users and drivers), the statement said.
Kant said there is a need to boost investment in the agriculture sector as well as to introduce new technology and market reforms.

New Delhi: India cannot achieve 9-10 percent GDP growth without a revolution in the farm sector, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said Monday.

Addressing Mahindra Samriddhi Agri awards, he said there is a need to boost investment in the agriculture sector as well as to introduce new technology and market reforms.

Kant also stressed on scrapping Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee and some old laws like the Essential Commodities Act, which restrict movement of farm produces.

However, he said agriculture is a state subject and the central government has a limited role in it.

"In India, 50 percent of our population is dependent on agriculture. If India's GDP has to grow at 9-10 percent for the next 30 years, then it cannot be without bringing revolution in the agri sector," Kant said.

He also emphasised on eliminating middlemen in the marketing of farm produces to boost farmers' income.

Kant expressed confidence that farmer income will be doubled by 2022.

He said there is a need to spread good agriculture practice and success stories of farmers across the country.

"The second revolution in agriculture will come from technology and marketing," Kant said.

Pawan Goenka, Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd,, said: "The contribution made by our farming community is a manifestation of this new age of farming which we celebrate through our annual awards".

As part of Mahindra Agri Village (MAV) programme, he said the company has worked closely with more than 50 villages.

"Our Prerna initiative has empowered nearly 2,000 women farmers over 40 villages, through the introduction of gender-neutral farm tools for reducing farm drudgery, and dissemination of knowledge and essential capabilities," Goenka said.

Mahindra Samriddhi Krishi Shiromani Samman (Lifetime Achievement Award) 2019 was conferred upon E A Siddiq for his immense contribution to Indian agriculture. The award was handed over to recognise his contribution of enhancing the productivity of paddy (Both Basmati & Non-Basmati).

The group gave awards in total 11 categories.
Jet Airways, the Naresh Goyal-led cash-strapped air carrier, on Tuesday, said that the Jet Airways aircrafts are safe to fly and are being maintained at the highest levels of safety

Jet Airways engineers union, on Tuesday, said that the Naresh Goyal-led airline's aircraft are safe to fly and are being maintained at the highest levels of safety.

We assure you and the public that Jet Airways airplanes are safe to fly and are being maintained at the highest levels of safety standards since last 25 years. We have an impressive TDR (Technical Dispatch Reliability) of 99.50 percent, one of the highest in the industry, Jet Aircraft Maintenance Engineers Welfare Association (JAMEWA) said in a statement.

All the members of JAMEWA are committed towards the safety culture of Jet Airways and would continue to do so in future, the Jet engineers union said further.

Earlier in the day, in a communication to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the JAMEWA sought the aviation regulator's intervention in recovering the dues, saying the management's failure to keep its commitment of clearing their salary by March had "shaken" their faith in the company, according to the PTI report.

Jet Airways has nearly 560 engineers to maintain its fleet of over 100 planes. The JAMEWA claims representing around 490 engineers.

"As of now, three months' salary is overdue to us," the association had said in an e-mail to the DGCA. "It has been arduous for us to meet our financial requirements, which has resulted in adversely affecting the psychological condition of engineers at work and therefore, safety of public transport aircraft being flown by Jet Airways across India and the world is at risk", PTI report said.

(With PTI inputs)
Kotak Investment Advisors Ltd (KIAL) on Tuesday announced a $400 million fund in partnership with DivyaSree Developers to build and acquire commercial office assets across the country

New Delhi: Kotak Investment Advisors Ltd (KIAL) on Tuesday announced a $400 million fund in partnership with DivyaSree Developers to build and acquire commercial office assets across the country.

KIAL, an arm of Kotak Mahindra Bank, said in a statement that it has launched a new fund which will partner with Bengaluru-based realty firm DivyaSree Developers to develop and acquire commercial office assets.

"The $400 million India Office Assets Fund I, is anchored by a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and is one of the largest dedicated commercial office development platforms announced in India," it added.

DivyaSree is the exclusive development partner and property advisor for the fund and KIAL will act as an investment manager. It is structured as an Alternative Investment Fund under SEBI regulations.

The fund's strategy is to develop greenfield projects as well as acquire under construction and completed assets across key markets in India.

When contacted, Kotak Realty Funds CEO Vikas Chimakurthy said, around $200 million would be infused by ADIA and the rest would be pumped in by KIAL and DivyaSree.

He said projects are being identified for development and the target is to deploy this fund as quickly as possible.

Chimakurthy said: "We have a compelling opportunity to develop and operate quality commercial assets for marquee global customers. This is the first time in India where a financial institution and a developer have come together on a fund platform."

The commercial real estate has been performing well and attracting huge investments since the last few years, despite an overall slowdown in the property market. Leading player Embassy Office Park, a JV of Blackstone and Embassy has currently launched its REIT to raise Rs 4,750 crore.

DivyaSree Developers MD Bhaskar N Raju said: "We currently provide quality commercial spaces across South Indian cities of Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. With this fund, we will consolidate our position in the three cities and also expand footprints in new key markets of Mumbai, Pune and National Capital Region (NCR)."

KIAL's MD and CEO S Sriniwasan said: "As we scale the asset management business, we will work with like-minded partners and create appropriate platforms to address a variety of capital requirements in India.

KIAL focuses on the Alternate Assets business of the group.

While the Kotak Mahindra Group had been associated with PE investments since 1997, the Alternate Assets Group was set up in early 2005 with its first structured third-party private equity and real estate funds. Since then, KIAL has raised $3.5 billion across different asset classes.
L&T has entered into a deal to buy Cafe Coffee Day owner V G Siddhartha's 20.32 percent stake in Mindtree and has also placed an order with brokers to pick up another 15 percent

New Delhi: In the country's first hostile takeover bid in the IT sector, infrastructure giant Larsen & Toubro Monday made an offer to buy up to 66 percent stake in the Mindtree for around Rs 10,800 crore.

L&T has entered into a deal to buy Cafe Coffee Day owner V G Siddhartha's 20.32 percent stake in Mindtree and has also placed an order with brokers to pick up another 15 percent of the company shares from the open market.

Subsequent to these deals, L&T would make an open offer to buy an additional 31 percent stake through an open offer, it said in a late evening statement.

All the three acquisitions are being done at Rs 980 per share, a premium of 1.8 percent over Monday's closing price of Mindtree on the BSE. Mindtree closed on the BSE at Rs 962.50 a piece.

L&T would pay Siddhartha Rs 3,269 crore and Rs 5,030 crore for the open offer, as per filings made by L&T and Mindtree.

The company would shell out around Rs 2,500 crore for acquiring the additional 15 percent stake. Together, the outgo would be around Rs 10,800 crore, according to a rough calculation.

This would be the first hostile takeover bid in the country's IT sector.

L&T's announcement came even as some Mindtree board members wrote to L&T saying that most of the employees and institutionalised investors are not ready to be the part of the entity that would be controlled by the infrastructure major because of cultural differences.

L&T -- which has two subsidiaries L&T Infotech and L&T Technology Services -- is keen to bring Mindtree under its fold to exponentially raise its client base and product offering.

The proposed acquisition is subject to necessary regulatory approvals.

L&T said that Mindtree would remain an independent listed entity.

"L&T has sufficient financial flexibility to fund the entire transaction through its existing financial resources," the company statement said. "This acquisition is in line with L&T's stated strategy of focusing on services and asset-light businesses to drive profitable future growth," it said.

Mindtree would add to L&T's attractive IT-services platform with a focus on new-age digital and cloud solutions.

L&T said it would extend support to Mindtree in its business going forward. "Mindtree will benefit from access to larger client base and wider product offerings under a common parentage giving higher returns to shareholders of Mindtree," the infrastructure major said.

L&T CEO and Managing Director S N Subrahmanyan said the acquisition is part of a strategy to deliver industry-leading IT services to its clients worldwide.

The acquisition, he said, would allow L&T to further enhance shareholder value as Mindtree has a well-established management team.

"Coffee Day Trading and VG Siddhartha (promoter of the company) along with certain other parties have signed a definitive agreement to sell their entire stake in Mindtree Ltd... for a consideration not exceeding Rs 3,269 crore," Coffee Day Enterprises said in a regulatory filing.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of FY 2020, subject to stipulated conditions.

The proceeds from the sale would be used to pare down Coffee Day Group's debt.

"This business restructuring allows us to sharpen our portfolio focus and devote more time towards the strategy for our coffee business," Siddhartha said.

Ahead of L&T's hostile bid, two Mindtree co-founders had flagged concerns over corporate governance at the diversified group saying any such deal would destroy value for the shareholders of the IT firm, according to sources.

Mindtree co-founders and board members -- Krishnakumar Natarajan and CEO Rostow Ravanan, -- wrote to L&T board last week, they said.

The co-founders in the letter said that many institutional investors, clients and employees of Mindtree have expressed their reservations to be part of an L&T-controlled organisation due to a cultural difference between the two companies, according to the sources.

Mindtree was co-founded by -- Krishnakumar Natarajan, Rostow Ravanan, Subroto Bagchi and NS Parthasarathy.

Amid the takeover attempts, Bagchi has rejoined Mindtree.

"Mindtree has not been designed as an 'asset' to be bought & sold. It is a national resource. It has a unique culture that humanises the idea of business. It sets the standards of corporate governance. I need to be there in its time of difficulty. Hence the hard decision to return," Bagchi said in a tweet on Sunday.
For Jet Airways, in their Silver Jubilee year, the airline is battling with what is their biggest existential crisis at the moment.

We live in interesting times. Over the years, several Indian airlines' liveries have slipped into oblivion. From low-fare pioneer Air Deccan in both its avatars (low cost and regional) to Kingfisher, Sahara, Damania, ModiLuft, NEPC and more.

And now, it is Jet Airways which is coming close to a grinding halt the second time around. Back in 2013, when they had a financial crunch, the Middle East carriers were on a high note, and FDI in Indian aviation was enabled at right about the time when Jet Airways needed the fund infusion.

For Jet Airways, in their Silver Jubilee year, the airline is battling with what is their biggest existential crisis at the moment. What started about six months ago as a default on paying salaries to employees has now translated into a full-blown crisis which continues to throw new surprises every day for all the stakeholders, including employees, customers and other.

Almost half the airlines fleet is grounded, customers find out about flight cancellations last minute, and the airline is not able to do much for them. Naresh Goyals word was taken seriously for the first few months till it was not an issue that was connected to the lenders. The airline was still flying, albeit with hiccups. But now, he is unable to keep his word on the timeline of resolution for this situation. For instance, he assured employees that by 18 March the situation would ease up. On 18 March, he extended the deadline sine die, stating it was taking time to make things work.

At the heart of the salvage of the airline is the continued desire of the airlines current promoter, Naresh Goyal, to hold on to the airline in some capacity or another. I empathized with him last year, after all, Jet Airways is all he has to show for his lifes work. But now, it looks more and more like his personal ambition is holding the airline back from resurrection. He is playing hardball, but so is everyone else. And then when he had almost lost it all, he came around with an offer to invest Rs 750 crores in the airline to hold on to the promoter status.

Where do the customers stand?

Customers had given up every little perk they enjoyed on the airline in the name of transformation. Last October, many customers got the shock of their life when they arrived at Mumbai airport only to be turned away from the lounge because GVK stopped accepting Jet Airways customers. Lounge access was eventually withdrawn for frequent flyers in Economy class across the world. Cancellation fees went up, meals went from hot meal to everyone to a cold sandwich to a select few. Everyone else had to buy on board.

Passenger Experience took a beating, but customers were still supporting the airline because the schedules were reliable, and the airline had corporate contracts. The pull of the JetPrivilege programme still worked, and customers were minting JPMiles and thinking of this as a blip in their long association with the airline.

Circa November, it was a good time for Goyal to negotiate a deal with the Tatas, take their payday and head home. The brand was still alive, the affinity for the brand was still alive and the problem was of a smaller magnitude than today. The airline did need a cash infusion, but the payoff with injecting that one billion dollars then to pay off the debt then was much higher. But for the aspirations of Goyal to retain a seat on the table. The Tatas did not want him around, so negotiations went cold between the two sides.

In December, the airline started to implement a focused hub strategy, where they withdrew a lot of direct flights from the rest of the country and started to fly customers via Mumbai and Delhi. This did not go very well for customers, who were now getting edgy because it meant flights were going to take longer to get where they had to go.

Now, by our counts at LiveFromALounge.com, Jet Airways has approximately 61 aircraft of their 119 aircraft on the ground at various airports across the country. These aircraft have been grounded at the demand of the lessors, who have asked Jet Airways to stop operating them till they cant make up for the lease rentals for the past few months.

This continuous grounding of aircraft has led to a capacity reduction for the airline, and also a market share reduction from 14.9 percent in December 2018 to 11.9 percent in January 2019. But most of all, there is no schedule integrity for the airline. Once a lessor serves notice, the airline has to ground those aircraft and then they cancel flights for operational reasons last minute.

For instance, on 19 March, they have cancelled 67 out of their 106 scheduled flights from Delhi. Many passengers find out about these cancellations the night before they fly, or at the airport itself. Given Jet Airways tottering financial condition, other airlines such as Air India and Vistara have stopped accommodating Jet Airways displaced passengers on their flights, for the fear that Jet Airways may not be able to pay them later.

Jet Airways offers its passengers nothing more than a full refund, which sometimes takes a long time to arrive. It leaves passengers with no option but to book on another carrier at last minute fares.

With reduced capacity in the market, airlines have started to raise fares in the T/T-1 bracket (spot fares). For instance, last year, about the same time, you could buy a Mumbai  Delhi next day ticket for Rs 3,500 in economy class, which should have never been the case, given this is traditionally the business travel bracket, and tickets bought which are expensed to the company. Certain no-frill carriers started the trend, so everyone else had no choice but to join in given the fickle Indian passenger largely chooses on price.

As a result, most people stopped booking ahead and started to bank on last minute tickets. The same passengers are now finding fault with airlines due to stronger last-minute fares, and DGCA is apparently taking the airlines to task in meetings, trying to understand why last-minute fares are high. In my personal view, fares are back to normal and the low fares were an aberration, which caused bleeding balance sheets across airlines including IndiGo, Jet Airways and everyone else.

Jet Airways has withdrawn from the north-east, Kerala, many sectors in the middle-east and many other airports altogether. They have downgauged flights on marquee sectors such as operations to Singapore and Dubai from Mumbai and Delhi to the 737 narrowbody where competition such as Singapore Airlines and Emirates flies the A380s and other widebody aircraft.

But Jet Airways still has takers, even at these high fares, given their planes are still flying full, packed to the brim in Economy class. Spot fares on the airline are being frequently sold at Rs 9000 upwards for an economy class on the Mumbai  Delhi sector. Because when you got to go, you got to go, and almost all airlines are running full flights these days. January loads across airlines were over 80 percent across the board.

However, passengers have now started to book away from the airline, given the schedule integrity is compromised and the airline does not have a backup plan in place. With one sweep on 17 March, they cancelled all flights from Abu Dhabi overnight and nixed half their flights to Dubai. That left customers scrambling, and even the staunchest of Jet Airways customers are now wondering if the airline will be around by the time it is their turn to fly the airline next.

When the airline stabilizes, however, I dont expect it to retain the privileges extended to their frequent flyers for the time being. That means a couple of USPs such as hot meals and lounges are gone.

Where do the banks stand?

The default of the lender loans, which were due at the end of December 2018, has kicked off a chain of events that are forcing the hand of everyone. Banks, shy lenders after their debacles with Kingfisher airlines, did not want to lend more to a business that they did not understand. They have now agreed to turn their loans into shares, hence becoming a part owner of the airline, only for Re. 1.

But the airline does not just need its past dues recused temporarily. It also needs money for future operations. According to various reports, the airline is incurring about Rs 10 crores per day as operational costs, and Etihad is dragging its feet on making an investment in the airline. Per various media reports, Etihad has been given an ultimatum about bringing their investment on the table or exiting the airline so that the (perhaps) someone else can invest. Qatar Airways, which has been potentially looking to start an airline in India, categorically stated that they wont invest in Jet Airways given an adversary had invested in the airline. On the other hand, the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund, which was supposed to invest in Jet Airways, has not even started due diligence, as per media reports.

So, where does it leave the banks? If Jet Airways is not able to get new funds soon, they would have continued to shrink, and there are only a few aircraft owned by Jet Airways which can be sold to recuperate about $800 million of the amount owed to the banks.

Where do the lessors stand?

The lessors, after the issues with taking their planes out of India from the earlier demise of Indian airlines, have decided to play it safe. Jet Airways, much like other Indian carriers, leases aircraft from other global companies who own these aircraft. They gave Jet Airways the longest rope, waiting for their rentals to come in before they asked the airline to stop operating these aircraft. This has led to the grounding of over 40 Boeing 737 aircraft for Jet Airways, which is causing them to cancel flights left, right and centre.

While many lessors have still given Jet Airways time till the end of March before they take next steps, if Jet Airways is not able to take a stance soon, they will start to lose these aircraft. With the worldwide grounding of the 737 MAX aircraft, the older 737 aircraft are back in demand, and lessors will find it hard to pass up the opportunity to deploy these aircraft again to other airlines. A Boeing 737 aircraft which is more than 5 years old still earns about $250,000 per month for a lessor, so for each leased aircraft Jet Airways has not met its obligation, the airline is on the hook for over a million dollars as per estimates.

For instance, SpiceJet is looking for at least 12 of these to make up for their currently grounded 737 MAX aircraft, and lessors have already sent them proposals, given it is easy to deregister from the Jet Airways register and pass it on to the SpiceJet register while the aircraft is still in India.

Assuming Jet Airways gets funds, they will find it hard to gather leased aircraft to bring it back to its earlier state if they let go now, apart from the fact that the lease cost will be much higher, given the paucity of non-MAX 737 airframes right now.

Where do the Employees stand?

Jet Airways Naresh Goyal and the employees share a special bond, and the airline has been cashing their chips over the months. The airline has not been able to pay salaries to their employees over the months, and while the airline has managed to retain a lot of them with a delayed salary schedule, the Eagles have started to circle.

IndiGo, which got caught off guard with a paucity of captains powering their fleet growth earlier this year, is holding roadshows at the moment, where they are offering Jet Airways pilots back pay for the period they havent been paid, and equivalent designation at the airline. Even if a few switch, it opens the floodgates for Jet Airways on another frontier, which has some of the most experienced pilots in the industry, albeit on a Boeing 737, not on the Airbus A320.

In the long run, if and when the airline comes back on their feet, the first set of people expect to be paid are the employees, who are working with their chin up. They are the frontline, taking all the brunt of the customers and smiling for the customers, while they are not being kept happy themselves.

Where does the company stand?

The driving force behind the airline has been Naresh Goyal. As one of Indias most visible aviation entrepreneurs, he had his stamp all over the airline, just like many other airlines which are personality centric. He has been pushing the envelope with all the stakeholders trying to keep the airline afloat.

The key to the banks money coming back to them is strong professional management for Jet Airways, assuming the airline transits to a day when it is able to implement the Bank Led Provisional Recovery Plan. India does not have strong professional management across most of its airlines, with IndiGo and GoAir being run by foreign CEOs, and SpiceJet being run by the promoter itself. No names have yet been discussed about professional management who would come in and save the day.

The international long-haul strategy of the airline is working out alright, with the airline having plugged into the Delta- Air France  KLM troika to complete the transfer of passengers from the Americas and Europe to India. In many years, this is the first time that the Boeing 777 aircraft and the Airbus 330s of the airline are being deployed for the right missions, rather than being leased out to other carriers. But if Etihad gets more say in the matter, who is to say this wont be thrown out of the window and Jet Airways becomes a feeder airline again.

For the moment, the company is in a situation where it will need a new strategy to win back the confidence of everyone, including the customers and frequent flyers. One of the trusted strategies in India is to keep fares low to keep the planes filled. Unfortunately, that wont be the one that will make the airline return to its gloried past anytime soon. They really need a better plan for a sustained revival over the long run.

(Ajay Awtaney is a business travel & aviation journalist based in Mumbai, and the founder of the Indian frequent-traveller website Live From A Lounge)
By Laila Kearney NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices rose to near four-month highs on Monday, supported by the prospect of extended OPEC-led oil supply curbs and signs of inventory declines in U.S. crude stockpiles

By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices rose to near four-month highs on Monday, supported by the prospect of extended OPEC-led oil supply curbs and signs of inventory declines in U.S. crude stockpiles.

Brent crude futures settled at $67.54 a barrel, rising 38 cents, or 0.6 percent. The international benchmark held near its 2019 peak of $68.14 reached on Thursday.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude settled at $59.09 a barrel, adding 57 cents, or 1 percent, after hitting a four-month high at $59.23.

"We will leave open the likelihood of fresh Brent highs especially with OPEC+ reaffirming their commitment to cut production further via the past weekends ministerial session," Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates, said in a note.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known as OPEC+, met in Azerbaijan this weekend to monitor their crude supply reduction pact, where they said they would exceed commitments in the coming months.

The group also cancelled their April meeting, meaning the producer group will not meet again until June.

Saudi Arabia on Sunday signalled producers may need to extend the 1.2 million barrels per day of curbs past June into the second half of 2019. The kingdom has in general been cutting more dramatically than some other nations, while Russia, the largest non-OPEC member in the pact, is less enthused about continuing production cuts.

"As long as the levels of inventories are rising and we are far from normal levels, we will stay the course, guiding the market towards balance," said Saudi minister Khalid al-Falih.

Exports from OPEC's biggest producer fell to 7.3 million bpd in January from 7.7 million bpd in December, official data showed.

Signs of falling crude inventory levels at the U.S. storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma also supported futures, market participants said.

Crude stockpiles at Cushing, the delivery point for WTI, fell 1.08 million barrels in the week to Friday, traders said, citing data from market intelligence firm Genscape.

Overall U.S. crude inventories were forecast to have drawn down last week, the second consecutive weekly decline, a preliminary Reuters poll showed.

U.S. oil output from seven major shale formations was expected to reach a record 8.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in April, up 85,000 bpd, which would be the smallest monthly increase since May 2018, the government forecast.

(Additional reporting by Alex Lawler in London and Devika Krishna Kumar in New York; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
RCom called off the sale of its telecom assets to Reliance Jio Infocomm, the mobile telecoms firm controlled by Mukesh Ambani, citing failure to get approvals from lenders and the government.

Shares of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom) were locked in the upper circuit on Tuesday after his elder brother Mukesh Ambani helped pay off debt owed to Swedens Ericsson.

Telecom equipment maker Ericsson received Rs 462 crore ($67.42 million) from RCom as unpaid dues from a deal it had signed in 2014, a spokeswoman said on Monday.

Indias richest man Mukesh Ambani, who controls oil-to-telecoms powerhouse Reliance Industries, appears to have offered support to ensure Anil Ambani paid off total dues of Rs 550 crore ($80 million) to Ericsson.

The nature of the backing or how it was delivered was unclear, but in a statement Anil Ambani thanked his billionaire brother for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to our strong family values by extending this timely support.

RCom called off the sale of its telecom assets to Reliance Jio Infocomm, the mobile telecoms firm controlled by Mukesh Ambani, citing failure to get approvals from lenders and the government.

The Supreme Court had last month ordered Anil Ambani and two RCom directors to pay Ericsson Rs 450 crore within four weeks or face a three-month jail term for contempt of court.

Share of RCom rose as much as 10 percent to Rs 4.4, in their biggest daily percent gain since 26 February.
SpiceJet has joined global airlines' grouping IATA as a member, becoming the first Indian low-cost carrier to get the membership

Mumbai/ New Delhi: SpiceJet has joined global airlines' grouping IATA as a member, becoming the first Indian low-cost carrier to get the membership.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) represents more than 290 airlines, including Air India, Jet Airways and Vistara.

The membership would help SpiceJet, which has ambitious expansion plans, to have codeshares and agreements with other carriers, the domestic airline said in a statement Tuesday.

SpiceJet has become the first Indian low-cost carrier to join the IATA as a member, it added.

"We are delighted to welcome SpiceJet as part of the 290 airlines in the IATA family. SpiceJet is the first Indian low-cost carrier to be an IATA member, and our fifth member in India," IATA Regional Vice-President for Asia Pacific Conrad Clifford said.

According to the statement, the IATA membership is significant on account of SpiceJet's plans for rapidly expanding its international footprint.

The membership allows the airline to "explore and grow its collaborations with international member airlines of IATA through interlining and codeshares, enabling SpiceJet to seamlessly expand the network options for its passengers in future," it added.

"The membership will further enable us to inculcate global best practices and innovations... IATA also provides us a platform to closely work and collaborate with other airline members and expand our network through codeshares and agreements with partner airlines," SpiceJet Chairman and Managing Director Ajay Singh said.

In December 2018, IATA Director-General and Chief Executive Officer Alexandre de Juniac told PTI that SpiceJet had requested to be a member of the grouping.

Recently, SpiceJet received IATA's Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) certificate.
Today's top stories: Goa Assembly Speaker Pramod Sawant has been sworn in as Goa chief minister; the BJP is expected to release its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha election; Nirav Modi is expected to be arrested after a UK court issues a warrant against him; and more.

Goa gets a new chief minister

Goa Assembly Speaker Pramod Sawant took oath as the new chief minister of the state, at the Raj Bhavan, in the early hours of Tuesday.

In addition, 11 other leaders, who were part of the previous Goa cabinet, including Sudhin Dhavalikar of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Vijay Sardesai of the Goa Forward Party (GFP) and BJP MLA Vishwajit Rane, took oath as cabinet ministers.

The oath was administered by Goa Governor Mridula Sinha. Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nitin Gadkari was also present at the ceremony. Forty-three-year-old Sawant represents Sanquelim Assembly constituency. His wife, Sulakshana Sawant is the president of the womens wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa.

The chief minister's post fell vacant following the death of Manohar Parrikar on Sunday evening after prolonged illness.

BJP 'first list' expected, Congress campaign heats up

As the BJP readies its battle plan for the Lok Sabha elections, its first list of candidates is expected to be released on Tuesday, after the Central Election Committee of the party holds a meeting in the evening.

Meanwhile, Congress president Rahul Gandhi will address an election rally at Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh and a party meeting at the Manipur capital of Imphal. His sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will begin day two of her boat trip on the Ganga with a visit to the Maulana Ismail Chishti Majar in Mirzapur. The Congress general secretary for Uttar Pradesh East will also tour Bhatauli, Devri and Chunar.

The Election Commission of India will convene a meeting of the country heads of major social media companies and platforms to discuss issues related to the use of social media in the forthcoming election.

Police arrest auditor in Mumbai bridge collapse case

Police have arrested auditor Neeraj Desai whose firm had carried out the structural audit on the foot overbridge near Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Station and declared it safe for use despite signs of corrosion. The collapse had left six people dead.

"We detained Desai on Sunday after ascertaining negligence on his part and arrested him," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone I) Abhishek Trimukhe told reporters.

Police also recorded statements of other officials, including Additional Municipal Commissioner, BMC, Sanjay Darade, he said.

CRPF jawan killed in clash with Maoists

One CRPF jawan died and four others were injured in an IED blast followed by an exchange of fire between security forces and Maoists in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district on Monday.

Troops of 231 Battalion of CRPF, along with the state police, were on road security duty when the blast hit them. The blast was followed by firing from Maoists between Kondapara and Kamal posts.

UK court issues warrant against Nirav Modi

United Kingdom's Westminster Court has issued an arrest warrant against fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, accused in the $2 billion PNB fraud case, according to media reports.

The arrest warrant was issued against Modi by a London court and he is to be produced in court on 25 March, said News18 in a tweet.

According to a report by a UK newspaper that took the Indian media by storm last week, Modi is currently living in a three-bedroom flat occupying half of a floor of the landmark Centre Point tower block in London, where the rent is estimated to be 17,000 a month.

According to investigating agencies, Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, in connivance with certain bank officials, cheated PNB to the tune of Rs 14,000 crore through issuance of fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoUs).

GST Council meet today

The GST Council in its 34th meeting on Tuesday is expected to take up various issues including the implementation of lower GST rates for the real estate sector. The meeting is likely to deliberate only the transition provision and related issues for the implementation of lower GST rates for the real estate sector, sources said, adding, no issues related to rate is in the agenda as the model code of conduct is in force.

In the previous meeting (24 February), the high-powered GST Council slashed tax rates for under-construction flats to 5 percent and affordable homes to 1 percent, effective 1 April.

The council is expected to give its nod on new rules on how far builders can make use of credit for taxes paid on raw materials and services in settling their final tax liability as the real estate sector moves to a new tax regime from 1 April, sources said.

Currently, the goods and services tax (GST) is levied at 12 percent with input tax credit (ITC) on payments made for under-construction property or ready-to-move-in flats where completion certificate is not issued at the time of sale. For affordable housing units, the existing tax rate is 8 percent.

DGCA to meet with airlines to discuss airfare hikes

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has called a meeting on Tuesday noon to discuss with airlines the upward spiral in airfares as Jet Airways continues to ground its aircraft and cancel a significant number of flights, a government official said.

According to the official, after the DGCA grounded all 12 of SpiceJet's 737 Max aircraft on 13 March following the Ethiopian Airlines crash, that killed 157 people, the problem of rising airfares in Indian market has "aggravated".

"DGCA has called a meeting at Tuesday noon to discuss the airfare rise because of a significant number of cancellations done by Jet Airways in the last few weeks," the government official told PTI.

Cash-strapped Jet Airways on Monday said it has grounded four more planes, taking the number of aircraft that are non-operational due to non-payment of lease rentals to 41. Etihad Airport services, in a notification to its passengers on Sunday, said, "Jet Airways has cancelled all their flights from Abu Dhabi with immediate effect from March 18 due to operational reasons".

Xiaomi Redmi Go to launch in India today

Xiaomi is expected to launch its very first Android Go-powered smartphone in India, at 12 noon on Tuesday. The Redmi Go which will likely be Xiaomi's most affordable smartphone yet will feature the option of running in 20 Indian languages and will also support the Google Assistant in Hindi.

Madhuri Dixit-produced Netflix film set for 29 March release

Madhuri Dixit's production debut, Marathi film 15th August, will release on Netflix on 29 March, the streaming service announced on Monday. Set in a Mumbai chawl, the film follows the course of a series of zany mishaps that occur on a single day, as its residents prepare for the Independence Day flag-hoisting ceremony.

The film revolves around how extraordinary events unfold on a not-so-typical Independence Day - when a lover, in his quest to win over his beloved, ends up creating complete mayhem, compelling residents to unite and help him out of his mess.
Pondering what might happen after his death, the Dalai Lama anticipated some attempt by Beijing to foist a successor on Tibetan Buddhists

Dharamshala: The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, said on Monday it was possible that once he dies his incarnation could be found in India, where he has lived in exile for 60 years, and warned that any other successor named by China would not be respected.

Sat in an office next to a temple ringed by green hills and snow-capped mountains, the 14th Dalai Lama spoke to Reuters a day after Tibetans in the northern Indian town of Dharamshala marked the anniversary of his escape from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, disguised as a soldier.

He fled to India in early 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, and has since worked to draw global support for linguistic and cultural autonomy in his remote and mountainous homeland.

China, which took control of Tibet in 1950, brands the 83-year-old Nobel peace laureate a dangerous separatist.

Pondering what might happen after his death, the Dalai Lama anticipated some attempt by Beijing to foist a successor on Tibetan Buddhists.

China considers Dalai Lamas reincarnation as something very important. They have more concern about the next Dalai Lama than me, said the Dalai Lama, swathed in his traditional red robes and yellow scarf.

In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in free country, one chosen by Chinese, then nobody will trust, nobody will respect (the one chosen by China). So thats an additional problem for the Chinese! Its possible, it can happen, he added, laughing.

China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lamas successor, as a legacy inherited from Chinas emperors.

But many Tibetans  whose tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death  suspect any Chinese role as a ploy to exert influence on the community.

Born in 1935, the current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two years old.

Many of Chinas more than 6 million Tibetans still venerate the Dalai Lama despite government prohibitions on displays of his picture or any public display of devotion.

UP FOR DISCUSSION

The Dalai Lama said contact between Tibetans living in their homeland and in exile was increasing, but that no formal meetings have happened between Chinese and his officials since 2010.

Informally, however, some retired Chinese officials and businessman with connections to Beijing do visit him from time to time, he added.

He said the role of the Dalai Lama after his death, including whether to keep it, could be discussed during a meeting of Tibetan Buddhists in India later this year.

He, however, added that though there was no reincarnation of Buddha, his teachings have remained.

If the majority of (Tibetan people) really want to keep this institution, then this institution will remain, he said. Then comes the question of the reincarnation of the 15th Dalai Lama.

If there is one, he would still have no political responsibility, said the Dalai Lama, who gave up his political duties in 2001, developing a democratic system for the up to 100,000 Tibetans living in India.

SEMINAR IN CHINA?

During the interview, the Dalai Lama spoke passionately about his love for cosmology, neurobiology, quantum physics and psychology.

If he was ever allowed to visit his homeland, he said hed like to speak about those subjects in a Chinese university.

But he wasnt expecting to go while China remained under Communist rule.

China  great nation, ancient nation  but its political system is totalitarian system, no freedom. So therefore I prefer to remain here, in this country.

The Dalai Lama was born to a family of farmers in Taktser, a village on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, in Chinas Qinghai province.

During a recent Reuters visit to Taktser, police armed with automatic weapons blocked the road. Police and more than a dozen plain-clothed officials said the village was not open to non-locals.

Our strength, our power is based on truth. Chinese power based on gun, the Dalai Lama said. So for short term, gun is much more decisive, but long term truth is more powerful.
A rundown of five of Firstpost's best articles on Tuesday, 19 March

KCRs talk of a 'new party' aimed at dispelling rumours of him being Modi's secret ally

At least for now, keeping away from Congress and BJP is essential for K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) in Telangana in his current scheme of things. While his main rival in the state is the Congress, he is averse to taking any risk of losing the minority vote by joining forces with the BJP. This political template, along with good governance, was the reason he was able to win a landslide victory in the 7 December, 2018 Assembly election. Like that Assembly election, TRS has an alliance with All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), a rabble-rousing Muslim party led by Asaduddin Owaisi, in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Christchurch terror attack: Jacinda Ardern's response shows us what a leader should look like

In her speech, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern underlined the grief and fear that the Christchurch shooting inspired. It left no wriggle room for the kind of thinking that justifies rage against immigrants and/or Muslims as natural or 'just' backlash, the kind of thinking that has got prominence through Brexit, through Donald Trump and our own right-wing government in India. The killings were wrong. The man who did it was wrong. He shouldn't be deified and there will be laws in place to ensure it never happened again. This was her response. And then she put on a headscarf when visiting the mourning families, prompting even more goggling and googling.

Economists vs CAs: What matters is the ground reality

An unseemly tussle seems to have broken out between economists and chartered accountants (CAs) with 131 CAs countering 108 economists and saying what the economists are doing is a smear campaign at the behest of vested interests a la the 'award wapsi' gang in the run up to the upcoming general elections. A lot has happened on the societal front also in the five years of Narendra Modi government, with Ujwala Yojana bringing relief to rural women with gas connections and Jan Dhan Yojana making direct benefit transfers possible and leak proof. It is wrong to pronounce verdict on a new government so soon in the day when its initiatives are still a work in progress and have the promise of changing the economy in years to come.

Miami Open 2019: Serena Williams starts as favorite in womens event

Serena Williams looked as good as she ever has in her win over Azarenka at Indian Wells, but had to pull out of her next match against Garbine Muguruza due to an illness. If she has recovered from that, she should be expected do some serious damage in the draw  Miami is pretty much her home, and shes won a staggering eight titles here.

Netflix's Love, Death and Robots highlights luxury of ambition that animated shows enjoy

Love, Death and Robots is a spectacular, wildly ambitious anthology animation show by Netflix, helmed by David Fincher and Tim Miller (visual effects maestro, who made his directorial debut with Deadpool in 2016). Going through the eighteen mini-episodes of LDR, one of the first things that strikes you is how each of the stories is set in a visually distinct universe  Witness is set in a vertiginous, surreal world of ominous-looking skyscrapers and off-kilter landscapes.
The Naval Adviser in the mission was subjected to aggressive tailing by Pakistani security personnel on 8, 9, 10 and 11 March, they said.

New Delhi: India has lodged a strong protest with Pakistan over several incidents of alleged harassment of Indian High Commission officials in Islamabad between 8 and 11 March, and demanded an immediate investigation into them, official sources said Monday.

The Indian High Commission issued a "note verbale" to Pakistan Foreign Ministry on 13 March, giving a detailed account of the incidents including tailing of India's Deputy High Commissioner, Naval Adviser and a first secretary on multiple occasions, they said.

The sources said the deputy high commissioner was aggressively tailed by Pakistani security personnel on 9 and 10 March while the first secretary faced similar harassment on 8 March.

The Naval Adviser in the mission was subjected to aggressive tailing by Pakistani security personnel on 8, 9, 10 and 11 March, they said.

One Pakistani agency personnel was observed keeping surveillance outside the residence of the Indian Deputy High Commissioner on 9 and 10 March.

Sources said two Pakistani security agency personnel have been following the High Commissioner on a daily basis.

In the note verbale, which is a diplomatic communication, the Indian High Commission has sought an urgent investigation into the incidents, saying such cases of harassment are violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. India's strong protest over the incidents came in the midst of severe strain in bilateral ties between the two neighbours.

Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after Indian Air Force fighter jets bombed terror group JeM training camp near Balakot deep inside Pakistan on February 26.

Pakistan retaliated by attempting to target Indian military installations the next day. However, the IAF thwarted their plans.

The Indian strike on the JeM camp came 12 days after the terror outfit claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a CRPF convoy in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama in which 40 soldiers were killed.
The results for the the first year pre-university college (PUC) results of Karnataka's Bengaluru's southern area were declared on the official website  result.bspucpa.com.

Karnataka 1st year PUC results 2019 | The results for the first year pre-university college (PUC) in Bengaluru's southern area were declared on the official website  result.bspucpa.com. Students who appeared for the exam can download their result from the website now.

Students will need to provide their registration number and the date of birth on the website. The pre-university board has advised students to check their results only from the official website.

This is the first time that Bengaluru students will be able to check their results online, instead of going to their college to see the results.

The Times of India quoted an official of the PU board as saying that the re-exam for students who fail this attempt will be held between 28 April and 10 May across 10 centres of the district. Additionally, the results are likely to be published later in May so that the students can enrol in the second year of PUC classes.

Here is how to check your result for 1st year PUC results:

Step 1: Visit the official website result.bspucpa.com

Step 2: Click on the link saying 'First year PUC result'

Step 3: Once the login page opens, enter your roll number and date of birth

Step 4: Take a print-out of the result for future reference

With inputs from agencies

This information has not been checked independently by Firstpost staff and will be updated with new developments.
The meeting comes days after the two countries held talks to finalise the modalities for the corridor linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in the Pakistani town of Kartarpur with the Gurdaspur district in Punjab.

New Delhi: India and Pakistan on Tuesday held a meeting of technical experts to discuss issues related to the Kartarpur corridor, including its alignment, coordinates, and other engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points, sources said.

The meeting comes days after the two countries held talks to finalise the modalities for the corridor linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in the Pakistani town of Kartarpur with the Gurdaspur district in Punjab.

The technical meeting at the level of experts, including engineers and surveyors, was held at "proposed zero points" in the follow up to the decision reached on the 14 March meeting, the sources said.

India has been seeking this meeting for long time and had even suggested to hold it on 15 February, 2019. Pakistan, however, had linked it to the meeting on the draft agreement.

The experts discussed the alignment of the corridor, the coordinates, and the engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points, the sources said.

The outcomes from Tuesday's site visit and survey would be further discussed at a meeting on 2 April, they said.

Zero point is the point at which the Indian side of the corridor and the Pakistani side of the corridor will be meeting. India had shared the coordinates with Pakistan earlier this year but the Pakistani side gave alternate coordinates.

A joint statement issued after the meeting on 14 March at the Indian side of the Attari-Wagah border had said both sides held detailed and constructive discussions on various aspects and provisions of the project and agreed to work towards expeditiously operationalising the Kartarpur Sahib corridor.

The meeting had come amid heightened tensions between the two neighbours following India's air strike on a terrorist training camp of the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Pakistan's subsequent retaliation.

Last November, India and Pakistan agreed to set up the border crossing linking Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, the final resting place of Sikh faith's founder Guru Nanak Dev, to Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Gurdaspur district.

Kartarpur Sahib is located in Pakistan's Narowal district across the river Ravi, about four km from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh had on 26 November, 2018 laid the foundation stone of the Kartarpur corridor in Gurdaspur district.

Two days later, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan laid the foundation stone of the corridor in Narowal, 125 kilometres from Lahore.
The custodial death of Rizwan Ahmad Pandit, a teacher from Awantipora, has triggered outrage across Kashmir with his house now becoming the centre of anti-government protests in the Valley

Awantipora: On Sunday night, security forces cordoned the house of Rizwan Ahmad Pandit. A day later, his family came to know about his death in police custody.

Pandit's death has triggered outrage in Kashmir. The victim's house has now become the centre of anti-government protests with the road outside it strewn with the stones after the youth fought with the police.

The Jammu and Kashmir Police responded by firing pellet guns and tear gas shells, during which at least four youth received injuries in the eyes, said Aatif Ahmad, a local resident. Some protesters received injuries in other body parts, Ahmad added.

The smoke from the tear gas shells filled the air and burning tyres blocked the movement towards the police station that lied only a few blocks away from Pandits house.

Pandit's death has come to light at a time when the environment in the Valley is already tense with the government crackdown on separatist leaders and the arrest of cadres of the religious-political group Jamat-e-Islami.

By late Tuesday afternoon, Rizwans body had not been handed over to the family as they were asked first to get it from the police control room (PCR) in Srinagar and later from Pampore police station. The family refused and sought that they should be handed Pandit's body by the Awantipora police, which had picked him on Sunday. The family later confirmed that Pandit's body was handed over to them via an ambulance, two kilometres away from their residence.

On Sunday night, the police had raided Pandit's house. During the raid, they had asked his father, mother and brothers to gather in a single room. The police then took the mobile phones and two laptops, which belonged to other members of the family.

"My son was innocent. He was not a militant. He was killed without any reason, said Pandit's mother, Haneefa, sitting on the verandah of their house among wailing women.

The police said that Pandit was in custody in connection with a militancy-related case. "In pursuance of investigation in a terror case, one suspect Rizwan Pandit, a resident of Awantipora was in police custody. The said person died in police custody," a police spokesperson said.

A magisterial inquiry has been ordered as per the procedure laid down in Section 176 of CrPC. "Separately, police investigation has also been initiated in the jurisdictional area of the incident," the police said.

On Sunday night at the time of Pandit's arrest, family members claim that security forces also searched the houses of his two uncles and warned them not to raise any "hue and cry".

Pandit's father Assaudallah said, that Pandit was a teacher at a local private school and offered tuitions on a part-time basis. He also taught as a guest faculty at a polytechnic college associated with the Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) in Awantipora.

"The authorities only want that there should be no peace in Kashmir, that is why they killed my son," he said.

According to Pandit's brother Mubashir, in 2018, the local police had arrested Pandit in a false case. He says that Pandit was taken to custody by the Awantipora police on 16 August and kept under detention for 10 days. After 10 days, the police registered a "false case" against Pandit, claiming to have arrested him from the IUST campus in August 2018, said Mubashir adding that weapons were shown to have been recovered from his possession.

He was not at the university when the police showed to have been recovered weapons from his possession from among the bushes. He was at the police station, a false case was registered against him. The police are doing all this to earn promotions," he claimed.

After his arrest in August 2018, Pandit was booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and detained at the Kotbalwal Jail in Jammu. He, however, was released in January 2019 after the PSA case was quashed against him.

"My brother was doing his job properly and had also helped out local boys by offering them education after the floods in 2014 and the 2016 agitation," said Mubashir.

"During the raid on Sunday, the security forces also took away my laptop and that of my cousin who is a contractor. They are harassing Kashmiris, he added.

A local resident, Aijaz Ahmad Bhat, said that there's fear among the people. "We fear for our lives as the security forces know only how to commit excesses, he said.

"Pandit's death is a loss to our nation. The local boys depended on him for education, added another resident, Jalaudin.

"The police is continuing with the killings only to get promotions. They only know how to invoke false cases, said Assaudullah, Pandit's father.
The number of farmer suicides is the tip of the iceberg of an agricultural crisis, and by not making uncomfortable figures public under various pretexts, the government is doing a disservice to itself and to the public at large

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, has been reporting the numbers of farmer suicides unfailingly from 1995 to 2015. It is part of the annual report on Accidental Deaths and Suicides (ADSI) for the whole country.

Since 2015, there has been no annual report of Accidental Deaths and Suicides (ADSI); the last one was released in 2016, with data for the previous year. It is in this report that the NCRB provides the data it compiles on farmers suicides.

An application under the Right to Information (RTI) act, filed by the author, demanding farmers suicides data for the whole country from 2016 to 2018 (three years) and the reasons for not making them public, elicited the response that the data for accidental deaths and suicides for 2016 is under finalisation. In a reply dated 8 January, 2019, senior statistical officer Sanjay Kumar said that the data for 2017 and 2018 is not with the Bureau as yet. He then went on to give navigational details of how to access the 2015 data and the general information available on the website.

It is surprising that the Bureau, which been collecting annual records and publishing them for 20 years, does not have data for 2017 and 2018, and it is only in the process of finalising data for 2016. While this is not the only data that has not been made public, and data on jobs and the employment rate has been suppressed, farm suicides data are a low priority anyway. When 108 Indian economists wrote a public letter raising concerns over political interference in statistical data, farm suicides numbers  or the lack of them  did not figure in their litany.

The economists demanded that voices be raised against this tendency to suppress uncomfortable data, and the suicides of farmers can easily fit into that category. Some states had already reported zero farm suicides, and there is an attempt by the NCRB to introduce new categories and reduce the farm suicide numbers since 2014.

However, it did have a special section for farm suicides since its 2015 report. Considering the paramount importance of this issue, the NCRB in consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare and Ministry of Home Affairs started collecting data on exclusively farmer suicides since 2014. Data on suicides in farming sector now include suicides committed by farmers/cultivators as well as agricultural labourers, according to the NCRB. So where is that data now?

Till 2013, the NCRB compiled suicide data for farmers in a single category  self-employed persons in agriculture". From 2014 onward, the NCRB introduced agricultural labourers as a category as well. For the purpose of this report, Farmers/Cultivators include persons whose profession is farming and who either cultivates his/her own land or who cultivates lease land with or without the assistance of agricultural labourers. Agricultural Labourers are those persons who primarily work in farming sector (agriculture/horticulture) and whose main source of income is from agricultural labour activities, it said. This led to data being collected under different categories, skewing the numbers.

The data for 2015 clearly shows that the percentage share of farm suicides as a percentage of total suicides has gone up from 8.7 percent in 2013 to 9.4 percent in 2015. The NCRB report said that, A total of 12,602 persons involved in farming sector (consisting of 8,007 farmers/cultivators and 4,595 agricultural labourers) have committed suicides during 2015, accounting for 9.4 percent of total suicide victims (1, 33,623) in the country. The nine-page chapter analyses the causes of suicides, as well as land holding patterns in various states.

Not publishing data since 2015 is a major lacuna and points to another possible case of suppressing facts. From 1995 to 2015, nearly 321,428 farmers have committed suicide in India, according to data from the NCRB. In 2015, State/Union Territory (UT)-wise analysis reveals that majority of suicides by persons engaged in farming sector were reported in Maharashtra (4,291 suicides) followed by Karnataka (1,569 suicides), Telangana (1,400 suicides), Madhya Pradesh (1,290 suicides), Chhattisgarh (954 suicides), Andhra Pradesh (916 suicides) and Tamil Nadu (606 suicides) during 2015, they together accounted for 87.5 percent of total such suicides in the country (11,026 out of 12,602 suicides)."

Agrarian distress and farmers suicides cannot be wished away. By not publishing the numbers as regularly as it used to, the NCRB and the government are inviting suspicion. The proposed merger of the NCRB with the Bureau of Police Research and Development has been kept in abeyance in 2018, according to a letter uploaded on the NCRB website. The data is collected from police stations, and is in existence, as another RTI application revealed, though the data is restricted to Maharashtra alone.

Mumbai-based RTI activist Jeetendra Ghadge sought information on farmer suicides in Maharashtra from 2014 to 2019 and got it. The data shows that in 2014, 2039 farmers committed suicide; in 2015, it was 3263 suicides; in 2016, it was 3052 suicides; in 2017, it was 2919 suicides; and in 2018, it was 2761 suicides. The numbers seem to be going down. However, there is a discrepancy in the data from NCRB and Maharashtra for 2014 and 2015, which includes agricultural labourers. Some states like Chhattisgarh have reported zero suicides in the past, and some suicides are entered under other heads like self-employed others. That is also the reason why the National Commission on Farmers had recommended a suicide census to standardise and validate figures from all states, but this is something that has not happened.

Farm suicides are also not recorded due to agrarian distress and are passed off as due to depression or alcoholism. Activists working on the issue have lamented the undue stress the survivors have to go through to establish the legitimacy of the suicide and get compensation. Since 2001, barely a quarter of the families where the farmer has committed suicide in the Amravati division, which is the worst affected in Maharashtra, are granted the one lakh rupee compensation, according to official figures. While the government proposed to increase this to Rs 5 lakh, nothing has been finalised, according to the information given to Jeetendra Ghadge.

The number of suicides is the tip of the iceberg of the crisis in agriculture and by not making uncomfortable figures public under various pretexts, the government is doing a disservice to itself and to the public at large. With elections round the corner, there is a dim chance of any official data being published in the event that will upset the apple cart.
The seven Indian engineers were kidnapped by Taliban militants in the restive northern Baghlan province on 6 May. India has been requesting the Afghan government to secure release of the Indians.

New Delhi: Ten months after being kidnapped in Afghanistan's Baghlan province, one of the seven Indians has returned to India, the External Affairs Ministry said Monday.

It said that India continues to work closely with the Afghan government for safe and early return of the remaining six Indian nationals.

The seven Indian engineers were kidnapped by Taliban militants in the restive northern Baghlan province on 6 May. India has been requesting the Afghan government to secure release of the Indians.

"One of the seven Indian nationals, who was kidnapped in Baghlan province of Afghanistan in May 2018, has safely returned to India," the MEA said.

"We are grateful to the Government of Afghanistan for their support in securing the release and repatriation of the Indian national," it said.

The Indian engineers were working on a project for the construction of a power sub-station and they were kidnapped by Taliban militants from the vicinity of Cheshma-e-Sher area.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had taken up the issue with the Afghan government on multiple occasions.

India has been carrying reconstruction activities in the war-torn country. It has already provided at least $ 2 billion aid to Afghanistan.
President Ram Nath Kovind awarded Shaurya Chakra to 16-year-old Irfan Ramzan Sheikh for fighting militants who attacked his residence in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir

New Delhi: In one of the rare occasions, President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday awarded Shaurya Chakra to 16-year-old Irfan Ramzan Sheikh for fighting militants who attacked his residence in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Shaurya Chakra is usually awarded to armed forces and para-military personnel for "gallantry otherwise in the face of the enemy". During the intervening night of October 16-17 of 2017, militants cordoned off the house of Sheikh. His father Mohammad Ramzan was an ex-sarpanch with affiliations to the People's Democratic Party (PDP).

When Sheikh, the eldest son of Mohammad Ramzan, opened the door, he found three militants in the verandah of the house armed with rifles and grenades. "Sensing that the militants could harm his family, he exhibited highest degree of courage and faced the militants for sometime so as to avoid their entry inside the house. In meantime, his father came out and the militants pounced on him, resulting in scuffle," the citation for the award read.

Sheikh did not think for a moment for his own safety and pounced upon the militants for safeguarding the life of his father and other family members, it read. The militants also resorted to indiscriminate firing, resulting in severe injury to Sheikh's father. He later succumbed.

However, Sheikh did not lose courage and continued to engage in scuffle with one of the militants, who resorted to indiscriminate firing resulting in severe injuries to the militant as well.

On seeing one of their associates injured, the militants tried to flee. However, Sheikh chased them and they left the body of their fellow militant behind. "Irfan Ramzan Sheikh exhibited the extraordinary show of bravery and maturity in such a small age," the citation read.

Currently, studying in Class X, Sheikh aspires to become an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer.
Congress has been finding myriad ways of undermining its own chances and boosting that of the BJP in the Lok Sabha Election 2019

Its tough to understand the Congress gameplan. The party is facing arguably the toughest election since its inception where the fight is not to regain power but to stay politically relevant. And yet, despite the impression that it is ready to throw the kitchen sink at the BJP, it finds myriad ways of undermining its own chances and boosting that of its rival. It is a perplexing paradox.

Nothing else explains the way Congress has so far carried out its campaign for the Lok Sabha election. One understands the party has a crack data analysis team at its command and smart brains behind campaign management. Congresss daffy moves are therefore doubly perplexing. One doesnt have to be Sun Tzu or Chanakya to reckon that in a battle one must play to ones strengths and target the Oppositions weakness. The grand old party seems to be doing quite the opposite. Let us take a look at two examples.

The chowkidar campaign

From the very beginning, Rahul Gandhis strategy was a flawed one. The 'chowkidar chor hai' (the watchman is the thief) might be a clever trolling of the prime ministers slogan of being the nations 'chowkidar' but catchphrases can serve only to solidify and convey a popular perception, never to create a perception out of thin air.

Narendra Modis five-year tenure at the Centre has certainly given the Opposition opportunities to target the prime minister as he seeks another mandate, but corruption isnt one of them. The image of incorruptibility is Modis strength, not weakness, and Rahuls strategy of targeting his strength in the battle runs a risk of ineffectiveness at best. It may even backfire on Congress.

It isnt just the fact that the Rafale deal  which forms the centrepiece of Congresss corruption charge against Modi  has been declared as kosher by the CAG and even the Supreme Court. These institutional responses obviously influence public opinion. But many other factors also contribute towards shaping public opinion. Some of these factors are describable  such as Modis track record as a politician; his tenure as three-time chief minister of Gujarat; the fact that economic offenders who fled the country and wheeler-dealers who are fugitive from the Indian law are being dragged back by the collar from foreign shores; implementation of disruptive steps like the demonetisation that became a morality tale in public perception; bringing of much-needed laws such as the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) that turned around sick units and addressed mounting bank NPAs.

Then there are factors that are indescribable but equally contributive towards the perception of Modi as an incorruptible leader  the austere lifestyle of his family members, the fact that he left family life to embrace the life of a pracharak and paribrajak before entering politics that plays out with the theme of renunciation in popular perception. An amalgamation of these factors  reality and perception  have contributed towards building an image of an incorruptible leader who is "out to root out corruption not indulge in it.

Faced against this perception, which is interchangeable in politics with reality, Congresss charge has fallen flat. Modi remains an outlier among prime ministers who managed to maintain his personal popularity throughout his tenure and even at the fag end of his term, surveys point out that he continues to bust the charts.

The latest CVoter-IANS survey that collected data till 14 March shows Modis approval rating at 56 percent. His nearest rival Rahul Gandhis popularity lurks way below.

According to the current TimesNow-VMR opinion poll, the NDA is slated to retain power with 283 out of 543 seats, UPAs figure is projected at 135 and others 125. The poll projects an uptick in Modi governments popularity since the presentation of the budget and Balakot strike.

Applying all necessary disclaimers, the trend shows that Rahuls corruption charges against Modi and incendiary rhetoric such as calling for jailing the prime minister in Rafale deal case  are finding no takers. Not just opinion polls, this is evident through other sources as well.

Modis campaign slogan Main Bhi Chowkidar, is a good example of how slogans work. At one level it kills off Congresss chowkidar chor hai catchphrase because it invites people to identify with the leitmotif of a watchman, at another level it creates a new constituency of workers, wage-earners, labourers, sanitation workers by imbuing their labour with dignity. People identify with a slogan when it either reflects a popular perception or carries a modicum of aspiration. While Modis slogan ticks the boxes, Rahuls doesnt.

It helps explain why, as India Today has found out after a light data crunching, BJPs chowkidar is ousting Congresss chowkidar from trending ranks. The article points out that #MainBhiChowkidar received around 1.5 million mentions on Twitter, followed by #ChowkidarPhirSe which was used for about 3,00,000 times. The #ChowkidarChorHai received hardly 1,63,000 mentions, which is almost 10 per cent of the number of times #MainBhiChowkidar got mentioned.

A lot of this trending has to do with the BJPs social media team, but that is also true for the Congress which boasts of no less efficient a system. Therefore, it points towards an unfavourable conclusion for Congress. Rahuls effort of portraying Modi as corrupt is not working. He should course-correct.

The Congress president and even his sister  touted as the smarter one  seems bent on making the same mistakes. Rahul tried to troll Modis slogan again while Priyanka Gandhi Vadra suggested chowkidars are for rich people.

This essentially misses the point. Modis slogan taps into his image and dismisses Rahuls charge as a slur, and by inviting people to identify with it (helped by the message of inclusiveness) makes it difficult for the Congress to use the word watchman as a pejorative. Congress doesnt seem to have got the memo.

Game of alliances

The second example of Congress calamitous campaign is the mess it is creating while trying to stitch up alliances. Congresss dilemma is understandable. It is torn between the need to build the partys torn structure ground up, and the need to remain in the power game. Its reduced numbers mean that it cant demand obeisance from regional chieftains. It must adjust itself to a new role where it is little more than an appendage to powerful regional leaders who want alliances on their terms.

Congress finds the new reality difficult to accept, and it is either driving too hard a bargain or being ignored as some Opposition forces find it less than useful for their designs. The BJP has been accused of being a too dominating outfit that doesnt know how to take allies along, but it has appeared nimbler in stitching pre-poll partners than Congress, and despite its commanding national position seems more willing to sacrifice seats for allies than Congress.

In Bihar, a key state for Congress, talks are on the verge of breaking down. At the time of writing, the RJD has asked Congress to be happy with 8 seats instead of 11, or be prepared to contest all 40 on its own. According to reports, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav isnt happy with Congress "greed".

In West Bengal, the Congress has dismissed overtures from the Left in joining hands against the ruling Trinamool Congress because apparently, it involves compromising with its dignity.

The Left Front, in return, has said that it cant accept Congress unjustified demands.

Meanwhile in Delhi, while Arvind Kejriwal is ready to tie up with Congress, the grand old partys local unit led by Sheila Dikshit has dismissed the idea. Dikshit, the former Delhi chief minister, has written to Rahul, clarifying that an alliance with AAP will be harmful for Congress.

The picture that emerges is of a party that is misfiring in its electoral campaign by playing to the rivals strength instead of weakness and making a mess of tactical alliances that could prove all the difference between vote share and seat share. The BJP would be glad.
Amit Shah, in his tweet, tagged a post by his party's Karnataka unit which said the state police had arrested some techies for raising pro-Modi slogans at Manyata tech park in Bengaluru. Rahul Gandhi was to address a meeting at the venue

New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah on Tuesday targeted Congress chief Rahul Gandhi over the alleged arrest of some techies in Bengaluru for raising pro-Modi slogans, saying youngsters give direction to the future and he should "stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics".

"Hugs for tukde tukde gang and arrest of peaceful youth raising pro-Modi slogans? Where are the champions of free speech? Yuvraj (prince) of Congress must know that time follows the course taken by youngsters. Stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics," Shah tweeted.

The BJP alleged that several protesters, the party claimed they included techies, were taken into custody. It also condemned the police action and alleged that Congress workers had attacked the protesters.

Shah, in his tweet, tagged a post by his party's Karnataka unit which said the state police had arrested some techies for raising pro-Modi slogans at Manyata tech park in Bengaluru. Rahul was to address a meeting at the venue.

"This is the real face of democracy in a Cong-JD(S) ruled state. It's total dictatorship where freedom of choice and expression of citizens is suppressed," it had said, posting a purported video of some people being taken away by cops.
Ashok Gehlot also said the Constitution, democracy and the entire country was in danger under Modi, who, he said, would 'do anything' to get back to power. People felt he could even go to war with Pakistan to achieve this goal, the senior Congress leader said.

New Delhi: India may not see another election if Narendra Modi is re-elected as prime minister, Rajasthan chief minister and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot has claimed, suggesting the country may go, electorally, the China and Russia way.

Gehlot also said the Constitution, democracy and the entire country was in danger under Modi, who, he said, would "do anything" to get back to power. People felt he could even go to war with Pakistan to achieve this goal, the senior Congress leader said.

Dubbing Modi a "good actor", Gehlot said he could do much better in Bollywood and would have left his indelible mark in acting. He also alleged Modi was a "master in marketing false promises".

"If people re-elect Modi, then there is no surety on whether elections will be held in the country or not. 'Chunav honge bhi, aur nahin bhi honge... jaise China, Russia mein hota hai' (Elections will be held in the country and yet not be held, like what happens in China, Russia)," Gehlot said during an interaction.

"Modi ji has done very good marketing," he also said, alleging the prime minister is creating a misconception in the minds of people about the Congress.

He was suggesting that polls will be held on the lines of those in China and Russia, where only one party rules and who becomes the president or the prime minister is decided beforehand.

His remarks come in the wake of a fierce battle between the Opposition Congress and the ruling BJP ahead of Lok Sabha elections starting 11 April.

While the BJP is taking the nationalist narrative to the grassroots in these elections, the Congress and other parties are trying to bring the narrative back to the basic issues of joblessness, farmers plight, economic crisis and corruption including that in the Rafale deal.

"This man can do anything to win elections...People felt he could even go to war with Pakistan, which is not a good thing....The personality of Modi ji that has emerged before the country is that he can go to any extent before and after elections...to win elections," Gehlot said while attacking Modi and added that "none including Amit Shah knows what is in his mind".

Taking a swipe at what he termed Modi's "acting skills", the senior Congress leader said, "If Modi ji was in Bollywood, maybe he would have left a different mark in the country and abroad, with his mastery in acting, oratory skills and antics."

Claiming that the "truth is on our side", the Congress leader said people in the country are far wiser and can differentiate between falsehood and truth and public conscience will side with the truth. Truth shall finally emerge victorious, he asserted.

The veteran Congress leader also accused the prime minister of misusing Indian embassies in garnering the support of NRIs outside the country during his visits abroad.

Gehlot alleged that Modi's public events during his foreign visits were organised with the active support of Indian embassies that drew widespread support from the NRI community.

There should be tolerance in a democracy, he said, alleging that BJP leaders have "no tolerance as they don't want anyone from the opposition to question them".

"It is not in their DNA," he said.

The Rajasthan chief minister hit out at Modi over his style of functioning and said he has focussed on targeting opposition leaders by misusing agencies instead of governance during his rule and that is why he had "no result to show".

Gehlot, who has held several key positions in the Congress during his a political career spanning almost five decades, also attacked Modi over the use of language, saying it did not behove one who held the top post of the country's prime minister.

He accused Modi of having "failed" to fulfil the promises made to people before assuming power.

He also targeted the RSS, the BJP's ideological fountainhead, dubbing it an "extra-constitutional" authority that was trying to impose its people on every institution in the country.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has converted Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency as a laboratory for testing the hard line by equating the Sabarimala temple issue with the volatile Ram temple issue in Ayodhya.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had abandoned its hard Hindutva politics in Kerala after it failed to click in the southern state with a population of nearly 45 percent minorities. However, the Supreme Court verdict of 28 September allowing women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple has made the saffron party to revert to the hard Hindutva line in constituencies where the Hindus form a majority.

The party has chosen Pathanamthitta where the temple is situated to experiment the aggressive Hindutva politics that helped it to come to power at the Centre in 2014. The party has converted Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency as a laboratory for testing the hard line by equating the Sabarimala temple issue with the volatile Ram temple issue in Ayodhya.

Pathanamthitta is ideal for experimenting the Hindutva politics since Hindus constitute majority in the constituency  about 57 percent of the population in the district. While Muslims account for only a minuscule 4.7 percent, majority of the 38.6 percent Christians is in a state of flux. The saffron party has, therefore, placed Pathanamthitta high among four seats it can win in the state.

Fancying an easy victory, top BJP leaders have been vying for the seat even delaying finalisation of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidates for the 20 Lok Sabha seats in the state. K Surendran, who spent 25 days in jail over the Sabarimala issue, was the front runner for the seat initially. However, the process hit a roadblock after state chief P S Sreedharan Pillai, Union Minister Alphonse Kannanthanam, general secretary M T Ramesh and the partys firebrand woman leader Shobha Surendran staked claim for the seat.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had initially toyed with the idea of fielding a leader of the Sabarimala Karma Samithi (SKS) which spearheaded the protests against the Left Front governments decision to implement the Supreme Court verdict. The RSS leadership had suggested Sasikumara Verma, leader of SKS and a member of the Pandalam royal family, for the seat, but the move was vetoed by the BJP central leadership, which felt that the party should not surrender a winnable seat to outsiders.

Surendran has staked claim for Pathanamthitta as he has already done a lot of groundwork consolidating the Hindus. The supporters of Surendran claim that he has touched a chord with the Hindu believers by playing a lead role against the entry of women in the hill shrine. They say that the aggressive stand he took on the issue has brought the Nair community, which earlier maintained a distance from the Sangh Parivar, close to the party besides cementing the partys relationship with the Ezhava community.

However, the rival camp has countered the claim saying that the party cannot win the seat with the support of the Hindus alone. They dont expect Surendran to get the votes of the Christians, as he is seen as a hardline Hindutva leader. They claim that Sreedharan Pillai is best suited to get the support of the Christians as he is considered as a moderate leader who has been maintaining close ties with all the communities.

The Pillai camp considers the current division in the Orthodox Christian community, which has a decisive presence in the constituency, over the implementation of the Supreme Court verdict on the dispute with the rival Jacobite faction over churches and its properties will be an added advantage to the state BJP president.

The Orthodox Church, which had supported the LDF in the 2016 Assembly elections and later in the Chengannur assembly by-election, has moved away from the LDF following its failure to take any steps to implement the apex court verdict. The Church, which traditionally backed the Congress-led United Democratic Front, had rallied behind the LDF after it promised to resolve the issue in its favour during the Assembly election.

The BJP think-tank believes that the party can get the support of the Orthodox Church as they are disenchanted with both the LDF and the UDF. Moreover, the church bishop in Ahmedabad has been close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi ever since he came to power in Gujarat.

Political analysts like Sunnykutty Abraham does not expect the minorities and even a large segment of Hindu believers to support Pillai since he had taken the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala as a golden opportunity for the party to make electoral mileage. He wonders how the party that failed to file even a review petition against the Supreme Court verdict claim to be saviours of faith.

"The Hindus would have rallied behind BJP if the state unit of the party had forced the government at the Centre to bring out an ordinance against the implementation of the Supreme Court verdict. No one will now take their claim to protect the Hindus seriously," he added.

Sunnykutty believes that the beneficiaries of Sabarimala issue would be the Congress since it had not only stood by the position it took against the entry of young women in Sabarimala in the court but also made a party leader to file a review petition.

Pathanamthitta is considered a bastion of the Congress, which had won the Lok Sabha seat in both the elections held after it became a separate constituency in 2008. Anto Antony who won the seat in 2009 by a margin of 1,11,206 votes and in 2014 by 56,191 votes has entered the fray for the third time. The LDF candidate is Veena George, a sitting MLA from Aranmula assembly segment in the constituency.

The vote share of the BJP has been showing a steady increase in both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the district. The party which polled 56,294 votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha election increased its votes to 1,38,594 in 2014. The votes in the seven assembly segments of the constituency rose to 191576 in the 2016 Assembly elections.

The BJP hopes that it can bridge the gap if the anti-LDF votes fall into its kitty over the Sabarimala issue. However, the Election Commissions directive not to invoke the name of Lord Ayyappa or any other God for soliciting votes may affect its plan to make full use of the Sabarimala issue.

However, observers feel that the issue has already sunk deep into the Malayali psyche and nothing can be done to prevent it from influencing the voting pattern. They say that even if the poll panel succeeds to quarantine the issue from the campaign, there is no way voters can be immunised against it.

Party positions on the issue are also well-established and there is no need to mount a new campaign in support of their respective stands. The voters may have already made up their mind even before the elections were notified. Whoever the candidate, Sabarimala will be the key issue for the BJP in Pathanamthitta.
BJP general-secretary Anil Jain, also the party affairs in-charge for Chhattisgarh, made the announcement as the BJP's central election committee, which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders, met in New Delhi to deliberate over its candidates for the polls.

New Delhi: In a major decision, the BJP on Tuesday announced it will drop its all 10 incumbent MPs from Chhattisgarh and replace them with new faces in the Lok Sabha polls, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in the recent Assembly elections.

BJP general-secretary Anil Jain, also the party affairs in-charge for the state, made the announcement as the BJP's central election committee, which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders, met in New Delhi to deliberate over its candidates for the polls.

"We have decided to fight the elections with new candidates and new zeal," Jain told reporters.

The announcement underscores the BJP's bid to wrest its lost territory back from the Congress, which handed it a massive defeat in the Assembly polls in 2018.

The Congress had won 68 seats, reducing the tally of the BJP, which was in power in the state for 15 years, to a mere 15. The difference in the vote share of the two parties was a huge 10 per cent.

The BJP is also considering not to field any family member of these sitting MPs, sources said. If the party indeed adopts this criterion, the likely candidature of former chief minister Raman Singh, whose son Abhishek Singh is a sitting Member of Parliament, will also be in question.
By calling Kishor a 'Bihari dacoit' and making adverse remarks about 'Biharis', Naidu has handed an easy ammunition to the BJP and JD(U) to target the 'mahagathbandhan' to raise heat in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections.

Election strategist-turned-JD(U)-vice-president Prashant Kishor is back in news. This time around for being called 'Bihari dacoit' by Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu. "K Chandrashekar Rao is doing criminal politics. He is grabbing the MLAs of Congress and TDP. Bihari dacoit Prasant Kishor has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh," Naidu was quoted as saying by ANI.

Naidu didn't just stop at just that, he also questioned the "law and order situation in Bihar" and likened Biharis to cyber criminals. By doing so, he has given rise to a big political controversy in the run up to parliamentary elections. It is worth noting, that despite Naidu's claims that "Kishor has removed lakhs of voters...", it should be remembered that removal or addition of voters is Election Commission's job, and is beyond reach of a private individual.

Though at the time of formally joining politics and JD(U) Kishor will no longer be doing what he was doing in the past (working as an election strategist for leaders across the political spectrum), but he had also made it clear that he was committed to finish his pre-assigned task of advising YSR Congress Party chief Jagan Mohan Reddy for Andhra Pradesh Assembly and parliamentary elections. Andhra Pradesh Assembly polls are going to be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections on 11 April, 2019. Kishor continues to be poll strategist for YSRCP.

Jagan Mohan Reddy's YSRCP is posing a stiff challenge to Naidu's TDP. There are reports that Reddy has an edge over Naidu in coming elections. Kishor reacted by tweeting:

An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So Im not surprised with the baseless utterances of @ncbn Sirji rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice & malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again. https://t.co/CYSJNRJ43W  Prashant Kishor (@PrashantKishor) March 19, 2019

By calling Kishor a 'Bihari dacoit' and making adverse remarks about 'Biharis', Naidu has handed an easy ammunition to the BJP and JD(U) to target the 'mahagathbandhan' to raise heat in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections.
Seeking to navigate the Congress towards regaining its political moorings in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Monday began her 'Ganga Yatra' on boat with a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urged voters to bring in a government that works for them.

Allahabad: Seeking to navigate the Congress towards regaining its political moorings in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Monday began her 'Ganga Yatra' on boat with a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urged voters to bring in a government that works for them.

The 47-year-old Congress general secretary, clad in a green cotton saree and pink blouse, interacted with a cross-section of people, including students, and invited some of them to join her on the motorboat as she undertook her much anticipated ride from the Manaiya Ghat in Kachnar tehsil of Prayagraj district.

Addressing the people at Sirsa Ghat and other places where she halted during the boat-ride, Priyanka took a swipe at Modi's "main bhi chowkidar' campaign, saying "chowkidars are for the rich, not for farmers", and alleged that the issues of religion and caste are being raised as the government has failed on the development front.

"Unki (Prime Minister) marzi apne naam ke aage kya lagaen. Mujhe ek kisan bhai ne kaha ki 'dekhiye chowkidaar toh ameeron ke hotey hain, hum kisan toh apney khud chowkidaar hotey hain ("It is up to him what prefix he uses in his name. Yesterday I met a group of farmers. One of them told me, chowkidars are for the rich. We farmers are our own chowkidars)," she said.

Citing BJP's promises which have remained "unfulfilled", she asked: "Have two crore jobs been given...has our prime minister ever come here...he has been travelling all over the world."

"They think that by misleading you all they will remain in power. All institutions are being destroyed...the country cannot run like this...," she said. "I could have also sat at home. I have come out as the country is in danger, the country's Constitution is in danger...so vote wisely," Priyanka said.

"We have the intention, not 'jumley' (rhetoric) and we worked and showed it in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan on loan waiver promise," she said and asserted that "my brother Rahul Gandhi does what he says".

Priyanka, who kicked off the Lok Sabha election campaign with her three-day visit to eastern Uttar Pradesh, will cover a distance of 100 kilometres by boat in Ganga from Allahabad to Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of Modi, and will also visit several temples while literally testing the political waters in Uttar Pradesh where the Congress has been in wilderness for nearly three decades.

She started her river journey with a visit to the Sangam and performing puja along with party leaders at the Bade Hanuman Mandir, popular as Letee Hanuman Ji' near Prayagraj Sangam. Taking a halt at the Dumduma Ghat under the watchful eyes of SPG personnel escorting her, Priyanka, who was accompanied by other party leaders, said she had come here to learn about people's problems rather than giving speeches.

"Bring a government that works for you. Form a Congress government so that your problems could be looked into," she said, adding that she is aware that sand mining rights are not given to boatmen who are 'ganga putra' and added that "Rahul has said that a separate ministry for them will be created".

At the Sirsa Ghat, she said the electorate has witnessed Congress governments during which schemes like MNREGS were launched and regretted that jobs have become scarce in the present times. After a night halt in Sitamarhi in Bhadohi district, the Congress leader will resume her onward journey tomorrow morning that will culminate in Varanasi on Wednesday.

Sitting cross-legged on the motorboat, the Congress leader was all ears as the locals residing on the river bank apprised her of their issues. "River Ganga is a symbol of truth and equality... Ganga-ji is the lifeline of Uttar Pradesh and with her support I will reach you," the party's newly appointed general secretary had said in an open letter on 17 March.

Arriving from Lucknow on Sunday night to a rousing reception by party workers who shouted slogans of 'dahan karo Modi ki Lanka, behen Priyanka behen Priyanka', the Congress leader tweeted an image of the room at Swaraj Bhawan.

"Sitting in the courtyard of Swaraj Bhawan, I can see the room where my grandmother (Indira Gandhi) was born. While making me sleep in the night, she used to tell stories of Joan of Arc. Her words reverberate even today. She used to say  become fearless and everything will be alright," Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said in a tweet.

Addressing people and party workers at Sitamarhi in Bhadohi district on Monday, Priyanka said the BJP is citing the same excuse that it used to make during the previous election. "They blame the Congress for all problems, like unemployment...but you are running the government for five years, what have you done?" she posed. The crowd responded saying "janata ko dhokha diya". She told the audience that "Rahulji wants the welfare of the people and does not run after power".

Priyanka said, "Like you, I too am sick of this government which undermines our Constitution, institutions and does not care for the people.... Responsibility is yours. Chunao nahi chunauti hai (It not an election but a challenge)."

"I know my brother. We have faced lots of struggles and martydom of our father and sacrifice by our family members," she added. The BJP, however, ridiculed Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's boat campaign, saying every election is a "picnic" for the Gandhi family.

Polling will be held in seven phases in Uttar Pradesh from 11 April to 19 May. Results will be announced on 23 May.
Rahul and several Congress leaders have targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over alleged corruption in the Rafale fighter jet deal, saying 'chowkidar chor hai.

New Delhi: At a time when "#MaiBhiChowkidar" campaign is trending with BJP cadres prefixing 'chowkidar' to their names on Twitter, Haryana Minister Anil Vij on Tuesday targeted Congress, saying that its workers should add "Pappu" to their names over which BJP will have no objection.

"We have added 'chowkidar' to our names and you have a problem with that. You should also prefix 'Pappu' to your names and we will have no objection," Vij tweeted.

The BJP often use the word 'Pappu' to mock Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

Rahul and several Congress leaders have targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over alleged corruption in the Rafale fighter jet deal, saying "chowkidar chor hai.

'MainBhiChowkidar' campaign was launched on Saturday to further the narrative of the prime minister on graft. A day after the launch of the campaign, Modi and top BJP leaders such as Amit Shah, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan and JP Nadda added the prefix 'chowkidar' to their Twitter handles.
Himanta Biswa Sarma comes handy for the BJP to forge these alliances and device a common election strategy. The BJP is depending on Sarma who helped them form the alliances during the Assam Assembly election two years ago.

Finance and health minister of Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma, the man behind BJP's unprecedented success in north east, will not contest in the upcoming Lok Sabha election 2019, BJP president in Assam Ranjit Das said. The announcement is seen as a U-turn by the BJP leadership on the candidature of Sarma who had promised to nominate Sarma ahead of the upcoming elections.

Even though the U-turn might come as a dampener ahead of the elections, Sarma still enjoys fair bit of confidence within the party ranks and the retraction is most likely not to impact his stature in the region. "Himanta Biswa Sarma will not contest from one constituency... he will contest from all the Lok Sabha constituencies in the North East," Das told Firstpost in a lighter vein. He said that Sarma is also the convenor of the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) and there is no one who can lead the front as effectively in the upcoming election.

"He is entrusted with the responsibility of helping party candidates and the allied parties win election," Das said.

Das also added that the leaders in the Assam BJP can ensure that the party performs well in the state in the upcoming elections. But the party requires Sarma as the convenor of the NEDA to ensure that the front wins as many seats as possible in the region.

Significantly, NEDA is a political front of anti-Congress parties in the North East, formed after BJP secured a historic win in 2016 Assembly elections in Assam. The goal of the alliance was to ensure a Congress-free rule in the North East.

North East has 25 Lok Sabha seats, out of which 11 were won by the BJP and its allies in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The party's target is to win, at least, 22 seats this time around. "The target set by the BJP leadership for the North East cannot be met without the alliances with regional parties. Sarma is required behind the scene to revive these alliances which cannot be ensured if he is a candidate himself," said a BJP source.

Be it the alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad in Assam in 2016 or the one with the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura  both led the saffron party to historic victory in those states.

But the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill introduced by the Centre has jolted the alliances in the North East. Two of the constituents of the NEDA  Asom Gana Parishad and United Democratic Party  had left the alliance protesting against bill and the remaining threatened to review the alliance with the BJP.

The NEDA convenor has already persuaded Asom Gana Parishad to return to its fold.

Sarma comes handy for the BJP to forge these alliances and device a common election strategy. The BJP is depending on Sarma who helped them form the alliances during the Assam Assembly election two years ago.

Speculation that Sarma might contest Lok Sabha elections this year stemmed from his own announcement that he wished to contest the said polls. Last month he told media that he is not going to contest Assembly elections in 2021 but would like to contest Lok Sabha polls this year.

"As I have stated earlier, I want to leave state politics and I don't want to contest the 2021 Assembly elections. I have conveyed my decision to my party," he told the media in the side lines of a meeting at Lakhimpur district in Assam. He also added that on the prospect of contesting the general elections, he said: "I cannot take the decision... They (the BJP) can nominate me to contest for the Lok Sabha if they wish, and I will contest."

https://www.news18.com/news/politics/open-to-contest-lok-sabha-polls-if-bjp-wants-says-assam-minister-himanta-biswa-sarma-2048623.html
A flashpoint during the 80s Assam agitation, Mangaldois residents left out of the NRC seem determined to vote in April like always even though uncertainty looms over their future

Editor's Note: A network of 60 reporters set off across India to test the idea of development as it is experienced on the ground. Their brief: Use your mobile phone to record the impact of 120 key policy decisions on everyday life; what works, what doesn't and why; what can be done better and what should be done differently. Their findings  straight and raw from the ground  will be combined in this series, Elections on the Go, over a course of 100 days.

Read more articles from the series here

***

Mangaldoi: The administrative headquarters of Darrang district in Assam, Mangaldoi, has 80 functioning NRC Seva Kendras to review cases of the approximately 3,18,412 people from the district who did not find their names in the second National Register of Citizens (NRC) draft published on 30 July, 2018. Across the state, nearly 40 lakh people who claim to have been born and living in Assam for decades, have been excluded from the Complete NRC Draft that currently lists 2.89 crore citizens.

Among them are the two sons of 70-year-old Ashraf Ali, a resident of Gasbari village, who had come of Mangaldoi to attend the hearings on verification of documents for inclusion in the NRC.

Sitting cross-legged in the crowd with his sons and nephews, Ali looked perplexed as his name was on the list, but his sons were excluded. "My father Javed Ali moved from Barpeta to Gasbari long before the Assam Movement," said Ali.

"Along with my father and my elder brother, I have regularly voted in Mangaldoi when we came of age and were eligible to vote," he informs.

Ali, and many others like him, dont understand what exactly is going wrong. "If the parents are proven to be Indians, can the children be Bangladeshis?" he asks.

Another election, four decades ago

The NRC process was accelerated by the orders of the Supreme Court and completed in 2018, but its roots are decades-old and Mangaldoi was an important flashpoint during the Assam Movement. The indigenous people of Assam have long anguished over the massive infiltration of outsiders, both Indian and foreign, and feared that it was taking a serious toll on the states economy.

It was the number of voters released by the Government of India ahead of the 1977 General Elections to Lok Sabha that raised serious doubts regarding the inclusion of supposed foreigners in the electoral list.

In March 1979, Prafulla Mahanta was elected as president and Bhrigu Phukan as general secretary of All Assam Students Union (AASU) and they pledged to launch a statewide movement against the influx of foreigners in Assam. The 3Ds  detection, deletion (from electoral rolls) and deportation  became the rallying cry of the Assam Movement.

Then on 28 March, 1979, the death of the sitting MP of Mangaldoi constituency, Hiralal Patowari called for a by-election. It was after the revision of electoral rolls of this constituency in the by-polls of 1979 that the biggest mass movement in Assam gained momentum, which claimed 855 lives and finally led to the signing of the Assam Accord on 15 August, 1985, which directs the creation of a National Citizens Registry of those who can prove they have been residents of Assam since before 25 March, 1971.

In his book, Infiltration: Genesis of Assam Movement, former professor of statistics at Gauhati University, Abdul Mannan makes an astounding revelation about how the Assam Movement spurred after the revision of Mangaldoi electoral rolls in 1979.

Drawing references from the chronicle written by Premakanta Mahanta, a former SP of Border Police, Mannan talks about how Mahanta and Hiranya Kumar Bhattacharya, then Deputy Inspector General, played an important role in the identification of nearly 47,000 names of probable migrant voters and maliciously got most of these names struck off the voter list.

Mahanta mentions in his memoir that he and Bhattacharya met the union leaders of the organisations involved in the movement and thus mobilised the collective population to shift the objective of the entire movement towards expulsion of Bangladeshi infiltrators identified from the electoral rolls, which wasnt but a part of the 21 charter of demands raised by AASU previously.

The looming cloud of disenfranchisement

Lakhs of women and young children haven't been able to get their names included in either of the two published NRC drafts. Joyphul Khatoon, a woman in her early 20s, sits on a cemented slab outside the Mangaldoi district library NSK, with her husband and two-year-old daughter. While her husband and his parents are in the list, Joyphul and her children are still presenting themselves for the hearings and the verification process.

"We came early morning from Tirakata Gaon and this is our second hearing in Mangaldoi. I have already submitted all the documents but still couldnt get my name on the list. As for my daughter, she only has her birth certificate," says Joyphul, adding, "If that fails to get her citizenship we dont know where to go. More than me, we are worried about her future."

Joyphul has only completed her primary education and therefore do not have a High School Leaving Certificate, which is an essential document for the NRC process. Quite similar is the story of Anita Mandal from Mangaldoi. Except for Anita and her mother, everybody in her family made it to the second NRC draft.

Most applicants filing claims in the Mangaldoi, Kharupetia and Sipajhar NRC Seva Kendras (NSKs) are women like Joyphul from villages in the Char or riverine areas, who are the worst hit as they do not possess formal-legal documents.

"Muslim women living in the Char areas fall prey to social evils like the practice of child marriage. They leave their fathers home at an early age without any legal document and hence face problem in establishing their legacy as someones daughter, which is mandatory for the NRC process. This is why even children find their name missing when either of the parent's names is missing, said Mannan adding, "These women are either uneducated or leave school before Matriculation and thereby cannot produce any certificate provided by the State or Central Boards of Education.

Cases have also been encountered where, in the absence of any document, many women along with their kids are unable to file their claims, in spite of being born in India. They have left their fates to be decided by God or the government.

From 1951 to 2011, Assam has witnessed a surge in population, particularly among Muslims. This population explosion is often attributed to infiltration of lakhs of Bangladeshis every year. Mannan, however, disproves this theory using statistics in his book. He says that the population explosion among the Muslims has child marriage, illiteracy and economic neglect at its root, contrary to the common belief.

"Where other Assamese communities might have three generations since 1971, the Muslim community has been found to have 4.5 generations. A survey can prove that not every problem in Assam is because of infiltration, but because of the governments inability to uplift certain deprived communities of the society, says Mannan.

The apathy of officials

Adding to the peoples woes is the often-biased and indifferent attitude of officials conducting the verification process. The Kharupetia NSK was packed with people from Baksa, Dalgaon, Moirabari and a few neighbouring villages.

Alepuddin, president of All Assam Minorities Students Union, Darrang District, who helps applicants in filing claims or objections in and around Mangaldoi is hopeful of a fair and inclusive NRC but has major concerns about the officials carrying out the process.

"When an applicant whose name is not in the list files claim for an explanation, he/she is provided with due reasons. But there are many cases where these people have been asked to get a clarification document from the Foreigners Tribunal. This is a tedious process for an Indian national who has names of his parents and relatives in the electoral rolls. Also, women who have submitted Panchayat documents for verification are asked to get substitute documents but at times, those are rejected citing various reasons," says Alepuddin while believing that the main hindrance towards a fair and complete NRC is nothing but the biases and pre-conceived notions of the officials towards a particular section of the people as being Bangladeshis (Hindu or Muslim).

Accusations of bias gained credibility when on 20 August, 2018, a bunch of NRC verification documents were recovered by local people from a ditch behind a Seva Kendra attached to the Ondolajhar GP office in Dalgaon circle (part of the Mangaldoi Parliamentary Constituency). It was that time when the second NRC draft was released and the process of filing claims and objections was about to start.

Local people alleged that some important documents related to the verification of legacy data, including reports of the District Magistrate Investigating Team (DMIT) with the seal and signature of the authorised officer of District Registrar of Citizen Registration (DRCR) were recovered inside a plastic carry bag from the ditch.

"The structural design, the guidelines and modalities set for the NRC updation stands as brilliant and if done flawlessly, this can bring relief to so many people suffering and disturbed with the question of citizenship and basic rights. But, when the officials working under the government, act on prejudices and take decisions swayed by popular opinions, as in few cases I have heard about and personally encountered, then the fairness and genuineness of the entire procedure is under question," says Mannan.

This kind of behaviour and attitude may render many rightful citizens, stateless, he adds.

Election of 2019

As elections draw near, the general feeling of those thronging the NRC Seva Kendras is that the current BJP government is not treating Muslims fairly. Baharul Islam, a resident of Daipangpara village in Dalgaon and his sister had come with their mother after learning from the NRC portal that they had been called again for verification at the Kharupetia NSK.

Baharul had to quit his job in Bengaluru and return to Assam to help the members of his family, including his wife, mother and sisters-in-law who failed to get their names included in the final NRC Draft.

We are left with no peace and certainty of life and property, but whatever happens, all members of my family will definitely vote," said Baharul, proudly flashing his voter card.

The NRC process, say people in Mangaldoi, is sure to influence the upcoming Lok Sabha election. Saffron flags and flyers of BJP leaders flutter across the town and electric poles around the town are painted with the letters ABVP.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court in a hearing on 13 March, 2019, admonished the Assam government for its inaction against the detected illegal migrants and those in detention centres.

There is immense fear and anxiety among those who did not make it to both the drafts as uncertainty looms over their future. But there are people like Alepuddin who continue to lend them strength and hope in such difficult times. He tells them that in case they do not make it to the final NRC list, they can again file complaints at the court and judicially prove their citizenship.

Even after all these processes, if anyone is left, we will request the Government of India to provide those people with some identity cards and allow them to work here, even if they lose their rights as citizens, said a sanguine Alepuddin.

Mangaldoi goes to polls on 18 April.

The author is a Pune-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters
For a whole year now, KCR has been singing the tune of a Congress-mukt and BJP-mukt Bharat saying that the nation could never achieve salvation unless it is blessed with an alternative to the two so-called mainstream parties

Bad politicians think of only themselves. Better ones think of politics. The best of them think of ideas.

And Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) can never be accused of running short of ideas. The mind of the 65-year-old leader from the Velama caste is like a hectic laboratory that creates an alchemy of ideas faster than the less intellectual politicians around him can assimilate.

Some of KCR's ideas are indeed of the neighbour's-envy-owner's-pride variety. His Raitha Bandhu scheme of doling out cash to farmers, for instance, was such a fabulous gem of creative appeasement that Narendra Modi plagiarised it without as much as a blink of an eye, calling it the PM-Kisan programme.

But some of KCR's ideas fall flat even before he fully pronounces them in his rustic Telugu with Telangana accent. His idea of forming a national party, if necessary, is once such idea. It's not clear whether he was amusing himself by thinking aloud while kicking off his election campaign from Karimnagar on Sunday or he was really serious about it. I's also not clear whether the good luck that he believes Karimnagar brings to whatever he does from there extends to whatever he says there as well.

His idea of a new party can be described as the culmination of a progression of concepts that originated with his brainwave last year of a "federal front". Such a front, he had said, would ensure the "amalgamation of like-minded people who are determined to reinvent national politics". It was no secret that, in the process, KCR wanted to reinvent himself as a national leader. The post of a deputy prime minister or, with better luck, the prime minister going to the most unpredictable leader in the most unpredictable part of the country in case of a fragmented Lok Sabha election verdict can be a fairly good incentive for joining "national" politics.

For a whole year now, the TRS leader has been singing the tune of a Congress-mukt and BJP-mukt Bharat saying that the nation could never achieve salvation unless it is blessed with an alternative to the two so-called mainstream parties.

Elusive federal front

But where is the Federal Front? Nowhere, really. With the noble mission of forming such a thing, KCR had met leaders including Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), MK Stalin (DMK), Mayawati (BSP), Akhilesh Yadav (SP) and Naveen Patnaik (BJD). Stalin openly supported Congress president Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate, while Patnaik may go the BJP way. The rest, in case of a hung Parliament, may be inclined to support Congress. In the end, KCR may himself back an NDA government, depending on the numbers.

But at least for now, keeping away from Congress and BJP is essential for KCR in Telangana in his current scheme of things. While his main rival in the state is the Congress, he is averse to taking any risk of losing the minority vote by joining forces with the BJP. This political template, along with good governance, was the reason he was able to win a landslide victory in the 7 December, 2018 Assembly election. As in that Assembly election, TRS has an alliance with Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), a rabble-rousing Muslim party led by Asaduddin Owaisi, in the current Lok Sabha polls.

Why he speaks of new party

The federal front is a non-starter, although he keeps harping on it. Yet the TRS leader is trying to push himself to the next level by talking of floating a new party independent of the Congress and BJP. The timing and venue he picked for doing it only lead us to a reasonably safe conclusion that it has something to do with the Lok Sabha election. It's more than likely that by speaking of a new non-BJP, non-Congress party at this point of time, KCR wants to dispel the widespread conviction, at least for now, that he will back the NDA after elections.

Whatever he does after the results are out, KCR also must contend now with the allegation that he already has some sort of a tacit understanding with BJP. This is at the root of the campaign by Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader Chandrababu Naidu that KCR is part of a BJP conspiracy to defeat him. The third member of an "evil" troika that Naidu talks about is Jaganmohan Reddy, the leader of the YSR Congress Party and his main rival in Andhra Pradesh.

KCR's target: 16 + 1

Talk of KCR's collusion with the BJP can keep Muslims, who make up some 12 percent of Telangana's population, away from him. That isnt a good thing, when he is moving heaven and earth to win 16 of the state's 17 Lok Sabha seats, with one seat allotted to ally AIMIM.

The Telangana chief minister said, "BJP and Congress leaders try to ridicule me by asking what I would do with just 16 seats. I have spoken to parties which share my views and they will have more than 100 seats with them. The TRS, as the driving force, will help the federal front to find a panacea to all the economic ills plaguing our nation because the rulers had no vision."

Leave aside the panacea for India's ills for a moment. By coincidence, Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Deve Gowda had just 16 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka when he became an 'accidental' prime Minister in 1996. And KCR is also hoping to add Jagan's score in Andhra Pradesh to his own when the numbers are called out after 23 May.

The author tweets @sprasadindia
Lok Sabha Election 2019 Tracker LIVE updates: Speaking at Akhnoor in Jammu, Narendra Modi attacked the Opposition grand alliance, and said that the 'mahamilawati' leaders are bound to face 'mahagirawat' (great destruction).

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BJP chief Amit Shah will address rallies at Koliabor and Teok in Assam's Jorhat district in a daylong trip to the state.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to begin active election campaigning on Thursday with rallies in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, Rudrapur in Uttarakhand and Jammu in Jammu and Kashmir. All three seats go to polls in the first phase on 11 April.

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi will have a busy day in Haryana with five roadshows in a single day, at Jagadhri, Radaur, Ladwa, Indri and Karnal in Haryana.

Newly anointed Congress general secretary for Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi has said that she is open to contesting elections. Priyanka has been campaigning at Amethi and is scheduled to visit Ayodhya on Friday.

Bollywood actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, who has been associated with BJP for about three decades, will join the Congress on Thursday and is likely to be fielded from Patna Sahib.

The development came a day after, Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy raised fears about possible raids on Congress and JD(S) functionaries in the state. He had claimed that CRPF personnel were brought from various parts of the country to carry out the raids in the state.

In a pre-dawn swoop today, Income Tax officials along with CRPF personnel carried out raids at the residences of Karnataka Minor Irrigation Minister CS Puttaraju and his nephew, reported News18.

In what is being considered a very youth-oriented poll plank, the SP will form a youth commission to help formulate policies.

Samajwadi Party will release its 2019 Lok Sabha election manifesto on Thursday. The party manifesto will focus on jobs for youth, reported News18.

Reports say the high command upset with the allocation of certain seats and some Congress leaders have suggested calling off the alliance. Rahul will have one-on-one meetings with senior Congress leaders.

Amidst reports that discontent is brewing between the Congress and its Bihar ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal over seat-sharing, Rahul Gandhi will meet his party's Bihar unit to finalize alliance details.

The state government has also cancelled the transfer of the intelligence chief. Naidu has called the EC's decision "undemocratic and one-sided". The EC's orders follow a complaint filed by Telugu Desam Party's rival, YSR Congress Party, alleging that phones of the party's leaders are being tapped by top police officials in the state.

The Chandrababu Naidu government in Andhra Pradesh has filed a writ petition at the High Court over the Election Commission of India's orders to transfer a few top cops in the state including the state's intelligence chief. The hearing is on Thursday.

A wall collapsed at Jagan's rally in Mandapet town, killing a woman and injuring 20, while Naidu's road show in Ananthpur saw 20 people injured after a wall gave away.

In a strange and tragic coincidence, both Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrabu Naidu and YSRCP chief Jaganmohan Reddy's rallies on Wednesday saw serious accidents take place.

In the video, the BJP has alleged that the UPA regime had compromised on providing assistance to the Indian armed forces to make it easier for Vadra (referred to as jijaji) to get "commission".

BJP has released a new campaign video, this time aimed at Congress president Rahul Gandhi's brother-in-law Robert Vadra, under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate in a land scam.

"He (Rahul) has said whatever he felt like. I won't like to make any comment on it. He is just a kid. What will I say about it?" Mamata said.

She also refused to comment on Rahul's minimum income promise ahead of the Lok Sabha election.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday dismissed Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's allegations against her government, saying "he is just a kid".

"All those deployed at such polling stations - police, election officers and other employees - will be women. These booths, an initiative towards gender equality and involving women's participation in the electoral process, will be called as 'Sakhi Matdan Kendras'," it said.

As per the Election Commission's (EC) directions to set up polling stations entirely managed by women, such booths will be set up in all 40 Lok Sabha seats of the state, a release issued by the election office here said.

An all-women polling booth will be set up in every Lok Sabha constituency of Maharashtra during the next month's polls in a bid to encourage more female voters to exercise their franchise.

Speaking to a private news channel, JD(S) leader Puttaraju said three teams of Income Tax officials and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel carried out raids at his Chinnakurli residence in Mandya and his nephew's house in Mysuru.

In a predawn swoop Thursday, Income Tax officials along with CRPF personnel carried out raids at the residences of Karnataka Minor Irrigation Minister CS Puttaraju and his nephew.

JD(S) leader Madhu Bangarappa said Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy had already "spoken" about this, because he got inputs from the intelligence department and questioned why BJP leaders' houses were left unscathed, reported ANI.

"This is out in the open through I-T raids. The constitutional post offer for I-T officer Balakrishna has helped the PM in his revenge game. It is highly deplorable to use government machinery, corrupt officials to harass opponents during election time," he said.

28 March, 2019 | HDK tears into BJP over raids on JD(S) minister's house, says I-T official was offered post as bribe

Reports say the Congress high command is upset with the allocation of certain seats and some Congress leaders have suggested calling off the alliance.

This comes amidst reports that discontent is brewing between the Congress and its Bihar ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal over seat-sharing.

A meeting has begun at Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's residence between the party brass and its Bihar leaders.

He also touched upon the safety of women, the respect accorded by his government to idealogues Chaudhary Charan Singh and Deenbandhu Chhoturam, the allegedly false promises made by Indira Gandhi ('gareeb, gareeb hi rehe gaya') and the numerous schemes brought by his government.

There is little that Modi did not speak on, when it came to issues at the Meerut rally. The prime minister spun his full repertoire of rhetorics for repeated slams on the Congress, the SP-BSP alliance and critics of his government. He, however, did give a new spin to the old 'saabka saath, saabka vikas' slogan and instead said 'saabka saath, saabka hisaab.'

"They wanted to become heroes of Pakistan. Will you forgive these people?" he asked to resounding cheers.

"Uttarakhand has four holy dhams to which I wish to add a fifth dham, the sainik dham," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He, once again, asked the crowds if it was okay to question whether India had indeed done the Balakot air strikes.

28 March, 2019 | Will add fifth dham for sainiks to Uttarakhand's four dhams, says Modi

"If Modi ji is elected again we will ensure every infiltrator is removed from Assam," Amit Shah said at his Assam rally on Thursday. The BJP has run into choppy waters in Assam over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, which has seen widespread protests, and a firm promise by the BJP chief is likely to help the party at this point.

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has written to Chief Electoral Officer of Bhubaneswar demanding action against BJP for alleged violation of Model Code of Conduct 'for surrogate advertising through a TV serial broadcast on a TV channel in which the characters talk about Atal Pension Yojana, ANI reported.

"There are two sets of parties today. Those who are neutral and those who are anti-BJP. I am anti-BJP, while Naveen Patnaik, according to me, is neutral. On 23 May (counting day), there will be a new prime minister. I can assure that."

"Jaganmohan is a criminal. He is a cheat. BJP is supporting Jagan as they feel he will support them post polls. There is a hidden nexus between them. Both TRS and YSRCP are with the BJP... I am not in the race to be the next prime minister, but we will all sit together post polls and work out a solution. Democratic compulsions far bigger today than political compulsions.

28 March, 2019 | I'm not in race to be PM, says Chandrababu Naidu In an interview, TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu said, "I am not a contender for prime minister's post. I am being targeted by the BJP government through YSRCP leader Jaganmohan Reddy.

ANI quoted Kumaraswamy as saying, "I-T department should work independently, but it's working under the instructions of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. After the BJP came to power, it (the situation) has become like a dictatorship. Do you think the I-T director in Bengaluru is innocent? I also have lot of records."

Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy, his deputy G Parameshwara, and other senior Congress-JD(S) coalition leaders are currently protesting outside I-T office against raids at residence of Karnataka minister CS Puttaraju in Mandya.

He further said, "I was once travelling in a bus while your vehicle was passing by. There was a traffic jam, so I got off the bus thinking maybe you would do a dance number or two to clear the jam."

The National Commission for Women has issued a notice to Samajwadi Party leader Firoz Khan over his remark on BJP Rampur candidate Jaya Prada. Khan on Thursday stirred a controversy by saying people of Rampur will get entertained in the ensuing polls, where Samajwadi Party's Azam Khan will face BJP's newly-inducted member Jaya Prada. "Evenings in Rampur will now become more vibrant during elections. Azam Khan has done enough for the people of Rampur, so they will surely vote for him. But they will leave no stone unturned in getting entertained during this one-off opportunity."

Asserting that the NDA government has worked for development in every field, Shah said, "To save Assam, infiltration has to be stopped and the Congress cannot do this work."

Addressing a rally in Assam's Teok, BJP chief Amit Shah claimed that he is hearing only slogans for Narendra Modi government's re-election these days. "Wherever I go, I'm hearing the same slogan: "Fir ek bar, Modi Sarkar (Once again, Modi government)."

Attacking the Opposition grand alliance, he said, "The Opposition that doesn't have a prime minister candidate or a policy can't develop the country or work for the welfare of the people."

" Former prime minister Manmohan Singh was an MP for 20 years from Assam. However, the Congress failed to do any development for the region," Amit Shah said while addressing a rally in Assam's Teok.

According to reports, an alliance between the Congress and the NCP is unlikely in Gujarat. The NCP also released its list of star campaigners on Thursday, featuring prominent names like Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar, and Supriya Sule..

According to ANI, BJP's Kozhikode Lok Sabha candidate Prakash Babu has been remanded to 14-day judicial custody by a Pathanamthitta court in connection with the violence in Sabarimala.

According to Samajwadi Party's new list, Nasir Qureshi will contest from Moradabad, Bhagwat Sharan Gangwar from Bareily,Pooja Pal from Unnao, Shyam Sunder Yadav from Jhansi and Nathuni Prasad Kushwaha from Kushinagar.

Lalu Prasad's son Tej Pratap Yadav tweeted that he has resigned as the chief of RJD's student wing.

Addressing a rally in Assam's Teok, BJP chief Amir Shah said, "Din mein to Congress ke Gogoi ji aur Ajmal (AIUDF Cheif Badruddin Ajmal) aamne saamne chunaav ladte hain. Magar jab raat hoti hai, dono ke beech mein ilu-ilu chalu ho jata hai (During the day, Congress' Tarun Gogoi and AIUDF's Badruddin Ajmal fiercely contest elections, but in the night, the two share a friendly relationship)."

Addressing a rally in Jammu, Narendra Modi said that it was an honour that he got to visit Jammu on the first day of his election campaign and that he was able to seek blessings of Vaishno Devi.

He further said, "After the strike in Balakot, the Congress leaders have been speaking such things that are not in the favour of the country. How can an individual find anything acceptable that is being lauded in Pakistan. They're asking for proof of the attacks, " he said.

peaking at Akhnoor in Jammu, Narendra Modi lashed out at the Congress for demanding proof of Balakot air strike. "Amid the call to end terrorism, what has happened to the Congress and its allies. I simply don't understand that is it the same Congress which belong to Sardar Patel. I don't understand is it the same Congress in which Subhash Chandra Bose had dreamed of an independent India? My soul says it's not the same Congress. What is your opinion?"

Narendra Modi accused the Congress, National Conference and PDP of praising the people who promote terrorism in the Valley. "They have a problem in saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' , but they are proud to hail those who promote terrorism," he said. He also blamed the three parties of stalling developmental projects in state.

Speaking at Akhnoor in Jammu, Narendra Modi attacked the Opposition grand alliance. "If the people of Jammu have faith in chowkidaar, then note it down that the mahamilawati leaders are bound to face mahagirawat (great destruction)," he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "The guru of Congress naamdar (Sam Pitroda, Rahul Gandhi's media advisor), who accompanies Rahul on foreign trips, gave clean-chit to terrorists and Pakistan on television. Jab guru hi aisa hoga to chele kaise honge, aur chele ke sathi kaise honge. (When the guru is of such kind, then how would his followers be?)"

Speaking on development, Narendra Modi said, "Your chowkidaar (watchman) is committed to ensuring the fulfillment of the five points of development: Education for children, income for youth, medicine for the old, irrigation for farmers, and voice of the public."

In Dhaurahra, Congress workers staged a demostraction demnanding Jitin Prasad be giving ticket from the constituency. Prasada responded to it, saying, "I am a disciplined soldier of the party and will do what I am told."

Samajwadi Party releases another list of candidates. Nasir Qureshi to contest from Moradabad, Bhagwat Sharan Gangwar from Bareily,Pooja Pal from Unnao, Shyam Sunder Yadav from Jhansi and Nathuni Prasad Kushwaha from Kushinagar. #LokSabhaElections2019 pic.twitter.com/OJNTRjtMA4

According to Samajwadi Party's new list, Nasir Qureshi will contest from Moradabad, Bhagwat Sharan Gangwar from Bareily,Pooja Pal from Unnao, Shyam Sunder Yadav from Jhansi and Nathuni Prasad Kushwaha from Kushinagar.

Lalu Prasad's son Tej Pratap Yadav tweeted that he has resigned as the chief of RJD's student wing.

Addressing a rally in Assam's Teok, BJP chief Amir Shah said, "Din mein to Congress ke Gogoi ji aur Ajmal (AIUDF Cheif Badruddin Ajmal) aamne saamne chunaav ladte hain. Magar jab raat hoti hai, dono ke beech mein ilu-ilu chalu ho jata hai (During the day, Congress' Tarun Gogoi and AIUDF's Badruddin Ajmal fiercely contest elections, but in the night, the two share a friendly relationship)."

Addressing a rally in Jammu, Narendra Modi said that it was an honour that he got to visit Jammu on the first day of his election campaign and that he was able to seek blessings of Vaishno Devi.

He further said, "After the strike in Balakot, the Congress leaders have been speaking such things that are not in the favour of the country. How can an individual find anything acceptable that is being lauded in Pakistan. They're asking for proof of the attacks, " he said.

peaking at Akhnoor in Jammu, Narendra Modi lashed out at the Congress for demanding proof of Balakot air strike. "Amid the call to end terrorism, what has happened to the Congress and its allies. I simply don't understand that is it the same Congress which belong to Sardar Patel. I don't understand is it the same Congress in which Subhash Chandra Bose had dreamed of an independent India? My soul says it's not the same Congress. What is your opinion?"

Narendra Modi accused the Congress, National Conference and PDP of praising the people who promote terrorism in the Valley. "They have a problem in saying 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' , but they are proud to hail those who promote terrorism," he said. He also blamed the three parties of stalling developmental projects in state.

Speaking at Akhnoor in Jammu, Narendra Modi attacked the Opposition grand alliance. "If the people of Jammu have faith in chowkidaar, then note it down that the mahamilawati leaders are bound to face mahagirawat (great destruction)," he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "The guru of Congress naamdar (Sam Pitroda, Rahul Gandhi's media advisor), who accompanies Rahul on foreign trips, gave clean-chit to terrorists and Pakistan on television. Jab guru hi aisa hoga to chele kaise honge, aur chele ke sathi kaise honge. (When the guru is of such kind, then how would his followers be?)"

Speaking on development, Narendra Modi said, "Your chowkidaar (watchman) is committed to ensuring the fulfillment of the five points of development: Education for children, income for youth, medicine for the old, irrigation for farmers, and voice of the public."

Dhaurahra: Congress workers stage demonstration demanding Jitin Prasada be given ticket from the constituency. Prasada says 'I am a disciplined soldier of the party and will do what I am told' pic.twitter.com/FYfHXOHUFl

In Dhaurahra, Congress workers staged a demostraction demnanding Jitin Prasad be giving ticket from the constituency. Prasada responded to it, saying, "I am a disciplined soldier of the party and will do what I am told."





Lok Sabha election 2019; pre-poll trends LATEST updates: Speaking at Akhnoor in Jammu, Narendra Modi attacked the Opposition grand alliance, and said that the "mahamilawati" leaders are bound to face "mahagirawat" (great destruction).

He also lashed out at the Congress for demanding proof of Balakot air strike. "After the strike in Balakot, the Congress leaders have been speaking such things that are not in the favour of the country. How can an individual find anything acceptable that is being lauded in Pakistan. They're asking for proof of the attacks, " he said.

Addressing a rally in Assam's Teok, BJP chief Amit Shah said, "Former prime minister Manmohan Singh was an MP for 20 years from Assam. However, the Congress failed to do any development for the region."

In an interview, TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu said, "I am not a contender for prime minister's post. I am being targeted by the BJP government through YSRCP leader Jaganmohan Reddy." However, he assured that on 23 May  which is the counting day, India will have a new prime minister.

Speaking at a campaign rally at Kaliabor in Assam, BJP chief Amit Shah on Thursday recited a list of the Narendra Modi government's achievements and vowed that if Modi is elected again, the BJP would ensure every infiltrator is removed from Assam.

On a day when it was widely expected that Shatrughan Sinha will join the Congress, it was announced by the party that he will join the party on 6 April. The actor-turned-politician has, however, met Congress chief Rahul Gandhi.

In a shorter speech than his Meerut one, Modi made it clear in Rudrapur that he is willing to rake up the Balakot air strikes in order to strike the nationalism chord when and where required. This was the second rally where he has called Rahul Gandhi "Pakistan's hero."

"The people of Uttarakhand have always been with me. This is a contribution which I never forget," he said. In the rally, he also highlighted the several measures taken by his government in the state.

PM Narendra Modi began the second of his three rallies of Thursday at Rudrapur in Uttarakhand by stressing that the Congress, which never thinks about the poor, sat on the Rafale deal for 10 years because they failed to make a profit out of it.

Modi uttered yet another invocation of the nation's Army in the beginning when he called Uttarakhand "the land of the brave, the land of sacrifices."

Reports have said that actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha who has been with the BJP for a very long time, is now headed to meet Congress chief Rahul Gandhi. The party has promised "good news" on the Sinha front soon, say reports.

Minutes after Modi had stopped speaking at his first campaign rally at Meerut, Congress communication in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a press conference that the prime minister should apologise for comparing three political parties of the country to alcohol with his "sarab" jibe and also for "mocking the poor of the country."

"It is unfortunate that when we speak of NYAY, Mr Modi mocks the poor of the country. Previously he had mocked the poor of the country during demonetisation, this shows his true character," Surjewala said.

There is little that Modi did not speak on, when it came to issues at the Meerut rally. He combined the 'sa' of Samajwadi Party, the 'ra' of RLD and the 'B' of Bahujan Samaj Party together form 'SARAB'. The acronym, it is understood, stands for alcohol.

The prime minister spun his full repertoire of rhetorics for repeated slams on the Congress, the SP-BSP alliance and critics of his government. He, however, did give a new spin to the old 'saabka saath, saabka vikas' slogan and instead said 'saabka saath, saabka hisaab.'

He also touched upon the safety of women, the respect accorded by his government to idealogues Chaudhary Charan Singh and Deenbandhu Chhoturam, the allegedly false promises made by Indira Gandhi ('gareeb, gareeb hi rehe gaya') and the numerous schemes brought by his government.

"If someone goes to the theatre to see a play, he or she expects drama, new sets. Sets is a common term in theatre. Some people who were confused, thought I meant theatre 'sets' when I said 'A-SAT'," Modi said, taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi over the latter's World Theatre Day snub of the PM's Mission Shakti announcement yesterday.

India has decided, phir ek baar Modi sarkar, Narendra Modi said at his first rally in Meerut on Thursday. He kicked off the rally by remembering the Chaudhary Charan Singh and saying that he has followed in the leader's footsteps in prioritising farmers over all others.

Speaking before Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Meerut, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath repeated the selfsame chant of the BJP, 'Modi hain toh mumkin hain' and said Modi has been synonymous to development by now.

Fresh off the controversial speech on Mission Shakti  which has also attracted ECs scrutiny  after India's launch of an anti-satellite weapon on Wednesday, the prime minister will speak in rallies at Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, Rudrapur in Uttarakhand and Jammu in Jammu and Kashmir.

A meeting has begun at Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's residence between the party brass and its Bihar leaders. This comes amidst reports that discontent is brewing between the Congress and its Bihar ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal over seat-sharing.

Reports say the Congress high command is upset with the allocation of certain seats and some Congress leaders have suggested calling off the alliance.

Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy called the raids of JD(S) minister Putturaju's house the "real surgical strike".

"This is out in the open through I-T raids. The constitutional post offer for I-T officer Balakrishna has helped the PM in his revenge game. It is highly deplorable to use government machinery, corrupt officials to harass opponents during election time," he said.

In a predawn swoop Thursday, Income Tax officials along with CRPF personnel carried out raids at the residences of Karnataka Minor Irrigation Minister CS Puttaraju and his nephew.

Speaking to a private news channel, JD(S) leader Puttaraju said three teams of Income Tax officials and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel carried out raids at his Chinnakurli residence in Mandya and his nephew's house in Mysuru.

The development came a day after, Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy raised fears about possible raids on Congress and JD(S) functionaries in the state.

Thursday promises to be a high octane day as far as developments in the road to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is concerned. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hit the election trail for the first time since the dates of the election were announced on 10 March.

Modi's speech has also invited censure from Opposition parties which have questioned the timing of the speech and also alleged that Modi has chosen to dramatise the achievement for polltime gains.

TMC chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had said that the TMC will approach Election Commission to file a complaint on the speech.

It is, however, up to the Election Commission to interpret it in that manner. Modi did not explicitly turn the speech into a poll pitch, but the BJP leadership did pat Modis back for the success of the mission. The partys social media team has also been strategically pointing out that Modi deserved credit for having the courage to give a go-ahead for the project, something they allege that the previous UPA government stopped short of. The poll code does bar the ruling party from using the governments achievements in a way to further political interests.

For now, the Election Commission has sought an active transcript of Modis speech from the government. A committee headed by the Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena will examine the prime minister's address on Mission Shakti for possible Model Code of Conduct violation.

BJP chief Amit Shah, meanwhile, will address rallies at Koliabor and Teok in Assam's Jorhat district in a daylong trip to the state.

In Bihar, the BJP will be losing its longtime member, actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, to the Congress on Thursday. Sinha is likely to be fielded from the Patna Sahib seat in Bihar, which he currently holds.

Although not all is okay within the Congress either in the state of Bihar. Amidst reports that discontent is brewing between the Congress and its Bihar ally, the Rashtriya Janata Dal over seat-sharing, Rahul Gandhi will meet his party's Bihar unit to finalize alliance details.

Reports say the Congress high command is upset with the allocation of certain seats and some Congress leaders have suggested calling off the alliance. Rahul's Bihar meeting will come on a day when he will hold a whopping five roadshows at Jagadhri, Radaur, Ladwa, Indri and Karnal in Haryana.

Meanwhile in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul's sister, newly anointed Congress general secretary for Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi, indicated on Wednesday that she would be open to contesting the 2019 election if the party wants her to.

Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party will release its 2019 Lok Sabha election manifesto on Thursday. The party manifesto will focus on jobs and in what is being considered a very youth-oriented poll plank, the Samajwadi Party will form a youth commission to help formulate policies.

In Karnataka, meanwhile, Putturaju claimed that CRPF personnel were brought from various parts of the country to carry out the raids.

"Three teams of I-T officials and CRPF soldiers comprising eight soldiers carried out raids at my Chinnakurli residence in Mandya and my nephew's residence in Mysuru," Puttaraju told a channel. The minister said he was not afraid of the raids and instead, it had instilled confidence in him.

Lok Sabha elections will begin on 11 April and continue for over a month till 19 May across seven phases, followed by counting of votes on 23 May, the Election Commission announced Sunday, kick-starting a mega electoral battle where the BJP will pitch for a re-election of the Modi government amid the Opposition's efforts for a united fight to unseat it.

The polling will be held on 11 April, 18 April, 23 April, 29 April, 6 May, 12 May and 19 May for 543 Lok Sabha seats across the country in which nearly 90 crore voters would be eligible to vote, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said. Assembly elections will also be held in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Odisha simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls, the CEC said.
After an alliance with the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal is looking to regain its base in western Uttar Pradesh and win the three seats it will be contesting in the coming Lok Sabha election.

Lucknow: After an alliance with the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal is looking to regain its base in western Uttar Pradesh and win the three seats it will be contesting in the coming Lok Sabha election.

In 2014, the defeat of the then-Union minister and Rashtriya Lok Dal president Ajit Singh in Baghpat to BJP's Satyapal Singh, who had resigned as Mumbai Police commissioner just before the election, was "unexpected" for many as he had never lost the seat since 1999.

"The defeat was seen as a big sign of how the BJP was consolidating the dominant Jat vote in its favour. This time, RLD has an opportunity to take a sweet revenge by improving its performance with the help of SP and BSP and get back the Jat vote in its fold," said political analyst Manjula Upadhyay.

RLD leaders are confident of repeating their performance of Kairana Lok Sabha bypoll last year when they succeeded in getting back Jat votes they had lost to the BJP in 2014.

"During Kairana byelection, RLD leader Jayant Chowdhury's slogan to Jats was 'BJP Ki Poonch Nahi, RLD Ki Mooch Bano'. The call was a hit and he succeeded in invoking the name of his grandfather Chowdhury Charan Singh and reminding the Jats of his legacy," a senior RLD leader said.

During the Kairana bypoll, RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan succeeded in defeating the BJP in the high-profile battle necessitated following the death of BJP MP Hukum Singh. RLD candidate Tabassum was supported by the Congress, SP and BSP.

Kairana was seen as a testing ground for the new-found opposition unity against the rising BJP then, and the win gave a boost to opposition's efforts to stitch a grand alliance against the saffron party.

Statistically, RLD's performance showed a downward trend after the death of former prime minister Chowdhury Charan Singh. When Charan Singh died in 1987, Bharatiya Lok Dal had the maximum 83 legislators in Uttar Pradesh. The number dwindled over the years and came down to just one in 2017 assembly polls.

The best performance of RLD under Ajit Singh was in 2002 when it won 14 assembly seats in alliance with the BJP. The party won five seats in 2009 Lok Sabha polls, again in alliance with the BJP, but during 2012 assembly polls, it forged an alliance with Congress and won nine assembly seats.

In 2014 general election and 2017 assembly polls, the party's performance was worst as it failed to turn voters in its favour and the BJP succeeded in making a dent in its vote bank. Of the seven seats contested in 2014, the party lost all of them.

Even party chief Ajit Singh slipped to the third spot in his traditional Baghpat seat while his son Jayant Chowdhury lost to Bollywood actor-politician Hema Malini, who contested on a BJP ticket from Mathura. Other candidates including Amar Singh, Jaya Prada and Rakesh Tikait also could not perform well and all of them lost.

In 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, the RLD had contested 277 of the total 403 seats but won only one  Chhaprauli seat. After entering an alliance with SP-BSP, the RLD will be contesting Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar and Mathura seats. While party chief Ajit Singh is likely to contest from Muzaffarnagar, his son Jayant will be contesting from party's traditional seat  Baghpat.

Asked about RLD's Lok Sabha prospects, a senior RLD leader said, "This time equations are in our favour. Be it Muslim, backwards, Dalits, Jats or any other community, all are in our favour. Farmers are angry due to non-payment of cane dues."

SP MLC Rajpal Kashyap, when asked about the alliance partner, said, "This is an alliance of ideologies and it will succeed in defeating the communal BJP. We are all committed to ensure victory of the alliance candidates.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) released its manifesto for the Lok Sabha election on Tuesday, a day after the party  in an alliance with the Congress in Tamil Nadu  released its first list of 20 candidates.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) released its manifesto for the Lok Sabha election on Tuesday, a day after the party  in an alliance with the Congress in Tamil Nadu  released its first list of 20 candidates.

In the manifesto, the MK Stalin-led party has promised the electorate that efforts will be made to release all seven of the convicts imprisoned for the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The party also promised all Sri Lankan refugees citizenship, according to reports.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who cemented an alliance with DMK in February, had said at a rally recently that he harboured no hatred towards the convicts of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, and asserted that it was for the courts to decide on their release.

The Congress chief, who was in the state for a day to launch the United Progressive Alliance's campaign on 13 March, said the assassination of his father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 had two aspects. "While one was personal, which we have dealt with, the other was the legal issue, which has to take its course. Whatever course the legal issue takes, we are happy with it," he said.

Other promises in the DMK's manifesto include "the inter-connection of South Indian rivers, the abolition of the NEET and the waiver of education loans."

The DMK also said that a CBI probe into the Kodanadu Estate heist case will be conducted, along with a promise for full-fledged statehood for Puducherry. The party also took on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's much-debated demonetisation, saying in its manifesto that compensation will be given to those who suffered due to the move to make notes Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 void.

Additionally, the DMK promised to resume the Sethu Samudhram project, and also keep petrol and diesel prices under control. "Besides, administration pricing mechanism will be implemented and a law will be formulated to curb human trafficking," a News18 report said, quoting the manifesto.

In the first list of candidates released on Monday, the party fielded former Union telecom ministers Dayanidhi Maran and A Raja  who were prime accused in 2G spectrum case  among 20 names.

Maran will contest from Central Chennai, while Raja has been fielded from Nilgiris. Raja and Maran had unsuccessfully contested these seats in 2014. The alleged scam, in which two are the accused, relates to the allocation of 2G spectrum licenses in 2007-08, which according to the Comptroller and Auditor General report, caused a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the public exchequer.

Rajya Sabha MP and the daughter of late DMK chief M Karunanidhi, Kanimozhi will also contest from Tuticorin. While senior leader TR Balu is returning as a DMK candidate from Sriperumbudur, which he won in 2009.

Other candidates include Kalanithi Veeraswamy from Chennai North, Tamiyachi Thangapandiya from Chennai South, Selvam from Kancheepuram and Tenkasi from Dhanush Kumar. DMK will contest 20 out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, while its ally Congress will contest nine seats and also the lone seat in Puducherry.

Meanwhile, the BJP has joined the ruling AIADMK and PMK in Tamil Nadu.
BJP has demanded special observers at mosques to prevent any attempt to influence voters. APP said the same observers should be appointed at RSS shakhas.

"Khutbah" refers to a sermon delivered at mosques before Friday prayers that comprises socio-political messages. Before the 2004 Lok Sabha election, Jama Masjid's Shahi Imam Ahmed Bukhari had appealed to Muslims to support the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and to look beyond Article 370, the lack of a Uniform Civil Code and the Babri Masjid controversy and consider education and employment their priority.

Ulemas had taken a dim view of Bukhari's stand. His father Abdullah Bukhari had supported Independence activist Jayaprakash Narayan's movement during the Emergency and had later supported Indira Gandhi's return to power.

The political influence of the imams of the Jama Masjid is not a new phenomenon. However, there are nearly 1,500 mosques in Delhi. Neither are all the imams so influential, nor are the voters' minds as impressionable as they used to be back in 2004, when the Muslim Political Council of India had called for tactical voting  a last-resort vote in favour of a party to prevent its opponent from coming to power. At the same time, the Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat had also appealed to Muslims to vote unanimously for the Congress and its allies.

Cut to 2014, and the friendship between religion and politics was still strong.

On Sunday, the Delhi BJP had demanded that special observers be appointed to watch over mosques to prevent any attempt to influence voters along religious lines. In retaliation, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said it will welcome all steps by the Election Commission to prevent any communal discord, with one condition that observers also be appointed at shakhas of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

The letter  addressed by the legal department of the Delhi BJP  claimed Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP members often gave speeches that could polarise voters. Shyam Jaju, national vice-president and state prabhari of Delhi and Uttarakhand BJP, told Firstpost that Kejriwal challenging BJP's "purely constitutional" demands was another marker of his irresponsible leadership.

In response, AAP's Amanatullah Khan told Firstpost that pushing the Lok Sabha election in Delhi to the seventh and last phase, making it fall during Ramzan, was a move aimed at dissuading Muslim votes. He also questioned why the RSS had gone back on its promise to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that it will remain a non-political organisation.

Furthermore, a historian at Aligarh Muslim University, Ali Nadeem Rezavi explained the inevitability of politics in religious congregations and said the concept is not limited to Islam.

Yet another dimension, according to historian Syed Irfan Habib, is that the voting pattern among Muslims and Dalits had changed over the years. He pointed out bifurcations in voting patterns; in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the Muslim vote is broadly split between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, and the Dalit vote is bifurcated, with some sub-castes, like the Valmikis and Ravidasis, voting for the BJP.

The inseparability of politics and religion is not limited to Muslims and Hindus either. In 2014, the Shiromani Akali Dal had raised the demand for an All India Gurdwara Act, a good six decades after a private bill was first moved on the subject. The bill proposes to bring all gurdwaras in India under the control of a unified body of Sikhs elected from across the country.

In a book titled Sikh Separatism: The Politics of Faith, it is argued that "the proposed Act has elements designed to extend the Akali Dal's power base to Sikhs throughout the country, rather than to ensure the proper management of all Sikh religious institutions".

In the North East, countering the "Church veto" in states like Nagaland and Meghalaya was a challenge for the ruling party. After the BJP's victory in the North East, its star campaigner in the region, Sunil Deodhar, had said he had seen a trend of candidates being introduced in churches in Meghalaya. Right after the results of the elections were declared, he had revealed that loyalties were so sharply divided that Presbyterian churchgoers were urged to vote for a candidate from their sub-caste even if they were contesting against a Catholic candidate.

Last year, BJP spokesperson and advocate Ashwini Upadhyay had filed a petition under Article 32 to restrict the misuse of religion for electoral gains in line with the recommendation of the Election Commission. Under Section 123(3) of the Representation of People Act, an appeal on the grounds of religion, race, caste, etc, and promotion of feelings of enmity between various classes constitute corrupt practices, but the problem lies in the fact that the same can be questioned only by way of an election petition and cannot be a subject of inquiry before the Election Commission, even when the polls are underway. In fact, it is this lack of electoral reforms that has left the judiciary with no option but to intervene.

In the world's largest electoral operation, the intervention of courts through such petitions has led to electoral reforms. For instance, one was on the provision for candidates to disclose their assets and criminal antecedents upon a petition filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms; another was on striking down Section 8(4) of the Representation of People's Act, 1951, which permitted even murder convicts to continue as MPs and MLAs.

Upadhyay had pleaded the court to declare that the Election Commission has the power to take action on complaints related to the misuse of religion for electoral gains. He had also sought directions to the Centre to take appropriate steps to restrict the misuse of religion.

The Supreme Court had dismissed the Public Interest Litigation in October 2018, but Upadhyay claims he had withdrawn the plea and moved the Election Commission, instead, to ensure free and fair elections in the spirit of articles 14, 19 and 324.

In 2014, RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale had referred to the Lok Sabha election that year as a "starting point of a long-term vision". The union of religion and politics demands addressing across parties and religions, not random measures like the appointment of special observers at particular institutions.
BJP president Amit Shah and Union minister Nitin Gadkari played behind-the-scene roles in ensuring the party retained power in Goa, after the death of Manohar Parrikar, sources familiar with the developments said.

Panaji: BJP president Amit Shah and Union minister Nitin Gadkari played behind-the-scene roles in ensuring the party retained power in Goa, after the death of Manohar Parrikar, sources familiar with the developments said.

The impasse over government formation, which included dealing with stubborn allies wanting to extract their pound of flesh, was resolved with deft handling of the situation by the two senior BJP leaders, party sources said on Tuesday.

In 2017 also, after the BJP failed to get a majority in the state Assembly polls, Gadkari had flown to the state to help the BJP cobble up an alliance with smaller parties in the coastal state, after which a government was formed under Parrikar's leadership.

The sources said the BJP expected a crisis in Parrikar's absence, as the alliance was formed in 2017 only on the plank of supporting the late leader become the chief minister.

When Parrikar died on Sunday after battling pancreatic cancer, the BJP swung into action even as MLAs of ally Maharashtrwawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) huddled in a meeting.

Vijai Sardesai of another alliance partner Goa Forward Party (GFP) along with his own party members and other independent legislators, including ministers Rohan Khaunte and Govind Gawade, also began holding meetings.

As the leadership change became imminent, the BJP sent Gadkari, experienced at handling handling political situation in Goa, to the state, with the mandate of doing all that was required to retain power there.

Sources said Gadkari held one-on-one discussions throughout the night with all MLAs supporting the government, but no consensus was reached among the warring factions.

Even as MGP legislator Sudin Dhavalikar staked his claim for the top post, the BJP legislature party proposed Pramod Sawant's name while the GFP and others supported Vishwajit Rane as the chief ministerial candidate.

Despite several rounds of meetings, there was no consensus till Monday morning.

While the BJP was grappling with these issues, the Opposition Congress in the meantime submitted a letter to Governor Mridula Sinha, staking claim to form government, saying it was the single largest party with 14 MLAs. The Congress claimed it had majority support.

Till Monday evening, as Parrikar was being cremated with state honours, there was no clarity on the new government formation.

Things started moving when Amit Shah held a meeting of his party MLAs and Dhavalikar at a hotel.

Gadkari, who earlier announced that he would be leaving the state soon, also stayed back and by late Monday evening things started falling in place, the sources said.

"A formula which was acceptable to all coalition partners was worked out, under which Sawant emerged as the chief ministerial candidate while Sardesai and Dhavalikar were to be designated as his deputies," the source said.

The alliance partners also suggested that status quo on the cabinet be maintained, implying that all the ministers

be sworn in again, which was agreed upon.

Though the BJP was optimistic that the Sawant-led alliance would be sworn in at 9 pm, some last-minute glitches gave rise to uncertainty.

Gadkari then sat to troubleshoot things, as several issues, including a common minimum programme and power sharing, were worked out, said sources who were part of the discussions.

Finally, around 1.30 am on Tuesday, the BJP-led coalition decided to stake claim and all the leaders, including Gadkari, rushed to the Raj Bhawan to stake claim to form the new government and minutes later, Sawant and 11 ministers were sworn in at the oath ceremony held in the wee hours of Tuesday.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserted his government has changed the image of Uttar Pradesh and the state's law and order has become a model for the country

Lucknow: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserted Tuesday his government has changed the image of Uttar Pradesh and the state's law and order has become a model for the country as not one incident of rioting happened under his watch.

Presenting a report card on the completion of two years of his government, he said when he assumed office in March 2017, debt-ridden farmers were committing suicides and Uttar Pradesh had become "synonymous with murder, loot and riots". "Mafia was looting the state's resources under political patronage. Mafia was rampant in SP, BSP rule," he alleged. "There was a long era of scams."

Adityanath said he has changed the "perception about the state" and improved its "tarnished image". The better atmosphere has become a "nazeer" (model) for the country, he said.

Hitting out at previous state governments, he said, "In 2012, there were 227 major communal riots. In 2013, there were 247 such riots. In 2014, there were 242 riots. And 219 riots in 2015 and more than 100 in 2016, in which properties worth crores were lost."

"However during the BJP government, not a single riot took place. Nor were there any incident of acid attacks or kidnapping," he claimed.

Though there has been no major communal violence in Uttar Pradesh during the past two years, a mob of 400 people, including right-wing activists, had fought pitched battles with police in Bulandshahr district in December last year. The violence in the district's Siana area broke out apparently after right-wing activists were angered by the discovery of cow carcasses strewn in a nearby jungle.

In January last year, a 22-year-old youth was shot dead during a "Tiranga Yatra" by some people after which a series of violent incidents and arsoning had rocked Kasganj. Taking lesson from it, the state government that year denied permission for any such procession in the western Uttar Pradesh city on Independence Day.

On Tuesday, at his press conference in Lucknow, Adityanath cited the reported exodus of Hindus in 2017 from Kairana, another city in western UP, "due to anarchic forces". "However", he said, "today, peace has returned as well as the traders who had fled from there."

The exodus of Hindus from Kairana was a major poll issue for BJP in the 2017 assembly election in Uttar Pradesh.

The chief minister said the confidence of the state police force has gone up and there is no interference from his government in their functioning. "There is zero tolerance for crime and criminals and 73 criminals have been killed in 3,300 police encounters. Over 8,000 criminals were arrested, while 1,000 were injured. Unfortunately, half-a-dozen police jawans also attained martyrdom in the encounters," he said.

Adityanath also said that the UP Sthaapnaa Diwas (Foundation Day) was celebrated for first time after 68 years in 2018. The chief minister said the state had received investment proposals worth Rs 5 lakh crore, of which Rs 1.5 lakh crore has already been invested. "In the past two years, investments done in the state are more than the combined amount of SP and BSP governments. Under the BSP dispensation, the investment figure was Rs 56,000 crore and during the SP rule, it was Rs 77,000 crore," he said.

Adityanath also attacked the Congress, which has been out of power in the state for nearly 30 years. "Congress ruled the state for the maximum time, and gave it the title of BIMARU state. The people of the state wanted to shed the BIMARU tag, but after 1990, during SP rule (4 times) and BSP rule (3 times), the state entered into an era of anarchy and lawlessness."

BIMARU is an acronym that denoted the states  Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh  with low levels of development index. The chief minister also listed achievements and welfare schemes of his government. His deputies Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma and Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey were present at the press conference.
Sawant met family members of his deceased predecessor Parrikar before assuming charge of office, at their private residence at Dona Paula

The newly sworn-in Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant will face the floor test on Wednesday, he told media persons in Panaji on Tuesday.

He told the reporters that he aspires to give a stable government to the people, along with his two deputy chief ministers, Vijay Sardesai and Sudin Dhavalikar. He also said that he was committed to carry forward Manohar Parrikar's legacy of good governance in the state.

Sawant met family members of his deceased predecessor Parrikar before assuming charge of office, at their private residence at Dona Paula near Panaji around 12 noon, before heading to the CM's Office at state Secretariat, Porvorim.

Speaking to reporters, the new chief minister said his priority would be to reach out to every person, and carry forward the "glorious legacy" of good governance left behind by Parrikar.

Sawant, a protege of Parrikar, was Speaker of the Legislative Assembly when he was picked to be the successor of Parrikar.

"Manohar Parrikar is a father-like figure for me. He was my inspiration...everything. I am here only because of him...I became MLA, then Speaker, and now CM only because of Parrikar," Sawant told reporters after meeting kin of the late chief minister.

When asked to list his priorities, Sawant said, "As a chief minister, my aim would be to reach out to every person and complete his works".

He also urged people not to congratulate him, or celebrate his swearing-in during the seven-day mourning period being observed to mark Parrikar's demise, ANI reported. "I request all the people to not congratulate me or welcome me with flowers during the seven-day mourning period," he said.

"I have taken charge with great humility and gratitude towards my idol and mentor Manohar bhai (Parrikar). I seek your blessings and support to carry forward the glorious legacy of commitment towards good governance," he said.
Priyanka's forays in Uttar Pradesh, her attempts to get some smaller parties on board by extending the olive branch indicate a desperate bid to find a foothold in the state.

Abundant news space has been used to discuss the many launches, re-launch, and the coming-of-age of Rahul Gandhi over the years. Now, when the Priyanka card has been played by the Congress, it is his sister's turn to dominate headlines. From her posture, her sartorial sense, to the length of her sari's veil when she visits temples, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's every move and gesture is up for analysis. Copious notes have been dedicated to her resemblance to her grandmother and former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

But what is the mood beyond the reams of newsprints and cacophony of prime time news? Does the media's obsession with the Congress scion translate into voters' interest? Congress' key opponent in the poll arena, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) thinks otherwise.

Party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi attempted to fashion a symbolic retort to Priyanka's boat ride on river Ganga to key Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh. Trivedi termed her boat as directionless and carrying a party without support base.

"...people are travelling on boat... a directionless boat carrying a party without any support base led by unwise leadership and doing politics without values, one can easily imagine how far such a boat can go. Wherever this boat will find a shore it will be enough for it," Trivedi said.

Bid to forge directionless alliances

Coming from her political rival, the comments seem harsh, but the statement does resonate with some degree of skepticism that erstwhile Congress allies and political pundits have also shown. The party's tryst with alliance politics also somewhat strengthens the perception of directionlessness.

Priyankas forays in Uttar Pradesh, her attempts to get smaller parties on board by extending the olive branch, indicate a desperate bid to find a foothold in the state. However, the Congress' actions on ground indicates party's intent to play political games within the non-BJP camp, which is anchored in the belief that it still enjoys the status of first party among equals in a state where it managed to win only two seats out of the 80 in 2014 elections.

Congress failed to reach an understanding with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh in the belief that it is influential enough in the state to fight on its own. Uttar Pradesh is one state where the Congress could have shown a better understanding of its current diminished status to leave the field open for the SP and the BSP while humbly accepting the minor partner's stature in the alliance.

Instead, it attempted to broker peace by offering to leave seven seats for the alliance, like Mayawati and Akhilesh had when they said they won't field candidates from Congress' pocket boroughs Rae Bareli and Amethi.

The move might have triggered some pre-election bonhomie, and a scope for post-poll alliance, had Priyanka not confirmed Mayawati's worst fear that Congress intends to undercut her Dalit base by meeting the young Dalit leader, Chandrashekhar Azad, in hospital.

The BSP supremo, noted for her mercurial mood shifts, did not take to this kindly and rebuffed the Congress offer to leave seven seats for the alliance without any official understanding.

Daring the Congress to go ahead and field candidates in all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state, Mayawati advised Priyanka to refrain from "spreading confusion".

Akhilesh Yadav too snubbed the Congress adding that the alliance was capable on its own to defeat the BJP in state. In a tweet, the SP president said, "In Uttar Pradesh, the SP, BSP and RLD alliance is capable of defeating the BJP.The Congress party need not spread any kind of confusion."

All that the grand old party was left with was a possibility of alliance with one or both faction of a smaller party Apna Dal, (depending on whether NDA manages to quell dischords with the faction led by Anupriya Patel) and a sealed pact with the lesser known Jan Adhikar Party. There was some talk of Congress allying with Shivpal Yadav-led SP faction, but there has been no confirmation on that account.

Things, however, look grim after Mulayam Singh Yadav on the last day of the 16th Lok Sabha stunned everyone by wishing another term for Narendra Modi  Shivpal and Mulayam are considered close to each other and it was the question of alliance with Congress in 2016 Assembly election that brought to fore the infighting within the Yadav clan.

Road show to river trails

After making a political buzz through a successful roadshow in the state capital last month, Priyanka is now navigating the river route seeking to steer the Congress towards regaining its political moorings in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.

The optics were all in place.

The 47-year-old Congress general secretary, clad in a green cotton saree and pink blouse, interacted with a cross section of people, including students, and invited some of them to join her on the motorboat as she undertook her much anticipated ride from the Manaiya Ghat in Kachnar tehsil of Prayagraj district. She delivered some quotable quotes as she took potshots at Modi's latest poll antics. And she offered prayers at the major temples in the holy city, as Congress offered breathless comparisons to her grandmother Indira.

Sitting cross-legged on the motorboat, the Congress leader was all ears as the locals residing on the river bank apprised her of their issues.

Political analyst Ramesh Dixit, while admitting that he did not remember any leader using the river route for campaigning, said this was only aimed at giving it a different look.

"The target is to reach out to the Mallah, Kewat and Nishad communities of boatmen, fishermen and agriculturalists living along the river...but to know about the difficulties faced by them, it does not require one to be a diver...this is just aimed at making the campaign look different," said Dixit, a retired head of the political science department of Lucknow University.

Moments after Priyanka was seen praying at the bade Hanuman temple in Prayagraj, her head covered with her sari, Congress tweeted a throwback photo of Indira Gandhi, almost in an identical setting. "Traditions, rituals never change," said the tweet in Hindi.

Priyanka too underscored the comparison as she tweeted a picture from her stay at Jawaharlal Nehru's paternal home, Swarajya Bhawan, remembering Indira.

                                         -       pic.twitter.com/q8Ecdb2RsL  Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) March 17, 2019

However, the optics aside, the only static rule in predicting election trends is that crowds don't necessarily mean votes. The rural voters have managed to surprise poll pundits and the urban society at the end of the polling process before. (remember India shining in 2004?) There is no reason why one should not exercise the same caution in gauging Priyanka's popularity by the frontpage space she occupies or the number of people that attend her rallies.

The fact is that Priyanka's formal entry into politics was much delayed, and nobody can be expected to wave a magic wand months before election and resurrect a party whose organisational structure is in shambles.

Telangana Rashtra Samithi, a party that has refused to ally with both Congress and BJP and is trying to cobble up a third front, espouses this view.

"Those days have gone when people with super-charisma come and sway the voters because voters today are educated, especially the youth who are making an impact," TRS leader Abid Rasool Khan, said.

On assessment of some analysts that Priyanka's "charisma" is similar to that of Indira, he said "there is a difference". During Indira Gandhi's days, charisma was important because most of the voters were illiterate, and it's not the case now. Thanks to social and other media exposure, people are demanding their rights now, not just charisma.

"I don't think personally she will make any impact until and unless the Congress party looks at itself...where it has gone wrong, set right all the problems under her leadership and builds up the party base...," he said. "Over a period of five years if she works hard, definitely there will be an impact, but not coming just before the elections", Khan said.

Political strategist-turned politician, JD(U)'s Prashant Kishor, who once curated Congress' poll campaigns in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, also resonated a similar view.

"Nobody has a magic wand. I do not think she will be able to turn things around for the Congress in the two-three months that are left for the Lok Sabha elections. But she is a big name and a popular face. In the long run; yes, she would emerge as a challenge (to the NDA)," Kishor said.

With inputs from agencies
With fervent nationalism becoming the flavour of the election season, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi Tuesday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's patriotic credentials and accused him of not raising the issue of India's 'territorial integrity' during his meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Itanagar: With fervent nationalism becoming the flavour of the election season, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi Tuesday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's patriotic credentials and accused him of not raising the issue of India's "territorial integrity" during his meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The Congress leader claimed the prime minister "did not utter a word" on the boundary question when he hosted Xi in his home state Gujarat a few years ago.

"During Xi Jinping's meeting with Modi in India, the prime minister was seen sitting with him over a cup of tea without uttering a single word on the boundary dispute. Even during his (Modi) visit to China he never took up the Doka La issue," Rahul told an election rally in the Arunachal Pradesh capital.

India and China are locked in a protracted dispute over Arunachal Pradesh, often resulting in incursions by their respective armies into each other's territory.

In June 2017, a military standoff occurred between China and India as Chinese soldiers attempted to extend a road on the Doklam plateau and Indian troops moved in to prevent them. India had claimed to have acted on behalf of Bhutan with which it has a 'special relationship'.

"How can he (Modi) claim himself a desh bhakt (patriot) when he did not even take up the issue of the country's territorial integrity? The country doesn't want such patriots.

"The people of Arunachal Pradesh are more patriotic as they are zealously protecting the country's territory," he told the rally. Rahul said Modi had visited China "without an agenda" on the vexed boundary question.

The Congress president had recently called Modi "weak and scared" of the Chinese president, after Beijing once again blocked a UN resolution to designate JeM chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist.

He had tweeted:

Weak Modi is scared of Xi. Not a word comes out of his mouth when China acts against India. NoMos China Diplomacy: 1. Swing with Xi in Gujarat 2. Hug Xi in Delhi 3. Bow to Xi in China https://t.co/7QBjY4e0z3  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 14, 2019

The Congress president repeated his allegation that Modi continued to shoot for a documentary in the Corbett National Park when the nation was mourning the killing of 40 CRPF personnel in a terror bombing in Kashmir's Pulwama.

Referring to the recent killing of three people in police firing during the agitation against permanent residency certificates to some sections in Arunachal Pradesh, he said,"Was there any necessity for the police firing? The issue could have been resolved in other ways without harsh action." He alleged that it was the BJP's "nature" to suppress those who dare to stand up against it.

Rahul dubbed the prime minister as an "arrogant" leader who claimed India awoke only after the advent of his

government in 2014. "He has no knowledge of the country's strengths," the Congress leader said.
Speculation about Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil resigning as Maharashtra LoP have been rife in political circles ever since his son, Sujay, joined the ruling BJP on 12 March and is set to be recommended by it for the Ahmednagar Lok Sabha seat

Mumbai: Senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil Tuesday rejected reports that he had quit as the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

Speculation about Vikhe Patil resigning as Maharashtra LoP have been rife in political circles ever since his son, Sujay, joined the ruling BJP on 12 March and is set to be recommended by it for the Ahmednagar Lok Sabha seat.

Sujay's candidature from the BJP will pit him in a straight fight with the NCP, which had refused to accede to Vikhe Patil's request to let his son fight on a Congress ticket from there.

Vikhe Patil, who is in his hometown Loni, said, "I reject reports that I have resigned as Leader of Opposition."

Vikhe Patil had earlier said that Sujay's decision to join the BJP was a personal one. He would continue to the serve the Congress and abide by its directives, the LoP had asserted.
Earlier this month, Dikshit, after meeting Gandhi, had claimed that there was unanimity in the party against an alliance with the AAP.

Delhi: Uncertainty persisted in the Delhi Congress over a pre-poll tie-up with the AAP after its chief Sheila Dikshit and her three working presidents wrote to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi against the alliance, sources said.

In a letter written last week, Dikshit and working presidents Haroon Yusuf, Devender Yadav and Rajesh Lilothia protested a recent phone survey to gauge workers' mood on the alliance.

"Dikshit and the working presidents have urged the Congress chief not to have an alliance with the AAP, saying it will harm the party in the long run," said a Delhi Congress leader.

The leader said they have also expressed reservation over the phone survey, being carried out through Shakti app of the party, which was undertaken by PC Chacko, the AICC incharge of Delhi Congress.

The survey sought views of around 52,000 Delhi Congress workers on whether they supported the party's alliance with the AAP in Delhi or not.

Chacko had said earlier that a report of the survey would be submitted to Gandhi who would take a final call on the issue.

Dikshit had opposed the survey, saying it was "overriding" Gandhi's decision that the Delhi Congress was against the alliance.

Earlier this month, Dikshit, after meeting Gandhi, had claimed that there was unanimity in the party against an alliance with the AAP.

However, opinion seems to be divided in the Congress over the issue. Many believe that it is necessary to have an alliance to take on the BJP as the saffron party is upbeat after air strikes b the Modi government following the Pulwama terror attack.

"We do not think it will be an easy task for us to fight against the resurgent BJP and the ruling AAP in Delhi in the Lok Sabha polls. Also, things will be tougher for us as both the Congress and the AAP have the same voter base which will be split if there is no alliance,"a senior Delhi Congress leader said.

However, the opponents of the alliance in the party believe that the move will be "suicidal" as the Congress has to face the Delhi Assembly polls early next year and its main rival will be the ruling AAP.
Sheila Dikshit's opposition to Congress forming an alliance with AAP for Lok Sabha election is likely to be a pre-emptive action to prevent a repeat of the grand old party's disastrous performance in the 2015 Assembly polls

The spat between former Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken and current chief Sheila Dikshit over alliance with the Aam Admi Party (AAP) is the recent political drama to unfold before 2019 Lok Sabha polls with the lesson being that politics is a strange game where leaders change their stances with a change in their fortunes.

Maken and Dikshit seem to have swapped their roles on the issue of alliance with AAP and are now seen sparring with each other over their new found zeal.

Maken, who strongly opposed any alliance with AAP when he was the head of Delhi Congress, is now backing an in-party survey seeking views from party workers on whether or not to ally with AAP in the upcoming polls.

On the other hand, Dikshit who was known to be soft towards a possible alliance with AAP, is now strongly opposing the survey, terming it an attempt to cause confusion. She asserts that there is no change in the Congress leadership's decision to not ally with AAP.

What is even more interesting is that both the leaders are now placing themselves against each other in a full-blown spar in the media over the issue.

The survey touted as an order by Rahul Gandhi is initiated by party in-charge for Delhi affairs PC Chacko and over 40,000 workers have participated in it as per a report by Times of India.

While expressing her displeasure over the survey, Dikshit said, Our Stand (against alliance) remains what it was. Rahulji is not in Delhi. He does not give orders for such surveys.

Maken, however, has opposed Dikshit's stance on the survey. This is Rahul Gandhis decision. If anyone in the Congress is questioning the decision of Rahulji, I think it is wrong, he said.

The public sparring between the two leaders has come as a surprise for many, as both the leaders were seen as having completely opposite views on the subject till a few months back.

In fact, it was widely believed that Makens strong stance against the alliance was the reason behind his exit as the head of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee.

Earlier, a staunch critic of AAP, Maken had questioned AAP's offer to ally for the Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. "When the people of Delhi are continuously rejecting Kejriwal Govt, why should we (Congress) come to their rescue? he had said.

He had also said that the Congress leaders and workers do not want any alliance with the AAP and hence there is no question of it.

In January 2019, Maken was replaced by Dikshit who is understood to be softer on her views about an alliance with the AAP.

Soon after taking over as the Delhi Congress chief, Dikshit had told Firstpost in an exclusive interview hinting that she is open to alliance with the AAP. "In politics, we cannot predict what will happen after two months or even after two weeks. Decisions are taken keeping tab with new developments in the field, she had said.

Now, both the leaders have gone for role reversal. News about spat between both the leaders in party meetings over the issue of alliance with the AAP has been coming in bits and pieces.

Dikshits opposition to the alliance came to the forefront when, she, after two hour long discussion with Rahul announced in the media that there would be no alliance with the AAP.

After being snubbed by Rahul, AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal alleged that the Congress and the BJP have a secret understanding.

"At a time when the whole country wants to defeat (Narendra) Modi-(Amit) Shah duo, Cong is helping BJP by splitting anti-BJP vote. Rumours are that Congress has some secret understanding with BJP. Delhi is ready to fight against Congress-BJP alliance. People will defeat this unholy alliance, a perturbed Kejriwal had tweeted after Dikshit had made the announcement.

At a time when the whole country wants to defeat Modi- Shah duo, Cong is helping BJP by splitting anti-BJP vote. Rumours r that Cong has some secret understanding wid BJP. Delhi is ready to fight against Cong-BJP alliance. People will defeat this unholy alliance. https://t.co/JUsYMjxCxy  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) March 5, 2019

Kejriwals criticism of the Congress seems to be guided by genuine fear that BJP may win all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi without an alliance between the Congress and AAP in place.

AAP had won a historic mandate in the 2015 Assembly election in Delhi with 54.3 percent of the vote share. The BJP had garnered 32.2 percent of the votes while the Congress had received merely 9.7 percent votes.

Before AAP emerged as a key player in Delhi politics in 2013, the contest in the national capital was mostly limited to the BJP and Congress. In the 2008 Assembly polls, the Congress formed government after winning the election with 40.3 percent of the votes while the BJP had received 36.34 percent votes.

Looking at these figures, it is evident that most of AAP's vote bank came from the Congress pool in 2015.

Though Congress had gradually revived itself in the national capital's politics since then, AAP's vote share began to reverse rapidly. This reverse trend was clearly visible in the 2017 election for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, when AAP won a disastrous 26 percent of the votes and the Congress received 21 percent votes. BJP swept the polls with 36 percent of the vote share.

It is no wonder that AAP made repeated attempts to secure a pre-poll alliance with the Congress.

Though the AAP's angst over the Congress partys reluctance to ally with it is understandable, it has also to be kept in mind that Congress had a not so memorable experience of forming an alliance with the AAP in 2013.

After the 2013 Delhi Assembly election, AAP had formed the government in alliance with Congress in Delhi. But soon after the government was formed, incessant bickering followed between both the parties. After functioning for 49 days the Kejriwal-led government resigned.

In the next Assembly election, Congress presence in the Delhi Assembly was decimated to zero.

Delhi is going for Assembly elections again either by the end of this year or early next year. Sheila Dikshit as the state Congress chief, stands a chance to reclaim the chief ministers office if her party gains majority. Perhaps, her opposition to forming an alliance with AAP is a pre-emptive action to prevent a repeat of the 2015 disaster.
Tripura BJP vice-president Subal Bhowmil on Tuesday quit the saffron party and is set to join the Congress.

Tripura BJP vice-president Subal Bhowmil on Tuesday quit the saffron party and is set to join the Congress. For the Lok Sabha election, Bhowmik is likely to be nominated on the Congress ticket from the West Tripura Lok Sabha constituency.

In a letter to the state party president, Bhowmik said, "I humbly intend to submit that some unavoidable circumstances compelled me to relingquish all my position as office bearer of Tripura Pradesh BJP with immediate effect including that of primary membership. Inconvenience, if any, is regretted."

Bhowmik was quoted by The Hindu on Tuesday as saying, "I am joining Congress today. Rahul Gandhiji will announce my candidature from his rally at Khumulwng tomorrow." Congress president Rahul Gandhi is scheduled to hold a rally at the Khumpui Academy ground in the Khumulwng area of the state on Wednesday.

Reportedly, Bhowmik's meeting with Tripura Congress president Pradyot Kishore Manikya came after his decision to leave the BJP. The former BJP leader wrote a post on Facebook only captioned "Enough is enough". "I dont want to stay in BJP as a burden. Some in the party have said that if I became an MP candidate the government may fall. This government has come to power after a long struggle against the Communist rule and I dont want it to fall so soon!" he told reporters.

Bhowmik was originally a member of the Congress party and had let the party to join the BJP in 2014, ahead of the last general elections. The former Congress MLA from Sonamura had played a significant role in the saffron party's rise in Tripura, reports said.

With inputs from agencies
Ameya Dalvi

The sub Rs 30,000 segment is one that can give flagship phones sleepless nights. In this budget, you pretty much get more than a handful of features that flagship device priced at 2X their cost brag of, namely powerful processors, loads of RAM and storage, excellent cameras and a classy design. While the sub-20K segment and sub-15K segment saw a massive churn over the past month or two, the sub-30K segment hasnt seen as many new arrivals. But we do have a couple of new and interesting handsets that managed to gain a spot on our list this month. Time to look at the best smartphones one can buy under Rs 30,000 this March and what they have to offer.

Best phones under Rs 30,000 in India

Lets start with the three phones with the most processing power in this segment, courtesy of Qualcomms flagship Snapdragon 845 SoC. We will place them in descending order of onboard RAM and storage and in ascending order of aesthetics.

Poco F1

Xiaomi released its sub-brand Poco last year and launched a phone with Qualcomms flagship Snapdragon 845 SoC at close to Rs 20K in India. While we included the base variant of the Poco F1 (Review) in our list of best phones under Rs 20,000 this month, you can get the top end variant of the same with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage for well under 30K. You can add another 256GB to it using a microSD card, just in case. The design isnt the most eye-catching one out there, but it is a beast when it comes to performance.

The Poco F1 comes with a 6.18-inch full HD+ notched display and a 12 MP + 5 MP dual camera setup at the back that does a good job in average to good lighting. You dont get premium features like optical image stabilisation but the image quality is pretty good. Theres also a more than decent 20 MP front camera for selfies. The Poco launcher is a refreshing change over MIUI that you get in most Xiaomi phones. If you are looking to play PUBG in its full glory on a tight budget, and aesthetics are secondary to you, Poco F1 is a practical option.

Poco F1 price in India: Rs 27,999 for 8 GB RAM/256 GB storage

Asus Zenfone 5Z

Asus Zenfone 5Z (Review) was the first Snapdragon 845 phone to be priced under Rs 30,000 in India. And that was the price of the base variant then. Now, you can buy the mid variant with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB storage under 28K. It lets you expand the storage further up to 2 TB with a microSD card. Unlike the Poco F1, the Zenfone 5Z looks and feels a lot more premium courtesy of its glass and aluminium body. The 6.2-inch Full HD+ notched display is sharp and feels just right.

The 12 MP + 8 MP dual rear cameras do an impressive job in most lighting conditions courtesy of a bright f/1.8 24 mm wide angle lens with large pixel size and 4-axis optical image stabilisation. It can also record 4K videos at 30 FPS and slow-mo videos at 1080p and 720p resolution at 120 and 240 FPS respectively. The Asus Zenfone 5Z is a solid all-around phone with premium looks, very good cameras, the fastest SoC currently available and its affordable too.

Asus Zenfone 5Z price in India: Rs 27,999 for 6 GB RAM/128 GB storage

LG G7 ThinQ

If you are a brand-conscious buyer or one who doesnt trust Chinese brands for whatever reason, heres one for you. Just like the earlier two handsets, the LG G7 ThinQ (Review) is also powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC. It comes with modest but acceptable 4 GB RAM and 64 GB of internal storage that can be expanded further to 2 TB. A striking feature here is its 6.1-inch Super Bright QHD+ display with 3120 x 1440 pixels resolution. And the phone is IP68 rated dust- and water-resistant too. In simple terms, it can survive more than a splash or two. In simpler terms, you can take it along for the Holi party but dont spend too much time in the pool with it.

Photography is taken care of by a pair of 16 MP cameras at the back with f/1.9 and f/1.6 apertures. The LG G7 ThinQ boasts of features like an ultrawide lens, optical image stabilisation along with shooting slow motion HD videos at 240 FPS. Just the thing you need to capture the festive madness. The quality of captured images and videos is quite impressive. The phone is expected to get an Android Pie update soon.

LG G7 ThinQ price in India: Rs 29,999 for 4 GB RAM/64 GB storage

Nokia 8.1

Moving on from flagship SoCs, Nokia 8.1 (Review) is powered by Qualcomms new upper mid-range chipset Snapdragon 710, which is no slouch by any means. The phone is available in two variants  4 GB RAM/64 GB storage and 6 GB RAM/128 GB storage. We will opt for the latter simply because it offers better value for a price difference of Rs 3,000 and still remains within our budget. The storage can be expanded further by 400 GB. The phone has the trademark Nokia metal and glass design with dual-tone anodised metal frame that users loved in the Nokia 7 Plus.

The Nokia 8.1 has a sharp 6.18-inch Full HD+ notched display. A 12MP + 13MP dual cameras at the back boast of Zeiss optics, dual pixel auto-focus and optical image stabilisation. The cameras produce some vibrant photographs with the right amount of sharpness and detail. One interesting thing I would like to point out here is the Live Bokeh (portrait) mode that saves depth data and lets you tweak the photos in Google Photos app after you shoot them. Like most Nokia phones these days, the 8.1 is also a part of the Android One bandwagon. So you get stock Android UI and regular OS and security updates. The phone runs Android Pie.

Nokia 8.1 price in India: Rs 29,999 for 6 GB RAM/128 GB storage

Vivo V15 Pro

Remember the two new interesting phones I mentioned at the start of this article? Heres the first. Vivo V15 Pro (Review) offers some interesting features like a pop-up front camera, a notch-less display and an in-display fingerprint scanner. Not that we havent seen these features before but now having all of them together in this budget is the interesting part. The feature set doesnt end there. The phone boasts of a 90 percent+ screen to body ratio courtesy of its aforementioned 6.39-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED notch-less display.

While the 32 MP pop-up front camera grabs all the attention, the 48 MP + 8 MP + 5 MP triple camera setup at the back does all the heavy lifting to deliver good images in most lighting conditions. Theres ample processing power available here thanks to a Snapdragon 675 SoC coupled with 6 GB or RAM and 128 GB of internal storage. Its 3,700 mAh battery keeps the phone powered for a day of moderate usage. The phone runs Android Pie.

Vivo V15 Pro price in India: Rs 27,990 for 6 GB RAM/128 GB storage

Oppo F11 Pro

The Oppo F11 Pro (Review) is quite similar to the Vivo V15 Pro in many ways. This too has quite an attractive design, a pop-up camera, 6 GB RAM and a notch-less display. There are a bunch of subtle differences too. You will have to make do with a Mediatek P70 SoC instead of its more popular Qualcomm counterpart, 64 GB less internal storage, a 16 MP front camera and dual cameras at the back instead of three that you get on the Vivo. None of these are deal breakers in my opinion. On the brighter side, you get a slightly bigger 6.5-inch screen, a larger 4,000 mAh battery with VOOC fast charging support and you save a few thousand Rupees too.

Though the Oppo F11 Pro does not have triple rear cameras, it retains the 48 MP primary sensor at the back that manages to capture some quality shots. The company has opted for a more classical rear-mounted fingerprint scanner instead of the in-display one  a smart decision. And lastly, the phone runs Android Pie out of the box with Color OS 6.0 on top.

Oppo R11 Pro price in India: Rs 24,990 for 6 GB RAM/64 GB storage
Partha P Chakrabartty

It has been a year since the Cambridge Analytica expose burst into our consciousness, revealing how billionaire donor Robert Mercer managed to assemble a team of data experts to hack key elections. These included the Brexit vote and the 2016 US Election, both of which delivered unexpected results by narrow margins. The expose showed, once again, the disproportionate influence that the few had on the lives and fortunes of the many, and revealed how sophisticated the tools of controlling the behaviour of voters had gotten.

Revisiting the Cambridge Analytica data breach

For those of us who have forgotten what Cambridge Analytica did, here is a quick explainer on how Christopher Wylie, a former research lead at Cambridge Analytica blew the whistle on its unethical practices.

First, it got 32,000 US voters to fill out a 120-question psychometric test that assessed their personality, paying them between $2 to $4 for taking the test. Then, it compared this psychological profile with their behaviour on Facebook  data on likes and personal information. This can be thought of as a sample study, whose results could be extrapolated to bigger populations. Churning all this data using machine learning, it arrived at a way to make 253 predictions about a persons psychology and political views. Suddenly, you didnt need every person to fill the 120-question survey. All you needed to predict a voters beliefs, and therefore exploit weaknesses in their psychology, was Facebook data alone.

What turned this 32,000-strong, seemingly academic exercise into a political weapon was a separate set of steps. The survey takers had to give the Cambridge Analytica (CA) app access to their Facebook accounts in order to get paid. When they took this innocuous step, which took them less than a few minutes, they somehow signed off not just their data, but also that of their friends. In total, the number of voters CA had data on hit 87 million. CA then picked 2 million voters from this pool, who lived in 11 key States in the US and sent them targeted ads that influenced their vote. A similar method was employed in the Brexit vote, and in elections in other countries, notably Nigeria.

Cambridge Analyticas influence on India has not been easy to untangle. Facebook claims about 0.5 million Indians were potentially affected by the data leak and this was thanks to just 355 individuals downloaded the 'thisisyourdigitallife' app and took the quiz. This is a small percentage of the 87 million total, and unlikely to have had the influence the corporation had in the US and the UK. However, it is important to point out that the relationship between Facebook data and psychology may be relevant across cultures, as CA used a personality test that holds true in other contexts. This means that those 253 algorithms can be used to predict Indian voter behaviour if someone gets hold of their Facebook data.

The government of India has ordered the CBI to probe the activities of Cambridge Analytica, and its parent firm, Strategic Communications Limited (SCL). The investigation began in August 2018. We await the results.

Cambridge Analytica aftermath

What has happened since the expose went down? Both, who has been held accountableand those who have notare notable. Cambridge Analytica was an obvious target and had to shut shop within six short weeks after the expose. Another target of lawmakers fury was Facebook, which has had to face a series of investigations, hearings and new regulations, as well as a threat to break up the company. A full timeline of the fallout for Facebook has been compiled by Tech2.

The most recent of the revelations, sparking a fresh investigation, claims that Facebook had been aware of the data breaches back in 2016, a full two years before the expose. Facebook has already shaved 13 percent of its share value since the scandal broke and has recently seen an exodus of 11 senior managers, including chief product officer Chris Cox and Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. It has also been found to be the company least trusted with personal information by a small survey conducted by Toluna, a research company. If the latest allegations are true, then Facebook is in even hotter water than before.

While CA and Facebook face the heat, there are many who seem to have gotten away entirely. Whistleblower Christopher Wylie told the Guardian, "I feel like the whole story is a lesson in institutional failure. Because although Facebook paid the price in its share value, there have been virtually no consequences for people who have committed unlawful acts. When you look at how, for example, the NCA [National Crime Agency in the UK] has just sat on blatant evidence of Russian interference in Brexit. When you look at how you can go and commit the largest infraction of campaign finance law in British history and get away with it."

Thus far, even Facebook has actually gotten away with doing precious little. The way the company handled the crisis was shameful, using the tactics of delaying, denying and deflecting criticism, most notably hiring a PR firm to place the blame on George Soros, and cynically lobbying against new regulations that would incentivise Facebook and other companies to clean up their act.

Facebook's promises have fallen flat

On the promises they did make when it came to the Cambridge Analytica expose, Facebook has made little progress. Its forensic audit of Cambridge Analytica is still waiting for a go-ahead from the UKs Information Commissioners Office. A promised investigation into apps, like the one CA used, has only led to 400-odd suspensions, with no progress since August. A clear history tool, that would allow users to delete browsing data collected by Facebook, has also not yet been released. Facebook says it will be released before the end of this year.

The latest effort to head off criticism is a post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, released in time for the anniversary of the expose. It claims that Facebooks new focus is on privacy concerns, but the fine print shows it mostly has to do with integrating and encrypting the messaging services of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, a move that makes more business sense than it addresses concerns over the very different product of Facebooks News Feed.

It is clear from its lukewarm efforts that Facebook still sees itself, as it used to, as a platform, with no real accountability for the content posted on it  something that 'publishers' such as media organisations are not exempt from. This was made possible by the infamous safe harbour provisions under US law, which were imitated by governments all over the world, including in India. These provisions relieved Facebook of liability on account of misinformation posted on their platform, only requiring them to delete content and block accounts when alerted to misconduct.

It is this that allowed the company to build a media empire without having to invest in the costly and time-consuming tasks of fact-checking and quality control that traditional media organisations were legally bound to conduct. Repeated attempts to get Facebook and other tech companies to take up this responsibility have failed: Facebook has refused to add these costs to its unprecedented profitability of US $634,694 per employee, the highest in the world.

What are the costs of this irresponsibility? Most recently, Facebook was the chosen platform of the mass murderer in the Christchurch shootings, who uploaded his massacre on Facebook Live. While companies were diligent in scrubbing the video, which was uploaded over 1.5 million times on Facebook alone, copies remained available. This is one video, well-identified, and Facebook struggled to take it down. How can it hope to fare better when facing the many-headed hydra of online fake news, or of covert, targeted political ads?

We know of the extent of Facebooks failure, and the damage that it has caused, from the tragedy of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. For most people in Myanmar, Facebook is the entire internet. Facebooks lax rules on false content had led to it becoming a platform for anti-Rohingya propaganda and hate speech. More than 25,000 people have been killed and over 700,000 displaced, and Facebook has admitted that it is implicated, releasing a report by Business for Social Responsibility. But simply admitting responsibility is not enough. The measure it has suggested, to hire a 100 human moderators (until now they had none who were trained in the languages spoken in the country), is woefully inadequate.

Until now, Facebook has claimed to deliver great value to its users. Many still rely on the platform for news, and to stay connected with loved ones. But the days of blindly celebrating Silicon Valley for their services need to now come to an end. We have to remember that Facebook is hardly the only platform in the world and that the additional value it adds over what other companies could do is not that significant. We can build an online world where we get these services without having to sell our minds for exploitation and manipulation.

We need to overthrow an internet regime that relies only on marketing for its revenues. Until that is the aim of a company, no values will keep it from turning rapacious. Interestingly, analysts have reacted negatively to Zuckerbergs announcement about a greater focus on privacy; they see the protection of our data as bad for profits.

When we yield up our data and give corporations the license to influencing our private decisions, is it any surprise that this license is abused by everyone from businesses to politicians? Can we permit blatant propaganda in the name of political marketing?

It is time to throw away our enchantment with internet companies like Facebook, and fight to win our data and privacy back. Governments the world over are beginning to take measures; we must support them in bringing irresponsible technocrats to book.
tech2 News Staff

Following a major security issue that caused Google+ to expose over 5,00,000 users profile data to external developers, Google announced that it will shut down the consumer version of its social network this year.

Google+ will shut down next month and the Mountain View company is preparing to delete all users data before the social networks final closure. Google had begun taking some of the core features of Google+ offline in February this year. While the company is prepping to delete consumer data once and for all, the Internet Archive and ArchiveTeam taking to Reddit have announced that they are working to preserve publicly posted content on Google+ before they are deleted.

The Internet Archive and the ArchiveTeam in a post on Reddit said that the process of archiving public Google+ posts has already begun. However, both the sites noted that all private or deleted content will not be preserved and posts with over 500 comments will rather be preserved in a truncated form. Moreover, the publicly shared videos and photos will be archived at a lower resolution.

While this may be good news for those users who want to save their precious content on the social network, others who dont want their content to be saved can delete their posts and accounts from Google+. To do so, all you need to do is sign in to the Google account that is linked to the Google+ profile. Once signed in, open Google+ page and click Settings that you will find in the menu on the left.

Scroll down and at the bottom, you will see Delete Google+ Profile. Tap on it and you will be asked to enter your Google account password. Follow the on-screen instruction to complete the procedure. To delete a post, you will have to first sign to your Google+ account. Once logged in, click on the posts that you want to delete then tap on the three stacked dots more icon. You will see Delete option, click on it and your selected posts will be deleted.
tech2 News Staff

Facebook Incs Instagram began trialing a feature on Tuesday that lets US users shop directly for products from the photo sharing app by adding a Checkout feature on items tagged for sale, the company said.

The move is in line with Facebooks plan to monetize higher-growth units like Instagram as the companys centerpiece product, News Feed, struggles to generate fresh interest.

Instagram said it has partnered with more than 20 brands, including Adidas, H&M and billionaire Kylie Jenners booming cosmetic company and Michael Kors, on the new feature, easing into territory more familiar to retail giants like Amazon.com and Walmart.

Under the new feature, users will be able to click on a product that is featured in a post and see its price, and then click again to bring up an order form.

Users can then later checkout and choose to pay by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and PayPal. Previously, Instagram allowed brands to link to their respective websites for users to shop.

The new feature could also turn out to be lucrative for Instagrams ad business, which could also get a boost as Checkout could convince brands that the social network produces better return on investment since there are fewer steps before purchase. For now, only organic posts from partnered merchants will feature Checkout buttons and ads arent eligible.

Facebooks plans are to evolve Instagram and Messenger into robust e-commerce platforms where you can click on ads and buy the products, said Ivan Feinseth, an analyst with Tigress Financial Partners.

Facebook is also looking to incorporate payment processing and payment transfers over Messenger, further expanding its e-commerce and interactive capabilities, Feinseth said.

Instagram, which did not specify the financial details in the blog, said it would introduce a selling fee to help fund transaction-related expenses.

The new 'Checkout' feature on Instagram is currently in closed beta for businesses and available to people in the US only.

With inputs from Reuters
Sanghamitra Deobhanj

Protection of coral cover along the existing protected marine areas in the Andaman and Nicobar islands is necessary to conserve the endangered bumphead parrotfish, a new study has suggested.

Bumphead parrotfish, Bolbometopon muricatum, is an important component of coral reef ecosystem, but is highly endangered globally. It is categorized as vulnerable in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This fish is a highly prized resource but is threatened due to limited knowledge about its distribution and abundance in Indian waters.

Now a group of researchers has studied the distribution, abundance, and dangers to this species in the waters of Andaman and Nicobar islands.

"A large body size, aggregating behaviour and limited activity at night make B. muricatum an easy target for spear-fishers. Combined with slow growth and low replacement rates, this has resulted in population declines across the Indo-Pacific and Red Sea regions," said Vardhan Patankar, a marine biologist from Wildlife Conservation SocietyIndia.

The team carried out underwater visual census, during November 2013 and April 2015, at a total of 75 reef sites across 51 islands of Andaman and Nicobar islands, using scuba diving and underwater camera. It recorded 59 individuals of parrotfish across nine sites from the northernmost island in the Andamans (Landfall Island) to the southernmost island in the Nicobars (Great Nicobar Island).

During the study, the scientists also spoke to about 100 fishermen regarding their awareness and perception of B. muricatum. From the interviews, they collected the data on the intensity of fishing, ethnic heterogeneity of the fishing community and the diversity of fishing gear used.

The team found that the fish occurs unevenly, with most sightings from only two islands, and with an apparently very small density. It also emerged free diving spear-fishers exclusively target the aggregations of this fish during night.

The study reports that the presence of a protected area, like coral and algal cover, significantly influenced the distribution and abundance of B. muricatum. Incidental catch by fishers and degradation of coral reef habitats are two potential threats to the species.

Evidence of low abundance of B. muricatum on ocean reefs surrounded by deep waters, and traits such as limited dispersal and gregariousness, could also have influenced the distribution and abundance of this fish, said Tanmay Wagh, another member of the team.

The findings suggest the necessity to ban night fishing for the species and to implement regulations regarding reef fishing. Considering the vulnerable status of B. muricatum globally, the species could be a flagship for educational campaigns focusing on the importance of conserving similar fish groups and protecting the coral reefs.

The research findings have been published in the journal Oryx.
tech2 News Staff

Sperm is one of the shortest-lived cells in the animal kingdom, with just 5 days of life in the best of conditions before it dies out or gets recycled by the body. Now, scientists have managed to revive semen stored in a lab since 1968 and used the cells to get 34 lambs pregnant.

Amazingly, the sperm resulted in birth rates comparable to semen frozen for 12 months, which is an established benchmark timeline for current freezing tech.

"This demonstrates the clear viability of long-term frozen storage of semen," Professor Simon de Graaf from the University of Sydney, said in a press release.

All the semen used in the study came from four rams  Sir Freddie, born in 1959, two rams born in 1963, and a ram born in 1965. Their sperm was used to revive lambs with wrinkles on their body  a feature common in Merino rams in the mid-20th-century. The wrinkles meant a larger skin surface area and better wool yields, which eventually grew tedious to manage and sheer.

The success bodes well not just in the veterinary sciences, but also human medicine. As de Graaf told Inverse, "What is true for the sheep is also true for humans."

Theres no reason to believe that human sperm will behave any differently than sheeps'. The researchers will have to keep a close eye on those wrinkly lambs to make sure they develop normally. But as far as scope for the future, this success means hope for people at risk of losing their fertility (like males undergoing chemotherapy).

This could also be great news for breeders of purebred dogs  the genetic diversity in many dog breeds is down to worrying levels, which means more abnormalities and poorer health with every successive generation. One of the most awesome of its applications is making (existing or extinct) animals and people parents long after their death.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bears the mark of Al-Qaeda-related jihadist groups that have been regularly attacking the army and international forces in central Mali.

Bamako: Mali's army has said that heavily armed men attacked a camp in central Mali, killing at least 23 soldiers. The army said on Monday that the attack on Sunday, which is the most deadly against the army this year, took place in the village of Dioura.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bears the mark of Al-Qaeda-related jihadist groups that have been regularly attacking the army and international forces in central Mali.

Mali's army has blamed the attack on Ba Ag Moussa, a former colonel of the Malian army who deserted in 2012 to join the Tuareg rebellion before joining Al-Qaeda. However, this announcement by the army comes as debates are being held about integrating former rebels into the army as part of a peace agreement. Many senior Malian officers are not in favour of integration.
China said on Monday it had arrested about 13,000 'terrorists' in a massive crackdown against militants in the volatile Uyghur Muslim-majority Xinjiang region since 2014, denying criticism that Beijing is 'buying' silence of the Muslim world with heavy investments in Pakistan and other Islamic countries.

Beijing: China said on Monday it had arrested about 13,000 "terrorists" in a massive crackdown against militants in the volatile Uyghur Muslim-majority Xinjiang region since 2014, denying criticism that Beijing is "buying" silence of the Muslim world with heavy investments in Pakistan and other Islamic countries.

China has faced mounting criticism for the detention of thousands of Uyghur Muslims in massive "education camps". "Since 2014, Xinjiang has destroyed 1,588 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested 12,995 terrorists, seized 2,052 explosive devices, punished 30,645 people for 4,858 illegal religious activities, and confiscated 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials," a white paper released Monday said.

It said that some areas in Xinjiang were severely disturbed by terrorism and the infiltration of religious extremism. "For this reason, some people cannot speak, read or write in standard Chinese, have a weak understanding of rule of law, and have difficulty finding employment through a lack of employable skills. As a result, such people are more inclined to be incited or coerced into criminality by terrorist and extremist forces," it said.

China has made significant progress in its counterterrorism and de-radicalisation efforts in Xinjiang, it said. "However, the three forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism are not gone; their influence can still be felt. And the 'East Turkistan' forces are in search of opportunities to create trouble. We still face a severe and complex situation in combating terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang," it said.

Separately, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang has denied China is "buying the silence" of Muslim countries with massive investments through the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a flagship project.

Diplomats from Pakistan and several other Muslim countries, who were recently taken on a guided tour of Xinjiang following allegations of detention of over a million Uyghurs, said there was no religious and cultural repression.

Asked whether China's was investing heavily in Muslim countries to buy their silence, Geng told the reporters that the BRI investments had nothing to do with Xinjiang related issues. "China pursues preventive counter terrorism measures. I believe the international community recognises this," he said.

The UN human rights panel said in August last year that it had received many credible reports that about a million ethnic Uyghurs in China in "massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy".

China defended the camps, saying they are re-education camps aimed at de-radicalising sections of the Uyghur Muslim population from extremism and separatism. The US and several other countries, besides UN officials, have expressed concern over the camps.

Xinjiang has been in turmoil for the last several years following Uyghur protests over large scale settlements of Han Chinese into the resource-rich province. China blames the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) for the violent terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of the country in the last several years. A number of Uyghurs reportedly joined Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and were planning to return.
The prized pigeon, Belgium's best long-distance racer of all time according to those in the know, was snapped up by a Chinese buyer for a princely sum that caused a flutter of excitement among fanciers.

Brussels: A star racing pigeon named Armando has fetched a record 1.25 million in an online auction, Belgian media reported Sunday.

The prized bird, Belgium's best long-distance racer of all time according to those in the know, was snapped up by a Chinese buyer for a princely sum that caused a flutter of excitement among fanciers.

Armando had been expected to break the previous record of 376,000 ($ 425,000) paid for a pigeon called Nadine, but not by such a wide margin.

"Earlier this week it became clear that Armando would be the most expensive pigeon ever sold in an online auction," wrote the specialist website Pigeon Paradise (Pipa.be).

"However, no one expected that the magical cap of a million euros would be pulverised," it added. The final amount was  1,252,000.

Pigeon Paradise did not say who had bought the pigeon, but according to the Belgian news agency Belga, it was a Chinese buyer who will no doubt use his new acquisition to breed other champions.

Armando was just one of more than a hundred birds sold by respected Belgian breeder Joel Verschoot.

Verschoot's stable of pigeons is based in Ingelmunster, in the west of Belgium, and his online auction of his pigeons has been open for several weeks.

By Sunday, the family had sold 178 pigeons for around  two million.

Homing pigeons are raced by releasing them sometimes hundreds of kilometres from home, with the first back home winning.

Racing them is a tradition in Belgium, Britain, northern France and the Netherlands, although it has been going into decline.

But interest from Asian buyers in recent years has given the practice a new lease of life.
By Lisandra Paraguassu WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited the CIA on Monday as he sought support from the Trump administration for his security agenda and courted the U.S. business community on his first official trip to Washington. The three-day visit underscored Bolsonaro's embrace of U.S.

By Lisandra Paraguassu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited the CIA on Monday as he sought support from the Trump administration for his security agenda and courted the U.S. business community on his first official trip to Washington.

The three-day visit underscored Bolsonaro's embrace of U.S. influence in Latin America to confront what he calls a communist threat against democracy  a theme he remarked on at a dinner on Sunday evening with his ministers and right-wing thinkers.

In a gesture aimed at boosting tourism, Bolsonaro also waived a visa requirement for visitors from the United States in a decree published on Monday afternoon.

President Donald Trump will receive Bolsonaro at the White House on Tuesday, a meeting organised within weeks of the far-right leader's Jan. 1 inauguration after the two populist firebrands expressed mutual admiration for each other.

Their ideological common ground has raised expectations of greater cooperation between the two biggest countries in the Americas, although their aides have played down the potential for major breakthroughs on this first visit.

The United States will strengthen military ties with Brazil to a level usually reserved for NATO allies, Brazilian government officials said last week.

A half dozen ministers travelling with Bolsonaro are also preparing accords for collaboration on nuclear energy, aerospace and law enforcement, along with more open trade of agricultural goods.

Still, the Brazilians showed little interest in getting caught up in the U.S. trade war with China, which has long since replaced the United States as Brazil's biggest trade partner.

Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said on Monday in Washington that friendlier U.S. relations would do nothing to reduce Brazilian trade with China.

In a late edition of Brazil's official government gazette, Bolsonaro issued a decree waiving a visa requirement for visitors from the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan.

The U.S. government is not planning to reciprocate with a visa exemption for Brazilians, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

TWEETING VISITS

Like Trump, Bolsonaro and his family have a penchant for breaking with protocol.

Presidential advisers, including his official spokesman, had said during the Sunday dinner that Bolsonaro's agenda on Monday morning would be kept private. But the president's son, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, revealed the CIA visit in a Twitter post.

The president's office said the visit to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, conveyed the importance that Bolsonaro places on "fighting organised crime and drug trafficking and the need to strengthen intelligence."

The CIA declined to comment.

Brazil is suffering from a wave of drug-related violence and homicides that Bolsonaro pledged to fight in his electoral campaign, though he has provided few details on how he will achieve this.

Bolsonaro was scheduled to meet later on Monday with former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and deliver remarks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu, Alexandra Alper and Jonathan Landay; additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Brasilia; writing by Mary Milliken; editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Lisandra Paraguassu WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited the CIA on Monday as he sought support from the Trump administration for his security agenda on his first official trip to Washington. The three-day visit underscored Bolsonaro's embrace of U.S

By Lisandra Paraguassu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro visited the CIA on Monday as he sought support from the Trump administration for his security agenda on his first official trip to Washington.

The three-day visit underscored Bolsonaro's embrace of U.S. influence in Latin America to confront what he calls a communist threat against democracy  a theme he remarked on at a dinner on Sunday evening with his ministers and right-wing thinkers.

President Donald Trump will receive Bolsonaro at the White House on Tuesday, a meeting organised within weeks of the far-right leader's Jan. 1 inauguration after the two populist firebrands expressed mutual admiration for each other.

Their ideological common ground has raised expectations of greater cooperation between the two biggest countries in the Americas, although their aides have played down the potential for major breakthroughs on this first visit.

The United States will strengthen military ties with Brazil to a level usually reserved for NATO allies, Brazilian government officials said last week.

A half dozen ministers travelling with Bolsonaro are also preparing accords for collaboration on nuclear energy and law enforcement, along with more open trade of agricultural goods.

Still, the Brazilians showed little interest in getting caught up in the U.S. trade war with China, which has long since replaced the United States as Brazil's biggest trade partner.

Economy Minister Paulo Guedes said on Monday in Washington that friendlier U.S. relations would do nothing to reduce Brazilian trade with China.

Like Trump, Bolsonaro and his family have a penchant for breaking with protocol, using social media to make public his visit to the CIA.

Presidential advisers, including his official spokesman, had said during the Sunday dinner that his agenda on Monday morning would be kept private. But Bolsonaro's son, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, revealed the CIA visit in a Twitter post.

"Going now with the (president) and ministers to the CIA, one of the most respected intelligence agencies in the world," he wrote. "It will be an excellent opportunity to discuss international topics in the region with experts and technicians of the highest level."

The president's office said the visit to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, conveyed the importance that Bolsonaro places on "fighting organised crime and drug trafficking and the need to strengthen intelligence."

The CIA declined to comment.

Bolsonaro was scheduled to meet later on Monday with former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and deliver remarks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu, Alexandra Alper and Jonathan Landay; writing by Mary Milliken, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) - The head of Canada's federal bureaucracy said on Monday he was quitting over his role in handling a corporate corruption case that has sparked a political crisis and damaged the ruling Liberals' hopes of re-election in October. Michael Wernick, the clerk of the privy council, said in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he wanted to leave well before the election because he had lost the confidence of opposition leaders.

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The head of Canada's federal bureaucracy said on Monday he was quitting over his role in handling a corporate corruption case that has sparked a political crisis and damaged the ruling Liberals' hopes of re-election in October.

Michael Wernick, the clerk of the privy council, said in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he wanted to leave well before the election because he had lost the confidence of opposition leaders.

Trudeau has been on the defensive since Feb. 7 over allegations that top officials leaned on former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to ensure engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc avoided a corruption trial.

The civil service and Wernick are supposed to be non-partisan, but his strong defence of Liberal officials and his insistence that no one had done anything wrong triggered widespread criticism that he was siding with the government.

"It is now apparent that there is no path for me to have a relationship of mutual trust and respect with the leaders of the opposition parties," Wernick said in his letter.

Wernick, who was appointed by Trudeau to the job in early 2016, is the latest victim in a scandal that has already cost the prime minister his closest personal aide and two senior cabinet members.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Paul Simao and Cynthia Osterman)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
China on Monday said that it would like to see the easing of tensions between India and Pakistan following the Pulwama terror attack and the issue would figure in the first strategic dialogue between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday.

Beijing: China on Monday said that it would like to see the easing of tensions between India and Pakistan following the Pulwama terror attack and the issue would figure in the first strategic dialogue between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday.

Qureshi who arrived at Beijing on Monday is visiting China, days after the nation for the fourth time blocked a bid in the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to designate Pakistan-based chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror group Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist" by putting a technical hold on the proposal, a move India termed as disappointing.

The JeM has claimed responsibility for the 14 February Pulwama attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead and escalated tensions between India and Pakistan.

The proposal to designate Azhar under the 1267 Al Qaida Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council was moved by France, the UK and the US on 27 February.

"As neighbour, China would like to see easing of tensions between the two. We would like to see the two countries continue to engage in dialogue for the peace and stability of the region," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing in Beijing.

"I believe the issues causing regional tensions will be discussed," Geng said.

To another question on whether the issue of listing of Azhar would figure in the talks specially in the backdrop of Chinese Ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui expressing confidence that it would be resolved, Geng said, "well I can't prejudge the topics" that are going figure in the talks.

"But they will discuss issues of bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual concern," he said.

Regarding the listing of Azhar, "China will continue to deal with the issue with a responsible and constructive manner and will maintain close communication with all parties, including India and Pakistan," he said.

Lu on Sunday exuded confidence of resolving the sticky issue of designating Azhar as a global terrorist through consultations.

"I am quite sure this matter (listing of Azhar by the UN) will be resolved. This is only a technical hold and the matter can be resolved through continued consultation," Luo said on the side-lines of an event at the Chinese embassy.

According to reports in the Pakistani media, Qureshi, on a three-day visit to China, will hold comprehensive discussions on the entire range of bilateral relations, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Both sides will also discuss the regional situation and cooperation at multilateral fora.

Qureshi will also address the Political Parties Forum on the CPEC and participate in the ruling parties' dialogue between the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Communist Party of China. He will also call on the Chinese leadership, the reports said.

The CPEC, which connects Gwadar Port in Balochistan with China's Xinjiang province, is the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). India is opposed to the project as it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Geng said China welcomed the talks between India and Pakistan last week to open the Kartarupur Corridor.

India and Pakistan last year agreed to open up a special border crossing linking Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan's Kartarpur - the final resting place of Sikh faith's founder Guru Nanak Dev - to Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Gurdaspur district.

"We welcome this interaction. Hope this can further ease tensions between both sides and improve regional situation. India and Pakistan are neighbours and always live with each other," he said.

Good relations between both will serve the interest of both and common aspirations of the international community, he said.

"We hope the two sides continue to show goodwill meet halfway, resolve difference through dialogue and uphold regional peace and stability together," he said.

Asked whether Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou who recently visited Pakistan would visit India also, Geng said, "As far as I know China and India maintain communication at various levels. So if there such a visit we will release the information in a timely manner."
US president Donald Trump on Monday gave possible 2020 presidential election rival Joe Biden a taste of what to expect if he does jump in the race, with a tweeted insult about his intelligence.

Washington: US president Donald Trump on Monday gave possible 2020 presidential election rival Joe Biden a taste of what to expect if he does jump in the race, with a tweeted insult about his intelligence.

Biden, who was vice president under Barack Obama and is seen as potentially the most heavyweight Democrat, remains on the sidelines. However on Saturday he appeared to confirm his candidacy before correcting himself in mid-sentence, as if having made a slip of the tongue.

Trump, who delights in inventing mocking nicknames and poking fun at opponents, pounced.

"Joe Biden got tongue tied over the weekend when he was unable to properly deliver a very simple line about his decision to run for President," Trump tweeted. "Get used to it, another low IQ individual!" Biden's surprise slip  or, as some speculated, crafty hint  came during a speech in his home state of Delaware.

"I'm told I get criticized by the new left. I have the most progressive record of anybody running for the United...," he said, immediately correcting himself  "anybody who would run."
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - After days of intense grieving for New Zealand's worst-ever mass shooting, attention began to turn to how the country's gun laws need to change and what warning signs might have been missed ahead of a gunman's attack on two mosques that killed 50 people. Bodies of the victims of Friday's attacks in Christchurch were being washed and prepared for burial in a Muslim ritual process, with teams of volunteers flown in from overseas to assist with the heavy workload

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - After days of intense grieving for New Zealand's worst-ever mass shooting, attention began to turn to how the country's gun laws need to change and what warning signs might have been missed ahead of a gunman's attack on two mosques that killed 50 people.

Bodies of the victims of Friday's attacks in Christchurch were being washed and prepared for burial in a Muslim ritual process, with teams of volunteers flown in from overseas to assist with the heavy workload.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her Cabinet had made in-principle decisions on changes to gun laws which she would announce next Monday, saying now was the time to act on tightening access to firearms.

Simon Bridges, leader of the opposition National Party, said he wanted to get details of the changes to see if there could be bipartisan support in Parliament. The National Party draws support from rural areas, where gun ownership is higher than in urban areas.

"We know that change is required. I'm willing to look at anything that is going to enhance our safety - that's our position," Bridges told TVNZ.

In addition to the 50 killed, dozens were wounded at the two mosques in the South Island city during Friday prayers.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island, was charged with murder on Saturday. Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5, where police said he was likely to face more charges.

Andrew Little, the minister who oversees New Zealand's intelligence agencies, said monitoring of online activity had been stepped up in the wake of the Christchurch attacks.

"There are people who have been online making statements who have been interviewed by the police; that will continue. There is a level of intervention, there is a heightened level of monitoring," Little said on TVNZ on Monday night.

Ardern said there would be an inquiry into what government agencies "knew, or could or should have known" about the alleged gunman and whether the attack could be prevented.

"We have to know whether there have been failings, whether there have been gaps," Little said on TVNZ. "We have to leave no stone unturned to not only deal with the perpetrator and ensure the criminal justice system gets to deal with him, but to understand how this could have happened in this country."

More than 250 New Zealand police staff are working on the inquiry in the attacks, with staff from the U.S. FBI and Australia's Federal Police working with local investigators.

In the wake of the deadly attack, other incidents were drawing scrutiny. A gun club in the northern town of Kaitaia burnt down early on Tuesday morning, and police were treating the blaze as suspicious. A bomb hoax that closed Dunedin Airport on Sunday night and caused some flights to be diverted was under investigation, police said.

A black laptop bag was thought to have been bought onto the airfield by someone climbing over fences around the Dunedin airport. Police found a note written by the person who left the "hoax device," which was dealt with by defence force experts.

"The insensitive nature of this act in light of recent events cannot be overstated," police said in a statement.

(Writing by John Mair; Editing by Leslie Adler)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Tom Westbrook CHRISTCHURCH (Reuters) - A wheelchair-using worshipper who survived the slaughter at Christchurch's Al Noor mosque, but whose wife was killed, has offered an olive branch to the gunman, saying he would like to meet him and telling him 'I still love you.' Fifty people died at two mosques in the South Island city on Friday when a gunman burst in, spraying bullets at his victims while they prayed in a city now consumed by grief and sadness. 'I want to give the message to the person who did this, or if he has any friends who also think like this: I still love you,' Farhid Ahmed, 59, told Reuters in an interview at his house, as mourners arrived to offer condolences for his wife, Husna.

By Tom Westbrook

CHRISTCHURCH (Reuters) - A wheelchair-using worshipper who survived the slaughter at Christchurch's Al Noor mosque, but whose wife was killed, has offered an olive branch to the gunman, saying he would like to meet him and telling him "I still love you."

Fifty people died at two mosques in the South Island city on Friday when a gunman burst in, spraying bullets at his victims while they prayed in a city now consumed by grief and sadness.

"I want to give the message to the person who did this, or if he has any friends who also think like this: I still love you," Farhid Ahmed, 59, told Reuters in an interview at his house, as mourners arrived to offer condolences for his wife, Husna.

"I don't agree with what you did  you took a wrong decision, a wrong direction, but I want to believe in you. That you have great potential in your heart," he said.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged on Saturday with murder over the killings, New Zealand's worst mass shooting. Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5 where police said he was likely to face more charges.

Ahmed, who uses a wheelchair after being hit by a car, was in the Al Noor mosque when the shooter burst in. He was praying not where he usually does, in the main room, but in an ante-chamber with a friend.

"As that moment I realised two things. One, definitely it was gunshots, and two, this is my last day," he said. "Because in that situation, with a wheelchair, it was impossible to get out."

But the killer did not enter that chamber, and Ahmed was able to escape to the carpark where he watched the massacre unfold from behind a car, on the opposite side of the mosque to where his wife was gunned down outside.

"People were screaming and rushing to come out ... as they were coming, they were panicking, I saw some people had blood, some people were limping," he said.

After the gunman left to continue his rampage at another mosque, Ahmed went back inside the building.

"It was unbelievable," he said. "On the right hand side, usually where I pray, so many dead bodies."

The wounded were screaming. He comforted them until police arrived, who then took him back outside.

"At that time I did not know that my wifes dead body was (at) the other gate."

In the aftermath of the shootings, bewilderment has been a common refrain, as the city comes to grips with the scale of the tragedy.

Voices are barely raised beyond a murmur as office workers, and school children have come to lay flowers near the mosques and at makeshift shrines through the city.

But there has also been a sense of generosity and solidarity, led by victims such as Ahmed, who has preached at the mosque and advocates forgiveness.

"If there is any chance I get, I want to meet you," he said of the gunman. "I want to hug you and I want to tell him in face that I am talking from my heart. I have no grudge against you, I never hated you, I will never hate you," Ahmed said.

"I want to hug him and say: 'I have forgiven him'. I want to tell him, if he has any mother, I want to hug her too and I want to tell her that I'll treat you exactly like my aunty ... I want to give that message."

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May will ask the European Union to delay Brexit by at least three months after her plan to hold a third vote on her fraught divorce deal was thrown into disarray by a surprise intervention from the speaker of parliament. Nearly three years after Britain voted narrowly to leave the EU, its departure is uncertain and increasingly impatient European capitals are pressing May to spell out how she plans to resolve the crisis before they can agree to an extension. Possible eventual outcomes still range from a long postponement, leaving with May's deal, a disruptive exit without a deal, or even another referendum.

By Guy Faulconbridge and Elizabeth Piper

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa May will ask the European Union to delay Brexit by at least three months after her plan to hold a third vote on her fraught divorce deal was thrown into disarray by a surprise intervention from the speaker of parliament.

Nearly three years after Britain voted narrowly to leave the EU, its departure is uncertain and increasingly impatient European capitals are pressing May to spell out how she plans to resolve the crisis before they can agree to an extension.

Possible eventual outcomes still range from a long postponement, leaving with May's deal, a disruptive exit without a deal, or even another referendum.

Ten days before the March 29 exit date that May set, and two days before a crucial EU summit, she was on Tuesday writing to European Council President Donald Tusk to ask for a delay, her spokesman said. He did not disclose how long a delay she would seek, but said she believed it should be as short as possible.

May had earlier warned parliament that if it did not ratify her deal, she would ask to delay Brexit beyond June 30, a step that Brexit's advocates fear would endanger the entire divorce.

Other EU member states were discussing two main options: a delay of two to three months, if May persuades them she can clinch a deal at home, or much longer if she accepts that radical reworking of the accord is needed.

The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said an extension would only make sense if it increased the chances of May's deal being ratified by Britain's House of Commons.

He said the economic and political costs of a delay for the EU had to be weighed against the potential benefits.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said Britain must present a detailed plan on how to push the May's deal through parliament in order to get EU approval for an extension,

An official in the office of President Emmanuel Macron went further, saying France was ready to veto any British request for a Brexit delay that delays matters without offering a way out of the present deadlock, or imperils European Union institutions.

The BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, said May would ask for an extension until June 30 - which could give her another chance to pass her deal - with the option of a delay of up to two years.

BREXIT CRISIS

In a move that added to the sense of crisis in London, speaker John Bercow ruled on Monday that May's deal had to be substantially different to be voted on again by parliament.

Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said a vote this week was now less likely, adding: "This is a moment of crisis for our country." But he indicated the government still planned a third vote.

British lawmakers will in any case be able to debate ways to break the Brexit impasse from Monday, May's spokesman said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned time was running out, saying: "I will fight until the last minute of the time to March 29 for an orderly exit. We haven't got a lot of time for that."

Her foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said: "If more time is needed, it's always better to do another round than a no-deal Brexit."

Tusk and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar agreed after talks that they must now "see what proposals emerge from London" before the EU summit on Thursday and Friday.

If Britain left with no deal, it would tumble out of the EU's 500-million-strong single market and customs union overnight, falling back on World Trade Organisation rules that could mean many import and export tariffs. It would face the prospect of manufacturing and financial market disruptions, sharp economic contraction and border hold-ups..

However, most senior EU figures, while exasperated by Britain's dithering, have no appetite for pushing it out in 10 days' time without a deal.

DIVISIONS

The 2016 referendum, which produced a 52-48 percent vote to leave, exposed deep divisions in British society and has fuelled soul-searching about everything from secession and immigration to capitalism and British identity.

And now Britons' patience with negotiations may be running out. In a Comres survey in the Telegraph newspaper, nearly half of respondents said Britain would ultimately thrive if it left without a deal.

The pressure to come up with changes means May is likely to get only one more chance to put her deal to a vote.

Bercow said his ruling did not stop the government reshaping its proposal, or having parliament vote to overrule him.

Brexit Secretary Barclay said a change in context might be sufficient to meet Bercow's test.

But even before Bercow's intervention, May was having difficulty boosting support for her deal - which would aim to secure close trade and security ties with the EU while leaving its formal structures - after it was defeated by 230 votes on Jan. 15, and by 149 votes on March 12.

She needs to win over at least 75 lawmakers - dozens of rebels in her own Conservative Party, some Labour lawmakers, and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up her minority government.

The DUP said it was unlikely to support the deal in a third vote unless it was convinced it can pass, HuffPost reported.

In addition to regulating the terms of departure, May's deal promises to take Britain out of the EU single market and customs union, common fisheries and farm policies and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice at the end of a status-quo period in which new trade arrangements would be agreed.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Escritt, Alastair Macdonald and Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge, Michael Holden and Giles Elgood; Editing by Kevin Liffey/Mark Heinrich)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's strongest election rival, former army general Benny Gantz, said on Tuesday he would seek peace with the Palestinians but stopped short of endorsing their goal for statehood.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's strongest election rival, former army general Benny Gantz, said on Tuesday he would seek peace with the Palestinians but stopped short of endorsing their goal for statehood.

Gantz, a centrist candidate, said in an interview with Hadashot TV news that Israel has a moral obligation to "strive for peace."

"I will talk to anyone I can in order to advance a diplomatic solution," Gantz said.

When asked whether the ultimate goal would be that of a Palestinian state, Gantz did not give a definitive answer although he did suggest that eventually Israel should separate from the Palestinians.

"At the end of the road there is a Jewish, democratic, safe and strong state with a solid Jewish majority and what happens on the other side would be an outcome of what happens at negotiations."

Palestinians want to establish a state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. The last round of peace talks between the sides broke down in 2014.

The United States is widely expected to unveil a new peace proposal after the April 9 Israeli election. The Trump administration has wavered over whether it would endorse a Palestinian state, saying the final outcome will be up to the sides to determine, but both sides will have to compromise.

The Palestinians on their part have boycotted the Trump administration since it announced it recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital and opened a new U.S. embassy there last year. Washington has also cut hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Palestinians.

Gantz's Blue and White party has slipped in opinion polls recently, although it still has a slight lead over Netanyahu's Likud in most surveys. However, Netanyahu still appears likely to win the most support from allied parties, allowing him to form a coalition of right-wing and religious factions similar to one he now heads.

After the attorney-general announced on Feb. 28 he plans to indict Netanyahu in three corruption cases, Gantz ruled out joining a Netanyahu government.

But in leaked recordings aired on Israeli Reshet News on Monday, Gantz said that things could change if Trump's peace plan is put forward.

In Tuesday's interview he said he would not join a Netanyahu government if charges are indeed filed against the prime minister.

Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing, will have the chance to persuade the attorney-general to scrap the charges at a hearing expected after the election.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Frances Kerry)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Dutch police said it was seriously investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack because of evidence including a letter found in the main suspect's getaway car

Utrecht: Dutch prosecutors and police said they were "seriously" investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack because of evidence including a letter found in the main suspect's getaway car.

"So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," they said in a joint statement.

Turkish-born main suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, and two unnamed men from Utrecht aged 23 and 27 remain in custody. Police found a red Renault Clio after Monday's attack which they said he had used to flee.

The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, which is near Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said. "So far our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims," police and prosecutors added.

Dutch and Turkish media reports had previously reported that a family dispute may have been the motive for the shooting. However the police and prosecutors said that "other motives are not excluded, they are also being investigated."

Armed police arrested Tanis in Utrecht after a huge manhunt on Monday during which police released his picture on social media. "A firearm was found during his arrest," the statement added.
The lesson from the New Zealand terror attacks is that violence begets violence  Left, Right or otherwise  in an almost linear progression.

Nearly all the world is applauding the compassionate response of New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Arden to what was arguably among the worst terrorist attacks in recent times. Her crisp utterance of "they are us" while referring to the victims of the Christchurch shootings and her wearing a hijab on her visit to the city are all actions of a leader with a clear moral compass. Such actions are rare indeed and a contrast to the remarks of US president Donald Trump, who was criticised for not reaching out to Muslims at home while condemning the terror attacks on "sacred places of worship".

Arden also trumps the US president's response in other ways. Within 10 days of the incident, she announced reforms in New Zealand's gun laws, a gravely controversial subject in the US. Also, unlike some Indian politicians, Arden did not use the occasion to pad up her political standing, and even more unusually acted strongly to prevent the terrorist's video from his social media livestream from being circulated. That should make some of our TV channels blink.

The 28-year-old Australian shooter, Brenton Tarrant, was a curious person. Travelling through many parts of the world, including Pakistan and North Korea, doesn't seem to have made him any more conscious of the diversity of nations. In Pakistan, he seems to have visited Gilgit Baltistan and praised locals for their kindness. Whether he tried to join any jihadi group in that country has yet to come to light.

Cases across the world indicate that a person bent on violence may switch from one religion or cause to another. This is often apparent among cadre of the Islamic State who are in it for the killing rampage. In the UK, for instance, many Islam converts have a criminal and violent past. In the US, there have been instances where white supremacists switched to radical Islamic beliefs before committing murder. Besides, terrorists of any kind  Left, Right or religious  have long been seen to have strikingly similar motivations.

First, however, it has to be acknowledged that white supremacist and right-wing attacks have been rising in parts of Europe and the US. In the latter case, the perception of immigrants as the 'other' is often blamed on President Trump's policies, which is centred around building a wall along the Mexico border at present. In many cases, the threat from illegal migration in terms of a rise in crime and violence is real, particularly in border states. But the danger arises from the fact that right-wing supremacist ride on these arguments. This makes it hardly surprising that attacks by this group are rising and could become a serious threat to the US itself.

A perceptive article in The Atlantic quoting the respected Anti-Defamation League observes that between 2009 and 2018, right-wing extremists accounted for 73 percent of extremist attacks in the US, dwarfing Islamist terror at 23 percent. Similar figures are reported in the UK, where the police recorded 94,000 hate crimes in 2017, up by 17 percent from previous years. This could well be linked to the horrific terror attacks in that year.

Second, there is another rather overlooked factor that must be noted. The statistics referring to this rise of far-right attacks in the UK were also linked to the Brexit debate and immigration. In simple words, in both the UK and the US, as well as other parts of Europe, hate crimes and far-right terror surges during an economic slowdown. Let's not forget that the last surge of right-wing politics was in the mid 1990s, fuelled by an immigrant wave and an economic downturn. With an economic slowdown in Europe, such incidents could increase.

To return to the present, a commentary on the violence in New Zealand notes the extreme hopelessness in Christchurch after its destruction in an earthquake in 2011 and the rise of right-wing sentiment, often quite unacknowledged. So yes, a deteriorating social or economic situation adds to the danger.

The last issue, however, is equally unacknowledged. The fact is that much of the 'wars' or violent conflicts, where populations have been bombed, strafed or otherwise killed, have been in West and South Asia. The US has been a primary actor in most of these. But there is also the disturbing fact that States like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan have been equally, if not more, violent on their own and neighbouring Muslim populations. It is hardly an accident that Pakistan remains the 'ground zero' of terrorism, since it has a hand to play in most, if not all, of these conflicts.

The lesson is that violence begets violence  racist or otherwise  in an almost linear progression. For instance, nationals from Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, among others, are viewed with suspicion and often denied entry into most 'white' countries. That process, in turn, increases the perception of these nationals as the 'other', where anyone with a turban is seen as a potential terrorist.

Remember that Brenton Tarrant's rant against the world, which was in his 'manifesto', included a hate against all immigrants, including Indians. Indians have never been involved in terrorist attacks anywhere. But hate crimes and their ideology don't deal with facts. It's all sentiment.

Indians affected by the attack will grieve the deaths of their relatives, while others will wonder at its logic. However, before Indian commentators throw up their hands at the New Zealand terror attacks, it would do well to acknowledge that the perception of the 'other' is growing in this country, as well.

If a white man does the unthinkable, so can a brown one. The hatred runs deep, and like the other such instances, can hardly be blamed on religion. Hinduism, unlike some book-based religions, has nowhere justified attacks on anyone, let alone a small religious minority. The trouble runs deeper and may well again originate in the wallet.
Like other extremist groups, racist ideologues have leveraged the power and reach of the internet to disseminate violent ideas, and give advice on the logistics of terror.

Hong Kong: The carnage unleashed in Christchurch by a white supremacist has highlighted what analysts say is the global problem of a far-right threat that frequently flies beneath the intelligence radar.

Like other extremist groups, racist ideologues have leveraged the power and reach of the internet to disseminate violent ideas, and give advice on the logistics of terror.

And while not a well-defined group with a core leadership, they represent a "blind spot" for security services, says Amarnath Amarasingam, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Bridging this gap, instead of focusing primarily on Islamist militants, needs to be a priority.

"We're able to, in multiple sectors of government and policy... connect random knife attacks inspired by (the Islamic State group) to a global terrorist movement with some ease," Amarasingam wrote on Twitter after the Christchurch attack.

"But we struggle to do this with white nationalism, the alt right, etc. We need to quickly rethink this blind spot."

Brenton Tarrant was steeped in a neo-fascist, anti-Muslim ideology, according to a rambling "manifesto" he posted online before the massacre of 50 people at two mosques last week.

He was not on any watch lists and travelled abroad extensively.

New Zealand will "look at what all relevant agencies knew or could or should have known about the individual and his activities, including his access to weapons and whether they could have been in a position to prevent the attack," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday.

The probe will also look at "travel movements... his use of social media and his connection to others".

While critical details and connections have yet to be discovered by investigators, the Christchurch attack has sparked a wave of questions about counter-terrorism policies against right-wing extremists.

Experts say the white nationalist movement is a cohesive one, binding together people from disparate bits of the world on a platform that preaches an imagined, racially "pure" ideal.

It is one that rejects immigration, and has an often violent antipathy towards Jews, Muslims, and women.

In a 2011 article that has begun circulating on the internet since the mosque attacks, analyst Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment described violent white nationalism as "a new doctrine of civilisational war".

It is "the closest thing yet to a Christian version of Al Qaeda", he said.

"Many forms of right-wing terrorism are international terrorism, drawing on international networks, ideas, and personalities from around the world," wrote Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institute.

"An Australian travelling to New Zealand to attack mosques is one example."

Slipping through the cracks

Analysts say one factor that has emboldened extremists like Tarrant is the rise to power of right-wing populists and anti-immigrant parties across the world.

"The demonisation of Muslim communities, often by politicians who later act shocked and angry when violence occurs, contributes to societal polarisation and inspires violence," wrote Byman.

Critics in the United States point to the anti-immigrant ethos of President Donald Trump's "America First" rhetoric as one such example.

Trump's expression of sympathy in the wake of Christchurch has been attacked as tepid -- a position exacerbated when he told reporters white nationalism was not a growing problem.

"I don't really. I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess," Trump said.

In Australia, successive governments, including the current administration of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, have been accused of stoking anti-immigrant sentiment as an election strategy.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton defended Canberra's counter-terrorism policies, claiming Australian authorities were alert to the threat of the extreme right.

"These extremist groups, neo-nazis, or white supremacists, extreme right-wing groups, whatever term you want to apply to them, they've been squarely on... (the) radar," he said.

New Zealand, however, now intends to find out if there are failings in how its intelligence and law enforcement are set up in the face of the threat posed by individuals like Tarrant who can go around the world, often without stringent visa requirements.

Dutton said Tarrant had spent only 45 days in Australia during the last three years.

The 28-year-old travelled extensively for years and said in his online screed that he first began considering an attack in 2017 while in Western Europe, where he was shocked by the number of immigrants.

Such ideas are spread regularly on online platforms like the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, or 8chan, a messaging board notorious for misogynistic posts and far-right conspiracy theories.

How the extreme right organises online and spreads these views presents a unique challenge, despite the vast electronic monitoring infrastructures deployed by governments.

To counter it, tech firms, especially social media giants, need to respond with the same rigour as they use to identify and filter jihadist content.

"Similar methods need to be employed for other, equally lethal, forms of hate like anti-Muslim, racist, and anti-Semitic violence," said Byman.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has slammed leaders' unwillingness to call out hate, while the parliament unanimously passed a motion to stand against white supremacy in the wake of the Christchurch mosques attack.

Ottawa: Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has slammed leaders' unwillingness to call out hate, while the parliament unanimously passed a motion to stand against white supremacy in the wake of the Christchurch mosques attack. "I stand here today to cast a light on this hatred and on our unwillingness to call it out," Trudeau said in the House of Commons Monday.

"As leaders, as (a) privileged few with power and an audience, we have a responsibility to do something." Trudeau said allowing bigotry in party politics, online, at town halls and "when it reaches our front door" amounted to nothing more than complicity and cowardice.

"I'm calling on like-minded countries of the world to stand with Canada in this fight. Muslims, Christians, Jews, black, white, all of us, we must fight this hatred as a team." The prime minister's comments come amid a heated debate over religious and racial bigotry in the neighbouring US that saw President Donald Trump berated over his tepid response to the New Zealand massacre.

After the attack on two mosques in Christchurch on Friday, which left 50 dead and 50 injured, Trump voiced sympathy and solidarity with the victims and people of New Zealand.

The alleged gunman  identified as an Australian white nationalist  referred to Trump as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose." But in comments to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump dismissed concerns that white nationalism represented a growing danger around the world.

"I don't really. I think it's a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess," Trump said.

The Quebec City mosque shooter, who killed six worshippers in 2017, had scoured Twitter for Trump, right-wing commentators and alt-right figures before the attack.
By David DeKok PITTSBURGH, Pa. (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania prosecutor on Tuesday urged jurors in the racially-charged trial of a white police officer who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Antwon Rose in June 2018 to focus on what motivated him to pull the trigger.

By David DeKok

PITTSBURGH, Pa. (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania prosecutor on Tuesday urged jurors in the racially-charged trial of a white police officer who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Antwon Rose in June 2018 to focus on what motivated him to pull the trigger.

East Pittsburgh Police officer, Michael Rosfeld, 30, does not dispute shooting Rose, 17, as he sought suspects following a drive-by shooting.

The incident, one of a number of U.S. shootings that raised questions about police use of force and racial justice, sparked several nights of protests in Pittsburgh.

Rosfeld faces a single count of homicide.

"Only this is disputed: What was on the mind of Michael Rosfeld when he shot and killed another human being," Dan Fitzsimmons, an assistant Allegheny County district attorney, said in his opening statement. "There may be many other things brought up that have nothing to do with his state of mind."

The prosecutor acknowledged that Rose, who was shot three times as he ran away from Rosfeld, was in a car involved in the shooting minutes before he died.

Another youth, Zaijuan Hester, 18, has pleaded guilty to being the shooter in that incident.

Some of Rose's family members attended the trial, occasionally dabbing their eyes or silently sobbing in the Allegheny County Courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh, about 11 miles (17.7 km) from where Rose died.

Defense lawyer Patrick Thomassey said in his opening arguments that Rosfeld, who was dressed in a gray suit, was "not a criminal" and had to make "a split-second decision" whether to shoot Rose.

Thomassey portrayed Rosfeld as a trained and dedicated police officer who, like other officers, risk their lives to defend people like those on the jury.

"All he did is what a trained officer is supposed to do," Thomassey said. "He was protecting you and everyone in the room, that is what he's supposed to do."

Thomassey suggested Rose was complicit in the drive-by shooting that preceded his death, saying he identified targets for Hester. Rose had a bullet clip in his pocket, and his DNA was found on one of the two Glock pistols left in the car.

"Why did he get out of the car and run?" Thomassey said of Rose.

The trial is expected to last into next week.

(Reporting By David DeKok; Editing by Frank McGurty and Nick Carey)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two senior U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two senior U.S. senators called on Monday for the Trump administration to correct a slowing pace of U.S. sanctions designations on North Korea, saying there had been a marked decline in the past year of U.S. engagement with Pyongyang.

In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat Ed Markey called for a recommitment to robust enforcement of U.S. and United Nations sanctions on North Korea.

The senators, the chairman and ranking member respectively of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, complained that the pace of sanctions designations on North Korea had "slowed considerably" in the past year of U.S. diplomatic engagement with the country.

They cited research by the Foundation for Defence of Democracies think tank saying that the Trump administration had sanctioned 182 persons and entities for North Korea sanctions violations since March 31, 2017, but only 26 since Feb. 23, 2018, "despite ample evidence of illicit behaviour from Pyongyang and its enablers."

The letter pointed to a 2019 U.N. report which found that North Korea had continued to defy U.N. sanctions with a massive increase in smuggling of petroleum products and coal and violation of bans on arms sales.

While welcoming U.S. diplomatic efforts aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, the senators' letter said "the status quo is unacceptable and is contrary to the administrations 'maximum pressure and engagement' doctrine."

U.S.-North Korea engagement has appeared to be in limbo after a second summit in the past year between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un broke down last month over conflicting demands for sanctions relief and denuclearisation.

The State and Treasury Departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Senators' letter.

Pompeo said in a radio interview on Monday that the administration had "the toughest economic sanctions in history," on North Korea "but the most promising diplomatic engagement in history" with the country as well.

Speaking to B98 FM in Kansas, Pompeo said Washington aimed to reengage with Kim. Pompeo said on March 5 that he was hopeful he could send a team to North Korea "in the next couple of weeks," but there has been no sign of such direct engagement since the Feb. 27-28 summit.

The State Department said the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun, who has led working-level talks with Pyongyang, would travel to London on Tuesday to meet British, French, and German counterparts to discuss coordinated efforts to advance North Korean denuclearisation.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. envoy for the contested Western Sahara will convene talks in Switzerland later this week, seeking compromise after a first round in December that marked a return to the negotiating table for the first time in six years, a statement said.

United Nations efforts have repeatedly failed to broker a settlement over the desert territory, contested between Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario since Spain left in 1974.

U.N. envoy Horst Koehler said after talks in December that all sides had agreed to meet again in early 2019.

He has invited delegations from Morocco, the Frente Polisario, Algeria and Mauritania to the meeting in Switzerland set for March 21-22, a U.N. statement said.

"The meeting will take place in accordance with UN Security Council resolution 2440 as a further step in the political process towards reaching a just, lasting, and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara," it said.

"The purpose of the meeting is for delegations to start approaching elements needed for building an enduring solution based on compromise," it added.

Morocco has offered autonomy to Western Sahara, a thinly populated region that has rich fishing waters and phosphate deposits, and may also have oil and gas reserves.

The Polisario, which waged a low-intensity guerrilla war until a ceasefire in 1991, reject this and want a referendum, with independence for Western Sahara as one option.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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(Reuters) - Floodwaters continued to rise in the U.S. Midwest on Monday and were not expected to crest for another 24 hours, forecasters said, after killing three people in Nebraska and Iowa and inundating a U.S. Air Force base.

(Reuters) - Floodwaters continued to rise in the U.S. Midwest on Monday and were not expected to crest for another 24 hours, forecasters said, after killing three people in Nebraska and Iowa and inundating a U.S. Air Force base.

The Missouri River, the longest in North America, has flooded much of Nebraska between Omaha and Kansas City at the Missouri state line. It was expected to crest at 47.5 feet (14.48 m) on Tuesday, breaking the previous record, set in 2011, by more than a foot, the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said in the latest bulletin on its web page.

"This really is the most devastating flooding we've probably ever had in our state's history, from the standpoint of how widespread it is," Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts said in a Twitter post on Monday.

"In 2011, it took 108 days for water to subside, and this year the water is 4-5 feet higher," Ricketts said in another tweet. "NEMA and teams across the state are working around the clock to provide relief."

Ricketts and Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds have both declared states of emergency, and U.S. President Donald Trump said the White House had reached out to state and local officials in devastated areas.

On Monday the Omaha World-Herald newspaper, citing sheriffs' officials, reported that an 80-year-old woman had become the latest confirmed fatality of the disaster. Betty Hamernik died in her home near Columbus, Nebraska, after becoming trapped by rising floodwaters from the Loup River.

Other casualties identified by local authorities are 50-year-old James Wilke, who was swept away while trying to use his tractor to free a trapped car near Columbus, and a man whose car was caught up in fast-moving water in Iowa..

At least two people are missing in Nebraska, the World-Herald reported.

NUCLEAR PLANT CUT OFF

More than 600 Nebraska residents were evacuated and taken to American Red Cross-operated shelters, NEMA said on Sunday.

The Missouri River's overflowing banks have cut off roads leading to the Cooper nuclear plant, near Brownville, Nebraska, forcing operators to fly in staff and supplies by helicopter. The nuclear plant continued to operate safely and was at full power, its operator said.

Water also covered one-third of that state's Offutt Air Force Base, near Bellevue, home to the U.S. Strategic Command.

At least 30 buildings had been flooded by up to 8 feet of water and 30 more structures had been damaged on the base, the Omaha World-Herald reported, citing a base spokeswoman. Base officials did not respond to a request for comment.

The National Weather Service reported some of the region's larger rivers were running at record high levels, causing levee breaks. Some small towns and communities have been cut off by floods while others found themselves short of fresh drinking water.

Streets in Lincoln, Nebraska's capital, were barely visible as high water surrounded homes, cars and trees, according to photos released to Reuters by state authorities. Elsewhere in the state, one highway near Waterloo was submerged, and piles of debris and damaged roads were visible in Niobrara.

Floodwater climbed up the sides of buildings at Camp Ashland, an Army National Guard facility in Ashland, Nebraska.

Warmer temperatures will speed the pace of snow melt across the region and contribute water to already swollen rivers, the NWS said, possibly forcing more evacuations in communities along the Missouri River on the Nebraska and Iowa border, as well as along the Elkhorn and Platte rivers in Nebraska.

"There could be issues across portions of Nebraska and Kansas for the next seven days," NWS meteorologist Jim Hayes said.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
The report, presented to the General Assembly, said that from 1 January to 31 December, 2018, the United Nations received a total of 148 sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) allegations directly involving UN workers, and 111 involving staff from partner organisations implementing UN programmes

United Nations: The United Nations received a total of 259 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by the staff working in its agencies and their partner organisations in 2018, an increase of more than a hundred in such incidents from 2017, according to a report presented by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The report, presented to the General Assembly, said that from 1 January to 31 December, 2018, the UN received a total of 148 sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) allegations directly involving UN workers, and 111 involving staff from partner organisations implementing UN programmes.

This represents an increase in the total number of incidents reported in 2017, when 138 allegations were made, and 165 allegations made in 2016, it said.

The report said while the figures of allegations rose in 2018 compared with the previous two years, there was increased awareness among the UN and UN-related staff, and improved and harmonised reporting tools across the organisation towards a 'zero tolerance' effort to end sexual exploitation and abuse across the UN.

According to the report, not all the allegations have been fully verified and many are still under investigation or are still in a preliminary assessment phase.

The report said that the third system-wide survey on sexual exploitation and abuse was administered in 2018 to the UN and affiliated personnel at 34 duty stations with humanitarian and/or peace operations.

The duty stations included those in countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, India, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, Pakistan, South Sudan and Syria.

There were some encouraging signs in Peacekeeping Operations, where allegations were down almost by half over the past two years, it said.

While 103 SEA incidents were reported in 2016, only 54 allegations were made in 2018, the report said.

Despite this improvement in the UN's peacekeeping wing, the number of allegations went up against personnel in other UN entities, with 94 allegations received in 2018, compared with 50 in 2017.

In a troubling sign, the number of allegations against partner organisations implementing the UN's programmes reached a high of 109, increasing more than four-fold from 2017 when only 25 incidents were reported.

"The numbers show that the UN's victim-centred approach, implemented over a year ago, is paying off as there seems to be an increased trust among the victims and survivors to come forward and report incidents," the UN said in a statement.

The Secretary-General has stressed that there will be zero tolerance towards sexual exploitation and abuse across the UN. His strategy, in its first phase, focuses on addressing the issue within the UN system, as well as those mandated by the world body to carry out programmes.

This entails more than 90,000 staff in more than 30 entities and more than 100,000 uniformed personnel.

In 2017, Guterres had launched a new strategy to prevent and end sexual exploitation and abuse by UN personnel.

A major element of this new approach was the creation of the 'Circle of Leadership' for Heads of State and Government to demonstrate resolve and commitment at the highest political level to eradicate the scourge.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member of the Circle of Leadership.

The Secretary General said in the report that he encourages Member States to give greater visibility to their initiatives to eradicate sexual exploitation and abuse, including information on the status of administrative and judicial processes, which will be included in a public electronic hub.

In 2018, he had asked the members of the circle to provide him with updates, and seven Member States have responded, including India, Australia, Germany, the UK and Uruguay.

The world body had launched in October last year an electronic tool called 'Clear Check', to screen UN staff dismissed as a result of substantiated SEA allegations, or those who resigned or were separated during an investigation.

The UN does not have the authority or a legal mandate to criminally prosecute individuals found guilty of committing sexual exploitation and abuse and criminal accountability of individuals continues to rest with the relevant country.

In cases where the alleged offender is a civilian, the UN conducts administrative investigations.

The staff member is dismissed when the allegation is substantiated and if the UN concludes that a crime may have been committed, it refers the matter to relevant national authorities for further action, the statement said.
worth paying multiplex prices for

worth a look, but wait for DVD, unless your favorite actor is in it

give it a miss

my reaction under consideration

my reaction under gag order for now

not yet seen by me
Its not always that we get to see the birth of a new generation of cellular wireless technology. Sure we have been reporting about it since 2015, the murmurs started as far back as 2009 but fast forward 10 years, 5G is not a buzzword anymore, it is a reality. We have devices ready to go to market with battle tested functioning chips, the standards are in place and many nations are getting the 5G spectrum ready so that operators can deploy infrastructure. While operational difficulties are being solved at speeds we cant imagine, it is time we take a big picture look at 5G. How is this new technology going to change our lives? Well, lets first take a deep dive into this new technology and how it was demonstrated at the Qualcomm booth at Mobile World Congress 2019.

Towards the end, you could see that the words started getting too technical. Thats often the case because cellular technology is not so easy to comprehend. It involves a lot of wireless maneuvering that we dont get to see. I mean, think about it. With landline telephones, we could actually see the wires that connected us with each other. There was a dial tone, the sonic indicator of a live connection. We have been to telephone exchanges, there used to be operators who connected us to our friends living far, far away. We remembered first circle phone numbers, wrote down the rest. The phonebook was a real book and the language of interaction was straightforward and simple. Remember STD/ISD/PCO booths? Yeah, those still exist. Hotels still use a variation of this language of communication.

Then wireless cellular happened. We suddenly switched from pipes underground to pipes in the air. We still use numbers but no longer have to remember them. Tag a name or something identifiable with that number and you can forget the number for good. The only visible change was that cell towers started popping up and telecom infrastructure moved entireely into the background. I remember studying extensively about cellular networks in my college books. While I got to know why it was called a cellular network, what a hand off was, there were also many things I had an idea of, but just couldnt see. Like Frequency division, Time division, still the two main methods in which the radio pipe is divided for use. We designed rules for managing this electromagnetic pipe through which invisible lines carried our voice.

Then we expanded these pipes to add more capacity and include other forms of data. The internet suddenly became wireless and started hogging these pipes. We adapted. The way we communicate with each other started changing from sending simple texts and emojis the size of bits to sharing live video streams. Our devices adapted to the ways we consumed and shared information with each other. Knowledge became accessible literally from our fingertips. It all happened too fast and it has already changed our lives to a level which we cannot even comprehend. So when a new generation of cellular technology is in the horizon, offers to change our lives again, it is even harder to comprehend the potential.

There are some major signs though, based on which the standards are designed. Lets start with exploring the potential for video, which is the ost obvious because we all know that mobile video dominates the pipes. The video format occupies a lot of bandwidth and high speeds would make our user experience better in the sense that any information we wish to access in the form of video will be available to us instantly if we are connected to a Gigabit-speed 5G network. It will be available to us in such a high resolution and a much higher bitrate that we wouldnt be able to tell between a video and reality. 5G will get us there.

With a need for a major expansion of capacity, the mmwave spectrum of 5G will open up bandwidth for a lot more devices to connect to the network. While this seems like a basic need to address demand, satisfying it opens so much potential that mmWaves will possibly single-handedly change our lives. Itll not only let every single one of us connect to a really fast network, it will allow other devices to connect to it as well. This is the first time that the Internet of Things will become a reality. 5G will get us there.

There is more to mmWaves though. By nature, it has extremely low latency so it enables a new kind of product design where computation can be offloaded to nearby servers. If you have a dream of your phone becoming just a screen, with very limited processing power focused on specific things while the rest of it is powered by a powerful server nearby, just imagine the things you can do. Pure potential. 5G will get us there.

This low latency communication also massively increases reliability of service. Games on the cloud? Heavy apps on the wireless edge? 8K streaming without a single second of buffering? Really light extended reality headsets? PCs that are just a screen and input? Tablets that are just a screen? Smart watches with really high battery life? We can go on and on. Add connected cars, industry grade reliability to machines to talk to each other with mission critical applications, artificial intelligence with distributed computing. We are just at the very beginning of a massive revolution. The potential is so big that we dont even know whats coming. But, 5G will get us there.

This is the promise and the massive potential of 5G, a generational change that seems to be super aware of our future needs. All of this observation is of course based on the thought leadership that was demonstrated by Qualcomm at their MWC booth. Which potential future innovation are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments section below.
Google has been revamping things, adding features and much more to its GSuite, in a bid to give users a smooth experience. As we all know, last the company launched automatic room suggestions in Google Calendar on the web.

In the recent development, the search engine giant is planning to bring this feature to Android and iOS devices as well. This feature, using Google AI, suggests the rooms for your meetings based on the locations and preferences of the guests.

Automatic room suggestions factor guest location like building and floor, as well as past preferences. This includes history, audio/video equipment needs, and room capacity requirements.

To enable this feature, structured resource information and users work locations are required to be set. Initially, this Google AI-powered capability was first announced in February, and rolled out to the desktop web client in July.

Source
Don't think for a second that all blue-chip stocks are stuffy and deliver sluggish growth. Some of them are exactly the opposite of that description.

These three blue-chip stocks recently hit 52-week highs, with two of the three reaching all-time-high marks. Here's why Abbott Labs (NYSE:ABT), Novartis (NYSE:NVS), and Stryker (NYSE:SYK) are performing so well -- and whether any of these stocks are buys right now.

1. Abbott Labs

Abbott Labs is the best performer of the three blue-chip stocks on this list, with its shares up 24% over the last 12 months. You only have to look at Abbott's 2018 financial results to know why the big medical-device maker is doing so well. The company increased its earnings per share (EPS) by 15%, generated over $6 billion in cash flow, and boosted its dividend by 14%.

It would be a stretch to say that only one or two products led to Abbott's success. After all, the company markets a long list of products across multiple categories. And all four of its business segments generated year-over-year revenue growth in 2018. However, there are two products that warranted special attention from Abbott CEO Miles White in the company's Q4 conference call in January: FreeStyle Libre and Alinity.

FreeStyle Libre is Abbott's continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system that doesn't require finger sticks. Sales for the system more than doubled last year to top $1 billion. Alinity is Abbott's suite of diagnostic products that have been launched in Europe and some international markets but not yet in the U.S. White stated in Abbott's Q4 call that Alinity's "rollout in Europe has been exceptional."

2. Novartis

Novartis' shares have gained 13% over the last 12 months and now trade at the highest level since January 2018. The big pharma company's momentum kicked into gear last July after Novartis reported solid second-quarter results.

While Novartis claims a whopping 15 blockbuster drugs on the market, its two fastest-rising stars right now are immunology drug Cosentyx and heart-failure drug Entresto. Last year, sales for Cosentyx soared by 37% to $2.8 billion, making the drug Novartis' No. 2 best seller overall. Entresto topped $1 billion in sales for the first time, with revenue more than doubling from the previous year.

Acquisitions have also fueled Novartis' rise. The company closed its purchase of French drugmaker Advanced Accelerator Applications in early 2018. It followed up in April with the acquisition of gene therapy biotech AveXis. Novartis also announced last October that it was buying cancer-focused biotech Endocyte.

Check out the latest earnings call transcripts for Abbott Labs, Stryker, and other companies we cover.

3. Stryker

After finishing 2018 with a puny 1% gain, medical-device giant Stryker's shares have jumped 23% so far in 2019. The stock is now near its 52-week and all-time-high marks.

The primary catalyst for Stryker was the company's great Q4 update in January 2019. Stryker CEO Kevin Lobo stated on the company's conference call that the company "had an excellent finish to 2018 with the best organic sales growth in a decade, and strong adjusted earnings performance."

Two areas look especially strong for Stryker. The company's medical-surgical unit is firing on all cylinders, with endoscopy instruments experiencing notably strong sales growth. Stryker's acquisition of K2M also boosted the company's neurotechnology and spine growth.

Are they buys?

In my view, one of these three blue-chip stocks is a solid pick, and two are maybes to keep on your radar. Let's start with the ones to watch.

Novartis has a lot going for it with Cosentyx and Entresto, new products like migraine drug Aimovig, and a promising pipeline. However, it will likely take a few years for the drugmaker's pipeline to really begin contributing. In the meantime, Novartis faces headwinds for older products, including cancer drug Gleevec and multiple sclerosis drug Gilenya. My view is to hold off on Novartis for now, but it could be a stronger choice in the not-too-distant future.

I plan to closely watch Stryker as well. The company has some new products launching this year that should drive revenue higher. I think that Stryker is close to being a stock to buy, but I'm in wait-and-see mode for now.

My favorite of these three stocks is Abbott. I think that FreeStyle Libre should continue to perform really well, especially with a new version on the way. I also expect the U.S. launch for Alinity to be a great success for Abbott. With Abbott's increasing dividend, my take is that it could deliver market-beating total returns in the future.
The marijuana industry is growing like a weed. According to various Wall Street prognostications, the global cannabis industry could be generating upwards of $50 billion to $75 billion in annual sales roughly one decade from now. That's a boatload of cash, and all the more reason for pot growers to double down on capacity expansion.

Although there are 11 growers that are currently on pace for more than 100,000 kilograms in peak annual output, according to their respective management teams, none stands out more than Alberta-based Aurora Cannabis (NASDAQ:ACB).

The leader of the pack

Aurora has been aggressively expanding its production potential in an effort to secure lucrative long-term supply deals, and perhaps attract a brand-name partner in the beverage, snack, tobacco, or pharmaceutical industry. Plus, with the legal cannabis market still nascent, Aurora projects to have a good chance of grabbing market share in the early stages of legal marijuana sales.

In the company's press release highlighting its fiscal second-quarter operating results, which ended Dec. 31, 2018, it was noted that 20% of all cannabis sold in Canada between the beginning of October and the end of the year was attributed to Aurora. At its expected annual run-rate of more than 150,000 kilos by the end of this month, none of its peers are even close to keeping pace.

According to Aurora's management team, the company is on track for more than 500,000 kilos in annual run-rate production by mid-2020. However, yours truly expects the company to come in at 700,000 kilos per year once its facilities are fully licensed, permitted for sale, and operating at peak efficiency. How exactly does Aurora get to 700,000 kilos? Let me walk you through the step-by-step process.

Here's how Aurora Cannabis gets to 700,000 kilos of production a year

Following the purchases of ICC Labs in South America and Whistler Medical Marijuana in British Columbia, the company has more than a dozen facilities from which to generate cannabis. Here's a brief rundown of the 11 facilities (not including ICC Labs and Whistler) mentioned in Aurora's most recent investor presentation:

Aurora Mountain (4,800 kilos a year): This 55,200-square-foot facility is Aurora's longest-running, and has been in operation since 2015.

This 55,200-square-foot facility is Aurora's longest-running, and has been in operation since 2015. Aurora Vie (4,000 kilos a year): Located in Quebec, Aurora Vie has been in operation since 2018, and spans 40,000 square feet.

Located in Quebec, Aurora Vie has been in operation since 2018, and spans 40,000 square feet. Aurora Eau (4,500 kilos a year): Officially opened in November 2018, Aurora Eau spans 48,000 square feet in Lachute, Quebec.

Officially opened in November 2018, Aurora Eau spans 48,000 square feet in Lachute, Quebec. Aurora Sky (more than 100,000 kilos a year): Once the company's largest organic project at 800,000 square feet of cultivation space, Aurora Sky is fully operational in the company's home province of Alberta.

Once the company's largest organic project at 800,000 square feet of cultivation space, Aurora Sky is fully operational in the company's home province of Alberta. Aurora Sun (more than 150,000 kilos a year): Currently the largest organic project to date, Aurora Sun spans 1.2 million square feet, with initial planting expected in late 2019, and construction completed by mid-2020.

Currently the largest organic project to date, Aurora Sun spans 1.2 million square feet, with initial planting expected in late 2019, and construction completed by mid-2020. Aurora Nordic 1 (8,000 kilos a year): Partnering with Alfred Pedersen & Son, Denmark's Aurora Nordic 1 facility, spanning 100,000 square feet, is fully operational and set to make its first sale during the first quarter of 2019.

Partnering with Alfred Pedersen & Son, Denmark's Aurora Nordic 1 facility, spanning 100,000 square feet, is fully operational and set to make its first sale during the first quarter of 2019. Aurora Nordic 2 (more than 120,000 kilos a year): This facility features 1 million square feet of growing space in Denmark, with construction expected to be complete by mid-2020.

This facility features 1 million square feet of growing space in Denmark, with construction expected to be complete by mid-2020. CanniMed (19,000 kilos a year): Acquired for the tidy sum of $852 million, Saskatchewan-based CanniMed brought with it 19,000 kilos of fully operational capacity spanning 97,000 square feet.

Acquired for the tidy sum of $852 million, Saskatchewan-based CanniMed brought with it 19,000 kilos of fully operational capacity spanning 97,000 square feet. Markham (7,000 kilos a year): Acquired through its $2 billion purchase of MedReleaf, the 55,000 square foot Markham facility was MedReleaf's oldest, with operations beginning in 2014.

Acquired through its $2 billion purchase of MedReleaf, the 55,000 square foot Markham facility was MedReleaf's oldest, with operations beginning in 2014. Bradford (28,000 kilos a year): Also acquired through the MedReleaf deal, Bradford was a 210,000 square foot organic expansion that's now fully operational.

Also acquired through the MedReleaf deal, Bradford was a 210,000 square foot organic expansion that's now fully operational. Exeter (105,000 kilos a year): Once again, acquired through the MedReleaf deal. Exeter was itself purchased in a land deal by MedReleaf, with the 1 million square foot vegetable-growing facility expected to be retrofit to grow cannabis.

Check out the latest earnings call transcripts for the companies we cover.

Added up, that's a minimum projected annual run-rate of 550,300 kilograms by mid-2020, directly from the company's management team.

But wait -- there's more

However, this projection doesn't include its relatively new acquisitions of ICC Labs or Whistler Medical Marijuana.

Whistler's Pemberton facility in British Columbia is expected to yield more than 5,000 kilos yearly when operating at peak capacity, which will likely occur within the next 12 months. That brings the total output up to at least 555,300 kilos per year.

Then there's ICC Labs, which had 92,000 square feet of already operational cultivation facilities when it was acquired, along with 124,000 square feet being developed in Colombia, and a 1 million square foot facility being constructed in Uruguay, the only other country besides Canada to have legalized recreational weed. Assuming Aurora utilizes its higher-yield growing techniques in the ongoing construction projects, my personal expectation would be around 8,000 kilos from the existing 92,000 square feet, another 10,000 kilos from the Colombia facility, and north of 120,000 kilos annually from the 1 million square foot facility in Uruguay. Altogether, this increases the company's run-rate to 693,300 kilos per year.

Of course, note above that Aurora conservatively expects its largest facilities to produce 100,000 kilos, 120,000 kilos, or 150,000 kilos, per year. That's more than enough margin of error to expect yields to be 1% higher than existing estimates, pushing peak production to 700,200 kilos a year.

1 million kilograms isn't out of the question

At 700,000 kilos of annual output, Aurora should easily lead the pack. But even then it may not be done. Should global demand prove overwhelming, the company has ample opportunity to expand its cultivation base.

When MedReleaf was acquired for $2 billion, Aurora gained hold of MedReleaf's 164-acre land purchase. This land features the Exeter facility on 69 acres, as well as 95 acres that are currently unused. At the time of the purchase, MedReleaf opined that it could build a facility that was 1.5 times the size of Exeter if demand merited such a move. With Aurora's superior greenhouse construction knowledge and growing techniques, it wouldn't be out of the question that an up to 1.5 million square foot facility could yield up to 200,000 kilos of additional output per year.

Then there's ICC Labs in South America which, according to Aurora, has 450,000 kilos of peak capacity between hemp and cannabis. The only thing we don't know is just how much of this grow space (on paper) is specifically devoted to hemp relative to cannabis. Presumably, with the company able to yield in the neighborhood of 140,000 kilos from existing projects in South America, there would be ample room for production expansion.

Even smaller grow sites offer hope for expansion. For example, Whistler Medical's Pemberton site could be expanded to provide up to 15,000 kilos of annual output, according to Aurora. Additionally, expansion at CanniMed should be able to push peak production north of 30,000 kilos a year.

In other words, it would not be out of the question for Aurora Cannabis to one day produce 1 million kilograms per year.

The only question left to ask is, what project is next?
Williams Companies ( WMB 0.07% ) has worked hard over the past few years to improve its financial profile and strategic position. The pipeline giant continued those efforts this week by forming a strategic partnership with a Canadian pension plan to optimize two of its midstream businesses in the Northeast. The transaction will reduce costs while at the same time providing the company with some cash to repay debt and fund high-return expansion projects so that it can continue growing its 5.5%-yielding dividend.

Drilling down into the latest deal

Williams Companies is forming a long-term partnership with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) to optimize its midstream operations in the western Marcellus and Utica shale region. CPPIB will invest $1.34 billion for a 35% stake in the joint venture, which will include Williams' Ohio Valley Midstream (OVM) and Utica East Ohio Midstream (UEO) systems. The transaction values those businesses at $3.8 billion.

Williams will use a portion of the cash proceeds to purchase the remaining 38% stake in UEO from another midstream company, taking full control of that entity. By assuming control of UEO and then combining it with OVM, Williams expects to save money by reducing operating costs and optimizing the expansion of both systems. After factoring out the purchase price of the increased UEO stake and the associated transaction costs, Williams expects to have about $600 million left over to repay debt and fund other expansion projects.

Check out the latest earnings call transcript for Williams Companies.

Partnering up to improve

This transaction is the latest in a string of partnerships forged by Williams Companies geared toward optimizing its operations, reducing debt, and enhancing its growth prospects. Last summer, for example, the company made a high-value trade. It sold its Four Corners Area business to another midstream company for $1.25 billion, giving it some of the cash needed to buy Discovery DJ Services, which it purchased along with private equity giant KKR ( KKR -0.55% ). The pair paid $1.173 billion for Discovery, with Williams initially owning a 40% stake and KKR taking the other 60%.

In addition to that, Williams pledged to invest $250 million to expand Discovery through 2020, which would boost its stake up to 50%. The company also has the option to buy out KKR's interest in phases over the next six years. Williams netted about $400 million of cash in this trade, which it used to pay down debt and finance expansion projects, including those on Discovery.

Meanwhile, the company formed a joint venture with Brazos Midstream last fall to enhance its Delaware Basin midstream business. It contributed its existing assets in the region for a 15% interest in the joint venture, which will expand its footprint and bolster its growth prospects.

On top of that, Williams Companies formed a partnership with Targa Resources ( TRGP 0.06% ) last month. As part of that deal, Williams will build the 188-mile Bluestem Pipeline to connect its natural gas liquids (NGLs) assets in Kansas to Targa's Grand Prix pipeline, which will open additional markets. The company also has the option to buy a 20% stake in an NGL facility Targa Resources has under construction. Overall, Williams expects to invest $350 million to $400 million in these projects.

These partnerships were all about making Williams Companies better. They either bolstered its growth prospects, enhanced its strategic position, or boosted its financial profile, which will combine to make Williams a stronger company in the long run.

A top-tier option for income seekers

Williams Companies has come a long way over the past few years. That has helped increase the long-term sustainability of its high-yield dividend, which the company appears poised to expand at a healthy pace in the future. That makes it an excellent stock for income-focused investors to consider buying for the long term.
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Greater Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin CarePatrol Franchise Owners Receive 2019 Franchisee of the Year Award

Todd and Kim Seidl honored with prestigious award at CarePatrols annual franchise conference

March 19, 2019 // Franchising.com // Phoenix, AZ - Greater Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin CarePatrol franchise owners, Todd and Kim Seidl, were awarded the 2019 Franchisee of the Year award at CarePatrols annual convention in Phoenix, Arizona.

The Seidls were recognized out of 150 locations for being high-level producers in the franchise system, providing a top of the line service for their clients, and being selfless givers across the entire franchise system.

Todd and Kim are the kind of franchise owners you want serving in your network every day, said Becky Bongiovanni, president of CarePatrol. They genuinely care for their clients, and you see that through their hard work and dedication in placing seniors in a safe environment. With every client, they strive to go above and beyond to make sure everyone is placed exactly where they need to be.

The Seidls have been involved in the senior care industry since 2007 when they opened a national home care franchise office. As owners, they often found themselves in a role of senior placement advisor when it was no longer safe or appropriate for their clients to stay at home. In 2012, they sold their business and explored options for a senior placement franchise, landing on the Assisted Transition franchise, which was subsequently sold to CarePatrol years later.

When we were involved in just one segment of senior care, we realized many people didnt have a long-term view for future care needs, said Kim. With advising, we have the opportunity to meet with families and show them the bigger picture. It is a blessing to have work that makes a meaningful difference in the lives of others, and CarePatrol has provided us with everything we need to succeed.

For more information about CarePatrol, visit https://www.carepatrol.com.

About CarePatrol

CarePatrols founders have been pioneers in the senior placement industry for the past 25 years. Franchising since 2009, CarePatrol has been a Franchise Satisfaction winner for eight consecutive years. With 150 franchise partners, CarePatrol is the largest senior placement organization in the country, and in early 2018, was acquired by ComForCare, a premier provider of home care for aging adults. With ComForCares private equity partnership with The Riverside Company, CarePatrol is now part of Best Life Brands, LLC, a multi-brand franchise parent company, which has plans for more expansion across the continuum of care for aging adults. For more information, visit www.CarePatrol.com.

Media Contact:

Sarah Lofdahl

BizCom Associates

318.617.0362

sarah@bizcompr.com

SOURCE CarePatrol

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Local Entrepreneur Brings Dickeys Texas-Style Barbecue to Gulf Breeze

March 19, 2019 // Franchising.com // Gulf Breeze, FL - Dickeys Barbecue Pit franchisee, Wendy Williams, plans to open her first Dickeys location in the coming weeks in Gulf Breeze, FL.

At Dickeys Barbecue Pit we focus on the authenticity of our products while offering our guests a true Texas-style experience, says Laura Rea Dickey, CEO of Dickeys Barbecue Restaurants, Inc. With Wendys passion for the Dickeys brand and dedication to serving her community delicious barbecue, she is sure to be a success.

Though new to the restaurant industry, Wendy has always looked for the perfect opportunity to open her own restaurant. Originally from Louisiana, she fell in love with Dickeys Barbecue Pit and after moving to Florida, she knew it was the perfect place to open her first restaurant.

I have always wanted to be a restauranteur and Dickeys made it so simple for me to become a part of their growing family, says Wendy. I look forward to opening my first restaurant in Gulf Breeze and serve the residents of this wonderful community.

Find your nearest Dickeys Barbecue Pit location: https://www.dickeys.com/location/search-by-state. Find more information about national and international franchise opportunities: https://www.dickeys.com/franchise.

Follow Dickeys on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dickeysbarbecuepit, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dickeysbarbecuepit/ and Twitter: https://twitter.com/dickeys.

About Dickeys Barbecue Restaurants, Inc.

Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, Inc., the nation's largest barbecue chain was founded in 1941 by Travis Dickey. For the past 77 years, Dickeys Barbecue Pit locations across the nation have served guests Legit. Texas. Barbecue. At Dickeys, all meats are smoked low and slow on-site, every night in every location. The Dallas-based family-run barbecue franchise offers several slow-smoked meats and wholesome sides with 'No B.S. (Bad Stuff)' included. The fast-casual concept has expanded worldwide and includes more than 500 locations in 44 states. In 2016, Dickey's won first place on Fast Casual's "Top 100 Movers and Shakers" list and in 2018 Dickeys Barbecue Pit made the Top 10. Dickey's Barbecue Pit has also been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine, Franchise Times and Nation's Restaurant News. For more information, visit www.dickeys.com.

Media Contact:

Callie Head

Public Relations Manager

Dickeys Barbecue Restaurants, Inc.

O: (972) 248-9899 x 156

SOURCE Dickeys Barbecue Restaurants, Inc.

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Valvoline Announces Opening of Company-Owned Quick-Lube Center in Williamsburg, Virginia

New location marks company's 6th company-owned service center in Virginia and expands company's network of more than 1,300 company-owned and franchised quick lube locations

LEXINGTON, Ky. - March 19, 2019 // PRNewswire // - Valvoline Inc. - a leading worldwide supplier of premium branded lubricants and automotive services - announced today that it has opened a new company-owned Valvoline Instant Oil ChangeSM (VIOC) service center in Williamsburg, Virginia.

A core element of Valvoline's strategy is to accelerate the growth of its industry-leading quick-lube model, which is all about delivering a quick, easy and trusted experience for every customer, every day. This is Valvoline's sixth company-owned VIOC quick lube in the state of Virginia, and its first in Williamsburg.

The service center is at 6393 Richmond Road. No appointments are necessary.

Valvoline Instant Oil Change service centers let customers stay in their cars and watch VIOC's certified technicians perform their service. Technicians complete a professional ASE-certified training program that is ranked #2 globally by the Association for Talent Development's 2017 BEST Award. In addition to full-service oil changes done in about 15 minutes, VIOC performs a wide range of preventive maintenance services, including transmission, radiator and air-conditioning services; safety parts replacement, including wiper blades and light bulbs; and tire rotation. Most locations also offer fuel system and battery services. VIOC services most vehicle makes and models, including luxury, diesel, and hybrid. Visit www.vioc.com to learn more.

About Valvoline

Valvoline Inc. (NYSE: VVV) is a leading worldwide marketer and supplier of premium branded lubricants and automotive services, with sales in more than 140 countries. Established in 1866, the company's heritage spans over 150 years, during which it has developed powerful brand recognition across multiple product and service channels. Valvoline ranks as the No. 3 passenger car motor oil brand in the DIY market by volume. It operates and franchises more than 1,300 quick-lube locations, including the No. 2 quick-lube chain by number of stores in the United States under the Valvoline Instant Oil ChangeSM brand and the No. 3 quick-lube chain in Canada under the Great Canadian Oil Change brand. It also markets Valvoline lubricants and automotive chemicals, including the new Valvoline Modern Engine Full Synthetic Motor Oil, which is specifically engineered to protect against carbon build-up in Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI), turbo and other engines manufactured since 2012; Valvoline High Mileage with MaxLife technology motor oil for engines over 75,000 miles; Valvoline Synthetic motor oil; and Zerex antifreeze. To learn more, visit www.valvoline.com.

TM Trademark, Valvoline or its subsidiaries, registered in various countries

SM Service mark, Valvoline or its subsidiaries, registered in various countries

Media Contact:

Heather Watson

+1 (859) 357-7082

hwatson@valvoline.com

SOURCE Valvoline Inc.

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Head of cloud gaming at Microsoft Kareem Choudhry recently had an interview with Eurogamer, sharing a few interesting details about the way Project xCloud is supposed to be working later this year.

First of all, Choudhry said that near Washington latency is really good: less than ten milliseconds. He commented that we find more latency in the Bluetooth stack, connected to an Android phone.

As for the kind of connections well be required to have xCloud working, he revealed that the demos which have been showcased thus far were around 9-10 Mbps.

Anyway, Microsoft is aiming at providing a really good video feed probably around six to five, so around PlayStation Nows current requirement (although in that case, the service goes for 720p straight away).

Finally, the head of cloud gaming also addressed Xbox Game Pass, which we gave for granted to be compatible and supported by the service even though that hasnt been outlined yet.

From what he says, thats going to be the case for what matters Xbox One, but it should be a bit different when it comes to mobile devices and PC.

Obviously GamePass is our subscription service, its really where we want to deliver great experiences and value to our customers, said Choudhry.

And right now its a console product  we have aspirations to bring it to more users and more places. Project xCloud and GamePass are going to co-exist in some reasonable way.

Last time we heard about xCloud, it was during the latest Inside Xbox, where it was showcased with a Forza Horizon 4 hands on.

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Last Week Tonight host John Oliver has praised New Zealand's response to Friday's Christchurch terror attack on his show.

The British talk show host said New Zealand has "been showing its strength in how it's been responding" to the attack, and added that the attack was "a total affront to the basic values of the people of New Zealand."

"New Zealand is an incredible place and I know we make fun of it on this show all the time," he said. "Honestly, there is nothing I like more than making fun of New Zealand, but part of that may be that controversies over there tend to get handled with calm and good cheer."

Oliver has a history of making fun of New Zealand, in particular the infamous flag referendum.



"How can you not a love a country that has a contest to design a new flag for itself and someone submits a kiwi bird with lasers coming out its eyes?," he said.

He also offered his take on controversial Australian Senator Fraser Anning's comments after the attack, calling Anning's view perpaps "the worst possible response to what happened".

Anning was egged by Australian teen Will Connolly in response to his remarks regarding the attack.

"The real cause of Fraser Anning getting hit with an egg is Fraser Anning saying things that prompt people to throw eggs at him," Oliver said. "He may be the victim today, but usually he's a huge f*****g a**hole."
There is peace in Khurvaleti and no armed persons have arrived from the occupied territory, say villagers - GeorgianJournal
ICICI Lombard joins hand with Mobikwik to offer cyber-insurance cover of Rs. 50,000 News oi-Priyanka Dua It can be availed digitally through the app at only Rs. 99/ month.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance, a leading non-life insurance company has announced a partnership with Mobikwik to offer cyber-insurance cover of Rs. 50,000.

The relationship aims to provide protection against unauthorized and fraudulent transactions online, across bank accounts, debit/credit cards, and mobile wallets. It can be availed digitally through the app at only Rs. 99/ month.

Sanjeev Mantri, Executive Director, ICICI Lombard said, "We have always been ahead of the curve and introduced unique solutions at attractive price points. With the introduction of mobile wallets, transactions have become far more effective and convenient. But, these online transactions expose users to a new class of risks. Cyber-insurance thereby becomes imperative to provide customers protection against any kind of data security breach. This relationship with MobiKwik further strengthens ICICI Lombard's endeavor to provide innovative and unique products against the new-age risks and cater to the needs of the customers of our business associates."

This product will have to provide 360 degrees insured security of their multiple bank accounts, debit and credit cards, and mobile wallets. MobiKwik users can enroll under this insurance product at the time of loading money into their wallet or in a standalone format, as per their wish. They can avail the cover digitally with an instant policy issuance. Additionally, the claims can be lodged digitally.

Upasana Taku, Co-founder, and Director, MobiKwik said, " This product was the need of the hour in today's digital era wherein a number of individuals prefer doing their financial transactions online. This is a category that has been untouched upon and is a promising one, with the rise in the adoption of digital payments, across cities and towns."

Taku said, "We have partnered with ICICI Lombard General Insurance for this product and are confident that this differentiated product will further enable more users to trust digital payments and will use them more actively, without any fear. We are committed to bringing in many more innovative and affordable products to address the requirements of millions of Indians."

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Motorola teases Moto G7 India launch on Twitter, launch expected soon News oi-Sandeep Sarkar Moto G7 flaunts a 6.24-inch inch display panel that offers a screen resolution of 1080 x 2270 pixels and has an aspect ratio of 19:9.

Motorola started the year 2019 with the launch of Moto G7 smartphone lineup. The successor to the company's mid-range G6 smartphone lineup, the G7 series was announced last month in an event held in Brazil. The new smartphone lineup comprises of Moto G7, Moto G7 Plus, and Moto G7 Play. Recently, the Moto G7 Power was made available in the Indian market and now the Moto G7 is expected to make an entry soon in the Indian market.

Motorola has now officially announced that it is going to bring the Moto G7 smartphone in the Indian market. The company made this announcement on its official Twitter account and has also shared a teaser video of the same. The Twitter teaser suggests that it is only the standard Moto G7 variant which is to be launched in India. While there is no specific date revealed by the company, we can expect the launch sometimes soon in the coming days. Also, it is not immediately clear as to when we will see the remaining smartphones in the Moto G7 series in the Indian market.

Moto G7 hardware:

The Moto G7 is a mid-range smartphone by the company. It comes with an octa-core Snapdragon 632 chipset onboard that clocks at 1.8GHz. The smartphone comes with 4GB of RAM for all the multitasking and has 64GB of internal storage. The onboard memory of the smartphone is expandable up to 128GB using an external microSD card. It ships with Android 9 Pie OS and offers a stock Android UI experience.

Make that Monday look count for you coz the sexy #motog7 is coming soon! Share your pictures showing how #stylematterstoyou to win it. T&C apply- https://t.co/22CVVO4u1j pic.twitter.com/bb5s4hDcUy  Motorola India (@motorolaindia) March 18, 2019

The smartphone flaunts a 6.24-inch inch display panel that offers a screen resolution of 1080 x 2270 pixels and has an aspect ratio of 19:9. The display comes with Corning Gorilla Glass protection and a notch on top for the front camera and sensors. It comes with dual-lens primary camera setup and a single lens setup with the former being a 12MP+5MP sensors and the latter being an 8MP lens. The device is backed by a 3,000-mAh battery unit that comes with fast charging support.

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Nokia 8.1, Nokia 5.1 Plus firmware update with latest Android security patch rolling out in India News oi-Sandeep Sarkar The update weighs around 127MB for the Nokia 8.1 smartphone, whereas, the Nokia 5.1 Plus firmware update weighs around 85MB in size.

HMD Global, the Finnish smartphone brand licensee to Nokia smartphones has is consistent with rolling out updates for its smartphones on a timely basis. The company had recently released an Android Pie update for the affordable Nokia 3.1 smartphone and is now pushing out a new firmware update for its popular Nokia 8.1 and Nokia 5.1 smartphones. One of the primary reasons for the timely firmware update releases for Nokia smartphones is that they come under the Android One program. This means that they come first in line to receive the Android updates and security patches.

The Nokia 8.1 and the Nokia 5.1 Plus smartphones are receiving a firmware update which brings along the latest Android security patch along with it. The firmware update is being rolled out as an OTA and the notification should be available to the smartphones soon. If in case the update notification does not show up on your respected Nokia smartphone, you can check the update manually in the Settings section.

The latest update comes with the March 2019 Android security patch along with some general bug fixes and tweaks to improve the performance of both the smartphones. The update weighs around 127MB for the Nokia 8.1 smartphone, whereas, the Nokia 5.1 Plus firmware update weighs around 85MB in size.

The update for both the devices is currently released for the users in India and Poland. The company has not shared the timeline for its release in the remaining markets; however, we can expect it to be released for the rest of the markets soon.

To recall, the Nokia 8.1 smartphone is backed by a premium mid-range Snapdragon 710 processor which is clubbed with Adreno 616 GPU and 4GB/6GB of RAM. The device offers a storage space option of 64GB or 128GB which is expandable via microSD card. On the other hand, the Nokia 5.a Plus runs on a MediaTek Helio P60 processor which is clubbed with 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage.

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US Wages Wide-Ranging Campaign to Block Huawei

By Rob Garver March 18, 2019

Over the past several weeks, the U.S. government has launched a seemingly unprecedented campaign to block the Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies from competing in the global rollout of next-generation 5G mobile networking technology, claiming that the company is effectively an arm of the Chinese intelligence services.

In an effort that has included top-level officials from the departments of State, Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, and Commerce, as well as the president himself, the Trump administration has taken steps to curtail Huawei's ability to operate within the U.S. It has also mounted an extraordinary effort to convince U.S. allies to bar the firm from operating on their soil.

Huawei has long been viewed with suspicion and distrust in many corners of the global economy. The company has a documented history of industrial espionage, and its competitiveness on the global stage has been boosted by massive subsidies from the government in Beijing. Still, the scope of the U.S. government's current offensive against the company is remarkable.

"Huawei has been accused of many things for a very long time. This is nothing new. What is unique is the extent of the pressure campaign," said Michael Murphree, assistant professor of International Business at the University of South Carolina's Darla Moore School of Business. "In the grand scheme of international technology competition, this is certainly a very strong effort against a specific firm."

The push to keep Huawei from playing a major role in the rollout of 5G comes at a time when the U.S. and China are in talks to end a costly trade war that the U.S. launched last year with the imposition of tariffs against hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Chinese exports. In another unprecedented move, President Donald Trump has even tied at least one of the government's actions against Huawei  a federal indictment in which the company's chief financial officer has been named  as a potential bargaining chip in trade discussions.

A corporate spokesman for Huawei declined to comment on the Trump Administration's aggressive tactics.

The case against Huawei

U.S. officials cite a number of reasons to treat Huawei with extreme suspicion, some of them well-documented, others less so.

Top of the list is a National Intelligence law passed in China in 2017 that gives government intelligence services broad and open-ended powers to demand the cooperation of businesses operating in China in intelligence gathering efforts. U.S. policymakers argue that this presents an unambiguous threat to national security.

"In America we can't even get Apple to crack open an iPhone for the FBI," Florida Senator Marco Rubio said in a March 13 appearance on Fox Business Network. "In China, Huawei has to give the Chinese anything they ask for." He added, "They should not be in business in America."

And while Huawei has strongly denied that it operates as an arm of the Chinese intelligence services, at least two recent international espionage cases have come uncomfortably close to the firm.

In January, the Polish government arrested a Huawei executive on charges of spying for China. The company itself has not been charged in the case, and Huawei announced that the employee, a sales manager, had been fired.

Early last year, the French newspaper Le Monde Afrique reported that over the course of several years, the computer systems in the Chinese-financed headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa were secretly transmitting data toservers in Shanghai every night, and that listening devices had been discovered implanted in the building. It was later revealed that the primary supplier of information and communications technology to the project had been Huawei.

No proof has ever been put forward that Huawei was involved in the data theft, and African Union officials have declined to go on the record confirming that the information transfers ever occurred.

One of the most frequent concerns expressed by U.S. officials about Huawei is the least substantiated: the idea that the company could install secret "backdoor" access to communications equipment that would give the Chinese government ready access to sensitive communications, or even enable Beijing to shut down communications in another country at will.

It's a claim that Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's 74-year-old founder and president, has personally ridiculed. The government would never make that request, and Huawei would never comply, he told the BBC recently. "Our sales revenues are now hundreds of billions of dollars. We are not going to risk the disgust of our country and our customers all over the world because of something like that. We will lose all our business. I'm not going to take that risk."

The public battle over Huawei's image

The sheer number of fronts on which the U.S. federal government is currently engaging with Huawei, sometimes very aggressively, is notable.

The most high-profile of these is a federal indictment of the company naming its Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou, in an alleged scheme to deceive U.S. officials in order to bypass U.S. sanctions on Iran. Meng was arrested in Canada at the request of U.S. prosecutors, and the Justice Department is seeking her extradition in order to have her face trial in New York. At the same time, a second federal indictment accusing the company of stealing trade secrets, was unsealed in the state of Washington.

It is the Meng case that President Trump has suggested he might use as leverage in ongoing trade talks. Speaking to reporters at the White House last month, he said, "We're going to be discussing all of that during the course of the next couple of weeks. We'll be talking to the U.S. attorneys. We'll be talking to the attorney general. We'll be making that decision. Right now, it's not something we've discussed."

There have also been active efforts to dissuade other countries from doing business with Huawei.

Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned U.S. allies that if they use Huawei telecommunications equipment in their critical infrastructure, they will lose access to some intelligence collected by the United States "If a country adopts this and puts it in some of their critical information systems, we won't be able to share information with them, we won't be able to work alongside them," Pompeo said in an interview with Fox Business Network.

On March 8, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany sent a letter to the German minister for economic affairs, reiterating the U.S. government's concern about the potential for backdoors in Huawei systems and the threat of tampering during complex software updates. He said that U.S. intelligence sharing would be significantly scaled back if Germany uses Huawei products in its new telecommunications systems.

In February, the U.S. government sent a large delegation to MWC Barcelona, the telecommunications industry's biggest trade show, where they publicly excoriated the company as "duplicitous and deceitful." The U.S. delegation included officials from the departments of State, Commerce, and Defense, as well as Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. Also there were officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development, who made it clear that foreign aid dollars from the U.S. will not be available to help fund purchases from Chinese telecom firms.

In addition, a law signed by President Trump last year bars the federal government from buying equipment from Huawei and smaller Chinese telecom company ZTE. Trump has additionally floated the possibility of an executive order that would block Huawei from any participation at all in U.S 5G networks.

Huawei is fighting back, filing a lawsuit this month that claims it was unfairly banned from U.S. government computer networks. Deng Cheng, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, said the lawsuit may be aimed at determining what information the U.S. government is using to make its case.

"There is information that the intelligence community may have that isn't necessarily going to be made public," he said. "What is admissible in court is not always the same as the information that is actually available. So I'm not really sure how this court case will even be adjudicated."

Huawei's lawsuit is likely also partly aimed at improving the firm's reputation at a time when it is under siege by American officials.

The risk of pushback from China

At a time when the United States relations with even its closest traditional allies is under strain, Washington's seemingly unilateral demand that a major global supplier be effectively shut out of an enormous marketplace is an audacious request.

For one thing, it is complicated by the fact that for countries and companies anxious to take advantage of 5G wireless technology, there may not be a ready substitute for the Chinese firm.

This seems to be reflected in recent reports that U.S. allies, in Europe, India, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere, are showing real resistance to U.S, demands. A report in the New York Times late Sunday said that in Europe, the general sense is that any risk posed by Huawei is manageable through monitoring and selective use of the company's products. The story noted that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's response to the U.S. was a terse message that Germans would be "defining our standards for ourselves."

And of course, there is always the possibility  even the likelihood  of Chinese retaliation against countries that accede to the United States' requests. And in China, where the media is largely controlled by the Communist Party, and access to international news services is sharply limited, that retaliation would likely have widespread public support.

"The very strong perception is that Huawei is a great Chinese company that has done extraordinary things to move to the global frontier, in some respects to the head of the pack, and it is being unfairly treated and held back by the United States for specious reasons," said Lester Ross, the partner-in-charge of the Beijing office of U.S. law firm Wilmer Hale.

VOA's Xu Ning contributed to this report.

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March 18, 2019

News Release

Press Operations

Release No. NR-056-19

Readout of Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan's Meeting with French Minister of Armed Forces Florence Parly

Acting Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Charles E. Summers Jr. provided the following readout:

Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan met with French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly today at the Pentagon to reaffirm the defense relationship with the United States' oldest ally.

The leaders discussed a broad range of defense issues, including U.S. commitment to the long-term destruction of ISIS and continuing commitment to leading the global D-ISIS coalition.

Secretary Shanahan and Minister Parly agreed to continue working together as coalition partners to address security and stability in northeast Syria.

https://dod.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1788365/

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March 18, 2019

News

By Jim Garamone

Defense.gov

NATO Alliance Marking 70 Years, Looks to Counter Threats

WASHINGTON -- As NATO prepares to mark its 70th anniversary, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance may have changed many times, but it has not compromised its foundational principle: the commitment of its member nations to protect and defend one another.

Stoltenberg spoke on the future of NATO enlargement at an event hosted by the German Marshall Fund think tank today in Brussels.

On April 4, NATO will mark 70 years since the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. Other allies are marking significant anniversaries as well, the secretary general said. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO 20 years ago. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia became members 15 years ago. Albania and Croatia joined 10 years ago. And NATO's newest member, North Macedonia, will complete the accession process later this year or early next year.

Need for An Alliance

NATO grew out of the experiences of the early 20th century. The First and Second World Wars were born out of conflicts that had been nearly constant on the continent for hundreds of years. "For most of Europe's history, conflict was our constant companion," Stoltenberg said. "The last 70 years have been the exception. And we should not take peace for granted."

The alliance was also a response to aggression from the Soviet Union. It banded together like-minded nations in a defensive alliance, with Article 5 being the heart of the treaty: an attack on one member nation was the same as an attack on all.

Twelve countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, but NATO was always open to more joining.

"NATO enlargement is not a provocation," Stoltenberg said. "We respect the right of every sovereign nation to decide their own destiny, without force and without interference, whether they decide to join NATO or not. We believe in a world without spheres of influence."

European Transformation

The secretary general called 1989 the year when Europe transformed. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union started to dissolve and the ideals of democracy and free markets taking hold.

"NATO's open door and the enlargement of the European Union have helped spread freedom, democracy and human rights, and we must continue to work hard every day to uphold those values," he said.

"Open door" refers to Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that NATO membership is open to any "European state in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area."

"Let us remember that alliances do not stand in the way of strong and independent nations," the secretary general said. "NATO exists precisely to ensure the freedom and prosperity in which sovereign countries and peoples can thrive."

The new member nations are full players in the alliance, Stoltenberg said. Their troops are deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq and are helping to ensure peace in the Balkans.

"Many of you lead by example when it comes to burden sharing within our alliance, already investing 2 percent of your [gross domestic product] in defense," he said. "NATO's open door policy serves both our values and interests. It's a positive driver for reform. It extends our shared area of peace and stability. And it enriches our alliance with new voices, new experiences, and new capabilities."

NATO Growth

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has nearly doubled its membership  from 16 member nations in 1989, to 30 when North Macedonia becomes a full member. "NATO's door remains open," the secretary general said. "We continue to work with the three aspirant countries  Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia and Ukraine  to bring them closer.

"At the same time we cannot be complacent," he continued. "We cannot squander the hard-won gains of those who came before us. They knew that history does not just happen. But that it takes courage and conviction to shape our world and defend our values."

NATO is changing yet again, Stoltenberg said, and is facing a more complex and unpredictable world.

"This is what has made us the most successful alliance in history," he said. "Faced with the greatest security challenges in a generation, we are increasing the readiness of our forces, investing more in our collective defense and modernizing our alliance. NATO remains both an anchor of stability and a beacon of hope."

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March 18, 2019

News

By Jim Garamone

Defense.gov

Shanahan, French Counterpart Discuss Syria, Iraq During Pentagon Meeting

WASHINGTON -- Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan welcomed French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly to the Pentagon today for talks centering on activities in the Middle East.

The minister received a 19-gun salute upon her arrival at the building's River Entrance, and the Marine Band played both nations' national anthems.

In their meeting, Shanahan said, he and Parly would discuss their common efforts in Iraq and in Syria. France has been supporting efforts "indirectly in Syria and directly in Iraq," he said. "I do have some further comments on Syria: We're working closely with the Turks. They are a strategic partner. More importantly, we are on plan for a drawdown in Syria. We are in close coordination with our [Defeat-ISIS] coalition partners on the real details of the plan."

The secretary said he is ready to answer questions that France has about the progress in the region and what the American actions will be there moving forward.

Shanahan has met with Parly on other occasions since becoming acting secretary in January, with meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels and at the Munich Security Conference in February. Shanahan said he has been looking forward to the opportunity to have more in-depth discussions with the French.

France is the United States' oldest ally  without French help in the American Revolution, the 13 colonies could still be part of the United Kingdom. Shanahan said France is America's "partner of choice," and he noted that French and American service members serve together every day in many climes and places throughout the world.

French leadership is essential in many areas of the globe, including the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific region, Africa and, of course, Europe. Shanahan praised France's efforts to deter Russian aggression. "We are staunch partners in countering violent extremism in all corners of the globe," he said at the start of the meeting between the defense leaders.

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22 Afghan forces killed in Taliban attack

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Kabul, March 18, IRNA -- At least 22 Afghan forces were killed in an attack attributed to the Taliban terrorist group, a local official said Monday.

Rahmatollah Qaysari, Governor of Qaysar District in the northern Afghan Province of Faryab told reporters that armed forces affiliated to militant group of Taliban raided the government security headquarters overnight, killing 16 troops and six volunteer forces and injuring 10 more.

He also noted that some 40 militants were killed in fire exchange with Afghan forces.

Located faraway from the center of province, Qaysar has always been a target for Taliban attacks.

As it is getting warmer and Nowruz holidays approach, Taliban adds to its attacks across Afghanistan.

The group attacked Bala Murghab in the northwestern Province of Badghis in the same way as Faryab 10 days ago. They took control of some parts of the region and made the government forces to retreat.

Spokesman of the district's governor told the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) that some 100 forces have withdrew from Bala Murghab.

Afghan media reported today that the forces have fled to Turkmenistan, and they will enter Herat from Turghondi border crossing.

9156**2044

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Secretary General praises NATO's Open Door policy at enlargement anniversary event

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

18 Mar. 2019

NATO's Open Door policy extends our shared area of peace and stability and enriches our Alliance with new voices, new experiences, and new capabilities, said Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. He delivered a keynote speech today (18 March) at a German Marshall Fund (GMF) event titled "NATO at seventy  post-Cold War enlargement and the future of Transatlantic security".

This year, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland celebrate 20 years since joining NATO; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia mark 15 years since becoming members, and Albania and Croatia  the 10th anniversary of their accession. The Secretary General praised their "great commitment to our Alliance". This includes the contribution of brave and professional troops to NATO missions and operations from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Western Balkans, and to NATO's multinational forces in the eastern part of the Alliance. Mr. Stoltenberg also paid tribute to those Allies who lead by example when it comes to burden-sharing by investing 2 percent of their GDP in defence.

"NATO's Open Door and the enlargement of the European Union have helped spread freedom, democracy and human rights. And we must continue to work hard every day to uphold those values," the Secretary General said.

"NATO enlargement is not a provocation. We respect the right of every sovereign nation to decide their own destiny, without force and without interference," the Secretary General said, confirming that the Alliance's door remains open. "We are welcoming one new member, the Republic of North Macedonia, already an invitee at NATO's table," he added.

The GMF event saw discussions and speeches by politicians, diplomats and senior analysts, including Radmila Sekerinska, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of North Macedonia. The foreign ministers from the celebrating countries, diplomats, business representatives and academics an also attended the conference.

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SECNAV Names Future Destroyer in Honor of US Navy Medal of Honor Recipient

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS190318-03

Release Date: 3/18/2019 11:56:00 AM

From Secretary of the Navy Public Affairs

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer has named a future Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, DDG 130, in honor of Medal of Honor recipient, Hospital Corpsman Master Chief William Charette.

Charette, a native of Ludington, Michigan, joined the Navy in 1951 and served in the Korean War in the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) as a hospital corpsman attached to Company F, Third Platoon, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

"The actions of Hospital Corpsman William Charette will neither be forgotten or diminished," Spencer said. "Charette put himself at extreme risk during intense combat to render aid to Marines in need. His efforts saved lives and I am honored that his legacy will live on in the future USS William Charette (DDG 130)."

Charette was presented the Medal of Honor for his actions on March 27, 1953, when Chinese soldiers in North Korea attacked and overran two of three Marine hill outposts. During a counterattack, an enemy grenade landed near Charette who was providing aid to a wounded Marine. Charette placed himself on top of the Marine to shield him from the explosion. The blast rendered Charette unconscious but when he awoke he continued to aid Marines, including using torn parts of his uniform in order to dress battle wounds, his own battle vest to shield a wounded Marine, and exposing himself to incoming rounds in order to carry wounded Marines to safety.

All five enlisted Sailors who received the Medal of Honor for actions during the Korean War were Navy hospital corpsmen attached to the Marine Corps. Charette was the only living recipient. Charette passed on March 18, 2012, due to complications from heart surgery.

Arleigh-Burke class destroyers conduct a variety of operations from peacetime presence and crisis response to sea control and power projection. The future USS William Charette (DDG 130) will be a Flight III destroyer, capable of fighting air, surface and subsurface battles simultaneously, and will contain a combination of offensive and defensive weapon systems designed to support maritime warfare, including integrated air and missile defense and vertical launch capabilities.

The ship will be constructed at Bath Iron Works, a division of General Dynamics in Bath, Maine. The ship will be 509 feet long, have a beam length of 59 feet and be capable of operating at speeds in excess of 30 knots.

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NECC Digs into Exercise Pacific Blitz 2019

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS190318-02

Release Date: 3/18/2019 10:41:00 AM

From Navy Expeditionary Combat Command Public Affairs

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (NNS) -- Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) forces began participation in the joint Exercise Pacific Blitz 2019 (PacBlitz19), March 12.

PacBlitz19 is an opportunity for U.S. forces to increase maritime readiness to be prepared for real-world crisis situations. The exercise provides realistic, relevant training necessary for effective global crisis response expected of the Navy and Marine Corps.

The Navy expeditionary forces (NEF) of NECC support the Marine Expeditionary Forces and the fleet by establishing theater logistics through the development of advanced naval bases (ANB). These forces are uniquely capable of coming from the sea, and operating effectively in underdeveloped conditions ashore.

During PacBlitz19, the NEF are distributed throughout installations in and off the coast of Southern California, to include Port Hueneme, Naval Air Station Point Mugu, Vandenberg Air Force Base, and Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

During the exercise, NECC forces are divided into two task elements; the first task element is led by a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 5 detachment and provides direct support to 1st Marine Logistics Group in a simulated ANB on Naval Air Station Point Mugu and Port Hueneme. Task element one is composed of Underwater Construction Team 2, Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit 303 (CBMU-303), U.S. Coast Guard Port Security Unit 312, and an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 11 platoon.

Task element two is led by Coastal Riverine Group 1 (CRG-1) and provides direct support to 1st Marine Logistics Group in a simulated ANB on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. It is composed of Coastal Riverine Squadrons 1, 3 and 11, NMCB-5, CBMU-303 and Navy Cargo Handling Battalion 1.

"Planning over the phone with Construction Battalion Mobile Unit 303 and Coastal Riverine Group 1, and then getting out here and seeing their full capability, is definitely opening my eyes to the fact that NECC has a few more toys than what the Marine Corps has," said 1st Lt. Joshua C. Geidel, Combat Logistics Regiment 1, Combat Operations Center watch officer. "Their mission set is definitely applicable for this type of environment and will be relied upon as we continue to go forward."

Setup for the exercise in Camp Pendleton was not without difficulty as rain showers combined with overly saturated ground proved difficult for heavy equipment and machinery to traverse.

"When we come out and do exercises like this, we don't always know what to expect when we hit the ground, so one thing I'm very impressed with about my Sailors is their level of ingenuity and flexibility when they're faced with different problems," said Chief Engineering Aide Zachary A. Cunningham, CBMU-303 officer in charge. "They start thinking outside the box and find a way to get the job done."

PacBlitz19 is comprised of Sailors, Marines and Coastguardsmen who come together as a team to complete the mission.

"We've got a lot of different rates and a lot of different ideas but we all have the same goal," said CBMU-303 Builder 2nd Class Ian R. Masters. "We're integrating our standard operating procedures and building that cohesion for NECC."

Masters also added that training in adversity will prepare them for working in any conditions as the adverse weather has forced the different commands to overcome unexpected obstacles just as they might find in a real warfighting environment.

"I think this is a great opportunity because it'll be more of a learning exercise than it is an exercise of things we know how to do," said Geidel. "There are definitely going to be mistakes, but any steps backward will ultimately advance us forward in concept development."

The NEF will be conducting field training exercises which include military base construction and maintenance, expeditionary medical facility construction and maintenance, port security, expeditionary rapid airfield damage repair, port damage assessment and repair, support to undersea warfare, and expeditionary ordnance reload.

"We have a mission laid out in front of us and we exhaust all efforts in getting that done," said Cunningham. "Seabees have a motto and that's 'can do,' so we don't say we 'can't' do anything."

The exercise will conclude March 26.

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USS Chief Arrives in Manila

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS190318-19

Release Date: 3/18/2019 4:10:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jordan Crouch,

MANILA, Philippines (NNS) -- The Avenger-class mine countermeasures ship USS Chief (MCM 14) arrived in Manila, Philippines, March 17, for a port visit.

Chief is visiting Manila while operating in U.S. 7th Fleet to work with our Philippines partners to strengthen regional security and stability, and enhance interoperability.

"The crew of Chief is thrilled at the opportunity to visit Manila," said Lt. Cmdr. Fred Crayton, commanding officer of Chief. "Our camaraderie with the Philippines is one of our most enduring relationships in the Indo-Pacific region. The Filipino people are some of our closest friends, partners, and allies in which we share a connection based on shared sacrifices for democracy, human rights, and strong societal ties."

Chief Sailors will have a chance to visit the city and interact with the Filipino community and Philippine Navy.

For one Chief Sailor, it is the chance to return home and visit friends and family.

"I'm pretty excited about returning," said Culinary Specialist 1st Class Angelo Dano, who was born and raised in the Philippines for the first 20 years of his life before he moved to the U.S. in 2003. "I'm going to surprise my two daughters who are visiting some of my family in Manila while we're in port."

Dano joined the Navy as an undesignated seaman a few months after arriving in the U.S. to follow his grandfather's path in life, who retired as a chief storekeeper.

"My grandpa told me the best way to see the world for free was to join the Navy," said Dano.

He went on to earn his culinary specialist rate in 2006.

"My experience in the Navy has been good to me," said Dano. "I have been able to travel around the world and experience new things."

USS Chief, part of Mine Countermeasures Squadron 7, is operating in the Indo-Pacific region to enhance interoperability with partners and serve as a ready-response platform for contingency operations.



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British army servicing Saudi jets bombing civilians in Yemen: Minister

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 07:30PM

A British government minister has admitted that his country is servicing fighter jets supplied to Saudi Arabia which are being used in an indiscriminate bombardment of civilians in Yemen.

Armed Forces Minister Mark Lancaster told the parliament on Monday that Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) was providing "engineering support" and "generic training" to Saudi Arabian military in its war on its southern neighbor.

Lancaster was responding to a question by opposition Labour Party lawmaker Lloyd Russell-Moyle, on military personnel seconded to BAE Systems, a major British arms dealing company, in Saudi Arabia.

"RAF personnel on secondment to BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia have provided routine engineering support for UK-supplied aircraft operated by the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF), including aircraft engaged in military operations in Yemen," said the minister.

The reply came as Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP, had alleged that British support for Saudi Arabia's military has enabled the kingdom to keep its devastating air war on Yemen going.

The admission to offering of direct military support to Saudis in the midst of the war on Yemen comes despite previous statements by UK government officials who had denied London had any role in the plight of the Yemenis affected by the Saudi war.

More than 15,000 Yemenis, an absolute majority of them civilians, have been killed in four years of Saudi Arabia's illegal war on their nation.

This comes as UK-supplied weapons and aircraft have repeatedly been used to bomb schools, hospitals and other types of civilian infrastructure in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country.

Many have called on the London to totally ban arms sale to Saudi Arabia as the kingdom faces growing number of accusations about its records on human rights.

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Sexual misconduct allegations keep UN in spotlight

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 06:51PM

Allegations of sexual misconduct, namely exploitation and abuse, keep the United Nations in the spotlight.

In an annual report to the UN General Assembly circulated on Monday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted the fact that there has been an increase in the number of such allegations against those UN personnel employed in areas other than UN missions and against staff of organizations that implement UN programs.

Women and children make up the largest group of alleged victims.

In 2018, there were 94 allegations against UN personnel and 109 -- up from 25 in 2017 -- targeting staff of local organizations that work with the UN worldwide.

The World Food Programme received 19 allegations of sex abuse against its staff and partner organizations in 2018, compared to 26 over the previous 12 years.

The UN refugee agency, also known as UNHCR, reported 34 allegations in 2018 compared to 19 in 2017. There were 15 allegations at the UN children's agency UNICEF last year compared to eight in 2017.

On the other hand, in cases of rape and exploitation involving UN peacekeepers there was a drop down to 54 in 2018 from 62 the previous year and 104 in 2016. The majority of claims in 2018 came from the UN missions in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

A media report quoting staffers said last year that sexual harassment was widespread and there is a culture of impunity for the perpetrators at UN offices around the world.

Guterres has vowed to stamp out sexual abuse following a string of cases over recent years that have severely tarnished the image of peacekeepers and staff.

The UN comprises more than 90,000 staff and over 100,000 uniformed personnel.

Highlighting the "zero-tolerance" policy adopted by the UN, Guterres said he has embarked on "a cultural transformation" to eliminate sexual abuse and exploitation throughout the UN system.

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Iran not involved in Turkey operation against PKK: Military source

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 04:12PM

An informed Iranian military source has denied Turkish interior minister's comments that Tehran carried out a joint operation with Ankara against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant group.

An informed source at the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces told IRNA on Monday that Turkey's army had launched an operation against the PKK along its eastern borders earlier in the day, adding that the Iranian Armed Forces have not been involved in the operation.

The source, however, said, "The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will severely counter any group that intends to create insecurity in our country."

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said earlier on Monday that Turkey and Iran had carried out a joint operation against PKK militants.

"We started carrying out an operation with Iran against the PKK on our eastern border this morning (and) will announce the result," Turkey's news agency Anadolu quoted Soylu as saying.

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.

In January 2018, Ankara launched a cross-border military operation inside Syria, code-named Operation Olive Branch, with the declared aim of eliminating the Syrian Kurdish militants of the People's Protection Units (YPG).

The YPG forms the backbone of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an anti-Damascus alliance of predominantly Kurdish militants supported by the United States.

Ankara views the YPG as a terrorist organization and the Syrian branch of the PKK.

More than 40,000 people have been killed during the three-decade conflict between Turkey and the autonomy-seeking militant group.

Iran has had its own struggle with the PKK's Iranian offshoot, the so-called Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), which has waged several terrorist attacks in western Iran over the past years.

The terror group carries out attacks in parts of Iran's West Azarbaijan province which borders Iraq, Turkey, and Armenia.

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Israel depriving Palestinians of access to clean water supplies, stripping their land of minerals: UN rights expert

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 02:04PM

A United Nations human rights investigator says the Israeli regime is depriving millions of Palestinians of access to clean water supplies while extracting natural resources in the occupied territories "in an apparent act of pillage."

Michael Lynk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said on Monday that Israel "continues full-steam with settlement expansion" in the West Bank irrespective of an international outcry and UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which calls on the regime to "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem" al-Quds.

Lynk further noted that 20,000 to 25,000 people were added to the settler population in the occupied West Bank every year.

"In Gaza, the collapse of the coastal aquifer, the only natural source of drinking water in the Strip and now almost entirely unfit for human consumption, is contributing to a significant health crisis among the two million Palestinians living there," the UN official pointed out.

Despite the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza in 2005, Tel Aviv has maintained a "hermetic seal of air, sea and land blockade" around the coastal enclave, Lynk said.

"For nearly five million Palestinians living under occupation, the degradation of their water supply, the exploitation of their natural resources and the defacing of their environment are symptomatic of the lack of any meaningful control they have over their daily lives," he noted.

Lynk went on to say that Israeli quarry companies extracted some 17 million tonnes of stone each year, "notwithstanding strict prohibitions in international law against a military power economically exploiting an occupied territory."

"The Dead Sea and its plentiful natural resources, part of, which lies within the occupied Palestinian territory, is off-limits to any Palestinian development while Israeli companies are permitted to harvest the minerals in an apparent act of pillage," he said.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi, urged Israel to put an end to "the theft of Palestinian property."

"Israel must stop this pillaging, what Israel is doing in the occupied territories is very far from its obligations under international law and treaties. This is more even than apartheid," he said.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said on October 2 last year that some 89 percent of the Gaza Strip population did not have access to safe drinking water.

Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards as well as unprecedented unemployment and poverty.

Israel has also launched several wars on the Palestinian sliver, the last of which began in early July 2014 and ended in late August the same year. The Israeli military aggression killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians and injured over 11,100 others.

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Algeria unions refuse to back new PM's govt. formation efforts

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 11:01AM

Over a dozen Algerian unions have refused to support the newly-appointed prime minister's efforts to establish a new administration aimed at appeasing the protesters demanding the resignation of ailing President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika.

Noureddine Bedoui was appointed the new Algerian premier last week after his predecessor, Ahmed Ouyahia, resigned in the wake of weeks-long mass rallies.

Bedoui promised to form an inclusive technocratic government. That promise has, however, failed to soothe the protesters.

Leaders of 13 independent unions on Monday rejected the premier's call for them to enter negotiations.

"We will not hold discussions with this system, we belong to the people and the people said 'No' to the system," Boualem Amora, one of the leaders of the education sector unions, told reporters.

On March 11, Bouteflika bowed to the mass demonstrations against his 20-year rule and abandoned a decision to seek a fifth term, but he stopped short of stepping down.

He also canceled the upcoming elections without setting a new date, meaning he will likely remain in power for some time. The decision drew fire from the protesters, who took to the streets again.

The 82-year-old wheelchair-bound leader is reportedly in poor health after suffering a stroke in 2013.

Algerians have barely seen their ailing president since then.

The demonstrators are also angry about corruption and secrecy in Algeria's power structure.

The protesters say they disapprove of the country's old political system, dominated by veterans of the 1954-62 independence war against France, including the president himself.

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US to keep 1,000 troops in Syria despite Trump's full withdrawal plan: Report

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 07:42AM

The US plans to keep about 1,000 troops in Syria, despite an earlier announcement by President Donald Trump to completely withdraw them from the Arab country, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The reversal comes after talks with Turkey as well as US-backed Kurdish forces and European allies failed to produce an agreement on a "safe zone" in northeast Syria where terrorists are based in their last bastion.

Trump has suggested the creation of a 30-kilometer safe zone along Turkey's border with Syria, but has not specified who would create, enforce or pay for it, or where it would be located.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned the United States and allies operating along the Syria border that any safe zone in the area should be under Ankara's control.

Citing American officials, the Journal on Sunday said the US now plans to keep working with Kurdish militants in Syria, despite Turkish threats to launch an offensive against them. The proposal, the report said, may keep up to 1,000 US forces spread across Syria.

The evolving discussions represent a shift away from Trump's decision to withdraw all American troops from Syria, the newspaper said.

Trump announced his decision to withdraw all 2,000 US troops from northeastern Syria on December 19. The decision shocked allies and top US officials who see the withdrawal a victory for the Syrian government.

The pullout was initially supposed to be completed within weeks, but it slowed down as opponents of the pullout frantically lobbied for troops to stay.

Last month, the White House announced that around 200 American troops would remain in Syria on a "peacekeeping" mission.

The Journal said members of Trump's national security team had urged him to secure assurances that Turkey wouldn't attack US-backed militants once American troops pulled out.

The US denied the new report, saying plans for a residual force of around 200 troops had not changed.

"A claim reported this evening by a major US newspaper that the US military is developing plans to keep nearly 1,000 US troops in Syria is factually incorrect," General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said.

"There has been no change to the plan announced in February and we continue to implement the President's direction to draw down US forces to a residual presence," he said in a statement.

Dunford also said the US was continuing to "conduct detailed military planning with the Turkish General Staff to address Turkish security concerns along the Turkey-Syria border."

Turkey considers US-backed YPG militants a terrorist organization and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an autonomous region inside Turkey since 1984.

The Turkish military launched two cross-border operations in northern Syria, the first dubbed "Euphrates Shield" in August 2016 and the second code-named "Olive Branch" in January 2018 with the alleged aim of keeping Kurdish militants at bay.

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Venezuela's Maduro plans deep government restructuring: Vice president

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 07:25AM

After tackling a massive nationwide blackout, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro is planning a "deep restructuring" of his government to protect the country in the face of an ongoing political crisis fueled by the US-backed opposition, his deputy says.

In a tweet on Sunday Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said Maduro "has asked the entire executive Cabinet to put their roles up for review in a deep restructuring of the methods and functions of the Bolivarian government, to protect the fatherland of Bolivar and Chavez from any threat."

She was referring to independence leader Simon Bolivar and the late iconic president, Hugo Chavez.

The Latin American country is in the midst of a political crisis, which broke out in late January after opposition politician and president of the defunct National Assembly Juan Guaido abruptly declared himself "interim president" of Venezuela, challenging the outcome of last year's presidential election, in which Maduro emerged victorious.

Guaido's bid was quickly recognized by the US followed by dozens of its regional and European allies. Washington slapped sanctions on the Venezuelan oil sector in support of the opposition figure and went as far as threatening a military option to topple the Caracas government.

Maduro has censured Guaido's moves as a coup attempt masterminded by the US against the elected government of Venezuela, calling on the opposition figure to abandon his coup-mongering strategies and engage in negotiations with the Caracas government.

The latest announcement came days after nearly most of the country was swept by a massive blackout, which Maduro blamed on a cyber attack by the US government and acts of sabotage by the opposition at home as part of their regime change attempts.

The government managed last week to restore power to most parts of the country.

Maduro said Friday that he had authorized the formation of a new military unit tasked with protecting the country's key infrastructure following the blackout.

Meanwhile, Guaido started a tour of Venezuela's towns and rural towns in a fresh attempt to garner support in his bid for power and organize more anti-government protests.

He toured his hometown La Guaira in Vargas State on Monday, visiting a market and the streets of a neighborhood before giving a speech in front of his supporters.

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Kyrgyz-Tajik Negotiators Reach Agreement, Reopen Border Crossing After Deadly Clashes

By RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service March 18, 2019

A disputed section of the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan reopened on March 18 following the successful conclusion of four days of bilateral talks.

The border had been closed following violent clashes between locals on March 13 that left two Tajik citizens dead and three Kyrgyz citizens hospitalized.

Locals from two Kyrgyz villages , Ak-Sai and Kok-Tash, who had been evacuated following the violence have returned to their homes.

The negotiators also reached an agreement on the construction of local roads, which was a cause of the initial dispute.

"The roads will be opened today and there will be no checkpoints," Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Jenish Razakov told journalists after the signing of the agreement.

"The construction of roads needed by the population will be continued," Razakov also said. "We discussed many problems. But the main thing is that we have achieved mutual understanding and, taking into account the interests of both countries, reached an agreement."

Razakov headed the Kyrgyz delegation to the talks, while Tajik Deputy Prime Minister Azim Ibrohim led the Tajik team.

The two sides also agreed to jointly investigate the March 13 violence and prosecute those responsible.

The dispute occurred in the volatile Ferghana Valley area, where the borders of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan meet in a complicated network of exclaves.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyz-tajik-negotiators -reach-agreement-reopen-border-crossing- after-deadly-clashes/29828634.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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Former Kyrgyz President Atambaev Says He Is Sorry For Bringing His Successor To Power

By RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service March 18, 2019

Former Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev has issued a public apology for helping to bring his successor to power and vowed "to try to rectify my mistake," likening his onetime ally to an autocrat.

Atambaev's March 17 statement in Bishkek threatened to take his bitter feud with President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, the former prime minister he steered into office in 2016, to a new level.

Speaking at a public gathering marking the 17th anniversary of deadly violence against protesters in the southern town of Aksy, Atambaev accused Jeenbekov of creating an autocratic governing style based on family ties in the Central Asian country.

"I apologize that while all my life fighting against autocratic regimes, I failed to see the true inner self of that person -- and seeing only his mask, I brought him and his family to power," Atambaev said of Jeenbekov.

He also issued what appeared to be a veiled warning to Jeenbekov, saying that "if one day the people wake up, nobody can stop them."

There was no immediate direct response from Jeenbekov, who visited the Aksy district to commemorate the victims of the violence there and said he will "never allow the creation of autocratic clans in Kyrgyzstan."

On March 17, 2002, violence erupted at a demonstration in support of a jailed politician and police killed at least five protesters.

The incident sparked widespread protests. It was the first deadly dispersal of demonstrators since Kyrgyzstan won independence in the Soviet collapse of 1991 and contributed to the anger that led to the ouster of President Askar Akaev in 2005.

Atambaev, who was limited to a single six-year presidential term by the constitution, vocally backed Jeenbekov in an October 2017 presidential election.

But the two have exchanged public accusations of incompetence and lack of professionalism in recent months.

Several of Atambaev's close allies were arrested on corruption charges just months after Jeenbekov's inauguration.

Atambaev heads the now-fractious ruling Social Democratic Party (SDPK), and Jeenbekov is a member.

Some Kyrgyz politicians have said that Atambaev, who enjoys immunity as an ex-president, must also face justice for alleged corruption while in office.

In October, Kyrgyzstan's Supreme Court ruled that the immunity enjoyed by the country's former presidents is unconstitutional.

In December, parliament gave preliminary approval to a bill that would eliminate immunity for ex-presidents, potentially opening the path for Atambaev's prosecution.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/former-kyrgyz-president -atambaev-says-he-is-sorry-for-bringing-his- successor-to-power/29827621.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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Beijing Plans to Build 'City' on 'Blueprint' Island in South China Sea

Sputnik News

23:45 18.03.2019

The Chinese government has plans for a large military settlement on a reclaimed reef in the contested Paracel Islands, where adversaries such as the US strongly oppose Chinese expansion.

The plan for an "island city" on "Woody Island" or "Yongxing" in the Paracels, 185 miles from China's Hainan Island (of which Beijing's ownership is not in dispute), was announced by a Communist Party official for Sansha prefecture on Friday. The development would turn Woody Island, along with nearby Tree Island and Drummond Island  known by the Chinese as Zhaoshu and Jinqing  into a "national key strategic service and logistics base," the South China Morning Post reported Monday.

The statement was vague, SCMP noted, only saying, "We need to carefully plan the overall development of the islands and reefs based on their different functions, taking into account their complementary relationship" and "take active steps and demonstrate their initiatives" to provide a "satisfactory report card" to the party leadership.

Only a single square mile in size, Woody Island is the administrative center of Sansha prefecture, a Chinese territory established in 2012 to govern the Paracels. A sizeable part of the island's territory is covered in an 8,850-foot long runway that can handle most People's Liberation Army aircraft, but the rest of the island already houses a sizeable settlement of 1,000 people.

Last May, the Washington, DC-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative noted that Chinese development of other South China Sea islands followed the "blueprint" established at Woody Island: harbor dredging followed by airfield construction; then the building of hangars, radar and communication infrastructure; and finally the deployment of anti-air and anti-ship missiles to the location.

"With similar platforms now seen on the Big Three, it is reasonable to look at other recent Woody Island deployments as signs of things to come at Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi Reefs," AMTI said at the time.

Beijing claims ownership of 90 percent of the South China Sea, including the Paracel Islands, but those claims are disputed by a number of nations, including several other Southeast Asian nations with overlapping claims. The US and its allies, such as the UK and Japan, have engaged in defiant Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS), during which military vessels ignore China's claims of sea as their territorial waters and sail on as if those claims did not exist. This has led to some tense confrontations, including one last year in which US and Chinese destroyers were only a couple of dozen yards apart, Sputnik reported.

Last week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized "China's illegal island-building in international waterways" and accusing the country of coercing other nations, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, into giving up some of their claims over the waterway  and the substantial hydrocarbon reserves believed to lie beneath it.

However, Shi Yinhong, a professor specializing in US-China relations at Renmin University of China, told SCMP the Woody Island development was a response to US provocations, not their cause, but cautioned that exacerbating the South China Sea situation vis-a-vis Washington was not Beijing's top priority.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said last week that plans were progressing between Beijing and the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to arrive on a mutual "code of conduct" for the region by 2021, AP reported. Four of the nations involved in South China Sea territorial disputes are part of ASEAN: Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. Taiwan also lays claim to the same territory as China.

"The road map is already very clear," Wang said, noting that China's "sincerity and sense of responsibility" compelled it to develop the modus vivendi.

 Sputnik

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Massive Blackout Hits Venezuela's Caracas Again, Reason Behind Outage Unknown

Sputnik News

20:33 18.03.2019(updated 21:03 18.03.2019)

CARACAS (Sputnik) - A massive power outage occurred again in various parts of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and nearby localities, eyewitnesses of the incident told Sputnik on Monday.

The blackout is reported mainly by the inhabitants of East Caracas, namely the districts of Altamira, La Urbina, El Cafetal, El Rosal, Los Palos Grandes, and others.

In the municipality of Chacao, where a number of foreign embassies and large hotels are located, power outages were registered on Sunday evening. According to a Sputnik correspondent, as of 10.30 a.m. (14.30 GMT), there was no electricity in this part of the city either inside houses or on the street.

The causes of the latest blackout are still unknown. However, a number of media outlets cite an explosion, which allegedly occurred at an electrical substation in the industrial area of Cloris east of Caracas, as a possible cause. The Venezuelan authorities have not yet commented on these reports.

On March 7, a massive power outage swept through the majority of Venezuelan states, leaving the nation  over 30 million people  without access to basic amenities, including water and medical care at hospitals. National electricity supplier Corpoelec insisted that the blackout was the result of sabotage at the major Guri hydroelectric power plant in the country's east. Maduro has pinned the blame for the crisis on the United States, while Washington has denied having a role in the blackout.

On Wednesday, Venezuelan Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said that power had been fully restored across Venezuela.

 Sputnik

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US Not Seeking to Build Military Base, Station Troops in Slovakia - Ambassador

Sputnik News

17:19 18.03.2019

BRATISLAVA (Sputnik) - The United States, which is now negotiating a defense cooperation agreement with Slovakia, has no intention to build a US military base in the central European nation or permanently station its troops there, US Ambassador in Bratislava Adam Sterling said on Monday.

"The United States and Slovakia are negotiating an agreement on defense cooperation We are not seeking to construct a US military base in Slovakia, and we are not negotiating the permanent presence of US troops in your country [Slovakia]," Sterling said in a video, published on the US Embassy's official Twitter account.

According to the ambassador, the agreement will allow the United States to invest in Slovakia's military infrastructure, which he said would "support the security of Slovakia and all our NATO allies."

"Such investments would also likely lead to contracts for Slovak companies and good jobs for Slovak workers," he added.

Last week, the Slovak Defence Ministry announced it would no longer participate in the negotiations concerning the financial aid as part of the defense cooperation agreement with the United States to modernize Slovakia's two military airports.

The Slovak Spectator newspaper reported, citing the Defense Ministry spokeswoman, that the sovereignty of Slovakia may be "threatened" if legal conditions for the activities of foreign armed forces in Slovakia for an unlimited time were created.

However, the Slovak Foreign Ministry reportedly said Bratislava and Washington were not discussing the permanent presence of US soldiers in Slovakia, which has been a member of NATO since 2004.

 Sputnik

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Fort Trump Could Be Traded for Additional US Troop Deployment in Poland Report

Sputnik News

14:24 18.03.2019

Despite Polish politicians repeatedly confirming the construction of a new military base at the country's own expense, Washington has been cautious in making promises and so far has only been considering taking up Warsaw's offer to deploy troops.

Spokesman for the Polish president, Blazej Spychalski, said in an interview with RMF FM radio that Fort Trump will not necessary be a base like "second Malbork [22nd air base]".

"The point is to increase the US military presence in Poland and amount of military equipment. [] From the very beginning we have been talking about the constant military presence of US troops in Poland. This is Fort Trump", he said.

The idea of building a military base for US troops was introduced by Poland's President Andrzej Duda. In September 2018 he suggested that the country would pay some $2 billion for its construction instead of the US. The president also came up with the idea of calling it "Fort Trump".

At the same time, Washington hasn't so far confirmed its readiness to deploy the country's troops and military equipment to the yet to be constructed base. Yet, additional US troops were sent to Poland early in January 2019.

 Sputnik

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Shooting Erupts Between Indian, Pakistani Forces in Makwal Sector, Jammu

Sputnik News

12:45 18.03.2019(updated 13:25 18.03.2019)

Relations between India and Pakistan have been strained of late over incidents near the border in the Jammu and Kashmir region. Late in February the Pakistani Air Force announced it had downed two Indian jets following an air raid by the Indian Air Force against an alleged terrorist camp on Pakistan's soil.

One Indian soldier was killed and three more seriously injured in an exchange of fire early in the morning between Indian and Pakistani forces, an Indian military official told Sputnik. The incident took place in the Makwal sector of Jammu and was initiated by the Pakistani Army, which used combat choppers as support, the official said.

This is the third major exchange of fire between the two armed forces following the recent build-up in tensions between the states. They happen along with continuing incidents involving Pakistani drones, violating Indian airspace, and being downed by the Indian military.

Relations between Islamabad and New Delhi have spiralled downward since the Pakistan Air Force downed two Indian jets on its territory and captured their pilots. New Delhi has stated that its jets shot down a Pakistani F-16 in the course of the encounter; however Islamabad denies losing a single plane, as well as using F-16s in the first place.

Pakistan has called for a diplomatic resolution to the escalating tensions between the two states after Islamabad made a "peace gesture" on 1 March by releasing one of the Indian pilots of the downed MiG-21.

The downing of the jets followed an airstrike conducted by the Indian Air Force on an alleged camp belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist group on Pakistani territory on 26 February. The air raid came in response to a terrorist attack on an Indian security convoy on 14 February carried out by JeM that claimed the lives of 40 people. Islamabad has denied the camp's existence and stated that the airstrike hit an empty hillside.

India insists that Pakistan is harbouring and supporting militants that are conducting terrorist attacks on Indian territory against its military personnel. Islamabad denies the accusations. In several recent major operations, Pakistani authorities have arrested a number of terrorist organisations' members, including Mufti Abdul Raoof, the brother of the leader of JeM.

 Sputnik

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Gaza investigators call on Israel to review 'rules of engagement' as Gaza protest anniversary looms

18 March 2019 - Human Rights Council-appointed investigators urged Israel on Monday to revise its military rules of engagement, shortly before the one-year anniversary of the start of mass demonstrations at the country's border fence with Gaza, that have left hundreds of Palestinians dead and thousands more injured.

Speaking in Geneva, Santiago Canton, Chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, explained what the panel knew about the Israeli Defence Force's relevant military protocols with regard to demonstrators.

"Under the rules, they could be shot in the leg at any moment," he said. "While in theory, this key inciter status was to be conferred only when the crowd was posing an imminent threat to life, in reality - and that has been one of the main findings of the Commission - that was rarely the case."

Mr. Santiago's comments followed his assertion that the panel's "main conclusionis that we found reasonable grounds to believe that the Israeli Security Forces committed serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law".

During last year's demonstrations in the Gaza Strip - referred to as the "Great March of Return and the Breaking of the Siege" - the Commission found that 189 Palestinians were killed, 183 with live ammunition.

Victims included children, persons with disabilities  including a double amputee who was shot and killed while sitting in his wheelchair - journalists and medical personnel.

Less than two weeks from the anniversary of the beginning of the protests, the panel's concern is to avoid a repeat of deadly demonstrations such as those on 30 March, 14 May and 12 October. "We hope that the international community gets involved in order to avoid more killings and more shootings during the anniversary," Mr. Santiago told reporters after his address to the Human Rights Council earlier in the day. "I think that is why this presentation was important. It's important that Israel change the rules of proceedings and stop the shootings, basically."

'Triggers were pulled 6,000 times'

In addition to those killed during weekly protests at the border fence with Israel, the UN panel underscored the damage caused by high-velocity bullets, which replaced the rubber bullets initially used against demonstrators.

"In the case of many of the killings, there were very small entry wounds and huge exit wounds," Commission member Sara Hossain said. "We also have detailed evidence about the kinds of bullets, but also about the use of long-range sniper rifles, sophisticated optical aiming devices," she added.

"We know that the target could be magnified in the sight of the snipers, so they could know the consequences of at least some of the shootings. But nevertheless, triggers were pulled, and the trigger was pulled more than 6,000 times."

Asked about the legality of targeting unarmed protesters in a crowd, the Commission insisted that doing so based on individuals' membership of an armed group was unlawful.

"We believe that in situations of crowd control and in situations that we deem to be civilian in nature, if there are individuals in the crowd that may be a legitimate target, you still cannot shoot at the crowd, because you may kill or shoot innocent individuals", Mr. Santiago said.

Israel probe into 11 incidents welcomed

The Commission also welcomed inquiries into 11 incidents which Israel has said it will undertake, although Ms. Hossain called for more transparency.

"On the nature of investigations, for the ones from Israel, they have announced that there are these 11 incidents...but that is after one year," she said. "And there is no announcement as to the progress of those investigations and we think that there is at least a moral obligation to disclose what the outcome of those is."

The issue of demonstrators launching incendiary kites and balloons from Gaza was also covered in the Commission's report to the Human Rights Council, Ms. Hossain said, noting that "significant property damage" had been caused in southern Israel.

In a related development on Monday, Human Rights Council-appointed Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk warned of an impending "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza linked to the "stifling restrictions" on the Strip's residents.

"Israel has maintained a hermetic air, sea and land blockade around Gaza, controlling who and what enters and leaves the (Gaza) Strip," Mr. Lynk told the Council. "For nearly five million Palestinians living under occupation, the degradation of their water supply, the exploitation of their natural resources and the defacing of their environment, are symptomatic of the lack of any meaningful control they have over their daily lives."

A major concern is the "collapse of natural sources of drinking water in Gaza and the inability of Palestinians to access most of their water sources in the West Bank", the Special Rapporteur said.

Scale of Gaza victims' needs is immense, warns UN health agency

Coinciding with developments at the Human Rights Council on Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) appealed for $5.3 million to help the many thousands of Gazans hurt and handicapped in the demonstrations.

"The sheer magnitude of trauma needs in Gaza is immense; every week injured patients continue to arrive at hospitals requiring complex long-term treatment." said Dr Gerald Rockenschaub, head of WHO's office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

WHO reiterated concerns that the upcoming one-year anniversary of the Great March on 30 March could result in further casualties and an increase in people requiring trauma care and rehabilitation services.

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UN will do 'utmost to prevent and mitigate any risk of violence' in DR Congo, pledges Mission chief

18 March 2019 - Despite the relatively peaceful passage of December's presidential election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN Special Representative to the country told the Security Council she "remained concerned" over developments in the east, where dozens of armed groups continue to operate.

In briefing the Security Council on Monday, Leila Zerrougi said that in North Kivu the ongoing deadly Ebola outbreak in the Grand Nord region, was the second-largest in history; and militias continued to attack civilians and Government forces  known by the French acronym FARDC - as well as humanitarian workers and personnel from the UN Stabilization Mission (MONUSCO), which she also heads.

She said MONUSCO was "sparing no effort" to protect civilians and to support FARDC and national police units. Following recent attacks against Ebola response centres in Butembo and Katwa, MONUSCO has redeployed additional personnel for security assistance and to address community resistance to the response, she told the Council.

Meanwhile, preparations continue in the area for upcoming national and provincial elections at the end of March: "We will be doing our utmost to prevent and mitigate any risk of violence throughout this politically sensitive period" spelled out Ms. Zerrougui.

Turning to South Kivu, she noted that clashes have "flared up" between community-based militias, "resulting in significant displacements of the population, with the potential of further deterioration".

To address this, she said MONUSCO was supporting a reinforced Government presence in addition to "our own Standing Combat Deployment, and our intercommunal mediation efforts". Ms. Zerrougui noted that while the Government has shown "a genuine willingness" to respond quickly, its national security forces need bolstering.

"In North and South Kivu", she lamented, "structural violence is profoundly entrenched, and conflict dynamics related to identity, access to land and resources, and regional issues have taken deep root in the fabric of everyday life".

To sustainably address this, the UN envoy asserted that "concentrated engagement will be needed in the period ahead".

Shocking violence in western Yumbi region

Ms. Zerrougui also updated the Council on the mass inter-communal killings around Yumbi in the west, on the banks of the Congo, which took place in mid-December, with her office and UN human rights workers later documenting 535 deaths, 111 wounded, 19,000 displaced and destruction of many homes and livelihoods. It was "a troubling reminder of how quickly violence can escalate", she said.

She said the Government needed to be encouraged to better prevent and address potential causes of violent conflict overall. The MONUSCO head encouraged the Council to continue supporting what has been achieved in the country, as well as to assist the DRC in addressing its remaining threats to peace and security.

'Decisive step' toward democracy

Despite protests by some parties and politicians who lost out, over the conduct and results of elections held on 30 December, Ms. Zerrougui told the Council that it was the first peaceful handover since independence, and "most Congolese citizens were pleased to welcome the inauguration of President Tshisekedi".

Calling it "a decisive step to establish democracy and rule of law" in DRC, the MONUSCO head acknowledged that the reactions of "certain political parties and their supporters" to the outcomes of senatorial elections last week "are a concern", as "they reveal the fragility of the political process in the country".

Ms. Zerrougui confirmed that the President Felix Tshisekedi's commitment to work towards consolidating peace, the rule of law, democracy and human rights, was being bolstered by "tangible actions", specifically in his efforts towards "allaying tensions".

She noted the recent release of some political prisoners, adding that politicians had been meeting freely throughout the country "without obstruction" and the return of political exiles was expected.

In conclusion, Ms. Zerrougui urged the Council "to support the Government in its efforts to honour the expectations of the Congolese population; to advance political dialogue and collaboration; and to seize the opportunities which we are now seeing for a sustainable reduction of armed groups in some areas".

The plight of women

Briefing by teleconference from the capital Kinshasa, Anny Tengandide Modi, of UN Women's African Women Leaders Network updated the Council of the "situation and plight of women and girls in the DRC".

She noted the Council's commitment in acknowledging the leadership of African women in the peace and security field by adopting resolution 2457 last month and spoke at length on the elections.

Ms. Modi voiced a number of concerns, including the detention of protestors "on flimsy grounds", a lack of awareness-raising on the electoral process and "many obstacles to the participation of women".

"Despite these shortcomings", she pronounced the DRC elections "a benchmark for the region and the DRC is at a historical and decisive juncture", underscoring the importance "that women, particularly young women, are engaged not just in voting, but on consultations in peace" to support the political process and guarantee the country's stability.

She updated that "the DRC has put provisions in place for the representation of women in the security sector in particular to boost the number of women in the armed forces and the police" as part of ongoing reforms.

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F-35 multilateral conference sets stage for operational integration in Indo-Pacific

By Staff Sgt. Hailey Haux, Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs / Published March 18, 2019

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AFNS) -- F-35 Lightning II subject matter experts from the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea met to improve 4th and 5th generation aircraft theater interoperability during the second Pacific F-35 User Group Conference at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, March 12 -14.

More than 80 personnel from the four nations discussed bed down and strategic concepts, operations, logistics and sustainment topics, all building on the success of the March 2017 F-35 Symposium.

"This conference provides a great opportunity to work with our allies to strengthen our interoperability with 5th and 4th generation aircraft as these airframes start to become more prominent in the region," said Gen. CQ Brown Jr., Pacific Air Forces commander. "Improving interoperability between our forces and helping allies increase their capabilities works to deter aggression, maintain stability and ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific."

This year's theme "operational integration in the Indo-Pacific" focused on security, interoperability, training, simulators and logistics information systems.

As the presence of the F-35 increases in the Indo-Pacific, future multilateral exercises will enhance 5th generation aircraft interoperability and integration, as well as agile command and control across the full spectrum of combined warfighter operations.

"It's how we take advantage of all the capabilities we have in the region," Brown said. "The F-35 will bring a full spectrum of capabilities to us and will be a critical part of joint and coalition efforts."

The Marine Corps currently has F-35Bs based at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, and Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, is projected to house future F-35A squadrons starting in 2020. The Air Force last deployed F-35As to the region in 2017, with the 34th Fighter Squadron from Hill AFB, Utah, going to Kadena Air Base, Japan, for a six-month deployment.

The F-35's advanced technologies and sensors, in conjunction with other multi-domain systems to collect, fuse and distribute information will lead to unprecedented battlespace awareness, survivability, and lethality in future highly contested environments.

"Right now we have all the right people in the right place at the right time," Brown said. "With that we can address change, identify areas that require additional work, and initiate measurable progress to close gaps. As we posture for the future, remember that we're stronger and more effective when we work together."

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US, Russian Diplomats to Discuss Venezuelan Crisis

By Sabina Castelfranco March 18, 2019

U.S. and Russian diplomats are meeting in Rome this week to discuss "the deteriorating situation in Venezuela."

For Russia, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remains the country's only legitimate leader. Russian officials are expected to emphasize this point when they meet with U.S. special envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams in Rome on Monday and Tuesday.

The U.S. and some 50 other nations have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's interim president.

Russia is to reiterate its position that a U.S. military intervention in the South American country would be inappropriate, deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency on Sunday.

"The positions of Moscow and Washington on this question are diametrically opposed, but that's not a reason not to talk," Interfax quoted Ryabkov as saying.

Ryabkov reportedly also said the Russian government will continue to cooperate with Venezuela in a number of sectors, including energy and military expertise, regardless of U.S. pressure.

Russia and other nations say sanctions imposed by the U.S. are only hurting the population. Russia has sent food and medical aid to Venezuela, helping the Maduro government bypass the sanctions.

Abrams has defended the sanctions, saying they are only a temporary measure.

"The purpose is to motivate people to change their behavior," he said. "So while we impose sanctions of visa revocations, we make it very clear this is reversible if people's pattern of conduct changes. It's not just a punishment, we hope it is also an inducement to a changed pattern of behavior."

Abrams has also dismissed Maduro's claims that opposition leader Guaido is a collaborator in a U.S. coup plot.

"The allegation that Juan Guaido is some kind of a puppet of the United States I think is first ridiculous and second has been disproved in a number of ways. One of them is the number of countries that support him," the U.S. envoy said.

For Abrams, Maduro is responsible for the crisis in the country and must go.

"This economic decline is not new," Abrams said. "The situation in Venezuela now is a product of years of corruption and incompetence and venality on the part of this regime. That's the problem, and the solution is to replace it with a democratic government that is actually responsive to the needs of the people."

On Friday, Venezuela created a unit tasked with protecting basic installations and services such as electricity and water, a week after a massive blackout.

Maduro now plans "a deep restructuring" of his government, according to Vice President Delcy Rodriguez.

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UN: Envoy Urges DRC to Form New Government Soon

By Margaret Besheer March 18, 2019

The United Nations' top official in the Democratic Republic of Congo has urged President Felix Tshisekedi to form a new government without delay, as the country continues its first peaceful transition of power in its nearly 60 years as an independent nation.

"We cherish the hope that the new government will shortly be established and operational," the head of the U.N. mission in DRC, Leila Zerrougui, told a meeting of the Security Council on Monday. "Indeed, the expectations of the Congolese people are tremendous. It is of critical importance to not leave them to wait too long or to dash their hopes."

Zerrougui said discussions for the new government are underway between the Common Front for Congo (FCC), which secured the majority of legislative seats at the national and provincial level, and the Coalition for Change, which supported the candidacy of Tshisekedi.

Tshisekedi's inauguration on Jan. 24 was not without controversy. It followed elections that were marred by widespread irregularities and allegations by the country's powerful clergy that another opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu, was the real winner.

Kabila retains influence

Skeptics say former president Joseph Kabila, 47, who reluctantly left office after 18 years in power, struck a deal with Tshisekedi, 55, the son of a longtime Congolese opposition leader, when he realized his preferred candidate would not win.

Kabila has also retained influence in the National Assembly where his FCC coalition is dominant, and has declared that it won an overwhelming majority in last week's senate elections, as well.

"The reactions of certain political parties and their supporters in light of the outcomes of the senatorial elections last week are a concern," Zerrougui said. "They reveal the fragility of the political process which is underway in the DRC."

Some violence, including looting and the death of one policeman, were reported in the aftermath of Friday's senate elections.

Beni region in conflict

Meanwhile, the country is facing an escalation in intercommunal clashes and a serious outbreak of Ebola in the country's Beni region.

Fighting between Banunu and Batendein communities in the western territory of Yumbi in December left at least 535 dead and 19,000 displaced Zerrougui said. She said it is a "troubling reminder" of how quickly violence can escalate in DRC.

The U.N. has its largest peacekeeping mission in the DRC  more than 17,000 troops and police, plus 4,000 civilian personnel with a budget of more than $1 billion a year. The mission's main priority is the protection of civilians, mainly in the country's volatile east, where dozens of armed groups threaten the population. The U.N. is looking to gradually drawdown and ultimately close the mission, and has begun to plan for its exit.

The U.N. has also assisted the government and humanitarian partners with the Ebola response. The outbreak is in a region plagued with insecurity. Several Ebola clinics have been attacked.

The World Health Organization says there have been 886 confirmed cases of the virus so far and nearly 600 deaths. DRC's U.N. Ambassador Ignace Gata Mavita wa Lufuta told the council that 310 people have recovered from Ebola.

Government talks underway

On the political front, Lufuta said negotiations are underway with the different stakeholders to form the government.

"The president of the republic has appointed the members of his cabinet, and in the interim, has published his emergency program for the first 100 days of his mandate," he said.

He underscored that the security situation is one of the government's chief concerns, and called on the U.N. mission and the national army to neutralize armed groups.

The U.N. Security Council will reauthorize the mission later this month and is currently discussing its mandate  which is likely to include a refocusing of the mission on the eastern part of the country to areas where threats are highest  and the reconfiguration of some military units into rapid deployment forces.

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Iran, Russia FMs vow efforts to help resolve Venezuela crisis

Iran Press TV

Tue Mar 19, 2019 03:48PM

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, have expressed their readiness to work towards the settlement of the Venezuelan crisis through political approaches.

In a Tuesday phone call initiated by the Iranian side, Zarif and Lavrov discussed the latest developments unfolding in Venezuela, which has been grappling with a political crisis since January, Xinhua quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying in a brief statement on Tuesday.

The top Iranian and Russian diplomats expressed their "readiness to contribute, on the basis of the principles of the UN Charter, to the efforts of the international community to find mutual understanding between the responsible political forces of Venezuela," it added.

According to the statement, these efforts should help ensure Venezuela's internal peace and lead to a swift resolution of the "pressing social and economic" issues in the Latin American country.

The Latin American country is in the midst of a political crisis, which broke out in late January after opposition politician and president of the defunct National Assembly Juan Guaido abruptly declared himself "interim president" of Venezuela, challenging the outcome of last year's presidential election in which President Nicolas Maduro emerged victorious.

Guaido's bid was quickly recognized by the US followed by dozens of its regional and European allies. Washington slapped sanctions on the Venezuelan oil sector in support of the opposition figure and went as far as threatening a military option to topple the Caracas government.

On the other camp, Iran, Russia, Turkey and China, among other states, have voiced support for the elected Venezuelan government. The UN has also said it would only work with the Maduro-led administration.

Maduro has censured Guaido's moves as a coup attempt masterminded by the US against his government, calling on the opposition figure to abandon his coup-mongering strategies and engage, instead, in negotiations with the Caracas government.

During a speech at the presidential palace in the capital Caracas on Friday, Maduro said he has authorized the formation of a new military unit tasked with protecting the country's key infrastructure following the recent nationwide blackout.

He also plans a "deep restructuring" of his government to protect the state against the political crisis.

Maduro has repeatedly accused Washington of masterminding a "coup" against his government, blaming the US for the economic crisis in Venezuela.

In a phone conversation with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza late in January, Zarif said the Islamic Republic supports the legal government in Venezuela and the country's people in the face of all plots, particularly those hatched by the United States.

Lavrov had in January censured Washington's "destructive" policy on Venezuela, called on its opposition "not to be pawns in someone else's dirty game."

'Russia warns US against military intervention in Venezuela'

On Wednesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow had expressed concerns over the American sanctions on Venezuela during a round of talks in Rome, Italy.

Moscow, he added, also warned the US against using aid delivery to Venezuelans as a pretext to militarily intervene in the country.

The Russian official also said his country is continuing to offer its services as an intermediary in Venezuela talks, calling on Guaido to take this issue seriously.

During the talks, the two sides failed to narrow their positions on Venezuela, but Moscow now better understands Washington's stance, Ryabkov said, describing the discussions as difficult but frank.

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Lebanese security forces detain dual national on charge of espionage for Israel's Mossad

Iran Press TV

Tue Mar 19, 2019 01:47PM

Lebanese intelligence forces have arrested a Lebanese-Canadian man on charges of spying for Israel's Mossad spy agency and collaboration with the regime's authorities through gathering intelligence about the Hezbollah resistance movement and missing Israeli pilot Ron Arad.

The General Security Directorate announced in a statement on Tuesday that the suspect, identified only by his initials as F.G., admitted during interrogation that he was recruited by fugitive Lebanese spy N.G. in 2013. N.G. currently chairs a division in the 504 Unit of the Israeli intelligence service.

F.G. also confessed that he had been assigned to recruit Lebanese people to infiltrate Hezbollah's support zone and collect security information for Israel, including hints about the missing pilot.

The 41-year-old suspect was referred to related judiciary officials, and efforts are underway to arrest those who worked with him.

The Lebanese Army's intelligence branch stated on November 12 last year that it had arrested a man suspected of spying for Mossad as he was attempting to cross the southern border into occupied Palestinian territories.

The army said the man, identified as Mohammad Hussein Fakih, was captured in the village of Meiss Ej Jabal, situated some 78 kilometers (49 miles) south of the capital Beirut.

On September 25 last year, Lebanon's Military Tribunal sentenced three Lebanese nationals to three years in prison with hard labor on charges of espionage on Hezbollah for Mossad.

On October 16, 1986, Arad and his co-pilot, Yishai Aviram, ejected themselves from their Phantom jet while conducting strikes on the positions of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) around the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.

The tribunal, chaired by Brigadier General Hussein Abdallah, issued the verdicts against Hasan Salemeh, Karam Idris and Kamal Hasan after they were found guilty of providing the Israeli regime with intelligence about Hezbollah's military arsenal and operations, and with photos of several strategic locations in Lebanon.

The court also stripped them of their rights as Lebanese citizens.

The three had been arrested in October 2017 and charged with communicating information to Israel. They reportedly possessed Israeli wireless communication devices at the time of their arrest.

Two other defendants, identified as Lebanese nationals H.K. and N.Sh., were separately questioned after they allegedly contacted Israelis through Facebook.

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Guaido-led opposition occupies Venezuelan diplomatic properties in US

Iran Press TV

Tue Mar 19, 2019 12:43AM

Representatives of Venezuelan opposition leader and self-declared "Interim President" Juan Guaido have occupied three of the country's diplomatic properties in the United States.

Guaido's US envoy Carlos Vecchio announced the move from the office of Venezuela's military attache in Washington, one of the buildings occupied on Monday.

"We are taking these steps in order to preserve the assets of the Venezuelans here in this country," Vecchio said after replacing Maduro's portrait with an image of Guaido.

The other two occupied buildings include another Venezuelan Defense Ministry edifice in Washington and a consular building in New York.

Vecchio said that the group expects to take over Venezuela's embassy in Washington "in the days to come."

The envoy made the comments alongside Colonel Jose Luis Silva, Venezuela's former military attache to Washington who defected to Guaido late January.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry responded by issuing a statement describing the move as a violation of international law on the protection of diplomatic properties. The statement demanded that the US takes "necessary measures to immediately reverse this forcible occupation."

The move comes as the US withdrew all diplomatic personnel from Venezuela last week.

Tensions between Washington and Caracas rose after the Trump administration recognized Guaido's self-proclamation as "interim president" earlier this year.

Maduro announced in response that he was severing diplomatic ties with Washington, expelling all US diplomats and recalling Venezuelan representatives from Washington.

The US has since repeatedly said that the "military option" is on the table to oust Maduro. Washington has also imposed economic sanctions on the country, confiscating the country's US-based state oil assets in order to channel them to Guaido.

Facing heightening tensions, Maduro formed a new military unit tasked with protecting the country's key infrastructure last week.

The measure comes after a series of suspected cases of sabotage targeted key energy installations in the country, including one which led to a recent nationwide blackout .

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No Agreement On Maduro After U.S.-Russia Talks On Venezuela

By RFE/RL March 19, 2019

The United States and Russia have held "useful" and "substantive" talks on Venezuela, but the two sides remain split on how to resolve the South American country's crisis, according to the U.S. special representative Elliott Abrams.

Abrams made the comments in Rome on March 19 after meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who described the talks as "difficult" but frank.

Venezuelan opposition leader and parliament speaker Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in January, and was recognized by the United States, most European Union countries, and the majority of Latin American states.

Russia, along with other countries including Iran, Cuba, China, and Turkey, continues to recognize Nicolas Maduro as president.

"No, we did not come to a meeting of minds, but I think the talks were positive in the sense that both sides emerged with a better understanding of the other's views," Abrams said after the meeting in a Rome hotel that lasted more than two hours.

The U.S. envoy said that the sides "agreed very much on the depth of the crisis in Venezuela," adding: "We are, as they, deeply concerned about the nature and the seriousness of the humanitarian crisis."

Ryabkov emphasized the need for dialogue with Washington, but warned the United States against military intervention in Venezuela.

"We assume that Washington took our priorities, our approaches, and warnings seriously," Ryabkov said, according to Russia's state-run news agency TASS.

The meeting in the Italian capital took place as the United States imposed fresh sanctions on Venezuela, this time targeting the state-run mining company Minerven and its head.

Maduro, a socialist who took office in 2013 after the death of Hugo Chavez, was sworn in for a second term in January following elections in May 2018 that were marred by an opposition boycott and claims of vote-rigging, leading to mass street protests.

Russia -- who has loaned Venezuela billions of dollars in recent years -- has been Maduro's biggest international supporter since the dispute with Guaido began.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, TASS, and Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/venezuela-maduro-u-s--russia- talks-no-agreement/29830491.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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 May Drop Kabul From Talks With Taliban Over Official's Criticism  Report

Sputnik News

19:01 19.03.2019

Although the Taliban and the US made "meaningful progress" in the last round of talks, the final agreement is yet to be signed. The next talks are set to take place in Doha, Qatar in late March, but it seems that the Afghan government itself risks being left out.

US officials are refusing to participate in any further talks that include the Afghan president's national security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, following his recent criticism of the US, Reuters reported, citing several anonymous sources. This means that Afghanistan may be left out of the next round of talks between Washington and the Taliban, unless it sends someone else.

US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale reportedly informed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that Mohib is no longer welcome in Washington or the US in as a whole and that no American officials would deal with him.

One former Afghan official told Reuters that the move is an attempt to force Ghani to "oust" his national security adviser. The report has not been commented on by either of the two countries' top officials.

In a heated speech during a press conference in Washington, Mohib accused US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad of "delegitimising the Afghan government", while granting legitimacy to the Taliban and holding talks with them on issues officially regulated by Kabul.

The national security adviser also suggested that Khalilzad was attempting to create a "caretaker government" by using the Taliban, in which he would be a "viceroy". Mohib's statements were condemned by the US State Department.

The scandal erupted amid ongoing talks between the Taliban and the US, which wants to secure assurances that the country won't become a safe haven for terrorists planning attacks in exchange for a military withdrawal. Although the deal hasn't been signed yet, the sides reportedly agreed to a certain framework and made "meaningful progress" in the talks the last time they met.

The United States has been conducting a military operation against the Taliban and other groups in Afghanistan since 2001 as a response to the 9/11 attacks. US troops overthrew the Taliban, which had been governing the country since 1996, accusing them of turning it into a safe haven for al-Qaeda*.

While most US troops left Afghanistan by the end of 2014, Washington continues to support the Afghan Armed Forces in combating terrorism.

*al-Qaeda  a terrorist group, banned in numerous states, including Russia

 Sputnik

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Russia, Egypt Did Not Sign Contracts for Aircraft Delivery in Late 2018

Sputnik News

15:21 19.03.2019(updated 15:56 19.03.2019)

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia and Egypt did not sign contracts for aircraft supply in the second half of 2018, Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) told Sputnik Tuesday.

"Contracts for the supply of aircraft equipment to the Arab Republic of Egypt were not signed in the second half of 2018," the FSMTC said.

The Kommersant newspaper wrote on Monday that Russia and Egypt had signed a contract for the supply of Su-35 fighters to Cairo.

According to newspaper sources, the relevant agreement, which implies the supply of over 20 aircraft and weapons for them worth some $2 billion, came into force at the end of 2018, and the deliveries may begin already in 20202021.

 Sputnik

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Norway Claims 'Electronic Proof' of Russian GPS Jamming During NATO Drills

Sputnik News

13:42 19.03.2019

Allegations of disrupting GPS signals are only a single step in Norway's array of verbal attacks against Russia. Previously, Norway accused Russia of simulating an attack on a US-supported radar in the Barents Sea.

Norway's Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen has reiterated his claims that Russia disrupted global positioning system signals during recent NATO drills in his country. According to Bakke-Jensen, Norway has "electronic proof" of the Russian jamming.

Following NATO's massive Trident Juncture drills last November, Finland and Norway claimed that Moscow may have intentionally disrupted GPS signals. This, they claimed, may have affected the navigation of civilian air traffic in the Arctic.

"Russia asked us to give proof. So we gave them the proof", Frank Bakke-Jensen said, as quoted by Reuters. By his own admission, the "proof" consisted of measurements showing that signals had been jammed.

Asked whether Russia could have targeted Norway intentionally, the minister said: "They were exercising very close to the border and they knew this will affect areas on the other side".

"Russia said 'thank you, we will come back when our experts review that'. To have such an answer from Russia is a positive thing", Bakke-Jensen ventured. "To be a neighbour of Russia you need to be patient", he mused.

Oddly enough, the news of Norway allegedly having proof of Russia's GPS meddling received no coverage in Norwegian mainstream media, which are often quite happy to place the blame on Russia.

Earlier, both Norway and Finland protested to Russia over alleged jamming. However, the protests were dismissed by Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov disclaimed them as "fantasy", whereas Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasised an existing trend of "accusing Russia of various deadly sins".

Meanwhile, this is not the first time that Norway fires grave accusations against Russia. A series of security reports have identified Russia as the single largest threat to Norway, alongside China.

In February 2019, Lieutenant General Morten Haga Lunde, the director of Norway's Intelligence Service, claimed Russian Su-24s had performed a mock strike against a Norwegian radar. According to him, the Russian squad turned back shortly before entering Norwegian airspace.

The Norwegian fishing village of Vard has since 1998 housed a US-backed radar installation called Globus II. While it is officially tasked with tracking space junk, its suspected role in the US anti-missile system and capability of building a signature database of Russian missiles has made it a thorn in Norwegian-Russian relations.

 Sputnik

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Taking China's Cues India Begins 1st-Ever Military Drill with 17 African Nations

Sputnik News

12:22 19.03.2019(updated 12:24 19.03.2019)

China with a view to showcasing its military prowess had earlier organised a China-Africa Defence and Security Forum in 2018 that involved 50 African nations.

New Delhi (Sputnik): In a bid to match China, India along with 17 African nations (called AFINDEX-19) on Monday commenced a first-ever joint military drill at Aundh Military Station in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Contingents from 17 African Nations  Benin, Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe will be part of the military exercise. India will be represented by the Maratha Light Infantry regiment.

"The exercise will focus on exchange of best practices between the participating nations, team building and tactical level operations in conduct of United Nations mandated tasks", a statement issued by the Indian Army read.

The UN's mandated tasks include establishment of new missions, setting up of military observer sites during peacekeeping missions, protection of civilians, nuances of standing combat deployment, convoy protection, patrolling aspects, and aspects related to humanitarian mine assistance.

Earlier this year in January, during an Africa Day event at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit organised in the city of Ahmedabad, Henry Oryem Okello the Ugandan Minister of State for International Affairs had sought to nudge India into forging stronger ties with Africa by saying, "Indians had arrived first but ignored a beautiful Africa  the Chinese came subsequently and took it over".

Besides burgeoning trade and investment relations with African nations, Beijing had also launched the first-ever China-Africa Defence and Security Forum in 2018 to strengthen its military presence in the region. China had already operationalised its first foreign military base in Djibouti in 2017.

During the said China-Africa forum meeting, representatives from over 50 African nations visited multiple sites belonging to the Chinese Army, Navy, and Air Force. The event was considered an attempt to showcase Chinese technical capacities with a view to opening avenues for selling military equipment to African nations.

 Sputnik

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India's NSA Vows Retaliation on Kashmir Attack Amid Overnight Pakistan Firing

Sputnik News

11:10 19.03.2019(updated 11:54 19.03.2019)

India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval was speaking at a function commemorating the 80th foundation day of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). It was a convoy belonging to this paramilitary force that endured a terror attack in Kashmir in mid-February. The attack claimed the lives of 40 police personnel.

New Delhi (Sputnik): In his first public comment after the 14 February Pulwama attack, India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval on Tuesday stated in terse words that the country had not forgotten the suicide terror assault that had claimed Indian lives, adding that strong action would be taken against terrorists and against those who harbour them.

"The country has neither forgotten nor will ever forget it (Pulwama terror attack). Leadership will decide on time and locations to act, be it against terrorists or those who support/harbor them", Ajit Doval said while delivering an address at the 80th foundation day of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Gurugram near New Delhi.

Doval paid tribute to the 40 soldiers who were martyred when a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist rammed an explosive-laden car into a CRPF convoy.

Meanwhile, heavy cross-border fire exchanges continue to take place between Indian and Pakistani forces on the Line of Control (LoC) in the northernmost Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The state shares its borders with Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

"The Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked ceasefire violation in Rajouri's Sunderbani sector and Jammu's Akhnoor sector on Monday night", Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand, Indian defence ministry spokesman, told the media.

Exchanges of fire in the Sunderbani sector started at 10:45 p.m. local time, but stopped soon, Anand added.

"In Akhnoor, the Pakistan Army resorted to mortar shelling and firing of small arms which continued till Tuesday morning. Our troops retaliated effectively", he stated.

One Indian Army soldier was killed and three others injured in cross-border Pakistani firing in the Sundarbani sector on Monday morning.

The backdrop of the current India-Pakistan cross-border hostilities is the 14 February Pulwama terror attack that was claimed by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and killed 40 Indian paramilitary troops. India after a week had conducted a pre-emptive air strike against alleged JeM terror camps at Balakot in Pakistan.

 Sputnik

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Israel, Greece to Build Radar on Crete Amid Rapprochement Reports

Sputnik News

10:48 19.03.2019

The two countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as Cyprus, have been boosting their ties, strengthening military and economic cooperation, including the planned construction of an East Med underwater pipeline with the estimated cost of $8 billion.

The Long Horizon marine radar system will be built by Israel and Greece in eastern Crete, the Greek newspaper Kathimerini reports. The enhanced coverage of the radar will allow both countries to monitor the Eastern Mediterranean basin. The daily has not disclosed the cost of the project, saying only that it is "not insignificant," especially taking into account Greece's reduced military budget.

According to the outlet, Athens and Tel Aviv have been drifting together recently, boosting their military ties among other things. Greece has recently agreed with Israel to share know-how for its navy, which has begun to develop. According to the outlet, 40 Israeli probationers will be carried by a Greek transporter from Haifa to Crete, without any stops in Cyprus, by the end of the month. The Israelis will join the Greek forces during upcoming drills and then return to Haifa after a stop in Milos and Rhodes.

On the other hand, Athens has been open to the possibility of bolstering its arms gaps with the help of Israel, as Kathimerini noted. Among other things, Greece has rented seven drones from Israel for search and rescue operations.

Israel's Haaretz reports that Cyprus also shares the Israeli interests in the region. The list of common interests includes a stance on the situation in Syria and Lebanon as well as uneasy relations with Turkey.

Apart from military and political cooperation, which is to be confirmed during an upcoming trilateral Greek-Israeli-Cypriot summit with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the three countries are developing a major economic project  the undersea East Med pipeline, designed to deliver natural gas from the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe via Greece and Cyprus. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades are expected to sign the grand deal, agreed upon in 2018, within the month, as the Greek media earlier reported.

The 2,000-kilometre underwater pipeline is intended to have a capacity of 12 billion cubic metres of gas annually, delivering fuel from Israel's Leviathan, named one of the largest young gas reserves in the world, and the Aphrodite offshore gas fields. Additionally, the venture was boosted in February when it was announced that large gas deposits had been discovered in Cyprus.

The line, which is almost twice as long as Russia's Turk Stream pipeline, is estimated to cost $8 billion and is said to be the world's deepest underwater gas pipeline. Egypt, the only Muslim nation besides Jordan that has a peace treaty with Israel, is also seeking to export its newly discovered gas reserves, and has expressed interest in joining the project.

 Sputnik

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Lack of Pilots, Operating Costs May Keep Norway's F-35 Fleet Grounded

Sputnik News

10:39 19.03.2019(updated 10:40 19.03.2019)

With 52 F-35 fighter jets as a replacement for its ageing F-16 fleet, Norway hopes to build one of the world's most modern air forces. However, there are fears it will be hamstrung by a dramatic lack of pilots and technicians.

Despite Norway's massive investment and ambitions of building up a formidable air force, it may end up largely grounded due to lack of experienced pilots and ballooning associated costs, the daily newspaper Aftenposten reported.

"In 2025, we will have one of the world's most modern air defences. My big concern is whether we have enough money to actually use it", Major General Tonje Skinnarland, the Chief of Norway's Air Force, told Aftenposten.

According to Skinnarland, there is a large gap between the recommended number of pilots and the actual number of trainees schooled annually. In addition to the lack of pilots, Skinnarland also highlighted the lack of aviation technicians. This is exacerbated by the fact that very many of today's pilots and technicians are approaching retirement age.

Brigadier yvind Strandman, who was previously responsible for education programmes in the Norwegian Air Force, shared Skinnarland's concern.

"The situation is that we acquire an expensive weapon system, but do not have the economy to be able to operate it fully due to lack of expertise", Strandman said.

Additionally, sky-high flight prices and costly education were also named as risk factors possibly resulting in the expensive aircraft being grounded indefinitely.

The operating costs for the F-35 is about NOK 110,000 ($13,000) per hour. Complete education for a pilot costs about NOK 60 million ($7 million). Combined, these factors may result in a serious financial burden even for Norway's oil-rich economy.

Norway's air defence has recently reduced the number of bases, but made huge investments in new aircraft. So far, Norway has received nine F-35 fighter aircraft with an average price tag of NOK 1.375 billion apiece (roughly $160 million), with another seven still in US for tests. With 52 such aircraft in total, Norway will become one of Europe's foremost users of F-35, a long-running fighter jet project marred by well-documented flaws and skyrocketing costs.

 Sputnik

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Venezuelan Opposition Seizes Control of 3 Diplomatic Buildings in US

Sputnik News

02:34 19.03.2019(updated 07:09 19.03.2019)

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Venezuela's opposition has taken control of three diplomatic facilities in the United States and will attempt to obtain further US-based assets in the near future, Carlos Vecchio, opposition leader Juan Guaido's envoy to the US, told reporters on Monday.

"Today, we are taking control over three facilities, three buildings. Two of them are located here in Washington, D.C., and the other one is the building in which the consulate services works," Vecchio said.

Vecchio explained that all three buildings are owned by the Venezuelan government. One of the two properties seized in Washington is a military building that belongs to Venezuela's Defence Ministry, the opposition envoy said.

"Colonel [Jose Luis] Silva Silva  he is in charge of this building  is working with us in the diplomatic mission because he decided to recognize Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela," Vecchio said.

The Venezuelan government later confirmed in the statement that the country's diplomatic representation offices in the United States had been illegally taken over by opposition members.

"The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela informs the international community that its diplomatic premises in the United States have been forcibly seized by people who enjoy official support of the US government and act as its agents in its political interests and in the direct violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations," the statement, released by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza on his Twitter account, read.

In January, Col. Silva Silva, Venezuela's military attache at its US Embassy, defected from the government of President Nicolas Maduro and urged other armed forces members to join him in recognizing Guaido as the interim president of the South American nation.

Vecchio did not disclose details regarding the second building in Washington. The third facility taken over by the opposition on Monday was the Venezuelan Consulate General in New York.

Venezuela's opposition will attempt to take over the country's main embassy building in Washington in the coming days, Vecchio stated.

The United States and 54 other countries have recognized Guaido as Venezuela's interim president.

Russia, China, Turkey, Bolivia and other countries continue to back Maduro as the only legitimate authority in Venezuela.

Maduro has characterized Guaido as a puppet of the United States and said Washington has attempted a coup d'etat to exact a change in government.

 Sputnik

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First peaceful transfer of power in DR Congo 'an extraordinary opportunity' for advancing rights

19 March 2019 - The election of President Felix Tshisekedi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), marks "an extraordinary opportunity" for the country to advance civil and political rights, said a senior UN official, on Tuesday at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights (OHCHR), Andrew Gilmour, welcomed Mr. Tshisekedi's inaugural speech in January, in which he made a "clear commitment" to respect citizens' rights and end discrimination.

The president's recent decree ordering the release of all political prisoners was also to be welcomed, Mr. Gilmour said, in anticipation of their actual release and the closing of all unofficial detention centres.

Mr. Tshisekedi's unexpected election win on 30 December, despite a week's delay due to logistical concerns, coming on top of a two-year delay due to former President Joseph Kabila's reluctance to leave office, marked the first peaceful transfer of power in the country of more than 80 million, since independence from Belgium, almost 60 years ago.

Mr. Kabila governed DRC for 18 years, before agreeing to step down last year, although his former ruling coalition has a majority in the legislature.

In his inaugural speech in late January, according to news reports, the new president said he and his party were committed to building a modern, peaceful, democratic State, and pledged then to release all political detainees.

Mr. Gilmour said that "such measures, if fulfilled, would represent an exceptionally positive development towards the opening up of democratic space, which has been increasingly restricted in recent years."

"During the electoral process, such restrictions were obvious. In the weeks just before and after the elections, the Joint Human Rights Office in the DRC documented the killing of at least 36 civilians in elections-related violence" said the OHCHR official, "most killed by security forces using disproportionate use of force, including the use of live ammunition."

The Assistant Secretary-General's comments coincided with the publication of a report into DRC violence and rights abuses, in 2018.

It found that more than 1,100 people were killed in conflict-related violence, almost 900 were subjected to sexual violence in a war-setting, including 279 children.

On the continuing inter-communal violence in the province of Mai-Ndombe, around Yumbi town, that left hundreds dead last December following an orchestrated and well-planned massacre, Mr. Gilmour urged the authorities to extend the rule of law throughout the country.

There is an urgent need to take measures to defuse tensions and promote reconciliation in the region and avoid further bloodshed, he said, and to ensure that those responsible are prosecuted.

In reply, Marie-Ange Mushobekwa, Minister of Human Rights in DRC, said that those responsible for the Mai-Ndombe killings, in the west of the country, on the banks of the Congo River - and earlier massacres in the Kasais - would be prosecuted.

And she confirmed that 36 people have been convicted in association with the killing of UN experts, Michael Sharp and Zaida Catalan in Kasai on 12 March 2017.

The highly-regarded experts on the region, were brutally murdered while investigating reports of mass atrocities in the Kasais, around conflict between the Kamuina Nsapu militia and Government forces. The fallout from the case continues, with a Congolese army colonel, reportedly arrested in connection with the killing of the two UN monitors, early in December.

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Dutch Police Arrest Suspect in Tram Shooting

By VOA News March 18, 2019

Following an hours-long manhunt, Dutch police have arrested a suspect in a shooting incident on a tram that left three people dead and five others wounded in the city of Utrecht Monday.

Police had earlier identified the suspect as 37-year-old Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis, releasing a photo of a bearded man sitting on the tram wearing a dark blue hooded top.

Authorities immediately raised the terror alert to the maximum level of five in Utrecht. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said a terror attack "could not be excluded."

But Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that relatives of Tanis in Turkey said the shooting could have been part of a family dispute.

A Dutch regional prosecutor said the suspect had previously been arrested in the Netherlands, but did not give further details.

Security has been increased at Dutch airports, as well as mosques. Schools in Utrecht have been closed, and residents were advised to stay home.

After the suspect was arrested Monday, the threat level was reduced to level four.

Earlier Monday, the Dutch national terrorism chief said the incident on the tram was one of "multiple" shootings in the city.

"Shooting took place this morning at several locations in Utrecht," Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, the Netherland's anti-terror coordinator, told a news briefing at The Hague. "A major police operation is underway to arrest the gunman."

Police said that several trauma helicopters had been deployed to the scene to assist the wounded, and appealed to the public to stay clear of the area to allow first responders to provide the necessary help.

"The surrounding area has been cordoned off, and we are investigating the matter," Utrecht police said.

Political parties suspended campaigning for provincial elections scheduled for Wednesday that will also determine the makeup of the Dutch senate.

Utrecht is the fourth-largest city in the Netherlands, known for its canals and large student population. Gun violence in the city is rare, as it is across the Netherlands.

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Over 150,000 civilians apply for jobs in military

Global Times

By Liu Caiyu Source:Global Times Published: 2019/3/18 21:38:39

More than 150,000 people have applied for civilian jobs in the Chinese military as more people are attracted to work for the People's Liberation Army.

Over a hundred people have applied for each of 200 positions, the PLA Daily reported on Sunday.

On average, eight people vie for one post. The most popular positions each receive 399 applicants, the report said, without revealing what positions.

According to the official recruitment website, Military Talent Net, applications can be made online until Wednesday, and exams will be held on April 10.

High salaries and the chance of getting promoted in the military are major reasons for the attraction to military jobs.

Military personnel also enjoy a high social status in China, Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military analyst, told the Global Times on Monday. "Especially for young Chinese people, joining the military is a cool thing to do," Wei said.

Civilian jobs are open to undergraduates and graduates, with those holding a university certificate preferred. But those who support national separatism, have links with overseas organizations with "complicated" backgrounds, or have a criminal record are banned from applying.

The jobs are found in the PLA Air Force, Navy, and Armed Police, military universities, military medical institutes and research institutes. Applicants majoring in languages, medicine, the internet, engineering and journalism and other fields are eligible.

Wei said that engineering jobs account for a high percentage of the vacancies, reflecting the demand for talent in the military, especially those specializing in high-tech weaponry.

The military hired more than 5,700 civilians in 2018, 91 percent of whom have a bachelor's degree or higher and 34 percent have a master's or PhD, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

About half of them have work experience, such as in research, medical or public service institutions, the Xinhua report said.

In the military, "civilian personnel" refers to those who work in management or professional technical posts but are not in active service.



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Anti-terrorism efforts stressed in white paper on Xinjiang

Global Times

By Liu Xin Source:Global Times Published: 2019/3/18 22:58:40 Last Updated: 2019/3/18 23:52:40

Western double standards upset global efforts to fight terrorism

Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region government has prioritized preventive anti-terrorism and taken multiple measures, including setting up training centers and improving residents' livelihoods, to protect people from the harm of terrorism and extremism, according to a white paper released on Monday.

The paper, titled The Fight against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang, was released by the State Council Information Office.

It stresses that Xinjiang has been an inseparable part of Chinese territory, tells the origin and development of terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang and the current anti-terrorism and de-extremism measures.

Terrorist and extremist forces in Xinjiang, driven by the goal of separatism, have engaged in damaging activities, which have severely undermined local stability and greatly harmed the lives, security and property of local residents, according to the paper.

"Terrorism and extremism jeopardize human rights and sustainable development as they propagate intolerance between different religions, cultures and societies, challenge human justice and dignity, and do great harm to peace and security," the paper reads.

It points out that echoing the UN resolutions on "addressing the conditions conductive to the spread of terrorism" and "preventing and combating terrorism," China's Xinjiang has taken measures - harshly cracking down on terrorist crimes while at the same time improving people's livelihoods, strengthening education on laws, setting up vocational education and training centers in accordance with laws and other measures.

Preventative efforts

"How to prevent terrorist activities before they happen remains the biggest problem for the international community, as no punishment after a terrorist attack could make up for the huge casualties and loss of property," Li Wei, a Beijing-based anti-terrorism expert, told the Global Times.

Establishing vocational education and training centers is one of the preventative measures.

The white paper said that Xinjiang has included de-extremism education in its daily courses in training centers.

By learning national laws and regulations, ethnic policies and religious knowledge, trainees can realize that religious extremism totally deviates from religious doctrines.

They can understand the essence and harm of terrorism and extremism and finally get rid of their control and influence, according to the white paper.

Li also said Xinjiang's ongoing de-extremism measures have proved effective as they help protect local residents' right to life and development, which are basic human rights.

And "by giving people who have been influenced by extremism a new chance in the training centers, their human rights have also been protected," Li said.

Xu Jianying, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Research Center for Chinese Borderland History and Geography, noted that Xinjiang's de-extremism measures, drawn from previous experience, fit the local situation.

For example, Xinjiang combines de-extremism efforts with measures to improve residents' livelihoods.

By offering vocational training in the centers, residents could find a job after graduation, enhance life and consolidate the anti-terrorism foundation, according to Xu.

There has been no terrorist attack in Xinjiang for more than two years, which is an achievement brought about by de-extremism efforts in the region, according to Xinjiang officials reached by the Global Times.

"Xinjiang's ongoing measures can offer some experience to the international community on combating extremism. However, hindered by long-term bias, some Western countries will not acknowledge Xinjiang's achievements," Li said.

"The West has adopted double standards on, for example, defining terrorist attacks: What happened in their own countries are terrorist attacks but similar cases in developing countries, including China, are protests against local government policies on ethnic groups," Li noted, saying the double standards would affect global efforts to combat terrorism.

"There is no doubt that Xinjiang's fight against terrorism and extremism is an important component of the global struggle, and has made an important contribution to the latter," read the white paper. It also called for countries to abandon double standards.

Many foreign diplomats and media have been invited to visit Xinjiang and they were impressed by the achievements of the region's de-extremism.

Nugroho Fery Yudho, a reporter from Indonesia, told the Global Times during his visit to Xinjiang in February that "I admire the Chinese government's courage to explore its own way on de-extremism Some countries rely on international organizations or other countries for de-extremism, which seemed to achieve little."

Facts on Xinjiang

The white paper also listed incomplete data and cases of thousands of terrorist attacks, launched by separatists, terrorist and extremist forces in Xinjiang, which killed a large number of innocent people and hundreds of police officers and caused immeasurable damage to property.

Terrorists and extremists in Xinjiang also killed people from the religious field.

The white paper noted that on November 6, 1997, a terrorist group under the command of the "East Turkistan" organization stationed abroad shot and killed Senior Mullah Younusi Sidike, member of the China Islamic Association, president of Aksu Islamic Association and imam of the Great Mosque of Baicheng County, on his way to the mosque for worship.

On July 30, 2014, the 74-year-old Senior Mullah Juma Tayier, vice president of Xinjiang Islamic Association and imam of the Id Kah Mosque, was brutally killed by three terrorists on his way home after morning Fajr prayer.

The data, rarely released to the public out of concern at causing panic, has been gradually opened to domestic and overseas media recently, to show the world the previous suffering of Xinjiang from terrorism and extremism, an official from the Xinjiang publicity department, told the Global Times.

"These facts showed clearly why we are making efforts at eradicating extremism in Xinjiang currently," he said.

Since 2014, Xinjiang has destroyed 1,588 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested 12,995 terrorists, seized 2,052 explosive devices, punished 30,645 people for 4,858 illegal religious activities, and confiscated 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials, according to the white paper.

While seeking the way of de-extremism, Xinjiang has insisted on not linking terrorism to a certain place, religion and ethnic group.

Mijuti Mehmoti, principal of a training center in Kashi, told the Global Times that Xinjiang's current de-extremism measures, including the training centers, are not targeting a certain ethnic group or religion but to help those being influenced by extremism.

Xinjiang fully respects and safeguards residents' rights including freedom of religion, protects legal religious activities and meets the demands of religious groups, according to the white paper.

It fights terrorism and crimes which spread hatred among different ethnic groups and split the country under the disguise of religion, read the white paper.

The white paper also noted that Xinjiang's anti-terrorism and de-extremism measures are implemented in accordance with national laws and regulations.

Aside from abiding by the national law systems on counter-terrorism, Xinjiang has also put forward regional regulations including regulations on managing religious affairs and regional de-extremism regulations, to offer legislative authority on cracking down on terrorism and extremism.

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China: Nearly 13,000 'terrorists' detained in restive west since 2014

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 06:27AM

China says it has arrested tens of thousands of "terrorists" since four years ago in its volatile western Xinjiang region, which is home to millions of Muslim minorities, including Uighurs.

The Beijing government issued a white paper on Monday on what it calls "the fight against terrorism" and "human rights protection" in Xinjiang, where Beijing stands accused of being engaged in a crackdown campaign against the Muslim communities.

Since 2014, authorities have "destroyed 1,588 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested 12,995 terrorists, seized 2,052 explosive devices, punished 30,645 people for 4,858 illegal religious activities, and confiscated 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials" in the region, the paper said.

It said Xinjiang has been the scene of frequent incidents of terror attacks under the influence of separatists, extremists and terrorists, which have been harmful to the life and property of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang and have trampled on people's dignity.

The paper also claimed legal authorities have adopted a policy that "strikes the right balance between compassion and severity." China's fight against "terrorism and extremism" was an important part of the same battle being waged by the international community, it added.

The exiled World Uyghur Congress was quick to slam the 15,000-character policy paper, with its spokesman Dilxat Raxit saying, "China is deliberately distorting the truth."

"Counter-terrorism is a political excuse to suppress the Uighurs. The real aim of the so-called de-radicalization is to eliminate faith and thoroughly carry out Sinification," he added.

Resource-rich and strategically located on the borders of Central Asia, Xinjiang is key to China's growing energy needs.

The autonomous region is home to around 10 million Turkic-speaking Uighur Muslims, accounting for 45 percent of Xinjiang's population. The Muslim minorities in China's west have long accused Beijing of cultural, religious and economic discrimination.

Beijing has been under fire since last August, when a UN human rights panel reported that numerous camps had been set up in China's vast Xinjiang region, holding as many as one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims.

Chinese officials have dismissed the allegations and instead characterized the camps as "vocational education and employment training centers" for "criminals involved in minor offenses."

They have long linked their measures in Xinjiang with counter-terrorism efforts, arguing that separatists there are bent on joining Takfiri terrorists like al-Qaeda.

Last month, Turkey accused China of exposing the Turkic-speaking minority to "torture and political brainwashing," calling on Beijing to "respect fundamental human rights of the Uighur Turks and shut down concentration camps."

Spokesman for Turkey's Foreign Minister Hami Aksoy said even those who were not detained were "under great pressure" in Xinjiang.

China, however, categorically dismissed as "unacceptable" Turkey's allegations, urging Ankara to retract the "vile" remarks.

The United States has also previously accused China of human rights violations regarding its treatment of the Uighur community.

Beijing hit back at Washington as well, calling on the US to "stop interfering in China's internal affairs with human rights as a pretext."

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Army launches full-scale assessment in bid to boost military skill levels

Global Times

By Hu Yuwei in Xinjiang Source:Global Times Published: 2019/3/19 17:38:40

 PLA aims for more combat-ready troops with large-scale professional test

 Experts believe the assessment is a concrete step in boosting the PLA's military professionalism

 Versatile and qualified soldiers are identified through the assessment, while those without expertise have little chance to stay in the army

"One point off if you hit an obstacle bar while driving, and two points off if you completely roll over the bar. Be careful, because everyone has only one chance!" The shouts from an examiner filled the morning air in the training field of an armored regiment of Northwest China's Xinjiang military region affiliated to the Western Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

The soldiers were waiting to drive an armored vehicle through obstructed routes, and they looked nervous.

Their prospects for future promotion could be affected by the results in this exam.

Starting in March, the PLA Army organized all officers and soldiers to take a military training grade evaluation. It was the first time the PLA ground forces carried out wide-ranging tests of this kind.

Computer theory tests, drawing analysis, battlefield operations, and physical assembly operations are all being conducted simultaneously.

The PLA Army is developing more focused, professional and scientific exams designed to make soldiers more versatile and ready for combat.

All categories of commanders, staff officers, and military professionals will be placed into junior, middle, and senior levels in their major through this assessment, which combines theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

Experts believe the assessment is a concrete step in raising the PLA's military professionalism, as a professional army needs long-term support from high-level and specialized personnel.

In the future, a soldier's physical ability will no longer be the most important factor, and only qualified soldiers with comprehensive knowledge will be able to adapt to modern warfare.

Versatility is key

This panzer regiment in Xinjiang is committed to cultivating "versatile" military personnel by asking those who sign up for senior-level assessment to have basic-level qualifications in two other related disciplines, according to the PLA Army's test syllabus guidelines.

"For example, a tank driver is eligible for senior qualification through the exam only if he has basic qualifications in artillery and electro-communication. This enables the driver to deal with other problems when facing an emergency in real combat," Shi Hongtao, head of the tank battalion, told the Global Times.

"In peacetime, evaluation in conditions close to real combat is becoming the most important measure for assessing a serviceman's quality," said Li Daguang, a professor at the National Defense University of the PLA in Beijing.

"People who come here to muddle along or slack off don't have a chance. Each officer or soldier has to be clear about their own strengths and weaknesses through the assessment, and try to train themselves to be versatile," Li said. "Unlike flashy military shows or contests, the assessment serves as a true test of combat effectiveness, and helps to identify the talented soldiers and eliminate those who are unqualified.

Midnight oil

On the afternoon of March 5, Chen Shuai, a new recruit, moistened his palms as he got into the armored vehicle. Eight minutes later, he became the first to successfully pass the driving test at junior level. The newbie had arrived only six months earlier, and never expected to undergo such a big challenge so soon after joining the army.

"I was very nervous because each person only had one chance, and the examination was very strict throughout. I got to know the exact route only a few minutes before the test," Chen told the Global Times.

"It's common to work until late night as everyone attaches great importance to the exam," he said. "The result reflects the overall strength of the , and is also a great chance to examine what I've learned in the first stage of my military career," said Chen.

"When the notification comes, so does the pressure," said Shi Hongtao. "The content of this exam is very wide-ranging, and the rules and division of expertise is unprecedented in detail."

"Many people work overnight at the dormitory study room. You can see the lights on late into the night, while others squeeze time out of their daily training or sacrifice their rest time for preparation," said Chen.

Jin Han, the person in charge of training and tests for the armoured regiment, told the Global Times that the results will be recorded in everyone's profile, and will be used as important criteria for future promotion and education.

It is a challenge not only for new recruits who have to take such an important test just three months after joining the army, but also for some veterans who have been away from their field of expertise for a long time.

Li Zhi (pseudonym), a member of the armored regiment who had been given senior qualification in his major, was transferred to another post several months ago. For him, this overall re-evaluation meant a lot of pressure.

"I thought the previous assessment results could be used for life, but I didn't expect to have to get retested so soon. This assessment takes me back to my primary major."

Identifying expertise

"Ordinary soldiers used to be ranked and scored in 'common subjects' [physical fitness, light weapons, military theory], because their various specialized subjects' had very diverse standards. However, that drew many away from their expertise, as participants put more effort into the contest to earn a higher rank rather than focusing more on their own profession," Shi told the Global Times.

It is like providing one single examination paper for people in different positions and professions, Shi pointed out bluntly, referring to an analogy in which teachers of different subjects are asked to compete in writing on a blackboard, which tells nothing of their true capability.

"Now, there's a chance to redefine the standards, to make officers and soldiers understand where their jobs and responsibilities are focused," Shi said.

He noted that "in our commander subject placement exam, overall basic knowledge accounts for only 30 percent of the total score, while their specialized actual combat command ability accounts for 70 percent. This places more emphasis on their practical capability."

Jin Han told the Global Times that the artillery corps of the armored regiment now aims to cultivate truly combat-ready troops, and not just seek glory through competition results.

He said he was not worried about the number of people who fail the assessment, and they would not artificially lower their assessment standards, but would rather use the tests to expose people's shortcomings.

The regiment deploys discipline inspectors to supervise the examination, and the entire process is recorded on video.

All exam results are given out and confirmed on the spot, leaving no chance for tampering.

In recent years, China has made great efforts to implement "all-weather, all-season and all-region combat training," in order to build a powerful modern army. More frequent cross-regional exercises, joint exercises and training, international competitions, and now large-scale assessments, are all part of that process.

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Universities respond actively after Xi stresses ideological and political theory courses

Global Times

By Leng Shumei and Xu Keyue Source:Global Times Published: 2019/3/19 21:13:41

Education key to nurture socialism builders

Universities across China have positively responded to remarks made by President Xi Jinping at a Monday symposium in Beijing, where he stressed efforts to implement the Party's education policy and the kind of ideological education the country needs and should promote.

Efforts should be made to foster a new generation of young people capable of shouldering the mission of national rejuvenation, and those who have all-round moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetic grounding with a sound work ethic, Xi said.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while presiding over a symposium for teachers of ideological and political theory, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

"We should be confident to run the ideological and political theory courses well as they are key to the socialist education with Chinese characteristics," said Xi.

Ideological and political education is vital to nurturing qualified successors to the communist cause of the CPC, Cai Zhiqiang, a professor at the Beijing-based Party School of the CPC Central Committee, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"It is an important way to pass down political culture and the great achievements the CPC has made to the young generation to help them clearly understand the CPC's path and inherit the CPC's lofty ideals to make contributions to the country as well as the people," he said.

Cai pointed out that Xi had repeatedly used "lifeline" to describe the importance of the course as education can help safeguard and guide the Party's work in other areas by nurturing people to meet the demands of China's development while ensuring the direction of the development.

Xi stressed that there's no ambiguity that the country should nurture the future generation of talent that upholds CPC leadership and the socialist system and be devoted to the cause of socialism.

Xi said it's necessary to set up ideological and political classes at campuses ranging from primary schools to universities amid the Party's efforts to cultivate builders of socialism.

On Tuesday, teachers and students across China, including those from Xiamen University, Hexi University, Shaanxi Normal University and Qiqihar University, studied and discussed Xi's speech and vowed to carry out the spirit of the speech in teaching and studies.

Teaching ideological and political theory courses in school is quite challenging especially as different opinions clash on various platforms, read a commentary from Guangming Daily on Tuesday.

It's a test for teachers on how to instruct their students to look at the country's achievements and shortcomings in a dialectical manner, it said.

The ideological and political courses should deliver the country's mainstream ideology and directly respond to false ideas and thoughts, Xi noted.

Innovative teachers

Xi stressed that the key of the courses lies in teachers, adding that it is crucial to give full play to teachers' enthusiasm, initiative and creativity.

Ideological and political theory teachers must have strong political integrity, deep feelings, creative thinking, a broad vision, be disciplined and upright, Xi said, urging teachers to improve the ideological and theoretical level of the courses and bring the courses closer to students and make them more focused.

Wu Chengzhi, a junior at Hainan Normal University, told the Global Times that his teachers in those courses adopted new teaching methods by assigning homework on microfilm-making instead of boring recitation to encourage students to learn theory through practical experiences.

The University of Science and Technology Beijing set up an online teaching and discussion platform for Marxism to promote a teaching mode through new media and new technologies, Mu Ah'ni, a veteran Marxism teacher at the university, told the Global Times.

For example, during the class, teachers could start a discussion on "using two words to summarize China's modern history" through mobile phones. Each student's reply would be displayed on a big screen. Mu would invite the students to elaborate, which she said could strengthen students' in-depth understanding of class topics.

Eight teacher representatives, including Chen Guo from Fudan University, attended the Monday symposium.

Suggestive guidance works better than indoctrination, and teachers should stimulate students' moral emotions, enlighten their ideals as well as guide them to establish correct views of the world, life and values through interaction and frank discussions, said Chen, also a popular ideological and political theory teacher on Chinese social media.

Colleges across China launched reforms in ideological and political education in December 2016 after Xi stressed the importance and clarified the direction of the education in a conference on ideological and political education at colleges.

After more than two years, ideological and political education runs well in nationwide colleges, which effectively promoted the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era in textbooks and to students, the Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

New teaching styles involving teacher-student interaction and scene teaching respect students' personal character and activate the students' learning initiative, making ideological and political education more interesting, Xinhua said.

A report from China's Ministry of Education showed that among the more than 30,000 college students they surveyed, 91.8 percent like their ideological and political class teachers, Xinhua reported Sunday.

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Italy Set to Join China's Belt & Road Initiative

By Saibal Dasgupta March 19, 2019

Italy is expected to join China's Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, when Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives Thursday in Rome.

The United States has been critical of the trillion-dollar global infrastructure project and warned about the risks of "debt-trap diplomacy." Members of the European Union are worried the plan could add to fissures in an already strained coalition.

When Xi visits this week, analysts say Italy is expected to sign a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China. That agreement will pave the way for construction projects and financing from the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

"The MoU is mostly perceived as a way to secure more exports to China and more chances to access financing from the AIIB," said Alessia Amighini, co-head of Asia Center at ISPI, a Rome-based research group.

Rome expects to reduce its trade deficit with China and avoid some heavy expenses by attracting Chinese and AIIB investments in big infrastructure projects. The agreement also will give Chinese companies more access to the busy port of Trieste, and in turn, the Mediterranean.

Reports emanating from Italy suggest Rome also is looking at the possibility of inviting Chinese companies to expand or manage three other Italian seaports, which are Genoa, Palermo and Ravenna.

"Italy is eager to attract investments to improve its competitive position compared to northern European routes and ports," Amighini said.

Clearly, China is exploiting business competition within the Eurozone and trying to wean away an important member by offering a set of attractive terms, analysts note.

The MoU signing will represent a major political achievement for China at a time of growing concerns and criticism of the plan. Italy is a founding member of the European Union and could help open up doors for Beijing to the Eurozone.

So far, the Belt and Road Initiative's biggest projects and controversies have been tied to countries with serious financial difficulties, such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives and Greece.

With Italy's decision to join, China is dealing with a country where there is less fear of slipping into a debt trap under the program.

But it is likely to challenge Europe's connectivity strategy, a plan that was unveiled in September 2018 and aims to improve links within Europe and with Asia while promoting sustainability standards and rules-based practices.

Analysts are waiting to find out if Xi will offer a modified version of the program to Italy to meet European standards; but adopting those standards would take away China's ability to cut costs and reduce its competitive edge.

"I don't expect China to show more flexibility. In any case; I don't see financing terms as a real issue in Europe," Amighini said.

European disunity

Teresa Coratella, program manager at the Rome office of the European Council on Foreign Affairs, said the Italian move has the potential of creating disunity in the European Union at a time when the coalition is working out a common approach toward Chinese investments.

Both the U.S. and France have expressed discomfort about Rome's move, while German officials reportedly have been lobbying against the MOU signing. Italy, a member of the Group of Seven most industrialized countries, is the only G7 nation to join the BRI.

"Italy is a major global economy and great investment destination. No need for Italian government to lend legitimacy to China's infrastructure vanity project," tweeted Garrett Marquis, spokesman for White House's group of national security advisors.

French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed unease about Rome's decision, and he has called for a "coordinated approach" covering all European Union members toward Chinese plans.

"It's a good thing that China is taking part in the development of many countries, but I believe in the spirit of equality, reciprocity. The spirit of equality means respecting the sovereignty of nations," Macron said.

Lucrezia Poggetti, a research associate with Merics, the Berlin-based research institution, said Italy is the third-largest economy in the eurozone, and an Italian signature on the BRI has wide implications.

"Italy's decision in itself is bad news for the EU and its largest members, who are currently trying to pursue a more unified European China strategy to address challenges with the economic and political weight of the EU bloc," she said.

Rome's attraction toward the BRI is not new. Former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni was the only head of government among G-7 countries to attend the first meeting of the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017.

The current government would "go much further by officially endorsing an initiative that has been criticized internationally for, among other things, creating debt traps, political dependencies and promoting exclusively the interests of Chinese companies through unfair practices that don't meet international standards and rules," said Poggetti.

Zhiqun Zhu, who chairs the Department of International Relations at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said the United States is exaggerating the idea of a China threat in all issues, including the BRI plan.

"Italy and other countries should make their own decisions instead of being forced to choose sides between the U.S. and China," Zhu said.

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No sign of imminent N Korea missile launch: South Korean defense chief

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 10:16AM

South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo says there is still no sign that North Korea is preparing for an imminent missile launch as reported by US media outlets.

Earlier this month, US news outlets cited reports by several American think-tanks and South Korean officials, warning that satellite images showed that North Korea was possibly making preparations for a missile or space launch from the Sohae rocket launch site in Tongchang-ri.

South Korea's defense chief told a parliamentary hearing on Monday that it was too soon to tell if recent activity at some of North Korea's rocket facilities was preparation for a launch.

"It's hasty to call it missile-related activity," Jeong said. "Tongchang-ri is a launch site but we don't see any activity being carried out for a missile launch."

Asked if he could confirm whether Sohae was functionally restored, he said it was inappropriate for intelligence authorities to comment on every media report.

He confirmed, without elaborating, that there were indications of continued nuclear activity in North Korea.

South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told a separate parliamentary panel that it was possible that the recent activity at the missile site was to bolster North Korea's leverage in negotiations.

"But given North Korea's continued work, thorough analysis is needed to find out its exact intentions," Cho added.

North Korea, on Friday, said that its leader Kim Jong-un was considering suspending denuclearization talks with the United States.

The North's Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui told reporters that Kim may rethink a freeze on missile and nuclear tests unless the United States made concessions.

At a summit with the South's President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed last year to shutter the Sohae site.

In August last year, satellite pictures suggested workers were dismantling an engine test stand at the facility.

However, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies suggested last week that rebuilding was progressing quickly at the facility.

It said work at the site had started before last month's failed meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump on denuclearization in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Trump blamed the breakdown of the talks on Kim, saying he was not ready to make the necessary concessions, and that the North Korean leader had asked for the removal of all the sanctions against his country.

Pyongyang later rejected the claims, saying Kim never put forward such a request.

The two leaders had first met in June 2018 in Singapore, where they agreed to work toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang has taken several steps toward the goal by suspending missile and nuclear testing; however, the US has insisted that sanctions on the North must remain in place until it completely and irreversibly dismantles its nuclear program.

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Bolton warns North Korea not to test missiles

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 05:55AM

US national security adviser John Bolton has warned North Korea not to renew missile tests as negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have ended in a stalemate.

The warning came after a senior North Korean official said Friday that Pyongyang was considering suspending talks on denuclearization with the United States and resuming its nuclear and missile tests.

Bolton, during a radio interview aired Sunday morning, said, "They issued an unhelpful statement saying they were thinking of going back to nuclear and ballistic missile testing, which would not be a good idea on their part."

"The North Koreans really, unfortunately, were not willing to do what they needed to do," he told John Catsimatidis, a New York-based radio host on AM970.

The second summit between President Donald Trump and leader Kim Jong-un collapsed last month over differences on how far Pyongyang was willing to limit its nuclear program and the degree of US eagerness to ease sanctions. Trump abruptly walked away from the talks and held a press conference shortly afterwards.

During the presser, Trump said that "he had to walk away" from the talks because of the North's demands to lift all economic sanctions against Pyongyang as a prerequisite to denuclearization.

However, a few hours later, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho offered a completely different breakdown of the summit, telling reporters in a separate presser that Pyongyang had never asked for the removal of all sanctions, but was only seeking their partial removal.

Meanwhile, the North's Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui said Friday that on their way back to Pyongyang from the summit, Kim had told her that "for what reason do we have to make this train trip again?'"

"Whether to maintain this moratorium or not is the decision of our chairman of the state affairs commission," she told reporters. "He will make his decision in a short period of time."

Bolton, however, said that the US president was still willing to break the stalemate.

"President Trump wants to see this threat resolved through negotiation," Bolton said. "He's made a number of proposals to Kim Jong-un ... It hasn't worked out yet, but the president still is willing to try and do it. He wants North Korea to be free of nuclear weapons, that's for sure."

According to a state media report published earlier this month, the people of North Korea blame the US for the collapse of the summit.

"The public at home and abroad that had hoped for success and good results from the second DPRK-US summit in Hanoi are feeling regretful, blaming the US for the summit that ended without an agreement," the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party, said in a commentary, referring to North Korea's official name  the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

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N Korea Calls Back Top Diplomats From UN, China Amid Unresolved Issues With US

Sputnik News

14:57 19.03.2019

In late February, the second high-level summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un finished in Hanoi without an agreement on denuclearisation being reached.

North Korea has called back its top diplomats to China and the United Nations, KBS World Radio reported, citing sources in Beijing, who pointed out that an Air Koryo flight carrying Ambassador to China Ji Jae-ryong and North Korean Ambassador to the UN Kim Song had departed for Pyongyang from Beijing on Tuesday afternoon.

Both high-profile diplomats are said to have played a significant role in negotiations with Washington on denuclearisation and the resolution of the crisis between the two Koreas.

Per the Korean international broadcaster, there is speculation that Pyongyang has summoned the pair to talk about Washington apparently floating an idea to strengthen sanctions against the DPRK, as well as the country's potential response following the collapse of the second round of North Korea- US talks, which took place in February.

In late February, Trump and Kim Jong-un met in Hanoi to discuss North Korea's commitment to denuclearise. However, Trump abruptly quit the meeting when Kim demanded that the US president lift all sanctions. As a result, no agreements on the issue of denuclearisation were signed, although US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo subsequently noted that Washington remained optimistic about nuclear talks with North Korea.

Following the first bilateral summit, held last year in Singapore, Trump assumed that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat to the United States. The first round of talks successfully resulted in an agreement that had it that Pyongyang would make efforts to promote the complete denuclearisation of the peninsula in exchange for the United States and South Korea suspending their joint military exercises.

 Sputnik

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Germany Plans to Cut Military Budget in Spite of US Calls to Reach NATO Target

Sputnik News

09:30 19.03.2019

Berlin's failure to meet the alliance's agreement to spend 2% of GDP on defence has been a source of tension between Germany and the US. Angela Merkel earlier pledged to boost military spending up to 1.5 percent of GDP by 2024. But the budget plan, introduced in Berlin, suggests that the expenditures will be decreasing after a rise next year.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has presented the country's budget plan for the next several years allocating an extra $2.4 billion for military spending in 2020. This means the share of defence expenditures will increase to 1.37 percent of GDP and closer to NATO's 2 percent target. However, after what the ministry described as a "notable increase," the expenditure share will be rolling back to 1.25 percent of GDP, or $50.2 billion by 2023.

The Ministry of Finance has justified its budget planning due to the worsening economic prospects, the German outlet Spiegel reports. Apart from military spending, the ministry is also planning to gradually cut its spending on development aid from $11.6 billion in 2020 to $10.8 billion in 2023.

This draft bill, which is due to be adopted by the government on 20 March, goes against German Chancellor Angela Merkel's earlier pledge to increase German defence spending to 1.5 percent by 2024. The issue of meeting the alliance's spending arrangement remains a stumbling block between Merkel's Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and its coalition partner, the Social Democrats, as well as a major irritant in ties between the US and the European powerhouse.

The news has prompted US Ambassador Richard Grenell to lambast Germany's financial planning, steering Berlin away from reaching the NATO quota. He pointed out that NATO member states have clearly agreed to move to the 2 percent target by 2024 and not away from it.

"The fact that the German government is considering even reducing its already unacceptable contributions to military readiness is a disturbing signal from Germany to its 28 NATO allies", he said as cited by the German news agency DPA.

Both US President Donald Trump and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg have called on allies in the bloc to raise their defence spending, following an agreement between member states in 2014 to spend two percent of GDP on their militaries. Although Germany has been raising its military expenditures, up from $45 billion to $50 billion in 2018, it still does not meet NATO's target, prompting repeated complaints from Donald Trump.

Trump pointed out that only a few of the 29 member states were spending two percent of their GDP on defence and insisted that the other members of the alliance should pay their "fair share".

Moreover, the US president has even questioned the Cold War-era bloc's relevance, calling it "obsolete" and "unfair" to Washington. While the US spent nearly $700 billion on military expenditures in 2018, all its European NATO allies combined allocated just $280 billion.

 Sputnik

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Can Priyanka Gandhi Vadra Help Dent Modi's Popularity?

By Anjana Pasricha March 18, 2019

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the latest high-profile member of India's famous Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to enter the political arena, has embarked on an unusual three-day boat rally to launch the Congress Party's campaign in the battleground state of Uttar Pradesh. But questions have been raised about whether she can boost the fortunes of the party that was decimated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.

Vadra, the charismatic 47-year-old sister of the Congress Party leader, Rahul Gandhi, has grabbed national attention since her formal plunge into politics two months ago.

The party that ruled India for five decades since its independence hit rock bottom in 2014, winning just 44 out of 543 elected parliamentary seats. But as a new general election looms, it is mounting an aggressive battle to regain its position at the heart of Indian politics.

Recent victories in three states that were bastions of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have given it momentum. And Vadra, appointed as the Congress Party's general secretary for eastern Uttar Pradesh, hopes to build on that momentum to woo back voters, although she will not run be a candidate herself.

With crowd-drawing appeal and a striking resemblance to her grandmother, Indira Gandhi, who ruled India for 17 years, Vadra is taking the battle into the prime minister's turf. Her 140-kilometer (87-mile) boat journey that is winding its way down the Ganges River in Uttar Pradesh will end Wednesday in Modi's constituency, Varanasi. Last week, she addressed a rally in his home state, Gujarat.

Uttar Pradesh is a politically significant state that elects 80 members of parliament and is the home of Congress Party bastions; her brother Rahul Gandhi and mother Sonia Gandhi both run in the state. But the party was virtually wiped out in 2014 when the state handed an almost complete victory to the BJP.

Taking a cue from the Hindu nationalist party, Vadra offered prayers Monday at a temple before embarking on the river that Hindus consider holy. She called the Ganges a "symbol of truth and equality." Some see her river rally as a challenge to Modi, who in 2014 had said that he had been called by "Maa Ganga" to run in Varanasi  an appeal to the BJP's core Hindu constituency.

Addressing meetings at villages on the river's bank during her boat ride, Vadra repeated the charge that the Congress Party hopes will win back voters to its fold: Modi has failed to provide jobs for young people. She promised that her party would address the issues facing the poor.

Some analysts say her entry into the political arena will help the Congress Party mount a credible challenge to Modi, who has always pitched himself as a strong, decisive leader.

"She has inherent charisma, personality, she has shown certain amount of spark, she is in the same strong leader mold which was her grandmother's, which is of Modi," said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst in New Delhi.

Vadra has demonstrated a natural political flair when she had campaigned on behalf of her brother and mother in previous elections, and is widely viewed as connecting with voters more easily than her brother.

'Make-or-break' election

Others doubt whether her entry so close to elections will have an impact. The five-week-long voting period begins April 11 and the Congress Party is already struggling to wrest the initiative from the BJP as Modi pitches himself as a strong leader able to deal with recent intense friction between India and Pakistan.

"Priyanka always grabbed the headlines, but I doubt on the ground whether she will make that much of a difference," said independent political analyst Ajoy Bose. "People will talk about her, but I don't see the Congress being transformed because of her."

Bose says this is a "make-or-break" election for the party, which needs to dramatically improve on its 44 seats in parliament. "It is very important for the Congress to get back into three figures for them to have a future in Indian politics," he said.

The BJP, meanwhile, will try to turn Vadra's entry into politics against her party, having long mocked Congress for "dynastic politics" because its leaders have always come from the Nehru-Gandhi family. It has often contrasted the "entitled" Rahul Gandhi and his sister with Modi, the son of an ordinary tea-seller who made it to the top on his own merit. The great grandson of India's first prime minister, Rahul is the sixth member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to lead Congress. His mother handed leadership of the party to him in 2017.

BJP leaders say Vadra's entry is only proof that Rahul Gandhi has not been able to make a mark. Whether she can lift the fortunes of the party remains to be seen.

"She definitely is the X factor; what is the value of X we don't know," Mukhopadhyay said.

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Mogherini insists on EU-China cooperation to adhere JCPOA

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Mon / 18 March 2019 / 15:57

Tehran (ISNA) - EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini stressed on assuring EU and China's commitment to Iran's nuclear deal, alone with other areas of their cooperation.

During her joint press conference with Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi held in Brussels, Mogherini insisted on constant adherence of EU and China to Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

"In the international field, our exchanges are concentrated on some foreign policy and regional issues, as usual. First of all we work together to ensure constant adherence to Iran's nuclear deal, which we spent days and nights negotiating over it".

End Item

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Iran Hints at Using Foreign Militias in Domestic Crackdown

By Mehdi Jedinia, Sirwan Kajjo March 18, 2019

An influential Iranian cleric says Iran might bring Shiite militias to the country from other parts of the Middle East to fight threats to the government.

Musa Ghazanfarabadi, head of the Tehran Islamic Revolution Courts, told religious students in Qom this month that his government could use foreign fighters to crack down on potential popular uprisings in Iran.

"If we don't support [our] revolution, the Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi, the Afghan Fatemiyoun [Brigade], the Pakistani Zainebiyoun and Yemeni Houthis will come and support the revolution," he said.

Ghazanfarabadi was referring to Shiite militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen that have been formed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

These armed groups have played a major role in conflicts in Iraq and Syria, supporting the governments of both countries. In Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthis have been fighting Saudi-backed government forces for years.

Ghazanfarabadi's comments have triggered negative reactions inside Iran and abroad.

Seyyed Mostafa Tajzadeh, an Iranian reformist and a former minister, was among the first politicians to denounce the idea.

"What damage did you do to the Islamic Republic so you're asking help from other people to protect it, instead of seeking help from those who built it?" Tajzadeh said.

Reserve force?

Some analysts say the Iranian regime is considering the foreign fighters backed by Tehran as a potential reserve force for emergency use.

Saeed Bashirtash, a Belgium-based Iranian affairs analyst, believes that the presence of IRGC-controlled foreign militia could threaten any national movement seeking democratic change in Iran.

"These trained, brainwashed Shiite fighters can become a strong arm for the theocrats of Iran against anything intimidating them," he told VOA. "They could be used as a force to suppress and destroy any democratic movement in the future."

Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, a global affairs research group in Washington, believes Abadi's threat "is very far-fetched." She told VOA she "can only speculate that it was meant to show that there is solidarity behind the regime's ideology that extends to all these disparate groups."

Slavin doubts the concept will materialize.

"Many of the players are simply being opportunistic in accepting Iranian help and vice versa, that Iran grooms proxies to serve its regional interests," she said.

Precedent

Seeking help from non-Iranian groups is not unprecedented in Iran. In the protests during the 2009 presidential election, also known as the Green Revolution, Tehran reportedly brought foreign agents to persecute Iranian protesters in Tehran and elsewhere in the country.

Shahrooz Pezeshkpour, a London-based Iranian political activist, said he was "surrounded and beaten by two" non-Iranian agents during the 2009 protest movement.

"They called their associates on the radio speaking in [Lebanese] Arabic. Then, two other men appeared in anti-riot police uniforms, arrested me, and transferred me to a nearby detention center," Pezeshkpour told VOA.

Afghan fighters

Iran has sent thousands of Shiite Afghan refugees to Syria to fight alongside other Iranian-backed forces in support of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Iran's army recruits them with promises of citizenship and improved living standards for their families.

Analysts say Ghazanfarabadi's comments could be a hint at the possibility of returning those fighters to Iran once the conflict in Syria is over.

"That might apply to Afghans who fought in Syria in return for promises of legal residence in Iran," Slavin said. "I doubt it applies to the others."

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South Korea quadruples imports of Iranian oil: Yonhap

Iran Press TV

Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:29AM

South Korea's imports of Iranian oil more than quadrupled in February from a month ago, nearing levels before US sanctions on Tehran, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday, citing government data.

South Korea is one of Iran's biggest Asian customers which won a six-month waiver in November from US sanctions but it resumed imports of Iranian oil in January after a four-month gap.

Last month, Korean refiners imported $476 million worth of crude from Iran, more than four times the volumes posted in January, data from the Korea Customs Service showed on Tuesday.

South Korean companies imported $101.2 million in Iranian crude in January, less than one-fifth of $539 million worth of Iran purchases which the world's fifth-largest crude importer averaged monthly in the first seven months of 2018.

Among Korean refiners, Hanwha Total Petrochemical Company has already bought 12 million barrels of Iranian oil for delivery in February to April.

Condensate accounts for nearly 70 percent of South Korean imports of Iranian crude, according to Yonhap. Iranian condensate took up 51 percent of Seoul's total condensate imports during the first quarter of last year, it said.

Condensate is an ultra light oil which is mainly used as a raw material to make petrochemicals like plastics. Asian customers favor Iran's South Pars condensate for its rich naphtha yield, a stable supply and price competitiveness.

Before the sanctions, South Korea was the biggest client of Iranian condensate with 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) on top of 100,000 bpd of crude oil.

The US waiver allows South Korea to purchase 200,000 bpd of condensate for use in several refiners which are designed to process the Iranian grade.

SK Incheon Petrochem, Hyundai Chemical, Hanwha Total Petrochemicals and Lotto Chemical are regular buyers of Iranian condensate.

South Korea and other importers of Iranian oil are holding their breath as the waiver expiry in May nears.

Oil prices surged to four-month highs of $67.54 for Brent on Monday, with an increasingly tightened market due to loss of production in Venezuela already weighing heavily on crude futures.

OPEC: Impossible to zero out Iran oil imports

The US has reiterated that its goal is to reduce Iran's exports to zero but OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said on Tuesday it is "practically impossible".

"We keep hearing that the objective is to bring down Iranian exports to zero but practitioners in this industry know very well that it is practically impossible to bring down the exports of Iran to zero," he said in Baku.

Barkindo said questions about whether the US will extent the waivers "continue to be one of these growing uncertainties in the market because of the importance and size of Iran in the supply demand balance."

Iran's Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh said on Saturday that the Trump administration was behind the current market tensions.

"They have caused tensions in the oil market for over a year now, and they are responsible for it, and if this trend continues, the market will be more tense," he said.

Zangeneh also said, "We do not know whether US waivers would be extended or not. We will do our job but they say something new every single day."

On Sunday, the minister said there has been a steady rise in crude production in Iran's West Karun fields near the Iraqi border.

Iranian officials have said developing joint fields is a top priority, but US sanctions have prevented major energy companies from making new investments in them.

Oil development plans on track

According to Zangeneh, oil production from West Karun oil fields has quintupled over six years.

"The amount of oil production from West Karun fields in 2013 was 70,000 barrels per day (bpd). This amount has reached 355,000 barrels in the year 1397," he said, referring to the current Iranian year that ends Thursday.

The West Karun bloc includes Yadavaran, Yaran and Azadegan fields which hit 305,000 bpd of production in 2018, up from 120,000 bpd in 2017.

State-run Chinese energy giant Sinopec has offered Iran a $3-billion deal on further development of Yadavaran the two countries are already working on, the Wall Street Journal reported in January.

Iran's plans to build a new oil export terminal are also on track. Zangeneh said the terminal at Jask on the Gulf of Oman will become operational by 2021.

"We hope that this terminal will become operational by end of the year 1399 and for the first time Iran's oil will be exported through Makran" on the Gulf of Oman, he said.

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Iranians Need Jobs, Not Curses, U.S. Diplomat Tells Rohani

By RFE/RL's Radio Farda March 19, 2019

A senior U.S. diplomat has told President Hassan Rohani that he should give Iranians jobs and employment instead of urging them to curse the United States for their country's deteriorating economic situation.

In a tweet in Persian on March 19, U.S. special representative for Iran Brian Hook, who sometimes responds to similar statements by senior Iranian officials, said: "In response to the paralyzed economy, Rohani asked the Iranian people to put a curse on United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia! By resorting to curses and magic he is after blaming others for his economic record."

"The people of Iran would like to have jobs, instead of putting curses," Hook added.

Rohani, in televised remarks on March 18, called on all Iranians to put a curse on the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism for economic hardships following Washington's withdrawal from a nuclear deal and the reinstatement of U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

"Put all your curses on those who created the current situation," Rohani said, adding that "the United States, the Zionists [Israel]," and Saudi Arabia were to blame. He didn't say what kind of curses the Iranians should invoke.

Rohani, who came to power in 2017 promising to improve the economy, has claimed that the United States wants to "dominate" Iran.

After the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran in May 2018 and reimposition of tough economic sanctions, Iran's economy has nosedived, with a steep devaluation of its currency, skyrocketing prices for essential goods, and frequent protests and strikes.

The crisis has hurt Iranians and prompted Rohani's critics to openly call for his ouster.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said that their aim is not to hurt the Iranian people, but to force the Islamic republic to renegotiate the nuclear agreement.

On March 17, Rohani also asked Iran's judiciary to pursue legal action against U.S. officials on the grounds of "crimes against humanity."

With reporting by Reuters and AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iranians-need-jobs-not-curses-us -diplomat-tells-rohani/29829740.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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Kazakh President Nazarbaev Abruptly Resigns, But Will Retain Key Roles

By RFE/RL March 19, 2019

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has abruptly resigned after nearly 30 years in office, but will continue to head the ruling party and keep his lifetime post as chairman of the influential Security Council.

"I have decided to end my duties as president," Nazarbaev said in a televised address to the nation on March 19, speaking hours after his office said that he would make an important announcement.

"This year I will have held the highest post for 30 years," said Nazarbaev, 78, who has headed the energy-rich country since before the Soviet collapse of 1991. "The people gave me the opportunity to be the first president of an independent Kazakhstan."

Nazarbaev indicated that the speaker of the upper parliament chamber, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, will be acting president for the remainder of what would have been his term, in accordance with the constitution.

Toqaev is to be sworn in on March 20, and the next presidential election is due to be held in 2020.

Even as he resigned, Nazarbaev pointed out that he has been granted the status of "elbasy," or leader of the nation, a title bestowed upon him by the loyal parliament in 2010.

"I remain chairman of the Security Council, which has been granted serious authority," he said, adding that he is also staying on as chairman of the Nur Otan party and as a member of the Constitutional Council.

"So I am staying with you," Nazarbaev said. "The concerns of the country and the people remain my concerns."

The roles he is keeping could allow Nazarbaev to retain a great deal of power.

In July 2018, the Security Council's status was changed from consultative to constitutional, increasing its authority, and Nazarbaev became its chairman for life.

Many in Kazakhstan saw those changes as a sign that Nazarbaev was seeking to ensure that he would maintain his grip on power if he stepped down as president.

Among other things, the Security Council is responsible for "organizing control over the implementation of laws" on national security and defense.

In a statement, the spokeswoman for the European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini praised Nazarbaev for driving forward "modernisation reforms, including constitutional reforms," and for playing "an important role in promoting cooperation both regionally and globally, with a particular emphasis on promoting peace, stability and security."

"We look forward to a smooth transition in accordance with the Constitution of Kazakhstan," said the spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic.

Kazakhstan's presidential press service said that Nazarbaev had discussed his decision to step down as president in a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that the two leaders " agreed to continue regular contacts in the future."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin had spoken with Nazarbaev by telephone, but didn't say what they had discussed.

Rights activists and critics say Nazarbaev has persistently suppressed dissent, prolonged his time in office through undemocratic votes or referendums, and used the levers of power to neutralize potential opponents.

Nazarbaev was last elected in 2015, securing a five-year term after moving the date of the vote up from 2016 in a move was widely seen as an attempt to strengthen his grip on power.

With the death of autocratic Uzbek President Islam Karimov in 2016, Nazarbaev became the only leader of a former Soviet republic to have held power since before the U.S.S.R. fell apart in 1991.

While his announcement was unexpected, there had been several signs that he might be considering stepping down as president.

In early February, Nazarbaev set off speculation about his intentions by asking Kazakhstan's Constitutional Council to provide an official interpretation of an article from the country's constitution that deals with the termination of presidential duties.

His resignation comes after he dismissed the government on February 21, citing its failure to raise living standards and diversify the economy away from the energy sector.

The move followed unusually persistent protests in which demonstrators in several cities across the country of some 18.7 million have accused the government of ignoring the needs and demands of ordinary people.

The protests were spurred in part by anger and grief over the deaths of five children from a single family in a house fire in Astana, the capital, on February 4.

The predawn fire destroyed a tiny family home in Astana while both parents were away working overnight shifts, killing five girls aged 3 months to 13 years.

Nazarbaev moved the capital of Kazakhstan from Almaty to Astana in 1997 and the city was built up substantially, making it a modernized symbol of his power.

Nazarbaev's eldest daughter, Darigha Nazarbaeva, 55, has been seen as a possible successor to her father.

She has chaired the International Affairs, Defense, and Security Committee in the upper house of parliament since September 2016, and before that served as a deputy prime minister.

Toqaev, 65, is a career diplomat who has served as foreign minister and prime minister in the past. Educated in Moscow, he is fluent in Kazakh, Russian, English, and Chinese.

Once a steelworker, Nazarbaev has been the senior leader in Kazakhstan since June 1989, when he became Community Party boss in what was then a Soviet republic.

As president, he has maintained close relations with Russia while courting investment from Europe, the United States, Asia, and other regions to develop Kazakhstan's plentiful oil and natural-gas resources.

The "leader of the nation" status handed to Nazarbaev in 2010 granted him and his family lifelong immunity from criminal and civil prosecution.

With reporting by Merhat Sharipzhan, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, Current Time, RFE/RL correspondent Rikard Jozwiak in Brussels, Reuters, and TASS

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/kazakh-president-nursultan- nazarbaev-says-he-is-resigning-/29830123.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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Nazarbaev's Decision To Leave Office Just Might Be His Greatest Legacy

By Bruce Pannier March 19, 2019

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbaev announced on state TV on March 19 that he will step down, ending nearly 30 years in office.

Nazarbaev might deserve credit for many accomplishments: relinquishing nuclear arms inherited from the Soviet Union; delicately balancing relations with Russia, China, and the West; or developing hydrocarbon potential to help make Kazakhstan post-Soviet Central Asia's wealthiest country.

But his decision to leave office voluntarily might prove his most significant contribution to his country and to a region where previous changes of leadership have occurred only through death, revolution, or other major political upheavals.

Nazarbaev's resignation was not a total surprise. He has spoken often of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew as a model. After the funeral of longtime Uzbek leader Islam Karimov in September 2016, Nazarbaev shuffled the Kazakh government twice in less than two weeks, placing individuals thought to be his closest and most loyal aides in top positions. Those people remain in senior posts despite a reshuffling of officials last month to defuse protests over conditions for working mothers.

Earlier in February, Nazarbaev requested that Kazakhstan's Constitutional Council clarify what would happen if a president stepped down. Some took that as a sign he was considering resigning from office soon.

The other Central Asian states will be watching closely in the coming weeks to see how any transfer of power progresses in Kazakhstan.

Two presidents of Kyrgyzstan were chased from power: Askar Akaev in 2005 and Kurmanbek Bakiev in 2010. They and their families played no further role in the politics of Kyrgyzstan.

In Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov preserved the system of government that his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, created before his death in December 2006. Berdymukhammedov essentially appropriated the cult of personality that Niyazov had built so that as little as possible remained to remind Turkmenistan's citizens of Niyazov.

Uzbekistan's transfer of power may well be what has most concerned Nazarbaev. Karimov, that country's first president under independence, is still officially revered, but most of his family has fallen on hard times since losing the protection that came with being a relative of the president. Moreover, successor Shavkat Mirziyoev has launched his own reforms, and the blame for the mess Uzbekistan found itself in when Karimov died is increasingly being placed on Karimov's policies.

By resigning voluntarily, Nazarbaev could set a new precedent for Central Asian transitions of power.

If a genuine handover were to happen smoothly, and if Nazarbaev and his family continued living unmolested in Kazakhstan, that could convince other Central Asian leaders that they, too, could leave office without fear of repercussions.

Kazakhstan's constitution has been rewritten several times to ensure the rights of the "first president," and Nazarbaev will no doubt remain powerful, even without the title of president.

Other countries, notably Tajikistan, have followed that example.

Resignation, whether titular or genuine, marks unfamiliar territory for Central Asian leaders.

Much now depends on how successfully Kazakhstan can proceed from here.

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

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/nazarbaev-s- decision-to-leave-office-just-might-be-his -biggest-legacy/29830474.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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Kazakh President Nazarbayev Resigns

Sputnik News

16:06 19.03.2019(updated 17:14 19.03.2019)

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his resignation on Tuesday.

Nazarbayev has been serving as president of Kazakhstan for 28 years, since the office was created on 24 April 1990. The speaker of the country's senate, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, will assume the office of president until a new president is elected.

"I made the decision to terminate my powers as president", Nazarbayev said, speaking on national television channels addressing the people of Kazakhstan.

Following the announcement, Nazarbayev signed a decree on the termination of his powers as the head of state.

"I believe that the time has come for me to sign the relevant decree. Let me read it out: on the authority of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan I'm terminating from March 20, 2019, my powers as President of the Republic of Kazakhstan," Nazarbayev said.

Nazarbayev said he would retain the post of head of the country's Security Council and leader of the Nur Otan party, and remain a member of the Constitutional Council.

Nazarbayev, 78, held a number of senior posts in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, which was a part of the Soviet Union. He became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, making him the leader of the second biggest republic within the Soviet Union, in 1989.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Nazarbayev remained in power, becoming president of the independent Republic of Kazakhstan. He won presidential elections in 1991, 1999, 2005, 2011 and 2015. In 1995, Kazakhstan also held a referendum on extending the presidential term until 2000, with the initiative having been supported by more than 95 percent of voters.

Nazarbayev was the last leader of a post-Soviet state who had been heading his country since the Soviet era.



 Sputnik

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Myanmar military court to probe violence against Rohingya

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 03:11PM

A military court in Myanmar will investigate the army's conduct during a crackdown on the persecuted Rohingya Muslims that forced thousands to flee to neighboring Bangladesh in August 2017.

The army said in a statement on Monday that the court, comprising a major general and two colonels, will investigate the events in Rakhine state.

"The information is released that the investigation court was formed ... to further scrutinize and confirm the respective incidents," said the statement, which was posted on the website of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the army's commander-in-chief.

The court will respond to allegations made by the United Nations and human rights groups accusing security forces of mass killings, rape and arson.

Last year, a UN fact-finding mission said the campaign against the Rohingya was orchestrated with "genocidal intent." It urged charging the army chief and five other generals with the "gravest crimes under international law."

A previous military investigation in 2017 had exonerated the security forces of any crimes.

Nicholas Bequelin, Southeast Asia and Pacific Director of Amnesty International, said the new court is "another bad faith maneuver" to fend off international pressure.

"The military stands accused of the gravest crimes under international law and has shown no sign of reform," he said.

Myanmar is facing growing international calls for accountability over the Rakhine massacre.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened a preliminary examination into the violence. A commission of inquiry formed by Myanmar and including some current and former diplomats to the UN is due to publish its findings later this year.

About 740,000 Rohingya Muslims are living in camps in Bangladesh after they were driven out of Rakhine during the deadly campaign in 2017, which the United Nations has described as ethnic cleansing.

Rakhine has been the scene of communal violence since 2012. Many Muslims have been killed while tens of thousands have been forced to flee as a result of attacks by Buddhists. The refugees largely live in camps in dire conditions.

The Rohingya have inhabited Rakhine for centuries, but most people in Buddhist-majority Myanmar see them as unwanted immigrants from Bangladesh, with the state denying the Muslims citizenship.

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S Korean Forces Accidentally Launch Anti-Aircraft Missile During Check - Reports

Sputnik News

14:48 18.03.2019

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - A routine maintenance check at a South Korean air force base in Chuncheon on Monday ended with an anti-aircraft guided missile getting accidentally launched and exploding in midair, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing a military official.

According to the outlet, a Cheongung medium-range surface-to-air missile exploded at around 10:38 a.m. local time (01:38 GMT) some 53 miles northeast of Seoul.

The missile is designed to explode in cases of guidance system failures after launch, the air force's official explained.

The accident caused no casualties or material damage, and a task force has been formed to investigate the cause of the accident, he added.

The Cheongung (KM-SAM) missile, which was designed by South Korea with Russia's technical support, was first tested in a live-firing mission late 2017. The 15-foot-long missile is capable of striking an aircraft at a range of 25 miles and an altitude of up to 10 miles.

 Sputnik

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Russia to deploy nuclear-capable bombers in Crimea

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 06:05PM

Russia has announced plans to deploy nuclear-capable strategic bombers to the Crimean Peninsula in response to the US missile defense deployment in Romania.

Russia's RIA news agency quoted a senior Russian lawmaker as saying on Monday that Moscow had decided to station the Tupolev Tu-22M3 long-range bombers at the Gvardeyskoye air base in Crimea.

"The US missile defense deployment in Romania was a serious challenge, in response to which the Russian Defense Ministry decided to deploy in Crimea, at the air base in Gvardeyskoye, squadrons of Tu-22M3 long-range bombers," Viktor Bondarev, head of the upper house of Russian parliament's defense and security committee, was quoted as saying.

"This step radically changed the balance of forces in the region," Bondarev added.

The senior Russian lawmaker said the strategic bombers stationed in Crimea would be modernized to be able to destroy air and missile defense systems everywhere in Europe.

The United States and other NATO members have increased their military activities in Eastern Europe since the eruption of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 and Russia's reunification with Crimea in a referendum.

Moscow has repeatedly criticized NATO's military build-up in Eastern Europe, saying it undermines regional security.

The deployment of bombers in Crimea comes in the backdrop of Washington's withdrawal from the the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Moscow, signed in 1986 between then US president, Ronald Reagan, and his Soviet Union counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev.

US President Donald Trump said on October 20, 2018 that Washington would pull out of the INF over the claim that Moscow had violated the pact. Russia has rejected that claim.

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Moscow Rules Out Destroying 9M729 Missile Complexes, Says They Fit INF Treaty

Sputnik News

11:50 19.03.2019(updated 12:10 19.03.2019)

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia will not destroy its 9M729 missile complexes that Washington believes to be in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

"We can not go for destroying our 9M729 missile that Washington groundlessly believes to violate the treaty", the ministry said.

According to the ministry, the United States is actively developing medium-range missile systems and Russia has to be ready for Washington's potential deployment of such systems.

The ministry also stressed that extension of another arms control document, the New START, would be in the interests of the entire international community.

"Unfortunately, Washington prefers to create an atmosphere of uncertainty, sending negative signals [about the possibility of extension]", the ministry said.

The US has repeatedly claimed that Russia is violating the treaty by testing 9M729 (NATO reporting name SSC-8) missiles at ranges banned by the agreement. Russia has refuted the accusations, insisting that the missile's maximum range of 480km is in line with the INF Treaty's requirements.

On 2 February, the United States formally suspended its obligations under the INF Treaty and launched the withdrawal process, which will be completed within six months unless Moscow remedies its alleged violations of the bilateral arms control deal. The same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied the accusations, announcing that Moscow had also suspended its obligations under the treaty in response to the US move.

 Sputnik

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Syria underlines liberation of all occupied areas

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, March 18, IRNA -- Syria's defense minister on Monday stressed liberation of all areas occupied by terrorist groups.

Syria has already not started the operation for liberation of Idlib and whenever the grounds are ready, it will conduct an operation to liberate the region from occupation, General Ali Ayoub said.

He made the remarks in a joint press conference with his Iranian and Iraqi counterparts.

As the President Bashar al-Assad has reiterated for several times, even one meter of the country's soil will not remain out of government's control, the commander noted.

Since March 2011, Syria has been suffering from unrest and terrorist acts.

9191**2050

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Syria accuses US-coalition of committing war crimes

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, March 18, IRNA -- Syria has confirmed that the statement issued by the United States, France and Britain on Syria is a historical document of lie, hypocrisy, deception and falsification.

According to Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Syria says that the countries that killed and destroyed are not invited to contribute to the reconstruction.

'They should only pay compensations for the killing and destruction due to their heinous crimes and stop their blatant interference in internal affairs,' SANA quoted a source as saying.

This source went on to say that these criminals will not be invited for reconstruction of Syria since they have to compensate for massacre and destructions they caused.

It reiterated 'the crimes and atrocities committed by terrorist groups in Syria and those committed by the US-led illegal coalition especially in Raqqa and Deir Ezzor are regarded as war crimes.

It added anti-humanity crimes will ever remain a stain on the criminals' foreheads.

Recently, three European countries together with Germany in a statement announced that they will not wait for any aids to reconstruct Syria until a secure and real political procedure come into play.

Earlier in a new aggression launched by the US-coalition on Sunday ten civilians were killed in an attack on al-Baghouz Camp in the southeast of Deir Ezzor.

Meanwhile earlier, UN reported that eight years since the war began, 12 million Syrians are either refugees or displaced inside Syria; adding up to around half the pre-war population.

"Around 70 percent of Syrian refugees live a razor-edge existence below the poverty line," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi in a joint statement, who recently visited Syria and Lebanon, where refugees make up a quarter of the population.

9376**1424

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US 'flagrant' support for terrorism must stop: Syria

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 07:11PM

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has vehemently lambasted the US administration's support for terrorist organizations and war crimes in Syria, stressing that the move would fail to undermine Syria's determination in combating terrorism and the foreign occupation until the last inch of its territory is liberated.

"The US continues its flagrant support for terrorism to which Syria is exposed, in a flagrant and continued violation of the UN Charter and rules of international law as well as all relevant resolutions," an official spokesman at Syria's Foreign and Expatriates Ministry told the country's state news agency, SANA, in a statement on Monday.

The unnamed spokesman called on the US administration to respect the UN Security Council resolutions regarding combating terrorism and halting the financing of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham Takfiri terrorist group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, and other affiliated terrorist organizations.

The foreign ministry official also said the government in Damascus would condemn Washington's behavior in offering covert and overt support to terrorist organizations including the so-called White Helmets.

The US State Department announced on March 14 that Washington was offering an additional $5 million to the White Helmets organization, which has repeatedly been accused of cooperating with Takfiri terrorists and staging false-flag gas attacks in Syria.

The administration in Washington had earlier vowed to stop funding the White Helmets back in May 2018. However, it reversed course just a month later, sending $6.8 million to the group.

Over the past years, mounting evidence has emerged about members of the so-called civil defense group filming scenes of staged chemical attacks in a bid to implicate the Syrian government and make a case for ensuing US-led airstrikes.

The group is also notorious for engaging in organ trafficking, terrorist logistics support and looting in Syria, according to a report presented to the UN.

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Defense minister: Foreign military presence in Syria amounts to 'occupation'

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 04:22PM

The Syrian Ministry of Defense has denounced as an "act of occupation" the presence of foreign forces in the country without authorization from the government in Damascus, stressing that Syria reserves the right to defend its security and sovereignty against any act of aggression.

Speaking at a press conference in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Monday, Syrian Defense Minister General Ali Abdullah Ayyoub said the unauthorized military presence of any country in Syria was regarded as "illegal" and that the Syrian armed forces would not relent in their determination to defend the country's territorial integrity.

General Ayyoub also added that areas held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) would be brought back under government control through military force or some kind of "reconciliation agreements."

"The only card remaining in the hands of the Americans and their allies is the SDF, and it will be dealt with through the two methods used by the Syrian state: national reconciliation or the liberation of the areas that they control through force," the Syrian defense minister said.

"The Americans must leave and will leave," he added.

The US has long been providing the SDF -- a predominantly Kurdish alliance of militants -- with arms, calling it a key partner in the purported fight against the Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

The Daesh terror group lost its territorial control in Syria in late 2017 thanks to national army operations backed by Iran and Russia.

Despite the terror group's collapse, the US and a coalition of allies, which invaded Syria in 2014 under the pretext of fighting Daesh, have refused to end their aerial operations in defiance of the Damascus government.

The US has deployed some 2,000 troops to Syria and runs military bases there.

Many reports have emerged over the past months, indicating that Washington lets the terrorists enjoy freedom of movement near its military base, and even trains them there.

In December last year, US President Donald Trump unexpectedly announced that the US would be pulling all its 2,000 forces out of Syria. He also claimed victory over Daesh in the country.

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Anti-terror fight to continue until all terrorist groups defeated: Iran military chief

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 03:42PM

Iran's top military commander has warned about efforts by stooges of the global arrogance to fuel insecurity in the Middle East, stressing that the fight against terrorists will continue until their full elimination.

Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri made the remarks while addressing a joint press conference at the end of a tripartite meeting with his Iraqi counterpart Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanimi and Syrian Defense Minister General Ali Abdullah Ayyoub in Damascus on Monday, during which the three countries exchanged views on ways to combat terrorism.

Iran's military chief said at the present time, the main goal is to preserve national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria, adding, "Measures taken by the three countries will continue until terrorists are fully defeated."

Baqeri added that withdrawal of foreign forces that are present in Syria without any authorization from the country's government is also top on the agenda of the three states.

Commenting on the presence of Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria, Baqeri said terrorists active in those countries posed a threat to Iran's security, adding that the Islamic Republic dispatched its military advisors to the two Arab countries at their request.

Baqeri emphasized that no foreign armed forces should be deployed to any country in the region without its legal permission, adding that Iran will continue its fight against terrorists in Syria as long as the legal Syrian government demands it.

Speaking upon his arrival in the Syrian capital on Sunday, the top Iranian military commander said foreign forces who are illegally present in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib and east of the Euphrates, should leave these areas at the earliest.

"[Those foreign] forces who are present in Syria without any authorization from the country's government must leave the Syrian soil as soon as possible," Baqeri said.

Iran has been offering military advisory support to Syria and Iraq at the request of their governments, enabling their armies to speed up their gains on various fronts against terror outfits.

The Syrian defense minister, for his part, said at the presser that Syria would gain full control of the country.

Ayyoub said the Syrian government will not allow anyone to have control over even an inch of the country's soil, adding that this is what President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly emphasized.

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Damascus Accuses US and Its Allies of War Crimes in Syria

Sputnik News

03:57 18.03.2019(updated 14:08 18.03.2019)

DAMASCUS (Sputnik) - The Syrian Foreign Ministry responded to the statement issued by the US-led coalition partners that refused to take part in the reconstruction of Syria noting that these states are not invited to contribute to the reconstruction after those war crimes committed against the Syrian people.

"These countries that killed and destroyed have never been interested in the reconstruction [of Syria] and they are not invited to contribute to the reconstruction. These states should only pay compensations for the killing and destruction committed as a result of their heinous crimes and stop their blatant interference in internal affairs", the statement obtained by Sputnik read.

The ministry noted that counterterrorism methods of the US-led coalition constitute war crimes and violations of the international law.

The United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom said in a joint statement on Friday that they will not consider providing reconstruction assistance to Syria until a credible political process is underway in the country.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry called this statement a historic evidence of "lie, hypocrisy, deception and falsification".

As the armed conflict in Syria seems to be nearing its end and Damascus has regained control over the vast territories that were previously controlled by terrorist groups and rebels, Syria has already launched the reconstruction process and started welcoming back refugees.

The US-led international coalition of more than 70 members has been engaged in counterterrorism operations in Syria since 2014 without the permission of Syrian authorities or the UN Security Council. The United States has, in particular, supported the Kurdish-led militia controlling the territories to the east of the Euphrates River.

US President Donald Trump announced last December that the US troops would leave Syria. However, no exact deadline for the withdrawal of US soldiers has been unveiled yet.

 Sputnik

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Militants Shell 4 Syrian Provinces, Ceasefire Violated - Russian MoD

Sputnik News

03:27 18.03.2019

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Militants breached the truce regime in the Syrian provinces of Latakia, Hama, Idlib and Aleppo over the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria said on Sunday.

"Over the past day, terrorists attacked Haisa al-Sharqi, Dahar Abu Asad and Djubb al-Zarur in Latakia province, Al-Suqaylabiyah (two times) in Hama province, Dreiba, Sukkary, Umm al-Rdjim, al-Fhaila and Niha in Idlib province, Aleppo city (three times)", head of the center Maj. Gen. Viktor Kupchishin said at a briefing.

According to Kupchishin, ceasefire violations by militants were registered in 10 locations in the Idlib de-escalation zone over the past 24 hours.

Kupchishin recalled that the Syrian authorities continue to work on amnesty for those who evade from military service, including those among refugees and former members of illegal armed groups, adding that as for 16 March, in total 56,856 people were granted amnesty.

Kupchishin added that works to recover social infrastructure in Syria continue.

"As for 16 March 2019, 31,402 houses, 826 educational facilities and 147 medical centres has been recovered. Besides, 1,020.2km [635 miles] of roads have been repaired", he said.

Syria has been engulfed in an armed conflict since 2011. At the moment, the Syrian government forces continue military operations in several areas of the country to clear them from terrorists. The political resolution, rebuilding of the country and return of the refugees have come to the forefront in Syria.

 Sputnik

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US-Backed Force Says It's in Control of IS Syria Encampment

By Jeff Seldin March 19, 2019

Hundreds of Islamic State fighters making a last stand for the terror group's self-declared caliphate lost control of their "tent city" in the northeastern Syrian town of Baghuz, in what U.S.-backed forces described as a significant blow.

Syrian Democratic Forces made the announcement Tuesday on social media, following an operation, which resulted in the capture of what they described as 157 experienced IS fighters, many from outside Syria and Iraq.

"#SDF is in control of Daesh encampment area," spokesman Mustafa Bali wrote on Twitter, cautioning, "This is not a victory announcement."

"Clashes are continuing as a group of ISIS terrorists who are confined into a tiny area still fight back," he said, using another acronym for the terror group.

A media official with the Kurdish YPG militia, which has been aiding in the campaign against IS, also said the battle had shifted to the outskirts of Baghuz.

"A group of terrorists are remaining on the edges of Euphrates and haven't surrendered yet," Zana Amedi announced on Twitter.

The U.S.-backed forces said hundreds of injured or sick IS fighters also had been evacuated from the town and taken to nearby military hospitals for treatment.

The U.S.-led coalition Tuesday described the fighting as sporadic due the ongoing presence of civilians.

"The enemy is still using civilians as shields, as well as dressing up in female attire to either try to escape or cause death by employing suicide vests," Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, Col. Sean Ryan, told VOA.

"The safety of civilians has remained paramount, thus making fighting sporadic at times," he added.

In the meantime, the coalition said air and artillery strikes were still being carried out in support of the SDF offensive.

Thousands of SDF troops have massed around Baghuz for weeks, laying siege to the town in an effort to liberate the final IS enclave in Syria. Officials said Kurdish special forces from Iraq also had been brought in to help with the operations.

On several occasions, SDF officials said victory was near, but time and again the fight was slowed by fierce fighting and the presence of tens of thousands of civilians, many the wives, children and family members of IS fighters.

Despite the progress Tuesday, SDF officials did not say how many fighters remained, nor how many additional civilians or IS hostages were present.

More than 4,000 people have fled Baghuz since the SDF resumed its final assault on IS just over a week ago, and previous estimates by both the SDF and the U.S.-led coalition have been way off.

SDF officials initially estimated about 1,000 civilians and 300 fighters were holed up in Baghuz shortly after the operation to liberate Baghuz got under way last month. But since then, more than 30,000 civilians, including thousands of IS fighters, have surrendered.

This past Sunday, SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel said more than 5,000 IS fighters had surrendered over the past month, while another 1,300 had been killed in the fighting.

Hundreds more were captured as part of SDF operations, he said.

But at the time, SDF officials also estimated as many as another 5,000 people might still be hiding in Baghuz.

"We have been consistently wrong, as have our SDF partners, on how big this is," a senior U.S. defense official said earlier this month.

U.S. defense officials say one reason for the vast underestimation of the number of people and fighters may be due to Islamic State's extensive use of caves and tunnels, which have made it difficult to see just how many people remained entrenched in the ever-shrinking sliver of land.

Various U.S. and SDF officials have described the cave and tunnel system under Baghuz as complex, with some initial intelligence suggesting the tunnels ran for more than two kilometers, capable of hiding an unknown number of fighters.

Officials also expected the tunnel system would be rigged, full of traps and explosives designed to slow down any attempt to clear out IS fighters while at the same time inflicting heavy casualties.

But so far, SDF officials have not said what remains of the tunnel system or how long it may take to clear it of IS resistance.

Earlier this month, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Gen. Joseph Votel, warned the slow, drawn out fall of Baghuz, including the periodic surrender of thousands of civilians, was part of a "calculated decision" by IS to allow the group to complete its transition to a clandestine insurgency.

Despite losing administrative control over almost all the land it once held in Syria and Iraq, U.S. defense officials caution IS still has "tens of thousands" of fighters working either as part of sleeper cells or as part of an active, clandestine insurgency.

Additionally, senior officials said most of the group's senior leadership, including its self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remain at large.

On Monday, IS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir released a new audio message online, vowing the liberation of Baghuz by the coalition would not signal the end of the terror group.

"Here is America declaring a false victory that has no bearing on reality," he said, according to a translation by SITE Intelligence.

Former U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence officials said Tuesday that while IS's self-declared caliphate would soon face an ultimate defeat, the terror group will live on, as will its dangerous legacy.

"The idea of a caliphate existing in the here and now, in 2017, 2018, 2019  that genie is out of the bottle," Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism analyst, said Tuesday during a panel on extremism in Washington.

"It's more authentic because it's real," he said. "It's not something in history that you read about in a book."

Juan Zarate, who served former U.S. President George W. Bush as a deputy national security adviser, added that the collapse of the caliphate is also unlikely to dishearten IS supporters.

"They will rationalize the loss. They will rationalize it in part because they have a very long-term vision of their own movement in history," he said. "They will see this as just one chapter."

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Turkish President Claims Iran Joins Military Offensive Against Kurdish Separatists

By RFE/RL March 19, 2019

Turkey has repeated its claim that it and Iran are jointly carrying out a military operation against Kurdish separatists, although semiofficial Iranian media quoted the military as denying it was involved.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on March 18 said the operation was targeting militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), adding it was the first of its kind and that he hoped further missions would follow.

Turkish TRT channel quoted Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu as saying, "Today, at 8 a.m., Turkey, together with Iran, carried out our first joint operation."

It was not clear where the operation was happening.

Millions of ethnic Kurds live in the mountainous region along the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Some have links to Turkey's militant PKK, which has for decades fought for an independent homeland.

Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency reported that the army denied involvement in the operation.

"The Turkish Army carried out the operation against the militant group PKK, but Iran's armed forces were not part of the operation," Fars quoted an Iranian military source as saying.

"Iran's armed forces will severely counter any group that intends to create insecurity in our country," the source added.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in the past has clashed with Kurdish rebel groups in the northern part of the country near the Turkish border and across the border in Iraq.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) occasionally carries out attacks inside Iran from its bases in Iraq and is listed as a terrorist group by Tehran. Several of its leaders have been killed in attacks the group has blamed on Tehran.

The group is an militant leftist party made up of ethnic Kurds from Iran. It has been based in northern Iraq since it was banned in Iran.

With reporting by Reuters, Fars, and TASS

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/turkey-says-iran-joins-military -offensive-against-kurds/29829247.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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UK parliament speaker blocks resubmission of Brexit deal

Iran Press TV

Mon Mar 18, 2019 06:27PM

The speaker of the British parliament has announced in a shocking statement that the government would be barred from returning to the chamber for a third vote on its controversial European Union withdrawal agreement if the deal on offer is the same as the one defeated two times this year.

John Bercow said on Monday that it would be against precedents of the House of Commons that the government would seek to gain the approval of the lawmakers for the same exact deal that was rejected last week.

"This is my conclusion: if the government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same, nor substantially the same as that disposed of by the house on the 12th of March, this would be entirely in order," Bercow said, adding, however, that "the same proposition or substantially the same proposition as that of last week" would not be allowed for another vote.

The announcement came as a shock for Prime Minister Theresa May who was reportedly trying to hold a third vote on her Brexit deal on Wednesday, just more than a week before Britain is officially expected to leave the EU.

May's deal had been defeated by 149 votes on March 12 and by 230 votes on January 15. She has desperately been seeking to go through the Commons with the deal she finalized with the EU in November and bring Britain out of the EU, as demanded by more than 17 million voters, on March 29.

May's office said the announcement had not been expected and the government was disappointed that it could not continue with its efforts to secure the deal in the parliament.

Bercow said, however, that his announcement was not his last word and the government, which dominates the parliament and sets its agenda, can come up with new propositions.

Pro-Brexit lawmakers in the Commons welcomed Bercow's decision to bar another vote on government Brexit deal, saying it would prepare the ground for a clean break from the EU at the end of March. Opponents said the move would definitively cause May to seek an extension to EU-UK negotiation period, as allowed by the Commons last week.

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UK Government May Be Barred From 3d Vote on Brexit Deal  House Speaker

Sputnik News

18:51 18.03.2019(updated 19:24 18.03.2019)

A motion that is the same or "substantially the same" as the motion that has been rejected by the House of Commons, cannot be legally brought to the UK Parliament for another vote, according to John Bercow.

"What the government cannot legitimately do is to re-submit to the House the same proposition or substantially the same proposition," John Bercow told parliament on Monday.

The Speaker addressed the issue raised by some MPs last week, following days of debate and two Meaningful Votes on the government's Withdrawal Agreement. With the PM expected to bring her deal back to the Parliament for yet another vote  after two rejections  Labour MP Angela Eagle had questioned such action.

She asked the Speaker last week whether a motion can be brought back repeatedly to the House, even when it has been rejected.

"No answer is required now but a ruling will be made about that matter at the appropriate time. I'm grateful to the right honourable lady for reminding me a ruling might be required," the Speaker of the House, John Bercow answered.

On Monday, Bercow returned to the matter and told MPs that parliamentary rules prevent a motion being brought back repeatedly for votes in the same session of Parliament.

Theresa May's government doesn't hold a majority in the UK Parliament, which has played a role in hampering the success of motions brought forward by the Cabinet.

According to the Thomas Erskine May's guide to parliamentary practice, the government can bring substantially similar or the same motion for a vote once the next parliamentary session begins. The House of Commons' new session is due to begin in September 2019.

20 March is the last day a vote can be held before Theresa May heads to an EU Council meeting, where she will ask the EU27 to delay Brexit.

 Sputnik

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EU Centrists Fear British Participation in Euro-Election in May

By Jamie Dettmer March 18, 2019

The European Union appears set to agree to a delay on Britain's exit from the bloc, but officials in Brussels are anxious about the impact that might have on European parliamentary elections in May.

They fear a wave of Euro-skeptics will be returned by British voters, if the country participates in the elections, reinforcing an expected strong populist showing across the continent.

Some EU officials are already exploring legal ways to try to stop British participation on the grounds that the country may not be a member by the time the parliamentary term expires. Instead they want either the current British MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) to continue in place or for the British government to appoint temporary Euro-lawmakers reflecting the current party strengths in Britain's House of Commons.

But Brexiters are already exploring legal action to block any attempts to prevent British participation. Leading Brexiter Nigel Farage says a new party he's launched plans to field a full slate of candidates. Lawyers acting for the hardline Brexit campaigning group, Leave Means Leave, are in talks with Downing Street.

John Longworth, chairman of the group, which favors a "no-nonsense" Brexit, departing without any deal, said in a statement: "We are determined to challenge the government and EU if they attempt to deny the democratic right of the people of the UK to be represented in the EU Parliament."

On Thursday, Prime Minister Theresa May is due to meet European national leaders in Brussels, where she will request a Brexit extension following the parliamentary rebuff of her EU withdrawal deal, which was agreed with Brussels last November. The House of Commons has also blocked Britain exiting the EU without a deal.

It is unclear whether she will ask for a short three-month extension, hoping still to secure parliamentary approval for her deal that has been rejected twice now, or for a longer postponement. France and Germany favor a longer extension of 21 months.

Prime Minister May has warned Brexiters opposed to her deal, which she might put to a parliamentary vote again Tuesday, that they will have to take part in the Euro-elections, if they vote again against her EU divorce agreement and it is delayed beyond June 30, shortly before new MEPs take their seats.

Legal nightmare

The Brexit mess is becoming as much a legal nightmare as a political one for both Britain and the EU. On Monday the Speaker of the House of Commons ruled under parliamentary rules that Prime Minister Theresa May can't bring back her Brexit deal for a third for a vote after it has been rejected twice before.

In Europe, one legal opinion offered to EU ambassadors last week warned that Brussels would be obliged under the bloc's rules to terminate British membership of the EU on July 1, if Britain has not participated in the May 23 Euro-elections.

"No extension should be granted beyond 1 July unless the European parliament elections are held at the mandatory date," the legal opinion stated.

For EU officials and centrist European politicians, who had always hoped Brexit would be reversed, the prospect of British participation in the May elections might be a case of be careful for what you wish for.

"We could see a lot more people like Farage elected to the parliament," said a senior EU official. "And that risks emboldening populists across the bloc and upsetting efforts to try to restore stability and predictability in the face of rising nativism," he added.

On Monday, British trade minister Liam Fox warned the ruling Conservatives that they "need to be ready to take part in the European elections in May."

Crucial elections

This year's European parliamentary elections are likely to be the most important the bloc has ever held. Two conflicting visions of Europe are on offer with centrists led by French President Emmanuel Macron and nationalist populists championed by Italy's Matteo Salvini struggling for mastery. The populists have turned for advice to former Donald Trump aide Steve Bannon.

Macron has pitched himself as the antidote to the "illiberal democracies" of Central Europe and the defender of the European Union threatened by populist-nationalists like Salvini. The French leader wants to reform and revive the bloc by deepening political and economic integration of Europe.

The 44-year-old Salvini wants the opposite, not only a brake on further integration, but a reversal with the bloc consisting of a looser grouping of nation states less hedged by Brussels and EU treaties.

In their campaigning the populists are exploiting what French historian Jean Garrigues, a critic of the populists, recently described as the "EU's original sin"  building an "economic Europe" that is too technocratic as the first step in building European political unity. This has resulted in a deficit of democracy and trust and "led to a governance by a very technocratic commission which has become an ideal scapegoat," he said.

Populist parties, especially in Italy, Poland, Hungary and France, expect to make major gains in the May elections and are coordinating their campaigning. In France, opinion polls suggest that Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National is now neck-and-neck with Macron's En Marche party. Salvini's Lega party has performed strongly in recent regional elections. Germany's hard-right Alternative fur Deutschland, the largest opposition party in the country, is also likely to pick up seats.

Pollsters are predicting Euro-skeptics will capture a third of the European parliament's 705 seats.

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Leading Ukraine Candidate Fights 'Fakes With Fakes' As Facebook Tests New Political Ad Rules

By Christopher Miller March 18, 2019

KYIV -- On a recent afternoon inside the digital campaign headquarters of Ukrainian comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy, around a dozen young volunteers sat glued to computer screens. Their task was twofold: to scour social media sites for impostor accounts and "fake news" about their candidate while trying to fend off armies of bots spreading negative comments on official campaign pages.

In the politically charged atmosphere surrounding a presidential election that's now just 13 days away, it is an exhausting, never-ending task.

Just ask 28-year-old Mikhail Fedorov, a digital strategist who leads a clever campaign that builds on Zelenskyy's own viral posts.

"Every day there's a large number of fakes we have to fight against," Fedorov, whose private firm specializes in advertising on Facebook and Instagram, told RFE/RL between strategy sessions with his team for the Zelenskyy campaign.

Most, he added, are discovered on Facebook.

When the campaign finds the fakes, which violate Facebook's terms of service, Fedorov's team follows the same reporting process as any of the world's largest social network's 2 billion other active users: They report the abusive content one example at a time, as there is no direct line for campaigns to Facebook's 6-month-old elections "War Room."

It's a tedious process that can take several days before the offending accounts, pages, or posts are removed. By that time, Fedorov explained, the damage may already be done.

But on March 18, Fedorov's and other Ukrainian candidates' teams got a little added help in their fight.

New Transparency Requirements

In a move meant to curb "fake news," disinformation, and foreign intervention ahead of the country's watershed presidential election -- and to avoid a situation like that in 2016, when Facebook was criticized for failing to stop alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election -- sponsors of political ads in Ukraine are now required to publicly disclose their identity.

Similar transparency requirements were recently introduced in the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, India, and Israel. Facebook has said that it plans to introduce the rules globally by the end of June.

The move is a long time coming for Ukraine, which first warned Facebook of Russian disinformation and bogus news being spread on the social network in 2015 to sow discord and whitewash a Russian military invasion.

President Petro Poroshenko, who is now fighting for reelection, famously pleaded to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in a May 2015 Facebook post to open a local office in Ukraine staffed with people in tune with the political situation and Russia's perceived misuse of the platform.

The request was aired two days later during a town-hall meeting at Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters and met with laughter.

Nearly four years later, there is no Facebook office in Ukraine and a position for a Warsaw-based public-policy manager for Ukraine remains unfilled, the company confirmed to RFE/RL.

The latest poll by Rating Group shows Zelenskyy leading the field at 24.7 percent among Ukrainians planning to vote on March 31, in the first of two possible rounds, followed by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with 18.3 percent and Poroshenko with 16.8 percent. None of the other 36 candidates garnered more than 10.3 percent support.

"One step of this [transparency] process is for the person running the ad to provide identification documents to confirm they are who they say they are," Jan Sciegienny, head of corporate communications for Facebook in Central and Eastern Europe, told RFE/RL in e-mailed comments about the new rules.

Identity confirmation consists of turning on two-factor authentication, then providing Facebook with a government-issued ID, two official documents, or a notarized form from Facebook. The process is estimated to take 48 to 72 hours.

Besides confirming their identity, political advertisers must label their ads as political and provide a "Paid for by" disclaimer to be approved by Facebook. Authorized Facebook pages in Ukraine will also display all locations of the page administrators in the "Info and Ads" section.

'Wide Range Of Bad Actors'

In addition, Facebook will house all Ukraine-related political ads with disclaimers in a public database for seven years. Ads that run without a disclaimer will also be kept in the database if they are reported and determined to contain political content.

The transparency requirements come after Facebook announced in January that it would prohibit electoral ads bought outside Ukraine from appearing there in the run-up to the election.

"We know that a wide range of bad actors (from Russia and elsewhere) will look to target a major public event like an election," Sciegienny said of that measure. "Our aim is to help protect elections in Ukraine and part of that includes guarding against foreign interference and not accepting electoral ads from foreign territories."

Some in Ukraine have questioned whether that meant Facebook would also prohibit ads from Crimea, the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia five years ago, as well as areas of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by Russia-backed separatists. Sciegienny confirmed to RFE/RL that that was the case.

"According to Ukrainian law, these regions are currently territories not controlled by the Ukrainian government," Sciegienny said.

Too Little, Too Late?

Dmytro Zolotukhin, a Ukrainian deputy minister of information policy who has met with Facebook representatives in Kyiv on at least two occasions in recent months, praises the new ad rules and transparency requirements, telling RFE/RL they mark a big step forward for Facebook that "will make [information in] this sphere much more clear."

But coming less than two weeks before the first round of voting, some observers say Facebook's move is too little, too late and argue that there are simple ways to get around the new requirements.

Nina Jankowicz, a global fellow at the Washington-based Wilson Center's Kennan Institute focused on Russian disinformation, warned that in a country like Ukraine -- with its many ties to Russia -- the new advertising and transparency rules can be "quite easily circumvented."

"It would be easy for a layman, let alone a member of the Russian security services, to exploit the loopholes in the geographic requirements and still purchase ads," she told RFE/RL in January.

Ihor Razkladai, a Ukrainian lawyer at the Kyiv-based Center for Democracy and Rule of Law who has helped conduct trainings with Facebook in Ukraine, told RFE/RL that researchers he worked with were already finding Facebook accounts "with large followings" being "rented for big [sums] of money."

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

Fedorov welcomed Facebook's new policy but said his team would not count solely on the social network for combating the fakes and disinformation targeting their candidate.

Last week, taking a page from Zelenskyy himself -- who has crowdsourced his platform and potential cabinet -- Fedorov's team launched a project to crowdsource its fight against disinformation and fake accounts.

The project will work like this: When disinformation or a fake accounts appear, a chat bot designed to recognize key words will mobilize supporters on social media to "defend Zelenskyy."

Last month, Fedorov's team launched a competition "to come up with the best fake" about Zelenskyy and share it on social media using the hashtag #ZeFake.

In fighting disinformation fire with fire, Fedorov said he hoped to "destroy and depreciate" the potentially damaging messages spread about his candidate. He claimed it had already worked, though he declined to provide details.

The candidate himself promoted the competition in a video address published on social media and appeared pleased with the result.

"We laughed heartily" at the fakes, Zelenskyy said before reading some aloud. "Zelenskyy is a reptilian. Zelenskyy is Merkel's lover...Zelenskyy is actually a woman, moreover, the illegitimate sister of Tymoshenko who is taking revenge on her."

The winner?

"Zelenskyy is the great-grandson of an honorary member of the Rothschilds."

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/leading-ukraine-candidate- zelenskyy-facebook-fakes-political -ad-rules/29828605.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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Exclusive: Tymoshenko Defends Decision Not To Fight Over Crimea, Attacks Minsk Process

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service March 18, 2019

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is a leading candidate in the country's March 31 presidential election, has defended her support for Kyiv's 2014 decision not to use military force to resist Russia's annexation of the Black Sea region of Crimea.

Tymoshenko, who recent polls show among the top three of 39 remaining candidates, cited a lack of military and diplomatic weapons in the face of an invasion that robbed Ukraine of the Crimean Peninsula and preceded five years of continued bloodshed in other parts of eastern Ukraine.

"At the time that all began, Ukraine had no army and no international support," Tymoshenko said in an exclusive interview with RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.

"If we had given in to the provocation that had been arranged -- and we knew from foreign intelligence sources...that the...Kremlin was waiting for just one killed Crimean or one killed serviceman from the Black Sea Fleet to let loose Russian forces all along Ukraine's border with the aggressor," Tymoshenko said.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine has left around 13,000 people dead, some 30,000 injured, and uprooted well over 1 million Ukrainian citizens, according to UN and Ukrainian officials.

"I have expressed my position that if [Russia] had managed to provoke [aggressive] actions from us, they would have occupied two-thirds of Ukraine and we would have hundreds of thousands of people dead today."

'Highest Priority'

Tymoshenko also said that if elected she would reject the Minsk process for resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine and launch a new process guided by the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

"I didn't accept the Minsk agreements from day one," Tymoshenko said. She described the Minsk process as based on an agreement between "terrorists" in eastern Ukraine and "people who don't hold official posts in Ukraine."

"My question is: Who's representing Ukraine?" she concluded.

The highest priority, Tymoshenko said, must be to return Crimea. She said the fact that the Minsk process, which aims to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine between Moscow-backed separatists formations and the Ukrainian government, did not include discussion of Crimea was tantamount to "state treason."

Under the Minsk process, Kyiv holds talks with representatives of the separatist formations with the goal of establishing a stable cease-fire and then moving toward a political settlement.

Kyiv and the West have accused Moscow of not living up to its commitment to pressure the separatist formations to implement the Minsk scheme, including allowing Kyiv to secure its international border with Russia.

Poroshenko 'Not A Patriot'

Tymoshenko has long advocated resolving the conflict with Russia within the framework of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom offered Ukraine security guarantees in exchange for its surrender of Soviet-era nuclear weapons.

"I would remind you that the Budapest Memorandum was signed by the president of the United States [at the time, Bill Clinton], the prime minister of Great Britain [then John Major], and the president of the Russian Federation [then Boris Yeltsin]," Tymoshenko said. "This is precisely the format in which we must now sit down to fulfill the Budapest Memorandum."

She insisted that such talks must include "the president of the occupying country, the president of the Russian Federation."

Tymoshenko also called on Western countries to provide greater "defensive weaponry" to Ukraine as a means of applying pressure on "the aggressor country."

Tymoshenko, 58, is one of the top three candidates in a field of 39 running in the March 31 presidential election. Incumbent President Petro Poroshenko and comedian Volodomyr Zelenskyy are the other frontrunners.

Tymoshenko also slammed Poroshenko in the RFE/RL interview, accusing him of embezzling "the defense budget through illegal deals with the aggressor [Russia]" and calling on him to resign, a demand that she has expressed before.

"He's not a patriot," she said. "He's a thief, a corrupted official who's been secretly making deals with the Kremlin."



Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/tymoshenko-defends- decision-not-to-fight-over-crimea-attacks- minsk-process/29828453.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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Canada Expected To Announce Extension Of Ukraine Training Mission

By RFE/RL March 18, 2019

Canada is set to announce it will extend its 200-member military training mission in Ukraine, Reuters reports, citing a source directly familiar with the matter.

Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan are scheduled to hold a news conference on March 18.

"[The subject of the news conference] is the Ukraine extension," the source said, according to Reuters.

No additional trainers are expected to be sent to the country, the source added.

A spokeswoman for the defense minister declined to comment. Representatives for Freeland could not immediately be reached.

Canada first sent troops to Ukraine in 2015, and they were scheduled to pull out at the end of March.

But political and military sources said that, given continuing tensions between Ukraine and Russia, it was necessary for the mission to be extended.

In December 2018, Freeland said that Russia's "illegal annexation of Crimea, its direct involvement in the conflict in [eastern Ukraine], and now its illegal actions targeting Ukrainian sailors and vessels...cannot and must not be accepted by the international community."

On March 15, the United States, together with the European Union and Canada, imposed new sanctions on more than a dozen Russian officials and businesses in response to the country's "continued aggression in Ukraine."

Ukrainian government forces have been fighting against Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk since April 2014 in a conflict that has killed some 13,000 people -- a quarter of them civilians.

Canadian trainers are part of a larger mission that involves the United States, Britain, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden. The Canadian mission is based in western Ukraine, a long distance from the regular clashes between Ukrainian soldiers and Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country.

In November 2018, Russia captured three Ukrainian ships and their 24 crew members near the Kerch Strait, which links the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The 24 Ukrainian sailors are still being held by Moscow.

During a trip to Sevastopol on March 18, which Russian officials have proclaimed as the Day of Crimea's Reunification With Russia, President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to take part in a ceremony opening a new power station, the Kremlin said.

With reporting by Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/canada-extension- training-mission-ukraine-freeland -sajjan/29827261.html

Copyright (c) 2019. 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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TORONTO, March 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canopy Rivers Inc. (Canopy Rivers) (TSXV: RIV) and LeafLink, Inc. (LeafLink) are pleased to announce the establishment of LeafLink Services International ULC (LeafLink International), a new venture that exclusively licenses and leverages LeafLinks dominant business-to-business (B2B) marketplace and supply chain technology platform for deployment throughout regulated international cannabis markets.



LeafLink is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketplace that simplifies the supply chain through its e-commerce platform. The company has a growing network of more than 950 cannabis brands, and penetration throughout ~2,800 cannabis retailers across 16 territories in the United States. LeafLink has established the single largest B2B marketplace for cannabis brands and facilitates more than US$900 million in gross merchandise value annually. Retailers use LeafLink for managing their wholesale inventory, enabling them to shop multiple vendors in one cart, view up-to-date product and brand menus, review historical and open orders, discover new products, and request samples. LeafLink further serves vendors by offering supplementary tools such as order management, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, inventory tracking tools, and customized reporting systems, among other services.

We have been very impressed with LeafLinks deep market penetration and their understanding of cannabis companies needs and behaviors, said Narbe Alexandrian, President of Canopy Rivers. The number of brands and products within our new cannabis economy has been explosive, making it difficult for retailers to deal with multiple parties in an increasingly fragmented market. As regulated cannabis consumption and distribution proliferates around the world, LeafLink International will introduce the industrys leading SaaS-enabled marketplace to the global stage to create a new standard for expediting the cannabis supply chain in regulated markets.

By creating this new joint venture, Canopy Rivers continues to expand its exposure across the cannabis value chain through a capital-light, market-leading B2B platform that is immediately scalable across legal jurisdictions. Canopy Rivers intends to integrate its network of complementary cannabis companies and global reach to drive growth for LeafLink International and assist in developing and deploying this technology as it continues to increase its global footprint.

We are excited to join forces with Canopy Rivers  combining our industry-leading, B2B marketplace technology with their expertise and strategic network in the global cannabis market, said Ryan G. Smith, CEO and Co-founder of LeafLink. Together, we are creating the first seamless e-commerce experience across the global cannabis supply chain to further empower members of the LeafLink community.

Under the terms of the agreement, LeafLink has made an initial capital commitment of US$1 million along with an exclusive, royalty-free license for all non-US marketplaces for their proprietary B2B software platforms and service solutions. Canopy Rivers has committed an initial equity investment of US$2 million and has the option to invest an incremental US$6 million on preferred terms. LeafLink and Canopy Rivers hold approximately 82%, and 18%, respectively, of LeafLink International after the initial transaction. Both parties will work collaboratively on the continued development and deployment of the LeafLink technology platform throughout international marketplaces, having already launched in select Canadian markets.

About LeafLink:

LeafLink is the cannabis industrys leading wholesale marketplace, serving more than 950 brands and ~2,800 retailers across 16 territories with streamlined business tools such as an order management system, CRM, inventory tracking, and reporting systems, among others. Retailers who previously called, emailed, or texted dozens of sales representatives to place orders now save one day per week shopping all their cannabis brands in one LeafLink cart. Backed by venture capital firms and strategic investors such as Lerer Hippeau, Nosara and Casa Verde Capital, LeafLink has raised more than US$14 million to date, with its headquarters in New York City and Los Angeles.

About Canopy Rivers:

Canopy Rivers is a unique investment and operating platform structured to pursue investment opportunities in the emerging global cannabis sector. Canopy Rivers works collaboratively with Canopy Growth (TSX: WEED, NYSE: CGC) to identify strategic counterparties seeking financial and/or operating support. Canopy Rivers has developed an investment ecosystem of complementary cannabis operating companies that represent various segments of the value chain across the emerging cannabis sector. As the portfolio continues to develop, constituents will be provided with opportunities to work with Canopy Growth and collaborate among themselves, which Canopy Rivers believes will maximize value for its shareholders and foster an environment of innovation, synergy and value creation for the entire ecosystem.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains statements which constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of Canopy Rivers with respect to future business activities and operating performance. Forward-looking information is often identified by the words may, would, could, should, will, intend, plan, anticipate, believe, estimate, expect or similar expressions and includes information regarding: the ability of LeafLink International to launch its SaaS marketplace platform globally and create a new standard for expediting the cannabis supply chain in regulated markets; the scalability of LeafLinks B2B platform; Canopy Rivers ability to integrate its network of complementary cannabis companies and global reach to drive growth for LeafLink International and assist in developing and deploying this technology as it continues to increase its global footprint; both parties will work collaboratively on the continued development and deployment of the LeafLink technology platform throughout international marketplaces; and other expectations for other economic, business, and/or competitive factors.

Investors are cautioned that forward-looking information is not based on historical facts but instead reflects managements expectations, estimates or projections concerning future results or events based on the opinions, assumptions and estimates of management considered reasonable at the date the statements are made. Although Canopy Rivers believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking information are reasonable, such information involves risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such information, as unknown or unpredictable factors could have material adverse effects on future results, performance or achievements of Canopy Rivers. Among the key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information are the following: regulatory and licensing risks; the number of brands and retailers adopting LeafLinks e-commerce platform; competition in the B2B supply chain space; the ability of LeafLink and Canopy Rivers to collaborate; changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including changes in the financial markets; the global regulatory landscape and enforcement related to cannabis, including political risks and risks relating to regulatory change; risks relating to anti-money laundering laws; compliance with extensive government regulation; public opinion and perception of the cannabis industry; and the risk factors set out in Canopy Rivers final short form prospectus dated February 21, 2019, filed with Canadian securities regulators and available on Canopy Rivers profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although Canopy Rivers has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Canopy Rivers does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update this forward-looking information except as otherwise required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For further information, please contact:

Canopy Rivers Inc.

Karoline Hunter

Sr. Director, Investor Relations & Communications

E-mail: ir@canopyrivers.com

LeafLink



Rosie Mattio

RMPR

E-mail: Rosie@rosiemattiopr.com
New York, New York, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- --- For Immediate release





TEN Steps to Global Happiness United Nations International Day of Happiness (UNIDOHappiness) campaign launches today



New York, NY, - March 18, 2019: United Nations International Day of Happiness (UNIDOHappiness) launches the TEN Steps to Global Happiness challenge campaign today calling on all people, and nations, to celebrate International Day of Happiness on March 20, 2019 by taking the TEN Steps to Global Happiness challenge at happinessday.org.

The #InternationalDayOfHappiness was established in 2012, when all 193 Member states adopted UN resolution 66 281:International Day Of Happiness. The first International Day of Happiness was celebrated on March 20, 2013.

Every year since, more than 7 billion people across the planet share in celebrating this special day, through social media, local, national, global, and virtual events, UN related ceremonies and campaigns, and independent celebrations around the world, consistent with Article 2 of UN resolution 66 281, and the spirit of UN resolution 65 309.





Happiness is contagious. The TEN Steps to Global Happiness are 10 steps anyone can take to celebrate the International Day of Happiness, with the idea of increasing individual happiness, as well as, spreading happiness to others, while also elevating global happiness levels by making the planet vibrate, with our common celebration of happiness, in honor of this special day we all share together as fellow members of the great human family, said Jayme Illien, UNIDOHappiness founder.

The first step in the Ten Steps To Global Happiness challenge is Tell Everyone about the International Day of Happiness, with the goal of informing as many people as possible about the existence of this UN sanctioned International Day of Happiness which recognizes happiness as a human right for all, and which is in its seventh year of celebration.

A perfect and simple way to complete this first step of the challenge is by wishing everyone you encounter during the March 20 International Day of Happiness a Happy International Day of Happiness  just like you would wish someone Happy Birthday. This brightens the day of both the greeter, and the recipient, while at the same time building more awareness about the International Day of Happiness.



If you are a journalist, media, we urge you to complete Step 1 by writing and publishing articles and content about the International Day of Happiness

Another step of the #TenStepsToGlobalHappiness challenge is to celebrate International Day of Happiness and HappinessWeek at local, national, global, and/or virtual events around the world.



Here are some of the International Day of Happiness events resources for this Happiness Week:

https://HappinessDay.org (UNIDOHappiness): Complete the #TenStepsToGlobalHappiness challenge for the 2019 #InternationalDayOfHappiness. Make it through all 10 steps to increase your own happiness while spreading happiness to others, and helping to elevate global happiness levels. Download & share the UN happiness resolutions, our logo and social media kits to spread even more joy, fun, and awareness! #INTERNATIONALDAYOFHAPPINESS

https://DayofHappiness.net : (March 20, 2019) "Happier Together" campaign celebrates the importance of relationships, and togetherness, and how important it is rediscover our common humanity at a time of such polarisation in our societies - coordinated in partnership with Action for Happiness. Visit https://dayofhappiness.net to access the World Happiness Report and more great resources to celebrate the International Day of Happiness.

1st World Happiness Agora (March 18-22): 5 days of virtual events, 5 major topics including the Future Happiness and Wellbeing, with respect to Health, Technologies, Education, Future of Work, and more, as well as over 30- live events, 10,000 people and you! Become an Agora host! Visit https://happinessagora.world/

United Nations: a great resource for http://www.un.org/en/events/happinessday/ information about the International Day of Happiness

World Happiness Report:The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The World Happiness Report ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels and will launching at the United Nations and online on March 20. http://worldhappiness.report/

Global Happiness Policy Report - of the Global Happiness Council is a report by expert working groups on happiness and good governance, and provides evidence and policy recommendations on best practices to promote happiness and wellbeing. The first version was released in 2017 under the auspices of the Global Happiness and Well-being Council, chaired by Professor Jeffrey Sachs and supported by the Prime Ministers Office of the United Arab Emirates, and the leadership of Her Excellency UAE Minister of Happiness Ohood bint Khalfan Al Roumi. The GHPR is a companion report to the World Happiness Report, was presented at World Government Summit held in Dubai, and can be found at www.happinesscouncil.org



For the remaining #TENStepsToGlobalHappinessChallenge, visit happinessday.org !

Register your event to post on happinessweek.com

Press, Media, Journalists contact press@happinessday.org


Dublin, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "The Top Supermarket Chains in Ethiopia" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



This report provides the most up to date analysis of the leading supermarket chains in Ethiopia. It analyses proprietary research on the emerging supermarket sector with data on the key players, challenges for operators and brand owners, and includes forecasts on the future development.



Reasons to Buy

Identify the market leaders in the Ethiopian supermarket sector.

Quantify the number of stores, floorspace and position of the top supermarket chains.

Understand how each retailer positions itself and targets consumers.

Assess the balance between domestic and foreign players in the retailer landscape.

Understand how top supermarket chains compete against one another.

Assess the size of the supermarket sector and its growth.

Analyse the market opportunity and future outlook for supermarket retailers in Ethiopia.

Gain important insights on future developments for the sector in Ethiopia.

Major Issues

Ethiopia, with 8%+ GDP growth and a young, burgeoning population, is one of the hottest markets in Africa for brand owners.

But 2018 has been a challenging year for supermarket chains in Ethiopia, with little to no network growth and ongoing bureaucratic challenges and costs.

A major issue is investor concern about government intervention and the pace of liberalisation of the wider food sector, which is structurally geared towards traditional channels.

There are no major international supermarket chains in Ethiopia - we analyse why and when they might enter.

Key Questions Answered

Who are the leading supermarket chains in Ethiopia?

What share of the grocery retail floorspace do they take?

Which supermarket chains are expanding?

How do leading chains compare against one another?

What is the national penetration of the leading supermarket chains?

Which market segments does each chain operate in?

Who are the future winners and losers?

Key Topics Covered:



1. Supermarkets In Ethiopia



2. The Top Supermarket Chains In Ethiopia



3. Supermarket Store Networks



4. Modern Grocery Retail Floorspace



5. Positioning Of Leading Supermarket Chains



6. Supermarket Chains In And Outside Addis Ababa



7. Key Findings And Future Outlook



Companies Mentioned



Fantu

Safeway

Shoa

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/2bpdtc/the_top?w=12

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.
Herzliya, Israel , March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- COPIA Agro and Food Technologies Fund ("COPIA") today announced it has successfully raised USD 27 million from institutional investors, family offices, private investors and corporates in Israel, Europe, Asia, USA and Africa.



Copia is an impact fund investing in proven technologies addressing key global challenges related to food and agriculture. Its focus is on increasing global food security and safety; reducing environmental degradation caused by modern agriculture; and promoting climate change adaptation and mitigation. Copia cooperates with Israel's leading Agri-food research institutions and universities, such as the state-owned Agricultural Research Organization (Volcani Center), Weizmann Institute of Science and leading universities, such as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

Copias unique operating model positions the fund in a "Blue Ocean." It screens and selects promising scientific projects within research institutes, finances the research while focusing it on specific market requirements, and partners with industrial companies to commercialize the innovations into viable products or processes for global markets.

To date, Copia has created a rich portfolio of 13 technologies, of which seven have been incorporated with industrial partners. For example: biological control of phloem-based bacterial diseases (e.g. Citrus Greening that decimated Florida's citrus industry); a wide spectrum soil-disinfectant against noxious organisms and weeds (to replace the multi-billion Methyl Bromide market); a method to eliminate bacterial contamination of dairy products that also increases cheese production efficacy by 5-10%; a biological treatment to prolong the shelf-life of fruit and vegetables; and more.

Adam Ben-Dror, Head of Alternatives at Altshuler Shaham, a leading Israeli Investment House with NIS multi-billion under management, and a lead investor in Copia stated, "Altshuler Shaham believes in the Agri-Food sector and our investment in Copia opens an opportunity to capitalize on the strong knowhow and IP developed in Israel. The fund's unique business model, strong capabilities of its team, and their excellent track-records in developing ideas into viable products, make us confident that their passion and market knowledge will lead COPIA to great success.

Ohad Zuckerman, Managing Partner at Copia explained, Humanitys relationship with food is facing intense challenges and we must act to further sustainability. Technological innovation is a key element in mitigating these challenges and academic institutions are a main source of innovation. Often, products presented to the world by Israeli Ag & Food companies originated in the Israeli academic institutes. Our methodology in selecting promising technologies and teaming them with excellent industrial partners is successful. The disruptive technologies in our portfolio will change the way food is grown and processed."

Eyal Cohen, Managing Partner at Copia, added, Our hands-on management and early-stage cooperation with industrial partners is advantageous in effectively transitioning technologies into marketable solutions. Our unique business model creates a high return potential. We reduce risk relative to typical early stage funds since we choose technologies that have passed the proof-of-concept stage and our strategic partnerships significantly shorten time to market. We invite prominent agriculture and food companies to collaborate with us in transforming our technologies into profits for a better world."

About COPIA:

Copia Agro & Food is an Israeli impact fund aiming to add to the world's sustainability by transforming proven disruptive Agricultural & Food technologies originating from Israeli R&D institutions and universities, into robust commercial solutions. Copias IP rights model enables the optimization of the commercial potential of its technologies in partnership with industrial partners, who are leaders in their category.
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lydian International Limited (TSX:LYD) (Lydian or the Company) today announced that the Republic of Armenia Government has commenced its third-party assessment (Third Audit) of the Amulsar Gold Projects environmental impact on water resources, geology, biodiversity and water quality.



In September 2018, an assessment was ordered by the Armenian government to study possible impacts of the Amulsar Gold Project on water resources. The scope of work will now also include a review of the Companys Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This is despite the fact that the Companys EIA was previously approved by Armenian authorities in accordance with Armenian law before Lydian began constructing the Amulsar Gold Project. Earth Link and Advanced Resources Development (ELARD) has been selected by the Armenian government as the consulting firm to perform the assessment, which is expected to last approximately 12 to 16 weeks. In February 2019, the Armenian government allocated USD$396,900 to fund the Third Audit and announced earlier today that the Third Audit has commenced.

Joao Carrelo, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lydian, stated, We have cooperated fully with the two previous government ordered audits since inception of the blockades in June 2018 and we will collaborate with ELARD in what we have been told by the government will be the final audit. In the meantime, we continue to engage with the Armenian government to enforce the rule of law in order to provide access to the Amulsar project site and allow Lydian to resume construction and environmental activities concurrently with the Third Audit. Despite all our efforts to date and notwithstanding the current governments intolerance of other illegal blockades in country, Lydian has been prevented from restarting construction activities. The Armenian governments actions and inactions form part of an ongoing campaign targeting Lydians investments in Armenia. No other company in Armenia has been subjected to three audits since June 2018 and been unable to continue its operations.

The Company does not accept the need or legal basis for the Third Audit, since the Armenian government already confirmed that the Amulsar Gold Project complied with Armenian environmental requirements when it approved the EIA, and that Lydian relied on this approval when investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Armenia.

About Lydian International Limited

Lydian is a gold developer focused on construction at its 100%-owned Amulsar Gold Project, located in south-central Armenia. However, illegal blockades have prevented access to Amulsar since late June 2018. Amulsar is expected to be a large-scale, low-cost operation with production targeted to average approximately 225,000 ounces annually over an initial 10-year mine life. Estimated mineral resources contain 3.5 million measured and indicated gold ounces and 1.3 million inferred gold ounces as outlined in the Q1 2017 Technical Report. Existing mineral resources beyond current reserves and open extensions provide opportunities to improve average annual production and extend the mine life. Lydian is committed to good international industry practices in all aspects of its operations including production, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility. For more information and to directly contact us, please visit www.lydianinternational.co.uk .

For further information, please contact:

Doug Tobler, Chief Financial Officer

+1 720-307-5087 Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations

+1 720-464-5649

Or: moreinfo@Lydianinternational.co.uk

Caution regarding forward-looking information

Certain information contained in this news release is forward looking. All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events, results, outcomes or developments that the Company expects to occur are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects, is expected, intends, anticipates or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results may, could, will, would, should, or occur or the negative or other variations of such terms. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, among others, statements with respect to: the Companys intention to collaborate with ELARD; the Companys engagement with the Armenian government; and the resumption of construction and environmental activities at the Amulsar project site. Statements concerning mineral resource estimates may also be deemed to constitute forward-looking information to the extent that they involve estimates of the mineralization that will be encountered when the property is developed.

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that are inherently subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks, uncertainties and factors include, without limitation: changes in gold and silver prices; adverse general economic, political, market or business conditions; failure to achieve the objectives of the future exploration and drilling programs; regulatory changes; as well as "Risk Factors" included in the disclosure documents filed on and available at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results and future events could materially differ from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. All of the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, events or otherwise, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
LAS VEGAS, NV, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE  MJ Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: MJNE) (MJH or Company), a leader in the Nevada cannabis market, proposes to increase its number of directors to a total of three and will continue to expand the board as the company grows. MJH is proud to nominate Roger J. Bloss to the Companys Board of Directors, and a vote of the shareholders will take place on April 1, 2019 to confirm Rogers election. Mr. Bloss, President of MJHs Alternative Hospitality division, invested $1,000,000 in the Companys initial round of funding in 2018. Roger has more than 40 years of experience in the hospitality industry and has served in executive positions with several major hotel franchise companies including as a founder of Vantage Hospitality Group in 1996. MJHs CEO and Chairman, Paris Balaouras, stated, I have worked with Roger for over a year developing the first generation of cannabis centric hotels and consumption lounges. He has been a tremendous supporter of our Company and his vast experience will bring true value to our Board of Directors. We look forwarding to officially welcoming Roger aboard.

Mr. Bloss will join Mr. Balaouras on the MJH Board of Directors, and the Company expects to announce an additional proposed board member in the coming weeks. I am honored to be nominated to the Board of Directors of MJ Holdings, Inc. As President of the Companys hospitality division, I will lead the development of our canna-tourism brand of hotels and lounges, Mr. Bloss said. A look into our initial concept can be seen at https://news.weedmaps.com/2019/03/hotelier-plans-to-open-marijuana-friendly-lodging-in-coachella-valley/ .

About MJ Holdings, Inc.

MJ Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: MJNE) is a diversified publicly traded holding company providing management and consulting services to the regulated cannabis industry. Through our subsidiaries we provide cultivation and production management services and infrastructure development. Our management operations include a three-acre outdoor marijuana cultivation facility in the Amargosa Valley of Nevada, as well as a fully licensed indoor agritourism facility located in the city of Las Vegas known as the Highland Show-Grow. We are also active in identifying and acquiring revenue producing assets and licenses within legalized cannabis markets both nationally and internationally.

Safe Harbor

The information provided in this press release may include forward-looking statements relating to future events or the future financial performance of the Company. Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Words such as "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "intends," "will," "potential," "hope" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon current expectations of the Company and involve assumptions that may never materialize or may prove to be incorrect. Actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of various risks and uncertainties. Detailed information regarding factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by statements in this press release relating to the Company may be found in the Company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the factors described in the sections entitled "Risk Factors", copies of which may be obtained from the SEC's website at www.sec.gov . The parties do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements contained in this press release.

Attachment
WEST CHESTER, Pa., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A. Duie Pyle (Pyle), the premier provider of asset and non-asset based transportation and supply chain solutions in the Northeast, today announces the immediate opening of its newest service center in Concord, New Hampshire. As Pyles first service center in the state, the new site offers close and convenient support to the high-volume of customers in the Concord area.



The service center is located at 40 Londonderry Turnpike, Hooksett, NH 03106  conveniently positioned at the junction of I-93, I-293 and Route 101. Featuring 40 dock doors and a fleet maintenance shop, the new service center will sit on approximately seven acres of property and feature a 25,500 square foot building with 6,000 square feet included for fleet maintenance needs. The service center is expected to provide an additional 30 jobs to the area.

We are extremely excited to expand our direct service coverage in New England with the opening of the Concord Service Center, said John Luciani, COO of LTL Services at A. Duie Pyle. The addition of this facility to our network not only improves service to and from the area, but it also allows us to build stronger, more personal relationships with our customers in the community.

For more information on A. Duie Pyle, visit www.aduiepyle.com .

About A. Duie Pyle

A. Duie Pyle, a family-owned and operated business for more than 94 years, provides a range of integrated transportation and distribution services supported by 24 LTL service centers and 10 warehouses strategically located throughout the Northeast region. Pyle provides a variety of asset and non-asset-based services offering uniquely engineered logistics solutions including LTL, Custom Dedicated fleet operations, Warehousing & Distribution services through more than 2.5 million square feet of public and contract warehousing space, and specialized services through its Brokerage Solutions.

MEDIA CONTACT

Hannah Young

Uproar PR for A. Duie Pyle

HYoung@uproarpr.com

321.236.0102
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Blueberries Medical Corp. (CSE: BBM) (OTC: BBRRF) (FRA: 1OA) (the Company or "Blueberries"), a leading Colombia-based licensed producer of medicinal cannabis and cannabis-derived products, is pleased to announce the appointment of Fabio Valencia Cossio, a former Colombian Minister, Senator and Ambassador to Italy with extensive strategic international business experience to its board of directors.



We are honored to welcome Mr. Valencia to our board of directors and are confident that his vast experience in public policy and international business will be a valuable addition to our leadership team, stated Christian Toro, Chief Executive Officer. His appointment will create competitive advantages through his established track record of success guiding global companies in rapidly evolving regulatory environments. As we look to expand globally and enter new jurisdictions, Mr. Valencias international relationships and experience navigating foreign regulatory environments will be invaluable.

I look forward to joining the Blueberries team as they continue to execute on their impressive growth strategy and show their leadership in the Colombian market and abroad, stated Mr. Valencia. I am confident I will be able to add value as we become a dominant regional player in Latin America and expand internationally.

Mr. Valencia practiced as a lawyer after graduating from the University of Antioquia before being elected to Colombian congress in 1982. His extensive tenure in public office includes service in the following appointments:

Minister of the Interior and Justice of Colombia

Ambassador to Italy with dual accreditation to Greece, Malta, San Marino and Cyprus

Representative of Colombia to the United Nations Agency in Rome

High Presidential Adviser for Competitiveness and Productivity

President of the Congress of the Republic of Colombia

Senator and Member of House of Colombia Representatives

Member of the National Council of Narcotic Drugs

Presidential Commissioner for the Plan Puebla-Panama

Colombian Representative, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Peace Negotiator, Colombian Government and FARC

Minister Delegate for Presidential Functions of Colombia

Since his tenure with the government, Mr. Valencia has been very active in the private sector where he currently provides legal and commercial consulting services to an extensive group of large multinational companies looking to grow their operations in South America. He is currently engaged with consumer product companies including Diageo plc, Pernod Ricard S.A. and Bacardi Limited. Mr. Valencia has also advised Ribera Salud Spain, a leading provider of health insurance services and Indra Sistemas S.A., Grupo Tradeco, Gilat Satellite Networks, Pacific Rubiales and Gran Colombia Gold.

Mr. Valencias distinguished political career spanned 40 years over which time he was an integral member of numerous significant political accomplishments. As Ambassador to Italy, Mr. Valencia achieved the highest level of diplomatic, commercial and cultural relations. The following is a few of his many achievements. As Minister of the Interior and Justice of Colombia, Mr. Valencia designed a comprehensive policy against the world drug problem and redesigned the national narcotics program. He also designed and implemented several important policies for the protection of human rights as well as a monitoring system for the legislative activity of the National Government in the Congress of Colombia. During his time in the High Council for Competitiveness, he helped to create and implement the national competitiveness system, recognized by the private sector as a great instrument for investment and business development and infrastructure in all regions of the country. Mr. Valencia was also instrumental with the Puebla-Panama Plan, "the Mesoamerica Project", helping to have Colombia accepted as a full partner in the Mexico-Central America regional block, generating new multilateral opportunities for the Country. As an author he Mr. Valencia has written, Towards a New Municipality (1985), Chronicles of Courage (1994), Asia: The Future (1996), and Formulas to Save Colombia (1996). He also co-authored Freedom of the Press in Colombia, Solutions for the Countryside, and Insecurity and Impunity in Colombia, among others.

Mr. Valencia is also a former President of the Shalom Association (Cultural Exchange with Israel) and a Member of the Colombo-Israel Cultural Institute based in Jerusalem.

In recognition of his service, Mr. Valencia has been distinguished with a number of prestigious honors including:

Order of San Carlos granted by the National Government of Colombia

Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (Knight of Grand Cross) granted by the Italian Republic

Order of the Congress of Colombia Gran Cruz degree with gold plaque granted by the Senate

Mr. Valencia has been granted options (the Options) to purchase up to 500,000 common shares in the capital of the Company, pursuant to the Companys stock option plan. The Options are exercisable at a price of $0.55 per share.

About Blueberries Medical Corp.

Blueberries is a Colombia-based licensed producer of naturally grown premium quality cannabis with its primary operations ideally located in the Bogota Savannah of central Colombia. Led by a specialized team with proprietary expertise in agriculture, genetics, extraction, medicine, pharmacology and marketing, Blueberries is fully licensed for the cultivation, production, domestic distribution, and international export of CBD and THC-based medical cannabis. Blueberries combination of leading scientific expertise, agricultural advantages and distribution arrangements has positioned the Company to become a leading international supplier of naturally grown, processed, and standardized medicinal-grade cannabis oil extracts and related products.

Additional information about the Company is available at www.blueberriesmed.com. For more information, please contact:

Camilo Villalba, Chief Operating Officer

Tel: +57.313.483.0131

Email: cvillalba@blueberriesmed.com

Jessika Angarita, Pacta Relations

angarita@pactarelations.com

Tel: +1 (305) 877 4710

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as expects, or does not expect, is expected, anticipates or does not anticipate, plans, budget, scheduled, forecasts, estimates, believes or intends or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results may or could, would, might or will be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward looking statements relate, among other things, to future expansion plans in Europe.

These forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time such statements were made. Actual future results may differ materially as forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to materially differ from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors, among other things, include: fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets; expectations regarding the size of the Colombian and international medical cannabis market and changing consumer habits; the ability of the Company to successfully achieve its business objectives; plans for expansion; political and social uncertainties; inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on cultivation, production, distribution and sale of cannabis and cannabis related products in Colombia or internationally; and employee relations. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure shareholders that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking statements, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

Additional information regarding the Company, and other risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's business are contained under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's Listing Statement dated January 31, 2019 filed on its issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.
Boise, Idaho, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For Immediate Release

Boise Cascade reaches agreement to acquire American Lumber Distributors

BOISE, Idaho  Boise Cascade Company (Boise Cascade) (NYSE: BCC) announced today an agreement to acquire American Lumber Distributors and Brokers, Inc., headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. American Lumber is a wholesale distributor of top quality lumber as well as plywood, oriented strand board, James Hardie Siding and engineered wood products.



American Lumber is an exceptional supplier of many building products, said Nick Stokes, executive vice president, Boise Cascade. With their experienced and knowledgeable team, they will be a great addition to our nationwide distribution network and will enhance our service capacity in the Southeast.

Boise Cascade has been a valued supplier to American Lumber for 32 years, said Walter Russell, president of American Lumber. This is an ideal strategic fit that will allow the combined organization to grow and provide enhanced value to our customers.

The acquisition is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2019.





About Boise Cascade

Boise Cascade is one of the largest producers of engineered wood products and plywood in North America and a leading U.S. wholesale distributor of building products. For more information, please visit our website at www.bc.com .

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes statements about our expectations of future operational and financial performance that are 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. Statements preceded or followed by, or that otherwise include, the words "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "project," "estimates," "plans," "forecast," "is likely to," and similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "may," "would," "should," and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. Such statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of our management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. The accuracy of such statements is subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected, including, but not limited to, prices for building products, commodity input costs, the effect of general economic conditions, mortgage rates and availability, housing demand, housing vacancy rates, governmental regulations, unforeseen production disruptions, as well as natural disasters. These and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements are discussed in greater detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. We undertake no obligation to revise them in light of new information. Finally, we undertake no obligation to review or confirm analyst expectations or estimates that might be derived from this release.
TEMPE, Ariz., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SoOum Corp. (OTCPINK: SOUM) an International Physical Commodities Trading company and web-based trade platform (SoOum.com) announces it begun discussions in Nigeria with local government and USAID officials to start and manage an abattoir (slaughterhouse) located in the country.



After managements invitation to an agricultural expo held in Nigeria in October 2018, an official from both Company and the country entered into preliminary discussions. Following the conference, a national senator invited management to visit Keffi, Nasarawa state, central Nigeria. Both SOUM and officials discussed the upstart and management of a modern abattoir located in the country, already built but not operated.

Helping the people of Nigeria in their quest to close the gap on food scarcity by introducing modern ranching operations as an alternative to the Nomadic system that already exists remains the primary objective of both SOUM and country officials.

SOUMs mission, therefore, encompasses ranching, controlled feedlot and cross-breeding of cattle to engineer tender, softer, beef, that will help feed the entire country and generate trade.

The Company continues with talks with a private Investment firm to secure safe, non- dilutive financing options for the project.

Updates on the project to become available as progress moves forward

About SoOum Corp

SoOum Corp, a publicly held (OTCPINK: SOUM) Physical Commodities International Trading firm, specializes in arbitrage based transactions of Physical Commodities and offers a web-based International Trading Platform - www.sooum.com.

For more information regarding this press release, please contact SoOum Corp Investor relations - investors@sooum.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in this press release regarding the Companys business which are not historical facts is  forward-looking statements that involve some risks and uncertainties. The Company cautions that various factors, including the factors described under the caption forward-looking statements in the Companys annual report on Form 10-K, could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements contained herein. These factors include the following: business conditions and volatility in the commodities market, and the general economy; competitive factors including compressed gross profit margins; shifts in market demand; product availability; reliance on key customers; fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; income tax legislation; and the risk factors listed from time to time in the Companys reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

Steve Messina

646-801-3772

investors@sooum.com
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via CannabisNewsWire  More than 7,500 cannabis industry players from around world are expected to gather in Toronto, Canada, as the OCannabiz Conference and Expo marks its return to this dynamic metropolis hugging the shores of Lake Ontario. The 3-day event will be held April 25-27 at The International Centre, which offers outstanding trade and consumer show exhibition facilities and is located just minutes from the Toronto Pearson International Airport.



The OCannabiz Conference and Expo features a full spectrum of cannabis-related industry panel discussions covering a wide range of timely cannabis topics, more than 400 exhibitor booths, and B2B networking opportunities to explore options and foster connections in the rapidly evolving space.

To learn more and register, visit https://ocannabiz.com .

Voted the No. 1 Cannabis Event in Canada by High Canada Magazine, OCannabiz is known for its ability to showcase and promote the people, businesses and brands that are making a difference as cannabis continues its path toward global acceptance. Many of these visionaries will be celebrated during the first ever OCannabiz Industry Awards Gala, slated for the evening of April 25 at the majestic Casa Loma castle located in midtown Toronto.

Conference topics will highlight policy and regulations; marketing, advertising and branding; growing and cultivation; health and wellness; cannabis science; managing your cannabiz; high finance; emerging topics; and alternative consumption methods. Sessions also include exploring cannabis for animals, for use in relationships, as a beauty boost and for inspired cooks in the kitchen.

Keynote speakers include actor, musician, writer, comedian, TV and radio host Henry Rollins; Krishna Andavolu, host and executive producer of Weediquette, Vice Media; Jacqui Childs, social media influencer; Steve Deangelo, co-founder and president of Arcview Group; actress Ricki Lake, Weed the People documentary; and actor, former TV personality Montel Williams, who has been a medical cannabis advocate for nearly two decades due to his personal battle with multiple sclerosis. Williams is back by popular demand as a featured speaker during the Cannabis Meets Healthcare segment of the OCannabiz conference.

Following a day of panel discussions and expo exhibits, attendees can cut loose at a variety of after-hours events including a cocktail party prior to the OCannabiz gala awards, a happy hour cocktail mixer featuring The Village People, a VIP after party at Twenty7 featuring 5X Canadian Junio Awards Winner Reggae star Exco Levi, and a cocktail and networking hour on the final night of the conference.

About O'Cannabiz Conference & Expo

The O'Cannabiz Conference and Expo, voted the No. 1 cannabis event in Canada by High Canada magazine, is the premiere cannabis industry event on the calendar in Canada. Combining business, investors, healthcare, and consumer features, the 3rd annual show is a must-attend event for the entire cannabis market. Cannabis in any form is not available at this show. You must be 19+ to attend.

The producers of OCannabiz have decades of experience producing national profile events and creating global connections between business communities in the arts, broadcasting, media and technology. They have organized trade summit initiatives with governments around the world and have worked closely with sponsors in all levels of Canadian government.

To learn more about the OCannabiz Conference and Expo, including how to purchase tickets, become a sponsor or reserve a booth, visit: https://ocannabiz.com/

Connect on social media via Twitter: https://twitter.com/OCannabiz

Main Contact:

Eric Vengroff

Toronto, Canada

www.OCannabiz.com

905.858.3298

Info@OCannabiz.com

Media Contact:

CannabisNewsWire (CNW)

Denver, Colorado

www.CannabisNewsWire.com

303.498.7722 Office

Editor@CannabisNewsWire.com

CannabisNewsWire is an official distribution partner of the O'Cannabiz Conference & Expo.
HOUSTON, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas, LLP (SSEK Law Firm) is investigating claims involving former Wells Fargo Advisors Financial broker John Gregory Schmidt. Schmidt was an Ohio-based broker recently barred by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) as a result of multiple investigations into allegations of forgery, securities fraud, and theft. According to regulators, Schmidts misdeeds resulted in losses over a 14 year period, beginning in 2003. During most of that time period, Schmidt was a broker with Wells Fargo. Prior to that, Schmidt worked for Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., First Union Securities, Painewebber and Prudential-Bache Securities. Schmidt is also facing a 128-count criminal indictment related to his fraud involving elderly and disabled clients.



According to the SECs civil complaint , Schmidt ran a Ponzi scheme from 2003 -2017 where he repeatedly sold securities [variable annuities] belonging to some of his brokerage customers [without authorization] and secretly transferred the sale proceeds to cover shortfalls in the accounts of other customers. To cover his tracks, Schmidt issued numerous false account statements, forged client signatures, created fake customer e-mail accounts, and destroyed documents. From Feb. 2013 through Oct. 2017, Schmidt received over $230,000 in commissions from customers who were either the source of, or recipient of, misappropriated funds. This scheme began to fall apart when the Ohio Department of Insurance opened an investigation into irregularities during the summer of 2017. According to FINRA BrokerCheck , Schmidt was fired from Wells Fargo shortly thereafter due to allegations of unauthorized money movement between clients and fraudulent account statements. In March 2018, FINRA barred Schmidt for failing to respond to requests associated with FINRAs investigation. Several former clients have filed complaints and received settlements totaling more than $2.5 million stemming from Schmidts activity during this 14-year time period.

If you were a client of John Gregory Schmidt or any of his financial entities, please contact the law firm of Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas, LLP today for a free, confidential evaluation of your account(s). We have a team of attorneys, consultants, and staff with over 100 years of combined experience in the securities industry and in securities law that are ready to assist you in recovering your investment losses today.
English French

New national platform led by Evergreen and OpenNorth supports communities to lead in open smart cities approaches

TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Community Solutions Network, a program of Future Cities Canada, is a new platform for communities across the country to connect and build a national centre of excellence in open smart cities. The Network, led by Future Cities Canadas lead Evergreen, with technical partner OpenNorth and partners across Canada, brings knowledge, expertise, experience and guidance to municipal and community leaders to build internal capacity and navigate the open smart cities landscape through advisory services and event-based programs. The program is funded by the Smart Cities Community Support Program of Infrastructure Canada and runs in parallel with the Government of Canadas Smart Cities Challenge, amplifying and sustaining its impact and objectives to create more liveable, inclusive communities across the country.

The Community Solutions Network is based on a Canadian vision of city building that responds to the opportunities presented by open smart cities, said Martin Canning, Executive Director, Smart Cities at Evergreen. In an increasingly technologically advanced world, this unique approach to smart cities can be a global example in how communities develop innovative and creative solutions.

Open Smart Cities are much broader than data and connected technology, said Jean-Noe Landry, Executive Director, OpenNorth. The Community Solutions Network provides the valuable information about open smart cities issues and approaches that are accessible to everyone so that every community can adapt and execute a vision that is best for the city and its residents.

The Community Solutions Network supports communities of all sizes - big, mid-sized, Indigenous, small and northern  by connecting them to other communities across the country and with partners and cross-sector stakeholders. Through an advisory service and a series of event-based programs, such as Idea Camps, Collision Days, Roundtables and the 2019 Future Cities Canada Summit, the Network will provide knowledge, lessons learned and best practices to build awareness about emerging open smart cities issues (e.g. data management, privacy and security) and experiences in Canada and around the world.

This spring, the Network is making information about smart cities issues and approaches available and accessible to everyone, and will focus on helping communities talk to the right people, and find the right partners. An advisory service is currently being offered to Smart Cities Challenge finalists with a focus on community-readiness resources and personalized support. The Network will engage with a wider group of communities, in addition to Smart Cities Challenge finalists, into spring-summer 2019. The event-based programs will begin in late spring and will take place in regions across the country and in communities of every size.

About:

In the fall of 2018, the Government of Canada announced that Evergreen was selected to receive up to $4.6 million in funding over two years from the Smart Cities Community Support Program to provide knowledge, expertise, experience and the guidance communities of all sizes need to build internal capacity and navigate the smart cities landscape. As the project lead, Evergreen is working with OpenNorth and partners who will also support current finalists and future applicants of the Smart Cities Challenge in advancing their thinking, developing strong proposals.

Connect:

For details on the Community Solutions Network and other Future Cities Canada programs, please visit https://futurecitiescanada.ca/ . For the latest information follow @FutureCitiesCA .

For media information, please contact:



Renee Tratch | Sr. Manager, Public Relations| Evergreen | 416-596-1495 X 273

Evergreen Brick Works, 550 Bayview Avenue, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3X8



For information on the Community Support Program, please contact:



Infrastructure Canada

613-960-9251 | Toll free: 1-877-250-7154 | media@infc.gc.ca

Twitter: @INFC_eng | Facebook: Infrastructure Canada - English | Web: Infrastructure Canada

Future Cities Canada is a national cross-sector initiative with the mission to accelerate innovation to transform cities for the benefit of all. Drawing on the expertise of its founding organizations - The McConnell Foundation, TD Bank Group, Evergreen, Maison de linnovation sociale and Community Foundations of Canada - and together with a diverse and growing network of partners, Future Cities Canada collectively strives to address the challenges facing cities and city-dwellers to reimagine cities that are equitable, regenerative and prosperous.

Evergreen is dedicated to making cities flourish. Since 1991, the national not-for-profit has been hard at work transforming spaces into great places so that communities can thrive. We believe that by connecting people, natural and built worlds, we can enable Canadians to do great things that will shape our cities for the better.

OpenNorth is Canada's leading not-for-profit organization working to open up data, government, community engagement, and technologies. OpenNorth works with Canada's most innovative and connected cities to create open smart cities. Through its interdisciplinary applied research, OpenNorth brings international practices to local communities, while connecting local communities, governments, and partners to international networks and communities of practice.
Arlington, VA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --



Ivan Iricanin, founder and CEO of Street Guys Hospitality, is pleased to announce the March 18 opening of TTT Mexican Diner & Buena Vida, which will be located at 2900 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, Virginia 22201. Renderings here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6zi4rlmd38h1my2/AAAOSxYXrRkHqiuUn7UYK6h0a?dl=0



Iricanin has teamed up with Gerardo Vazquez Lugo, the acclaimed executive chef of the popular Mexico City restaurant, Nicos, for this new endeavor. Vazquez Lugo will serve as concept chef for both dining concepts. TTT Mexican Diner is the first-floor concept showcasing authentic Mexican street food with 86 seats in the first-floor dining room, 26 seats on the mezzanine level, an additional 15 seats at the bar and a 30-seat outdoor patio. TTT will serve brunch, lunch and dinner daily. Tacos and tortas will be the main attraction showing how a few simple ingredients can make a diverse menu that can be enjoyed by everyone. The restaurant will showcase a pastry corner where all the breads, biscuits and traditional Mexican pastries will be made in-house. Tortas and tortillas will also be made on the premises using traditional recipes and organic ingredients found in Mexico City. On the second floor, Buena Vida will offer a menu showcasing traditional, indigenous fare that incorporates recipes that have been handed down through generations. One will have an authentic experience, tasting Mexican cooking that transcends what one expects from most Mexican restaurants in America. Buena Vida is 3,700-square-feet with seating for 101, which includes an 18-seat private dining area and a 11-seat bar.

A native of Mexico City, Gerardo Vazquez Lugo is an architect by profession, but he abandoned his promising career to pursue his true passion: traditional Mexican cuisine. Vazquez Lugo inherited his love of cooking from his parents, Raymundo Vazquez and Maria Elena Lugo Zermeno, who opened their popular Mexico City restaurant, Nicos, in 1957. He completed his culinary studies twenty-five years ago at the Institute of Culinary Culture (CUCUL), where he obtained honorable mention in the Diploma of Restaurant Management, under the tutelage of the renowned chefs Alicia Gironella and Giorgio De'Angeli, authors of the Larousse of Mexican Cuisine. In 1996, Vazquez Lugo was named executive chef of Nicos, and since then, has worked alongside his mother to preserve Mexican heritage through traditional home cooking. Today Nicos cuisine is attached to the precepts of the Slow Food world movement, of which Vazquez Lugo is one of its promoters in Mexico: a cleaner kitchen, socially responsible and above all fair and equitable. Since 2015, Nicos has been named one of Latin Americas 50 Best Restaurants. In 2018, Vazquez Lugo and his mother celebrated the restaurants 60th anniversary and received The Diners Club Lifetime Achievement Award 2019 for their joint contribution to Mexican cuisine.

The daily brunch menu at TTT will offer a variety of Fresh Fruit, House-Made Pastries, Scrambles, Benedicts, Omelets, Amaranth Pancakes, Churro Waffles and Signature Brunch Dishes. Menu items will feature cage-free eggs, house-made lamb chorizo sausage and additional meats sourced from local Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania farms. Signature menu items will include the Breakfast Enchilada; Torta; Chorizo Taco, and the Chilaquiles. Guests will also be able to enjoy a collection of house-made cocktail list during brunch including Michelada, Bloody Mary Bloody Maria, Mimosa and sparkling wines paired with seasonal, freshly squeezed juices. Hot chocolate, both with milk and a dairy-free version will also be available along with a collection of Mexican coffee drinks such as the Cafe de Olla and Vera Cruz. TTT will also feature a pastry corner where breads, biscuits and traditional Mexican pastries will be made in-house. The Amaranth Pancakes, Churro Waffle, Chocolate and Vanilla Conchas, and Yucatan Bunuelos will also be standouts that whisk guests to Mexico.

For lunch and dinner, TTT will also serve a collection of Tacos, Tortas, Soups & Salads and Platos Fuertes. Highlights include Requeson and Hibiscus Flower Tacos; Lamb Chorizo Tacos with onion and coriander; Shrimp & Cheese Tacos with red adobo; Suadero Torta with salsa verde and avocado; Octopus Torta with bell peppers, squid ink and olives; Lamb Carnitas with consomme, and the Chile Relleno with poblano pepper, cheese and tomato gravy. A selection of signature guacamole and made-to-order salsas from Concept Chef Gerardo Vazquez Lugos Mexico City restaurant, Nicos, will also be available. Prices will range from $8 to $25.

The dinner menu at Buena Vida will offer an array of Soups & Salads, Raw Bar, Fish, Bird and Meat dishes as well as menu items To Eat with a Spoon, which will be served with a side of rice. Highlights include the Shrimp Aguachile with Serrano pepper, lime and coriander; Suadero Huarache with masa, tender cactus and suadero in salsa verde; Dry Soup with a coulis of ancho, guajillo and chipotle chilies; Shrimp in Sesame and Amaranth; Fish in Angel Sauce with orange juice, butter, onion and aromatic herbs; Guerrero-Style Grilled Fish with mayonnaise, guajillo, garlic and spices; Picadillo Stuffed Ancho Chile as well as Duck in Red Pumpkin Seed Sauce with duck rolls. Buena Vida will also serve Caesar Salad with romaine, egg, anchovies, Dijon mustard and sheeps milk cheese, which will be prepared in wooden bowls tableside. The recipe originates from Italian-American Restauranteur Caesar Cardini who is said to have invented the salad in 1924 at the Hotel Caesars in Tijuana, Mexico. Prices will range from $5 to $30.

Iricanin has tapped Esteban Ordonez as the mixology consultant for TTT & Buena Vida. Ordonez is the principal mixologist and managing partner for International Cocktail Group, a North American based consulting firm that specializes in creating and managing cocktail/beverage programs and spirits driven events for the hospitality industry, as well as luxe private clients. He has quickly risen in the national and international mixology scene and is best known for helping open Albert Trummers famous cocktail mecca, Apotheke in New York Citys Chinatown and the now famous Amaru Pisco Bar in Queens as well as Theater Bar in Tribeca. Ordonez was also the winner of the National Brand Ambassador and Director of Mixology for Don Q Rum and Serralles USA. In 2005, Esteban launched his own consulting business, creating and mixing cocktails for high profile clients and properties throughout the United States, South America, and the Caribbean. His unique libations have been featured in the New York Times, New York Post, Time Out New York, Rob Report, Market Watch, The Japion, Revista Vanidades, Cosmopolitan Magazine and numerous other publications. Estebans cocktails are currently poured at Bleu Moon in Miami, and New York Citys Apotheke, Amaru Pisco Bar, Colors Lounge, Spitzers Corner, Yerba Buena Perry and Plein Sud, A Voce Restaurant and The Arthur, to name a few.

Esteban stepped out from behind the bar in 2001 to study at the world-famous Escuela Espanola de Cata and Circulo de Vino Matritense, both located in Madrid, Spain. This immersion in European culinary methods served to further hone his unique style, palate, and technique, which he brought back to New York City and shared at the famous Citarella Gourmet Market and Atlas restaurants. He further developed his skills by taking and successfully completing the renowned B.A.R course in New York City in 2011.

Both restaurants will showcase an expansive beverage program. Buena Vida will have an approachable list of wines from Mexico with bottles ranging from $30 to $50. 17 wines will also be available by the glass with prices ranging from $8 to $13. Additionally, one will find a variety of traditional and craft Mexican beers by the bottle and on draught, along with a diverse selection of tequilas, including blancos, reposados, anejos, premium, and house-infused options staring at $8. A carefully curated list of agave and Mexican spirits such as bacanora, raicilla and sotol will also be available.

TTT will offer a cocktail menu that showcases the diversity of Mexicos celebrated spirit, featuring agave cocktails as well as classic margaritas. The menu reflects the vibrant colors and the rich tropical flavors of Mexican culture. The focus is on quality and flavor incorporating seasonal, local and sustainable ingredients whenever possible. Priced from $8 to $12 each, standouts include Modern Margarita; Tommys Margarita with Blue Weber agave silver tequila; the Mezcalita with Mezcal Blanco and Agavero orange liqueur and the Ponte Frida with almond coconut milk, cinnamon and baked coconut flakes. House-made fruit juices and fruit cups will also be available as a delightful finale. Hot chocolate, both with milk and a dairy-free version will also be available along with coffee from La Colombe Coffee Roasters and a collection of Mexican coffee drinks such as the Cafe de Olla and Vera Cruz.

The 3,500-square foot restaurant, TTT will showcase vibrant colors and bold graphics inspired by the colorful street food scene of Mexico. Mexican-inspired textiles were chosen to accent the industrial finishes. Other highlights include a DJ booth, a mural from Victor "Marka27" Quinonez, the internationally renowned street artist, and a 190-inch single panel projection screen, which retracts from the ceiling making TTT an ideal place to watch sporting events or a favorite movie. One can book a private event for 26 guests on the mezzanine, which has a perfect view of the screen ideal for watching the Kentucky Derby or the Super Bowl. Other unique design touches include three roll up garage doors which invite the outdoors inside (weather permitting). The 20-seat inside bar at TTT is also double sided and serves eight patrons on the outside sidewalk patio. A communal table occupies a prominent space within the dining room and extends outside onto the patio for gathering ideal for both shade loving and sun worshippers to share a meal. Upstairs at Buena Vida, the light-filled restaurant draws on the warm, relaxed characteristics of Mexico. Natural woods, woven textures and greenery add to the charm.

TTT & Buena Vida is located at 2900 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, Virginia 22201, just two blocks from the Clarendon metro accessible on the orange and silver lines. Parking is available in the Colonial Parking Garage at 1303 North Filmore Street. TTT will be open for brunch Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.; lunch and dinner Monday through Thursday, from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Friday, from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Buena Vida will be open for lunch Monday through Friday, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dinner Sunday through Thursday, from 4 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, from 4 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Brunch will debut in late Spring and will be served Saturday and Sunday, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. For additional information or reservations please visit www.tttdiner.com & https://www.buenavidaclarendon.com.

Street Guys Hospitality, an international restaurant group, which owns and operates ten concepts and employees 400+ across two continents, which they currently oversee. Concepts include: TTT Silver Spring, Buena Vida Contemporary Cuisine Silver Spring, AMBAR Belgrade, AMBAR Capitol Hill, AMBAR Clarendon, BABA, Mala Fabrika Ukusa, Burrito Madre Belgrade, Burrito Madre Karadjordjeva and Burrito Madre Bulevar. Additional information can be found at: http://streetguyshospitality.com.





Media Contact: Heather Freeman (202) 441-3607

www.heatherfreeman.com

Heather@Heatherfreeman.com

###

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SPOKANE, Wash., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Avista, through a request for proposal issued in June 2018, has selected to purchase power generated by the proposed Rattlesnake Flat Wind project in Adams County, Washington.



Rattlesnake Flat Wind, a wind energy facility permitted and being developed by renewable energy developer Clearway Energy Group (Clearway), will provide Avista with approximately 50 average megawatts of renewable energy, or as much as 144 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity, under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with deliveries beginning in 2020. The PPA provides Avista with additional renewable energy, capacity and environmental attributes, which will offset higher priced market purchases. The PPA aligns with Avistas 2017 Integrated Resource Plan which identifies that the utility will consider acquiring additional resources if such resources have lower long-term cost than electric market alternatives. Avista expects to recover the cost of the power purchased through its retail rates.

Recent market changes, including reductions in the cost of wind power facilities and tax incentives that remain in effect, have combined to make this an excellent time to acquire long-term output from a cost-effective wind resource, which has the added benefit of being located in our service territory, said Jason Thackston, Senior Vice President of Energy Resources for Avista. Rattlesnake Flat will help Avista meet its goal of providing reliable energy to our customers at a reasonable cost, while bringing even more renewable energy to our region, now and in the future.

Weve been closely working with key stakeholders in Adams County, developing partnerships with landowners, businesses and local government to enable this project, and entering into this long term partnership with Avista is a very exciting next step, said Benjamin Fairbanks, Senior Director of Wind Development at Clearway. Were proud that Rattlesnake Flat will be a source of home-grown renewable energy for the state of Washington and for Avistas customers for many years to come.



The wind farm will be the largest renewable energy facility in Adams County with the capacity to generate enough clean, renewable energy to power about 37,600 of Avistas customers homes. Situated on 20,000 privately owned acres near Lind, WA, Rattlesnake Flat will tie into Avistas electric system via Avistas Lind/Washtucna transmission line.

About Avista Corp.

Avista Corp. is an energy company involved in the production, transmission and distribution of energy as well as other energy-related businesses. Avista Utilities is our operating division that provides electric service to 388,000 customers and natural gas to 355,000 customers. Its service territory covers 30,000 square miles in eastern Washington, northern Idaho and parts of southern and eastern Oregon, with a population of 1.6 million. Alaska Energy and Resources Company is an Avista subsidiary that provides retail electric service in the city and borough of Juneau, Alaska, through its subsidiary Alaska Electric Light and Power Company . Avista stock is traded under the ticker symbol "AVA." For more information about Avista, please visit investor.avistacorp.com .

This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding the companys current expectations. Forward-looking statements are all statements other than historical facts. Such statements speak only as of the date of the news release and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the companys control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations. These risks and uncertainties include, in addition to those discussed herein, all of the factors discussed in the companys Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended Dec. 31, 2018.

SOURCE: Avista Corporation

About Clearway Energy Group

Clearway Energy Group is accelerating the world's transformation to a clean energy future. Built for 21st century energy markets and focused on providing customers with the power they need and the customer experience they deserve, Clearway was created and staffed with functions specific to renewable energy generation and distribution. With assets across 28 states, more than 500 employees and the capacity to power about 2.7 million homes, Clearway is bringing reliable and clean power to market from day one. The Company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA with offices in Carlsbad, CA; Scottsdale, AZ; Houston, TX; and New York, NY. For more information, visit www.clearwayenergygroup.com .



To unsubscribe from Avistas news release distribution, send reply message to lena.funston@avistacorp.com

Contact:

Avista: Mary Tyrie mary.tyrie@avistacorp.com

Avista 24/7 Media Access (509) 495-4174



Clearway Energy Group: Raymond G. Long media@clearwayenergy.com
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OTTAWA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Young entrepreneurs across the country now have an increased chance of success, thanks to the Government of Canadas renewed investment of $38M over five years in Futurpreneur Canada, announced today in the 2019 federal budget.



This renewed partnership will strengthen early-stage support for young entrepreneurs and fuel their long-term success, said Karen Greve Young, Chief Executive Officer, Futurpreneur Canada. Our organization looks forward to continuing to work with the Government of Canada to support young entrepreneurs building new businesses in a variety of exciting sectors, in every community across Canada.

This investment, and the additional corporate and provincial funding it will help secure, will enable Futurpreneur to build on its successful 20+ year track record. Its proven Start-up Program of financing, mentoring and other professional resources supports aspiring entrepreneurs aged 18-39 in launching or acquiring existing businesses.

From bakeries to restaurants to small clothing stores, we stand behind main street businesses that help small communities across Canada thrive, said John Risley, Chair, Futurpreneur Board of Directors, President and Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Fine Foods Inc. Some of these incredible businesses will grow and scale in the same way many Futurpreneur-supported alumni have, from Canada Rope and Twine to Skip the Dishes to Frank & Oak.

This investment from the Government of Canada also builds Futurpreneurs capacity to engage Indigenous youth through a specially-tailored program of outreach and support. Working with Aboriginal Financial Institutions and other partners, Futurpreneur will ensure that Indigenous youth across Canada have access to the skills, mentorship, financing and other resources they need to support their entrepreneurial success.

At Futurpreneur, we pride ourselves in being the only national non-profit that provides a unique offering of financial and mentoring support to help young entrepreneurs realize their dreams of launching a business. Futurpreneur is industry-agnostic and provides support to young entrepreneurs across a variety of different sectors.

Our government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, believes in the ideas and in the potential of young Canadians. We know that a strong and inclusive economy is one where young entrepreneurs are well-represented, said The Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion. To this end, we are investing in Futurpreneur, an organization that has helped thousands of young entrepreneurs succeed with mentorship, programming and capital investment. I look forward to seeing the many incredible success stories of young entrepreneurs being able to start up, scale up and access new markets with the help of Futurpreneur.

Futurpreneur continually strives to find innovative and improved ways to support young Canadian entrepreneurs. In addition, Futurpreneur leverages Government of Canada support to secure matching funding from non-federal sources, bolstering the organizations support for young entrepreneurs in every province and territory.

This investment is a call to action for provincial governments, and other organizations who support small business creation, to join us in amplifying the success of diverse young entrepreneurs, said Greve Young. With this renewed support, local communities across the country will be sustained by homegrown businesses, some of which will scale and export globally. We will continue to work with community and corporate partners to secure the long-term funding needed to successfully support Canadas promising young entrepreneurs.

On behalf of young entrepreneurs across Canada, we thank the federal government for their continued support. Together, we can help build Canadas economy, one young entrepreneur at a time.

About Futurpreneur Canada

Since 1996, Futurpreneur Canada has been the only national, non-profit organization providing resources, financing and mentoring to aspiring business owners aged 18-39. To date, we have supported over 12,000 young entrepreneurs, and helped launch over 10,000 Canadian businesses, which have created an estimated 50,000 jobs. Our internationally recognized mentoring program matches these entrepreneurs with business experts from a network of over 3,000 volunteer mentors. Futurpreneur is a founding member of the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance, the Canadian member of Youth Business International and the Canadian host of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

www.futurpreneur.ca

Facebook: Futurpreneur

Twitter: @Futurpreneur

For interview opportunities and media inquiries, please contact:

Zandra Miljan

Public Affairs

Futurpreneur Canada

Call or Text: 647-680-8165

Email: zmiljan@futurpreneur.ca

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b1e43505-4ccd-42bd-90fb-e96a2e86863d
Nutrition Programs & Check-Ups at Clinic Sanmare

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - Healthcare Resources, an independent resource network that provides no-charge and minimal charge health and well-being services to Puerto Vallarta residents and visitors, has announced the new Nutrition Programs, as well as complete check-ups for men and women, at Clinic Sanmare.

Nutrition Programs at Clinic Sanmare

We are thrilled to announce our new Nutrition Programs, led by the bilingual, highly experienced nutritionists of Clinic Sanmare. Healthcare Resources is really excited to be working together with Clinic Sanmare to bring you these new innovative programs. There are no others like them in the greater Banderas Bay area!

We will begin on Thursday, March 28 at 9:00 am with:

"What is Bugging You? Local Food Safety" - At this no charge event, you will learn how to prevent yucky 'stomach experiences' in the area, as well as tips and ideas to keep your stomach healthy and happy. This topic is especially important now that the weather is getting warmer. Space is limited, so RSVP required.

As well, on this date, you can learn all about a series of programs that begin very soon. This six-week series will include local tropical fruits, a shopping tour to a local market, making smoothies using local ingredients, Mexican Herbs and Spices, Healthy Mexican Cooking and more! There will be a minimal charge to participate in the series to cover expenses.

Complete Women's and Men's Check-Ups at Sanmare

Remember that we have complete check-ups for men and women available. Good, basic studies, at an economical price that includes a follow up consult with a bilingual GP. These have become very popular! Time for a physical? This one is for you!

Women's Check-Up

Monday through Friday

By Appointment Only

6,000 pesos

Complete Women's check-up includes:

Labs: CBC, Protime, Glucose, Creatinine, Uric Acid, Total Cholesterol, Triglycerides, HDL, LDL, A/G Relation, Billirubins, TGO, TGP, GGT, Sodium, Potassium, T4 Free, TSH (thyroid stimulant hormone) FSH (Folicule stimulant hormone), Urinalysis, Coproparasites (stool sample) Stool Hidden blood

Tests: Electrocardiogram, Abdominal Ultrasound and Chest X-ray.

A follow up with a bilingual physician for exam and review of all studies, a day or so after the original check-up.

These exams take approximately 90 minutes. You will receive all of the studies performed for your records. These check-ups are By Appointment Only, so send an email Pam to make yours TODAY!

Men's Check-Up

Monday through Friday

By Appointment Only

6,000 pesos

Complete Men's Check-up includes:

Labs: CBC, Glucose, Creatinine, Uric Acid, Triglycerides, Total Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, TGO, TGP, GGT, Sodium, Potassium, T4 Free, TSH (Thyroid stimulant hormone), PSA Total, Urinalysis, Coproparasites (stool sample), Stool Hidden Blood

Tests: Electrocardiogram, Abdominal Ultrasound and Chest X-ray.

A follow up with a bilingual physician for exam and review of all studies, a day or so after the original check-up.

These exams take approximately 90 minutes. You will receive all of the studies performed for your records. These check-ups are By Appointment Only, so send an email Pam to make yours TODAY!

For questions on the above, or anything else health-related, please contact Pam Thompson at pamela(at)healthcareresourcespv.com.
VANCOUVER, March 19, 2019 - Macarthur Minerals Ltd. (TSX-V: MMS, OTCQB: MMSDF) (the Company or Macarthur) is pleased to announce the issuance of a private placement offering (the Offering) of up to US$6 million of secured Convertible Note (Note).



The proceeds from the offering will be used to complete a Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS) on Macarthurs Moonshine Magnetite and Ularring Hematite iron ore deposits in Western Australia. The BFS will include a 54-hole drill program.

Macarthur owns 100% of the Moonshine Magnetite Project, with an Inferred and Indicated Mineral Resource Estimate consisting of 1,316 million tonnes (Mt) @ 30.1% Iron (Fe). Initial metallurgical test work from core at Moonshine indicated that a very high-grade iron ore product ranging from 68.5%-69.1% Fe, can be achieved as an export quality target.

The Inferred Mineral Resource estimate for the Moonshine Magnetite Project was initially prepared by CSA Global Pty Ltd (NI43-101 Technical Report filed December 17, 2009, titled NI43-101 Technical Report on Lake Giles Iron Ore Project: Western Australia) and was updated by Snowden Mining Industry Consultants (NI43-101 Technical Report filed March 25, 2011, titled Macarthur Minerals Ltd.: Moonshine and Moonshine North Prospects, Lake Giles Iron Project, Western Australia, NI43-101 Technical Report  Preliminary Assessment).

Macarthur also owns the Ularring Hematite Project, with a Mineral Resource Estimate consisting of Indicated 54.46 Mt @ 47.2% Fe and Inferred 25.99Mt @ 45.4% Fe, previously announced on August 16, 2012 (NI 43-101 Technical Report filed October 1, 2012, titled NI 43-101 Report, Macarthur Minerals Ltd., Pre-Feasibility Study, Ularring Hematite Project, Western Australia). The Pre-feasibility Study focused on utilising all Probable Mineral Reserve of 42.95Mt @ 47% Fe hematite, producing a 60.1% Fe sinter fines product.

Cameron McCall, Executive Chairman of Macarthur Minerals commented;

Macarthur Minerals has invested over C$60 million in the Moonshine and Ularring iron ore projects. We are extremely excited to begin moving the projects to the next level and our objective of advancing to production in a timely manner. The Note Offering is at a critical juncture in its approach to secure sufficient funding to complete the Banking Feasibility necessary to secure project financing. Macarthur Minerals initial focus will be on the 1.3 billion tonnes of high-quality magnetite resources. What makes this project unique is the close proximity to existing under-utilized rail and port infrastructure. The recent disruption in supply in the iron ore market creates a market that is seeking high grade low impurity products, and the Moonshine Magnetite product is ideally suited to fill this supply void and to meet this shift in product preference by the major Chinese and global markets. This Convertible Note enables the company to move forward and produce a comprehensive plan for the monetisation of its iron ore assets whilst protecting current shareholders from further immediate dilution. At this stage we have had preliminary interest from a number of potential institutional investors and will update the market once the process has moved forward.

Pursuant to the Offering, the Note will be structured around these key terms:

The Note has a face value of US$10,000 following adoption of a loan note instrument.

The Note can be converted at any time after 12 months into common shares of Macarthur at Noteholders option at a conversion price that reflects 80% of the average VWAP over 5 trading days immediately preceding a notice of conversion or at the greater of C$0.10 with attaching warrant offered for one fourth of the Commitment amount exercisable at the greater of C$0.10 or the average VWAP over 5 trading days immediately preceding the date of the Exercise Notice.

The Note will have a term to maturity of 3 years and bear interest at a rate of 12.5% per annum.

The Note includes a mandatory conversion clause that such conversion may not have the effect of causing Noteholder to own 20% or more of the common shares of Macarthur or becoming a control person.

The iron ore licences in Lake Giles region of Western Australia held by Macarthur act as security for the Note.

Any shares issued upon conversion of the principal amount of the Note and any accrued interest will be subject to certain resale restrictions, including a restricted (or hold) period of four months and one day following the distribution date, under applicable Canadian securities legislation.

The Company is working with Capstan Capital Partners LLP, a UK regulated corporate finance business to effect this private placement. A success fee is payable in the amount of 5% of the total Convertible Note raised from third party investors and an amount of US$176,000 in cash to be paid within 10 business days of the closing of the Convertible Note. 100% of this success fee amount shall be applied to subscription of Convertible Note raised in Macarthur, to be issued in the name of Capstan ranking pari passu with the other issued Convertible Note held by Macarthur investors.

This financing commitment marks another significant milestone for Macarthurs iron ore projects and will ensure effective long-term access to markets where Macarthurs high quality iron ore is in strong demand.

ABOUT MACARTHUR MINERALS LIMITED (TSX-V: MMS, OTCQB: MMSDF)

Macarthur Minerals Ltd. is an iron ore development, gold and lithium exploration company that is focused on bringing to production its Western Australia iron ore projects. The iron ore projects are Ularring hematite (approved for development) and the one plus billion tonne Moonshine magnetite. Macarthur Minerals has prominent (~1,130 square kilometer tenement area) gold, lithium, nickel, cobalt exploration interests in Pilbara region of Western Australia. In addition, Macarthur Minerals has lithium brine Claims in the emerging Railroad Valley region in Nevada, USA.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

MACARTHUR MINERALS LIMITED

Cameron McCall

Cameron McCall, Executive Chairman

Company Contact

Joe Phillips, CEO and Director

Email: jphillips@macarthurminerals.com

Telephone: +61 448899247



Website: www.macarthurminerals.com



For further information please contact:

Investor Cubed Inc.:



Neil Simon

E-mail: nsimon@investor3.ca

Telephone: (647) 258-3310

Fax: (416) 363-7977

THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Caution Regarding Forward Looking Statements

Certain of the statements made and information contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, forward-looking statements) within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements in this press release reflect the current expectations, assumptions or beliefs of the Company based upon information currently available to the Company. With respect to forward-looking statements contained in this press release, assumptions have been made regarding, among other things, the timely receipt of required approvals, the reliability of information, including historical mineral resource or mineral reserve estimates, prepared and/or published by third parties that are referenced in this press release or was otherwise relied upon by the Company in preparing this press release. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct as actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include fluctuations in exchange rates and certain commodity prices, uncertainties related to mineral title in the project, unforeseen technology changes that results in a reduction in iron ore demand or substitution by other metals or materials, the discovery of new large low cost deposits of iron ore, uncertainty in successfully returning the project into full operation, and the general level of global economic activity. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Such statements relate to future events and expectations and, as such, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and except as may otherwise be required pursuant to applicable laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 - INV Metals Inc. (INV Metals or the Company) (TSX:INV) provides an update on the 100% owned Loma Larga property (Loma Larga or Project), located in Ecuador.



The Company reports that on March 18, 2019, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court reached a decision on two referendums related to the potential effects of mining activities in the cantons of Giron and San Fernando. The cantons are adjacent jurisdictions which do not contain the Loma Larga Mineral Resources and Reserves. One referendum is in opposition to the potential impacts of mining activities, and the other, brought forward by a local group near Loma Larga, is in support of the economic benefits of mining.

Ms. Candace MacGibbon, CEO, stated, Loma Larga will continue to advance towards development. The Mineral Resources and Reserves of our Project are not located in either Giron or San Fernando cantons. The processing and tailings facilities, however, were originally planned in Giron canton and they will be relocated if required.

The Constitutional Court ruled that the principle of tacit approval be invoked in these cases, allowing for the two referendums to proceed without the Constitutional Court opining on the merits of the questions being asked because a certain period of time had elapsed without a specific decision. INV Metals will seek further legal clarification on the decision.

Qualified Person

All scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed, verified and approved by Bill Shaver, P. Eng, a mining engineer and the Companys COO and Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101.

About INVTM Metals Inc.

INVTM Metals is an international mineral resource company focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of precious and base metal projects in Ecuador. Currently, INVTM Metals primary assets are: (1) its 100% interest in the Loma Larga gold exploration and development property in Ecuador, and (2) its 100% interests in exploration concessions in Ecuador, including the Las Penas, Tierras Coloradas, La Rebuscada and Carolina exploration projects.

For more information please contact:

Candace MacGibbon

Chief Executive Officer

Phone: (416) 703-8416

E-mail: cmacgibbon@invmetals.com

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information. Forward-looking information contained in this news release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the referendums, the judgement to invoke the tacit approval of the referendums, the results of votes with respect to the constitutionality of referendums and location of the processing and tailings facilities. These statements are based on information currently available to the Company and the Company provides no assurance that actual results will meet managements expectations. In certain cases, forward-looking information may be identified by such terms as anticipates, believes, could, estimates, expects, may, shall, will, or would. Forward-looking information contained in this press release is based on certain factors and assumptions made by management and qualified persons in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management and the qualified persons believe are appropriate in the circumstances. While the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors include risks inherent in the exploration and development of mineral deposits, including changes to project parameters as plans continue to be redefined, changes resulting from a move of the processing and tailing facilities, risks relating to grade or recovery rates, reliance on key personnel, operational risks, regulatory, capitalization and liquidity risks. Please refer to the Companys Annual Information Form dated March 23, 2018 filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com for other risks that could materially affect the Company. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Companys forward-looking information. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on the Companys forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information that may be made from time to time by the Company or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.




Mexican Lawmakers Launch Marijuana Reform Process

Mexico City - Top lawmakers from Mexico's leading political parties joined together last week to kick off what could be a lengthy process to formally decriminalize marijuana in line with recent court rulings.

No new concrete legislation beyond past proposals has yet emerged from the talks, and there is no immediate timeline for when reform could become law in what senators said would be a "gradual" process, according to press reports.

Still, last week's Marijuana Regulation Forum was a small but symbolically significant step towards drug reform in Mexico, where prohibition-fueled violence has destabilized entire regions and led to tens of thousands of deaths, some in unspeakably gruesome acts.

Whatever emerges will "not... criminalize those who are innocent and those who personally consume" cannabis, said Senator Martha Lucia Micher, according to Mexico City-based newspaper Excelsior.





The meeting follows a series of rulings from Mexico's top court culminating in several cases last year that established national precedent that criminalizing possession and cultivation of small amounts of cannabis is a violation of the country's Constitution.

It also, not insignificantly, follows drastic movements towards marijuana reform in the United States and Canada, Mexico's top two trading partners.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has approached the prospect of legalization with an open mind, and not just with respect to marijuana. He suggested during his presidential campaign that ending prohibition could mitigate drug market violence in the country. And after his election last year, his administration announced that cabinet members would meet with Canadian government officials to discuss the regulation of cannabis.

The idea that marijuana legalization could curb violence is shared by Olga Sanchez Cordero, Mexico's secretary of the interior. Before she formally joined the administration, she said the country doesn't "want more deaths" and that legalization "will be a major contribution to bringing peace to our beloved country."

As a senator, Sanchez Cordero formally filed cannabis legalization legislation.

"Canada already decriminalized, and [marijuana is] decriminalized in several states of the United States. What are we thinking?" Sanchez Cordero said in a separate interview last year. "We are going to try to move forward."

Last month, Mexico's Senate released a report meant to inform lawmakers as they consider legalization legislation. It drew from the experience of other countries as well as published research to build a case for a regulated, commercial cannabis market.
Baltimore lawmakers Saturday killed legislation that would have allowed city school police officers to carry guns while patrolling in schools.The city's state House delegation voted 10-5 against the bill -- effectively killing it for this General Assembly session.Before the vote, Del. Cheryl Glenn _ the bill's sponsor _ urged her colleagues to support the measure as a way to protect schoolchildren in Baltimore. She noted that school resource officers in every other part the state are allowed to carry firearms inside schools."Baltimore city would be the only jurisdiction in the entire state where our children are not protected," said Glenn, who is chairwoman of the city's House delegation.Del. Talmadge Branch, who is majority whip in the House of Delegates, agreed. Armed officers are necessary in an age when mass shootings happen across the country, he said. He also cited Baltimore's high crime rate. The city has recorded more than 300 homicides in each of the past four years."There's plenty of violence in Baltimore city," Branch said. "Here we have our school system sitting right in the middle of all this turmoil and we don't protect them."But Del. Brooke Lierman argued that there's little evidence that arming school police officers inside buildings would make children safer. Rather, she said, a shootout between a gunman and police could lead to more deaths or injuries."There's no data to demonstrate that having an armed guard or armed police officer in a school building deters active shooter situations or makes people safer," Lierman said.It was Glenn's second attempt this session to pass her bill. She withdrew it in January after the Baltimore school board unanimously voted to oppose the idea.But after a staff member at Frederick Douglass High School was injured in a Feb. 8 shooting inside the school, the board reversed its position, and Glenn reintroduced her bill.Under current law, the city's roughly 100 school police officers are allowed to carry their guns while patrolling outside schools before and after class hours. But they are required to store their weapons in a secure location during the school day.Baltimore is the only jurisdiction in Maryland with a sworn school police force. In surrounding districts, county police officers or sheriff's deputies patrol schools and are allowed to carry their guns.Baltimore parents, community members and legislators have long been divided over the issue.The shooting at Douglass loomed over the debate.Police charged a relative of a student with shooting special education assistant Michael Marks inside the school. The 56-year-old longtime staffer was seriously injured but survived.Maryland Senate Republicans are pushing a bill that would require city school police officers to carry their guns inside schools.But that legislation _ sponsored by Senate Minority Leader J.B. Jennings, who represents Harford and Baltimore counties _ has no Democratic co-sponsors. In Maryland's Democratic-controlled General Assembly, Republicans cannot pass legislation without at least some bipartisan support.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed an 18-week abortion ban into law on Friday, making Arkansas' abortion policy one of the most prohibitive in the U.S.The Republican governor signed House Bill 1439 by Rep. Robin Lundstrum, R-Elm Springs, which will outlaw abortion 18 weeks into a woman's pregnancy except in medical emergencies and in cases of rape or incest.Abortion opponents trumpeted the bill as a victory for the unborn, but abortion-rights advocates decried the law as unconstitutional, promising to sue the state.Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List group, thanked Arkansas lawmakers for HB1439."Arkansas has some of the nation's strongest pro-life laws and continues to expand protections for unborn children and their mothers, informed by science and compassion," Dannenfelser said. "At 18 weeks, nearly halfway through pregnancy, unborn babies are beginning to move and can hear sounds. Their facial features are developing, and an ultrasound can show if the child is a boy or girl. The humanity of the unborn child and the brutality of abortion is undeniable."Meanwhile, Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, said the General Assembly put its ideology ahead of women's health care.
Georgia state Rep. Dar'shun Kendrick is floating the idea that if men can legislate women's reproductive rights, women should have a vote on what men do with their bodies.In an email titled "Testicular 'Bill of Rights' Legislation" sent to fellow lawmakers with its level of importance marked "high," Kendrick proposed a bill to "ban vasectomies," classify sex without a condom as "aggravated assault" and require men purchasing Viagra to have their partner's consent.Her email is in response to the Georgia's House of Representatives approval last week of HB 481, which would forbid abortions from being performed once a fetal heartbeat is detected. Abortion rights activists argue that often comes around the six-week point of gestation, before women first realize they're pregnant.If Kendrick's proposal becomes a bill, it would require men to take paternity tests at eight weeks and to begin paying child support to the mother's immediately, because according to conservative lawmakers, the baby is already born at that point.The 36-year-old Democrat's idea would also require a 24-hour cooling period for men wishing to purchase pornography or sex toys in the state of Georgia, much the same way guns are sold.In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Kendrick conceded the bill won't pass anytime soon, partially because Georgia's 2019 legislative agenda has already passed. She also insisted she was "dead serious" about the tit-for-tat proposal.Kendrick says HB 481 is also no laughing matter and fears that it's an early step in the right-wing's agenda to overturn the abortion rights women first won in 1973."(HB 481) is a case to test Roe v. Wade. They're hoping that it gets up to the Court of Appeals," she said. "The Eleventh Circuit is one of the most conservative court circuits that we have, and they're hopeful that they will uphold part of it, and then they'll take it all the way to the Supreme Court."In his two years in office, President Trump has placed two conservative Justices on the Supreme Court, including Brett Kavanaugh, whose position on women's rights remain murky since his October inauguration.The 54-year-old Catholic was accused of several counts of sexual misconduct -- all of which he denied -- during his confirmation process. He also testified during that hearing that Roe v. Wade was an "important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years."
Virginia's use of racial demographics to draw election districts over the past decade divided the Supreme Court Monday, a week before it will consider an even more explosive issue: partisan gerrymandering.The court's conservative justices seemed inclined to let the state's Republican-controlled House of Delegates defend the racially drawn districts, even when the Democratic executive branch refused to do so. They also defended the GOP's decision to make 11 districts 55 percent African American, which a federal district court struck down as unnecessarily excessive."I'm wondering why 55 is so problematic here, given that the states have to have some flexibility," Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh told lawyers for the state and individual challengers. "If a state ... said, 'We're going to do 52 percent or 53 percent', they would be hammered from the other side, saying you are discriminating against African American voters."But liberal justices argued that the GOP House lacked the authority to defend the districts because it does not represent the governor or state Senate. And they expressed doubt about the way the lines were drawn."They drew lines in the middle of a street, with black houses on one side and white houses on another side," Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. "I don't know how you can look at that and not think that race predominated."It was the second time the high court has heard the case. In 2017, it sided with challengers in demanding further review of the districts by the lower court. The 7-1 ruling was a temporary victory for Democrats who argued that the maps were drawn to pack more blacks than necessary in some districts to give Republicans the advantage in many more surrounding districts.
Seeing the razor wires while driving into the parking lot of a Pennsylvania state prison to visit a parent is traumatizing for children.After going through security checks, the youngsters visit their parents in rooms in an institutional setting.With the hope of providing comfort to the estimated 80,000 children of incarcerated parents in Pennsylvania prisons, arts and crafts programs are being provided in all 25 institutions, officials said Monday."We understand the important relationships between a parent and child, and we want to foster the continuation of those relationships through contact in our visiting room," Secretary of Corrections John E. Wetzel said Monday. "We are going a step further by allowing incarcerated parents the opportunity to share in creativity with their children through arts and crafts."Under the new policy, each prison is coming up with a plan to provide crafts that could include origami, making bookmarks and other art projects.The inmates will be allowed to bring artwork back to their cells as a way of bonding with their children.Some state prisons, such as the state Correctional Institution at Chester in Delaware County, already provide crafts projects for children.The policy is in response to a recommendation to Wetzel from Chad D. Lassiter, executive director of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, a state agency charged with promoting civil rights and protecting people from discrimination in employment, housing, commercial property and public accommodations."As a social worker and volunteer in the prison system, I have seen firsthand the trauma children experience when their parent is incarcerated," Lassiter said.Susan McNaughton, prison spokeswoman, said the plan calls for art supplies for all prisons, noting that scissors and glue will not be provided. The supplies will be kept in a secure area, and they will be issued by a security room supervisor.
Not many governors decide to sue a city in their state within a few weeks of taking office. Gavin Newsom, the new Democratic governor of California, however, did just that, signaling his seriousness about addressing the states chronic but worsening housing shortage.Under a 2017 state law, California cities and counties are required to include, as part of their long-term plans, a housing element for the preservation, improvement and development of housing. About 10 percent of the cities in the state have failed to do so. With his lawsuit, Newsom went after the biggest of these, Huntington Beach in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.Housing activists are delighted. California has passed any number of robust housing laws over the years, but very little has been done in terms of enforcement. In addition to the lawsuit, Newsom has threatened to withhold transportation dollars from cities that fail to play by the required development rules. If theres no sticks, then these laws dont mean anything, which has been the tradition around these state laws, says Laura Clark, who directs YIMBY Action, a San Francisco group that pushes for more housing construction. The local jurisdictions just ignore them and theres no consequences.Newsom has continued to pound at the idea that lack of action will now have real consequences. He called out noncompliant cities in his State of the State address and has been meeting with local officials to make sure theyre ready to get with the program. Huntington Beach officials have, of course, complained about the lawsuit, describing its contentions as factually inaccurate. Other cities on Newsoms list of scofflaws point to extenuating circumstances that prevent them from acting, such as a shortage of land available for development due to industrial contamination.For the most part, however, mayors recognize that the governor has the upper hand. They are looking for ways to collaborate with him, if only to avoid lawsuits. And Newsom suggests that he has no interest in suing localities that are acting in good faith. Cities may have any number of reasons not to be in compliance with the housing element requirement, says Carolyn Coleman, executive director of the League of California Cities, but they share the goal of getting more housing built. We applaud the thought of having a governor who wants to partner with cities to address a challenge that we identified several years ago, she says.In addition to sticks, Newsom is dangling big carrots in front of localities. His first budget request includes more than $2 billion for housing and homeless programs, with a sizable share intended to assist local governments with planning. Hes put a lot of money in the budget for affordable housing, for planning money for cities and reward money for cities that are meeting their housing goals, says state Sen. Scott Wiener.Wiener notes that the vast majority of California cities do have housing plans in place, yet many of them fall short of meeting those goals. Housing costs continue to rise, in part due to strong job growth and the states off-the-charts construction costs, but also because high-demand locations often seem to go out of their way to block new multiunit projects.A proposed apartment building in San Franciscos gentrifying Mission District has been held up for more than a year, first out of concern for the possible loss of an old laundromat that might be granted historic status and more recently for fear the building will cast shadows on a school playground. Much more modest developments have been held up or rejected in other crowded cities.When Newsom set a campaign goal of building 3.5 million additional units over the next seven years, even cheerleaders for more housing wondered whether such an astronomical number could possibly amount to more than just campaign puffery. The odds are that Newsom will fall far short of reaching such a goal, but his lawsuit and his desire to devote serious dollars to housing suggest that the state might finally see real progress.
The need for social services has reached an all-time high. This article takes a look at how the social good sector can learn from the private sectors adoption of technology and data to help serve the most critical needs of our communities.
(TNS)  Florida's cities and counties have spent countless dollars to make sure buildings, parks and other frequented places are accessible to all residents and visitors since the Americans with Disabilities Act passed in 1990.But nearly 30 years later, with the vast majority of government information available on the Internet, lawsuits are on the rise as many communities are playing catch-up in ensuring their government websites are just as accessible as other services.Cities in Volusia County are working to make their websites more accessible to people with visual or hearing impairments after Flagler County agreed to settle for $15,000 a lawsuit that claimed its website violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because it wasn't usable for the visually impaired.Joel Price, of Daytona Beach, filed the suit in October. Price's lawsuit stated that screen reader software didn't work with a portable document format, or PDF, and much of the website's content was in PDF format.It's not unusual for clients of Daytona Beach's Center for the Visually Impaired, 1187 Dunn Ave., to run into this issue, said Christopher Dixon, a program manager at the center."It would be great to see the entire Web available to anybody who wants to access it," Dixon said. "Any steps in that direction would be great."During a recent Deltona City Commission meeting, staff members presented UserWay , the new accessibility widget for the website. Features include keyboard navigation, a page reader, bigger text, bigger cursor and highlighted links. The free add-on, which includes a link for users to make donations, allows visitors to alter the saturation and contrast as well as change the font style."This enhances the experience and increases compliance with ADA and Section 508 requirements ," Katherine Kyp, planning coordinator, told the commission.Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was amended in 1998 by then-President Bill Clinton to strengthen requirements in the federal sector for access to electronic information.Deltona Mayor Heidi Herzberg said the use of UserWay is just one step the city is taking to be more accessible and more compliant."We definitely are going to work every which way we can to come into compliance," Herzberg said in a phone interview.Deltona has formed an ADA Committee and is looking into how to make all of the city's documents and media accessible by all people, Lee Lopez, city spokesman, said.The city also is looking to get closed captioning services for Deltona TV, Herzberg said.Deltona city attorney Marsha Segal-George said during a recent meeting that multiple cities, to avoid potential lawsuits, were taking documents and streaming services down until they're able to come into compliance."It's very complicated to try and get all of our systems to try to be totally acceptable for disabled folks who need a different way of accessing," Segal-George said. "In that process, we're not removing anything from the website."DeBary and other cities in Central Florida have removed PDF files to avoid potential lawsuits like the one filed by Price.On March 6, the DeBary City Council unanimously approved a budget amendment of $25,000 to bring the city's website into compliance. Basic information will continue to be available, but people searching for certain public documents will need to call or visit City Hall for access.Once officials decide on the software program to use, converting all of the city's documents may take several months, Eric Frankton, DeBary's information technology director, said.Dixon said the Center for the Visually Impaired recommends that website development follow guidelines by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)."I think, nowadays, websites are so visually based," Dixon said. "But you can still have a visually-appealing website that is W3C compliant."Volusia County "regularly monitors its sites to ensure they meet the requirements of Title II of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d), as amended in 1998 and the World Wide Web Consortium, Web Contact Accessibility Guidelines," according to the county's ADA Notice Daytona Beach is working on making its website fully compliant, its accessibility section indicates."Due to the city's integration with third-party providers, areas within, and linked from the site, remain beyond our control. Until the integration with these third-party providers is resolved, the city can only achieve a partial level of conformance according to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines," the website states.The city's website also provides links to PDF readers.
(TNS)  The city of Clermont, Fla.'s free public Wi-Fi is now live in limited locations in the waterfront district.No password is required to log into the "Clermont-Public" network. You can access it from the newly resurfaced Champions Splash Park (which reopened Friday for spring break), Waterfront Park, the Clermont Boat House, the Clermont Boat Ramp and the Highlander Pavilion, as well as the northern part of Victory Pointe."The city of Clermont's award-winning Master Plan continues to move Clermont forward," City Manager Darren Gray said. "Offering free Wi-Fi in the Downtown-Waterfront area and along the trail will enhance our residents' and visitors' experiences while giving event organizers yet another reason to choose Clermont as their preferred location."By the end of 2020, free public Wi-Fi should be available in Clermont's entire Downtown-Waterfront District. That includes 2.5 miles of South Lake Trail along Lake Minneola, as well as in Clermont's Central Business District, from Osceola Street in the north to Desoto Street in the south and from Lake Avenue in the east to West Avenue in the west."Public Wi-Fi is a Smart City tool that many cities across the country are implementing to leverage economic and social benefits," City of Clermont Economic Development Director Shannon Schmidt said. "It can empower residents and visitors in finding city services, way-finding, learning more about community events and safety. It encourages more people to come downtown and encourages the location of new restaurants, offices and shops."Plus, the city can collect users' ZIP codes during login to gain insight into where visitors are from, how long they are staying and what areas of the downtown they are visiting more frequently."The data becomes an important tool for business owners and the city alike," Schmidt said.An option to add your email address also allows the city to follow up with helpful news and information.It all started with resident requests for Wi-Fi at Waterfront Park, one of the city's most popular parks, and its neighboring Champions Splash Park.And now, it's becoming a reality as part of the Master Plan with the Clermont's City Council approval.In 2013, the Clermont started pulling fiber through the network of empty conduit, which had previously been installed while the ground was open for a water project, with the foresight of City of Clermont IT Director Don Dennis.Naples-based vTECH io was awarded the contract in November 2018 for buildout and installation of the Wi-Fi, utilizing the fiber network. Now, Wi-Fi access points are being mounted to existing street lamps and buildings."Because we already have fiber on a significant portion of the area, it's easy to add Wi-Fi there," Dennis said. However, more fiber needs to be added to cover the complete planned area, extending west past Lake Hiawatha Preserve and east to the City of Minneola's limits.The city is looking to recoup some of the project's costs by charging for high-bandwidth Wi-Fi access for those who need guaranteed bandwidth, such as large events wanting to stream live videos of race results. The city also could explore sponsors/subscriptions. Gray has asked for state funding for the project."It adds one more thing to make Clermont an appealing place to be," Dennis said. "As people become more dependent on technology, the public is coming to expect it."Clermont has been offering free Wi-Fi inside all city facilities since 2017. Log in through "ClermontGuest" with "Clermont" as the password.
(TNS)  Artificial intelligence will unleash changes humanity is not prepared for as the technology advances at an unprecedented pace, leading experts told an audience at the official opening Monday of Stanford Universitys new AI center.At a day-long symposium accompanying the centers launch, speakers from Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates to former Google AI chief Fei-Fei Li and a host of other leaders in the field laid out the promise of AI to transform life for the better or  if appropriate measures are not taken  for the worse.The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, a cross-disciplinary research and teaching facility dedicated to the use of AI for global good, needs to educate government along with students, Gates said during his keynote speech.These AI technologies are completely done by universities and private companies, with the private companies being somewhat ahead, Gates told the audience. Hopefully things like your institute will bring in legislators and executive-branch people, maybe even a few judges, to get up to speed on these things because the pace and the global nature of it and the fact that its really outside of government hands does make it particularly challenging.Gates said AI can speed up scientific progress. Its a chance  whether its governance, education, health  to accelerate the advances in all the sciences, Gates said.Artificial intelligence is, essentially, algorithm-based software that can see, hear and think in ways that often mimic human processes, but faster and theoretically, more accurately. However, rapid advances in AI have sparked growing concern about the ethics of allowing algorithms to make decisions, the possibility that the technology will replace more jobs than it creates, and the potentially harmful results algorithms can produce when their input includes human bias.This is a unique time in history  we are part of the first generation to see this technology migrate form the lab to the real world at such a scale and speed, institute co-director Li told the audience. But, she said, intelligent machines have the potential to do harm. Possible pitfalls include job displacement, algorithmic bias that results from data infected by human prejudices, and threats to privacy and security.This is a technology with the potential to change history for all of us. The question is, Can we have the good without the bad?' she said.That question remains to be answered, said Susan Athey, a professor of the economics of technology at the universitys business school. If we knew all the answers we wouldnt need to found the institute, Athey said in an interview. Were trying to grapple with big questions that no discipline has monopoly over. What we want to do is make sure we get the greatest minds studying these questions.Those minds will come from Stanford schools and departments including computer science, medicine, law, economics, political science, biology, sociology and humanities. The inter-disciplinary structure of the institute will allow researchers, students and instructors to explore the effects of AI on human life and the environment, symposium speakers said. AI should be inspired by human intelligence, but its development should be guided by its impact, said university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne.Because the facility is located at a university, students and faculty can create collaborations that allow people to learn about AI while actually improving the social good, Athey said.Areas ripe for AI-boosted development include medicine, climate science, emergency response, governance and education, speakers said. The technology promises to augment human intelligence, helping doctors diagnose illness or helping teachers educate children, speakers said.Still, AI in many ways falls far short of human intelligence, the symposium heard. While the technology can be applied generally across many fields, its usefulness is, so far, very narrow.It does only one thing, said Jeff Dean, Googles head of AI. How do we actually train systems that can do thousands of things, tens of thousands of things? How do we actually build much more general systems?Another leader in Americas AI field, MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson, highlighted the potential prosperity the technology may deliver  if humans can keep up with the pace of change it creates.The first-order effect is tremendous growth in the economic pie, better health, ability to solve so many of our societal problems. If we handle this right, the next 10 years, the next 20 years, should be, could be, the best couple of decades that humanity has ever seen, Brynjolfsson said.Because theres no economic law that says everyone must benefit, We need to be proactive about thinking about how we make this shared prosperity, Brynjolfsson said. The challenge isnt so much massive job loss, its more a matter of poor-quality jobs and uneven distribution.Currently, companies are focusing on using AI to perform certain tasks, and work based on such tasks is disappearing, Brynjolfsson said.The problem is that human skills, human institutions, business processes change much more slowly than technology does, he said. Were not keeping up. Thats why this human-centered AI initiative is so important. How can we adapt our economics, our laws, our societies? Otherwise, were going to be facing more of the unintended consequences.Fewer than a dozen companies are large and powerful enough to use AI broadly, and research is concentrated within a handful of countries, said Kate Crawford, co-director of the AI Now Institute at New York University.Its really a small group of people who really have their hands on the levers of power, Crawford said. When we start to talk about what that looks like geopolitically, it actually starts to look very concerning.Keeping developers of AI accountable for what their technology does is a challenge so far unmet, said Tristan Harris, executive director of the Center for Humane Technology and the former design ethicist at Google. If Google and Facebook are funding the majority of AI research, then that presents a lot of huge problems, Harris said. We need structural accountability.California Gov. Gavin Newsom closed the symposium with a dire analysis. Major employment areas in the state  trucking, logistics and warehousing  are on the edge of automation, Newsom said.We added about $10 million of our $204 billion budget to increase skills training to community colleges. It seems inadequate to this conversation, Newsom said.We cant even conceive of the jobs that will be created. But theres a dislocation, a transition. And theres an anxiety around this thats real. Were in an industrial age mindset in an information age, Newsom said.Were going from something old to something new and were not prepared as a society to deal with it.
Autonomous drones making deliveries to your front door arent a thing yet, but this idea did just get one step closer to reality. A self-piloting drone recently made its first delivery to a ship anchored offshore, kicking off a trial period for shore-to-ship delivery. Part of Airbus Skyways project, these drones are intended to speed up shipping operations and delivery times.On March 15, the Skyways drone delivered a 3.3-pound package of 3-D printed objects from Singapores Marina South Pier to a ship waiting about 0.93 miles offshore. The delivery took 10 minutes round-trip, much less time than it would have taken humans to do it. The drones can carry up to 8.8 pounds and have a maximum range of 1.86 miles.
Economic and National Security Concerns

To Ban or Not to Ban?

Transit Officials on the Defense

State and local government agencies have become increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks -- particularly when it comes to public transportation.In 2016, hackers hit the San Francisco transit system with a ransomware attack demanding $70,000. The following year, Sacramento Regional Transit faced a similar strike . In 2018, the Colorado Department of Transportation shut down 2,000 computers after falling victim to two ransomware attacks in two weeks Faced with these kinds of new cyberthreats, a number of security officials and experts have focused attention on one potential source: China. Chinese hackers have not been accused of the transit ransomware attacks, but they have been blamed for hacking other U.S. government agencies and businesses in an effort to gain intelligence and trade secrets. The growing political tensions between the U.S. and China have culminated in a series of tariffs on Chinese goods.Meanwhile, a state-owned Chinese company is building rail cars for some of America's biggest cities, prompting cybersecurity concerns. The increasing role of the China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. (CRRC) has prompted a bipartisan group of U.S. senators to introduce legislation that would prevent transit agencies from using federal funding for rail-car contracts with companies that are owned, controlled or subsidized by China.By significantly underbidding other companies, CRRC has won rail-car contracts in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. In 2017, the Chinese company reportedly lost out on a bid with the New York City subway to the Japanese company Kawasaki Heavy. Now, CRRC has eyes on a contract with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority again and may soon bid to design and build rail cars for Washington, D.C.s metro system.The potential D.C. deal has sparked a clash between local transportation officials and federal lawmakers.In a January letter to the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) , U.S. senators from Maryland and Virginia raised concerns in regards to the procurement process that WMATA is currently undertaking to acquire new rail cars. The letter does not name China or CRRC directly but says state and local procurements become a problem if they involve foreign governments that have explicitly sought to undermine our countrys economic competitiveness and national security."U.S. national security should be of the utmost importance as WMATA considers bids," the senators wrote.Usually, public entities pick the cheapest bid. If Congress wants D.C. to use a more expensive manufacturer, Washington City Councilmember and WMATA Board Chairman Jack Evans told The Washington Post that the federal government would "need to subsidize the difference."The concerns over CRRCs growth in the U.S. center on economic and national security, says Erik Olson, vice president of the Rail Security Alliance, which advocates for a ban on contracts with Chinese state-owned companies.From an economic standpoint, Olson says CRRCs U.S.-based manufacturing plant provides fewer local jobs than other popular foreign rail-car manufacturers, such as German-owned Siemens. Also, by underbidding competitors by millions, CRRC enables some local governments and transit agencies to fully fund rail-car projects on their own rather than seeking federal funding. When this happens, CRRC could bypass federal Buy America requirements, according to Olson. The 1982 regulations require that 60 percent of the cost for components used in transit projects go to American sources; that number will increase to 70 percent in October.Regarding cybersecurity, opponents of the CRRC contracts worry the company will install surveillance devices on the rail cars that it builds. Such a possibility could be especially unsettling in Washington, D.C., the nation's capital.Were not saying they are going to blow up the subway system, Olson says. Theres a lot of technology used on these cars.  Were talking about [China] gathering intelligence.Last week, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced the Transit Infrastructure Vehicle Security Act, which would "prevent federal funds from being used by transit agencies to purchase rail cars or buses manufactured by Chinese government-owned, controlled or subsidized companies," according to a press release.The ban, however, wouldn't affect projects that don't receive federal aid, such as the Boston transit agencies' CRRC contract and the D.C. procurement.Congressional lawmakers introduced similar regulations last year as part of the appropriations process. The House and Senate both passed bills including the foreign contract ban, but it was removed from the final legislation.While groups like the Rail Security Alliance support the ban, other security experts say that level of concern may be unwarranted.Timothy Heath, a senior international defense research analyst for the RAND Corporation, says he is not totally persuaded that CRRC presents a real security threat at this point. CRRCs U.S. rail contracts don't include developing software or computer components for the cars. The separation between hardware and software manufacturing makes any desired hacking much more difficult, Heath says.In defense of their CRRC contracts, local transit officials say cybersecurity concerns extend beyond China. As technology becomes more sophisticated, they say it's best to be prepared.[Weve] had talks since they started the preliminary designs to make sure cybersecurity is considered from the very beginning, says David Collins, a senior project leader for Philadelphia's transit system. Its not something that were just adding on at the end.Los Angeles Metro spokesman Dave Sotero touted his agencys ability to take appropriate precautions.Metro has the means and expertise to assure that any threats to security are identified and mitigated, says Sotero. Metro oversees all elements of vehicle design and system integration, and has the ability and intention to validate software and hardware integrity.As for Washington, D.C., WMATA is still in talks with other companies, but has added "enhanced" cybersecurity safeguards to procurements.
Current, powered by GE announced that its work at more than 50 FCA US LLC facilities and dealerships in North America is driving down lighting energy costs by more than 50%. The largest impact to-date has come from 18 FCA US manufacturing sites where 20,000 of Currents Albeo luminaires are now improving energy efficiency, with an additional 5,000 indoor and outdoor fixtures installed at 33 dealerships.

This type of energy savings is why LED adoption rates in industrial spaces are expected to skyrocket from just 3% in 2014 to 76% in 2020 according to Frost & Sullivan.

The automakers 5-million-squafoot Sterling Heights Assembly Plant in Michigan is one of the largest automotive plants in the US with the technologically advanced manufacturing equipment. Current by GE created special anti-glare lenses and extended power supply solutions to address the scope and size of the plant.

The automotive industry has been an early adopter of intelligent environments, investing between $4 billion and $5 billion on smart infrastructure over the last five years. The automakers move to advanced LED solutions with wireless control capabilities addresses a need for real-time energy consumption data and flexibility. The company also pointed to the impact on employee satisfaction, productivity, maintenance savings and safety improvements.

Beyond their manufacturing facilities, FCA is extending its sustainability commitment to its dealership network with 5,000 indoor and outdoor LED solutions. In addition to reducing operating costs with energy savings, the indoor LED lighting improves the showroom display environment and the outdoor lighting helps improve lot security and better displays vehicles at night.

Current is the digital engine for intelligent environments. A first-of-its-kind startup within the walls of GE, Current blends advanced LED technology with networked sensors and software to make commercial buildings, retail stores, industrial facilities and cities more energy efficient and productive.
A Stanford-led team has developed a new electrolysis system to split seawater in hydrogen and oxygen. Their findings are published in an open-access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Existing water-splitting methods rely on highly purified watera precious resource and costly to produce.





Hongjie Dai and his research lab at Stanford University have developed a prototype that can generate hydrogen fuel from seawater. (Image credit: Courtesy of H. Dai, Yun Kuang, Michael Kenney)

Electrolysis of water to generate hydrogen fuel is an attractive renewable energy storage technology. However, grid-scale freshwater electrolysis would put a heavy strain on vital water resources. Developing cheap electrocatalysts and electrodes that can sustain seawater splitting without chloride corrosion could address the water scarcity issue. Here we present a multilayer anode consisting of a nickeliron hydroxide (NiFe) electrocatalyst layer uniformly coated on a nickel sulfide (NiSx) layer formed on porous Ni foam (NiFe/NiSx-Ni), affording superior catalytic activity and corrosion resistance in solar-driven alkaline seawater electrolysis operating at industrially required current densities (0.4 to 1 A/cm2) over 1,000 h. A continuous, highly oxygen evolution reaction-active NiFe electrocatalyst layer drawing anodic currents toward water oxidation and an in situ-generated polyatomic sulfate and carbonate-rich passivating layers formed in the anode are responsible for chloride repelling and superior corrosion resistance of the salty-water-splitting anode. Kuang et al.

Theoretically, to power cities and cars, you need so much hydrogen it is not conceivable to use purified water, said Hongjie Dai, J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood professor in chemistry in Stanfords School of Humanities and Sciences and co-senior author on the paper.

Dai said his lab showed proof-of-concept with a demo, but the researchers will leave it up to manufacturers to scale and mass produce the design.

Water splitting with electricityelectrolysisis a simple and old idea: a power source connects to two electrodes placed in water. Negatively charged chloride in seawater salt can corrode the anode, however, limiting the systems lifespan. Dai and his team wanted to find a way to stop those seawater components from breaking down the submerged anodes.

The researchers discovered that if they coated the anode with layers that were rich in negative charges, the layers repelled chloride and slowed down the decay of the underlying metal.

They layered nickel-iron hydroxide on top of nickel sulfide, which covers a nickel foam core. The nickel foam acts as a conductortransporting electricity from the power sourceand the nickel-iron hydroxide sparks the electrolysis, separating water into oxygen and hydrogen.

During electrolysis, the nickel sulfide evolves into a negatively charged layer that protects the anode. Just as the negative ends of two magnets push against one another, the negatively charged layer repels chloride and prevents it from reaching the core metal.

Without the negatively charged coating, the anode only works for around 12 hours in seawater, according to Michael Kenney, a graduate student in the Dai lab and co-lead author on the paper.

The whole electrode falls apart into a crumble. But with this layer, it is able to go more than a thousand hours. Michael Kenney

Previous studies attempting to split seawater for hydrogen fuel had run low amounts of electric current, because corrosion occurs at higher currents. But Dai, Kenney and their colleagues were able to conduct up to 10 times more electricity through their multi-layer device, which helps it generate hydrogen from seawater at a faster rate.

I think we set a record on the current to split seawater. Hongjie Dai

The team members conducted most of their tests in controlled laboratory conditions, where they could regulate the amount of electricity entering the system. But they also designed a solar-powered demonstration machine that produced hydrogen and oxygen gas from seawater collected from San Francisco Bay.

Without the risk of corrosion from salts, the device matched current technologies that use purified water.

The technology could be used for purposes beyond generating energy. Since the process also produces breathable oxygen, divers or submarines could bring devices into the ocean and generate oxygen down below without having to surface for air.

One could just use these elements in existing electrolyzer systems and that could be pretty quick. Its not like starting from zeroits more like starting from 80 or 90 percent. Hongjie Dai

Other co-lead authors include visiting scientist Yun Kuang from Beijing University of Chemical Technology and Yongtao Meng of Shandong University of Science and Technology. Additional authors include Wei-Hsuan Hung, Yijin Liu, Jianan Erick Huang, Rohit Prasanna and Michael McGehee.

This work was funded by the US Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, National Science Foundation of China and the National Key Research and Development Project of China.

Resources
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has made awards under the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for a Phase 1 Truck Platooning Early Deployment Assessment. This project is being conducted to understand how truck platoons will operate in a realistic, operational environment.

Previous research has resulted in the development of truck platooning technology with only limited testing and demonstration in a real-world environment. This project will provide valuable insight into actual truck platooning operations that can be used to inform state and local stakeholders that are making decisions related to truck platooning regulations.

s The project will assess various aspects of in-service truck platoons that are delivering commercial goods by a fleet operator on their common delivery routes over an extended time period. Various data will be collected, both technical and operational, related to the vehicles, environment, and drivers to assess safety, efficiency, and mobility impacts. The strategy is to partner with and leverage current industry and state agency plans for truck platooning operations.

The 9-month Phase 1 project awards will perform detailed planning and team building and develop Phase 2 proposals. The Phase 2 project awards will execute the plans, collect data, and conduct evaluations of truck platoons driven by professional drivers delivering commercial goods. Only Phase 1 awardees will be eligible to submit Phase 2 proposals.

FHWA will work together with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) to conduct the work. The project is funded by the ITS JPO.

Phase 1 awards are:
STAMFORD  Technology-training firm General Assembly has launched its local center in the Comradity co-working complex at 845 Canal St. in the citys South End.

The opening follows General Assemblys announcement last December that this year it would start running full-time courses in web development and data science at a site within walking distance of the main Metro-North train station in Stamford. Comradity operates about 1 mile from the downtown transportation center.

Were incredibly excited to partner with Comradity as we work together to build a highly skilled and inclusive talent pipeline that can support Connecticuts economic development in the years ahead, Lizzie Livingston, General Assemblys manager of instruction and education programs, said in a statement. Their unique and state-of-the-art space is the ideal location for our Stamford campus, and will help foster an environment tailored toward creative learning and instruction.

Opened in 2015 by husband-and-wife team Jim and Katherine Kern, Comradity has established itself as a hub for startups in a range of industries, including consumer goods, media and information technology. Multinational companies such as GE and Spotify also hold meetings there.

It is a compliment that General Assembly chose Comradity to deliver their exceptional learning experience, Jim Kern said in a statement. Katherine Kern cited Comraditys belief that businesses flourish when they are open minded, collaborative, and provide opportunities for growth.

Comradity and General Assembly said they will offer businesses a 24/7 open-studio membership plan, which includes a 50 percent discount on General Assembly workshops and boot camps.

A state-funded allocation of $1.25 million to General Assembly is supporting the new center. The state is providing the same amount of funding to an equivalent program, run by Tech Talent South, in Hartford.

Combined, General Assembly and Tech Talent South are expected to enroll about 400 students by 2020.

Manhattan-based General Assemly runs campuses in many cities, including New York, Boston, Providence, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, Denver and Washington.

With our Manhattan campus, we saw a lot of demand from people in Connecticut, General Assembly President and Chief Operating Officer Scott Kirkpatrick said in a recent interview. Given that there are so many tech jobs now, we said, Why dont we run a campus right here in Connecticut?

Demand for tech professionals continues to grow, as several companies have announced major expansions in Connecticut.

Last December, job-search firm Indeed pledged to add another 500 jobs at its downtown Stamford offices, where about 900 now work. The announcement followed a separate plan rolled out last year to create 500 jobs.

Indeed aims to raise its Stamford contingent to about 1,700 by the end of 2031.

Last September, IT consulting and research firm Gartner announced it would add 400 jobs during the next five years at its headquarters in Stamfords Waterside neighborhood. The company employs about 1,200 at the main offices and about 100 elsewhere in the state.

Another IT firm, Infosys, announced in March 2018 that it would open a center in Hartford, aiming to employ about 1,000 there within the next four years.

More than $50 million in state subsidies are cumulatively supporting the projects at Indeed, Gartner and Infosys.

pschott@scni.com
GREENWICH  A Greenwich man is facing up to 30 years behind bars after pleading guilty Monday in federal court in New Haven to offenses related to an investment fraud scheme.

Leonid Pollak, 58, also known as Lenny, owned a Norwalk-based company that organized trade shows and expositions throughout the country, said John H. Durham, U.S. attorney for Connecticut.
GREENWICH  The contentious debate around tolls on Connecticuts highways will be taken up by the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting on April 8.

The RTM will consider a non-binding resolution declaring it opposed to the imposition of tolls on its residents and calling on the towns elected representatives to oppose any measure that would impose tolls on our constituents.

The resolution claims it would be a substantial burden for residents to have to pay tolls, particularly because the residents of Greenwich already pay more in taxes and fees than most residents in states around the country. Additionally, the resolution states tolls would result in an increase in traffic and pollution in Greenwich because drivers would use local roads to avoid paying to drive on the highway.

Since reinstituting tolling would affect every resident in the state, what residents think about the issue should be a major factor in the making of that decision, said RTM Moderator Tom Byrne.

The resolution was initiated by town resident Laura Gladstone, who said she wanted to send a message to Gov. Ned Lamont and state Sen. Alexandra Bergstein, D-36, both of whom support tolls and are Greenwich residents.

If Governor Lamont hears from (one of) the largest (towns) in the state that they are upset that he went back on his campaign promise of tolling only trucks, maybe he will listen to all of his constituents that the majority of people in Connecticut are against tolls, Gladstone said.

Gladstone, co-founder of a citizens group called Fiscal Freedom for CT, is not a member of the RTM but Greenwich residents can get a resolution before the body with 20 signatures of registered voters. Her petition included signatures of state Rep. Fred Camillo, R-151, and former state Sen. L. Scott Frantz, who represented the 36th District for 10 years before losing his reelection last year to Bergstein.

Bergstein, the first Democrat elected to represent the district, which covers all of Greenwich plus portions of Stamford and New Canaan, since 1930 made tolls a centerpiece of her campaign. Soon after being sworn in she proposed legislation returning electronic tolls to the states major highways.

Her bill. SB 102 has been referred to the Legislatures Joint Committee on Transportation and is one of several being considered. A committee vote on at least one toll bill was to come as early as Wednesday.

She has strongly defended her proposal, blaming the poor condition of Connecticuts infrastructure on underinvestment and mismanagement of public funds.

Its time to fix this failure with evidence-based policy, Bergstein said Tuesday. The evidence shows that electronic tolls, much of which would be paid for by non-Connecticut drivers, would allow us to fix our trains and roads and reduce travel time significantly. This is pro-business policy.

Camillo, who is running to be Greenwichs first selectman, is on record against tolls and he said Tuesday he wants to hear from the RTM.

While it is non-binding, I do think it sends a message to those public officials supporting them and claiming that everyone they talk to is for the tolls that it is not the case and in the opinion of many of us is a minority view, Camillo said.

The Greenwich delegation to Hartford is split on the issue, with Camillo and state Rep. Livvy Floren, both Republicans, opposed to tolls and Bergstein and state Rep. Stephen Meskers, Democrats, in favor of them.

Meskers, the first Democrat elected from Greenwich to the state House in more than a century, is still also a member of the RTM. On Tuesday he indicated he planned to be at the April 8 meeting.

I want to hear people and I may choose to speak depending on how the conversation around the resolution proceeds, Meskers said. I want it to be a productive discourse around it.

Greenwich will not be the first municipality to consider a resolution against tolls. On March 5, Stamfords Board of Representatives voted to approve a similar non-binding statement opposing them. Trumbull, Enfield and Sherman have also passed resolutions against tolls.

First Selectman Peter Tesei said the RTM is within its rights to consider the resolution.

I do not support the imposition of tolls in the state as Connecticut has not demonstrated any ability to safeguard the money that is designated to protect our transportation infrastructure, Tesei said. Given the information released thus far, any toll on any motorist is a highly regressive tax on the working class that will have a negative rippling impact not only on residents and consumers but on businesses as well. This is not a way to grow and improve the state and local economies.

Moves by municipalities to vocalize against tolls has gotten some pushback from members of the Legislature. Last month, state Rep. Jason Rojas, a Democrat from East Hartford, posted a tweet wondering if every town that passed an anti-toll resolution should lose state infrstructure money. Rojas did later say he was posing it as a question, not a statement of policy but his tweet did get a response from Bergstein who called it a great idea.

You want state funds to fix your roads and parking problems? Then be part of the Solution, Bergstein tweeted.

Byrne took exception to both Rojas and Bergsteins tweets.

I was appalled to read the suggestion by one state legislator, seconded by one of Greenwichs own representatives, that the expression of an opinion by a town legislature that was different from the state legislators own opinion should be punished by financial penalty imposed on any town that dare to speak on the issue, Byrne said. What has happened to the constitutionally protected right of free speech? How dare a state legislator try to silence those who disagree with him or her.

Bergstein replied saying, I wish Mr. Byrne would speak with me directly. I listen to everyone and respect any view thats based on real facts.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
HARTFORD  A panel discussion called The Science of Vaccines was canceled late Monday when two Yale doctors pulled out of the event, which was also going to feature Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer who founded an anti-vaccine organization.

Kennedy already was scheduled to speak at a forum titled Should Vaccines Be Mandates? hosted by Reps. Anne Dauphinais, R-Danielson, Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, and Jack Hennessey, D-Bridgeport.

The intent of the forum, to share science, was overshadowed by the negative attention, Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Hamden, said in a Facebook post late Monday night announcing the cancelation of the Science of Vaccines forum.

Hennessy said that the doctors were scared to be on a panel with Kennedy because they just cant back up the facts.

Jillian Wood, executive director of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the forum was no longer going to serve the purpose of allowing lawmakers to ask difficult questions and get information.

We cannot convince true anti-vaccine people their information is wrong, Wood said. We can only answer questions about scientific truth.

She said its hard to have an honest discussion with people who arent going to be honest back.

Drs. Brett Lindenbach and Gene Shapiro were two of the four experts scheduled to appear on the canceled panel.

The cancellation didnt deter turnout at the other panel. Two rooms at the Legislative Office Building were filled with women and children Tuesday who came to hear Kennedy speak.

Were here because we have vaccine-injured children, Jen Kozek said.

Dauphinais said the most disappointing part of the day was that Yale bailed. She said lawmakers were looking forward to a two-sided conversation about vaccines and informed parental consent to vaccinate.

She said shes not sure what Elliott meant by negative attention.

Kennedy suggested that no vaccine has ever been safety tested.

None of them have been safety tested against a placebo, Kennedy said. That is criminal because nobody can say whether a vaccine is causing more harm than good.

Wood said its hard to believe in vaccine safety if you dont believe in the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC has an Immunization Safety Office that identifies possible vaccine side effects and conducts studies to determine whether health problems are caused by vaccines.

Linda Niccolai, professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said the bar for vaccine testing is very high and if you dont trust the CDC theres more than enough evidence from health organizations around the world.

Every vaccine goes through rigorous evaluation before and after its licensed for use, Niccolai said, adding that there is a vast body of research that has not confirmed any serious side-effect from vaccines in use today.

She said she hears claims about children who have been injured by vaccines, but there is no causal relationship between the injury and the vaccine.

Theres no evidence vaccines are causing those illnesses, she added.

At one point during the press conference Kennedy asked all the women in the room with vaccine-injured children to raise their hands.

Its the press and the Democratic Party that arent listening to women, Kennedy said to cheers from the crowd.

Kennedy apologized for Democratic leadership who have chosen to listen to pharmaceutical companies, instead of women who believe their children have been injured by vaccines.

The facts in this debate speak for themselves, Kennedy said.

He said theres a difference between the scientific establishment and established science. He told reporters that they have to learn to mistrust the CDC.

He equated censorship about vaccines with the Catholic churchs problem with pedophilia.

Today people in the press have to be guarded about persuading themselves that the CDC and the vaccine program are so important that we cant entertain criticism of it, Kennedy said. That was the mistake everybody made with the pedophile scandal  we cant talk about it because people will lose faith in this important institution.

House Majority Leader Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, promised on March 13 that in the next 12 months the House would debate legislation to eliminate religious exemptions for vaccines.

Its not fair to a child with a compromised immune system to have to go to school with those children, Ritter said, referring to unvaccinated children. You have to fight for those folks.

He said theyre not saying a person shouldnt have a strongly held religious belief that prevents them from getting a vaccine. He said the removal of the exemption would simply mean that they couldnt enroll unvaccinated children in public schools.

Connecticuts immunization rates have dropped slightly.

In the 2012-13 school year, 97.1 percent of kindergarteners were vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella. In the 2017-18 school year that number dropped to 96.5 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of measles cases being tracked nationwide by the CDC jumped 30 percent last week  from 206 on March 11 to 268 on March 14.

Thus far in 2019, the CDC has documented measles in 15 states including Connecticut, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.

There are currently outbreaks  defined as three or more cases  in six US jurisdictions: New Yorks Rockland County, New York City, and the states of Washington, Texas, Illinois, and California.
In Amy Schumers new Netflix comedy special, "Growing," she reveals a lot about her pregnancy and marriage. One of the most surprising bits? Her 39-year-old husband Chris Fischer has autism spectrum disorder.

I knew from the beginning that my husbands brain was a little different than mine, Schumer says of Fischer, per ET. My husband was diagnosed with what used to be called Aspergers. He has autism spectrum disorder. Hes on the spectrum.

Schumer, who is expecting her first child with Fischer at 37, says there were some signs early on, like the fact that he reacted in an unusual way once when she fell down. Once he was diagnosed, it dawned on me how funny it was, because all of the characteristics that make it clear that hes on the spectrum are all of the reasons that I fell madly in love with him, she continues. Thats the truth. He says whatever is on his mind. He keeps it so real. He doesnt care about social norms or what you expect him to say or do.

In a recent Instagram post, Schumer also made it very clear that his unwavering support has meant the world to her: Thank you to my husband, Chris who has kept me going during this pregnancy. His willingness and desire to be open with the world about himself and our marriage is courageous and beautiful. He makes me laugh more than anyone and he laughs at me more than anyone.

Not exactly sure what autism spectrum disorder is? Doctors explain how to spot the symptoms and what a diagnosis means for your day-to-day life:

What is autism spectrum disorder and what do the symptoms look like?

Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental disorder that affects a persons communication and behavior, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. People with ASD can have a wide range of symptoms, but they typically have difficulty communicating and interacting with other people, have restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, as well as symptoms that can interfere with their ability to do well in school and work. Those can include not looking at or listening well to people, being slow to respond, having trouble with making conversation and having facial expressions and reactions that dont match whats being said, the NIMH says.

How is autism spectrum disorder different in adults?

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all children be screened for ASD and symptoms usually show up in the first two years of life, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, its possible to be diagnosed at any age and even in adulthood, like Fischer. We are finding more adults who might have had another diagnosis or none at all be diagnosed as being impacted by autism, says Scott Badesch, president of the Autism Society of America.

Symptoms of autism are varied in severity and the types of issues it can cause, says Santosh Kesari, M.D., Ph.D, a neurologist and neuroscientist at Providence Saint Johns Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Thats why some people can go undetected into adulthood. Some people with autism also have strengths in some areas that can overshadow their symptoms, making it less likely that theyll be diagnosed at an earlier age, Kesari says.

It can also be difficult to diagnose ASD in adults because some symptoms of ASD can overlap with symptoms of other mental health disorders like anxiety and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, Kesari says. Its a little hard to eke out an ASD diagnosis in some cases with adults, he says.

What happens after an adult is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder?

Overall, getting a proper ASD diagnosis  even as an adult  is a positive thing, Kesari says.

Theres no cure for ASD, but there are many ways to help a person with autism achieve their highest quality of life, Badesch says. Every person is different, but that may mean making other loved ones aware of the diagnosis so that they can better understand why a person acts a certain way, and learn to react accordingly, Kesari says. In terms of interacting with these patients, there can be certain ways to do things to better manage symptoms, he says.

There isnt a one size fits all treatment for ASD, but some people may end up taking medication for anxiety, depression, or mood changes that can come along with having ASD, Kesari says.


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Scott Walker will chair a nonprofit group that aims to enact a federal balanced-budget amendment by convincing state legislatures to call for a new constitutional convention.

The Republican is stepping back onto the national stage after he was narrowly defeated in his quest for a third term as governor of Wisconsin. He left office in January after signing controversial legislation to limit the power of his successor during a lame-duck session.

Born in 1967, Walker is only 51. We definitely haven't heard the last of him, and he's being strategic about how he spends these years in the wilderness. "What I was looking at was stuff I could do that's mission oriented," he said. "There's a lot of business opportunities out there. Nothing wrong with that. But I was looking for things that were really consistent with what I worked on as governor."

That led him to accept the new role with the Center for State-led National Debt Solutions, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Under Article V of the Constitution, a new convention can be held to amend the founding document if two-thirds of the states request one. That's 34 states. It's an improbable push. No one has ever used this mechanism, though many have tried to do so on the right and the left. Until Walker did it in 2012, on the other hand, no governor in U.S. history had survived a recall election either.

Intense fights have been playing out at the state level over the past few years around whether to call a constitutional convention. In 2017, Walker supported a successful push for Wisconsin to become the 28th state to do so. Wyoming and Arizona also joined that year. But other states that had supported conventions in the past rescinded their resolutions, including Maryland and Nevada.

Walker plans to make trips to South Carolina and Minnesota during this legislative session to encourage those states to call for a convention to enact a balanced-budget amendment. This summer he hopes to visit Idaho, Montana, Kentucky and Virginia - four other top target states- to make the case. Lower on his priority list are Washington, Nevada, Maine and even Connecticut. Walker noted that he got to know a lot of local leaders around the country during his 2016 run for president and his tenure as chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

Walker told me he is keeping the door open to another run for statewide office in Wisconsin. He noted that Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has said in the past that he won't seek a third term in 2022, which would create an opening that intrigues him. He said he's not sure if Johnson will "follow through with what he said previously." "I would defer to him," Walker said. "If he chose to run again, I wouldn't run."

He could also run against Gov. Tony Evers, the Democrat who defeated him, in a 2022 rematch. "As you know, I think six months is a lifetime in politics," Walker said. "I'm not ruling anything out. My wife . . . told me, 'Don't pretend you wouldn't ever running again.'"

For now, he plans to offer conservative media commentary and write a forthcoming column. He's joined a speaker's bureau and may guest-host a news-talk AM radio show in Milwaukee from time to time. He's staying engaged with parochial issues important to the state. He appeared, for example, at the Wisconsin GOP's 8th Congressional District convention this past Saturday. "I wanted to go around and thank people," he said.

President Trump and congressional Republicans slashed taxes while jacking up spending during the two years they had unified control of government. This will result in annual deficits topping $1 trillion for the foreseeable future. It's unprecedented to run such massive deficits when the economy is booming.

The national debt eclipsed $22 trillion last month. The federal government will need to spend $482 billion next year just on interest payments, more than the entire budget for Medicaid. By 2024, according to the budget released by the White House last week, the U.S. government will spend more servicing the debt than on the entire military.

Walker declined to directly criticize Trump or GOP leaders for their specific roles in adding to the deficit. He prefers the pox-on-all-their-houses message and to blame Washington writ large. "Washington's got their head buried in the sand," he said. "Both parties share a significant amount of the blame for the failure to act. Maybe one more than the other."

He complained that both parties often come together and agree to omnibus deals that give everyone what they want. "Someone asked if I believe in bipartisanship," he quipped. "I said it depends."

Asked how Trump is faring generally, Walker said "substantively great." Like many other Republicans, Walker added, "There are times I wish he would tweet or say things a hair differently."

Walker noted that he had to balance the budget each of the eight years he was governor, including when the economy was still in the doldrums after the Great Recession. "It forces tough decisions," he said. "It doesn't allow you to push them off. . . . That's been a godsend for us. . . . Depending on which way the pendulum swings I may not always like the decision, but at least it's being made."

I asked why Republicans are talking so much less about the debt than they did when Barack Obama was president. "You kind of have these ebbs and flows," Walker said. "It's like any other issue. In 2012, we weren't talking about border security. . . . That doesn't mean it wasn't an issue. . . . It's who are the voices, who are the personalities."

He said he's going to do everything he can to "elevate" the issue during the 2020 presidential election. "This is really going to have to be state driven," he said.

A balanced-budget amendment is a less fashionable idea than it was during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1995, a proposed amendment passed the House and failed by just one vote in the Senate. Otherwise it would have gone to the states for ratification.

Liberals believe a balanced-budget amendment, if enacted, would inevitably force steep cuts to Medicare and Social Security. They also say it would worsen economic downturns by forcing the government to raise taxes and cut spending when a slowing economy results in less government revenue.

Some conservatives worry that an amendment to the Constitution would force tax increases to close the deficit because it's too politically difficult to cut popular programs.

Separate from the substance, if Walker got his way, there are fears among legal scholars about the possibility of a "runaway" convention that would alter our founding charter in unintended ways. After all, the first Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was supposed to only clean up the Articles of Confederation - not toss them out and start over. There would be nothing to stop a constitutional convention, once it convened, from taking up issues far beyond its original mandate, and tiny states like Vermont or Wyoming would be on equal footing with megastates like California and Texas. This is why Antonin Scalia, among others, was against the idea.

Walker countered that 38 states - three-quarters of the country - would need to ratify any changes that a convention made to the Constitution.

Loren Enns, the president of the group Walker is joining, was a successful network engineer for Cisco Systems and a computer engineer for Microsoft who grew alarmed about the debt over the years. In 2015, he decided to focus full-time on the nonprofit. Enns, 46 of Clearwater, Florida, has recruited a board of directors that includes conservatives like former governor Mike Huckabee, as well as former senators Judd Gregg, George Allen and Norm Coleman. He reached out to Walker shortly after his term ended and then pitched him on joining the initiative. "It is the biggest threat that we face as a country," Enns said.

Regardless of the outcome of the fight, embracing the role of fiscal hawk dovetails with - and could burnish - the national brand Walker has spent the past decade trying to cultivate. In the long-term, decrying the debt while Republicans in Washington continue to spend like drunken sailors on shore leave could tee up a useful contrast against potential rivals who currently sit in the Senate if Walker were to run for president again in 2024, 2028 or even 2032. He will turn 65 the day before that election.

There is even a precedent. "You look way back," Walker told me. "Ronald Reagan talked a lot about this issue between being governor of California and president."
Unless youve been to China, it is quite likely youve never heard of baijiu. But even if you have, and found yourself consummating a new business partnership with shots of the pungent clear spirit -- cheering over heaping plates of pork, chilies and noodles -- chances are youre still unaware that grain-based baijiu is the most consumed alcohol on planet Earth.

Thats because even though four billion gallons of baijiu are sold annually, more than twice the volume of vodka, almost none of that ocean of distillate reaches American shores. Ming River Baijiu aims to change that. In a partnership with one of the largest and oldest distilleries in China, Luzhou Laojiao, the four founders of Ming River aim to not only introduce another bottle to the crowded spirit marketplace but also introduce an entirely new category to the American consumer. Its a daunting challenge indeed.

Related: From MMA Champ to Whiskey Entrepreneur: a Conversation With Conor McGregor

Adding to the difficulty is the history and breadth of the spirit (baijiu translates generically to white alcohol), encompassing numerous regional styles. Dating back to the Ming Dynasty, at least a dozen varietals, or aromas, of baijiu have developed throughout China. Four major pillars (sauce-aroma, rice-aroma, strong-aroma and light-aroma) account for more than 95% of sales volume, however. Strong aroma, the Sichuan-based variety that Ming River produces, is the most popular.

Image credit: Ming River

All of which makes the challenge facing Global Marketing Director Simon Dang, Educational Director Derek Sandhaus and CEO Bill Isler even greater. The colleagues started their endeavor in 2014 by opening Beijings first baijiu-focused bar, Capital Spirits, inspired after Dang and Isler attended a discussion of Sandhaus's book, Baijiu: The Essential Guide to Chinese Spirits. Capital Spirits was an unexpected success; it attracted a throng of young Chinese and expats, two coveted demographics. Western media noticed, and Chinas largest baijiu distillers were not far behind.

How did the success of the Capital Spirits evolve into the Luzhou Laojiao distillery approaching your team for a partnership?

Dang: I guess the whole concept was kind of a genius marketing idea in itself. People had this preconceived idea about baijiu, so you can just imagine someone saying, Hey, I went to this baijiu bar the other night. The other person goes, No way. Youre absolutely crazy. Then they come back and say, Actually, it was pretty cool. Then word spreads. Also, during that time, Chinese President Xi Jingping was cracking down on corruption. Because it was often given as gifts to politicians, it was a crackdown on baijiu -- so the industry was not doing too well. Their main customer was usually the government. Now, Capital Spirits was reaching a demographic they had never really hit before: foreigners and younger Chinese. So it kind of snowballed.

Related: 9 Tips for Starting a Business in a Crowded Digital Marketplace

Describe the challenge of not only launching a spirit brand into America's crowded market, but specifically of launching an entirely new category.

Dang: Theres definitely a huge challenge in launching a new liquor brand, because there are new liquor brands all the time. But its not like were launching another gin or whiskey; theres pros and cons to it, really. The pro is no one knows anything about baijiu really, so we can paint the canvas the way we want to. In the U.S. there are some negative myths about baijiu that are incorrect that we are dealing with right now. We had to spend a lot of time and money on education at the same time while trying to promote a brand. Those are some of the challenges we face. Part of our educational strategy is promoting DrinkBaijiu.com, which is a resource for everything baijiu.

Baijiu us best served with Sichuan food. Are you trying to find a way to make that happen in the U.S.?

Dang: We are working with Sichuan restaurants who want to offer an authentic experience. Were serving baijiu straight pours and carafes just like in China. We also want to show that our product has a very good potential in mixology at the bar. So, were also working with bartenders all over the U.S. and Europe on making new unique crafted cocktails using Ming River.

Image credit: Ming River

What's your schedule for rolling out Ming River?

Isler: We are committed to a narrowly focused rollout. Ming River and baijiu, in general, is not yet at the point where it sells itself, even in the most receptive/cosmopolitan markets in the U.S., and our team is still quite small. Since our sales force -- including we the founders -- have limited reach, and since we do not want Ming River to collect dust on distributor, retailer, or bar shelves, we are limiting our expansion to places where we can actively educate trade and consumers while also conducting our own sales efforts.

What demographic are you going after the hardest?

Dang: Were trying to figure out who our main audience is for baijiu. We have some assumptions, and were trying to work off of that. But were playing around with different demographics. Is it gonna be more female or male? Older or younger? Millennials? Were trying to target everyone in a way and then seeing what works best. So far, were seeing pretty good adoption by the millennials, but were going to try to go after other demographics as well.

Related: From Rock God to Master Rose Winemaker: a Conversation With Jon Bon Jovi

Sandhaus: Because we are in such unchartered waters, weve made a lot of assumptions that were challenged immediately. We have to really pay attention to what people are telling us and adapt quickly, because were trying to do something that essentially hasnt been done before. So, theres not a right answer to who the target market is for this product yet.

What are some assumptions that were flipped on their head early on?

Sandhaus: Because there is a very large Chinese-American population and baijiu is not incredibly popular in the U.S. market, we thought maybe that was a group that probably wasnt going to be terribly receptive to what we were selling. But what we found when we do public-facing events is a huge portion of our audience ends up being Chinese-American. And a lot of people view it as a product that kind of fits in with their lifestyles, and that allows them to connect more with a culture they might feel a little bit disconnected from. So, weve right away adapted and started doing a lot more Chinese American-focused events.

Related:

This Chinese Distillery Is Bringing the Most Consumed Spirit on the Planet to America

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TORRINGTON  Volunteers who renewed and preserved the historic Brass Mill Dam property at Migeon Avenue and Church Street will be recognized Saturday with a statewide award from the Connecticut Land Conservation Council.

There was stiff competition, for the Excellence in Conservation Organization Award, said Mark Linehan, who submitted the nomination on behalf of the Torrington Heritage Land Preservation Trust.

Linehan wrote that the trust preserved the historical value of the land... reflecting the manufacturing history of the city...  The 12-acre property also reveals the importance of the rivers and essential water power they supplied to the factories and mills, he wrote.

The award letter from the conservation council stated that The selection committee was especially impressed by the collaborative nature of the project  integrating open space conservation, historic preservation and public access to the river and trail system.

Land Trust President Earl Skokan said Tuesday that a proposed trail from the trust property on the west branch of the Naugatuck River could be built to connect the preserve to the Naugatuck Greenway River Trail.

Its one of our showcase properties, Skokan said. He noted that the 1904 gatehouse, which sits on the opposite bank of the river from the propertys entrance, has also been preserved.

The trust has a grant pending of $3,900 from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, Skokan said, which will be used to paint and protect the outside of the wooden gatehouse.

We want to clear trees and brush so you can see the gatehouse from Church Street, Skokan said. That would allow the trust to open the gatehouse to the public for special occasions, he said.

Amy Paterson, executive director of the state conservation council, said Tuesday that the awards ceremony recognizes the ongoing success in our state, by conservation groups.

She said the Torrington preservation trusts work was not traditional with them taking on the historic aspect. Paterson added that the work is even more impressive given that the members are all volunteers

Maybe their community project will help inspire other groups to include historical projects, as well, Paterson said.

Residents who would like to support the land trust organization can find out more information about the nonprofit group on their website, or by calling 860-294-4660.

Correction: The first name of Earl Skokan was incorrect in an earlier version of this article.
The woman known as "Mama June" on reality shows Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Mama June: From Not to Hot, was arrested on drug charges in Alabama last week, according to court documents.



June Shannon was charged with possession of a controlled substance and with use/possession of drug paraphernalia.
Toll Brothers limited-time Kitchen and Bath Sales Event will take place Saturday, March 9 though Sunday, March 17 for participating communities in Connecticut.

The Kitchen and Bath Sales Event is the perfect opportunity for home buyers to create their own luxurious haven. For a limited time, new buyers can enjoy exceptional savings on their dream kitchen and bath because we believe the most loved areas in your home deserve to be the most extraordinary, said Toll Brothers Group President Chris Gaffney.

Hundreds of amazing designer finish options are available to home buyers to enhance the kitchen and baths in their new home, from flooring and fixtures to cabinets and countertops.

When it comes to kitchens and baths, the details make all the difference. During this limited-time event, buyers can make upgrades to these important spaces, without adding to the cost of the home, Gaffney stated.

To take advantage of the special savings and incentives offered through Toll Brothers Kitchen and Bath Sales Event, buyers must place a deposit on a new home at a participating community Saturday, March 9 through Sunday, March 17, sign an Agreement of Sale within 10 days, and close on the home. Incentives vary by community and will comprise a package of savings created specifically for this event, so buyers should contact their community of interest and speak with a sales representative to learn more, or visit TollBrothers.com/NEKitchenAndBath.

Toll Brothers, an award-winning Fortune 500 company founded in 1967, embraces an unwavering commitment to quality and customer service. Toll Brothers is currently building in 20 states nationwide and is a publicly owned company listed on the New York Stock Exchange .

For five years in a row, Toll Brothers has been ranked the #1 Home Builder Worldwide on the Fortune magazine Worlds Most Admired Companies list.

Toll Brothers also has been honored as national Builder of the Year by BUILDER magazine, and was twice named national Builder of the Year by Professional Builder magazine.
Nokia India has posted a teaser video for the Nokia 9 PureView with the closing line 'Stay tuned!'.

This isn't at all surprising as we were expecting Nokia to release its new flagship in India sooner or later. It means that HMD will likely detail pricing and availability in the following days.

It's also likely that Nokia India will drop new teasers as the local launch draws near. The only bit of information we really need is the price.

The Nokia 9 PureView is already shipping in some markets and is a solid smartphone with a reasonable price (around 630 in Europe). It has a 5.99-inch 1440x2880px P-OLED, a Snapdragon 845 with 6GB of RAM, 3,320mAh battery, fast wired and wireless charging and nigh stock Android 9.0 Pie.

The 5 cameras on the rear are the Nokia 9's key selling point promise to deliver the most realistic bokeh from a phone so far as well as class-leading dynmic range.

Source | Via
Alongside the new Redmi Go, Xiaomi officially introduced its Mi Pay payment service to the Indian market. Back in 2016, Xioami launched Mi Pay in China and followed that up by launching a beta trial in India. Testing is finally complete now and Indian users get full access to Mi Pay.

The platform is built on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in collaboration with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and ICICI Bank and supports over 120 banks.

The service offers instant peer-to-peer transfers to other Mi Pay users or bank accounts. It is highly integrated with MIUI and allows for instant payments from other native Xiaomi apps such as SMS, contacts, and scanner. Focusing on the most common digital payment use cases, Mi Pay users will be able to pay for amenities like gas, water, and electricity as well as top up their phone or TV provider bills. Popular broadband providers like Nextra Broadband, Asianet and Hathway are already supported and Xiaomi's website will soon offer Mi Pay support as well.

Xiaomi claims that Mi Pay data is stored only on Indian servers and is working alongside EY and Lucideus to keep user data safe. The new service is a direct competitor to Google Pay, Paytm and Whatsapps payment feature and judging by the popularity of Mi devices in India it could gain some serious traction.

Source
American Airlines is adding to its inventory of flights arriving and departing at Huntsville International Airport.

The airport announced Tuesday that beginning in June, American will have more early-morning and evening flights for customers traveling to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The airport touted that this will given Huntsville customers more convenient access to American's worldwide routes. American is also launching seasonal flights to Dublin, Ireland and Munich, Germany in June.

The expanded service, however, will depend on the airport's ability to support those flights.

"These additions are another step to provide all of the citizens of the Tennessee Valley more air travel options and phenomenal savings," Rick Tucker, executive director of the airport, said in the announcement. "American sees potential in Huntsville's market, and we are glad they chose to expand their presence in HSV. This is great news and if the business community and our residents support our local airport we will all enjoy more air travel options with guaranteed lower fares."

With the expanded service, American will have six non-stop flights daily originating from Huntsville to Dallas-Fort Worth and seven flights from DFW to Huntsville.

Two flights will leave Huntsville before 8 a.m. each day with three flights departing DFW for Huntsville after 6 p.m. each day, according to the flight schedule announced by the airport.
OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- An Ocean Springs teen has been charged with driving under the influence after his vehicle struck and destroyed a brick entrance sign to the Gulf Park Estates subdivision early Satu

Hayden Anderson

rday morning.

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell said deputies were alerted to an accident at the location at the intersection of Beachview Drive and Old Spanish Trail around 2 a.m. Saturday. When they arrived at the site, they found 19-year-old Hayden Andersons vehicle in the median of Beachview where the sign has stood. The sign was privately owned.

Anderson was taken into custody and transferred to the Jackson County Adult Detention Center, charged with DUI-1st offense and no insurance. He was released Saturday afternoon after posting $2,000 bond.
GULFPORT, Mississippi -- A 46-year-old Vancleave woman pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court Tuesday to charges that she stole more than $350,000 from a local credit union while employed there.

According to the U.S. Attorneys Office, Merrideth Christina McMillian had been employed as vice president of the Moss Point branch of Singing River Federal Credit Union.

Investigators said McMillian defrauded the credit union by going into the computer system and releasing collateral being used to secure other loans. Once released, McMillian used that collateral to borrow money for herself. In 2017, McMillian used a customers personal information, without the customers consent, to take out multiple unsecured loans. Those loans ranged from $5,000 to $60,000.

On another occasion, FBI agents discovered McMillian had used a friends name and a customers money market account information to take out a fraudulent loan of $47,500. An August 2018 audit uncovered the suspicious transactions which led to the FBI investigation.

McMillian will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden on June 24. She faces a maximum sentenced of 30 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.
Botswana Geoscience Institutes Chief Executive, Tiyapo Ngwisanyi said there is a need for continuous research on the mineral sector in the country as the mines are getting deeper and grades are getting low.

Briefing journalists last week, Ngwisanyi said the institution has developed a strategic plan 2018 to 2023 which prioritizes on undertaking high quality geoscience research for mineral exploration, promotion of sustainable development and geo-hazards. There is a continuous change in the mining sector and geological field. We see mines getting deeper, grades getting lower and there is a growing requirement for social responsibility. All these require BGI to facilitate a vibrant mining industry through research, innovation and development, said Ngwisanyi.

He also highlighted the institution is working on advising the government and attracting investors in the mineral sector. Meanwhile Botswana is exploring ways to produce and market clean diamonds through the use of digital sales platform that uses propriety analytics with cloud and block chain technologies. The project is currently undertaken by the Canadian Diamond Producer, Lucara Diamonds. Through the system jewellery manufacturers would be able to sell diamonds directly via a digital platform backed by secure blockchain technology, which would cut out the middlemen in the industry.

Recently the minister of mineral resources, Green Technology and Energy Resources, Eric Molale said they will look into upgrading the Botswana Geoscience Institution laboratories to have them accredited and equipped to carry out all analysis required by the industry. Lucara Diamonds is conducting a pilot project for the diamond tracing technology called Diamond solutions. These and other emerging technologies will enhance Botswana in her efforts to produce and market clean diamonds, said Molale.




Haiti - FLASH : The PM ignores the vote of no confidence of the deputies and remains in office





Sanctioned Monday by a vote of no confidence in the lower house by 93 votes for 6 votes against and 3 abstention votes https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27219-haiti-flash-haiti-has-no-more-government.html Prime Minister Ceant, who was not present at this session, asserts that this vote does not concern him and that he is not an outgoing Prime Minister because he is still Head of Government in office.



Ignoring the 18 March response of President Moise to the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies after being informed of the vote of no confidence against his Prime Minister in which he writes "[...] I take note of the decision of the Chamber of Deputies Deputies who dismissed Prime Minister Jean Henry Ceant following a motion of censure voted by the Assembly of Deputies with ninety-three (93) votes "for", six (6) "against" and three (3) "abstentions ", during an intyerpellation session held on Monday, March 18, 2019.



I inform you that I will begin consultations with the Parliament as soon as possible on the selection of a new Prime Minister, in accordance with Article 137 of the 1987 Constitution as amended. [...]"



Ceant qualify as illegal and unconstitutional this interpellation session in the lower house which goes against the republican and parliamentary traditions, while he was in the Senate and he informed the President of the Chamber of Deputies of his unavailability. A presence in the Senate that the Prime Minister hastened to have to report by a Justice of Peace, after being informed of the vote of censure by the deputies.



Ceant recalls that the interpellation sesion in the Senate was put in continuity Monday around 7:00 pm by Carl Murat Cantave, the President of the Senate and postponed to next Wednesday. The Head of Government who ensures that he will be present Wednesday in the Senate, said he discusses with his team the appropriate response to give the Chamber of Deputies.



Several senators including Youri Latortue downplay the vote of no confidence of the deputies estimating that Jean Henry Ceant is still Prime Minister. According to them, the Senate takes precedence in this matter.



Deputies of the minority opposition including Sinal Bertrand, Printemps Belizaire and Baudelaire Noelsaint denounce a vote of censure, which they describe as illegal.



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Diplomacy : Haiti will open an Embassy in Doha, Qatar





Chancellor Bocchit Edmond at the head of a Haitian delegation composed among others of Jean Baden Dubois, the Governor of the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BRH); of Cliffort Naud, Advisor to President Jovenel Moise, of Charles Jean-Jacques, National Authorizing Officer and businessman, Andre Apaid is currently on an official visit to Doha, Qatar to respond to an invitation from his colleague, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The mission is to assess bilateral cooperation, discuss investment, ways to support and develop them, and issues of common interest.



Chancellor Bocchit Edmond announced the decision of the Government of Haiti to open an Embassy in Doha explaining "[...] We have already established diplomatic relations with Qatar with the Qatari Ambassador of Santo Domingo also accredited in Haiti for several years. We decided to open an Embassy in Doha, Qatar.



This Embassy will be responsible for the Gulf region. The approach is to have a much more diversified foreign policy taking into account other geographical poles in order to have a broader horizon in our quest for Foreign Investments.



Like the President of the Republic, Jovenel Moise, I believe that Haiti will not be able to progress economically without foreign investment in the form of an economic partnership with the spin-offs of job creation, wealth creation and the strengthening of local SMEs."



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27218-haiti-news-zapping.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politic : Importation of fuels, the state transfers its responsibility to the private sector





Fils Aime Ignace Saint Fleur, the Director General of the Office for the Monetization of Development Assistance Programs (BMPAD) informs the oil companies that "[...] in the context of the liberalization of the import of petroleum products : Diesel, Gazoline, and Jet, a Stand-by Letter of Credit will be required by potential local suppliers of such products for the value equivalent to the demand expressed by each company, to guarantee payments and minimize potential risks.



Thus, you are asked to take the necessary steps to facilitate the implementation of this new mechanism from the next call for tenders. BMPAD is counting on your customary collaboration to make these products available on the local market at any time and stop any form of breakage. [...]"



This new measure that relieves the State of its responsibility for supplying fuels to the private sector, will mainly benefit 3 large companies in Haiti : Dinassa, Total and Sol and does not suit small companies. Too small to respond alone to a tender, insufficiently capitalized they had to regroup before to respond to calls for tender. With this new measure, in addition to regrouping, they are aware that they will find it very difficult to obtain a standby letter of credit from their banks for each call for tenders.



Learn more about the stand-by letter of credit :

The stand-by letter of credit is a bank guarantee with which the importer guarantees its supplier that the bank will replace it if it is in default, provided that the exporter presents the documents requested as proof of the existence of the debt."



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - DR : The Government confirms that the wall of the Dominicans respects the Haitian territory





Reacting to violent border incidents in the Carrizal community of Elias Pina at the height of pyramid 181, where the Dominican Republic builds an important multi-agency complex fenced by a wall (object of the conflict) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27122-haiti-security-the-dominicans-explain-the-construction-work-at-the-border.html Jean-Marie Reynaldo Brunet, the Ministry of the Interior notes that the construction these infrastructures close to the border line have been causing a situation of confusion and tension in the area for a few days. The contestation by Belladerois, of the right of the property of the spaces where these sites are implanted by the Dominicans, gave rise to escalations and in particular to the bloody confrontations (between Haitians and Dominicans) registered on March 15, 2019 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27194-haiti-flash-violent-confrontation-at-the-border-between-haitians-and-dominican-soldiers.html



The Ministry reminds the population of the area and all those interested in the matter that the two States have agreed on the boundary line delimiting the two territories, based on the Treaties, Agreements and Border Review Conventions of January 21, 1929, February 27 1935, March 9, 1936, thus materialized by bounds.



It informs that an administrative and technical investigation aimed at establishing the location of the Dominican infrastructures under construction, at the base of the controversies, was already in progress and that governmental emissaries of the Ministries of the Interior, Defense, Foreign Affairs, the Interministerial Committee for Territorial Development (CIAT) and the National Center for Geospatial Information (CNIGS), were dispatched to the scene, including February 19 and March 14.



An analysis of the geolocated cartographic records and the verification of the geographical referencing were carried out, compared to the line of the border between the two countries. As a result, according to the results of these studies, the Dominican infrastructures in question, located between the RH/RD 181 and RH 182 terminals, are on the "east" side of the border line, are in Dominican territory.



As a result, the Ministry instructed local authorities to inform the population of the situation and to enforce the legal provisions relating to border management."



In the Dominican Republic, a high-level military commission to investigate the clashes of March 15, which killed 1 person and injured at least 2 on the Haitian side, including Vice-Admiral Nestor Felix Pimentel, Inspector General of Forces Major General Estanislao Gonell Regalado on Saturday visited the border community of Carrizal, Elias Pina, to launch an in-depth investigation into the circumstances of this incident, allegedly due to unfounded rumors that Haitians that the Dominicans were building infrastructure and a wall on land owned by Haiti.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27194-haiti-flash-violent-confrontation-at-the-border-between-haitians-and-dominican-soldiers.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27122-haiti-security-the-dominicans-explain-the-construction-work-at-the-border.html



HL/ SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - FLASH : Permanent Residence, a hope for Haitians benefiting from the TPS





The Embassy of Haiti in Washington DC informs us that the Democrats Deputies presented to the US House of Representatives the "Dream and Promise Act." which aims to open a way to obtain permanent residence for more than 50,000 Haitian nationals who are beneficiaries of the Protected Temporary Status (TPS) and to several million holders of the Deferred Enforced Departure (DED).



HR.6 was introduced by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ms. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez, Rep. Yvette Clarke and the other Democrats.



The Embassy states that "If the Act is passed TPS recipients will be able to immediately apply for the green card, provided that the applicant has resided in the country for at least three years, that it has obtained temporary status since September 2016, and that it has successfully passed the step of verifying its antecedents. Finally, 5 years after obtaining the green card, the people concerned will be able to apply for citizenship.



However, immigrants who have been found guilty of crimes punishable by more than one year in prison, or sentenced for at least three offenses involving sentences of more than 90 days, will not be eligible."



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27204-haiti-petit-goave-supplication-of-high-school-students-deprived-of-course-since-january-14.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-27038-icihaiti-petit-goave-high-school-students-deprived-of-class-for-59-days.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26825-haiti-petit-goave-striking-teachers-refuse-dialogue.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26796-haiti-petit-goave-the-ministry-dialogue-with-strikers-of-lycee-faustin-soulouque.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26770-haiti-petit-goave-teachers-will-not-go-back-to-the-classrooms.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26731-haiti-petit-goave-8-hours-of-demonstrations-and-violence-several-victims.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26724-haiti-petit-goave-activities-paralyzed-for-lack-of-fuels-and-student-demonstrations.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26672-haiti-petit-goave-violent-clashes-between-students-at-least-6-wounded.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26663-haiti-petit-goave-lycee-faustin-soulouque-closed-angry-students-demand-reopening.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25191-haiti-petit-goave-promise-of-a-school-year-without-strike-at-lycee-faustin-soulouque.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2019/03/18 | Source

On the episode of the KBS 2TV drama "Neighborhood Lawyer Jo Deul-ho 2: Crime and Punishment" on the 8th, Lee Jae-ryong (Kim Myung-kook) asks Jo Deul-ho (Park Shin-yang) for help.

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Lee Jae-ryong is a key insider of the Daesan Welfeare Center, which was included in Lee Ja-kyeong's (Go Hyun-jung) revenge list and a fake priest who falsely incarnated churchgoers. Last week, he tried smuggling himself out, but was caught by Han Min (Moon Yoo-bin) and was almost killed until Jo Deul-ho's team showed up, but Lee Ja-kyeong's threat to kill him continued.

In the meanwhile, a fearful Lee Jae-ryong goes to see Jo Deul-ho.

Lee Jae-ryong apparently spills out amazing facts about the Gukil Group. He also asks Jo Deul-ho to promise him something and shows extreme fear. What is he afraid of?
Members of Parliament across the aisle have expressed concern at the possible bad image that the country could attract due to the strained relationship between President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi and his predecessor. Since last year Dr. Masisi and former president Dr. Ian Khama have been entangled in a polarised relationship that has divided the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP).

Debating the budget for Ministry of International Affairs and Cooperation this week, MPs expressed concern that the situation has escalated and would possibly affect the countrys image in the international arena. MP for Francistown South Wynter Mmolotsi said while they appreciate that the current president is visiting other countries and participating in international meetings it is worrisome that the relationship between Dr. Masisi and Khama is strained. The legislator stated that Dr. Khamas failure to attend regional and international forums was negatively affecting the country. He however expressed worry that even though Dr. Masisi is doing a good job sometimes his statements are likely to annoy some countries especially those that Botswana relies on.

He might be trying to mend relations but some of his public utterances are a cause for concern. The president must be careful what he says and to whom he says it to. The recent issue about wildlife, I think the president should not have said the words he said. We do not want to find ourselves fighting with other countries especially western countries. He might have said the words with good intentions but we always have to be careful and choose correct and diplomatic words. The way he approached the issue it is like we do not care as a country, said Mmolotsi adding that western countries have got nothing to lose but Botswana as a small economy has a lot to lose.

He told Parliament that the fighting within the BDP is not good for the country. The former president would say something and then Dr. Masisi would say another, pointed out Mmolotsi. He called on the International Affairs and Cooperation Minister Dr. Unity Dow to engage the duo to safeguard the countrys image. MP for Gaborone Central Dr. Phenyo Butale said the disagreement between the former and current presidents should not be allowed to harm the country. He stated that the interest of the country has to be protected.

He challenged the consistency of the countrys foreign policy. He said the government used to say something about the Dalai Lama but today we are saying a different story. There is need for us to be consistent. We cannot have a situation where two leaders are competing and saying bad things in the public space which have the potential of denting our image. According to Dr. Butale the country has always been cautious of what it says or does because of the delicacy of its economy. We do not want our country to be taken to the dogs by our two leaders because we do not know what exactly happened between them, said Dr. Butale.

The MP said while Dr. Masisi is representing the country well at international level, it is important to apply a robust approach about multilateral relations. He said there is need for an aggressive approach in pursuing the interests of the country. MP for Francistown East Honest Buti Billy said it is costing the country to see the situation between Dr. Masisi and his predecessor. As an individual, one might think the matter does not concern them but it does. People out there see it differently. We are known to be a peace-loving nation but what is currently happening is telling a different story and the world is watching, Billy told Parliament.

He said the duo has to be serious and sort out their differences. He wondered what people will tell their grandchildren about the current situation if it is not attended to. I know people do not want us to talk about this issue, but we have to talk about it because we cannot ignore it anymore, he said.

Minister Dr. Dow said at ministry level regarding the relationship between the two leaders is to ask the question what you do is it for the country or is personal? She told Parliament that as the ministry they will only celebrate and appreciate those who do good for the country and not for personal gain. She said they however do not control what people speak at their individual level.
Published on 2019/03/19 | Source

Seungri (center) of boy band Big Bang leaves the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency after questioning last Friday. /Yonhap

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Seungri of boy band Big Bang has applied for his looming enlistment to be postponed while he is subject to a criminal investigation for pimping and other charges.

He filed the application with the Military Manpower Administration on Monday afternoon, according to his lawyer.

He was to start his Army boot camp on March 25, but the escalating scandal has thrown a spanner in the works.

Earlier, police also asked the MMA for help so Seungri can cooperate in the investigation.

The star has tearfully pledged to retire from showbusiness amid charges that he procured prostitutes for potential investors in his swish Gangnam nightclub, Burning Sun, which was allegedly a hotbed of drug peddling and sex abuse.

He has also been sucked into a scandal surrounding fellow K-pop star Jung Joon-young, who is accused of habitually sharing clandestinely filmed sex tapes of himself with his celebrity friends in an online group chat that Seungri was also a member of.

Seungri was grilled at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency for about 16 hours last week.
Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Wade Palmer, who was shot in the line of duty when he discovered a vehicle belonging to a suspect involved in a shooting at the Evaro Bar and Casino in Missoula, has close ties to the Hi-Line.

Palmer, who is currently in a Salt Lake City hospital where he remains in critical condition, had his first Highway Patrol assignment in Havre.

Palmer started with MHP in 2012.

State Department of Justice Deputy Communications Director Anastasia Burton said Palmer was "sworn in on Feb. 3, 2012, and completed his field training assignment before reporting to Havre. He assumed the Havre station April 8, 2012, and transferred to Missoula May 4, 2013."

"While stationed in Havre, Palmer was assigned the duties normally associated with being a trooper, such as patrolling Montana's highways to enforce federal, state and local traffic laws; apprehending criminals; and providing humanitarian aid to citizens," Burton said.

Burton also said a few of Palmer's fellow colleagues have established a GoFundMe account to raise money for expenses incurred by his family. People who want to help can visit https://www.gofundme.com/trooper-wade-palmer-expense-fund/.

A post Friday on the Havre Police Department Facebook page with Palmer's photo called for prayers for him and his loved ones and all who are involved in the shooting and their care.

"This is the face of a man who has a wife and two children," the post said. "This is the face of a man who straps on a vest every day he goes to work, because he knows the hazards of the profession he has chosen. This is the face of a man who has to rotate between day shift and night shift every three months. This is the face of a man who is in a fight right now as we prepare for the weekend festivities. This is the face of a man who needs our prayers."

Hill County Sheriff's Office posted information about Palmer's Havre position and links to stories and the GoFundMe account.

"He was a part of our community for many years and now needs our support more than ever," a Saturday post said. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to Trooper Palmer and his family during this difficult time."

Montana Highway Patrol Commander Col. Tom Butler said Palmer is still in critical condition but stable.

Palmer's wife, Lindsey, released a statement through Highway Patrol sharing her gratitude to the state of Montana and Utah for their support.

"I want to extend my sincere gratitude to Montana and Utah for all of their support, and to all of the caring people throughout the nation that have offered prayers and positive messages. To all of the brothers and sisters in blue, words cannot express the appreciation we have for all that you have done and for reaching out. We are holding strong and the continued aid is greatly appreciated. Knowing that our communities are coming together at our time of need is a great comfort. It gives us the ability to focus our attention on Wade and family which is the most important thing at this time. Hold the line. Stay strong."

Palmer received the Medal of Valor in 2014 after saving a woman who was thrown from her car after a Semitractor-trailer plowed into it because of slippery roads.

Montana Highway Patrol announced that people who want to send cards or letters to Palmer and his family can mail them to Attn: Palmer Family, Montana Highway Patrol Headquarters, 2550 Prospect Ave., Helena, MT 59620.

The suspect, Jonathan Bertsch, 28, made his first court appearance Monday in Missoula County Justice Court. He is facing one count of deliberate homicide for an alleged shooting at a bar at the Wye west of Missoula, which resulted in the death of Shelley Hayes, and three counts of attempted deliberate homicide related to the shootings, incuding of Palmer near a bar in Evaro 10 miles out of Missoula. All charges are felonies.

Bertsch's bond was set at $2 million. The Missoula Department of Justice is investigating the shooting of Palmer, while the Missoula Police Department is investigating the shootings at the Wye.

Bertsch is accused of opening fire on a pickup Thursday night, killing one person and injuring two. About an hour later, Palmer was shot while investigating the earlier shooting.
Havre Police Department

A Third Street caller reported a possible water main break Monday at 6:35 a.m.

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Monday at 9:21 a.m. a caller reported a vehicle had been stolen from a Second Street residence about 9 p.m. Sunday.

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A caller reported a wounded deer in a parking lot on U.S. Second Street at 9:27 a.m. Monday.

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Eusebio Barron McGillis of Havre, 36, was issued a summons on a shoplifting charge after a caller at a First Street business reported Monday at 9:39 a.m. someone stole deli food.

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A caller reported disruptive parents at Highland Park Early Primary School Monday at 11:21 a.m., and officers issued a written or verbal warning.

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A hit-and-run vehicle crash was reported on First Street Northeast Monday at 1:02 p.m.

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Officers investigated a 4:20 p.m. Monday report from Child Abuse Hotline of a domestic disturbance in the Havre area.

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A caller at a First Street West business reported the theft of a phone Monday at 11:37 p.m.

Hill County Sheriff's Office

A two-vehicle, non-injury crash reported in the parking lot of a U.S. Highway 2 West business Monday at 11:38 a.m. was referred to Montana Highway Patrol.

Havre Fire Department

Emergency medical personnel responded to one call Monday.

Havre Animal Shelter

The Havre shelter this morning held two medium-hair cats, two long-hair 8-month-old kittens, one long-hair 10-month-old kitten and a medium-hair 7-month-old kitten all of unknown gender, two medium-hair male cats, one short-hair female cat and one medium-hair female cat. Seven cats are also being held for the shelter's trap-spay-neuter-release program.

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The Havre shelter also held this morning four female mixed-breed dogs, female shepherd-Labrador retriever dog, a male mixed-breed 16-week-old puppy, a female Australian cattle dog-blue heeler-Australian shepherd dog, three 8-week-old pit bull terrier puppies, two male and one female, one male pit bull terrier dog, a male mixed-breed 6-month-old puppy and a female Australian cattle dog-blue heeler-border collie dog.

Births

A girl was born Sunday, March 17, 2019, to Devyn Carpenter and Skylar Johnsen of Havre.
Montana State University-Northerns Sweetgrass Society is holding a fundraiser Thursday at Pizza Hut.

The money raised will go toward their upcoming Sweetgrass Society Powwow, which will happen April 12-13 at Northerns Armory Gymnasium.

The Sweetgrass Society is an American Indian student organization at MSU-Northern,

Sweetgrass Society Advisor Erica McKeon-Hanson said. The Sweetgrass Society seeks to promote an understanding of American Indian cultural traditions and values, while offering support and mentoring to students at MSU-Northern. The organization hosts cultural events and activities, as well as the annual powwow, throughout the academic year at MSU-Northern.

Thursday, when anyone paying for a dine-in or carry-out order at Pizza Hut says they are donating to Sweetgrass Society, 20 percent of the purchase price will go to the fundraiser.
Monday in the Montana Legislature the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Safety Committee held a two-hour hearing on House Bill 599, introduced by Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy.

"I think it went pretty good," Windy Boy said in an interview after the hearing.

House Bill 599 which would allow certain health care services under the community health aide program to use federal certification standards for health aides and require the state to provide Medicaid funds to train providers on Montana Indian reservations to meet federal certification standards.

"This is federal law," Windy Boy said. "A lot of these standards are already in place. All that we need to do is come in there and put an amendment in there that would explain."

The bill would accept licensing requirements for specific types of service providers and create a two-year program to train people to the standards of the federal certifying body. The training would include scope of practice, supervision and continuing education.

It would apply to people providing medical assistance, medical care, home health care services, private-duty nursing services, dental services, physical therapy, mental health, clinical services, prescription drugs, dentures, prosthetic devices, eyeglasses and screenings.

Windy Boy said the bill would increase access not only to health care but also to preventive care as well. He said it follows the guidelines in the Indian Health Care Improvement Act.

The bill would also allow the tribes to set up boards to pursue third-party billing through Medicaid, he said, increasing the revenue for the tribes by three times.

Windy Boy said the opponents who spoke during the Senate Hearing did not understand the bill, "taking this thing to a place where we weren't even heading."

During the hearing, Past President of the Montana Dental Association Kevin Rencher said he opposed the bill. The Montana Dental Association is committed to helping Montanans, he said, and under-qualified, under-trained and under-experienced people practicing dental surgeries could result in irreversible damage done to patients.

He added that the idea behind the bill is a bad concept, with major flaws.

"I agree we need to work hard so every person in Montana has access to a dental home, dentists in this state are committed to that, but a dental therapist is not the answer," he said.

Al Garver, Montana Dental Association executive director, said the standards of care should not be based on income or the individual's address. The bill is not a new concept, it has been in other states across the country, he said, but people who would be practicing medicine have no accreditation under the bill.

"If the Legislature approved this, it is essentially authorizing this newer, lower-level standard of dental care in our state. Special interests could then push for this lower standard of care for other parts of the state," he said.

Helena dentist Quinn Erwin said that in the beginning he was "in the air" about what to think about the bill. After consideration, he said, he realized the state wouldn't allow an unqualified, unaccredited teacher to teach in schools. He added that the bill is a substandard solution to the problem.

"The dentists of Montana are there for this patient base and, hopefully, we can figure out something, a better model to take care of these patients," he said.

People also spoke in favor of the bill.

Margaret Morgan, representing the Montana Dental Hygienists' Association, said the association supports the bill, although it would like to add an amendment to make the bill stronger, ensuring the same quality care to the rest of Montana and preventing a double standard.

She said the amendment would require all practitioners to possess the same level of education and licensure oversight as those caring for the rest of the public. She added that she has already spoken to the sponsors of the bill and worked with them on seeing if the amendment could be included. Although, if the amendment is not included, the association would support the bill regardless, she said.

"We support the bill, we think this amendment would be an improvement," she said.

Jennifer Show, the diabetes coordinator and a nurse practitioner in Fort Belknap, said she supports House Bill 599. She said that in the recent past, one dentist served more than 5,000 people in Fort Belknap. In this system, most people are not getting dental care or preventative care, she said. Show said it resulted in just emergency care, with many people needing dental surgery or tooth extraction.

Fort Belknap now has two dentists, but the dentist-to-patient-ratio is not low enough to serve the area. Show said the bill is not a new idea, with New Zealand having a similar system. New Zealand's children's preventative services are better than in the United States, she said.

"I fully support this bill. I pray you guys do, too. It is a way for native communities to take hold of their own health care and start to get services to them," she said.

Fort Peck Tribal Councilman Jestin Dupree said that the shortage of medical providers on the reservations is a serious issue. The reservations are severely challenged in retaining and obtaining qualified practitioners who will stay on the reservation, he said. The aid provided in House Bill 599 is much needed for their communities, he said.

"Frankly, the existing health care system is failing us, as Indian people," Dupree said.

He added that the median age of death for males on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation is 47. For females it is 58.5, and the rate of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and liver disease is 2 to 7 times higher than the rest of Montana, he said.

Windy Boy told the Senate committee that mental health and behavioral health are needed on the reservations and are a necessity for a community.

"The reservations in Montana have one of the highest (rates) in the state for suicides, with Montana being one of the highest in the country," he said.

On the local level, the reservations don't have specialized facilities set up to address a lot of the needs of the residents.

Northern Montana Hospital addresses mental health, Windy Boy said, although it is not enough to properly address the needs of the reservation.

"What I am attempting to do is think outside of the box," he said, "to get better access to health care for us on a local level, especially in our area where we are so isolated."

President of the Fort Belknap Indian Community Council Andrew Werk Jr .; Blackfeet Tribal Business Council Chairman Timothy Davis; Kathy Deserly from Helena and Wolf Point; Rocky Boy Health Clinic CEO Jessica Windy Boy; Indian Health Service Dr. Dan Foster, and a few others also spoke to the committee in favor of House Bill 599.

Windy Boy said in the after-session interview that preventative dental care for the kids is a major goal of the bill, so people can catch what they need to catch at an early stage and prevent any serious issues later on.

He added that in order to gain access to specific dental care; people from Rocky Boy have to travel to Helena.

"We are not trying to take away some of the jobs brought up by some of the opposition," he said. "To get to the point, the level of care that we need, we can do at our local level."

No action had been taken on the bill as of print deadline this morning.
Air Botswanas latest acquisition - Embraer 170 jet - remains grounded because it is yet to be certified by Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana (CAAB). Meanwhile some of the national airlines executives in particular the Director of Flight Operations, Captain Clement Nsimbi, are takig the rap for the mess, but through the office of the PR manager, Thabiso Leshoai, Nsimbi is vehemently denying any blame worthiness.

The aircraft , which was bought in Canada was delivered without verification certificate that allows it to be flown commercially in foreign lands more than two months ago. Contrary to ICAO regulations relevant authorities, particularly the project manager and or flight operations director did not prepare training of crew staff and CAAB inspectors in advance. Botswana Guardian learns that CAAB inspector did in fact accompany Air Botswana staff and was trained on ground school, which he passed. However, Director Flight Operations refused to pay for his simulator training allegedly because it was expensive and they would not be able to bond him.

Its now said that CAAB has secured funds and a training slot for him is in April 2019. Its said for type-related airworthiness training one of the airworthiness inspectors has done in-house training with Air Botswana pilots. He is currently undergoing on the job training which is to be validated by SACCA on 17 March 2019.

Nsimbi denied the accusations as factually incorrect. Instead he said the CAAB Inspector had been scheduled for oversight purposes and that Air Botswana assumed the costs for training. However, the requirement for the CAAB Inspector to be type rated on the aircraft came late in the process, and was not able to be accommodated at that stage. The issue of bonding has never been grounds for denying the Inspector simulator training. ABs cancellation of flights due to crew shortage is another issue of concern. Director of Flight operations has allegedly said that CAAB never allows them to use relief or temporary crew.

However, experts say this cannot be the case as the Operations Manual provides operational procedures for such issues. Nsimbi concured that there have been cancellations and that these have a direct link with the delay of the deployment of the jet because the sectors planned to be covered by the jet had to now be covered by ATR aircraft. Unfortunately this increased the crew working hours and led to maximum utilisation of allowed crew duty times, which in turn led to crew constraints in some instances. The expedited integration of the Jet to our fleet is the primary solution however; we are also looking to source additional crew on temporary basis, he said.

Nsimbi was noncommital as to when the jet will hit the sky, saying it will be commercially available as soon as it is registered on our Air Operator Certificate, which process is currently with CAAB. He confirmed that the Jet is technically in working condition and serviceable. For an aircraft to be commercially available in Botswana, Air Botswana needs to satisfy Part V (2) of the Civil Aviation (Air Operator Certification and Administration) Regulations 2013.

It provides that, a person shall not operate any specific type of aircraft in commercial air transport until it has completed satisfactory initial certification, which includes the issuance of an Air Operator Certificate listing for that type of aircraft. As part of this process, several mandatory steps need to be followed, including; de-registration of the aircraft from its former regulatory jurisdiction and registration in Botswana in order for CAAB to start to enforce its regulations. It is only when these processes have been completed and the aircraft has been included in Air Botswanas Air Operator Certificate (AOC) that it can now be commercially available.

International operations however require what is known as Foreign Operators Permit (FOP) which can only be applied for and secured after the CAAB certification processes are completed. Most importantly, these approvals are dependent on each other and necessarily sequential. As a result, they tend to be lengthy. Unlike the ATR equipment that was registered before arrival in Botswana the Jet -being a first for CAAB - was not possible to follow the same procedure.

Nsimbi said the option of relief crews is also being considered subject to CAAB regulations as well as our own Operations Manual; there is no reluctance in this area. As for allegations that the project is mismanaged and failed to comply with CAAB regulations, Nsimbi said Air Botswana always complies with all regulations and has never, under any circumstances circumvented any regulations as laid out by regulatory and governing bodies. Nsimbi said in light of current experiences, management has embarked on a process to review our manuals and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to international best practice in line with any regulatory requirements.
Jerri Lynn Denny, "Standing in Sunlight," 58, passed away due to natural causes on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, at Rocky Mountain Care in Murray, UT.

Wake services will begin today, March 19, 2019, and will continue until her funeral service, which will take place at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, March 20, 2019, all at Our Saviour's Lutheran Church. Burial will follow in the William Denny Jr. Family Cemetery.

Holland & Bonine Funeral Home has been entrusted with arrangements.

Please visit Jerri's online memorial page and leave a message of condolence for her family at http://www.hollandbonine.com.

Jerri was born on October 8, 1960, in Fort Belknap to William Denny, Jr. and Roberta Buck. She was raised mostly in Rocky Boy, and graduated from Havre High School in 1978. Following high school, Jerri attended the College of Great Falls, majoring in liberal arts. After college, she began to travel extensively, finding work wherever she went.

She was a creative woman who saw the good in everyone. As a younger woman, Jerri was a fancy shawl dancer at pow wows and spoke eloquent Cree, and she taught herself to play the guitar despite her hearing loss in one ear. She recorded an album with Buddy Russette and the Cree-ations at age 17 which is still played today in Indian Country. Jerri's heart was kind and loving and her personality caused her to always remain positive.

Jerri enjoyed playing her guitar and singing, writing poetry, making pottery, and being around people.

She was preceded in death by her father, William Denny, Jr .; brother Arthur Curtis Buckles; grandparents William and Hattie Denny, Sr., Emma Lame Bull, and Charles Buck.

Jerri is survived by her daughter, Ali Denny of Roosevelt, UT; grandsons, Arthur Webster and John Grey Cloud; mother, Roberta (Ridley Eagle Chief) Wind Chief of Utah; sisters, Wilma (Gil) Tyner of Rocky Boy and Johnna Denny of Nashville, TN; brother Clinton Denny of Fort Hall, ID; special friend Don Ruark of Utah; and numerous aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, and other extended family and friends.
It is with great sadness the family of Robert "Bob" Garland Tilleman announces his peaceful passing in Bozeman, MT, on Tuesday, March 12, 2019, at the age of 81 years.

Bob had a good life that began on October 14, 1937, when he was born to Charlie and Beulah Tilleman in Chinook, MT.

Bob was a "jack of all trades" who could build or fix almost anything. He grew up on the family farm south of Chinook along with his six brothers where he developed a strong work ethic that he passed on to his five sons. Bob formed Tilleman Construction Company. He ran a gravel pit, ready-mix concrete plant where he provided concrete supply and finishing services to the community while performing numerous new construction and remodel projects around Blaine County. He spent many late nights and weekends babysitting concrete slabs in order to get that perfect polished finish. His older sons learned the construction trade while working for "huge" wages.

Bob was an active member of the National Guard for about 40 years where he served on weekends and transitioned to working full-time. Bob was a proud member of the Honor Guard unit that rendered military honors at many funerals and ceremonies. He received several awards over the years, but his favorite was when the tank unit under his command won the "Top Gun" award by a large margin at the field exercises in Boise, ID.

Bob was always willing to help and volunteered for numerous projects throughout Chinook. He held several volunteer positions including president of the Jaycees and fire chief of the Chinook Volunteer Fire Department. He was chairman of the Chinook Rodeo for several years. He had a good sense of humor and revealed it by telling odd jokes. He enjoyed recalling how he taught groups of kids to march.

Grandpa Bob instilled a love of the outdoors; fishing, hunting and camping in his sons and grandchildren. He cherished hunting trips in the fall and taught his boys and grandchildren to hunt and fish from a young age. Bob created his famous "Tilleman Special" fly that he sold in fishing shops throughout Montana. Payment to the boys for tying inventory was a stash of flies and the thrill of catching multitudes of trout and other fish while fly-fishing. One of Bob's favorite weeks of the year was spent camping and fishing with family and friends.

Bob is lovingly remembered by his wife of almost 62 years, Mary Lou (Schubert); sons, Dave, Jim (Miriam), Gary (Susan), Jeff (Lisa), Kelly (Liz); 13 grandchildren, Kate, Ethan, Colin, Kirsten, Kyle, J.D., Jared, Melissa (Scottie), Amber, Brianna, Olivia, Becca, Jenna; great grandchildren Taylor, Oliver; and brothers Gus (Mary Anne), Dick (Vernelia), Duane (Betty), Tom (Kitty), Doug (Martha); sister-in-law, Myrt.and a very large extended family of Tillemans and Schuberts and many friends.

Bob was predeceased by his parents, Charlie and Beulah, and brother Frank.

Memorial service celebrating Bob's life will be held on Saturday, March 23, 2019, at 1:00 p.m. at the American Lutheran Church in Chinook, MT. Bob is returning to his beloved hometown. A graveside service at the Chinook Cemetery will be followed by a luncheon at the church. There will be a reception at the Chinook Senior Center later in the afternoon for those who wish to swap stories and continue the celebration of Bob's life.

Donations in memory of Bob can be made to the Chinook Food Pantry, 112 Sixth St. West, Chinook, MT 59523.
Dear people of the great state of Montana,

Hello! I am a fourth-grade student in North Carolina. In fourth grade, we research a state for our state fair, and I have chosen your state! Now I am very excited to learn more about the great state of Montana as I work on my report.

Most of the information I get will be from books and websites. However, the best information comes from the people who live in and love their state! This is why I am writing to you. I was hoping that you would be willing to send me some small items to help me learn more about the best things in your state. It could be things like postcards, maps, pictures, general information, this newspaper article, or any other items that you think would be useful. You can mail items to the address below by April 30 for our State Fair on May 17. I really appreciate your help and will do my very best to send a thank-you note to each and every person who takes the time and makes the effort to help me with this project, Thank you in advance for your consideration!

Sincerely,

Noah Shamker

Mrs. Eastridges Class

Charlotte Latin School

9502 Providence Road

Charlotte, NC 28277
Tractor-trailer restriction aims to reduce I-26 backups

A new restriction on a stretch of Interstate 26 in Asheville targets improved safety and reduced congestion.

The N.C. Department of Transportation will unveil signs this week restricting trucks from the far left lane between the French Broad River and Long Shoals Road.

The lane restriction should improve safety by reducing congestion-related crashes and driving delays caused by trucks travelling side-by-side uphill toward the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Speed data from a 10-month period in 2018 shows speeds along this section of I-26 averaged between 30 and 35 miles per hour during peak times, said Bucky Galloway, NCDOT Western Region Field Operations Engineer. We hope that restricting trucks to the right lane will improve mobility and safety for all motorists traveling this portion of I-26.

The restriction prohibits trucks or truck and trailer combinations with a gross vehicle weight rating of greater than 26,000 pounds from using the left-most lane of I-26 in either direction. It will also apply during construction and after completion of a project to widen I-26 from I-40 through Hendersonville.

This is an opportune time to enact the restriction with construction starting this fall or sooner, Galloway said. We hope this will be a positive strategy to offset some of the impact that construction will have on traffic along this corridor.

An average of 85,000 vehicles traveled this section of I-26 per day in 2017, the highest average since tracking started in 2002.

The restriction is similar to the regulations in place on I-26 on the Saluda Grade, approaching and exiting the Green River Gorge in Henderson County and between the Tennessee state line and exit 9 in Madison County. Similar restrictions apply to I-40 approaching and on Old Fort Mountain, between exits 33 and 37 in Haywood County and between exit 20 and the Tennessee state line.

The restriction is effective immediately and State Highway Patrol will begin enforcement this week.

We will be monitoring the area on a regular basis to ensure there is compliance, Highway Patrol 1st Sgt. John Fairchild said. Through our partnerships with trucking associations, it will benefit all of the motoring public, and help prevent traffic hazards and additional crashes.

For real-time travel information, visit DriveNC.gov or follow NCDOT on social media.
A GIRL of 10 staged a protest about climate change in Henley town centre.

Grace Gubbins, who attends Sacred Heart Primary School in Greys Hill, stood outside the town hall carrying a banner she had made the night before.

The 6ft long banner read Climate kids are coming! Change behaviour now and was coloured in various shades of green and blue.

Grace, 10, of Crowsley Road, Shiplake, was joined at Fridays protest by her mother Katherine, aunt Penny Liddell and family friends Sonija Silberkuhl and Darryl Grant.

The protest coincided with a worldwide climate strike in which children walked out of school to stage demonstrations encouraging governments to take action against rising global temperatures.

Grace organised her event between midday and 1pm to coincide with her school lunch break and avoid missing classes.

She chatted with passers-by, several of whom stopped to congratulate and encourage her.

They said their own children had wanted to organise climate strikes or take part in them but had lost their nerve at the last minute.

Gillotts School pupils Tom Fielder, from Henley, and Aliyah Lee, from Hambleden, came to offer their support. Tom, 14, said: This is a good thing because people should take action to save the earth and every little helps.

The Government needs to understand that things cant continue this way and its our lives that will be affected.

Aliyah, also14, said: I support Grace because something needs to change. The planet is at risk so whats the point in doing anything else without trying to save it?

Grace, who hopes to stage further protests, said: Its a good start as its only our first one. Weve had a lot of people coming up to support it and cars have been honking as they drove past.

I did the banner last night and its been blowing everywhere in the wind but we didnt want to stick it down with tape because that would be using plastic!

Mrs Gubbins said: Im very proud of her and people seem to really appreciate what shes done.

She wanted to do it in Parliament Square but I think it was important to do it in her own community and hopefully interest in the issue will grow.

Grace was inspired by the efforts of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who organised the worlds first school strike last year. She read about her in current affairs magazine The Week Junior.

Earlier this year she witnessed the aftermath of the Crans-Montana avalanche in Switzerland, which killed one skier on a safe piste and is thought to have been partly caused by melting snow.
Contrary to Vermas assertions, evidence adduced in court leading to the company being placed under judicial management and final liquidation of Pula Steel indicates that the Verma family was the greatest beneficiary of the deal.

Court records submitted during the application for judicial management shows that CEDA was approached by Pula Steel partners comprising of Wealth Generation owned by Brian Mosenene and Mpho Balopi ; and the Verma Family represented by Verma senior and the spouse. CEDA then injected funds as they believed that it was a good business proposition and especially being in Selibe Phikwe, but before any production could start, BCL developed interest in being part of the project.



Spouse

CEDA was not aware at all material times that one of the Vermas was in partnership with the spouse of the BCL General Manager at that time in an unrelated business nor was it privy to the discussions that led BCL to develop interest in Pula Steel. BCL paid for their consideration in Pula Steel and as per the Shareholders Agreement they were given a controlling stake whilst Phase 1 implementation was underway. Pula Steel under the management of Verma senior as CEO proceeded to procure equipment for Phase 2 with funds that were supposed to complete Phase 1 of the project. This led to a shortfall in funds to complete Phase 1 hence the capital call that resulted.

CEDA questioned the wisdom of allowing such a cardinal transgression in planning and subsequently CEDA declined to take part in the Capital Call and ended up being diluted. CEDA at the time stated to Pula Steel that its decision not to participate was based on the unjustified change in scope without CEDAs consent and without a proper business case. Whilst BCL did deposit their portion of the capital call, the Vermas indicated that they had paid a creditor a certain amount and therefore wanted it to be treated as their contribution, whilst the event took place prior to the capital call but could not produce paper trail to that effect. Disagreements ensued that fuelled the mistrust within the shareholders because it was an expectation that such funds be deposited in an account and be recorded as such.



Hot debate

Besides non-compliance with the agreed capital call governance, funds were being raised for a different purpose than paying the referred creditors of which the resultant effect was that there will be a shortfall on the targeted capital being raised. This was hotly debated and contested, and other shareholders were adamant that the Vermas had not paid as agreed. However, over time as this was being debated, BCL being the majority shareholder decided to recognise the Vermas contribution and capital call process was closed and funds released for the companys use.

Money then finished off very quickly as it came and still the business was not operating optimally. Pula Steel then made another capital call. This time around BCL made it clear that they will not participate because they were in liquidation. Besides BCL, other shareholders proceeded to consider the capital call. Following its internal processes, CEDA reverted and indicated that its exceptional participation woud be based on certain conditions being met which were stipulated in a term sheet.

The conditions that CEDA put in were that a Management Services firm be engaged to ensure that policies and procedures are embedded in the organisation for good corporate governance. CEDA needed to know as to what transpired from a company that required an initial P40m to a company that had already gobbled up more than P120m within a short space of time.

Since CEDA insisted on the Management Services Firm, Grant Thornton was engaged to undertake the assignment. Their results are contained in the report presented to the High Court. It showed that Pula Steel did not adhere to the basic principles of financial management, had poor record keeping, unpaid PAYE obligations to BURS, proper good governance, an improper pricing strategy, over reliance on a narrow customer base in South Africa and exacerbated by questionable related party dealings that were undeclared.

Hence CEDA insisted on the Vermas stepping down from the management team based on the results of the audit that showed that they were not running the company properly, poor financial management discipline, governance lapses, related party transactions and obligations that had no clear contracts. Creditors were not being paid yet money had been contributed by shareholders to among others deal with such matters. There was also employees dissatisfaction and in some cases those who questioned the Vermas were dismissed, an example being Jacob Motlhale who was the finance manager.



CEDA clear

Records seen by Botswana Guardian indicate that CEDA made it clear that its funding must give the Agency control of up to 49 percent so as to put things in order. CEDA required that it has control over three key positions being the CEO, Finance Manager and Production /Technical Manager. Another condition was that CEDA become a signatory in Pula Steel bank account, contributions from shareholders should be deposited in an escrow account at Armstrong Attorneys.

This was to prevent an earlier scenario where the Vermas had decided to not deposit their contribution in a company account and instead insisted that they paid creditors. Other conditions were that CEDA takes security of Pula Steel plant and land against the funding; that all Pula Steel Directors including the Vermas resign from their positions and new Directors be appointed. This would have given the Vermas only one position.



Board

Further the term sheet was made in March 2017. There was a set date for contributions to have been made but the Vermas and Wealth Generation did not meet the deadline. Only CEDA met the deadline of the capital call and had placed its contribution with the attorneys, and the deadline was extended for other shareholders. Subsequently numerous meetings ensued where the Vermas suddenly objected CEDA conditions and made it clear that they do not want to resign from the company and that they wanted more shares. It was discussed that if they wanted more shares, then they must put in more funds, something that they could not do.



Progress

Seeing that there was no progress, CEDA applied for judicial management which was agreed to by all the shareholders including the Vermas. From March to August, nothing could move as the Vermas allegedly changed goalposts time and again citing that CEDA conditions are not fair to them. During this period, the Judicial Manager was in charge of the company but could not do much to resuscitate the business without funding. CEDA did not move an inch on its conditions, citing that Pula Steel is in distress because of the bad management by the Vermas and therefore it cannot ignore such a factor in releasing its funding. CEDA made it clear at court that its contribution of about P28m is available provided Pula Steel meets its conditions, which were objected to by the Vermas as they wanted control of the company.

The creditors including Pula Steel staff and other shareholders supported the new CEDA deal except for the Vermas. CEDA chief executive Thabo Thamane strongly stood his ground before the Master of High Court during one of the creditors meeting held on June 26th 2017. Thamane stated that CEDA could inject capital only if its terms were complied with to avoid money going down the drain. Indications are that had CEDA put in the P28m without clear conditions, the exposure in Pula Steel by the government owned entity would be substantial.
'Gda Shauna Higgins told Tallaght District Court she was on foot patrol when she came across McCabe, who was trying to get on to a Dublin Bus that was not in service.' (stock photo)

A passenger who drunkenly tried to get on a Dublin Bus called the driver "a w**ker" after he was told it was out of service.

Alan McCabe (29) had "hit the bottle" on the first anniversary of his nephew's death.

Judge Patricia McNamara ordered McCabe to complete 80 hours of community service in lieu of two months in prison.

The defendant, of Allenton Avenue, Tallaght, admitted threatening and abusive behaviour at The Square shopping centre car park last October 27.

Gda Shauna Higgins told Tallaght District Court she was on foot patrol when she came across McCabe, who was trying to get on to a Dublin Bus that was not in service.

Demanding

Gda Higgins said McCabe was shouting at the driver that he was a "w**ker" and demanding to be let on the bus as he was trying to get home.

Gda Higgins said McCabe was intoxicated, and when she spoke to him he tried to walk away as he "wasn't going to be f*cking arrested".

The court heard McCabe had 50 previous convictions, including for public order matters.

Defence solicitor Michael Hennessy said McCabe wished to apologise for his behaviour.

Mr Hennessy said the def-endant had a problem with alcohol, he accepted that and had some insight into his behaviour. He was back attending Alcoholic Anonymous meetings.

In relation to this incident, Mr Hennessy said McCabe "hit the bottle" and was drinking hard liquor as it was the first anniversary of his nephew's death.
Ken Mayers and Tarak Kauff during a press briefing by Veterans for Peace in Dublin

An 82-year-old ex-US Marine was one of two former American serviceman refused bail yesterday over an alleged security breach at Shannon Airport on St Patrick's Day.

At a special sitting of Ennis District Court, Judge Marie Keane remanded Ken Mayers (82), of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Tarak Kauff (77), of Woodstock, New York, in custody after refusing bail applications.

She said the two are facing "very serious charges".

Judge Keane refused bail after Inspector Tom Kennedy expressed concerns that if they were granted bail they would leave for the US and not be answerable to the charges.

Solicitor for the two, Daragh Hassett, said his clients - both wearing black and white "Veterans for Peace" tops in court - assured him they are "men of honour who have served in the US defence forces and will return to Ireland for their cases".

Insp Kennedy said the incident held up airport operations for 45 minutes.

He said there was a demonstration by anti-war activists at Shannon on Sunday.

Refusing the two bail, Judge Keane said: "I have to take into account the two travelled to Ireland less than one week ago and have been apprehended relating to an alleged breach of security at an international airport.

"Airport security is hugely important and it affects each and every citizen who resides in this State or who visits this State. I am satisfied that I have to refuse bail based on the seriousness of the alleged offences before the court."

Slogans

She said she noted the two men have exemplary records and are veterans of the US forces.

They are likely to be held on remand at Limerick Prison unless they can secure High Court bail. They are charged with causing 2,500 of criminal damage to the airport perimeter fence and unlawful trespass into a taxiway.

A small number of supporters - who later up held banners outside court containing anti-war slogans - were there to support the two men in court.

Giving evidence of arrest, charge and caution, Garda Noel Carroll said Mr Kauff replied "not guilty" when charged and Mr Mayers made no reply.

Insp Kennedy said the two arrived in Ireland last Wednesday and Gda Carroll said they were due to fly out of Dublin to the US tomorrow.

Gda Carroll said it will be alleged the two were spotted crossing a runway on their way to inspect a military aircraft after 10am on Sunday morning.

He said a cutter and gloves were found at a large hole in the airport security fence.

Mr Hassett said there was no evidence the two were involved in cutting the fence.
Gardai caught a burglar near the scene of a restaurant break-in by following a trail of footprints he left in the snow.

Mark O'Shea (38) stole cash from the Dublin location as the Beast From The East storm swept Ireland last year.

Officers immediately spotted his tracks in the fresh blanket of snow.

O'Shea tried to flee when gardai saw him but he was arrested after a struggle.

Intruder

The accused, of Thornton Heights, Inchicore, pleaded guilty to burglary at Moloughney's Restaurant.

Judge John Hughes gave him a six-month suspended sentence.

He noted there had been no confrontation at the restaurant in Vernon Avenue, Clontarf, and there was no suggestion of violence.

Dublin District Court heard gardai became aware of an intruder at the restaurant on March 2, 2018, when 200 was taken from the till.

There had been a heavy snowfall and gardai followed the trail that led to the accused.

When he saw the officers, he tried to run into a cul-de-sac but they were able to pin him down. A garda told Judge Hughes the accused did not encounter anyone during the burglary but put up "quite a struggle" with officers.

The court heard that O'Shea had 36 previous convictions for offences including theft, criminal damage and possession of drugs. It had been four years since O'Shea's last theft conviction, his barrister said.

A probation report before the court outlined the accused's personal circumstances.

O'Shea had been getting on very well for a period of his life and had a successful business but lost that during the recession, his barrister continued.

Habit

O'Shea's drug problem began while he was out of work and he slid into addiction. He had stolen to feed his habit, the court heard.

However, since the crimes, he had taken steps to wean himself off drugs.

O'Shea had moved out of Dublin to Arklow, Co Wicklow, to help his rehabilitation.

The probation report had "positive aspects" and spoke highly of O'Shea's recent attempts to get back on the straight and narrow.

Judge Hughes suspended the sentence for a year, on condition that he continued to engage with the drug rehabilitation services.
'So much we want the public to know': Meritus COVID cases surge again
Come Holi, Akshay Kumar-starrer Kesari will hit the screens. The Dharma Production film will tell the story of the exceptional bravery of 21 Sikh soldiers of the British Indian Army who took on the might of an estimated 10000-strong army of Pashtun fighters to defend the fort of Saragarhi in modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan.

21 Jat Sikhs of 36 Sikh Regiment of the British Indian Army were stationed at Saragarhi as part of Tirah campaign. This was an Indian frontier war, fought in 1897-98 in an attempt by the British to subdue the wild western frontier of the British Empire. These men were led by Havildar Ishar Singh and Akshay Kumar will be seen in this role.

Also read: Alia Bhatt on dancing with Madhuri Dixit in Kalanks Ghar More Pardesiya: I was lucky it wasnt a dance-off

In a recent interview, Akshay said it was sad that Indians dont know about Battle of Saragarhi. It is sad that though the British celebrate Saragarhi Day, remembering the martyrs of the war, but we Indians do not know much about it. It is sad how an incident like this has got lost in the pages of history. It is hard to imagine how 21 Sikh soldiers stood strong inside a fort, knowing that 10,000 Afghan soldiers were waiting outside to kill them. Knowing that death is inevitable and continuing the fight requires a lot of bravery. That war was a pure example of that, the actor said.

The Battle of Saragarhi will definitely go down as one of the fiercest last-stands in history. A last-stand is when a defensive army holds on to a fort against an opposing army in much bigger numbers.

The British had taken control of forts, originally built by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, dotting the hilly terrain. These included Fort Gulistan and Fort Lockhart in the Kohat region of frontier province. Since, these two forts were miles apart, Saragarhi fort was built in between which also served as heliographic communications centre.

Between August and September that year, a general uprising of Pashtuns took place, wherein they attacked Fort Gulistan respectively which was repulsed. On September 12, an estimated 10000 strong force of Pashtun tribesmen attacked Fort Saragarhi.

Watch Akshay Kumar in Kesari trailer:

Despite repeated communications sent to Fort Lockhart for reinforcements, none arrived. There were attempts to break open the gate but they were unsuccessful. Later, one of the walls was breached. What followed thereafter is considered by many as one of the fiercest hand-to-hand combat.

At the end of it, all 21 Sikh soldiers were killed and an approximate 180 Pathans lay dead. However, in two days, the fort was recaptured by the British, after the Pathans came under heavy artillery fire. Post recapturing, as many as 600 bodies were counted.

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The trailer of award-winning filmmaker Ashvin Kumars film No Fathers In Kashmir is out and hints at an innocent but nail-biting drama. It tells the story of a British girl Noor (Zara Webb) and a local boy Majid (Shivam Raina), who are on a dangerous journey to find their missing fathers.

The two teenagers reach a treacherous area near the Indo-Pak border and are arrested. Noor is released since she is British and then decides to help Majid get his freedom. The trailer is spellbinding and the film often touches open issues we rarely see in mainstream cinema.

Mahesh Bhatt, who attended the launch of the film also starring his wife Soni Razdan, said at the event, A staggering, heart wrenching film. Ashvin has the guts to embrace all that darkness and then having done that bring us so much light. In these dark times of hate, heres a love story from the blood-soaked valley of Kashmir, which has the audacity to hope.

According to a report in India Today, Mahesh lambasted the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for censor board saying, Its a tragedy that for a film like No Fathers In Kashmir, a filmmaker had to run from pillar to post and beg people to get it through. In this age and time, is there anything called censorship? I have the audacity to look at the truth; the greatest epic which mankind has been blessed with, the Mahabharata came from the battle of Kurukshetra. In that moment of darkness, he who locks the eyes with the darkness discovers a life, which Ashwin has discovered.

Mahesh Bhatt, Ashvin Kumar, Soni Razdan and Anshuman Jha and Maya Sarao at No Fathers In Kashmir trailer launch. (Varinder Chawla)

Also read: Deepika Padukone takes to the stage with ex Ranbir Kapoor, dances to Ranveer Singhs Simmba song. See pics, video

Razdan also spoke about the film at the event. She said, When I read this script, I found it very interesting because here was a film that showed the reality. There have been many films on Kashmir but this one isnt peppered by drama, love stories and other things. Its what truly is representative of how the situation is in the valley. And thats what drew me to the film.

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A host of Bollywood celebrities came under one roof as they attended the Zee Cine Awards in Mumbai on Tuesday. Malaika Arora walked the red carpet in a dramatic silk gown with a thigh-high slit. With her hair on one side, the reality show judge posed for the cameras with confidence. She was also spotted bonding with Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster actor Chitrangada Singh who attended the event in a floral gown.

Malaikas ex-husband Arbaaz Khan, who is now hosting a new online show Pinch, arrived at the event with girlfriend Giorgia Andriani. The two complemented each other in black and white.

Malaika Arora sizzles in red at the awards event. (Varinder Chawla)

Chitrangada Singh and Malaika Chopra bonded on the red carpet. (Varinder Chawla)

Actor Ranveer Singh also attended the event and was a dapper in a black suit. Sunny Leone too, walked the red carpet with husband Daniel Weber.

Actor Varun Dhawan was spotted on the red carpet with Hema Malini and greeted her by touching her feet. While Varun was in a white suit, the veteran actor was dressed in a pale pink sari.

Luka Chuppi actor Kartik Aaryan and Uri: The Surgical Strike actor Vicky Kaushal were the hosts of the evening and were among the first ones to arrive on the red carpet. Both of them looked dapper in tailored suits. Vicky was also accompanied by his father and stunt director Sham Kaushal and mother Veena.

Ankita Lokhande, who made her Bollywood debut with Kangana Ranauts Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, turned up in a pink gown for the awards night. MS Dhoni: The Untold Story actor Kiara Advani sizzled at the event in a yellow gown with a long trail.

Among others were Sacred Games actor Kubbra Sait and Pataakha actor Radhika Madan. Aparshakti Khurana, who played a pivotal role in Luka Chuppi, also walked the red carpet in an indo-western outfit. His brother Ayushmann Khurrana was one of the first performers at the event.

Ranveer Singh, Sunny Leone, Radhika Madan attend Zee Cine Awards. (Varinder Chawla)

Pooja Hegde and Dia Mirza on the red carpet. (Varinder Chawla)

Varun Dhawan greets Hema Malini and Kiara Advani on the red carpet. (Varinder Chawla)

Kubbra Sait, Arbaaz Khan with girlfriend Giorgia Andriani, Ankita Lokhande at the event. (Varinder Chawla)

Kartik Aaryan, Vicky Kaushal and his parents Sham Kaushal and Veena at the event. (Varinder Chawla)

Badhaai Ho actors Neena Gupta Gajraj Rao, Padmaavat actor Jim Sarbh and Mrunal Thakur at the event. (Varinder Chawla)

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The government has asked state-run banks to rescue privately held Jet Airways without pushing it into bankruptcy, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to avert thousands of job losses weeks before a general election, two people within the administration told Reuters.

The finance ministry has in the past year sought regular updates from the banks, led by State Bank of India (SBI), on Jets financial health, the people said. In recent months, the banks have provided weekly updates about a revival plan and also sought government advice, the people added.

Top officials at the finance ministry seek regular updates on the issue, said an official at one of Jets lenders, who did not want to be identified as discussions are private.

Details of the discussion between the finance ministry and bankers on bailing out Jet have not been previously reported.

New Delhi has urged state-run banks to convert debt into equity and take a stake in Jet in a rare move in India to use taxpayer money to save a struggling private-sector company from bankruptcy. The two people plus one more source, however, said this would be transitory and lenders could sell the stakes once Jet revives.

Also read: Civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu calls emergency meeting on Jet Airways crisis

The government has also nudged its 49 percent-owned National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) - created to invest in stalled and new infrastructure projects - to buy a stake in Jet, a separate government source said.

Saddled with more than 1 billion dollars of debt, Jet is struggling to stay aloft. It has delayed payments to banks, suppliers, employees and aircraft lessors - some of which have begun terminating lease deals.

The worlds biggest democracy is gearing up for an election next month and its booming aviation sector, which employs close to a million people, has been one of the job-creation success stories that Modi can point to as he seeks a second term.

It is crucial for India that Jet revives as the fall of its second-largest airline could have disastrous consequences for the investment climate in the sector, a top government official told Reuters.

The official is concerned that if Jet collapses it could drive up airfare in a fast-growing market, wiping out efforts to bring low-cost air travel to Indias hinterland.

A chaotic end could also make it more difficult for the government to sell a stake in Air India, at least in the short run. Last year, it failed to sell part of its stake in the indebted carrier which currently relies on taxpayer money.

If the governments plan for Jet succeeds, then state-run banks including SBI and Punjab National Bank (PNB) as well as NIIF would together own at least a third of the airline until they find a new buyer.

Currently, Abu Dhabis Etihad Airways is Jets largest shareholder with a 24 percent stake.

Indias finance ministry, SBI, PNB and Jet Airways did not respond to requests for comment.

KINGFISHERS COLLAPSE

Most companies in Jets financial condition would be placed by creditors into Indias new bankruptcy process, two bankers said. However, memories of the chaos sparked by Kingfisher Airlines demise in 2012 have prompted the government to seek a more sober road to rescue, they said.

Kingfishers bankruptcy caused job losses, lessors lost millions of dollars and banks took massive writedowns.

Putting what is essentially a services provider like Jet through the bankruptcy process would diminish its value because it owns no major assets, unlike a manufacturing company, as most of its planes are leased, said another government official.

Also read: Jet Airways delays interest payments, grounds 4 more planes

If it is pushed into bankruptcy and lessors start pulling even more planes out of service, there would be nothing left for any potential investors, the official said. Already 41 planes have been grounded by lessors in the past three months, leading to flight cancellations.

While on the surface Jets future still hangs in the balance with its main shareholder Etihad at loggerheads over the final terms of any deal, behind-the-scenes support from the government means there is likely to be a bailout.

But there are no easy options, one of the sources said, adding that the lenders do not have the expertise to run an airline so they have to decide what to do once they convert their debt into equity.

New Delhi is also backing a proposal for Jets founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal to step down if it means saving the airline, another official said. Saving Jet is not equivalent to saving Goyal, the official said.

RISING AIRFARE

Jet, with its fleet of 119 planes, once controlled a sixth of Indias domestic aviation market. The 25-year-old airline is also one of only two full-service carriers that flies to international destinations. The other is Air India.

The government ideally wants four to six major airlines to ensure fares are competitive and passengers have greater choice, according to the top government source.

Also read: Not paid salaries for months, Jet Airways pilots seek govt help

India plans to build 100 new airports costing about $60 billion which would need a steady stream of flights to sustain them, and that is possible only if there are enough airlines, a separate official said.

The investment in these airports will solely depend on operators willing to have regular flights at affordable prices and one operator going bankrupt does not help, he said.
The District Consumer Disputes Redressal, Chandigarh, has directed British Airways and an online ticket portal to pay up 30,000 as relief to an elderly Chandigarh man who was left stranded at the Zurich airport in Switzerland.

Manmohan Pal Singh, 72, of Sector 45 had left for a world tour in 2017. He booked a British Airways ticket from Zurich to Sao Paulo (Brazil) on CheapTicket.in for November 22, 2017, by paying 30,316.

Singh was issued the boarding passes from Zurich to London and also for the connecting flight from London to Sao Paulo by British Airways. However, when he was to board the first flight, he was refrained from doing so as he did not have a transit visa for London.

Singh requested the airlines Zurich office to cancel his ticket and refund the amount so that he could book another flight from Zurich to Sao Paulo, but to no avail.

Finally, the septuagenarian called his family in India, who arranged for his safe travel back to New Delhi by paying 78,000. He later filed a consumer complaint against the Noida-based website and British Airways.

What they said

While CheapTicket.in pleaded that it was clearly mentioned on the site that in case anybody wishes to change flights/airport, he or she must have the transit visa of the country concerned. Meanwhile, British Airways stated that as the complainant had to transit from one airport to another, he required a transit visa to change the terminals at London. It was the duty of the complainant to enquire in advance, said the airline.

However, the court observed, The complainant is a senior citizen aged 72 years, who was left stranded and shattered at the alien country at the fag end of his life, and as per the complainant, he was not having sufficient money to arrange his travel to New Delhi.

If the transit visa was mandatory, then on what basis the boarding pass from London to Sao Paulo was issued to the complainant by the opposite parties? the court questioned. There is no doubt that the opposite parties negligently issued the boarding passes without verifying his documents authentically which created last moment panic to the old-aged person.

The court said that denying their own boarding pass just before taking the flight even after issuing the same was deficiency in service and unfair trade practice, which caused unprecedented physical and mental harassment to the complainant and forced him to indulge in the present unnecessary litigation.

The court directed British Airways and CheapTicket.in to pay 20,000 to Manmohan Pal Singh as compensation for deficiency in service, unfair trade practice and physical and mental harassment caused to him besides 10,000 towards the cost of litigation.
The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Air Force has sent a contingent of its J-10 fighter jets to participate in Pakistans National Day celebrations on March 23. This is not the first time that Chinese aircraft have performed in Pakistan. Yet, coming on the heels of the recent India-Pakistan standoff, this is evidently an affirmation of Chinas all-weather friendship with Pakistan.

Chinas decision to impose yet again a technical hold on listing Masood Azhar on the United Nations list of terrorists has already complicated Indias diplomatic efforts against terrorism. Although the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has taken a sober line on this issue and avoided a confrontational stance towards China, it is imperative for New Delhi to nudge Beijing towards a more balanced posture between India and Pakistan.

Over the past five and a half decades, China and Pakistan have had a strong relationship at multiple levels. Indeed, Pakistan is the only ally with which China has not had any serious friction. Although the relationship was forged against the backdrop of the India-China conflict and the 1962 war, the Chinese have been clear-eyed about their interests in any India-Pakistan crisis. During the 1965 war, the Chinese issued a couple of demarches to India, which sounded rather like ultimatums. Yet, they refrained from making any serious moves to back these up.

Similarly, in the 1971 crisis the Chinese did not take any steps apart from routine diplomatic statements to intervene in support of Pakistan. Even when US President Richard Nixon explicitly urged the Chinese to make military moves against India to prevent it from overrunning East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Beijing chose not to respond. Contrary to received wisdom in India, China was not deterred by the Indo-Soviet treaty. Rather, Chinas position stemmed from a cold calculation that the emergence of Bangladesh was inevitable and that it stood to gain nothing by tilting heavily towards Pakistan.

By the mid-1990s, the Chinese were well aware that Pakistans sponsorship of terrorism was emerging as a threat to regional stability. The Narasimha Rao government had flagged this issue in discussions with Beijing. These efforts contributed to China adopting a relatively balanced approach between India and Pakistan from 1993 onwards.

During his visit to Pakistan in 1996, Chinese President Jiang Zemin stated in a speech in the Pakistan National Assembly that Pakistan should deal with India the way China and India were dealing with each other: discuss thorny issues, but not let them hinder the growth of the overall relationship. This speech was a stark contrast to Chinas repeated avowals since 1964 of support for Kashmirs right to self-determination and so on. Chinas stance during the Kargil crisis of 1999 and India-Pakistan standoff in 2001-02 was also carefully calibrated  not withstanding friction with India following the latters nuclear tests.

Yet, after the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 (in which a Chinese national was killed), China refused to condemn or act against the perpetrators and their backers in Pakistan. In his book ,Choices, former foreign secretary and national security advisor, Shivshankar Menon, perceptively notes that Beijings stance was dictated by the desire for tighter ties with Pakistan in the wake of Indias closer strategic alignment with the United States after the civilian nuclear deal. Looking back in 2016, Menon wrote that the US-India deal had provoked a natural rebalancing [by China towards Pakistan] that we were probably slow to anticipate.

Over the past decade, Pakistan has become more strategically important for China than earlier. Pakistan is a major destination for Chinese investments and plans in the Belt and Road Initiative. This will also provide China overland access to the Indian Ocean, which it deems important for its energy security as well as strategic access. Lastly, there has been a significant stepping up of military cooperation between China and Pakistan.

The Modi government was initially well-placed to persuade the Chinese to avoid too sharp a tilt towards Pakistan. Yet the widening power differential with China as well as a series of missteps eroded its ability to do so. On several issues pertaining to China, the Modi government took a public stance: clarification of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the listing of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. None of these merited such a public push  let alone putting the prime ministers weight behind them.

Indian officials should have known that China had pointedly refused to proceed with the clarification of the LAC during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. They believed it would merely congeal the status quo ahead of a boundary settlement and hence sought the Special Representatives mechanism to negotiate the boundary. There was no point flogging this particular horse. Similarly, neither the NSG membership nor the listing of Azhar was intrinsically important enough to turn them into litmus tests of our ties with China.

The outrage in India over Chinas continued refusal to list Azhar suggests a continuing inability to assess our core interests. Will placing Azhar on that list seriously dent the capabilities of the Jaish-e-Mohammad? This is not to suggest that India shouldnt pursue this objective  merely that it is not worth a confrontation with China. It is easy to dismiss this as unilateral appeasement. But diplomacy should help expand our options in such a context rather foreclose them in petulance. Think of how the Chinese are dealing with the Trump administration over the trade war. New Delhis efforts should be geared towards getting China to yet again calibrate its approach to India and Pakistan. Diplomatic patience will pay more dividends  including on terrorism.

Srinath Raghavan is professor of international relations, Ashoka University

The views expressed are personal
Ahead of the general elections, the police in Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh are coming together on social media for the real-time exchange of information.

The heads of the bordering districts of Delhi are tying up with their counterparts and starting a WhatsApp group to share information.

A senior police officer, who did not wish to be named, said that around two weeks ago the idea was first discussed in a meeting of the top officers of Delhi police.

The officer said forming a WhatsApp group will ensure that there is no delay in exchange of information since going through the standard protocol of sending letters and alerts takes time.

The group will enable the officers to share any tip-off related to a wanted criminal or security detail by just posting it on their phone.

The national capital shares 106 border entry points with Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

Of this, only around 40 points have police posts, the rest remain unguarded.

Taking advantage of the porous borders across the city, most criminals enter or flee the national Capital after committing crimes.

The district police chiefs of the three states will share information about criminals who cross over states during the elections, the smuggling of liquor or criminals who become active at the time of polls. Smuggling of liquor is a common crime during the election time. It is about using technology. The information shared is confidential too and cannot be seen by others, said the officer.

During a recent meeting of the police chiefs of Gautam Buddha Nagar (Uttar Pradesh), Faridabad (Haryana) and Delhi polices southern range, the deputy commissioner of police of the three districts proposed to start a WhatsApp group.

Delhi polices Chinmoy Biswal, head of the southeast district, which shares its border with Noida and Faridabad, said they have already formed a WhatsApp group.

Within the next two weeks, Delhi police will also hold a meeting with officers from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Haryana. During the meeting, senior police officers of the three states will chalk out a strategy to ensure that the general election in these states are held peacefully.
The Delhi High Court has stayed an order of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) banning the sale, manufacture, distribution, trade, import and advertisement of e-cigarettes and vapes.

Justice Vibhu Bakhru said on Monday that prima facie these products do not fall within the definition of a drug.

..the Court is, prima facie, of the view that the products do not fall within the definition of a drug, as defined under section 3 (b) of the Drugs and Cosmetic Act, 1940, the court said.

If the product in question is not a drug, respondent no 1 (DHGS), would not have the jurisdiction to issue the impugned circular. In this view, the impugned communication and impugned circular are stayed, till the next date of hearing, it said.

The courts decision comes on a plea by Litejoy International Private Limited, which through one of its directors Lokesh Jain had challenged the February 22 order of the DGHS to ban e-cigarettes and similar such projects.

Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate Sandeep Sethi contended that vaping device is not akin to a cigarette and has been internationally recognised as a healthier alternative to traditional tobacco smoking.

Sethi said that the use of such a device is not just an alternative effective nicotine delivery system but is universally marketed and sold as a substitute for traditional tobacco cigarettes. These devices enable cigarette smokers to switch to safer methods of nicotine consumption without the overreaching harmful impact of cigarettes, he said.

He also said that vaping devices do not contain or use tobacco as an ingredient for functioning which would naturally mean that the several thousand harmful chemicals and tar conventionally inhaled by a traditional tobacco cigarette smoker, in order to also consume nicotine, is not consumed by a user of such vaping devices.

The principal reason for promoting vaping or an e-cigarette device is de-addiction of the consumer from traditional tobacco smoking. The vaping devices and the alternative delivery system of e-cigarettes operates akin to a nicotine patch or a nicotine gum which is freely sold in the markets and medical stores as a healthier alternative to tobacco smoking for nicotine consumption, the plea filed through advocate Vivek Raja said.

Thus, sale (including online sale), manufacture, distribution, trade, import and advertisement of, inter alia, vaping systems/devices are in the interest of public health, it said.

The matter would be now heard on May 17.
A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court here, hearing the 2007 Samjhauta blasts case, will give its ruling on the plea filed by a Pakistan woman for examining eyewitnesses from her country on Wednesday.

The court posted the matter for hearing for March 20 after arguments on the application were concluded on Monday.

In a last-minute application to the anti-terror court, Rahila Wakeel, the daughter of blast victim Muhammad Wakeel of Hafizabad district in Pakistan, sought examination of eyewitnesses from her country. She had contended that her co-nationals either did not receive proper summonses from the court or were denied visas by authorities to appear before it.

However, the NIA argued that summons were sent through proper channels on three occasions, but no responses were received.

The NIA also said that Rahila is not a sighted witness in the case. The NIA has not received any communication in respect of 13 Pak witnesses from the official channel. As per the records, Rahila Wakeel was not examined during the investigation in this case by the GRP/Haryana Police and NIA, it said.

The agency further submitted that in absence of any communication from the Pakistan government or witnesses, the NIA is not in a position to vouch for the authenticity of the

application submitted by Rahilas counsel Momin Malik on March 11.
To push its green energy initiative and cut electricity expenses, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation will install grid-connected rooftop solar panels on municipal buildings, including 30 schools, four hospitals and four zonal offices.

According to north corporation officials, the move will help to collectively generate 1.5MW electricity and save at least 9 lakh per month.

North corporation standing committee chairperson Veena Virmani said: Tenders for the installation of solar panels on eight buildings, including four hospitals and four zonal offices, have been floated and installation work will begin in two weeks. Solar panels at these buildings will produce 435KW electricity.

A senior official said power generation at hospitals and zonal buildings would begin in June and at the schools by the end of July. He said bids for schools would be invited after the model code of conduct was over.

The zonal offices  Keshav Puram, Civil Lines, Narela and Karol Bagh -- and hospitals will follow the Renewable Energy Service Company model where the vendor would invest money and maintain the plant for 25 years.

In return, we will purchase electricity as per rates quoted in the bidding process. Purchasing electricity under this model will be cheaper by at least 3.75 per unit. The corporation will save 1.5 lakh per month on electricity bills for these eight buildings, the official said.

The hospitals chosen for the project are Balakram Hospital, Kasturba Hospital, Girdharilal Maternity Hospital and RBIPMT Hospital.

The official said 1MW solar power would be generated at the school buildings under the capital expenditure model in which the municipality would bear the cost of the plant. We will generate and consume electricity and save around 7.5 lakh per month. We will add more buildings in the next phase, he said.
The students who appeared for CBSE Class 10 Hindi examination in Lucknow on Tuesday said question 12 of set 3 was out of course though it was of 5 marks. The students found grammar section of moderate difficulty. But students were happy question had plenty of choices.

Shreeya and Harshita, both students of GD Goenka Public School, Lucknow said, Question 12 of set 3 was out of course which was of 5 marks though. Heena Naela another student from the same school found the grammar section of moderate difficulty.

Aditya and Shalini Bhushan were happy with that the question paper was full of choices. Ujjwal Vaish said that the paper was lengthy but easy and most questions were from the previous years papers.

The exhilarated students of Lucknow Public School, South City said that they got good time to revise the paper. Priyanshi Yadav, said, Very easy paper and the questions of writing section were rooted to syllabus. Another student from same school, Rishabh Mishra said, We were expecting a lengthy paper but I finished it before time.

Anju Bajpai, teacher of Lucknow Public School, South City said, The paper was easy. The reading passage is also quite uncomplicated to comprehend. Bhagwati Sharma, teacher of same school said, Two to three tricky questions were asked in grammar section but all in all it was a good paper. Essay writing topics were also quite general.
ICSE Commerce Paper 2019: The Commercial Studies Paper for the ICSE class 10 examination received mixed bag reactions here in Lucknow. Students felt that apart from couple of tricky questions in Section B it was a relatively easy paper. The paper had direct questions with no twist and confusion, examinees said after writing the exam on Tuesday afternoon.

Students of Hoerner College, Saurabh Saini and Apoorva Gupta opined that it was an easy paper. Sneha Singh and Nidhi felt the balance sheet was a bit tricky but otherwise it was a scoring paper. Their teacher Meenakshi Bajaj felt the paper was neither tough nor easy as it needed application of understanding the questions thoroughly. The Principal Mala Mehra was happy to see confident faces and was sure of a good outcome.

Abin B Sam, a student of St Teresas College, Aashiana said that paper was easy as compared to the pre-board exam. The paper had direct questions with no twist and confusion. It was altogether very easy paper, Sam said.

Shabham said that questions paper was awesome and very easy. Areeba Siddiqui paper was easy and she is expecting good marks. Commerce teacher at St Teresas College, Aashiana, Rajeev Pandey said the ICSE Commercial Studies paper was very scoring.

There could be no other paper easier than this. The paper was very straight forward without even a single question that could be termed tricky or out of syllabus. It was as per expectations and all the questions were well- practiced by the children. Children may expect this to be most scoring paper out of all, Pandey said.

ICSE (Class X) students at City Montessori School, Aliganj also felt that commercial students question paper was easy and straight forward. Section A was easier than Section B. No tricky questions were asked, they said.

According to Mansi Jain, Anshika Gupta and Mahmood Ahmad, the questions were very well framed, direct and specific. Akanksha Yadav and Anshita Trivedi said, We completed our paper within the time limit.

As per the Commerce teacher, Praneeta Garg the paper was on expected lines and all students will definitely succeed in the examination. The school principal, Jyoti Kashyap was happy for the children and said that she was confident that all of them will pass with flying colours.

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Students who appeared in ISC Biotechnology paper in Lucknow on Tuesday said that the question paper covered the entire syllabus.

The students of City Montessori Inter College, Aliganj Campus 1 said they found the paper to be balanced. Most of the questions were direct. The students who were regular throughout the year found it easy.

Those who had prepared from previous years ISC papers found it good. Shivangi, a student said, The paper was good and she could complete it in time. Another student, Jyotsna said she was quite satisfied with the paper.

Anamika said she also felt quite happy with the paper. Some said that, although the paper was quite technical they could do it properly however all of them felt relieved as it was the last paper.

Their teacher Sujata was also satisfied with the paper and felt that the students must have performed well. The school principal, Jyoti Kashyap was also happy at seeing the beaming faces of the students.

Students of CMS Gomti Nagar branch also said that the question paper was easy. Priyanka said, Question paper was very easy and most of the questions were direct. Nivriti Singh, a student from the same school said, The paper was very easy and expected questions were asked.

Manas Singhal, a student said, Questions were directly asked from syllabus. No question was out of syllabus. A thorough reading of all the topics would suffice and help the student get good marks.

Medha Navya Dwivedi said, The paper was quite easy and covered the entire syllabus. It was basically objective in nature. Biotechnology teacher of CMS Gomti Nagar 1, Rohit Mishra said paper was balanced. He said, It was prepared in such a manner that average students can also score good marks.

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South Africa: SA, US explore cooperation possibilities

South Africa and the United States have recently shared perspectives and explored possibilities for cooperation, at regional and multilateral levels, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) said.

This emerged after Dirco Director-General Kgabo Mahoai on Friday co-chaired the South Africa-United States Working Group on Africa and Global Issues (WGAGI), with the United States Deputy Secretary of State, John Sullivan, in Pretoria.

Matters relating to peace and security, sustainable development, trade and investment, and wildlife trafficking, amongst others, were high on the agenda.

The WGAGI is a structured bilateral mechanism that was held at the level of the Director-General/Deputy Secretary of State, which gives both the respective Heads of Delegation an opportunity to engage on African and global issues of mutual interest.

The meeting shared perspectives and explored possibilities for cooperation, at the regional and multilateral levels, including matters related to peace and security, sustainable development, trade and investment, and wildlife trafficking, amongst others, Dirco said in a statement.

Deputy Secretary Sullivan used the platform to provide a briefing on the Trump Administrations recently announced Africa Strategy and in particular the Prosper Africa initiative, which is aimed at enhancing trade and investment ties for the benefit of both the United States and Africa.

Bilateral relations between South Africa and the United States are cordial. The United States is an important partner for South Africa for trade, investment, tourism, technology transfer, education and health cooperation.

South Africa is a major beneficiary of development assistance from the United States, especially for health, through the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Trade and investment relations take place under the auspices of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), under which South Africa gains duty-free access to the US market for value-added products.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, recommended Angelica Infante-Green, a veteran New York educator, expert on English-language learner communities, and first-generation immigrant to serve as the states next commissioner of education.

If approved by the states board of education, she will replace Commissioner Ken Wagner, who has served as the state education chief since 2015.

This is an important, exciting moment in Rhode Island education, Infante-Green said in a statement, according to local media reports. The foundation is in place, and we we must have the courage and collective will to act boldly on behalf of all of our students.

Infante-Green, the daughter of Dominican immigrants, received her undergraduate degree in architecture but, after college, decided to switch careers after a Teach for America stint as a dual-language teacher in the South Bronx. She rose through the ranks in New York City schools, serving as a dual-language project director, the founder of a school for recent immigrant arrivals, and the associate commissioner for bilingual education and world languages.

She currently serves as the deputy commissioner with the New York Education Departments office ofiInstructional support.

She will start on April 29.

Many in New York thought she should be the chancellor of New York City schools and she was a finalist earlier last year for Massachusetts commissioner.

Rhode Island is in the middle of a wide-ranging debate over what it needs to do to improve its school system. Recent test results show that its students perform significantly worse than Massachusetts students do.

This is our truth-telling moment, Ken Wagner, Rhode Islands superintendent said shortly after the release of the test scores, according to local media reports. Theres no surprise we have tons of work to do. Massachusetts students arent smarter than ours. Theyve just been doing the work for the past 25 years. Weve been doing pieces of it, but we havent stuck with it. We havent all been on the same page like Massachusetts has.

Dont miss another State EdWatch post. Sign up here to get news alerts in your email inbox. And make sure to follow @StateEdWatch on Twitter for the latest news from state K-12 policy and politics.
At least ten students including members of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) have announced an indefinite hunger strike to protest against the varsitys anti-student admission policies.

Last week, the university announced the schedule for its first-ever online entrance examination to be conducted by the National Testing Agency for various courses.

Raising strong objections to the online entrance tests, JNUSU said that the time-tested method of conducting JNU entrance exam assessing the different aspects of a students potential for learning and research has been replaced without any academic reasoning. It also said that the decision was taken by illegally keeping the JNUSU out of the academic council meetings and that the teaching community was also opposed to the move.

The students body also accused the administration of arbitrarily doing away with the BA lateral entry programme which allowed students a chance to enter JNU from other universities. This despite the fact that the SLL&CS Board of Studies had categorically rejected the proposal, it said.

Another point of contention included the delinking of M.Phil-PhD programme. The move will adversely affect the continuity of a research that a student conducts and also unnecessarily burden the students to take multiple exams at the MPhil and PhD level, instead of focussing on research, JNUSU said.

However, the administration said that the decision would help students who could enrol for PhD programme directly after MA or MSc and can submit their theses in four years. It also added that the decision on such reforms were the result of serious deliberations and their adoption in statutory bodies, such as the Academic Council and the Executive Council in the university.
Hours ahead of the Disney-Fox merger, a new Avengers fan theory predicts how the X-Men could be integrated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The 15-months-in-the-making deal will pull 20th Century Foxs characters under the Disney umbrella, opening up the possibility of characters such as Wolverine and Magneto sharing the screen with Iron Man and Captain America.

The theory, shared by a fan on Reddit, suggests that the Avengers will destroy the Infinity Stones in Endgame, thereby creating the mutant gene, which is found in the X-Men. The theory provides the example of Captain Marvel and the tesseract, which gives her superhuman powers. The tesseract is now embedded in Thanos Infinity Gauntlet as an Infinity Stone.

Avengers: Endgame will end with the Avengers destroying each Infinity Stone, and once destroyed, the stones will send shock waves in the universe, and create the mutant gene.

The Disney-Fox deal is reportedly valued at $71.3 billion ( 4.9 lakh crore). Marvel had previously come to an agreement with Sony, who allowed Disney to use Spider-Man in the MCU, but retained the rights to the character.

Several theories have already been floated around about how the X-Men could enter the MCU. Disney plans on continuing the Deadpool movies under the Fox banner, but the future of the X-Men series looks ominous. The only two films on the calendar - Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants - have been delayed, with the latters release still in doubt.

Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson and others. The film is slated for an April 26 release.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
A Delhi court on Tuesday directed that Christian Michel, the alleged middleman in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal currently lodged in Tihar Jail, be kept out of solitary confinement. The court also asked director general of prisons to file a compliance report within three days.

The courts observation came after Michels counsel Aljo K Joseph and Vishnu Sankar moved a plea for shifting Michel from a high-security cell to a normal one on the grounds that he is kept in isolation and is not allowed to interact or walk around in the prison which may affect his mental and physical health.

The court, which examined five days of CCTV footage of jail no. 1, observed that Michel is indeed kept in total isolation that it can cause an array of mental disorder.

...solitary confinement can cause an array of mental disorder as well as provoke an already existing mental disorder in prison causing more trauma and symptoms..., said CBI special judge Arvind Kumar.
Preet Bharara, a former US prosecutor, has confirmed in an autobiography released Tuesday that a female Indian diplomat arrested in 2013 for alleged visa fraud in the hiring of a domestic help was strip-searched, as widely believed, and acknowledged, as significantly, it could have been avoided.

Devyani Khobragade, a diplomat at the Indian consulate in New York, was arrested on December 12, in 2013, immediately after she had dropped off her children at their school. She was charged with providing false information in the visa application for a domestic help she was bringing from India.

As Khobragade, an officer of the Indian Foreign Service, was checked into custody, she was strip-searched. The incident precipitated the worst crisis in India-US relations in recent years. New Delhi retaliated by removing extra-security barriers from outside the US embassy in New Delhi, and the United States threw open, equally churlishly, blocked parking lots outside the Indian embassy in Washington DC.

At the heart of it was Bharara, the Indian American US attorney of the Southern District of New York, Americas most prestigious public prosecution office with oversight over Wall Street, the hub of global financial network, and the UN, with the member countries permanent missions. His office prosecuted the Khobragade case, and was seen by critics then as an over-reach in dissonance with the then administrations diplomatic efforts to resolve the issue.

Khobragade was afforded a number of courtesies during the course of her arrest, because of her diplomatic status, but she was strip-searched per regular procedure by the US Marshals Service in the SDNY (Southern District of New York), Bharara writes in his book, Doing Justice: A Prosecutors Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law released on Tuesday.

He added, most notably, That could have and should have been avoided, given that no one would have sought pretrial detention.

And here is what the Indian government had said then. The action taken against her (Khobragade) was not in keeping with the Vienna Convention. There were no courtesies in the treatment that was meted out to the diplomat, under the normal definition of that word in the English language.

Indians were outraged not so much by the arrest of an Indian diplomat as the fact that the diplomat was a woman and she was arrested as soon as she had dropped off her children to their school and, most significantly, she was strip-searched at the time of her being checked into custody.

American authorities had then sought to portray the arrest and the following strip-search as procedural issues.

That case, Bharara laments, turned him into persona non grata in the country of my birth.

Bharara seeks to shirk responsibility for the case, which he says he he is proud ot, and writes in book, The State Department opened the case  the State Department investigated it;  career agents in the State Department asked career prosecutors in my office to approve criminal charges.

He offers few details of how the case unravelled in a rush to portray himself as a victim of media backlash in India, on which he lingered longer than on the facts.

There is nothing in the chapter on the Khobragade case on talks between India and the United States at the time to resolve an issue both countries were eager to put behind. Bharara might not have been involved in them as a prosecutor, but he had appeared at odds with the administration.

Then US secretary of state John Kerry had called Indias national security advisor Shivshankar Menon to express regrets over the incident, even as Bhararas prosecutors had pressed ahead with their case against Khobragade. Bharara offers no details of these talks, and, as said before, he might not have known.

But he did know something, apparently. The then secretary of state, John Kerry, was pressured to make the case go away, Bharara claims in the book, without revealing details of who was pressuring the secretary of state, and why.

Bhararas office had pressed fresh charges against Khobragade even after a New York court had dismissed earlier accusations against her citing her diplomatic immunity.

The former US attorney was fired by President Donald Trump a few months after he took office, abruptly ending his career that had earned him the title of Sheriff of Wall Street for the stocks fraud cases his office had prosecuted successfully including those against Raj Rajaratnam and Rajat Gupta.
The Gujarat government has declined sanction to prosecute retired police officers D G Vanzara and N K Amin in the alleged fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others, the Central Bureau of Investigation told a special CBI court on Tuesday.

After going through a letter submitted to the court by CBI lawyer R C Kodekar to special CBI judge J K Pandya said the sanction to prosecute the former officers, who were accused in the case, under section 197 of the CrPC, was declined by the state government.

The decision may pave the way for the controversial case against Vanzara and Amin to be dropped.

Defence lawyer V D Gajjar had then sought permission for filing an application to drop proceedings against the two former police officers. Granting the request, the court has asked them to file an application on March 26.

The reasons cited by the Gujarat government for denying the permissions are not known. We had received the sealed cover, which was submitted to the court. The court has told that in the letter the government has declined the permission, Kodekar said.

The court had earlier rejected discharge applications of the two former officers. The CBI had sought the prosecution permission after the court had asked it to clear its stand on whether it wants to get sanction to prosecute them from the state government.

Also read: Ishrat Jahans mother files objection to discharge pleas of ex-cops

Vanzara and Amin are two of the seven accused chargesheeted by the CBI in the case. Vanzara is a former deputy inspector general of police, while Amin retired as superintendent of police.

IPS officer G K Singhal and retired deputy superintendent of police Tarun Barot were other main accused in the case. Former Director General of Police P P Pandey was discharged by the court in the same case.

Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old college student from Mumbra near Mumbai, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana, and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an alleged fake encounter by the police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

The Gujarat police had claimed that the four had links with terrorists and had plotted to kill the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

Shammima Kausar, Ishrats mother, had filed a complaint that her daughter and others were abducted by the Gujarat police prior to the encounter.
After concluding two foundational agreements to strengthen military cooperation in the past three years, India and the United States are inching closer to finalising a new pact to deepen defence industry collaboration, two officials said on condition of anonymity.

The two sides announced their readiness to start negotiations on an Industrial Security Annex (ISA) to shore up defence cooperation during the inaugural 2+2 dialogue last September.

The US has submitted a draft ISA to the defence ministry and is waiting for India to respond, said one of the officials. The conclusion of the ISA will allow the US government and American original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to share classified information with local private defence firms.

Currently, the US can share such information only with the Indian government and public sector undertakings under the General Security of Military Information Agreement (Gsomia) signed 17 years ago.

Signing an annexure to Gsomia will allow the US government and American companies to share classified information with the Indian private sector. It is expected to provide impetus to the Make in India programme, said the second official.

India is looking at building fighter jets, next-generation submarines, helicopters and armoured vehicles locally under the strategic partnership (SP) model that seeks to provide a boost to the Make in India programme. The SP model envisages local manufacturing of major defence platforms by Indian strategic partners who will collaborate with foreign OEMs to set up production facilities in the country. US firms are competing for projects to build fighter jets and helicopters in the country.

The ISA will be a step forward towards transfer of sensitive technology from the US to the Indian private sector while ensuring it remains protected. It will help improve the technology level of the local industry, said Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (retd), additional director general, Centre for Air Power Studies.

India and the US signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (Lemoa) in August 2016, allowing the two countries to provide logistics support to each others fighter planes, warships and personnel. Another key pact, the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (Comcasa), was signed by India and the US last September at the 2+2 dialogue.

Both Lemoa and Comcasa were delayed for years as New Delhi bargained hard for getting its concerns addressed before inking the sensitive pacts. The India-specific Comcasa has in-built safeguards to secure Indias national interests with complete access to equipment to make sure there is no disruption.
India has not and will not forget the Pulwama suicide attack and the countrys leadership is both capable and courageous to respond to such incidents appropriately, as per its choosing, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval said on Tuesday. He was speaking at the 80th raising day celebrations of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Gurugram in Haryana.

Forty CRPF personnel were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into their convoy in Pulwama on February 14. Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed has owned up the attack. Calling it a very sad incident, Doval said the country will always be indebted to the jawans who laid down their lives in the line of duty and their families.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the attack  one of the worst in recent times  the NSA said, What should we do? What should be our way, our aim and our response and time to respond? The countrys leadership is both capable and courageous to (do) that, Doval said.

The country is capable of dealing with terrorism and the overground workers. We are ready to face the challenge and the intent to do so.

Twenty-eight of the thirty-seven countries that fragmented since World War-II disintegrated because of internal security challenges, Doval said highlighting the importance of internal-security and added, full-scale wars are unlikely to lead to the break-up of a country in this century, but, internal security challenges can lead to fragmentation of a nation-state.

Doval, a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is one of the key people behind designing and executing Indias response to the Pulwama suicide attack  the air strike on the JeM camp in Balakot in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Meanwhile, at a talk organized by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Doval referred to the importance of surprise and added that in his career he had never repeated the same thing.

I started this in my 20s and now I am 75. Ive never done anything twiceevery operation whether big or small is the first of my life. So I do it with that spirit of new challenge, he said.

On Balakot air strike, Doval said it is natural that when one is taking a major decision there can be a sense of anxiety. You are not a crystal gazer and the result is known only after the decision is taken, he said.
Industrialist-turned-politician Nama Nageshwar Rao on Tuesday resigned from Telugu Desam Party. The former MP from Telangana and TDP politburo member is one of the richest politicians in the country with declared assets worth over 113 crore.

Nageshwar Rao represented Khammam parliamentary constituency between 2009 and 2014. He had been associated with the TDP for the last 15 years and served as leader of TDP parliamentary party during his stint in Lok Sabha.

The former MP, who promoted Madhucon Projects Limited, a leading infrastructure company in the country, unsuccessfully contested the recent assembly elections in Telangana from Khammam assembly constituency and lost to Puvvada Ajay Kumar of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

Since then, Rao has been keeping away from the TDP activities and skipped the partys politburo meeting held at Amaravati on Sunday. On Monday evening, he met TRS president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao at the latters farm house in Erravelli in Siddipet district.

Nageshwar Rao is expected to join the TRS soon and is likely to be fielded as party candidate for the Lok Sabha elections from Khammam, in place of sitting MP Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy.

Interestingly, the Congress high command has also been trying to bring Rao into the party and reserved the party ticket for Khammam for him. However, the former MP is understood to have preferred TRS to Congress.

During his stint as an MP from 2009 to 2014, Rao was one of the richest MPs in the country at the time. In 2014 general elections, he declared assets worth 338 crore. In 2018 assembly elections, however, he declared assets worth 113 crore.

Last week, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) authorities conducted raids on Raos Madhucon Projects on the charges of diversion of funds to the extent of 264 crore in the construction of Ranchi-Rargoan-Jamshedpur four-lane national highway project (NH-33) worth 1,151 crore.
Manohar Parrikar was 17th chief minister in the country and second in Goa who died while still in office.

Parrikar, 63, a former defence minister, died on Sunday at his private residence in Dona Paula near the state capital after battling a pancreatic cancer for over last year.

Before Parrikar, Dayanand Bandokar, the leader of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), died in August 1973 while occupying the post.

He had swept the polls in 1963 to become the first chief minister of Goa. Under his leadership, the party swept the 1967 and 1972 polls in the state.

The MGP is currently an ally of the BJP in the state.

Tamil Nadu witnessed deaths of three sitting chief ministers. The first one was C N Annadurai, a mentor to future chief ministers of the state.

Under his leadership, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) defeated the Congress in the 1967 assembly polls. The Congress has been out of power in the state since then. Annadurai died just two years after being in the office.

The legendary thespian M G Ramachandran, and the founder of All Indian Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) also died while in office in December 1987.

Ramchandrans protege and AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa won the assembly polls for the fourth time in May 2016. However, her tenure was short-lived as she died in December 2016.

Chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir Sheikh Abdullah and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died while they were in office.

Gujarat also saw two of its sitting chief ministers die.

Balwantrai Mehta was killed after his aircraft was shot down by Pakistan Air Force during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. Chimanbhai Patel headed the state government from 1990 until his death in 1994.

Three chief ministers, including Mehta, died in air accidents. Incidentally, all were from the Congress.

S Rajashekara Reddy, the chief minister of the undivided Andhra Pradesh died in a helicopter crash in September 2009, months after he swept the polls.

Dorjee Khandu, the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, also died in a helicopter crash in May 2011.

Beant Singh, a chief minister from Punjab, was killed in a bomb blast at the state secretariat in Chandigarh by Sikh extremists in 1995.

Marutrao Kannamwar, the second chief minister of Maharashtra (1962-63), died while still in office.

Noted freedom fighter Bidhan Chandra Roy was the chief minister of West Bengal from 1952 until his death in 1962.

Barkartullah Khan, the only Muslim chief minister of Rajasthan, was at the helm from July 1971 until his death in October 1973.

Congress Shri Krishna Singh was the first chief minister of Bihar and he held the post from 1952 until his death in 1961. He was also the premier of Bihar from 1937 to 1939 and 1946-52.

Ravi Shankar Shukla was the chief minister of Central Provinces from November 1956 until his death in December 1956.

Gopinath Bordoloi died in August 1950. He was the premier of Assam, a post he held twice.
Indias aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil aviation held an emergency meeting with the management of debt-ridden Jet Airways on Tuesday evening. DGCA said the situation is dynamic and the number of Jet flights may reduce further in the coming weeks.

The meeting came in the wake of the airliner drastically reducing its operations due to liquidity crunch.

DGCA reviewed the performance of Jet Airways on Operational, Airworthiness & Passenger facilitation. Current availability of aircraft in the fleet for operation is 41 and accordingly scheduled for 603 domestic flights and 382 international flights has been drawn, a statement said.

The aviation regulator has asked Jet Airways to comply with the relevant provisions for facilitation of passengers regarding timely communication, compensation, refunds and providing alternate flights wherever applicable.

The DGCA statement said it is continuously monitoring overall situation and based on the same, will take appropriate steps by the end of the month, if needed.

Aviation minister Suresh Prabhu had directed his ministrys secretary to hold an emergency meeting on Jet Airways massively cancelling flights after grounding of a large part of its fleet.

Directed Secretary, @MOCA GOI to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, advance bookings, cancellations, refunds and safety issues, if any, Prabhu said in a tweet.

Asked him (civil aviation secretary) to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA, he added.

On Monday, Jet Airways engineers body wrote to aviation regulator DGCA, seeking its intervention in the recovery of their salary dues, saying non-payment was affecting their psychological condition which, in turn, was a risk to the airlines flight operations.

Also read | Dont overcharge, DGCA tells airlines amid Boeing 737 Max 8 crisis
Indias aviation regulator told debt-ridden Jet Airways to ensure that pilots and cabin crew who are under stress arent allowed to operate flights in its already heavily curtailed schedule even as its pilots said they would stop flying after April 1 if the beleaguered airlines management doesnt finalise a resolution plan by that deadline.

Jet has been operating with just one-third of its fleet of 119 planes after failing to pay aircraft lessors. The cause of the stress could be delays in pilots and crew receiving their salaries and it could be dangerous for them to operate flights, officials at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said .

DGCA is ensuring that all aircraft in the fleet whether in operation or on ground are maintained in accordance with Approved Maintenance Programme (AMP). The operator was also directed to ensure that no Pilots/Cabin Crew/AMEs be rostered on duty who had reported stress of any nature. Additionally, all such staff should be current with all mandatory training requirements, a DGCA spokesperson said. AMEs are aircraft maintenance engineers.

On Tuesday, Jets pilots decided they would stop flying on April 1 if the status quo continues. Karan Chopra, president of the National Aviators Guild, the pilots union of Jet Airways, said, We want assurance that our salaries will be paid to us. Currently, we havent been given any information by the management.

A senior management official said, In no case, will the salaries not be paid to the pilots.

Also read | Jet Airways crisis worsens as government steps in, pilots threaten strike

Jet Airways is battling a crisis that has led to the grounding of 78 of its 119 planes. The board of Etihad Airways, which owns a 24% stake in the airline, and creditors of Jet Airways are in an impasse over fresh fund infusions into the beleaguered carrier, forcing it to halt flights to foreign destinations including Abu Dhabi, one of its two international hubs.

Aviation minister Suresh Prabhu directed civil aviation secretary to hold an emergency meeting on Jet Airways massive cancellations following the grounding of a large part of its fleet.

DGCA reviewed the performance of Jet Airways on Operational, Airworthiness and Passenger Facilitation on Tuesday. Current availability of aircraft in the fleet for operation is 41 and accordingly schedules for 603 domestic flights and 382 international flights have been drawn. However, it is a dynamic situation and there may be further attrition in coming weeks, DGCA said in a statement.

Jet used to operate 119 aircraft and almost 4,000 flights weekly, which has gone down to 985.

DGCA instructed the airline to comply with the relevant provisions of the applicable CARs (Civil Aviation Requirements) for facilitation of passengers regarding timely communication, compensation, refunds and providing alternate flights wherever applicable. The data is being monitored by DGCA on regular basis, the spokesperson added.

On Tuesday evening, Jet Airways said it had grounded six more planes due to non-payment of lease rentals. .... an additional six aircraft (include one aircraft of Jet Lite (India) Ltd) have been grounded due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors under their respective lease agreements, the airline said in a filing to the stock exchanges.

Many passengers are being informed about flight cancellations at the last moment and although the airline will refund them, most are unable to book alternative flights because of the extra cost it would entail.

I booked tickets two months in advance to travel home for Holi (March 21) but for travel on Wednesday, the airline informed me on Monday that my flight has been postponed to Sunday, the day when my return flight is booked. I checked fare of other airlines, which is almost four-five times of the fare I booked. Now my festival is ruined because of the callous behaviour of the airline, said a passenger who booked a flight from Mumbai to Kolkata, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

There were also concerns over maintenance of the grounded planes and safety of the planes that are operating.

DGCA is ensuring that all aircraft in the fleet whether in operation or on ground are maintained in accordance with Approved Maintenance Programme (AMP), the DGCA spokesperson said.

DGCA is continuously monitoring overall situation and based on the same, will take appropriate steps by the end of the month, if needed, he added.

Burdened by debt of around $1.14 billion, Jet Airways has cancelled several flights from/to Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Port Blair.

Meanwhile, lessors of Jet Airways grounded aircraft are in talk with its rival Spicejet to ensure the planes are in operation, according to a senior airline official who did not want to be named. Spicejet has had to ground 12 Boeing 737 MAX planes amid safety concerns following an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on March 10 that killed 157 passengers and crew, and is in need of more aircraft.
The closure of Pakistans airspace, since the Indian Air Force (IAF) strikes in Balakot on February 26, has affected international flights to and from India over the last 20 days, with Air India being a major victim.

Flights from across the world have either been cancelled or rerouted, since the closure was announced on February 27. Pakistan partially opened its airspace, only for the flights bound for the country.

Air India, which operates 33 weekly services to the US and 66 to Europe, has curtailed operations due to the airspace closure. It has clubbed together several US and Europe bound flights.

According to reports, around 400 flights have been affected a day, with the national carrier being the worst hit. The airline had to reschedule several flights to Europe and the US. It has kept passengers informed through its Twitter handle.

Flights to the US and Europe are now diverted over Mumbai and then northwards over the Arabian Sea through the United Arab Emirates (UAE) airspace. The new technical stops on the route are Sharjah in the UAE, and Vienna in Austria. The Delhi-Washington flight has a stopover at Mumbai.

The flights from the US have been taking a longer route, which has extended their duration on the already long-haul journeys.

The AI Mumbai-New York-Mumbai flight, launched in December 2018, has been combined with the Mumbai-Newark-Mumbai flight for duration between March 16 and May 31, the airline tweeted on March 14.

Another newly launched flight, between Delhi and Najaf in southern Iraq, has been cancelled, as are the Delhi-Madrid-Delhi, Delhi-Birmingham-Delhi and Delhi-Amritsar-Birmingham and Birmingham-Amritsar-Delhi flights.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has said Congress Priyanka Gandhi Vadra must acknowledge Prime Minister Narendra Modis efforts in cleaning the Ganga, which has made it possible for her to go on her river journey.

Yogi Adityanath said on Tuesday the Congress leaders Ganga Yatra from Prayagraj to Varanasi proved that the BJP government had accomplished what the four generations of Congress rule could not do.

It would have been nice had she taken Rahul ji and leaders of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) along on her Ganga Yatra and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Namami Gange project which has made travel across the clean Ganga possible, Yogi Adityanath said.

Watch: Ground report different from report card: Priyanka Gandhis jibe at govt

The chief minister was speaking to reporters on the completion of his governments two years in office.

Yogi Adityanath said an estimated 24 crore people took the dip in the clean Ganga during the Kumbh Mela and Priyanka Gandhis Ganga Yatra proved the BJP government has been successful in cleaning the Ganga.

Adityanaths comments on Priyanka Gandhis river campaign came a day after the Congress general secretary for eastern Uttar Pradesh sharpened her attack on the Centre and state government asking them to stop blaming Congress for its own failures.

Also read: Priyanka Gandhi says Modi govts argument to blame Congress has an expiry date

And on Tuesday, she said that the Yogi Adityanath governments report card on its performance in the last two years was fake and did not reflect the ground reality in Uttar Pradesh.

I have been meeting every section of society, including farmers and Anganwadi workers. All are in distress. They have got nothing, Gandhi said. There is a difference between the reality and what they speak. Yogis report card promotion sounds good but there is nothing on the ground, she said.

Adityanath also spoke on Priyanka Gandhis plan to visit the Kashi Vishwanath temple, which has been opposed by a local lawyer in Varanasi on the grounds that she is of Parsi origin.

I think in our (Hindu) system all can enter a temple. I think temples are a place where even the impure becomes pure. This is not an issue for the government to deliberate on, he said.

Meanwhile, Congress leaders said Priyankas three-day Ganga Yatra would expose the Modi governments farce on Ganga cleanliness.

Also read: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra begins Congress Uttar Pradesh campaign on Ganga

They promised a clean Ganga but can the government claim that despite changing a Union minister and spending crores of rupees, the ancient river is actually clean? They stand exposed now even on their ideological commitment, Congress leader Piyush Mishra said.

The 2,525-kilometre river which flows through Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Jharkhand is of great political importance as it travels through nearly 160 Lok Sabha constituencies.

While filing his nomination from Varanasi in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Modi, the then prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, had invoked the Ganga saying he had chosen Varanasi on divine intervention.

Mujhe Ganga ne bulaya hai (The Ganga has beckoned me), he had said then.

BJP leaders said Priyanka Gandhi is trying to copy Prime Minister Modi by connecting with riverine communities and displaying soft Hindutva to counter the BJP in the Hindi heartland.

Also read: Priyanka will make no difference to BJPs poll prospects, says Yogi

On being voted to power, Modi had set up a separate ministry to fast track the process of cleaning the river considered holy by millions Hindus. He had also launched the ambitious Namami Gange or National Mission for Clean Ganga project in June 2014. It was an integrated conservation mission with an initial budget outlay of 20,000 crore to accomplish the twin objectives of effective abatement of pollution, conservation and rejuvenation of national river Ganga.

Priyanka Gandhis Ganga Yatra, a part of her second visit to the state after being appointed the partys general secretary, comes less than a month before the Lok Sabha election 2019.

Uttar Pradesh, the politically-crucial state which sends 80 or the most number of lawmakers to Parliament, will vote in all the seven phases from April 11 and till May 19. The counting of votes will take place on May 23.
For the Indian couple Abdul Nazer and Ansi Alibava, life in New Zealand was peaceful and promising until Fridays mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch that shattered their dreams. Both were both inside the Al Noor mosque in central Christchurch when the first shots were fired by a white supremacist, in one of New Zealands worst mass shootings, that killed 25-year-old Alibava and 49 others.

The couple borrowed some USD 48,000 to move to New Zealand from Kerala last year so that she could do a masters degree in agribusiness management, which she completed just three weeks ago.

Nazer, 34, was working at the local supermarket to help pay the bills.

When Alibava graduated, they hoped she would get a high-paying job and they would live and work in New Zealand.

Fridays mass shootings at two mosques in central Christchurch changed everything for the couple.

Recounting the horrible attack, Nazer told CNN that he and Alibava were seated separately inside the mosque -- men sat on the left, women on the right. Right before the main prayer, I heard a single shot firing and I thought that some kids outside might have popped a balloon, Nazer said. Seconds later a series of staccato shots from a high-powered weapon sent 300 or so people in the mosque scrambling for the exit.

Nazer said he was close to an emergency door and escaped after someone smashed the glass. Others were not so lucky. People started falling over me, I saw people with blood on their shirts, he said. He ran to a neighbouring house and phoned the police for help before returning to the mosque to find his wife. The scene that confronted him on his return to the mosque was horrifying, with bodies scattered on the street beside pools of blood. Then he saw the motionless figure of Alibava, lying face down in the street.

I ran towards her and then a policeman stopped me and told me to move somewhere else, he said.

It was not until Saturday night, more than 24 hours after he had fled the mosque, that New Zealand police confirmed that Alibava was one of the 50 people killed in Fridays attacks by Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, who has been charged with murder.

Nazers friend, George, was with him when police provided them, and other families, a list of the people confirmed dead. Until then they had clung on to the hope that perhaps Alibava was in hospital.

We thought it might be one of those miracles that could happen, George said.

Nazer and Alibava had an arranged marriage two years ago, but friends say they have no doubt that the couple soon fell deeply in love.

According to Tali Ao, Alibava was the brightest student on her course at the Lincoln University.

Her professors, everyone loved her, Ao said. On Monday, the universitys students and staff bowed their heads on the lawn for one minutes silence in remembrance of the dead, CNN reported.

For some of our familys victims to be attacked because of their religion is inconceivable, said Acting Chancellor Bruce Mckenzie.

Meanwhile, the Kerala community in Christchurch has rallied around Nazer to help him through the tragedy.

They have started a Givealittle page to help him pay back the huge loan they took out in India to pay for Alibavas studies in New Zealand.

Nazer wants to send his wifes body back to Kerala to be home with her mother and brother in Kodungallur in Thrissur district. Her father died several years ago.

Nazer is unsure what the future holds, but he says he knows he wants to stay in Christchurch, where he and his wife spent most of their married life together.

She had so many dreams, he says. No one would expect something like this would happen. There are a lot of good people here ... This shouldnt happen to any family. The Kerala Chief Ministers Office has said that all efforts were being made to bring the mortal remains of Alibava from New Zealand.
Officials said Vedanta Ltds alumina refinery in Odishas Kalahandi district was operating normally on Tuesday, a day after two people were killed during clashes, and that villagers held discussions with the companys officials on Monday night.

A Dalit villager living near Vedantas 1.5 million tonne refinery in Lanjigarh was killed and a guard of Odisha Industrial Security Force (OISF) charred to death when protesting locals demanding permanent jobs clashed with police outside the refinery on Monday.

The tensions have cooled down around the plant. We hope the situation would normalise soon, Kalahandis district collector Dr Parag Harshad Gavali said.

Vedanta has agreed to give 25 lakh each to the next of kin of the two men who died, Gavali said. The state government will also give an additional 5 lakh to their families and a job to the OISF personnels relatives, he added.

The sub-collector and the police would conduct a joint inquiry into the incident and accordingly action will be taken as per emerging evidence. How the violence started would be known only after a detailed inquiry, Gavali said.

Dani Patra from Khambesi village in Niyamgiri and OISFs Sujit Minz were killed in the violence after villagers around the plant clashed with the personnel of the state armed police force to guard private and government industrial installations over the demand to reinstate a retrenched Vedanta employee.

The district collector denied that the violence had anything to do with rehabilitation of people of three villages around the plant, who are going to be displaced due to the expansion of red mud pond of the factory. Red mud is bauxite residue, a toxic waste product of alumina manufacturing.

Compensation for the land acquired by the government for expansion of the red mud pond has been given. Now, the resettlement and rehabilitation plan is being finalised. The process is going on, he said.

Kalahandis superintendent of police Battalu Gangadhar said the violence seems to have escalated after protesting locals first burnt down the closed-circuit television or CCTV camera tower at the entrance of the company.

The villagers sat on dharna before the company gate protesting the retrenchment of a contractual staff. When the locals tried to forcefully enter the main gate, OISF jawans led to lathicharge which led to the death of a local, said Gangadhar.

The mob then forced its way into the company premises and burnt down the CSR building and the security guard shed. The charred body of an OSIF jawan was found from the shed later, he said.

The chief executive of Vedantas Lanjigarh plant Ajay Dixit had said on Monday that the violence seemed premeditated. Dixit said the company has about 3,000 people at the Lanjigarh plant, of whom 2,500 are contractual and the rest permanent employees.

OISF was formed in 2012 on the line of Central Industrial Security Force to look after the security of the private and government industrial units.

The chromite and iron ore mines of Tata Steel, mines of Odisha Mining Corporation, Indian Rare Earth Limited, Hirakud Dam, Utkal University and Vedanta Alumina are some of the concerns that have deployed the armed jawans of OISF.

While the state government pays the salary of OISF personnel, the organisations that deploy them have to pay 11.8% supervision charges and 18% GST.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray on Tuesday declared that despite his party not contesting the Lok Sabha elections, he would campaign aggressively against PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah and his ultimate aim was to defeat the BJP. These two have made a mess of this country and we need to make a new beginning. These two individuals should be swept aside. For this, the BJP needs to be defeated, said Thackeray.

He asked MNS workers to campaign against the BJP and defeat them in the polls. However, he refrained from extending support to any party, saying that the 2019 polls was Modi-Shah versus the country.

Addressing party workers at an auditorium in Bandra, Thackeray called the BJPs newly launched Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign as a farce. Are elections taking place in India or Nepal? This campaign is just to divert the attention of the masses as this government has been a failure the past five years. All they did in the past five years was to abuse Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi, he added. He said it was imperative to remove this government from power, irrespective of which parties benefit from this move.

Thackeray also taunted CM Devendra Fadnavis who had remarked that the former was taking instructions from NCP chief Sharad Pawar. He did not respond to my allegations and just said something irrelevant, said Thackeray. He also displayed video clips of Modis speeches where he was seen attacking Pawar during the 2014 campaign, blaming him for the sad plight of farmers, and two years later praising Pawar, saying he cared a lot for the farmers.

He also dismissed reports that he was lobbying for Lok Sabha tickets from the Congress-NCP combine. I met both Ajit Pawar and Ashok Chavan and asked them whether my party leaders or I had asked for any alliance. They both denied. I had already made it clear before that I was not interested in the Lok Sabha elections. However, whatever I do now will benefit the opposition parties, he added.
Nationalist Congress Party boss Sharad Pawar on Tuesday stepped in to help Rahul Gandhis Congress and Arvind Kejriwals Aam Aadmi Party work out an alliance in the national capital for the Lok Sabha elections. Pawar also reached out to AAPs Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh soon after.

A Congress leader said Rahul Gandhi drove down to Sharad Pawars residence along with senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge. They went over the seat sharing deal for Maharashtra where the Congress and NCP are in alliance. The conversation then moved to Delhi.

It is not immediately clear how this round of Pawars intervention will pan out. The Congress hasnt spoken yet on the outreach. AAPs Sanjay Singh did not get into the details of his conversation with Pawar but stressed that this is the time to save the country not just talks of a party.

Watch: Decision on AAP-Congress alliance in a few days: PC Chacko

Read: Priyanka Gandhi says Modi govts argument to blame Congress has an expiry date

This is Sharad Pawars second effort since mid-February when he hosted a dinner for top opposition leaders at his house that brought Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal to the same room. Over dinner, there were many suggestions at this meeting that the Congress and AAP should join hands in Delhi.

Gandhi, 48, however, knew that many of his partys Delhi leaders were against any alliance with AAP and signaled his reluctance. The Congress and its leaders had been AAPs prime target when the party, which has its origins in a massive anti-corruption movement, had founded.

But the February meet did set off some rethinking within the Congress. Over the next few weeks, many Congress leaders including Ajay Maken and Arvinder Singh Lovely  who had campaigned against a tie-up with AAP  joined the chorus.

When the Congress leadership decided to conduct a survey to get a sense of what party workers thought about the idea, Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit made no secret of her disappointment. Dikshit told reporters that she did not know about the survey.

Read: Amit Shah targets Rahul Gandhi over police action against techies in Bengaluru

She followed it up with a letter to the Congress president, also signed by the city units three working presidents, warning the party that an alliance with AAP would hurt the party in the long run. The opponents of the alliance in the party believe that the move will be suicidal as the Congress has to face the Delhi Assembly polls early next year and its main rival will be the ruling AAP.

But this wasnt the only letter written. There is another letter, this one by 5 former Delhi Congress presidents and 15 block presidents, which supports the alliance.
Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Tuesday took a pot shot at Congress president Rahul Gandhi over police action against protesters, said to be techies, in Bengaluru. Shah alleged that the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) government of Karnataka was intimidating people who oppose their politics.

Hugs for Tukde Tukde gang and arrest of peaceful youth raising pro-Modi slogans? Where are the champions of Free Speech? Yuvraj of CONgress must know youth decides the future of a period Stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics, Shah wrote on Twitter.

The BJP president was referring to an incident that happened on Monday in Bengaluru. A group of protesters raised pro-Modi slogans outside the venue where Gandhi was addressing entrepreneurs in the city. The protesters put up placards asking Gandhi to leave the venue.

The police took the protesters, whom the BJP referred to as techies, into custody in order to clear the venue. The BJP condemned police action against the protesters at the Manyata Tech park, where Gandhis event was held.

The Karnataka BJP posted a video on Twitter claiming that police arrested the techies for raising pro-Modi slogans at the Gandhis venue. Democracy in DangerPolice arrests few techies for raising pro Modi slogans at Manyata tech park in Bengaluru. This is the real face of democracy in a Cong JDS ruled state. Its total dictatorship where freedom of choice & expression of citizens is suppressed, read the tweet posted by BJP Karnataka on Monday night.

The video shows police telling the protesters to vacate the venue. Video does not show any use of force by police. The cops, however, could be seen pushing a few protesters away from the spot. Shah re-tweeted the post on Tuesday morning to target Rahul Gandhi.
Former Union minister Yashwant Sinha on Tuesday tweeted some advice for the opposition party leaders including Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Sinha asked the opposition parties to stop bickering going into the Lok Sabha election. He advised Gandhi to finalise the Congresss alliances in Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi.

Sinha, a strong critic of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, offered unsolicited advice to the opposition leaders on Twitter. Unsolicited advice to Rahul Gandhi, pl finalise your alliances in Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi and elsewhere today. It is already too late, read the first tweet posted by the former Union minister.

Unsolicited advice to Rahul Gandhi," pl finalise your alliances in Bihar, Jharkhand, Delhi and elsewhere today. It is already too late.  Yashwant Sinha (@YashwantSinha) March 19, 2019

The Congress is yet to take a final call on the alliances for the Lok Sabha in these three states having 61 Lok Sabha seats. In Bihar, the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) have not reached to an agreement over seat-sharing.

The Congress- RJD grand alliance in Bihar also comprises of Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP), Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular, Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) and Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP). The leaders have held a few round of talks but failed to arrive at a consensus apparently due to the Congresss insistence on contesting 11 of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

The RJD has offered the Congress to contest nine seats in the state. The Congress had contested on 12 parliamentary seats in 2014 Lok Sabha election.

In Jharkhand, Yashwant Sinhas home state, the Congress is in alliance with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) and the RJD. The seat sharing formula has not been finalised despite a broad agreement among the alliance partners. The Congress is likely to contest seven of 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand.

In Delhi, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party has offered the Congress to contest seven Lok Sabha seats jointly against the Bharatiya Janata Party, which recorded a clean sweep here in 2014 polls. The Delhi Congress has rejected the proposal to enter into an alliance with the AAP. Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit has publicly voiced her opposition to the proposal. Final decision is likely to come from Congress president Gandhi.

In his second tweet, Yashwant Sinha said, Unsolicited advice to all leaders of opposition parties, stop speaking against each other in public. Sort out your differences privately.

This comes amid public statements made by opposition leaders especially in Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress is contesting the Lok Sabha polls alone. The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party are in alliance. Announcing their electoral arrangement in January, the two parties stated that they would not field candidates at Amethi and Rae Bareli, the two constituencies represented by Congress president Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi respectively.

On Sunday, the Congress had reciprocated saying that it would not contest seven Lok Sabha seats currently held by the key leaders of the BSP-SP alliance in Uttar Pradesh.

BSP chief Mayawati responded to the Congress announcement saying that the party should not create confusion with its statements about the grand alliance in Uttar Pradesh. She said the Congress is free to contest all 80 seats in the state as the BSP-SP combine is capable of defeating the BJP on its own.

The Lok Sabha election will be held in seven phases between April 11 and May 19 for 543 seats. The counting of votes will take place on May 23.
With Himachal Pradesh going to polls on May 19the last phase of Lok Sabha electionsruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and opposition Congress are facing a big dilemma over ticket distribution in Himachal.

While the BJP is in a fix over selecting candidates for Mandi and Shimla, Congress has not been able to find a nominee for all four Lok Sabha seats- Mandi, Shimla, Hamirpur and Kangra.

The BJP was initially keen to renominate all the sitting MPs in the upcoming elections, but was forced to reconsider its decision after aspirants in Mandi and Shimla staked claims.

In Mandi, former Union minister Sukhrams grandson Ashray Sharma has been vying for a ticket for long. Other contenders are former MP Maheshwar Singh and Kargil veteran Brigadier (retd) Khushal Thakur.

The party also finds itself on a sticky wicket in Shimla where former IAS officer Hira Nand Kashyap, another ticket aspirant, has openly expressed displeasure over the partys desire to field the sitting MP.

As per sources, the survey conducted by the party has put the sitting Mandi MP Ram Swaroop Sharma, who is considered close to the chief minister, and his Shimla colleague Virendra Kashyap on a weak footing.

Amid the tug-of-war for ticket in both the constituencies, former MP Maheshwar Singh and Thakur recently met the national leadership in Delhi.

Also Read | Lok Sabha election 2019: Issues, key players and more on Himachal Pradesh

Ticket confusion grips Congress

Meanwhile, Congress is facing a tough task in finalising candidates in all four parliamentary seats. Race is tough in Kangra where former MP Chander Kumar, former ministers GS Bali and Sudhir Sharma have thrown hat in the ring. Dalhousie legislator and AICC secretary in-charge for Punjab, Asha Kumari is also among the contenders.

In Mandi, former CM Virbhadra Singh, who has refused to contest the polls himself, is considering to field his son, Shimla (rural) legislator Vikramaditya Singh.

Meanwhile, the meeting of partys screening committee, held in Delhi on Sunday, ended in vain, with no concrete outcome.

Another round of brainstorming will be held in a day or two.
Can the BJP manage another spectacular win in the 2019 polls in Maharashtra?

Five years ago, the Modi wave pushed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the last position among four main political parties that have dominated the state over last two decades, to numero uno.

The saffron alliance won 42 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 general polls (the BJP won 23 seats on its own), an unprecedented win that reduced the then ruling parties to single digits. The Congress won 2 seats in a state it had controlled, barring exceptions, since Independence.

The big challenge for the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP in the state in 2019 is to do a once-more, without the Modi wave. With the two main alliances pitched against one another, every seat lost by the saffron alliance is one seat less for the NDA and one seat more for the UPA. Fadnavis task is to minimise losses to the NDA. With a month-and-a-half to go for the four-phase polls in the state, it looks like the primary advantage is with the BJP.

SAFFRON TIE-UP

The pre-poll tie-up with the Shiv Sena managed tacitly through backchannel talks is the BJPs big strategic win ahead of the elections. By avoiding a three-corner fight, the BJP has prevented a split in its vote bank and potential losses, especially in urban constituencies. While CM Devendra Fadnavis had from day one backed the saffron alliance, the BJPs performance in Lok Sabha bypolls and later Assembly polls in the three crucial Hindi heartland states pushed the top leadership towards the tie-up.

The first win for us was when we got the Sena on our side. In this election, the role of alliances will be important as the Opposition is bandying together against the Modi government. With the alliance, a tally of 35+ seats is within reach for us, said a senior BJP functionary.

Despite the bitterness between the allies for the past four-and-a-half years, the BJP and Sena have already rolled out a plan to campaign together first by holding joint meetings of workers, followed by public rallies. They are also likely to bring out a common minimum programme for the state to show a united front. The allies have managed to iron out creases in the alliance. For instance, the Sena has cleared the path for BJP state president and MP Raosaheb Danves election in Jalna by quelling rebellion by Sena minister Arjun Khotkar. The BJP has cancelled land acquisition for ambitious Nanar oil refinery acting on its allys demand. The co-ordination between the saffron allies is in stark opposition to the disarray between their opponents, Congress-NCP.

MODI, WELFARE SCHEMES

The 2019 polls do not have a Modi wave similar to 2014, but the PM continues to be a key factor in the elections. The BJPs campaign strategy will centre around his personality, as the partys recent presidential style slogans  Phir Ek bar Modi Sarkar or Modi hai to Mumkin hai or Main bhi Chowkidar  indicate. This narrative has been built by projecting the lack of alternative PM candidate from the Opposition. The state issues aside, Maharashtra BJP leaders say the party will contest polls on this issue. The other main plank will be the governments report card. The campaign will be cemented by several public rallies that will be held by the PM himself in as many as half of the states Lok Sabha constituencies.

The campaign as well as the strategy for the 2019 general polls is from the Centre. Our job is to implement what we have been asked to do. Post Pulwama attack, there is a clear shift of sentiment again in favour of the decisive leadership of PM from a slight dip earlier. PM Modi, the nationalism narrative and welfare schemes of the Centre will form the spine of our campaign, said a BJP minister.

Fadnavis through his public rally speeches has been speaking about the schemes stressing on what the government has delivered especially to farmers and poor namely the Jan Dhan Yojana, Kisan Sanman Nidhi, Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana. The difference between the 2014 polls and 2019 polls for us is that we are now in power. In power, we are more accountable to the people. We will face these polls by presenting what we have achieved in the last four-and-a-half years  from building mega highways to rural electrification and creating more jobs to building homes, said Madhav Bhandari, BJP spokesperson.

PREP AND SANGH PARIVAR

If theres one difference between the preceding Congress-NCP governments and the BJP, it is the latter has used power to strengthen and expand the party base. Internal critics of the party say this expansion has come at the cost of the core BJP workers and largely by taking in opportunists across party lines.

But the logic of the BJP top brass is to accommodate outsiders if it helps the party electorally. In the last five years, the BJP has expanded its elected representatives across urban and rural self-government bodies to become number one in the state. This network will come in handy in the general polls. The recent poaching of Sujay Vikhe Patil, son of Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, leader of Opposition and senior Congress leader, by the BJP is just one such example. Sujay will be given a ticket from Ahmednagar constituency in Western Maharashtra, while the sitting BJP MP Dilip Gandhi will be asked to sit out of the contest. Besides Gandhi, several other non-performing MPs are likely to be asked to step down, including from Solapur, Latur, Gadchiroli-Chimur, Bhandara-Gondia and Pune.

The candidate for every seat is being decided post detailed surveys and considering local factors, especially caste. The CM has clearly said that we cant be complacent because of IAF air strikes or Modi factor, said a BJP state functionary.

Beyond candidate selection, the party organization has been preparing for these polls for the last year-and-a-half working at the booth-level cadre.

At the grassroots, the Sangh Parivars several wings, from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to Swadeshi Jagran Manch, also come together during polls to gauge sentiment and give feedback. This is routed through the organization secretary incharge of the BJP, who is nominated by the RSS, for every region, explained a BJP organisational secretary. Even a state-level booth co-ordinator from a small district can get a call from party president Amit Shahs team for feedback or review. So the organization is activated. The ground-level support from Sangh Parivar during elections is important for mobilisation as well as feedback, said a BJP state strategist.

ECONOMY, FARM DISTRESS

Despite its obvious strengths, the party faces challenges, especially owing to rural agrarian distress and the ongoing drought. Over half the state is reeling from drought this year. The farm economy figures also point to a slowdown with single digit growth since July 2017 and as low as 2.7 in October to December 2018.

There has been a lot of propaganda and marketing of schemes, from loan waiver to crop insurance, but farm incomes have been wiped out. Two years of drought and demonetisation has not allowed farmers to recover from economic shocks. They were promised double incomes in 2014. There is deep discontent, but this has been diverted to an extent by the nationalism narrative. A lot would depend on how the Congress raises farm distress, said Vijay Jawandia, farm activist from Vidarbha region. Vidarbha voted all 10 saffron MPs in 2014, but this time the BJP-Sena may face potential losses here.

While the Modi factor is important, issues such as unemployment, caste polarization and the difference between promises and deliverables will have an impact on the elections.

In a region like Marathwada, people are facing drought since October. One can assume that they will vote based on what they are facing and currently the picture is not rosy. Similarly, unemployment is quite stark, so youngsters in rural areas may be angry. But, a lot depends on perception, electoral management, said Surendra Jondhale, political analyst. He added that on both these counts, BJP scores very high. Both Jawandia and Jondhale agree that unlike 2014, this election is without the wave.

Beyond economy, at least two communities, Muslims as well as Dalits, are expected to vote against the party. The BJP does not expect the minority vote and believes polarisation in such constituencies will help its candidates. And, with regards to Dalit votes, there is likely to be a split in the vote bank with Congress as well as Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkars Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi claiming the Opposition votes. The Maratha versus OBC polarisation may also have an impact on the BJP as OBCs are unhappy with the 10% reservation to the poor and 16% to Marathas. The OBCs have traditionally supported the BJP. But the caste equations will get played out depending on candidates and local constituency level issues as well, said Jondhale.

The partys support base, the urban middle class is expected to back it, especially for Modi, citing lack of options.
Days after Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath asked Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh to choose a tough seat to enter the Lok Sabha election fray, the latter Monday said he was ready to contest from wherever party chief Rahul Gandhi wants him to.

Sigh also said that accepting challenges was his habit.

Rumours are around in political circles that Singh might be fielded from either Bhopal or Indore Lok Sabha constituency, which are the traditional strongholds of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and Alok Sanjar are sitting MPs from Indore and Bhopal, respectively.

Speculations on the likely candidature of Singh, a former chief minister, got strengthened when Kamal Nath told reporters recently that he had requested Singh to contest from one of the toughest seats, if the latter wants to enter the poll ring.

There are 2-3 seats in the state from where we have not won for the last 25-30 years, Nath had said in an apparent reference to Indore and Bhopal seats.

The Congress had last won Bhopal constituency in 1984, after assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The seat was the represented by Congress K N Pradhan.

Similarly, the Congress last won Indore in 1984, when Prakash Chandra Sethi defeated his opponents.

Responding to Naths request, Singh in a tweet Monday said: With the blessings of people of Raghogarh (erstwhile princely state), I have won in 1977 (assembly polls) also during the Janata Party wave. Accepting challenges is my habit. From any place my leader, Rahul Gandhi will ask me, I am ready to contest Lok Sabha polls. Narmade Har.

Thank you Kaman Nath ji for inviting me to contest from weak seats of Congress. He considered me capable for this and I am thankful to him, Singh said in another tweet.

Polls for total 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh will be held in four phases during April 29--May 19 period.

Madhya Pradesh Congress said it was incumbent upon senior leaders to contest from tough seats since the party wanted to win maximum number of seats in upcoming elections.

As the party wishes to win maximum number of seats in the state in Lok Sabha polls, senior leaders must contest from the tough seats the Congress had not won for long, state Congress media department chairperson Shobha Oza told PTI.

She said the entry of senior Congress leaders like Digvijaya Singh into poll fray from difficult terrain, would also boost morale of party workers.

In 2014 Parliamentary elections, the BJP won 27 seats in Madhya Pradesh while the Congress tally was just two.

Normally, Singh and his family members have contested Lok Sabha elections from their traditional Rajgarh seat.

Singh had represented Rajgarh in 1984 and 1991.

His brother Laxman Singh had represented the seat in 1994 (bypoll), 1996, 1998, and 1999 from Congress, and in 2004 from BJP.

In 2009, Digvijaya Singh loyalist Narayan Singh Amlabe won from Rajgarh.

Singhs choice of seat is hotly debated in the faction-ridden Congress. While a section of leaders want him to contest from Rajgarh, a safe seat, the gauntlet to enter the poll fray from either Indore or Bhopal is also thrown at him at the behest of another faction.

Singh had completed his schooling and BE from Indore, the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)
JD(U) vice-president and political strategist Prashant Kishor had an uncanny response to Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu calling him a Bihari dacoit.

Naidu had during a poll rally in Andhra Pradeshs Ongole accused Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao of doing criminal politics and poaching Congress and TDP MLAs, according to ANI.

He also said that Bihari dacoit Prasant Kishor has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh, the news agency reported.

Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu in Ongole: K Chandrashekar Rao is doing criminal politics. He is grabbing the MLAs of Congress and TDP. Bihari dacoit Prasant Kishore has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh. (18.03.2019) pic.twitter.com/y04MP1u7v4  ANI (@ANI) March 19, 2019

Kishor, who has helped strategise campaigns for Narendra Modi in 2014 Lok Sabha elections and Nitish Kumar in 2015 Bihar assembly polls, took to Twitter to say that he was not surprised with the baseless utterances of Naidu.

 An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So Im not surprised with the baseless utterances of @ncbn, he tweeted.

The poll strategist also added up with an advice for the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief to help him in the polls.

Sirji rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice & malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again, Kishor said.

An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So Im not surprised with the baseless utterances of @ncbn



Sirji rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice & malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again. https://t.co/CYSJNRJ43W  Prashant Kishor (@PrashantKishor) March 19, 2019

Faced with defections in large numbers, Naidu has been facing an uphill task at finalising candidates for the Lok Sabha elections and the simultaneous assembly polls to be held in a single phase on April 11.

There are 25 Lok Sabha seats and 175 assembly seats in the state.

The assembly elections will decide the fate of Naidu who is facing a strong opposition from YSR Congresss Jaganmohan Reddy, who has the tacit support of the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.
The Azad Maidan police on Monday arrested Neeraj Desai, the structural auditor who had certified Himalaya Bridge near Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT)  which collapsed last week  as safe for use.

Six people were killed and 31 others injured after a slab of the arterial bridge, which connected CSMT to the other side of Dadabhai Naoroji (DN) Road, came crashing down on March 14. Pedestrians using the bridge fell 35 feet into rush-hour traffic.

On Monday, the police applied the more stringent section 304 (2) of the Indian Penal Code (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against Desai, 46, the structural auditor. We have collected sufficient evidence of negligence, said Abhishek Trimukhe, the deputy commissioner of police (Zone 1).

Desai will be produced before a local court on Tuesday.

A 2016 survey conducted by Desais firm, Professor DD Desai Associated Engineering Consultants and Analysts Private Limited, said Himalaya Bridge only required minor repairs.

The bridge was among 296 foot overbridges and road overbridges whose structural safety was checked by the Mumbai civic body between 2016 and 2018.

The action against the structural auditor comes just four days after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) issued a show-cause notice to Desais firm and the contractor who did repair work in 2013.

A day after the collapse, BMC suspended two civic officials and said their primary investigation found the staff tasked with supervising the repairs of the bridge had failed to identify the issues that may have led to the collapse.

The Azad Maidan police said their investigation team took the statements of the 31 people injured in the incident.

We also recorded the statement of Sanjay Darade, the chief engineer of BMCs bridges department, to understand how work related to the safety and maintenance of the Himalaya Bridge was done, said a senior police officer, not wishing to be named. We wanted to know what the BMCs responsibilities are after the audit report was submitted, and about the junior and senior engineers entrusted to undertake maintenance work, the officer said.

The police took Darades statement on Sunday, and visited Desais Vile Parle office on Monday. Desai was not at the office. He was later found at an office in Saki Naka from where he was arrested, said Azad Maidan police officials. The police said more arrests were expected soon.

The BMC has now ordered a re-audit of all 296 FOBs and road over bridges (ROBs).
A woman intern and a printer have been arrested by the Thane Rural police for allegedly murdering the editor of a news portal and magazine, whose body was found on Saturday.

Nityanand Pandey, 44, the victim, had been missing since March 15. His body was found under a bridge in Bhiwandi.

Police said Pandey had been sexually assaulting the woman, an intern at the news portal he ran, for two years. She had committed the murder along with Satish Mishra, 34, who used to print Pandeys magazine, police said.

The woman and Mishra were arrested on the basis of call data records (CDR) of the intern and the victim, police said.

Sanjay Hazare, police inspector of Bhiwandi police station, said, Over the past two years, Pandey would allegedly sexually harass the woman at the workplace and she had protested against it. He refused to give her a promotion and coaxed her to have sexual relations with him. To stop the sexual abuse, the woman contacted Mishra and convinced him to be a part of the plan to murder Pandey, said Hazare. Police officers said Pandey owed printing dues to Mishra and was delaying payment.

Hazare said that on Friday, the duo convinced Pandey to go for a drive in his car to Uttan, Bhayander, under the pretext of showing him a sea-facing house there. But during the drive, Mishra offered Pandey a drink laced with sedatives. After Pandey became unconscious, the duo stopped the car and using a rope, strangled him to death. They dumped the body in Bhiwandi, Hazare said.
The most recent episode of comedian Hasan Minhajs Netflix show Patriot Act, in which he discusses the upcoming Indian general elections, is attracting attention from all quarters.

While a certain section of Twitter is praising Hasan for his choice of subject - he discusses Prime Minister Modi and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath in the episode - others are accusing him of being biased. There is a whole other contingent urging viewers to quickly watch the episode, just in case it is taken down.

The entire episode has been uploaded on YouTube. You can watch it here:

Meanwhile @hasanminhaj hits the ball out of the park with his latest on the Indian elections, wrote journalist Rana Ayyub, adding, watch it before Netflix decides to drop it.

Comedian Kunal Kamra wrote, @NetflixIndia as you notice great traffic on this episode, you would realize that shying away from confrontational content whether political or social is bad for business.

Meanwhile, another Twitter user commented, The latest Hasan Minhaj show has content outside comedy! His remarks about RSS is hurtful!

Here are some reactions:

Meanwhile @hasanminhaj hits the ball out of the park with his latest on the Indian elections. He has got you covered from Gowalker to Adityanath, watch it before Netflix decides to drop it.  Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) March 17, 2019

You HAVE to watch this show (and especially this episode if you live/vote in India.) @hasanminhaj , I can't even imagine what your comment-pages look like right now!  https://t.co/VFtGAgGmLq  VISHAL DADLANI (@VishalDadlani) March 19, 2019

Watch @hasanminhaj's Patriot Act on Indian elections...



Bold, Brave, Hillarious. @NetflixIndia as you notice great traffic on this episode, you would realize that shying away from confrontational content whether political or social is bad for business...  Kunal Kamra (@kunalkamra88) March 18, 2019

@NetflixIndia @netflix The latest Hasan Minhaj show has content outside comedy! His remarks about RSS is hurtful! May be you can call it comedy, but its a hatred content! How could you allow such content? Is there no governance over content? #HasanMinhaj  Subrahmanya Hegde (@SubbuSirsi) March 17, 2019

So @hasanminhaj is warned of severe consequences if he does satire on Indian politics- from America 

Do spare a moment for those who do satire on Indian politics- from India 

BTW Minhaj is on @NetflixIndia ... Watch it before a new proposed FDI policy shuts down the platform. pic.twitter.com/ebWY2sW0oU  The DeshBhakt (@akashbanerjee) March 17, 2019

By NOT listening to his desi uncles and aunts @hasanminhaj did the best thing ever!. One of the best episodes of @patriotact.

Hasan scrutinizes the upcoming elections in #India. so hilariously realistic!



Watch it before @netflix decides to drop ithttps://t.co/76AI1vGASc pic.twitter.com/XnmNQqCQCf  Mona Farooq (@moonalala) March 19, 2019

An earlier episode of the series, in which Hasan spoke about the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, was pulled off from Saudi Arabia after the prince requested Netflix take the episode down.

A request? Does MBS think Netflix is a wedding DJ? Hasan reacted to the news, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Yeah, quick request. You wanna take down just that one episode thats criticizing me and then just play Ushers Yeah. A request is when a neighbour tells you to turn the music down. A demand is when that neighbour is Conor McGregor and youre in his parking spot.

Several OTT platforms such as Netflix and Hotstar have agreed to self-regulating content in India, according to a Variety report. The new Code of Best Practices for Online Curated Content Providers, created by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, has been signed by Netflix, Hotstar, Sony Liv, Eros Now, Arre, Alt Balaji and Voot. Amazon Prime Video and Facebook have not signed on.

According to the report, streamers have agreed to not exhibit content that disrespects the Indian flag, shows children engaged in real or simulated sex, offends religious sentiments, promotes terrorism or contains officially banned material.

Netflix India was involved in a legal battle over the depiction of former PM Rajiv Gandhi in the series Sacred Games in 2018.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
China on Tuesday assured Pakistan of firm support to protect its territorial integrity and dignity during a high-level bilateral strategic dialogue in Beijing. At this meeting, Islamabad had raised the rapidly deteriorating situation in Kashmir and called on New Delhi to relook its policies in the state.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Pakistan foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Chinese state councilor and foreign minister, Wang Yi appreciated Islamabads efforts to ease tensions with India following the terror attack in Kashmirs Pulwama, claimed by Pakistan-based terror outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

The attack was followed by the Indian Air Force carrying out strikes on a JeM training camp and the air force of the two countries engaging each other in a dogfight near the Line of Control.

Last week, China had for the fourth time put a technical hold on listing JeM chief, Masood Azhar as a global terrorist at the UN security council, saying it needed more time to study the case.

On Tuesday, Wang reiterated Beijings backing for Islamabad.

No matter how things change in the world and the region, China will firmly support Pakistan upholding its independence and territorial integrity and dignity, he said amid growing international pressure on Pakistan to take concrete steps against cross-border terrorism.

Wang said China has always believed that peace and stability in south Asia was in the joint interests of countries in the region and is what the international community wishes.

Read more| Behind Chinas move to block Masood Azhars listing, a strategic reason

China appreciates Pakistans constructive efforts to ease the situation and calls on Pakistan and India to continue to exercise restraint and resolve the differences that exist via dialogue and peaceful means, Wang said.

Wang said Sino-Pakistan ties remain rock solid and vibrant despite the changing international landscape.

China also called on India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and peacefully resolve differences through dialogue.

The two ministers were addressing the press after the first-ever China-Pakistan Foreign Minister-level strategic dialogue.

Qureshi said the situation in Kashmir was discussed during his dialogue with Wang.

I also briefed the foreign minister on the rapidly deteriorating situation on the Indian side of Kashmir, intensification of human rights violations, especially after Pulwama, he said, referring to where the attack took place.

This is a concern because that leads to a reaction and that reaction at times creates tensions in the region which must be avoided, Qureshi added.

I think theres a need for a new assessment on how the situation on the Indian side of Kashmir should be handled by the Indians. There are now voices within India that are questioning the efficacy of the policy that theyve followed for the last so many years, Qureshi said.

He said Pakistan was always ready and is still ready for talks with India to resolve differences.

The Pakistani foreign minister hailed Chinas support to his country in the challenging times and said Islamabad was committed to the expeditious implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Qureshi appreciated Chinas stand that there should be no double standards in combating terrorism as he thanked Beijing for its support to Pakistan in international fora on the issue of tackling the menace.

Qureshi said that China has been helpful in these challenging times for Pakistan.

The Chinese government was very generous in supporting Pakistan. We had good discussions...We are committed to the expeditious implementation of CPEC, Qureshi said.

Read more| Masood Azhar issue will be resolved, says Chinese envoy

New Delhi has repeatedly lodged protests with China on the CPEC as it goes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, saying the project violates Indias territorial integrity.

The CPEC, which connects Gwadar Port in Balochistan with Chinas Xinjiang province, is the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinpings ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will attend the second Belt and Road Forum to be held in Beijing end of next month.

At an earlier meeting on Tuesday, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan told Qureshi that China supports ...Pakistan in seizing opportunities and tackling challenges, and properly handling relations with its neighbors, to achieve stable development.

Qureshi told Vice President Wang that Pakistan appreciates Chinas constructive role in moderating tensions between India and Pakistan.
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Rene Emmanuel Sadi, ministre de la communication, porte-parole du gouvernement archives

The Minister of Communication and Government Spokesperson, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, has warned that President Paul Biya, shouldnt be compared to the detained leader of the Cameroon Renaisaance Movement(CRM), following a call made by the opposition candidate to hold talks with Biya.

To Rene Sadi, Kamto is just a normal citizen and nothing else. He was speaking this Tuesday morning on Radio France International, where he reacted to the media's worry if Paul Biya would agree to meet with Maurice Kamto of the CRM, following an earlier call made by the opposition candidate that he was ready for dialogue.

 President Paul Biya can not be considered to be on the same footing Mr. Kamto. Mr. Kamto is a citizen like everyone else. I think that today, he must stop being considered alike. I want to point out that Mr. Kamto and his supporters are before the Cameroonian courts for facts unrelated to their political commitment  , said Rene Sadi.

The RFI journalists further questioned why Kamto and his supporters were facing a death penalty , when they hadnt killed anyone. Mr Sadi replied,  The laws, are the laws and the judges will appreciate the case. It is up to the Cameroonian judges to appreciate the gravity of the facts of each and every one, and to take sentences that each person deserves .

During his press briefing in Yaounde, Maurice Kamto's lawyer, Eric Dupond Moretti, expressed the wish to personally meet President PaulBiya too,on the plight of his client, a step Rene Sadi thinks is misleading.

 Listen, we ask Moretti that he did not come to Cameroon as a mediator .decried the Minister.

He called on the lawyer to focus on his judicial.file and not involve in arguments that surround claims over Kamtos victory, at the 2018 presidential elections.

Kamto and over 100 supporters of his party were arrested after a nation wide protest to decry electoral fraud and injustices in Cameroon. He is facing a terrorism charge.
Renovation

19 March 2019

A lesson in monochromatic modernism on Portugal's wild Atlantic coast, Memmo Baleeira has long established itself as a hub for design aficionados, surf junkies, and nature lovers alike. Not content with standing still however, the first sun-dappled days of spring herald the unveiling of the 144-room hotel's fresh new lookthe results of an extensive renovation project comprising the creation of restaurant "Fornaria Memmo", complete remodeling of the outdoor pool area, and a reinvigorated aesthetic. Throw in a newly refurbished wellness space, children's play areas complete with climbing wall, and bike and surfboard stations, and you have the epitome of a house for all seasons.

A new take on seaside modernismTrouble viewing? View online. Memmo BaleeiraSeaside revivalBerlin, March 19, 2019 - A lesson in monochromatic modernism on Portugal's wild Atlantic coast, Memmo Baleeira has long established itself as a hub for design aficionados, surf junkies, and nature lovers alike. Not content with standing still however, the first sun-dappled days of spring herald the unveiling of the 144-room hotel's fresh new lookthe results of an extensive renovation project comprising the creation of restaurant "Fornaria Memmo", complete remodeling of the outdoor pool area, and a reinvigorated aesthetic. Throw in a newly refurbished wellness space, children's play areas complete with climbing wall, and bike and surfboard stations, and you have the epitome of a house for all seasons. www.designhotels.com/memmo-baleeira

Set amid a dramatic landscape that is characterized by pristine beaches, jagged cliffs, and the thumping roar of the Atlantic surf, it is little wonder that the creative team at Memmo Baleeira looked to its surroundings for design inspiration. The hotel's former white-on-white aesthetic has been lifted with earthy tones and the use of raw, natural materials, while clusters of lush foliage are a nod to the area's pastoral verdure. In the public areas, neutral, sand-colored rugs and sofas upholstered in tonal linens add warmth while maintaining the hotel's unique brand of restful minimalism, allowing for its spectacular locale to take centerstage. The hotel's 144 guestrooms feature a refreshed color palette of greys and browns, augmented by signature design pieces such as the blue-and-white throws traditionally crafted from pure mountain wool by sustainable Portuguese brand Burel.

Paying homage to the area's gastronomic heritage is central to the ethos of the hotel's first-floor restaurant Fornaria Memmo. An open wood-fired oven is at the heart of the culinary concept, which focuses on regional produce and locally-caught fish prepared simply in dishes such as "roasted octopus in rosemary olive oil" and "black linguini with shrimp and cuttlefish". The refreshing simplicity of the menu is complemented by the clean lines of the restaurant's interiors, which are defined by off-white walls and natural wooden cabinetry. Cozy rattan sofas with plush throw cushions and Scandinavian chairs from the hotel's original Sixties' incarnation sit alongside modern design masterpieces from the likes of Philippe Starck and Tom Vac, while the stoneware is a feat of ceramic craftsmanship courtesy of Costa Nova.

From its position stretched flat on a hill, Memmo Baleeira overlooks the charming village of Sagres and, of course, the vast expanse of windswept coastline. Providing the perfect perch from which to soak up the breathtaking views, the outdoor pool area has undergone a complete transformation. A sun-drenched deck dotted with loungers frames the heated pool, while the newly established poolside bar ensures that sundowners flow way past sunset. For those drawn to the siren call of the crashing waves below, the hotel's new surfboard store and rental is a very welcome addition to Memmo's existing surf school that offers unrivalled access to the Sagres surf scene. The bike station, on the other hand, opens up the myriad of trails through the brooding clifftops and heady eucalyptus woods to give guests an invaluable insight into this untamed corner of the Algarve.

Closer to home, smaller guests are well served by the opening of two children's play areas, complete with climbing wall and trampolines. Meanwhile, adults can unwind and recharge at the enhanced wellness area, which features an indoor pool, sauna, Turkish bath, and spacious gym.
Press Release

19 March 2019

London UK/Spokane WA - Magnuson Worldwide's global hotel brand is proud to announce the addition of Drop Tyne Lodge located in Franklin to the collection.

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Near Harlan County Lake in South Central Nebraska, Drop Tyne Lodge is proudly Veteran owned and operated. Walk 3 minutes to the Franklin County Museum or 6 minutes to the Franklin County Memorial Hospital. Visit the Franklin County Fairgrounds by car in 6 minutes to take part in community events during the summer. Kearney Regional Airport (EAR) is a 50-minute drive away.

The property has a cosy home town feel with excellent local eating. The front lobby is available to guests from the hours of 7 am to 10 pm and features an indoor fireplace for those cold winter nights. Minifridges and microwaves are available in-room for guest convenience. The hotel has laptop friendly work space and wireless internet with continuous access.

Thomas Magnuson, CEO of Magnuson Worldwide says: "We are delighted to be welcoming the team at the Drop Tyne Lodge to the Magnuson family."
Press Release

19 March 2019

A great idea, initiated by the HSMAI Region Europe Revenue Optimization Advisory Board and supported with a lot of enthusiasm by the other Advisory Boards, is now a reality! We are proud to present you the HSMAI Region Europe COMMERCIAL SUMMER CAMP 2019  4th - 9th of August 2019, Amsterdam

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The kick off will be on Sunday and the program will last until Friday evening. The program includes a two day 'Executive Development' training focused on Leadership skills, by Cornell University!

You will have access to industry peers across departments, countries and companies.

Potential candidate profile

The Commercial Summer Camp focuses on developing cross-functional strategic thinking and leadership skills, to enable tomorrow's commercial leaders in the hospitality industry. The ideal candidate is already a sales, marketing, or revenue management expert or a property leader with the ambition and desire to understand all of the specific disciplines and what it takes to keep them all running smoothly together.

Cornell University coming to Europe in August

As part of HSMAI Region Europe Commercial Summer Camp 2019 Professor Cathy Enz is confirmed for the Essentials Skills for Leadership program. That means you will get a certificate from Cornell for 2 of the days in addition to the certificate from HSMAI.

About the two days Executive Development program by Cornell University:

Essential Skills for Successful Leadership

Explore what defines leadership success

Focus on your own leadership style, cultural intelligence, and motivational skills

Understand how to inspire high levels of performance from all types of individuals

Being a leader - Keys to success

A framework for understanding others: Johari window

Leadership bias and thinking traps: Cognitive shortcuts, Attribution theory, Unconscious bias, self fulfilling prophecy

Emotional intelligence and motivation

Leadership process vs management process

Skills required for success as a leader

Your cultural intelligence assessed

Creating a culture of excellence

Your leadership brand and personal strategy

Developing tomorrow's leaders

About the 3 following days:

You will be able to develop an overall Commercial Plan. This will expose you to certain elements that is very important for you to understand as a leader and that you do not come across often in other programs.

Topics include:

Distribution strategy - which channels and why? Cost implications, branding implications, marketing implications, revenue implications. Commercial Technology strategy - what choices to make to PMS, RMS, CRS, Channel Manager, cost implications, training implications, integration implications and more. Branding strategy - join a chain, stay independent, what type of chain and why? (global, regional or local). Building commercial teams - on-property, central, clustered, more sales people, less sales people, digital marketing person, revenue manager(s), training and education costs, outsourcing and more. Customer Centricity. About delivering the promises made, managing the perception and trust of the brand on social and digital media through the experiences delivered. Data and CRM strategy - GDPR, personalization, loyalty programs and guest recognition. Calculating ROI on marketing and sales activities / spend and how to communicate to the business Sales Theory, Sales Strategy, Sales Leadership and Hands-on tips.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner sessions with the "experts" would allow you to fine-tune your plan and get more information on what you are missing or guidance and recommendation to strengthen your business plans.

At the HSMAI Commercial Summer Camp you will be forced to think about all the pros and cons and why decisions are being made and the strategies behind this. This allows you after your return from the summer camp to have genuine discussions with your boss and Senior Management about these types of strategies and you can play a much larger and important role within your company.

Already during the Spring, as soon as you have signed up for the Summer Camp, you will get access to some of the experts that will give you some homework so are well prepared in August.

You will also get access to our digital platform where you can communicate with other attendees.

Price for HSMAI Region Europe members per person:

2900 Euro ex VAT including full day program, material, coffee, lunch and dinner.

Price for Non members per person:

5900 Euro ex VAT including full day program, material, coffee, lunch and dinner.

Secure space for you and/or your best team members already now! Please contact us at [email protected]

Task force:

It will be an inspiring and insightful week. The development of the content will be supported by a special task force representing the six HSMAI Region Europe Advisory Boards:
Supplier News

19 March 2019

Orlando, FL  Adventures on the Gorgepremier West Virginia adventure destination on the rim of the New River Gorgehas tapped the Flip.to advocacy marketing platform to drive growth by opening up an entirely new channel of travelers for their vacation resort.

6 Months of Growth with Advocacy

Launched in August of 2018, the property has sparked conversations with travelers worldwide, since reaching a new audience of over 160,000. This is in addition to converting thousands of unique site visitors and warm leads who are being nurtured down the path to becoming a future guest with the help of the Flip.to platform.

By tapping into Flip.to, Adventures on the Gorge is turning their travelers into storytellers who go on to share the highlight of their stays to friends and family around the globe. In turn, Adventures on the Gorge is reaching wide, new audiences who are the perfect demographic for their unique experience.

Trust is a critical piece of the success of the platform. As Nielson, Google, Expedia and other sources have continuously shown over time, recommendations from friends & family weigh heavily on travel decisions being made today. This is especially true at the point of inspirationto the tune of  of all travelers, according to Expedia's research for their 2016 American, British, and Canadian travelers' paths to purchase.

With these impacts, the platform has opened up a new marketing channel to drive direct revenue for Adventures on the Gorge.

Gearing Up For 2019

A pioneer in the adventure resort industry, Adventures on the Gorge has over 40 years of experience bringing unique, adrenaline-fueled adventures to those traveling to the New River Gorge. Their peak visitation runs from mid-spring to the end of summer, edged with shoulder seasons and closing in the winter to prepare for the next peak.

For their marketing team, this meant the ability to continue reaching new audiences over the shoulder and closed seasons was critical to maintain growth.

The advocacy platform presented a unique solution to not only drive more business into their shoulder seasons, but also to continue to nurture and grow an audience of potential future bookers heading into next spring, setting up for the following year.

In fact, even during the months they've been closed, travelers have continued sharing stories to friends and family worldwide. This has added up to 60K+ in reach since December alone, raising awareness to hundreds of potential visitors each and every day, all who are being introduced in the most authentic way possible.

The platform goes on to help convert this pool of prospects, previously out of reach, into warm leads who are now in unique, personal conversationseach being nurtured to a future stay for the the next season.

Taking A Storytelling Approach To Marketing

Beyond building an entirely new audience and growing relationships with their guests, the platform has helped amplify their efforts with a storytelling approach to marketing, letting guests share unique perspectives that only they can providemore authentic than any ad.

With Flip.to, Adventures on the Gorge is netting a library of authentic, legally-owned content to highlight the travel experiences their guests are sharing, with the resort at the center of the story.

These candid adventures from their travelers have built a strong narrative that's true to their brand and inspires travel, infusing a level of authenticity into all of their efforts.

Stories and experiences shared by recent travelers to Adventures on the Gorge

See more at: https://adventuresonthegorge.stories.travel

Getting Started

Drawn to the rim of the New River Gorge by world-class whitewater, rock climbing, mountain biking, and hiking, the founders of Adventures on the Gorge were driven to create a resort that could live up to the natural wonders that surrounded it. To see the authentic experiences being shared firsthand, visit, http://adventuresonthegorge.stories.travel/gallery or reserve your stay today at https://adventuresonthegorge.com/.

To get started with Flip.to for hotels, the advocacy platform for that reaches, converts and inspires and entirely new global audience every day, take a tour, or see other hotels shining on the platform, here: https://www.flip.to/customers/hotels.

More about Adventures on the Gorge

Named one of the top six adventure resorts in the country by U.S. News & World Report and celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2018, Adventures on the Gorge features an array of outdoor adventures including whitewater rafting, aerial adventures, rock climbing, kayaking, stand up paddleboarding, fishing, mountain biking and hiking. The resort also offers an array of accommodations, restaurants, bars, shops and a conference center.

Travelers can find out more about Adventures on the Gorge online, by calling 1-855-379-8738, or connecting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, TripAdvisor, YouTube, and Vimeo and signing up for AOTG e-newsletter.

More about Flip.to

Flip.to, the advocacy platform for destinations, hotels and vacation rentalsReach, inspire and convert an entirely new global audience of travelers every day with Flip.to.

Flip.to lets your guests introduce your hotel to the world, combining trust with massive reach and introducing your hotel to travelers just one degree awaywarm leads who are the perfect fit. Start building your ever-growing team of advocates who turn meaningful moments into measurable ROI, and instantly see the unmatched impact when you switch on this entirely new channel. http://flip.to
We all agree that managing a hotel in the time of crisis is no mean feat. And, if that crisis is of an extreme nature, your management skills are truly put to test. Like Paul Rusesabagina, the Manager of Hotel des Mille Collines from the movie, Hotel Rwanda who provided shelter to over 1200 refugees in the capital city of Kigali and saved their lives during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

We all agree that managing a hotel in the time of crisis is no mean feat. And, if that crisis is of an extreme nature, your management skills are truly put to test. Like Paul Rusesabagina, the Manager of Hotel des Mille Collines from the movie, Hotel Rwanda who provided shelter to over 1200 refugees in the capital city of Kigali and saved their lives during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

Source - npr.org

If youre wondering why we are talking about him now in 2019, heres why  As a hotelier, Paul maintained and displayed the highest level of integrity in the midst of a bloody civil war, took care of refugees as his guests and used his well-harbored contacts to save their lives. To many of us who have watched the movie, it is clear that it was his profession as a hotelier that compelled him to fight against waves of odds to ensure the safety of his guests.

Here are some hotel management lessons that every hotelier can learn from Paul Rusesabagina 

#1 Motivate your staff to put their best foot forward

Source - Lionsgate Films



You cant run a hotel without having a set of highly motivated staff. The movie shows some of the staff members at Hotel des Mille Collines displaying complete carelessness towards their duties, in the backdrop of a civil war that was raging at that point of time. Paul takes stock of the situation and urges everybody by saying, Get back to work, we have a hotel to run.

Happy and motivated employees are your assets. When happy and led by the right manager, they feel involved, serve guests with utmost sincerity and are more creative in their work. All these add value to your hotel business and help you in increasing your hotels overall profitability.

#2 Take care of your hotels reputation

Source - Lionsgate Films

Try to recall that scene from the movie, where Paul convinces his boss over the phone not to close down the hotel, given the civil unrest in Rwanda. He says, That would be very bad for our reputation. Hotel des Mille Collines is an oasis of calm for all our loyal guests.

This shows how fiercely he safeguarded the hotels reputation even in the most adverse situation. So, your hotels reputation should be literally everything to you, thats how your guests look at your brand.

Consider this  in todays world of online travel, if you could manage to increase your online reputation score by 1%, you can increase your ADR by around 7%. Plus, it also helps you increase your occupancy rates by around 1.4%.

#3 Nothing comes before your guests







Source - Lionsgate Films

Happy guests are loyal to your brand and they eventually become your brand ambassadors. Not only this, if your guests are happy with your offerings and services, chances are that you may witness a 97% increase in your revenues and profits.

In the movie, Paul refers to the refugees as guests and directs his staff to allot them some rooms. The lesson here is  come hell or high water, you should welcome guests to your property with a smiling face, take care of them and their needs to make them feel at home.

#4 Recommend your best products to guests





Source - Lionsgate Films

In the movie, you will find Paul recommending lobster for lunch to the non-refugee guests. He goes on to explain how good it is and how the guests are going to like it. You can also see him promoting his hotels most popular single malt whisky to his guests.

Understand your hotels best products and recommend them to your guests. It could be your chef-crafted food and beverage, wellness spa or anything that could make your guests happy. It is absolutely okay to call it the art of upselling. This helps you earn more revenue.

We all know that the human touch is the most important factor when it comes to inculcating all these lessons. But, with changing times, you also need to leverage the power of new-age hospitality technology solutions to serve guests and earn their loyalty.

Sources

2017 smart decision guide to hotel guest experience management

RateGain blog

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B2B travel conference organiser EyeforTravel has released a new report that explores the Chinese outbound travel market, with particular focus on Chinas largest distribution platform, Ctrip.

B2B travel conference organiser EyeforTravel has released a new report that explores the Chinese outbound travel market, with particular focus on Chinas largest distribution platform, Ctrip.



The largest distribution platform in China, Ctrips gross revenues have grown at a 42% CAGR over the last 5 years, according to EyeforTravels free report The Future of the Online Travel Giants  Ctrip- download the free report here.

With Chinas outbound tourist market expected to account for over 160 million trips by 2020 (McKinsey, 2018) anyone looking to grow their revenue stream should understand Chinas biggest players.

With over 300 million registered members worldwide, Ctrip has successfully established its position as the worlds third largest OTA. Since opening in 1999, the company has seen a steady increment in revenue, combining the online travel agency and tour operator models, and offering the largest product portfolio available in the Chinese market.

EyeforTravels latest report contains a comprehensive guide of the pros and cons of partnering with Ctrip  while the company is sure to provide you with access to the Chinese market, as competition in the global OTA market increases, it may be more cost-effective to partner with players who work closer to home.

Since Ctrip has a near-monopoly in its home market of China, their local industry knowledge is a huge advantage for anyone looking to sell in China  partnering with them will undoubtedly increase your exposure to Chinese travel consumers. Still, with Booking and Expedia increasingly eyeing up the Chinese market, the report evaluates the possibility of Ctrip retaining its stronghold over Chinas outbound tourism industry.

The report evaluates Ctrips success and considers some of their key strengths and competitive advantages  among them, their dominance in the Chinese industry, scale and their vertically integrated model and comprehensive product offering.

On the other hand, key weaknesses include Ctrips dependence on the Chinese market, generally low brand awareness in other areas and its low profitability compared to international peers.

Finally, the report evaluates Ctrips future prospects, considering everything from its strategic focus to its expansion into other parts of the world.

Helen Raff, Chief Product Officer at EyeforTravel says this report really covers everything you know about Ctrip and the local Chinese market. Anyone hoping to market their product to Chinese tourists should look at this to get a better understanding of local consumer trends and what it takes to make it big in China.

The full report is packed with insight and exclusive facts about Ctrip and Chinas growing outbound tourism industry  download your copy for free here: http://bit.ly/2F4g7bK

For more information go to http://bit.ly/2F4g7bK or contact helen@eyefortravel.com

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April 9-11; HITEC Europe is an extension to the worlds largest and oldest hospitality exposition and conference brand

Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP), an international nonprofit association and producers of the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC), has sold all exhibit spaces for the upcoming HITEC Europe 2019. A floor plan with a list of participating companies is available on the HITEC Europe website. HITEC Europe will take place from April 9-11 at the Palau de Congressos in Palma, Mallorca, Spain.

For companies who were not able to reserve a booth in time, a waiting list for booth space is available with placement given on a first-come, first-served basis. HFTP also offers exhibitor supporter packages for non-exhibiting companies, which grants access to many of the same perks HITEC exhibitors receive - the next best thing to having a booth. Exhibitor supporters receive two full conference registrations, recognition in the HITEC mobile app, as well as recognition at the conference.

"HITEC Europe in 2019 will be located in the premiere travel destination of Palma, Mallorca a locale with hundreds of hotels and headquarters to numerous hospitality companies," said Carl Weldon, HFTP COO - Europe. "Not only is the island a draw due to its large hospitality market, but the program for HITEC Europe will be a cannot miss event for industry professionals who are involved in the technology operations at hotels, resorts and more."

HITEC Europe 2019 brings together thought leaders, practitioners and vendors to cover hospitality technology trends and practices. A highlight to the program is the keynote presentation on Wednesday, April 10 by award-winning futurist Rohit Talwar. Talwar is an entrepreneur and specialist advisor on business transformation, disruptive strategies and radical innovation. Profiled as one the top 10 global future thinkers by the Independent newspaper, his controversial and inspiring keynote speeches enable teams to think differently, act fast and be first to the future.

For exhibiting companies, sponsorship opportunities are available for companies to stand out and have their organization name seen by the thousand plus attendees before and after the show. See which opportunities are available and download the marketing kit by visiting the event website.

For more information about supporter packages, contact HFTP Sales and Accounts Manager Matt Chambers at matt.chambers@hftp.org or +1 (512) 220-6443.

HITEC Europe will be the first of three HITEC events in 2019. The larger HITEC Minneapolis will take place June 17-20 at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA. HITEC Dubai will take place in November 12-13 at The Festival Arena by Intercontinental at Dubai Festival City in Dubai, UAE.

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Revenue per available room up 2.2 Percent to CAD89.46

The Canadian hotel industry recorded positive year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 24 February through 2 March 2019, according to data from STR.

In comparison with the week of 25 February through 3 March 2018, the industry reported the following:

 Occupancy: +1.2% to 60.1%

 Average daily rate (ADR): +1.0% to CAD148.85

 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +2.2% to CAD89.46

Among the provinces and territories, Manitoba registered the largest increase in occupancy (+9.5% to 68.1%), which resulted in the only double-digit jump in RevPAR (+10.7% to CAD85.13).

British Columbia posted the highest jump in ADR (+3.1% to CAD169.09).

Newfoundland and Labrador reported the largest declines in each of the three key performance metrics: occupancy (-22.4% to 38.9%), ADR (-8.2% to CAD120.80) and RevPAR (-28.8% to CAD46.94).

Saskatchewan saw the second-largest drop in RevPAR (-6.8% to CAD61.06).

Prince Edward Island experienced the second-steepest decrease in occupancy (-8.0% to 30.6%).

STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com.

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Revenue per available room down 1.5 Percent to CAD93.17

The Canadian hotel industry recorded mixed year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 3-9 March 2019, according to data from STR.

In comparison with the week of 4-10 March 2018, the industry reported the following:

 Occupancy: -1.9% to 59.9%

 Average daily rate (ADR): +0.4% to CAD155.46

 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): -1.5% to CAD93.17

Among the provinces and territories, Manitoba registered the largest increases in occupancy (+5.3% to 69.5%) and RevPAR (+9.8% to CAD88.97).

Prince Edward Island posted the largest lift in ADR (+7.3% to CAD113.45) but the steepest decline in occupancy (-17.7% to 29.6%), which resulted in the second-largest decline in RevPAR (-11.7% to CAD33.61).

Nova Scotia reported the largest drop in RevPAR (-13.7% to CAD77.65), due primarily to the only other double-digit decrease in occupancy (-11.0% to 60.8%).

Newfoundland and Labrador saw the steepest decline in ADR (-7.0% to CAD123.11) and the third-largest drop in RevPAR (-11.2% to CAD55.75).

STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com.

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The iconic "Bred" Air Jordan 4 is returning to retailers this Spring, as Jordan Brand continues its year long celebration of the AJ4's 30th anniversary.

Originally, it was believed that the black and red 4s would be available on May 11, but it is now being reported that the kicks will be back in stock a week early on May 4.

(Air Jordan 4 "Bred": Image Via @AJSole23)

Looking just as they did when they originally released in 1989, the "Bred" Air Jordan 4s come equipped with a black nubuck upper with fire red accents and cement grey "Nike Air" branding on the heel. The last time the "Bred" Air Jordan 4s featured the OG branding on the heel was back in 1999.

Check out some additional photos of the 2019 rendition below while we await official images and release details.

(Air Jordan 4 "Bred": Image Via @AJSole23)

(Air Jordan 4 "Bred": Image Via @AJSole23)

(Air Jordan 4 "Bred": Image Via @AJSole23)
It's been over four months since Mac Miller passed away, and ex-girlfriend Ariana Grande continues to honor him however she can. The pair split up just months before his untimely death in September 2018 after he accidentally overdosed on a mixture of cocaine, fentanyl, and alcohol. The tragic news allegedly caused Grande and her then-fiance Pete Davidson to break up, and since then Grande has paid tribute to her former lover.

On Monday, Grande performed a show in Albany, New York, the first stop on her worldwide "Sweetener" tour. While fans filed in and waited for Grande to take to the stage and start the show, Grande made sure that Miller's songs were playing in the background. When Grande was dating Davidson, she inked herself with "8418," Davidson's father's FDNY badge number, a beautiful tribute considering his father died responding to the World Trade Center bombing on September 11, 2001. Yet, she covered that tattoo with one that was dedicated to Miller's dog, Myron.

Grande also got a tattoo of the word "Always" on her ribcage, another piece of ink that was for Davidson. She recently updated that one as well with leaves completed by tattoo artist Mira Mariah, also known as GirlNewYork. "Post run thrus, 3 am with @girlknewyork :) not a cover up just evolvin  also, our show opens tomorrow. i love u and im so grateful. see u soon," Grande wrote on Instagram.

Mariah mirrored the same image on her Instagram page and wrote, "Middle of the night leaves on the queen. I love you thank you this is all! So! Exciting! Happy tour "
The Gulf Coast has, for the first time, become a net exporter of oil as the region rapidly expands its refining, pipeline and terminal networks to handle the flood of crude from Texas shale fields and ship petroleum around the world.

But the milestone, reported by the Energy Department Monday, is juxtaposed against fires at a refinery in Baytown and storage terminal in Deer Park  the latter of which was still burning Tuesday  as the price of economic growth is again measured in plumes of petrochemical smoke canvassing the sky, blotting out the sun and potentially affecting the health of nearby residents. As the shale boom  led by the Permian Basin is West Texas  sends record amounts of oil, natural gas and chemical feedstock to the Houston area, observers say the expansion needs a corresponding increase in regulation, oversight and safety measures.

"With that growth comes increased risks with the transportation, storage and shipping," said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, professor and chief energy officer for the University of Houston. "There's always a balance of price and risks. We're handling a lot more crude at our refineries and ports, and so we're storing a lot more."

Houston has long been the nation's refining and petrochemical epicenter, but the scale has increased significantly in recent years as crude and natural gas have flowed to the Gulf Coast and tens of billions of dollars have been invested to process them and export them. Crude exports alone tripled from the Houston area last year. More than 35 percent of all U.S. oil bound for foreign markets moves through the Houston Ship Channel, according to an analysis by the financial research firm Morningstar.

Related: Deer Park fire could last two more days

That volume is only expected to increase as new and expanded pipelines come online this year and next to move more oil and gas from West Texas to Houston. The expansion in tank farms, export terminals and refineries should also mean the expansion of protective barriers to prevent spills and leaks that could get into the air, water and soil, Krishnamoorti said. Inspections by regulators and public safety officials, as well as robotic drones, should also increase to help prevent fires, explosions, leaks and other potential disasters, he added.

Exxon Mobil completed a multibillion-dollar petrochemical expansion last year at its sprawling Baytown complex, where a fire broke out there Saturday. The blaze was contained and extinguished within a few hours after spewing dark smoke across the Houston skyline. On Sunday, another fire broke out at Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park, which spread to at least eight tanks and continued to burn through Tuesday.

Price of growth

Such incidents are unfortunate, but the expansion of refining and storage terminals in the Houston area is necessary to move the record volumes of oil and gas produced in Texas  production that has lifted both the state and local economies, said Patrick Jankowski, senior economist with the Greater Houston Partnership.

Its all part of the global supply chain, Jankowski said. We need these facilities here because its how we get our products to market. We wouldnt be producing all this oil if we didnt have a way to get it to market.

The Houston areas exports of all petroleum products more than doubled in the past five years to about 150 million tons in 2018, according to the Commerce Department. Gulf Coast crude exports surged to a record of 2.3 million barrels a day in December.

In addition to the race to build oil export terminals  at least eight are proposed along the Texas Gulf Coast  companies authorized the construction of 16 major refining and petrochemical projects last year, according to the Greater Houston Partnership.

That has raised concerns that regulators such as Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cant keep up with the growth, said Elena Craft, senior director of health and climate at the Environmental Defense Fund in Texas.

Theres this Goliath of an industrial network along the Houston Ship Channel, and the region is expecting serious growth, Craft said. Its going to lead to more incidents.

On HoustonChronicle.com Dangerous chemicals create hidden dangers in Houston

Craft added that recent fires at the Baytown refinery and International Terminal Co. occurred during day-to-day activities. What about when theres another Category 4 hurricane? she asked.

The race heats up

Both Exxon Mobil and Intercontinental Terminals Co. said in statements that the safety of their workers and the surrounding communities was their prime concern.

In the meantime, the race continues to build new oil-exporting terminals near Houston, Corpus Christi and offshore. Crude exports are expected to top 4 million barrels a day in the coming years, according to the International Energy Agency, most shipping from the Gulf Coast.

Houstons Enterprise Products Partners plans to build the Sea Port Oil Terminal, or SPOT, off the coast of Freeport and Galveston. A consortium led by Canadas Enbridge and Houstons Kinder Morgan proposes another offshore one, Texas Crude Oil Loading Terminal, or COLT, also off of Brazoria County. Global commodities trading firm Trafigura is pitching another, but smaller, offshore export terminal offshore of Corpus Christi.

Other planned projects would build or expand crude export terminals in Corpus Christi, Freeport and farther south in Brownsville. These proposals add up to about 4 million barrels a day of additional crude exporting capacity if theyre all built, said Sandy Fielden, director of oil and products research at Morningstar.

The limit to world appetite for U.S. crude is unknown today, Fielden said, but current bets on export infrastructure assume it wont be reached soon,

jordan.blum@chron.com

twitter.com/jdblum23
Houston engineering and construction company KBR is among the companies invited to bid on a multibillion dollar project to build Mexicos first new refinery in more than 40 years.

The refinery, estimated by the Mexican government to cost $8 billion, would process domestically produced crude oil to make gasoline and diesel at a time when Mexico is importing 80 percent of its fuel from the United States and other nations. Located on nearly 1,400 acres of coastal land owned the federal government in the state of Tabasco the new Dos Bocas Refinery would process 340,000 barrels of crude oil per day to make gasoline and diesel to be sold as gas stations across Mexico.

This project is the size and scope that our country demands of us, said Mexican Secretary of Energy Rocio Nahle at a press conference in the state of Hidalgo. It is of the dimensions that our people need. It is a challenge facing us as Mexicans but because we are capable, we are going to retake the role that belongs to us.

Looking to accelerate the timeline for construction, Nahle said the Mexican government is restricting participation in the bidding process to four bidders, which include KBR, TechnipFMC, which has headquarters in London, Paris and Houston, and two consortia. One consortium comprises Bechtel of Reston, Va. and an Argentinian firm, Techint. The other includes the Australian firm WorleyParsons and Dallas engineering firm Jacobs.

The companies were chosen because of their technical capability, financial capability, quality, prior records of transparency and a code of ethics with a proven track record of responsibility, Nahle said.

More Information The reHowever, Nahle did release some details about the government's expectations for the refinery, which will be owned and operated by Mexico's national oil company . See More Collapse

Officials from KBR and Jacobs declined to comment. Officials with Bechtel, Techint, WorleyParsons and Technip could not be reached for comment.

Shifting policies

The refinery, which would be owned an operated by Mexicos national oil company ,Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, is the centerpiece of the energy policy adopted by Mexicos new president, Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador, and a potential blow to U.S. refiners that want to expand sales in Mexico as a result of the market reforms of Lopez-Obradors predecessor, Enrique Pena-Nieto. Those reforms ended the 75-year-old Pemex monopoly and opened energy markets to foreign investment and competition.

Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank, said the refinery announcement signals backtracking on energy reforms that were passed as constitutional amendments under Pena-Nieto. The refinery announcement, he noted, was made on the 81st anniversary of Oil Expropriation Day, when Mexico nationalized its oil and gas industry in 1938.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Lopez Obrador moves ahead on refinery overhaul, threatening U.S. fuel exports

Lopez Obrador also has canceled auctions of onshore oil blocks and electricity projects opened by the previous administration. For the time being, Wood said, demand will exceed Mexicos refining capacity even as refineries are built and upgraded.

There will be a healthy business for U.S. refineries in Mexico for a at least another six years, Wood said. And even after then, Mexico will still have to import refined products.

Pemex owns and operates six refineries that were designed to process a combined 1.3 million barrels of crude oil per day, but were running at roughly 40 percent of their capacity in January, figures from the state oil company show. To make up for that shortfall, Mexico imported nearly 14.3 million barrels of crude oil and refined products from the United States in December, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Budget buster?

With a construction permit already approved, studies and design work for Dos Bocas have been completed or fast-tracked, which should allow the winning bidder to complete the project within the three-year deadline. Bidders will have to use 50 percent domestically sourced materials in building the refinery, which Nahle said is expected to create 23,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs during construction

Wood, however, said the Dos Bocas project is unlikely to stay within the $8 billion budget. Based on the technical aspects, Wood said, its more likely to cost about $12 billion.

You can build a new refinery in the $8 billion range, just not at Dos Bocas  certainly not at that scale or capacity, Wood said. Maybe you can build one in a different location, or a smaller refinery.

sergio.chapa@chron.com

@SergioChapa on Twitter
A great pleasure of restaurant writing is to see a chef youve admired come fully into his or her own.

One of those exhilarating moments is happening right now at Tris in The Woodlands, where Austin Simmons is busy making his newly rebranded and remodeled restaurant a regional destination. From opulent menu to intelligent beverage program, from stylishly reconfigured dining room to warm hospitality, Tris is operating tantalizingly close to a four-star level.

You can taste it in something as deceptively modest-sounding as a seasonal potato soup that vibrates with the salty tang of Hooks Five-Year Cheddar, slick little rafts of house-cured Iberico pork shoulder and drifts of toasty bread crumbs floating on top. The savor is almost dizzying  it flirts with over-saltiness and somehow darts back to safety.

Just as gripping, if more overtly luxurious, is Simmons intense lobster bisque graced with fennel pollen that gives its flavor profile a dusky, golden glow. Soups are one of the best gauges I know of a chefs (and a kitchens) prowess, and these two prove the rule.

Sauces can be equally revealing, so allow me to direct your attention to the astonishing version of beurre blanc that comes with what may be Simmons most compelling new dish: dewy hunks of butter-poached crab that ride on a devilish little kimchi pancake, its shredded cabbage mimicking the texture of picked crab. Its a crab cake turned inside out, then graced with a burnished browned-butter sauce that is tart, winey and fascinating to the last drop.

Tris Three stars 24 Waterway Ave., No. 125, The Woodlands; 281-203-5641 Hours: L: 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; D: 5-10 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays Credit cards: all major Prices: starters $10-$25; entrees $24-$80 (lunch $14-$21); desserts $9-$19 Must-orders: Korean butter poached crab; braised short rib ragu; potato soup; grapefruit avocado; Texas venison with apple/Pernod puree; duck with fermented cabbage and pancetta; crab and truffle pasta; branzino; Patagonian toothfish; kimchi mashed potatoes; chocolate cake with sea salt caramel Reservations: Highly recommended, via OpenTable.com; walk-ins welcome for bar seating Noise level: Quiet to moderate Parking: Validated in attached Waterway 24 garage Website:triswoodlands.com STAR RATINGS Four stars: superlative; can hold its own on a national stage. Three stars: excellent; one of the best restaurants in the city. Two stars: very good; one of the best restaurants of its kind. One star: a good restaurant that we recommend. No stars: restaurant cannot be recommended. See More Collapse

And believe me, you will consume the last stray drop. This poached crab dish is 24 bucks, and it is so rich and satisfying I could eat it solo for lunch or a light supper.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houstons Golden Age of carrot cake

Simmons has become more or less the King of Rich, actually. His new menus give a lunchtime nod to lightness and vegetable options, and starters such as a jumpy Thai-spiced hamachi tostada can have a brisk, saladlike effect. But his stock in trade is browned butter, velvety sauces, sumptuous braised meats, mushrooms and truffles and saffron polenta.

These are luxury touches in which he specializes at his adjoining weekend tasting-menu room, Cureight. Now they hold pride of place on a Tris menu that is much more of a piece than it was during the restaurants original Hubbell & Hudson Bistro incarnation, when the bill of fare had a rather disjointed, mix-and-match steakhouse and grill vibe to it.

Simmons is still making an effort to please his exurban audience  which he knows from his days as a sous chef at John Tesars Modern Steak and Seafood during its too-brief Woodlands run  but hes also pleasing himself and cooking up to his abilities.

Braised short-rib ragu with potato gnocchi was cooked down to a marvelous glaze on a recent evening. Crabmeat and black truffle emulsion turned springy, skinny tagliatelle into a sybarites dream. Theres something old-school and unapologetic about this impulse that I love. And Simmons tempers those soft, plush flavor curves with little bursts of acid or greenery or heat to keep things lively.

Case in point: He zings the usual Robuchon-esque cloud of buttery mashed potatoes with tart, hottish kimchi that he ferments in house. Theyre fabulous.

Shades of softness collide on a salad plate of ripe avocado slices and triangles of gently fried tofu, only to be snapped to attention by glorious local grapefruit segments, plus jots of red chili and soy and crunchy sunflower seeds.

Many of the entrees at Tris are priced in the $30s and $40s, which makes it one of the most expensive restaurants in Greater Houston. The prices are supported by careful execution and the chefs ingenuity. So slabs of medium-rare duck breast, say, find a memorable match with orange-laced fermented cabbage and pancetta, all smoothed out by a brown-buttered rosemary applesauce.

Venison is easily abused, but here the backstrap is served rosy and tight-textured against a delicate, savory duxelles of mushroom tart, with tones of apple and licoricey Pernod weaving in and out of the roasted carrots. With a suitable red wine  ask beverage director Joshua Olivier for his good advice  its a plate worth the drive from Houston.

So are a couple of easy-to-mess-up fish dishes. Both small-flaked branzino, the Mediterranean sea bass, and large-flaked, cold water Patagonian toothfish, emerged from the kitchen impeccably cooked. Butterflied over a puree of butternut squash, the branzino had a late-winter escort of sliced fennel bulb, toasted almonds and lovely small potato gnocchi, a more sophisticated take on a dish Simmons served back when Tris was known as Hubbell & Hudson Bistro.

The toothfish outright wowed in its pool of resonant black-garlic bisque, with charred chicory greens, wasabi-braised rutabaga and radish adding their wintry notes. Try it now, while its still on the menu.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Alison Cooks review of a singular Vietnamese restaurant in Montrose

Theres a blip here or there that could use refining. Simmons loves to use chiles in his Asian-inflected dishes, and occasionally they come on way too strong. Perfect small cornmeal-fried oysters rolled up in shiso leaves to make Japanese tacos had their harmony of flavors and textures disrupted by too many too-hot serrano wheels. (I ended up picking them out.) The dots of red chile sauce on that vegan salad of grapefruit, avocado and tofu were way too hot for the dishs good.

And, occasionally, Simmons brave new ideas just dont quite work out. Im still wondering why meaty, singed pork belly is a better addition to a lively, cross-sectioned wedge salad than bacon, and why the grape tomatoes are so tartly marinated they fight with the blue cheese dressing. Or why a promising-sounding lunch dish of chicken-fried venison turned out so dreary and dry, with such a one-dimensional cream sauce sitting on top.

I was flummoxed, too, by a costly $19 dessert of mascarpone cheesecake, a rich fluff on a clashy chocolate crumb crust flavored with fleur de sel, its small crown of tart apricot helpless to perk things up. Simmons is doing his own desserts these days, which is tricky, and his deconstructed, discombobulated banana pudding left me scratching my head.

But his vegan strawberry shortcake works surprisingly well, and his towering devils food cake sheathed in dark chocolate is stupendous, with its irresistible blobs of sea-salt caramel sauce. Simmons has taught himself to make serious chocolates, too, but I wonder if eventually he will want to hire a pastry chef again, just to even things out.

Otherwise, the staffing is notably good at Tris. Director of operations Chris Perry is a gifted natural host who runs a tight service ship. And everyone  from bartenders working on interesting cocktails to servers bragging on the new menu and more flexible dining-room floor plan  acts excited to be working here. Thats infectious.

Simmons and his team are now running one of the best restaurants in the city, broadly defined. For anyone interested in fine dining, its a worthwhile jaunt. Id do it for the Korean butter-poached crab alone.

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.
Three Native American inmates bested the Texas prison system in a lawsuit over religious liberties, winning the right to let their hair grow long despite arguments from state attorneys that it would pose a security risk and make it easier for inmates to escape from an understaffed facility.

The trio of long-time prisoners at the McConnell Unit sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in federal court, arguing that their Native American spiritual beliefs regard hair as an extension of the soul, something to be cut only when in mourning. The prison systems rules requiring men to keep short hair or face disciplinary consequences, the inmates and their attorneys argued, were an unfair violation of religious freedom

Religious liberty is a bedrock value, said Rob Ellis, one of the lawyers who represented the inmates. Its also a nonpartisan issue so its especially important for minority groups like Native Americans whose views arent as well known or accepted.

Even though female prisoners are allowed to have long hair, attorneys for the state claimed that letting men do the same would cost too much money to police, that prisoners would get too hot in uncooled facilities, that it would make identifying inmates harder and that it could increase the number of inmate suicides.

UNDERSTAFFED: Gangs, lack of guards spark riot at Texas juvenile prison

But after a three-day bench trial last year, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi rejected those arguments.

While we do not agree with the finding of this court, we fully respect the legal process, said prison spokesman Jeremy Desel, adding that the department was exploring the possibility of appeals.

Legally, the outcome of the case only impacts the three prisoners involved  but the same arguments could apply to future lawsuits involving any of the more than 5,000 other Native Americans spread across the states 104 prisons.

Religious beliefs

The case first started in 2012, when Teddy Norris Grey Hawk Davis filed a lawsuit  without an attorney  in a Corpus Christi federal court. Later, other inmates at the Beeville prison joined the case and eventually the court agreed to appoint them all lawyers.

Even after Davis got out of prison, the rest of the men continued with their lawsuit. Now, the lead plaintiff is 55-year-old Robbie Dow Goodman, a Cherokee man from the Panhandle.

Raymond Cobb, a 42-year-old Walker County man of Native American descent, joined the case more recently as did 59-year-old William Casey, a Cherokee man whos now in a wheelchair.

Theyve all been behind bars for decades, serving time for serious crimes like murder and sexual assault. Now, theyre all aging, and havent caught major disciplinary fractions in years.

And, in accordance with their religious beliefs, all three of the men realized they wanted to grow their hair long. Cobb wanted a braid, to avoid risking rejection from his ancestors when crossing over after death. Casey, meanwhile, believed his long hair gave him strength and Goodman said it connected him to his Creator.

Its just like the roots of a tree, he said at trial. It connects us.

Being forced to cut his hair feels like getting beat up.

But prison policy mandates that male inmates have to keep their hair cut short around the ears or face disciplinary consequences such as loss of recreation or commissary privileges.

Thats why the men filed suit under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that protects prisoners rights of free worship.

To raise a legal claim under that act, prisoners beliefs have to be sincere; to fight a claim filed under the act, the state has to show compelling governmental interest for prohibiting the expression of religion, such as proof of a credible security risk.

State opposition

State attorneys didnt dispute the sincerity of the prisoners beliefs, but during trial, they raised a number of concerns. For one, officials worried about the possibility that inmates could hide contraband in long hair  and the contraband men smuggle tends to be more dangerous than the contraband women smuggle, attorneys argued.

Although both male and female offenders have been caught with all types of contraband, the types of contraband that female offenders are most commonly caught with is cosmetics, the state wrote in court filings. Male offenders are much more likely to smuggle contraband that is dangerous, such as cellphones, drugs, and sharpened weapons intended for stabbing.

On top of that, the department claimed, long hair can be dangerous in fights, if one inmate grabs anothers head. It can symbolize gang affiliation, harbor lice, or increase the odds of overheating in uncooled prison units. And, officials fretted over whether long hair could increase suicide risk, because one time a woman in prison tried to smother herself with her own hair.

IN COURT: Mom sues Texas prisons after "egregious" failure to prevent son's suicide

But the biggest concerns state attorneys raised centered around their ability to identify prisoners in large facilities and to adequately search them at understaffed units. The added time to search inmates, the state argued, would throw off the whole days schedule.

When one activity or task takes longer than the time allotted for it, attorneys wrote, it has a domino effect and can affect the schedule for the entire day.

Despite all those possible problems, women are allowed to have long hair  and it doesnt require extra staffing to handle their hair.

The judge took the prisoners side in January when she issued 23-page signed findings requiring the prison system to let the men wear their hair long, even if it requires TDCJ to expend more resources to manage the male inmates that desire to wear long hair as a religious practice.

Following a final judgment in late February, the state has 30 days to appeal.

Inmates being able to fully express and practice their religion is rehabilitative and reduces recidivism, said attorney Steven Messer, who handled the case with Ellis. Its just good policy.

keri.blakinger@chron.com

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Tempers flared before potential jurors entered a Houston courtroom Monday in the trial of four men accused of aiding in a series of violent and fatal armored truck robberies

Testimony was to begin Tuesday in the sweeping federal conspiracy case arising from a string of brazen heists. Prosecutors said two security couriers were fatally shot in separate incidents as they stocked ATM machines before the final robbery attempt in which the alleged triggerman was killed in a shootout with a SWAT team carrying out a sting operation.

None of the men on trial is accused of pulling the trigger, but two of the defendants are charged with helping the suspected gunman.

Flanked by U.S. Marshals, the four defendants entered the court for jury selection in leg shackles, handcuffs and shock belts, which were concealed from jurors by a ruffled black skirt around the defense table.

Two defendants, John Edward Scott and Bennie Charles Phillips, Jr., wore button-up shirts and slacks and had lawyers. Two others, Nelson Alexander Polk and Marc Anthony Hill, opted to represent themselves; they arrived in jail uniforms, having refused to wear civilian clothing.

Polk declined to sit at the defense table. When the judge ordered him to so, Polk muttered, Threats, threats, threats, threats, threats. Polk argued that he had no further business with the court and did not plan to proceed to trial, claiming what he called Child of God status.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner denied that request. Polk also argued that he had sovereign status, an idea promoted by anti-taxation and extremist groups, meaning that one is not subject to the laws of the United States. The judge also denied this status.

Polk became so irate during the proceedings that the judge ordered him to watch the entire trial via a one-way video monitor from a separate room.

There, Polk could be seen seated with his head tilted all the way back and what appeared to be a legal folder balanced precariously atop his face.

The second defendant choosing to defend himself, Marc Anthony Hill, ultimately agreed to change into the jacket and tie hed brought for trial, rather than being banished to a separate room where he would not be able to question witnesses on his own behalf. Both men had court-appointed back-up lawyers on hand in case the defendants changed their minds.

A fifth man, Trayvees Duncan-Bush, has pleaded guilty to participating in the violent scheme and could be called as a witness.

Federal prosecutors believe the crew began robbing armored trucks in March 2016 and ended their run nine months later in a bloody shootout outside an Amegy Bank of Texas branch.

The alleged mastermind, Redrick Batiste, was fatally shot by Houston police during the sting operation. Three alleged accomplices, including two of those on trial, were arrested while fleeing; another two were picked up after the ill-fated heist.

Police had determined that Batistes robberies followed a pattern, and federal investigators have linked him to the two killings.

The first, in March 2016, ended in the death of a Loomis security courier, Melvin Moore, who was gunned down while stocking an ATM at the J.P. Morgan Chase branch on Airline Drive.

After being shot, Moore reached for his gun and fired at the would-be robber  who left the scene empty-handed.

The following August, a robbery crew targeted a Wells Fargo Bank in the 13000 block of Northwest Freeway. A sniper fatally wounded courier David Guzman as he refilled an ATM.

Following that shooting, another crew member moved in and grabbed the bags of cash, making off with $120,000. Hill and Polk are charged with conspiracy in relation to Guzmans death. None of the defendants were charged in the earlier killing.

The final fatality came amid a sting operation in December, when, police say, Batiste and five accomplices set their sights on the Amegy Bank. For days, the suspects posted up near the bank, watching the comings and goings of the armored vehicle they aimed to target.

On the morning of Dec. 7, they assumed their positions.

But rather than robbing a truck full of cash, they came face to face with a group of police officers and FBI agents who pulled up to the bank in an armored Brinks truck.

Authorities gave this account: Duncan-Bush and Polk attempted to flee the scene on foot. Batiste opened fire, and was fatally wounded. Afterward, authorities retrieved a .223-caliber AR-15 with a scope nearby.

Hill tried to drive away in his vehicle but was arrested. Scott and Phillips were apprehended later.

By the time the judge announced which jurors had been selected, the high adrenaline courtroom scene had shifted. Polk was back in the room dressed in a buttoned shirt and he calmly agreed to let his back-up lawyer, Nicole DeBorde, represent him when testimony begins Tuesday.

gabrielle.banks@chron.com
Beto O'Rourke's ability to win the White House could be built on a fund-raising process from his 2018 Senate race in Texas.

Shortly after entering the 2020 Democratic field for president earlier this month, his campaign announced it had raised more than $6.1 million online within a day of his campaign announcement.

That is the highest first-day amount reported by any 2020 presidential candidate.

O'Rourke spokesman Chris Evans also tweeted that that monetary return came "without a dime" from political action committees, corporations or special interests.

Click through the gallery above to see how which states made the highest number of contributions to Texas House and Senate races through ActBlue from Jan. 2017 to Oct. 2018.

So, how did O'Rourke get off to a fiscally advantageous start in the race?

Part of the answer is ActBlue, a non-profit that, according to the organization's website, seeks to "democratize power and help small-dollar donors make their voices heard in a real way."

Even though it did not end in victory, Beto O'Rourke's 2018 campaign is proof of the national fund-raising organization's ability to raise tens of millions of dollars for Democratic candidates.

From Jan. 2017 through mid-Oct. 2018, the congressman from El Paso raised roughly $61.6 million in individual campaign donations (according to data from the Federal Election Commission).

73 percent of that amount (roughly $45.4 million) came through ActBlue (according to information the organization filed to the Federal Election Commission).

And 48 percent (almost $22 million) of that $45.4 million came from states other than Texas.

Those figures were determined through financial analysis by fivethirtyeight.com.

The website also explains that "because ActBlue operates as a legal conduit  a federal political committee that passes contributions through to other committees  it does have to disclose the donors who give to federal political committees through its platform, regardless of the size of the contribution, which provides a window into the small-donor boom."

And the organization didn't just help O'Rourke.

The slideshow above shows the top 10 states that provided the highest number of individual contributions to Texas Senate and House races (from Jan. 2017 to mid-October of 2018). Those figures are based on calculations and analysis performed by fivethirtyeight.com.

Peter Dawson is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | Peter.Dawson@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here.
Eric Gay, STF / Associated Press

AUSTIN  Despite holding the most expensive and closely-watched U.S. Senate election in the nation last year, Texas still ranked among the ten worst states for voter turnout in 2018, according to a new report on voting trends.

About 46 percent of eligible Texas voters cast a ballot in the November election, up from 29 percent four years earlier, according to America Goes to the Polls 2018, a report from Nonprofit VOTE and the US Elections Project. While the number of voters jumped, the turnout places Texas 41st in the country for voter turnout  up from 50th in the 2014 election.
For nearly 40 years, Houstonian Jimmy Dunne has importuned Texas lawmakers to ban corporal punishment in Texas public schools, to no avail.

As a math teacher in 1981, he had a Damascus Road experience while paddling a student that convinced him beating a child was no way to address student misbehavior. He formed an organization that campaigned to end the practice, and over the years he has sent images of deep bruises on student backsides to state lawmakers to show the kind of injuries inflicted by paddling, testified in hearings in Austin and even held a demonstration of paddling on the Capitol grounds. He pushed the Houston Independent School District to end corporal punishment in 2001.

Dunne, 83, is still agitating for change and is optimistic that House Bill 420, authored by state Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, could gain some traction beyond a committee hearing where previous bills have not. The bill would ban hitting, spanking, paddling or deliberately inflicting physical pain as a punishment in Texas public schools. Most corporal punishment is delivered using a 2-foot-long wooden paddle.

School paddling is clearly child abuse, and child abuse should not be tolerated at home or in school, Dunne told the editorial board.

Texas is one of 19 states where corporal punishment in public schools remains legal. The state ranks just behind Mississippi among states that spank their students the most, according to the Department of Educations 2013-2014 statistics on corporal punishment in public schools. And 31 states and the District of Columbia have stopped the practice, according to University of Texas at Austin associate professor Elizabeth T. Gershoff, whose research focuses on how corporal punishment impacts student development. The practice, which occurs in mostly rural areas, is not allowed in most Texas school districts, especially those in the major urban areas, she said.

According to a 2018 Education Week review of federal civil rights data released by the U.S. Department of Education, the percentage of K-12 students who are subject to corporal punishment in schools continues to drop. However, nearly 100,000 children were still spanked or paddled in schools in 2015-2016, and black students are still more likely to receive corporal punishment.

Gershoff said some Texas school administrators and state lawmakers defend corporal punishment as the only way to ensure that children behave in school. Studies have shown, however, that spanking improves neither students behavior nor their grades.

As Dunne has been saying for decades, if someone inflicted the kind of corporal punishment meted out to students onto a teacher, it would be called assault. Thats why Texas lawmakers need to put an end to spanking in schools and pass HB 420.
When you bow in prayer, when your head touches the ground, you know someone is there to protect you.

These are the words of the Imam delivering his Friday sermon at one of the Houston areas largest Muslim congregations. Halfway across the world 49 children, women and men were gunned down at two Friday congregations in Christchurch, New Zealand.

In Houston, details are trickling in. Congregants react with feelings of sadness, anger and betrayal.

The first congregant I meet is a high school kid quietly hunched over his phone in a corner, earbuds on. I notice that he is watching video coverage of the mosque massacre, his eyes bloodshot and glazed. The New Zealand shooter had livestreamed the slaughter over social media to shock the world. I panic and cover up the boys phone. This world is treacherous! he blurts at me Arabic, his voice trembling. He walks away.

I catch up with a group of older male congregants as they exit the mosque. Theyre all of Arab origin. They wear straight faces, but look about uneasily. One of them, a physician, tells me casually, they will never accept us. The other, a businessman, interjects: It will always be this way. A third remarks on the vindictiveness of the shooter, emptying rounds into already dead bodies like they are targets in a video game.

Their pessimism is matched only by their nerve, their defiance. They would not let fear keep them from worship.

Thats not to say those who attended mosque on that brisk and somber day did so without caution. It seemed that on Friday, Gods primary theological directive was security. With four armed security officers on site, the congregation understood the need to protect its places of worship, its schools and its families. On Friday, congregants were joined by representatives from the Fort Bend County Sheriffs office, Interfaith Ministries and other local organizations. Their solidarity was warmly received. It kept hope alive.

In this country, that hope emboldens peaceful people, unites them, and sharpens their resolve against hate and terror.

It was another story in New Zealand, where my contacts expressed frustration at how unprepared the country is to give its Muslim citizens the protection they deserve. New Zealand has been considered one of the safest countries in the world. Not anymore. Friday evening, authorities called for all mosques to shut down and for Muslims to avoid congregating in publica clear indication they have no clue how to secure their country. In response, Muslim grassroots organizations the world over have organized a public peace vigil.

The scale and horror of New Zealands worst act of terrorism in modern history stunned many. It should not stun Americans. From the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October, to the mosque burned in Victoria in 2017, to the Charleston church shooting in 2015, we have seen this movie before. Even the local mosque I visited Friday was the target of a drive-by shooting in January. Thankfully, there were no causalities.

The profile of recent mass shooters against Muslims, Jews, blacks or other minorities in houses of worship is the same: angry white men protecting the superior race from the inferior ones. Since Donald Trumps campaign in 2015 and his election to the U.S. presidency in 2016, hate crimes  especially against Muslims, Jews and African-Americans  have risen sharply. White nationalism is clearly a growing threat to national security, even if the president refuses to admit it. Internal figures reported recently by the Washington Post show that during the 2017 and 2018 budget years, authorities arrested more domestic terrorism suspects than those inspired by Islamic extremists.

Many countries have since marched ceaselessly toward a path of nationalism, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment.

The New Zealand shooter, who is Australian, meticulously premeditated his assault for years, fed off the cesspool of hatred we know as social media and prepared an 80-page manifesto. He was inspired by Trump and justified his massacre as deterring the invasion of Muslim immigrants. Hours later Trump equated immigrants with an invasion at a press conference partly intended for condemning the massacre.

As long as political leaders, right-wing cable and social media generate hate and fear of Muslims, immigrants and others, attacks on sacred places wont soon become a thing of the past. While I suspect security will tighten its hold over religious communities, it will not loosen our resolve to live peacefully and worship freely.

El-Badawi is program director and associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Houston. Hes on Twitter @EmranE
Houston and New Zealand are, literally, oceans apart, but the pain that New Zealanders are feeling from the terrorist attack at two mosques resonates with Houstonians, indeed the world, as if Christchurch was a neighbor city. Houstonians have spent the days since March 14 listening to and absorbing horrific news: a murderous rampage killed at least 50 people in an act of terrorism, a recorded and broadcast killing frenzy in an internet age. The shooter targeted Muslims at prayer because they represented that which he hated, and people whom he feared.

We condemn this act of hate and all acts of hate targeting individuals or groups because of their faith, and we pledge to work with Houstonians of all faiths and of no faith to challenge hatred and bigotry and to help our community be a place in which all people can work, live, play and pray.

We seek to build a world of dignity, compassion and love for all people because our faiths compel us to do so and because our faiths dare us to build a better world. Our differing faith traditions all have in common the mandate to love God and love neighbor, to serve before we are served, to understand, care for and respect each other. We know that these values are shared across religions and with those who do not practice a religion but understand the humanity we all have in common, a humanity that knows that we are called to respect one another and learn from each other.

We know that the work we can all do daily and regularly is here in Houston, and that work is to love each other relentlessly, and for that love to disrupt the forces of hate, prejudice and fear that endanger our community. Interfaith Ministries looks forward to the opening of our Brigitte and Bashar Kalai Plaza of Respect in April, a multi-faith and multimedia space designed both to inspire thought and spur action. We hope the plaza will be a leading gathering space for our diverse community, a city in which one in four Houstonians was born outside the United States, so that we may learn better ways to build respect.

As the terroristic massacre in Christchurch, as well as at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, Emanuel AME Church in 2015, the Wisconsin Sikh Gurdwara in 2012 and other horrific acts of hate demonstrate, virtues such as respect, civility and dialogue are no longer luxuries or so-called soft skills, as if they ever were. Contrary to the old saying, talk is never cheap; the words and thoughts that inspired the actions of the killer have exacted a horrible cost.

We have heard that one of the Muslim worshippers words to the killer were words of welcome: Hello, brother. These simple, but profound words were not only words of welcome but words that sought to establish and recognize our kinship, whether it be actual, spiritual or our simple connection as fellow human beings. In these coming days, we ask Houstonians to be inspired by these words, to welcome each other as brothers and sisters as fellow travelers through life, to be part of each others joys and struggles. Reach out to your neighbor. Learn about a new part of Houston. Call on organizations like Interfaith Ministries that seek to build bridges. Serve one another; help communities that are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Harvey. Talk to one another. Challenge words of hatred. Confront acts of bigotry. Each one of us has a part to play.

Fiorenza is archbishop emeritus, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston; Karff is rabbi emeritus, Congregation Beth Israel, and Lawson is founding pastor, Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. Often called the three amigos, they are being honored by Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston for their lifelong work in bringing together people of all faiths, backgrounds and races. Bashar Kalai and his wife, Brigitte, are funding the new IM Plaza of Respect honoring these community leaders and bridge builders.
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The U.S. hotel industry reported occupancy decreased 1% to 65.3%, but a 1.3% increase in ADR to $127.59 raised RevPAR 0.3% to $83.36 during the week ending 2 March.

The U.S. hotel industry reported mixed year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 24 February through 2 March 2019, according to data from STR.

In comparison with the week of 25 February through 3 March 2018, the industry recorded the following:

 Occupancy: -1.0% to 65.3%

 Average daily rate (ADR): +1.3% to US$127.59

 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +0.3% at US$83.36

Among the Top 25 Markets, New Orleans, Louisiana, reported the largest lift in RevPAR (+37.9% to US$151.37), due primarily to the largest rise in ADR (+33.1% to US$199.22). STR analysts note the year-over-year jump is due primarily to the Mardi Gras holiday calendar shift.

Chicago, Illinois, experienced the highest rise in occupancy (+5.1% to 60.1%) and the third-largest increase in RevPAR (+11.4% to US$70.03).

San Francisco/San Mateo, California, saw the only other double-digit increases in ADR (+10.6% to US$236.81) and RevPAR (+11.9% to US$187.62).

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-New Jersey, registered the steepest declines in each of the three key performance metrics: occupancy (-10.7% to 63.6%), ADR (-4.7% to US$121.42) and RevPAR (-14.9% to US$77.17).

Two markets matched for the second-largest decrease in occupancy: Nashville, Tennessee (-7.6% to US$71.4%) and Seattle, Washington (-7.6% to 68.4%).

Nashville reported the second-largest drop in RevPAR (-10.6% to US$103.54).

View U.S. weekly hotel performance review

STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com.

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 2021 Hospitality Trends
The U.S. hotel industry reported occupancy dropped 2.4% to 66.8% during the week of 3-9 March. ADR rose 0.8% to $132.01, but RevPAR decreased 1.7% to $88.15.

The U.S. hotel industry reported mixed year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 3-9 March 2019, according to data from STR.

In comparison with the week of 4-10 March 2018, the industry recorded the following:

 Occupancy: -2.4% to 66.8%

 Average daily rate (ADR): +0.8% to US$132.01

 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): -1.7% at US$88.15

Among the Top 25 Markets, San Francisco/San Mateo, California, reported the largest rise in occupancy (+3.3% to 80.7%) as well as the only double-digit increases in ADR (+45.3% to US$305.91) and RevPAR (+50.1% to US$246.80).

Phoenix, Arizona, saw the second-largest increases in occupancy (+1.4% to 91.1%) RevPAR (+4.6% to US$180.03).

Atlanta, Georgia, posted the second-largest lift in ADR (+4.7% to US$115.24).

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-New Jersey, registered the only double-digit decline in occupancy (-15.2% to 67.4%), which resulted in the largest drop in RevPAR (-20.1% to US$85.19).

New Orleans, Louisiana, saw the steepest decline in ADR (-9.5% to US$187.15) and the third-largest decline in RevPAR (-11.5% to US$154.55).

Houston, Texas, posted the second-steepest drop in RevPAR (-13.2% to US$80.35).

Overall, 20 of the Top 25 Markets reported a decrease in RevPAR.

View U.S. weekly hotel performance review

STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com.

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Montreal and Abuja, 19 March 2019  At a workshop hosted by the Government of Nigeria today, ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu delivered a stark caution: the realization of better air connectivity in Africa, and the crucial sustainable development it promises, will only be accomplished through the mobilization of sufficient and appropriate investment.

It is especially urgent for Africa to address its aviation infrastructure gaps, given current and high levels of awareness of how air connectivity has become such a unique and indispensable catalyst for socio-economic growth on this continent, Dr. Aliu remarked at the 2019 Aviation Infrastructure for Africa Gap Analysis Workshop.

ICAO long-term traffic forecasts presently indicate that passenger and freight traffic for the African region are expected to grow by 4.3 per cent and 3.8 per cent annually through 2035. Currently accounting for four per cent of global air transport services, Africa presents the highest potential for growth out of all of ICAOs global regions.

The launch last year of the African Unions Single Market demonstrated Africas unity and agreement of the fact that aviation connectivitys socio-economic benefits are real, sustainable, and worthy of the attention and commitments of African Governments, Dr Aliu insisted. But rapidly-expanding air traffic and enhanced air connectivity can only be sustained with continued investment and development for aviation infrastructure, capacity and technology, supported by a regulatory framework which is ICAO compliant and therefore harmonized with other States and Regions.

ICAO plays a key role in fostering effective partnerships between donors, investors and States-in-need, primarily by facilitating local capacity-building and resource mobilization under its No Country Left Behind initiative. However mobilizing dependable long-term financial resources is becoming more difficult and represents a great challenge for many States, who are facing strains on their public finances, including for developing countries who are further confronted by high borrowing costs.

The goal of the Abuja workshop is to help address the needs of African States by defining a practical and agreed methodology and approach to aviation infrastructure gap analyses. This could then serve as a key reference for African States seeking to develop regional and national aviation infrastructure programmes and master plans, all fully in line with current forecast traffic growth and the related targets defined in ICAOs Global plans.

All investments in aviation infrastructure development and modernization on this continent must be directed to well-managed projects featuring solid business cases and due levels of accountability, transparency and quality assurance, Dr. Aliu underscored. Addressing financing challenges facing aviation infrastructure and capacity development requires both ambition and credible means of planning and implementation, and we should aspire to a goal of no constraints of infrastructure capacity, technology and financial resources for aviation development.

Resources for Editors



About ICAO



A specialized agency of the United Nations, ICAO was created in 1944 to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation throughout the world. It sets standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety, security, efficiency, capacity and environmental protection, amongst many other priorities. The Organization serves as the forum for cooperation in all fields of civil aviation among its 192 Member States.



ICAO Eastern and Southern African (ESAF) Office

Western and Central African (WACAF) Office

ICAO's No Country Left Behind initiative





Contacts



Anthony Philbin

Chief, Communications

aphilbin@icao.int

+1 514-954-8220

+1 438-402-8886 (mobile)

Twitter:@ICAO



William Raillant-Clark

Communications Officer

wraillantclark@icao.int

+1 514-954-6705

+1 514-409-0705 (mobile)

Twitter: @wraillantclark

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/raillantclark/




The IFJ Asia-Pacific office represents 30 affiliated unions and associations in the Asia-Pacific region.

IFJ Asia-Pacific works with national journalists unions and associations to improve the conditions of journalists and the quality of journalism through training programs and advocacy campaigns in defense of media-related rights, including the right to safety and decent working conditions, the right to freedom of expression, the right to a free media, the right to access information, the right to freedom of association and the right to justice and fair legal proceedings.

IFJ Asia-Pacific also runs actions and international campaigns on journalists safety, press freedom, public service values, editorial independence, ethics, gender equality and decent working conditions at the request of affiliates, associates and partners in the Asia-Pacific region. This work ranges from emergency missions to draw international attention to immediate crises to long-term training, campaigning and institutional support.

IFJ Asia-Pacific aims to:

Strengthen the organisation and leadership of journalists unions and professional bodies.

Improve journalists working conditions.

Assure journalists of safety and protection.

Defend freedom of the media, freedom of expression and freedom of association.

Enable quality journalism to thrive.

Ensure the media and journalists organisations are open to participation by all.

In South Asia the IFJ works with its affiliates defending rights of journalist and freedom of expression under the South Asia Media Solidarity Network (SAMSN). SAMSN was launched in 2002 as a platform for joint strategy and action that builds solidarity. The SAMSN Digital Hub hosts all of the work the IFJ and its affiliates do in South Asia.

In South East Asia the IFJ and its affiliate work together under the South East Asia Journalist Unions (SEAJU) promoting press freedom, impunity and better working conditions. SEAJU was launched in 2013 in Cambodia and in 2018 the IFJ and SEAJU released the first IFJ South East Asia Media Freedom Report - Underneath the Autocrats.
Imperial Valley News Center

Vice President Mike Pences Call with Prime Minister Adil Abd Al-Mahdi of Iraq

Washington, DC - Vice President Mike Pence spoke today with Prime Minister Adil Abd Al-Mahdi of the Republic of Iraq. The two leaders discussed opportunities to advance the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Iraq, including continuing to work together to strengthen and professionalize Iraqs Security Forces and grow Iraqs economy.

Vice President Pence welcomed news of Iraqs recent economic and trade agreements with Jordan and the Prime Ministers upcoming travel as major steps towards Iraqs reintegration in the region after the territorial defeat of ISIS. Prime Minister Abd al-Mahdi also updated the Vice President on the Iraqi governments efforts to exhume the mass graves of ISISs genocide against Yazidis in Sinjar and the Prime Minister conveyed that he would personally investigate security and economic impediments noted by the Vice President as preventing the return of many of Iraqs religious components and other displaced persons.
Proclamation on Greek Independence Day, 2019

Washington, DC - On the 198th anniversary of Greek Independence Day, we celebrate the rich history and enduring bond between the United States and Greece. Our strong alliance and unwavering friendship are rooted in mutual respect and a shared commitment to freedom, justice, and democracy.

The common bond between the United States and Greece is rooted in thousands of years of tradition, stretching back to ancient Greece. The lessons of ancient Greek democracies are among the greatest and most enduring ever taught. From them the world came to know and understand the foundational principles of human liberty, selfgovernment, and the rule of law  the very principles that fueled Americas own drive for independence and shaped our Republic. Decades after securing our independence, American citizens expressed their appreciation by supporting the people of Greece in their fight for their own freedom.

Today, our Greek-American partnership is robust and gaining momentum. The inaugural United StatesGreece Strategic Dialogue, held last December, and the United StatesGreece Commercial Dialogue, held last September, highlighted the strength of the bilateral relationship and bolstered confidence in Greece as a regional leader. We applaud the historic 2019 decision of the Greek Parliament to ratify the Prespa Agreement, which resolved the long-standing naming dispute with North Macedonia. This ratification confirmed Greeces role as a partner with an abiding commitment to advancing stability, security, and prosperity in the region. Additionally, the 2018 Thessaloniki International Fair forged opportunities for enhanced collaboration in technology, enterprise, and innovation.

Our common vision for a peaceful and prosperous region is particularly evident in our ongoing defense relationship. The rotation of NATO aircraft and equipment through Thessaloniki and Alexandroupoli, the complex bilateral training events, and the availability of Souda Bay for the naval forces of the United States reflect mutually beneficial cooperation to ensure our mutual strength and security. Our bilateral relationship has also afforded many opportunities to support partnerships and initiatives that address the areas of defense and security, law enforcement and counterterrorism, and energy security and diversification.

The strong people-to-people ties that undergird our friendship also serve to fortify our alliance. We continue to identify opportunities to increase student and professional exchanges and English language programs. These programs make tremendous contributions to the economic, cultural, and political power of our two great democracies. This summer, we will launch the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) Program with Greece to develop the next generation of leaders who will sustain and enhance our strong partnership.

On this day, we honor the shared values that bind our two countries as faithful allies and friends, and we recognize the profound impact GreekAmericans have had on every aspect of our culture. Together, recalling the spirit of the ancient Greeks, we reaffirm our abiding belief that democratic institutions offer the greatest opportunity to safeguard human rights, dignity, and freedom for all.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 25, 2019, as Greek Independence Day: A National Day of Celebration of Greek and American Democracy. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighteenth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand nineteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-third.

DONALD J. TRUMP
Aruba National Day

Washington, DC - Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo: "On behalf of the Government of the United States, I offer my best wishes to the people of Aruba as you commemorate your National Day on March 18.

"The United States values the strong ties and exchanges between our nations. We look forward to expanding travel between our two countries and continuing our collaboration in renewable energy and entrepreneurship. We value the close cooperation with Aruban law enforcement agencies in combatting transnational criminal organizations and countering regional instability. These efforts help keep both Aruba and the United States safe.

"The United States values our longstanding friendship and wishes you a happy National Day celebration."
Toy Story will be back on screens in 2019. A fourth film is set to arrive after nearly a nine-year gap since Toy Story 3, and more than two decades after the original, which was released in 1995.

Heres everything we know about the highly anticipated Pixar sequel.

Whos in the cast?

Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Joan Cusack will all return as the voices of Woody, Buzz, and Jessie. New characters for the film are Forky (Tony Hale), Ducky (Keegan-Michael Key) and Bunny (Jordan Peele). Ant-Man and the Wasp's Madeleine McGraw will also voice Bonnie, who was introduced in 2010's Toy Story 3.

Don Rickles, the voice of Mr Potato Head, died in 2017 and did not record any lines for the sequel. Although a teaser has confirmed the characters return, there has been no confirmation on whether a new actor was cast in the role.

Tim Allen revealed Keanu Reeves has a very small role in the sequel, adding: Keanu Reeves has got a great part. Actually, a little inside story, even [Reeves] said  gentle, wonderful guy that he is  This sounds too much like Buzz Lightyear. And his character does have an edge to that. And the guy said, So we calmed him down a little bit, and they reminded me his toy is only that big.

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The film will also feature the return of Bo Peep, voiced by Annie Potts, who was notably absent from Toy Story 3. As one of the toys that Andy didnt gift to Bonnie before he left for college, Bo has spent years on her own, and it appears the experience has changed her.

Director Josh Cooley told E! News: Bos taken control of her own destiny. While Woody was watching Andy grow up, Bo gathered dust until she took it upon herself to head out into the world. And when Woody shows up, they cant believe that theyve found each other again.

Whats the plot?

The official synopsis for the film reads: Woody has always been confident about his place in the world and that his priority is taking care of his kid, whether thats Andy or Bonnie. But when Bonnie adds a reluctant new toy called Forky to her room, a road trip adventure alongside old and new friends will show Woody how big the world can be for a toy.

Hanks teased the climax of the film as a moment in history, adding: The way you record Toy Story, youre in a room with the team that has created it. When I went in for my last day of recording, I wanted to have my back to them, because usually, youre facing him so he can look right up and you can talk about it. But I didnt want to see them and pretend they couldnt see me.

Are there any trailers?

You can watch the full-length trailer below.

 Toy Story 4 trailer

 Toy Story 4 Big Game Ad



When is the film released?

Toy Story 4 will be released in cinemas on 21 June 2019.
Peppa Pig has been accused of sexism for using the word fireman.

The London Fire Brigade criticised the childrens television show, stating the word is an outdated gender stereotype and harms attempts to sign up more female firefighters.

The episode in question  titled The Fire Engine  begins with the narrator saying: Mummy pig is dressed as a fireman.

On Twitter, the official account of the fire brigade wrote: Come on, weve not been firemen for 30 years. You have a huge influence on kids [and] using out of date stereotypical gender-specific wording prevents young girls from becoming firefighters.

Some users pointed out, though, that the repeated episode shows female characters becoming firefighters when a group of fathers accidentally start a blaze after using a barbecue incorrectly. Others defended the series for its inclusion of strong female role models.

London has more than 5,000 firefighters and only 354 are female. The fire brigade, who launched the Firefighting Sexism campaign in the hope of redressing the imbalance, told The Telegraph: We need to challenge outdated language that our research is showing is stopping young girls and women from considering firefighting as a rewarding and professional career.

Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did Show all 14 1 /14 Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 1. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Kicking us off is Phil Lord and Christopher Milles bizarre animated film about a scientist who creates a machine that transforms water into food. So far, not too crazy, but then the machine gets stuck in the sky and it starts raining food. Everything goes wrong and Flint Lockwood must save the day by flying up to the machine and kicking fried chicken butt. Yeah, a pretty crazy premise, but a fantastic film. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 2. Frank Michael Fassbender may be one of the most bankable stars of the moment - having starred in the likes of Steve Jobs, X-Men and Macbeth - but in 2014, instead of flaunting his face, producers decided to make him wear a weird papier-mache mask for the films near entirety. The plot sees Fassbenders titular character front a rock band, play SXSW and make likeable music. Its all just a bit strange. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 3. Groundhog Day Almost anything with Bill Murray in it is a win in my book, but when you say the premise of Ground Hog day out loud - a weatherman who must relive the same day over and over again - it sounds quite boring. What transpired was one of Murrays funniest films. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 4. Star Wars With Star Wars being so prevalent in pop-culture, its hard to imagine a time when no-one except George Lucas knew what a Lightsaber was. Producers must have been shocked when this young director came into the office trying to sell a script about Luke Skywalker, R2D2, Darth Vader, Chewbacca and Stormtroopers. Thankfully, they believed in his vision and now we have one of the best sci-fi sagas of all time. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 5. Incepetion A dream, within a dream, within a dream. Even those who watched Inception were left confused, let alone those who only heard what the film was about. Christopher Nolans final flick, however, was a masterclass in storytelling and one of the best films of the last ten years. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 6. Speed The high-concept Speed is quite ridiculous really. Keanu Reeves cant let a bus go below 50 miles per hour or it will blow up. Its quite amazing how Jan de Bont managed to make his debut 116 minutes long in the first place, let alone making it a decent film in the process. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 7. Edward Scissorhands Tim Burton is a director who could fill this entire list up. While he may have chosen to reboot numerous films in the past few years (Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the upcoming Dumbo 2) it was his original concepts that set him apart from everyone else. In Burtons head, the love story of a man with scissors for hands and a young woman made complete sense, while for everyone else - from just the premise - it seemed entirely weird. Luckily, he was given the opportunity to make the film and a cult classic was born, all while Johnny Depps ability to play the outsider was solidified. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 8. Mrs Doubtfire Post-Hook and Aladdin, Robin Williams was on a role. One of his standout performances was as Mrs. Doubtfire, the father-turned-drag-housekeeper. As a premise, dressing your lead male as a woman wasnt exactly new (see Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie), so the filmmakers ran the risk of it all seeming like an overdone joke. Luckily, Chris Columbus managed to pull off the ridiculous plot (how wouldnt the kids know its their father, really?) leading to one of the funniest films of the 90s. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 9. The Lobster Like Burton, most of Yorgos Lanthimoss films could probably feature on this page, but weve gone with The Lobster. The film tells of a hotel where residents must find a suitable partner within 45 days otherwise they will be turned into an animal. Try to run away and the other residents will hunt you down with tranquillisers. The result was one of the best love stories of 2015. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 10. Ant-Man Some comic book superheroes should not be adapted to the big screen (*cough* Howard the Duck *cough*). Ant-Man is not one of them. Against all the odds, Paul Rudd and Peyton Reed managed to make a compelling film about a man who could shrink down in size and control ants. Whats incredible is that - somehow - the film quickly became one of Marvels most beloved films. Of course, everyone knew Marvel could pull off weird, having knocked it out of the park with Guardians of the Galaxy the year before. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 11. Beetlejuice Two ghosts living in their old home want to scare away the alive people who now live there. Unfortunately, the new home-owners cant see them and so the ghosts have to call upon a deranged Michael Keaton to help them out. Add one of the strangest afterlife scenes in film history and youve got a brilliant film. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 12. Forrest Gump While not an obvious contender like Star Wars or Beetlejuice, when you think about it, Forrest Gump is a weird idea. A below-average intelligent man, sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus, telling strangers about all the famous moments in history where he observed/effected. Thanks to Tom Hanks, Gump was a magical film of love and hope, winning over the hearts of thousands and becoming an instant classic. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 13. The Lego Movie Another film from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, The Lego Movie shouldnt have worked. Making a beloved toy into a film; it was all just a bit silly. Thankfully, Chris Pratts turn as Emmett (and a catchy song in Everything is Awesome) the film was a huge hit with critics and fans alike, and now we have a cinematic universe of Lego movies to come. Awesome? Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 14. Im Not There Lets get Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw to all play Bob Dylan in a single film, Todd Haynes said. While you would think that would be overkill, the result was stunning, with Dylan himself eventually praising the film in 2012.

The tweet launched a social media debate, which was highlighted on ITV series Good Morning Britain. However, controversy struck when host Piers Morgan criticised the issue women have with the use of the word fireman in cartoons, including Fireman Sam.

Its not that women dont want to go and risk their lives, but actually, its cartoons, Morgan said. Its Fireman Sam, that is the problem, because it is called Fireman Sam.

The 65 best movie insults of all time Show all 65 1 /65 The 65 best movie insults of all time The 65 best movie insults of all time Avengers Assemble (2012) "This is my bargain, you mewling quim." Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) "Hey, where'd you get those clothes, the toilet store?" DreamWorks Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) "How could you sleep with Fat Bastard? No, I mean, literally, how could you do it? He's so fat, the sheer mechanics of it are mind-boggling." New Line Cinema The 65 best movie insults of all time Bad Moms (2016) "Well, you look like a bag of d***s" REX The 65 best movie insults of all time Bad Santa (2003) Youre an emotional f***ing cripple. Your soul is dogs***. Every single f***ing thing about you is ugly. REX The 65 best movie insults of all time Blade: Trinity (2004) "You c*ck-juggling thunderc***!" New Line Cinema The 65 best movie insults of all time The Breakfast Club (1985) "Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?" Universal Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) "If staying here means working within 10 yards of you, frankly, I'd rather have a job wiping Saddam Hussein's arse." Universal Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Bull Durham (1988) "From what I hear, you couldn't hit water if you fell out of a f***ing boat." Orion Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Burn After Reading (2008) "I have a drinking problem? F*** you, Peck. Compared to you we all have a drinking problem." Macall Polay The 65 best movie insults of all time The Campaign (2012) "You know what the difference between your momma and a washing machine is? When I dump a load in a machine, the machine doesn't follow me around for three weeks." Warner Bros Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Casino (1995) "You horse manure smelling motherf***er, you." Universal Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time The Cat in the Hat (2003) "Do you know how hard it is telling people were related?" DreamWorks Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Closer (2004) "Go f*** yourself, you WRITER!" Columbia Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Clueless (1995) "Youre a virgin and you cant drive." Paramount Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Con Air (1997) "You're somewhere between a cockroach and that white stuff that accumulates at the corner of your mouth when you're really thirsty." Buena Vista Pictures Distribution The 65 best movie insults of all time The Death of Stalin (2017) "You smell like rendered horse, you burning a**hole." eOne Films The 65 best movie insults of all time Donnie Darko (2001) "You can go suck a f***." Pandora Cinema The 65 best movie insults of all time Duck Soup (1933) "He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you  he really is an idiot." Paramount Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Easy A (2010) "Don't you think it's a little strange that your boyfriend is 22-years-old and still in high school?" Screen Gems The 65 best movie insults of all time Erin Brockovich (2000) "That's all you got, lady - two wrong feet and f***ing ugly shoes." Columbia Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Escape Plan (2013) "You hit like a vegetarian" The 65 best movie insults of all time The Favourite (2018) "You look like a badger." Fox Searchlight Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time A Fish Called Wanda (1988) "To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people." The 65 best movie insults of all time Full Metal Jacket (1987) "You climb like old people f***, Private Pile." ColumbiaCannonWarner The 65 best movie insults of all time Gangs of New York (2002) I dont give a tuppeny f*** about your moral conundrum, you meat-headed s*** sack. Miramax Films The 65 best movie insults of all time Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) "You're in more dire need of a blowjob than any white man in history" Buena Vista Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time The Hangover (2009) "You are literally too stupid to insult." Warner Bros. Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time His Girl Friday (1940) "Listen, you insignificant, square-toed, pimple-headed spy!" Columbia Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Home Alone (1990) "You're what the French call: 'les incompetents'." DON SMETZER/20TH CENTURY FOX/The Kobal Collection/WireImage.com The 65 best movie insults of all time In Bruges (2008) "YOU'RE AN INANIMATE F***ING OBJECT!" Universal Studios/Focus Features The 65 best movie insults of all time In the Loop (2009) "Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your a*** with a lubricated horse c***." IFC Films The 65 best movie insults of all time Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) "I should have had you wear double condoms. Well, we shouldn't have done it in the first place, but if you ever do it again, which as a favour to women everywhere, you should not, but if you do, you should be wearing condom on condom, and then wrap it in electrical tape. You should just walk around always inside a great big condom because you are s***!" CBS Films The 65 best movie insults of all time Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) Perry: "Look up 'idiot' in the dictionary. You know what you'll find?" : "Look up 'idiot' in the dictionary. You know what you'll find?" Harry: "A picture of me?" Perry: "No! The definition of the word idiot, which you f***ing are." REX The 65 best movie insults of all time Knocked Up "Your face looks like Robin Williams' knuckles. The 65 best movie insults of all time The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) "Were you always this stupid or did you take lessons?" The 65 best movie insults of all time The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) "My great aunt Jennifer ate a whole box of candy every day of her life. She lived to be 102 and when she'd been dead three days, she looked better than you do now." Warner Bros. The 65 best movie insults of all time Matilda (1996) "Your mummy is a TWIT." TriStar Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time The Mist (2007) Ill tell you what. The day I need a friend like you, Ill just have myself a little squat and s*** one out. REX The 65 best movie insults of all time Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries." EMI Films The 65 best movie insults of all time National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, d***less, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey s*** he is." The 65 best movie insults of all time Parenthood (1989) "I wouldn't live with you if the world were flooded with piss and you lived in a tree." Universal Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Phantom Thread (2018) "Are you a special agent sent here to ruin my evening and possibly my entire life?" REX The 65 best movie insults of all time Point Break (1991) "You're a real blue flame special, aren't you, son? Young, dumb and full of cum. What I don't know is how you got assigned here. Guess we must just have ourselves an asshole shortage, huh?" REX The 65 best movie insults of all time The Princess Bride (1987) "I'll explain and I'll use small words so that you'll be sure to understand, you warthog faced buffoon." Vestron Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Roxanne (1987) "Is that your nose or did a bus park on your face?" REX The 65 best movie insults of all time Say Anything (1989) "I got a question: if you guys know so much about women, how come you're here on a Saturday night completely alone drinking beers with no women anywhere?" The 65 best movie insults of all time Scarface (1983) "Even if I were blind, desperate, starved and begging for it on a desert island, you'd be the last thing I'd ever f***." Universal Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time School of Rock (2004) "You're tacky and I hate you" The 65 best movie insults of all time Sexy Beast (2000) "You're the f***ing problem you f***ing Dr White honkin' jam-rag f***ing spunk-bubble!" REX The 65 best movie insults of all time She's All That (1999) "To everyone here who matters, you're spam. You're vapour. A waste of perfectly good yearbook space." Miramax Films The 65 best movie insults of all time Short Circuit (1986) "Hey laser-lips, your mother was a snowblower." REX The 65 best movie insults of all time Shrek (2000) "You dense, irritating, miniature beast of a burden." REX The 65 best movie insults of all time The Silence of the Lambs (1991) You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but youre not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?" Orion Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) "Why, you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder." 20th Century Fox The 65 best movie insults of all time Step Brothers (2008) "You're not a doctor. You're a big fat curly headed f***." REX The 65 best movie insults of all time There Will Be Blood (2007) "You're just the afterbirth, Eli, slithered out on your mother's filth. They should have put you in glass jar on a mantelpiece." Paramount Vantage/Miramax Films The 65 best movie insults of all time Three Amigos (1986) "You dirt-eating piece of slime. You scum-sucking pig. You son of a motherless goat." Orion Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Toy Story (1995) "You are a sad strange little man, and you have my pity." Buena Vista Pictures Distribution The 65 best movie insults of all time Wayne's World (1992) "Benjamin is nobody's friend. If Benjamin were an ice cream flavour, he'd be pralines and d***." Paramount Pictures The 65 best movie insults of all time Whiplash (2014) "You are a worthless, friendless, piece of shit whose mommy left daddy when she figured out he wasn't Eugene O'Neill, and who is now weeping and slobbering all over my drum set like a f***ing nine-year old girl." REX The 65 best movie insults of all time The Witches of Eastwick (1987) "In the short time we've been together, you have demonstrated every loathsome characteristic of the male personality and even discovered a few new ones. You are physically repulsive, intellectually retarded, you're morally reprehensible, vulgar, insensitive, selfish, stupid, you have no taste, a lousy sense of humour and you smell. You're not even interesting enough to make me sick." REX The 65 best movie insults of all time Withnail & I (1987) "Monty, you terrible c***." HandMade Films The 65 best movie insults of all time The Wizard of Oz (1939) "You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk!" Loew's, Inc. The 65 best movie insults of all time The Women (1939) "You wanna see a bad facelift? Helen Danvers, two o'clock. She looks like she's re-entering the Earth's atmosphere." REX

He slammed the London Fire Brigade for posting the ridiculously politically correct statement on Twitter, saying: Why dont you go and put out fires?

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South Yorkshire Fire and Rescues temporary deputy fire chief recently used Fireman Sam as an example of a series that reinforces male stereotypes.

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London has more than 5,000 firefighters and only 354 are female. The fire brigade, who launched the Firefighting Sexism campaign in the hope of redressing the imbalance, told The Telegraph: We need to challenge outdated language that our research is showing is stopping young girls and women from considering firefighting as a rewarding and professional career.

Peppa Pig isnt the only childrens show to be accused of sexism. South Yorkshire Fire and Rescues temporary deputy fire chief recently used Fireman Sam as an example of a series that reinforces male stereotypes.
A new 165m coal mine has been unanimously approved by councillors in Cumbria, sparking protests by environmental campaigners.

Cumbria County Council said it was putting jobs above climate change concerns after its development committee approved the plan on Tuesday afternoon.

West Cumbria Mining, which filed the application, wants to extract coking coal along the coastline between Whitehaven and St Bees in Copeland and process the fossil fuel at a plant nearby.

Last week, Copeland's Conservative MP Trudy Harrison "wholeheartedly" endorsed the proposed undersea mine, touting new jobs and the "huge" investment it would bring to the area.

International trade secretary Liam Fox has also given his backing to the project.

"Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change Show all 38 1 /38 "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 Reuters "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Magdeburg, Germany on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest outside Holyrood in Edinburgh on March 15 Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Cape Town, South Africa on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in New York on March 15 AFP/Getty Images "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Madrid on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Quezon City, Philippines on March 15 Getty Images "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Vienna on March 15 AFP/Getty Images "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Dublin on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Canterbury, Kent on march 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest outside Holyrood in Edinburgh on March 15 Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Erfurt, Germany on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Zagreb, Croatia on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Lisbon on March 15 Reuters "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Edinburgh on March 15 Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Florence, Italy on March 15 Sign reads: there is no future without a planet, let's not sell it for money EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Vienna on March 15 Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Brighton on March 15 Reuters "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest outside Holyrood in Edinburgh Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Cambridge on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change Students protest in Bangalore, India on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Cape Town, South Africa on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change Students protest in Bangalore, India on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change A student protests in Lucerne, Switzerland on 15 March EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 AFP/Getty Images "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Milan, Italy on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 AFP/Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Lund, Sweden on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change A poster with Greta Thunberg, who began the current children's movement at the protest in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Cape Town, South Africa on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Canterbury, Kent on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Canterbury, Kent on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest outside Holyrood in Edinburgh Getty

But critics accused the council of ignoring the current climate crisis, which is increasingly causing extreme and dangerous weather events across the globe.

Parts of the US midwest are currently suffering from record-breaking floods, while southern Africa is attempting to cope with an unprecedented cyclone which may have killed more than 1,000 people.

"Cumbrian coal mine application vote - approved unanimously, by Labour, Lib Dem and Tory councillors. How can this shower be in charge of something so big? Shame on you all," tweeted Gwen Harrison, a local climate activist who attended the meeting.

The decision prompted a handful of campaigners to stage a sit in on the floor of the chamber.

Geoff Cook, Liberal Democrat councillor and chair of Cumbria County Councils development committee, said: "It wasnt an easy decision. All of us would prefer to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and we recognise that during construction there will be disruption to many local residents.

"However we felt that the need for coking coal, the number of jobs on offer and the chance to remove contamination outweighed concerns about climate change and local amenity."

Friends of the Earth clean energy campaigner Tony Bosworth told The Independent: This is awful news for our environment.

If we want to avoid dangerous climate change, giving the go-ahead to a new coal mine takes us in completely the wrong direction.

Coal for power generation is currently being phased-out. Industries like steel and cement must make the shift to cleaner energy a top priority.

Its time to consign coal to the history books where it now belongs.
Compelling evidence of the widespread illegal killing of one of Englands rarest birds of prey has been uncovered by a major study.

Hen harriers are 10 times more likely to die or disappear in areas mainly covered by grouse moors, researchers found.

After analysing a decade of satellite tagging data from 58 birds, Aberdeen and Cape Town University scientists found that 42 (72 per cent) had been killed illegally or had vanished  with nothing to suggest their tracking device had malfunctioned.

The first year survival rate of the hen harriers, tagged in England as fledglings, was only 17 per cent. First year survival rates on the Orkney Islands, where there are no managed grouse moors, are 37 per cent for male hen harriers and 54 per cent for females.

After comparing land use data supplied by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds with the satellite data provided by Natural England, the scientists concluded: The probability of a bird dying or disappearing increased with the proportion of [location] fixes on grouse moors  indicating that harriers were 10 times more likely to die or disappear in areas dominated by grouse moors.

Steve Redpath, professor of conservation science at Aberdeen University, and one of the reports lead authors, concluded: Our analysis points the finger at continued illegal killing on grouse moors across the north of England.

Wildlife photographer of the year Show all 26 1 /26 Wildlife photographer of the year Wildlife photographer of the year A polar bear's struggle - Highly Commended Justins whole body pained as he watched this starving polar bear at an abandoned hunter's camp, in the Canadian Arctic, slowly heave itself up to standing. With little, and thinning, ice to move around on, the bear is unable to search for food. Justin Hofman / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Curious Encounter - Shortlisted Cristobal Serrano, Spain. Any close encounter with an animal in the vast wilderness of Antarctica happens by chance, so Cristobal was thrilled by this spontaneous meeting with a crabeater seal off of Cuverville Island, Antarctic Peninsula. These curious creatures are protected and, with few predators, thrive. Cristobal Serrano / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Bond of brothers - Winner David Lloyd, New Zealand / UK. These two adult males, probably brothers, greeted and rubbed faces for 30 seconds before settling down. Most people never have the opportunity to witness such animal sentience, and David was honoured to have experienced and captured such a moment.The picture was taken in Ndutu, Serengeti, Tanzania. David Lloyd / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Fox meets fox - Highly Commended Matthew Maran, UK. Matthew has been photographing foxes close to his home in north London for over a year and ever since spotting this street art had dreamt of capturing this image. After countless hours and many failed attempts his persistence paid off. Matthew Maran / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Three Kings - Highly Commended Wim Van Den Heever, South Africa. Wim came across these king penguins on a beach in the Falkland Islands just as the sun was rising. They were caught up in a fascinating mating behaviour the two males were constantly moving around the female using their flippers to fend the other off. Wim Van Den Heever / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year One toy, three dogs - Highly Commended Bence Mate, Hungary. While adult African wild dogs are merciless killers, their pups are extremely cute and play all day long. Bence photographed these brothers in Mkuze, South Africa they all wanted to play with the leg of an impala and were trying to drag it in three different directions! Bence Mate / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Clam Close-up - Shortlisted David Barrio, Spain. This macro-shot of an iridescent clam was taken in the Southern Red Sea, Marsa Alam, Egypt. These clams spend their lives embedded amongst stony corals, where they nest and grow. It took David some time to approach the clam, fearing it would sense his movements and snap shut! David Barrio / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year The Orphaned Beaver - Shortlisted Suzi Eszterhas, United States. A one-month-old orphaned North American beaver kit is held by a caretaker at the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center in Arlington, Washington. Luckily it was paired with a female beaver who took on the role of mother and they were later released into the wild. Suzi Eszterhas / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Ice and Water - Shortlisted Audun Lie Dahl, Norway. The Brasvellbreen glacier moves southwards from one of the ice caps covering the Svalbard Archipelago, Norway. Where it meets the sea, the glacier wall is so high that only the waterfalls are visible, so Audun used a drone to capture this unique perspective Audun Lie Dahl / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Teenager - Shortlisted Franco Banfi, Switzerland. Franco was free diving off Dominica in the Caribbean Sea when he witnessed this young male sperm whale trying to copulate with a female. Unfortunately for him her calf was always in the way and the frisky male had to continually chase off the troublesome calf. Franco Banfi / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Resting Mountain Gorilla - Shortlisted David Lloyd. The baby gorilla clung to its mother whilst keeping a curious eye on David. He had been trekking in South Bwindi, Uganda, whenhe came across the whole family. Following them, they then stopped in a small clearing to relax and groom each other. David Lloyd / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Painted Waterfall - Shorltisted Eduardo Blanco Mendizabal, Spain. When the sun beams through a hole in the rock at the foot of the La Foradada waterfall, Catalonia, Spain, it creates a beautiful pool of light. The rays appear to paint the spray of the waterfall and create a truly magical picture. Eduardo Blanco Mendizabal / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year The Extraction - Shortlisted Konstantin Shatenev, Russia. Every winter, hundreds of Steller's sea eagles migrate from Russia, to the relatively ice-free northeastern coast of Hokkaido, Japan. They hunt for fish among the ices floes and also scavenge, following the fishing boats to feed on any discards. Konstantin took his image from a boat as the eagles retrieved a dead fish thrown onto the ice. Konstantin Shatenev / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Shy - Shortlisted Pedro Carrillo, Spain. The mesmerizing pattern of a beaded sand anemone beautifully frames a juvenile Clarkii clownfish in Lembehstrait, Sulawesi, Indonesia. Known as a 'nursery' anemone, it is often a temporary home for young clownfish until they find a more suitable host anemone for adulthood. Pedro Carrillo / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Red, Silver and Black - Shortlisted TinMan Lee, USA. Tin was fortunate enough to be told about a fox den in Washington State, North America, which was home to a family of red, black and silver foxes. After days of waiting for good weather he was finally rewarded with this touching moment. Tin Man Lee / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Isolated - Shortlisted Anna Henly, UK. Snapped from a helicopter, this isolated tree stands in a cultivated field on the edge of a tropical forest on Kauai, Hawaii. The manmade straight lines of the ploughed furrows are interrupted beautifully by natures more unruly wild pattern of tree branches. Anna Henly / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Sound Asleep - Shortlisted Tony Wu, USA. This adult humpback whale balanced in mid-water, headon and sound asleep was photographed in Vavau, Kingdom of Tonga. The faint stream of bubbles, visible at the top, is coming from the whales two blowholes and was, in this instance, indicative of an extremely relaxed state. Tony Wu / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year All That Remains - Shortlisted Phil Jones, UK. A male orca had beached itself about a week before Phils visit to Sea Lion Island, Falkland Islands. Despite its huge size the shifting sands had almost covered the whole carcass and scavengers, such as this striated caracara, had started to move in. Phil Jones / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Ambush - Shortlisted Federico Veronesi, Kenya. On a hot morning at the Chitake Springs, in Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe, Federico watched as an old lioness descended from the top of the riverbank. Shed been lying in wait to ambush any passing animals visiting a nearby waterhole further along the riverbed. Federico Veronesi / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Gliding - Shortlisted Christian Vizl, Mexico. With conditions of perfect visibility and beautiful sunlight, Christian took this portrait of a nurse shark gliding through the ocean off the coast of Bimini in the Bahamas. Typically these sharks are found near sandy bottoms where they rest, so its rare to see them swimming. Christian Vizl / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Otherworldly - Shortlisted A school of Munk's devil ray were feeding on plankton at night off the coast of Isla Espiritu Santo in Baja California, Mexico. Franco used the underwater lights from his boat and a long exposure to create this otherworldly image. Franco Banfi / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year The Bats Wake - Shortlisted Antonio Leiva Sanchez, Spain. After several months of field research into a little colony of greater mouse-eared bats in Sucs, Lleida, Spain, Antonio managed to capture this bat mid-flight. He used a technique of high speed photography with flashes combined with continuous light to create the wake. Antonio Leiva Sanchez / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Under the Snow - Shortlisted Audren Morel, France. Unafraid of the snowy blizzard, this squirrel came to visit Audren as he was taking photographs of birds in the small Jura village of Les Fourgs, France. Impressed by the squirrels endurance, he made it the subject of the shoot. Audren Morel / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Unique Bill - Shortlisted Rob Blanken, The Netherlands. The pied avocet has a unique and delicate bill, which it sweeps like a scythe, as it sifts for food in shallow brackish water. This stunning portrait was taken from a hide in the northern province of Friesland in The Netherlands. Rob Blanken / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year Family Portrait - Shortlisted Connor Stefanison, Canada. A great grey owl and her chicks sit in their nest in the broken top of a Douglas fir tree in Kamloops, Canada. They looked towards Connor only twice as he watched them during the nesting season from a tree hide 50 feet (15 metres) up. Connor Stefanison / Natural History Museum Wildlife photographer of the year A dog jumps to catch a disc during a dog frisbee competition in Poznan via REUTERS

He was backed in this conclusion by the RSPB and Natural England, the governments advisory body for the natural environment.

The study in the journal Nature Communications adds to a growing body of research suggesting that despite suitable habitat in upland England, hen harrier numbers are low because of wildlife crime committed to stop the raptors eating grouse destined for shoots.

The research will also increase the pressure for grouse moors to be licensed. Some have also called for the introduction of Scottish-style vicarious liability laws that would call English moor owners to account for the actions of gamekeepers or other employees.

Moor owners suggested the situation has changed since the satellite tagging data was collected. But opponents of driven grouse shooting argue that the pastime is turning some upland areas of England into a massive wildlife crime scene.

The study authors said the areas most affected by suspiciously high hen harrier mortality were the North York Moors and the Peak District, followed by the North Pennines, Nidderdale, the Yorkshire Dales and the Forest of Bowland.

Of the 58 harriers fitted with satellite tags between 2007 and 2017, only seven were still alive at the end of the study period. Five birds were found to have died a natural death.

There were four cases of confirmed satellite tag malfunction.

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That left 42 hen harriers. Of these, four were confirmed to have been illegally killed, and in a further 38 cases, the tag suddenly stopped transmitting with no malfunction detected.

The researchers concluded that the only reasonable explanation for the 38 disappearances was that the birds had been killed by a wildlife criminal who had taken away the tag and the dead hen harrier.

In their article, Patterns of satellite tagged hen harrier disappearances, they wrote: We can think of no alternative, plausible explanation as to why mortality and unexpected tag failure was occurring at a higher rate on grouse moors.

There are no other obvious potential sources that would be expected to yield such high mortality on managed grouse moors. Predators such as golden eagles and red foxes are scarce and we would expect to recover tags from naturally predated harriers.

Furthermore our recorded tag failure rate (7 per cent) is very similar to that found in a study on Montagus harriers (6 per cent) using the same type of Doppler tags manufactured by the same company.

Discussing the findings, Dr Megan Murgatroyd, from the University of Cape Town, the other lead author of the study, said: Whilst dead harriers can be disposed of, the pattern of hen harrier disappearances revealed by this data could not be hidden.

The multiple levels of analyses of the data have all led to the same robust conclusion: that hen harriers in Britain suffer elevated levels of mortality on grouse moors, and this is most likely the result of illegal killing.

Dr David Douglas, RSPB principal conservation scientist and study co-author, added: The high rate of illegal persecution on grouse moors revealed by this study goes a long way to explaining why hen harriers are barely hanging on as a breeding bird in England.

He was backed by Stephen Murphy, an ornithologist from Natural England, who led the collection of the satellite tagging data.

Mr Murphy said: These analyses confirm what has long been suspected: that illegal persecution is having a major impact on the conservation status of the hen harrier.

Amanda Anderson, director of the Moorland Association, which represents grouse moor owners and managers in England and Wales, said the study data, gathered between 2006 and 2017, was before a management scheme put in place as part of Defras hen harrier recovery plan.

She said keepers had engaged with tactics such as reporting and monitoring nests and roost sites, as well as reducing conflicts between the birds via feeding strategies.

Ms Anderson said that 2018, the first year of the brood management scheme, was the most successful hen harrier breeding season in England for over a decade, continuing: We know from evidence gathered on the ground there are many areas on grouse moors where hen harriers  with or without satellite tags  are currently thriving.

But she added: We want to see more hen harriers on grouse moors. Persecution should not occur and must cease in order to give hen harriers the best chance of survival. Seventy per cent of hen harriers perish in their first year from natural causes. However, when a satellite tag fails unexpectedly, persecution may be a factor.
Halima Aden is launching a range of fashionable headscarves just in time for Istanbul Modest Fashion Week (IMFW).

While the fashion industry still has a long way to go when it comes to diversity, one of the people helping pave the way is Aden, an American-Somali model who gained recognition after winning the Miss Minnesota USA pageant in 2016 wearing a hijab and burkini.

Since then, Aden has walked the runway for high-fashion brands like Max Mara, Alberta Ferretti and Kanye West's Yeezy. She also became the first hijab-wearing model to grace the cover of British Vogue in the publications 102-year history in 2018.

Now, the 21-year-old is breaking another boundary by adding fashion designer to her ever-growing multi-hyphenate title.

Collaborating with Turkish modest fashion brand Modanisa, Aden has designed a 27-piece capsule collection of fashion headscarves that will launch at Istanbul Modest Fashion Week, which takes place on 20-21 April 2019.

Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Show all 8 1 /8 Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Anniesa Hasibuan show, runway, Spring Summer 2017, New York Fashion Week Rex Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Anniesa Hasibuan show, runway, Spring Summer 2017, New York Fashion Week Rex Features Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Anniesa Hasibuan show, runway, Spring Summer 2017, New York Fashion Week Rex Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Anniesa Hasibuan show, runway, Spring Summer 2017, New York Fashion Week Rex Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Anniesa Hasibuan show, runway, Spring Summer 2017, New York Fashion Week Rex Features Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Anniesa Hasibuan show, runway, Spring Summer 2017, New York Fashion Week Rex Features Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Anniesa Hasibuan show, runway, Spring Summer 2017, New York Fashion Week Rex Features Muslim fashion designer features hijabs at New York Fashion Week Anniesa Hasibuan show, runway, Spring Summer 2017, New York Fashion Week Rex Features

While further details about the collection are yet to be revealed, a recent comment made by the model regarding her modest fashion must-haves has given fans an insight as to what they can expect.

During an interview with Paper magazine, Aden declared that one of the staples for women who practice modest fashion is a good nude hijab.

However the model, who has built a reputation for her own personal style, also has a penchant for bold prints and bright colours with many of her Instagram posts showcasing her love for vivid shades of blue, red, fuchsia pink and leopard print.

Most recently, Aden made headlines after wearing a glittering chain-link Christian Cowan hijab with a neon-striped trouser suit at New York Fashion Week.

The model was also spotted walking for Tommy Hilfiger at the Tommy x Zendaya Paris Fashion Week show.

Aden hopes that her success in the fashion industry will encourage more women from the next generation to follow their dreams.

I want to be known for encouraging other girls to go out and have their own success stories, she told Paper.

I'm focused on the next generation. I want to one day see a hijabi at the Met Gala. I want to see a hijabi being a lead actress.

Think of all the many firsts that are still out there. What can I do to encourage girls to dream big, to bring it home?"
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced that they are expecting their second child.

During her first pregnancy, Meghan Markle became renowned for her pregnancy wardrobe.

Of course, the former Hollywood actor was no sartorial novice prior to her pregnancy. But when she was pregnant with Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor, the former Suits actor has proved her maternity style credentials with aplomb.

From stepping out in a retro mini dress on International Womens Day to colour-blocking on a visit to Birkenhead, Meghan kept things fresh by paying homage to an eclectic mix of trends.

Markle is also renowned for championing female British designers, such as Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham and of course, Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy, who designed her wedding gown.

Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks Show all 11 1 /11 Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 14 January 2019 In an unusual style choice for the Duchess, who traditionally favours neutral hues, this ensemble offers a vibrant twist on the colour-blocking trend with a red Sentaler coat, matching heels and a bright purple Aritzia dress. It was a playful choice for the royal couple's visit to Birkenhead Town Hall. Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 30 January 2019 The Duchess wore head-to-toe blush for her visit to the National Theatre, where she is now a patron. The ensemble is by US designer Brandon Maxwell but the suede shoes are Aquazurra. Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 1 February 2019 Oscar de la Renta can do no wrong when it comes to flirty patterned dresses. This theatrical bird and rose-covered number was an apt choice for the Duchess; visit to Bristol Old Vic. AFP/Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 7 February 2019 This Givenchy skirt offers some pizzazz thanks to its knee-high slit and its flattering waistline. Markle paired the look Aquazzura mules and a white collared shirt. Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 12 February 2019 Who said you couldn't wear all-white everything? Markle paired her turtleneck Calvin Klein dress with an Amanda Wakeley coat for a gala performance at the Natural History Museum. Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 23 February 2019 The Duchess was a lady in red for her visit to Casablanca, Morocco in this bespoke Valentino midi-dress, which she paired with nude court heels and a matching clutch. Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 24 February 2019 Markle arrived at a reception hosted by the British Ambassador to Morocco in this full-coverage caped gown by Dior, which came in an opulent shade of champagne. Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 25 February 2019 This billowing Carolina Herrera dress was the perfect choice for the Duchess' outing to brace the balmy climes of Rabat, Morocco, where she'd been visiting King Mohammed VI of Morocco with Prince Harry. This hypnotic sea blue gown was a custom-made number, obviously. Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 8 March 2019 Proving that maternity hemlines needn't be restricted to one's ankles, Markle stepped out in this 1960s-inspired shift dress by high street label, Reiss. Paired with a black blazer and a pair of matching Manolo Blahnik pumps, it was a classic but delightfully retro look. AFP/Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 11 March 2019 The Duchess has a penchant for rich emerald green hues, and this ensemble exemplifies just how suited the shade is to her complexion. The outfit was designed by Erdem, which was a symbolic choice given she wore the Canadian designer's pieces to a Commonwealth Day Youth Event at Canada House in London. Getty Images Meghan Markle's best pregnancy looks 11 March 2019 For the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey, the Duchess wore a cream chain-print dress by Victoria Beckham, which made its runway debut just a few weeks ago at London Fashion Week. The look was topped off with a matching pillbox hat, emerald green stilettos and a satin clutch. Getty Images

In a very short period of time, the mother-to-be managed to completely dismantle the myth that pregnant women are slaves to slouchy garb  think tracksuit bottoms and stretch-top jeans. No. They can radiate in printed maxi dresses by Carolina Herrera or fix up and look sharp in snazzy tailoring from high street labels.

Click through the gallery above to see Markles best pregnancy looks, which came complete with Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein and copious pairs of Manolo Blahniks.
Devin Nunes has sued Twitter and several of its users, among them a parody account of his mother and a cow.

The Republican congressman is seeking $250m (188m) in damages for abusive, hateful and defamatory content allegedly hosted on Twitter, which the suit claims was intended to interfere with the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential election.

The complaint, filed in a Virginia state court on Monday, refers specifically to the accounts Devin Nunes Mom (@DevinNunesMom) and Devin Nunes cow (@DevinCow), as well as Republican communications consultant and critic of Mr Nunes, Liz Mair.

The content referred to in the complaint includes a human centipede-style diagram of waste passing from Russian president Vladimir Putin to US president Donald Trump, before passing to Mr Nunes.

The caption of the diagram, posted by the Devin Nunes Mom account, stated: Heres a helpful diagram to explain their relationship.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The lawsuit accuses the @DevinNunesCow account of making defamatory remarks about the Republican to its 1,204 Twitter followers. At the time of writing, the account is still active and now has more than 66,000 followers.

Some Twitter users have attributed this rapid follower growth to a phenomenon known as the Streisand effect, whereby an attempt to remove or censor a piece of information instead serves to publicise it more widely.

According to the lawsuit, the @DevinNunesMom account was suspended following a complaint by Mr Nunes real mother.

A legal representative for Mr Nunes could not be reached for comment but in an appearance on Fox News on Monday Night, the Congressman said: This is the first of many lawsuits that are coming... Our First Amendment rights are at stake here.

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It is not the first time a US politician has accused Twitter of targeting them because of their political views, with Mr Trump consistently accusing the social media platform of bias against conservatives.

Social media is totally discriminating against Republican/ Conservative voices, he tweeted in August 2018. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others.

Social media companies are protected from defamation liability, however the complaint alleges Twitter wilfully facilitated defamation on its platform by completely ignoring lawful complaints about offensive content and by allowing that content to remain accessible to the public.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
PewDiePie has become the first Youtuber to reach 90 million subscribers following a sustained campaign from his fans and fellow content creators.

The 29-year-old, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, made the incredible comeback just hours after being dethroned as YouTube's most subscribed channel by Indian music channel T-Series.

Expressing his gratitude to fans for their support during a crucial time, he said: Thanks for 90 million subs, feels weird celebrating but just wanted to say thanks for all the support and love especially as of late.

PewDiePie's six-year reign came to an end when the Indian music channel, which releases lavish music videos, edged ahead of the Swedish star.

The two channels have been neck-and-neck for months and after T-Series gained the lead, PewDiePie's fans called for others to fight back by subscribing to his channel.

11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Show all 11 1 /11 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Play in the background One of the YouTube apps most frustrating shortcomings is the inability to play music videos in the background or when youre phones locked. There is a way around this, but only on iOS. Open the YouTube website in Safari, play a video and then press your iPhones home button. After that, launch the Control Centre by sliding up from the bottom of the screen and tap play. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Loop videos YouTubes looping option on desktop is really useful, but nowhere near as easy to find as it should be. To loop a video, right-click it while its playing and select Loop. Even if you have Autoplay enabled, your video will replay itself as soon as it finishes. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Enable Dark Theme YouTube recently introduced a black-and-red Dark Theme on the desktop, which is much easier on your eyes than the regular version of the site. Enable it by clicking the account symbol, selecting Dark Theme and turning Activate Dark Theme on. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Simplify YouTube Another alternative YouTube user interface is available to access at youtube.com/tv. Its a really simple, no-frills UI thats incredibly easy to navigate. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Try out new features You can test upcoming and experimental features early by signing up to YouTube TestTube. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Read When you want to watch a YouTube video but dont have your headphones and dont want to disturb anyone around you, turn on Captions. Theyre also really handy if youre trying to watch a video in a foreign language. Transcriptions, meanwhile, break down exactly when certain things take place, so you can skip to the part you want to watch accurately and easily. In the More tab under the video title, launch the dropdown menu and select Transcript. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Use shortcuts You can lean back in your seat and control YouTube videos with your keyboard if you want to. J and L let you rewind and fast-forward 10 seconds, K is pause/play, M is mute/unmute and the 0-9 keys let you jump through various stages of the video, from 0 per cent to 90 per cent. On the app, you can fast forward or rewind 10 seconds by double-tapping the right or left side of a video. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Limit data use If youre on a limited mobile data plan, there are easy ways to save yourself some money. In Settings on the YouTube app, hit General and enable Limit Mobile Data Usage and disable Autoplay. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Keep things private Unless you make them private, other people can see your Liked videos, your saved playlists and subscriptions. If you want to hide them, go to Settings and Privacy. You can also clear or pause your History. On either desktop or the mobile app, go to History and select Clear All Watch History or Pause Watch History. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Make sharing clearer Sometimes you want to share a video with a friend, but want them to watch a specific part, rather than the whole thing. Instead of sending the timestamp through as a separate message, make the video automatically play from the right place. Just pause it at the right moment, click the Share button, tick the Start At box and copy the URL. 11 YouTube features you didn't know existed Get nerdy Stats for Nerds shows you technical data for YouTube videos, including video format, audio format and bandwidth. On desktop, you can find the info simply by right-clicking the video player and selecting Stats for Nerds. On mobile, you have to enable it first in General Settings. Once thats done, open a video, hit the menu button in the top-right corner and tap the Stats for Nerds option.

The fan reaction helped him briefly regain his throne, but Tuesday afternoon, T-Series was back on top.

His other memorable stunts in recent weeks include calling on Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to host a popular segment on his channel called Meme Review.

Both channels now have more than 90 million subscribers and are expected to reach the 100 million milestone by June.

Its incredible to see how media companies like T-Series are flourishing in this space. Whilst YouTube continues to be a pivotal platform for influencers like PewDiePie, media companies have really doubled down on the platform this year, Denis Crushell from social video analytics firm Tubular Labs recently told The Independent.

T-Series and its sister channels now see well over 4 billion views per month, making it YouTubes most viewed media company globally.
Shamima Begum was just 15 years old when she ran away from home in Bethnal Green with two school friends to join the so-called Islamic State in Syria. There she married a Dutch jihadi and threw herself into a life of religious fervour and day-to-day brutality. In February, heavily pregnant with her third child, having lost two other children in infancy, Begum gave an interview from a refugee camp, saying shed like to come back to London. The outcry at her request was immediate and predictable and not helped by Begums assertion that the Manchester bombing was fair retaliation for the actions of British and US forces overseas. Sajid Javid acted swiftly to prevent Begums repatriation by launching the process to strip her of her British citizenship.

Listening to those who have lost loved ones in terror attacks claimed by Isis and the heartbreaking testimonies of the Yazidi people who bore the brunt of its cruelty, it was easy to think that Javid was right. What was the point of risking more lives to bring Begum home and attempt to deradicalise her? Begum seemed unrepentant, even as she asked for a chance to have her third child on the NHS. There was a feeling that she wouldnt have been asking to come back at all were Isis still the winning team. She said she wasnt fazed by the sight of a severed head in a bin. Indeed, it seems she thought the poor decapitated chap had it coming. By her words and by her deeds, Begum showed us who she really was. And people dont ever change, do they?

What were you like when you were a teenager? Did you harbour any ridiculous beliefs? Have any unsuitable friends? At 16, I was a regular at the local pub, drinking alcohol underage. When the police raided said pub one Saturday night, my 30-year-old friend Richie asked me to hold something for him. He stuffed a wadded handkerchief into the breast pocket of my denim jacket. That handkerchief was wrapped around a large lump of marijuana resin. I had no idea. Expecting to be searched, Richie was happy for someone else to carry the cannabis. When he explained afterwards, I thought it was exciting. Decades later, I see exactly what a nasty move it was. The police didnt search anybody that night but my life might have turned out very differently had they done otherwise.
Tesla chief executive Elon Musks defence against a contempt of court claim borders on the ridiculous, according to US regulators.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday that Mr Musk had brazenly ignored a federal judges order to ensure his tweets were approved by Teslas lawyers. Not a single tweet from Mr Musk has had legal signoff, the SEC said in a court claim.

Mr Musk, who has previously sent the value of Teslas shares soaring after tweeting inaccurate information, has argued he believes the order only covers information that is material to investors.

The regulator countered that Mr Musks claim that tweeting about car production forecasts on 19 February wasnt material information is almost ridiculous. His interpretation is inconsistent with the plain terms of this courts order and renders its pre-approval requirement meaningless, the lawyers wrote.

Mondays filing from the SEC said the tweet was different from prior public disclosures by the company and that Mr Musk has regularly published tweets with substantive information about the company and its business.

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A Manhattan district judge will decide if Mr Musk is in contempt and whether he should be punished. The SEC said no hearing is necessary on the matter because there appear to be no disputed issues of material fact.

Mr Musks lawyers said last week that the tweet merely restated previously approved disclosures about Teslas electric car production volumes. The tweet did not reveal material information or change the mix of data available to investors, the lawyers said.

The Tesla bosss latest legal troubles stem from tweets he made in August claiming to have secured funding to take the company private at $420 a share. Shares jumped in value before falling again when it became clear that Mr Musk did not have the money in place.

To settle a securities fraud case brought by the SEC, Tesla and Mr Musk each had to pay $20m in fines. Mr Musk was also removed as chairman.

Last week, Mr Musks lawyers accused the SEC of censorship and violating the right to free speech under the First Amendment.

But the SEC said that submitting statements for approval does not amount to prohibiting free speech.

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As long as a statement submitted for pre-approval is not false or misleading, Tesla would presumably approve its publication without prior restraint on Musk, they wrote.

Musks tweet said that Tesla would produce around 500,000 vehicles this year, but it wasnt approved by the companys disclosure counsel, the SEC has said.

The lawyer quickly realised it and summoned Mr Musk to the companys Fremont, California, factory to help write a correction. The company would make vehicles at a rate of 500,000 per year, but it wouldnt produce half a million in 2019.
MPs have warned live music fans against using secondary ticketing site Viagogo until it fully complies with consumer law.

In a new report the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee said Viagogo had caused distress for too many music fans for too long.

MPs said that the company has shown an unwillingness to appear before the committee and provide oral evidence and that it has demonstrated disdain for not only the legislative process, but its customers.

The DCMS committee therefore took the highly unusual step of warning the public not to use a companys services.

Viagogo was handed a court order in November demanding that it provide accurate and upfront information about the tickets sold on its website.

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Biggest business scandals in pictures Panama Papers: Millions of leaked documents expose how worlds rich and powerful hid money - April 2016 Millions of confidential documents have been leaked from one of the worlds most secretive law firms, exposing how the rich and powerful have hidden their money. Dictators and other heads of state have been accused of laundering money, avoiding sanctions and evading tax, according to the unprecedented cache of papers that show the inner workings of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is based in Panama. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Google's tax avoidance Google reached a deal with the HM Revenue and Customs to pay back 130 million in so-called back-taxes that have been due since 2005. George Osborne championed the deal as a major success. But European MEPs have since called for the Chancellor to appear in front of the committee on tax rulings to explain the tax deal. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Rogue trader A French court cut the damages owed by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel from 4.9bn (4.2bn) to just 1m (860,000). The court ruled on that Kerviel was partly responsible for massive losses suffered in 2008 by his former employer Societe Generale through his reckless trades. Kerviel has consistently maintained that bosses at the French bank knew what he was doing all along. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Barclays CEO under investigation for trying to identify whistleblower - Monday Paril 10 Authorities have launched an investigation into Barclays chief executive officer Jes Staley for trying to identify a whistleblower, the bank said on Monday. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are both investigating Mr Staley after the bank notified them that Mr Staley had tried to identify the author of two anonymous letters, which were sent to the board and a senior executive in June 2016. 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On Monday, the three were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on accounts including bribery, fraud and money laundering. Mark Dobson, another manager at HBOS, Alison Mills, and John Cartwright were also convicted. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Lloyds chief apologises for damage caused by affair allegations - August 2016 Antonio Horta-Osorio, the chief executive of Lloyds Bank, has broken his silence over allegations about his private life admitting he regrets any "damage done to the group's reputation". In a message sent to the bank's 75,000 employees, the banker said that anyone can make mistakes while insisting that staff had to maintain the highest professional standards. 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Mark Johnson, global head of foreign exchange cash trading in London, was reportedly arrested on Tuesday. He will appear before a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Bloomberg said. Getty Biggest business scandals in pictures Former PwC employees found guilty in 'Luxleaks' tax scandal - June 2016 Two ex- PricewaterhouseCoopers staffers were found guilty in Luxembourg of stealing confidential tax files that helped unleash a global scandal over generous fiscal deals for hundreds of international companies. Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet face suspended sentences of 12 months and 9 months and were ordered to pay fines of 1,500 (1,230) and 1,000 (822) for their role in the so-called LuxLeaks scandal. Despite the minimal sentences, the ruling was described by Deltours lawyer as shocking and a terrible anomaly. The ruling puts on guard future whistle-blowers, Deltour told reporters.The LuxLeaks revelations sped beyond Luxembourg, causing European Union regulators to expand a tax-subsidy probe and propose new laws to fight corporate tax dodging, while EU lawmakers created a special committee to probe fiscal deals across the 28-nation bloc. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Goldman Sachs dealmakers lavished Libyan officials with prostitutes to win contract - June 2016 A former Goldman Sachs dealmaker trying to persuade Gadaffi-era Libya to invest $1 billion with the investment bank procured prostitutes and invited Libyan officials to lavish parties in the hope of winning the business, the High Court heard on Monday June 13.The Libyan Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund is suing Goldman Sachs for inappropriately coercing its naive staff into giving its sovereign wealth fund cash to the bank to invest in products they did not understand. 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The company founder said that workers were paid less than the statutory minimum because of bottlenecks at security in an admission that could result in sanctions from HMRC. Reuters Biggest business scandals in pictures Mitsubishi admits improper fuel tests - April 2016 Mitsubishi has admitted to using false fuel methods dating back to 1991. The scale of the scandal is only just coming to light after it was revealed in April that data was falsified in the testing of four types of cars, including two Nissan cars. AP Biggest business scandals in pictures Quindell, the scandal-ridden insurance firm Quindell was once a darling of AIM but its share price fell in April 2014 when its accounting practices were attacked in a stinging research note by US short seller Gotham City. In August the group was forced to disclose that the 107 million pre-tax profit it had reported for 2013 was incorrect, and it had in fact suffered a 64million loss. 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Under the order, Viagogo must tell customers if there is a risk that they will be turned away from a venue, and make it clear which seat in the venue they will get, among a host of other requirements.

The DCMS committees latest criticism comes just two weeks after the competition watchdog said issues remained around Viagogos business practices and that the company had not complied with the court order.

The CMA said it was preparing to take further legal action against Viagogo.

The company has said it does not think it has breached the order.

The DCMS report looked at the economic, cultural and social benefits of live music in the UK. Of 80 evidence submissions to its inquiry, close to two-thirds related to ticket abuse.

The committee said it notes the significant progress by enforcement agencies in bringing a number of secondary resale platforms into line with consumer law following actions by the CMA and the Advertising Standards Authority, as well as changes within the industry itself to limit the resale of tickets for profit.

But it called for more action from the government. MPs said in a statement: We believe that Viagogo has yet to prove itself a trustworthy operator given its history of resisting compliance, court orders and parliamentary scrutiny, and flouting consumer law.

We are concerned that while that work takes place, consumers remain vulnerable to the sites misleading sales practices. It is imperative that the CMA acts promptly and decisively to bring Viagogo into line with consumer law and, until it does so, we advise the public not to buy or sell tickets via Viagogo.

Committee chairman Damian Collins said that, despite a boom in live music in the UK, it is also facing stark challenges, with bad experiences with ticket resale platforms damaging trust in the industry.

He said: Were calling on the government to review the effectiveness of the law intended to prevent consumers being ripped off when buying tickets for live concerts.

The government shouldnt rely on the work of voluntary groups to take on the giants in the ticket resale market but make sure there is effective action to end exploitation, and greater transparency and redress for ticket buyers when things go wrong.

The DCMS committee has taken today the highly unusual step of issuing a warning to the public against using a major secondary ticketing site until it complies fully with consumer law.

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A spokesperson for Viagogo said it was disappointed to have been singled out and claimed that it provided an invaluable service.

Hundreds of thousands of British citizens use our service to buy and sell tickets to their favourite live events every day and never experience any problems, the firm said.

For those transactions that fall into the 1 per cent annually where customers do have an issue, the overwhelming majority of cases are due to the unfair and potentially illegal restrictions the event organisers pose simply because customers have chosen to purchase tickets from a competitor of theirs.

We have been complying and will absolutely continue to work constructively with the CMA to make further amends where necessary, all the while putting all of the buyers and sellers who use the platform first.
A shortage of NHS clinical oncologists is likely to hold back cancer patient care, a report has warned.

The study from the Royal College of Radiologists pointed to a growing staffing crisis, with predictions that within four years the workforce would be at least 22 per cent short of cancer consultants.

Cancer centres said they had dire staffing levels, with dozens of posts left open. One had had no new applicants since 2015.

The warning came as a separate study suggested breast cancer death rates would fall in the UK and nearly all EU countries this year.

However, the radiologists report said cutting-edge cancer therapies, such as immunotherapy and proton beam therapy, may not be delivered to all those who could benefit without more investment.

NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday Show all 18 1 /18 NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday Nurses test the hearing of a newborn child Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday The waiting room is busy in Milton Keynes University Hospital Reuters NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday On Ward 24, two nurses work at the nurses station Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday In A&E, a porter rushes a patient through the corridor Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday A surgical team prepares a patient for their operation Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday In the physiotherapy department, patients are treated in the hydrotherapy pool Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday On Ward 8, an inpatient awaits visitors Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday In the physiotherapy department, amputees take a class Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday A junior doctor is at work in the staff room Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday A surgical team prepares a patient for their operation Reuters NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday An inpatient has her hair washed by the staff hairdressers Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday In the audiology department, a mother watches on as her son is given a hearing test Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday On Ward 8, staff serve lunch to the patients Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday On Ward 24, a patient waits on their bed Reuters NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday On Ward 8, a cleaner is at work Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday A nurse takes blood from a patient Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday On Ward 8, an inpatient receives a visitor Reuters/Hannah McKay NHS at 70: Pride and worry as free health service celebrates birthday Inpatient Donald Ritson lies in bed in Ward 24 in Milton Keynes University Hospital Reuters

The study said the UK was short of at least 184 clinical oncologists  the minimum number needed to fill vacancies and cover the extra hours doctors are working to treat patients.

Vacancies are more than twice as high as in 2013  70, up from 33  and more than half of posts have been empty for a year or more.

The college said a small rise in staff numbers last year was not keeping up with demand.

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Demand for radiotherapy is going up by 2 per cent every year, and for chemotherapy by 4 per cent.

The report said: We are losing expertise as consultants retire earlier and risking our workforce by asking them to work longer hours.

Dr Tom Roques, lead author of the report, said Britain did not have enough consultants in training.

Numbers leaving are rising, and overseas recruitment had not been successful, partly due to differences in how doctors are trained, he said.

The burden of the disease will continue to increase, with implications for public health and costs to society Professor Carlo La Vecchia

Meanwhile, research in the journal Annals of Oncology found the UK is expected to record the greatest fall in breast cancer deaths out of six countries, with a 13 per cent drop this year.

The researchers said national screening programmes, early diagnosis and better treatments were driving the improvements.

However, they warn deaths will rise as the population continues to grow.

This means the burden of the disease will continue to increase, with consequent implications for public health and costs to society, said Prof Carlo La Vecchia, of the University of Milan.

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Of the six largest EU countries, the UK has the greatest predicted decrease (13 per cent), followed by France (10 per cent), Germany (9 per cent), Italy (7 per cent) and Spain (5 per cent). In Poland a 2 per cent increase is predicted.

Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive of Breast Cancer Now, said the UK was finally expected to catch up with the rest of Europe.
One cold morning, Stefan Smit, a white farmer in South Africas stunning wine region, woke up to find his vineyard under siege.

Anxious and angry, Smit, 62, drove his pickup to the highest point on his estate and peered down. Impoverished residents from the black township next door had stormed the land, clearing weeds and erecting 40 shacks in a matter of hours.

I, personally, cant breathe here, Smit says later.

Virtually overnight, Smits farm, with its sweeping views of the Stellenbosch region, became a battleground in a bitter political fight that has split the nation and reached all the way to the Trump White House: who should own South Africas land?

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The fight pits white South Africans, who still control much of the economy a generation after the end of apartheid, directly against their black neighbours, many of whom are struggling to acquire a tiny patch on which to build a shack.

A recent government survey found that white farmers like Smit control nearly 70 per cent of farms held by individual owners in South Africa. And the figure does not even include land held by companies and trusts, which account for the largest share of privately owned land in the country.

In this fabled corner of South Africa, where Americans and other foreigners come to taste chenin blanc and pinotage, white farmers like Smit have been trying to hold on to a part of the country they consider their historic domain.

He and his white Afrikaner friends call it an invasion, part of a calculated effort by the governing African National Congress (ANC) to capture the only province that remains out of its political control.

People are being brought from other parts of the country just to create a voting bloc, says Jan de Klerk, a friend of Smits and a son of FW de Klerk, the former president who negotiated the end of apartheid with Nelson Mandela. Its not skills coming into the town. Its basically just people coming in, and theres no room.

The squatters say they moved in out of desperation. Life had barely changed for the men and women in the neighbouring township, even a quarter of a century after achieving democracy. They still lived in flimsy shacks in cramped quarters, while Smit and his friends hold vast tracts of land brutally snatched from African inhabitants generations ago and deliberately kept in white hands for decades.

The monopolies go far beyond private estates. Nearly 80 of the farms in Stellenbosch sit on public land. And most of them are locked in 50-year leases that local authorities signed with white farmers in the early 1990s, right before the end of apartheid, in exchange for private investments in water infrastructure, according to confidential municipal audits obtained by The New York Times.

People lay out plots and build shacks on a piece of land belonging to the Louiesenhof Wine Estate (AFP/Getty Images)

The arrangements have enabled the farmers to maintain control of large stretches of public land long after the arrival of democracy.

We see that land, we must take that land, Zola Ndlasi, 44, the man who led the takeover, says as he walks among the new shacks. Because he came from the same region as Mandela, everyone calls him by the same clan name, Madiba.

With only a few months to go before elections, this elemental struggle  over who owns South Africa  is playing out on a national level.

Many black South Africans feel betrayed by the failure of the ANC, riddled with corruption, to provide access to land for the black majority.

The ANC has tried  halfheartedly, critics say  to redistribute some of the land, but the party has failed repeatedly, angering black residents all the more. One ANC programme purchased land from willing white farmers, but was so tainted by corruption that politicians ended up with more land than the ordinary citizens who were supposed to benefit.

In recent years, an ANC spinoff, the Economic Freedom Fighters, has tapped into this anger by calling on black South Africans to take land on their own.

Having lost some of his partys core supporters, President Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC leader, is now also pushing to change the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation.

But eager to avoid international ire, Ramaphosa said during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January that his country would handle land reform in a manner that takes the interests of all into account.

We are not going to allow land grabs in South Africa, Ramaphosa said.

Many are deeply sceptical of his promises, warning of the seizure of white-owned farms that turned Zimbabwe, South Africas next-door neighbour, into an international pariah.

President Donald Trump waded into the dispute last year, echoing false or exaggerated allegations that white farmers were being forced off their land by the government and killed in large numbers. The presidents statement was a boon for AfriForum, a far-right group that advocates for Afrikaners like Smit and enjoys popular support here in Stellenbosch.

The Cape Town drought Show all 8 1 /8 The Cape Town drought The Cape Town drought There has already been a fire on Table Mountain AFP/Getty Images The Cape Town drought Taps fed by a spring are critical for locals AFP/Getty The Cape Town drought Theewaterskloof Dam is nearly dry AFP/Getty Images The Cape Town drought Locals are filling bottles of water in town AFP/Getty Images The Cape Town drought The mayor of Cape Town asked religious leaders to pray for rain AFP/Getty Images The Cape Town drought Theewaterskloof Dam, which is running low AFP/Getty Images The Cape Town drought Theewaterskloof Dam, about 108km from Cape Town, has less than 20% of its water capacity remaining AFP/Getty Images The Cape Town drought Locals are collecting drinking water from pipes fed by underground springs AFP/Getty Images

Contrary to the claims, the law has sided with Smit. A judge ordered the squatters to vacate the farm, but most of the shacks have remained while the decision is being appealed. Now, the municipality is negotiating with Smit to buy the plot.

The case has reverberated far beyond Stellenbosch because of the towns singular place in South Africas past, present and future.

Long before the region became famous for its wines, Stellenbosch University, an elite institution that until recently taught mostly in Afrikaans, produced many of apartheids leading politicians and thinkers  so much so that Stellenbosch is often called the cradle of apartheid.

Many executives of white-led companies have moved to the town in the past two decades, leading critics of the nations enduring economic inequality to joke about political leaders taking orders from Stellenbosch.

It is a retreat, a redoubt, says Jannie Gagiano, who taught political science at Stellenbosch University.

Stellenbosch is also home to a neighbourhood that tourists hardly ever see: a black township called Kayamandi, groaning under a fast-growing population and squeezed into some of the most crowded blocks in this part of South Africa. Kayamandi abuts a handful of wineries, some separated by high barbed-wire and electrified fences.

Newcomers arrive every day to Kayamandi, mostly from the impoverished Eastern Cape province. The steady migration has made black South Africans the biggest racial group in Stellenbosch, outnumbering whites and people of mixed race, according to a 2016 population survey.

To Smit and his friends, the changing demographics support their suspicions that the recent seizure was orchestrated by the nations leaders. Black voters are likely to back the ANC, while white and mixed-race South Africans tend to vote for another party, the Democratic Alliance, in this part of South Africa.

They bring the people down like fodder, Smit says of the ANC.

Madiba and Red Ants

Unlike his more famous namesake, Ndlasi  or Madiba to the squatters  does not dream of a rainbow nation.

Ndlasi worked as a labourer for white businesses, then started organising newcomers so desperate for housing that they rent shacks behind government-built homes. Writing letters and leading meetings, he pressed the municipality to build housing.

In May, he led the first push into Smits farm. Men from the township built half a dozen shacks. Smit quickly obtained an eviction order and the Red Ants  demolishers named after their red overalls  dismantled the shacks and carted them away.

When angry protesters faced off with the Red Ants, Ndlasi was arrested for inciting violence, spending three nights in jail.

Hundreds of shacks have been erected on the property, which is next to the Kayamandi informal settlelment (AFP/Getty Images)

We are not fighting him, Ndlasi says of Smit. We can be friends if he dont have that white attitude. Maybe he can think hes better than us.

Ndlasi and other organisers then contacted a lawyer who told them about a local law: the squatters could not be evicted without a court order if they had lived in the shacks for two days or more.

So one night in July, Ndlasi led men and women up the hill again.

When the Red Ants came back a few days later, they faced an angry resistance. The police fired tear gas and pepper-sprayed the protesters.

Lubabalo Mpiliso, 20, had built all but the roof of his shack. He hurled rocks but watched helplessly as the Red Ants ripped apart his zinc sheets and wooden frames. Undeterred, he patched together a new shack days later.

If I build a house, then I will leave this for my children, says Mpiliso, who had been living in a two-bedroom government house with 10 members of his family.

The municipality of Stellenbosch acknowledges a housing shortage in Kayamandi, which had more than 7,000 shacks before the push into Smits farm. But while the town has resources to deal with the problem  it owns scores of farms  critics say its leaders are reluctant to build homes for fear of losing control of City Hall, especially with the arrival of black newcomers unlikely to vote for them.

Municipal officials dismissed the allegation as absolutely untrue, countering that the squatters are trying to jump ahead of a long line of people waiting for housing.

People just take land because they know what the political fight is, says Wilhelmina Petersen, a municipal council speaker who belongs to the Democratic Alliance, which controls most of the town. They test the country.

Ndlasi, too, is trying to gauge the political winds. He is quick to recount the corrupt ways of the ANC and is waiting to see how many voters will break for the Economic Freedom Fighters in this years elections.

But he is also getting pointers from a local ANC leader, Midas Wanana, 43. During an interview, Wanana talked about making Ndlasi the face of the ANC in the next elections.

A woman washes her dishes outside her recently-built shack on a piece of land belonging to the Louiesenhof Wine Estate (AFP/Getty Images)

We want to put him in front, Wanana says. He is a hero.

Able to breathe

Across the hill, Smit seemed like a feudal lord high up in his castle. Generations of township residents, who had never laid eyes on him, pictured him as an all-powerful figure. Some called him the Italian, confusing him for an Italian man who once worked for Smits father.

In reality, Smit stayed away from the township  out of fear.

I never spoke to the people myself, he says. You dont do that. Its not un-dangerous. Its not advisable.

Business has been down in recent years. Few tourists visited his modest tasting room, choosing competitors often backed by foreign investors. His two daughters were away teaching English in Vietnam and Taiwan. He wants them to be happy somewhere they will be able to breathe.

Before the end of apartheid, Smit benefited from the white monopoly over land and a steady supply of cheap black labour. His great-grandfather had cultivated grapes since the late 19th century on a property nearby. His father once owned the largest wine estate in the country, Smits website says.

Black people had not been allowed to purchase land in Stellenbosch long before the apartheid government came to power in 1948. One of the farmers who bought the land before Smits family even had to demonstrate in the late 1930s that he was not a native, according to archived deeds.

When Smits father bought the farm in the early 1960s, he had to file an affidavit confirming that he belonged to the White Group. And like some other white farmers, Smit locked up additional public land in a 50-year lease before the end of apartheid, in return for infrastructure investments estimated at more than $500,000, he says.

Still, Smit does not view land reform as a fair means of redress. The African ethnic groups that make up the majority of South Africa today did not live in this region when European settlers came to the Cape, he says, though he acknowledges that Europeans had violently displaced an indigenous group called the Khoi-San.

Them, we must look into the face, he says. But others, its political.

By late August, nearly a thousand shacks spread across Smits plot. With no electricity, many residents went to the township to charge their phones and cook. The municipality later installed two water taps and cleared ground to build some toilets.

But if a neighbouring settlement was any indication, things were unlikely to improve. In 2006, township dwellers moved into a steep valley filled with venomous snakes. More than a decade later, it is a dangerously overcrowded shantytown with few toilets and no electricity.

For months, the new residents of Smits farm fought to avoid that fate, demonstrating with signs that said: We need land, we took land. Ndlasi led protest songs adopted from the apartheid era.

In late October, while protesting in Stellenbosch, township residents hurled bricks at the municipalitys offices. Ndlasi and Wanana, the ANC leader, were arrested, ultimately spending six weeks in jail.

At the farm, Smit began receiving threatening messages.

They said theyll burn me alive, he says. After months of a tense standoff, he says he was ready to sell the plot the squatters took over.

His friends had warned him of a long fight. One afternoon, Smit shared bottles of his wine with fellow Afrikaners who had come to support him, an air of uncertainty hanging over the room. They owned the land now, but for how much longer?

Well enjoy the ride for a while, De Klerk says. How did my dad say it? Fasten your seat belt.

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John Bercows dramatic ruling that Theresa May cannot hold another vote on her Brexit agreement has undoubtedly caused a political storm. But has it made a no-deal exit from the European Union more likely?

Several Tory Eurosceptics think so, as does Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader who is setting up a new Brexit Party.

They welcomed the speakers edict, hoping that denying May a third vote means the UK could still leave without a deal at 11pm on 29 March.
UK yellow vest protester James Goddard has denied harassing an MP and a police officer at a court hearing that descended into chaos.

A judge walked out of the packed trial at Westminster Magistrates Court as Mr Goddards supporters shouted insults about pro-Remain MP Anna Soubry and chanted shame on you.

Three supporters joined him in the dock during the adjournment, as yellow vests packed out the courtroom and protested outside in unprecedented scenes that sparked an official investigation by HM Courts and Tribunals Service.

Mr Goddard, 29, denied public order offences over two incidents during the pro-Brexit groups protests in London.

He is accused of harassing Ms Soubry by following her, filming her and calling her a Nazi and traitor outside the Houses of Parliament on two occasions in December and January, the court heard.

Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Show all 11 1 /11 Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray (left) and a pro-Brexit protester argue as they demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament A pro-Brexit protester argues Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police surround the pro-Brexit protester after he confronted Steve Bray, a pro-European protester Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament A leave supporter is spoken to by a police officer as he argues with a remain supporter, Steve Bray, outside Parliament PA Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament MPs in Parliament are to vote on Theresa May's Brexit deal next week after her December vote was called off in the face of a major defeat Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament A leave supporter is spoken to by a police officer PA Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police look on as anti-Brexit protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament. Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police hold back a leave supporter PA Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament A police officer speaks with anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police surround a pro-Brexit protester after he confronted a pro-European protester Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Conservative MP David Davies, wearing a gopro camera, speaks to anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray Getty Images

Mr Goddard is also charged with the racially aggravated harassment of a police officer on 7 January, and a public order offence of causing harassment, alarm or distress.

The defendant, of Altrincham in Greater Manchester, pleaded not guilty to both offences and is expected to rely on a defence of fair comment.

Addressing judge Kenneth Grant from the dock, Mr Goddard said: Its not illegal to heckle an MP. All of this is wrong.

His supporters clapped and cheered, while shouting for Mr Goddard to sack his defence lawyer.

Mr Goddard asked why? when told to stand for the charges to be read, and gave his nationality as English but refused to give his address due to the vultures in court.

Judge Grant temporarily adjourned the case and left the courtroom 15 minutes into the hearing, after yellow vests in the public gallery started shouting about Brexit, made derogatory comments about Independent Group MP Ms Soubry and chanted.

Supporters of James Goddard outside Westminster Magistrates Court on 19 March (PA) (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

The case resumed briefly to inform Mr Goddard of his bail conditions but descended into chaos again as the defendant left the dock.

He asked to make a speech at the end of the hearing but was refused permission, and members of the public gallery repeated shame on you as the hearing came to an abrupt end.

Mr Goddard was freed on bail until a two day trial scheduled for 19 July at Westminster Magistrates Court.

An HM Courts spokesperson said: The safety and security of all court users is our priority and were deeply concerned to hear of intimidating behaviour at Westminster Magistrates Court this morning.

We apologise to all those affected and are urgently investigating what happened. This sort of behaviour will not be tolerated.

After the hearing, a group of yellow vests travelled to the attorney generals office in Westminster and stormed the building.

Protesters, including members of a group who claim a drink-driving crash that killed three teenagers was a deliberate attack, roved through corridors and pounded on doors while chanting and shouting.

The Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the scene but made no arrests during the incident, which lasted for around two hours.

Regular yellow vest protests started in December, seeing supporters block bridges and scuffle with police.

Demonstrators have heckled journalists and pro-Remain protesters in Westminster, and targeted several government buildings and institutions including the Cabinet Office, Downing Street, Labour Party and LBC radio.

Weekly Saturday rallies have also spread from London to other British towns and cities, mirroring the format of yellow vest protests that have seen violence and riots in France.

Additional reporting by PA
Police have asked the public for help tracing the mother of a baby found in the toilets of an Oxford hospital.

The boy, thought to have been born at 6pm on Monday, was found by staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

Doctors and police officers fear for the mothers help and urged her to get treatment.

Medics at the hospital were looking after the newborn boy.

Sam Foster, chief nurse of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: I am appealing directly to the babys mother to please come forward to seek medical attention.

Childbirth is a very emotional process, from a physical perspective you will need our medical and midwifery team to check that there are no complications from you giving birth.

Here at the hospital we have midwives and doctors to give you the care you need and reunite you with your baby boy.

The boys mother should call 01865 740 429 for help, the nurse added, or contact 999 and ask to speak to the ambulance service.

Anyone with information should call Thames Valley Police on 101, quoting reference number 1209 18/3/19.

Officers asked for witnesses who may have seen a distressed woman leaving the hospital Headley Way, Headington, late yesterday afternoon.

Additional reporting by PA
Academics could lose hundreds of millions of pounds in European Union (EU) research funding if the UK crashes out of the bloc without a deal, Universities UK (UUK) has said.

Those who applied for the latest round of grants from the European Research Council (ERC) will find out if they were successful on 8 April.

But it remains unclear what happens to the money in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

According to UUK, the government has not said what future system will replace the current stream of EU funding.

Researchers at UK universities doing life-changing work remain in the dark over what will happen to their current ERC applications or where they will go in future for funding, if there is no deal, Janet Beer, president of UUK, said.

The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Show all 8 1 /8 The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Post-Brexit immigration workers sorting radishes on a production line at a farm in Norfolk. One possible post-Brexit immigration scheme could struggle to channel workers towards less attractive roles - while another may heighten the risk of labour exploitation, a new report warns. PA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Customs union A key point in the negotiations remains Britain's access to, or withdrawal from, the EU customs union. Since the referendum there has been hot debate over the meaning of Brexit: would it entail a full withdrawal from the existing agreement, known as hard Brexit, or the soft version in which we would remain part of a common customs area for most goods, as Turkey does? No 10 has so far insisted that Brexit means Brexit and that Britain will be leaving the customs union, but may be inclined to change its position once the potential risks to the UKs economic outlook become clearer. Alamy The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Northern Ireland-Irish border Though progress was made last year, there has still been no solid agreement on whether there should be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. To ensure borderless travel on the island, the countries must be in regulatory alignment and therefore adhere to the same rules as the customs union. In December, the Conservative Partys coalition partners, the DUP, refused a draft agreement that would place the UK/EU border in the Irish Sea due to its potential to undermine the union. May has promised that would not be the case and has suggested that a specific solution would need to be found. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Transition period Despite protests from a small number of Conservative MPs, the Government and the EU are largely in agreement that a transitional period is needed after Brexit. The talks, however, have reached an impasse. Though May has agreed that the UK will continue to contribute to the EU budget until 2021, the PM wants to be able to select which laws made during this time the UK will have to adhere to. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said the UK must adopt all of the laws passed during the transition, without any input from British ministers or MEPs. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Rights of EU citizens living the UK The Prime Minister has promised EU citizens already living in the UK the right to live and work here after Brexit, but the rights of those who arrive after Brexit day remains unclear. May insists that those who arrive during the transition period should not be allowed to stay, whereas the EU believe the cut-off point should be later. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreement (with the EU) Despite this being a key issue in negotiations, the Government has yet to lay out exactly what it wants from a trade deal with the EU. Infighting within the Cabinet has prevented a solid position from being reached, with some MPs content that "no deal is better than a bad deal" while others rally behind single market access. The EU has already confirmed that access to the single market would be impossible without the UK remaining in the customs union. Getty The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Future trade agreements (internationally) The Government has already begun trying to woo foreign leaders into prospective trade agreements, with various high profile state visits to China, India and Canada for May, and the now infamous invitation to US President Donald Trump to visit London. However the UK cannot make trade agreements with another country while it is still a member of the EU, and the potential loss of trade with the world's major powers is a source of anxiety for the PM. The EU has said the UK cannot secure trade deals during the transition period. EPA The biggest issues facing UK on leaving EU Financial services Banks in the UK will be hit hard regardless of the Brexit outcome. The EU has refused to give British banks passporting rights to trade within the EU, dashing hopes of a special City deal. However according to new reports Germany has suggested allowing trade on the condition that the UK continues paying into the EU budget even after the transition period. Getty

Without clarity very soon, vital research could be disrupted which would be hugely damaging to peoples lives. The UK also risks losing some of our brightest minds to other countries, if they dont know how their research will be progressed.

The UK was the most successful country in the ERCs last round of advanced grant awards, with 66 of its researchers given up to 2.5m euros each, a total of 155m euros (133m) in funding.

UUK, which represents 136 universities across Britain, argues that a no-deal Brexit could leave vital research in limbo.

The group is calling on the government to immediately clarify the situation.

The UK could be about to lose some of its competitive edge on science and research, said Joanna Burton, a senior policy analyst at the Russell Group.

A no-deal Brexit could mean our access to the European Research Council grants and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions will end with immediate effect.

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We need the government to set out contingency measures, ready for immediate implementation, so that research funding and collaboration opportunities do not face a damaging cliff-edge.

A government spokesperson said: Science recognises no borders and the UK has a proud record of welcoming the worlds leading scientists and researchers to work and study here.

This will not change when we leave the EU.

Through our modern industrial strategy we are investing a record level in research and development and we are committed to seeking an ambitious future relationship on science and innovation with our EU partners.

Additional reporting by agencies
England faces an existential threat as it looks set to run short of water within just 25 years, the head of the Environment Agency has warned.

A combination of climate change and population growth are pushing the country towards what Sir James Bevan referred to as the jaws of death.

At this point, unless urgent action is taken, there will not be enough water remaining to supply basic needs to the population.

Global warming is a major problem, bringing hotter and drier summers to the UK like the one experienced last year.

According to Sir James, water companies have identified this as the biggest threat to their industry.

Environment news in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Environment news in pictures Environment news in pictures Davos 2019: David Attenborough issues stark warning about future of civilisation as he demands practical solutions to combat climate change Sir David Attenborough has issued a stark warning about climate change to business figures gathered in Davos, telling them that "what we do now...will profoundly affect the next few thousand years". On the eve of this year's World Economic Forum, the renowned naturalist told the audience that the worlds of business and politics should "get on with the practical solutions" needed to prevent environmental damage. "As a species we are expert problem solvers. But we've not yet applied ourselves to this problem with the focus it requires. "We can create a world with clean air and water, unlimited energy, and fish stocks that will sustain us well into the future. But to do that, we need a plan," he said. The broadcaster made his speech after receiving a Crystal Award, which is awarded by the forum to "exceptional cultural leaders". AFP/Getty Environment news in pictures At least 60% of wild coffee species face extinction triggered by climate change and disease Two decades of research have revealed that 60 per cent of the worlds coffee species face extinction due to the combined threats of deforestation, disease and climate change. The wild strain of arabica, the most widely consumed coffee on the planet, is among those now recognised as endangered, raising concerns about its long-term survival. These results are worrying for the millions of farmers around the world who depend on the continued survival of coffee for their livelihoods. As conditions for coffee farming become tougher, scientists predict the industry will need to rely on wild varieties to develop more resilient strains Alan Schaller Environment news in pictures Warming Antarctic waters are speeding the rate at which glaciers are melting The Antarctic ice sheet is losing six times as much ice each year as it was in the 1980s and the pace is accelerating, one of the most comprehensive studies of climate change effects on the continent has shown. More than half an inch has been added to global sea levels since 1979, but if current trends continue it will be responsible for metres more in future, the Nasa-funded study found. The international effort used aerial photos, satellite data and climate models dating back to the 1970s across18 Antarctic regions to get the most complete picture to date on the impacts of the changing climate. It found that between 1979 and 1990 Antarctica lost an average of 40 gigatonnes (40 billion tonnes) of its mass each year. Between 2009 and 2017 it lost an average 252 gigatonnes a year. This has added 3.6mm per decade to sea levels, or around 14mm since 1979, the study shows Nasa/Getty Environment news in pictures Greater Manchester to ban fracking, paving way for confrontation with government over controversial industry Greater Manchester is to effectively ban fracking, raising the prospect of fresh confrontation with the government over the controversial industry. All of the regions 10 councils are to implement planning policies which create a presumption against drilling for shale gas in their areas, Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has announced. Campaigners said the move was the latest sign that the tide was turning against fracking, which has been the subject of multiple legal battles across the country. Critics of fracking say it poses environmental and health risks. Drilling at the UKs only operational fracking site, run by Cuadrilla in Lancashire, has repeatedly been halted due to earth tremors. But ministers support the industry and last year unveiled plans to accelerate the development of new drilling sites Ross Wills Environment news in pictures Japan confirms plan to resume commercial whaling in its waters from next year Japan will resume commercial whaling next year for the first time in more than three decades, in a move that has provoked strong criticism from campaigners and the international community. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said his nation would leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to resume hunting the marine mammals in Japanese waters. However, he stated the activity would be limited to Japans territory and the 200 mile exclusive economic zone along its coasts. This means controversial scientific trips to Antarctica in which Japanese vessels killed hundreds of whales, as well as activity in the northwest Pacific, will stop in 2019 AP Environment news in pictures COP24: Environmental groups criticise morally unacceptable climate deal reached after major Poland summit Diplomats from around the world have agreed a major climate deal after two weeks of United Nations talks in Poland. But climate campaigners warned the deal  effectively a set of rules for how to govern the 2015 Paris climate accord  agreed between almost 200 countries lacked ambition or a clear promise of enhanced climate action. Activists cautiously welcomed elements of the plan, saying important progress had been made on ensuring that efforts to tackle climate change by individual nations can be measured and compared. But environmental groups were also highly critical of the agreement, warning it lacked ambition and clarity on key issues, including financing for climate projects for developing countries. The COP24 deal, which is aimed at providing firm guidelines for countries on how to transparently report their greenhouse gas emissions and their efforts to reduce them, was confirmed on 15 December, after talks overran Reuters Environment news in pictures Unprecedented changes needed to stop global warming as UN report reveals islands starting to vanish and coral reefs dying Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut almost in half by 2030 to avert global environmental catastrophe, including the total loss of every coral reef, the disappearance of Arctic ice and the destruction of island communities, a landmark UN report has concluded. Drawing on more than 6,000 scientific studies and compiled over two years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings, released this morning, warn enormous and rapid changes to the way everyone on Earth eats, travels and produces energy need to be brought in immediately. Though the scientists behind the report said there is cause for optimism, they recognised the grim reality that nations are currently nowhere near on track to avert disaster AFP/Getty Environment news in pictures Africas three biggest elephant poaching cartels exposed using DNA from illegal ivory shipments DNA taken from massive shipments of ivory has been used to identify the three largest wildlife trafficking gangs operating at the height of Africas elephant poaching epidemic. Ivory tends to be shipped around the world from African ports in bulk, and scientists have used genetic evidence gleaned from intercepted batches to reveal their origins. Led by Dr Samuel Wasser from the University of Washington, they traced a number of these shipments to three cartels operating out of Kenya, Uganda and Togo. Evidence collected by Dr Wasser has already helped convict ivory kingpin Feisal Mohamed Ali, and as his team joins the dots between shipments they plan to shore up the cases against more of the continents most prolific smugglers Art Wolfe

There is also the issue of a rapidly increasing population, which is expected to rise from 67 million to 75 million by the middle of the century.

We can foresee this moment and there is still time to avoid it. But we need to change our attitudes to wasting water, said Sir James.

The Environment Agency chief is set to deliver this message at a speech to the Waterwise conference in London.

Besides significant action by the government, water companies and regulators, Sir James is warning that the public must also play a role in tackling this growing threat.

In the last few decades weve radically changed behaviour on smoking (everybody did it) and seatbelts (nobody wore them). In the last two years weve changed behaviour on plastic, he will say.

We need water wastage to be as socially unacceptable as blowing smoke in the face of a baby or throwing your plastic bags into the sea.

We need everyone to take responsibility for their own water usage.

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The Environment Agency previously warned that water shortages may affect people by 2050, and the government has suggested efforts must be made to cut peoples water use.

However, an official report also found that enough water to meet the needs of 20 million people in an average day is lost through leakages in the system.

Preventing these leaks, as well as larger reservoirs and desalination plants, were all suggested by Sir James as methods to prevent the impending catastrophe.
Germany and France have warned that Theresa May will need to present a clear and precise reason why she needs a Brexit delay when she meets EU leaders later this week if she wants to have any chance of them approving it.

Michael Roth, Germanys Europe minister, said EU member states were really exhausted by the UKs approach to talks, warning the situation was not just a game.

Meanwhile, his French counterpart Nathalie Loiseau said Ms May would have to present something new that did not just result in an extension of the same deadlock.

Its not a question of really strict conditions. We need something new because if its an extension to remain in the same deadlock, how do we get out of this? The British have to come with an initiative that is clear and credible and supported by a majority, the French minister told reporters on her way into a meeting of ministers in Brussels.

Arriving at the same meeting, Mr Roth added: Were really exhausted by these negotiations and I expect clear and precise proposals of UK government why an extension is necessary. Its not just a game. Its an extremely serious situation not just for people in UK but also for the people in EU.

For my government its the key priority to prevent a no-deal Brexit. I dont have any appetite for substanceless, very abstract discussions and negotiations on Brexit. Please deliver, dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking.

Ms May will travel to Brussels on Thursday to meet with the 27 other EU leaders, after parliament approved an extension to Article 50  which would delay Brexit past 29 March. Under EU treaties, such an extension must be approved unanimously by all 27 other member states  meaning each one has an effective power of veto.

Speaking on Tuesday after meeting EU27 ministers, chief negotiator Michel Barnier said leaders would have to assess what is in the best interests of the bloc before making a decision.

I am here to ask a very legitimate question on behalf of the European authorities  which is why do you want an extension? What for? Whats the objective of an extension? What use would it be? An extension has to be useful, he said.

Does an extension increase the chances of ratification of the withdrawal agreement? Will the UK request an extension because it wants a bit more time to rework the political declaration?

Michel Barnier speaking in Brussels after the meeting (EbS)

He added: What would be the purpose and outcome? And how can we ensure that, at the end of a possible extension, we are not back in the same situation as today?

Mr Barnier warned that extending uncertainty without a clear plan would have political and economic costs for the EU, and that a longer extension needed to be linked to something  such as a new political process in the UK to find a solution to the deadlock.

Also speaking after the meeting, Irelands deputy prime minister Simon Coveney said there was a lot of concern amongst EU member states and partners about the prospect of a long extension of Article 50.

An extension brings risks with it, obviously through a European election cycle and the establishment of a new commission, and the EU is dealing with a lot of things at the moment, so the disruptive effect of Brexit for another nine months, or another whatever period of time, is something that I think people will need convincing on, he said.

Mr Coveney added that there will need to be a very persuasive plan to go with that, to explain why thats needed, and how they will use the time to conclude the outstanding issues that havent been agreed in London in the context of the Brexit process.

He warned that an extension would not necessarily be accepted: I think people would be very foolish to assume that this is just some kind of political game and that an extension will automatically be facilitated. I do think EU leaders will be demanding.

The EU does not want to grant an extension on request for the UK that brings us back to the same point that we are at today, in three months, six months, nine months time, having wasted a lot more time.

The comments by the French, German and Irish ministers are the latest expression of frustration from EU leaders at Britains approach to talks, which is seen in Brussels and elsewhere on the continent as erratic, poorly planned and divided.

Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Show all 60 1 /60 Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr

On Sunday Ms Loiseau joked in an interview with the French press that she had nicknamed her pet cat Brexit because of the way in which it meowed loudly to leave the house but then stood there when she opened the door.

If the UK does not get an extension it will either have to pass the Brexit deal, revoke Article 50 to cancel Brexit, or leave without a deal  with the latter option expected to cause economic chaos.

Theresa May has been criticised previously by EU leaders for turning up to meetings in Brussels without clear and precise technical demands. At a summit in December Ms May was reportedly asked, what exactly is it that you want? by German chancellor Angela Merkel, while she pleaded for assistance to pass her Brexit deal, but could not spell out exactly what measures she wanted.
The Commons speaker stunned the government yesterday by announcing that Ms May cannot hold another vote on her Brexit deal  not, that is, unless it has changed significantly.

Downing Street had no idea the dramatic statement was coming. It blew out of the water its strategy of holding another vote on the deal this week, before Ms May heads to an EU summit on Thursday, and probably another next week.

The government may have one more shot at getting its deal through, but Mr Bercow warned ministers that for another vote to go ahead, the agreement must have changed substantially.

That is not impossible. Ms May will request, and probably be granted, a delay to Brexit at the European Council meeting this week. Ministers are likely to claim that this marks a clear change of circumstances and that another vote should therefore be allowed.

But in a worrying sign for No 10, Mr Bercow suggested that for another vote to take place, the deal itself would have to have been altered, not just the circumstances around it.

Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Show all 18 1 /18 Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well These billboards were plastered by campaign group Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well PA Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter

Is there anything the government can do to get round Bercows ruling?

The government could, in theory, find a procedural way around this. The rule invoked by Mr Bercow says a vote cannot be held on the same matter in the same parliamentary session. The current session is due to end in May, meaning No 10 would be fully entitled to call another meaningful vote immediately after this. It could even bring the end of the parliamentary year forward  a move mooted yesterday by Robert Buckland, the solicitor general.

Ministers could also hold a Commons vote on disapplying the rule that stops multiple votes being held, though asking parliament to override centuries of convention would be highly controversial.

The reality, though, is that regardless of Mr Bercows intervention, it was far from certain that Ms Mays deal would have been approved by MPs voting on it for the third, fourth or even fifth time. If they stuck to their guns, the rump of around 20-30 hardline Tory opponents were numerous enough to defeat it again and again.

That, along with the speakers ruling, may force the prime minister to go back to the drawing board. She will do everything possible to avoid doing so, having spent almost her entire time in office working on the deal she agreed with the EU.

What are Mays options now?

She has few options left. She could try to negotiate a totally different Brexit deal, call a general election or hold another referendum, but any of these choices are likely to result in her departure from office. Scrapping her deal would be an astonishing admission of failure, Tory MPs will not allow her to fight another general election, and she has repeatedly said a fresh referendum will not take place while she is prime minister.

Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Show all 15 1 /15 Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Pork There will be tariffs on pork in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cheese There will be tariffs in place on some cheeses including 22.10/100kg of cheddar, 19.10/100kg of processed cheese and 18.60/100kg on some blue cheeses Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Milk There will be no tariffs in place on milk Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Car Parts There will be no tariffs on car parts imported from Europe PA Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cars However finished cars will face tariffs of 10.6% Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Alcoholic drinks There will be no tariffs on alcoholic drinks - except on some rums due to ingredients used in their distilling process Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Beef There will be tariffs on beef in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fish There will be no tariffs on many types of fish including cod, haddock, salmon and sea bass Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fruit and vegetables There will be no tariffs on almost all fruit and vegetables Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Chocolate There will be no tariffs on chocolate or other cocoa products Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Poultry There will be tariffs on poultry in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Ceramics There will be some tariffs in place on ceramis Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Steel There will be no tariffs on steel Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Coal There will be no tariffs on coal Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Lamb/Mutton There will be tariffs on the meat of sheep in order to protect British farmers Getty

In typical fashion, it appears the prime minister is indeed sticking with plan A.

Can ministers just force through a vote on the deal?

Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, suggested on Tuesday that MPs switching their support and the EU agreeing to delay Brexit would be enough of a change to justify a third vote, telling the BBC: If we see a number of members of parliament changing their vote, if we see clarity in terms of an extension from the council, then these are the issues on which members of parliament, Im sure, will find a way through.

It seems unlikely that Mr Bercow will agree. He has made his position very clear, and is, to put it mildly, a man not afraid to cause a stir.

The prime minister will then face a choice: does she force a vote to overrule the 1604 convention that the speaker is relying on, or does she admit her deal is dead?

Ms May will desperately try to find a way to hold another vote, but her escape routes are closing by the day. Mr Bercows explosive intervention has made her situation even trickier but it does not change the fundamental question: how, if at all, can the prime minister secure MPs backing for a deal they have twice rejected? It is a question that No 10 still seems unable to answer.
Theresa May has admitted the country is in crisis as she prepares to write to the EU explaining her next steps with Britain heading towards a no-deal Brexit in ten days.

The prime ministers spokesman argued that a crisis had now come to pass, as Ms May warned it would after the House of Commons rejected her Brexit deal last week.

She will now write to European Council president Donald Tusk setting out her next steps, a letter likely to involve some kind of request for a delay to Brexit.

Recommended Brexit delays will make the UK a pariah for global investors

The move follows a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning at which tensions peaked with a clash between Brexiteers and remain ministers.

Pressure on the prime ministers administration has reached new heights after commons speaker John Bercow blocked the government from holding a vote on Ms Mays deal before the European Council starting Thursday.

Ms May invited Boris Johnson into Downing Street on Tuesday as she continues to also have talks with DUP and Labour MPs in a bid to secure a majority for her deal.

The PMs spokesman said: If you look back to the speech she gave just before the [second vote on her deal], she said if MPs did not support [it] we would be in a crisis.

I think events yesterday tell you that that situation has come to pass.

The spokesman said Ms May would be writing to Mr Tusk with regard to an extension of Article 50 ahead of the summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Show all 9 1 /9 Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Boris Johnson Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has long been hopeful, he previously stood in the leadership contest that followed the Brexit vote and has at many times since been thought to be maneuvering himself towards the goal. He remains a darling of the party's right wing, particularly those in the ERG, and is the most popular choice among Tory voters but his leadership bid would be fiercely opposed by many MPs PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Michael Gove Environment secretary Michael Gove is another member who has long wanted to be leader. He has lately been known for rousing his party in the commons, his recent speeches on the Brexit deal and Labour's no confidence motion have overshadowed the Prime Minister's. He has been loyal to the Prime Minister, partly to shed his reputation as a backstabber who abandoned Boris Johnson to stand against him in the 2016 leadership election Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Dominic Raab Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has emerged as a favourite to be the Brexiteer candidate in a contest to succeed to Ms May. He displayed a grip on detail in his role as Brexit secretary. When asked recently if he would like to become prime minister he replied "never say never" Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Rory Stewart International development secretary Rory Stewart is pitching himself as the sensible candidate, promising to rule out both a second referendum and a no-deal Brexit. He was only recently promoted to the cabinet, previously serving as prisons minister, where he caught headlines with a pledge to resign if he could not reduce levels of violence within a year PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Esther McVey The former work and pensions secretary announced that she will be standing for the leadership when May leaves. McVey is the first to explicitly state that she intends to stand. She resigned from the cabinet in protest over May's Brexit deal AFP/Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Sajid Javid Home secretary Sajid Javid is said to have a plan in place for a leadership race. He made headlines over Christmas when he declared that people smuggling over the English channel was a "major incident" and more recently when he revoked the citizenship of ISIS bride Shamima Begum. Son of a bus driver, he wants the Conservatives to be seen as the party of social mobility PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Jeremy Hunt Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt was recently thought to be the favourite in the event of a leadership race as he could sell himself as the man to unite the party. Critics worry that his long stint as health secretary could return to haunt him at a general election. He has reportedly been holding meetings with Tory MPs over breakfast to promote his leadership PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Andrea Leadsom Following the Prime Minister's second defeat over her Brexit deal, Leader of the house Andrea Leadsom hosted a dinner party at which "leadership was the only topic of conversation", The Times heard. Leadsom ran against Theresa May in the 2016 leadership election before dropping out, allowing May to become Prime Minister AFP/Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Priti Patel Former international development secretary Priti Patel is thought to be positioning herself as a contender. One MP told The Independent "she knows she's from the right of the party, the part which is going to choose the next leader, so she's reminding everyone she's there." Patel left the government late in 2017 after it emerged that she had held undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials PA

It is unclear at this point exactly what she would ask for, but The Independent understands it would be possible for her to seek a longer extension that could be curtailed if she manages to win a vote on her Brexit deal next week.

The PMs spokesman said there was an absolute determination in cabinet to find a way for parliament to vote to leave the EU with a deal.

This used to be the cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what Im hearing its not Commons leader Andrea Leadsom

He added: They had a full discussion which covered both the implications of the speakers comments yesterday and the upcoming European Council.

Mr Bercow angered the government on Tuesday when he said he would not allow the prime minister to bring a further vote on her deal before the commons unless there were substantial changes to the proposition.

Exactly what this means is yet to be seen, but ultimately it means the government must convince the speaker that what is on offer for any new vote, is different to what was been tabled in the past, or alternatively they must win a vote to overturn the speakers ruling.

The UK is still legally set to leave the EU according to statue already passed by parliament, regardless of a non-binding vote which set out MPs which not do so.

The cabinet meeting on Tuesday saw a 90-minute discussion punctuated with difficult exchanges  Leave-backing commons leader Andrea Leadsom told colleagues: This used to be the cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what Im hearing its not.
 Close Theresa May banned from vote on same Brexit deal in major blow issued by John Bercow

Theresa May is set to write to European Commission president Donald Tusk to lay out the government's plan for delaying Brexit.

The cabinet spent 90 minutes discussing the issue this morning but reportedly did not reach a conclusion on the possible length of the extension.

It comes as European leaders signalled that they may not agree to the UKs request for a delay to Britain's departure from the bloc, which was originally expected on March 29.

German Europe minister Michel Roth said EU leaders were really exhausted with the Brexit saga and and demanded clear and precise proposals from the UK government.

To follow events as they unfolded, see our live coverage below
Theresa May will defy John Bercow and find a way through to stage a third vote on her twice-defeated Brexit deal next week, a cabinet minister has insisted.

Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, revealed the prime minister would attempt to get around the speakers shock ruling  that identical votes cannot be restaged after defeats  by arguing she had secured changes.

One option was to insist the EU agreeing an extension to Article 50 to delay Brexit day constituted a different motion, or to agree changes that satisfied the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

If we see a number of members of parliament changing their vote, if we see clarity in terms of an extension from the council, then these are the issues on which members of parliament, Im sure, will find a way through, Mr Barclay said.

The comment suggests the government will  if a Brexit delay is agreed at this weeks EU summit  simply being forward a third meaningful vote and challenge Mr Bercow to block it.

If he does, a vote would be staged to overturn the 1604 convention he invoked to prevent a motion that is the same or substantially the same as one MPs have already thrown out.

If the will of the house is for a further vote then Im sure the speaker will look at that very closely, Mr Barclay told BBC Radio 4.

Asked again about possible changes to the deal, he referred to discussions we are having with our confidence and supply partners, meaning the DUP.

Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Show all 9 1 /9 Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Boris Johnson Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has long been hopeful, he previously stood in the leadership contest that followed the Brexit vote and has at many times since been thought to be maneuvering himself towards the goal. He remains a darling of the party's right wing, particularly those in the ERG, and is the most popular choice among Tory voters but his leadership bid would be fiercely opposed by many MPs PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Michael Gove Environment secretary Michael Gove is another member who has long wanted to be leader. He has lately been known for rousing his party in the commons, his recent speeches on the Brexit deal and Labour's no confidence motion have overshadowed the Prime Minister's. He has been loyal to the Prime Minister, partly to shed his reputation as a backstabber who abandoned Boris Johnson to stand against him in the 2016 leadership election Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Dominic Raab Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has emerged as a favourite to be the Brexiteer candidate in a contest to succeed to Ms May. He displayed a grip on detail in his role as Brexit secretary. When asked recently if he would like to become prime minister he replied "never say never" Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Rory Stewart International development secretary Rory Stewart is pitching himself as the sensible candidate, promising to rule out both a second referendum and a no-deal Brexit. He was only recently promoted to the cabinet, previously serving as prisons minister, where he caught headlines with a pledge to resign if he could not reduce levels of violence within a year PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Esther McVey The former work and pensions secretary announced that she will be standing for the leadership when May leaves. McVey is the first to explicitly state that she intends to stand. She resigned from the cabinet in protest over May's Brexit deal AFP/Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Sajid Javid Home secretary Sajid Javid is said to have a plan in place for a leadership race. He made headlines over Christmas when he declared that people smuggling over the English channel was a "major incident" and more recently when he revoked the citizenship of ISIS bride Shamima Begum. Son of a bus driver, he wants the Conservatives to be seen as the party of social mobility PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Jeremy Hunt Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt was recently thought to be the favourite in the event of a leadership race as he could sell himself as the man to unite the party. Critics worry that his long stint as health secretary could return to haunt him at a general election. He has reportedly been holding meetings with Tory MPs over breakfast to promote his leadership PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Andrea Leadsom Following the Prime Minister's second defeat over her Brexit deal, Leader of the house Andrea Leadsom hosted a dinner party at which "leadership was the only topic of conversation", The Times heard. Leadsom ran against Theresa May in the 2016 leadership election before dropping out, allowing May to become Prime Minister AFP/Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Priti Patel Former international development secretary Priti Patel is thought to be positioning herself as a contender. One MP told The Independent "she knows she's from the right of the party, the part which is going to choose the next leader, so she's reminding everyone she's there." Patel left the government late in 2017 after it emerged that she had held undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials PA

On Monday night, the solicitor general proposed the extraordinary step of suspending parliament and starting a new session, because the convention lapses after a new Queens speech.

But Mr Barclay, asked on Sky News if parliament could be prorogued to create a new session, replied: No. The one thing everyone would agree on is that involving Her Majesty in any of the issues around Brexit is not the way forward, so I dont see that a realistic option.

However, the Brexit secretary  who voted against an Article 50 extension last week, after urging MPs to back it  refused to say he would support it next week, saying: I dont think my constituents want to see a long delay.

Both supporters of a no-deal Brexit and a fresh referendum expressed delight at the speakers ruling, both believing it made their favoured option more likely.

 Theresa May to force third vote on Brexit deal in defiance of John Bercow ruling, cabinet minister reveals

But Mr Barclay stamped on those hoping for a crash-out Brexit, saying: I think that is clutching at straws because the house has already moved to take no deal off the table ... I dont think that is a realistic option.

However, he ducked whether MPs would still retain a veto over an Article 50 extension, even if agreed by the prime minister with the EU on Thursday.

International agreements are reached at council level, but obviously the government will always listen to the will of the house, he said.
The official Brexit campaign has been fined 40,000 by the UKs privacy watchdog after sending thousands of unsolicited text messages during the EU referendum campaign.

A probe by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) found that Vote Leave sent 196,154 text messages promoting their campaign in the weeks leading up to the Brexit vote.

However, the campaign group, which was backed by Tory big-hitters Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, was unable to provide evidence to the ICO that the recipients had given their consent to receive the messages  as required by electronic marketing law.

Vote Leave has already been fined and reported to the police by the election watchdogs after it was found to have breached strict spending rules during the campaign.

Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Show all 60 1 /60 Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr

The Electoral Commission slapped a 61,000 fine on the campaign after it uncovered significant evidence of joint working between Vote Leave and a youth group known as BeLeave, which meant the campaign had exceeded its spending limit.

ICO director of investigations Steve Eckersley said: Spam texts are a real nuisance for millions of people and we will take action against organisations who disregard the law.

Direct marketing is not just about selling products and services, its also about promoting an organisations aims and ideals.

Political campaigns and parties, like any other organisations, have to comply with the law.

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Vote Leave claimed it had obtained the contact details from enquiries through its website, respondents to promotional leaflets and also from entrants to a football competition, according to the ICO.

It also found that the organisation had deleted evidence of consent, the phone numbers the messages were sent from, the volume of messages sent, and the volume of messages received.

Vote Leave has always denied wrongdoing during the referendum campaign, and claimed the complaints against it are politically motivated.

Responding to the ICO probe, a Vote Leave spokesman said: Fewer than 20 people made complaints about the 196,000 text messages we sent during the referendum campaign.

This is far lower than the commercial texting campaigns who have previously been fined by the ICO.

Vote Leave was operating in a highly political environment, which makes false allegations much more likely. It is therefore highly likely that the tiny number of people who complained to the ICO were doing so for political purposes.

The ICO took over two years to bring these complaints to our attention, when they could easily have done so in the summer of 2016.

Unlike the Stronger In campaign, we deleted all of our data after the referendum as agreed with the ICO, so their decision to prosecute us now feels particularly vindictive.

The spokesman said Vote Leave complied with both the letter and the spirit of the law and refuted the ludicrous theories.
Gas boilers will be banned in new homes from 2025 in a bid to tackle emissions, the government has announced.

Philip Hammond said new standards mandating the end of fossil fuel heating systems in new homes from 2025 delivering lower carbon, and lower fuel bills too.

The move was one of a series of environmental measures unveiled by the chancellor in a short Spring Statement as he sought to address one of the major concerns of young people ahead of a second school climate strike later this week.

The Treasury also announced the protection of all the waters around Ascension Island in the Atlantic, where no fishing will be allowed.

Mr Hammond outlined a call for evidence on whether travel providers should be required to offer genuine carbon offsets for their customers to reduce the pollution from their journeys, and proposals to boost green gas in the grid.

Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here Show all 29 1 /29 Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 AFP/Getty Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 Getty Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 EPA Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Manchester on February 15 Getty Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Manchester on February 15 Getty Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 Getty Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Brighton on February 15 Getty Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 AFP/Getty Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 AFP/Getty Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 PA Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 PA Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 PA Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 PA Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The protest in Parliament Square, London on February 15 PA Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 AP Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 AP Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 AP Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 AP Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 Reuters Climate strike: See the best signs from the protest here The march in Brussels, February 14 AP

Along with measures on climate change, Mr Hammond also announced that the government would mandate biodiversity net gain for developments in England to ensure new housing and infrastructure does not hit wildlife.

A comprehensive global review of the link between biodiversity and economic growth, to be led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, emeritus professor of economics at Cambridge, will also be carried out as part of efforts to stem declines in wildlife.

Campaign group 10:10 Climate Actions director Max Wakefield backed the move to end fossil fuel heating in new homes from 2025.

He said: All our homes and buildings must be made efficient, affordable and zero-carbon within the next two decades to address the climate crisis. Ending the scandal of poor quality new homes is a no-brainer thats good for everyone.

Mel Evans, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said the plan to end fossil fuels in new homes is vital and welcomed the measures to protect wildlife.

But she warned that tackling the climate emergency required much bigger thinking.

Ms Evans added that issues like the shoddy state of our existing housing stock and rapid adoption of electric vehicles require serious money behind serious policies  such as banning new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030.

Dave Timms, from Friends of the Earth, said: The nations children are calling out for tough action to cut emissions; Mr Hammond must listen harder to the lesson theyre teaching him.

He added: The chancellor should have announced a massive programme of investment in home insulation and public transport, instead of pushing the false solution of carbon off-setting for aviation.
Labours only officially affiliated Jewish group is set to hold a no-confidence vote in Jeremy Corbyn within weeks amid fresh tensions over the handling of antisemitism complaints within the party.

The Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) is braced to vote on the unprecedented motion at its annual general meeting, which claims the party is "institutionally antisemitic" and Mr Corbyn's leadership, combined with his past actions and associations shows "a complete disregard for the Jewish community in Britain".

Members of JLM, which has been affiliated to Labour nearly a century, will also consider a separate motion that describes the entire leadership as antisemitic and vows to support deputy leader Tom Watson's efforts to set up a new social democrat grouping in the party.

The row comes after JLM opted to stay and fight for the party at an emergency meeting last month, after deliberating whether to sever its ties with Labour over the antisemitism row that has dogged the party.

Jewish Labour MPs Dame Margaret Hodge, Ruth Smeeth and Dame Louise Ellman joined around 200 JLM members for an emotional meeting on how the group should respond to the row, resulting in an overwhelming vote to stay.

However the motions, sent to JLM members and seen by The Independent, show the group is far from happy.

One motion, which will be decided by delegates, said there was a "culture of antisemitism from party members, an institutional culture enabling and sustaining it, and a culture of denial that such a problem even exists".

It read: "That blame for both the crisis of antisemitism within the Labour party and the partys failure to deal with it therefore ultimately rests with Jeremy Corbyn.

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"Jeremy Corbyn is therefore unfit to be prime minister and that a Labour government led by him would not be in the interest of British Jews."

If it is approved by delegates in April, JLM will be compelled to issue a proclamation saying it has no confidence in Mr Corbyn and saying it will not campaign for MPs or councillors who it does not consider allies against antisemitism.

A Labour spokesperson said: "Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party are fully committed to the support, defence and celebration of the Jewish community and its organisations."

Antisemitism complaints received since April 2018 relate to about 0.1 per cent of our membership, but one antisemite in our party is one too many.

"We are determined to tackle antisemitism and root it out of our party.

It comes after the UKs equality watchdog said it would consider whether Labour has unlawfully discriminated against the Jewish community following complaints from groups including JLM.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it will look at whether to use enforcement powers against the party in relation to the allegations.

Once the EHRCs formal letter is received by Labour, the party will have 14 days to respond. The commission will then take enforcement action, which could include a full-blown investigation.
Phillip Hammonds claim of a big economic boost if MPs pass Theresa Mays Brexit deal has been dismissed by his own watchdog, which predicted a negligible effect.

The uncertainty hanging over the economy would only be lifted after several years when the shape of a future trade deal with the EU is known, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned.

The chancellor has leant on MPs to ratify the Brexit agreement by promising a deal dividend, where pent-up investment is released to allow him to spend billions to finally end austerity.

But, asked if that would happen if the deal was passed next week, Sir Charlie Bean, an OBR committee member, replied: I dont think a resolution of the uncertainty next week is possible.

Sir Charlie predicted several years of consideration about what the ultimate trading regime is and, also, the migration regime.

Recommended May to force third vote on Brexit deal in defiance of Bercow ruling

And he told the Commons Treasury Committee: The likelihood, to be honest, of resolving that uncertainty is close to negligible.

Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Show all 15 1 /15 Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Pork There will be tariffs on pork in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cheese There will be tariffs in place on some cheeses including 22.10/100kg of cheddar, 19.10/100kg of processed cheese and 18.60/100kg on some blue cheeses Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Milk There will be no tariffs in place on milk Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Car Parts There will be no tariffs on car parts imported from Europe PA Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cars However finished cars will face tariffs of 10.6% Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Alcoholic drinks There will be no tariffs on alcoholic drinks - except on some rums due to ingredients used in their distilling process Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Beef There will be tariffs on beef in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fish There will be no tariffs on many types of fish including cod, haddock, salmon and sea bass Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fruit and vegetables There will be no tariffs on almost all fruit and vegetables Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Chocolate There will be no tariffs on chocolate or other cocoa products Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Poultry There will be tariffs on poultry in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Ceramics There will be some tariffs in place on ceramis Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Steel There will be no tariffs on steel Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Coal There will be no tariffs on coal Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Lamb/Mutton There will be tariffs on the meat of sheep in order to protect British farmers Getty

The reality must be, surely, that  even if you take some of the worst downside tail risks off the table  there is still going to be uncertainty that gradually businesses will learn about and the uncertainty will gradually get resolved.

A more plausible story is that it comes back over several years.

Sir Charlie said other countries had enjoyed a near-10 per cent boost to non-housing investment since 2016, which was roughly what we would have expected without the Brexit effect.

Theres nothing obvious that has happened in the UK independently that would have acted as a drag on investment, he told the MPs.

The OBR forecast, following last weeks Spring Statement, was for investment growth to climb back to 2.5 per cent a year, if a disorderly Brexit is avoided.

But he added: Thats still below what one would expect, given where we are in the cycle, unemployment at low levels.

Last week, Mr Hammond told MPs he would use a Brexit deal dividend to pour billions into increased spending on public services, capital investment in Britains future prosperity and keeping taxes low.

However, the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies has also cast doubt on a boost from stalled investment, faster growth and higher tax revenues once a deal is signed.

Paul Johnson, its director, said last week that it was strange to talk about an economic boost when the forecasts were made on the basis of a deal being agreed.

This is arguably the best case, or at least the central, scenario. What the chancellor isnt allowed to say is that what hes really talking about is a negative dividend from not having a deal, Mr Johnson said.

Economists have also cast doubt on whether the chancellor has a potential war chest of 26.6bn, as he has argued.

The figure depends on him abandoning his longstanding target of balancing the books by the mid-2020s, it is argued.
A deadly tropical cyclone has destroyed as much as 90 per cent of the Mozambique city of Beira, raising fears for more than 500,000 people.

Cyclone Idai brought devastation to the major coastal city of half a million people on Thursday night with winds of up to 106 mph, before moving to Zimbabwe and Malawi, Red Cross said.

The damage was massive and horrifying, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society (IFRC) said after surveying the worst-hit areas via helicopter.

Images on social media and local television showed billboards and rooftops blown off, trees snapped and electricity cables left fallen in the citys streets.

President Filipe Nyusi said he believed the storm could be the deadliest to hit the southeast African country, adding that it was a real disaster of great proportions.

Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Residents are on a roof surrounded by flooding in Beira, Mozambique AFP/Getty Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Chimanimani locals walk near one of the many roads that have been damaged by Cyclone Idai EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Praia Nova in Beira, Mozambique that has been devastated in Cyclone Idai EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Submerged area of Praia Nova in Beira, Mozambique EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Praia Nova in Beira, Mozambique that has been devastated in Cyclone Idai EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Locals stand beside a damaged section of road between Beira and Chimoio in Mozambique AFP/Getty Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Pylons and telegraph poles amidst the flooded area outside Beira in Mozambique AFP/Getty Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Praia Nova in Beira, Mozambique that has been devastated in Cyclone Idai Reuters Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Damaged sports arena in the Ponta Gea area of Beira, Mozambique EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Submerged area of Bozi in the south of Beira, Mozambique AFP/Getty Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures A young man sits in front of destroyed settlements in Beira, Mozambique EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Residents carry their belongings through a flooded section of Praia Nova in Beira EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures A man searches through the rubble in Beira, Mozambique EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Residents walk through a flooded area of Beira, Mozambique EPA Cyclone wipes out 90% of city in Mozambique: in pictures Locals queue to receive aid during search and rescue operations in the wake of Cyclone Idai in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe AFP/Getty

Appearing on state radio, he described seeing bodies floating in the water after two rivers broke their banks and wiped out entire villages. He said he expected the death toll, which currently stands at 84, to rise significantly to more than 1,000 deaths.

The United Nations humanitarian office said on Friday that electricity and communications in the city had been cut off by the cyclone.

It also warned of devastation outside Beira, in particular of livestock and crops, adding that the damage took place just before the main harvest season, which could exacerbate food insecurity in the region.

In February 2000, Cyclone Eline also made landfall near Beira during a period of intense rain, killing hundreds and displacing 650,000 across the wider region.

With the latest disaster also leaving thousands missing or displaced, Amnesty International is calling on foreign governments and regional leaders to ramp up rescue efforts.

Muleya Mwananyanda, deputy regional director for southern Africa, said the international community must provide the necessary aid resources to save lives and provide relief to those affected.

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As the effects of climate change intensify, these extreme weather conditions can be expected to revisit us more frequently, she said. The devastation wrought by Cyclone Idai is yet another wake-up call for the world to put in place ambitious climate change mitigation measures.

Regional leaders and governments of wealthier countries must support effective early-warning systems, disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation strategies to save lives and protect human rights.

Additional reporting by AP
In a wide-ranging interview with Fox News, Brazils far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has attempted to justify his tweeting of an explicit video and claimed he cannot be racist because a relative is a known as a big black man.

The 63-year-old earlier this month shared on social media a sexually explicit clip - reportedly filmed at Sao Paulos annual street festival - in which a man is seeing urinating on another person. He later tweeted: What is a golden shower?

The move was an attempt to discredit carnival-goers, many of whom protested Mr Bolsonaros anti-LGBTQ policies and a money laundering scandal involving the president and his personal driver.

Mr Bolsonaro, who was set to meet Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, told Fox News host Shannon Bream on Monday the video was already on the internet and we just shared it to try to showcase how way off track carnival is going in Brazil.

Also one of the things that got me elected president was my sense of respect to families, principles, traditions, and customs, and of course respect towards our culture as well as our religion, he said through a translator.

Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Show all 20 1 /20 Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Brazil's new President Jair Bolsonaro waves as he drives past before his swear-in ceremony Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Supporters wait in front of the Planalto Palace, where he will take office EPA Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Jair Bolsonaro gestures at the Congress before he is sworn AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Supporters take pictures as Brazil's new President Jair Bolsonaro drives past Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Flanked by first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro waves to the crowd, as he rides in an open car after his swearing-in ceremony AP Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Jair Bolsonaro reacts as he drives past Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration The National Congress before Brazil's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro is sworn in AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Jair Bolsonaro gestures at the Congress AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AP Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration EPA Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty

Brazilians at the time were quick to condemn Mr Bolsonaros tweet as a gross misrepresentation of the festival, which took place from 28 February to 5 March.

I spent an entire carnival seeing so many beautiful things, TV presenter Astrid Fontenelle wrote in response to Mr Bolsonaros tweet. Then I come across THAT on twitter from the president of the republic that must be followed by MANY children.

Mr Bolsonaro, dubbed the Trump of the Tropics, also spoke out in defence of Mr Trumps proposed border wall across the US-Mexico border.

The vast majority of potential immigrants do not have good intentions or do not intend to do the best or do good to the US people, Mr Bolsonaro said, without providing evidence.

I would very much like the US people to uphold the current immigration policy because to a large extent we owe our democracy in the southern hemisphere to the United States.

 Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro posts video of 'man having golden shower' in attempt to discredit Carnival

He echoed his US counterpart when he dubbed Brazils mainstream media fake news and claimed it is virtually dominated by the left-wing.

Responding to allegations he discriminates against minorities and women, he said: I have nothing against homosexuals or women, I am not a xenophobe but I want to have my house in order.

He added: I cannot have anything against black people, my father-in-law is known as a big black man.

Mr Bolsonaro also addressed suggestions he had knowledge of last years assassination of Marielle Franco, a gay Rio De Janeiro councilwoman who was shot dead after leaving a work event.

Two former police officers have been charged with the killing, but who ordered the slaying and why remains unanswered.

I only learned about Marielle Franco after she was killed, Mr Bolsonaro said. She was a councilwoman and I never - I have never ever heard anything about her life.

And one further point, what kind of motivation could I possibly have to be the mastermind of some kind of murder like that? I didnt even know her.
Fox News' newest pundit is one CNN rejected after she colluded with Hillary Clinton's campaign before campaign events in 2016.

Fox said on Monday that it has hired Donna Brazile, the former interim Democratic National Committee chair and a long-time CNN commentator before she became embroiled in controversy in 2016.

CNN forced Ms Brazile to resign as an on-air contributor in October 2016 after emails revealed that she had tipped off Ms Clinton's aides about questions likely to be asked by CNN moderators during the debates and town hall meetings carried by CNN.

At the time, Ms Brazile was highly supportive of Ms Clinton's candidacy. The network said the leaking of the question was a break of its ethics and undermined the impartiality of its campaign coverage.

Fox said Ms Brazile would comment on the upcoming presidential campaign on Fox News and Fox Business Network.

US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 US Presidential election: key moments in pictures US Presidential election: key moments in pictures The 2005 Access Hollywood video which showed Mr Trump bragging to Billy Bush Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and her health concerns Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump suggests gun-supporters could kill Hillary Clinton to prevent her from picking the supreme court justices Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Melania Trump plagiarises Michelle Obamas speech Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Mr Trump said that judge Gonzalo Curiel would not be able to rule fairly, as he was of Mexican heritage United States Federal Court/AP US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump anxious over securing black vote Reuters US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Hillary Clinton and concerns about securing black vote Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Pope Francis Questions Donald Trump's Christianity Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and his relentless remarks against Mexican people Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures Donald Trump and the sexual assault allegations Getty US Presidential election: key moments in pictures FBI director announced that there would be no charges for Hillary Clinton amid email scandal Getty

In announcing Ms Brazile's hiring, it made no mention of the issues surrounding her in 2016.

The DNC, which Ms Brazile led on an interim basis during 2016, decided earlier this month to exclude Fox News from televising any of its candidate events.

The organisation's chair, Tom Perez, said Fox was too closely aligned with President Donald Trump, leading him to conclude the network could not host "a fair and neutral debate for our candidates."

Recommended Democrats block Fox News from hosting debates over Trump ties

In a statement released on Monday, Ms Brazile said: "I know I'm going to get criticised from my friends in the progressive movement for being on Fox News. My response is that, if we've learned anything from the 2016 election, it is that we can't have a country where we don't talk to those who disagree with our political views.

There's an audience on Fox News that doesn't hear enough from Democrats. We have to engage that audience and show Americans of every stripe what we stand for rather than retreat into our 'safe spaces' where we simply agree with each other."

People at Fox said Ms Brazile would have no role in commenting on any debates or town hall meetings it covers, though Fox will probably have very few of those given the DNC's decision to remove it from consideration in televising Democratic events.

Ms Brazile's role in channelling questions to Ms Clinton came to light in emails released by WikiLeaks during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign. The emails came from a hack of the DNC's servers by Russian operatives.

CNN said at the time that it was "completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about (Ms Brazile's) interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor."

Ms Brazile apparently got her information from conversations with TV One host Roland Martin, who was a guest moderator for one of the CNN debates. She said she learned that one of the questions during a televised town hall meeting in March of that year would involve the death penalty.

Another question before a debate with Ms Clinton's chief Democratic primary challenger, senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, in Flint, Michigan, concerned the city's ongoing water crisis, although it seems questionable that such a tip was helpful, given that the issue was bound to come up considering the event's location.

Ms Brazile said at the time that she offered her resignation when the WikiLeaks emails surfaced showing her telling a senior Clinton adviser, "From time to time, I get the questions in advance."

Ms Brazile was scheduled to make her first appearance on Fox on Monday afternoon.

The Washington Post
A town in California has filed a lawsuit against the current owner of the iconic Flintstone House after she added dinosaur statues and a sign reading 'Yabba Dabba Doo' to the property.

The quirky residence, located in the upscale area of Hillsborough, was built in 1976 and was inspired by the American cartoon.

However, not everyone is a fan.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Locals have called it a "public nuisance" and alleged that "landscape modifications to the home were conducted without planning approvals and building permits".

The current owner, Florence Fang, a former publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, reportedly began renovations on the property in 2017. There are now 15-foot dinosaurs, a giraffe, mastodon, and brightly-coloured mushrooms grazing on the lawn.

According to the suit, she was asked multiple times to halt the works, with officials calling it a highly visible eyesore and are out of keeping with the community standards.

Assistant City Attorney Mark Hudak told Fox 2: We don't like it when people build things first, and then come in and demand or ask for permission later. That's not fair to everyone else who goes through the process.

In a statement to Associated Press, Ms Fang's grandson Sean Fang said the dinosaurs were beautiful, adding: "They make everyone smile and should stay."
It began as an operation targeting a cocaine ring in southern New Jersey. But after investigators listened to a wire tap, the case took on an unexpected focus: do-it-yourself firearms made from parts easily found online.

The suspects in New Jersey are accused of trying to sell several homemade AR-15 assault-style rifles that are known as ghost guns because they cannot be tracked. The AR-15 rifle is a powerful weapon similar to the one used to kill 11 people last year at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

On Monday, New Jersey law enforcement officials announced the arrests of four men who became the first defendants charged under a law passed last year that makes it illegal to buy, manufacture, possess or sell homemade guns in the state. California is the only other state that restricts such weapons, but New Jerseys version is far more stringent, according to national gun control groups.

In fact, one of the suspects is heard on a wiretap specifically citing New Jerseys law and saying they had to move the weapon sales out of state.

Ghost guns are a real and dangerous menace, Gurbir Grewal, attorney general of New Jersey, said in a news conference in Camden where he discussed the case. They offer criminals, convicted felons, terrorists, domestic abusers, people who we all agree shouldnt access firearms, the ability to access them.

Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Show all 10 1 /10 Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Young people march from the White House to Capitol Hill while participating in the national school walkout over gun violence. EPA Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Thousands of local students march down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the US Capitol during a nationwide student walkout for gun control. AFP/Getty Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence A student has the words,'don't shoot,' written on her hands as she joins with other students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after walking out of their school to honor the memories of 17 students and teachers that were killed. Getty Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Students take part in a walkout at General McLane High School. AP Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Students from Harvest Collegiate High School stand in Washington Square Park in New York to take part in a national walkout to protest gun violence. AFP/Getty Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Students rally in front of the White House in Washington after walking out of school to protest gun violence in the biggest demonstration yet of the student activism that has emerged in response to last month's massacre of 17 people at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. AP Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Airport High School juniors Tony LaFata, 16, left, and Noah Doederlein, 17, stands for a moment of silence during a walkout at General McLane High School. AP Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Young people rally on the West Front of the US Capitol to participate in the national school walkout over gun violence, in Washington. EPA Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Students from Passaic High School hold photos of some of the 17 victims killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. AP Students walk out of US schools to protest gun violence Students join hands as they take part in a student walkout in Lafayette. AP

New Jersey already has some of the countrys toughest gun laws, but buying parts individually and assembling them at home  often with the help of online videos and instructions  could allow people with criminal records and others who would not pass background checks to obtain guns.

Marketed to gun enthusiasts who enjoy building their own firearms, companies that sell kits are making it easier for guns to circulate illegally, law enforcement authorities and gun control advocates said.

You go to some of the websites, they offer you discounts if you buy a pack of five or a pack of 10, said J Adam Skaggs, chief counsel and policy director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Now, you ask yourself, am I going to buy a discounted 10-pack of ghost guns because I want to build myself 10 guns to use at the range? Or am I going to buy a 10-pack if Im a would-be trafficker who wants to start a little factory of my own and sell these at a markup to people who cant pass a background check?

Recommended Democrats push for biggest gun control measures in years

Across the country, there have been arrests involving ghost guns with the accused charged with violating other state and federal laws. In New York, a police sergeant was accused of selling ghost guns to members of a motorcycle gang who had criminal records.

The difficulty of disrupting illegal ghost gun operations is underscored by the circuitous route that led authorities to the trafficking ring in New Jersey.

The investigation began as a probe into a large cocaine ring in Lindenwold, a town in Camden County, Mr Grewal said. Law enforcement authorities only became aware of the illegal gun trafficking through conversations between two of the alleged members of the criminal network that were secretly recorded.

They changed some law, one suspect was recorded saying, so we gotta go over to Philly to pick them up.

A second suspect said, We just gotta go out of state now.

 Kamala Harris gives powerful words on gun violence setting the bar high for other potential 2020 presidential candidates

The suspects would have parts for guns shipped across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania to get around the New Jersey law, and then would bring them back into the state, Mr Grewal said.

Law enforcement officials eventually recovered six AR-15 rifles made from parts without serial numbers, which were being offered on the black market for $1,100 to $1,300, nearly double the market price for an AR-15 assault-style rifle. They also intercepted parts for two more assault-style rifles that had been shipped to Pennsylvania.

Another eight men were also arrested as part of the illicit operation and were charged mostly with drug-related offenses.

Though these were the first arrests for trafficking ghost guns under the new law, Mr Grewal said other ghost guns have turned up in the state. State police had recovered well over 15 in the last year, he said.

We are starting to see them at crime scenes, he added. We are starting to see them in our investigations. They are not an abstract threat. They are a real threat to public safety.

There are multiple investigations into ghost gun manufacturers and criminal networks, Mr Grewal said. But, he added, responsibility also rests with manufacturers.

When you see repeatedly the same address and the same individuals at the same location continuing to order parts and parts and parts and parts for the same types of guns, some red flags have to go up, Mr Grewal said.

The New York Times
Mexicos Popocatepetl volcano erupted late on Monday, triggering warnings for ash rain and mudslides.

The Washington Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) warned an explosion at the volcano in central Mexico had taken place at 9.38pm local time.

Mexicos National Centre for Disaster Prevention (CENAPRED) said the blast had sent a column of ash around 1.2km into the air.

There were no immediate reports of any injuries or damage caused as a result of the incident.

CENAPRED urges the public not to approach the volcano and especially the crater, because of the danger involved in the fall of ballistic fragments, the agency said in a statement.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The Mexican government has issued a yellow phase two volcano alert following the eruption, setting up a 7-and-a-half mile exclusion zone around the summit.

Recommended Volcanoes may have wiped out dinosaurs before asteroid arrived

Authorities warned small to intermediate-sized explosions, ash rain in nearby towns and mudflows could all follow.

Popcatepetl, which gets its name from a Nahuatl-language phrase meaning smoking mountain, sits around 43 miles southeast of Mexico City.

The volcano had been dormant for almost 50 years, before smoke started emanating from the crater again in the early 1990s.

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Since then, it has seen sporadic activity and several significant eruptions are recorded each year by CENAPRED and the Washington VAAC.
Beto ORourke's record-breaking fundraising haul has appeared to upset supporters of Bernie Sanders, who began spreading misinformation about how the Texas Democrats campaign managed to top that of the Vermont senators in its first 24 hours.

A tweet claiming the former congressmans 2020 campaign was part of a supposed financial kickback with the Texas Democratic Party went viral after Mr O'Rourke released his fundraising figures from his first day on the campaign trail earlier this week.

That tweet was posted by Xavier Perez, a member of the Democratic county committee in Bronx, New York and a former volunteer for Mr Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.

It read: Well this is awkward! @BetoORourke gave the remaining $4.5+ mill from his Senate race to @TexasDemocrats a few months ago, & the Party sent the money back to him on the day his announcement.

So this is probably why hes not releasing his individual contribution list., the tweet continued.

The tweet accuses the Texas Democratic Party of violating federal campaign laws by contributing more than $5,000 (3,765) to Mr ORourke's presidential campaign. However, the Federal Election Commission only has disclosure information prior to February  meaning there is no way to know how much, if any, the Texas Democratic Party actually donated to Mr ORourke's 2020 campaign that kicked off last week, until that information has been filed and published.

Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Show all 23 1 /23 Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Joe Biden The former vice president - poised to be a frontrunner - has announced his run. He recently faced scrutiny for inappropriate touching of women, but was thought to deal with the criticism well AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Bernie Sanders The 2016 runner-up has announced that he will be running again in 2020 Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Hillary Clinton The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State says she is still considering whether she will run again. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Pete Buttigieg The Indiana mayor and war veteran will be running for president. If elected, he would be the first openly LGBT+ president in American history. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kamala Harris The former California attorney general will be running for president in 2020. Introduced to the national stage during Jeff Sessions testimony, she has endorsed Medicare-for-all and proposed a major tax-credit for the middle class. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Elizabeth Warren The Massachusetts Senator has formally launched her bid for president in 2020. A progressive Democrat, she is a major supporter of regulating Wall Street. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Beto ORourke The former Texas congressman told Oprah Winfrey that he has been thinking about running for presidency, but stopped short of formally announcing his bid to run in 2020. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Wayne Messam Mayor of the city of Miramar in the Miami metropolitan area, Wayne Messam has announced his bid. He intends to run on a progressive platform against the "broken" federal government. He favours gun regulations and was a signatory to a letter from some 400 mayors condemning President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. Vice News Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kirsten Gillibrand The New York Senator formally announced her presidential bid in January, saying that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Cory Booker The New Jersey Senator has announced that he will be running for the presidency in 2020. If he secures the nomination he said finding a female vice president would be a priority. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Delaney The Maryland congressman was the first to launch his bid for presidency, making the announcement in 2017. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Julian Castro The former San Antonio mayor announced his candidacy in January and said that his running has a special meaning for the Latino community in the US. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Tulsi Gabbard The Hawaii congresswoman announced her candidacy in January, but is likely to face tough questions on her past comments on LGBT+ rights and her stance on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Andrew Yang The entrepreneur has announced his presidential candidacy, and has pledged that he would introduce a universal basic income of $1,000 a month to every American over the age of 18. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Marianne Williamson The author and spiritual advisor has announced her intention to run for president. She had previously run for congress as an independent in 2014 but was unsuccessful. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Kerry The former secretary of state has said he is still thinking about whether to run. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Michael Bloomberg The entrepreneur and former New York mayor with a net worth of around $50bn  has said he will decide by the end of February whether to seek the presidency. AFP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Howard Schultz Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has not yet ruled out running for president in 2020, despite criticism that his bid could help re-elect Mr Trump by dividing the Democrat vote. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Holder The former attorney general has said he will decide in the next month or so whether to run as a 2020 presidential candidate. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Swalwell The California congressman said he is ready to do this and will decide before April whether to run. MSNBC Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Terry McAuliffe The former Virginia governor, who worked to elect Democratic governors during 2018 midterms, said there was a 50 per cent chance he would run. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Sherrod Brown The Ohio senator is still undecided about whether to run for president in 2020. Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Mitch Landrieu The former New Orleans mayor said he doesnt think he will run for president, but never say never. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Supporters of Mr Sanders responded to a slate of tweets posted by journalists and other Twitter users discussing Mr O'Rourke's fundraising numbers with the same false information about the alleged kickback system between his campaign and the state party.

It remained unclear where the misleading accusations stemmed from and whether or not they were simply based on a general misunderstanding of campaign finances.

(Twitter (Twitter)

Mr Perez did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Calls to his offices also went unanswered.

It is possible some of the questions surrounding Mr O'Rourke's fundraising comes from a lack of detail in a statement released by his campaign announcing the record-breaking haul on Monday. The campaign did not disclose additional figures on the total number of individual contributors, as well as the average donation made within the first 24 hours of Mr O'Rourke's candidacy.

A spokesperson for the campaign responded to questions from The Independent about those figures in an email shortly after the announcement reading, We have already released the fundraising numbers we will be putting out.

On Tuesday, Mr O'Rourke's director of communications Chris Evans told The Independent, "Beto's grassroots campaign raised a record-breaking $6,136,763 online from individuals in the first 24 hours after launching. Each and every single dollar of that came online from people, not from PACs, corporations, special interests or in the way described in this completely false tweet."

The campaign has hired Louis Susman, a top backer for Barack Obamas first presidential campaign, to secure major investments from top Democratic donors across the country.

Mr O'Rourke proved to be a fundraising juggernaut during his failed 2018 senatorial campaign in the deeply-red state of Texas, breaking senate campaign records while challenging Republican incumbent Ted Cruz.

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Mr Sanders also raised a whopping $5.9m (4.4m) within the first 24 hours of his campaign launch, while California Democrat Kamala Harris also secured $1.5m (1.1m) after kicking off her campaign with a major rally in Oakland, California.

Campaign finance experts have noted the difficulties female candidates  particularly minority female candidates  face in fundraising their campaigns compared to white, male candidates.
New court filings reveal the extent of investigations Special Counsel Robert Muellers office conducted against Donald Trumps longtime fixer and former lawyer Michael Cohen  well before the infamous raid against him took place last year.

The special counsel received warrants nearly a year before the raid to begin reading Cohens private email correspondence, according to court documents that were unsealed on Tuesday morning and reviewed by The Independent.

Initially, the special counsel's office had launched a probe into whether Cohen was acting as an unregistered foreign agent, an allegation he has not been charged over.

When federal prosecutors raided Cohens properties in April of last year, they seized all sorts of material evidence as part of their investigation into Donald Trumps 2016 presidential campaign and Russian interference in the general election.

According to exhibit 6 of the partially redacted records, prosecutors seized at least two DVDs and a USB flash drive. It remained unclear what significance any of this evidence has played in the special counsel probes.

However, one of the DVDs in question featured a date prominently displayed on a label reading Cohen  2018.03.07. That date  7 March, 2018  was the same day numerous outlets reported on a secret restraining order Cohen had sought against Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who has alleged to have had an extramarital affair with Mr Trump. Another DVD featured a label reading 2-28-18 Cohen SW Returns  Google and 1&1.

Criminals who worked for Trump Show all 5 1 /5 Criminals who worked for Trump Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Cohen Former lawyer for Donald Trump was sentenced to three years in prison on counts involving evading income tax, false disclosure of the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and another hush money charge Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Paul Manafort Former campaign manager for Trump Manafort was found guilty in February 2018 of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The crimes occurred prior to his appointment in Trump's campaign Getty Criminals who worked for Trump George Papadopoulos Former Trump campaign adviser Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in October 2017. He had lied about making contact with a professor who claimed that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. He was sentenced to 14 days in jail Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Flynn Former White House National Security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017. He had lied about conversations that he had with the Russian ambassador to the US during Trump's Presidential campaign. He was not given prison time due to his "significant assistance" to the Mueller investigation Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Rick Gates Deputy chairman of Trump's presidential campaign Gates pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in February 2018 AFP/Getty

Cohen pleaded guilty over the summer to failing to report more than $4m (3m) in income to the IRS, making false statements to financial institutions and campaign-finance violations stemming from the hush-money payments he arranged for Ms Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen implicated Mr Trump in his guilty plea, saying the president directed him to make the payments during his 2016 campaign.

The records show the inquiry into Cohen had been going on since July 2017  far longer than previously known  and that a big part of its focus was Cohens taxi businesses and misrepresentations he made to banks as part of a scheme to relieve himself of some $22m (16.6m) in debt he owed on taxi medallion loans.

Tuesdays release of the search warrant came nearly six weeks after US District Judge William H Pauley III partially granted a request by several media organisations that the search warrant be made public due to the high public interest in the case.

Recommended Cohen lawyer discussed pardon after FBI raid

Many sections of the records dealing with the campaign-finance violations Cohen committed when he paid two women to stay silent about alleged affairs they had with Mr Trump were redacted. A judge ordered those sections to remain secret after prosecutors said they were still investigating campaign finance violations.

The judge acknowledged prosecutors concerns that a wholesale release of the document would jeopardise an ongoing investigation and prejudice the privacy rights of uncharged third parties, a ruling that revealed prosecutors are still investigating the campaign-finance violations.

The judge ordered prosecutors to redact Cohens personal information and details in the warrant that refer to ongoing investigations and several third-parties who have cooperated with the inquiry. But he authorised the release of details in the warrant that relate to Cohens tax evasion and false statements to financial institutions charges, along with Cohens conduct that did not result in criminal charges.

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The FBI raided Cohens Manhattan home and office last April, marking the first public sign of a criminal investigation that has threatened Mr Trumps presidency and netted Cohen a three-year prison sentence that he is scheduled to start serving in May. The agents, who also scoured Cohens hotel room and safe deposit box, seized more than 4 million electronic and paper files in the searches, more than a dozen mobile devices and iPads, 20 external hard drives, flash drives and laptops.

Additional reporting by AP
The US State Department has raised concerns among the American press after conducting a conference call exclusively with faith based media outlets.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo reportedly participated in the Monday afternoon press call.

Reporters from networks across the country are typically provided the opportunity to listen to these State Department calls and ask questions about news developments and upcoming announcements.

Mr Pompeos call solely included outlets such as EWTN Global Catholic Television, which told CNN it was allowed to join the conference after requesting permission from the State Department. A reporter for the outlet said the call was for faith-based media only.

It remained unclear which networks were provided access to the call and whether those included represented a range of religious faiths.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The State Department reportedly did not reply when CNN asked to be included , and would not provide a list of the outlets who were included on the Monday conference.

The department also declined to provide a transcript  a standard practice for press calls.

Andrea Mitchell, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, called out the departments move in a tweet on Monday night.

State dept will not provide transcript of @SecPompeo call with so-called faith based media, the reporter tweeted. She added the department would not say who took part of what criteria were for participating.

She added: Usually transcripts are provided for all on the record interviews.

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Former State Department spokesperson John Kirby told CNN it is typical practice that any on the record interview in which a Cabinet official participates is transcribed and published at the earliest appropriate opportunity.

These officials are public servants. What they say  in its entirety  is inherently of public interest, he said. Its inappropriate and irresponsible not to observe that obligation.
Representative Steve King has civil war on his mind.

The Iowa Republican broached the subject in a Saturday evening Facebook post - a bizarre meme of two fighting figures, one red and one blue, each an amalgamation of states based on their political leanings.

"Folks keep talking about another civil war," the meme read. "One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use."

Mr King, whom Congress recently stripped of committee assignments over his comments about white supremacy, annotated the image with a winking emoji and mused, "Wonder who would win...."

Mr King was openly pondering violent, armed conflict, apparently joking about Republican-leaning states fighting their Democratic-leaning neighbours in a second American Civil War.

Mass shootings in America Show all 8 1 /8 Mass shootings in America Mass shootings in America Camden shootings  1949 Howard Unruh killed 13 people, including three children, during a 12-minute walk through his neighborhood on September 6, 1949, in Camden, New Jersey, when he was 28 years old. The incident became known as the "Walk of Death". Unruh was found to be criminally insane and died in 2009 after a lengthy illness at the age of 88, following 60 years of confinement. Alamy Mass shootings in America University of Texas tower shooting  1966 Charles Whitman killed 17 people and injured 31 others in Austin, Texas. After stabbing his mother and wife the night before, he headed to the University of Texas, where he opened fire on people in the campus and streets from the observation desk. He was shot dead after a policeman and civilian reached the scene. Austin History Center, Austin Public Library Mass shootings in America Easter Sunday Massacre  1975 James Ruppert killd 11 family members in his mother's house, which included his mother, brother and his wife, as well as their eight children. He used a magnum, two handguns and a rifle. Mass shootings in America Wilkes-Barre shootings  1982 Former prison guard, George Banks, shot dead 13 people in Pennsylvania, including five of his own children. AP Photo/Times Leader Mass shootings in America Wah Mee massacre  1983 Three men, Kwan Fai Mak, Wai-Chiu Ng, and Benjamin Ng, killed 13 people who were in Seattle's Wah Mee gambling club. YouTube/KIRO 7 News Mass shootings in America San Ysidro McDonald's massacre  1984 James Huberty killed 21 people and injured 19 others after he walked in a McDonald's in San Diego. He was shot dead by a sniper after 78 minutes of him entering the restaurant. Alamy Mass shootings in America Palm Sunday massacre  1984 Ten people were shot dead from handguns at close range in a New York home. A baby girl was the only survivor after convicted dealer, Christopher Thomas, shot three women, one teenage girl and six children in their Brooklyn home. Thomas was convicted of manslaughter and cleared of murder. He was released from prison after 32 years. Mass shootings in America Edmond post office shooting  1986 Patrick Sherrill, a postal worker at the Edmond post office in Oklahoma, killed 14 co-workers and injured 6 others, before he shot himself. Oklahoma Highway Patrol Collection

But Mr King, an Iowa native and sitting congressman, may have been confused about which side he was on. There, forming the blue warrior's bicep, was his home state, delivering a cartographic uppercut to the jaw of its red opponent.

Mr King deleted the post, which he shared on an official campaign page, on Monday. His office did not respond to questions about the picture or his reasons for posting and removing it.

Observers pilloried him for the post, which many saw as further provocation in a divisive political climate that has already seen signs of civil war rhetoric. Many called for Mr King's expulsion from Congress, a punishment that would end his nine-term run in office.

"This is treason," said Richard Painter, the Bush administration ethics chief, on Twitter. "Steve King should be expelled from the House immediately."

Responding to Mr Painter, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe modified his criticism: Mr King "isn't actually COMMITTING treason, but he is fomenting and inciting it. Ample reason to expel him."

The Democratic Party in Clay County, Iowa, which is located in Mr King's district in the northwestern area of the state, told its representative, "Iowa would be better off if you just resigned."

Some criticised Mr King's timing, as he posted the meme the day after a white supremacist killed 50 people in New Zealand mosques. Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, tweeted that Mr King had ignored the "gun violence in America and across the world caused by division and fear of one another" when he posted the image.

Others accused Mr King of promoting transphobic language, and at least one scholar attempted a history lesson.

 Steve King announces his support for vote rebuking his racist remarks

"I grew up in SC where the #CivilWar began, a war that eventually freed 4 million slaves, a war that left 620,000 soldiers dead-including 40,000 Black soldiers," wrote Cornell Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former president of the NAACP. "Don't use #transphobia to legitimate #WhiteSupremacy, or bathrooms to spit on graves."

Over his nearly two decades as a national political figure, Mr King has furnished a long history of racist remarks and comments widely viewed as antisemitic, white nationalist, or insulting to immigrants and to women seeking abortions.

He has also made at least two other nods to civil war.

In 2018, Mr King himself said the country was on the brink of civil war. In a tweet, he said, "America is heading in the direction of another Harpers Ferry. After that comes Ft Sumter."

Harper's Ferry was the site of abolitionist John Brown's raid of a federal armoury, an attempt to begin an anti-slavery rebellion, that helped spark the Civil War. The attack on Fort Sumter was considered the start of the war.

Mr King has even kept a reminder of the war placed prominently on his desk - a small Confederate flag, peeking out from a display that also sported a Gadsden flag.

Iowa was part of the Union.

The Washington Post
The Supreme Court has given Donald Trump an important victory by endorsing the US governments authority to detain immigrants waiting to be deported at any time, even years after they have completed prison terms for criminal convictions.

The 5-4 ruling saw the courts conservative justices overcoming liberal dissent, and essentially allowing US immigration enforcement to detain such immigrants indefinitely and at any time.

In writing the majority ruling, justice Samuel Alito left open the possibility individual immigrants could challenge the law on constitutional grounds should they be detained long after serving their criminal sentence.

He wrote that the ruling was not intended for extreme situations in which immigrants had left prison many years before and gone on to lead productive and law-abiding lives.

But, mirroring concerns expressed by conservative justices during oral arguments that detention manpower and resources can be limited when an individual is released, he said it was ridiculous to expect Department of Homeland Security officials to turn into pumpkins just because an ex-con immigrant is released.

People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Show all 16 1 /16 People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Washington, DC, U.S., February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants AUSTIN, TX - FEBRUARY 16: Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants High school student Kathia Suarez holds up a sign as she protests with others outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. LM Otero/AP People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants High school senior Vicky Sosa holds a sign outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. In an action called "A Day Without Immigrants," immigrants across the country are expected to stay home from school, work and close businesses to show how critical they are to the U.S. economy and way of life. LM Otero/AP

Justice Stephen Breyer, in his dissent, questioned whether Congress meant to allow the government to apprehend persons years after their release from prison and hold them indefinitely without a bail hearing when writing the law in question.

Mr Breyer continued, warning from the bench that the majoritys decision gives too much power to the federal government.

It is a power to detain persons who committed a minor crime many years before, he said. And it is a power to hold those persons, perhaps for many months, without any opportunity to obtain bail.

The Trump administration had argued a lower court ruling that immigrants would undermine the US governments ability to deport immigrants who had committed crimes,

The case involved two legal US residents who filed separate lawsuits in 2013, a Cambodian immigrant and a Palestinian.

The Cambodian immigrant, Mony Preap, had been convicted previously for marijuana possession. The Palestinian immigrant, Bassam Yusuf Khoury, was previously convicted of attempting to manufacture a controlled substance.

The US law in question allows the government to detain immigrants indefinitely during their deportation proceedings, and without a bond hearing, after completing prison sentences.

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During oral arguments, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Cecillia Wang said the law requires immigrants to be detained immediately after their release.

But conservative justices baulked at the idea, but acknowledged some grey areas exist.

Its not reasonable if they dont have enough people to do it, chief justice John Roberts said. I dont know whats reasonable in this situation. A month?
Donald Trump has accused major technology firms such as Facebook and Google of radical left bias  even as he is spending millions of dollars in political adverts on the platforms.

In a post on Twitter  which he also included in his accusation  the president repeated a claim he and many on the right have made before, namely that big tech companies reduce or minimise access to conservative content.

Facebook, Google and Twitter, not to mention the Corrupt Media, are sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats. But fear not, we will win anyway, just like we did before, said Mr Trump.

Later, appearing with right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro at the White House, he doubled down on his allegation, saying Twitter was different than it used to be. He said certain voices were not getting through.

It seems to be if theyre conservative, if theyre Republicans, if theyre in a certain group theres discrimination, and big discrimination, he said. We have to do something about it.

Criminals who worked for Trump Show all 5 1 /5 Criminals who worked for Trump Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Cohen Former lawyer for Donald Trump was sentenced to three years in prison on counts involving evading income tax, false disclosure of the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and another hush money charge Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Paul Manafort Former campaign manager for Trump Manafort was found guilty in February 2018 of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The crimes occurred prior to his appointment in Trump's campaign Getty Criminals who worked for Trump George Papadopoulos Former Trump campaign adviser Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in October 2017. He had lied about making contact with a professor who claimed that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. He was sentenced to 14 days in jail Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Flynn Former White House National Security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017. He had lied about conversations that he had with the Russian ambassador to the US during Trump's Presidential campaign. He was not given prison time due to his "significant assistance" to the Mueller investigation Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Rick Gates Deputy chairman of Trump's presidential campaign Gates pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in February 2018 AFP/Getty

His accusation came as Republican congressman Devin Nunes sued Twitter for $250m, claiming the site was guilty of defamation and negligence. He also alleged it had engaged in so-called shadow banning, in which Twitter users are able to post but no one else sees their messages. Twitter has denied doing this.

Despite Mr Trumps attacks on the big tech companies, new data shows he is already utilising the same firms in a major way as he prepares his reelection campaign, much as he did in 2016 when spent heavily on Facebook and Google. Both platforms, along with Twitter, were targetted by fake news and accounts that US prosecutors have alleged originated in Russia.

The messages were designed to boost Mr Trumps chances of winning, and hurt those of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton,

On Tuesday, as Mr Trump was tweeting about the evils of big tech, data collated by the analytics and communications firm Bully Pulpit Interactive, showed the presidents 2020 campaign had spent almost nearly twice as much as the entire field of potential Democratic rivals combined.

The data showed Mr Trump had spent at least $13m in digital media since May 2018, and more than $4.5m in the first three months of 2019.

This is an unprecedented level of investment this early, and especially from an incumbent president, Mike Schneider, a partner at Bully Pulpit Interactive, told Axios.

Trumps digital sophistication was one of the most over-reported stories of the 2016 election cycle. Trumps digital head start in the 2020 cycle is one of the most under-reported stories.

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In 2017, Facebook admitted that hundreds of fake accounts run from what was termed a Russian troll farm had spent about $100,000 on adverts during the 2016, seeking to stir up divisive issues such as race relations and gun control.

Though were committed to doing everything we can to reduce the spread of false news to as close to zero as possible, we also need to make sure we take steps to address the problem when people do encounter hoaxes, wrote Adam Mosseri, a Facebook vice president.

To that end, were exploring ways to give people more context about stories so they can make more informed decisions about what to read, trust and share and ways to give people access to more perspectives about the topics that theyre reading.

At least 470 accounts appeared to come from the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a St Petersburg-based organisation known for promoting pro-Russian government positions via fake accounts. In February of 2018, 13 Russian individuals and 3 entered  among them IRA  were indicted by Robert Mueller as part of his special counsel investigation into alleged Russian interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

Facebook has turned over its findings to Mr Muellers office, which is continuing its investigation.
Donald Trump has called the husband of senior aide Kellyanne Conway a "total loser" after he suggested the president's mental health is deteriorating.

George Conway, a lawyer and persistent conservative critic of Mr Trump, tweeted on Monday images from the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders".

He highlighted pages showing diagnostic criteria for "narcissistic personality disorder" and "antisocial personality disorder".

It followed a weekend in which Mr Trump lashed out at a number of perceived enemies, from late night comedy show Saturday Night Live to deceased Republican senator John McCain.

On Tuesday morning, Mr Trump hit back, sharing a tweet about Mr Conway by Brad Pascale, Mr Trump's 2020 campaign manager, and captioning it: "A total loser!"

Criminals who worked for Trump Show all 5 1 /5 Criminals who worked for Trump Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Cohen Former lawyer for Donald Trump was sentenced to three years in prison on counts involving evading income tax, false disclosure of the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and another hush money charge Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Paul Manafort Former campaign manager for Trump Manafort was found guilty in February 2018 of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The crimes occurred prior to his appointment in Trump's campaign Getty Criminals who worked for Trump George Papadopoulos Former Trump campaign adviser Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in October 2017. He had lied about making contact with a professor who claimed that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. He was sentenced to 14 days in jail Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Flynn Former White House National Security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017. He had lied about conversations that he had with the Russian ambassador to the US during Trump's Presidential campaign. He was not given prison time due to his "significant assistance" to the Mueller investigation Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Rick Gates Deputy chairman of Trump's presidential campaign Gates pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in February 2018 AFP/Getty

Mr Pascale claimed "Mr Kellyanne Conway" had been turned down for a job in the administration and was "either fired/quit" at the Department of Justice.

"Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success. POTUS doesnt even know him!" he wrote.

In fact, according reporting by the New York Times in 2017, Mr Conway dropped out of the running to head the Justice Department's civil division, citing family considerations. Last year, he said he did not take a post because he considered the Trump administration "a s***show in a dumpster fire".

Within minutes of Mr Trump's tweet, Mr Conway responded by reposting diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder and writing: "Tell us, @realDonaldTrumpwhich of these diagnostic criteria do you not satisfy?"

"Congratulations!" he added. "You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job!"

Last week, Mr Conway tweeted: "Whether or not impeachment is in order, a serious inquiry needs to be made about this man's condition of mind."

 John Legend urges Trump to apologise for 'demonising' Muslims in the wake of the New Zealand massacre

He later added: "His condition is getting worse."

On Monday, he said Americans should be "thinking seriously" about Mr Trump's "mental condition and psychological state, including and especially the media, Congress  and the Vice President and Cabinet".

Ms Conway, one of Mr Trump's highest-ranking advisors, later dismissed her husband's concerns, telling reporters at the White House, "I don't share those concerns".

"I have four kids and I was getting them out of the house this morning to talk to the president about substance, so I may not be up to speed on all of them," Kellyanne Conway said, referring to her husband's tweets.
Donald Trump has doubled down on his criticism of the late John McCain, a man millions of Americans consider a war war hero, saying: I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.

Seven months after the former POW died at the age of 81 from cancer, and after the president spent the weekend making accusations about him on Twitter, Mr Trump was asked why he was attacking a dead man.

The president claimed he was angry when the then Arizona senator had in 2017 dramatically voted against a White House-backed plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, when Mr McCain had campaigned to get rid of the programme.

Mr Trump claimed the late senators actions in reversing his position at the last minute and displaying a thumbs down on the floor of the senate, had been disgraceful.

And there are other things, Mr Trump added. I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.

Trump and Farage - a working friendship Show all 7 1 /7 Trump and Farage - a working friendship Trump and Farage - a working friendship Donald Trump and Nigel Farage pose in the golden elevator at Trump Tower on 12 November 2016, four days after Trump was elected president. Farage was the first British politician to meet with Trump after the election LeaveEUOffical/Twitter Trump and Farage - a working friendship Not long after their meeting at Trump Tower, then-president elect Trump tweeted in favour of Nigel Farage being appointed ambassador to the US Trump and Farage - a working friendship Farage appears at a Trump campaign rally in Jackson, Mississipi on 24 August 2016. Farage drew parallels between the recent vote for Brexit in the UK and a vote for Trump in the US, saying "they could take back control of their country, take back control of their borders and get back their pride and self-respect" Getty Images Trump and Farage - a working friendship Trump introduced Farage as "Mr. Brexit" Getty Images Trump and Farage - a working friendship President Trump with Nigel Farage when they met met face-to-face to discuss why the President should back a no-deal Brexit on 3 March 2019 PA Trump and Farage - a working friendship From left to right: Gerry Gunster (US pollster and campaign adviser to Leave.EU), Arron Banks (Leave.EU founder who is being investigated over the funding of the Brexit campaign), Donald Trump (then president-elect), Nigel Farage (then leader of UKIP), Andy Wigmore (communication director of Leave.EU) and Raheem Kassam (then-advisor to Farage and later UK editor of Breitbart news) Trump and Farage - a working friendship Farage and his adviser Raheem Kassam arrive to meet with Trump on November 12 2016 Getty Images

Mr Trump, who secured five deferments to avoid the Vietnam draft, has long had a testy relationship with McCain, who spent more than five years as a POW after his jet was shot down. At least two of the years he spent as a prisoner, were in solitary confinement.

While campaigning in 2015 for the Republican nomination, a position McCain had secured in 2008 when he ran and lost against Barack Obama, Mr Trump disputed the suggestion that his fellow Republican was a war hero.

Hes not a war hero, said Trump. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who werent captured.

Mr McCain never hid his dislike of Mr Trump, though he was obliged to outwardly support him to some degree because he relied on many of the presidents supporters to vote for him in his 2016 senate reelection campaign.

This weekend, Mr Trump, who was asked by McCains family not to attend his state funeral in Washington DC, continued his attacks on the dead man.

Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain, he tweeted, Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Bill Clinton and who had made the comments in a Fox News interview.

 Cindy McCain on Donald Trump's insults towards her late husband

He also tweeted of McCain: He had far worse stains than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!

McCains family has hit back at the comments, which included a false accusation that the senator had come last in his class at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. The late senators daughter, Meghan McCain, told ABC News that Mr Trump spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he will never be a great man.

My father was his kryptonite, McCain said.

That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now. I genuinely feel bad for his family. I cant imagine having a father that does this on the weekends.
 Close Lawyer for Li Yang: 'She was fascinated with Donald Trump the way a lot of people are'

Donald Trump and Brazils far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro held a joint press conference in the White House Rose Garden, in a show of unity between the two nations.

President Trump said he told Mr Bolsonaro he would make Brazil a major non-Nato ally, with the possibility of supporting a campaign to make it maybe a Nato ally.

In turn, the Brazilian leader went on to praise Mr Trump for changing the United States, echoing Mr Trumps fake news slogan.

Brazil and the United States are tied by the guarantee of liberty, respect for the traditional family, the fear of God our creator, against gender identity, political correctness and fake news, Mr Bolsonaro.

The far-right leader has been an avid supporter of President Trump, with their mirroring speeches sharing conservative views.

Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Show all 20 1 /20 Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Donald Trump's Cabinet Donald Trump's Cabinet is one the richest in American history, filled with billionaires, conservatives and several career politicians. AFP/Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Mike Pence US Vice President Mike Pence has defended Donald Trump throughout his presidency while walking a fine line to avoid any public involvement in major scandals. AFP/Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Mike Pompeo Secretary of State Mike Pompeo replaced Donald Trump's previous appointment to the post, Rex Tillerson, and has led talks with North Korea in establishing high-profile summits between the president and Kim Jong Un. Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Wilbur Ross Secretary of Commerce Wibur Ross raised controversy when he was accused of falsely claiming to have sold stock in a bank and violated a government ethics agreement. AFP/Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Robert Lighthizer US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has been a fixture in Donald Trump's ongoing trade spat with China. AFP/Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet William Barr Attorney General William Barr replaced Jeff Sessions as the nation's top cop in early 2019 and has refused to commit to recusing himself from the Russia probe despite an unsolicited memo he sent to the Justice Department decrying the investigation. EPA Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Rick Perry Energy Secretary Rick Perry has held his post throughout Donald Trump's presidency despite previously undermining the need for the agency he now leads in past public statements. Ken Shipp / United States Department of Energy Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Betsy DeVos Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also held her post throughout the presidency, despite major backlash to her apparent undermining of the nationwide public school system and advocacy for charter programmes. Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Steven Mnuchin Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has faced numerous controversies throughout his tenure as the head of Treasury, including costing taxpayers at least a million dollars in travel expenses. AP Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Robert Wilkie Veterans Affairs secretary Robert Wilkie was appointed after Donald Trump's White House doctor Ronny Jackson withdrew over allegations he provided prescription drugs to patients without prescriptions. AFP/Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet David Bernhardt Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt took office in January 2019 after the resignation of Ryan Zinke after previously serving as Zinke's deputy. Before taking office Bernhardt worked for many years as a solicitor for the Department of the Interior. Tami Heilemann / United States Department of the Interior Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Elaine Chao Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has held her post throughout the presidency and has mostly avoided controversy, despite a report claiming her office has been in frequent coordination with her husband's, Mitch McConnell. AFP/Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Kevin McAleenan Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan took over from Kirstjen Nielsen after she resigned in April 2019. He previously worked as the executive director of the executive director of the Office of Anti Terrorism in the Customs and Border Protection agency United States Customs and Border Protection Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Ben Carson Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson was appointed shortly after Donald Trump took office and raised controversy over an exorbitant furnishing bill for his office. Reuters Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Gina Haspel CIA Director Gina Haspel was appointed in 2018 and faced backlash surrounding her oversight of Guantanamo Bay. Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Dan Coats Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats could be the next person to leave Donald Trump's administration over his refuting the president's claims surrounding ISIS. Reuters Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Sonny Perdue Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has been dogged by ethics questions throughout his tenure and faced controversy when emails showed the agency appeared willing to eagerly work with lobbyists under his leadership. Reuters Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Alex Azar Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is a former pharmaceutical lobbyist and former drug company executive. Getty Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Mick Mulvaney Acting Chief of Staff and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has described himself as one of the most conservative officials in the White House. EPA Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet Robert Wilkie Secretary of State for Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie has spent his career on Capitol Hill serving in various roles in foreign affairs and defence. He holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force Reserve. Gene Russell / United States Department of Veterans Affairs

The press conference came after Donald Trump was drawn into a Twitter spat with George Conway, husband of adviser Kellyanne, over questions around the presidents mental health.

The argument comes as the FBI investigates the president's ties to the owner of a chain of massage parlours in Florida at the urging of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.

The Democrats have asked the bureau to look into public reports about alleged the activities by Ms Li Cindy Yang and her apparent relationship with the president, who has been the subject of allegations relating to human trafficking, prostitution and promising Chinese businessmen access to Mar-a-Lago to meet Mr Trump, who denies knowing her despite their being photographed together.

Reports have meanwhile emerged suggesting the president obtained $2bn (1.5bn) in loans from Deutsche Bank over two decades, allegedly exaggerating his personal wealth and promising bankers weekends at his Florida retreat in exchange for their help in securing the funding.

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A woman has been arrested after she allegedly tried to open an emergency exit door during a flight from Indianapolis to Detroit.

The incident occurred shortly after her plane departed from Indianapolis International Airport.

Fellow passengers restrained the woman until the flight landed at about 6.45pm on Monday, officials said.

Erica Donerson, a spokesperson for Detroit Metropolitan Airport, said the woman may have been suffering from a medical issue.

The woman remains in custody but Ms Donerson said a preliminary investigation found she did not have criminal intent.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

On Tuesday a spokesperson for the FBI said no federal charges would be filed against the passenger.

The flight was operated by Republic Airline, which apologised to affected customers on Tuesday.

Were aware of an incident which occurred on our flight 5972 on Monday evening, a spokesperson told the Detroit Free Press.

While we can confirm that the flight landed without incident and ahead of schedule, were unable to further comment as this matter is still being investigated.

We apologise to any passengers who were affected by this incident.

 Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

Additional reporting by agencies
A security guard has sparked outrage among Chinese social media users after demanding a student remove her Goth-style make-up before boarding a subway train.

The official reportedly told the passenger, who was wearing dark lipstick and heavy eyeshadow, to change her appearance for fear it would scare other customers at Xiaogang station on the Guangzhou Metro.

Your makeup has problems - It's terrible, the guard told the woman, according to the state-run news outlet China Daily.

The student said she refused to give in to the demands of the staff member and boarded a train without removing her make-up.

The woman security guard told me the make-up was problematic and too horrifying. It must be removed on the spot, she later wrote on Chinas Sina Weibo social network.

China cancels Christmas Show all 7 1 /7 China cancels Christmas China cancels Christmas A man sells Christmas decorations on a street of Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas a promoter dressed as a teddy bear rest along a retail street in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas A family walk past images of Santa Claus in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas A worker guards the entrance of a shop decorated with images of Santa Claus in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas Sales staff from an apparel shop dance wearing Christmas themed costumes to promote a year end sales in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas Sales staff from an apparel shop dance wearing Christmas themed costumes to promote a year end sales in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas a sales person waits for customers near a Christmas tree decoration in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Im hoping to use this relatively public platform to challenge the authorities: what laws grant you the right to stop me and waste my time?

Women posted selfies in Goth-style make-up in support of the student (Sina Weibo)

If you can cite one, I am willing to pay for a banner to hang in the subway station that says Goth fashion and heavy make-up are barred from the subway.

Thousands posted using the hashtag #ASelfieForTheGuangzhouMetro (Sina Weibo)

The post attracted significant attention on the site, with many users criticising the security guard over her behaviour.

More than 5,000 users went on to post photographs of themselves wearing Goth make-up under the hashtag #ASelfieForTheGuangzhouMetro, in a show of support of the woman.

Guangzhou Metro later issued a statement, saying the guard in question had handled the incident inappropriately, and would be suspended until she received further training.

Guangzhou Metro apologises publicly to the victimised passenger and to netizens, and will try to further improve its work and management to provide even better service, the company added.

The incident is thought to be one of several on the Guangzhou Metro in which customers have been harangued over their appearance in recent months.

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In July last year, a woman wearing Lolita-style dress inspired by Japanese manga when security inspectors told her odd clothes were not permitted on the subway.

In November, a woman wearing Goth-like clothing reported she was stopped by guards, who warned her outfit was scary, as she tried to enter a Guangzhou Metro station.
A woman in China almost died after injecting herself with a cocktail of more than 20 different fruit juices.

In an effort to improve improve her health the 51-year-old from Guiyang County in Chenzhou, Hunan province, gave herself an intravenous infusion by drip.

After injecting herself with the mixture, the woman had itchy skin and a rising temperature.

The woman, who was interested in unconventional health treatments, suffered liver, kidney, heart and lung damage and was put into intensive care for five days, according to a report by the Chinese daily Xiaoxiang Morning Herald.

"I had thought fresh fruits were very nutritious and it would not do me harm by injecting them into my body," she said. "I had no idea that would get me into such trouble."

Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Fireworks explode over ice sculptures on the opening day of the annual Harbin Festival EPA Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors walk among ice sculptures during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival Reuters Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors look at ice sculptures lit by night during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival in China's northeast Heilongjiang province AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures A "cityscape" view of Harbin Reuters Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors walk among ice sculptures during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures The palace at Harbin EPA Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Workers carve snow sculptures during the Harbin Festival AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors walk among ice sculptures lit by night during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures A "cityscape" view of Harbin AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Fireworks explode over ice sculptures on the opening day of the annual Harbin Festival AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors walk among ice sculptures lit by night during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures The main gate to Harbin AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures A wall in Harbin EPA Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Swimmers prepare to dive into a swimming pool carved from ice AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors walk among ice sculptures lit by night during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Workers build up Harbin Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Workers build up Harbin Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures An ice sculpture at Harbin AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors walk among ice sculptures during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors ride on the ice in front of a snow sculpture in Harbin AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors walk among ice sculptures during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures A wide view of Harbin AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures A pig sculpture to celebrate the Year of the Pig at Harbin AFP/Getty Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures Visitors walk among ice sculptures lit by night during the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival EPA Incredible town made of ice in China for Winter festival: in pictures A wide view of Harbin at night AFP/Getty

Doctors at the Affiliated Hospital of Xiangnan University in Hunan removed toxins from her blood using dialysis, injected clotting agents and gave her antibiotics.

After five days her condition improved and she was transferred from intensive care to the hospitals kidney unit and eventually discharged.

Liu Jianxiu, a doctor at the hospital in Hunan, said she had been in danger of dying of multiple organ failure and sepsis.

The incident caused a stir on Chinese social media where more than 11,000 users posted with the hashtag #OldWomanPutsJuiceIntoVeins.
A man has been arrested after he was allegedly caught attempting to smuggle a live human embryo into India.

Authorities in the country say they discovered the man, a Malaysian national, carrying the embryo in a special container hidden in his suitcase at Mumbais airport last Friday.

The man reportedly admitted he had previously made several similar smuggling runs.

He then led officials to an IVF clinic in Mumbai which is now being investigated as part of a possible smuggling ring.

The clinic has denied any allegations it is involved in smuggling.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Rebecca Gonsalves, representing the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), the agency investigating the alleged smuggling operation, told Mumbais high court on Monday that several text messages were found on the mans phone suggesting the clinic was the intended place of delivery, according to The Times of India.

However, Dr Coral Gandhi, an embryologist who runs the clinic, denied the allegation.

Her lawyer, Sujoy Kantwalla, said she does not import embryos as part of her business, the Indian Express reported, and he blamed a conspiracy hatched by persons which may include competitors.

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It is illegal to import embryos into India without a certificate from the Indian Council of Medical Research.

In Malaysia, IVF is not permitted under Islamic law. Some couples are believed to export their embryos to India for IVF.
Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man, has paid $77m (58m) to Ericsson, a Swedish multinational firm, to help his brother avoid prison.

Anil Ambani thanked his elder brother in a statement, for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to our strong family values by extending this timely support.

The New Delhi Supreme Court found the younger businessman guilty of contempt in February, over his firm Reliance Communications failure to pay Ericsson $77m in owed fees.

Failure to pay would have left Anil Ambani facing a three-month jail term.

The younger businessmans troubles are partly linked to his brothers decision to launch Reliance Jio, a new mobile network, in 2016, according to CNN.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The new venture eventually forced multiple competitors out of Indias lucrative mobile market, including Reliance Communications, which once dominated the sector.

Anil Ambani, who was worth at least $31bn in 2008, now has a fortune of only $300m.

His brother, in contrast, is currently worth $54.3bn, according to Bloomberg.

After the death of the brothers father in 2002, the Ambanis battled for control over his Reliance business empire, eventually splitting it between them.

Their feud has been extensively covered in the Indian media ever since and Anil Ambani alluded to the old rivalry in his statement.

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I and my family are grateful that we have moved beyond the past, and are deeply grateful and touched with this gesture, he said.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstans uninterrupted post-Soviet leader, has announced he is resigning as president after nearly three decades at the helm.

Speaking in a televised address to the nation, Mr Nazarbayev, 78, said he had taken the difficult decision to leave his post.

This year will mark 30 years in which I have held the highest post, he said. The people allowed me the chance to be the first president of independent Kazakhstan.

Mr Nazarbayev rose to the presidency in 1990 while the Soviet Union was still in existence.

Since then, he has cemented his grip on the oil-rich state, suppressing dissent and strengthening the levers of authoritarian rule.

In 2015, he was re-elected with 98% of the vote.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Like all other post-independence elections, the vote was considered neither free nor fair.

According to the Kazakh constitution, the presidency will now temporarily pass to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Chairman of the countrys Senate and a former prime minister. He is considered to be one of the main candidates to take the job on a permanent basis.

It is unlikely the announcement marks the end of Mr Nazabayevs firm grip on Kazakh politics. In his televised address, he confirmed he would remain as chair of the ruling party, and would become life-long head of the Security Council  a role fixed in the constitution only last year. At the time, many speculated the new position was designed to allow Mr Nazarbayev to keep a hold on power.

Few in Kazakhstan were surprised by todays announcement, says Amirzhan Kosanov, an opposition politician and former government official. Both society and president had clearly become tired of each other after 30 years. Likewise, few were surprised by Nazarbayevs manoeuvrings to remain de facto the most influential person in the country.

While Nazarbayev remains alive, nothing will change, Kosanov told The Independent. He will choose Kazakhstans second president, who will only be able to operate independently once the first has physically left the scene.
New Zealands prime minister Jacinda Ardern has vowed never to say the name of the Christchurch gunman who killed 50 people in shootings at two mosques, on the basis he committed the attack at least in part to lift his profile.

Ms Ardern was speaking on Tuesday after it emerged that the 28-year-old Australian man charged with murder over the attack, Brenton Tarrant, had dismissed his court-appointed lawyer and planned to represent himself.

The prime minister said she would do everything in her power to deny the accused mosque gunman a platform for elevating his white supremacist views.

I agree that it is absolutely something that we need to acknowledge, and do what we can to prevent the notoriety that this individual seeks, Ms Ardern told reporters.

He obviously had a range of reasons for committing this atrocious terrorist attack. Lifting his profile was one of them. And thats something that we can absolutely deny him.

New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Show all 11 1 /11 New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Zakaria Bhuiyan People gather hoping to find out information about Zakaria Bhuiyan who is still missing after the mosques shootings in Christchurch. David Moir/AFP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Mucad Ibrahim Three-year-old Mucad Ibrahim, the youngest known victim of the mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019. Abdi Ibrahim via AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Nadeem Rasheed Nadeem Rasheed, brother of Pakistani Naeem Rashid who died alongside his son Talha Naeem, 21, who were killed in shooting at a Mosque in Christchurch, at their home town in Abbottabad, EPA New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Omar Nabi Omar Nabi speaks to the media about losing his father Haji Daoud Nabi, 71, in the mosque attack REUTERS New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Ash Mohammed Ash Mohammed, right, talks to a police officer about his father and two brothers who are missing near the Masjid Al Noor mosque AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Akhtar Khokhur Akhtar Khokhur, 58, shows a picture of her missing husband Mehaboobbhai Khokhar, 65. AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Wasseim Alsati A note is seen on a window of a door at the family home of Wasseim Alsati in Christchurch on 17 March 2019. AFP/Getty Images New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Haroon Mahmood Relatives offer condolences to nephew (centre) of Haroon Mahmood, a Pakistani citizen who was killed in Christchurch mosque shootings. AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Farid Ahmed Farid Ahmed (pictured) survived the Al Noor mosque shootings but his wife Husne was killed. AFP/Getty Images New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Syed Areeb Ahmed A relative shows a picture of Syed Areeb Ahmed, a Pakistani citizen who was killed the Christchurch mosque shooting. AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Naeem Rashid A relative looks at a picture on a mobile phone of Pakistani nationals Naeem Rashid and his son Talha Naeem (right) who died in the Christchurch shootings. AFP/Getty Images

She demurred about whether she wanted the trial to occur behind closed doors, saying that was not her decision to make.

One thing I can assure you  you wont hear me speak his name, she said.

Later, in a passionate speech to parliament, she urged the public to follow her lead and to avoid giving the gunman the fame he so obviously craves.

I implore you: speak the names of those who were lost, rather than the name of the man who took them, she said. He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing, not even his name.

On Monday evening, more than 1,000 students from rival Christchurch schools and different religions gathered in a park across from the Al Noor mosque, joining voices in a passionate display of unity.

The students sat on the grass in the fading daylight, lifting flickering candles to the sky as they sang a traditional Maori song. Hundreds then stood to perform an emotional, defiant haka, the famed ceremonial dance of the indigenous Maori people.

For many, joining the vigil for the victims of the mass shooting was a much-needed opportunity to soothe their minds after a wrenching few days.

I feel like its just really important to show everyone that one act of violence doesnt define a whole city, said Sarah Liddell, 17. This is one of the best ways to show everyone coming together. Some schools have little funny rivalries, but in times like this we all just come together and thats all forgotten.

One of the ways in which the shooter made clear his desire for attention was the live footage he streamed of his attack on social media.

Facebook said it had removed 1.5 million versions of the video within 24 hours of the attack, while a consortium of tech companies including Facebook said it was sharing a database of the digital fingerprints of more than 800 versions of the video, in a bid to make them easier to take down.

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism was created in 2017 under pressure from governments in Europe and the US after a spate of deadly attacks. It provides a platform for companies to share counter-terrorism techniques and work closer with security officials.

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Facebook said the original video on its service, a live broadcast of a gunman firing in and around a mosque, was seen fewer than 200 times.

An archived copy drew about 3,800 additional views on Facebook before the company removed it, Facebook said in a blog post on Monday, but a user on online forum 8chan had already copied the video and posted a link on a file-sharing service.

Shorter clips of the video were shown by TV networks across the world, despite pleas from the New Zealand government. New Zealand has now formally classified the video as an objectionable publication, making it an offence to distribute or possess it.

Meanwhile in parliament on Tuesday, Ms Ardern said there were justified questions and anger about how the attack could have happened in a place that prides itself on being open, peaceful and diverse.

New Zealands international spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, confirmed it had not received any relevant information or intelligence ahead of the shootings. There are many questions that need to be answered and the assurance that I give you is that they will be, she said. We will examine what we did know, could have known or should have known. We cannot allow this to happen again.

Meanwhile, Christchurch was beginning to return to a semblance of normalcy on Tuesday. Streets near the hospital that had been closed for four days reopened to traffic as relatives and friends of the victims continued to stream in from around the world.
The Quran was recited during New Zealands parliament session on Tuesday, the first since last week's terrorist attack on two mosques that claimed 50 lives.

A Muslim imam led prayers in parliament, in what is being seen as a gesture of solidarity with the victims of the shooting.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has received international praise for her response to the attack including offering to pay the funeral costs of victims, started her speech with the phrase As-Salaam-Alaikum, an Arabic greeting meaning peace be unto you.

She encouraged people to acknowledge the Muslim communitys grief on Friday  the Muslim day of worship, and one week since the attack, and vowed that the full force of the law will come down on the attacker.

The verses come from chapter al-Baqarah (The Cow), which emphasise patience, prayers, and justice on judgement day.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

This is thought to be the first time the Quran has been read in the New Zealand parliament.

Ibrahim Kalin, Chief Counsellor to the President of the Turkish Republic, said: I commend the [parliament] for this heartwarming and graceful act. It is these acts of kindness and resolution that will defeat terrorism and fascism.

Prime Minister Ardern has been vocal about her refusal to name the attacker, who has been charged, saying: I implore you, speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them.

"He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless."
A schoolgirl has died after being electrocuted when she dropped her mobile phone that was on charge into the bath, according to local media reports.

Yulia Vysotskaya, 14, was listening to music on the phone while she was in the bath at her home in Cheboksary, near Moscow.

Its believed that when the phone fell from her hands, it sent a live current into the water. The teenager lost consciousness from the electric shock before she drowned, Russian medical sources said.

Her parents called an ambulance but she was declared dead at the scene.

Investigators said they would carry out a forensic medical examination and look into exactly how it happened.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

It is thought to be the third incident of its kind in the country in the past year, despite repeated warnings about charging phones near water.

Last year, a 15-year-old girl and a 12-year-old were killed in separate cases.

In 2017 another 14-year-old was electrocuted while using her mobile in the bath at home in New Mexico. Madison Coe died after touching the frayed extension cord she was using to charge the phone.

Electronics engineer Andrey Stanovsky said: To relax in the bath with a mobile phone connected to the charger is like playing Russian roulette.
A senior member of Matteo Salvinis far-right League party who is an outspoken critic of Italys mandatory vaccination rules has been treated in hospital after contracting chickenpox.

Massimiliano Fedriga, president of the northeastern Fruili-Venezia Giulia region, announced he spent four days under observation in a medical facility after being diagnosed with the virus last week.

I'm fine, I'm at home in convalescence and I thank everyone, he wrote on social media following his discharge.

Mr Fedriga has been a vocal opponent of Italys decision to introduce mandatory childhood vaccinations against 12 diseases, including chickenpox.

The legislation, introduced following a measles outbreak in 2017, prevents unvaccinated children from attending nursery or pre-school and imposes heavy fines on parents who fail to immunise school-age children.

The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement Show all 7 1 /7 The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement Charlie Sheen Sheen fought a legal battle against ex-wife Denise Richards to try and block her from vaccinating their children. Richards of course won and Sheen was reportedly so bitter that he paid the paediatrician bill entirely in nickels Getty The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement Gwyneth Paltrow Paltrow's "health and wellness" company Goop hosted a notorious anti-vaccine speaker at their 2018 Goop Summit Getty The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement Rob Schneider Schneider demanded the freedom to decline vaccination Getty The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement Jenny McCarthy McCarthy has claimed that "people are dying from vaccinations", believes that her son caught autism from a vaccine and has pushed her opinions on the topic publicly for many years AFP/Getty The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement Bill Maher Maher has long spoken against vaccines sating on Larry King live that "a flu shot is the worst thing you can do." His stance appears to stem from a distrust of government AFP/Getty The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement Alicia Silverstone In Silverstone's book The Kind Mama, she wrote that "there is increasing anecdotal evidence from doctors who have gotten distressed phone calls from parents claiming their child was never the same after receiving a vaccine." Getty The famous faces of the anti-vaccine movement Andrew Wakefield Godfather of the anti-vax movement, disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield famously published a report in the medical journal Lancet claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in 1998. The Lancet retracted the report in 2010 and Wakefield was struck off the medical register PA

During his time serving as the Leagues head of the chamber of deputies in the Italian parliament, Mr Fedriga had argued parents should not be coerced into vaccinating their children.

In one interview, he described the Democratic Party, the largest member of the then-ruling coalition government, as Stalinist for attempting to impose the policy on the public.

Writing on Facebook, Mr Fedriga insisted he was not a supporter of the anti-vax movement, members of which avoid immunising their children  often due to unsubstantiated safety fears.

I'm reading a series of celebratory comments on Twitter because Ive been hospitalised, he said.

I have always said that I am in favour of vaccines, but to achieve the result it is necessary to have an alliance with families not imposition.

They even said I would get chicken pox from my children, not knowing that my children are vaccinated, as I have stated in interviews.

Vaccinations have in recent years become a contentious issue in Italian politics.

The Leagues coalition partners in government, the Five Star Movement, which also opposes compulsory immunisation, has been accused by opponents of enabling anti-vaxxers.

Roberto Burioni, a prominent Italian doctor who runs the website MedicalFacts, said the incident served as a warning to adults to ensure they were vaccinated.

Dear President, first of all let me wish you a speedy recovery, he wrote on Facebook. Im glad you vaccinated your children.

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[Mr Fedriga], like many adults, did not get vaccinated... if he had been vaccinated as an adult he would be in perfect health.

If he had infected a pregnant woman we would be facing a malformed child or an abortion.

The only way we have to avoid such tragedies is to vaccinate us all to prevent the circulation of this dangerous virus, which could have hit a much more vulnerable person.
A pupil has injured a teacher and three other staff members with a knife and fork taken from a school kitchen in the Norwegian capital Oslo, police said.

The boy  who studied at the school  was arrested after reports he attacked staff with a knife. The motive was not immediately clear.

Police later confirmed the victims suffered bite marks and had been stabbed with a knife and fork taken from the canteen.

Four employees at Brynseng School in the east of the city were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

Sven Christian Lie, of the Oslo police department, said an investigation had been launched and officers were speaking to witnesses.

It is a very young boy who is arrested. I cant say anything more about the grade level. He was arrested inside the school, he said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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Police were first called at around 8.30am local time to reports of an ongoing incident with a student threatening a teacher with a knife.

A police statement said: Four people were taken to the emergency care department for treatment.

The injured are employees of the school. We are still on the site with several patrols and are conducting witness interrogation.

Police confirmed pupils may have witnessed the incident but no children were harmed.

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Armed police remained at the school throughout the morning.

The school, which opened in 2017 and has more than 800 pupils enrolled, gave no comment to Norwegian newspapers despite requests.

Local media quoted a text message sent by the headteacher, Maria Tindberg, informing parents that the situation was now calm and under control.

A survey for Norways educational association last year found around one in five teachers had experienced violence over the previous 12 months.
A 60,000-strong nationalist march in Warsaw which saw demonstrators tout white supremacist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic messages was largely an expression of patriotic feeling, Poland's Foreign Ministry has said.

Marchers hung a banner which said, "pray for Islamic holocaust" and carried signs with slogans like "white Europe of brotherly nations". Others chanted "pure Poland, white Poland" and "refugees get out!"

Although the country's government condemned racist and xenophobic ideas, it called the event "a great celebration of Poles, differing in their views, but united around the common values of freedom and loyalty to an independent homeland".

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party, said there were "unfortunate incidents" during the march, but he called them a "marginal problem."

Mr Kaczynski added that he believed there could have been a "provocation".

Without specifying who might have tried to bait the marchers, he said: "Those who want to harm Poland know how to do it."

Poland has previously accused Russia of trying to create instability in the country.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the march was "a dangerous march of extreme and racist elements".

"We hope that Polish authorities will act against the organisers," Mr Nahshon said in a statement. "History teaches us that expressions of racist hate must be dealt with swiftly and decisively."

Agnieszka Markiewicz, director of Warsaw office of the American Jewish Committee, a global advocacy group, said the march "was seriously marred by hateful, far-right throngs that threaten the core values of Poland and its standing abroad".

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

A small group of rights activists subsequently protested what they said was the authorities' failure to respond properly to the behaviour of the nationalists.

They protested in front of Warsaw city hall and a police station, chanting: "Warsaw free from fascism". One man held a banner saying, "Poland, wake up. Fascism is coming."

However, the Polish President issued the conservative government's strongest condemnation yet of the far-right views expressed at the march earlier this week.

He said "there is no place in Poland" for xenophobia, pathological nationalism and anti-Semitism and that the country must remain a land of open to all who want to come together and work for the good of the nation.

He added that it made no difference if a person's father was "German, Jewish, Belarusian, Russian, or whatever."
A 747 cargo jet suffered damage after it tipped backwards while parked on the tarmac when airport workers mistakenly unloaded the aircraft from its nose.

The jet  belonging to Iranian cargo airline Fars Air Qeshm  became unbalanced during unloading at Doha airport in Qatar, tipping onto its tail.

The Boeing 747-281, which had arrived from Yerevan, Armenia, is the airline's only aircraft.

Incidents of aircraft tipping backwards are uncommon, but happen more frequently with cargo jets.

Some airlines use tail stands when the aircraft are parked to prevent them tipping back.

In 2016 a Ukraine International airlines Boeing 737-900 tilted onto its tail after cargo was removed from the front of the aircraft.

Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Show all 16 1 /16 Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan A Turkish cargo jet wheel is seen in a home amongst belongings in Kyrgyzstan Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Handout via REUTERS Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Rescuers work at the site of an airplane crash near the airport Manas, 30 km from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. A Turkish Boeing 747-400 cargo plane crashed on a village near the capital of Kyrgyzstan, destroying 32 houses and killing at least 37 people, EPA Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Rescuers work at the site of an airplane crash near the airport Manas, 30 km from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. A Turkish Boeing 747-400 cargo plane crashed on a village near the capital of Kyrgyzstan, destroying 32 houses and killing at least 37 people EPA Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Members of a rescue team work at the crash site of a Turkish cargo jet near Manas airport outside the capital city Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Handout via REUTERS Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan A Turkish cargo jet landing gear is seen at the crash site near Kyrgyzstan's Manas airport outside Bishkek Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Handout via REUTERS Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan A Turkish cargo plane crashed into a village near Kyrgyzstan's main airport Monday, killing 32 people and destroying homes after attempting to land in thick fog Getty Images Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Rescue personnel work at the crash site of a Turkish cargo plane in the village of Dacha-Suu outside Bishkek Getty Images Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan The plane wreckage is seen at the crash site of a Turkish cargo jet near Manas airport outside the capital city Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan REUTERS/Vladimir Pirogov Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyz police officers cordon off the site of a Turkish cargo plane crash in the village of Dacha-Suu outside Bishkek Getty Images Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Rescue teams are seen at the crash site of a Turkish cargo jet near Kyrgyzstan's Manas airport outside Bishkek REUTERS/Vladimir Pirogov Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan An undercarriage of a crashed Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane lies at a residential area outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The cargo plane crashed, killing people in the residential area adjacent to the Manas airport as well as those on the plane AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan A Turkish Boeing 747-400 cargo plane crashed on a village near the capital of Kyrgyzstan, destroying 32 houses and killing at least 37 people EPA Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan EPA Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan The damaged cockpit at the site of an airplane crash near the airport Manas, 30 km from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. A Turkish Boeing 747-400 cargo plane crashed on a village near the capital of Kyrgyzstan, destroying 32 houses and killing at least 37 people EPA Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan A Turkish Boeing 747-400 cargo plane crashed on a village near the capital of Kyrgyzstan, destroying 32 houses and killing at least 37 people EPA Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane crash in Kyrgyzstan Firefighters work among remains of a crashed Turkish Boeing 747 cargo plane at a residential area outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan AP Photo/Vladimir Voronin

The same 747 damaged in Doha was reportedly hit by an Israeli airstrike last year while it was parked at an airbase in the Syrian port city of Latakia.

Taking the damaged aircraft out of service while it is repaired will leave the beleaguered Iranian airline without a single airworthy jet.
An emerging Algerian opposition group representing a mass protest movement has demanded the embattled president leave office in fewer than six weeks.

But President Abdelaziz Bouteflika insisted on sticking to his longterm schedule before he departs, as he dispatched a key official to Moscow to shore up support.

In a statement issued on Monday night through the official Algerian news agency, Mr Bouteflika defied hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding his immediate departure. His scheme includes a months-long process to create a national conference to write up a new constitution, before holding a referendum and then presidential elections.

This conferences mission is of a sensitive nature as it will take the decisive decisions necessary to produce the quantum leap our people, and particularly the youth, are calling for, read the statement, issued on the commemoration of the countrys 1954-1962 war of independence from France. This qualitative step will be endorsed by a comprehensive and deep revision of the constitution.

Protesters took to the streets anyway on Tuesday, maintaining their momentum ahead of large protests anticipated for Friday after prayers. On Monday, army chief of staff Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaed Salah suggested the countrys powerful armed forces were getting nervous and would possibly intervene.

Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Show all 14 1 /14 Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Protests against President Bouteflika in Algiers on March 15 Reuters Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Protesters march in Algiers to demand the resignation of President Bouteflika on March 15 Reuters Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Protesters carrying the national flag protest against President Boueflika on the Republique Plaza on March 17 AP Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Algerians march during a protest in Algiers on March 15 AP Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Students protest in Algiers on March 19 Reuters Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Protesters hang national flags atop a building in Algiers on March 15 Reuters Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Algerian doctors protest against President Bouteflika on March 19 in Algiers EPA Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Algerians demand the resignation of President Bouteflika in a protest on March 15 in Algiers AFP/Getty Algerians protest against President Bouteflika A woman holds a placard with the photo of President Bouteflika during a protest on March 15 in Algiers AP Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Algerians demand the resignation of President Bouteflika in a protest on March 15 in Algiers AFP/Getty Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Algerian doctors march against President Bouteflika on March 19 in Algiers EPA Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Algerians take part in a demonstration against President Bouteflika on March 19 in Algiers AFP/Getty Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Algerian doctors protest against President Bouteflika on March 19 in Algiers AFP/Getty Algerians protest against President Bouteflika Employees of the Algerian Ministry of Vocational Education and Training protest against President Bouteflika in Algiers on March 18 EPA

But the new confederation of opposition activists warned the army  considered one of the most powerful in Africa  should fulfil its duties without interfering in the political choices of the people.

There is an urgent need to make radical changes of the system in place with new personnel, said the group, the National Coordination for Change, which includes a prominent human rights activist, a former official, Islamists, and other opposition leaders.

Their statement called for Mr Bouteflika, his cabinet and parliament to leave office on 27 April, the day the current term expires. They asked him to hand over power to a collegial presidency composed of several national figures who would then appoint a caretaker government.

Meanwhile, the regime appeared to be attempting to ramp up its international support, dispatching new deputy prime minister Ramtane Lamamra to Russia, which counts Algeria as its biggest African weapons customer.

Russia has backed up authoritarian regimes facing popular unrest in Syria and Venezuela, dismissing demands for change as western meddling. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed on Tuesday, without providing evidence, that outside powers were attempting to destabilise Algeria.

We see attempts to undermine the situation, and categorically oppose any interference in these processes, he was quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.

Mr Bouteflika, wheelchair bound and 82 years old, has not publicly spoken since he was debilitated by a stroke in 2013. President since 1999 and a figure within Algerias political elite for decades, he now speaks to the public in statements that many Algerians suspect are crafted by an entourage of relatives, advisers and senior officials struggling to maintain their grip on power.

Since protests began last month against him running for a fifth term, Mr Bouteflika and his handlers have sought repeatedly to come up with ways to extend his term by another year. The protesters managed to push him to agree not to stand for a fifth term but many now suspect the manoeuvring is meant to buy time and wait out the protest movement so that he doesnt have to quit immediately. Meanwhile, the protests only seem to gather steam week after week, drawing in establishment leaders and security officials.

Adding to the mistrust, Mr Bouteflika has promised repeatedly over the years to bring about change, only to renege once public pressure eased. Algerians across the political and economic spectrum have for years been dissatisfied with how the leadership of the oil and gas-rich nation manages the economy and public services.

 Algerian mass demonstrations against Bouteflika regime sees riot police and students join street protest

A series of corruption scandals involving senior officials and international energy companies has further sullied the reputation of the elite, reinforcing the impression that an intertwined network of security officials and business leaders are looting the country.

Mr Bouteflikas statement said his proposed national conference would allow Algerians to freely discuss the social and economic future of the country.

But his words ring hollow to many. His government has attempted to stifle freedom of expression for years, and has shown little inclination to open up the political space. Journalists and bloggers have been repeatedly prosecuted on charges of insulting the president or state officials. A state of emergency dating back to the countrys vicious 1990s civil war remains in place, imposing restrictions on freedom of assembly in major cities.
Hamas has arbitrarily arrested and tortured hundreds of protesters, rights workers and journalists in Gaza in the most severe crackdown on dissent in a decade, a rights group has warned.

Amnesty International urged the militant group that runs the strip to immediately stop the attacks on those behind the revolt of the hungry.

Residents have been holding rallies against tax hikes and the soaring cost of living in the besieged enclave.

Amnesty said their own consultant Hind Khoudary was detained and interrogated by the Hamas-run Ministry of Interior due to her work with the group. In the three-hour ordeal, male interrogators treated her poorly and threatened to prosecute her for being a foreign agent, Amnesty added.

It comes days after the United Nations Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said he was alarmed by the brutal beating of journalists and protesters.

Residents of the strip told The Independent that many people had been arrested at their homes, badly beaten and held illegally for expressing support for protests on social media or joining rallies that were violently cleared.

On Monday night, activists sent photos and videos purportedly showing the spokesperson for Fatah, the political rival to Hamas, unconscious in hospital. Masked gunmen, believed to be linked to Hamas, had attacked Atef Abu Saif outside his home.

The crackdown on freedom of expression and the use of torture in Gaza has reached alarming new levels, said Saleh Higazi, Amnesty Internationals Middle East and North Africa deputy director.

He added: Over the past few days, we have seen shocking human rights violations carried out by Hamas security forces against peaceful protesters, journalists and rights workers.

The Hamas de facto administration must immediately launch an independent, thorough and transparent investigation into the unnecessary and excessive use of force, arbitrary arrest and detention, and torture and other ill-treatment by security forces.

Gaza suffers from one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world, while over half its 2.2 million population live under the poverty line.

Many local journalists and activists have been arrested and severely attacked for covering whats going on. People we know were kidnapped and brutally attacked just for writing on Facebook Gaza resident

The 25-mile long enclave has been crippled by an 11-year-long Israeli siege and a sporadic blockade by Egypt, imposed after Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. Three wars with Israel over the last decade have also destroyed the economy.

Hamass mismanagement and corruption has also been blamed for contributing to the widespread misery.

Anger at worsening conditions has simmered since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas slashed salaries to government employees in Gaza two years ago, and access to electricity, in an apparent bid to force Hamas from power.

While that rage has been directed outside the strip, particularly with weekly marches on the border fences with Israel, over the last month protesters have tried to hold rallies within Gaza expressing anger at the authorities.

Footage shared online this week purportedly showed Hamas security officers forcibly clearing protests with batons and live ammunition. Photos and videos were shared with The Independent, apparently showing Mr Abu Saif in a hospital bed.

His legs and arms were apparently broken, one Gaza resident told The Independent, on the condition of anonymity for fear of arrest.

Many local journalists and activists have been arrested and severely attacked for covering whats going on. People we know were kidnapped and brutally attacked just for writing on Facebook, the local added.

Hamas has not directly referenced the crackdown or the protests. However, on Sunday they released a statement saying the group had prioritised the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people.

The statement added that Hamas fights with all means possible to restore the Palestinian rights.

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Amnesty said the round-up started on 10 March when 13 activists planning rallies against the soaring cost of living were arrested during a private meeting at a house in the town of Jabalya, in northern Gaza.

The group had launched social media campaigns called The Revolt of the Hungry and Down with Price Hikes.

Security forces stormed into the house without an arrest warrant, and the activists were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in detention. On 12 March, they were released with a warning not to continue with their plans.

Two days later Amnesty said Hamas security forces  some dressed in civilian clothes  attacked hundreds of peaceful demonstrators in Jabalya refugee camp Deir al-Balah, using sound grenades, batons, pepper spray and live ammunition. They also attacked al-Boreij camp and the city of Rafah.

After that, they beat and hospitalised a local journalist as well as Jamil Sarhan, director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights and the groups lawyer, also in Deir al-Balah camp.

Since then, several journalists, lawyers and rights workers have been beaten and detained for covering the rallies, Amnesty added.

 Meet the young musicians of Gaza fighting the siege to play

UN envoy Mladenov expressed his concerns on Sunday, saying he strongly condemned a campaign of arrests and violence used by Hamas security forces against protesters, including women and children.

I am particularly alarmed by the brutal beating of journalists and staff from the Independent Commission for Human Rights and the raiding of homes, he said.

It is their right to protest without fear of reprisal, he added.

Meanwhile, the West Bank-based Palestinian Journalists Syndicate demanded accountability for the attack on Mr Abu Saif.

It said it held Hamas responsible for the crimes and demanded the attackers be punished, according to a statement carried by Wafa, the Palestinian news agency.
Brexit dominated the agenda as Snows Timber hosted Ashfield MP Gloria De Piero at its Huthwaite distribution centre this week.

Snows Managing Director, Ian Church, and General Manager of the Huthwaite DC, Richard Holland, discussed with the Labour MP the problems that could be caused by leaving Europe without a deal.

Snows imports 90% of the wood it sells, with the vast majority coming from Scandinavia.

Church told Gloria that he has concerns about delays at the ports due to customs checks if we leave the Customs Union without a decent deal, as well as extra costs that could be levied.

He said: If tariffs were imposed at the point of entry, that would negatively affect our cashflow and the delays worry me because we dont know what they will look like.

As part of the Customs Union, timber entering the UK from the EU clears ports immediately, allowing for Just in Time deliveries, keeping costs low throughout the supply chain.

A no deal exit is the worst thing that could happen. My real fear is that businesses like ours would not be able to survive. We cant afford any more delays, and we need a deal to be agreed now.

De Piero said: What Ian has told me about his fears for a no deal Brexit echoes those I have heard from many other businesses in the constituency.

It is vital that we secure a deal that works for them and which avoids customs checks at borders, time delays and costly tariffs.

That is why I have been pressing the Government for a deal that includes being part of the Customs Union and Single Market.

Only with this access will British companies be able to remain competitive and jobs saved.

Pictured: Ian Church, Gloria De Piero and Richard Holland.
US-backed Syrian forces are close to capturing the last territory under Isis control, after taking most of a tent city where the group has made its last stand.

Although scattered clashes were continuing on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said the battle would end very soon.

This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight against Daesh, said Mustafa Bali, on Twitter.

The battles are not yet over. There are still some pockets next to the river. Some of the terrorists have taken their children as human shields. There are intermittent clashes, Mr Bali continued.

It is believed the Kurdish-led forces have also captured a group of suspects involved in a bombing that killed four Americans in January.

The battle to secure the last piece of the once mighty caliphate has gone on longer than anyone expected. Cornered in the small village of Baghouz, in Syrias Deir ez-Zor province, the groups most experienced fighters have put up a fierce fight.

An exodus of people has filed out of the village over the past two months, surprising Syrian and US officials. Some 60,000 people have fled the groups dwindling enclave, nearly half of whom were surrendering supporters of Isis, including some 5,000 fighters.

Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Show all 14 1 /14 Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Trucks full of women and children arrive from the last Isis-held areas in Deir ez-Zor, Syria Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Zikia Ibrahim, 28, with her two-year-old son and 8-month-old daughter, after fleeing the Isis caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Men who fled the last Isis-held area of Syria line up to be questioned by American and Kurdish intelligence officials Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate A young girl pulls her belongings after arriving Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate An SDF fighter hands out bread to women and children after they arrive Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Sita Ghazzar, 70, after fleeing from the last Isis-held territory in Syria Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate A family from Russia who recently fled the last Isis-held area of Syria Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent

In the last few weeks, Isis had been surrounded in a tent city on the edge of the village, which lies on the bank of the Euphrates, along with thousands of civilians.

The battle has stopped and started many times, but there are signs that the caliphate is seeing its last days.

The SDF, which is backed by a US-led coalition set up to fight Isis, said it had captured 157 mostly foreign fighters on Monday, as they tracked efforts by jihadists to break out of the enclave and escape their besiegers.

Even on the brink of defeat, the groups propaganda division continued to function.

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On Monday night Isis released an audio recording of its spokesperson, Abu Hassan al-Muhajer, saying the group would stay strong.

Do you think the displacement of the weak and poor out of Baghouz will weaken the Islamic State? No, he said.

It also put out a video recording from inside the Baghouz camp, showing fighters shooting out at the encircling forces and a mess of stationary vehicles and makeshift shelters around them.

Additional reporting by Reuters
From December, British Airways will operate a daily round-trip between two Gulf destinations that are only 54 miles apart and connected by road.

BA is extending its current Heathrow-Bahrain service to Dammam in Saudi Arabia. It is the nearest Saudi city to the island nation of Bahrain, to which it is linked by a causeway.

British Airways currently has a dedicated limousine link meeting its flights at Bahrain and taking passengers to Dammam, scheduled to take 90 minutes. It is coded as BA flight 8499.

But starting on 1 December, a Boeing 777 with four classes will replace the road connection, flying only the same distance as London to Brighton.

BA flight 125 will first depart from Heathrow and fly to Bahrain in about six hours. Many passengers will leave the aircraft, but Dammam-bound passengers will stay onboard the aircraft on the ground for an hour.

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The jet, weighing over 150 tons, will take a further 50 minutes to reach the Saudi city, including the aircrafts taxiing time at either end. The average speed is 65mph, even though the 777s cruising speed is 555mph.

During this stretch of the journey it is believed no alcohol will be served in any of the four classes, in contrast to the journey from London.

Boeings published figures show that the aircraft will use at least 1.5 tons of fuel between take-off and a height of 10,000 feet.

The aircraft is unlikely to fly any higher. When the fuel is burned, the CO2 emissions will be 5 tons.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: When the aviation industry talk about the necessity of expansion, always remember that a lot of their slots are reserved for short hops. These can often be done just as easily by train, not just in the Gulf, but in many parts of the world.

We need to place a strict limit on aviation emissions by managing demand like with a frequent flyer levy. The more you fly, the more you pay.

John Stewart, chair of the aviation campaign group HACAN, said: This is the sort of route that gives the aviation industry a bad name. Aviation has an important role to play, but not this.

Given the swift processing at Bahrains small airport, a Dammam-bound passenger who left the aircraft at the intermediate stop and hailed a taxi to Dammam would probably arrive at their final destination ahead of the plane.

Alternatively, frequent Saudi and Bahraini buses make the trip across the causeway connecting the island with the mainland for 10 each way.

Gulf Air flies four times a day between Bahrain and Damman using a narrow-bodied Airbus A320. The journey time is 35 minutes.

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The current shortest route on British Airways is 62 miles, between Antigua and St Kitts. It is an extension of the flight from Gatwick to Antigua. But unlike the planned Bahrain-Dammam link, there is no road alternative.

The shortest link with a surface alternative is 155 miles from Heathrow is to Manchester, on which BA has seven flights a day.

Historically, British Airways shortest flight is believed to be the 24 miles between Guernsey and Jersey in the Channel islands.

The worlds shortest flight is between the Orkney islands of Westray and Papa Westray on Loganair. The one-mile hop is scheduled to take two minutes, but on a good day takes as little as 70 seconds.
When India and Pakistan drifted worryingly close to out-and-out confrontation in February, there was a moment when the threat of war seemed very real. Calls for revenge overwhelmed social media and television news channels, countered by voices using the hashtag #SayNoToWar.

Lost in all the flag-waving and fears, however, was the voice of a group that is almost always overlooked when war, national security and militarism are debated: women.

The feminist perspective on war tends to be conspicuous by its absence in mainstream discussion, but this was a crucial moment to reflect on how women are disproportionately affected by armed conflict. A moment to consider how military action would exacerbates the grim conditions of women living in poverty in conflict areas; how they become more susceptible to sexual violence; and how they lose access to education and health services, homes and livelihoods.

Communities do not magically heal once the bullets and bombs fall quiet: they are damaged for generations.

When calling out sexual harassment, Indias feminist voice has just about been broadcast by mainstream media outlets. But when it comes to Pakistan, Indian nationalism takes on a life of its own, and critical voices are shushed.

Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Show all 13 1 /13 Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Indian muslims in Mumbai burn posters of Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan, center, and Hafiz Saeed, chief of Pakistani religious group Jamaat-ud-Dawa, during a protest against Thursday's attack on a paramilitary convoy in Kashmir that killed at least 40 AP Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Policeman walk past vehicles set on fire in Jammu by a mob during a protest against Thursday's attack on a paramilitary convoy AP Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Vehicles are set on fire in Jammu during protests following the attack AP Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Indian Muslims hold a protest in Mumbai the day after the terrorist attack AFP/Getty Images Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Mourners gather for the cremation of Central Reserve Police Force soldier Mahesh Yadav, who was killed in Thursday's bombing in Kashmir AP Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Protestors in Jammu throw stones during a clash between communities while protesting against Thursday's attack on a paramilitary convoy that killed at least 40 in Kashmir AP Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Indian police men keep vigil next to a barbed wire fencing during the third day of curfew in Jammu AP Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party workers in Mumbai burn a symbolic effigy of Pakistan as part of protest against Thursday's attack on a paramilitary convoy in Kashmir, AP Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) soldiers pay tribute to their colleague Maneswar Basumatary, who was killed in Thursday's bombing in Kashmir AP Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Indian army soldiers patrol during a curfew in Jammu on February 16, 2019 AFP/Getty Images Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack A crowd carries a victim's coffin during a cremation ceremony AFP/Getty Images Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack A relative of Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper Sudip Biswas mourns over his coffin at Kolkata airport AFP/Getty Images Fire on the streets as Indians react to the Pulwama bombing attack Mourners gather for the cremation of Central Reserve Police Force soldier Mahesh Yadav, who was killed in Thursday's bombing in Kashmir AP

Any critique of the militarys strike was labelled as unpatriotic  this situation, it seemed, was the exception. Ahead of elections this spring, strongman Narendra Modis government seized the moment, creating a hyper-nationalist climate that has gagged otherwise mainstream feminist voices. In one disturbing incident, the widow of a man killed in the suicide bombing which sparked the tensions was bullied for her anti-war stance  even though she clarified she supported surgical strikes, just not full scale war. Another woman received rape and death threats for a Facebook post criticising the Modi government and the devaluing of Kashmiri lives.

In the scramble to applaud the Indian military for bringing Pakistani terrorists to justice, Kashmiri women  on whose land, and on whose bodies these wars will be fought  are utterly forgotten. There are estimated to be half a million soldiers in Kashmir, the most densely militarised zone in the world. Kashmiri womens lives have been defined by war  it brings insecurity, terror and loss.

Numerous rights organisations have accused the military, and other security forces of using sexual violence and rape as a tactic of war in Kashmir. There are reports of the torture and sexual abuse of young girls. These violations can only escalate during all-out war, a thought too horrific to imagine.

Even today, mass rapes of Kashmiri women by the Indian military are ignored. Twenty-eight years ago, members of the Indian army are alleged to have raped about 30 women in the towns of Kunan and Poshpora, during a large-scale military operation. The army denies the allegations, and a suit for compensation to the victims idles in the Indian Supreme Court.

Feminist ideas about how to address the effects of war on women are unlikely to come from Indian centres of power, which remain fiercely patriarchal. Women are dramatically underrepresented in the Indian military. It was only early this year that the Jammu and Kashmir government approved raising two womens battalions in the states police.

Sidelining feminist ideas also means we lose key advocates against the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war against men. Reports from Kashmir claim that men  and young boys  have been tortured and raped to punish protestors, crush dissent and create an environment of crippling fear. This has received almost no attention in the Indian press, let alone in the corridors of power.

Lack of data on sexual violence against men during conflict is a major problem: the hyper-masculine culture enveloping militarism, along with toxic masculinity more generally, shames male victims into silence. Further shrouding the full extent of the armed forces actions is the impunity with which they operate in Kashmir.

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The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act  a colonial vestige ironically used by the British to restrain the Indian freedom struggle  provides extraordinary powers to the armed forces, including immunity from prosecution. This does not extend to sexual violence, but prosecution isnt possible without a prior sanction from the central government, adding another hurdle on the long road to justice.

Before Indians vote in the upcoming elections, we need to think of whose lives are being protected  and at whose expense. We can be proud of the sacrifice and bravery of our troops while questioning the legality and morality of its actions, and condemning their complicity in violence against women.

A with us or against us attitude silences critical voices, benefiting only the abusers. No one wants to be accused of hating their country, but the real fear of a mob/vigilante reaction relegates feminist discourse to echo chambers and private WhatsApp groups. As the long overdue acceptance of mainstream feminist ideas about sexual harassment, and LGBT+ rights have positively impacted Indians (though considerable work remains), a mainstream feminist perspective is vital to a more nuanced understanding of armed conflict and its real, human costs.
Having entered the United States Senate in 1973, Joe Biden has been a fixture of American public life for decades. Thanks to his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, the longtime Senators stature has only grown throughout the past decade  making him one of the countrys best-known liberal politicians and a prospective leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Bidens real, if superficial, appeal rests heavily on his image as an affable, blue-collar everyman at once populist and easygoing: an image arguably shaped more by social media and cable TV than by reality. Indeed, you might even say that there are two Joe Bidens: one a character, the other a real-life politician.

The first is essentially a meme: a kind of funny national uncle, amiable and well-meaning, self-deprecating, and slightly mischievous in a harmless sort of way. This is the Biden who bros-out with his best buddy Barack Obama in viral tweets, makes cameos on your favourite shows, and is the subject of affectionate caricatures on late-night TV. Its also the one which inspired The Onions long-running character Diamond Joe, the subject of headlines like: Biden Huddling With Closest Advisers on Whether to Spend 200 Bucks on Scorpions Tickets; Biden Worries Legalized Weed In D.C. Will Cut Into His Business" and Biden Offers Government to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. As the Washington Posts Michael Cavna put it in 2017, Diamond Joe is a rugged, easygoing classic metal-head who favors biker babes, Whitesnake T-shirts and a sixer of Schlitz.

While few people are likely to mistake Diamond Joe for the real-life Biden (a devout Catholic who reportedly doesnt even drink), the meme-ified version of the former vice president has nevertheless increasingly come to define his public image. And thats a problem, given how little resemblance Biden the real-world politician  a notoriously gaffe-prone Senator who has spent the majority of his career as a hawkish, somewhat socially conservative Democrat  has to his mostly likeable, laid-back, and apolitical cultural avatar.

The real Joe Biden got into politics opposing busing, a vital de-segregation measure he dismissed in the 1970s as the atom bomb of anti-discrimination weapons. Throughout his subsequent career as a US Senator, he would go on to champion several pieces of legislation that disproportionately targeted black Americans and helped institutionalise mass incarceration including 1994s infamous Crime Bill, then boasting on the Senate floor: The liberal wing of the Democratic Party has 70 enhanced penalties The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 100,000 cops...The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is for 125,000 new State prison cells. As recently as 2007, Biden still called the bill his greatest accomplishment.

Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Show all 23 1 /23 Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Joe Biden The former vice president - poised to be a frontrunner - has announced his run. He recently faced scrutiny for inappropriate touching of women, but was thought to deal with the criticism well AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Bernie Sanders The 2016 runner-up has announced that he will be running again in 2020 Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Hillary Clinton The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State says she is still considering whether she will run again. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Pete Buttigieg The Indiana mayor and war veteran will be running for president. If elected, he would be the first openly LGBT+ president in American history. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kamala Harris The former California attorney general will be running for president in 2020. Introduced to the national stage during Jeff Sessions testimony, she has endorsed Medicare-for-all and proposed a major tax-credit for the middle class. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Elizabeth Warren The Massachusetts Senator has formally launched her bid for president in 2020. A progressive Democrat, she is a major supporter of regulating Wall Street. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Beto ORourke The former Texas congressman told Oprah Winfrey that he has been thinking about running for presidency, but stopped short of formally announcing his bid to run in 2020. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Wayne Messam Mayor of the city of Miramar in the Miami metropolitan area, Wayne Messam has announced his bid. He intends to run on a progressive platform against the "broken" federal government. He favours gun regulations and was a signatory to a letter from some 400 mayors condemning President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. Vice News Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kirsten Gillibrand The New York Senator formally announced her presidential bid in January, saying that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Cory Booker The New Jersey Senator has announced that he will be running for the presidency in 2020. If he secures the nomination he said finding a female vice president would be a priority. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Delaney The Maryland congressman was the first to launch his bid for presidency, making the announcement in 2017. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Julian Castro The former San Antonio mayor announced his candidacy in January and said that his running has a special meaning for the Latino community in the US. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Tulsi Gabbard The Hawaii congresswoman announced her candidacy in January, but is likely to face tough questions on her past comments on LGBT+ rights and her stance on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Andrew Yang The entrepreneur has announced his presidential candidacy, and has pledged that he would introduce a universal basic income of $1,000 a month to every American over the age of 18. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Marianne Williamson The author and spiritual advisor has announced her intention to run for president. She had previously run for congress as an independent in 2014 but was unsuccessful. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Kerry The former secretary of state has said he is still thinking about whether to run. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Michael Bloomberg The entrepreneur and former New York mayor with a net worth of around $50bn  has said he will decide by the end of February whether to seek the presidency. AFP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Howard Schultz Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has not yet ruled out running for president in 2020, despite criticism that his bid could help re-elect Mr Trump by dividing the Democrat vote. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Holder The former attorney general has said he will decide in the next month or so whether to run as a 2020 presidential candidate. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Swalwell The California congressman said he is ready to do this and will decide before April whether to run. MSNBC Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Terry McAuliffe The former Virginia governor, who worked to elect Democratic governors during 2018 midterms, said there was a 50 per cent chance he would run. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Sherrod Brown The Ohio senator is still undecided about whether to run for president in 2020. Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Mitch Landrieu The former New Orleans mayor said he doesnt think he will run for president, but never say never. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Bidens populist, blue-collar image is likewise difficult to reconcile with his long-standing proximity to corporate and financial interests and propensity to defend the ultra-rich. In 1979, after receiving donations from Coca-Cola, for example, Biden co-sponsored legislation that helped the soft-drink industry skirt antitrust laws. In the 1990s he voted against several measures aimed at the regulation of credit card companies, one of which (MBNA) just happened to be his largest single donor throughout the decade. Even as issues like corporate power and economic inequality have increasingly entered the mainstream for Democrats, Biden has insisted: I dont think 500 billionaires are the reason were in trouble. The folks at the top arent bad guys.

The list goes on and on. From having a decidedly mixed record on pro-choice legislation, casting a vote for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, expressing his fondness for noted torture proponent Dick Cheney, and declaring anti-LGBTQ Republican vice president Mike Pence a decent guy, Biden the politician has never really resembled the innocuous caricature thats flourished on social media. But should he indeed enter the race, its Biden the conservatively minded politician, not Biden the harmless internet meme, who will ultimately be running for president.

In deciding who they should nominate to take on Donald Trump, Democrats would therefore do well to grapple with his actual record  and relegate smiling Diamond Joe to retirement where he belongs.
The decision to close a hospital ward in Limerick has been criticised by a leading nursing trade union and TDs.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) slammed the plans by University Hospital Limericks management to close the ward, resulting in the loss of 17 funded medical beds.

The hospitals overcrowding situation reached the second highest it has ever been on Tuesday, with 76 patients waiting for beds, according to INMO figures.

The beds facing closure are in Ward 1A, used primarily for the treatment of patients who require short periods of admission.

Limerick is the most overcrowded hospital in the countryMary Fogarty

The INMO say it learned of the plans in recent weeks, and has written to the chief executive, on March 6, to object to the loss of hospital capacity.

The union released a statement saying that the hospitals issues with overcrowding will be exasperated by the closure.

University Hospital Limerick is already the most overcrowded hospital in Ireland, with the INMOs daily trolley watch showing that 11,400 patients were on trolleys, without beds, in the hospital in 2018, a statement said.

On Tuesday, a total of 76 people were waiting for hospital beds in UHL, with 54 waiting in the emergency department, and 22 elsewhere in the hospital.

INMO industrial relations officer for Limerick, Mary Fogarty, said the numbers were unacceptable.

Limerick is the most overcrowded hospital in the country, she said.

Overcrowding is endemic and we already see unacceptable numbers of patients forced to wait without a proper bed.

It simply does not make sense to close further beds when faced with such a problem.

We need to be going in the opposite direction.

Closing beds will only worsen Limericks overcrowding crisis, leading to compromised treatment and patients being forced to wait on public corridors.

Closing these 17 funded beds is a disservice to the patients and staff at the hospital.

Sadly, to date the hospital management has refused to review this illogical decision.

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Sinn Fein TD for Limerick Maurice Quinlivan also condemned the plans.

The decision to close this in-patient ward beggars belief, he said.

University Hospital Limerick is already the most overcrowded in the state with more than 70 people lying on hospital trolleys today because there arent enough beds.

The loss of these 17 inpatient beds can only add further pressure to the overcrowding in the hospital.

This closure has been decided by the management of the hospital and I would urge them to immediately review that decision.

Our health service is in crisis and Minister (Simon) Harris has failed to deal with the issues that are causing this emergency.

The government should be working to address the systemic problems in the health service, rather than making the situation worse.

A spokesman for the hospital said: Ward 1A is to close to facilitate the completion of works on the new fracture unit.

This is in accordance with the overall plan to redesignate the space occupied by the old emergency department at UHL.

Staff were fully involved in this process, with various teams presenting business cases on optimal use of the old ED.

The outcome of this process was to open a new fracture clinic in a portion of the old ED footprint.

This will have a significant benefit for patients attending our busy fracture clinic in terms of reduced wait times and improved patient experience.
Seeing stars: A protester walks past the EU flags of anti-Brexit activists near the Houses of Parliament. Picture: AFP/Getty

British Prime Minister Theresa May will be forced to seek an extension to the Brexit deadline as the UK continues to grapple with yet more political turmoil.

Speaker John Bercow - who determines parliamentary procedure in the House of Commons - yesterday ruled that Mrs May cannot bring her divorce deal back for a third vote unless it is fundamentally changed.

The intervention blindsided Downing Street, which was last night scrambling to find a pathway out of the latest crisis that has been described by the UK's solicitor general as constitutional in nature.

If the deal cannot be returned to parliament for a final meaningful vote it cannot be ratified by the UK, leaving a no-deal exit or an extension as the only options on the table.

Diplomats in Brussels were said to be considering if an agreed extension to the Brexit date could be tagged on to the deal in order to allow it to be sent back to MPs for another vote.

The UK government was also examining a number of routes around the speaker's ruling.

Mr Bercow has set the bar high for his test on whether the deal could return, but said that his statement was not his final word on the issue.

"This is my conclusion: if the government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same, nor substantially the same as that disposed of by the house on March 12, this would be entirely in order," he said.

"What the government cannot legitimately do is to resubmit to the House the same proposition or substantially the same proposition as that of last week which was rejected by 149 votes."

He later appeared to suggest a change from the EU side - which has already been ruled out - would be necessary.

"Fundamentally, for something to be different, it has to be by definition, fundamentally different. Not different in terms of wording, but difference in terms of substance and this is in the context of a negotiation with others outside the United Kingdom," he said.

But there was no immediate clarity on whether the UK government could change domestic legislation to see the deal make its way to the floor again.

Tanaiste Simon Coveney will meet Michel Barnier in Brussels today after hosting key EU players in the negotiations at an event in the city to mark St Patrick's Day last night.

He said it was likely a significant extension would be sought by Mrs May, but said the latest twist in London had not done much to change this week's events.

"We have to assume that because of the way in which the British parliament voted last week that the British prime minister will come to that summit and seek a significant extension of Article 50 and give a detailed explanation as to how she plans to use that time to try to provide some certainty, working with the EU, to the Brexit process," he said.

He expressed surprised that a parliamentary procedure was being used to potentially prevent the vote.

Meanwhile, efforts to shore up support for the deal in the event that there is another vote were also dealt a further blow last night as talks with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) failed again to break the impasse which has seen it twice reject the deal.

It has emerged Tory negotiators are unlikely to reach an agreement this week that would allow the DUP to vote for the deal.

The DUP's support is vital if Mrs May is to get her deal through parliament, as swaying it would pave the way for a significant chunk of Tory rebels to back it.

British junior Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng said last night he believed there was still a chance parliament would approve the exit deal this week.

He also warned that if the EU Council does not agree an extension then the UK will leave without a deal in just 10 days' time.

Several options have emerged as potential ways out of the new parliamentary deadlock. Suspending this session of parliament - something that can only be done by Queen Elizabeth - in order to allow the deal to be voted on in a new session is seen as one way to circumvent the speaker's ruling which is based on precedent dating back to 1604.

Mrs May will travel to Brussels on Thursday for a European Council summit, where it is now expected a delay of sorts will be agreed.

Meanwhile, European Council President Donald Tusk is in Dublin today to discuss the latest developments with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

An extension, which would see the UK remain a member for a portion of the new EU parliament which will sit from July, is seen as problematic by many EU capitals.
Well, at least someone's enjoying this. While voters groan, and MPs gape, and aides fume, and prime ministers scream silently into their hands, one man, at any rate, is having the time of his life. Yesterday in the House of Commons, John Bercow was the absolute dead centre of attention. And he wallowed in it. He wallowed like a hippo in a Jacuzzi.

At just gone half past three, the speaker announced he would now make a statement to the House. He hadn't told anyone, including the Government, what he was about to say. For maximum impact, he simply sprang it on them, out of the blue.

But perhaps "spring" is the wrong word. It implies speed, directness, getting straight to the point. But Mr Bercow did not get straight to the point.

Instead, he strung out his statement for what felt like an age, slowly building suspense as if he were the author of an airport thriller, delaying the big twist to the last moment.

On all sides of the House, lips tightened. Eyes goggled. Legs jiggled. In speechless agony, MPs waited.

Finally, after no less than nine and a half minutes, the speaker put them out of their misery. Theresa May's Brexit deal, he said, had already been rejected by MPs. Unless she substantially changed it, she couldn't ask them to vote again. Her deal, effectively, was dead.

Consternated Tories leapt up to raise points of order. The speaker never seems more at home than when confronted by a flustered, hot-faced Conservative backbencher.

He did not hold back, at one point calling Neil O'Brien (Con, Harborough) a sycophant ("He has always seemed to me to be a keen supporter of close regulatory alignment with the Government whips' office").

None of the protests remotely fazed him. "The responsibility of the speaker is to speak truth to power," he yawned.

"I have never been pushed around and I'm not going to start now..."

For over an hour, he bathed contentedly in the glow of Tory ire. At long last, however, there were no more points of order left to take. "I'm most grateful to colleagues," purred Mr Bercow, "for the interest they have shown."

Strictly speaking, it isn't possible to swagger while standing still. But somehow, Mr Bercow managed it. ( Daily Telegraph, London)
The lack of preparedness among Irish firms for GDPR changes and the European Commission's anti-money laundering directives has led to widespread fines, James Treacy, managing director of Stubbs Gazette, has warned.

High-ranking officials from banks, insurance companies, and government agencies alike will converge on the RDS for the company's fraud and cyber crime conference on May 17.

Treacy said that the topic had become particularly relevant in recent times.

"With the introduction of GDPR and the new EU anti-money laundering directives it makes it a lot easier for organisations such as banks and government agencies to share information as long as they have a legitimate purpose," he said.

"However, almost all of the major banks in Ireland have been slapped with fines, not because they're aiding money laundering but rather that they haven't got their documentation in place and they're not seen to do their screening and their ID verification checks."

Treacy described fraud as the "last great unreduced business cost" and said that it was costing around 3.8 trillion annually.

He said that he expects around 500 people, predominantly chief executives and chief technology officers, to attend. "The theme is collaboration and it's not just focusing on one aspect of fraud. At the moment there seems to be a big emphasis on cyber crime but that's only one aspect of the whole fraud scenario," Treacy said.

Mary Aiken, a cyberpsychologist and adviser to Europol, former High Court president Nicholas Kearns and Ibec CEO Danny McCoy are among the speakers, while the Sunday Independent is a media partner.
The UK's biggest supermarket chain has insisted it has no plans to import cheap beef from South America post-Brexit amid concerns over Ireland's valuable export trade.

It comes in a week where fears over the knock-on impact on Irish family farms was raised as the UK unveiled its worst-case tariffs and import quotas in the case of a crash out of the EU.

EU Commissioner Phil Hogan swiftly moved to dampen fears, urging Irish farmers not to panic. He believes, even in a no-deal scenario, that demand for premium Irish products like beef and cheese in the UK will remain steady.

"We have had assurances from the UK that they will maintain EU food standards as a minimum. The British shopper is a discerning individual and will not suddenly abandon quality Irish produce because of price increases due to tariffs," the Commissioner told the Farming Independent. Mr Hogan stressed that Ireland is in line for a major share of a 500m package in EU farm supports if a no-deal Brexit happens.

Tesco UK beef manager Hannah Donegan insisted that South American beef was "out of the question" for the supermarket giant's shelves as customers were discerning when it came to quality produce, saying the carbon footprint was also key.

She said the retailer only sells Irish and British beef in the UK and has no plans to source from elsewhere, as much of the product in South America does not meet Tesco's strict quality standards.

"There's a combination of parameters that are important to consumers, with the top two being price and quality. South America is out of the question. We currently source for the UK market all of our beef from the UK and Ireland," Ms Donegan told the Farming Independent.

"If we are to use new supply chains they must meet the requirements that we adhere to within the UK market."

Agriculture Minister Michael Creed said it was abundantly clear the unveiling of the potential tariffs was a "political game".

Mr Creed did welcome the comments from Tesco but questioned what would be the "tipping point" in terms of consumer preferences and Irish beef.

Permitted

He said if lower-priced beef from South America is permitted to enter the UK in high volumes and is competing directly then it may be a question of "how long can it sustain a higher price push?".

Meat Industry Ireland's Cormac Healy warned that high tariffs would seriously undermine trade as major UK retailers and catering businesses "shield consumers from price inflation".

"If in the future customers have more access to lower-priced beef options from other global suppliers (under a zero-tariff quota or at tariff levels 50pc lower than today), this will make the task of recovering any tariffs on Irish exports to the UK even more challenging," he said.

In the absence of a deal being agreed in the coming days, Mr Healy said a long extension would be best and is what is needed by businesses and farmers.

Mr Hogan said he believes any Brexit extension given to the UK is most unlikely to go beyond May 23.

He said if Britain is to get a longer extension, then it must hold European Parliament elections at the end of May - a move which would be anathema to supporters of Brexit.

"That of itself should concentrate minds in London," Mr Hogan said.

He has again said a support package is prepared for Irish farming and agribusiness if the worst comes to the worst in 10 days' time and the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal on March 29.
The Minister for Agriculture has described an IFA demand on live exports as 'reckless' for the industry.

It comes IFA President Joe Healy was on the ground in Cherbourg, Normandy, France, this week visiting the Pignet Lairage.

Healy said an additional 600 calves could be delivered within days with some co-operation from the Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed and the French authorities.

He said Minister Creed must request the French authorities to approve an extension which would to add this extra capacity in Cherbourg. With the additional 400 places announced late last week, it could increase capacity by 3,000 per week over three sailings, to 15,000 calves per week, according to IFA.

The IFA has called on Minister Creed to also allow the use of the facility at Abbeville, France which can act IFA said as an overflow lairage in light of the backlog caused by the exceptional bad sailing weather. IFA claimed this was permitted in previous years.

The Abbeville facility can accommodate 5,000 calves, it claimed.

However, it has been claimed the journey to Abbeville would add substantially to the journey time of the calves and breach EU animal welfare laws.

A spokesperson for the Minister said he will not act recklessly and risk bringing down our entire live export industry.

"The Minister will not, however, ignore the law when it comes to animal welfare and reiterates that compliance is central to protecting an industry which has many many objectors.

"The Ministers record in developing the calf export trade speaks for itself with a 63% increase in 2018 and further strong growth in 2019 to date. His Department has facilitated exporters in every way to maximise opportunities including financial incentives of over 700k in the past year alone.

Last year the Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed confirmed that penalties have been applied to those found to have breached live export regulations.

His comments came following a recent investigation by animal rights group Eyes on Animals on a number of transporters from different countries leaving Rosslare port.

The journeys took place on March 13, 2018 when two teams from animal rights group Eyes on Animals inspected calf trucks leaving Rosslare Port and heading to Cherbourg Port via the Stena Roll-on Roll-off ferry service.

The Group claimed the ferry journey took 19 hours in total (including a 1.5 hour delay).

It also said that at least six of the calf trucks that came off the Stena Carrier did not stop at the first available control post, to unload the calves as they should, according to the EU regulations.

Instead they drove to a different Qualivia control post, situated in Abbeville, a further drive of 5 hours resulting in all of these trucks exceeding the maximum allowed transport time of 19 hours (9-1-9) for unweaned calves, the group said.

Committee row

Meanwhile, live calf exports have also sparked a row between members of the Oireachtas Ag Committee.

Carlow Deputy Pat Deering, Chairperson of the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and Marine said: "Fianna Fails only agriculture policy seems to be to criticise the Minister and we see that yet again this week, even though extra lairage space has been secured in Cherbourg.

He claimed Fianna Fail's Agriculture Spokesperson, Charlie McConalogue seems to be missing the point of the work the Department of Agriculture is doing and how it fits into the export process.

"Exporters need to work together here and be honest with farmers.

The Purcell brothers have offered a ship with capacity for 4,000 calves which will also offer lairage facility but the exporters have been holding back, thus having a detrimental effect on the prices of calves and dairy stock.

Its amazing that the Fianna Fail spokesperson on Agriculture has not encouraged exporters to use this service so that farmers can get the advantage of the facility that is being offered to Irish exporters," he said.

Fianna Fail Spokesperson on Agriculture Charlie McConalogue TD has criticised government efforts after it was announced lairage capacity near Cherbourg Port, France has been increased to hold an additional 400 animals.

His comments come as McConalogue said, It is alarming the Minister for Agriculture has welcomed this increase as it does not go near enough to ensuring Irish farmers are in a position to export dairy bull calves.

"We are at the peak of the export season, yet little seems to be done by the government to aide those in the industry. The farming community is crying out for additional capacity for exporting their produce but this has not materialised.

I understand there is room for even more lairage capacity in Cherbourg, up to 600 additional spaces according to some estimates. Robust efforts from government on behalf of the Agri-sector is needed to have this expanded.

The beef sector is in crisis. The ongoing export issues combined with the news of tariffs on exports to the UK from the Republic have caused great anxiety in the sector. The Minister must give assurances to the farming community as we navigate the next number of weeks post Brexit, Deputy McConalogue said.
Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed has said the current budget proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are not tenable.

Speaking to fellow European Agriculture Ministers in Brussels yesterday, he said it feasible position to keep asking farmers to do more and more yet clearly decide that we will pay them less and less.

"Farmers won't thank us for that and I don't think society generally will thank us either," he said.

He called on his fellow ministers to put pressure on their Governments to maintain current CAP spending.

"We must say that the proposals as published do not represent an adequate budget for the ambition that we have for the CAP.

"It is not a tenable position to ask farmers to do more and more and clearly in the context of the proposals on the table to pay them less and less.

"Europe does face new challenges, but Europe needs to find new money. It is not a rationale to rob the budget of the CAP to meet other challenges< he said.

Under plans for the EUs budget for 2021-2027, farmers would receive around 232 billion in direct support, a drop of more than 30 billion from the current seven-year budget.

Minster Creed has been actively engaging with counterparts from France, Spain, Finland, Portugal and Greece, who have all called for the restoration of the CAP budget for the 2021  2027 period to current levels.

Up to 20 Member States have joined this alliance and Minister Creed has said the group will continue to work together in an effort to build consensus on this point.

Addressing fellow Ministers for Agriculture today, he said there is one key issue. That is to ensure an adequate budget for the entire CAP.

"The CAP budget is the key," he warned fellow Ministers.

The last EU budget negotiations went down to the wire, taking two and a half years of haggling. Member States and the European Parliament are set for tough talks, with hopes of an agreement in the autumn.

Germany and France, the biggest paymasters putting in 19pc and 17pc of the budget respectively, are ready to plug some of the Brexit gap if the budget suits their new priorities.

aris, for example, wants to see some budget allocated to the 19-member eurozone as part of plans to bolster the EU single currency. With its traditionally strong farm lobby, France is also likely to defend farmers from pressure to cut back on EU subsidies.

Ireland's position on the budget has been so far unequivocal. From the Taoiseach to the Minister for Finance and Minister Creed, Ireland wants to see the budget restored to the previous level, taking into account that there will no longer be the UK contribution.

Some 80pc of the EU funds for Ireland come through the CAP.

For every euro Ireland puts into EU funds we get back a higher amount through CAP.

However, the Commission's proposals are based on a certain increase in member state contributions and not all member states are willing to make a contribution.

The Dutch led the charge for rich northern states unwilling to step into the Brexit breach: A smaller EU ... should have a smaller budget, Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said.
The Irish Government is willing to introduce further capping of large EU farm payments and said plans to allow farmers to deduct labour costs would undermine such cuts.

Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed told a meeting of his fellow Agriculture Ministers that the Irish Government is open to capping and that Ireland has introduced mandatory capping at 150,000 as part of the current Common Agricultural Policy.

However, Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner, Phil Hogan warned that such an approach would undermine the commonality of the CAP and the level playing field between EU farmers.

Describing capping as a sensitive issue, Minister Creed said "we are willing to implement further capping but this must be done in a straight forward manner.

He said a key issue for Ireland is that proposals to deduct labour costs must be voluntary for member states.

He said Ireland considers that the deductions would undermine the proposals on capping and that it would also be cumbersome to administer.

Minster Creed, however, did say that while Ireland is open to capping it believes policy imperatives mean the EU should not cap eco payments or payments to young farmers.

In its CAP reform proposals announced last year, the European Commission is proposing a reduction of payments above 60,000, with compulsory capping for payments above 100,000.

This, it says, is designed to ensure a fairer distribution of payments, with the saved monies being used to fund small and medium-sized farmers.

However, the move has been slammed by some commentators and farmers, who say this claim is misleading and disingenuous, as it ignores what is likely to be the fine print in the Commission proposal.

The crux of the issue is that under the proposals the Commission says all Member States must allow for labour costs to be taken fully into account.

The effect of this proposal is that farmers receiving large payments can deduct the value of salaries or on-farm labour from the direct payments received before the cap is applied.

Yesterday's, Agriculture Council meeting debated a report on the state of play regarding key CAP proposals which summarises the work carried out on the planned reforms since January by Member State and Commission officials.

Under the new proposals, the wording to the regulation will change from 'shall' to 'may' which will allow Member States to decide whether to allow for labour costs to be taken fully into account when capping payments.
You've got to take your hat off to the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland (IBI), the organisation that represents the independent commercial radio sector, including RTE's own radio stations.

For the past number of years IBI, under the very capable direction of Lisa Ni Choisdealbha and its chairman John Purcell, has banged its drum loud and clear and had left no stone unturned in its quest to convince legislators that public funding for the sector was needed if local and regional radio stations are to continue to churn out programming that fulfils much of the criteria associated with public service broadcasting.

Local and regional radio stations are an important part of the social fabric in many communities around Ireland and they can boast considerable listenership figures in the regions they serve.

It's hard to argue against IBI, particularly at a time when traditional media is under the cosh, media consumption habits are changing, advertising revenue continues to flow in the direction of the digital giants and, in other countries, the concept of public service broadcasting is under threat.

Look at the US, the largest media market in the world, for example. President Donald Trump, in his recent budget, proposed that all federal funding for public service broadcasters, which is channelled through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, be abolished altogether.

In a nutshell, that would mean 1,168 public service radio stations and 355 TV channels across the US would lose their funding, forcing some of them, particularly in rural areas, to switch off the microphones and turn off the lights as they leave the building for good.

Trump won't get his way, but it does illustrate the challenges public service broadcasting faces in some countries.

No such draconian steps would ever be contemplated in Ireland, however.

In fact, as IBI has ploughed its often-lonely public service furrow over the past few years, it has received cross-party support and sympathy within both the Dail and Seanad.

This time last year, for example, the Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment published its rather dull-sounding report on Pre-Legislative Scrutiny of the General Scheme of a Broadcasting (Amendment) Bill 2017 and Retransmission Fees which, among other things, recommended that local and regional radio stations could benefit from bursaries to help fund content.

While the amount of funding available would only make a small inroad, it was nonetheless interpreted as a sign of some progress.

More progress was made in the past few weeks, when a series of measures that will pave the way for the provision of support from the TV licence fee to public service content on local, regional and national radio stations, was passed by the Dail following a private members motion put forward by Fianna Fail's communications spokesman Timmy Dooley.

The motion essentially recognises the public service contribution that independent radio stations make, while it also proposes the establishment of a ring-fenced fund to underwrite some of the costs associated with all of this.

While it has taken IBI several years to get this far, it is far from home and dry. Some time over the next few weeks, the Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment will submit its final report to the Minister, Richard Bruton, and it remains be seen what direction the debate will take.

Since taking over the Communications portfolio from Denis Naughten, the Minister has been preoccupied by other matters such as climate change, energy and cyber-bullying. He has not yet given his views on how public service broadcasting - never mind the wider media industry - should be funded.

As a Dublin-based minister, there is a fear within the radio industry that he might not share the same concerns of his predecessor, or indeed those of other rural-based politicians.

When he was Minister, Naughten, for example, made it quite clear that he was open to the idea of local and regional radio stations receiving additional funding to cover some of the costs associated with their public service output.

He even went further by saying, back in 2016, that he was in favour of some sort of funding mechanisms to help the newspaper industry which, like its broadcasting counterparts, is also feeling the pinch.

But that was then, this is now and it seems likely that IBI's quest still has some distance to go.

There is also a danger that this quest could possibly be swallowed up in the debate when the Pandora's Box that contains thorny issues like RTE charging retransmission fees and the collection of the licence fee is opened up by Bruton. When this does eventually happen, expect sparks to fly.

While IBI is perfectly right to plough its own furrow, the question has to be asked whether or not we have missed a much wider opportunity to put the entire media industry on a much sounder financial footing?

Only last week, for example, Alan Cox, the CEO of Core, the largest marketing communications group in the country, said that the newspaper industry - which also has public service dimension to it - was going through a profound period of crisis and that the Government should commission an independent report to examine the state of the news media in Ireland.

Would it not be better to take on board all the concerns of the media industry - including those articulated by IBI and News Brands Ireland - and come up with some solutions to ensure that an important part of Irish life, and democracy in general, are safeguarded well into the future? Over to you, Minister Bruton.

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No deal: BoI, headed by CEO Francesca McDonagh, disputes redress for some staff fighting for tracker rates

Thousands of tracker cases continue to be disputed by banks, despite the scandal dragging on for a decade now.

An additional 8,700 cases in three different banks are being disputed by the lenders.

If the banks eventually have to concede on these it will take the total number of tracker cases to almost 50,000, and could see the total bill for the banks rise by another 290m.

That would mean the total bill will be close to 1.3bn.

Newly-appointed AIB CEO Colin Hunt has been urged to add 6,000 customers to its tracker mortgage redress and compensation scheme.

Consumer advocate Brendan Burgess said the AIB customers started on fixed rates but had a contractual right to a tracker at the "prevailing rate" when the fixed-rate period ended. He claims AIB failed to do so. AIB maintains that "the customer grouping in question did not hold a tracker mortgage". The bank has offered customers 1,600 each because it did not offer them a tracker, but insists they did not lose out. But it has not put them to trackers or refunded them for overpaid interest.

Mr Burgess has urged the customers to use AIB's independent appeals panel. The deadline was last Friday, but he said appeal applications would still be accepted. Those who do not appeal will lose all legal rights and options and wave goodbye to any chance of getting their tracker back.

He hopes to mount a legal challenge and says a successful appeal could cost AIB up to 200m in additional redress and compensation.

More than 200 current and former staff in Bank of Ireland, who claim they were promised tracker rates, have so far failed to meet the Central Bank to discuss the issue. This is despite staff in the regulator's office promising to meet them by the end of February.

A spokesman for the group said: "Our main drive is to secure a face-to-face meeting with the Central Bank to fully explain our situation and how this has impacted members."

BoI, run by Francesca McDonagh, is holding out, despite already restoring some 1,800 other staff and former staff on trackers, refunding them overpaid interest and paying compensation.

And Permanent TSB insists its tracker probe is complete despite claims there are thousands more cases yet to be resolved. It has restored fewer than 2,000 to trackers, refunded overpaid interest and compensated them.

But tracker denial cases authority Padraic Kissane claims there are another 2,500 cases the bank is refusing to concede on, or where people got redress but were put on the wrong tracker margin.

The Central Bank said the vast majority have been identified but it continues to "review and challenge the work undertaken by lenders to ensure all groups of customers who have been impacted are included for redress and compensation".
Critical Healthcare has signed a 10m deal with Danish emergency services company Falck.

The Midlands-based company provides a range of medical products and services to the pre-hospital market and ambulance providers in Ireland, the UK and Europe.

Critical Healthcare will become Falcks single managed service provider for medical consumables, and will have responsibility to manage some of Falcks key manufacturers and producers.

In addition, it will roll out Medlogistix, its multi award-winning procurement platform, for Falck across four countries  Denmark, the UK, Germany and Spain.

The deal is estimated to be worth approximately 2m per year over five years  meaning a total contract value of 10m.

The new contract means Critical Healthcares export sales will increase from accounting for 1pc of its business three years ago to 60pc in two years time.

On the back of the increased demand Critical Healthcare plans to at least double its staff from the current 22 over the next five years.

Dr Anne Cusack, MD and co-founder, Critical Healthcare, said: "We are absolutely thrilled with our collaboration with Falck and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with them."

"The impact of this collaboration is an important milestone in the companys progression and represents significant growth for us over the coming years. We have 22 directly employed staff in Westmeath, where our business is growing strongly. But with the new Falck deal, and other ongoing work, that number is set to increase further  by around 30 new hires over the next five years."

Meanwhile, Headquartered in Denmark, Falck has operations in 35 countries and its 2,500 ambulances respond to four million emergency calls each year.

The company also provides a large number of other pre-hospital services, including emergency helicopters and rapid response units with paramedics, nurses and doctors.
Questions: An image of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 on the exterior of the Boeing Renton factory in the United States. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Boeing shares tumbled early yesterday on heightened scrutiny by regulators and prosecutors over whether the approval process for the company's 737 Max aircraft was flawed.

A person familiar with the matter said that the US Transportation Department's inspector general was examining the plane's design certification before the second of two deadly crashes of the almost brand-new aircraft.

Separately, the 'Wall Street Journal' reported that a grand jury in Washington, DC, on March 11 issued a subpoena to at least one person involved in the development process of the Max. And a 'Seattle Times' investigation found that US regulators delegated much of the plane's safety assessment to Boeing and that the company in turn delivered an analysis with crucial flaws.

Boeing dropped 2.8pc to $368.53 before the start of regular trading in New York, well below any closing price since the deadly crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10. Ethiopia's transport minister said on Sunday that flight-data recorders showed "clear similarities" between the crashes of that plane and Lion Air Flight 610 last October.

US Federal Aviation Administration staff warned as early as seven years ago that Boeing had too much sway over safety approvals of new aircraft, prompting an investigation by Transportation Department auditors who confirmed the agency hadn't done enough to "hold Boeing accountable."

The 2012 investigation also found that discord over Boeing's treatment had created a "negative work environment" among FAA staff who approve new and modified designs, with many saying they'd faced retaliation for speaking up.

Their concerns pre-dated 737 Max development.

In recent years, the FAA has shifted more authority over the approval of new aircraft to the maker itself, even allowing Boeing to choose many of the personnel who oversee tests and vouch for safety.

Just in the past few months, Congress expanded the outsourcing even further. "It raises for me the question of whether the agency is properly funded, properly staffed and whether there has been enough independent oversight," said Jim Hall, who was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001 and is now an aviation-safety consultant.

At least a portion of the flight-control software suspected in the 737 Max crashes was certified by one or more Boeing employees who worked in the outsourcing arrangement, according to one person familiar with the work who wasn't authorised to speak about the matter.

Bloomberg
Former and current members of Danske Bank's executive board have waived bonuses for 2018 because of the money laundering scandal linked to its Estonian branch.

Danske Bank is under investigation in the United States, Denmark, Estonia, France and Britain over 200bn in payments that were found to have flowed through its Estonian branch from Russia, former Soviet states and elsewhere between 2007 and 2015.

Since the scandal surfaced last year, the bank has replaced its CEO and chairman, pulled out of Russia and the Baltics, boosted compliance efforts and promised to donate 201m to fighting financial fraud.

"The executive board has decided to waive the bonuses that could have been paid for 2018," new chairman Karsten Dybvad told shareholders at the bank's AGM in Copenhagen yesterday. The chairman said he supported the decision but did not disclose the size of the bonuses being waived.

Mr Dybvad replaced former chairman Ole Andersen at an extraordinary general meeting in December called by the Maersk family, the largest shareholder in the bank and shipping group AP Moller-Maersk.

Reuters
New blow: Future of Italian carrier has been plunged further into doubt after budget airlines move. Photo: REUTERS

The future of Alitalia was plunged further into uncertainty yesterday after British budget airline EasyJet pulled out of talks to rescue the Italian carrier two weeks before a deadline to save it.

EasyJet said it had decided to withdraw from the process after discussions with Italy's state-controlled railway Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane and US airline Delta Air Lines.

Alitalia was put under special administration in 2017 after workers rejected the latest in a long line of rescue plans, leaving the Italian government once again seeking a buyer to save the airline.

Ferrovie is racing against the clock to meet a deadline of the end of the month set by the Italian government to present a rescue plan for Alitalia, and had been in talks with EasyJet and Delta over a possible deal.

But the parties had not seen see eye to eye on the structure of a deal.

Without an industrial partner fully on board, a source said last week that Alitalia could soon find itself in trouble since neither Ferrovie nor the state have the skills to run the carrier.

Delta said it was still in talks with Ferrovie. "Discussions remain ongoing as Alitalia is a long-standing partner of Delta," the US airline said in a statement.

Alitalia and Ferrovie could not immediately be reached for a comment.

EasyJet, whose shares were unaffected by yesterday's announcement, had said several times it was interested in Alitalia's short-haul operations and positions at primary airports.

A source familiar with the talks said EasyJet still believed it could be a good partner for Alitalia, but that a deal was not feasible with the current approach.

"EasyJet pulled out because it wanted to control (Alitalia's) Milan hub and use it for point-to-point flights. This could not be done," another source with knowledge of the matter said.

EasyJet said it remained committed to Italy, as a key market for the company.

"We continue to invest in the three bases in Milan, Naples, (and) Venice," it said in a statement.

Reuters
Lesley Manville has said there is a growing demand for middle-aged women to see themselves represented on screen.

The star of comedy series Mum said that there has been a slow but significant shift to showing more older women in film and TV.

Manville plays the grieving Cathy in Mum, and says the character represents the kind of person more women want to see as the population ages.

Lesley Manville talks about the joy of working with the cast of @BBCTwo's #Mum #RTSawards pic.twitter.com/SpqxsmxkwL  Royal Television Society (@RTS_media) March 19, 2019

Speaking at the Royal Television Society Awards in London, she said that life and acting careers dont stop at 50, and more older women want to see people like them on screen.

She said: There is an audience for this. Women want to watch programmes where they feel theyre represented.

Comedy has been the bastion of men, historically, for many, many decades.

Its great that television and film are seeing not only how important, and vital and equal it is to have women at the helm. But there is a hunger, particularly from other women, to see that, to watch it.

Especially the middle-aged women. Its not game over just because youre over 50.

I think the shift has been quite slow, but I think the shift is beginning to be quite significant. I think series like Mum actually help that.

Video of the Day

Manville was nominated for best female comedy performance at the RTS awards.
BBC director-general Lord Hall joked he was as in the dark as everyone else about the identity of mystery villain H on Line Of Duty, as he announced the series would return on March 31.

The fourth series of the BBC crime drama left many questions unanswered when it came to an end in 2017, including the identity of a character known only as H.

But speaking at the launch of the fifth season, Lord Hall said he was not party to the shows secrets.

Welcoming the programmes creator Jed Mercurio and stars Adrian Dunbar, Vicky McClure and Martin Compston, he said: Its been two years too long as far as all of us are concerned.

Like many of you Ive spent much of that time trying to figure out who is H and sadly I dont get any closer to the answer, but thats testament to the genius of Jed.

I so admire Jed Mercurio for what you create. Everything starts with the writer and you entertain your audience like no-one else, you thrill, you surprise and every scene is so beautifully constructed.

What Jed creates is television that everybody talks about. Everyone I know has a theory about whether you can trust Ted Hastings or what might be in store for AC-12.

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Lord Hall continued: The weird thing is as I go around the place and talk about Line Of Duty, people think I might know some of the answers and nothing could be further from the truth.

Video of the Day

I was lucky enough to spend a bit of time with the team in Belfast. I took one look at Vicky and Martin and figured they wouldnt give anything away. They wouldnt tell me who H was.

I hoped that Adrian might be the weak link but even after a long and very enjoyable dinner and even after a glass of Bushmills later in the evening he wouldnt spill the beans, so I promise I know no more than any of you.

Lord Hall then announced that the show would finally be back on screens at the end of the month.

I cant wait, he said.

Line Of Duty returns at 9pm on BBC One on Sunday March 31.
Nicki Minaj paid tribute to the victims of the Manchester Arena terror attack as she performed in the city (PA)

Nicki Minaj paid tribute to the victims of the Manchester Arena terror attack as she performed in the city.

The superstar rapper was performing in the arena on Monday night as part of her Nicki Wrld Tour and between songs took time to mention the victims and their families.

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In May 2017, 22 people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device following an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena.

In footage captured by a fan and posted to Twitter, Minaj, a friend of Grandes, said: Put your light in the sky for everybody we lost.

God bless the families of everyone who survived and God bless Manchester for being resilient and not bowing down to fear. For being strong no matter what.

Minaj, 36, wrote on Twitter that Manchester had stolen my heart.

Minaj, who had earlier performed in London as part of her world tour, was forced to cancel a planned concert in Dublin last week after bad weather left her equipment stranded.
The couple told Lorraine they have moved on from last years scandal on Strictly (REX)

Strictly Come Dancings Katya Jones has said she was shocked at the reaction after she was pictured kissing her celebrity partner, comedian Seann Walsh, during the series last year.

Appearing alongside her husband, fellow Strictly professional Neil, on ITVs Lorraine, she said she had not realised the scale it was going to be.

The 29-year-old Russian, and British dancer Neil, 36, also told Lorraine that they feel people overreacted to the scandal and that they have both moved on.

She told Lorraine: Do you know, I think it took a few days, I didnt realise the scale it was going to be. So sort of hyped up. It was quite shocking really. It was really shocking, but I just tried not to look on the outside, we were just trying to keep it all together here.

Neil said finding out his wife had kissed her partner had been a major shock but added: I appreciated it of course that Katya told me, so I found out from Katya before I saw it in the news.

The couple, who have been together for 10 years, will both return to BBC Ones Strictly this year.

Asked by Lorraine if he thought people had overreacted, Neil said: For me, I felt they overreacted.

Katya said: Even the fact that were still talking about it. Its like, were over it, I think everyone else is over it, lets just move on.

The couple will soon embark on the tour for their dancing show called Somnium: A Dancers Dream.
The Chief Justice has complained to the Justice Minister about what he described as a leak to the media of a letter containing proposals to bring down the size of awards for minor injuries such as whiplash.

The letter was sent by Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan to Mr Justice Frank Clarke last month, but its contents appeared in a number of newspapers before the Chief Justice had received it.

In a strongly worded note, a copy of which has been obtained by Independent.ie, Mr Justice Clarke told Mr Flanagan it was particularly disconcerting to read the contents of the letter before it had arrived.

The only conclusion which I can reach is that there has been a leak to the media of the letter, the Chief Justice wrote.

While I am sure that the leak did not come from you, I am afraid I must conclude that it did come from someone on the Governments side.

I have to say that I find it particularly unhelpful that someone on the Governments side has seen fit to leak the letter before it has even been received.

Such action does nothing to foster a spirit of co-operation on matters of mutual interest.

The episode is something of an embarrassment for the Government which is under pressure over the slow pace of insurance cost reform.

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Mr Justice Clarke was particularly irked by the final paragraphs of one article which suggested he would respond favourably to the ministers letter. He said he could only conclude this briefing came from the Government side as well.

I will, of course, consider and respond to any correspondence which I actually receive, he wrote.

However, I feel that it is incumbent on me to express, in strong terms, my dismay at the actions of whichever person or persons organised the leak and briefing in question.

Mr Flanagan has asked the Chief Justice if it is possible for a small number of judges with expertise in personal injuries to participate in a group with a view to revising guideline award levels.

Under the proposal, the group would also include representatives of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) and, possibly, the Department of Justice.

The minister wants the judges to consider recent Court of Appeal rulings and part of a 2018 report by the Personal Injuries Commission, which found awards for minor injuries were almost five times the level of those in Britain.

That report called for a rebalancing and a recalibration of awards in line with levels in other countries and recommended that judges compile new guidelines.

It was thought this could be done by setting up a new Judicial Council.

However, Judicial Council legislation has stalled and hasnt progressed since November 2017, leaving the Government under pressure to come up with an interim measure.

Mr Flanagans letter suggested revised guideline awards could be identified where appropriate.

The findings could then be published by PIAB, under existing legislation, to supplement or replace guidelines in the Book of Quantum, which guides the level of compensation awarded in respect of a particular injury.

It is unclear if Mr Justice Clarke has responded to the proposal yet.

However, it has been opposed by the Law Society, which warned it may give rise to constitutional problems.

The society, which represents and regulates solicitors, said the failure to progress the legislation should not result in a knee-jerk reaction which could have unintended and unforeseen negative circumstances.

It warned of the importance of preserving the separation of powers and said the State could not be impartial in assessing appropriate claims levels when it is a defendant in many compensation cases.

The society is concerned claimants could fall foul of statutory rules on costs if the goalposts are shifted. It also claimed there was no evidence reducing damages would result in lower premiums.
A coroner has called for more to be done to warn of the dangers of swimming in the sea on a night out after an Irish dad drowned during Storm Callum.

Brighton and Hove assistant coroner Gilva Tisshaw said extra steps must be taken to make the public aware of the risks of going into the water after drinking or taking drugs as she ruled David Dooley's death an accident.

The 38-year-old Irishman was swept out to sea after a night out in Brighton on October 13, while being almost four times the drink-drive limit.

He was spotted "waving his arms and making attempts to return to shore" in the "very rough" sea with "high winds and large waves" before he fell lifeless and his body was seen floating.

An inquest on Tuesday heard revellers spilling out of seafront nightclubs, heading onto the beach and venturing into the sea after a night drinking was a common problem in the East Sussex city.

Born in Dublin, Mr Dooley lived in Tullamore, Co Offaly, before moving to Chiswick, west London. He is survived by his wife Khrystyna and son Brandon.

He had recently moved to Sussex for work before he died, having arranged that day to meet an old friend in Brighton and they ended up on the beach after spending the evening drinking.

A post-mortem examination found he died from drowning, but "serious intoxication" was a contributing factor. Toxicology reports also showed he had traces of cocaine in his system.

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Last month, Ms Tisshaw adjourned the inquest while she investigated "matters of concern" over whether Mr Dooley could have been saved.

Police were first called at 1.21am and saw him in the water two minutes later. He had stopped moving around 20 minutes later and his body was pulled out of the water at around 2am.

Officers were ordered not to go into the rough seas because Mr Dooley had drifted too far out and the weather was so bad it was unsafe to try to rescue him, the inquest previously heard.

The police on the scene did not know where to find life rings which are stored along the beach - although at least two had been close by, resulting in delays in attempts to reach him.

Instead they tried to get closer and shout instructions as he was battered by the waves and rapidly dragged west by the current.

Experienced surfer and swimmer Chris Ingall, the council's seafront office manager, told the court a shingle bank had built up on the beach that night and there were "extremely powerful" crashing waves of up to three metres high hitting the shore every four to seven seconds, adding: "The sea is very unforgiving at the best of times."

Sussex Police Sergeant Paul Nellis said he had "never seen the waves so bad" in his 10 years working for the police in the city, adding: "It was my honest opinion at the time that if anyone else had entered the sea, they would have been swept away."

While Pc Anastasia Dart said she feared for the safety of officers after feeling "shocked at the momentum of the sea" and "surprised that the waves were so aggressive."

Ms Tisshaw said: "I believe there was nothing further the police could have done."

In making the report to prevent future deaths - where coroners can tell public bodies to take action, Ms Tisshaw said: "I believe steps should be taken to increase police awareness of the locations of life rings.

"Steps should be taken to increase public awareness of the risks of the sea when having consumed alcohol or drugs".

Mr Dooley was one of two people to die as the storm wreaked devastation across western parts and coastal areas of the country that weekend. Corey Thomas Sharpling, 21, of Newcastle Emlyn, was killed near the village of Cwmduad in Carmarthenshire, west Wales, on the same day.
Gardai caught a burglar near the scene of a restaurant break-in by following a trail of footprints he left in the snow.

Mark O'Shea (38) stole cash from the Dublin eaterie as the 'Beast from the East' storm swept Ireland last year.

Officers immediately spotted his tracks in the fresh snow.

O'Shea tried to flee when gardai saw him, but he was arrested after a struggle.

The accused, of Thornton Heights, Inchicore, Dublin, pleaded guilty to burglary at Moloughney's restaurant.

Judge John Hughes gave him a six-month suspended sentence. He noted there had been no confrontation at the restaurant in Vernon Avenue, Clontarf, and there was no suggestion of violence.

Dublin District Court heard gardai became aware of an intruder at the restaurant on March 2, 2018, where 200 was taken from the till.

There had been heavy snowfall and gardai followed the trail that led to O'Shea.

When he saw the officers, he tried to run into a cul de sac, but they were able to pin him down. A garda told Judge Hughes the accused did not encounter anybody during the burglary, but put up "quite a struggle" with officers.

The court heard that O'Shea had 36 previous convictions for offences including theft, criminal damage and possession of drugs. It had been four years since O'Shea's last theft conviction, his barrister said.

A probation report before the court outlined the accused's personal circumstances.

O'Shea had been getting on very well for a period of his life and had a successful business, but lost that during the recession, his barrister said.

O'Shea's drug problem began while he was out of work and he slid into addiction. He had stolen to feed his habit, the court heard. However, since the crimes, he had taken steps to wean himself off.

O'Shea had moved out of Dublin to Arklow, Co Wicklow, to help his rehabilitation.

The probation report had "positive aspects" and spoke highly of O'Shea's recent attempts to get back on the straight and narrow.
Scott Harry Richardson, 27, had his conviction for the alleged 2015 attack quashed last year after an appeal court heard new DNA evidence had come to light.

An alleged IRA man has gone on trial accused of raping two teenage boys in a republican safe house in the 1990s.

The man (45) has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to charges of sexual assaulting and raping two boys in Co. Louth on dates in the early 1990s and in 2001.

On the opening day of the trial, Patrick Gageby SC, prosecuting, said in his opening speech to the jury that both complainants in the case lived in a large home owned by a dedicated republican and that it began to be used as a safe house.

A man told Mr Gageby that he lived in the house in Louth in the 1980s and 1990s to which IRA volunteers would be brought during the night and stay for a few days or weeks.

He said the accused man first came to stay in the house around 1991 or 1992. The accused became part of the family and that he looked up to him as a "big brother figure".

The man said that the accused began to abuse him when he was 13 or 14 years old. He said he woke up to find the accused sexually assaulting him on six occassions.

He said he would push the accused away from him when he woke up and that the accused would apologise for his actions. He said that after the first occasion the accused asked him not to tell anyone about what happened and talked about his experience in the IRA.

He said that the house had a reputation for being haunted and that on one occasion the accused had claimed to have seen his bed lifting up on its own. The accused was told by the owner of the house to go sleep with the boys if he was really afraid and he slept in the complainant's room with him.

The man said that he went camping with the accused in a nearby field and that he fell asleep in the tent after becoming intoxicated. He woke up to find he was being raped.

He said the accused told him to be quiet and to stay still. He said he felt confused about what was happening aside from that he knew he was being broken in every way imaginable.

The man said that in 2001 he was living on his own in another part of Co Louth when the accused arrived to his door.

The accused convinced him to go for some drinks and while out he apologised for the things he had done to him years ago.

He said that they went back to his house and that he remembers sitting on his couch while drunk. He said the next thing he knew he was face down in his bed and he was being sexually assaulted. He said that he did not agree to any of this occurring.

He said that he turned to alcohol in a bad way in the aftermath of these incidents, but said he had been sober for ten years.

The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Paul McDermott and a jury.
Karen Brown, the 31-year-old partner of Katie Taylors father, Pete, today Tuesday settled a 60,000 damages claim against Dunlaoghaire, Co Dublin, motorist Enda Curran who, it was claimed, rear ended them two years ago.

Brown, who was listed in her proceedings as having two addresses, Camaderry Road, Bray, Co Wicklow, and Wyattville Road, Ballybrack, Co Dublin, was a passenger in Pete Taylors car on 5th March, 2017 when Currans car collided with it at Upper Glenageary Road, Co Dublin.

Barrister Paul Gallagher, who appeared with Anderson and Gallagher Solicitors for Brown, told Circuit Court President, Mr Justice Raymond Groarke,that her claim had been settled following talks with the defendants legal team and could be struck out with an order for her costs.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed to the court and it was not stated if a similar whiplash injury claim had been lodged or was being made on Mr Taylors behalf who was driving Ms Brown at the time.

Mr Taylor accompanied Ms Brown to the Four Courts for the proceedings but neither of them had to attend in the courtroom.

Mr Taylor was with Ms Brown, a marketing and sales consultant, throughout settlement discussions outside Circuit Civil Court No 28.

Brown claimed that Enda Curran, of Highthorn Park, Dunlaoghaire, had, due to negligence, breach of duty and while allegedly driving without due care and attention, rear ended Mr Taylors vehicle in which she was a front seat passenger.

She claimed in her proceedings that she had suffered whiplash injuries to her neck, shoulders and back and that pain had not settled despite her having taken Neurofen.

She had attended Dr Peter Joyce on May 25 at Beechlawn Medical Centre who found she had tenderness to her neck and upper back.

Dr Joyce had prescribed anti-inflammatory medication but by early June she had reported that the pain in her neck was getting worse and that she was suffering a constant dull ache with shooting pains in her head.

Brown stated in her claim that she had been unable to go to her gym or run due to the pain and that prior to the accident she had regularly exercised. She had undergone an MRI of her cervical spine and had been advised she should be seen by specialists.

Judge Groarke, on the application of Mr Gallagher, struck out the proceedings with an order for Ms Browns legal costs.
Cristina Garcia Garcia (Partner of the late Rosa Gonzales Velasco) pictured at the Four Courts after a High Court action.Pic: Collins Courts

The family of a 28-year-old Spanish woman who died here six years ago has settled High Court actions over the care she received at Kerry General Hospital.

Tattoo artist, Rosa Gonzalez Valesco, died after an alleged failure to diagnose and treat her rare cancer on a timely basis when she sought help for a swelling on her jaw.

It was contended the cancer was misinterpreted as Tuberculosis (TB).

The young womans mother and partner on Tuesday settled their actions against the HSE, which denied all the claims.

Ms Gonzalez Valesco died six weeks after she first sought help at Kerry General A&E at the end of October 2013.

Oonah McCrann SC, for the family, said she had been living in Ireland and became aware of a lump on her neck and jaw and went to Kerry General in Tralee.

Counsel said her side contended had the cancer been diagnosed, she could have had chemotherapy immediately and it would have altered her prognosis to five years or may have been curative.

Her family were reassured by the diagnosis and did not rush to her bedside and as a result they felt they lost precious time.

In the two cases, her partner of six years, Ms Cristina Garcia Garcia, sued for nervous shock over her death and the deceased's mother, Isabel Velasco Cobaleda, from Seville, sued over the circumstances of her daughters care.

The terms of the settlement are confidential and the cases were struck out.

There was, it was claimed, a failure to diagnose and treat her cancer in a timely basis and an alleged failure to identify alleged malignant cells in the core biopsy.

An incorrect diagnosis of TB was made, it was claimed.

Ms Gonzalez Valesco had attended a GP in late September 2013 complaining of swelling in her left jaw and antibiotics were prescribed.

She suffered continuous swelling and attended Kerry General on October 31, 2013.

She had an ultrasound and chest x-ray. She later had a CT scan which showed up lung lesions and she later had a biopsy and TB was suspected.

In November 2013, she was told she would need to undergo further investigations.

On December 2, the woman had a Mantoux test which was negative for the presence of TB.

Her condition worsened and she was transferred to a Cork hospital where she remained in isolation until it was decided on December 12, 2013, she did not have TB.

She continued to deteriorate and suffered three cardiac arrests on December 16, 2013 when she died, it was claimed, due to a rare cancer called advanced widespread histiocytic sarcoma.

In a statement outside court, Rosa's mother and partner said they were glad there was a successful outcome to the proceedings.

"It is a pity it has taken so long. We would hope the Irish health system will communicate better with families of ill patients in the future," the statement said.
A GAA community has been left devastated after a former player and son of a club founder died in a tragic motorbike accident.

Robbie McCabe, aged 39, died when his motorbike crashed on Whitestown Way, Tallaght, Dublin, early yesterday morning.

David Reynolds, secretary of St Judes GAA Club in Templeogue, just 5km from the accident scene, said everyone at the club had been left in shock at the loss of a man who had been involved until recently in the club since before his fifth birthday.

"Robbie had been involved with the club from under five years old. His father Martin was one of the founding members," said Mr Reynolds.

"So the family are a major part of the club. It's so sad a loss. Robbie was still involved as a member. He was a gentle, lovely guy - an absolute gent, quiet and unassuming."

Mr McCabe worked as a barman in Devitts Pub on Camden Street and had been living in Tallaght, although he was brought up in Templeogue and still had strong connections there.

Gardai appealed for witnesses to contact Tallaght garda station on 01 666 6000, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any Garda station.

Mr McCabe's tragic death brings to 39 the number of people who have died on the country's roads so far this year.
The board leading the development of the new National Children's Hospital has refused to release an internal report into the cost escalation.

The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) rejected a Freedom of Information request by the Irish Independent for the report, citing "commercial sensitivities".

It also refused to release correspondence related to the report.

An internal report by the board, called 'Process to Guaranteed Maximum Price', was compiled when the escalation of the hospital's construction costs became apparent.

The report was discussed at a meeting of another board involved in the construction of the landmark health facility on November 16.

Notes of that meeting report that there was a "detailed discussion on the GMP process as set out (in the report)".

Dean Sullivan, a HSE official who took part by phone, noted the report "which explains reasons for increase in costs, sets out options for action and makes clear the contractual/financial risk of not instructing (the next phase of works by December 3)".

However, a request for the report was refused by the hospital board, despite dozens of documents - including Government memos - being released since concerns erupted over the cost of the project.

Meanwhile, an external report into the hospital overspend is being conducted by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). It will analyse the massive jump in the bill for the hospital, in which the construction price has risen by 450m since April 2017.

It is also expected to assess the risks the expense of the project will rise further - beyond the 1.4bn it is currently expected to cost.

The expert report was due to be delivered to Government on March 29.

However, that report will now not be completed until April, Health Minister Simon Harris has confirmed.

"The NPHDB is participating fully with the PwC review and has no further comment to make at this time," said a spokeswoman for the NPHDB.
BRAIN injury support group, Headway, has launched a campaign for a 2m trauma recovery centre in Cork.

Headway, which supports people with an acquired brain or head injury, hope the proposed new centre on the Carrigrohane Road will allow people from the south to avail of recovery supports closer to home rather than having to travel to Dublin.

The campaign for the 2m new centre was launched in Cork today with Lord Mayor Councillor Mick Finn to mark National Brain Injury Awareness Week.

Headway's Stephen Forrest said that people recovering from a brain injury such as those inflicted in an accident, stroke or other trauma face a challenging task.

Living with a brain injury can be hard, Every Cork person who has a brain injury from a stroke, accident or other trauma will probably need to access vital services and support from Headway at some point as they cope with their injury, he said

Its a difficult road for all survivors and for their families but Headway is there to help."

However, Headways current Cork facilities are not sufficient to support anyone trying to cope with such a life changing injury.

More than 350 people and families are currently being assisted.

The charity aims to merge their existing Ballincollig service with the proposed new Carrigrohane recovery support centre to offer those with a brain injury a world-class rehabilitation centre.

Headway rehabilitation director, Liz Owens, said it is vital the new centre is built.

We have reached a critical point in time - a new centre needs to be built. A project plan is currently being developed that will allow for the creation of a state-of-the-art, not-for-profit facility that will be able to treat hundreds of patients annually."

"Headway needs to raise a total of 2m to build, landscape and furnish a location that will treat and support hundreds of survivors and their families each year.

The support group said their services are currently stretched to the limit - and 100 additional families in the greater Cork area could immediately be supported via the new centre.

Councillor Finn said the new centre is desperately needed by the region.

"I would encourage people to get behind the fundraising campaign, he said.

Headway was boosted by the confirmation it will now be one of the recipient charities from the Lord Mayor's Christmas Concert.
Friends from the hen party stayed in the village for news. Photo: Ciara Wilkinson

The death of a mother of three who went missing on a hen night is understood to have been a tragic accident.

There was widespread shock as the body of Ruth Maguire (30) was recovered from Carlingford Lough yesterday afternoon.

Ms Maguire, from Newcastle, Co Down, was with 32 people who were on a hen night in the popular Co Louth village when she went missing.

There was great concern for her welfare as soon as it was realised she was missing because it was "out of character", according to her friends.

The group was staying in a house in the village just a short walk from the pub they had been in.

When they returned to the house around 11.30pm on Saturday, they realised Ms Maguire was not with them.

The group, the majority of whom are from Belfast, began searching for her straight away, but could not find her.

It emerged Ms Maguire took a photograph outside a house that is across the road from Carlingford Lough and posted it to Instagram about midnight.

As a result of that, searches began of the shore line and the lough itself, in case she had gone into the water.

About 1.30pm yesterday, a body was spotted in the water between Carlingford Harbour and Greenore.

Gardai confirmed that the body was that of the missing woman.

While a post-mortem examination has yet to be carried out, it is understood there was nothing to suggest her death was suspicious and it is being treated as a tragic accident.

George Campbell of the Greenore Coastguard, said: "I am sorry to say that a young female has been recovered and identified as the person who was reported missing.

"Our sympathy goes out to the lady's family."

Mr Campbell thanked all of the organisations who were involved in the search for her, including Clogherhead Coast Guard and RNLI unit, An Garda Siochana, HM Coast Guard, South Down Coast Guard, Newcastle RNLI and the Dublin and Belfast operations radio rooms.

The hen party had arrived on Saturday afternoon, having travelled from Belfast.

Yesterday, as the search continued, many of them, including the bride-to-be, were by the lough waiting for news.

The village is an extremely popular location for hen and stag parties, and one local woman said that often, people did not get their bearings before they headed out to socialise.

"Everybody is very shocked here this morning," Kay McKevitt said yesterday.

"It often happens that a group comes to the village on a Saturday and by the end of the night, they have forgotten which end of the village they are staying in.

"They are not in the village long enough to get their bearings."
People looking up information online about sensitive medical issues including abortion and sexual infections have been tracked by private companies because the HSE includes what's described as a privacy 'Trojan horse' in its own webpages.

A major review by Danish researchers found almost all pages on the HSE website were being monitored by advertising industry trackers. These trackers, which were fully permitted by the HSE, meant dozens of technology firms could log users' locations, personal devices and browsing habits.

"A broad spectrum of Irish citizens' health data is being continuously and invisibly leaked to commercial actors," according to the CookieBot research.

Once collected, information can be sold via data brokers to the advertising industry where it can be used to target potentially vulnerable people based on their web-browsing habits.

In a statement last night, the HSE said it had begun removing the 'ShareThis' feature at the heart of the controversy from its website pending a review of the CookieBot research.

The HSE did not dispute the key findings, but said a new website it was developing did not include the data tracking feature.

It insisted some highly sensitive information had already been moved to these new pages.

"Our new site sections currently include mental health, child health, unplanned pregnancy and abortion services, and medical cards and other schemes and benefits," officials claimed.

However, a disclaimer still on the website last night said the web pages used cookies - activity tracking technology - from DoubleClick, a Google-owned company, and that they are used for serving targeted advertisements.

The HSE said it did not benefit financially from having the controversial software.

A key risk identified by the Danish researchers was the HSE's inclusion of apparently innocuous 'ShareThis' buttons on almost all of its webpages, to allow readers to send information to other users.

However, the technology running those buttons actually provides advertising companies with an entryway to the complex software running behind the Government website.

These third parties and even fourth parties can then log users' locations, devices and browsing habits, according to the CookieBot research.

The research, first reported by the 'Financial Times', found similar problems on many government websites across the EU.

Most Irish Government websites performed relatively well, but the HSE was an exception, ranking worst among EU health services. A total of 73pc of so-called landing pages on the HSE website - where web users arrive initially to seek information - contained the ad trackers. Up to 23 outside companies were monitoring single HSE pages.

If the HSE website is in contravention of tough European data privacy rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it could face fines of up to 1m.
The husband of missing woman Tina Satchwell (47) issued an emotional plea for information on her whereabouts as Gardai said they have now pursued 330 different lines of inquiry and studied over 100 hours of CCTV security camera footage.

Tina vanished without trace from her Cork home on March 20 2017 - and her husband, Richard, used the second anniversary of her disappearance to issue a heartfelt plea for information as to her whereabouts.

Mr Satchwell has consistently maintained that his wife is alive and that all he wants is for her to return home safe.

In a brief statement, he pleaded with her to make contact with her family - or for anyone with information on her whereabouts to contact the family or Gardai.

"My arms are open and always will be until I draw my final breath," he said.

"I will never stop loving you."

Expand Close Tina Satchwell (46) went missing from her Youghal home in Co Cork on March 20, 2017 / Facebook

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Whatsapp Tina Satchwell (46) went missing from her Youghal home in Co Cork on March 20, 2017

Mr Satchwell said his life has been a nightmare since his beloved wife vanished from their Youghal, Co Cork home two years ago.

"The hurt and pain I have had to ensure these past two years. I almost find them at times (to be) unbearable. I live in a state of misery."

Mr Satchwell said Tina's beloved pets were being cared for by him - and he previously said he greets a photograph of his missing wife each morning.

He has also kept all birthday, anniversary and Christmas presents for his wife since her disappearance.

Gardai admitted all leads in the case so far have failed to yield any clue as to solving the mystery over what happened to her two years ago.

A senior garda source confirmed that they have no plans, as yet, for any further major searches following major operations off the Youghal coast and in an east Cork woodland.

Ms Satchwell was last seen by her husband, Richard, on March 20 2017 when she asked him to leave their Youghal, Co Cork home on an errand.

She was not at their home when he returned a few hours later and he presumed she had gone to stay with her family.

He reported her missing four days later.

A huge garda search operation and an analysis of hours of CCTV security camera footage has failed to yield any clue as to what happened to Tina.

Tina did not have a passport - and there was no indication she had purchased tickets to travel overseas by either plane or ferry.

"At this point, all the indications are that Tina never left Ireland," the source said.

Gardai searched CCTV footage from all Irish ports and airports without any sighting of Tina being found.

UK police have also checked for Tina at their ports and airports - and at locations in the UK where she used to live.

All such searches have yielded nothing.

Gardai again appealed for anyone with information to contact them.

Mr Satchwell has repeatedly pleaded with Tina to return home - and said his life has become a nightmare without her.

The former truck driver, who is now working as a courier, says 'good morning' to a photo of his beloved Tina every day in the sitting room of their Youghal home.

He spent the first anniversary of her disappearance at their Youghal home with Tina's dog, Ruby, which she loved like a child.

A heartbroken Mr Satchwell said his life has been "hell" since Tina vanished.

Last Christmas he insisted he remains convinced Tina is alive - and issued a fresh appeal for anyone who may have information about Tina's movements or whereabouts to contact the Gardai.

"Every morning I wake up I am waiting for the door to open or the phone to go (to say Tina has been found safe)," he said.

"That is a daily thing for me - even now."

"I feel sadness and hope - that is all I have. I don't have anything else," he said.

"When I get up every morning, I say 'good morning' to a photo of her left in the sitting room - it might sound crazy but that is what I do.

That is what I am left with at the minute."

Mr Satchwell said there was nothing out of the ordinary on March 20 2017 to indicate his wife was about to disappear.

"It was the same as any other morning - she got up and I made her a cup of tea and a slice of toast. It is something I will never forget."

"It wasn't unusual for her to turn around and ask me to go shopping."

"I thought nothing of it at the time. When I came back, the keys were on the ground. When she didn't come back I thought she was gone to Fermoy," he said.

He raised the alarm four days later when he realised, to his shock, that Tina had not gone to visit relatives in Fermoy. Tina's relatives in Fermoy, Co Cork said they were too upset by the anniversary to comment publicly.

Two suitcases were missing as well as items of Tina's clothing from the Youghal home on March 20 2017.

However, her beloved dog, Ruby, was left alone in the house.

Mr Satchwell also claimed that 26,000 in cash, saved from a property sale and the proceeds of car boot sales, was missing from the property.

Last March, Gardai conducted a major 12 day search of a 40 acre woodland outside Castlemartyr in east Cork.

However, that yielded nothing of significance in the search for Tina.

No further such searches are currently planned.
Fun and games: The Aqua Dome in Tralee pays 20pc of its income to cover soaring insurance costs, fuelled by compo culture

One of the best known water parks in the country faces closure unless there is radical reform to deal with the insurance crisis.

Denis Reen, chairman of the Aqua Dome in Tralee, Co Kerry, said "compo culture" was making it increasingly difficult to run the indoor park and swimming pool.

His comments come as consumers, businesses and voluntary groups claim Government attempts to reform insurance and cut award levels have stalled.

Minister with responsibility for insurance reform Michael D'Arcy has blamed "off-the-wall" pay outs, and criticised insurers for increasing profits by repeatedly loading premiums on companies.

The well-known Kerry water park has seen its insurance premium double in the last year alone and is also now struggling to get cover.

Mr Reen said the only way it was able to get public liability cover last year was to accept it covers the first 185,000 of any claims. This so-called excess was up from 75,000 the year before.

"Closure is inevitable if the trend of rising premiums and higher excesses continues. Unless the Government gets to grips with the situation we will be forced to close at some stage in the future," he said.

"There is no will to make the changes that are necessary. Minister D'Arcy is up against it to try to make changes because the insurance and legal lobbies are too strong."

The company behind the Aqua Dome has to set aside 2 for every 10 it takes to cover insurance costs and claims. "Our turnover is 1m and then we have to keep aside 200,000 for insurance. It is just not tenable," said Mr Reen.

He said the country was suffering from a compo culture. "We have a couple of hundred thousand visitors each year and the majority of these go without incident. But it is the frivolous claims that are causing the problem, making our insurance rise."

He said the centre was struggling to find an insurer. It uses London firms, as Irish ones won't quote for business. But many UK insurers are turning away from this country as they see it as too much of a risk.

Mr Reen's comments come as seven activity centres have been forced to close in the last three months. Others warned they face closure.

A bowling centre in Offaly and a children's train ride service that operates in large shopping centres have ceased operations.

The Alliance for Insurance Reform said reform was taking too long and it was dismayed at the admission from Mr D'Arcy that plans to set up a Garda fraud unit have made no progress.

A spokesman for the minister said he shared the frustration of consumers and small firms with the delay in setting up a dedicated Garda insurance fraud unit.

Mr D'Arcy and Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan were pushing ahead with plans to bring award levels down to the levels that pertain in other countries.
Like many things to have been thrown overboard in the wake of the Brexit vote two and a half years ago, the old adage that "a week is a long time in politics" now seems hopelessly naive.

After all, the past week's worth of chicanery in Westminster alone would normally be enough drama to fill the lifetime of two parliaments.

Yet, to the consternation and bewilderment of even the most seasoned political observers, the open confusion which has reigned since Theresa May's farcical dash to Strasbourg last Monday seems to have deepened.

On that occasion, it looked as if the embattled prime minister had managed to swing some sort of deal on the Irish backstop with the EU. Bizarrely, the whole thing was then scuppered by her own attorney general, Geoffrey Cox; an act of political sabotage which, in previous centuries, would have resulted in his head on a spike outside the Tower of London.

In the years and decades to come, historians will have a field day trying to piece together the various strands, grudges and personal foibles which have managed to turn a momentous, genuinely life-changing political decision about the future of the entire EU into a squalid, petty jostling for position by politicians - politicians who seem to have completely abandoned even the pretence of doing the right thing for the people in favour of securing their own post-Brexit future.

But will there even be a Brexit at this stage?

Interestingly, that is the question being asked by the most hard-line Brexiteers themselves, a sign of their despondency at the farcical and unworkable situation which now besets us all.

Of course, from an Irish perspective, that would suit us all very nicely, thank you very much.

But to imagine that the whole thing might simply fade away into the ether through a combination of second thoughts, mature reflection and the simple - but oft overlooked - element of pure Brexit-fatigue, is an exercise in wishful thinking.

It is quite incredible, really, to think that with a mere 10 days to go until the UK leaves the EU, everyone seems further away from some sort of deal than ever - and wherever there is uncertainty, there is room for chaos and bad choices.

Unfortunately, as we have learned in the past two and a half years, there is no upper limit on the number of bad choices that can be made by people who have placed their own venal self interest ahead of the common good.

Mrs May met with the DUP again yesterday in what is merely the latest set of "crisis talks" (we've long passed the days of mere "meetings", now everything is a crisis) in an effort to get it on board for a third vote. But even then, there is no guarantee that its support would be sufficient to sway the vote her way.

The most optimistic estimates seem to suggest that a change of heart from the DUP could sway some of the other Brexiteers to vote with Mrs May's proposals. But even those estimates suggest she still only has a 50/50 chance of getting it over the line, while the hard-line European Research Group reckons she will lose by 30-40 votes, even with DUP support.

Even if she were to win over the DUP - a party hardly renowned for its give-and-take approach to politics - she then faces an open revolt on the floor from the likes of David Davis, Dominic Raab and the ever-reliable Priti Patel, she of the "let's starve the Irish into submission" school of diplomacy.

If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then one could suggest that there is something seriously amiss in Downing Street. But Mrs May's supporters will argue that there is, after all, a method to the madness we are witnessing.

The logic behind this seems to suggest that, were she to decide that there is no way she could win that vote, she will go to the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and ask for an extension to the exit plan.

Would that be for three months? Or could it be stretched out to two years, as some have suggested?

Even assuming the club of 27 consents to any extension - and that's a large assumption, given the rumoured resistance from France, Austria and Italy - that would merely be kicking the can down the road.

But even kicking the can down the road would at least give people some more time to try to work out what has so far been unworkable.

That the cracks are beginning to show between the pro-Brexit/anti-May factions may give the Irish some grounds for hope that the Tory party's difficulties provide some opportunities for both this country and, indeed, the EU to exploit.

Boris Johnson, who has become a truly malevolent figure in all of this, managed to infuriate his fellow Brexiteers when he said that anyone who would vote with Mrs May's proposed plan would be "guilty of sabotage", which was merely rhetorical grist to the mill. But to then suggest, even more witheringly, that any pro-Brexit Tory who sided with their nominal leader (well, she is leader for now, at least) would be "unpatriotic" was, given the current febrile mood in Parliament, an insult that would be second only to accusing a member of the DUP of being a secret Fenian.

Even Jacob Rees-Mogg seems to be showing signs of panic. Or at the very least, he now seem less convinced of his own position.

Speaking on a London radio station yesterday, he admitted: "I genuinely haven't made up my mind. There is a hierarchy. No deal is better than Mrs May's deal, but Mrs May's deal is better than not leaving. I don't think we will get another chance to leave the European Union.

"Delay is denial. The thought that if you get two years for something better is hopelessly optimistic."

Of course, a delay is not a denial at all, it is merely giving the technocrats - and, far more importantly, businesses - an opportunity to gather their breath and give them a better perspective on the long game ahead.

To most of us, that would seem reasonable. But as we have seen in frankly horrifying detail recently, reason left Westminster a long time ago, and the mother of parliaments has disgraced itself in ways previously unthinkable.

Ultimately, this week will - or should, at least - force the hands of everyone at the table: a straight no deal, an extension to the exit deal of varying times, another referendum on the matter, or a general election.

Confused? You should be.

After all, those Tories who have been leading this charge over the cliff have now become the political equivalent of the last scenes of 'Reservoir Dogs', with all the protagonists standing in a circle and pointing guns at each other.

And we all know how that ended up.
Another day, another Brexit plot twist - and this one looks set to make the uphill climb towards a deal even more perilous.

Embattled Tory leader Theresa May is all but clinging on to her premiership, and has now had her apparent strategy of running down the clock dealt a potentially fatal blow by the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.

Her third-time-lucky vote has turned out to be rather unlucky - and that's without looking at the parliamentary arithmetic, which still looks breathtakingly tight, even if she does manage to win over her key targets.

The announcement by Mr Bercow - a man who could have been plucked from central casting for the role in the House of Commons - was met with frantic reaction across the spectrum in the UK.

It was welcomed by hard-line Brexiteers, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, who said: "May I say how delighted I am that you have decided to follow precedent, which is something I am greatly in favour of."

But in Whitehall, there was an unsurprisingly icy reception, with the prime minister's spokesman confirming the speaker "did not forewarn us of the content of his statement, or indeed the fact that he was making one".

The solicitor general in the UK described the chaos as a "constitutional crisis".

The words of Winston Churchill describing a "riddle wrapped in an enigma" have been invoked often along the Brexit way. But it seems Mr Bercow has added another layer of complexity, adding a lock to which only he holds the key. He will be the one to determine if the UK government has met the bar he has set out, based on hundreds of years of parliamentary precedent.

The Brexit battle facing Mrs May, with just 10 days to go until the UK is scheduled to leave, has split on two fronts.

On one hand, she must continue trying to sway the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) behind her deal in order to convince enough rebel Tory and Labour MPs to vote for it.

On the other hand, she will have to find a way to actually ensure there is a vote for them to get behind.

Mr Bercow has suggested it would take a change from Europe to ensure the deal was substantially different if it returned for a third vote.

But there wasn't immediate clarity on whether changes to domestic legislation alongside the deal would be enough to meet his litmus test. Changes to the UK's Brexit legislation had been mooted as a potential way to reassure the DUP.

Within minutes of his proclamation, speculation had turned to the idea Queen Elizabeth could end the parliamentary session early and convene a new one to allow the deal to be brought back for a vote.

There are, it appears, avenues out of the current crisis, but the intervention by Mr Bercow has left the UK scrambling to find it - and all the while, the ticking of the clock is only getting louder.
The day after the Brexit vote, the Irish embassy in London ran out of citizenship application forms. Ever since, people have been scrambling around, shaking family trees, trying to find an Irish granny to ensure they will still be able to freely travel and work in the EU. But should we be a soft touch for so-called 'passport tourists' in search of a nationality post-Brexit?

The stampede to claim Irish heritage shows no sign of slowing down, with almost a quarter of a million applications for Irish passports submitted in less than three months by anxious Britons. Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney says the figures represent a 30pc increase on the same period last year.

It's not just the Brits either. The number of passport applications from Americans rose by 36pc after Donald Trump's election victory in 2016. 2018 was a record year, with the highest number (860,000) of Irish passports ever issued.

During St Patrick's weekend in 2018, more than 2,500 people applied for an Irish passport online. Officials are expecting that number to double after this weekend's global Paddywhackery. Traditionally, St Patrick's Day is the one day in the year when everyone is aware of the Irish .

Why do it? Well, being Irish is seen as being likeable, cute and eternally up for the craic. More practically you are entitled to travel freely and work in any of the European Union countries. You don't need to apply for a work permit for this - it comes with the passport. Once you've worked in an EU country for a certain period of time, you're automatically entitled to unemployment and pension benefits as well as health care.

It's fairly easy to get an Irish passport - we currently have one of the broadest sets of criteria for obtaining one. Irish citizenship law is based on the so-called 'ius soli' - if you are born in Ireland, including in the North, you are entitled to be Irish. These long-standing principles were confirmed in the Good Friday Agreement.

Anybody born on the island of Ireland before 2005 is entitled, as is everyone from Northern Ireland. If you were born in Ireland after January 1, 2005, and at least one parent was an Irish citizen at the time, you qualify for a passport. Relatives from other European countries count too, so around 10pc of the British population, excluding Northern Ireland, qualifies for Irish papers. Even if neither of your parents were born in Ireland, you may claim citizenship through an Irish grandparent.

For years, the State has been happy to hand out passports for all sorts of different reasons. Sometimes, we just sold them to wealthy people. And, presumably because the Government is happy with this arrangement, we still do that.

In the '90s, the Irish passport was for sale and all the usual requirements under the Citizenship Act 1986 could be waived by a government minister.

Passports could be bought by anybody willing to make a large investment in the country, live here for a while and be our best friend forever. This 'economic citizenship' scheme operated by the Irish government allowed anybody to make a one-off investment in return for instant citizenship within 90 days.

One of the most notorious passport recipients - Sultan Khalid Bin Mahfouz - was a Saudi Arabian banker who was being investigated in America over fraud in 1990, when he and his family bought Irish passports. Apparently, they were handed personally to him by Charlie Haughey. This particular scheme was eventually scrapped, mostly because the public was uncomfortable about the opportunity it gave politicians to sell Irish passports.

Mossad reportedly used eight "Irish" passports in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010. It was later reported they were fake. But in 2012, the passports-for-sale scheme was reintroduced by a cash-strapped Irish government and in 2013, to encourage higher uptake, the cost of the cheapest 'investment' scheme available to obtain residency and then citizenship was halved to 500,000.

Many of the holders of new Irish passports will know something about Ireland already. They might have heard something about our obsessions with land and language, religion and rebellion. They might have an Irish mammy or have read some of Yeats's poetry. Some of them won't, and I'm not sure we should celebrate a casual attitude to holding Irish citizenship.

Gaining Irish citizenship should be about something bigger than the right to still go on your summer holiday to Italy. After all, new passport holders now have a say in our country and they should have some care about it too.

We should value our citizenship more. We should award it its full value. Unless we have a sense of what our citizenship means and have a conversation about that, we can't really criticise anyone who abandons their Irish citizenship to pay less tax.

And people wearing their leprechaun hats and binge drinking on Paddy's Day should remember that we are not just Irish on March 17, we are Irish for 365 days a year, every year.

So, go off and apply for your Irish passport if you want but, please, when you get it and look at the score for Amhran na bhFiann on its pages, understand what the words mean and think about the little country that gave you the right to citizenship.
The world of Irish millinery has a new element and it comes from the handyman's box of tools ... it's the plastic cable tie.

Spiralling pheasant feathers, pearls, straws and lavish bows still have a place, but the humble cable tie has found a surprisingly new use in hat making.

Dubliner Ashleigh Myles's risk paid off and she was named Milliner of the Year at the Irish Fashion Innovation Awards.

She entered three headpieces made with more than 2,000 cable ties. Her design process involves hours of looping and hand-painting the ties with metallic marker after her day's work as a finance manager.

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"I've been there for over 20 years and I took up millinery as a hobby and it has grown into something I love and find very therapeutic," said Ms Myles, who devised a formula for success.

"I'm always using cable ties at home and for the awards, I wanted to do something innovative and different."

Her successes include a win at Ladies' Day at the RDS, where the straw hat was inspired by arrows on the M50.

Katie Ann McGuigan, from Newry, Co Down, won both the Designer of the Year and the Overall Innovation Award.

The Accessories Designer prize went to scarf designer Rita White.

Student Designer of the Year went to Holly Rose Twomey, from LSAD, and Jeweller of the Year went to Emer Roberts.
In the never-ending coverage of doom and gloom coverage, there has emerged one positive retail story.

Last week, Inditex, the Spanish retail giant which owns Zara announced profit growth of 3pc, which, 10 years ago, would hardly make headline news, but in 2019, when retailers are crashing at an alarming rate, it prompts pause for thought. Inditex owns Pull & Bear, Bershka and Massimo Dutti, among others, but the undoubted jewel in its crown is Zara.

Its attainability has long been at the core of its long-standing dominance in the cut-throat retail market and its styles transfer universally, attracting shoppers from royals like Kate Middleton and Spain's Queen Letizia to the girl next door.

As Instagram tightens its grip on the youth market, which expects teenagers and younger women in particular to embrace a copycat culture, Zara is using this practice to its advantage.

Last year, the brand significantly overhauled its digital department, putting more of a focus on online sales, while simultaneously investing heavily in its brick-and-mortar stores. In 210 of its biggest selling stores, mostly in the US and continental Europe, it launched augmented reality experiences allowing customers to see models wearing the clothes they've chosen via sensors.

It was a dream marriage of the appealing ease of online shopping with a modernised in-store experience.

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Shopping patterns are changing - as we see with the near-monthly announcement of former retail behemoths being forced into administration - but Zara is a business which places the customer at its core.

Its products are appealing, yes, but it is no better or worse than competitors like H&M, Marks & Spencer or Mango. So how is it so good at standing out from the crowd? Mainly by offering a fast, quantity-rich response to trends dictated by the big fashion houses, and it has it down to an art.

Last year, Zara released tan leather sandals for 29.99 in a style similar to a pair made by high-end brand Hermes, which sold for 480. The sandals sold out almost instantly and generated enough buzz for Zara to repeat the style again this spring/summer.

Unsurprisingly, there's already a waiting list for the next delivery.

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It is particularly adept at its marketing strategy, carefully choosing which hero pieces are inspired by runway shows during fashion week (like the feather embellished robe first seen at Prada last summer) instead of adopting a one-trend-fits-all model and rolling out duplicate after duplicate.

While fast-fashion brands like Boohoo and Missguided react to Kim Kardashian-inspired looks within a few days, Zara will roll out their looks a full season later, like a real designer.

Its customers are part of the experience, and building brand loyalty through these tactics is a key to its endurance as a market leader.

And unlike smaller designers like Issa, which crumbled under the weight of trying to cope with global demand after Kate Middleton wore its royal blue wrap dress announcing her engagement in 2011, Zara thrives in this type of reactive environment.

On social media, bloggers and fashion influencers are also taking a step back to evaluate their #OOTD strategy.

On the one hand, they want to showcase their frugality with on-trend high-street buys, but on theother hand they require cheaper clothing in order to allow their black Givenchy Antigona tote to be the focal point of a picture.

Both of these are opportunities for Zara to shine.

A bargain in Zara is one which is shouted from the rooftops and its response to sell-out stock in the form of waiting lists and email sign-ups allows the pattern to continue. It doesn't have quite the same effect as, "Thanks hun, Penneys", but it's not far off.

It retains its identity as a mid-scale store with designer look-a-likes aplenty mixed with respectable basics for reasonable prices. These days, simple, solid colour tops are hard to come by.

Today, labels prefer signature designs, fabrics and styles to stand out on social media and in real life, but Zara understands that no day is the same for any woman, who requires an arsenal of clothing hanging in her wardrobe.

It sells two collections: TRF, its low-priced basics line, which is aimed at younger women, while the more expensive Women's range is for when you've 'grown up', thus allowing a built-in customer experience to last years. It also has men's, children's and a homewares range

Last year, I was on holidays in Istanbul and I was wearing a black floral bomber jacket I bought in Zara back in 2016.

As I walked past a restaurant, a man asked confidently, 'Zara?' He said he used to work as a designer there and seemed genuinely thrilled to see it in real life, two years after it was on the market. That same jacket is one I joined two different waiting lists to get my hands on after seeing someone share it on Instagram.

Such is the cult of Zara, that more than one colleague of mine owns it as well and we have been to known to double up on it in the office.

So, what's the secret to its success? The effective model it has built over the last 44 years.

It's just that now the rest of the world is noticing.
An Ethiopian relative of a crash victim grieves next to a floral tribute at the crash site (Mulugeta Ayene/AP)

Boeing's chief executive has said the aircraft manufacturer is taking actions to ensure the safety of its 737 Max jets in the wake of two crashes that killed 346 people.

In an open letter addressed to airlines, passengers and the aviation community, Dennis Muilenburg says Boeing will soon release a software update and offer related pilot training for the 737 Max to "address concerns" that arose in the aftermath of October's Lion Air flight that plunged into the Java Sea, killing 189.

Mr Muilenburg said Boeing representatives are supporting the investigation into the cause of last week's crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 that killed 157.

The United States and many other countries have grounded the Max 8s and larger Max 9s as Boeing faces the challenge of proving the jets are safe to fly amid suspicions that faulty sensors and software contributed to the two crashes in less than five months.

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A flooded area in Sentani, Papua province, Indonesia March 16, 2019, in this still image from a video obtained from social media on March 17, 2019. RICHARD WIJAYA/via REUTERS

A flooded area in Sentani, Papua province, Indonesia March 16, 2019, in this still image from a video obtained from social media on March 17, 2019. RICHARD WIJAYA/via REUTERS

A flooded area in Sentani, Papua province, Indonesia March 16, 2019, in this still image from a video obtained from social media on March 17, 2019. RICHARD WIJAYA/via REUTERS

A child is rescued by Kodam XVII/Cendrawasih soldiers in Sentani, Papua province, Indonesia March 17, 2019, in this still image from a video obtained from social media. Pendam XVII & Kodam XVII Cenderawasih via REUTERS

People stand as they look at damaged houses after a flash flood in Sentani, Papua, Indonesia, March 17, 2019 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Gusti Tanati/ via REUTERS

Man walks near a damaged aircraft following a flash floods in Sentani, Papua, Indonesia, March 17, 2019 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Gusti Tanati/ via REUTERS

Cars are submerged in mud following a flash flood in Sentani, Papua, Indonesia, March 17, 2019 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Antara Foto/Gusti Tanati/ via REUTERS

This aerial shot taken on Sunday, March 17, 2019 shows the area affected by flash floods in Sentani, Papua province, Indonesia. Flash floods and mudslides triggered by downpours tore through mountainside villages in Indonesia's easternmost province, killing dozens of people, disaster officials said. (AP Photo/Barce Rumkabu)

Vehicles and pedestrians are seen in floodwaters during heavy rains in Sentani, Papua province, Indonesia early March 18, 2019, in this still image from a video. VIRGIAWAN/via REUTERS

People ride a motorcycle near an aircraft damaged following a flash floods in Sentani, Papua, Indonesia March 17, 2019 in this still image taken from a video obtained on March 18, 2019. @EVELINESS96/via REUTERS

This aerial shot taken on Sunday, March 17, 2019 shows the area affected by flash floods in Sentani, Papua province, Indonesia. Flash floods and mudslides triggered by downpours tore through mountainside villages in Indonesia's easternmost province, killing dozens of people, disaster officials said. (AP Photo/Barce Rumkabu)

In this photo taken on Sunday, March 17, 2019, a volunteer orthopedic surgeon Andreas Messikommer of Switzerland conduct a surgery on a female orangutan named 'Hope' to remove dozens of air rifle pellets from its body, at Sumatra Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) facility in Sibolangit, North Sumatra, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

In this photo taken on Sunday, March 17, 2019, a veterinarian and a volunteer of Sumatra Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) tend to a three-month old baby orangutan named 'Brenda' that was evacuated from a village with a broken arm, prior to a surgery at SOCP facility in Sibolangit, North Sumatra, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

In this photo taken on Sunday, March 17, 2019, veterinarians and volunteers of Sumatra Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) tend to a female orangutan they named 'Hope' after conducting a surgery for infections in some parts of the body and to fix broken bones, at SOCP facility in Sibolangit, North Sumatra, Indonesia.(AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

The death toll from flash floods and mudslides triggered by torrential downpours in eastern Indonesia has risen to 89, with dozens of others missing.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the worst-hit area from the flooding was Sentani subdistrict, where tons of mud, rocks and trees from a landslide on a mountain rolled down to a river that burst its banks, sweeping away residents.

He said on Tuesday that 89 bodies had been pulled from the mud and wreckage of crumpled homes and 159 people were injured.

Rescuers were searching for 74 residents reportedly missing.

Expand Close In this photo taken on Sunday, March 17, 2019, a veterinarian and a volunteer of Sumatra Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) tend to a three-month old baby orangutan named 'Brenda' that was evacuated from a village with a broken arm, prior to a surgery at SOCP facility in Sibolangit, North Sumatra, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara) / Facebook

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Whatsapp In this photo taken on Sunday, March 17, 2019, a veterinarian and a volunteer of Sumatra Orangutan Conservation Programme (SOCP) tend to a three-month old baby orangutan named 'Brenda' that was evacuated from a village with a broken arm, prior to a surgery at SOCP facility in Sibolangit, North Sumatra, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

Papua military spokesman Colonel Muhammad Aidi said more than 1,600 rescuers, including police and soldiers, were facing difficulties clearing huge piles of debris due to shortages of heavy equipment.
In court: Brenton Tarrant, the man charged in relation to the attack. Photo: Getty

The Australian terrorist who filmed himself killing 50 worshippers at two mosques in New Zealand has asked to represent himself in court, prompting concerns the trial could become a platform to promote his far-right ideology.

Brenton Tarrant, a white supremacist who gunned down his victims with a semi-automatic rifle at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch, sacked his court-appointed lawyer so he could defend himself.

Richard Peters, his former lawyer, said he "wants to be self-represented in this case".

Mr Peters, who represented Tarrant at a preliminary court hearing, played down speculation that he was mentally unfit to stand trial.

"The way he presented was rational and someone who was not suffering any mental disability. That's how he appeared. He seemed to understand what was going on," he said.

Tarrant was partially inspired by Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, who used his own trial to expand on his crazed political ideology. For instance, on the first day of his trial in 2012, Breivik claimed his attack was an act of "self-defence" against mass migration and multiculturalism. Extracts from his propaganda videos were played during the trial and on at least one occasion he gave a Nazi salute in court.

More than 30 people remain in hospital after the New Zealand shooting, including a four-year-old girl who is in critical condition.

A British security minister warned yesterday that the attack, which was widely broadcast on social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, could be copied by extremists in the UK.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme, Ben Wallace said: "It absolutely could happen here. That's why the government has been concerned about the growing group of people crossing into the extremist mindset on the far-right and the neo-Nazis."

Yesterday, Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's prime minister, said she would announce new laws on gun ownership to make it more difficult to obtain semi-automatic weapons, such as those wielded by the attacker.

"Within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer," she told a news conference, but did not provide further details. She has previously expressed support for a ban on semi-automatic weapons.
Crime scene: Police inspect the Utrecht tram on which three people were shot dead

A forensic expert looks for clues in a house where the suspect of a shooting incident was arrested in Utrecht, Netherlands, Monday, March 18, 2019. A gunman killed three people and wounded nine others on a tram in the central Dutch city of Utrecht. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Dutch police say they have arrested another man on suspicion of involvement in the deadly tram shooting in Utrecht.

Police said in a statement late on Tuesday that the 40-year-old man was arrested in the afternoon by heavily armed officers in Utrecht.

They say the man "is suspected of involvement in the shooting.

"His role is under further investigation."

Expand Close Children place flowers at the site of a shooting in Utrecht, the Netherlands March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw / Facebook

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Whatsapp Children place flowers at the site of a shooting in Utrecht, the Netherlands March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw

Police say that two other men arrested following Monday's shooting that left three people dead and three seriously wounded have been released and are no longer considered suspects.

The main suspect, 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis, remains in custody over the attack which claimed three lives.

Earlier today, public prosecution office spokesman Ties Kortmann said the alleged gunman Tanis was being held on suspicion of manslaughter with a possible terrorist motive, but added that investigations were continuing into what drove him to allegedly open fire in a tram.

Authorities said they have not ruled out other possible motives and Dutch media said his neighbours in Utrecht have speculated that the shooting may have been linked to a relationship.

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Justice minister Ferd Grapperhaus said Tanis "was known" to authorities and had a criminal record, but would not elaborate.

"If it had terror motives, that is being investigated. But it was very serious. The world shares our grief," prime minister Mark Rutte said.

The attack came three days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating white supremacist opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers.

Dutch authorities reduced the threat level in the city back to four out of five following the arrest of Tanis, which came after a manhunt involving heavily armed officers with dogs.

During the hunt, police released a photo of a bearded Tanis on a tram in a blue hooded top.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Dutch military police tightened security at airports and key buildings in the country, and Mr Rutte said: "If it is a terror attack, then we have only one answer: Our nation, democracy, must be stronger than fanaticism and violence."

The shooting took place at a busy intersection in a residential neighbourhood.

Local media said Tanis had been charged several times over recent years with offences ranging from attempted manslaughter to petty crime in and around Utrecht. Two weeks ago he was in court on charges of raping a woman in 2017, news reports said.

The Netherlands' anti-terror co-ordinator, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, raised the threat alert to its highest level, five, around Utrecht, a city of nearly 350,000, until Tanis was captured.
Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visit the New Zealand House to sign the book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family in London, Britain March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visit the New Zealand High Commission to sign a book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family, in London, Britain March 19, 2019. Ian Vogler/Pool via REUTERS

Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visits the New Zealand High Commission to sign a book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family, in London, Britain March 19, 2019. Ian Vogler/Pool via REUTERS

Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visits the New Zealand High Commission to sign a book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family, in London, Britain March 19, 2019. Ian Vogler/Pool via REUTERS

Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visit the New Zealand High Commission to sign a book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family, in London, Britain March 19, 2019. Ian Vogler/Pool via REUTERS

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have told New Zealanders "we are with you" as they signed a book of condolence for the victims of the Christchurch terror attack.

Heavily pregnant Meghan wore a pair of earrings featuring a crossed feathers design given to her by the country's prime minister Jacinda Ardern.

The duchess and her husband Harry greeted the New Zealand High Commissioner to the UK Sir Jerry Mateparae with the traditional Maori method of pressing noses together on Tuesday afternoon.

They both placed bouquets of flowers outside the building in central London, adding to the pile of floral tributes which has grown since 50 people were killed after a lone gunman opened fire at two mosques during last week's Friday prayers.

The duke and duchess were among the first to sign the book of condolence, which opened to the public on Tuesday.

On a single page, they left the message: "Our deepest condolences... We are with you."

Beneath their signatures was the Maori word "Arohanui", meaning much love.

The duke and duchess met with members of staff at the High Commission to discuss their response to the atrocity.

Meghan said "we are with you", adding she was "just devastated" by the atrocity, as she cradled her baby bump.

Harry said "it's just very sad" as he asked about their connections to Christchurch.

Sir Jerry said: "We are overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of support we've received from across the UK.

"Their Royal Highness's visit is reflective of this outpouring of support and it was wonderful to welcome them to New Zealand House."

Meghan's appearance came more than a week after her last official public engagement before the arrival of her baby.

She joined the royals at the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey last Monday after visiting Canada House with Harry.

The duchess is believed to be around six weeks away from the arrival of her first child, which she has said is due in late April or early May.

Meghan and Harry's baby will be seventh in line to the throne and the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh's eighth great-grandchild.

Kensington Palace announced the pregnancy on the eve of the couple's first royal tour, which ended in New Zealand.

The duchess made a big impression on the country's people and was singled out for praise by figures including Ms Ardern.

She said Meghan's pregnancy "increased my respect for the role that she's playing at such an often tiring time", adding: "I have real empathy and I think she's incredible."

The duchess in turn praised the efforts of Kiwi women who fought for the right to vote 125 years ago, saying they were "universally admired".

In the wake of last week's terror attack, the Queen led heartfelt messages of condolence from senior royals to the people of New Zealand.

In a joint message, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said: "We have all been fortunate to spend time in Christchurch and have felt the warm, open-hearted and generous spirit that is core to its remarkable people.

"No person should ever have to fear attending a sacred place of worship."
Crime scene: Police inspect the Utrecht tram on which three people were shot dead

Dutch police have arrested a 37-year-old man suspected of shooting three people dead and wounding five others in a possible terror attack on a tram.

Gokmen Tanis, the Turkish-born suspect, had been on the run since yesterday morning, forcing vast parts of Utrecht city - including mosques, schools and businesses - into lockdown.

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Although the local terror threat level was set to a maximum of five, as the day progressed increasing evidence on social and international media suggested the attack could have been personally motivated.

During the eight-hour manhunt, residents were advised to stay indoors and police were sent to secure mosques across the Netherlands.

In an unusual move, police had named and released photographs of Mr Tanis, a local resident born in Turkey, who was thought to have unleashed a volley of shots on a tram in a quiet, residential area yesterday morning before fleeing in a stolen, red Renault Clio car.

Rutger Jeuken, the local chief public prosecutor, said that early indications suggested a terror attack.

"The first interpretation of what happened according to witness statements and the evidence we have found suggest a terrorist motive, although we cannot rule out other motives," he said at a press conference.

A prosecutor had earlier suggested the killer could have been motived by "family reasons" and Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency, quoting relatives, said he had fired at a relative on the tram and had then shot at others who tried to help her.

Mr Tanis had reportedly been sentenced for an attempted killing in 2013 after he fired shots towards an apartment building. He was in court two weeks ago accused of a rape in 2017, and had previously been arrested for attempted vehicle theft, driving under the influence of intoxicants and spitting at police.

The shooting took place at the 24 Oktoberplein area, and eyewitnesses said that after shouts of "shooter", people fled from the tram.

The area was quickly shut off by police, three trauma helicopters were called, and armed police and anti-terror forces flooded the streets.

Greet Oldenlam (65) said that she saw paramedics carry a body covered with a bloodstained sheet from the tram.

"I can't believe this happened in my city," she said. "[It] seems nowhere is safe now. Those poor people attacked in the tram on a quiet Monday."

Daan Molenaar, a witness on the tram, told Dutch broadcaster NOS: "I saw someone lying behind the tram and thought she had been ridden over. People came out of cars running towards her. Then a shooter came running with a pistol up, and heard people shouting 'shooter!' I ran."

As schools and businesses closed their doors, residents stood outside their homes, looking up dumbfounded as helicopters and drones flew over the area. Later, armed police surrounded a first-floor apartment in the nearby street of Trumanlaan and the red car was discovered on a nearby road with its doors open and engine running.

In a press conference yesterday evening, police announced that a second suspect had also been arrested during the day.

"Today is a black day for our city," said mayor Jan van Zanen. ( Daily Telegraph, London)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
Grounded: A worker walks next to a Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane parked at Boeing Field in Seattle. US.

US federal authorities are exploring a criminal investigation into how Boeing's 737 Max was certified to fly passengers before the latest crash in Ethiopia that killed 157 passengers.

A report by the 'Seattle Times' published on Sunday found that US regulators allowed Boeing engineers to carry out much of the safety assessments on their own new plane.

The report quoted unnamed Boeing and FAA experts who claimed that the company subsequently delivered an analysis that contained crucial flaws and out of date information.

The paper submitted questions to the FAA and Boeing about the certification process 11 days before the Addis Ababa crash that killed 157 people.

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The new investigation into the Boeing certification was prompted by information obtained after a Lion Air 737 Max 8 crashed shortly after take-off from Jakarta, killing 181 last October.

The US Justice Department is now gathering information about the development of the 737 Max, including through a grand jury subpoena.

Both Boeing and the Transportation Department declined to comment about the investigation.

Ethiopia's transport minister said that flight-data recorders showed "clear similarities" between the crashes of that plane and Lion Air Flight 610 last October.

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A possible criminal investigation during an aircraft accident investigation is unusual.

US Federal Aviation Administration employees warned seven years ago that Boeing had too much control over safety approvals of new aircraft, prompting an investigation by Transportation Department auditors who confirmed the agency hadn't done enough to "hold Boeing accountable".

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The 2012 investigation also found that many FAA employees said they'd faced retaliation for speaking up. Their concerns pre-dated the 737 Max development.

In recent years, the FAA has shifted more authority over the approval of new aircraft to the manufacturer itself, even allowing Boeing to choose many of the personnel who oversee tests and vouch for safety.

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"It raises for me the question of whether the agency is properly funded, properly staffed and whether there has been enough independent oversight," said Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board who is now an aviation-safety consultant.

At least a portion of the flight-control software suspected in the 737 Max crashes was certified by one or more Boeing employees working in an outsourcing arrangement.

The agency doesn't have the budget to do every test, and "the use of designees is absolutely necessary," said Steve Wallace, the former head of FAA accident investigations.

"For the most part, it works extremely well," he said.

The 'Seattle Times' quoted unnamed engineers who said the plane maker had understated the power of the flight-control software in a system safety analysis.

Boeing said the FAA had reviewed all data and concluded the aircraft "met all certification and regulatory requirements". ( Washington Post)
Standard Life Aberdeen has said a tribunal has ruled that Lloyds Banking Group did not have the right to end a mammoth 100 billion contract with the asset manager.

Standard Life Aberdeen has said a tribunal has ruled that Lloyds Banking Group did not have the right to end a mammoth 100 billion contract with the asset manager.

It said the tribunal found in its favour that Lloyds was not entitled to give notice to terminate the investment management agreements between the two firms.

Keith Skeoch, chief executive of Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA), said: Now that the arbitration panel has ruled in our favour, we will carefully consider our next steps, working constructively with LBG (Lloyds) to bring the matter to resolution.

SLA added that, in the meantime, it will continue to manage the assets in the best interests of Lloyds customers.

Shares in SLA rose 3% after the announcement.

Last May, SLA launched its challenge against the lenders decision to end the lucrative contract.

Lloyds had claimed it was entitled to end the agreement due to competition issues with its Scottish Widows business, which were created by the merger of Aberdeen and Standard Life in 2017.

We are disappointed with the decision of the arbitration tribunal, and will look to discuss its outcome with Standard Life AberdeenScottish Widows

Lloyds dealt the blow to the asset management giant in February 2018, when it announced it was ending the contract  SLAs largest single client  citing a material competitor clause.

The investment management deal was set to end after a 12-month notice period, as required under the original agreement between Aberdeen Asset Management and Lloyds.

A spokesman for Lloyds Bank-owned Scottish Widows said: We are disappointed with the decision of the arbitration tribunal, and will look to discuss its outcome with Standard Life Aberdeen.

He added: We will discuss starting the process of an orderly transfer of assets to our new partners, BlackRock and Schroders.

We will continue to work closely with Standard Life Aberdeen to ensure there is no disruption to performance or service.

Aberdeen took on the deal to manage the 109 billion of assets when it bought Scottish Life Investment Partnership from Lloyds in 2014.

But Lloyds maintains there was a clause allowing it to end the mandate if Aberdeen merged with a competitor and believes this was triggered by the 11 billion tie-up between Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management, creating the UKs biggest fund manager.
Ambulances are parked next to a tram after the shooting in Utrecht (Peter Dejong/AP)

A third person has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the tram shooting in the city of Utrecht that left three people dead and five injured, Dutch police say.

Public prosecution office spokesman Ties Kortmann said three people were in custody  the alleged gunman Gokmen Tanis, 37, and two others who were also arrested on suspicion of involvement in the shooting on Monday morning.

Mr Kortmann said Tanis was being held on suspicion of manslaughter with a possible terrorist motive, but added that investigations were continuing into what drove him to allegedly open fire in a tram.

Prosecutors said the nature of the attack and a note found in a getaway car give them reasons to consider terrorism as a motive, but other possible motives are being investigated.

Dutch media said Taniss neighbours in Utrecht have speculated that the shooting may have been linked to a relationship, but prosecutors said investigations do not so far indicate the gunman knew any of the victims.

Earlier, justice minister Ferd Grapperhaus said Tanis was known to authorities and had a criminal record, but would not elaborate.

If it had terror motives, that is being investigated. But it was very serious. The world shares our grief, prime minister Mark Rutte said.

Our thoughts go to the victims relatives, to the families who have lost a beloved member. Our thoughts also go to the wounded, who are now fighting for their lives. The whole of the Netherlands shares your deep pain.



Full statement  https://t.co/VBOPf232R3  Mark Rutte (@MinPres) March 18, 2019

The attack came three days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating white supremacist opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers.

Dutch authorities reduced the threat level in the city back to four out of five following the arrest of Tanis, which came after a manhunt involving heavily armed officers with dogs.

During the hunt, police released a photo of a bearded Tanis on a tram in a blue hooded top.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Dutch military police tightened security at airports and key buildings in the country, and Mr Rutte said: If it is a terror attack, then we have only one answer: Our nation, democracy, must be stronger than fanaticism and violence.

The shooting took place at a busy intersection in a residential neighbourhood.

Local media said Tanis had been charged several times over recent years with offences ranging from attempted manslaughter to petty crime in and around Utrecht. Two weeks ago he was in court on charges of raping a woman in 2017, news reports said.

The Netherlands anti-terror co-ordinator, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, raised the threat alert to its highest level, five, around Utrecht, a city of nearly 350,000, until Tanis was captured.
A few days ago, on March 15, 2019, Bollywood's sweetheart Alia Bhatt celebrated her 26th birthday. She rang the special day in with boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor, dad Mahesh Bhatt and sister Pooja, with a few close friends at her residence. Nevertheless, while boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor was by Alia's side on her birthday, reports suggest that as her birthday gift, Ranbir Kapoor will whisk away Alia to Aspen Mountain Ski Resort in Colorado for a romantic holiday.

As the reports suggest, just before her birthday Alia gifted two cheques worth Rs 50 lakhs to her driver Sunil and helper Anmol. She gave them this amount so that they would buy their own house in Mumbai. They have been with Alia ever since she began her film career, and Alia wanted to show her gratitude and love.

On the work front, Alia Bhatt will be in Kalank. The film also stars Varun Dhawan, Madhuri Dixit, Sanjay Dutt, Sonakshi Sinha and Aditya Roy Kapur in key roles.

Furthermore, Ranbir and Alia will share screen space for the first time in Ayan Mukerji's Brahmastra. The film, which also stars Amitabh Bachchan, Mouni Roy, Nagarjuna Akkineni and Dimple Kapadia, is being made as a fantasy trilogy, the first installment of which is slated to release this Christmas.
A bill to keep the reservation of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in trust is seeing movement on Capitol Hill amid complaints in the conservative media.

H.R.312 , the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act, is due to be taken up in the U.S. House of Representatives next week, according to news reports. The bill ensures that the tribe's reservation in Massachusetts can't be taken out of trust by the federal government and can't be challenged by litigation.

"For perspective, keep in mind that once our bill is passed, our Reservation and Ancestral Homelands are FOREVER protected....our lands will never be under threat again," Chairman Cedric Cromwell said in a message to tribal citizens on Monday.

The conservative media has rallied against the bill because a prior version was co-sponsored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), a Democratic candidate for president. A new version hasn't been introduced in the Senate so far but headlines continue to tie the measure to the popular politician, who is frequently attacked by President Donald Trump.

"House Democrats Look to Move Warren Casino Bill Without Debate" and "House Democrats Plan to Move on Swampy Indian Casino Bill Backed by Warren" were two headlines in the conservative media this week. One story complained that the legislation hasn't been "marked up, debated or voted on" by the House Committee of Natural Resources

The committee held a hearing on a prior version of the bill in July 2018. The measure drew bipartisan support from Republican and Democratic members though it was never scheduled for a markup.

With Democrats now in control of the House, the bill is due to clear the chamber if it is brought up for consideration. The next hurdle would be the Senate, which remains under Republican rule.

"We will then focus our efforts on the Senate," Chairman Cromwell said in his message. "I commit to our Tribal Citizens that we will work tirelessly to see our bill come to fruition."

But if it gets that far, the conservative media sees problems ahead. According to Redstate: "Trump has been briefed on the legislation and opposes it."

Congress enacted similar legislation for a tribe whose reservation in Michigan was questioned by litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Patchak v. Zinke eventually confirmed that such an approach is constitutional

The federal government hasn't taken a tribe's trust land out of trust since the termination era.

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By Keerthi Vedantam and Luv JuniousCronkite News

WASHINGTON  Backed by sheriffs and members of angel families, including three from Arizona, President Donald Trump on Friday vetoed a bill that would have blocked his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.

I knew this day would come, you know, that he would do something that proves to all of us that he is doing exactly what he promised the American people during his campaign, said Mary Ann Mendoza.

Mendoza, who founded Angel Families for survivors of people killed by immigrants here illegally, was at the veto signing ceremony with fellow Arizona Angel Family member Steve Ronnebeck and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb.

Despite Mendozas optimism, however, Fridays veto is not a green light for the national emergency declaration that Trump said would let him shift billions of dollars that Congress has denied him for border wall construction.

Congress does not appear to have enough votes to override the veto. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday the House would once again act to protect our Constitution and our democracy from the Presidents emergency declaration by holding a vote to override.

Even if the override stands as expected, the emergency declaration faces several separate court challenges, including one from 16 states.

But Trump said Friday while Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution  I have the duty to veto it.

Congress vote to deny the crisis on the southern border is a vote against reality, Trump said. Its against reality. It is a tremendous national emergency.

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday that the only emergency was of Trumps making.

Congress has refused to fund the wall multiple times; Mexico wont pay for it; and a bipartisan majority in both chambers just voted to terminate his fake emergency, Schumer said in a statement released by his office.

President Trump has signed a VETO of the resolution by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to block the national emergency declaration for our crisis on the southern border. pic.twitter.com/2d76DSfp1Y  The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 16, 2019

Arizona lawmakers did not immediately return requests for comment Friday. But in a statement Thursday  when 12 Senate Republicans joined all Democrats to block the emergency on a 59-41 vote  Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona, said Congress has a responsibility to control the budget.

Several weeks ago, Congress increased Homeland Security funding by $1.7 billion for this year, Sinemas statement said. While there is more work for Congress to do, the emergency declaration undermines critical military assets across our country and unnecessarily puts at risk resources for Arizona servicemembers and national security.

Trump declared a national emergency last month as he grudgingly signed a budget bill that allowed the government to reopen after a 35-day shutdown, the longest in history. That budget included $1.375 billion for border security, less than Congress had originally offered and well below Trumps demand for $5.7 billion, a demand that sparked the shutdown in December.

Trump said the emergency would let him shift $6.6 billion, mostly from the Defense Department, to a border wall.

Critics seized on Trumps remark at the announcement of an emergency that he didnt need to do this, but Id rather do it much faster. Congress moved quickly to reject the declaration, with the House on February 26 voting 245-182 and the Senate following suit Thursday.

Arizonas House delegation split along party lines, with Democrats opposing the emergency and Republicans backing it. The states Senate delegation also split, with Sen. Martha McSally, R-Arizona, voting to uphold the emergency.

At the White House signing ceremony Friday, Lamb urged lawmakers to come down and see firsthand what were dealing with. And youll see that we do  we are dealing with a crisis.

What we say in Arizona is, this isnt about immigration anymore; this is about drug trafficking and human trafficking into this country, he said. If you care about human rights, you should absolutely care about border security.

Mendoza insisted there is an emergency at the border and that the American people are fed up with the lies that come out of Washington.

This is whats right for our American people and what is right for our country, she said after the veto.

This story originally appeared on Cronkite News and is published via a Creative Commons license . Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University

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180th anniversary is time to reflect and look forward

By Principal Chief Bill John BakerCherokee Nation

On March 24 we commemorate the 180th anniversary of the end of the infamous Trail of Tears with a National Day of Remembrance

On this day in 1839, the last detachment of our ancestors forced removal from their homelands in the southeast region of the United States occurred as they marched to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. We remember and honor the sacrifices and untold hardships of our ancestors. Those who completed the trek and those who perished on that brutal journey will always remain in our hearts and in our minds.

Their indomitable spirit to live despite the odds stacked against them enabled them to survive the treacherous journey. It is that same spirit that allowed them to rise above and to create a new home for themselves and their children.

1/ The 2019 #RememberTheRemoval Bike Ride cyclists pictured w/ @chiefbillbaker are Kevin Stretch (mentor), Shadow Hardbarger, Josh Chavez, Steven Shade, Kayli Gonzales, Ashley Hunnicutt, Elizabeth Hummingbird, Sydnie Pierce, Brooke Bailey, Destiny Matthews, Marie Eubanks (mentor) pic.twitter.com/FCvfK1kldp  CherokeeNation (@CherokeeNation) February 26, 2019

It is that the same spirit that enabled them to rebuild our nation. It is that same spirit that lives on in each of us. It is that same spirit that allows us to ensure the great Cherokee Nation we have today is an even better tomorrow for our children and for generations to come.

During the Trail of Tears, an estimated 4,000 Cherokees perished along the way, which represented about one quarter of our tribe. The grit and determination of our ancestors allowed them to not only survive adversity, despair and grief, but it empowered them to thrive. That sense of where we come from and who we are is deeply rooted in who we are as Cherokee people.

It is especially poignant to be commemorating the anniversary because this year during the annual Cherokee Days gathering at the Smithsonian National Museum of American Indian in Washington, D.C., the Treaty of New Echota , the legal document that paved the way for the forced removal of our ancestors, will be on public display. For the first time in recent history, selected pages from the actual signed treaty will be available for viewing

It is the sacrifices of our ancestors that have made Cherokee Nation the strong nation it is today. As a country, we do a poor job of educating our youth on the bright moments of our past and the dark periods of injustice against Native people as the birth of America evolved. I know we can improve on that in Oklahoma  telling our story, teaching our children the history and traditions of tribes.

After removal, the Cherokee people re-established our government in modern-day Oklahoma. We recreated our school systems and re-established our courts. Our newspaper began to print again and informed citizens of events and the days news.

We rebuilt one of historys most sophisticated societies in a new and unfamiliar land. But we will always remember who we are. We will never forget.

We, as a nation, will always honor our ancestors and the sacrifices they made. As Cherokee people, we are stronger today than ever before.

Bill John Baker currently serves as the 17th elected chief of the Cherokee Nation, the largest Indian tribe in the United States. Born and raised in Cherokee County, he is married to Sherry (Robertson) Baker. Principal Chief Baker has devoted much of his life in service to the Cherokee people. He spent 12 years as a member of the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council and was elected Principal Chief in October 2011.

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'Were hopefully going to have our water back on'

Donations coming in from fellow tribes

In the wake of unprecedented flooding, the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska is seeking donations of bottled water and baby supplies, even as it continues to make repairs to damaged infrastructure.

After a record amount of snowfall, melting and flooding, the tribe in northeast Nebraska suffered a water line break and a brief power outage last week after five power lines were toppled by floodwaters and ice. The tribe was forced to evacuate some elderly citizens and families with children to its casino just south of its main community.

On Monday, the tribe was still struggling to repair damage to its water system, though its electricity had been restored.

Were kind of getting back to normal, hopefully, said Santee Sioux Chairman Roger Trudell on Monday by phone.

Indianz.Com on SoundCloud: Santee Sioux Chairman Talks About Flooding and Relief Efforts

He said he expects the tribes water system will be repaired by the end of the day Monday.

Were hopefully going to have our water back on before the days over, he said. The problem there is that it wont be potable for a few days until this thing kind of gets straightened out.

In the meantime, the tribe will continue to need donations of bottled water, he said. The tribe also needs other supplies as well, including personal hygiene items, pampers, baby food, formula and baby wipes.

GoFund Me page also was collecting donations to help pay for repairs to the tribe's water system.

Chairman Roger Trudell of the Santee Sioux Tribe. Photo: South Dakota Department of Tribal Relations

Over the past week, dozens of communities across Nebraska have seen historic flooding following a devastating snow and rain storm last week that was preceded by several weeks of record snowfalls. With temperatures rising, most of the snow in the state has finally begun to melt, swelling creeks and rivers and leading to the collapse of dams, bridges and roads throughout the state.

Trudell said several tribes have stepped up to help during his peoples time of need, including the Winnebago, Ponca, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and Yankton Sioux.

I just got off the phone with Shakopee, he said. Theyre working on getting us some assistance also.

He said the Red Cross donated baby supplies, and the Ponca Tribe donated 18 pallets of bottled water, or nearly 1,300 cases of water. The Winnebago Tribe also provided water and baby supplies.

Chairman Frank White and the first lady from Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska pulled in with a truck load of baby supplies and water!1 Posted by Sid A. Tuttle Sr. on Sunday, March 17, 2019

The Winnebago Tribe delivered a truck load of baby supplies and water to the Santee Sioux Tribe whose reservation was hit by unprecedented flooding. Post: Sid A. Tuttle Sr.

Trudell said he is deeply grateful by the outpouring of donations.

A lot of these tribes are bad off as us, and theyre still putting out everything they can to help us, he said. You think over the years people have lost their heart, and then you see it again. It really humbles a person.

Other tribes in Nebraska have been affected by flooding as well, including the Winnebago and Ponca tribes. In Winnebago, heavy rain and melting snow led the Omaha Creek to overrun its banks and flood some citizens homes, said Chairman Frank White.

We have flooding in our basements, damage to some of the structures, but not that severe, he said.

The tribe issued an emergency declaration for its community and casino about 20 miles to the east in Sloan, Iowa. On Monday, the Missouri River continued to overrun its banks, leading to water creeping up around the WinneVegas Casino, though it remained open.

The casino flooded in June 2011 when the Missouri River overran its banks.

We are open and operating as normal, the casinos Facebook page announced on Monday. The interstate and road to the casino is dry.

Trudell said the emergency declaration should provide the tribe access to FEMAs resources and technical assistance from the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

Ponca Chairman Larry Wright Jr. said Monday that his tribe planned to continue to provide support to the Santee Sioux

He said several tribal families have been impacted by the flooding in Nebraska, including one family that suffered significant damage to their property caused by flooding and debris. The family was actually stranded for some time, he said.

He said one of the tribes properties in Niobrara in northeast Nebraska was severely damaged.

We had a building that was essentially destroyed with the ice and river, he said. Part of it washed away. The other part of it was heavily damaged with the chunks of ice. Some of them were as big as cars.

He said several tribal citizens were forced to evacuate their homes in Norfolk and the tribe decided to open up its service center in that community to provide housing for them. Nearly 40 people ended up using the facility, Wright said.

Thank you Hyvee Yankton for helping us put together a community meal so quickly! We appreciate all your help! Thank you... Posted by Santee Community Schools on Sunday, March 17, 2019

Santee Community Schools: Community Meal

On Monday, he said the tribe would continue to gather supplies to take to Santee, including a load expected to arrive on Thursday. He said the Winnebago Tribe also planned to host roundtable discussions and meals in Niobrara and Norfolk on Monday, March 25.

He said more information would be provided on the tribes Facebook page

It is truly amazing to see this and is a reminder for us, that buildings and property dont define who we are  our people do, he said in a statement to his tribes citizens. We will work together to help our tribal citizens, while also helping those in need in the communities in which we live.

Ponca Express and Maintenance dropping off flood supplies to Headquarters. #poncaflood2019 Posted by Ponca Tribe of Nebraska on Monday, March 18, 2019

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Fate of Native Children May Hinge on U.S. Adoption Case

By Teresa WiltzStateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts

case before a federal appeals court could upend an historic adoption law meant to combat centuries of brutal discrimination against American Indians and keep their children with families and tribal communities.

For the first time, a few states have sued to overturn the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which Congress enacted in 1978 as an antidote to entrenched policies of uprooting Native children and assimilating them into mainstream white culture.

Now, in a country roiled by debates over race and racial identity, theres a chance the 41-year-old law could be overturned by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the countrys most conservative court. (The law applies to federally recognized tribes.)

Overturning the law, its proponents say, could significantly increase the number of American Indian children adopted into non-Native families.

Hundreds of tribal nations vehemently oppose the lawsuit. They say it threatens the sovereignty of Indian Country and seeks to return Indian children to the arbitrary and discriminatory whims of state courts and state agencies, unfettered by the centuries-old trust obligations this nation owes to Indian tribes and Indian peoples.

Meanwhile, some states and private adoption attorneys pushing for change argue the Indian Child Welfare Act interferes in state affairs and requires them to place Indian children in accordance with statutory requirements based on race, rather than the childrens best interests.

Oral arguments in the case were heard last Wednesday in New Orleans. Whatever the outcome, the case is likely headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Graphic  The Pew Charitable Trusts

Brackeen v. Bernhardt pits Texas, Indiana, Louisiana and a coalition of conservative legal groups, including the Goldwater Institute, against the federal government, hundreds of tribal nations, 21 state attorneys general, Native American civil rights groups and child welfare organizations, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Childrens Defense Fund.

The plaintiffs, who include several families interested in adopting Native American children and a non-Native biological parent who wants her American Indian child to be adopted by a non-Native family, argue that the law, often called ICWA (pronounced ICK-wah), is race-based and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Tribal nations counter that Indian is a political, rather than a racial, designation. The Supreme Court agrees with that classification. In 1974, it said that with federal hiring preferences for American Indians in federally recognized tribes, preference is political, rather than racial in nature.

The plaintiffs also charge that in enacting the law, Congress exceeded its authority over federal affairs with tribal nations.

I want to see ICWA overturned completely, said Mark Fiddler, co-counsel on the Brackeen case representing adoptive families, and an enrolled member of the Chippewa Nation. ICWA has been a miserable failure.

No, they are citizens of the United States, entitled to equal protection of the law. No one owns the children. https://t.co/yhZrpZ0HPH  Mark Fiddler (@markfiddler) March 14, 2019

Over the years, though, the child welfare law has been held up by child welfare advocates as the gold standard for foster care and adoption, because it requires agencies to keep families together when possible.

When thats not safe or feasible, the law requires agencies to try to place children with relatives or other members of their community. (That philosophy is further represented in a new federal law, the Family First Prevention Services Act, which includes broad changes to the U.S. foster care system.)

Many child welfare advocates fear that overturning the landmark law would send more Native children into foster care and that more would be adopted out of their tribal communities.

Some say overturning ICWA also would affect other federal laws governing tribal sovereignty, such as the Indian Gaming Regulations Act.

This is about attacking Indian law and Indian sovereignty, said Chrissi Nimmo, deputy attorney general for the Cherokee Nation. This is just the first step. The Cherokee, Navajo, Oneida and Quinault Indian Nations, as well as the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, asked to be included as defendants in the lawsuit.

But Fiddler dismisses that argument as laughable, saying, Thats a sky-is-falling argument.

Fiddler used to defend ICWA cases and in 1994 founded the ICWA Law Center in Minneapolis to make sure the law was being enforced in adoption and foster care cases.

Back then, Fiddler said, he thought ICWA made for compelling policy because it tried to preserve Native culture whenever possible and keep families together. He still supports those goals, he said.

But hes committed to overturning the law: ICWA is harming the very children it was designed to protect, Fiddler said.

He recalled a 1997 case in which he represented an American Indian mother whod put her child up for adoption and wanted to get her child back  after the child had been with his adoptive parents for more than a year.

Child psychologists told Fiddler that separating the child from his adoptive parents would cause lasting harm to the child.

But it was deeply troubling to me, Fiddler recalled. ICWA was overriding a childs need for secure attachment in a safe and stable home.

"I vow, as the Principal Chief of @CherokeeNation , that we will continue to devote the necessary resources to defending this most important law, and we will continue to be a leader in #IndianCountry...  CherokeeNation (@CherokeeNation) March 13, 2019

Potential Indian Children

In October, U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor of the Northern District of Texas  known for striking down the Affordable Care Act in December  ruled that the Indian Child Welfare Act is unconstitutional.

ICWAs racial classification applies to potential Indian children [who are eligible for tribal citizenship], OConnor wrote, including those who will never be members of their ancestral tribe, those who will ultimately be placed with non-tribal family members, and those who will be adopted by members of other tribes. The law, he wrote, is a race-based statute that treats Native children differently.

A coalition of conservative legal groups filed a series of friend of the court briefs in the Brackeen case. One argued ICWA imposes race-based mandates and prohibitions that make it harder for states to protect Native American children against abuse.

The latest case echoes another infamous case, Adoptive Parents v. Baby Girl , a wrenching custody battle over a Cherokee girl who bounced back and forth between her American Indian father and her white adoptive parents.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 ruled in a 5-4 vote that a non-custodial Native American parent cannot invoke ICWA to block an adoption initiated by a non-Indian parent. The girl was returned to her adoptive parents.

Quinault Nation Vice Chairman Tyson Johnston: The Indian Child Welfare Act "has been very successful policy for Indian Country, to right the wrongs of the Indian removal period and make sure that our families remain whole and our nations remain whole." #ProudToProtectICWA pic.twitter.com/yqDRzht181  indianz.com (@indianz) March 13, 2019

Brackeen v. Bernhardt originated in 2017, when white foster parents wanted to adopt a 2-year-old boy whod been placed in their care. The childs biological parents are enrolled members of the Navajo and Cherokee Nations, which means the toddler was eligible for enrollment in both tribes.

The parents of the boy identified in court records as A.L.M. consented to the Brackeens adopting the child, court records show. But the Navajo Nation had identified a Native family in New Mexico and wanted the child to be placed with them.

The Brackeens sued and eventually were able to adopt the child.

The vice president of litigation for the Goldwater Institute, Tim Sandefur, said the Indian Child Welfare Act is problematic because it relies on race to place children in homes and because it requires child welfare agencies to take extra steps to keep a potentially abused child with neglectful parents. The institute filed a brief in support of the Brackeens.

ICWA requires that Indian children be more abused, Sandefur said. Thats disgraceful.

Chairman Tehassi Hill of the Oneida Nation @OneidaNationWI said the Indian Child Welfare Act "has been in place for 40 years. It does a great job in making sure that Indian families stick together." #ProudToProtectICWA pic.twitter.com/XKXhzaZvEK  indianz.com (@indianz) March 13, 2019

Take the Indian Out

In 1978, when the law was enacted, 1 in 4 Native children was in the child welfare system; the overwhelming majority  99 percent  were living in non-Native homes, said Kathryn Fort, director of the Indian Law Clinic at Michigan State University, one of the lawyers representing the tribes in the Brackeen case.

Those statistics stemmed from policies dating to the 1800s of removing American Indian children from their homes and placing them in military boarding schools or having them adopted by white families.

The idea was to take the Indian out of the child, said Shannon Smith, executive director of the IWCA Law Center in Minneapolis, which represents families affected by the child welfare system.

That history led to a vicious cycle of generations of broken families, Indian child welfare experts say.

Congress wrote in ICWA that an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families [were being] broken up by the removal, often unwarranted, of their children from them by nontribal public and private agencies.

ICWA set the stage for other child welfare legislation, Fort said. Two years later, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, which created federal funding for foster care and adoption assistance.

And a dozen states enacted versions of the Indian Child Welfare Act, establishing standards for placement in foster and adoptive homes. These laws were intended to supplement, strengthen or in some cases correct judicial interpretations of the federal statute that state lawmakers thought were incorrect.

Today, Native American children remain disproportionately represented in the foster care system. Since 2009, theyve had the highest rates of representation in the foster care system, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a Washington, D.C.-based group that tracks state policy.

Nationwide, they are overrepresented in foster care by nearly three times their proportion in the general population, according to National Indian Child Welfare Association. The Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit, which works to ensure the well-being of Native children, filed a friend of the court brief in the case.

Whats more, research has shown that because of bias, American Indian children are twice as likely to be involved in an abuse investigation, and they are four times more likely to be placed in foster care than white children.

Child welfare experts fear those statistics will get worse if ICWA is overturned.

If we didnt have the Indian Child Welfare Act, whos to say where we would be right now, said David Simmons, National Indian Child Welfare Associations director of government affairs and advocacy.

This article originally appeared on Stateline on March 12, 2019. Stateline provides daily reporting and analysis on trends in state policy. Since its founding in 1998, Stateline has maintained a commitment to the highest standards of non-partisanship, objectivity, and integrity. Its team of veteran journalists combines original reporting with a roundup of the latest news from sources around the country.

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Terrence Terry Tibbetts, the chairman of the White Earth Nation , passed away on Sunday after a lengthy illness. He was 60 years old.

Tibbetts's Ojibwe name was Nii-Gah-Nii-Mosay, meaning "Walks First." He worked for the tribe for 35 years in various capacities before being elected chairman in 2016, according to a statement from the reservation business committee.

Tibbetts will be laid to rest on the reservation in Minnesota on Friday, according to an obituary . A wake service takes place on Thursday.

"In honor and remembrance of our Chairman Terry Tibbetts, the White Earth Tribal Offices will be closing at 12:00 pm (noon) on Thursday, March 21st and will remain closed through Friday, March 22," a post on social media stated. "Offices will re-open on Monday, March 25th at 8:00 am."

The Minnesota House of Representatives observed a moment of silence in honor of Tibbetts on Monday, another post read.

Vice Chairman Eugene Umsy Tibbetts will serve as acting chair until further notice. He is a distant relative of the late chairman, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

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After an eight-month battle with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), Ashvin Kumar's directorial "No Fathers in Kashmir" will hit the screens on April 5.

The movie is finally seeing the light of the day and in a statement, Kumar said, "It is a film made for young people all over India to connect with young people all over Kashmir, about the euphoria and hopefulness of being young - an A certificate would keep both these audiences away from each other. Now I am confident that kids will come out with their hearts beating for Kashmir."

The film is everything we should know about Kashmir-that we don't!

Screengrab

The film is a story of a British-Kashmiri girl Noor (Zara La Peta Webb) who visits Kashmir to look for her father, who had disappeared years ago. She gets help from a local teenager, Majid (Shivam Raina), who takes her to a forbidden zone near the Indo-Pak border. However, they get caught and arrested.

Screengrab

While Noor gets freedom because she is British, the tale then takes us through the journey of a struggle for Majid's freedom.

Screengrab

The trailer of Ashvin Kumars No Fathers in Kashmir is out and it shows harsh realities in Kashmir with how Noor and Majid's friendship helps them in surpassing all odds. The supporting cast includes the writer and director, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Soni Razdan and Anshuman Jha. The film will release on April 5. Watch the trailer now.
After a year since he along with his accomplices fled India, the law has finally caught up with Nirav Modi who has been living in London since the fled India last year to evade arrest in the multi-crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam.

ANI quoting Enforcement Directorate sources reported that an arrest warrant has been issued against him by a Westminister court on the agency's request.

Reports suggest that the arrest warrant was issued a few days ago and the fugitive jeweler could be arrested any time soon.

BCCL

As far as his extradition to India is concerned, Modi will be first arrested by the London Metropolitan Police, following which he will be granted bail on the condition that he cannot leave the UK.

Till now there are no indications of Modi challenging the arrest warrant on the extradition request.

The former celebrity diamond trader who had been elusive for nearly a year since he feld India was finally tracked down by a British journalist earlier this month in London.

The man who is accused of swindling off Rs 13,000 crore from PNB was caught on camera outside his three-bedroom 8 million apartments occupying half a floor within the luxury skyscraper called Centre Point off Tottenham Court Road, where rent is understood to be 17,000 a month.

When he was confronted by the journalist, Modi was wearing an ostrich hide jacket which is estimated to be worth over Rs 9 lakhs.

The Telegraph

The newspaper also reported that Modi has resumed his diamond business under a new name.

According to The Times of India, Modi's new business is called Diamond Holdings and has an office in Soho.

Following the media reports of him living in London, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Ravish Kumar had stated that the Indian authorities were aware of his presence in the UK and the extradition request was pending with the UK Foreign Secretary.
Tens of thousands of farmers are suffering from the deepening agrarian crisis, which has worsened under Prime Minister Narendra Modis rule. Multiple protests and marches have been organised to the capital, but there seems to be no solution that government can provide to farmers.

A debt-ridden 39-year-old potato farmer from Agra sent Rs 2,000 he received under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath along with a letter demanding euthanasia.

The farmer, Pradeep Sharma, said he was fed up of waiting for four years for compensation of crop loss.

I have sent a money order of Rs 2,000 to CM Yogi Adityanath. I am under Rs 35 lakh debt and if the CM cant help me, he can at least grant me the permission to kill myself, he told The Times of India.

Talking to TOI, the farmer said that he lives with his family in a small rented accommodation and has been struggling every day. Earlier, too, I had written to the district administration and the state government seeking help, but never received a reply. In December last year, I had gone to Delhi to meet Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh but returned empty handed from there too.

Despite several requests and submitting several documents, Sharma is yet to receive any compensation.

He added, When my uncle died of heart attack in 2015 due to farm debts, I brought the matter to the notice of administration officials but nobody came forward to help. Due to bad weather, I suffered crop loss in 2016 and my father died of cancer in 2017. Already under debt, I couldnt give him proper medication. Now, I have sent the money order to the CM and perhaps he will understand me.

This isnt the first incident when a grieving farmer has received peanuts for the crop loss.

Last year, an onion farmer received a princely sum of Rs 1,064 after selling 750 kg of onions. He sent the money via money order to the Prime Ministers Office.

The farmer, Sanjay Sathe, had taken his onion crop to Niphad wholesale market, had received a paltry rate of Rs 1.40 per kg.

The Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), found that if given an option majority of farmers in the country would leave farming and take up some other work. Poor income, bleak future and stress are the main reasons why they want to give up farming.

The survey of 5,000 farm households across 18 states says that 76 per cent farmers would prefer to do some work other than farming.
Earlier this year, Japans Supreme Court ruled that transgenders in the country must be sterilised to be officially recognised as the opposite gender. Takakito Usui, a transgender man (ie, someone who was born female but identifies as male), had sued the Supreme Court over the requirement that to be officially designated as a man, he must have his ovaries and uterus removed.

Additionally, he must undergo a surgery to make his genitals look male, be over 20, have no minor children and have been diagnosed as suffering from gender-identity disorder.

Usui said that all these requirements violated his right to self-determination and was therefore unconstitutional. He wanted to get his gender recognised as male without undergoing sterilisation.

Japans Supreme Court has disagreed. It said that there were doubts about the law reflecting changing times but maintained that it was constitutional. According to Japans definition, GID describes a person whose biological sex is clear but they have a psychological identity with an alternative gender and plan to live as that gender.

A Human Rights Watch report, in 2017, confirmed sterilisation was still happening in the country.

Presiding justice Mamoru Miura and another justice wrote this additional opinion about the doubts.

Getty Images

Suffering related to gender, felt by people with gender identity disorder, is also the problem of society as a whole, which should encompass the diversity of sexual identity, the opinion read.

Human-rights group say demanding irreversible surgery is disgraceful. Seven Asian countries, including South Korea, have similar laws. European countries like Norway, Sweden and France once required sterilisation, but do not practice it any longer.

In 2017, European Court of Human Rights called for the change in all 47 countries under its jurisdiction.
One of the seven Indian engineers abducted by the Taliban in Baghlan province of Afghanistan was returned on Monday. The MEA spokesperson confirmed his return in a late night statement. India was grateful to the Government of Afghanistan for their support in securing the release and repatriation of the Indian national. We continue to work closely with the Government of Afghanistan for safe and early return of the remaining six Indian nationals," the MEA spokesperson's said.

In May 2018, seven Indian engineers were abducted from a location where they were building a power plant in Baghlan province. They were taken unknown militants and their driver who was an Afghan was also abducted with them.

Representational Image

The then governor of Baghlan had told that the engineers had been kidnapped by the Taliban and were taken to Pul-e-Khumri. They had also said it that it was a case of mistaken identity as the Taliban thought they were Afghan government employees.

For the next 10 months, there was no word about them and official also time and again refused to talking citing the sensitive nature of talks between two sides. Even now, there is no word of six remaining engineers who are still with the Taliban.
Asteroids are just fine when they stay in space, but the minute they come hurtling towards Earth we run scared. We know how massive they are, how much destruction they can cause, so it's only natural.

Except, when a massive one struck us last month, you missed it.

NASA

As it turns out, on December 18 last year, the second-largest asteroid to hit Earth in 30 years came plummeting towards us. On a direct course for impact, the rock was doing a blistering 32km/s at a very steep angle.

Thankfully for us though the meteorite, which was several metres long, exploded before it hit us, going up in a fireball about 25.6 km above the Earth's surface.

The explosion however had an impact energy of 173 kilotons. To compare, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had yields of 15 and 20 kilotons respectively.

"That was 40% the energy release of Chelyabinsk,"said Kelly Fast, the near-Earth objects observations program manager at NASA, referring to the major meteorite hit in Russia back in. "But it was over the Bering Sea so it didn't have the same type of effect or show up in the news,"

It was actually the US Air Force that first detected the fireball in the sky thanks to its satellites. The information was then passed on to NASA, who managed to grab some pictures. See the fireball below?

A picture snapped by a Japanese satellite

Wait, you don't? Well, look closer...just near the center...that little blip...

Yup, that's why you never knew about the asteroid. Well, that and the fact that the Earth doesn't have a meteor detection system yet. NASA has been working on one and hopes to be able to track 90 percent of all near-Earth objects larger than 140 m by 2020.

One problem with that is objects smaller than that might be harder to track out in space. Unfortunately, though possibly less damaging, they're also more frequent than other meteorite strikes.

In the meantime though, the US space agency has also been working on a plan to deal with the asteroids they do spot that seem to be heading for Earth. They're just going to shoot them to knock them off course, like a giant game of marbles in space.
While social media is dominated by the #TriangleChallenge, Bengaluru is using a viral challenge in their daily lives to take on the citys water crisis. After the #BucketChallenge, it is the #HalfBucketChallenge that is encouraging citizens of Bengaluru to take a bath with half-a-bucket of water.

It is an initiative started by Bengaluru Apartment Federation that also issued a notice which says, 'A water crisis is looming in Bengaluru. We all need to do our bit to conserve water. If all of us can try to take bath in half a bucket of water and succeed, we will help conserve millions of liters of water.'

AFP

The challenge has been taken up in order to conserve water in the newly-populated areas of the city that do not receive pipe-water supply and depend on tankers to meet their demands.

Srikanth Narasimhan, General Secretary of BAF, told The News Minute, I have been taking bath with half a bucket of water for quite some time and it is pretty easy. It just takes a little bit of a mindset change and focuses on conservation. A lot of people including non-apartment residents have also taken the challenge up.

Ajay Mehrotra, joint secretary of BAF, told Times of India,We are looking to push this as a viral social media campaign, where people can post a simple message on Facebook and Twitter indicating they have been able to do it successfully and in turn tag at least three friends, challenging them to follow suit.

The people are also adopting other steps like monitoring water usage by installing water meters for each apartment and household.

AFP

According to the reports, a similar initiative is also being taken by Bengaluru restaurants like Koshys that are serving half-filled glasses of water to reduce water wastage. Food chains like Mavalli Tiffin Rooms are conserving water in the kitchen by using wastewater from RO purifiers to wash floors or clean utensils.

Several areas in Bengaluru are facing an acute water shortage and according to the reports, Bengaluru may be the first Indian city to run out of drinking water by 2030.
Pritesh Gandhi, a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Population Health at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, is vying for a seat in the House of Representatives in Texas 10th District. (gandhifortexas.com photo)
When two reporters from Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism filed public records requests about criminal cops in January, they didn't expect to get a threatening letter from California's Attorney General. Three weeks after receiving a list of 12,000 names of cops and applicants for police jobs who have been convicted of a crime in the past 10 years, CA Attorney General Xavier Becerra contacted the journalists, telling them to destroy the records and that possessing them is a criminal offense.



The American Constitution Society (ACS) is hosting an all-star panel discussion about the implications of the Attorney Generals letter, and the importance of First Amendment Protections. Panelists include Director of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, John Temple, attorney and Director of the First Amendment Coalition, David Snyder, and civil rights attorney Daniel Sheehan, who worked on historically significant cases including the Pentagon Papers case, the Watergate burglary case, and the Iran-Contra scandal. Added to the calendar on Monday Mar 18th, 2019 3:42 PM
Protesters Shut Down Entire Block in front of Wells Fargo's Global Headquarters by Photos: Marie-Rose & Julien Ramboz

Tuesday Mar 19th, 2019 6:34 AM

On March 18th, demonstrators rallied in front of Wells Fargo headquarters in San Francisco, blocking traffic and making their demands through a loudspeaker. They want Wells Fargo to invest in clean energy solutions to the climate crisis, instead of what the bank calls traditional energy sources. The rally was the grand finale after a 34 mile "March for Fossil Fuel Freedom."



Photos by Marie-Rose Ramboz, Pro-Bono Photo and Julien Ramboz, Pro-Bono Photo. Please credit the photographers. Top photo by Julien Ramboz.

At a mass rally in front of Wells Fargo Banks global headquarters, demonstrators called on Big Oils largest lender to halt its financing of fossil fuels. To call attention to their cause, protesters shut down the entire block of California St. between Sansome and Montgomery streets, causing all traffic be diverted. As part of the protest, a group of indigenous women affiliated with Idle No More (SF Bay) held fast in front of one of the banks major entrances at 464 California St.



Auto traffic was blocked from entering the street by protesters and cable cars were halted. Campaign organizer with 350 Silicon Valley Vanessa Warheit said that while people were inconvenienced, it is important to see minor traffic delays in light of the huge danger of global warming. She also said, from a podium set up directly in front of the banks entrance, that protesters understand that workers at Wells Fargo have families to feed and jobs at the bank they need; it is Wells Fargos funding of fossil fuels that must change, she said.



The group 350 Silicon Valley, along with 49 partnering organizations, issued a statement saying they want Wells Fargo to invest in clean energy solutions to the climate crisis, instead of what the bank calls traditional energy sources. The three hour demonstration included non-violent direct action, a lockdown with protesters attached to oil drums rendering themselves immobile. Monday's rally was the grand finale following a 34 mile march to San Francisco that began in Palo Alto.
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However, the New Zealand-based expert  who is strategy and innovation lead for Augen Software  also insisted it is possible to bring different players together to facilitate greater outcomes all round.

One of the key things wed like to see with InsurTech New Zealand, InsurTech Australia and the whole Global InsurTech Alliance is a concept of community, Roberts told Insurance Business. We need to get people working together and hearing each others views because we know incumbents often have quite a different view from insurtechs  but then theres also legislators, regulators and funders.

Theres a whole community of people who need to engage as part of a forward direction for innovation and technology.

Roberts isnt alone in his sentiment  fellow insurtech leader Joshua Theeuf agreed that improved communication and collaboration would push the industry forward.

Insurtechs need to create an understanding with incumbents that we want to collaborate  were not here to take all their customers and use them as a way to put our product out there  we want to work with them to make customer journeys better, he told Insurance Business.

While theres certainly room for improvement when it comes to cross-party collaboration, Theeuf said he expects the biggest uptick among insurtechs, as they build a community to better serve incumbents and address some of their major challenges.

I would say over the next five years, the insurtech space is going to turn into mostly insurtechs partnering with insurtechs to try to remove this legacy type system that we are constantly hearing about, he said.

Insurtechs are building these plug-and-play technologies that will enable other insurance companies to be able to bring them on board and create a complete package, so they dont have to rebuild them.
Helen Bird, Swinburne University law and corporate governance specialist, said only about four to six cases will likely make it to court, as she noted that its not the massive actions that are being contemplated by the investigations currently being undertaken by ASIC, nor by the matter of what peoples public expectations are, ABC reported.

Megan Motto, Governance Institute of Australia chief executive, meanwhile, said the public will be sorely mistaken, unfortunately if they were expecting quick resolutions.

They have long processes, and rightfully so, because they have to be carefully thought-through processes, Motto told the news agency.

The string of scandals exposed by the royal commission has prompted the government to increase penalties for corporate crime, with those convicted now facing jail terms of up to 15 years and financial penalties of up to $525 million for companies. However, even successful convictions will be unlikely to get the maximum penalties.

(Theres) a very conservative approach to the awarding of sanctions against white-collar crime coupled with a preference to go with a civil penalty route, Bird said.

Historic comparisons show it can take years for cases to be resolved. The billion-dollar collapse of Storm Financial, for instance, began with actions in 2007, was prosecuted in court in 2010, and reached a judgment in 2016.

So you sit back and look at that and think well, what does that tell you about how long this is going to involve, and its a message not to be too idealistic about the times, Bird told ABC.
Mai takes over from CEO Chris Fischer Hirs, who had overseen the regions since October 2018 on an interim basis after the departure of Andreas Berger, who joined Swiss Re. Also effective April 01, Thomas Sepp, currently head of midcorp business for Allianz Re, will join the AGCS board of management and succeed Mai as chief underwriting officer, corporate, based in Munich.

In his new board role, Mai will also continue to oversee the capital solutions line of business, and the AGCS digital incubator initiative Cross-functional Smart Evolution (XSE), as well as taking on global broker management. All other corporate lines of business (property, liability, engineering, financial lines and mid corporate) and Allianz Risk Consulting will be led by Sepp, a statement from AGCS said. As a part of this change, two areas  the alternative risk transfer line of business and strategy & business development  will change reporting lines from Mai to chief underwriting officer, specialty, Paul ONeill.

I am extremely pleased that Hartmut will be taking over responsibility for one of our most important regional clusters representing a third of our premium volume, said AGCS CEO Chris Fischer Hirs. He has been the driving force behind many of AGCSs recent advances in what we can offer globally, and has a strong track record of delivering the right solutions for clients needs. With Hartmuts energetic leadership at board level, supported by the experienced regional leadership team, we now have the right team in place to drive continued success and profitable growth in these core markets.

A warm welcome to Thomas, who, with over 20 years experience in corporate insurance, brings a wealth of knowledge on all aspects of our business, and I look forward to working with him in his new role for AGCS.
Jonathan Froelich, partner, KPMG Advisory, commented: A mega deal between two of the three largest brokerages in the world has the potential to impact a variety of constituents in the insurance marketplace. For carriers, brokers are the intermediary force that act as the go-between with the policyholder. As you get more premium controlled by fewer intermediaries, I think this increases the potential to drive up prices for carriers.

The second potential impact of such a merger would be in the broader commercial marketplace. The bread and butter business of a lot of the mega insurance brokers is in larger commercial risks for global businesses. If you take one of those brokers out of the marketplace by merging it with another, youre potentially offering less choice to the large global corporations that really need partners with expertise and presence in the world markets  something that isnt always offered by some of the smaller and medium-sized brokerages. That could potentially have multiple impacts on the broader commercial market.

Its also important to remember that the major brokerage houses do more than just traditional broking. Most of the top global firms are also present in the growing employee benefits space, the analytics and technology space, and in reinsurance broking. They offer business process outsourcing, call centre capabilities and other things of that nature. In that regard, the implications of a mega-merger to the industry are much wider than just the broking piece, explained Mark Purowitz, US Insurance M&A leader, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Deloitte US.

With a prospective deal between two of the top three brokers, you have to consider the potential anti-trust considerations, not only on the broking side but in all aspects of their businesses, said Purowitz. Even the consolidation on the firms respective human capital consulting and employee benefits businesses are going to be pretty dramatic. The regulatory implications and the aspect of analyzing whether it makes sense to go ahead with a deal is going to be on multiple levels, not just on the broking side.

As for the wider brokerage market, while a mega merger between two of the top three might seem like a daunting prospect, it actually has the potential to unlock new opportunities. For example, smaller brokerages might get a chance to pick up any talent displaced by the deal, and they might also gain opportunities to compete up-market for accounts that were previously beyond their reach.

If the big three becomes the big two, theres the possibility that they might start entertaining the next level down of insurance brokerages as an intermediary for some of their business. This could potentially allow some of these brokers to move up-market and compete for accounts that they wouldnt otherwise get an opportunity to compete for, Froelich told Insurance Business. Also, whenever you merge two businesses of that size with large and disparate producer forces, I think theres some potential for some loss of producers and loss of business. This could present opportunities for some of the smaller brokers because those producers, that premium and that commission has to land somewhere. So, theres an opportunity for these brokers to attract some talent out of the emerging platform.

Not all the outcomes of a mega-merger are positive. So, whats the driving force behind a potential combination of two of the top three global brokers? At this point its helpful to look at Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC) US$5.6 billion (about CA$7.5 billion) takeover deal with Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group (JLT), which was announced in September 2018 and has since received US antitrust approval and shareholder approval. It has been widely reported that the economics of the Marsh-JLT deal largely revolved around scale, diversification and cost synergies. JLT, which Bloomberg described as a relative minnow in this global industry, dwarfed by the likes of Marsh & McLennan, Aon and WTW was holding too much capital but struggling to grow. Merging with Marsh was the answer.

One component driving these major brokerage deals is geography. Brokers are looking for the ability to cover clients on a more multi-geographical basis, commented Purowitz. Merging with another major broker might enable them to fill in holes either in geographic coverage, in product or in the service offerings they bring to certain markets around the world. Ultimately, when you take a look at the buy side and the sell side, you have to ask the question: What are you solving for? Some brokers might be market-leading in one part of their business but slightly behind in another. In order to provide a more well-rounded set of capabilities to clients, they might want to buy an organization with a certain set of capabilities that enhance any strategic goals.

Moving forward, the likelihood of seeing a mega-merger between two of the top three global insurance brokerages is relatively low, according to Froelich. There are numerous challenges to getting a mega deal done, most notably the complex regulatory approval processes that must be met, and the anti-trust considerations mentioned by Purowitz. But the Aon and WTW news earlier this month shows that those conversations are being had  so who knows that the future holds?
Lee will also represent the interests of PEMCO and its customers by working with HLDI staff and other board members to supervise future research, a release said.

Im looking forward to volunteering my time to support an organization that is making a measurable impact to advance safety by helping consumers make informed choices about the vehicle they purchase, along with important decisions regarding car seats, bike helmets and other safety resources, as well, Lee said.

As director of product, Lee administers PEMCOs product and actuarial teams. The teams are responsible for the development, management, and evolution of the companys products. Before joining PEMCO in 2017, Lee held a number of positions in the insurance industry, such as being the director of state operations for Liberty Mutual in Washington.

HLDI is a non-profit research organization that issues insurance loss statistics on most car, SUV, pick-up truck and motorcycle models in both the US and Canada.

PEMCO is a member company of HLDI; as a member, the insurer has access to one of the largest insurance loss databases in the world.
Delaware authorities say a house fire in a neighborhood near the coast was an accident.

The Delaware Office of the State Fire Marshal issued a news release saying that it had ruled the fire in Sussex County, Delaware, was accidental.

No injuries were reported. Authorities say the fire damage was estimated at $250,000.

The Lewes Fire Company responded to the blaze, and state fire investigators were caused to look into the cause.

Investigators say a vehicle parked in the garage had a mechanical malfunction that sparked the fire.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A tropical cyclone that tore across Mozambique at the weekend may have killed more than 1,000 people, President Filipe Nyusi said, as heavy rains continued to inundate the southeast African nation and neighboring Zimbabwe.

Its clear that the next few days could be worse, Nyusi said in comments broadcast on state radio. If more than 1,000 lives have been lost, we wont be surprised.

Mozambiques worst-recorded flooding occurred in 2000, when Cyclone Leon-Eline struck. About 800 people died that year. The country is the third-most vulnerable on the continent to climate change, according to the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery.

So far, at least 98 people have died in Zimbabwe and 84 in Mozambique, according to official counts. More than 200 people are missing in eastern Zimbabwe, where crops and livestock have been destroyed, while continuing rains raise the risk that there will be further flooding from the Buzi and Pungwe rivers in Mozambique, the United Nations said.

Alerts have been issued regarding the risk of flooding in the Buzi and Pungoe river basins in the next 72 hours, which could lead to further destruction and potential loss of life, the UNs humanitarian agency said in a statement.

Emergency services only began to reach the Mozambican port city of Beira after its airport partially reopened on Sunday, while other areas have been cut off by damaged infrastructure and flooding since Tropical Cyclone Idai made landfall on Friday. The scale of the damage it caused is massive and horrifying, said Jamie LeSueur, who is leading an International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent assessment team in Beira.

It seems that 90 percent of the area is completely destroyed, he said in a statement.

Returning Storm

Before forming a tropical cyclone on March 9, the system had dumped heavy rains over Mozambique and neighboring Malawi earlier this month, displacing more than 100,000 people and causing more than 60 deaths. The storm then moved back out to the southern Indian Ocean, where warm waters caused it to rapidly strengthen as it once again took aim at Mozambiques coast.

The first incarnation of the storm last week resulted in a temporary halt to coal exports from Vale SAs Moatize operation, Mozambiques biggest producer, after railway lines were submerged. Operations have since resumed, the company said by email.

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the state-owned power utility in neighboring South Africa, said the storm reduced the amount of electricity it imports from the Mozambiques Cahora Bassa hydropower dam, exacerbating a shortage thats resulted in blackouts.

Land Slides

In Zimbabwe, Idai swept across the east of the country, destroying roads and bridges in a region thats recently experienced drought. The storm prompted President Emmerson Mnangagwa to cut short a visit to the United Arab Emirates to manage the governments response to the disaster.

Zimbabwe is drawing from strategic reserves to send food to affected communities, Mnangagwa told reporters late Monday.

Many drowned while others were killed in their sleep from swift and unexpected rockfalls, which demolished their homes and other forms of shelter, he said. Still others met their fate from overwhelming land slides.

Heavy rains are forecast to continue into the middle of the week, making it difficult to reach stranded communities in both countries.

With assistance from Ana Monteiro.

Related:

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.

Topics Flood
Norsk Hydro ASA, one of the worlds biggest aluminum producers, suffered production outages after a cyber attack affected operations across Europe and the U.S.

The company said it was still working to contain the effects of the ransomware, a kind of malicious software that typically blocks computer access unless a ransom is paid, and called the situation quite severe. Hydro said it has cyber insurance and plans to restore systems using back-up data.

It couldnt detail how much output had been impacted, but said it had isolated affected plants. Some plants where metal is fashioned into finished products for use in construction, cars and other manufactured goods were temporarily stopped. The so-called potlines, which process molten aluminum and need to be kept running 24 hours a day, had switched to manual mode where possible.

Ransom Attack

The majority of our plants are operating as normal, producing customer orders and delivering according to plan, Chief Financial Officer Eivind Kallevik said in an interview in Oslo.

Hydro doesnt know the identity of the hackers, but believes the attack originated in the U.S. The company hasnt made contact with the perpetrators and no specific ransom demands have been made, Kallevik said.

The shares slid 0.9 percent to 35.51 kroner as of 4:02 p.m. in Oslo. Aluminum futures on the London Metal Exchange rose in line with other metals.

The attack is the latest to hit the commodities sector, where disruptions can quickly cascade down the supply chain. Prior to Norsk Hydro, companies from zinc smelter Nyrstar NV to Saudi and Russian oil giants Aramco and Rosneft PJSC, shipping company AP Moller-Maersk A/S and agriculture trader Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. had been also hit by cyber attacks.

Hydro is a leading supplier of aluminum products in North American and European markets, providing specialized parts to industrial customers. Making those finished products can be highly automated, and involve extensive digital monitoring to ensure product quality, according to Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets Ltd.

Theyll probably have to halt pretty much everything in the short term as they work on a back-up plan, Hamilton said by phone from London. Operationally, this is distinctly challenging.

Outage Risks

While a sustained outage at the companys downstream plants could cause turmoil for customers in end-use markets, prices are unlikely to react unless theres a disruption to the supply of metal from the companys primary production lines, Hamilton said.

Potlines usually have multiple redundant systems to operate, including in many cases full manual back-up operation, as the furnaces can not be turned off while the hot metal is inside.

The cyber attack on Hydro began late Monday, escalating during the night, according to the Norwegian National Security Authority, which is assisting the company now. Hydro is focusing on finding a cure to the virus as further deliveries will depend on it, according to Kallevik.

The attack comes as Hydro is in a protracted struggle to restart its Alunorte alumina refinery in Brazil amid claims of environmental damage after flooding. The disruptions have weighed on the companys shares, which are down 25 percent over the past year.

Norsk Hydro has more than a dozen aluminum facilities in Europe, from Norway to the U.K., including those producing primary metal or using aluminum extrusion, which is a technique used to transform an alloy into specialized parts. The companys market share in the extrusion segment is around 20 percent in Europe and 23 percent in North America.

Hydro also this week announced that Hilde Merete Aasheim will take over as its new chief executive officer on May 8.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.

Topics Cyber Europe
Former Steinhoff Chief Executive Markus Jooste and seven others were involved in a 6.5 billion euro ($7.4 billion) accounting fraud at the South African retailer, the new CEO said told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Steinhoff said on Friday an independent report had found it overstated profits over several years in the fraud that involved a small group of top executives and outsiders. PwC conducted the independent investigation.

The company did not name the individuals last week, citing legal reasons. But during Tuesdays session in parliament South African lawmakers instructed Louis du Preez, who was appointed CEO last year, to reveal those involved.

Du Preez named former CEO Jooste and former Chief Financial Officer Ben la Grange, alongside six other people, who he said had inflated Steinhoff profits and asset values over several years.

Jooste, who resigned hours before Steinhoff disclosed the hole in its accounts in December 2017, could not be reached for comment through his lawyer. He has previously denied any wrong doing.

La Grange could not immediately be reached for comment through his lawyer.

($1 = 0.8804 euros) (Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng and Wendell Roelf; editing by Louise Heavens and Edmund Blair)

Topics Fraud
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees warned as early as seven years ago that Boeing Co. had too much sway over safety approvals of new aircraft, prompting an investigation by Department of Transportation auditors who confirmed the agency hadnt done enough to hold Boeing accountable.

The 2012 investigation also found that discord over Boeings treatment had created a negative work environment among FAA employees who approve new and modified aircraft designs, with many of them saying theyd faced retaliation for speaking up. Their concerns pre-dated the 737 Max development.

On Sunday night, a person familiar with the 737 Max said the Transportation Departments Inspector General was examining the planes design certification before the second of two deadly crashes of the almost brand-new aircraft. Earlier Sunday, Ethiopias transport minister said flight-data recorders show clear similarities between the crashes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 and Lion Air Flight 610 last October.

Shares of the Chicago-based planemaker fell early Monday after Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg and FAA officials were forced to defend the quality of testing of the new aircraft, and the Wall Street Journal reported on a grand jury probe. The stock was trading at $371.99 in pre-market U.S. trading  down 1.8 percent from Friday, and below any closing price since the Ethiopian Airlines disaster.

Boeing Faces Spate of Lawsuits After Second 737 MAX 8 Crash

A Seattle Times investigation found that the U.S. regulator delegated much of the safety assessment to Boeing and that the company in turn delivered an analysis with crucial flaws.

Separately, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., issued a broad subpoena dated March 11 to at least one person involved in the development process of the 737 Max jets, the Wall Street Journal reported late Sunday.

In recent years, the FAA has shifted more authority over the approval of new aircraft to the manufacturer itself, even allowing Boeing to choose many of the personnel who oversee tests and vouch for safety. Just in the past few months, Congress expanded the outsourcing arrangement even further.

It raises for me the question of whether the agency is properly funded, properly staffed and whether there has been enough independent oversight, said Jim Hall, who was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001 and is now an aviation-safety consultant.

Outsourcing Safety

At least a portion of the flight-control software suspected in the 737 Max crashes was certified by one or more Boeing employees who worked in the outsourcing arrangement, according to one person familiar with the work who wasnt authorized to speak about the matter.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the inspector generals latest inquiry. The watchdog is trying to assess whether the FAA used appropriate design standards and engineering analysis in approving the 737 Maxs anti-stall system, the newspaper said.

Both Boeing and the Transportation Department declined to comment about that inquiry.

In a statement on Sunday, the agency said its aircraft certification processes are well established and have consistently produced safe aircraft designs, adding that the 737 Max certification program followed the FAAs standard certification process.

The Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed minutes after it took off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board. The accident prompted most of the world to ground Boeings 737 Max 8 aircraft on safety concerns, coming on the heels of the October crash of a Max 8 operated by Indonesias Lion Air that killed 189 people. Much of the attention focused on a flight-control system that can automatically push a plane into a catastrophic nose dive if it malfunctions and pilots dont react properly.

In one of the most detailed descriptions yet of the relationship between Boeing and the FAA during the 737 Maxs certification, the Seattle Times quoted unnamed engineers who said the planemaker had understated the power of the flight-control software in a System Safety Analysis submitted to the FAA. The newspaper said the analysis also failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded  in essence, gradually ratcheting the horizontal stabilizer into a dive position.

Software Fix

Boeing told the newspaper in a statement that the FAA had reviewed the companys data and concluded the aircraft met all certification and regulatory requirements. The company, which is based in Chicago but designs and builds commercial jets in the Seattle area, said there are some significant mischaracterizations in the engineers comments.

In a separate statement Sunday, Muilenburg reiterated the companys sympathies for the affected families and support for the investigation into the flight-control system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System.

While investigators continue to work to establish definitive conclusions, Boeing is finalizing its development of a previously announced software update and pilot training revision that will address the MCAS flight-control laws behavior in response to erroneous sensor inputs, Muilenburg said.

The newspaper also quoted unnamed FAA technical experts who said managers prodded them to speed up the certification process as development of the Max was nine months behind that of rival Airbus SEs A320neo.

The FAA has let technical experts at aircraft makers act as its representatives to perform certain tests and approve some parts for decades. The FAA expanded the scope of that program in 2005 to address concerns about adequately keeping pace with its workload. Known as Organization Designation Authorization, or ODA, it let Boeing and other manufacturers choose the employees who approve design work on the agencys behalf.

Previously, the FAA approved each appointment. Under the new approach, which was fully implemented in 2009, the ODA representatives are still under U.S. legal requirements and the FAA has the authority to oversee them and request that their management be changed.

Anonymous Faxes

In 2012, a special investigator of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Transportation sent a memo to the FAAs audit chief warning him of concerns voiced by agency employees about the new process. Some allegations were made in anonymous faxes sent to the inspector generals office, and the office followed up by interviewing employees in the FAAs Transport Airplane Directorate.

Our investigation substantiated employee allegations that TAD and FAA headquarters managers have not always supported TAD employee efforts to hold Boeing accountable and this has created a negative atmosphere within the TAD, according to the June 22, 2012, report sent to the FAA. (The memo was made available later in a public records request and appears now on a website operated by governmentattic.org, which warehouses government documents. A spokesman for the inspector generals office confirmed its authenticity.)

The employees told the investigators that managers had overturned a recommendation by staff to remove the administrator Boeing had chosen for the program and had not adequately addressed employees concerns about potential conflicts of interest, the memo said. The employees, it said, viewed this as evidence of management having too close a relationship with Boeing officials.

Despite those concerns, as well as others raised in a subsequent report by the inspector general, Congress has embraced the program as a way to improve the FAAs efficiency.

President Donald Trump signed into law a change on Oct. 5. It allows manufacturers to request that the FAA eliminate limitations on how company representatives certify low and medium risk items, giving them even more authority over their own products.

The agency doesnt have the budget to do every test, and the use of designees is absolutely necessary, said Steve Wallace, the former head of accident investigations at the FAA. For the most part, it works extremely well. There is a very high degree of integrity in the system.

Dreamliner Fires

But the program was also at issue in the FAAs 2013 grounding of Boeings 787 Dreamliner after two fires of battery packs. Boeings designated engineering representatives oversaw tests of the battery packs.

A 2015 report by the Department of Transportations inspector general, requested by U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio, found the FAA lacked an effective staffing model and risk-based oversight process over the ODA program.

DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, now heads the House transportation and infrastructure committee, and has said he will conduct a rigorous investigation to make sure the FAA is protecting safety.

Hall, the former NTSB chairman, said the agencys move to shift power to the manufacturers contributed to the unusual situation in which two of Boeings newly introduced aircraft were grounded in a period of six years. Before the Dreamliner, the FAA hadnt grounded a model since 1979.

When I was chairman of the NTSB, my single most important job was who we hired, Hall said. Do we have in the federal government the level of funding and expertise we need? Are we attracting the kind of young, smart minds that continue to uphold our reputation in the aviation area?

As the investigation continues, mourners marched in the hundreds past the Library of Parliament in Addis Ababa to Selassie Cathedral for a funeral service Sunday, wearing black or the sea-green uniforms of Ethiopian Airlines and carrying photos of the dead. After a priest read the victims names aloud, people carried empty coffins from the cathedral to a graveyard. All that was heard was sobbing, wailing and chanting.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.

Topics USA Aviation Manufacturing Aerospace
Manufacturers have a duty to warn about potential dangers of parts with asbestos that were later added onto their products by third parties, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The ruling, in a case involving sailors diagnosed with cancer, says this responsibility is in keeping with maritime law that extends special protections to Navy veterans.

Air & Liquid Systems Corp. and four other manufacturers made equipment for Navy ships that required asbestos parts to function as intended, but the manufacturers did not always incorporate the asbestos into their products. Instead, the Navy later added the asbestos to the equipment. Two Navy veterans, Kenneth McAfee and John DeVries, were exposed to asbestos on the ships and developed cancer. They and their wives sued the manufacturers, alleging that the asbestos exposure caused the cancer and contending that the manufacturers were negligent in failing to warn about the dangers of asbestos in the integrated products.

When used as intended, the equipment can cause the release of asbestos fibers, which if inhaled or ingested may cause various illnesses.

In their defense, the manufacturers raised the bare-metal defense, under which they said they should not be held liable for harms caused by later-added third-party parts. The defense refers to the fact that the equipment was delivered in a condition known as bare-metal.

In an opinion written by Justice Brent Kavanaugh and joined by five other justices, the high court rejected the manufacturers argument in this case. The court held that in the maritime tort context, a product manufacturer has a duty to warn when its product requires incorporation of a part, the manufacturer knows or has reason to know that the integrated product is likely to be dangerous for its intended uses, and the manufacturer has no reason to believe that the products users will realize that danger.

The court noted that many products can foreseeably be used in numerous ways with numerous other products and parts but that requiring a product manufacturer to imagine and warn about all of those possible uses would be burdensome and costly, while simultaneously overwarning users.

At the same time that it rejected this foreseeability rule of liability as too generous to plaintiffs, the court also rejected the bare-metal defense as going too far in the other direction because, the court said, it would mean a business generally has no duty to control the conduct of a third person to prevent physical harm to another.

The Supreme Court said its rule does not require that manufacturers warn in cases of mere foreseeability. The rule requires that manufacturers warn only when their product requires a part in order for the integrated product to function as intended.

The opinion is Air & Liquid Systems Corp. v. DeVries.

Topics Manufacturing
Houston-based benefits consultant Dan Cotuno has joined Alliant Insurance Services as vice president within the companys Employee Benefits Group.

Cotuno will provide integrated, data-driven benefits to a diverse client base as Alliant continues to grow its Texas benefits team.

Cotuno is a relationship-driven benefits specialist who strategically employs data analytics and evidence-based solutions to deliver programs that reduce insurance costs and strengthen the bottom line. He has extensive experience in business development, strategic planning, contract negotiation, and performance analysis.

Prior to joining Alliant, Cotuno was vice president within the Houston office of a national insurance brokerage and employee benefits consultant, where he designed and implemented cost containment solutions for health and welfare programs, while also consulting clients on navigating the Affordable Care Act.

Headquartered in Newport Beach, California, Alliant Insurance Services, Inc. provides property/casualty, workers compensation, employee benefits, surety, and financial products and services to clients nationwide, including public entities, tribal nations, healthcare, energy, law firms, real estate, construction, and other industry groups.

Source: Alliant Insurance Services

Topics Texas
The Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace has become part of the states insurance department after Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed legislation dissolving the marketplace board as a separate entity.

The state Legislature established the insurance marketplace in 2013.

The Arkansas marketplace used funding from a $99.99 million federal grant in 2015 to set up exchanges that consumers and small businesses would use instead of healthcare.gov. The marketplace also approved the health plans provided in Arkansas through healthcare.gov and helped consumers sign up.

Gov. Hutchinson signed legislation last month that transferred control of the states health insurance exchange to the Arkansas Insurance Department. The measure directed all of the marketplaces funds and other assets to be moved to the department.

Sen. Jason Rapert, who sponsored the legislation, said he expects any additional marketplace funds that the department doesnt need to be transferred to the states general revenue budget.

The department will keep the marketplaces consumer-oriented website, which had already been changed to describe the marketplace as a division of the insurance department.

Ryan James, an insurance department spokesman, said most consumers shouldnt notice any differences.

The measure authorizes all of the marketplaces contracts to be transferred to the insurance department, which can renegotiate them. Once the contracts expire, the department will follow state procurement rules in re-bidding the contracts, James said.

There are currently 58,915 Arkansans enrolled in individual plans offered through healthcare.gov as of March 1, according to the Insurance Department.

Kerr has said his department can take on the marketplaces duties at a cost of no more than $500,000 a year.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation
Floridas one-way attorney fee statute enacted to protect Florida policyholders from large insurance companies has instead spawned a huge industry of assignment of benefits (AOB) predators who take advantage of policyholders and threaten the livelihood of hundreds of independent insurance agencies and the agents they employ.

As lawmakers convene for the Florida Legislature for the 2019 Legislative Session, Sen. Doug Broxson (R-Gulf Breeze), an independent agent and member of the Florida Association of Insurance Agents (FAIA), has introduced a bill supported by the industry to reform a law that is being abused by attorneys and unscrupulous contractors.

The current law provides that a policyholder who sues an insurance company for underpaying or denying a claim will not have to pay the insurance companys attorney fees should the company win.

In theory, it levels the playing field for consumers who dont have the financial resources to compete with a large insurance company.

In practice, it creates an environment ripe for abuse.

Heres an example of how it works: A water remediation company directs the policyholder to sign a work authorization contract assigning their policy benefits to the company. This allows the policyholder not to have to pay up front for repairs while waiting for reimbursement from their insurer. But what policyholders may not understand is that they have signed away all of the policy benefits, including the right to sue the insurance company.

In effect, the vendor (and its attorneys) are the policyholder after an assignment. The abuse takes the form of unnecessary repairs, tacked on fees and prices higher than the market will bear. Vendors wait to file a claim until after the work is done, leaving the insurers claims adjuster with nothing to adjust.

If the insurer denies the claim or pays something less than the inflated amount, the vendor sues. Since they dont have to pay the insurers attorney fees (remember, the vendor is the policyholder now), they have nothing to lose and much to gain.

Thats why AOB lawsuits have spiked. Over 120,000 AOB lawsuits were filed last year alone. Water-loss claims are a huge and growing segment of AOB abuse.

According to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, the skyrocketing frequency and severity of water losses from bursting pipes or leaking toilets will double some homeowner insurance premiums in less than five years. And thats on top of rates that are already twice that of the national average.

Agents near areas where the abuse is the worst now face debilitating underwriting restrictions with entire neighborhoods declared off limits for new business.

That leaves Citizens Property Insurance, Floridas residual property market, the only option, which often comes with higher premiums for homeowners and reduced commission for agents. Many agents with voluntary markets face rising loss ratios that reduce or eliminate contingency commissions; some have had their carrier contracts terminated.

Most carriers are also reducing coverage for losses that are prone to AOB abuse, which increases the likelihood of an agency E&O claim and affects agency customer retention.

Then, there are the moral hazards on the periphery. One example is within the water remediation industry. Thousands of new remediation companies have cropped up to take advantage of the huge profits and low risks associated with AOB.

Unregulated and unlicensed, these firms pay exorbitant referral fees  some as much as $2,500  to plumbers who are first on the scene of a water loss, all eventually paid by an insurer on an inflated invoice. Plumbers caught up in such schemes create opportunities to make more referral fees by loosening pipes and performing other actions that will result in a repeat visit.

Research from OIR shows such plumbing leaks have risen 60 percent in some parts of the state.

This year, Sen. Broxson chairs the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee where previous reforms have often stalled. His proposal, SB 122, limits the one-way attorney fee statute to the homeowners it was intended to benefit. The bill was passed by the committee earlier this month after a consumer friendly amendment was introduced.

FAIA supports SB 122 and thanks Sen. Broxson for taking this stand and hopefully making 2019 the year that Florida puts an end to this insurance abuse plaguing our state.

Florida agents will march with the team from FAIA at Capitol Days on March 20 to show support for AOB reform. During the event, agents will learn about issues and legislation that could affect their business and the industrys future. Agents will have the opportunity to meet with their legislators about AOB reform.

Agents can register online at faia.com/capdays.

Related:

Topics Carriers Agencies Legislation Florida
Officials say the drinking water in a West Virginia community along the Ohio River contains a harmful chemical widely used by dry cleaners.

State Bureau for Public Health spokeswoman Allison Adler said in an email Wednesday tetrachloroethylene has been detected in Paden Citys water system since around 2010 at levels below maximum allowable standards. She says the water system was assessed a violation notice in December.

Mayor Clyde Hochstrasser says the levels last year exceeded the federally allowed limit.

Adler didnt disclose the source of the chemical, but Hochstrasser told the Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register the cause is likely from a dry cleaner that closed more than a decade ago.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, tetrachloroethylene is a likely carcinogen and can harm an individuals nervous system, liver, kidneys and reproductive system.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Pollution Virginia Chemicals
The members of the Surplus Line Association of California have reelected Robert Gilbert of Markel West Insurance Services as chair of the SLA board of directors.

Gilberts election was finalized after the SLA tallied the final ballots from members who were unable to attend the SLA Annual Meeting, which took place Feb. 5 and Feb. 7 in San Francisco and Los Angeles respectively.

Also reelected to leadership were Terri Moran of Paul Hanson Partners, who remains vice chair, and Janet Beaver of Tokio Marine-HCC Casualty, who will serve a second term as secretary/treasurer.

The leadership team won a second term following the boards vote in 2018 to allow officers to serve in their positions for two years.

Additionally, voters approved the nominating committees proposed slate for the entire 13-member board. Three new members won election to seats on the board this year, including James Faley of Vela Insurance Services, Charles Rosson of R-T Specialty, and Terrence Villar of AmWINS.

Completing the 13-member board are the following individuals who also served in 2018:

Tim Chaix, R.E. Chaix and Associates

Rich Gobler, Burns & Wilcox

Hank Haldeman, Worldwide Facilities, LLC

Cameron Kelly, Worldwide Facilities, LLC

Pam Quilici, Crouse & Associates Insurance Services of Northern California, Inc.

Kathy Schroeder, Sierra Specialty Insurance Services, Inc.

John Washington, Arch Insurance Group

Additionally, SLA members reelected Harry Low, a former insurance commissioner and retired presiding justice of the California Court of Appeal, as mediator.

All of those elected to the 2019 board will serve until balloting is completed following the next SLA annual meeting in February 2020.

Topics California Excess Surplus
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CALGARY, ALBERTA - March 19, 2019 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Westleaf Inc. (TSX-V: WL) (OTCQB:WSLFF) ("Westleaf"), is pleased to announce it has executed a term sheet with Xabis Inc. (Xabis), whereby Xabis has agreed, subject to execution of a definitive agreement, to provide expertise to the Companys Calgary cannabis extraction and production facility. The facility formerly known as Delta West, will be rebranded The Plant by Westleaf Labs (The Plant) after Westleaf consolidated its interest in The Plant to 100%. Provided Health Canada issues the applicable license for The Plant, the extraction and production facility under construction in south east Calgary is expected to produce cannabis derivative products and, after legalization of such products which is expected later this year, consumables, topicals and other cannabis infused products, subject to and in compliance with provincial and federal regulations.

Xabis is a Colorado-based cannabis processing company which provides turnkey operations for companies in the mid-stream of the cannabis industry. With more than 150 years of collective experience, Xabis's team of PHDs and scientists manage, what in Westleaf's view, is the most technically difficult processes in the cannabis life-cycle, all aspects of the extraction and manufacturing of cannabis infused products.

Highlights

Tapping into Industry Leading Expertise - Xabis is an industry leader in design, construction and management of cannabis extraction and manufacturing facilities, as well as product development: Xabis has run facilities in various states in the US for a total of 8 years of cumulative operating experience; and Xabis has developed more than two dozen different form factors (delivery systems such as vape pens etc.) and concentrate types with more than two hundred individual product SKUs, including oil based oral solutions, gummy edibles, hard pressed tablets, water soluble powders, oil-based capsules, body melt capsules and suppositories.

- Xabis is an industry leader in design, construction and management of cannabis extraction and manufacturing facilities, as well as product development: Focus on High Margin Products - Upon legalization of the broader set of derivative cannabis products, Westleaf believes a diversified offering of derivative cannabis products will account for the majority of consumer demand. Westleaf is focused on differentiated product formulations to produce vape cartridges, edibles, beverages, and topicals to meet this expected demand in accordance with applicable regulations.

- Upon legalization of the broader set of derivative cannabis products, Westleaf believes a diversified offering of derivative cannabis products will account for the majority of consumer demand. Westleaf is focused on differentiated product formulations to produce vape cartridges, edibles, beverages, and topicals to meet this expected demand in accordance with applicable regulations. Developing Products for the Global Market - The Plant is being built to EU Good Manufacturing Process (GMP) specifications to ensure compliance regulations in Canada (one of the largest emerging cannabis markets), and for export capabilities. Strategically located in Calgary, the facility is not only in the largest retail market in the prairies, but also has easy access to transportation services to the rest of Canada and to global markets.

- The Plant is being built to EU Good Manufacturing Process (GMP) specifications to ensure compliance regulations in Canada (one of the largest emerging cannabis markets), and for export capabilities. Strategically located in Calgary, the facility is not only in the largest retail market in the prairies, but also has easy access to transportation services to the rest of Canada and to global markets. Scalability - The Plant includes an approximately 60,000 square foot complex with Phase I (~15,000 sq. ft.) designed to include R&D, processing, extraction, manufacturing and order fulfillment. Construction is expected to be complete in summer 2019. It is anticipated that the facility will be capable of producing the full suite of new derivative product lines in preparation of Health Canada's anticipated legalization of derivative and consumable products, expected to occur on October 17, 2019.

- The Plant includes an approximately 60,000 square foot complex with Phase I (~15,000 sq. ft.) designed to include R&D, processing, extraction, manufacturing and order fulfillment. Construction is expected to be complete in summer 2019. It is anticipated that the facility will be capable of producing the full suite of new derivative product lines in preparation of Health Canada's anticipated legalization of derivative and consumable products, expected to occur on October 17, 2019. Multiple Revenue Streams - The Plant is designed to produce a diversified offering of cannabis derivative products under Westleaf's brand portfolio. Additionally, Westleaf plans to offer white labeling services to produce finished products for third parties, as well as contract manufacturing services for raw extract and distillation.

- The Plant is designed to produce a diversified offering of cannabis derivative products under Westleaf's brand portfolio. Additionally, Westleaf plans to offer white labeling services to produce finished products for third parties, as well as contract manufacturing services for raw extract and distillation. Truly Vertically Integrated Company - Westleaf is one of the few truly vertically integrated companies in the Canadian cannabis industry, with assets owned and under development across each vertical of the business, including cultivation, extraction, processing & manufacturing, distribution and wholly owned retail. Westleaf believes that being vertically integrated provides significant optionality and defensively positions the company to protect margins across the life cycle of the industry.

"We are entirely focused on the plant-to-product portion of the value chain," explains Dale Zink, CEO of Xabis. "From the end of the grow to the final processed product shipping out to the retail store or dispensary, we apply our expertise to help companies create the industry's best and most profitable processes and systems." Zink leads a group of PHDs with extensive experience in biotechnology and chemical engineering, including experience in the extraction industry, the pharmaceutical industry and academia.

The move by Xabis into the Canadian market under an exclusive relationship with Westleaf is the company's first foray into the largest single legalized recreational market. Xabis has designed, built, and operated facilities in five (5) US states where medical or recreational cannabis has been legalized.

"This partnership is another part of the execution on Westleaf's strategy of becoming a significant vertically integrated player in the Canadian cannabis industry," said Scott Hurd, President and CEO of Westleaf. "We believe a diversified offering of derivative cannabis products will account for a major shift in consumer demand once legal. We are positioning to formulate unique, high quality derivative products and bring in the best minds in the industry to help leverage our expertise in building and running these types of facilities."

Artist's rendering of The Plant in SE Calgary.

The Brand Story

The Plant derives its name from the origin story of the company: a plant is not just a source of life; at Westleaf, it's our source of inspiration. Not only nature's ideal version of growth, to us, it's also a place of progress and production. A place to press forward. To build on our foundation, extract our most potent ideas, and to optimize everything we do. It's not where we cultivate, it's where we innovate. In order to ensure we provide the absolute best our country has to offer and fulfill our mandate to be at the forefront of cannabis research, development and technology. This is our place of constant growth.

About Xabis

Xabis brings scientific discipline, sound business principles, and professionalism to the cannabis industry by delivering turnkey processing operations for the commercial scale transformation of cannabis from plant to product. Xabis is led by seasoned business professionals and scientific experts, including some of the industry's leading chemical and biological PhDs and engineers. For more information, please visit www.Xabisinc.com.

About Westleaf Inc.

Westleaf is a vertically integrated cannabis company focused on innovative retail experiences and engaging cannabis brands as well as cultivation, production and extraction of cannabis products. Westleaf is rolling out a national retail footprint for its retail concept Prairie Records, with stores planned for British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and potentially Ontario. The retail concept leverages the instinctual tie between recreational cannabis and music and redefines the cannabis purchasing experience. The Company also has two significant production facilities under construction and scheduled for completion in 2019. For more information, please visit http://www.westleaf.com or www.prairierecords.ca.

More Information:

Bruce Leslie, VP Corporate Communications

Bruce.leslie@westleaf.com

403-801-7612

Lauren Steeves, NorthStrategic

Lauren.steeves@northstrategic.com

306-717-3253

Neither 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

Cautionary Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. This news release, forward-looking statements relate, among other things, to: (i) the execution of a definitive agreement with Xabis; (ii) development of The Plant facility, the quality of the facility, the products to be produced at the Facility and the expected opening date thereof; (iii) the legalization of derivative products and the resulting market therefor; (iv) Westleaf's ability to market and sell its products across different markets, including globally; (v) approval of Health Canada for The Plant; and (v) the business and operations of Westleaf. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; and the delay or failure to receive board, shareholder, court or regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. Except as required by law, Westleaf assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

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The vast majority of building materials used in the Irish construction sector are either sourced in the UK or enter Ireland through international distributors in Britain and represent a major risk for the industry, according to executives at the National Construction Summit in Citywest last week.

And a huge majority of construction executives say higher cost of materials after Brexit are their number one concern, according to property consultancy firm WK Nowlan.

According to its survey, half of the industry expects the cost of doing business to increase by 5% to 10% in a no-deal Brexit outcome.

Some cost increases are anticipated because importers of UK products will be required to fulfil the legal role of authorised representative once Britain becomes a so-called third country under EU regulations.

Other price increases will happen to cover the recertifying costs of goods arriving with UK-only British Standards Institution certificates, which will no longer be recognised within the EU.

The duties of an authorised representative can be onerous. Exporters selling into the US will be familiar with similar requirements for an importer of record requirement, which adds substantially to selling costs.

Worse, about three-quarters of Irish construction companies have not taken any form of Brexit impact assessment or made any Day One preparation plan, said JP Hilliard, director of development at WK Nowlan.

Brian Collier, head of construction procurement at Dublin and Cork airport operator the DAA, said he was confident it would manage the Brexit outcomes without creating problems for airline travellers or for commercial freight customers.

He said the DAA is reaching out to work with all sectors of the construction industry to deliver the huge 1bn-plus development it has started at the runway, as well as upgrades in piers, terminal buildings, car parks, and access roads.

Maurice Buckley, chairman of the Office of Public Works, said that all necessary Brexit plans would be completed in time for Britains exit date, which is still set for the end of the month, at the Dublin and Rosslare seaports, as well as the main airports.

He said the preparations involve substantial costs to the State but are still necessary to cushion Irelands exporters and importers from the fallout in the event of a worst-case outcome of Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal.

He said the preparations may in the end not be needed if the UK government changes direction.

However, it is not all doom and gloom.

According to some construction executives, there are opportunities out there for the Irish construction firms to exploit after Brexit.

The opportunities identified include the increased volumes of work for Irish-based businesses as fewer UK-based companies will be in a position to compete in the market.

The industry also anticipates an opportunity to tap fresh flows of foreign workers who have had to leave the UK and who will be available to take up work in Ireland.

That is good news for an Irish industry facing skills shortages.

Tom Moloney, managing director of CIS, a construction information services provider to the industry, was also bullish on the prospects barring any unknown impact from Brexit.

He said that construction activity was forecast to grow by 20% in 2019, with a total output of 24bn. But he also warned about the Governments ability to deliver critical infrastructure.

John Whelan is managing partner of the Linkage-Partnership, an international trade consultancy with offices in Ireland, Netherlands, and Switzerland.
Photo: The Canadian Press Speaker John Bercow

The speaker of Britain's House of Commons dealt a potentially fatal blow to Prime Minister Theresa May's ailing Brexit deal on Monday, saying the government couldn't keep asking lawmakers to vote on the same deal they have already rejected twice.

The government intended to try a third time to get lawmakers to back the deal, ideally before May joins EU leaders Thursday at a Brussels summit where she is set to ask the bloc to postpone Britain's departure. May has warned opponents that a failure to approve her Brexit divorce deal would mean a long, and possibly indefinite, delay to Britain's departure from the EU.

Speaker John Bercow scuttled May's plan, saying that centuries-old parliamentary rules prevent "the same proposition or substantially the same proposition" from being brought back repeatedly for votes in a session of Parliament.

He said a new motion would have to be "fundamentally different. Not different in terms of wording, but different in terms of substance."

The ruling caused uproar on the government side of the House of Commons. Solicitor General Robert Buckland said Britain was facing a "major constitutional crisis," with not much time to solve it.

By law, the U.K. will leave the EU on March 29, deal or no deal, unless it secures a delay from the bloc. Withdrawing without a deal could mean huge disruption for businesses and people in the U.K. and the 27 remaining EU countries.

"Frankly, we could have done without this," Buckland told the BBC.

As interpreter and enforcer of Parliament's rules, the speaker has broad powers. Bercow  whose booming cries of "Orderrrrr!" have made him something of a global celebrity  has often used his office to boost the influence of backbench lawmakers, to the annoyance of May's government.

"Part of the responsibility of the speaker is, frankly, to speak truth to power," he said Monday.

Even before Bercow's ruling, May faced a struggle to reverse the huge margins of defeat for the Brexit divorce agreement in Parliament. It was rejected by 230 votes in January and by 149 votes last week.

Her goal was to win over Northern Ireland's small, power-brokering Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP's 10 lawmakers prop up May's minority Conservative government, and their support could influence pro-Brexit Conservatives to drop their opposition to the deal.

Opposition centres on a measure designed to ensure there is no hard border between the U.K.'s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Brexit.

The mechanism, known as the backstop, is a safeguard that would keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU until a permanent new trading relationship is in place. Brexit supporters in Britain fear the backstop could be used to bind the country to EU regulations indefinitely, and the DUP fears it could lead to a weakening of the bonds between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

Talks between the government and the DUP have been aimed at reassuring the party that Britain couldn't be trapped in the backstop indefinitely.

But with no sign of a breakthrough, May's spokesman, James Slack, said the government would only hold a vote if there is "a realistic prospect of success."

Influential Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said he would wait to see what the DUP decided before making up his mind on whether to support May's deal.

"No deal is better than a bad deal, but a bad deal is better than remaining in the European Union," he told LBC radio.

After months of political deadlock, British lawmakers voted last week to seek to postpone Brexit. That will likely avert a chaotic British withdrawal on the exit date of March 29  although the power to approve or reject a Brexit extension lies with the EU, whose leaders are fed up with British prevarication.

May has said if her deal is approved, she will ask EU leaders this week to extend the Brexit deadline until June 30 so that Parliament has time to approve the necessary legislation. If it isn't, she will have to seek a longer extension that would mean Britain participating in May 23-26 elections for the European Parliament  something the government is keen to avoid.

EU leaders say they will only grant it if Britain has a solid plan for what to do with the extra time.

"We have to know what the British want: How long, what is the reason supposed to be, how it should go, what is actually the aim of the extension?" German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told reporters in Brussels. "The longer it is delayed, the more difficult it will certainly be."

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders agreed, saying: "We are not against an extension in Belgium, but the problem is  to do what?"
It looks like being a good year for the Dublin pub trade.

A survey by the Licensed Vintners Association finds two out of three Dublin pubs are expecting growth, most expect to hire additional staff, and 60% are planning to expand their food business.

LVA Chief Executive Donal O'Keeffe says their survey shows the outlook for Dublin is positive.

Our survey shows that the outlook for the Dublin pub trade is very positive for the year ahead. Most Dublin pubs expect to see their main business and their food business grow over the course of 2019. We can also expect to see the level of staffing in Dublin pubs continue to increase, with five additional employees (two full-time, three part-time) being added on average to the roster," he said.

"That is an encouraging development and one that again highlights the importance of the trade as a significant employer in this city."

However, the survey data is further evidence of a growing two-tier outlook in the tourism and hospitality industries between Dublin and the rest of the country, Mr O'Keeffe acknowledged.

This optimism would seem to confirm the growing discrepancy throughout the tourism and hospitality sector, with a two-tier system developing. Tourism and hospitality businesses in Dublin are thriving, while widespread reports would suggest the conditions in other parts of the country are more difficult for all businesses in this sector."

Among the challenges facing pubs in the capital are staffing issues, Brexit and the rising cost of insurance.

While the situation is more positive in the capital, it also has to be acknowledged that there are still challenges facing Dublin pubs. There are serious concerns about staffing, with pubs finding it hard to get the right staff and to keep them.

"This is also putting pressure on wages throughout the sector. While the 50% jump in insurance costs and the difficulty in tackling insurance fraud is another key concern.

"The majority of Dublin publicans are also worried about Brexit and what impact that will have on the tourism trade," Mr O'Keeffe outlined.

"The decision to hike the hospitality VAT rate is deeply worrying in terms our tourism competitiveness."
Brain injury support group Headway has launched a campaign to raise 2 million to fund the creation of a major trauma recovery centre in Cork.

A group of survivors from Headway Brain Injury Services & Support launched the campaign at Cork City Hall as part of National Brain Injury Awareness Week.

Currently, 30,000 people in Ireland are living with an acquired brain injury. Each year, Headway in Cork helps more than 350 families affected by brain injury with the existing service stretched to the limit.

An extra 100 families need their help each year, with demand growing all the time.

At the end of 2018, Headway purchased a site on the Carrigrohane Road in the west of Cork city, which the organisation has been renting for a number of years. They hope to merge its current services in Ballincollig and Carrigrohane, to deliver a rehabilitation centre for people living with brain injury on the Carrigrohane site.

We have reached a critical point in time - a new centre needs to be built, said Liz Owens, head of Headway Rehabilitation Services in Cork.

A project plan is currently being developed that will allow for the creation of a state-of-the-art, not-for-profit facility that will be able to treat hundreds of patients annually.

"Headway needs to raise a total of 2m to build, landscape and furnish a location that will treat and support hundreds of survivors and their families each year."

Brain injury survivors were on hand to lend their support to the campaign launch.

Living with a brain injury can be hard, said Stephen Forrest, a former Headway service user.

Its a difficult road for all survivors and for their families, but Headway is there to help.

"However, Headways current Cork facilities are not sufficient to support anyone trying to cope with such a life-changing injury.

The campaign has been boosted by funds raised by the Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Mick Finn through the 2018 Lord Mayor's Christmas concert. He encouraged people to back the campaign and give generously to support the expansion plan.

For further information or to contribute to the Cork Headway campaign, go to headway.ie/get-involved/support-our-campaigns/cork-capital.
Primary care centres cannot be upgraded to house improved medical services for 25 years because of botched government contracts, a minister has claimed.

While the Government has pushed a policy of keeping people out of hospital by providing more services in the community, none of the 14 new primary care centres have x-ray facilities.

Independent Minister of State Sean Canney said it is almost impossible to upgrade these medical hubs as the State is locked into a special contract that extends from construction through 25-year facility maintenance.

Mr Canney pointed to Tuam, Co Galway, where 770,000 in extra funding has been approved to add x-ray facilities to the new primary care centre.

However, the operators are now being forced to use the old medical centre as the new building cannot be altered.

Over 25 years of the contract, you are definitely going to see changes in emphasis in treatments, he said.

With technologies, we dont know what those changes might be, so we have failed to future-proof these buildings in any way If there is some other form of treatment that will come on board where you need to change the size of the room, take down a wall or whatever, you wont be able to do that in these primary care units."

Mr Canney said a radical overhaul of how public contracts are drawn up is needed.

and a government advisor must be appointed to avoid mistakes such as this one and the overspend at the National Childrens Hospital.

This is a glaring omission, but how do these things happen, and how do we ensure they dont happen in the future? he said.

A HSE spokesperson said: There is a mechanism in the contract to request alterations [through public private partnership]. Any alterations would have an additional cost.

Mr Canney a qualified quantity surveyor, questioned this, saying: If it can be done why isnt it being done in Tuam? The answer is shrouded in doubt, not in fact.

What I was told was the contract didnt allow them to structurally alter the building and they would have to put the extra facility into the existing health centre which is a separate building.

If you have to negotiate after you sign a contract to do something, its probably going to cost you an awful lot more. But I have been told that we cannot change any of the buildings structurally because the contract wont allow it.

Mr Canney said x-ray facilities, which require a room with lead-lined walls and doors and a gantry fitted to the ceiling to hold the machine, had not been factored into the 14 new centres, which are all now open.

A HSE spokesperson said the primacy care centre (PCC) in Tuam had already been built when a request for x-ray facilities was submitted and it was therefore not possible to provide these facilities in the PCC as the building was complete.
The group campaigning for a directly-elected mayor in Cork has called for urgent public information events on the proposal amid concerns that people may vote against it in May because they dont know enough about it.

The Cork Mayor Campaign said with just 65 days to a plebiscite on the proposal for the soon-to-be-enlarged city, too many questions still remain unanswered about the nature of the new role and the powers the office holder may wield.

People will be asked to vote on May 24 - the same day as the local and European elections - on whether or not they favour the introduction of directly-elected mayors in Cork city, Limerick and Waterford City. A citizens assembly will be established in Dublin to consider the question.

The Cork Mayor Campaign group has now called on Minister of State for Local Government and Electoral Reform, John Paul Phelan, to publish draft legislation on the proposal and to engage the public in information nights as a matter of urgency.

The group has sent him a report, arising from a public workshop it held earlier this month, supporting the concept but outlining concerns about the outstanding questions such as the relationship between the proposed mayor, city officials and the elected councillor.

There was a consensus at the meeting that the new directly-elected mayor would need significant, but not total powers, over the local authoritys budget, and that striking the balance between the mayors powers and the existing council chief executive would be vital.

A salary of 100,000 was also considered appropriate to attract the right candidates.

But above all, the group said with just over two months to the plebiscite, the government must publish the details soon.

Tanaiste Simon Coveney said he expects Cabinet to be briefed on the proposals within two weeks.

Seanad leader, Jerry Buttimer, accepted that many questions have yet to be addressed.

I fully recognise that Government must publish, in depth, the role, power, functions, resources, and terms of the position to so as to inform people fully of what the job entails. I expect this to happen shortly, he said.

There is ample time to inform and campaign but we cannot be complacent and assume it is going to pass. It is imperative that we put in place a series of information meetings across Cork as part of the advancement of the case and I have invited Minister Phelan to Cork to engage on this crucial vote, he said.

I believe this is an exciting time for Cork as we are in the midst of the most radical overhaul of local government in the history of the city.

Speaking in January, Minister Phelan said he had hoped to bring detailed proposals on the position to the Government in the coming weeks.

He said at the time that the new mayor would be an ex officio member of the elected council, continuing to perform the functions currently exercised by local authority cathaoirligh, mayors and lord mayors, including reserved functions, but would also encompass a civic and representational role.

He said given the wide range of functions performed by local authorities, the new mayors role would have to be supported by a chief executive officer, and that the relationship between the two would be similar to that between a government minister and the secretary general of a government department.
Joe Murphy was one of three IRA Volunteers who died on hunger strike in jails in 1920.

He was among a group of 60 prisoners who went on hunger strike when political status was taken away from them. He died in Cork Gaol along with Commandant Michael Fitzgerald from Fermoy.

Joe Murphy.

Their deaths were overshadowed because the same day Murphy died so too did Terence MacSwiney, then Lord Mayor of Cork.

MacSwiney had been on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, London.

Regular newspaper articles would cover the condition of the men.

An editorial in the Cork Examiner gave the following report: It is astounding that some of them, who are mere boys, have not already succumbed, but in all their pain they were fortified by the faith that their suffering will serve the cause of their country. Despite this, the morale among the prisoners was high, with a strong sense of solidarity uniting them.

On October 8, those on hunger strike in Cork Gaol wrote a letter to MacSwiney in Brixton expressing solidarity with him and encouraging him to hold fast. Joe Murphy was one of the signatories.

An appeal was made to British prime minister Lloyd George to show mercy to the prisoners but he said they were hastening their demise by refusing food and his government wouldnt accept any responsibility for any harm that would befall them.

A further appeal was made for Joe Murphy to stand formal trial for the possession of a bomb, the charge with which he was imprisoned on. But it was denied by the authorities on the basis he wasnt in a proper condition due to his hunger strike.

In a last-ditch attempt to save the lives of the prisoners, an appeal was made to public sympathy. On October 15, 10 days before Murphys death, an appeal for a mass for the hunger strikers appeared in the Cork Examiner at the request of Irish Volunteers  All premises are asked to close as to allow employees attend services.

Meanwhile, Murphys condition deteriorated sharply and he couldnt even drink water.

On October 17, Commandant Fitzgerald passed away.

At this time, world attention was fixed not on the hunger strike in Cork, but MacSwineys own demise.

Dying only a few hours after the lord mayor, Joe Murphy was almost destined to be overlooked.

In the presence of friends, family and clergy, he passed away on 25 October at 8.35pm at the age of 25.

His American roots were noted across the Atlantic and were reported by American media. Motions of sympathy with the Murphy family were passed by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, Cork Sinn Fein, and various other republican and community organisations.

Thousands of mourners gathered outside the prison for his removal and his coffin was given a guard of honour by Volunteers from the Lough Church to the Republic plot at St Finbarrs Cemetery. There was a heavy British army presence and they ordered that no more than 100 mourners went into the cemetery. The order was obeyed, but thousands stood outside.

In recognition of his country of birth, an American flag was draped over the coffin and IRA Volunteers from H Company fired a volley in salute.

A plaque commemorating his sacrifice was later erected at his house.

The extended Murphy family are thrilled, said

Joe Murphys grandniece, Shirley Delaney. His father, Timothy Murphy, requested a pension as recognition for Joes sacrifice as early as May 1, 1923, but was denied this from the Department of Defence. At some point Timothy was granted a gratuity payment of 75.

The requests continued from his wife Nora Murphy, after the death of her husband, but again were denied and also from Shirleys grandmother, Mary Delaney, up to 1954.

The news was also welcomed by Sinn Fein TDs Donnchadh O Laoghaire and Aengus O Snodaigh, who sought archive documents, put down Dail questions, and spoke to Mr Kehoe on behalf of the family.

The family has campaigned tirelessly for this outcome, over an extended period of time. I, Aengus O Snodaigh and others such as the Togher Historical Society have offered whatever support possible, but this is ultimately a great success for the family of Joe Murphy, who I know remain hugely proud of him, Mr O Laoghaire said.
A meeting will be held in UCC tomorrow to plan for special centenary commemorations of the War of Independence and Civil War.

The date has been chosen because it marks one year to the day before the centenary of the death of Lord Mayor of Cork Tomas MacCurtain takes place.

Tomas MacCurtain in 1920.

Several academics and relations of those involved in the conflicts have been invited to attend the meeting, which takes place at 8pm in the G1 lecture theatre in UCCs Kane Building. It is being organised by Gabriel Doherty, a lecturer in UCCs School of History, who is urging any member of the public who has an interest in taking part to come along.

Mr Doherty is the co-ordinator of events relating to the Decade of Centenaries  and in particular with regard to the rapidly-approaching series of significant centenaries that will take place in Cork.

He said the death of MacCurtin was by any standards an enormously important event, both in the life of the city and as part of the national struggle for independence.

Im keen to ensure, certainly from a UCC and also from a civic point of view, that it be commemorated in suitable fashion, sid Mr Doherty. I have been in contact with Fionnuala MacCurtain, grand-daughter of Tomas, and someone who has done sterling work over the years in keeping alive the memory of the life and achievements of her illustrious forebear, and together we hope to bring together all the significant elements in the life of the city to organise a suitable centenary commemoration.

We have no doubt that the city council, and the Lord Mayor, will ultimately take on the co-ordinating and driving role for the commemoration, so we see our role more as getting the ball rolling.

He said that, after the killing of MacCurtain, Cork became an epicentre of what was happening in Irish politics for the next few years.

You then had multiple attacks on crown forces, the battle of Kilmichael, and the burning of Cork, he said.

He said the battle of Douglas and Rochestown, between Free State soldiers and Republican Forces, was the biggest single military engagement seen in Ireland since the 1798 rebellion.

It started on August 8, 1922, when 450 Free State soldiers disembarked from a ferry at Passage West and fought their way towards the city to recapture it from the Republicans.

After a few days of intense fighting the Republicans streamed out of Cork in disarray, leaving large sections of the city burning behind them.

IRA general Liam Lynch had brought his forces into the city in opposition to the Treaty.
A man among a group caught in a vehicle in a church car park with a hammer and two large knives has been given an eight-month prison sentence.

David Manning, 25, was among the four men found in the car at 8.35am in the church car park in Innishannon in Co Cork on November 1, 2017.

Mr Manning, of 27 Berryfield, Classes Lake in Ovens near Cork City had pleaded guilty to possession of the items with no lawful excuse as to why.

Clonakilty District Court heard that as well as three previous convictions for handling stolen property, Mr Manning had also received a suspended sentence at circuit court level for an assault.

His solicitor, Myra Dineen, said her client had addiction issues with tablets and alcohol and was seeking to engage with addiction services.

However, Judge James McNulty noted a probation report on Mr Manning which said he was the father of a seven-year-old girl from a previous relationship and while she visited on alternate weekends, his own parents, with whom he lives, took care of her.

He also noted the Probation Service observation that Manning had a lack of any positive activities and a cavalier approach to creating a more productive future for himself. Judge McNulty said he was not impressed.

The judge said Mr Manning had had a suspended sentence previously and he was not inclined to hand down another one.

I made a mistake, Judge, Mr Manning said, I will do everything if you give me a chance.

Ms Dineen said her client had been in custody since last Friday and it had been a shock to the system, arguing that more time in jail would not benefit Mr Manning.

Judge McNulty said Mr Manning had had a chance to detach himself from bad company and given the seriousness of the charge he believed it warranted a custodial sentence.

He sentenced him to eight months in prison but said if Mr Manning wished to appeal it he may have better news to provide to a circuit court judge in future.

He said any release on appeal would be subject to a bail bond of 100, and the usual condition to keep the peace, in addition to special conditions in his case.

They include that he fall under the supervision of the Probation Service for six months - which includes random urine analysis - that he avoid controlled drugs, and that he actively pursue treatment for any addictions.

Mr Manning subsequently lodged the appeal.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and European Council president Donald Tusk have warned of the "serious consequences for all concerned" if a no deal Brexit strikes in just 10 days time.

The two leaders raised the concerns in a statement after a meeting in Dublin this morning which also emphasised the "strong and ongoing solidarity" across the EU with Ireland.

With just 10 days to go until the current March 29 Brexit deadline and with crisis continuing to engulf the House of Commons, Mr Tusk arrived at Government Buildings in Dublin by cavalcade just after 11.30am on Tuesday morning.

As he was greeted by Mr Varadkar, Mr Tusk was immediately asked by a reporter for his views on House of Commons speaker John Bercow's decision to warn British prime minister Theresa May he would veto any attempt to table a third Brexit deal vote unless it changes significantly.

Both leaders declined to take questions, with Mr Tusk simply replying to the question with a shrug of the shoulders.

However, while not addressing the Bercow development, a statement released by the Government after the meeting today read:

"President Tusk expressed the strong and ongoing solidarity with Ireland of the European Council and European leaders. They agreed that we must now see what proposals emerge from London in advance of the European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

"Meanwhile, preparations continue in Ireland and across the European Union for a no deal scenario which would have serious consequences for all concerned."

Mr Varadkar and Mr Tusk held the meeting in Dublin as British prime minister Theresa May on Tuesday morning chaired a vital British cabinet meeting in London over the ongoing Brexit stand-off.

It has been made clear to Ms May that she will need to have won over support for her Brexit deal before the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday if she is to be given a three-month extension to Friday week's March 29 deadline.

If she fails to do so, it is almost certain the EU will either force her to accept a two-year extension which could kill Brexit, or potentially drag Britain out of the EU without any deal.
The time is long overdue to define the difference between hate and anger, and to challenge Prime Minister Trudeaus attempts to paint us all as racists and bigots.

According to a recent Canadian Press news item, The country's top public servant received profanity-laced social-media messages calling him garbage, a traitor, a loser and a liar after defending the Trudeau government's conduct in the SNC-Lavalin affair.

Hate is like a vitriolic anger that on a bad day might motivate somebody to seriously hurt or even kill somebody.

The sentiments expressed in Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernicks emails are in all likelihood nothing more, and nothing less than expressions of anger and frustration over the callous and irresponsible ways our federal Liberal government is dealing with the more important and complex issues facing our nation, and justifiably so.

Reflecting on some of the more controversial decisions Trudeau has made recently, like lying to the people about scrapping our colonial electoral system, buying a $4.5-billion pipeline with our tax dollars, and the alleged corrupt relationships between our federal governments and SNC-Lavalin, its no wonder the people are angry.

Andy Thomsen, Kelowna
UK Prime minister Theresa Mays Brexit deal looks dead in the water after a third vote on her withdrawal agreement was ruled out unless it is significantly changed.

As Ms May met with members of the DUP yesterday in a bid to get them on side, House of Commons speaker John Bercow made a shock ruling that the prime minister cannot bring her EU withdrawal agreement back before MPs unless it is substantially different from the package which was decisively defeated last week.

The move, which caught Ms May off guard, means the only realistic option now available is to seek a long-term Brexit extension from EU leaders on Thursday.

The prime minister had been expected to make a last-ditch attempt to get her deal through the Commons, effectively presenting MPs with a choice between the withdrawal agreement, which they have already rejected twice, or a long wait for Brexit.

Mr Bercows ruling makes that plan impossible, unless Ms May is able to negotiate some significant changes to her deal before presenting it once more to MPs.

Last night, a spokesperson for Tanaiste Simon Coveney stressed that the EU couldnt be clearer that there would be no new negotiations, scuppering any chances of Ms May securing the changes to table another House of Commons ballot.

As the possibility of a crash-out Brexit increases with each passing day, the Government is due to sign off on a special Brexit package for hundreds of millions of euro to protect incomes, jobs, and exports tomorrow.

In Brussels, Tanaiste Simon Coveney will today meet with fellow members of the General Affairs Council in Brussels to discuss a possible Brexit extension. He will also meet with the EUs chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, this afternoon to compare notes on any possible extension to Article 50.

Meanwhile, EU Council president Donald Tusk will meet Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Dublin today where the two will also discuss Brexit and a possible request from Britain to extend the March 29 deadline.

Agriculture Minister Michael Creed yesterday used a Council of Agriculture Ministers meeting to warn his EU counterparts of the profoundly negative effect a disorderly Brexit would have on this country.

The Irish agri-food sector will be uniquely affected, with beef particularly exposed, Mr Creed told the meeting. The impact is likely to be immediate, and without support, at least in the short term, many of our beef farmers will struggle to survive.

Mr Varadkar is to fly to Brussels on Thursday for what is expected to be a crunch meeting of EU leaders, including Ms May.

However, with just 10 days to go to the scheduled date of Brexit, Britain is no clearer about how, when, or if it will be leaving the EU  and yesterdays ruling added further uncertainty and increased the threat of a no-deal Brexit.

Citing a convention dating back to 1604, Mr Bercow told the House of Commons that the same withdrawal agreement cannot be voted upon again in this parliamentary session.

If the government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same nor substantially the same as that disposed of by the House on March 12, this would be entirely in order, Mr Bercow told the House of Commons.

What the government cannot legitimately do is resubmit to the House the same proposition  or substantially the same proposition  as that of last week, which was rejected by 149 votes.

This ruling should not be regarded as my last word on the subject. It is simply meant to indicate the test which the government must meet in order for me to rule that a third meaningful vote can legitimately be held in this parliamentary session.

Speaking in Brussels Mr Coveney said the ruling was a surprise but that he expects Ms May will ask for a long extension to Article 50 at Thursdays EU summit.
Karen ODonohoe and Michael Kelly tell Ciara McDonnell what to expect from series two of Grow, Cook, Eat.

For Karen ODonohoe, it started with rocket. Like so many of us, she was doing her weekly shopping, mindlessly flinging bags of rocket into the trolley in an effort to be as she puts it, the really good middle-class mammy.

Id take these bags home and either eat it all of it in one go, or inevitably leave one of the bags to go to sludge at the bottom of the fridge. When I actually ate proper home-grown rocket, which is full-on and so peppery and delicious, I realised what it should actually taste like.

Im chatting with Karen, who is head of community development for GIY Ireland, and Michael Kelly, its founder, ahead of series two of Grow, Cook, Eat, airing on RTE 1 every Wednesday until April 24.

Like last year, the show will feature one hero vegetable each week, and take viewers on a journey from seed to harvest to a delicious dish we can make at home.

We were very particular about how we wanted it to be presented, explains Michael.

We wanted it to be a cooking show as opposed to a gardening show, because I had that sense that people are genuinely interested in food.

Teaming up with chef Katie Sanderson, Grow, Cook, Eat seeks to ground us with knowledge that families can take on in daily lives.

Children responded extremely well to season one, say the experts, and this year they hope to capture their imagination once more, says Michael. We were at Bloom last year and loads of kids came up to myself and Karen to say that they had been watching it and its just fantastic. We have a kids book coming out later in the year hopefully because its a brilliant time to catch them  they are so enthusiastic and infectious about it.

Karen hopes that the series will give us a sense of empowerment when it comes to making food choices. Its really about normalising food growing and for people to realise that its not an elitist activity; its not boring, she says.

It doesnt take a lot of space or know how  everybody can give it a go. This is all underpinned by the message that if you grow your own food and become increasingly aware around the impact your food and therefore other choices have on our world as well as on our health, you suddenly start to realise that you have more power than you think.

The duo focus on several issues affecting Irish consumers and producers throughout the series, one of which is limiting plastic consumption. The team visited three supermarkets, two Irish nationwide chains and one local greengrocer.

At each store they purchased nine of the most popular vegetables found in Irish trolleys. The difference in packaging was astounding, says Karen.

That was a really sobering day. In two of the baskets you could barely see the vegetables through the plastic packaging, whereas in the third basket, which came from a local greengrocer market, you could see, smell, and touch the veg. There is simply no comparison.

ODonohoe hopes to shock viewers into making more informed food choices when it comes to so-called bargain vegetables, and to try to be aware of the other costs involved. It comes down to the point that until people really wake up to food and their responsibility around food, you just think at the till that you are saving money.

"You dont think about how much it is costing you personally to dispose of the waste, never mind the unseen costs to people and the planet round the packaging in the first instance."

Chef Katie Sanderson will be cooking with seasonal Irish vegetables throughout the programme, hoping to entice us to try new treatments of Irish produce instead of falling back on trendy alternatives.

One of the vegetables we look at are French beans, which I normally wouldnt eat them if you paid me, laughs Karen.

Katie challenged me to give it a go, and instead of smashed avocado, she did something even tastier with French beans. I think its great to be inspired, its great to have positive role models around food, but at the same time, we have to stop thinking about ourselves in terms of the food that we eat.

"I love avocados  theyre great, but actually it would be really hypocritical of me to be still buying them and eating them because I know the impact it is having globally.

For Michael, the message this year is more political. I met a lady yesterday who said that she grew all seven veg last year for the first time and this year we want people to do the same thing, follow the story and grow along with it. I think its slightly more political, if thats not too strong a word, this year.

He visits some of Irelands biggest vegetable growers to talk about the impact of cut-price supermarket vegetables on their business, and the landscape he encountered was one in dire straits.

I visited Paul Brophy who is one of the biggest broccoli producers in the State, to talk about the challenges that the commercial food growers have in terms of competing with cheaper foreign imports, he explains. They are finding it near impossible to compete with the imports coming in, and this is having a detrimental impact on the industry.

This is rooted in the core ethos of the team behind Grow, Cook, Eat. Weve always promoted food growing as an activity which helps people to get a better understanding of food, he points out. The impact we try to have as an organisation is to help people grow some food, and then that armed with the extra knowledge of growing, you are a better and wiser consumer who makes different choices around the veg that you buy and eat  thats where the good stuff happens, I think.

Karen and Michael want to give us back our confidence when it comes to our food choice. When you think about it, we have kind of been indoctrinated in terms of our taste buds and our food values and we are being dictated to around food, says Karen.

We need to challenge that and know that we deserve much better. In order to do that, we have to be proactive about changing about how much we value food.

Michael agrees. We want to change peoples minds about the amazing veg that we grow on our doorstep. Id be very worried that the way we currently consume food will result in putting most of our growers out of business. Well end up with no Irish veg on the shelves at all, and that would be very sad indeed.

Grow, Cook, Eat Series 2 is on RTE One on Wednesdays, 8.30pm.
The Cork couple from the renowned Carducci Quartet are looking forward to playing with Julian Bliss on their Irish tour this week, writes Cathy Desmond.

Mention a successful Anglo- Irish partnership in Cheltenham and one might expect a discussion on horses and jockeys to follow.

Famous for its racing festival, the spa town is also the home of a couple from Cork who make up half of the internationally renowned classical ensemble, the Carducci Quartet.

When I speak to violinist Michelle Fleming  whose husband Eoin Schmidt-Martin is also in the quartet  by telephone at her Gloucestershire home, political turbulence is causing some concerns about a post-Brexit UK for musicians that spend much of their time working in Europe.

In the meantime, the couple are looking forward to a trip home with the Anglo component of the string quartet, Matthew and Emma Denton and leading British clarinettist, Julian Bliss. The quintet will perform a string of dates starting in Cork at the School of Music where it all started for Fleming and her husband Eoin Schmidt-Martin.

When it came to making quartet playing our careers, the Vanbrugh Quartet who were quartet in residence at UCC when we were students were such an inspiration to us. We never imagined then that one day we would be like them. 

So how was this unique Anglo-Hibernian alliance forged? Moving to London in 2003 with an empty diary , Fleming originally from Bishopstown, got her start within a month, when a mutual friendintroduced her to an emerging string quartet in need of a replacement second violinist.

The trial went well and when the viola chair became vacant two years later, Eoin Schmidt- Martin who was just finishing a post-grad course at the Royal Academy of Music was invited to join the ensemble.

Carducci is a poet that all Italians study at school and the town of Castagneto in Tuscany took his name when he became famous. The other two members performed there when their student quartet started out 21 years ago.

An unusually close knit ensemble composed of two husbands and wives, the quartet has enjoyed a stable line up for more than a decade, a big plus factor for any professional quartet. International success has followed with a clutch of coveted prizes, a bevy of acclaimed recordings and the quartet run their own music festival in Gloucestershire. Both couples have also become parents.

Our kids are ten and seven now. It does take a lot of forward planning but we have amazingly supportive families and now the children are older, we take them with us when school isnt in the way.

The quartet have recorded twoalbums with their touring partner for this trip, clarinettist, Julian Bliss.

We love working with Julian. He has had stardom since he was a kid but he is so down to earth. He is a technical wizard and can play anything. We feel we play well with him.

The programme includes a quintet by Brahms and a new work with a quirky title, Gumboots, by David Bruce.

We play a lot of contemporary music and we were immediately drawn to this piece.

"The piece was inspired by gumboot dancers in South Africa. In the brutal conditions in South Africa under Apartheid, black miners were chained together and wore Gumboots or wellingtons while they worked in the flooded gold mines, because it was cheaper for the owners to supply the boots than to drain the floodwater from the mine.

Apparently slapping the boots and chains was used by the workers as a form of communication which was banned in the mine.

"The first movement produces this amazing haunting atmosphere. In the second there are five dances that have these fascinating rhythms. The contrasts draw you in. It is a fantastic piece. We love playing it.

The Carducci Quartet and Julian Bliss play: Cork, CIT School of Music, Thursday, Mar 21; Sligo, The Model, Mar 22; Wexford, National Opera House, Mar 23; Kilkenny The Parade, Mar 24
One of Barack Obamas initiatives begun a decade ago in the US has strengthened civil society by innovative means over here, writes Padraig Hoare.

Whether the Barack Obama presidency achieved what the idealistic young senator from Illinois had set out in his energising Yes We Can-inspired campaign in 2008 will be judged by historians.

What cannot be denied is the enthusiasm and verve it generated among civic-minded businesses and communities, and a new era of corporate social responsibility was ushered in because young employees and community-minded activists demanded it.

The Government-backed Social Innovation Fund Ireland (SIFI) took inspiration from the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation which was created by the Obama White House,and has already made an indelible mark on communities all around Ireland since its first year of operations in 2015.

Social innovation as a theory has existed since the 1960s but has gained momentum in Ireland in the past four years through the work of SIFI.

The charity was created in order to establish a philanthropic fund of significant size and impact to aid the development of social innovation, which is described as strengthening civil society by innovative means.

The organisations mission is to provide growth capital and supports the best social innovations in Ireland, enabling them to scale and maximise their impact.

In simple terms, if a community-minded project has the betterment of society in mind, is able to get bigger and better with the right support, it is something SIFI would be willing to support.

Crucially, every euro raised in philanthropy is matched by a euro from the Department of Rural and Community Development through the Dormant Accounts Fund.

The Department of Rural and Community Development was established in July 2017 to provide a renewed and consolidated focus on rural and community development in Ireland.

In 2017, SIFI met its target to raise 5m in philanthropic funds, creating a 10m national social innovation fund.

On the back of this, the Department of Rural and Community Development pledged to build a 50m social innovation fund in Ireland.

Cork-based Padraic Vallely, who is business development manager with SIFI, said it wasincredible to see the growth of community projects such as Sensational Kids, which assists thousands of children across the country with additional needs; Tallaght-based Citywise which has substantially raised the number of young people going on to third level in the area; and DPS Engineerings Aspire2 programme which partners with schools in areas of lower third level take up in order to boost students going on to college.

The impact we have made is substantial. It is absolutely brilliant from a personal point of view to see the projects thrive. We had an event where we brought our donors to specific areas, and one was at Citywise, an education centre out in Tallaght.

I had heard about it, but seeing it was something else. In Tallaght, 17% go to onto third level. That goes up to 97% once in Citywise. Thats incredible.

Its about bringing that mindset to people in less advantaged areas that they can go to university. Were seeing firsthand the impacts that these projects are having on the ground.

It is so rewarding to see those funds being spent in an impactful way. But there is more to do to make long-term impacts on such organisations, he said.

Cork Chambers partnership with SIFI means the business community can become immersed in supporting some of the best community projects, Mr Vallely said.

The Cork Chamber fund really is about getting the Cork business community around this; not only will they be able to give back but they will also be brought on that journey for two to three years. We showcase that journey and the impact made.

Innovation is key, as is scale and impact. Those are the three core criteria when we look at applications. We support them by looking at fundraising, marketing, business planning, strategy, theory of change; its about putting those organisations in a stronger position to succeed.

DPS brought the funds in and we leveraged it. It is a really excellent project. Sensational Kids is another that has scaled wonderfully  the amount of families it has helped over the years is amazing and inspiring.

SIFI has partnered with companies such as Bank of America, Google, Medtronic, Mason Hayes & Curran and IPB Insurance, as well as SMEs, trusts, families and individuals and provided growth capital and supports to 61 social innovations in Ireland.

Mr Vallely said: We were modelled on a Barack Obama initiative when the administration originally had set up a social innovation private-public partnership.

When we were doing our exploratory conversations, our chief executive Deirdre Mortell actually flew over to the key person in that Barack Obama initiative and saw how it could work.

Were putting systems in place where there is double the impact  donors are getting value for money, and they are investing in organisations that Government may not even have heard of.

Its a private-public partnership in essence. We have no core funding from Government, we have to report to it and draw down funds, but we are very private in terms of our systems and our processes.

To us, governance is key in organisations we support, from internal screening to interviews to due diligence  wed look at everything in terms of governance and leadership.

Its a social investment so we have to be sure of the potential. Its not just about bringing money to the table, it has to be solid in its impact as well as innovative, Mr Vallely said.

Cork Chamber became the first of its kind in Ireland to get on board with SIFI and as part of its 200th anniversary, launched a six-month community funding drive in January to raise 200,000 to benefit Cork community initiatives with a social,environmental or economic impact. It has a fundraising target of 100,000, with the goal of a combined funding total of 200,000 through its funds raised being matched.

Fundraising will take place until July, after which an open call for applications will be made through SIFI.

New and established not-for-profit or social enterprises across Cork may apply for funding of projects that are innovative, address a critical social issue such as health, inclusion, local economy, and environment, Cork Chamber said.

Cork Chamber president Bill OConnell said: This funding drive with SIFI is one of the cornerstones of our anniversary programme, marking 200 years by raising 200,000.

Social innovation projects have a hugely important role to play in local communities and this project gives everyone a chance to become a philanthropist.

We are encouraging businesses of all sizes, as well as individuals, to take ownership of this partnership and contribute to the fund, thereby making a personal investment in initiatives that will build community resilience and ensure longevity for the future, making Cork a better place to live and work as we start our next 200-year journey.

Those interested in supporting the Cork Chamber 1819 fund can do so viagofundme.com/cork-chamber-1819-fund or by contacting Cork Chamber directly in relation to corporate donations.

Celebrating past, looking to the future

By Katherine Fitzpatrick

Over the last 200 years, Cork Chamber has given a voice to business and pushed for key infrastructure developments and projects that have changed the face of the city and region.

However, as the chamber celebrates its bicentenary, this year, our key initiatives not only celebrate the history of the organisation, but also look forward with strong vision and ambition, for our city, for today and in the future.

One such is the Cork Chamber 1819 Fund,a crowdfunding initiative in partnership with Social Innovation Fund Ireland (SIFI).

We aim to raise 100,000 in six months, and this money will be matched, euro for euro, by government, from the Department of Ruraland Community Development via the Dormant Accounts Fund, to bring it to 200,000.

The Cork Chamber 1819 Fund (www.gofundme.com/cork-chamber-1819-fund) is the first of its kind in Ireland, the first time a Chamber has engaged in an ambitious crowdfunding campaign to support social innovation.

By bringing together individual philanthropic and corporate donations, we want to demonstrate that the people and the businesses of Cork are committed to making Cork a great place to work and live.

The money will be used to back several, innovative sustainable projects that address critical social issues in the Cork region and will be distributed via a competitive application process, which will be launched by SIFI this summer.

Over the last few years, Cork Chamber surveys have shown extremely high levels of optimism among our member businesses.

Yet, while Ireland is performing strongly at the moment, we must acknowledge that our society faces many challenges.

Daily headlines highlight some of the issues in Ireland, such as political instability, homelessness, food waste, global warming, skills shortages, increasing mental health issues, and social exclusion.

Fifth year student Megan Hurley placing a fermentation reaction into a water bath in the laboratory in the presence of Janice McGarry, Aspire2 project manager, DPS Global, during a student programme for fifth and sixth year students in St Patricks College, Gardiners Hill, Cork, with DPS Global in partnership with UCC, CIT and Social Innovation Ireland. Picture: Denis Minihane

There is an ongoing need for us to think creatively about how to address these challenges and we need to support those organisations,the social enterprises that are spearheading innovative projects to find solutions to some of these issues.

As an influencer in the business community in Cork for the last 200 years, it is Cork Chambers responsibility not only to help businesses to connect, network, and promote themselves on a daily basis, but also to look at the bigger picture and to be ambitious for the long-term future of the region.

Businesses are looking for ways of using their influence and of directing some of their profits to worthy causes, for CSR (corporate social responsibility) or ESG (environmental, social and governance) reasons. Investing in social enterprises through the Cork Chamber 1819 Fund gives businesses the opportunity to invest in a sustainable business and to build more resilient communities. We hope that the people and the businesses of Cork will get behind this drive to jointly fund and support some of the most promising social enterprises in Cork, thereby leaving a positive legacy for our region into the future.

Katherine Fitzpatrick, director of international relations at Cork Chamber

Food empathy sprouts as group inspires others to grow it yourself

Having grown fruit and vegetables for years, Michael Kelly set up a local food growers group in Waterford in 2008. It is now an international movement with more than 500,000 inspired by the Grow It Yourself (GIY) vision.

GIY inspires and supports people to grow their own food at home, in school, in workplaces and in the community.

GIY supports over 500,000 people and 8,000 community food-growing groups and projects in Ireland and the UK.

The ethos behind GIY, according to Mr Kelly and head of community development Karen ODonohoe, is that when people grow food on any level they gain an understanding for food called food empathy, which has a significant impact on their well-being and the health of the planet.

In October 2016, GIY opened the GROW HQ, the home of the GIY movement and its National Food Education Centre in Waterford. GROW HQ aims to attract 250,000 visitors over five years, and empower 17,000 people to learn how to grow and cook their own food. The GROW HQ bistro has been lauded by food and restaurant critics.

Ms ODonohoe said Social Innovation Fund Ireland (SIFI) support has helped take GIY to the next level. In 2018, GIY was successful in two applications to SIFI  its Social Enterprise Development and Resilient Communities Fund. The cash award helped but the six-month accelerator programme and non-cash supports around business development, strategic planning and impact measurement was invaluable, Ms ODonohoe said.

Michael Kelly and Karen ODonohoe say the ethos behind GIY is to help people gain an understanding for food that will help their well-being.

Mr Kelly worked closely with business mentor Declan Droney to develop GROWBox, a retail product piloted in 2017 in response to peoples main barriers to growing food  lack of time, space and knowledge. By the end of the process, Michael and Declan produced a three-year strategic plan that identified the significant impact GROWBox, with the right investment, could have on GIYs income and impact.

Ms ODonohoe, founder of The Cottage Market, was given through the Resilient Community Fund, an opportunity to work with the SIFI team and Ahmed Abu-El-Eta, a London-based business consultant to undertake a forensic review of The Cottage Market concept to clarify its mission, strategic objectives and financial model.

Ms ODonohoe said: The process, though challenging at times, has repositioned The Cottage Market as a community development initiative that, with some changes to the model and sustained investment in key areas such as PR, communications and impact measurement, will develop social, economic and environmental resilience in rural and urban communities at scale. It will change the narrative around rural communities in particular, from death toll-esque negative to vibrantly positive.

Aspire2 bridges gap, allowing students access to college

Five years ago, chief executive of DPS Engineering, Frank Keogh was looking through the yearly Irish Times schools to university feeder league tables.

He was struck at the vast gap between schools in so-called affluent areas and those not traditionally affluent. In Cork alone, progression was near 100% in schools such as PBC, CBC and Scoil Mhuire, while in areas such as Corks northside or Ballyfermot in Dublin it was as low as 20%.

In 2015 DPS began its Aspire2 programme, which aims to bridge the gap and enhance numbers going on to third level in these areas.

Initially partnering with two schools in Dublin and two in Cork, Aspire2 now works with six schools and has assisted 600 students by offering not just financial help, but supports including mentoring from DPS employees, work placements, youth advisory panels, and a wide range of in-school initiatives. These have included extra tuition, personal development workshops, Gaeltacht scholarships, cultural visits, motivational workshops, and after-school study hubs.

Aspire2 aims to supportstudents in their personal growth and development; motivate and encourage them to complete their second level education successfully; help them achieve Leaving Certificate results that reflect their true potential; provide them with opportunities to progress further through the education system; and help them realise their potential.

It is closely supported by UCC and CIT, as well as UCD, Trinity College, and IT Tallaght.

Aspire2 project manager Janice McGarry said: It has been an absolute pleasure to work with like-minded partners on this programme over the last number of years. The real reward for the Aspire2 team, and indeed all at DPS, is to watch the students grow and develop into young adults.

It was also delightful to see that the programme empowered many of the students to such an extent, that they were keen to form an Aspire 2 alumni, with the sole intention of giving back to their peers, school, community, and indeed the programme.

At a student programme in St. Patricks College, Gardiners Hill, Cork were Janice McGarry, Aspire2 project manager, DPS Global, (third from left at back) and Nicola Quinn, Aspire2 student support worker, DPS Global, (second from right) with Brian Cronin, principal, and students Abigail OFarrell (front) and (back from second left) Emily Bozynski, Emily Cleary, Patricia Pavlovic, Kayleigh OBrien and Molly Prendergast. Picture: Denis Minihane

DPS director Tony Mahon said the support of SIFI was invaluable.

We were more than pleased when SIFI expressed an interest to work with us on our unique education project. Education is the most important tool for ensuring that our young people have the brightest future possible.

We believe that through working together with key stakeholders from the education sector, we are educating the young minds who will be part of creating a brightfuture for themselves, along with Ireland Inc, Mr Mahon said.

Fellow DPS director Michael Mulhall told a recent business breakfast of Cork Chamber that due to SIFI getting onboard, DPS was able to expand its base, the number of schools, and variety and focus of initiatives.

It has been a very successful partnership. Interestingly, it offers many advantages to our own people through mentoring, and is of tremendous satisfaction for them.

"We have helped 600 students and progression rates have gone from 40% to 60% in our selected schools. But six schools is a drop in the ocean and there is a lot of work to be done, he said.

Service invaluable for kids with additional needs

To the families of more than 5,600 children with additional needs all over Ireland, Sensational Kids has been more than invaluable  it has almost been divine intervention, such is the massive impact it has made.

Having experienced lengthy waiting lists and a lack of affordable and accessible occupational therapy services for her own children, Karen Leigh founded Sensational Kids in Kildare in 2007, aiming to bridge the gap between public and private services.

Ms Leigh wanted to make the likes of speech and language therapy and occupational therapy affordable and accessible for children with additional needs.

The numbers positively impacted since are staggering. With 5,600 children directly benefiting, and around 1.5m saved in therapy fees, Sensational Kids has a highly skilled clinical team across sites in Kildare, Cork and Mayo.

Speech and language therapist Elaine Baldwin and occupational therapist Mary Lucey with Tessa Howlin and Mason Slyne at Sensational Kids in Clonakilty, which bridges the gap between public and private services by providing affordable and accessible early intervention services for children with additional needs. Picture: Dermot OSullivan.

An online store and child development stores attached to the centres means every euro goes back into providing more services for families. The stores have a range of developmental aids with all profits raised funding equipment, training for therapists and workshops.

It means parents that perhaps cannot afford fees, Sensational Kids can work with them because of the funds available from the stores.

In Clonakilty, Co Cork, Sensational Kids has helped over 100 children and provided over 150 therapy appointments since opening last year, specialising in speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and play therapy from this month.

Clonakilty-based business development manager Beth ORegan said: Within the first six weeks of opening, we had 100 appointments. We are growing and scaling every single week, getting more and more enquiries and children, and we are adding more strings to our bow such as play therapy. Everyone that comes to us says we are so lucky to have this facility on the doorstep in West Cork.

We were lucky to become an awardee of SIFI last July and it has helped us grow and scale in Clonakilty and Claremorris later this year.

SIFI believed in us and invested in us, not only in financial terms but through support and guidance. Its been unbelievable. They saw our merits and believed in our mission as a social enterprise to narrow that gap of children on public waiting lists waiting for therapy.

That support means being able to see more children, to grow and scale  we want Sensational Kids to be accessible to people within an hours drive. That is the dream. SIFI is helping us achieve our dream.

Corporate Ireland call to innovation

By Deirdre Mortell

SOCIAL Innovation Fund Ireland (SIFI) was created by the Government in 2013 to fill the gap in risk funding for innovation and to fill the gap in philanthropy after the closure of Atlantic Philanthropies and ONE Foundation reduced the organised philanthropic funds available for social issues in Ireland by 85% in just three years.

So what is social innovation? Social innovations are innovations that are social in their end or in their means.

For SIFI, a special focus is placed on innovative solutions to critical issues. Our purpose is to find and back innovative solutions to critical issues in Ireland.

We provide cash grants and business supports to charities and social enterprises so that they can scale and reach as many people in need of their important work.

Ever euro we raise in philanthropic donations is matched by a euro from Government, by the Department of Rural and Community Development from the Dormant Accounts Fund.

In 2017, the Department of Rural and Community Development announced its commitment to building a 50m fund for social innovation in Ireland.

Since then, we have significantly accelerated our fundraising and we are on a mission to raise 25m in philanthropic funding from corporates, SMEs, trusts, foundations, and individual and family philanthropists.

Our vision is to create the best ecosystem for social innovation right here in Ireland and we are calling for as many people across the country to come and join us and help make this happen.

Since 2015, we have raised over 28m in commitments, 50% from private philanthropy and 50% from the Department of Rural and Community Development through the Dormant Accounts Funds.

We have partnered with companies such as Bank of America, Mason Hayes & Curran, IPB Insurance, Google, and Medtronic, and trusts such as Cork-based Tomar Trust.

We have opened over 20 calls for applications,addressing a wide range of critical social issues including education, youth mental health, and equality, and supporting projects that use new and innovative ways to achieve impact, including through technology, arts, sports, and more.

This has enabled us to provide growth capital and business supports to 81 of the best social innovations in Ireland including Sensational Kids, an innovative social enterprise that has positively impacted the lives of more than 5,600 children throughout Ireland with additional needs, and the Irish Mens Sheds Association, which was set up to support and promote the development of Mens Sheds in Ireland.

A Mens Shed is any community-based, non-commercial organisation which is open to all men to provide a safe, friendly, and inclusive environment where the men are able to gather and/or work on meaningful projects at their own pace, in their own time and in the company of other men.

In January, we partnered with Cork Chamber of Commerce to launch a 200,000 fundraising drive to create a Resilient Communities Fund in Cork.

We are urging corporate Ireland and corporate Cork to get involved in this fund, which has potential for meaningful impact in communities across Cork and beyond.

Cork Chamber is the first Irish chamber of commerce to launch an initiative of this kind with SIFI.

We believe that now more than ever is the time for a Resilient Communities Fund.

Significant development occurring across Ireland since the late 1990s has brought changes to settlements, transport patterns, and economic bases, and has altered the traditional rural/urban population balance.

As a result of this shift, our rural and town communities are facing challenges to build sustainable economies, maintain public services, and retain young people; while our urban communities are burdened with

increasingly unaffordable housing, longer commute times, more limited resources, and stresses on infrastructure.

Both urban and rural communities are facing potential impacts of climate change, such as adverse effects on water quality and increased risk of flooding.

The Resilient Communities Fund represents the ability and effort of Irish communities to overcome all of these challenges and more for stronger, more vibrant communities that also deliver positive economic, social, and environmental impact.

We are also calling for applications from organisations in Cork to apply for funds which are now open, including the Ignite Fund, the Mna na hEireann/Women of Ireland Fund, the Children and Youth Mental Health Fund, and the Children and Youth Education Fund.

Deirdre Mortell is CEO of Social Innovation Fund Ireland. See: socialinnovation.ie
Governments must act together to fight gangs undermining climate policies, write Robert Muggah, Adriana Abdenur, and Ilona Szabo.

As the worlds largest terrestrial carbon sink, the Amazon is a key front in the fight against climate change. But it is also host to a thriving criminal underworld that could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

In fact, reversing climate change is not just about regulating polluters; it is also about fighting organised crime.

Deforestation in the Amazon has accelerated rapidly in recent years, resulting in a dramatic loss of tree cover. Since the 1970s, around one-fifth of the area has been razed; 50-80% of that deforestation is due to illegal activities, including gold mining. If the current trend continues, another 20% of existing tree cover will be gone by 2030.

Among the many threats to the Amazon, mining is especially destructive, because it also strips away earth, prevents regrowth, and pollutes rivers. Nonetheless, large mining corporations such as Anglo American and Vale have spent tens of billions of dollars to build access roads into some of the Amazons  and the worlds  most environmentally vulnerable regions.

They have been abetted by politicians, who issue generous tax incentives to scale up extraction of bauxite, copper, iron ore, manganese, nickel, tin, and especially gold.

And now, Brazils newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro, has promised to give mining giants access to even more protected lands, including areas belonging to indigenous communities.

The governments approach to the Amazon is directly at odds with its promise to crackdown on corruption. By weakening government regulatory bodies, offering more tax subsidies and incentives to logging and mining companies, and selling off land, it will further embolden those engaged in organised crime.

Tens of thousands of garimpeiros, or artisanal gold diggers, already depend on illegal gold mining to survive. In small Brazilian towns like Itaituba, along the Amazon River, illegal mining accounts for 50-70% of the local economy.

And an estimated 20,000 Brazilians work in clandestine mines on the border with French Guiana. As makeshift settlements continue to spring up across the region, gambling, prostitution, human trafficking, slave labour, and violent crime are on the rise, and indigenous and quilombola (Afro-descendant) people are bearing the brunt of the costs.

But wildcat miners are hardly the only players scrambling for Amazonian riches. Because the Amazon basin straddles the worlds three major coca-producing countries  Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru  Colombian/Peruvian cartels and Brazilian gangs have also gotten into the business of illegal gold mining.

They have found that gold, easy to extract and sell for an attractive market price, is often a safer financial bet than cocaine. Hence, criminal groups are expanding their involvement in illegal mining. Along the Brazilian-Colombian border, for example, former members of the now-disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as the still-active National Liberation Army (ELN), control large mining sites.

And while the Brazilian military and Colombian authorities have conducted operations to wrest back control of these areas, they are often outgunned. All of this is having dire environmental consequences. For starters, mining is fuelling much more deforestation than previously thought, and now accounts for 10% of the decline in tree cover.

Beyond that, dredged and dynamited rivers are destroying local ecosystems and releasing mercury into food supplies across the basin. In some Yanomami villages on the Brazil-Venezuela border,90% of recently tested individuals were found to be contaminated.

Moreover, there are worrying signs of increased violence near illegal mining sites, with the Amazonian cities Belem, Macapa, and Manaus currently registering homicide rates that are among the highest in the world. .

Tackling the criminal activities that are contributing to climate change will require increased investment in, and coordination of, federal police, prosecutors, public defenders, intelligence agencies, and the armed forces.

Public agencies like Brazils Institute of Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA) need a cash injection and more autonomy, and poorer areas ravaged by illicit gold mining need targeted investment, so that their young men will not be drawn toward crime.

Stewardship of the Amazon is in the entire worlds interest. When it comes to fighting environmental crime, a coordinated approach is the only option. The elites, bureaucrats, and criminals profiting from illegal mining will have to be confronted, requiring courage on the part of elected officials.

But there are also technical solutions, such as the satellite-monitoring systems that the Bolivian and Peruvian governments have deployed against drug traffickers. More broadly, durable progress will depend on high-level political action.

National governments need to align their environmental and security priorities and this will require careful diplomacy; robust, coordinated oversight of extractive companies; and a commitment to transparency, with penalties for non-compliance. The broader international community should support such efforts.
Is the PMs half-baked public non-apology for criminal intervention sufficient?

We all have heard how Prime Minister Trudeau, Finance Minister Morneau and several other officials of the Trudeau government tried for several weeks to coerce Canadas former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to secretly change her decision to not defer an ongoing criminal investigation involving corruption by chief executives of SNC-Lavalin.

These executives have a long history of corruption. If found guilty of the current charges, the company could be shut down for 10 years. An estimated 9,000 jobs could be affected, over 3,500 in Quebec.

Shutdown of SNC-Lavalin could be politically devastating for Trudeau and his Liberal government. Therefore, he and several of his top advisers, according to Ms. Wilson-Rayboulds sworn testimony, tried to coerce her to change her mind and defer the charges against the company.

Wilson-Raybould refused to capitulate to the pressure from the PM and members of his cabinet. Suddenly, she was removed as attorney general.

After being removed from office, she was severely criticized by cabinet members in an attempt to discredit anything she might have to say. She was not allowed to speak about the matter for several weeks. Only after much public outcry did the PMO allow her voice to be heard.

In a national announcement after her explanation of the matter, the PM claimed that Rayboulds release was planned prior to this incident and had nothing to do with her decision to not defer the criminal investigation of LNC-Lavalin. Canadians with half a brain know that is a lie.

The PM did not admit any wrongdoing, even though Wilson-Raybould had detailed every action of possible criminal coercion that took place. Rather, he passed off what appears to be the criminality of himself and his cabinet members as a non-event, claiming a misunderstanding between himself and Wilson-Raybould. He and others involved in this scandalous action were only trying to save jobs.

This matter needs to be fully investigated.

Garry Rayner, West Kelowna
With development land prices prohibiting many young people from owning their own home, Tim Ryan says the 1973 Kenny Report is now more relevant than ever.

Forty-six years have passed since the report by the Committee on the Price of Building Land (the Kenny report) was first published in 1973.

It contained a set of radical recommendations which had the potential to transform the way building land was purchased by local authorities forever. However, the recommendations were never implemented, thereby missing a key opportunity to avoid subsequent decades of very incoherent and distorted housing policy.

To this day, in virtually every housing debate in the Houses of the Oireachtas, reference is made to the report and calls are still made for the implementation of some of its key recommendations.

For example, speaking at the opening of the Thomas Kent School of History in Fermoy on September 30, 2018, the Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said he was asking the partys justice spokesperson and senior counsel, Jim OCallaghan, to examine whether the report could be implemented without the need for a constitutional referendum on the right to private property.

The committee was established in 1971 by the then Fianna Fail Minister for Local Government, Robert Molloy TD, in reaction to the disproportionate price of building land at the time, notably in the capital.

Chaired by High Court judge Mr Justice John Kenny, it had two representatives from the Department of Local Government, one from the Taoiseachs Department (Dr Martin ODonoghue, who later served as Minister for Economic Planning & Development), one from the Revenue Commissioners and one from the Valuation Office.

Its terms of reference included the consideration of possible measures for controlling the price of land required for housing and others forms of development as well as ensuring that all or a substantial part of the increase in the value of land attributable to the decisions and operations of public authorities would be secured for the benefit of the community.

The members were also asked to advise on what changes in the law may be required to give effect to any measure recommended.

The committee sought written submission from interested parties and also wrote to organisations which it believed had a special interest in the area. In total, 42 submissions were received, including 16 from local authorities, three from Government departments and the remainder from interested parties and organisations such as the IDA, the City and County Managers Association and the Construction Industry Federation.

One TD, Fine Gael Deputy Mark Clinton (who later served as Minister for Agriculture from 1973  77) made a submission. A total of 59 meetings were held at which two heard oral evidence. The report was published in March 1973. It included a Majority and a Minority report, the Minority report drafted, ironically, by the two civil servants from the Department of Local Government, the commissioning department.

In its opening chapter, the committee noted that in the period 1963 to 1971, the average price of serviced land (ie undeveloped land which has the main services of water, sewerage and drainage close to it) in county Dublin increased by a staggering 530% compared to a rise of 64% in the consumer price index.

When the committee reported in March 1973, the Majority Report recommended that local authorities be given the right to acquire undeveloped lands at existing use value plus 25 per cent by adopting Designated Area Schemes.

This financial deal was deemed to be a reasonable compromise between the rights of the community and those of the landowners. The Majority Report members believed this would, in turn, stymie the disproportionate price rise in building land and thus end speculative land banking.

As the increase in the value of building land was in many cases attributable to infrastructural works carried out by local authorities, the Majority Report argued that the local community had a legitimate claim to all profit accruing to the land. This increase in value was referred to as betterment.

The Minority Report recommended that areas required would be designated by the local authorities. In a designated area, the local authority would have first option to purchase land put up for sale. A levy of 30% would be charged on all disposals of land in the area. The proceeds of levies would accrue to the local authorities to be used by them to finance capital works.

However, regulating the price of building land was considered by many, including the two Minority Report members, to be an infringement of private property rights which are protected under the Constitution, notably Article 43.1.2.

By the time the report was published, the Fianna Fail Government had left office and was replaced by the Fine-Gael Labour Coalition of 1973-77 led by Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave.

Since then, there has been much general commentary as to why its recommendations were not implemented. In January, 1974, the government announced their acceptance in principle of the concept of the Majority report.

However, no commitment was given as to the amount of compensation payable in a designated area and the questions as who should be the Designation Authority was left open.

Records in the National Archives show that the Government was advised that the principles did not infringe the Constitution but concurred with the view in the Majority Report that the opinion of the Supreme Court on the legislation should be obtained, pursuant to Article 26 of the Constitution.

The economic recession of the mid-70s caused further consideration of the Report to be side-lined and, in 1976, the then Minister for Local Government, Jimmy Tully, decided to defer the implementation of the Kenny majority proposals in view of the then prevailing economic and fiscal circumstances.

Since then, there have been a myriad of reason why the Kenny Report was not implemented, including powerful vested interests and the well-trotted out threat of a constitutional challenge.

Furthermore, the introduction of the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act, 1963, saw the culture of compensation for landowners grow rapidly in cases where planning permission was refused.

But equally, there have also been many and varied calls for the findings of the Kenny Report to be implemented. In 1982, for example, the Commission on Taxation echoed calls for the recommendations in the Kenny report to be implemented, particularly in relation to betterment.

Most significantly, some 31 years later, in 2004, in the context of the emerging Irish housing bubble, the approach recommended by the Kenny report was reiterated in the Ninth Progress Report of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution. In its recommendations, the Report, whose legal advisor was Gerard Hogan SC, now an Advocate General in the Court of Justice of the European Union, concluded that it is very likely that the major elements of the Kenny recommendations, that land required for development by local authorities should be compulsorily acquired for development by local authorities at existing values plus 25%  would not be found to be unconstitutional.

In June 2017, RTE sold 8.64 acres at Donnybrook to Cairn Homes for a price of 107.5m. Cairn Homes plans to build 500 apartments and nine houses on the site, giving an initial cost of 210,000 per unit  for site costs alone.

Today, with development land prices still prohibiting many of the nations young people from owning their own home, the Kenny Report is as relevant as ever.

Tim Ryan is a former Irish Examiner journalist currently researching a PhD thesis on the 1973 Kenny Report at the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin.
Business Suu Kyi, Prayut Open 2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge

State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha attend the opening ceremony of the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge on Tuesday. / Saw Toe Htut Khaing

YANGONSpeaking at the opening ceremony of the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge on the Kayin State-Thai border, State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said Myanmar is ready to work with Thailand for the mutual benefit of both peoples and described Thailand as having been a good neighbor since diplomatic relations began.

On Tuesday, the State Counselor and Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha opened a new bridge linking Mae Sot district in Thailands Tak province with Myanmars border city of Myawaddy. A second Mae Sot Boundary Post was also opened alongside the bridge.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said the bridge would promote cross-border trade, investment, tourism and cultural exchange.

Bilateral trade between Myanmar and Thailand stood at US$5 billion (7.7 trillion kyats) in fiscal 2017-2018, $4.3 billion in 2016-17, $4.8 billion in 2015-16, $5.7 billion in 2014-15, $5.6 billion in 2013-14, $4.7 billion in 2012-13, and $4.5 billion in 2011-12, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Thailand is Myanmars third-biggest source of foreign investment.

The bridge is the result of working together to benefit both sides, the State Counselor said.

Officials from both sides began survey work for the project in May 2012, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held in August 2015. Construction of the 3.9-billion-Thai-baht (190 billion kyats), 270-meter-long bridge took four years.

The bridge lies on the East-West Economic Corridor, part of the Mekong-Japan cooperation scheme, Tokyos grand infrastructure plan for the region. Within this plan, Myanmar sits on two major economic corridors: the East-West Economic Corridor connecting Vietnams Dong Ha City with Yangons Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ) via Cambodia and Thailand, and the Southern Economic Corridor connecting central Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand to the Dawei SEZ in southeastern Myanmar.

The plan aims to improve connectivity between Bangkok and Yangon along the East-West Corridor. The corridor will help businesses based in Bangkok extend their supply chains to Yangon (at the Thilawa SEZ). The Myanmar section of the East-West Corridor does not yet function as an international highway due to bottlenecks such as one-way stretches, a lack of paved roads, traffic difficulties in the rainy season and weight limitations.

According to the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Tokyo plans to shorten transport time by constructing three bridges in Karen and Mon statesthe Gyaing-Kawkareik Bridge, the Gyaing-Zathabyin Bridge and the Atran Bridgeas part of the East-West Economic Corridor. These are expected to reduce the time needed to transport goods the 870 km from Thilawa to Bangkok to one-and-a-half days.

I believe the [2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge] will become a part of the Greater Mekong economic corridor. I also believe that it will [help] connect Southeast Asian countries along the East-West Economic Corridor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said.

Modern Thai-Myanmar diplomatic relations were established in 1948. To mark the 70th anniversary of ties last year, the two sides agreed to enhance their natural strategic partnership, particularly on border development and seamless connectivity, two areas deemed crucial for the prosperity of people living near the border on both sides.

At the end of her speech, the State Counselor stressed that, We have seen our relations improve in recent years. I would like to offer reassurances that [we] will work together with Thailand [for the benefit of both peoples], she said.
Burma ANP Calls for Removing Military from Parliament in One Fell Swoop

Military-appointed lawmakers attend Parliament. / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYITAWThe Arakan National Party (ANP) on Monday proposed amending the Constitution to establish a Union Parliament composed entirely of elected civilian lawmakers, according to Lower House lawmaker U Aung Kyaw Zan of the ANP.

The party made the proposal at a meeting of the committee to draft amendments to the 2008 Constitution.

While the ANP seeks a military-free legislature, the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) has proposed a gradual reduction in the 25 percent of all parliamentary seats the Constitution currently reserves for unelected military lawmakers, U Aung Kyaw Zan said.

An NLD lawmaker on the committee who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Irrawaddy that the ruling party would rather take a pragmatic approach, believing it is unrealistic to ask the military to return to the barracks immediately.

We will need their [the militarys] approval even to reduce their share [of seats], he said.

The NLD has proposed reducing the military block to 15 percent in the 2020 election, and by a further 5 percentage points at each general election.

Under Article 436, no amendment can be made to the Constitution without the approval of military-appointed lawmakers. So there is a need for serious negotiations between the leaders of the government, the Tatmadaw and the ruling party, political analyst Dr. Yan Myo Thein told The Irrawaddy.

Military-appointed lawmakers declined to comment when asked about the ANP and NLDs proposals.

NLD lawmaker U Aung Kyi Nyunt, who submitted the initial proposal that led to the formation of the committee to draft amendments to the 2008 Constitution, said the process is going smoothly and swiftly but declined to offer details.

The committee has thus far discussed nearly 200 provisions from Chapters 1 through 4 of the 13-chapter Constitution. It has already submitted 48 proposed amendments relating to basic principles of the Union as described in Chapter 1.

The ANP has also proposed downsizing the bicameral Union Parliament, U Aung Kyaw Zan said.

The cost of operating the Union Parliament is high. There is also a need for staff. The [bicameral] Union Parliament is unnecessary. When a decision needs to be put to a vote by the two houses, we just need to see how the majority of the Lower House votes, he said.

Under normal conditions, there are 224 lawmakers in the Upper House and 440 in the Lower House. Currently, there are 657 lawmakers in the Union Parliament.
Burma Arakanese Politician, Author Sentenced to 20 Years in Rakhine State

U Aye Maung appears at Sittwe District Court in Rakhine State in May. / Min Aung Khine / The Irrawaddy

SITTWE, Rakhine State  The Sittwe District Court in Rakhine State on Tuesday sentenced prominent ethnic Arakanese politician U Aye Maung and author Ko Wai Hin Aung to 20 years in prison for encouraging people to support a rebel group.

The two were given 20 years in prison for high treason and another two years for defamation of the state to be served concurrently, Ko Wai Hin Aungs lawyer, Daw Aye Nu Sein, told The Irrawaddy.

The two were arrested and charged in January 2018 over remarks they made at a public event in Rathedaung Township commemorating the 233rd anniversary of the fall of the Arakan Kingdom that allegedly expressed and encouraged support for the rebel Arakan Army.

A few days after the event, the Ministry of Home Affairs released a lengthy statement accusing U Aye Maung and Ko Wai Han Aung of having destabilized the community with their remarks.

Daw Aye Nu Sein accused the prosecution of using video footage of their remarks out of context and said the politician and author were merely trying to entertain the crowd.

Though people were splitting their sides with laughter over their remarks, their quotes were taken out of context. It is against the law, she said.

The two men were originally charged with high treason, defamation of the state and unlawful association, but the court dismissed the unlawful association charges in September.

It is against the law to file three separate charges against an individual for a single action, and punishment was handed down for two charges even though one charge was dismissed, Daw Aye Nu Sein said.

It is up to Dr. Aye Maung whether or not to appeal, she added.

Dozens of locals waited for the ruling outside the Sittwe District Court, where tensions between police and supporters of the accused ran high.

The charges are completely unfair. What can we expect for the future of our country if an author and a lawmaker working for the country are given such punishment, said U Aung Htay, chairman of the Sittwe chapter of the Arakan National Party.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma Myanmar Military Court to Probe Rohingya Atrocity Allegations

Rohingya refugees make their way to a refugee camp after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Palong Khali, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh in November 2017. / Reuters

YANGONMyanmars military said on Monday it had set up a military court to investigate its conduct during a crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in 2017 that forced more than 730,000 to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

The court comprising a major-general and two colonels will investigate events in western Myanmars Rakhine State in August 2017, the military said in a statement posted on the website of Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the army commander-in-chief.

The information is released that the investigation court was formed with the following persons to further scrutinize and confirm the respective incidents, the military said.

The court will respond to allegations made by the United Nations and rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accusing security forces of mass killings, rape and arson.

Myanmar forces launched their offensive in Rakhine State in response to a series of attacks by Rohingya insurgents on security posts near the Bangladesh border.

A UN fact-finding mission last year said the military campaign was orchestrated with genocidal intent and recommended charging Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing and five other generals with the gravest crimes under international law.

Myanmar has denied the accusations of murder, rape and other abuses by its forces though Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing said last month a number of security men may have been involved.

A previous military investigation in 2017 exonerated the security forces of any crimes.

The new court is another bad faith maneuver to fend off international pressure, said Nicholas Bequelin, Southeast Asia and Pacific Director of Amnesty International.

The military stands accused of the gravest crimes under international law and has shown no sign of reform, he said.

The idea that the Tatmadaw could investigate itself and ensure justice and accountability is both dangerous and delusional, Bequelin added, referring to the military.

The military information unit did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Myanmar is facing growing international calls for accountability over the Rakhine campaign.

The International Criminal Court has opened a preliminary examination into the violence, while a commission of enquiry formed by Myanmar and including Filipino diplomat Rosario Manalo and Kenzo Oshima, Japans former ambassador to the UN, is due to publish its findings this year.

The creation of the military court was based on assessments and suggestions from the military-appointed Judge Advocate-General, as well the allegations contained in human rights reports, according to the army statement.
Burma President Nominates Replacement For Disgraced Tanintharyi Chief Minister

Tanintharyi Region Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation Minister, and acting Chief Minister, U Myint Maung. / Tanintharyi Region Government / Facebook

YANGON  President U Win Myint nominated Tanintharyi Regions minister of natural resources and environmental conservation to replace Chief Minister Daw Lei Lei Maw, who was fired immediately after her arrest on corruption charges earlier this month.

Tanintharyi Region Parliament Speaker U Khin Maung Aye told The Irrawaddy that the legislature received the nomination on Monday and that he has called lawmakers to an emergency session on Friday to discuss it.

The regional minister for natural resources and environmental conservation, U Myint Maung, has been serving as acting chief minister since Daw Lei Lei Maws arrest on March 10.

The ousted chief minister was arrested after a month-long investigation by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) along with Global Grand Services Managing Director U Thein Htwe, Director U Aung Myat and General Manager U Thura Ohn. The ACC opened cases against all four under the Anti-Corruption Law.

The ACC said Daw Lei Lei Maw misused her position on a number of occasions since April 2016, just weeks after she was appointed. A day after her arrest, the Presidents Office announced that she had been fired.

U Khin Maung Aye said he believed U Myint Maung was the right person for the job because he had experience serving in the regional cabinet and had overseen the local mining industry well over the past three years.

U Myint Maung was elected to the local legislature to represent Kawthaung Township in the 2015 general election representing the National League for Democracy, which came to power in same poll. He is also the NLD secretary for Tanintharyi Region.

There is not much time to address all the problems that the region is facing, but I hope he can solve a few of them in the remaining term, U Khin Maung Aye said.
Burma Six Civilians Injured in Shooting, Shelling in Downtown Mrauk-U

Maung Win Yee, who was injured by an exploding artillery shell in downtown Mrauk-U on Monday night, sits in the medical ward of Mrauk-U Hospital, in Rakhine State, on Tuesday morning. / Irrawaddy

MRAUK-U, Rakhine State  At least six residents of northern Rakhine States Mrauk-U Township were wounded by gun fire and artillery Monday night that locals say were fired by Myanmar military soldiers without provocation.

The military has been fighting with the rebel Arakan Army (AA) in the north of the state since late last year.

The main hospital in Mrauk-U said it was treating six people from the Yaung Haung quarter injured in the latest incident. Staff said that among the wounded were a husband and wife, Maung Win Yee and Daw Ye May, injured by an exploding artillery shell.

The Mrauk-U Youth Association said local volunteers waited until the shooting and shelling ended to rescue the victims and take them to hospital for fear of being targeted themselves.

One resident, Min Thu Kha, said he saw soldiers firing from a military truck while he was passing a branch office of Kanbawza Bank in downtown Mrauk-U, near U Ottama Park.

Bullets started flying from army trucks along the road. I could have died right there if I had not lied down on the ground.

The bank building was also damaged by the shooting and shelling; the front door was blown off and the walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. A thatch house hit by the shelling burned to the ground.

Daw Nyunt Ayes home was also hit. When she heard the shooting start, she shuttered her shop but did not have time to turn off the lights.

When the army trucks drove slowly in front of my home, they shot bullets into my house, and an artillery shell exploded in my bedroom, she said.

She and her children survived the ordeal uninjured by lying on the ground.

Ko Kyaw Naing, who runs a small shop near the bank, said the AA had not engaged the soldiers when the shooting started and that locals had been strolling the streets.

He said he saw about eight army trucks driving through town and heard someone yell, Kill all these AA supporters. They shot at the bank for about two minutes and hit his shop with a few rounds as well.

A spokesman for the militarys Western Command said the soldiers were attacked by AA fighters while returning to Mrauk-U in the evening. He said the AA shot from residential areas and that the soldiers returned fire.

It was over after 8 p.m. Both sides used artillery. AA fighters are embed in the local population, he said.

AA spokesman Khine Thukha denied that the group had any fighters imbedded in the local population and said it was not involved in any fighting in the area Monday night.

He accused the military of shooting in a thuggish manner to scare people off. They are cowards.

U Oo Hla Saw, a Lower House lawmaker and ethnic Arakanese, turned to his Facebook page to urge State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and military chief Sen. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing to restore order.

Sister and brother! I do apologize. Please dont be cruel to Mrauk-U. Kill me or kill us, but spare Mrauk-U, he posted.

Locals gathered at the scene of the shooting early this morning but scattered at about 7:20 when the military fired more shells from the downtown neighborhood of Nan Yar Kon. Shops in the area quickly shut down and the streets were soon abandoned. A few domestic tourists also left for the state capital, Sittwe, in the morning.

Over the weekend, artillery shells landed in the downtown heritage zone of Mrauk-U. One shell landed between the Htukkanthein temple and Shitthaung pagoda, where vendors set up shop during the day. Another landed near Myede pagoda, which sits beside a local residence.
Photo: GoFundMe Phoenix Scott, 9, wants to help those in need.

When most nine year olds get money for their birthday, their first thought is all of the things they are going to buy.

For Phoenix Scott, his first thought was how he could give it to the less fortunate in Vernon.

His mom, Danielle Scott, said when Phoenix was seven, he and his big brother, Keegan Jones, handed out 50 brown bag lunches and bottles of water to the less fortunate at Linear Park.

Phoenix also went to Polson Park and handed out roses with inspirational sayings to random people.

Phoenix has always loved to do nice things for people and doing random acts of kindness has become a regular thing for him, Danielle said. He is just a sweet little nine-year-old boy who wants to help everyone. He just wants people to be happy.

Because Phoenix wants to keep helping others in need, Danielle started a GoFundMe page to raise money for his efforts.

The goal is to raise $1,000  a number that Danielle said they chose for no particular reason  which will mark the beginning of Phoenix's Random Act of Kindness Project.

I am hoping to raise enough money that Phoenix will be able to do weekly random acts of kindness. He will get to chose who he donates to and how the money will be given away. Being a single working mother who also goes to school full time, I am not able to help Phoenix financially with his desire to help people as much as I would like, said Danielle.

He hopes that by doing this it will inspire more people to do nice things for others. Any support to help Phoenix reach his goal would be amazing. Together we can change the world, just one random act of kindness at a time.

Phoenix will decide where they money will go and people can follow his progress on a Facebook page made by Danielle.
Burma Stop War Crimes in Rakhine or Well Join the Fight There, TNLA Tells Tatmadaw

Hundreds of villagers from Lay Nyin Taung flee their homes to escape armed clashes in northern Rakhine's Mrauk-U Township last week. / Khine Murn Chan

The Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) has called on the Myanmar military to end its operations against the Arakan Army in Rakhine State, accusing government forces of targeting Arakanese civilians in the region and warning that this could prompt other ethnic armies to enter the fight on the AAs side.

The Myanmar Army (or Tatmadaw) has been engaged in fierce fighting with the AA in Rakhine State in recent months. The AA and the TNLA are both members of the Northern Alliance of ethnic armed groups.

The TNLA warned the Tatmadaw that if it did not end its military operations in the area, the Northern Alliance groups would fight alongside the AA. This would be a bad outcome for the country, Brigadier-General Tar Phone Kyaw of the TNLA told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.

We want to ask the Myanmar Army and the government to stop committing war crimes in Arakan [Rakhine State]. We also want to tell them to stop shooting civilians, he said.

The governments National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) has invited members of the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committeea group of seven ethnic organizationsto attend peace negotiations in Naypyitaw. Representatives of the four-member Northern Alliance, which comprises FPNCC members, will travel to the capital soon to meet with the NRPC first.

It is a political conflict. We need to solve it through political dialogue. Therefore, we accepted their request to have a meeting in Naypyitaw. We will try this method first. We will see whether our first efforts are successful. If not, we will do what we need to do, Brig-Gen. Tar Phone Kyaw said.

He said that as an ally of the AA, the TNLA could not stand by and watch the Myanmar Army killing and attacking people in Rakhine.

The TNLA will do what we can to help the AA. But now is not the right time to say [exactly] what we will do, he said.

The fighting in northern Rakhine State reached the town of Mrauk-U in recent days. According to local sources, the Myanmar Army wounded civilians including a boy in an attack on the town on Monday night. Fighting continued in Mrauk-U on Tuesday morning. The Tatmadaw reportedly used jet fighters to attack AA positions outside the town.

Three ethnic armed groupsthe AA, TNLA and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Armyissued a joint statement on Tuesday accusing the Myanmar Army of targeting civilians and attacking historic pagodas.

The Myanmar Army is conducting ongoing attacks in Mrauk-U. They used jet fighters and artillery, as well as rifles to target civilians and destroy historic heritage pagodas. Their actions are war crimes, the statement reads.

The Myanmar Army launched a military offensive in Rakhine State over a month ago, prompting many reports of human right abuses in the region. The current wave of fighting broke out in Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships on Jan. 4, when the AA attacked four police bases and killed 13 security officials.

Since then, fighting between the Myanmar Army and the AA has escalated and spread to other townships in the region including Mrauk-U, Rathedaung, Ponnagyun and Kyauktaw. Over 10,000 people have become IDPs after being forced to flee the fighting.

According to the TNLA, whenever the Myanmar Army loses a significant number of troops in fighting in ethnic areas, it targets civilians.

The Myanmar Army should stop fighting in [Rakhine]. If not, the fighting will get worse in the region. We are worried that there have been many cases of human right abuses. We have found that [the Tatmadaw] has acted very badly in [Rakhine] compared to other ethnic areas when it comes to rights abuses, Brig-Gen. Tar Phone Kyaw said.
Travel Coast, Caves and Island TreasuresDestination Guide to Myanmars Deep South

A view of some of the more remote islands of the Myeik Archipelago. / Marie Starr

Kawthoung

Kawthoung is the city located at the southernmost tip of Myanmar and a quick boat across the water from Thailands Ranong. It bustles with trade and tourism and crowds come from Thailand and beyond every day to get a taste of the nearby Myeik Archipelago. The leafy park above the coast road at Victoria Point features a giant statue of King Bayintnaung wielding his sword towards Thailand. This is also a great spot for views across the busy harbor below.

Myeik Archipelago

Touted as one of the worlds last untouched island paradises, the 800 islands of Myeik were largely cut off to the public until just a few years ago. With development plans in the works for some of the islands, now is the time to take a multi-day cruise through the more remote parts of the archipelago and bask in the tranquility of deserted white-sand beaches and dense virgin jungle. The archipelago is said to have some of the best dive sites in the world and you may spot a family of the sea nomad ethnic group, the Moken (called Salone in Burmese).

Myeik

The city of Myeik has been an important port city for centuries, with sea traders from across the globe docking in the harbor. The main streets have well-preserved European and oriental architecture and several mighty mansions built by wealthy traders are still in use. The fish processing part of town is interesting and worth a visit if you can hack the smell, while the bustling and colorful ship-building yard is a must-see.

Dawei

The draw to Dawei usually leads travelers beyond the city to the beaches at Maungmagan and further along the coast. Maungmagan has wooden beach hut restaurants where you can order coconut water and delicious seafood. Walking south along the beach brings you to a picturesque fishing village while a motorbike trip north leads to deserted, pristine white sand beaches, like Nabule which is studded with dramatic boulders.

Mawlamyine

The sleepy, peaceful Mawlamyine located at the mouth of Thanlwin River is actually Myanmars fourth largest city. There are a number of beautiful pagodas to visit, like Mahamyatmuni Pagoda which has a great view across the town and down to the river. You can go back in time visiting colonial-era churches and other well-preserved architecture or see a local craft workshop on Bilu (Ogre) Island across the river. A short trip outside Mawlamyine lies Win Sein Taw Ya, said to be the longest reclining Buddha image in the world, which you can actually walk inside and see a series of life-size scenes from the Buddhas life.

Hpa-an

The wonders of Hpa-an, the capital of Karen State, lie outside the town among the craggy limestone outcrops inside which youll find caves both small and mighty. The huge Saddang Cave has religious monuments to the front and beautiful mineral formations to the back. Other good caves to visit include Kawkathaung and Kawgoon caves and at sunset, you can watch millions of bats swarm out of the Bat Cave by the river. Mount Papu is an easy trek while Mount Zwekabin (732 meters) is much more challenging yet rewarding with fantastic views from the pagoda at the top.

Golden Rock

The famous gold leaf-covered rock with stupa on top teeters seemingly impossibly on the edge of a rocky mountain and is one of the most religiously important sites in Myanmar making it the destination for hundreds of thousands of Buddhist pilgrims every year. You can take a truck to the drop-off point a 45-minute walk from the rock itself, or choose to walk the pilgrim route from the base which takes around six hours. Back in Kin Pun, the base town serving visitors to Golden Rock, the beautiful Saung Hlaing Gyi waterfall is just a taxi or motorbike drive away and has a great swimming area and waterside shops where you can sit in the shade and order drinks and snacks.
Tuesday, March 19th, 2019 (7:48 am) - Score 1,922

The state aid supported 31m+ Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire project has launched a new interactive mapping tool, created by FarrPoint, that helps locals to identify whether they can now or will in the future be able to order a superfast broadband (30Mbps+) connection.

At present the project in Nottinghamshire, which is supported by the Governments Broadband Delivery UK programme and Openreach (BT), has already made superfast speeds (mostly via FTTC) available to around 98% of local premises (some 80,000+ extra homes and businesses).

Further work is also expected to continue under Phase 3 of the project, albeit focused more on extending ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology to another 3,000 premises in rural parts of Bassetlaw, as well as the Newark and Sherwood districts (starting this spring). Theres also scope for additional work to take place until the end of 2020 as more public reinvestment is made via future gainshare (clawback).

Kay Cutts MBE, Leader of Nottinghamshire Council, said: The fact that Nottinghamshire has one of the most comprehensive superfast broadband networks in the country is a major selling point for the county when we are competing with other areas to attract new jobs and investment. According to independent estimates, the Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire programme (BBfN) will be worth 302m to the local economy over a 15-year period, representing a return 11 for every 1 of public and private investment made. We know that access to good quality broadband is rated by many residents and businesses to be as important as other utilities like gas, electricity and water  which is reflected in the high take-up of broadband services in the hundreds of communities where BBfN has provided access. The launch of our When and Where interactive map now provides the public with easy access to the information they need, 24/7.

The council claims that this is the most detailed mapping tool of its kind but we have seen other BDUK based projects with interactive maps of similar or even better detail before. One other issue is the fact that theyre only launching this map toward the latter stages of their roll-out but it would have been much more useful to have several years ago.

Residents will also have the option to register their details on the website to receive regular updates and reminders to take-up superfast services, where they are available.
Photo: BC Gov't

Several Thompson-Okanagan schools are among 50 that will receive new playgrounds as part of $5 million in funding from the provincial government.

The playgrounds will be built over the next six months and are expected to be ready for kids to play on in fall 2019.

The playgrounds are funded based on greatest need. Priority is given to schools where there is no playground, then to schools where the existing playground is aging.

"As a parent, I understand first-hand how tough it can be for schools and parents to find the time and volunteers to fundraise for playground equipment and activities," said Minister of Education Rob Fleming. "... parents should not have to become dedicated fundraisers in their spare time."

In the Central Okanagan, Kelowna's Rutland Elementary and West Kelowna's Shannon Lake Elementary will each receive $105,000 for accessible playgrounds.

In the North Okanagan-Shuswap School District, Len Wood Middle School in Armstrong will receive $90,000 for a new playground.

Kamloops/Thompson School District will see Aberdeen Elementary and Oak Hills Primary/Ecole Collines d'Or Primaire both receive $90,000.
The Federal Government's encryption law spreads its net far and wide in society, but exempts one class of person  politicians  from its tentacles, according to an analysis of the law by lawyer and consultant Matthew Shearing.

"This Bill (which is now law) has a number of small but powerful provisions tucked away in its 220 pages  but none might raise more eyebrows than the provision regarding members of Parliament," Shearing pointed out in his analysis which came to iTWire's notice after InnovationAus editor James Riley mentioned it.

"While the rest of the Australia (and in many cases, the world) is subject to the new legislation, the only people who are expressly excluded from everything in the Bill are the very people who rushed it through Parliament in the first place  the politicians."

And in a sarcastic aside, he added: "Its not a big deal though  its common knowledge that our politicians are the most trustworthy and transparent of anyone in our society. I, for one, am glad they have blanket immunity."

A great deal of Shearing's analysis of the bill covers well-worn paths with the difference being that he has used plain English unlike some pundits who have laid claim to tell people "everything you wanted to know about the Assistance and Access bill".

Shearing mentions the danger that the law poses to the technology industry in Australia many times.

"If I was advising an international company on this Bill, Id say they must assume that any data originating in Australia is being routed via Australian intelligence servers," he wrote.

"Id also say theres a the much higher chance that Australian software will be breached by hackers and malicious actors. I suspect many experts will recommend avoiding Australian software and staff altogether  which some organisations have already begun doing.

"This is tough, because most Australian companies probably havent been served with a notice yet.

"Business, however, is cold and pragmatic, and theres little room for doubt when youre talking about data security. Its entirely possible that, when weighing options for service agreements or software development, one of the first questions asked will be 'Who has an Australian presence?'

"Much in the same way that low university grades are filtered out of job application processes early, being Australian made may get you automatically removed from shortlists quicker than you can say 'there should have been a referendum on this'.

Also listed in his analysis are a number of measures that can be taken to minimise the impact of the law. One that Shearing cites is, "Wherever possible, put measures in place to monitor your software for unauthorised alterations and suspicious activity from your employees.

"The Bill gives authorities the power to compel employees to make changes without the knowledge or involvement of anyone else in a company. If youre unaware of the existence of a notice, you must treat any unauthorised alterations as a cyber attack and deal with it accordingly."

And his advice to international firms does not sound good for Australia. "If youre an international company, seriously consider if you still want to do business in Australia. You may save a lot of time and money by simply excluding Australia from your business until our government comes to their senses. How overseas companies will interact with this Bill (and what they can be forced to do) is still something that requires further thought and will probably form a Part 2 of this article."

An inquiry is now underway into the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018 by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The PJCIS is expected to submit a report to government by 3 April.
The same fate that befell big data analytics company Splunk last month  having to pull out of doing business in Russia  is likely to be shared by many Australian technology companies in the same or other countries once the Federal Government's encryption law begins to make its presence felt.

Splunk announced it would no longer sell its software and services to organisations in Russia, and, to date, no reason, apart from some bizspeak  "[we are] continually evaluating where we are investing and focusing our company resources"  has been advanced to account for the decision.

But is fair to assume that Moscow would have asked for access to the source code of the application  and many companies are now fighting shy of granting such requests, especially given the hostile state of relations that the US enjoys (!) with many other nations.

If that same demand was made of an Australian company which had complied with a demand from the authorities to build in functionality  which can be demanded under the encryption law  there is no way it could accede to a request to provide its source code. That would mean a term behind bars.

There is nothing unusual about requests for source code: China allowed Microsoft to supplyfor its public sector only after the Redmond giant had allowed Beijing to look at the source in its entirety. Given the oodles of money in that market, Microsoft did not hesitate.

But then it has no vulnerabilities built into its code by the US Government. Or, at least none that have been discovered so far.

For the uninitiated, or those who have been living under a rock for the last eight months, the Australian encryption law  officially known as the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018  was passed in December 2018.

(An inquiry is now underway by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The PJCIS is expected to submit a report to government by 3 April.)

Under the law, the authorities can get industry to aid in gaining access to encrypted material in three ways. A technical assistance request (TAR) allows for voluntary help by a company; in this case, its staff would be given civil immunity from prosecution.

Else, an interception agency can issue a technical assistance notice (TAN) to make a communications provider offer assistance.

Finally, a technical capability notice (TCN) can be issued by the attorney-general at the request of an interception agency; the communications minister of the day would also need to agree. This would force a company to help law enforcement, by building functionality.

But if the company or individual who is asked to build in functionality breathes so much as a word about it, then he/she/they would all end up eating dry bread and water in one of the many prisons in this big, brown land.

So, if an ambitious Australian company wants to sell its wares abroad  many already do and are much valued  and if the prospective buyer asks for an assurance that there are no doodahs in the code of the product, how does the Aussie firm offer that assurance if it has been approached and has satisfied a request for "help"?

Without that assurance  and often an inspection of the code itself  no buyer would be satisfied.

Australia has used similar logic to exclude Chinese telco equipment vendor Huawei Technologies from its 5G networks  even though Huawei has offered its source code to the authorities for inspection!

There have been muttered arguments about Communism and capitalism, and angry noises that the Australian and Chinese systems cannot be compared.

But such arguments  "trust us, we are fair dinkum Aussies"  will be worth nothing if it comes to a request for source code and the company which is seeking business abroad cannot meet the request.

The only option left will be to dig up some bizspeak the way Splunk did. This site should help.
Norwegian aluminium maker Norsk Hydro has been under what it describes as "an extensive cyber attack" that has affected several areas of the company's operations. The malware affecting the firm is believed to the LockerGoga ransomware that attacks Windows systems.

The attack began late on Monday evening, the firm said. Norway is 10 hours behind AEDT.

At 5am this morning UTC somebody from Norway uploaded a signed copy of LockerGoga ransomware. It uses the same certificate me and @malwrhunterteam team identified several weeks ago, which the CA has now revoked. pic.twitter.com/PxYS690oYs  ? Kevin Beaumont ? (@GossiTheDog) March 19, 2019

The company posted a detailed account of its travails on Facebook, saying that it had isolated all plants and operations and was switching to manual operations and procedures to the extent possible.

The firm's chief financial officer, Eivind Kallevik told the media: This is a classic ransomware attack. The situation is quite severe.

Norwegian media with NorCERT are reporting LockerGoga ransomware deployed by Active Directory, which backs up this thread theory. pic.twitter.com/22YbOwHVAZ  ? Kevin Beaumont ? (@GossiTheDog) March 19, 2019

He said the company had no plans to pay the ransom demanded but would restore all the locked files from back-up servers.

We have good back-up systems and we have plans on how to restore it, he said.

Kallevik said the financial impact was limited thus far. It is mostly direct labour: some of the activities that we use computers to do, today we use manual labour. We have to add some more people."

on the plus side the printer still works pic.twitter.com/SQJ80lsGpF  ? Kevin Beaumont ? (@GossiTheDog) March 19, 2019

Commenting on the ransomware attack, Tyler Moffitt, a senior threat research analyst at security outfit Webroot, said: "LockerGoga is a new ransomware variant that appears to be targeting European companies. So far the notable victims have been Altran in France (25 January) and Norsk Hydro in Norway (past 24 hours).

"The encryption process used by LockerGoga is slow because it creates a new process each times it encrypts a new file and also exhibits no detection evasion techniques, showing a lack of sophistication.

"LockerGoga was signed using a valid digital certificate which has since been revoked."

Moffitt said he expected LockerGoga to become a big player in the ransomware scene and would monitor its progress.

Norsk Hydro employs 36,000 people in 40 countries and reported a profit of 4.3 billion Norwegian crowns (US$505 million) in 2018, with sales topping out at 159.4 billion Norwegian crowns.
The funds will be used to extend the Visa-powered cards platform to fintech companies or start-ups in Australia, Hong Kong and Malaysia looking to be part of Singapores payments and remittances ecosystem.

InstaReM says the latest round is led by Singapores Vertex Growth Fund and supported by new venture capital investor Atinum Investment from South Korea.

The new funding will also be used to introduce a multi-currency forex card, which InstaReM says will help APAC international travellers save on foreign exchange conversion rates and excessive charges on expenses.

In addition, InstaReM says it plans to increase headcount in the companys existing London and Seattle offices, and expand to Latin America.

This latest round takes InstaReMs total fundraising to $84 million, making it one of the top 10 best-funded fintech companies in Southeast Asia.

Founded in 2014, InstaReM first launched its services in Australia in 2015, more than a year before it launched in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Although InstaReM is based in Singapore, the company says Australia still represents its biggest client base.

InstaReM co-founder and chief executive Prajit Nanu said: Our primary focus is to make moving money internationally, faster and more convenient for our customers. Weve built a good relationship with existing investors, and it means they have a lot of confidence in what were doing. Our goals are quite ambitious, and they support that.
The funds will be utilised to aggressively scale the platform in Australasia and accelerate the integration of Waddles global financial services partners.

Waddle says the raise will support its mission to simplify working capital for SMEs by automating the entire credit process through integration with cloud accounting and enterprise planning systems.

According to Waddle, the completion of the funding round builds on a significant year for the company, including the rollout of international bank platform partnerships, strong lending growth and closing a $50 million wholesale debt facility.

The company says that by accelerating marketing, sales and development, the business is well positioned to capitalise on this momentum.

Waddle co-founder Simon Creighton said: Cloud accessible data and the broader digital economy is quickly transforming how SMEs think about and solve their working capital constraints.

Allectus shares our vision of leveraging data and automation to provide SMEs with simple and cost-effective access to capital. Im thrilled to have them join the team. The support we will receive from this global organisation as we build out with partner banks will be invaluable.

Allectus is a global technology investor that focuses on fintech, artificial intelligence and automation, identity and security and digital health, and oversees A$400 million of assets across the Asia Pacific, UK and US. The company is managed and owned by ICM Limited, an international fund manager and corporate finance adviser with seven offices globally, It directly and indirectly manages US$18 billion in funds.

ICM portfolio manager Jason Cheong said: We believe Waddle presents an incredible value proposition for SMEs by providing best in class user experience, live credit assessment and digital account management. We see a great opportunity to grow the business alongside trusted financial services partners and leverage our technology ecosystem.

As part of the transaction, ICM chief information officer Pierre De Villecourt will join the Waddle board.
More than $10 million in new contracts in Australia have been announced as part of a trade mission from Ireland, including 71 Irish companies from the fintech, medtech, high-tech construction, agritech, emerging technologies and ICT sectors.

Irish Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, who led the trade mission, announced the deals and the opening of a Melbourne office for Enterprise Ireland as a direct result of continued growth in exports to Australia and New Zealand to the tune of $404 million last year, an increase of 43% over the previous three years.

Australia is a mature and highly developed economy that offers significant opportunity for Irish exporters," she said.

Despite the long distance to market, Australias open economy, significant infrastructure expenditure and strategic location at the doorstep of Asia has led many Irish companies to enter and perform strongly in the market. The size and scope of this trade mission demonstrate that now more than ever the importance of this marker.

[A total of] 320 Irish companies are now exporting to Australia and these companies employ over 25,000 people in Ireland. Our ambition is to grow client exports to 360 million (A$574m) by 2020. I am delighted to lead this trade and investment mission to Australia and engage in an extensive program of activity which focuses on supporting Irish companies to expand exports into this significant market.

My aim over the coming days is to build awareness and promote the Irish advantage of the participating companies through their innovation and capability in key sectors. I look forward to engaging with key decision makers at the highest levels in Government and Industry to promote Ireland as a source of world-class products and services.

Key deals include:

Kingspan Insulated Panels announced a $8 million capex investment for a new state of the art machine which will operate at their factory in Greater Western Sydney.

GM Steel announced the commissioning of a goat abattoir with Darling River Meats Company in Bourke NSW worth $9 million.

Solgari and Barhead announced a strategic partnership to bring Solgaris Dynamics 365 All-Channel Solution to Barhead Financial Service & Retail customers in Australia. This gives Solgari access to Microsofts global partner network and millions of potential customers.

Emydex announced a contract with Harvey Beef, the largest meat processing company in WA, to provide its food processing software

Eppione announced a contract to license their software to HR consulting firm Talenting.

Combilift announced a contract with E Store Logistics who are soon to become the second largest user of the Combilift Aisle Master product and largest private user across Australia and New Zealand.

Office openings:

Fineos Corporation, a global provider of customer centric core insurance software, which employs 130 people across Australia and New Zealand and services BT Financial, AMP, Commonwealth Bank and Westpac.

Alpha Wireless announced the opening of a new research and development office in Sydney to support the companys expansion in Asia Pacific.

Glofox Gym and Fitness Studio Management Software announced the opening of a new office in Sydney.

Mainstream Renewable Power announced the establishment of an office in Melbourne to focus on renewable projects in Victoria and across Australia.

Linesight, which provides professional services and strategic support to the global construction industry, opened a new office in Sydney.

Kevin Sherry, executive director, Global Business Development, Enterprise Ireland, said: Expanding the Irish export footprint in markets beyond the UK is a key priority for Enterprise Ireland and we are working closely with Irish industry to pursue realisable opportunities to support greater market diversification throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Since 2018, Enterprise Ireland has strengthened our resources in key sectors such as Digital Technologies, Financial Services, Education, Agritech, Healthcare, Construction and Food FDI across the Asia Pacific region and will add additional resources by end of 2019 including new offices in Melbourne and Vietnam as well as pathfinders in New Zealand and Shenzhen to support that continued growth.
Photo: Twitter

A United Conservative Party candidate in the upcoming Alberta election has resigned following allegations that she made comments about white nationalists online.

Caylan Ford, who was running in Calgary-Mountain View, says in a statement posted to Facebook overnight that she decided to step down to avoid becoming a distraction in the campaign.

The announcement comes after the website PressProgress reported on what it says was a private Facebook conversation from 2017 in which Ford allegedly spoke about the replacement of white people in their homelands and the collapse of Western culture.

Ford says the comments published by PressProgress are distortions and are not reflective of her views.

PressProgress says on its website that it operates under the Broadbent Institute's mandate and focuses on issues that include social and economic equality and democratic renewal.

Ford's resignation comes after documents leaked on the weekend suggest UCP Leader Jason Kenney's leadership team directed the campaign of fellow candidate Jeff Callaway, as Callaway attacked and criticized Kenney's main rival Brian Jean.
Photo: Contributed

New discount airline Swoop will soon be flying direct to Las Vegas from Kelowna.

Swoop, which is WestJets ultra-low-cost carrier, will start offering direct flights from Kelowna International Airport to McCarran International Airport on June 27. The twice-weekly flights, which will take place on Thursdays and Sundays, will continue until Oct. 26.

"Las Vegas and Swoop make the perfect combination for Kelowna travellers," Swoops senior communications advisor Karen McIsaac said in a press release.

"Our flights are non-stop and remarkably affordable, encouraging the freedom to fly more often while leaving more money to spend on the experience.

For more on this story, visit Okanagan Edge.
The City of Vernon has been ordered to reinstate two employees who were fired a year ago for engaging in sexual activity while on duty at the Vernon firehall.

The order was made by a majority of an arbitration board convened to hear a grievance brought forward by the B.C. International Association of Fire Fighters.

The fire captain and a dispatcher were caught on a surveillance camera placed in the chief's office for another matter during a turbulent time in the department's history in which tensions were high between management and union members.

The fire captain, not named by the city, had previously served a three-day suspension for engaging in bullying and harassment of a fellow firefighter.

Our emergency personnel have a duty to serve our taxpayers and respond with all due diligence, not to be distracted from their duties by engaging in sexual relations in the firehall when on shift. Lives depend on rapid response. Engaging in sexual activity rather than managing the platoon is absolutely unacceptable, said Will Pearce, chief administrative officer for the city.

I am most disappointed in the majority decision. It sends entirely the wrong message to fire personnel across the country and to staff of the City of Vernon. It is not now and will never be acceptable or ethical for a direct supervisor to engage in a sexual relationship with junior and subordinate staff. The City of Vernon has an employee code of ethics, known by both employees, that requires staff to maintain the highest ideals of honour and integrity in public and business relationships and not to act in any way that would detract from the image of integrity or professionalism of the City of Vernon.

I extend my apologies to the citizens of Vernon for the behaviour of these two people. Our staff, with few exceptions, are dedicated to high standards of service, ethics, integrity, and honesty. These two individuals do not reflect the professionalism of the proud public servants who work for the city.

The union grieved the dismissals and objected to the admissibility of the video footage into evidence.

It did acknowledge the employer had just and reasonable cause to discipline both employees, but said dismissal was excessive.

The decision of the arbitration panel was not unanimous.

John McKearney, former chief of the Vancouver Fire Department, wrote: In 2018, a fire captain involved in a sexual encounter with a female subordinate, in the fire hall, in a reckless open manner, on a Sunday morning, must generally be considered cause for termination. The conduct was antithetical to (his) responsibility as Captain and leader of the shift and has created a poison work environment for other females in the hall (and for males). His actions were a gross violation of his duty to create a welcoming work environment for all, and especially for women.

Pearce said the city believes the arbitration board erred in its decision and is exploring a range of options.
Photo: The Canadian Press Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte expresses his gratitude to Dutch police officers after laying flowers at a makeshift memorial for victims of a shooting incident in a tram in Utrecht, Netherlands, Tuesday, March 19, 2019.

Investigators probing the deadly tram shooting in the Dutch city of Utrecht sharpened their focus Tuesday on a possible extremist motive, as judicial authorities revealed that the main suspect was released from jail this month and faces a rape trial in July.

The nature of the Monday's attack and a note found in a suspected getaway car suggest a possible terror motive, prosecutors said in a statement, but they add that other possible reasons also are being investigated.

"Based on the letter, we think he had a terroristic motive," police spokesman Joost Lanshage told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate.

Speaking in parliament, anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders said the note expressed support for the suspect's "Muslim brothers."

Prosecutors also said that investigations so far have not established any relationship at all between the main suspect, Gokmen Tanis, and the shooting victims.

Three people died: a 19-year-old woman from the neighbouring town of Vianen, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht.

Three others were seriously wounded and four more suffered minor injuries, according to prosecutors.

Throughout the day, well-wishers placed flowers at the foot of a tree next to the intersection where the shooting happened. At the end of the afternoon, Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus also laid bouquets and briefly talked to police officers at the scene.

Tanis, a 37-year-old man of Turkish descent, was being held on suspicion of "manslaughter with terrorist intent."

He was arrested Monday evening after an hours-long manhunt that nearly paralyzed the Netherlands' fourth-largest city and sent shockwaves through the nation. Police recovered a weapon when they arrested him.

In an unusual step, judicial authorities released details of Tanis' criminal past, and said he was released from jail on March 1 and faces trial in July on a rape charge. A court had approved his release after he pledged to co-operate with authorities.

In the past, he was acquitted of manslaughter but convicted of illegal possession of a weapon and theft.

Wilders called on Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus to resign, saying that Tanis shouldn't have been released from jail.

"You are politically responsible for this," Wilders said during a parliamentary debate. "You have to resign, get out of here."

Police spokesman Martin de Wit said that three people  the alleged shooter and two others whose involvement was being investigated  were in custody following Monday's attack.

The tram shootings came just days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating Australian white supremacist opened fire in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers. There was no indication of any link between the two events.
Photo: The Canadian Press Eight migrants from Somalia cross into Canada illegally from the United States by walking down this train track into the town of Emerson, Man., where they will seek asylum at Canada Border Services Agency.

A pregnant woman who walked across the United States border into Manitoba was rescued after she became trapped in a snowbank and went into labour.

Emerson-Franklin Reeve Dave Carlson says the woman called 911 on Saturday morning after she walked from Minnesota and became stuck in deep snow.

Firefighters were able to free the woman and keep her warm until an ambulance arrived and took her to hospital.

Carlson says he is not sure whether she gave birth.

The number of people crossing the border into Manitoba has drastically decreased in the past two years, but the reeve says it is a stark reminder that danger remains.

Numbers from the federal government say two people have been intercepted by RCMP crossing into Manitoba in the first two months of this year, compared to more than 160 in 2017.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Corvus Gold Inc. (Corvus or the Company) - (TSX: KOR, OTCQX: CORVF) announces it has received results from three additional holes, one being the northern most hole drilled to date and two along the eastern boundary of the Mother Lode deposit, Nevada (Table 1). Results continue to show the deposit thickening with higher grade as the system progresses north (ML19-104 best hole drilled to date at Mother Lode with 126m @ 1.85 g/t gold). This most recent drill hole continues to outline a major new and expanding center of the deposit north of the existing resource. The eastern holes intersected gold in the favorable target horizon but grades and thicknesses were lower (Figure 1). Resource expansion drilling at Mother Lode is ongoing with 15,000 metres planned during the current phase.

Northern Extension

The new North Deposit appears to be a major new zone of mineralization that could drive a new resource development program. Additionally, hole ML19-104 had thick intervals of underground type grades in the 4-6 g/t gold range with the bottom of the hole averaging almost 5 g/t gold. This hole along with holes ML18-093 (116m @ 1.8 g/t gold) and ML18-087 (114m @ 1.4 g/t gold) are defining a large new deposit north of the currently defined resource.

This type of new discovery along with positive comments made by AngloGold Ashanti on their Silicon project to the north and Coeurs planned exploration program for the Crown block to the south and west have focused substantial attention on this area of the greater Bullfrog District. In addition to the ongoing drilling at Mother Lode, Corvus is preparing to launch its 2019 new discovery program targeting both sediment hosted deposits like Mother Lode and epithermal vein deposits like its YellowJacket deposit, Barrick Bullfrog deposit and possibly the new AngloGold Silicon discovery.

Jeff Pontius, President and CEO of Corvus, said, The encouraging results developing from the new North Deposit at Mother Lode are very exciting as it represents another new covered target discovery in the District. The absence of diligent modern exploration in the Greater Bullfrog Region has created a significant district-wide exploration opportunity for all players in the District. We believe the Bullfrog District will emerge as a new, major gold-silver production center to rival any of those across Nevada and mining a full spectrum of gold deposit types.

Table 1

Phase III - Mother Lode Drilling Results

(Reported intercepts are not true widths as there is currently insufficient data to calculate true orientation in space. Mineralized intervals are calculated using a 0.3 g/t cutoff unless otherwise indicated below)

Drill Hole # from (m) to (m) Interval (m) Gold (g/t) Silver (g/t) Comment ML19-104

AZ 080 dip-85 409.96 536.45 126.49 1.85 n/a West of ML18-092

North Zone inc 445.01 461.77 16.76 2.12 n/a 1 g/t cut inc 473.96 512.06 38.10 2.71 n/a 1 g/t cut inc 473.00 492.3 18.30 4.20 n/a 2 g/t cut inc 518.16 534.92 16.76 4.43 n/a 1 g/t cut inc 522.69 533.40 10.70 6.28 n/a 2 g/t cut

ML19-105

AZ 085 dip-65 512.06 518.16 6.10 0.68 n/a East of ML18-094

Northeast Zone

ML19-106 0.00 6.10 6.10 0.59 n/a West of ML18-086

Southeast Zone AZ 090 dip-50 57.91 64.01 6.10 0.30 n/a





Qualified Person and Quality Control/Quality Assurance

Jeffrey A. Pontius (CPG 11044), a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101), has supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Pontius is not independent of Corvus, as he is the CEO & President and holds common shares and incentive stock options.

Carl E. Brechtel, (Nevada PE 008744 and Registered Member 353000 of SME), a qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, has coordinated execution of the work outlined in this news release and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Brechtel is not independent of Corvus, as he is the COO and holds common shares and incentive stock options.

The work program at Mother Lode was designed and supervised by Mark Reischman, Corvus Golds Nevada Exploration Manager, who is responsible for all aspects of the work, including the quality control/quality assurance program. On-site personnel at the project log and track all samples prior to sealing and shipping. Quality control is monitored by the insertion of blind certified standard reference materials and blanks into each sample shipment. All resource sample shipments are sealed and shipped to American Assay Laboratories (AAL) in Reno, Nevada, for preparation and assaying. AAL is independent of the Company. AALs quality system complies with the requirements for the International Standards ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 17025:1999. Analytical accuracy and precision are monitored by the analysis of reagent blanks, reference material and replicate samples. Finally, representative blind duplicate samples are forwarded to AAL and an ISO compliant third-party laboratory for additional quality control. Mr. Pontius, a qualified person, has verified the data underlying the information disclosed herein, including sampling, analytical and test data underlying the information by reviewing the reports of AAL, methodologies, results and all procedures undertaken for quality assurance and quality control in a manner consistent with industry practice, and all matters were consistent and accurate according to his professional judgement. There were no limitations on the verification process.

Mr. Scott E. Wilson, CPG (10965), Registered Member of SME (4025107) and President of Resource Development Associates Inc., is an independent consulting geologist specializing in Mineral Reserve and Resource calculation reporting, mining project analysis and due diligence evaluations. He is acting as the Qualified Person, as defined in NI 43-101, and is the primary author of the Technical Report for the Mineral Resource estimate and has reviewed and approved the Mineral Resource estimate and the Preliminary Economic Assessment summarized in this news release. Mr. Wilson has over 29 years of experience in surface mining, resource estimation and strategic mine planning. Mr. Wilson is President of Resource Development Associates Inc. and is independent of the Company under NI 43-101.

Mr. Wilson, a qualified person, has verified the data underlying the information disclosed herein, including sampling, analytical and test data underlying the information by reviewing the reports of AAL, methodologies, results and all procedures undertaken for quality assurance and quality control in a manner consistent with industry practice, and all matters were consistent and accurate according to his professional judgement. There were no limitations on the verification process.

Metallurgical testing on North Bullfrog and Mother Lode samples has been performed by McClelland Analytical Services Laboratories Inc. of Sparks Nevada (McClelland), McClelland is an ISO 17025 accredited facility that supplies quantitative chemical analysis in support of metallurgical, exploration and environmental testing using classic methods and modern analytical instrumentation. McClelland has met the requirements of the IAS Accreditations Criteria for Testing Laboratories (AC89), has demonstrated compliance with ANS/ISO/IEC Standard 17025:2005, General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories, and has been accredited, since November 12, 2012. Hazen Research Inc. (Hazen), an independent laboratory, has performed flotation, AAO testing and cyanide leach testing on samples of sulphide mineralization from the YellowJacket zone and Swale area of Sierra Blanca, and roasting tests on Mother Lode flotation concentrate. Hazen holds analytical certificates from state regulatory agencies and the US Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA). Hazen participates in performance evaluation studies to demonstrate competence and maintains a large stock of standard reference materials from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Canadian Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (CANMET), the EPA and other sources. Hazens QA program has been developed for conformance to the applicable requirements and standards referenced in 10 CFR 830.120 subpart A, quality assurance requirements, January 1, 2002. Pressure oxidation test work on Mother Lode concentrate samples was performed by Resource Development Inc. of Wheatridge, CO.

For additional details, see technical report entitled Technical Report and Preliminary Economic Assessment for the Integrated Mother Lode and North Bullfrog Projects, Bullfrog Mining District, Nye County, Nevada, dated November 1, 2018 and amended on November 8, 2018, with an effective date of September 18, 2018 on the Companys profile at www.sedar.com.

About the North Bullfrog & Mother Lode Projects, Nevada

Corvus controls 100% of its North Bullfrog Project, which covers approximately 86.6 km2 in southern Nevada. The property package is made up of a number of private mineral leases of patented federal mining claims and 1,057 federal unpatented mining claims. The project has excellent infrastructure, being adjacent to a major highway and power corridor as well as a large water right. The Company also controls 445 federal unpatented mining claims on the Mother Lode project which totals approximately 36.5 km2 which it owns 100%. The total Corvus Gold 100% land ownership now covers over 123.1 km2, hosting two major new Nevada gold discoveries.

The combined Mother Lode and North Bullfrog Projects contains a Measured Mineral Resource for the mill of 9.3 Mt at an average grade of 1.59 g/t gold, containing 475 k ounces of gold and Indicated Mineral Resources for the mill of 18.2 Mt at an average grade of 1.68 g/t gold containing 988 k ounces of gold and an Inferred Mineral Resource for the mill of 2.3 Mt at an average grade of 1.61 g/t gold containing 118 k ounces of gold. In addition, the project contains a Measured Mineral Resource for oxide, run of mine, heap leach of 34.6 Mt at an average grade of 0.27 g/t gold containing 305 k ounces of gold and an Indicated Mineral Resource for, oxide, run of mine, heap leach of 149.4 Mt at an average grade of 0.24 g/t gold containing 1,150 k ounces of gold and an Inferred, oxide, run of mine, heap leach Mineral Resource of 78.7 Mt at an average grade of 0.26 g/t gold containing 549 k ounces of gold.

About Corvus Gold Inc.

Corvus Gold Inc. is a North American gold exploration and development company, focused on its near-term gold-silver mining project at the North Bullfrog and Mother Lode Districts in Nevada. In addition, the Company controls a number of royalties on other North American exploration properties representing a spectrum of gold, silver and copper projects. Corvus is committed to building shareholder value through new discoveries and the expansion of its projects to maximize share price leverage in an advancing gold and silver market.

On behalf of

Corvus Gold Inc.

(signed) Jeffrey A. Pontius

Jeffrey A. Pontius,

President & Chief Executive Officer

Contact Information: Ryan Ko Investor Relations Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Phone: 1-844-638-3246 (toll free) or (604) 638-3246

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, forward-looking statements) within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including, without limitation, statements regarding the expectations regarding the Nevada gold district; the planned exploration program and expectations regarding the 2019 new discovery program; the potential for a new deposit at Mother Lode; the advancement and development of our Mother Lode project and the expansion of our drill program the; potential for additional mineralization; updates on the development progress at the Mother Lode project; the expected increases in a systems potential; anticipated content, commencement and cost of exploration programs, anticipated exploration program results, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, variations in the nature, quality and quantity of any mineral deposits that may be located, variations in the market price of any mineral products the Company may produce or plan to produce, the Company's inability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities, the Company's inability to produce minerals from its properties successfully or profitably, to continue its projected growth, to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2018 filed with certain securities commissions in Canada and the Companys most recent filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). All of the Companys Canadian public disclosure filings in Canada may be accessed via www.sedar.com and filings with the SEC may be accessed via www.sec.gov and readers are urged to review these materials, including the technical reports filed with respect to the Companys mineral properties.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Core Gold Inc. (Core Gold or the Company) (TSXV: CGLD, OTCQX: CGLDF), in response to stakeholder inquiries, wishes to clarify the circumstances surrounding the recent termination of its former President & CEO, Mr. Keith Piggott, for cause.

Mr. Piggott was initially put on notice by the Company in November 2018 for, among other things, incurring new debt at the subsidiary level without notice to, or approval of, the Board of Directors (Board), and for conducting activities at the Companys projects in Ecuador that were in breach of Cores contractual obligations that were then in effect. These activities were not disclosed to the Board or other members of senior management. In response, the Board required that Mr. Piggott not exceed certain expenditure limits without Board approval and that he cease undertaking activities that would cause Core to breach its contractual commitments. In addition, the Board required that Mr. Piggott cease using his personal email for Company activities.

Mr. Piggott did not abide by these directives from the Board. Subsequently and in addition, he also misappropriated for his personal use what the Board believes was approximately $50,000, as well as causing the disclosure of confidential information related to the merger discussions with Titan Minerals Limited (Titan) to persons outside of the Company.

Accordingly the Board made the decision to terminate Mr. Piggott for cause for these reasons. While Mr. Piggott was the only director who was not supportive of the amendment made to the proposed merger with Titan (as announced on March 11, 2019), the circumstances of Mr. Piggotts termination are unrelated to the Titan merger. Mr. Piggott, as a director, did vote in favour of the Titan merger as originally announced on February 24, 2019.

Full details of the decision-making process undertaken by the Board in determining to proceed with the Titan merger, as well as the Boards rationale for its recommendation will be set forth in Cores management information circular for its shareholder meeting to approve the Titan merger, which Circular will be available in late April.

About Core Gold Inc.

The Company is a Canadian based mining company involved in the mining, exploration and development of mineral properties in Ecuador. The Company is currently focused on gold production at its wholly-owned Dynasty Goldfield project. Mineral is treated at the Companys wholly-owned Portovelo treatment plant. The Company also owns other significant gold exploration projects including the Linderos and Copper Duke area in southern Ecuador all of which are on the main Peruvian Andean gold-copper belt extending into Ecuador.

For further information please contact:

Mark Bailey, CEO

Suite 1201  1166 Alberni Street

Vancouver, B.C. V6E 3Z3

Phone: +1 (604) 345-4822

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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.
VANCOUVER, March 19, 2019 /CNW/ - Equinox Gold Corp. (TSX-V: EQX, OTC: EQXFF) ("Equinox Gold" or "the Company") has completed an updated mineral resource estimate for its Aurizona Gold Mine ("Aurizona") in northeastern Brazil and an updated mineral reserve and resource estimate for its Mesquite Gold Mine ("Mesquite") in California, USA, and has filed a new technical report for Mesquite. All dollar amounts are shown in US$. Mineral resources are reported exclusive of mineral reserves.

Highlights

Equinox Gold's consolidated Proven and Probable ("P&P") Reserves increased 470% since year-end 2017 to 5.5 million ounces of gold

Aurizona Measured and Indicated ("M&I") Resources (exclusive of reserves) increased 50% to 692,000 ounces of contained gold

Aurizona underground Inferred Resources increased 115% to 1.1 million ounces of contained gold

Mesquite M&I Resources (exclusive of reserves) increased 61% to 1.9 million ounces of contained gold

Mesquite technical report shows net present value (discounted at 5%) of $203 million and demonstrates mine life extension potential

Scott Heffernan, EVP Exploration of Equinox Gold, commented: "The Aurizona resource update captures the success of the 2017-2018 exploration program, demonstrating the potential to both expand the open-pit resource base and develop an underground mine, which could extend production well beyond the current mine life. We are also pleased with the results of the Mesquite technical report and look forward to realizing on optimization and mine life extension opportunities at Mesquite."

Aurizona Resource Estimate

The updated mineral resource estimate for Aurizona incorporates 13,635 metres ("m") of shallow infill and step-out drilling focused on the western end of the Piaba deposit completed since the July 2017 feasibility study (the "Feasibility Study"). For the resource update, independent open-pit and underground resource models were prepared to provide an improved basis for assessing the underground potential at Aurizona. Results are as follows.

P&P Reserves remain unchanged at 971,000 ounces grading 1.52 grams per tonne gold ("g/t Au")

Total M&I Resources (exclusive of reserves) increased 50% to 692,000 ounces, including a new underground Indicated Resource of 460,000 ounces grading 1.96 g/t Au

Total M&I Resource grade increased from 1.57 g/t Au to 1.68 g/t Au

Underground Inferred Resources increased 115% to 1.1 million ounces grading 1.98 g/t Au

The updated resource estimation reflects several improvements and changes in methodology over the 2017 model as outlined below.

Independent open-pit and underground resource models were generated using block sizes of 10 m x 5 m x 6 m for the open-pit and 5 m x 5 m x 5 m for the underground and a production scenario using standard open-pit and underground long-hole open-stope mining methods.

x x for the open-pit and x x for the underground and a production scenario using standard open-pit and underground long-hole open-stope mining methods. The underground resource model is informed by an updated geological model consisting of 16 high-grade gold-bearing structures having an average thickness of 3 m to 6 m and coincident with increased veining, sulphide mineralization and grades greater than or equal to 0.7 g/t Au.

to and coincident with increased veining, sulphide mineralization and grades greater than or equal to 0.7 g/t Au. Optimization parameters are unchanged from the 2017 resource estimate except to update adequate infrastructure setback distances.

Aurizona Mineral Reserve & Resource Estimate at December 31, 2018 Deposit Area Category Tonnes (kt) Grade (g/t) Gold (ounces) Piaba Reserves Open Pit Proven Probable 8,438 11,398 1.44 1.58 392,000 579,000 Total Reserves P&P 19,836 1.52 971,000 Piaba Open Pit Measured 519 1.29 21,575 Indicated 4,811 1.32 204,073 Inferred 444 1.90 27,126 Boa Esperanca Open Pit Indicated 144 1.34 6,221 Inferred 16 1.33 682 Total Open Pit M&I 5,474 1.32 231,869 Inferred 460 1.88 27,808 Piaba Underground Indicated 7,317 1.96 459,907 Inferred 16,500 1.98 1,051,787 Total Aurizona Resource M&I 12,791 1.68 691,776 Inferred 16,960 1.98 1,079,595

Notes. Reserves are unchanged from the reserve estimate in the July 2017 feasibility study. The update to the January 5, 2017 resource estimate was completed by Trevor Rabb, P.Geo of Equity Exploration Consultants Ltd. with an effective date of October 22, 2018. Mineral resources are reported using cut-off grades of 0.6 g/t Au for open-pit and 1.0 g/t Au for underground resources. Open-pit mineral resources were constrained by pit shells developed using $1,400/oz gold for Piaba and $1,350/oz for Boa Esperanca and a variable elevation datum separating open-pit from underground resources. Underground resources were constrained by using a 1.0 g/t Au confining solid. Mineral resources are reported exclusive of reserves. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any part of a mineral resource will be converted into mineral reserves. Numbers have been rounded to reflect the accuracy of the estimate and may not sum due to rounding. See Cautionary Notes.

The open-pit and underground resource models are separated by a datum defined by a surface that is 20 m below the lower of the upper contact of the fresh rock or the base of the Feasibility Study reserve pit.

Figure 1: Long section showing the 2017 Feasibility Study reserve pit, 2018 resource pit, datum and current topography

The application of the datum resulted in certain sections of previously classified open-pit resources being reclassified as underground resources, increasing underground Inferred Resources by 562,000 ounces to 1,052,000 ounces and establishing a new underground Indicated Resource of 460,000 ounces. Based on the significant increase to underground resources, the Company is examining the potential of developing an underground mine at Aurizona, either as a sequential project or concurrently with open-pit mining to increase production with higher-grade feed from underground.

Not included in the current update is 5,500 m of drilling to the northeast of Piaba, which intersected broad intervals of economic grade gold mineralization, and 1,804 m of drilling at the Tatajuba target, which represents a potential 4-km extension to the Piaba Trend. The Company is planning future drill programs for both of these targets.

Mesquite Reserve and Resource Update

Equinox Gold completed its acquisition of Mesquite on October 30, 2018. To comply with certain regulatory requirements in connection with the acquisition, Equinox Gold engaged AGP Mining Consultants Inc. ("AGP") to complete a reserve and resource update and an associated National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") technical report for the project. The technical report has been filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and is also available for download on Equinox Gold's website at www.equinoxgold.com. Based on data existing at the time of the acquisition and using a $1,250/oz base gold price, the technical report shows:

Life of mine gold production from current reserves of 682,800 ounces over 3.25 years of mining and an additional three years of residual leaching

After-tax net present value (discounted at 5%) of $203 million

P&P Reserves decrease of 11% to 1.0 million ounces reflecting ounces mined during 2018

M&I Resources increase of 61% to 1.9 million ounces of contained gold

Mine life extension potential from: Conversion of resources to reserves Mineralized dumps and leach pads from historical operations In-pit, near-mine and regional exploration opportunities



The increase in M&I Mineral Resources is primarily the result of using a higher gold price ($1,400 from $1,375) in the estimation and including the Rainbow Zone, the eastern extent of the Mesquite mineral resource. The Mesquite economics outlined in the technical report do not include near-term production potential from mineralized dumps and leach pads from historical operations that Equinox Gold is currently testing, as discussed in section 24 of the technical report, or exploration opportunities.

Mesquite Mineral Reserve Estimate at December 31, 2018 Proven Reserves Probable Reserves Proven & Probable Reserves Ore Type Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Oxide 367 0.46 5,000 26,539 0.44 378,000 26,906 0.44 383,000 Transition - - - 260 0.65 6,000 260 0.65 6,000 Non-Oxide 800 0.69 18,000 26,669 0.70 597,000 27,469 0.70 615,000 Total 1,167 0.62 23,000 53,468 0.57 981,000 54,635 0.57 1,004,000

Notes. This mineral reserve estimate has an effective date of December 31, 2018 and is based on the Mesquite mineral resource estimate dated December 31, 2018 completed by SIM Geological Inc. The mineral reserve calculation was completed under the supervision of Gordon Zurowski, P.Eng of AGP, who is a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101. The mineral reserves and resources were reported in the technical report entitled "Technical Report on the Mesquite Gold Mine, Imperial County, California, U.S.A." with an effective date of December 31, 2018. The reserves for Mesquite are based on the conversion of the Measured and Indicated resources within the current mine plan. Measured Resources are converted to Proven Reserves and Indicated Resources are converted directly to Probable Reserves. Mineral reserves are stated within the final design pit based on a $1,250/oz gold price. The cut-off grade for oxide material is 0.15 g/t and 0.31 g/t for transition and non-oxide material. The mining cost averaged $1.45/t mined, processing costs are $1.81/t ore and G&A was $0.75/t ore placed. The ore recoveries were 75% for oxide, and 35% for transition and non-oxide material. Numbers have been rounded to reflect the accuracy of the estimate and may not sum due to rounding. See Cautionary Notes.

Mesquite Mineral Resource Estimate (exclusive of reserves) at December 31, 2018 Measured Indicated Measured & Indicated Inferred Ore Type Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Oxide 3,900 0.36 56,200 0.36 60,100 0.36 702,000 8,300 0.30 80,000 Transition 100 0.56 200 0.39 300 0.45 5,000 0 0 0 Non-Oxide 1,400 0.57 66,100 0.55 67,500 0.55 1,191,000 6,800 0.48 104,000 Total 5,400 0.42 122,500 0.46 127,900 0.46 1,898,000 15,000 0.38 184,000

Notes. This mineral resource estimate was prepared by Robert Sim P.Geo, SIM Geological Inc. and Bruce Davis, FAusIMM, BD Resource Consulting, Inc. The estimated mineral resources represent the material located between the surveyed topographic surface at December 31, 2018 and the ultimate resource limiting pit shell generated at year-end 2018, excluding any surface stockpiles. Cut-off grade for oxide material is 0.134 g/t Au and 0.288 g/t Au for transition and non-oxide material. Mineral resources are reported exclusive of mineral reserves. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any part of a mineral resource will be converted into mineral reserves. It is expected that a majority of inferred mineral resources could be upgraded to indicated or measured resources with additional exploration. Numbers have been rounded to reflect the accuracy of the estimate and may not sum due to rounding. See Cautionary Notes.

Equinox Gold Consolidated Reserves & Resources

Equinox Gold's consolidated P&P Reserves at December 31, 2018 were 5.5 million ounces, a 470% increase compared to 971,000 ounces at the end of 2017 as a result of the Mesquite acquisition and completion of a prefeasibility study for Castle Mountain. M&I Resources at year-end 2018 were 3.6 million ounces, a 20% decrease compared to 4.4 million ounces at the end of 2017 as a result of the majority of Castle Mountain M&I Resources upgrading to P&P Reserves upon completion of the prefeasibility study.

Equinox Gold Consolidated Mineral Reserve Estimate

at December 31, 2018 Proven Reserves Probable Reserves Proven & Probable Reserves Project Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Mesquite 1,167 0.62 23,000 53,468 0.57 981,000 54,635 0.57 1,004,000 Aurizona 8,438 1.44 392,000 11,398 1.58 579,000 19,836 1.52 971,000 Castle Mountain 136,611 0.58 2,558,775 60,978 0.51 1,004,318 197,589 0.56 3,563,093 Total 146,216 0.63 2,973,775 125,844 0.63 2,564,318 272,060 0.63 5,538,093

Notes. Numbers have been rounded to reflect the accuracy of the estimate and may not sum due to rounding. See Cautionary Notes and Qualified Person and Technical Disclosure Statement.

Equinox Gold Consolidated Mineral Resource Estimate (exclusive of reserves)

at December 31, 2018 Measured Indicated Measured & Indicated Inferred Project Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Tonnes (kt) Grade

(g/t) Gold (ounces) Mesquite 5,400 0.42 122,500 0.46 127,900 0.46 1,898,000 15,000 0.38 184,000 Aurizona 519 1.29 12,272 1.70 12,791 1.68 691,776 16,960 1.98 1,079,595 Castle Mountain 24,100 0.56 20,400 0.52 44,500 0.54 770,000 171,395 0.40 2,210,000 Elk Gold 340 7.07 703 5.96 1,043 6.32 211,900 1,097 5.94 209,600 Total 30,359 0.62 155,875 0.59 186,233 0.60 3,571,676 204,452 0.56 3,683,195

Notes. Mineral resources are reported exclusive of reserves. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any part of a mineral resource will be converted into mineral reserves. Numbers have been rounded to reflect the accuracy of the estimate and may not sum due to rounding. See Cautionary Notes and Qualified Person and Technical Disclosure Statement.

On behalf of the Board of Equinox Gold Corp.

"Christian Milau"

CEO & Director

About Equinox Gold

Equinox Gold is a Canadian mining company with a multi-million-ounce gold reserve base, gold production from its Mesquite Gold Mine in California, and near-term production from two past-producing mines in Brazil and California. Commissioning is underway at the Company's Aurizona Gold Mine in Brazil and the Company is advancing its Castle Mountain Gold Mine in California with the objective of ramping-up Phase 1 operations in early 2020. Further information about Equinox Gold's portfolio of assets and long-term growth strategy is available at www.equinoxgold.com or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Cautionary Notes

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as such term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Qualified Persons and Technical Disclosure Statement

Scott Heffernan, M.Sc., P.Geo., the Company's EVP Exploration and Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"), has reviewed and verified that the technical information contained in this news release is accurate and approves the written disclosure of this information.

Aurizona: The 2018 Piaba open-pit, Piaba underground and Boa Esperanca open-pit resource estimates, with an effective date of October 22, 2018, were prepared by Trevor Rabb, P.Geo (EGBC #39599), B.Sc., who is a "qualified person" within the meaning of NI 43-101. Mr. Rabb is an employee of Equity Exploration Consultants Ltd. and is considered to be "independent" for the purposes of Section 1.5 of NI 43-101. The Aurizona reserve estimate was disclosed in the "Feasibility Study on the Aurizona Gold Mine Project" prepared by Lycopodium Minerals Canada Ltd. with an effective date of July 10, 2017, which is available for download on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Mineral Reserve estimate has an effective date of May 29, 2017 and is based on the Mineral Resource estimate dated January 5, 2017 and prepared by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. The Mineral reserve calculation was completed under the supervision of Gordon Zurowski, P.Eng of AGP, who is a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101. Mineral Reserves are stated within the final design pit based on a $1,056 per ounce gold price pit shell with a $1,200 per ounce gold price for revenue. The cutoff grade was 0.60 g/t Au for the Piaba pit area and 0.41 g/t Au for the Boa Esperanca area. The mining cost averaged $2.32/tonne mined, processing averages $11.30/tonne milled and G&A was $2.84/tonne milled. The process recovery averaged 90.3%. The exchange rate assumption applied was R$3.30 equal to US$1.00. Numbers may not sum due to rounding.

Mesquite: The Mesquite reserve and resource estimates were disclosed in the technical report entitled "Technical Report on the Mesquite Gold Mine, Imperial County, California, U.S.A." prepared by AGP with an effective date of December 31, 2018, which is available for download on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Mesquite resource estimate was prepared by Robert Sim P.Geo, SIM Geological Inc. and Bruce Davis, FAusIMM, BD Resource Consulting, Inc. The Mesquite reserve estimate was based on the Mesquite mineral resource estimate prepared by SIM Geological Inc. The mineral reserve calculation was completed under the supervision of Gordon Zurowski, P.Eng of AGP, who is a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101. The estimated mineral resources represent the material located between the surveyed topographic surface at December 31, 2018 and the ultimate resource limiting pit shell generated at year-end 2018, excluding any surface stockpiles, and are reported exclusive of mineral reserves. Cut-off grade for oxide material is 0.134 g/t Au and 0.288 g/t Au for transition and non-oxide material. The reserves for Mesquite are based on the conversion of the Measured and Indicated resources within the current mine plan. Measured Resources are converted to Proven Reserves and Indicated Resources are converted directly to Probable Reserves. Mineral reserves are stated within the final design pit based on a $1,250/oz gold price. The cut-off grade for oxide material is 0.15 g/t and 0.31 g/t for transition and non-oxide material. The mining cost averaged $1.45/t mined, processing costs are $1.81/t ore and G&A was $0.75/t ore placed. The ore recoveries were 75% for oxide, and 35% for transition and non-oxide material. Numbers may not sum due to rounding.

Castle Mountain: The Castle Mountain Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource Estimates were disclosed in the "NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Preliminary Feasibility Study for the Castle Mountain Project" prepared by Kappes, Cassiday and Associates with an effective date of July 16, 2018, which is available for download on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The Mineral Reserve estimate with an effective date of June 29, 2018 is based on the Mineral Resource estimate with an effective date of March 29, 2018 that was prepared by Don Tschabrun, SME RM of Mine Technical Services. The Mineral Reserve was estimated by Global Resource Engineering, LLC with supervision by Terre Lane, MMSA, SME RM. Mineral Reserves are estimated within the final designed pit which is based on the $850/oz pit shell with a gold price of $1,250/oz. The minimum cut-off grade was 0.14 g/t gold and 0.17 g/t gold for Phases 1 and 2, respectively. Average life of mine costs are $1.39/tonne mining, $2.11/tonne processing, and $0.80/tonne processed G&A. The average process recovery was 72.4% for ROM and 94% for Mill/CIL. The Mineral Resource is based on a gold cut-off grade of 0.17 g/t. The Mineral Resource is contained within an LG shell limit using a $1,400 gold price as well as cost and recovery parameters presented in the technical report. Numbers may not sum due to rounding.

Elk Gold: The Elk Gold Mineral Resource estimate has an effective date of August 22, 2016 as reported in the "Technical Report on Resources of the Elk Gold Project" completed by Robert Wilson, P.Geo., Gary Giroux, P.Eng. and Antonio Loschiavo, P.Eng. with an effective date of August 22, 2016. The Mineral Resource calculation was completed under the supervision of Gary Giroux, P.Eng., who is a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101. The constrained resource was calculated using a gold price of US$1232/oz. Open-pit resources are reported at a 1.0 g/t gold cut-off grade and potential underground resources are reported at a 5.0 g/t cut-off grade. The grade reported is the average grade of the resource both in and underground. Numbers may not sum due to rounding.

Estimates of Measured, Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources

Information regarding reserve and resource estimates has been prepared in accordance with Canadian standards under applicable Canadian securities laws and may not be comparable to similar information for United States companies. The terms "Mineral Resource", "Measured Mineral Resource", "Indicated Mineral Resource" and "Inferred Mineral Resource" used in this news release are Canadian mining terms as defined in accordance with NI 43-101 under guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves adopted by the CIM Council on May 10, 2014. While the terms "Mineral Resource", "Measured Mineral Resource", "Indicated Mineral Resource" and "Inferred Mineral Resource" are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, they are not defined terms under standards of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Under United States standards, mineralization may not be classified as a "reserve" unless the determination has been made that the mineralization could be economically and legally produced or extracted at the time the reserve calculation is made. As such, certain information contained in this news release concerning descriptions of mineralization and resources under Canadian standards is not comparable to similar information made public by United States companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. An "Inferred Mineral Resource" has a great amount of uncertainty as to its existence and as to its economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an "Inferred Mineral Resource" will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of Inferred Mineral Resources may not form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. Readers are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of Measured or Indicated Resources will ever be converted into Mineral Reserves. Readers are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an "Inferred Mineral Resource" exists or is economically or legally mineable. In addition, the definitions of "Proven Mineral Reserves" and "Probable Mineral Reserves" under CIM standards differ in certain respects from the standards of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Forward-looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation and may include future-oriented financial information. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements or information in this news release relate to, among other things: the ability of the Company to successfully complete construction and commissioning activities and the planned restart of production at Aurizona; the ability of the Company to successfully operate Mesquite, including with respect to production; development and timing of anticipated production at Castle Mountain; and the growth potential of the Company. Forward-looking statements or information generally identified by the use of the words "will", "advancing", "planned", "anticipated", "expected", "estimated", "continue", "near-term", "ramping-up" and similar expressions and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "should", or "be achieved", or the negative connotation of such terms, are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements and information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements since the Company can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. The Company has based these forward-looking statements and information on the Company's current expectations and projections about future events and these assumptions include: tonnage of ore to be mined and processed; ore grades and recoveries; prices for gold remaining as estimated; the construction and planned production at Aurizona and Castle Mountain being completed and performed in accordance with current expectations; currency exchange rates remaining as estimated; availability of funds for the Company's projects and future cash requirements; capital, decommissioning and reclamation estimates; the Company's mineral reserve and resource estimates and the assumptions on which they are based; prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services; no labour-related disruptions and no unplanned delays or interruptions in scheduled development and production; all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals are received in a timely manner; and the Company's ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws. While the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available, they may prove to be incorrect. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on the forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release.

The Company cautions that forward-looking statements and information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release and the Company has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: fluctuations in gold prices; fluctuations in prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services; fluctuations in currency markets; operational risks and hazards inherent with the business of mining (including environmental accidents and hazards, industrial accidents, equipment breakdown, usual or unexpected geological or structural formations, cave-ins, flooding and severe weather); inadequate insurance, or inability to obtain insurance to cover these risks and hazards; employee relations; relationships with, and claims by, local communities and indigenous populations; the Company's ability to obtain all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals in a timely manner; changes in laws, regulations and government practices, including environmental, export and import laws and regulations; legal restrictions relating to mining; risks relating to expropriation; increased competition in the mining industry; and those factors identified in the Company's management information circular dated June 20, 2018 and in its MD&A dated December 31, 2018, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements and information are designed to help readers understand management's views as of that time with respect to future events and speak only as of the date they are made. Except as required by applicable law, the Company assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or to publicly announce the results of any change to any forward-looking statement or information contained or incorporated by reference to reflect actual results, future events or developments, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting the forward-looking statements and information. If the Company updates any one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that the Company will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Evrim Resources Corp. (TSX.V:EVM) (Evrim or the Company) is pleased to announce final drill results at the Cerro Cascaron gold and silver project in southwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. Evrim and exploration partner, Harvest Gold Corporation (Harvest Gold), have completed a total of ten diamond drill holes at Serpiente Dorada, San Pedro and Cascarita for a total of 2,255 metres. The assay results included in this release follow up on the announcement made in February 14, 2019.

The maiden drill program at Cerro Cascaron demonstrates significant potential to discover a low to intermediate sulphidation epithermal gold deposit, specifically at the Serpiente Dorada and San Pedro areas, commented Stewart Harris, VP of Technical Services. Drilling at Serpiente Dorada delineated a significant structural corridor containing local high-grade gold mineralization. Well-developed quartz fissure veins within a broad stockwork containing moderate gold grades and epithermal textures exists at San Pedro, and drilling has aided in vectoring toward a deeper and possibly higher grade gold target. Additional drilling is needed to follow up both areas and for exploration of several untested targets.

Drill Program Highlights

Serpiente Dorada

Drill hole SPT18-01 intersected 1.0 metre grading 20.10 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 22.5 g/t silver from 225.5 metres downhole within 6.5 metres grading 3.29 g/t gold and 6.3 g/t silver from 224.5 metres (previously reported February 14, 2019)

Drill hole SPT19-02 intersected 11.5 metres grading 0.48 g/t gold and 3.9 g/t silver from 119.5 metres downhole and 1 metre grading 1.57 g/t gold and 1.2 g/t silver from 219 metres

San Pedro

SPED19-02 intersected 4.8 metres grading 1.02 g/t gold and 13.0 g/t silver from 141 metres downhole and 0.35 metres grading 5.39 g/t gold and 23.7 g/t silver from 154.45 metres downhole (previously reported February 14, 2019)

SPED19-03 intersected 2.4 metres grading 0.98 g/t gold and 36.6 g/t silver from 162.5 metres downhole.

About the Cerro Cascaron Drill Program

Ten drill holes have been completed with two holes at the Serpiente Dorada, four holes at San Pedro gold targets, and four at the silver-rich Cascarita target.

Serpiente Dorada

Drill hole SPT19-02 targeted the intersection of the north-trending Serpiente Dorada and northeast-trending La Julieta structures approximately 180 metres north of SPT18-01. The hole drilled into a sequence of rhyolitic and andesitic volcanic rocks with crosscutting hydrothermal breccias; a similar setting as hole SPT18-01. A zone of pervasive silicification and quartz veining hosts a broad zone of low-grade gold mineralization from 119.5 metres depth and a narrow zone of strong quartz veining hosts the intersection from 219.0 metres. The true widths of the zone of silicification and strong quartz veining are not known.

Drill holes SPT18-01 and SPT19-02 intersected the Serpiente Dorada structure over a strike length of approximately 180 metres and also delineated a new structure or splay off the Serpiente Dorada structure. Mineralization intersected in these holes comprises quartz veining and silicification where the Serpiente Dorada structure intersects interpreted hydrothermal breccias and a contact between andesitic and rhyolitic volcanic rocks, and presents a structural setting for additional drilling.

San Pedro

Drilling at San Pedro has intersected a quartz vein beneath the shallow historic workings hosted in rhyolitic tuff and andesite. Drill hole SPED19-02 intersected the quartz vein approximately 110 metres beneath the workings at the contact between andesite and rhyolite and returned 4.8 metres grading 1.02 g/t gold and a separate higher grade interval of 5.39 g/t gold over 0.35 metres. Drill hole SPED19-03 intersected the San Pedro vein approximately 40 metres beneath the vein in SPED19-02 and returned 2.4 metres grading 0.98 g/t gold from 162.5 metres downhole. Both SPED19-02 and SPED19-03 intersected the banded San Pedro quartz vein and the vein intersected in hole SPED19-03 also contained multi-episodal chalcedonic quartz and quartz breccias. The textures observed in holes SPED19-02 and SPED19-03 suggested that the vein in these holes is above the boiling zone where the best mineralization is expected. Hole SPED19-04 was drilled to intersect the San Pedro Vein about 70 metres downdip from the vein in SPED19-03 and intersected a zone of pervasive silicification and quartz veinlets with anomalous gold and pathfinder elements. Additional drilling is recommended to test deeper targets along strike within the system.

Significant Intersection Table

Hole From

(m) To

(m) Width

(m) Gold

(g/t) Silver

(g/t) SPED18-01 No significant assays SPED19-02 141.0 145.8 4.8 1.02 13.0 And 154.45 154.8 0.35 5.39 23.7 SPED19-03 162.5 166 3.5 0.74 26.5 including 162.5 164.9 2.4 0.98 36.6 SPED19-04 No significant assays SPT18-01 224.5 231.0 6.5 3.29 6.3 Including 225.5 226.5 1.0 20.1 22.5 SPT19-02 119.5 131.0 11.5 0.48 3.9 and 219.0 220.0 1.0 1.57 1.2

All intervals given for mineralized intervals are core lengths. The true widths of the intersections are not known.

Drill Hole Information Table

Hole Easting

(m) Northing

(m) Elevation

(m) Azimuth

(o) Dip

(o) Hole Depth

(m) SPED18-01 246,222 2,949,475 1,883 276 -45 201.0 SPED19-02 246,222 2,949,475 1,883 220 -55 219.0 SPED19-03 246,222 2,949,475 1,883 220 -68 216.0 SPED19-04 246,309 2,949,410 1,919 270 -70 370.5 SPT18-01 248,404 2,947,705 1,677 270 -64 320.0 SPT19-02 248,370 2,947,880 1,733 270 -55 270.0 CAS18-01 240,533 2,947,389 1,360 060 -45 209.7 CAS18-02 1 240,556 2,947,295 1,301 070 -45 48.2 CAS18-02B 240,557 2,947,296 1,301 070 -45 201.0 CAS18-03 240,361 2,947,455 1,405 040 -60 200.0

Hole was lost

About the Cerro Cascaron Project

The Cerro Cascaron property hosts a low to intermediate sulphidation epithermal gold system that includes a gold-bearing vein in the eastern part of the property. Veining has been mapped over 900 vertical metres, with classic textural evidence of hydrothermal boiling accompanying the highest gold grades. The proposed boiling zone has been established in the upper 380 metres of the vein field. Beneath the boiling zones, silver and base metal rich veins and breccias provide additional exploration targets.

Cerro Cascaron's setting and mineralization are similar to many epithermal deposits in the Sierra Madre Occidental, including Minera Frisco SAB's Ocampo Mine to the northwest, Coeur Mining Inc.s Palmarejo mine, and First Majestic Silver's San Martin de Bolanos silver mine.

Qualified Person Statement

Evrim's disclosure of technical or scientific information in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Stewart Harris, P.Geo. Vice President, Technical Services for the Company. Mr. Harris serves as a Qualified Person under the definition of National Instrument 43-101.

Core samples were delivered to ALS Global in Hermosillo, Sonora for sample preparation and to the ALS laboratory in North Vancouver for analysis. The Hermosillo and North Vancouver facilities have ISO/IEC 17025:2017 certification. Field duplicate samples, blank samples and certified reference materials were inserted into the sample sequence each at a frequency of one per 20 samples. Samples were assayed for gold by 30 gram fire assay and multi-element analysis by four-acid and ICP analysis.

About Evrim Resources

Evrim is a precious and base metals project generator, with early stage exploration projects and a database covering substantial areas of Mexico, western Canada and portions of southwestern United States. We focus our expertise on identifying new early stage exploration targets which are later advanced through option and joint venture agreements with industry partners to create shareholder value and avoid stock dilution. Evrims business plan also includes royalty creation utilizing the Companys exploration expertise and existing projects.

On Behalf of the Board

EVRIM RESOURCES CORP.

Paddy Nicol

President & CEO

To find out more about Evrim Resources Corp., please contact Paddy Nicol, President, Charles Funk, VP New Opportunities and Exploration at 604-248-8648, or Liliana Wong, Investor Relations Manager at 778-929-3382.

Visit our website at www.evrimresources.com.

Forward Looking Information

This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward looking statements". All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that Evrim Resources Corp. (the "Company) expects to occur, are forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur.

Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in the forward looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, and continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Companys management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

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.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Macarthur Minerals Limited (TSX-V: MMS, OTCQB: MMSDF) (the Company or Macarthur) is pleased to announce the issuance of a private placement offering (the Offering) of up to US$6 million of secured Convertible Note (Note).

The proceeds from the offering will be used to complete a Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS) on Macarthurs Moonshine Magnetite and Ularring Hematite iron ore deposits in Western Australia. The BFS will include a 54-hole drill program.

Macarthur owns 100% of the Moonshine Magnetite Project, with an Inferred and Indicated Mineral Resource Estimate consisting of 1,316 million tonnes (Mt) @ 30.1% Iron (Fe). Initial metallurgical test work from core at Moonshine indicated that a very high-grade iron ore product ranging from 68.5%-69.1% Fe, can be achieved as an export quality target.

The Inferred Mineral Resource estimate for the Moonshine Magnetite Project was initially prepared by CSA Global Pty Ltd (NI43-101 Technical Report filed December 17, 2009, titled NI43-101 Technical Report on Lake Giles Iron Ore Project: Western Australia) and was updated by Snowden Mining Industry Consultants (NI43-101 Technical Report filed March 25, 2011, titled Macarthur Minerals Limited: Moonshine and Moonshine North Prospects, Lake Giles Iron Project, Western Australia, NI43-101 Technical Report  Preliminary Assessment).

Macarthur also owns the Ularring Hematite Project, with a Mineral Resource Estimate consisting of Indicated 54.46 Mt @ 47.2% Fe and Inferred 25.99Mt @ 45.4% Fe, previously announced on August 16, 2012 (NI 43-101 Technical Report filed October 1, 2012, titled NI 43-101 Report, Macarthur Minerals Limited, Pre-Feasibility Study, Ularring Hematite Project, Western Australia). The Pre-feasibility Study focused on utilising all Probable Mineral Reserve of 42.95Mt @ 47% Fe hematite, producing a 60.1% Fe sinter fines product.

Cameron McCall, Executive Chairman of Macarthur Minerals commented;

Macarthur Minerals has invested over C$60 million in the Moonshine and Ularring iron ore projects. We are extremely excited to begin moving the projects to the next level and our objective of advancing to production in a timely manner. The Note Offering is at a critical juncture in its approach to secure sufficient funding to complete the Banking Feasibility necessary to secure project financing. Macarthur Minerals initial focus will be on the 1.3 billion tonnes of high-quality magnetite resources. What makes this project unique is the close proximity to existing under-utilized rail and port infrastructure. The recent disruption in supply in the iron ore market creates a market that is seeking high grade low impurity products, and the Moonshine Magnetite product is ideally suited to fill this supply void and to meet this shift in product preference by the major Chinese and global markets. This Convertible Note enables the company to move forward and produce a comprehensive plan for the monetisation of its iron ore assets whilst protecting current shareholders from further immediate dilution. At this stage we have had preliminary interest from a number of potential institutional investors and will update the market once the process has moved forward.

Pursuant to the Offering, the Note will be structured around these key terms:

The Note has a face value of US$10,000 following adoption of a loan note instrument.

The Note can be converted at any time after 12 months into common shares of Macarthur at Noteholders option at a conversion price that reflects 80% of the average VWAP over 5 trading days immediately preceding a notice of conversion or at the greater of C$0.10 with attaching warrant offered for one fourth of the Commitment amount exercisable at the greater of C$0.10 or the average VWAP over 5 trading days immediately preceding the date of the Exercise Notice.

The Note will have a term to maturity of 3 years and bear interest at a rate of 12.5% per annum.

The Note includes a mandatory conversion clause that such conversion may not have the effect of causing Noteholder to own 20% or more of the common shares of Macarthur or becoming a control person.

The iron ore licences in Lake Giles region of Western Australia held by Macarthur act as security for the Note.

Any shares issued upon conversion of the principal amount of the Note and any accrued interest will be subject to certain resale restrictions, including a restricted (or hold) period of four months and one day following the distribution date, under applicable Canadian securities legislation.

The Company is working with Capstan Capital Partners LLP, a UK regulated corporate finance business to effect this private placement. A success fee is payable in the amount of 5% of the total Convertible Note raised from third party investors and an amount of US$176,000 in cash to be paid within 10 business days of the closing of the Convertible Note. 100% of this success fee amount shall be applied to subscription of Convertible Note raised in Macarthur, to be issued in the name of Capstan ranking pari passu with the other issued Convertible Note held by Macarthur investors.

This financing commitment marks another significant milestone for Macarthurs iron ore projects and will ensure effective long-term access to markets where Macarthurs high quality iron ore is in strong demand.

ABOUT MACARTHUR MINERALS LIMITED (TSX-V: MMS, OTCQB: MMSDF)

Macarthur Minerals Limited is an iron ore development, gold and lithium exploration company that is focused on bringing to production its Western Australia iron ore projects. The iron ore projects are Ularring hematite (approved for development) and the one plus billion tonne Moonshine magnetite. Macarthur Minerals has prominent (~1,130 square kilometer tenement area) gold, lithium, nickel, cobalt exploration interests in Pilbara region of Western Australia. In addition, Macarthur Minerals has lithium brine Claims in the emerging Railroad Valley region in Nevada, USA.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

MACARTHUR MINERALS LIMITED

Cameron McCall

Cameron McCall, Executive Chairman

THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Caution Regarding Forward Looking Statements

Certain of the statements made and information contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, forward-looking statements) within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements in this press release reflect the current expectations, assumptions or beliefs of the Company based upon information currently available to the Company. With respect to forward-looking statements contained in this press release, assumptions have been made regarding, among other things, the timely receipt of required approvals, the reliability of information, including historical mineral resource or mineral reserve estimates, prepared and/or published by third parties that are referenced in this press release or was otherwise relied upon by the Company in preparing this press release. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct as actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include fluctuations in exchange rates and certain commodity prices, uncertainties related to mineral title in the project, unforeseen technology changes that results in a reduction in iron ore demand or substitution by other metals or materials, the discovery of new large low cost deposits of iron ore, uncertainty in successfully returning the project into full operation, and the general level of global economic activity. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Such statements relate to future events and expectations and, as such, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and except as may otherwise be required pursuant to applicable laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Golden Share Resources Corporation (TSXV: GSH) ("Golden Share" or the "Company") is pleased to provide exploration update on its Berens River Project ("Berens River" or the "Project").

The Berens River Project is located 200 km north of Red Lake, hosted in the Favourable Lake Greenstone Belt of Northwestern Ontario. The Project includes the past producing Berens River Mine, operated by Newmont Mining from 1939 to 1948. The Berens River Mine is reported to have produced 158,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 9.6 g/t, 5.8 million ounces of silver, 1.7 million pounds of zinc and 6.1 million pounds of lead. (Please refer to the press release dated March 27, 2017).

In 2017, a Project wide VTEM survey was planned but postponed after the Ontario Geological Survey (OGS) announced it would be surveying the area with high resolution helicopter EM/magnetics. The Company's planned VTEM survey was to test for potential base metal massive sulphide conductors within volcanic rock sequences in the eastern and southern parts of the Project area. The magnetic component of the VTEM survey would assist in delineating stratigraphic and structural trends within the Project. (Please refer to the press releases dated July 31, 2017 and May 1, 2018.)

The Company has completed its review of the OGS 2017-2018 Favourable Lake VTEM survey results over and around its Berens River Project. The results of the 17,511 km, 200 m line spacing VTEM survey were released in October, 2018. The OGS VTEM survey is the first comprehensive high-resolution airborne EM/magnetic survey of the Favourable Lake Belt. Promising VTEM targets in areas with historic precious and base metal occurrences have been identified. Two focus areas were defined with favourable geology and airborne geophysics, concentrations of historic precious metal occurrences and strong support from the exploration history, especially Golden Share's earlier field work. The Company has also added 3 single cell mining claims to better cover one of the focus areas.

In addition to generating exploration targets in the two focus areas, the OGS VTEM survey provides a regional high-resolution image of the electromagnetic and magnetic character of the Berens River Project area, its surroundings and much of the Favourable Lake Greenstone Belt. This survey shows the unique structural setting of the Berens River gold deposit and related vein systems. It also identifies bands of formational conductors in and around the Project which are considered areas of limited exploration interest.

In 2016, a small IP/Magnetic and soil sampling program were completed. The results of these orientation surveys showed coincident or near coincident shallow, clear and well-formed IP anomalies over parts of mineralized veins #3, #11 and #12. A number of new IP targets just north of the known vein systems were also identified. (Please refer to the press releases dated September 20, 2016 and December 12, 2016.)

Having confirmed the potential role for IP in the exploration of the Berens River Project area, larger production IP and drone magnetic surveys in the two focus areas are under consideration. With exception to the 2016 orientation survey, neither focus areas have been surveyed with IP or high-resolution magnetics. The Company will cautiously and systemically continue to advance the Berens River Project in line with market conditions.

Golden Share is pleased with the new information derived from the Favourable Lake VTEM survey and thank the OGS for their sponsorship and management of this work. The Company regards such work by the Government of Ontario as strong support for the struggling mineral exploration industry of Ontario.

All technical information in this release has been reviewed and approved by Wes Roberts., P.Eng., who is the Qualified Person for the Company.

About Golden Share

Golden Share Resources Corporation is a junior natural resource company focusing on mineral exploration in the province of Ontario, Canada, a mineral rich and politically stable jurisdiction.

WARNING: Certain statements in this press release may be forward-looking, including those with respect to the timing and content of up-coming work programs, geological interpretations etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. The Company relies upon litigation protection for forward-looking statements. The reader is warned against undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For more information, please visit www.goldenshare.ca or contact:

Golden Share Resources Corporation

Nick Zeng, President & CEO

Tel: (905) 968-1199

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
I would like to take a moment to respond to some of the misconceptions and fallacies of a recent letter by Roger von Dach.

As Roger says regarding arguments for and against the carbon tax, he doesnt know much about it either. This shows in his letter through the many inaccuracies.

Insults towards Catherine McKenna aside, the reason we have elected representatives is to have people who can look at evidence and draft evidence-driven policy on matters that many citizens are not knowledgeable about. Unlike ourselves, these representatives have aides, the counsel of experts, and access to research and studies which enable them to be as informed as possible.

Carbon dioxide is important to plants, however this does not mean that more carbon dioxide is more beneficial. Just as we breathe oxygen, a higher oxygen environment can actually be damaging to our lungs. We evolved to live in the Earths current atmosphere, along with all other plants and animals, few of which existed during times when atmospheric conditions were different.

Most of these evolutionary adaptations occurred over prolonged periods, giving opportunity to adjust to new conditions. Changes to our atmosphere are occurring at rates unprecedented in Earths history outside of mass extinction events.

The earth has a natural carbon cycle. This includes CO2 emitted from volcanoes and hydrothermal vents, and CO2 produced by life on the planet. The earth also processes carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere. This is traditionally a balanced cycle, however since industrialization, humans have upset this balance, releasing far more CO2 into the atmosphere than the Earths natural cycles are able to accommodate.

According to the US Geological Survey, the worlds volcanoes generate about 200 million tons of CO2 annually. This contrasts to vehicle emissions alone, which generate roughly 24 billion tons.

The chemistry of CO2 has been well understood by scientists for over 100 years, as carbon is used extensively in organic chemistry. Fields including biology, medicine, energy all require an intimate understanding of how carbon dioxide functions, and that is why there are research papers dating back as far as 1896 On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Earth.

The term global warming was not used until a 1975 Science article titled Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming. This term though was not popularized until much later. Meanwhile climate change continued to be prominently referred to as such. Examples including the IPCC or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change founded in 1988 as well as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatchers 1989 address to the Conservative Party, which highlighted the threat of climate change.

Much of today's misinformation is driven by those whose profits could fall as a result of evidence-driven policy.

Matt Phillips, Kelowna
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Magna Terra Minerals Inc. (the Company or Magna Terra) (TSX-V: MTT) (SSE: MTTCL) is pleased to announce results from a ten hole, 860 meter, diamond drill campaign on the Piedra Negra project in the Santa Cruz Province of Argentina. The project is within 30 km of the Vanguardia Gold Mine (Anglo Gold Ashanti - see figure 1). The drill program was completed in December 2018. Assays for holes PN_DDH001 through 9 have recently been received.

Executive Summary:

The Company has completed a first phase drill program at its Piedra Negra Project, Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Drill hole PN_DDH006 intersected 2.0 m of 0.655 g/t Au (from m 14 to 16) and then 1.0 m of 0.18 g/t Au (from m 26 to 27) (Table 2). The hole collared in argillized tuffs, and after 14 m, cut low sulphidation vein material. Further anomalous intercepts are reported in Holes PN_DDH001, 2, 4 and 7 and occur over an area of 700 by 500 m in the Vetas Hermanas and Puyutano Dome areas.

The Piedra Negra project is composed of four areas which we term, Puyutano Dome, Vetas Hermanas (including the Brunella, Emily, Valentina and Jazmin veins), Vetas Ocultas and Domos de Piedra Negra. These areas are illustrated with geology and surface rock chip Au in Figure 2. In this campaign we partially tested the Elizabeth vein at the southern edge of the Puyatano Dome Area. We also tested the Vetas Hermanas Area and the Domos de Piedra Negra down to around 100 m. The Vetas Ocultas Area remains un-tested.

Collar data for the campaign are provided in Table 1 and illustrated relative to Induced Polarization at 90 m depth in Figure 3.

Chalcedonic silica in Au bearing intercepts along with a pervasive Illite Sericite alteration, combine to indicate that the drilling was restricted to the upper part of a low sulphidation epithermal system, implying further target potential at depth. Additionally, strong Hg anomalies, between 2 and 4 ppm in PN_DDH008 appear to form part of a regional pattern which relates the Piedra Negra Veins to the discovery vein at the Companys Covadonga Project, 9 km to the West.

Piedra Negra Intercepts

Puyutano Dome Area

Holes PN_DDH001 and 2 on the Elizabeth Vein reported 2.1 m of 0.24 g/t Au and 4 m of 0.135 g/t respectively. Whilst the intercepts are sub- economic, see Table 2, these holes were altered throughout most of the length and in the case of PN_DDH001, quartz veinlets throughout the upper half of the hole, tended to be parallel to the core. Additionally, the host rock, which is largely tufaceaous, is mixed with large rhyolite fragments from the Puyutano Dome to the North. The general N-S orientation of the veins at surface does not appear to hold at depth where mineralized targets may be orientated E-W in zones of dilation and along the southern flank of the Puyutano Dome.

Vetas Hermanas Area

Holes 4, 6 and 7 reported short sub-economic Au intercepts, the strongest coming from the Valentina vein where PN_DDH006 reported 2 m of 0.655 g/t Au (see Table 2 and Figure 3) and a further 1 m of 0.18 g/t Au. PN_DDH007 reported 1 m of 0.1 g/t and a further 1 m of 0.14 g/t. Whilst we didnt get an Au intercept from the Brunella Vein, on strike to the north, PN_DDH008 did intercept strong Hg anomalies, between 2 and 4 ppm. The Hg anomalism, accompanied by a general Illite Sericite alteration in the area, implies that our intercepts are:

a) high in the epithermal system

b) related to a district scale alteration system which includes our Covadonga Project, 9 km to the West

Vetas Oculatas Area

This area was not drill tested in this short campaign and will be considered for the future as surface geology and Induced Polarization data show targets on strike with the Emily and Brunella Veins.

Domos de Piedra Negra Area

Holes PN_DDH009 and 10 were drilled in this area and targeted fluid traps beneath surface stockworks in rhyolite domes. PN_DDH010 was cut short of target for technical reasons. PN_DDH009 cut 29 m of rhyolite dome with stockwork, breccias and quartz veinlets, followed by 6 m of andesitic tuffs with silicification and brecciation with disseminated pyrite. Unlike the surface rock chip sampling, the hole was barren. Further QAQC procedures will be undertaken before making a decision on further exploration in this area.

Table 1: HQ Diamond Drill hole collar details, Grid WGS UTM 19S

Collar X Y Z Azimuth Dip Length PN_DDH001 568605 4669400 180 90 60 113 PN_DDH002 568600 4669280 180 90 60 110 PN_DDH003 568560 4668970 175 90 60 128 PN_DDH004 568600 4668970 172 90 60 65 PN_DDH005 568601 4668800 184 45 50 104 PN_DDH006 568215 4668837 182 270 45 56 PN_DDH007 568206 4668719 185 270 45 47 PN_DDH008 568176 4669075 168 270 45 50 PN_DDH009 568600 4667650 194 90 45 143 PN_DDH010 568620 4667475 186 135 45 44

Table 2: Drill assay results, intercepts > 0.1 g/t Au

Hole Sample From Too Length (m) Au (g/t) PN_DDH001 620 21.55 23.65 2.1 0.240 PN_DDH002 732 37 41 4.0 0.135 PN_DDH004 922 20 22 2.0 0.110 PN_DDH006 636 14 16 2.0 0.655 PN_DDH006 649 26 27 1.0 0.180 PN_DDH007 673 16 17 1.0 0.100 PN_DDH007 679 19 20 1.0 0.140

The Company is currently evaluating these results with a view to designing a future exploration program which would include all of the four target areas, and would also aim to examine the ground between Piedra Negra and the discovery outcrop at Cerro Covadonga.

Dr. Paul David Robinson, Vice President of Exploration, commented, We are very pleased to be off to a positive start with the testing of Piedra Negra. This project, in conjunction with our Cerro Covadonga Project, has been shown to represent a district with significant exploration potential. This district is very close to the now aging Cerro Vanguardia mine and we hope that it will play a part in its future.

QAQC

Sampling was carried out at the drill site, with core being cut by angle grinder and half of the core retained for logging and potential re-analysis. Blind standards, blanks, and duplicates were inserted into the sample chain accounting for 14 % of samples. Samples were then delivered, by Magna Terra staff, directly to Alex Stewart Laboratories in San Julian, Santa Cruz, Argentina, for sample preparation and subsequently shipped to Alex Stewart Laboratories in Mendoza, Argentina, for gold fire assay and multi element analysis. Intercepts were calculated using a 0.1 g Au/t cut off.

Qualified Person

All technical data disclosed in this press release has been verified by Magna Terras Qualified Person, Paul D. Robinson Ph.D. and Certified Professional Geologist as recognized by the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Ontario (APGO).

About Us

Magna Terra Minerals Inc. is a precious metals focused exploration company, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Magna Terra (MTT) has a significant interest in the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina within the prolific Deseado Massif in southern Patagonia. With five district scale drill ready projects, and a highly experienced management and exploration team, MTT is positioned to deliver significant shareholder value through the potential for precious metals discovery(s) on its extensive portfolio. For detailed information regarding our projects, please visit the Companys website at: www.magnaterraminerals.com

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Magna Terra Minerals Inc.

Lewis Lawrick, President & CEO: 647-478-5307

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Website: www.magnaterraminerals.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward Looking Information

Some statements in this release may contain forward-looking information. All statements, other than of historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future (including, without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization) are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by use of the words may, will, should, continue, expect, anticipate, estimate, believe, intend, plan or project or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Companys ability to control or predict, that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, without limitation, failure by the parties to complete the Transaction, failure to establish estimated mineral resources, the possibility that future exploration results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, changes in world gold markets or markets for other commodities, and other risks disclosed in the Companys public disclosure record on file with the relevant securities regulatory authorities. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaim any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement.
New drill intercept in Idaho Vein assays 90.4 gpt gold / 4.27 m (2.6 oz per ton / 14.0 ft)

New drill intercept includes 458 gpt gold over 0.81 m (13.4 oz per ton / 2.7 ft)

Additional drilling targeting Idaho #1 Vein currently in progress

Multiple 52 Vein intersections assayed up to 15.4 gpt gold over 1.63 m (0.45 opt / 5.3 ft)

A shallow vein near surface assayed 8.5 gpt gold over 2.88 m (0.25 opt / 9.4 ft)

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Rise Gold Corp. (CSE: RISE) (OTCQB: RYES) (the "Company") is pleased to announce additional assay results from on-going diamond core drilling at the Idaho-Maryland ("I-M") Gold Project.

The exploration drill program at the Idaho-Maryland continues to be successful. Recent drilling intersected the Idaho #1 Vein below historic mining areas and intersected the 52 Vein area prior to reaching the Idaho #1 Vein target. A shallow vein was also intersected at 259 m.

TABLE 1 - New Drill Hole Intercept Highlights

Hole From (m) To (m) Gold

(gpt) Intercept

Length

(m)* Vein Idaho #1 Vein I-18-11 1381.86 1384.33 3.6 2.47 Idaho #1 I-19-13 1007.97 1013.09 5.5 5.12 Idaho #1 I-19-13A 1005.31 1009.57 90.4 4.27 Idaho # 1 Including 1008.77 1009.57 458.0 0.81 Near Surface I-18-11 259.16 262.04 8.5 2.88 ? Including 261.14 262.04 18.8 0.90 52 Vein Area I-18-11 975.50 976.70 19.2 1.20 52 I-18-11 992.25 993.88 15.4 1.63 52 Including 992.70 993.22 35.6 0.52 I-18-11 1046.17 1052.58 3.9 6.42 52 I-18-11 1142.33 1144.08 5.4 1.75 52 I-18-12 950.50 960.49 2.6 9.98 52

*The Company is not able to estimate true widths for the intersected mineralization until further drilling is completed.

Very high-grade gold mineralization was encountered in drill hole I-19-13A which assayed 90.4 gpt gold over 4.27 m (2.6 oz per ton / 14 feet). Rise Gold has interpreted this intercept to represent a significant down-dip extension of the historic Idaho #1 Vein. The intercept in I-19-13A is near the elevation of the lowest haulage level of the mine accessed by the existing vertical mine shaft.

FIGURE 1 - Visible Gold in Drill Intercept I-19-13A (in retained half core)



The Idaho #1 Vein was the most productive and highest-grade vein of the I-M Mine. Historic production from the Idaho #1 Vein is estimated at 935,000 oz of gold with an average head grade of 38.7 gpt (1.12 opt) gold. Total historic production from the Idaho Veins is estimated at 1,621,000 oz of gold with an average head grade of 28.4 gpt (0.74 opt) gold.

Idaho #1 Vein Drilling

The mineralized intercepts in drill holes I-19-13 and I-19-13A consist of a quartz shear vein and extensive zones of quartz-sericite-pyrite alteration in the walls of the vein.

Drill hole I-19-13A was wedged from drill hole I-19-13 and the holes are offset approx. 1.5 meters apart at the vein intersection

The vein in I-19-13 assayed 5.5 gpt gold over 5.12 m (0.16 opt / 16.8 ft)

The vein in I-19-13A assayed 90.4 gpt gold over 4.27 m (2.64 opt / 14.0 ft)

The weighted average of both holes is 44.1 gpt gold over 4.69m (1.29 opt / 15.4 ft)

I-19-13A includes a sample which assayed 458 gpt gold over 0.84 m (13.36 opt / 2.7 ft)

The vein in I-19-13A contains coarse visible gold in some samples of retained half core

A 40 m wide zone of alteration surrounds the vein with an average grade of ~1.5 gpt gold and individual samples assaying up to 12 gpt gold

Drill hole I-18-11 intersected the Idaho #1 Vein approx. 525 m along strike to the north-west and 200 m below I-19-13A. The intercept consists of a quartz shear vein and extensive zones of quartz-sericite-pyrite alteration in the walls of the vein.

The vein in I-18-11 assayed 3.6 gpt gold over 2.47 m (0.11 opt / 8.1 ft)

A 100 m wide zone of alteration surrounds the vein with an average grade of ~1.1 gpt gold and individual samples assaying up to 8 gpt gold

Additional drilling in the area of I-18-11 may reveal coarse gold similar to I-19-13A

Drill hole I-18-13A and I-18-11 are located 120 m and 320 m vertically below the I2400 level, the lowest level of exploration on the Idaho #1 Vein. Historic drifts were driven from each end of the vein and reported to be in gold mineralization at the time the mine was shut down.

I2400L West: historic channel samples of the vein and wallrock averaged 19.9 gpt gold over 1.93 m (0.58 opt / 6.4 ft) for a distance of 165 m to the final shutdown face

Channel samples include assays up to 481 gpt gold over 1.16 m (14.0 opt / 3.8 ft)

I2400L East: drifting in the Idaho #1 Vein was reported to be "well mineralized" over a distance of 76 m to the final shutdown face

Drill hole I-18-12 was designed to test the down-dip extension of the mineralization encountered in I-18-11 but significantly deviated and did not reach the intended Idaho #1 Vein target.

Rise Gold is currently drilling the Idaho #1 Vein target between I-19-13A and I-18-11 and utilizing directional drilling to improve the accuracy of drilling and expedite the next intercepts.

A summary of drill hole assay results from recent exploration diamond drilling on the Idaho #1 Vein target are presented in Table 1 and illustrated in Figure 2. A photo of coarse visible gold in drill hole I-19-13A is displayed in Figure 1.

The Isometric drawing (Figure 2) showing the recent drill hole intercepts in the Idaho area can be downloaded from the following link.

https://riseg.sharefile.com/d-s8bc52c537474e41a

FIGURE 2 - Idaho Vein Intercepts - Isometric View





52 Vein Area Drilling

Drill holes I-18-11 and I-18-12 drilled though the 52 Vein area en route to the Idaho #1 Vein target.

Important gold mineralization related to the 52 Vein was intersected in drill holes I-18-11 & I-18-12. The 52 Vein intercepts are located approximately 242 m and 125 m north-east of the previous drill intercept in drill hole I-18-10.

A similar style of mineralization to I-18-10 was encountered with a wide flat lying shear vein and high-grade extensional veins in the walls of vein.

Drill hole I-18-10 assayed 149.3 gpt gold over 6.8 m, including 2,190 gpt gold over 0.47 m and was previously reported by news release on Dec 13th 2018.

The current drill program is focussed on the Idaho #1 Vein target and therefore the 52 Vein intercepts are incidental to the Idaho #1 Vein drilling. The 52 Vein represents a large and compelling target for a focussed drilling program in the future.

A summary of drill hole assay results from recent exploration diamond drilling on the 52 Vein target are presented in Table 1 and illustrated in Figure 3.

FIGURE 3 - 52 Vein Intercepts - Plan View





Quality Control and Assay Methods

Richard Lippoth, M.Sc, CPG, the qualified person for the exploration drill results disclosure contained in this news release, has studied the drill core discussed in this news release and has reviewed the analytical and quality control results. Mr. Lippoth has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical contents of this news release.

Benjamin Mossman, P.Eng, CEO of Rise Gold, is the qualified person for the historic production disclosure contained in this news release. Historic production at the Idaho-Maryland Mine is disclosed in the Technical Report on the Idaho-Maryland Project dated June 1st, 2017 and available on www.sedar.com.

Rise has implemented a quality control program for its drill program to ensure best practice in the sampling and analysis of the drill core. This includes the insertion of blind blanks, duplicates and certified standards. HQ- and NQ-sized drill core is saw cut with half of the drill core sampled at intervals based on geological criteria including lithology, visual mineralization, and alteration. The remaining half of the core is stored on-site at the Company's warehouse in Grass Valley, California. Drill core samples are transported in sealed bags to ALS Minerals analytical assay lab in Reno, Nevada.

All gold assays were obtained using a method of screen fire assaying. This procedure involves screening a large pulverized sample of up to 1 kg at 100 microns. Any +100 micron material remaining on the screen is retained and analyzed in its entirety by fire assay with gravimetric finish and reported as the Au (+) fraction result. The -100 micron fraction is homogenized and two sub-samples of 30-50 grams are analyzed by fire assay with AAS finish. If the grade of the material exceeds 10 gpt the sample is re-assayed using a gravimetric finish. The average of the two results is taken and reported as the Au (-) fraction result. All three values are used in calculating the combined gold content of the plus and minus fractions.

About Rise Gold Corp.

Rise Gold is an exploration-stage mining company. The Company's principal asset is the historic past-producing Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine located in Nevada County, California, USA. The Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine is a past producing gold mine with total past production of 2,414,000 oz of gold at an average mill head grade of 17 gpt gold from 1866-1955. Historic production at the Idaho-Maryland Mine is disclosed in the Technical Report on the Idaho-Maryland Project dated June 1st, 2017 and available on www.sedar.com. Rise Gold is incorporated in Nevada, USA and maintains its head office in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Benjamin Mossman

President, CEO and Director

Rise Gold Corp.

For further information, please contact:

RISE GOLD CORP.

Suite 650, 669 Howe Street

Vancouver, BC V6C 0B4

T: 604.260.4577

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.risegoldcorp.com

The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this news release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur.

Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to certain factors including, without limitation, obtaining all necessary approvals, meeting expenditure and financing requirements, compliance with environmental regulations, title matters, operating hazards, metal prices, political and economic factors, competitive factors, general economic conditions, relationships with vendors and strategic partners, governmental regulation and supervision, seasonality, technological change, industry practices, and one-time events that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information contained in this release. Rise undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements or information except as required by law.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Tudor Gold Corp. (TSXV: TUD) (FSE: TUC) (the "Company" or "Tudor Gold") is pleased to announce that the Company has completed its previously announced non-brokered private placement, which closed with the sale at 11,934,200 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.25 per Unit, for aggregate gross proceeds of $2,983,550 (the "Offering").

Each Unit consists of one common share and one transferable common share purchase warrant (each, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one additional common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.40 for a period of one year from closing of the Offering, provided that commencing on the date that is four months and one day after closing of the Offering, if the closing price of the Company's common shares on the TSX Venture Exchange, or any other stock exchange on which the Company's common shares are primarily listed, is at a price greater than $1.00 per share for a period of ten (10) consecutive trading days, the Company will have the right to accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants by giving written notice to the holders of the Warrants that the Warrants will expire on the date that is not less than 30 days from the date of such notice.

The proceeds from the sale of the Units will be used to reduce liabilities and improve the Company's working capital, for general corporate purposes and to advance exploration of the Company's mineral properties in the Golden Triangle of northwestern B.C. In connection with the Offering, the Company paid aggregate cash finder's fees of $103,395 to certain third-party finders who introduced subscribers to the Offering.

All of the common shares, Warrants and any common shares issued upon exercise of the Warrants are subject to a hold period until July 20, 2019, except as permitted by applicable Canadian securities laws and the TSX Venture Exchange.

Strategic Investment by Mr. Eric Sprott

Pursuant to the Offering, Mr. Eric Sprott, through 2176423 Ontario Ltd., a corporation which is beneficially owned by him, acquired 6,000,000 Units for a total consideration of $1,500,000. Following the completion of the private placement, Mr. Sprott's holdings represent 5.5% of the issued and outstanding common shares of the Company, on a non-diluted basis, and 10.5% on a partially diluted basis, assuming the exercise of the Warrants acquired hereunder and forming part of the Units. Mr. Sprott did not beneficially own any securities in the Company prior to this investment.

The Units were acquired by Mr. Sprott for investment purposes and with a long-term view of the investment. Mr. Sprott may acquire additional securities of the Company either on the open market or through private acquisitions or sell securities of the Company either on the open market or through private dispositions in the future, depending on market conditions, reformulation of plans and/or other relevant factors.

A copy of 2176423 Ontario Ltd.'s early warning report will appear on the Company's profile on SEDAR and may also be obtained by calling (416) 362-7172 (200 Bay Street, Suite 2600, Royal Bank Plaza, South Tower, Toronto, Ontario M5J 2J2).

About Tudor Gold

Tudor Gold is a precious and base metals explorer in British Columbia's Golden Triangle, an area that hosts past-producing mines and several large deposits that are approaching potential development. The 17,913 hectare Treaty Creek project (Tudor Gold has a 60 % interest) borders Seabridge Gold Inc.'s KSM property to the southwest and borders Pretium Resources Inc.'s Brucejack property to the southeast. The Company also has a 60% interest in the Electrum project, and a 100% interest in the 18,300 hectare Crown project, all of which are located in the Golden Triangle area.

"Walter Storm"

Walter Storm

President and Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please visit the Company's website at www.tudor-gold.com or contact:

Aris Morfopoulos

Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Secretary

Tel: 604-721-2650

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

or:

Marketsmart Communications Inc.

Tel: 604-261-4466

Toll-Free: 877-261-4466

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

Cautionary Statements regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Company's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially.

All statements including, without limitation, statements relating to the anticipated use of proceeds from the offering as well as any other future plans, objectives or expectations of the Company are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's plans or expectations include risks relating to the actual results of current exploration activities, fluctuating gold prices, possibility of equipment breakdowns and delays, exploration cost overruns, availability of capital and financing, general economic, market or business conditions, regulatory changes, timeliness of government or regulatory approvals and other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

(Not for distribution to United States newswire services or for dissemination in the United States)
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GPM Metals Inc. (TSXV:GPM) (the Company or GPM) provides an update to its Walker Gossan Project, Arnhem Land, Australia.

The Northern Land Council (NLC) has scheduled a community meeting the week of 13 May 2019 in Gapuwiyak, Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory in Australia, between the local Traditional Land Owners (TLOs), GPM Metals management and the representatives of the Northern Land Council (NLC)..

At this meeting GPM Metals will be presenting their sampling and field program proposed for the Walker Gossan Project (the Project), principally Exploration Licence (EL) 24305, to the TLOs and the NLC.

Upon review and approval of program, it is anticipated work will commence during June or July 2019.

The Project is the subject of farm-in and joint venture agreement between GPM (and its Australian subsidiary) and Rio Tinto Exploration Pty Limited(RTX) executed in January 2014, pursuant to which GPM can earn a 75% interest in the Project through meeting staged exploration expenditure requirements. The Project tenure is held by RTX with GPM acting as the operator and manager of exploration, community relations and title grant (see January 27, 2014 press release of the Company available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com).

Title Deed, Work Program and Exploration License (EL 24305) approval was granted in November 2015 by the NLC after a series of meetings and consultations with the TLOs and GPM Metals in Numbulwar and Darwin.

The Project lies within one of the great metallogenic provinces of the world, the North Australian Zinc Province (NAZP); which currently provides 30% of the world zinc production from a number of significant silver, lead, zinc deposits; including the Mt. Isa, George Fisher, McArthur River and Century Mines.

The exploration target is a large, strata bound, sediment hosted lead  zinc deposit. Field work planned for 2019 will consist of geological mapping, geochemical sampling and prospecting with the view of identifying vectors towards the center of the mineralized system. To date GPM geologists believe they previously identified and drilled into the iron rich, siderite, outer halo to potentially a major mineralized stratabound Lead Zinc deposit.

About GPM Metals Inc.

GPM Metals is a zinc focused exploration company with offices in Toronto, Brisbane and Lima.

The Companys current holdings include the district scale Walker Gossan Project, NT, Australia, a joint venture with Rio Tinto Exploration Pty Limited; and the 100% Claims interest in the Pasco Project, Department of Pasco, Peru.

Both projects are advanced exploration properties and have considerable potential to host significant zinc resources.

All scientific and technical information in this press release has been prepared under the supervision of Dan Noone, (Chairman of GPM), a qualified person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Noone (B.Sc Geology, MBA) is a member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists.

CONTACT INFORMATION

For further information contact:

GPM Metals Inc.

Peter Mullens, CEO

Suite 1101  141 Adelaide Street West,

Toronto, Ontario M5H 3L5

Telephone : + 416 628-5904

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The use of any of the words expect, anticipate, continue, estimate, may, might, will, project, should, believe, plans, intends and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information and/or statements. Forward-looking statements and/or information are based on a number of material factors, expectations and/or assumptions of GPM which have been used to develop such statements and/or information but which may prove to be incorrect. Although GPM believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements and/or information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements as GPM can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. In addition to other factors and assumptions which may be identified herein, assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: results from planned exploration and drilling activities; GPMs future plans for operational expenditures; the accuracy of the interpretations of exploration and drilling activity results; availability of financing to fund current and future plans and expenditures; the impact of increasing competition; the general stability of the economic and political environment in which GPM has property interests; the general continuance of current industry conditions; aboriginal matters; the timely receipt of any required regulatory approvals; the ability of GPM to obtain qualified staff, equipment and/or services in a timely and cost efficient manner; the ability of the operator of each project in which GPM has property interests to operate in a safe, efficient and/or effective manner and to fulfill its respective obligations and current plans; future commodity prices; currency, exchange and/or interest rates; and the regulatory framework regarding royalties, taxes and/or environmental matters in the jurisdictions in which GPM has property interests. The forward-looking information and statements included in this news release are not guarantees of future performance and should not be unduly relied upon. Such information and/or statements, including the assumptions made in respect thereof, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results and/or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information and/or statements including, without limitation: risks associated with the uncertainty of exploration results and estimates, currency fluctuations, the uncertainty of conducting operations under a foreign regime, exploration risk, the uncertainty of obtaining all applicable regulatory approvals, the availability of labour and/or equipment, the fluctuating prices of commodities, the availability of financing and GPMs dependence on its management personnel, other participants in the property areas and/or certain other risks detailed from time-to-time in GPMs public disclosure documents, (including, without limitation, those risks identified in this news release and GPMs current managements discussion and analysis). Furthermore, the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as at the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake any obligations to publicly update and/or revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of additional information, future events and/or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy and / or accuracy of this release
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 19, 2019) - Japan Gold Corp. (TSXV: JG) (OTCQB: JGLDF) ("Japan Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that a fourth diamond core drill rig is currently being imported into Japan and approvals have been received for an additional six experienced expatriate drilling personnel to support Kyushu drilling operations.

The additional drill rig and drill support personnel enhances Japan Gold's capabilities for its drilling programs due to begin in May on Hokkaido and in June on Kyushu. The Company's drilling operations are being managed by Welltech LLC supported by Japan Gold's drilling team. Welltech LLC is a long established Japanese drilling service company having a proven track record in geothermal, geotechnical and core drilling. Japan Gold has now received permits for 18 drilling personnel with experience in drilling epithermal vein-type mineralisation to support Welltech in running the Company's four drill rigs at full operational capacity.

The Company's three drill rigs already in Japan will be focused on the Ikutahara Project where an initial 3,000 m drilling program is scheduled to start at the Kitano-o Prospect in May. The fourth drill rig will be assigned to the Company's Kyushu projects. The first Kyushu drilling, 2,100 m, will start at the Ohra-Takamine Project in June.

John Proust commented, "This fourth drill rig and the additional experienced drilling personnel are significant steps towards accelerating the Company's projects in Kyushu and Hokkaido. Japan Gold is now well set up to execute its 2019 and future drilling programs and continue building shareholder value."

Hokkaido Q2 2019 Drilling Program

Ikutahara Project: The initial 3,000 m drill program at the Kitano-o Prospect will target veins within the central and western portions of the 3 km long east-west trending Kitano-o Mine workings. A series of drill holes will test across the vein corridor, where numerous gold-bearing quartz veins are recorded immediately below surface-workings and the extensively developed paleo-sinter horizon. Drilling will target broader vein structures and boiling zones which conventionally develop at depths greater than 100 m below sinters in epithermal systems where potentially high-grade gold-silver mineralisation can be deposited.

Permitting for the Kitano-o drill program is well advanced for drilling to start in May. Permitting for drilling at the Ryuo Prospect will also be progressed in the first half of 2019, and other prospects throughout the year.

Kyushu Q2 2019 Drilling Program

Ohra-Takamine Project: a 2,100 m Phase 1 drilling program is planned to test the 3.5 km of strike which hosts the historic Ohra, Takamine and Urushi Gold Mines. These drill holes will test for extensions and vein shoots adjacent to and along strike of the shallowly developed mine workings. The permitting process is advancing rapidly and the Company plans to have a drill rig operating at Ohra-Takamine in June.

For more information on the Company's projects, please visit our website www.japangold.com

Drill Rigs and Support Teams

Drilling equipment and personnel with relevant experience in drilling epithermal vein targets are in short supply in Japan because of the lack of exploration in recent years and the focus of the Japanese drilling industry on geothermal drilling. Japan Gold's assessment of this situation has led to the Company's acquisition of its own drill rigs and experienced supporting personnel to satisfy its requirements for independence and flexibility for its drilling needs. Japan Gold's drill rigs can core-drill to depths of up to 700 m in NQ core size.

Marketing

The Company has retained Proactive Investors LLC ("Proactive Investors") to assist in creating video and editorial content on the Company's developments. Proactive Investors is a leading multimedia news organisation, investor portal and events management business with offices in Vancouver, Toronto, New York, London, Sydney and Perth. The agreement has a 12-month term. Proactive Investors have no present interest, direct or indirect, in Japan Gold or its securities.

Qualified Person

The technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Japan Gold's President & Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Mike Andrews, PhD, FAusIMM, FSEG, who is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

On behalf of the Board of Japan Gold Corp.

"John Proust"

Chairman & CEO

About Japan Gold Corp.

Japan Gold Corp. is a Canadian mineral exploration company focused solely on gold and copper-gold exploration in Japan. The Company holds 17 Projects, for a combined area of 71,529 hectares (715.29 square kilometres), across the three largest islands of Japan: Hokkaido, Honshu and Kyushu. The Projects cover areas with known gold occurrences and a history of mining, and are prospective for both high-grade epithermal gold mineralization and gold-bearing lithocaps which could indicate the presence of porphyry mineralization. Japan Gold's leadership team has decades of resource industry and business experience, and the Company has recruited geologists and technical advisors with experience exploring and operating in Japan. More information is available at www.japangold.com or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

For further information please contact:

John Proust

Chairman & CEO

Phone: 778-725-1491

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Website: www.japangold.com

Cautionary Note

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as such term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to expected or anticipated future events and anticipated results that are forward-looking in nature and, as a result, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, such as general economic, market and business conditions, competition for qualified staff, the regulatory process and actions, technical issues, new legislation, uncertainties resulting from potential delays or changes in plans, uncertainties resulting from working in a new political jurisdiction, uncertainties regarding the results of exploration, uncertainties regarding the timing and granting of prospecting rights, uncertainties regarding the Company's ability to execute and implement future plans, and the occurrence of unexpected events. Actual results achieved may vary from the information provided herein as a result of numerous known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors. No joint ventures are currently in hand and there is no guarantee that the Company will conclude a joint-venture.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rockridge Resources Ltd. (TSX-V: ROCK) (Rockridge or the Company) is pleased to announce it has commenced a diamond drilling program at its flagship Knife Lake Project located in Saskatchewan (the Knife Lake Project or Property). Rockridge recently entered into an Option Agreement with Eagle Plains Resources Ltd. to acquire a 100% interest in a property that covers the majority of the historical Knife Lake Cu-Zn-Ag-Co VMS deposit. The contiguous claims total approximately 85,196 hectares and are located approximately 50 km northwest of Sandy Bay, Saskatchewan.

In 1998, Leader Mining published a historical estimate of the shallow Knife Lake deposit, reporting a drill-indicated, non NI 43-101 historical resource of 20.3 million tonnes grading 0.6% Cu, 0.1 g/t Au, 3.0 g/t Ag, 0.06% Co and 0.11% Zn. There is a higher grade zone of 11.0 million tonnes grading 0.75% Cu in addition to other metals within this historical estimate. Previously reported historical drill results include 1.37% Cu, 5.07 g/t Ag, 115 ppm Co, 1182 ppm Zn over 60.13m beginning at a depth of 2.37m in hole K-96-02 as well as 0.99% Cu, 4.73 g/t Ag, 103 ppm Co over 38.83m beginning at a depth of 6.11m in hole K-96-36.

Knife Lake VMS Project Map: Click Here

Rockridges President and CEO, Jordan Trimble commented: The commencement of drilling is a significant milestone for Rockridge as we look to position the Company as a go-to copper and base metal exploration and development company in Canada. The historical Knife Lake Deposit returned some notable drill results and there is still robust discovery potential around it and regionally. This inaugural drill program represents the first meaningful exploration carried out on the project in over sixteen years as we execute on our strategy of going back into overlooked projects in favourable jurisdictions with modern exploration techniques and methodologies to make new discoveries.

The Company is planning to carry out an initial 1,000 metre drill program in eight to ten diamond drill holes. The current drill program represents the first work on the property since 2001 and has two primary objectives: confirm the tenor of mineralization reported by previous operators and expand known zones of mineralization. All activities will advance the project toward the goal of completing a NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate.

Knife Lake Winter 2019 Proposed Drill Program: Click Here

With the historical deposit open along strike and at depth, drilling will focus on resource upgrade and expansion as well as infill drilling between historical holes. The program will also give the Companys technical team valuable insights into the property geology, alteration, and mineralization that will be applied to future regional exploration on the highly prospective and underexplored land package.

Knife Lake contains typical VMS mineralogy which has been significantly modified and partially remobilized during the emplacement of granitic rocks. Therefore, the known historical deposit is likely a remobilized portion of a presumably larger primary VMS deposit based on general observations about the mineralogy, mineral textures and metal ratios in the deposit. Most of the historical work consisted of shallow drilling at the deposit area with little regional work carried out and limited deeper drilling below the deposit. As a result, there is strong discovery potential both at depth and regionally.

Knife Lake Geology and History:

The Knife Lake Project is interpreted to be a remobilized VMS deposit. The stratabound mineralized zone is approximately 15 m thick and contains copper, silver, zinc and cobalt mineralization which dips 30 to 45 eastward over a strike-length of 4,500 m, with an average horizontal width of approximately 300 m. Over 400 diamond drill-holes have been completed in and around the current property boundaries, with much of the drill core stored under cover and in very good condition.

Knife Lake Deposit Map: Click Here

The deposit is hosted by felsic to intermediate volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks which have been metamorphosed to upper amphibolite facies. The deposit is typical of VMS mineralogy which has been significantly modified and partially remobilized during the emplacement of granitic rocks. The mineralization straddles the boundary between two rock units and occurs on both limbs of an overturned fold.

The Knife Lake area saw extensive exploration from the late 1960s to the 1990s with the last documented work program completed in 2001. Drilling has outlined a series of stratabound mineralized lenses which are controlled by complex geological structures. In the copper mineralized zone, significant thickening of the mineralization occurs near the central portion of the deposit. Sulphides and rare native copper are visible in outcrop. Massive sulphides consist of 25% to 60% pyrrhotite and 0.2% to 10% chalcopyrite mineralization. Pyrite is present as irregular disseminations and masses. Locally, up to 8% sphalerite (zinc mineralization) is present.

The first documented work in the Knife Lake showing area occurred between 1969-1973, consisting of ground and airborne geophysical surveys and extensive soil geochemical sampling. The discovery drill-hole, collared in September 1969, returned 2.37% Cu over 4.48 m from 19.96-24.44 m, including 3.5% Cu over 2.5 m from 20.27-22.77 m. A total of 96 diamond drill holes (8,232 m) were completed between 1969 and 1971, and in 1973 Straus Exploration announced a maiden resource on the Knife Lake Deposit.

Hudson Bay Exploration and Development Company Ltd. later carried out a regional Airborne EM geophysical survey in the Knife Lake  Scimitar Lake area, followed up by geological mapping, prospecting, ground geophysics, and diamond drilling. The property was subsequently optioned to Copperquest Incorporated in 1989, who carried out further geophysical and geochemical surveys and optioned the property to Leader Mining International in 1996. Between 1996 and 2001, Leader flew various airborne geophysical surveys in the area, including electromagnetic (EM), magnetic, and gravity surveys. This was followed up with stripping and trenching of the outcropping deposit area. Ground TEM, magnetic, ground IP/Resistivity and VLF-EM surveys were completed over and adjacent to the main deposit area.

Between 1996 and 1998, Leader completed 315 diamond drill holes, outlining a broad zone of mineralization occurring at less than 100 meters depth (AF 63M-0006, Report 10). Late in 1998, Leader published a historical estimate for the deposit, reporting a drill-indicated resource of 20.3 million tonnes grading 0.6% Cu, 0.1 g/t Au, 3.0 g/t Ag, 0.06% Co and 0.11% Zn. Within the historical estimate, there is a higher grade zone containing 11.0 million tonnes grading 0.75% Cu in addition to other metals (SMDI 0406). All disclosed historical estimates were completed prior to the passing of NI 43-101 into law and as such the Company advises that these mineral resource estimates, as disclosed, are not supported by a compliant National Instrument 43-101 technical report, contrary to NI 43-101. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify these historical estimates as current mineral resources or mineral reserves in accordance with NI 43-101. The above resource estimates are from the Saskatchewan Mineral Deposit Index (SMDI) 0406. The Company is not treating the historical estimates as current mineral resources or mineral reserves. These estimates do not comply to categories prescribed by National Instrument 43-101 or the Canadian Institute of Mining, and are disclosed only as indications of the presence of mineralization and are considered to be a guide for additional work. The historical models and data sets used to prepare these historical estimates are not available to Rockridge and the author is not aware of any more recent resource estimates or data. The 1998 historical resource was calculated using the cross-section method and used assay data from 241 Leader holes and from 6 other holes drilled prior to Leaders drilling. A cutoff grade of 0.3% copper-equivalent and a minimum composite length of 3.0 meters was used. Holes were plotted on vertical drill sections ranging from Section 20760 N to Section 24905 N, covering a strike length of 4,145 meters. The categories used for the Leader Mining 1998 historical resource estimates are stated as being drill-indicated. This is not a resource category as defined under 43-101 CP Section 2.4 (1) and (2)6 but based on the methodologies and drill hole spacing it would likely be equivalent to an inferred resource category.

In 1997, Leader International shipped a 2.4 tonne bulk sample of mineralized material excavated from the surface outcrop of the Knife Lake deposit to Lakefield Research Limited for metallurgical test-work. Lakefield concluded that the copper metallurgy was straightforward. Following a simple flowsheet, greater than 90% copper recovery was achieved at a concentrate grade of 28% Cu. Gold recovery in the copper concentrate was 80%. The cobalt recovery in the copper cleaner concentrate was 13%, with 28% of the cobalt present in cleaner tailing products. Another 48% of the cobalt was present in the sulphide concentrate.

A 357kV powerline runs within 16 km of the Knife Lake Deposit area, greatly enhancing the projects infrastructure.

Qualified Person:

Charles C. Downie, P.Geo., a qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, and a Director of Eagle Plains Resources Ltd., has prepared, reviewed, and approved the scientific and technical disclosure in the news release.

About Rockridge Resources Ltd.

Rockridge Resources is a new publicly traded mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral resource properties in Canada, specifically copper and base metal projects. The Company's flagship project is the Knife Lake project located in Saskatchewan, which is ranked as the #3 mining jurisdiction in the world by the Fraser Institute. The project hosts the Knife Lake deposit, which is a VMS, near-surface copper-cobalt-gold-silver-zinc deposit open along strike and at depth. There is strong discovery potential in and around the deposit area as well as at regional targets on the 85,196-hectare property. Rockridges goal is to maximize shareholder value through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions.

Rockridge Resources Ltd.

Jordan Trimble



Jordan Trimble

President and CEO

For further information contact myself or:

Nick Findler

Corporate Development and Communications

Rockridge Resources Ltd.

Telephone: 604-639-3850

Toll Free: 800-567-8181

Facsimile: 604-687-3119

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE CONTENT OF THIS NEWS RELEASE.

Forward Looking Statements:

Statements included in this announcement, including statements concerning our plans, intentions and expectations, which are not historical in nature are intended to be, and are hereby identified as, forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may be identified by words including anticipates, believes, intends, estimates, expects and similar expressions. The Company cautions readers that forward-looking statements, including without limitation those relating to the Companys future operations and business prospects, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Luminex Resources Corp. (TSXV: LR) (US OTC: LUMIF) (the Company or Luminex) is pleased to announce that on March 18, 2019, it entered into a non-binding letter of intent (the LOI) for an earn-in and joint venture agreement with a wholly owned subsidiary of BHP Group plc (BHP), on Luminexs Tarqui 1 & 2 mining concessions in Ecuador (the Property or Tarqui).

BHP will have the right to earn up to a 70% ownership interest in the Property by investing an aggregate amount up to US$75 million and making up to US$7 million of cash payments to Luminex. Luminex has agreed to work exclusively with BHP to negotiate and complete a binding agreement (the JV Agreement) over the next three months.

Marshall Koval, Luminexs CEO, commented: Luminex is excited to advance Tarqui with an organization like BHP that has the opportunity and commitment to supplying future global copper demand and a strong focus on responsible development in Ecuador. Tarqui is an exciting copper prospect that BHP and Luminex will pursue over the coming years.

Luminex is now in the unique and fortunate position of having three world class venture partners in BHP, Anglo American and First Quantum on separate exploration projects within its portfolio. These agreements will provide up to US$178 million dollars in aggregate funding(1). Luminex will also continue to advance its 100% owned concessions, Quimi, La Canela and Tres Picachos and its 90% owned Condor project.

(1) Up to US$157 million dollars in exploration expenditures and up to US$21 million dollars in cash payments. In addition, First Quantum and Anglo American have options to carry Luminex to a construction decision in order to increase their respective project ownerships to 70%.

Summary of Key Terms Contemplated by LOI

The LOI envisages a three stage earn-in by BHP where it will have the right to:

earn a 51% interest on completion of US$25 million of exploration expenditures and US$2.4 million of cash payments to Luminex within the 4th anniversary of signing of the JV Agreement (First Earn-in);

earn an additional 9% interest on completion of cumulative US$35 million of exploration expenditures and cumulative US$7 million of cash payments to Luminex within the 6th anniversary of signing of the JV Agreement (Second Earn-in); and

earn an additional 10% interest on completion of cumulative US$75 million of exploration expenditures (Third Earn-in).

BHP will assume management of the joint venture company and the exploration program for the Property and will have the right to accelerate the exercise of the earn-in by completing all the exploration expenditures and any outstanding cash payments to Luminex in a period shorter than the earn-in term.

Assuming completion of the Third Earn-in, Luminex will retain a 30% interest in the Property and would be responsible for funding its 30% pro rata share of any capital required. Entering into the JV Agreement and completing the transactions above are subject to customary conditions, including BHP being satisfied with its due diligence of the Property, approval by Luminexs board of directors and receipt of all necessary governmental and regulatory approvals.

About Luminex Resources

Luminex Resources Corp. is a Vancouver, Canada based precious and base metals exploration and development company focused on gold and copper projects in Ecuador. Luminexs inferred and indicated mineral resources are located at the Condor Gold-Copper project in Zamora-Chinchipe Province, southeast Ecuador. Luminex also holds a large and highly prospective land package in Ecuador consisting of approximately 100 thousand hectares, including the Orquideas and Pegasus projects, which are being co-developed with First Quantum Minerals and Anglo American Plc respectively.

Further details are available on the Companys website at https://luminexresources.com/.

LUMINEX RESOURCES CORP. For further information contact: Signed: Marshall Koval Scott Hicks This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Marshall Koval, CEO and Director T: +1 604 646 1899

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements and information herein, including all statements that are not historical facts, contain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Such forward-looking statements or information include but are not limited to statements or information with respect to the completion of a binding agreement, the proposed terms of the binding agreement, the timing of executing a binding agreement, and the aggregate funding to be provided to the Company through its arrangements with BHP, First Quantum and Anglo American. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements or information can be identified by the use of words such as will or variations of that word and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results will or are intended to be taken, occur or be achieved.

With respect to forward-looking statements and information contained herein, the Company has made numerous assumptions including among other things, assumptions about general business and economic conditions, the prices of gold and copper, and anticipated costs and expenditures, and the ability and willingness of BHP to proceed with the transactions contemplated by the LOI, and that Anglo American and First Quantum will continue their respective agreements with the Company to the end of their term. The foregoing list of assumptions is not exhaustive.

Although management of the Company believes that the assumptions made and the expectations represented by such statements or information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that a forward-looking statement or information herein will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking statements and information by their nature are based on assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Companys actual results, performance or achievements, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information. These factors include, but are not limited to: the Company may not be able to agree on a final form of JV Agreement with BHP, at all or on terms acceptable to the Company; risk that the results of BHPs due diligence on the Tarqui 1 & 2 mining concessions may not be to BHPs satisfaction; risks that conditions to signing a definitive agreement may not be obtained at all or on terms satisfactory to the Company; risks that the Companys agreements with Anglo American and First Quantum may be terminated or not be complied with as expected; risks associated with the business of the Company; business and economic conditions in the mining industry generally; the supply and demand for labour and other project inputs; changes in commodity prices; changes in interest and currency exchange rates; risks relating to inaccurate geological and engineering assumptions (including with respect to the tonnage, grade and recoverability of reserves and resources); risks relating to unanticipated operational difficulties (including failure of equipment or processes to operate in accordance with specifications or expectations, cost escalation, unavailability of materials and equipment, government action or delays in the receipt of government approvals, industrial disturbances or other job action, and unanticipated events related to health, safety and environmental matters); risks relating to adverse weather conditions; political risk and social unrest; changes in general economic conditions or conditions in the financial markets; and other risk factors as detailed from time to time in the Companys continuous disclosure documents filed with Canadian securities administrators. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Condor Resources Inc. - ("Condor" or the "Company") (TSX-V: CN) is pleased to announce that Condor and Chakana Copper Corp. (TSX-V: PERU) ("Chakana") have agreed to the acquisition of a 1% NSR by Chakana, and to amend the NSR terms of the assignment and option agreement of April 2017, whereby Chakana has the right to acquire a 100% interest in Condor's Soledad concessions in Peru.

Condor will receive 900,000 Chakana shares (current market value  CAD$385,000) and US$275,000 cash ( CAD$365,000) in consideration for the 1% NSR granted to Chakana on the Soledad concessions. Under the amended terms of the April 2017 agreement, on exercise of the purchase option, Condor will retain a 1% NSR on the concessions, and on a 2km area of influence. Chakana will have the right to buy down Condor's NSR to a 0.5% NSR by further payment of US $1million. Pre-production NSR payments scheduled to commence in 2022 have also been eliminated. Chakana is aggressively exploring the Soledad Property, but has yet to publish an initial resource estimate.

In the event Chakana does not exercise their option to acquire the Soledad concessions, Chakana will retain a 1% NSR royalty on the concessions, which royalty Condor will have the option to reduce to a 0.5% NSR by payment of US$1 million. All other terms of the assignment and option agreement, including the remaining cash payments of US$5.225 million, are unchanged.

Commented Lyle Davis, Condor President and CEO, "We are pleased to monetize half of the inherent value of the NSR today, yet still maintain an NSR interest and a significant equity position in Chakana, and thereby the project. This amendment not only improves the long-term economics of the project, but gives us direct upside to the 20,000m drill program planned at Soledad for 2019."

Condor is an active explorer focused exclusively on Peru, supplemented by a project generator and royalty model designed to generate exploration capital whilst minimizing shareholder dilution. Our objective in advancing our portfolio of projects is the discovery of a major new precious metals or base metals deposit in Peru. Project acquisition and development is managed by our Lima based exploration team.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Lyle Davis,

President & Chief Executive Officer

For further information please contact the Company at 1-866-642-5707, or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
In 2016, Karadzic was convicted of genocide for the Srebrenica massacre, and of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role as the political mastermind behind the brutal Bosnian Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing. The trial of Radovan Karadzic together with that of Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, told the most comprehensive story of what happened, notes Vukusic, while other trials before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) only covered parts of the story of the Bosnian war. The 1992-1995 war in Bosnia left over 100,000 people dead and many more driven from their homes as the Bosnian Serbs attempted to carve out ethically clean areas by forcing Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs to leave through violence and intimidation.

Karadzics military alter-ego Mladic is currently appealing a life sentence on similar charges. These two cases came late in the tribunals existence as both Karadzic and Mladic were among the very last fugitives to be arrested, in 2008 and 2010 respectively. They also presented the most recent analysis of what happened and the most recent evidence available, giving a kind of updated version of the proof presented before in cases against a host of the mens subordinates.

An out of control mega-trial

The trials of Karadzic and Mladic tell us the story about how these different elements worked together to create a social reality (in Bosnia) where large numbers of non Serbs would just be gone, explains Vukusic. In particular, the Karadzic case covered multiple joint criminal enterprises and showed how different political and institutional policies and people worked together to create a vast political project.

During the appeals hearings last year, Karadzic said prosecutors twisted his words and tried to portray him as a warmonger, while he insists he did everything to prevent war. His lawyers argued that Karadzic did not get a fair hearing during what they called an out of control mega-trial that lasted seven years. They are calling for a retrial but that seems an unlikely scenario as the ICTY/MICT has only ordered two re-trials in its over 20-year history, in the joint case of Franko Simatovic and Jovica Stanisic and a partial retrial for former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Ramush Haradinaj.

This was a well-led case both on the side of the prosecution and the defence. It was a huge case but still running at a solid pace, Vukusic says. I would be very surprised if there were significant changes on appeal.

Second genocide conviction?

Prosecutors also appealed. They want Karadzics 40-year-sentence to be increased to a life sentence. In addition, they are pushing for a second genocide conviction for the campaign of ethnic cleansing in a number of municipalities in Bosnia at the start of the war. The campaign included setting up a series of detention camps where tens of thousands of Muslims and Croats were beaten, tortured, held in inhumane conditions and sometimes sexually assaulted.

In the trial judgment the ICTY judges said the prosecutors had failed to show Karadzic had the intent to destroy the Muslim and Croat population in the municipalities, a vital element for a genocide conviction. An ethnic cleansing campaign  i.e. killings perpetrated in the intent of driving many more out of a certain area  does not amount to genocide, the judges ruled.

On appeal prosecutors tried to show that Karadzics genocidal intent could be inferred by looking at the levels of violence. By supporting a plan that could only succeed through mass atrocities and violence against non-Serbs, the former Bosnian Serb leader showed genocidal intent, according to prosecutors.

Karadzic and his associates knew that they would need to spill rivers of blood to carve out the ethnically-cleansed territories they sought and embraced this bloody path, prosecutor Katrina Gustafson told the court.

Not such a big deal

The final outcome of the Karadzic case will be big news in Bosnia especially within the affected communities of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats but less so in the other countries of the region. In Bosnia the case is also used by different political parties to score points with their owncommunities, still deeply divided among ethnic lines nearly 25 years after the end of the war. Many Bosnian Serbs consider Karadzic a hero. InBosnias neighbours like Serbia and Croatia, the interest has waned in recent years. It is not such a big deal as it once was, said Vukusic.

Mountains of evidence for historians

Besides the convictions, the tribunal has played a significant role in how we look at the Yugoslav wars, Vukusic says, and there is a more universal legacy the ICTY/MICT can leave through their extensive archives. When all the trials are over and the dust settles, researchers can swoop in for more substantive studies. What we are left with, thanks to these proceedings, are mountains of evidence and we can spend the next decades working out what happened, she says.

The documents and materials will tell a story that goes far beyond the former Yugoslavia. As a researcher and a historian, I think it is really important to look at this material and see what it tells us about perpetrators, about organizational structures that perpetrate mass violence and social circumstances that give birth to violence, says Vukusic.
Deferred Prosecution Agreements should never mean crime can pay.

I think everyone should agree a corporation that the World Bank has put high on its list of most corrupt companies worldwide  and this determination is supported by numerous convictions in other countries, the OECD, its prosecution after investigation by the RCMP, and the forthcoming Canadian trial for corruption and bribery  should never have been considered for a DPA.

Everyone should be able to agree it was stupid of our government, be it NDP, Conservative or Liberal, to ever think Canadians would be OK with this.



Everyone should agree this entire crisis has been due to a very poorly executed attempt at hoodwinking voters and stepping on the line of what is ethical and legal in our government's day-to-day operations.

For anyone to argue that Canada not having DPAs for corporate criminals thereby puts us at a competitive disadvantage worldwide, is part of the problem.

And this problem apparently, is the belief by some corporations, politicians, and individuals, that Canadians arent smart enough to compete worldwide honestly, ethically, and with moral fibre.

What hopefully happens here in Canada in the next few months, is that corporations with a history of criminality, will be brought to a real justice and, if warranted, convicted so that we know that our federal government agrees with us that crime should not pay now, or in the future.

Neil Stephenson, Kelowna
College of Business launching Gates Capital Speaker Series



Tuesday, March 19, 2019

The inaugural Gates Capital Speaker Series will feature a panel discussion, "The Next Decade: Outlook for Kansas and the U.S," at 9 a.m. Thursday, March 28, in the Business Building's Lecture Hall.





MANHATTAN  A new speaker series in the Kansas State University College of Business Administration will welcome a trio of distinguished business leaders to campus for the panel discussion "The Next Decade: Outlook for Kansas and the U.S."



The panel will begin at 9 a.m. Thursday, March 28, in Lecture Hall in the Business Building. The event is free and open to the public.



Organized by the college's finance department, the inaugural Gates Capital Speaker Series event will bring together three aspects of expansive financial interest: industrial, financial and governmental. The panel discussion will revolve around the financial policy impact of new government tariffs as well as the impact of general government financial policies on the Kansas and national economies.



Making up the panel will be Michael Upchurch, Kansas City Southern executive vice president and chief financial officer; Katrina Scott, Mariner Wealth Advisors chief investment officer; and Alison Felix, vice president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve. Each member of the panel will speak about the impact of the topic on the sector of the economy they represent, followed by a question-and-answer session.



Upchurch is part of the executive leadership for Kansas City Southern, which is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. The transportation holding company has railroad investments in the U.S., Mexico and Panama. The company's North American rail holdings and strategic alliances are primary components of the NAFTA railway system, linking the commercial and industrial centers of the U.S., Mexico and Canada.



As chief investment officer, Scott is part of Mariner Wealth Advisors' executive leadership team overseeing all aspects of investments across the firm. Her responsibilities include leading Mariner's investment committee and private investment committee, and is a member of its risk committee. Since she joined the firm in 2007, Scott has held a wide range of responsibilities throughout the organization, including serving on the investment and asset allocation committees and managing fixed income portfolios for high-net-worth clients. Before moving into a leadership role, she co-managed a tactical exchange-traded fund portfolio.



Felix is vice president and Denver Branch executive at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In this role, she serves as the bank's regional economist and representative in the states of Colorado, Wyoming and northern New Mexico. Felix also recruits and works closely with the branch's board of directors and is responsible for briefing the Kansas City Fed's president  a member of the Federal Open Market Committee  on economic and business activity in the Denver region's states. Felix's research focuses on public finance and labor issues, with an emphasis on tax policy, state and local government finance and the economics of education.

The panel marks the inaugural event in the Gates Capital Speaker Series, which will bring successful finance professionals to Kansas State University to share their knowledge and experience. Lectures will be given each year and are sponsored by Gates Capital Management.






In following the SNC-Lavalin affair, I have concluded that it shows a clash between the politics of conviction and the more flexible politics of pragmatism.

When the law creating Deferred Prosecution Agreements was newly passed in 2018, Jody Wilson-Raybould would have been aware that her cabinet colleagues were thinking of applying it to the SNC-Lavalin case. After she told the prime minister on Sept. 17 that SNC-Lavalin was not eligible for the DPA, she instructed her staff to document every related interaction with government officials.

This suggests an embattled stance even before any interference had occurred.

Wilson-Rayboulds government job was ambiguous. As attorney general, she had a legal role and was responsible for legal decisions on SNC-Lavalin. But, as minister of justice, she had a political role and was responsible for exploring legal options with the cabinet team.

When the PMO asked that she seek outside legal advice, Wilson-Raybould saw this suggestion as interference. This despite the fact that her own deputy minister had written a document stating that one of the legitimate options of the attorney general was to seek outside legal advice.

On another matter, she went against her deputy minister by vetoing release of a study on the possible effects of a criminal conviction against SNC-Lavalin to the Privy Counsel. At every point, Wilson-Raybould has acted as though she had no obligation to communicate with other government members on those decisions.

Why is SNC-Lavalin not eligible for use of the DPA? She has never stated her reasons. On the contrary, she has acted as though she had no need to do so.

I see Wilson-Raybould as demonstrating the unbending politics of conviction. She shows no willingness to consider alternative perspectives and seems to doubt the integrity of anyone who questions her perspective.

I agree with Gerald Butts that the SNC-Lavalin case raises public policy concerns. The stated purpose of DPAs is to prevent harm to workers unconnected with corruption charges. It also aims to help corporations rebuild after proven corruption.

People are debating whether or not SNC-Lavalin would be crippled by a 10-year moratorium on federal contracts. However, we know for certain that its efforts to rebuild would be significantly impeded. In my view, the 10-year moratorium is bad law. It is too punitive and should be shortened.

The politics of conviction is moral and rigid. Good politics can be both moral and flexible.

Gary Willis
Photo: The Canadian Press

An elusive Tunisian billionaire who disappeared from Canada as he was set to be deported to his homeland in 2016 has resurfaced and is under arrest in France.

Belhassen Trabelsi fell off the radar of Canadian authorities three years ago as he was to be returned to Tunisia to face justice.

The Tunisian government says after being informed of Trabelsi's arrest last week, it made clear to French officials that it wants Trabelsi returned home.

A short statement provided by the Tunisian Embassy in Canada says a letter to that effect was sent to France last week through diplomatic channels.

Trabelsi arrived in Canada with his wife and children in 2011 as his brother-in-law, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was being deposed as president by the Tunisian people.

Trabelsi had previously been granted permanent resident status in Canada, but that was stripped, and in 2015 his request for refugee status was rejected. He vanished while challenging an order sending him back to Tunisia.

Reports from France say Trabelsi, 56, is currently in a jail in Marseille.
Xing, Heycar & Microsoft on stage at Deep Learning World in Munich!

Deep Learning World Munich is getting closer and closer and you still have the chance to get your early bird pass until April 5th. Secure your ticket for a lower price and access case studies and deep dives covering the commercial deployment of deep learning!

Get your early bird pass by 5 April

Featured Speakers Munich 2019:

Dr. Sebastien Foucaud

Vice-President Data Science

Jonathan Greve

Machine Learning Engineer

Dr. Marcel Tilly

TSP





This year's highlight sessions:

Case Studies

From Ensembles to Neural Networks:

A Comparative Study of Recommendation Systems at heycar and XING

How We Failed 3 Times and Created Neural Network for Merchandising

Can UX demystify AI?

Deep Dives

3D Point Clouds for Autonomous Connected Ecosystem

How To Capture Usable Intent From Noisy IoT Automotive Data

Building a Neural Machine Translation System from Scratch



The case study sessions will focus on how it worked and what didnt work while the deep dive sessions will explain topics such as RNN, CNN, LSTM, transfer learning and further in analytical and technical detail.







Meet the European deep learning community in May in Munich

and learn from industry leaders!

Use code KDNUGGETS to receive 15% off your Deep Learning World pass.
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. -- Out of 35 counties in Oregon, Klamath Falls is ranked last. Josephine is ranked 3rd from last. And in California, Siskiyou County is 57 out of 58.

Click here to explore county health rankings.

COUNTY RANKINGS Jackson: 16 (out of 35)

Josephine: 33 (out of 35)

Curry: 28 (out of 35)

Klamath: 35 (out of 35)

Lake: 26 (out of 35)

Siskiyou: 57 (out of 58)

The overall rankings in health outcomes represent how healthy counties are within the state. The healthiest county in the state is ranked #1. It's Washington County. Wheeler County was left out of the rankings because the population is too low.

Click here to compare the health of counties.

The ranks are based on two types of measures: how long people live and how healthy people feel while alive. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundations County Health Rankings and Roadmaps annual report was just released today. It breaks down counties for each state across the U.S.

Click here to read the full report.

The Foundation is the same agency that named Klamath County one of four Cultural of Health Prize winners in 2018.

Since 2011 the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to provide state and county-level snapshots of a variety of factors influencing the lives of Americans. Klamath County has improved in a number of areas this year, but there is still work to be done, according to the public health director.

Although we remained at the bottom for health outcomes, we moved up three places for health factors. Im pleased to see positive improvement in several of the subcategories that contribute to that score, said Jennifer Little, director of Klamath County Public Health.

A factor to consider in evaluating the 2019 County Health Rankings is the age of the data being analyzed. In some areas, such as low birth weight and teen births, statistics from 2011 to 2017 were evaluated to reach a value for the current rankings. It will be several years before a more accurate picture can develop. The most current data used in any ranking component is from 2017.

When the data catches up to the current work being done across the county, by local agencies, I expect to see significant improvement in rankings over the next few years, Little said. Its also important to note that our local community health assessment is out for community review and a community health improvement plan survey is currently underway. KCPH continually works with our partner agencies to know what is occurring throughout the county.

Health outcomes include length of life and quality of life. Klamath ranked 33 for length of life and improved from 36 to 33 for quality of life. Length is influenced by the number of premature deaths, which are defined as a death occurring before someone reaches the age 75. Quality includes the percentage of residents reporting poor or fair health, the number of reported poor physical health days, the number of poor mental health days, and the percentage of infants with low birthweight.

Health factors include health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors, and the physical environment.

Klamath ranked 31 in health behaviors, which take into consideration factors such as adult smoking, adult obesity, food environment index, physical inactivity, access to exercise opportunities, excessive drinking, alcohol-impaired driving deaths, sexually transmitted infections, and teen births. Adult obesity increased from 31 to 32 percent, with the current rate drawn from 2015 data. Teen births, numbering 37, were nearly double the Oregon rate of 20.

Clinical care improved to 18 from 23. Uninsured adults were 11 percent of the population, up from 10 percent. The ratio of patients to primary care physicians improved to 1,100:1 from 1,160:1. Access to dentists also improved, moving from 1,300:1 to 1,200:1. Mental health provision improved from 250:1 to 230:1. Mammography screening fell from 37 percent from 61.

Social and economic factors fell from 29 to 31. These indicators include high school graduation rate, residents having attended some college, unemployment, children living in poverty, inadequate social support, income inequality, children living in single-parent households, number of social associations, violent crime rate, and injury deaths.

Klamath Countys physical environment remained ranked at 16. This measure reflects air and water quality data, along with severe housing problems, driving alone to work and a long commute to work driven alone. Severe housing problems are defined as households with overcrowding, high housing costs, or lack of kitchen or plumbing facilities.

Theres a lot of great work happening in the community and we are beginning to see it in the numbers. Everyone is doing their part, and if we keep this up I predict we will see our numbers continue to improve over the years. Remember, change takes time, Little said.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Oregon Democrats want to make it easier for developers to build more affordable housing in the state's major cities and suburbs.

They're proposing a measure that would require cities to offer more housing options than the typical single-family home. That means building more townhouse, apartments and duplexes.

Development in Oregon has not kept up with high demand. A study from the economic consulting firm ECONorthwest found that only 63 new housing units were created for every 100 new families in Oregon from 2010 to 2016.

But homeowners warned that more housing options could destroy a neighborhood's character and wrestle control away from local governments.

The idea is part of Democrats' multi-pronged approach to tackling the state's housing crisis. Oregon recently implemented the nation's first statewide rent control measure to combat escalating rental rates.
ASHLAND, Ore. -- The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced Nataki Garrett as the sixth artistic director.

The addition ends a yearlong search for a new artistic director, as Garrett takes over for Bill Rauch.

I have known Nataki Garrett for 17 years and have closely followed and admired her career. She is a rigorous and thrilling artist; a thoughtful, confident leader; and big thinker, said Rauch. Natakis historic appointment, as an African American woman running one of the largest-budget theaters in the United States, is a direct expression of OSF's decades-long commitment to helping create a more equitable field.

Garrett will arrive at OSF next month to prepare for the 2020 season, and will assume full director duties on August 1st.

In June, she will begin rehearsals for How to Catch Creation, which she is directing. The show will open in the Thomas Theater July 23.

I am absolutely thrilled to be named incoming artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival and it is an honor and privilege to inherit such a wonderfully rich and dynamic legacy of artistic excellence in partnership with a dedicated board, staff, company and local community, said Garrett. I am equally excited and inspired by OSFs dedication to expanding our worldview and look forward to maintaining our commitment to the revolutionary spirit of Shakespeare and classical text, while continuing to explore and expand opportunities for new voices and narratives through new play development.

Garrett most recently served as acting artistic director for Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) during the organizations 18-month leadership transition, working in partnership with the managing director, chief executive officer and board of directors, and managing the theatre companys $27 million annual budget.

For more than 20 years, Garrett has worked as a theatre administrator, director, producer, playwright, educator, activist and mentor. She is a graduate of California Institute of the Arts with an MFA in directing.
ROSEBURG, Ore. --A Roseburg man is in the Douglas County Jail after a two-week stand-off with law enforcement. It ended peacefully. last night.

The stand-off started on Monday, March 4, 2019, when the Douglas County Circuit Court issued a court order which mandated 42 year-old Stephen Adam Cain turn over custody of his 3-year-old daughter to law enforcement. They say Cain refused to allow the order to be served or to comply with the court order, barricading himself inside his home in the 100 block of Willamina Court in Roseburg and holding his daughter captive. Since then, negotiators attempted to work with Cain to submit and turn the child over to authorities per the court order. During the course of a two-week period, negotiators continued speaking with Cain to reach a peaceful resolution.

Officers say Cain made statements and threats against law enforcement should they attempt to force entry into the home to enforce the order, but at no point did law enforcement deem Cain to be an imminent threat to citizens or neighbors.

On March 18 at approximately 5:00 pm, Cain agreed to comply with a plan to surrender and release his daughter. Cain was taken into custody by law enforcement without incident.

Cain was lodged at the Douglas County Jail on the following charges:

 Felony Arrest Warrant - Custodial Interference

 Obstructing Governmental or Judicial Administration

The Sheriffs Office was assisted by the Roseburg Police Department, Oregon State Police, Douglas Interagency Narcotics Team, Douglas County District Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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One of the most popular topics in health care is the idea of universal health care coverage. You know the soundbites: Medicare for all. Single-payer system.

While universal coverage sounds desirable to many, some factors must be considered. In this post, Im going to provide an aerial view of this complicated topic. My goal is to translate this issue into patient-friendly language that all of us can understand. This topic isnt going away anytime soon and is likely to play a significant role in the 2020 presidential election.

Terminology basics

First, its important to understand what exactly universal health care entails. Quite simply, it does not mean coverage for all people, in all circumstances, for all services. This is the first point many dont realize or neglect to acknowledge when creating political soundbites.

Instead, universal health care answers the question of who is covered, what services are covered and the cost associated with each service. Its fully transparent, which is not a feature of our current health care system. At its core, universal health care arises from the ideology that health care is a right for Americans (not a privilege), and Americans should be able to access the health care system without incurring financial hardship or ruin.

Now, in a vacuum, Id venture to guess the vast majority of us dont object to this ideology. Unfortunately, its not that simple. Its the way in which universal health care would be implemented and how it would be funded that makes this a highly controversial and complex topic.

Structure of universal health care

Countries such as Canada, France, Germany, and Switzerland already offer universal health care. In these cases, the federal government pays for health care, but it is provided by private companies. This is a very important distinction to make. In the U.S., Medicare, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid are examples of such a system.

On the other hand, in the United Kingdom, the government both pays for and provides health care services. This is socialized medicine. In the U.S., this type of system already exists with the Department of Veteran Affairs.

Advantages of universal health care

The obvious main advantage is universal coverage, thus helping those that would otherwise not have health insurance. A second important advantage is cost control. The government would control the cost of medication and medical services through negotiation and regulation. It would also drastically decrease the administrative cost of dealing with different private health insurers. Presently, doctors must deal with many private insurance companies, all of whom want something different and require unrealistic administrative tasks for physicians. This could be greatly streamlined.

Disadvantages of universal health care

At its core, universal health care forces healthy people to pay for others medical care. Is this fair? Why should an active, healthy-eating, non-smoker pay for health care for an obese, sedentary diabetic who chain smokes all day? Chronic diseases, like diabetes and heart disease, make up 85 percent of health care costs. These are loaded questions, and I dont plan to provide answers, but hopefully, you can see the point of contention.

Second, with universal health care, people might not be as careful with their health spending. For example, if I know it wont cost me anything, I might elect to go to the ER instead of waiting four weeks for an appointment. Not convinced about this point? Most universal health care systems report long wait times for elective procedures. For example, lets say you have chronic back pain and your doctor has recommended an MRI. Under this type of system, it is entirely plausible that your MRI would be scheduled 4-6 months down the road? Is that good care?

Third, health care costs could overwhelm governmental budgets. This might negatively impact funding for other things such as education, defense, and infrastructure.

Finally, to rein in costs as much as possible, the government might limit some services that have a low probability of success. Instead of an expensive medication or major operation, the government might instead pay only for end-of-life services. In other words, the government could seize control of some medical decisions from the doctors.

In case you think Im exaggerating, allow me to remind you the Affordable Care Act included the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) provision. This board is independent of any medical entity, Congress or democratic process. IPAB is composed of 15 unelected bureaucrats appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Their task would be to control Medicare spending (i.e., refuse coverage in certain situations). I dont know about you, but this is a frightening amount of power for 15 non-medical people devoid of any real accountability. Thankfully, President Obama never appointed anyone to IPAB, but there has been plenty of mainstream media coverage of these so-called death panels.

Paying for universal health care

OK, lets pretend universal health care is on its way. How will it be financed? Likely in one of three ways:

1. Single-payer system. The government taxes all citizens for health care. It doesnt matter if you use it or not. There would likely be a marginal tax rate, much like income taxes. This is the approach of Medicare for all by Bernie Sanders.

2. Insurance mandate. This would mandate all citizens to purchase health care. Germany uses such a system, and obviously, this sounds somewhat familiar to the Obamacare individual mandate.

3. Two-tier approach. The government taxes citizens to provide basic government health care services. Citizens can also choose to supplement with private health insurance. France utilizes this system.

Conclusion

This is an incredibly complex topic and one that certainly cannot be given justice in a single post. However, I hope Ive provided you with a basic framework to approach the discussion. My goal is to educate you enough so that you can cut through the political soundbites to accurately understand emerging health care policy proposals.

Kevin Tolliver is an internal medicine physician who blogs at My Medical Musings.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
President Xi Jinping stressed firm implementation of major reforms at the seventh meeting of the central committee for deepening overall reform Tuesday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping. [File Photo: Xinhua]

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, chairman of the Central Military Commission and head of the central committee for deepening overall reform, presided over and addressed the meeting.

Xi stressed efforts to fix the problem of formalities for formalities' sake at the grassroots level through reform, continue to strengthen people's sense of fulfillment, happiness and security, and unswervingly promote the implementation of major reform policies and measures.

Members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and deputy heads of the reform committee Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng also attended the meeting.

Participants agreed that to reach a new stage in the large-scale development of the western region, measures should be taken to focus on priorities, address inadequacies, and shore up points of weakness.

The meeting decided to prioritize ecological and environmental protection and stick to a new path featuring environmental protection and green growth in the western region development.

With joint development of the Belt and Road playing a leading role, the country should accelerate cross-border route and regional hub construction as well as improve the infrastructure network, for a high level of opening-up and economic development.

The meeting also stressed efforts to promote high-quality development and coordinate economic and social development of the population, resources and environment in the western region.

Stating that higher education and research institutes serve as important forces in the process of implementing the innovation-driven development strategy and making China a country of innovators, the participants underlined efforts to streamline management procedures for science and technology projects and reform the system on approval and enforcement of major science and technology projects.

Participants agreed that efforts should be made to promote further integration of artificial intelligence with the real economy, deepen reform and innovation, optimize the institutional environment and boost the innovation vitality of enterprises.

The meeting also stressed strengthening and improving rural governance, calling for the establishment of a law-based modern rural social governance model under which Party committees exercise leadership, the government assumes responsibility, non-governmental actors provide assistance, and the public gets involved.

Efforts are needed to deepen the integration and sharing of public resource trading platforms, innovate the transaction supervision system, and improve the efficiency and fairness of public resource allocation.

The meeting stressed promoting reform in the operation mechanism of the oil and natural gas pipeline network. The country will set up oil and gas pipeline network companies that are state-owned capital controlled and with diversified investors. The country will also work to improve the oil and natural gas resource allocation efficiency and ensure a stable supply of resources.

The meeting stressed speeding up the building of a modern public legal service system that covers urban and rural areas with high efficiency, convenience, and equitable access.

As for reform on firefighting law enforcement, the meeting stressed efforts to develop new ways of regulation and supervision, strengthen management at the source, further streamline administration and delegate powers, and resolutely remove various unreasonable barriers.

The participants called for efforts to defuse prominent tensions and problems and push forward reform in a steady and orderly way as this year will face more challenges and risks in reform and development.

A number of documents were reviewed and adopted at Tuesday's meeting.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- The Oregon House approved a 10-year ban on fracking to explore for oil and natural gas.

Lawmakers voted 42-12 on Monday to prohibit the process, which injects high-pressure liquids into underground rock to extract oil and gas. The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration.

There are currently no fracking operations in Oregon. But developers say there's potential for coalbed methane extraction in the Willamette Valley, which this bill would also block.

Environmental advocates say fracking can contaminate groundwater and pose other environmental risks.

The Trump administration announced last year that it planned to roll back federal regulations on the process, making it easier to frack on public lands.

New York, Vermont and Maryland have enacted fracking bans, and Florida and New Mexico are also considering outlawing at least some forms of the practice.
ROSEBURG, Ore. -- Roseburg residents on Monday reacted to a deadly shooting on Interstate 5 that left one man dead.

KEZI spoke with two Roseburg residents who live near exit 123 and witnessed police surrounding 53-year-old Edward Lanier's car.

READ ON: VICTIM NAMED IN DEADLY I-5 SHOOTING; SEARCH CONTINUES FOR GUNMAN

One of those residents, Jason Green, said he initially thought the person driving the car may have had some sort of medical episode. However, Green soon found out that wasn't the case.

"I'd say probably five to seven officers with assault rifles rolled up, and that was when I realized it was probably not somebody having a heart attack," Green said. "It was probably something more serious, and it was a pretty scary feeling."

Xander Coultas also saw officers surrounding Lanier's vehicle and immediately knew something was wrong.

"It wasn't just a normal response," Coultas said. "They were on edge, and there was like people running across the road trying to rush to the vehicle."

When Green found out what happened, he was baffled by people's recklessness and willingness to put so many other lives in danger.

"This just, again, just seems reckless," Green said. "There was just disregard for the children, families, cars, trucks -- just anything. Just complete disregard."

Now Green says he just wants to find out exactly what lead to Lanier's death.

"Is it something between the two or three individuals I read about or is it just a case of road rage?" Green said. "Or is it something that just instantly set somebody off? Or was it more direct? I would like to know."

This incident is still under investigation. If you have any information about the person that may have ended up firing shots that killed Lanier, you are asked to call Oregon State Police.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A West Linn college student has taken the president of the West Linn City Council to court over her refusal to provide him with her hand-written notes taken during council sessions.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports 2018 West Linn High School graduate Rory Bialostosky previously tangled with the city council over parking restrictions near the high school.

He says in watching council meetings he's seen council president Teri Cummings "constantly" taking notes on a note pad and, knowing they were public records, asked in January to see them.

After city officials turned him down, Bialostosky in late February emailed Cummings directly with the request.

Oregon law says she has seven days to respond. Bialostosky says she still hasn't.

Cummings didn't respond to a request for comment.

Oregon public officials including the governor routinely turn over hand-written notes from meetings in response to public records requests.
VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) -- A Washington woman has pleaded guilty to pushing her 16-year-old friend from a bridge at a popular swimming area near Vancouver.

The Columbian reports 19-year-old Tay'lor Smith pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless endangerment Monday in Clark County District Court.

Prosecutors are recommending a sentence with no jail time when Smith is sentenced later this month.

Smith pushed Jordan Holgerson of Kalama off the bridge Aug. 7 at Moulton Falls northeast of Vancouver.

Video posted on YouTube that went viral shows Holgerson standing on the bridge with friends before a woman forcefully pushes her.

Holgerson broke six ribs and punctured her lungs in a fall of over 50 feet.

In an interview on "Good Morning America" Smith said she didn't consider the repercussions.

Outside the courtroom, Genelle Holgerson said she and her daughter want this chapter of their lives to be over.
Representatives of Kilkenny County Council, who were in New York for the St Patricks Day period, met with senior executives from Tourism Ireland on Monday, 18 March. They were briefed on Tourism Irelands extensive promotional programme in the United States for 2019, which is in full swing right now.

Tourism Ireland has prioritised North America, as a market which offers a strong return on investment, in terms of holiday visitors and expenditure. In 2019, Tourism Ireland aims to surpass the record-breaking performance of 2018 and to grow revenue from North American visitors by +8% i.e. 1.99 billion generated by 2.17 million visitors (+6%).

Our important culturally curious and social energiser audiences are being targeted with distinctive vacation experiences, events and special offers tailored to their interests. Tourism Ireland is creating stand out for the island of Ireland in the US, highlighting experiences in Kilkenny and Irelands Ancient East. Promotions aim to grow travel to the regions of Ireland, during the shoulder and off-peak seasons.

We were delighted to meet with the representatives of Kilkenny County Council and to have the opportunity to brief them about the extensive promotional programme we are undertaking in the United States this year, said Alison Metcalfe, Tourism Irelands Head of North America and Australia. In 2018, we welcomed a record 2 million North American visitors to the island of Ireland. Looking to the year ahead, we are confident that our strategy  combined with more airline seats than ever before from the US, as well as the strength and competitiveness of the vacation experience right around the island of Ireland  will deliver further growth.

St Patricks Day traditionally marks the real start of the tourism season for us; our aim is to bring a smile to the faces of people everywhere and to convey the message that Ireland offers the warmest of welcomes and great fun, as well as wonderful scenery and heritage. We are using every opportunity to capitalise on Irelands heightened profile this week; the saturation coverage about Ireland at this time of year  across the airwaves, in newspapers and digital media  is an invaluable boost for our overall tourism marketing drive in 2019.

Over the past few days, Tourism Ireland has participated in and promoted the island of Ireland at a range of St Patricks Day events across the United States. Numerous landmarks participated in Tourism Irelands Global Greening initiative to celebrate St Patrick and Ireland  including the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, the famous Welcome sign in Las Vegas, City Hall in Boston and the spectacular Niagara Falls.
Last week, St Canices and Bagenalstown Credit Unions officially joined forces in the spirit of co-operation to create a stronger credit union.

As a result members from Bagenalstown will now have access to the greater range of services that St Canices Credit Union has to offer including the provision of online facilities, low cost loans, electronic payments, competitive dividends, rebates and extended opening hours as well as greater financial strength and stability.

With 11 branch locations, members from both credit unions will also enjoy the added convenience of being able to do business in any of the St Canices branches located at High Street and MacDonagh Junction Shopping Centre in Kilkenny city, in addition to the branches in Ballyragget, Graignamanagh, Callan, Dunnamaggin, Ballingarry, Durrow, Rathdowney, Mountrath offices and now also, Market Square, Bagenalstown.

Members of Bagenalstown Credit Union can rest assured that their local office will remain open and fully operational and members can continue to carry out their business as usual, with enhanced lending and financial services.

Speaking about the merger, CEO of St Canices Credit Union Claire Lawton said the combination was an extremely positive move for members of both Credit Unions.

Our service strengths make this combination a natural fit as both of our credit unions are dedicated to delivering the very best service to members.

We look forward to meeting and working with our new Bagenalstown members in the months and years to come and we wish them a very warm welcome to St. Canices Credit Union,she said.

St. Canices Credit Union is by far Irelands largest community credit union with more than 60,000 members and over 400 million in assets.

To save or borrow with the Credit Union, you must be a member. However joining is easy and youll be in good company with millions of others who have already recognised the benefits of Credit Union membership in Ireland.

For more information on becoming a member, just drop in to your nearest St. Canices Credit Union office or visit the website, www.stcanicescu.ie
Kingstree, SC (29556)

Today

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 53F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 53F. Winds light and variable.
Editor's Note: Get caught up in minutes with our speedy summary of today's must-read news stories and expert opinions that moved the precious metals and financial markets. Sign up here!

(Kitco News) - Investors, take notes  Brent Cook of Exploration Insights, a seasoned geologist with decades of experience in the field, breaks down aspects of mining companies to focus on when picking stocks.

You need someone you can talk to, or trustfirst thing we look at when a good hole comes out, whats the metallurgy? Cook told Kitco News on the sidelines of the Metals Investor Forum in Toronto.
Editor's Note: Get caught up in minutes with our speedy summary of today's must-read news stories and expert opinions that moved the precious metals and financial markets. Sign up here!

(Kitco News) - Gold bulls need to stay patient for a little while longer before seeing gold prices rally to $1,375 levels projected for the year-end, according to TD Securities.

It is too early for a gold breakout, wrote head of commodity strategy at TD Securities Bart Melek, citing a strong risk appetite.

Equity market strength and a robust risk appetite reduced the demand for safe-haven assets such as gold, Melek said on Monday. Given the strong likelihood that the US dollar should remain firm, as the American economy continues to be the best performer relative its peers, gold will face strong headwinds from the broader currency markets.

Melek was not surprised by golds recent drop below $1,300 an ounce and its failure to recover back to its recently seen 10-month highs.

While the yellow metal recovered from its downward move to $1,280/oz, the jump above $1,310/oz proved to be temporary as we expected. This fits well with the fact that the spec positioning did not move in one single direction last week  money managers grew shorts quite substantially even as long exposure increased aggressively, Melek noted.

The U.S. Federal Reserves rate announcement on Wednesday is the key event to watch this week, added Melek.

The strategist highlighted that the already dovish Fed is unlikely to add any risk-off sentiment even if it lowers its rate hike projections to just one this year and none next year.

While the U.S. Federal reserve is likely to be dovish relative to previous FOMC meetings, with dots and growth estimates migrating lower, it is unlikely to commit to ending its hiking cycle just yet. Indeed, the U.S. central bank may very well be perceived to be more hawkish relative to current spec positioning, which would suggest some downside from here, Melek pointed out.

This could create a headwind for gold, forcing the yellow metal to once again fall below $1,300 this week, Melek added.

In order for prices to move to our $1,364/oz target late in the year, risk appetite will need to moderate, the USD to weaken and Fed policy ambiguity to disappear with the market convincingly calling that the next rate move is a cut. We are not there just yet, he said.

At the time of writing, April Comex gold futures were trading at $1,302.20, up 0.13% on the day.

TD Securities sees gold rising to $1,375 an ounce in Q4 and advancing to $1,425 an ounce in Q3 and Q4 of 2020.

Other important triggers to watch this week include U.S. factory orders, durable goods, Markit PMIs, wholesale inventories and existing home sales.

A sliding USD, prospects of a firmer RMB amid pending improvements in Chinese growth prospects and a belief that the U.S. Federal Reserve will continue to sound a dovish tone prompted investors to send gold and its industrial peers platinum and palladium higher. But strong risk appetite will likely prevent a surge higher, Melek stated.
"When we talk about the deficit, I don't think its going to be a big one... it's probably in a range between 100,000 and 300,000 tonnes," he said.

Speaking after the release of Antofagasta's annual results, Arriagada added that the planned $2.7 billion concentrator at the Centinela mine will most likely be funded by debt.

(Reporting by Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru and Zandi Shabalala in London; editing by Louise Heavens)
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Theresa Mays Brexit plans were in disarray on Tuesday as her government sought to plot a way around a ruling by the speaker of parliament that she must change her twice-defeated divorce deal to put it to a third vote.

After two-and-a-half years of negotiations, Britains departure from the European Union remains uncertain with options including a long postponement, leaving with Mays deal, a disruptive exit without a deal, or even another referendum.

In a move that added to the sense of crisis in London and exasperation in European capitals just days before the March 29 exit date, Speaker John Bercow shocked Mays government by ruling it could not put the same Brexit deal to another vote unless it was substantially different.

Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said the ruling meant a vote this week on Mays deal was more unlikely but ministers were studying ways out of the impasse and he indicated the government still planned a third vote on Mays deal.

This is a moment of crisis for our country, Barclay said. The ruling from the speaker has raised the bar and I think that makes it more unlikely the vote will be this week.

May is due at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday at which she will ask for a delay to Brexit as the British government tries to come up with a way to leave the European Union after 46 years of membership.

The blocs two most powerful members, Germany and France, expressed intense frustration at the chaos in London.

Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking, Germanys Europe minister, Michael Roth, told reporters in Brussels.

France was blunter, and warned a no-deal exit was possible.

Grant an extension - what for? Time is not a solution, its a method, Frances EU affairs minister, Nathalie Loiseau, said. If there is an objective and a strategy, it has to come from London.

The 2016 referendum, in which 17.4 million voters backed leaving and 16.1 million backed staying, showed a deeply divided country and has fuelled soul-searching about everything from secession and immigration to capitalism and modern Britishness.

The crisis has left allies and investors puzzled by a country that was for decades touted as a confident pillar of Western economic and political stability.

SPEAKERS SPANNER

Bercow said his ruling, based on a convention dating back to 1604, should not be considered his last word and the government could bring forward a new proposition that was not the same as those already voted upon.

Because May must now spice any deal with additional legal and procedural innovation, Bercows ruling means she is likely to get just one more chance to put the deal to a vote.

Brexit Secretary Barclay, who last week said Britain should not fear a no-deal exit, indicated the government was looking at different options and that circumstances, such an extension or a shift in support, would indicate a change in context.

The speaker himself has pointed to possible solutions, he himself has said in earlier rulings we should not be bound by precedent, Barclay said. You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed.

The speaker himself has said that where the will of the House is for a certain course of action, then it is important that the will of the House is respected.

THIRD VOTE?

Even before Bercows intervention, May was scrambling to rally support for her deal - which keeps close trading ties with the EU while leaving the blocs formal structures - after it was defeated by a massive 230 votes in parliament on Jan. 15, and by 149 votes on March 12.

To get her deal through parliament, May must win over at least 75 lawmakers - dozens of rebels in her own Conservative Party, some Labour lawmakers, and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up her minority government.

The biggest issue is the so-called Northern Irish border backstop, an insurance policy aimed at avoiding post-Brexit controls on the United Kingdoms border with EU-member Ireland.

Many Brexiteers and the DUP are concerned the backstop will trap the United Kingdom in the EUs orbit indefinitely, and have sought guarantees it will not.

The Financial Times said May had been told by senior colleagues she will have to set a timetable for her own departure if she is to persuading many rebels to support her deal.

Barclay ruled out May asking Queen Elizabeth to cut short the entire parliamentary session, known as prorogation, saying involving the 92-year-old monarch in Brexit was a bad idea.
MANILA, March 19 (Reuters) - Nickel Asia Corp, the Philippines' top nickel ore producer, expects its 2019 shipments to be unchanged from last year, although it plans to increase its domestic sales to maximise profits, its chief financial officer told Reuters.

Nickel Asia accounts for about half of the nickel ore output in the world's second-biggest supplier of the metal. Its ores are exported to customers in China and Japan, who process them to make stainless steel and for use in battery materials.

Top nickel producer Indonesia, though, has been ramping up shipments to China after lifting a ban on metal exports in 2017, with Chinese buyers preferring the higher-grade Indonesian ore, said Nickel Asia Senior Vice President and CFO Emmanuel Samson.

To counter market share lost in China, Nickel Asia will increase shipments to two Philippine smelters it partly owns, at Coral Bay and Taganito. The plants buy ore linked to London Metal Exchange (LME) prices, Samson said, with their output then sent to Japan for further processing into "Class 1" nickel.

"As long as Indonesia continues to export ore to China, it's going to be a very challenging period for Philippine miners," Samson said in a phone interview on Monday.

Nickel ore sales for this year will be about the same as the 19.3 million wet tonnes sold in 2018, which were up from 17.7 million wet tonnes sold in 2017, he said.

The company, which operates four of the nation's 30 nickel mines, posted a 9-percent gain in net income last year to 3.01 billion Philippine pesos ($57.1 million), from 2.77 billion the year before, thanks largely to higher LME prices. Nickel Asia in 2018 benefited from an average LME nickel price of $5.95 per pound on sales to the two domestic processing plants, compared with an average price of $4.67 in 2017.

On the other hand, shipments of unprocessed ore slurry to China last year accounted for 60 percent of the company's total sales at 11.54 million wet tonnes, up from 9.64 million in 2017, although the average price fell to $21.53 per wet tonne from the previous year's $24.42, he said.

"There's a lot of supply now that's coming from Indonesia going into China for stainless steel," Samson said. "That part of the business is going to be more or less flat in terms of prices (this year)."

NICKEL FOR BATTERIES

LME nickel-linked deliveries last year to the two Philippine processing plants accounted for 40 percent of the sales, or 7.81 million wet tonnes, down from 8.06 million wet tonnes in 2017.

"The one that is exciting is the LME side of the business," Samson said. "Why? Because of the battery story, which is linked to LME nickel."

Global metal producers expect a surge in demand in the coming years for nickel for use in electric vehicle batteries.

To benefit from higher LME prices, Samson said Nickel Asia would likely boost its LME-linked domestic business to 45-50 percent, while exports to China would be cut to 50-55 percent.

Nickel Asia is the only Philippine nickel miner with ownership in processing plants, making it "unique" compared with other local miners, who sell all their unprocessed ore output to Chinese stainless steel producers, Samson said.

Nickel Asia's fifth mine, the Dinapigue project in Isabela province in northern Philippines - acquired in 2015 - is still undergoing exploration and development work, he said.

"We're hoping that next year or by 2021, we can start shipments," he said, without giving any volume estimates.



($1 = 52.70 Philippine pesos)

(Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; Editing by Tom Hogue)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that U.S. trade talks with China were going well as two top American officials reportedly plan a visit to China next week for a fresh round of talks.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expect to fly to Beijing the week of March 25 to meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, who will pay a return trip to Washington the following week, the Wall Street Journal said, citing Trump administration officials.

Talks between China and the United States are in the final stages, with a target date for a deal by the end of April, according to the report.

Chinas going very well. Talks with China are going very well, Trump said in response to a shouted question at the end of his White House news conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Washington and Beijing have slapped import duties on each others products that have cost the worlds two largest economies billions of dollars, roiled markets and disrupted manufacturing and supply chains.

Representatives of the U.S. Treasury and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative could not be immediately reached for comment. The White House had no immediate comment.
(Adds news items, analyst comment, updates share prices)

March 19 (Reuters) - Britain's FTSE 100 continued its winning streak as oil majors and miners boosted the index and Ocado climbed to a life high after posting higher first-quarter retail sales.

The FTSE 100 was up 0.5 percent. The index held on to its five-month high and rose for the seventh straight session, it's longest streak of gains since May 2017.

The domestically-focused FTSE 250 was up 0.1 percent by 0936 GMT as investors waited for further Brexit developments after the speaker of Britain's parliament said Prime Minister Theresa May's deal could not be voted on again unless a different proposal was submitted.

Investors also kept tabs on the two-day U.S. Federal Reserve meeting which begins on Tuesday and on sterling, which fell after Tuesday's Brexit update but later recovered losses.

"You must say the sanguine reaction in currency markets reflects the fact that no one really knows where this leaves the Brexit story," Markets.com analyst Neil Wilson said.

On Tuesday, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay cast doubt over a vote this week on May's deal - already rejected twice by parliament - but indicated the government still planned a third vote. Heavyweight oil majors helped lift the main index as supply cuts by OPEC and U.S. sanctions against Iran and Venezuela buttressed prices, while miners rose on China's plan to cut tax for manufacturers from April. Chilean copper miner Antofagasta advanced 4.4 percent and hit a seven month high as a higher-than-expected dividend payout overshadowed a drop in annual core earnings. Online supermarket Ocado , added 3.7 percent to hit an all time high after posting a double-digit jump in first-quarter retail sales despite growth being hit by last month's fire at a large distribution centre. Rating actions drove some moves. Drugmaker Hikma was 1.8 percent higher after a rating upgrade from Citi and positive comments on growth prospects from Jefferies and event manager and publisher Informa rose 2.1 percent after a Morgan Stanley upgrade.

Sainsbury's edged 2.2 percent higher. The Financial Times reported on Monday that Britain's No. 2 supermarket group and Walmart's Asda would detail price cuts in response to a negative provisional view of their proposed tie-up by Britain's competition watchdog. Mid-cap iron ore pellet producer Ferrexpo skidded 9 percent after a review of its donations to a charity set up by the company identified additional discrepancies, forcing it to delay the release of its 2018 results. However, IT firm Softcat jumped 5.9 percent as it added more customers and said its annual results would be marginally ahead of expectations.

(Reporting by Shashwat Awasthi and Yadarisa Shabong in Bengaluru; Editing by Keith Weir and Janet Lawrence)
* Annual dividend sends shares higher* Expects copper market deficit of as much as 300k T* 2019 capex to rise to $1.2 bln on mine expansion (Adds shares, CEO comments from call) By Justin George Varghese and Zandi Shabalala March 19 (Reuters) - Chilean copper miner Antofagasta Plc announced on Tuesday a higher-than-expected dividend for 2018, sending its shares to a seven-month high, though core earnings dropped in line with analysts' projections.

The company, majority-owned by Chile's Luksic family, lowered its 2018 total dividend by 14 percent to 44 cents per share compared to the prior year, but beat the 26 cents expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv Smart Estimates.

"The dividend is strong and equates to a significant portion of our earnings, it's a positive surprise to what was expected," Chief Executive Ivan Arriagada told Reuters. "Essentially we are giving back all excess cash to our shareholders and rewarding them in this way."

Antofagasta, along with its peers, has steadily increased

returns to shareholders after repairing its balance sheet from the damage done by the commodities crash of 2015-16. Shares in the FTSE-100 company rose 4.7 percent to 984.2 pence at 0943 GMT, their highest since August. "The dividend is higher than expected with Antofagasta effectively pushing through non-core asset proceeds to investors which should be taken positively," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Tyler Broda. Antofagasta said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell 13.9 percent to $2.23 billion in the year ended Dec. 31, hurt by higher input costs and lower sales volumes. It said in January that annual copper production rose 3 percent to 725,300 tonnes and came in at the higher end of its forecast, as its Centinela mine produced better quality ore and higher output. This was after the company was forced to tighten its 2018 production guidance in October, hurt by demand disruptions for the metal, caused by top consumer China's trade war with the United States. The tit-for-tat trade dispute pushed benchmark copper prices down 17 percent last year, stoked by fears over demand from the world's top metals consumer China.

Arriagada said he expects a deficit of between 100,000 and 300,000 tonnes this year which should help prices trade either sideways or slightly higher. He added that Antofagasta's planned $2.7 billion concentrator at the Centinela mine, which is at the feasability stage, would most likely be funded by debt. Antofagasta plans to spend $1.2 billion this year, higher than $873 million in 2018, mainly on the expansion of Los Pelambres which is expected to be completed in late 2021. The company saved $184 million this year as part of a cost-savings plan, ahead of its targeted $100 million. The miner said it was targeting another $100 million in savings this year. (Reporting by Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru and Zandi Shabalala in London; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Reuters Messaging: justin.varghese.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
OSLO, March 19 (Reuters) - The Norwegian centre-right coalition government cut its outlook for 2020 growth on Tuesday as it began work on a fiscal spending plan for next year.

The finance ministry's forecast for growth in 2019 mainland GDP stood at 2.7 percent, equal to a prediction made last October, while the 2020 forecast was cut to 2.5 percent from 2.8 percent.

While the economy is in a cyclical upturn, with growth exceeding the long-term average, the outlook was mixed, the government said in a statement.

"International economic growth has been high, but the economic upturn is abating and growth has dropped in several countries. This may eventually translate into lower demand for Norwegian goods and services," the Finance Ministry wrote.

"On the other hand, cost cuts in the petroleum industry contribute to good profitability and high activity on the Norwegian continental shelf," it added.

The predictions for growth and other economic variables will help determine how much the government plans to spend from Norway's $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, when its 2020 budget is presented to parliament on Oct. 7.

The Norwegian crown strengthened slightly following the statement, trading at 9.6980 against the euro at 0822 GMT from 9.7041 earlier.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who faces pressure from members of her four-party coalition currently meeting at a secluded resort north of Oslo to prioritise their wishes, has repeatedly called for restraint. Solberg leads the Conservatives.

"The greatest challenge is that the cost of all the things we desire to do is greater than the available sum," Solberg told TV2 earlier on Tuesday.

The meeting of cabinet ministers is expected to last until March 21.

Separately, the board of the Norwegian central bank is due to hold a rate meeting on March 20, at which it is widely expected to raise its key policy rate. Its decision will be published the following day.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Gwladys Fouche and Catherine Evans)
Stuff reports:

One of Australias most senior Muslim clerics, Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman, was refused entry to New Zealand following the Christchurch massacre  but the ban was overturned following a complaint to the Australian government.

The revelation will raise questions about why the Sheikh was on a New Zealand no-fly list, particularly in light of accusations that Australian security agencies and their international partners are too focused on Islamic extremism compared to right-wing terrorism.  Immigration New Zealand confirmed Sheikh Shady was refused entry to the country due to a ban placed on him by Denmark last year.

[INZ] can confirm that Mr Alsuleiman was advised that he was unable to travel to New Zealand visa free as a result of being excluded from Denmark, said national border manager Stephanie Greathead.

Because of the exclusion he required whats known as a special direction enabling a visa to be granted. Taking into account all the circumstances Mr Alsuleiman has now been granted the special direction and a one month visitor visa.

I dont have a problem with Sheikh Shady coming here. I do not think he is a security threat. But it is worth looking at what he has said over the years. They include:

In 2013, Alsuleiman spoke of the  evil actions of homosexuality , saying, Allah will send on them diseases they have never experienced before

actions of , saying, Allah will send on them diseases they have never experienced before He has said in online videos that females will be hung by their breasts in hell and that adulterers should be stoned to death

He has advocated 100 lashes for people engaging in pre-marital sex

He has said women must obey their husbands and men have the right to demand sex from their wives

Spoke to a UK school and said Give victory to all the Mujahideen all over the world. Oh Allah, prepare us for the jihad

In 2009 invited a top recruiter for Al Qaeda to speak to Muslim youths in Sydney

Personally Im against the death penalty for anything, let alone consensual adult sex.

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As we know the terrorist was motivated by opposition to immigration from non-Europeans. He did his slaughter to try and provoke conflict, hoping it will lead to his eventual goal.

So what better way to respond to his hatred of immigration, than for the Government to announce that say for the next three years we will relax our immigration settings so an extra 5,000 people a year (100 per person killed) can migrate to New Zealand, under the normal residency criteria.

Could there be a stronger way for us to say that New Zealand rejects his anti-immigration hatred of non-europeans. That the result of his madness is now what he wanted, but the opposite?

One can have legitimate debates about the right level of immigration, but an extra 15,000 over three years is not going to have a huge impact on infrastructure,

Let all the parties in Parliament get together and announce unanimous support for allowing an extra 15,000 people to immigrate to New Zealand over the next three years. Let that be our response to his murderous hatred of non-white immigrants. WOuldnt that be great and fitting.

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President Moon Jae-in and his wife Kim Jung-sook wave before heading to Brunei, the first stop on his three-nation tour, at the Seoul airport in Seongnam, Sunday. Yonhap



South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Sunday headed for Brunei, the first stop on his three-nation tour that will later take him to Malaysia and Cambodia.



Moon's first overseas trip this year is largely designed to improve his country's relationship with the three member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).



"ASEAN is expanding its influence on the global economy based on its rapid growth and openness that also represent a large economic bloc of 650 million people and combined gross domestic product of $2.76 trillion," Moon's presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said earlier.



The 10-member ASEAN is already South Korea's second-largest trading partner in the world, with their bilateral trade reaching a record high of US$160 billion last year.



Seoul is set to host a special summit with the heads of state of all 10 ASEAN countries later in the year. The special summit to be held in South Korea will also mark the 30th anniversary of the start of South Korea-ASEAN dialogue.



The South Korean president has repeatedly stressed the importance of ASEAN, also introducing the so-called New Southern Policy as one of his two major foreign policies that seeks to boost his country's economic and diplomatic ties with its Southeast Asian neighbors, including India.



Under the New Southern Policy, South Korea seeks to boost its bilateral trade with ASEAN to more than $200 billion in 2020.



"The visits this time will be an opportunity to further diversify our overseas market and global value chain that are currently focused too much on the United States and China by accelerating the implementation of the New Southern Policy," Cheong Wa Dae said.



Moon will arrive in Brunei later in the day on a three-day state visit that will include a summit with Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.



He will make a three-day state visit to Malaysia from Tuesday for a summit with Sultan Abdullah of Pahang and a meeting with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.



Moon's trip will end in Cambodia, where he will hold a summit with Prime Minister Hun Sen and also call on King Norodom Sihamoni.



He will be making a state visit to Cambodia, according to Cheong Wa Dae.



The South Korean president will return home Saturday. (Yonhap)






The island nation of Taiwan is all set to implement a complete ban on plastic by 2030.

According to Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration, the government will limit the use of plastic by implementing a plastic ban in phases, and is encouraging the public to use reusable straws and bags to help combat plastic pollution.

Starting later this year, stores are to be prohibited from providing in-store customers with single-use straws.

In 2020, stores will face fines if they provide customers with disposable utensils. Stores will also be restricted from providing plastic straws for take-outs.

Customers could choose to purchase plastic straws or bags if they are willing to pay extra to the store till 2025.

By the year 2030, Taiwan's plastic ban will be fully implemented, with stores completely banned from providing any plastic bags, disposable utensils, plastic cups, bottles and straws. (Next Animation via Reuters)





A handout photo made available by Greenpeace shows rubbish floating along Verde Island Passage, Batangas City, Philippines, 07 March 2019 (issued 12 March 2019). According to a data from the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Filipinos dispose 163 million pieces of single-use plastic sachets daily. An underwater exploration conducted by Greenpeace in Batangas, Philippines, single-use plastic sachets were found between, beneath, and on the corals and seabed of Verde Island Passage, the epicenter of marine biodiversity in the world. EPA/Greenpeace






Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. Low 54F. Winds SSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

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Isolated thunderstorms early, then mainly cloudy overnight with thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. Low 54F. Winds SSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Auburn, IN (46706)

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Cloudy skies early followed by heavy thunderstorms late. A few storms may be severe. Low near 55F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

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Cloudy skies early followed by heavy thunderstorms late. A few storms may be severe. Low near 55F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday announced his intention to nominate the new U.S. ambassador to Mexico, a key diplomatic post as U.S. border dilemma remains unsolved.

U.S. President Donald Trump [File photo: IC]

In a statement issued by the White House, Trump announced his intention to nominate Christopher Landau, who "is a constitutional and appellate attorney who has briefed and argued appeals before the United States Supreme Court, Federal courts of appeals, and State appellate courts."

He is also a partner in the law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and was appointed in 2017 to a three-year term "as a member of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules," the White House said.

Having earned his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard College, Landau is fluent in Spanish, said the White House.

The U.S. former ambassador to Mexico is Roberta Jacobson. She arrived in Mexico in 2016 and officially left the nation in May last year, when bilateral relations soured over U.S. proposal to build a wall along the border to fend off illegal immigrants, for which Washington has urged Mexico to pay.

On March 11, Trump presented to Congress a budget proposal for fiscal year 2020, seeking 8.6 billion dollars for constructing additional sections of the wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Numerous guests gathered in the district of Munzingen, Freiburg for the topping-out ceremony on March 15, 2019. Together with the construction companies and architects carrying out the project, the staff and management of KNF Neuberger GmbH celebrated the end of the second stage of construction for the new building, which will house administrative offices and additional production areas.

The speech at a German topping-out ceremony is traditionally concluded by smashing a glass for good luck. The CEO of KNF Neuberger, Gunter Emig, and the site manager Mr. Layer rose to the occasion with a well-received joint speech. They thanked the tradespeople and planners in attendance for the successful completion of the building shell, in front of KNFs staff, Munzingen district council and the company owners, the Becker family.

The long-awaited new building is a further milestone in KNFs success story. The companys production areas will total 5,000 m2 once the project is completed, which should be later this year. The company is enjoying dynamic growth as it skillfully capitalizes on the opportunities created by digitalization. Its employees actively contribute to the continuous advancement of the company by driving improvements to operations themselves. KNF already uses a robot in CNC manufacturing. The company wants to make use of its new space to exploit the possibilities of Industry 4.0 more systematically. The work spaces will be structured based on the latest lean management approaches and kitted out with state-of-the-art technology. This will allow to work even more ergonomically and efficiently.

The family-owned Freiburg company has invested more than 5 million euros in the expansion of its location in Freiburg-Munzingen. The existing administrative building is set to be renovated following the completion of the new build.
A man is in jail Monday, after two Sherman cops were assaulted on the job while trying to break up a fight.

Sherman police say Joel Alvarez and fiance Carmen Limones were fighting inside the Steeple Chase Farms Apartments Sunday around 2:30 a.m.

Sgt. Brett Mullen said when officers went inside, Alvarez attacked them.

"When they came in, told them to get back," Mullen said. 'The suspect started swinging the officers and was able to punch two in the face."

One officer suffered minor injuries.

The other was taken to a local hospital and was released Monday night.

"As a result of the assault, one officer sustained serious facial injuries which did require hospitalization," Mullen said.

Alvarez was booked in for aggravated assault of a public servant and assault family violence.

Limones also was booked in for assault family violence against Alvarez.

"When someone just outright assaults an officer, it's very upsetting. We take it very seriously."

Grayson County District Attorney Brett Smith said cases involving police officer assaults aren't treated lightly.

"If a police officer is a victim, or anyone acts out during an act of violence, we're going to pull out all the stops to make sure that prosecution is effective and efficient," Smith said.

Alvarez is still in jail as of 6 p.m. Monday. Police say the officers are both expected to make a full recovery.
Specialty chemicals company LANXESS is expanding its production capacity for the industrial chemical benzyl alcohol for the global market by around 30 percent. The two-stage expansion of the plant at the German site in Krefeld-Uerdingen is scheduled for completion by the end of 2019. A low double-digit million euro sum will be spent on the conversion measures. In addition, the Advanced Industrial Intermediates (AII) business unit has expansion plans for its Indian site in Nagda. Several process improvements have already led to an increase in benzyl alcohol capacity there in recent years.

"With our two sites in Germany and India and the planned expansions, we are well positioned to meet the growing demand from our customers," says Michael Ertl, Head of the Benzyl Products & Inorganic Acids business line at AII. "We are well equipped to serve both global groups with locations around the world and small and medium-sized companies worldwide," the manager emphasizes.

Important industrial chemical for numerous applications

Benzyl alcohol from LANXESS is used in a variety of different applications, for example as a solvent for coatings, color pastes and construction chemicals, as a high-purity preservative for injection solutions and cosmetics, and as a synthetic chemical. Other applications include adhesives, plastics, textile auxiliaries, fragrances and flavorings, and agricultural chemicals. In the European Union, benzyl alcohol is approved as a food additive with the number E 1519 for the production of flavors for certain beverages, confectionery and bakery products.
The formic acid model is in the centre. The color code of the surrounding sphere shows the direct chirality of the formic acid for every direction from which the laser comes. If the laser is directed from the right side (right arrow), it results in right-handed formic acid; if from the left, in left-handed formic acid. Both chiral formic acids reflect the common structure of the molecule.

Seven of the ten most frequent medications contain chiral agents. These are molecules that occur in right- or left-handed forms. During chemical synthesis both forms usually occur in equal parts and have to be separated afterward, because chirality determines the agents effect in the body. Physicists at Goethe University have now succeeded in using laser light for the purpose of creating either right- or left-handed molecules.

In pharmaceutics, being able to transition a molecule from one chirality to the other using light instead of wet chemistry would be a dream, says Professor Reinhard Dorner from the Institute of Atomic Physics at Goethe University. His doctoral student Kilian Fehre has now brought this dream one step closer to coming true. His observation: the formation of the right- or left-handed version depends on the direction from which laser light hits the initiator.

For his experiment, Kilian Fehre used the planar formic acid molecule. He activated it with an intense, circularly polarized laser pulse to transition it to a chiral form. At the same time, the radiation caused the molecule to break into its atomic components. It was necessary to destroy the molecule for the experiment so that it could be determined whether a duplicate or mirror version was created.

Fehre used the reaction microscope (COLTRIMS method) that was developed at the Institute for Atomic Physics for the analysis. It allows the investigation of individual molecules in a molecular beam. After the molecules explosive breakdown, the data provided by the detector can be used to precisely calculate the direction and speed of the fragments paths. This makes it possible to reconstruct the molecules spatial structure.

In order to create chiral molecules with the desired chirality in the future, it has to be ensured that the molecules are oriented the same way with regard to the circularly polarized laser pulse. This could be achieved by orienting them beforehand using a long-wave laser light.

This discovery could also play a critical role in generating larger quantities of molecules with uniform chirality. However, the researchers believe that in such cases, liquids would probably be radiated rather than gases. There is a lot of work to be done before we get that far, Kilian Fehre believes.

The detection and manipulation of chiral molecules using light is the focus of a priority programme which goes by the memorable name ELCH and which has been funded by the German Research Council since 2018. Scientists from Kassel, Marburg, Hamburg and Frankfurt have joined forces in this programme. The long-term funding and the close collaboration with the priority programme provide us with the necessary resources to learn to control chirality in a large class of molecules in the future, concludes Markus Schoffler, one of the Frankfurt project managers of the priority programme.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday discussed the situation in Syria's Eastern Euphrates region and Idlib Province with visiting Russian Defense Minister Sergey Kuzhugetovich Shoygu, state news agency SANA reported.

A handout made available by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syrian President Bashar Assad (C) meeting with the Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu (L) in the presence of Syrian Minister of Defense Maj.Gen. Ali Abdallh Ayoub (R), in Damascus, Syria, 19 March 2019. [Photo: IC]

Both sides agreed to continue joint work to find suitable solutions to the issues of Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria, and the Eastern Euphrates River region in eastern Syria, which is largely controlled by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

It's worth noting that the United States is behind the SDF in its push in the Eastern Euphrates River region in eastern Syria while Turkey enjoys big sway over the rebels in Idlib.

Assad and Shoygu also discussed the "high coordination" between the two countries in the anti-terror efforts and the achievements made in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) militant group and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front in Syria.

The visit of Shoygu comes a day after the chiefs of staff of Iran and Iraq visited Syria and held meetings with Syrian Defense Minister Ali Abdullah Ayyoub and then Assad.

During the meeting with the two officials, Ayyoub said the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) must embark on reconciliation with the government, or the areas under their control will be retaken by the Syrian army.

The Syrian official said the government will completely wrest control over all territory including Idlib sooner or later, through reconciliations or military force.

The Syrian government has long said it would retrieve Idlib from the ultra-radical rebels. However, a planned military campaign was put on hold late last year when Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed on setting up a demilitarized zone in Idlib.
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As part of the rebuilding of the Los Angeles Times, Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine and Deputy Managing Editor Sewell Chan made the following announcement.

We are pleased to announce that Sandhya Kambhampati and Ryan Murphy are joining our Data Desk in May, on the strong recommendation of Ben Welsh, who leads the team.

Sandhya Kambhampati comes to us from ProPublica Illinois. Her work using data to document longstanding injustices was so thorough that even Chicagos notorious political class couldnt avoid responding with reforms. In 2017, she worked on an expose of inequality in local property taxes that led to the county assessor being voted out of office, work for which she was honored as a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Last year, following her work analyzing disparities in Chicagos parking-ticket system, all 14 candidates for mayor called for change and a new city task force was formed to find a fix.

Sandhya previously worked at the Chronicle of Higher Education and the E.W. Scripps Co. She is a leader in the data journalism field, seen earlier this month at the NICAR conference in Newport Beach, where she administered the gatherings popular Lightning Talks. Here at The Times, Sandhya will help our readers better understand and explore this diverse region using data gathered by the U.S. Census and other surveys. That will include partnering with reporters to generate more ambitious coverage of California communities, as well as revitalizing Mapping L.A, our audience-informed effort to define and study local neighborhoods.

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Ryan Murphy joins us after nine years at the Texas Tribune, where he is the deputy editor and lead developer for the newsrooms Data Visuals team. During his time in Austin, Ryan has demonstrated an expansive arsenal of skills, his talents touching virtually every element of the Tribunes report. His experience includes examples of data analysis, longform story design, database-driven applications, specialized newsroom tools and more.

He is also a consistent contributor to open-source software projects, which have strengthened both the Tribune and our industry at large. That includes an impressive tool for publishing complex interactive projects outside of the content management system  in a style similar to our big builds. Ryans skills position him to help us expand our options for interactive storytelling, lift the aims of our open-source software efforts and enhance our data-driven offerings during the 2020 primary season.
A century ago, August Vollmer, Berkeleys first police chief, helped introduce the lie detector into police work. It was a deeply flawed innovation, yet police have continued committing to technology that makes their jobs easier  even when it doesnt work as promised or does more harm than good for the people the police serve. Author Matt Stroud examines that history in Thin Blue Lie: The Failure of High-Tech Policing, exposing what he says are the systemic problems  and the often racist applications  in the use of Tasers, closed-circuit television surveillance, body cameras and Compstat, the philosophy that emphasizes computer statistics in formulating policing strategies.

The Los Angeles Police Department plays a major role in the book. The LAPD was a pioneer in a negative way  they made the first decision to jump on the Taser  and tend to be a leader in using technology, Stroud says.

However, while incidents in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago spark the most headlines, these problems are nationwide. Ive been tracking body camera contracts and smaller departments are certainly catching on, he says, and Tasers are now in 18,000 police forces, and thats pretty much everybody.

A book jacket for Thin Blue Lie: The Failure of High-tech Policing, by Matt Stroud. (Kelly S. / Metropolitan Books)

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Your book explores the dangers in technological innovations by telling the evolution of each one, often as a business history. Why take that approach?

I came from the perspective of a business reporter and a lot of my reporting was built around SEC documents and publicly traded companies. But also you have to think of this as an industry  its the way the people at the forefront think of it. People such as [former LAPD Chief] Bill Bratton would go in and out of public service and theyd go into a consulting career and push their product and their highly paid consulting services. There was this whole industry that hadnt really been delved into, the police industrial complex. I felt that needed attention.

Bratton called himself the CEO Cop, Rick Smith the CEO of Axon [formerly Taser International] has never been in law enforcement or public service. Hes thinking about policing from the perspective of somebody who has an MBA. I do think Bratton believed he was changing policing for the better with Compstat. But they dont think of it as a way to deal with civil rights issues, I dont think the heart of the matter for them is improving policing. When you get down to it, its about making money, about bringing industry into policing in a new way.

Isnt there at least some positive potential in some of these technologies, like body cameras for police?

The body camera idea is a good one. But you have to make that footage available to the public but there has been a lot of pushback. Body cameras are a problem in the monopoly Axon has in that industry and in the decisions lawmakers have made to shield that video footage from public viewing. Police unions, district attorney associations and lobbying arms realize they can be problematic, so they are working so that videos are shielded from public records requests and not available to the public until during or after a trial.

The Taser and the company behind it come across as the most malevolent force in the book.

The Taser was meant to reduce the number of shootings by police officers, but from the data I have seen, it has not achieved that goal. Yet people have died from police using Tasers. There are almost 1,100 people killed by a device that was supposed to be non-lethal, and that seems like a lot to me.

Taser International just denied in court for years that these weapons could kill. Its so upsetting to watch it unfold and to realize there was no consequence to their lies and these deaths. The SEC investigated and there were some negative ramifications, but in the long run they never really paid the price. This deny, deny, deny does seem less shocking now than when I was reporting on it because it is how Trump heads the country now and you realize that is how in large part he built his business.

What was so striking to you about the way Rahm Emanuel refused to release the dashcam video footage of Laquan McDonalds killing by a police officer in Chicago?

After the video footage finally became public, the Emanuel administration made announcements that the city was going to spend millions of dollars on Tasers and spend millions of dollars on body cameras  as though that was the problem that the Laquan McDonald video revealed. That kind of press conference gets reported and kind of accepted as a solution.

Matt Stroud poses for his book Thin Blue Lie: The Failure of High-tech Policing. (Justin Merriman / American Reportage)

Your final chapter is The Problem With Solutionism, using the term Evgeny Morozov hung on Silicon Valley innovators for thinking every problem has a simple solution. Was that initially your unifying theme or something you came across while researching?

I had read Morozovs book so the idea was in my head, but it really came back when I read what I had written for the book to come up with my conclusion and it did seem the most applicable way to think about it.

Rahm Emanuel tried to keep that video from becoming public so the idea that more body cameras will make that situation not happen in the future is just ludicrous. I dont think that technology was a solution to the McDonald shooting or to any of the major police shootings. That simplicity is passed off as a solution to all these problems. You have government officials say: The real problem here is we havent spent enough money on technology, the real problem is we dont have body cameras. But that is not a solution. To really address the problems you need to think deeply about the way your police department is interacting with the community, the way specific police officers act on duty, and these are very challenging questions and you cant just gloss over them and spend millions of dollars.

Is it incumbent on journalists to not just report these statements but to push back?

Next time a government official makes one of these announcements I want people to react viscerally to it and to oppose it and to ask for studies about how the police operates, for more accountability for the officers on the street and for government officials. Dont accept that kind of solution as a solution because its not one. Im sure there were writers and activists who brought up how ludicrous Emanuels plan was but I didnt see it at that time. I would like the idea that this is a ludicrous solution to be a more mainstream idea.

You note that Vollmer argued a century ago that officers needed to be more like social workers than soldiers and that the recommendations from the 1967 report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, commissioned by President Lyndon B. Johnson, were incredibly progressive in both the proposals for changing policing and for connecting it to larger societal issues. They were both largely ignored. So, now what?

We cant go back and re-litigate the last 100 years. We have to take simple steps and start small, start moving in the right direction. We must get out the idea that we cant solve these horrendously difficult problems with cash and the purchase of technology. That will get people asking more coherent questions about ways police forces are going to change and force government officials thinking in better and more thoughtful ways about how the police should do their jobs, in ways that harm fewer people.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper has signed a two-book deal with publisher Harper, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Cooper, the host of the CNN program Anderson Cooper 360, will collaborate on the books with Katherine Howe, an author best known for her Salem witch trials-themed novels The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and the forthcoming The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs.

The first of Coopers two books is slated for publication in 2022, Harper said. The publisher did not indicate what Coopers books would be about, although Fortune magazine reports they will be works of nonfiction.

Cooper, known for his on-location reporting from the sites of natural disasters and political unrest, has worked for CNN since 2001. Before he started at the cable news network, he reported for ABC and for Channel One, a news agency that produced programming for students in grade schools and high schools.

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He is one of television journalisms most decorated correspondents, having won five Emmy Awards and two GLAAD Media Awards. Cooper is the son of fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt and the late writer and actor Wyatt Emory Cooper.

Cooper has gained a reputation as a hard-hitting interviewer occasionally given to on-air displays of emotion. In 2016, while reporting on the victims of the massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., he broke down while reading the names of those killed in the shooting.

Cooper is the author of two previous books. His first, Dispatches From the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival was published in 2006, with his collaboration with Vanderbilt, The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss, following 10 years later.

The latter book, which took the form of a series of email exchanges between Cooper and Vanderbilt, dealt with the death of Wyatt Emory Cooper and with Anderson Coopers decision to come out as gay in 2012. Both books were bestsellers.
With weeks to go in his tenure atop the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb squared off with two companies at the center of his efforts to halt a surge in teen vaping.

Gottlieb, who plans to leave his post April 5, said at an event in Washington that his agency may need to pull pod-based nicotine products off the market as it fights a surge in teen vaping. He said he had a contentious meeting last week with executives from Marlboro maker Altria Group Inc. and Juul Labs Inc.

Late last year, Altria took a $12.8-billion stake in Juul, maker of a popular vaping device, at the same time that the companies had promised to increase efforts to keep kids from getting hooked on e-cigarettes. Miffed by the transaction, Gottlieb had summoned the companies to Washington to provide answers.

The e-cigarette industry has been overly dismissive of the risk that kids could become addicted to nicotine through e-cigarette use, Gottlieb said on Tuesday at the Brookings Institution. Were capturing an exploding epidemic right now.

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Gottlieb said the FDA is working on defining exactly what constitutes a pod-based product in case it needs to temporarily ban them. Sales of vaping pods could resume if manufacturers show that their devices are geared toward adult cigarette smokers trying to quit, and not kids.

It was a difficult meeting, the commissioner said, noting that there was a disconnect between the companies priorities and those of health officials. He added that it appeared Altrias decision to purchase a stake in Juul was purely a business decision and not driven by public health concerns.

Shares of Altria fell $1.29, or 2.3%, to $56.01 on Tuesday.

Altria and Juul didnt specifically respond to Gottliebs characterization of the meeting. Both companies said they remain committed to combating underage use of e-cigarettes.

The FDA is going to have to very carefully calculate its action against the entire category of pod-based products, Gottlieb said.

Gottlieb also said the FDAs proposed rule to cut nicotine in cigarettes to nonaddictive levels will probably be ready for review by the Trump administration this summer. Doing so could cause about 5 million adult smokers to quit smoking in the first year of adoption, the FDA has previously reported.

Separately, San Francisco officials proposed legislation Tuesday that would forbid the sale of e-cigarettes in the city and ban companies such as Juul from occupying city-owned property, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Juuls headquarters are in offices owned by the city.

The FDA last week released a draft guideline on its much-anticipated plan to limit the sales of most flavored e-cigarettes. The proposal calls for enhancing enforcement against flavored e-cigarette sales in retail locations where a minor can enter at any time, such as a convenience store or gas station. The restrictions wont apply to tobacco, mint or menthol-flavored e-cigarettes.

Gottlieb, who has taken heat from senators and industry leaders over a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, declined to comment specifically on the next steps for the initiative after his departure. But he did say the long-term goal is to remove characterizing flavors from all tobacco products.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told senators last week that there are complex legal issues surrounding banning menthol in cigarettes.

Norman E. Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute, will serve as acting FDA commissioner when Gottlieb leaves his post.
Southern California Edison has unveiled safety improvements at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station concerning the movement of heavy canisters filled with spent nuclear fuel from one area of the plant to another, about seven months after a 50-ton canister of nuclear waste was accidentally left suspended about 18 feet from the floor of a storage cavity for about 45 minutes.

Next week, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to issue a final enforcement decision regarding the incident. The NRCs decision may include civil penalties.

Nuclear safety is a core value for this company, said Ron Pontes, manager of the plants decommissioning environmental strategy, during a media tour of the San Onofre plant Monday. And I think that we probably, to be quite candid, we lost sight of that a little bit in this process and we didnt demand that rigor out of our contractors. Were going to demand it now.

Edison, which is in charge of oversight at the facility, had contracted with New Jersey-based Holtec International to transfer the canisters on a roughly 1,500-foot trip from wet storage pools to a newly constructed dry storage facility at the plant, where they are then lowered into vaulted cavities a little more than 100 feet from the ocean.

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The tour included a 90-minute briefing with Edison representatives spelling out what they said are changes in supervision and work culture to make sure the Aug. 3 incident doesnt happen again.

Jim Peattie, general manager of decommissioning oversight at the plant, said Edison has beefed up training, added equipment, improved procedures and put in place a revamped corrective action plan to more effectively identify problems and fix them.

Were going to have extra oversight people, Peattie said.

First revealed to the public by a worker at the plant, the August incident occurred when workers thought the canister had been completely lowered into the storage vault, but it had not. Instead, it came to rest on an inner ring near the top of the cavity, 17 to 18 feet from its floor.

Jim Peattie, general manager for decomissioning oversight, explains how this specialized crane is used to lower the vessels holding spent nuclear fuel into the holding facility. (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Whats more, the heavy canister was not supported by the rigging and lifting equipment that includes two slings designed to complete the transfer operation.

Within a few minutes, the mistake was noticed and the canister was eventually lowered, but not before it was left unsupported for about 45 minutes.

Edison and Holtec have said workers and the public were not in danger and even if the canister had fallen 18 feet, the robust design of the canister would have prevented any radioactive release.

But since the incident, Edison has suspended all transfers at the plant, and the NRC in September launched a weeklong special inspection into what happened.

A report from the inspection criticized Edison for violations that may require escalated enforcement action, with the agency saying it is concerned about apparent weaknesses in management oversight regarding the transfers.

Among the findings, the NRC inspectors said the Aug. 3 incident marked the first time the crane operator of the transporter that moves the heavy canisters had actually completed a downloading operation. It was also the first time the rigger/spotter  who watches the top of the canister to make sure it is successfully lowered  had attempted to perform the downloading.

Edison officials now say 11 workers or oversight personnel will be required when canisters are transferred, compared to nine in August. A camera has also been mounted near the top of the heavy equipment that lifts the canister and moves it into the appropriate storage cavity.

Theres a camera system set up where you can actually watch the canister download, Peattie said. An alarm system also has been installed to help make sure a loaded canister is not left unsupported.

Overall, Edison will work much more closely with Holtec during all transfers.

Edison officials have said they will not resume transfers until the NRC has completed its inspection work and the company is satisfied that new training and improvements have been successfully demonstrated. But Peattie said if the NRC on Monday allows Edison to resume transfers, the process can resume within days.

We dont know what the NRC is going to say that day, Pontes said. I dont want you to think that we have some expectation they will say, Youre approved to go, because we just dont know if theyre satisfied with everything.

The canister lowered on Aug. 3 marked the 29th of 73 canisters moved to the new dry storage facility. Forty-four others are scheduled to eventually be transferred.

Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the shored-up measures appear positive but Holtec and Edison need to make sure no other problems follow.

Lets face it, this is not brain surgery, Lyman said. Its just moving a heavy object from one place to another and putting it into a hole. Its relatively simple but as you can see even relatively simple operations require great rigor to do them properly because nuclear technology is very exacting. This incident was an eye-opener and hopefully it has shocked Edison and Holtec out of whatever complacency led to this event on Aug. 3.

One of the Edisons critics, Gary Headrick, co-founder of the advocacy group San Clemente Green, said the enhanced safety effort seems to make sense but he worried about longer-term issues, such as the strength and security of the canisters.

Were putting a lot of faith in an industry that has let us down in so many other ways that its not building much confidence, he said.

Edison officials insist the stainless steel canisters are safe and the dry storage facility designed by Holtec works well.

Mondays tour comes just days after San Diego attorney Michael Aguirre filed a federal lawsuit against the NRC, complaining the federal agency has engaged in stonewall tactics in turning over Freedom of Information Act requests for documents related to problems during the transfer process at the San Onofre facility.

NRC officials have said they do not comment on pending litigation.

San Onofre has not produced electricity since the plant shut down following a leak in a steam generator tube in 2012. The following year the plant officially closed. It is now in the process of being decommissioned.

rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com
People tend to think of the vision plans offered by employers as being like any other health insurance. Theyre not.

The reality is that vision plans, headed by market leaders VSP and EyeMed, are primarily discount programs intended at least in part to promote sales of eyewear affiliated with each company.

The vision plans expect you to get patients in, get them out, sell them glasses, said Myles Zakheim, an optometrist with offices in Brentwood, Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Their goal is to push as much product as they possibly can.

Other health insurers may steer patients to specific drugs, say, but thats because they have sweetheart deals with the drugmakers, not because the insurers themselves manufacture the drugs.

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Its an incredible conflict of interest, said E. Dean Butler, who founded both EyeMed and LensCrafters but is no longer involved with either business. He currently works as an optical-industry consultant.

The vision plans are manipulating the market for their own benefit, Butler told me. Optometrists have lost control of their own profession.

Many optometrists and opticians say they feel squeezed by the vision plans.

They want to do right by patients. At the same time, theyre mindful that steering customers to particular frames can result in larger reimbursements  which the patient likely isnt aware of.

Its been like this for a long time, said Norm Steinberg, owner of City Eyes Optometry in Sherman Oaks. The plans want people to buy their own frames.

This is another aspect of how the eyewear industry is characterized by consolidation, self-interest and price-fixing, with the biggest players doing all they can to stifle or eliminate competition.

As Ive previously reported, if you wear designer glasses, its likely youre wearing frames made by a single company: EssilorLuxottica. The companys owned and licensed brands include Armani, Brooks Bros., Burberry, Chanel, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Polo Ralph Lauren and Ray-Ban.

EssilorLuxottica also runs LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical. And, yes, EyeMed Vision Care.

VSP, aka Vision Service Plan, owns Marchon Eyewear, which controls or holds licenses for Altair, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, LaCoste, Nautica, Nine West, Nike and other brands.

VSP also is following EyeMed into the world of brick-and-mortar retailing. The company said last week it soon will open three stores in Chicago to see how consumers respond.

It said Monday that its partnering with Maui Jim eyewear to offer special discounts as part of a program designed to provide VSP network doctors with greater opportunity for more patient flow and increased revenue.

Butler described to me a system by which the big vision plans try to influence where you shop and what you buy, in some cases by greasing the palms of optometrists and opticians to boost sales of their own products.

He said the plans often shortchange optometrists in reimbursing for eye exams, with payments as low as $50. This keeps optometrists focused on sales of high-priced frames and lenses to cover overhead and meet expenses.

Even then, there may be more going on than meets the eye.

Lets say youre a VSP member. Lets say youre interested in both a Calvin Klein frame and a similar pair of Ralph Lauren specs.

You may not know that Calvin Klein is affiliated with VSP. Ralph Lauren is affiliated with EyeMed. The optician will receive a larger reimbursement from VSP if he or she can get a plan member to buy a VSP-linked frame.

Of course theyll emphasize the Calvin Klein in that case, Butler said. Theyll make more money.

Not much more, maybe a few bucks. But over time, that adds up.

If youre like me, youre probably reflecting at this moment on all the times an optometrist or optician said, Those are totally you, or words to that effect.

Youre probably wondering if the glasses were in fact less you and more them  that is, more for the stores benefit than your own.

I spoke with more than a dozen optometrists and opticians. They told me that Rancho Cordova-based VSP, which is by far the largest vision-benefit provider with nearly 90 million members, is the most aggressive at promoting its own brands with payments to opticians.

Ohio-based EyeMed, which has 46 million members, uses its market power mainly to steer people to its own LensCrafters stores, where most if not all frames and lenses are made by parent company EssilorLuxottica, or to shops that feature EssilorLuxottica frames.

I ran a search on EyeMeds site for service providers in my L.A. ZIP code. Of the 20 results that came up on the first page, five were for LensCrafters locations; four were for Eyexam of California facilities, which are located in LensCrafters stores; and every one of the others was an independent optician carrying EssilorLuxottica frames.

All health insurers have their own networks of doctors. But they generally dont also run the hospital youre visiting or manufacture the medical equipment used. (Kaiser Permanente operates sort of like that, but its structured to create savings for patients, not to inflate prices every step of the way.)

And when it comes to frames and lenses, prices routinely are marked up by as much 1,000% for no better reason than because theres so little competition and transparency in the eyewear market.

Jace Duval, a VSP spokesman, said the company is focused on providing value to VSP members and opportunities to our network doctors  private-practice optometrists  who choose what products they offer to their patients.

He said VSP can provide more value to members by giving deeper discounts for the companys own frames. He also acknowledged that optometrists receive larger reimbursements for selling VSPs Marchon eyewear and affiliated brands.

If the patient decides to apply their benefit towards one of those frames, the doctors payment is adjusted to reflect the enhanced benefit level, Duval said.

An EyeMed spokeswoman, who insisted its company policy not to be quoted by name, said that EyeMed members are not incentivized under their EyeMed vision benefit to shop at LensCrafters, although my provider search suggests otherwise.

Unlike VSP, though, EyeMed doesnt offer optometrists extra cash for pushing affiliated frames.

EyeMed offers the same reimbursement to the provider regardless of whether he or she is selling a Luxottica product or a non-Luxottica product, the spokeswoman said.

Nevertheless, just about every optometrist and optician I spoke with said he or she feels pressure to stay in good with the vision plans by emphasizing frame sales. Plan members can account for more than 75% of customers at many independent shops.

Its a totally rigged market, said the manager of one West L.A. optical shop, who called back shortly afterward pleading with me not to use his name. Ill get in trouble with VSP and EyeMed, he said.

He and others confirmed that their shops will promote brands that offer the biggest payoff, typically without the customer knowing.

High-end optical shops featuring independent brands, such as Salt or Garrett Leight California Optical, tend to be the exception. Other places do that, but not us, Andrea Diaz, an optician at Playa Vistas Runway Optometry, said of pushing particular frames on customers.

Butler, 74, established LensCrafters in 1983. He told me he started EyeMed a few years later after seeing how VSP dominated the market for vision plans.

The original idea wasnt to use EyeMed as a way to move frames. It was to prevent VSP from controlling everything, Butler said.

Things changed after Luxottica bought out LensCrafters parent company, U.S. Shoe Corp., in 1995. EyeMed soon became a key piece of a vertically integrated business that controls everything from vision coverage to the retail store and glasses offered.

Its an unethical way to do business, Butler said of the vision plans. It should not be legal for an insurer to be involved in selling goods. Insurers should be independent of manufacturers.

At the very least, potential conflicts should be clearly disclosed.

I suggest state lawmakers look at a rule requiring a posted notice that says some eyewear brands may have a business relationship with a particular vision plan, and that opticians may have a financial interest in favoring one brand over another.

Thats not to say Calvin Klein glasses (affiliated with VSP) are better or worse than Ralph Lauren glasses (affiliated with EyeMed).

But if theres more at stake than just which one looks better on me, I want to know.

If an optician is getting a bigger paycheck for selling me one or the other, I want to know.

Scratch that. I have a right to know.

Its high time lawmakers opened their eyes to that fact.

David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.
A little more than a year after buying a new home in the Hollywood Hills, Scottish DJ Calvin Harris is ready to bounce. Hes put the updated 1940s pad up for sale at $5.75 million or for lease at $25,000 a month, records show.

The stark black estate holds a recording studio and two-story music room, which have attracted a few different musicians over the years. Bong Load Records owner Tom Rothrock sold it to DJ Steve Angello for $3.9 million in 2013, and Angello sold it to Harris for roughly $5.045 million four years later, the Los Angeles Times previously reported.

In 6,010 square feet, the two-story Traditional holds four bedrooms, six bathrooms and a handful of living spaces that vary in style. Theres an elegant chandelier-topped living room with parquet floors and beamed ceilings, a more relaxed family room with a wet bar and a sleek black-and-white kitchen with a center island.

1 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 2 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 3 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 4 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 5 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 6 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 7 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 8 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 9 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 10 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 11 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 12 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 13 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 14 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 15 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 16 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 17 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 18 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 19 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 20 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 21 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 22 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 23 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 24 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 25 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 26 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 27 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 28 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon) 29 / 29 Hot Property | Steve Angello (Sean Gordon)

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Little nooks include an office and a window-lined lounge with paneled walls and built-in seating.

The main level opens to a spacious deck with city light views, and down below, a swimming pool sits under hanging lights. The landscaped space also holds a spiral staircase and outdoor shower.

Jonathan Nash and Stephen Resnick of Hilton & Hyland hold the listing.

Harris, 35, has hits that include The Girls, Im Not Alone and Lets Go. In 2013, he won a Grammy for best short-form music video for the song We Found Love, which features Rihanna.

jack.flemming@latimes.com | Twitter: @jflem94
Sheriffs officials in Macon County, Ala., have released mug shots of Mama June Shannon and her boyfriend, who were arrested last week on charges of drug possession and domestic violence.

Shannon, who became famous via Toddlers & Tiaras and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo on TLC and WeTVs Mama June: From Not to Hot, was arrested with Eugene Geno Doak last Wednesday at a gas station near Tuskegee, Ala., after law officers responded to a domestic-violence call, according to AL.com, which cited arrest records.

Doak has been charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, and both face charges of felony possession of drugs and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia after allegedly being found with crack cocaine and a crack pipe.

Doak allegedly told Shannon that he was going to kill her, according to documents obtained by TMZ. The two have been dating for about three years, the site said, and were spotted together at a casino in Wetumpka, Ala., on Saturday despite Doak being ordered to stay away from Shannon, TMZ said.

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Honey Boo Boo ran for four seasons until it was canceled in 2014 after Shannons then-boyfriend, Mark Anthony McDaniel, was revealed to be a convicted child molester. Mama June: From Not to Hot, which also features the rest of Shannons family, premiered its third season Friday. On the show, Shannon lost nearly 300 pounds following weight-loss surgery.

Reps for Shannon did not respond immediately to The Times request for comment.

cdz@latimes.com

@theCDZ on Twitter and Instagram
For over two decades, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was a lost film, unfinished and unseen, more rumor than pop culture memory. In theory, it captured a lot of what anyone might desire in a rock n roll movie from London circa 1968: the Stones, the Who, John Lennon, Eric Clapton and more.

On a sound stage designed like the inside of a circus big top, each of the musicians performed at the height of their powers while mingling with trapeze artists, fire-eaters and other semi-dazzling acts from a traveling circus.

The clowns and the Rolling Stones got along very well, recalls the films director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 78.

Yet the films planned television premiere was delayed indefinitely for one reason: The Stones thought the Whos performance was better.

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It took 28 years, but the Stones came around in time for Lindsay-Hogg to finish the legendary rock film for a 1996 premiere at the New York Film Festival and release on home video. You had these little explosions of greatness in the room, says Lindsay-Hogg of the two-day shoot, and the Rolling Stones recognized that.

Now, in time for the North American leg of the Stones ongoing No Filter Tour, Circus has been remastered for a limited U.S. theatrical run during the first week of April. Among the Southland theaters showing the film will be the Cinemark Playa Vista on April 1 and April 3. Last week, Lindsay-Hogg, who now lives in Los Angeles, attended a private screening in Hollywood of the film, recast in vivid Dolby Vision color and Dolby Atmos sound.

I was thrilled by it anew, which I hadnt been for a long time, says Lindsay-Hogg, whose career began in England as director on the 60s music show Ready Steady Go!, where the camerawork could be as frenzied as the acts onstage.

He also directed music videos for the Stones, Beatles and the Who, and made the intimate Beatles documentary Let It Be. In the pipeline is a long-awaited restoration of the 1970 Beatles film, which will follow an entirely new film being assembled from the same 55 hours of footage by New Zealand director Peter Jackson.

Attending the Circus screening was Brett Morgen, director of 2015s acclaimed Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck and his own Stones documentary, 2012s Crossfire Hurricane. In an onstage Q&A with Lindsay-Hogg following the film, Morgen celebrated the filmmakers essential work with these epochal musical figures.

The man defined the image that so many of us have of the Stones and the Beatles, Morgen said in an interview with The Times. He created a new language. You look at the Jumping Jack Flash video and what he did is as innovative as what Busby Berkeley did to the musical.

In Circus, the Stones performed several songs from the just-completed Beggars Banquet, the first of four consecutive album milestones that defined the bands greatest work. There was also Lennon leading a supergroup he called the Dirty Mac, with Eric Clapton on guitar, Keith Richards on bass, and drummer Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a new Beatles song, Yer Blues. Yoko Ono then joined for an improvisational jam.

Other performers included Marianne Faithfull, Taj Mahal and Jethro Tull. The Whos playful reading of the mini-rock opera A Quick One While Hes Away was close to perfect. Jagger had personally invited all of them.

In those days, rock n roll bands would arrive late. Youd schedule something for 1 and theyd arrive at 4, recalls Lindsay-Hogg. But on this particular day, because they all respected each other, everybody was on time.

A London sound stage was rented and Lindsay-Hogg hired the best camera operators from Ready Steady Go! The production also used experimental cameras from France, which shot both 16mm film and provided a video feed to the control room. Aside from having to change film canisters every 10 minutes, the new cameras frequently stopped working.

When one of the cameras had broken down for the 11th time that day, we had a little break, the director recalls. The musicians would then retreat to their dressing rooms. I went backstage to see how everybody was, and they were all sitting in a room  John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton  playing blues on guitar and harmonica. Keith Moon was playing spoons on a table.

The Stones didnt get onstage to perform until 2 a.m. It was the final live appearance of guitarist Brian Jones, dazed and fading from drug abuse, but still able to re-create his heartbreaking slide guitar lines on No Expectations.

Within months of filming, Jones left the band and drowned soon after. Jagger went to Australia to star in Ned Kelly. Lindsay-Hogg traveled to California to work on a film. The momentum of the era pushed its participants forward, but somehow left Circus behind until the footage was rediscovered in the 90s.

Lindsay-Hogg continued working with the Stones through the early 1980s, directing several music videos, from Its Only Rock n Roll (But I Like It) to Waiting on a Friend. He turned his attention to feature films, TV specials and directing theater, though he remains friendly with the Stones.

We knew each other when we were kids, he says now. It wasnt my nature to hang round if I didnt have to. In a funny way, I think they respected that. I was happy to just be working with them.

todd.martens@latimes.com

Twitter: @toddmartens
The Late Late Shows James Corden will hit the stage again for the 73rd Tony Awards show this summer.

On Tuesday, CBS announced that Corden will host this years ceremony from Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Itll be the second time the English comedian has handled the gig.

Corden hosted 2016s Tony Awards, which drew the largest audience in 15 years and won an Emmy for outstanding special class program.

In 2012, he won a Tony himself for his lead performance in One Man, Two Guvnors.

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Im thrilled to be returning to host the Tony Awards, Corden said in a press release. The Broadway community is very dear to my heart, and Im beyond proud to be part of this incredibly special night.

James is the ultimate master of ceremonies to lead a night of live event television, celebrating live theater, said CBS Jack Sussman in the same release, calling Corden charming and fearless on stage.

Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss will return as executive producers, with Weiss serving as director for the 20th consecutive year. Ben Winston will produce.

Tony Awards nominations will be announced April 30, and the show will air live on June 9 on CBS.
Yours Truly will open March 21 in Venice. Vartan Abgaryan, formerly at 71Above, is executive chef with a menu that includes avocado hummus with salsa macha and zaatar flatbread; skate wing with chermoula and couscous; and Nashville hot shrimp.

1616 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 396-9333, ytvenice.com

Alameda Supper Club

Alameda Supper Club is open at the Manufactory downtown. The restaurant is a collaboration between Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson of Tartine Bakery and Chris Bianco of Pizzeria Bianco. Dishes include strozzapreti cacio e pepe, lamb belly with salsa verde, and gilt-head bream with fennel cream.

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Oysters with celtuce mignonette and chive oil at Alameda Supper Club. (Jakob N. Layman)

757 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, (213) 375-3315, alamedasupperclub.com

Pasjoli

Dave Beran, chef of tasting menu restaurant Dialogue in Santa Monica, is gearing up to open his second restaurant in the city. Pasjoli, which Beran says will be a fun and playful homage to classic French cuisine, is slated to open this summer. His duck press, used early on at Dialogue, will find a permanent home at the new a la carte restaurant.

2732 Main St., Santa Monica

Monas Kitchen

Monas Kitchen is open in Tarzana from Mouna Kalout, formerly the head chef at Hayats Kitchen in North Hollywood. The Lebanese menu includes makanek sausages, kibbeh nayeh, beef tongue and shawarma sandwiches, frog legs and the savory meat pies known as sambousik.

18970 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana, (818) 708-8986, instagram.com/monaskitchen_lebanesecuisine

Burgerlords

Burgerlords opened a second location March 16 in Highland Park. In addition to burgers, fries and vegan double cheeseburgers, the new location will have exclusive vegan dishes, including a cheeseburger with shiitake mushroom bacon and onion rings, and stay open until 10 p.m.

110 N. Ave. 56, Los Angeles, burgerlords.com

Decadence

Decadence recently opened in Hermosa Beach with Huy Nguyen, a former sous-chef at Baco Mercat, Orsa & Winston and Rose Cafe, in the kitchen. Theres an oxtail-and-filet mignon pho on the menu along with pan-seared duck breast with Pinot Noir-cherry sauce and tempura-fried avocado with marinated nappa cabbage and spicy aioli.

1332 Hermosa Ave., Hermosa Beach, (424) 409-0990, decadencebar.com

Base51

Base51 is open in Hawthorne. Its focus is virtual simulation car racing  big video game cars you sit in and drive  allowing anyone to come in, eat a Reuben, drink a local beer then jump into a simulated racing experience using one of 10 top-of-the-line simulators that re-create actual cars from the likes of GT3 and Formula 1.

12831 Cerise Ave., Suite B, Hawthorne, (800) 618-1784, base51.com

Closings

Filifera is closed in Hollywood. A restaurant named Sorra, from the owners of Hinoki & the Bird, Rosaline and Blackship, is open in the rooftop space, with Chris Ono, formerly of Esthers and Gesso, overseeing a menu of Japanese-Mexican dishes.

1550 N. Centro Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 978-7377, facebook.com/SorraHollywood

Cafe Bizou will close on March 31 after 25 years in Sherman Oaks. The restaurants location in Agoura Hills remains open.

14016 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 788-3536, cafebizou.com

Nook Bistro will close March 26 after 15 years in West L.A.

11628 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 207-5160, nookbistro.com

After a year and a half, Nyesha Arrington has closed her Santa Monica restaurant Native. Its just hard to turn a profit, Arrington told The Times.

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Josiah Citrin and Hans Rockenwagner will take over time-tested Culver City steakhouse Dear Johns on Apr. 9. The duo plans to operate the restaurant with an updated menu until it closes on Apr. 1, 2020.

11208 Culver Blvd., Culver City, (310) 397-0276

Starting April 5, NoMad L.A. will offer a cocktail pop-up called For a Limited Time Only on Friday and Saturday nights in its coffee bar. The first months concept will play on the Mamma Guidaras dinner series from NoMad New York, including an exclusive drink menu, limoncello fountain, mini stromboli and black truffle arancini, among other snacks.

649 S. Olive St., Los Angeles, (213) 358-0000, thenomadhotel.com/los-angeles/experiences/for-a-limited-time-only

Times staff writer Andrea Chang contributed to this report.
Behind the glass of the picture window, cornflower blue wings flap slowly beneath the balloon of a muslin-covered zeppelin. Wheels connected by bicycle chains to the airship rotate, while a tiny metal man scans the horizon with a bronze spyglass, another steers the wheel of the ship and a third pops up from a hatch on the deck. A red rudder pivots back and forth below the keel of ship, stirring the still air in the store, a prop shop called Jadis that first opened in Santa Monica in 1976.

The flying machine, powered by a small electrical motor contained within the balloon, looks like something Terry Gilliam might have dreamed up during his Monty Python days, or one of the late artist Chris Burdens airplane factory art installations.

For the record: An earlier version of this story said Skeeter Wachtendonk joined the Coast Guard as a young man. He joined the Air Force.

Instead, the zeppelin was built by a Wisconsin couple almost 40 years ago, found by chance in a Ventura junk shop and installed in the window of Jadis by its owners, Susan Lieberman and her late partner Parke Meek, an artist who worked with Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller and Charles and Ray Eames.

And until a few weeks ago, it was dusty, water-stained and rudderless, an aging flying machine that had seen better days but still drew crowds to the window of the oft-closed shop.

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I never thought Id ever find the maker, said Lieberman, 70, a tall woman with a cap of blond hair who has run the shop, mostly only opening it on the weekends and by appointment, since Meek died in 2010. Most of the shops business came from renting props to movies, including The Artist, Gods and Monsters, Batman & Robin and X-Men. What Lieberman had decided to do was not to sell the airship  shes gotten many offers over the years  but to somehow find its makers and refurbish the machine. It was an improbable project, hampered by the fact that she initially had no idea who had made it decades ago.

Donna Wachtendonk, left, and daughter Katye Stilen, repairing one of their airships at Jadis. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

When Lieberman and Meek found the airship, one of three machines by the same artists, in that Ventura shop, the shops owner had also given them an old notebook with sketches and clippings. Then, a few months ago, she started Googling and eventually found the name of the couple and their small company, called the Flying Dutchman, which for years was set up as a booth at EAA AirVenture, Wisconsins famed Oshkosh airshow.

Lieberman eventually tracked down Donna Wachtendonk, who had made the machines with her late husband Edward, called Skeeter, as well as hundreds of other items in their small Wisconsin workshop.

I thought, what the hell, maybe shed like to get out of the Wisconsin winter, said Lieberman. So she sent Wachtendonk, 64, and her daughter Katye Stilen, 43, a pair of plane tickets and offered them a trip to Los Angeles. It was a leap of faith, said Lieberman.

In late February, Wachtendonk and Stilen came to Los Angeles from Wild Rose, Wis., with a suitcase of supplies and gear for repairing the airships. It was an emotional trip, as Wachtendonk had stopped making the machines shortly after her husband died 20 years ago.

A detail of the newly-refurbished zeppelin at Jadis in Santa Monica. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In the workshop in the back of the prop shop, surrounded by piers and drills, bow saws and calipers, a Tesla coil, two plastic skulls and a Van de Graaff electrostatic generator, Wachtendonk and Stilen disassembled the zeppelin, stripping the fabric that came apart in their hands from the balloon, then recovering the frame. Its like a lampshade, but so much more complicated, said Wachtendonk, as she whipstitched muslin and recalled the early days of the business.

They cleaned the structure with toothbrushes and steel wool, put in new wiring and light bulbs, recoated and painted the parts, dabbed all the rivets with gold paint, and re-covered the balloon with muslin. We just went to the Home Depot, said Lieberman, who runs the shop with the help of her assistant Jenny White.

This was all my husbands fault, said Wachtendonk. He took a welding class in high school. He made this huge airplane out of his moms coat hangers, and it just snowballed from there. Skeeter Wachtendonk joined the Air Force as a young man, and would make models of airplanes and ships for visiting dignitaries. Then, with the help of his parents, they set up a booth at the air show, and had a standing order from the museum at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

Over the years that their shop was open, they made, she figures, over 100 airships, plus lighthouses, submarines, motorcycles, motorhomes with tiny dentists offices inside and ships, including a 14-foot model of the USS Wisconsin.

Theyre in dentists offices, in restaurants and bars, said Wachtendonk of all the machines, which were disseminated across the country to museums, private collectors and junk shops like the one where Lieberman found the airship shes working on.

Katyes been welding since she was 5 years old, said Wachtendonk. Oxy-acetylene welding, said Stilen. Thats how I got my braces, she explained, as her parents would barter many of their inventions for services, including the Model-T that was the first car Stilen ever drove. I got a ride on a P-51 Mustang, said Wachtendonk, smiling.

From left: Katye Stilen; her mother, Donna Wachtendonk; Jadis owner Susan Lieberman; her assistant Jenny White. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

After a few days repairing the zeppelin, as well as a second machine they call the thumper, an ornithopter built on top of a steampunk tractor, Wachtendonk and Stilen reassembled the airship and rehung it back in the front of the shop as curious onlookers again peered in the window.

The ship whirred into action, the wings fluttering, a bronze harpoon swinging back and forth. Nearby, metal rocket ships and bronze robots  one made by an Echo Park artist, another by a JPL engineer  completed the futuristic diorama.

I should close it, Lieberman said of the shop, which she came close to shuttering after the death of her partner nine years before. But its very hard to walk away from. You see the joy on the kids faces, even jaded passers-by.

What is it? Wachtendonk said that folks will usually ask of the flying machines, jigsawed together with found objects, rotisserie motors and leftover rivets, embellished with metal lanterns, tiny wheels and painted wings. Then theyll ask, Can I have a ride?

The fashion designer John Galliano once came into the shop, said Lieberman, and wanted to buy the machine. I asked how Id get it to him and he said, Oh, itd just fly by itself.

Jadis, 2701 Main St., Santa Monica; (310) 396-3477; jadisprops.com/moderne.

amy.scattergood@latimes.com

Instagram: @AScattergood
Ben Poston is an investigative reporter specializing in data at the Los Angeles Times. A three-time Livingston Award finalist, Poston has won several national awards, including a George Polk Award, a Gerald Loeb Award and Sigma Delta Chis award for First Amendment reporting. He worked on Behind the Badge, a series that detailed the flawed hiring practices by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. He also co-wrote an investigation that found the Los Angeles Police Department routinely misclassified violent crime data. A native of Springfield, Ohio, he joined The Times in 2012. Prior to that, he was the data editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Hailey Branson-Potts is a Metro reporter who joined the Los Angeles Times in 2011. She has reported on a wide range of topics, including rural California and LGBTQ issues. Branson-Potts was part of the team that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for its coverage of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, as well as the team that was a 2020 Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of a boat fire that killed 34 people off the coast of Santa Barbara. She grew up in the tiny town of Perry, Okla., got her start at the Perry Daily Journal, and graduated from the University of Oklahoma.
They broke up an international movie piracy ring, returned the hand of an ancient mummy to Egypt and helped arrest the worlds biggest drug kingpin, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.

Homeland Security Investigations, a branch within Immigration and Customs Enforcement, focuses on combating cross-border criminal activity and is billed as the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. While many of its investigations involve immigrants, including some in the country illegally, many do not.

But its connection to ICE  at a time when the agency is under fire because of its role in deportations and enforcing President Trumps aggressive immigration policy  has caused friction with some law enforcement agencies.

In California, where a sanctuary law, Senate Bill 54, went into effect last year to provide protection for immigrants in the country illegally, agents have voiced frustration over police departments pulling out from operations  sometimes at the last moment  as well as withdrawing from task forces and slowing down investigations.

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Now all of a sudden I have an agent in the street saying, This police department doesnt want to work with us because my cred says ICE, said Joseph Macias, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations Los Angeles.

Trumps hard-line stance on illegal immigration has provoked cities across the country to scrutinize agreements with ICE and, in some cases, end collaborations with the agency altogether.

In the realm of everything thats going on here in the sanctuary state with Senate Bill 54, it is absolutely making [agents] job harder, Macias said. The boots on the ground, the guys that are doing the work, they understand it. We never want to violate any of the Senate bills pieces that are in there, but we want to make sure our guys are safe.

One HSI agent recounted an operation last year that involved the arrest of a U.S. citizen in a narcotics investigation. Less than an hour before the man was supposed to arrive, LAPD officers were told to stand down, the agent said.

We had to scramble, change our entire plan on the hood of our car. We did it with maybe six less people than we wanted to.  It was less than ideal, said the agent, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Homeland Security Investigations agents gather before serving an employment audit notice at a 7-Eleven last year in Los Angeles. (Chris Carlson / Associated Press)

The political atmosphere has served to deepen longstanding tensions within the agency.

This month, Homeland Security Investigations responded by expanding a program that immerses community members in weeks-long training sessions, known as citizens academies. These citizens academies, once held only in a handful of offices, including in L.A., are now required in all HSI offices in the U.S.

I think this initiative will move the needle in a positive way more than anything else we do, in terms of trying to communicate and take a stand on where HSI is and what we do, said Derek Benner, executive associate director for Homeland Security Investigations.

Its a stroke of public relations that officials hope smooths a reputation that last June prompted 19 heads of HSI offices around the country to send a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, requesting that the division break apart from ICE.

HSIs investigations have been perceived as targeting undocumented aliens, instead of the transnational criminal organizations that facilitate cross border crimes impacting our communities and national security, the letter stated.

An agency born out of the merging of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs Service over a decade ago, ICE includes Enforcement and Removal Operations and Homeland Security Investigations branches. Agents liken the Homeland Security Investigations branch to the role the FBI plays within the Department of Justice.

HSI, which has grown to more than 6,000 special agents, has 30 field offices across the country. Their investigative areas include narcotics, child exploitation, money laundering, airport and seaport operations, export violations, computer crimes and trade fraud. One of their investigations recently led to the indictment of 18 alleged members and associates of a white supremacist gang in Oklahoma.

The Enforcement and Removal Operations side focuses on enforcing immigration laws. Recently during an enforcement surge in the state of New York, ERO agents arrested 118 people for allegedly violating immigration laws. More than 100 were convicted criminals or had criminal charges pending, according to ICE.

The confusion between the two branches is long running, and HSI has struggled with a branding problem, according to John Sandweg, who headed ICE under President Obama.

Theres always been this perception that the ICE brand  has tainted HSI as an organization and impaired their ability to do their job, Sandweg said. One of the biggest things that plagues ICE at large is how politicized it is as a law enforcement agency, and thats only gotten a lot worse, obviously, in the last couple of years.

Under the Trump administration, HSI received a directive to increase work site enforcement, which has played out with the arrests of immigrants in the country illegally at places such as a slaughterhouse in Tennessee and a trailer manufacturer in Texas.

Last year, the agency announced that ICE work site enforcement investigations in fiscal year 2018 had grown dramatically over the previous year. And during a non-immigration related operation, agents wont shy away from arrests of immigrants in the country illegally.

If were in an operation and were doing a criminal search warrant and theres somebody at a location and we read their name and they have a deportation order for a violent offense, were not going to walk away from it. Were going to arrest that person, said Jennifer Reyes, HSI assistant special agent in charge and organizer of the L.A. citizens academy. But thats not our primary goal. Our primary goal is criminal enforcement.

Homeland Security Investigations Citizens Academy participants watch as special agents Gustavo Rios and Nick DeSimone, from bottom left, demonstrate how to handle a suspect. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Advocates say those examples show that HSI has a clear role in immigration enforcement.

Ive heard them say, Were different, we dont do that, when in fact they also participate. But theyre complicated in that they do more than just immigration enforcement, said Angelica Salas, executive director of the nonprofit Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. I think that theyre trying to not get painted with the rightfully negative reputation of ICE, when in fact theyre also very important in immigration enforcement Its like trying to deny themselves the scrutiny and the public concern, while still doing the work.

Although there are more than 30 state and local agencies that continue to work with HSI and who are still with us side by side, Macias said, a few departments have pulled out of agreements over what he called the politics.

The police officers that work on our task forces, theyre essential for what we do because they know the neighborhoods. We cover seven counties, Macias said. We cant cover it all without our state and local partners.

Benner said any issues occurred early on at a time when the pressure publicly was at an all-time high in terms of the debate about sanctuary cities.

It kind of amped up peoples sensitivities to this and thankfully that didnt last that long, Benner said. We kind of got back to what I would call business as usual, in terms of recognizing that as law enforcement we do better together.

But he acknowledged that at meetings, agents have questioned what he plans to do to promote the HSI brand. Benner said he hopes the rollout of the citizens academies nationwide will help answer that question.

The more contact that we can have with members of the community in this kind of intimate way  explaining what we do and how we do it in a very transparent manner  will answer that question of how will HSI become a more well-branded organization.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it wont intervene in San Diegos pension cuts case, leaving in place a California Supreme Court ruling that the city skipped a key legal step when the cuts were placed on the ballot in 2012.

The decision means state courts will resolve the case, including a decision about how to financially compensate 4,000 city employees who dont have pensions because of the voter-approved measure called Proposition B.

Estimates of how much that could cost the city have ranged from $20 million to $100 million, depending on a variety of factors.

In its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in October, the city argued that the state court ruling ignored the federal free speech rights of former Mayor Jerry Sanders, who had claimed to be operating as an ordinary citizen, not as mayor, when he championed Proposition B.

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The state Supreme Court ruled in August that Sanders violated Californias collective bargaining law by not negotiating with labor unions before pursuing the pension measure. The state court said that because Sanders used his power and influence as mayor to support the measure, he was obligated to meet with city union leaders before placing it on the ballot.

San Diego asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that Sanders vocal support of the measure is protected speech and that its a violation of his 1st Amendment rights for the state court to rule that such speech comes with an obligation to negotiate with unions.

In documents posted on its website Monday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court listed the San Diego case among dozens of cases it had decided not to take. The court did not provide a reason.

The decision vindicates leaders of the four city labor unions who filed suit, alleging the pension cuts were not legally placed on the ballot.

The unions argued last fall that San Diegos free speech claims had no chance to succeed in court because the case was based on collective bargaining law, not on the 1st Amendment.

Proposition B was approved by 65% of city voters in June 2012.

It made San Diego the only California city to discontinue traditional pensions for new hires, who instead have 401(k)-style retirement plans. Proposition B did not apply to new police officers, who still get traditional pensions.

Four city labor unions quickly challenged the legality of the pension cuts based on Sanders participation. The state labor board ruled in favor of the unions in 2015.

But the 4th District Court of Appeal overturned that in 2017, ruling that the pension cuts were valid and that Sanders acted appropriately.

In August, the state Supreme Court overturned the appeals court, agreeing with the unions that the city skipped a key legal step and ordering the appeals court to take the case back and resolve the situation.

The appeals court began that process last week with a hearing in downtown San Diego.

Although its ruling wont come for several weeks, the appellate judges expressed support for requiring San Diego to financially compensate city employees who dont have pensions because of Proposition B.

The three-judge panel expressed reluctance to invalidate Proposition B, indicating a separate legal process is needed to allow participation by citizen proponents of the measure. That process, which could delay resolution of the case for months or even years, would begin in state Superior Court.

On Monday morning the lead attorney for the labor unions, Ann Smith, said it is not a surprise that the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to take the case.

We knew this case was never about the 1st Amendment and no public officials free speech rights have been affected by the California Supreme Court when upholding the rights guaranteed to public employees under state law, Smith said.

Former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio, who helped write Proposition B, said in a statement Monday that the decision was somewhat expected.

The Supreme Court accepts only 100 to 150 cases of over 7,000 it receives each year, so while we are disappointed, we are not too surprised that the U.S. Supreme Court did not weigh in, he said.

The city cannot restore pensions for new hires until Proposition B has been removed from the city charter, either by a public vote or a court ruling.

Union leaders and city officials have discussed potentially settling the case, but union leaders are expected to demand restoring pensions for new hires as part of any settlement. If they make such a demand, the case couldnt be settled until Proposition B is removed from the charter.

Financial compensation for the employees without pensions is expected to be based on a state labor board recommendation from 2015 that those employees be made whole. The labor board said they should receive the equivalent value of a pension, plus 7% interest, but the city could factor into that the value of the 401(k)-style plans the employees received instead of pensions.

Garrick writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
A 53-year-old man who crashed a rented scooter into a tree in downtown San Diego last week has died, becoming the citys first electronic scooter fatality, police said Monday.

The rider, identified as Christopher Conti of Woodstock, Ga., succumbed to his injuries Friday, San Diego police Sgt. Victoria Houseman said in a statement.

Conti was headed north on the sidewalk of 10th Avenue near C Street shortly before 10 p.m. Wednesday when he failed to negotiate a left turn and struck a tree, police said.

He was not wearing a helmet, Houseman said. It was not known if alcohol or drugs were factors.

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This is the first known fatality in the city of San Diego involving a scooter, Houseman said.

The countys first scooter death happened in December when Esteban Galindo, 26, was struck from behind by a car in Chula Vista. The driver involved stopped after the 4 a.m. crash. Its unclear whether drugs or alcohol were factors.

Dockless scooter companies, such as Lime and Bird, first showed up in San Diego in 2018. Initially, some companies also offered dockless bikes but that transportation option proved far less popular.

Health officials reported seeing a surge in scooter-related injuries and began tracking statistics on the cases they treat.

The city of San Diego is considering a slate of regulations on dockless electric scooters and bicycles that would address speed limits, parking restrictions and impose fees for company operating permits.

Karen Kucher writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Some police officers were disciplined for illegal sexual activity or dishonesty and evaded criminal prosecution. Others used deadly force but details of their actions have long remained out of the publics view.

The California Reporting Project  a partnership of 33 newsrooms across the state  launched Tuesday in an effort to combine resources to review internal police records that became public under a new transparency law that took effect this year.

READ MORE: An off-duty officer fled DUI crash, then let his mom try to take the blame, records show 

The Los Angeles Times is part of the collaborative, which has filed requests with more than 600 law enforcement agencies and so far received records of hundreds of incidents in which officers used significant or deadly force, were found to have been dishonest or committed sexual misconduct. Other members of the collaborative include KPCC, the Orange County Register, KQED, the San Jose Mercury News, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and other media outlets.

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The documents reviewed by the collaborative provide a window into how California police departments evaluate misconduct, shootings and other force by their officers  issues that have fueled criticism that law enforcement agencies arent open enough with the people they serve.

Heres some of the stories that have relied on records released under the new transparency law:

The Times detailed an investigation into a South Pasadena police officer who was fired after he admitted fleeing the scene of an off-duty crash. Cpl. Ryan Bernal had been drinking with colleagues at an after-work gathering before he crashed into a pole, which struck and damaged a home, according to internal records. Hours later, he accompanied his mother as she falsely told sheriffs officials that she had been behind the wheel, the records show.

San Francisco-based KQED and the Bay Area News Group reported that a Rio Vista police officer entered a home in 2017 and immediately put a man in a chokehold for 20 seconds, which was captured in body camera images. That officer was fired. The radio station also found that two officers in Watsonville in Santa Cruz County had been fired in recent years for repeatedly having sex with civilians while on duty.

The San Diego Union-Tribune found a San Diego County sheriffs lieutenant had embezzled more than $100,000 in donations from her church, according to an internal affairs investigation. She agreed to pay back the missing funds and was not prosecuted. She retired from the department in 2013. The newspaper also reported about a Chula Vista police officer who was fired last year for having sex while on duty and in uniform in a public area.

Last week, The Times published details from the first records released by the Los Angeles Police Department, which included officers fired in connection with allegations of sexual assault and of making false statements under oath.

The disclosure of the records marks a stark departure for California. For years, the state had the nations strictest laws on disclosing police personnel records, due in large part to the lobbying efforts of powerful law enforcement unions that wanted to keep the files confidential. All internal disciplinary records were confidential.

That changed last year with the passage of Senate Bill 1421, which allows for the release of records of shootings by officers, severe uses of force and confirmed cases of sexual assault and lying by officers.

ben.poston@latimes.com

Twitter: @bposton
The Los Angeles Times is one of 33 newsrooms across the state that have formed a collaborative to analyze police records that became public under a transparency law that took effect this year.

The California Reporting Project  which also includes KPCC, the Orange County Register, KQED, the San Jose Mercury News and other media outlets  has filed requests with more than 600 law enforcement agencies and so far received records of hundreds of incidents in which officers used significant or deadly force, were found to have been dishonest or committed sexual misconduct.

The documents will provide a window into how California police departments evaluate misconduct, shootings and other force by their officers  issues that have fueled criticism that law enforcement agencies arent open enough with the areas they serve.

READ MORE: An off-duty officer fled DUI crash, then let his mom try to take the blame, records show 

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Until then, many significant questions about policing remain unanswered in California.

How many people have been killed by police in California?

In 2017, a bill that would have funded a study of California police shootings by state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra failed in a state Senate committee. Becerra had supported the effort, saying it would have helped officials develop policies to reduce the number of future shootings.

What happens to officers who commit misconduct?

For years, California had the nations strictest laws on disclosing police personnel records, due in large part to fierce lobbying efforts from powerful law enforcement unions that wanted to keep the files confidential. All internal disciplinary records were confidential.

That changed last year with the passage of Senate Bill 1421, which allows for the release of records of shootings by officers, severe uses of force and confirmed cases of sexual assault and lying by officers. Lawmakers approved the transparency law, which went into effect Jan. 1, amid a heightened debate over how officers use force and interact with communities of color.

Records released under SB 1421 promise to reveal how strict or lenient departments have been in meting out discipline when they fault officers in cases related to significant force, shootings, dishonesty and sexual assault while on duty.

How many dishonest officers are still on the force?

The Times has identified deputies with the L.A. County Sheriffs Department who were suspended for falsifying records and making false statements but were allowed to keep their jobs with six-figure salaries. Many of those same deputies were later listed as potential witnesses in criminal cases.

How many fired officers were rehired by other departments?

Its unknown how many officers were able to land new jobs at different agencies after being fired or quitting to avoid significant discipline.

ben.poston@latimes.com

Twitter: @bposton

maya.lau@latimes.com

Twitter: @mayalau
South Pasadena Police Cpl. Ryan Bernal realized he was in trouble.

Dazed from a night of drinking, he was jolted awake when his pickup truck smashed into a pole that fell on the patio roof of an occupied house in Duarte, internal police records show.

So the off-duty officer drove his truck around the block, walked to a nearby Walmart and slipped away in a ride-hailing service vehicle. The next morning, he showed up at a Los Angeles County sheriffs station with his mother, who falsely claimed she had been behind the wheel, investigators said.

Bernal resigned in July 2017 after police moved to fire him for making false statements, committing a hit-and-run and attempting to obstruct an internal affairs inquiry. Prosecutors declined to charge him with a misdemeanor hit-and-run charge. A sheriffs investigator said two of Bernals department colleagues who had crucial evidence declined to cooperate with the criminal investigation.

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Former Cpl. Ryan Bernal resigned in 2017 after Pasadena police moved to fire him. (South Pasadena Police Department)

The South Pasadena incident is one of hundreds of cases being examined by the newly created California Reporting Project, a collaboration of 33 news organizations including The Times that is analyzing internal police records released under the new law.

The collaborative has filed requests with more than 600 law enforcement agencies and so far received hundreds of records from incidents in which officers used significant or deadly force, or were disciplined for dishonesty or sexual misconduct.

The documents provide a glimpse into how California police agencies evaluate misconduct, force and shootings by their officers  issues that have dominated a national debate over policing and fueled criticism that law enforcement agencies arent transparent enough with the communities they serve. Those concerns helped drive efforts to pass the new law, Senate Bill 1421.

READ MORE: 4 questions we cant answer yet about California police 

Details of Bernals misconduct recently became public under the landmark transparency law, which requires the release of internal police records of shootings, use of force and confirmed cases of sexual assault and lying on duty.

The public finally gets to see inside one of the key institutions of our community, the police force, said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who teaches criminal law at Loyola Law School. For too long it was very difficult to try to pierce through the departments to see who these officers were and what they were doing.

So far, The Times has obtained dozens of files on misconduct and use of force. The records provide details about:

A Cathedral City detective suspended for three days for falsifying his time sheet in 2017

An Inglewood Unified School District police officer fired for lying during an internal investigation after his service weapon was stolen from his car in 2015

A Chula Vista police officer fired last year for having sex while on duty and in uniform in a public area

Still, a dozen police agencies have refused The Times requests to release records of incidents that happened before Jan. 1, when SB 1421 went into effect. Some argue the law does not explicitly allow access to the older files and that releasing them would violate long-standing protections on officer personnel records.

In Los Angeles, Orange, Contra Costa and other counties, judges have rejected similar arguments by police unions seeking to block the release of older records. The state Supreme Court also declined to consider an appeal by one of the unions.

Some officials have nevertheless sought to destroy records that would otherwise be public under the law.

In Downey, the police union asked a court to order the city to destroy disciplinary records older than five years, as the citys record retention guidelines allow. The cities of Long Beach and Inglewood recently destroyed years worth of records.

But at least 134 agencies have begun releasing records under the new law, revealing misconduct previously kept hidden from the public.

Award-winning officer

Ryan Bernal had been on the South Pasadena Police Department for about a year when Mothers Against Drunk Driving gave him an award for assiduous patrolling of DUI suspects culminating in arrests.

Four years later, he was out drinking with colleagues after work  downing as many as nine Old Fashioned cocktails, a shot of tequila and a beer  when he got behind the wheel of his Toyota Tundra around 12:45 a.m. Feb. 7, 2017, according to an internal affairs report.

Bernals vehicle struck a utility pole that broke from its foundation and landed on the patio roof of a house, leaving behind exposed wires, according to investigators. No one was hurt.

Several hours later, the records show, Bernal was with his mother when she told sheriffs officials she was the one who hit the pole and fled the scene. Later that day, Bernal called a South Pasadena police sergeant and admitted that he had been drinking that night, crashed his truck and left the scene but said he had not been drunk, according to the internal report.

Bernal told investigators he dozed off while driving due to a lack of sleep. The 31-year-old said he left the scene so that he could deal with this on my own time, believing he would be responsible only for property damage, the records show.

Dont tell anyone

But internal investigators concluded he was driving under the influence. They also found text messages that showed Bernal told a dispatcher in the department that he had been involved in the traffic collision just after it happened and directed her not to report it.

Dont tell anyone. If I need 2 ditch my truck I will, he wrote the co-worker as he was driven away by a ride-hailing service. Later that morning, he followed up: Hey, this convo and the one last night never happened.

Bernal denied directing his mother to lie for him, but investigators noted that he did not intervene when she confessed to the hit-and-run.

Efforts to reach Bernal and his attorney were unsuccessful.

The criminal probe

While the disciplinary inquiry resulted in Bernal being fired, a separate criminal investigation by the Sheriffs Department was stymied when two key witnesses at the South Pasadena Police Department declined to cooperate, according to a district attorneys memo.

Robert Bartl, the sergeant to whom Bernal first confessed, told a sheriffs deputy he would not testify in court, the memo said. And the dispatcher who had exchanged text messages with Bernal did not provide access to those records, according to the memo.

In a phone interview, Bartl said he doesnt remember a sheriffs deputy contacting him for a statement. I would have never told a sheriffs detective I wouldnt go to court. said Bartl, now an acting captain.

The dispatcher, Janee Hannible, declined to comment for this story.

L.A. County Sheriffs Deputy William Holverson, who investigated the crash, told The Times that Bernal and his Police Department colleagues declined to give statements.

Without being able to bring Bernals text messages and admission into court, there was little chance of prosecuting him, Holverson said.

The guy resigned  so hes out of everyones hair, Holverson said.

ben.poston@latimes.com

Twitter: @bposton

maya.lau@latimes.com

Twitter: @mayalau
The man charged with killing the reputed boss of the Gambino crime family wrote pro-Donald Trump slogans on his hand and flashed them to journalists before a court hearing Monday.

Anthony Comello, 24, was arrested Saturday in New Jersey in the death of Francesco Franky Boy Cali last week in front of his Staten Island, N.Y., home.

While waiting for a court hearing to begin in Toms River, N.J., in which he agreed to be extradited to New York, Comello held up his left hand.

READ MORE: Suspect arrested in killing of reputed Gambino family mob boss in New York 

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On it were scrawled pro-Trump slogans including MAGA Forever, an abbreviation of Trumps campaign slogan Make America Great Again. It also read United We Stand MAGA and Patriots In Charge. In the center of his palm he had drawn a large circle. It was not immediately clear why he had done so.

Comellos lawyer, Brian Neary, would not discuss the writing on his clients hand, nor would he say whether Comello maintains his innocence. Asked by reporters after the hearing what was on Comellos hand, Neary replied, Handcuffs.

Anthony Comello displays writing on his hand during his extradition hearing in Toms River, N.J. (Seth Wenig / Associated Press)

He referred all other questions to Comellos Manhattan lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, who said in an emailed statement that his client had been placed in protective custody because of serious threats that had been made against him, but he gave no details. Ocean County officials could not immediately be reached after hours on Monday.

Mr. Comellos family and friends simply cannot believe what they have been told, Gottlieb said. There is something very wrong here and we will get to the truth about what happened as quickly as possible.

The statement did not address the writing on Comellos hand, and a lawyer from Gottliebs firm declined to comment further Monday evening.

Comello sat with a slight smile in the jury box of the courtroom Monday afternoon as dozens of reporters and photographers filed into the room. When they were in place, Comello held up his left hand to display the writings as the click and whir of camera shutters filled the room with sound.

During the hearing, Comello did not speak other than to say, Yes, sir to the judge to respond to several procedural questions.

Cali, 53, was shot to death last Wednesday by a gunman who may have crashed his truck into Calis car to lure him outside. Police said Cali was shot 10 times.

READ MORE: East Coast mob sweep is straight out of a Scorsese movie 

Federal prosecutors referred to Cali in court filings in 2014 as the underboss of the Gambino family, once one of the countrys most powerful crime organizations. News accounts since 2015 said Cali had ascended to the top spot, though he was never charged with leading the gang. His only mob-related conviction came a decade ago, when he was sentenced to 16 months in prison in an extortion scheme involving a failed attempt to build a NASCAR track on Staten Island. He was released in 2009 and hasnt been in legal trouble since then.

Police have not said whether they believe Calis slaying was a mob hit or whether he was killed for some other motive.

The last Mafia boss to be killed in New York City was Gambino don Big Paul Castellano, who was assassinated in 1985.
Agents who work in a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that focuses on combating cross-border criminal activity feel ostracized.

TOP STORIES

The Agency That Helped Catch El Chapo Has a PR Problem

Agents from Homeland Security Investigations have broken up an international movie piracy ring, returned the hand of an ancient mummy to Egypt and helped arrest the drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. They also work for a branch within Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which means some, but not all, of its investigations involve immigrants in the country illegally. With Californias sanctuary law in effect, HSI agents say a few police departments have been pulling out of operations, sometimes at the last minute. Now theyre trying to better explain what HSI does.

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Restoring Faith in Justice?

Its been just over a month since William Barr was sworn in as attorney general, and the message hes brought to the Justice Department  a frequent target of President Trump and his supporters  is one of reassurance. Those close to Barr say that one of his goals is to bring the department out of the line of political fire. Unlike his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, Barr hasnt been humiliated via presidential tweet (yet). But Barr could face a tough test when special counsel Robert S. Mueller III releases his final report, whenever that may be.

More Politics

-- The Pentagon has provided Congress with a list of more than 400 military construction projects around the globe, including dozens in California, that it could raid to help pay for Trumps long-promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

-- Democratic presidential candidate Beto ORourke raised more than $6 million online during the first 24 hours after he announced his White House bid, the highest first-day number reported by any candidate so far, his campaign said.

-- Republican Rep. Devin Nunes is suing Twitter and several of its users for more than $250 million, accusing them of defamation and negligence. The defendants include two anonymous parody accounts, Devin Nunes Mom and Devin Nunes Cow.

A Dramatic Fall at Warner Bros.

Six years ago, when Kevin Tsujihara took the reins at Warner Bros., he was tasked with bringing the studio into its digital future. Two weeks ago, his new boss at AT&T Inc.-owned WarnerMedia gave him an expanded role at the company. Now, Tsujihara has stepped down as Warner Bros. chairman and chief executive amid allegations that he had an affair with aspiring actress Charlotte Kirk in 2013 and tried to help her get parts in movies and television shows.

A House of Worship Divided

The United Methodist Church is in the midst of a civil war. The issue: homosexuality. At a gathering last month, the churchs top policy-making body voted to tighten its ban on gay clergy and same-sex marriage and to increase the punishment for violations. But many California congregations, including one in the heart of Hollywood, long have operated in open defiance of the churchs stance.

The Rise of Online Anti-Vax Attacks

Doctors undergo years of education and training before they practice, but how to deal with being harassed on social media isnt usually part of the curriculum. These days, health providers who promote the benefits of vaccines online say they are coming under attack from organized groups who are vehemently opposed to vaccinations.

More Than Meets the Eye

People tend to think of the vision plans offered by employers as being like any other health insurance, writes consumer columnist David Lazarus. Theyre not. Instead, optometrists and opticians say plans such as VSP and EyeMed are mostly discount programs intended, at least in part, to promote sales of eyewear affiliated with each company. Read the eye-opening details here.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

After World War ll, the Pacific Electric Railway system was slowly dismantled  replaced by buses and freeways and giving rise to a grand transit conspiracy theory. As reported on this date in 1956, many of the Red Cars were broken up for scrap: A host of ghosts hovers over a monumental boneyard on Terminal Island in Los Angeles Harbor. There at the National Metal & Steel Corp. junkyard the hulks of hundreds of ancient streetcars are coming to rest at an acetylene torch-dissecting demise.

In March 1956, old Pacific Electric red cars sit at a Terminal Island junkyard, awaiting dismantling to become scrap metal. (Los Angeles Times Archive / UCLA)

CALIFORNIA

-- Many campaign donors to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey are longtime contributors to local politicians, but others include people accused of serious crimes or misconduct, or relatives and associates of the accused. After The Times asked Lacey about those contributors, her campaign returned donations to 13 individuals or business entities, totaling about $13,000.

-- L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has abruptly removed Ray Leyva, his second-in-command, replacing him with Assistant Sheriff Tim Murakami. Leyva was seen by many as a steadying influence.

-- Actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman have hired big-name law firms to represent them in the college admissions cheating scandal.

-- Are crowds really ruining the super bloom? Theres a debate over poppy mania.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- Black Panther and Captain Marvel are paving the way for a more inclusive Marvel Cinematic Universe. Is it evolving fast enough?

-- Netflix is producing or co-producing 50 films and series in Mexico, making the country one of the busiest international territories for the Los Gatos, Calif.-based streaming giant.

-- Hulus new series The Act follows the troubled and tragic real-life mother-daughter relationship of Dee Dee Blanchard and her daughter, Gypsy Rose.

-- MySpace reemerged from the shadows this week to announce that all music uploaded to the site before 2015 has been lost. Thats about 50 million songs from about 14 million artists.

NATION-WORLD

-- The Supreme Court has agreed to resolve two long-standing disputes and decide whether the Constitution includes rights to the insanity defense and a unanimous jury verdict of guilt.

-- The Southern Poverty Law Center has called on Michelle Obamas former chief of staff to lead a top-to-bottom examination of its workplace culture, less than a week after the anti-hate nonprofit fired co-founder Morris Dees for misconduct.

-- A former Pennsylvania pediatrician was sentenced to at least 79 years in prison for the sexual assault of 31 children, most of them patients, in a case that state medical regulators failed to act on nearly two decades ago.

-- Australias #EggBoy may face charges, but the 17-year-old has won global adulation for egging a senator who blamed Muslim fanatics for the mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques  a deadly attack allegedly carried out by a white supremacist.

-- A gunman killed three people and wounded five others during a mid-morning tram ride in the Dutch city of Utrecht, raising the specter of another extremist attack only days after the murderous rampage in New Zealand. Authorities seized a Turkish-born suspect in Mondays shooting.

BUSINESS

-- Boeing is facing a potential legal mess after the crashes of two 737 Max planes. The families of passengers who perished will have strong claims for damages.

-- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said its stunning that Elon Musk didnt seek pre-approval of any of his tweets about Tesla Inc. in the months since he was ordered by a judge to do so.

SPORTS

-- Filling out your March Madness bracket? Mark columnist Bill Plaschkes words: The Duke Blue Devils are not going to win the tournament.

-- The Clippers Lou Williams wants you to know the truth about his buzzer-beaters.

OPINION

-- A long-shot lawsuit in Connecticut against Remington might finally hold the gun industry accountable.

-- Beto-mania is proof that cult-of-personality politics is our new normal.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

-- Despite numerous red flags, Deutsche Bank handed well over $2 billion to Donald Trump, a man whom nearly all other banks had deemed untouchable. (New York Times)

-- Economist Alan Krueger, who served in the White House under President Obama, studied the minimum wage and introduced the notion of the Great Gatsby Curve, has died at 58. (Bloomberg)

-- Coyote fur is a booming fashion trend. Is it ethical? (The Guardian)

ONLY IN CALIFORNIA

Its been called the Dome House, the Gumby House and the Bubble House, but the home at 45 Berryessa Way in Hillsborough, Calif., is perhaps best known as the Flintstone House because of its boulder-like, orange and purple design. Two years ago, a former publisher of the San Francisco Examiner bought the property and began redesigning the backyard with artificial mushrooms, 15-foot dinosaurs, a giraffe, a mastodon and a sign reading Yabba Dabba Doo. The neighbors are saying, Yabba Dabba Dont.

If you like this newsletter, please share it with friends. Comments or ideas? Email us at headlines@latimes.com.
The new flight is proof that our investments in OHare are paying off, as more people throughout the world want to travel to Chicago than ever before, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in the statement. From the Midwest to the Middle East, OHare is making whats already the best-connected city in the nation more accessible for travelers throughout the world.
Its bad enough that Congress allows military assault-style weapons to be sold to the general public, making instruments of mass carnage available for the price of a laptop computer. Making matters worse, lawmakers have granted the gun industry near-blanket protection from liability for the damage inflicted with their weapons, unlike other companies that make or sell deadly products.

That shield against liability  the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act  was passed in response to a wave of lawsuits in the late 1990s against gun manufacturers and dealers for injuries and deaths caused by their goods. Last week, however, the Connecticut Supreme Court issued a ruling that might open a narrow breach in that outrageous legal wall protecting the industry.

The case centers on a lawsuit filed by families of nine victims of the 2012 gun massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The plaintiffs argue, among other things, that Remington, the manufacturer of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S semiautomatic rifle used in the massacre, should have reasonably foreseen that its advertisements touting the Bushmaster as, in effect, a weapon of war would lead someone to use it as one.

Is Remington responsible for Lanzas rampage because it marketed Bushmaster rifles as he-man death machines?

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As weve argued many times before, civilians have no business owning such firearms. Setting aside the broader debate over the proper level of gun control, these weapons of war should not be kept in neighborhood gun lockers, stuffed in closets, or  as is allowed in some states  carried around in the open under the pretext that the 2nd Amendment confers us all the right to walk around armed like soldiers of fortune. Congress did manage in the mid-1990s to ban assault-style weapons from civilian life temporarily, at the urging of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), but it let that ban lapse in 2004.

Lawmakers compounded the problem the next year by protecting the gun industry from being held accountable for the use of its products. While it may be legal to manufacture these weapons, no one compels the gunmakers to do so. They opt to design, manufacture and market these weapons with a stunning obliviousness to the carnage those sales can lead to.

As long as guns can be sold, people whose lives are upended when someone like Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer, uses such a weapon should be able to haul those they believe liable into court to try to persuade a judge and jury that the maker and seller bear some responsibility. They may not be able to prove Remington to be responsible in this case, but the victims in such incidents and their families should not be shut out of the courtroom because the gun lobby put in the fix with its water-carriers in Congress. The gun industry should bear the same liability risks as any other product manufacturer or seller  no more, and certainly no less.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

The judge in the Connecticut case allowed the claims to move forward because of a narrow exception to the federal ban on gun-industry lawsuits. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act allows some lawsuits, such as those over a defectively designed or manufactured gun, or if the maker or dealer broke state or federal laws in selling or marketing the gun. While the courts rejected most of the arguments posed by the Connecticut families, the state Supreme Court agreed last week that Remingtons macho and militaristic ad campaign for the Bushmaster may violate a Connecticut law barring companies from unscrupulous and unsafe marketing. Unless the case is successfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, it will now be up to a jury to decide whether the defendants broke the Connecticut law by marketing the XM15- E2S to civilians for criminal purposes, and that those wrongful marketing tactics caused or contributed to the Sandy Hook massacre.

Still, its hard to say whether the lawsuit by the Sandy Hook victims will succeed. Other lower courts have upheld the federal liability-protection law, raising the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court  which has taken on a gun-friendly tilt of late  will agree to hear an appeal if Remington files one. And even if it goes to trial, the case details get problematic.

Lanzas mother had lawfully obtained the weapons; Lanza killed her, then took the guns to school and unleashed his horrific attack. Is Remington responsible for Lanzas rampage because it marketed Bushmaster rifles as he-man death machines? That connection may be difficult to prove. But its an argument the families should have a right to make in court.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook.
Beto ORourke quickly discovered one of the biggest differences between running for the U.S. Senate against an incumbent loathed by Democrats and running for the presidency against an incumbent loathed by Democrats: The latter requires far more self-loathing.

His nascent presidential campaign raised more money in its first 24 hours than any other White House wannabe, which suggests that a lot of people across the country like the idea of the former Texas congressman facing off against President Trump in November 2020. Yet ORourke has spent a non-trivial amount of time in his campaigns opening days apologizing for something he said, did, or just is.

Sound familiar? Acts of contrition are like a rite of passage into the Democratic field this year. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) apologized for the sexual harassment that pockmarked his 2016 campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) apologized for the idiotic DNA test. Joe Biden hasnt formally declared, but hes already apologizing for all manner of past offenses.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), at least, has resisted the urge to apologize when challenged for her work as a prosecutor and state attorney general. Instead, she has stuck to the message that she was a progressive prosecutor, despite stinging criticism from criminal-justice-reform advocates on the left. Ditto for Sen. Amy Binder Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who has declined to apologize for being a reputed boss from hell.

The example set by Trump, who is famous for never apologizing, suggests that Harris and Klobuchar are taking the wiser course. But what works for a former reality TV star in the GOP doesnt necessarily translate to the Democratic Party.

This is a gross oversimplification, but Republicans in the 21st century dont seem to expect their candidates to apologize for their youthful indiscretions, personal or policy-wise. All that matters to GOP voters is that candidates believably pledge to deliver on their (conservative) promises when in office.

Think back to the Republican primaries in the last three elections. The party of American conservatives nominated three people with possibly the worst conservative credentials in the field. And yet they persuaded voters to look forward, not back.

Democrats, meanwhile, impose purity tests of progressivity on potential nominees that can turn a long record of public service into a minefield of liabilities. Folks forget that now-rejected policies such as dont ask, dont tell were actually seen as steps forward at the time they were adopted  the circumstances of past compromises have long been forgotten.

In a sense, thats a win for evidence-based decision-making  dont listen to what candidates say theyll do, look at what theyve done. But its fundamentally backward-looking, and it breeds a hunger for new faces with no record to hold against them. Hello, Pete Buttigieg!

Heres where its worth remembering another lesson of the Trump phenomenon: Experience matters in the White House. If Democrats are determined to punish candidates for having made choices in the past that look bad by todays standards, theyll wind up with a fresh face who makes beguiling promises but has little or no knowledge of how to deliver them.
Its pretty fantastic that a bumper crop of butterflies and fields of flowers have inspired so many people to turn off their screens and enjoy the show that Mother Nature puts on for free all the time.

But, really, why must some people show their appreciation for nature by destroying it?

Thats apparently been the case out at Walker Canyon near Lake Elsinore, where hordes of people have traveled many miles in their climate-changing machines to see the colorful poppy-covered hills  and then trample through the delicate blooms. The crowds and traffic got so bad that Lake Elsinore city officials shut down access to the canyon Sunday. Thats only a temporary reprieve, and as spring hasnt quite sprung, there will be likely more super bloom carnage to come here and in places like the high desert and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

Its a sad fact that nature has to be protected from humans who might otherwise love it to death. During the government shutdown earlier this year, the national parks remained open to visitors, though their rangers and other staff were furloughed. Many of those who traveled to Yosemite or Joshua Tree national parks (probably in a gasoline-powered vehicle) to enjoy their unspoiled loveliness without having to pay the usual entrance fee thanked the park service by dumping trash among the cacti or pine trees and otherwise destroying the environment. (The Los Angeles Times editorial board was appalled at the bad behavior and urged the national parks to be shut down until the government was reopened.)

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Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

Even when humans arent squashing flowers or leaving their fast food wrappers (and worse) behind, theres something perverse about how we experience nature. When the super bloom of 2017 enticed thousands of people to pile into their cars and burn gallons of gasoline just to view some flowers, I couldnt help but wonder how many tons of carbon dioxide were added to the atmosphere by all the flower tourists, and what that meant for future super blooms.

Whats more, you dont need to drive for an hour or two to see some great flower action this year. Its all around us. Look at your own neighborhood. The poppies are popping right now in my dense and urban Los Angeles neighborhood, along busy sidewalks and freeways. And if your neighborhood is bereft of flowers, you can fix that next year by buying some native wildflower seeds now and planting them around your yard.

But if you just cant stay away and must join the crowds to see the blooms this year, then at least take a minute to consider the sage advice imparted in the video posted below.
A Supreme Court decision Tuesday morning that backed the governments power to indefinitely detain some immigrants wasnt much of a surprise, though it was still a disappointment.

And once again, Justice Steven G. Breyer in a dissent zeroed in on the issue to which the conservative majority of the court has remained blind: The government should not be able to detain immigrants indefinitely without giving them a chance to argue for bond before an immigration judge.

The case, Nielsen versus Preap, hinged on murky wording and timing. A 1996 immigration law says the government shall take into custody any alien convicted of specific crimes when the alien is released, without regard to whether the alien is released on parole, supervised release, or probation, and without regard to whether the alien may be arrested or imprisoned again for the same offense.

Note the word when.

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Mony Preap was born in a Cambodian refugee camp and became a lawful permanent resident in 1981. In 2006 he was convicted of two misdemeanor pot possession charges, and seven years later immigration agents detained him under that law as they sought to deport him.

Preap joined with the American Civil Liberties Union in a class-action suit arguing that the wording of the law meant the government could only detain him if he was grabbed as he was released from jail, which the government missed. By a long shot.

That sounds like a political decision, not a legal one.

A district court judge in San Francisco and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, but the conservative Supreme Court majority did not. The opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito, held that Congress enacted mandatory detention precisely out of concern that such individualized [bond] hearings could not be trusted to reveal which deportable criminal aliens who are not detained might continue to engage in crime [or] fail to appear for their removal hearings.

Thats preposterous  the government can detain all lawful immigrants convicted of certain crimes after they have served their sentence, and who it is seeking to deport, because some of them might commit another crime? And none have a right to court review of their detention?

Thats precisely the kind of decision that is made every day in bail and bond hearings.

Alito went further, essentially saying that given lack of cooperation with immigration enforcement by local officials around the country  so-called sanctuary jurisdictions  it was necessary to go with the looser interpretation of the timing of the detention.

That sounds like a political decision by the court, not a legal one.

And it avoids the more significant issue which the court also sidestepped in the Jennings vs. Rodriguez case last year, in which it ruled that federal law does not grant immigrants facing deportation  a civil matter  the right to a bond hearing even if they are held for more than six months, though it sent the case back to the 9th Circuit to determine if the Constitution granted that right. Breyer, who also dissented in the Jennings vs. Rodriguez decision (Alito again writing for the majority), hit that nail on the head in his dissent in the new ruling:

Under the Governments view, the aliens subject to detention without a bail hearing may have been released from criminal custody years earlier, and may have established families and put down roots in a community. These aliens may then be detained for months, sometimes years, without the possibility of release; they may have been convicted of only minor crimes  for example, minor drug offenses, or crimes of moral turpitude such as illegally downloading music or possessing stolen bus transfers; and they sometimes may be innocent spouses or children of a suspect person. Moreover, for a high percentage of them, it will turn out after months of custody that they will not be removed from the country because they are eligible by statute to receive a form of relief from removal such as cancellation of removal. These are not mere hypotheticals.

No, they are real people being held in jails indefinitely while the swamped immigration court system tries to determine whether they can stay or must go, at huge risk to the stability of their families.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

It is reasonable for the government to seek to detain people it genuinely believes pose a threat to public safety or national security, or who are a flight risk.

But it should not have the power to deprive a class of people of their liberty because some might commit a crime. And it certainly shouldnt be able to deprive anyone of freedom for a protracted period without court oversight. We dont stand for that in criminal cases, and we shouldnt stand for it in civil deportation proceedings.

But the immigration law involved in this case orders just that. The law is wrong and Congress should fix it. Alternatively, the Supreme Court should strike it down. In fact, it should have already.

As Breyer argued, it is fundamental to civil liberties that the government cannot seize and imprison someone without due process of law. Yet this immigration law mandating detention of people in a civil proceeding because they previously were convicted and sentenced in a criminal matter  one that might not even involve jail time  flouts that bedrock principle.

I fear, Breyer wrote, that the Courts contrary interpretation will work serious harm to the principles for which American law has long stood.

Indeed.

As for Preap, he was eventually released  after he won permission to remain in the country. So Preap, living here lawfully, was deprived of his freedom for nothing.

And only because a misguided and patently unfair immigration law said he had to be.
The news held no surprises. When U.S. News & World Report released its much-anticipated annual rankings of graduate and professional schools last week, Yale once again ranked No. 1 among law schools, a spot it has held since 1987, when the news magazine first entered the law-school ranking business.

But Yale, which is both my alma mater and my longtime employer, is not No. 1 in all respects. Prospective law students should treat the U.S. News rankings  and any other ranking system, for that matter  with caution and skepticism.

Rankings can be helpful in a crude first analysis, if used as one among many tools for prospective students. But the U.S. News rankings have serious limitations, relying as they do on debatable and sometimes perverse weights and formulas.

The biggest factors in the rankings are lawyer and peer assessments, in which law deans, judges, practitioners, relatively junior professors and others are asked to rate programs around the country. But how much do they really know about the schools they are rating? Lawyer and peer assessments risk being simply an echo chamber in which a given law school ranks high this year largely because of a vague sense by distant and ill-informed observers that it is a top law school. Why? Often because it ranked well in previous years.

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The U.S. News rankings have serious limitations, relying as they do on debatable and sometimes perverse weights and formulas.

Other metrics used in the rankings are at best imperfect proxies and at worst vulnerable to strategic manipulation by school administrators. One factor involves employment rates at graduation and 10 months later. The rankings dont fully reflect how good those jobs are or what kinds of law various graduates end up practicing. Yale may be tops for anyone seeking to clerk for a federal judge, but probably not for someone wanting to practice patent law or oil and gas law.

The U.S. News rankings can also make applicants feel that only the tippy-top schools are worth attending, but there are lots of strong schools beyond the top three (Yale, Stanford, Harvard)  or even the top 30. Some regional schools are particularly good at familiarizing students with state law and state court systems and preparing them for leadership in state government and local hubs of national law firms.

Dont get me wrong. I think Yale is a great school, and we have been blessed by the current ranking system. No other institution of higher learning  no Ivy League college, no medical school, no business school, no university program in any major sport for that matter  has enjoyed anything remotely like Yale Law Schools three-decade dominance in U.S. News standings.

And I have benefited personally from the system. The maiden law-school rankings issue of U.S. News in 1987 featured a large and flattering picture of me in the classroom. For most of the last decade, I have been closely involved in admitting and recruiting Yales top prospective students. Thanks to U.S. News, most recruits need little persuasion; we have them at hello. So my grapes are not sour and my gripes are not self-serving.

But here is some truth in advertising. Yes, Yale has some strong pluses. Were a tight-knit school with a grand tradition of academic excellence and an abiding commitment to public service. Our alumni include dozens of notable law professors, two modern presidents, four current justices, five sitting senators, Californias last (and longest-serving) governor, and three justices of the California Supreme Court. Many of the most important legal ideas of the last 60 years were born at Yale Law. But we have real flaws.

We have failed to achieve true intellectual diversity; our litigation clinics tilt left, and in my field, constitutional law, we need more top conservative professors. Several other schools do a better job populating the top tier of the private bar (Biglaw). Because we are small, our curriculum is at times spotty. Some Los Angeles schools, especially the sometimes underappreciated UCLA (ranked 15th), may be a better and more affordable fit for those intending to practice in Southern California.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

Serious applicants should consult leading rankings beyond U.S. News, and should pore over the law-school data freely available from the ABA to create their own individualized weightings and formulas. Those desiring a large school with more courses and classmates might rank Harvard Law No. 1. Stanford Law might be best for someone into high-tech startups.

And there are many superb national schools beyond this triumvirate, including the University of Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Northwestern, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia, among others. If you already have crushing undergraduate debt, the law school offering the best financial deal should perhaps top your list.

Its so easy in sports. The team that wins most consistently is best. No such clear and widely accepted rules define which law school is best. Notwithstanding last weeks rankings, in truth there is no No. 1.

Akhil Reed Amar is a professor of constitutional law at Yale Law School. His most recent book is The Constitution Today.
As we contemplate ways to address the disproportionate number of people imprisoned in America, one potential impediment to change is the large corporations that profit from incarceration.

Between 2000 and 2016, the number of people housed in private prisons in the United States increased by 47% compared with an overall rise in the prison population of 9%, according to an analysis from the Sentencing Project.

Before the genesis of the war on drugs in the 1980s, America rarely used private prisons.

But after the implementation of draconian mandatory sentences during the Reagan administration, incarceration rates jumped, and private corporations rushed in to fill the need for more prison cells in a hurry.

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Corporate executives and shareholders should not profit from putting people in cages.

The system that has developed is completely counter to our values, particularly in a state as progressive as California. We should not be part of a prison system in which there is a profit incentive to lock up more people.

There is now an effort in the state legislature to ban this backward and immoral practice in California. AB 32, which is gaining broad support from legislators and the governor, provides a common-sense solution that would ban new contracting out of incarceration to private prison companies starting in 2020 and sets an end date of 2028 for the removal of all state inmates from private prisons.

California currently contracts with two of the largest firms in the private-prison industry, GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corp. of America), both of which have faced numerous lawsuits over the years accusing them of substandard medical care and treatment of inmates.

CEOs and shareholders of private prison companies have an incentive to minimize investments and maximize profits for shareholders, which can result in cutting corners to lower operating costs, including worse treatment of inmates and worse pay for prison guards.

A 2016 report from the Justice Department found that private prisons regularly failed to ensure inmates were receiving medical care. They reported more than twice as many inmate-on-staff assaults as in state-run prisons, and reported a 28% higher rate of inmate-on-inmate assaults. At La Palma Correctional Center, a private prison in Arizona that holds California inmates and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, a 2010 state inspector general report discovered that the facility overused solitary confinement, provided insufficient services and had numerous security issues.

And although the contracting out of detention was done in part to save money, recent research has cast doubt on whether private prisons actually save the government money.

An investigation into the prisons in Arizona discovered that inmates in the states private prisons rarely cost less than those in state-run prisons, and in some cases cost as much as $1,600 more per inmate per year. The report also noted that private prisons can push down costs by refusing to take prisoners with severe illnesses or a history of violence, something state-run prisons cant do.

GEO Group and CoreCivic are also key partners in President Trumps inhumane immigration agenda, as both operate detention centers throughout the country.

Our state is unfortunately one of the top revenue-producing states for both companies, and state lawmakers should do everything they can to divorce California from this toxic relationship.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

That shouldnt be terribly difficult. California uses only five private facilities to house inmates. Together, the prisons incarcerate only about 3.5% of the states total prison population, half of them in state and half in Arizona.

Transferring those inmates to other prisons and not sending new ones is entirely feasible within the time frame outlined in AB 32, particularly given the precipitous decline in Californias prison population since a federal court ordered officials in 2009 to reduce dangerous and inhumane prison overcrowding.

While the expansion of private prisons is not the only problem in Californias often slow-moving criminal justice system, there is something particularly galling about people making money off of increasing the size of our prison population.

Corporate executives and shareholders should not profit from putting people in cages, and its time to end the archaic and cruel practice of private prisons in California.

Jackie Lacey is the Los Angeles County district attorney.
To the editor: As a citizen and former educator, I am angered by the distorted sense of familial love that the parents accused of bribing their children into elite colleges demonstrate. I am disturbed that this scandal might cause worthy low-income students to lose faith in their own life struggle to make it into the college of their choice. (The college cheating scandal hit these Eastside high school kids hard, column, March 17)

They already must overcome complex life challenges along the way just to knock on the door. When applying for college, they also must deal with a very complex admissions process that they now understand can tilt in favor of the privileged.

As these young, hardworking students deal with this scandal, I hope they will have an epiphany about their self-worth and their right and privilege to attend the college of their choice. They should know that the rest of us depend on their honorable struggle and life experience to keep defining our democratic way of life.

Those who bribe and cheat to get their kids into college commit a crime against our entire society because they use their abundant blessings to dishonor their families, weaken our democracy and stain the American dream.

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Maria Casillas, Sherman Oaks

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To the editor: I graduated from college at age 30.

I was married at 19 and had less than two years of work completed at UCLA. I had two babies very quickly and could see that getting that degree was essential to all of our futures.

I went to Los Angeles Valley College at night and later, when my kids were in elementary school, I attended Cal State Northridge. My husband had the opportunity to work in San Francisco, so I transferred to San Francisco State and earned my degree and my teaching credential. When I returned to Los Angeles and was teaching high school, I enrolled in graduate studies and earned by masters degree.

That 15-year journey is probably my biggest source of personal pride. I cannot imagine a parent stealing that opportunity from his or her child.

Phyllis Molloff, Fallbrook

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To the editor: For those wondering why our kids face so much pressure on our kids to get into a fancy college, all they have to do is read Steve Lopezs March 15 column on the values we are teaching our children.

Lopez waxes on about morals, life and meaning, and then goes on for much of the article quoting an educational advocate and his information from Stanford Universitys Center on Adolescence  not Arizona State University, not Cal State Fullerton, not even my alma mater UC Santa Barbara, but Stanford.

Although I had one heck of a good time at UCSB.

Tim Marshall, Corona del Mar

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To the editor: At first, I thought the Column One article by reporter Thomas Curwen was going to describe the long-overdue removal of the unsightly and outdated oil rigs that mar the Santa Barbara coastline.

But then the author waxed nostalgic about his industry-hosted visit to one of the oil platforms, with terms such as the nearly iconic, inescapable status in the California landscape of the platforms, and observations such as, At twilight, the platforms brighten the horizon with their mysterious, even pretty lights.

I volunteered with a bird rescue organization after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. So yes, its understandable that the decommissioning of these archaic structures is being celebrated by environmentalists, activists and residents of the Santa Barbara coast. It should be celebrated by all of us.

Julia Borovay, Redondo Beach

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To the editor: As I sit writing, children march worldwide against the tyranny of the world oil economy and its effect on their precarious future.

I read with mirth the full-page spread about Southern Californias beloved (drips with sarcasm and black goop) offshore oil platforms awaiting removal. I dont know what was funnier, the claim that more oil production means less seepage, or the spin about oil rigs becoming reefs.

If anybody believes these rigs are indeed artificial reefs, I have a million old shopping carts to sell you.

Joey Racano, Los Osos

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A parody Twitter account purporting to be owned by an unhappy cow living on one of Rep. Devin Nunes Iowa farms attacked the California Republican as a treasonous cowpoke and udder-ly worthless during the 2018 campaign.

Now Nunes wants $250 million in damages from Twitter for failing to police the accounts of @DevinCow as well as another parody, @DevinNunesMom, and a political activist named Liz Mair.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Virginia, Nunes complained that all three defamed him in hundreds of tweets over several months last year. It also seeks $350,000 in punitive damages, though legal experts say the suit has little chance of moving forward.

Nunes, a close ally of President Trump, says in his complaint that he endured what no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life. He said it caused him to win reelection last November by a narrower margin than in the past and distracted him from running the House investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election.

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Among other things, Nunes, from Tulare, cited a variety of tweets that used crude humor to accuse him of criminal behavior, including soliciting prostitutes.

Most politicians and celebrities today face similar parody accounts. Many just ignore them, though a few play along. A Twitter account called @Betosblog lampoons Democratic presidential candidate Beto ORouke. Parody accounts of President Trump have hundreds of thousands of followers.

The @DevinNunesMom account was suspended by Twitter after his actual mother, Toni Dian Nunes, complained.

But if Nunes hoped his lawsuit would intimidate his trollers into silence, the move may have backfired.

The @DevinCow account has jumped from just over 1,000 followers to more than 137,000 followers as of Tuesday afternoon, and still rising.

Mair said on Twitter she will not comment publicly on the complaint.

As part of the suit, Nunes wants Twitter to disclose the real names of the people who created the parody accounts. The suit also accuses Twitter of bias against conservatives.

Nunes has clashed with his media critics before. Last year, he sent out a glossy, 40-page mailer shortly before the 2018 election attacking the Fresno Bee after its editorial board criticized him repeatedly.

Twitter has indicated in the past that parody accounts do not violate its rules as long as the profile or user name states that the account does not belong to the person its satirizing. The company has denied a political bias but has not commented specifically on Nunes suit.

Nunes, who last year cosponsored legislation titled the Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act, has a hard road ahead to winning the suit.

Courts have generally ruled that satirical works are opinion, not a representation of fact, and are therefore not subject to libel and defamation laws.

First Amendment experts say the Communications Decency Act protects large social media companies like Twitter from being held liable for what users publish on their platforms.

The courts have traditionally ruled that anonymous speech is protected under the 1st Amendment, and that social media sites are by their nature a place where people engage in outrageous opinion  rather than fact, said Alex Abdo, litigation director for the Knight First Amendment Center at Columbia University.

And since Nunes is a public official, he faces a higher burden to prove libel or defamation.

The claim against Twitter is almost certain to get dismissed very quickly and my guess is the rest of it  is likely to get dismissed very quickly, Abdo said.

The lawsuit was announced to conservative media outlets first, and Nunes told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night that Tuesdays suit is the first of many he plans to file.

We have to hold all of these people accountable, because if we dont, our 1st Amendment rights are at stake here, Nunes said. How is it possible that I can be attacked relentlessly, hundreds of times a day by fake accounts that [Twitter] claim in their terms of service should not be there?

The latest from Washington 

More stories from Sarah D. Wire 
After weeks of delay, the Pentagon on Monday provided Congress with a list of more than 400 military construction projects around the globe, including dozens in California, that it could raid to help pay for President Trumps long-promised wall at the southwest border.

The 21-page document includes more than $12.8 billion in projects that the Defense Department conceivably could tap under the emergency Trump has declared on the border.

They include military housing, school building repairs, hazardous material facilities, security measures, naval piers and airfields.

The list names 31 planned military construction projects, with congressional appropriations of more than $1.1 billion, in California alone.

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Among them are fire emergency and electrical upgrades at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, airfield maintenance at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and a new pier at Naval Base San Diego.

The total funding on the list is nearly four times the $3.7 billion that Trump has said he needs from military construction projects to fulfill his campaign pledge to build a wall. Nearly 700 miles of border barriers were built under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama.

After shutting down parts of the government for 35 days in an impasse with Congress over wall funding, Trump declared a national security and humanitarian emergency on the southwest border in mid-February when Congress again rebuffed his demands for billions for the wall.

A bipartisan majority in Congress responded by passing a resolution to overturn the presidents emergency declaration. Trump then issued his first veto, clearing the way for the White House to take money from the Pentagon budget to build the border barriers.

The prospect that the White House could raid military projects caused widespread concern on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers are traditionally fiercely protective of military and other construction projects in their districts, which can take years of careful negotiation to get approved.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers have complained to the White House for weeks that they have not received the list of projects potentially on the chopping block.

Congressional staffers said they were told that the Pentagon gave its list of approved construction projects to the White House last week.

The list released Monday still does not identify which or how many projects will be raided for the presidents wall, which could take years to build.

The appearance of any project within the pool does not mean that the project will, in fact, be used, the document states.

That led to confusion and complaints on Capitol Hill.

This list is wholly insufficient and just tells Congress what projects it already approved, said Evan Hollander, the Democratic spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee. This appears to be nothing more than another stall tactic designed to delay the political consequences of President Trumps emergency declaration.

It is important to be clear that this is not a list of projects that will definitively be impacted, said Leacy Burke, spokeswoman for Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

A spokesman for acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said senators had asked for a list of unawarded military construction projects and that was completed over the weekend.

Lt. Col. Joe Buccino said the Homeland Security Department still had not given the Pentagon a list of specific border barrier construction projects that the military would then use to determine which ones support use of the armed forces, as the law requires.

The Homeland Security Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The Pentagon has emphasized to lawmakers that it will not tap military construction projects already contracted or that will be contracted in fiscal 2019, which began in October.

Lawmakers also were assured that construction of military housing, barracks or dormitories would not be touched, but several housing projects were on the list.

It also includes projects in Arizona that Shanahan had said would not be touched.

The White House has said the military construction money will be used to pay for the wall only after other funding sources have been tapped.

The House Armed Services subcommittee on military readiness will hold a hearing on the project list in coming weeks, according to staff for the chairman, Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove).

They will examine whether diverting funds for planned construction projects will affect what the Pentagon says is a $116-billion backlog in military facility maintenance needs.

Garamendi met with Shanahan seven times in the last week and a half, aides said.

In a letter to Shanahan, Garamendi and Rep Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), the committees ranking Republican, asked for the list of projects, details on how diverting the funds would affect their completion date, and justification for how doing so would help with national security, as required under the law that regulates national emergency declarations.

The House is scheduled to vote on the presidents veto on March 26, but neither chamber is likely to have the two-thirds votes necessary to override the veto and halt his emergency declaration.

Now that members of Congress can see the potential impact this proposal could have on projects in their home states, I hope they will take that into consideration before the vote to override the presidents veto, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

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(The differences) are primarily going to be different chefs in the different locations. They're both central. They're both biz district locations. But obviously the character of the buildings and the spaces, we always take those into consideration, he said. It's interesting how we will take one chef that has been tested well in one location and put them in another location across town, and they won't do well, so you really do have to figure out what that customer base is like at a very micro level.
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan released a list of military construction projects Monday that could lose funding to help pay for a wall on the U.S. southern border.

The list of vulnerable projects includes a number previously reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune, including proposed infrastructure for Osprey aircraft at Naval Air Station North Island, new landing pads for F-35Bs at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and a replacement pier at Naval Base San Diego.

President Trump in February declared a national emergency after a monthlong government shutdown that began when Congress refused to fund his proposed border wall. The emergency declaration authorizes him to divert funds from military construction to national security infrastructure, in this case at the border.

He has called for up to $3.6 billion to be diverted, but its still unclear exactly which projects will be slashed or delayed.

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The Defense Department said in a statement that its list of possible projects to cut includes all military construction projects in which contracts had not yet been awarded as of Dec. 31.

That list encompasses $12.9 billion in planned construction nationwide, including more than $1 billion in projects in California, with nearly $600 million in the San Diego area.

Some projects up for possible diversion include a $47-million potable water project and a $15-million fire emergency response station, which are part of about $175 million in projects slated for Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

Also listed is almost $170 million in projects connected to the new Navy SEAL complex in Coronado.

Military housing and barracks projects would not be affected, the Pentagon said.

The Pentagons list provides greater clarity than a similar list released last month by the House Armed Services Committee.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate both voted to block the emergency declaration, but Trump vetoed their resolution Friday.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, admonished the Trump administration in a statement Monday.

What President Trump is doing is a slap in the face to our military that makes our border and the country less secure, Reed said. He is planning to take funds from real, effective operational priorities and needed projects and divert them to his vanity wall.

In a statement Friday on his first presidential veto, Trump said the situation at the border has reached a breaking point and that it demanded immediate action.

The current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency, Trump said in a statement.

Dyer writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

andrew.dyer@sduniontribune.com
NASAs New Horizons spacecraft successfully flew past the most distant world ever explored by humans on New Years Day. Now, a clearer picture of the 22-mile-long object known as Ultima Thule is beginning to take shape  and it has scientists baffled.

Weve never seen anything like this, said Alan Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission. Its a mystery.

The New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past Ultima Thule on Jan.1 at a speed of 32,000 mph, furiously collecting data as it went. At the moment of closest approach it was about 2,200 miles from the small worlds surface, or roughly the distance from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.

Ultima Thule is so small and far from the sun that before New Horizons hurdled past it, scientists had little idea what it might look like. The spacecraft revealed that it is what is known as a contact binary object, which means it is made of two distinct lobes that fused together long ago.

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It looks like two things stuck together, which is exactly what a contact binary is, Stern said.

The first images sent back by New Horizons suggested that it resembled a snowman, but as more data have trickled in from the spacecraft, that initial impression has shifted.

The New Horizons team now thinks that Ultima Thule looks more like a snowman that has been tipped on its side and smushed. Imagine if a kid made two balls out of clay, stuck them next to each other and then pressed them both down with the palm of her hand.

These are three dimensional bodies, but they are not spheres, said William McKinnon, a New Horizons investigator from Washington University in St. Louis. And they are stuck together in a very specific way  end to end.

The researchers have also determined that the larger lobe known as Ultima is significantly flatter than the smaller lobe  Thule.

We still dont know the answer why, but we are working on it, McKinnon said.

Part of what makes Ultima Thule so fascinating to scientists is its pristine condition. It is 4.1 billion miles from Earth and receives so little light and warmth from the sun that its chemistry and structure have remained frozen in time since it formed 4.5 billion years ago, Stern said.

In addition, it is part of the slow-moving, sparsely populated region of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt, where impacts are infrequent and gentle when they do happen.

That low-frequency, low-intensity environment has helped ensure that Ultima Thule has remained intact and essentially unchanged for billions of years.

It provides a treasure trove of information about the birth of the planets, Stern said.

The geographical features of Ultima Thule, including the lack of stress fractures on its surface, indicate that the two lobes were initially in orbit around each other and came together gently at a speed of no more than 7 mph, scientists said.

They believe the two objects were once in orbit around each other, but that orbit shrank and shrank until the two distinct bodies merged into one.

Both Ultima and Thule have lumpy-looking surfaces that resemble monkey bread. In fact, the New Horizons team thinks the two may have formed in a similar way with individual space rocks sticking together, just like how you put individual balls of dough next to each other in a pan to form one loaf of the sweet bread.

Scientists have also determined that Ultima Thules surface is extremely dark and very red. The darkest areas reflect just 7% of the dim sunlight it receives while the brightest areas reflect about 14% of that light.

It appears to be composed of water ice, organic compounds and methanol, and its topography includes rolling hills, troughs and pits.

Its a small world with mouthwatering geology, said Kirby Runyon, a New Horizons science team member from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

The New Horizons spacecraft will continue to send data from its Ultima Thule close encounter for at least another year. Scientists are hoping that somewhere in that data they will find evidence of a satellite around Ultima Thule, which would help them resolve the objects density.

We know that 35% of cold classical Kuiper Belt objects have satellites, Stern said. We havent seen one yet, but we have more sky around this object to explore.

In the meantime, the mission team is already thinking about what New Horizons might explore next.

We will be in the Kuiper Belt until the late 2020s, so we have almost a decade to search for another object and hopefully find something, Stern said. In that happens we will be probing accretion not 4 billion, but 5, 6 or 7 billion miles from the sun.

deborah.netburn@latimes.com

Do you love science? I do! Follow me @DeborahNetburn and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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With the solemn expression of someone lost in a memory, Dilan Oezkan gazed at the vacant lot where the Costa Mesa Motor Inn once stood.

This is the place where I first realized I was homeless and what that meant, he said.

The now-defunct motel  once a hotbed for drug dealing and prostitution  served as Oezkans home from ages 8 to 10. He lived in countless motels throughout his childhood, but the Motor Inn remains the one he remembers most.

Returning to the site for the first time recently, Oezkan wondered what became of the other motel kids who used to live there, whether they overcame vast odds and found their way out of poverty.

This brings back loads of hardship and struggle, Oezkan, now 18, said. But I never thought I would be where I am now.

Dilan Oezkan walks along the fence, remembering what it was like to live in the now torn down Costa Mesa Motor Inn property in Costa Mesa. He was able to fight his way out of poverty and get his own apartment. He will soon attend college. (Don Leach / Times OC)

Fleeing a situation he described as abusive, Oezkan came to the United States in 2005 from Germany with his mother and siblings.

We had no money, Oezkan said. We were instantly homeless when we landed.

The Oezkans spent two years in Texas homeless shelters. When the shelters were at capacity, Oezkan slept outside with the other boys and men.

Oezkans mother met the man who would eventually become her childrens stepfather at one of the shelters, and they all moved to Orange County in 2007 to be closer to his family.

Oezkans childhood was defined by instability, living in motels throughout the county and sleeping in bedrooms with his four siblings.

He attended seven elementary and six middle schools.

It was rough as a kid, Oezkan said. Switching schools and leaving friends was hard. It was embarrassing to go to school a lot of the time because I was wearing clothes where my shorts were up to my thighs, and my jacket was longer than my shorts, so it looked like I wasnt wearing any pants. I would get made fun of a lot for looking homeless.

Dilan Oezkan at school in a scene from the film, Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County, by Alexandra Pelosi. (Courtesy of Dilan Oezkan)

While living at the Motor Inn, Oezkan and his family were featured in a 2010 documentary by Alexandra Pelosi, Homeless: the Motel Kids of Orange County. The film depicted the struggles of homeless children living in one of the wealthiest counties in the country.

There were 27,119 homeless students countywide in the 2016-17 school year, according to the Orange County Department of Education. They made up 5.5% of the 490,430 enrolled students. OCDE spokesman Ian Hanigan said the 2017-18 numbers have yet to be released.

Pelosi, daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said Oezkan has maintained contact with her since her documentary was filmed.

A lot of these kids, the light had gone out in their life by age 10, but Dilan still had that spark, Pelosi said. Dilan had dreams  all kinds of fantastic dreams about living in a big house and how hed make it out. But the rest of them didnt even dream. Their souls were already crushed by age 10.

I was 10 years old, so it was fun to have the camera follow me around, Oezkan said. Years later I was like, Oh it was actually a documentary about the big struggles of my life. Now every time I watch the documentary I break down and cry.

Though his stepfather was unemployed for some time, Oezkans mother worked as a certified nursing assistant. Even so there were times when the family didnt have enough money for a motel and slept outdoors.

Despite the lack of constancy, Oezkan and his sister Celine Oezkan studied all the time. From early on, both realized that education was the key to escaping the cycle of homelessness.

Trials continued when Oezkans mother kicked him out at age 15 following a disagreement. He was able to stay with friends until the Illumination Foundation, an Orange-based nonprofit, started funding an apartment for him in Costa Mesa about a year ago.

Dilan is such an incredible young man, said Paul Leon, president and chief executive of the Illumination Foundation. Hes had the hardest of the hard in his life. He was able to be so resilient, despite constantly being faced with different obstacles. He understood early on that he needed to get an education. For him to stick with it under those incredible odds, its a tribute to his spirit and fortitude.

Dilan Oezkan, left, with his brother Ben at school in a scene from the film, Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County, by Alexandra Pelosi. (Courtesy of Dilan Oezkan)

Oezkan will graduate from Saddleback High School in Santa Ana with a 4.4 weighted GPA. He was recently presented with a certificate of recognition for his academic performance in the face of adversity by Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do.

As we make monumental progress on homelessness in Orange County, Dilans story is a reminder to us all about what can be accomplished, Do said. Dilans work ethic, positive attitude and perseverance is an inspiration to us all.

Oezkan plans to attend college in the fall. Hes been accepted to San Francisco State, Cal Poly Pomona and Sacramento State, and is still waiting to hear back from Columbia, Penn., Georgetown and USC.

Pelosi wrote him letters of recommendation.

Dilan still has a tough road ahead of him, Pelosi said. Theres that bridge that young people need to cross in order to make it into adulthood. Thats the bridge Dilan is on. It could still go terribly wrong if he doesnt get the money for college. I just pray he makes it across that bridge.

Oezkan will be the second of his siblings to attend college. Celine Oezkan attends Chapman University on a full scholarship.

The Costa Mesa Motor Inn before it was demolished last year. Though the motel provided an affordable housing avenue for the homeless, it had become known for attracting crime. (File photo)

Oezkan plans to double major in political science and history. If he ever reaches elected office he plans to use my authority toward ending homelessness.

He currently has scholarships that provide about $6,500 in support each year. To attend the top schools on his list, Oezkan is going to need to secure more financial help. He knows whatever job he gets in college wont cover tuition.

Pelosi finds her former subject worthy of financial aid.

Dilan deserves way more than I ever got in my life, Pelosi said. If there is meritocracy in America, this kid is going to get into a good college, and he is going to get scholarship money to pay for it. If he doesnt, its a true indictment against the whole system. He did everything that was asked of him. Nobody could be more worthy.
Despite objections from the defendants lawyer, an Orange County judge ruled Tuesday that a Costa Mesa man can be held for trial on murder charges related to a hit-and-run crash last year that killed a 2-year-old and her grandmother in Irvine.

Its a dangerous route that were going down, your honor, attorney Gary Pohlson told Superior Court Judge Douglas Hatchimonji as he argued that his client should only be charged with manslaughter.

Pohlsons client, Alec Scott Abraham, 21, originally did face manslaughter charges, but after Abrahams arrest at a Costa Mesa park the day after the June 10 crash, the Orange County district attorneys office upgraded both counts to murder.

If convicted, Abraham could face up to 30 years to life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.

On Tuesday, prosecutors argued that the increased charges are justified because Abraham knew his reckless driving could kill someone and he decided to continue anyway.

How could he not know? prosecutor Mark Birney said before describing excessive speed and reckless swerving that authorities allege led to the crash.

According to law enforcement, Abraham was driving a Ford Mustang more than 60 mph in a street race on westbound Alton Parkway in Irvine when he veered around stopped traffic and blew through a red light at Barranca Parkway without braking.

The Mustang broadsided a Chevrolet Cruze, killing its 54-year-old driver, Katherine Hampton of Lake Forest, prosecutors say.

Hamptons 2-year-old granddaughter, Kaydence, who was seated behind Hampton, died four days later at a hospital, according to authorities.

The crash seriously injured Hamptons daughter and 7-year-old grandson, who also were in the car, police said.

Abraham, who is in custody with bail set at $1 million, sat in an orange jumpsuit Tuesday as Irvine police officers and traffic investigators took the stand to lay the framework of the prosecutions case during the four-hour hearing.

According to the officers testimony, one witness told them that Abrahams vehicle went screaming by her before slamming into the Cruze.

Police said another witness saw Abraham frantically searching his wrecked car before taking a bystanders cellphone and fleeing the scene.

The witness, a nurse, checked on the Cruzes driver and found no pulse, police said.

Pohlson agreed that the case is tragic, but he said more is needed to justify charging Abraham with murder.

The defendant must be aware of the risk he is creating, he said.

But prosecutors allege Abraham was warned about reckless driving by officers who previously pulled him over for speeding and other traffic violations.

Investigators said they quickly identified Abraham as a suspect in the hit-and-run when they found four traffic citations with his name on them in the wrecked Mustang.

Birney contended that acquaintances who saw Abraham drive recklessly also warned him of the danger.

Repeatedly hes told hes an idiot, the manner in which he drives hes going to hurt someone. And he did, Birney said.

On the stand, Irvine police Officer Garrett Gales described interviewing Abrahams co-workers at a Toyota dealership in Huntington Beach.

Some of them said they watched Abraham burn rubber before pulling out of the business driveway, Gales said. Others said they heard him brag about running red lights and speeding, Gales said.

Gales also described a video that one of the co-workers turned over to police. He said Abraham had texted it to a group of friends in November 2014.

It appears to be shot on a cellphone from inside a car that looks to be the same black Mustang, Gales said. The video shows the 55 Freeway in front of the Mustang and then pans down to the speedometer showing about 90 mph.

As the engine grows louder, the camera alternates between the road and the dashboard, showing the speedometer continually increasing until it maxes out at more than 140 mph.

Gales said the camera then turns to show Abraham filming while driving.

The driver then yells something to the effect of Woo and then the video ends, Gales said.
A Huntington Beach woman who was ousted from two school district committees after she was alleged to have referred to minorities as colored people in a YouTube video will remain on the citys Finance Commission after an investigation by Councilman Patrick Brenden found insufficient evidence to remove her.

I have completed a thorough and time-consuming review of the allegations against Gracey Larrea-Van Der Mark, Brenden said in a text message to the Daily Pilot.

Brenden, who appointed Larrea-Van Der Mark to the commission in 2017, said he made his decision after meeting with her about the allegations. Brenden said he also considered input from people on both sides of public comments about the issue during City Council meetings.

From this process, I find insufficient evidence to support a finding of just cause for removing her from her appointed volunteer position, Brenden said. I have complete confidence in Graceys ability to fulfill the responsibilities of serving on the Finance Commission and I look forward to her continued service to the community.

Larrea-Van Der Mark could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

Larrea-Van Der Mark, who is Latina, came under fire in April after she reportedly made the colored people comment in a post with a video she uploaded to YouTube in 2017 showing protesters crashing an anti-racism workshop in Santa Monica by a group called Committee for Racial Justice.

According to the OC Weekly, Larrea-Van Der Mark wrote: This meeting was being ran by the elderly Jewish people who were in there. The colored people were there doing what the elderly Jewish people instructed them to do.

Brendens decision, which he announced in the message late Friday, came days after Larrea-Van Der Mark publicly addressed the allegations during the May 7 council meeting. She denied claims in the community that she is racist and contended that liberals have become increasingly intolerant of diverse viewpoints.

She said her words were attacked and twisted so viciously by the left in an attempt to remove me from positions, threatened by ideological differences.

She said she was physically assaulted when she attended the anti-racism workshop and then described what happened using terminology used at the event.

I consider myself to be a colored person. I am not offended by the term, Larrea-Van Der Mark said. She added that the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People also uses the phrase.

In my opinion, all people of all colors should be accepted, all political sides should be accepted, she said. But school boards should be nonpartisan.

Several of Larrea-Van Der Marks supporters called the allegations against her a political blow initiated by Ocean View School District trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin, who last year appointed Larrea-Van Der Mark to a district bond oversight committee but last month called for her removal from the panel and from the city Finance Commission after the alleged colored people comment surfaced. Clayton-Tarvin said the remark promoted bigotry and did not reflect the school district.

The Ocean View school board voted April 24 to remove Larrea-Van Der Mark from the Citizens Oversight Committee for Measure R. A week later, the Huntington Beach City School District removed Larrea-Van Der Mark from its Measure Q Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. Both panels oversee expenditures related to voter-approved bond measures for school facility improvements.

Huntington Beach City district officials said Larrea-Van Der Mark was removed after hearing concerns from parents and community members. She was assigned to that committee in 2016 by the Orange County Taxpayers Assn.

Brendens decision to investigate came after several people, including Peter Levi, Orange County regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, called on the city April 16 to take action against Larrea-Van Der Mark.

Though Brenden didnt know Larrea-Van Der Mark before appointing her, he said he thought she would be a good addition to the Finance Commission after learning she had been appointed to the Ocean View committee.

Larrea-Van Der Marks online activity has received heightened attention since she spoke in support of Huntington Beachs plan to file a lawsuit against California to challenge Senate Bill 54, a state law that expands protections for undocumented immigrants.

The OC Weekly reported on the colored people comment days after the City Council approved the lawsuit early last month.

Priscella.Vega@latimes.com

Twitter: @vegapriscella
Hoping to jog the memories of longtime residents who might have crossed paths with the suspect in the kidnapping and killing of 11-year-old Linda OKeefe in July 1973, authorities Thursday night released a vintage photo of James Alan Neal to show what he may have looked like at the time of the slaying.

The undated photo is thought to have been taken between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Newport Beach police said.

Neal, 72, was arrested Tuesday by authorities in Colorado, where he lives and remains in custody. Barring any legal challenges, he awaits extradition to California, according to Newport Beach police.

Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy stands next to a picture of James Alan Neal, who was arrested in the cold-case killing of Linda OKeefe in Newport Beach. (Don Leach / Staff Photographer)

Neal has been charged with special-circumstances murder, kidnapping and lewd and lascivious acts on a minor under 14 in connection with Lindas death.

Authorities say Neal went by the name James Albert Layton Jr. at the time of the killing. Investigators believe he lived in Southern California in the 1970s and changed his name following an incident in Florida.

A sketch of a person of interest in Lindas death was circulated at the time of the killing, but it generated no leads.

DNA testing wasnt available at the time. Instead, investigators tested bodily fluids and blood left at crime scenes for proteins that helped provide clues or narrow a list of suspects.

The science eventually became key to the case.

Newport Beach detectives in 2018 contacted Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based medical lab, which used DNA from the crime scene to calculate a possible suspects facial composite, gender, ancestry, freckles and skin tone, and eye and hair color.

The lab provided two profiles  one showing a man in his mid-20s and another detailing what he might look like today in his late 60s or early 70s.

A DNA profile of a possible suspect in the 1973 slaying of 11-year-old Linda OKeefe in Newport Beach shows what the man might have looked like then, left, and what he might look like now. (Newport Beach Police Department)

But detectives still couldnt put a name with the computer sketch. They had checked the DNA against databases of convicted felons over the years but continued to come up empty-handed.

That changed in January when investigators tapped FamilyTreeDNA.com, a genealogical database that the public can use to search for relatives and ancestors.

As a result of genealogical submission, they got an indication that James Alan Neal might be the suspect, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said Wednesday.

Once investigators located Neal in Colorado, they began watching him. Authorities said they collected additional DNA evidence from Neal during that time, though it isnt clear how that was done. The DNA from that sample matched the one collected at the 1973 crime scene, officials said.

Anyone with information about the case can call the Newport Beach Police Department cold-case tip line at (949) 644-3669.

Julia Sclafani is a Daily Pilot staff writer. Hannah Fry writes for the Los Angeles Times. KTLA contributed to this report.
A new instrument that two UC Irvine professors helped develop may shed light on the dark matter that makes up much of the known universe.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, recently gave approval to the assembly, installation and use of the Forward Search Experiment, or FASER, at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.

Though the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 completed the standard model, a theory in particle physics that describes how fundamental particles interact with one another, the particles observed in the standard model dont carry the same properties as dark matter.

There must be something beyond the standard model to account for the other 85% of the matter in the universe, said Dave Casper, an experimental physicist and associate professor at UCI. The problem is, no one really knows what the properties of this is. The only thing we can do  is to look anywhere else we can and hope we can find something there.

Thats what FASER endeavors to do  find new particles that may make up dark matter.

Theres a lot of evidence from astronomical observations that most of the universe is not visible to us and cannot be detected, Casper said.

We can see its gravitational influence, but [dark matter] isnt like normal matter like the elements and particles that we know of thats made of protons and neutrons. So these astronomical observations suggest that we only see about a fifth of the total matter in the universe.

The FASER detector will be in this tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. It is expected to begin collecting data in 2021 after the collider restarts from its current two-year hiatus for upgrades. (Courtesy of Forward Search Experiment)

Casper joined a team of about 30 other international scientists, CERN collaborators and graduate students to work on the FASER project along with Jonathan Feng, a fellow UCI professor and a co-leader of the experiment.

The project was conceptualized in a paper Feng wrote with postdoctoral researchers Iftah Galon, Felix Kling and Sebastian Trojanowski in August 2017. Details of the design came later, followed by a technical proposal to CERN in November last year.

FASER received approval for assembly and operation in early March along with $2 million in funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation and Simons Foundation, in addition to support from CERN.

The detector will be set 1,574 feet from a larger detector called ATLAS, Feng said.

As proton beams pass through the ATLAS detector, which Casper also works on, new particles may be generated that pass through the concrete walls of the Large Hadron Collider and into the FASER detector, which will measure and track the rate of decay.

Our detectors in some sense are staring at a wall. If you just stare at a wall, you expect to see nothing. But these special particles were looking for can pass through the wall totally unhindered and then turn into electrons and positrons on the other side, Feng said. If we see electrons and positrons coming out of the wall, theres no standard explanation for that, given all the laws of physics.

We know that if we see something very weird happening, it could be that weve discovered new particles that are related to dark matter. But the first step is to see something totally unexpected; the next is to explain it.

The project will be assembled during the colliders current two-year hiatus for upgrades and will collect data from 2021 to 2023. The short time frame is a challenge, the professors said, because if they dont finish construction before the collider restarts, the FASER installation will need to wait until the colliders next hiatus begins in 2024.

At the same time, however, the time frame is beneficial for graduate students, Feng said.

Because our project is so quick, they can see everything, he said. They get to be involved with designing, then be involved in constructing the experiment  and at the end, they can be involved with collecting and analyzing the data.

Its important [that graduate students] can point to the things they did: This is my part of the experiment; this is my intellectual contribution. Thats the foundation for their career going forward, Casper said. Being on a small and fairly high-profile experiment  its becoming more rare for high-energy physics to do that, so its a really good opportunity for the students.

The team hopes there will be support to expand the project with a larger detector  FASER 2  to search for other hypothetical particles. The hope is to work on it during the colliders next two-year hiatus.

[FASER] might have other implications that we dont know of, but the first goal is a very fundamental goal. We as humans are always curious about our world, what its made of and our place in it, Feng said.

Without understanding it, were kind of at a loss. This would shed light on our universe.
Forty years after opening as the first youth shelter in Orange County, the Laguna Beach Youth Shelter has made a way for itself.

The shelter, operated by Santa Ana-based nonprofit Waymakers, began in 1979 as a place for homeless and runaway youths. Today, the shelter serves up to six young people at a time who suffer from mental health issues that have led to self-harm.

The shelter celebrated its 40th anniversary last week with a day-long open house. Visitors entering the sunny front family room could tour the 80-year-old homes three bedrooms, basement recreation room and backyard. About 100 people ages 12 to 17 filter through the shelter each year for a three-week program that aims to give them therapy, coping skills and healthy routines.

Graduation of the program here is really just the beginning of something new in their lives, said Carol Carlson, the shelters program director.

Each morning, the guests wake up around 7 for a shower, shampoo and shine before eating together for a homemade meal at the dining room table. They write their daily goals on a chart on the wall and then go on a power walk before settling in at the house for study time, therapy and plenty of rest and leisure.

The kids are required to go to individual therapy once a day with one of Waymakers two licensed marriage and family therapists. They also do a group session several times a day and family therapy at least twice a week.

The one thing thats not on the schedule? Electronics. The youths are not allowed access to phones or social media during their stay.

We know they know how to use those things, Carlson said. Were trying to teach them something new.

Above the basement computer tables where the guests do their homework while theyre away from school, a sign reads, No logging on to YouTube. Instead of spending time in their rooms surfing the web, watching videos or roaming social media, they are encouraged to stay in the common areas to play games, read, write in journals, exercise or talk with their fellow guests.

All the while, Carlson said, they are learning coping mechanisms to deal with their issues.

With mental illness  it makes you feel like youre a stereo person living in a radio world, Carlson said. Sometimes the hopelessness is just overwhelming. And our goal is to make it so they can get through this really rough period in their lives and learn how to manage those symptoms and again reunify with their families.

Twenty-four staff members work around the clock to feed the guests, clean the house, guide activities and offer other help. Melissa Whitworth, the shelters house supervisor, said the facility is often full of youth specialists, therapists and community volunteers.

You just never know when crisis is going to strike, Whitworth said. You can never tell whats going to happen, so youve got to be ready for it.

Laguna Beach Police Chief Laura Farinella sometimes visits to share a meal with shelter residents. She said its important to make positive contact with them.

Well sit around the table and well ask them, What is your experience with law enforcement? And they all kind of look down on their plate, because it has not been positive, Farinella said. Thats why were here. We want you to see that theres another side of law enforcement and were here to help.

The youths arrive at the shelter from all over Orange County and in a variety of conditions, Carlson said. Some have attempted suicide. Many are referred after a mental health check-in at an area hospital.

They need a safe timeout so they wont harm themselves, said Carlson, who has volunteered or been employed at the shelter for 31 years.

Last year, 94% of shelter guests successfully and positively reunited with their family members, Carlson said.

In the past 40 years, the shelter has seen childrens needs change, Carlson said. In its first decade, most residents were homeless or runaways, though many likely had undiagnosed mental issues, she said. In the 1990s, drug and alcohol use spiked. The shelter responded with increased education.

By the 2000s, homelessness had again become a recurring theme. Today, Carlson said, about 30% of shelter guests dont have secure housing. When those residents graduate from the program, Waymakers links them and their families with housing resources through the Orange County Health Care Agency.

As the shelters resources grew over the years, so did its waiting list. Waymakers took over operations of a youth shelter in Huntington Beach and celebrated its 12th anniversary there last year. Another Waymakers shelter opened in Tustin in 2016.

We grew very responsibly, Carlson said. We stuck to what we knew how to do and we looked at the population we were serving and saw its needs.

In the 31 years she has worked at the shelter  21 as a staff member and 10 before that as a volunteer  Carlson said she has seen many graduates of the program return to the place that helped them.

She remembered a former resident who returned to the shelter as a grown man with his 3-year-old son. The man told her he had grown up in an abusive situation but that the shelter helped him break the cycle and change his familys legacy.

That is the greatest gift you could ever have, she said, to know that you helped somebody change their story, their future.
Nottage is arguing that the union, representing all unions, was at least partly designed to protect whites only  when it came to jobs, it didnt want nobody that nobody sent, to quote the late Abner Mikvas mythical ward boss in Chicago. That exclusionary history is represented by Brucie (Andre Teamer), an older African-American character whose poverty has led him down a spiral of self-abuse. But Brucie is balanced by Jessie (Chaon Cross), a younger white woman who now seems headed down the same path herself. Nottages main focus, though, is on two members of the rising generation, the sons of Cynthia and Tracey, played respectively by Edgar Miguel Sanchez and Mike Cherry. These two guys, Chris and Jason, start out as pals, but their initial fraternity gets ripped apart by economic duress curdling over time into racism of the bloodiest kind. That part of Sweat has much in common with Willy Russells socialist musical from the 1980s, Blood Brothers.
Once Upon a Time Bookstore, the Montrose business that Publishers Weekly certified in 2008 was the countrys oldest childrens bookstore, is being recognized next month as Small Business of the Year for the 25th state Senate District.

Sen. Carol Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge) will honor the Honolulu Avenue business during a ceremony in Sacramento on May 25. The 1,200-square-foot store, which opened in October 1966, is owned by Maureen Palacios, who bought it in 2003 from its original founder, Jane Humphrey.

I am pleased to honor Maureen Palacios and the Palacios family for their hard work in preserving this treasured asset and promoting literacy throughout the community, Liu said in a statement.

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Once Upon a Time Bookstore in Montrose is being recognized next month as Small Business of the Year for the 25th state Senate District. (Roger Wilson / Staff Photographer)

In an interview, Palacios said she was surprised to receive the award, considering hers is a decidedly low-tech business in an increasingly high-tech world.

Still, being recognized was very personal and rewarding, she said. We feel like we do a lot for the community.

Above her was some framed paper-cut artwork hanging above the stores entrance. Likely made in the 1940s, the piece that depicts ducks and other animals has been at Once Upon a Time since the beginning.

The piece reads: See my farm / See the big house / See the little ducks / Quack, quack, quack.

Palacios, who estimated that the store has about 80,000 books in its inventory, said in the modern marketplace, she keeps up by also selling various gifts  greeting cards, wind chimes, puppets, small toys  and hosting events that have featured Newbery Medal winners.

The medal is given by the Assn. for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Assn.

Palacios said her store provides important moments that connect children with their favorite authors. She had her own such moment in eighth grade, when Ray Bradbury visited her school.

I think thats important to get kids to remember and to have a memorable experience, Palacios said, because it happened to me.

How Palacios came to own the community bookstore where her family frequented is a tale of its own. Unbeknownst to Palacios, her daughter, Jessica, who was 9 years old at the time, wrote a letter to the Glendale News-Press in 2003 after hearing that Humphrey was looking to sell the store.

I am sad because no one wants to buy the nice bookstore, she wrote. Where am I going to get my fifth Harry Potter book if there is no Once Upon a Time Bookstore?

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Within a few days of her letter publishing, Jessicas family ended up buying the place. The rest, as they say, became local legend. Jessica was transformed into the little girl who saved the bookstore.

Once Upon a Time still has its place in the community, Palacios said. It employs high school students, gives them their first jobs. Famous authors leave their autographs in the storage room.

The experience, according to Palacios, is personalized and personal.

We like to find the right book for you at the right time, she said  and its a big part of what sets Once Upon a Time apart from the Amazons of the world.

Amazon is a data collector. They dont care about a story. I sell stories. I sell dreams. They sell data, Palacios said. I have the better lot in life.

--

Bradley Zint, bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint

--

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Ten Years Ago

La Canada High School grad and Glendale Community College student Monica Kaufmann won the Wipeout Bowl challenge of the Cheerleaders vs. the Couch Potatoes and claimed the $50,000 grand prize. The competition was shown as an ABC TV special at the same time as the final hour of the 2009 Super Bowl, which aired on another channel. Kaufmann, then 20, defeated 23 other competitors. She began her cheerleading career at the age of 8, learning as a member of the La Canada Gladiators cheerleading squad.

Twenty Years Ago

In tragic news, La Canada Flintridge resident Chung Hong, 52, was fatally wounded and her 21-year-old son Eddie was injured during an armed robbery at the grocery store the local family operated in South Central Los Angeles. Hong was a beloved grocer whom customers called Mama, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Thirty Years Ago

The Foothill Auxiliary of the Childrens Home Society announced preparations were underway for its 1988 annual benefit luncheon and Chinese auction, which would be emceed by radio personality and La Canada resident Roger Barkley.

Forty Years Ago

A special committee advised the school board to keep and lease out rather than sell the La Canada Unified School Districts Oak Grove and Palm Crest elementary school campuses, which were slated to be closed due to declining enrollment.

Fifty Years Ago

Ivers Department Store opened its doors in the Plaza de La Canada  in the building that now houses a T.J. Maxx  on Feb. 3, 1969. A benefit opening gala was held on the Saturday evening prior to the ribbon-cutting event to raise funds for the La Canada Scholarship League.

Sixty Years Ago

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in early 1959 called for a study on the best way to sell Descanso Gardens because its admissions were not sustaining the venue. Supervisor Burton Chase declared the $1 million or more such a sale would bring in was needed to supplement the countys budget. Descanso had been originally purchased by the county from former newspaper publisher Manchester Boddy for $1.16 million in 1953.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.
La Canada High School students will be able to take back their mornings starting this fall, after the La Canada school board voted unanimously Tuesday to shift the campus start time from 7:45 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

The decision to try the schedule change for a one-year period was made in a special meeting convened to let board members review data collected from a survey of district parents and students. Responses indicated an overwhelming majority of support for pushing back the schedule to allow teens more brain-nourishing sleep, according to board member Brent Kuszyk.

Theres definitely support for this, said Kuszyk, whose daughter Ali will be an incoming freshman in 2017-18. My daughters very happy  a lot of the kids are.

Tuesdays meeting was an opportunity for the board to take into consideration the many impacts the shift will have on parents, teachers and students, especially student athletes who already miss class time to travel to away games.

As such, LCUSD has agreed to enter into a memo of understanding with the La Canada Teachers Assn. to assist student athletes with missed class time. It was determined buses transporting athletes to other schools for games may be able to leave a bit later, according to Governing Board President Dan Jeffries.

We also asked if we could flag student athletes at registration so as to minimize fifth-period missed class time, Jeffries said in an email interview. That may have some limitations since other schedule issues are involved, but we will look at it.

Other adjustments made to passing periods and morning announcements will mean the school day next year ends only 15 minutes later than other schools in the Rio Hondo League.

LCUSDs decision came the same day that Senate Bill 328  a proposal by state Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge) that would mandate California middle and high schools begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m.  passed the Senate and is moving on to the state Assembly.

I am very proud to see such an important public health bill moving to the state Assembly, the senator said in a statement. The best interest of our children needs to come first and by passing this legislation, the state Senate sends a strong message that it believes in that mission.

sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
The Art Deco Naval and Marine Corps Training Center was built from 1938 to 1941, through the Works Progress Administration. It opened just before World War II.

During the war, 20,000 sailors passed through the training center, including reservists Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and director John Ford.

On Feb. 27, 1980, a fire heavily damaged the center. Los Angeles firefighter Frank Hotchkin was killed when a portion of the roof collapsed.

The building is now operated by the Los Angeles City Fire Department as the Frank Hotchkin Memorial Training Facility.

April 22, 1938: Groundbreaking on the Naval and Marine Corps Armory in Chavez Ravine near downtown Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times

Dec. 22, 1955: Entrance of the United States Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Training Center in Chavez Ravine. This photo was used as part of the 1955-56 Know Your City Photography Series. John Malmin / Los Angeles Times

This John Malmin photo appeared in the Dec. 24, 1955, Los Angeles Times as part of the Know Your City photography series. The original caption reported:

KNOW YOUR CITY, NO. 37  Silly to make these things so simple. If the gun doesnt tip you off, the lettering on the building should. But for those who dont recognize it, the answer is on Page 18, Part ll.

ANSWER: The one in the picture is not, of course, the only big gun at the United States Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Training Center in Chavez Ravine, the entrance of which is shown in the photo.

This post was originally published on Jan. 10, 2017.

Sep. 27, 1980: A $500,000 fire damages the Naval and Marine Reserve Armory near Dodger Stadium. Los Angeles firefighter Frank Hotchkin died when a portion of the roof collapsed. Larry Sharkey / Los Angeles Times

Sept. 27, 1980: A fireman checks out the auditorium of the United States Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center in Chavez Ravine. A fire in part of the complex caused $500,000 of damage. Barbara Martin / Los Angeles Tmes

See more from the Los Angeles Times archives here
Out of the darkness appeared a snout.

Fei zhu!  Fat pig!  8-year-old Shino Chen shouted to her younger brother as she jumped up and down and pointed at a wild boar.

The hairy black pig, which must have weighed at least 150 pounds, grunted and snuffled through a flimsy, old fence along the sidewalk. The children tiptoed toward the animal then sprinted back to their fathers side.

Kenneth Chen, 44, and his children visit the boars almost every night. All they have to do is step out of their apartment here in the neighborhood of Tai Wai, located on the fringes of an ever-expanding metropolis.

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I bring my kids to see a natural habitat because they seldom get to see live animals in Hong Kong, Chen said.

Hong Kongs 7.4 million residents spend most of their days rushing between high-rises, metro stations, tiny apartments and air-conditioned offices. People occupy less than a quarter of the 426-square-mile region, making its urban core one of the most densely populated places in the world.

The rest of Hong Kong belongs to monkeys, snakes, porcupines, boars and other wildlife.

The city is a concrete jungle in the middle of an actual jungle.

Now, as urban areas sprawl into the surrounding hills, Hong Kong is struggling to contain a wild boar problem.

1 / 13 A wild boar walks close to a man sitting with his dog on a bench outside Hong Kongs Aberdeen Park. (Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images) 2 / 13 A man walks past a wild boar in Hong Kongs Aberdeen Park. (Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images) 3 / 13 A wild boar scavenges for food while residents watch at a park in Hong Kong. (Vincent Yu / Associated Press) 4 / 13 A wild boar scavenges for food while residents watch at a park in Hong Kong. (Vincent Yu / Associated PRess) 5 / 13 Residents take a photo in front of a wild boar at a park in Hong Kong. (Vincent Yu / Associated PRess) 6 / 13 A wild boar rubs itself on a tree trunk to relieve an itch as a group of men play a game at a table in Hong Kongs Aberdeen Park. (Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images) 7 / 13 A wild boar scavenges for food while residents watch at a park in Hong Kong. (Vincent Yu / Associated Press) 8 / 13 Police walk past wild boars near a residential estate in Hong Kong. (Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images) 9 / 13 Some students walk up a road behind a wild boar eating bread left by a visitor to Hong Kongs Aberdeen Park. (Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images) 10 / 13 Wild boars rest in Hong Kongs Aberdeen Park. (Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images) 11 / 13 A man takes a photo of a wild boar as it eats food left by a visitor in Hong Kongs Aberdeen Park. (Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images) 12 / 13 A woman takes a photo of a wild boar in Hong Kongs Aberdeen Park. (Anthony Wallace / AFP/Getty Images) 13 / 13 A man walks past wild boars in Hong Kongs Aberdeen Park. (Anthony Wallace / AFP / Getty Images)

The pigs are everywhere: sprinting down the highway, digging into dumpsters, falling through the ceiling of a childrens clothing store, sauntering into metro stations, taking over barbecues, confronting police at the airport, even swimming across the balmy bays of Hong Kong Island.

No one has conducted a census to determine the actual number of wild boars in Hong Kong. But encounters reported to local authorities have more than doubled in the last five years, from 294 in 2013 to 679 in the first 10 months of 2018 alone.

There have also been injuries: A 70-year-old man was hospitalized last week after he threw a stone at a wild boar and the animal bit him.

The classic solution for boar overpopulation in most places, including California, is hunting. Hong Kong once licensed hunters to kill boars, especially in rural areas where farmers often complained about the animals uprooting their crops.

Boars have also provoked anger for lurking around cemeteries, waiting to eat food that people leave on graves to honor deceased relatives in accordance with Chinese tradition.

READ MORE: All around the world, humans are forcing other mammals to be more active at night 

But Hong Kongs government suspended boar hunting in 2017 in response to an outcry by animal rights activists.

Roni Wong, the 35-year-old founder of the Hong Kong Wild Boar Concern Group, has spearheaded public confrontations with hunters, shouting at them to desist from harming the pigs.

It is very cruel, not civilized behavior to do that, Wong explained.

He says that humans and boars can peacefully coexist as long as people follow a few basic rules: We always educate the public, dont feed the wild boars or make them angry. Just leave them and they wont attack.

On the other side of the debate are activists who say defenders of the boars are naive.

They actually have absolutely no idea how dangerous these animals are, said Wesley Ho, spokesman for Feral Pig Hong Kong, a group formed last year to demand stronger action against the pigs.

Hong Kong residents take a photo in front of a wild boar at a park. (Vincent Yu / Associated Press)

Killing boars isnt wrong when its necessary for protection, he said.

They may not attack 100 times, but the 101st time, they could, and those attacks could be fatal, Ho said. No matter what, human lives are the most precious thing. They come first in any case.

He said many Hong Kongers are afraid to go camping or have picnics, because gluttonous boars are encroaching on human space and stealing food. Looking at them, theyre so fat, he said. How hungry can they be?

Searching for a compromise, politicians have suggested different tactics for the boar problem, including introducing natural predators into Hong Kong or sending the boars to nearby islands.

But wild boars are strong swimmers, and their predators  tigers and wolves, among other carnivores  wouldnt exactly fit the urban landscape either.

For now, the citys solution is birth control.

A team of veterinarians recently launched a two-year pilot sterilization program that starts with tracking down boars and shooting them with tranquilizer darts.

READ MORE: Saving giant pandas: China launches a make-or-break experiment to prevent the animals extinction 

It takes 15 minutes for the darts to kick in, giving the hogs ample time to freak out before they collapse.

Sometimes its in the middle of the city center, like a big pig in a small area and its very challenging, said Karthi Martelli, one of the vets.

Then the females are injected with a three-year contraceptive and, along with the males, released back into Hong Kongs country parks.

Its not a perfect system, Martelli acknowledged. But so far nobody has invented a more humane option.

Can you imagine caging a [330-pound] wild boar? she said. They have tusks. There is no real cage that can hold them for a few days. So we need to come up with a method of sterilization thats minimally invasive.

The biggest problem in Hong Kong is not that boars or humans are hurting each other, she said, but that too many people find the pigs adorable and decide to feed them.

It doesnt help that 2019 is the Chinese Year of the Pig and that some consider boar sightings a sign of good luck and prosperity.

It was really cute once upon a time, but I mean, wild pigs running loose in a city center is not very exciting anymore, Martelli said.

Her husband, Paolo Martelli, who is also a veterinarian, pointed out that the invading species is the human, not the boar.

Theyve always been here, he said.

Now the boars are eating more, reproducing more, and living an unhealthy urbanized life, Karthi Martelli added: Its a man-made problem, but the pigs are paying the price.

Her advice: The best way of protecting animal and human alike is to disengage.

But that is becoming harder as development presses into the wild lands.

With more people moving to Hong Kong from other parts of China, developers built 21,000 new homes last year, the most in 14 years.

Many were in the New Territories, a largely rural area that stretches north to mainland China. New train routes are also under construction, carving deeper into areas once inhabited only by wildlife.

Tai Wai, which is in the New Territories, was a farming village until the late 1970s. There are signs warning people not to bother the animals, but not everybody obeys.

As the Chen family marveled at one boar, another local resident, 36-year-old Wai-ling Tang, came walking down the street. Suddenly she noticed another boar wiggling toward the fence, which was only about 50 feet long and had a boar-sized hole at the bottom.

Tang gasped and jumped to the side, arcing wide around the sidewalk.

Theyre too close, Tang said. They should move back up the mountain.

The boars seemed to be getting bolder every day, at times wandering into the road.

It didnt help that her husband occasionally fed them cheap apples from the supermarket. Tang was not happy about that.

He treats the pigs better than he treats me! she said.
Aid workers rushed to rescue victims clinging to trees and crammed on rooftops against rapidly rising waters Tuesday after a cyclone unleashed devastating floods in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. More than 238 were dead, hundreds were missing and thousands more were at risk.

This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambiques recent history, said Jamie LeSueur, head of response efforts in Beira for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. At least 400,000 people were left homeless.

The rapidly rising floodwaters created an inland ocean in Mozambique, endangering tens of thousands of families, aid workers said as they scrambled to rescue survivors of Cyclone Idai and airdrop food, water and blankets.

Mozambiques President Filipe Nyusi said the death toll could reach 1,000.

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Emergency workers called it the regions most destructive flooding in 20 years. Heavy rains were expected to continue through Thursday.

This is a major humanitarian emergency that is getting bigger by the hour, said Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program. Many people were crammed on rooftops and elevated patches of land outside the port city of Beira and WFP was rushing to rescue as many as possible, he said.

Mozambiques Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, creating inland oceans extending for miles and miles in all directions, Verhoosel said. Dams were at 95% to 100% capacity.

People visible from the air may be the lucky ones and the top priority now is to rescue as many as possible, he said.

The extent of the damage was not yet known as many areas remained impassible. With key roads washed away, aid groups were trying to get badly needed food, medicine and fuel into hard-hit Beira, a city of some 500,000 people, by air and sea.

Cyclone Idai swept across central Mozambique before dropping huge amounts of rain in neighboring Zimbabwes eastern mountains. That rainfall is now rushing back through Mozambique, further inundating the already flooded countryside.

Its dire, Caroline Haga of the Red Cross told the Associated Press from Beira. We did an aerial surveillance yesterday and saw people on rooftops and in tree branches. The waters are still rising and we are desperately trying to save as many as possible.

Satellite images were helping the rescue teams target the most critical areas, Haga said. Rescue operations were based at Beira airport, one of the few places in the city with working communications.

The waters flooded a swath of land more than 30 miles wide in central Mozambique, putting more than 100,000 people at risk, said the aid group Save the Children.

The assessment emerging from Mozambique today is chilling, said Machiel Pouw, Save the Childrens response leader in Mozambique. Thousands of children lived in areas completely engulfed by water. In many places, no roofs or treetops are even visible above the floods.

The full horror, the full impact, is only going to emerge over coming days, Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane told reporters in Geneva.

Torrential rain was still lashing the region on Tuesday, and Buzi town could be entirely submerged within 24 hours, the aid group said.

Hardest hit was Beira, where thousands of homes were destroyed.

The city and surrounding areas were without power, and nearly all communication lines were destroyed. Beiras main hospital was also badly damaged. Large areas to the west of Beira have been severely flooded, and floodwaters have completely covered homes, telephone poles and trees, the Red Cross said.

Beira could face a serious fuel shortage in the coming days, WFP said, and its power grid was expected to be nonfunctional through the end of the month.

The nearby cities of Dondo and Chimoio were also badly affected.

In Zimbabwe, the death toll rose to 98, the government said. The mountain town of Chimanimani was badly hit. Several roads leading into the town were cut off, with the only access by helicopter. Residents expected the death toll to rise.

We did over 38 burials this morning, Absolom Makanga, a Salvation Army divisional commander, said. It is difficult. We have to walk long distances because the roads are cut off but also because sometimes the graves are then washed away.

Among those fleeing on foot was Luckmore Rusero, who carried a small bag with his remaining possessions. His wife carried their 1-year-old child and their 11-year-old son struggled to keep pace as they joined many others in seeking refuge.

Thank God we survived, Rusero said. There are no roads, no transport, so we have been walking for more than 20 kilometers now through the forests and the mountains.

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa arrived in the area on Tuesday, saying a number of countries, including the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola, were offering aid.

The U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe said the U.S. was also mobilizing to provide support to partners in the three affected countries, but provided no details. The European Union and Britain also pledged aid.

Malawis government confirmed 56 deaths, three missing and 577 injured in the flooding, which caused rivers to burst their banks, leaving many houses submerged and around 11,000 households displaced in the southern district of Nsanje.

Neighboring Tanzanias military airlifted some 238 tons of emergency food and medicine to the three countries.
U.S.-backed Syrian forces on Tuesday seized control of an encampment held by Islamic State in eastern Syria, after hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, a spokesman said, signaling the groups collapse after months of stiff resistance.

A group of suspects involved in a January bombing that killed four Americans in northern Syria were among militants captured by the Kurdish-led forces.

The taking of the Islamic State camp was a major advance but not the final defeat of the group in Baghouz, the last village held by the extremists where they have been holding out for weeks under siege, according to Mustafa Bali, the spokesman for the Kurdish-led force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. Still, the groups fighters were starting to celebrate.

Im happy its over. Now I know my people are safe, said a fighter who identified himself as Walid Raqqawi who fought in the camp Monday night. He said he is returning to his hometown of Raqqah to rest. Comrades from his unit sang and danced in celebration at an outpost in Baghouz, all saying they were looking forward to going home.

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An unknown number of Islamic State militants still clung to a tiny sliver of land trapped between the Euphrates River and the encampment now held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, officials in the force said.

U.S.-backed militia captures two American militants in battle with Islamic State in Syria 

The militants have been putting up a desperate fight, their notorious propaganda machine working even on the brink of collapse. On Monday, Islamic State issued a video showing its militants furiously defending the encampment, a junkyard of wrecked cars, motorcycles and tents. In the footage, they shoot nonstop with AK-47s and M-16s from behind trucks, vehicles and sand berms.

A group of children could be seen at one point amid the fighting.

My Muslim brothers everywhere, we did our best, the rest is up to God, a fighter said to the backdrop of black smoke rising from behind him.

The complete fall of Baghouz would mark the end of Islamic States self-declared territorial caliphate, which at its height stretched across much of Syria and Iraq. For the last four years, U.S.-led forces have waged a destructive campaign to tear down the caliphate. But even after Baghouzs fall, Islamic State maintains a scattered presence and sleeper cells that threaten a continuing insurgency.

The battle for Baghouz has dragged on for weeks  and the encampment has proven a major battleground, with tents covering foxholes and underground tunnels.

The siege has also been slowed by the unexpectedly large number of civilians in Baghouz, most of them families of Islamic State members. They have been flowing out, exhausted, hungry and often wounded. The sheer number who emerged  nearly 30,000 since early January according to Kurdish officials  took the Kurdish-led forces by surprise.

In the last two weeks, many Islamic State militants appeared to be among those evacuating. But Syrian Democratic Forces commanders have stopped speculating when the battle may finally be over, saying they dont know how many more may still be left, hiding in tunnels beneath the war-scarred village.

In the seizure Tuesday of the encampment, hundreds of wounded and sick militants were captured and evacuated to nearby military hospitals for treatment, Bali, the SDF spokesman, said in a Twitter post. Still, he cautioned, this is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight.

There were conflicting reports from SDF commanders on the ground about the extent of the Islamic State surrender.

Commander Rustam Hasake told the Associated Press that SDF fighters advanced on four fronts Monday night and were inside the camp when the last Islamic State fighters surrendered at dawn. He said the last fighters were pushed out of the camp and were now in an open patch of land by the Euphrates River and were being processed and detained.

Another commander, however, said some militants continue to hold a tiny area in an open patch of land in the village, outside the encampment.

AP journalists in Baghouz reported sporadic gunfire echoing and jets circling overhead. At a command post in Baghouz on Tuesday, a Humvee pulled up and unloaded weapons captured from Islamic State, including sniper and hunting rifles, pump action shotguns and grenades and ammunition.

Five trucks hauling 10 trailers full of people were seen coming out of Baghouz. A child could be heard wailing from inside one. At least 100 people, nearly all of them children, have died in the truck trips from Baghouz on the way to a camp in northern Syria, or soon after reaching it, according to the International Rescue Committee  a sign of how miserable conditions were inside Baghouz during the siege as supplies ran out.

These children escaped from ISIS captivity, but there is no joy in their return home 

Bali, in a separate Twitter post Tuesday, said the SDF captured a group of suspects involved in a January suicide bombing that killed four Americans in the northern town of Manbij. He did not elaborate on the number of suspects or whether they were among the most recent militants to surrender.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blast outside a popular restaurant in Manbij, which killed at least 16 people, including two U.S. service members and two American civilians. It was the deadliest assault on U.S. troops in Syria since American forces went into the country in 2015.

In an audio posted online Monday, the Islamic State spokesman, Abu Hassan Muhajer, issued his first message in six months, calling for revenge attacks by Muslims in Western countries in retaliation for the attack on two New Zealand mosques that killed 50 people.

He also ridiculed U.S. declarations of the defeat of Islamic State, calling the claim of victory a hallucination.

But Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrated as if the final collapse were imminent. At the SDF outpost in Baghouz, a commander danced with his soldiers. Fighters said remaining militants didnt put up much resistance.

We fired on them with our rifles and heavy weapons and they didnt shoot back. So we walked into the camp and they didnt shoot at us, said Orhan Hamad, from the northern province of Hassakeh.

I tell the martyrs, it wasnt for nothing. Using an Arabic term for Islamic State, he said: With Gods permission, weve finished Daesh.

Islamic State wives want to come home. But what were they doing while they were away? 
Not long after, Jeff Frank was getting the couples older sons  then 6 and 4  up and ready for the day. When he went to get Emmett and turned him over, the toddler wasnt breathing and felt like dead weight in his arms. The father laid his son on the floor and started CPR as he yelled for his 6-year-old to call 911. The boy then also called his moms cell phone, not knowing she had left it at home. Her voicemail recorded the next several minutes as Jeff Frank screamed save my baby to the paramedics who had arrived. They soon told him his son was already dead.
- An army spokesman, Major Yahaya Nasir Kabara, confirms reports about the shooting of the Garrison Commander of 33 Artillery Brigade in Shadawanka Barracks, Mohammed Barack

- It is still not clear whether the unidentified gunmen that shot the officer dead were bandits or assassins

- Barack was reported to have been riding a power bike when he was shot on Jos-Bauchi highway, while returning from Kaduna

An army spokesman has confirmed the killing of Col Mohammed Barack, the Garrison Commander of 33 Artillery Brigade of Nigerian Army in Shadawanka Barracks, Bauchi,

Unidentified gunmen killed the officer on Sunday, March 17. It was not clear whether he was killed by bandits or assassins, The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

Barack, who was riding a power bike, was shot on Jos-Bauchi highway, while returning from Kaduna. The officer hailed from Kano state.

READ ALSO: Probe attack on our reporter - BBC tells PDP

The spokesperson of 33 Artillery Brigade, Major Yahaya Nasir Kabara, confirmed the shooting.

Yes, its true, he said

Investigation is ongoing, I will get back to you when the finding is out. Let me communicate with my Commander, I will get back to you. he said.

Legit.ng had earlier reported that suspected gunmen have killed the garrison commander of 33 Artillery Brigade of Nigerian Army in Shadawanka Barracks, Bauchi, Col. Mohammed Barack.

According to Punch Newspaper, the incident which took place on Bauchi  Jos Road has raised panic in the state.

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In another report, the Nigerian Army, in the evening of Monday, March 18, said it was betrayed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over its alleged role in the violence that engulfed Rivers state during the 2019 general election.

The Nigerian Army insisted that its men were professional during their outing in Rivers state.

In a statement by Colonel Aminu Iliyasu, the Army spokesperson, the security body further said it was surprised that after meeting with the committee that visited Rivers state on a fact-finding mission, INEC still went ahead to indict its men.

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Can Nigerian Soldiers really not deal with Boko Haram fighters?| Legit TV

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- The presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, challenges President Muhammadu Buharis re-election before an election tribunal in Abuja

- The PDP national legal adviser, Emmanuel Enoidem, says the party is also seeking for the election to be aside over alleged widespread irregularities

- The spokesman of the Atiku campaign organisation, Segun Sowunmi, urges the judiciary to deliver a judgment that reflects that the Nigeria is practicing democracy

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has asked the presidential election tribunal to declare him winner of the February 23 election.

Atiku made the request in a petition filed before the tribunal in Abuja on Monday, March 18, where he challenged President Muhammadu Buharis re-election, The Cable reports.

The PDP national legal adviser, Emmanuel Enoidem, told journalists that in addition to the request that Atiku be declared the winner of the election, the party is also seeking for the election to be aside over alleged widespread irregularities.

In the alternative, we also asked that the election be set aside on the ground of irregularity which was apparent across the country.

We have also lined up more than 400 witnesses that are going to testify in this petition, he said.

Speaking on the issue, the spokesman of the Atiku campaign organisation, Segun Sowunmi, urged the judiciary to deliver a judgment that reflects that the country was practicing democracy.

The judiciary should do what is right; examine the issues and deliver to Nigerians the kind of judgement that represent the fundamental operating principle of why we are in democracy and why the judiciary is the last hope of the common man," he said.

In another report, the Cross River stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have called for the cancellation and a re-run of the February 23 and March 9, governorship, National Assembly and State House of Assembly elections in the state.

Hilliard Eta, the APC south-south national vice chairman, made the call on Monday, March 18, in Abuja while speaking with newsmen on the outcome of the elections.

Eta described the elections that were conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as a sham and would not stand the test of time.

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INEC announces Buhari as 2019 election winner, Nigerians react | Legit TV

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- Delta state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, has called for the abolishment of the death penalty in the country

- The governor also called for the reformation of prisoners to make them better citizens of the country

- Okowa further disclosed that the state government would give starter packs to those leaving prisons, to enable them start up their own businesses

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state on Monday, March 18 called for the abolishment of death penalty in Nigeria.

The governor made the call when members of the Presidential Committee on Prisons Reforms led by its chairman, Justice Ishaq Bello, paid him a courtesy visit in Asaba, NAN reports.

READ ALSO: Declare me winner of February 23 election - Atiku tells tribunal

Legit.ng gathers that the governor stated that the death penalty should be abolished and those who are already sentenced to death should have their sentences converted to life imprisonment; more so now that most state governments are unwilling to sign the death warrant.

He also called for the reformation of the prisoners to make them better citizens of the country.

Okowa condemned a situation where prison inmates coordinate criminal activities such as kidnapping from the prisons, adding that reforming the prisoners was apt for a sustainable crime-free society.

We need to reform the minds of the prisoners, a programme to reform the mind of prisoners is very important because once you are able to reform their minds, they will become better citizens.

As a state government, we are extending our skills acquisition programmes to the prisons.

But it will be such that the prisoners would be given starter packs as they are leaving the prisons to enable them start their own businesses and be useful members of the society, he said.

According to the governor, setting up of the committee for prison reform is timely, and he urged it to ensure a thorough job.

He noted that the crime rate in the country was on the rise and available prisons infrastructure had been stretched beyond their limits.

Earlier, Bello said that they were in the state as part of their activities to reform the Nigerian Prisons Service.

He said that the committee had visited more than 13 states in that regard.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that a bill prescribing death by hanging for any person found guilty of any form of hate speech that results in the death of another person received the first reading at the Senate.

The bill, sponsored by Senator Sabi Abdullahi, sought the establishment of an independent national commission for hate speeches.

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Ex-prisoner turns advocate for release of former inmates - on Legit TV:

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- The federal government seems to be making success with its move to get the participation of private firms in power generation

- This was as the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) gave the ministry of water resources a certificate for full business compliance

- The document certifies that the ministry has complied with the regulations for the concession of 30 Megawatts Gurara Hydropower Dam

The federal ministry of water resources has received the full business certificate compliance for the concession of 30 Megawatts Gurara Hydropower Dam from the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC).

The minister of water resources, Suleiman Adamu, while receiving the certificate on Monday, March 18, in Abuja said it was a milestone achievement that had targeted private sector participation in power generation in the country, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda

He said this feat had concluded the procurement exercise for the concession contract, saying it was ready for approval from the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

The minister said that this would lead to awarding and signing of the concession agreement, saying the ministry would continue to open its doors to prospective partners and investors.

He said: The ministry believes in public private partnership as a veritable relationship that will not only accelerate infrastructure development in our country, but enhance their effective and efficient operation and maintenance.

With the experiences that have been gained from the concessioning of the Gurara hydropower plant, we are now set to accelerate the pace of engagement with the private partners for other available facilities.

Chidi Izuwah, |ICRC Director-General commended the ministry for a transparent procurement process which was in compliance with the ICRC act and the national policy on public private partnerships.

According to him, the full business certificate compliance has shown that the ministry has completed all technical and financial transactions for the hydro power component of the dam for concession.

He said that the ICRC had chosen the northsouth power company as the preferred bidder and mainstream energy Solutions as the reserved bidder, saying this was in line with international best practices

Izuwah said: The private sector has chosen capacity, look at what the private sector has done in Shiroro and Jebba hydropower, when Shiriro was concession, it was doing barely 200 megawatts, today, it is doing 600 megawatts.

The private sector has demonstrated capability to be able to unleash these facilities for the benefit of Nigerians.

We need power, the concessionaire itself has shown commitment to see that this project commenced pledging to bring its own funds.

Benson Ajisegiri, the chairman, project delivery team, said that the Outline Business Case (OBC) for the project began in October 2015, with the certificate approved by FEC in January 2016.

Ajisegiri said that other activities being carried out in the course of concessioning include application for power generation license with the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, (NERC) preparation of grid connection agreement among others.

The ICRC act mandates the commission to manage the complex arrangements that the PPP process entails as well as build capacity within MDAs to subsequently handle such arrangements themselves.

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The ICRC is also expected to monitor the implementation of such arrangements according to best practice ensuring that the desired service standards are attained and maintained, while value for money is assured.

It also ensures that the private sector operators are in a position to recoup their investments in a fair and equitable manner.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that gas-fired and hydro electricity generating stations in Nigeria released an average of 4,197 megawatts of electricity into the national grid on Saturday, March 17, a daily energy report had said.

The report, which was compiled by the advisory power team, office of the vice president, was made available on Sunday, March 17, in Abuja.

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Nigerian Electricity Crisis Explained | Legit TV

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- John Campbell described Nigeria's 2019 presidential election as a setback

- According to the former US ambassador to Nigeria, the election was marred by irregularities

- Campbell said Atiku is not likely to win in court

The former US ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, has described the 2019 presidential election in Nigeria as bad news for democracy.

In his perspective for the election for the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, Campbell claimed the election was marred by historically low turnout and credible allegations of rigging.

The former ambassador also said Atiku was not likely to win at the tribunal court due to President Muhammadu Buharis margin of victory.

He said based on reports from situation rooms, the election was a step back from the 2015 own.

READ ALSO: Breaking: Senate finally passes N30,000 minimum wage for Nigerian workers

Read the report below

Nigerias latest presidential election cycle has been bad news for democracy in Africas most populous country and across the continent. Though President Muhammadu Buhari won the election, it was marred by historically low turnout and credible allegations of rigging.

The Old Guard

Buhari and his main challenger, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, both Muslims from the Fulani ethnic group in the countrys north, are part of the political class that has dominated Nigeria since independence in 1960. Their contest meant there would be no generational leadership change in a country where the average age is eighteen and half of registered voters are under thirty-five. Buhari, who spent much of his last term abroad for medical treatment, hardly campaigned at all.

Buhari and Abubakar are the standard-bearers for two political parties descended from the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida: the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), respectively. Both parties are undemocratic in spirit and function primarily to contest elections rather than to promote legislation or policy. During their campaigns, the candidates and their parties offered little that was new to address security breakdowns caused by Boko Haram in the countrys northeast; conflict over land use, ethnicity, and religion in the Middle Belt; and the division of oil revenue in the Delta. Moreover, they were mute on climate change, urbanization, and a population boom that is expected to push Nigeria past 450 million people by the middle of the century.

A Step in the Wrong Direction

The Situation Room, an umbrella organization of Nigerian civil society groups, wrote that [PDF] the vote marked a step back from the 2015 general election and actions should be taken to identify what has gone wrong and what can be corrected. Just hours before polls were set to open on February 16, the election commission delayed the vote by a week. This was particularly disruptive for the many Nigerians who had travelled from one part of the country to another to vote. When voting finally took place, there were numerous irregularities, and many polling stations opened several hours late. There is also evidence that the security services at some stations prevented voters from casting ballots, particularly in opposition strongholds, and intimidated election commission staff.

Of the more than eighty million Nigerians registered to vote this year, just thirty-five million actually voted. In the north, where Buhari is popular among the poor, turnout was around 50 percent. But in the predominantly Christian south and east, where Abubakar was favored, turnout stood around 20 percent, a continuation of a long decline in voter participation.

The Nigerian Example

Nigerias influence across sub-Saharan Africa is outsized. Its population and economy are Africas largest; its cultural influence, symbolized by the Nollywood film industry, is far-reaching; and its traditional diplomatic activism, through participation in peacekeeping missions and the regional economic bloc ECOWAS, is consequential. When Nigeria transitioned from military to civilian rule in 1999, the effects on West Africa were palpable: coups lost their legitimacy, and the region has pursued a positive democratic trajectory ever since. But the latest presidential election is far from an example for those African countries consolidating their democracies or emerging from quasi-authoritarian regimes to emulate.

A Broken System

Younger and aspiring politicians also ran for the Nigerian presidency: Oby Ezekwesili, leader of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign and cofounder of Transparency International; Donald Duke, a former governor of Cross River State known for his innovative business development initiatives; and Kingsley Moghalu, an economist and former UN official. But they were frozen out by a geriatric and unresponsive system whose patronage politics requires candidates to have vast sums of money and the ability to distribute them. These candidates failed to connect with voters, winning only a tiny percentage of the vote.

Abubakar says he will contest the election, but Buharis margin of victorysome four million votesis so large that it is unlikely courts will overturn the result. Aside from some small pro-Abubakar demonstrations, Nigerians appear resigned to the outcome. The poor quality of this election cycle and the low and declining number of voters do not inspire confidence, and some Nigerians have begun to question whether democracy is right for their country.

Meanwhile, Gbenga Daniel, a former governor of Ogun state and ex-director general of the Atiku Abubakar campaign council, may have taken a definite stand concerning his alleged political move to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

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The former governor, who announced his resignation from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in a letter to the partys headquarters recently, was believed to have moved to the APC after he revealed that his supporters wanted him to lead them to the ruling party.

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2019 elections: Do you still trust INEC to conduct fair elections? - Nigerians speak| Legit TV

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First there was the BASE jumper. Now, theres a graffiti tagger.

In its final days, Martin Tower is attracting some after-hours daredevils.

It appears someone has snuck to the top of the Lehigh Valleys tallest building to leave their mark.

A large graffiti tag can be seen at the top of the 21-story former Bethlehem Steel Corp. headquarters on the south side of the cruciform-shaped building.

Bethlehem police Lt. Benjamin Hackett said the propertys owners have not filed a police report regarding the graffiti, but said hes seen the tagging himself.

The tower is a shell of its former self as crews have spent more than a year working to remove asbestos and prepare the building for its implosion later this spring.

Last week, owners Lewis Ronca and Norton Herrick revealed their plans for the roughly 53 acre property at the corner of Eaton and Eighth Avenues in West Bethlehem. They submitted a master plan to the city outlining what they want to do after the tower come down.

It proposes 528 upscale apartments, a 132-room hotel and a gas station and convenience store. It also includes two retail buildings totaling 33,100 square feet, a 5,080-square-foot restaurant and three medical office buildings totaling 124,854 square feet.

The Bethlehem Planning Commission is slated to review the master plan April 11.

Martin Tower opened as world headquarters of the now-defunct Bethlehem Steel in 1972 and sits on the National Register of Historic Places. Its cruciform design, seen from above, maximized the number of corner of offices for Steel executives, offering expansive views of the Lehigh Valley.

That same design made its reuse financially unfeasible, leaving the developers to decide to tear down the building and start from scratch. Mayor Bob Donchez said earlier this month it could be imploded as early as next month. The developers have not submitted any requests for the demolition to the city or state.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Where you live directly influences how well and how long you live.

An annual county health ranking released Tuesday, shows that Northampton County is one of the healthiest counties in Pennsylvania.

The rankings by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute boil down all of the factors that influence health -- from life expectancy, access to healthy food, graduation rates to housing costs -- into easy to digest snapshots that compare counties within states.

The report shows stark differences across Pennsylvanias 67 counties with Union County ranking healthiest and Philadelphia County the worst. It features an easy to use tool to allow users to drill down into the data and compare counties.

In the Lehigh Valley, Northampton County is the ninth healthiest while neighboring Lehigh County landed at 18 in the ranking.

The overall health ranking looks at how long people live and how healthy people feel. Northampton was 11th in the 2018 rankings while Lehigh County has not moved.

The 2019 County Health Rankings released Tuesday, March 18, give a snapshot overview of the health of U.S. counties. The rankings are a joint venture between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

I think what we have here are two relatively healthy counties, said Joe Hinton, a researcher with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, working on the joint project. They are more similar than they are different.

Hinton noted that Northampton County actually scores within the margin of error for the nations healthiest counties on many factors.

Residents of the Lehigh Valley overall are doing quite well making healthy decisions and they have good access to healthcare. Thats not surprising given the fact the region has two major health networks rapidly expanding.

But the rankings take a much broader view of health, Hinton noted.

Health is more than health care, he said.

The rankings pay close attention to the number of children living in poverty and a regions housing conditions.

Those are areas where the Lehigh Valleys struggles can be seen as the region doesnt fare as well in the overall health factor rankings, which represent all that influences a countys health. Theyre an estimate of the future health of a county as compared to others within a state. The ranking accounts for four things: health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic and physical environment factors.

On the overall health factor rankings, Northampton landed at 17 for 2019 while Lehigh County is at 24, thats an improvement from 18 and 27, respectively, in 2018.

This map measures the overall health factor rankings, which represent what influences the health of a county. They are an estimate of the future health of counties as compared to other counties within a state

The 2019 rankings took a deep diving into housing measures this year after seeing many places with great access to clinical health care and strong healthy behaviors showing lower scores on physical health measures, Hinton explained.

Housing is one of the foundational aspects of good health, Hinton said.

The Lehigh Valley is definitely part of that phenomenon.

High housing costs can force people into living in unsafe or overcrowded housing or put them on the street. A lack of access to safe, secure and affordable housing is tied to poor health, the report finds.

Families may only be able to afford housing in neighborhoods without full grocery stores, putting healthy and fresh foods out of reach. Or they may be spending too much of their income on housing, making it harder to have money for fresh foods or to repair a car so they can get to work or to afford a visit to the doctor.

Our homes are inextricably tied to our health, said Dr. Richard Besser, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation president and CEO. Its unacceptable that so many individuals and families face barriers to health because of what they have to spend on housing. This leaves them with fewer dollars to keep their families healthy. Imagine the stress and pain that come with unplanned moves. We are all healthier and stronger together when everyone has access to safe and affordable housing, regardless of the color of their skin or how much money they make.

Among the 17 percent of Pennsylvania kids living in poverty, 55 percent live in a household that spends more than half of its income on housing. In the Lehigh Valley, 18 percent of children in Lehigh County live in poverty and 14 percent do in Northampton County.

Overall 14 percent of Pennsylvania households spend more than half of their income on their rent or mortgage. Nationally, the rate is 1 in 10, Hinton noted.

The burden of severe housing costs disproportionately impacts people of color. Twenty-six percent of Pennsylvanias Hispanic-headed households spend more than half of their income on housing compared to just 11 percent of white households.

Locally, the rankings found that 16 percent of Northampton County and 17 percent of Lehigh County households reported at least one of four housing problems: overcrowding, high housing costs, lack of kitchen or plumbing facilities.

The rankings dont just show the health of the community. Theyve been paired with a database of proven, implementable strategies for counties and groups to enact.

All communities have the potential to be places where everyone enjoys full and equal opportunity. But the data show thats not happening in most communities yet. Children of color face a greater likelihood of growing up in poverty, and low-income families struggle to pay rent and get enough to eat, said Sheri Johnson, acting director of County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. It is time to do the difficult work of coming together to undo policies and practices that create barriers to opportunity

Pennsylvanias 10 healthiest counties

10. Snyder

9. Northampton

8. Lancaster

7. Butler

6. Bucks

5. Cumberland

4. Montgomery

3. Chester

2. Centre

1. Union

The 5 Pennsylvania counties in the poorest health are:

5. Luzerne

4. Lawrence

3. Cambria

2. Fayette

1. Philadelphia

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Liberty High School was in a lock-in situation Tuesday morning after an anonymous tip was sent about a potential threat, Bethlehem Superintendent Joseph Roy said.

The lock-in, where people were not permitted to enter or leave the school, was reported at 8:43 a.m. Bethlehem police said the incident was over by about 9 a.m. and the lock-in was lifted before 9:09 a.m.

Authorities said the tip, sent through the Safe2Say Something, was about about a man with a firearm near the high school.

Roy said a student on a bus leaving the high school saw someone with what appeared to be a rifle near a door to the school. When authorities got a look at the video, it was determined it was a member of the band bringing a replica Revolutionary War weapon -- used in performances -- back into the school, Roy said.

There was no actual threat, Roy said. The school will get bags to carry the replica weapons in the future, he added.

In an abundance of caution students and staff were told to remain in place while Bethlehem police searched the school before allowing students to resume their normal schedules.

The 24/7 Safe2Say Something is a youth violence prevention tip line that was launched statewide Jan. 14.

Anyone can call, text or email the anonymous hotline to share their concerns.

I would say it worked Roy said Tuesday as authorities were quickly alerted to what could have been a threat. It was a good example of see something, say something, he said.

Up to this point, the tip line has mostly been used by students who were concerned about friends being suicidal or in some other worrisome state, Roy said. This is the first time that he can recall thats its been used in the district for a potential larger danger, Roy said.

City police cautioned that dialing 9-1-1 is the quickest way to get assistance.

We are satisfied that there is no, nor was there ever, a threat to the school or the community, police Capt. Benjamin Hackett said in a news release. The safety of our school students is of utmost importance to the Bethlehem Police Department and as such we will continue to investigate any reports of potential danger. We encourage anyone who feels they have knowledge of an eminent threat of violence to call 9-1-1 immediately and reserve the use of anonymous tip lines for less urgent matters.

@LibertyHigh is currently in a lock-in situation - no person is permitted into or out of the school due to a tip received through the Safe2Say Something tip line about a potential threat outside but near the school. @BethlehemPolice are checking the area. @BethlehemAreaSD  Joseph Roy (@BASDSUPT) March 19, 2019

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The Pennsylvania governors office is authorized to borrow more than $3 billion a year to fund economic development projects across the state, and the Lehigh Valley wants its share. Local developers, governments and nonprofits submitted their applications for Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program funds in January. There are 12 proposals in Northampton County and seven in Lehigh County asking for a combined $76 million.

In order to be considered, the funds must be for the acquisition and construction of regional economic, cultural, civic, recreational and historical improvement projects. They must have a regional or multi-jurisdictional impact, and generate substantial increases or maintain current levels of employment, tax revenues or other measures of economic activity.

Awards typically arent granted until the budget is complete, according to the governors spokesman, J.J. Abbott. The fiscal year ends in June, so we might have to wait for months to know which projects get the grants.

You can check out the applications here.

Here are the Northampton County proposals from least to most expensive:

Lehigh Township public works facility ($368,000)

The township proposes a 23,000-square-foot public works facility at the current municipal complex. It will contain a lift, four service bays, a floor drain for washing vehicles, showers, storage areas and a small office/training room.

Construction is expected to get underway in April 2019 on the Heritage Lanes building, seen in mid-March, at 132 S. Third St. In Easton. (Tony Rhodin | For lehighvalleylive.com)Tony Rhodin | For lehighvalleylive.com

Heritage Lanes ($750,000)

The old Heritage Lanes bowling alley at 132 S. Third St. in Easton is being converted into an office building. Renovation is expected to start in a month for the building that will house offices for three magazines with Hearst Publications. The project calls for demolition of the first floor, renovation of the underground parking garage and construction of a new second floor. The developer hopes to wrap up the project in six months.

A Lidl grocery store is going in on 25th Street in Wilson Borough. (Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Lidl grocery store ($1 million)

The German grocery chain Lidl has nearly completed construction of a supermarket on South 25th Street in Wilson Borough. The chain paid to remove the former Victor Balata plant, a manufacturer of industrial belts.

Starters Riverport in Bethlehem (File photo)Express-Times

Riverport Market ($1.2 million)

This project calls for a $3 million renovation of the former Starters Riverport pub in South Bethlehem into a market for as many as 30 vendors. Plans call for a 16,000-square-foot main floor and a 7,000-square foot mezzanine. The funds will cover demolition, a build-out for vendors, an elevator and major plumbing and electrical upgrades.

Lafayette College - Rinek Rope complex ($1.5 million)

The Easton college wants to renovate and repurpose the former Rinek Rope manufacturing complex at 991 Bushkill Drive. After renovations, there will be about 43,000 square feet of usable space. Original brick buildings will be stabilized in order to make them safe. The project includes demolition of unsuitable buildings, renovations and repairs for three buildings, repairs to a water tower, and the installation of parking, sidewalks and lights.

ArtsQuest Community Cultural Center ($4 million)

ArtsQuest in Bethlehem wants to construct a new 80,000-square-foot arts and cultural center at the current Banana Factory Art Center. The project calls for razing four of the six current buildings. It will add a gallery, classrooms and meeting spaces, a 125-seat comedy theater, two outdoor arts plazas, artist focused 2- and 3-D MakerSpaces and digital design displays. It preserves the hot glass, ceramic and jewelry studios and adds digital, print and video studios and observation areas. The application was denied in 2018.

Lafayette College - Kunkel Hall ($4 million)

The Easton college wants to renovate this building for academic and administrative uses consistent with its campuswide expansion plans. The funds will help cover demolition, HVAC repairs, millwork, plumbing, electrical and landscaping costs. Kunkel Hall will provide up to 30 new offices, a computer lab, classrooms and a lecture hall for guest speakers.

The Boyd Theater, 30 W. Broad St., Bethlehem. (Nicke Falsone | For lehighvalleylive.com)EJA

Boyd Theater ($5 million)

The redevelopment of the former Boyd Theater property in Bethlehem will be the first new mixed used residential development project on West Broad Street in over 35 years. Plans call for demolishing the obsolete two-story commercial structure and single-screen movie theater and replacing them with 120 one- and two-bedroom apartments with modern layouts and amenities.

Polk Street parking garage ($5 million)

This seven-story, 585-space parking garage is planned for a surface parking lot maintained by the Bethlehem Parking Authority. Costs include site preparation, infrastructure improvements and construction.

The proposed Da Vinci Science City on South Third Street in Downtown Easton. (Courtesy rendering)EXT

Da Vinci Science City ($8 million)

Da Vinci Science City is partnering with the City of Easton to erect a a state-of-the-art LEED certified science-center facility with contemporary exhibits, a STEM Innovation Center and a science theater at the site of the demolished Days Inn hotel at 185 S. Third St. in Easton. The museum will be designed to attract visitors from a 50-mile radius. City council will discuss soon whether to commit $30 million to the estimated $130 million project.

The Commodore is a 7-story building with a rooftop restaurant proposed at 100 Northampton St. in Easton. It will be attached to the Kaplan's building to its right. (Rendering courtesy of architect Christine Ussler)Courtesy Christine Ussler

The Commodore ($9.3 million)

Plans call for preserving the historic section of a blighted building at 100-116 Northampton St., called the gateway to Easton. The new structure will have a rooftop restaurant and 32 apartments. It was home for decades to Kaplans Awnings.

Readington Farms ($20 million)

The Readington Farms project in Palmer Township includes the construction of a 350,000-square-foot dairy processing and distribution facility on a 35-acre parcel. The warehouse will serve the companys distribution operations center by providing a eight-bay tanker unloading and loading area, a 15-dock loading area, a truck stop, a truck wash, a truck scale and a fueling center.

Here are the Lehigh County projects:

Allentown Metal Works ($500,000)

The Allentown Commercial and Industrial Development Authority owns 606 S. 10th St., a 19-acre former manufacturing property. The project includes a phased renovation of three buildings. The completed renovation will provide a code-compliant shell ready for tenant fit-out by a heavy steel fabricator or similar manufacturing use requiring high-bay space.

Bogerts Bridge restoration ($1 million)

The historic covered bridges railing system, approach road and timber deck all need serious repairs. Many systems have completely failed. Without significant rehabilitation, this bridge may be lost.

Mansion on Seventh rehabilitation ($1.5 million)

Plans call for rehabilitating a historic Allentown mansion to host a restaurant for hospitality training and to provide commercial office space. Empty parcels adjoining the mansion will be developed as public green space and for the construction of two commercial units and eleven townhouses.

Iron Works Catasauqua ($2.2 million)

The project calls for the redevelopment of the former Crane Iron Works site in Catasauqua for a mix of commercial, residential, and public uses. The initial phase completed in 2017 included a new $10 million building to house the borough offices, fire department and police station. The next phase will prepare the site for mixed use development via the selective demolition of old, obsolete industrial buildings and the installation of roads and infrastructure.

Evonik ($2.5 million)

The German specialty chemicals company Evonik plans to open a $50 million business and technology center at 7201 Hamilton Blvd. in Upper Macungie Township. Improvements include interior and exterior renovations and site upgrades. The grant funds will offset renovation, upgrades and site acquisition costs.

Little Lehigh infrastructure ($3 million)

This Allentown development will provide housing for extremely low, low, and moderate income Allentown families; large families and families with children; elderly; and public housing residents. It calls for the demolition of 10 structures and the new construction of 16 buildings. The new development proposes 76 total units: 10 one-bedrooms; 40 two-bedrooms, 23 three-bedrooms and 3 four bedrooms.

Whitehall Township police and municipal services complex ($5 million)

Plans call for a new 29,000-square-foot police station at the current township municipal complex at 3219 MacArthur Road, renovations to the township building, a new shared lobby, two new elevators and associated site improvements.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
A mobile home was destroyed by fire early Tuesday morning in the Laurys Station section of North Whitehall Township but four people got out safely, authorities say.

The call went out at 5:22 a.m. and the building was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived at 1073 Dogwood St., Laurys Station Volunteer Fire Company Chief Robin Hood said.

We tried our best but it was too involved, Hood said of the effort to save the home. Firefighters protected nearby homes and the blaze didnt spread to more structures, he said.

They had it under control by 6 a.m., he added.

2ND ALARM | NORTH WHITEHALL | 1000 BLK OF DOGWOOD STREET | FULLY INVOLVED DWELLING Posted by Newsworking on Tuesday, March 19, 2019

An older couple, another adult and a child were out of the home when firefighters arrived, Hood said. There were no smoke alarms in the home, he added. A 9-year-old German shepherd named King alerted the 11-year-old to the danger and the child woke the rest of the residents, according to the Morning Call.

One cat from the home was found alive but another was still missing, Hood said.

The cause of the fire and its origin remain under investigation by the township fire marshal, Hood said.

The Laurys Station company was assisted by firefighters from Neffs, Schnecksville, Lehigh Township, Whitehall Townships Egypt station and Woodlawns cascade system, Hood said. Northampton and Nova provided EMS services, he added.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter@TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A western Pennsylvania state lawmaker resigned Monday, two months after being stripped of a chairmanship over allegations he had sex with a woman against her will while she was blacked out.

Rep. Brian Ellis (R-Butler County), who has not been charged with any crime, wrote in a letter to the House speaker that he was quitting immediately.

The announcement comes about a week after the woman, whose work involves the General Assembly, filed a complaint about Ellis to the House that said she was cooperating with law enforcement.

She said that in October 2015, she had been out at a piano bar with a friend and then at a fundraising event for a politician before blacking out.

"I woke up in pain, injured and naked the next morning in the bed of Representative Ellis," the woman said.

Ellis told her they had sex, and she responded she would never have done that, she wrote in the memo to a House Republican lawyer. "He smugly replied, 'I always knew we would,'" she wrote. She said she has no memory of having sex with Ellis.

A call seeking comment was made to Ellis' cellphone Monday but no message could be left. He has kept a very low profile in recent weeks, missing a string of voting sessions. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week that his lawyers called the allegations "just plain false." Messages were also left for attorneys with the law firm in that article.

The woman's lawyer, Christine Wechsler, said Monday she interprets Ellis' resignation as "an acknowledgement of her credibility and her courage and willingness to come forward."

Ellis' letter to Republican House Speaker Mike Turzai said his resignation decision was in the best interests of his family, district residents and his own health. He said representing a Butler County district was his highest professional honor.

BREAKING: Facing a sexual assault accusation, state Rep. Brian Ellis, R-Butler, has resigned from the state House. pic.twitter.com/eH6sdAwtFt  Pennsylvania Capital-Star (@PennCapitalStar) March 18, 2019

The Butler Eagle reported last week that Ellis' wife of 20 years recently filed for divorce.

House Republican leaders removed Ellis as chairman of the Consumer Affairs Committee in January and urged him to resign.

The state's victim advocate, Jennifer Storm, who has been working with the unidentified woman, said in January the woman had rebuffed advances by Ellis "multiple times before. Not just that night."

Storm issued a statement on behalf of the woman Monday that said they were "hopeful today that a new day of transparency and accountability is upon us. We truly hope this sends a message to other survivors who we know exist, you can break your silence, you can come forward and you will be supported."

House Republicans have said prosecutors are looking into the allegations, but Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo has declined to confirm an investigation.

On Monday, Chardo said only that Ellis resignation was outside his offices purview.
Old Florida isnt fabricated at the Lodge at Wakulla Springs; it never disappeared. Built by financier Edward Ball in 1937, the Mediterranean revival retreat recalls a time when sipping cherry phosphates at the worlds longest marble soda fountain bar was something to write home about. An art deco elevator transports guests to rooms outfitted with period furnishings. Several overlook the springs, where part of Creature From the Black Lagoon was filmed in 1954. When not cooling off in 70-degree spring water, visitors can enjoy boat tours, nature trails and sampling local specialties in the Edward Ball dining room. Rates from $119 to $269 a night.
The next wedding trend has nothing to do with sparklers or statement wedding cakessome couples are now choosing to take their honeymoons apart. For some, the vacation after the wedding is more about the trip itself, rather than relaxing post-nuptials. These couples jet set separately, taking what are now known as solomoons or unimoons. Other couples scoff, saying that honeymooning separately is not a great way to begin a marriagecouples should appreciate their time together. What do you think?

Plenty of people grow up dreaming of their wedding day, but in early adulthood, many also fantasize about where they will take their honeymoon. Will it be Paris? Australia? Hawaii? The dream honeymoon has built a reputation of being the vacation of your life, and for some couples, that dream isn't the same.

The New York Times Danielle Braff spoke to a number of couples who took unimoons as a result, meaning they honeymooned separately. One couple explains:

Neither of us wanted to be where the other one was, Ms. OBrien said. We each came back to Dublin full of stories, buzzing of our trips and truly delighted to see each other again to share the memories: It was the perfect imperfect honeymoon.

For OBrien and her husband, the unimoon provided a different kind of bondone where the couple could talk and share experiences that each individual thoroughly enjoyed, rather than compromising on a vacation they would both enjoy less.

No one is saying your honeymoon needs to be extravagant, but it should, at the very least, be spent with your partner. Experts agree that a honeymoon is not just a superfluous thinga vacation with your new spouse provides crucial time to bond uninterrupted, creating an important foundation for your lives together.

Some question how long relationships can actually last if they begin a new chapter like marriage apart.

Unimoon is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Really? Let's see how lo ing this trend or marriages last. @HollyLiveFox5DC @fox5dc  Karl Lissade (@KarlLissade) March 15, 2019

Others argue that the unimoon is simply another evolutionary step in the modern relationship. Individualism is paramount, and honeymooning separately signals a couples lack of dependency. According to psychologist Lisa Marie Bobby, knowledge of your own needs and values is a great indicator of a healthy relationship, particularly if your partner is different from you. Bobby tells Braff:

While taking separate honeymoons may seem extreme, highly individuated couples may view their independence and separate experiences as a strength of their relationship, Ms. Bobby said. Having your own life is, after all, a wonderful way to be an interesting, vibrant and genuinely satisfied person. All of which are qualities that will sustain a long-term relationship.

Every couple operates differently, and if some want to spend the days or weeks after their wedding apart, more power to them.

@woodyandwilcox I got married in October and I love my wife but I also like the idea of the unimoon. Also I'm an introvert and she isn't so I have to recharge my introvert batteries and what better way than to be by myself for a weekend  Van Coupo (@VanCoupo) March 14, 2019

Others are grounded in tradition. A honeymoon should be a time of relaxationaway from the stress of a wedding or all of the family that youve just had to visit. The time after your wedding is a universally-respected respite, which does not come around that often. Partners should enjoy it with each other.

The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, wed love to hear what you have to say.
A man jailed for one of the worst cases of animal cruelty in the history of the State has moved to appeal against the severity of his three-year prison sentence which he is serving at the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise.

James Kavanagh (48) pleaded guilty to 30 counts of causing or allowing animal cruelty at his property at Raheenleigh, Myshall, Co Carlow, in April 2015.

Carlow Circuit Court heard that the charges related to 63 animals. Gardai and animal welfare officers found a number of dead dogs and horses, as well as dogs feedings on the carcasses of horses when they inspected Kavanaghs dog breeding premises at Myshall.

The court heard that 340 dogs and 11 horses were removed from Kavanaghs property after the inspection. Four horses and 20 dogs had to be euthanised due to their condition.

He was sentenced to three years imprisonment and ordered to pay 35,000 towards costs incurred by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ISPCA) by Judge James McCourt on February 22 last

His wife, Jennifer Kavanagh, was given a wholly suspended 12 months sentence on the same occasion after she admitted 30 counts of allowing animal cruelty.

Opening an appeal against sentence on Tuesday, Kavanaghs barrister, Colman Cody SC, accepted that it was a serious case of neglect but there were no overt acts of physical cruelty.

Mr Cody said Kavanagh had a dog breeders license from Carlow County Council but claimed he wasnt breeding dogs.

He claimed Kavanaghs premises had been "mischaracterised" by the media as a puppy farm but it was nothing of the sort.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said the claim that Kavanagh was not breeding dogs seemed incompatible with an objective view of footage from his premises, filmed by the ISPCA, which was played in court.

It was accepted that 114 puppies were found on his premises but Kavanagh claimed he wasnt aware some of the dogs were pregnant.

Mr Cody said dog breeding had been Kavanaghs previous business but the transportation of dogs was subsequently generating more money for him.

He said legislative changes in recent years had required that all dogs in Ireland obtain "puppy passports which involved a cost to owners. He said the market had become flooded and people were offloading dogs onto Kavanagh because they didnt want to pay for puppy passports.

Mr Cody said Kavanaghs premises became a dumping ground for all these animals and a holding premises which Kavanagh allowed get out of hand.

The court heard that Kavanagh was being paid 40-50 depending on the breed of dog he transported and that charitable organisations, mostly in the UK, covered the cost of transport.

President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said the issue was being presented as if changes in the legislation, concerning puppy passports, had caused problems for Kavanagh but in truth, it seems the changes in the legislation created a bonanza for him.

Mr Cody said it was not a fair characterisation. He said a lot of people were complicit in this.

One of the judges commented that Kavanagh wasnt obliged to take them (the animals) in.

If youre in the business of transporting dogs, the more dogs you can get your hands on the better, Mr Justice Birmingham said, adding that Kavanagh had been looking to bring street dogs in from Romania.

Mr Cody said the sentencing judge was obliged to have regard to all of the background circumstances.

He said Kavanagh and his family had been subjected to the most vitriolic campaign of hate and abuse online. He said people were threatening to burn Kavanaghs house down and to do violence to his family. Even before hes brought to court, hes already suffered.

Mr Cody said Kavanagh was the sole breadwinner in the family and not a man who lived a lavish lifestyle.

He said his client had been left with shame and stigma from adverse publicity.

He said Kavanagh had lost his business to which Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy added: It was a criminal business; he hadnt paid a penny in tax.

Mr Cody submitted that the sentencing judge fell into error when he said Kavanagh had expressed no remorse. He said his client had expressed remorse to the ISPCA inspectors and had instructed his lawyers to express remorse on his behalf in court.

Mr Justice Edwards commented that anyone can assert remorse but there wasnt a scintilla of evidence to suggest he (Kavanagh) had any appreciation of what he was doing or regretted it in any way. He regretted that he was caught, the judge commented.

Mr Cody said Kavanagh had acknowledged that the animals were neglected and had pleaded guilty in court.

Mr Justice Birmingham said Kavanagh presented as somebody deserving of little sympathy. He said Kavanagh had been asked to look after the animals during the 11 days that the removal operation was in progress but didnt do so. During that period, he said Kavanagh continued to neglect the animals and failed to provide them with the most basic needs such as food and water.

The three-judge court was shown a 10-minute video from Kavanaghs premises, which included footage of dogs eating the carcasses of horses.

Kavanaghs explanation was that they were not his horses but had strayed onto his property, Mr Cody said.

After watching the video, Mr Justice Birmingham said horses were clearly shown in some form of paddock and he asked how they could have strayed into an enclosed area.

Mr Cody said they were originally stray horses, adding that Kavanagh had 15 of his own horses and efforts were made to get rid of the strays.

The implication is they (the horses) were there to feed the dogs, Mr Justice McCarthy commented.

Mr Cody said it was never suggested that horses were being brought onto Kavanaghs property for the express purpose of feeding the dogs.

Mr Justice McCarthy said there may have been no evidence to suggest the horses were being fed to animals but de facto they were being fed to dogs. He (Kavanagh) was allowing them to be fed to dogs.

Mr Cody said it was a case of neglect rather than overt acts of animal cruelty.

Mr Justice Birmingham said it was a case of neglect on a massive, commercial scale. He said the Circuit Court judge may have considered consecutive sentences in respect of the dog offences and the horse offences.

Mr Cody said that would have been grossly disproportionate.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Conor ODoherty BL, said it was one of the single biggest animal welfare prosecutions in the history of the State. In terms of the scale of the offending, it has to be seen to be believed, he said, referring to the video shown in court.

Mr ODoherty said it wasnt a case of others seeking Mr Kavanagh to offload dogs onto him, as had been suggested. There was evidence that Kavanagh had sought individuals out himself, he submitted.

He referred to a vet who outlined the conditions which animals suffered. The vet said it was one of the worst cases of animal cruelty he ever had the displeasure of dealing with. One dog in particular, photos of which were shown to the court, had to be euthanised.

Mr ODoherty also referred to comments from an Inspector who said it was one of the worst cases of animal cruelty he had come across in his 20 years with the ISPCA.

Referring to Kavanaghs previous convictions, Mr ODoherty said the Carlow man had brought animals from the UK during the Foot and Mouth crisis and claimed subsidies he wasnt entitled to.

He said a judge doesnt have to accept somebodys remorse at face value, just because their barrister asserts it.

The three-judge court reserved its judgment.

A fortnight earlier, Mr Cody sought urgent bail for Kavanagh pending his appeal. He was given an early date for hearing instead.

Mr Cody said Kavanaghs teenage son was tragically killed in a road traffic accident shortly after his client went into custody.

Following the death of their son, he said Jennifer Kavanagh "had to be sedated" and admitted to hospital.

He said his client was on suicide watch in the Midlands Prison and had to be moved from his original cell to the sex offenders wing for his own safety.
Tipperary farmer Liam Minehan has thrown his hat into the EU Parliament election race and hopes to win over 100,000 votes to be elected in May.

The Puckane man, best known for his 'Fight the Pipe' opposition to the Irish Water proposal to take water from the River Shannon to be pumped to serve the greater Dublin area, says that he wishes to start a conversation about the reinvigoration of rural Ireland, and the necessity of rebuilding population bases so that the rural economy can flourish.

"I don't want my grandchildren to be forced to live in apartment blocks in the middle of Dublin," Liam said this week.

His four sons PJ, Bill, Michael and Jim all work locally in the agricultural sector, while his wife Marian is the Secretary of the North Tipperary GAA Board and is very well known in sporting circles.

"My whole thing is about the fact that rural Ireland should be developed and supported in order to create a level playing field for everyone. Why is it that everything has to be inside the Pale?

"Why does everything have to go through the M50? It is only through repopulating the rural areas that we can breathe life back into the communities where people can live, work and play.

"You cannot have communities dying, but we are allowing that right now, because the system is wrong. I want to make democracy work for the people of rural Ireland," he says.



Liam (pictured above) points to the Government's spatial strategy being allowed to "tie up the legs of the local economy" and says that there needs to be a return to the days of decentralising of Government departments throughout the country.

"Decentralisation got a bad name the last time round because civic servants were made to move. But, there are so many now who wish to get out of Dublin, there would be no problem in implementing it.

"Like, why does the Department of Agriculture have to be right in the middle of Dublin city - it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. We need to use pillar 2 to maintain farmers and farming, not to maintain the factories," he says.

Liam speaks straight forward with a real clarity of thought. And, he offers the view that there are many many like-minded people out there who are very frustrated at the systems which govern the country at the present time - a system, which he says is broken and must be fixed.

Indeed, the 58-year-old readily admits that it is not Europe which really interests him, but rather Dail Eireann, and agrees that many of the structures and systems he wishes to see replaced are the responsibility of the elected representatives of Dail Eireann, rather than MEPs.

However, he also points out that the European elections ensures that his views reach far more constituencies than the General Election and affords the opportunity for more like-minded individuals to understand his thinking.

"I understand the process. But, my view is that if I can get 100,000 people to vote for me and to elect me to Europe, then I can have a voice which can be heard.

"I want to create an awareness in the Ireland South constituency that there is an alternative way, a straight forward and direct way. I have a very wide range of views on a lot of matters and I consider them all to be common sense.

"And, from speaking to a lot of people, I realise that others are of the same view," he says.

Liam is standing as an Independent candidate and says that he will have a very small team working with him.

But, he is hoping to tap into a thought process in rural Ireland which is very frustrated at the manner in which small local towns and villages are being left behind due to lack of broadband, poor road networks etc.

"People are angry at what is going on but they don't really have another outlet. How is it that there are major housing problems in Dublin - people can't get a house - and yet we have rural villages crying out to be repopulated.

"You'll get all the usual answers, but you won't get the real answer, which is that there is no will to make the changes necessary," Liam says.

The 'Fight the Pipe' campaign continues as Irish Water bids to pump 330 million litres of water to Dublin from Lough Derg.

This will increase the water supply to Dublin to be in the region of 960 million litres, which will be three times above the required capacity. But, more than half the water produced is being lost through leakage and wastage, according to figures.

"There are very real, viable and economical alternatives to solve the water problems in Dublin, but they don't want to hear about it.

"Temple Bar is one of the worst areas in the country for leakages, but when you mention digging up the streets around Temple Bar, you know the reaction you will get. They prefer to pump millions of water from Tipperary to top up their supply, rather than dig up a street in Dublin," he says.

"The decline in small towns and villages has been well documented and we are now probably at the bottom of the curve in that we have pretty much lost everything that can be lost.

"Our Post Offices are gone, the few pubs that are left are fighting for their very survival and there are very few small shops still in existence.

"Rural isolation is a very real, rapidly increasing phenomena and it is now possible for a person living alone to go the full day without as much meeting a neighbour.

"This has to change, this is our watch, only we can make a difference.

"Looking at our villages and small towns it is difficult to see how the shops, Post Offices and pubs that have closed will ever be reopened.

"We live in a different world and have become accustomed to different ways, either by choice or legislation. The reinvigoration of our villages and towns will require ambitious and creative projects, but it can be done.

"Technology is rapidly presenting an opportunity unlike anything we have previously witnessed.

"Many workers spend their working day in front of a computer screen in an office inside the M50 where road networks and accommodation are struggling to cope with demand.

"This need not be the case. Why could these offices and their associated computer terminals not be located in smaller, well appointed hubs in our villages and towns?

"This would allow workers move from the overpriced accommodation in the greater Dublin area to a part of the country where realistic house prices and quiet roads are the norm.

"A small hub capable of accommodating 20 to 30 workers would inject much needed life into our villages and towns and could begin the process of finally redressing the balance."

Liam Minehan is a passionate advocate for rural Ireland with many forward thinking, some might say radical, ideas. But, many others will be very taken his direct narrative.

Liam is contactable at: liamminehan@gmail.com OR marianminehan@live.ie

If you would like to discuss any matters with him, his phone number is 085 7215444
A great night was had at the bring your own bottle barn dance held in Mary Keenans Barn, Ballinacarrig, Carlow, recently where an amazing 3,500 was raised for a charity in Uganda.

A great night was had by all who attended the dance on Friday night, March 8 in the barn with line dancing, jiving, waltzing and great fun all around.

The dancing and social event was in aid of the UgaIrish Project in Uganda.

The organisers wish to thank everyone who supported this fun event and made the dance such a huge success.

Thanks go to Mary Keenan, for the use of her beautiful barn, to all those who came to the dance, those who gave donations, raffle prizes and Declan and the line dancers.

It was a great night and raised 3,500 for the charity, organisers said.

UgaIrish Project exists to support and encourage Ugandan communities to be in a position to provide for themselves through sustainable enterprise the basic needs of life  education, health, food and accommodation.

The Project was founded by Siobhan Kinsella when she visited Kamuzinda Childrens Village in 2006.

It is funded by donations, and by fund-raising events run by the volunteers who travel each year to Uganda.

The charity also organises sponsors, who pay for the education of children in the area, or for the accommodation and education of special needs children in suitable schools.
A Portlaoise charity that helps homeless people has started a new service in Laois to support local people in need.

Portlaoise Action to Homelessness (PATH) volunteers travel to Dublin every Saturday night to distribute food, toiletries, sleeping bags and other essential items to people who are homeless.

The charity committee also works behind the scenes with people in Laois and surrounding areas who are struggling and experiencing poverty.

They help local struggling families to pay for food and they have seen a need for more local help with an increase in calls from people in Laois who struggle to make ends meet.

PATH has started a new mobile service in Portlaoise town centre offering tea, coffee, soup and a chat to anyone local who might want to talk to them or just have a cup of tea.

The service started for the first time last week. PATH want to operate it between 7.30pm and 9 pm on Wednesday evenings in Lyster Square.

Everyone is welcome to use the service, have a cup of tea and a chat with volunteers at the mobile service under the arch in Lyster Square.

Irene Redmond is Chairperson of PATH.

We want to be more visible in our local community as we do help families and individuals in and around Laois. We have always been helping locally. We do an awful lot of work helping families that are struggling. We are getting more calls lately and we know that there is a huge need to help and so we wanted to be more visible.

Wednesday night is an opportunity for people to come down and have a cuppa and a chat with us if they want. We will have tea/coffee/soup and a few other items available, she said.

There is a huge effort from the committee and volunteers to organise the trips to Dublin every Saturday and now the charity has taken on another night of helping those in need.

PATH welcomes new volunteers to help with the huge amount of work they do.

The charity holds an information meeting at Portlaoise Leisure Centre on the first Tuesday of every month at 8 pm for anyone who is curious about their work. New volunteers are welcome to attend.

While PATH does not have the capacity to take donations of clothes for the homeless, they will accept sleeping bags, tents, sweets, chocolate, crisps, hats, scarves, gloves, underwear and toiletries for men and women.

Any donations can be dropped to the Parish Centre in Portlaoise.
Laois County Fire & Rescue Service has confirmed that Portarlington Train Station remains closed after a fire broke out this afternoon.

The train station was evacuated around 4pm today Tuesday March 19, after a fire began in a maintenance workshop, a stone building that runs next to the platform.

Commuters from Dublin and Cork and Limerick will be disrupted by the fire because the station is expected to remain closed to passengers for several more hours.

Fire brigades from four stations are attending the blaze which is understood to now be under control. The roof of the workshop has been destroyed.

The fire began in a maintenance carriage which is not for passengers, inside the workshop . Nobody was working on the carriage at the time but ambulances were called to the scene as a precaution, a spokesperson for the fire service told the Leinster Express.

"There were no injuries. The ambulances are on the scene as a precaution," the Fire Service spokesperson said.

Fire brigades from Portarlington, Portlaoise, Mountmellick and Monasterevin are attending the fire.

"Members of the public were evacuated and the station is currently closed. It will remain closed for a few more hours," the spokesperson confirmed.

Passing train passenger Aine Mulloy tweeted the following video as the blaze was getting underway.
A Dublin man accused of possessing almost 3 million worth of drugs and an assault rifle told gardai that he and his brother, who was caught with 15 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition, lived "separate lives" and were like "chalk and cheese".

The Special Criminal Court has heard that gardai failed to find the drugs and assault rifle, which had been stashed in a bed, when they carried out a search of a Kildare house during a "very fast-moving operation".

In her opening address to the non-jury court, prosecution counsel Fiona Murphy SC said that the owner of the property later came to clear out the premises and found what appeared to be a large amount of controlled drugs and a firearm" at the base of a bed.

Michael Brady (54), with an address in Blackrock, Co Dublin is charged with possessing 1.5 million worth of cocaine, 1.26 million worth of heroin, an assault rife and more than 180 rounds of ammunition at a property at Sallins Bridge, in Sallins, Co Kildare on January 24, 2017.

He has pleaded not guilty to all nine counts on the indictment.

It is the State's case that forensic evidence links Michael Brady to some of the items found at Sallins Bridge and to the address itself.

Detective Inspector Derek Maguire, of the Garda National Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (GNDOCB), told the prosecution that fingerprints and buccal swabs were taken from Michael Brady as it was necessary for the proper investigation of the offence.

Garda Shona Moran, of the Special Crime Task Force in the GNDOCB, told Tony McGillicuddy BL that she interviewed the accused man on January 24 and 25 at Tallaght Garda Station.

The witness agreed with Mr McGillicuddy that, before the interviews began, Mr Brady was told of items seized at Greenogue Business Park, Rathcoole, Co Dublin.

Last month Declan Brady (52), a brother of the accused, pleaded guilty to possessing 15 firearms and more than 4,000 rounds of ammunition at that address on the day in question. He is awaiting sentence.

The court heard today that Michael Brady told Gda Moran in his interviews that he was originally from Drimnagh but sometimes stayed in Sallins Bridge to look after dogs. The accused said he had woken up in Sallins Bridge on January 24 as he was minding the dogs and no one else was in the house at the time.

Michael Brady was asked by gardai how often he stayed at Sallins Bridge and the court heard he replied: "Every now and again, it could be a few days at any given time."

He slept downstairs in a room beside the bathroom but this was not officially his bedroom, he said. There were four bedrooms in the house, he did not pay rent and his name was not on the lease agreement, he indicated.

The accused man told gardai that he had his own set of keys for the house at Sallins Bridge, had permission to be there and had been staying there on and off for a year.

Michael Brady said he was 100 per cent that he did not have anything illegal in his bedroom at Sallins Bridge.

Detective Garda Gary Dunne testified that he carried out the third interview with Michael Brady at 1.30pm on January 25. The accused man told gardai that his brother Declan Brady also had a key to Sallins Bridge and would sometimes stay there as he owned the dogs.

Michael Brady denied that the two rounds of ammunition found at the back of a chair in the dining room on the previous day belonged to him.

Gardai asked Michael Brady if his brother Declan was into criminal activity. I wouldnt like to say anything about his activity, he replied.

Gardai also asked the accused if he was aware that his brother was in custody as he had been found with guns. The accused said that he and his brother lived "separate lives" and were like chalk and cheese growing up.

Michael Brady said that he did not know anything about firearms found at a lockup and was not familiar with guns. He denied that his brother had ever asked him to do anything illegal.

Earlier, Detective Garda Maria OHara, of the GNDOCB, agreed with prosecution counsel Fiona Murphy SC that she conducted a meticulous search of a downstairs bedroom at Sallins Bridge on January 24. A letter in relation to a lease agreement for Sallins Bridge which was addressed to Declan Brady was seized in this bedroom, she said, adding that it was dated February 23, 2015 and it confirmed the full rent deposit had been received.

The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Paul Coffey, presiding, sitting with Judge Gerard Griffin and Judge David McHugh.
Essential works to be carried out at Saggart Reservoir may cause disruption to Ardclough Road and surrounding areas in Celbridge until 6pm, Wednesday March 20.

Irish Water, working in partnership with Kildare County Council and Dublin City Council, will carry out essential works at the Saggart Reservoir from this evening 6pm, Tuesday, 19 March, until 6pm, Wednesday, 20 March.

These essential works may cause supply disruption to the Ardclough Road and surrounding areas in Celbridge. Due to water network management carried out by Kildare County Council, we expect continuity of supply for the affected areas. However some customers, especially those on higher ground, may experience low pressure and minor supply disruption.

During these essential works, Irish Water is encouraging customers to conserve water. We are urging customers to conserve water by not running taps needlessly, taking showers instead of baths and to postpone using dishwashers and washing machines where possible.

Irish Water and Kildare County Council thank customers for their patience while we carry out these essential works. For further information please visit our supply and service section on our website www.water.ie and on Twitter @IWCare. The Irish Water customer care helpline is open 24/7 and customers can call us on 1850 278 278.
The CornMill Theatre are on the trail for All Ireland glory this year with their production of On Broken Wings.



The Carrigallen group are in the middle of festival circuit but are already faring well having received first place in their two local festivals in Ballinamore and Kiltyclogher this month.

They came third in Ballyshannon drama festival but are hoping to hit the top note in Shercock this week and Cavan Town later this month. They will also perform in Caremorris and Carrickmore also.



After they took home the top prizes in Ballinamore and Kiltyclogher this month Athlone is calling was already being mentioned across social media for the Carrigallen group.



Director Ronan Ward also got awarded at Kiltyclogher Drama Festival. He was in charge when the group last won the All Ireland Drama Festival in 2014.

Dermot Healy's masterpiece, On Broken Wings, takes its title from a popular song of the 1930s, a period in which some of the scenes are set.



The play opens in contemporary Ireland with an old masked figure - Timothy Lavell seated by the hearth of a cottage on the Mullet peninsula.

It follows from Timothys childhood, including his trip by boat and train to Scotland, and his time there potato-picking, before return home again. Then we continue with Timothys life in America. He finds work as an elevator man, and encounters many races and creeds. His experiences, his failed love affair, his hallucinations, and his fears are explored.

Eventually he returns to Ireland to sit by the hearth like his father and mother before him. Timothy Lavell is a stubborn survivor of another age.



The 2019 All Ireland Drama Festival will be held in the Dean Crow Theatre, Athlone May 2- May. The nine finalist theatre groups will be announced in April.

Also read: Don't miss Dermot Healy's masterpiece - On Broken Wings
I have a love-hate relationship with EC 261. On the one hand, it's a necessary rule that provides real compensation when something goes wrong. We desperately need a regulation like it in the United States. On the other hand, the way in which it's written leaves so much open to creative interpretation by airlines that it's often ineffective.
UNIVERSITY Hospital Limerick has set the record for highest level of overcrowding in 2019 for a third time this Tuesday morning.

According to figures published by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, there were 76 patients being treated on trolleys at UHL.

This is one of the highest levels of daily overcrowding ever recorded since records began in 2006. The national record was broken by UHL on March 22, 2013 when there were 80 patients being treated on trolleys.

The second highest rate of overcrowding at UHL this year was 70 patients on February 26. The third highest was 69 patients in mid-February.

There were 35 more patients on trolleys at UHL than at Cork University Hospital, which had 41 patients on trolleys on Tuesday.

The third highest level of overcrowding was at University Hospital Galway, with 34 patients on trolleys.

Sinn Fein TD Maurice Quinlivan said this Tuesday's figures is "proof that the governments efforts to resolve this crisis have been absolutely farcical.

Minister Harris has failed to deal with the issues that are causing this emergency. The minister is clearly out of his depth.

The government needs to work with unions to address the systemic problems in the health service and get patients off trolleys and into hospital beds," he stated.

This high level of overcrowding comes amid growing concern by Oireachtas members over a delay in the delivery of the 60-bed modular block at the Dooradoyle site.

Estimated to cost 19.5m, Minister for Health Simon Harris has assured his Fine Gael colleagues that the crucial project will be included in the HSEs capital plan for 2019.

The HSE announced on March 1 that 2m has been allocated to carry out enabling works and has indicated that the project will be completed by June 2020.

Hospital management has yet to indicate when the 96-bed block will be built, though it is believed it will be delivered sometime in the 2020s.
WORK began this Monday on a 144,000 project to provide a new, safe, one-way system for dropping off and collecting pupils at St Fergus National School in Glin.

It is one of three school gate projects to be supported by Newcastle West Municipal District councillors.

The project got the all-clear last week with confirmation of a 70,000 loan from the Limerick Diocese and a contribution of 25,000 from the GMA discretionary roads fund controlled by local area councillors.

Welcoming the arrival of a digger at the school. Cllr John Sheahan, who was a member of the schools parking committee, said: This is one of the most important projects to be done in this area in the last number of years from a health and safety aspect.

The issue of safety in dropping off and collecting pupils had been growing in urgency for some time, he added.

Last month, councillors asked management to look again at providing funds to three school gate safety projects: pedestrian crossings at Killoughteen NS and St Marys NS in Broadford and the set-down system in Glin.

Presentations from representatives the three schools involved, all reported in the Limerick Leader, had emphasised the health and safety aspects.

Last Wednesday, councillors agreed to give 35,000 to Killoughteen and 25,000 to Glin. A further 35,000 was earmarked for a pedestrian crossing outside Broadford NS, to be installed as part of a resurfacing of the road later this year. The total cost of the Broadford project was over 250,000, Cllr Seamus Browne said, and was important as the road was in bad condition in parts.

I am delighted the pedestrian crossing is going ahead, he said.

The pedestrian crossing at Killoughteen will be installed as part of a large-scale project to develop a school hall and parking across the road from the school.
THE LONGEST coffee and tea morning in Ireland could soon be the longest in the world.

Mike ODonoghue started the fundraiser four years ago with Saoirse Corbett, aged 19, Tara Campbell, 18, and Sarah Dillon, aged 13. It takes place in Mikes home in Pallasgreen on Friday, March 22.

Mike will thrown open his doors at 7.30am. It will be well after midnight when he, the girls and his kettle can take a break. To date they have handed over 16,000 to the Irish Cancer Society.

Mike holds the event for the Irish Cancer Society as he is a survivor. Loved ones of Saoirse, Tara and Sarah have all been touched by the terrible disease  as has practically everyone.

The mammoth coffee morning began so early because people asked him could they call in before work. And the day just got longer and longer.

Well keep going until the last person leaves! said Mike.

The society told them it was the longest coffee morning in the country. So this year they got in touch with the Guinness Book of World Records to see if they could go global

Were not trying to break a record. Were trying to create a record because there is none. We have to take a note of everything and we send off all the information then. If there is nobody here between 9am and 9.10am, for example, we write that down and that is taken off the very end for the grand total of hours. We send all the information off and then see will they accept it, said Mike.

Last year was their biggest event to date. A total of 327 men, women and children had a cuppa and a slice of cake or tart and helped raise 6,000 for the charity. What you cant calculate is the sense of community.

We always have great craic. You have to have the chat. We had a meeting the other night and we said we wouldnt set any goals. Well see what happens, said Mike.

To find his house, turn left in the village of Pallasgreen if you are travelling from Limerick and it will be sign posted from there.

A warm welcome is guaranteed from Mike, Saoirse, Tara and Sarah.

The three girls are dynamite. They are all taking the day off school or work for it. Where would you get three youngsters working for 16 hours in a row for nothing. We are a team. Without them it would never have happened or continued - I mean that from the bottom of my heart, said Mike, a former postman and farmer who played all levels for Pallasgreen GAA.

Michael D Higgins has also recognised their efforts. Mike needed something stronger than a cup of tea when the letter carrying the presidential seal fell on his mat one morning

It read: May I commend Saoirse Corbett, Tara Campbell and Sarah Dillon for their fundraising efforts for the Irish Cancer Society. Through their dedication and work, sustained over a number of years, they have demonstrated remarkable solidarity with and commitment to others, and have done so with energy and enthusiasm. They are a wonderful example to their community and so may I wish them the very best in their continuing efforts.

Mike kept it a secret. He invited the girls and their families to a night in his house last September and gave each of them a framed copy of the letter.

All are welcome to his Pallasgreen home on Friday, March 22.
THERE are just 30 grave plots left in Reilig Ide Naofa in Abbeyfeale but the search continues for a new graveyard site in the town. So far, 16 sites have been tested for suitability at a cost of 34,000.

But now, councillors have been told, there are enough burial spaces in the town for the next five years.

In a written answer to a series of detailed questions, Cllr John Sheahan has been told that there are 30 grave plots left in Reilig Ide Naofa but 25 plots have now been identified in the old St Marys graveyard while there are 68 plots in the Church of Ireland graveyard.

Based on current trends in the sale of new burial spaces in Abbeyfeale over the last four years and taking into consideration the number of burial spaces remaining, it would take approximately five years before this remaining capacity would be used up, Gordon Daly director of services with Limerick City and County Council told Cllr Sheahan.

But he declined to answer Cllr Sheahans query as to how many more sites have been identified by the council and where. As site selection is currently not finalised, Mr Daly said, this information cannot be made available at this time.

Two years have now passed since local concerns were first raised that Abbeyfeale could run out of grave plots and the local community council as well as local councillors have continued to press for action on the matter. Landowners and estate agents were contacted and sites investigated and then, last year, the council publicly advertised for expressions of interest from landowners. However, at a meeting in January, director of services Gordon Daly said there had been a change in direction on the matter. The council was now actively identifying sites that it considers suitable from a number of points of view and approaching landowners, rather than the other way round, he explained.

On foot of that, he said, a number of sites had been identified as suitable in terms of accessibility with maps showing the land to be suitable. These would now be tested, he said. This approach, he assured councillors , would allow them to move very quickly at the end of that process.

In the meantime, Mr Daly said, the council was working on a plan to address capacity in the short term. But he stressed, the focus had not gone off finding a location for a new graveyard.

But Cllr John Sheahan is not happy with the councils short-term plan. The councils answer is to bury people in graves already used in St Marys or the Church of Ireland, he said.

I am not happy with the response, he continued, noting the high number of sites (16), already investigated, and the large amount of money already spent, 34,000. I take it that doesnt include the cost of man hours put in by the council, he said.

There is an urgency in this, he said. The people of Abbeyfeale need to exercise their voice if they wish to have a new graveyard within the next five years.

X
MULTI-MILLION euro proposals to restore a derelict marina in Ballina have hit delays.

The son of Euromillions winner Dolores McNamara Gary, who lives nearby, is seeking planning permission to restore the old harbour in the Tipperary village.

Mr McNamara, who has bought up The Killaloe Hotel and saved the jobs, is planning to invest 2m in the project.

However, one resident has highlighted her concern over the work, claiming it represents unauthorised development.

She is seeking leave to appeal to An Bord Pleanala, claiming the plan to transform the development at Derg Marina is causing her particular concern.

I have never before made an objection to any planning decisions in the past. The proposed development at Derg Marina is causing me particular concern. Granting my request for leave to appeal will provide an opportunity to be independently heard and to outline my genuine and real concerns in relation to the unauthorised development at Derg Marina, Ballina. For the past five months, I have tried to engage positively with the applicant and more recently with Tipperary County Council but without any success, she wrote.

Derg Marina was bought by Mr McNamara, 40 and his wife, who have a variety of property interests across the region.

The land changed hands for well over the asking price of 550,000 back in 2015.

The marina features more than 500 metres of water frontage and panoramic views over the lake and adjoining countryside.

The local who is appealing the plans  who did not comment further also expressed concerns over light pollution.

John Mullen, chairperson of the Marine Village Residents Association, said the majority of the residents are delighted with the works, and have signed a petition to support Mr McNamara.

Gary has been great to communicate with the people and asked our opinions along the way. It will be the best inland marina in Ireland when its finished, he said.
LIMERICK city centre looks set to get its third branch of coffee-shop chain Starbucks.

The former OSullivans pharmacy unit, at the junction of OConnell Street and Sarsfield Street is in the process of being refitted, and signage advertising the coffee shop giants name was being erected on site this Tuesday.

Founded in Seattle back in 1971, Starbucks first opened in Limerick back in 2015, with its first outlet being at Colbert Station.

This was followed up with a second unit in the Thomas Street centre, also home to Uber, the following year.

Helen ODonnell of the Limerick City Business Association has expressed concern at yet another coffee shop opening in the city.

She said: We have enough coffee shops in the city right this minute. We have become a real cafe and food city which is great. But wed just hope there are enough people to frequent these places. Its tough going. Each franchise is independent, so while there are a number of Starbucks in the city, they are all independent owners. Best of luck to them, but my goodness, its a very crowded market.

Ms ODonnell has bemoaned the fact that it is effectively another chain shop opening in the centre.

Wed like to see independent businesses opening up, we want to support our local famlies. I feel this is a Starbucks too many, or indeed a coffee shop too many.

While our city centre population has increased, it hasnt increased that enormously, she said.

Ms ODonnell suggested a new masterplan needs to be put in place to promote a better retail mix.

Starbucks Coffee will join a Costa Coffee branch nearby, which operates at the former HMV unit in Cruises Street.

OSullivans pharmacy itself moved to the former Munster store in the heart of OConnell Street.

The Starbucks Coffee chain has been contacted for comment by The Leader.
FIANNA Fail has suffered a blow after high-profile candidate Francis Brosnahan announced he is pulling out of the local election race.

The former Young Munster rugby star, who is based in the Fr Russell Road, has cited family reasons for his decision not to seek election in City West.

However, he says he will remain an active and valued member of the party.

Speaking following his withdrawal, Willie ODea said: I want to wish Francis all the best. I understand he has family commitments which must always come first for any person. I want to thank Frank for his hard work and effort and wish him well for the future.

Its unclear at this stage whether Fianna Fail will replace Mr Brosnahan on the ticket, with the party already running Mayor James Collins, Cllr Sean Lynch and Muslim candidate Abul Kalam Azad Talukder in City West.

There are seven seats available. Limerick will go to the polls on May 24 next.
GARDAI are appealing for help in locating the occupants of a car who fled the scene of a collision on the main Limerick to Newcastle West road.

The black car rear-ended a SUV which had stopped to turn off the N21 near Rathkeale at around 5.30pm on Thursday last  March 14.

The black jeep was stopped and waiting to turn right off the N21. Suddenly it was rear ended by a black car. This car had four people in it all of whom jumped from the car and ran off, said Sergeant Ber Leetch.

None of the occupants of the car - believed to be a Ford Mondeo - have been located to date and gardai say efforts to locate them are ongoing.

Last Thursday was the day before the St Patricks bank holiday weekend and at that time the roads were very busy. Im sure there were witnesses to this accident so please, contact investigating gardai, added Sgt Leetch.

In a post on Facebook, the driver of the SUV stated she had just collected her young grandson when the collision happened.

"I was driving home and about to turn to take the road to my house when a black Ford Mondeo came speeding behind me as I saw them in my rear view mirror and honestly thought they would go inside me and pass me out. Instead they rammed my jeep and drove me across the main N21 road. It was the luck of God that there wasn't a vehicle coming against me or I wouldn't be telling my story," she said.

Gardai in Rathkeale can be contacted at (069) 63222.
New Delhi: Traditionally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been perceived as a North Indian party, with limited influence beyond the Hindi-speaking states. While the party has done much to change this perception, notching up a host of victories in the countrys North-East, the South Indian states remain its Achilles heel . Even in 2014, when the BJP swept the Lok Sabha elections, it won a mere 21 seats in the five southern states, or 19% of the 112 seats on offer. By contrast, in the rest of the country, the BJP won 60% of seats on offer.

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Not only has the number of southern seats won by the BJP remained constant, the party has also failed to expand beyond its traditional strongholds in Karnataka. A comparison between the 1998 and 2014 elections shows that the BJPs victories are mostly confined to coastal and north Karnataka.

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In 2014, the BJP, acknowledging its shortcomings in the southern states, competed only in 67 seats (out of 112). It secured a vote share of 31% across these seats and won in 21 (31% of contested seats). While this was lower than the BJPs national performance where it secured 40% vote share and 66% seats in the seats it contested, it was still an improvement over the BJPs previous performance in the South. In the 2009 elections when the BJP was more ambitious, competing in 106 seats, it won only 19 seats (18%). In the forthcoming elections, the BJP is expected to follow a targeted strategy, focusing on fewer constituencies, and relying on allies in other constituencies.

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In Karnataka, the only southern state where the BJP is a force to reckon with, it will be hoping to build on previous electoral successes.

The BJP has been the best performing party in terms of total seats won in the state over the past three general elections (since 2004). In the 2018 state assembly elections, the BJP won in constituencies beyond its traditional strongholds along the coast. All this suggests that the BJP should perform well in the state. However, the pre-poll alliance announced by the Congress and the JD(S) (Janata Dal Secular) could hurt its prospects. Had the Congress-JD(S) alliance existed in 2014, it would have secured 13 seats and brought down the BJP total to 15 (from 17).

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The rest of South India, however, presents a far greater challenge for the BJP. Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are bastions of regional parties, where the BJP has struggled historically. These regional parties hold sway by appealing to local sensibilities, pride, culture and language, thereby denting the BJPs nationalist appeal. The BJP, therefore, remains a fringe player, heavily reliant on alliances with regional parties.

Also read: Elections 2019: How Delhi is making inroads into the Dravidian heartland

In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, on the two occasions when the BJP performed reasonably well (1999 and 2014), it did so in alliance with the TDP (Telugu Desam Party). In 2009, when the TDP withdrew from the NDA (National Democratic Alliance), the BJP suffered a humiliating defeat, winning no seats. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, the last time it won a meaningful number of seats (four) was in 1999, when it was in alliance with the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and Vaikos MDMK (Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam). Since then, the party has been blanked out completely, winning only a solitary seat in 2014 in Kanyakumari.

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In these elections, the party so far remains without allies in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, leaving K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Chandrababu Naidu as potentially decisive kingmakers in the overall verdict. A reported potential alliance with Jagan Mohan Reddys YSRCP (Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party), which won eight seats in the 2014 elections, could boost the BJPs prospects in Andhra Pradesh. However, the BJP can be more optimistic about its prospects in Tamil Nadu, where it has secured a pre-poll deal with the AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), the current ruling party in the state assembly and the winner of 37 seats in 2014.

This combined with the BJP itself competing in five seats could mean a marked improvement for the party in Tamil Nadu. But even these potential gains could be hindered by the potential Congress-DMK alliance.

The one state where the BJP is unlikely to make any inroads is Kerala. Despite competing in a large number of seats historically against the Congress and the coalition of Left parties, the BJP is yet to win a single seat in the state.

Given this, even the recent polarization around the Sabarimala issue is unlikely to help the BJP secure a foothold in its last frontier in the country.

Save for a miracle then, historical data suggests that there is unlikely to be a dramatic turnaround in the BJPs fortunes in South India in the forthcoming elections.

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But times have changed and so have the laws. The U.S. Supreme Court has since found that such sentences are too harsh, even inhumane for someone so young. Maybe at the age of 34, after serving half of his life in prison, Malvo deserves a new sentence. The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would look into it.
On Dec. 18, 2018, a school bus-size meteor exploded over Earth with an impact energy of roughly 10 atomic bombs. According to NASA, the blast was the second-largest meteor impact since the organization began tracking them 30 years ago, bested only by the infamous fireball that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in Feb. 2013.

Despite this, hardly anyone noticed it was happening  and nobody saw it coming.

As to why one of the largest meteor impacts in recent history may have totally passed you by, that's likely because the space rock in question shattered over the Bering Sea, a cold stretch of the Pacific Ocean between Russia and Alaska, miles from inhabited land. [The 10 Biggest Impact Craters on Earth]

NASA learned about the December impact thanks to the U.S. Air Force, whose missile-monitoring satellites were among the first to detect the blast. The rumble of the impact also registered on infrasound detectors  stations that measure low-frequency sound waves inaudible to human ears  around the world, giving scientists enough data to draw some basic conclusions about the sneaky meteor.

According to NASA, that meteor weighed about 1,500 tons (1,360 metric tons), had a diameter of about 32 feet (10 meters), and was traveling through the atmosphere at about 71,582 mph (115,200 kilometers per hour) when it exploded. The blast occurred about 15.5 miles (25 km) over the ocean and erupted with an energy equivalent to 173 kilotons of TNT  roughly 10 times the energy of the atomic bomb that the United States detonated over Hiroshima during World War II.

The world's asteroid-monitoring groups failed to see the rock headed our way likely due to its smallish size. Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queens University Belfast in Northern Ireland, told New Scientist that most modern telescopes are best able to detect objects measuring several hundred meters or more in diameter, making smaller objects like this one easy to miss. NASA asteroid hunters are most concerned about identifying near-Earth objects measuring 460 feet (140 m) across, which have the potential to obliterate entire US states if allowed to pass through the atmosphere, Live Science previously reported.

The December 2018 impact only came to attention this week thanks, in part, to a presentation at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas that was delivered by Kelly Fast, NASA's near-Earth objects observations program manager. Fast told BBC News that the December event exploded with "40 percent the energy release of Chelyabinsk," but didn't show up in the news because of the impact's relatively remote location.

The Chelyabinsk meteor, which measured 62 feet (19 m) wide, passed over mainland Russia and was recorded by many motorists. The resulting shockwaves injured more than 1,200 people.

Originally published on Live Science.
The temple may be located near Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. Part of the city, which people have inhabited for thousands of years, is shown here.

A 2,000-year-old bronze tablet from Yemen, has engraved writing that mentions a lost temple dedicated to a god named "Athtar Harman," a deity whom scholars have never heard of before.

Written in the Sabaic language, in a text known as Sabaean, the bronze inscription reads:

"Ilimata and Khabiat, the two servants of Khawliyan offered to Athtar Harman, the owner of Bana, with a tablet of bronze, their sons and those he will add, for their salvation" (translation by Christian Robin). [Cracking Codices: 10 of the Most Mysterious Ancient Manuscripts]

"This plaque comes from a temple dedicated to the god Athtar Harman," Robin, researcher emeritus at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, told Live Science, explaining that "Bana" is a name used for a temple. "This god and his temple were unknown previously. Some details suggest that this temple was in the vicinity of San'a' [also spelled Sanaa, a city which is the capital of Yemen]," Robin said, adding that he believes the tablet dates to the first century B.C.

Historical records tell of a number of kingdoms that flourished in Yemen more than 2,000 years ago, some of them involved in the trade of incense and spices.

The bronze tablet, which was recently put up for auction by Artemis Gallery, a company based in Colorado, comes with a number of mysteries: Who is this god and where is his lost temple? Who are the people named on the tablet? And how did the tablet get to the United States?

Ancient clues

The text provides a few clues, suggesting that the temple is located not far from San'a', Robin said. Another Saba language inscription discovered in 1909 at the site of Shibam al-Ghiras, located northeast of San'a', refers to a "Bana" located at Shibam al-Ghiras.

Additionally, the name "Khawliyan" is mentioned in another inscription, found at a site called Mahram Bilqis, which lists the "name of princes of the commune Ayfa," Robin said. Scholars are not certain where exactly Afya was located, but the people who lived there were "Fayshanite," a group that lived in the area around San'a', Robin said.

Looting concerns

Yemen has been in a state of civil war since 2011, and the International Council of Museums has raised concerns that artifacts from Yemen are being looted and sold on the black market. In January 2018, the council published a "red list" of types of cultural artifacts from Yemen that could be looted from the country.

The council listed ancient writing on stone or metal plates as one type of artifact to watch out for. Several scholars told Live Science they were concerned that the bronze tablet may have been looted.

Bob Dodge, the founder and executive director of Artemis Gallery, said that the gallery's research indicates that the tablet was not recently looted.

"This was acquired from a California auction house in 2015 and came to them from an old New Orleans collection," Dodge told Live Science. We are attempting to trace the prior history but have been told the former owner is thought to be deceased and was a collector of such [items] between 1970 and 1990.

"Should we find any evidence that this was recently imported, we will immediately pull the item from the sale, or should it [the discovery of such evidence] occur after the sale is completed, we will inform the new owner and request that we buy it back and return it to the consignor," Dodge added.

Originally published on Live Science.
Shoes, buttons, a prayer book, bullets, Soviet coins and a harmonica were among the 400 artifacts archaeologists recently unearthed at the sites of an infamous Nazi massacre.

At the end of World War II in Europe, over the course of a few days in March 1945, the Nazis murdered 208 Polish and Russian forced laborers in Germany's Westphalia-Lippe region.

Archaeologists have been looking for traces of the massacre in three rural sites  near the towns of Warstein, Suttrop and Eversberg. They presented their findings to the public on March 8.

The researchers said that most of the 400 artifacts came from Langenbach Valley near Warstein, where 60 women, 10 men and a child were taken into the forest, under the pretense of being moved to a different labor camp, and then shot. Bullet cartridges found scattered in the surrounding forest suggest some of the laborers tried to escape the firing squad. Many of the artifacts were personal items that had been buried with the victims, such as a Polish prayer book and dictionary, colorful buttons and beads, and shoes. [Images: Missing Nazi Diary Resurfaces]

The graves of forced laborers near Suttrop in Germany. (Image credit: National Archives and Records Administration, Washington)

Similar tactics were used in a field near Eversberg, where archaeologists also discovered artifacts; the Germans used grenades to blow a giant pit in the ground, where they shot another 79 forced laborers and a child. Near Suttrop, foreign laborers were forced to dig the trenches where 57 of them would be buried.

The Nazis had tried to cover up their crimes at these sites. American troops liberated the region just weeks later, and at Suttrop, they forced German townspeople to exhume the dead to be reburied in proper cemeteries. Similar investigations took place at Eversberg and Warstein. However, most of the dead remain anonymous today, and just 14 of the victims have been identified by name.

Jewelry, pearls, shoes and bowls are examples of some of the artifacts discovered at Warstein in Germany. (Image credit: LWL/Thomas Poggel)

Matthias Lob, the director of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, the group that organized the archaeological excavation, said in a statement that the findings are important for the memory of the atrocities committed during World War II. Lob added that Germany has seen an increase in trivialization and denial of Nazi crimes, and the murders are an example of this part of our history that we have to face.

He might have been referring to comments by Alexander Gauland, one of the leaders of Germanys far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, who said last year that "Hitler and the Nazis are just bird sh*t in more than 1,000 years of successful German history."

Originally published on Live Science.
Historic floods across the Midwest have left three dead, prompted mass evacuations, and drowned cities.

The floods arent isolated incidents, however: Two giant waves of water are rolling down from the country's far-northern middle expanse. One wave is following the path of the Missouri River toward the Mississippi River, carrying with it big chunks of ice. The second wave is taking a similar path down the Mississippi River from Minnesota. Both are the result of a long winter of heavy snowfall in Minnesota and the Dakotas followed by a short, sharp melt.

Both floods are more or less each one giant wave traveling at the speeds of their rivers, said Darone Jones, director of the Water Prediction Operations Division (WPOD) at the National Weather Services National Water Center (NWC) in Alabama.

The North Dakota wave traveled down the Missouri River to Nebraska and yesterday (March 18) reached northwestern Missouri. After passing Kansas City it will turn left, following the river, and make its way toward the joining of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers in St. Louis. [Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth]

The Minnesota wave is taking the more straightforward route down the Mississippi River through Iowa, past St. Louis and into the ocean. Along the way, both waves should lose some water, so the downstream floods may not be as intense as those upstream.

It takes about 28 days for a drop of water originating in North Dakota to make its way down the Missouri River to the ocean, Jones told Live Science. This series of floods is the result of excess water swelling the northern stretches of the Missouri River following a sudden melting event last week.

Snowpack, melting

The WPOD has known that there was a lot of potential meltwater in the northern Midwest in the form of snowpack, Jones said. The whole region had a very rough winter.

(Figuring out how much potential meltwater there is isn't just a matter of seeing how high the snow is piled, but weighing it, Jones added. Light, fluffy snow doesn't produce as much water when it melts as heavier, more tightly packed snow.)

Indeed, the NWC has a spring flooding forecast due for release at the end of this week that will warn (perhaps too late) that this winter dumped a lot of heavy snow in the northern Plains and Midwest, creating significant flooding risks. But the extent of flooding is a factor of how fast the snow melts, not just how much snow is up there, Jones said.

Thanks to a strong storm system last week, the snow is melting very fast. That storm dumped heavy snow on Colorado and then turned into rain over North Dakota and Minnesota, Jones said. That rain was very cold, but still warm enough to trigger a sudden snowmelt. Ultimately, a couple inches of rainwater across a wide area combined with several inches of snowmelt to produce this intense flood wave.

And the chunks of ice in the flood make things worse, Jones said. Periodically, they clump up as the flood moves south, creating temporary ice dams. Those dams cause water to back up behind them, worsening the flooding before they break and release the wave again.

Forecasters aren't sure yet just how bad this flood season will be, Jones added. That depends a lot on whether there are many more sudden melting events like the one that caused this wave, he said, or whether the region has a chance to warm slowly.

Originally published on Live Science.
Little Boy

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Doubleday.

192 pp. $24

---

More than 60 years ago, Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote,

"I am anxiously waiting

"for the secret of eternal life to be discovered."

By most counts, he seems to have discovered it.

Ferlinghetti - the poet, the scholar, the champion of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, the tireless critic of political ills - turns 100 on March 24.

He has not mellowed. At all.

In 2017, Ferlinghetti told The Washington Post, "I never wanted to write an autobiography because I don't like looking back." Evidently, he overcame that reluctance, but, of course, the autobiography he's releasing this month is entirely on his own terms. "Little Boy" isn't really a memoir. The publisher calls it "a novel," but it really isn't that either. As his literary ancestor Walt Whitman would say, it's a "barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

A few months ago, Ferlinghetti claimed, "The little boy is an imaginary me," but the broad outlines of his real life appear here, particularly in the early pages, which are the only ones that tell something like a coherent story. We learn of his tumultuous childhood: His father died before he was born; an aunt whisked him to France and then back to the United States; the aunt's wealthy employer, descended from the founders of Sarah Lawrence College, adopted him.

He may have lived like "Little Lord Fauntleroy," but "it was a very lonely life for Little Boy," Ferlinghetti writes, "with the nearest neighbor out of sight and no children of any age to play with." In a mansion some 20 miles outside New York City, his new guardians spoke to one another in courtly tones and dressed in Victorian garb. They sent him to a private school, and, more important, they possessed a fine library, which he was encouraged to use.

As the pace of "Little Boy" accelerates chaotically, whole years fly by in a phrase or two - from high school to college with a major in journalism, and then the Navy, where he participated in the Normandy landing and saw Nagasaki just a few weeks after it was destroyed. Discharged, he earned an MA in literature at Columbia University, a PhD at the University of Paris and "emerged as a reasonably miseducated product of high culture and not all so irrelevant as rebels might imagine." And then, around Page 15, the wheels bust off this narrative, and we're airborne: "Grown Boy came into his own voice and let loose his word-hoard pent up within him."

What follows for the next 150 pages is a volcanic explosion of personal memories, political rants, social commentary, environmental jeremiads and cultural analysis all tangled together in one breathless sentence that would make James Joyce proud.

Do I recommend it?

Yes I said yes I will Yes.

You may think you're in good shape, but before long, you'll be panting after this irrepressible geezer. "Little Boy" is full-on stream-of-consciousness: "A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man." As he swoops back and forth through the impressions and highlights of his long life, Ferlinghetti spits on conventional grammar and mocks the very idea of linear coherence. A Beat sensibility? Sure, but there's also a dose of Robin Williams' manic comedy here: the hairpin turns, the interior voices bantering with each other, the constant spinning of an idea till it ricochets off to another. He's the silliest, angriest, kindest, smartest man you've ever heard - a whirling dervish of scholarly asides, literary allusions, corny puns and twisted aphorisms drawn from "an echo chamber of everything ever said or sung in the history of man."

The inevitable annotated edition of "Little Boy" will have to be four times longer just to explain all the references. Any page might offer a bastardized phrase from Genesis, Shakespeare and Matthew Arnold, while criticizing Christianity, condemning American capitalism and warning of the climate apocalypse.

No one alive carries the history, the writers, the personal experience of 20th-century literature in his mind as Ferlinghetti does. "I was all the mad wandering tattered poets rolled into one sleeping under the bridges of the world," he writes, "I met all the other great writers and poets and great articulators of consciousness." Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs and so many others flit in and out of these pages so casually that when he mentions Don Quixote, it took me a moment to realize that he didn't know the knight personally. Indeed, scholars and fans of the writers who passed through Ferlinghetti's San Francisco bookstore and publishing house may hope for a compendium of colorful anecdotes, but "Little Boy" has no ambitions in that direction.

"What is the plot of this novel," he asks in one of many self-referential passages, "if not the remembrance of things still not past for the past is but a cautious counselor of what has yet to come what has yet to transpire or expire so farewell final albatross as time ticks on and all of us like insects in an anthill seen from space all nebulous figures dancing in a tropic night through the night-mazes singing a lyric escape again then and why not Are we to live in despair all the time thinking only of our certain deaths so why not live the highs and ignore the lows. ..."

Yes, this can feel like trying to set the table while falling down the stairs, but there's something hypnotic about Ferlinghetti's relentless commentary, a style that amuses him, too: "Every sentence the last sentence I'll ever write but then there's always another thought to be spoken or written and we can't go on but I do." If you're willing to let go, he'll win you over. "Perhaps there is no meaning there is only existing just as a poem or a painting does not mean but Is and there are only episodes that don't add up to any meaning but exert in themselves the pith of living."

It's that "pith of living" that "Little Boy" offers up so frequently and unexpectedly. Grab hold of any section, break it apart like a pomegranate, and you'll find delicious bits randomly spread about.

Stick with this book long enough, and you'll start to hear the central concerns of Ferlinghetti's life. They revolve around the disastrous conspiracy of our fecundity and our selfishness, what he calls "me-me-me." "Oh for a little erectile dysfunction before the earth bursts its latitudinals with overpopulation," he cries, "the spaceship earth overloaded and no end to the eternal rutting and breeding a primeval instinct that will not be denied and no politician dare touch it and don't tell me I can't have a baby."

That concern for the fate of the Earth clearly haunts this thoughtful man as he contemplates "the ravenous maw of eternity." He may be, as he calls himself, a "dissident romantic or romantic dissident," but he feels in his own approaching mortality the larger calamity barreling down on us all as we fritter away these final chances for salvation. "The cries of birds now are not cries of ecstasy but cries of despair."
What does a megalomaniacal president of the United States do when he's cornered? We'll soon find out.

House Democrats are beginning a series of investigations and hearings into Donald Trump .

Senate Republicans have begun to desert him. Twelve defected on the wall; seven refused to back Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. In the House, Republicans joined Democrats in a 420-0 vote on a resolution to make special counsel Robert Mueller 's report public.

That report, not incidentally, appears imminent.

Trump cannot abide losing. His ego can't contain humiliation. He is incapable of shame.

So what does a cornered Trump do? For starters, he raises the specter of violence against his political opponents.

In an interview with Breitbart News published last week, Trump noted: "I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump -- I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough -- until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad."

In case you missed it, "they" are Trump's political opponents, including House Democrats and the mainstream media. And the "certain point" could be impeachment but is more likely to be reached if the House investigations reveal crimes Trump committed both before and after he became president.

"I actually think that the people on the right are tougher," Trump warned in the same interview. "But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress ... with all this invest[igations] -- that's all they want to do is -- you know, they do things that are nasty."

Here we have it, in a nutshell. In Trump's mind, congressional investigations that could cause him shame and humiliation, and quite possibly result in a prison sentence, will be countered by forces loyal to him: the police, the military and vigilante groups like Bikers for Trump.

To put it another way, the work of a democratically elected Congress will be met by Trump loyalists, who, he asserts, are "tougher" because they have brute force on their side.

It is impossible to know what bizarre scenario is playing out in Trump's head. But another hint came on March 15, when, in the wake of the horrific shootings at two mosques in New Zealand, Trump told reporters he didn't believe white nationalism is on the rise.

"I don't really," he said. "I think it's a small group of people."

As usual, the facts are otherwise. The number of hate groups in the U.S. increased 7 percent last year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hate crime reports increased 17 percent, according to the FBI.

Recall that 11 people were murdered at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27 at the hands of a white supremacist. A few days earlier, a white supremacist murdered two black people at a grocery store in Jeffersontown, Kentucky.

It is hardly the first time Trump has played down white nationalism, or signaled his support for those who might use violence on his behalf.

At a Las Vegas rally during the 2016 campaign, he said he'd like to punch a protester in the face. At another event he encouraged his supporters to "knock the crap" out of any protester making trouble.

"I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees," he said.

But as Trump becomes ever more entrapped in the web of his own misdeeds, his threats are becoming more ominous.

At a rally for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley in September, Trump said his opponents "were lucky that we're peaceful." He continued: "Law enforcement, military, construction workers, Bikers for Trump ... They travel all over the country ... They've been great." But, he warned, "these are tough people ... they're peaceful people, and antifa and all, they'd better hope they stay that way."

In February, the White House Correspondents' Association called on Trump to make it "absolutely clear to his supporters that violence against reporters is unacceptable." To date, he has not.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, another of Trump's bottom feeders, predicted that "2019 is going to be the most vitriolic year in American politics since the Civil War."

Throughout his campaign and presidency, Trump has given cover to some of the most vile bigots in America. As he grows more desperate, he is giving them encouragement.

It is our job -- and the job of all senators and representatives in Congress, regardless of party, and of military leaders -- to condemn hatred and violence in all its forms, even when the president of the United States makes excuses for it.

And it is up to all of us to reaffirm our commitment to democracy, even when the president of the United States threatens to unleash the military and vigilantes against it.

(Robert Reich's latest book is "The Common Good," and his newest documentary is "Saving Capitalism.")

(c) 2019 By Robert Reich; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
Prince: The Last Interview

Introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib

Melville House. 144 pp. $16.99

---

Music came so easily to Prince, one of the most difficult things in his purple life was convincing others that he was real.

From the start, too. Go back and read a clip from 1977, when a scribe from Minnesota Daily was sent to investigate the local 18-year-old wunderkind, and you can practically hear the reporter sigh with relief when Prince pulls a prank at a restaurant - proof-positive that this super-freaky prodigy was "a real live kid, packed with talent, but basically normal and mischievous."

Nearly four decades later, in the pages of Rolling Stone, an eyewitness describes how bizarre it was to see a deity performing the mundane tasks that fill most everyday lives: "Prince being Prince, it's fascinating to watch him do just about anything. The more ordinary the activity - clicking a mouse, say - the weirder it feels."

Prince was human, though. We confirmed it in the worst way on April 21, 2016 when he was found dead inside an elevator at Paisley Park, the suburban Minnesota recording studio that he treated as a laboratory, a bunker and a vault. Since then, we've been bombarded with books about the reclusive virtuoso - by journalists, by critics, by anecdote-collectors, by his ex-wife - all of which seem to prove how unknowable he ultimately was.

For those hoping to not-know him a little better, there's "Prince: The Last Interview and Other Conversations," a new compilation of profiles and Q&As previously published in a delightfully disparate array of outlets, including Minnesota Daily, Rolling Stone, Vegetarian Times, Yahoo! Internet Life and Prince's high school newspaper.

In the book's introduction, the poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib hypothesizes that, despite his enigmatic ways, Prince came to each of these conversations hoping that his inquisitors might "understand him beyond his superhuman capabilities." For fans, that's always been hard. And for mourners, it'll always be. How do you grieve a sphinx? Can we assemble the meaning of Prince's life based on all of the things he didn't say? It feels like there must be some elusive truth waiting for us in the negative space, lest all of that lavender-scented mystique have been for naught.

Unsurprisingly, these 10 interviews uphold Prince's reputation for being tight-lipped with his interrogators - not always down to play ball, but occasionally playful. When Ben Greenman asks him about "cybersex" in 1997, Prince winks back with six words: "Ain't nothin' like the real thang." But he also knew how to deflate a discussion. In a 1985 interview with MTV, when asked whether he could have ever foreseen the success of "Purple Rain," he flatly replies, "I don't know."

The only thing more vexing than the questions that go unanswered are the questions that go unasked. Prince cites "The Matrix" in interviews with the New Yorker and Rolling Stone. Did he ever read Jean Baudrillard? During the book's titular 2015 interview - an awkward group-chat at Paisley Park in 2015 with the Guardian's Alexis Petridis and other European journalists - Prince explains how the internet has forced his critics to be more honest, and concludes that "it gets embarrassing to say something untrue, because you put it online and everyone knows about it, so it's better to tell the truth." So what did a pop utopian of his stature make of all the trolling and disinformation that had begun to foment on social media around that time?

And when the New Yorker's Claire Hoffman asks him about his stance on gay rights and abortion in 2008, Prince taps his fingers on a nearby Bible and replies, "God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, 'Enough.'" Prince had become a Jehovah's Witness by this point, but his position still baffles. How could a writer of visionary songs about radical acceptance believe anything even close to that?

To be fair to the journalists, Prince didn't dig follow-up questions. He didn't really like answering questions at all. Starting in the '90s, he famously asked that his interviewers no longer use recording devices or notebooks - and according to a 1994 profile in Q Magazine, his handlers added a third demand: "that no questions be asked."

By most accounts, he was difficult and defiant with the press. But Prince probably didn't spend all of those decades being evasive for the mere fun of it - at least not entirely. Maybe the commitment to his mystique was just Prince's way of protecting our idea of him. To be known is to become static, stiff, frozen in time. To be unknown is to remain flexible and free. Now, even though he's gone, our understanding of him can still change shape.

---

Richards is the pop music critic for The Washington Post.
The San Antonio River Walk hasn't always been know for its concrete walkways, shops and restaurants that define it today.

Its reputation as a popular downtown destination took years of work, but the river has always had a special place in the city's heart.

The history of the rivers, springs and lakes that make up the Edward's Aquifer  including the San Antonio River  is detailed on a self-created website from local environmental scientist Gregg Eckhardt. Weaving together research, historic photographs and postcards from a personal collection, Eckhardt tells the story of the parks that contribute to the culture of San Antonio.

RELATED: Vintage postcards show San Antonio parks in the early, mid-1900s

During San Antonio's early years, the river served as a vital resource for residents. The water fed irrigation ditches, powered mills and supplied bathhouses, according to Eckhardt.

In the late 1930s, the city voted on a river beautification project that gave way to what is now known as the River Walk, according to the Texas State Historical Association. The project was funded through a combination of money from the city, local businesses and a grant from the Great Depression-era Works Project Administration.

The River Walk officially opened in 1941, but it wasn't until the World's Fair in 1968 that San Antonio's waterside retreat caught the attention of the rest of the world.

Take a look at how the San Antonio River has evolved from the early 1900s onward in the gallery above.

RELATED: Chicago official calls San Antonio River Walk 'cheap and crappy-looking'

erobinson@mysa.com

Twitter: @eeelizzzabeth
Waco Independent School District Superintendent A. Marcus Nelson said he is remorseful for his marijuana possession arrest but plans to ask the school board Tuesday for the chance to "redeem" himself.

He said he can use his mistake as an opportunity to warn children about the danger of drugs and "making poor choices," the superintendent said in an hourlong interview Sunday with the Tribune-Herald.

If the school board allows him to stay, Nelson said he would like to remain in the superintendent position for the rest of his career.

Nelson acknowledged that he was returning from an interview with the Houston ISD school board on March 6, when he was pulled over in Robertson County and arrested on the Class B misdemeanor charge.

RELATED: Petition to support former LISD superintendent charged with possession gets thousands of signatures

He talked behind closed doors with the board about the vacant superintendent position in the state's largest school district. He said the conversation with the Houston trustees went well, but he informed them he wished to stay in Waco.

A state trooper stopped Nelson that evening on U.S. Highway 190 outside of Hearne, about 55 miles southwest of Waco, for driving in the passing lane.

The trooper smelled marijuana, which gave him cause to search Nelson's vehicle, and he found less than 2 ounces of marijuana in the passenger seat, according to an arrest affidavit. Nelson said the trooper asked him if he had anything illegal in the car, and Nelson told the trooper he had a small amount of marijuana in the car, enough for about two small joints.

Nelson was booked into the Robertson County Jail in Franklin and released the next day on his own recognizance. He signed a plea agreement with the Robertson County District Attorney's Office on Friday and paid $500 to enter a 90-day pretrial diversion program. If Nelson goes 90 days without any problems, the charge will be dismissed.

Before he left Houston, Nelson said he stopped at the house of an old friend, and in the course of a conversation he mentioned that he had chronic back pain.

"He asked me if I'd ever tried cannabis," he said, "and I said that I had not considered that as a remedy."

Nelson said the friend took out "a small sample" of marijuana, which he smoked at the house. He said he took two small marijuana cigarettes home with him. He said it was "hours later" when he was pulled over, and he was not under the influence at the time.

READ ALSO: Former LISD superintendent charged with marijuana possession

"I was not doing anything wrong in the vehicle," he said. "My father is a 38-year retired police officer, and he taught me to always tell the truth."

Nelson said he does not defend his decision to try marijuana.

"All forms of marijuana are illegal in Texas," he said. "I know there's a debate out there, but as school superintendent, I believe students should have nothing to do with illegal drugs, and I believe staff should not be under the influence while at work."

Nelson sees an opportunity in his recent arrest to speak with children about the dangers of drugs, poor choices and the friends they choose and how those choices can jeopardize careers and reputations, he said.

"I believe there is a message there," he said. "I believe the stronger message is that one mistake doesn't define you. You can move forward if you can accept responsibility for your actions and be honest with yourself about what led to that."

Nelson said he had first tried marijuana in college, but it had been years since he smoked it. He said he has never used any other illegal drugs.

"If I was a member of the board, I would be so hurt that our superintendent made this mistake," he said, "so irritated and disappointed in his poor judgment in putting us as a board in this situation, in this embarrassment. I would also consider how difficult it is to find a quality superintendent."

Nelson said he does not know of other examples of superintendents who have been given the kind of second chance he is seeking, but he believes good could come out of it.

"It would end up being a story of learning," he said. "It would be a prime example of how the community supported one its members."

READ ALSO: Laredo-area officials talk cost efficiency for detox center project

Nelson started as Waco ISD superintendent in 2017 after serving as superintendent of Laredo ISD.

Meanwhile, the Houston ISD school board has been looking for a new superintendent since September, the Houston Chronicle reported. The board established an April 30 deadline for selecting a new superintendent after former superintendent Richard Carranza left in March 2018 to become chancellor of New York City public schools.

The agenda for the March 6 Houston special school board meeting includes an item to interview candidates for the superintendent position. It does not list any specific candidates.

While he was not a formal applicant for the Houston superintendent position, Nelson said the Houston school board was interested in his record at Waco ISD, including the five "transformation zone" schools that were pioneered under his watch, per House Bill 1882 legislation.

Nelson said he indicated to Houston ISD officials that he would pass up the Houston opportunity, and after the interview, his commitment to Waco was "even stronger." He said if the Waco ISD board allows, he would be happy to spend the rest of his career in his current position.

"I learned from being with another board that something unique is happening in Waco," he said. "My interest right now is regaining the trust of the Waco ISD community in doing whatever I can do to redeem myself. I want to use this as an opportunity to teach our kids about the dangers of illicit drugs. I own this. I made a mistake, and I need to be held accountable for this mistake and accept the consequences.

"It was a small mistake," he said, his voice breaking. Nelson paused to gather himself, stifling tears.

READ ALSO: TX tycoon delivers jokes in writing his own obituary

"I have to have the chance to make this right," he said, his voice stronger. "I have to. There's too much good work that's been done. My team has supported me through this. And this is not an issue. It would not be an issue coming going forward. I understand I have to be held to a higher standard. I understand there is an expectation of the superintendent of schools, but when you consider the total circumstances here, I should be afforded an opportunity to make it right, with severe consequences."

Nelson said he has tremendous pride in being the first black superintendent in Waco, and he wants to continue that legacy. He said he has been studying his family tree, tracing it back to slavery.

"I know how my ancestors got to Texas. I know what they did when they earned their freedom, and I am so humiliated to attach this mistake with my culture," he said. "Many times my culture feels like we're being held to a higher standard, that often it's unfair. I've never really played that card, but I can assure you it hurts me to bring this kind of embarrassment to my family, to my culture."

The conversation Nelson had with his family, particularly with his 14-year-old son, about his arrest presented a difficult challenge for the superintendent. Nelson said he had never been incarcerated before March 6.

"I have a 14-year-old son I want to never interact with illegal drug use," he said. "That's why I say going to our kids is going to be a hard conversation. "

Nelson said he believes once people hear the whole story and see his contrition that they will be able to move forward and learn from his mistake, just as his own son found a way to forgive his father. He plans to demonstrate how "contrite and committed" he is to ensuring this never happens again.

The Tribune-Herald on Sunday reported the case of a former teacher's aide who was asked to resign after she was arrested on a Class B misdemeanor marijuana possession charge, similar to Nelson's case. Like him, she is also completing a pretrial diversion program, which is expected to result in no jail time and a clear record.

Nelson said that case was different from his in that the teacher's aide did not have an employment contract. He said if he had reviewed the case he might have given the aide another chance. Nelson said he would encourage the human resources department to review each case individually if he is allowed to remain superintendent.

"What I'm asking for is not special treatment," he said. "This is what I think should be the practice for people who have no criminal record, people who are cooperative with the police and people who are able to get their prosecution deferred and their case dismissed. Anyone who came to me with the circumstances that I have I would not move so quickly to have them resign or terminated."

Nelson said he is not concerned about losing his superintendent certification. He said officials with the Texas Education Agency expressed to him they are no longer considering sanctions since he entered the pretrial diversion program.

For now, Nelson must wait for the board of trustees to decide his future. He only has to wait until Tuesday.
Yo-Yo Ma, the world's most famous living cellist, will be holding a day of action in Laredo next month, where he plans to play a concert in the middle of the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge.

Ma is currently traveling the world as part of his Bach Project, where he plans to perform all six cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach in one sitting, in 36 cities. With each concert he is including a "day of action."

A representative of the Laredo Philharmonic told Laredo City Council on Monday that Ma would only play in San Antonio if he could hold his day of action in Laredo.

Armando X. Lopez, who serves on the city's Fine Arts and Culture Commission, said Ma intends to play for 15 minutes in a sparse setting: just him, a chair and a sound system on the bridge -- simpler than the Washington's Birthday Celebration bridge ceremony. It will be a celebration of how culture unites communities across the border, Lopez said.

READ ALSO: Sip and Shop your way through The Outlet Shoppes at Laredo

He asked for council to support the event with support from the Police, Fire and parks departments, plus assistance with closing bridge I during the concert. Council approved the motion unanimously.

That Laredo was chosen as the location for this concert is a testament to the work people in this city have done to focus the discussion on the reality of the border, Lopez said.

Councilwoman Nelly Vielma noted that this could promote Laredo internationally; and Councilman Merc Martinez III said it will be a great opportunity to show the nation that the border and Laredo are safe.

A representative of Ma has not yet returned LMT's request for comment.
On this date in ...

1919: During an event in Coblenz, Germany, to determine the best dressed females, theatrical men there solved the problem of a shortage of women by convincing American soldiers to dress in drag and impersonate the females. Every state in the union was represented except New York, until two young men volunteered. One of them, Edward McConvell of Franklin Street in Albany, a member of Evacuation Hospital No. 14, sashayed away with the top prize.

1969: More people than ever before favored stricter enforcement of laws against drunken driving and imposition of stricter penalties, 90 area law enforcement officers were told by traffic safety experts. Julian D. Rivo of the State Traffic Safety Council said 84 percent of people queried in a recent Gallup poll thought motorists suspected of drunken driving should be required to take a chemical test  breath or blood  to determine alcohol or drug levels in their blood. He said 44 percent favored a law similar to Great Britain's, under which any driver who had had more than one drink must receive some minimum penalty.

1994: A safe-sex pamphlet aimed at adult gay men was distributed to Hackett Middle School students during a "wellness day" recently by an employee of the Whitney Young Health Center. Albany City Schools Superintendent John Bach said he was shocked by the pamphlet, which included an illustration of two men engaged in oral sex and instructions on how to engage in safer sex. He called the brochure "pornographic." Evelyn Williams, the executive director of Whitney Young, said the female staff member acted on her own and now faced disciplinary action. She said the health center didn't even use the brochure for its clients.

Want to read more about the Capital Region's past? Have any memories or thoughts about how our history relates to today's events? See http://blog.timesunion.com/history/
Among the schools chosen are some, such as Wells High School in the East Ukrainian Village neighborhood, that have struggled with enrollment. Other schools hit hardest by declining numbers such as Hirsch and Tilden high schools on the South Side, were not on the list.
A woman has been arrested for allegedly stealing a man's vehicle while he was asleep at a local hotel room.

Emily Noemi Garcia, 24, was arrested Friday in the 600 block of San Agustin Avenue. She was charged with theft.
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has resigned from the board of the University of Maryland Medical System following a controversy involving a deal with the hospital system to buy her children's books.

Last week, Pugh, D, and others on the health system's board were criticized by Gov. Larry Hogan, R, and top state lawmakers for the financial deals with the hospital system and possible conflicts of interest.

On a financial disclosure form, Pugh listed a $100,000 profit for one year from selling 20,000 copies of her self-published children's books series "Healthy Holly" to the University of Maryland health system, which runs 13 hospitals including the state's trauma unit in Baltimore and has connections with the state's dental and medical schools.

Hogan described the financial contracts, which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, as "appalling" and "unseemly." Senate President Mike Miller, D-Calvert County, called them "self-dealing" and "a huge disaster."

House Speaker Michael Busch, D-Anne Arundel, who has been on the board for 16 years, said the unfolding scandal was the worst he's seen in Maryland politics. He said he, Hogan, Miller and high-level staffers from the hospital system will meet in Annapolis on Wednesday.

The deals were first disclosed last week by the Baltimore Sun, which reported that Pugh's deals with the hospital board totaled $500,000 over several years, and were not fully listed on disclosure forms when Pugh represented Baltimore in the state Senate.

Other board members who had lucrative deals included former state senator Francis X. Kelly, who owns an insurance company and reported $1.6 million in revenue from deals with the hospital system.

Officials at the hospital system have said their contracts are legal. Legislation pending in the General Assembly would ban such arrangements..

In a statement put out Monday explaining her resignation, Pugh, who has served on the board since 2001, said she had "other pressing concerns that require my full attention, energy and efforts." The Sun reported Friday that she had amended her state disclosure forms from her time in the Senate.

The system's board members are appointed by the governor and the General Assembly's presiding officers.

Hogan said Pugh's resignation was "a step in the right direction." Last week, he called on board members with contracts with the health system to step down.

"We're going to push for major reforms to make sure people either terminate their financial relationship or terminate them from the board," Hogan said Monday. "One way or another, (we'll) make sure that things like this don't happen in the future."

In a statement, Stephen Burch, chairman of the UMM system, said he had accepted Pugh's resignation and was "grateful to Mayor Pugh for her years of dedicated service."

Miller said he met with Burch on Monday and expected more resignations later this week. "It's a very unfortunate chapter in all our lives, and we need to learn from it," he said.

Pugh's spokesman James Bentley said the mayor is leaving the board to deal with the pressing issues in Baltimore.

"We have a new police commissioner," he said. "We're trying to fund city schools. The mayor is focused on neighborhood revitalization and running the city."
It was supposed to be a chance for Muslim and Jewish House Democrats to ease tensions and find common ground. It ended with one lawmaker in tears.

At a late-night meeting blocks from the Capitol, about a dozen lawmakers shared their raw experiences with bigotry and discrimination, hoping the stories would bridge the glaring interfaith divide. Suddenly, Rep. Dean Phillips, a Jewish Democrat, shattered a moment meant to be about listening and learning - not politics.

Phillips felt he had to address what had been unspoken for nearly two hours - the recent divisive remarks of Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Muslim who suggested American supporters of Israel have an "allegiance to a foreign country."

Those kinds of remarks, Phillips said, represented "tips of the arrow" - small but devastating offenses that made Jews fearful of a rising tide of anti-Semitism. Phillips told his fellow Minnesota freshman that she had to apologize and said the group should publicly affirm Israel's right to exist and protect itself.

His words stunned the three Muslim Democrats in the room, as well as some other Jewish members and third-party participants. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a Palestinian American is critical of the Israeli government's treatment of the Palestinians, grew emotional and started to cry as she spoke of her grandmother's suffering in the West Bank at the hands of Israelis. "She would treat you like a grandson," she said to Phillips, according to two people in the room.

The abrupt end to the March 5 meeting - the second gathering aimed at reconciliation broke on a bitter note - was a discomfiting moment in a previously unreported, behind-the-scenes effort inside the diverse class of House Democrats to foster tolerance amid the withering pressure of Washington.

Democrats' convulsive efforts to respond to recent Omar criticisms of Israel have exposed ugly rifts in the party over religion and U.S. ally Israel that have boiled over on Twitter and in the public sphere. Those interparty fights have distracted from the party's legislative agenda and fueled political attacks from Republicans, including President Trump.

It's why Democrats on both sideshave formed a small group to try to work past their differences. Success or failure of the private meetings could have an impact on the party's larger effort to unite across schisms on race, gender and ideology.

Despite the harsh endingto the meeting, several participants who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations said the huddle had a profound effect: Some in the room heard stories of hardship from their colleagues they knew nothing about.

The next day, at a heated closed-door caucus meeting, some of those attendees pushed back against leadership's plan to reprimand Omar for the same comments Phillips objected to the night before. Some Jewish participants of the meeting broke with people of their own faith who wanted to rebuke Omar by name. They had come to know her, did not believe her comments were intentional and objected to the idea of rebuking a woman who told them the night before about death threats she'd received.

"If we can't be on the same page, it's hard for the country to," said Phillips, adding that he learned from the gathering - and the effect his words had. "We have an opportunity here because the eyes are on us. We know that."

House Democratic leaders responded with a sweeping resolution condemning all forms of hate that passed overwhelmingly on March 7.

Days before the first meeting on Feb. 13, Omar posted tweets attributing politicians' support of Israel to campaign money donated by pro-Israel groups - "it's all about the benjamins baby," she wrote. Critics earlier had unearthed comments Omar made during violence between Israelis and Palestinians in 2012, suggesting Israel had "hypnotized" a world that did nothing to stop the bloodshed.

Those comments outraged many Jewish Democratic lawmakers, who pushed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and her lieutenants to condemn Omar's remarks. Omar apologized the next day and later deleted the tweets.

When the group met two days later at a former lawmaker's house on Capitol Hill, the controversy had mostly cleared, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., was determined to keep the mood casual, according to several who attended who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private sessions.

He asked everyone to go around the room to say something about a grandparent, starting the conversation by talking about how his grandfather had been the first Jewish member of the Minnesota legislature - a pathbreaker like many of the freshman House Democrats.

The idea, according to people familiar with the session, was to humanize one another. Raskin would not discuss details of the meeting but said that he is "constantly trying to get members together to talk about the experiences and values that have brought them into public life."

Phillips, a wealthy businessman representing the Minneapolis suburbs, spoke of his grandmother teaching him piano and how he was adopted from a poor family into a wealthier one after his father died in the Vietnam War.

Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, a Muslim convert elected in 2008, told a story about his grandmother picking him up from a shelter when he was little after his mother, who struggled with schizophrenia, had a severe episode. That grandmother, former congresswoman Julia Carson, ended up raising him and introducing him to politics.

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita M. Lowey (N.Y.) talked about how her grandparents left Russia to escape anti-Jewish pogroms and were eager to embrace America.

"I think it was just the beginning, and I think it's important that we get to understand each other and try and educate people, understand people's different points of view," Lowey said about the meeting.

But the conversations left some members wanting to delve deeper into personal struggles- especially in light of Omar's comments. Rep. Andy Levin (Mich.), a former labor organizer and synagogue president, began organizing a more formal event that would focus on anti-Semitism, calling on leaders of a liberal Jewish group, Bend the Arc, to attend and moderate the discussion.

Levin had hoped the leftward tilt of the organization would make it easier to discuss such a sensitive topic with liberal members who sympathize with Palestinians. He also extended the invitation to freshmen allies of Omar and Tlaib - including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, N.Y., and Ayanna Pressley, Mass. - in hopes of making the two Muslim women more comfortable.

But days before the meeting, Omar again sparked an uproar with her comments about American supporters of Israel. Several Jewish Democrats had quietly started pressing Pelosi to pass a resolution rebuking Omar by name and condemning anti-Semitism. Lowey used Twitter to "urge her to retract this statement and engage in further dialogue with the Jewish community," which in turn prompted a public retort from Ocasio-Cortez.

When the small group convened, tensions emerged almost immediately. A Bend the Arc facilitator made a joke about Jews and money to try to clear the air. But Rep. Jahana Hayes (Conn.), one of the freshman allies invited to join the session, grew serious and asked why the facilitator could talk like that when someone like Hayes could not.

"It's not okay," Hayes said this past week when asked about the specific exchange. "These [sorts of jokes] are off-limits. It's confusing for someone like me who is trying to learn."

Hayes, however said, the meeting - which delved into the history of anti-Semitism and charged language - was helpful for people who don't know the meaning of certain words: "I'm looking to try to understand everybody's perspective," she said. "This isn't my community."

The conversation took a different turn as some non-Jewish members in the room admitted they didn't know what anti-Semitism looks like. The Jews present appreciated the candor and sought to share stories illuminating why certain words had negative meaning.

Soon lawmakers were talking about their own experiences with discrimination.

Toward the end of the session, Phillips felt the need to bring up a personal hurt: Omar's recent comments.

Omar, who supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said nothing as Tlaib described the effects Israel's policies on her Palestinian family. Others in the room saw racial undertones in Phillips's comments, offended that a wealthy white businessman representing an affluent suburban community was suggesting a black refugee such as Omar incited fear.

Phillips, startled by Tlaib's emotional reaction, embraced her afterward and told her that he would like to meet her grandmother someday.

Tlaib and Omar declined to comment about the meeting.

Asked about the exchange, Phillips said he had not intended to offend anyone and had learned from it. "It wasn't planned, and it wasn't what we expected. But I think it was cathartic. It certainly was for me," Phillips said.

Since then, the group has huddled on the House floor to discuss what happened. Although the exercise has been uncomfortable at times, many think it was worthwhile and are planning to do it again, perhaps focusing on anti-Muslim bigotry and racism .

"This wasn't a one-time thing," Levin said in an interview in which he spoke generally about the meeting but declined to comment on specific events. "We are committed to building authentic relationships of mutual understanding and solidarity to tackle all forms of discrimination and oppression. The only way to do that is by having private dialogues where folks can speak freely so we can really learn from and about each other."
On Monday, President Donald Trump tweeted about a new survey released earlier in the day. He said a poll found that "50% of Americans AGREE that Robert Mueller's investigation is a Witch Hunt." That claim is in line with the USA Today report. But a close look at the survey and other recent polling suggests it may overstate the public's skepticism of the Mueller probe.

Here's how the question was asked: "President Trump has called the Special Counsel's investigation a 'witch hunt' and said he's been subjected to more investigations than previous presidents because of politics. Do you agree?"

There are a lot of ways to ask a question such as this, and it's useful to measure whether Americans share Trump's skepticism of the Mueller investigation. But this question and its interpretation skirt a couple of best practices for opinion-poll question wording, as highlighted by Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray in several tweets.

First, the question is double-barreled. It tells respondents 1) that Trump says the special counsel's investigation is a "witch hunt" and 2) that Trump says he is being investigated more than previous presidents for political reasons, then asks whether respondents agree with Trump. It's possible that a respondent could think the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt but not that Trump has been investigated more than past presidents for political reasons, or vice versa. Yet the question asks respondents to react to both at the same time, and as a result we don't know which specific assertion they are agreeing or disagreeing with.

The placement of the question in the survey also may have led respondents to think about issues beyond the Mueller investigation. Just before asking about Trump's "witch hunt" assertion and excessive investigations in general, the Suffolk-USA Today survey stated that House Democrats had launched "a series of investigations" into Trump and asked whether they were going too far or doing the right thing. Having this as a lead-in question may have primed respondents to think of an entire "series of investigations" by Democrats rather than Mueller's investigation when answering the subsequent query in question.

A second issue is that the question is unbalanced - it describes Trump's viewpoint and asks, "Do you agree?" without an accompanying option "or disagree." Balancing the response options gives a respondent two ways to respond to a question and not just one, signaling to the respondent that it's acceptable to say the opposite. There's also a broader phenomenon in which respondents are more likely to "agree" when asked an agree-disagree question than other formats, a reason many polls avoid such questions.

Lastly, while the question articulates Trump's criticism of investigations, it does not offer an alternative view that counters Trump's opinion - that the investigation is not a witch hunt or that the president has not been subject to more investigations than past presidents. Doing so would provide respondents with a more balanced choice between high-profile arguments. And in a similar way to lacking a "disagree" option, unbalanced arguments in a question make it far easier for respondents to side with the only response option provided.

Needling survey-nerd issues withstanding, there are a handful of nondouble-barreled, balanced questions about this issue that other polling firms have asked, and they tend to find less skepticism toward the Mueller probe.

A February CNN poll found significantly more Americans who said the investigation was a "serious matter that should be fully investigated" (58 percent) than "mainly an effort to discredit" Trump's presidency (37 percent). CNN has asked that question numerous times dating to August 2017 and has found between 55 percent and 64 percent saying the matter should be fully investigated.

A Washington Post-Schar School poll that same month also found more saying that Mueller was "mainly interested in finding out the truth" (57 percent) than "hurting Trump politically" (36 percent).

A January CBS News poll also found slightly more Americans who said the investigation into dealings between Trump associates and Russia was "justified" (50 percent) than that it was "politically motivated" (45 percent). But those results are not far from the Suffolk-USA Today findings, and a November CBS poll found 51 percent saying the investigation was politically motivated.

Meanwhile, a November Quinnipiac poll found that more registered voters said the investigation was "legitimate" (50 percent) than a "political witch hunt" (44 percent). Quinnipiac has asked the question over a year and has found between 48 percent and 54 percent saying it is legitimate.

These four surveys suggest that the public is more positive than negative toward the special counsel's motives, with between 50 percent and 59 percent rating them positively, while between 36 percent and 45 percent see its motives in a negative light. A significant share of the public will probably look at Mueller's final report with a skeptical eye, but probably not quite as many as suggested by the Suffolk-USA Today poll.
BRUSSELS - Dutch investigators said Tuesday that terrorism was "a serious possibility" in a shooting that killed three people on a tram a day earlier in Utrecht, after they found a note in the suspect's vehicle that gave new guidance about the motivations behind the attack.

The Monday morning violence unsettled the Netherlands, which has largely been spared the type of terrorist attacks that have struck neighboring countries. Counterterrorism officials had been especially on guard after an attack Friday in New Zealand that killed 50 worshipers at two mosques.

But in the chaotic hours following the attack in Utrecht, investigators struggled to piece together a motive. By the end of Monday, Dutch news outlets were flooded with accounts - incorrect ones, prosecutors suggested Tuesday - that said the 37-year-old Turkish-born suspect had targeted a woman on the tram in connection with a family dispute.

"The investigation has so far shown no relationship between the main suspect and the victims," Dutch prosecutors said Tuesday in a statement. "So far, a terrorist motivation is being taken as a serious possibility. There is cause for this because of, among other things, a letter found in the getaway car."

They offered no details about the contents of the letter and said they were not excluding other possible motivations.

A Dutch court said Tuesday that Tanis also faces rape charges over a July 2017 incident and that he was sentenced earlier this month for burglary and shoplifting. In 2014, he was convicted of illegal weapons possession and attempted theft, and acquitted of attempted manslaughter. Courts had allowed him to remain free despite the burglary and shoplifting convictions because he had not exhausted his appeals. He was on pretrial release in the rape case.

Tanis was caught by police Monday evening after an intense manhunt that put much of Utrecht on lockdown. Tanis had a firearm when he was arrested, prosecutors said. Amid contradictory information from authorities, fearful residents on Monday had little sense of whether there was a risk of further attacks.

Police also arrested two other men, a 23-year-old and a 27-year-old, both Utrecht residents, and were trying to determine whether they had any role in the attack, the prosecutors said.

The three victims were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, a town close to Utrecht, and two Utrecht men ages 49 and 28, the prosecutors said. Five people were injured, three of them critically.

Mourners were piling flowers at the base of a tree at 24 Oktoberplein, the site of the attack, a busy intersection in southwestern Utrecht. Dutch flags stood at half-staff on government buildings.

The attack stunned the Netherlands, where citizens will vote Wednesday in regional elections that could shake up the ruling coalition. An anti-immigration party has been surging in opinion polls, and party leaders capitalized on Monday's attack to hit Prime Minister Mark Rutte for what they said was an overly open immigration policy.
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department's criminal division is looking into the Boeing 737 Max, a person familiar with the matter said, although the exact parameters of that inquiry could not immediately be learned.

Additionally, an investigator with the U.S. Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General also has sought information about the Federal Aviation Administration's certification of the plane and its training materials, according to a source with knowledge of that effort.

It was unclear to what extent the efforts may overlap. But the pursuit of information by federal investigators comes as the FAA and Boeing face growing questions about the way the government and company worked together to certify the airplane involved in crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia within months of each other.

The FAA has for years relied heavily on Boeing and the other companies it regulates to do much of the work of certifying safety, prompting critics to warn that the agency's approach to the industry is too lenient and could be dangerous. The FAA has argued that its processes are "well established and have consistently produced safe aircraft designs."

The FAA and Boeing declined to comment on the work of federal investigators. "We do not comment even as to whether such matters exist," a Boeing spokesman said. The company had said earlier that the FAA's certification requirements for the 737 Max aircraft were "identical" to those that "governed certification of all previous new airplanes and derivatives."

The FAA did not say if it was looking at an internal investigation of its own, but a spokesman said that "our full focus is on the software upgrade and supporting the accident investigation."

The software change is meant to address an automated feature of the Max jets that investigators say contributed to the Oct. 29 crash in Indonesia that killed 189. Flawed sensor data feeding into the plane's anti-stall system helped push the aircraft downward and into the Java Sea, according to a preliminary report.

A spokesman for the Transportation Department's Office of Inspector General would not confirm or deny an investigation. The office does, however, have an auditing arm. The spokesman said that while no new audit has been announced into the Max certification, the office is always "evaluating our use of audit resources and considering future audit work in light of emerging issues," including congressional requests and earlier audits it has performed on the FAA's airplane certification procedures.

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, first reported that a grand jury in Washington had issued a subpoena to at least one person involved in the development of the 737 Max. The Journal also said a second inquiry by the Transportation Department's inspector general is focused on the Seattle-area office of the FAA charged with certifying aircraft as well as an office that mandates training requirements.

Meanwhile, data from the flight recorders on the Ethiopian Airlines jet show "clear similarities" with the October Lion Air flight in Indonesia, investigators in France said Monday, echoing comments from Ethiopian authorities over the weekend.

"You got two airplanes of the same type that have experienced problems. So of course they are going to go back and look at the certification process. FAA is going to look at that themselves. And it also appears DOT is going to look at it," said John M. Cox, a former pilot and an airline safety consultant with the Washington-based aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems. "They are going to look at everything."

Even as investigators studying the data have found several similarities, Larry Rooney, president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations (CAPA), a trade association for more than 30,000 pilots, said that does necessarily mean a quick resolution.

"I suspect even though there will be some similarities, [the crashes] won't be mirror images of each other," Rooney said. "No two accidents are exactly the same."

And then there is the question of when the planes will fly again. In 2013, when the FAA grounded Boeing's 787 Dreamliner amid concerns about the plane's lithium ion batteries, it took three months before the aircraft returned to the skies.

"Grounding [the 737 Max jets] was easy; ungrounding it is going to be hard. The question is going to be how much is going to be enough to put the airplane back in the air," Rooney said.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said last week that he plans to hold one or more hearings on the Boeing crashes.

On Sunday, Ethiopia Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said the condition of the data and voice recorders was good and that enough data had been recovered that her ministry's Accident Investigation Bureau would release a preliminary report in 30 days on what happened to Flight 302.

Officials with France's Bureau D'Enquetes et D'Analyses (BEA) confirmed the "clear similarities" Monday, in announcing that the data from the flight recorders had been transferred to the Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau.

The BEA, which has extensive experience analyzing crashes in Europe, began work March 15 to retrieve information from the flight data recorder. Its role in the investigation is now complete, as it has handed off the retrieved data to Ethiopia for further analysis.

Last week investigators found a device known as a jackscrew in the wreckage, which suggests the Ethiopian flight might have had a problem with the automated system also suspected in the Lion Air crash.

The jackscrew, used to set the device that raises and lowers the plane's nose, indicates the jet was configured to dive, Cox said.

That was the second piece of information suggesting similarities between the two crashes involving Boeing 737 Max 8 jets.

FAA officials last week also cited satellite tracking data as a key similarity. The planes in both cases ascended and descended multiple times before crashing, experts said.

Initial flight data as well as subsequent satellite information showed the Ethiopian Airlines plane in trouble almost immediately and that it had an erratic flight path during the six minutes the plane was in the air before it crashed into a field outside Addis Ababa, killing all 157 aboard.

Officials from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which sent three investigators to France, the FAA, and Boeing also are assisting in the probe.

U.S. investigators will continue to assist in the analysis of the data, an NTSB spokesman said Monday. Any progress report on the investigation will be issued by Ethiopian authorities, per international protocol.

Boeing on Sunday said the company was working with the authorities to evaluate new information as it becomes available.

"Safety is our highest priority as we design, build and support our airplanes. As part of our standard practice following any accident, we examine our aircraft design and operation, and when appropriate, institute product updates to further improve safety," the company said in a statement.

"While investigators continue to work to establish definitive conclusions, Boeing is finalizing its development of a previously-announced software update and pilot training revision that will address" the way the automated anti-stall feature, known as MCAS, responds to "erroneous sensor inputs. We also continue to provide technical assistance at the request of and under the direction of the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Accredited Representative working with Ethiopian investigators," the company said.

In all, more than 300 people have died in the two crashes involving the Max 8 jet.

In November, Boeing issued a bulletin on how to reset the stabilizer if it started to push the plane's nose down.

Boeing said last week it had stopped delivery of all 737 Max jets. The company said it would continue manufacturing them, however.

- - -

The Washington Post's Ashley Halsey III contributed to this report.
MUMBAI, India - It was a display of sibling devotion for the record books.

Earlier this week, Mukesh Ambani, Asia's richest man, intervened to prevent his younger brother Anil from going to jail by writing a very large check.

Mukesh, 61, helped Anil, 59, make a payment of $67 million on outstanding debt the day before a court-imposed deadline. Without the payment, Anil had faced three months' imprisonment.

The dramatic development marked the latest twist in the long saga of India's wealthiest family. More than a decade ago, the two brothers feuded over the empire first created by their father and parted ways in a rancorous split.

They have come together on important family occasions, including the lavish wedding of Mukesh's daughter Isha in December. The nuptials featured a private performance by Beyonce, and the guests included former U.S. secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John F. Kerry.

Mukesh heads Reliance Industries, a petrochemicals-to-retail conglomerate. He has a fortune estimated at $54 billion, according to Bloomberg, and lives in his own 27-story skyscraper in Mumbai, India's financial capital.

His younger brother Anil, chairman of Reliance Group, has been far less successful. His wealth has decreased to $300 million, roughly a tenth of what it was in 2008, and his businesses are saddled with debt. He has also become enmeshed in a political controversy over a deal to buy fighter planes from France.

Both brothers sought to win a chunk of India's fast-growing telecommunications industry. Mukesh's low-cost cellphone service, Reliance Jio, launched in 2016 and gained millions of subscribers. Meanwhile, Anil's business struggled and accrued debts, including to Ericsson, the Swedish telecom giant.

On Monday, Anil's troubled telecom venture, Reliance Communications, paid $67 million to Ericsson, clearing its obligations. It had earlier deposited $17 million with the court for payment to Ericsson. Asked whether elder brother Mukesh had provided all or part of Monday's funds, a spokesman for Reliance Communications said he did not know.

The funds came from Mukesh in a personal capacity, said a spokesman for Reliance Industries. He also did not confirm the amount.

Whatever the precise figure, Anil expressed deep gratitude to Mukesh.

"My sincere and heartfelt thanks to my respected elder brother . . . for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to our strong family values by extending this timely support," he said in a statement. "I and my family are grateful we have moved beyond the past."

India's Supreme Court had taken a dim view of Anil's repeated delays in paying the amount he owed to Ericsson and last month found him guilty of contempt of court.

But even with his brother's help, Anil's financial woes are not over. Reliance Communications also owes a payment of $40 million to the Indian government next month, according to media reports.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on the proposal. However, ICE is looking to contract with a detention center and recently posted a request for one within an 80-mile radius of Chicagos immigration court, according to a website with information about federal contracts. The federal agency is seeking a facility that can house 1,000 people in various levels of security and that could facilitate travel to and from cities like Milwaukee and Indianapolis.
WASHINGTON - Acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan identified all of the projects that could possibly be affected by President Donald Trump's decision to use emergency authorities to take up to $3.6 billion in military construction funds for his border wall.

Shanahan had promised to deliver the list to lawmakers by the end of the day last Thursday during a tense hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Pentagon didn't send the file to Capitol Hill until midday Monday, prompting anger from lawmakers who had been requesting it for weeks.

The $12.9 billion pool of initiatives includes military construction projects approved and appropriated by Congress but not yet contracted out by the Pentagon. Of those, projects that involve military housing or that carry award dates before Sept. 30, 2019, won't be touched, the statement said.

Lt. Col. Joe Buccino, a spokesman for Shanahan, said in a statement that if Congress enacts next year's budget on time and as requested by the administration, the construction projects will all proceed on schedule. But the president's budget request has already run into opposition on Capitol Hill, and Democrats have rejected the idea of "backfilling" affected Pentagon accounts in the coming budget, meaning some of the projects could face delays as a result of the wall.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the list includes projects that could be derailed or put on the chopping block as a result of Trump's action. Reed urged fellow senators to take into consideration the projects in their home states when voting on whether to override Trump's veto of a congressional resolution rejecting his national emergency.

"What President Trump is doing is a slap in the face to our military that makes our border and the country less secure," Reed said. "He is planning to take funds from real, effective operational priorities and needed projects and divert them to his vanity wall."

The projects on the list range the gamut, from a hangar for drones at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea to a wastewater treatment plant at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. They represent the full spectrum of construction initiatives that the Pentagon undertakes to maintain a vast network of bases and operations around the globe.

Many of the projects are updates to facilities that affect daily military life on bases - dining halls, schools, fire stations, medical facilities, roads and parking lots. Others are construction projects that directly impact military operations and training, such as firing ranges, aircraft maintenance hangars, flight simulation facilities and munitions depots.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who last week accused Shanahan of sandbagging senators by failing to make the list public for weeks, said that Trump "is putting his border wall ahead of the safety of our troops."

"The projects that could lose funding include military training centers in Virginia, a plant to prevent water contamination at Camp Lejeune, and a cybersecurity facility in Georgia," he said. "I hope my colleagues in Congress will take a serious look at the projects that support our military in their own states and then vote to override the President's veto."

Whether any of the projects end up delayed depends in large part on negotiations between congressional lawmakers and the Trump administration over the coming year's budget. The Trump administration is proposing to "back fill" the $3.6 billion it plans to take from the construction account for the wall, but Democrats have said they aren't going to fund projects Congress has already funded. The Pentagon has said it won't cancel any of the projects outright, but the initiatives won't be able to proceed if they aren't funded by Congress.

Trump is planning to access the funds for the wall under Section 2808 of the U.S. code that governs the military. It allows the defense secretary, in the event of a national emergency requiring the use of the military, to undertake military construction projects "not otherwise authorized by law that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces."

A number of lawsuits, including one by a coalition of 16 U.S. states and another by the American Civil Liberties Union, are challenging in court whether Trump is following the letter of that law.

Congress, meanwhile, voted to reject Trump's declaration of a national emergency on the southern border, but the Senate didn't pass the resolution with a veto-proof margin. Trump vetoed the legislation late last week.

Trump is also planning to take up to $2.5 billion in counterdrug funds from the Pentagon, a move that doesn't require the invocation of emergency authorities. Because the counterdrug account has less than $100 million remaining in it, the Pentagon will need to move money from elsewhere in its budget into the account to fund the wall. Where that money will come from isn't fully clear - and the list sent Monday doesn't address the matter.
Ecuador has tethered its economic fortunes to a burgeoning mining industry. Now it just needs to get bureaucrats and community leaders on board.

Local opposition and red tape are hindering plans to become a mining superpower that can rival other South American nations. Less than two years ago the government hoped mining would become 4 percent of Ecuador's gross domestic product by the end of President Lenin Moreno's term in 2021. That's now under question, according to Deputy Mining Minister Fernando Benalcazar.

"That 4 percent is aggressive, given the conditions of radical social and environmental opposition that we have been seeing," Benalcazar said in an interview in Quito. "Mining belongs to all 17 million Ecuadorians and large projects can't be decided by groups of people that don't represent even one per thousand of the country."

Ecuador still expects that mining exports will rise to $3.66 billion in 2021 from $270 million in 2018 as the country's first two large-scale mines start operating later this year, he said. But mirroring the growth stories of neighbors Chile and Peru, the world's two largest copper producers, is proving hard as multiple projects face delays. International investors, some of whom have set up shop in Ecuador over the last two years, have complained publicly that they face difficulties.

That was a common theme in the stories that mining investors and prospectors in Ecuador shared during a session at the PDAC conference in Toronto earlier this month, Benalcazar said in the interview last week. "They keep having problems, even if they have seen substantial change in environmental licenses, there are still delays in things like water permits."

As a result, about 40 percent of the $1.25 billion in mining investments expected for 2018 never made it into Ecuador, Benalcazar said. The government is in the final days of completing a new policy that will mirror that of countries with greater mining experience in order to streamline procedures and increase Ecuador's competitiveness.

The government has been collaborating with officials in Canada and is starting conversations with Chile to boost prospecting in the more than a third of the country that remains unexplored, he said.

Among the projects that have faced delays is Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Co.'s Mirador copper mine, in Chinchipe province. The mine has reserves of 30.2 million tons of copper and would be churning out 344,000 tons of concentrate per year. It was initially supposed to start producing in 2016, but construction was suspended after environmental and indigenous organizations alleged subsidiary ECSA had committed human rights abuses.

The mine, which resumed construction earlier this month, will start operating at the end of year, Benalcazar said. Still, in a report Wood Mackenzie highlighted the risk of more delays and estimated it could start during the first quarter of 2020.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court has allowed a referendum on mining activities in three jurisdictions to go ahead on March 24. A vote against mining near Cuenca would threaten INV Metals Inc's Loma Larga copper, gold and silver project.

The government is also working on a legal strategy to allow the development of Junefield Mineral Resources Holdings-owned Rio Blanco gold mine. The project was halted in May after a group of protesters took over the site, burned the mining camp and damaged access roads. A court subsequently ordered the company to stop construction. The mine could start producing in just four months, if building could resume, Benalcazar said.

To be sure, Lundin Gold Inc.'s Fruta del Norte gold mine is scheduled to start operating at the end of the year and other multinational mining companies are looking at Ecuador with interest, he said. Dundee Precious Metals Inc. will begin investing in Ecuador through junior miners already operating in the country, while Barrick Gold Corp. Chief Executive Officer Mark Bristow has visited the country several times, Benalcazar said.

Anglo American signed an earn-in joint venture agreement with Canada's Luminex Resources Corp. on three exploration projects. BHP Group, the world's biggest miner, has agreed to invest about $75 million exploring for copper on a deposit owned by Luminex. BHP has been looking to increase it exposure the metal and has targeted Ecuador as a key jurisdiction for that growth.

"Ecuador's economic future is based in mining," Benalcazar said. "We're not a potential destination anymore, we're the country where any large-scale mining company needs to be."
HURON COUNTY  Michigan has among the highest property tax rates in the country, so it's important to be getting good value out of those tax dollars.

Good news, Huron County is one of the top counties in the state getting the most "bang for its buck."

According to an annual property tax study by online financial site SmartAsset, Huron County ranks ninth in the state where property tax dollars are being spent most effectively. To do this, the company looked at property taxes, school rankings, and crime rates for every county.

Huron County ranked ninth in best overall value (73.70), with a property tax rate of 1.49 percent, school rating of 7-out-of-10, and crimes per 100,000 people of 1,131.

In comparison, the Upper Peninsula's Dickinson County took home the top ranking in Michigan (93.89 overall value index), registering a property tax rate of 1.63 percent, school rating of 9-out-of-10, and crimes per 100,000 people of 413.

Other counties cracking the top 10 include No. 2 Leelanau, No. 3 Presque Isle, No. 4 Houghton, No. 5 Clinton, No. 6 Benzie, No. 7 Arenac, No. 8 Lenawee, and No. 10 Ionia.

As a way to measure the quality of schools, SmartAsset analyzed the math and reading/language arts proficiencies for every school district in the country. They created an average score for each district by looking at the scores for every school in that district, weighting it to account for the number of students in each school. Within each state, they assigned every county a score between 1 and 10 (with 10 being the best) based on the average scores of the districts in each county.

For each county, they calculated the violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents.

Using the school and crime numbers, they calculated a community score. This is the ratio of the school rank to the combined crime rate per 100,000 residents.

SmartAsset used the number of households, median home value and average property tax rate to calculate a per capita property tax collected for each county.

Finally, they calculated a tax value by creating a ratio of the community score to the per capita property tax paid. This shows the counties in the country where property tax dollars are going the furthest.
A narrowly divided Supreme Court said Tuesday that federal authorities have broad powers to detain indefinitely and without a bond hearing legal immigrants who have committed certain crimes that make them eligible for deportation.

It does not matter whether authorities pick up such noncitizens years after they have been released from criminal custody, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision. Federal law mandates detention for certain immigrants while awaiting deportation proceedings.

"As we have held time and again, an official's crucial duties are better carried out late than never," wrote Alito, joined in the outcome by his fellow conservatives.

While the Obama administration held the same view of the law, it has become more important for the Trump administration, which has stepped up deportation enforcement and complained that policies of "sanctuary cities" hinder its ability to learn of the release of those whose crimes make them deportable.

As is often the case, the justices were debating what lower courts have found to be ambiguous wording in a federal statute. It says the attorney general "shall take into custody any alien" who has committed certain offenses "when the alien is released" from state or local custody.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said that meant immediately upon release from custody. Other courts have said that is impractical and that "when" means when the government learns of the person's release, even if it is years later.

Alito said the plaintiffs' assertions that "they are owed bond hearings in which they can earn their release by proving that they pose no flight risk and no danger to others" is not supported by the statute's text or structure.

"In fact, both cut the other way," he wrote, joined in the outcome by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court's dissenting liberals and underlined his disagreement by reading part of his opinion from the bench.

"In deciphering the intent of the Congress that wrote this statute, we must decide - in the face of what is, at worst, linguistic ambiguity - whether Congress intended that persons who have long since paid their debt to society would be deprived of their liberty for months or years without the possibility of bail," Breyer wrote.

"We cannot decide that question without bearing in mind basic American legal values: the Government's duty not to deprive any 'person' of 'liberty' without 'due process of law.' "

Breyer was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Alito allowed that there could be constitutional issues with the law but that the plaintiffs in the case had not raised them.

The 9th Circuit case involved two people in unrelated cases.

Mony Preap was born in a refugee camp after his parents fled Cambodia, and he has lived legally in the United States since 1981. He was convicted in 2006 of marijuana possession but was not picked up by federal authorities after he was sentenced to time served.

In 2013, he served another criminal sentence for battery, a charge that is not a deportable offense. He was detained for months but was released and no longer faces deportation.

Bassam Yusuf Khoury has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 1976. In 2011, he was released after serving a 30-day sentence for a drug charge. Nearly two years later, federal authorities picked him up for deportation and he was detained for more than six months before a judge said he could be released.

But Alito said it would be impossible to hold federal authorities to a standard that said someone must be picked up the day he is released from criminal custody.

"State and local officials sometimes rebuff the Government's request that they give notice when a criminal alien will be released," Alito wrote. Citing government data, he added, "Indeed, over a span of less than three years (from January 2014 to September 2016), the Government recorded a total of 21,205 declined requests in 567 counties in 48 states including the District of Columbia."

Kavanaugh wrote separately to emphasize the decision's "narrowness."

"The issue before us is entirely statutory and requires our interpretation of the strict 1996 illegal-immigration law passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton," he wrote.

Breyer seemed to take exception to that.

"These aliens may . . . be detained for months, sometimes years, without the possibility of release; they may have been convicted of only minor crimes - for example, minor drug offenses, or crimes of 'moral turpitude' such as illegally downloading music or possessing stolen bus transfers; and they sometimes may be innocent spouses or children of a suspect person," Breyer wrote.

"These are not mere hypotheticals," he wrote. "Thus, in terms of potential consequences and basic American legal traditions, the question before us is not a 'narrow' one."

American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Cecillia Wang, who argued the case at the Supreme Court, said the case was reminiscent of one last term in which the court limited the ability of immigrants to object to their detention.

"For two terms in a row now, the Supreme Court has endorsed the most extreme interpretation of immigration detention statutes, allowing mass incarceration of people without any hearing, simply because they are defending themselves against a deportation charge," Wang said in a statement. "We will continue to fight the gross overuse of detention in the immigration system."

The case is Nielsen v. Preap.
Ever since contemporary terrorism emerged in the 19th century, there has been coverage of it. And ever since that coverage started, there has been a debate over its excesses and restraints.

Journalists frequently face criticism for providing terrorists with the "oxygen of publicity" by reporting on their motives or demands. But Friday's right-wing terrorist attack in Christchurch, in which at least 50 people were killed, marked a major shift: Terrorists no longer need journalists in the same way, if they can get a million other people to upload their content for them instead.

Facebook said it removed more than 1.5 million versions of the attacker's live video feed of his mosque attack in Christchurch. Other platforms such as YouTube and Twitter similarly struggled to contain the spread of the gruesome footage. At the same time, users worldwide read through the attacker's own manifesto, in which he laid out his worldview in a Q&A format.

Friday's attack has turned a moral dilemma that once mostly affected journalists into a broader question for almost anyone with access to a social network. Where are the boundaries between posting about an attack to condemn it - and unintentionally helping to spread a perpetrator's message in the process?

In an address to parliament on Tuesday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a strong case for denying the suspected Christchurch attacker the attention he craved. "He will, when I speak, be nameless . . . And to others, I implore you, speak the names of those who were lost, rather than name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name."

Ardern's case for not naming terrorists or focusing on them isn't exactly new. Some researchers argue that terrorism wouldn't be able to exist without the publicity media grant them by reporting on their actions and ideologies. Over the decades, the quest to dominate headlines has resulted in attacks being tailored for TV - as 9/11 was - or for social media, as the latest case in Christchurch shows. There's hardly any difference between right-wing extremist terrorists and Islamist attackers on that front: Both want and need the attention of the groups they're fighting against. By denying them this kind of publicity, Ardern's argument goes, extremism can be starved off the oxygen it needs to survive.

On the flip side of this argument, however, terrorism analysts have maintained that examining and discussing motives as well as individuals' path to radicalization is crucial to understand how to prevent future attacks. Democracies in particular, they argue, should have an inherent interest in understanding why some in their midst feel the need to resort to violent means to pursue ideological goals.

Besides that, there just aren't a lot of options to stop people from focusing on suspects, as history shows. When Germany's left-wing terrorists began kidnapping people across the country in the 1970s, the government introduced a news embargo. In other countries, terrorism suspects were charged in secret trials to avoid publicity and to prevent national security-relevant details from becoming public. In both cases, however, foreign media outlets - not bound by the same rules - broke embargoes and questioned the government-imposed secrecy.

The same now applies to social media, where embargoes are almost impossible to enforce. New Zealand has charged at least one person so far for sharing the live-streamed attack video from last Friday, but with more than 1.5 million uploads on Facebook alone it's clear that law enforcement won't deny terrorists the publicity they search in the 21st century.

Amid that historical context, Ardern has chosen a third option: Setting an example, but refraining from deploying judicial pressure. On Tuesday, Ardern was widely applauded for her initiative, including by the husband of late British Member of Parliament Jo Cox, who was murdered by a right-wing extremist in 2016.

"When Jo was killed I vowed the same," Brendan Cox wrote on Twitter. "I have often genuinely forgotten the person's name and my kids have never heard it. Notoriety is such an important driver for terrorists and we should all get better at denying them it."
In a rare show of bipartisanship, the House unanimously passed new legislation this month to raise awareness about the health dangers of military burn pits.

Thousands of veterans who worked on those massive open-air disposal sites, where garbage was disposed of and burned with fuel, in Iraq and Afghanistan say they have respiratory illnesses and cancer.

The debris included everything from computer parts to insecticides.

But the Department of Defense says there is not enough scientific evidence to link long-term illness to the burn pits.

Officials admit smoke from burn pits could have short-term health problems.

The Burn Pit Registry Enhancement Act would allow family members to access the registry to add cause of death and to also note if the death could be linked to exposure to burn pits.

Currently, only living veterans and active service members can register .

In her latest edition of "Matter of Fact," Soledad OBrien talked with with Bonnie Carroll, founder of Tragedy Assistance Program For Survivors, and Coleen Bowman, whose husband died of cancer after being exposed to burn pits.

Bowman said a burn pit was located about a half-mile from where her husband Rob and his fellow soldiers slept at night.

Multiple pits were located elsewhere nearby.

Burning constantly, she said.

The burn pits were used through 2010 at military bases, according to Stars and Stripes , an independent newspaper covering the military.

Her husband was diagnosed in 2011 with a rare form of cancer. He died 18 months later.

His doctor was smart enough to know right away that this was not genetics, Bowman said. This was caused by the environment.

Other tests on her husband also confirmed environmental changes caused the cancer.

Carroll said her organization is seeing such a dramatic increase in the number of families coming to us.

Bowman said there are about 3.5 million service members who might have been affected by the burn pits.

By next year, Bowman, who also works with Carroll at TAPS, estimates that the number of service members who die due to effects of the burn pits will surpass the number of service members who commit suicide.

More than 170,000 service members are already part of the registry . Families of soldiers who have died are not eligible to register.

Bowman said its important for her to be the voice for her husband and others who have died.

If this is how God is going to take me, I want to be the pioneer of this, Bowman recalled her husband saying.

It was the last gift of leadership he gave, she said.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Tuesday ratcheted up a remarkable public spat with the husband of one of his top advisers, attacking Kellyanne Conway's husband as a "total loser" on Twitter in response to the lawyer's persistent questions about his mental health and competency.

"A total loser!" Trump wrote in the tweet targeting Conway's husband, a prominent conservative attorney. The president's tweet also included a dubious assertion from Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, that the president "doesn't even know" his senior adviser's husband.

But George Conway said in an interview Tuesday that he has had a number of notable interactions with Trump over the past decade, including legal representation and sensitive legal matters since Trump became president. He described the president as "mendacious" and "incompetent" and predicted he would not win reelection.

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Conway also suggested his own tweets questioning the president's mental health were aimed in part at avoiding conflicts with his wife.

"It's so maddening to watch," said Conway, a longtime Washington attorney who is well-known in conservative circles. "The mendacity, the incompetence, it's just maddening to watch. The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day. That's basically it. Frankly, it's so I don't end up screaming at her about it."

Conway has been a persistent critic of Trump's policies and actions, frequently going on Twitter to question whether the president is operating within the Constitution and other accepted boundaries. But the criticism recently has become more personal, and he has often attacked Trump just after his wife defends the president on television.

Conway's tweets on Monday included images from the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," including pages with diagnostic criteria for "narcissistic personality disorder" and "antisocial personality disorder."

Although Conway had previously posted similar concerns on Twitter, "it stuck this time because of the utter bizarreness this weekend, his own conduct. It was so illustrative," he said, referring to a two-day span in which Trump sent out 52 tweets with a broad range of attacks.

Kellyanne Conway did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday, but she said on Monday that she did not share her husband's concerns about Trump. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has wanted to attack George Conway on Twitter before but has been talked out of it by aides, who argued it would embolden Conway and cause unnecessary drama, according to several current and former White House aides.

The president's change of approach was apparently prompted by a tweet sent Monday night by Parscale, who wrote about Conway: "We all know that @realDonaldTrump turned down Mr. Kellyanne Conway for a job he desperately wanted. He barely worked @TheJusticeDept and was either fired/quit, didn't want the scrutiny? Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success. POTUS doesn't even know him!"

George Conway said that contrary to Parscale's tweet, he opted against working at the Justice Department after Trump offered him a position heading the civil division because he watched Trump attack the department's leaders and then fire James Comey, the FBI director, in early 2017. Conway said he remembered riding down the West Side Highway in Manhattan and hearing on the radio that special counsel Robert Mueller had been appointed to lead an investigation of possible connections between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign.

"I'm thinking to myself, this guy is going to be at war with the Justice Department for the next two years," Conway said. "I'm not doing this," George Conway said.

In a conversation with Trump at the wedding of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in June 2017, Conway said Trump approached him and complimented him for not taking a job under then-attorney general Jeff Sessions.

"He said to me, I remember it clearly, you were smart not to work for that guy," George Conway said. "He is so weak."

Trump then ranted for several minutes that Sessions should have never recused himself from the Mueller investigation. "I told him, I'd heard the recusal issue was pretty clear, that Sessions had to recuse himself," Conway said. "He took great affront at that."

A person close to Parscale said the campaign manager was told by Trump that he did not have any recollections of being in a room with George Conway and that the president only met Kellyanne Conway during the election.

George Conway outlined a number of interactions with Trump that date back more than a decade - and said his wife had known him for that long.

Shortly after they were married in 2001, Kellyanne and George Conway moved into an apartment in Manhattan's Trump World Tower. A few years later, George Conway made an impression on the future president at a condominium board meeting where he argued against removing Trump's name from the building. The speech earned him an offer to join the condo board, which he declined but passed on to his wife, who accepted.

In a 2006 letter shared with The Washington Post, Trump praised Conway for helping him keep control of the building.

"What I was most impressed with was how quickly you were able to comprehend a very bad situation," Trump wrote, praising Conway for "ridding Trump World Tower of some very bad people." In a postscript, Trump said Conway had "a truly great voice, certainly not a bad asset for a top trial lawyer!"

Conway said Trump also called him to thank him, and he told the president he was glad his name stayed on the building.

The two later met at a fundraiser in Alpine, New Jersey, where the Conway family owns a home, he said. After Trump won the election 2016, Conway said that he flew with Trump to Washington for an inaugural dinner with his wife as they moved their belongings, which were on the plane.

During that flight, Trump repeatedly quizzed Conway if he should fire Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Conway said. "I said in general, it's better to have your people in terms of important positions than others," Conway said. He said the president did not appear motivated by anything other than political machinations. Trump eventually fired Bharara in the spring of 2017.

During the transition, Conway said he also rode in a black SUV with Trump, his wife and Steve Bannon to a costume party at the home of GOP megadonor Rebekah Mercer. Trump had heard about the party and wanted to attend. During the car ride, Conway said the president was fixated on John Bolton's prominent mustache - and that it was a reason not to pick him as secretary of state. Since then, Trump picked Bolton as his national security adviser.

"He didn't like the mustache," Conway said. "He just went on and on about the mustache."

Conway later said he was surprised to get a call from Trump around the time he took office, where the Trump was seeking legal advice about a lawsuit alleging that the president was benefiting financially from the presidency in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. The call, he said, was arranged by his wife. "He wanted to know what I thought about the judge and what I thought about the case," Conway said.

In spring 2017, Conway said his wife arranged a call with Conway, the president, Vice President Pence and senior adviser Jared Kushner to evaluate lawyers for the Mueller investigation. A speakerphone was used, Conway said.

"He wanted to know my opinions on a variety of lawyers who were being considered to be his outside counsel. He asked me for my opinions on each of them," Conway said, adding that there were "all these people in the room making it a nonprivileged conversation."

Some in the White House say Conway is selfish for posting so many tweets, making it difficult for his wife to work there and attacking her boss. "Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success," campaign manager Brad Parscale posted on Twitter Monday night.

Kellyanne Conway went on a lengthy rant about her husband to several guests at a British Embassy party for members of Congress last month, including New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell and former Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn, according to two attendees, who requested anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Conway told the group that she and the president think her husband is jealous of her, and that the president has kept her at a prominent place in the administration because he trusts her and wants to "protect her," the attendees said.

Kellyanne Conway also said that George Conway preferred to spend his time in front of his computer, while she preferred to socialize, the attendees said. Kellyanne Conway also said it was the fault of the news media for giving her husband such a platform, and that some of George Conway's close friends had asked him to stop.

She told the guests that they would not like it if their marriages or personal lives were in the spotlight, these people said.

Asked for comment, Quinn said Conway was upset about the media giving her husband so much attention.

"She said women should be respectful of other women, and his comments had nothing to do with her job," Quinn said. "I told her it's a story, it's a very good story."

George Conway declined to comment on the state of his marriage - answering only that he wished his wife did not work for the White House.

He said he remained proud of his wife and was not "jealous."

"No one was prouder than I was that she was able to elect this man president despite his obvious flaws," said Conway, who was spotted crying tears of joy on election night in 2016 at Trump Tower. "She took a campaign that the candidate had run into the gutter."

He added, "I made it possible for her to be where she is today. So there's that. It's not about jealousy. It's about reality. Who this man is, and whether he's fit for public office. Which, as I've said, he isn't."

Many of Conway's friends in the legal community say he should focus instead on the president's success in appointing conservative judges and that he is too fixated on the president's personal style.

But Conway said Trump was damaging conservatism for decades to come and that it was not worth the bargain for judges and conservative policies. He also shrugged off Trump calling him a "total loser" on Twitter.
Potholes, the legacy of the Blizzard of 1999, have been plaguing motorists on virtually every expressway, highway and toll road in the Chicago area this month, but few can compare with the size of the hole that brought traffic to a near standstill early Monday on the Interstate Highway 80 bridge over the Des Plaines River in Joliet.

An 11-by-7-foot concrete-and-steel section of the roadway in the eastbound lanes over the bridge broke loose and plunged into the river shortly after midnight, causing state police and Illinois highway officials to shut down two of the three lanes over the bridge.

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"An entire section of the roadway just peeled off," said Dick Adorjan, Illinois Department of Transportation spokesman.

Four smaller potholes in the bed of the bridge's eastbound roadway also were found by state police, adding to the traffic snarl during Monday's morning rush hour.

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No injuries or serious damage to vehicles were reported, but several vehicles lost hubcaps and a few suffered flat tires.

"We hope to have the potholes patched up and all of the eastbound lanes open to traffic by sometime Tuesday," Adorjan said.

The state contracted with Herlihy-Mid Continent Construction Co. of Romeoville to undertake the repair work.

Adorjan said that once repair crews patch the eastbound lanes, they will turn their attention to some of the potholes developing in the westbound lanes. One lane of traffic will be closed at a time, Adorjan said.

Elsewhere in the Chicago area, crews were scheduled Monday to complete hot-mix asphalt repairs started Sunday on potholes in the northbound lanes of the Dan Ryan Expressway between 70th and 29th Streets.

Large areas of pavement have broken loose on the Dan Ryan since the Jan. 2 blizzard, prompting Gov. George Ryan to order hot-mix repairs that usually would start in the spring. The work on the Ryan potholes began last week.

About half of the Dan Ryan's lanes have had hot-mix repairs, and IDOT engineers say they are pleased with the results of the work.

Hot-patching gives a longer-lasting repair than cold-patching, but it is difficult to use the hot mix in freezing weather.

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As a result of the pothole problems on the Dan Ryan, state officials in the spring plan to repave the expressway from 31st Street south to Interstate Highway 57, a project originally scheduled for 2000, Adorjan said.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey sued the Catholic diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and its former bishop Michael Bransfield on Tuesday, charging that they "knowingly employed pedophiles and failed to conduct adequate background checks" for people working in Catholic schools and camps, a news release from Morrisey's office says.

The lawsuit, the latest dramatic civil action against the American church in the past year, alleges violations of the state's consumer protection laws. It accuses the diocese of advertising safe environments for children while at the same time, the complaint says, choosing "to cover up and conceal arguably criminal behavior of child sexual abuse."

Some child abuse experts said the move was precedent-setting, both in terms of targeting an entire diocese rather than individual priests, and by using consumer law to launch a civil lawsuit which could unlock the church's files through legal discovery. The West Virginia attorney general used the consumer fraud strategy because, as with attorneys general in other states, he is not empowered to launch a criminal grand jury investigation.

"This is the most that we've seen so far in terms of prosecution, in terms of someone in the higher levels of the hierarchy. This is the first time we've seen a comprehensive claim against a whole diocese and a bishop," said Marci Hamilton, a law scholar and head of Child USA, a nonprofit organization focused on child abuse.

The Wheeling-Charleston Diocese, which covers the entire state, issued a statement Tuesday which said it "strongly and unconditionally rejects the Complaint's assertion that the Diocese is not wholly committed to the protection of children." The statement said the lawsuit was based in part on information provided by the church both publicly and to the attorney general in recent months, that some allegations "occurred more than 50 years ago and some are not accurately described."

Bransfield, the only bishop named as a defendant in the suit, could not be reached for comment.

Although Catholic officials and leaders have conceded that the Church failed in the past, some consider the recent criticism unfair for an institution that has invested many millions in child protection efforts. One church official who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to appear to be defending past behavior, called the new suit a "publicity stunt," noting that policies have changed significantly in recent decades.

Civil authorities in the past year have initiated several actions against the Catholic Church on sex abuse that are new in the United States, where the church is the largest single faith group and, survivor advocates say, has been shielded for many years by insufficiently critical law enforcement, prosecutors and the news media. Last summer, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released an extensive, damning grand jury report describing abuse and cover-ups across the state in past decades. Last fall, the Justice Department opened an investigation of alleged sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy members across the state.

West Virginia launched its investigation last fall after Pennsylvania's report disclosed that some of the priests there also had worked in West Virginia, the new lawsuit states, and filed subpoenas to the diocese which did not result in full disclosure. Morrisey said in an interview that he has been communicating with people working on the sex abuse issue in other states since priests have crossed state lines, and he decided it was best to file the lawsuit under consumer protection laws. Pennsylvania officials said 16 attorneys general have publicly revealed investigations of the Catholic church since the Pennsylvania grand jury report was issued.

"If we didn't engage in this action, there would be no statewide review that would occur," he said. "The state doesn't have the structure to do what Pennsylvania did because it doesn't have the criminal jurisdiction."

The lawsuit is seeking a permanent court order "blocking the diocese from continuation of any such conduct," as well as possible restitution and civil penalties. Morrisey said he is hopeful that more people will come forward and that the lawsuit could be amended to include more examples.

"I'm pleased to see Attorney General Morrisey taking such an innovative approach to protecting children in West Virginia," Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said.

Advocates for the abused have cheered what they consider a late entry of top civil officials, as other countries - including Australia, Canada and Germany - have run nationwide investigations of clergy sex abuse and coverups. Many Catholic leaders have been apologetic and said they were cooperating with needed investigations; others have painted the push as anti-Catholic and unfairly targeting one community for the societal problem of child sexual abuse.

The West Virginia news comes a week after Baltimore Archbishop William Lori - whom the pope appointed last fall to investigate allegations including that Bransfield had sexually harassed adults - barred Bransfield from any priestly duties. Lori said on March 11 that his preliminary investigation, which involved five lay experts, was being forwarded to the Vatican for a final judgment.

That inquiry was looking into allegations of sexual harassment of adults and financial improprieties.

Morrisey said the U.S. church's investigation into Bransfield was sent to the Vatican without the state being allowed to review any files. By filing this lawsuit, he said, he wants the church to become more transparent.

"There's still a culture of secrecy," he said. "The church needs to come clean."

Morrisey also wants the diocese to have abuse allegations reviewed by third parties, not just a diocese lawyer. And, he said, he wants background checks done by independent services.

"We have reason to believe the systems in place are still inadequate," he said.

The two counts of the lawsuit are filed under West Virginia's consumer protection law. The first count alleges the church failed to deliver the advertised service of "providing a safe learning environment" and the second count claims the church failed to "warn of dangerous services," by employing priests the diocese knew had been credibly accused of abuse "and intentionally failed to warn the purchasers of educational and recreational services." The church claims to have the eighth largest school system in West Virginia by number of schools, with six high schools and 19 elementary schools.

The alleged pattern of failures by the diocese dates to as early as 1965, the lawsuit states, when the church hired a priest from Philadelphia it knew had been credibly accused of sexually abusing a child. That priest, Victor Frobas, "was moved frequently" due to allegations of sexually abusing children, and in 1972 became director of Camp Tygart, now known as Camp Bosco, the lawsuit states, before he was removed and sent to a home in Massachusetts for treatment of pedophilia. But he returned to West Virginia in 1976 and served as the chaplain at Wheeling Central Catholic High School, then took another leave after more allegations of abuse. He wound up in St. Louis, where he was convicted in 1987 of inappropriate conduct with minors and sentenced to five years in prison, the lawsuit states. Frobas died in 1993.

In another case, the complaint alleges that the diocese hired a lay teacher to work at a high school in Weirton, W.Va., in 2011 but didn't do a background check on him. Two years later, the diocese found that the man, Ronald Cooper, was a convicted rapist in Washington state. He was fired, but the diocese didn't disclose that it had "employed a person convicted of sexual abuse of a child," the lawsuit states.

"Another priest admitted on his employment application to having been accused of child sexual abuse decades earlier, yet the civil complaint alleges the diocese passed on the opportunity to thoroughly vet the priest and adequately check his background. Instead, the diocese and two bishops employed the priest for approximately four years at a parish that operates an elementary school," the attorney general's news release says but doesn't specify when.

Judy Block Jones, Midwest regional leader for the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said West Virginia fosters a tight-knight atmosphere where victims seem more afraid to come out than in other states where she spends her time.

"It's hard to get outside law enforcement involved in anything with the Catholic sex abuse crisis," she said. "Now they're starting to listen."
DUNEDIN, New Zealand - New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she would deny the accused gunman the fame he sought by refusing to even speak his name in an emotive parliamentary meeting on Tuesday, the first since the worst massacre in her country's modern history.

Espousing anti-immigrant, white nationalist ideology, 28-year-old Australian national Brenton Tarrant is accused of killing 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday, rattling a country that takes pride in its safety, diversity and openness.

"He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety," Ardern said. "And that is why you will never hear me mention his name."

She added: "He is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless."

The parliamentary session opened with a recitation in Arabic from Imam Nizam ul Haq Thanvi of verses from the Koran that "provide comfort and reassurance."

Ardern opened her address to Parliament with a greeting in Arabic. "As-salamu alaykum," she said, looking up to the public gallery. "Peace be upon you, and peace be upon all of us."

Tarrant has been charged with a single count of murder, but authorities say more charges are coming. On Tuesday, police wrapped up forensic work at the house he rented in the city of Dunedin, several hours south of Christchurch, and where authorities believe he had meticulously planned his attack.

Tarrant has fired his court-appointed lawyer and says he plans to represent himself in court, leading some to speculate that he's hoping to use the proceedings as a further platform for espousing his extremist white-nationalist beliefs.

The massacre has shocked the world not only because of its scale - the shooter continued his rampage for more than 30 minutes at a second mosque before he was arrested - but also for the brazenness in which it was live-streamed on Facebook. Dozens commented, cheering him on, while others watched horrified as social media giants struggled to prevent the 17-minute video from being downloaded and re-shared over and over again.

He also published a 74-page manifesto ahead of the attacks, sharing it on Twitter and sending to dozens within New Zealand, including Ardern's office and media outlets.

While Tarrant is held in detention ahead of his next court appearance on April 5, he will be denied access to media, including radio, television and newspapers. The New Zealand Herald reported that he is under 24-hour surveillance and will not be allowed visitors.

Ardern declined to say whether his trial will happen behind closed doors, but she emphasized to reporters that New Zealand will deny him the ability to lift his profile through the attacks. In his only court appearance so far, Tarrant's face was blurred out in photographs and the video feeds showing him escorted into the courtroom, which the judge says will protect his right to a fair trial.

Despite the overwhelming support and praise for New Zealand's handling of the massacre's aftermath, families of victims are growing increasingly frustrated at the delay in receiving their loved ones' bodies.

Post-mortems had been completed on all 50 victims, police said in a statement Tuesday night, more than four days after the attacks. Twelve victims had been identified but only six bodies had been returned to their families.

"Police are acutely aware of frustrations by families associated with the length of time required for the identification process following Friday's terror attack," the police said.

According to Muslim beliefs, bodies should be washed and buried as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours. The delays are causing many families more trauma after the attacks.

"Normally we shouldn't wait too long to bury, but in this case they're still taking time," Mohammed Bilal, whose cousin Syed Areeb Ahmen was killed, told the New Zealand Herald.

Tariq Mohammed, whose father was killed, said tensions were running high.

"Fathers have died. Brothers have died. Everyone wants their body back, man," he told Stuff, a local news website. "There's going to be a lot of emotions, man. We are humans; we are not angels. We will have feelings."

The spokesman of the Islamic State, known only by his alias of Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, condemned the attack on New Zealand's Muslim community and called on supporters in the country to exact revenge.

Muhajir, who has not been heard from in six months, mentioned the New Zealand attack during a nearly 45-minute audio recording in which he disputed American declarations of victory over Islamic State militants in Syria, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity online.

Breaking from the traditional Islamic State dogma that dictates that Muslims living in non-Muslim countries are apostates, Muhajir said "the scenes of death in the two mosques are enough to wake the sleep and incite supporters of [the Islamic State] who live there, to take vengeance for their religion."

Facebook said it removed more than 1.5 million versions of the video feed of the mosque attack in Christchurch. Other platforms such as YouTube and Twitter similarly struggled to contain the spread of the gruesome footage. At the same time, users worldwide read through the alleged attacker's manifesto, in which he laid out his views in a Q&A format.

Ardern's case for not naming terrorists or focusing on them isn't exactly new.

Some researchers argue that terrorism wouldn't exist without the publicity the media grants them by reporting on their actions and ideologies.

On the flip side of this argument, however, some terrorism analysts have maintained that examining and discussing motives as well as individuals' path to radicalization is crucial to understand how to prevent attacks.

On Tuesday, Ardern was widely applauded for her initiative, including by the husband of late British lawmaker Jo Cox, who was killed by a right-wing extremist in 2016.

"When Jo was killed I vowed the same," Brendan Cox wrote on Twitter. "I have often genuinely forgotten the person's name and my kids have never heard it. Notoriety is such an important driver for terrorists and we should all get better at denying them it."

- - -

Fifield reported from Christchurch, New Zealand. Rick Noack in London and Tamer al-Ghobashy in Toronto contributed to this report.
The Archdiocese of Chicago says it already releases the names of every priest who's had a substantiated allegation against him and now turns over the names of those accused to law enforcement.
For the first time, one of the top prizes in mathematics has been given to a woman.

On Tuesday, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced it has awarded this years Abel Prize  an award modeled on the Nobel Prizes  to Karen Uhlenbeck, an emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The award cites the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics.

One of Uhlenbecks advances in essence described the complex shapes of soap films not in a bubble bath but in abstract, high-dimensional curved spaces. In later work, she helped put a rigorous mathematical underpinning to techniques widely used by physicists in quantum field theory to describe fundamental interactions between particles and forces.

In the process, she helped pioneer a field known as geometric analysis, and she developed techniques now commonly used by many mathematicians.

She did things nobody thought about doing, said Sun-Yung Alice Chang, a mathematician at Princeton University who served on the five-member prize committee, and after she did, she laid the foundations of a branch of mathematics.

Uhlenbeck, who now lives in Princeton, N.J., learned that she won the prize Sunday morning.

When I came out of church, I noticed that I had a text message from Alice Chang that said, Would I please accept a call from Norway? Uhlenbeck said. When I got home, I called Norway back and they told me.

Uhlenbeck, 76, a visiting associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said she had not decided what to do with the $700,000 that accompanies the honor.

There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics, and for decades, the most prestigious awards in math were the Fields Medals, awarded in small batches every four years to the most accomplished mathematicians who are 40 or younger. Maryam Mirzakhani, in 2014, is the only woman to receive a Fields Medal.

The Abel, named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Hendrik Abel, is set up more like the Nobels. Since 2003, it has been given out annually to highlight important advances in mathematics. The previous 19 laureates  in three years, the prize was split between two mathematicians  were men, including Andrew J. Wiles, who proved Fermats last theorem and is now at the University of Oxford; Peter D. Lax of New York University; and John F. Nash Jr., whose life was portrayed in the movie A Beautiful Mind.

In her early work, Uhlenbeck essentially figured out the shape of soap films in higher-dimensional curved spaces. This is an example of what mathematicians call optimization problems, which are often very difficult and can have zero solutions, one solution or many solutions.

You can ask a question of when you have a soap bubble in this em>n/em>-dimensional space, she said. You dont know ahead of time what the shapes of those minimal soap bubbles are going to be.

In 1983, at 41, she received broader recognition with a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called Genius Grant, which comes with a bundle of money  $204,000 in Uhlenbecks case.

In 1990, she became the second woman to give one of the highlighted plenary talks at the International Congress of Mathematicians, a quadrennial meeting. At each congress, there are 10 to 20 plenary talks, but for decades, all of the speakers had been men.

That was almost more unnerving than being the first woman to receive an Abel, Uhlenbeck said.

Uhlenbeck said she recognized that she was a role model for women who followed her in mathematics.

Looking back now I realize that I was very lucky, she said. I was in the forefront of a generation of women who actually could get real jobs in academia.

But she also noted: I certainly very much felt I was a woman throughout my career. That is, I never felt like one of the guys.

To find an influential woman, she looked to television.

Like many people in my generation, Uhlenbeck said, my role model was Julia Child.
An off-duty Bexar County sheriff's deputy was fired after he was arrested in San Antonio on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, the Bexar County Sheriff's Office said Monday in a news release.

Ryan Storm Ferrell, 28, was pulled over by police around 10:30 p.m. Sunday night in the 4300 block of Interstate 10 West, according to the news release. He had been with the department for six years and is a corporal in the detention division.

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On Monday afternoon Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar served Ferrell with a termination notice and placed him on unpaid administrative leave, according to the news release.

"A DWI in and of itself is bad enough, furthermore taken in totality with a pattern of misbehavior, makes a mockery of public trust," Salazar said in a statement. "This will not be tolerated in the Bexar County Sheriff's Office."

Ferrell has been in trouble with Salazar before. He was suspended for one day for his involvement in a brawl that spilled outside of a house party on June 8, 2017.

He was also one of the deputies officials said was involved in a hazing incident caught on camera at a different house party less than a month later. Ferrell and other deputies handcuffed a fellow jailer, roughed him up and used a stun gun on him. Salazar suspended Ferell for 30 days in connection to that incident.

The sheriff office's Internal Affairs unit will run a separate investigation into Ferrell's arrest, according to the news release. His bail was set at $1,500, jail records showed.

Drunken driving has been an issue at the Bexar County Sheriff's Office in recent years. In 2018, 23 deputies were arrested with DWI being the most common charge.

"We continue to work proactively to prevent this pervasive issue through education and training," Sheriff Javier Salazar said in a statement. "Nonetheless, as issues occur, we will take decisive action. I personally terminated three employees last week for alcohol-related incidents, and will continue my strong stance on discipline and accountability."

FROM OUR SUBSCRIBER SITE: Top San Antonio psychologist to tackle 'pervasive issue' of deputy misconduct at Bexar County Sheriff's Office

Those three employees were identified as Vanessa Flores, a Bexar County dispatcher, Deputy Joseph Martinez and Deputy Adrian Parra. All three were fired Friday after they were unsuccessful in appealing their termination notices, according to a sheriff's office spokesperson.

In October 2018, Salazar announced stricter hiring requirements for the detention division, where most of the arrested deputies had been assigned, meaning that candidates could have no prior arrests for DWI, drug possession or family violence charges.

In January, the sheriff's office hired psychologist Brandi Burque to provide counseling to deputies in an effort to curb misconduct.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | fsabawi@mysa.com|@FaresInSA
A San Antonio woman was convicted for a second time for her role in a 2010 killing, more than four years after her first conviction was overturned, according to the district attorney's office.

A Bexar County jury found Vanessa Cameron guilty of murder on Tuesday in the death of Samuel Allen Johnson Jr., the father of her child.
Lancasters nephew said he left the gathering before the shooting Monday night. Family and friends had been sharing stories about Lancaster, and his nephew talked about how Uncle Lo used to give the kids money and help them with homework after school. At age 42, Lancaster was fatally shot in the chest March 18, 2016, in the 3700 block of West Division Street, according to Tribune archives.
This is a little complicated, so bear with me.

First of all, Israel is a fully functioning modern state, firmly and solidly integrated into the international community.

Second, since 1967, Israel has been in military occupation of the Palestinian territories, including the West Bank.

There are international laws and conventions that set legal standards for occupying powers. One of those laws is that the occupying power (Israel in this case) is not allowed to transfer civilian population into the occupied territory (the West Bank). This is why the settlements that Israel constructs in the West Bank for Israeli citizens are illegal. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch tell us that the settlements are on land stolen from Palestinians and do considerable harm to the prospects of peace in the region.

The international community has not done much to deter Israels settlement-building enterprise. But many groups choose not to do business with or in these settlements, because the settlements are illegal and obstacles to peace.

One company that has recently decided not to do business in the settlements is Airbnb. Airbnb has a policy of not listing properties in any disputed territory. And so it is not listing properties in the illegal settlements in the West Bank. (It is important to note that it proudly and gladly lists properties that are in Israel proper. It has no problems doing business within Israel.)

Got that? Because things are about to get confusing.

Now, if you are a contractor for the state of Texas and you are traveling on state business for instance, as a consultant for Alamo Community Colleges and staying in an Airbnb property, say, in San Antonios King William district, the state of Texas will no longer compensate you for your lodging. The state will compensate you if you stay in a hotel or another home-sharing property. But not Airbnb.

Why? Because Airbnb does not accept listings from the occupied West Bank.

Confused yet? You should be. Why should Texas punish a San Antonio homeowner who lists with Airbnb over Airbnbs perfectly reasonable decision not to do business in disputed territory?

It is because Texas, to its shame, has a law, HB 89, that requires people and businesses that contract with the state of Texas to agree not to boycott Israel, including, apparently, businesses that operate in the West Bank. (Remember, the West Bank is a territory that is not part of Israel but that Israel controls through military occupation.) If you are a contractor with the state of Texas, you need to sign a document promising not to engage in a boycott or do business with companies that participate in a boycott against Israel.

Lets be clear: You are free to boycott McDonalds. You are free to boycott Tibet. You are free to boycott the U.S. government. You are free to boycott Oklahoma if you want. Im not sure why youd want to, but, hey, its a free country  that is, except when it comes to Israel. You are not free to boycott Israel. You are not even free to do business with a company that chooses not to operate in the occupied territories.

This is our law: HB 89. It is almost certainly unconstitutional. Lets ask why our legislators voted for this. And lets ask them to get rid of it.

Judith Norman is a philosophy professor at Trinity University and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.
The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!

Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.

The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.

The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.

The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.

Access to college recruiters and advisors  its harder to line up higher education.

Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.

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"It's better for the court when theyre dealing with a circumstance such as this one where theres a great deal of public emotion, public feeling, to try to give people some sense that theyre not being arbitrary," Lyon told the Chicago Tribune. "I'm not saying they did do it off the cuff or glibly, (but) when you issue a very short denial with no real discussion of why you did that, I think especially nonlawyers  may think that you just dont care."
One of the early scenes in 13 Going on 30 finds 13-year-old protagonist Jenna Rink locked inside a closet of her own accord, literally banging her head against the wall and shrieking, I wanna be thirty! Thirty and flirty and thriving!

Its no coincidence her assumption  that to be thirty is to thrive  is illustrated by a spread in Jennas favorite (fictional) magazine Poise. Womens media and pop culture are major contributors to the oft-cited narrative that ages 30-39 are a womans supposed prime  socially, professionally, physically, sexually and emotionally. The resulting stereotypes are endless: Your thirties are when your true friend group finally crystallizes. Your thirties are when the hours of time and mental energy youve devoted to your career start to pay off. Your thirties are when you learn to take care of (and even love!) your body. Your thirties are when you have the best sex of your life. Your thirties are when you figure out who you are. Your thirties are when everything just starts to click:

Turning 30 was really big for me, Reese Witherspoon told Glamour. I feel better  so much better now than I ever did in my 20s. I am calmer; I know who I am. And as a result, I feel much sexier. I dont think I realized [in my 20s] that no one else makes you whole You have to take responsibility for your own happiness. That took me until I was about 31 to know. 

This is such a pivotal moment in my life! Beyonce told Harpers Bazaar the year she turned 30. Im transitioning as a woman, and Im finally able to express myself as I am.

If my 20s were pumping it, then my 30s were like the release button, Lizzie Caplan told Elle Canada. It was amazing. Im 32 now, and everything they tell you is true: You just kind of chill out; you become more yourself. It has been a very welcome shift.

All through my 20s I spent more time worrying about what I didnt have than thinking about what I did have, Shakira told Daily Star. I wished I was taller, had longer legs, slimmer hips, a smaller bottom, even straighter hair Now Im in my 30s, Im very happy with who I am.

The extent to which women, famous and otherwise, openly celebrate the revelatory clarity of their thirties has cemented it as a bonafide cultural stereotype, ripe for both sweeping generalizations and confirmation bias. As I approach the decade myself, I cant help being curious about whether or not it actually lives up to its reputation.

Statistically speaking, there may be some science to back up the stereotype (or at least the illusion of it). A recent Payscale analysis indicated that on average womens salaries peak at age 39. A study conducted by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s and 50s stipulated that women in their 30s had more orgasms than women in their teens. A study of over 2,000 people in 2014 found that 31 is the age when women felt most comfortable with their bodies and their sexuality. A 2012 study by Friends Reunited found that 33 was the age at which people of all genders felt happiest thanks to fulfillment from their professional lives and their network of family and friends.

Leandra, a recently minted 30-year-old, told me she was distinctly excited to leave her twenties behind. It seems too soon to comment on this with any real experience given that Im a mere two months in, she said, but I can see where and why that stereotype comes from given how I have felt thus far. If your 20s are an exploration phase, then your 30s seem to be the landing phase.

Crystal, age 37, acknowledged a notable uptick in self-confidence and purpose after turning 30: I didnt have some huge awakening that somehow turned me into a proper adult, but I feel much more certain and resolute about the things I want and need out of work, friendships and life in general. I still feel young, but Ive let go of expectations around where I should be and am just focusing on where I am.

Gina, age 35, relishes being in her thirties because of the authority its given her at work: Being a twenty-something is hard because even though youre not a kid anymore, youre still perennially the youngest person at your office. Now that Im in my thirties, I feel like Ive truly earned the respect of my peers. Thats not to say I know what Im doing all the time and never make mistakes, but Im definitely more grounded in all my decisions.

Your thirties as a golden decade sounds lovely in theory, but its broader implications are complex: that, as a woman, everything before your thirties is a critical warm-up and everything after is a decline  or worse, an invisible abyss. Moreover, by positioning a womans thirties as the era in which her life begins to make sense, it puts a unique kind of pressure on anyone for whom uncertainty persists on the cusp, or in the midst, of this hallowed stage.

On the morning of my 28th birthday, I woke up and cried, my mom, now 57, told me when I asked about her relationship to her thirties. I had the expectation that my life would have greater direction as I approached my thirties. I think I was more focused on marriage and starting a family than many young women of today would be, and even though both of those things ultimately came to fruition, at that point neither seemed close to being a reality.

Another woman I spoke with, Sarah, now 55, acknowledged a similar consciousness of these milestones as she reflected on her thirties: Leaving my twenties and entering my thirties, I felt relieved that I had hit all the checkmarks  married at 28, pregnant with my first child at 30 and a homeowner.

Sheryl, now 51, experienced the repercussions of hitting some milestones but not others: My thirties were traumatic because when I got married and had a baby, I felt like my social life stopped. It was hard for me to maintain balance and juggle life and career as a professional model. The baby made my body look different, and I had stretch marks. It was great being a mother, but very stressful. I thought I would become more sexually fulfilled, but it didnt happen even though I was married. It was depressing. I constantly felt like I needed to be accomplishing more.

Eva, now 40, was also surprised by how unsettled she felt in her thirties: Growing up, I figured Id be settled by 30, married and with some sort of foothold into a career. I spent my 30s in total upheaval. First Law School, then a real whirlwind romance (married and a mom within nine months of meeting each other), then a cross country move. Starting over in San Francisco at 35 was humbling.

While generational differences could conceivably contribute to these pressures, a number of women who are currently in their thirties today expressed familiarity with them as well.

I was really anxious about leaving my twenties, Crystal told me. I didnt think I was where I was supposed to be by traditional standards, and I struggled with that quite a bit. My mom was married with children and was a successful business owner in her early thirties, so I was anxious that I hadnt achieved that yet myself.

Womens media and pop culture work in tandem to position a womans thirties as her moment of true clarity and success. The Cut published an Ode to Being Almost 30. Inspired by an Instagram of Rihanna wearing a T-shirt that read Dont trust anyone under 30, Elle put up a slideshow of 31 Reasons Your Thirties Are Your Best Decade Yet, According to Rihanna and Beyonce. Shows like Sex and the City, The Mindy Project and Girlfriends depict a version of 30-something womanhood that, although not devoid of hurdles, is decidedly aspirational.

Simultaneously, this messaging reinforces the notion that failing to meet certain expectations during this stage is an indication of failure. Personal essays written by women with headlines like Im Freaking Out About Turning 30  Heres Why and The Friends Episode That Made Me Feel Better About Turning 30 abound. Bridget Jones Diary tells the story of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown because she is 32 years old, single and childless.

Considering no one is immune from the pressures, triumphs and pitfalls involved in the process of growing up, its interesting that the cultural ideology of thirty-something transcendence (or acute lack thereof) appears to be largely targeted at women. I spoke with a handful of men about what their experience was like approaching 30, and many of their answers mirrored those of the women with whom I corresponded.

I was not too thrilled about hitting 30, which loomed large over the second half of my 29th year, Avi, now 32, told me. Turning 30 felt like some sort of milestone where you were obligated to stop and reflect on whether you had steered your life in the direction you wanted. Something about my future felt ossified to me, as if large swings in the direction of my life were no longer possible and I would only be able to make minor course corrections from then onward; and I did NOT really like my lifes direction.

The reality of his thirties was a lot better, however. Im still an anxious person but have learned to cope better and appreciate myself more, he said. Im a much less moody friend now, and feel pretty satisfied socially. Professionally Im doing better, and now have a better sense of the importance of a good job in my life. Sexually, I feel in my prime, too, in that I am much more fulfilled by sex and feel less social pressure as it relates to it. Emotionally, Im the healthiest Ive been, which is easy for men because were mentally teenagers until 30.

George, age 35, experienced the same transition: I definitely got my act together more in my thirties, he told me. I was less enthralled by the prospect of dinking around and more interested in being intentional about my life and where it was headed. Especially in terms of work and relationships.

Brian, who turns 30 this fall, is looking forward to the increase in self-assurance and perspective that comes with this new decade: Theres a certain level of confidence that comes with having lived and worked in the professional world for seven years or so that makes the next chapter feel so much more accessible and ripe for the taking, he said. My 20s felt like a lot of I dont know what Im doing, but now at its closing, Ive now seen enough to realize no one truly knows what they are doingwhich really frees you up to just do what you feel is right.

At the same time, he also acknowledged a tangible increase in expectations: Professionally, my peer set is beginning to ascend to leadership roles in their companies, or theyre just finally becoming doctors, or actually switching careers, and personally, weddings and babies and home purchases  the real kicker to us city-folk  are accelerating. That can amount to a lot of pressure.

Still, even if similar pressures and emotional growth spurts occur across genders, the cultural messaging about women in their thirties is palpably greater in that it remains a significant topic of discussion. Without making too many generalizations, it seems likely that this cultural noise is to some extent a rebellion against the cliched fear-mongering women experience around aging (i.e. not only is turning 30 not so bad, its actually GREAT). To that point, theres a logical reason soundbites from celebrity women proclaiming the virtues of being thirty-something go viral. They suggest something radical: that leaving behind the pinnacle of youth embodied by your twenties isnt a thing to be feared, but rather desired.

While any steps in the direction of more acceptance around women and aging are positive ones, its disappointing that the hype appears to cut off around 39. Whats more, many of the women I spoke with who had passed the threshold of their forties rejected outright the idea that their thirties were their prime.

Based on my experience, the idea of an ultimate prime seems wrong to me, my mom said. Perhaps it is a prime for some things (maybe physically speaking) but certainly not a prime for everything. I find new primes with each passing phase of my life, and I am certain that there are greater heights to come. Each stage has its own particular joys which makes me grateful for things that are as well as things that have passed.

Sarah echoed this sentiment: At 49, I took a hard won financial settlement from an unexpected divorce, moved across the country and bought and renovated a 100-year-old heritage building. At 53, I learned how to surf, and I can finally do a handstand. I have a lover who makes me laugh, and true friends. I revel in my adult children who are still teaching me about everything that matters.

As for the rumor that your thirties are your sexual prime? Sexual bliss comes much, much, later, she said. Trust me.

Ultimately, ascribing any degree of universality to an experience that is innately diverse is a fools errand, but that is particularly true when the ascription is vague to begin with. What exactly is a prime, emotionally speaking? Professionally? Sexually? Not only will womens answers vary, but they will also change over time  further proof that just as we contain multitudes, so do our lives, and our perspectives, and even our primes.

Feature photo by (c)Columbia/courtesy Everett Collection; Illustrations by Meredith Jensen.
Bryan Fair, the chair of the Southern Poverty Law Centers board of directors, said this in a prepared statement about Tchen: The events of the last week have been an eye-opening reminder that the walk towards justice must sometimes start at your own front door and force you to look at your past so you can improve your future. A key first step in that process for the SPLC is an immediate, top-to-bottom external review of our workplace culture and our past practices and policies. Tina Tchens extraordinary experience and qualifications will be indispensable in helping us build a more effective and just organization.
At the beginning of the year, Carrie and I launched a new series called Big Y Local Love with our social media expert, Breanne. With this series, we travel to nearby businesses to learn about how our favorite local products are made. We introduce you to the families and business owners behind the brands, learn what makes their products unique and actually get hands-on in the process.

Last week, we traveled to Charlemont, MA to visit Blue Heron Farm to learn the ins-and-outs of producing their signature maple syrup. While I've walked through sugar houses and enjoyed locally-produced maple syrup in the past, it was my first experience seeing the complete process from tree to bottle.

When we arrived, we were greeted by owners Bill, Norma and their son Jubal. I still have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that only three people run their entire business! Their farm is located on a picturesque 130-acre property with trees that have been tapped since the late 1700's.

Every year, new holes are drilled on different sides of each tree so the previous taps can heal themselves over time. Then, the trees are connected by an elaborate network of tubes, which carries the sap from the trees into the sugar shack by a combination of gravity and vacuum pressure. The conditions have to be just right in order for the sap to flow - below freezing at night and roughly 38-40 degrees during the day. We even found out the direction of the wind and amount of sun can affect the sap flow!

Once in the sugar shack, big tanks collect the sap. I was shocked to see the sap was essentially sugar water flowing through - nothing like the sticky sap we traditionally think of. We were able to take a sip of the water and it had the slightest hint of sweet maple flavor.

The sap water then passes through a series of filters and enters into a wood-fired evaporator. Here, Norma quickly builds a hot fire underneath, which ultimately boils off 66.7% of the water. It must be within this range to be labeled as maple syrup, so they continuously stir and monitor the consistency and temperature of the syrup until it begins to "curtain" - a term used to describe how the syrup forms drips on the end of the spoon in the shape of a curtain.

When the syrup is ready, it pours out of a spout and into buckets. It takes around 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup! We sampled the warm syrup at this phase and it was like nothing we had tasted before - rich, buttery and not too sweet. After more filtering, testing and grading, the syrup is packaged and shipped to stores. My takeaway from this experience: never take for granted the hard work that goes into producing each and every drop of this incredible local syrup!

Be on the lookout for this upcoming video, as well as other Big Y Local Love features, at https://www.bigy.com/LocalLove.

Author's Note: Andrea Luttrell is a registered dietitian nutritionist for the Living Well Eating Smart program at Big Y Foods. Have a nutrition question? E-mail livingwell@bigy.com or write Living Well at 2145 Roosevelt Ave, Springfield, MA 01102.
A 24-year-old Malden man is facing charges after he allegedly sexually assaulted someone Sunday afternoon in Bostons South End.

Anthony Smith-Pacheco was arrested on a warrant for assault and battery, indecent assault and battery, and assault with intent to rape in connection with a sexual assault. Police say someone was sexually assaulted inside on a business on Harrison Avenue in the South End at about 2 p.m. Sunday.

Police released Smith-Pachecos photo on Monday hoping for the publics help in identifying him.

Smith-Pacheco was arrested in Malden and is expected to be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court.
At least 30 gravestones were tagged with swastikas and anti-Semitic language at the Hebrew Cemetery in Fall River over the weekend, the Herald News reports.

The police were alerted to the graffiti on Sunday after receiving a report about a car that had been parked by the cemetery on McMahon Street for two days, Sgt. J.T. Hoar told the Herald News. Hoar did not immediately respond to phone and email messages from MassLive requesting comment.

Swastikas and ethnic slurs were written on several gravestones in black marker, the newspaper reports. The words heil Hitler was written on one and Hitler was right was written onto another, the newspaper reports.

On one gravestone with a menorah carved into it was the phrase: Oy vey! This is MAGA country, a reference to President Donald Trumps campaign slogan Make America Great Again.

Anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise nationally. In Massachusetts the Anti-Defamation League recorded 177 anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, a 42 percent increase from 2016.

The police department is offering a reward for anyone with information that leads to an arrest, according to the Fall River Reporter.
One of Bostons newest restaurants will be right on the water  literally  but wont be around for long.

The city has approved a proposal for a temporary floating restaurant at Charlestown Navy Yard, scheduled to open this summer. A 245-foot tall ship will house the dining area and will include an artistic lighting installation connection to Shipyard Park, the Boston Planning & Development Agency announced last week.

The Navy Yard Hospitality Group will operate the tall ship. The Charlestown-based company also owns Pier 6 and Mija Cantina in Faneuil Hall and Reelhouse in East Boston.

By bringing activities for people of all ages to the Navy Yard, we hope to encourage a more inclusive and equitable waterfront for Bostons residents and visitors to enjoy, Mayor Marty Walsh said in a statement. The Navy Yard is a place of national historic significance, and we are pleased with the creative proposals we received and the selections that will be moving forward this summer.

The Navy Yard will also host an outdoor community pop-up gathering space with activities along with beer and wine service that will will be sponsored by the Anthem Group. Activities will include exercise classes, performing arts events, movie nights, photography classes, family educational programs, and more.

The pop-up space will move to different locations throughout the Navy Yard over the course of the summer, Boston Planning & Development Agency said.

We look forward to continuing to work with the community to ensure that the Navy Yard is a welcoming public space, Walsh said in a statement. While celebrating and respecting its history.
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern said immigrants with temporary protections were perhaps the most law-abiding people in the country, noting that they must routinely undergo background checks.

I wonder how many people in the Trump administration cabinet could pass a background check, McGovern said, prompting chuckles from Democrats beside him. But these people do every 18 months.

McGovern, D-Worcester, was referring to recipients of Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian program for foreign nationals from certain embattled countries. Those recipients are registered with the federal government and have to renew their background checks every 18 months.

These are people we should value in our community," he added Monday afternoon as he joined immigrants and politicians at Boston City Hall Plaza. "We should celebrate their presence here in our community.

McGovern joined U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, Rep. Katherine Clark and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, all Democrats, to voice their support of the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019.

The bill, introduced by House Democrats last week, offers legal permanent residency for TPS holders and those with Deferred Enforced Departure, as well as conditional residency to Dreamers, young undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children.

More than 30,000 immigrants in Massachusetts stand to benefit from the bill if it passes Congress. The Bay State is home to at least 12,000 TPS recipients, mostly from El Salvador and Haiti. Massachusetts has more than 5,000 Dreamers under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that protects them from deportation, as well as an estimated 13,000 Dreamers who dont have DACA.

McGoverns comments come as special counsel Robert Mueller investigates whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia and whether President Donald Trump obstructed the investigation. Prosecutors in New York say in a separate case that Trump directed his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to make illegal hush-money payments to two women to prevent possible sex scandals from surfacing during his 2016 presidential campaign.

More than a year ago, Trumps national security advisor, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over his communications with Russia officials.

Trump maintains his innocence and recently touted the results of a Suffolk/USA Today poll about the Mueller investigation, though some experts have taken issue with the wording of the question, according to CNBC.

Wow! A Suffolk/USA Today Poll, just out, states, 50% of Americans AGREE that Robert Muellers investigation is a Witch Hunt. @MSNBC Very few think it is legit! We will soon find out?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2019

Walsh said 20 percent of Boston residents were born outside of the U.S., touting the city as a safe, strong community. He called the latest iteration of the Dream Act a bill that offers solutions, not scapegoats.

.@marty_walsh voices his support for the American Dream and Promise Act and says he will continued to advocate this to mayors across the country. He recalled how his father immigrated to the U.S. and worked in construction. pic.twitter.com/J5V0sSqx7q  Steph Solis (@stephmsolis) March 18, 2019

Clark, the Congresswoman, hailed TPS recipient Jose Urias and his company J.J. Construction Company in her district for creating jobs. Meanwhile, Uriel expressed concerns about having to return to El Salvador after living in the U.S. for 22 years.

I worked so hard to create my business, to achieve my dream, said Urias, a member of the Massachusetts TPS Committee. How are we going to let them tell me I have to shut down my business? How am I going to let them separate my family?
AMHERST  Nearly 20 residents, parents, students and teachers told the Town Council at Mondays meeting they support building a new school that would replace two aging buildings with myriad problems administrators says would be costly to fix.

The Amherst School Committee recently convened six listening session to discuss whether the Fort River and Wildwood elementary schools should be replaced with one new building that would house about 600 students.

Although both buildings are aging and need work, community members on Monday mostly expressed their concerns with the conditions at Fort River.

One parent told the council that her child dreads going to school when it rains because of numerous leaks in the ceiling. Another said getting around inside the building, with all the trash barrels catching water coming from the ceiling, is like an obstacle course.

Superintendent Michael Morris said both schools have no sprinkler system, electrical problems are serious and that mold and rodents are ongoing problems. He said one of the biggest challenges at Fort River is that the open floor plan does not allow classes to be taught without sound interference from other classes going on at the same time.

Morris and School Committee Chairwoman Anastasia Ordonez asked the council to support a letter of interest to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. The school board recently approved the letter.

Should the council approve the letter at its meeting April 1, the School Building Authority would then consider whether to invite the district into the program and discuss whether it would fund a portion of a feasibility study.

The studys purpose would be to decide which option might be best to address the building problems in the Amherst school district.

Should the Council approve the letter, the School Building Authority is expected to render a decision later this year.

No cost estimates for the study, nor any estimates on what a new school might cost, were discussed at Mondays council meeting.

Councilor Darcy Dumont said that should a feasibility study be done, the report should go to all households ... so we have real consensus and look at different cost comparisons.
A hacker infiltrated a quasi-public Massachusetts state agency and accessed payroll data for 164 current and former state employees.

The breach at Commonwealth Corporation was made public Tuesday in an audit by state auditor Suzanne Bump.

Commonwealth Corporation, or CommCorp, is dedicated to developing workforce skills training for young people and unemployed workers. It is funded by payments from the states unemployment trust fund and has a contract with the state to administer a major workforce grant program.

The audit reported that a year ago, on March 19, 2018, a hacker impersonating CommCorps president and CEO gained unauthorized access to the organizations email system. The hacker accessed payroll data and W-2 forms for 164 employees who worked for the corporation between 2008 and 2017.

The data was encrypted, but a payroll employee emailed the encryption password to the hacker, contrary to company policy, thinking the hacker was the president/CEO.

The hacking was identified when the hacker tried to transfer $3,500 from an online bank account. CommCorp notified state and federal authorities and offered its employees free credit monitoring.

Commonwealth Corporation said in response to the audit that company officials have distributed updated policies about information technology security to staff and now conduct annual mandatory training.

Bump said in a statement, I commend Commonwealth Corporation for its overall response to the hack and for strengthening its cybersecurity defenses, and hope this incident spurs other government and quasi-public agencies to review their defenses against similar phishing attacks.
I think we all hope that this has worked, and shes in a good place, that she is doing really well with all the things that are required of her, Roe-Taylor said. I have no reason to think that she will return (to the airport), but I also dont have a crystal ball. I have a lot of hope that that will never happen again.
A few decades ago, you couldnt find much in Berlin.

The sleepy Massachusetts town, tucked away along Interstate 495, was filled with orchards, farmland, rolling hills and woods. But in the years since, the edges of town have become increasingly suburban. The construction of the Solomon Pond Mall in 1996 brought more commerce to the area, and development pressures have moved west from Boston, bringing more activity beyond the I-495 belt.

Now, the area is getting another new development with the construction of a 240-unit upscale apartment community called The Rockwell. The project, being developed by The NRP Group, is part of a larger mixed-use, master-planned development called Riverbridge Village.

At full build-out, Riverbridge will consist of 26 acres surrounded by 88 acres of undeveloped conservation land off of River Road West. The owner, Riverbridge North LLC, has been developing pieces of the property for nearly a decade.

The site currently features the soon-to-open Homewood Suites by Hilton hotel, a Growing Room daycare center, a wine and coffee shop and a gas station. Future phases are anticipated to include up to 40,000 square feet of additional retail.

"We came on board and saw a really unique opportunity close to the highway," said Carolyn Mendel, vice president of Development at The NRP Group. "Despite being in the suburbs, we've got great walkability to these great retail amenities."

The Rockwell, comprised of seven residential buildings, will feature 10 percent affordable housing. The development includes a clubhouse with an in-ground pool and a gear garage with recreational equipment for residents to use.

Mendel said the regions growing popularity is not only a by-product of Boston becoming increasingly expensive, but also the economic development along I-495.

"There is so much employment along 495 and the Pike that we're seeing a lot of folks that would really just prefer to be in the suburbs and have shorter commutes to their offices, if they're in fact employed in that area and if we can offer similar types of amenities to what downtown Boston provides," she said. "That is the type of product we're building out in the suburbs that you didn't see 10 to 15 years ago."

Berlin Board of Selectman Chairwoman Christine Keefe, whos lived in town since 1984, said preserving Berlins rural character is important to residents.

There hasnt been an extreme increase in residential housing, she said. I think our Planning Board has a good handle on that, were trying to keep it slow growing, keep it rural.

Aside from the Solomon Pond Mall and several developments on the edges of town -- including Riverbridge Village -- she said the town has been able to achieve that goal. But residents dont view those projects as a negative. In fact, Keefe said she cant remember hearing much concern when the projects were approved.

I havent heard a lot of negative response about it, I think they know its coming and it will help satisfy our affordable housing, she said.

Although The Rockwell hasn't begun leasing yet, Mendel said the company's other developments often see young families who are saving for a home and older professionals who are renters by choice.

Weve got a couple generations of people coming out of school that have a lot of debt, quite frankly, and cost of living is consistently increasing, housing prices are consistently going up in this area and incomes arent rising in proportion, she said. I think the flexibility of renting is really appealing, especially to a generation that saw the effects of the recession on the employment market.

The new development will feature a mix of one- and two-bedroom apartments that range in size from 725 to 1,558 square feet. Mendel said rent prices haven't been set yet, as the project is still about two years away from completion.

She added that the development will also aim to provide a more interactive experience for its residents, with community events run by the leasing staff and shared spaces.

It feels like a nice mini-community within the town, she said. I think that the really unique aspect of this property is that having this mixed-use type of community out in the suburbs is sort of a new concept for the suburbs and Greater Boston. Were really excited that we can be a part of this particular community.

Planning Board Member and lifelong Berlin resident Timothy Wheeler said after the completion of the project, he expects growth in town to slow once again.

Wheeler, who owns Indian Head Farm less than a mile from Riverbridge Village, said Berlin typically saw about 100 new residents per decade from the 1960s to 2000s, but that number picked up slightly over the last 20 years as a result of Chapter 40B.

Chapter 40B is a state affordable housing program that allows developers to bypass some local regulations if at least 20 percent of the units within the development are deemed affordable. Municipalities have little power to deny 40B developments if less than 10 percent of homes in their community are not designated affordable.

Wheeler said as a small community without town water or sewage, Berlin hovered between 5 and 10 percent affordable housing for the past few decades.

We could get close, sometimes wed get over it but then wed fall back again. Right now were at 10 percent, which means that the growth weve seen in residential development, primarily through 40B projects, should subside, unless we as a community choose to entertain someones proposal for a new 40B project, he said.

He said the primary reasons Berlin approved the Riverbridge project a decade ago was to fulfill that 10 percent affordable housing goal and generate revenue within the rural community. Wheeler said revenue from Riverbridge, Solomon Pond Mall and the Shops at Highland Commons -- three of the towns largest developments -- have helped pay for critical services including schools, a new fire station, improvements to the town offices and more.

Funds from agreements with Solomon Pond and Highland Commons also allowed the Conservation Commission to secure and protect a significant amount of open space in town.

Its significant, theres no reason to believe that we wont continue to find ways to protect more open space because people are very concerned about the rural character," Wheeler said. Theres a lot of good, positive things happening, I think.
BEVERLY -- A 28-year-old woman wanted for kidnapping her two children from Maine was arrested in a home here after a "Be On the Lookout" alert was issued.

Brittany Bohan, 28, was apprehended Monday by Massachusetts State Police. She was charged with being a fugitive from justice and on a court warrant and will be arraigned Tuesday in Salem District Court, police said.

Her two children were found in the home with her and were unharmed. They were placed in the custody of Maine Child Protective Services, police said.

At about 1:30 p.m. police put out an alert for Bohan after Maine police said she had allegedly kidnapped the two children, of whom she did not have custody.

Police then received information that Bohan could be in a home in Beverly. Multiple State Police troopers and Beverly Police officers working together located her in the residence and arrested her without incident, police said.
BOSTON - A man who pleaded guilty to firearms charges after being found to be in possession of ammunition and an unlawful ghost gun designed to be similar to an AR-15 rifle, was sentenced to more than three years in prison on Monday.

Brendan Sheils, 32, of Burlington, was sentenced to serve 46 months in prison and three years supervised release by Judge Leo T. Sorokin in federal court in Boston.

Sheils was arrested on Feb. 22, 2018 after law enforcement investigated accusations that he threatened to attack the Burlington Police Department. Officers received a search warrant for his home and found an AR-15 style rifle which was created by assembling gun component parts purchased separately. The gun was loaded with 28 bullets and two more pieces of ammunition were found separately, said Christina DiLorio-Sterling, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling.

Sheils pleaded guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of ammunition in December 2018, she said.

The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Boston Field Division; Woburn Police and Burlington Police. Assistant U.S. Attorney Suzanne Sullivan Jacobus of Lellings Major Crimes Unit prosecuted the case.
Forty percent of students in public K-12 schools in Massachusetts are children of color, but only 6 percent of teachers in those same schools are people of color, Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Jeff Riley told lawmakers Monday.

Those figures, Riley said at a Ways and Means Committee hearing at Bristol Community College, are despite "both profound and important research" indicating that if children of color see a teacher who looks like them, they have greater chances of graduating high school and having better life outcomes.

"We have to be intentional about this, and this will be a big goal of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education," Riley told the committee.

"Good. Appreciate that," Rep. Russell Holmes of Mattapan called out in response.

Holmes, who is black, said later in the hearing that he was in the fifth grade when he saw a white teacher for the first time.

"It is a very different perspective," Holmes said.

Riley discussed diversity in response to a question from Sen. Jason Lewis, the assistant vice chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee and Senate chair of the Education Committee.

Lewis said students of color are making up increasingly larger portions of the state's student population "yet when you look at the leadership in our higher education system, we don't see that reflected, and when we look at our workforce in K-12, we don't see that reflected today as well."

Lewis said Malden has the most diverse high school in the state, and one of its biggest challenges is finding educators "who reflect the students that are being educated."

Moms and former students

Higher Education Commissioner Carlos Santiago said diversity in the public education system is "only going to be increasing." Latino students now make up 24 percent of the system's student body, he said.

"It's a dramatic change, and it is among the only growing population we have that's going to college, and we have to educate them and bring them in in greater numbers," he said. "We have to do that at the higher ed leadership level as well."

Santiago said the higher education system in Massachusetts is decentralized, with hiring and leadership decisions made at the individual campus level.

"We think we've made some gains, and we have to continue to make more," Santiago said. "We have grants now to diversify the teacher corps as well."

Riley, who served as receiver and superintendent in the Lawrence school system before becoming commissioner in January 2018, said Lawrence managed to triple its number of Latino teachers, in part by looking within the school system.

"We were very intentional about how we did it," Riley said.

He said school officials looked to their paraprofessionals, many of whom were moms with kids in the district, and "got them trained up" to be teachers by providing test-taking support and financial help for needed coursework.

Lawrence officials also reached out to graduates -- "I won't say stalked, but we hunted our former students," Riley said -- and offered incentives like paying for master's degrees or connecting them with a housing program to make homeownership affordable.

"Our idea was if we could bring our kids home and re-establish them in the communities, we could rebuild a middle class," Riley said.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Educations School and District Accountability and Assistance Advisory Council plans to discuss diversity recruitment initiatives at a Wednesday meeting in Marlborough.
The Massachusetts House is considering setting up a system for its caucuses that one advocate called a legislative slush fund  allowing the groups to accept private donations that are not subject to state campaign finance limits or public disclosure laws regarding contributions.

The purpose of the proposal is to establish a more formal registration system and funding mechanism for House caucuses, which today are loosely formed groups of legislators that deal with topics ranging from mental health to manufacturing. But some advocates are raising eyebrows at a proposal that could allow money, potentially from interest groups with business before the Legislature, to flow to these caucuses without transparency.

Because of the Legislatures dismal track record when it comes to transparency, establishing what amounts to a slush fund will further erode the public trust unless there is complete transparency, said Mary Connaughton, director of government transparency and finance and administration at the Pioneer Institute, a think tank that advocates for government openness.

Caucuses are groups of legislators who meet and advocate for a particular agenda. Some are affinity groups, like the womens caucus, while others are organized around a political interest  a clean energy caucus or rural caucus. A new caucus can be formed at any time.

Today, most caucuses do not have their own money. Lawmakers pay for expenses  mileage for trips or food for meetings  out of their own pockets or from campaign accounts, which are regulated by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. Campaign accounts have contribution limits, and receipts and expenditures are publicly disclosed.

When the House passed its rules in January, it required caucuses, referred to formally as legislative member organizations, to register with the House Rules Committee. There are 14 caucuses registered, according to the House clerk.

The rules say caucuses may accept contributions or gifts for public purposes. The funds will be held in an account for each caucus, with accounting managed by the House business office. Gifts cannot be used to pay House employees salaries. If a caucus accepts a contribution or a gift of goods or services from a private organization or individual valued at more than $50, that gift would have to be approved by House counsel. The House counsel would confirm that gifts over $50 do not violate the states conflict of interest law, according to House officials.

The House version of a supplemental budget bill would set up a Legislative Member Organization Trust Fund to hold money the caucuses raise. The money could be spent by the caucus for the public purpose of furthering its common legislative agenda. The fund would be administered by the House, and the money would belong to the caucus. It would not be subject to legislative appropriation.

According to House officials, State Ethics Commission rules barring gifts to members from lobbyists would still apply.

The bills final version is being negotiated between the House and Senate.

The House Rules Committee, led by Rep. William C. Galvin, D-Canton, proposed the change. Erin OConnor, the committees chief of staff, said the House rule established a new registration and accounting process for caucuses.

We sought input from the Comptroller's Office regarding best practices for setting up accounts for the legislative member organizations when creating this new system, OConnor said in an email. They recommended establishing a Trust Fund in which to place the accounts and a transition process to move over or incorporate any current accounts.

OConnor did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the fund would be subject to disclosure requirements or contribution limits.

The Office of Campaign and Political Finance said the fund would not be subject to campaign finance laws. A group or trust that raises money for legislative purposes is not subject to the campaign finance law, and disclosure with our agency is not required, said spokesman Jason Tait.

Scott Olsen, a spokesman for the comptrollers office, said the funds expenditures would be made public through the comptrollers website, which documents all state spending, including by the Legislature. But the site does not reveal contributors.

Connaughton said the proposal leaves numerous unanswered questions. How can the public be assured that the gifts the fund receives are not in return for legislative favors? she said. Will there be any transparency when it comes to who is contributing to the fund? Will the public be able to see the contracts and invoices to support fund expenditures?

Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a good government group, said she worries the trust fund could open a whole other can of worms, and a place where a lot of money from special interests could enter into the process.

Wilmot said she thinks if caucuses serve a public purpose, they should be paid for by taxpayer dollars. But if lawmakers want to develop a new funding mechanism, she would like to see more time spent developing safeguards and regulations.

Wilmot envisioned a scenario where caucuses could be created for leadership, or members interested in banking, and special interests could contribute with limited transparency and restrictions.

You could see going down the line these kinds of legislative caucuses exploding, not just from traditionally marginalized communities, Wilmot said. All sorts of things could come of it, particularly if it has a lot of power to raise money.

Wilmot acknowledged that the system today is largely unregulated. But, she said, The question isnt how can we make something just a little teeny bit better, but how do we not create problems in the future.

The Caucus of Women Legislators, which is registered as a business, and the Black and Latino Caucus, registered as a nonprofit, already operate outside of campaign finance restrictions and mechanisms for transparency. Both maintain private bank accounts.

Nicole Stephens, executive director of the Caucus of Women Legislators, and Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, D-Springfield, chairman of the Black and Latino Caucus, said each of their caucuses are funded by members dues and donations, generally paid from members campaign accounts.

Both caucuses have staff who are employed by the House, paid by tax dollars, and whose salaries are disclosed on the state comptrollers website.

Gonzalez said the Black and Latino caucus has been looking for ways to raise money. The new system, he said, would give them the opportunity to hold regional events and possibly promote scholarships for students.

Were trying to see if we can take a little different view of what we can do at those events, not just make them Boston-centric, and sort of open them up," Gonzalez said. That will take potential resources.

This story was updated to mention State Ethics Commission guidelines.
SHEFFIELD  Law enforcement investigating a murder of a mother and three young children at the hands of the father, who set the home on fire and committed suicide, found two propane tanks and additional accelerant in the home.

The investigation is continuing into the deaths of Luke Karpinski and his wife Justine Wilbur, both 41, and their children twins Alex and Zoe, 7, and Marek, 3, District Attorney Andrea Harrington said on Monday in a written statement.

This investigation is complex and ongoing, but we have uncovered overwhelming evidence suggesting that Luke Karpinski killed his wife and children prior to committing suicide, Harrington said.

Firefighters responded to a fire at the familys home at 1343 Home Road at about 7:50 a.m., Wednesday. When it was safe to enter the home, they discovered all five members of the family had died, she said.

Wilbur, a chemist and patent attorney and senior associate at Hoffman Warnick in Albany, New York, was found on the first floor. The investigation showed she died of a traumatic injury and it occurred before the fire was set, Harrington said.

Karpinski, who worked as a patent lawyer for the U.S. Department of Commerce in its Sheffield office, and the three children were found on the second floor, Harrington said.

The cause of death for Karpinski and the children has not been released. Autopsy results were not available Monday from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Boston, Harrington said.

No evidence of firearms was found in the home, she said.

The fire is believed to have been set. Investigators found evidence of accelerant in different parts of the home, including two 20-pound propane tanks on the upper floor, she said.

The State Police Detective Unit assigned to the Berkshire District Attorneys Office and members of the State Police assigned to the Office of the State Fire Marshal are heading up the investigation. On Wednesday, several police and fire departments responded to the scene of the fire, she said.
SPRINGFIELD  The City Council approved a new contract for the police supervisors union on Monday that includes the supervisors agreeing to a body camera requirement for all officers and accepting a limited residency requirement.

The four-year contract with the Springfield Police Supervisors Association, which is retroactive to July 1, 2016, includes a 2 percent pay raise retroactive to that date, followed by 2 percent pay raises retroactive to July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018. In addition, there is a 2 percent pay raise effective July 1, 2019, and a 1 percent raise for June 30, 2020.

The union ratified the contract earlier this month. The supervisors agreed to the same body camera system and residency requirement already agreed to by Springfield patrol officers.

Im thrilled, Im very happy to have the support of the Springfield City Council as we move this process forward, said Capt. Brian Keenan, president of the supervisors union. The body cameras and residency were two items that they wanted. We delivered them. Were glad this is behind us.

The council vote was 11-1 in favor of the contract. Councilor Michael Fenton was opposed, saying the residency requirement for supervisors was not as strong as the requirement for Fire Department supervisors.

With both police unions agreeing to the body cameras, the city is able to move forward with a program with a recently hired consultant. It was not known how long it will take to implement the camera program, city officials said Monday.

Regarding the residency requirement, any officer hired after July 1, 2018, must maintain their residence in Springfield for at least 10 years.

William Mahoney, the citys director of labor relations, said that, for example, if an officer is hired now, and works for three years as a patrol officer before being promoted to supervisor, that officer must live in Springfield a total of 10 years  in that case three years while a patrol officer and seven years as a supervisor.

There are approximately 75 police supervisors.

The retroactive pay for all supervisors is expected to total approximately $1.3 million, said Councilor Timothy Ryan, chairman of the Finance Committee. Those funds are expected to come from citys free cash surplus left over from fiscal 2018.
A Springfield man on Monday was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to bringing heroin into New Hampshire two years ago, according to Scott W. Murray, United States Attorney for the state of New Hampshire.

Darrell Self, 44, pleaded guilty in December to a single count of possession of heroin with intent to distribute.

He was arrested in January 2017 on Interstate 91 near Portsmouth after New Hampshire State Police stopped his car. During the traffic stop, Self was seen by troopers tossing something from his car over the guardrail. The item was recovered and turned out to be a bag containing 40 grams of heroin.

When he was taken into custody, police also found $1,106 in cash in his pockets.
Ticket and citation quotas are illegal in Massachusetts, a Boston-based attorney said, citing a Massachusetts Appeals Court decision and state law.

The discussion of quotas being issued by police was rushed to the forefront after federal prosecutors claimed Massachusetts State Police troopers working a specialized patrol  one that was part of widespread abuse within the department  were expected to issue a minimum number of citations per each overtime shift.

Federal prosecutors in the sentencing memorandum for former Trooper Eric Chin, one of several troopers who face either state or federal embezzlement charges in the overtime investigation, said troopers who did not meet an 8 to 10 citation quota per overtime shift on the Massachusetts Turnpike would result in a trooper being blocked from receiving such overtime opportunities.

A state police spokesman said there are no policies or procedures establishing quotas.

Under the leadership of Colonel Gilpin, the Department has implemented several reforms, including the elimination of Troop E and AIRE Patrols, and has referred 46 troopers to federal prosecutors for alleged overtime abuse, state police spokesman David Procopio said. While the department does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings, the Department has no policy or operating procedures that establish quotas, and does not endorse a quota system.

Boston-based attorney Peter Elikann said state laws and an appeals court decision involving Newton police show any ticket quota is illegal.

The purpose of tickets is to discourage bad drivers and not just be a revenue generator, he said. To have quotas would greatly undermine the confidence of the public that there may be an ulterior motive.

A state appeals court decision reviewed a civil lawsuit filed by the Newton Police Association who represented officers in the Newton Police Department. The civil suit was filed in 2003.

The association asked the court to declare invalid an order by the police chief at the time where officers assigned to traffic enforcement duty at designated high accident locations to issue traffic citations and to stop issuing warnings.

The order by the chief was a violation of state laws that say an officer who witnesses the violation and is on the scene has the discretion to issue a ticket or written warning, the decision said.

Essentially, the decision on when to issue a ticket or warning cannot be done by a bureaucrat way up the ladder, Elikann said. The decision is for the officer out there in the trenches, he added.

In the Newton case, a superior court judge declared the chiefs order was invalid and the decision was upheld by the appeals court.

Tickets cannot be a cash cow and are issued to discourage bad driving, Elikann said. Any type of quota erodes public trust in law enforcement, he added.

Chin is scheduled for sentencing in U.S. District Court in Boston next week.

Prosecutors, in Chins sentencing memorandum state troopers working Accident and Injury Reduction Effort patrols  known as AIRE  were expected to issue a minimum of 8-10 citations for each AIRE shift.

Any failure to issue the required number of citations had to be explained to supervisors and command staff, prosecutors wrote. Repeated failures to meet this quota often resulted in a trooper being blocked from receiving such overtime opportunities.

The AIRE shifts, which have been eliminated by state police, were 4-hour-long shifts and conducted by members of the former Troop E and designed to reduce accidents, crashes and enforce aggressive driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Federal investigators said troopers instead skipped or partially worked those shifts in 2015 and 2016 and falsified citations to make it appear they were conducting the patrols.

Eight troopers were charged in federal court on embezzlement charges in connection with the overtime investigation. Chin is one of several troopers who pleaded guilty in federal court.

Three troopers, including Lt. David Wilson, also face state charges in the overtime scandal.

One woman, a friend of Wilsons wife, referenced quotas in her support letter for the longtime trooper.

Ruth Beringer claimed that troopers were allowed to leave overtime shifts early if traffic stop quotas were met.

If Lt. Wilson finished his quota, he would relieve the desk officer and go in early for his regular shift, she wrote.

Chin told WCVB in an interview that overtime abuse was a common practice in Troop E.

Chin was fired on Dec. 12, 2018. Union members have not filed grievances about a loss of overtime opportunities based on failure to meet an alleged citation quota.

Nearly 50 troopers were flagged in the overtime investigation that involved members of the former Troop E after state police began an internal investigation in 2017 and, in early 2018, announced an internal audit revealed potential overtime abuse.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who is archbishop of Galveston-Houston and serves as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is expected to be released to a rehabilitation facility reportedly for several weeks following his hospitalization March 15 with what has been described as a mild stroke.

A statement on the archdioceses website described the cardinal as resting comfortably and conversing with associates, doctors and nurses.

It quoted the 69-year-old DiNardo as saying, With so much to do, I am looking forward to getting back to work as soon as possible."

DiNardo, who has faced growing pressure as USCCB president to address the Churchs clergy sexual abuse crisis in the United States and who has himself been accused of covering up abuse cases, reportedly suffered leg pains while leading the Stations of the Cross at a Houston church and was taken to hospital.

DiNardo, who attended the February Vatican summit on the crisis, had been in Washington last week for an administrative committee meeting of the USCCB to discuss the USCCB June meeting in Baltimore where the bishops are expected to vote on proposals to improve both the handling of allegations against bishops and the reporting of them.

Bishops efforts on this front at their fall 2018 meeting were delayed by Vatican request to postpone any action until after the February summit called by Pope Francis.

DiNardo is said to favor a proposal that gives more oversight to metropolitan bishops whose authority oversees dioceses within a region, a throwback to the 2002 USCCB charter on the protection of minors, with a lay board providing assess as opposed to other proposals for a national review board of lay people.

During a conference on the role of the laity in addressing the abuse crisis in early February at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., DiNardo said bishops will have to let go  not of their authority, for that is instituted by Christ  but bishops will have to learn new ways to share and delegate their administrative duties,

DiNardo, who has headed the Galveston-Houston archdiocese since 2006, was elected to head the USCCB for a three- year term during the fall 2016 USCCB conference.

He is said to have assigned his USCCB duties during his recuperation to Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, USCCB vice president, as provided for by the conference bylaws.

In January, the Galveston-Houston archdiocese released a list of 42 priests, some named for the first time, as having credible claims of child sex abuse made against then.

More dioceses have issued such lists in the wake of the public outrage over last years Pennsylvania grand jury report that revealed some 300 priests in six dioceses there had sexually abused 1,000 children over seven decades and that the cases were covered up by church hierarchy.
(CNN)  The US Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected Elon Musk's claims that the regulator is unfairly trying to silence him.

In a filing Monday, the SEC said it was "stunning" that the billionaire business leader had continued to fire off tweets about Tesla without consulting others at the company despite having agreed to a court-ordered settlement requiring him to do so.

The filing is the latest salvo in a protracted battle between the SEC and Musk, who has been outspoken in his criticism of the securities regulator.

In the fall, Musk agreed to a court-approved deal with the SEC in order to settle charges over his controversial tweet in August about his plans to take Tesla private. The settlement stipulated that Musk receive pre-approval for any social media posts containing information that is "material" to Tesla shareholders. At the time, the electric carmaker said it would establish a board committee to oversee its CEO's posts.

But the SEC has since found fault with Musk's tweeting. In late February, the commission filed a motion asking a federal judge to hold Musk in contempt for violating the terms of the settlement.

The SEC cited a tweet from February 19 in which Musk said Tesla would build 500,000 cars in 2019. He then tweeted a clarifying message that Tesla would be building at an annual rate of 500,000 cars by the end of the year, but would actually only make 400,000 cars in 2019.

Musk fired back last week, arguing that the tweet didn't contain material information about Tesla, that he diligently tried to follow the court settlement, and that the SEC's request is a breach of his constitutional right to free speech.

'Reckless conduct'

The SEC disputed those points in its Monday filing.

"The pre-approval requirement was designed to protect against reckless conduct by Musk going forward," the agency said. "It is therefore stunning to learn that, at the time of filing of the [contempt] motion, Musk had not sought pre-approval for a single one of the numerous tweets about Tesla he published in the months since the court-ordered pre-approval policy went into effect."

Musk is interpreting the settlement "as not requiring pre-approval unless Musk himself unilaterally decides his planned tweets are material," the agency said, adding that such an approach is "inconsistent with the plain terms" of the settlement and makes the pre-approval requirement "meaningless."

The SEC also said that Musk has "made no diligent or good faith effort to comply with the pre-approval provision of the court's order."

And it dismissed the Tesla CEO's argument that his First Amendment rights are being violated because needing pre-approval for his tweets does not mean "that he is prohibited from speaking."

Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The SEC sought to remove Musk as CEO of Tesla last year after he tweeted in August that he had secured funding to take the company private. It was eventually revealed that while he'd spoken with investors, he hadn't secured anything. The SEC said the tweet was "false and misleading."

The settlement allowed Musk to stay on as CEO, but he had to give up his role as chairman of Tesla. He and Tesla were fined a total of $40 million, which Musk paid himself.

The US District Court for Southern New York, which approved the original settlement in October, will decide whether Musk's February 19 tweet violated the deal.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "SEC: Elon Musk's failure to comply with court order over his tweets is 'stunning'"
Today, we are putting the State of Illinois back on the side of working families, and rebuilding the vital services and the workforces that deliver them to people with disabilities, working parents, and kids in every corner of our state, the administration and the union said in a joint statement. We look forward to continuing to stabilize these programs together, and we share a commitment to fixing other harmful Rauner policies through the bargaining process.
Women account for more than half the Massachusetts population. But on the states 50 most prominent public boards and commissions, women are just 22 percent of the CEOs, 34 percent of board chairs and 39 percent of board members.

The Eos Foundation, a private philanthropic foundation that aims to increase the number of female leaders in Massachusetts, released a report Tuesday looking at the gender makeup of the states public boards and commissions. That followed a separate report released earlier this month by the foundation measuring the gender gap at Massachusetts business advocacy organizations.

These commissions are coming up with policies that impact our whole state, said Andrea Silbert, president of the Eos Foundation and one of the reports authors. Without different perspectives, were going to get wrong policies.

The report also looks at racial data and finds that people of color account for 28 percent of the Massachusetts population, but only 7 percent of CEOs and 10 percent chairs on public boards. Racial data was not available on board members.

The group found that representation of women varies among boards. For example, several boards related to business and technology  like the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center and the Clean Technology Center  are less than 30 percent female.

The Health Policy Commission, a significant advisory body on state health care policy, has two women out of 11 members. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority has one woman out of 11 members.

Even among fields with many women working in them, like education, women are not equally represented on boards. The Board of Higher Education has two women out of 11 members; the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has four women out of 11 members; the UMass Board of Trustees has five women of 17 members. The CEO and board chair of all three boards are men.

Women are woefully underrepresented among our key education boards, Silbert said.

Some of the boards with the most women include the boards regulating both alcohol and marijuana, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, and the Board of Early Education and Care.

The foundation argues that there are several reasons for low levels of female representation.

Leaders tend to hire and promote people similar to themselves and judge qualifications accordingly. Social stereotypes mean people typically envision power brokers as men. Rules that require companies to interview minority candidates often backfire, since those candidates say they interview repeatedly but never get the job.

Advocates will use the data to urge the Baker administration, and other officials who appoint members to boards, to make more of an effort to appoint diverse board members.

We have to demand change, Silbert said.

House Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad, D-Somerset, and Sen. Jason Lewis, D-Winchester, sponsored a bill, H.2711/S.1878, that would require all public boards to have at least 50 percent of members be women by 2022. The bill also says boards shall broadly reflect the general public of the commonwealth, including persons of different backgrounds, abilities, interests, and opinions including ethnic minorities and women.

Each board and commission would have to provide demographic data to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.

Haddad said today, many women feel they do not have the skills to sit on boards. But many also serve on parent-teacher organizations, run their households and raise money for charity.

We dont think about it because its just part of our DNA, Haddad said. That DNA needs to be not only around the house and the neighborhood and the community, it needs to be on boards, on commissions, in places where what we bring can be celebrated.

Haddad said gender parity will not happen organically. It has to be a decision made every day to make sure you promote women and women of color, Haddad said.
Bernie Sanders spent much of 2016 talking of revolution. In 2019, hes turned to a subject thats a bit more pragmatic: electability.

As he revs up his second presidential campaign, the Vermont senator and his supporters are putting his case for winning the general election at the center of the argument. The emphasis is meant to aggressively confront the perception that Sanders , a self-described democratic socialist, is too liberal to win over the coalition needed to win the White House. That question dogged Sanders' campaign for the Democratic nomination four years ago. This time he is trying to shake it early.

On the trail, Sanders is quick to note that some of his policy ideas have moved from the fringe to the mainstream of the Democratic Party. His strategists argue he's best positioned to win over voters in the three Rust Belt states that Democrat Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016. Trump, the campaign argues, won Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, the keys to his Electoral College victory, by offering a version of Sanders' populist economic message.

What Trump was offering "was faux-Bernie Sanders in order to beat Hillary Clinton," Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said, adding that Sanders plans to focus on the three states even as he fights off a crowded field of Democrats vying for the nomination in states with early primary contests. "We will invest, we will go to these states and demonstrate through real action, and hopefully data and numbers, that we can beat Donald Trump."

The early focus on the general election is just one of the many ways Sanders has evolved from the freewheeling candidate of 2016 to a front-runner. Already, the campaign has 70 staffers on its payroll , compared to 30 in July 2015, his advisers told reporters last week on a conference call arranged to discuss Sanders' "path to victory more than 600 days before Election Day. In less than a week as a declared candidate, Sanders flexed the power of his robust donor list, raising $10 million from donors, the campaign said, a sum that dwarfed his rivals.

Sanders' viability-first focus comes as the Democratic field continues to expand. Former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke jumped into the presidential race last week, and former Vice President Joe Biden appears on the cusp of announcing his plans. Biden and O'Rourke are each expected to infuse a more centrist strain of politics into the race, and supporters of both men say they could also appeal to white working-class voters who backed Trump in 2016.

Kayleigh McEnany, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said: "We are happy to go toe to toe with any Democrat 2020 contender, especially in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. President Trump expanded the map, winning states that have not been won by a Republican since the 1980s."

2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, right, meets with supporters at a rally Saturday, March 16, 2019, in Henderson, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher)AP

Whether Sanders would have beaten Trump in 2016 is, of course, unknowable. Indeed, like Trump, Sanders appealed to voters with populist promises to upend Washington and fight for the forgotten. It is possible that, if Sanders had been the nominee, he may have won some disillusioned or disconnected voters who ultimately voted for Trump over Clinton. But Sanders had weak spots with other key parts of the Democratic coalition  notably African-American voters. Its impossible to know whether he would have matched Clintons overwhelming support from those voters.

Sanders' campaign argues that he's starting his 2020 bid in a stronger place among African-American and Latino voters. But this case isn't yet about convincing independent or moderates, but rather about convincing the Democratic base.

"The polls have been pretty consistent that Democratic primary voters are very focused on which candidate has the best chance to beat Trump, so I expect all the candidates to argue why they are uniquely positioned to win," said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama.

"Bernie Sanders has a strong case that his economic message works in the states that delivered Trump the presidency in 2016, but his challenge is going to be articulating how he can defend himself against attacks that he is a socialist," Pfeiffer said.

Karine Jean-Pierre, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser at MoveOn, argued against the notion that a more centrist candidate is inherently more electable. "Often you'll hear arguments from centrist, or more corporate-aligned, Democrats that a candidate needs to run as a centrist to win  but those comments say more about the commenters' interests and ideology. They don't actually tell you much useful about political outcomes," she said.

"This year's primary is obviously a different dynamic than 2016, when there were only two Democrats, and much of that debate centered on electability  and then the candidate presumed by the Democratic establishment to be most 'electable' lost," Jean-Pierre said.

So far, Sanders has been focused on Democrats' shared goal of defeating Trump, whom he's called the most dangerous president in American history. But he's also placed himself as a standard-bearer in today's political environment.

FILE - In this March 16, 2019 photo, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in Henderson, Nev. Sanders spent much of 2016 talking of revolution. In 2019, hes turned to a subject thats a bit more pragmatic: electability. (AP Photo/John Locher)AP

In 2016, this is where the political revolution took off, Sanders said during a recent trip to New Hampshire, a state that he won by 22 percentage points. He said that he began the race far behind Clinton, campaigning on ideas considered by establishment politicians and mainstream media to be radical and extreme.

Sanders says that now his ideas are supported by a majority of Americans, particularly Democrats and independents, as well as his rivals in the race.

Many of the hundreds who braved a snowstorm to hear Sanders speak said they believe Sanders is the Democratic candidate best suited to end the Trump era.

Kimberly Taylor, a 53-year-old who works at a veterinary clinic, said she was a huge supporter of Sanders in 2016 and is inclined to support him again.

"I know there's a huge running list and that there are a lot of people out there, but I think a lot of them are just reiterating what he's been saying pretty much his whole life," Taylor said of the Democratic field.

Asked whether Sanders is Democrats best opportunity to beat Trump, she replied, God, I hope so.
U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes has filed a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter and a group of users Monday, accusing the social media giant of defamation and shadow-banning conservatives.

The California Republican and former chair of the House Intelligence Committee filed the suit in a Virginia state court accusing Twitter of negligence, defamation per se, insulting words, and civil conspiracy.

Twitter, by its actions, intended to generate and proliferate the false and defamatory statements about Plaintiff in order to influence the outcome of the 2018 Congressional election and to intimidate Plaintiff and interfere with his important investigation of corruption by the Clinton campaign and alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election, the suit charges.

Nunes claims that Twitter has revealed a political agenda by allowing attacks on him by anonymous accounts like Devin Nunes Mom (@DevinNunesMom) and Devin Nunes Cow (@DevinCow).

The @DevinNunesMom account has been suspended, but the @DevinCow account remained intact as of Monday evening, The Hill reported.

The suit seeks $250 million in compensatory damages and an additional $350,000 in punitive damages.
BOSTON -- U.S. Sen. Ed Markey joined local reproductive health advocates Tuesday in speaking out against a new federal rule that they said would bar health care providers at Title X-funded centers, like Planned Parenthood, from informing patients that abortions are among the health care options available to them.

The Massachusetts Democrat, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts Medical Director Dr. Danielle Roncari, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts Executive Director Rebecca Hart Holder and Dr. Carole Allen, of the Massachusetts Medical Society, pledged to take legal and legislative action against the Trump administrations Title X rule during a Boston news conference.

Arguing that a womans reproductive health decisions should be left up to a woman and her health care provider, Markey condemned the Department of Health and Human Services for publishing a final rule in the federal register that would eliminate the requirement that Title X providers offer abortion counseling and referral, as well as prohibit referral for abortion as a method of family planning.

The senator called the rule -- which is set to take effect on May 3 -- a malicious attempt by the Trump administration to deliberately hide information from patients who have a right to be counseled on every service that may suit her individual health care needs. He argued that the proposed changes are not only unethical, but ... a direct infringement on the doctor-patient relationship.

We cannot let this stand, he said, further casting the rule as just another line of attacks in the Republican plan to take womens rights back to the 19th Century.

Markey and advocates pledged to fight the Trump administrations rule, which they said would also loosen quality requirements defined in the Title X program and require facilities that receive Title X funds to be physically and financially separate from facilities that perform abortions.

This is going to be a huge fight, its going to be a fight that goes on for the rest of this year and for as long as Donald Trump is in the White House. We are going to use every legal mechanism we have to challenge this in court. We are going to use every option we have in Congress to try to overturn this decision, which the Trump administration has made, Markey said. We are not going to give up, this is just the beginning of our effort to take on Donald Trump and to ensure that women and everyone who takes advantage of Planned Parenthoods medical advice are given the protections which they need.

Advocates noted that Title X health care centers offer wellness exams, cervical and breast cancer screenings, birth control, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases to 4 million people annually, including 75,000 in Massachusetts.

They added that low-income women, young women and women of color are more likely to receive care at Title X-funded centers, with more than two-thirds of patients at such facilities nationwide having incomes at or below the federal poverty level.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, meanwhile, joined other chamber Democrats this week in calling on Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions officials to hold a hearing assessing the impacts of the new Title X rule.

The senators raised concerns that the effects of this requirement would be devastating nationwide and in our home states.

We urge you to hold a hearing so we can fulfill our responsibility to scrutinize the policy with the due diligence it deserves," they wrote.

HHS, however, has argued that the new rule would ensure compliance with, and enhance implementation of, the statutory requirement that none of the funds appropriated for Title X may be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning, as well as related statutory requirements. Officials noted that the final rule does not bar non-directive counseling on abortion, but eliminates the requirement that Title X providers offer abortion counseling and referral.

Further, the agency said, the rule ensures that grantee responsibilities, referral requirements and documentation obligations are clear under the Title X program.

The Trump administration published the rule less than one year after it proposed changes regulating Title X family planning grants. Officials noted at the time that HHS proposal does not include the so-called gag rule on counseling about abortion that was part of the Reagan Administrations Title X rule.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey have both spoken out against the proposed federal changes.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
The parents of Sheffield native Samya Stumo, the University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate who was killed in an Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10, will host a reception this weekend to remember their daughter.

Nadia Milleron and Mike Stumo released a statement saying that they will hold a gathering at their home on Saturday. The reception will take place in a barn on their family farm, 615 Boardman St. in Sheffield, at 1:30 p.m.

A funeral service with limited seating will also be held Saturday morning at Stumos small family church.

We hope to share food and memories with all those who are able at our barn, her parents said in the statement.

Stumo, a 2015 graduate of UMass Amherst, was among the 157 passengers killed in last Sundays Ethiopian Airlines jetliner crash. The 24-year-old Sheffield native was working for Washington, D.C.-based ThinkWell as a health care analyst at the time.

ThinkWell is a nonprofit that works on health care financing in developing countries.

I joined ThinkWell because I am passionate about resolving disconnects between policy and practice, making health care people-centered by nature, and inspired to impact change while rejecting the status quo in global health and development, Stumo wrote in her biography on the companys website.

Before joining the nonprofit, she worked as a consultant for the health systems team at Barcelona Institute for Global Health and holds a masters degree from the University of Copenhagen School of Global Health.

At UMass, where Stumo studied anthropology and Spanish, professor Tom Leatherman remembered her as a friend.

This is someone who is really one of a kind, Leatherman told WBUR, and whose life had so much promise, so much potential and the sort of person who really makes a difference in the world. And you hate to see that kind of life cut short.
SPRINGFIELD  Lawyer James J. Martin, convicted of indecent assault and battery in one case and facing similar charges in two others, has had his right to practice law temporarily suspended, according to a Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers database.

The records show Martins status as Suspension from the practice of law, with a temporary suspension imposed on March 11.

The six-page order of immediate temporary suspension says Martin must notify courts, agencies and tribunals that he is no longer practicing law, and providing notice to clients, wards, heirs and beneficiaries of his status.

Martin, a 41-year-old Western Massachusetts lawyer now living in Amherst, was convicted of three counts of indecent assault and battery in January. Hampden Superior Court Judge J. Gavin Reardon Jr. gave him an 18-month sentence, ordering him to serve six months in the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow. The rest is suspended with two years probation.

Conditions of Martins probation include registering as a sex offender, wearing a GPS monitor, sex offender treatment and mental health evaluation and treatment.

Martin chose to have a jury-waived trial in the case.

Martin has two more cases against him. In those cases he is accused of indecent assault and battery against two women; in one case, he is also charged with rape.

The first of those cases is scheduled for trial April 1 before Hampden Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney.
Seven people were hospitalized after an early-morning fire at a multi-family home in Worcester.

Worcester firefighters were dispatched at 2:39 a.m. on Tuesday to a fire at a residential building at 77 Merrifield Street. Crews arrived to find heavy smoke and fire, with seven people trapped inside the second and third floors of the building.

Firefighters quickly used a ground ladder and aerial ladder to rescue the five adults and two children trapped inside, according to a statement from the Worcester Fire Department. Those rescued were transported to local hospitals to be evaluated for any injuries.

The 3-alarm fire damaged all three floors of the eight-unit building, according to the Worcester Fire Department. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

A total of 14 people were displaced from the building, the fire department said.

This story has been updated to include the most recent information from the Worcester Fire Department.
A nearly 100-year-old landmark Jewish delicatessen in Worcesters Canal District is closing next month and is set to be replaced by a French creperie.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported that Weintraubs Jewish Delicatessen at 126 Water St., which opened in 1920, will close next month and be replaced by Suzette Creperie & Cafe this fall. The new business is being opened by Jean Luc Wittner, who works at a steakhouse in Wellesley and is originally from France.

Weintraubs historic sign will stay on the outside of the building, according to the newspaper.

The Jewish deli  the last of its kind in Worcester  has struggled with health code issues, including 64 violations in the past four years. The city inspector found evidence of rodents throughout the establishment in 2017, according to reports by the Telegram.

Facing sluggish sales and a changing neighborhood, Dariush "David" Mizrahi, who bought the business from the Weintraub family in 1989, said he was ready to close over the summer.

But the deli has hung on as property owner Edward Murphy looked for a new owner to take over the business.

Thomas Smith, who has worked at Weintraubs for 18 years, previously told MassLive that the once thriving Jewish community on Water Street has disappeared.

Decades ago, he said the road was lined with businesses owned by Jewish families. But now, Smith said, he does not know who his neighbors are.

"Back then it was a neighborhood, everybody knew everybody," he said. "Now I couldn't tell you who owns these places, everything has changed."

He said he began to notice that shift about 10 years ago. Smith said Weintraub's went from three or four waitresses working at a time down to one, and it's usually just himself or Mizrahi behind the counter with a dishwasher upstairs.

Known for classics like hot pastrami sandwiches and matzo ball soup, Weintraub's was started by Sam Weintraub in 1920 and became an iconic landmark in the city.

Wittner told the Telegram that he plans to honor the buildings history with a pastrami crepe.
An Artificial heart is device that replaces original heart and it performs like original heart. It can be consider as prosthetic device fixed into the body to substitute the organic mammalian heart. Person can live with artificial heart from a few weeks to more than one year. Risk associated with treatment for artificial heart implementation because it can lead to bleed and infection.

A comprehensive analysis of the Global Artificial Heart Market is been done AMA in this intelligence report. It includes the investigations done on the past progress, ongoing market scenarios, and future prospects. An accurate data of the products, strategies and market shares of leading companies in this particular market is mentioned. This report presents a 360-degree overview of the competitive scenario of the Global market. The report further projects the size and valuation of the global market in the coming forecast period. The report also presents a thorough qualitative and quantitative data affecting to the projected impact of these factors on markets future growth prospects.

Major Key Players in This Report Include,

SynCardia Systems (United States),BiVACOR (United States),CARMAT (France),Abbott (United States),Cleveland Heart (United States),AbioMed (United States),Jarvik Heart (United States),Cirtec Medical Systems (United States),Thoratec Corporation (United States),Boston Scientific Corporation (United States),Braile Biomedica (Brazil)

Get Free PDF Sample Pages of Artificial Heart Market @ https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/sample-report/20798-globalartificial-heart-market

After studying key companies, the report focuses on the start-ups contributing towards the growth of the market. Possible mergers and acquisitions among the start-ups and key organizations are identified by the reports authors in the study. As leading companies take efforts to maintain their dominance in the Global Artificial Heart Market, the right way to do so is by adopting new technologies and strategies.

The market study is being classified by Type (Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) and Total Artificial Heart) and major geographies with country level break-up.

Challenges

Need of Skilled Cardiac Specialist

Threat of Substitution by using Alternative Methods

On 1st August 2018, CARMAT the designer and developer of the worlds most advanced total artificial heart project has announced successful transplant of a donor heart in the first international patient implanted with the CARMAT heart in October 2017. and On 29th May 2018, Boston Scientific Europe has launched the HeartLogic Heart Failure Diagnostic in Europe. It provides a diagnostic tool that enables proactive heart failure (HF) care.

Research methodology used to estimate and forecast begins with capturing data on key vendor revenues and the market size, growth, analysis, latest technique and overview of the individual segments through secondary sources such as market associations and trade journals. The vendor offerings are also taken into consideration to determine market segmentation.

Enquire for customization in Report @ https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/enquiry-before-buy/20798-globalartificial-heart-market

On the basis of geographical regions, the Global Artificial Heart Market is segmented broadly into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. The global market is still in its exploratory stage in most of the regions but it holds the promising potential to flourish steadily in coming years. The major companies investing in this market are situated in Canada, U.K., and the US, India, China and some more countries of Asia Pacific region. Consequently, Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe are estimated to hold more than half of the market shares, collectively in coming years.

The Artificial Heart Market in terms of investment potential in various segments of the market and illustrate the feasibility of explaining the feasibility of a new project to be successful in the near future. The core segmentation of the global market is based on product types, SMEs and large corporations. The report also collects data for each major player in the market based on current company profiles, gross margins, sales prices, sales revenue, sales volume, photos, product specifications and up-to-date contact information.

Table of Content Artificial Heart Market:

Market Overview

1.1. Introduction

1.2. Scope/Objective of the Study

1.2.1. Research Objective

Executive Summary

2.1. Introduction

Market Dynamics

3.1. Introduction

3.2. Market Drivers

3.2.1. Rising Mortality Ratio Due To Cardiovascular Diseases

3.2.2. Unhealthy Lifestyle

3.2.3. Undesirable Atmospheric Conditions

3.3. Market Challenges

3.3.1. Need of Skilled Cardiac Specialist

3.3.2. Threat of Substitution by using Alternative Methods

3.4. Market Trends

3.4.1. Increasing Awareness about New Technological Innovations

3.4.2. Government Initiation towards Providing Funds for Treatment of Heart Dieses

Market Factor Analysis

4.1. Porters Five Forces

4.2. Supply/Value Chain

4.3. PESTEL analysis

4.4. Market Entropy

4.5. Patent/Trademark Analysis

Global Artificial Heart, by Type, End User and Region (value, volume and price ) (2013-2018)

Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.
People with dementia, as well as those that take care of them, can benefit from a bit of robotic assistance. There are a few robots on the market that are designed to help elderly people around the house, but not too much exists for those suffering from cognitive decline. While theres been development in this field, researchers at the University of California, San Diego wanted to find out what kinds of robots would actually help.

The team brought together a group of caregivers that have a good deal of experience with dementia patients. These included social workers, family members, and others, and they helped to mock up model robots and identify the characteristics that they should have.

What the caregivers identified was a bit of a surprise to the researchers, since the focus was heavily placed on helping to maintain positive verbal communication, redirecting patients away from certain activities and questions to others, and that they should personalize their speech to the individuals theyre helping. Essentially, the caretakers are sick of the repetitive questions, the annoying debates that people with dementia can engage in, and other forms of unpleasant behavior they exhibit. The caretakers desperately want robots to take over managing this intractable problem.

From an announcement by the University of California, San Diego:

Researchers found that caregivers wanted the robots to fulfill two major roles: support positive moments shared by caregivers and their loved ones; and lessen caregivers emotional stress by taking on difficult tasks, such as answering repeated questions and restricting unhealthy food. Robots should help redirect conversations when repetitive questioning becomes burdensome

Robots should be integrated into everyday objects that the people with dementia are already familiar with, or borrow features from those objects. For example, one caregiver wanted her husband to get messages through the TV, which he spends a lot of time watching.

Robots should be able to adapt to new situations and to the behavior of the person with dementia. This is particularly important because dementia is a progressive disease and each stage brings new challenges for caregivers. In addition, patterns of progression vary from person to person and as a result are almost impossible to predict.

Robots should be able to learn from end users, and customize and personalize their interaction and responses.

Robots should have human-like components. That is not to say that they should look human. Rather the machines could, for example, use a real human voice or face. When caregivers wanted robots to take active roles in persuading people with dementia to do something, they designed robots with more human-like features, the researchers write. Related to this, caregivers wanted robots to include features that would help build trust, such as looking like a friend or clinician.

Robots should interact with humans via voice activation much like a smart speaker. More specifically, caregivers wanted the robots to use voices that their loved ones would be familiar withcaregivers or doctors. Caregivers also wanted robots to be capable of facial recognition.

Via: University of California  San Diego
Zika virus disease (Zika) is a disease caused by the Zika virus, which is spread to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito. The most common symptoms of Zika are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis. The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week after being bitten by an infected mosquito. People usually dont get sick enough to go to the hospital, and they very rarely die of Zika. For this reason, many people might not realize they have been infected. However, Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause a serious birth defect called microcephaly, as well as other severe fetal brain defects. Once a person has been infected, he or she is likely to be protected from future infections.

Scope of the Report:

Zika virus disease (Zika) is a disease caused by the Zika virus, which is spread to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito. The most common symptoms of Zika are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis. The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week after being bitten by an infected mosquito. Based on research to date, there is scientific consensus that Zika virus is a cause of microcephaly and GBS.

Zika virus is primarily transmitted to people through the bite of an infected mosquito from the Aedes genus, mainly Aedes aegypti in tropical regions. Sexual transmission of Zika virus is also possible. Other modes of transmission such as blood transfusion are being investigated.

Zika virus is a mosquito-borne flavivirus that was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in monkeys through a network that monitored yellow fever. It was later identified in humans in 1952 in Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania. Outbreaks of Zika virus disease have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. From the 1960s to 1980s, human infections were found across Africa and Asia, typically accompanied by mild illness. The first large outbreak of disease caused by Zika infection was reported from the Island of Yap (Federated States of Micronesia) in 2007. In July 2015 Brazil reported an association between Zika virus infection and Guillain-Barre syndrome. In October 2015 Brazil reported an association between Zika virus infection and microcephaly.

The worldwide market for Zika Virus is expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly xx% over the next five years, will reach xx million US$ in 2024, from xx million US$ in 2019, according to a new GIR (Global Info Research) study.

This report focuses on the Zika Virus in global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.

Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers

Bharat Biotech

Inovio Pharmaceuticals and GeneOne Life Sciences

Intrexon

Cerus

Sanofi

NewLink Genetics

Immunovaccine

GlaxoSmithKline

Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers

North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)

Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)

Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)

South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia etc.)

Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

Market Segment by Type, covers

Sexual Transmission

Blood Transfusion

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Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into

Hospitals

Clinics

Ambulatory Surgery Centers

Others

The content of the study subjects, includes a total of 15 chapters:

Chapter 1, to describe Zika Virus product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market driving force and market risks.

Chapter 2, to profile the top manufacturers of Zika Virus, with price, sales, revenue and global market share of Zika Virus in 2017 and 2018.

Chapter 3, the Zika Virus competitive situation, sales, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast.

Chapter 4, the Zika Virus breakdown data are shown at the regional level, to show the sales, revenue and growth by regions, from 2014 to 2019.

Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to break the sales data at the country level, with sales, revenue and market share for key countries in the world, from 2014 to 2019.

Chapter 10 and 11, to segment the sales by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2014 to 2019.

Chapter 12, Zika Virus market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2019 to 2024.

Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Zika Virus sales channel, distributors, customers, research findings and conclusion, appendix and data source.

Table of Contents

1 Market Overview

2 Manufacturers Profiles

3 Global Zika Virus Sales, Revenue, Market Share and Competition by Manufacturer (2017-2018)

4 Global Zika Virus Market Analysis by Regions

5 North America Zika Virus by Country

6 Europe Zika Virus by Country

7 Asia-Pacific Zika Virus by Country

8 South America Zika Virus by Country

9 Middle East and Africa Zika Virus by Countries

10 Global Zika Virus Market Segment by Type

11 Global Zika Virus Market Segment by Application

12 Zika Virus Market Forecast (2019-2024)

13 Sales Channel, Distributors, Traders and Dealers

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Global Oncology Information Systems Market Research Report: by Product & Service Type (Software, Professional Services), Application (Medical Oncology, Radiation Oncology, Surgical Oncology), End User (Hospitals & Oncology Clinics)  Forecast Till 2023

Market Scenario

Global Oncology Information Systems (OIS) Market is expected to register a healthy CAGR over the forecast period. The market held a market value of USD 2,356.6 million in 2017 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period.

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Oncology Information Systems (OIS) is a comprehensive information and image management solution that facilitates the management of patient treatment schedules, treatment plans, treatment delivery, and treatment summaries. This system involves the exchange of information between radiation therapy departments and the healthcare enterprises. Factors attributed for the market growth are worldwide growing geriatric population along with rising prevalence of cancer, increasing investments in cancer research, and technological advancements in OIS. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) stated that there were 14 million new cases of cancer in 2012 that grew to 17.0 million in 2018, which is anticipated to reach to more than 22 million by 2030. Progress in developing treatments is enabling investors to invest in oncology research. Increasing equity investments in cancer-therapeutics startups is foreseen to shape the OIS vertical in the near future. On the contrary, higher costs associated with OIS services are anticipated to restrain the market growth over the forecast period.

Segmentation

The global oncology information systems market has been segmented into product & service type, application, and end user.

By product & service type, the market has been segmented into software and professional services. The software segment is further categorized into patient information systems and treatment planning systems. The professional services segment is further divided into consulting/optimization services, implementation services, and post-sale & maintenance services. The software for patient information systems segment spearheaded the market in 2017 as these systems offer advantages including planned treatment and remote access due to digital availability as compared to conventional record maintenance methods.

On the basis of application, the market has been classified into medical oncology, radiation oncology, and surgical oncology. The medical oncology segment would lead the market over the forecast period owing to rising applications of OIS in efficiently managing, interpreting, analyzing, and storing the patient information, as well as, in predicting the treatment results for patients, thereby improving their survival rates.

Based on end user, the market has been categorized into hospitals & oncology clinics, government institutes, and research centers.

The global oncology information systems market has been segmented by region into the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. The oncology information systems market in the Americas has further been segmented into North America and South America, with the North American market divided into the US and Canada.

The European oncology information systems market has been segmented into Western Europe and Eastern Europe. The Western Europe oncology information systems market has further been classified as Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, and the rest of Western Europe.

The oncology information systems market in Asia-Pacific has been segmented into Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia, and the rest of Asia-Pacific. The oncology information systems market in the Middle East & Africa has been segmented into the Middle East and Africa.

Key players

Accuray Incorporated, Cerner Corporation, Philips Healthcare, McKesson Corporation, Altos Solutions, Inc., Elekta AB, Varian Medical Systems, Inc., Flatiron Health, Inc., RaySearch Laboratories, Epic Systems Corporation, Bogardus Medical Systems, Inc., and CureMD Healthcare are some of the prominent players in the global oncology information systems market.

Regional Analysis

Geographically, the Americas would grab the highest market share over the forecast period due to the presence of oncology information systems providers, changing lifestyle coupled with rising burden of cancer, increasing expenditure on healthcare, and adoption of oncology information systems in the US and Canada. The IARC reported that in 2018, the Americas have 13.3% of the global population and accounted for 21.0% of incidence and 14.4% of mortality worldwide.

The oncology information systems market in the Middle East & Africa will exhibit considerable market growth rate from 2018 to 2023. Majority of the regional market is likely to govern by the Middle East region due to the presence of world-class cancer treatment centers in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, increasing healthcare sector reforms, and gradually rising investments in OIS sector.

Growing adoption of OIS in European countries, namely, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, as the major market value contributors such as Philips Healthcare, Elekta AB, and RaySearch Laboratories are headquartered in the region.

Asia-Pacific would represent the phenomenal growth during the forecast period due to growing elderly population coupled with rising prevalence of cancer. The World Health Organization (WHO) and IARC reported that the proportions of cancer deaths in Asia (57.3%) are higher than the proportions of incident cases (48.4%) due to the higher frequency of certain cancer types associated with poorer prognosis and higher mortality rates.

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A surgical gown is a personal protective garment intended to be worn by health care personnel during surgical procedures to protect both the patient as well as health care personnel from the transfer of body fluids, microorganisms, and particulate matter.

Advance Market Analytics published a new research publication on Global Surgical Gowns Market Insights, to 2025 with 175 pages and enriched with self-explained Tables and charts in presentable format. In the Study you will find new evolving Trends, Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities generated by targeting market stakeholders. The growth of the Surgical Gowns market is mainly driven by the increasing R&D spending across the world. Some of the key players profiled in the study are Paul Hartmann (Germany), Molnlycke Health Care NV/SA (Belgium), Steris Plc. (United Kingdom), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (United States), Cardinal Health, Inc. (United States), 3M (United Kingdom), Ahlstrom (Finland), BATIST Medical (Czech Republic), Cardiva Soluciones Integrales, SA (Spain) and Exact Medical (United States).

According to AMA, the Global Surgical Gowns market is expected to see growth rate of 6.25% and may see market size of USD1723.5 Million by 2024.



Scope of the Report of Surgical Gowns

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Market Drivers

Continuous Innovation by Surgical Gown Manufacturers and Lucrative Marketing

Market Trend

Escalating Demand for Body Protection against Clinical Hazards Along With Massive Product Usage for Medical Purposes

Restraints

Government Regulations on the Quality and the Price of the Products

Opportunities

The Growing Numbers of Hospitals & Clinics Worldwide



The Surgical Gowns Market report provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, geography segment, end use/application segment and competitor segment and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the international major industry players in detail.

According to the Regional Segmentation the Surgical Gowns Market provides the Information covers following regions:

*North America

*South America

*Asia & Pacific

*Europe

*MEA (Middle East and Africa)

The key countries in each region are taken into consideration as well, such as United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Germany, United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Turkey, Russia, France, Poland, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Australia and New Zealand etc.

Have Any Questions Regarding Global Surgical Gowns Market Report, Ask Our Experts@ https://www.advancemarketanalytics.com/enquiry-before-buy/42171-global-surgical-gowns-market

The titled segments and sub-section of the market are illuminated below:

The Study Explore the Product Types of Surgical Gowns Market: Reusable, Disposable

End Users: Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, Diagnostic Centers, Clinics, Others

Distribution Channel: Online Sales, Retail Pharmacies, Direct Sales

Top Players in the Market are: Paul Hartmann (Germany), Molnlycke Health Care NV/SA (Belgium), Steris Plc. (United Kingdom), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (United States), Cardinal Health, Inc. (United States), 3M (United Kingdom), Ahlstrom (Finland), BATIST Medical (Czech Republic), Cardiva Soluciones Integrales, SA (Spain) and Exact Medical (United States)

List of players also available in Coverage: Foothills Industries (United States), Bellcross Industries (India), ATS Surgical (India), Halyard Health (United States), Guardian Surgical (United Kingdom), Haywood Vocational Opportunities Inc. (United States), Medline Industries Inc. (United States), Lac-Mac (Canada), Pal Surgical Works (India) and Priontex (South Africa)

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Advance Market Analytics is Global leaders of Market Research Industry provides the quantified B2B research to Fortune 500 companies on high growth emerging opportunities which will impact more than 80% of worldwide companies revenues.

Our Analyst is tracking high growth study with detailed statistical and in-depth analysis of market trends & dynamics that provide a complete overview of the industry. We follow an extensive research methodology coupled with critical insights related industry factors and market forces to generate the best value for our clients. We Provides reliable primary and secondary data sources, our analysts and consultants derive informative and usable data suited for our clients business needs. The research study enable clients to meet varied market objectives a from global footprint expansion to supply chain optimization and from competitor profiling to M&As.

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by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, March 18, 2019

Saint Archer Gold, the result of a partnership between San Diego-based craft brewer Saint Archer and MillerCoors, has been rolled out in four test markets, with the benefit of full marketing support from the national beer giant.

The new beer looks to capitalize on several characteristics that have helped some brands -- most notably Anheuser-Busch InBev's Michelob Ultra -- buck the overall downward trend in beer sales.

Like Michelob Ultra, Saint Archer Gold is in the above-premium price segment, is low calorie and low carb (95 calories and 2.6 grams of carbs per 12-ounce serving), and has low alcohol content (4.2% by volume). The difference? Saint Archer Gold is delivering those attributes plus the full-bodied taste of a craft beer, thereby filling a white space in the craft segment, according to Brad Nadal, president of the Saint Archer brewery.

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The new beer is targeted to health-conscious 25- to 44-year-olds who want a more sessionable (able to be consumed over a longer period, due to lower alcohol and carbs/calories) craft beer experience, Nadal explained in the MillerCoors blog.

Saint Archer Gold made its debut starting last week in Austin, Texas; Indianapolis; Charlotte, N.C. and Arizona (where Sain Archers existing portfolio has been sold since late 2016). If it takes off, it will become the craft brewers first nationally distributed beer, possibly as soon as 2020.

The creative for the marketing within the four test markets, from Austin-based Preacher, was inspired by the San Diego vibe and the lifestyles of the brewers founders.

Called A Light for the Journey, it includes a 90-second anthem video (below) that shows attractive young adults engaging in artistic endeavors and downtime activities including fishing, surfing and skateboarding -- all shot in a golden glow, to the soulful (Van Morrison-reminiscent) sounds of Foy Vances Shed a Little Light.

Message: Find your own way to a light but uncompromisingly flavorful brew.

The long-version ad is running on Saint Archer and MillerCoors social channels, as well as on paid social, including Instagram and Facebook.

A 30-second version called Beacon, along with two other similarly laid-back 30-second ads (Brewery and Guide), are being aired in the test markets, along with radio, out-of-home and in-store merchandising.
by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, March 19, 2019

Martech is a multi-billion industry dwarfing ad tech and rivaling the overall media economy yet it is barely on Madison Avenues radar, WPPs GroupM unit asserts in a new Business Intelligence report published this week.

The two biggest martech -- or marketing technology platform -- players are Salesforce and Adobe, which generated $11 billion and $9 billion, respectively, last year, and GroupM Global President-Business Intelligence Brian Wieser estimates many tens of billions of dollars are spent on long-tail players that get less attention than the two big publicly traded, cloud-based platforms.

By market capitalization, the two companies are each worth around $120 billion, or more than the combined value of CBS, Viacom, Discovery, AMC and the new entity which houses Fox, Wieser writes -- referring to the new Fox Corporation, which unveiled its corporate structure today, including board members like former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and former long-term News Corp. honcho Chase Carey.

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Defining the industrys boundaries is tricky, but martech is often centered around suites of products called marketing clouds, Wieser continued, concluding, media-focused marketers should generally pay increasing attention to martech with every passing year.

This will not be a do-over of ad tech, which is mostly about applying more automation and data to trading-related activities. Marketing technology goes much further by providing solutions helping marketers manage all of their internal workflows and engagements with consumers. Applied well, martech should improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing operations, allow for the use of more and higher quality data in the making of decisions and better tie media executions more tightly to evolving marketing goals.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, March 19, 2019

Rep. Devin Nunes has sued Twitter and three users, including the anonymous creators of the parody accounts Devin Nunes' Mom and Devin Nunes' Cow, over allegedly libelous tweets.

Twitter allowed (and allows) its platform to serve as a portal of defamation in order to undermine public confidence in Plaintiff and to benefit his opponents and opponents of the Republican Party, Nunes, a Republican from California, says in a complaint filed this week in Henrico County, Virginia. He is seeking at least $250 million in damages.

His complaint lists several examples of tweets he finds objectionable. One by Devin Nunes' Mom reads: @DevinNunes your district is looking for you? Are you trying to obstruct a federal investigation again? You come home right this instant or no more Minecraft!

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Nunes adds that an endless barrage of tweets by the Devin Nunes' Mom account maliciously attacked every aspect of Nunes' character, honesty, ethics and fitness to perform his duties as a United States Congressman.

He alleges that the Devin Nunes' Cow account likewise conducted a vicious defamation campaign against Nunes that lasted over a year, and included tweets such as Devins boots are full of manure. Hes udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison.

Numerous courts have ruled that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects platforms like Twitter from defamation liability for content posted by users.

Nunes asserts that Twitter shouldn't be entitled to that protection, arguing that the company is not a neutral intermediary. Like some other Republicans, he contends that Twitter is biased against right-wing views.

"Twitter uses its platform, including proprietary algorithms, selectively to convey its corporate/institutional viewpoint, its position on issues and candidates for office, such as Plaintiff, to influence the outcome of elections, such as the 2018 election for Californias 22nd Congressional District, and as a dumping ground for 'oppo research'," the lawsuit contends. Twitter is not a neutral platform such as an Internet bulletin board.

Others, including New York Law School professor Ari Waldman, say tech companies filter out material posted by liberals as well as conservatives. Activists associates with the Black Lives Matter movement have reported just as many if not more take downs of images discussing racism and police brutality than any of the anecdotal evidence of suspensions or take downs on the right, he said last year in written testimony to Congress.

But even if anyone could prove bias by tech companies, they would still be protected by Section 230, according to the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Online platforms are within their First Amendment rights to moderate their online platforms however they like, and theyre additionally shielded by Section 230 for many types of liability for their users speech, the EFF wrote last year. Its not one or the other. Its both.
by Larissa Faw , March 19, 2019

Gabriel Miller has been appointed president of the Americas for WPP brand consulting and design firm Landor.

In the role, Miller will oversee the agencys offices in Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, San Francisco and Mexico.

Based in New York he reports to global CEO Jane Geraghty and replaces Stuart Sproule, who left to pursue other opportunities.

As president, Miller is tasked with driving growth in the region. "Gabe brings unique skills to the role, says Gerahty. "He has deep brand, advertising and digital expertise and inspires award-winning creativity."

The 20-year marketing veteran recently served as executive partner and NYC studio leader at IBM iX, IBMs digital and design agency. Earlier Miller was president of Resource/Ammirati and co-president of Avrett Free Ginsberg.

Miller has worked with a variety of brands including Bacardi, Coca-Cola, Fox Sports, JetBlue, McDonalds, Nestle, Neutrogena and Toyota.

While Geraghty says the WPP-owned agency always tries to "promote from within," we also look for the "best-in-class" talent. "In this case, we filled the position externally."
by Tanya Gazdik , March 19, 2019

Jeremy Tucker is leaving the top marketing position at Nissan North American to pursue other opportunities, according to the automaker.

A well-placed source says Tucker, who was vice president, Nissan marketing communications and media, was fired. However, Tucker describes it as a "mutually agreeable parting."

Sales at the automaker have been lackluster and there has been some discontent among dealers about the brands lack of national advertising, according to another source. The automakers total calendar year 2018 U.S. sales were down 6.2% compared to the prior year. Nissan division sales were down 6.6%.

Replacing Tucker effective April 1 is Allyson Witherspoon, currently general manager, global brand engagement, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. who will return to North America from Japan for the position, which is based in Tennessee. Witherspoon is the second woman to become the top marketer at Nissan North America. Janet Thompson was vice president of marketing at Nissan North America Inc., Nissan and Infiniti Divisions from June 2004 to September 2007.

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Tucker says he will stay on until later in April so there is a smooth transition for Witherspoon, who has been his global counterpart for Nissan marketing.

You know, 18 months is the average tenure for a CMO, and Ive been here more than four years, Tucker tells Marketing Daily. I feel like I've done some great things for the brand.  I love this brand, my first car was a Datsun. But its time for me to do something different and stretch my wings.

Tucker notes that Witherspoons international experience will serve her well.

At this point in time, its all about unity and strengthening the relationship globally, he says. Coming from Japan, she has the ability to do that. She will be able to play the linkage role.

The automaker says the change is part of efforts to meet targets outlined in the companys midterm business plan, M.O.V.E. to 2022.

While Nissan moved several other non-marketing executives around, Tucker is the only executive reported to be leaving the company.

Tucker has been in the position for four years and seven months. He was instrumental in arranging for several high-profile deals between Nissan and Disney, including a well-received effort tying the Nissan Rogue to the "Star Wars" franchise. Previous to Nissan, Tucker spent two years at the Walt Disney Co. and seven years at PepsiCo.

Witherspoon has been in her current position in Japan for two years. She has handled global marketing and creative strategy and validation of local marketing communications executed across seven global regions and 40 markets.

Previous to Nissan, she spent three and a half years at Infiniti Motor Co., Nissans luxury division, lastly as director of marketing communications and media, and two and a half years at Havas Worldwide. She was also global business director for Volvo in Amsterdam.

Witherspoon's previous positions at global marketing firms included direct support to a number of luxury automotive manufacturers including BMW North America and Mercedes-Benz USA. She spent most of her early career as an assistant vice president of Ansira, a marketing consultancy whose clients included American Honda Motor Co. in addition to Mercedes-Benz.
YUMA, Ariz.

March 19, 2019

Arizona

Deb Hall

Yuma, AZ

/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Yuma Senior Living is pleased to announce that they achieved a perfect score on their latest state inspection by the Arizona Department of Health Services. Over the past nine months, Yuma Senior Living has completed various community improvements and invested in care team training to ensure thatstate regulatory compliance is part of their company culture."We are laser focused on making sure our residents are provided the highest quality assistance with their activities of daily living in a comfortable and value-oriented community," said, Executive Director for Yuma Senior Living.Inspections are part of Arizona Assisted Living Facilities requirements and are conducted by State Surveyors. Conducted annually, results can be found for every Assisted Living Facility on the Arizona Department of Health Services website.Hall continued to say, "I'm honored to serve as the Executive Director at Yuma Senior Living, and I'm also excited to be given the opportunity to be part of our awesome team that's continuing to offer new amenities and wellness programs that our residents benefit from."Yuma Senior Living is currently adding other upgraded community amenities including a new senior wellness center and beauty/barber shop.About Yuma Senior Living: Yuma Senior Living owns and manages an Independent and Assisted Living 151 apartment community located near Yuma Regional Hospital at 2600 S. 4th Avenue,85364. A locally owned business, they employ 55 team members. Yuma Senior Living has made part of their company philosophy to provide the highest quality life possible for its residents.SOURCE Yuma Senior Living
A lot has been said about 'Captain Marvel' in the last few weeks.

Would it have been received in a much more positive way if it was a part of the MCU plan from the start? Probably.

Would it have been considered a breakout movie for female superheroes if 'Wonder Woman' hadn't come out 2 years ago? Probably.

For some, 'Captain Marvel' was nothing more than filler content from the start and trying to convince them otherwise is futile. But, the fact remains, if you've invested in 20 MCU movies over the last 10 years or so, then why not invest in one more before watching, what will possibly be, the highest grossing movie of all time?

So, if you haven't watched the movie yet and are willing to understand my reasoning with an open mind then read on. Even if you've watched the movie and just want a few reasons to justify why 'Captain Marvel' can't be missed, read on.

But, if you've already made up your mind about 'Captain Marvel' not being worth it, then go watch 'Avengers: Endgame' when it's out. You'll feel like you've missed something in between. There's no coming back from that, though. You can only watch 'Endgame' for the first time once.

 Disney

Backstory

The only reason you're invested in the Avengers as a team and the MCU as a franchise is because you've seen all your favourite characters develop on the big screen. Almost all of the superheroes (barring the Hulk) have received multiple solo movies where we get to learn more about them without having to worry about the collective.

That's something 'Captain Marvel' lacks right now. No one knows who she is or what she can do. Yes, a two-hour movie is not going to allow for as much character development as a couple of films or a trilogy. But, it's way better than nothing. Can you imagine Captain Marvel just showing up and kicking ass in 'Avengers: Endgame?' Everyone would have been like, "who is she? If she's so powerful, why haven't we heard of her before?" And most importantly, "where has she been for the last 20 movies?" (If you want to know all the possible reasons Captain Marvel was missing from the last 20 movies, then let me know in the comments and I'll write a separate article on that.)

To get answers to all of these questions you'll have to watch 'Captain Marvel.' There are no two ways about it.

 Disney

Being That Know-It-All Marvel Fan

We all know that one person who claims to know everything about everything in the MCU. I'm talking to that person directly right now. Imagine not knowing how the Avengers Initiative got its name or how Nick Fury lost an eye.

One of the most entertaining parts of any MCU movie are the easter eggs. There are so many of them. Yes, some of them are integral to the plot and can't be ignored but there are others that don't make much of a difference apart from getting a few oohs and aahs from the audience.

Imagine watching 'Avengers: Endgame' and the guy beside you says, "I know how Captain Marvel got her powers" and you're just sitting there going, whaaatttt Not going to be good for your reputation, right? There are quite a few questions answered in 'Captain Marvel' so you should give it a watch.

You do want to retain the title of Mr Know-It-All when it comes to the MCU, right?

 Disney

Post-Credits Scene

Marvel is the only production house who has figured out how to get the audience to stay glued to their seats until the very last credit has shown up on screen  post-credit scenes. Yes, we look forward to them almost as much as we do the movies themselves.

There have been a few let downs in between with inconsequential post-credits scenes and it makes sense that the audience didn't expect much from 'Captain Marvel' as the credits rolled on to the screen. But, as usual, Marvel blew our socks off with just 5 seconds or so. Those 5 seconds are perhaps the reason 'Avengers: Endgame' will become the highest grossing movie of all time. Yes, those 5 seconds!

You've probably watched the latest 'Endgame' trailer already. so you already have some more information on the movie but I'm not going to spoil anything for you if you haven't. Go watch the movie and then the trailer. It's absolutely worth it.

 Disney

It's A Great Nick Fury Origin Story

Yeah, I couldn't resist saying it because it's the truth. We might not associate with Captain Marvel because she was just tossed into the mix recently but we know Fury. This is probably as close to a solo film the character will ever get. Do you see anyone complaining? I don't think so. Why? A young Nick Fury is a delight. So, even if you don't care about Carol Danvers, go watch the movie to learn more about Nick Fury. I know I've already said this a few times but, it's worth it.

Considering the amount of money the movie is raking in, I don't think there are many who needed reasons to watch it. But, hopefully, for the few remaining 'rebels,' I hope I've been able to give you at least one reason to watch the movie.
Guess who's back, back again? Nah, it's not Slim Shady but one of Hollywood's most reputed, infamous directors- Quentin Tarantino and this time, he's bringing to us his 9th film titled 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood'.

 Pinterest

The film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in the lead roles already has its first poster out and according to popular notion, it looks like it has been photoshopped and has already received a fair share of flak and absolutely hilarious memes, for existing in the first place.

Even so, people are still looking forward to Tarantino's work and according to the writer and director the film, it is a story that takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippy Hollywood."

The poster does initiate a similar vibe but it looks rather bland, like someone's deliberately asked Pitt and DiCaprio to pose, whilst holding a gun to their heads!

Take a look:

 Twitter

The film is basically based on the Manson family murders in 1969, in Los Angeles. DiCaprio will play Rick Dalton, a former star of western TV series and Brad Pitt will play his stunt double, Cliff Booth.

I've been working on this script for five years, as well as living in Los Angeles County most of my life, including in 1969, when I was 7 years old. I'm very excited to tell this story of an LA and a Hollywood that don't exist anymore. And I couldn't be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio and Pitt as Rick and Cliff, said Tarantino in an interview

 Twitter

The poster has two of them leaning on either side, supporting a very nonchalant 60s look, and they will both play fictional characters in the film, while the rest of the cast is based on real-time characters. The film has a huge star-cast which primarily includes- Margot Robbie who plays Sharon Tate, Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen, Al Pacino as Dalton's agent Marvin Shwarz, Dakota Fanning as Carles Manson's follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, Timothy Olyphant and Kurt Russell, among the rest.

Hollywood. 1969. #OnceUponATimeInHollywood A post shared by Leonardo DiCaprio (@leonardodicaprio) on Mar 18, 2019 at 5:44am PDT

Twitter, however, smells a Photoshop rat and claims Bratt Pitt has been made to look digitally younger than his OG age of 55 years, probably in an intent to make him look the same age as Leo, who is 44.

good lord, did they have to make brad pitt in cgi or is this just some terrible, terrible photoshop #OnceUponATimeInHollywood pic.twitter.com/zglSb1dc8Q  .  (@jordanjabroni) 18 March 2019

What is going on with the photoshop work on Brad Pitt in this #OnceUponATimeinhollywood poster?  Steven Agnew (@agnew1979) 18 March 2019

Then there are some Jim Carrey's 'Ace Ventura' comparisons:

And then there were some pertinent questions...

What the heck are they leaning on??#OnceUponATimeInHollywood pic.twitter.com/6ri7I6Suoy  Ahmed Ali (@MrAhmednurAli) 19 March 2019

...and guess what? They were answered!

The expanded poster for #OnceUponATimeinHollywood is wild pic.twitter.com/0uSknsB0pW  Tom Butler (@TomButler) 18 March 2019

There was also some rough scepticism

And then there were memes!

thanks, QT, but we're going to take this in a different direction pic.twitter.com/cCkdv2Nk3T  Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) 18 March 2019

I'll see you that crime of a #OnceUponATimeinhollywood poster and raise you a pic.twitter.com/Y0XhpnuP2S  Katherine Brannon (@katherinbrannon) 18 March 2019

This is the extended male cast poster! #OnceUponATimeInHollywood pic.twitter.com/bvJQ71jDQF  Ricardo Chucky (@ricardochucky) 19 March 2019

But Tarantino, DiCaprio and Pitt fans still can't wait to watch the film.

can't wait to lose a week's worth of productivity when the ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD trailer drops.  lindsey romain (@lindseyromain) 18 March 2019

This is gonna be so so darnnnn special. #OnceUponATimeInHollywood https://t.co/aZ9hQZSMUW  Lala Rukh (@Lala02rLala) 18 March 2019

I'm gonna go on the opposite side and say the crappy poster for #OnceUponATimeInHollywood is intentional because the film takes place in the 60s/70s.

That, or the graphic designer really is trash LOL.  dracarys. (@DavikaStaar) 19 March 2019

once upon a time in hollywood (2019) coming for every single award pic.twitter.com/06dNyh7x2G  bauti (@loganmarshaII) 18 March 2019

THE RELEASE DATE FOR ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD CHANGED FROM AUGUST TO JULY pic.twitter.com/vHvpT90sYU  nika (@MVDICNE) 18 March 2019

Inglorious Basterds poster:



- Minimal

- Visceral

- Provocative

- Enticing



Once Upon a Time in Hollywood poster:



- Minimal pic.twitter.com/Ho4UQKqKKi  Cameron Frew (@FrewFilm) 18 March 2019

I feel like I'm the only one who in the world who doesn't care about The Avengers. Give me the Once Upon A Time in Hollywood trailer already! pic.twitter.com/z3e1KBFJp1  Joel (@_supjoel) 14 March 2019

Well, some say the poster is tweaked in a certain way to make it look like it belongs to the 60s.

While minimalism and blandish designs are not what Tarantino's about, we're sure there will be an explanation for the posters soon. We also reckon the trailer will throw some light on what to expect from the movie. For now, let's wait for the final release, which is on the 26th of July, 2019 to see what's in store.
Over the years we have come to think of Ajay Devgn as being synonymous to Bollywood's most sought-after action hero. Sure, Akshay Kumar is also a leading name in the category, but when it comes to someone who has been acing each and every role in this category, we can only think of Devgn.

Ajay made the entire country eat out of his hands when he first graced the screen as Bajirao Singham, the righteous and daring cop who would go to the end of this world to bring the culprits to justice.

We have loved him and his daredevilry in the 'Singham' series, and feel that no one could have done it better than the man himself, but as per latest reports, it seems Ajay is all set to explore other aspects and roles in the action category and he will next be seen portraying the role of an IAF Wing Commander in the film titled 'Bhuj: The Pride Of India'.

The film is reportedly based on true incidents, wherein Ajay will be seen essaying the role of Squadron Leader Vijay Karnik who was in charge of the Bhuj airport during the Indo-Pak war in 1971. The airstrip was destroyed by Pakistani air strikes and Karnik mobilised 300 local women to rebuild it for the Indian Air Force aircrafts to make a safe landing. Karnik played a pivotal role in helping keep the airstrip operational amidst heavy bombing from Pakistan.

The film has been written, and will be directed by Abhishek Dudhaiya and talking about Vijay Karnik and the feat he achieved during the war, producer Bhushan Kumar told the media, This courageous tale needs to be told because we want the current and the coming generation to know about this brave soldier, Squadron Leader Vijay Karnik, who played a significant role in India's victory in the 1971 war. He was heroic enough to take this bold step of involving civilians in a war. Also, who better than Ajay Devgn for the role of Vijay Karnik?

Karnik recalled the events from the eventful incident and he is glad that Ajay has agreed to play his character in the film. Talking to the media he said, We were fighting a war and if there had been any casualties of any of these women, it would have been a great loss. But I took the decision and it worked out. I had briefed them where they could take shelter if attacked and they followed it bravely. Also, I could only see Ajay Devgn essaying my character and I'm glad that he's on board.

We can't wait for this one.
Manohar Parrikar, Goa's late CM, was laid to rest last evening with complete state honours, and in the presence of his family, party members and thousands of Goans, who had gathered to bid adieu to Goa's son.

 Twitter

From his colleagues, to the people of the state he worked for and even the opposition leaders, everybody has stepped forward to recall Parrikar's relentless efforts and goodwill not only for his state Goa, but also for the society and nation at large.

On Monday, the ex-Defence Minister's friends reminisced about their humble mate Manohar, who always seemed like a born leader to them even when they were a bunch of young lads studying at IIT-Bombay between 1973-1980.

Here are 4 impressive details that have been revealed by Manohar Parrikar's friends, which prove that India has lost a valuable and invested leader of our times.

1. While studying at IIT-Bombay, Parrikar was the mess secretary. And once when the mess workers went on strike and refused to serve the students, Parrikar churned out delicious food for everyone along with his friends.

Parrikar's hostel mate from IIT-B recalls the incident thus, He was on good terms with the mess workers as he always participated in the committee. After the strike was called, he spoke to the workers. When they refused to serve us, he convinced 40 of us to cook ourselves. That was the best meal we ever had.

2. His friends from IIT-B remember him as a born leader and a humble individual who attended all alumni meets.

3. Another friend recalls how Parrikar left his position behind when he met his friends. Hostel mate and close friend Bakul Desai recalled how Parrikar would wait in the queue to have lunch during alumni meets, for which the alumni members were given coupons. He also asked his security personnel to stay away when he was in the company of his friends.

4. Another IIT-B batchmate of Parrikar, Ganesh Natarajan, recalled Parrikar's humility even after he took charge as the Goa CM. "Have seen him take an auto rickshaw at Mumbai airport even after becoming Goa CM. He will be missed across all walks of life."

There might be a ton more incidents about Manohar Parrikar, but these few personal incidents coming from his friends prove that not only was Parrikar a great politician and leader, who was invested in his work and duty, but also that he was a great human being whose heart was in the right place all along. He is the real aam aadmi of the masses.
Another account of cultural and religious hate based on pure ignorance surfaced, when Instagram comedian Jess Hilarious, aka Jessica Moore boasted about how she allegedly got 4 turbaned Sikh men 'kicked off' a plane because she felt 'threatened' by their presence.

(c)Twitter

The comedienne was rightfully slammed for her Islamophobic comments by lots of people on Twitter and a compilation of the comments she made, was posted on Twitter by activist Simran Jeet Singh.

Take a look:

Four innocent Sikhs were kicked off a plane today because this woman was scared of how they looked.



Please watch and share this video to understand how hate hurts us all.



(see thread below for more info on the Sikh religion and identity)

pic.twitter.com/xg8vSfgsYm  Simran Jeet Singh (@SikhProf) 17 March 2019

After the video was out, a bunch of people took to Twitter to verbally bash her hatred and absolutely ignorant and racist rant.

Hi @jess_hilarious,



I hear that you're fearful of people who look like me. Let me know if you ever want to chat. I'm happy to show you we're normal(ish) people and that you have nothing to fear.



peace,

a sikh https://t.co/RTmwziDeO5  Simran Jeet Singh (@SikhProf) 18 March 2019

I thought I'd reshare this after @jess_hilarious managed to get 4 Sikhs off of a plane because she confused them with Muslims.

I think it's disgusting that she would not only do this, but share that she did this and then think it was something we'd find funny after recent events. https://t.co/2VChRhI7BB  Kat Blaque (@kat_blaque) 17 March 2019

It's really hurtful that some people see turbans and view that as something to be afraid of.



Sikhs wear the turban/have long hair as a way to be publicly identified as in service to others. The idea is if you see someone in a turban, you'd know you could go up and ask for help.  Aditi Juneja (@AditiJuneja3) 17 March 2019

The fact that Jess hilarious thinks it's funny to be 'threatened' by 4 Sikh people entering the plane because she thought they were Muslim and bragging about them being kicked out after the New Zealand incident is disgusting. pic.twitter.com/LjBxSyuB5T  yas (@Adoomies1) 17 March 2019

Jess Hilarious' anti-Muslim rhetoric sheds light on a very important topic; Islamophobia within the black Christian community  dylan (@dylanthegypsy) 17 March 2019

4 innocent Sikh passengers kicked off a plane cos celebrity @jess_hilarious was uncomfortable with their APPEARANCE



What a shame Airline company acceded to her request!



Sikhs have been most helpful community in times of trouble yet they get such discrimination @SushmaSwaraj Ji pic.twitter.com/suGHcFo5MD  Manjinder S Sirsa (@mssirsa) 18 March 2019

@jess_hilarious you are racist af & sound so damn ignorant. The Sikh man was minding his business, is that what you felt THREATENED about?! #JessHilarious pic.twitter.com/b2DdZJYvU5  s a r a (@sara_zfa) 17 March 2019

A day after Muslims were ambushed and murdered while praying (death toll now at 51), Jess Hilarious hops on Al Gore's internet to brag about+defend getting 4 people with turbans kicked off a flight because she didn't feel safe.  Candice Marie Benbow (@CandiceBenbow) 17 March 2019

Getting four Sikhs off a plane because she felt threatened shows the incredible stupidity of @jess_hilarious. The airline should have drop kicked her ass off the plane. https://t.co/Z7fySepfDn  rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) 18 March 2019

So while we mourn 50 Muslims who were gunned down in New Zealand and Muslims face Islamophobic harassment across the country on the streets and online, Jess Hilarious targets 4 Sikh men for wearing turbans and gets the removed from flight because she's afraid of Muslims.  Margari Aziza (@Margari_Aziza) 17 March 2019

When she was slammed with rhetoric hate comments about her behaviour towards 4 Sikh men, the woman went on a rant over a video cussing people who were speaking up against her. She justified her actions saying F*** y'all, I feel how I feel. I felt threatened and that was it. F*** y'all."

(c)Twitter

This probably isn't the first time Sikhs have faced racist hate all over America. Post 9/11, there were attacks on the Sikh community as they were misunderstood for radical Islam fundamentalists. But the fact that 9/11 was 18 years ago and yet people live in absolute ignorance is quite sad TBH.

There are some latent lessons due about how not all Muslims are terrorists and how the Sikh community is not religiously fanatic or a threat, to have them evacuated from an airplane! But because she probably thrives on irrational content that she assumes is funny. She thought she could take a dig at calling someone out as a threat just for fun, and she'd get away with it. Well, that's not how it works sista!

(c)Twitter

Moore did post a video on her Instgaram handle apologising for her behaviour but you know, sometimes an apology doesn't really hold any merit, once the damage is done.

Here, take a look at it anyway:

The woman has also offered to donate $15,000 to the victims of the New Zealand tragedy. Well, that's great Jess, but maybe it's time to get schooled again for your lack of knowledge!

Jess Hilarious is blatantly ignorant lmao, first off those were Sikhs on the plane and besides, had they been Muslims why would you behave that way despite having Muslims in your family?  pic.twitter.com/0GOMnSo8b7  Too $hort (@sukhisofly) 17 March 2019

All we can say is that Jess Hilarious is not really hilarious after all and we hope her ignorance doesn't get her into any more trouble!
On Tuesday, 19 March, Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs Sia Anagnostopoulou will participate in the EU General Affairs Council in Brussels.

In the context of the preparation of the European Council Summit which will be held on 21 and 22 March, the ministers will discuss, inter alia, recent developments related to Brexit.
That doesnt necessarily make Van Dyke, Gaughan or the sentence itself popular. But in the real world of Cook County courts, lawyers who practice there tell us that 6 3/4 years isnt out of line. Punishment for second-degree murder ranges from probation to 20 years imprisonment. One prosecutor sums it up this way: Six years isnt unusual for someone (1) who has no criminal record, (2) who evidently didnt go looking to commit this killing, and (3) who isnt likely to become a repeat offender. Sentences of 12 to 14 years are more typical, because those cases often involve people with prior convictions for other serious crimes.
RUTH  An animal rare to the state of Michigan was spotted and captured in Huron County this weekend.

A female Canada lynx was captured just east of Ruth early Sunday morning, after a male lynx was seen killing and eating geese at a local farm.

"It's very unusual to have lynx in the Lower Peninsula," said Jim Zelenak, species lead for Canada lynx for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I think there were six verified records historically and a bunch more anecdotal, which are unreliable because of the close resemblance to bobcats and just the unreliable nature of a lot of trapping data. But, there were six verified records in the Lower Peninsula. One was in the 1850s or 1860s, and then in the early 1900s, there were five of them trapped along the Au Sable River all in the same year, and that would suggest a flush of animals coming from the north."

The lynx was first sighted Friday night at by Joe McCoy, who was checking his goose pen.

The bodies of two dead geese were in the pen, and a duck could not be located.

Saturday morning, the male lynx was again located in the pen, attempting to kill the geese, but he failed and left the area.

The cat returned Saturday afternoon, and dragged one of the carcasses from the pen, which it then left about 50 feet from the pen.

On Sunday morning, after traps were set Saturday evening, a female lynx was captured.

"It's very rare to hear reports of lynx getting into livestock, but certainly a hungry lynx that finds a pen full of geese, they're opportunistic predators, especially when they're in a place with not enough snowshoe hares to keep them fed," Zelenak said. "Usually, lynx disappear either by starvation or by wandering back northward from areas that can't support them, and that may be what this cat is trying to do."

In February, an animal that was thought to be a lynx, but has not yet been verified, was caught on video in Lexington.

Since then, there were other reports of a lynx being seen near Deckerville.

"I saw the video of the one in Lexington and it really looked like a Canada lynx," Zelenak said. "Now, there's lots of issues with trying to identify them through videos or photos because they are very tough to distinguish from bobcats, which are much more common or likely in that part of Michigan."

"When you talk about the subsequent sightings in Deckerville and Ruth, it seems like, to me, that it might just be the same cat moving around and maybe moving northward," he added. "But, now it sounds like there are at least two, and that's very interesting."

Michigan DNR Officer Mark Siemen, who visited the farm on Saturday, verified that the photos were in fact of a Canada lynx.

The Canada lynx is currently listed as a threatened species. Zelenak said the animals are very rare to this area because there is not a large enough of a prey base.

"I certainly know that the DNR is interested in any verified observations of lynx there, as are we," Zelenak said. "We are, right now, working on a rule to delist lynx in the lower 48. They are currently listed as threatened and they were listed as threatened back in 2000 because of concerns that there were not adequate regulatory mechanisms on federal lands, and there has been a lot of things done to address those things."

Lynx mostly feed on snowshoe hares, and according to Zelenak, there have been no reported attacks by lynx on humans.

"They're really only about twice the size of large house cats," he said. "If they're cornered, like any cat, they could strike out, but there's never been a documented attack on humans. They normally just want to go in the other direction. Like any animal, if they are starving or are sick, that could affect their behavior, but I have never heard anything to suggest any danger to humans."

On Monday, the captured female lynx was taken to a veterinarian in Livingston County.

Zelenak said if anyone is to come in contact with a Canada lynx, the best course of action would be to contact the DNR.

"I would just recommend that folks there stay in close contact with the state agency, with the DNR," he said. "They can provide guidance on what to do."

The DNR can be reached at 989-684-9141.
Hong Kong: Law revision urgently needed: CE

The Government's proposed amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance are intended to pursue judicial justice in criminal cases and protect the public.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam made the statement before attending todays Executive Council meeting, adding that serious criminals could threaten public safety.

If there are serious criminal crime offenders who have absconded and come to Hong Kong, they are a threat to public safety. So we have reviewed the existing legislation and acknowledged that there is a loophole, and the intention of these amendments is to plug the loophole.

Citing the case of a Hong Kong resident suspected of murdering another Hong Kong resident in Taiwan then returning to Hong Kong, Mrs Lam said the issue needed to be dealt with promptly.

We have a case right in front of us which has caused a lot of public anxiety, a lot of anger, especially amongst the parents of the deceased.

So we need to do this expeditiously in order to have the legal framework and the authority to deal with that particular case.

Mrs Lam added that to alleviate the business sectors concerns about the proposed amendments, the Secretary for Security met their representatives and explained human rights will be safeguarded under the proposed arrangement.

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines)  McDonald's Philippines continues to bring world-class experience to more Filipinos, as the company introduces more "NXTGEN" stores nationwide.

The company, through launching its NXTGEN store format last October, demonstrated its commitment in providing Filipino customers top-notch convenience, service and innovations.

The new store format features the self-ordering kiosks, modernized menu boards, cashless mode of payment through card acceptance, split counter system, and the specially trained Guest Experience Leaders.

Through these innovations, Filipino customers now get to have a similar McDonald's experience available in other parts of the world such as the United States, France and Australia, among others.

"By bringing NXTGEN to the Philippines, McDonald's affirms its commitment to continuously invest and innovate to deliver a world class experience to Filipinos. We have seen the clamor for NXTGEN stores among our consumers here in the country, and we are excited to bring this store format to more locations nationwide," said McDonald's Philippines President and CEO Kenneth Yang.

Since the launch of its first NXTGEN store, McDonald's Philippines has opened and converted over 30 NXTGEN stores across the country.

Apart from Metro Manila, McDonald's NXTGEN also opened in provincial areas such as La Union, Tagaytay, Boracay and Davao. The company is expected to open and convert more stores into NXTGEN format in more locations nationwide.

Learn more about how McDonald's brings world class experience to the Philippines:
That empowering of haters gives urgency to discussions about how to clean up the internet. But all of us can do something to help break the cycle of hate, fear and resentment. Asked how he decided to take his exit from the skinheads, Picciolini said, Ultimately, you know, it was interactions with people of color who, you know, showed me compassion when I least deserved it. And those moments of clarity added up.
UBLY  Ublys FFA Chapter recently attended the 91st Michigan FFA State Convention.

In leadership contests, the chapter had two teams and two individuals compete.

In Greenhand Conduct of Meetings, the Myah Schulte team received a fourth place silver. Team members included Myah Schulte, Reese McLellan, Haley Klama, Alex Foote, Lindsey Guza, Hailey Mausolf, Alex Susalla and Alyson Benson.

In Parliamentary Procedure, the Amber Essenmacher team received state runner-up. Team members consist of Amber Essenmacher, Nolan VanErp, Mikaela VanErp, Rachel Leppek, Cheyenne Porzondek, Hannah Schroeder and Anna Messing.

In Prepared Public Speaking, Bethany Gornowicz received a silver rating for her speech, "Whats Killing Farmers Around the World?"

Haili Gusa received first place in Extemporaneous Public Speaking and will be competing at National Convention in the fall.

This year, the Ubly chapter had 23 members receive Academic Excellence awards, nine being silver and 14 being gold. The chapter also had seven members receive bronze, 11 members receive silver and six members receive gold for their SAEs.

Grant Geiger was a state winner for his SAE in beef production, and Adam Weber was a state winner for his SAE in grain production.

The chapter also had 15 members receive Outstanding Junior, with Grant Geiger receiving state runner-up. Seventeen of the chapter's members were awarded their State Degrees, with Rebekka Foster, Nolan Murray and Adam Weber receiving golds.

The chapter also had many other members participate in other activities, such as the Arthur Berkey Science Fair, state talent and the state band.

In the Arthur Berkey Science Fair, members researched a topic then made presentations about their findings and presented their research to judges. Participants included Lindsey Gosdzinski, Dawson Schumacher, Nolan Murray, Ellie Peruski, Cheyenne Porzondek, Abigail Sorenson, Mikaela VanErp and Lacey Pionk, who received a third place bronze in the category of Division 3 Plant Systems.

JaeLynn Burton and Abigail Sorenson auditioned and moved onto the stage to preform for State Talent, with Sabrina Schumacher being an alternate. Kylie Ogryski was recognized for her four-year dedication to the State Band.

For the National Chapter awards, Ubly received a gold rating. They placed second in the #Speak Ag contest and received $700 for their chapter. For Pop Tab Collection, they received first place and will have an ice cream social sponsored by the FFA state officers.

Haili Gusa was slated in the position of president and vice president. With a little convincing of the Michigan delegates, Gusa was elected as the 2019-20 Michigan FFA state president. She is the seventh president from Huron County in its 91-year history. She is also the first state president from Ubly and the first female president from Huron County.
HARTFORD  Environment Committee Democrats flexed their muscles Monday and completely rewrote a bill that would have allowed a black bear hunt in Litchfield County.

The new bill expands the current law for issuing permits to deal with nuisance wildlife.

Rep. Michael DeMicco, D-Farmington, said the new language adopted by the committee Monday amends current law, which already allows the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner to issue a permit to kill wildlife thats doing unreasonable damage to an agricultural crop. The new language expands that to livestock, poultry or bees.

The bill passed the committee 17-11.

The legislation also allows the person approved to kill the wildlife, which could be a bear, to keep it. A farmer, who doesnt hunt, is allowed to assign the permit to someone who does hunt.

Rep. Maria Horn, D-Salisbury, said she has a lot of farmers in her district who have real problems with bears destroying their crops and taking their livestock.

I am very pleased we shifted this bill, Horn said.

She said she hopes farmers dealing with this issue are first resorting to non-lethal management.

However, an amendment that would require them to do that was withdrawn by Rep. Mary Mushinsky, D-Wallingford.

Mushinsky said she thinks the bill is defective without the amendment so she voted against forwarding it to the Senate.

Without trying non-lethal diversion first  I think we have no business authorizing shooting of the bear, coyote or whatever else is attacking the crops, Mushinsky said.

Rep. Ed Vargas, D-Hartford, also voted against the bill because he said the only way to restore the ecological balance to the state of Connecticut is to reintroduce timber wolves.

It may create other problems down the road, Vargas said. But I rather deal with those problems than see bears shot.

He said it was a mistake to eradicate the wolves.

Rep. David Michel, D-Stamford, said the legislation creates a loophole that would allow trophy hunting on farmlands, and thats why he cant support it.

Bryan Hurlbert, executive director of the Connecticut Farm Bureau, said there are a significant number of beehives that have been damaged by bears. He said his organization welcomes the legislation.

Another bill, SB 894, which passed 27 to 1, would require non-lethal measures to be taken to help control the black bear population.

Both bills were forwarded to the state Senate.
Connecticut children are still vaccinated at a higher rate than the national average, but the number has dropped in recent years  with most of the states unvaccinated children avoiding immunizations for religious reasons.

The drop off in immunizations follows a national trend that concerns doctors, health insurers and school administrators and is prompting states like Connecticut to weigh taking action.

According to information from the Connecticut Department of Public Health, 98.8 percent of Connecticuts kindergarteners were immunized against measles, mumps and rubella in the 2013-2014 school year. That dropped to 96.5 percent last year.

Vaccinations of kindergarteners for diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough, dropped from 98.8 percent in the 2013-2014 school year to 96.5 percent in the last school year.

Most of those unvaccinated children  78.8 percent  were not immunized for religious reasons. The rest, about 21.2 percent, were not vaccinated for medical reasons.

Even with the drop in vaccinations, the immunization rate of children in Connecticut is higher than the national average. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, median vaccination coverage nationwide was 94.3 percent for measles, mumps and rubella and 95.1 percent for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough for kindergarteners in the 2017-2018 school year.

Doctors in the state, however, are concerned about the downward trend.

Clearly any drop off is concerning  Some kids have died, said Robert McLean, an internist who practices in New Haven and is the incoming president of the American College of Physicians.

Jillian Wood, executive director of the CT Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said there is a concern that exemptions are going up, even if they go up a tiny little bit it makes a difference.

The measles virus, for example, is extremely contagious, but is also considered extremely rare because the disease is easily preventable through vaccination. Yet an increase in anti-vaccination movements across the country and even in other parts of the world has left children unprotected and vulnerable to the infection.

The anti-vaccine movement has spread on social media, experts say, because personal anecdotes are more compelling than medical studies that say vaccinations have nothing to do with autism or risks for other diseases.

McLean said concerns about the anti-vax movement prompted the American College of Physicians to adopt a policy in the summer of 2015 calling on all states to drop exemptions parents can use to avoid vaccinating their children  except for medical reasons.

Ive found nothing compelling in religious exemptions, McLean said.

Some Connecticut lawmakers agree and are considering introducing measures that would prohibit children who are not vaccinated on religious grounds from enrolling in the states public schools. Some say that people with philosophical objections to vaccinations are wrongly using the religious exemption.

The issue will be debated at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford on Tuesday at two separate events.

Democratic state Rep. Josh Elliott of Hamden will hold a forum in support of universal vaccinations with a panel of experts, including professors from Yale. A little later in the day, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, president of Childrens Health Defense and a vaccine skeptic, will appear at a separate event hosted by two Connecticut lawmakers who are concerned about vaccines.

The states health insurers have also weighed in on the debate.

During a hearing in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this month Americas Health Insurance Plans submitted testimony that said vaccinations eliminated polio in 1979 after the vaccine against that disease became widespread.

While coverage is broadly available for recommended vaccines, low vaccination rates. are an ongoing public health problem, AHIP said. Nationwide, approximately 42,000 adults and 300 children die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases.

While Connecticut allows exemptions for religious reasons as well as medical reasons, other states allow philosophical and personal exemptions, too.

Like other doctor organizations, the American Academy of Pediatrics is urging states to eliminate all but the medical exemption, and limit that one to cases where they believe a vaccine might do harm, mainly those with impaired immune systems who suffer from cancer or other diseases.

Those who oppose vaccinations base their argument on individual rights. They insist parents, not the government, should decide whether to vaccinate their children.

A backlash against vaccine critics

According to the CDC, measles was eliminated in the United States in 2000. But the CDC reports that 268 individual cases of measles have been confirmed in 15 states, including Connecticut, from Jan. 1 to March 14 of this year.

Not even four months into this year, Connecticut has already reported two cases of measles to the CDC. Three cases were reported in the 12 months of 2018.

Most of the recent measles outbreaks in the United States were the result of a traveler bringing the disease home with them from overseas. The virus then spread through the unvaccinated people in the travelers communities.

In 2018, the United States experienced 17 measles outbreaks, with New York and New Jersey contributing most of the cases.

Those outbreaks were linked to someone who brought measles back from Israel, where a large outbreak was occurring. The disease then spread mostly through unvaccinated Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey.

The resurgence of measles in the United States is spurring a backlash against vaccine critics, from congressional hearings investigating the spread of vaccine misinformation to state measures that would make it harder for parents to opt out of immunizing their children.

In Washington state, where the worst measles outbreak in more than two decades sickened nearly 70 people, two proposals are advancing through the state legislature that would bar parents from using personal or philosophical exemptions to avoid immunizing their school-age children

In Vermont and New York, legislators have introduced similar measures.
HARTFORD  A public hearing on what some call aid-in-dying and others call assisted suicide drew passionate testimony Monday from advocates on both sides of the issue.

The legislation seeks to allow a physician to prescribe medication at the request of a mentally competent patient with six months to live.

Even though Connecticut has been debating the issue for a decade, no associated bill has never even made it out of the Public Health Committee to a full debate, let alone a vote, in the House or Senate.

Supporters of the legislation believe it has a better chance this year to become law because a past opponent has decided to remain neutral this year.

The Connecticut State Medical Society has adopted a position of engaged neutrality, which means its leaving it up to its member physicians.

Of the dozens testifying in support of the bill, no ones message was more compelling than Sharon Hines, a Middletown resident who has stage four lung cancer and also happens to be an oncology nurse practitioner.

The cancer in my brain is growing and I am running out of acceptable treatment options, Hines told the committee.

Hines said she has been given a prognosis of six to nine months to live  and she wants to live those months on her terms.

My focus has always been on quality not quantity, Hines said. Medical aid and dying should be an option for those of us with terminal illness. I want to die in my own home on my own terms.

My husband supports my decision, Hines said. My son supports my decision. My friends support my decision.

Referring to the fact that other states allow assisted suicide, Hines added: I should not be forced to move out of state to be a medical refugee.

Rep. Michelle Cook, D-Torrington, said she could empathize with Hines situation, because I lost my step-mom in August to lung cancer.

But Cook said one issue she was struggling with is that when it has been discussed in past legislative sessions there has been testimony that it would take up to 90 pills to end your life.

Cook said she found that hard to stomach and she asked Hines if she had any concerns about, basically, using medication to induce death. Have we solved that problem? Cook asked Hines.

Hines said she wasnt a scientist but she believed one advantage to an aid-in-dying bill is that a person could take his or her death at a time of their choosing. Those last days can be the most difficult for the patient and the family, Hines said. Its about quality of life. Hines said when she dies she wants it to be peaceful and gentle.

Shes not alone.

Tony Award winning actor James Naughton, teared up while telling the committee about the painful death from pancreatic cancer his wife endured in 2013.

Even after the cancer was discovered, Naughton told the committee, he said his wife was determined to make the best of it. He said they went on with their lives, grandchildren arrived, she was the ultimate baby whisperer, the actor joked.

But then the cancer began to take its toll. She became dependent on pain pumps. I was the caregiver, managing the pumps, the drains and the phenomenal list of medications, Naughton said.

One day, in 2013, Naughtons wife told him she didnt want to deal with it anymore.

Naughton said he looked at his wife with surprise, and she told him: Jimmy weve always known that this was a fatal disease.

Naughton told the committee when he thinks about it now he realizes that we were dealing with life and death strategies every day. He said the legislation is weighty but welcome because, when the person you loved your whole life, with whom you fought so hard for four years to survive, there is nothing you wouldnt do to help, what she wants, what she deserves, to help her be relieved from her suffering.

Naughton said thats why he testified Monday  because Im still trying to do the right thing by Pam.

Immediately following Naughtons testimony was Kim Callinan, chief executive officer of Compassion & Choices, an organization that advocates to pass medical aid and dying laws across the country.

What this legislation is really about is who decides, Callinan said. It is the terminally ill person in consultation with their doctor, their faith leaders and their loved ones - or the government.

Amy Edwards of Milford said she watched both her parents suffer from terminal cancer.

It was a horrible way to die and a horrible way for my family and I to watch their heartbreaking suffering, Edwards said. We do it for our beloved animals  why cant we do this for humankind.

Many who oppose the concept of what they call assisted suicide fear its an attempt to hasten the end of the lives of the disabled and elderly patients who demand more from the healthcare system.

Others, such as state Rep. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme, worry that it might be opening Pandoras Box, as far as how the law could be interpreted.

At a press conference right before the start of the public hearing, those opposed to the legislation argued their case.

State Rep. Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said he found it distressing that a series of bills have been raised in the Public Health Committee over the past few years that, in his words, are telling people their lives are not worth living.

Candelora, and Dr. Brian Callister, a Nevada doctor who is recognized as an expert in end-of-life care issues, also noted that while the Connecticut State Medical Society has moved its position to neutral, the American Medical Association (AMA) remains opposed.

The AMAs stated position is: physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physicians role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.

Callister said doctors are notoriously bad at predicting how long patients have to live.

Cathy Ludlum, a disabled resident from Manchester, and co-founder of the disability lobbyist group Second Thoughts Connecticut, stressed in her remarks that not everyone with a disability is permanently ill.

She said many people who are asking for assisted suicide are not in pain, but are are suffering from a loss of dignity, a loss of activities, a loss of autonomy.

Ludlum said those symptoms can be dealt with through the health care system  not by putting those people to death.

Another disability advocate, Elaine Kolb of West Haven, spoke passionately against the legislation.

Keep your poison pills, Kolb said. Were not dead yet. And dont make it easier for people to kill themselves.

Public Health committee members stressed that they were careful in crafting the bill to avoid putting any undue pressure on a person making a life-ending decision.

We put in belts and suspenders to make sure that they both verbally and in writing indicated this is what they wanted, said state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, a Westport Democrat who co-chairs the Public Health Committee.

He said not only do two medical professionals have to be involved, but theyve looked at the experience from other states to make sure we are mimicking the best practices.

A 2015 Quinnipiac University poll found Connecticut voters support legislation that would allow a doctor to prescribe lethal drugs to help terminally ill patients end their own lives by a 63-31 percent margin. Among those over the age of 55, the approval rating was 59 percent.

Aid in dying is legal in the District of Columbia and seven states: California, Montana, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

Currently, the nearest state with an aid-in-dying law is Vermont. Massachusetts held a 2012 referendum asking voters if state-licensed physicians should be allowed to prescribe medication to a terminally ill patient to end the patients life. Voters narrowly rejected the measure.
MIDDLETOWN  First & Last restaurant on Main Street will be closing as of April 1, the mayor said Monday.

The city filed a lawsuit in January to evict the restaurant from its space in the police department building for overdue rent going back to 2016, Mayor Dan Drew said in a Facebook post.

By the time the court-mandated mediation took place earlier this month, First & Last owed the City of Middletown in excess of $140,000, Drew said. As of April 1, First & Last will no longer occupy the restaurant space there.

Drew said the city has received many expressions of interest by other restaurant groups and that it will pursue the one most beneficial to the taxpayers of Middletown.

First & Last was one of the restaurants cited in a restaurant inspection report the Press did in February. Inspection records show the restaurant earned an 88 out of 100 because a low-bay cooler under the grill was not maintaining its temperature and the food inside was over 41 degrees, in violation of health codes. Owner Tony Scacca said at the time that the cooler was broken, so he was not using it and that all other minor issues cited in the report were immediately addressed.

In 2018, First & Last won Middlesex County Chamber of Commerces Restaurant Showdown contest during an event at Fire at the Ridge in Middlefield. The restaurants veal saltimbocca entree took the top prize in the contest, chamber officials said.
Sebastian Kaulitzki / Getty Images /Hemera

BRIDGEPORT  A Connecticut man who worked for the Federal Aviation Administration pleaded guilty Monday to receipt of child pornography, federal authorities said.

Scott Pierson, 58, of Vernon, faces a minimum of 5 years and up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced, according to a release from the office of John H. Durham, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut.
1845 N. Orchard St., Chicago: $5,989,888 | Listed: Nov. 9, 2021



This six-bedroom home has six full bathrooms, two half baths, and a carved limestone and brick exterior. The Christopher Peacock kitchen has Waterworks fixtures, a farmers sink and two Subzero refrigerator/freezers. It also opens to the living room, which leads to an outdoor area with a full kitchen, seating areas, and a wood-burning fireplace. On the second floor, the primary bedroom suite features a dressing room and morning kitchen and an en suite bath with a separate shower and soaking tub. Three additional en suite bedrooms are also on the second floor. Other features include a wine cellar, a library, a media room with a Savant projection and audio system and an attached four-car garage with extra storage.



Agent: Carrie McCormick, @properties, 312-961-4612



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To feature your luxury listing of $800,000 or more in Chicago Tribunes Dream Homes, send listing information and high-res photos to ctc-realestate@chicagotribune.com.



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A former Hamden school employee, who resigned from her position Friday after a video showing her on a racist tirade in an East Haven grocery store went viral, called police numerous times about the incident.

Four audio files were released by East Haven police on Monday to complain about what happened in the store.

Listen to the calls here:

***WARNING***

***GRAPHIC AND OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE USED ***

Corinne Magoveny-Terrone first called Easton police. In the Easton call, a dispatcher has to take another call and puts her on hold briefly, and she yells "Don't you dare put me on hold!"

When he comes back, she proceeds to tell him that she was in a grocery store talking to her children when a black man asked if she was talking to him and said a profanity, and she called him the n-word.

The dispatcher calmly asks her what town this happened in and then informs her she called the incorrect department.

She then called the East Haven Police Department. In a call that lasted longer than six minutes, she tells that dispatcher that she was walking down the center aisle at the store and got to the registers, said "Oh Jesus Christ" to her kids, and then a man in a scooter called her an offensive term and she says she called him the n-word because of what he called her.

She also tells police there was "spitting back and forth" and that "I am pressing charges."

In another call to East Haven police, she tells a dispatcher that the person who answered the phone previously was "completely unhelpful and useless."

She calls back a third time, asks who she is speaking with and then says "I was just verbally assaulted at Shop Rite in East Haven." She then goes on to explain what happened in the store, and she says "I'm not gonna sugar coat what I said."

Thousands of people shared two different videos on Facebook over the weekend that partially shows the incident.

In the footage, posted by a user whose profile name is Tatiana Winn, Terrone yells the n-word three times and spits at two people, a black man and woman. It is unclear how the encounter began.

After her first use of the racial epithet, the man appears to rush toward Terrone, who taunts, "Put your hands on me, come on!" and pulls out her phone to begin recording. The man then appears to quickly knock the device from her hand, and does not make further physical contact based on what is visible in the footage.

As of Monday afternoon, police said nobody has come forward yet to file a formal complaint in the case.

However, police said they are consulting the state's attorneys office and are "awaiting the final outcome of the DCF investigation."

Hamden schools notified the state Department of Children and Families after they were made aware of the video, they said in a statement over the weekend.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the calls were made to 911. Magoveny-Terrone called the police departments at their non-emergency numbers.
Celebrating Passover doesnt have to mean sitting at a table inside someones home, surrounded by family members. A Passover seder can be held outdoors, under the stars.

Just ask Newtown resident Diana Sarna.

Sarna has spent the last 10 Passovers very far away from home  in Nicaragua.

Every spring vacation, she takes approximately 20 students from Fox Lane High School in Bedford, N.Y, where she teaches English, on a service trip to build homes through the international, nonprofit organization Bridges to Community.

The first time she went, we were invited to a seder through the Jewish Temple Shaaray Tefila in Bedford, N.Y., that had gone a few months before, said Sarna, who has two daughters  Audra, 25 and Lauren, 23  with her husband, Ira.

Sarnas group drove 45 minutes from their work site to take part in the seder. We arrived in the flatbed of a pickup truck, she said.

They had this small little group that did a Passover and I was asked to participate in it. There is no temple large enough to have a seder over there, so the seder was held outdoors, under the stars. They put out folding tables under some arbors, Sarna said.

There were about 35 people from all over the world who had somehow found themselves in Nicaragua for Passover, said Sarna, adding that it also happened to be Easter week.

Since there was no rabbi, one of the Jewish men who was a leader down there, did the seder with the local parish priests, Sarna said.

It was tropical. We were all in sundresses under the stars, she added.

Sarna wore her daughter Audras kippot that Audra had worn at her bat mitzvah.

Audras kippot added to the colorful patchwork quilt of cultures and faiths, she said.

A number of the children who went with them were Catholic and had never been to a seder before.

During the seder, everyone had parts reading in multiple languages. We sang songs in Hebrew, English, Spanish and Ladino, which is a westernized Spanish-speaking Latin American language, she said.

On another occasion, while in Nicaragua, Sarnas group was invited to spend Passover with a group of evangelicals at their church.

The evangelicals said they loved Israel and they would really love if someone Jewish came at Passover to celebrate with them, according to Sarna.

It was an hour drive in the moonlight to this church, Sarna said. When we walked in the doors, they started blowing a giant shofar.

Sarna had brought a letter that her rabbi (Stefan Tiwy from the United Jewish Center in Danbury) wrote, wishing them a happy Holy Week, which includes both Passover and Easter.

They played the hora and we all got up and danced for 20 minutes straight, Sarna said.

Sarna said her seders in Nicaragua has been life-changing experiences. This year, due to civil unrest there, Sarna will head to the Dominican Republic for Passover.

The seder in Nicaragua will always be special. We were praying outdoors under the stars  an interfaith group from around the world, all praying and sharing a meal together, she said.

Exchange student

Aside from spending Passover far from home, Sarna has also brought those from afar into her home.

For the past 30 years, Sarna has been a volunteer with AFS, an international high school exchange organization. We have hosted many people in our house over the years, she said.

Fifteen years ago, she hosted a Muslim exchange student from Malaysia named Natasha, who stayed with Sarnas family for five months.

Sarnas father-in-law, who was a Holocaust survivor, came to the familys Passover seder. He was in a Russian work camp and part of the Polish underground during World War II, according to Sarna.

They were seated side-by-side, reading the prayers, she said.

Its what exchange is all about, the idea of building bridges through intercultural understanding. To host a girl from a culture so different from our own, and to see her sitting beside my father-in-law, who was a Holocaust survivor, was pretty remarkable.
In 1936, Connecticut's governor, Wilbur Cross, commissioned a Survey of the Human Resources of Connecticut that seemed better suited to Nazi Germany than the Constitution State. The survey classified state residents based on 21 factors including race and citizenship. A 1938 report based on the survey called for weeding out, either through forced deportation or sterilization, immigrants and various ethnic groups, as well as those thought to suffer from a variety of supposed disabilities including mild vision impairment.

When I first heard about it, I thought it was a conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, it's true, in all its ugliness.

The eugenics movement, which would ultimately inspire Adolf Hitler, was born in the second half of the 1800s. Inspired by Charles Darwin's work, his half-cousin, Francis Galton, theorized that successful people could strengthen the human race by breeding with other successful people. Galton coined the term "eugenics" in 1883 from the Greek word for "well-born." His work inspired widespread eugenics research and found many receptive ears in the U.S.

In 1909, Connecticut became one of several states to enact a sterilization law, by which those believed to have handicaps or mental illnesses could be sterilized without their consent. Between 1909 and 1963, more than 500 people were sterilized this way.

This practice was only one of several ways eugenics infected the state. The American Eugenics Society was housed in New Haven with an office overlooking the city's green, and the state was home to many outspoken proponents of the movement, including Yale economics professor Irving Fisher, often hailed as the greatest U.S. economist in history.

Of course, Connecticut was not alone. Across the Sound on Long Island, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory housed the Eugenics Record Office of Charles Davenport and Harry H. Laughlin, two prominent eugenicists. Research conducted by Laughlin and Davenport was used to justify the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited dramatically the number of immigrants allowed to enter the country from Southern and Eastern Europe. The term "moron" entered the lexicon in the early 1900s due to research from eugenist Henry H. Goddard.

The practice of forced sterilization of the "unfit" in Connecticut and across the country was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case. "It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. ... Three generations of imbeciles are enough," wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in his infamous opinion in the case.

However, the Connecticut survey of the 1930s stands out, even in that era, for its disturbing ambition. In 1935, an act of the state's legislature called for the formation of a commission to, in the words of its title, Study the Laws and Facilities of Connecticut Pertaining to the Prevention, Treatment and Care of Mental Defects and Disease and Allied Problems. Gov. Cross signed the act into law, and the commission was established in 1936 and appointed Laughlin, from the Eugenics Record Office, to commence the study. Laughlin set up shop in the State Office Building in Hartford, and with some assistants began collecting data on state residents.

"Laughlin's plan was to sterilize approximately 175,000 Connecticut residents  or about 10 percent of the state's population," writes Edwin Black, a journalist and author. "To save expense, others would not be sterilized but simply thrown out of the state. Immigrants would be deported to their native countries. Unfit Americans would be expelled to their family's original locale."

In recent years, Black's 2003 book War Against the Weak and an updated version released in 2012 have helped shine a light on the mostly forgotten survey.

Fortunately, after its completion in 1938, the report seems to have had little impact. It was not published and does not appear to have been widely circulated. More recently, there has been debate about the level of responsibility Cross bears for the direction the survey ultimately took.

In 2014, Linwood Branham Sr., an organizer of the Society of Former Slaves and Freemen, called for a discussion of whether the New Haven high school and parkway bearing Cross' name should be removed. The effort garnered media attention, but the high school and parkway's names remain unchanged.

Even though it went nowhere, the very existence of the survey, along with the forced sterilizations, remain a shameful piece of Connecticut history that deserves to be better remembered. No matter how unsettling that memory might be.

This article appeared in the March 2019 issue of Connecticut Magazine.
If Connecticut is to meet its self-imposed goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it will not happen via increased use of natural gas.

The threat of global climate change goes far beyond Connecticut, but it would be wrong to say we dont have a part to play in allaying its worst impacts. We have a responsibility to do all we can, because, as we have seen, the effects will be felt not only in future but are happening today, in the form of extreme weather, more severe storms and threats to coastal communities.

It will only get worse. Connecticut has made laws pledging a reduction in the kinds of emissions that cause global warming, and needs to increase its efforts. The state must move away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. Technology is already available, and costs are dropping rapidly, but its up to the state to make the process go faster.

Natural gas was long considered by some to be safer for the environment as compared to coal or oil, but the difference, evidence has shown, is not enough to make a difference in climate change, and by some accounts may make matters worse.

As an important step, the state must eliminate a law that would put all citizens on the hook to pay for a new pipeline importing natural gas. There is not currently a plan for a pipeline, but according to legislation passed several years ago, the state can make such a move and charge the people for it.

A new pipeline isnt needed, and the state should remove the temptation to build one by passing the Pipeline Tax Repeal Bill.

In Massachusetts, a similar law that would have required all ratepayers  not just those who use natural gas  pay for a new pipeline was struck down. That would put the burden of paying for a new pipeline, should it ever arise, even more on the backs of Connecticut residents. The Legislature should ensure it never comes to that.

The mix of energy sources Connecticut relies on to keep the lights burning has changed quickly in recent years. The demand for more natural gas is down and is likely to keep declining, even as new natural-gas-burning plants continue to open and be proposed. The state needs to put a halt to that trend, understand that natural gas is not the way of the future, and close off any path toward importing even more fossil fuels.

As the sources of Connecticuts energy have changed, so too has efficiency increased. Electric cars still are rare today, but will become more common in years to come. Were using less energy and finding better ways to procure it. There is vast potential to increase our production from wind-powered facilities in Long Island Sound.

The state doesnt need a new pipeline, and the ability to charge state residents for it should be rescinded.
Gov. Ned Lamont predicted on Monday that David Lehman, the controversial former Wall Street executive whose nomination has lingered for weeks amid pushback in the General Assembly, will be confirmed as the next commissioner for economic development.

Speaking after an unrelated event at Quinnipiac University, Lamont said that Lehman is already focused on the task at hand, and is visiting towns and cities throughout the state, in an acting capacity, to lay the foundation for a revival of Connecticuts business climate and recruitment.

Lets face it, we have not done a very good job in this state when it comes to economic development, job creation, working with the business community, working with labor, doing everything we can to attract and grow jobs in this state, Lamont said. Were near the bottom of the barrel across 50 states going back a generation. Ive asked a very different type of person to help lead our economic development efforts: David Lehman.

Lamont said Lehman has plans on how to attract more businesses and development so-called opportunity zones in cities.

I think he can speak the language of the business community in a way that is sort of special for this state, Lamont said, confirming his confidence that Lehman will win confirmation. He gives us the best chance to get this state going again. Hes going to all the communities across the state. Hes going to Bridgeport, hes meeting with community leaders. He takes this very seriously. Hes going to get the job done.

Lamont and Lehman have been pressing the nomination in the Senate, the only legislative body that needs to act on it. The governor has been calling senators, while Lehman has met privately with nearly all of the Senates 36 members.

Im cautiously optimistic and hopeful, Lehman said late Monday, declining to handicap which way any senators were leaning.

"Ive met basically every Democratic senator save for one that Im trying to get together with, he said Monday. All the conversations Ive had have been very good and productive."

Hes also met with many Republicans and has had a strong presence at the Capitol to answer questions. Lehman met, for example, with a group of constituents of Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, last week in East Hartford.

As for Senators who have decided not to support him, Lehman said, No one has said that to me directly but some have indicated they are still on the fence and have not made a final decision if they can support me or not." On his experience in public infrastructure, he said, "Maybe it wasnt emphasized as much as it should have been."

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, also believes Lehman will win confirmation. I believe he will pass and that the governors office has done its job in order to help introduce Mr. Lehman to Democratic senators, Duff said Monday.

Senate Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said Monday that a vote is likely to be scheduled for next week.

We havent caucused it yet, Looney said in a Monday phone interview. We wanted to give Mr. Lehman ample time to meet with members. Looney said that he hasnt made a final decision on the nomination. Were still doing due diligence, looking at the record accumulated over the years and the investigations contemporaneous to this and slightly after.

He expects Lehman to have reached out to the entire Senate by the end of the week. Democrats control the chamber 22-14, and several Democrats have voiced concern about Lehmans role with Goldman Sachs during the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

Dan Haar contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON -- A former Defense Intelligence Agency officer pleaded guilty to attempting to give national defense information to Chinese intelligence agents, the Department of Justice announced.

Agents from a Chinese intelligence service recruited Ron Rockwell Hansen, 58, of Syracuse, Utah, in 2014 and he met with them regularly in China to discuss information of interest to them, Hansen admitted in his plea agreement, according to a Justice Department statement issued Friday. He was given hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Chinese intelligence agents for the information, including from industry conferences, that he provided.

The Defense Intelligence Agency hired Hansen in 2006 as a civilian intelligence case officer, according to the Justice Department. He is a retired Army warrant officer with a background in signals and human intelligence and he speaks fluent Mandarin-Chinese and Russian.

Between May 24, 2016 and June 2, 2018, Hansen requested national defense information from a DIA intelligence case officer that he knew would be valuable to the Chinese agents, according to the statement.

"Hansen agreed to act as a conduit to sell that information to the Chinese. Hansen advised the DIA case officer how to record and transmit classified information without detection, and explained how to hide and launder any funds received as payment for classified information," the Justice Department said.

The case officer reported Hansen to DIA and became a confidential FBI source.

Hansen met with the DIA officer on June 2, 2018 and received documents with classified national defense information that he requested, Hansen also admitted in his plea agreement. The information was "related to United States military readiness in a particular region," the Justice Department said.

After looking at the documents, Hansen told the DIA case officer that he was going to hide some of his notes "in the text of an electronic document" before he took a flight to China, according to the Justice Department.

"Hansen intended to provide the information he received to the agents of the Chinese intelligence service with whom he had been meeting, and Hansen knew that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of a foreign nation," the statement said.

On Friday, Hansen pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to gather or deliver national defense information to aid a foreign government, according to the Justice Department, and his plea agreement calls for a 15-year sentence. He will be sentenced Sept. 24.

The Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment Monday on the case, according to an agency spokesman, directing requests for statements to the U.S. attorneys office in Utah.
American Airlines and its regional subsidiary Envoy Air had the worst record for damaging passengers' wheelchairs and power scooters in December, while SkyWest and Delta had the best, mishandling less than 1 percent of those transported, according to information now available in a federal consumer air travel report.

Data on mishandled wheelchairs and scooters first appeared in the Air Travel Consumer Report issued in February, the same monthly Department of Transportation report that relays information on flight delays, passenger complaints and animal deaths involving U.S. airlines.

Advocacy groups, including the Paralyzed Veterans of America, have pressed for years that the information be included in the report. The February summary covers the period from Dec. 4-31, 2018. In all, 701 chairs, or roughly 2 percent of the 32,209 transported, were reported damaged.

Shaun Castle, a retired Army sergeant who serves as PVA deputy executive director, said the information is crucial for persons with disabilities in deciding which airlines "will take care of them."

"This is important, not only to the 20,000 members of our organization, but to all people who use a wheelchair or mobility device," Castle said. "When you are trying to decide which airline to fly as a consumer, you want to know if it's friendly to those with disabilities."

Those who require a wheelchair or scooter usually are allowed to travel to their gate in their own chairs but then must be transferred to a special chair to transfer to the aircraft. Their personal devices may be stored in the cabin, if they are collapsible. More often, however, they are stowed with the baggage.

And thats where the damage can occur, according to Castle.

"I've had to deal with my wheelchair rims being bent or hubs missing parts, side guards damaged," he said. In one instance, he added, his titanium wheelchairs crossbar was broken, requiring a $2,000 repair.

Damage to power chairs, the type used by many quadriplegics, can run upward of $10,000.

"Knowing which airline is going to take care of me, take care of my equipment, is very very important. ... My wheelchair is my legs. If you break my wheelchair, I can't go anywhere," Castle said.

Disabled passengers are protected by the Air Carrier Access Act, which prohibits airlines from refusing to transport a passenger based on a disability. But under the ACAA, disabled passengers also cannot take legal action against an airline they believe has violated their rights -- they can only file a complaint with the airline or the Transportation Department.

In 2016, more than 26,000 complaints were filed against U.S. airlines by passengers with disabilities. The majority of the complaints involved failures by the airlines to provide assistance or inadequate seating. But nearly 1,200 complaints involved the airlines' handling of an assistance device, including wheelchairs, according to the Department of Transportation.

In his blog on WheelchairTravel.org, John Morris noted that the data published for December doesn't provide a full picture of damage caused to wheelchairs during the month, as the information submitted by Southwest Airlines and American Airlines was incomplete.

"As more data is received and the sample size grows, we should gain a clearer picture of which airlines are treating wheelchairs and scooters with the greatest care and respect and which would be best to avoid," said Morris, who uses a power chair for mobility.

A spokeswoman for Delta Airlines said the company's advisory board on disability has been actively engaged in developing and refining policies affecting customers with disabilities.

"Delta is committed to providing the highest level of care and service to all our customers," Olivia Mayes said. "We are acutely focused on continuous improvement in our assistive device-handling processes, as we know they are critically important to many of our customers."

According to the data, Delta transported the highest volume of wheelchairs and scooters of any of the 12 airlines in the December report: 11,838. It recorded 105 mishaps, the second-to-lowest damage rate reported at .89 percent.

Castle says he looks forward to future reports, which will contribute significantly to protecting consumers with disabilities.

"We hope this accountability will inspire airlines to improve procedures to accommodate the more than 20 million Americans who have mobility disabilities," Castle said.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @patricia.kime.

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A billionaire philanthropist has donated $25 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide genetic tests for veterans to help tailor their medical treatments and medications.

The VA and Denny Sanford, a South Dakota banker and Air Force Reserve veteran, announced the gift March 12. The money is expected to help up to 250,000 veterans through 2022, starting with those who have received a cancer diagnosis.

According to Sanford Health, the hospital system named for Sanford after he donated $400 million in 2007, the gift will fund the testing program, called Pharmacogenomics Action for Cancer Survivorship, or PHASeR. It aims to use a veteran's DNA to determine personalized treatment and reduce costly adverse drug reactions.

During the announcement of the donation at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said the gift will help shape future treatment for all veterans who receive care at VA.

"The pharmacogenetic testing that we are going to be using as a result of Mr. Sanford's generosity is critical for our nation's veterans," Wilkie said. "We are all committed to active engagement with medicine and science ... to bring our veterans the very best care."

Dr. Deepak Voora, with the Duke University School of Medicine's Center for Applied Genomics and Precision Medicine, will oversee the program; a pilot is expected to launch at the Durham, N.C. VA Health System later this year.

"As a physician, it's hard to predict exactly how a patient will respond to a medicine," Voora said at the announcement event. "But this pharmacogenetic testing program can change that by indicating how patients might respond to medications before they even take them."

He added that specialized pharmacogenetic testing largely has been out of reach for VA patients due to cost.

The program is expected to be available at 125 sites by 2022. Test will be taken at local VA facilities and processed at a Sanford Health facility in South Dakota. The tests will examine genetic markers to determine how patients tolerate and metabolize different types of drugs, including antidepressants, blood thinners and pain medications.

Sanford Health plans to supplement Sanford's gift with a matching fundraising effort.

"We recognize that our patients who are veterans are coming to us with something special on their mind and in their experiences," Sanford Health CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft said. "This is a natural way for all of us at Sanford Health to give back."

Denny Sanford, 83, made his fortune, estimated by Forbes to be at $2.2 billion, in banking and credit card companies. He said on Fox News Sunday on March 17 that he plans to die broke, having given away his fortune. To date, he has donated $1.6 billion to causes that include health care research and services, neglected children, the University of Minnesota, education, the San Diego Children's Zoo, stem cell and breast cancer research.

"It's a joy to help other people," he told Chris Wallace. "I will die broke. Everything is committed to different organizations."

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @patricia.kime.
We wanted to choose this book as the author lives in Chicago and last summer was the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission and this summer will be the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission (that landed on the moon), Peterson said. The book is the story of the men and their families that made the mission possible and it was a far reach, given the geo-political push at the time.
Key

List of minerals for each chemical element

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

This page contains all mineral locality references listed on mindat.org. This does not claim to be a complete list. If you know of more minerals from this site, please register so you can add to our database. This locality information is for reference purposes only. You should never attempt to visit any sites listed in mindat.org without first ensuring that you have the permission of the land and/or mineral rights holders for access and that you are aware of all safety precautions necessary.

This small, private quarry is located on the boundary between the uppermost levels of the Codden Hill Cherts and the overlaying Crackington Formation. It is occasionally worked for aggregate.The friable, finely fractured siltstones and mudstones of the quarry contain occasional fossils, lenticular phosphate nodules (fish-bone & chiton coprolites) and what have been tentatively identified as ocean-floor manganese nodules.There is some evidence of phosphate mineralisation at this location.The quarry is occasionally worked for aggregate. The farmer who owns the quarry lives nearby and he will ask anyone who has not asked permission to leave.
DEXTER TOWNSHIP, MI -- A man suspected of brazenly walking inside a Dexter Township home while the residents were inside and stealing a purse has been arrested in Ohio, according to the Woodhaven Police Department, which investigated a similar incident believed to involve the same suspect in suburban Detroit.

The suspect entered the Dexter Township home about 11 a.m. March 11, his image captured on in-home surveillance cameras. Footage was subsequently shared via social media, and Woodhaven police on March 14 said the suspect had been spotted in that community.

A message seeking further details was left with the Washtenaw County Sheriffs office.

The suspect was described as a nearly 60-year-old black man with a heavy build and a medium to dark complexion. He was described as bald, but with hair on the sides and back of his head. He was last seen wearing a black jacket, gray patterned sweater, black pants and dark dress shoes.

The suspect fled in a maroon Ford vehicle.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Washtenaw County Sheriffs Office confidential tip line at 734-973-7711 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-Speak-Up.
ALGER COUNTY, MI  Two snowmobilers were killed when they collided head-on in Michigans Upper Peninsula.

WLUC-TV6 reports the crash occurred at 9:25 p.m. Monday on Trail No. 8 one mile north of Samuelson Road in Alger Countys Rock River Township.

Both riders were ejected from their machines following the head-on collision, the TV station reported.

Efforts to revive the snowmobilers were unsuccessful and they were pronounced dead at the scene. Excessive speed is believed to be the cause of the crash, police said.

The names of the victims have not been released pending notification of family.

The Alger County Sheriffs Office was assisted at the scene by Alger County EMS, Alger County Rescue 21, Rock River Fire Department, Rock First First Responders, and Valley Med Flight.
MENOMINEE TOWNSHIP, MI - A body found in a river in the Upper Peninsulas Menominee Township has been identified as a South Dakota woman who had been missing for nearly three weeks. Authorities in her home state say theyve made an arrest on murder charges in connection to the case.

Authorities in Yankton County, South Dakota have identified the woman as Tammy LaFramboise, 46, according to WLUC.

She was last seen March 1 at her apartment, just west of Yankton, according to KTIV.

Her body was found Saturday in an undisclosed river in Menominee County. That site is about 640 miles from Yankton County, S.D.

Sheriffs officials there say they have arrested Stephen Robert Falkenberg, 45, according to station KSFY. He was taken into custody in Sioux Falls Monday and charged with second-degree murder. He remains lodged in the Yankton County Jail.
DETROIT -- A member of the Detroit police department was found guilty on a charge of misdemeanor assault and battery for repeatedly hitting a woman in an emergency room triage unit, according to the Associated Press. A jury found 47-year-old Dewayne Jones guilty Tuesday of hitting a 29-year-old woman multiple times while she was being treated at Detroit Receiving Hospital.

Video of the incident shows Jones hitting the woman several times, but witnesses also say she spat at Jones, yelled profanities at staff and bit an officer during the incident. Naked and unarmed while Jones was hitting her, the woman was being restrained by another officer and hospital staff during the assault.

Jones was suspended for the incident, but later reinstated at a lower rank. A previous felony misconduct charge related to the case was also dropped. Jones faces up to 93 days in jail for his conviction. He will be sentenced on May 1.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential photographer David Hume Kennerlys exhibit Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford will be on display for the first time at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids.

The exhibit is scheduled to open on March 25, with a ribbon-cutting at 5 p.m. and a presentation at 7 p.m. featuring Kennerly and Fords daughter Susan Ford Bales.

Davids work not only captured historic images of our fathers presidency, but also the personal side of our family, said Bales. We are blessed to have this beautiful photography available and open for the public to view.

Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford follows Fords presidency from the day he was appointed vice president to the end of his presidency. The exhibit is a collection of behind-closed-door images by Fords personal White House photographer, including the inner workings of the White House, the Ford family, and the end of Fords presidency after losing to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election.

Mr. Kennerlys unprecedented access to President Ford and his family offers a candid look into historic events surrounding some of our nations darkest times while highlighting the presidents efforts to heal the country, said Elaine Didier, director, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum. We are honored to have these images on display and give the public an opportunity to view history as seen through the eyes of one of the nations highest-regarded photographers.

In 1972, Kennerly was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for a portfolio of his photos from the Vietnam War, the Ali-Frazier fight, refugees from East Pakistan in India, and combat in Cambodia. Two years later, at age 27, he accepted an appointment to serve as Ford's chief presidential photographer.

I photographed every major event during President Fords time in office. I think the most important image that emerged from the thousands of photos was a close-up portrait of the presidents humanity, said Kennerly. It is a privilege to bring these images to the home of President Ford and allow the community to experience his presidency and the Ford familys personal side.

Kennerly was named One of the 100 Most Important People in Photography, by American Photo Magazine. He served as contributing editor for Newsweek for more than a decade and a contributing photographer for Time and Life magazines.

He covered the 2016 presidential campaign for CNN, and was a major contributor to the networks book, Unprecedented: The Election that Changed Everything. His exclusive photo of Trump taken two weeks after he was elected was featured on the cover.

Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford will be on display through Sept. 2. The March 25 ribbon-cutting and presentation are free and open for the public to attend.
A Medal of Honor recipient from Michigan will have a guided-missile destroyer named after him, the United States Navy announced on Monday.

The future Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, DDG 130, will be named in honor of Hospital Corpsman Master Chief William Charette, a native of Ludington, who fell on a grenade to shield a wounded Marine during a battle in North Korea on March 27, 1953.

The actions of Hospital Corpsman William Charette will neither be forgotten or diminished, Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer said in a statement.

Charette put himself at extreme risk during intense combat to render aid to Marines in need. His efforts saved lives and I am honored that his legacy will live on in the future USS William Charette.

Charette joined the Navy in 1951 and served in the Korean War in the Fleet Marine Force as a hospital corpsman attached to Company F, Third Platoon, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

His heroic actions took place when Chinese soldiers in North Korea attacked and overran two of three Marine hill outposts.

During a counterattack, an enemy grenade landed near Charette, who was providing aid to a wounded Marine. Charette placed himself on top of the Marine to shield him from the explosion.

The blast rendered Charette unconscious but when he awoke, he continued to aid Marines, including using torn parts of his uniform in order to dress battle wounds, his own battle vest to shield a wounded Marine, and exposing himself to incoming rounds in order to carry wounded Marines to safety.

All five enlisted Sailors who received the Medal of Honor for actions during the Korean War were Navy hospital corpsmen attached to the Marine Corps, but Charette was the only living recipient.

He died on March 18, 2012, due to complications from heart surgery.

The ship named for Charette will be constructed at Bath Iron Works, a division of General Dynamics in Bath, Maine. The 509-foot long vessel will have a beam length of 59 feet and will be capable of operating at speeds in excess of 30 knots.

The future USS William Charette will be a Flight III destroyer, capable of fighting air, surface and subsurface battles simultaneously.

It will contain a combination of offensive and defensive weapon systems designed to support maritime warfare, including integrated air and missile defense and vertical launch capabilities.
ANN ARBOR, MI -- Get rid of old medicines and their packaging and keep waste out of landfills during a Safe Medication Disposal event, hosted by UM College of Pharmacy.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2, students will collect unused and expired medications, to keep potentially harmful substances out of the environment, according to the UM College of Pharmacy.

The @UMichPharmacy safe medication disposal event is in  weeks!

Stop by Ingalls Mall or the Towsley Center at @umichmedicine on April 2 from 10am-2pm to dispose of unwanted medications. Sharps and sharps containers will also be accepted.

More info: https://t.co/nxrS7RNOMl pic.twitter.com/aGPkCSA77h  U-M DPSS (@umichdpss) March 19, 2019

Prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, vitamins, ointments and lotions, inhalers, antibiotics and steroids are being accepted on central campus at Ingalls Mall North, 881 N. University Ave., and Triangle Connector Link Towsley Center at the Michigan Medicine Hospital, 1500 E. Medical Center Drive.

This year, sharps -- any device or object used to puncture or lacerate the skin -- and sharps containers are also being accepted. Items not accepted include sunscreen, make up or hair products, aerosol cans, blood or infectious waste.

For a full list of accepted and unaccepted items, and a map of the disposal locations, visit the UM College of Pharmacy website.
Finally, Ann Williams will take over as the districts chief financial officer/chief school business official. Williams currently serves on the SFO Certification Commission for the Association of School Business Officials International and the Foundation Governance Board of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials. Williams has trained more than 150 school board members in fiscal accountability, East Aurora officials told those in attendance Monday. She has 20 years experience in finance and operations and will make $160,000 per year.
GRAND BLANC TWP, MI -- A Grand Blanc Township chiropractor is accused inappropriately touching a patient during a recent visit.

Charles Arthur Jackson, 66, was arraigned Friday, March 15 in Genesee Countys 67th District Court on two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Grand Blanc township police received a complaint in late February in which the alleged female victim told police Jackson made inappropriate physical contact with her during a recent examination at the Jackson Chiropractor Clinic, 2455 E. Hill Road.

An investigation was launched and a report was turned over to the county prosecutors office for review which led to the charges.

Jackson was arrested March 13 at his office and lodged in the Genesee County Jail.

Township police Sgt. Marcus Ferguson noted theres a slew of complaints coming in from other potential victims since the case came to light.

The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs currently has four open complaints against Jackson, but no additional details were available due to the ongoing investigation. He still holds an active license to practice.

Jackson was issued a $20,000 personal recognizance bond and ordered not to have any contact with the alleged victim, according to district court records.

Hes due back in court March 28 for a probable cause conference.
FLINT, MI-- Flint Mayor Karen Weaver and members of the city council could be getting a raise soon.

The Local Officers Compensation Commission voted at a Feb. 8 meeting to increase council members current annual salary and customary benefits. Flint City Council received a memorandum about the vote Feb. 20.

Council members are given a 30-day grace period to introduce a resolution rejecting the raises with a two-thirds vote. If council doesnt reject the resolution, it is adopted, according to the citys charter.

Weavers salary would increase from $91,801 to $125,000 unless council rejects it.

City Council President and 6th Ward Councilman Herb Winfreys salary would increase from $20,855 to $23,572 and City Council Vice President and 7th Ward Councilwoman Monica Galloways salary would increase from $20,380 to $23,035. Regular council members $19,907 salary would increase to $22,500.

There remains confusion among those interviewed by The Flint Jounal-MLive about whether both sets of raises will go into effect March 22 -- 30 days after the Feb. 8 vote -- or if the date was reset on council raises when the compensation commission met again.

Flint City Clerk Inez Brown referred questions to the compensation commissions chairperson, Loyst Fletcher, whom declined to comment.

First Ward Councilman Eric Mays said the March 15 meeting was to discuss benefits for council more thoroughly, which could have potentially restarted the 30-day grace period for council raises.

It would not have affected the mayors potential raise, however. Mays said Weavers raise should go into effect on March 22 unless its rejected by city council in a special meeting before Friday.

I dont think there are enough votes to reject her raise, Mays said. I wouldnt vote to reject it."

As for council raises, Mays said he would vote to reject them because it isnt enough. He contends the grace period was, in fact, reset at the March 15 meeting.

Our 30-day period restarted when they met on Friday, Mays said. "I would vote to reject our determination and sending them back to the drawing board. My position is seeing councils salary increase to $28,000 and working full-time.

Mays said hes not trying to increase anyones pay, but rather fix the salaries for the position that were broken when emergency managers stepped in to address Flints financial crisis nearly a decade ago. Pay and benefits for the mayor and all nine city council members were eliminated by emergency managers in 2011.

In April 2013, the emergency manager allowed Flints mayor and city council to have some of their powers restored and part of their pay re-instituted.

Pay for the mayor increased from $55,000 to $82,500 while the pay for each council member rose from $7,000 annually to $10,500 on June 20, 2014 when former Emergency Manager Darnell Earley signed a resolution allowing the raises.

In April 2015 former Emergency Manager Jerry Ambrose restored the mayors salary to $91,801. He also restored $20,856 for the council president, $20,381 for the vice president and $19,907 for the other seven council members.

The Flint Local Officers Compensation Commission is comprised of seven members registered to vote in Flint and appointed by the mayor. City council is responsible for approving the appointments.

Individuals or businesses contracted to do work with the city in the past year cannot be appointed or maintain membership on the commission. Family members or employees of the legislative, judicial or executive branch of government are not allowed on the commission.

When filing a determination of salary increases with the city clerk, the commission is required to report the total compensation of similar positions in cities of similar population.

Similarly, the city of Ann Arbor received raises after a resolution to reject its local officers compensation commissions determination failed with a city council 6-5 vote in 2017. The citys population is 121,477 compared to Flints population of 94,144, according to census data.

Salaries for Ann Arbor City Council members, $16,232, and mayor, $43,285, increased by 2.2 percent for the next two years after the vote. It should be noted that Ann Arbor has a weak-mayor form of government with a full-time city administrator. Flint has a strong-mayor form of government. Comparatively, council members in Livonia, with a population of 96,942, have a $17,270 salary. City council members in Westland, with a population of 84,094, have a salary of $16,251, according to data complied by the Ann Arbor Local Officers Compensation Commission in 2017.

Mays said he expects city council to discuss Flints Local Officers Compensation Commissions determination for council raises at its Thursday, March 21 committee meetings.
FLINT TOWNSHIP, MI - A Russian man accused of breaking into the Flint Township home of a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor and killing him is headed to trial Aug. 20.

Dmitri Zavalnitski, 32, is charged with first-degree felony murder, first- and second-degree home invasion and possession of burglary tool and marijuana. Russian interpreters were requested for witnesses appearing at a Monday, March 18, pretrial in Judge Kelly Behms courtroom.

The charges are related to the death of Leonid Yufa, who was found deceased in his home in the 4400 block of Lennington Court on Dec. 19, 2017.

Flint Township Police officers were called to Yufas home around 10:15 p.m. on reports of a medical emergency, Flint Township Police Detective Sgt. Brad Wangler previously said. When they arrived, they found Yufa was dead.

Evidence at the scene indicated foul play, and the Michigan State Police Crime Lab was called in to process the scene, Wangler said.

At this time, investigators believe Yufa died of asphyxiation.

Yufa, who was born in 1938, escaped with his family from Ukraine during the German invasion of the former Soviet Union in WWII, according to an interview from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Yufa and his family hid out in Siberia, where his family struggled for work and food, according to a previous article by The Flint Journal.

Yufa and his wife, Nina, immigrated to the Flint area in 1993 through Flints Russian Resettlement Program, a program spearheaded by Jewish Family & Childrens Services.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI  Longtime Grand Rapids businessman Raleigh J. Finkelstein is donating $2 million to Grand Rapids Community College to transform its Main Building into a 21st-century learning environment.

During a Board of Trustees meeting Monday, March 18, the school board recognized Finkelsteins generosity by voting to rename the Main Building after him.

Mr. Finkelsteins gift will not only allow our iconic building to continue serving our faculty, staff and students long into its next 100 years, but it will allow us to serve them better, said GRCC President Bill Pink.

He and his family have a long, vibrant history in Grand Rapids, and I know he has a passion for helping all students improve their lives through education, so they can reach their academic and career goals.

Raleigh J. Finkelstein Hall will appear in big blue letters on the Main Building with GRCCs name below it. The five-story building, located at 143 Bostick Ave. NE, houses classes for more than 5,200 students each week.

Michigan Clothiers, started by Finkelsteins parents, became MC Sporting Goods. Finklestein and his brothers grew the company into the one of the largest retail operations of its kind.

After the chain was sold, the brothers branched out into other endeavors including real estate  REM Real Estate is active in properties throughout the region. Raleigh Finkelstein also previously served as chairman of Arbor Mortgage, a company he helped form.

Renovations to the Main Building are expected to start in 2021.

Officials say the college will reconfigure existing spaces to meet program needs and provide additional classrooms, revitalize labs and art studios, create more and quieter study spaces, and establish a dedicated space to support technology-based learning.

I want to keep the educational progress going here, Finkelstein told MLive prior to the vote to change the name.

GRCC is doing a good job. The world is changing, and I hope they will be able to get improvements and updates that will make it a nicer place to get educated.

Grand Valley State Universitys latest addition to the Medical Mile also carries Finkelsteins name. Raleigh J. Finkelstein Hall opened last spring.

The $37.5 million building, located at 500 Lafayette Ave., includes classroom, laboratory and office space to support the College of Health Professions and Kirkhof College of Nursing.

This is a very philanthropic community and Ive joined it, Finkelstein said.

Built in 1923 as Davis Technical High School, the Main Building became part of Grand Rapids Junior College in 1944. The configuration of many of its classrooms has not changed, limiting how it can be used.

GRCC officials say the redesigned academic and career development floors in the Main Building will improve efficiency by providing streamlined student enrollment and academic counseling areas, offer dedicated space for veteran student services, and engaging employers in the re-entry process for a vital workforce population.

Helping students thrive in the modern world calls for modern facilities to help us grow and meet changing needs, Pink said.

Im excited at this opportunity, as we have not only gained a generous gift from a new friend of the college, but the change to preserve and improve a campus icon so it can be enjoyed by students, staff and faculty for decades to come.
UPDATE: The school board opted to only interview Devon Horton and Adrian Talley on April 8.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI  The Grand Rapids Board of Education is extending an invitation to a fifth candidate to interview to replace retiring Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal, officials say.

Until confirmed for a Monday, March 25 interview, the candidates name is not being revealed. He or she was among six candidates originally invited to interview Saturday, March 16, but a funeral conflict prevented acceptance.

During a retreat Monday, March 18, the school board also decided to invite two of four candidates interviewed Saturday back for a second round of interviews on Monday, April 8:

Adrian Talley, Director of Community Schools for Prince Georges County Public Schools in Maryland. A district of more than 130,000 students.

Devon Horton, Chief of Schools for Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, KY. A district of approximately 101,000 students.

If the fifth candidate the board all wanted to meet is interviewed, he or she could be added to the second round of interviews.

We are all just wanting to be so intentional about this selection and making sure that we are looking at it from all angles and really choosing the best candidate, said Kristian Grant, school board president.

We are going to make sure we take our time and go through the process to find the right person.

On April 8, prior to the evening interviews, the school board also plans to host focus groups with parents and community members, teachers and administrators, and students. A format is being developed for that engagement.

The board was to interview five candidates Saturday but Aaron Johnson, Associate Superintendent for Instruction at Farmington Public Schools and only Michigan candidate, withdrew from consideration Friday.

The school board discussed Saturdays interviews, the 30 applicants for the position and those who didnt seek the job with representatives from the Michigan Association of School Board (MASB), hired to conduct the search. No internal candidates from the district applied.

There was some discussion about restarting the search, something the City of Grand Rapids did before hiring City Manager Mark Washington.

The option was raised because while some members saw real strengths in two or three of the candidates interviewed, they still had some reservations, primarily around their level of experience.

For example, Talley and Horton have been in their current positions for less than a year. They were the top two choices because of the work in positions they held previously.

Prior to his September appointment as director of community schools, Talley was the executive director for student services for Prince Georges County Public Schools. He also was Principal Deputy Director and Associate Director of Education for the Department of Defense Schools for three years.

Horton has been chief of schools for Jefferson County Public Schools since June. Previously, he was deputy superintendent at the East St. Louis 189 School District for four years and an educator in Chicago Public Schools the 14 years prior.

School board member Tony Baker said he wanted to get to know the men more in the second round of interviews to further evaluate their capacity to take over the district.

Like others, I wish that we had 100 candidates for this and that we had a greater level of diversity and higher level of confidence and that we had an ideal person, but we didnt, said school board member Jose Flores.

Flores said there are no perfect candidates and doesnt want to see a failed search. He said he would be concerned about potentially losing the candidates they think are strong by restarting the search process before engaging in second round of interviews.

School board member Kymberlie Davis said she was hoping to leave the interviews Saturday "fired up and excited'' but she didnt. She said she wasnt sure if she just needed to learn more about them or if perhaps her expectations were too high for the first round.

"I am finding myself sad that we didnt find somebody that knows our community,'' she said.

Rod Green, executive search consultant for MASB, said sometimes it takes time to get to know the candidates to determine if they are the right fit, encouraging the second round of talks.

Green was questioned about the aggressiveness and scope of MASBs search. He said they threw out a broad net and made a lot of calls to potential candidates, including from West Michigan.

Saturdays interviews were live streamed. There were three men and one woman interviewed, all African American.

Both Talley and Norton have experience in urban schools, have held cabinet positions as well as been teachers and principals and have doctorate degrees.

The time for the April 8 interviews have not been scheduled. The interview with the fifth candidate, if accepted. would be 6 p.m. March 25, in the administration building, 1331 Franklin St. SE.

Horton has a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from Jackson State University, Master of Arts in Educational Leadership from Chicago State University, and an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Chicago State University.

Talley has a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from University of Virginia, Master of Arts in High Education Administration from Boston College, and an Ed.D. in Administration and Policy from George Washington University.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Interim Grand Rapids Police Chief David Kiddle is defending the use of force by one of his officers during the arrest of two teens who failed to cooperate with police after being stopped for walking in the street.

When the officer attempted to arrest the 15- and 16-year-old males, the encounter escalated and resulted in the officer pulling out and pointing his gun at the two teens and ordering them to the ground to be handcuffed.

One of the teens was transported to juvenile detention for resisting and obstructing a police officer. The other was transported home by police.

On Monday, March 18 -- a week after the incident occurred -- Kiddle held a press conference to show body-worn camera footage of the arrest, and to answer questions.

The interim police chief said the video showed a textbook example of how we expect our officers to conduct themselves in a professional and tactically safe manner.

Id like to point out the officers professionalism, restraint, and appropriate demeanor throughout the contact, Kiddle said. It was the suspects outright defiance and lack of simple cooperation that escalated this incident unnecessarily.

A Grand Rapids police officer stopped the two teens Monday, March 11, in the 600 block of Lynch Street SW. He explained to the youths that they were violating a city ordinance that prohibits walking in the street when the sidewalk is clear of snow and ice.

The conversation between the teens and officer starts in the street and moves to the sidewalk, where the officer repeatedly asks the teens to take their hands out of their pockets and to provide their names and other identifying information.

After repeatedly not providing basic info, following instructions, or removing hands from their pockets and attempting to walk away, the officer decided to arrest them for their failure to cooperate or provide basic information, Kiddle said. The officer informed them multiples times that they werent free to leave.

When the officer tried to detain the teens, they resisted. In the police-provided video, one of the teens could be heard telling the officer, Chill out, bro ... He didnt do nothing, bro."

Kiddle said one of the youths struck the officer to release his grasp.

When one of the subjects reached behind his back, the officer disengaged as hes trained to do and pulled out his firearm as he thought the subject might have been reaching for a weapon, Kiddle said.

He keeps reaching for his waistband, the officer can be heard saying to another officer arriving on scene. Hes under arrest for failure to identify, and he kept reaching for his waistband.

While both teens are on the ground, one of them says, Im young as hell. Youre treating me like an adult or something.

The March 11 incident comes almost one year after the police department unveiled its youth interaction policy -- a policy born in response to community outcry over how officers handled the detainment of youth in a handful of incidents in recent years.

On Monday, Kiddle said the policy provides guidelines to how officers will interact with youth, while allowing flexibility to handle cases in a safe and appropriate manner.

"What this policy doesnt allow for is outright defiance of the law, lack of compliance when given instructions, or ask our officers to place themselves in potentially unsafe situations unnecessarily," Kiddle said.

In this case, repeated commands are given to stop, to take their hands out of their pockets, to put their hands on their head and to get on the ground. Despite this escalating order of instruction, the two individuals continue to argue and challenge the officer throughout this basic investigation.

The interim chief said the officer from the March 11 incident was assigned to the area because of the high number of violent crimes," as well as gang graffiti that indicates potential violence between gang members.

Kiddle said he was notified of the incident by a command staff member who saw cell phone footage of the incident shared on social media. The video was taken by a nearby resident who witnessed the incident.

Also on Monday, Kiddle detailed a March 17 incident in which force was used during a traffic stop after the driver failed to comply with police orders. An officer in that incident was placed on paid administrative leave while the departments Internal Affairs Unit reviews an internal use of force complaint.
SUMMIT TWP., MI  A Jackson County charter school that prides itself on preparing students to excel in life and earn college credits early is taking heat for failing to be transparent with parents and the state.

Jackson Preparatory & Early College administrators are meeting with the Michigan Department of Education Wednesday, March 20, to discuss what went wrong when the school failed to timely provide data its legally required to report, school administrators said at the JPEC Board of Governors Monday, March 18 meeting.

Parents filed an official complaint with the state claiming the school has been intentionally withholding public information and working in the shadows. Administrators adamantly denied those claims before the board on Monday.

The schools legal counsel reviewed the complaint and found no wrongdoing, but the board asked to meet with MDE to verify the attorneys findings, JPEC Board of Governors Chairman Jonathan Williams said.

We want to make sure we are doing everything we are supposed to be doing to meet the state legal requirements, Williams said. There hasnt been any finding that anyone (at JPEC) was intentionally going outside the law, but MDE will be the final arbiter on this. Once we talk to them Wednesday, we will know where to go from there.

At issue is a list of grievances reported by parents that includes the schools lack of transparency in reporting teacher qualifications, employee compensations and construction contract negotiations, and a general failure to communicate openly on public matters.

Currently, the schools transparency reporting, which is required by state law to be posted online, is largely void of compensation information for personnel expenditures for the 2017-18 school year.

There was a shortcoming on our part due to a technical glitch and the state did not get the required information on time, a representative from the schools outsourced human resources firm, Americas Back Office, said during the meeting.

Board members denied accusations that the school has educators teaching classes they are unqualified to teach, stating all JPECs teachers have been vetted by state regulators.

Our employees are qualified to be where they are and Its backed up by MDE and our standard, Williams said.

The board admitted there has been a lack of communication when addressing parent concerns and efforts to do better in the future are underway, Williams said.

It shouldnt have taken a parents complaint to state regulators for us to look into this, he said.

The board stated it will release the reports related to the investigation after its meeting with MDE, Williams said.
BAY CITY, MI- Minors who smoke, possess or sell e-cigarettes could face a misdemeanor and up to 24 hours of community service under Bay Citys new ordinance that bans minors from vaping or using other forms of e-cigarettes.

The Bay City Commission voted unanimously to pass the new ordinance that will make it unlawful for any minor to purchase, possess or use an e-cigarette or e-cigarette cartridge in the city, according to City Manager Dana Muscotts report to the commission.

A minor found in violation of the new ordinance would face a $100 fine and eight hours of community service for a first offense. The second offense includes a $200 fine, given a municipal infraction and will perform 16 hours of community service. For the third offense, a minor would be charged with a misdemeanor and must perform 24 hours of community service.

We were approached by the schools to take a look at having an ordinance about the e-cigarettes because they are having an issue with students having it on campus and so we are doing an ordinance thats proposed to prohibit the sale or furnishing it to anybody under 18, Muscott said, adding the schools have issues with it being more discreet than regular smoking since there is no smell of tobacco or very little smoke.

Also, according to Muscotts report to the commission, federal law bans the sale of tobacco products, including vaping materials to anyone younger than 18, though Michigan does not have a state law against a minor possessing vaping tools and or the liquid added to it.

Muscott added that Bay City is actually one of the last cities in the state that didnt have an ordinance addressing e-cigarettes and minors. The city was able to mimic other ordinances from around the state.
SAGINAW, MI  The attorney for Robert Father Bob DeLand Jr. argued in a Saginaw County District courtroom Monday that extensive media coverage will make it difficult to seat an unbiased jury in the Saginaw Catholic priests upcoming trial.

During the hearing that took place on Monday, March 18, in Judge Darnell Jacksons courtroom, attorney Alan Crawford asked for a change of venue as well as additional challenges when vetting potential jurors.

Its going to be rare that we find anyone who hasnt heard anything about this case, Crawford said.

Prosecution argued that media coverage was not grounds for a venue change and called it premature.

Jackson denied the additional challenges of potential jurors that Crawford requested, but did not rule on a venue change, stating that he will reserve that ruling for once jury selection begins.

Jury selection for DeLands first trial begins Tuesday, March 19.

DeLand, 72, is charged with six felonies and one misdemeanor in five separate files. The charges relate to two male teens and one man having accused DeLand of sexually assaulting them.

DeLand appeared in the courtroom Monday during the hearing. He is currently suspended from his job in the Saginaw Diocese, where he most recently worked in the Freeland area.

Another trial for DeLand is set to begin Thursday, March 21 as well as one on Tuesday, March 26. All trail dates are pending how long jury selection and testimony takes, according to the prosecutors office.

The Catholic Diocese of Saginaw on March 16 released a statement ahead of DeLands trials. A video statement by interim Bishop Walter Hurley asks parishioners to pray for healing and justice.
HARBOR BEACH, MI  Officials say they have captured a rare Canada lynx, which was possibly seen on video in Michigans Thumb region last month, and relocated it to a nature center.

The Howell Nature Center shared the news on its Facebook page Monday evening, March 18. According to the post, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on Monday transferred the animal to the Howell Nature Centers Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic after it was trapped in Harbor Beach Sunday, March 17. It was trapped near where a lynx was captured on video in February.

Monique Touchette-Soper said the video, which made headlines last month, was taken at about 9:30 a.m. on Feb. 16 on her familys 25-acre wooded property in Lexington, located in eastern Sanilac County along Lake Huron.

We were shocked to see the lynx, because weve never seen one around before, Touchette-Soper said, adding that her family usually sees deer on the property.

The Port Huron Times Herald reports the lynx was trapped after it attacked some geese being kept in a pen at a property near Harbor Beach.

The Canada lynx is classified as a threatened species in Michigan with only rare sightings occurring in the last 40 years, primarily in the Upper Peninsula, and this is the first time a live lynx has been captured in the state, according to the nature centers post.

Officials are observing the animal and will perform a full physical examination under anesthesia soon. After its health and behavior have been assessed, officials will determine whether it can be released back into the wild.

Its unclear whether it was being kept as an illegal pet or is truly wild, officials said.

Dan Kennedy, endangered species coordinator with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, said the captured lynx could be one of two in the area, but the existence of a second cat hasnt been confirmed. DNR officials are asking the public to report any possible lynx sightings and to share photos taken from a safe distance by emailing dnr-wildlife@michigan.gov.
I started working on this proposal about 10 days ago, and its a process getting approval and a request for seats in the gallery, Kifowit said. One thing weve done throughout history is honor those who have come before us, but as the only female veteran serving in the House, I thought it was important we recognize the vets that are still with us while we can.
MIDLAND, MI  Corteva Agriscience, a division of DowDuPont, has ended a study that involved testing on dogs, as the testing is no longer required by regulators in Brazil, the company announced Monday, March 18.

The companys announcement comes after an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States. The investigation alleged the testing was taking place at a laboratory near Kalamazoo.

Corteva officials posted the following statement on the companys Facebook page Monday:

"As we indicated previously, we have been actively advocating with Brazils Agencia Nacional de Vigilancia Sanitaria (ANVISA) to amend its requirements for animal testing with pesticides and today we received official confirmation that the tests we were seeking to change are no longer required for our product. We have immediately ended the study that was the subject of attention last week and will make every effort to rehome the animals that were part of the study.

We are pleased that our efforts produced this outcome, and we note that it is yet another result of work our heritage companies have been doing for many years to continually refine, reduce, and replace animal tests wherever possible and finding alternative means of obtaining the data necessary to assure our products are safe for humans, animals, and the environment. In fact, this particular effort to change Brazils requirement had been underway in collaboration with the Humane Society of the United States.

The Humane Society alleged three dozen beagles were being fed fungicides at Charles Rivers Laboratories, 54943 N. Main St. in Mattawan, Michigan.

The animal rights organization called on the public to sign a petition and demand a stop to the tests and the release of the dogs. As of Tuesday, more than 310,000 people had signed the petition.

Corteva Agriscience, the agriculture division of DowDuPont, initially responded to the Humane Societys report last week. In that statement, officials said Corteva planned to continue the study until it was no longer needed. At the time, Corteva officials said the testing was required by regulators in Brazil and they had discussed the issue with the Humane Society.

Last week, Charles River Laboratories also released a statement in an email that read:

"Charles River Laboratories operates our facilities in a way that is consistent with our commitment to the welfare and ethical treatment of the animals in our care and in compliance with all federal regulations and international standards.

As animal caregivers and scientific researchers, we are responsible to our clients and the public for the health and well-being of the animals under our stewardship, and we strive to fulfill that responsibility on a daily basis.

After Corteva announced Monday it had ended the study, Kitty Block, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, issued the following statement:

We applaud Dow AgroSciences (Corteva AgriScience) for making the right decision by ending the one-year pesticide test on 36 beagles at Charles River Laboratories in Michigan. This is a significant step that is critical to the welfare of the dogs.

"We now urge Corteva to work with us to get the dogs out of the laboratory and to our shelter and rescue partners so that they can be adopted into loving homes.
Days after media reported that the troubled Boeing 737 MAX 8s certification lacked proper oversight and analysis, two US departments are looking into how the new jet was allowed to fly with a suspect flight control device.

A grand jury in Washington DC has subpoenaed at least one person behind the Boeing 737 MAXs certification, according to the Wall Street Journal. The subpoena, initiated by the Justice Departments criminal division, seeks documents and correspondence relating to the aircraft, which has been marred by two crashes in less than a year and is now grounded across the world.

Meanwhile, the Transportation Departments inspector general has launched a separate probe into the approval of the 737 MAX by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The news comes amid mounting backlash against Boeings latest narrow-body aircraft. The company has delivered 371 MAX models around the world, and practically all of them are now grounded pending the results of probes into the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people earlier this month.

Notably, the crash bears clear similarities to the Lion Air disaster in Indonesia, in which 149 people died in October aboard another 737 MAX, French investigators said in a statement Monday.

READ MORE: French air crash investigators say clear similarities between Boeing 737 MAX crashes

Meanwhile, a damning report by the Seattle Times, the hometown newspaper of Boeing HQ, alleged that the FAA delegated crucial parts of the certification process to the corporation itself.

It emerged that Boeings analysis contained flaws, including several relating to the so-called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a controversial flight control system investigators believe played a role in both incidents.

The 737 MAX has larger and more powerful engines, which shifted the airplanes balance and made it prone to sudden stalls mid-flight. The MCAS was designed to make micro-adjustments to the tails angle to push the nose back down and counteract this.

However, Boeings engineers understated the power of the new flight control system, the report said, as the system was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than mentioned in the initial safety analysis document.

Americas largest aerospace company may have cut corners to certify the plane quickly so it could compete with Airbus new A320neo family, the MAXs direct competitor. The Transportation Departments inquiry is specifically targeting the MCAS, according to the WSJ.

Another alarming finding in the report is that Boeing did little to brief airlines and pilots about the MCAS and ways of handling it  particularly, how to disengage it in case of emergency  before the 737 MAX was put into service in 2017.

Boeing has promised to design a software fix to address some of the troubles caused by the MCAS, but it has already suffered losses on the back of the Ethiopian tragedy. The companys market value dropped by nearly $26 billion, with analysts predicting a steep decline of its stock price and investments.

Also on rt.com Profit v passenger safety: Why the US was the last to ground troubled Boeing jets

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Algeria protest leaders called on army to stay out of politics

Algeria protest leaders called on army to stay out of politics

A new group headed by political leaders, opposition figures and activists called on Algerias generals to stay out of politics as it pressed President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and the government to quit. In the first direct message to the army from leaders emerging from mass protests against Bouteflika, the National Coordination for Change said the military should play its constitutional role without interfering in the people choice. The organization demanded the Bouteflika should step down before the end of his term on April 28 and the government resign immediately. Generals have traditionally wielded power from behind the scenes in Algeria but have stepped in during pivotal moments. In 1992, the army cancelled elections an Islamist party was set to win, triggering a long civil war that killed an estimated 200,000 people, Reuters said. Throughout the recent unrest, soldiers have stayed in their barracks.Source : RT - Daily news
Algerias Bouteflika to hand over power to elected president, deputy PM says in Moscow

Algerias Bouteflika to hand over power to elected president, deputy PM says in Moscow

Algerias President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has agreed to hand over power to an elected president, the new deputy prime minister said on Tuesday. The opposition will be allowed to take part in the cabinet that will oversee elections, Ramtane Lamamra said in Moscow. Lamamra was speaking at a news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Algerian government had responded to the legitimate demands of the Algerian people, Lamamra added. Lavrov said that Moscow supported the Algerian governments initiative to hold talks with the opposition after weeks of protests. The top Russian diplomat also said that Moscow saw attempts to destabilize the situation in the North African country.Source : RT - Daily news
Borders are not imaginary lines and must be respected by all, former president George W. Bush has declared, apparently unaware of the numerous border-defying US bombings and invasions during his administration. Twitter remembers!

Weighing in on the contentious immigration debate that has gripped the country, the Republican ex-president suggested that Americans should find a common middle ground in order to break the political deadlock.

That starts with recognizing a plain responsibility at the border  and, in an often chaotic situation, being willing to state the obvious: Borders are not arbitrary and they need to be respected  along with the fine men and women of immigration services and our Border Patrol, he said during a naturalization ceremony for new citizens, hosted at the Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas.



His comments come as Donald Trump locks horns with Congress over his declared state of the emergency at the US-Mexico border  a crisis that, according to Trump, can be alleviated by building a wall to keep out illegal immigrants.

But is Bush really the right person to lecture America about the sanctity of borders? No, answered Twitter.



Borders need to be respected? Lmao, wrote one Twitter user, who then proceeded to tally up the number of civilians and American servicemembers killed and maimed during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Unless its the Iraq border, right? quipped another netizen.



Others pointed out that disastrous US policies in Latin and South America have played a key role in destabilizing the region, creating the immigration mess which Bush said he was so eager to solve.

Indeed, it seems odd that the former president would suddenly hold the borders of sovereign nations in such high esteem. Bush, whose popularity has soared among liberals after he shared a cough drop with Michelle Obama, is credited with bombing and/or invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Somalia. The US is also believed to have carried out drone attacks in Yemen and the Philippines during Bushs two terms.

However, unlike other illegal border infringements, Bush was never locked in a cage while he awaited deportation. Instead, he took up painting.

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Germany must press US over Yemen drone strikes controlled from Ramstein air base  court

Germany must press US over Yemen drone strikes controlled from Ramstein air base  court

A court in Germany ruled on Tuesday that the government has partial responsibility to ensure US drone strikes controlled with the help of an American base on German territory are in line with international law. However, judges stopped short of ordering the ban that human rights activists had called for. The Muenster administrative court said available evidence suggests the Ramstein US air base in southern Germany plays a central role for the relay of flight control data used for armed drone strikes in Yemen. The case was brought by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights on behalf of three Yemeni plaintiffs, who allege their relatives were killed in a US drone strike in 2012, AP reports. A lower court had dismissed their case in 2015.Source : RT - Daily news
Troops from 17 African nations have gathered in Pune, India, for ten days of military drills with the Indian Army, aimed at boosting ties between the South Asian powerhouse and emerging economies in the resource-rich continent.

Dubbed the Africa-India field training exercise-2019 (AFINDEX-19), the drills will tap into Indias decades of experience on UN peacekeeping missions, with troops undergoing synchronized operational and tactical-level training, such as learning how to protect a convoy during a mission and without hurting civilians. Other exercises include learning how to properly deactivate landmines and other types of explosives.

Speaking at its opening ceremony on Monday, the commanding officer of the Indian Armys Pune HQ, Major General Sanjeev Sharma, expressed his confidence in the operational success of the exercises.

Also on rt.com Indias aircraft carrier & nuclear subs deployment a no-nonsense message to China, not Pakistan?

He also spoke of the hope for enhanced diplomatic and the cultural bonds between India and the participating nations, and that troops make new friends and comrades in arms.

Nations attending AFINDEX-19 come from all corners of the African continent, with contingents from Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Senegal and South Africa among the participants.

Indias push for deeper military ties in Africa follows similar moves by neighboring China to strengthen its military presence in the region.

In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged $100 million in free military assistance to the African Union to help beef up its peacekeeping capabilities. While last summer, delegations from 50 African armies attended the first ever China-Africa Defense and Security Forum. The three-week symposium discussed roadmaps for defending Chinas multi-billion dollar investments in African economies, and helping African nations improve their responses to crisis situations.

Also on rt.com The devil you know: Old foes India & China strengthen ties as America proves too unreliable

Taking into account the extent of Chinese investment and decades-old history of diplomatic relations and arms exports to the region, Indias response is currently focused on soft skills and is mostly symbolic, Iftikhar Lodhi, assistant professor at Nazarbayev Universitys Graduate School of Public Policy told RT.

As the success of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative and other ventures into Africa grows, India along with other powers is bound to respond in various shapes and forms across these regions.

In addition to creating a nuisance value for China with help from allies in the West, Lodhi said the exercises could have positive long term effects.

Such military exercises and consequent networking along with old diplomatic contacts could be of some value for India in the long run, he concluded.

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Its an ad weve all seen a million times. A saucy seductress sprays herself gently with an overpriced perfume. Except now the femme fatale is Israels justice minister, and the perfume is called fascism. Is this real life?

Accused by political opponents of embracing right-wing extremism, Ayelet Shaked was clearly going for satire when she released a campaign ad in which she mimics a chichi model who samples a bottle of fascism perfume  but the joke hasnt translated well. Her right-wing views, coupled with the fact that many who watched the video on social media are not Israeli and dont speak Hebrew, have led some to wonder if Israels justice minister has lost her marbles.

As Shaked saunters about in the faux perfume ad, she whispers in Hebrew judicial reform, separation of powers and restraining the Supreme Court  issues which she has made central to her campaign.

After spraying herself with the scent of fascism, Shaked tells the camera: To me, it smells like democracy.

International outrage over the ad has compelled Israeli journalists to try to explain its context to English speakers.

Its a really tone deaf ad, but most of the descriptions Im seeing in English are pretending its a defense of fascism when its not. Shes clearly saying shes accused of fascism but that the policies listed in the ad (which most would-be translators skip) are democratic, Lahav Harkov, senior contributing editor at the Jerusalem Post, tweeted.

The ad may have succeeded in creating publicity for her upstart political party, New Right, but as Haaretz explained, an unintended side effect has been to leave thousands of viewers overseas confused and stunned after viewing the ad. And that may be an understatement.

I dont get it. Is she trying to say that shes a fascist? Or shes not a fascist? one Twitter user inquired.

At least she's honest, read another tweet.

Even those who understood the intention of the ad had a hard time comprehending the adverts logic.

Im afraid it looks very much like shes saying that which our enemies label as fascism, I call democracy, one Twitter user mused.

I think what the ad is trying to say is that all those elements being called out are in fact the ingredients for true democracy. Thats the concept. But the execution is so bungled that it comes off as if she's actually in favor of fascism, remarked another netizen.

Shaked is no stranger to controversy. She found herself in hot water after she advocated that the mothers of Palestinian militants should be killed.

They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there, she reportedly said in 2002.

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The last joint connecting offshore and land sections of the Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline have been welded, Russian media reported, citing the projects operator South Stream Transport B.V.

The operator said on Tuesday that the event represents the completion of all works on the gas transmission system via the Black Sea.

During the technical operation called the above water tie in, the length running along the bottom of the Black Sea and the one lying on the land were lifted on a special platform to connect them into a single pipeline, the company said in a statement on Tuesday, as cited by RIA. After the lines of the pipeline were connected, the offshore section was lowered back into the sea to a depth of 32 meters.

Also on rt.com Serbia greenlights expansion of Russias Turkish Stream gas pipeline

The Turkish Stream, also known as TurkStream, is set to be ready for commercial operations in late 2019 after the construction of a terminal near the Turkish town of Kiyikoy.

The Turkish Stream consists of two lines with an annual capacity to deliver 31.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The 930km offshore section, completed in November, runs along the bottom of the Black Sea from Russia to the Turkish coast. Its 180km land section stretches further through Turkey to deliver gas to the countries of southern and southeastern Europe.

Also on rt.com Full stream ahead! Russia & Turkey officially complete construction of joint gas pipeline

In early March, Serbia gave the nod for the construction of the branch of the Turkish Stream to extend the route from Bulgaria to Hungary. Earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban asked Russia to extend the gas pipeline to his country and further into Europe.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
A Malaysian national was arrested after authorities discovered a human embryo in a concealed canister in his luggage, and now they believe he may have been part of a larger embryo smuggling ring.

Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials made the arrest last Friday after finding the embryo in a specialized nitrogen-packed canister concealed in Partheban Durais luggage.

Durai apparently admitted that this was not the first time he had brought this kind of cargo through customs (in fact, it was his seventh or eighth), and even pointed them toward the high-end in-vitro fertilization clinic that allegedly put him up to the gruesome task.

The clinic in question, Indo Nippon IVF in Mumbai, vehemently denies any connection to the operation, but authorities are moving forward with a full investigation.

Prosecutors allege that they have incriminating text messages which prove that the clinic was Durais destination.

Embryologist and co-founder of the clinic Dr Goral Gandhi was called to defend herself in court over the incident. According to the Indian Express, her lawyer blamed a conspiracy hatched by persons which may include competitors.

The officials believe the embryos were being smuggled in, fertilized in a lab and then implanted into Indian women who act as surrogates.

This kind of surrogacy is illegal in Malaysia under Islamic law, which is why desperate families may be turning to exporting embryos from abroad.

Also on rt.com Gene-edited Chinese CRISPR babies may have mental superpowers, researchers warn

While embryos can be legally imported for research purposes, doing so requires a permit from the Indian Council of Medical Research.

The DRI said this was the first ever case they had investigated involving the smuggling of a live human embryo.

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Angela Merkel has said that her government will not exclude Huawei or any other company from helping to develop 5G in Germany simply because they come from China, in a clear rebuke of Washingtons stance on the issue.

The government has said our approach is not to simply exclude one company or one actor, but rather we have requirements of the competitors for this 5G technology, Merkel said at the annual Global Solutions Summit in Berlin on Tuesday.

The chancellor explained that regulations related to 5G development in Germany would be laid out in new telecommunications legislation.

And then we shall then talk to our partners, because they have their ideas as well, she added.

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Singapore shipbuilding and marine service firm Global Radiance Group has announced plans to invest around $2 billion in the Pakistani shipbuilding industry, the group chairman and managing director Abdul Lateef Siddiqui said.

The step is set to create about 4,000 jobs, according to the executive, as quoted by the News International, Pakistans largest English-language newspaper. Siddiqui said that the country is currently forced to pay up to $4 billion to foreign shipping companies.

Pakistans state-owned National Shipping Corporation (PNSC) reportedly operates nine ships, three tankers and six bulk carriers with only 65,786 seafarers, 18,988 officers and 46,798 crews are currently being employed in the sector.

Siddiqui highlighted that the countrys shipping industry is earning as low as $500 million compared to the Philippines, which is generating more than $6 billion from the sector annually.

PNSC tankers are only used to carry oil for Pakistan, however, theres more appetite considering present and future requirement due to CPEC [ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor] and oil refinery, he said. Besides, when the fleet is added it will create further jobs and support complimentary industries.

The Singapore-based company pledged to build 50 new ships of the desired type and size, with the vessels expected to start being commissioned within two years. The ships are projected to pay off the entire cost of up to $50 million within 10 years, becoming an asset besides yielding other obvious multifarious profits.

Global Radiance Group is planning to provide technical maintenance for the vessels as well as facilitating the commercial management of the ships.

The chairman stressed that the project wont need any financial injection from the Pakistani authorities, apart from incentives for importers and exporters in the form of rebates and competitive freight charges. The corporation also expects appropriate legislation that would allow restricting shipping through foreign firms when local ships are available, as well as state guarantees to regularly pay off the installments and not to divert the income generated by the fleet on any other head till clearance of its loan.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
Republican congressman Devin Nunes announced he will file a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter for its alleged explicit censorship of conservatives. Nunes complaint is one of many against the social media giant.

In a complaint filed on Monday, Nunes (R-California) alleged that Twitter has taken sides in Americas left-right political divide, shadow-banning those on the right, while refusing to take action against abusive, hateful and defamatory content from the left.

Nunes claims that Twitter refused to enforce its own terms of service during his election campaign last year, when he says he endured a defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope.

Also on rt.com Zero Hedge, LiveLeak blocked, sharers warned of jail as NZ censors crack down on mosque attack video

The defamatory content cited by Nunes includes accusations that he worked with Russia to undermine American Democracy, that he took cocaine and hired underage prostitutes, as well as a host of lowbrow jokes about his sexuality.

Nunes has accused Twitter of censoring conservatives before, threatening the company with legal action last year for allegedly hiding comments from prominent Republicans. He is not the only conservative to accuse Twitter of bias though, and even President Trump promised last year to look into this discriminatory and illegal practice.

The company admitted to shadowbanning a tweet by Federalist co-founder Sean Davis last week. The tweet included an excerpt from former FBI attorney Lisa Pages Congressional testimony discussing the FBIs eagerness to find connections between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.

Alongside the excerpt, Davis pointed out the irony of the Clinton campaign hiring a former British spy to solicit damaging information about Donald Trump from Russian sources.

Although Twitter corrected the issue on Monday, the company told Davis it had in fact shadowbanned his tweet, and does this to keep people safe on Twitter.

Speaking to podcast host Joe Rogan earlier this month, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that his company has acted too swiftly in banning some right-wing users, but denied any favoritism.

The companys chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, also admitted that in the context of the transgender debate, Twitter often considers certain factually correct viewpoints as grounds for suspension, and applies its terms of service selectively.

Nunes complaint names Republican strategist Liz Mair as a defendant, as well as two parody accounts, Devin Nunes Mom and Devin Nunes cow. During Nunes election campaign, Mair shared multiple tweets accusing Nunes of criminal activity, claims that Nunes calls egregiously false.

Although deleted now, Devin Nunes mom retweeted many of Mairs claims, and hit the California Republican with salacious and potty-mouthed insults, once falsely suggesting that Nunes might be willing to give the president a blowjob.

Devin Nunes cow, meanwhile, mostly used dairy-farming puns to mock Nunes, calling the representative a cowpoke and udder-ly worthless.

Ironically, Nunes attempt to gag the parody account seems to have backfired. In the hours since his complaint became known, Devin Nunes cow went from just over 1,200 followers to almost 78,000 at time of writing.

Twitter is not the only Silicon Valley tech giant to face accusations of liberal bias. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by Republican lawmakers on the issue last year, and although he admitted that Silicon Valley as a whole leans to the political left, he denied that his company does.

Despite Zuckerbergs denial, conservatives were skeptical. Just last month, a Facebook whistleblower told conservative watchdog Project Veritas that the company actively suppresses and deletes right-wing content.

While the right has so far led the campaign against social media censorship, a growing number of voices on the left have joined in. Facebooks mass deplatforming of 800 alternative news and politics pages before last Novembers midterm elections incensed activists and journalists from across the political spectrum.

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There is a good chance that simple bacteria populate the atmosphere of Venus, a Russian scientist told local media. A joint US-Russian space mission planned for 2026 is expected to look for life traces in the planets clouds.

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system as temperatures on its surface can reach a staggering 465 degrees Celsius (870 degrees Fahrenheit). However, simple forms of life may still have survived in the atmosphere, according to Ludmila Zasova, co-chair of the joint Russian-US Venera-D (Venus-D) project.

Clouds on Venus are mostly made of sulfuric acid but theres also 15-20 percent of water in them, the scientist said, adding that temperature and atmospheric pressure in the lower layer of the cloud cover is similar to those on Earth.

Also on rt.com Roscosmos ready to help NASA if construction of Soyuz alternative is delayed

Not a single robot has managed to land on Venus for more than 30 years, when the Soviet spacecraft Vega 2 touched down on its surface in July 1985. The Venera-D program dares to fill that gap. The project has been led by Russia for almost two decades. In 2015, NASA got involved and a joint research team was established.

Apart from the lander, the mission is also expected to be equipped with an orbiter, a long-life station, and an aerial platform. The latter, according to Zasova, would also include a special microscope to look for traces of bacterial life in the planets atmosphere.

Technical details of the actual program are, however, yet to be defined. Were not at that nuts-and-bolts stage, said Tracy Gregg, co-chair of the US-Russian committee for Venera-D. She added that the earliest possible launch date wed be looking at is 2026, and who knows if we could meet that.

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The US has imposed new sanctions on Venezuelas state-run mining company Minerven and Adrian Antonio Perdomo Mata, who heads the company, according to a statement posted by the US Treasury Department.

The sanctions are part of Washington's ongoing efforts to squeeze the government of President Nicolas Maduro, who the White House has claimed is an "illegitimate" leader.

US President Donald Trump declared support for right-wing opposition leader Juan Guaido as "interim president" in mid-January, prompting many US allies to immediately follow suit.

The US has been steadily tightening sanctions and economic pressure on Maduro's government and openly calling for regime change.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW
Sanctions-hit Venezuela may reroute crude initially destined for the US to other countries, according to the countrys top energy official, adding that shipments could go to Russia and China.

Venezuelas oil minister and president of state-run oil company PDVSA, Manuel Quevedo, told a meeting of OPEC and other oil ministers in Azerbaijan on Monday that Caracas is going to diversify its crude shipping routes. Reuters reported that Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft and China were seen as the destinations after the country halted its crude supplies to India.

Russia and China are seen as the main destinations because of the suspension of oil exports to India, the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry said in a statement citing the minister.

Also on rt.com US warns the world against buying Venezuelan oil

India used to be the leading buyer of Venezuelan crude during the first half of February before facing US pressure for continuing to deal with the Latin American country after Washington slapped Caracas with heavy sanctions.

The US restrictions targeted the Venezuelan oil sector, which is crucial for Venezuela to keep the economy afloat as oil revenues account for about 98 percent of its export earnings.

Also on rt.com Russia vows to defend its Venezuelan oil assets

Last week, Mike Pompeo accused Russias Rosneft of defying US sanctions against Caracas by continuing to buy oil from PDVSA. The Russian oil giant rebuffed the allegations, saying that the contracts for the purchases of Venezuelan crude were signed long before the sanctions were enforced. The company added that it does not want to engage in politics and merely carries out commercial activities in the interests of all its shareholders.

While some Western countries led by the US pledged support for Venezuelas self-proclaimed interim president, Juan Guaido, Moscow has refused to follow suit.

Also on rt.com Maduro orders European HQ of Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA to be moved to Moscow

Russia has several joint projects with the Latin American country, including in the energy, agricultural and defense sectors, among others and has vowed to defend its interests in the country in line with international law using all available mechanisms.

Earlier this month, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the relocation of PDVSAs European headquarters from Lisbon to Moscow in an attempt to diminish risks for the company amid US sanctions. The new office is set to open in April when Quevedo visits the Russian capital.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
As officers and police dogs searched near the BNSF railroad tracks, they noticed the coat, an outer shirt and the mask had been shed by the offender as he fled on foot. Police followed the trail of items and eventually spotted the man who had tried to hide in a backyard in the first block of Quincy, near the tracks.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19) - President Rodrigo Duterte will meet with Metro Manila's water regulator tonight to discuss the water crisis, his spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said officials from the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) may be asked for an update regarding his directive last week to release 150 days worth of water from Angat Dam in Bulacan.

MWSS Administrator Reynaldo Velasco and Chief Regulator Patrick Ty have faced lawmakers from the House and Senate to explain the water crisis affecting 1.2 million Manila Water customers in Metro Manila and Rizal.

Manila Water said it has improved its water supply in 90 percent of its service areas, but rationed water supply will last until the end of May.
Green stickers issued by the Department of Revenue stating that the restaurants certificate of registration had been revoked are on the door and windows of the eatery at 7108 W. 171st St. The notice also says that anyone found conducting business could be subject to criminal prosecution and a fine.
E-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon India are preparing to tap into India's fast-growing online insurance market valued at Rs 35,000 crore, after electronics, fashion and groceries.

Sources told Business Standard that both the companies are readying a blueprint to enter the market for the past four months. The original plan was to introduce their insurance products at the beginning of 2019. However, this plan was delayed as the companies took in and adjusted to the new FDI norms that the government released at the end of December 2018.

Moneycontrol couldn't independently verify the report.

"We are pleased to receive the corporate agency licence from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. We are exploring the landscape in India and are looking at insurance solutions for our customers," Amazon India spokesperson told the paper, while Flipkart did not respond.

Both the companies will provide standalone insurance products and also weave it into their various verticals. "Amazon and Flipkart both have travel and ticketing vertical on their platform. They can provide travel insurance as part of the package. Similarly, they can provide theft and damage insurance for high-value electronics. They will soon start selling general and life insurance," a source told the paper.

To grow this business, Amazon may enter into deals with multiple firms, while Flipkart is also on the lookout for insurance companies to work with.

The companies have already started in a small way last year. Flipkart got a corporate agent licence last year. It also launched its 'Complete Mobile Protection' programme which provided insurance solutions for all leading mobile brands on its platform, with Bajaj Allianz General Insurance. Similarly, Amazon invested $12 million in online insurer Acko General Insurance. Interestingly, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal also invested in the same firm.
ASK group's private equity arm will invest Rs 326 crore in various housing projects being developed by QVC Realty, Tridhaatu and TVS Emerald. These projects are located in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Delhi-NCR.

ASK Property Investment Advisors (ASK PIA) is the real estate private equity arm of ASK Group.

Mumbai-based ASK Investment Managers Ltd, the holding company, is a leading asset and wealth management firm and it soon plans to launch Initial public Offer (IPO) to raise an estimated Rs 2,000 crore.

"We have invested Rs 326 crore as equity and structured equity in around 8 projects of QVC Realty, Tridhaatu and TVS Emerald," said Amit Bhagat, MD & CEO, ASK PIA.

About Rs 200 crore would be invested in three projects of QVC Realty in NCR and Bengaluru, Rs 80 crore in two projects of TVS group firm TVS Emerald and Rs 44 crore in three projects of Tridhaatu Realty, he told PTI.

"Liquidity crunch of NBFCs/HFCs has accelerated the consolidation process benefitting reputed developers. Project launches with right-sized and right-priced focused on mid-segment have seen growth in absorption. Lack of refinancing to developers has considerably increased the deal flow for private equity," Bhagat said.

These investments are in line with the fund's strategy of investing in residential focused real estate projects in the top five cities with established developers.

ASK group MD & CEO Sunil Rohokale said: "These investments reaffirm ASK group's strong belief in demand revival in the residential real estate market which has undergone structural changes like GST and implementation of RERA in current regulatory regime."

The sector needs patient and flexible long-term capital to ensure project completion, he added.

ASK-PIA has been set up to manage and advise real estate dedicated funds. The fund had raised its third domestic fund of Rs 1,400 crore in 2016 and had announced final close for its structured equity fund of Rs 898 crore in March 2018.

The ASK group is into asset and wealth management business and primarily caters to HNI and UHNI market in India. It manages assets of over Rs 43,000 crore as on February 2019.
Time is not on our side, DeLuca wrote. Unless we take bold and dramatic steps, it may be too late to turn things around  I am deeply concerned that without implementing meaningful initiatives immediately, many areas across the Southland may be falling into an economic point of no return.
Norsk Hydro, one of the world's largest producers of aluminium, was battling on Tuesday to contain a cyber attack which hit parts of its production, sending its shares lower and aluminium prices higher.

The company shut several metal extrusion plants, which transform aluminium ingots into components for car makers, builders and other industries, while its giant smelters in countries including Norway, Qatar and Brazil were being operated manually.

The attack, which began on Monday evening and escalated overnight, affected the company's IT systems for most of its activities.

"Hydro is working to contain and neutralize the attack, but does not yet know the full extent of the situation," the company said in a statement.

It added that the attack had not affected the safety of its staff and it was too early to assess the impact on customers.

News of the attack pushed aluminium prices up 1.2 percent to a three-month high of $1,944 a tonne in early trade on the London Metal Exchange, before giving up some gains to trade at $1,935 by 1148 GMT.

The event was a rare case of an attack on industrial operations in Norway. The last publicly-acknowledged cyber attack in the Nordic country was on software firm Visma, when hackers working on behalf of Chinese intelligence breached its network to steal secrets from its clients.

Companies and governments have become increasingly concerned about the damage hackers can cause to industrial systems and critical national infrastructure following a number of high-profile cyber attacks in recent years.

In 2017, attacks later blamed by the United States on Russia and North Korea caused millions of dollars of damage to companies worldwide, crippling computers in industries from shipping to sweet making. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the allegations.

In Ukraine, meanwhile, authorities have seen hackers knock electricity grids and transport systems offline, and an attack on Italian oil services firm Saipem late last year destroyed more than 300 of the company's computers.

FROM CARS TO CONSTRUCTION

Hydro makes products across the aluminium value chain, from the refinement of alumina raw material via metal ingots to bespoke components used in cars and the construction industry.

"Some extrusion plants that are easy to stop and start have chosen to temporarily shut production," said a Hydro spokesman.

The company's hydroelectric power plants were running as normal on isolated IT systems unaffected by the outage.

The Norwegian state agency in charge of cyber security said Hydro contacted them early on Tuesday and that it was assisting the company.

"We are ... sharing this information with other sectors in Norway and with our international partners," said a spokeswoman for the Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM). She declined to comment on the nature of the attack.

Norsk Hydro's main website page was unavailable on Tuesday, although some of the web pages belonging to subsidiaries could still be accessed. The company was giving updates on the situation on its Facebook page.

"Hydro's main priority now is to limit the effects of the attack and to ensure continued people safety," it wrote in a Facebook post.

Hydro's shares fell 3.4 percent in early trade before a partial recovery to trade down 0.6 percent by 1148 GMT. It was still lagging the Oslo benchmark index, which was up 0.8 percent.

Hydro, which has 36,000 employees in 40 countries, recorded sales of 159.4 billion crowns ($18.7 billion) last year, with a net profit of 4.3 billion crowns.
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Exim Bank on March 19 said it has given a loan of $83.11 million to Congo to finance three solar power projects in the central African country. Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank) has, on behalf of the government, extended three lines of credit (LOC) aggregating $83.11 million to the government of Congo, it said in a release.

The loan will be utilised for financing three solar photovoltaic power projects with a total capacity of 35 megawatt in the three provinces -- Karawa, Mbandaka and Lusambo.

The LOC agreements to this effect were exchanged between Ambassador of Congo to India Mossi Nyamale Rosette and Exim Bank Managing Director David Rasquinha during the 14th CII-Exim Conclave 2019.

"With the signing of these three lines of credit for $83.11 million, Exim Bank, till date, has extended 10 LOC to the government of Congo on behalf of government of India, taking the total value of LOCs extended to $578.05 million," it said.

Projects covered under the LOCs extended to Congo include hydroelectric power projects, power transmission and distribution projects, cement plant, hand pumps and submersible pumps installation, and solar power projects.

With this line of credit, Exim Bank said, it has now put in place 244 LOCs covering 63 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the CIS with credit commitments of around $23.43 billion available for financing exports from India.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is unhappy with the Grant Thornton interim report on IL&FS Financial Services, as the audit firm has been able to find money trail for anomalies worth only Rs 2,364 crore while the report had pointed out financial irregularities totalling Rs 13,000 crore.

IL&FS has a debt of about Rs 89,000 crore, of which Rs 65,000 crore has been classified under the 'amber' and 'red' categories.

Grant Thornton did not respond to a query by Moneycontrol.

The ED received Grant Thornton's report about a week after it submitted the report to the IL&FS board on February 20.

According to the ED, the audit report only sheds light on some transactions but an in-depth forensic report is missing.

A source close to the development told Moneycontrol The forensic report did not go into details of layering in loan disbursement to companies, that do not have proper collateral. As per our primary investigation, the first layer of loan disbursement had no issue with respect to the prevention of money laundering (PMLA). Their annual books have mentioned related party transactions with details on relatives who have received contracts."

"The main investigation point is about who received contracts in the second or third layers and whether those companies actually exist or are just on paper. These critical details are not a part of the (Grant Thornton) forensic audit report.

Another source said, Grant Thornton was under investigation from the Serious Fraud Investigation Office in the Kingfisher Airlines case where the auditor had given a report on the brand equity of Kingfisher, based on which Kingfisher took a loan from IDBI bank."

Enforcement Directorate feels this case may be the biggest scam of the financial crime and could be worth more than Rs 30,000 crores. Even the Ministry of Corporate Affairs feels over Rs 30,000 crores may not be returned to banks and over Rs 50,000 crores lie in the red category which means no kind of debt will be serviceable."

Moneycontrol was the first to report the findings of the forensic audit report by Grant Thornton on IFIN.

The ED is investigating instances where funds lent to borrowers of IFIN, were utilised to provide funds to certain group companies of IL&FS (primarily ITNL). Based on the unapproved minutes of the IL&FS board meeting held on September 11, 2018, it appears that the then Board of Directors and certain members of the board who were part of the Committee of Directors were allegedly aware that the loans provided to third parties had been forwarded or lent to IL&FS group companies.

As per the forensic audit, "Certain companies of IL&FS Group (that were available) were identified following instances amounting to Rs 2,270 crores where they received funds from the third party to whom IFIN has lent loans.

The Grant Thornton audit claimed, ITNL received Rs 1,150 crore, Srinagar Sonmarg Tunnelway got Rs 390 crores, Gujarat Integrated Maritime Complex received Rs 250 crores, Fagne- Songard Expressway received loans of Rs 200 crore, Chennai-Nashri Tunnel Way received Rs 150 crore, Sea Land Port and Sitar Bikaner got loans of worth Rs 100 crore and Rs 30 crore, respectively. SREI, Empower, Vistar, GHV, PCL, Sangam and Dynamatic had allegedly transferred the loan to these companies.

The ED is investigating at least six instances where nearly Rs 100 crore in loans disbursed to borrowers were transferred to their promoters or directors.

The audit firm revealed that a certain amount of loan which was disbursed by IFIN to borrowers, were directly utilised to pay the latters promoters or directors.

IFIN had lent Rs 75 crore in October 2017 to Prism, which was again forwarded to Gupta in the form of a loan. Similarly, group company Flemingo received loans of up to Rs 514.50 crore and directors of the company, Kabir and Viren Ahuja received Rs 8.81 crore.

IL&FS Energy Development Company Limited director also got Rs 2.95 crores. Siddhartha Dinesh Mishra who is one of the promoters of Bay Capital got a loan from IFIN in Indus Equicap Consultancy private limited".

In one of the cases, it was noted that Siddharth Dinesh Mehta, who is a promoter of group Bay Capital and director at IL&FS Energy Development Company Limited, had received Rs 2.95 crore in a similar manner.
According to the EOW, the accused colluded with the former promoters of Religare Enterprises, Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh. (Image: Reuters)

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In yet another blow to Singh brothers, stock market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in its order on March 19, asked Fortis Healthcare to take all necessary steps to recover Rs 403 crore along with accrued interest from the brothers and their holding companies.

The SEBI order directed Singh brothers to pay Fortis within three months from the date of the interim order.

The regulator also ordered Singh brothers and their companies not to dispose of or alienate any assets or divert any funds pending completion of the investigation and until further orders.

Along with Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, referred to as the Singh brothers, the SEBI order included RHC, Shivi Holdings, Malav Holdings, Religare Finvest, Best, Fern and Modland in the order.

Failure to comply with the order may even possibly land the Singh brothers in prison.

The SEBI began its preliminary enquiry following a media report about Rs 500 crore diverted from the company through inter-corporate deposits (ICDs), and external auditor Deloitte's refusal to sign second quarter FY18 results. SEBI also appointed a forensic auditor MSA Probe Consulting to get to the bottom of the allegations.

The SEBI found diversion of funds and fudging of account.

The order said there was a circular movement of Rs 600 crore between three borrower companies in form of ICDs giving an impression that they were paying-off Fortis, but these funds landed with RHC, the holding company of Singh brothers.

SEBI noted that besides the ICDs, Fortis has given numerous short term loans to unrelated entities viz. Best, Fern and Modland that landed in the accounts of Singh brothers and their companies on the very same day.

It emerged that the loans given by FHsL to 3 borrower companies were for the sole purpose of making available funds to the promoter and related entities. Though it was portrayed that the loans were given to Best, Fern and Modland which were apparently not connected to FHsL or its directors/promoters at the time of giving the loans, the ultimate beneficiaries of such loans were RHC Holding and other promoter related entities, SEBI order said.

SEBI also found that Fortis had misrepresented financial statements through structured movement of funds.

FHsL had entered into multiple structured transactions over a period starting from June 30, 2016, till June 30, 2017, which were prima facie fictitious and fraudulent in nature, the order said.

These pertained to various ICDs granted by FHsL to Best, Fern and Modland, which were shown to had been squared off at the end of each quarter. However, in reality, the ICDs were not squared off but were fictitiously and fraudulently shown to have been repaid through a structured movement of funds between FHsL and the borrower companies at the end of each quarter to give rise to an accounting fiction that the payment due for all the ICDs has been received, the order added.

Singh brothers, the erstwhile promoters of Fortis Healthcare, lost control of the company in February 2018, after lenders invoked the pledged shares with the approval of Supreme Court. Fortis was bought by Malaysias IHH Healthcare for $1.1 billion in a bidding process in August 2018.

The brothers are also facing allegations diverting Rs 740 crore from Religare Enterprises , in which too, they lost control. They were also chased by Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo, that is trying to enforce Rs 3,500 crore arbitration award it got from Singapore tribunal. Supreme Court has summoned the Singh brothers on March 28, to hear whether they will pay up the amount or not.
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Facing opposition to its acquisition of Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) founder VG Siddhartha's stake in Mindtree, Larsen & Toubro (L&T) said the deal should not be considered as a hostile takeover. Instead, said SN Subrahmanyan, its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, said the engineering behemoth is approaching this acquisition in good faith, with dil and pyaar.

There are certain emotions and trepidation involved, but business is business. Emotions do play a part, but emotionalities have to be overcome as we go forward, Subrahmanyan said at a press conference held in Mumbai, a day after L&T announced purchase of Siddhartha's 20.32 percent stake in Mindtree, at Rs 980 per share, for Rs 3,269 crore and also made an open offer for an additional 31 percent stake in the midcap IT services firm for Rs 5,030 crore in an all-cash deal.

We are trying to do this with pyaar and will continue to look at this as something we are doing from our dil, he added.

This statement comes in the wake of Mindtrees founders condemning and opposing L&Ts hostile bid  a first in the Indian IT industry to take over the Bengaluru IT services company.

However, Subrahmanyan said there is room for negotiation with Mindtree's promoters.

Speaking on the sequence of events, he said Siddhartha had approached L&T three months ago to sell his stake in Mindtree. We looked at picking up stake in Mindtree after three-to-four rounds of meetings. Siddhartha wanted to sell stake to a company with similar values.

In a statement on March 18, L&T said it had also placed an order with its broker for an on-market purchase of up to 15 percent of Mindtree's shares at Rs 980 apiece. This will take L&T's Mindtree shareholding to nearly 65 percent, valuing the deal at Rs 10,733 crore.

The Competition Commission of India is the only approval we require in India. We need some overseas approvals as these companies operate globally, said R Shankar Raman, Chief Financial Officer, L&T, adding that they expect the regulatory approval to occur in 30-45 days.

The main takeaway from the conference was that Mindtree will remain a separate entity and not be merged with L&T Infotech. We would have to leverage L&T Infotech, if we had carried out the acquisition through it. Our intent is to keep both of them separate. L&T's logic behind Mindtree's stake buy is to expand its services business, not integrate it with L&T Infotech, Subrahmanyan said.

L&T Infotech is predominant into banking and insurance, whereas Mindtree focuses on areas like retail and hospitality.

However, Raman did not rule out a future merger in between the two entities, adding: "The market and developments will decide when, if at all, Mindtree and L&T Infotech can be combined."

At present, the primary reason to keep both entities separate was to protect interests of minority shareholders, he stated.

Raman said they cannot buy or trade in Mindtree stock until the company receives necessary approvals. Over and above Siddharthas 20 percent stake, we need to go for an open offer to increase our stake. We dont know what the response will be for the open offer, market dynamics will play out, he said.Ruling out conflict between L&T Infotech and Mindtree, Raman sees minimal scope for the same as both companies are about a $1 billion each. In fact, he sees enough room for growth. Even in the few common clients, both companies are working at different ends. If anything there will be synergies. When they reach $5 billion each, they could possibly start to look at each others turf, he added.Subrahmanyan said that a large chunk of L&Ts revenues comes from the engineering, procurement & construction (EPC) and services businesses. "Net profit margin in the service business is around 15-16 percent versus 6-7 percent for the EPC business. That's why, we wanted to make acquisition in the services sector and hence considered Mindtree," he explained. Follow @HimadriBuch
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It was a succession plan that did not pan out as envisioned.

Less than five years after founder Capt CP Krishnan Nair of Hotel Leelaventure handed over the company's reins to his two sons Vivek and Dinesh Nair, most of its key assets, including brand Leela, have been sold.

On March 20, the board of Hotel Leelaventure, which owns the Leela brand and runs properties under it, decided to sell all but one of its assets, under a slump sale arrangement to Canada's real estate fund Brookfield Asset Management.

Brookfield owns and manages 155 hotels in US, UK and Australia.

Leela's operational hotels in Delhi, Udaipur, Chennai and Bengaluru (having a total of 1,017 rooms), a land parcel in Agra (near the Taj Mahal), leasehold rights for land in Bengaluru and license agreement for Mumbai property form the core of the deal.

Though Leela said it intends to use the Rs 3,950 crore for repaying its Rs 4,000 crore debt, this multi-layer transaction has benefitted Brookfield more than Leela.

For instance, the sell-off of the 206-room Goa property in 2015, fetched Leela Rs 721 crore, translating to Rs 3.5 crore per room.

The present deal has similar terms, despite entailing much more.

Brookfield managed to get the four properties (all located at prime locations) for a valuation that is not very different from the Goa hotel transaction, a good deal considering the Canadian company also got brand Leela and other assets. It is evident that there has not been any healthy appreciation in the value of its properties during the last four years.

A lifeline

In February, JM Financial Asset Reconstruction Company (JMFARC) filed an application with the National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai bench, against Hotel Leela. The application was under Section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016. This was done to get the best valuation even as the powers of the promoters of Hotel Leela becomes limited in the tribunal.

JMFARC, which made brothers Vivek and Dinesh Nair forgo salaries for two consecutive years, controls 96 percent of the Hotel Leelas debt. The company had been in talks with a variety of interested parties including private equity investors, asset management companies, state-backed investment funds and other prospective bidders. However on most occasions, the talks fell through over asset valuation.

Hotel Leela started defaulting on quarterly interest payments on debentures to Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India in 2018. By end the end of last financial year, Leela's debt climbed Rs 3,800 crore.

How did Leela get into this mess?

Leela Hotels closed FY14 with a debt of nearly Rs 5,000 crore. After Capt. Nair's demise in 2014, the company was struggling to push itself to profitability, mainly due to the ballooning cost of finance that eroded its margins repeatedly.

Unlike its competitors such as Hyatt, Marriott and Intercontinental, who run readymade properties on management contracts, the management at Leela decided to infuse own funds to build new properties. As most of this was done through debt, the interest payout on the loans made it difficult to avoid losses.

One of India's largest hotel firms Indian Hotels Company , that runs Taj Hotels, switched to the management contract route after years of continuous losses. Termed as asset-light strategy, management contracts help keep fixed costs considerably low compared to the asset heavy (ownership) model.

Even before Nair's demise, the company had already sold off its luxurious Kovalam property and an IT Park in Chennai. But the high level of debt forced the company to keep exploring sale of properties. Soon after the Goa property was sold, it was followed by monetisation of another IT park in Kochi.

If the current deal goes through Hotel Leela will switch to becoming a management company from an ownership company. It will continue to run all its current properties which will be under three different ownerships.

The Nair family has also formed a joint venture with Brookfield for the purpose of carrying out certain development activities jointly, a statement from Leela said.
Kolkata-based SREI Equipment Finance Limited has come under the scanner of various agencies after a whistleblower's letter alleged that the financing firm had restructured loans to prevent them from becoming non-performing assets (NPAs).

The letter, dated December 19, 2018, was sent to Additional Commissioner, CGST, with copies to Reserve Bank of India and Serious Fraud Investigation Office.

"Company regularly restructured bad loans to escape NPA/launder money through the hawala route. RBI guidelines are systematically bypassed" said the letter.

Moneycontrol has seen the letter.

The GST department, sources told Moneycontrol had separately called SREI's Chief Executive Officer DK Vyas for questioning, following raids in the companys Mumbai office for alleged GST violation.

A senior officer in GST department added that the agency is examining loans that SREI had given to infrastructure and real estate companies. The loans were given on the basis of sale deeds between inter-company transfers. As of now, we have not received any invoice generation receipt.

Responding to queries sent by Moneycontrol, SREI said: "It has come to our notice that an individual pretending to be a whistleblower is spreading rumours and misinformation about Srei Group anonymously. The claims made in the unsigned letter, which is being circulated anonymously, are false and baseless. We believe that this is being done to malign SREI Group's impeccable reputation and is a feeble attempt to blackmail and extort money."

The company added that it is making complaints to authorities "for criminal conspiracy and attempted extortion".

Adding that the company has a "well laid out framework" in accordance with RBI guidelines for sanctioning and disbursing loans, SREI said: "We emphatically refute all the allegations proposals are thereafter approved/rejected by empowered committees and not by any individual; the company is regularly audited by several regulatory agencies and reputed auditors."

Nirmal Lifestyle loan

Moneycontrol has seen one intra-company sales deed of Rs 22.5 crore between Mumbai-based real estate firm Nirmal Lifestyle and its unit Nirmal Lifestyle Kalyan Private Limited, where - as the whistleblower letter had alleged  the loan seemed to have been restructured.

According to the sales deed papers, Nirmal Lifestyle got a loan of Rs 22.5 crore from SREI Equipment to buy construction equipment from its unit on March 16, 2018. But within 12 days of getting the loan, Nirmal Lifestyle repaid loans worth Rs 22.5 crore, which many of its units, including Nirmal Lifestyle Kalyan, owed SREI Equipment. This despite the authorization letter mentioning that the money sanctioned cant be used in re-payment of loan.

Both, SREI and Nirmal Lifestyle Limited, have refuted the charges.

We have taken this loan from SREI against various assets/properties/Land owned by Nirmal Group and the said loan of Rs. 22.5 Cr has been availed by Nirmal Lifestyle against the assets owned by Nirmal Lifestyle only, said Nirmal Lifestyle, in response to Moneycontrols query.

The value of the securities provided under the loan agreements are more than the required assets cover. We have various existing loans with Srei and repayment is done regularly as a part of our contractual obligation, it added.

SREI Equipment claimed that it had extended the loan to Nirmal Lifestyle against its existing assets.

"We would like to deny that Rs 22.50 cr was financed by us to Nirmal Lifestyle to buy construction equipment from its subsidiary Nirmal Lifestyle Kalyan. We have all the necessary documents corroborating these facts. Further the security charge created in our favour can be verified in CERSAI and with ROC."

It added:

"Therefore, your assumption that we have financed to Nirmal Lifestyle for buying of Construction equipment from its subsidiary Nirmal Lifestyle Kalyan is factually incorrect.

We would also like to emphasise that providing financing solution to our customers with judicious security cover of various security mix and also timely collection of dues thereafter, is our normal course of business and in Nirmal Group of Companies too, there is nothing out of the normal which is worth highlighting.

The whistleblower letter concludes by asking the Director of SFIO to conduct a forensic audit, "so that we do not become the next IL&FS."
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More ports around the world are banning ships from using a fuel cleaning system that pumps wastewater into the sea, one of the cheapest options for meeting new environmental shipping rules.

The growing number of destinations imposing stricter regulations than those set by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) are expected to be a costly headache for cruise and shipping firms as they face tough market conditions and slowing world trade. They might have to pay for new equipment and extra types of fuel and adjust their routes.

Singapore, China and Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates have already banned the use of the cleaning systems, called open loop scrubbers, from the start of next year when the new IMO rules come into force.

Reuters has learned that individual ports in Finland, Lithuania, Ireland and Russia, have all banned or restricted such equipment, according to interviews with officials and reviews of documents by Reuters. One British port has occasionally imposed restrictions.

Norway is also working on open loop scrubber bans around its world heritage fjords, an official with the climate and environment ministry told Reuters. A ban on all types of scrubbers is also proposed, the official added.

The IMO rules will prohibit ships from using fuels with sulphur content above 0.5 percent, unless they are equipped with exhaust gas cleaning systems. The open loop scrubbers wash out the sulphur and some industry experts believe they are the cheapest way to meet the new global rules.

Companies that invested in open loop scrubbers will be unable to use them while sailing through those port waters. They also fear the IMO rules could change again and ban open loop scrubbers altogether.

The world's top cruise operator Carnival Corporation has invested over $500 million to deploy the devices.

Carnival's Mike Kaczmarek, senior vice president for marine technology and refit with oversight of the group's scrubbers program, said the port moves were "very troubling".

"The more ports that participate in this, the greater the (economic) impact," he said.

"A lot of people out there...in good faith have made significant investments."

Ships with open loop scrubbers docking or sailing through those ports would need to store waste in tanks until it could be discharged elsewhere or avoid the ports.

The other option is to use a scrubber with a "closed loop", which stores the waste until it can be treated on land. There are also hybrid scrubbers with a loop that can be open or closed.

Ship owners could also choose another energy source such as low sulphur fuel or liquefied natural gas (LNG). Some experts say there will be enough low sulphur fuel available to avoid fitting scrubbers.

Data from Norwegian risk management and certification company DNV GL shows there will be a total of 2,693 ships running with scrubbers by the end of 2019 - based on current orders a and over 80 percent of them will be open loop devices, compared with 15 percent using hybrid scrubbers and 2 percent opting for closed loop scrubbers.

REGULATORY UNCERTAINTY

Initial research to date into the environmental impact of open loop scrubbers has produced a range of results. The ports and authorities that have banned them have acted in anticipation of studies that conclusively show the discharge is harmful, environmental groups say.

International regulation often lags local action and the IMO rules were agreed in 2016 after years of tense discussions.

An official with Sweden's Gothenburg port said it recommended shipowners in their waters not to use open loop scrubbers as a precautionary principle to "avoid discharges of scrubber wash water in coastal waters and port areas".

Businesses are waiting to see if the IMO rules will change.

"What is terrible for business is uncertainty in regulation and changes which are not broadcast well in advance," said Hamish Norton, president of dry bulk shipping group Star Bulk Carriers, among the biggest investors in scrubbers.

Jurisdictions that have not imposed restrictions are also watching closely.

The IMO encouraged member states in February to research the impact of scrubbers on the environment. An IMO spokeswoman said it was up to countries to make any proposal to tighten scrubber regulation, which would need consensus approval by its 174 member states.

The 28 European Union countries submitted a paper to the IMO which said the use of open loop scrubbers was "expected to lead to a degradation of the marine environment due to the toxicity of water discharges". It said it wanted to see "harmonization of rules and guidance".

A separate paper submitted to the IMO, commissioned by Panama - the world's top ship registration state - and conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said more scientific investigation was needed.

THE FRONT PAGE TEST

A number of jurisdictions without bans, including Gibraltar, South Korea and Australia said they were investigating.

"We will study to find out how harmful it is to oceans and then consider what actions we can take," said an official with South Koreas Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.

"If the IMO sets out a guideline on this, we will comply."

Others are pushing back. Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, said it concluded in research last year that there was little impact on the marine environment from scrubber water discharges.

Carnival said a study it commissioned concluded that scrubbers were safe and discharges were over 90 percent lower than maximum allowable levels in various waters.

Nevertheless, many in the industry expect the rules to change.

Ivar Hansson Myklebust, chief executive with Hoegh Autoliners, said at a recent Marine Money conference the vehicle transporter was not ordering any scrubbers.

"The (open loop) scrubbers have a hard time passing the front page test taking pollutants from the air and dumping it into the sea," he said.
Venezuela has suspended its oil exports to India and views Russia and China as its main export destinations, the Azeri energy ministry said on Tuesday, citing Venezuela's oil minister.

The Azeri ministry issued the statement on Tuesday following talks in Baku between Azerbaijan's energy minister and Venezuelan oil minister and president of state-run oil company PDVSA, Manuel Quevedo.

"At the meeting... Quevedo said in order to prevent a sharp reduction, various measures are being implemented and diversification of the export market is underway," the statement said.

"Russia and China are seen as the main destinations because of the suspension of oil exports to India," the statement said.

The Indian market has been crucial for Venezuela's economy because it has historically been the second-largest cash-paying customer for the OPEC country's crude, behind the United States.

Earlier this year, the United States imposed heavy sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry and has pressed India to stop buying Venezuelan oil.

OPEC and other oil ministers met in Baku in talks over the weekend that ended on Monday.
(Image: Reuters)

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Beleaguered airline Jet Airways could be up for further attrition of aircraft, even as the airline has grounded as many as 78 planes and has withdrawn close to 1,000 scheduled flights.

In a meeting held between the airline executives and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the former informed the watchdog that 603 domestic and 382 international scheduled flights have been withdrawn due to unavailability of aircraft. The airline is now operating only 34 percent (41 of 119 aircraft) of its fleet.

DGCA held an emergency meeting with the airline in New Delhi, on March 19, to take stock of flight cancellation, advance booking and airline safety and directed the latter to comply with the relevant provisions of applicable civil aviation requirements (CARs) for facilitation of passengers.



Directed Secretary, @MoCA_GoI to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, Advance bookings, Cancellation, Refunds and Safety issues, if any. Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA. @jayantsinha

 Chowkidar Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) March 19, 2019

Union minister for civil aviation, Suresh Prabhu, directed the watchdog to hold a meeting with the airline and review the situation.

According to a statement by DGCA, the meeting was to review performance, operational airworthiness and passenger facilitation of/by the airline.

Jet Airways is reeling under a debt of over Rs 8,000 crore has been defaulting on loan re-payment and interest thereof. This has led to numerous flight cancellations, consequently leading to soaring airfares.

Also read: Jet Airways' lessors offer 50 grounded Boeing aircraft to SpiceJet: Sources

India's second-largest carrier, which is facing is worst ever debt crisis in 25 years, has delayed payments to its pilots, suppliers and lessors for months and defaulted on loans subsequent to an intense competition, weak rupee and rising fuel costs.

DGCA has further asked the airline to ensure that no pilots/cabin crew/aircraft maintenance engineers are put on duty who have reported stress of any nature.

Additionally, all such staff should be current with all mandatory training requirements, the statement said.

Jet Aircraft Maintenance Engineers Welfare Association (JAMEWA), had written letter to the government and DGCA to seek their intervention in the recovery of their salary dues. It said that the non-payment was affecting their psychological condition which, in turn, was a "risk" to the airline's flight operations. The letter, however, was later withdrawn by the body.

DGCA directed the airline to ensure that all the aircrafts, whether in operation or grounded, must be maintained in accordance with the Approved Maintenance Programme (AMP).

DGCA is continuously monitoring the overall situation and based on the same, will take appropriate steps by the end of the month, the statement said.
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Lessors of beleaguered Jet Airways have offered 50 of the airlines new generation Boeing 737 aircraft to budget carrier SpiceJet even on short-term leases of up to three years, Moneycontrol has learnt.

Top sources in SpiceJet told Moneycontrol that the lessors have offered the aircraft on dry lease in order to avoid grounding of these planes in wake of ailing financial health of Jet Airways. A dry lease is a situation where the lessor provides aircraft to an airline without any crew or ground staff member.

SpiceJet is in need of 12 new aircraft after the aviation safety watchdog, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), decided to ground Boeing 737 Max planes owing to safety concerns. The aircraft model was involved in two fatal accidents within a span of six months killing 346 people in all.

The budget carrier has, so far, received two replacements on lease from a Turkish Airline, sources said.

Lessors of Jet Airways, sources say, fear payment uncertainty owing to the financial crunch in the company.

Jet Airways is reeling under a debt of over Rs 8,000 crore has been defaulting on loan re-payment and interest thereof. It has grounded a total of 60 aircraft so far and is operating with half its fleet. This has led to numerous flight cancellations, consequently leading to soaring airfares.

India's second-largest carrier, which is facing is worst ever debt crisis in 25 years, has delayed payments to its pilots, suppliers and lessors for months and defaulted on loans subsequent to an intense competition, weak rupee and rising fuel costs.

Union minister for civil aviation, Suresh Prabhu, directed DGCA to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights, advance booking cancellations, refunds and safety issue of the airline.

According to letter by Jet Aircraft Maintenance Engineers Welfare Association (JAMEWA), the body was seeking DGCAs intervention in the recovery of their salary dues as the non-payment was affecting their psychological condition which, in turn, was a "risk" to the airline's flight operations. The letter, however, was later withdrawn by the body.

Jet Airways was earlier looking at a resolution plan which required an infusion of over Rs 750 crore in the airline. Its last resort, the partner airline Etihad Airways, has decided against infusion of any fresh capital as it wont be allowed to become a majority stakeholder due to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) conditions.

Media reports have suggested that Etihad Airways was not willing to accept the proposed resolution plan for Jet Airways and was offering its top lender State Bank of India (SBI) the option to acquire its 24 percent stake at Rs 150 per share. Etihad, which owns 24 percent of Jet Airways, may also eventually look at an exit, reports suggested.

If Etihad backs out, Jet Airways would have to look for a new partner in a fortnight. The Indian airline, which defaulted on loans in December, has 15 days before it is liable to be referred via a case to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC), reports said.
Jet Airways owes banks nearly Rs 8,000 crore.

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Etihad Airways is not willing to accept the proposed resolution plan for Jet Airways and is offering its top lender State Bank of India (SBI) the option to acquire its 24 percent stake at Rs 150 per share, reports ET Now.

Earlier, Etihad is said to have informed SBI it won't make any further investment in the airline. The airline may not even be part of the fundraising deal drawn up by the consortium of lenders, according to a report by The Economic Times.

Etihad, which owns 24 percent of Jet Airways, may also eventually look at an exit, sources told the newspaper. According to the report, Etihad's CEO Tony Douglas conveyed this decision to SBI chief Rajnish Kumar in a meeting on March 18.

Read: All eyes on Naresh Goyal, as his deadline to Jet Airways' pilots expires

Amid grounding of operations at various domestic and international airports, Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyal and his son Nivaan Goyal flew to Doha and gave a presentation to Qatar Airways Global CEO Akbar Al Baker, as per the report. A senior executive at Qatar, however, told the newspaper it was not interested in investing in Jet Airways.

Moneycontrol independently could not verify the report.

Lenders To Weigh All Options But Seek To Avoid NCLT Route For Jet As Of Now 3/19/2019 1:52:08 PM ETo Accept Terms Of MoU For Resolution Proposed By Jet Air 3/19/2019 1:51:45 PM ESources On~Jet Airways ~ Lenders' Meeting Comes Amidst Impasse Between Etihad & Naresh Goyal 3/19/2019 1:51:37 PM ESources On~Jet Airways ~ Etihad Offers To Sell Its Stake To Lenders Or A New Investor 3/19/2019 1:50:52 PM ESources On~Jet Airways ~ Lenders To Discuss Etihad's Proposal To Exit, Alternatives In Today's Meet 3/19/2019 1:50:11 PM ESources On~Jet Airways ~ Etihad Airways To Have Proposed Exiting Jet Airways At `150/Sh 3/19/2019 1:50:06 PM E

Sources On~Jet Airways ~

Earlier, Jet Airways' lenders told Etihad it could exit if it didn't agree to conditions in the resolution plan. Key conditions include an immediate infusion of Rs 750 crore for the cash-strapped by Etihad, which the Gulf carrier didn't agree to. Meanwhile, Etihad's conditions weren't met by the lenders and Jet Airways.

The Middle East airline continues to stick to its demands, including capping of Goyal's stake at 22 percent and exemption from opting for an open offer in case it decides to invest further in the Indian airline, thus increasing its stake.

In the absence of a strategic investor, lenders on their own may be unable to turn around Jet Airways. The development could make the revival prospects of the beleaguered airline bleak.

Read: Naresh Goyal pens new letter to employees, asks for further short time

According to the draft memorandum of understanding (MoU), the lenders are supposed to convert debt into 114 million shares. The airline has already enhanced its share capital and will, in the next step, issue fresh shares via a rights issue.

As per the provisional pact, a 'new investor' was to inject between Rs 1,600 crore to Rs 1,900 crore for about 20 percent in Jet Airways and the Goyal-led promoter group's stake was to fall to 17.1 percent, with a caveat seeking to cap it at 22 percent.

Jet Airways is facing the worst financial crisis in its 25-year old existence. As a result of liquidity constraints, the airline has defaulted on loan repayments, grounded a majority of its planes, delayed payments to most vendors, including aircraft leasing companies and delayed salaries.

Read: Jet Airways grounds 4 more aircraft; about 60 now taken off service

If Etihad backs out, Jet Airways would have to look for a new partner in a fortnight. The Indian airline, which defaulted on loans in December, has 15 days before it is liable to be referred via a case to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulations state that lenders must find a resolution to cases pertaining to defaulting companies within 180 days of their first default. If the case remains unresolved, the company has to be referred to a bankruptcy court.

Watch: Editor's Take | Not Naresh Goyal, but Etihad now holding up Jets lifeline deal

Increasing flight cancellations at Jet Airways have also prompted Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) to demand that the airline be barred from any advance bookings. Refunding disgruntled customers would worsen the airline's cash position.
March 19, 2019 / 03:32 PM IST

Market Close: The bull run continues on the Dalal Street on Tuesday with Nifty and Sensex finished higher for the 7th consecutive day.

At the close, the Sensex was up 268.40 points at 38363.47, while Nifty was up 70.20 points at 11532.40. About 1382 shares have advanced, 1290 shares declined, and 166 shares are unchanged

HCL Tech, Bharti Infratel, Infosys, Reliance Industries and ITC were among major gainers, while losers include Eicher Motors, JSW Steel, Hero Motocorp, L&T and Maruti Suzuki on the Nifty.

On the sectoral front, except auto all other sectors ended in green led by PSU bank, energy, IT, pharma, FMCG and infra.
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Increasing flight cancellations at Jet Airways have prompted Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) to demand that the airline be barred from any advance bookings, according to a report by The Economic Times.

The cash-strapped Jet has cancelled flights to several international and domestic destinations including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Dammam, Kochi and Nagpur.

Jet Airways will be operating merely 45 planes from March 19 as it has grounded close to 64 percent of its 124-strong fleet as of December, sources told the paper. This has affected its operations in various routes including Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad.

"Jet Airways usually accounted for 12-15 percent of our total sales. Now, it's come down to 2-5 percent," an executive at a travel portal told the newspaper.

Read: Jet Airways delays interest payments, grounds 4 more planes



@sureshpprabhu @jayantsinha @MoCA_GoI -pl stop advance booking of tkts by Jetairways,when no clarity is there on their schedules.Everyday, we hear grounding of more & more planes.Let gullible Pax not contribute working capital now & face losses later

 Sudhakara Reddy (@presidentapai) March 16, 2019

Owing to the inconvenience caused to passengers due to these groundings, Industry watchers and experts said the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) should stop advance bookings. "Jet shouldn't be allowed to do the advance booking with fancy offers when a situation is going from bad to worse," D Sudhakara Reddy, President, APAI, tweeted.

"Past experience shows gullible passengers lost hundreds of crores when Paramount, Kingfisher and SpiceJet collected money in the name of advance booking. When schedules were disrupted or aircraft grounded, passengers lost all their monies," he added.

South Indian carrier Paramount Airways, which started flying in 2005, folded in 2010, while Kingfisher Airlines, founded by liquor baron Vijay Mallya, started in 2005 and shut down in 2012. SpiceJet was on the brink of getting shut in 2014 but managed a turnaround.

Read: Jet Airways pilots seek government's help to recover unpaid salaries, with interest

According to the report, daily Delhi-Mumbai flights have been increased to 18 from 15 earlier, even as other departures have been decreased, a source told the newspaper.

Industry experts, however, are of the view that DGCA's move to bar Jet's advance bookings may worsen the situation for the crisis-hit airline.

Read: Naresh Goyal pens new letter to employees, asks for "further short time"

"While DGCA has to take a call to protect passengers and their money, barring Jet from making advance bookings would hasten its demise. We have already seen a huge spurt in fares that would worsen. It would be a nightmare," the travel company executive added.
A large number of people raised pro-Modi slogans outside the venue of a function here at which Congress president Rahul was addressing entrepreneurs.

Raising pro-prime minister slogans 'Modi, Modi', the protesters put up placards asking Gandhi to leave the venue.

As the noise intensified, the police removed the protesters.

BJP sources alleged several protesters, whom they referred to as techies, were taken into custody.

The BJP condemned the police action and alleged that Congress workers attacked the protesters.

"Congress workers attack techies who shouted "Modi Modi" slogans when Rahul Gandhi went to Manyata Tech Park in Bengaluru..." state BJP general secretary C T Ravi tweeted.
Representative image

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The share price of Hotel Leela Venture was locked at 5 percent upper circuit after the company decided to sell its hospitality and hotel operations business on slump sale basis to Brookfield.

There were pending buy orders of 1,059,544 shares, with no sellers available.

The company in its BSE release said that it has approved the execution of a Framework Agreement with BSREP III India Ballet Pte. (Brookfield) for sale and transfer of four hotels properties in Bangalore, Delhi, Udaipur and Chennai on a slump sale basis as a going concern for Rs 3,950 crore.

It also includes the hospitality and hotel operations business of the company and 100 percent shareholding of the company in Leela Palaces and Resorts that owns property and holds licenses for the development of a hotel in Agra.

At 11:03 hrs Hotel Leela Venture was quoting at Rs 11.63, up Rs 0.55, or 4.96 percent on the BSE.

For more market news, click here
Here are the stocks that are in news today:

Orbit Exports: Board approved the buy-back of fully paid up equity shares for an amount upto Rs 10 crore at a price upto Rs 130 per share.

Vakrangee: RBI renews the authorization issued to company for White Label ATMs

Aegis Logistics: Board approved interim dividend of 50 paise on equity shares of face value of Re 1 each.

HCL Technologies entered into a shared services arrangement with Xerox Corporation

Reliance Communications: The agreements dated December 28, 2017 and August 11, 2018 entered into between company, RTL, RITL (RCOM Group) and Reliance Jio respectively for sale of certain specified telecom assets have been terminated today by mutual agreement.

Reliance Communications: Company made payment of Rs 458 crore to Ericsson as per Supreme Court orders - CNBC-TV18.

Tata Motors clarified that Jaguar Land Rover is conducting a voluntary recall following the identification of C02 performance variability with certain 2016-2019 MY Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles fitted with 2. OL diesel or petrol engines.

Aarti Industries: Board approved raising of funds by way of issue of equity shares, through, a QIP.

Coffee Day Trading subsidiary of Coffee Day Enterprises and Mr. V.G. Siddhartha (Promoter of the Company) have signed a definitive agreement to sell their entire stake in Mindtree

Amines & Plasticizers: ICRA assigned long term rating at BBB+ and outlook positive to company's bank loan facilities.

Majesco: Company acquired insurance software business in India issued by Majesco, USA, subsidiary company.

IL&FS Transportation Networks: Company defaulted in payment of principal and interest due on non-convertible debentures.

Hotel Leela Venture: Company to sell its hospitality & hotel operations business on slump sale basis to Brookfield.

ISGEC Heavy Engineering fixed March 29 as record date for sub division of equity shares

RattanIndia Infrastructure: Vikas Adukia is appointed as the Chief Financial Officer of the company.

Adani Ports: Board approved the buyback of 14,000 non-convertible debentures (NCDs) aggregating to Rs 1,400 crore from the existing debenture holders in one or more tranche through negotiated deals.

FIEM Industries: Company declares interim dividend of Rs 8 per share for the financial year 2018-19.

Pidilite Industries: Chief financial officer P Ganesh resigned.

Voltas introduces, industry''s first, Adjustable Inverter AC range, with the unique value proposition of Flexible Air Conditioning

Canara Bank: Bank plans to raise long term foreign currency funds by issuing Senior Unsecured Bonds in the international markets to the extent of $500 million.

Emami: SAT quashes SEBI order against company - CNBC-TV18.

L&T, Mindtree: L&T signs deal to buy VG Siddharthas entire stake in Mindtree for Rs 981 per share: CNBC-TV18 sources.

Talwalkars Better Value promoter entity sold 0.23% stake in market on March 15

Bulk Deals on March 18

NSE

DHFL: PGGM World Equity BV bought 25,16,898 shares of the company at Rs 136.55 per share

Mindpool Technologies: Keyur Bipinkumar Shah purchased 24,000 shares of the company at Rs 16.5 per share

Reliance Communications: IndusInd Bank Client A/C sold 2,76,05,034 shares of the company at Rs 4.04 per share.

Reliance Infrastructure: PGGM World Equity BV bought 14,60,946 shares of the company at Rs 135.93 per share.

Suumaya Lifestyle: Newedge Vinimay Private Limited sold 3,20,000 shares of the company at Rs 29.9 per share.

BSE

Bharti Infratel: Bharti Airtel subsidiary Nettle Infrastructure Investments Limited bought 16 crore shares of the company at Rs 316.80 from Bharti Airtel.

(For more bulk deals, click here)

Analyst or Board Meet/Briefings

The New India Assurance Company: Board meeting is scheduled on March 27 to consider general matters of the company.

BEML: Board meeting is scheduled on March 21 to consider the interim dividend for the financial year 2018-19 on equity shares.

Aster DM Healthcare: Company is participating in the Kotak India Investment Forum being held at Singapore on March 19, where meetings shall be held with various investors/analysts.

PI Industries: Meeting with investor namely Canara HSBC Life Insurance is scheduled to be held on March 19.

Tata Chemicals: Company's officials will meet NVS Brokerage Pvt. Ltd. on March 19.

Allahabad Bank: Board meeting is scheduled on March 26 to consider capital raising plan.

Mahindra Logistics: Group Meeting (warehouse site visit) with various Institutional Investors is scheduled to be held on March 19.

Emmbi Industries: Company's officials will meet TrustLine Holdings on March 19 in Mumbai.

: Board meeting is scheduled on March 22 to consider the issue price for equity shares to be allotted to the qualified institutional buyers in the proposed Issue, including a discount, if any.
Picture for representation

Sending out a strong message on gender equality, two brides from Karnatakas Vijayapura indulged in a little role reversal. Twisting norms of male privilege, the two women tied mangalsutra (sacred thread) to their husbands instead of letting their men do so, InUth reported.

One of the couples in question belong to the Lingayat and Kuruba communities, respectively. Amit and Priya got married according to the teachings Lingayat social reformer Basavanna, who, back in the 12th century, had rejected instruments of discrimination and rituals like wearing the sacred thread.

The other couple -- Prabhuraj and Ankita -- also hailing from different communities, decided to scrap out regressive customs such as 'kanyadan', which symbolises 'handing down or giving away' the daughter, like a property. The couple also didnt rely on the idea of 'shubh mahurat' or auspicious time to decide the time of their wedding.

Both couples were blessed by thousands who attended the wedding, including members of all four families. It also saw the presence of many prominent Lingayat leaders such as guru Mahantesh Swami, Lingasugur Vijay Mahantesh Mutt Siddhalinga Swami, Guledagudda Basavaraj Devaru, Mahant Teertha seer, Satti Mutt's Basavalinga Swami, and Madara Chennaiah Guru Peetha's Basava Murthy.

One must note here, this is not the first time women have openly flouted meaningless, archaic norms. A few months ago, two brides from West Bengal made the headlines for similar gung-ho moves. One of the brides refused to perform 'Kanakanjali', which requires a woman to throw rice behind her as she moves to her in-laws, symbolic of paying off her parents' debts.

A video of the bride confronting those who questioned her decision, went viral shortly ad won the internet.

The other bride's father hired female priests to perform the wedding rituals and also backed out from performing 'kanyadan', clearly stating his daughter is no property.
India may not see another election if Narendra Modi is re-elected as prime minister, Rajasthan Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot has claimed, suggesting the country may go, electorally, the China and Russia way.

Gehlot also said the Constitution, democracy and the entire country was in danger under Modi, who he said would "do anything" to get back to power. People felt he could even go to war with Pakistan to achieve this goal, the senior Congress leader said.

Dubbing Modi a "good actor", Gehlot said he could do much better in Bollywood and would have left his indelible mark in acting. He also alleged Modi was a "master in marketing false promises".

"If people re-elect Modi, then there is no surety on whether elections will be held in the country or not. 'Chunav honge bhi, aur nahin bhi honge...jaise China, Russia mein hota hai' (Elections will be held in the country and yet not be held, like what happens in China, Russia)," Gehlot said during an interaction with PTI.

"Modi ji has done very good marketing," he also said, alleging the prime minister is creating a misconception in the minds of people about the Congress.

He was suggesting that polls will be held on the lines of those in China and Russia, where only one party rules and who becomes the president or the prime minister is decided beforehand.

His remarks come in the wake of a fierce battle between the opposition Congress and the ruling BJP ahead of Lok Sabha elections starting April 11.

While the BJP is taking the nationalist narrative to the grassroots in these elections, the Congress and other parties are trying to bring the narrative back to the basic issues of joblessness, farmers plight, economic crisis and corruption including that in the Rafale deal.

"This man can do anything to win elections...People felt he could even go to war with Pakistan, which is not a good thing....The personality of Modi ji that has emerged before the country is that he can go to any extent before and after elections...to win elections," Gehlot said while attacking Modi and added that "none including Amit Shah knows what is in his mind".

Taking a swipe at what he termed Modi's "acting skills", the senior Congress leader said, "If Modi ji was in Bollywood, maybe he would have left a different mark in the country and abroad, with his mastery in acting, oratory skills and antics."

Claiming that the "truth is on our side", the Congress leader said people in the country are far wiser and can differentiate between falsehood and truth and public conscience will side with the truth.

Truth shall finally emerge victorious, he asserted.

The veteran Congress leader also accused the prime minister of misusing Indian embassies in garnering the support of NRIs outside the country during his visits abroad.

The reference was to the prime minister's public events during his visits abroad. Gehlot alleged that they were organised with the active support of Indian embassies that drew widespread support from the NRI community.

There should be tolerance in a democracy, he said, alleging that BJP leaders have "no tolerance as they don't want anyone from the opposition to question them".

It is not in their DNA," he said.

The Rajasthan chief minister hit out at Modi over his style of functioning and said he has focussed on targeting opposition leaders by misusing agencies instead of governance during his rule and that is why he had "no result to show".

Gehlot, who has held several key positions in the Congress during his a political career spanning almost five decades, also attacked Modi over the use of language, saying it did not behove one who held the top post of the country's prime minister.

He accused Modi of having "failed" to fulfil the promises made to people before assuming power.

He also targeted the RSS, the BJP's ideological fountainhead, dubbing it an "extra-constitutional" authority that was trying to impose its people on every institution in the country.
Five years after the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act received the Presidents nod, a high-level committee comprising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi cleared former Supreme Court judge Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose to head Indias first Lokpal  the national anti-corruption ombudsman.

As per the Act, the Lokpal is to be headed by a chairperson who is or has been a Chief Justice of India or is or has been a Judge of the Supreme Court or an eminent person of impeccable integrity and outstanding ability having special knowledge and expertise of not less than 25 years in matters relating to anti-corruption policy, public administration, vigilance, finance including insurance and banking, law and management.

Justice PC Ghose, known for upholding the conviction and sentencing of VK Sasikala in the disproportionate assets case, seems to be the right man for the job.

Born into a lawyers family on May 28, 1952, Pinaki is the son of Justice Shambhu Chandra Ghose, who was a former chief justice of the Calcutta High Court.

He graduated in commerce from St Xaviers College in Calcutta and later obtained a degree in Law and Attorney at Law from Calcutta University. In 1976, he enrolled himself with the Bar Council of West Bengal, specializing in civil and company affairs.

In 1997, he became a judge of the Calcutta High Court, and in March 2013, he was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court. He retired from the apex court in May 2017 and has been a member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) since then.

Justice PC Ghose was a part of the Division Bench, along with Justice Amitava Roy, which convicted VS Sasikala, a close aide of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, in the disproportionate assets case. Even though Jayalalithaa was an accused in the same case, charges against her were dropped because she died during the pendency of the case.

Justice Ghose was also a part of the two-judge bench that had banned the centuries-old tradition of jallikattu (bullfighting) in Tamil Nadu.

Another important case handled by Justice Ghose in his stint as a judge of the Supreme Court was directing a trial court in 2017 to proceed against political leaders LK Advani, MM Joshi, Uma Bharti and others for alleged criminal conspiracy in the Babri Masjid demolition case.

Reminiscing his days of working with Justice Ghose, Supreme Court advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said he was very friendly towards all lawyers and had an extremely cool temperament.

He was extremely fast in the delivery of judgment and had an extremely good memory. He was an outstanding judge, Bhattacharya told The Indian Express.

The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act was passed to inquire into allegations of corruption against public functionaries. The act requires setting up of an ombudsman  Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas in the states. It was enacted in 2013 and received Presidential assent on January 1, 2014.
Parsons was born and raised in Evanston but moved away with her mom before attending Evanston Township High School, she said. However, the President/CEO of McGaw YMCA in Evanston returned after college to work and and raise her own child. She is running for her second term on the District 202 school board because I want every student to have as good or better an experience as my son had in high school, Parsons said.
June 02, 2019 / 09:01 AM IST

Welcome to the Lok Sabha election 2019 coverage. This blog tracks the latest developments from the general election.

The BJP reacted with jubilation at the exit polls, which forecast a return of the NDA government, saying that they show a huge positive vote for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but opposition parties rejected the forecast.

Narendra Modi is returning to power with a bang,
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday lashed out at the BJP for questioning her religion and said neither she nor the people of the state need to learn the meaning of 'communal harmony' from the "divisive BJP".

"There are people who question my religion. I want to tell them that my religion is humanity and I do not need lectures from others about religion," she said at a programme here in connection with the upcoming Holi festival.

"They (BJP) try to point fingers at me and say I do not allow puja to be conducted in Bengal. They should go and see how many 'mandir' (temples) have been constructed during the TMC regime," the Trinamool Congress supremo said.

The BJP had often questioned her religion and accused her of following the politics of appeasement.

Continuing to hit out at the saffron party, Banerjee, who is among its harshest critics, said she believed in playing Holi with colours "unlike some sections (BJP) which believe in paying with blood".

"I believe in playing Holi with colours and a pure mind unlike a section which believes in playing Holi with the blood of others. I do not need to learn the meaning of communal harmony from a divisive force like the BJP," she said.

Banerjee called for maintaining communal harmony on the days of 'Doljatra' (as the festival of colours is known in Bengal) and Holi, and cautioned people to be on guard against any effort to disturb peace.
Shekhar Iyer

You may take me out of Goa but you cannot take Goa out of me. These words of Manohar Parrikar, the 63-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister of Goa and former defence minister, are enough to qualify his relationship with his state, its people and politics.

Parrikar died on March 17 after fighting pancreatic cancer, leaving the BJP orphaned of its most prominent face of the land, which the rest of India imagines to be just the sun, surf and beaches. Without Parrikar in a state befuddled with issues such as rising unemployment, the BJP faces not just an uncertain future but also a vacuum in leadership, which will remain a big problem for Goa too.

Despite his last appearances showing a fragile man with a nasal tube and supported by aides, Parrikar symbolised an era of stability that had eluded Goa since its formation in 1961 after it was liberated from the Portuguese.

Before Parrikar, Goa went through five phases of Presidents Rule interspersed by short governments led by the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and the Congress. The state politics underwent a change after the BJP came to power at the Centre under Atal Bihar Vajpayee in 1998 and 1999. Under Parrikar, who formed the first BJP government in 2000, the party managed to develop roots and form governments  alternating with the Congress.

During the 1990s, Goa saw 13 CMs in 10 years. Some of them did not last in the office for a year. The MLAs kept shifting sides for power. Congress Ravi Naik created history by becoming the shortest serving CM for seven odd days. Parrikar got four terms, but could never complete a full term in office. He dissolved the assembly mid-way in his first term. Parrikars second stint was toppled by BJP MLAs led by Digambar Kamat shifting to the Congress. He had to leave his third term to serve as the defence minister. His fourth term ended after he lost the battle to cancer.

On March 18, after the last respects were paid to Parrikar, a 2 am swearing-in ceremony in the Raj Bhavan placed his favourite follower and Goa assembly speaker, Pramod Sawant, in the CMs chair. However, this was not before tough negotiations and hard bargaining with BJPs allies. A crisis was averted after Sudin Dhavalikar of the MGP and Vijay Sardesai of the Goa Forward Party (GFP) were appointed deputy chief ministers, a first for Goa. These two leaders had objected to Sawants name, seeking themselves to be made CM. Union minister Nitin Gadkari was BJPs negotiator who managed to strike the deal.

The support of the MGP and the GFP has meant that the NDA reached a tally of 20 in a 40-member assembly. This has put to rest Congress claim that it is the largest group in the assembly. In terms of the assembly arithmetic, there are four vacant seats after the death of two BJP members (including Parrikar) and the resignation of two Congress lawmakers.

After the 2017 state polls, the Congress emerged as the largest party. However, Gadkari managed to strike an alliance with other parties to form a BJP-led state government. Parrikar, who was then the defence minister, had to quit and return to Goa to once again become the chief minister because he was the most acceptable leader.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah picked on 45-year-old Sawant as he represented the original BJP, rising from the ranks of the youth wing and enjoying a relatively a clean image. However, Sawant faces an unenviable task. His survival as CM and the BJPs continuation in office depends on ensuring a modicum of stability and winning the two Lok Sabha seats (North Goa and South Goa) and the bypolls to three assembly seats of Mapusa, Mandrem and Shiroda.

Sawant has been candid to admit that Goa politics will not be the same without his mentor. Even if Parrikars death leaves sympathy for his party, Sawant realises that he is a green horn when it comes to crafting a strategy.

Parrikar was not just an able administrator but also a man of the masses and adept in realpolitik  whose interactions and friendships were beyond the traditional support bases of his party. Sawant will have Modis full backing, of course, but, he would have to work out his own ways to reach out to his party men, allies and those sections of Goa voters who would look at the BJP without Parrikar as an anathema. Here Gadkari will be of great help to Sawant, as Shahs ways wont work in Goa.

Of course, with Parrikar no more the Congress is smelling power again. Its calculation would be that the survival of the Sawant-led government would be difficult and fresh polls are bound to take place, sooner or later.

In the absence of Parrikar, the MGP and the GFP would also be looking at new equations. Thus the initial challenge for Sawant would be to ensure that the apple-cart is not toppled till at least the general elections are over. In the meantime, Sawant can follow Parrikars footsteps and focus on development.

A big factor that could determine and even alter the events in Goa is the results of the general elections. If Modi returns as Prime Minister of a BJP-led NDA government it would act as a deterrent to the disrupters in Goa. This maybe even the deciding factor on how Sawants term as CM goes. A change at the Centre would most likely act against Sawants term as Goa CM.

Another factor could be the reluctance of sitting MLAs (much like the AIADMK MLAs in Tamil Nadu) to face fresh polls  after all, they got elected only in 2017.

Shekhar Iyer is former senior associate editor of Hindustan Times and political editor of Deccan Herald. Views are personal.

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Leading Indian conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindras automotive division has made some impressive strides in recent times, especially in the electric vehicle segment. Late last month, Mahindra introduced its new tech-based premium e-mobility service, Glyd, in Mumbai, flagging off the first batch of 10 eVerito vehicles at the launch event. The new ride-hailing service is targeted at office going executives, and will be available in the Bandra Kurla Complex area in Mumbai in its initial phase. Customers can travel from home to office and return home in the evening using the electric vehicle fleet. The tariff is fixed and the type of vehicle is predictable for passengers who choose to commute this way. Thats a good thing, as we know - who amongst us hasnt, at some point, prayed that we would get a newer vehicle, especially on hot summer days like these?

Mahindra & Mahindras electric venture will, of course, place it squarely in direct competition with the two main players in Indias can business - Ola and Uber. Glyds pricing will be premium - around 5-10 percent more than the rates of Ola and Uber - since it claims to offer a premium service. M&Ms managing director Pawan Goenka said, This is our unique step to drive positive change towards a smart, sustainable and experiential daily commute.

This is a good time to look at what the future might hold for Mahindras Glyd. Will it prove to be a successful disruptor, like the company hopes, or will it just be another competitor that Uber and Ola simply outlast?

What is a Glyd?

Glyd is M&Ms second foray into the aggregator platform. It had tested the waters, so to speak, in 2015 with its app-based cargo aggregator business SmartShift. - a truck booking service that merged with a Mumbai startup named Porter.

The brand Glyd is owned by M&M, but the fleet of cars will be owned by third party companies and drivers. M&M flagged off a fleet of 10 e-Veritos, which are fully electric versions of the Mahindra Verito, on 25th February. Those 10 e-Veritos are owned by Mumbai-based ride-hailing company Meru Cabs.

A Moneycontrol report noted that since Glyd will have only electric cars on its app, it is designed on the lines of the Bengalurubased all-electric cab company Lithium. As stated earlier, the initial phase has been planned in and around Bandra-Kurla Complex and Lower Parel in Mumbai - the premium business districts of Mumbai. Glyd hopes to have 200-400 electric cars functional around BKC, and a further 800-1,600 cars in Lower Parel in the next 12 months. M&M is partnering in this project with Cisco and Vodafone. Cisco has been roped in to provide web-conferencing facilities in the e-Veritos, while Vodafone will offer curated digital content and connectivity in the vehicles. M&M is also offering features like air purifiers and strain-free lighting that it claims will add more value to the commuting experience. Glyd cabs will also include stress-relieving amenities like wrap-around head rests, custom designed armrests and bolstered seats. To ensure privacy, a section of the fleet have partitions in the rear seat so that one is not disturbed by co-passengers. One can book the full car or a seat through the Glyd app. These extra features will, of course, come at a special cost - that 10 percent premium over a regular Uber or Ola cab we mentioned earlier. We will only find out later if such services translate into willing customers. But M&M officials claim they are confident that their customer base is strong, and that the personalized solutions at the cost are justified.

In fact, so confident that M&M is likely to add more models to the Glyd service when they are available in the market. Glyd will have only Mahindra branded vehicles in its fleet, and though there is no official word from Mahindra on the future model range in Glyd, the company is set to launch an electric version of the KUV100 this year followed by an electric version of the XUV300 in 2020.

The companys MD, Dr. Goenka, said, As the pioneer of electric vehicles in the country, Mahindra has from time to time provided innovative and first of its kind e-mobility solutions. Glyd is one such flagship premium e-mobility solution to redefine the in-commute experience of daily commuters....Going forward, we plan to launch multiple e-mobility solutions, across cities. He added, To not participate in shared mobility and watch it from the sidelines will be suicidal.

Another Mahindra official told Business Standard, We need to identify new user cases for e-mobility and then allow it to scale up...Our services will be premium. There is a difference between you checking into a five-star hotel versus a budget hotel  even as the room size is the same, the experience is different. Mahindra is looking at offering a differentiated experience.

One market watchers analysis, as per Moneycontrol, is that, Drivers are starting to get confidence about putting an electric vehicle for commercial use. The cost advantages of running an EV is much higher for commercial purposes than running petrol or diesel-powered car.

EVs: their time is now. Or is it?

Is that true? EVs can cost more than their petrol or diesel equivalents. But, as cabs, one would think EVs would probably not make a difference to paying customers who just want to get from point A to point B. India has witnessed a boom of mobility startups and services, led by the success of Ola. That company then ventured into electric cabs, in collaboration with Mahindra, in Nagpur but received a fairly disappointing response. That project pretty much failed with drivers even reportedly returning the vehicles, thanks to frustratingly long queues at the charging stations in the city that were few and far in between. But Ola has stuck by its plan to bring one million EVs to Indian roads by 2022. One source told FactorDaily, Nagpur was a pilot to see how things works. It learnt from its mistakes, and has included new ways to build its EV fleet. In fact, just a few days after the launch of Glyd, Ola Electric Mobility Ltd announced it had raised 400 crores from Olas existing and early investors Tiger Global and Matrix India.

Mahindra is no spring chicken when it comes of EVs. If anything, it knows that segment fairly well. It sells the all-electric e2O in India and recently released 10,000 electric three-wheelers. It is the second biggest beneficiary of the institutional order of 10,000 electric cars from Delhi-based state-owned company Energy Efficiency Service, or EESL. Tata Motors is the only other auto company in India to manufacture electric vehicles, and supplies its electric vehicle Tigor to Energy Efficiency Services. In terms of value, M&Ms order in higher than the order leader Tata Motors. M&M has committed to supplying 4,950 units of the eVerito.

Business Standard said that in an earlier interaction Pawan Goenka had claimed there was also interest from many state governments, some having approached the company for e-mobility and setting up last-mile connectivity. He had reportedly said Mahindra was in serious discussion to create a fleet of its EVs in three or four cities. The company already had one MoU with the Thane Municipal Corporation. Besides, the central government has already stated that, as part of its National Electric Mobility Mission Plan for 2030, it wants EVs to make up 30 percent of all new automobiles on Indian roads.

Further, EVs are gaining popularity as the vehicles of choice for rental services. As Yourstory.com reported, ...bike-sharing platforms like Yulu, Mobycy, Rapido, ONN Bikes, Bounce, Vogo, and Olas new EV venture, Ola Electric, are all looking to go electric in order to survive and thrive in the $300 million ride-sharing/rental market in India...Bus aggregator ZipGo and car rental startup Zoomcar are also looking at electric (vehicles)...And then there are the electric three-wheeler operators such as SmartE, which address last-mile connectivity...SmartE plans to release one lakh three-wheelers by 2022. Even Ashok Leyland announced its foray into electric buses a year ago, and is now ready to launch 50 e-buses.

One of the things Ola learnt from the Nagpur experiment, according to the FactorDaily report, was to focus on three-wheelers or electric auto-rickshaws, rather than electric cars. The report quotes an Ola insider sa saying, Its cheaper and easier to deploy. Charging is also faster.

Ola does have big plans for EVs, which probably explains Pawan Goenkas urgency to not miss the bus, as it were. Through Ola Electric, the Indian unicorn has partnered with several OEMs and battery manufacturers, while also looking at working with the automotive industry for solutions for electric vehicles. According to Olas official statement, they are currently running several pilots to deploy electric vehicles and charging solutions, including battery swapping stations, electric 2-wheeler and 3-wheeler services amongst others. Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder & CEO, had said, ...our mission is to enable sustainable mobility for everyone. India can leapfrog problems of pollution and energy security by moving to electric mobility, create millions of new jobs and economic opportunity, and lead the world.

Were going to get a bit technical here, to explain what charging stations are all about.

YourStory.com noted that electric vehicles across the world have two common charging options: charging stations or swappable batteries. A fixed charging system is made up of a permanent docking system that can be set up in malls, homes, and offices. The vehicle can also be fast-charged depending on the technology available. Luxury sportscar maker Porsche, for example, is experimenting with a 450 KW charger. German luxury carmaker BMW has similar technology - both can charge a car for 100 km in under five minutes. Tesla has charging stations with fast chargers, but continues to work on swappable batteries. Batteries today are increasingly lithium-ion, rather than lead acid, which fell out of favour because it drains faster after eight months of use.

Currently, 80 percent of electric vehicles are charged at homes and/or offices. Youve probably seen them in the basement parking if you live in a large apartment complex - those thick blue or red cables stuck into a plug point in the wall. This form of charging is slow because it typically takes eight hours for a full charge. Also, such basic charging amenities do not always exist at offices, hotels, and malls. The infrastructure needs to be easy to set up, low-maintenance, cost-efficient, and quick to use before it can be widely adopted with ease.

Glyd vs the rest

While Ola has stayed the course with its own EV venture, Uber has stayed out of it. In fact, Uber has not really responded to the launch of Mahindras Glyd. In October last year, Uber had said it was focusing on reducing its dependence on petrol and diesel vehicles and Ubers India president Pradeep Parmeswaran indicated that Mahindra was their partner for the venture. Last month, M&Ms Goenka tod The Economic Times that while Mahindra and Uber had signed a memorandum of understanding in 2017 to provide last mile zero emission connectivity in Indian cities but the partnership had taken longer than anticipated to firm up. However, things were finally falling into place, he claimed. Where that long-awaited partnership heads next will be interesting to watch, to say the least.

Ruchi Shukla, a Mumbai-based independent mobility expert, told Quartz India, The EV space, first, is tough to crack at this stage when the infrastructure is not mature. But M&M has one advantage: it is the only supplier of batteries, starter motors, power electronics, and power transmission for EVs, which it sells to other carmakers. As Quartz noted, the fact that both Ola and Uber are also eyeing the EV segment makes Glyd a formidable rival. After all, M&M is Indias largest maker of EVs. Ashish Chandra, a research scholar at the International Organisation of Scientific Research, told Quartz, Having in-house capabilities of batteries et al is in favour of the company (M&M). It will help keep operating expenses low for its drivers and car suppliers...Moreover, M&M is not directly operating the cabs, and neither is it buying anything; car, batteries, or infrastructure.

Amit Kaushik, country head of automotive consultancy Urban Science, told Quartz, Uber and Ola are investor-driven companies and any vertical that isnt giving viable returns doesnt make sense for them...M&M, on the other hand, can re-deploy investments if the initiative fails to take off. The company isnt putting in a lot of money into it anyway.
The ruling BJP in Tripura received a jolt as three of its leaders including state unit vice-president Subal Bhowmick joined the Congress on March 19.

Congress Tripura unit president Pradyot Kishore Debburman welcomed Bhowmick, senior leader Prakash Das and vice-president of the BJP kishan morcha Premtosh Debnath to the party and said "today is a historic day. Their joining our party is like returning of family members to their own home."

Bhowmick, Das and Debnath were earlier with the Congress.

Debburman claimed that many leaders who have left the party would return to the Congress at the rally to be addressed by Congress president Rahul Gandhi here on Wednesday.

CPI(M) leader and member of Kailashahar Municipal council in Unakoti District, Debasish Sen also joined the Congress on March 19.

The Tripura Congress president appealed to former Congress leaders and worker who have left the party to return to the Congress.

Bhowmik had joined the BJP in 2014 and was appointed the vice president of the partys state committee.

Bhowmick said he along with many other Congress leaders and workers had joined BJP to change the 25 years rule of CPI-M and restore democracy in the state.

"However, after BJP came to power we could understand that there was no virtual change in the government and there was no democracy in the party. The government is corrupt and inefficient and failed to deliver any good to people. I am sure BJP would be ousted in the Centre and Congress under leadership of Rahul Gandhi would secure absolute majority, he said.

When contacted, BJP spokesperson, Ashoke Sinha said, "Everybody is free to join any party. I can only say that their joining other party would not harm the poll prospect of the BJP in the state."

Election to the two Lok Sabha seats in Tripura would be held on April 11 and 18.
Amit Shah also commented on the alleged drug nexus in Bollywood. In the last 18-24 months, several decisions have been taken to curb the problem. I assure you that under Modi jis leadership its going to be very difficult for people who want to spread drugs, said Shah.



Hugs for Tukde Tukde gang and arrest of peaceful youth raising pro-Modi slogans?

Where are the champions of Free Speech? Yuvraj of CONgress must know          ' Stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics. https://t.co/AXqeyihKJy  Chowkidar Amit Shah (@AmitShah) March 19, 2019

BJP president Amit Shah on March 19 targeted Congress chief Rahul Gandhi over the alleged arrest of some techies in Bengaluru for raising pro-Modi slogans, saying youngsters give direction to the future and he should "stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics".

The BJP chief in his tweet tagged a post by his party's Karnataka unit which said the state police had arrested some techies for raising pro-Modi slogans at Manyata tech park in Bengaluru. Gandhi was to address a meeting at the venue.

"This is the real face of democracy in a Cong-JD(S) ruled state. It's total dictatorship where freedom of choice & expression of citizens is suppressed," it had said, posting a purported video of some people being taken away by cops.
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Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserted on Tuesday his government has changed the image of Uttar Pradesh and the state's law and order has become a model for the country as not one incident of rioting happened under his watch.

Presenting a report card on the completion of two years of his government, he said when he assumed office in March 2017, debt-ridden farmers were committing suicides and Uttar Pradesh had become "synonymous with murder, loot and riots."

"Mafia was looting the state's resources under political patronage. Mafia was rampant in SP, BSP rule," he alleged. "There was a long era of scams."

Adityanath said he has changed the "perception about the state" and improved its "tarnished image". The better atmosphere has become a "nazeer" (model) for the country, he said.

Hitting out at previous state governments, he said, "In 2012, there were 227 major communal riots. In 2013, there were 247 such riots. In 2014, there were 242 riots. And 219 riots in 2015 and more than 100 in 2016  in which properties worth crores were lost."

"However during thee BJP government, not a single riot took place. Nor were there any incident of acid attacks or kidnapping," he claimed.

Though there has been no major communal violence in Uttar Pradesh during the past two years, a mob of 400 people, including right-wing activists, had fought pitched battles with police in Bulandshahr district in December last year.

The violence in Siana area of Bulandshahr happened apparently after right-wing activists were angered by the discovery of cow carcasses strewn in a nearby jungle.

In January last year, a 22-year-old youth was shot dead during a"Tiranga Yatra" by some people after which a series of violent incidents and arsoning had taken place in Kasganj.

Taking lesson from it, the state government that year denied permission for any such procession on Independence Day in the western Uttar Pradesh city.

On Tuesday, at his press conference in Lucknow, Adityanath cited the reported exodus of Hindus in 2017 from Kairana, another city in western UP, "due to anarchic forces".

"However", he said, "today peace has returned as well as the traders who had fled from there."

The exodus of Hindus from Kairana was a major poll issue for BJP in the 2017 assembly election in Uttar Pradesh.

The chief minister said the confidence of the state police force has gone up and there is no interference from his government in their functioning.

"There is zero tolerance for crime and criminals and 73 criminals have been killed in police encounters. Unfortunately, half-a-dozen police jawans also attained martyrdom in the encounters," he said.

Adityanath also said that the UP Foundation Day was celebrated for first time after 68 years in 2018.

His deputies Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma and Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present at the press conference.
With the Congress-CPI(M) proposed alliance falling apart in West Bengal, the stage is set for a four-cornered contest in which the main contenders -- the Trinamool Congress and the BJP - are in an advantageous position to consolidate the voters in their favour.

According to Trinamool Congress sources, the breakdown augurs well for the party, which would be in a better position to bag the nearly 30-per cent minority votes in the state in the absence of another credible "secular force" in the state.

The CPI(M)-Congress seat-sharing talks failed after the latter accused the Left of insulting it by unilaterally announcing 25 candidates in the state, which has 42 Lok Sabha seats.

The cross currrents of the failure to clinch the Opposition alliance will be felt directly in 15 seats spread across north and south Bengal, a TMC leader said.

"Although the breakdown of the Opposition alliance has its benefits, it has taken away the buffer from us. Now the maximum anti-TMC votes would be bagged by the BJP, which might alter lot of equations in various seats," another senior TMC leader said.

"Had the alliance been there, the anti-TMC votes would have been divided between it and the BJP, which would have helped us," he told PTI on the condition of anonymity.

The TMC will now be directly pitted against the BJP in Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Raiganj, Balurghat, Malda South in north Bengal; and Murshidabad, Krishnanagar, Ranaghat, Basirhat, Barrackpore, Asansol, Purulia, Jhargram, Bankura and Midnapore seats in south Bengal, sources in the party said.

"Had there been an Opposition alliance, we would have been in a comfortable position in most of these seats. But now things will be different. We have full faith in our leadership and things will change once the campaign starts," a senior TMC leader of north Bengal said.

The development has brought cheer to the BJP camp, which has emerged as the main challenger of the TMC in the past few years. The party will be in a better position to find favour with a sizeable portion of the refugee voters in the border districts following its efforts to bring in the citizenship bill.

Besides, a section of the Hindu voters, who are unhappy with the "appeasement politics" of the TMC, will support the BJP, said a leader of the saffron party.

The refugees have for the past several decades been a trusted vote bank of the Left.

The Citizenship Amendment Bill, which was passed in the Lok Sabha on January 8, seeks to grant Indian citizenship to non-Muslims who fled religious persecution from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and entered India before December 31, 2014.

"Those voters who are disillusioned with the TMC will now vote for BJP as it is only the saffron party which can provide them with an alternative. If the TMC has Mamata Banerjee, we have Narendra Modi and Amit Shah," said Arjun Singh, a former TMC MLA who had recently switched to the saffron party. Singh is likely to be the BJP's candidate in Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat, which is held by Dinesh Trivedi of the TMC.

Leaders of both the Congress and the CPI(M) agreed that the failure to clinch a seat-sharing deal would actually be a negative factor for both the parties and they might not win more than one or two seats in the state.

"It is true that elections will now be more polarised between the TMC and the BJP. But the CPI(M) needs to understand that it has to be more flexible while working in an alliance," state Congress president Somen Mitra told PTI.

CPI(M) central committee leader Sujan Chakraborty, also echoed Mitra's views but said the Congress should have been more active in order to seal the deal. "The people of the state will decide whether we were right or wrong (in breaking the alliance). Despite a lot of hurdles, we had tried to provide a secular alternative along with the Congress, but it had other plans," Chakraborty said.

The electoral history of Bengal shows that it is the ruling party and the main opposition which become the main beneficiaries in the event of a four-cornered contest.

In 2014, the state again witnessed a four-cornered election in which the TMC won 34 seats, the Congress four and the Left and BJP two seats each.

The TMC had then secured 39.05 per cent votes, the CPI(M)-led Left Front 29.71 per cent, while the BJP and the Congress had secured 17 percent and 9.5 per cent respectively.

The CPI(M)-Congess seat sharing deal in the 2016 state assembly polls had failed to halt the return of the TMC to power, but it was successful in stopping the march of the BJP to an extent. But the alliance fell apart after the poll as the CPI(M) decided to part ways with the Congress since its central committee vetoed it.

Since then the BJP has steadily taken over the Opposition space in various by-elections and has emerged as the main challenger to the ruling TMC.

Mohammed Kamruzzaman, the general secretary of All Bengal Minority Youth Federation, told PTI that had there been a credible Left-Congress alliance, a percentage of minority votes in north Bengal would have swung in favour of it. "But now minorities would en bloc vote for the TMC to stop the march of the BJP".

Lok Sabha polls will be held in the state in seven phases from April 11.
Demonetisation was a terrible idea and the government's own economic surveys have indicated that this move contributed to a slowdown in the economy, claims a new book.

The Great Disappointment: How Narendra Modi Squandered a Unique Opportunity to Transform the Indian Economy attempts to answer the overarching question of whether or not the Modi government transformed India's economy and what the next government's agenda should look like.

Written by economic and political commentator Salman Anees Soz, the book is also a critical assessment of five years of the brand of economics Modi has championed, often referred to as 'Modinomics'.

According to Soz, demonetisation was a self-goal by the Modi government.

From ordinary people to experts, demonetisation has come in for withering criticism. I believe that if PM Modi's electoral prospects are at all threatened in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, demonetisation's lasting impact will be partly responsible, he claims.

He argues for most economists and development experts, demonetisation did not achieve its initial objectives as a weapon against corruption, black money, terrorism or counterfeit money.

It also did not make a significant advance in making India less cash dependent, he says.

While I was convinced demonetisation would have an adverse impact on the economy, initially I thought it would be of a short-term nature The initial costs of demonetisation appeared modest to some people. This was perhaps because the full extent of the unfolding crisis was unknown in the weeks following the announcement, Soz writes in the book, published by Penguin Random House India.

A year after demonetisation, it was becoming clear that the move was failing to meet its objectives, the author claims.

There is no concrete evidence to indicate that demonetisation led to a significant decline in terrorism.

He says the Modi government added a few additional objectives to demonetisation's initial ones. The finance minister made the case that there would be greater formalisation of the economy, more people would become part of the tax system and that India would become a less cash' society.

Of course, it is one thing to argue that demonetisation largely failed to achieve its objectives and quite another to make the case that it had an adverse impact on the economy. However, even on this front, the evidence suggests that demonetisation was a terrible idea, the book says.

In addition to the more than a hundred people who reportedly died as a result of demonetisation, millions lost their jobs according to a Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) analysis, and millions dropped out of the labour force, it says.

Those supporting demonetisation contested these assertions. However, let me just note that the government's own economic surveys have indicated that demonetisation contributed to a slowdown in the economy, Soz argues.

He also talks about GST in the book.

In March 2017, 11 years after P Chidambaram first proposed it, the Modi government steered the GST through Parliament, he says.

The delay in implementing the GST was due to a lack of consensus between political parties and the state governments they controlled. One of the biggest opponents of the GST was PM Modi himself when he was chief minister of Gujarat. In his view, and he was not alone, producing states such as Gujarat and Tamil Nadu could lose revenues since taxes would now be based on consumption.

With Modi and the BJP in power, it was easier to achieve consensus on implementing the GST. The Congress and other opposition parties were already in favour of it. Many experts predicted that economic growth could go up by as much as 1.5 percentage points in the event that the GST became law, the author writes.

Despite positive sentiments about the GST, a thorough debate ensued, he says.

The Congress party complained that the proposed GST was too complex given that it would have multiple tax rates and a guaranteed cap on tax rates set at 18 per cent. However, the government pushed ahead with its proposal and Parliament passed the constitutional amendment and sent it to the states for ratification, he writes.
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Former Prime Minister and Janata Dal (Secular) supremo HD Deve Gowda has vacated his political bastion the Hassan Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka  after a lot of family pressure, according to a News18 report.

The 85-year-old leader has vacated the seat for grandson Prajwal Revanna. Son of Gowdas elder son, Prajwal, is now Congress-JD(S) coalition's candidate from Hassan seat.

The neighbouring Mandya Lok Sabha seat, which is considered as the strongest seat of the JD(S), has also gone to another grandson, Nikhil Kumaraswamy. He is the son of Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy.

Deve Gowda has won 13 out of 15 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections contested in the last 57 years. However, now he has left with no constituency to fight his 16th election, suggested the report.

The veteran leader is now looking to get a seat out of Mysore, Bengaluru North and Tumkur to contest from in the state.

Among the three seats, he is reportedly eyeing, Mysore does not seem to be an option for him, as the Congress has refused to cede the seat to JD(S) because of former CM Siddaramaiah's pressure tactics, the report suggests.

For Bengaluru North, a section in the JD(S), including CM Kumaraswamy, are reportedly opposing candidature of his father on the grounds that it is a tricky seat, being a city constituency.

According to the JD(S) camp, Gowda is willing to shift to Tumkur where his party did remarkably well in the last assembly elections. However, the local Congress unit is opposing any such move. They have further threatened to take action against its coalition partner in case the JD(S) is awarded the seat.

Meanwhile, Deve Gowda has been receiving criticism for playing dynasty politics by fielding two grandsons in the polls. The decision is being criticised within the party and by the BJP, which is in Opposition.

A section in the JD(S) has come up against the decision. Congress leaders and workers from both Hassan and Mandya are openly opposing the entry of third generation Gowdas and some have even joined the BJP vowing to defeat them.
How he personally dealt with each case hasnt changed. What has changed is the process of being a detective. Because of technology, there are bigger expectations in evidence gathering, he said. Police are expected to get every piece of evidence they can from video, cellphones, computers and other sources. The techniques have made crime-fighting easier, but detectives have to put an exhausting number of hours on cases to solve them, he said.
India may not see another election if Narendra Modi is re-elected as prime minister, Rajasthan Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot has claimed, suggesting that the country may go the way of China and Russia.

Gehlot also said both democracy and the country were in danger under Modi, who he said would do anything to get back to power. People felt he could even go to war with Pakistan to achieve this goal, the Congress leader said.

Dubbing Modi a good actor, Gehlot said he could do much better in Bollywood and would have left his indelible mark in acting. He also alleged that he was a "master in marketing false promises".

"If people re-elect Modi, then there is no surety on whether elections will be held in the country or not. 'Chunav honge bhi, aur nahin bhi honge...jaise China, Russia mein hota hai' (Elections will be held in the country and yet not be held, like what happens in China, Russia)," Gehlot said during an interaction with PTI.

He was suggesting that polls will be held on the lines of those in China and Russia, where only one party rules and who becomes the president or the prime minister is decided beforehand.

His remarks come in the wake of a fierce battle emerging between the opposition Congress and the ruling BJP ahead of Lok Sabha elections starting April 11. The Congress and the BJP are locked in a war of words while trying to win this crucial election.

"This man can do anything to win elections...People felt he could even go to war with Pakistan, which is not a good thing....The personality of Modi ji that has emerged before the country is that he can go to any extent before and after elections...to win elections, Gehlot said while attacking Modi and added that none including Amit Shah know what is in his mind".

Taking a swipe at what he termed Modi's acting skills, the senior Congress leader said, If Modi ji was in Bollywood, maybe he would have left a different mark in the country and abroad, with his mastery in acting, oratory skills and antics."

Claiming that the "truth is on our side", Gehlot said truth shall finally emerge victorious. He asserted that people in the country are far wiser as they can differentiate between falsehood and truth and public conscience will side with the truth, which is on their side.

The veteran Congress leader also accused the prime minister of misusing Indian embassies in garnering the support of NRIs outside the country during his visits abroad.

The reference was to the prime minister's public events during his visits abroad. Gehlot alleged that they were organised with the active support of Indian embassies that drew widespread support from the NRI community.

There should be tolerance in a democracy, he said, alleging that BJP leaders have "no tolerance as they don't want anyone from the opposition to question them".

"It is not in their DNA," he said.

The Rajasthan chief minister hit out at Modi over his style of functioning and said he has focussed on targeting opposition leaders by misusing agencies instead of governance during his rule and that is why he had no result to show.

Gehlot, who has held several key positions in the Congress during his almost five-decade political career, also attacked Modi over the use of language, saying it did not behove one who held the top post of the country's prime minister.

He accused Modi of having failed to fulfil the promises made to people before assuming power.

He also targeted the RSS, BJP's ideological fountainhead, dubbing it an extra-constitutional authority that was trying to impose its people on every institution in the country.
Days after having unanimously decided to go it alone in Delhi, the Congress is again mulling options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in the national capital in its bid to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections.

Sources said the Congress leadership is in talks with AAP leaders and senior leaders within the party are trying to convince Delhi Congress leaders for an alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP.

AICC general secretary in-charge of Delhi Congress PC Chacko said, "I am in consultation with Congress party leaders in Delhi on the possibilities of forging an alliance with AAP.

"The Congress Working Committee has decided to align with like-minded parties across the country to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections.

"I hope Delhi Congress leaders also go by this sentiment and decide on an alliance with AAP, but a final decision will be taken by the Congress president very soon," Chacko told PTI.

Chacko's views are at variance with Delhi Congress president Sheila Dikshit, who has made it clear that aligning with AAP will not be in the party's interests keeping in view the assembly election in the national capital slated later.

He said some senior leaders in Delhi, who think defeating BJP is the party's immediate responsibility and for which an alliance should be forged with AAP, have written to party president Rahul Gandhi on this.

He, however, said Gandhi will take a final call on shortly after consultations within the party.

"I hope our Delhi leaders also follow the policy decision of the CWC. I am talking with them and trying to convince them about this, but if they still decide not to forge an alliance, it is up to them," he said.

The party has announced that it will go it alone in Delhi and the Delhi Congress unit has told Gandhi that aligning with AAP in LS polls is not in the party's interests.

The Lok Sabha election is slated for May 12 in Delhi.
File image: Twitter/@PawarSpeaks

Amidst rising indecisiveness on an alliance between the Congress and the AAP in Delhi for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, NCP chief Sharad Pawar has again offered to be a mediator.

A Congress leader told Hindustan Times that Congress president Rahul Gandhi drove down to Pawars residence along with senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge. After they discussed their seat-sharing deal for Maharashtra, where the Congress and the NCP are purportedly in an alliance, they went over a prospective alliance in Delhi.

Pawar is also said to have reached out to AAPs Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh soon after.

It wasnt immediately clear how this round of Pawars intervention panned out, with Congress not revealing any details. However, Sanjay Singh told the newspaper that this is the time to save the country, not just talks of a party.

This is not the first time that the 78-year-old has offered to mediate talks between the Congress and the AAP, which have been adversaries in Delhi since the inception of the latter.

On February 14, 2019, Pawar had hosted a dinner for leaders of all major political parties, which had brought Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal on the same table. At that time too, an alliance between the two parties in Delhi was suggested.

However, recalling that the Congress Delhi unit were against any tie-up with the AAP, Gandhi had signalled his reluctance. When it was founded, the AAP was a massive anti-corruption movement against the incumbent Congress in Delhi, and had targeted the then chief minister Sheila Dikshit for her involvement in numerous scams  the reason why Dikshit has vocally expressed her disappointment over an alliance with AAP.

Dikshit followed it up with a letter to Rahul Gandhi, also signed by the city units three working presidents, that an alliance with AAP will hurt the Grand Old Partys prospects in the long run.

On the one hand, opponents of the alliance within the party have warned that the alliance will be suicidal as the two parties will lock horns in 2020 in the Assembly elections. On the other hand, five former Delhi Congress presidents and 15 block presidents have written a letter to Gandhi supporting the alliance, the newspaper has reported.
With fervent nationalism becoming the flavour of the election season, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on March 19 questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's patriotic credentials and accused him of not raising the issue of India's "territorial integrity" during his meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The Congress leader claimed the prime minister "did not utter a word" on the boundary question when he hosted President Xi in his home state Gujarat a few years ago.

"During Xi Jinping's meeting with Modi in India, the prime minister was seen sitting with him over a cup of tea without uttering a single word on the boundary dispute. Even during his (Modi) visit to China he never took up the Doklam issue," Gandhi told an election rally in the Arunachal Pradesh capital.

India and China are locked in a protracted dispute over Arunachal Pradesh, often resulting in incursions by their respective armies into each other's territory.

In June 2017, a military standoff occurred between China and India as Chinese soldiers attempted to extend a road on the Doklam plateau and Indian troops moved in to prevent them. India had claimed to have acted on behalf of Bhutan with which it has a 'special relationship'.

"How can he (Modi) claim himself a Desh Bhakt (patriot) when he did not even take up the issue of the countrys territorial integrity? The country doesnt want such patriots.

"The people of Arunachal Pradesh are more patriotic as they are zealously protecting the countrys territory," he told the rally.

Gandhi said Modi had visited China "without an agenda" on the vexed boundary question.

The Congress president had recently called Modi "weak and scared" of the Chinese president, after Beijing once again blocked a UN resolution to designate JeM chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist.

"Weak Modi is scared of Xi. Not a word comes out of his mouth when China acts against India. NoMos China diplomacy: 1. Swing with Xi in Gujarat. 2. Hug Xi in Delhi. 3. Bow to Xi in China," Gandhi had said on Twitter.

The Congress president repeated his allegation that Modi continued to shoot for a documentary in the Corbett National Park when the nation was mourning the killing of 40 CRPF personnel in a terror bombing in Kashmir's Pulwama.

Reffering to the recent killing of three people in police firing during the agitation against permanent residency certificates to some sections in Arunachal Pradesh, he said," Was there any necessity for police firing? The issue could have been resolved in other ways without harsh action."

He alleged that it was the BJP's "nature" to suppress those who dare to stand up against it.

Gandhi dubbed the prime minister as an "arrogant" leader who claimed India awoke only after the advent of his government in 2014. "He has no knowledge of the country's strengths," the Congress leader said.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday said the ground reality was different than what the Uttar Pradesh government has been portraying and there is an expiry date to the rant that nothing was done in the past 70 years.

The Congress incharge of east Uttar Pradesh was responding to a question about the Adityanath government issuing its report card on completion of two years in office, in which it highlighted various achievements and welfare schemes.

"They (BJP) need to come to the ground to see the reality. This report card and publicity looks good, but the reality is different... all sections are feeling harassed," she said at the Sitamarhi guest house in Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi district, where she had a night halt.

"There is a big difference between polls promises and fulfilling them. As far as the rant about (no development in) 70 years is concerned, it also has an expiry date. You (BJP) are in the government for the past five years, what have you done in five years? the Congress leader asked.

The Bharatiya Janata Party often attacks the Congress by accusing it of not developing the country in the past 70 years.

The 47-year-old, who had embarked on a three-day boat journey on Ganga to reach out to the electorate residing on the river banks, offered prayers at the Sitamarhi temple before starting for her next stop en route to Mirzapur.

Priyanka Gandhi alleged that nothing had been done on the ground in the state during Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's rule. "Everyday, I'm meeting people from different sections of the society and I'm getting to know that students, youngsters, 'shiksha mitras', anganwadi workers and ASHA workers are feeling harassed. At some places, it was announced that they will get Rs 17,000 salary, but till now they have got nothing. For the past two years, they are getting Rs 8,000."

Asked about BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma accusing her and Congress president Rahul Gandhi of coming for a picnic before elections and vanishing just after that, she said: "Well, I haven't been to Italy in the past three-four years. I should go in fact to see my grandmother."
Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has decided to give the event a skip. Naidu also declined invitation to Jagan Mohan Reddy's swearing-in ceremony.

The ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on March 19 released its third list of candidates for the Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh.

The N Chandrababu Naidu-led party announced names of 36 candidates for the Assembly polls, thereby declaring names for all 175 assembly seats.

Andhra Pradesh will head for voting in the Lok Sabha polls and the Assembly election, in a single phase, on April 11.

TDP had announced its first and second list of candidates on March 15 and March 17, respectively. It featured the names of party chief Chandrababu Naidu and his son Nara Lokesh.

Naidu will be contesting the Assembly polls for the seventh time from Kuppam in his native Chittoor district. His son Lokesh will be fighting his first electoral battle from Mangalagiri constituency in the Amravati capital region.

Few names from the first list were replaced in the third list, it seems.

After Adala Prabhakar Reddy severed ties with the TDP, Abdul Azeez has now been named from Nellore Rural assembly seat. Sriram Malyadri has been replaced by Tenali Sravan Kumar in the Tadikonda seat.

The party, on March 19, also released the names of 25 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. The list figured names of prominent leaders such as former union minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Galla Jayadev. Raju and Galla will contest from Vizianagaram and Guntur, respectively. Kesineni Srinivas and N Sivaprasad will fight from Vijayawada and Chittoor, respectively.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday said certain state government schemes should not come under the purview of the Election Commission's model code of conduct, which is in force in the state ahead of next month's Lok Sabha polls.

Banerjee also said that the West Bengal government would apprise the EC on the need to continue with such schemes during the duration of the general elections.

The CM, replying to a query, said state government programmes like the 'Rupashree' (financial grant to underprivileged women above 18 years) and 'Somobyathi' (financial assistance in cremation/burial for poor households) should not be stopped because of elections.

"We don't want people to stop getting benefits of government schemes launched much before announcement of election dates, for the entire poll period. Will marriages not be scheduled during elections? If there is a death in a poor family, should it face difficulties in performing the last rites of the deceased?" she said.

Banerjee said the chief secretary would soon brief the Election Commission about the nature of these schemes.

To another query on when the chief minister and her party, the Trinamool Congress, would start campaigning for the polls, she said, "We will start it at the right time".

"First, let us release the manifesto. With the ICSE, CBSE and ISC exams still continuing, we don't want to inconvenience the students," Banerjee added.
Vivo recently launched the companys first gaming smartphone under the iQoo brand, and its nothing short of impressive. According to recent reports, Vivos new gaming smartphone will go head-to-head against the OnePlus 7.

The new Vivo iQoo is estimated to cost approximately Rs 32,000 for the base model. The gaming smartphone will come powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC.

According to Geekbench, Vivo V1824BA variant with 6GB RAM received a Single-Core Score of 3,479 points and a Multi-Core Score of 11,184 points. These numbers put it ahead of all Galaxy S10 models with Exynos 9820 chipsets. The Geekbench rating also confirmed that Vivos first gaming smartphone would debut with Android 9.0 Pie OS out of the box.

The Galaxy S10 models released in India sport the Exynos 9820 chipset as opposed to the Snapdragon 855 SoC. The SoC isn't bad by any means, although benchmarks suggest the Galaxy S10 phones with Snapdragon 855 chipsets outperform their Exynos 9820 counterparts. While the Galaxy S10 does get a lot of things right, in terms of raw performance numbers, the iQoo still holds the upper hand.

In terms of camera, the iQoo gaming phone features a triple rear camera setup with a 13MP wide-angle camera, 12MP primary camera with dual pixel technology and a 2MP depth sensor. Additionally, the 6.41-inch OLED display supports 2340x1080 resolution with a waterdrop notch that house a 12-megapixel front-facing camera and an in-display fingerprint sensor under the screen. The iQoo is also armed with a 4,000 mAh battery with 44W fast-charging support which can charge the phone by 50-percent charge in 15 minutes and a full charge within 45.

The iQoo smartphone is touted as a gaming phone. And in a gaming phone, nothing matters more than raw performance, which Vivo gets spot on. But more performance results in more heat, which the iQoo tackles using a super liquid cooling method, compromising a vapour chamber located around the chipset. Furthermore, the Multi-Turbo service in the software enables AI Turbo, Center Turbo, Net Turbo, Cooling Turbo, and Game Turbo modes.



6GB RAM/ 128GB Storage  Rs 32,000



8GB RAM/ 128GB Storage  Rs 35,000



8GB RAM/ 256GB Storage  Rs 38,000



12GB RAM/ 256GB Storage  Rs 45,000



The Vivo iQoo gaming phone will arrive in four variants Global pricing of these phones could change when taxes are brought into the mix. However, theyre still comparatively lower than the Galaxy S10 models, especially considering the budget Galaxy S10e retails at Rs 55,000. The Vivos no compromise approach to the iQoo smartphone might just revive the concept of gaming phones if priced right.
Moneycontrol News

Xiaomi has unveiled the Redmi 7 in China alongside the Redmi Note 7 Pro. The Redmi 7 is an upgraded version of Redmi 6 which was launched last year.

The Redmi 7 has a 6.26-inch HD+ display with a water-drop notch. It has a resolution of 720x1520 pixels and an aspect ratio of 19:9. Under the hood, it is powered by an Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC clocked at 1.8GHz paired with 2GB/3GB/4GB RAM options. The smartphone has internal storage options of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB which can be further expanded via microSD up to 512GB.

The Redmi 7 has a dual camera setup at the rear. It includes a 12MP f/2.2 primary sensor and a 2MP secondary sensor with flash. The front camera has an 8MP sensor for selfies. The camera has many modes like AI Smart Beauty, Selfie Timer, etc.

The device has a massive 4,000 mAh battery and comes with a 10W charger. On the connectivity front, it supports 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS/ A-GPS, micro-USB, Infrared (IR) blaster. The Redmi 7 has a 3.5mm headphone jack and has P2i splash-resistant coating.

The Redmi 7 has been launched in three variants in China  2GB + 16GB storage for 699 yuan, 3GB + 32GB for 799 yuan, and 4GB + 64GB for 999 yuan. It comes in three colours  Red, Black and Blue. There is no word on the launch date of Redmi 7 in India, but it is expected to be launched soon.

Xiaomi also launched the Redmi Note 7 Pro in China, which was first released in India last month.
Germany launches its auction on Tuesday for the construction of an ultra-fast 5G mobile network as a transatlantic dispute rages over security concerns surrounding giant Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei.

The United States has threatened to end intelligence sharing with Berlin if it does not exclude hardware made by Huawei from the infrastructure, arguing that Chinese equipment could help Beijing spy on Western companies and governments.

Attempting to play down the row on Monday, Jochen Homann, chairman of the German Federal Network Agency (BNA), said: "No matter whether a supplier comes from Sweden or China, companies must meet certification requirements and security checks."

'5G' - 'fifth generation' - is the latest, high-speed generation of cellular mobile communications and Berlin will require winning bidders to offer 5G service to at least 98 percent of German households, motorways and rail lines.

Germany, Europe's biggest economy whose wireless networks rank 46th in the world for download speeds, wants to close the sizeable digital gap by making the shift to the ultra-fast 5G system.

The BNA starts the auction in Mainz at 0900 GMT on Tuesday and the process will allocate 41 different frequency blocks.

Four operators are in the running, among them Germany's three main mobile network providers - Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Germany (O2) - plus United Internet (1&1), a German company specialising in internet services.

Chinese firm Huawei is not one of the bidders but provides the four German companies with essential hardware - such as antennas and routers.

The US has accused Beijing of using Huawei's 5G network gear as a Trojan horse, forcing operators to transmit data to the regime, but Washington has not provided evidence to support their suspicions.

Huawei has strenuously denied allegations its equipment could be used for espionage.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday lashed out at what he called "abnormal, immoral" attacks on Huawei and demanded a "fair and just competition environment" for Chinese firms.

US-led attempts to encourage other nations to ban Huawei equipment from their telecoms infrastructure suffered a setback when Chancellor Angela Merkel's government decided against imposing company specific-restrictions on the 5G auction.

US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell last week warned that Washington could stifle intelligence cooperation unless Berlin agreed a Huawei ban.

In a letter, Grenell told Peter Altmaier, Germany's economy minister, that intelligence-sharing cooperation could cease if Berlin allows the Chinese firm to be part of the 5G network.

The threat escalated last week when NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, warned Germany that NATO forces would cut communications if Berlin works with Huawei.

"We're concerned about their (Germany) telecommunications backbone being compromised in the sense that, particularly with 5G, the bandwidth capability and ability to pull data is incredible," Scaparrotti told the House Armed Services Committee last Wednesday.

"If it also is inside of their defence communications, then we're not gonna communicate with them.

"And for the military that would be a problem." Merkel has tried to reassure senior figures in Washington by saying Germany would consult with the US over whether to use Huawei tech, but would "define our standards for ourselves".

However, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) shares some of the US fears.

BND security experts have asked the government to take China's overall strategy into account, including a law on forced cooperation in security matters, according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine.

Other media outlets claim Berlin is drawing up a catalogue of measures, for all 5G providers, to change the telecommunications laws.

These measures range from a non-espionage clause to the requirement of testing all components and the obligation to publish source code used in infrastructure.

In some cases, the government could insist equipment already installed is replaced, which could exclude Huawei from the infrastructure without pronouncing a formal ban on the Chinese firm, according to business daily Handelsblatt.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on March 19 praised the bravery and courage by worshippers as a lone gunman massacred their friends and family, saying the nation stood with its grieving Muslim community in this "darkest of days".

As preparations for the first burials were underway for the 50 people killed last Friday in the Christchurch mosques mass shooting, Ardern singled out three worshippers, including one of the first killed in the attack.

Hati Mohemmed Daoud Nabi, 71, opened the door to the Al-Noor mosque. Ardern said he "uttered the words Hello brother, welcome. His final words".

"Of course he had no idea of the hate that sat behind the door, but his welcome tells us so much that he was a member of a faith that welcomed all its members, that showed openness, and care," she said.

Ardern said she never anticipated having to voice the grief of a nation and ended her speech with the Arabic greeting "Al salam Alaikum", meaning "Peace be upon you".

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island, was charged with murder on March 16 .

Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5, where police said he was likely to face more charges.

"The families of the fallen will have justice," said Ardern, adding she would never mention the alleged gunman's name.

"He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name."

The victims, killed at two mosques during Friday prayers, were largely Muslim migrants, refugees and residents from countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, Kuwait, Somalia and others.

Bodies of the victims were being washed and prepared for burial in a Muslim ritual process on Tuesday, with teams of volunteers flown in from overseas to assist with the heavy workload.

"We've been very conscious of the need to work sensitively with requirement of each family," Sarah Stuart-Black, Director for the Ministry of Civil, Defence & Emergency Management, said at a press conference in Christchurch.

Families of the victims are desperately seeking to come to New Zealand for the funerals. Immigration New Zealand said 65 visas have been granted for travelling family members.

The attack also left 50 people injured of which 30 still in the Christchurch hospital, authorities said. Nine of them are in a critical condition. One four-year-old child was transferred to a hospital in Auckland in a critical condition.

GUN LAW DEBATE RAGES

The gunman used a semi-automatic AR-15 during the mosque shootings, police said. A New Zealand gun shop owner said the store had sold Tarrant four weapons and ammunition online between December 2017 and March 2018, but not the high-powered weapon used in the massacre.

Ardern has said she supports a ban on semi-automatic weapons and that cabinet has made in-principle decisions to change gun laws which she will announce next Monday.

"Part of ensuring the safety of New Zealanders must include a frank examination of our gun laws," said Ardern.

While some New Zealanders have voluntarily surrendered guns, others have been buying more from gun stores to beat the ban.

A gun club in the northern town of Kaitaia burned down early on Tuesday and police were treating the blaze as suspicious.

Simon Bridges, leader of the opposition National Party, said he wanted to get details of the changes to see if there could be bipartisan support in parliament. The Nationals draw support from rural areas, where gun ownership is high.

"We know that change is required. I'm willing to look at anything that is going to enhance our safety - that's our position," Bridges told TVNZ.

Ardern has said that Tarrant emailed a manifesto to more than 30 recipients including her office, nine minutes before the attack but it gave no location or specific details. In the document, which was also posted online, Tarrant described himself as aJust a ordinary White man, 28 years old.

Ardern was critical of social media platforms for allowing the distribution of hatred and division, including live broadcasts of the attack.

"We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published. They are the publisher. Not just the postman," she said.

"There cannot be a case of all profit no responsibility. This of course doesnt take away the responsibility we too must show as a nation, to confront racism, violence and extremism."

Ardern said there would be an inquiry into what government agencies "knew, or could or should have known" about the alleged gunman and whether the attack could be prevented.

More than 250 New Zealand police staff are working on the inquiry in the attacks, with staff from the U.S. FBI and Australia's Federal Police working with local investigators.

Police will be stationed at mosques around the country when open for prayers and nearby when closed, said Ardern.

"Unfortunately, we have seen in countries that know the horrors of terrorism more than us, there is a pattern of increased tension and actions over the weeks that follow that means we do need to ensure that vigilance is maintained."
Pakistan's Supreme Court was Tuesday set to hear an appeal by country's jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif seeking bail on medical grounds.

Sharif, 69, is serving a seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore since December 2018.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo has suffered four angina attacks last week, according to his daughter Maryam Nawaz .

The Sharif family is complaining that the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is not providing health facilities to the former premier who has serious health complications.

Sharif filed an appeal on March 6 against a judgment by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) which on February 25 rejected his bail application on medical grounds in the Al-Azizia steel mills case.

Several senior leaders of PML-N were also expected to be in the court on the occasion.

A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and comprising Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi will take up the petition.

The former premier had twice submitted requests to the apex court for an early hearing of his application.

In January, he filed application in the IHC for bail on medical reasons as he developed heart-related medical complications in jail but it was dismissed.

Three corruption cases - Avenfield properties, Flagship investment and Al-Azizia steel mills - were registered against the Sharif family by the anti-graft body in 2017 following a judgment by the Supreme Court that disqualified Sharif in the Panama Papers case in 2017.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Avenfiled corruption case in July 2018 which was related to his properties in London. Later he was given bail in September.

In December, the accountability court convicted him in the Al-Azizia graft case but acquitted him in the Flagship corruption case.
North Korea should take "actual action" towards giving up its nuclear weapons to break the deadlock in talks with Washington, a top security adviser to the South's president said, suggesting Seoul's patience with Pyongyang may be wearing thin.

President Moon Jae-in was instrumental in brokering the negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington, seizing on the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea to catalyse a rapid diplomatic rapprochement after a year of missile tests, threats and tensions.

But the first summit between the North's leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June produced only a vague commitment to "work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula".

Their second meeting in Hanoi last month broke up without agreement, or even a joint statement, as the two failed to come to a deal over sanctions relief and denuclearisation.

Since then, Pyongyang has said it is considering suspending the talks and images have emerged of rebuilding works at the Sohae rocket launch facilities.

That triggered international alarm that North Korea might be preparing a long-range missile or space launch, which could put the whole negotiations process at risk - Pyongyang has not carried one out for more than a year and Trump has repeatedly said its continued moratorium is crucial.

A launch of any kind by the North would be a "disaster", said Moon's special adviser on national security Moon Chung-in.

The "outcome will be catastrophic", he told AFP.

In Hanoi, US officials said, Trump urged Kim to "go all in" and that "the weapons themselves need to be on the table". In return, they were "prepared to go all in as well".

But it was not clear exactly which facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear complex the North was willing to give up, while they wanted "basically all the sanctions except for armaments" lifted, the officials said.

For its part the North's foreign minister said it only wanted some of the measures eased, and that its proposal to close "all the nuclear production facilities" at Yongbyon was its best and final offer.

Moon's goal, his adviser said, was a "nuclear weapons-free, peaceful and prosperous Korean peninsula" - and he would not accept a peaceful accommodation with a nuclear-armed North.

The South Korean president has long pushed engagement with Pyongyang to bring it to the negotiating table, but his security adviser backed US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's assessment that "talk is cheap", saying that the North had given "words and commitment, but no actions".

Kim had told the South Korean leader that he had dismantled 30 per cent of the Sohae missile test site, including "about 20 per cent of the launching pad - but he hasn't shown us", Moon Chung-in said.

"That still needs some kind of observation or inspection." Similarly, Pyongyang claimed to have demolished "two-thirds" of its nuclear testing ground at Punggye-ri, but that too "needs verification", he said.

"North Korea should take further moves to really dismantle all of them," he stressed. "It is now the North Korean turn to show actual action to make (the) US move."

Openness was crucial, he added. There are many competing estimates of the North's nuclear arsenal, and Moon places the most faith in figures of 30-35 weapons from US expert Siegfried Hecker, who has been to Yongbyon.

"But still we never know," he added. "That is why we need the process of declaration and inspection. It's like a blind man touching (an) elephant."

A retired professor of politics, Moon Chung-in has been involved with policy towards the North for decades and was one of the architects of the "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with Pyongyang under president Kim Dae-jung.

He stressed that he speaks for himself and not the president -- as an adviser, he is outside the formal policy-making process -- but his comments may suggest the South will press the North harder to narrow the gap with Washington on nuclear talks.

The breakdown in Hanoi meant a mooted trip by Kim to Seoul was off the table for now, Moon said, but added it was vital the two Korean leaders met again for more talks.

The South is pushing an "all for all" agreement, as demanded by the US, combined with Pyongyang's insistence on a step-by-step process to get there, described by Moon Chung-in as "incremental implementation with an acceptable road map". That would require compromise from both sides.

Moon has met Kim twice and says the North Korean leader has a "mastery of issues".

"He's young, much more willing to talk" than his father and predecessor Kim Jong Il, "kind of entertaining".

Kim understands that "complete denuclearisation" includes his existing stock of weapons, and the missiles that can reach the US mainland and other targets, he said.

The North Korean leader was -- like any negotiator -- looking to minimise risk while maximising benefits, Moon said, and "hedging" because "regime survival is at stake".

But he must have been "very shocked" when Trump walked out of the Hanoi meeting, Moon said. "I think that was a very important learning process for him."
The Indian government has reportedly asked public sector banks (PSBs) to save private carrier Jet Airways from bankruptcy ahead of elections, says an international wire agency.

After grounding a large part of its fleet (78 out of 119), the carrier has been cancelling flights on a massive scale leaving thousands of domestic and international travellers in the lurch.

After a huge outcry on social media, Union Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu tweeted this evening that he had directed the aviation secretary to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, Advance bookings, Cancellation, Refunds and Safety issues, if any. Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA."

Directed Secretary, @MoCA_GoI to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, Advance bookings, Cancellation, Refunds and Safety issues, if any. Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA. @jayantsinha  Chowkidar Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) March 19, 2019

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which called a meeting with the carrier, later said that, at present, Jet Airways has 41 leased aircrafts in its operational fleet which are expected to cater to 603 domestic and 382 international flights. The airline is operating with half its original fleet of 119 aircrafts and managing only 200 flights a day.

The development comes a day after passengers were left stranded at Abu Dhabi as Jet Airways cancelled flights. The cash-strapped carrier, which has been forced to ground over 40 aircraft of its fleet due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors, is regularly grounding aircraft as it is unable to pay the lessors. But more about it later.

Operating with a depleted fleet due to the grounding of all but 41 aircraft by Jet Airways, airfares are likely to soar and alternative arrangements are not possible. This is a double whammy for people, because almost all vacationers would have booked and paid for hotel accommodation in advance too.

Social media remains abuzz with desperate pleas from international travellers, who find that they cannot make their connecting flights from international hubs, since the first leg of their flights out of India had been abruptly cancelled.

Ironically, many of those tweeting desperately and tagging the airline seem clueless about its dire financials and crumbling operations  most are making demands for refunds and rescheduling, which harried Jet employees, who themselves have not been paid for a long time, are unable to answer.

Meanwhile pilots of Jet Airways are holding meetings in Mumbai and New Delhi to chart out their future course of action regarding non-payment of salaries for over three months.

As per reports, if there is no proper clarity on the resolution process and salaries are not paid by 31st March, then pilots of Jet Airways would stop flying from 1 April 2019.

Jet Airways Pilot union decides not to fly from April 1 unless letter of intent signed for pending dues; around 300 pilots will do a silent march at Siroya (Jet Airways HQ) pic.twitter.com/Z0Z84favG4  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) March 19, 2019

PSB to the Rescue?

Quoting two sources from the administration, a report from Reuters says, "...(the) government has asked state-run banks to rescue privately held Jet Airways without pushing it into bankruptcy, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to avert thousands of job losses weeks before a general election."

As per the report, the ministry of finance has been asking details on financial health of Jet Airways from banks led by State Bank of India (SBI) on a weekly basis. "The government has urged state-run banks to convert debt into equity and take a stake in Jet Airways in a rare move in India to use taxpayer money to save a struggling private-sector company from bankruptcy," the report says.

The government has also nudged its 49%-owned National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF)created to invest in stalled and new infrastructure projectsto buy a stake in Jet, Reuters says quoting a separate government source.

This puts into question the efficacy of the national democratic alliance (NDA) governments much touted success with the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act (IBA), and underlines the fact that a bankruptcy law is not substitute for good governance and tough and timely action by lenders.

Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal had asked Etihad, which has 24% stake in the airline, to bring in Rs750 crore demanded by lenders as promoter contribution. Etihad, however, expressed that it was willing to sell its 24% stake if it got a price of Rs150, which is much lower than the current price of Rs236. Lenders are willing to provide support but unwilling to hold more than 49% equity through debt conversion.

Last month, terming media reports as 'speculative', SBI had said no decision has been taken on moving the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to recover loans from the private carrier.

At an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) in February 2019, shareholders of Jet Airways had approved, by an overwhelming majority, a proposal to convert a part of the company's loans into shares.

This was a significant development as the approval was required to go ahead with the bank-led provisional resolution plan (BLPRP) led by the consortium of the lenders. As part of the plan, public sector lenders would become the largest equity owners of the airline, virtually making it a nationalised carrier.

Etihad, however, abstained from voting on various proposals during the EGM.

"The BLPRP currently estimates a funding gap of Rs8,500 crore, including proposed repayment of aircraft debt of Rs1,700 crore, to be met by appropriate mix of equity infusion, debt restructuring, sale or sale and leaseback or refinancing of aircraft, among other things," Jet Airways had said in a regulatory filing.

Both SBI and PNB were said to have agreed to provide Jet Airways with Rs500 crore interim funding to continue operations until a long-term restructuring plan is worked out for its Rs8,000-crore debt.

Flyers Taking a Big Hit

Late in the night on Monday, passengers travelling in the first two weeks of April received messages that their flights were cancelled. Naturally, the cash-strapped airline is not talking about refunds. This will throw into jeopardy the plans of all those who had booked their summer vacation travel months in advance.

The government, which collects a chunk of the airfare as taxes has been watching silentlyon social media, until the Mr Prabhu, finally directed the aviation secretary to call a meeting on Tuesday evening.

Debt-ridden Jet Airways has been suo moto cancelling tickets of its passengers, many of whom are struggling to even get refunds from the carrier.

Jet Airways Flight Cancellation News:Abu Dhabi gone: There are some big updates to Jet Airways Flight Cancellations. Jet is now starting to unscheduled trim down a lot of their remaining... - https://t.co/dWeiSkacMU ... pic.twitter.com/Ku7eqG0qTb  Ajay Awtaney (@LiveFromALounge) March 19, 2019

In addition, several fliers are seeking refund from Jet Airways and are venting their anger over social media.

@jetairways I am on a long haul international flight and half of my journy has been cancelled. Can you please cancel my tickets. I have been trying to reach you for days.  SC (@SayantaniChak) March 19, 2019

@jetairways More than 24hrs my fl cancelled by jet airways.I need money to book another ticket please let me know when I get refund??.need reservation team contact number, as per your PM on fb Reservations team not yet contacted.Please help!!#9Wupdate  RAM GAWANDE (@gawanderam) March 19, 2019

@jetairways, @DGCA_IN , @MoCA_GoI Dear Jet airways team. I am tired of attempting to reach you through various channels. You have cancelled my flight PNR: KMWVAY) but seats are there in 17:50 flight. Please allot me seats in 17:50 fight without loss to me. I need to travel. pic.twitter.com/ulLMd7dRDB  Vijay Upadhyay (@vijayrupadhyay) March 19, 2019

I had booked @jetairways flight for 15th april 2019 BOM JDH 9W 412 .and yesterday i received a mail from jet airways stating ur flight has cancelled !! what should i do now?? #JetAirways pic.twitter.com/jw1IZMsYr7  sitaram mistry (@MistrySitaram) March 19, 2019

Earlier, Jet Aircraft Maintenance Engineers Welfare Association wrote to the DGCA raising issues of overdue salaries.

Last month, amidst cancellations of flight on technical issues, Jet Airways had revised its refund rules.

Under the new regime, the penalty for a cancellation ranges between Rs2,300 and Rs4,600 depending on the cost of the ticket, and if the cancellation or change is done seven days before or after departure.

The fee for a change of ticket will range between Rs1,500 and Rs4,300. The cancellation fee charged by low-cost carriers like IndiGo and Spice Jet is a flat Rs3,000, which is much lower than that Jet Airways.

Pilots To Meet To Decide Future Course of Action

The National Aviators Guild will hold meetings in Mumbai on Tuesday and in Delhi on Wednesday to discuss ways in which to deal with the present situation.

The meetings come a day after Jet Airways founder and chairman Naresh Goyal appealed to employees to remain patient and give the resolution process some time to complete. "I am fully aware of the hardships each of you are undergoing owing to the stretched-out ongoing dialogue and deeply, most sincerely appreciate your patience, perseverance and your incredible dedication and loyalty," he said in an email to employees on Monday.
Diversified conglomerate Larsen & Toubro (L&T) on Monday took its first step to acquire Mindtree by buying V.G. Siddhartha's 20.4 per cent stake in the the mid-tier IT services company for approximately Rs 3,300 crore.

Siddhartha is the biggest shareholder in Mindtree.

The next step expected from L&T is to present an open offer to further buy public shareholders spending Rs 8,000 crore and taking a controlling stake in the company, said sources.

The move from L&T came even as the founders of Mindree were looking to pass a board resolution on Wednesday to undertake share buyback on their own to avert a hostile takeover and subsequent change of management.

On Sunday, Mindtree co-founder and ex-Chief Executive Officer Subroto Bagchi resigned as the head of the Odhisa Skill Development Authority, saying that he was returning to the company.

"An imminent threat of hostile takeover of Mindtree has made me resign from the government to be able to go save the company," Bagchi tweeted.

"I must protect the Tree from people who have arrived with bulldozers and saw chains to cut it down so that in its place they can build a shopping mall," he added.

Mindtree shares rose over 1.74 per cent to Rs 962.50 per share at the close of market hours on the BSE on Monday.

This will be the first ever hostile takeover move in India's technology sector. The four remaining founders of the two-decade-old, Bengaluru-based company -- Krishnakumar Natarajan, Subroto Bagchi, N.S. Parthasarathy and current CEO Rostow Ravanan -- together hold 13.32 per cent stake in Mindtree.

The four remaining founders are holding on to their shareholding and want to increase it through a buyback. But their financial muscle would come into question if they take on the might of L&T.

Disclaimer: Information, facts or opinions expressed in this news article are presented as sourced from IANS and do not reflect views of Moneylife and hence Moneylife is not responsible or liable for the same. As a source and news provider, IANS is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article.
The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani (ADA) group company, Reliance Communication Ltd (RCom), on Monday, paid Rs462 crore to Ericsson India in accordance with Supreme Court orders. Details of the nature of funding and how it was routed are not known, except for Anil Ambanis statement thanking his 'respected' older brother Mukesh Ambani. Separately, RCom and the Mukesh Ambani group have made it clear that they have mutually agreed to terminate sale of its specified assets, including spectrum to Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (RJio) of the senior Ambani. This ends any hope for the debt-ridden company to raise funding by selling its assets. It also means that the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) will now decide RComs future.

The apex court had given a deadline of 19 March 2019 to RCom for paying Ericsson, failing which Anil Ambani would have had to serve a jail term of three months.

In a regulatory filing RCom says, "The requisite payment of Rs550 crore and interest thereon to Ericsson has been completed in compliance of the judgment of the Supreme Court."

With Mondays payment of Rs462 crore, the debt-laden telco ends its 18-month long battle with Ericsson which had claimed dues for its maintenance services, it added.

Quoting senior advocate Anil Kher, who has been representing Ericsson, a report from Economic Times says, "Ericsson has received the payment along with up to date interest and it will accordingly be withdrawing the petitions filed for insolvency."

In the RComs regulatory filing, Anil Ambani stated, "My sincere and heartfelt thanks to my respected elder brother Mukesh, and Nita, for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to our strong family values by extending this timely support. I and my family are grateful we have moved beyond the past, and are deeply grateful and touched with this gesture.

Last month, the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Rohinton F Nariman and Vineet Saran also asked Reliance ADA group to purge contempt by paying Rs453 crore with interest to Ericsson within four weeks. If not paid, three months' jail term will follow, the bench had said.

The bench had directed the Court's registry to give Ericsson Rs118 crore that were earlier deposited by RCom. The apex court said the entire amount that RCom has to pay to Ericsson is Rs550 crore plus the interest that was generated.

Commenting on the deal, Andy Mukherjee from Bloomberg says in recovering $80 million (Rs550 crore) from tycoon Anil Ambani, Swedish company Ericssons lawyers played the nascent bankruptcy system expertly. He says, "For an unsecured creditor to walk away with a 48% recovery of its claimwhile secured lenders wait patiently for RCom to sell its spectrum, redevelop its land assets and pay them somethingshows that the Swedish firm played its cards well."

"It also shows the secured creditors, led by State Bank of India (SBI), in a rather poor light. They have been deluding themselves since June 2017, when they agreed to an out-of-court restructuring, including a plan to convert part of their debt into equity at almost Rs25 a share. Luckily that plan went nowhere. RCom shares closed on Monday at Rs4. As secured lenders cringe at that thought, Ericssons lawyers can bask in their success. First, they snagged a sweet deal by exploiting RComs initial reluctance to enter in-court bankruptcy. Then, they succeeded in getting a credible jail risk for Anil Ambani thrown into the mix to ensure the deal was honoured. Finally, they got their client $80 million," Mr Mukherjee added.

Separately, in a regulatory filing, RCom said by mutual agreement, it has decided to terminate sale of certain specified telecom assets to Reliance Jio. "The said transactions have become incapable of being consummated in accordance with the terms thereof, on account of various factors and developments since the execution of the said agreements nearly 15 months ago," the company said its filing.

RCom claims that over the past 15 months and after more than 45 meetings, it could not get consent from over 40 foreign and Indian lenders for its proposed transaction with RJio. "The statements of the lenders, as recorded in the order dated 15 March 2019 of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, (NCLAT) that it is not possible for them to sell the specified assets, and therefore, the NCLT process for debt resolution should be reinstated. RCom group is committed to a comprehensive resolution of their overall debt, with transparency, certainty and finality, through the NCLT process," it added.

NCLTs order on 4 February 2019 had also restrained sale, transfer or alienation of any movable or immovable property of RCom, Reliance Telecom (RTL) and Reliance Telecom Infrastructure (RITL).

Last year in April, the NCLAT as well as the Supreme Court had allowed RCom to sell its tower and fibre assets. RComs plea challenging the High Court stay was supported by the consortium of banks headed by the SBI, which had contended that the sale of spectrum and optical fibre assets would fetch Rs25,000 crorepart of Rs45,000 crore that RCom owes them.

On 28 December 2017, RCom had signed an agreement with RJio, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), for selling certain specific assets and for change in allotment of certain specific spectrum.

RCom failed to get consent from lenders and also necessary approval from department of telecom (DoT) for passing on its spectrum to RJio through mutual agreement.
Indian National Bank Employees' Federation (INBEF), the banking wing of Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) has asked the government to remove disparity in pay scales, pension or other terminal benefits amongst employees of public sector banks (PSBs) and those of the union government.

"In spite of several negotiation meetings with Indian Banks' Association (IBA), the United Forum of Banks' Unions (UFBU) has failed to arrive at wage settlement which is overdue since November 2017. However, initially the ministry of finance had given signals that wage settlement of bank employees should be finalised before the expiry of earlier agreement, practically in spite of several representations having been submitted to the ministry wage revision is yet to be finalised. This is not the first time that wage settlement has been delayed. In the past also similar delay occurred in spite of nine constituents coming together. In the present settlement a vertical split is being noticed amongst constituents of UFBU which has weakened the bargaining power of UFBU," says Subhash Sawant, general secretary of INBEF.

Highlighting its role in bipartite settlements in banking over the years, the Federation has published a booklet, "INBEF ki Awaz'.

Mr Sawant says, "INBEF's view is that disparity in pay scales, pension or other terminal benefits amongst PSU banks and central government employees should be removed and accordingly a suitable via media is to be found out to meet out the dissatisfaction in bank employees and officers. This will not only attract the new talents but will also restrain the existing employees from hopping to the other sectors. Hence, INBEF has appealed to UFBU to give a thought in this regard while making negotiations with IBA for current wage settlement."

According to the bank employees federation, in the ongoing negotiations, IBA has been trying to introduce variable pay, which is being opposed by some of the constituents of UFBU. "INBEF has also raised strong objection to the move of other bank employee union, who have been demanding early settlement by bypassing the officers organisations by making wide split in UFBU. INBEF, irrespective of its membership, has been staging a strong voice and playing its vital role in each and every settlement and the same is being highlighted in INBEF ki Awaz to enlighten bank employees and officers on one side and as an appeal to government on the other side to invite its attention on bank employees welfare," it says.

INBEF's booklet highlights recoveries made from the employees from the seventh, eighth and ninth bipartite settlement in the name of enhanced cost of pension, injustice to the people opting voluntary retirement and those resigning from bank, rising disparity between the wages of central government. Employees of PSBs are left behind in terms of in salaries and other benefits, compared with employees of insurance companies and also with their peer bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), Mr Sawant added.
At time of writing, the share price of Cann Group Limited [ASX:CAN] is up 18.56%, trading at $1.98.

It has been a difficult 12-month period for the stock, with a -32.88% return over this timeframe:

Source: tradingview.com

The latest news out of the company is that it has reached an agreement to purchase a site in the Mildura region as well as the announcement of a five-year offtake agreement with Aurora Cannabis.

Get our research on the Top Four Pot Stocks on the ASX. It is available for free, right here.

Cann Group share price reacts, which bit of news was more important?

The Cann Group share price was quick out of the blocks and continued to make gains over the course of the day.

While both pieces of news are certainly positive for the company, the offtake agreement is arguably more important as it secures future revenue for the company. The offtake partner Aurora Cannabis holds a 22.9% equity interest in Cann Group.

Heres a quick summary of the offtake agreements key features:

Covers full production capacity beyond that which is produced for the domestic market

Runs until 2024

Will involve GMP (good manufacturing practice) grade dry processed flower

Includes a price review mechanism

Termination rights for both parties

Specific terms to remain confidential

Cann Group CEO, Peter Crock, said:

Securing offtake with Aurora is a key milestone for the Company that is expected to both underpin the anticipated value generated with our expansion program and mitigate the risk associated with that investment. We remain firmly committed to satisfying the domestic market as a priority and the agreement with Aurora should enable us to meet this commitment.

Cann Group has also reaffirmed previous guidance that, when fully operational, the expanded production capacity will generate annual revenues of approximately $160 million to $200 million based on the current wholesale price of cannabis dry flower.

With regards to the new facility, here is a quick summary of its key details:

Will be built in the Mildura region (not Tullamarine as previously planned)

Site has been secured via a non-binding Heads of Agreement for $10.75 million plus GST

Expected to produce 50,000 kgs of dry flower per year

34,000 square metre greenhouse

Expected to be fully commissioned in Q3 calendar year 2020 at a cost of $130 million

Will be funded by a mix of debt and equity

Assessing Cann Groups plans for the future

There is no doubt that Cann Group has outlined ambitious plans for the future with this move, and to produce 50,000 kgs of dry flower is a significant quantity in the Australian context.

34,000 m2 is a massive facility.

So its important to look at Cann Groups most recent balance sheet, given that it says it will be coming up with $130 million through debt and equity.

Its got about $47.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and $25 million in investments in term deposits.

Combined with other smaller balance sheet items, it has got approximately $75.6 million in total current assets.

The term deposits are certainly helpful here, but by my back of the envelope (very rough) reckoning it will (depending on the length of its term deposits) need to come up with up to around $94.5 million ($130 million  facility costs  cash) to fund this mammoth facility, as it is not receiving much in the way of sales from the strictly regulated domestic medicinal market.

The method of capital raising will be particularly interesting and we will cover that should it eventuate.

Regards,

Lachlann Tierney,

For Money Morning

PS: The Four Most Exciting Pot Stocks on the ASX Right Now.
March 19, 2019 Venezuela - Journalists Doubt Guaido's Legitimacy - Regime Change Plans Continue On February 23 the U.S. created a 'humanitarian aid' stunt at the border between Colombia and Venezuela. The stunt ended in a riot during which the supporters of the self declared 'president' Guaido burned the trucks that where supposed to transport the 'aid'. Even the New York Times had to admit that. The riots also marked the day that Guaido lost the legal argument he had used to make himself 'interim president'. Guaido also lost his original legal position. He claimed the presidency on January 23 under this paragraph of article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution: When an elected President becomes permanently unavailable to serve prior to his inauguration, a new election by universal suffrage and direct ballot shall be held within 30 consecutive days. Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge of the Presidency of the Republic. That the "elected President becomes permanently unavailable" was never the case to begin with. But if article 233 would apply Guaido would have had 30 days to hold new elections. The 30 days are over and Guaido did not even call for elections to be held. He thereby defied the exact same paragraph of the constitution that his (false) claim to the presidency is based on. The hapless coup plotters in Washington DC were finally put on notice that the issue creates a legal problem for them. During a March 15 press briefing Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela, was asked about the issue: QUESTION: [C]ould you explain to us the article under which Mr. Guaido declared himself president? It is said that it has expired last month. Could you explain that to us? What is the -- MR ABRAMS: As to the Venezuelan constitution, the National Assembly has passed a resolution that states that that 30-day period of interim presidency will not start ending or counting until the day Nicolas Maduro leaves power. So the 30 days doesnt start now, it starts after Maduro. And they  thats a resolution of the National Assembly. A resolution of the National Assembly, which the Supreme Court of Venezuela holds in contempt over the seating illegally elected persons, can change the country's constitution? That does not sound convincing to me. The journalists in the briefing were equally curious of how the rules could be changed like that during the ongoing game: Q: When did they  they did that after he --

A: They did that  this is roughly a month ago. We could try to find the date for you.

Q: When he was  when he was  took the mantle of interim president, that wasnt there.

A: Yes, when  thats correct. And so people --

Q: Can you do that ex post facto like that?

A: When people ask a question how do --

Q: That seems to be like saying I was elected for four years to be president, and then two years in you change the rules so that your term didnt start  hasnt even started yet. How does that happen?

A: Well, you dont get a vote because youre not in the National Assembly.

Q: Well, you dont. Youre not in the National Assembly either.

Q: If it matters, does the U.S. view that as constitutional under their system?

A: Yes. I mean, were taking the  the National Assembly is the only legitimate democratic institution left in Venezuela, and their interpretation of the constitution, as you know, is that as of the date of this alleged term for Maduro, the presidency is vacant. But they have also said that that 30-day period starts when Maduro goes.

Q: So Juan Guaido is the interim president of an interim that doesnt exist yet?

A: The 30-day end to his interim presidency starts counting. Because hes not in power, thats the problem. Maduro is still there. So they have decided that they will count that from when he actually is in power and Maduros gone. I think its logical.

Q: So then he really isnt interim president, then?

A: He is interim president, but hes not --

Q: With no power.

A: -- able to exercise the powers of the office because Maduro still is there.

Q: So their interpretation is that until and unless he actually has the power to run the country, hes not actually the interim president?

A: No. Their interpretation is that the constitution requires a 30-day interim period, but it  those 30 days should not be counted while Maduro is still there exercising the powers of his former office. Here is a video of the exchange. (Abrams seems to be lying about the alleged National Assembly resolution.) The legal argument Abrams produced lacks logic and clearly contradicts the wording of the constitution quoted above. The elected president has not become unavailable. Maduro was sworn in for his second term on January 10. If the underlying argument is that Maduro was illegally elected to his second term, Guaido should have declared himself 'interim president' on the day Maduro's first term ended, January 10, not some random 13 days later. The constitution says that an election shall be held within 30 days after the elected president becomes unavailable. If the argument is that Maduro was illegally elected to his second term, the 30 days started on January 10. If the National Assembly changed that "roughly a month ago" it must have been after the time had run out. In the constitution the election within 30 days is the precondition for the existence of the 'interim president', not the other way around: "Pending election and inauguration of the new President, the President of the National Assembly shall take charge ..." With no election pending within 30 days there can be no 'interim president' - with power or without. The legal subterfuge Abrams is using would not convince any serious court. It is of course well known that Abram's has little regard for the law. He was convicted for lying to Congress in two cases. But the issue will matter. The U.S. seized Venezuelan assets, especially the Citgo refineries which are in financial trouble. The U.S. is trying to move all the valuable assets towards Guaido to finance the next phased of its 'regime change' plan. Bondholders of Citgo will likely contest these impoundments and transfers of assets in court. There the argument Abrams made is not going to be a winning one. The first round of the U.S. 'regime change' change attempt in Venezuela failed but it is far from over. The State Department alone foresees to spend $500 million more on it: The Fiscal Year 2020 budget request includes funding to support democracy in Venezuela and provides the flexibility to make more funds available to support a democratic transition, including up to $500 million in transfer authority. The CIA and the Pentagon will have made much larger budget requests even while an invasion of Venezuela continues to be unlikely. In August last year so called Venezuelan army defectors attempted to kill Maduro with drones carrying explosives during a military ceremony. CNN talked with them. The men say they trained in Colombia and met at least three times with U.S. officials. It is likely that such assassination attempts, undoubtedly organized by the CIA, will continue. In preparation of the 'humanitarian aid' stunt the U.S. had asked Brazil to use military force to bring in the 'aid' into Venezuela and to allow a U.S. presence at the border. The far-right President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil supported that but the military of Brazil, which holds significant power in the cabinet, vetoed it (in Portuguese). Bosonaro is currently in Washington to meet President Trump. He also made an unusual visit to the CIA headquarter likely to review plans for future operations in Venezuela: A senior U.S. administration official briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, noted that Brazil has a close relationship with Venezuelas military and may be able to serve as a go-between with the security forces that continue to support Maduro.

...

We have to sort Venezuela out, Bolsonaro said. We cannot leave them the way they are. We have to free the nation of Venezuela. That a Brazilian President visits the CIA, the agency responsible for violent coups and brutal dictatorships in Latin American is disgusting. Many people in Brazil will dislike it. Supporting a CIA coup in a neighboring country is worse. Its hard to sink any lower. The government of Venezuela is preparing to resists the next phase of the U.S. regime change attempt. It will export more of its oil to Russia which continues to be willing to pay for it. After the large electricity outage and other sabotage attempts the situation in Venezuela is back to normal. No one is starving even as prices are high. President Maduro asked his cabinet to resign. The new government and its tasks will be re-configured to resist better to U.S. pressure and the upcoming additional sanctions. This will be a long fight. Posted by b on March 19, 2019 at 18:18 UTC | Permalink Comments next page  next page 
An Auckland artist has painted a moving mural in honour of those that died in the Christchurch terror attacks.



Paul X Walsh has used a wall at the Avondale Art Park in Auckland to create a memorial featuring the image of Rashid Naeem alongside the words "Remember the heroes, 15.03.19."

Naeem, a school teacher, watched his son die before trying to physically overpower the gunman and being shot himself, the moment captured on the gunman's body camera. He later died from his wounds in hospital.

Walsh says his work is meant to honour the original and adopted nationalities of Naeem.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have signed a book of condolence for Christchurch terror attack victims on behalf of the Royal Family with a simple message: "We are with you, Arohanui".



Meghan wrote, 'our deepest condolences, we are with you' while Prince Harry signed his name with 'arohanui'.

Prince Harry and Meghan greeted delegates at New Zealand House in London with a hongi.



They spoke with High Commissioner of New Zealand, Sir Jerry Mateparae, before laying floral bouquets and reading tributes left by members of the publuters

"We are overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of support we've received from across the UK.

"Their Royal Highness's visit is reflective of this outpouring of support and it was wonderful to welcome them to New Zealand House," Mateparae said.

The Queen requested the couple to represent the Royal Family, as they were the last royals to visit the country during their South Pacific tour in October.

Newshub.
A brand new trailer for Disney's Toy Story 4 has been released.

The trailer gives us our first proper look at the story and follows Woody as he attempts to rescue a new toy and reunites with an old friend.

Check out the full trailer in the video above.
A US woman has given birth to six babies in a span of just nine minutes, defying the remarkable odds of one in 4.7 billion.

The woman had two sets of twin boys and one set of twin girls, weighing between 1 pound, 12 ounces to 2 pounds, 14 ounces.

All of the babies are in stable condition and are staying at the hospitals advanced neonatal intensive care unit.
Among the main items in this weeks federal budget is a focus on wide-ranging changes aimed at making home buying more attainable, according to research by The Canadian Press.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau has previously vowed that a particular area of concern that the budget will tackle is housing affordability for Canadians, especially for the millennial/young adult purchasing cohort.

A government source, who declined to be named due to lack of prior authorization to speak about the budget ahead of its release, admitted that the plan is tailored towards addressing housing supply, demand, and regulation. No further specifics were provided.
One of the big challenges with bank-statement loans is computing what the income is going to be, he said. Its not traditional. Youre not looking at a W-2 that just gives you a number. We rolled this bank-statement review team out at the beginning of the year, and the feedback were getting from originators has been outstanding.

Originators working on a bank-statement loan simply gather the borrowers bank statements and upload them through Angel Oaks secure portal. Within 24 hours, the companys bank-statement review team will get back to the originator with the borrowers approved income, Hutchens said.

It saves a lot of time, and it creates a lot of clarity early on, he said. The traditional way of completing bank-statement loans would be for the broker or loan officer to gather all the documentation then send it to the lender to find out if the income will work. They may not know the loan wont work until pretty far into the process. But thats one of the first things we do  and once they know the income, they can determine if the borrower will qualify.

The advantages of this system are twofold, Hutchens said.

It saves time for an originator having to do all the work  but just as importantly, it saves them from having to do that work if there is no loan, he said. By the time you send a loan to underwriting, the borrower has had to gather a lot of documentation  everything thats required for the loan. By doing it this way, the borrower isnt wasting their time, and the loan officer isnt wasting theirs.
One family was forced to move out of their home after their pediatrician told them their child could not be in the home for more than one hour at a time due to black mold, MFAN wrote in the studys interview findings. The family was charged $356 for wear and tear on their home, and three weeks later, their house was condemned.

We spoke with families at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, all of whom said there really werent any options outside of base housing. The lack of off-base housing was compounded by the fact that most people were stationed at Fort Leavenworth for just one year. In most such cases, the issues were passed from tenant to tenant, wrote MFAN.

Congress established the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MHPI) in 1996 to address both the shortage of quality, affordable private housing and the poor condition of Department of Defense-owned housing.

A new bill has been introduced in the House and Senate that would tackle these issues, according to The Military Times. Service secretaries were also finalizing a tenants bill of rights that would increase accountability and oversight over privatized housing companies, The Military Times reported.

The bill would require privatization companies to pay the relocation costs of service members and their families, as well as any temporary lodging fees, if they had to leave their homes due to adverse conditions.
Its my eleventh year of doing business, with almost $1 billion in closing, we havent issued one preapproval lettereverthat got declined in underwriting. Thats how good this preapproval letter is. Thats predictable experience. When you get into contract and we say well close in 25 days, we are closing in 25 days. Thats predictable experience, Shekhar said. You need to build systems and processes with your team . . . whatever your volume is, whatever your current status is in terms of your team size, theres no reason why your entire process should not be mapped and should not be predictable.

And when borrowers come to associate an originator with a positive, predictable process, that experience will keep them coming back.

Imagine the sales funnel as starting with lead generation, lead conversion, and transaction management. The bulk of the cost is generally spent on lead generation, Horanyi said, whether its buying leads or taking realtors out to lunch. But, he adds, if originator can convert leads and manage the transactions well and in a predictable, repeatable way, those borrows go right back into being a convertible lead, instead of having to start back at the top of the funnel and acquire them again.

Instead of going back to the point where you have to spend all the money again to get them to go through your experience, they already know what you do, they trust what you do and they want what you do. You no longer have to put them through that hamster wheel and your business can incrementally grow over time, and its something that you can be really proud of, he said.

For strategies from top originators, come to Anaheim on April 4th for our Power Originating session featuring Shant Banosian, Ben Anderson, and Oleg Tkach.
The Houston Ship Channel region is shipping out more than 35 percent of the nation's crude oil exports after the Houston area roughly tripled its volumes from 2017 to 2018.

All of the Texas Gulf Coast accounts for about 80 percent of the nation's crude shipments with the Beaumont and Corpus Christi regions ranking second and third nationwide, according to a new report from Morningstar energy analyst Sandy Fielden.

This Texas dominance won't end anytime soon. Most of the new crude production is coming from West Texas' booming Permian Basin and there's a race to build a bevy of new export terminals along the Texas coast and even offshore of Texas. The proposed offshore terminals are in deeper waters that can more easily handle the world's largest crude vessels.

"The limit to world appetite for U.S. crude is unknown today, but current bets on export infrastructure assume it won't be reached soon," Fielden said.

RELATED: U.S. to dominate energy production, exports

Nationwide crude exports last year averaged about 2 million barrels of oil a day, up 73 percent from 2017. And, this year, volumes already are averaging more than 2.5 million barrels daily. Crude exports are expected to top 4 million barrels a day in the coming years, according to the International Energy Agency. More than 90 percent of those exports come from Gulf Coast ports in Texas and Louisiana. The remainder mostly is shipped from northern states to Canada.

More than 35 percent of the exports last year came from the Houston Ship Channel region from Houston to Galveston, or more than 700,000 barrels daily last year. That's more than triple the 2017 Houston Ship Channel volumes of about 225,000 barrels a day.

The Houston area is now outpacing the Corpus Christi region - for n0w - in exports. The Corpus area last year exported more than 440,000 barrels a day. But the Beaumont area also surpassed Corpus last year, growing from about 260,000 barrels a day to nearly 460,000 barrels.

Louisiana and Mississippi - largely from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, called LOOP - combined to ship almost 250,000 barrels a day.

RELATED: Gulf Coast becomes net crude exporter

As for the race to build new exporting terminals, Houston's Enterprise Products Partners plans to build the Sea Port Oil Terminal, or SPOT, offshore of Freeport and Galveston.

A consortium led by Canada's Enbridge and Houston's Kinder Morgan plans another offshore one, Texas Crude Oil Loading Terminal, or COLT. And global commodities trading firm Trafigura is proposing another, but smaller, crude export terminal offshore of Texas.

Onshore, there are plans to build or expand terminals in Corpus Christi, Freeport and farther south in Brownsville.

These proposals add up to about 4 million barrels a day of additional crude exporting capacity if they're all built, Fielden said.
Mexican officials have released bidding documents to build an $8 billion Pemex refinery in the coastal state of Tabasco but are restricting participation to four companies.

In an early Monday afternoon press conference, President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador and Mexican Secretary of Energy Rocio Nahle released bidding documents for the new Dos Bocas Refinery in Tabasco.

With a construction permit already approved, the refinery will be owned and operated by Mexico's national oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex.

Located on nearly 1,400 acres of coastal land owned the federal government, the refinery will process 340,000 barrels of domestically produced heavy crude oil per day to make gasoline and diesel. Specifically the refinery will be configured to process crude oil with a gravity of 22 API, which is found in Mexico's offshore oilfields.

"It'll be a heavier crude because that's what we have," Nahle told reporters in Spanish. "Heavy crude oil is in high demand right now because it has the highest content to make diesel."

Energy Reforms: Mexico to release bidding documents on new refinery

But there was a catch, Mexican officials are restricting participation in the bidding process to four foreign companies. The names of the four companies are expected to be released later today.

"We had interviews with companies around the world and chose those with the highest standards of transparency," Nahle said.

Pemex owns and operates six refineries with sagging production. In addition to building the Dos Bocas Refinery, Nahle's office reported that the agency also has plans to boost production at the other six facilities by 2020.

Fuel Fix: Get daily energy news headlines in your inbox

The refinery announcement was made on the 81st anniversary of Oil Expropriation Day when then-President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized Mexico's oil and natural gas industry on March 18, 1938.

Sworn into office in December, Lopez-Obrador campaigned on restoring Pemex's productivity and ending Mexico's dependence on foreign energy sources.

Mexico currently imports 80 percent of its gasoline and diesel compared to Colombia and Brazil which import 13 percent, Nahle said.

"Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador campaigned on restoring the nation's energy balance and that's what we're doing today," Nahle said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19)  The deadlock between the House and the Senate over the 2019 budget is still on, as Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo denied that the lower chamber will withdraw the spending bill it has transmitted to the upper house, leaving senators confused.

"We have not withdrawn our version. We're in discussions about what is the proposed new version," Arroyo told reporters Tuesday.

Arroyo also continued to defend congressmen's itemizations of lump sums in the budget after its ratification, despite senators having assailed it as illegal and unconstitutional.

"We will insist on no lump sum because that is what is unconstitutional. That's what we will insist, no lump sum. Now, as to the details, that's the one that we'll see," she said.

Arroyo said she will meet today with congressmen, including San Juan Rep. Ronaldo Zamora, who has been tasked to negotiate with the Senate on the budget.

House Appropriations Committee Chairperson Camarines Sur 1st District Rep. Rolando Andaya earlier denied that the House will withdraw the budget bill. He insisted on House leaders' assertion that the move needs the approval of the plenary - which Sotto said is not necessary.

Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III said the Arroyo's statement has left senators confused since Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson announced yesterday that Zamora has told him that the House has agreed to withdraw the transmitted budget bill, and stick to the spending bill from the bicameral conference committee report.

"Nalilito na kami. Ano ba talaga? [We're confused. What's the truth?] So we will just wait for them to make up their minds otherwise, we can wait until June 30," Sotto told reporters.

Sotto has resisted signing the spending bill from the House, as senators said they have gotten wind of realignments in the budget following its ratification by Congress. Consequently, it blocked the transmittal of the measure to Malacanang to be enacted into law.

"You cannot internally realign and that is what they did, and that is what we don't want to allow. As far as we are concerned, we do not want to join them in that particular realignment," Sotto said.

The House and the Senate have locked horns on the budget, with lawmakers from both chambers trading accusations that they shaved off billions of pesos in funding from government agencies and transferred these into their respective districts and bailiwicks.

The government has been operating under a reenacted budget for three months, leading to some delays in government projects like the rehabilitation of the MRT-3 and the Metro Manila subway.

Congress' failure to pass fresh funding for the government has also led to economic managers cutting the growth forecast for 2019 from seven to six percent.
We have had tremendous response to the programs, Ettelson said. They are very different. We have had more people come to the events than we anticipated. We are appreciative to the community that they are responding to the events and celebrating the people and the history that makes our town what it is.
The party is traditionally held after the Mens Club-sponsored roundball tournament. The roundball tournament involves the entire OLPH school grades K-8. Every student is placed on a team. The teams are named after the mascots of Catholic universities (Fighting Irish, Blue Demons, Hoyas, etc.), then kids in grades six, seven and eight play in a double elimination basket tournament, Kearney said.
Supporters of legalized marijuana in Illinois have launched efforts aimed at making it easier for legitimate businesses that sell the product to have bank accounts and accept credit card transactions.

State Treasurer Michael Frerichs, a Democrat, said Monday he supports legislation in the General Assembly that would prohibit state banking regulators from punishing banks or credit unions that provide basic banking services to legitimate cannabis-related businesses.

He also said he is joining with other state treasurers around the country in lobbying Congress for changes in federal laws that prohibit banks from doing business with the cannabis industry.

The inability of the legal cannabis industry in Illinois to use a bank or credit union for basic services such as check writing, savings or access to capital is a sleeping giant, Frerichs said during a news conference in Chicago. We have an industry that handles money hiding in the shadows because banking rules built decades ago have not kept up with changes in behavior and in law.

Illinois legalized the use of marijuana for certain medical conditions in 2015, and Frerichs said the business now accounts for $136 million a year in retail sales. State lawmakers this year also are considering legislation, which Gov. J.B. Pritzker supports, to legalize adult use of recreational marijuana.

However, marijuana still is illegal in all forms under federal law, and it alsois a violation of federal banking laws for any bank to knowingly engage in transactions involving proceeds generated from marijuana-related activity.

During the Obama administration, the Justice Department relaxed some of its enforcement of those laws, especially in states that had legalized at least some kinds of marijuana use, saying it would focus its resources on certain priorities, such as preventing the sale of marijuana to minors; preventing revenue from marijuana sales from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels; and preventing the shipment of marijuana from states where it is legal to states where it is not.

But the Trump administration reversed that policy in January 2018 when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions distributed a memo to federal prosecutors, effectively instructing them to go back to enforcing federal laws as they originally were intended to be enforced.

Prior to last year, about 85 percent of our cannabis industry was banked with a single bank in the state of Illinois, Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, said during the news conference. As the Trump administration ramped up threats towards the legal cannabis industry, that bank got nervous about potential backlash and informed all of these businesses that they would cease to have a banking relationship with them.

The result of that has been to move the finances of the legal cannabis industry into a kind of underground cash-based economy, Frerichs said.

As residents of this state, we needlessly invite risk to people and property as that $136 million is shuffled from place to place in duffle bags, in the front seat of cars, or the trunk of a car, he said.

In addition to supporting changes in state-level banking regulations and lobbying Congress for changes in federal law, Frerichs said his office is exploring ways to provide incentives for banks and credit unions to serve the legal cannabis industry.

The companion bills pending in the General Assembly are House Bill 2980 and Senate Bill 2023.
Im going to ask the audience during the first half if they have some requests, Dirks said. In the intermission, Ill take some minutes to make arrangements of five or six of the requests. He will then play those pieces during the second half of the show.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  Hundreds of homes flooded in several Midwestern states after rivers breached at least a dozen levees following heavy rain and snowmelt in the region, authorities said Monday while warning that the flooding was expected to linger.

About 200 miles of levees were compromised  either breached or overtopped  in four states, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. Even in places where the water level peaked in those states  Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas  the current was fast and the water so high that damage continued to pile up. The flooding was blamed for at least three deaths.

The levees are busted and we arent even into the wet season when the rivers run high, said Tom Bullock, the emergency management director for Missouris Holt County.

He said many homes in a mostly rural area of Holt County were inundated with 6 to 7 feet (1.8 to 2.1 meters) of water from the swollen Missouri River. He noted that local farmers are only a month away from planting corn and soybeans.

The water isnt going to be gone, and the levees arent going to be fixed this year, said Bullock, whose own home was now on an island surrounded by floodwater.

One couple was rescued by helicopter after water from three breached levees swept across 40,000 acres (16,188 hectares), he said. Another nine breaches were confirmed in Nebraska and Iowa counties south of the Platte River, the Corps said.

More Information Riverbend flood forecast ALTON - Due to do heavy rain and snow-melt in the Mississippi River Basin over the past two weeks, the National Weather Service has issued a flood warning for Grafton and Alton at the Melvin Price Lock and Dam. River levels were 22.14 feet in Grafton as of 2:30 p.m. on Monday morning with a forecast predicting nearly 25.4 feet by Saturday morning, according to the Nation Weather Service. At 24 feet roads within Chautauqua and Elsah will start flooding with traffic along Route 100 in Grafton being detoured at 24.7 feet. Levels at the Melvin Price Lock and Dam were valued at 24.89 feet at 2:30 p.m. with a flood stage at 21 feet. A flood warning in Hardin also continues with the Illinois River at 28.56 feet as of Monday afternoon, with water levels forecasted to rise to 31.1 feet by Saturday. - Steven Spencer steven.spencer@thetelegraph.com See More Collapse

In Atchison County, Missouri, about 130 people were urged to leave their homes as water levels rose and strained levees, three of which had already been overtopped by water. Missouri State Highway Patrol crews were on standby to rescue anyone who insisted on staying despite the danger.

The next four to five days are going to be pretty rough, said Rhonda Wiley, Atchison Countys emergency management and 911 director.

The Missouri River already crested upstream of Omaha, Nebraska, though hundreds of people remained out of their homes and water continued to pour through busted levees. Flooding was so bad around Fremont, Nebraska, that just one lane of U.S. 30 was uncovered outside the city of 26,000. State law enforcement limited traffic on that road to pre-approved trucks carrying gas, food, water and other essential supplies.

There are no easy fixes to any of this, said Fremont City Administrator Brian Newton. We need Mother Nature to decrease the height of the river.

In southwest Iowa, the Missouri River reached a level in Fremont County that was 2 feet (0.6 meter) above a record set in 2011. The countys emergency management director, Mike Crecelius, said Monday that more water was flooding into low-lying parts of Hamburg, where a wall of sand-filled barriers was breached when one failed.

President Donald Trump tweeted Monday that he is staying in close contact with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem about the flooding. Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence to go survey the flood damage in Nebraska Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in the tweet . She did not say where in Nebraska Pence would go.

Reynolds, touring flood-ravaged areas of the state for the second straight day, warned that flooding will worsen along the Mississippi River as snow melts to the north.

The National Weather Service said the river was expected to crest Thursday in St. Joseph, Missouri, at its third-highest level on record. Military C-130 planes were evacuated last week from nearby Rosecrans Air National Guard base.

In North Dakota, Fargo was preparing for potentially major flooding along the Red River  the same river that ravaged the city a decade ago. Mayor Tim Mahoney declared an emergency and asked residents to help fill 1 million sandbags in response to a weather service warning that snowmelt poses a big risk in Fargo. Sandbag-filling operations start March 26.

In Illinois, weather service readings showed major flooding along the Pecatonica River at Shirland and Freeport, and the Rock River in the Rockford area and Moline. Freeport City Manager Lowell Crow said officials there expected the Pecatonica River to possibly rise to a record level or at least to a level we havent seen in 50 years.

The flooding started after a massive late-winter storm hit the Midwest last week.

The high water was blamed in the deaths of three people from Nebraska. Betty Hamernik, 80, of rural Columbus, was trapped in her home by the fast-rising Loup River. Her body was recovered Saturday.

Aleido Rojas Galan of Norfolk was swept away Friday night in southwestern Iowa, when the vehicle he was in went around a barricade. On Thursday, Columbus farmer James Wilke, 50, died when a bridge collapsed as he used a tractor to try and reach stranded motorists.

Two men in Nebraska have been missing since Thursday. One was last seen on top of his flooded car; the other was swept away after a dam collapsed.

The Missouri Department of Transportation reported about 100 flood-related road closures, including a stretch of Interstate 29.

Jud Kneuvean, emergency manager with the Army Corp of Engineers Kansas City district, blamed rainfall, snowmelt and higher temperatures converging all at the same time. No significant flooding was expected east of Kansas City, though Kneuvean said the Corps was monitoring closely.

When you have a high river and have any forecast of rain on it, it can change the scenario very quickly, Kneuvean said.

___

Associated Press writers Jim Salter in St. Louis; Grant Schulte in Lincoln, Nebraska; Nelson Lampe in Omaha, Nebraska; Caryn Rousseau in Chicago; David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa; and Blake Nicholson in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed to this report.
The company recently leased temporary manufacturing space in Gurnee. However, that was only designed to last until the new plant could be built, according to Perkins. He estimated about 90 employees from that plant will relocate to the new one in Antioch. Only the company's temporary location at Gurnee will close, Perkins added.
I havent gotten a phone call from anybody, he said of the investigation. They havent given me that decision. Either tell me youre going to charge him or youre not going to charge him or its still under investigation. They said there are nuances of the case that they cant discuss yet, but I should be hearing shortly.
I sat on one side of the room while the other side of the room would not let my colleague talk and express his First Amendment right. Thats not right.  I believe that what happened there last week was absolutely staged, and I believe that its all because of Trustee Patel, Spagnoli said, before being interrupted with boos from the crowd after he named Patel in his comments even though the wording of the question asked candidates not to point fingers.
Microphone and US Flag View Photos

During the Democratic Weekly Address, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) stated that Republicans are going after your health care.

Shatz was Tuesdays KVML Newsmaker of the Day.

According to Schatz, Republicans really are coming after your Medicare and your Medicaid. This isnt a campaign slogan or an overstatement. Its right there in the budget that the president released this week. Its got $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, and $845 billion in cuts to Medicare. And whats interesting is that these cuts add up to about $2.3 trillion, which is literally the same amount that the tax cuts that the Republicans just gave to the wealthiest Americans last year.  And so, now theyre trying to pay for it by going after your health care.

He continued that the budget has cuts to Social Security, student loan programs, programs for the poor, and the EPA that are totally unacceptable.

Schatz concluded, Republicans are all about tax cuts, and paying for it by cutting health care. And Democrats want to expand healthcare coverage, invest in students, and protect the air we breathe and the water that we drink. Its that simple.

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.
In 2009, she joined the staff at Fischer Middle School when it opened, and in 2012 moved to Gregory as an assistant principal. Shes been principal at Scullen for the past two years.
This article, NASA: A massive meteor exploded over Earth, but almost no one noticed, originally appeared on CNET.com.

A giant fireball exploded in Earth's atmosphere on Dec. 18 off the coast of Russia over the Bering Sea.

It was the second-largest known meteor explosion in the past 30 years, according to NASA data. The fireball released a blast with an impact energy of 173 kilotons at just 25.6 kilometers above Earth's surface. (At around 100 kilometers you'd be in space.)

A fireball this big is only expected about two or three times every 100 years, Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA, told BBC News on Monday. However, because of its remote location, almost no one noticed. Military satellites picked it up and reported it to NASA.

Screenshot by Marrian Zhou/CNET

The fireball is second only to one that exploded 23.3 kilometers above Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, with an impact energy of 440 kilotons. Witnesses said one meteorite damaged a zinc factory in the Chelyabinsk region and disrupted the city's internet and mobile service. The blast set off a shock wave that broke nearby windows and set off car alarms.

NASA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Though some folks have tweeted photos of the meteor.

See the 2nd-largest meteor explosion in modern history.



It is very tiny in the picture but I tried to zoom.https://t.co/XRtXFaL7hG pic.twitter.com/PyEuOYdh9X  Red T Raccoon (@RedTRaccoon) March 18, 2019

Last years Bering Sea meteor explosion as seen from the... https://t.co/UPwJfdiJL3 pic.twitter.com/RPE28xBBmG  Love Everyone Often (@LoveEveryone144) March 18, 2019

First published on March 18, 10:07 a.m. PT.

Updates, 12:59 p.m. PT: Adds tweets about the fireball explosion.
One of the San Antonio's very own "MasterChef Junior" contestants may be out of the televised competition but the internet is still cheering him on.

Thomas Reyna, 13, was one of four local kitchen gurus who were cast in the show with the formidable chef Gordon Ramsay. During a tense moment in the kitchen, Reyna got some sideline support from a fellow contestant named Kate, who shouted "Thomas, you got it!"
A pair of established restaurants that feature fish-focused menus will dive into the San Antonio dining scene in coming months, according to a local real estate firm that manages the properties they are moving into.

Reata Real Estate confirmed that the Austin-based Cabo Bobs Burritos is taking over a restaurant space north of Loop 410 off Broadway that was a former Las Palapas location. And the California-based Sky Sushi is moving into a newly constructed Midtown building near the San Antonio Museum of Art. The restaurant will be named Shiro, but will retain the same Sky concept.
"La Gordiloca's" border buzz has spread north.

The local citizen journalist recently garnered her own headline in the New York Times. The story highlights her unconventional ways of reporting the news, bringing Laredo's night crawler to the national stage.

Priscilla "La Gordiloca" Villarreal hinted to her 121,000 followers in February that a Times article could be coming.

"Waking up to this puts a smile on my face. I have some stories to tell," she said in a Facebook post. Attached was a photo of what appeared to be a text message from a NYT journalist.

Just a few weeks later the story ran online: "La Gordiloca: The Swearing Muckraker Upending Border Journalism."

READ ALSO: Laredo's Daniella Rodriguez recounts how she met Astros star fiance

Simon Romero, a national correspondent for the Times, touches on Villarreal's turbulent past, her 2017-18 legal battle with the Laredo Police Department, her news reporting tactics and, naturally, her $700 1998 Dodge Ram truck, in which she chases her scoops.

There are only two other people who are interviewed in the story besides Villarreal. One of them a fan, the other, a critic.

"This is a woman who has no respect for the rule of law, or due process," Abundio Rene Cantu said in the article.

Cantu is a lawyer for All Star Kids Daycare and Learning Center that sued Villarreal for defamation in 2016. According to NYT, Villarreal is appealing an initial ruling against her.

Villarreal told the NYT that one thing she dislikes about her job is her "haters."

In December, the Laredo Morning Times reported on Villarreal's birthday bash, including photos from the cumbia-filled night at the Casablanca Event Center.

Shortly after the story was published, Villarreal received a flood of negative comments on Facebook, in which she exposed in return on her Facebook page.

"These are your adult Facebook bullies," she said in a post, including screenshots of the most negative comments along with a photo and names of particular commentators.

While she may have haters, it's clear by her six-digit following that she has a massive amount of fans as well.

Romero recounts a lunch date with Villarreal at the La Posada Hotel. He said Villareal was quickly recognized and bombarded with requests for selfies. One woman, Hilda Pena, 72, told Villarreal she was one her biggest fans.

During last year's events that led to the arrest of former Border Patrol agent Juan David Ortiz, Villarreal reported to her followers on Facebook as four women were killed over the course of two weeks.

Pena said that it was Villarreal's reporting during these events that won her over.

"With that serial killer on the loose, I wondered if I should get my gun," Pena is quoted in the article. "But 'La Gordiloca' made it clear when the situation was under control."

RELATED: Photos: 'La Gordiloca' celebrates her birthday with locals and cumbia

Villarreal shared the NYT article on her Facebook page which received a warm, congratulatory response locally and across the nation.

"You're a badass," Carol Rutz, from Kentucky said.

"I wish her all the best and blessings in the world," Helen Martinez, of Colorado commented.

In January 2018, Texas Monthly ran a story on "La Gordiloca." According to the publication, the night crawler had just 80,000 Facebook followers at that time.

It looks like this border muckraker isn't going anywhere.

Villarreal did not respond for request to comment by the time this story was published.

JeriLynn Thorpe is a digital reporter for the Laredo Morning Times. Read more of her stories on LMTonline.com | jerilynn.thorpe@lmtonline.com
Intercontinental Terminals Company's tank facility in Deer Park has been burning since Sunday.

And it has taken its toll on both nearby residents, and ITC itself.

"This isn't an event we wanted, or planned," said ITC spokesperson Alice Richardson during a news conference.

Choking back tears, Richardson apologized on behalf of the company, noting that numerous employees are part of the community. "Many of my employees work in the city of Deer Park. They live in Deer Park. They're out there fighting this fire the best they can."

HOUSTON CHRONICLE EXCLUSIVE: Deer Park company battling fire accused of intentionally polluting water during Harvey

ITC has established a claims hotline and website to help residents of Deer Park who may have damages from the incident.

WHAT IS BENZENE: What to know about the chemicals in the Deer Park plant fire

The claims process is available to individuals and businesses impacted by the disaster.

The company told KHOU late Monday that claims had arisen from the Sunday morning incident.

RELATED: Deer Park plant fire: How the weather impacts growing smoke plume

Those who believe they have suffered damages or losses as a result of the incident can visit itcclaims.com.

Individuals must complete the appropriate form and then submit said form to incident31719@itcclaims.com.

Individuals can also submit a claim form, along with supporting documents to:

ITC Claims

March 17, 2019 Incident

P.O Box 698

Deer Park, Texas 77536

In addition, ITC has also set up a phone number to take claims if the other options are not feasible. The number, which can be found on the website, is: 346-263-9766.



As of noon, air quality levels were still at a "moderate" reading with 78 particles detected in the Houston area, according to AirNow.gov.

Peter Dawson is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | Peter.Dawson@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here.
The chemical fire at Intercontinental Terminals Company's Deer Park facility may create more problems to the environment.

"Some of the chemicals have washed into the adjacent Houston Ship Channel that links the Gulf of Mexico to Houston, the nation's busiest petrochemical port," ITC spokersperson Dale Samuelsen told Reuters.

That same report revealed that ships continue to move through the 50-mile-long channel.

RELATED: Deer Park plant fire: How the weather impacts growing smoke plume

When a reporter asked if chemical runoff will go into the bay during a press conference late Tuesday afternoon, David Wascome, a senior vice president of operations for ITC, did not provide a definitive answer.

Reporter: Nothing goes into the actual water, the bay?

Wascome: Yeah, so the diked area, as it starts filling up, we're discharging through a ditch, and we're catching that with some spill booms. We've got a third party helping us assist with that. TCEQ is also doing some analysis with the water samples. We're also checking, monitoring online PH, COD and other things.

Chron.com sent ITC multiple requests for comment.

Up to this point, they have gone unanswered.

ITC officials said Tuesday that two additional chemical tanks caught fire overnight at the plant on Independence Parkway after water pressure dropped when two fireboat pumps providing water to firefighters malfunctioned for about six hours.

The fire, which had been contained to six storage tanks late Monday, had spread to eight by 2:30 a.m., the company said. The plant has 242 tanks, according to the company's web site.

On Tuesday, officials from ITC, which is owned by Japan's Mitsui & Co, also said that it brought in a 15-person crew experienced in battling tank-farm fires. The organization will also bring other equipment to help solve the issues at the scene.

Fire officials are now uncertain about how long the chemical fire at Intercontinental Terminals Co. will continue after the blaze at the Deer Park facility worsened late Monday night and early Tuesday morning.

Peter Dawson is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | Peter.Dawson@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here.
I cannot make this any clearer: I will not seek another term as mayor of Niles in 2021, period, Przybylo said in a statement released Monday. Despite the fact that I never said I was going to put forward a referendum to allow an exemption to term limits, some of my political opponents have made an issue of it . I am respecting the will of the voters and will honor term limits as set forth in the 2013 referendum.
The San Antonio Police Department will auction off an array of seized items on Thursday.

The viewing begins at 5:30 p.m. and the auction begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8196, at 650 VFW Blvd.
A Bexar County jailer cannot be a peace officer in Texas again after a jury convicted him Tuesday in connection to an excessive force incident in 2016.

Michael Fernandez was convicted on a charge of tampering with a government record, according to a news release from the district attorney's office.

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The Bexar County Sheriff's Office determined that on June 15, 2016, Fernandez used excessive force against an inmate and then lied to investigators about it. He was suspended for 15 days and later indicted by a grand jury.

Fernandez was sentenced to six months of probation and was ordered to complete an anger management course.

He must also pay a $1,000 fine and surrender his Texas Commission on Law Enforcement license, according to the district attorney's office.

District Attorney Joe Gonzales was proud of the case's outcome, he said in a statement.

"The jury's verdict in this case sends a strong message to our community, and the men and women in law enforcement, that this type of behavior in our jails is unacceptable and will not be tolerated," he said.

READ MORE: Former Bexar County jailer's charges dismissed after striking deal with prosecutors

Another Bexar County jailer, Garrett Flores, agreed earlier this month to surrender his peace officer license in return for having his charges dropped in an unrelated case.

Flores was also accused of attacking an inmate and then lying to investigators about the incident, which was caught on surveillance camera.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | fsabawi@mysa.com|@FaresInSA
San Antonio police arrested a suspected burglar Monday after investigators found his fingerprints at the crime scene, authorities said.

Albert Herrera, 27, was arrested on suspicion of burglary of a habitation, according to jail records.

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On Feb. 22, police responded to a woman's home in the 2400 block of Lake Louise Avenue after she reported that someone broke into her home and stole two Michael Kors purses, according to Herrera's arrest affidavit.

Investigators found fingerprints left behind on glass, and the prints matched those of Herrera, the affidavit says.

Investigators used an online database and found two Michael Kors purses were sold to a San Antonio pawnshop on the day after the burglary, according to the affidavit.

Police said they spoke to the clerk of the pawn shop, who identified Herrera as the one who sold the purses to her.

Herrera has multiple convictions for theft and burglary charges, Bexar County court records showed.

His bail was set at $15,000, according to jail officials.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | fsabawi@mysa.com|@FaresInSA
Two suspects are in custody and a third is at large after a robbery at a Northeast Side apartment complex left one man in critical condition, police said.

The three assailants  two men and a woman  approached the 36-year-old victim in between two apartment buildings at the Victorian Village complex in the 5300 of Gawain Drive, police said.

San Antonio Police Sgt. Malcolm Guidry said the suspects demanded the man's wallet and pulled out a gun after he refused to comply. The victim tried to run away, but one of the suspects opened fire and struck the victim twice in the abdomen.

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The suspects fled in a silver Honda Accord with distinctive damage on the passenger side, Guidry said. Paramedics rushed the victim to San Antonio Military Medical Center in critical condition.

Police later found two of the suspects, one of the men and the woman, driving the Honda, but the third remains at large. Guidry said the two who were arrested are not cooperating with investigators.

Guidry said the victim may not have been specifically targeted and that anyone in a similar situation should turn over whatever the suspects want.

"Your life is more precious than the items you have," he said.

Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

Caleb Downs covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com |

cdowns@mysa.com | @calebjdowns
As a petrochemical fire in Deer Park continues to blaze after tanks caught fire over the weekend at the Intercontinental Terminals Company, billows of smoke are visible  including on radar images.

Though employees at one surrounding chemical company were sent home Tuesday, the air quality readings in the area are below hazardous levels, an ITC spokesperson said.
Just when you thought Brexit couldnt possibly become more chaotic, those wily Brits manage to surprise.

Theresa May tripped yet another landmine. Thanks to her decision to repeatedly put off votes and decisions in the hope of still getting approval for her detested Withdrawal Act, May was already set to go to Brussel for Thursday and Friday meetings to get approval for a Brexit extension.with it looking pretty certain that her side would not only spring whatever idea they had on the EU27 at the very last minute, but would not have a very well thought out plan. The combination of pushing the EU27 to the wire and almost certainly not having any plausible strategy as to how to create consensus around a different sort of Brexit if her Meaningful Vote failed yet again was already making the upcoming EU Council meeting look at risk of going off the rails.

As UK and Ireland-based readers no doubt know full well, Mays plan to have another Meaningful Vote this week blew up in a way that called her and her Governments basic competence into question. Commons Speaker John Bercow said that if the Government tried again to have a vote on its Withdrawal Act, hed deem it to be impermissible in the current session of Parliament by virtue of the matter having already been considered. And he further indicated that the Withdrawal Act would need to change substantially for him to deem another vote to be in order.

Well get to more specific observations below, but the two big takeaways are:

1. On multiple levels, this blowup was a complete failure of planning by the Government. It was hardly a surprise that Bercow could nix a vote. Yet the Government failed to investigate the matter, pre-sound Bercow, and have contingency plans ready if the Speaker said no. 2. This opinion by Bercow isnt (or didnt have to be) the disaster it is portrayed as being. But the complete lack of imagination and preparation not only leaves May floundering, but has thrown a big monkey wrench into the planning the EU was no doubt trying to undertake. The spectacle of more floundering, plus having to consider even more options, cant help but further sour the already poor dynamics between Brussels and London. And do not forget, even when the objective stakes are high, interpersonal factors matter and regularly determine outcomes (even though the principals will tell themselves otherwise).

More details below.

The Government was utterly unprepared for Bercows position on the planned vote. Both tweets courtesy Richard Smith:

Hilary Benn asks whether there must be negotiations with the EU to make TMs brexit deal to be sufficiently different to be voted on again. John Bercow says: In all likelihood the answer is yes. A change to legal opinion not enough   Sam Coates Times (@SamCoatesTimes) March 18, 2019

Sense of absolute shock among ministers  no idea what to do. "There's no plan yet, everyone is just trying to come to terms with it," one says.  Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) March 18, 2019

And notice the next tweet in this thread:

I am NOT an MP. I knew about this Erskine May rule. Just shows the deep, deep arrogance and STUPIDITY of May and her government if they are surprised by The Speakers ruling!  William Irving Clark (@ClintClease) March 18, 2019

The Government having the rug pulled out from under it by Bercow covered up the fact that May probably wasnt having a meaningful vote anyhow. The press had been in its usual horserace drama, playing up the idea that May could flip the DUP to support her Withdrawal Act, and based on that, somehow get another 65 MPs to change their mind. The Irish press had been more skeptical about the DUP supporting Mays deal.

On Sunday, the Government started trying to lower expectations. On the Andrew Marr show, Phillip Hammond said the Government would not hold a vote this week if it didnt have DUP and enough Tory support to secure passage. Right before Bercow nixed a vote, Robert Peston tweeted:

It is now almost 100% certain that there will be no deal between the DUP and the government this week, and therefore  as I said on Saturday  @theresa_may will not risk third meaningful vote this week. So the scenario I mapped out this morning of the vote on her deal  Robert Peston (@Peston) March 18, 2019

So despite all the rending of garments, May would be more or less where she is now, but with less egg on her face.

Not only was Bercows reaction not at all unreasonable, its also not as serious an impediment as the press and the Governments ineptitude are making it seem. Richard North explained how not only was Bercows opposition to yet another vote likely, but there was precedent for proroguing Parliament, which is being depicted as a nuclear option. From his site:

I cant think why the Speakers ruling yesterday on the resubmission of the Brexit motion should have come as a surprise.. If it is truly the case that Downing Street was unaware of this restriction, and is currently in a state of shock, then it points further to a sense of pervasive incompetence in government. As to the source of this information, it resides in Erskin May, but obtainable to mere mortals only on payment of 439.99  although it is, of course, free to our rulers. And there we can see that this is not a small, arcane point. A whole chapter is devoted to the rule under the title: same question may not be twice offered. There we find that: It is a rule, in both houses, which is essential to the due performance of their duties, that no question or bill shall be offered that is substantially the same as one on which their judgment has already been expressed in the current session. We also find details of where prorogations have been resorted to in order to circumvent this rule. One period in 1707 lasted a week but in 1721 it was over in a mere two days. In theory, though, there seems to be nothing to stop a prorogation being set for an hour or less, which could  in theory  keep Mrs Mays motion on track, ready to be voted on before the European Council later this week. Nevertheless, at the time of writing, plans for todays expected vote are in disarray, with the situation accurately described as chaos, even if we detach the constitutional aspect from it. The fact is that, since the government intended to offer the same question, it should have been prepared. It wasnt.

Being prepared would have included not just preparing the groundwork for proroguing or other fallback moves, but also briefing the EU. The flailing about raises even more doubts about whether its possible for the UK to steer any path through Brexit. The fact that some top reporters are seeing Bercow as motivated by pique, even if fully warranted, is likely to be noted by EU leaders and factored into their thinking about what to do next.

The EU has one big reason to give an extension: Ireland. We have long had the view that the cost and disruption of a crash out has been greatly underestimated, if nothing else because the imposition of a hard border between the UK and EU is a trade barrier.even if the UK were to be in a customs union.

However, as much as cliff edge Brexit would be messy, businesses are increasingly unhappy with the uncertainty over if Brexit will happen, when that would be and what sort of Brexit will occur. It has hit the point where the press is reporting grumblings that more and more executives are saying protracted uncertainty will be very damaging. At a minimum, it will lead to a big reduction in investment, which by itself would slow growth further.

Moreover, even though its a safe bet that no deal plans arent ready for a March 29 departure, the fact that the EU plans to keep the status quo in place in key areas through as long as the year end would soften the impact of a crash out.

In other words, the English-language press is not registering the considerable ambivalence a lot of EU leaders. For instance, Macron does not seem to be posturing when he says, in effect, the UK better have a damned good reason for asking for an extension. The French government also seems not to think that avoiding a crash out is critical. The officialdom appears to think that while there would clearly be pain, there could also be medium and long term advantages. The mess of the Bercow intervention isnt going to improve the already dark mood in Brussels.

The biggest reason for the extension is likely not to be the UK, which has done everything it could to alienate the EU27, but Ireland. As PlutoniumKun said by e-mail yesterday (before the Bercow train wreck):

Ireland is seriously unprepared for a no-deal  Dublin Port has put in place customs facilities for the Holyhead link but the new ferry links to the continent are not running yet so far as I know. I know some police and army people, Ive not heard any suggestion from them of cancelled leave, etc., although no doubt there are secret contingencies. A full soft mobilisation along the border would be essential. I think the Irish government has assumed all along there would be an extension if May could not get the deal through. The government will go into panic overdrive in Brussels to get at least a 3 month extension in the last week if they suspect the mood has turned. There will have been furious lobbying over the St. Patricks Weekend in all the key political capitals (including of course Washington, not that they have direct influence at this stage). I agree with Vlade that it would look like bad faith if the EU was to take the option of an extension off the table at this stage. But Ive been wondering if the soundings about a 21 month extension are intended to set the ground for conditions that they know London can never accept. My guess is that theyll give May a choice  a very short extension (a few weeks) for another vote, or a 21 month extension with very strict conditions (including a new vote). They know of course that May will be incapable of getting any sort of consensus at home so both could well be refused by default.

Experts are all over the map as to what happens next. Politicos morning European newsletter hews closely to conventional wisdom, arguing that the EU27 are likely to accept any rationale May gives for a longish extension, presumably her only option given that getting her deal voted through by May 29 looks even more implausible given Bercow.and the EU is not likely to give her an extension to try anyhow, and then have to give her a second one.

Robert Peston (who remember has much better EU official contacts than the overwhelming majority of UK reporter) had in a speech last Friday put no deal after a short extension as the most likely outcome. From Portfolio Adviser:

Peston said markets have been massively underestimating the risk of a no-deal Brexit simply because of the complexity of any scenarios that follows through Parliament, whether that is Mays deal, another deal, a delay, or another referendum. My central prognosis is that we will end up with a no-deal Brexit, not on 29 March but a month or two afterwards, he said. The reason I say that is because the challenge of getting everything aligned to prevent that from happening is very, very hard.

Pestons concerns are valid. There are too many things that have to happen for either of the ways out of a no deal to happen: a revocation of Article 50 or getting to a Withdrawal Agreement. As weve stressed repeatedly, any process that has a lot of steps to completion is highly failure prone if those steps are not assured of success. This is simple cumulative probability. Not only do we have many steps, but virtually none of them have odds of success as high as 90%.

Richard North focused on how flabbergasted the EU is likely to be. And contrary to Politico (and mainstream thinking), he contends that the Bercow punch makes a long extension less likely:

With only ten days to go before the scheduled Brexit day, any idea of a roadmap has evaporated. The colleagues in Brussels can have no idea of Mrs Mays intentions because, most likely, she herself has no clue of what they are. As for us, we not only dont know whether we are going to leave on time, we dont even know what is planned over the next few days. Confronted with an unprecedented situation where there are multiple variables and significant long-term consequences, 27 Member State governments have to consult internally to establish their own responses, and then they have to consult with each other and with the EU institutions before coming to a common position. At the best of times, this would be difficult to achieve but, given the circumstances, it is almost at the point of expecting too much. Probably, the only play available to the colleagues is to give the UK a short-term extension, for the sole purpose of organising a third and final vote. For that, though, they will need Mrs Mays assurances that there is a procedural fix, which undoubtedly there is. The precedents for a prorogation are sound. Even the speaker agreed that resubmission after prorogation is self-evidently valid. However, if prorogation takes us into an extension period, it would almost certainly create a make-or-break situation, where a negative vote would precipitate a no-deal Brexit  unless at the last minute Mrs May is prepared to revoke the Article 50 notification. An affirmative vote would take us into the transitional period. From this perspective, it would seem that the long-extension option is off the table. Keeping to their current policy stance of refusing a long extension unless there is a substantial justification, the European Council might find it difficult to authorise anything other than a short period, in the absence of any certainty as to the Westminster parliaments intentions  which now cannot be divined before the European Council. One final possibility, though, might involve the Council deferring any decision and convening an emergency consultation on 29 March. That, literally, would leave it to the eleventh hour  one hour before midnight, Brussels time  maximising uncertainty and creating an intolerable situation.

North doesnt state it as crisply as he might, but given Mays famed rigidity, she may hold fast to her Plan A of trying to bully Parliament into approving her deal.

Will the EU put itself through the brain damage of letting her try and having an emergency summit March 28 and 29, particularly if May fails to say much about what her Plan B might be? The UK press has stories saying she would seek either a nine month or a one year extension if she cant get her deal approved. Neither is long enough for a second referendum and follow-up actions, and its hard to see any other way to shift the deep political divisions in the UK far enough to get at a new type of deal. Given Parliament just having rejected a second referendum, she cant use that as a reason for delay, and it seems unlikely that shes say shed call for a new general election. EU leaders have said they wont let May get away with offering no reason, as in no plan for how to achieve a different Withdrawal Agreement, but pray tell, what could she possibly say?

Or will the EU give her a few months, even though the business community wont be happy, as the most they can justify given the UKs utter confusion, as well as to give Ireland some badly needed prep time?

The silence of the Government on what to do next, plus the fact that Tusk is making the rounds to see if he can sell his longer extension idea, says everyone is still very much in the dark.

Update 6:15 AM: Vlade just sent this by e-mail, and it hit the wires less than an hour ago. Oddly the Reuters version that he is getting in the UK is not the same as the one I am getting in the US (we poor Yanks must need to be sheltered from the cold realities of Brexit) but I see similar quotes in the Independents and the Express version of the story:

Germany to U.K.: Please Deliver Clear Plans (9:20 a.m.) German Europe Minister Michael Roth had a stern warning for Theresa Mays government as he arrived for a meeting to prepare for Thursdays summit in Brussels. I dont have any appetite for substance-less, very abstract discussions and negotiations on Brexit, he said. Please deliver, dear friends in London, please deliver. He added: Time is running out and were really exhausted by these negotiations and I expect clear and precise proposals of the British government, why such an extension is necessary. Its not just a game, its an extremely serious situation.

Vlade added, and I concur:
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

At some point in the future, Id like to do failure matrix for the pathways to misfortune (example of such a matrix here) that precipitated two deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes on take-off in five months, but I dont feel that I have enough information yet. (Im not unsympathathetic to the view that the wholesale 737 MAX grounding was premature on technical grounds, but then trade and even geopolitical factors enter in, given that Boeing is a national champion.) We do not yet have results from the cockpit voice and flight data recorders of either aircraft, for example. But what we do know is sufficiently disturbing  a criminal investigation into Boeing had already been initiated after the Lion Air crash, but before the Ethiopian Airlines crash  that I think its worthwhile doing a play-by-play on the causes of the crashes, so far as we can know them. About that criminal investigation:

According to the Wall Street Journal, a Washington D.C. grand jury issued a March 11 subpoena requesting emails, correspondence, and other messages from at least one person involved in the development of the aircraft. Its a very, very serious investigation into basically, was there fraud by Boeing in the certification of the 737 MAX 8 ? Arthur Rosenberg, an aviation attorney who is representing six families whose relatives died in the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes, explained. Nobody knows the answer to that yet, Rosenberg cautioned, adding that he had not yet seen the Justice Departments subpoena and therefore could not know its full scope. Rosenberg expects the criminal probe to question whether Boeing fully disclosed to the FAA the engineering of the 737 Max 8s MCAS flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), during the planes certification process. The flight control system was designed to prevent the plane from stalling.

Bloomberg comments:

A possible criminal investigation during an aircraft accident investigation is highly unusual . While airline accidents have at times raised criminal issues, such as after the 1996 crash of a ValuJet plane in the Florida Everglades, such cases are the exception.

Before we get to the play-by-play, one more piece of background: CEO Dennis Muilenburgs latest PR debacle, entitled Letter from Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg to Airlines, Passengers and the Aviation Community. The most salient material:

Safety is at the core of who we are at Boeing, and ensuring safe and reliable travel on our airplanes is an enduring value and our absolute commitment to everyone. This overarching focus on safety spans and binds together our entire global aerospace industry and communities. Were united with our airline customers, international regulators and government authorities in our efforts to support the most recent investigation, understand the facts of what happened and help prevent future tragedies. Based on facts from the Lion Air Flight 610 accident and emerging data as it becomes available from the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accident, were taking actions to fully ensure the safety of the 737 MAX. We also understand and regret the challenges for our customers and the flying public caused by the fleets grounding. Boeing has been in the business of aviation safety for more than 100 years, and well continue providing the best products, training and support to our global airline customers and pilots. This is an ongoing and relentless commitment to make safe airplanes even safer . Soon well release a software update and related pilot training for the 737 MAX that will address concerns discovered in the aftermath of the Lion Air Flight 610 accident.

Fine words. Are they true? Can Boeings commitment to everyone to ensure  safe and reliable travel really be said to be absolute? Thats a high bar. Lets see!

Ive taken the structure that follows from a tweetstorm by Trevor Sumner (apparently derived from a Facebook post by his brother-law, Dave Kammeyer). However, Ive added topic headings, changed others, and helpfully numbered them all, so you can correct, enhance, or rearrange topics easily in comments (or even suggest new topics). Let me also caveat that this is an enormous amount of material, and time presses, so this will not be as rich in links as I would normally like it to be. Also note that the level of abstraction for each topic varies significantly: From The Biosphere all the way to Pilot Training. A proper failure matrix would sort that out.

* * *

(1) The Biosphere: The 737 MAX story begins with a customer requirement for increased fuel efficiency. This is, at bottom, a carbon issue (and hence a greenhouse gas issue, especially as the demand for air travel increases, especially in Asia). New biosphere-driven customer demands will continue to emerge as climate change increases and intensifies, and hence the continued 737 MAX-like debacles should be expected, all else being equal. From CAPA  Centre for Aviation:

The main expected impacts of climate change on aviation result from changes in temperature, precipitation (rain and snow), storm patterns, sea level and wind patterns. In addition, climate change is expected to lead to increased drought, impacts on the supply of water and energy, and changes in wildlife patterns and biodiversity. Consequences for aviation include reduced aircraft performance, changing demand patterns, potential damage to infrastructure, loss of capacity and schedule disruption.

All of these factors will affect aircraft design, manufacturing, maintenance, and use, stressing the system.

(2) Choice of Airframe: The Air Current describes the competitive environment that led Boeing to upgrade the 737 to the 737 MAX, instead of building a new plane:

Boeing wanted to replace the 737. The plan had even earned the endorsement of its now-retired chief executive. Were gonna do a new airplane, Jim McNerney said in February of that same year. Were not done evaluating this whole situation yet, but our current bias is to not re-engine, is to move to an all-new airplane at the end of the decade. History went in a different direction. Airbus, riding its same decades-long incremental strategy and chipping away at Boeings market supremacy, had made no secret of its plans to put new engines on the A320. But its own re-engined jet somehow managed to take Boeing by surprise. Airbus and American forced Boeings hand. It had to put new engines on the 737 to stay even with its rival .

Why? The earlier butchered launch of the 787:

Boeing justified the decision thusly: There were huge and excruciatingly painful near-term obstacles on its way to a new single-aisle airplane. In the summer of 2011, the 787 Dreamliner wasnt yet done after billions invested and years of delays. More than 800 airplanes later here in 2019, each 787 costs less to build than sell, but its still running a $23 billion production cost deficit.. The 737 Max was Boeings ticket to holding the line on its position  both market and financial  in the near term. Abandoning the 737 wouldve meant walking away from its golden goose that helped finance the astronomical costs of the 787 and the development of the 777X.

So, we might think of Boeing as a runner whos tripped and fallen: The initial stumble, followed by loss of balance, was the 787; with the 737 MAX, Boeing hit the surface of the track.

(3) Aerodynamic Issues: The Air Current also describes the aerodynamic issues created by the decision to re-engine the 737:

Every airplane development is a series of compromises, but to deliver the 737 Max with its promised fuel efficiency, Boeing had to fit 12 gallons into a 10 gallon jug. Its bigger engines made for creative solutions as it found a way to mount the larger CFM International turbines under the notoriously low-slung jetliner. It lengthened the nose landing gear by eight inches, cleaned up the aerodynamics of the tail cone, added new winglets, fly-by-wire spoilers and big displays for the next generation of pilots. It pushed technology, as it had done time and time again with ever-increasing costs, to deliver a product that made its jets more-efficient and less-costly to fly. In the case of the 737 Max, with its nose pointed high in the air, the larger engines  generating their own lift  nudged it even higher. The risk Boeing found through analysis and later flight testing was that under certain high-speed conditions both in wind-up turns and wings-level flight, that upward nudge created a greater risk of stalling. Its solution was MCAS, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System control law that would allow for both generations of 737 to behave the same way. MCAS would automatically trim the horizontal stabilizer to bring the nose down, activated with Angle of Attack data. Its now at the center of the Lion Air investigation and stalking the periphery of the Ethiopian crash.

(4) Systems Engineering: Amazingly, there is what in a less buttoned-down world that commercial aviation would be called a Boeing 737 fan site, which describes the MCAS system in more technical terms:

MCAS was introduced to counteract the pitch up effect of the LEAP-1B engines at high AoA [Angle of Attack]. The engines were both larger and relocated slightly up and forward from the previous NG CFM56-7 engines to accomodate their larger diameter. This new location and size of the nacelle causes it to produce lift at high AoA; as the nacelle is ahead of the CofG [Center of Gravity] this causes a pitch-up effect which could in turn further increase the AoA and send the aircraft closer towards the stall. MCAS was therefore introduced to give an automatic nose down stabilizer input during steep turns with elevated load factors (high AoA) and during flaps up flight at airspeeds approaching stall.

Unfortunately for Boeing and the passengers its crashed aircraft were carrying, the MCAS system was very poorly implemented. Reading between the lines (Ive helpfully labeled the pain points):

Boeing have been working on a software modification to MCAS since the Lion Air accident. Unfortunately although originally due for release in January it has still not been released due to both engineering challenges and differences of opinion among some federal and company safety experts over how extensive the changes should be. Apparently there have been discussions about potentially adding [A] enhanced pilot training and possibly mandatory [B] cockpit alerts to the package. There also has been consideration of more-sweeping design changes that would prevent [C] faulty signals from a single sensor from touching off the automated stall-prevention system.

[A] Pilot training was originally not considered necessary, because MCAS was supposed to give 737 MAX the same flight characteristics as earlier 737s; thats why pilots werent told about it. (This also kept the price low.) [B] Such alerts exist now, as part of an optional package, which Lion did not buy. [C] The single sensor was the result of regulatory capture, not to say gaming; see below.

(The MCAS system is currently the system fingered as the cause of both the Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes; we wont know for sure until the forensics are complete. Here, however, is the scenario for an MCAS-induced crash:

Black box data retrieved after the Lion Air crash indicates that a single faulty sensor  a vane on the outside of the fuselage that measures the planes angle of attack, the angle between the airflow and the wing  triggered MCAS multiple times during the deadly flight, initiating a tug of war as the system repeatedly pushed the nose of the plane down and the pilots wrestled with the controls to pull it back up, before the final crash.

(5) Regulatory Capture: Commercial aircraft need to be certified by the FAA before launch. The Washington Post labels todays process self-certification:

The FAAs publication of pilot training requirements for the Max 8 in the fall of 2017 was among the final steps in a multiyear approval process carried out under the agencys now 10-year-old policy of entrusting Boeing and other aviation manufacturers to certify that their own systems comply with U.S. air safety regulations. In practice, one Boeing engineer would conduct a test of a particular system on the Max 8, while another Boeing engineer would act as the FAAs representative , signing on behalf of the U.S. government that the technology complied with federal safety regulations, people familiar with the process said.

(Note that a 10-year-old process would have begun in the Obama administration, so the regulatory process is bipartisan.) I understand that safety culture is real and strong, but imagine the same role-playing concept applied to finance: One bankers plays the banker, and the other banker plays Bill Black, and after a time they switch roles. Clearly a system that will work until it doesnt. More:

The process was occurring during a period when the Transportation Departments Office of Inspector General was warning the FAA that its oversight of manufacturers work was insufficient. Four years after self-certification began, fires aboard Boeings 787 Dreamliner jets led to the grounding of the fleet and a wave of questions about whether self-certification had affected the FAAs oversight.

Why self-certification? Investigative reporting from the Seattle Times  the article is worth reading in full  explains:

The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.

Alert readers will note the similarity to the Neoliberal Playbook, where government systems are sabotaged in order to privatize them, but in this case regulatory capture seems to have happened by littles, rather than out of open, ideological conviction (as with the UKss NHS, or our Post Office, our Veterans Administration, etc.).

(6) Transfer of Authority to Boeing: In the case of the 737 Max, regulatory capture was so great that certification authority was transferred to Boeing. In order to be certified, a System Safety Analysis for MCAS had to be performed. The Seattle Times:

The safety analysis: Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the plane down to avert a stall. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis document.

Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly pushing the airplanes nose downward.

Assessed a failure of the system as one level below catastrophic. But even that hazardous danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor  and yet thats how it was designed.

So who certified MCAS? Boeing self-certified it. Once again The Seattle Times:

Several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing. There wasnt a complete and proper review of the documents, the former engineer added. Review was rushed to reach certain certification dates. In this atmosphere, the System Safety Analysis on MCAS, just one piece of the mountain of documents needed for certification, was delegated to Boeing .

(Im skipping a lengthy discussion of even more technical detail for MCAS, which includes discrepancies between what Boeing self-certified, and what the FAA thought that it had certified, along with the MCAS system acting like a ratchet, so it didnt reset itself, meaning that each time it kicked in, the nose was pitched down even lower. Yikes. Again, the article is worth reading in full; if youve ever done tech doc, youll want to scream and run.)

(7) Political Economy: This tweet is especially interesting, because even I know that Muddy Waters Research is a famous short seller:

This is a great example of real short-termism by a corporate. Its clearly in $BA LT interest to have robust cert system, but those chickens come home to roost years later, allowing mgmt to meet ST expectations. BTW, semi-annual reporting would do NOTHING to fix this mentality. 4  MuddyWatersResearch (@muddywatersre) March 18, 2019

And here we are! There are a myriad of other details, but many of them will only prove out once the black boxes are examined and the forensics are complete.

* * *

It should be clear at this point that the central claims of Muilenburgs letter are false. I understand that commercial aviation is a business, but if that is so, then Muilenburgs claim that Boeings commitment to safety is absolute cannot possibly be true; indeed, the choice to re-engine the 737 had nothing to do with safety. Self-certification makes Boeing a judge in its own cause, and that clearly contradicts Muilenburgs absurd claim that safety  as opposed to profit  is at the core of who we are. The self-certification debacle that allowed MCAS to be released happened on Muilenburgs watch and is already causing Boeing immense reputational damage, and a criminal case, not to mention the civil cases that are surely coming, will only increase that damage. Mr. Market, the Beltway, and even Trump, if his trade deals are affected, will all soon be bellowing for a sacrificial victim. Muilenburg should recognize the inevitable and gracefully resign. Given his letter, it looks unlikely that he will do the right thing.
By Richard Vague, Managing Partner, Gabriel Investments and Chair, The Governors Woods Foundation. Originally published in Democracy; cross posted from the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

In 1787, in his capacity as secretary of the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts, [Tench] Coxe had provided support for a British emigrant, Andrew Mitchell, to return to Britain and pirate textile technology [then one of the worlds preeminent industries], a scheme that failed when Mitchell was discovered and forced to flee to Copenhagen. Thomas Digges smuggled nearly two dozen British textile workers to the United States, including some hired by [Alexander] Hamilton. In another case, an English weaver named George Parkinson was granted a US patent on textile technology [that had been developed in Britain] in 1791; later he went to work for the government-sponsored manufacturing center sponsored by Hamilton . . . Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, in charge of patent policy, arranged for the patent. . . . In 1787, Phineas Bond, the British consul in Philadelphia, bought four carding and spinning machines that had been smuggled into the United States and sent them back to Britain.

Michael Lind, Land of Promise

In its earliest years, the United States took ideas from Britain, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and the keeper of those manufacturing secrets that had fueled its powerhouse textile industry. By 1872, Americas economy had surpassed that of Britain, and it soon became the worlds most creative industrial power, with eager scouts from other shores trekking to its factories. By 1918, Americas economy was larger than that of Britain, France, and Germany combined.

China, in the small handful of decades since it embraced capitalism, has aggressively sought to acquire intellectual property (IP) from the rest of the world. Witness just one unhappy Wall Street Journal headline: How China Systematically Pries Technology From U.S. Companies: Beijing leans on an array of levers to extract intellectual propertysometimes coercively.

Some commentators have accused China of stealing intellectual property, and characterized theirs as a copycat culture not well suited for innovation. In 2011, the journalist Alexandra Harney wrote that:

[T]he harder Beijing pushes its companies and scientists to come up with new ideas, the more they seem to copy the work of others. . . . In a nation with such breakneck economic growth and an overburdened judicial system the dishonest frequently win. The system to protect the honest simply isnt robust enough. Dishonest copiers move quickly to secure an advantage in a rapidly growing market, and their success, in turn, perpetuates Chinas copycat culture.

In 2016, Peter Guy, a financial writer and former international banker, argued that copying and reverse engineering [in China] accelerated new product launches, but eroded Chinas competitiveness. Stealing intellectual property has enormously benefited Chinese companies. But, it has crippled their ability to develop the next version or innovate. Just look at almost every important technological innovation in hardware, software, and the internet. Without sounding arrogant or imperialistic, they are with few exceptions made in America.

China has assiduously and relentlessly copied others. In fact, in joint ventures that U.S. companies have entered into with Chinese companies, and in investments Chinese companies have made in U.S. and other foreign companies, the Chinese have often made the turnover of IP to China a requirement.

Yet China is doing far more than copy, steal, extract, and imitate. It is hell bent on taking over the worlds leadership in innovation, and is well on track to accomplish this. Chinas President Xi Jinping has made indigenous innovation a national priority, and technology innovation and advancement are integral to Chinas current five-year plan. In its 2006 National Medium-and Long-Term Program for Science and Technology Development, and in the speeches of its government leaders, China has made clear its goal of becoming an innovative nation by 2020, an international leader in innovation by 2030, and a world powerhouse of scientific and technological innovation by 2050. The business press is beginning to note this shift, as with CNN reporter Matt Riverss 2018 article, Inside Chinas Silicon Valley: From copycats to innovation.

On top of this, in 2015, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced the Made in China 2025 initiative, an industrial policy that seeks to make China dominant in global high-tech manufacturing. This was seemingly modeled on the German governments adoption in 2013 of its Industry 4.0 strategy, designed to significantly enhance the computerization of Germanys already highly advanced manufacturing capability.

The bald truth is that China has crafted a focused, aggressive plan to dominate the most important areas of scientific and technological innovation, and its government is investing heavily to achieve that plan. In contrast, the U.S. government has invested at a (relatively) diminishing pace, leaving the United States vulnerable to being surpassed. In fact, if the United States doesnt assertively respond, this will readily happen.

Breakthroughs Abound, on 5G and More

The numbers speak for themselves. In 2014, China awarded 34,000 PhDs in the natural sciences and engineering, as compared to 40,000 in the United States. More telling, China awarded 1.4 million undergraduate degrees in the natural sciences and engineering, almost four times as many as the 377,000 awarded in the United States. And while the number of these degrees has been increasing in both countries, that growth has been far faster in China. In ten years, PhDs awarded in China have increased by 146 percent as compared to 55 percent in the United States. China increasingly boosts its rate with expanded scholarship support, particularly for degrees like pharmaceutical science.

One result has been that China now leads the world in scientific papers published, with 426,000 studies in 2016 as compared to 409,000 in the United States. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), China is now the second largest source of international patent applications behind the United States and is projected to overtake the U.S. within three years as the largest source of applications filed under WIPOs Patent Cooperation Treaty. It already leads the world in digital communications patent applications.

Many academics question the validity of Chinas achievements, especially as it relates to the comparative quality and scientific rigor of these papers and degrees. They note, for example, that many Chinese engineering degrees are not of the same caliber as U.S. degrees, and that some Chinese scientific publications pay authors for research papers, whereas U.S. journals do not. They also note the evidently greater number of instances in China where authors have falsified scientific results. A study by Wei Quan at Wuhan University, Bikun Chen at Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and Fei Shu at McGill University was reported on by MIT Technology Review, which found that plagiarism, academic dishonesty, ghost-written papers, and fake peer-review scandals are on the increase in China, as is the number of mistakesThe number of paper corrections authored by Chinese scholars increased from two in 1996 to 1,234 in 2016, a historic high, they say.

Still, examples of Chinese innovation and genuine breakthroughs abound:

China produces more electric cars than anywhere else in the world, and it is already the worlds leader in battery technology, leading The Financial Times to headline one article from September 2018, Why the future of electric cars lies in China: Tesla grabs the limelight, but the real story is elsewhere.

China has also built more houses and office buildings than any other country in the past decade, and its construction technology now leads the world. A case in point is its prefabrication technology. In 2010, it startled the world when it demonstrated the construction of a 15-story hotel in less than a week using prefabricated materials (igniting a collateral debate about quality and safety). Low-income countries throughout Africa and elsewhere are proving to be a growing export market for this type of construction.

Chinese progress is just as pronounced in the most highly complex arenas. CRISPR-Cas9 is an astonishing new technology that can be used to edit genes within organisms. It holds seemingly unlimited promise (and risk) as a tool for enabling cures for diseases and for modification of life forms. Though developed in the United States, there is now more experimentation in China using this new technology than there is here at home, thanks to the greater availability of government funding and a more liberal regulatory environment. Dr. Carl June of the University of Pennsylvania, who is the leading immunotherapy researcher in the world and an early user of CRISPR, has stated, We are at a dangerous point in losing our lead in biomedicine [to China].

In addition, China aims to take the lead in artificial intelligence (A.I.). It envisions a $1 trillion A.I. industry, as CNBC reported in May 2018. Its investors injected $4.5 billion into more than 200 A.I. companies in China between 2012 and 2015. Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research recently wrote: Artificial intelligence, and especially the A.I. that powers visual analytics, is a critical technology for a raft of new products. The Western companies have their own advantages, to be sure. But the Chinese model of government sponsorship and private capital is coming on very strong.

Just as notable is the lead China may already have in the race for 5G, the next generation of mobile communications, according to a U.S. National Security Council memo. As the memo states, 5G is by no means simply a faster 4G . . . [but instead is] a change more like the invention of the Gutenberg Press. As The Financial Times noted, with its much larger capacity for data, significantly reduced lag times, and greatly enhanced speeds, 5G is expected to extend well beyond phones and permeate every aspect of factories, automobiles, smart homes, robots, and more.

Beyond that, The New York Times reports, China has a clear lead in [the computing discipline of] quantum encryption. As it has with other cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence, the Chinese government has made different kinds of quantum [computing] research a priority. This will be a crucial advantage in a world in which data security is an increasing concern.

The country is arguably already the global leader in high-tech manufacturing as well. The United States simply does not have the ready skills in place to manufacture certain smartphones at the scale on which they are built in China. High-tech manufacturing, as opposed to more routine manufacturing, commands higher profit margins and is itself a platform for product innovation.

Winning the R&D Race

To a degree not widely appreciated, scale alone can drive innovation. The bigger the market, the more opportunity there is for innovation, and the more necessity there is for it as well. With a larger number of customers than its competitors, a given company can invest more in R&D for product enhancements, will get more feedback from customers that can result in improvements in such products, and has more need for product modifications and production improvements to handle this larger number of customers. Amazon makes more delivery innovations than other retailers not only because it can, but because it has to.

In the mid- to late-1800s, for instance, the United States was simply building far more railroads, telegraphs, and guns than Britain and Germanyand that was the point when U.S. innovation in these areas overtook the world. China has now reached that point for an increasing number of products and services. Those who dismiss China as a mere copycat miss this aspect of the comparison. At a certain size, Chinese companies face challenges and opportunities that no one else has ever faced. At that point, it is hard not to be innovative. On top of this, small innovators are more likely to try and sell their innovations to the largest companies because that brings a greater profit potential. For example, a small A.I. startup company, most likely cash-starved but nurturing a new, unproven, but potentially powerful A.I. product that it has invented, will usually seek to sell itself to a larger company at the point when its product starts to gain market acceptance. Most often, the potential buyers will be the largest companies in that field. Increasingly, and in a rising number of sectors, those companies are Chinese.

The situation is clear. Both by desire and necessity, China already is a world-class innovator, despite how its often depicted. One byproduct of this is the increasing number of scientists from the United States and other countries relocating to China because of the increasing availability of financial support.

Thats not to minimize the daunting political and economic challenges China faces. And who is to begrudge it? The issue is not whether the Chinese are trying to rapidly advance. They are. The issue is how rapidly the United States is trying to advance, and whether it is maintaining its lead over China. It appears that it is not.

The concern regarding China systematically pr[ying] technology from U.S. companies is valid, with recurring headlines about Chinese hacking of U.S. government and corporate secrets, or U.S. criminal charges against Chinese intelligence officers. It is certainly the case that American companies need to vigorously defend their intellectual property, and the government should be shoulder-to-shoulder with them in doing so, tightening security against IP theft in its trade agreements and its legal initiatives. (There is also tremendous international concern regarding the ethical standards, or lack thereof, that govern Chinas scientific advancement, especially in areas like CRISPR-Cas9 research.)

However, ultimately, the best way for any company or country to defend its IP may not be so much in the courtroom as in the acceleration of innovation using that company or countrys own advanced IP as a stepping stone and platform. In other words, to build on its advantage and increase its lead.

Yet, to the extent that U.S. businesses and institutions are accelerating, it is with one arm tied behind their back, because there have been few moments in its almost 250-year history that the U.S. government has been less forceful in trying to lead science and technology. Even the U.S. militarya leading force in U.S. innovation ever since the Revolutionary War that ignited manufacturing in this countryhas begun to come under criticism for underinvesting in innovation. Analysts suspect Chinas new weapons advancements in areas such as A.I., drones, and cyberwarfare are at least equal to Americas.

Before we look at the numbers, we must discuss philosophy. China has a very overt industrial policy to guide its IP conquests. In areas like 5G and A.I., it has stated national goals for global industry leadership and aggressively directs government research and venture capital to complement industry efforts in pursuit of those goals. The United Statess industrial policy doesnt work like thisor at least not in a cohesive, concerted, and concisely articulated manner advocated at the highest levels of government. While it might seem reasonable to think that the United States would or should have such a policy for select industries, the fact is that some prefer not to have one. Their belief is that government should not try to pick winners, because government so often gets it wrong. Instead, these industries believe that markets should decide, and that laissez-faire capitalism is the surest, most efficient path to innovation. They believe that government is a bungler when it comes to guiding business investment and quickly point to notable government failures and fiascos. Solyndra, anyone? They then point to Americas legacy of innovation and claim that it is a result of free markets.

Theres just one problem with thisits a false reading of U.S. history. Americas federal, state, and local governments have been deeply involved in directing industrial policy since this countrys inception. Perhaps the best example is the massive, pervasive, and decades-long involvement of the U.S. government in supporting the expansion of railroads. This was, as all such efforts are, replete with failures and missteps. But it gave this country, for a time, the worlds best transportation system, and powered it to global economic leadership. In the Land Grant Act of 1850, the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862-1866, and the many other state and federal initiatives that followed, railroads were provided land and indispensable direct government financial support. And that is but one example of the U.S. government guiding industrial policy toward innnovation. From the construction of canals to the unlocking of atomic power, government leadership and financing has been decisive in American progress. The 12 key enablers and product differentiators of todays iPhone stem directly or indirectly from government research, including touch-screen technology, GPS, lithium batteries, and the Internet itself.

What are the recent trends in U.S. R&D? Since 2000, Americas R&D intensityits expenditure on R&D as a percentage of GDPhas been fairly flat, and currently stands at 2.7 percent. Thats slightly above the world average, but well below Israel and South Koreas 4.2 percent. In that same period, Chinas R&D intensity has more than doubled from 0.9 percent to 2.1 percent; China has passed the EU in R&D spending, and its brisk growth in this area is projected to continue. These numbers include government, academic, and industry spending.

In the United States, the federal governments portion of R&D spending has declined. Even with recent nominal increases, the budget of the bellwether National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nations medical research agency, is down in real dollars compared to its budget in 2003. The average age at which an investigator with a medical degree receives his or her first NIH research grant has risen from less than 38 years in 1980 to more than 45 years in 2013, discouraging new entrants into the research field. The story is similar wherever you look, from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the National Cancer Institute, and beyond. From 1964 to 2015, total federal funding of R&D has dropped by two-thirds relative to GDP, from 1.86 percent to 0.62 percent. Meanwhile, during the past ten years in China, central government funding in real renminbi for science and technology has more than tripled.

Americas government can either accelerate its level of R&D funding, or be content ceding leadership to China. Americas government can either target certain areas for greater increases in basic research investment, say in gene therapy, cancer research, and artificial intelligence, or it can effectively decline to do so.

Having said that, whats the big deal if China passes us in developing electric cars, A.I., construction equipment, gene therapy, and other areas? Its a very big deal, indeed. It means that the lions share of global business and of profits from new, high-margin businesses will go to Chinese companies rather than U.S. companies. It means ceding important markets to China. Over the long term, it means both fewer and lower-paying jobs because, without ownership of the worlds market-leading IP, U.S. companies will inevitably grow smaller and less profitable.

Skimping on basic, ground-breaking government research today will cost the United States dearly over time. The U.S. research juggernaut, which has been the leader and envy of the world for well over a century, will have to settle for second.

It wouldnt take much to make firm again our grasp on the global research and development lead. For 2018, U.S. federal R&D funding will be roughly $176.8 billion. One key part of that, the NIH budget, is $37 billion. As one example, for the NIH budget, where every $1 billion increase is highly meaningful, an additional $5 billion increase would be transformational, and a $15 billion increase would create a jobs juggernaut and would help power the overall U.S. economy to new heights. It would take even less to revolutionize the NSF budget, which is at $7.8 billion and has stayed flat in real dollars since 2010.

Its time to crank up the U.S. research juggernaut again.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19)  An international delegation of lawyers to the Philippines to review the killings of legal practitioners claimed they experienced "brazen threats, harassment, and surveillance" on Monday.

"It was so for real. And it stared at us right in our faces," the delegation said through a statement from Suzanne Adely and Hans Gaasbeek, two of the panel's members.

They said a man and woman in civilian clothes were monitoring them, during their press conference at the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in Pasig City.

"He milled around the Delegation and was not-so-discreetly taking our pictures and snooping on our conversation. Meanwhile, a woman in sloppy civilian clothes was also close by and was looking ill at ease, reporting at the top of her voice to somebody over the phone," their statement read.

The lawyer group also reported being tailed from the IBP to a mall by two men in bull caps on a motorcycle without a plate number.

"We were tailed until we reached our hotel where more men in civilian clothes and bull caps were posted at both entrances, obviously stalking us and peering into the lobby and monitoring the ingress and egress of people and vehicles," the delegation said.

Another member of their host committee was also tailed by unidentified men, the lawyers said.

The delegation is in the Philippines to investigate the spate of lawyers' killings under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte. An earlier IBP statement said there have been 38 legal practitioners killed since August 2016, the year Duterte took office.

On Monday, the panel denounced the killings and called on the President to protect and not attack legal practitioners.

"Even more outstandingly ironic is that we as international lawyers made time to see things firsthand on the reported attacks on our peers and brethren out of genuine concern and who in good faith humbly put forward concrete recommendations for consideration by the authorities are ourselves the object of attack," the statement.

The delegation said the acts seem to be "intimidation and reprisal by State agents."

The lawyers' panel said it has reported the incident to their members' respective embassies.

Earlier in the day, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said pinning the blame on the government for the attacks against lawyers is "pushing it too far," saying the international group must come up with their proof to back up their claims.
Following a meeting with Prime Minister Zoran Zaev on Tuesday (19 March 2019), the NATO Secretary General said that the signature of the Accession Protocol for the Republic of North Macedonia in February was a historic moment for the country and for NATO. Your leadership helped make this happen, he said. By working with Athens you have shown what courage, commitment and diplomacy can achieve.

Mr. Stoltenberg said that the agreement with Athens has already created a lot of positive political momentum and that NATO membership will further bring peace, stability and prosperity to South-Eastern Europe. He highlighted that several Allies have already ratified the Accession Protocol and that once all Allies have completed this process, North Macedonia will become the 30th member of the Alliance.

Your country already has a seat at NATOs table, he said. Last month I welcomed Minister Sekerinska to the meeting of NATO Defence Ministers here. And next month, Foreign Minister Dimitrov will join us in Washington to mark the founding of our Alliance seventy years ago.

The NATO Secretary General said that NATOs open door policy is one of NATOs great success stories and that welcoming new members into the NATO family has made Europe and North America more secure.

Mr. Stoltenberg said that North Macedonia already makes important contributions to the Alliance, participating in NATOs training mission in Afghanistan, promoting regional cooperation in Southeast Europe and implementing major reforms. He encouraged North Macedonia to continue on the path of reform, stressing that this is important as the country prepares for full membership.

I look forward to the day when North Macedonia becomes a full member of our Alliance. What once seemed a distant hope for your country is set to become a reality, he said.
In a meeting with external experts, the North Atlantic Council today (19 March 2019) discussed global energy developments and their security implications.

The International Energy Agencys Executive Director, Dr. Fatih Birol, the European Commissions Director-General for Energy, Mr. Dominque Ristori, and the US State Departments Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Diplomacy, Mr. Kent Logsdon, discussed the shifting global energy landscape, examined the political, economic and security implications of current energy developments, and reviewed the challenges to energy security in Europe.

These informal Council meetings with energy experts help NATO Allies to keep abreast of energy developments that could affect their security. They also contribute to strengthening NATOs ties with other institutions, such as the European Union and the IEA.
(As delivered)

Prime Minister Zaev, dear Zoran,

Welcome back to the NATO headquarters. This is really a great pleasure and honour to welcome you here for the first time as the Prime Minister in North Macedonia.

It is a great pleasure to meet you again, especially since last month NATO Ambassadors signed the Accession Protocol for the Republic of North Macedonia.

It was a historic moment for your country and for NATO. Your leadership helped make this happen.

By working with Athens you have shown what courage, commitment and diplomacy can achieve. The agreement with Athens has already created a lot of positive political momentum. NATO membership will further bring peace, stability and prosperity to South-Eastern Europe.

And for that I really want to thank you and to congratulate you for your courage and your commitment.

Several Allies have already ratified the Accession Protocol. Once all Allies have completed this process, North Macedonia will become the 30th member of the Alliance.

Your country already has a seat at NATOs table. Last month I welcomed Minister Sekerinska to the meeting of NATOs Defence Ministers. And next month, Foreign Minister Dimitrov will join us in Washington to mark the founding of our Alliance seventy years ago.

NATOs open door policy is one of our greatest success stories. Welcoming new members into the NATO family has made Europe and North America more secure. Together, we stand in defence of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.

North Macedonia already makes important contributions to the Alliance.

You are part of NATOs training mission in Afghanistan, you promote regional cooperation in Southeast Europe and you are also implementing major reforms.

I encourage North Macedonia to continue on the path of reform. This is important, as you prepare for full membership. And build a better future for all citizens in your country.

So Prime Minister,

I look forward to the day when North Macedonia becomes a full member of our Alliance. What once seemed a distant hope for your country is set to become a reality.

Thank you once again for your tireless efforts and your leadership.

So welcome once again.

Thank you.
(Natural News) Its about damn time.

Twitter is being sued for $250 million by California Congressman Devin Nunes over its censorship of conservatives, shadow-banning and its complicit role in the online smearing and defamation of conservative voices.

Fox News now reports:

California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes filed a major lawsuit seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages against Twitter and a handful of its users on Monday, accusing the social media site of shadow-banning conservatives including himself to influence the 2018 elections, systematically censoring opposing viewpoints and totally ignoring lawful complaints of repeated abusive behavior.

In a complaint filed in Virginia state court on Monday, obtained by Fox News, Nunes claimed Twitter wanted to derail his work on the House Intelligence Committee, which he chaired until 2019, as he looked into alleged and apparent surveillance abuses by the government. Nunes said Twitter was guilty of knowingly hosting and monetizing content that is clearly abusive, hateful and defamatory  providing both a voice and financial incentive to the defamers  thereby facilitating defamation on its platform.

Jack Dorsey is a criminal mafia mob boss who is about to face serious legal ramifications for racketeering and election meddling

Over the last two years, Nunes has emerged as one of the most courageous voices in the entire U.S. Congress. He has fought to expose the deep state spygate conspiracy to illegally spy on Trump campaign officials using FISA court abuse, and he has fearlessly faced the media day after day to challenge the fake news Russia collusion narrative, which the deep state has been exploiting to try to overthrow the outcome of the 2016 election.

Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, has emerged as a deceptive, vindictive techno-tyrant who routinely lies to Congress while surreptitiously plotting to silence all the voices he doesnt like. My own account on twitter (@HealthRanger) was completely cut off without warning just hours after I publicly criticized Jack Dorsey and his involvement in a shady Bitcoin scheme that smacks of criminal money laundering.

I have publicly called for Jack Dorseys arrest and indictment under federal racketeering laws (the RICO Act) for his involvement in meddling in the 2018 mid-term elections and his ongoing efforts to steal the 2020 elections for Democrats by silencing all conservative voices.

One of the tactics Jack Dorsey allowed to play out across Twitter was the creation of a fake account called DevinNunesMom, controlled by a deranged Leftist who impersonated the mother of Devin Nunes and used the account to smear Nunes with a barrage of false and damaging accusations. That account was allowed to operate throughout the mid-term elections, no doubt personally protected by Jack Dorsey himself as part of his racketeering criminal operation to steal U.S. elections.

As Fox News reports:

The complaint also named Devin Nunes Mom, a person who, with Twitters consent, hijacked Nunes name, falsely impersonated Nunes mother, and created and maintained an account on Twitter (@DevinNunesMom) for the sole purpose of attacking, defaming, disparaging and demeaning Nunes.

Nunes lawyers wrote, In her endless barrage of tweets, Devin Nunes Mom maliciously attacked every aspect of Nunes character, honesty, integrity, ethics and fitness to perform his duties as a United States Congressman.

Had such an account been created against a Democrat  such as, for example, OcasioCortezMom  and used to spread lies and defamatory information about AOC, theres no doubt that account would have been terminated almost immediately.

Twitter is an online mafia organization with hit men enforcers

Jack Dorsey runs Twitter like a mafia organization, protecting the top criminals while allowing his hit men to smear and defame his political opponents. Thats why Dorsey must be arrested and prosecuted for racketeering and other felony crimes.

As the Nunes lawsuit alleges:

The shadow-banning was intentional, the complaint continued. It was calculated to interfere with and influence the federal election and interfere with Nunes ongoing investigation as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Twitters actions affected the election results. The combination of the shadow-ban and Twitters refusal to enforce its Terms and Rules in the face of clear and present abuse and hateful conduct caused Nunes to lose support amongst voters.

Now, we are finally starting to see legal action initiated against Twitter, an extremely dangerous and dishonest social media entity that operates completely outside U.S. law and any reasonable code of conduct for such a large public discussion platform. The U.S. Department of Justice must criminally indict Twitters CEO for his role in the stealing of the 2018 mid-term elections which saw nearly the entire state of California flip for the Dems.

Thats the goal of Twitters ongoing criminal cartel: To censor all conservative voices and steal the 2020 election, carrying out exactly what Democrats have been claiming the Russians did in 2016.

Twitter even openly admits shadow-banning whatever political content it doesnt want the world to see. As further explained by The Gateway Pundit:

Twitter has confessed that they shadowbanned a factual tweet about Hillary Clinton working with Russians to obtain information about then-candidate Donald Trump.

Sean Davis, co-founder of conservative website The Federalist, had tweeted a screenshot of former FBI attorney Lisa Pages Congressional testimony in which she discussed an urgency within the FBI to find evidence of someone within the Trump campaign working with the Russians to obtain damaging information about Clinton.

Shortly after the post, Davis tweeted screenshots of his tweet not appearing on feeds for other people  though it remained visible to him. He asked if Twitter was experimenting with shadow bans by deleting tweets so others cant see them, but keeping them visible to you while youre logged in?

Nearly a week later, Davis posted an update saying that Twitter had confirmed to him that they did indeed shadowban his tweet  in order to keep people safe[.]

Is @Twitter experimenting with shadow bans by deleting tweets so others can't see them, but keeping them visible to you while you're logged in? I had to re-publish my original Lisa Page transcript tweet because it was disappeared to everyone but me. pic.twitter.com/RugtpK2MYn  Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 12, 2019

Take action: Demand Twitter reinstate @HealthRanger or face the legal consequences

Join the grassroots effort to demand that Twitter reinstate the @HealthRanger account that was completely banned without warning and without justification.

Tweet #FascistJack using the Twitter handle @Jack, or reach out to @Twitter and send them a link to this article.

Tick tock Twitters day of reckoning is coming, and Devin Nunes just ignited the first round of fireworks.

Stay informed about the evils of the tech giants at TechGiants.news.
(Natural News) U.S. federal agents seized at least a million pounds of pork that was being smuggled from China into the country in more than 50 shipping containers via the ports of New York and New Jersey  meat that could be contaminated with a hemmorhagic virus that wipes out entire pig populations in Asia. African swine fever virus has ravaged the worlds largest hog industry in China and sent pork prices skyrocketing.

Now the Chinese are considering greatly decreasing their imports of U.S. genetically modified soy thats used as pig feed. The deadly pig virus spreads quite easily and is very resilient. And yes, the meat products and even the animals feed can carry the virus. When will an outbreak in the U.S. occur? Its just a matter of time.

Swine fever virus spreading rapidly in China, could hit U.S. this year

The deadly pig virus has already spread to Russia and Eastern Europe. It seems just a matter of time before U.S. pigs catch it, spread it, out get wiped out in genocidal form, like in Asia now. U.S. border protections are loose and need a good ratcheting to prevent this catastrophe. All high-risk pork products should be banned by bio-security experts immediately. We need quarantine stations and increased cargo inspections, especially for imports coming from Russia and China.

If the virus hits U.S. pigs, it could cost our economy tens of billions of dollars a year in losses. So far, scientists claim the pig virus is not transmittable to humans, but the virus could mutate into a form that is, and that dredges up another related horrific concern.

Deadly pig viruses are used in U.S. childhood vaccines

Natural News has covered, repeatedly, how one insidious U.S. vaccine manufacturer (and pediatrician ironically) designed a childhood vaccine for Rotavirus using two strains of another deadly Asian pig virus called Circovirus.

With no rhyme or reason, freak doctor Paul Offit mixed the deadly pig virus into his highly controversial Rotateq vaccine. The adverse events and side effects listed on that vaccine insert include intussusception  where the injected childs intestines become entangled and the infant can die.

Will the CDC and freak doctor Paul Offit design a new mandatory and safe and effective childhood vaccine that contains the African swine fever virus? Offit made millions off Rotateq, thanks to the CDC, while children across America are maimed and dying of unknown causes.

USDA increasing use of sniffing dogs at major ports, airports, and border crossings

Inspections arent enough, though. The U.S. needs radical changes made to not only the meat import industry, but the soy import industry, since the virus can transmit through animal feed. Plus, because most meat in America, including cow, chicken, turkey, and swine, is raised in corrupt, contaminated confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), parasites, pathogens, and viruses are already of epic concern.

If the American Big Food industry, including meat and dairy, continue with business as usual, its almost unavoidable that some genocidal virus will break out everywhere. The African swine fever virus is easily spread through contact or contaminated meat products and can survive in processed meat, like hot dogs, deli meat, and sausages, for months on end.

There is currently no cure for African swine fever virus, and once its discovered to have infected a herd, the farmers must wipe out every pig in the vicinity. In China, where half the worlds pigs live, well over half a million have been executed from threat of the virus spreading. The U.S. imports massive amounts of food from China, so the virus threat is of high concern. The virus can live outside the host in all kinds of conditions, even in dirt.

Tune into Vaccines.news for more updates on imported deadly pig viruses that are used in U.S. vaccines to maim children.

Sources for this article include:

ZeroHedge.com

TheGuardian.com

NaturalNews.com

Merck.com

Vaccines.news
(Natural News) The number of patients who underwent electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the U.K. rose by 11 percent in the last four years, a shocking new report released by the TheGuardian.com revealed. The prevalence in which this treatment is prescribed depended on local medical preferences. The rise of ECT can be attributed to improved access to the therapy, less negative view of the treatment option, and incorrect prescription.

ECT, also known as electroshock therapy, was initially developed during the 1930s as a treatment for people with severe mental conditions. Patients were induced into an epileptic shock which would  in theory  reset the neural connections back to their original, healthy form. Considered archaic and barbaric, the practice was discouraged  though not banned  during the 1960s and 1970s as new treatment options for depression and other ailments were developed. ECT has then been listed as the last resort for people with severe depression. It has been thought that the procedure lost favor among mental health professionals.

The new analysis suggests otherwise. Using the Freedom of Information Act, The Guardian requested every English NHS mental health trust to release data regarding their ECT use between 2005-2006 and 2015-2016. Figures from private clinics were not included. That data showed that there was an 11 percent increase from 2012-2013 to 2015-2016. In fact, almost two-thirds of NHS trusts reported a rise in ECT treatments carried out over that four-year period. The average number of shock therapy per patients also rose, from 9.6 percent in 2012-2013 to 10.1 percent in 2015-2016. More surprisingly was the discovery that specific regions in the U.K. showed dramatic increases in ECT treatments. For example, the Mersey Care NHS trust showed a fairly constant number in ECT treatments whereas the Lincolnshire Partnership NHS foundation had a 75 percent increase. Experts have hypothesized that this alarming revival can be linked to several factors, including a lack of credible alternatives.

Tim Oakley, chair of the ECT Accreditation Service (ECTAS) accreditation committee and Clinical Director at the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS foundation trust told the reporters at the Guardian, I think [ECT] should be on the increase because it has been underused for a number of years. There are some patients who would respond very well to ECT who perhaps dont get it as quickly as they should or dont get it at all for various reasons. In terms of getting people better, particularly for depression where everything else fails, it is still the best treatment.

Other mental health advocates are not so sold on the idea. The decision about whether ECT is to be used or not is based on the quirks of the local psychiatrist. My view is that ECT is a classic failure of evidence-based medicine. I dont believe that there are adequate clinical trials of ECT to establish its effectiveness, retorted Richard Bentall, professor of Clinical Psychology at Liverpool University. Bentall went on to say that ECT proponents base their opinions on historical ECT trials which show the treatment benefiting patients with the most severe forms of depression. Yet, these studies have not been recently validated, highlighting the need for some sort of randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial  a proposal that ECT proponents have stated as unethical. To this, Bentall exasperatedly replied, it is clearly unethical to pass electric shocks across peoples brains unless it is effective [and] helpful to do so and therefore there is an ethical requirement to show that treatment is effective.

The rise of ECT treatments can also be linked to its induction. Instead of applying electrodes to both sides of the head, many health professionals now only apply it on one side. That has slightly fewer side-effects and is less likely to cause memory impairment, said Andrew Molodynski, consulting psychiatrist at Oxford Health NHS foundation trust and Mental Health Lead of the British Medical Associations consultant committee.

Molodynski does note that the increase of ECT treatment should be viewed with some caution, particularly if the treatment is being used haphazardly. Equally, if people are resorting to ECT for inpatients more quickly, because it works more quickly than antidepressants, in order to get them out of hospital because of our perpetual bed crisis, that would be a major concern.

Sources include:

TheGuardian.com

DailyMail.co.uk

Psychiatry.org
(Natural News) The people of New Zealand are understandably shocked, hurt, and angry following the Friday shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, in which some 50 Muslim worshipers were killed and about that many wounded.

What makes the shootings even more horrific is that terrorism isnt something New Zealanders have much experience with  especially when the terrorist is a bigoted hater who lived among them (though he is Australian).

But if Americans have learned any lessons from similar incidents they include these: Bad things happen to good people; hate is intolerable, no matter who is doing the hating; and liberties, once surrendered, are not easily recovered.

Following the shootings, the New Zealand government has already begun to consider restrictive new gun control measures, specifically, bans on semi-automatic rifles like the one used by the killer, Brenton Tarrant.

Whats more, in the governments efforts to learn more about the attacks  that is, beyond what Tarrant provided in a rambling 74-page manifesto already  authorities are ready to trample additional rights.

As The Gateway Pundit reports, it took the New Zealand government less than 24 hours to shut down Internet access to VOAT and 8chan, online chat rooms that serve as principle forums of opposition to the Deep State (which is global, by the way). It should be noted here that New Zealand is a member of the Five Eyes Western intelligence network that includes the United States, Canada, the U.K., and Australia.

In addition, authorities are demanding personal information on any online user at the Kiwifarms website who engaged in any discussions of Tarrants disturbing manifesto.

NZ Police Demand "Kiwi Farms" Message Board Preserve "IP Addresses" And "Email Addresses" Following Massacre https://t.co/IFTUcELeMv  Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) March 17, 2019

New Zealand Police Requested Personal Data From Kiwifarms Users Who Discussed Shooter Manifesto, Video https://t.co/NNtzCVZ17N  Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) March 17, 2019

New Zealand isnt the U.S., so its easy to understand the tendency to react strongly to what has happened. But destroying democracy to save it isnt a strategy that will work out long term.

All the gun bans in the world arent going to stop evil people from doing evil things. As for Tarrant, he reportedly was a known gun owner because he had applied for, and received, a firearms license.

Dont give up essential liberties for temporary security

Even the Washington Post has acknowledged that:

Tarrant obtained a license in November 2017 for the guns that police say were used in the shootings at the two mosques; he began purchasing the weapons that December, according to officials, and at least some of them had been modified.

New Zealand-based Newsroom also reported:

Tarrant was in possession of five firearms. He held a basic, Category A New Zealand gun licence, and had likely used it to legally purchase the semi-automatic weapons. It is understood he then went on to illegally modify the AR15 semi-automatic with large magazines.

Also, gun owners in the country appear to jealously guard their rights as much as Americans do; Newsroom acknowledged that despite Prime Minister Jacinda Arderns promise that gun laws will change, it wont be simple.

As for cracking down on privacy, that isnt something that countries wedded to democratic principles tend to tolerate, nor should they. Once governments find it easy to tread upon civil and human rights, then it will become far easier to simply take them away. And once that happens, the only way, historically, such rights have been restored is violently, after many people die. (Related: The possibility for civil discourse is OVER in America vote and buy guns says former federal prosecutor, because the Left has gone lawless.)

Evil people will always walk the Earth, unfortunately. But they will be in the minority, subjugated by great governments and advanced civilizations that refuse to allow the actions of an evil few to destroy what they have built.

Founding father Benjamin Franklin once said, Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Founder Thomas Jefferson added, Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

Read more about the dangers to liberty posed by evil at Liberty.news and Evil.news.

Sources include:

TheGatewayPundit.com

Newsroom.co.nz

BigGovernment.news
(Natural News) No plant in the world has a feature thats remotely similar to a brain. However, British researchers recently found out that flowering plants contained proteins that can store information about changes in their environment, such as shifts in temperatures when one season gave way to another.

These data served as memories for a plant. When the plant experienced stimuli that matched what it remembered from the past, it would respond accordingly.

These PRC2 proteins can be found in cereals and vegetables, both of which are important plants for making food. Researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Nottingham believed that the memory function was vital to a plants success in acclimatizing to a new and different kind of environment.

The memory-storing proteins allowed plants to effectively oversee their activities in response to external stimuli like stress or seasonal change. A plant that experienced the long periods of cold temperatures during winter will know that it should only start growing delicate flowers when the weather was warmer. (Related: The Swiss Army knife of plants  why sea buckthorn oil is such a powerful remedy.)

Plants remember cold seasons and floods, and react accordingly

The PRC2 proteins combined into a structure whenever the temperature grew cold. They were also responsible for getting the plant to produce flowers. However, there was little information on the means used by this group of proteins to detect environmental changes.

The Birmingham-Nottingham researchers investigated the ability of PRC2 proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana to evaluate the conditions of the environment. They found that the structure heavily relied on a particular protein called VRN2.

VRN2 displayed high instability. It broke down at a steady rate under hospitable conditions, such as warm weather and the presence of more than enough oxygen.

However, the behavior of the protein drastically changed once the environmental conditions got worse. During floods that cut off the supply of oxygen, the stability of VRN2 greatly increased. In turn, this improved the chances of the plant to survive the crisis.

Furthermore, the VRN2 protein increased in number during winter conditions. Once spring arrived, the accrued amounts of VRN2 made it easy for the PRC2 protein complex to activate the flowering process.

Curious as to why the protein accumulated during cold weather, the researchers compared the plants response to cold temperatures and its reaction to oxygen shortages during flooding. They were surprised by the similarities between the two responses, given the differences in their respective stimuli.

This unstable protein is responsible for controlling the life cycle of plants

Birmingham researcher Daniel Gibbs stated that the ability to sense and recall environmental changes was of critical importance for plants. The organism depended on this protein-based memory so that it could successfully reproduce and create a new generation of plants.

VRN2 is continually being broken down when it is not needed, but accumulates under the right environmental conditions, Gibbs said in a press release. In this way, VRN2 directly senses and responds to signals from the environment, and the PRC2 remains inactive until required.

His Nottingham colleague and co-author, Michael Holdsworth, said that they were planning to look into the reason as to why VRN2 proteins become much more stable when it got colder. They also want to determine why the plant reacted to cold temperatures in the same way it did when confronted with a flooded environment.

The PRC2 protein complex was also present in animals. However, animal PRC2 lacked the unstable VRN2 protein.

This system appears to have evolved specifically in flowering plants, said Holdsworth. Perhaps it gives them more flexibility in their ability to adapt and respond to environmental change, which is important since they are fixed in the ground and cant move.

Sources include:

ScienceDaily.com

Nature.com
According to police, Harrison had been charged with one count of reckless homicide and two counts of aggravated driving under the influence. Police said Monday the Cook County states attorneys office is again reviewing the case following Sheltons death to determine if additional charges will be brought against Harrison.
(Natural News) Time and again, the so-called mainstream media proves its primary reason for being is to serve as the propaganda wing for the Democrat Party.

Like Cubas state-controlled media and Chinas Communist Party does for President Xi Jinping today, the U.S. and Western media will exacerbate anything even remotely negative about the political opposition  in this case, conservatives  while burying anything negative about Leftist Democrats.

Reuters is a case in point.

A reporter for the newswire service admitted that, during then-Rep. Robert Beto ORourkes admittedly tight campaign against incumbent GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, he offered to cover up damaging information about the Democratic candidate.

To wit: On Friday, Reuters writer Joseph Mann broke the news that as a teen, ORourke was part of a hacking collective known as Cult of the Dead Cow. According to the story:

Members of the hugely influential Cult of the Dead Cow, jokingly named after an abandoned Texas slaughterhouse, have protected his secret for decades, reluctant to compromise his political viability.

Now, in a series of interviews, CDC members have acknowledged ORourke as one of their own. In all, more than a dozen members of the group agreed to be named for the first time in a book about the hacking group by this reporter that is scheduled to be published in June by Public Affairs. ORourke was interviewed early in his run for the Senate.

Youd be excused if you read Manns Reuters story and glossed over the highlighted portion above. Thats because its intentionally vague. Its a journalistic trick; mention a bombshell revelation in passing so that most readers will not pick up on the fact that its a bombshell.

Its an especially useful trick to employ when youre trying to protect a story subject you like and agree with: While most people wont pick up on the association  that ORourke was interviewed early in his run for the Senate because he was a member of the same group  the writer gets to claim, Hey, I didnt hide anything! True; but he just wasnt completely honest and clear about everything, either.

Par for the mainstream media course

Others did pick up on this intentional deception, however, and within a few hours, Reuters was forced to acknowledge that its correspondent just happened to leave out the part of ORourkes hacking in pre-election coverage.

While I was looking into the Cult of the Dead Cow, I found out that they had a member who was sitting in Congress. I didnt know which one. But I knew that they had a member of Congress, Mann told Reuters senior producer Jane Lee.

And then I figured out which one it was. And the members of the group wouldnt talk to me about who it was. They wouldnt confirm that it was this person unless I promised that I wouldnt write about it until after the November election. Thats because the member of Congress had decided to run for Senate. Beto ORourke is who it was, he added.

It should be noted that ORourkes early online activities were not just limited to chat rooms. He stole credit card numbers, scammed long distance phone charges, and engaged in other illegal activity as part of the oldest hacker collective in the countrys history.

Granted, he was a teenager at the time and, according to Mann, ORourke said he no longer engaged in those activities once he left for boarding school. But hes a 2020 Democratic presidential contender now, and full disclosure  giving Americans all they need to know about our potential leaders  is always the better play.

Reuters after-the-fact mea culpa explainer was the newswire services attempt to come clean. But the outlet didnt even bother to apologize to readers for Manns blatant dishonesty and journalistic malpractice.

Sadly, this is just par for the mainstream media course.

Read more about the fake news coverage of Beto ORourke at Beto.news and NewsFakes.com.

Sources include:

Reuters.com

Breitbart.com

Beto.news
(Natural News) Its an inexplicable health condition with no known cure that affects as many as 2.5 million people in the United States and 17 million people globally, and that costs the American economy as much as $24 billion every year in medical bills and lost incomes. But good luck actually trying to come up with a viable solution for chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or C.F.S./M.E., because most attempts thus far to find a solution have been met with bullying, persecution, and even death threats from the corrupt medical establishment.

An in-depth report on C.F.S. by Thompson Reuters Foundation News has revealed that, much like what happens to anyone, scientist or otherwise, who questions the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, health practitioners who dare to suggest that C.F.S. might have some kind of psychological component are quickly tossed into the quack bin. And some have even had their careers threatened, which is why many end up opting out of the quest to solve the C.F.S. puzzle.

One would think that, because its imposing enormous financial strain both on the medical system and the people who suffer from it  not to mention all the pain and suffering that demarcate its horrific profile of symptoms  C.F.S. would be a top priority for medical professionals to cure, or at least learn how to better manage. But instead, many within the medical establishment are waging war against those trying to find answers.

According to Kate Kelland, who wrote the new report for Reuters, of the dozen professors, doctors, and researchers with experience analyzing or testing potential treatments for C.F.S. who were contacted by the news organization, all of them indicated that theyve been targeted with online harassment by activists who object to their approach. One such activist is David Tuller, a former journalist with a doctor of public health degree from the University of California, Berkeley, whos published an astounding 140 blog posts, amounting to tens of thousands of words, attacking people who suggest that psychological treatments could help people suffering from C.F.S.

Tuller even went so far as to complain to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.), New Yorks Columbia University, and the media streaming service Netflix, which ran a docu-series about patients with C.F.S. Tullers goal with all this activism is to brand anyone who suggests that there might be a psychological component to C.F.S. as insane, or working with a cabal trying to push mass delusion using bogus and really terrible research.

For many scientists, its a new normal: From climate change to vaccines, activism and science are fighting it out online, Kelland explains about the situation. Social media platforms are supercharging the battle, she contends.

Many scientists, doctors are being bullied out of conducting C.F.S. research, which means patients will continue to suffer

The losers in all this arent the doctors and scientists being bullied out of conducting C.F.S. research. Its the millions of C.F.S. patients who will continue to needlessly suffer because of the political agendas of the medical establishment, which has once again proven to the world that it cares more about preserving its collective ego than helping patients find relief.

Reuters learned, because of all the anti-C.F.S. bullying, the number of clinical trials looking for solutions to C.F.S. has decreased substantially. From 2010 to 2014, there were 33 new C.F.S. clinical trials launched. However, since the bullying campaigns really ramped up, that number dropped to a mere 20 new clinical trials from 2015 to the present.

The toxicity of it permeates everything, says Michael Sharpe, a University of Oxford professor who eight years ago published the results of a clinical trial showing that some C.F.S. patients experienced dramatic improvements after undergoing various talking and exercise therapies  and who was bullied and harassed by the medical establishment for doing so.

Patients are the losers here, Sharpe says, adding that his persecutors are doing a terrible disservice to sufferers from this condition.

For more news about the system of medical fascism that inhibits the discovery of real solutions to health problems, be sure to check out Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

News.Trust.org

NaturalNewsBlogs.com
EAST LANSING, Mich. - Scientists studying monarch butterflies have traditionally focused on two sources for their decline - winter habitat loss in Mexico and fewer milkweed plants in the Midwest.

New research conducted by Michigan State University and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, shows that a critical piece of the butterfly's annual cycle was missing - the fall migration. By focusing on this southerly trek, as well as changing the scale at which winter populations are examined, scientists reveal a wider, more-accurate spectrum of threats that have contributed to the monarch population's downward trend.

"Getting accurate monarch counts in the summer is tough," said Sarah Saunders, former MSU integrative biologist and the study's lead author. "Finding them in the fall, though, is nearly impossible as they're moving hundreds of miles daily."

Monarch butterfly numbers have been dropping precipitously for more than two decades - in part due to shrinking winter habitat and increased herbicide use in the Midwest that eliminates their host plants from summer breeding grounds. However, herbicide use and habitat loss have diminished over the past decade, yet monarchs continue to decline.

These key facts told scientists that a big part of the story was being left out, said Elise Zipkin, MSU integrative biologist and the study's senior author.

"Migratory periods are missing from most research because they are the most difficult periods to investigate," she said. "For monarchs, the fall is the least-studied season because the data are so sparse and are generally opportunistic."

In the paper, Saunders and her team built a multi-scale model and included a summer population index to account for year-to-year variations. They then added environmental factors occurring during the fall migration, such as temperature and landscape greenness. A brown, dry fall means fewer nectar resources - where monarchs obtain their energy - to fuel them along their journey.

There's also the threat of OE, or Ophryocystis elektroscirrha, a parasite that infects monarchs, causing deformed or smaller wings. Understanding the changing threats affecting animal migration is key to conservation, said Elizabeth Blood, a program director at the National Science Foundation, which funded this research.

"The survival of migratory animals has been an important area of investigation as climate changes spark ecosystem and migratory pattern changes," she said. "This research boosts our understanding of larger processes - from regional to even continental scales - and the impact they have on migratory animals."

The scientists re-evaluated the long-standing base on which monarch estimations are made. Rather than consider the winter population as a single entity, their model used the numbers from all 19 known colonies individually.

"We're the first to examine the winter colonies this way," Zipkin said. "If you aggregate the winter colony data, you can get the wrong result because there are important differences in habitat quantity and quality at the individual colony sites."

"Unsurprisingly, our model shows that all seasons are important; summer, fall and winter factors are all connected," said Saunders, who's currently a quantitative ecologist at National Audubon Society. "In particular, we found that landscape greenness during the fall migration, in addition to the peak summer population size and the amount of habitat at local winter colonies, were the key factors influencing the winter population size."

The interdisciplinary aspect of this research is also noteworthy. A single researcher couldn't collect the data necessary to create this improved model. Decades worth of continental-scale data from across all seasons fuel it. Climatologists, collaborators in Mexico and citizen scientists all have contributed critical information.

Scientists like Zipkin and Saunders are looking at integrative biology through a brand-new lens.

"Thanks to citizen scientists and wider collaborative networks, many different data sources are now available," Zipkin said. "We have unique opportunities to research questions that were unanswerable just a decade ago."
The U.S. pushed China Wednesday to rein in companies that deal with North Korea after President Donald Trump tweeted ahead of the high-level talks that Beijing's efforts to sway its wayward ally weren't working.

Trump has been counting on China to use its economic leverage with the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as American concern grows over the North's acceleration toward having a nuclear missile that can strike the U.S. mainland.

The security talks between U.S. and Chinese diplomats and defense chiefs are occurring amid outrage in Washington over the death of Otto Warmbier days after the American student was released from imprisonment in North Korea in a coma.

U.S. lawmakers are pressing for a tough response against Pyongyang over its treatment of the 22-year-old university student, who was accused of trying to steal a propaganda banner while visiting with a tour group and was convicted of subversion.

Trump has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for trying to contain North Korea, which counts on China for 90 percent of its trade, but the effort has delivered few results. North Korea hasn't conducted a nuclear test explosion as feared earlier this year but has kept up its rapid pace of missile launches.

"While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!" Trump tweeted Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. flew two supersonic B-1B bombers over the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. often sends powerful warplanes in times of heightened animosities with North Korea. South Korea's Defense Ministry said the bombers engaged in routine exercises with its fighter jets aimed at deterring the North.

At the talks in Washington, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis were hosting Chinese foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi and Gen. Fang Fenghui, chief of the People's Liberation Army's joint staff department.

Susan Thornton, the senior U.S. diplomat for East Asia, said North Korea would get "top billing." She said the U.S. would be consulting with China on implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that are intended to restrict revenue and technology for the North's nuclear and missile programs.

Last week, Tillerson told a Senate hearing that China's efforts on North Korea had been "uneven." Thornton cited Chinese restrictions on imports of North Korean coal as "notable" progress. But she said the U.S. wants more action against blacklisted North Korean companies doing business through China.

Beijing, which wants resumed U.S. negotiations with North Korea, was hoping for "positive outcomes" from Wednesday's dialogue, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said.

The discussions replace a strategic and economic dialogue held annually under the Obama administration. Those talks rarely produced significant results. This year's edition separates out the security aspects.

Thornton said the talks would also cover the South China Sea, where Beijing's island-building and construction of possible military facilities have rattled neighbors and caused tension with Washington; U.S.-Chinese military cooperation to reduce risk of conflict; and efforts to defeat the Islamic State group.

Divisive trade issues will be dealt with at a later date.

Like past presidents, Trump is finding the U.S. has limited scope for punishing North Korea, particularly over the arrest of U.S. citizens.

His administration is considering a ban on Americans visiting North Korea. That would only slightly add to the North's isolation and loss of revenue. The route to inflicting significant economic pain on Kim's government remains through China.

Washington has one threat it can use with Beijing: The possibility of "secondary" sanctions that go after Chinese companies doing business in North Korea. Such a move risks fraying relations between the world's two biggest economies.

The Chinese state-run Global Times warned in an editorial that if Washington imposes sanctions against Chinese enterprises "it will lead to grave friction between China and the U.S."

Associated Press writer Richard Lardner contributed to this report.
A former president of Peru was arrested Sunday in Menlo Park, according to the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office.

Alejandro Toledo, who served as Peru's president from 2001 to 2006, was booked on charges of being drunk in public at a restaurant, police said.

Peru wants Toledo back but for the wrong reasons. He's accused of taking $20 million in bribe money while he was in office.

Toledo says he's innocent.

The sheriff's office released Toledo Monday morning and said the charges in Peru do not carry over to the United States.
A veteran Oakland fire captain is suing the city's fire department after it rescinded a promotion when it was found his son was a convicted arsonist.

Capt. Howard Holt, a 27-year veteran, claims the department was discriminatory, retaliatory and in breach of contract in its decision and is naming the city of Oakland and the fire chief in his federal lawsuit.

"I think its personal, discriminatory, people overstepping bounds, not knowing what the rules are," Holt said.

In December 2017, the department offered Holt a promotion to acting assistant fire marshal, an achievement he said he was happy and proud about. But his joy turned to anger a few weeks later when the department called him and rescinded the offer, saying the decision was related to Holt's son being convicted of arson in Napa County.

"I think it's horrible and wrong your judging me on something you don't even know about," Holt said.

Months later, according to the lawsuit, after filing a grievance with the union, the Oakland Fire Department once again offered him the job, but on the condition he agreed not to take legal action.

He didn't accept.

The City Attorney's Office declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying it had not yet seen it.

Holt, who is currently on leave with an injury, is hoping the legal action will focus the fire department on following promotional rules.

"I have the education, knowledge and experience," he said.
The Pentagon sent a 20-page list of military construction projects to Congress on Monday that might be slashed to pay for President Donald Trump's wall along the Mexican border. Democrats expressed hope that by knowing which local projects could be targeted, lawmakers would be likelier to override Trump's veto of a measure aimed at preventing the cuts.

"Now that members of Congress can see the potential impact this proposal could have on projects in their home states, I hope they will take that into consideration before the vote to override the President's veto," Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

With the House scheduled to vote Tuesday on overriding Trump's veto, the spokeswoman for the top GOP vote counter predicted the president will prevail anyway.

"House Republicans have stood strongly with President Trump on securing our nation's border and overwhelmingly supported his emergency declaration by large margins when we voted on this weeks ago; this will not change," said Lauren Fine, spokeswoman for No. 2 House GOP leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana.

The Pentagon document listed hundreds of projects envisioned around the U.S. and world worth around $12.9 billion. Not all will be subject to cuts, the Defense Department wrote, making it difficult to determine exactly which would be vulnerable.

The list included more than $100 million for water treatment plant improvements at Camp Lejeune and airfield security and other work at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina. That is the home state to Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who initially said he opposed Trump's emergency but voted for it. Tillis, who could face a tough re-election fight next year, said the White House had shown a willingness to consider curbing presidential powers to declare future emergencies.

Also listed were an air traffic control tower at Fort Benning, Georgia; a maintenance hangar at Travis Air Force Base in California; and a drone hangar at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea.

In their initial votes, the House and Senate both fell short of the two-thirds majorities that will be needed to override Trump's veto. That suggests the override effort will fail unless the political tide shifts.

Trump declared a national emergency at the Mexican boundary last month after Congress limited him to just under $1.4 billion to build border barriers. He invoked a law that would let him siphon other budget funds  $3.6 billion from military construction  to build the structures and fulfill his prime 2016 campaign promise.

The House voted to block his emergency by 245-182 in February. The Senate followed last week by 59-41, including a dozen GOP defections. Lawmakers expressed concerns that Trump was ignoring Congress' constitutional control over spending and worries about the cuts' impact back home. Trump vetoed the bill Friday.

In a letter accompanying the list, Defense Department officials said they wouldn't touch items for which money would be awarded by the Sept. 30 end of this fiscal year or for projects like housing. They didn't specify which would be exempted.

Even so, Democrats latched onto the potential cuts to drum up support for the veto override.

"What President Trump is doing is a slap in the face to our military that makes our border and the country less secure," Reed said.

Three top Democrats said in a statement that the projects were facing cuts "to placate the President."

Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Hawaii's Brian Schatz said, "This madness will not stop until more of our Republican colleagues are willing to put the military ahead of party politics."

A spokesperson for Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Armed Services panel, said the document "is not a list of projects that will definitively be impacted." She said Inhofe will continue working with defense officials to find targets "without negatively affecting any military construction projects."

Trump said throughout his campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall, which it has consistently refused to do.

Democratic-aligned groups including state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against the emergency declaration, potentially blocking the money for months or more.
What to Know Elon Musk's Feb. 19 tweet was different from prior public disclosures by the company, the SEC argued in court Monday.

In the tweet, the Tesla CEO said he might take Tesla private at $420 per share.

A U.S. District Judge in Manhattan will decide if Musk is in contempt and whether he should be punished

U.S. securities regulators countered Tesla CEO Elon Musk's contempt-of-court defense Monday night, writing in court papers that he brazenly disregarded a federal judge's order and that one of his arguments "borders on the ridiculous."

Lawyers for the Securities and Exchange Commission, in a response to Musk, wrote that when the contempt motion was filed in February, Musk had not had a single tweet approved by a company lawyer, violating a requirement of a court-approved settlement order.

The October securities fraud settlement stemmed from tweets by Musk in August about having the money to take Tesla private at $420 per share. But Musk didn't have the funding secured. Tesla and Musk each had to pay $20 million in fines and agree to governance changes that included Musk's removal as chairman.

SEC lawyers led by Cheryl Crumpton wrote in a response to Musk's defense that he interprets the settlement order as not requiring pre-approval unless Musk decides the tweets are meaningful to investors. The agency said Musk's argument that tweeting about car production forecasts on Feb. 19 wasn't material information is nearly ridiculous. "His interpretation is inconsistent with the plain terms of this court's order and renders its pre-approval requirement meaningless," the lawyers wrote.

U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan will decide if Musk is in contempt and whether he should be punished. The SEC said no hearing is necessary on the matter "because there appear to be no disputed issues of material fact."

Musk's lawyers wrote last week that the Feb. 19 tweet merely restated previously approved disclosures on electric car production volumes. They wrote that the tweet, which was published after the markets closed, neither revealed material information, nor altered the mix of data available to investors.

The lawyers also accused the Securities and Exchange Commission of censorship and of violating Musk's First Amendment rights by imposing a prior restraint on his speech.

But the SEC lawyers wrote that submitting statements for approval does not mean Musk is prohibited from speaking. "As long as a statement submitted for pre-approval is not false or misleading, Tesla would presumably approve its publication without prior restraint on Musk," they wrote. The SEC also wrote that Musk waived any First Amendment challenge to the order when he agreed to it.

Musk's lawyers also argued that the SEC's motion for contempt is an over-reach that exceeds its authority. But the SEC said enforcement of the order is up to the judge, who has broad powers to enforce court orders.

Monday's filing said the Feb. 19 tweet was different from prior public disclosures by the company. Also, Musk has regularly published tweets with "substantive information" about the company and its business, the SEC contended.

Musk's 13-word Feb. 19 tweet said that Tesla would produce around 500,000 vehicles this year, but it wasn't approved by the company's "disclosure counsel," the SEC has said.

The lawyer quickly realized it and summoned Musk to the company's Fremont, California, factory to help write a correction. The company would make vehicles at a rate of 500,000 per year, but it wouldn't produce a half-million in 2019.

Musk's response by former Enron prosecutor John C. Hueston of Newport Beach, California, said that the settlement allows Musk "reasonable discretion" to determine if his communications would require the lawyer's approval. In the case of the Feb. 19 tweet, Musk determined that it did not.

Legal experts say it's unlikely that Musk will be punished severely, but the commission wants to get on the record that Musk violated the terms, to prepare for any future violations.

The tweet was posted and corrected after U.S. markets had closed, but experts say regulators don't care much about that because stocks are traded nearly around the clock. Tesla's stock rose by just $1.10, or less than 1 percent, the next day.
Ann Coulter's planned appearance at the University of California, Berkeley next week has been called off for security concerns.

UC Berkeley officials say they were "unable to find a safe and suitable" venue for the right-wing provocateur who was invited to speak by campus Republicans on April 27.

In a letter to Berkeley College Republicans sent Tuesday, Vice Chancellor Scott Biddy said officials made the decision in consultation with campus police who determined they could not ensure the safety of Coulter, audience members or protesters expected at the event.

News organizations obtained a copy of the letter Wednesday.

"Unfortunately, UCPD determined that, given currently active security threats, it is not possible to assure that the event could be held successfully ... at any of the campus venues available on April 27th," the letter said.

University spokesman Dan Mogulof said that posters went up on campus last week threatening disruption of the event and officials discovered "targeted threats" on various websites indicating the possibility of planned violence.

"We realize that this is disappointing news," Biddy's letter said, promising that campus police and officials will work the Berkeley College Republicans to find another time and date for Coulter's speech.

UC Berkeley said it did not have enough advance notice to provide security for the Coulter event.

"We learned about the invitation to Ms. Coulter by reading about it in the newspaper," university officials said.

Berkeley College Republicans said that's not true, that they provided plenty of notice about their plans.

The cancellation comes days after violent clashes between far-right and far-left protesters Saturday at a rally supporting President Donald Trump in downtown Berkeley.

An appearance at UC Berkeley by former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos was canceled after protesters rioted outside the event in February.

Organizers of the event released their own statement Wednesday, expressing discontentment at the change in plans.

They wrote: "UC-Berkeley, a publicly-funded university, first imposed a series of ridiculous requirements on the speech allegedly in the name of 'safety.' Coulter, we were informed, would be required to deliver her speech in the afternoon; only students would be allowed to attend; and the speech location would not be announced until close to the event."

Although Berkeley College Republicans advised Coulter not to agree to those stipulations, she did, they wrote. In return, she asked the chancellor to help ensure appropriate police response to "law-breaking by rioters attempting to shut down conservative speakers," according to the statement.

Coulter reportedly also asked Berkeley officials to warn students that "engaging in violence, mayhem or heckling" to prevent the speech would result in expulsion, the statement said.

The Berkeley College Republicans reported Coulter as having said, "If Berkeley wants to have free speech, it can have it."

The group lashed out in its statement, accusing university officials of misusing taxpayer money for an "unconstitutional purpose" and comparing Biddy and UC President Janet Napolitano to North Korea's authoritarian leader Kim Jong Un.

"This is as clear-cut a case as it gets that public universities are using taxpayer dollars to shut down conservative speech, while allowing liberal speech only," they wrote.

Group members have stressed that they have "no intention of acceding to these unconstitutional acts. The Ann Coulter lecture sponsored by Young Americas Foundation will go forward."

Coulter herself said in a tweet Wednesday she's still planning on coming to Berkeley to speak and blasted the school for cancelling the event.

University officials have yet to respond to those declarations.
A burglar entered a home in Vallejo early Sunday while a woman and her two young children were sleeping, and he was captured on security camera before making off with a few electronic devices, police said.

The suspect, who was still at large Monday, even peeked into the bedrooms of the 4-year-old girl and 1-year-old boy who were sleeping, according to a family member.

"You could see him close the door but cant see how he looks," said the children's aunt, Schendelle Bohulano, who added the burglar first peeked into her nieces room then went to the nursery. "My nephew was sleeping; hes 1-year old. (The suspect) looked around and closed the door."

The nursery camera caught clear footage of the burglar as he took his time looking for electronic gadgets around the house. Bohulano said he stole an iPad, Beats speakers and an Apple Mac desktop computer.

In the video, the burglar is seen wearing a red hoodie as he appears in front of the door and walks near the house. Neighbors said they saw the person matching the man in the video walking along the street but didnt think much of it.

It was only when the children's father came home that he noticed the surveillance cameras were tilted and things missing. The burglar had tried to disable the cameras.

Police said the burglar left behind gloves and those have been sent for DNA testing.
Sen. Bernie Sanders kicked off his presidential campaign Saturday miles from the rent-controlled apartment where he grew up in Brooklyn and forcefully made the case that he is nothing like fellow New Yorker Donald Trump, proclaiming himself the Democrat best prepared to beat the incumbent in 2020.

"My experience as a child, living in a family that struggled economically, powerfully influenced my life and my values. I know where I came from," Sanders boomed in his unmistakable Brooklyn accent. "And that is something I will never forget."

The Democrats in the 2020 race have taken varied approaches to Trump, with some avoiding saying his name entirely, while others make implicit critiques of his presidency. Sanders has never shied from jabbing Trump in stark terms, and during his speech at Brooklyn College, he called Trump "the most dangerous president in modern American history" and said the president wants to "divide us up."

The Vermont senator positioned himself in opposition to Trump administration policies from immigration to climate change. Beyond the issues themselves, Sanders, who grew up in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Flatbush in a middle-class family, drew a stark contrast between himself and the billionaire in the White House who hails from Queens.

"I did not have a father who gave me millions of dollars to build luxury skyscrapers, casinos and country clubs," said Sanders, who has lived in Vermont for decades. He pegged his allowance as a kid at 25 cents a week.

Sanders also said he "did not come from a family of privilege that prepared me to entertain people on television by telling workers, 'You're fired.'"

"I came from a family who knew all too well the frightening power employers can have over every day workers," he added.

More than 200 miles away in suburban Washington, Trump reveled in his 2016 victory and said Republicans "need to verify it in 2020 with an even bigger victory."

While Trump didn't mention Sanders explicitly in a two-hour speech, he railed against the policies of "socialism" in a continued attempt to portray Democrats as out of touch with ordinary Americans. Sanders is a self-described democratic socialist.

"Socialism is not about the environment, it is not about justice, it is not about virtue. It is only about one thing - it is called power for the ruling class," Trump said. "We know the future does not belong to those who believe in socialism"

Speaking at the same conference Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence called Sanders an "avowed socialist."

Sanders enters the race at a moment that bears little resemblance to when he waged his long-shot bid in 2016. Democrats have been mobilized by the election of Trump and are seeking a standard-bearer who can oust him from office. Many of Sanders' populist ideas have been embraced by the mainstream of the Democratic party. The field of Democrats that he joins includes a number of liberal candidates, most notably Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who share similar sensibilities.

As Sanders launched his campaign in Brooklyn, Warren was campaigning in Waterloo, Iowa and was questioned repeatedly about Sanders. Though the two have been friends since before they came to the Senate, Warren did not endorse Sanders in 2016, a decision that angered his supporters.

"I'm going to be blunt - we can't go back and relitigate 2016," she told a voter who asked why she declined to back Sanders. "We've gotta keep our focus on how we're going to win in 2020."

Later asked by reporters how she'll distinguish herself from Sanders, she said she would focus on issues, and emphasized the need for the Democratic field to stick together.

"The way I see it, I got plenty to talk about as it is  about the structural change we need in this country and laying out how we can do this. This is hopeful. People come and they hear what's broken, that we can fix it and that we do it together."

Sanders' rally was his first campaign event since announcing a week ago that he would run against for the White House. Hours before his speech in Brooklyn College's East Quad, a line of supporters snaked down the snowy streets.

A reggae band played before Sanders spoke, and he was introduced by a number of supporters including Nina Turner, the former Ohio state senator who is a co-chair of Sanders' campaign this year, and Shaun King, the writer and civil rights activist.

King cited Sanders' participation in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, when he was a student at the University of Chicago.

"This is the origin story of an American revolutionary," King said of Sanders, who will return to Chicago on Sunday evening for a second campaign rally, where he's expected to further highlight his own activism.

Paul Crewdson, 37, of Brooklyn, came to the rally carrying a hand-drawn cardboard sign that read, "Win Michigan, Win Ohio, Win Wisconsin."

"I think this was the reason that Democrats lost in 2016," he said.

As he began his speech, Sanders himself hinted at how he sees the race, a campaign that runs beyond the battlegrounds. "This is a 50-state campaign," he said. "We will not concede a single state to Donald Trump."

Associated Press writers Alexandra Jaffe, Kevin Freking and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
What to Know The family of Jassy Correia who was last seen at a Boston nightclub on Saturday night says she has been found dead in a car trunk.

Thirty-two-year-old Providence resident Louis D. Coleman III had been wanted in connection with the kidnapping of Correia.

Correia was seen leaving Venu Nightclub in Boston just after midnight on Sunday, getting into a red car with a man, believed to be Coleman.

Family members say the body of a Massachusetts woman who was last seen at a Boston nightclub on Saturday night has been found in the trunk of a car in Delaware, where her alleged kidnapper was captured on Thursday.

"We received some devastating news today and Jassy is no longer with us," Katia Depina, the cousin of Jassy Correia said on Thursday night.

A Rhode Island man wanted in connection with the kidnapping of 23-year-old Jassy Correia of Lynn was taken into custody Thursday in Delaware, according to law enforcement sources. Boston Police said a body had been recovered and they were awaiting positive identification.

Thirty-two-year-old Providence resident Louis D. Coleman III had been wanted in connection with the kidnapping of Correia. Providence Police said that Coleman was apprehended in Delaware and that a body was found in the trunk of his vehicle.

Earlier in the day, Joel Correia told NBC10 Boston that his sister Jassy was dead.

Depina said she received news from police on Thursday that the body was identified as Correia.

"She was a mother, she was brave, she was strong. She did not deserve this. She went out to celebrate her birthday and never returned home. She did not deserve this," she said. "We want justice for her death."

"Women should have the right to go to any nightclub and wear what they want and not worry about being kidnapped and murdered at the end of their night," said family friend Joao Depina.

Family and friends say they've never heard of Coleman and don't think Correia knew him, either.

Authorities said Coleman had previously been seen in the Providence area on Thursday. A search warrant was conducted at his Chestnut Street apartment, but Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements said he could not give details on what was found.

Clements said the case was being treated as a homicide investigation. He said police in Providence and Boston are investigating in collaboration with the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Attorney General's Office, as well as local offices of the FBI.

"We don't know right now whether it will be Boston, Providence or a federal agency who eventually takes the case," Clements said.

Correia, the mother of a 2-year-old girl, told her family she was going out on Saturday night and didn't respond to messages on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, which is when her family began to fear the worst.

She was last seen leaving Venu Nightclub in Boston just after midnight on Sunday, getting into a red car with a man, believed to be Coleman, near Tremont Street and Herald Street. The family could not reach her on her birthday on Tuesday, and she was reported missing Wednesday.
It always stinks to sink money into something you ultimately know is going to be ripped out, but it is our obligation to maintain a safe village, Oak Park Trustee Dan Moroney said. If you walk across the Home Avenue deck, you see just how bad some of these things are.
President Donald Trump keeps changing his story in the swirling investigations into Russia election interference and hush money payments to women who say they had affairs with him.

He insists that payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 campaign were "private transactions" and that any crime committed would be the fault of his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, not him. That's a change from what the president said before. Trump previously had denied knowledge of payments and dismissed any hint of a crime.

In the special counsel's probe into contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump tried to cast doubt on whether his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI. Flynn in fact pleaded guilty to doing just that.

Over the past week, Trump also made a flurry of false or unsupported statements about immigration. He said, with no evidence, that migrants are plagued with disease. He asserted that Mexico has in effect agreed to pay for his border wall, even as he threatens a partial government shutdown if Congress doesn't approve billions of dollars to build it. He twisted federal statistics to claim the recent arrest of 10 terrorists who don't exist.

A look at the claims:

COHEN

TRUMP: "Remember, Michael Cohen only became a 'Rat' after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY'S OFFICE!"  tweet Sunday.

THE FACTS: It was not a break-in. The FBI executed a search warrant obtained from a judge in conducting the raid and seizing records on a variety of matters, among them a $130,000 payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels by Trump's lawyer, Cohen. The application for the warrant was approved high in the Justice Department.

Former FBI director James Comey tweeted in response Sunday that Trump is "lying about the lawful execution of a search warrant issued by a federal judge."

TRUMP: "I never directed him to do anything wrong. Whatever he did, he did on his own."  interview Thursday with Fox News.

TRUMP: "I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law ... many campaign finance lawyers have strongly stated that I did nothing wrong with respect to campaign finance laws, if they even apply, because this was not campaign finance."  tweets Thursday.

TRUMP: "So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,...which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama's - but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer's liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced."  tweets Dec. 10.

THE FACTS: Whatever the truth, his account is evolving. Trump's description of the payments as a "simple private transaction"  which he couples with his insistence that "did nothing wrong" with respect to campaign finance laws  is not how he explained it just a few months ago.

In April, Trump issued a blanket denial that he knew anything about reports of $130,000 in hush-money paid to Daniels, saying reporters would "have to ask Michael Cohen." A month later, he then acknowledged the payments as a "private contract." Trump is now saying if something criminal happened, it would be solely Cohen's fault as his former attorney.

Both Cohen and American Media Inc., the company that owns the National Enquirer tabloid, say they made hush-money payments to Daniels and McDougal for the purpose of helping Trump's 2016 White House bid, a campaign finance violation. Both women alleged they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which the White House denies. Federal prosecutors say the payments were made at Trump's direction.

For the payments themselves to be a crime rather than a civil infraction, prosecutors would need to show that Trump knew that what he was doing was wrong when he directed Cohen to pay the women and that he did so with the goal of benefiting his campaign.

It's unclear what federal prosecutors in New York will decide to do if they conclude that there is evidence that Trump himself committed a crime. In the meantime, Trump's changing version of the truth is running head-on into facts agreed to by prosecutors.

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

TRUMP: "Wow, 19,000 Texts between Lisa Page and her lover, Peter S of the FBI, in charge of the Russia Hoax, were just reported as being wiped clean and gone. Such a big story that will never be covered by the Fake News. Witch Hunt!"  tweet Saturday.

THE FACTS: The Justice Department's watchdog, in a report released Thursday, found no evidence the FBI intentionally destroyed text messages of former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who were involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation when they worked for the bureau.

The inspector general faulted an FBI-wide software failure that has resulted in large portions of FBI text messages not being archived.

The report examined a gap in messages from December 2016 through May 2017 from the phones of Strzok and Page. The FBI ultimately managed to recover thousands of the messages.

Some congressional Republicans had suggested the messages were intentionally deleted. The inspector general report said there was no evidence Strzok and Page circumvented protocol. Strzok was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation after anti-Trump texts were discovered. He has since been fired. Page resigned.

TRUMP: "Well the FBI said Michael Flynn, a general and a great person, they said he didn't lie. And Mueller said: 'Well, maybe he did.' And now they're all having a big dispute, so I think it's a great thing that the judge is looking into that situation. It's an honor for a lot of terrific people."  remarks Thursday.

THE FACTS: That's not what the FBI said. And Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, has agreed that he lied to the FBI. He pleaded guilty to it and is to be sentenced this week  the first White House official punished as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing Russia investigation.

The idea that Flynn didn't lie to the FBI picked up steam after Republicans on the House intelligence committee issued a report this year that said ex-FBI director James Comey, in a private briefing, told lawmakers that agents who interviewed Flynn "discerned no physical indications of deception" and saw "nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them." But Comey called that description "garble" in a private interview with House lawmakers this month.

Comey, in essence, said Flynn was a good liar, having a "natural conversation" with agents, "answered fully their questions, didn't avoid. That notwithstanding, they concluded he was lying."

As for Trump's comment that the judge is looking into the matter, it's true U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has asked for documents related to the agents who interviewed Flynn. It's not clear from Sullivan's order whether he considers there to be a dispute to resolve or if he just wants to see the underlying documents as he decides Flynn's sentence.

BORDER SECURITY

TRUMP: "The Democrats policy of Child Seperation (sic) on the Border during the Obama Administration was far worse than the way we handle it now. Remember the 2014 picture of children in cages - the Obama years."  tweet Sunday.

THE FACTS: Democratic President Barack Obama did not have a separation policy. The Trump administration didn't, explicitly, either, but that was the effect of his zero tolerance policy, which meant that anyone caught crossing the border illegally was to be criminally prosecuted, even those with few or no previous offences.

The policy meant adults were taken to court for criminal proceedings and their children were separated. In most cases, if the charge took longer than 72 hours to process, which is the longest time that children can be held by Customs and Border Protection, children were sent into the care of the Health and Human Services Department. Zero tolerance remains in effect, but Trump signed an executive order June 20 that stopped separations.

Trump also misrepresents 2014 photos of children in holding cells. They did not involve family separation.

The photos, taken by The Associated Press during the Obama administration, showed children who came to the border without their parents and were being housed at a Customs and Border Protection center in Nogales, Arizona. The photos were identified as such but wrongly described online as illustrating imprisonment under Trump.

TRUMP: "People with tremendous medical difficulty and medical problems are pouring in, and in many  in many cases it's contagious. They're pouring into our country. We have to have border security."  statement in Oval Office meeting Tuesday with Democratic leaders, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer.

THE FACTS: Trump provided no evidence that people coming into the country, including the caravan at the U.S.-Mexico border, are carrying contagious diseases at a higher rate than the U.S. population. Medical screening is part of the process for vetting people who seek asylum.

A study published this month by the UCL-Lancet Commission on Migration and Health called scares about contagion one of the most pervasive myths about migrants. The study found no evidence that migrants pose a significant public health risk to countries such as the U.S. that have good health systems. In fact, migrants themselves face health threats from arduous journeys, violence along the way, or overcrowding in shelters or camps, the Lancet commission said. While some may come from regions where certain diseases are common, the report noted that international tourism and movement of animals spread illness, too.

As for the caravan and other migrants from the south, World Bank statistics show Mexico and Central America vaccinate most children against measles, sometimes at a bit higher rate than the U.S. Along the border between Mexico and California, public health departments have long had a system in place to watch for signs of outbreaks of a variety of illnesses, whether they're immigration-related or not.

TRUMP: "Our Southern Border is now Secure and will remain that way."  tweet Tuesday.

TRUMP: "We need border security. People are pouring into our country, including terrorists. We have terrorists. But we caught 10 terrorists. These are over the last very short period of time  10. These are very serious people."  statement in Oval Office meeting.

THE FACTS: Trump contradicted himself, declaring the border secure and insecure on the same day. And Trump is wrong about the government recently catching 10 terrorists.

His statement is a mangling of federal statistics showing that U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped an average of seven to 10 people a day in the 2017 budget year who were denied entry to the U.S. because they were on a watch list. That average applied to all points of entry, and overwhelmingly from airports, and was not specific to the southern border. The standard for placing someone on the list is reasonable suspicion, a lower bar than the probable cause needed to arrest someone for an alleged crime. The statistics do not show how many might have been arrested or charged with anything.

In any event, Trump rendered a daily average as 10 recently captured terrorists in the flesh.

As for border security, U.S. arrests on the Mexican border jumped 78 percent in November from a year earlier to the highest level in Trump's presidency. Increased arrests indicate that more people are trying to cross the border illegally.

JOBS

PELOSI: "We came at a place to say, 'How do we meet the needs of American people who have needs?' The economy has  people are losing their jobs."  Oval Office meeting.

TRUMP: "Well, we have the lowest unemployment that we've had in 50 years."  Oval Office meeting.

THE FACTS: Trump is correct about jobs.

There may always be some layoffs even if the economy is strong. General Motors, for instance, said last month it would cut as many as 14,000 workers in North America in a restructuring aimed at generating cash to spend on innovation, even though U.S. auto sales are near historic highs.

But the U.S. economy has now added jobs for a record 98 straight months, dating to October 2010, during the Obama administration.

The Labor Department reported the unemployment rate in November stayed at 3.7 percent, a five-decade low, for the third straight month.

The job gains are pushing down unemployment rates to historically low levels for a variety of groups. The unemployment rate for men aged 20 and above fell last month to 3.3 percent, the lowest in 18 years. The rate for Americans with just high school diplomas dropped to 3.5 percent, the lowest since December 2000. The African-American jobless rate declined to 5.9 percent, matching May's figure as the lowest on record.

That's making it more challenging for businesses to find the workers they need. Employers have posted 7 million open jobs, outnumbering the ranks of the unemployed, which fell last month to just under 6 million.

THE WALL

TRUMP: "I often stated, 'One way or the other, Mexico is going to pay for the Wall.' This has never changed. Our new deal with Mexico (and Canada), the USMCA, is so much better than the old, very costly & anti-USA NAFTA deal, that just by the money we save, MEXICO IS PAYING FOR THE WALL!"  tweet Thursday.

THE FACTS: This is a face-saving statement to mask the fact that Mexico refused to pay for a U.S. border wall, Trump gave up trying to make it do so and U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for it.

In essence, Trump is arguing that new terms of trade with Mexico will increase economic growth in the U.S. and produce more tax revenue. That's what everyone hopes trade agreements will do. As part of that, he hopes for a lower trade deficit with Mexico. Neither outcome is assured.

The deal negotiated with Mexico and Canada is an update of the North American Free Trade Agreement he railed against, not a transformative pact. The three countries will continue trading in an environment of mainly low or no tariffs, with improvements here and there for all three partners. There is no credible way for Trump to forecast additional growth covering costs that are being charged to U.S. taxpayers if the wall is built. Trade balances depend on too many factors  consumer tastes, exchange rates, overall economic performance, and the choices of thousands of companies among them  and some are well outside any government's control.

Trump specifically promised in the campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall. That is not the same as trying to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, which is about the exchange of goods and services among private entities rather than payments between governments. Nor is a trade deficit necessarily a penalty on consumers. It is the result of consumers buying things made in another country.

He wants some $25 billion from Congress for wall construction over five years and promises a partial government shutdown if he does not get a $5 billion or so portion in the next week. Congress may or may not give him that. If it does, it will not be because lawmakers expect a refund to the treasury in future years from extra growth produced by a trade deal.

TRUMP: "Tremendous amounts of wall have already been built."  statement in meeting Tuesday with Pelosi and Schumer.

TRUMP: "People do not yet realize how much of the Wall, including really effective renovation, has already been built." ''We have already built large new sections & fully renovated others, making them like new."  tweets.

THE FACTS: Tremendous portions of the wall have not been built. Yes, some barrier renovation has happened, but little wall construction has been completed under Trump.

Congress allocated roughly $1.4 billion in the spring  a bit more than 5 percent of what Trump wanted  for border security and specified that the money was not to be used for construction of the prototype wall sections that stand near San Diego. Instead, the money is to strengthen or replace existing fencing with more secure fencing.

Altogether, Trump promised in the campaign that he'd build a 1,000-mile (1,600 kilometer-) wall, as high as 40 feet or 12 meters (and have Mexico pay for it, which isn't happening). If some 650 miles (1,050 km) of existing fencing are considered in the equation, that leaves him with about 350 miles (560 km) of wall to build.

Associated Press writers Jonathan Lemire, Eric Tucker, Chad Day, Lauran Neergaard, Josh Boak, Matthew Daly, Colleen Long and Elliot Spagat contributed to this report.
Floodwaters that turned two Northern California wine country communities into islands reachable only by boat began receding Thursday as a rain-engorged river finally peaked after swamping thousands of homes and businesses.

The Russian River in wine country north of San Francisco crested at more than 46 feet Wednesday night, Sonoma County officials said. The water was not expected to return to the river's banks until late Thursday.

The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that officials received no calls for help overnight from hundreds of people who stayed in their homes instead of heeding evacuation orders.

The river frequently floods in rainy weather but it had not reached that level in 25 years. The estimated 2,000 inundated buildings were mainly in and around the community of Guerneville, said Briana Khan, a Sonoma County spokeswoman.

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Sonoma County Thursday, as well as in counties of Amador, Glenn, Lake and Mendocino, in response to flooding, mudslides and storm damages.

Flood Photos: Water Overtakes Roadways, Homes in North Bay

"Guerneville has essentially become an island," Khan said. The nearby town of Monte Rio also was isolated when roads leading to it were swamped.

In addition, two sewage treatment plants were not working, leading to concerns about potential sewage spills, she added.

The river was one of several in Northern California that was engorged by days of rain from western U.S. storms that also dumped heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada, throughout the Pacific Northwest and into Montana, where Gov. Steve Bullock issued an emergency order to help keep up the supply of heating fuel amid frigid temperatures.

By Wednesday night, the rain had eased but about 3,500 people in two dozen river communities remained under evacuation orders. No injuries were reported in the Guerneville area but in Humboldt County, the sheriff's office said a man presumably drowned in floodwaters trying to get to his home, where three children were trapped.

The man was walking to his home from a barn through up to 5 feet of water when he was carried away by the fast-moving current, Humboldt Sheriff's Office said in a statement Thursday. Deputies were sent Wednesday night to the house in Ferndale, about 200 miles north of Guerneville, and rescued the three people from the tractor and the children from the home.

NBC Bay Areas Janelle Wang provides more perspective of how different things look after flooding in Sonoma County.

Elsewhere in the western U.S., two Amtrak trains together carrying nearly 300 passengers stopped and reversed directions because of an avalanche that closed railroad tracks in the Sierra Nevada and shut down service between Sacramento and Reno, Nevada.

In Idaho, the mountain town of Stanley became marooned Wednesday after all three highways leading to the town were closed because of drifting snow, avalanches and the risk of more slides.

Several areas in California set record-high rainfall totals, including nearby Santa Rosa, which had nearly 8 inches of rain in one day. The often-waterlogged Venado weather station 5 miles from Guerneville recorded more than 20 inches of rain in 48 hours.

An atmospheric river, which is defined as a slender band of water vapor that pulls moisture from the tropics, is known for dumping "significant levels of rain and snow," especially in locations across the West Coast, according to the National Weather Service.

"Everything is under water, restaurants, all the rooms, the bar, the office," Hotel R3 employee in Guerneville Luis Lowenbery said. "Everybody was evacuated yesterday afternoon because we knew it was going to come in but we weren't expecting to come in last night around 11."

Dozens of people were rescued from cars that became stranded after drivers tried to cross flooded roads.

Nina Sheehan, who is visiting from North Carolina, had to abandon her rental SUV after it got stuck in a flooded hotel parking lot.

"We made a decision to take the rental car through the waist-high water and we got two thirds of the way and then the car stalled," she said.

Rhondell Rasmus had pulled to the side of a road too flooded to cross in Sebastopol in Sonoma County late Tuesday night and emergency dispatchers told her to wait for help. But just before dawn, she awoke to find the car was nearly submerged and she was out of gas.

"The water just came up so fast next to my car, it was crazy," she told the Press-Democrat newspaper of Santa Rosa.

She wound up in an emergency shelter, bringing with her a handbag, a backpack and a pair of rain boots.

California is no stranger to atmospheric rivers. In fact, one nearly wiped out Sacramento in Gold Rush times. Scientists say climate change will mean bigger and more frequent atmospheric river events that dump more water on the West Coast.

In Guerneville, streets became seas of muddy brown water. Jeff Bridges, a hotel co-owner who is president of the Russian River Chamber of Commerce, spent the day canoeing through town and gave a ride to a couple and their dog who were stranded in a low-lying apartment.

Five people whose homes were flooded were bunking down at his two-bedroom home.

"We saw quite a few fish swimming by my front porch," he said.

[NATL] Extreme Weather Photos: Record Heat Threatens Europe

Bridges said this flood was the fourth he's experienced in 33 years and the locals took the disaster calmly.

"It's the price you pay to live in paradise," he said. "Buffalo, New York puts up with blizzards. Miami and Houston put up with hurricanes...we have floods."

However, Bridges said it will take weeks to clean up his R3 Hotel, as he has done in past floods. More than 8 feet of water inundated the 23-room business.

"Anything that's been flooded you've got to rip it out, sanitize everything...and rebuild," he said, but added nonchalantly: "Everything's fixable."
The Irving-based Boy Scouts of America has retained the services of a law firm and is exploring the option of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The move would be an attempt to stave off a wave of sex abuse lawsuits  no fewer than 140 have already been filed  that allege wrongdoing against scout masters or adults in the program.

In a statement, Michael B. Surbaugh, the Chief Scout Executive, noted that news reports about the BSAs financial position are speculation. But he also acknowledged that the organization is working with experts to explore all options available to ensure that the local and national programming of the Boy Scout of America continues uninterrupted.

We have a social and moral responsibility to fairly compensate victims who suffered abuse during their time in Scouting, and we also have an obligation to carry out our mission to serve youth, families and local communities through our programs, Surbaugh said.

Surbaugh added Wednesday that the daily mission of the Scouts would continue and that there was no imminent action or immediate decision expected.

Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection would halt the civil proceedings against the Boy Scouts, giving the organization an opportunity to negotiate settlements, according to a report in The Dallas Morning News.

Other institutions facing multifaceted sexual abuse scandals have sought bankruptcy protection recently. USA Gymnastics took the step last week as it attempts to settle dozens of lawsuits related to abuse by now-imprisoned gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. About 20 Roman Catholic dioceses and other religious orders around the U.S. have previously filed for bankruptcy protection as a result of clergy sexual abuse claims.



Surbaugh apologized on behalf of the BSA to those abused during their time in the Boy Scouts.



"We have always taken care of victims -- we believe them, we believe in fairly compensating them and we have paid for unlimited counseling, by a provider of their choice, regardless of the amount of time that has passed since an instance of abuse," he said. "Throughout our history we have taken proactive steps to help victims heal and prevent future abuse."



In addition to abuse-related litigation, the Boy Scouts have been trying to reverse a decline in membership. The organizations' current youth participation is about 2.3 million, down from 2.6 million in 2013 and more than 4 million in peak years of the past.



In a major step toward revitalization, the BSA is moving to open all its programs to girls, but even that has caused problems.



Last month, the Girl Scouts of the USA filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the BSA for dropping the word "boy" from its flagship program in an effort to attract girls.



That suit was in response to the BSA's decision to rename its program for 11- to 17-year-olds; it will be called Scouts BSA rather than the Boy Scouts, though the parent organization will remain the Boy Scouts of America.



Paul Mones, a Los Angeles-based lawyer who has handled many sex-abuse lawsuits targeting the BSA, said the organization has assets of more than $1 billion, but has been under increasing pressure from litigation as public awareness of sexual abuse intensifies.



Mones was co-counsel in a 2010 sexual abuse case in Portland, Oregon, that led to a nearly $20 million judgment against the BSA on behalf of a man molested by a Scout leader in the 1980s. As a result of that case, the Oregon Supreme Court ordered the BSA to release previously confidential files on suspected abusers.

The Associated Press' David Crary contributed to this report.
The National Enquirer committed neither extortion nor blackmail by threatening to publish intimate photos of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, an attorney for the head of the tabloid's parent company said Sunday.

Elkan Abromowitz, an attorney for American Media Inc. chief executive David Pecker, said on Sunday a "reliable source" well-known to Bezos and his mistress provided the story about the billionaire's extramarital affair.

Bezos has said AMI threatened to publish the explicit photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the Enquirer obtained his private exchanges with his mistress, former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, and publicly declare that the Enquirer's coverage of him was not politically motivated. Bezos also owns The Washington Post.

Bezos' investigators have suggested the Enquirer's coverage of his affair was driven by dirty politics, and the high-profile clash has pitted the world's richest man against the leader of America's best-known tabloid, who is a strong backer of President Donald Trump. Trump has been highly critical of Bezos over his ownership of The Washington Post and Amazon, and the Post's coverage of the White House.

Federal prosecutors are looking into whether the Enquirer violated a cooperation and nonprosecution agreement that recently spared the gossip sheet from charges for paying hush money to a Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Trump, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday. The people weren't authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

But asked during an interview with ABC's "This Week" whether he was concerned the Bezos matter could jeopardize the noncooperation agreement, Abramowitz said: "Absolutely not."

Abramowitz defended the tabloid's handling of the situation as part of a standard legal negotiation.

"I think both Bezos and AMI had interests in resolving their interests," Abramowitz said. "It's absolutely not a crime to ask somebody to simply tell the truth. Tell the truth that this was not politically motivated, and we will print no more stories."

Bezos' affair became public when the Enquirer published story on Jan. 9 about his relationship with Lauren Sanchez, who is also married. Bezos then hired a team of private investigators to find out how the tabloid got the texts and photos the two exchanged.

Bezos' personal investigators, led by his security consultant Gavin de Becker, have focused on Sanchez's brother, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Michael Sanchez is his sister's manager, a Trump supporter and an acquaintance of Trump allies Roger Stone and Carter Page.

Abramowitz would not comment when asked whether Michael Sanchez was the Enquirer's source but said that "Bezos and Ms. Sanchez knew who the source was."

Michael Sanchez has declined to speak with AP on the record. In a Jan. 31 tweet, he said without evidence that de Becker "spreads fake, unhinged conservative conspiracy theories."

Investigators working for Bezos have identified who they believe provided text messages to the Enquirer, the person familiar with the matter told the AP on Sunday. Bezos' investigators concluded their probe into the text message leak and turned over the results to attorney Richard Ben-Veniste for review and possible referral to law enforcement, the person said. Ben-Veniste had served as special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal.

In his blog post on Thursday, Bezos alluded to a possible relationship between Saudi Arabia and AMI, but Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia's minister of state of foreign affairs, said he had "no idea" about such a relationship and doubted the kingdom played any role in urging AMI to run negative stories about Bezos. Last year, the tabloid produced a glossy magazine that included 97 pages saluting Saudi Arabia, ahead of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's arrival in the U.S. on a public relations blitz to transform his country's image.

"It's like a soap opera," al-Jubeir said of Bezos' allegations during a roundtable on Friday with reporters in Washington.

Asked about AMI's recent $450 million debt restructuring, Abramowitz said "not a penny" of that money came from the Saudi kingdom. The company had sought financing from the Saudis but never received any, he said.

After Bezos on Thursday posted the exchanges with AMI in an extraordinary blog post on Medium.com, several celebrities and journalists posted on social media that they too had been threatened by AMI. Ronan Farrow said he and "and at least one other prominent journalist" involved in reporting on the tabloid had "fielded similar 'stop digging or we'll ruin you' blackmail efforts from AMI" and actor Terry Crews alleged the company tried to "silence him" by "fabricating stories of me with prostitutes."

Abramowitz said he didn't know of any AMI employees blackmailing celebrities or journalists or "committing any crime at all."

In recent months, the Trump-friendly tabloid acknowledged secretly assisting Trump's White House campaign by paying $150,000 to Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal for the rights to her story about an alleged affair with Trump. The company then buried the story until after the 2016 election.

Trump's longtime personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty last year to charges that included helping to broker that transaction.

As part of a nonprosecution agreement in that case, AMI promised not to break the law. The deal requires top executives, including Pecker and the Enquirer's editor, Dylan Howard, to cooperate with federal prosecutors. A violation of the agreement could lead to criminal charges over the McDougal payments.

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Michael R. Sisak and Jim Mustian contributed to this report.
Samsung unveiled a highly anticipated smartphone with a foldable screen in an attempt to break the innovation funk that has beset the smartphone market.

But it's far from clear that consumers will embrace a device that retails for almost $2,000, or that it will provide the creative catalyst the smartphone market needs.

The Galaxy Fold, announced Wednesday in San Francisco, will sell for $1,980 when it is released April 26.

Consumers willing to pay that hefty price will get a device that can unfold like a wallet. It can work like a traditional smartphone with a 4.6 inch screen or morph into something more like a mini-tablet with a 7.3 inch screen.

When fully unfolded, the device will be able to simultaneously run three different apps on the screen. The Galaxy Fold will also boast six cameras: three in the back, two on the inside and one on the front.

After spending nearly five years developing the technology underlying its foldable-screen phone, Samsung is clearly hoping for a big payoff.

"Get ready for the dawn of a new era," declared DJ Koh, who oversees Samsung's smartphone division. The new phone, he said, "answers skeptics who said everything has already been done."

If Samsung is right, the Galaxy Fold will spur more people to upgrade their phones. Overall smartphones sales peaked in 2017 ; Samsung saw its smartphone sales fall 8 percent last year, based on estimates from the research firm International Data Corp. Worldwide, smartphone sales dropped 4 percent in 2018, according to IDC.

But most analysts see a limited market for foldable-screen phones, at least in the early going. Phones like the Galaxy Fold "are likely to sell to a very limited market of technology aficionados who like big screens and have big wallets," said IDC analyst Ramon Llamas.

Samsung also released new Galaxy S10 phones that boast fancy cameras, sleek screens covering the entire front of the devices and at least 128 gigabytes of storage  important features to consumers shopping for phones.

The new phones are able take wider-angle shots than previous models and can charge other devices, including wireless headphones and smartwatches. A fourth S10 model, due out this spring, will have faster wireless speeds through the emerging 5G cellular network.

But those improvements aren't a big leap from the smartphones released during the past few years by Samsung, Apple and other top manufacturers.

"These phones are all variations on a theme we have already seen," Llamas said. "It's the same song with a slightly different verse."

With the pace of smartphone innovation seemingly locked in baby steps, consumers are holding on to their existing devices for longer periods than they have in the past. Compounding that reluctance to upgrade is smartphone sticker shock, which the Galaxy Fold seems unlikely to alleviate. Prices for some existing phones models have soared above $1,000 .

Samsung is offering a slightly smaller S10 model for $750 in an attempt to make smartphones more affordable, but the higher-end models sell for $900 and $1,000.

Two of Samsung's new models, the S10 and the S10 Plus, are largely incremental upgrades of last year's S9 and S9 Plus, although they are designed differently. They are about the same size as last year's models, but will have more display space, as Samsung found additional ways to eliminate waste around the edges. As a byproduct, the top right of the display has a circle or oval cut out for the front-facing cameras.

The lowest-priced "essentials" model, the S10e, has most of the same features, but is 5 percent smaller than the S10 in volume. The S10e also lacks curved edges, a signature feature for many Samsung phones.

All three S10 models will come out March 8, with pre-orders starting Thursday.

Samsung trumpeted its 10th anniversary lineup ahead of a major mobile device conference in Barcelona next week. Huawei, which is threatening to overtake Apple as the world's second biggest seller of smartphones, has promised to use the Spain showcase to preview its own device with a foldable screen and the ability to connect to 5G networks as they become operational during the next few years.
The union that represents the press in Venezuela said Telemundo journalist Daniel Garrido, who had been reported missing Tuesday in Caracas, has been released from the custody of security forces.

Garrido, a correspondent for the Spanish-language Telemundo network, was last seen outside the hotel where Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and his team were staying before authorities ordered them deported from the South American country after an interview with President Nicolas Maduro, according to the National Union of Press Workers in Venezuela (SNTP).

#AlertaSNTP | Daniel Garrido, reportero de @TelemundoNews, aparecio luego de ser ruleteado, incomunicado por 8 horas y robado por funcionarios del Sebin. #26Feb pic.twitter.com/5CxebzyGTj  SNTP (@sntpvenezuela) February 26, 2019

The group said Garrido had been photographing the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), the repressive Venezuelan security force that escorted Ramos and the Univision team to the airport, before he disappeared Tuesday morning.

In a statement published to its website Tuesday afternoon, Telemundo said Garrido was abducted at 6 a.m. ET in the vicinity of the Hotel Cayena in the La Castellana neighborhood of Caracas.

"Daniel was covering the recent detention and deportation of the Univision News team, when a group of armed and unidentified individuals forced him into a vehicle and covered his head with a hood. After questioning him for six hours and seizing his work equipment, the kidnappers freed him without explanation and without returning his equipment."

Luis Fernandiz, Telemundo's executive vice president of network news, confirmed Garrido's release on Twitter. Fernandez tweeted around 1:30 p.m. ET that Garrido was freed but authorities had seized his cell phones. Another attack against freedom of the press. Another one, he added.

The network condemned the harrassment of journalists in Venezuela by members of the Maduro regime and called on the government to "guarantee our right to inform, as well as the physical integrity of journalists operating in Venezuela, as established in international conventions and the laws of the country."

World of Dance returns for its second season on Tuesday, and Access Lives Scott Evans is pulling duties as the competitions new host! Scott takes us on an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the set!

Garrido's brief detention comes after a Univision news team led by Jorge Ramos said they had their camera equipment and phones seized and were briefly detained at the presidential palace after Maduro abruptly ended an interview Monday.

Ramos, one of the most influential Spanish-speaking journalists in the U.S., said late Monday that Maduro cut short the interview after 17 minutes when he was shown video on an iPad shot a day earlier of young Venezuelans eating food scraps out of the back of a garbage truck.

The news crew was ordered deported and reportedly boarded a flight to Miami without their equipment returned.

Vice President Mike Pence on Monday announced new sanctions against Venezuelas Nicolas Maduro and his supporters.

Ramos, who interviewed Maduro's mentor, Hugo Chavez, three times, said Maduro accused him of siding with the government's opponents in the political fight for power now raging in Venezuela.

More than 50 governments around the world have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's rightful leader after Maduro was sworn in for a second term last month following what the critics say was an illegitimate election.

As the battle for political power in the country escalates, the Maduro regime has strived to control the news coverage. Privatly owned networks have been taken off air, newsrooms have been raided and closed and reporters detained, according to the Caracas-based free press NGO Espacio Publico. Arbitrary arrests and violence against reporters by the police and intelligence services are common and Foreign journalists are often expelled.

Venezuela is ranked 143rd out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2018 World Press Freedom Index, dropping six places from its 2017 standing.

"The fact that at least 19 journalists have been detained in 2019 to date demonstrates Nicolas Maduros pattern of contempt for democratic values in Venezuela, where restrictions on journalistic freedom are used as a blackmail tool within the framework of the countrys current crisis," International press freedom organization said in a statement. "The arbitrariness of this act of censorship is aggravated by the fact that it took place during an interview with Nicolas Maduro himself, at the historic headquarters of the Venezuelan government."

RSF called on the international community including those countries that still recognize Maduro as president to "pay special attention to guarantees for a free press in Venezuela under the framework of the commitments they have signed before international law, considering that respect for press freedom is an essential requirement for international relations."
Teachers at a Loudoun County, Virginia, elementary school instructed students to pretend to be slaves during a gym class activity for Black History Month, the president of a local NAACP chapter says.

Madison's Trust Elementary School students participated in an "insensitive" activity during their physical education classes, Principal David Stewart said in a letter sent on Feb. 12 apologizing to parents.

"The lesson was culturally insensitive to our students and families. I extend my sincerest apology to our students and school community," Stewart said in the letter.

Loudoun County Public Schools spokesman Wayde Byard said the gym class began with a lesson about the Underground Railroad as part of Black History Month. Byard said all students in the exercise, including minorities, were asked to act as members of the Underground Railroad but didn't specifically say students were asked to be slaves.

Students in grades 3-5, including African-American students, were then split into groups and challenged to overcome a physical obstacle. Some of the students pretended they were escaped slaves, the NAACP said.

Byard said the school system received about 10 complaints from families.

"It's awful," Loudoun NAACP Chapter President Michelle Thomas said. "It's really insulting. It makes me feel unsafe because I have kids in Loudoun County Public Schools."

Thomas said three teachers crafted the activity with the oversight of a school administrator.

"It shows that there's some implicit bias problems right here at this school," she said.

Stewart said the content covered during the activity would be retaught to students "within an appropriate and respectful context."

"A next step for us as a school involves the formation of an equity/culturally responsive team which will be comprised of school personnel and parent representatives," Stewart said. They said the content will be taught to students again.

Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Eric Williams said in a statement Friday the school system will make the following changes to address address racism, cultural insensitivity and inequity:

Creating an "Equity and Cultural Competence Specialist" position for fiscal year 2020. "This person will organize cultural competence and implicit bias training for all teachers and administrators. Previously, this training had been optional for teachers and administrators, and it will now be required," Williams said.

An outside expert will conduct an equity audit this spring to gather perspectives on racial and cultural insensitivity. The school system will then devise a longterm plan based on the results.

The school board's budget for 2020 includes a position "dedicated to equity in education."

The school board will create a group to address equity in education.

"We acknowledge that this incident at Madisons Trust is a symptom of a broader issue. The diversity in Loudoun County is one of our greatest strengths, but Loudoun County is also a place where equity has proven a challenge for many decades," Williams said. "We have struggled with inequities in student achievement gaps, discipline disproportionality, underrepresentation of minority students in advanced programs and courses, and the lack of a diversified teacher workforce."

The incident comes as several top officials in Virginia, including Gov. Ralph Northam, have been embroiled in a blackface scandal.

Thomas said she has met with Stewart and with parents to try to come up with solutions to "remedy this racist act."

"I'm satisfied with the progress that we're making," she said.
President Donald Trump's claims over Christmas that he had awarded 115 miles of new border wall construction in Texas appear to confuse work that's already funded and underway.

Trump tweeted on Monday, "I am in the Oval Office & just gave out a 115 mile long contract for another large section of the Wall in Texas."

He reiterated on Tuesday that he's moving forward on construction, even as the government remains partially shutdown over his insistence that Congress approve more money for a border wall.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to follow-up questions on Monday or Tuesday, but here's what's known about contracts and construction of the wall.

TRUMP, asked Tuesday morning about the wall and his Christmas Eve tweet: "Yesterday, I gave out 115 miles' worth of wall, 115 miles in Texas. It's going to be built, hopefully rapidly. I'm going there at the end of January for the start of construction."

THE FACTS: Trump can't award construction contracts. U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers award contracts for border wall construction after Congress approves funding and months have gone into planning.

In March, Congress approved funding for 33 miles (53 kilometers) of construction in South Texas' Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal border crossings.

CBP announced in November that construction in the Rio Grande Valley would begin in February. Targeted areas include the nonprofit National Butterfly Center, a state park and privately owned ranches and farmland.

Trump's statement that he plans to visit the site at the end of January suggests he may be referring to this previously announced construction.

TRUMP, speaking Tuesday: "We gave out 115 yesterday, and we gave it out at a great price."

THE FACTS: It's unclear where the figure of 115 miles is coming from.

According to DHS , the March funding from Congress will pay for 84 miles (135 kilometers) along the southern border, including the 33 miles (53 kilometers) for Texas. And if the Trump administration gets the $5 billion it's requested, DHS says it would build 215 miles (346 kilometers) that it considers the "highest priority," include 159 miles (256 kilometers) in Texas.

Whether DHS got a "great price" on the 33 miles is up for debate. Twocontracts announced by CBP to build 14 of those miles (23 kilometers) total $313 million, or roughly $22 million per mile ($14 million per kilometer).

There's already 653 miles (1,051 kilometers) of border fence in place, built under the Secure Fence Act passed in 2006. CBP estimated in 2015 that the total cost to build that mileage was $2.3 billion, or roughly $3.5 million a mile ($2.2 million per kilometer). Many of those miles were built with less complicated design or on easier terrain than where CBP wants to build now.

TRUMP, asked Tuesday who received the contracts: "Different people. Highly bid."

THE FACTS: CBP announced in November that Galveston, Texas-based company SLSCO won the two contracts with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for projects in the Rio Grande Valley. Contract notices posted online say that three bids were solicited online and received for each contract. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working with CBP to plan and build the wall.
President Donald Trump cast into doubt a key component of his upcoming trip to an international summit in Argentina as he suggested Tuesday he may cancel his planned sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Russia's seizure of three Ukrainian naval ships last weekend.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Trump said he would be receiving a "full report" from his national security team on Russia's recent actions in eastern Ukraine and the Black Sea. He said he would decide on a course afterward.

"Maybe I won't have the meeting," he said. "Maybe I won't even have the meeting."

Trump added: "I don't like that aggression. I don't want that aggression at all."

The comments were Trump's strongest to date in condemnation of Russia's recent actions in Ukraine, where tensions are flaring. But White House aides were still planning for the Putin meeting after Trump's comments.

The meeting between Trump and Putin is set to be just one of several high-profile foreign policy engagements for the U.S. leader on the whirlwind two-day visit to Argentina. Trump is also set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping over dinner this weekend, in what may be a pivotal session to determining if and how the ongoing trade dispute between their two countries could be resolved.

The White House on Tuesday warned Xi against trying to wait out Trump in the ongoing talks, suggesting the Chinese economy was not as resilient to a trade war as would be the U.S.

The warning from Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, came ahead of the two leaders' high-stakes sit-down on Saturday evening. Over the last year, the two countries have levied a series of tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of imports from one another, with the latest round of U.S. duties set to go into force in the new year.

National Security adviser John Bolton said Trump will also be meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Argentine President Mauricio Macri, South Korea's Moon Jae-in, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the trip an opportunity for the president to cement relations with other world leaders and advance a global economic system based on "free, fair and reciprocal trade."

The Trump-Xi meeting would be the first since the two countries began hitting each other with import taxes earlier this year. The United States targeted $250 billion in Chinese products, and Beijing lashed back by slapping tariffs on $110 billion worth of U.S. goods. The two sides have been in negotiations for months, but Kudlow described them as being stalemated until just a few weeks ago.

Kudlow said the administration has been "extremely disappointed" by China's engagement in trade talks but the meeting between Trump and Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit could be a game-changer.

"Perhaps we can break through in Buenos Aires or not," he said.

Kudlow added that if the U.S. doesn't get "satisfactory" responses to its trade positions more tariffs will be imposed. He said Trump is "not going away."

"I hope they understand that," he said.

China's foreign ministry has said a recent phone conversation between Xi and Trump about trade and other issues was "extremely positive."

This story has been corrected to show China's tariffs are on $110 billion, not $110 million, worth of goods.
Twitter's new privacy policy suggests ambitions of becoming more like Facebook  more tracking of users and more targeting of ads to rake in more money.

Twitter recently reported its first quarterly revenue decline since going public. That should give you some clues about the reasons behind the policy changes, which take effect June 18.

WHAT'S CHANGING?

Twitter was already tracking users. For example, if you visited a webpage that had an embedded tweet or a button to share something on Twitter, you could be tracked and targeted.

With the changes, Twitter expands the pool of people it can track and lets the company collect more data about those people when they are visiting sites around the web, said Jules Polonetsky, CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum, an industry-backed think tank in Washington.

For example, the company will now keep data about users' web activities for 30 days instead of 10, which allows it to create more comprehensive profiles of people.

In addition, Twitter will no longer honor the "Do Not Track" option that let people say no to being tracked by the likes of ad and social networks. Many such networks no longer honor that option anyway. Polonetsky said Twitter had been "one of the rare prominent brands that respected Do Not Track."

WHY IS TWITTER DOING THIS?

The short answer is money. A longer answer? Targeted ads that are tailored to your whims and tastes are more lucrative than generic ones. That's the selling point of online advertising, and the reason why companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter offer their services for free. The implied understanding is that they will make money off you by showing you ads.

Research firm eMarketer expects worldwide digital ad spending to hit $224 billion this year. Google and Facebook will command a combined $110 billion of this. Twitter, though, is estimated to get just $2.3 billion, or about 1 percent. Twitter's investors are hungry for a larger slice of the pie.

IS THIS BAD FOR YOU?

That depends on whom you ask. Twitter, of course, is giving the impression that it's a good thing, or at least not something many users will care about. In a pop-up notification telling users of the change, Twitter chirps that you will "soon start to see more relevant Tweets and ads based on your visits to sites with Twitter content." It says that the tailored ads you already see will improve and that "we've given you even more control" over your data.

Your next option is to click a highlighted "sounds good" box, or choose "review settings," which appears in less prominent type underneath. Sounds good? Not to privacy advocates.

"Twitter's announcement is bad news for online privacy. The company dropped Do Not Track and gave advertisers access to more user data," said Marc Rotenberg, president of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Also, all of the settings now default to disclosure, which means users have to go in and change their privacy settings."

YOUR OPTIONS

If you are in the U.S., move to Europe. Besides achieving your dreams of finally living in a tiny flat in Paris with a stray cat named Gaston and a mustached baker named Olivier, you will also have stronger online privacy protections.

Twitter will store data about your web activities for 30 days now instead of 10, but it won't do this for users in the European Union and the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), because it's prohibited.

Barring that, go to http://twitter.com/personalization on a browser; from an app, click the settings wheel from your profile, then choose "Settings" and "Privacy and safety." You can go through the permissions piece by piece and decide, for example, whether to turn off personalize ads (but still get non-targeted ads).

Or, you can disable all, prompting a warning that "Turning this off may make the Tweets and ads you see less relevant."

Is that what you really want? Click "Yes, I'm sure" and that's that.
I guess it depends on what the debt is for, Little said. I think we are going to have to take a hard look at construction especially at overcrowded schools . If the plan is that we dont take out debt, but Washington has 30 kids in a classroom, then no.
Massachusetts State Police deny the troop involved in an ongoing overtime abuse investigation established a quota for issuing tickets to drivers.

The Boston Globe reports troopers in the disbanded Troop E were expected to issue a minimum of eight tickets during their shifts. Troopers who failed to meet the quota reportedly were denied opportunities to work overtime.

In a statement to NBC10 Boston on Tuesday, state police said the department does not condone a quota system.

"While the department does not comment on ongoing legal proceedings, the department has no policy or operating procedures that establish quotas, and does not endorse a quota system," the statement said.

Allegations of the quota came to light following a sentencing memo for Eric Chin, who pleaded guilty in connection with the ongoing scandal and was terminated from the department in December 2018.

Dozens of former troopers from Troop E were charged for fraud and embezzlement for being paid for overtime shifts they did not work or from which they left early.
As more and more communities in New England and across the country debate bans on single-use plastic bags, lawmakers in Vermont are considering nixing them state-wide.

A key panel of the Vermont Senate took testimony Wednesday on a proposal that could change the way people shop or get take-out meals across Vermont.

Single-use plastic bags are evil, said Sage Lalor, a high school senior at Manchesters Burr and Burton Academy, who testified before the Vermont Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy.

The bill would ban single-use plastic carryout bags, drinking straws, coffee stirrers, and polystyrene foam food containers starting in July 2020. It would also create a special committee to study plastic bag bans and make recommendations to ensure goals are met.

The proposal aims to promote durable reusable bags and reduce what ends up in landfills or the environment.

The Chittenden Solid Waste District said its sorting-center machinery is often clogged with improperly-recycled bags.

As you can imagine, thats dangerous, Jen Holliday of CSWD told the senators on the committee.

Holliday urged the senators to advance the proposal.

Other states look to our models when theyre looking at legislation, so in that respect, I think it would be great for Vermont to move forward, she told the committee.

The proposal for state-wide rules follows a local ban already in place in Brattleboro, and other pushes in several individual Vermont communities.

Plastic bags are very harmful to the environment because they are so plentiful and they are so light, so they are very easily littered, Evelyn Seidner, a Burr and Burton junior, testified Wednesday.

Industry groups are pushing back.

A manufacturer of foam egg cartons testified Wednesday that some alternatives to his products, such as heavier plastic containers, are actually worse for the planet in terms of how much material and energy are used in the manufacturing.

A lobbyist for New England movie theaters suggested in testimony that a ban could be hard on consumers, saying that many movie-goers would likely prefer a lid and straw for their soda, to reduce spills in a dark and crowded theater.

Every place thats called it a success deems it a success because they implemented a ban, Phil Rozenski of the American Progressive Bag Alliance, which represents plastic retail bag manufacturers, said of bag bans elsewhere around the country. Theres a lot of unintended consequences, or because of a lack of terminology, the marks were missed.

The senate panel acknowledged the issue is complicated, so its members will consider certain exemptionslike allowing straws by request.

Committee chair Sen. Christopher Bray, D-Addison County, said his group plans to continue its discussions Thursday, with the expectation of a vote by the end of the week on whether to advance the bill.
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has requested a presidential commutation, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Friday.

The spokeswoman declined to comment further.

A petition created over the summer asks President Barack Obama to grant executive clemency to Blagojevich after a federal judge declined to lower the embattled politicians sentence.

Blagojevich is serving a 14-year sentence for his attempt to sell then-President-elect Obamas U.S. Senate seat, in addition to other corruption charges. He is being held at a low-security federal prison in Colorado.

An appeals court last year struck down five of his 18 convictions and ordered a new sentencing, but a judge this year upheld the 14-year term.

In 2008, Blagojevich was impeached from the governor's office after being charged with racketeering, bribery, wire fraud and attempted extortion.

We ask that President Barack Obama offer executive clemency and allow Rod to leave prison based on the sentence of the time that has already been served, the petition reads. Combination the prison sentence to time served would allow Rod to again be a productive citizen in society again, and be offered the opportunity to help raise his children.

Blagojevich's lawyers this week asked a U.S. appeals court to nullify the prison term and order another sentencing hearing, arguing he's been a model prisoner.
A new veterans' home in Chicago is expected to welcome its first residents next spring, more than four years after ground was broken on the project.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin attended a Friday ceremony marking the placement of the building's final structural piece. The Chicago Tribune reports officials say the home should be completed in December.

Then-Gov. Pat Quinn proposed the 200-bed facility and the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs broke ground in September 2014. However the project stalled when Quinn lost his re-election bid and then-Gov. Bruce Rauner halted construction during budget negotiations. Construction resumed when a budget agreement was reached in June 2016.

The Chicago home will be Illinois' fifth state-run, long-term care facility for veterans. The federal government is paying for about two-thirds of the more than $70 million project.
The Illinois House adopted a resolution last month designating October of this year as Zombie Preparedness Month.

The living-dead-legislation, sponsored by Democratic state Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch, encourages Illinoisans to learn about natural disasters and take steps toward stockpiling three days worth of emergency rations.

I am told that if you are prepared for zombies, then you would be prepared to deal with a natural disaster like tornadoes, blizzards, natural disasters of any kind, Welch said on the House floor in February. You would have proper food storage, you wouldve identified a place where you would go for shelter and youd be prepared for a natural disaster.

Before opening the floor up to other lawmakers, Rep. Lou Lang noted that the resolution awakened various zombies in the chamber.

State Rep. Steven Andersson jokingly asked Welch which zombies the state is defending against, citing monsters from a pair of television shows. Andersson noted that zombies from Z Nation are fast and smart, while zombies from The Walking Dead are slow, but overpowering.

Im talking about preparation for all zombies, Welch responded. If youre prepared for all zombies, youre prepared for a natural disaster."

Rep. Grant Wehrli, one of the bills co-sponsors, said he appreciates the resolution's good humor and aim, noting that the measure is a good thing.

Its not when things go well that we need a plan, its when things go off the rails, Wehrli said.

Additionally, Rep. William Davis asked why the state was equating natural disasters to a zombie apocalypse, which typically means a cataclysmic, end of the world event. He pressed the resolution's sponsor on whether this was a fair comparison.

In response, Welch said the goal was to use the allusion to grab and direct Illinoisans' attention to a worthy cause.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jeanne Ives slammed members of the Illinois House for focusing on fun and games, instead of the states ongoing budget impasse.

This bill is incredibly misplaced at a time when our budget is in such dire straits, Ives said, pointing to the states struggling economy.

This may sound like fun, but if youre really concerned about disaster, the natural disaster thats happening in Illinois is all economic and its all our doing," she added. And actually with the right policies in places, we can change this disaster into a real benefit. So lets get to work on the real stuff instead of bills like this."

At the end of the floor debate, Welch also called for budget action, stressing the importance of his resolution.

If we need to do something like Zombie Preparedness Month to get peoples attention to an important issue like preparing for a natural disaster, then so be it, he said.

The Illinois House adopted a resolution Thursday designating October of this year as Zombie Preparedness Month.

The measure, sponsored by Democratic state Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch, encourages Illinoisans to learn about natural disasters and take steps toward stockpiling three days worth of emergency rations.

I am told that if you are prepared for zombies, then you would be prepared to deal with a natural disaster like tornadoes, blizzards, natural disasters of any kind, Welch said on the House floor Thursday. You would have proper food storage, you wouldve identifeid a place where you would go for shelter and youd be prepared for a natural disaster.

Before opening the floor up to other lawmaker Thursday, Rep. Lou Lang noted that the resolution awakened various zombies in the chamber.

State Rep. Steven Andersson jokingly asked Welch which zombies the state is defending against, citing monsters from a pair of television shows. Andersson noted that zombies from Z Nation are fast and smart, while zombies from The Walking Dead are slow, but overpowering.

Im talking about preparation for all zombies, Welch responded. If youre prepared for all zombies, youre prepared for a natural disaster."

Rep. Grant Wehrli, one of the bills co-sponsors, said he appreciates the resolution's good humor and aim, noting that the measure is a good thing.

Its not when things go well that we need a plan, its when things go off the rails, Wehrli said Tuesday.

Additionally, Rep. William Davis asked why the state was equating natural disasters to a zombie apocalypse, which typically means a cataclysmic, end of the world event. He pressed the resolution's sponsor on whether this was a fair comparison.

in response, Welch said the goal was to use the allusion to grab and direct Illinoisans' attention to a worthy cause.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jeanne Ives slammed members of the Illinois House Thursday for focusing on fun and games, instead of the states ongoing budget impasse.

This bill is incredibly misplaced at a time when our budget is in such dire straits, Ives said, pointing to the states struggling economy.

This may sound like fun, but if youre really concerned about disaster, the natural disaster thats happening in Illinois is all economic and its all our doing," she added. And actually with the right policies in places, we can change this disaster into a real benefit. So lets get to work on the real stuff instead of bills like this."

At the end of the floor debate, Welch also called for budget action, stressing the importance of his resolution.

If we need to do something like Zombie Preparedness Month to get peoples attention to an important issue like preparing for a natural disaster, then so be it, he sa
Thousands of people showed up Wednesday for a chance to pack and ship products to Amazon customers, as the e-commerce company held a giant job fair at nearly a dozen U.S. warehouses.

Although the wages offered will make it hard for some to make ends meet, many of the candidates were excited by the prospect of health insurance and other benefits, as well as advancement opportunities.

It's common for Amazon to ramp up its shipping center staff in August to prepare for holiday shopping. But the magnitude of its current hiring spree underscores Amazon's growth when traditional retailers are closing stores  and blaming Amazon for a shift to buying goods online.

Amazon said it received "a record-breaking 20,000 applications" and hired thousands of people on the spot, and will hire more in the coming days. The number was less than the 50,000 it had announced it was planning to hire before the event took place.

Most of the jobs are full-time positions in packing, sorting and shipping and will count toward Amazon's previously announced goal of adding 100,000 full-time workers by the middle of next year.

The bad news is that more people are likely to lose jobs in stores than get jobs in warehouses, said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.

On the flip side, Amazon's warehouse jobs provide "decent and competitive" wages and could help build skills.

"Interpersonal team work, problem solving, critical thinking, all that stuff goes on in these warehouses," Carnevale said. "They're serious entry-level jobs for a lot of young people, even those who are still making their way through school."

The company is advertising starting wages that range from $11.50 an hour in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to $13.75 an hour in Kent, Washington, near Amazon's Seattle headquarters. The $11.50 rate amounts to about $23,920 a year. In Washington state, the current minimum wage is $11.50 but by 2020 this will increase to $13.50. By comparison, the warehouse store operator Costco raised its minimum wage for entry-level workers last year from $13 to $13.50 an hour.

Many of the job candidates Wednesday were looking to supplement other income.

Rodney Huffman, a 27-year-old personal trainer, said the $13-an-hour job in Baltimore would pay enough to help cover bills while he starts his own company.

"I'm looking to do the night shifts and then run my own company during the day," he said.

At one warehouse  Amazon calls them "fulfillment centers"  in Fall River, Massachusetts, the company hired 30 people on the spot in the first two hours. Amazon was looking to hire more than 200 people Wednesday, adding to a workforce of about 1,500. Employees there focus on sorting, labeling and shipping what the company calls "non-sortable" items  big products such as shovels, kayaks, surfboards, grills, car seats  and lots of giant diaper boxes. Other warehouses are focused on smaller products.

While Amazon has attracted attention for deploying robots at some of its warehouses, experts said it could take a while before automation begins to seriously bite into its growing labor force.

"When it comes to dexterity, machines aren't really great at it," said Jason Roberts, head of technology and analytics for mass recruiter Randstad Sourceright, which is not working with Amazon on its jobs fair. "The picker-packer role is something humans do way better than machines right now."

Steve King, 47, a job candidate in Fall River, agreed: "I don't think robots are up to snuff yet. I think they will be. Hopefully I can get in before the robots get that good and get above the robots in administration or something."

In recent years, reports have emerged about difficult working conditions at Amazon's warehouses, including deaths at two Amazon warehouses in 2014. The company also came under fire in 2011 for extreme heat at its warehouses that caused "heat-related injuries" among workers. Amazon said at the time that it took emergency actions during heat waves and subsequently installed cooling systems in its warehouses.

But many of those who showed up Wednesday were excited by the prospects of health insurance and other benefits, as well as advancement opportunities.

"I like to be busy, so I know Amazon is busy and they want hard workers," retired police officer Brian Trice said.

Trice was among those who stood in line in Baltimore on a hot day, as Amazon contractors passed out bottles of water. In Fall River, a line snaked out of the warehouse and under an air-conditioned tent. In Kent, Washington, a vendor offered free cups of shaved ice from a truck playing steel-drum music.

Among those lining up in Kent were 18-year-old Javier Costa and his 49-year-old uncle, Manuel Alvarenga. Costa said the warehouse work wasn't necessarily what he was looking for, but his uncle, a recent immigrant from El Salvador, was looking for whatever he could get.

"He was making $6 an hour in El Salvador; you can imagine what the people below him were making," Costa said. "It's a harder life down there. At this point he just needs a job."

Some left disappointed. Maureen Schell gave up after several hours at the Fall River site, describing it as a publicity stunt and a "drive to get bodies in the door so they can cherry-pick the warehouse staff they want."

"It looks like they're looking for young, healthy warehouse staff only," said Schell, a 57-year-old searching for work that will put more money into her retirement.

Amazon was also holding events at shipping sites in Ohio, Kentucky, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Illinois and Indiana.

AP writers Brian Witte, Gene Johnson and Barbara Ortutay contributed to this story.
President Donald Trump greenlighted the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, declaring it a "great day for American jobs" and siding with energy advocates over environmental groups in a heated debate over climate change.

The presidential permit comes nearly a decade after Calgary-based TransCanada applied to build the $8 billion pipeline, which will snake from Canada through the United States. Trump's State Department said the project advances U.S. national interests, in a complete reversal of the conclusion President Barack Obama's administration reached less than a year-and-a-half ago.

"It's a great day for American jobs and a historic moment for North America and energy independence," Trump said, standing alongside TransCanada's CEO in the Oval Office. Keystone will reduce costs and reliance on foreign oil while creating thousands of jobs, he said, adding: "It's going to be an incredible pipeline."

The decision caps the long scientific and political fight over a project that became a proxy battle in the larger fight over global warming. And Friday's decision, while long foreshadowed by Trump's public support for Keystone, represents one of the biggest steps to date by his administration to prioritize economic development over environmental concerns.

TransCanada, Trump said, can now build Keystone "with efficiency and with speed." Though it still faces other major hurdles, including disputes over the route, the president said the federal government was formulating final details "as we speak."

The 1,700-mile (2,735 kilometers) pipeline, as envisioned, would carry oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. It would move roughly 800,000 barrels of oil per day.

Environmentalists, Native American groups and landowners who've opposed Keystone expressed outrage, and Greenpeace said the U.S. was "moving backwards" on climate and energy policy.

"Keystone was stopped once before, and it will be stopped again," vowed Annie Leonard, the group's U.S. director.

Obama in 2015 rejected the pipeline after years of study, saying it would undercut U.S. credibility in the international climate change negotiations that culminated later that year in a global deal in Paris. He echoed the argument of environmental groups that Keystone would encourage use of carbon-heavy tar sands oil, contributing heavily to global warming.

Relying mostly on the same information, the Trump administration reversed Obama's decision Friday.

In a lengthy report, the State Department alluded to the Paris deal as one reason. Because many other countries have pledged to address climate change, it said Keystone can proceed without undermining the overall effort to slow global warming. The Paris agreement compels the U.S. and other countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades.

Keystone would strengthen U.S. energy security by increasing access to Canada's "dependable supply of crude oil," said the State Department, which had jurisdiction because the pipeline crosses the U.S.-Canada border.

But the level of those benefits has been the subject of exhaustive debate in recent years.

Obama argued the oil wouldn't stay in the U.S. because it would be exported after being processed in American refineries. TransCanada insisted Keystone "is not an export pipeline." Many energy experts insisted the truth was somewhere in between.

Environmental groups argued Canada's tar sands oil should stay in the ground. But Keystone's backers said that wouldn't happen even if the pipeline wasn't built. Without a pipeline, they said the oil would move by rail or truck, more dangerous methods which themselves contribute greenhouse gas emissions.

How many jobs Keystone will create is also widely disputed.

TransCanada promised as many as 13,000 construction jobs and Trump once predicted it "could be 42,000 jobs." The vast majority would be "indirect" jobs other industries gain from the influx of dollars and construction workers. Other estimates predict just a few thousand jobs, lasting only for the few years the pipeline is being built. And after that, only a few dozen workers would be needed to maintain the pipeline.

TransCanada CEO Russ Girling said Friday that thousands of people are "ready and itching to get to work."

Trump boasted as recently as this week that Keystone would be built with American steel, which he has required for new or expanded pipelines. But his administration has already given Keystone a pass. TransCanada has already acquired the steel for the project, and the White House has said it's too difficult to impose Trump's requirement on a project already under construction.

Although portions of Keystone are already built, it still faces obstacles to completion. In Nebraska, for example, the route must still be approved and opponents have repeatedly thwarted TransCanada's attempts to access the necessary land. A commission is expected to review the matter later this year.

Trump, told of the hiccup, pledged his help.

"Nebraska? I'll call Nebraska," he said.
A Philadelphia doctor with a suspended medical license used his colleague as a go-between to get prescription drugs so he could exchange them for sex, the United States Attorney's Office announced Wednesday.

The two doctors are among 14 people facing charges for illegally prescribing opioids to patients who didn't need the drugs in exchange for cash, the USAO said. Others include physician assistants and employees of urgent care facilities in the Philadelphia region.

According to prosecutors, 78-year-old Dr. Murray Soss had his medical license suspended in April 2017, so he turned to Dr. Frederick Reichle, 83, for help. Prosecutors say Soss would have Reichle fill out oxycodone prescriptions and then Soss would exchange the pills for sexual favors from one of his patients.

The indictment claims that when Reichle was not helping Soss to sexually exploit his patient, he was getting paid off to prescribe drugs for his colleague's other patients. Since his suspended medical license meant Soss wasn't allowed to prescribe meds, he allegedly paid Reichle to act as the middleman between people and drugs.

Using this system, Soss got paid to accept new patients - at times receiving $2,500 per person - and then allegedly funneled those patients to Reichle, who would in turn provide the prescription. "Soss and Reichle charged the patients a fee to obtain oxycodone prescriptions, written by Reichle, that were not medically necessary," the District Attorney's Office said.

They and the 12 other defendants are accused of issuing more than 3,600 illegal prescriptions between 2014 and 2017.

"As alleged in these indictments, thousands of illegally prescribed pills flooded our streets because of the conduct of these defendants," U.S. Attorney William McSwain said in a news release.

According to the USAO, the suspects routinely charged people an $80 to $140 office fee at any of four Advanced Urgent Care locations before prescribing them painkillers. Federal prosecutors say the suspects did this on a daily basis and ignored signs that patients were abusing the painkillers or even selling them off to others.

Despite urine tests showing patients testing positive for drugs like meth, heroin and cocaine, the defendants continued to prescribe them opioids, prosecutors say. Other times, the defendants allegedly ignored tests that came back negative for any drugs, which would suggest people were selling off their prescription meds.

The investigation, carried out federally by agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration; and locally by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General and the Philadelphia Police Department, among others, found that the defendants exacerbated an opioid crisis already wreaking havoc on Pennsylvania.

"The defendants issued 3,678 prescriptions which amount to hundreds of thousands of pills being used by addicted individuals," said Jonathan A. Wilson, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA's Philadelphia Field Division.

According to the DEA, opioids disproportionately contributed to the state's 5,456 overdose deaths in 2017. "The high availability and corresponding demand leading to the misuse of illicit and prescription opioids is a crisis without geographic, demographic, or socioeconomic boundaries in Pennsylvania," the agency concluded in a September 2018 report.

The 14 defendants are charged with distribution of oxycodone, conspiracy to dispense and distribute controlled substances outside the course of professional practice, health care fraud and related charges.
A Virginia-based company is one step closer to building a private immigration detention center near Chicago after trustees of a small village approved the plan despite pushback from activists.

Dwight trustees last week voted to annex and rezone 88 acres (36 hectares) where Immigration Centers of America plans to build a detention center. More than 200 people attended the village meeting, which was repeatedly interrupted by protesters.

The project could stimulate the region's economy by creating about 300 jobs, said Jared Anderson, the president of the village board. Dwight, which is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of downtown Chicago, lost jobs and businesses when the state closed a women's prison in the village, he said.

There have been multiple failed attempts in recent years to bring a detention center to the Chicago area. The most recent effort stands out because village officials backed the plan, said Fred Tsao, the senior policy counsel with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrants and refugees.

"All the others were basically killed either at a vote of the village officials or never got a vote because the proposal was withdrawn," Tsao said.

Anderson said he received more than 100 emails opposing the Immigration Centers of America project, but almost all of them were sent by people who live outside the village.

John Truscott, a spokesman for the Immigration Centers of America, agreed that most of those against the center were outsiders.

"We are more than happy to listen to what they have to say," Truscott said. "In the end, this is a decision for the citizens of Dwight."

Those against the plan complained that the only goal of for-profit facilities is to increase the number of inmates for financial gain, and have raised concerns about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies that separate children from their parents.

"Opportunities built on the back of another person aren't opportunities," said Eva Garcia, of the Chicago-based United Workers Center.

Immigration Centers of America, which already operates a detention center in Farmville, Virginia, must secure a contract with the federal government by September 2020 for the Dwight facility.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in February rejected ICA's effort to purchase a former state prison in Ionia, Michigan, because the company wasn't able to ensure detainees wouldn't be people being separated from their families.

The firm is still looking for a location in Michigan, according to a company spokesman.
A puppy stolen from a Chicago-area pet store was found in Los Angeles nearly two months after it was taken, according to police.

The male blue merle English Bulldog puppy was taken from Petland in suburban Naperville during the afternoon on Dec. 18, the store said in a statement.

It was 10 weeks old when it was stolen, according to Petland Naperville, which called the dog a "rare color of a very popular breed."

On Saturday, the Los Angeles Police Department posted on Facebook that officers had "joined forces" with Naperville Police to rescue the dog, which had been taken to California.

"I have a question," LAPD wrote, in the voice of the now-rescued pup. "I checked the weather and its cold/snowy back home. Can you pull some strings and let me enjoy some sunny SoCal weather for a couple extra days?"

The post featured photos of officers posing with the dog, as well as the puppy in an LAPD shirt and sitting at a desk at the police station.

On Sunday, LAPD posted a photo of the dog reunited with its rightful owners, who traveled from Illinois to pick up their dog.

The dog was slated to be a Christmas surprise, Petland said at the time it was stolen, adding that the family had made an appointment to see the dog the day it was stolen and was planning on taking it home that night.

"So this is bittersweet," LAPD wrote, again as the dog. "Im happy my family came all the way from Illinois to pick me up, but I will miss Los Angeles. Now if I can only get a first-class puppy seat on the flight back home  I mean, come on, I did have to deal with being stolen and taken thousands of miles away."

It was not immediately clear if anyone was taken into custody or charged in connection with the theft.
No charges had been filed in connection with the arrests in the United States Court for the Northern District of Indiana as of Tuesday afternoon.
Sini Mathews, the mother of Sherin Mathews, the North Texas 3-year-old girl found dead in a culvert in October 2017, is a free woman after the child endangerment charges filed against her were dismissed Friday.

Mathews was charged after prosecutors said she left her adopted daughter home alone while she and her husband Wesley went to dinner with their 4-year-old biological daughter on the night before the child was reported missing. Two weeks later Sherin's body was found in a drain pipe near the Mathews family home.

Sini Mathews, the mother of Sherin Mathews, the North Texas 3-year-old girl found dead in a culvert in October 2017, is a free woman after the child endangerment charges filed against her were dismissed Friday.

The charges against Sini Mathews were dropped Friday after the district attorney said there was not enough evidence to proceed. Had she been convicted, she would have faced between two and 20 years behind bars.

The charge was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it is possible the same or different charges could be leveled against her at any time.

Leaving the jail Friday, Sini told NBC 5's Maria Guerrero she felt "blessed" the charges were dismissed and that she's looking forward to being reunited with her biological daughter, who has been living with family members in Houston. She said the past 15 months she spent in jail awaiting trial were "challenging."

Leaving the jail Friday, Sini told NBC 5's Maria Guerrero she felt "blessed" the charges were dismissed and that she's looking forward to being reunited with her biological daughter, who has been living with family members in Houston.

Asked if she left Sherin home alone, Sini responded "no comment."

In a letter to the 282nd Criminal District Court, the Dallas County DA wrote that "after extensive investigation it has been determined that the state cannot prove this matter beyond a reasonable doubt at this time ... the state respectfully requests that this case be dismissed without prejudice."

Richardson police, who investigated Sherin's death and charged Sini with child endangerment, were apparently frustrated the charge was dropped. In a statement released Friday afternoon, the department said they developed sufficient probable cause to obtain the arrest warrant against Sini and that the case was approved by the district attorney and an indictment was returned by a grand jury. Richardson police also noted that several attempts to reduce Sini's bond were also unsuccessful.

"While we are disappointed with this turn of events, we will continue to work with the Dallas County District Attorney's Office to ensure justice is done," Richardson police said.

Asked if she loved Sherin, Sini responded: "Yes, absolutely. No doubt."

Sini's husband, Wesley Mathews, still faces a capital murder charge in connection with his daughter's death and he's being held on a $1 million bond. His trial is set for May.

Harris said he does not expect Sini to testify against Wesley.

"Absolutely not," he said. "This has been a tragic accident for this family and now she's just trying to get back to her other child."

Sini's attorney, Heath Harris, said he next plans to fight to get his client's passport returned and to restore visitation with her biological daughter who is living with family in Houston. Eventually, Harris said, they'll work to restore Sini's parental rights.

However, the spokesperson for CPS tells NBC 5 once parental rights are terminated it is permanent.

It is possible Sini may be able to visit with her daughter, if the girl's adopted parents who are Sini's family allow it.

Sini's attorney tells NBC 5 his client said she wanted to eat Indian food after leaving jail.
What to Know A Chester County attorney is accused of using his ex-wife's accounts to spend money on strip clubs, porn and an extramarital affair.

Joshua Janis, of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, is charged with identity theft, forgery, access device fraud and theft.

Janis was initially arrested over the summer for allegedly defrauding some of his clients.

A local attorney who was already charged with defrauding his clients was arrested again for allegedly using his ex-wifes accounts to spend money on strip clubs, pornography and an extramarital affair.

Joshua Janis, 38, of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, is charged with identity theft, forgery, access device fraud and theft.

Janis was initially arrested over the summer for allegedly defrauding multiple clients in his law practice in Chester County, Pennsylvania. After he was charged, he separated from his wife and then divorced.

After the divorce, Janis ex-wife began receiving bills from different accounts that she did not recognize, according to police. She ran a credit report and discovered Janis had opened multiple accounts in her name and created large, unauthorized expenses, investigators said. She then reported it to police.

Police determined Janis had used his ex-wifes identity and personal information to set up accounts with Capital One, T-Mobile, Bank of America, Citibank, Comcast, AT&T and other entities.

Janis allegedly used the accounts for bills at strip clubs, pornography and expenses related to an extramarital affair.

Janis incurred over $20,000 in unpaid expenses in his ex-wifes name while the other accounts had fraudulent expenses that varied from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars, investigators said.

Janis is being held on $5,000 bail. He is scheduled to go on trial in January in relation to his initial arrest.

The defendant did not hesitate to defraud clients, colleagues, and even his wife, Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan said. Anybody who had any significant contacts with the defendant needs to check and determine if they were victims of the defendants greed.
A very powerful magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck southern Ecuador in the early hours of Friday close to the country's border with Peru, although no immediate reports of possible casualties or damage were available.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake happened at 10:17 GMT 115 kilometers (71 miles) southeast of the town of Palora, in the Morona Santiago province, at a depth of 132 kilometers (82 miles).

The quake was felt in the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, and the coastal city of Guayaquil.

Peru's official geophysics institute said it registered two aftershocks of 6.06 and 6.6 magnitude in the 30 minutes that followed the first tremor.

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno said on his official Twitter account that "preliminary reports of the quakes near Macas (the provincial capital of Morona Santiago) don't show major damage."

The quakes, he wrote, "were felt all over the country."

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake that shook a central area of the Ecuadorean coast on April 16, 2016, killed more than 700 people, destroyed hundreds of houses and caused more than $3 billion of losses.
Johnnie Barto, 71, will be sentenced Monday at Cambria County Courthouse in Pennsylvania to spend whats likely to be the rest of his life in prison for sexually abusing a total of 29 children, including two relatives when they were minors, NBC News reports.

Prosecutors say Barto has admitted to sexually assaulting more than two dozen children during the four decades he practiced medicine, and that most were victimized in the examination room of Laurel Pediatric Associates, his practice in the Johnstown suburb of Richland Township.

Erika Brosig said she was 12 when she was assaulted by Barto in 1994 and remains haunted by what happened to her.

He just stuck his hand down my pants, digitally penetrated me, and he moaned, she said. The sound of that moan will never leave me.
As California's catastrophic wildfires recede and people rebuild after two hurricanes, a massive new federal report warns that these types of disasters are worsening in the United States because of global warming. The White House report quietly issued Friday also frequently contradicts President Donald Trump.

The National Climate Assessment was written long before the deadly fires in California this month and before Hurricanes Florence and Michael raked the East Coast and Florida. It says warming-charged extremes "have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration." The report notes the last few years have smashed U.S. records for damaging weather, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015.

The recent Northern California wildfires can be attributed to climate change, but there was less of a connection to those in Southern California, said co-author William Hohenstein of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"A warm, dry climate has increased the areas burned over the last 20 years," he said at a press conference Friday.

The report is mandated by law every few years and is based on more than 1,000 previous research studies. It details how global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas is hurting each region of the United States and how it impacts different sectors of the economy, including energy and agriculture.

"Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us," the report says.

That includes worsening air pollution causing heart and lung problems, more diseases from insects, the potential for a jump in deaths during heat waves, and nastier allergies.

"Annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century  more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states," the report says. It'll be especially costly on the nation's coasts because of rising seas and severe storm surges, which will lower property values. And in some areas, such as parts of Alaska and Louisiana, coastal flooding will likely force people to relocate.

"We are seeing the things we said would be happening, happen now in real life," said another co-author Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. "As a climate scientist it is almost surreal."

And Donald Wuebbles, a co-author from University of Illinois climate scientist, said, "We're going to continue to see severe weather events get stronger and more intense."

What makes the report different from others is that it focuses on the United States, then goes more local and granular.

"All climate change is local," said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the report but praised it.

While scientists talk of average global temperatures, people feel extremes more, he said.

"We live in our drought, our floods and our heat waves. That means we have to focus on us," he said.

The Lower 48 states have warmed 1.8 degrees (1 degree Celsius) since 1900 with 1.2 degrees in the last few decades, according to the report. By the end of the century, the U.S. will be 3 to 12 degrees (1.6 to 6.6 degrees Celsius) hotter depending on how much greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, the report warns.

Outside scientists and officials from 13 federal agencies wrote the report, which was released on the afternoon following Thanksgiving. It was originally scheduled for December. The report often clashes with the president's past statements and tweets on the legitimacy of climate change science, how much of it is caused by humans, how cyclical it is and what's causing increases in recent wildfires.

Trump tweeted this week about the cold weather hitting the East including: "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?"

Friday's report seemed to anticipate such comments, saying: "Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity ... Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase."

Releasing the report on Black Friday "is a transparent attempt by the Trump Administration to bury this report and continue the campaign of not only denying but suppressing the best of climate science," said study co-author Andrew Light, an international policy expert at the World Resources Institute.

During a press conference Friday, officials behind the report repeatedly declined to answer questions about the timing of its release and why it contradicts public statements from Trump. Report director David Reidmiller said questions about the timing were "relevant," but said what was in the report was more important.

Trump, administration officials and elected Republicans frequently say they can't tell how much of climate change is caused by humans and how much is natural.

Citing numerous studies, the report says more than 90 percent of the current warming is caused by humans. Without greenhouse gases, natural forces  such as changes in energy from the sun  would be slightly cooling Earth.

"There are no credible alternative human or natural explanations supported by the observational evidence," the report says.

___

The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Residents of a Florida Panhandle county devastated by a monster storm are feeling forgotten.

Private fundraising on behalf of Hurricane Michael survivors is well short of fundraising for victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Florence.

Bay County, Florida, officials say they are thankful for the help they've already received, but they need more.

The global attention the Category 4 storm first received quickly faded as national and international news media moved on to cover the midterm election and disastrous fires in California.

There were no celebrity-studded telethons for Hurricane Michael victims as there were for victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, or more than a dozen years ago for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Paulina "Bela" Sebastiao would give almost anything to be able to do a load of laundry without having to drive miles from her Mexico Beach home. Anthony Campbell would appreciate having a gas station closer than an hour away from his house in Parker. And Patrick Muth just hopes it doesn't rain when it's time to go to work: His "office" in Panama City consists of a desk surrounded by rubble under an open sky.

Life is still a struggle in the county hardest hit by Hurricane Michael, which carved a wide swath of destruction through the Florida Panhandle when it roared ashore on Oct. 10 with winds of 155 mph (250 kph).

Drivers who have lived in the area for years second-guess themselves about whether they're going the right way  the street signs, trees, and houses that once served as points of reference are gone. Many doctors' offices haven't reopened and one of the county's two hospitals was closed, even though Bay County residents are experiencing hurricane-related health problems such as respiratory illness.

Students in schools damaged by the storm have moved into other facilities, dropping enrollment by 14 percent. Bay County had about 183,000 residents before the storm, and about 7,800 people were estimated to be homeless in January.

Shopping for groceries is burdensome since many retailers haven't reopened yet. Many of those that have been selling limited goods from pop-up trailers parked in front of their damaged properties.

Garbage collectors aren't even close to removing the 15 million cubic yards (11.5 million cubic meters) of Sheetrock, insulation, tree limbs and appliances strewn everywhere by the storm.

Amid such disruption, once-mundane everyday tasks now require a combination of planning, patience and luck.

"It's just a hassle," said Campbell, who is retired. "With everyday life ... everything is different. You have to readjust."

After Hurricane Michael destroyed the Mexico Beach house of Bela and Jaques Sebastiao, they lived in a tent in their front yard and then a camper. They recently received a trailer from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but it took more than a month before they were allowed to move in since they needed a special tank for sewage. The trailer had a shower and not being able to use it for weeks was "torture," they said.

The Sebastiaos, along with two other neighbors, were the only residents who had returned to their beachside street in Mexico Beach, where homes were either blown off their foundations during the hurricane or intentionally knocked down after the storm because they were deemed too damaged. Every two weeks, they drive to their son's place in Georgia to do laundry hundreds of miles (kilometers) away.

"We don't have any showers, no laundry, no supermarkets," Jaques Sebastiao said in the days before they could move into their trailer.

In some cases, county residents have been hindered in their efforts to rebuild and repair. Mexico Beach  which became the poster child of the storm with its rows of empty cement foundations where houses once stood  had a moratorium on new construction until mid-February to allow new flood maps to be designed.

Even with the green light to go ahead, residents are having difficulty getting commitments from in-demand contractors, said Campbell, whose home developed mold after a dispute with his insurance company delayed repairs.

Principals and teachers at Bay County schools are on the lookout for students who are wearing dirty clothes or missing shoes. Northside Elementary School in Panama City was given industrial washers and dryers so students can get their clothes cleaned, and staffers have filled a broom closet with donated shoes and clothing.

"We have so many students who are living from place to place and the faculty is living place to place," said school principal Amy Harvey. "Academics has to be important, but we want to make sure these kids are emotionally OK before we can teach them anything."

Since his trucks weren't damaged, Muth kept operating his plumbing business with barely a hiccup, and he's already planning to rebuild his office space. But given the extensive damage to plumbing everywhere, his regular customers don't always realize it may take weeks before he can get to them. When making service calls miles (kilometers) away, he calls ahead to make sure the roads are clear and there is gas available in the area.

"It's just not going to be what it was for a long time," Muth said. "All of it has changed."

For law enforcement, the biggest problems since the storm are the pervasiveness of unlicensed contractors and the illegal dumping of debris on the sides of roads. Otherwise, though, the hundreds of officers from outside agencies who came to Bay County in the weeks after the storm helped keep the crime rate down, said Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford.

Would-be criminals are perhaps discouraged by signs like the one on two wooden boards covering windows at R & D Auto Electric in Parker. They read, "Stay out. You look, we shoot!"

"Make no mistake. Things are very tough here, and there are people who are living in very difficult circumstances," Ford said. "We are still hurting and we're going to be hurting for a long time."
Residents near the disputed boundary in divided Kashmir region said Sunday it was quiet overnight, their first lull since a dangerous escalation between Pakistan and India erupted last week bringing the two nuclear-armed rivals close to full-out war.

Many villagers used the calm in Pakistani-held Kashmir to leave their homes in Chakoti area along the so-called Line of Control, the demarcation line that divides the troubled Himalayan region on an Indian and a Pakistani sector, and move to safety.

Nazakat Hussain said his and many other families have no underground shelters or bunkers on their land to protect them and have no other option but to leave. The rough cold weather and snow, along with the cross-border shooting, prevented them from leaving earlier.

Pakistani government official Moazzam Zafar said some 200 families have already taken shelter in three large government buildings in the territory. Zafar said the authorities were providing warm clothing, bedding, food and medicines, and would establish more such camps.

At least eight civilians and two soldiers have been killed in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir since tensions soared following India's airstrike last Tuesday inside Pakistan that New Delhi said targeted militants behind a Feb. 14 suicide bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops.

Pakistan retaliated, shooting down a fighter jet on Wednesday and detaining its pilot, who was returned to India on Friday. India, in turn, on Saturday handed over the body of a Pakistani civilian prisoner beaten to death by inmates in a jail in India last week. The man, Skahir Ullah, was buried later Sunday in his home village of Sialkot in Punjab province.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan practically since their independence from British rule in 1947. The two countries each claim Kashmir in its entirety and have fought two of the three wars between them over it.

The rivals struck a cease-fire deal in 2003 but regularly violate it and trade cross-border fire.

On Sunday British Prime Minister Theresa may spoke by phone with Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan welcoming the return of the captured Indian pilot and reduction in tensions.

But she also urged Khan to crack down on terrorist groups operating in Pakistan, according to a Downing Street statement.

"The Prime Minister emphasized the importance of Pakistan taking action against all terrorist groups, in support of global efforts to combat terrorism," the statement said.

Associated Press writer Zarar Khan and Danica Kirka contributed to this report.
The Israeli military launched an operation on Tuesday to "expose and thwart" tunnels it says were built by the Hezbollah militant group that stretch from Lebanon into northern Israel.

The military said the tunnels were not currently being used by militants and that its work to find and neutralize them was taking place inside Israeli territory. However, the Israeli operation could send tensions soaring between Israel and its Iranian-backed foe, which have both been preoccupied with other conflicts since their last conflagration more than a decade ago.

"We see Hezbollah's activities as a flagrant and blatant violation of Israeli sovereignty" and of U.N. resolutions, said Lt. Col Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman. "This activity is another example of the negative effects of Iranian entrenchment in the region."

The military did not disclose how many tunnels snake into Israeli territory from Lebanon nor what tools it was using to deal with the threat, although it said the operation could last for weeks. Israel has spent years attempting to tackle a network of tunnels from the Gaza Strip into Israel and has used a variety of methods to destroy tunnels and prevent them from being rebuilt.

A Lebanese military official told The Associated Press that Lebanese troops and military intelligence agents, along with U.N. peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon, were observing the border on Tuesday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, had no further details.

Israel has been using earthmovers and other large machinery to build a massive wall along its northern border, saying the barrier is needed to protect civilians from Hezbollah attacks. While the construction has prompted complaints from the Lebanese army, Hezbollah has not responded, an indication it could remain restrained amid the new operation.

Israel, meanwhile, gave no special orders to residents of northern Israel, signaling that it too was not expecting an immediate response from Hezbollah.

The existence of the tunnels did not appear to have surprised Israel.

Conricus said that Hezbollah has been developing an offensive plan against Israel that would "shift the battleground into Israel." The group would use firepower and ground units and "the surprise component of that plan was supposed to be tunnels that would allow infiltrators into Israel."

He added that Israel has investigated the possibility of underground Hezbollah tunnels since 2013 and that a task force has been searching for them for more than two years. He did not explain why the operation was launched now.

On Tuesday, bulldozers and military vehicles were seen operating near the pastoral Israeli border town of Metula. Residents of the area told Israeli media they had been hearing digging noises for years and had reported their suspicions to the military.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah and its Al-Manar TV did not make any mention of the Israeli operation.

An official from the so-called "Axis of Resistance"  a grouping led by Iran and made up of Syrian officials, Iraq Shiite militias, Hezbollah and other groups  said Hezbollah fighters were "on high alert to confront any possible Israeli aggression." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the group's military activities with the media.

Malene Jensen, spokeswoman for the U.N. force in Lebanon known as UNIFIL, said the situation in the peacekeepers' "area of operation remains calm" and that they are in touch with all relevant parties to make sure calm and stability is maintained.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006 that ended in a stalemate. Israel's border with Lebanon has been relatively quiet in the years since, but Israel has continued to identify the Shiite militant group and its expanding weapons cache of tens of thousands of rockets as a major threat.

The Israeli operation began hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a snap trip to Brussels to meet U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in which the two discussed "ways to halt together Iranian aggression in the region," including in Lebanon.

Israel has long voiced concern about Iran's growing military presence along its northern border, warning of an Iranian corridor that could assist in the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah. Israel has generally refrained from engaging in Syria's civil war, though it has carried out scores of airstrikes against what Israel says were Iranian shipments of advanced weapons bound for Hezbollah.

The operation comes weeks after Netanyahu faced a major crisis in his governing coalition over the handling of a cease-fire with Gaza militants. Amid the crisis he took on the defense portfolio from his resigning minister and promised to pursue a hard line against Israel's enemies during what he described as a "complex" security situation.

Although its attention has been diverted to violent protests along its border with Gaza in recent months, Israel's main security concerns lie to the north, along the border with Lebanon.

Israeli officials have long warned the threat posed by Gaza's Hamas rulers pales in comparison to that of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah  a heavily-armed mini-army with valuable combat experience and an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets that can reach nearly every part of Israel.

Hezbollah meanwhile has also been distracted by the war in Syria, where it has fought fiercely alongside Assad's troops. With Syria's civil war winding down, Hezbollah is now free to re-establish itself back home in Lebanon and refocus on Israel.

Neither side appears interested quite yet in another full-fledged confrontation like the 2006 war, but any skirmish could spark an all-out conflict along the tense border.

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed to this report.
The fatal mauling of a zoo intern by a lion that escaped from a locked pen illustrates the need for North Carolina regulators to crack down on unaccredited exhibitors of dangerous animals, animal welfare advocates said Monday.

Alexandra Black, 22, was attacked Sunday while cleaning an animal enclosure with other staff members. It was at least the 10th instance of an escape or attack by an animal at a privately run North Carolina wildlife facility since 1997, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

Officials said the lion somehow escaped from a nearby pen and killed the recent college graduate just two weeks after she started working at the Conservators Center near Burlington, about 60 miles northwest of Raleigh. Sheriff's deputies shot and killed the animal before retrieving Black's body.

Black's "passion was the zoological industry. ... This person wanted to spend a lifetime around these animals, and I believe that the family was very supportive of that," said Mindy Stinner, executive director of the facility.

Before deputies fired on the lion, officials made several attempts to tranquilize it or hold it at bay with fire hoses, the Caswell County Sheriff's Office said.

Visitors at the center were hustled out of the park, Stinner said.

It was not immediately clear how the lion escaped or whether it got out of the enclosure that was being cleaned. Staff said the lion never made it beyond the park's perimeter fence. The park was closed indefinitely as part of an investigation.

Black, who was from New Palestine, Indiana, graduated from Indiana University in May with a degree in animal behavior. She had also recently worked at a research and education center in Battleground, Indiana, known as Wolf Park, which is home to wolves, bison and foxes.

As she tried to narrow down her interests to a specific field, she became intrigued with animal husbandry, said Wolf Park Managing Director Dana Drenzek.

"What made her a really good fit was her passion and intelligence," Drenzek said. Black would do research on her own and come back with questions, she said.

Cara Wellman, director of IU's Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior, recalled that Black was an undergraduate teaching assistant for introductory biology.

"She was very energetic and committed to animal behavior and pursuing a career in animal husbandry," Wellman said. "This is silly, but what comes to my mind is that she was quiet and sweet. That was my impression of her."

In a statement Monday, the center said the lion named Matthai was a 14-year-old male born at the center shortly after his mother was placed there following a 2004 confiscation assisted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

No problems were found at the nonprofit nature center during inspections by the USDA in January 2017 or April 2018, according to government reports. A government inspector counted 16 lions, three tigers and two leopards among 85 total animals during the 2018 site visit.

A 2016 federal tax filing shows the center earned about $711,000 from gifts, grants and contributions while spending about $600,000 operating the center that year. An online public records search indicates the center faced state tax liens totaling thousands of dollars in 2017.

While the center is USDA-licensed, animal welfare advocates note that it's not accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which requires facilities to meet strict animal safety and security standards.

The Humane Society has urged North Carolina to go beyond the USDA licensing standards, arguing that it's among four states with particularly lax laws on private ownership of dangerous wild animals.

The organization pushed for a 2015 bill to make it illegal to own lions, tigers and other wild carnivores unless a facility was accredited by AZA or met other strict standards. The bill passed the state House but not the Senate.

"The longer North Carolina does nothing as other states continue to pass stricter and stricter laws, North Carolina is going to see people coming into the state with their collections of dangerous wild animals, and the problem is simply going to grow," Lisa Wathne, the Humane Society's director of captive wildlife protection, said in an interview.

The center was founded in 1999 as an "educational nonprofit dedicated to providing a specialized home for select carnivore species," according to its website. The site says it houses 21 species and gets more than 16,000 visitors annually after starting public tours in 2007.

A center spokeswoman, Taylor Sharp, said the facility's leadership was not available to discuss safety and security Monday. The center acknowledges its lack of AZA accreditation on the site, noting that "facilities with more limited income must carefully choose how to allocate their resources."

Associated Press Writer Sarah Brumfield contributed to this report.
Farmer Jeff Jorgenson looks out over 750 acres of cropland submerged beneath the swollen Missouri River, and he knows he probably won't plant this year.

But that's not his biggest worry. He and other farmers have worked until midnight for days to move grain, equipment and fuel barrels away from the floodwaters fed by heavy rain and snowmelt. The rising water that has damaged hundreds of homes and been blamed for three deaths has also taken a heavy toll on agriculture, inundating thousands of acres, threatening stockpiled grain and killing livestock.

In Fremont County alone, Jorgenson estimates that more than a million bushels of corn and nearly half a million bushels of soybeans have been lost after water overwhelmed grain bins before they could be emptied of last year's crop. His calculation using local grain prices puts the financial loss at more than $7 million in grain alone. That's for about 28 farmers in his immediate area, he said.

Once it's deposited in bins, grain is not insured, so it's just lost money. This year farmers have stored much more grain than normal because of a large crop last year and fewer markets in which to sell soybeans because of a trade dispute with China.

"The economy in agriculture is not very good right now. It will end some of these folks farming, family legacies, family farms," he said. "There will be farmers that will be dealing with so much of a negative they won't be able to tolerate it."

Jorgenson, 43, who has farmed since 1998, reached out to friends Saturday, and they helped him move his grain out of bins to an elevator. Had they not acted, he would have lost $135,000.

Vice President Mike Pence surveyed flooded areas in Nebraska Tuesday, where he viewed the raging Elkhorn river, talked to first responders and visited a shelter for displaced people. He promised expedited action on presidential disaster declarations for Iowa and Nebraska.

"We're going to make sure that federal resources are there for you," Pence told volunteers at Waterloo, a town of less than 1,000 residents about 21 miles (34 kilometers) west of Omaha that was virtually cut off by the floodwaters.

The flooding is expected to continue throughout the week in several states as high water flows down the Missouri River. Swollen rivers have already breached more than a dozen levees in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

The flooding, which started after a massive late-winter storm last week, has also put some hog farms in southwest Iowa underwater. The dead animals inside must be disposed of, Reynolds said.

The water rose so quickly that farmers in many areas had no time to get animals out, said Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

"Places that haven't seen animal loss have seen a lot of animal stress. That means they're not gaining weight and won't be marketed in as timely a manner, which results in additional cost," he said.

In all, Nebraska Farm Bureau President Steve Nelson estimated $400 million of crop losses from fields left unplanted or planted late and up to $500 million in livestock losses.

In a news release issued Tuesday, Gov. Pete Ricketts said there have been deadlier disasters in Nebraska but never one as widespread. He said 65 of the state's 93 counties are under emergency declarations.

In neighboring Missouri, water was just shy of getting into Ryonee McCann's home along a recreational lake in Holt County, where about 40,000 acres (16,188 hectares) and hundreds of homes have been flooded. She said her home sits on an 8-foot (2.5-meter) foundation.

"We have no control over it," the 38-year-old said. "We just have to wait for the water to recede. It's upsetting because everything you have worked for is there."

The Missouri River was forecast to crest Thursday morning at 11.6 feet above flood stage in St. Joseph, Missouri, the third highest crest on record. More than 100 roads are closed in the state, including a growing section of Interstate 29.

Leaders of the small northwestern Missouri town of Craig ordered an evacuation. The Holt County Sheriff's Department said residents who choose to stay must go to City Hall to provide their name and address in case they need to be rescued.

In nearby Atchison County, Missouri, floodwaters knocked out a larger section of an already busted levee overnight, making the village of Watson unreachable, said Mark Manchester, the county's deputy director of emergency management/911.

Officials believe everyone got out before thousands of more acres were flooded. But so many roads are now closed that some residents must travel more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) out of their way to get to their jobs at the Cooper Nuclear Station in Nebraska, he said.

"It's a lot harder for people to get around," Manchester said.

River flooding has also surrounded a northern Illinois neighborhood with water, prompting residents to escape in boats. People living in the Illinois village of Roscoe say children have walked through floodwaters or kayaked to catch school buses.

Flooding along rivers in western Michigan has damaged dozens of homes and businesses.

AP writers Jim Salter and Heather Hollingsworth contributed to this report.
According to the release, the impact for most residential customers using 4,000 gallons of water each month would be about 15 cents per month or 0.4 percent after the first phase and $2.26 per month, or 6.4 percent, after the second phase.
Nigeria's top candidates on Saturday condemned the surprise last-minute decision to delay the presidential election for a week until Feb. 23, blaming each other but appealing to Africa's largest democracy for calm.

The decision, announced five hours before polls were to open, is a costly one, with analysts at SBM Intelligence estimating an economic hit of $2 billion, plus a blow to the country's reputation. Authorities now must decide what to do with already delivered voting materials in a tense atmosphere where some electoral facilities in recent days have been torched.

Electoral commission chairman Mahmood Yakubu told observers, diplomats and others that the delay had nothing to do with insecurity or political influence. He blamed "very trying circumstances" including bad weather affecting flights and the fires at three commission offices in an apparent "attempt to sabotage our preparations."

If the vote had continued as planned, polling units could not have opened at the same time nationwide. "This is very important to public perceptions of elections as free, fair and credible," Yakubu said, adding that as late as 2 a.m. they were still confident the election could go ahead.

The new Feb. 23 election date is "without equivocation" final, he said.

Bitter voters in the capital, Abuja, and elsewhere who traveled home to cast their ballots, including from Nigeria's vast diaspora, said they could not afford to wait another seven days, and warned that election apathy could follow. Some anguished over rescheduling weddings, exams and other milestones.

If the electoral commission knew about complications, why wait until the final moment to announce a delay, asked Godspower Egbenekama, spokesman for the Gbaramatu kingdom in Delta state in the restive south. "This shows that someone is pulling the strings from somewhere."

The party backing top opposition challenger Atiku Abubakar accused President Muhammadu Buhari's administration of "instigating this postponement" with the aim of ensuring a low turnout. It urged Nigerians to turn out in greater numbers a week from now.

"You can postpone an election, but you cannot postpone destiny," Abubakar tweeted.

Buhari said he was "deeply disappointed" after the electoral commission had "given assurances, day after day and almost hour after hour that they are in complete readiness for the elections." His statement appealed for calm and asserted that his administration does not interfere in the commission's work.

A spokesman for the president's campaign committee, Festus Keyamo, accused Abubakar's party of causing the delay to try to slow Buhari's momentum.

But a ruling party campaign director in Delta state, Goodnews Agbi, said it was better to give the commission time to conduct a credible vote instead of rushing into a sham one "that the whole world will criticize later."

A civic group monitoring the election, the Situation Room, blasted the "needless tension and confusion" and called on political parties to avoid incitement and misinformation.

Nigeria's more than 190 million people anticipate a close race between Buhari and Abubakar, a billionaire former vice president. Both have pledged to work for a peaceful election even as supporters, including high-level officials, have caused alarm with warnings against foreign interference and allegations of rigging.

When Buhari came to power in 2015  after a six-week election delay blamed on extremist insecurity  he made Nigerian history with the first defeat of an incumbent president. The vote was hailed as one of the most transparent and untroubled ever in Africa's most populous country, which has seen deadly post-election violence in the past.

Now Buhari could become the second incumbent to be unseated. This election is a referendum on his record on insecurity, the economy and corruption, all of which he has been criticized by some Nigerians for doing too little too slowly.

Associated Press photographer Jerome Delay contributed.
Nissan Motor Co.'s high-flying chairman Carlos Ghosn is to be dismissed after the company said an internal investigation found he under-reported his income by millions of dollars and engaged in other "significant misconduct."

The Japanese broadcaster NHK said Ghosn was arrested Monday after he voluntarily submitted to questioning by Tokyo prosecutors. The prosecutors' office did not confirm that.

The Yokohama-based company, one of the world's largest automakers, said the violations were discovered during an investigation over several months that was instigated by a whistleblower. Ghosn, 64, also allegedly engaged in personal use of company assets, it said.

Nissan said it was providing information to the prosecutors and cooperating with their investigation. The allegations also concern a Nissan representative director, Greg Kelly, it said.

Together, the two under-reported their income by a combined 5 billion yen ($44 million) from 2011-2015, Japan's Kyodo News service reported.

Nissan's CEO Hiroto Saikawa planned to propose to its board that Ghosn and Kelly both be removed from their posts, the company said in a statement.

"Nissan deeply apologizes for causing great concern to our shareholders and stakeholders. We will continue our work to identify our governance and compliance issues, and to take appropriate measures," it said.

The Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi group is among the biggest auto alliances in the world, selling about 10 million vehicles a year. Before joining Renault, Ghosn worked for Michelin North America.

Shares in Renault SA of France plunged 14 percent early Monday. The news of Ghosn's troubles broke after Japanese markets had closed for the day.

The allegations are a serious blow at a time when Nissan and Mitsubishi Motor Co. are still overcoming scandals over their quality testing reporting.

Ghosn is credited with helping engineer a remarkable turnaround at Nissan over the past two decades, resuscitating the Japanese automaker from near bankruptcy after he was sent in by Renault.

Initially Ghosn, his nickname was "Le Cost Cutter," inspired fears of social and economic upheaval amid plant closings, mass layoffs and the potential damage his reforms might inflict on Nissan's ties with its suppliers. However, his triumph in turning the company around made him something of a national hero.

At one point years ago, his name popped up on lists of people Japanese voters wanted to become prime minister even though his nationality made him ineligible.

Ghosn served as Nissan's chief executive from 2001 until April 2017, becoming chief executive of Renault in 2005, leading the two major automakers simultaneously. In 2016, Ghosn became Mitsubishi Motors' chairman.

For the past two decades, he has maintained an unusually high profile in a nation where foreign chief executives of major Japanese companies are still relatively rare.

Ghosn has appeared on magazine covers dressed in kimono, vowing to renew the Nissan brand. He was widely praised in Japanese industry circles for delivering sorely needed cost cuts and introducing greater efficiency at a time when Nissan needed a fresh start.
The ecstatic sailor shown kissing a woman in Times Square celebrating the end of World War II died Sunday. George Mendonsa was 95.

Mendonsa fell and had a seizure at the assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he lived with his wife of 70 years, his daughter, Sharon Molleur, told The Providence Journal.

Mendonsa was shown kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse's uniform, on Aug. 14, 1945  known as V-J Day, the day Japan surrendered to the United States. People spilled into the New York City streets to celebrate the news.

Mendonsa planted a kiss on Friedman, whom he had never met.

An iconic photo of the kiss by Alfred Eisenstaedt was first published in Life magazine and is called "V-J Day in Times Square," but is known to most as "The Kiss."

It became one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century.

Another photographer, Victor Jorgensen, who was in the Navy, also captured the moment in a similar photo. The moment has been shared widely and is often seen on posters.

Several people later claimed to be the kissing couple, and it was years before Mendonsa and Friedman were confirmed to be the couple.

Mendonsa served on a destroyer during the war and was on leave when the end of the war was announced.

When he was honored at the Rhode Island State House in 2015, Mendonsa spoke about the kiss. He said Friedman reminded him of nurses on a hospital ship that he saw care for wounded sailors.

"I saw what those nurses did that day and now back in Times Square the war ends, a few drinks, so I grabbed the nurse," Mendonsa said, WPRI-TV reported .

Friedman said in a 2005 interview with the Veterans History Project that it wasn't her choice to be kissed.

"The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed," she told the Library of Congress.

She added, "It was just somebody really celebrating. But it wasn't a romantic event."

Mendonsa died two days before his 96th birthday. The family has not yet made funeral arrangements.

Friedman fled Austria during the war as a 15-year-old girl. She died in 2016 at the age of 92 at a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, from complications of old age.
A global battle between the U.S. government and Chinese tech company Huawei over allegations that it is a cybersecurity risk overshadowed the opening Monday of the world's biggest mobile industry trade fair.

Huawei has an outsize presence at MWC Barcelona, from its displays in three separate show halls down to its red sponsorship logo adorning visitor pass lanyards. The focus at this year's meeting is new 5G networks due to roll out in the coming years. But the dispute over Huawei, the world's biggest maker of networking gear, is casting a pall.

The United States government dispatched a big delegation to press its case with telecom executives and government officials that they should not use Huawei as a supplier over national security concerns. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration says the Chinese government could use Huawei equipment to snoop on the world's internet traffic  accusations Huawei has rejected, saying there has been no proof of a cybersecurity breach.

In a fresh salvo, 11 U.S. senators on Monday called for the federal government to ban solar power inverters  advanced control systems  made by Huawei, saying they pose a national security threat to U.S. energy infrastructure.

Huawei's counteroffensive includes making its case directly to government officials, companies and journalists. It has unveiled a new folding 5G phone and its executives are speaking on keynote panels at the show. Formerly known as Mobile World Congress, the show is a key forum for lobbying and deal-making that's expected to draw 100,000 visitors.

"The geopolitical tensions between the U.S.A. and China will undoubtedly be a hot topic," said Shaun Collins, CEO of research firm CCS Insight. "There is little doubt that operators around the world are concerned that draconian sanctions on their ability to use Huawei's 5G infrastructure could have detrimental effects on their 5G roll-out plans."

Behind closed doors, U.S. officials have been suggesting that Ericsson of Sweden and Finland's Nokia should be preferred suppliers, but telecom providers like Huawei for its cheap but good quality equipment. That helps lower the cost to customers of using new 5G networks, which promise lightning fast download speeds and less signal lag  advancements that will help develop self-driving cars, factory robots and remote surgery.

At Huawei's sprawling main pavilion, lit in shimmering LED lights, the company showed off virtual reality racing games that use 5G to provide crisper graphics and quicker response times than 4G.

"Definitely compared to other big global vendors, they're cost efficient," said Sharif Shah Jamal Raz, a vice president at Bangladesh mobile operator Robi Axiata, as he and his colleagues inspected Huawei's display of network base stations and modular antennas.

Trump tweeted last week that he wanted the U.S. to catch up in the 5G race through competition, "not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies." Though he didn't mention China or Huawei, the comments could be seen as a more toned-down approach to the company, which has long been blocked in the U.S.

Guo Ping, one of three Huawei executives who take turns as chairman, told reporters Sunday that he read Trump's tweet as an admission that the U.S. needs faster internet networks and is lagging in this respect.

Guo stressed that his company "will never allow for backdoors in our equipment," and it would never violate laws and regulations in countries where it operates.

U.S. allies in Europe are still making their minds up on allowing Huawei gear in 5G networks and it's not clear if Washington's lobbying campaign is having an effect, with some viewing it as a calculation of technical risks rather than as part of a broader battle for tech supremacy between China and the U.S.

The CEO of Ericsson, Borje Ekholm, said countries face "critical decisions" as they roll out 5G networks.

"As we talk to our customers, they are feeling the uncertainty and they are concerned," Ekholm said at the MWC show.

A ban on Huawei could delay the rollout of 5G in Europe by two years, said Nick Read, CEO of Vodafone, one of the world's biggest mobile operators.

The "implication is suddenly you've got to do a massive swap of equipment. Hugely disruptive to national infrastructure, consumers (and) very, very expensive," he said.

The head of Britain's government surveillance agency, Jeremy Fleming, said Monday that China's tech dominance posed a complex strategic challenge.

"We have to understand the opportunities and threats from China's technological offer," Fleming said in a speech in Singapore, according to a transcript. "We have to take a clear view on the implications of China's technological acquisition strategy in the West."

The British government is carrying out a review of the risks involved with telecom infrastructure that will help it decide on Huawei's role in 5G networks. U.K. cybersecurity officials have said previously they think the risks involved with Huawei can be managed.

GSMA, an association that represents 750 mobile operators worldwide, is recommending a testing and certification regime for Europe to ensure confidence in network security.

Guo called for the industry and governments to develop "clear and unified" cybersecurity standards and regulations, and said decisions should be made by technical experts rather than politicians.
Embattled Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax compared himself to Jim Crow-era lynching victims in a surprise speech Sunday, as he resists widespread calls to resign prompted by allegations of sexual assault.

Fairfax strongly defended himself and lashed out at his critics from his rostrum in the state Senate as the 2019 legislative session was coming to a close.

"I've heard much about anti-lynching on the floor of this very Senate, where people were not given any due process whatsoever, and we rue that," Fairfax said, referencing legislation the General Assembly passed expressing "profound regret" for lynchings in Virginia between 1877 and 1950.

"And we talk about hundreds, at least 100 terror lynchings that have happened in the Commonwealth of Virginia under those very same auspices. And yet we stand here in a rush to judgment with nothing but accusations and no facts and we decide that we are willing to do the same thing," Fairfax said.

When he finished his five-minute impromptu speech, stunned senators sat in awkward silence.

Fairfax, who is black, has been accused by two women of sexual assault. Both of the alleged victims are African American.

Earlier this month, Vanessa Tyson publicly accused Fairfax of forcing her to perform oral sex in his hotel room during the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004. Her lawyer said last week that Tyson plans to meet with prosecutors in Massachusetts to detail her allegations.

Meredith Watson has also publicly accused Fairfax of sexual assault. She issued a statement accusing him of raping her 19 years ago while they were students at Duke University.

The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but both women have come forward voluntarily.

House Republicans announced plans Friday to hold a public hearing where Fairfax, Tyson and Watson can testify, a move that Fairfax and some Democrats have panned as a political ploy.

Fairfax has indicated he won't participate in the hearing, leaving it an open question whether Republicans will try to compel him to testify. Fairfax has said the accusations should be investigated by law enforcement.

Republican House Majority Leader Del. Todd Gilbert said Fairfax's comments about lynchings were highly inappropriate.

"That is the worst, most disgusting type of rhetoric he could have invoked," Gilbert said. "It's entirely appropriate for him to talk about due process and we would intend to offer him every ounce of it, and he's welcome to take advantage of that anytime he would like."

But black lawmakers did not object to Fairfax's speech.

"He said what he needed to say," said Sen. Mamie Locke.

Virginia Legislative Black Caucus Chairman Del. Lamont Bagby said he's heard similar rhetoric from his constituents, who have expressed concerns that Fairfax is being treated unfairly because of his race.

Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring, both Democrats and both white, are embroiled in their own scandal after acknowledging they wore blackface in the 1980s. Northam has also resisted widespread calls to resign and instead said he intends to devote his remaining years in office to addressing the state's deep and lingering racial divisions.

The trio of scandals has rocked Virginia politics and exposed deep divides among Democrats.

State Democrats have expressed fear that the uproar over the governor could jeopardize their chances of taking control of the GOP-dominated Virginia legislature this year. The party made big gains in 2017, in part because of a backlash against President Donald Trump, and has moved to within striking distance of a majority in both houses.

At the same time, the Democrats nationally have taken a hard line against misconduct in their ranks because women and minorities are a vital part of their base and they want to be able to criticize Trump's behavior without looking hypocritical.
Will President-elect Donald Trump remake school lunches into his fast-food favorites of burgers and fried chicken?

Children grumbling about healthier school meal rules championed by first lady Michelle Obama may have reason to cheer Trump's election as the billionaire businessman is a proud patron of Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's while promising to curb federal regulations.

The Obama administration has made healthier, safer and better labeled food a priority in the last eight years, significantly raising the profile of food policy and sometimes drawing the ire of Republicans, farmers and the food industry. The first lady made reducing childhood obesity one of her signature issues through her "Let's Move" campaign.

In addition to the healthier school meal rules, the administration ushered a sweeping food safety law through Congress, pushed through several new food labeling regulations, started to phase out trans fats, added calorie labels to menus and suggested new limits on sodium in packaged foods. The White House has also fended off efforts in the Republican Congress to trim the nation's food stamp program.

"Food advocates are already nostalgic for the Obama era and will be playing defense for the next four years," says Sam Kass, a former White House senior adviser on nutrition and personal chef for the Obamas.

A look at some of the food regulations that could be scrapped  or tweaked  in the new administration:

MAKING SCHOOL MEALS GREAT AGAIN

Trump himself hasn't weighed in on school meal regulations. But Republicans, school nutrition directors and some in the food industry have balked at parts of the administration's rules that set stricter fat, sugar and sodium limits on foods in the lunch line and beyond. While many students have now gotten used to the healthier foods, some schools still complain that they are costly and that it's difficult to meet the standards.

"I would be very surprised if we don't see some major changes on the school lunch program" and some other food issues, said Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Agriculture Department spending.

Aderholt, who sits on Trump's agriculture advisory committee, says the Obama administration's approach was "activist driven" and people who voted for Trump are looking for a more common-sense approach.

One of many names that have been floated as a possible agriculture secretary is Sid Miller, the Texas Agriculture Commissioner who repealed a state ban on deep fryers and soda machines at schools. Miller recently got in trouble when he used a profanity on Twitter to describe Democrat Hillary Clinton; he blamed a staffer and the tweet was deleted.

THE FOOD POLICE

In September, the Trump campaign pitched rolling back food safety regulations in a fact sheet, arguing they are burdensome to farmers and criticizing increased inspections of food manufacturing facilities as "overkill." The sheet referred to the "food police" at the Food and Drug Administration. The campaign later deleted the proposal from its website.

Congress passed new food safety regulations in 2010, a year after a salmonella outbreak linked to a Georgia peanut company killed nine people. Michael Taylor, former FDA deputy commissioner for foods who oversaw the food safety rules, says it wouldn't be popular with consumers to roll them back.

"Consumers are only getting more focused on safety, health and wellness," Taylor says.

Trump himself is a self-professed germaphobe who prefers eating at fast-food restaurants because he believes they have higher food safety standards.

FOOD STAMPS

Congressional Republicans have been examining food stamps since the program's cost grew to almost $80 billion annually after the recession. Participation and costs have dipped since its 2013 high, but conservatives have suggested tightening eligibility standards or increasing work requirements. House Speaker Paul Ryan has for years championed an overhaul to the program.

Democrats in the Senate have consistently objected to any changes to the program, and will still wield influence. But they won't have the backing of a Democratic White House.

OTHER FOOD POLICY

Many other laws are either already in place or close to it, including a revised "nutrition facts" panel on the back of food packages, with a new line breaking out added sugars, a labeling law for genetically modified foods and calorie labeling on restaurant and supermarket menus.

In many cases, the rules are a result of compromise with industry. Kass says that pulling back may just create more cost and uncertainty for businesses.

"Unwinding things is really hard, especially when most of them have been implemented and industry has moved on," Kass says.

He predicts most of the regulations will stay, but that there will be little additional progress. Ongoing administration efforts to reduce sodium in food and antibiotics in meat could be casualties.

Margo Wootan, a lobbyist on nutrition issues for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says advocates will continue to be aggressive at the state and local levels, hoping change will bubble up.

"The public is more interested than ever in nutrition and will continue to press companies," she says.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that electronics giant Foxconn will build a $10 billion factory in Wisconsin that's expected to initially create 3,000 jobs, the largest economic development project in state history.

The announcement comes at a critical juncture for a Trump administration that pledged to generate manufacturing jobs but has struggled to deliver results as quickly as the president promised. Trump's plans for health care and tax cuts face a murky future in Congress, while his administration is bogged down by an investigation into Russia's possible ties with his presidential campaign.

In a White House speech, Trump said the financial commitment by Foxconn CEO Terry Gou was a direct result of his electoral win.

"If I didn't get elected, he definitely would not be spending $10 billion," Trump said. "We are going to have some very, very magnificent decades."

But the decision to build the plant in Wisconsin also stemmed from $3 billion in state economic incentives over 15 years if Foxconn invests $10 billion in the state and ultimately adds 13,000 jobs. The incentives would only be awarded if Foxconn creates the jobs and pays an average salary of nearly $54,000.

The Wisconsin factory, scheduled to be open by 2020, would be massive. The campus dubbed "Wisconn Valley," would cover nearly 1.6 square miles and be three times the size of the Pentagon.

It will produce liquid-crystal display panels, or LCDs, that are used in televisions and computer screens. It will be located in the congressional district of House Speaker Paul Ryan. It would mark a substantial gain for a state that currently has 472,000 manufacturing jobs and is still recovering from factory layoffs  including the closure of a General Motors plant in Ryan's hometown  that hit after the 2008 financial crisis.

Taiwan-based Foxconn is perhaps best known for assembling Apple iPhones in China.

Inside the White House, discussions with Foxconn about opening a U.S. plant were led over several months by Jared Kushner, a senior adviser and the president's son-in-law, and Reed Cordish, an assistant to the president on technology initiatives. The president had met personally with Gou, who on Wednesday complimented Trump's leadership at the event by saying, "Mr. President, the eagle flies."

Seven states had competed for the Foxconn plant. By awarding the plant to Wisconsin, Foxconn would appear to be giving a victory to both Trump and the state's Republican governor, Scott Walker, who is up for re-election next year.

Other states that vied for the plant are Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Foxconn said in a release the announcement was just the first of several investments the company will be making in the U.S.

Walker and several other Wisconsin officials, including Ryan, attended the White House announcement.

Landing the multistate competition has been cast as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Foxconn is the biggest contract assembler of smartphones and other devices for Apple and other brands. It has been eyeing building the plant in a part of Wisconsin represented by Ryan, who said he has met with company officials at Walker's request.

Critics have cautioned that Foxconn has made promises before to invest in the U.S. and not followed through. Foxconn promised in 2013, for example, to invest $30 million and hire 500 workers for a new, high-tech factory in Pennsylvania that was never built. State Sen. Alberta Darling, co-chair of the Wisconsin Legislature's budget committee, said any deal would be examined with a "fine-toothed comb" and need to win approval by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Walker said he planned to call a special legislative session to consider the incentives. They include up to $1.5 billion in income tax credits for job creation, $1.35 billion in income tax credits for capital investment and up to $150 million in a sales tax exemption for the purchase of construction materials.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, who is from Ryan's congressional district in southeast Wisconsin, told WTMJ-TV on Tuesday that Trump, when flying over the area in Kenosha County during a visit to Wisconsin in April, noticed vacant land where a former Chrysler Motors plant used to be.

"He said, 'That land should be used,'" Priebus said. "So when Foxconn came into the White House, into the Oval Office, the president said, 'I know a good spot that you should go to, that place in Kenosha.'"

That part of the state is an attractive location for a large plant because of the area's proximity to Lake Michigan and its abundant water supply. To make flat-panel displays, the company will need access to great quantities of water to keep work spaces dust-free, among other things.

The news sent a jolt of excitement across Wisconsin, even among longtime Democratic critics of Walker.

"It's an exciting opportunity," said Democratic state Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca.

Barca, like many Democrats, voiced concern about how much taxpayers may have to contribute in tax breaks and other incentives.

"We want to make sure it's a fair deal for everybody," he said. "We want a win-win-win."
Experts said Wednesday that only 22 vaquitas remain in the Gulf of California, where a grim, increasingly violent battle is playing out between emboldened fishermen and the last line of defense for the smallest and most endangered porpoise in the world.

Jorge Urban, a biology professor at the Baja California Sur University, said the 22 vaquitas were heard over a network of acoustic monitors. That was in fact higher than many had expected; some had estimated as little as 15 would remain in the Gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortez, the only place in the world where the vaquita marina is found.

It may be a sign the vaquita is holding on, and what is keeping it alive is a thin line of defenders: Every night 22 volunteer crew members from ships operated by the environmentalist group Sea Shepherd go out to search the upper Gulf for hidden gill nets that catch prized  but protected  totoaba fish and drown vaquitas.

It is increasingly dangerous work. Over the last month, the Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat has suffered two attacks in which dozens of fast fishing boats pounded the ship with rocks and firebombs.

"If we stop operations, the vaquita will go extinct," said Sea Shepherd first mate Jack Hutton. "It's just out here removing nets, if we stop removing them then there's no hope for the vaquita."

The prime season to catch totoaba, which peaks in May, is causing a frenzy. The big fish's swim bladders are considered a delicacy in China and can bring thousands of dollars apiece at retail. With so few vaquitas left, a mass totoaba fishing effort this spring could wipe out the species.

"We know we are going to keep getting attacked," said Hutton, who was operating a drone that fishermen shot out of the sky last year. "We know we are risking our lives, but if we don't the vaquita has no chance."

The activists are not alone. Mexican marines and federal police aboard the Farley Mowat fired rubber bullets during the most recent attacks. But officials are clearly not capable of handling the attacks, or preventing fishermen from setting the submerged, hidden nets, which are banned by law from the area. The Mexican Navy and Environment Ministry did not reply to request for comments.

But marines have been intimidated by the fishermen, said documentary filmmaker Richard Ladkani, who filmed as they stood by while fishermen set out in their boats or as they battled authorities to free detained fishermen. Ladkani directed "Sea of Shadows," which won the audience award at the Sundance film festival this year for world documentaries.

Ladkani said he accompanied the Navy on wild, dangerous nighttime chases at top speed in which fishermen tried  and sometimes succeeded  in ramming naval patrol boats to disable their engines. "Why is the navy not using force?" Ladkani wondered. "We were on 10 chases, and every time the pangas (boats) got away."

Ladkani also has a theory about why the fishermen are getting so violent and desperate: Sea Shepherd is successful enough at pulling out nets  which cost about $3,000 apiece  that the fishermen are going into debt, borrowing money from the cartel of Chinese and Mexican totoaba traffickers to buy new nets.

"This is a vicious circle where people get more indebted," said Ladkani. "This one fisherman wound up owing the cartels $54,000 for 18 nets. He tried to get out, he finally came out and said there is no way I can repay the cartel. He was murdered."

Sunshine Rodriguez, a leader of the fishermen in the Baja California town of San Felipe, agreed that the illegal totoaba trade has not brought riches to the town: A total ban on gillnets has paralyzed the fishing fleet, and government payments meant to compensate for lost fishing income haven't been paid in at least three months.

"I know people who are dedicated 100 percent to that (totoaba) business, and don't even have $10 to put gas in the tank of their panga," said Rodriguez. "The Chinese are making the profit, that I can tell you."

"What did they expect the people to do, starve?" Rodriguez asked, saying the idea that fishermen make thousands of dollars for each totoaba bladder is a myth. He said a half-kilogram bladder from an average-sized fish commands only about $400, and prices are dropping.

Rodriguez said the Chinese-Mexican illegal dealers keep cutting the price because the fishermen "are starving. ... They say 'we'll keep on dropping it, we'll keep on making more profit, and these people are going to keep fishing because they have nothing else to do."

Investigator Andrea Costa of the group Elephant Action League agreed that prices appear to be falling, calling that "the first good news for the vaquita in a long, long time." He attributed that to his group's work in identifying illegal traders in Baja California's Chinese community, noting that the Chinese government recently arrested 16 traders.

Costa, who spent a year and a half working undercover to expose the totoaba trade, agreed with Rodriguez on another point: The Mexican government's strategy of focusing almost exclusively on cracking down on the fishermen is never going to work unless it also cracks down on the middlemen and the traders.

"As long as you hammer, put all your efforts only on the fishermen, only on removing the nets, you will fail," Costa said. "You don't address the problem, and the problem is a very sophisticated supply chain

As long as you don't hit these people and you do that ... you'll bleed out, not only the vaquita but the whole marine life in the Sea of Cortez."

Rodriguez, the fishermen's leader, puts it this way: "Everybody is illegal out there. Regardless if it's a shrimp net or a totoaba net, there is a ban on nets.

"So if you're going to catch me and take my boat away for using a shrimp net, what do you think I'm going to do instead? I'm going to do the most profitable illegal thing because I'm still illegal."

But in the meantime, the Sea Shepherd goes each night and hauls in nets, sometimes as many as 15 per night. The fishermen go out each night and lay nets because many of them can't stop; they're too in debt to the traders.

The Sea of Cortez, which Jacques Cousteau once called "the aquarium of the world," is suffering long-term damage from the nets, which are carefully weighted to float below the surface to avoid detection.

"The fact that they hide their nets does mean that we find active nets months later that have not been checked or forgotten about or lost by the poachers," said Hutton. "It means that there's walls of death that are just going to sit out there forever if no one picks them up

Ladkani said, "When it's totoaba season at the end of May, they may have killed everything by then."
The cause of a house fire in Willimantic is under investigation on Tuesday morning.

A family at a home on Winter Street awoke to smoke in their home and called 911, fire officials said.

When firefighters arrived, they said the family was out of the house and there was a small amount of fire showing from the front of the bottom of the house.

Crews were able to extinguish the fire quickly. Firefighters said they then did an extensive search to make sure it wasn't in the walls.

The family was allowed back in the home after firefighters finished their investigation.

The cause of the fire is unknown at this time.
A contentious proposal to allow bear hunting in Connecticut has been scaled back, now focusing only on farmers whose livestock, poultry and bees are destroyed by the animals.

NBC Connecticut Investigates explored the idea of bringing back a bear hunt in a piece that aired last November. Legislators have presented several approaches manage to the uptick in the Connecticut bear population.

The General Assembly's Environment Committee voted Monday to amend a bill that would have authorized regulated bear hunting in Litchfield County.

The new version of the bill, which awaits further action by the Senate, updates current law allowing the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner to grant permits for the taking of certain nuisance wildlife that has destroyed crops. According to the Humane Society of the United States, unlike the original hunting proposal, which would be restricted to Litchfield County, this adaptation allowing farmers to deal with bears that are nuisance wildlife is statewide.

Data courtesy of Connecticut DEEP

Under the newly revamped bill, damage to livestock, poultry and bees would be added.

The Connecticut Farm Bureau says bears are "one of those animals that are causing havoc on farms."

The committee also passed legislation encouraging more non-lethal bear management techniques.

University of Connecticut researcher Dr. Tracy Rittenhouse explains what her study revealed about where bears live in Connecticut.

The Humane Society of the United States said in a statement that they were disappointed in the vote and that there are already rules on the books that allow farmers to kill bears to defend agricultural products.

"Liberalizing landowner rights to kill bears is a strategy that has been used in other states by trophy hunters to create a loophole. Our current law is intentionally limited to landowners, leasees, and their employees in order to prevent reckless killing, and should NOT be altered. Considering CTs small bear population, these restrictions are all the more vital.

Non-lethal strategies for farmers-- like properly securing animals and crops, aversive conditioning, and temporary diversionary feeding programs-- have the benefit of being long-term solutions. Killing only creates an endless, cruel cycle of killing," the statement read in part.

A number of legislators have decided to take aim at bills connected to our states rising bear population.
The Lake County Board of Elections and Voter Registration recognized Mucci for her indomitable spirit in the singular exercise of the right to vote and in demonstrating the importance and significance of the right of each and every citizen to cast his or her vote for the candidates of their choice.
Police have arrested an employee of a substance use disorder treatment center in North Haven who is accused of stealing patients identities to get services like cable and internet.

North Haven police arrested 39-year-old Kimberly Telford, of New Haven, who they said was a counselor at an outpatient center.

She is accused of using access to patient and client information to open a fraudulent account to obtain services such as cable and internet under a patients name.

Police said she confessed to doing this to more than one person at the center and additional warrants are being prepared.

Telford was charged with identity theft, criminal impersonation and larceny and was released after posting a $35,000 bond.
A man is facing murder charges after a stabbing at an apartment complex in Rocky Hill on Monday night.

Officers received a 911 call from the Century Hills Apartment Complex shortly after 11 p.m. reporting that a man had been stabbed multiple times inside of an apartment.

When officers arrived, they said they found the man who had been stabbed and immediately began life saving measures.

The man who was stabbed was transported to Hartford Hospital where he later died. Officers have not released his name while his immediate family is notified.

Officers said they have arrested and charged Kenton Dalton with murder. He is being held on a $1 million bond.

The Connecticut States Attorney's Office and Connecticut State Police Major Crime Division are assisting the Rocky Hill Police Detective Division with the investigation.

The investigation is ongoing and officers said there is no threat to the public.
Multiple towns have been awarded a grant by the Connecticut Department of Housing to help homeowners with crumbling foundations test them for pyrrhotite.

The Connecticut Department of Housing (DOH) said Vernon, Ellington and Stafford were given a grant totaling $480,000 to help with the testing. The money will provide eligible property owners up to $5,000 to test their foundations with no upfront or out of pocket costs.

"The use of the money to test crumbling foundations in the municpalities of Vernon, Ellington and Stafford, often considered ground zero for crumbling foundations, is a welcome commitment. DOH intends to continue to work collaboratively with these municipalities in order to find a solution to an issue that affects one-third of our state," said Connecticut Department of Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno in a statement.

Vernon, Ellington and Stafford are among the towns hardest hit by crumbling foundations, officials said. Town leaders held a joint public hearing in August to gather input from the public that helped to form this grant application.

The program funded by this grant award will primarily benefit low-moderate income households, according to officials.

Information on how to apply for the testing program can be found at the Social Services Department in each town.
What to Know Beto O'Rourke told Oprah Winfrey in an interview Tuesday that he would decide this month whether or not he would run for president.

O'Rourke lost to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R) by less than three percentage points in the November midterms.

The Democratic primary field already includes notable names like Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ).

Breaking months of near-silence about his political future, Democrat Beto O'Rourke said Tuesday that he would announce his decision about a 2020 presidential run "before the end of the month" and suggested he's leaning toward it.

The former Texas congressman, who found political stardom in his unsuccessful Senate bid last fall, opened up about a potential 2020 run in a conversation with a bigger star, Oprah Winfrey, during a taping of her program "Oprah's SuperSoul Conversations from Times Square."

"I have been thinking about running for president," O'Rourke told Winfrey as the packed audience cheered. The 46-year-old Democrat cited his desire to help unify the country. "I'm so excited at the prospect of being able to play that role."

O'Rourke dazzled Democrats last year by nearly defeating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in the country's largest red state. In recent weeks, however, his presidential prospects have been overshadowed by the generally well-received 2020 campaign launches of Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

His comments Tuesday offered a powerful reminder that the Democratic field is far from set.

Winfrey, who has flirted with a potential run of her own, appeared to encourage O'Rourke to run during the wide-ranging interview that spanned nearly an hour.

"What's it going to take for you to say, 'Yes, I'm doing it?'" she asked.

The decision, O'Rourke said, would really be up to his family. He has three children under the age of 13.

"For the last seven years, my family hasn't seen me," he said. He added, "That's the far more important responsibility."

Winfrey herself has been the center of 2020 speculation, though she has said she doesn't plan to run. She remains an influential figure in Democratic politics, however.

Her endorsement of Barack Obama was pivotal to his 2008 campaign. She also took the rare step of campaigning for Democrat Stacey Abrams ahead of her near-upset in the Georgia governor's race.

Winfrey's show blurs the line between politics and pop culture. The lineup on Tuesday featured actors Bradley Cooper and Michael B. Jordan and philanthropist Melinda Gates, underscoring the sense of celebrity that surrounds O'Rourke.

O'Rourke's low profile in recent weeks has taken curious turns.

He treated Instagram followers to a glimpse inside his mouth during a teeth cleaning while trying to decry the Trump administration's border wall. He also recently traveled in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado, but his meandering online posts documenting the journey highlighted things like the open-face roast beef sandwich he had for lunch rather than offering hints about how he'd handle the rigors of a presidential campaign.

Compare that to his potential 2020 rivals swarming states that kick off presidential voting: New York Sen. Kristen Gillibrand and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper will be in South Carolina this week, Booker is visiting Iowa and Warren is set to formally announce her presidential bid Saturday, then hit New Hampshire and Iowa.

O'Rourke said he needed to spend time traveling alone to help overcome "a profound disappointment in myself that I let so many people down." He said he emerged with the reinforced belief that "people are so good."

The Texas Democrat, who represented a border state in Congress for six years, also took aim at President Donald Trump's push to build a border wall, calling it "a racist response to a problem that we don't have."

Though the taping was Tuesday, the interview won't air on Winfrey's network until Feb. 16. After that, O'Rourke doesn't have another headline-grabbing event on his schedule  at least not yet.
On the cusp of another White House run, Joe Biden faces a daunting challenge that could complicate his path to the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination: money.

Those close to the former vice president believe he would start off at a fundraising disadvantage compared to would-be rivals, whose campaigns have benefited from an early flood of small-dollar donations from the most liberal wing of the party. Biden, a 76-year-old lifetime politician with strong connections to the party's establishment, would be forced to rely on an "old-school grind-it-out" plan to generate campaign cash from wealthy individual donors, according to a person with direct knowledge of Biden's thinking.

Questions about money are among the nagging issues Biden is still considering as he weighs launching a campaign. He's decamped this week to St. Croix, a favorite Biden family vacation spot in the Caribbean, to discuss the remaining roadblocks with his wife, Jill.

Biden has long disliked the time-intensive process of political fundraising. But with virtually no campaign operation in key states, he'd need to generate millions of dollars in a matter of weeks should he enter what is expected to be the most expensive presidential campaign in U.S. history.

"He obviously has a lot of friends among the Democratic donor community," said David Axelrod, one of former President Barack Obama's top political advisers. "But fundraising today is turbo-charged by social media. He's not of the social media generation."

The fundraising question comes as Biden allies across the country feel an increasing sense of urgency for the Democratic heavyweight to declare his intentions. He has repeatedly hinted that he's close to making a decision, but those close to him now believe that an announcement, which some expected in January, might be delayed until April.

Democrats in key primary states are warning that it's becoming more difficult to persuade Biden holdouts to be patient as a crowded field of presidential contenders such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders actively fight for their support.

In South Carolina, which holds the first primary contest in the South, Charleston County Democratic Party Chairman Brady Quirk-Garvan said Biden's indecision has created a holding pattern for potential staffers and supporters. As time drags on, he said, he's fielding calls from some who are confused by Biden's indecision.

"Several have said it's concerning that he can't seem to make up his mind," Quirk-Garvan said. "If you're going to run for president, most people want someone who's pretty damn sure they want to be president."

Biden has made clear to his family, friends and advisers that he wants to run, but he has held off giving his team the final go-ahead to launch a campaign. Among the factors giving him pause is concern about the impact a presidential run would have on his family, particularly given his son Hunter's complicated personal history.

Even so, Biden adviser Steve Ricchetti has been signaling to potential Democratic rivals that Biden is expected to run. Other advisers including Greg Schultz and Peter Kavanaugh have been in regular contact with potential staff across the country to ensure Biden could quickly ramp up a national organization.

Those close to Biden expect him to signal his decision  at least internally  in the coming days to be followed by an intense period of hiring ahead of an April announcement should he decide to run.

Biden's likely entry into the race was among the factors that led former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to decide this week that he would not launch a campaign. Biden and Bloomberg spoke after the former mayor announced his decision, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.

That person, like others in the story, spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

Biden has openly raised questions about the social media and fundraising landscape, which has changed dramatically since he first joined Obama on the Democrats' 2008 presidential ticket.

Several 2020 Democratic contenders have condemned super PACs in recent weeks. Warren, who has been struggling to raise money, took it a step further late last month, vowing not to court wealthy donors at all.

Biden acknowledged during a recent appearance at the University of Delaware that fundraising is a major consideration.

"We also are making a decision on whether or not we can fund this campaign on my conditions because I will not be part of a super PAC  and to see whether or not it's realistic," Biden said. "An awful lot of people have offered to help  the people, who are usually the biggest donors in the Democratic Party, and, I might add, some major Republican folks."

A frequent headliner on the Democratic money circuit, Biden is well-known among donors but does not have a pool of big-dollar fundraisers lined up ready to commit to his campaign.

And his fundraising track record is underwhelming at best.

He faced little more than token opposition in his long run as a Delaware senator, requiring a relatively light fundraising burden. And in his 2008 presidential run, Biden raised barely half of the $20 million fundraising goal he set before dropping out of the race following a weak finish in the Iowa caucuses.

He was outraised by four other Democratic candidates in the final three months of his campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

With no clear front-runner in the crowded 2020 Democratic field, many of Obama's donors are holding off on making commitments to one candidate or plan to give smaller amounts to multiple candidates in the coming months. Biden's entry into the race is unlikely to change that approach, according to a Democrat who has spoken to several Obama donors.

But at least one Obama donor, Don Peebles, a two-time member of the former president's national finance team, expressed confidence in Biden's fundraising ability.

"I think he'd raise more money than several of the top candidates combined," Peebles said, vowing to support Biden if he runs. "He's the best chance that the Democrats have to win in November."

Some Biden loyalists are not as patient.

In Iowa, Roxana Moritz, who was part of Biden's Iowa steering committee during his failed 2008 bid, expressed concern that by waiting so long, Biden was allowing other candidates to peel off some of his supporters.

"The longer it goes, the harder it gets" for the former vice president to consolidate support, said Mortiz, the Scott County auditor.

While she's still certain to support Biden if he runs, Moritz is getting anxious.

"I wish that he would be clear on his plans," she said.

___

Pace reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C.; Alexandra Jaffe in Des Moines, Iowa; and Hunter Woodall in Manchester, N.H., contributed to this report.
A New Hampshire state worker had a deep gash on his face after a large piece of ice came flying off a truck, smashing right through his windshield.

William Taylor of the New Hampshire Department of Transportation has eight to nine stitches, a fat lip and other cuts on his face.

"I thought I was going to die," he said.

It happened as Taylor was driving home from work Thursday on Route 101 westbound in Raymond. A thick sheet of ice came off a cargo container on a truck.

"It just had a sheet of ice on the top of it, that was close to six inches thick," said Taylor. "I saw it coming. It was somersaulting through the air pretty slowly."

Taylor was about five car lengths behind the truck, but he says that with cars around him, he couldn't swerve out of the way:

"It was heading straight for my mouth and I just took my head and chin and just took it on the head," he said.

A good Samaritan pulled over to help him and called 911.

Taylor says the the truck driver knew what happened.

"He pulled over on the shoulder about a quarter mile up the road," he said. "As soon as the ambulance showed up, he took off."

NH state police also using this as a reminder of Jessica's Law, which says failing to clear ice and snow off your vehicle constitutes negligent driving.

"There's no good excuse to not remove this stuff from your vehicles," Taylor said. "I strongly encourage the driver to turn themselves in, because it will go much better for you than if they track you down."

New Hampshire State Police say ask anyone who witnessed the incident to call them. They're looking for any information to help find the truck driver.
Weekend storms raked parts of the Southeast, leaving deaths and injuries in their wake as a tornado smashed into a commercial district in a small Mississippi city and drenching rains fed a rising flood threat.

A woman was killed when a tornado hit Columbus, Mississippi, and a man died when he drove into floodwaters in Tennessee, officials said.

Columbus Mayor Robert Smith Sr. said 41-year-old Ashley Glynell Pounds of Tupelo and her husband were renovating a house Saturday evening, and when the husband went to get them something to eat, the building collapsed in the storm and killed her.

Smith said 12 other people were injured, but the injuries did not appear to be major. City spokesman Joe Dillon said the tornado also seriously damaged a school and two community center buildings.

"There was pretty extensive damage," Dillon said Sunday, a day after the Columbus twister struck. "But the streets today have been filled with workers and volunteers, all working hard to clean up the mess."

In Knox County, Tennessee, officials said a man died after his vehicle became submerged in high water.

Saturday afternoon's tornado in Columbus was confirmed on radar, said meteorologist Anna Wolverton with the National Weather Service in Jackson. She told The Associated Press that experts were dispatched Sunday to the east Mississippi city of about 23,000 people to gauge the tornado's intensity. Officials said a second, smaller twister damaged a mobile home and a shed and snapped trees in a small community in the region that same afternoon as severe storms rolled through.

At First Pentecostal Church in Columbus, the Rev. Steve Blaylock said the building was "a total loss," with a wall pushed in, holes in the roof and substantial water damage. He and his congregants tried to salvage what they could on the morning after the storm. But he said they still held a Sunday prayer service and even went ahead with a scheduled baptism, using a borrowed portable baptismal pool.

"We will rebuild. We've got a good church here," Blaylock said. "It'll be a testimony of God."

Residents of one street on the east side of Columbus were out early Sunday morning with chain saws, clearing away branches of the many trees that had snapped or were uprooted in the storm. Metal siding and roofing materials were scattered throughout the neighborhood of older homes. While the houses generally remained standing, sheds and outbuildings were mostly demolished.

Lee Lawrence, who said he has been selling used cars for decades in Columbus, told The AP that four buildings on his car lot were destroyed. He said trees toppled across vehicles and car windows were blown out.

Lawrence said he was at home getting ready to take a bath when the storm struck.

"The wind all of a sudden just got so strong and it was raining so much you could hardly see out the door, and I could hear a roaring. Evidently it came close," he said, speaking with AP in a phone interview.

"It will be a start-over deal," Lawrence said. "I can't say it will come back better or stronger, but we'll come back."

A photographer working for The AP in Columbus said some antique cars on Lawrence's lot were resting in the debris of a destroyed building a nearby pet grooming business appeared now to be mostly twisted piles of metal. A printing shop had been speared by a pipe.

Elsewhere around the South, homes, highways, parks and bridges were flooded or put out of commission amid the heavy rains and severe storms.

News outlets report that water rescues have been performed in some Middle Tennessee counties.

Interstate 40 near the Tennessee line with North Carolina was closed by a rockslide, one of the dozens of roads and highways shut down throughout the region, transportation officials said.

Officials said a mudslide destroyed a Subway restaurant in Signal Mountain, Tennessee. No injuries were reported.

In West Virginia, authorities have evacuated 11 families in the southern part of the state after low-lying areas flooded from heavy rains. Workers cleaned up from mudslides and high wind warnings remained in effect Sunday for much of the state. More than 50,000 customers were without power at one point, emergency officials said, warning driving would be difficult in high winds and more power lines could fall.

In Bruce, Mississippi, rivers broke flood stage and flash floods poured into homes and businesses. News outlets report that officials in Grenada, Mississippi, declared a local state of emergency after dozens of streets and homes flooded. A 6-mile (9-kilometer) stretch of the Natchez Trace Parkway was closed in Mississippi after water covered part of the road.

Kentucky announced Friday that it was closing the U.S. 51 bridge over the Ohio River to Cairo, Illinois, because of flooding on the southern approach. The bridge, which carries 4,700 vehicles a day, is likely to stay closed until Thursday, and possibly longer.

The Ohio River at Cairo was predicted to crest Sunday at its third-highest level ever recorded, and stay that high into next week. The Tennessee River near Savannah, Tennessee, also was forecast to crest at near-record levels.

Associated Press writers Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to this story, along with staff photographer Rogelio Solis and freelance photographer Jim Lytle working in Columbus, Mississippi.
The world of Star Wars is coming from a galaxy far, far away to become the largest single-themed land created in a Disney park.

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is an adventure through the grungy planet Batuu where guests can build their own droids and lightsabers, interact with aliens and climb into the cockpit of the massive Millennium Falcon, where you will discover your mission and engage in a dogfight with Tie Fighters.

2019 Disney Enterprises, Inc./Lucasfilm Ltd.

The sprawling 14-acre land is set on a remote world in the newest "Star Wars" trilogy  so don't expect appearances by Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. But some familiar faces including Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren and fan-favorite Chewbacca will be a part of the adventure as visitors explore the immersive world.

Galaxy's Edge is set to open this summer at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, then in the fall at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida. The lands at both parks are nearly identical and offer a mix of trading outposts, a cantina and even a wooded area where Resistance fighters have set up camp. Entry is included with a park ticket, but it'll cost more for guests who want to create their own lightsaber or purchase their own droid modeled on R2-D2 or BB-8.

TELEMUNDO 40

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts chairman Bob Chapek said guests inside Galaxy's Edge will have persistent interaction with Star Wars elements, whether it's Stormtroopers barking orders or the up-tempo, swinging music of a grimy cantina that yes, serves Star Wars-themed alcohol.

"You will not think you're in a theme park," he said. "Every cast member will be in character, the food and beverage and language will be in story. The merchandise inside the shops won't be in boxes that say Disney on them. Everything is very, very immersive."

[NATL-LA-updated 030619] Look From Above: New Photos of Disneyland's Star Wars Land and More

In a behind-the-scenes look, park officials took The Associated Press on a tour of Batuu, an uncharted region of lush trees and spires. The land is also filled with smugglers and traders hoping to avoid the First Order, the successor of the evil Galactic Empire.

Galaxy's Edge is still under construction, but its buildings, shops and main attractions are in place. Right now the focus is on "cosmetics and making sure the equipment is working properly," said John Larena, executive creative director at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Here are some of the land's key features:

MILLENNIUM FALCON: SMUGGLERS RUN

Selfie opportunities will be abundant inside and out of the "the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy." The spaceship is the exact replica of the ship from the films, measuring more than 100 feet long.

Inside the cockpit, a team of six people operate the spacecraft during an interactive experience that, just like the movies, that will get a little bumpy. An encounter with First Order fighters put guests in the role of pilots, gunners or flight engineers to ensure their mission is completed.

While others wait their turn, they will walk the halls of the Falcon or hangout in the area where R2-D2 played a round of the holographic chess-like game called Dejarik against Chewbacca in the original film.

The big hurdle the ceremony would have to overcome: Balance the fun without ignoring an industry still addressing #MeToo and #TimesUp

RISE OF THE RESISTANCE

This is where it gets real. On a full-size starship, guests play as new Resistance recruits and go on a journey. A hologram image of Rey will appear with a message before guests board their ship and take off from Batuu and head into the orbit.

But the starship runs into some trouble: It's intercepted by a nearby Star Destroyer. This sets up a climactic battle against military members of the First Order, who will probably give you a piece of their mind.

"They'll bark at you," Larena said. "They might say 'Move along, move along. You're going into detention."

A pharmaceutical company is recalling birth control pills mislabeled in a way that could result in an unplanned pregnancy.

Resistance guests will be thrown into a detention cell where they could run up against Kylo Ren.

"You have to figure your way out of the ship," Larena said. "There's always a way out."

SAVI'S WORKSHOP

Even though Skywalker, Vader and Yoda won't show up in "Galaxy's Edge," their lightsabers will. Guests will be able to purchase their popular weapon or hand-build their own. Bring plenty of credits: the price for the hilt is around $109 and the blade costs $49 depending on the type.

Park officials say they understand guests want to enjoy their new lightsabers, but they ask that they remain stowed when on attractions and around crowds for the safety of others.

DROID DEPOT

Who doesn't want their own personal R2 unit?

Guests  for an undisclosed cost  can either purchase a pre-built droid or build one in the colors of their choosing by picking pieces off a conveyor belt.

They're not just pretty to look at. Park official says the droids will be controllable by guests.

TASTE OF STAR WARS

There's no such thing as chicken in "Galaxy's Edge." That's Tip Yip, and the cornbread that you might eat with it is blue, gravy is green and cauliflower is orange.

Much of the food is plant based with dairy-free mash potatoes and vegan meatballs.

OGA'S CANTINA

While talkative DJ R-3X spins music, bartenders pour beverages.

The cantina will be the first location to serve alcohol to the general public in Disneyland's 60-plus year history. It's the place to come and unwind, but officials say it's also known to have some of the most disreputable characters in the galaxy.

And yes, droids are allowed.

PLAY DISNEY PARKS MOBILE APP

Galaxy's Edge is the first land within a Disney park designed to integrate with the app. It can help translate Star Wars languages and scan crates to discover contents within them. The app can also be used to interact with droids, media screens, door panels and drinking fountains.
A highly automated, multibillion-dollar plant in Colorado that destroys U.S. chemical weapons is over budget, behind schedule and bedeviled by troubles that could worsen the danger to workers.

But when the Army said this month it wants to spend millions extra installing more traditional technology to help the beleaguered plant and reduce worker risk, public reaction was more resignation than anger.

"Yes, the process has been too slow and too expensive, but this is the price paid to protect the workers and neighbors of this site," said Marco Kaltofen, a nuclear and civil engineering researcher at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts who has worked on chemical weapons destruction and testing methods.

Defense contractor Bechtel Inc. spent 12 years designing, building and testing the plant at the Pueblo Chemical Depot to disassemble and neutralize 780,000 decades-old shells filled with liquid mustard agent stored at the site.

Mustard agent  first used in World War I  can maim or kill, blistering skin, scarring eyes and inflaming airways.

The heavily guarded depot spreads across 36 square miles (93 square kilometers) of rolling, brushy terrain about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the city of Pueblo. The plant destroying the weapons is a collection of nondescript industrial buildings and tanks connected by a web of pipelines.

The plant is expected to cost $4.1 billion, including design, construction, operation and disassembly when the work is done, according to the Defense Department inspector general's office, an internal watchdog. Other costs are expected to push the total price for the operation to $4.5 billion, Army officials said.

The U.S. is obligated to destroy all its chemical weapons under international treaty. The Army has already eradicated much of its stockpile by incineration, which is cheaper per weapon than neutralization.

But faced with state and local concerns about air pollution, the military agreed to destroy the Colorado weapons with water to neutralize the mustard agent and microbes to digest and convert the remaining chemicals. The outcome is a dry "salt cake" that can be disposed of at a hazardous waste dump.

The plant started operating in September 2016 and has destroyed 43,000 shells. But it has endured two long shutdowns because of problems: a leak in a storage tank, a tear in a spill-containment liner at another tank, rust inside shells and vibration in pipes.

Most operations have been halted since September, after operators discovered more rust and other solids in the mustard agent than plant designers anticipated.

The rust clogs pipes and strainers, and officials worry it will make it difficult for the plant's robotic equipment to open the shells cleanly. Workers have to don protective suits and enter toxic areas to fix the equipment, increasing their risk of exposure.

"The primary issue is worker safety," said Greg Mohrman, the project site manager.

The Army announced this month it wants to install two closed detonation chambers, costing about $30 million each, to destroy 97,000 shells considered most likely to have excess rust and solids.

The shells wouldn't have to be opened before they're placed in the chambers. The chambers would heat the shells to about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 Celsius) to detonate or burn them and the mustard agent. Gases would be captured, burned and filtered.

That has revived Colorado's concerns about air pollution, but residents and officials have mostly refrained from criticizing the plan while they wait for details. Some have questioned why the plant designers didn't anticipate how serious the rust problem would be.

"My perspective is that they probably do have a legitimate problem, but it's one they should have anticipated," said Ross Vincent, a member of a citizens advisory group for the Pueblo plant. "They've known for many years that some of the rounds are going to contain that stuff."

The Army still must conduct an environmental study, get state and county permits and figure out how to pay for the chambers.

Army officials have asked the Colorado health department general questions about permits but have not applied for them, department spokeswoman Jeannine Natterman said. Pueblo County officials didn't return calls.

The Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky is preparing to destroy a smaller but more deadly chemical weapons stockpile  it contains nerve agents as well as mustard agent. Blue Grass will use a different type of neutralization on some weapons and will destroy others in a closed detonation chamber.

The Blue Grass plant  also over budget and behind schedule  is undergoing testing but isn't yet operating.

The inspector general reported last month the Colorado plant will likely wind up $513 million over budget and the Kentucky plant $357 million, but the predictions generated little public attention.
U.S. government scientists bought hundreds of dead dogs and cats from "Asian meat markets" and conducted experiments that included feeding their remains to healthy lab cats for needless research, according to a disturbing watchdog report being released Tuesday.

Other experiments at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's lab in Maryland included feeding dog remains to cats and injecting cat remains into mice, the report by the White Coat Waste Project found. The group is a non-profit that combats wasteful government spending on animal testing.

"It's crazy," Jim Keen, a former USDA scientist, told NBC News, which obtained a copy of the report. "Cannibal cats, cats eating dogs  I don't see the logic."

The experiments  some of which the agency said in scientific reports were aimed at studying different forms of a parasite that causes the food-borne illness toxoplasmosis  are believed to have been conducted between 2003 and 2015.

The USDA, which did not respond to requests for comment, has defended the cat testing in the past, calling it "life-saving research."
Under the new pay structure, clerks will make $150; inspectors will take in $190, with $50 in added compensation for each additional precinct they are responsible for; and judges will make $150, with $15 in additional pay for those the opposite party of the county clerk.
A major innovation in medicine may save tens of thousands of patients from open heart surgery, according to a North Texas doctor.

For years, a non-invasive procedure called trans-catheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR, has been used to repair the heart valve in patients too high-risk for open heart surgery.

Now, the revolutionary procedure has been expanded so that more patients, younger and healthier, can reap its benefits: safer surgery (reduced complications and lower chances for infection), quicker recovery and a shorter hospital stay.

"This probably will replace surgery, not in everyone, but in most patients," said Dr. Michael Mack, national co-principal investigator for the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Mack is the medical director of cardiovascular surgery at Baylor Scott & White Health and chairman of Baylor Scott & White The Heart Hospital - Plano Research Center.

During the TAVR procedure, surgeons thread the replacement valve through an artery in the leg. They use a balloon to push the old one aside and put the new one in its place.

Two large clinical trials show that TAVR is just as useful in younger, healthier patients.

Dennis Rosini, 76, of Dallas, was part of the trial. The procedure was recommended to him by his cardiologist who was monitoring Rosini's aortic stenosis, which is a narrowing of the aortic valve opening.

In patients like Rosini, who is relatively healthy and considered "low-risk," surgeons would traditionally perform open heart surgery.

"I was hoping for the TAVR because in the other, they split you open. They cut a couple ribs. It's a four to six week recovery time. It wasn't something I was looking forward to," said Rosini.

"The TAVR was one half hour. I was up in four hours, home in one day and I didn't have a scar," Rosini said.

Mack said patients who undergo the TAVR procedure are followed for 10 years, to see how the valve holds up.

The FDA still has to approve the use of the procedure in low-risk patients.
Dallas City Council members Monday voiced support for a $95 million Salvation Army homeless facility proposed on Interstate 35E at Regal Row -- but some neighbors are not pleased.

The 20-acre location would replace the current Salvation Army shelter on Harry Hines Boulevard that opened more than 30 years ago.

"We have been over capacity since the day we opened," said executive director Blake Fetterman. "This facility was originally designed for 470 people each night and today we are sheltering 600 on a good weather day."

Fetterman said the old building was worn out, but still operated around the clock so renovation and repair would be extremely difficult.

The new facility would allow the Salvation Army to serve 1,000 more homeless people each year.

"But it's not just the beds that's important. It's the additional services that we're investing in, to help lift people out of homelessness, the jobs training, the medical care, the mental health care, the child care," Fetterman said.

Dallas City Council Members praised the plan at a Human and Social Needs Committee Briefing Monday.

"We issued a challenge and Salvation Army stepped up to the plate and accepted the challenge," committee chairman Casey Thomas said. "So we appreciate this. This is exactly what we need."

Tomima Edmark runs Andra Group, a firm with offices and warehouse space adjacent to the proposed Salvation Army site. Her firm is the parent company of online businesses HerRoom and HisRoom.

"Let's put our brakes on a little bit and really get a thoughtful and good solution here," she said.

Edmark has more than 100 employees in the neighborhood. She said documents she obtained from city records suggested past contamination problems at the site.

"If we're going to bring a homeless population up to this neighborhood, as well as my employees, we should know what that land contamination is," Edmark said. "I think there should be complete transparency."

Fetterman said all of the environmental issues had been thoroughly studied and there was no problem. The results were available to the Dallas Plan Commission which strongly endorsed the zoning change needed for the project on March 7.

"There is no perfect place, but this gets as close as we can," Fetterman said. "It's an industrial area. It's away from residential neighborhoods and we are very, very sensitive to the property owners around that area."

The Salvation Army promised walls and security to protect neighbors. Those measures pleased city council member Mark Clayton, who served as co-chairman of the mayor's poverty task force.

"I think it's smart to have it walled for a lot of reasons," Clayton said. "I think this thing will be a model for what success can be if you do that."

A full Dallas City Council vote on the zoning change is scheduled for April 10.
An Ethiopian Airlines jet faltered and crashed Sunday shortly after takeoff from the country's capital, carving a gash in the earth and spreading global grief to 35 countries that had someone among the 157 people who were killed.

There was no immediate indication why the plane went down in clear weather while on a flight to Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya. The crash was strikingly similar to that of a Lion Air jet that plunged into the sea off Indonesia minutes after takeoff last year, killing 189 people. Both accidents involved the Boeing 737 Max 8.

The crash shattered more than two years of relative calm in African skies, where travel had long been chaotic. It also was a serious blow to state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, which has expanded to become the continent's largest and best-managed carrier and turned Addis Ababa into the gateway to Africa.

"Ethiopian Airlines is one of the safest airlines in the world. At this stage we cannot rule out anything," CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told reporters. He visited the crash site, standing in the gaping crater flecked with debris.

Black body bags were spread out nearby while Red Cross and other workers looked for remains. As the sun set, the airline's chief operating officer said the plane's flight data recorder had not yet been found.

Around the world, families were gripped by grief. At the Addis Ababa airport, a woman called a mobile number in vain. "Where are you, my son?" she said, in tears. Others cried as they approached the terminal.

Henom Esayas, whose sister's Nigerian husband was killed, told The Associated Press they were startled when a stranger picked up their frantic calls to his mobile phone, told them he had found it in the debris and promptly switched it off.

Shocked leaders of the United Nations, the U.N. refugee agency and the World Food Program announced that colleagues had been on the plane. The U.N. migration agency estimated some 19 U.N.-affiliated employees were killed. Both Addis Ababa and Nairobi are major hubs for humanitarian workers, and many people were on their way to a large U.N. environmental conference set to begin Monday in Nairobi.

The Addis Ababa-Nairobi route links East Africa's two largest economic powers. Sunburned travelers and tour groups crowd the Addis Ababa airport's waiting areas, along with businessmen from China, Gulf nations and elsewhere.

A list of the dead released by Ethiopian Airlines included passengers from China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Israel, India and Somalia. Kenya lost 32 citizens. Canada, 18. Several countries including the United States lost four or more people. Global nonprofit organization Save the Children said one of its employees  Tamirat Mulu Demessie, who worked at the group's U.S. headquarters in Connecticut  was killed in the crash. Georgetown University confirmed that a third-year law student from Kenya, Cedric Asiavugwa, was killed in the crash. He was on his way home to Nairobi following the death of his fiancee's mother, according to a statement from the university.

Ethiopian officials declared Monday a day of mourning.

At the Nairobi airport, hopes quickly dimmed for loved ones. "I just pray that he is safe or he was not on it," said Agnes Muilu, who had come to pick up her brother.

The crash is likely to renew questions about the 737 Max , the newest version of Boeing's popular single-aisle airliner, which was first introduced in 1967 and has become the world's most common passenger jet.

Indonesian investigators have not determined a cause for the October crash, but days after the accident Boeing sent a notice to airlines that faulty information from a sensor could cause the plane to automatically point the nose down.

The Lion Air cockpit data recorder showed that the jet's airspeed indicator had malfunctioned on its last four flights, though the airline initially said problems had been fixed.

Safety experts cautioned against drawing too many comparisons between the two crashes until more is known about Sunday's disaster.

The Ethiopian Airlines CEO "stated there were no defects prior to the flight, so it is hard to see any parallels with the Lion Air crash yet," said Harro Ranter, founder of the Aviation Safety Network, which compiles information about accidents worldwide.

The Ethiopian plane was new, delivered to the airline in November. The Boeing 737 Max 8 was one of 30 meant for the airline, Boeing said in July. The jet's last maintenance was on Feb. 4, and it had flown just 1,200 hours.

The plane crashed six minutes after departure , plowing into the ground at Hejere near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) outside Addis Ababa, at 8:44 a.m.

The jet showed unstable vertical speed after takeoff, air traffic monitor Flightradar 24 said. The senior Ethiopian pilot, who joined the airline in 2010, sent out a distress call and was given clearance to return to the airport, the airline's CEO told reporters.

In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration said it would join the National Transportation Safety Board in assisting Ethiopian authorities with the crash investigation. Boeing planned to send a technical team to Ethiopia.

The last deadly crash of an Ethiopian Airlines passenger flight was in 2010, when a plane went down minutes after takeoff from Beirut, killing all 90 people on board.

African air travel has improved in recent years, with the International Air Transport Association in November noting "two years free of any fatalities on any aircraft type."

Sunday's crash comes as the country's reformist young prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has vowed to open up the airline and other sectors to foreign investment in a major transformation of the state-centered economy.

Speaking at the inauguration in January of a new passenger terminal in Addis Ababa to triple capacity, the prime minister challenged the airline to build a new "Airport City" terminal in Bishoftu  where Sunday's crash occurred.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said in an interview that aired Sunday that a "crime may have been committed" when President Donald Trump fired the head of the FBI and tried to publicly undermine an investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia.

McCabe also said in the interview with "60 Minutes" that the FBI had good reason to open a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was in league with Russia, and therefore a possible national security threat, following the May 2017 firing of then-FBI Director James Comey.

"And the idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia's malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counterintelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, "Why would a president of the United States do that?" McCabe said.

He added: "So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia?"

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More

Asked whether Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was onboard with the obstruction and counterintelligence investigations, McCabe replied, "Absolutely."

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment Sunday night.

McCabe also revealed that when Trump told Rosenstein to put in writing his concerns with Comey  a document the White House initially held up as justification for his firing  the president explicitly asked the Justice Department official to reference Russia in the memo. Rosenstein did not want to, McCabe said, and the memo that was made public upon Comey's dismissal did not mention Russia and focused instead on Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation.

"He explained to the president that he did not need Russia in his memo," McCabe said. "And the president responded, "I understand that, I am asking you to put Russia in the memo anyway."

Trump said in a TV interview days after Comey's firing that he was thinking of "this Russia thing" when he fired Comey.

Those actions, including a separate request by Trump that the FBI end an investigation into his first national adviser, Michael Flynn, made the FBI concerned that the president was illegally trying to obstruct the Russia probe.

"Put together, these circumstances were articulable facts that indicated that a crime may have been committed," McCabe said. "The president may have been engaged in obstruction of justice in the firing of Jim Comey."

McCabe was fired from the Justice Department last year after being accused of misleading investigators during an internal probe into a news media disclosure. The allegation was referred to the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington for possible prosecution, but no charges have been brought. McCabe has denied having intentionally lied and said Sunday that he believes his firing was politically motivated.

"I believe I was fired because I opened a case against the president of the United States," he said.

In the interview Sunday, McCabe also said Rosenstein in the days after Comey's firing had proposed wearing a wire to secretly record the president. McCabe said he took the remark seriously, though the Justice Department last September  responding last September to a New York Times report that first revealed the conversation  issued a statement from an unnamed official who was in the room and interpreted the remark as sarcastic.

McCabe said the remark was made during a conversation about why Trump had fired Comey.

"And in the context of that conversation, the deputy attorney general offered to wear a wire into the White House. He said, "'I never get searched when I go into the White House. I could easily wear a recording device. They wouldn't know it was there,'" McCabe said.

In excerpts released last week by CBS News, McCabe also described a conversation in which Rosenstein had broached the idea of invoking the Constitution's 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. The Justice Department said in a statement that Rosenstein, based on his dealings with Trump, does not see cause to seek the removal of the president.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who is seeking her party's nomination for president, told reporters after a campaign event Sunday in Las Vegas that if the people around Trump believe he cannot fulfill the obligations of his office, then they have a duty to invoke the 25th Amendment.

A favorite target of Trump's ire, Warren said she has no special knowledge on whether there are grounds to remove Trump from office but said that "there are a whole lot of people who do see him every day who evidently were talking about invoking the 25th Amendment."
What to Know An 11-year-old is in police custody in connection to a double shooting on Friday morning in Alton, New Hampshire.

The Union Leader reports that one of the shooting victims has died.

Two local schools were temporarily placed in lockdown in the wake of the incident.

An 11-year-old is in custody after allegedly killing two adults in a shooting Friday in the Lakes Region town of Alton, New Hampshire.

The New Hampshire Attorney General's Office said Friday night that 50-year-old Lizette Eckert, who had suffered a gunshot wound, was found dead after police responded to a 911 call on Dobbins Way around 7:30 a.m. Her husband, James Eckert, 48, was also found shot.

James Eckert was taken to Portsmouth Regional Hospital in critical condition but was pronounced dead later Friday night, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office said.

An autopsy was completed Saturday on Lizette Eckert. The manner of her death was ruled a homicide and the cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head.

An autopsy has been scheduled Monday for James Eckert.

According to Geoffrey Ward, a senior assistant attorney general, the juvenile suspect was apprehended around 9:30 a.m. He was charged with one count of reckless second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. The charges filed are under the juvenile system. It's not immediately clear if he'll face additional charges now that James Eckert has died from his injuries.

Because of the suspect's age, Ward said limited information would be made available to the public.

Officials said there is no danger to the general public.

The nearby Alton Central and Prospect Mountain High schools were placed in lockdown during the time when Ward said authorities were searching for the suspect.

"There is no current threat to ACS," Alton Central School Principal John MacArthur said in an email. "As a precautionary measure we have activated a secure campus. Nobody is permitted in or out of the building until we are given an all clear."

State police tweeted around 9:45 a.m. that the "critical incident" had come to a conclusion and the schools lifted the lockdowns shortly after.

The investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with information is asked to call New Hampshire State Police at 603-223-4381.
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, "directed his attorney" to explore a potential presidential pardon last year, his current attorney said Thursday, appearing to contradict his client's testimony to Congress.

Cohen testified under oath last week at a House Oversight Committee hearing that he had never asked for, and would not accept, a pardon from Trump.

On Thursday, Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, said Cohen had in fact "directed his attorney to explore possibilities of a pardon at one point with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well as other lawyers advising President Trump."

The conversation happened in the months after the FBI in early April raided Cohen's home, office and hotel room, while Cohen's lawyers were involved in an agreement to share information with Trump's legal team. At the time, Cohen was "open to the ongoing 'dangling' of a possible pardon by Trump representatives privately and in the media," Davis said in a statement.

The development was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Davis' comment raises questions about whether Cohen, who is slated to begin a three-year prison sentence in May, lied to Congress last week. But it also highlights how the issue of pardons has emerged as a significant line of inquiry for congressional investigators.

There is nothing inherently improper about a subject in a criminal investigation seeking a pardon from a president given the president's wide latitude in granting them. But investigators want to know if the prospect of presidential pardons were somehow offered or used inappropriately.

Meanwhile, Cohen filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization, claiming that the company owed him "fees and costs," CNBC reported on Thursday.

Trump was obligated "to pay attorneys' fees and costs incurred" by Cohen related to his "work with and on behalf of the Organization and its principals, directors, and officers," the lawsuit said.

Cohen has become a key figure in congressional investigations since turning on his former boss and cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller. During last week's public testimony, he called Trump a con man, a cheat and a racist.

Trump, in turn, has said Cohen "did bad things unrelated to Trump" and "is lying in order to reduce his prison time."

In his statement on Thursday, Davis said when he was brought on to Cohen's legal team in June, his client "authorized me as a new lawyer to say publicly Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from President Trump even if offered."

"That continues to be the case," Davis said. "And his statement at the Oversight Hearing was true  and consistent with his post joint defense agreement commitment to tell the truth."

Davis did not immediately respond Thursday to text messages and emails seeking additional information.

Lawmakers have requested information about talks on possible pardons for Cohen and other defendants close to the president who have become entangled in Mueller's investigation. Mueller is investigating possible coordination between Russia and Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Cohen is headed to prison in May after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and other crimes.

Federal prosecutors have said Trump directed Cohen to arrange payments to buy the silence of two women  porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal  who had alleged they had sex with Trump. Trump has denied having an affair.

On Twitter Thursday, Trump commented on that topic, saying, "It was not a campaign contribution, and there were no violations of the campaign finance laws by me. Fake News!"

Cohen also admitted that he lied to Congress about the duration of negotiations in 2016 over a Trump real estate project in Moscow.
What to Know Ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to Congress about the president's real estate project in Russia

He admitted making false statements in 2017 to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow

President Donald Trump hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing, but federal prosecutors have said that a grand jury probe is ongoing

Ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to Congress about a real estate project in Russia that he was working on on Trump's behalf, revealing that negotiations lasted into Trump's campaign for Republican presidential nomination.

In a surprise appearance in Manhattan federal court Thursday, Cohen admitted he made false statements in 2017 to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. He told a judge he did it "out of loyalty" to Trump, and to align with this "political messaging."

Cohen's admission  his second guilty plea connected to Trump  indicated that his communications with Trump about the project were much more frequent than he had suggested. Members of Congress said the development underlines the importance of telling the truth at congressional hearings, and the remarks may come under more scrutiny when Democrats take control of the House in January.

In response to Cohen's plea, Trump called him "a weak person" who is lying to get leniency from prosecutors. He also said that running for president "doesn't mean I'm not allowed to do business."

Cohen struck the deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the U.S. election and any ties Trump's campaign may have had to it. Nothing said in court, or in associated court filings, addressed whether Trump or his aides had directed Cohen to mislead Congress.

Trump submitted written answers to a series of Mueller's questions last week, and current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani told NBC News Thursday that those answers were consistent with what Cohen said in court.

Criminal information submitted by Mueller maintains Cohen "knowingly and wilfully made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation" around Aug. 28 of last year.

Among other lies, Cohen said he told Congress that all discussions about building a Trump Tower in Moscow had ended by January 2016, when they had actually continued until June of that year.

He said he also lied about his contacts with Russian officials and lied when he said he never agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the project and never considered asking Trump to travel to support the project.

Prosecutors said in a court complaint that Cohen had misled Congress to give a false impression that the Moscow project had ended before the Iowa caucus and first Republican presidential primary in 2016.

Cohen gave a statement to congressional committees last year saying the president's company pursued a project in Moscow during the Republican primary but that the plan was abandoned "for a variety of business reasons."

Cohen also said he sent an email to the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of the potential deal.

In his statement, he said that he worked on the real estate proposal with Felix Sater, a Russia-born associate who he said claimed to have deep connections in Moscow.

The discussions about the potential development began after Trump had declared his candidacy. Cohen had said the talks ended when he determined that the project was not feasible.

Cohen had also disclosed that Trump was personally aware of the deal, signing a letter of intent and discussing it with Cohen on two other occasions.

Neither Cohen, wearing a navy suit and blue tie, nor his attorney commented on the matter as they left court shortly before 10 a.m.

After the news broke, Trump maintained Cohen was "lying very simply to get a reduced sentence," calling him "a weak person" and "not a very smart person."

"I didn't do the project, I decided not to do the project," Trump told reporters outside the White House Thursday as he left for the G-20 summit in Argentina. "We're talking about not doing a project."

Cohen was convicted on "various things unrelated to us," Trump went on to say.

"This deal was a very public deal," he said. "I wasn't trying to hide anything."

The White House didn't comment on Cohen's Thursday plea.

Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan addressed the issue during a forum with The Washington Post, saying that Cohen "should be prosecuted to the extent of the law."

Cohen's plea is "very significant," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is slated to take over the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee in January. The committee has been investigating Russian election interference as well, though Schiff has said the Republicans leading the investigation were unwilling to investigate as deeply as they should have.

Schiff told reporters Thursday that "we believe other witnesses were untruthful before our committee. We want to share those transcripts with Mr. Mueller."

The new plea comes just two weeks before the 52-year-old attorney is scheduled to be sentenced for an August guilty plea. In that case, brought by federal prosecutors in New York, he pleaded guilty to federal charges involving his taxi businesses, bank fraud and his campaign work for Trump.

The new chrages were handled by Mueller's team.

The Russia investigation has dogged the president for two years and ensnared members of his inner circle. He continues to face criticism for refusing to rule out a pardon for one of those inner circle members -- former campaign manager Paul Manafort. In recent weeks, Trump, armed with inside information provided to his lawyers by Manafort's legal team, has sharpened his attacks, seizing on what he claims are dirty tactics employed by Mueller and accusing investigators of pressuring witnesses to lie.

On Thursday, Trump likened the Russia probe to Sen. Joe McCarthy's pursuit of communists in the 1950s. "When will this illegal Joseph McCarthy style Witch Hunt, one that has shattered so many innocent lives, ever end-or will it just go on forever?" he tweeted.

Trump hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing, but federal prosecutors have said that a grand jury probe is ongoing and it targets unspecified "others." Court papers show Trump's conduct and that of top executives at the Trump Organization, some of whom have received immunity, have been scrutinized.

It's unclear what additional charges prosecutors are pursuing and how much of it pertains to the president personally. Federal prosecutors have said in court papers that the case involves numerous "uncharged" third parties and have argued against disclosing search warrants and other documents that would "certainly result in a very public guessing game" about their identities.
What to Know Court documents are shedding light on how investigators found 23-year-old Olivia Ambrose, who vanished after leaving a Boston bar.

The suspect, 38-year-old Victor Pena, has been ordered to undergo a full mental health evaluation for 20 days ahead of his next court date.

Detectives used her iPhone's location, in addition to surveillance images, to find Ambrose in a Charlestown Housing Project apartment.

Investigators used cell phone location data and surveillance footage from various locations to track down a Boston woman who disappeared from a bar Saturday night and the man suspected of kidnapping her, according to court documents.

Authorities found Olivia Ambrose alive Tuesday in the apartment of Victor Pena, where she allegedly was being held against her will. Pena, 38, was arrested and charged with kidnapping.

At a Wednesday hearing in Charlestown District Court a judge ordered Pena to undergo a full 20-day mental health evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital. He is being held without bail.

Joseph Perullo, an attorney for Pena, said after Wednesday's hearing that it's too early to comment on the specifics of the case, but Perullo said he's happy that Ambrose is back home with her family, the Associated Press reported.

Court documents released Wednesday shed light on how investigators traced Ambrose's steps after she vanished, using a digital trail left by her iPhone along with surveillance images to make their way to Pena's Walford Way apartment in the Charlestown Housing Project.

That's where police found Ambrose, standing next to her alleged kidnapper and "crying with a horrified look on her face," court documents said.

According to notes included in the document release, police obtained various surveillance videos from Saturday night, including footage that appeared to show Pena and another man, who was not named and has since been cleared by police, approach an apparently inebriated Ambrose on the street.

Notes describe video that showed Ambrose leaving Hennessy's bar on Union Street near Fanueil Hall at 11:08 p.m. on Saturday. She was caught on camera again at 11:37 p.m. on Union and North streets near White Bull Tavern, according to documents. Notes said she appeared intoxicated in the video and had trouble walking.

A minute later, documents said, another surveillance camera caught Ambrose near North and Congress streets, where she apparently encountered Pena. The footage allegedly showed Pena and the other man watch Ambrose as she walked unsteadily across the street and then follow her on Congress toward State Street. Footage also allegedly showed the men approach Ambrose as she crossed the street.

Then, just after midnight, MBTA surveillance cameras caught Pena "with his arm wrapped around" Ambrose, "guiding her as she walked" with him, according to documents.

Minutes later, her phone pinged her location on Main Street in Charlestown.

Around 12:06 a.m., the pair was seen on camera and by an eyewitness walking by the Whole Foods on Austin Street, with Pena seen "holding onto" Ambrose, "guiding her as she is having difficulty walking," documents said.

The final surveillance footage that caught Pena and Ambrose on camera came from a home security system on Green Street and showed them walking toward Bunker Hill Street. Pena was still holding onto Ambrose, court documents said.

The next day Ambrose's sister used the Find My iPhone app to approximate her location, which placed her at Walford Way and Corey Street, the police report said.

On Tuesday, a task force was convened and worked on canvassing the housing project where her iPhone sent its last ping.

Detectives on the ground spoke with residents and showed them surveillance photos of the suspect. The residents said the person in the photo looked like the person who lived in Apt. 625  Pena's apartment  and a detective then went to Boston Housing Authority management to get information about the apartment's tenant.

Meanwhile, other detectives got a booking photo for a previous charge against Pena and ran CharlieCard  the payment method used for public transit in Massachusetts  information for Walford Way, eventually finding a person who looked similar to the suspect in the surveillance photos.

As they were ascertaining that Pena was the suspect in the surveillance photos, detectives learned that Ambrose's phone had been turned on and "she was sending messages to her mother," according to documents, and that the phone's location pinpointed it to the apartment building at Walford Way and Corey Street.

When detectives arrived at Pena's door, they found that it had been outfitted with a private lock, despite housing authority's rules against doing so, court documents said. Police requested a Boston Housing Authority maintenance worker to come to the apartment to remove the lock.

Detectives knocked on Pena's door "numerous times" for about 20 minutes as they waited for the maintenance worker, who arrived with keys and a drill to remove the lock.

"Once the top lock was dismantled ... detectives heard the [lower] locks opening from inside," the police report read.

The detectives immediately saw Ambrose in the apartment, and as they tried to handcuff Pena, the suspect allegedly started to resist arrest.

After she was evaluated at Massachusetts General Hospital, Ambrose told investigators that Pena had taken her phone and "refused to let her leave the apartment for the entire time she was held there."

Hours before they found Ambrose, Boston police had released a timeline and a photo of a person of interest, whom investigators say is Pena.

Pena's next court date is Feb. 11.
After months of Brexit deadlock, this is it: decision time. At least for now.

With Britain scheduled to leave the European Union in less than three weeks, U.K. lawmakers are poised to choose the country's immediate direction from among three starkly different choices: deal, no deal or delay.

A look at what might happen:

DEAL DEJA VU

The House of Commons has a second vote scheduled Tuesday on a deal laying out the terms of Britain's orderly departure from the EU. Prime Minister Theresa May and EU officials agreed to the agreement in December, but U.K. lawmakers voted 432-202 in January to reject it. To get it approved by March 29, the day set for Brexit, May needs to persuade 116 of them to change their minds  a tough task.

Opposition to the deal in Parliament centers on a section that is designed to ensure there are no customs checks or border posts between EU member Ireland and the U.K.'s Northern Ireland. Pro-Brexit lawmakers dislike that the border "backstop" keeps the U.K. entwined with EU trade rules. May has been seeking changes to reassure them the situation would be temporary, but the EU refuses to reopen the withdrawal agreement.

Around 100 hard-core Brexit supporters in May's Conservative Party look set to oppose the deal unless the backstop is altered. To offset them, May has courted the opposition Labour Party with promises of money for urban regeneration.

Oliver Patel, a research associate at the European Institute at University College London, says "it's highly unlikely the deal will be passed. The big question is, what will the margin be?"

If, against the odds, lawmakers approve the deal, a short delay to Brexit may be needed so Parliament can translate the agreement's terms into British law. But the U.K. would be on course to leave the EU in the next few months, with a long transition period built in to help people and businesses get used to the new relationship.

May will have delivered on her promise of an orderly Brexit  and snatched an astonishing political victory from the jaws of widely predicted defeat.

DESTINATION NO-DEAL

If the deal is rejected, lawmakers expect to vote Wednesday on whether to abandon efforts to secure an agreement and leave the EU as planned on March 29 without a deal.

That idea is backed by a phalanx of pro-Brexit politicians, who say it would cut Britain free of EU rules and red tape, allowing the country to forge an independent global trade policy.

But economists and businesses fear a so-called "no-deal Brexit" would hammer the economy as tariffs and other trade barriers go up between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner.

In the short term, there could be gridlock at British ports and shortages of fresh produce. In the long run, the government says a no-deal scenario would leave the economy 6 percent to 9 percent smaller over 15 years than remaining in the EU.

Last month, Parliament passed a non-binding amendment ruling out a "no-deal" Brexit, so lawmakers are unlikely to go with it now.

DELAY, DELAY, DELAY

If lawmakers reject leaving the EU without an agreement, they have one choice left: seek more time. A vote scheduled for Thursday would decide whether to ask the EU to delay Britain's departure by up to three months.

This is likely to pass, since politicians on both sides of the debate fear time is running out to secure an orderly Brexit by March 29.

An extension requires approval from all 27 remaining EU member countries. They will probably agree, possibly at a March 21-22 summit in Brussels. But they are reluctant to grant a delay that stretches past elections for the EU's legislature, the European Parliament, in late May.

CRISIS DEFERRED

Whatever the U.K. Parliament decides, this week will not bring an end to Britain's Brexit crisis. Both lawmakers and the public remain split between backers of a clean break from the EU and those who favor continuing a close relationship  either through a post-Brexit trade deal or by reversing the decision to leave.

May is unwilling to abandon her hard-won Brexit agreement and might try to put it to Parliament a third time, especially if she loses by a small margin on Tuesday. But some lawmakers want her to have Parliament consider different forms of Brexit to see if there is a majority for any course of action.

Maddy Thimont-Jack, a researcher at the Institute for Government think tank, said this week's votes could force the famously stubborn May to compromise.

"If she loses the vote by quite a significant margin again, it really suggests that what she has done is just not going to fly," Thimont-Jack said. "In which case she will be under a lot of pressure to follow what Parliament wants."

Some think the only way forward is a snap election that could rearrange the forces in Parliament and break the political deadlock. May has ruled that out, but could come to see it as her only option.

And anti-Brexit campaigners haven't abandoned efforts to secure a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU. The government opposes the idea, which at the moment also lacks majority support in Parliament.

But that could change if the political paralysis drags on. The Labour Party has said it would support a second referendum if other options were exhausted.

It all means more twists are coming in the Brexit drama.

"No one really believes this is the last chance saloon," Patel said.
Lets be clear here. More victims will die at the hands of white supremacists or extremists or neo-Nazi militants, however you want to define this hate-filled population. They have convinced themselves that the white race  my race  are superior to all other races. And theyve been proving this to themselves by repeated acts of killing, violence, and intimidating anyone who thinks otherwise.
Over the past 20 years, Americans have been twice as likely to sweat through record-breaking heat rather than shiver through record-setting cold, a new Associated Press data analysis shows.

The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 states that had consistent temperature records since 1920 and counted how many times daily hot temperature records were tied or broken and how many daily cold records were set. In a stable climate, the numbers should be roughly equal.

Since 1999, the ratio has been two warm records set or broken for every cold one. In 16 of the last 20 years, there have been more daily high temperature records than low.

The AP shared the data analysis with several climate and data scientists, who all said the conclusion was correct, consistent with scientific peer-reviewed literature and showed a clear sign of human-caused climate change. They pointed out that trends over decades are more robust than over single years.

The analysis stopped with data through 2018. However, the first two months of 2019 are showing twice as many cold records than hot ones. That's temporary and trends are over years and decades, not months, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt.

"We are in a period of sustained and significant warming and  over the long run  will continue to explore and break the warm end of the spectrum much more than the cold end," Arndt said.

Former Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, who has been studying hot and cold extreme records since 2000, said the trend is unmistakable.

"You are getting more extremes," Walton said. "Your chances for getting more dangerous extremes are going up with time."

No place has seen the trend more clearly than the Southern California city of Pasadena, where 7,203 days (more than 19 years) went by between cold records being broken. On Feb. 23, Pasadena set a low temperature record, its first since June 5, 1999.

Vermont native Paul Wennberg felt it. He moved to Pasadena in 1998 just before the dearth of cold records.

"Even with the local cold we had this past month, it's very noticeable," said Wennberg, a California Institute of Technology atmospheric sciences professor. "It's just been ever warmer."

In between the two cold record days, Pasadena set 145 hot records. That includes an all-time high of 113 degrees last year.

"Last year was unbelievable here," Wennberg said. "The tops of a lot of the hedges, they essentially melted."

Scientists often talked about human-caused global warming in terms of average temperatures, but that's not what costs money or sends people to the hospital. A study this month found that in just 22 states, about 36,000 people on average go to the hospital because of excessive summertime heat.

"The extremes affect our lives," Arndt said, adding that they are expensive, with hospital stays, rising energy bills and crop losses.

National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Gerald Meehl, who has published peer-reviewed papers on the rising hot-to-cold ratio, said people pay more attention to climate when records are broken.

The AP counted daily records across 424 stations starting in 1920 and ending in 2018. The AP only considered daily  not all-time  high maximum temperatures and low minimum temperatures and only used stations with minimal missing data. Temperatures that tied previous records were counted in addition to temperatures that broke previous records.

More typical than Pasadena is Wooster, Ohio. From 1999 on, Wooster saw 106 high temperature records set or broken and 51 cold ones. In the previous eight decades, the ratio was slightly colder than one to one.

At MW Robinson Co., people are lining up for air conditioning installation as the climate seems to get have been getting hotter over the years, said Lori Bowersock, who coordinates the firm's HVAC installations.

"It's more and more every year," Bowersock said. "Usually we don't have them lined up like this."

The AP's other findings:

Since Jan. 1, 1999, just under half the stations had at least twice as many hot records set than cold ones, including Wooster.

In all, 87 percent of the weather stations had more hot records than cold since 1999. There have been 42 weather stations that have at least five hot records for every cold one since 1999, with 11 where the hot-to-cold ratio is 10-to-1 or higher, including Pasadena.

All nine of NOAA's climate regions have seen more hot records set than cold ones since 1999, with the West, Southwest and Northeast having a 3-to-1 ratio.

All four seasons have had more hot records broken than cold for the same time period.

Most decades in the 20th century had close to an even ratio of hot to cold. The 1930s, driven by Dust Bowl summers, had about 1.4 hot records for every cold. The 1960s and 1970s had about 1.5 cold records for every hot. The 21st century has a 1.9-to-1 hot-to-cold ratio.

"As a measure of climate change, the dailies (temperature records) will tell you more about what's happening," said climate scientist Chris Field of Stanford. "The impacts of climate change almost always come packaged in extremes."
The U.N. system's chief scientist on weather and climate warned Friday that climate change has "a multitude of security impacts" and is increasingly regarded as a national security threat  with global warming records broken in 20 of the last 22 years.

The Maldives' foreign minister, Abdulla Shahid, told a U.N. Security Council meeting on "the impacts of climate-related disasters on international peace and security" that there is no bigger security threat than climate change which endangers the Indian Ocean island nation's very existence.

But the acting U.S. ambassador, Jonathan Cohen, never even mentioned the words "climate change" or "security" in his council speech. And Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia objected strongly to discussing climate change in the Security Council, saying it is not a threat to international peace and security and should only be discussed in specific cases where it is a risk factor.

More than 80 of the 193 U.N. member states spoke at the day-long council meeting and virtually everyone except the United States agreed that climate change was happening.

Russia's Nebenzia said it should be discussed elsewhere in the U.N. system by experts, but the U.S.' Cohen spoke only of "natural disasters" like hurricanes and floods that "frequently lead to breakdowns in social order and spikes in crime, violence and instability."

Professor Pavel Kabat, chief scientist of the World Meteorological Organization, recalled that the first warnings of the world's changing climate were issued at its First World Climate Conference in 1979. And he began his speech saying this week's World Economic Forum in Davos ranked extreme weather, natural disasters, climate change and water crises as the top four existential threats in its new Global Risks Report 2019.

Kabat said the global average greenhouse gas concentrations of carbon dioxide  which causes global warming  continued rising to record levels in 2018-2019.

"The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of carbon dioxide was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3 degrees Celsius warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now," Kabat said.

In December, countries agreed on a set of rules to ensure that the target set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) is met. At the talks in Poland, many countries wanted to formally back a more ambitious temperature goal of 1.5 C (2.7 F) which scientists say is safer, but opposition from countries including the United States delayed any change.

Kabat, the first representative of the World Meteorological Organization ever to address the Security Council, said the global average temperature is already nearly 1 degree Celsius (1.8 F) above the pre-industrial era and posing threats.

Rosemary DiCarlo, U.N. undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, told the council that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report in October predicting more heat waves, heavier rain events, higher sea levels and severe damage to agriculture represents "a security risk for the entire world."

But she said "their consequences are felt most strongly in regions that are already vulnerable, where climate change and extreme weather compound existing grievances and threats." As examples, she pointed to the impact of hurricanes on small islands in the Caribbean and tensions between herders and farmers in Africa's Sahel region fueled by climate change and competition for land, forage and water.

The Maldives' Shahid recalled speaking at the Security Council at its first-ever debate on the impact of climate change on peace and security on April 17, 2007.

"I reminded the council on that day that climate change is not only an everyday fact of life for the Maldivians, but an existential threat," he said. "I reminded the council that a mean sea-level rise of two meters would suffice to virtually submerge the entire Maldives under water. That would indeed be the death of a nation."

Twelve years later, Shahid said, "I am still repeating the same message" and "prospects for our future are far worse than we ever imagined."

"While we are still busy trying to decide which form of the United Nations must address which aspect of climate change, our lakes are drying up, depriving fresh water to tens of millions of people. Unseasonal droughts are leaving millions of people homeless. Hunger and displacement are leading to conflicts, and entire nations are sinking under water," Shahid said.

"What is a bigger security threat to us than this?" he asked.
Philippine immigration authorities say they have arrested an American Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting altar boys in a remote central town in a case one official described as "shocking and appalling."

Bureau of Immigration spokeswoman Dana Sandoval said Thursday the Rev. Kenneth Bernard Hendricks, who has been indicted in Ohio for alleged illicit sexual conduct in the Philippines, was arrested in a church in Naval town on the island province of Biliran.

An Ohio court had issued a warrant for the arrest of 77-year-old Hendricks, who has been living in the Philippines for 37 years, Sandoval said, adding that the U.S. criminal case stemmed from complaints from Filipino minors who were allegedly victimized in the Philippines.

There was no immediate reaction from the U.S. Embassy, Philippine Catholic church officials or Hendricks, who was flown to Manila and detained in an immigration cell.

The suspect allegedly abused seven victims, who served mostly as altar boys in Naval, in 50 counts of molestation in his residence in a case that's "both shocking and appalling," Sandoval said.

"The victims were in his house and the abuses were committed while he was taking a bath with each of them," Sandoval said by telephone. U.S. authorities provided information about the alleged sexual assaults to the Philippine government, she said.

The victims were reportedly warned they would be locked up in jail if they told anyone about the abuses, she said.

"Several of his victims have come forward with their statements," Sandoval said.

The U.S. Embassy may revoke Hendrick's passport to help Philippine authorities immediately deport the priest, the immigration bureau said in a statement.

Hendricks is "a fugitive from justice that poses a risk to public safety and security," Sandoval said. "We will not allow sexual predators to prey on our children. People like him must be kicked out and banned from the Philippines."

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly lashed out at the dominant Catholic church and its priests over such abuses, saying he himself along with other students were sexually molested by an American priest in their high school days.

In separate speeches Wednesday, the volatile leader claimed almost 90 percent of Catholic priests were homosexual and also admonished Catholics to "kill your bishops, they are useless fools. All they do is criticize."

"I'm telling you, the most hypocritical institution in the entire Philippines is the Catholic church and the pope knows that," Duterte said.

A Catholic priest and Duterte critic, Amado Picardal, said the president's remarks on the church may be aimed at diverting public attention from his widely criticized deadly war on drugs, the government's failure to stop the smuggling of illegal drugs into the country, continuing poverty, corruption and other issues.

He said Duterte may also feel threatened by the Catholic church, which played a role in the ouster of two Philippine presidents, including the 1986 overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

"Many people believe that his controversial statements are simply a way of diverting the people's attention from the real issues raised against him," Picardal said.
Back when he was still just teasing a presidential run, Beto O'Rourke told "Vanity Fair" he was "born to be in" the race. Now that he's campaigning to far greater media attention and much larger crowds than many Democrats who've been competing longer, they are taking offense at the former Texas congressman's sense of entitlement.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar drew the sharpest such contrast on Sunday, saying "I wasn't born to run. But I am running" while acknowledging, "Oh, that's the Beto line."

"No, I wasn't born to run for office, just because growing up in the '70s, in the middle of the country, I don't think many people thought a girl could be president," Klobuchar said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Asked about the same O'Rourke quote, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, was gentler, saying "I think I was born to make myself useful."

"I'm not combating anybody," he told "Fox News Sunday." ''They are going to be competitors more than opponents, I think, among the Democrats."

After a slew of criticism, O'Rourke aimed to clarify his comment in "Vanity Fair." He told reporters Sunday that, when he saw the cover, he thought, "Man, I hope I didn't say that."

"The way that I feel is that Im born to serve, Im born to try to help bring people together," O'Rourke said. "Ive always been at my best as a member of the El Paso City Council, as a member of Congress, as a candidate for the United States Senate, and I feel that right now running to serve this country as president. So I dont know that anyone is born for an office or a position, and I certainly am not. But I do think that I find my purpose and function in life in doing this kind of work. And Im very grateful to be able to do that.

Still, other Democrats have taken more veiled swipes. Former Obama administration housing chief Julian Castro, who hails from San Antonio, has pointed to references that he's the "other Texan" in the White House race and says that though he's not the front-runner now, he will eventually overtake better known candidates like O'Rourke.

When asked about the Vanity Fair quote, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said that he's dedicated his professional life to working with "communities that are really being left out and left behind." New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said she'd be more willing to fight hard for Democratic values then promote the kind of feelgood, bipartisan optimism that O'Rourke favors.

Such intraparty fighting is uncommon with the election still about 18 months away and marks a contrast to how nice  or at least not openly antagonistic  the crowded field of Democrats running was to one another before O'Rourke's announcement.

O'Rourke spent months hinting that he was running for president before finally announcing last week. He immediately drew overflow crowds at stops across Iowa, which kicks off presidential primary voting, but then began driving a Dodge Caravan to the battleground midwestern states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio  hoping to indicate that, beyond the primary, he can be a strong Democrat and win places where Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016.

On Saturday, O'Rourke acknowledged benefiting from years of inherent white-male privilege. But those comments came when he was asked about whether his party would nominate another white guy for president in a year when a record number of women and minorities are running. He also said it would be his preference to pick a female running mate  but noted that he has to win the primary first.

O'Rourke vows not to attack his fellow Democrats, telling a packed, weekend house party in Dubuque that "the diversity, experience and skills and expertise and perspective that" so many candidates running bring to the presidential race "is to the benefit of all of us."

"You will not see us demeaning any of the other candidates, ever uttering a personal word about anyone else," he said.

But O'Rourke has made similar promises to keep things positive in the past  only to renege.

For more than a year, he refused to go negative against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz during his star-making, near-upset in November's Texas Senate race  only to reverse himself and refer to President Donald Trump's 2016 Republican presidential primary campaign nickname for Cruz, "Lyin' Ted," during a debate mere weeks before the election.

O'Rourke subsequently sharpened criticism of Cruz to narrow gaps in the polls and wound up losing by 215,000 votes out of nearly 8.4 million cast.

As a presidential candidate, O'Rourke has also repeatedly praised a perspective White House hopeful who still hasn't entered the race, Vice President Joe Biden, saying "I think he has a lot of perspective and experience to bring to bear."

That could be an effort to defuse coming criticism of O'Rourke himself because he didn't accomplish much during his six years in the House. But not all would-be voters see that as a bad thing.

"He doesn't have any votes to renounce or flip flops," said Nick Fisch, a 25-year-old teacher who attended the Dubuque house party.

Then, recalling another relatively inexperienced Democratic presidential candidate who did well in Iowa, Fisch added: "It's the same thing (Barack) Obama had."
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will hold a two-day summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam to continue his efforts to persuade Kim to give up his nuclear weapons.

Trump has said his outreach to Kim and their first meeting last June in Singapore opened a path to peace, but there is not yet a concrete plan for how denuclearization could be implemented.

Denuclearizing North Korea is something that has eluded the U.S. for more than two decades, since it was first learned that North Korea was close to acquiring the means for nuclear weapons.

"As part of a bold new diplomacy, we continue our historic push for peace on the Korean Peninsula," Trump said in his State of the Union address.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress last week that U.S. intelligence officials do not believe Kim will eliminate his nuclear weapons or the capacity to build more because he believes they are key to the survival of the regime. Satellite video taken since the June summit has indicated North Korea is continuing to produce nuclear materials at its weapons factories.

Last year, North Korea released American detainees, suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests and dismantled a nuclear test site and parts of a rocket launch facility without the presence of outside experts.

It has repeatedly demanded that the United States reciprocate with measures such as sanctions relief, but Washington has called for North Korea to take steps such as providing a detailed account of its nuclear and missile facilities that would be inspected and dismantled under a potential deal.

At the second Trump-Kim summit, some experts say North Korea is likely to seek to trade the destruction of its main Yongbyon nuclear complex for a U.S. promise to formally declare the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, open a liaison office in Pyongyang and allow the North to resume some lucrative economic projects with South Korea.

"Our hostages have come home, nuclear testing has stopped, and there has not been a missile launch in 15 months," Trump said. "If I had not been elected President of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea.

"Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong Un is a good one," he said in announcing their second meeting.

Stephen Biegun, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's special representative for North Korea, is hopeful, but acknowledges that many issues make it especially complicated for the two countries to "embark on a diplomatic initiative of this magnitude." Biegun was in Pyongyang on Tuesday.

The Vietnamese city where the two leaders will meet was not announced. The country, however, is keen to project itself on the world stage. It is a single-party communist state that boasts of tight political control and a tough security apparatus similar to Singapore's.

Where Singapore leans West, generally appreciative of U.S. influence in Asia, Vietnam leans East. Even with its edgy relationship with China, it has a long fraternal history with Asia's communist states. This is friendly ground for Kim and closer than Singapore.

On a related issue, the State Department said this week that the U.S. and South Korea have reached a tentative agreement on sharing the costs of keeping 28,500 American troops in South Korea, but no final deal has been signed to replace the existing agreement, which expired at the end of 2018. South Korea pays more than $800 million a year, but Trump has demanded that Seoul pay 50 percent more.

News that a tentative agreement has been reached offers relief to those who worried Trump would use the lack of a deal as a reason to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea as part of negotiations with Kim. North Korea has claimed that the presence of American troops in the South is proof that the U.S. has hostile intentions in the region.

Trump said after his first meeting with Kim in June that while he'd like to bring troops home, "that's not part of the equation right now."

Associated Press writer Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says as many as 146 million people may have received information from a Russian agency that's accused of orchestrating much of the cyber-meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The Facebook CEO says his company found about 470 accounts and pages linked to the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which generated around 80,000 Facebook posts over roughly a two-year period.

Zuckerberg says most of the people  roughly 126 million  "may have been served content" from a Facebook page linked to the Russian agency. Another 20 million "were likely served" on Instagram.

The Trump administration last month hit Internet Research Agency employees with financial sanctions. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had earlier indicted these employees for seeking to conduct "information warfare" against the U.S.

Zuckerberg will testify in the Senate on Tuesday and in the House on Wednesday about the company's ongoing data-privacy scandal and how it failed to guard against other abuses of its service.

The House energy and commerce committee released Zuckerberg's testimony Monday as well, in which he explained what happened in the Cambridge Analytica saga and with Russian election interference and what Facebook is doing about it.



"We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg met Monday with Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce panel. Nelson said afterward that Zuckerberg was "forthright and honest to the degree he could" be in the private, one-on-one meeting.

Nelson said he believes Zuckerberg is taking the congressional hearings seriously "because he knows there is going to be a hard look at regulation."

Democrats like Nelson have argued that federal laws might be necessary to ensure user privacy. Republicans so far have shown little appetite for such regulation, but that could change if there are future privacy scandals or Democrats gain control of Congress in this November's elections.

"I think he understands that regulation could be right around the corner," Nelson said.

Facebook has yet to send a detailed message to the news feeds to millions of users who might have had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has said most of the affected users (more than 70 million) are in the U.S., though there are over a million each in the Philippines, Indonesia and the U.K.

In addition, all 2.2 billion Facebook users will receive a notice titled "Protecting Your Information" with a link to see what apps they use and what information they have shared with those apps. If they want, they can shut off apps individually or turn off third-party access to their apps completely.

Reeling from its worst privacy crisis in history, Facebook is in full damage-control mode.

Zuckerberg also announced on Monday that the company is creating an independent election research commission to look into the effects of social media on democracy and elections through peer-reviewed research.



"Looking back, it's clear we were too slow identifying election interference in 2016, and we need to do better in future elections," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.

He also told The Atlantic that he is not resigning, saying in an interview published Monday, "it started in a dorm room and now its this unprecedented community in scale and Im very confident that we're gonna be able to work through these issues.

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie previously estimated that more than 50 million people were compromised by a personality quiz that collected data from users and their friends. In an interview aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Wylie said the true number could be even larger than 87 million.

That Facebook app, called "This is Your Digital Life," was a personality quiz created in 2014 by an academic researcher named Aleksander Kogan, who paid about 270,000 people to take it. The app vacuumed up not just the data of the people who took it, but also  thanks to Facebook's loose restrictions  data from their friends, too, including details that they hadn't intended to share publicly.

Facebook later limited the data apps can access, but it was too late in this case.

Zuckerberg said Facebook came up with the 87 million figure by calculating the maximum number of friends that users could have had while Kogan's app was collecting data. The company doesn't have logs going back that far, he said, so it can't know exactly how many people may have been affected.

Cambridge Analytica said in a statement Wednesday that it had data for only 30 million Facebook users.
A British cybersecurity researcher has a date in federal court on Tuesday in Milwaukee, but he was still being held Monday at a U.S. lockup in Nevada, authorities said.

Marcus Hutchins, a hacker who won acclaim after helping in May to curb the spread of WannaCry ransomware during an attack that crippled thousands of computers worldwide, is at the Southern Nevada Detention Center in rural Pahrump, facility spokeswoman Kayla Gieni said.

Hutchins faces charges that he created and distributed malicious software designed to steal banking passwords. Hutchins' attorney in Las Vegas, Adrian Lobo, didn't immediately respond to telephone and email messages.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Koppe in Las Vegas set Hutchins' bail on Friday at $30,000. Koppe said she expected that he could be released Monday.

The judge decided Hutchins was not a danger to the community and isn't a risk not to appear for future court proceedings. But Koppe ordered Hutchins to surrender his passport and said Hutchins could fly to Wisconsin without identification.

It's not clear if he couldn't raise bail or if he would be transported Monday to Wisconsin in custody.

Hutchins, 23, did not enter a plea at Friday's hearing. He faces six charges dating to 2014, including conspiracy to commit computer fraud, distributing and advertising an electronic communication interception device, attempting to intercept electronic communications, and trying to access a computer without authorization. He could face decades in federal prison if he is convicted.

An indictment filed last month in Milwaukee was unsealed after Hutchins' arrest last Wednesday at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Hutchins was returning home following Def Con, a convention in Las Vegas for computer security professionals, according to a friend.

The charging document says Hutchins and another defendant, whose name was redacted, conspired between July 2014 and July 2015 to advertise, sell and profit from the Kronos banking Trojan malware. The indictment accuses Hutchins of creating the malware and enabling cybertheft by spreading a program that can infect web browsers and capture usernames and passwords.

Hutchins has support in the information-security community, where some call him a principled, ethical hacker. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil-liberties nonprofit, was helping Hutchins obtain legal counsel. Karen Gulllo, a spokeswoman for the foundation, declined Monday to comment.

Hutchins lives with his family in the town of Ilfracombe, England, and worked out of his bedroom. His mother, Janet, called it "hugely unlikely" her son was involved in illegalities because he spends much of his time combatting malware attacks.

In May, the curly-haired computer wiz and surfing enthusiast discovered a so-called "kill switch" that slowed the unprecedented WannaCry outbreak. He then spent three days fighting the worm that crippled British hospitals and factories, government agencies, banks and other businesses around the world.

Though Hutchins had previously worked under the alias MalwareTech, cracking WannaCry led to the loss of his anonymity and propelled him to cyber stardom  including public appearances and a $10,000 prize for cracking WannaCry. He said he planned to donate the money to charity.

"I don't think I'm ever going back to the MalwareTech that everyone knew," he told The Associated Press at the time.

Associated Press writer Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
Uber Technologies Inc. faced a fresh round of turmoil Thursday, with its global operations chief resigning and a major investor suing the ride-hailing company's former CEO.

Ryan Graves told Uber staff in an email Thursday that he will transition out of his role as senior vice president of global operations in mid-September. Graves will remain on Uber's board.

That board  and its support for former CEO Travis Kalanick  was the subject of a lawsuit filed Thursday in Delaware Chancery Court by Benchmark Capital Partners.

Benchmark holds 13 percent of Uber's stock. It claims Kalanick is trying to pack Uber's board with his allies and eventually return to his post as CEO. The venture capital firm says that would harm Uber's shareholders, employees, drivers and customers.

A spokesperson for Kalanick said the lawsuit is "completely without merit and riddled with lies and false allegations."

In the lawsuit, Benchmark claims Kalanick concealed material information from investors when he created three new board seats in 2016 and gave himself the right to appoint people to those seats. Among other things, Benchmark said, Kalanick knew Uber might be accused of stealing trade secrets from Waymo, Google's self-driving car unit. Waymo sued Uber earlier this year.

The lawsuit also says Kalanick didn't discuss his failure to curb Uber's pervasive culture of discrimination and sexual harassment.

Kalanick resigned under pressure in June after a monthslong investigation into harassment and other behavior problems at the San Francisco-based company. But he quickly appointed himself to one of the three board seats. The other two remain vacant.

Benchmark says Kalanick has acquired "a disproportionate level of influence over the board, ensuring that he would continue to have an outsized role in Uber's strategic direction even if forced to resign as CEO." The firm says Kalanick has already interfered in the board's attempts to hire a new CEO.

Benchmark wants to remove the three additional seats and return the board to eight members. It's also asking the court to prevent Kalanick from participating in board meetings.

Uber said it had no comment on the lawsuit. But in a statement, Kalanick's spokesperson said the lawsuit is an attempt to deprive Kalanick of his rights as an Uber founder and shareholder.

"Travis will continue to act in the interests of Uber and all of its stakeholders and is confident that these entirely baseless claims will be rejected," the statement said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19)  Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra called the recent report of an international lawyer group on legal practitioners' killings "preposterous," after it supposedly pinned the blame on the administration.

"With all due respect, I find their conclusion that lawyers' deaths are state-sanctioned preposterous, unless they can back it up with some credible evidence. Of all people, they as lawyers, should be the first to show proof of facts before making reckless public statements," Guevarra said in a statement sent Wednesday.

The lawyers' panel called on President Rodrigo Duterte to protect and not attack the legal practitioners, after finding out that at least 37 of them have been killed since the start of his presidency. The lawyers also said Duterte's declarations give police, military and "effectively anyone" a license to kill.

READ: International lawyers call on Duterte admin to protect, not attack legal practitioners

However, the justice chief said it was a "sweeping statement," and also added that his department will "do its part" in protecting legal practitioners.

Guevarra also refuted the report's claims of a lack of "structural protection, compensation, or remedy" for the victims and their families.

He cited the case of Quezon City Deputy City Prosecutor Rogelio Velasco, whose death is undergoing preliminary investigation, after he was shot dead in May 2018 while driving.

"There are so many reasons why lawyers get killed -- work-related, personal, business, political, etc. and pinning the blame on government may be pushing it too far," he said.

Guevarra had earlier expressed support for prosecutors getting firearms for protection, but admits the Department of Justice lacked the budget to provide for bulletproof vehicles or body armor.
All the people in Quickly that were wrong about Russia and the wild collusion story, are the same ones trying to sell people on the climate change hoax. And know they want you to believe that the president is mentally unstable because George Conway say's so. Is the presidents bald spot growing, or hands getting smaller with age? And are his enablers growing more violent by the day, because some nut with a gun shot people in New Zealand? Where will the next climate disaster happen or shooting take place, Nostradamus? Or will you wait till after it happens to link the two together? Were in such scary times, living on such a fragile planet with predictions of doom and gloom all around.
A tourist who crashed into a tree while riding a dockless scooter has died, marking the first fatality in the city of San Diego involving the scooters that can be found on street corners throughout the region.

Christopher Conti, 53, from Woodstock, Georgia, was knocked unconscious during the collision along 10th Avenue near B street on Wednesday, March 13, San Diego police said.

The rider was traveling on a Bird scooter along a sidewalk and not wearing a helmet when the rider crashed into a tree.

NBC 7's Danica McAdam reports on the collision involving a man on a scooter along 10th near B Street in downtown San Diego.

It was 10 p.m. at the time of the crash. Investigators say Conti failed to negotiate a left turn and struck the tree.

Conti was visiting San Diego and decided to ride the scooter with another friend when he crashed, one of Conti's friends told NBC 7.

The SDPD traffic division was investigating the cause of the collision.

A spokesperson from the scooter company sent the following statement: "We are deeply saddened for those impacted by this tragic accident and our hearts go out to the individuals friends and family."

Conti's family and friends want everyone to be aware of the dangers of riding dockless scooters and why helmets should be made accessible to all riders.

The friend added that Conti was an organ donor and left this world having donated life-saving organs to at least five people in need.

This is not the first fatality involving the popular dockless scooters in the county.

Esteban Galindo, 26, was riding a Bird scooter on Third Avenue in Chula Vista on Dec. 22 when he collided with a car. Galindo's death was the first in the county connected to the dockless scooters.

There have been other injury crashes including two people riding tandem on an electric scooter on 21st and Commercial streets in Logan Heights when they collided with a trolley in October 2018.

NBC 7's Dave Summers spoke to scooter riders in San Diego and heard their reaction to the video.

Since the motorized scooters were first introduced in the city of San Diego in February 2018, the San Diego City Council's Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods committee has proposed regulations.

The regulations would implement geofencing to create 8-mph zones, create a consistent rider education program and allow the city to gather data from each company, among other rules.

A study published in January documented 249 emergency room visits tied to the scooters at two university hospitals over a one-year period. The researchers from UCLA state that four percent of riders wear helmets which is required by California law.
What to Know A woman was arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of her 9-year-old daughter was found in a duffel bag along a horse trail.

Taquesta Graham, 28, is expected to be charged with murder on Wednesday, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said.

Prosecutors last week charged Graham's boyfriend, Emiel Hunt, with murder in the killing of Trinity Love Jones.

Update (Wednesday, 10 a.m.): Taquesta Graham, 28, was charged Wednesday morning with murder in the death of her 9-year-old daughter.

A woman was arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of her 9-year-old daughter was found in a duffel bag along a suburban horse trail near Los Angeles, authorities said Monday.

Taquesta Graham, 28, was expected to be charged with murder on Wednesday, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said.

Prosecutors last week charged Graham's boyfriend, Emiel Hunt, with murder in the killing of Trinity Love Jones.

The dead girl was found March 5 at the bottom of an embankment in the suburb of Hacienda Heights. She was wearing pants with a panda pattern and a pink shirt that said, "Future Princess Hero."

There were no obvious signs of trauma on her body. Authorities have not revealed a cause of death or motive. Graham was extradited from Texas to California last week and was initially held on an unrelated warrant.

Graham was in custody Monday and could not be reached for comment.

Hunt, 38, has a previous child abuse conviction from 2005 in San Diego County, according to prosecutors. His arraignment is scheduled for April 16.

Friends and family members described Trinity as a joyful and talented girl who did well in school.

A memorial near where her body was found featured stuffed animals, heart-shaped balloons, dozens of votive candles and notes expressing love for Trinity and one that said "Rest in heaven, Princess."
Shes on the pages of Teen Vogue, Allure, and Cosmopolitan magazines  not a celebrity, but a sixth grader.

Molly Neuner, 11, of Portland, Maine, is making national headlines after she stood up to school officials enforcing a dress code she thinks is "unfair and sexist."

The dress code at King Middle School prohibits students from wearing "short or tight-fitting skirts or shorts, (no shorter than finger-tip length) thin strapped, revealing tops."

Neuner said sixth graders recently had a meeting with teachers, and when the topic of the dress code came up, two teachers told them it was because their clothing can be a "distraction" to boys.

Neuner said the next week at school, a teacher measured the width of her tank top straps and the length of her friends shorts in front of the class.

"It just made us feel uncomfortable," she said.

When she told her mother about it, Christina Neuner showed Molly the hashtag I am not a distraction on Instagram. It inspired Mollys next outfit for school.

"The minute I saw that, I knew thats what I wanted to do," she said.

Neuner wore a spaghetti-strap style tank top to school, and instead of sleeves, wrote the words "I am not a distraction" on her arm in marker. When her female classmates saw her, they joined in.

Their movement caught the attention of blogs and national magazines, and has been shared by the ACLU and Huffington Post, among other major outlets.

It has prompted school officials to review the dress code policy, and ask for student input at the end of the school year to make possible changes.

Superintendent Xavier Botana said they are carefully reviewing policies and considering "smart adjustments" to the dress code.

Neuner said she would like to see those changes sooner, but she's glad school officials were receptive.

She has received comments from students and parents across the country, and the world  some telling her shes not distracting, but inspiring.

"It just felt so empowering to know that other girls have looked up to me, and that they are going through this," she said. "Now they have another reason to stand up for themselves."
Authorities arrested a man suspected of a Thanksgiving shooting at an Alabama mall where police killed a man they mistakenly believed to be the gunman, officials said Thursday.

Emantic "EJ" Bradford Jr. was killed by an officer responding to the report of a mall shooting. Police said Bradford had a gun, and they initially blamed him for opening fire. They later retracted that allegation.

Erron Martez Dequan Brown, 20, of Bessemer was charged with attempted murder in the Nov. 22 shooting at the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, according to a statement from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.

Inspector Frank Lempka with the U.S. Marshals in Atlanta said Brown was arrested Thursday morning at a relative's home in South Fulton, just outside of Atlanta.

Brown was taken to the Fulton County jail for a hearing to be sent back to Alabama, Lempka said.

Brown's arrest followed days of protests over Bradford's killing in Hoover, where leaders of an asked the state Thursday for permission to release more information about the killing.

Brown was charged in the shooting of Brian Xavier Wilson, 18, of Birmingham, who was wounded. He wasn't charged with shooting a 12-year-old girl who also was injured.

Court records show Brown was arrested in June 2017 in Huntsville on a charge of using a gun to rob a man, but the case was dismissed three months later after prosecutors filed notice that they didn't want to pursue the case.

With the city's lone black City Council member, Derrick Murphy, acting as a spokesman, officials made the request during an appearance at City Hall that ended with two prayers. The city will look at releasing information on its own if no response comes by noon Monday, Murphy said.

Demonstrators and relatives of Bradford have pushed authorities to release video and other evidence since an officer responding to a report of the shooting, which happened at Alabama's largest shopping mall.

Murphy, who joined other leaders in meeting with Bradford's relatives earlier this week, said the city wanted to help answer questions raised by the family.

"They have our love, they have our prayers," he said.

The city made the request about evidence to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency because state investigators are handling the shooting probe. A statement from the agency about Brown's arrest said it was "highly likely" that releasing evidence would hamper the continuing probe, but it didn't directly address the city's request.

The statement from the Alabama police agency did not say whether there was any relationship between Bradford and Brown, and an attorney representing the Bradford family did not return a message about whether the two men knew each other.

A minister who described himself as the Bradford family's pastor, Mike McClure Jr., said releasing video of the shooting would help calm growing tensions that have included days of protests and racist social media posts.

"When there is no information it only leads to imagination," said McClure, one of two pastors who closed the councilman's statement with prayer.

McClure said Bradford attended his church, and McClure will officiate at funeral services on Saturday which will include a eulogy by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Bradford was shot to death on a mall concourse decorated for Christmas. An officer, who has yet to be publicly identified, shot and killed Bradford upon seeing the young man with a gun moments after shots were fired, police said.

Bradford's family has said he had a permit to carry a weapon legally, and their attorney has said witnesses reported that Bradford was trying to help after the shooting.
U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan believe exposure to around-the-clock trash fires on their military bases has left them with breathing problems and chronic illnesses, even years after returning home.

The Department of Veterans Affairs maintains that exposure to such fumes has not been definitively linked to any long-term health effects. The agencys stance continues to hinder the approval process for veterans hoping to secure medical care from the VA, which operates 1,243 health care facilities across the country. Members of Congress, however, are now pushing to expand health care coverage for veterans by forcing the VA to acknowledge burn pit exposure as a "presumed" service-connected illness.

Soldiers Call Burn Pits the 'Modern Day Agent Orange'

"[Veterans] are either becoming 100 percent disabled or they're dying," said U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-California. "You have a lot of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals in that smoke that our service members are breathing in."

Ruiz, a medical doctor of 18 years, authored two pieces of legislation and co-authored a third with Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Florida, that would guarantee medical care for veterans exposed to burn pits. The efforts aim to label such exposure as an automatic "presumption" of service-connected illness. A similar designation was ultimately put into place for Vietnam veterans who were exposed to the dangerous chemical known as Agent Orange.

"This is our Agent Orange, but they dont care," one local veteran told NBC Bay Area.

He asked his identity not be revealed due to the sensitive nature of his work as an intelligence officer. The Bay Area-based soldier spent a year stationed at Balad military base in Central Iraq, and he now suffers from asthma and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease.

He believes exposure to a burn pit while serving in Iraq is the source of his illnesses.

"I was healthy when I came into the Army, and for some reason I have a plethora of medical issues now," he said.

The veteran regularly coughs up blood and recently had a pacemaker put in because of a slow heart rate at just 39 years old. He also suffers from chest pains and frequent breathing problems.

"Slowly, over a period of time, my health just started going downhill." he said.

Burn Pit Usage on U.S. Military Bases Abroad Dates Back Decades

Burn pits date back to the Gulf War in the 1990s and were largely used on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan beginning in the early 2000s. Veterans returning from those wars showed increased signs of respiratory problems, including asthma, chronic bronchitis and other lung diseases, according to a study published in the research journal Military Medicine.

VA Believes Burn Pit Exposure Causes 'Temporary' Health Problems

While the VAs own research also found a possible link between chronic health problems and burn pit exposure, the agency maintains that study is not conclusive. As a result, veterans exposed to burn pits are often denied care by the VA.

Congress heavily restricted the use of burn pits a decade ago. At that time, there were more than 270 burn pits at bases in the Middle East, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. The Department of Defense hired private contractors to manage the burned trash piles. When something needed to be discarded, it was tossed into the flames. Veterans told NBC Bay Area they saw everything from refrigerators to plastics, and even body parts thrown into the fires. The pits burned 24 hours a day.

"You could just taste it. It was like this sickening thing that kind of burned the back of your throat all the time," the Bay Area veteran said. He says he worried about the burn pit exposure while he was stationed in Iraq, but he says any efforts to run his concerns up the chain of command were dismissed.

The Department of Defense now largely uses incinerators at military sites. As a result, only 16 burn pits are currently in use at U.S. bases in the Middle East, according to a spokesperson with U.S. Central Command. While 15 of those burn pits are only allowed to include "non-hazardous waste," such as classified documents, the military is operating one burn pit in Syria for "covered waste," which includes hazardous materials.

"I do believe the military is failing veterans," said Ruiz. "In the United States in the 1970s, they banned the use of open burn pits for a reason. So why would it be okay that we expose Americans in and foreign soil to those same burn pits that we don't allow to be burned here because of their toxic effects?"

NBC Bay Area

Eligibility for Medical Care Varies Widely for Veterans

Veterans of the Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are generally eligible for medical care at the VA for at least five years after being discharged, according to information posted on the Department of Veterans Affairs website. Compensation beyond that can be provided based on illnesses or injuries caused or made worse by active military service.

Compensation can include financial support or health care for injuries like severe hearing loss, traumatic brain injury and PTSD. Veterans who believe they are eligible for these benefits can file a claim with the VA. The VA stressed that approved medical coverage is based on individual circumstances on a case-by-case basis.

VA Denied 80 Percent of Medical Claims Related to Burn Pit Exposure

It is unclear how many veterans have been exposed to burn pits. Over the past decade, however, the VA approved just 20 percent of the medical claims related to the flaming piles of garbage. From June 2007 through Nov. 30, 2018, the VA processed 11,581 VA disability compensation claims with at least one condition related to burn pit exposure, according to VA spokesperson Susan Carter. Of those, 2,318 claims were granted.

While the VAs website lists breathing and lung problems among the conditions eligible for disability benefits, it can be difficult for veterans to prove those conditions derive from burn pit exposure. The VA says air pollution in Iraq and Afghanistan may actually pose a "greater danger  than exposure to burn pits." While the VA admits there are toxins in burn pit smoke, the agency says most health effects are "temporary."

"VA looks continually at medical research and follows trends related to medical conditions affecting Veterans," Carter said in a statement.

'In Some People, It Might Be Making Them Sick'

The VA is currently in the process of contracting with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to review respiratory health effects of airborne hazards in Southwest Asia, according to Carter. The report is scheduled to be released in 2020.

"In some people, it might be making them sick," said Dr. Drew Helmer, director of the VAs War Related Illness and Injury Study Center in New Jersey.

"Who it is making sick, how many people it is making sick, and what is the sickness -- those are still questions we dont have good answers for."

Helmer, who spoke to NBC Philadelphia, said the effort to investigate the potential long-term effects of burn pit exposure is an ongoing process at the VA.

"Even you go back further, we were concerned about Gulf War veterans and their exposure to burning oil well fires, for example," he said. "So it's been a very long process."

The Department of Defense did not answer repeated requests for an interview. The agency still has not released a comprehensive list of what exactly was tossed into each of its military burn pits and when.

"Theyre trying to skirt away from accountability and responsibility," said Ruiz. "If we dont know what was burned, then we wont be able to identify the health risks in order to outreach to our veterans."

More than a decade after returning from Iraq, the Bay Area veteran says hes still suffering. On his left arm, he now bears a tattoo, showing a skeleton dressed in military garb surrounded by flames and smoke.

"This is me dying -- me dying in the burn pits," he said, pointing to the tattoo. "Honestly, I feel like that is what led to everything that is wrong with me."

______________________________________
Lax regulations, chronic short staffing and a law that muffled the voices of environmentalists on mining licenses made the devastating collapse of a dam in southeastern Brazil all but destined to happen, experts and legislators say.

The failure of the dam holding back iron ore mining waste on Jan. 25 unleashed an avalanche of mud that buried buildings and contaminated water downstream. At least 115 people have died, and another 248 people remain missing.

But one of the cruelest parts of the tragedy in Brumadinho is that it has happened before: In 2015, a mining dam burst about 80 miles (130 kilometers) away in Mariana, in what is considered Brazil's worst environmental disaster.

What's more, it could happen again, as many Brazilian states and the federal government move to ease regulation in the name of economic development.

In the three years since the Mariana rupture killed 19 people, the regulation of the industry has gotten less, not more, rigorous in Minas Gerais state.

"It felt like it was just a matter of time before something bigger would happen," said Josiele Rosa Silva Tomas, the president of the Brumadinho residents' association.

Problems that existed when the dams in Mariana burst, like dramatic short-staffing, have persisted, while a new law has reduced the say of environmental groups in the project licensing process.

And the danger remains widespread: A 2017 report from the National Water Agency classified more than 700 dams nationwide as at high risk of collapse, with high potential for causing damage.

In fact, some fear the risk may only increase. Environmental groups accused the previous Congress and president of rolling back significant protections, and many expect further weakening under President Jair Bolsonaro, who has said environmental regulation hamstrings several industries, including mining.

But the politics that contributed to the collapses in Minas Gerais are much more local. For centuries, the mineral-rich state has revolved around the mining industry  its name, given by Portuguese colonizers, translates to "General Mines."

More than 300 mines employ thousands in the state, often in poor, rural areas.

Civil society groups often struggle to achieve basic guarantees. For instance, Tomas' group has long fought to prevent mining projects from contaminating drinking water.

"Minas Gerais has a centuries-long history of being lenient with the mining sector. It's cultural," Joao Vitor Xavier, a state deputy, told The Associated Press. "The industry creates a discourse where they dangle jobs and economic growth in front of people, but they put profit over safety."

The CEO of Vale SA, which owned and operated the Brumadinho mining complex, acknowledges their regulatory measures fell short.

"Apparently to work under the (current) rules has not worked," Flavio Schvartsman said during a press conference several hours after the dam breach.

Vale officials have said they don't yet know why the dam collapsed.

Arrest warrants have been issued for five people responsible for safety assessments of the dam, including three Vale employees. Vale was also involved in the Mariana rupture: The dams there were administered by the Brazilian giant and Australia's BHP Billiton.

The Mariana collapse unleashed nearly 80 million cubic yards (60 million cubic meters) of mining waste into rivers and eventually the Atlantic Ocean. While its environmental impact is considered the worst in Brazilian history, Brumadinho has already far surpassed its death toll.

In the wake of the Mariana tragedy, Minas Gerais was already struggling to implement what regulation it had: A 2016 audit found the state had only 20 percent of the staff needed at the agency charged with regulating mines. Environmentalists say mining regulation has gotten even weaker since.

In 2015, the state approved a new process for licensing mining projects. It shifted responsibility from a board that included several environmental organizations to the state environmental secretary, who created a new board with a majority of participants favorable to mining industry interests.

Then-Gov. Fernando Pimentel argued the bill would reduce bureaucracy. But days before the law was approved, the Minas Association of Environmental Defense called it "one of the biggest setbacks in environmental regulation in the country."

"The conditions are set so the licenses never get turned down," Maria Teresa Corujo, a rare pro-environmental voice on the new board, told the AP.

In December, Corujo, of the National Forum of Civil Society in Watershed Communities, was the only member of the new board to vote against approving the expansion of the mining complex in Brumadinho. Notes from that meeting show the complex's pollutant rating had been downgraded  a move that is now the purview of the environmental secretary  allowing the company to skip regulatory steps.

In July 2018, Xavier, the state lawmaker who has pushed for a ban on iron ore waste dams, made a grave prediction.

"I'm not saying we might have other dam ruptures in Minas Gerais. I am saying that, from everything I've seen and studied, I have no doubt we will have more ruptures of dams," he told the state assembly.

Today, he still has no doubt that there will be more tragedies unless more rigorous regulations are implemented.

"These dams are not 100 percent safe," he said. "How many of them can rupture? Any one of them."
European Union leaders on Sunday sealed a divorce deal with Britain, and issued a warning to U.K. politicians who within weeks will approve or reject it  this offer is as good as it gets.

Amid criticism of the deal from lawmakers on all sides of Britain's EU debate, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said the U.K. couldn't hope to negotiate better terms before its departure in March.

"I am totally convinced this is the only deal possible," he said. "Those who think that by rejecting the deal that they would have a better deal will be disappointed the first seconds after the rejection."

For once, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May was in complete agreement.

"This is the deal that is on the table," she said. "It is the best possible deal. It is the only deal."

Now that the EU has approved it, May must sell the deal to British parliamentarians  a huge task considering the intense opposition from pro-Brexit and pro-EU lawmakers alike.

May said Parliament would get a vote before Christmas, and argued lawmakers had a duty "to deliver Brexit" as voters decided in a 2016 referendum.

"The British people don't want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit," she said. "They want a good deal done that fulfils the vote and allows us to come together again as a country."

The last big obstacle to a deal was overcome on Saturday, when Spain lifted its objections over the disputed British territory of Gibraltar. It took EU leaders a matter of minutes at Sunday's summit in Brussels to endorse a withdrawal agreement that settles Britain's divorce bill, protects the rights of U.K. and EU citizens hit by Brexit and keeps the Irish border open. They also backed a 26-page document laying out their aims for future relations after Britain leaves on March 29.

At a bittersweet meeting, EU leaders expressed sadness at the departure of Britain, the first country ever to leave the bloc.

"A country leaving the EU doesn't give rise to the raising of Champagne glasses or applause," Juncker said. "It is a sad day and everybody who spoke today during the European Council attempted to express their sadness."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her feelings were "ambivalent, with sadness but on the other hand also some kind of relief that we made it to this point."

"I think we managed to make a diplomatic piece of art," she said.

May said she wasn't sad, because Britain and the EU would remain "friends and neighbors."

"I recognize some European leaders are sad at this moment, but also some people back at home in the U.K. will be sad at this moment," she told reporters.

But May said she was "full of optimism" about Britain's future.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the deal  the product of a year and a half of often grueling negotiations between Britain and the EU  was regrettable, but acceptable.

"I believe that nobody is winning. We are all losing because of the U.K. leaving," Rutte said. "But given that context, this is a balanced outcome with no political winners."

The deal must still be ratified by the European Parliament, something that its president, Antonio Tajani, said would likely take place early in 2019.

Tajani said a "large majority" of European parliamentarians supported the deal.

The same can't be said of British lawmakers.

May is under intense pressure from pro-Brexit and pro-EU British legislators, with large numbers on both sides of the debate opposing the divorce deal and threatening to vote it down. Brexiteers think it will leave the U.K. tied too closely to EU rules, while pro-Europeans say it will erect new barriers between Britain and the bloc  its neighbor and biggest trading partner.

Pro-Brexit Conservative lawmaker Iain Duncan Smith said Sunday that May should demand new conditions from the EU. He said the deal as it stands "has ceded too much control" to Brussels.

May insists her deal delivers on the things that matter most to pro-Brexit voters  control of budgets, immigration policy and laws  while retaining close ties to the U.K.'s European neighbors.

In a "letter to the nation" released Sunday, May said she would be "campaigning with my heart and soul to win that vote and to deliver this Brexit deal, for the good of our United Kingdom and all of our people."

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he thought May's chances of getting the agreement through Parliament were strong.

He said British lawmakers would see that "the alternative is a no deal, cliff edge Brexit which is something of course that we all want to avoid."

"Any other deal really only exists in people's imaginations," he added.
ISIS fighters facing defeat in Syria are slipping across the border into Iraq, where they are destabilizing the country's fragile security, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

Hundreds  likely more than 1,000  ISIS fighters have crossed the open, desert border in the past six months, defying a massive operation by U.S., Kurdish, and allied forces to stamp out the remnants of the jihadi group in eastern Syria, according to three Iraqi intelligence officials and a U.S. military official.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on intelligence matters. But indications of the extremist group's widening reach in Iraq are clear.

Cells operating in four northern provinces are carrying out kidnappings, assassinations, and roadside ambushes aimed at intimidating locals and restoring the extortion rackets that financed the group's rise to power six years ago.

"IS is trying to assert itself in Iraq, because of the pressure it is under in Syria," said Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasoul, the Iraqi army spokesman, using an alternate abbreviation for ISIS.

The militants can count between 5,000 and 7,000 among their ranks in Iraq, where they are hiding out in the rugged terrain of remote areas, according to one intelligence official.

In Syria, Kurdish-led forces backed by the U.S.-led coalition have cornered the militants in a pocket less than one square kilometer in Baghouz, a Euphrates River village near the 600-kilometer (370-mile) border.

The Iraqi army has deployed more than 20,000 troops to guard the frontier, but militants are slipping across, mostly to the north of the conflict zone, in tunnels or under the cover of night. Others are entering Iraq disguised as cattle herders.

They are bringing with them currency and light weapons, according to intelligence reports, and digging up money and arms from caches they stashed away when they controlled a vast swath of northern Iraq.

"If we deployed the greatest militaries in the world, they would not be able to control this territory," Rasoul said. "Our operations require intelligence gathering and airstrikes."

At its height in 2014 and 2015, the Islamic State group ruled over a self-proclaimed "caliphate" that spanned one-third of Iraqi and Syrian territory. The extremist offshoot of Al-Qaida in Iraq threatened to exterminate religious minorities.

Iraqi forces, with U.S., Iranian, and other international help, were able to turn the war around and Baghdad declared victory over the group in December 2017, after the last urban battle had been won.

But precursors to ISIS have recovered from major setbacks in the past, and many fear the militants could stage a comeback. The group is already waging a low-level insurgency in rural areas.

The Associated Press verified nine ISIS attacks in Iraq in January alone, based on information gathered from intelligence officials, provincial leaders, and social media. ISIS often boasts of its activities through group messaging apps such as Telegram.

In one instance, a band of militants broke into the home of a man they accused of being an informant for the army, in the village of Tal al-Asfour in the northern Badush region. They shot him and his two brothers against the wall, and posted photos of the killing on social media.

Sheikh Mohamed Nouri, a local tribal leader, said it was meant to intimidate locals in order to keep them from sharing intelligence with security officials.

"I have members of our tribal militia receiving threatening messages warning them to abandon their work," said Nouri.

In other instances, ISIS cells have killed mukhtars  village leaders and municipal officials. They have attacked rural checkpoints with car bombs and mortar fire, and burned down militia members' homes. In the Shurgat area in central Iraq, militants stopped a police vehicle last month and killed all four officers inside.

Other activities have aimed at restoring the group's financial footing.

On Sunday, militants kidnapped a group of 12 truffle hunters in the western Anbar province, marking a return to a strategy of intimidating and extorting farmers and traders for financial gain.

Naim Kaoud, the head of provincial security, urged locals to suspend truffle gathering, which has just one season a year and is an important source of income for rural families.

Other truffle hunters have disappeared in the countryside, according to former lawmaker and Anbar tribal figure Jaber al-Jaberi. He said the militants are taking cuts from truffle hunters in exchange for access to the land, and kidnapping or killing those who refuse to cooperate.

"This is one of the sources of their funding," said al-Jaberi.

Al-Jaberi cautioned against exaggerating the ISIS threat, saying the militants have been less successful at infiltrating communities than they were earlier this decade.

"These are different times," he said.

Others are not so sure. Hans-Jakob Schindler, a former adviser to the U.N. Security Council on ISIS and other extremist groups, said the same grievances that gave rise to IS in 2013 remain today, including a large Sunni minority that feels politically and economically marginalized by the Shiite-led central government.

"I'm very worried that we are just repeating history," said Schindler, who is now at the Counter Extremism Project.

He said he has seen ISIS "revert to the old type" of "classical terror attacks" and kidnapping for ransom, tactics that were once widely employed by al-Qaida in Iraq.

The militants staged a dramatic resurgence after 2011, when U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq and civil war broke out in neighboring Syria. Today some 5,200 American forces are based in Iraq, after they were invited back to help stem the ISIS rampage in 2014.

After President Donald Trump promised in December to pull American forces out of Syria, Iraqi lawmakers began clamoring for the U.S. to leave, arguing that the mission against ISIS was approaching its end.

But with no letdown to ISIS militancy, those calls have petered out.
Univision said journalist Jorge Ramos and a TV crew were "arbitrarily detained" in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday after an interview with President Nicolas Maduro was abruptly terminated.

In a tweet Monday night, the Spanish-language news network said that "a @Univision team, headed by @jorgeramosnews, is being arbitrarily detained at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. They were interviewing @NicolasMaduro but he didn't like the questions. Their technical equipment was also confiscated."

Western Hemisphere Assistant Secretary of the State Kim Breier Tweeted that the State Department had received word of the detention and insisted on their immediate release, warning that "the world is watching."

Minister Jorge Rodriguez responded for the Maduro administration on Twitter by calling the reported detention a "new fake allegation."

According to Univision president Daniel Coronell, the crew was later released, but their recording equipment and records of the interview remained confiscated by Maduro loyalists. Coronell said in a tweet that he spoke with Ramos over the phone after he and the crew were released.

World of Dance returns for its second season on Tuesday, and Access Lives Scott Evans is pulling duties as the competitions new host! Scott takes us on an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the set!

Coronell also said that he confirmed Ramos' release with the Maduro regime's communications minister.

Speaking from Caracas Monday night, Ramos told Univision anchor Patricia Janiot during a phone call that aired on the networks broadcast, Maduro didnt like the questions he was asking about the countrys humanitarian crisis and after showing the president photos he had taken of Venezuelans eating out of trash cans on the street, Maduro left the interview.

Ramos told Janiot they were then held for more than two hours and placed in a dark room for some of that time. Janiot said Venezuelan Communications Minster Jorge Rodriguez told Univision that Ramos insulted Maduro repeatedly by calling him a dictator and murderer.

Ramos made headlines in 2015 after then-candidate Donald Trump had him removed from a news conference when the Miami-based anchor attempted to engage with the GOP front-runner as he recognized another reporter. Ramos was trying to question Trump on his proposal to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. As the two spoke over one another in a testy back-and-forth, Trumps security detail approached the Mexican-American journalist and escorted him out of the room.

"You cannot build a 1,900-mile wall," Ramos continued on his way out.

Ramos was eventually allowed to return to the presser and Trump called on him to ask a question.

A security guard removes Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news conference on Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal.
The unexpected delay in Michael Flynn's sentencing raised a new wrinkle in the Russia probe.

The former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying the FBI about his contacts with Russia's ambassador, had expected to face no jail time after prosecutors vouched for him, saying he had provided substantial assistance in their investigation.

But when a federal judge lambasted Flynn and raised the prospect of prison, Flynn decided to postpone the hearing and keep cooperating to get as much credit as he can.

What we learned at Tuesday's hearing:

COOPERATION COUNTS  BUT SO DOES THE CRIME

There was no argument from either side about the extent and value of Flynn's cooperation. But U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan made clear that he was still hung up on the crime itself, repeating multiple times his distress over the fact that Flynn had lied to the FBI on the grounds of the White House.

Though Sullivan gave Flynn an opportunity to reset the process and earn additional credit for his cooperation, it's not clear that he'll get past the underlying crime itself.

MUELLER WANTS TO REWARD COOPERATORS

Even as it became clear the judge was going to call out Flynn for lying to the FBI, the Mueller team signaled it was still OK with seeking little to no prison time.

Prosecutor Brandon Van Grack told the judge that he continued to believe Flynn accepted responsibility even though a sentencing memo filed by his lawyers last week raised the prospect that he was less than remorseful.

For Mueller, a sentence of probation to reward cooperators is an important incentive for others who are contemplating admitting guilt and working with the government.

Van Grack also noted that Flynn had already provided the "vast majority" of the information he could and he has already committed to fulfilling any other cooperation needed.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR TRUMP?

Flynn took the legs out of some of President Donald Trump's most recent attacks on the Russia investigation.

Trump, who regularly attacks the Mueller probe as a witch hunt, has wrongly stated that the FBI said Flynn "didn't lie." In recent comments at the White House, Trump said Flynn's guilt was now in dispute and "I think it's a great thing that the judge is looking into that situation."

Look into it, Sullivan did. And after repeated questioning Tuesday, Flynn never wavered: He lied, he accepted responsibility for doing it and he wasn't withdrawing his plea.

Asked specifically if he was entrapped or if any FBI misconduct led to Flynn's false statements, Flynn attorney Robert Kelner said, "No."

NO ANSWER YET FOR WHY FLYNN LIED

It remains the enduring question about Flynn: Why did he lie about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.?

Neither Flynn nor Mueller has said in court papers. And Tuesday, Flynn's hearing was cut short before he was asked or had an opportunity to tell the judge why he had committed the crime.

So the wait continues.
China and Vietnam officially opened a new cross-border bridge on Tuesday linking the city of Dongxing in China and the city of Mong Cai in Vietnam.

The 27.7-meter-wide Beilun II bridge has four main lanes and two auxiliary ones. Its opening means that the busy port of Dongxing will have two bridges, and improved capacity to serve booming border trade between China and Vietnam.

Construction of the bridge started in 2014 and was completed in September 2017, involving an investment of about 220 million yuan (32.7 million U.S. dollars) from China and Vietnam.

It will shorten waiting time for customs clearance, thus boosting border logistics and trade and promoting connectivity under the Belt and Road Initiative, said Huang Xiong, deputy director of Dongxing Customs.

The new bridge will be used for freight vehicles, while the existing Beilun bridge, 3 km away, will be reserved for the passage of personnel only, officials said.

Dongxing, in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, faces Mong Cai across the Beilun river and has become an important goods channel between China and Southeast Asia.

In 2018, trade between Dongxing and Vietnam reached 24.45 billion yuan. The Dongxing port last year handled over 47,000 vehicles and about 12 million passengers, a record high.

Last year, trade volume between China and Vietnam reached a record high of nearly 150 billion U.S. dollars, and China accounted for the largest number of foreign tourists in Vietnam, roughly 5 million people.
What to Know U.S. Rep. Mia Love said her Josh Holt's imprisonment took a major emotional and financial toll on the family.

The cause of Laurie Holt's death is not yet known.

She is survived by her husband and four adult children.

Laurie Holt, a Utah woman who struggled for nearly two years to get her son freed from a Venezuelan jail, died on Sunday. She was 50 and died less than a year after her son returned to the U.S.

Holt died unexpectedly at her home in the Salt Lake City suburb of Riverton, former U.S. Rep. Mia Love said Monday. Laurie Holt's husband Jason Holt went to wake her for church at about 11 a.m. and found her unresponsive, Love said.

The cause of death is unknown and Holt had no known illnesses, said Love, who became Holt's friend while working with other politicians to help win freedom for Josh Holt.

He returned to the U.S. with his Venezuelan wife, Thamara Caleno, in May 2018 after he was imprisoned in June 2016 on weapons charges that the Holts and U.S. politicians said were invented.

Holt went to the South American country in June 2016 to marry Caleno, who he met online while looking for a Spanish-speaking Mormons to help him improve his Spanish.

He had planned to spend several months in Caracas with his new wife and her two daughters to secure their visas so they could move with him to the U.S.

Instead, the couple was arrested and accused of stockpiling weapons. Venezuelan authorities suggested the case was linked to unspecified U.S. attempts to undermine President Nicolas Maduro's rule amid deep economic and political turbulence.

Laurie Holt vehemently denied the accusations on her son's behalf and raised awareness about her son's incarceration by hosting rallies and fundraisers and doing media interviews.

Holt and Caleno were held in a notorious Caracas prison and Laurie Holt said her son suffered numerous health problems in jail, including kidney stones and respiratory problems.

Their release came after secret backchannel talks between an aide to Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and close allies of Maduro.

President Donald Trump hosted the Holts at the White House to commemorate the release. U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch on Sunday retweeted a video taken that day in his office of the moment when Laurie Holt first saw her son again, leading to a long and tearful hug.

Laurie Holt is survived by her husband and four adult children.

"We are devastated to announce the tragic passing of our sweet Mama Bear Laurie Holt this morning," the family said in a statement on her Facebook page. "She had a gigantic heart and we will miss her dearly."

Love said Josh Holt's imprisonment took a major emotional and financial toll on the family, leaving Jason Holt with debts to lawyers they hired to try to win Josh Holt's freedom. Love has launched an online fundraising drive to help raise funds for the funeral.

Love said Laurie Holt was relieved and happy to have her entire family back together, and was very excited about the August due date for Josh Holt and Thamara Caleno's baby.

"It's sad to me that she really only had a few more months with her family and her son," Love said. "She's going to be missed dearly."
Call it the chaos theory for picking the next House speaker.

Those Democrats trying to stop California Rep. Nancy Pelosi from reclaiming the job say they don't need a rival candidate just yet. Instead, they plan to show that Pelosi lacks the votes to win the race. And then, they say, new challengers will emerge.

It's strategy that has other Democrats cringing at the prospect of their new House majority in disarray. They say voters swept them to office in this month's elections to govern, not become bogged down by the kind of Republican infighting that sent Ohio Rep. John Boehner to an early exit as speaker and weakened his successor, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.

The last thing they want is a floor fight over the leadership post when Congress opens work in January.

"If the first Democratic value they see is chaos, I don't think that's very good," said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who recently wrote an op-ed with colleagues supporting Pelosi. "I don't think it's a good look at all."

The chaos theory will be put to a test this coming week when House Democrats meet in private for a vote nominating Pelosi to become speaker in January. She held that post from 2007 to 2011, the first woman to serve as speaker.

After one potential rival stepped aside, Pelosi is expected to easily win the majority from her ranks. But opponents have hopes of denying her the broader support she needs when the new Congress holds a vote in January.

One of those organizing against her, Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., said recently that the lack of a sure-fire challenger is beside the point. The goal is to force the question.

"The whole concept of you can't beat somebody with nobody is a Nancy Pelosi talking point," she said.

As Rice and others in the group led by Reps. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Tim Ryan of Ohio see it, it's all in the math.

At the moment, there are at least 15 Pelosi opponents, making for a razor-thin vote. House Democrats won a 233-seat majority in the 435-member House in the November midterm election, with a few races still uncalled. Pelosi needs 218 to win the job, if all Republicans oppose her, which is likely. The margin could expand slightly with absences or if lawmakers simply vote "present."

"The first step is showing that she cannot get to 218," Rice told reporters, "and then I believe the challengers will emerge that can allow new members to say, OK, here's another possibility, now I get it."

Moulton, a Marine veteran, said earlier he hopes it will be "a chaotic debate" for new leadership because "that would be healthy for the party."

But after the election delivered Democrats the House majority, it's an approach that may require a leap of faith that other lawmakers are unwilling to take, especially as Pelosi amasses an outpouring of support from advocacy groups, labor unions and even former President Barack Obama in a display of raw power.

Trying to head off that debate, Pelosi sent a letter to colleagues thanking "so many of you for the strong support you have given me" and asked that "we all support" the party's nominee for speaker when the full House votes. "Our unity is our power," she wrote.

At one point, Pelosi's opponents counted 17 Democrats on a letter against Pelosi and were hoping for more. But one by one, some of them started standing down.

A potential rival, Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, decided against a challenge, agreeing instead to lead a new subcommittee on voting integrity. Pelosi revived that panel and recommended Fudge for the post, elevating an issue important to the Congressional Black Caucus, especially after close races this month in Florida and Georgia.

Another opponent, Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., dropped his opposition after he said Pelosi agreed to have him take the lead on his proposal to expand Medicare as an option for those age 50 to 65.

As opponents regrouped, Pelosi was home for the holiday recess in California, working the phones and doling out the kinds of perks that show the potential power of being speaker in ways it hasn't been wielded on Capitol Hill.

Boehner and Ryan struggled to corral their majority since Republicans gained control of the House in 2011. The revolt from within the GOP ranks started with the 2010 tea party election and continued with the Freedom Caucus that pushed Boehner to early retirement. Ryan was able to pass the GOP tax bill into law but the right flank repeatedly flexed its muscle including during California Rep. Kevin McCarthy's recent election as minority leader.

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., said she remembers being in the House chamber as the Boehner speaker's race teetered, and thinking the dysfunction on display wasn't good for Republicans or Democrats.

She wrote the op-ed with Beyer in part because she cannot imagine facing voters in the St. Paul suburbs back home if a floor fight emerges as the Democratic majority's first order of business.

"People in Minnesota would be very, very disappointed  from disappointed to outrage  that we are blowing an opportunity," she said. "Those voters aren't looking for chaos. They're looking for effective, responsible governing."

Newly elected members, especially those who pledged to oppose Pelosi and make way for a new generation of leaders, are caught in the middle.

One who supports Pelosi, Rep.-elect Katie Hill of California, said Democrats "need to minimize any internal party strife" and "hit the ground running day one."

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said in a tweet: "I hope that we can move swiftly to conclude this discussion about party positions, so that we can spend more time discussing party priorities." She backs Pelosi.

Seasoned lawmakers, including Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., say now is not the moment for a public split.

"I wouldn't want to see it come to the floor, in front of the nation," Cleaver said. "I don't want to shake the confidence of the millions of people who stepped out to vote."

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
The former chairman of Japan's Nissan Motor Co., Carlos Ghosn, denied any wrongdoing and proclaimed his loyalty to the company at a court hearing in Tokyo on Tuesday.

It was Ghosn's first public appearance since he was arrested on Nov. 19 and charged with false financial reporting.

"Your honor, I am innocent of the accusations against me," Ghosn told the judge, speaking firmly and calmly as he read from a statement. "I am wrongfully accused."

Prosecutors have charged Ghosn, who led a dramatic turnaround at the Japanese automaker over the past two decades, with falsifying financial reports in underreporting his income by about 5 billion yen ($44 million) over five years through 2015.

They also say he is suspected of having Nissan temporarily take on his investment losses from the financial crisis.

Wearing plastic slippers and a dark suit without a tie, Ghosn rebutted the allegations against him point-by-point and said he had the option to leave Nissan but had decided to stay on.

"A captain doesn't jump ship during a storm," said Ghosn, who was visibly thinner than before his arrest.

The veteran auto executive, a familiar face at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and other elite gatherings, was handcuffed and led into the courtroom with a rope around his waist as the hearing began. Officers removed his handcuffs and seated him on a bench.

Presiding judge Yuichi Tada then read out the charges and said Ghosn, a Brazilian-born Frenchman of Lebanese ancestry, was considered a flight risk  he was arrested on his arrival in Tokyo by private jet  and might try to hide evidence.

In Japan, suspects are routinely held without bail, often due to fears about evidence tampering.

During Tuesday's hearing, Go Kondo, one of Ghosn's lawyers, argued he was not a flight risk.

"He's widely known so it's difficult for him to escape. There is no risk that the suspect will destroy evidence," he said.

Facing the courtroom, Ghosn spoke proudly of the automaker's  and his own  achievements, such as reviving iconic models like the GT-R and the Z, expanding operations in China, Russia, Brazil and India and pioneering electric cars and autonomous driving.

"I have a genuine love and appreciation for Nissan," he said.

Ghosn has been held in Spartan conditions at a Tokyo detention facility since he was taken into custody. However, Ghosn's defense lawyer Motonari Ohtsuru told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents' Club late Tuesday that Ghosn was transferred to a bigger room with a bed at his request.

In keeping with Japanese regulations, he has been allowed visits only from his lawyers and consular officials.

Ghosn said he had "acted honorably, legally and with the knowledge and approval of the appropriate executives inside the company with the sole purpose of supporting and strengthening Nissan," according to a statement released to some media including The Associated Press before the hearing and confirmed by his legal team.

It said he had not failed to disclose any of his income from Nissan.

Ghosn also defended payments questioned by prosecutors and by Nissan that were made to Khaled Juffali, a Saudi businessman. He said the money was paid to Juffali for real work that he did to sort out problems with a local distributor.

Before the hearing, the Khaled Juffali Company issued a statement saying the $14.7 million in payments over four years from Nissan "were for legitimate business purposes."

Other Nissan executives approved the payment, Ohtsuru said.

Ghosn said his personal investment losses stemmed from being paid in Japanese yen and that he had only asked Nissan to temporarily provide collateral for foreign exchange contracts. The company suffered no losses, he said.

Sent to Japan by Nissan's alliance partner Renault SA of France in 1999, Ghosn led a spectacular turnaround at the Yokohama-based automaker over two decades, during which he mostly served as chief executive.

Renault owns 43 percent of Nissan, while Nissan owns 15 percent of Renault. The alliance, which in recent years has added smaller Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp., has risen to be one of the most successful in the industry, rivaling Volkswagen AG of Germany and Japan's Toyota Motor Corp.

Ghosn remains the head of Renault and is still on Nissan's board of directors.

His courtroom appearance drew worldwide attention, with throngs of cameras set up outside the Tokyo Detention Center to capture his departure. No cameras or audio recordings are allowed in Japanese court sessions.

Authorities also arrested a fellow Nissan executive and aide to Ghosn, Greg Kelly, charging him with collaborating with Ghosn to underreport his income. Kelly, an American, was released on bail on Dec. 25. He also has maintained his innocence.

Tokyo prosecutors have repeatedly extended Ghosn's detention by adding new allegations. The latest is suspicion of breach of trust stemming from the claim he had Nissan temporarily shoulder his personal investment losses.

Formal charges on those allegations have not been filed and no trial dates have been set for Ghosn or Kelly.

Ghosn's detention now runs through Friday.

Ohtsuru said that preparations for a trial on charges of breach of trust could take months. He said he would continue to appeal Ghosn's detention.

Ghosn's protege and successor, Nissan Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa, has denounced Ghosn, claiming he used company assets and money for personal gain and falsified financial reports.

Nissan spokesman Nicholas Maxfield said an investigation by the company that found "substantial and convincing evidence of misconduct" prompted prosecutors to act.

Under Japanese law, falsifying financial reporting carries the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, a 10 million yen ($89,000) fine, or both. But some experts have questioned the allegations against Kelly and Ghosn since Nissan itself, not individual executives, should be responsible for filing such financial reports.
The political operative at the center of an election fraud scandal that has engulfed a North Carolina congressional race was arrested Wednesday on charges of illegal ballot handling and conspiracy. Four people working for him were also charged.

Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr., 63, was accused of directing workers to collect and mail in other people's absentee ballots during the 2018 Republican congressional primary and the 2016 general election. It is against the law in North Carolina for anyone other than the voter or a close relative to handle a mail-in ballot, a measure aimed at guarding against manipulation.

Prosecutors are still investigating evidence of ballot tampering by Dowless and others working on behalf of GOP candidate Mark Harris during last fall's congressional election in the mostly rural 9th District, which includes part of Charlotte and extends eastward across several counties.

The indictment represents the first charges in a scandal that has cast doubt on election integrity and will leave a congressional seat unfilled for months.

"These indictments should serve as a stern warning to anyone trying to defraud elections in North Carolina," state elections director Kim Westbrook Strach said.

Dowless was arrested less than a week after the state elections board decided that his work for Harris, starting with the primary, tainted the Republican's apparent victory in November. The board ordered a new election but hasn't set a date.

Harris is not running in the do-over election; his Democratic opponent from November, Dan McCready, is.

Harris has not been charged and has denied knowledge of any illegal practices by those involved in his campaign. But he, too, could come under scrutiny. During last week's board hearing, he admitted writing personal checks to Dowless in 2017, a potential violation if the payments weren't reported.

Dowless has denied wrongdoing and did not respond to phone and text messages Wednesday. A woman hung up on a call to Dowless' attorney.

Dowless was charged with illegal possession of absentee ballots, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He was booked into a Raleigh jail. The four others were charged with illegal possession of an absentee ballot and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The crimes "served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public's confidence in the outcome of the electoral process," the indictment said.

Dowless was accused of directing his workers "to mail the absentee ballot in such a manner to conceal the fact that the voter had not personally mailed it himself"  an act the indictment said constituted obstruction of justice.

In last fall's congressional election, Harris led McCready by 905 votes out of about 280,000 cast, but the state elections board refused to certify Harris as the winner because of the fraud suspicions. Last week, Harris abruptly dropped his bid to be declared the winner and called for a new election, and the board agreed.

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, who pursued the charges announced Wednesday, is still looking into evidence of irregularities in November. She indicated it could be weeks before any decisions are made on charges.

According to evidence at the elections board hearing, Dowless and his assistants illegally gathered up absentee ballots from voters by offering to put them in the mail, and in some cases forged signatures and filled in votes for local candidates.

Dowless refused to testify before the board without immunity from prosecution.

Dowless is a political junkie with felony convictions for perjury and insurance fraud  which led to a prison sentence in the 1990s  and several worthless-check offenses. He came to Harris' attention because he was known to produce votes.

Harris said he wanted to sign Dowless onto his 2018 campaign after noting the Bladen County man's work resulted in one of Harris' Republican rivals scoring an incredible 98 percent of the mail-in ballots in the 2016 primary.

Harris hired Dowless despite repeated warnings from the candidate's son, now a federal prosecutor in Raleigh, that Dowless was probably resorting to illegal methods.

In fact, Dowless had been on the radar of state elections investigators since 2010, when he was suspected of vote-buying but never charged. That was one of at least a half-dozen instances over the past nine years that prosecutors and election officials received complaints of serious irregularities in Bladen County.

The four other people charged in the case were paid by Dowless to collect ballots during the spring of 2018, when Dowless and his team were on the Harris campaign payroll, and during the 2016 general election, when Dowless himself successfully ran for a local soil and water conservation post, prosecutors said.

Jail records indicated he hadn't posted bond as of early Wednesday evening.
What to Know Republican state Rep. Brian Ellis resigned amid allegations that he had sex with an incapacitated woman against her will.

The alleged incident occurred three years ago. The woman's lawyer said her client was drugged.

Ellis' lawyers have called the allegations "just plain false."

A Pennsylvania lawmaker has resigned amid allegations that he had sex with an incapacitated woman against her will.

Republican state Rep. Brian Ellis, R-Butler County, has not been charged with any crime. He resigned Monday in a letter to the House speaker, saying it was in the best interests of his family, district residents and his own health to resign effective immediately.

The womans lawyer, Christine Wechsler, said her client believes she was drugged while having a drink with a friend and has no memory of the ensuing 12 hours. She went to a hospital the next day.

She reported to doctors that she had no memory of the previous evening and she believed she was sexually assaulted, Wechsler said in January.

The woman filed a formal complaint against Ellis with House Republicans last week.

Ellis' resignation comes nearly two months after the Pennsylvania state House Republicans stripped him of his committee chairmanship and recommended he step down to take care of his family and address the allegations.

Wechsler said the woman is a state employee who has never worked for Ellis.

The states victim advocate, Jennifer Storm, who has been working with the unidentified woman, called her brave and courageous.

Ellis' lawyers have called the allegations "just plain false."
The trial of former Trump adviser Roger Stone is set to start Nov. 5 and will last for about two weeks, a federal judge said Thursday, according to NBC News.

Stone was arrested in January on seven charges arising from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, which Stone has denied.

Stone wore a gray double-breasted suit and round glasses to the hearing, which also dealt with the re-release of a book he published as "The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution," now titled "The Myth of Russian Collusion."

That could have been considered a violation of a partial gag order Judge Amy Berman Jackson placed on Stone, but at Thursday's hearing, she said she was taking the circumstances "under advisement."
A second Boston-based billionaire is facing a criminal charge after a multi-agency investigation into human trafficking at massage parlors in Florida.

John W. Childs, the 77-year-old Massachusetts billionaire who founded a Waltham-based private equity firm, is facing a charge of solicitation of prostitution after a wide-ranging investigation across several counties, Vero Beach police said.

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Childs firm, J.W. Childs Associates, is located in an office building on Totten Pond Road in Waltham. A spokesman for the company declined to comment Sunday night.

Friday, the firm announced Childs' retirement and noted that he had not been active in the managing of the company.

"John built an enduring and strong business and we appreciate his many contributions to JWC," managing partner Adam Suttin said in a statement. "I look forward with confidence to the next chapter for our firm and wish John well."

NBC10 Boston went to a Chestnut Hill home Sunday that is listed under John W. Childs. A woman who answered the door Sunday identified herself as Childs' housekeeper and said he is in Florida right now.

Childs' home is just doors down from the gated home of Robert Kraft.

The owner of the New England Patriots is facing similar charges in connection with the same series of prostitution busts in Florida. Jupiter police said Kraft visited a massage parlor at least twice, each time paying for sex with a prostitute.

Kraft has denied that he did anything illegal.
A federal judge on Friday cautioned longtime Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone not to treat the charges against him like a public relations campaign or book tour, and said she may issue a gag order in the case.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said she had already noticed a significant amount of publicity in the case, including television appearances in which Stone has asserted his innocence.

"This is a criminal proceeding and not a public relations campaign," Jackson said, adding that "it behooves counsel and the parties to do their talking in this courtroom and in their pleadings and not on the courthouse steps or on the talk show circuit."

She said Stone may have "justifiably felt the need to get his story out," but his public statements risk tainting a pool of jurors who may ultimately decide his case.

Jackson did not immediately issue an order barring Stone or prosecutors from discussing the case, giving both sides until next week to weigh in. She said even if she did issue an order, the talkative political operative would still be free to opine on other matters.

"It would not be a bar on all public relations, activities or press communications, but only those related to this case," she said. "A party could discuss foreign relations, immigration or Tom Brady as much as they wanted."

Stone, 66, who was arrested last week in a pre-dawn raid at his Florida home, is the sixth Trump aide charged in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of witness tampering, obstruction and false statements.

Wearing a double-breasted pinstripe suit, Stone emerged from the courthouse after Friday's hearing and struck his two-handed victory pose in homage to former President Richard Nixon. He was then whisked away into a waiting vehicle amid supporters holding "Roger Stone did nothing wrong" signs. A protester held up a placard reading "Treason."

Stone made the rounds on television last weekend and held a news conference Thursday at a Washington hotel, where he said he was prepared to tell the truth to Mueller but he had no derogatory information about Trump, his longtime friend.

"I have great affection and remain a strong and loyal supporter of the president," Stone said.

He also said he was prepared to adhere to a gag order if the judge issued one but that he would likely appeal it. Among his lawyers is a noted First Amendment attorney who successfully represented the rap group 2 Live Crew in an obscenity court case nearly 30 years ago.

A seven-count indictment accuses Stone of misleading Congress about interactions with friends in which he discussed emails that were stolen from Democratic groups and in the possession of WikiLeaks. The anti-secrecy website released the communications in the weeks before the presidential election in an effort to harm Hillary Clinton's campaign.

But the indictment doesn't charge Stone or anyone close to the campaign of coordinating directly with WikiLeaks or having advance knowledge of its plans.

"I am not accused of Russian collusion, I am not accused of collaboration with WikiLeaks, I am not accused of conspiracy," Stone said Thursday. "There is no evidence or accusation that I knew in advance about the source or content of the WikiLeaks material."

In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors said the FBI seized physical devices from his home, apartment and office. They said multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information have been recovered, including bank and financial records and the contents of numerous phones and computers.

Jackson also presides over Mueller's prosecution of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and issued a gag order in that case after one of Manafort's attorneys addressed reporters outside the courthouse following his first court appearance.
Tyson Timbs admitted he'd sold drugs, and he accepted his sentence without a fight. What he wouldn't quietly accept was the police seizing and keeping the $40,000 Land Rover he'd had when arrested. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court sided with him unanimously in ruling the Constitution's ban on excessive fines applies to the states as well as the federal government.

The decision, in an opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, could help efforts to rein in police seizures of property from criminal suspects.

Reading a summary of her opinion in the courtroom, Ginsburg noted that governments employ fines "out of accord with the penal goals of retribution and deterrence" because fines are a source of revenue. The 85-year-old justice missed arguments in other cases last month following lung cancer surgery, but she returned to the bench on Tuesday.

Timbs, of Marion, Indiana, was charged in 2013 with selling $400 worth of heroin. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year of house arrest but faced no prison time. His biggest loss was the Land Rover he had bought with some of the life insurance money he received after his father died. Timbs still has to win one more round in court before he gets his vehicle back, but that seems to be a formality.

A judge in Indiana had ruled that taking the car was disproportionate to the severity of the crime, which carries a maximum fine of $10,000. But Indiana's top court said the justices had never ruled that the Eighth Amendment's ban on excessive fines  like much of the rest of the Bill of Rights  applies to states as well as the federal government.

The case drew interest from both liberal groups concerned about police abuses and conservative organizations opposed to excessive regulation. Timbs was represented by the libertarian public interest law firm Institute for Justice.

"The decision is an important first step for curtailing the potential for abuse that we see in civil forfeiture nationwide," said Sam Gedge, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice.

Law enforcement authorities have dramatically increased their use of civil forfeiture in recent decades. When police seize the property of people accused of crimes, the proceeds from the sale often go directly to the agency that took it, the law firm said in written arguments in support of Timbs.

The Indiana man had been on hand when arguments in the case were heard before the justices last November.

He said back then that his view of the case had changed over time.

"At first it was about getting my truck back because I was mad, and I wanted my stuff back. Now it's a lot different," he said. "I was curious to see how often they did this to people. They do it a lot around here, and apparently it's done all over the country."

As it did in earlier cases applying parts of the Bill of Rights to the states, the court based its decision on the part of the 14th Amendment that says "no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law." That same provision, the due process clause, also was used in cases that established a woman's right to an abortion and knocked down state laws against interracial marriage and gay sex.

The 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to ensure the rights of newly freed slaves.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to say he would have used a different part of the 14th amendment to achieve the same result. Thomas has long been a critic of the court's application of the due process clause, which also is found in the Fifth Amendment. He wrote that cases that employ the provision "are some of the court's most notoriously incorrect decisions," including the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion case and the 1857 Dred Scott case that held that African-Americans were not citizens.

Thomas said he would have relied on the Constitution's language forbidding states from making or enforcing "any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

Justice Neil Gorsuch also expressed his preference for the privileges or immunities clause.

The case is Timbs v. Indiana, 17-1091.
In a wild Oval Office confrontation, President Donald Trump heatedly threatened to shut down the U.S. government Tuesday as he and Democratic leaders bickered over funding for his promised border wall and offered a grim preview of life in Washington the next two years under divided government.

Trump and House and Senate Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer squabbled for more than 15 minutes in the stunning, televised encounter. Each of them, especially Trump, interrupted the others to question facts, quibble over election results and lob insults.

Trump questioned Pelosi's ability to count votes in her own House. She questioned his manhood  after she left the building.

The public clash marked Trump's first meeting with the newly empowered Democrats since their midterm victories that put them in control of the House, laying bare the tensions on both sides and suggesting how divided government might work  or not  as the 2020 presidential election nears.

Neither the public nor the private face-to-face portion of the meeting appeared to resolve the wall-funding dispute with a partial shutdown looming on Dec. 21. However, Pelosi said Trump called her later in the afternoon and told her the White House was looking at options she and Schumer had laid out.

In the public debate, Trump sounded more determined than ever to allow a partial government shutdown unless he gets the billions he wants for his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

At one point Trump said, "I would be proud to shut down the government for border security."

"I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down," he declared.

Pelosi later crowed that she and Schumer had goaded the president to "fully own that the shutdown was his." She told Democratic lawmakers back at the Capitol, according to an aide who was in the room, that the wall was "like a manhood thing for him ... as if manhood could ever be associated with him. This wall thing."

She added, "It goes to show you: You get into a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you."

The aide was not authorized to speak publicly and commented only on condition of anonymity.

While Trump has suggested he may be willing to trade with Democrats and has publicly praised Pelosi, he was focused Tuesday on reinforcing his hardline immigration promises, repeatedly stressing border security and the wall as a critical part. Democrats were in no mood to sympathize, emphasizing their newfound political strength.

"Elections have consequences, Mr. President," said Schumer.

Trump later called it a "friendly meeting," saying "I've actually liked them for a long period of time and I respect them both. And we made a lot of progress." The Democrats said they had given Trump two options to keep government open and the responsibility lay with him and Republicans who control Congress.

The wall remains the main sticking point in talks. Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan acknowledged Tuesday that the GOP-led House has yet to pass legislation that includes the $5 billion in border wall funds that Trump has been requesting. Ryan likely lacks sufficient votes from Republicans who will lose their majority at the end of the month.

Trump is seeking far more for his long-stalled border wall than the $1.6 billion the Senate has agreed to for border security, including physical barriers and technology along the U.S. southern border.

Should the two sides not make a deal by Dec. 21, about three-quarters of the government would continue to have enough money to operate. But departments affected absent a deal include Homeland Security, Transportation, Agriculture, State and Justice, as well as national parks.

Both sides came into the negotiating session primed for battle. After a few niceties, Trump dug into Democrats on the border wall, prompting a stern rebuke from Schumer that the issue at hand was "called funding the government." Trump soon started scrapping with Pelosi, when she said there should not be a "Trump shutdown."

"Did you say Trump?" the president said, as the two argued over whether Trump had enough Republican votes in the House to support his border wall plan.

"The fact is that you do not have the votes in the House," Pelosi declared.

Trump shot back, "Nancy, I do."

Also in a fighting mood, Schumer accused Trump of threatening a shutdown "because you can't get your way."

Trump heckled Schumer over a previous shutdown, saying "the last time you shut it down you got killed" politically.

Pelosi and Schumer both repeatedly asked to make the conversation private, without success, as Trump argued that the public meeting was a good thing: "It's called transparency."

Trump repeatedly returned to his argument that the border wall is needed for security reasons. He also argued that "tremendous" portions of the wall have already been built. In fact, some barrier renovation has happened, but little wall construction has been completed under Trump.

If Democrats refuse to support the wall, the military will build the remaining sections, Trump said. "The wall will get built," he insisted.

Hours after the meeting ended, a Pentagon spokesman said in a statement that "there is no plan" for the military to build sections of a border wall. But Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis added that the military may have the power to fund "barrier projects" in national emergencies or to counter the drug trade.

Pence, a former House member, sat silently as Trump and the two Democrats bickered. He later called the meeting a "good discussion." Asked to describe the atmosphere in the private meeting that followed the public quarrel, Pence said, "candid."

Pelosi and Schumer have urged Trump to support a measure that includes a half-dozen government funding bills largely agreed upon by lawmakers, along with a separate measure that would fund the Department of Homeland Security at current levels through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The homeland bill includes about $1.3 billion for fencing and other security measures at the border.

If Trump rejects that, Democrats are urging a continuing resolution that would fund all the remaining appropriations bills at current levels through Sept. 30.

"We gave the president two options that would keep the government open," Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement after the meeting. "It's his choice to accept one of those options or shut the government down."

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Trump is the only obstacle between fully funding the government and a shutdown.

"Time and again, President Trump has used the government of the American people as a bargaining chip for his fabricated solution to his manufactured crisis," Leahy said Monday in a Senate speech.

Trump "wants to score a made-for-reality-TV moment and he doesn't care how many hardworking Americans will suffer for it," Leahy said. "This is not about border security. This is about politics, pure and simple."

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said Democrats were the ones playing politics.

If Democrats have a better way to secure the border than Trump's $5 billion plan, "they need to come with an alternative," Scalise said Monday on Fox News Channel. "They can't come and say they want to shut the government down for no reason because they don't want border security. They'll lose that argument with the American people."

Pelosi, who is seeking to become House speaker when the new Congress convenes in January, said she and many other Democrats consider the wall "immoral, ineffective and expensive." She noted that Trump promised during the 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall, an idea Mexico has repeatedly rejected.

In fact, Trump declared during the presidential campaign two years ago, "That wall will go up so fast your head will spin."

Pelosi's willingness to stand up to Trump won praise from Democrats. Rep. Eric Swalwell of California told CNN that she "may have sealed her speakership by going toe-to-toe with the president."

Despite the rancor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he hadn't given up hope that a shutdown can be averted. The Kentucky Republican said "magic" sometimes happens in Congress ahead of Christmas, when lawmakers are eager to leave Washington.

"I'd like to see a smooth ending here," McConnell said at the Capitol.

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Jill Colvin, Deb Riechmann, Laurie Kellman and Alan Fram contributed.
You are here: China

China launched its 54th ocean expedition on Monday to conduct research on the oceanic resources and environment in the Pacific, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR).

The Chinese oceanographic research ship Xiangyanghong 10 departed from the city of Zhoushan in east China's Zhejiang Province. The whole journey will take 255 days and travel 22,000 sea miles, the MNR said.

Major tasks include the exploration of polymetallic nodules and investigations on interactions between the global changes, oceans and the atmosphere, said the ministry.

A total of 191 members from 25 organizations, including research institutes, universities and corporations, and four others selected from developing countries, have attended the expedition.

The research will promote China's understanding in the deep sea area, the MNR said.
Border agents have been told to explicitly target Spanish speakers and migrants from Latin America in carrying out a Trump administration program requiring asylum seekers wait in Mexico, according to memos obtained by The Associated Press that reveal some inner workings of a top government priority to address the burgeoning number of Central Americans arriving in the country.

The Trump administration launched the program in late January in what marks a potentially seismic shift on how the U.S. handles the cases of immigrants seeking asylum and fleeing persecution in their homeland. The program initially applied only to those who turned themselves in at official border crossings, but a memo from a division chief of the Border Patrol's San Diego sector says it expanded Friday to include people who cross the border illegally.

The guidance includes instruction about various groups of immigrants who are not to be sent back to Mexico and instead go through the traditional asylum process in the U.S. immigration court system. They include pregnant women, LGBT migrants and people suffering medical issues. Authorities said previously that Mexican asylum seekers are excluded, as are children traveling alone.

U.S. officials must check if the asylum seeker has any felony convictions and notify Mexico at least 12 hours before they are returned. Those who cross illegally must have come as single adults, though the administration is in talks with the Mexican government to include families.

The program is being implemented as border arrests soared in February to a 12-year-high and more than half of those stopped arrived as families, many of them asylum seekers who generally turn themselves in instead of trying to elude capture. Guatemala and Honduras have replaced Mexico as the top countries, a remarkable shift from only a few years ago.

The instructions say Mexican officials insist that no more than 20 asylum seekers are returned each day from San Diego to Tijuana, Mexico, on Monday through Saturday, underscoring challenges that the U.S. faces in trying to quickly ramp up one of its top border enforcement priorities and most significant changes to the U.S. immigration system of Donald Trump's presidency. Authorities said Tuesday that more than 76,000 were stopped or apprehended at the Mexican border in February, more than double the same period last year.

A memo on Tuesday to top Border Patrol officials in San Diego said the agency is under "pressures to utilize this program as much as we can."

Asylum-seeking families are typically released from U.S. custody immediately and allowed to settle with family or friends while their cases wind through immigration courts, which often takes years. Critics say that amounts to "catch-and-release," which administration officials want to limit with the new Mexico program.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security described the program as "another tool available in the law" to respond to the record numbers of Central American migrants arriving at the border in recent months. The agency said the program is being carried out in a "thoughtful and deliberate manner" that protects vulnerable migrants and is done in collaboration with the Mexican government.

Two U.S. officials who were not authorized to discuss the internal guidance and spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed contents of the memos obtained by the AP.

Explicitly targeting Spanish speakers and Latin Americans had not been previously disclosed, though some critics said it was no surprise considering that recent arrest numbers are largely Central Americans.

Judy Rabinovitz, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the criteria "does smack of the same concerns we had in the Muslim ban," referring to Trump's ban on travelers from several predominantly Muslim countries, which was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court.

"We know they are trying to get at Central American asylum seekers but to see it written there so blatantly is so disturbing," said Rabinovitz, whose organization was among those that sued the administration last month to block the policy.

Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has made the administration's "Migrant Protection Protocols" a top priority, working for months with Mexican counterparts to seal the broad outlines of an agreement in November.

Testifying Wednesday in Congress, Nielsen said the U.S., working with Mexico, was exercising its authority to make people wait outside the country.

"All asylum seekers have the opportunity to present their case," she said. "We're not turning anybody around."

The effort has gotten off to a modest start amid mixed signals from Mexican officials and been limited to San Diego. Tonatiuh Guillen, who heads Mexico's immigration agency, told the AP that Mexico accepted 112 Central Americans during the first five weeks, including 25 children. Homeland Security has declined to release numbers.

A Homeland Security official, speaking to reporters Friday on a conference call on condition of anonymity, said the administration planned to grow the effort exponentially across the border, including to people who cross illegally between border crossings. The official declined to say when or where but said it was likely to be expanded in the next few weeks.

One memo obtained by the AP shows that it had been expanded on the same day.

Associated Press Writer Colleen Long contributed to this report.
A gunman killed three people and wounded five during a mid-morning tram ride Monday in the Dutch city of Utrecht, raising the specter of another extremist attack only days after the murderous rampage in New Zealand.

Authorities seized a Turkish-born suspect after a manhunt that convulsed the historic city of nearly 350,000 people for most of the day.

As night set in, three victims lay in critical condition, and the motive for the bloodshed remained under investigation. Prime Minister Mark Rutte said authorities were trying to determine whether the attack had "terror motives."

Justice Minister Ferd Grapperhaus said the suspect, identified as Gokmen Tanis, 37, was known to justice authorities and had a criminal record, but would not elaborate. Police said they also detained another man on suspicion of involvement but released no details.

The shooting came three days after 50 people were killed when an immigrant-hating white supremacist opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers. There was no immediate indication of any link between the two events.

The Utrecht attack took place at a busy intersection in a residential neighborhood. The gunman was alleged to have had an automatic weapon, Grapperhaus said.

"We assume a terror motive," Mayor Jan van Zanen said as police searched for the killer, though he added that other motives could not be ruled out.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Dutch authorities put the Netherlands' fourth-largest city on lockdown, raised the threat level in the area to the maximum of 5 and tightened security at airports and key buildings in the country. Police issued a photo of a bearded Tanis aboard a tram in a blue hooded top.

"If it is a terror attack," the prime minister declared, "then we have only one answer: Our nation, democracy, must be stronger than fanaticism and violence."

Heavily armed officers with dogs searched for the killer, gathering at one point in front of an apartment building close to the scene. However, the suspect was later arrested at another location in the city. The threat level soon returned to 4.

Police said a red Renault compact car was carjacked shortly before the shooting and later found across town.

Local media said Tanis had been charged several times over the past years with offenses ranging from attempted manslaughter to petty crime in and around Utrecht. Two weeks ago he was in court on charges of raping of woman in 2017, news reports said.

The identities of the shooting victims were not immediately released, and Grapperhaus would not say if any were known to the gunman.

Political parties halted campaigning ahead of provincial elections scheduled for Wednesday that will also determine the makeup of Parliament's upper house. A televised debate also was canceled. It was not clear if campaigning would resume Tuesday.
A day after South Boston celebrated St. Patrick's Day, the neighborhood's World War II Memorial was vandalized.

Massachusetts State Police said they received a call reporting the vandalism around 11:30 a.m. Monday. Troopers responded and discovered a substance - believed to be a type of oil - splashed or poured onto the granite memorial stones.

I think its a disgrace, said South Boston resident Robert Ryan.

Its appalling. Its our neighborhood," resident Ruth Scully said. "These are veterans...we go by this every single day on our walk."

Locals, along with crews from the Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Massachusetts Port Authority, spent hours power washing and using Dawn soap in an attempt to clean up the memorial.

Its like kicking gravestones over, said local resident John Maddox, who tried using baking soda to remove the oil.

The memorial, which has more than 200 names listed and is located at the beginning of the causeway heading out to Castle Island, has been around for about 15 years and honors veterans from Southie and Dorchester who made the ultimate sacrifice.

I know hed be heartbroken, said Corey Morrissey-Scott, whose father is honored at the site. What would possess someone to do this to a World War Two memorial, to any memorial, its just evil.

This is a generation that put on a uniform and went overseas to fight Nazi Germany, to fight for our way of life, and to have their memory desecrated this way is unacceptable, said State Representative David Biele.

I would just like to find the idiot that did it and make them come down and clean it with a toothbrush, Scully said.

Experts will be at the site Tuesday morning to take a close look at the memorial and see what can be done to restore it and get rid of all the oil.

The exact time of the vandalism remains part of the ongoing investigation.

Anyone with information is urged to call state police at 617-740-7710.

Meanwhile, the VFW Post in South Boston says the creator of the memorial died Monday night. Post 561 announced the news on Twitter, saying John Mullen would be dearly missed.

"The patriarch of our post for so many years, John Mullen, passed away tonight," the tweet read. "His contributions to our community were profound, including creating a South Boston WWII Memorial.. a war in which he bravely fought in the Pacific. We will miss him dearly.

The patriarch of our post for so many years, John Mullen, passed away tonight. His contributions to our community were profound, including creating a South Boston WWII Memorial.. a war in which he bravely fought in the Pacific. We will miss him dearly. pic.twitter.com/iInUGmJfDS  VFW Post 561 (@FitzyVFW561) March 19, 2019

The post Vandalism at the WWII Memorial appeared first on Caught In Southie.
What to Know The Democratic governor used the term on CBS's "Face the Nation" while discussing Virginia's painful history of race relations

Northam released a statement Monday explaining that a historian had advised him the term was more historically accurate

The misstep comes amid calls for Northam's resignation over a racist photo from his 1984 medical school yearbook page

Historians say they were "shocked" and "mystified" when Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam wrongly used the term "indentured servants" Sunday in reference to the first Africans to arrive in English North America 400 years ago.

Most historians abandoned use of the term in the 1990s after historical records left little room for doubt that the Africans were enslaved, the scholars said.

"The indentured servitude thing is really bizarre," said Davidson College professor Michael Guasco, who wrote the book "Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World." ''He doesn't come across as being particularly informed."

The embattled Democratic governor used the term on CBS's "Face the Nation" while discussing Virginia's painful history of race relations. Northam said the "first indentured servants from Africa" arrived in what is now Virginia in 1619. Interviewer Gayle King interjected to say "also known as slavery." Northam replied "yes."

The Africans had come on two ships that had raided what's believed to have been a Spanish slave vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Sailing into the Chesapeake Bay to what is now Hampton, the ships traded more than 30 Africans for food and supplies. English colonists took the Africans, who came from what is now Angola, to properties along the James River.

Northam released a statement Monday to explain his use of the term. He said he spoke at a recent event about the arrival of the Africans "and referred to them in my remarks as enslaved."

"A historian advised me that the use of indentured was more historically accurate  the fact is, I'm still learning and committed to getting it right," Northam said.

Guasco, the Davidson College professor, said some historians did use the term from the 1970s to 1990s. That's because a very small number of the first Africans became free decades later. But he said historians have since confirmed through records, including censuses, that most remained enslaved.

The "indentured servant" remark is the governor's latest misstep in a blackface scandal that has shaken Virginia to its foundation. A racist photo recently surfaced from Northam's 1984 medical school yearbook. He denies being in the photo, but acknowledged wearing blackface at a dance party that same year.

New York University history professor Rebecca Goetz was among those who chastised Northam on Twitter.

She said in a phone interview that Northam's "indentured servant" remark is "shocking in light of his current political difficulties."
They get together to make dinners. They teach one another English and Spanish. They exchange phone numbers for a day they hope will never come.

Since Donald Trump's election as president, about 30 New York City residents have met regularly with dozens of Latino immigrants living in the country illegally, offering them their help and, in some cases, their homes. Many say that if the immigrants are detained or deported, they would be willing to take in their children.

"I have enough space," said Ruth Silverberg, a college professor who shares a two-bedroom apartment in Staten Island with her grown son. "I may not have a lot of walls, but I can go buy one of those Ikea partition things and I can manage to find space on my floor for up to 10 people."

While churches and other organizations have long stepped in to assist immigrants under threat of deportation, this effort is notable because it is led by ordinary citizens, mostly from Staten Island, New York City's most conservative borough and the only one that voted for Trump. Those involved say it's a chance to put their beliefs into action, ease their neighbors' fears and show them they have allies.

"This is not the America that I either grew up in or want to know about, so I'm fighting back against that," said Michael DeCillis, a special education teacher and former police officer who grew up in Staten Island and now lives in neighboring Brooklyn. He wouldn't hesitate, he said, to open up his two-bedroom home to immigrants if families are split apart by deportation.

In the meantime, DeCillis said, he could help by accompanying them to a doctor's appointment or to get basic government services if they are too scared to do so.

Tensions among New York's estimated half-million unauthorized immigrants reached a new high in the past few weeks after the Department of Homeland Security issued guidelines making it clear that millions of people living in the United States illegally could be targeted for deportation.

The idea to connect citizens and immigrants started shortly after the election, when several residents looking for ways to help approached the group La Colmena, a nonprofit that works with immigrant workers and translates as "The Beehive."

La Colmena divided the immigrants and citizens into five groups based on where people live and organized language classes to help them get to know one another. They also set up a plan to use a private messaging app to alert each other about potential immigration raids.

Jennifer Balis, a 47-year-old schoolteacher, said she wants to help immigrants but is trying to get guidance on whether it is legal to offer her home to immigrant children who also may not have legal status.

"We want to find out if we need to become fosters parents first," she said.

Maribel Torres, a 44-year-old Mexican mother of two who illegally crossed the border about a decade ago, said she is surprised every time she sees white neighbors in the meetings.

"I thought all residents here liked the president," Torres said in Spanish. "We are worried and scared. ... With this support from them, I feel a bit more secure."

Last week, Torres invited Silverberg to her home to teach her a little Spanish and how to cook Mexican beef "tinga." They chatted while Torres cut tomatoes and Silverberg crumbled the cooked meat with her fingers.

"Esto es chile. Pica, spicy," Torres said.

"I like spicy," Silverberg responded.

Torres says she wouldn't hesitate to ask her new friend for help. And her youngest son, Jose Juarez, would comply and live with Silverberg or another citizen of the group if his mother or stepfather were detained.

"I would be very upset because my mother takes care of me. I would struggle but I would overcome those fears and make my mom proud of me," said Jose, who is 13 and came to the U.S. as a toddler.

La Colmena director Gonzalo Mercado said he's satisfied that now, if immigration raids happen, there is a support network in place.

"Just the presence of non-immigrant neighbors coming to the meetings really gives a sense of relief and hope and comfort."
Top Democrats are urging the FBI to investigate a Trump campaign donor who is the founder and onetime owner of a spa that has been implicated in a human-trafficking ring.

In a Friday letter to the FBI, Democrats on the House and Senate judiciary and intelligence panels wrote that reports about Li Yang "raise serious counterintelligence concerns." Yang's company claimed it could provide Chinese clients with a chance to mingle and take photos with President Donald Trump, along with access to his private club in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Democrats said China has "frequently used non-traditional intelligence collectors and businesspersons to compromise targets" and asked for investigations into potential human trafficking, unlawful lobbying or campaign finance violations.

"Although Ms. Yang's activities may only be those of an unscrupulous actor allegedly selling access to politicians for profit, her activities also could permit adversary governments or their agents access to these same politicians to acquire potential material for blackmail or even more nefarious purposes," the Democrats wrote.

The Democrats asked the FBI to investigate whether authorities were previously aware of Yang's activities, to what extent she has interacted with Trump and how she was invited to a Super Bowl party at his West Palm Beach country club, among other matters. Signing on to the letter were House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrats on the Senate intelligence and Judiciary panels.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer of New York endorsed the request for an investigation in a joint statement, saying "the facts in this situation are very concerning."

An FBI spokesperson said the agency has no comment on the letter.

The Miami Herald last week published a photo of Yang with Trump at the Super Bowl party and reported on the link between Yang and the spa where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was charged with soliciting prostitution. Kraft was charged in late February and has pleaded not guilty.

Yang, a former owner of the spa, wasn't charged in a multiagency anti-human-trafficking operation that resulted in 25 arrests, including Kraft's, and shut down 10 Asian day spas in South Florida last month. None of the spas is registered to Yang or her family.

A company Yang registered in 2017, GY US Investments LLC, "provides public relations services to assist businesses in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace," according to a translation of the company's now-defunct website, which is mostly in Chinese.

That has included, the website claims, access to presidential dinners and roundtables, White House events, photo opportunities and "VIP" activities including the "opportunity to interact with the president, the Minister of Commerce and other political figures."

The site also featured numerous photographs, including a picture of Trump's Mar-a-Lago club and photographs of Yang with Trump. Yang is described on the website as the company's "Founder CEO," as well as a member of a "Presidential Fundraising Committee" and a "Presidential club member."

The FBI request comes as House Democrats have launched investigations into all aspects of Trump's White House, businesses and foreign financial dealings. Also Monday, a deadline passed for 81 people, businesses and organizations to respond to a broad document request issued by Nadler's Judiciary panel earlier this month.

Without naming names, Nadler said in a statement that the committee has already received "tens of thousands" of documents from "a large number" of recipients. He said some have requested a subpoena before they are comfortable complying.

"It is my hope that we will receive cooperation from the remainder of the list, and will be working to find an appropriate accommodation with any individual who may be reluctant to cooperate with our investigation," Nadler said.
In arguing for border wall funding, President Donald Trump claimed  without any evidence  that only 2 percent of those apprehended crossing the border and released pending immigration hearings appear in court. Actually, Trump administration officials put the figure at about 50 percent, while immigration experts say it is even higher.

The president made his remarks on Day 24 of the partial government shutdown, which began because Congress would not agree on Trumps request for $5.7 billion in funding for a proposed border wall. The president was speaking at the American Farm Bureau Federations annual convention in Louisiana.

--Trump, Jan. 14: Somebody comes into our country, they touch one foot on the ground, and we have to catch them. Its called, catch. We then take their names and we bring them to a court  can you believe this?  and we release them.  And they go into our country, and then you announce  these are the laws  then you say, Come back in three years for your trial. Tell me, what percentage of people come back? Would you say 100 percent? No, youre a little off. Like, how about 2 percent? (Laughter.) And those people, you almost dont want, because they cannot be very smart. (Laughter.) Two percent. Two percent. Two percent come back. Those two percent are not going to make America great again, that I can tell you. (Laughter and applause.) Crazy.

It is important to note first that most people apprehended at the border are quickly returned to their home country.

In an August 2018 report, the Department of Homeland Security said that 52 percent of the 479,000 people apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol for crossing the border illegally in 2014 were returned to their home countries within three days.

Overall, DHS repatriated 65 percent of aliens encountered in 2014, with the majority (80 percent) of these repatriations occurring as expedited removals or reinstatements of previous removal orders, according to the DHS report, which tracked the enforcement outcomes over time for people trying to cross the Southwest border legally and illegally in 2014.

Mexican nationals, in particular, are often immediately processed and removed, as are those with criminal records, the report said.

Existing enforcement measures are highly efficient at repatriating Mexicans, convicted criminals, and single adults who do not seek humanitarian relief, according to the report, which noted that 97 percent of those with criminal records were repatriated.

However, DHS has criticized current laws and court rulings that favor the release of unaccompanied children and families from noncontiguous countries until their immigration status can be resolved in court  a process that can take years. The DHS report said that more than half of those from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who were apprehended at the Southwest border in 2014 remained in the U.S. after three years, and about half of all those apprehended from those countries were unaccompanied children and families.

But we found no evidence to support Trumps claim that only 2 percent of those released return for court hearings, and no one from the administration provided us with any evidence, either.

We contacted the Department of Homeland Security, which referred us to the White House. Hogan Gidley, the White House deputy press secretary, promised to respond in a minute, but never did.

However, two administration officials testified about the subject before Congress, and both officials put the figure for no-shows at around 50 percent  not 2 percent.

At an Aug. 16, 2018, hearing, Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, questioned James McHenry, director of the Justice Departments Executive Office for Immigration Review, specifically about unaccompanied children who are released and then fail to show up at immigration hearings.

Im trying to figure out how many that we actually know are showing up to hearings or are still engaged in the process, Lankford said. Do you have a number on that at all?

The closest estimate we have is the in absentia rate, the number who receive an order of removal for not showing up at the hearing, McHenry replied. (In absentia is Latin for in the absence.)

McHenry said a little over 50 percent of cases involving unaccompanied children crossing the Southwest border are decided in absentia. A chart on the website of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which McHenry heads, shows the in absentia rate in fiscal year 2018 for unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, was 50 percent.

Similarly, Matthew T. Albence, executive associate director for Enforcement and Removal Operations at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told senators at a Sept. 18, 2018, hearing that 53 percent of cases involving family units encountered at the Southwest border in FY 2014 were decided in absentia.

One immigration expert told us Trumps 2 percent figure is highly unlikely.

As usual, I have no idea where he is getting his figures from and would suggest it is highly unlikely. This is so because those who are processed through the border are released from detention on an ankle monitor and have to follow a number of different procedures to help track them, all found to be highly effective alternatives to detention, said Ayodele Gansallo, an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who is a senior staff attorney with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of Pennsylvania.

Lenni B. Benson, who teaches immigration law at New York University, also questioned the 50 percent figure cited in congressional hearings by Trump administration officials.

In a phone interview, Benson said the fact that a deportation order is issued in absentia does not mean that the person will be or should be deported. Too often, she said, noncitizens dont know when to appear in court because they are given inadequate notices to appear.

Benson cited the case of Wescley Fonseca Pereira, who was ordered removed in absentia because he missed a removal hearing in 2007. The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in June that Pereiras notice to appear was inadequate because it lacked both time and location. In the majority opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Department of Homeland Security almost always serves noncitizens with notices that fail to specify the time, place, or date of initial removal hearings, and instead state that the time, place and date are to be determined.

The government acknowledged in a court filing that almost 100 percent of notices to appear omit the time and date of the proceeding over the last three years.

If given inadequate notice, noncitizens may seek to reopen their immigration proceedings, even though a deportation order was filed against them in absentia. Benson argued that the 50 percent figure cited by the Trump officials is inflated, because it is a snapshot in time. In other words, some who failed to show up and received a deportation order in absentia may nevertheless continue to work through the judicial system.

When asked about the best available data on case outcomes, several immigration law experts referred us to a study published last year in the California Law Review that analyzed government data from immigration court cases initiated between 2001 and 2016.

The study  led by Ingrid Eagly, an immigration law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles  found that [f]amily members released from custody attended all of their hearings in 86% of cases during the 15 years covered by the study period. The percentage was slightly lower  81 percent  for nonfamilies.

One group in particular  families seeking asylum  had a very high rate of showing up for court hearings. We find that family members seeking asylum who were released from detention attended their hearings in 96% of cases that began in family detention since 2001, the study found.

The president frequently complains about what he calls catch and release. Last year, he claimed only 3 percent of those released show up in immigration court, while on other occasions he has said the released immigrants never show up in court or nobody ever shows up. But there is no evidence to support any of these claims.
One lied about his knowledge of Russian-hacked emails, another about a Russian real estate deal, a third about dialogue over sanctions with a Russian ambassador.

A pattern of deception by advisers to President Donald Trump, aimed at covering up Russia-related contacts during the 2016 campaign and transition period, has unraveled bit by bit in criminal cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The lies to the FBI and to Congress, including by Trump's former fixer and his national security adviser, have raised new questions about Trump's connections to Russia, revealed key details about the special counsel's findings and painted a portrait of aides eager to protect the president and the administration by concealing communications they presumably recognized as problematic.

The false statements cut to the heart of Mueller's mission to untangle ties between the Trump campaign and Russia and to establish whether they colluded to sway the election. They concern some of the central questions of the investigation, including why the incoming Trump administration discouraged Russia from retaliating over sanctions imposed for election hacking; who knew what when about illegally obtained Democratic emails; and how plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow came together and fell apart.

"I think you can draw a conclusion that these false statements generally relate to an effort to protect the president of the United States in connection with his dealings with Russia," said Washington lawyer Daniel Petalas, a former Justice Department prosecutor. "That's what makes them material to the investigation that Mueller is pursuing, which is a necessary element of a false statement claim  that it has to be material."

The most recent example came Thursday, when Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about negotiations he had on Trump's behalf for a real estate deal in Moscow.

Though he told lawmakers the talks were done by January 2016, he admitted they actually lasted as late as June  after Trump had secured the Republican nomination and after Russians had penetrated Democratic email accounts for communications later released through WikiLeaks. He also said he had briefed Trump about the project's progress and members of his family.

Cohen said he lied out of loyalty to Trump, who insisted throughout the campaign that he had no business dealings in Russia, and to be consistent with his political messaging.

Though the Cohen plea didn't directly connect to Trump's campaign, other cases have.

George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about April 2016 conversations with a Maltese professor who told him Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." Papadopoulos told the FBI he wasn't part of the campaign when he encountered the professor, Joseph Mifsud, even though he had joined weeks earlier.

His lawyers said Papadopoulos, now serving a 14-day prison sentence, "lied to save his professional aspirations and preserve a perhaps misguided loyalty to his master."

Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, is being sentenced later this month after admitting lying to the FBI by saying he didn't discuss sanctions against Russia during the transition with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time.

That deception was flagged for the White House in January 2017 by Obama administration holdover Sally Yates, who as acting attorney general told White House counsel Don McGahn that officials were misleading the public by falsely declaring Flynn hadn't discussed sanctions.

Flynn's guilty plea was especially significant in that it made clear other transition officials were aware of his Kislyak conversations and discussed with him what he would say. And while Flynn was fired in February 2017, his importance to Trump became evident when ex-FBI Director James Comey said Trump had encouraged him during a private meeting that same month to end an investigation into Flynn.

More lies followed as prosecutors this week accused former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of lying even after his guilty plea, though they have not said about what.

And a draft plea agreement against another Trump supporter, conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, accused him of misrepresenting a conversation with Trump confidant Roger Stone about WikiLeaks, which published thousands of stolen emails ahead of the election to harm the Clinton campaign.

A false statement charge can be a powerful cudgel for prosecutors, especially in investigations like this one where witnesses are recalcitrant and openly defiant. In the Mueller investigation, perhaps emboldened by Trump's antagonist stance, witnesses have increasingly lashed out against the government's authority. Trump and Stone have publicly attacked Mueller's investigation, while Corsi rejected a plea offer and accused prosecutors of trying to bully him into saying what they want to hear.

"You've got a system where you're trying to take evidence from people, get their testimony under penalty of prosecution if you lie," said Duke University law professor Sam Buell. "And that's what you do when you have uncooperative people (who are) trying to conceal something that you're trying to get to the bottom of."

More false statement charges could be coming. Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the panel has made referrals to prosecutors and cited Cohen as an example.

"It's a loud message to everybody that is interviewed by our committee, regardless of where that prosecution comes from, if you lie to us, we're going to go after you," Burr said.

Though Trump regularly complains about Mueller's style, there's nothing unusual about prosecutors pursuing false statement charges to send a message and using their lies for cases against higher-level targets.

"This is what happened to the mob, this is what happened to the drug cartels," Buell said.

Not to mention, he noted, past Washington investigations like Watergate.
America's space agency wants you to head for the mountains with a smartphone and a measuring stick.

NASA's earth science arm is funding research that recruits citizen scientists on skis, snowshoes and snowmobiles to measure snow depth in backcountry locations of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Their measurements will be incorporated into computer models that calculate how much water will end up in the region's rivers and reservoirs.

Early results have been promising.

"Our initial model runs show that citizen science measurements are doing an amazing job of improving our simulations," said David Hill, an Oregon State University professor of civil engineering, who is collaborating with Alaska and University of Washington researchers. They received one of 16 NASA citizen science grants for the project.

The snowpack measurements are incorporated into computer models estimating "snow-water equivalent," the amount of liquid water contained in snow cover, of a watershed.

In western states, according to NASA, nearly three-fourths of annual stream flow that provides drinking water comes from spring and summer melt.

NASA in February began a multiyear research project to improve the accuracy of its snow measurements with partners in Europe and Canada, trying to solve challenges such as detecting snow through trees.

The grant awarded to Hill, Anthony Arendt of the University of Washington and Gabriel Wolken, a research geologist with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys, is not directly connected to that project but has a mutual interest, said Kevin Murphy, a program executive for science data systems at NASA headquarters.

"We decided about two years ago to start this program, which really looks at how can we harness the creativity and the capabilities of citizens to augment a lot of our satellite or aircraft measurements," Murphy said.

Snow telemetry stations maintained by the U.S. Agriculture Department are another important tool for measuring snow in high-elevation and other hard-to-access places, Hill said. The unmanned stations collect data using a system of automated sensors.

But too few of them exist, Hill said. "They're expensive to install, they're expensive to maintain, so there just aren't that many."

The citizen snow-measuring program, Community Snow Observations , aims to supplement that with people.

"We want to turn the public into these mobile snow telemetry stations," he said. "You just need a probe to do it."

The measuring device can be as rudimentary as a yardstick, Hill said, but most people venturing into mountains already carry an avalanche probe, a 5- to 6-meter stick that folds down like a tent pole. After an avalanche, the probes are used to feel for buried people. Probes typically carry measurement markings.

"You want to know when you actually find that person how deep they are," Hill said. "They're really just a big, long ruler."

For the citizen science program, an online tutorial tells participants to find undisturbed snow, push the probe firmly to the ground, read the depth in centimeters and enter the data onto a smartphone app. Participants are asked to repeat that several times and average the measurements.

The app records the location and time of the measurement and uploads the information. The program accounts for measurements in continental climate locations with light, dry snow or the wet, dense snow of maritime climates.

Initial measurements were made last winter in Alaska's Thompson Pass north of Valdez, where other snow research was being conducted.

"I recruited some of the folks from Valdez Avalanche Center. They brought friends along," said Wolken, the Alaska research geologist. "That was our first go at getting sort of a grassroots, citizen science team."

The hundreds of measurements collected far outpaced what the scientists could gather themselves. When NASA announced grants for citizen scientist projects, the researchers jumped to apply, Wolken said.

Preliminary calculations have been "striking," Hill said, and the subject of a paper written by a doctoral student.

"He has results that basically show that the errors in our modeled snow-water equivalent are cut by about 90 percent with this input from public," Hill said. "We're thrilled about that."

Other NASA grants in the program will use citizen scientists to collect data on mosquito populations and their breeding environments around the world, water depths in lakes in North Carolina and elsewhere, moisture in soil at various locations, changes in giant kelp across the globe, and images of clouds from the ground in Colorado.
Ukrainian authorities have avoided a second cyberattack, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in an announcement that suggests that the effort to wreak electronic havoc across Ukraine is ongoing.

Ukraine is still trying to find its feet after scores or even hundreds of businesses and government agencies were hit by an explosion of data-scrambling software on June 27.

Avakov said in a statement posted to his Facebook page that what he described as the second stage of that malware attack had been timed to hit its peak at 4 p.m. Ukraine time on Tuesday.

Like the first attack, Tuesday's originated from the Ukrainian tax firm M.E. Doc, Avakov said.

Wednesday's announcement adds clarity to Cyberpolice's midnight announcement that they had raided M.E. Doc and seized the company's servers.
China has started putting greater emphasis on improving pandas' genetic quality and biodiversity instead of merely increasing the population, according to a senior specialist known as "Panda Mama".

The specialist, Hou Rong, chief researcher at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Sichuan province, told China Daily about the shift last week during the annual two sessions. She's also a deputy to the National People's Congress.

Hou has spent most of her time trying to increase the number of pandas since joining the center in 1994. It is now home to 195 captive pandas.

Panda reproduction is no longer a major challenge. "Almost all baby pandas at the base survive, as long as they are healthy at birth," she said.

Priorities needed to change, Hou said.

"With 548 captive pandas nationwide, we will maintain the current growth rate, or lower it properly. We will turn to improving captive pandas' genetic quality. In other words, we will fully protect panda biodiversity," she said. The national total is believed to support a self-sustaining panda population.

While boosting numbers was the priority, a captive panda at a research center in China was the father of some 100 captive pandas. However, Hou said, that does not help with biodiversity.

Hou said public awareness of animal conservation in China has increased over the yearswhenever she has appeared at public events, journalists always want an interview about pandas.

While the Chengdu center used to be visited mainly by foreigners, the overwhelming majority of visitors now are Chinese. On a single day during the three-day May holiday, 80,000 Chinese flocked there.

Hou, who has served as an NPC deputy for 12 years, was the first deputy to ask for enactment of a law to establish the Giant Panda National Park to ensure joint efforts to protect wild pandas and other species in the park.

There are many nature reserves and scenic spots in the boundaries of the park that are under the administration of different agencies. Without a law, they might not work together as well, Hou said.

Planning for the park began in January 2017, when the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council issued a notice on the project.

The park covers 27,134 square kilometers in three provinces, with 20,177 sq km in Sichuan, 2,571 sq km in Gansu and 4,386 sq km in Shaanxi.

Establishing the park primarily in habitats of wild pandas is of great importance in protecting the ecosystem and biodiversity, with pandas at the center, Li Chunliang, deputy chief of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration, said at a ceremony at the park's administrative bureau in Chengdu in October.

In her first 10 years as an NPC deputy, Hou poured a great deal of research into writing a 50-page motion asking for revision of the country's wild animal protection law.

Some of her suggestions, such as protection of wild animals in captivity, were adopted in the revised law, which took effect on Jan 1, 2017.

Before the law was revised, there were no provisions pertaining to protection of wild animals in captivity. That led to incidents such as a university student who was reported to have poured sulfuric acid on five bears at a zoo in Beijing in 2002 and captive tigers that were starved at a zoo in Shenyang, Liaoning province, in 2010, Hou said.
"Making a Murderer" subject Steven Avery will have his case re-examined by a Wisconsin court, his lawyer announced this week.

Avery, who is serving a life sentence for the 2005 murder of photographer Teresa Halbach, won a motion to appeal, sending his case back to a circuit court. There, the court can either grant a new trial or send the case back to the appellate court, which could potentially reverse his conviction or grant a new trial, his lawyer Kathleen Zellner told Newsweek.

Zellner noted the appeal centered on a collection of possible human bones, which she said were never tested for DNA before they were returned to Halbachs family.

"We Won!!!!!!" Zellner tweeted Monday. "Back to the circuit court."

Avery was the subject of the Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer" series, which recently released its second season.

The series follows Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, both convicted of murdering Halbach and both serving life sentences, as they try to overturn their convictions. Avery had argued that his conviction was based on planted evidence and false testimony.

The series spawned conjecture about the pair's innocence, but those who worked on the cases accused the filmmakers of leaving out key pieces of evidence and presenting a biased view of what happened.

"[Steven Averys] DREAM OF FREEDOM is a NEW REALITY as [Court of Appeals] lets us reveal all the States BAD FAITH, DESTRUCTION & SUPPRESSION of evidence-misdeeds cannot be undone," Zellner tweeted Tuesday. "States old way of doing business is OVER."

She noted that the court of appeals "is letting us create an avalanche of evidence in this record" and called the courts ruling a "very good sign."

Should his conviction be overturned, it would mark the second time Avery has been imprisoned for a crime he says he didn't commit. Zellner's office did not respond to NBC Chicago's multiple requests for comment.
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says the deal to be acquired by Amazon was the result of a "whirlwind courtship."

Mackey made the remarks during a town hall with Whole Foods employees after the $13.7 billion deal was announced late last week, according to a transcript of the talk filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mackey said mutual friends set the companies up on a "blind date" in Seattle a little over six weeks ago, and that executives immediately hit it off and ended up speaking for more than two hours.

"It was truly love at first sight," said Mackey.

"We just had these big grins on our faces, like, 'These guys are amazing.' They're so smart. They're so authentic. They say what's on their mind. They're not playin' a bunch of BS games," Mackey said.

A representative for Whole Foods confirmed that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was at the meeting.

Mackey compared the relationship to an "old traditional marriage, where there are all kinds of rules and chaperones." He said they could not "consummate" the relationship until the deal was official, and that it was "not a Tinder relationship."

Beyond the romantic metaphor, Mackey also said the companies discussed what they could do together, though he could not share those plans until the transaction closed. But he said he thought Amazon would be able to help Whole Foods more quickly realize the changes it has already been pursuing, such as a loyalty program and its cost-cutting efforts. He noted that Amazon was known for its innovation.

"I think we're going to get a lot of those innovations in our stores," he said. "I think we're gonna see a lotta technology. I think you're gonna see Whole Foods Market evolve in leaps and bounds."

The deal comes after Whole Foods has been pressured as a key sales figure has declined. The Austin, Texas-based company has blamed the struggles on the wider availability of organic and natural food at traditional retailers, and said it is working on offering lower prices.

Jeff Wilke, Amazon's CEO of Worldwide Consumer who was on hand at the town hall last week, affirmed that Amazon did not want Whole Foods to change its standards on food quality, according to the transcript. Wilke also noted that Mackey would continue as CEO of Whole Foods, which prompted Mackey to interject by continuing the romantic allusion.

"Until death do us part," Mackey said.
Four Broward County men who dressed as women during a string of armed robberies throughout Florida and into Georgia have been convicted on multiple charges, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Jerome Simmons, 31, Adrian Hardy, 34, Christopher Brinson, 33, and Emmory Moore, 34, were convicted by a federal jury Friday on charges including Hobbs Act robbery, brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery, according to a news release from Ariana Fajardo Orshan, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Hardy was also convicted on four counts of kidnapping.

Prosecutors said Moore and Simmons wore wigs, makeup and women's clothing during a March 3, 2017 robbery of Class Jewelers in Deerfield Beach in which they held two employees at gunpoint and stole jewelry and other items from the store with the help of Brinson.

Days later, on March 6, 2017 in Spring Hill, two men dressed as women robbed Lilys Jewelry at gunpoint, prosecutors said. One of the suspects dropped a cellphone, which was later tied to Moore, and cell site information showed that cell phones owned by Simmons, Hardy, Brinson and Moore traveled to Spring Hill, prosecutors said.

Cell site information also showed that their cell phones traveled to Valdosta, Georgia on March 31, 2017. The next day, three men dressed as women robbed Bishops Jewelers in Valdosta, stealing money, jewelry, and a firearm from the stores safe. The firearm was later recovered from the trunk of a car driven by Moore by Fort Lauderdale Police during a traffic stop.

On April 16, 2017, three men dressed as women robbed LSO Jewelers in Port St. Lucie. Authorities responded and Port Saint Lucie officers located Simmons in a nearby hospital parking lot wearing only his underwear and a sock, prosecutors said. Brinson was located at a nearby restaurant but Hardy escaped into a nearby retirement community and held four residents at gunpoint for several hours, eventually forcing them to drive him from Port St. Lucie to Fort Lauderdale, prosecutors said.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 7. Simmons, Hardy, Brinson, and Moore face up to 20 years in prison for the robbery and robbery conspiracy charges and a consecutive mandatory minimum term of 7 years to life in prison for each conviction for brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. Hardy also faces up to 15 years in prison for each of the kidnapping charges.
The family of the woman shot and killed by an FHP trooper earlier this week spoke with NBC 6 on Saturday, sending a clear message: they want answers.

"Its been very hard because she was someone very special to my family. She was very hard working, loving and caring. So for someone to just rob her of her life, its not fair. Its not fair. We need justice, said Crystal Mapp, the victims cousin.

Latasha Walton, 32, was shot and killed Tuesday by a Florida state trooper. Cell phone video captured the traffic stop near the Golden Glades Interchange in Northwest Miami-Dade after police said Walton was driving erratically.

FHP said Trooper Ronald Melendez-Bonilla shot his gun several times at Waltons car, killing her, when she drove in the direction of the trooper.

"Theres no justifying the situation on what he did to my sister," said Alphonso Wright, Jr., the victims brother. "I cant see her no more. It hurts. Its so painful. I done cried so much to the point, she needs me to be strong for her kids."

Ben Crump, the same attorney who represented Trayvon Martins family, is representing the family and calls the shooting unjustifiable. Martin was shot and killed in 2012 by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman said he shot Martin in self-defense as the teen returned to his fathers home after a trip to a convenience store. Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder in 2013.

"Why is the police going in front of the car? Thats training, thats policy. This was an unnecessary, unjustifiable killing," said Crump.

Court documents show Walton pleaded no contest to a similar incident in 2016 when a Broward County Sheriffs Deputy said during a traffic stop, Walton nearly hit him and his unmarked car when she fled from police.

"We got video, the video speaks for itself. The playbook is, always after you have assassinated the person, then go assassinate their character to try and justify what is unjustifiable based on what we see," said Crump.

For Waltons family, nothing will justify taking her life.

"I just want justice for my sister," said Wright, Jr. "And the only thing I can think of is my nephews and what they would want."

"I just think its wrong all around the board. And no matter how they look at it or what they try to say, its not right," said Mapp.
The white supremacist accused of gunning down 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand has dismissed his lawyer and opted to represent himself at trial, prompting the prime minister to declare Tuesday that she would do everything in her power to deny him a platform for his racist views.

"I agree that it is absolutely something that we need to acknowledge, and do what we can to prevent the notoriety that this individual seeks," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told reporters. "He obviously had a range of reasons for committing this atrocious terrorist attack. Lifting his profile was one of them. And that's something that we can absolutely deny him."

Asked if she would like the trial to occur behind closed doors, Ardern demurred, saying that was not her decision to make.

"One thing I can assure you  you won't hear me speak his name," she said.

The gunman's desire for infamy was made clear by the fact that he left behind a convoluted 74-page manifesto before Friday's massacre and livestreamed footage of his attack on the Al Noor mosque.

The video prompted widespread revulsion and condemnation. Facebook said it removed 1.5 million versions of the video during the first 24 hours after the massacre. But on Tuesday, Ardern expressed frustration that the video remained available online, four days after the attack.

"We have been in contact with Facebook; they have given us updates on their efforts to have it removed, but as I say, it's our view that it cannot  should not  be distributed, available, able to be viewed," she said. "It is horrendous and while they've given us those assurances, ultimately the responsibility does sit with them."

Arden said she had received "some communication" from Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg on the issue. The prime minister has also spoken with British Prime Minister Theresa May about the importance of a global effort to clamp down on the distribution of such material.

Lawyer Richard Peters, who was assigned to represent Brenton Harrison Tarrant at his initial court appearance on Saturday, told the New Zealand Herald that Tarrant dismissed him that day.

A judge ordered Tarrant to return to New Zealand's High Court on April 5 for his next hearing on one count of murder, though he is expected to face additional charges. The 28-year-old Australian is being held in isolation in a Christchurch jail.

"He seemed quite clear and lucid, whereas this may seem like very irrational behavior," Peters told the newspaper. "He didn't appear to me to be facing any challenges or mental impairment, other than holding fairly extreme views."

Peters did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

He said a judge could order a lawyer to assist Tarrant at a trial, but that Tarrant would likely be unsuccessful in trying to use it as a platform to put forward any extremist views.

Under New Zealand law, a trial is "to determine innocence or guilt," Peters said. "The court is not going to be very sympathetic to him if he wants to use the trial to express his own views."

Peters said Tarrant didn't tell him why he wanted to represent himself.

Ardern previously has said her Cabinet had agreed in principle on tightening gun restrictions in New Zealand and those reforms would be announced next week. She also had announced an inquiry into the intelligence and security services' failures to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans. There have been concerns intelligence agencies were overly focused on the Muslim community in detecting and preventing security risks.

New Zealand's international spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, confirmed it had not received any relevant information or intelligence ahead of the shootings.

Meanwhile, Christchurch was beginning to return to a semblance of normalcy Tuesday. Streets near the hospital that had been closed for four days reopened to traffic as relatives and friends of the victims continued to stream in from around the world.

Thirty people were still being treated at the Christchurch hospital, nine of them in critical condition, said David Meates, CEO of the Canterbury District Health Board. A 4-year-old girl was transferred to a hospital in Auckland and is in critical condition. Her father is at the same hospital in stable condition.

Relatives of the dead are still anxiously awaiting word on when they can bury their loved ones. Islamic tradition calls for bodies to be cleansed and buried as soon as possible. Ardern has said authorities hope to release all the bodies by Wednesday and police said authorities are working with pathologists and coroners to complete the task as soon as they can.

The close-knit community has been deeply wounded by the attacks. On Monday evening, more than 1,000 students from rival Christchurch schools and different religions gathered in a park across from the Al Noor mosque, joining voices in a passionate display of unity.

The students sat on the grass in the fading daylight, lifting flickering candles to the sky as they sang a traditional Maori song. Hundreds then stood to perform an emotional, defiant haka, the famed ceremonial dance of the indigenous Maori people.

For many, joining the vigil for the victims of the mass shooting was a much-needed opportunity to soothe their minds after a wrenching few days.

Most of the students spent hours locked down in their schools on Friday as police tried to determine if any other shooters were involved in the attacks.

Those at the vigil told harrowing tales of being forced to hide under classroom tables or on a school stage behind a curtain, of being instructed not to speak, and to urinate in a bucket rather than risk leaving the classroom for a bathroom.

Sarah Liddell, 17, said many of her peers felt intense anxiety since the attack. There was a sense of safety in coming together on Monday, she said.

"I feel like it's just really important to show everyone that one act of violence doesn't define a whole city," she said. "This is one of the best ways to show everyone coming together. Some schools have little funny rivalries, but in times like this we all just come together and that's all forgotten."

Associated Press writers Stephen Wright and Nick Perry contributed to this report.
A 3-year-old Nubian goat is poised to become the first honorary pet mayor of the small Vermont town of Fair Haven.

The goat named Lincoln was chosen by townspeople for the one-year honorary post at the community's Town Meeting Day voting. The Tuesday ballot of 16 pets was open to all town residents. Most of the other candidates were dogs and cats; a gerbil named Crystal also was a candidate.

Lincoln takes office on Tuesday for the one-year term.

Fair Haven, a town of about 2,500 along the border with New York just west of Rutland, does not have an actual mayor.

Town Manager Joseph Gunter says he conceived of the idea as a fundraiser for a playground, but it turned into a civics lesson, teaching kids about local government.
The breakdown of a plea deal with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an explosive British news report about alleged contacts he may have had with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threw a new element of uncertainty into the Trump-Russia investigation.

On Tuesday, a day after prosecutors accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to them, trashing his agreement to tell all in return for a lighter sentence, he adamantly denied a report in the Guardian that he had met secretly with Assange around March 2016. That's the same month Manafort joined the Trump campaign and Russian hackers began an effort to penetrate the email accounts of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

The developments thrust Manafort back into the investigation spotlight, raising new questions about what he knows and what prosecutors say he might be attempting to conceal as they probe Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates in the campaign that sent the celebrity businessman to the White House.

All the while, Manafort's lawyers have been briefing Trump's attorneys on what their client has told investigators, an unusual arrangement that could give Trump ammunition in his feud against special counsel Robert Mueller.

"They share with me the things that pertain to our part of the case," Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told The Associated Press.

Giuliani also said Trump, who has recently stepped up his attacks on Mueller, has been enraged by the treatment of Manafort.

Other figures entangled in the investigation, including Trump himself, have been scrambling to escalate attacks and allegations against prosecutors who have been working quietly behind the scenes.

Besides denying he'd ever met Assange, Manafort, who is currently in jail, said he'd told Mueller's prosecutors the truth during questioning. And WikiLeaks said Manafort had never met with Assange, offering to bet London's Guardian newspaper "a million dollars and its editor's head."

Assange, whose organization published thousands of emails stolen by Russian spies from Clinton's campaign in 2016, is in Ecuador's embassy in London under a claim of asylum.

It's unclear what prosecutors contend Manafort lied about, though they're expected to make a public filing that could offer answers. More details could emerge a hearing set for Friday where both sides will weigh in on next steps in the case, including the possible setting of Manafort's sentencing date.

Dissolution of the plea deal could be a devastating outcome for a defendant who suddenly admitted guilt last September after months of maintaining his innocence and who bet on his cooperation getting him a shorter sentence. But it's also a potential setback for investigators, given that Manafort steered the campaign during a vital stretch of 2016, when prosecutors say Russian intelligence was working to sway the election in Trump's favor.

The prosecutors' filing underscored their exasperation not only at Manafort's alleged deception but also at the loss of an important witness present for key moments under scrutiny, including a Trump Tower meeting at which Trump's eldest son expected to receive "dirt" about Clinton from a Kremlin-connected lawyer.

"The fact is, they wanted his cooperation. They wanted him to truthfully reveal what he knew, so they're not getting what they wanted," said Washington defense lawyer Peter Zeidenberg. "This isn't like a good development where they're clapping their hands and saying, 'Now we get to crush this guy.'"

Manafort's motivation, if indeed he lied to prosecutors, also was unclear.

In an interview, Giuliani said Trump and his lawyers agree a presidential pardon should not be considered "now" but added, "The president could consider it at an appropriate time, as Manafort has the same rights as any American."

Giuliani also accused Mueller's team of mistreating Manafort in hopes of getting him to give false testimony against the president. He said Trump "thinks it is outrageous and un-American and sounds like something that would happen under an oppressive dictatorship."

Mueller's filing on Manafort came at a delicate time for investigators, who have gone months without new charges and continue to probe possible links between Trump associates and WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website.

As Trump continues raging against the investigation  he tweeted Tuesday that Mueller was doing "TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice system" and called the investigation "a total disgrace"  others in the crosshairs have filled the vacuum of Mueller's recent silence by publicly declaring their innocence, accusing prosecutors of coercing testimony or tempting fate by turning aside negotiations.

One associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone is contesting a grand jury subpoena in court. Another, Jerome Corsi, said he was rejecting an offer to plead guilty to a false statements charge and has complained in news media interviews about his interrogations by prosecutors.

Stone, under investigation himself for connections to WikiLeaks, has repeatedly disparaged Mueller's investigation and said his friend Corsi was at risk of prosecution "not for lying but for refusing to lie."

A document drafted by Mueller's team as part of a plea offer says Corsi tipped off Stone in August 2016 that WikiLeaks planned to release damaging documents about Clinton. The tip accurately forecast that WikiLeaks would publicity post the material, including messages from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, in October. It is the first known reference by Mueller to Americans close to Trump appearing to have foreknowledge of WikiLeaks' plans.

The draft document was first reported by NBC News, and a copy of it was posted online by The Washington Post. Stone has denied knowing about WikiLeaks' plans in advance.

Manafort, meanwhile, had been quiet since pleading guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy against the United States. He has met repeatedly since then with investigators.

He remained in the spotlight Tuesday when the Guardian published a report saying he had secretly met Assange around March 2016, when he was brought aboard the Trump campaign. The report suggested a direct connection between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign.

Manafort called the story "totally false and deliberately libelous," saying in a statement that he had never met Assange or anyone close to him.

The Guardian cited unidentified sources as saying Manafort first met Assange at the embassy in 2013, a year after Assange took refuge there to avoid being extradited to Sweden over sex crime allegations. The newspaper said that Manafort returned in 2015 and 2016 and that its sources had "tentatively dated" the final visit to March.

There was no detail on what might have been discussed.

The Trump campaign announced Manafort's hiring on March 29, 2016, and he served as the convention manager tasked with lining up delegates for the Republican National Convention. He was promoted to chairman that May.

An AP investigation into Russian hacking showed that government-aligned cyberspies began an aggressive effort to penetrate the Clinton campaign's email accounts on March 10, 2016.

Justice Department prosecutors in Virginia recently inadvertently disclosed the existence of sealed criminal charges against Assange, though it's unclear what that case entails. Prosecutors were in court Tuesday arguing against unsealing any charge.

Meanwhile, a judge may soon set a sentencing date for Manafort now that his hopes for leniency appear dashed.

"The cooperating defendant usually is very aware of what's at stake," said Shanlon Wu, who represented Manafort's onetime co-defendant Rick Gates. "What I always say to any client of mine who's contemplating that  there is no going back.

"It's like being a little bit pregnant," he added. "There's no such thing."

Associated Press writers Raphael Satter, Franklin Briceno and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.
The robbery suspect wore a unicorn costume, and police in Maryland say he has been unmasked.

News outlets report that Baltimore County police say 28-year-old Jacob William Rogge donned a pink-and-white unicorn costume and smashed a convenience store register with a crowbar Saturday. Police say 27-year-old Joseph Philip Svezzese drove Rogge, who fled with cash and cigarettes from High's Dairy Store.

The pair's car crossed into oncoming traffic and crashed into mailboxes, a utility pole, shrubbery and a boulder, which sent the car back across the road until it hit a tree. Both men were hospitalized with serious injuries.

Svezzese was treated and released, but Rogge remains hospitalized in serious condition. Court records didn't list lawyers for them.

Police say a discarded unicorn costume was later found in bushes.
In his 20 years as a paramedic, Mickey Huber assisted in two emergency deliveries. But to him, the most memorable birth is the one that didn't happen on his watch.

Huber was helping people evacuate from the terrifying wildfire that tore through the Northern California town of Paradise on Nov. 8 when he heard on the scanner about a pregnant woman going into premature labor.

Anastasia Skinner's baby wasn't due for another month, but she began to feel contractions as she grabbed her mother's two dogs and raced to escape the fast-moving blaze. The flames had already hit her car by the time she fought the panic-driven traffic jam out of town and reached a gas station, honking the horn and screaming for help.

"I knew I wasn't going to make it," Skinner, 25, said during a phone interview on Friday. "I called my husband and told him goodbye, tell all the kids I love them and make sure they remember me."

A motorcyclist who saw Skinner in distress flagged a police officer who helped her move to the back seat of her Honda Pilot. Several women who were stuck in the traffic jam brought her blankets and pillows, A retired fire chief came to her aid and someone requested a helicopter to airlift her to the hospital.

Huber, the assistant chief of operations for Butte County Emergency Services, was two miles away but had to get through 30 minutes of gridlock to get to Skinner. When he arrived and evaluated her condition, he knew she couldn't wait much longer for a helicopter.

"The smoke was thick, and the winds were blowing. The helicopters were having a hard time fighting the fire let alone airlifting patients," Huber said.

Because Skinner was having a high-risk pregnancy after suffering two miscarriages and other complications related to an inherited disorder, Huber said she may not have made it if she went into full-blown labor.

He arranged a caravan that included three police vehicles to rush Skinner to an ambulance. Then he jumped in the back seat, where he kept her calm until she reached a hospital where her labor was stopped.

"He was sweet. He told me, 'I'm a guy. I don't know what this feels like for you, but I'll try to help you get you through it,' " Skinner said. "Then he would yell at people outside of the car, waving his hat and telling them to get out of the way."

"My goal was to keep her breathing and get her down the hill," Huber said. "Two of my ambulance crews were trapped by the fire moments before I got to Anastasia so there was a lot of doubt, a lot of worry."

Skinner said a doctor later told her smoke inhalation put her body under stress and triggered the contractions.

On Dec. 12, more than a month after the fire began, Skinner gave birth via C-section to a full-term, healthy girl and named her after the man she believes saved her life.

"She's a blessing in every way including what happened at the Camp Fire," she said about her daughter, Zoele (rhymes with Noel) Mickey Skinner.

Skinner and her husband, Daniel, have three other children, ages 8, 6 and 4.

After getting Skinner to the ambulance, Huber helped with the mass evacuation until the next day. He said he was shocked and honored when he learned the baby was named after him.

"That day was full of a thousand different emotions but that is the strongest memory of the day for me," Huber said.

More than 50,000 people in Paradise and the neighboring communities of Magalia and Concow were forced to quickly flee the towering, wind-driven flames that burned an area about the size of Chicago  240 square miles (622 square kilometers)  and became the deadliest U.S. wildfire in at least a century. At least 86 people were killed and 14,000 homes destroyed.

Skinner and her husband, Daniel, lost their home; her mother lost hers too.

"All of our history and what we were as a family, everybody knowing your name and all the things about being in a small town are just gone," Skinner said.

When her children get sad about the things they lost in the fire, she said she reminds them to count their blessings, including the baby sister who made it alive.

"All of us, including our animals are out. Everybody we know is safe," Skinner said. "We can replace all the stuff in our house, but we can't replace each other."
A Massachusetts woman who allegedly assaulted a man wearing a Make America Great Again hat at a restaurant in Falmouth is in custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and due to be deported.

Authorities said Rosiane Santos, 41, is "an unlawfully present citizen of Brazil."

"Santos is currently facing local charges for assault and other offenses. She is presently in ICE custody and has been entered into removal proceedings before the federal immigration courts," read a statement from John Mohan, a public affairs officer for ICE's Boston office.

Santos pleaded not guilty last week in Falmouth District Court to charges of assault and battery and disorderly conduct for an incident the evening of Feb. 15.

Police said they were called to the Casa Vallarta on Davis Straits Road, where Bryton Turner had been minding his own business when Santos began to verbally assault him due to the MAGA hat he was wearing.

Turner began to record the incident with his phone saying, "Ignorant people like this. I'm just trying to sit here, eat a nice meal."

In the video, Santos can be seen walking up behind him and pulling the hat off his head.

Court documents show when police asked Santos why she did it, she said it was because he supports President Donald Trump and she allegedly called Turner an expletive.

"That's the problem with America these days. People are just ignorant. They want to lash out on people who are educated," Turner said in the video.

Police said when Santos was arrested, her eyes were "bloodshot and glassy". While walking her out of the bar, she allegedly hit Turner in the head.

Santos had been released on her own recognizance but was then taken into ICE custody Tuesday.
The death toll of the collapse of multiple buildings in north China's Shanxi Province on Friday rose to 12 on Monday morning, with eight people still unaccounted for as search and rescue operations continue.

The tragedy happened on Friday evening in Xiangning County when a landslide knocked down two residential buildings, a makeshift house and a bathhouse.

Rescuers said they were halfway through the 72 hours that could be the cut-off point to save lives.

Thirteen people have been rescued so far, including young children.

Large-sized machines start working

Large-sized machines were brought in on Sunday afternoon to assist rescue efforts. Two cranes have started to work at the top of the hill to stabilize the hanging parts of collapsed buildings to ensure the safety of rescuers.

A digger has been cleaning up the outer area of the scene trying to dig out a wider rescue way.

Cracks in walls

CGTN visited the site of the tragedy, and saw houses and shops near the collapsed buildings empty, with occupants having been evacuated.

Many nearby residents say they feel afraid.

"I feel quite uneasy now. I never expected this could happen. The collapse happened all of a sudden. And I also feel it's a bit unsafe to live around here," a female shop owner living across the street told CGTN.

"I'm very afraid now. Actually, I saw cracks on our house last winter," said a man who lived in a house near the collapsed site but has now moved out.

Buildings built on slopes

Xiangning County is located in a mountainous area where it's very common for buildings to be constructed on slopes. It's still unknown whether the construction of these houses was legal or met safety regulations.

The collapsed buildings were built on land in the Loess Plateau, which covers almost all of Shanxi Province.

The soft soil has made the site unstable, creating great challenges for rescuers.

Due to safety concerns, the rescue operation was suspended multiple times. Previously, in order to avoid secondary collapses, rescuers would use small tools to pull out trapped people. But they couldn't reach those under the debris in deeper place.

Rescuers say the rescue operation will be safer now that emergency crews have the help of machines.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he will work to designate Brazil a "major non-NATO ally"  and maybe even full NATO membership as he welcomed the country's new Trump-friendly far-right leader to the White House. That's despite the fact that Brazil doesn't quality to join the North Atlantic alliance.

Jair Bolsonaro, who's been described as the "Trump of the Tropics," ran on an unabashedly pro-American platform, emulating Trump in tone and in style. It's a position that seemed to pay off for the leader on his first official trip to Washington.

As they sat down for the first time, Trump praised Bolsonaro, saying he'd done "a very outstanding job" so far and hailed his run as "one of the incredible campaigns." Trump said he was "honored" Bolsonaro's campaign had drawn comparisons with his own 2016 victory. And he predicted the two would have a "fantastic working relationship," telling reporters at a joint press conference that they have "many views" in common. The two also exchanged soccer jerseys in a sign of friendship.

Bolsonaro has made clear he wants to strengthen military and economic ties with the U.S., and Trump appeared eager to deliver, announcing that he would back Brazil's effort's to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Trump also told reporters he intends to designate Brazil as "a major non-NATO ally" or "even, possibly, if you start thinking about it, maybe a NATO ally," though he said he'd "have to talk to a lot of people" for Brazil to join the organization.

Brazil, the largest and most populous nation in Latin America, has pursued becoming a non-NATO ally to make it easier to buy U.S. weapons and lower barriers for military and other cooperation.

But James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who was the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009 to 2013, said Brazil does not qualify for full membership under the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949.

"The idea of formal membership is a nonstarter in every dimension  the treaty doesn't allow it, the Brazilians wouldn't want it and the Europeans wouldn't approve," Stavridis said in an email exchange.

NATO's own membership policy says it is open only to any "European state" that is "in a position to further the principles of this treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area."

Bolsonaro has much in common with Trump. He, too, ran an insurgent, social media-powered campaign. And like Trump, he has blasted unflattering stories as "fake news" and used Twitter and Facebook to bypass mainstream news organizations.

Standing side-by-side in the White House Rose Garden, Bolsonaro told Trump the U.S. and Brazil stand together in support of "liberties," including "traditional family lifestyle," and "against the gender ideology or the politically incorrect attitudes and against fake news."

"I'm very proud to hear the president use the term 'fake news'," Trump later remarked.

As a congressman, Bolsonaro frequently made disparaging comments about gays, women, indigenous groups and blacks, and he has praised torture and killings by police and waxed nostalgic for Brazil's old military dictatorship. While such comments have drawn sharp criticism, they have also generated attention and fed into his narrative as a leader unencumbered by political correctness.

Bolsonaro has also echoed Trump's hardline immigration policies, calling immigrants from several poor countries the "scum of the world" and saying Brazil cannot become a "country of open borders."

In an interview with Fox News Monday, Bolsonaro said he supported Trump's immigration policies and his efforts to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"The majority of potential immigrants do not have good intentions or do not intend to do the best or do good for the American people," he said.

The two leaders were expected to discuss a range of issues during their visit, including expanding trade relations, increasing U.S. private-sector investment in Brazil and resolving the ongoing political crisis in Venezuela. Both are fierce critics of Venezuela's socialist President Nicolas Maduro.

In advance of the meeting, the countries signed several bilateral agreements, including one that allows the United States to use Brazil's Alcantara Aerospace Launch Base for its satellites. Brazil also announced an end to visa requirements for U.S. tourists who visit the country, while Trump agreed to Brazilian participation in the Trusted Traveler "Global Entry" program.

Days after taking office on Jan. 1, Bolsonaro, a former army captain, said Brazil would consider letting the U.S. have a military base in the country as way to counter Russian influence in the region, particularly related to Brazil's neighbor Venezuela.

That statement was roundly criticized, including by former military members of his government, and the administration backed off.

Bolsonaro, who has routinely expressed his admiration for Trump and frequently says closer U.S. ties are key to Brazil's future, sought to underscore his pro-America stance throughout his visit.

"For the first time in a while, a pro-America Brazilian president arrives in DC," he tweeted after arriving on Monday. "It's the beginning of a partnership focused on liberty and prosperity, something that all of us Brazilians have long wished for."

Bolsonaro succeeded a leftist who at times had a frosty relationship with the United States. In 2013, leaks from Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency had wiretapped conversations of former President Dilma Rousseff, leading to several years of tense relations between the U.S. and Brazil.
Long before accusations of absentee ballot fraud in a small North Carolina county cast doubt on the results of a heated 2018 congressional race, a state elections investigator spent weeks probing whether the man at the center of the current scandal was among a group buying votes.

That 2010 investigation was one of at least a half dozen instances over the last nine years that prosecutors and elections officials received complaints of serious elections irregularities in Bladen County, a rural locale of 35,000 people that has long had a statewide reputation for political chicanery by both Republicans and Democrats. The state's ongoing criminal investigation into 2018 voting irregularities has focused on Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr., a local political operative and convicted felon.

Marshall Tutor, who retired in March after 15 years as an investigator for the N.C. Board of Elections, told The Associated Press his office first fielded accusations nearly a decade ago that Dowless, now 62, was among a group giving voters cash to fill out ballots the way he directed.

Emails obtained by AP through a public records request detail the elections board's 2010 investigation in Bladen, which began after a Democratic candidate for county commissioner reported seeing political operatives handing voters what he suspected to be cash outside an early voting site.

Tutor traveled to Bladen multiple times, but said in an interview Monday he was unable to build a strong enough case against Dowless to support criminal charges.

"Dowless was throwing a lot of money around," said Tutor, 70, recounting the 2010 investigation. "There was no paper trail. Witnesses refused to give sworn statements or testify in court. No one was going to admit they were paid $5 to vote. But where there's that much smoke, there was fire."

Dowless did not respond Tuesday to a message seeking comment. His attorney, Cynthia Adams Singletary, issued a statement last month asserting that Dowless hasn't broken any campaign laws.

The AP first reported last month that North Carolina's top elections official issued an urgent plea nearly two years ago for the Trump administration to file criminal charges against Dowless and others, warning in a January 2017 letter that those involved in illegally harvesting absentee ballots in Bladen would likely do it again if they weren't prosecuted.

Both federal and state prosecutors failed to file criminal charges before the now disputed 2018 vote, the last unresolved Congressional election in the nation.

Investigators are now probing whether Dowless ran a sophisticated operation over multiple election cycles to collect absentee ballots from voters, potentially altering the selections or not turning them in to be counted. Under state law, it is illegal for anyone other than a voter or their immediate family to handle an absentee ballot before it is sealed and mailed.

Also at issue is whether Dowless was working as part of a larger local political machine, including whether he could have had improper help from current or former Bladen County officials.

The state Board of Elections refused to certify the results of the Nov. 6 vote where Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes, according to unofficial results. State investigators are also probing Dowless' work for Harris for the May 2018 Republican primary, in which he narrowly defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger.

Harris has admitted making the decision to hire Dowless after hearing about him from Bladen GOP officials, paying for the absentee ballot operation through a political consulting firm. Harris, a Baptist minister, has denied knowledge of any wrongdoing. He filed a lawsuit last week asking a state judge to order his certification as the winner of the November election.

North Carolina's appointed elections board was dissolved earlier this month by a panel of three state judges who in October struck down the GOP-back law that formed it as unconstitutional. A revamped board is due to be seated Jan. 31.

Democratic leaders in the U.S. House have said they won't allow Harris to take office because of the ongoing investigation. The U.S. Constitution makes the House the judge and final arbiter of its members' election contests.

Tutor, the former elections investigator, said he suspected in 2010 that political candidates or their supporters were funneling undisclosed cash to Dowless to fund efforts to influence votes.

"Dowless deals in cash," Tutor said. "He doesn't care about party affiliation. You show him the money, and he'll get the votes."

Years later, evidence surfaced that at least some political cash had been steered to Dowless that was never disclosed in campaign finance reports, as required by state law.

Jeffrey S. Smith, a Bladen County sweepstakes parlor operator, says he gave Dowless off-the-books cash in 2014. Smith testified as part of a lawsuit that he gave Dowless three cash payments totaling $5,800 on behalf of current Bladen County Sheriff Jim McVicker, a Republican.

"Everybody will tell you that McCrae takes cash for work," Smith told AP in an interview last month, recounting the payments.

North Carolina's legislature has repeatedly voted to outlaw so-called sweepstakes games, which typically resemble video slot machines. But many of the operations have managed to stay open with court challenges, software tweaks and frequent political donations.

Smith filed a lawsuit against McVicker after deputies raided his gaming parlor in 2015. As part of the case, Dowless gave a sworn statement admitting he received the cash and used it to hire about 20 people that encouraged voters to cast ballots supporting McVicker.

Larry Guyton, McVicker's chief deputy, said the sheriff declined to comment.

Though Tutor's 2010 investigation didn't yield a criminal case against Dowless, the investigator said he did gather strong evidence of wrongdoing by others.

The elections board doesn't have authority under state law to make arrests or file criminal charges. Emails reviewed by the AP show Tutor met with agents from the State Bureau of Investigation, North Carolina's version of the FBI, about pursuing a potential criminal case against Sue Anne Long, a state probation and parole officer.

Tutor said political alliances in Bladen often have more to do with skin color than party affiliation, and that his investigation indicated Long was part of a group gathering absentee ballots from low-income black residents and then throwing them away, a potential felony under state law. At the time, a black candidate for sheriff was squaring off against a white man in a Democratic party primary.

Tutor says he provided witness statements attesting to Long's alleged misconduct, but the case was later dropped. Tutor says the witnesses, whom he described as elderly black people, weren't deemed credible enough to bring criminal charges against Long.

"I was told the witnesses wouldn't be good in court," Tutor told the AP.

Long, 49, is still employed at the state adult corrections office in Elizabethtown, the Bladen County seat. She did not respond Monday to a phone message and email seeking comment.

SBI Deputy Director Gerald Thomas confirmed Monday that records showed his agency had investigated Long and made a referral to state prosecutors, who elected not to pursue charges.
President Donald Trump's first congressional veto was more than a milestone: It signals a new era of ever more fraught relations between the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Trump's legislative agenda was stymied even before his party lost unified control of Washington at the start of the year and he has grown increasingly frustrated by his dealings with Congress, believing little of substance will get done by the end of his first term and feeling just as pessimistic about the second, according to White House aides, campaign staffers and outside allies.

Republicans in Congress, for their part, are demonstrating new willingness to part ways with the president. On the Senate vote Thursday rejecting the president's national emergency declaration to get border wall funding, 12 senators defected and joined Democrats in voting against Trump.

The GOP-led Senate's 59-41 vote against Trump's declaration was just the latest blow as tensions flare on multiple fronts.

Trump tweeted one word after the vote: "VETO!" And he eagerly flexed that muscle on Friday for the first time, hoping to demonstrate resolve on fulfilling his signature 2016 campaign pledge.

Leading up to Thursday's dramatic vote of rebuke, Republican senators had repeatedly agitated for compromise deals that would give them political cover to support Trump despite their concerns that he was improperly circumventing Congress. But the president was never convinced that any of the proposals ensured the resolution would be defeated, said a White House official who demanded anonymity to discuss internal thinking.

A last-ditch trip to the White House by a group of senators Wednesday night only irritated Trump, who felt they were offering little in the way of new solutions.

As the vote neared, Trump repeatedly made clear that it was about party fealty and border security and suggested that voting against him could be perilous.

"It's going to be a great election issue," he predicted.

Looking past the veto, Trump's plans for future collaboration with Congress appear limited. With the exception of pushing for approval of Trump's trade deal with Mexico and Canada, the president and his allies see little benefit for Trump in investing more political capital on Capitol Hill. Trump ran against Washington in 2016, and they fully expect him to do so again.

Instead, the president  who once declared that "I alone can fix it" before getting hamstrung by the morass in Washington  is exploring opportunities to pursue executive action to work around lawmakers as he did with his emergency declaration on the border wall. He is directing aides to find other areas where he can act  or at least be perceived as acting  without Congress, including infrastructure and reducing drug prices.

Trump made his intentions clear recently as he assessed that Democrats would rather investigate him than cooperate on policy, declaring: "Basically, they've started the campaign. So the campaign begins."

His dealings with Congress were inconsistent even when Republicans controlled both chambers, and he has made few overtures to Democrats since they won control of the House.

Trump initially predicted he could work across the aisle, but that sentiment cooled after the bitter government shutdown fight and in the face of mounting investigations. His frustrations underscore the difficulty the Washington neophyte and former business executive has had with the laborious process of lawmaking, and the challenges yet to come.

The White House argues there are still opportunities for collaboration, listing the ratification of Trump's renegotiated North American free trade agreement, known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as his top legislative priority for the coming two years. But passage is anything but assured.

Trump's ire has been directed at both parties for some time, aides said. He was upset with the Republicans' performance during the recent congressional hearing featuring his former fixer Michael Cohen, telling allies that he was not impressed with their questioning.

Trump's budget proposal this past week was viewed as a shot at Democrats, with its proposals to increase funding for the border wall and cut to social safety net programs. The plan, which had little in the way of new or bipartisan ideas, was declared dead on arrival by Democratic House leaders.

Further stoking tensions, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to address an upcoming joint meeting of Congress, in what was widely seen as a rebuke of Trump's criticism of the trans-Atlantic alliance. The invitation was backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and followed votes earlier this year in which Republicans voiced opposition to Trump's plans to draw down U.S. troops in Syria and Afghanistan.

Presidential complaints about Congress  and efforts to find a work-around  are nothing new.

Former President Barack Obama in 2014 deployed what became known as his "pen and phone" strategy.

"I've got a pen to take executive actions where Congress won't, and I've got a telephone to rally folks around the country on this mission," he said.

Obama's strategy yielded years of executive orders and regulatory action  but many proved ephemeral when Trump took office and started deconstructing them.
A flurry of lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump's decision to chop up two large national monuments in Utah could finally bring an answer to the much-debated question of whether presidents have the legal authority to undo or change monuments created by past presidents.

Until that question is answered months or years from now, the fate of the contested lands in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments will remain unresolved.

Proclamations signed Monday by the president allow lands no longer protected as a national monument to be opened up in 60 days to mining, but conservation and tribal groups will likely try to keep that from happening.

Mark Squillace, professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado-Boulder, said he doubts the federal government would permit mining so quickly after Trump's announcement because it would be bad politics, especially as the legal battle mushrooms.

Outdoor retail giant Patagonia joined the lawsuits Wednesday, filing one on behalf of several other organizations to block Trump's reductions to Bears Ears. The California-based company said in the lawsuit that Trump's proclamation shrinking the monument by 85 percent exceeds the president's authority and strips much-needed protections from sacred tribal lands.

Patagonia also replaced its usual home page with a stark message, "The President Stole Your Land."

The post drew a strong rebuke from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke who called it "nefarious, false and a lie."

Three lawsuits already had been filed involving Utah's monuments. And more are expected  especially if Trump follows Zinke's recommendations to shrink two other monuments  Gold Butte in Nevada and Cascade Siskiyou in Oregon.

Supporters of Trump's move welcomed the fight, saying it will answer longstanding questions about presidential power involving the protection of land.

"Hopefully, we can have some closure on what the president can and cannot do," said Mike Noel, a Republican state representative in Utah who was on stage with the president during his proclamation signing in Salt Lake City.

Past presidents have trimmed national monuments and redrawn their boundaries 18 times, according to the National Park Service.

Legal experts disagree on whether the 1906 Antiquities Act  allowing presidents to create a monument  also lets them reduce one.

The question has never been settled in court, but conservation and paleontology groups and Native American tribes launching lawsuits are preparing to argue that Trump doesn't have that authority and his move jeopardizes a wealth of Native American artifacts, dinosaur fossils and rugged spaces.

"Gee whiz, it sounds like there are going to be a lot of attorneys making a whole lot of money," quipped Noel. "For every organization, there's a lunch ticket for a group of attorneys to exist."

Noel plans to intervene himself, filing a court brief to show support for the president's actions.

Donald Kochan, a professor of natural resources, property and administrative law at Chapman University in Orange, California, believes Trump's action is likely legal and the separate lawsuits allow each group to show supporters they're speaking up.

Squillace said the lawsuits will likely be merged into one case for each monument.

He thinks a court will try to focus on the overall question of whether Trump has the authority to reduce the monuments  something Squillace doesn't think the president has the legal authority to do.

While the legal battles play out, Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, has introduced a bill that would prevent presidents from designating monuments larger than 85,000 acres and give states and local officials the power to veto a monument larger than 10,000 acres.

Bishop's bill is awaiting a vote on the House floor.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.
Amazon has to pay $295 million in back taxes to Luxembourg, the European Union ordered Wednesday, in its latest attempt to tighten the screws on multinationals it says are avoiding taxes through sweetheart deals with individual EU states.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU official in charge of antitrust issues, also took Ireland to court for failing to collect a massive 13 billion euros ($15.3 billion) in back taxes from Apple Inc.

She argued that, like in Amazon's case, the company had profited from a deal with the country that had allowed it to avoid paying most of the taxes the EU felt were due.

The EU has taken aim at such past deals, which member states had used to lure foreign companies in search of a place to establish their EU headquarters. The practice led to EU states competing with each other and multinationals playing them off one another.

EU states are now trying to harmonize their tax rules, but Wednesday's and previous rulings seek to redress years of tax avoidance.

Vestager said that U.S. online retailer Amazon had unfairly profited from special low tax conditions since 2003 in tiny Luxembourg, where its European headquarters are based.

As a result, almost three quarters of Amazon's profits in the EU were not taxed, she said.

"In other words, Amazon was allowed to pay four times less tax than other local companies subject to the same national tax rules," she said. The issue is not so much that the companies got tax breaks but that they were available only to them.

Amazon said it believed it had not received any special treatment from Luxembourg and would consider appealing. "We paid tax in full accordance with both Luxembourg and international tax law."

EU states like Luxembourg and Ireland that have deals with multinationals are put in difficult positions with such rulings. They don't want to scare away the companies by hiking their tax bills but also want to fall in line with the EU's efforts to create an even playing field  as well as show taxpayers that big foreign companies are paying their fair share. The issue of corporate tax avoidance became a hot topic in the EU after the financial crisis, when governments had to raise taxes and slash spending to get public finances back into shape.

Luxembourg said it might appeal Wednesday's ruling, but stressed it is "strongly committed to tax transparency and the fight against harmful tax avoidance."

Analysts say that beyond claiming the sums of money owed, the EU's move is meant to create a public awareness of the issue of tax avoidance by multinationals, in effect shaming individual EU states and the companies while the bloc works on harmonizing its tax rules.

"Corporations are sensitive to being positioned as tax avoiders," said Louise Gracia, a professor at the Warwick Business School who researches tax issues.

The EU investigation was made particularly awkward by the fact that the current European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, was Luxembourg's prime and finance minister at the time the tax system for Amazon was set up.

"We try to investigate behavior from member states. It is not a criminal investigation trying to incriminate different persons in the positions that they hold," Vestager said.

Vestager had already ordered Ireland to claw back up to 13 billion euros from Apple last year, but said Wednesday that Ireland hadn't recovered any money so far.

Ireland, which is appealing last year's decision, reacted angrily, saying it "is extremely disappointing that the Commission has taken action at this time." It said it was busy working on the deal and had made "significant progress."
A proposal to curtail the nation's food stamp program would pinch families struggling to pay for groceries and ripple through other areas of the economy, including supermarkets and discounters, as people shuffle their budgets.

President Donald Trump is proposing a roughly 30 percent reduction in the federal budget for the program formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. His overall budget proposal met a chilly reception from lawmakers, and is unlikely to be passed as is. But it suggests increasing work requirements for SNAP recipients, and says states should both share in the cost of the program and determine the level of benefits they provide. That would lead to fewer people in the program, or could reduce how much help they get.

Last year, more than 44 million people received an average of about $125 a month in SNAP benefits, totaling about $66.6 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. How any cuts would play out across industries would depend on how people adjust to pay for food, how reliant a retailer is on SNAP spending and other factors.

Here's a look at what we know.

WHO USES SNAP, AND WHERE ARE THEY SHOPPING?

SNAP households are already on extremely tight budgets. To qualify, a family of four's take-home pay can be no more than $2,025 a month, while a two-person household can earn no more than $1,335.

More than 260,000 locations were authorized to accept SNAP credits last year. Superstores such as Wal-Mart and Target got 52 percent of redemptions, supermarkets like Kroger got 30 percent, and convenience stores got about 6 percent, according to the USDA . The rest was split among other kinds of stores.

The USDA doesn't specify how much is spent at specific retailers. But in 2013, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. told the Wall Street Journal that it gets about 18 percent of total SNAP benefits. That would have been about $13.43 billion in 2012.

WHAT HAPPENED WITH PREVIOUS SNAP CUTS?

It's complicated. Since food is a fixed cost, retailers have said that people used money intended for other purposes to pay for groceries after a recent pullback in the program.

"They're paying cash or on a credit card if they didn't have the food stamps. And then they will give up on something else," Kroger's CEO at the time, Dave Dillon, said in December 2013. That was after the SNAP benefits that were expanded during the recession returned to their previous levels.

But how companies are affected can vary and it's difficult to pinpoint the impact of any one change on sales, which can be affected by weather, competitive pressure and other factors. After the 2013 rollback in benefits, Wal-Mart blamed a 0.4 percent quarterly sales decline on the reduction, though the sales figure was down for the company's entire fiscal year.

Last year, the SNAP program also underwent cuts when 22 states reinstated a three-month limit on benefits for unemployed adults who aren't disabled or raising children and don't meet certain work requirements. That limitation had been waived by some states during the recession.

Dollar General, which has said it gets about 5 percent of its sales from SNAP benefits, compared the impact of the reduction last year to what happened in 2013. "Our traffic slowed tremendously then, very similar to as it did now," Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos said last summer.

WHAT CHANGES FOR RETAILERS?

Trump's proposal suggests that retailers pay a fee for authorization to accept food stamps. Companies currently don't pay to participate, which the proposal says fails to recognize "the significant portion of a retailer's revenue that SNAP can represent."

The proposed budget estimates the fees would raise about $2.4 billion over 10 years. It doesn't spell out how the fee would be calculated.

Imposing a fee could result in smaller stores or chains deciding not to seek authorization, said Craig Gundersen, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Illinois who has received financial support from the Walmart Foundation and grants from the agency that administers the food stamp program. That would reduce the number of places where people who use SNAP could get groceries.

The National Grocers Association said the fee proposal "raised a red flag." It otherwise declined to comment on how its members might be affected by the proposed changes, but said the SNAP program plays "an important role in providing a safety net to those in need."

HOW DO SNAP CUTS AFFECT THE LARGER ECONOMY?

The government's overall SNAP spending declines when the economy improves and fewer people rely on the program. It's a situation that is the "best possible outcome," said Stacy Dean, vice president of food assistance policy at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Dean said cutting benefits when people's financial situations are not improving could mean they use money they otherwise would have spent on needs like clothing or even medicine to make up for the gaps in their food budget. So there's still an impact to the overall economy, she said.

Putting off other purchases could affect other departments at superstores or separate retailers.

A report by the USDA in 2010 also said that boosting SNAP benefits during economic downturns starts a "multiplier process" in transactions and consumption. It found that boosting SNAP expenditures by $1 billion was estimated to increase economic activity by $1.79 billion.

Trump's proposal could have more significant effects than the rollbacks in 2013 and last year, said Gundersen. He said shifting costs partially to states would be unprecedented and likely lead to cutbacks. That's because states may decide they can't afford to fund benefits during tough economic times, or cut benefits for other reasons.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage has asked to ban the purchase of candy and soda with food stamps. LePage has expressed optimism that his push could gain traction under Trump's administration.
Google, Apple and other tech giants expressed dismay over an executive order on immigration from President Donald Trump that bars nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

The U.S tech industry relies on foreign engineers and other technical experts for a sizeable percentage of its workforce. The order bars entry to the U.S. for anyone from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

The move, ostensibly intended to prevent extremists from carrying out attacks in the U.S., could now also heighten tensions between the new Trump administration and one of the nation's most economically and culturally important industries. That's especially true if Trump goes on to revamp the industry's temporary worker permits known as H-1B visas, as some fear.

BITING BACK

"I share your concerns" about Trump's immigration order, Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a memo to employees obtained by The Associated Press. "It is not a policy we support."

"We have reached out to the White House to explain the negative effect on our coworkers and our company," he added.

Cook didn't say how many Apple employees are directly affected by the order, but said the company's HR, legal and security teams are in contact to support them. "Apple would not exist without immigration, let alone thrive and innovate the way we do," Cook wrote  an apparent reference not only to the company's foreign-born employees, but to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, the son of a Syrian immigrant.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was forcefully blunt. "Trump's actions are hurting Netflix employees around the world, and are so un-American it pains us all," he wrote on Facebook . "Worse, these actions will make America less safe (through hatred and loss of allies) rather than more safe."

"It is time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity," he continued. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg criticized the order in similar, though more carefully couched, terms on Friday .

Technology investor Chris Sacca, an early backer of Uber and Instagram, said on Twitter that he would match ACLU donations up to $75,000 after the organization sued over the ban  and then decided to donate another $75,000 , for a total of $150,000. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar, the child of Iranians, complained that the order was "simple bigotry ."

Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has recently appeared to be cultivating a relationship with Trump, tweeted that "many people negatively affected by this policy are strong supporters of the US" who don't "deserve to be rejected." Musk is an immigrant from South Africa.

GOOGLE GRUMBLES

Google told its employees from those countries to cancel any travel plans outside the U.S. and to consult with the company's human resources department if they're not currently in the U.S., according to a company-wide note described to The Associated Press. That memo was first reported by Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in the note that at least 187 Google workers could be affected by Trump's order. It is not clear how many of those workers are currently traveling outside the U.S. "We've always made our views on immigration known publicly and will continue to do so," Pichai said in the memo.

Company representatives declined to discuss the memo or to answer questions about the affected employees. In an official statement, Google said: "We're concerned about the impact of this order and any proposals that could impose restrictions on Googlers and their families, or that could create barriers to bringing great talent to the U.S."

Microsoft also said it is providing legal advice and assistance to its employees from the banned countries, noting they are all working in the U.S. lawfully.

A BIGGER ISSUE

The tech industry may be bracing for further immigration-related hits. Leaks of draft executive orders, still unverified, suggest that Trump might also revamp the H1-B program that lets Silicon Valley bring foreigners with technical skills to the U.S. for three to six years.

While the tech industry insists the H1-B program is vital, it has drawn fire for allegedly disadvantaging American programmers and engineers, especially given that the visas are widely used by outsourcing firms. Trump's attorney general nominee, Sen. Jeff Sessions, is a long-time critic of the program.

Venky Ganesan, a managing director at venture capitalist firm Menlo Ventures, acknowledged that the program is "not perfect" and subject to some abuse, but noted that it provides an invaluable source of skilled workers and plays a "pivotal" role in the tech industry.

"If we want to buy American and hire American, we do that best by creating companies in America," he said. :Having the best and brightest from all over the world come and create companies in America is better than them creating companies in India, Israel or China."
From hog producers in Iowa to apple growers in Washington state and winemakers in California, farmers expressed deep disappointment Friday over being put in the middle of a potential trade war with China by the president many of them helped elect.

After President Donald Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on products including Chinese steel, Beijing responded Friday with a threat to slap an equal 25 percent charge on U.S. products such as pork, and a 15 percent tariff on such things as wine, apples, ethanol and stainless-steel pipe.

American farmers "should be not necessarily infuriated but close to it," said Wayne Humphreys, who farms corn and soybeans and raises hogs and cattle near Columbus Junction, Iowa. "We've invested a lot of time, talent and treasure in developing markets around the world, and with the stroke of a pen, that investment has been jeopardized."

Overall, the nation's farmers shipped nearly $20 billion of goods to China in 2017. The American pork industry sent $1.1 billion in products, making China the No. 3 market for U.S. pork.

"No one wins in these tit-for-tat trade disputes, least of all the farmers and the consumers," said National Pork Producers Council President Jim Heimerl, a pig farmer from Johnstown, Ohio.

The U.S. has complained for years about China's sharp-elbowed trading practices, accusing it of pirating trade secrets, manipulating its currency, forcing foreign companies to hand over technology, and flooding world markets with cheap steel and aluminum that drive down prices and put U.S. manufacturers out of business.

On Thursday, the Trump administration declared the talk approach a failure, noting that the U.S. trade deficit in goods with China last year hit a record $375 billion. In a move to punish Beijing for stealing American technology, the White House set in motion tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese imports and restrictions on new Chinese investment in the U.S.

"We're doing something that will be the start of making trade with China more fair," Trump said. "Our past presidents should never have allowed this to happen."

The stakes are high: China is America's largest trading partner. Last year, the two countries exchanged $636 billion worth of goods, and American companies such as Boeing and Caterpillar depend heavily on the Chinese market.

Farmers voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016. But now many worry about economic blowback from his combative approach.

"When you start hurting this big segment of the economy from the people that gave him a lot of support in the election, I think it's going to hurt him. I really do," said Dave Struthers, who raises pigs, corn, soybeans and hay on a 1,100-acre family farm 30 miles northeast of Des Moines.

He said hog farmers are already struggling to make a profit, with prices below the break-even point, "and any more pressure against that is just going to hurt us that much more."

"We're very concerned about what might happen as far as a tariff," he said.

Some are holding out hope a trade war can be averted and the disputes can be resolved through negotiation.

"I think it's important to realize that China has said this, but it hasn't been implemented," said David Preisler, CEO of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association. "Hopefully there's still time to sit down and have respective governments work through things."

U.S. apple growers just got their foot in the door in China in 2015, and the country is now their 10th-largest market, with demand growing. They expressed frustration that their efforts could be damaged with tariffs.

"We are competing, and winning, with our exports to China growing nicely from zero to about 2.5 million boxes per year," said Jim Bair, CEO of the U.S. Apple Association, a trade group. He warned that U.S. apple growers are going to "get hurt in a fight we didn't start and in which we have no interest."

At a time when U.S. wine exports have been slipping overall, there's been growth in exports to China, where a rapidly growing middle class is adopting many Western tastes.

Exports to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan grew 10 percent to $197 million in 2017, the San Francisco-based Wine Institute said. The value of U.S. wine exports to China alone increased 450 percent in the past decade, the industry group said.

"Chinese retaliation against U.S. wine would put our producers at a significant disadvantage in one of the most important markets in the world at a critical time," said Bobby Koch, CEO of the Wine Institute. He said the industry could end up losing market share for years to come.

About 97 percent of U.S. wine exports come from California.

_____

Karnowski reported from Minneapolis. Associated Press writer Paul Wiseman contributed from Washington.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigned from his position at the ride-hailing app company he co-founded, Kalanick said in a statement Tuesday.

Kalanick's exit came under pressure from investors amid accusations of a toxic culture at the company and costly missteps that damaged Uber's reputation, but he will remain on the San Francisco-based company's board of directors.

"I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight," he said in the statement obtained by NBC News.

The New York Times was the first to report Kalanick's departure, saying that the company's major investors had demanded he step down in a letter to Kalanick earlier on Tuesday.



"Travis has always put Uber first," Uber's board wrote in a statement. "This is a bold decision and a sign of his devotion and love for Uber. By stepping away, he's taking the time to heal from his personal tragedy while giving the company room to fully embrace this new chapter in Ubers history. We look forward to continuing to serve with him on the board."

Kalanick's resignation comes after he took an indefinite leave of absence on June 13 following the death of his mother and criticism of his management style.



Uber has also been facing growing allegations of sexual harassment and other workplace misconduct. The day Kalanick took his leave of absence, former Attorney General Eric Holder released a highly anticipated report on Uber's workplace culture. It recommended that Uber set clear policies to protect employees from harassment, keep better records of worker complaints and change its written cultural values to promote inclusion and collaboration.

The company also faced allegations it stole trade secrets and a federal investigation into efforts to mislead local government regulators.

Uber lost an expensive battle for supremacy in China against Didi Chuxing and had to be satisfied with taking a stake in Didi as a consolation prize. Uber posted a $708 million first-quarter loss, unable to turn $3.4 billion in revenue into a profit. The loss narrowed from the $991 million it posted in the previous quarter.

Investors have talked about selling stock in Uber to the public, a move that would imply a transition to an established business. The company was valued at near $70 billion the last time it sought capital.

Kalanick's penchant for conflict undermined the company's prospects, said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Ride-hailing itself remains a topic of intense interest for the tech and auto industries as they compete to see whether Silicon Valley or the automakers will reap the profits from the digitalization of how people get from one place to another. But "the significance of Uber has declined because the company has not managed to present itself in a stable and socially responsible way," Dudenhoeffer said.

"When you're at war with customers, employees, service suppliers, you can't build up a business model and Kalanick was at war with everyone," said Dudenhoeffer. "There is no business model in being at war."

Under Kalanick, the company developed a reputation for ruthless tactics that have occasionally outraged government regulators, drivers, riders and employees. The company often flouted city regulations for taxi companies with a culture that encouraged "Principled Confrontation."

The company's hard-charging style has led to legal trouble. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Uber's past usage of phony software designed to thwart local government regulators who wanted to check on whether Uber was carrying passengers without permission.

A key step toward Kalanick's downfall came in February, when former Uber engineer Susan Fowler posted a personal essay about the year she spent at Uber, writing that she was propositioned by her manager on her first day with an engineering team. She reported him to human resources, but was told he would get a lecture and no further punishment because he was a "high performer," she wrote.

That caught the board's attention and brought outside investigations that led to the firing of 20 people including some managers. Former Attorney General Eric Holder conducted one of the probes, finding that the male-dominated Uber didn't have the most basic policies to protect workers from harassment. Holder's report suggested procedures that most companies have had for years such as using performance reviews to hold leaders accountable.

Also, Kalanick lost his temper in an argument with an Uber driver who was complaining about pay. The profanity-laced confrontation was caught on a video that surfaced in February. Afterward, Kalanick said he needed management help and had to grow up. The company began searching for a chief operating officer.

In March, board member Arianna Huffington expressed confidence that Kalanick would evolve into a better leader. But Huffington, a founder of Huffington Post, suggested time might be running out.

He's a "scrappy entrepreneur," she said during the call, but one who needed to bring "changes in himself and in the way he leads."

During the past year, several senior managers left the company, including the president and chief financial officer.

Outside experts said the only way to change Uber's culture was for Kalanick to step aside. But Uber's ownership and voting structure made it difficult to oust him.

Kalanick took an indefinite leave of absence earlier this month, in part to deal with a personal tragedy. In May, his mother was killed and his father hurt in a boating accident on a California lake.
What to Know Three people wounded in a possible gang-related shooting in Manhattan are expected to survive, the NYPD said

Two 18-year-olds and a 23-year-old were shot in the vicinity of East 112th Street and Third Avenue in East Harlem around 8 p.m.

One of the victims was shot in the back, and two were shot in the legs, according to the NYPD

Three people wounded in a possible gang-related shooting in Manhattan are expected to survive, the NYPD said.

Two 18-year-olds and a 23-year-old were shot in the vicinity of the Jefferson Houses at East 112th Street and Third Avenue in East Harlem around 8 p.m. Monday, police and the FDNY said.

One of the victims was shot in the back, and two were shot in the legs, according to the NYPD. Police recovered five casings from the scene and said up to nine shots were fired.

Police initially said one of the victims was not expected to survive, but later said all three victims were in stable condition and expected to survive.

No arrests have been made.
The Haiwen Bridge opened to traffic Monday in the island province of Hainan as the first cross-sea bridge crossing active faults and the most earthquake-resistant bridge in China.

The 5.59-km bridge connects the Hainan capital Haikou and Puqian, an island town in the city of Wenchang which is also known as the hometown of many overseas Chinese.

The six-lane bridge, which cuts the travel time between Puqian and Haikou from 1.5 hours to just 20 minutes, is expected to promote the integration of coastal industries in northeast Hainan, said Lin Dong, head of the provincial department of transportation.

With a total investment of 3 billion yuan (about 447 million U.S. dollars), the bridge was under strict marine monitor throughout its construction.
A onetime Air Force serviceman turned ISIS supporter has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for supporting ISIS.

Tairod Pugh, 49, was sentenced in federal court Wednesday following his March conviction of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Pugh tried to travel to Syria in 2015 to join with ISIS fighters but he was stopped in Istanbul and sent back to the U.S. where he was arrested by the FBI.

"The defendant turned his back on his country, and the military he once served, to attempt to join brutally violent terrorist organization committed to the slaughter of innocent people throughout the world," said Bridget M. Rhode, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

During his trial, prosecutors pointed out his writings, including one letter to his wife voicing support for ISIS and telling her he was trying to become a martyr.

Pugh had served in the Air Force as a mechanic more than 20 years ago. But officials said he became increasingly radical after the 9/11 attacks, culminating with his attempts to travel overseas in 2015.

Authorities seized Pugh's laptop after his arrest and found Internet searches for "borders controlled by Islamic state," an ISIS propaganda video and ISIS execution videos. On Facebook, he advised followers "to [support] ISIS with your bodies."

Pugh is one of dozens of suspects arrested for trying to travel overseas. The FBI has said it has investigations ongoing in all 50 states into suspected extremists.

Pughs lawyers have promised to appeal the conviction. Judge Nicholas Garaufis is expected to hand down the sentence on the terror-related charges in Brooklyn federal court, charges which carry a maximum of up to 35 years in prison.

CORRECTION (May 31, 2017, 7:15 p.m.) An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the New York judge. He is Judge Nicholas Garaufis, not Judge Nicolas Garrafus.


What to Know At least two people died and dozens of passengers were hurt when a charter bus bound for New York flipped on a highway ramp in Virginia

57 people, including the driver, were on the bus, officials said; no other vehicles were involved in the accident

The driver, a 40-year-old Staten Island man, has been charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, state police say

UPDATE: Bus in Deadly Crash Swerved Like 'Roller Coaster': Survivor

A Staten Island man was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter after a charter bus bound for New York flipped on a highway exit ramp in Virginia early Tuesday, leaving two people dead and dozens of passengers, including children, hurt, authorities say.

The driver, Yui Man Chow, 40, has been charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, Virginia State Police said. He is currently being held on bond at Riverside Regional Jail in Virginia, according to police.

His attorney information wasn't immediately available.

Fifty-seven people were on the Tao's Travel Inc. bus No. 9591, which was headed to the Manhattan from Orlando, Florida, when the driver tried to take the exit 45 ramp on I-95 in Prince George shortly before 5:30 a.m., according to state police and an employee with the bus company. The bus ended up running off the left side of the ramp and overturned, officials said.



An adult male died at the scene; an adult woman died a few hours later at a hospital, state police said. More victims were being treated at area hospitals for injuries ranging from minor to severe, officials said.

At least two adults were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, officials said at a news briefing. There was no immediate information on their identities, but authorities said the youngest hurt was "toddler age." It wasn't known if they were all part of one group.



A spokeswoman at a hospital where 12 patients were taken described the worst-injured as being in critical condition. She also said some of the victims were kids, though she didn't say how many children were among the victims.

The remaining 43 passengers were being treated at a half-dozen other hospitals; no further details on them were immediately released. The only person not taken to a hospital was the driver, who was not hurt.



Photos tweeted by the Virginia State Police showed heavy fog ensconcing the emergency scene. Luggage and blankets were seen strewn in the roadway as authorities canvassed the area. Major delays were expected through the day.



The bus was seen flipped on its side off to the swampy side of the road as eerie fog shrouded nearby trees and rescue crews in the roadway. Officials said they were looking into whether fog may have played a role.

Virginia State Police also said that they were notified that the particular ramp where the incident took place is a "problem area," and were looking at that as a possible factor in the crash as well.

No other vehicles were involved in the crash, officials said. The bus route started in Orlando and stopped in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, before continuing north to its final destination in New York. It was in Rocky Mountain that the bus switched drivers to the one who would later be involved in the crash.



An employee with the Massachusetts-based Tao's Travel Inc. confirmed the company's bus was involved in the accident. The man said the bus was chartered by a Chinatown-based company that sells tickets to customers and hires a bus to take them to and from their destinations. A person who answered the phone at a number listed for the Chinatown company had no information on the crash and asked that questions be emailed. A News 4 email seeking comment was not immediately returned Tuesday morning.



Tao's Travel Inc. has a satisfactory federal safety rating and had not been involved in any crashes that caused injury or required a tow in the 24 months prior to Tuesday's accident, according to online records.



The investigation is ongoing. A representative with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was on scene. The National Transportation Safety Board says it will not be sending a team to the crash site at this time.



Family of anyone who may have been on the bus can call the Prince George Emergency Services Center at 804-733-2659 for info. A Family Reunification Center has been set up at the Prince George County Central Wellness Center where translators will be on hand. Red Cross Virginia is also assisting.
What to Know Defense lawyers for a man charged with terrorist attack say the U.S. surveilled their client surreptitiously and perhaps illegally for years

Lawyers are demanding more U.S. disclosures to defend Saipov in a death penalty case arising from the Oct. 31, 2017 attack

Saipov has pleaded not guilty to charges

Defense lawyers for a man charged with killing eight people in a New York City terrorist attack said in a court filing Monday that the U.S. had their client under surveillance and perhaps illegally for years.

The lawyers in their partially redacted filing in Manhattan federal court demanded more information from prosecutors about how they knew so much about Sayfullo Saipov after they arrested him immediately after the Oct. 31, 2017 attack.

They said investigators' years-long wiretapping even included a conversation between an individual and Saipov the day before Saipov's arrest.

"The government's allegations strongly suggest the use of various surreptitious surveillance methods in this case," they wrote.

"Mr. Saipov's international electronic communications and other online activities could readily have been vacuumed up by the government's dragnet collection of content and metadata ... either through bulk surveillance or by targeting individuals overseas," the lawyers wrote.

"Any electronic communications he had with possible ISIS agents, members, or sympathizers located overseas (as well as agents, members, and sympathizers of other designated foreign terrorist organizations) were very likely intercepted," they added.

They are demanding more U.S. disclosures to defend Saipov in a case in which prosecutors seek death.

Saipov has pleaded not guilty to charges he drove a truck down a Manhattan bike path on Halloween in 2017, running over cyclists, before crashing his vehicle into a school bus. He was shot by a police officer and arrested at the scene.

Saipov, facing trial next year, moved to the United States legally in 2010 from Uzbekistan. He lived in Ohio and Florida and worked as a commercial truck driver before living with his family in Paterson, New Jersey.

Court papers say that after his arrest, he told authorities he was inspired by an Islamic State group video and that he had used a truck in the attack to inflict maximum damage against civilians.

A spokeswoman for prosecutors declined comment Monday.

Defense lawyers say they suspect the surveillance was swept up using a rule letting communications of U.S. individuals to be monitored overseas.

The lawyers said more information about how the U.S. government learned so much about Saipov's communications was critical to defend him against the death penalty.

A full examination of Saipov's moral culpability will include knowing whether others share culpability for the events because they influenced Saipov's behavior, according to the defense submission.

Prosecutors revealed in November they had watched Saipov and two of his associates for years, recording his conversations with them to learn about his personal contacts, finances and potential exposure to Islamic State group propaganda, violent jihadism and Islamic extremism, the defense lawyers said.

They said prosecutors are failing to disclose more details in part on the grounds that Saipov was never an investigative target and wiretap evidence will not be introduced at trial.

The defense lawyers said the government's refusal to divulge exactly how it got its information about Saipov "unfairly insulates investigative techniques actually used in this case from legal challenge and judicial oversight."
What to Know Measles is a highly contagious disease; young children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable

Measles is transmitted by airborne particles, droplets, and direct contact with the respiratory secretions of an infected person

Symptoms include rash, high fever, cough and red, watery eyes; the rash usually starts on the face

A traveler with measles who flew into Newark Liberty International Airport from Aruba may have exposed other people to the highly contagious disease, health officials say.

The traveler arrived in Terminal C at the airport on March 4, the New Jersey Department of Health said on Monday.

"The individual was infectious on that day and may have traveled to other areas of the airport," the department noted. The person flew to California after arriving in Terminal C.

Anyone who was in the airport between 9 p.m. on March 4 and 9:30 a.m. on March 5 may have been exposed to measles and, if infected, could develop symptoms as late as March 26, officials say. New Jersey residents identified as potentially exposed on the sick person's flights will be notified by their local health departments.

Anyone who suspects they've been exposed is urged to call a health care provider before going to a medical office to prevent additional spread of the disease, which is transmitted by airborne particles, droplets, and direct contact with the respiratory secretions of an infected person.



Two doses of the measles vaccine are 97 percent effective in preventing measles, so health officials urge anyone who hasn't been vaccinated to do so.



Young children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems are at highest risk for severe complications, which can include pneumonia and encephalitis.

Symptoms include rash, high fever, cough and red, watery eyes. The rash usually starts on the face, proceeds down the body, and may include the palms and soles. The rash lasts several days. Infected individuals are contagious from four days before rash onset through the fourth day after rash appearance.
What to Know The Statue of Liberty protester who climbed Lady Liberty last year was sentenced Tuesday to five-year probation and no jail time

Therese Okoumou, who was found guilty last year, was rearrested in Texas in February

Okoumou could face 30 days for the stunt that led to the evacuation of Liberty Island

The protester who climbed the Statue of Liberty was sentenced to five years probation with no jail time Tuesday morning.

Therese Okoumou was sentenced in a Lower Manhattan court after she was found guilty of misdemeanor charges in December after her protest climb of the Statue of Liberty July 4. The stunt led to the evacuation of Liberty Island.

She faced up to 18 months in jail. Prosecutors recommended she get at least 30 days in jail followed by 3 years of probation. They argued that that prison time was necessary because Okoumou scaled structures three additional times following the July 4 incident, including a detention center in Texas for which she faces six months in jail.

Okoumou arrived at the courthouse Tuesday with clear tape completely covering her face. Supporters rallied outside chanting "No hate. No fear. Immigrants are welcomed here" as she made her way to learn her fate.

Okoumou wore a jacket with white lettering that read "I REALLY DO CARE" as she was escorted through the crowd. Okoumou's jacket could be interpreted as a reference to the one the first lady Melania Trump wore on her way to visit a facility for migrant children last June. The first lady's jacket read: "I really don't care, do u?"

It is not the first time Okoumou wore an outfit apparently referencing the first lady's jacket.

Once she reached the steps to enter the courthouse Tuesday morning, Okoumou signaled the crowd to continue chanting.

The fact that Okoumou had her face completely covered with tape delayed getting her through security and to the courtroom. Once inside, the judge ordered her to remove it before they proceeded. She did.

During her sentencing, Okoumou said that she does not belong in prison because she is not a criminal. She also said she will continue to fight in prison if she were to be sentenced to serve time.

Earlier this month, judge changed the terms of her bail, ordering Okoumou to home detention to be enforced by electronic monitoring.

As part of her sentencing, her electronic monitoring will be removed so she can go to work at an art institute.

Prosecutors previously sent U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein a letter asking for a hearing to decide whether Okoumous bail should be revoked following her arrest in Texas on Feb. 20. Okoumou was arrested for criminal trespass in Travis County after she climbed a building and hung a banner that said Abolish ICE on it to protest federal immigration policy.

Last month, Gorenstein, who presided over the sentencing, took a trip to the landmark accompanied by Okoumou to better appreciate the risks or hazards created by defendants conduct.

Okoumou made the climb on Lady Liberty to protest President Donald Trump's immigration policies, specifically the separation of families at the southern border.
Scuffles broke out between protesters and police in central Paris on Saturday on the sidelines of a largely peaceful demonstration, during the fifth straight weekend of protests by the "yellow vest" movement.

Riot police fired small amounts of tear gas to disperse groups of protesters who headed down the side streets off the French capital's famed Champs-Elysees boulevard, some with traffic still flowing.

About 8,000 police and 14 armored vehicles were deployed in Paris for the demonstration, after similar protests in recent weekends turned violent, with protesters smashing and looting stores and setting up burning barricades in the streets.

Saturday's protest was far calmer in the morning, with riot police blocking off groups of protesters who attempted to disperse in side streets. At least 21 people were detained in Paris before the protests began, police said.

Some protesters voiced anger at being restricted to a few blocks by police.

"We're surrounded by CRS," said protester Lionel Toussaint, 53, who works in the heritage industry, referring to riot police. "I'm not armed. I only have Kleenex."

The "yellow vest" movement, which takes its name from the fluorescent safety vests French motorists must all have in their vehicles, emerged in mid-November as a protest against fuel tax increases. It soon morphed into an expression of rage about the high cost of living in France and a sense that President Emanuel Macron's government is detached from the everyday struggles of workers.

Without any clear form or leadership, the movement has attracted a wide range of disgruntled people across the political spectrum, including some violent militants.

"Respect my existence or expect my resistance," read one banner held aloft by protesters who converged on the Champs-Elysees.

Pierre Lamy, a 27-year-old industrial worker wearing a yellow vest and with a French flag draped over his shoulders, said the protests had long stopped being about the fuel tax and had turned into a movement for economic justice.

"We're here to represent all our friends and members of our family who can't come to protest, or because they're scared," he said as he walked to the demonstration with three friends. "Everything's coming up now. We're being bled dry."

Max Werle, a 56-year-old father of nine, said the protests were his first-ever demonstrations.

"I'm here for my children," he said, adding that his daughter had given birth in a fire truck on Monday because the local hospital in Loiret outside Paris had closed years ago.

The office administrator said the protesters were there "to defend our cause. ... It's not a left and right thing."

"Yellow vest" protests were also being held in other parts of France, with no violent incidents reported by mid-day.

On Friday, Macron called for calm during the demonstrations, and the French government reiterated the call online for demonstrators to remain peaceful.

"Protesting is a right. So let's know how to exercise it," the government tweeted from its official account, with a 34-second video which begins with images of historic French protests and recent footage of "yellow vest" protesters rallying peacefully before turning to violence.

"Protesting is not smashing. Protesting is not smashing our heritage. Protesting is not smashing our businesses. ... Protesting is not smashing our republic," the video says.

Macron acknowledged in a speech earlier this week that he is partially responsible for the anger displayed during the protests, and has announced measures aimed at improving workers' spending power. He has so far refused to reinstate a wealth tax that was lifted to spur investment in France.

But on the streets of Paris, some protesters were saying the president still didn't understand them.

"I think that Macron isn't in touch with what the yellow vests want. I think the yellow vests need to continue speaking out and the problem is that in the countryside," said Julie Verrier, a protester from Picardie in Normandy in northern France who had been participating in protests there for the past three weeks and had travelled to Paris for Saturday's demonstration.

"Local city halls are closed so we can't go there to express and write our complaints and our wishes," she said. "So coming here is the only way we have to say that French people need to be heard."
President Donald Trump is, at once, demanding billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury for a border wall and insisting the wall won't really cost America anything.

As he's done before, Trump argued Wednesday that Mexico is footing the bill thanks to a revised trade agreement. That's not true. If the wall is to be built, the money will need to come from Washington's coffers and be approved by Congress. There is no mechanism in the trade agreement or anywhere else for Mexico to pay back the U.S. or for the money to be refunded to the Treasury.

Trump also vastly overstated the number of people who are thought to be in the country illegally, retroactively declared that his defense chief who resigned was pushed out and raised what appear to be thin hopes for cheaper drug prices.

A look at some of his statements Wednesday on Twitter and at a Cabinet meeting:

IMMIGRATION

TRUMP, on the number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally: "I used to hear 11 million all the time. It would always stay right at 11. I said, 'Does it ever increase or go down?' 'No, it's 11.' Nobody knows. It's probably 30, 35 million people. They would flow in, mostly from the southern border, they'd come in and nobody would talk about it, nobody would do anything about it."  Cabinet meeting.

THE FACTS: It's nowhere close to 30 million to 35 million, according to his own Homeland Security secretary as well as independent estimates.

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates there were 10.7 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally in 2016, the most recent data available. Advocacy groups on both sides of the immigration issue have similar estimates.

At a House hearing last month, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen acknowledged the number was "somewhere" between 11 million and 22 million, significantly lower than Trump's claim of 35 million.

According to Pew, the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally had reached a height of 12.2 million in 2007, representing about 4 percent of the U.S. population, before declining in part because of a weakening U.S. economy.

TRUMP: "The coyotes are using children to gain access into this country. They're using these children. They're not with families. They're using the children. They're taking the children. And then they dispose of the children after they're done. This has been going on for years. This isn't unique to us. But we want to stop it."  Cabinet meeting.

THE FACTS: This does happen, though it's not as common as Trump suggests by talking about it so often.

He is referring to adults who come with children they falsely claim to be theirs, so that they won't be detained under a no-child-separation policy.

But such cases of fraud are rare. According to the Homeland Security Department, about 500 immigrants were found to be not a "legitimate family unit" and thus separated upon detention from April 19 to Sept. 30 of last year. That's a small fraction of the 107,000 families apprehended in the last budget year, which ended Sept. 30.

DRUG PRICES

TRUMP: "I think you're going to see a tremendous reduction in drug prices."  Cabinet meeting.

THE FACTS: Prices continue to rise. Administration policies announced last year and currently being completed don't seem to have shifted that trend.

Figures on U.S. prescription drug price changes compiled by health data company Elsevier show that from Dec. 20 through Jan. 2, there were 1,179 product price changes. Of those, 30 were price cuts and the remaining 1,149 were price increases, with 328 of them between 9 percent and 10 percent. All but one of the rest were by lower percentages. Elsevier spokesman Chris Capot said more companies will be announcing price increases this month.

Separately, a data firm whose software can help patients find the most cost-effective medications says its information shows price increases on many commonly used drugs for conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

"In the first two days of January, prices have increased on more than 250 different products," said Michael Rea, CEO of Rx Savings Solutions. The average increase is about 6 percent, he added.

MATTIS

TRUMP, on Jim Mattis: "I wish him well. I hope he does well. But, as you know, President (Barack) Obama fired him and essentially so did I. I want results."  Cabinet meeting.

THE FACTS: Actually, Mattis resigned as defense secretary in protest over Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria.

The retired Marine general announced on Dec. 20 in a resignation letter that he was stepping down after Trump's decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria. Mattis said he would stay on the job until the end of February. Three days later, Trump abruptly said he was replacing Mattis with the second-ranking defense official, Pat Shanahan, on Jan. 1.

As to the tenure under Obama, Mattis served as commander of the military's Central Command. He departed a few months earlier than expected in 2013, in part because of disagreements over Iran.

THE WALL

TRUMP: "Mexico is paying for the Wall through the new USMCA Trade Deal. Much of the Wall has already been fully renovated or built. We have done a lot of work. $5.6 Billion Dollars that House has approved is very little in comparison to the benefits of National Security. Quick payback!"  tweet.

THE FACTS: Mexico isn't paying. It's also not true that there's been much construction beyond fencing erected during previous administrations; some renovation of the existing barrier has been achieved.

Trump is arguing, in essence, that the updated trade pact with Mexico and Canada, known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, will yield economic benefits to the U.S. that, years from now, will cover the unrelated costs of the wall today. That assertion doesn't hold water even with those who support his push for a wall. He went further at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, contending the wall will pay for itself on a "monthly basis."

The new trade deal won't change that much from the previous North American Free Trade Agreement. The three countries would continue trading in an environment of mainly low or no tariffs, with certain improvements for all three partners from the terms of NAFTA. Moreover, the new deal isn't in effect. It's awaiting ratification from legislative bodies in each country, and that is not assured.

There is no credible way for Trump to forecast additional growth covering costs that are being charged to U.S. taxpayers if the wall is built. Trade balances depend on too many factors  consumer tastes, exchange rates, overall economic performance and the choices of thousands of companies, for example  and some are well outside any government's control. Trump specifically promised in his 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall. It is not doing so.

Trump's case is also built on a mischaracterization of trade balances. Unlike economists and governments, he considers a trade deficit to be a payment to the exporting country. By that argument, if a trade deficit shrinks, the U.S. is saving money. But that's not how trade works. Consumers create a trade deficit by buying products made abroad. They get value for their purchase  the products  and are not giving money away.

Trump's claim that much of the "Wall has already been fully renovated or built" is only supported when counting work done by past administrations and ignoring the fact that fences are not the towering walls he promised. The 2006 Secure Fence Act has resulted in about 650 miles (1,050 kilometers) of border barrier. Money approved by Congress in March 2018 is to pay for 84 miles (135 km), but that work is not done.

Trump's point that the national security benefits would outweigh the economic cost is a legitimate one to debate. But the notion that U.S. taxpayers would not be covering the cost is baseless.
A conservative writer and associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone said he is in plea talks with special counsel Robert Mueller's team.

Jerome Corsi told The Associated Press on Friday that he has been negotiating a potential plea but declined to comment further. He said on a YouTube show earlier this month that he expected to be charged with lying to federal investigators, though he said at the time that he was innocent of wrongdoing.

Mueller's team questioned Corsi as part of an investigation into Stone's connections with WikiLeaks. American intelligence agencies have assessed that Russia was the source of hacked material released by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election that damaged Hillary Clinton's campaign. Mueller's office is trying to determine whether Stone and other associates of President Donald Trump had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans.

The confirmation of plea talks  first reported by The Washington Post  comes as Mueller's team has just received fresh information from Trump personally and as federal prosecutors in Virginia recently inadvertently disclosed the existence of sealed charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

It's unclear if the charges against Assange are related to Mueller's investigation, but WikiLeaks was singled out in an indictment last summer against a group of Russian intelligence officers accused of carrying out the wide-ranging hack of Clinton's campaign and other Democratic organizations.

It's also not known if any plea by Corsi signals a new raft of charges by the special counsel or just that investigators are aggressively pursuing cases against people they believe made false statements to investigators. Mueller has brought such cases against four others, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

In a brief phone call with the AP, Corsi declined to elaborate on the details of any plea deal or say if a court hearing had been set.

Corsi, the former Washington bureau chief of the conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars, has said he cooperated with the probe for about two months after he received a subpoena in August. As part of that cooperation, he turned over two computers and a cell phone and provided the FBI access to his email accounts and tweets.

But he said earlier this month that talks with investigators recently had "blown up."

"I fully anticipate that in the next few days, I will be indicted by Mueller," he said.

The spokesman for the special counsel, Peter Carr, declined comment on Friday.

Shortly after his YouTube show appearance, Corsi broke off a scheduled interview with NBC News and declined any other media interviews. His comments Friday were the first since then.

Stone has denied being a conduit for WikiLeaks, which published thousands of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in the weeks before the election.

Stone, who also has said he is prepared to be indicted, said earlier this month that he "had no advanced notice of the source or content or the exact timing of the release of the WikiLeaks disclosures."

He told AP in a separate statement Friday: "It is clear from his recent videos and his recent interviews that my friend Dr. Corsi has been under a tremendous amount of pressure and it is beginning to affect him profoundly. He has stated publicly that he is being asked over and over to say things he simply does not believe occurred."
Once an outsider mocked by fellow lawmakers for his far-right positions, constant use of expletives and even casual dressing, former army captain Jair Bolsonaro is taking office as Brazil's president Tuesday.

A fan of U.S. President Donald Trump, the 63-year-old longtime congressman rose to power on an anti-corruption and pro-gun agenda that has energized Brazilian conservatives and hard-right supporters after four consecutive presidential election wins by the left-leaning Workers' Party.

Bolsonaro is the latest of several far-right leaders around the world who have come to power by riding waves of anger at the establishment and promises to ditch the status quo.

"I will cry" upon seeing Bolsonaro inaugurated, said Paulo de Sousa, a teacher from Rio de Janeiro who traveled to the capital of Brasilia for the ceremony. "It will be a wonderful year. We have to help our president to achieve that. There will be jobs, health and peace."

Brasilia will be under tight security, with 3,000 police patrolling the event. Military tanks, fighter jets and even anti-aircraft missiles will also be deployed.

The increased security came at Bolsonaro's request. His intestine was pierced when a knife-wielding man stabbed him at a campaign rally in September, and he has to wear a colostomy bag. His sons, politicians themselves, insist their father could be targeted by radicals, but security officials have not spoken of threats.

Bolsonaro has done little moderating since being elected in October, with progressives and liberals decrying stances that they say are anti-homosexual, sexist and racist.

The incoming president, who spent nearly three decades in Congress, has also drawn international criticism for his plans to roll back regulations in the Amazon and his disinterest in social programs in a country that is one of the world's most unequal in terms of income.

On the economic front, where Bolsonaro will ultimately lead Latin America's largest economy is unknown, as during the campaign he reversed course from previous statist stances with pledges to lead market-friendly reforms. He also promised to overhaul Brazil's pension system and privatize several state-owned companies, which has given him wide support among financial players.

Bolsonaro says he will prioritize the fight against crime in a nation that has long led the world in annual homicides. More than 63,000 people were killed last year. Human rights groups fear his defense of police violence could shield officers from investigations of misconduct and lead to more extrajudicial killings.

The most notable foreign leaders planning to attend the inauguration are also associated with far-right movements: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Leftist Presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, deemed dictators by Bolsonaro, were uninvited by Bolsonaro's team after the foreign ministry sent them invitations. The United States will be represented by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Seven of Bolsonaro's 22 Cabinet ministers are former military personnel, more than in any administration during Brazil's 1964-1985 dictatorship. That has sparked fears among his adversaries of a return to autocratic rule, but Bolsonaro insists he will respect the country's constitution. Bolsonaro's vice president is a retired general, Hamilton Mourao.

Bolsonaro's Liberal and Social Party will have 52 seats in Brazil's 513-member lower house, the second largest bloc behind the Workers' Party.

Michael Shifter, president of the think tank Inter-American Dialogue, believes the president will have trouble achieving major changes.

"The obstacles are formidable, including in the business community. In some cases, necessary reform will clash with the business interests and incomes of large numbers of lawmakers," Shifter said.

Associated Press writer Stan Lehman and video journalist Diarlei Rodrigues contributed to this report.
Chaos erupted outside Texas' death chamber when the son of the condemned inmate pounded on the chamber windows, shouted obscenities and threw fists after his father spoke his final words.

Billie Wayne Coble, a Vietnam War veteran who killed his estranged wife's parents and brother and threatened to do the same to her in 1989, told five witnesses he selected to attend his Thursday night execution that he loved them. Coble then nodded as they watched from a witness room, saying: "Take care."

When he finished speaking, his son, grandson and daughter-in-law became emotional, and the men swung and kicked at others in the death chamber witness area. Officers stepped in but said the men continued to resist and were eventually moved to a courtyard, where both were handcuffed and arrested.

"Why are you doing this?" the woman asked. "They just killed his daddy."

As the men were being subdued outside, a single dose of pentobarbital was injected into Coble. He gasped several times and began snoring as the lethal dose of drug was being administered inside the death chamber at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

He was pronounced dead 11 minutes later, at 6:24 p.m. His son and grandson, 45-year-old Gordon Wayne Coble and 21-year-old Dalton Coble, were arrested on charges of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. They each were released Friday on $1,000 bond.

The 70-year-old Billie Wayne Coble was the oldest inmate executed by Texas since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.

He was convicted nearly three decades ago for the August 1989 shooting deaths of Robert and Zelda Vicha, and their son, Bobby Vicha. The victims were killed at separate homes in Axtell, northeast of Waco. A prosecutor once described Coble as having "a heart full of scorpions."

Coble, distraught over his pending divorce, kidnapped his wife, Karen Vicha. He was arrested and later freed on bond. Nine days after the kidnapping, Coble went to her home, where he handcuffed and tied up her three daughters and nephew, J.R. Vicha, according to investigators.

Coble then went to the homes of Robert and Zelda Vicha, 64 and 60 respectively, and Bobby Vicha, 39, who lived nearby, and fatally shot them.

After Karen Vicha returned home, Coble abducted her. He drove away, assaulted her and threatened to rape and kill her. He was arrested after wrecking the vehicle in neighboring Bosque County following a police chase.

Coble was convicted of capital murder in 1990. An appeals court ordered a new trial on punishment in 2007, but a second jury also sentenced him to death. Other appeals were also denied.

J.R. Vicha, Bobby Vicha's son, was 11 when he was tied up and threatened by Coble during the killings. Vicha, who eventually became a prosecutor partly because of his father, said that Coble's execution would be a relief.

"The way they do it is more humane than what he did to my family. It's not what he deserves, but it will be good to know we got as much justice as allowed by the law," he said ahead of the execution.

"This is not a happy night," added McLennan County District Attorney Barry Johnson. "This is the end of a horror story for the Vicha family."

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Coble's request to delay his execution. His attorneys had argued that Coble's original trial lawyers were negligent for conceding his guilt by failing to present an insanity defense.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles also turned down his request for a commutation.

Coble's attorney, A. Richard Ellis, told the courts that Coble suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his time as a Marine during the Vietnam War. Ellis argued that Coble was convicted in part because of misleading testimony from two prosecution expert witnesses on whether he would be a future danger.

Coble was the third inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the second in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state.

J.R. Vicha, 40, still lives in the Waco area. His father was a police sergeant in Waco when he was killed, while his grandfather was a retired plumber and his grandmother worked for a foot doctor.

Vicha is working to get a portion of a highway near his home renamed in honor of his father.

"Every time I run into somebody that knew (his father and grandparents), it's a good feeling. And when I hear stories about them, it still makes it feel like they're kinda still here," Vicha said.
The second session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) came to a successful conclusion in Beijing on March 15. Some of the oft-heard phrases from the final assembly were: looking ahead to 2019, ensuring stable employment, ensuring the well-being of the people, opening up wider, and pursuing innovation-driven development. These send a message to the world: Despite changes in the international landscape, China remains unchanged in its commitment to opening up and development.

Budget ensures well-being of the people

"To secure a better life for the people" and "to follow a people-centered development philosophy" were tenets reflected in the government work report.

Delivered by Premier Li Keqiang, this year's work report directed governments at all levels to carry out an austerity plan and use all means possible to raise funds and ensure higher quality of life for the people.

Meanwhile, taxes will be reduced further. Inclusive tax reduction and structural tax policies will be implemented simultaneously to ease funding shortages faced by the manufacturing industry and by micro- and small enterprises.

Heavier investment will also be made into chief industries and key links. The government will take tough steps to forestall and defuse major risks, carry out targeted poverty alleviation, and prevent and control pollution. It will guide enterprises to increase investment in scientific and technological innovation, to upgrade the level of industrial chains, and to enhance the financial system's ability to better serve the real economy.

New policies widen 'circle of friends'

The Foreign Investment Law of the People's Republic of China was formally adopted at the closing meeting of the second session of the 13th NPC. Statistics show that China used US$135 billion in direct foreign investment in 2018, with the number of newly established foreign-funded enterprises increasing by nearly 70 percent. These numbers mean China has become the world's largest recipient of direct foreign investment.

Adhering to the policy of opening up to the outside world, China has continuously broadened its "circle of friends." At a press conference on March 8, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced that the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation will be held in Beijing in late April. It is the most important diplomatic event China will host this year, and an international gathering that will capture the world's attention.

Innovation leads development

The government work report also specified that backing of science and technology must be enhanced, including boosted funding for basic and applied research, and greater support for research in core technologies.

China will establish and complete a technological innovation system that combines the forces of industries, universities and research institutes, with enterprises playing the leading role, according to the government work report.

Other issues, such as bolstering research into technology "bottleneck" points, and pursuing innovative growth and commercialization of R&D results, were also key topics at the 13th NPC.

Luo Jun, president of Sun Yat-sen University and a deputy to the 13th NPC shared that the government has strategically strengthened guidance for basic scientific research and increased investment in this field. The approach, he said, will lay a solid foundation for China to make significant further progress.

Lei Jun, the CEO of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi and a deputy to the 13th NPC, said that enterprises should use the benefits and dividends obtained from tax and fee cuts to further increase investment in R&D, to improve the quality of manufacturing, and to build up a competitive edge.

Ding Lieyun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a deputy to the 13th NPC, said that talent is the core component of science and technology competition.

As ever, China is standing its ground. It will continue pursuing progress while ensuring stability and steady development. Following pragmatic methods, the country has found a path of development tailored to its national conditions. By its own strength, great courage and steadfast resolution, China is moving closer to center stage of the world.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
A teen staffer at a Colorado camp fought off a bear after waking up Sunday to find the animal biting his head and trying to drag him away.

The 19-year-old woke up at around 4 a.m. to a "crunching sound" with his head inside the mouth of the bear, which was trying to pull him out of his sleeping bag as he slept outside at Glacier View Ranch 48 miles (77 kilometers) northwest of Denver, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said. The teen punched and hit it and other staffers who were sleeping nearby yelled and swatted at the bear, which eventually left, she said.

The staffer, identified only as Dylan, was treated briefly at a hospital and released.

The teen told KMGH-TV that the bear dragged him ten to 12 feet before he was able to free himself.

"The crunching noise, I guess, was the teeth scraping against the skull as it dug in," said the teen, who teaches wilderness survival at the camp owned by the Rocky Mountain Conference of Seventh Day Adventists.

Dylan and the other staffers were near teepees where 12- and 13-year-old campers were sleeping. None of them were hurt.

Black bears aren't usually aggressive but have attacked several people in the West in recent weeks.

A woman and her dogs were attacked on Tuesday after they apparently surprised an adult bear and her cub in a huckleberry patch in the Idaho Panhandle National Forests.

Last month, black bears killed two people in Alaska in separate attacks.

Sixteen-year-old Patrick "Jack" Cooper of Anchorage was killed after he got lost and veered off a trail during a mountain race south of Anchorage. Mine contract worker Erin Johnson of Anchorage died and her co-worker was injured in a mauling about 275 miles northeast of Anchorage.

Black bears will defend their young and have been known to paw and bite tents with food inside. After the Colorado attack wildlife officers did not find any food that would have attracted the bear so they have set bear traps in the area and plan to continue a search for the bear with scent dogs on Monday.

The bear's behavior was so atypical that any bear found in the traps in the next few days will likely be euthanized and officials will test later to see if it was the same bear involved in the attack using DNA evidence, Churchill said.
Parents deported to Central America by U.S. immigration officials returned to the southern border Saturday to demand asylum and reunification with the children they were forced to leave behind, NBC News reported.

The 29 parents, who were sent back to their home countries last year after crossing illegally into the U.S. with their children, traveled over the past month with immigration lawyers, religious leaders and other supporters in the hope of rejoining their kids.

A father at the border in Mexicali, Mexico, told MSNBC's Mariana Atencio that he waited for seven hours Saturday for information from U.S. immigration officials.

"Time doesn't matter," said the Guatemalan man, who provided only his first name, Neri. "Our love for our child has no price."

The families have 27 children in U.S. custody, and the youngest is 5 years old. Some of the parents have been separated from their kids for nearly a year, said members of private organizations representing the parents. The longest separation is 14 months, they said.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez is at the center of the biggest test his party has faced in recent history.

The party has rebounded from its disastrous 2016 performance with key midterm victories, but now stares at a long and potentially divisive presidential primary fight that could include dozens of candidates. The DNC is rehabilitating from years of neglect and infighting and lags its Republican counterpart in fundraising and data capabilities  key elements a national party organization provides its nominees.

The decisions Perez faces in the coming weeks  from finalizing rules for presidential debates to convincing state leaders to give up control of voter files and choosing which city will host next year's Democratic convention  will be picked apart for any sign that he's throwing his weight behind one candidate or another. That underscores what could be Perez's most daunting task: convincing party faithful and activists that the DNC is a neutral actor in the primary process. It's a tough argument to make to a Democratic base scarred by a bitter primary in 2016 that many supporters of Bernie Sanders said was tilted in favor of Hillary Clinton.

"Tom really does have the hardest job in politics," said Tina Podlodowski, the Democratic chairwoman in Washington state, who backed Perez for his job but sometimes criticizes him. "It's thankless."

Nearly two years into his post, Perez, who was President Barack Obama's labor secretary, has already navigated tricky intraparty tumult. Most notably, he led the DNC through negotiations to scale back the role of so-called "superdelegates" who overwhelmingly backed Clinton.

But he knows the biggest fight lies ahead.

"If we have 15 candidates, 14 of them aren't going to make it to the mountaintop," Perez told The Associated Press. "My job, our job is to ensure that every candidate and their supporters feel like they got a fair shake."

"I come to this with sobriety," he said as he contemplates his next move.

At least publicly, Perez shows no signs of strain.

The 57-year-old son of Dominican immigrants was ebullient at a recent gathering of top party donors in Washington, calling the November midterms "historic." He praised other party committees for their work regaining House control and flipping seven governor's offices and almost 400 state legislative seats. But he made sure to argue that a "culture change" at the DNC also played a leading role.

There is irony to Perez positioning himself as an agent of change. He ran for chairman after the 2016 election at the urging his old boss, Obama, who is widely acknowledged to have let the DNC and party network around the country wither. It wasn't exactly Perez's plan  he hoped to become attorney general in a Clinton administration.

The approach he took to winning the DNC post offers clues about how he will manage the challenges ahead.

He competed for the job against Keith Ellison, then a Minnesota congressman and favorite of the liberal base. Using Obama's inner circle to lobby DNC members, Perez echoed Ellison's calls to "organize everywhere," invest "in every zip code" and give a voice to activists, particularly those who backed Sanders over Clinton in 2016.

After Perez came out on top during a raucous party meeting, he called Ellison to the stage and essentially declared him co-chairman, a maneuver with dubious justification under party rules. The move and the campaign that preceded it demonstrated that Perez, much like Obama, seeks to maintain at least a toehold in multiple camps, giving critics enough of what they want but still using brute political force when needed.

A "pragmatic progressivism," he likes to say, explaining his approach both to policy and politics.

Perez immediately got behind a "Unity Commission" that Sanders and Clinton conceived to overhaul how the party chooses its nominee. He eventually pushed changes that went further than an initial compromise on superdelegates. Now, DNC members and elected party leaders, including the chairman himself, will not vote on the first presidential ballot of the 2020 convention.

Multiple previous DNC chairs cried foul, as did the Congressional Black Caucus, arguing the change punished long-serving party leaders in favor of activists from outside the party machinery. When the overhaul passed last summer, the activists who had been skeptical of Perez cheered.

"One thing I like about Tom's leadership is that you can be critical and still be heard," said Melissa Byrne, an Ellison backer and former Sanders presidential campaign aide who served on Perez's transition team.

"So much of politics is the conversations you have in hallways, but you have to be there," she said. "Tom got us in the door."

Perez says he's applying the same philosophy to the debate rules. He's committed to a low qualifying threshold for early debates to avoid blocking legitimate candidates. The DNC will draw lots to place candidates on two stages rather than picking an "A-list" and "B-list" as Republicans did with their own large 2016 field. Perez said he and his team are talking to previous campaigns for their input, but not to prospective candidates themselves.

To be sure, there have been rocky stretches and inconsistencies, with more to come.

Perez has mandated that no DNC employee endorse any presidential candidate. He criticized the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for venturing into a hotly contested 2016 congressional primary in Texas. Yet Perez endorsed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his primary challenger, actress Cynthia Nixon, who had the backing of the Working Families Party.

Leaders at WFP and Indivisible, a grassroots group founded since Trump's election, declined to comment on Perez's stewardship.

The chairman has embraced the #MeToo movement, but never wavered in his support for Ellison when the deputy chairman's ex-girlfriend accused him of abuse. An investigation found no wrongdoing; Ellison quietly resigned from his party post after his November election as Minnesota attorney general.

Perez downplays the intraparty fights, arguing Democrats are as different as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist from New York City, and Sen. Joe Manchin, an occasional Trump ally from West Virginia. But he says they share common priorities like accessible health care, defending pensions and supporting organized labor.

"Those are FDR Democratic issues," he says.

While Perez has his detractors, particularly among state party chairs who accuse him of a power grab on voter data files, even some of those critics join his allies in saying he's already accomplished his first goal: imposing a steadiness that didn't exist under Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the last elected chair and another of Obama's hand-picked choices.

"I don't want to cast any blame because they are both friends of mine," said Woody Kaplan, a prominent Democratic donor from Boston, referring to Wasserman Schultz and Perez. "But he just had such a mess to dig out of."
Survivors of clergy sex abuse on Wednesday demanded transparency, zero tolerance for abuse and accountability for religious superiors who cover up for rapists, setting a confrontational tone on the eve of Pope Francis' high-stakes abuse prevention summit.

The victims also demanded to meet with Francis himself, but had to settle instead for a two-hour round-table with members of the organizing committee for the four-day summit, which starts Thursday.

The gathering of church leaders from around the globe is taking place amid intense scrutiny of the Catholic Church's record after new allegations of abuse and cover-up last year sparked a credibility crisis for the hierarchy.

Phil Saviano, an American who played a crucial role in exposing clergy abuse in the United States decades ago, said he told the summit organizers to release the names of abusive priests around the world along with their case files.

"Do it to launch a new era of transparency," Saviano said he told the committee. "Do it to break the code of silence. Do it out of respect for the victims of these men, and do it to help prevent these creeps from abusing any more children."

More than 30 years after the scandal first erupted in Ireland and Australia and 20 years after it hit the U.S., bishops and superiors in many parts of Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia either deny clergy sex abuse exists in their regions or downplay the problem.

Francis, the first Latin American pope, has made many of the same mistakes. As archbishop in Buenos Aires, he went out of his way to defend a famous street priest who was later convicted of abuse. He also took a handful of measures early on in his papacy that undermined progress the Vatican had made in taking a hard line against rapists.

He finally did an about-face after botching a well-known sex abuse cover-up case in Chile last year. Realizing he had erred, he has vowed to chart a new course and is bringing the rest of the church leadership along with him.

Some 190 leaders of bishops' conferences, religious orders and Vatican offices are gathering for four days of lectures and workshops on preventing sex abuse in their churches, tending to victims and investigating the crimes when they occur.

"I think that the time for words is long, long past," said Archbishop Mark Benedict Coleridge, of Brisbane, Australia, who will deliver the homily at the summit's final Mass on Sunday.

"We are dealing with a global emergency, and I don't think the language is too strong," he said. "A global emergency that requires a global response."

The Vatican isn't expecting any miracles, and the pope himself has called for expectations to be "deflated." But organizers say the meeting marks a turning point in the way the Catholic Church has dealt with the problem, with Francis' own acknowledgment of his mistakes in handling the Chile abuse case a key point of departure.

"I have been impressed by the humility of the Holy Father," said Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican sex crimes investigator who helped set Francis straight on Chile. "He's ready to say, 'I got that wrong. We're not going to do it again. We're going to do it right.'"

"I think that gives us great hope," Scicluna said.

But Jamaican survivor Denise Buchanan, who attended Wednesday's meeting, demanded to know why the Vatican wasn't implementing zero-tolerance policies on sex abuse across the board. The U.S. bishops' conference is considered a model for requiring any priest who is found guilty of molesting a child to be removed permanently from ministry.

"What is the holdup in implementing zero tolerance?" Buchanan said. "It is like, 'Oh, we already have the laws, we just need to implement the laws.' Obviously, the laws are not working because children are being raped right now."

Francois Devaux, from the French victims' group La Parole Liberee,  The Liberated Word  said the survivors made similar points to the committee members, and asked what exactly the summit was expected to accomplish.

"The great absence from this meeting was the pope, and that was clearly underlined," he said.

Francis did, however, meet with a victim on Wednesday, apparently on the sidelines of his general audience. A video of the meeting showed Francis holding and then kissing the hand of Polish survivor, Marek Lisinski, who heads Poland's Have No Fear foundation.

Lisinski went to the Vatican with a delegation headed by Polish lawmaker Joanna Scheuring-Wielgus, who gave Francis a report on hundreds of alleged cases of abuse and cover-up in Poland.

In a statement after Wednesday's meeting with the survivors ended, the summit organizers thanked the victims for "sincerity, the depth and the strength of their testimonies."

They said the survivors' input would help them understand the "gravity and urgency" of the problem during the summit.

Among those meeting with the survivors was Scicluna, Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of India and German Jesuit the Rev. Hans Zollner, an expert in child protection. The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the former Vatican spokesman who is moderating the summit, also participated.

The Vatican had asked Chilean survivor Juan Carlos Cruz, who last year helped open Francis' eyes to the seriousness of the abuse scandal in his country, to arrange the Wednesday's meeting.

"The culture of cover-up needs to end," Cruz said after the meeting, which was held on the grounds of a gated Vatican residence with survivor protesters waiting outside.
Foxconn Technology Group has shifted its stated strategy yet again on Friday for a massive Wisconsin campus, crediting a conversation with President Donald Trump for cementing plans to proceed with building a factory to make high-tech liquid display screens.

The news capped a week of confusion about Foxconn's plans in Wisconsin. The company announced in 2017, to much fanfare, that it planned to invest $10 billion in the state and hire 13,000 people to build an LCD factory that could make screens for televisions and a variety of other devices.

The company last year said it was reducing the scale of what was to be made in Wisconsin, from what is known as a Gen 10 factory to Gen 6. But this week, even that was thrown into question with Foxconn executive Louis Woo said it couldn't compete in the television screen market and would not be making LCD panels in Wisconsin.

But on Friday, in yet another twist, Foxconn said after discussions with the White House and a personal conversation between Trump and Foxconn chairman Terry Gou, it plans to proceed with the smaller manufacturing facility.

"Great news on Foxconn in Wisconsin after my conversation with Terry Gou!" Trump tweeted.

Wisconsin's new Democratic governor criticized the company Friday for its flip-flopping.

"There's no limit, frankly, to skepticism if the messaging isn't coherent," Evers told reporters. "I'm comfortable that they're still committed to the state. They're committed to this Generation 6 technology, but that doesn't mean that we (won't) encourage them to be more transparent and consistent in their messaging."

The latest Foxconn statement did not say whether the commitment to this size factory would affect the type of workers who would be employed in Wisconsin. Foxconn executive Louis Woo told Reuters earlier this week that about three-quarters of workers in Wisconsin would be in research and development-type jobs, not manufacturing. Woo said the Wisconsin project would be more of a research hub, rather than having a manufacturing focus.

A Foxconn spokeswoman had no immediate comment about what its plans to build the "Gen 6" factory would mean for the makeup of the workforce. The difference between a "Gen 10" and "Gen 6" plant rests with the size of the original glass used to make the screens. The larger plant, which had been part of Foxconn's initial plans, would have used glass more than three-times as large as what the smaller facility will use. The "Gen 6" plant can make screens ranging in size from a smart phone to a 75-inch television, while the larger plant would have allowed for devices as large as 9 feet by 11 feet.

The "Gen 6" plant is expected to be smaller in size and less expensive than a "Gen 10" factory, but Foxconn has not specified just how large it will be.

Foxconn, the world's largest electronics company, said Friday the campus will house both an advanced manufacturing facility and a center of "technology innovation for the region."

Local Wisconsin government and economic development officials where the Foxconn campus is located praised the news, saying construction of the "Gen 6" factory will coincide with construction of other related buildings over the next 18 months.

Wisconsin promised nearly $4 billion in state and local tax incentives to Foxconn if it invested $10 billion and created 13,000 jobs for the project, which Trump heralded last year as the "eighth wonder of the world."

But Foxconn has repeatedly revised its plans for what will be made in Wisconsin and who will work there, causing confusion in the state and leading critics of the project this week to accuse Foxconn of a "bait and switch."

The original deal was struck by then-Gov. Scott Walker and Trump. Evers, Wisconsin's current governor who used Walker's support for Foxconn against him in the race, was a critic of the project during the campaign but has said this week he's working closely with Foxconn on the project.

Foxconn earlier this week cited a changing global market as requiring a move away from making LCD panels in Wisconsin. Apple is Foxconn's main manufacturing customer and it has forecast a drop in revenue from the Chinese market due to decreasing demand for iPhones.

___

Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed to this report.
Electronics giant Foxconn reversed course and announced Wednesday that the huge Wisconsin plant that was supposed to bring a bounty of blue-collar factory jobs back to the Midwest  and was lured with billions in tax incentives  will instead be primarily a research and development center staffed by scientists and engineers.

The move was decried in some quarters as a case of bait-and-switch by the Taiwan-based company, which originally planned to build high-tech liquid crystal display screens in a project President Donald Trump had proudly pointed to as a sign of a resurgence in American manufacturing.

In a statement, Foxconn said it remains committed to Wisconsin and the creation of 13,000 jobs as promised. But because the global market environment that existed when the $10 billion project was announced in 2017 has shifted, "this has necessitated the adjustment of plans for all projects."

"This news is devastating for the taxpayers of Wisconsin," said Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, a Democrat. "We were promised manufacturing jobs. We were promised state-of-the-art LCD production. ... And now, it appears Foxconn is living up to their failed track record in the U.S.  leaving another state and community high and dry."

Economic development officials and other supporters of the project urged patience, saying Foxconn still plans to invest what it promised. The White House had no immediate comment.

Foxconn, a major supplier to Apple, is the world's largest contract maker of electronics.

Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn's CEO, was quoted as telling Reuters that it is scaling back and possibly shelving plans to build display screens in Wisconsin because "we can't compete."

Woo said that instead of a factory, Foxconn wants to create a "technology hub," with about three-quarters of the jobs in research and development and design. Those jobs typically go to college graduates. The plant is under construction and scheduled to open in 2020.

Marc Levine, senior fellow and founding director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Center of Economic Development, called it "one enormous bait-and-switch." And he scoffed at the idea that Foxconn, known for manufacturing, could transform into a research and development giant.

"That's simply not what Foxconn is," Levine said in an email. "So the notion that there will be 13,000 research jobs at Foxconn is highly, highly unlikely."

The company initially billed the massive 20 million-square-foot (1.86 million-square-meter) Wisconsin complex as its first North American manufacturing site for the next generation of display panels to be used in a wide variety of products, including large-screen TVs, self-driving cars, notebooks and other monitors.

Wisconsin state and local governments promised roughly $4 billion to Foxconn, the richest incentive package in state history and the biggest pledged by a state to a foreign corporation in U.S. history. Foxconn was required to invest $10 billion and create 13,000 jobs to get the full incentives.

It had already fallen short last year, hiring 178 full-time employees rather than the 260 targeted, and failed to earn a state tax credit worth up to $9.5 million.

Former Gov. Scott Walker, the Republican who brokered the deal, emphasized in a tweet Wednesday that Foxconn earns tax credits only for actual investment and job creation. "No jobs/investment? No credits. Period," Walker tweeted.

Republican legislative leaders who pushed the project blamed new Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for Foxconn's change in plans. They said he had created an air of economic uncertainty by supporting elimination of a manufacturing tax credit program.

Evers was critical of Foxconn in the campaign against Walker but did not pledge to undo the deal. His top aide Joel Brennan said that the administration was surprised by the news from Foxconn. He did not address the accusations Evers was to blame.

Democratic critics said the incentives promised to Foxconn were too rich, and they questioned whether the company would ever fulfill its promises.

The president of Wisconsin's Technology Council, Tom Still, said he is not surprised Foxconn wants to change course since televisions are becoming less expensive and iPhone sales are declining.

Still, whose group nurtures technology in Wisconsin, said Foxconn can succeed if the plant becomes more research-oriented because its areas of interest match up with Wisconsin's strengths, such as robotics, medical imaging and industrial imaging.

Last summer, Trump highlighted his economic policies at a groundbreaking event for the Foxconn complex.

"Made in the USA: It's all happening and it's happening very, very quickly," the president said in June after visiting the Foxconn site. "Today we're seeing the results of the pro-America agenda."

Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington and Ivan Moreno in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
High winds howled through much of the eastern U.S. for a second day Monday, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, closing schools, and pushing dramatic mounds of ice onto the shores of Lake Erie.

Wind gusts of hurricane force  74 mph (119 kph)  or higher were reported around the region, including West Virginia and New York. While atop Mount Washington, the Northeast's highest peak of 6,288 feet (1,916 meters) in New Hampshire, a gust of 144 mph (231 kph) was recorded.

Toppled trees and power poles, easy targets for strong winds that uprooted them from ground saturated by rain and snowmelt, plunged homes and businesses into darkness, though in most places power was expected back quickly as winds died down by the end of Monday.

In Media, Delaware County, a massive tree ripped through the middle of Steve Olkowski's home early Monday, NBC Philadelphia reported.

"All of a sudden we just heard this horrendous noise," Olkowski told the station. "It just sounded like a freight train coming through the bedroom."

The Philadelphia Electric Company reported more than 33,000 customers were without power Monday morning. The outages forced the closure of at least two schools in the area. In New York, hundreds of schools were delayed or canceled.

The wind peeled off roofs in places. In Syracuse, New York, scaffolding blown off a building knocked down power lines. Hundreds of schools were delayed or canceled.

Wind advisories and warnings were in effect through Monday in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast up to northern New England. In Maine, police say a trucker blamed wind for causing his tractor-trailer loaded with bananas to swerve and overturn on the Maine Turnpike. While in Sandusky, Ohio, a motorist captured video of a tractor-trailer flipping over on a bridge.

Giant chunks of ice spilled over the banks of the Niagara River across from Buffalo on Sunday, creating a jagged, frosty barrier between the river and a scenic road.

Dramatic footage captured by park police in Ontario showed the massive chunks roiling onto shore. High winds had raised water levels on the eastern end of Lake Erie in a phenomenon known as a seiche and then, according to the New York Power Authority, driven ice over a boom upstream from the river.

Ice mounds 25 to 30 feet (8 to 9 meters) high also came ashore farther south, piling up on several lakefront properties in suburban Hamburg.

"We've had storms in the past, but nothing like this," resident Dave Schultz told WGRZ. "We've never had the ice pushed up against the walls and right up onto our patios. ... It's in my patio, the neighbor's patio, and the patio after that."

A voluntary evacuation for the area was issued Sunday.

Mount Washington, at 6,288 feet (1,916 meters) the Northeast's highest peak and one renowned for its extreme weather, recorded a gust of 144 mph (231 kph).

Empty tractor-trailers and empty tandem trucks have been banned on some highways. Trucks were also banned on some bridges in New York City, where the winds sent litter swirling in the canyons between skyscrapers and rocked sidewalk food carts precariously.
The U.S. government has suddenly stopped force-feeding a group of men on a hunger strike inside an El Paso immigration detention center, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

The dramatic reversal came Thursday as public pressure was mounting on ICE to halt the practice, which involves feeding detainees through nasal tubes against their will. Last week, the United Nations human rights office said the force-feeding of Indian hunger strikers at the facility could violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

Earlier this week, a U.S. district judge said the government had to stop force-feeding two of the detained Indian immigrants, but warned that if their health started to decline he would consider ordering force-feeding again, their attorney said. On Thursday, all force-feeding at the detention center near the El Paso airport had stopped, according to ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa.

"This is a win for us," said Louis Lopez, who is representing Malkeet Singh and Jasvir Singh, two detainees who are Punjabi Sikhs in their early 20s. "They have a First Amendment right to protest."

Detained immigrants have sporadically staged hunger strikes around the country for years, protesting conditions they face while seeking asylum. ICE said Thursday there were a total of 12 detainees refusing food, nine from India, three from Cuba. Force-feeding, which began under court order earlier this year, had not previously been reported, and advocates involved said they weren't aware it had happened before.

In a federal courtroom Wednesday in El Paso, U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama heard from Dr. Michelle Iglesias about how men detained in the El Paso facility are restrained and have feeding tubes pushed through their noses. The judge asked whether they had some other way they could protest, and sought details about the Singhs' physical condition.

"What are the physiological and psychological effects of allowing a hunger strike to continue unabated by force-feeding?" he asked.

In addition to Guaderrama, U.S. District Judges David Briones, Philip R. Martinez and Frank Montalvo at the El Paso courthouse have issued orders for force-feeding in recent weeks.

Those orders are secret, under seal, because they contain "highly sensitive and personal medical information," Montalvo told The Associated Press in a letter declining a request to unseal the orders.

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said last week the office views force-feeding as potential "ill treatment" that would go against the convention, ratified by the United States in 1994.

The statement by the Geneva-based office echoed concerns raised by 14 Democratic lawmakers who have asked ICE for more information.

Texas Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, who toured the El Paso Processing Center and met with the hunger strikers two weeks ago following the initial AP reports, found them "deeply traumatized" and frail. She said she asked them why they were refusing food.

"It was so sad," she said. "They told me 'We would rather die in America than be deported.'"

Friday afternoon, about 30 supporters of the hunger strikers gathered for a protest along a crowded street near the ICE processing center close to El Paso's airport. While some passing cars honked in support, other drivers rolled down their windows to yell obscenities, chanting "USA! USA! USA!" or "He's still your president."

Protestors chanting "Free El Paso Nine" hoisted red and white kites painted with forks fashioned to look like prison bars being grasped by human hands, a symbol, organizers said, of people being force-fed.

"We don't force feed human beings," said one of the organizers, Elizabeth Vega, a grandmother from Las Cruces, New Mexico. "That's torture and we know it's torture. I don't care what a federal judge says."

Mendoza and Burke reported from San Francisco.
Israeli forces deployed along the volatile border with the Gaza Strip have fired live rounds at rock-throwing Palestinian protesters ever since demonstrations against Israel's long-running blockade of Gaza began in March.

And for eight months, Israeli snipers have targeted one part of the body more than any other  the legs.

The Israeli army says it is responding to weekly assaults on its frontier by Palestinians armed with stones, grenades and firebombs. The military says it opens fire only as a last resort, and considers firing at the lower limbs an act of restraint.

Still, 175 Palestinians have been shot to death, according to an Associated Press count. And the number of wounded has reached colossal proportions.

Of the 10,511 protesters treated at hospitals and field clinics in Gaza so far, at least 6,392, or roughly 60 percent, have been struck in the lower limbs, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. At least 5,884 of those casualties were hit by live ammunition; others have been hit by rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters.

The upsurge in violence has left a visible mark on Gaza that will likely remain for decades to come. It is now common to see young men walking through dilapidated streets on crutches. Most have legs bandaged or fitted with a metal frame called a fixator, which uses pins or screws that are inserted into fractured bones to help stabilize them.

The wounded can often be seen gathering at a treatment clinic run by the Paris-based medical charity Doctors Without Borders in Gaza City, where Associated Press photographer Felipe Dana took portraits of some of them.

Some of those he photographed acknowledged throwing stones toward Israeli troops during the demonstrations. One said he had hurled a firebomb. But others said they were unarmed bystanders; one paramedic said he was helping rescue the wounded, while another man said he was waving a Palestinian flag and another said he was selling coffee and tea.

International human rights groups have said the military's open-fire rules are unlawful because they allow the use of potentially lethal force in situations where soldiers' lives are not in immediate danger.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, rejected international criticism that Israel's response has been excessive. Instead, he said that firing at people's legs was a sign of restraint.

"Sniper rifles against hundreds or thousands of rioters that are violently trying to get into Israel with the open aim of killing Israeli civilians or abducting Israeli soldiers, I don't think that's disproportionate," he said. "I don't think it's disproportionate to shoot at feet or legs to get them to stop, rather than killing them."

Doctors Without Borders said this month that the huge number of patients was overwhelming Gaza's health care system, which has already been severely weekend by a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt that has fueled economic stagnation and rampant unemployment, and devastated water and electricity supplies.

The Paris-based aid group said the majority of the 3,117 patients it has treated have been shot in the legs, and many will need follow-up surgery, physiotherapy and rehabilitation.

"These are complex and serious injuries that do not quickly heal," the group said. "Their severity and the lack of appropriate treatment in Gaza's crippled health system means that infection is a high risk, especially for patients with open fractures."

"The consequences of these wounds ... will be a lifelong disability for many," the aid group said. "And if infections are not tackled, then the results could be amputation or even death."

Gaza's Health Ministry says it has carried out 94 amputations since the protests began, 82 of them involving lower limbs.
Indian and Pakistani soldiers have again targeted each other's posts and villages along their volatile frontier in disputed Kashmir, killing at least six civilians and two Pakistani troops, officials said Saturday.

But in a sign that tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals could soon ease, a Pakistani Cabinet minister said a key train service between Pakistan and neighboring India would resume on Monday.

Tensions have been running high since Indian aircraft crossed into Pakistan this past Tuesday, carrying out what India called a pre-emptive strike against militants blamed for a Feb. 14 suicide bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops. Pakistan retaliated, shooting down a fighter jet Wednesday and detaining its pilot, who was returned to India on Friday in a peace gesture.

Fighting resumed overnight Friday. Pakistan's military said two of its soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire with Indian forces near the Line of Control that separates Kashmir between the rivals. It marked the first fatalities for Pakistani troops since Wednesday, when tensions dramatically escalated between the nuclear-armed countries over Kashmir, which is split between them but claimed by both in its entirety.

Indian police, meanwhile, said two siblings and their mother were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The three died after a shell fired by Pakistani soldiers hit their home in the Poonch region near the Line of Control. The children's father was critically wounded.

In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, government official Umar Azam said Indian troops with heavy weapons "indiscriminately targeted border villagers" along the Line of Control, killing a boy and wounding three other people. He said several homes were destroyed by Indian shelling.

Following a lull lasting a few hours, shelling and firing of small arms resumed Saturday. A Pakistani military statement said two civilians were killed and two others wounded in the fresh fighting. The Indian army said Pakistani troops attacked Indian posts at several places along the militarized line.

Since tensions escalated following last month's suicide attack, world leaders have scrambled to head off an all-out war between India and Pakistan. The rivals have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since their independence from British rule in 1947.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday that Russia had offered to serve as a mediator to ease tensions. He said Pakistan was ready to accept the offer, but he did not know whether India would agree as well.

Qureshi also said a top Saudi diplomat would soon visit Pakistan and India. Pakistani officials said China is expected to send an envoy to Pakistan and India this coming week.

The current violence marks the most serious escalation of the long-simmering conflict since 1999, when Pakistan's military sent a ground force into Indian-controlled Kashmir. That year also saw an Indian fighter jet shoot down a Pakistani naval aircraft, killing all 16 on board.

The latest wave of tensions began after the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for the Feb. 14 suicide bombing by a Kashmiri militant on Indian paramilitary forces. India has long accused Pakistan of cultivating such militant groups to attack it. Pakistan has denied any involvement in the suicide attack.

Pakistan's minister for railways, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, told reporters Saturday that the Samjhauta Express train service linking the Pakistani city of Lahore with the Indian border town of Atari would resume on Monday. The service was suspended by Pakistani authorities this past week.

Thousands of people on both sides of Kashmir have fled to government-run temporary shelters or relatives' homes in safer areas to escape shelling along the frontier, which is marked by razor wire, watch towers and bunkers amid tangled bushes, forests and fields of rice and corn.

"These battles are fought on our bodies, in our homes and fields, and we still don't have anything in our hands. We are at the mercy of these soldiers," said Mohammed Akram, a resident in the Mendhar area in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Sakina, a young woman who fled to a shelter with her two children, said the frequent shelling had made them "homeless in our own land."

In Pakistani-administered Kashmir, many displaced families urged the international community to help resolve the issue of Kashmir so that they can live peacefully.

"Whenever India fires mortars, it's we who suffer," said Mohammad Latif, a laborer who took refuge at a government building that was vacated for sheltering displaced families.

"I don't care whether the Indian pilot is gone or not, I don't care who released him and why, but I want to know whether peace will return to us after his return to India," said Mohammad Sadiq, a shopkeeper who also was among the displaced. He said the latest tensions between Pakistan and India rose so suddenly that some people sold their sheep, cows and buffaloes at throwaway prices in his native Chikothi town.

"We did not know whether we will get any shelter and how could we take our animals" with us, he said.

Meanwhile, Indian police said two paramilitary soldiers and two counterinsurgency police officials were killed in a gunbattle with militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir, while troops fatally shot a civilian during anti-India protests.

Rebel groups have been fighting Indian rule since 1989 and demand that Kashmir be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed contributed to this report.
 Flash

A Chinese envoy on Monday urged the international community to help the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with its security capacity-building.

"The current focus should be put on helping the DRC to enhance its security capacity-building, supporting the effort of the DRC government to maintain peace and stability," Wu Haitao, the charge d'affaires of China's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, told the Security Council meeting on the situation in the DRC.

The international community should "fully respect the sovereignty and independence and territorial integrity of the DRC," Wu said, adding that it should also "fully respect the ownership and leadership of the DRC government in handling its own affairs, strengthen communication with the DRC government, and help the DRC to resolve its challenges in humanitarian, security, development and other fields."

The Chinese envoy also called on the world to continue supporting regional and sub-regional organizations in playing their roles to facilitate and strengthen interactions between the parties within the DRC government to advance the implementation of the peace security and cooperation framework for the DRC and the Great Lakes Region, so as to jointly contribute to the realization of peace and stability in the DRC and a wider region.

"International partners should help with the DRC's effort to make sure that armed groups in the DRC to abandon the military solution and instead resolve the issues through dialogue and consultation," he added.

Wu also said that efforts must be made to "continue providing necessary humanitarian assistance and economic support to the DRC government."

"International partners should focus on increasing input in education, healthcare, infrastructure and other areas, help the DRC to increase employment, improve people's life, and restore economic and social development," he said.

"We hope bodies such as UN Development Programme and UN Environment Programme can play a bigger role," he added.

"The international community should continue actively responding to the DRC's humanitarian assistance appeal, support the activities of the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross and help contain the Ebola outbreak.

Noting that MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, is "indispensable" to peace and stability in the country, Wu said that China supports the extension of its mandate.

"We hope MONUSCO can continue its activities according to its mandate to help the DRC realize peace stability and development," he said.

"In the meantime, we hope the (UN) Secretariat, the DRC government and the troop-contributing countries can engage in communication, and in view of the development, conduct timely review and put forward proposals of adjustment to MONUSCO mandate, so as to ensure a step-by-step and orderly handover of security responsibilities from MONUSCO to the DRC security forces," said the envoy.

China is ready to work with the wider international community to continue contributing to the DRC's efforts to achieve early peace, stability and development, Wu noted.

Leila Zerrougui, the UN secretary-general's special representative for the DRC, briefed the Security Council on the situation in the DRC.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Feb. 15 submitted to the President of the Security Council an update on the situation in the DRC.

The update, which covers developments in the DRC from Jan. 1 to 31, was submitted pursuant to Resolution 2409 (2018), in which the Security Council requested the secretary-general to provide a written update every 30 days on political and technical progress towards the holding of elections in the DRC and on obstacles to the implementation of the political agreement of Dec. 31, 2016.
Japan announced Wednesday that it is leaving the International Whaling Commission to resume commercial hunts for the animals for the first time in 30 years, but said it would no longer go to the Antarctic for its much-criticized annual killings.

Japan switched to what it calls research whaling after the IWC imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s, and now says stocks have recovered enough to resume commercial hunts.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Japan would resume commercial whaling in July "in line with Japan's basic policy of promoting sustainable use of aquatic living resources based on scientific evidence."

He added that Japan is disappointed that the IWC  which he said is dominated by conservationists  focuses on the protection of whale stocks even though the commission has a treaty mandate for both whale conservation and the development of the whaling industry.

"Regrettably, we have reached a decision that it is impossible in the IWC to seek the coexistence of states with different views," he said.

Suga said the commercial hunts would be limited to Japan's territorial waters and its 200-mile (323-kilometer) exclusive economic zone along Japan's coasts. He said Japan would stop its annual whaling expeditions to the Antarctic and northwest Pacific oceans, noting that non-signatory states are not allowed to do so.

The IWC imposed the moratorium on commercial whaling three decades ago due to a dwindling whale population. Japan switched to what is calls research whaling, but the program was criticized as a cover for commercial hunting since the meat is sold on the market at home.

The environmental group Greenpeace condemned the Wednesday's announcement and disputed Japan's view that whale stocks have recovered, noting also that ocean life is being threatened by pollution as well as overfishing.

"The declaration today is out of step with the international community, let alone the protection needed to safeguard the future of our oceans and these majestic creatures," Sam Annesley, executive director at Greenpeace Japan, said in a statement. "The government of Japan must urgently act to conserve marine ecosystems, rather than resume commercial whaling."

Australia's government, often a vocal critic of Japan's whaling policies, said in a statement that it was "extremely disappointed" with Japan's decision to quit the commission.

However, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters joined Australia in welcoming Japan's withdrawal from the southern ocean. Japan was the only country with an ambition to return to commercial whaling in the Antarctic Ocean.

Japanese Fisheries Agency official and longtime IWC negotiator Hideki Moronuki said Japan would use the IWC's method to carefully determine a catch quota, but declined to give an estimate.

Japan has hunted whales for centuries, but has reduced its catch following international protests and declining demand for whale meat at home. The withdrawal from the IWC may be a face-saving step to stop Japan's ambitious Antarctic hunts and scale down the scope of whaling to around the Japanese coasts.

Japan slashed its annual quota in the Antarctic by about one third after a 2014 International Court of Justice ruling that the country's research whaling program wasn't as scientific as Japan had argued. Japan currently hunts about 600 whales annually in the Antarctic and the Northern Pacific.

Fisheries officials have said Japan annually consumes thousands of tons of whale meat from the research hunts, mainly by older Japanese seeking a nostalgic meal. But critics say they doubt commercial whaling could be a sustainable industry if younger Japanese don't view the animals as food.

Suga said Japan would notify the IWC of its decision by Dec. 31 and remains committed to international cooperation on proper management of marine life even after its IWC withdrawal.

Associated Press writer Steve McMorran contributed to this report.
JetBlue has taken down a poster of a convicted murderer that it had included as part of a Black History Month tribute at New York's Kennedy Airport.

The airline said Saturday it removed the poster paying tribute to Assata Shakur last month after being alerted via Twitter that Shakur is "a convicted cop killer."

"The intention was always to unite our crewmembers and customers around the importance of Black History Month and we apologize for any offense the poster may have caused," a JetBlue spokesman said in a statement.

Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, is a former member of the Black Liberation Army who was convicted of murder for her role in a 1973 shootout that resulted in the death of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. She escaped from prison in 1979 and is living in Cuba, where she was granted asylum.

President Donald Trump demanded that Cuba return "the cop-killer Joanne Chesimard" in 2017 when he announced plans to reverse some Obama-era Cuba policies.

The poster paying tribute to the now 71-year-old Shakur at the JetBlue terminal at Kennedy was first reported in the New York Post, which noted that one of the bullet points listing Shakur's accomplishments said, "Became the first woman to be placed on the FBI's Most Wanted list after escaping to Cuba from prison where she was serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of a police officer."

The poster also read, "Many people believe Shakur to be a political champion who is innocent of the criminal accusation against her."

JetBlue said in its statement that the poster was part of a "ready-made batch of posters" that the airline bought from a third party.
Venezuelan authorities on Tuesday deported a Univision news crew led by anchor Jorge Ramos hours after they were briefly detained at the presidential palace following an interview with President Nicolas Maduro, which was abruptly terminated over their line of questioning.

Ramos said authorities told the Univision news team to arrive at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Vargas at 7 a.m. ET and board a midday flight to the U.S. Univision said the team was already scheduled to return to their base in Miami on Tuesday.

The news crew, accompanied by U.S. and Mexican diplomats, was escorted to the airport by members of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN), the repressive Venezuelan police force, according to Carlos Correa, who heads the Caracas-based free-speech NGO Espacio Publico.

Speaking from Caracas Monday night, Ramos told Univision anchor Patricia Janiot during a phone call that aired on the networks broadcast that he asked Maduro to comment on the fact that millions of Venezuelans don't consider him a legitimate president because of questions surrounding the validity of the results of the 2018 elections. He also said he asked Maduro whether he was a president or a dictator and to respond to accusations from opposition leader Juan Guaido that he was a usurper of power.

World of Dance returns for its second season on Tuesday, and Access Lives Scott Evans is pulling duties as the competitions new host! Scott takes us on an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the set!

Ramos said when he questioned Maduro about accusations of abuse and torture and then showed him video on an iPad he had taken a day earlier of young Venezuelans eating food scraps out of the back of a garbage truck, the leader cut short their interview after 17 minutes.

The seven-person team was then held for more than two hours in the Miraflores palace and had their camera equipment and phones seized. They were eventually released, but without having their equipment and footage returned, Ramos said.

"They stole my work," Ramos said. "My job is to ask questions."

A spokesman for the union of journalists in Venezuela, known as SNTP, said the Univision news crews' equipment, which included four cameras, four monitors, microphones, lamps, and a satellite instrument, had not been returned as of the moment they were processed through immigration at the airport. The Univision journalists boarded an 11 a.m. ET flight bound for Miami and it wasn't clear if the plane departed without the equipment.

Venezuela's government denied Ramos' account. They accused him of trying to stage an international incident after a senior State Department official and Sen. Marco Rubio relayed reports on social media of what they called Ramos' detention at the same time an interview shot earlier in the day with U.S. network ABC was being aired.

"Hundreds of journalists have passed through Miraflores and received the same decent treatment we give all those doing journalistic work," Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez said on Twitter.

Ramos, who interviewed Maduro's mentor, Hugo Chavez, three times, said Maduro accused him of siding with the government's opponents in the political fight for power now raging in Venezuela.

More than 50 governments around the world have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's rightful leader after Maduro was sworn in for a second term last month following what the critics say was an illegitimate election.

Ramos has previously angered one of Maduro's strongest critics: U.S. President Donald Trump, who famously had the journalist removed from a news conference on the campaign trail in 2015 when he asked about his anti-immigrant views toward Mexicans.

A security guard removes Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news conference on Tuesday in Dubuque, Iowa. Ramos stood up and began to ask Trump about his immigration proposal.
A federal judge in California ruled Thursday that a twin son of a gay married couple has been an American citizen since birth, handing a defeat to the U.S. government, which had only granted the status to his brother.

The State Department was wrong to deny citizenship to 2-year-old Ethan Dvash-Banks because U.S. law does not require a child to show a biological relationship with their parents if their parents were married at the time of their birth, District Judge John F. Walter found.

A lawsuit filed by the boys' parents, Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks, sought the same rights for Ethan that his brother, Aiden, has as a citizen.

Each boy was conceived with donor eggs and the sperm from a different father  one an American, the other an Israeli citizen  but born by the same surrogate mother minutes apart.

The government had only granted citizenship to Aiden, who DNA tests showed was the biological son of Andrew, a U.S. citizen. Ethan was conceived from the sperm of Elad Dvash-Banks, an Israeli citizen.

The suit was one of two filed last year by an LGBTQ immigrant rights group that said the State Department is discriminating against same-sex binational couples by denying their children citizenship at birth. The cases filed in Los Angeles and Washington by Immigration Equality said the children of a U.S. citizen who marries abroad are entitled to U.S. citizenship at birth no matter where they are born, even if the other parent is a foreigner. Only the Los Angeles case was decided Thursday.

The State Department did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the ruling. Previously the department pointed to guidance on its website that said there must be a biological connection to a U.S. citizen to become a citizen at birth.

"This family was shocked and appalled and angry when they were told their family wasn't legal," said Aaron Morris, executive director of Immigration Equality. "They wanted their twin boys to be treated exactly the same."

Morris said the government wrongly applied a policy for children born out of wedlock to married same-sex couples.

Walter agreed, writing that the State Department statute does not contain language "requiring a 'blood relationship between the person and the father' in order for citizenship to be acquired at birth."

"This is justice! We are hopeful that no other family will ever have to go through this again. It's like a giant rock has been removed from our hearts," Andrew and Elad Dvash-Banks said in a statement provided by Immigration Equality.

Andrew Dvash-Banks was studying in Israel when he met his future husband, Elad, an Israeli citizen. Because they couldn't marry at the time in the U.S. or in Israel, they moved to Canada, where they wed in 2010. The children were born by a surrogate in September 2016.

Everything seemed fine until the couple brought their cranky infants to the American consulate in Toronto a few months later to apply for citizenship and the woman at the counter began asking probing questions they found shocking and humiliating.

The consular official told them she had discretion to require a DNA test to show who the biological father was of each boy and without those tests neither son would get citizenship. The men knew that Andrew was Aiden's biological father and Elad was Ethan's but they had kept it a secret and hadn't planned on telling anyone.

After submitting the DNA test results that proved who fathered each boy, the couple received a large and small envelope from the U.S. on March 2. The big one included Aiden's passport. The other was a letter notifying Andrew that Ethan's application had been denied.

The family has since moved to Los Angeles to be closer to Andrew Dvash-Banks' family.

The other case involves two women, one from the U.S., and one from Italy, who met in New York, wed in London and each gave birth to a son. The State Department didn't recognize the couple's marriage, the lawsuit said, and only granted citizenship to the boy whose biological mother was born and raised in the U.S.
A 12-year-old reporter has received an apology after an Arizona marshal tried to stop her from following him.

Hilde Lysiak posted video Thursday on her website, Orange Street News, of Patagonia's mayor saying officials "sincerely apologize" that her First Amendment rights had been violated.

Now it is over. I want to thank Patagonia Mayor Wood and the Town. This wasn't just about me but about the First Amendment rights of every citizen, especially those who unlike me don't have a microphone. Now I just want to get back to covering the news. https://t.co/0M8kTjCovF  Hilde Lysiak (@orangestreetnew) February 28, 2019

Lysiak was following a tip while on her bicycle on Feb. 18 when a town marshal in his patrol vehicle stopped her.

According to Lysiak, the marshal threatened to put her in jail if she continued to follow law enforcement.

In video from their interaction, the marshal tells her she can film him but sharing the footage online is illegal.

Mayor Andrea Wood said at a town council meeting that officials encourage Lysiak's reporting aspirations.

The marshal has said that the girl was interfering.
The Trump administration on Monday sanctioned Venezuela's state-owned oil company, ratcheting up pressure on socialist President Nicolas Maduro to cede power to the U.S.-backed opposition in the oil-rich nation in South America.

The action means Maduro's embattled government would lose access to one of its most important sources of income and foreign currency along with around $7 billion in assets of the state-owned company, Petroleos De Venezuela S.A.

Hours after the White House announced the sanctions, Maduro went on state TV and called the U.S. action "immoral, criminal." In words directed at President Donald Trump, he said, "Hands off Venezuela!"

The sanctions follow the unusual decision by more than 20 countries, including the U.S., to recognize the opposition leader of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the interim president of Venezuela. Maduro was re-elected last year in an election widely seen as fraudulent. The once prosperous nation has been in an economic collapse, with several million citizens fleeing to neighboring countries.

"We have continued to expose the corruption of Maduro and his cronies, and today's action ensures they can no longer loot the assets of the Venezuelan people," national security adviser John Bolton said at a White House news conference to announce the sanctions with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Bolton said he expects Monday's actions against PDVSA  the acronym for the state-owned oil company  will result in more than $11 billion in lost export proceeds during the next year.

Oil production  the lifeblood of Venezuela's economy  has been collapsing for years. Despite sitting atop the world's largest reserves, Venezuela currently pumps just a third of the 3.5 million barrels a day it did when the late Hugo Chavez took power in 1999.

The nation's refining capacity has also declined because of poor maintenance and lack of skilled personnel. That has left it reliant on Citgo, the Houston-based refining arm of PDVSA, to refine the oil and send gasoline back to Venezuela to meet domestic needs.

"They have just lost that source," said Russ Dallen, managing partner of Caracas Capital, a brokerage company.

Venezuela is very reliant on the U.S. for its oil revenue, sending 41 percent of its oil exports to the U.S. Maduro can divert the roughly 500,000 barrels per day of oil currently being sold to Gulf Coast refineries to markets in Russia, China, India, Malaysia and Thailand.

But processing international financial transactions is hard without going through the U.S. or European banks. Transport costs would also jump because Venezuela's ports aren't well-equipped to load supertankers for transporting oil to distant markets.

That means the country, which depends almost entirely on oil exports for hard currency, will be able to purchase even less food and other imports, potentially worsening shortages and deepening its economic collapse.

Outside the PDVSA headquarters in Caracas, office workers lining up to board red company buses were seeking information about the immediate impact of the U.S. sanctions. As he hurried home with his two children, one employee told The Associated Press that the sanctions signaled tough times ahead.

"Things are going to get difficult," said the man, who refused to identify himself by name because he feared reprisals from the company. "The United States is one of the few buyers who pays for the oil up front, and it's probably where most of our income comes from."

Mnuchin said any money that U.S. entities use to buy Venezuelan oil will go into a blocked account in the United States, not the Maduro government.

He said if PDVSA wants to see the sanctions lifted, there would have to be a speedy transfer of control to the interim, U.S.-backed president and a democratically elected government that is "committed to taking concrete and meaningful actions to combat corruption."

He said the Treasury Department has taken steps to allow refineries to continue importing oil from Venezuela temporarily. Also, he said Citgo will be able to continue importing oil as long as the revenue is sent to the blocked account in the United States.

"This is a country that is very rich in oil resources," Mnuchin said. "There is no reason why these resources shouldn't be used for the economic benefit of the people there."

Mnuchin said he did not expect the sanctions would cause U.S. consumers to see higher prices at gas pumps.

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents 95 percent of the refining sector, has lobbied hard during the past two years against any sanctions that would disrupt imports of Venezuelan oil. The association issued a statement saying it supported the Trump administration's goal to bring change to Venezuela.

"To that end, we will work with the administration to minimize any unnecessary disruptions or negative impacts to the market and American consumers," the association said.

Mnuchin insisted the sanctions would have only a "modest" impact on U.S. refineries because Venezuelan oil exports to the U.S. have declined steadily over the years, falling particularly sharply over the past decade as its production plummeted amid its long economic and political crisis.

The U.S. imported less than 500,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan crude and petroleum products in 2017, down from more than 1.2 million barrels a day in 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Still, Venezuela has consistently been the third- or fourth-largest supplier of crude oil to the United States, and any disruption of imports could be costly for refiners. In 2017, the most recent year that data were available, Venezuela accounted for about 6 percent of U.S. crude imports. Valero and Citgo are among the largest importers of Venezuelan crude.

Associated Press writers Alexandra Olson in New York; Christine Armario in Bogota, Colombia; and Joshua Goodman, Scott Smith and Manuel Rueda in Caracas contributed to this report.
A man who yelled "Heil Hitler! Heil Trump!" at a theater performance of "Fiddler on the Roof" in Baltimore says he's sorry for the outburst.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Anthony M. Derlunas II said in an interview with the newspaper that his comments were "beyond a mistake."

The 58-year-old said he'd been drinking heavily before the show. Derlunas said the classic play, based on a Yiddish story that tells of a Jewish family persecuted in tsarist Russia, reminded him of President Donald Trump's immigration policies, which prompted his outburst.

The comments sparked panic in the Hippodrome Theatre and a few dozen people began running for the exits. The scare came a few weeks after a gunman fatally shot 11 people inside a Pittsburgh synagogue.
U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly doubtful that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un intends to dismantle his nuclear program, the officials told NBC News.

That's President Donald Trump goal in negotiating with North Korea, though there's no evidence Kim shares it. The White House has set low expectations for the meeting between Trump and Kim this week in Vietnam.

Trump could establish bare-bones diplomatic outposts between the two nations or perhaps offer to formally end the decades-old war on the Korean Peninsula, current and former U.S. officials say. Trump has been vague on whether he would offer to withdraw U.S. troops as part of a deal, saying last week that it was "not one of the things on the table" but later that "everything is on the table."

One former senior U.S. official said, "One of the worst possible outcomes is he makes some crazy deal pledging to withdraw U.S. troops for a vague promise of denuclearization."
Rescuers brought an excavator to the remote Indonesian gold mine that collapsed earlier this week, trapping dozens, hoping to speed up rescue efforts despite the risk of triggering landslides.

The death toll has risen to eight and 20 have been rescued, local disaster official Abdul Muin Paputungan said Friday. About three dozen people are still believed trapped in the rubble of the unlicensed mine in North Sulawesi's Bolaang Mongondow district that collapsed on Tuesday evening.

Paputungan said an excavator began working on the site Friday morning after relatives gave permission and a path was cleared through steep jungle terrain.

He said the dozens of emergency workers involved in the grueling rescue "never stop praying that all those still trapped in the mine are able to survive until we can rescue them."

Food and water has been passed to some of those trapped but officials are concerned oxygen is dwindling in parts of the mine. Rescue workers have used makeshift stretchers to haul victims to a nearby settlement.

Wooden structures in the mine collapsed Tuesday evening due to shifting soil and the large number of mining holes. Informal mining operations are commonplace in Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to thousands who labor in conditions with a high risk of serious injury or death.

On Thursday, a trapped miner's leg was amputated to free him but the man died from blood loss while being carried out of the area.

A rescuer who amputated the leg of miner Teddy Mokodompit said he and his team crawled 12 meters (40 feet) into the mine to operate, Kompas newspaper reported. The stuffy air was difficult to breath and the tunnel they were in vibrated, with soil and gravel falling on them, Laiya, who uses one name, told the newspaper.

"I and all my team members were crying while cutting his leg in the hole," he said. "We were worried that landslides will happen while we were inside."

The national disaster agency said more than 200 people from multiple agencies are involved in the rescue but frustration was growing among family members of trapped miners.

"The process to rescue only one person takes the whole day," said Amin Simbala, father of a buried miner. "Don't be concerned by this one person only, just get him out, if you need to amputate then amputate so others can still be saved."

Rescuers have used their bare hands and basic tools to search for the missing. They've fashioned stretchers from tree branches, twine and other material. Photos showed a trapped miner's arms and head jutting through a gap in rocks and rescuers toiling each night in arduous conditions.

The search and rescue operation is difficult not only because of the remote and inaccessible location but also because of the risk of triggering new collapses inside the mine.

Small artisanal and often unauthorized mining is rising in many parts of Asia and Africa. A study by the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development found the number of people engaged in such mining had risen to more than 40 million, up from 30 million in 2014 and 6 million in 1993.

Landslides, flooding and collapses of tunnels are just some of the hazards. Much of the processing of gold ore involves use of highly toxic mercury and cyanide by workers using little or no protection.
The Poor People's Campaign will hold bus tours of poverty-stricken areas in more than 20 states to call attention to "what the national emergencies really are" in the wake of President Donald Trump's emergency declaration over the U.S.-Mexico border, a leader of the campaign says.

The tours will begin in late March and continue through April, said the Rev. William Barber of North Carolina. Participants will include poor people, religious and political leaders and other advocates, he said.

The tours were always planned as part a revived version of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign that launched in December 2017 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of King's original campaign, Barber said. But Trump's declaration of a national emergency to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico added urgency, he said.

"Part of the problem that we see in policies of Democrats vs. Republicans is one talks about they want the wall and the other side said they don't want the wall," Barber said in a phone interview. "But nobody has sat down and said: 'Here are the real emergencies and here is how these resources could be used to address these real emergencies.'"

Barber is co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, along with the Rev. Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Institute. The renewed Poor People's Campaign began after Barber led the "Moral Monday" movement in North Carolina , which began in 2013 and held protests about issues including voting rights, gerrymandering, LGBTQ rights and unions.

Instead of spending almost $6 billion on a wall, the country could invest in health care, clean energy jobs or placing more children in Head Start programs, he said.

He and Theoharis announced details of the bus tours Monday in Washington. Theoharis said the tour is scheduled to visit almost 30 states and Washington, D.C. In California, the tour will visit the Yurok Indian reservation, while in New York state, the tour will go to Elmira, home to two maximum security prisons.

"We know as a nation we can lift up the load of poverty," she said at a news conference.

Trump issued an emergency declaration so he could access billions of dollars beyond what Congress authorized to start erecting a border wall that was a trademark of his presidential campaign.

Congress approved a vast spending bill earlier this month that provides nearly $1.4 billion to build 55 miles of border barriers in Texas' Rio Grande Valley while preventing a renewed government shutdown. Trump had demanded $5.7 billion to construct more than 200 miles.

In June, the Poor People's Campaign plans a People's Moral Action Congress in Washington with more than 2,000 people to discuss the realities of poverty. In conjunction with the meeting, the group will release a poor people's higher ground budget that focuses on inequality.

Attendees will call on Congress to hold a hearing with people hurt by poverty and racism regarding what Barber calls "interlocking injustices" of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, a war economy and a distorted moral narrative.

The U.S. needs to "shut up and shut down the foolishness that our greatest threat is who comes across our border rather than that the greatest problem is racism and poverty inside the border," Barber said.
 Flash

The ninth round of the China-EU High-level Strategic Dialogue on Monday in Brussels underlined the need to strengthen the bilateral partnership.

The dialogue was co-chaired by Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini.

Wang said that China and the European Union are comprehensive strategic partners. Facing the turbulent international situation, the two sides have developed fruitful communication and cooperation, playing the role of "stabilizer".

China and Europe, as two major powers in the world, should take this responsibility. The level and scale of bilateral cooperation are at a historic high, and there is still great potential, said Wang.

The two sides should continue cooperation, adopt problem-solving orientation, explore new methods, new areas and new impetus in the partnerships regarding peace, growth, reform and civilization, and further the enhancement of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and the EU.

Wang underlined three points. Firstly, cooperative partnership is the nature of China-EU relations. The common ground is to appreciate the development of bilateral relations, although the two have differences on some issues.

Wang believed there is no essential conflict of interest between China and the EU. The two can seek common ground while reserving differences, but also consolidate the common ground while resolving differences, maximizing the common interest and perception.

Secondly, the goal of China-EU cooperation is to achieve mutual benefit and win-win outcome, said Wang, hoping that Europe will stand to benefit from the new round of Chinese reform and opening-up. He welcomed Europe to participate in the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative, and expected to see the Europe-Asia connectivity plan to complement the Belt and Road Initiative.

Thirdly, Wang said the respect of each other's core interest is the trademark of the trust between China and the EU, and he hoped the EU could be discreet in words and deeds. China is willing to work with the EU to maintain a sound development of bilateral relations, benefit the people of the two sides, and contribute more to the world's peace and development.

Mogherini said the EU-China relations have reached a new high in the past five years in terms of their depth and extent. The two share common stance and goal against unilateralism and protectionism, and both support the international order established around the United Nations.

For the first time, the Chinese foreign minister met the foreign ministers of the 28 EU members on Monday, and they discussed about strengthening the EU-China cooperation. The EU regards China as its important strategic partner, not only economically but also politically, Mogherini noted.

The EU's new document on policy towards China published last week will not replace the current EU strategic cooperation with China, she said. The EU has no intention to impede the development of China, and it is impossible to do it. The EU wants to see a bigger leading role played by China on global issues.

The EU has differences with China in a number of issues, but has always looked upon the bilateral strategic partnership from the perspective of common prosperity. The EU will continue sticking to the one-China policy without any change, she added.

Mogherini noted that the EU, along with China, will push for the implementation of multilateral agreements, and work closely on issues like the Paris agreement, Iran nuclear agreement, sustainable development goals, African development and so on.

The EU is willing to enhance the connectivity and communication with Asia, explore the complementarities with the Belt and Road Initiative, and vigorously carry out third-party cooperation. The EU hopes to strengthen the security and defense cooperation with China, which is not targeting any third parties. The two sides can cooperate in cyber-security, safeguard the openness, safety and stability of the internet, and establish an order of the digital world based on rules, noted Mogherini.

The two sides also exchanged opinions on the current international situation, the respective relations with major powers, and global and regional hot issues.
Thousands of Central Americans journeying toward the United States were 2,500 miles from their destination in October when they reached a moment of decision: Should they press on toward the U.S. border? Or should they stop and put down roots in Mexico, where the government offered to let them stay?

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group of activists escorting the caravan, warned the migrants that the offer might be too good to be true and called a voice vote on whether to continue.

"Let's keep going!" the crowd yelled amid applause.

And they kept going. Thousands are now in Tijuana on the U.S. border, where they are likely to be camped for months or longer with no easy way to get into the United States, creating what is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis in this overwhelmed city.

Many blame Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, made up of about 40 U.S. and Mexican activists.

Critics, including former allies and some of the migrants themselves, say Pueblo Sin Fronteras downplayed the dangers of such treks, especially for families and small children, and misled the participants about how long they would have to wait on the Mexican side to apply for asylum.

Adelaida Gonzalez, 37, of Guatemala City, who joined the caravan with her 15-year-old son and neighbor, said that now that she is in Tijuana, she wishes she had accepted Mexico's offer to stay and work in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

"We were never told along the way that it would be this hard," said Gonzalez, after seeing the border wall topped with razor wire and the long waiting list for asylum seekers.

A Pueblo Sin Fronteras leader, Irineo Mujica, emphatically rejected the criticism.

"Our commitment first and foremost was protecting the lives of migrants and giving them as much information as possible," Mujica said. "To blame the people who are helping is crazy."

Pueblo Sin Fronteras founder Roberto Corona said in the organization's defense that attorneys along the way told the migrants they could be held in U.S. detention centers for months and possibly separated from their children. In the end, he said, the migrants  many of whom are fleeing poverty and violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala  made their own decision.

"They know the wall is very big, and they will not be very welcome in the U.S. by many people," Corona said, "but still they have hope of coming here, that at least their rights will be more protected, and they will be able to make a living."

This is the fourth and biggest caravan of Central American asylum seekers that Pueblo Sin Fronteras has helped reach Tijuana, a trek that angered President Donald Trump and prompted him to send troops to the border. When the caravan crossed into Mexico, it numbered 7,000; about 5,500 made it to Tijuana.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras maintains it simply accompanies the migrants to protect their rights. But the organization clearly plays an essential role: It helped charter the route, arrange bus transportation and negotiate with Mexican officials to provide protection. It also raised more than $46,000 online for emergency housing and food.

As the caravan crossed Mexico, the organization held nightly assemblies to decide the next day's destination. It alerted towns to prepare for migrants who camped in their squares.

For the Central Americans, there was a feeling of safety in numbers. For decades, migrants crossing Mexico have been robbed, kidnapped and killed by gangs and corrupt officials.

But traveling with the caravan was not without risks. One migrant was killed when he fell off a truck. Another was run over and killed on a highway. Two were stabbed and strangled after leaving a Tijuana shelter. Others have been attacked with rocks by local residents angry over the mass arrival.

Last month, a march by the migrants in Tijuana to demand the United States accelerate its asylum process degenerated into violence. Demonstrators threw rocks at U.S. border agents and tore down fencing, letting dozens rush through. U.S. authorities fired tear gas into Mexico, sending crowds that included children running and screaming.

"There is no reason to make these inhumane journeys," Alejandro Solalinde, a Mexican priest recognized for his work with migrants, said of the caravans.

Sergio Tamai, whose organization operates migrant shelters in the Tijuana area, said he called Mujica to express concerns about the Tijuana march beforehand  "and we all saw what happened  a disaster."

Migrants say they are grateful for all Pueblo Sin Fronteras has done, but they were not prepared for the long wait in Tijuana. Some 3,000 people were already in line to ask for asylum before the caravan arrived, and U.S. authorities are processing only about 100 claims per day at the crossing, resulting in overflowing shelters in Tijuana.

And the wait just got longer: The Trump administration announced Thursday that asylum seekers at the border will now be forced to wait in Mexico while their cases slowly wind their way through the clogged U.S. immigration courts. Previously, migrants were allowed into the U.S. while their claims were processed.

Esmeralda Siu, a Tijuana shelter manager, said many caravan members knew nothing about the difficulty in getting asylum.

"They come in desperation and so they hear what they want to hear," she said. As for their escorts, "it seems like they are putting the migrants at great risk."

Corona, Pueblo Sin Fronteras' founder, said that the caravans served their purpose but that he doesn't foresee the organization accompanying any more of them.

"We need to find out how can we reach the hearts and minds of the American people and Mexican people and mostly the policymakers who can come up with a permanent solution," he said.

_____

Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City and researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.
Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone may be accused of lying and tampering with witnesses, but it's equally notable what he's not charged with: colluding with the Kremlin in a grand conspiracy to help Trump win the presidency in 2016.

The case is the latest in a series brought by special counsel Robert Mueller that focuses on cover-ups but lays out no underlying crime. It's a familiar pattern in Washington, where scandals from Watergate to Iran-Contra and Whitewater have mushroomed into presidency-imperiling affairs due to efforts to conceal and mislead.

In the Russia investigation, one Trump aide after another has been accused of lying to investigators, or encouraging others to do so, about Russia-related contacts during the campaign and transition period.

Mueller may well have evidence of criminal coordination between Trump associates and Russia that he has yet to reveal, but so far, he's focused repeatedly on those he believes have tried to throw federal or congressional investigators off the trail.

Stone's indictment charges him with seven felonies, including witness tampering, obstruction and false statements, while leaving open the question of whether his or the Trump's campaign's interest in exploiting Russia-hacked emails about Democrat Hillary Clinton crossed a legal line.

"There's sort of two possible ways this investigation could end up. One is he finds this big Russian conspiracy or collusion with the Russians to influence the election," said Randall Eliason, a George Washington University white-collar criminal law professor and former federal prosecutor. "The other, I think very real possibility, is he just finds a cover-up."

The Stone case is in some way reminiscent of Mueller prosecutions that have accused former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen of lying to Congress about his role in a Moscow real estate project; former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn of lying about his contacts with the Russia's U.S. ambassador; and ex-campaign aide George Papadopoulos of lying about his knowledge that Russia had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of stolen emails.

In none of those cases did prosecutors say the things the defendants lied about were crimes themselves.

The absence of a definitive answer to the collusion question, more than 20 months into Mueller's work, has given the president and his allies a wedge to attack the investigation. In the hours after Stone's pre-dawn arrest at his Florida home Friday, Trump returned to his favored refrain of "NO COLLUSION" on Twitter. His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, mocked the case as "nothing more than another false statement charge" and speculated without evidence that Mueller's inquiry was nearing an end.

But with each new charge, Mueller continues to publicly untangle Trump campaign operations and their intersection with Russia's efforts to hurt Clinton and help Trump.

The Stone indictment, for instance, reflects an unflattering portrait of a presidential campaign eager to exploit stolen emails about a political opponent. It alleges that Stone informed unidentified senior Trump campaign officials of what Stone was hearing about plans by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks regarding the hacked emails. It says a senior Trump campaign official "was directed" to contact Stone about additional releases and "what other damaging information" WikiLeaks had "regarding the Clinton campaign."

Though those allegations don't form the basis of any of the charges against Stone, their inclusion in the 24-page indictment could signal that Mueller isn't done with that prong of the investigation. He already has charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers in the hacking of Democratic email accounts, setting up the potential for prosecutions of any Americans who might be involved in that conspiracy.

"This doesn't look to me like an investigation that's about to wrap up," said Stanford law professor David Alan Sklansky. "I would be cautious about reading too much into what's not in the indictment."

All told, Mueller has charged six Trump associates and 34 people overall, along with three companies. It is unclear when the investigation might end.

A defiant Stone, flashing a Nixonian-style victory sign, emerged from the courthouse on Friday to proclaim his innocence and predict his vindication. He was released on $250,000 bond and will make his first court appearance Tuesday in Washington, where the case was brought.

"As I have said previously, there is no circumstance whatsoever under which I will bear false witness against the president, nor will I make up lies to ease the pressure on myself," Stone said.

He denied prosecutors' accusation that he repeatedly lied to the House Intelligence Committee, including when he said he had not discussed his pursuit of the stolen emails with any Trump campaign officials. Stone has previously denied that he ever bullied other witnesses to change their testimony, which is another allegation he faces.

Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame law professor and former Justice Department official, said that so far Mueller's Russian defendants stand accused of one set of crimes and the American ones accused of separate violations, without direct evidence linking the two. But, he said, the repeated allegations of lies and false statements might speak to a "consciousness of guilt" that could pique a prosecutor's interest and suggest more grounds to pursue.

"I do think that it's more than just coincidental that there's all of these communications between multiple members of the Trump campaign and Russians, and efforts by members of the Trump campaign to cover up and conceal" those communications, he said.
Senators left a closed-door briefing with Trump administration officials Monday deeply frustrated by the lack of new information on the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, with some raising the prospect of placing new sanctions on the government of Saudi Arabia.

Lawmakers had instructed President Donald Trump to order an investigation into Khashoggi's killing by invoking the Global Magnitsky Act. The request was made in October, which gave the president 120 days to respond. But the White House declined to submit a report by the deadline, angering members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the panel, called the briefing "a farce" and said Trump still needs to give Congress an answer.

"The law's very clear, there needed to be a determination," Menendez said.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said the briefing Monday contained "zero" new information. He criticized the lack of an intelligence official among the briefers, a move he described as "purposeful."

"They don't want us to have a conversation about the intelligence," he said, referring to the White House. "These folks had no new information and were not permitted to give us any new information."

Khashoggi, a writer for The Washington Post, was killed in a Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul last year by Saudi agents. The Saudi government said the slaying was carried out by rogue operatives and denied Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had any involvement.

Lawmakers have said they believe the Saudi crown prince ordered the killing, but Trump has been reluctant to place blame.

Absent a determination from Trump, Menendez said the Senate has to do something, "unless it is willing to accept the death of a U.S. resident, a journalist."

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, another member of the committee, said, "The Senate will have to decide if it's going to impose its own sanctions"

The dispute over Khashoggi's death comes at a point of rising tensions between the White House and Congress over the U.S.-Saudi relationship, fueled in part by the Trump administration's involvement in Yemen's civil war. With U.S. weapons and logistical support, Saudi Arabia is fighting a protracted war in the country, creating the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

After Khashoggi's death last year, the Senate passed a resolution with an overwhelming majority calling for the U.S. to end its support for the Yemen campaign, though that resolution did not pass the House. The Senate is expected to take up the issue again in the coming weeks, reviving the debate.

While it's unclear if the Yemen resolution can again pass the Senate, members of both parties made clear they aren't moving on from Khashoggi. Sen. Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a statement pledging the investigation would continue.

"We will not let it go," he said.

The Global Magnitsky Act of 2016 makes it possible to impose entry bans and targeted sanctions on individuals for committing human rights violations or acts of significant corruption.
A young man from Louisiana has confessed to killing his parents, his girlfriend, and two of her family members who had taken him in after he was kicked out of his house, authorities said Tuesday.

Dakota Theriot, 21, told authorities he used a gun he stole from his father, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard said at a news conference. He said while Theriot was cooperating and had provided authorities with a lot of information about how the killings unfolded, they still haven't determined exactly why the killings happened.

"We don't really know what the motive is. We just know what he did," Ard said.

Authorities have said Theriot shot and killed three people  Summer Ernest, 20, his girlfriend; and Ernest's brother and father  in Livingston Parish, then drove her father's pickup truck to Ascension Parish, where he shot his parents. He then drove to his grandmother's house in Warsaw, Virginia, where he was arrested on Sunday morning, Ard and Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webre said.

Theriot is due in court on Friday in Virginia for an extradition hearing and will eventually be sent back to Louisiana to face multiple murder charges. Detectives from Louisiana went to Virginia and questioned him, the sheriffs said.

In addition to Summer Ernest, the victims have been identified as Billy Ernest, 43; Tanner Ernest, 17; and Theriot's parents, Keith Theriot and Elizabeth Theriot, both 50.

Summer Ernest and Dakota Theriot had only been dating for a couple of weeks, and he was living with her family for about the same amount of time after his parents kicked him out, Ard said.

The sheriff said that just a short time before the shootings, Theriot tagged along with Billy Ernest as he drove his wife to work early Saturday morning.

Summer Ernest and her father and brother were each shot once in the head, Ard said. Autopsies on Theriot's parents were to be done Tuesday, Webre said.

Keith Theriot survived the shooting long enough to call 911, and when deputies arrived he told them just before he died that his son had shot him, the authorities said.

Two children were in the Ernest home in Livingston Parish  a 7-year-old and a 1-year-old  Ard said. They went to a neighbor's house and the neighbor called law enforcement.

Theriot's grandmother had checked into a hotel Saturday night in Virginia, fearing he might show up there, Richmond County Sheriff Stephan B. Smith said in a phone interview. The woman asked authorities to check her house Sunday morning to ensure it was safe before she returned.

While deputies were there, Smith said, Theriot drove up with a firearm pointed out the window of a pickup. A sheriff's statement said deputies sought cover and challenged Theriot, who then dropped the gun and was arrested without incident. Smith said the pickup Theriot drove apparently was the one taken in Louisiana.

Authorities have said Theriot had some run-ins with law enforcement previously in other parishes but described those as misdemeanor-type incidents that did not include violence.

But people who lived with Keith and Elizabeth Theriot said their son had struggled with drugs over the years and had violent outbursts, and the relationship between him and Summer Ernest had raised red flags with her family and friends.

If Theriot doesn't fight extradition, he could be back in Louisiana by Friday or Saturday, said Webre, who added that he would not oppose the death penalty if prosecutors asked for it.

"We know what happened here," Webre said. "He killed five people. So, this is a monster."
A Massachusetts woman napping on a couch was awoken by a pickup truck that crashed into her house and just missed hitting her by inches on Thursday, according to Templeton police.

"Thank God I have my guardian angels watching over me," said Tracy Samuels, the woman on the couch.

At approximately 11:22 a.m., police received multiple 911 calls reporting a vehicle collision into a house at 315 State Rd. An investigation determined a pickup truck driven by Simon Quero-Luna of Gardner, Massachusetts, veered off the road and collided with the house, according to police.

"I got up and I went, 'Oh my God, what in the world is going on?'" Samuels said. "I turned and I looked and I went 'why is there a pickup truck in my living room?'"

The truck traveled through the entire length of the house and collided with a parked vehicle in the driveway on the opposite side of the house before the truck came to a stop.

Samuels said Quero-Luna got out of the truck and started running around.

"He turned around and he saw me and went, 'Oh my God, are you OK?' and I said, 'Yeah, I'm fine, are you OK? she recounted.

Miraculously, nobody was injured, but the house sustained major structural damage and was condemned by the Templeton building inspector.

Life throws you a curveball. Throws you a lemon. Do what you need to do. Try to keep an upbeat attitude," Samuels said. "And as for Christmas? Its a day. Its a day you spend with your friends and family. Thats what Im gonna do.

The incident is being investigated by Templeton police.
President Donald Trump avoided directly answering when asked whether he currently is or has ever worked for Russia after a published report said law enforcement officials, concerned about his behavior after he fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, had begun investigating that possibility.

Trump said it was the "most insulting" question he'd ever been asked.

The New York Times report Friday cited unnamed former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

Trump responded to the story Saturday during a telephone interview broadcast on Fox News Channel after host Jeanine Pirro, a personal friend, asked the Russia question.

"I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked," Trump said. "I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written, and if you read the article you'll see that they found absolutely nothing."

Trump never answered Pirro directly, but went on to assert that no president has taken a harder stance against Russia than he has.

"If you ask the folks in Russia, I've been tougher on Russia than anybody else, any other ... probably any other president, period, but certainly the last three or four presidents."

Trump's claim was disputed by Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said almost all the sanctions on Russia arose not in the White House but in Congress, due to concerns by members of both parties about Moscow's actions. Warner accused the White House of being very slow to put in place the penalties.

And while Republican lawmakers have reiterated the same claims that Trump has been tougher on Russia than his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, Sen. Ted Cruz said Sunday that as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee he would consider any evidence produced but did not know details about the probe.

"I know what was reported publicly in the media, and I sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, so we will consider any allegations that come forward," Cruz told "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd in response to a question about the Times report.

The Times reported that FBI agents and some top officials became suspicious of Trump's ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign but didn't open an investigation at that time because they weren't sure how to approach such a sensitive probe.

Trump's behavior in the days around Comey's May 2017 firing helped trigger the counterintelligence part of the probe, according to the newspaper.

In the inquiry, counterintelligence investigators sought to evaluate whether Trump was a potential threat to national security. They also sought to determine whether Trump was deliberately working for Russia or had unintentionally been influenced by Moscow.

Trump tweeted early Saturday that the report showed that the FBI leadership "opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof" after he had fired Comey.

Robert Mueller took over the investigation when he was appointed special counsel soon after Comey's firing. The overall investigation is looking into Russian election interference and whether Trump's campaign coordinated with the Russians, as well as possible obstruction of justice by Trump. The Times says it's unclear whether Mueller is still pursuing the counterintelligence angle.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said the report "may well suggest what it was that helped start this investigation in the first place." He and other Democratic senators said this report and others within the past week questioning Trump's behavior toward Russia give new urgency to the need for the Mueller investigation to be allowed to run its course.

A new report in The Washington Post said Trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin even from high-ranking officials in his own administration. The report cited unnamed current and former U.S. officials.

In the Fox News interview, Trump questioned why the newspaper made such a "big deal" out of his discussions with Putin in Helsinki last summer. "Anybody could have listened to that meeting, that meeting is up for grabs."

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., defended the president, who he said was "burned earlier by leaks of other private conversations."

Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani told the Times he had no knowledge of the counterintelligence inquiry but said that since it was opened a year and a half ago and they hadn't heard anything, apparently "they found nothing."

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is close to Trump and chairs the Judiciary Committee, said he intends to ask the FBI director if there was a counterintelligence investigation into the president. "If this really did happen, Congress needs to know about it and what I want to do is make sure how could the FBI do that?"

Trump has repeatedly and vociferously denied collusion with the Russians.

Also Sunday, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he will force a vote in the coming days on the Treasury Department's decision to ease sanctions on three companies connected to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin last week defended the decision, saying the companies are undergoing a major restructuring to "sever Deripaska's control and significantly diminish his ownership." He saids Deripaska himself and any companies he controls remain under sanctions.

Schumer, however, contends the Russian oligarch maintains significant influence on these companies, including the aluminum manufacturing giant Rusal, and said it's important the sanctions remain in place while Mueller's investigation proceeds. Deripaska has figured into the investigation due to his ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Warner predicted some Republicans in the GOP-controlled Senate would join Democrats in voting to override the removal of these sanctions.

Warner and Johnson spoke on CNN's "State of the Union," while Coons and Graham appeared on "Fox News Sunday."

___

Associated Press writer Lynn Berry contributed to this report.
Kim Jong Un was not responsible for horrific injuries sustained by American student Otto Warmbier, who died shortly after being released from 17 months of detention in North Korea, President Donald Trump said Thursday at a press conference after the nuclear summit in Hanoi collapsed, according to NBC News.

"Some really bad things happened to Otto  some really really bad things. But he tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word," Trump said, referring to the North Korean dictator.

Warmbier, 22, was arrested for taking a propaganda banner from a hotel while on a visit to Pyongyang in January 2016. The University of Virginia student from Ohio was later sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

Warmbier's father Fred described his son being returned to them on a stretcher blind, deaf and "jerking violently making these inhuman sounds." Otto died days after his release.

North Korea is one of the world's worst rights abusers and most repressive governments.
President Donald Trump is trying to manage expectations for his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, predicting a "continuation of the progress" made last time.

Trump tweeted Sunday that he was leaving early the next day for the meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, adding a tantalizing nod to "Denuclearization?" He also said Kim knows that "without nuclear weapons, his country could fast become one of the great economic powers anywhere in the World."

Their first meeting, in Singapore in June, produced a vaguely worded commitment from North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. Heading into this week's summit, Trump has said that North Korea has not tested any nuclear weapons in months and that as long as that testing has ceased, he's in no rush.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on "Fox News Sunday" that he was hoping for a "substantive step forward." But, he cautioned, "it may not happen, but I hope that it will."

"President Trump has also said this is going to take time. There may have to be another summit. We may not get everything done this week," Pompeo said.

Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who serves on the Senate foreign relations committee, expressed concerns about Trump's negotiating efforts Sunday on CBS, saying the president must be "careful" with what he offers.

Said Markey: "Nothing is clear, and I think as a result we could run the risk that Kim is given concessions which are not accompanied by real concessions that the United States is receiving in return from Kim and his regime."

Trump pushed back against his critics on Twitter Sunday, saying: "So funny to watch people who have failed for years, they got NOTHING, telling me how to negotiate with North Korea. But thanks anyway!"

Pompeo said he hoped to put a "road map" in place, but would not discuss the possibility of declaring a formal end to the Korean War or pulling some American troops from South Korea, in keeping with his stand against publicly discussing issue that could arise during the negotiations.

Pompeo said he believes North Korea remains a nuclear threat, though Trump tweeted after the Singapore summit that "there is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea."

Pompeo told CNN's "State of the Union" that the commitment Kim made "had substantially taken down the risk to the American people."

Speaking on CNN, Pompeo also said "verifiable denuclearization" remained the administration's goal, and he insisted the administration has not changed the conditions for sanctions relief.
President Donald Trump's surprise trip to Iraq may have quieted criticism at home that he had yet to visit troops in a combat zone, but it has infuriated Iraqi politicians who on Thursday demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

"Arrogant" and an "a violation of national sovereignty" were but a few examples of the criticism emanating from Baghdad following Trump's meeting Wednesday with U.S. servicemen and women at the al-Asad Airbase.

Trips by U.S. presidents to conflict zones are typically shrouded in secrecy and subject to strict security measures, and Trump's was no exception. Few in Iraq or elsewhere knew the U.S. president was in the country until minutes before he left again.

But this trip came as came curbing foreign influence in Iraqi affairs has become a hot-button political issue, and Trump's perceived presidential faux-pas was failing to meet with the prime minister in a break with diplomatic custom for any visiting head of state.

On the ground for only about three hours, the American president told the men and women with the U.S. military that Islamic State forces have been vanquished, and he defended his decision against all advice to withdraw U.S. troops from neighboring Syria, He declared: "We're no longer the suckers, folks."

The abruptness of his visit left lawmakers in Baghdad smarting and drawing unfavorable comparisons to the occupation of Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

"Trump needs to know his limits. The American occupation of Iraq is over," said Sabah al-Saidi, the head of one of two main blocs in Iraq's parliament.

Trump, he said, had slipped into Iraq, "as though Iraq is a state of the United States."

While Trump didn't meet with any officials, he spoke with Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi by phone after a "difference in points of view" over arrangements led to a face-to-face encounter between the two leaders getting scrapped, according to the prime minister's office.

The visit could have unintended consequences for American policy, with officials from both sides of Iraq's political divide calling for a vote in Parliament to expel U.S. forces from the country.

The president, who kept to the U.S. air base approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Baghdad, said he had no plans to withdraw the 5,200 troops in the country. He said Ain al-Asad could be used for U.S. air strikes inside Syria.

The suggestion ran counter to the current sentiment of Iraqi politics, which favors claiming sovereignty over foreign and domestic policy and staying above the fray in regional conflicts.

"Iraq should not be a platform for the Americans to settle their accounts with either the Russians or the Iranians in the region," said Hakim al-Zamili, a senior lawmaker in al-Saidi's Islah bloc in Parliament.

U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq as part of the coalition against the Islamic State group. American forces withdrew in 2011 after invading in 2003 but returned in 2014 at the invitation of the Iraqi government to help fight the jihadist group. Trump's visit was the first by a U.S. president since Barack Obama met with then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at a U.S. base outside Baghdad in 2009.

Still, after defeating IS militants in their last urban bastions last year, Iraqi politicians and militia leaders are speaking out against the continued presence of U.S. forces on Iraqi soil.

Supporters of the populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr won big in national elections in May, campaigning on a platform to curb U.S. and rival Iranian involvement in Iraqi affairs. Al-Sadr's lawmakers now form the core of the Islah bloc, which is headed by al-Saidi in Parliament.

The rival Binaa bloc, commanded by politicians and militia leaders close to Iran, also does not favor the U.S.

Qais Khazali, the head of the Iran-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia that fought key battles against IS in northern Iraq, promised on Twitter that Parliament would vote to expel U.S. forces from Iraq, or the militias would force them out by "other means."

Khazali was jailed by British and U.S. forces from 2007 to 2010 for managing sections of the Shia insurgency against the occupation during those years.

Trump's visit would be a "great moral boost to the political parties, armed factions, and others who oppose the American presence in Iraq," Iraqi political analyst Ziad al-Arar said.

Still, the U.S. and Iraq developed considerable military and intelligence ties in the war against IS, and they continue to pay off in operations against militants gone into hiding.

Earlier in the month, Iraqi forces called in an airstrike by U.S.-coalition forces to destroy a tunnel used by IS militants in the Atshanah mountains in north Iraq. Four militants were killed, according to the coalition.

A hasty departure of U.S. forces would jeopardize such arrangements, said Iraqi analyst Hamza Mustafa.

Relations between the U.S. and Iraq also extend beyond military ties. U.S. companies have considerable interests in Iraq's petrochemical industry, and American diplomats are often brokers between Iraq's fractious political elite.

Iraq's Sunni politicians have been largely quiet about the presidential visit, reflecting the ties they have cultivated with the U.S. to counterbalance the might of the country's Iran-backed and predominantly-Shiite militias.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Abdul-Mahdi accepted Trump's invitation to the White House during their call, though the Prime Minister's office has so far refused to confirm that.

Associated Press reporters Ahmed Sami and Ali Jabar contributed.
British Home Secretary Sajid Javid faced criticism Saturday after the death of a U.K. teenager's baby in a Syrian camp.

Shamima Begum, who had left London as a 15-year-old in 2015 to join the Islamic State group, had pleaded with British authorities before her baby was born to let her return to Britain to raise the child.

But Javid revoked her passport, saying Begum hadn't shown any remorse. The teen had told newspaper reporters she didn't have a problem with ISIS actions, including the beheading of captives.

Begum's infant son died Friday. Begum's family said the boy appeared to be in good health when he was born on Feb. 17. No clear cause of death has yet been given, but reports suggested he was having respiratory problems.

Fellow Conservative Party lawmaker Phillip Lee said Saturday he was "deeply concerned" by Javid's handling of the case, suggesting he had taken a hard line in order to please populists.

He said it was clear 19-year-old Begum "holds abhorrent views," but called her a child who was a product of British society. Britain had a moral duty to her and to her baby, he said.

When Begum first started speaking to reporters more than three weeks ago, she said the first two children she had given birth to since joining the extremist group had died of malnutrition and other ailments. She said she wanted to come home so she didn't lose another child.

Her predicament sparked a national debate on how the U.K. should handle Britons who had joined the extremists and now seek to return because ISIS has lost its territory in Syria and Iraq.

The challenge faces other European countries as the final ISIS stronghold in Syria is on the brink of falling, giving its fighters and their often youthful spouses no place left to hide.

U.S. President Donald Trump weighed in on the matter last month, saying European countries have a responsibility to take back and put on trial about 800 ISIS fighters who have been captured by U.S.-backed forces in Syria.

Begum is married to a Dutch national who joined ISIS extremists and has since been taken into custody. He said last week that he wanted to be able to live in the Netherlands with his wife and newborn son, who is now dead.

Kirsty McNeill, a director at Save the Children UK, said Britain should "take responsibility for their citizens" in Syria to prevent further unnecessary losses.

"It is possible the death of this baby boy and others could have been avoided," she said.

Javid didn't comment directly on the baby's death. A government spokesman said "the death of any child is tragic" and reiterated the British government's advice that citizens avoid travel to Syria.
 Flash

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that the United States will "re-engage" with Kim Jong Un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), over issues of mutual concern.

Pompeo made the remarks in an interview with B98 FM, a radio station of the U.S. state of Kansas via teleconference.

"We believe we're still moving forward. It's certainly difficult - we knew it would be. It's been a decades-long challenge," he said, according to the interview transcript circulated by the State Department.

"But we have the toughest economic sanctions in history," Pompeo said, adding that there was the most promising diplomatic engagement in history as well.

"And so we made a little bit more progress in Hanoi," he said, referring to the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and the DPRK top leader.

"We'll re-engage with him. It's incredibly important that we take down the threat not only for America and for Kansas, but for the entire world," said the U.S. top diplomat.

Pompeo said on Friday that Washington is still hopeful for continued talks with Pyongyang, confirming that there is ongoing negotiation between the two sides.

After ending the summit in Hanoi on Feb. 28 without reaching an agreement, Trump told a press conference that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of the DPRK's nuclear program, something the United States could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that DPRK only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.
The Trump administration imposed sanctions Friday on six high-ranking members of the Venezuelan security forces and revoked the visas of other officials and their relatives in the latest effort to pressure President Nicolas Maduro into leaving office.

The sanctions are in response to the blocking of humanitarian aid convoys last week while the visa revocations on "numerous" individuals are intended to punish people who have flourished amid the South American country's dire economic crisis, Elliott Abrams, the special representative for Venezuela, told reporters.

"Maduro supporters that abuse or violate human rights, steal from the Venezuelan people or undermine Venezuela's democracy are not welcome in the United States," Abrams said. "Neither are their family members who enjoy a privileged lifestyle at the expense of the liberty and prosperity of millions of Venezuelans."

The measures were the latest by the Trump administration to increase the international pressure on Maduro, whose re-election last year is seen as illegitimate, to resign and turn power over to the opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has been recognized by the U.S. and 50 other government as interim president.

Abrams declined to release the names, or even the number, of people whose travel visas are being revoked, citing privacy regulations. He said the list included "dozens" of Venezuelans who could be subject to deportation if they are in the country.

The U.S. already has travel bans on other high-ranking Venezuelan officials connected to Maduro who are accused of committing human rights abuses or corruption.

Separately, the Treasury Department imposed financial sanctions on six officials from the National Guard and police who are allied with Maduro and played a role in closing Venezuela's borders with Brazil and Colombia to prevent assistance from countries opposed to his continued rule from entering.

Maduro's forces fired tear gas and buckshot on activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid in violent clashes on Feb. 23, leaving two people dead and about 300 injured.

Friday's action targets six security officials "who control many of the groups that prevented humanitarian aid from entering Venezuela, thereby exacerbating the humanitarian crisis that has left millions of Venezuelans starving and without access to medical care under the Maduro regime," Treasury said in a statement.

The sanctions block any assets they have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from conducting financial transactions with them.

Those targeted are Richard Jesus Lopez, the commander of Venezuela's National Guard; Jesus Maria Mantilla, the commander of Venezuela's Strategic Integral Defense Region Guayana; Alberto Mirtiliano Bermudez, the general in charge of Venezuela's Integral Defense Zone in Bolivar State, which borders Brazil; Jose Leonardo Noronom, the general in charge of Venezuela's Integral Defense Zone in Tachira State, which borders Colombia; Jose Miguel Dominguez, a national police commander in Tachira; and Cristhiam Abelardo Morales, another commander in Tachira.

The men are part of security forces that have remained loyal to Maduro and are essential to his hold on power of the once-prosperous country.

Guaido had announced that last weekend's attempt to deliver U.S.-supplied humanitarian aid from Colombia into Venezuela would be politically decisive, but Maduro called the aid part of a scheme to overthrow his government.

Maduro has denounced his opponents as killers and criminals in fiery speeches reminiscent of the style of his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez.
For decades, women have had few choices when it comes to the clothing they can wear to hide that they're carrying a firearm. They could wear baggy T-shirts or coats, or put it in a purse and hope it didn't get swiped or that they didn't have trouble getting it out in an emergency.

Enter holsters, corsets, camisoles and other clothing designed to be flattering, feminine  and functional  for the pistol-packin' mama crowd.

"I don't want to dress in tactical gear and camo all the time. I love tactical clothing for the range. It's comfortable. I don't want to ruin my everyday clothing," said Marilyn Smolenski, who in 2012 created Nickel and Lace, a company that caters to women who want to carry a firearm concealed but don't want to trade in their femininity. "But I don't want to wear it to the grocery store."

Smolenski started her company right around the time when Chicago city laws changed and she could again legally carry a firearm. When that happened, she struggled to find something that didn't make her look frumpy and didn't broadcast that she was packing heat. Most of the clothing was geared to men  coats with hidden pockets, or holsters that tuck neatly inside a waistband. But until the last few years, those weren't always great options for women who don't wear belts as frequently and are more likely than men to wear form-fitting clothing, making it difficult to hide the fact they're carrying a firearm.

"When you put a man's holster on a woman's body it sticks out. It doesn't hug the body," said Carrie Lightfoot, founder and owner of The Well Armed Woman in Scottsdale, Arizona, which does everything from providingfirearms instruction to women to selling a variety of concealed carry clothing. One of her company's first missions was to design and produce a holster that recognized the differences in body types and clothing styles between men and women.

Women's waists tend to be shorter, providing less room to withdraw a gun from a holster. Hips and chests can get in the way too, she said.

Lightfoot and Smolenski said that some manufacturers tended to "shrink it and pink it"  thinking that taking gear produced for men and making it smaller and brightly colored would satisfy female customers. They and their counterparts emphasize they are driven first by function and safety before aesthetics come into the equation.

"Women need to know they can carry effectively," Lightfoot said. "I think the key is finding a way to carry it so you can be comfortable and move through your day without being poked and having a big hunk of metal in your pants and not be able to sit at work."

Both also are advocates for providing women with information and guidance on ways to feel secure and be safe. For Smolenski, that goal has led to the creation of the annual Firearms and Fashion Show which includes seminars on personal safety. Her company actually got its start with a line of jewelry  from necklaces that can be pulled away easily and then used as a weapon to "chopsticks" that can both be used to hold up hair and then be wielded against an attacker.

For Anna Taylor, the founder and CEO of Dene Adams LLC  named after her grandfather, who first taught her to respect firearms and handle them safely  the road to creating a line of concealed carry clothing began at around the time she became a single mom and the safety of the family rested on her shoulders. When she got her first concealed carry permit in 2013, she went through seven different holsters.

"Some were hard and uncomfortable. Some of them I'd have to take off and set down when I went to the bathroom and I was afraid I would go off and leave it just like I've left my phone behind before. Others, belly band types with a print so bad you could see the grip or outline of the gun through my clothes," Adams said. "So when I went out in public, I felt like I had these awkward arms always trying to hide this thing."

Her first design involved a mousepad and a post-partem corset to create a soft holster. She was able to carry the kids around, nurse, give the kids baths  even jump on the trampoline  "and I could forget that it was there." With her last $200, she found a manufacturer willing to do a small run. Flash forward three years and she now has products on shelves at nearly 100 dealers around the country. She has expanded into safety and training and is now an NRA pistol and rifle instructor. She even has a few men who buy her products  including, she said, air marshals, who gravitate to the snug, comfortable designs.

"We have options that don't have lace. We have solid black," she said.
The partial government shutdown became the longest closure in U.S. history when the clock ticked past midnight into early Saturday as President Donald Trump and nervous Republicans scrambled to find a way out of the mess.

A solution couldn't come soon enough for federal workers who got pay statements Friday but no pay.

The House and Senate voted to give federal workers back pay whenever the federal government reopens and then left town for the weekend, leaving the shutdown on track to become one for the record books once the clock struck midnight and the closure entered its 22nd day. And while Trump privately considered one dramatic escape route  declaring a national emergency to build the wall without a new stream of cash from Congress  members of his own party were fiercely debating that idea, and the president urged Congress to come up with another solution.

"What we're not looking to do right now is a national emergency," Trump said. He insisted that he had the authority to do that, adding that he's "not going to do it so fast" because he'd still prefer to work a deal with Congress.

About 800,000 workers missed paychecks Friday, many receiving blank pay statements. Some posted photos of their empty earnings statements on social media as a rallying cry to end the shutdown, a jarring image that many in the White House feared could turn more voters against the president as he holds out for billions in new wall funding.

With polls showing Trump getting most of the blame for the shutdown, the administration accelerated planning for a possible emergency declaration to try to get around Congress and fund the wall from existing sources of federal revenue. The White House explored diverting money for wall construction from a range of other accounts. One idea being considered was diverting some of the $13.9 billion allocated to the Army Corps of Engineers after last year's deadly hurricanes and floods.

That option triggered an outcry from officials in Puerto Rico and some states recovering from natural disasters, and appeared to lose steam on Friday.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called it an "unconscionable" idea to look at using disaster assistance "to pay for an immoral wall that America doesn't need or want."

Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas told reporters after discussions with the White House: "I feel confident disaster relief dollars will not be tapped." Brady said the administration was looking at the "breadth" of unspent dollars in other government accounts.

Other possibilities included tapping asset forfeiture funds, including money seized by the Department of Justice from drug kingpins, according to a congressional Republican not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. The White House also was eyeing military construction funds, another politically difficult choice because the money would be diverted from a backlog of hundreds of projects at bases around the nation.

Despite Trump's go-slow message, momentum grew in some corners for some sort of emergency declaration. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who met with the president on Friday, took to Twitter afterward to urge: "Mr. President, Declare a national emergency NOW. Build a wall NOW."

Trump has been counseled by outside advisers to move toward a national emergency declaration, but many in the White House are trying to pump the brakes. Senior aide Jared Kushner, who traveled with the president to the Texas border on Thursday, was among those opposed to the declaration, arguing to the president that pursuing a broader immigration deal was a better option. A person familiar with White House thinking said that in meetings this week, the message was that the administration is in no rush and wants to consider various options. The person was unauthorized to discuss private sessions and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has signaled moral opposition to the wall and vowed to oppose any funding, said the president is seeking to divert attention from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and other White House problems.

"This isn't a wall between Mexico and the United States. This is a wall between his failures of his administration," Pelosi told reporters. "This is a big diversion, and he's a master of diversion."

Pelosi sent a letter to colleagues late Friday thanking House Democrats for passing bills to reopen shuttered departments and agencies. Pelosi said there's "no excuse for President Trump to keep government shut down over his demands for an ineffective, wasteful wall." She said he's "endangering the health and safety of the American people and stealing paychecks from 800,000 innocent workers" over the shutdown.

Although Trump has been frustrated with aides as he loses the public relations battle over the shutdown, White House attempts to use the trappings of the presidency to buttress his case for the wall have yielded mixed results in the president's view.

Trump has long avoided using the Oval Office as a backdrop for his speeches, telling aides that previous presidents looked stilted and "flat" in the standard, straight-ahead camera angle. But he was persuaded that the seriousness of the moment warranted the Oval Office for his speech to the nation this week about the fight over the border wall.

But since Tuesday night's address, Trump has complained that he looked lifeless and boring, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. The president also expressed misgivings about his visit to the border, believing it would do little to change anyone's mind.

In a Friday morning tweet, Trump called illegal immigration on the southern border "an invasion," even though border crossings have declined in recent years. Later, he tried to blame Democrats for the shutdown, claiming he's flexible about the needed barrier.

"I don't care what they name it," Trump said. "They can name it 'peaches.'"

Trump has told advisers he believes the fight for the wall  even if it never yields the requested funding  is a political win for him.

But some of his outside advisers have urged him to declare a national emergency, believing it would have two benefits: First, it would allow him to claim that he was the one to act to reopen the government. Second, inevitable legal challenges would send the matter to court, allowing Trump to continue the fight for the wall  and continue to excite his supporters  while not actually closing the government or immediately requiring him to start construction.

Such a move could put Republicans in a bind. While it might end the standoff over funding and allow Congress to move onto other priorities, some Republicans believe such a declaration would usurp congressional power and could lead future Democratic presidents to make similar moves to advance liberal priorities.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who speaks to Trump frequently, said that unless Republicans and Democrats strike an unlikely compromise, "I fully expect him to declare a national emergency."

"Most conservatives want it to be the last resort he would use," Meadows said. "But those same conservatives, I'm sure if it's deployed, would embrace him as having done all he could do to negotiate with Democrats."

In a sign of growing unease, five GOP senators backed a bill from Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to resume paychecks for some 420,000 federal employees who are now working without pay during the shutdown.

Many Democrats, meanwhile, say they have little reason to give into Trump's demand for border wall funding since taking control of the House in the midterm elections.

"The American people gave us the majority based on our comprehensive approach to this problem and they rejected President Trump's," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
The Trump administration is weighing using a national emergency declaration to circumvent Congress and the budget stalemate and force construction of the president's long-promised southern border wall.

"We're looking at a national emergency because we have a national emergency," President Donald Trump told reporters Sunday amid stalled negotiations. He said during a press conference Friday that he would prefer to win the money he's demanding via Congress, but could "absolutely" call an emergency "and build it very quickly."

Vice President Mike Pence told NBC News in an interview that aired Tuesday that Trump hasn't yet determined if he would declare the emergency

Such a move would be a dramatic escalation of the current showdown, which has forced a partial government shutdown that's now in its third week. Here's what we know:

WHY AN EMERGENCY DECLARATION?

The administration has spent months trying to figure out how the president might be able to move forward with the wall  the central promise of his 2016 campaign  if Congress refuses to give him the money.

As early as last March, Trump was publicly floating the idea of using the military for the task. "Building a great Border Wall, with drugs (poison) and enemy combatants pouring into our Country, is all about National Defense. Build WALL through M!" he tweeted then.

But it's Congress  not the president  that controls the country's purse strings and must appropriate money he wants to spend.

Enter the emergency declaration, an option the White House counsel's office is currently reviewing. Among the laws Trump could turn to is Section 2808 of the Title 10 U.S. Code pertaining to military construction.

According to the statute, if the president declares an emergency "that requires use of the armed forces," the defense secretary "may undertake military construction projects, and may authorize the Secretaries of the military departments to undertake military construction projects, not otherwise authorized by law that are necessary to support such use of the armed forces."

Pentagon budget officials are analyzing the 2019 construction budget to determine how many unobligated dollars would be available to use for the wall if Trump settles on a declaration. Under the provision, only those construction budget funds that are not already obligated to other construction projects could be used for the wall.

There are more than 100 such provisions giving the president access to special powers in emergencies. And Congress has typically afforded the president broad authority to determine what constitutes an emergency and what does not, said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

"Absolutely it's an abuse of power for the president to declare a national emergency when none exists and to use it to try to get around the democratic process," she said. "But we are in a situation where our legal system for emergency powers almost invites that kind of abuse."

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN?

Such a move is sure to spark a flood of legal challenges questioning the president's authority as well as whether the situation at the border really constitutes an emergency. Trump has been trying to press that case in recent days, insisting the situation qualifies as a security and humanitarian "crisis."

He'll also run into other questions.

"The problem for the Trump administration is that border security is fundamentally a law enforcement issue that does not require the use of the military," said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, via email. "So I think they would be on shaking legal ground trying to use emergency authorities this way, and it is almost certain that they would end up in court."

Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it would be inappropriate for Trump to use Section 2808.

"We are not at war with Mexico, and the proposed border wall has no core (Defense Department) function. Indeed, the Pentagon's most recent National Defense Strategy doesn't mention the southern border as a national defense priority," said Reed, D-R.I.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, speaking on CNN, said that even if Trump could declare an emergency, it would be a "huge mistake."

"There clearly is no national emergency. But they asked me, 'Can he do it?' Yeah he can. It would be wrong, it would be horrible policy and I'm totally and completely against it. But from a legal standpoint he can do it," said Smith, D-Wash.

He and others agreed that any declaration would surely be challenged in court.

SO WILL HE DO IT?

It's unclear. Back when Trump dispatched active-duty troops to the southern border ahead of the midterm elections in what critics panned as a politically-motivated abuse of power, he described the situation as a "national emergency," but never signed an official proclamation.

But Trump is now under growing pressure to find a way to end the shutdown without appearing as though he's caved on the wall.

Trump "needs to use every tool available to him as the commander-in-chief of our armed services to go and enforce our laws by putting the military on our southern border, by having them build the wall if they need to," his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski urged on Fox News.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president remains "prepared to do what it takes to protect our borders, to protect the people of this country."

"We're looking and exploring every option available that the president has," she said.

Associated Press National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.
Uber riders in Pittsburgh can get a glimpse of the future by summoning a car capable of handling most of the tasks of driving on its own.

Starting Wednesday morning, a fleet of self-driving Ford Fusions will pick up Uber riders who opted to participate in a test program. While the vehicles are loaded with features that allow them to navigate on their own, an Uber engineer will sit in the driver's seat and seize control if things go awry.

Uber's test program is the latest move in an increasingly heated race between tech companies in Silicon Valley and traditional automakers to perfect fully driverless cars for regular people. Competitors such as Volvo and Google have invested hundreds of millions of dollars and logged millions of miles test driving autonomous vehicles, but Uber is the first company in the U.S. to make self-driving cars available to the general public.

"That pilot really pushes the ball forward for us," said Raffi Krikorian, Director of Uber Advanced Technologies Center (ATC) in Pittsburgh, the company's main facility for testing self-driving vehicles. "We think it can help with congestion, we think it can make transportation cheaper and more accessible for the vast majority of people."

Removing the cost of the driver is one way to make rides more affordable. But that prospect didn't sit well with some Uber customers.

"It scares me not to have a driver there with an Uber," said Claudia Tyler, a health executive standing near the entrance of an office in downtown Pittsburgh.

A reporter from The Associated Press tried out the service Monday. The ride through downtown Pittsburgh and over some bridges went smoothly, with the car waiting for oncoming traffic before making a turn and at one point stopping for a vehicle that was backing into a parking space. Parking, however, was a task the human driver had to perform.

Approaches to driverless technology differ. Google, a unit of Alphabet, and Ford Motor Co. want to perfect the fully driverless car  no steering wheel, no pedals  before letting the public climb in for a ride. Others are adding autonomous features in phases, while relying on the driver to take over in certain circumstances.

Many experts predict that it will be years, if not decades, before the public is being driven around in fleets of fully driverless vehicles under any condition.

"Because vehicles are driving at seventy miles per hour on the highway, if something goes wrong, things could go wrong very bad, very quickly," said Carnegie Mellon engineering Professor Raj Rajkumar. "This technology needs to be ultra-reliable before we can take the human out of the driving equation."

NuTonomy, a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, got the jump on Uber globally three weeks ago when it began picking up passengers in self-driving taxis in Singapore. The company said Tuesday that its six taxis  with backup drivers  haven't had any accidents since the service launched.

The Uber vehicles are equipped with everything from seven traffic-light detecting cameras to a radar system that detects different weather conditions to 20 spinning lasers that generates a continuous, 360 degree 3-D map of the surrounding environment.

During the demonstration for reporters two engineers were seated in front  one ready to take control in case the car encountered a situation it couldn't handle, the other monitoring the car's 3D map and scribbling notes on how to improve the car's software. The engineers must undergo a week of safety orientation or more to drive the cars, with additional training as the vehicles continue to be refined.

Pittsburgh is a particularly good place to experiment, they said, because the city is a research hub of self-driving cars and has notoriously bad driving conditions, including snowstorms, rolling hills and a tangled network of aging roads and bridges. Uber executives are watching to see how the cars handle these challenges before saying when fully driverless vehicles will be ready to hit the roads.

"We actually think of Pittsburgh as the double black diamond of driving," Krikorian said. "If we can really tackle Pittsburgh, that we have a better chance of tackling most other cities around the world."

Pennsylvania also lacks stringent testing regulations at the moment, unlike other driverless car-testing venues such as California. The Uber trial is perfectly legal under current state law, Pennsylvania officials said.

"There's no requirement that you be touching the steering wheel," said Kurt J. Myers, deputy secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. "But there is a requirement that you are a licensed driver and that you are in the driver's seat."

A task force commissioned by the state is expected to make policy recommendations in November.

Uber officials hope the initial trial will teach them how to ease public fears of adopting the bleeding-edge technology.

"The Pittsburgh pilot is our opportunity for real world testing, so that we can learn more about what makes riders feel safe and comfortable," said Uber product manager Emily Bartel.

Uber's Silicon Valley roots means it tends to pivot quickly and plan, experiment, and adjust direction within weeks, in contrast to longtime carmakers like General Motors or Toyota who have yearlong timelines when bringing out new features, Rajkumar and Uber officials said. When the drivers are removed from front seats, the cars will likely be restricted to driving in specific locations under good conditions at first.

"I'd probably give them a little bit and let them work their kinks out," Patrick Holland, a Philadelphia-area student, said right before getting into a human-driven Uber. "But I think a product that's well tested and it's proven to work and safe  I think that's where we're heading, and I think I'll eventually find myself in a driverless vehicle."
A group of top business economists believes the major tax cuts President Donald Trump pushed through Congress will give a significant boost to economic growth this year and next year. But they worry that by 2020, the country could be entering a new recession.

The National Association for Business Economics says in its latest quarterly outlook that its panel of 45 economists expects the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, to expand 2.8 percent this year. That is down slightly from the panel's March forecast, which put GDP growth this year at 2.9 percent.

The NABE economists are "slightly less optimistic about the U.S. economy in 2018 than they were three months ago," says NABE vice president Kevin Swift, chief economist at the American Chemistry Council.

Part of the drop-off in optimism reflects growing worries about what Trump's get-tough approach on trade might do to U.S. growth prospects.

Three-fourths of the NABE panel believes that current trade policies will have a negative impact on the economy. Trump last week imposed penalty tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from major U.S. trading partners  the European Union, Canada and Mexico  and he has threatened tariffs on up to $200 billion in Chinese imports, moves that could trigger a global trade war as the targeted nations pledge to retaliate.

The NABE forecasting panel was upbeat on the near-term impacts of the $1.5 trillion tax cut that Congress passed in December. The median expectation is that the cuts in individual and corporate taxes will boost growth by 0.4 percentage points this year and 0.3 percentage points next year.

The forecasters said the economy should grow 2.7 percent in 2019 after their projected 2.8 percent GDP growth this year. Both projections would be up from 2.3 percent growth in 2017 and the 2.1 percent average annual gains the country has seen since the Great Recession ended in 2009.

However, the Trump administration is projecting a bigger boost, forecasting that the GDP will grow by 3 percent or better over the next decade as the economy gains momentum from the positive impacts of the president's economic program of lower taxes, deregulation and tougher trade policies aimed at reducing U.S. trade deficits.

But many private analysts are more pessimistic, noting that underlying factors such as the retirement of the baby boomers and weak productivity gains will continue to depress long-term growth prospects. The private forecasters believe the positive effects from the Trump tax cuts will quickly fade after the first two years.

Asked when the next recession might begin, two-thirds of the NABE economists saw one starting by the end of 2020, with 18 percent even more pessimistic, expecting the next downturn to begin by the end of 2019.

The current recovery, which began in mid-2009, is currently the second longest expansion in U.S. history and will become the longest if it lasts past June 2019.
Hundreds of kilos of cocaine were found in a shipping container at the Port of Philadelphia during a massive drug bust Tuesday morning.

The shipment was on board the MSC Desiree, a container ship that was traveling from Colombia to Europe, according to law enforcement sources.

The container was brought to the Port of Philadelphia on North Delaware Avenue. Multiple agencies, including Philadelphia Police, Pennsylvania State Police, Delaware State Police, Homeland Security, the DEA, the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection, inspected it around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and found at least 537 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of at least $15 million.

Investigators are still counting the shipment and aren't expected to release the final number until Wednesday.

The case was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations.
What to Know Speed cameras could be coming to a nearly 12-mile stretch of Northeast Philadelphia's Roosevelt Boulevard by the end of the year.

The Philadelphia council bill calls for tickets to any drivers going 11 mph above the posted speed limit.

Bill sponsor Cherelle Parker cites safety as the main reason for trying to slow down drivers on the Boulevard.

A warning for drivers who go above the speed limit on Philadelphias busy Roosevelt Boulevard, you could soon be nabbed by technology.

Philadelphia Councilwoman Cherelle Parker, D-9th District, introduced a bill last week that would authorize the installation of speed cameras along a stretch of Route 1 in Northeast Philadelphia where 8 percent of all Philadelphia crashes involving death or serious injury occurred.

The cams, which would automatically take photos of speeding vehicles, would be placed at seven to 11 locations along the nearly 12-mile stretch of road from 9th Street to the Bucks County line, according to Parkers office.

Fines would start at $100 for any driver going 11 mph over the 45 mph posted speed limit. The fine increases to $125 for 21 to 30 mph over the limit and $150 for 31 mph or more over the limit.

The hope is that the camera-enforced ticketing will make the Boulevard safer as part of the citys Vision Zero plan to reduced traffic deaths by 2030. The boulevard is one of the most dangerous roads, Parkers office said while referencing PennDOT stats of 139 people killed or seriously injured in nearly 2,700 crashes from 2013 to 2017.

The tragic stories of people being killed or seriously injured on Roosevelt Boulevard have become all too common, but this doesnt have to be the case, Parker, whose district includes two miles of the Boulevard, said. We know that speed is especially deadly for people walking and biking, and that if we can get motorists to change their behavior and slow down, we can reduce crashes and save lives.

Once implemented, speeders would only get warnings during a 60-day grace period. Warnings signs would be installed in the vicinity of the cameras to warn drivers.

The council bill comes on the heels of Pennsylvania Senate Bill 172, which allows for speed cameras along the Boulevard. House Transportation Committee Chair Rep. John Taylor, R-Philadelphia, helped get the legislation passed in the State House last year.

Parkers council bill, which is co-sponsored by Council President Darrell Clarke and members Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Cindy Bass, is to be considered in the coming weeks. It calls for installation of the cameras before the end of the year.
A fight between two train conductors unleashed a speeding, unmanned locomotive that slammed into a barrier and exploded in the Egyptian capital's main train station Wednesday, killing at least 25 people, authorities said.

Railway officials said the single railcar collided head-on with the buffer stop, causing a huge explosion and fire. At least 47 people were also injured, many of them critically, and officials said the death toll could rise.

The deadly blaze blasted through people on the platform in the busy Ramses Station in downtown Cairo. A surveillance video showed the moment of impact when the car barreled past men and women walking by and engulfed them in flames and smoke. Charred bodies lay on the platform, and a man in flames ran down a staircase in panic, according to other photos and videos posted on social media.

Egypt's Prosecutor General Nabil Sadek said investigators determined the locomotive's conductor had left his car to fight with another conductor whose railcar was blocking his.

But the conductor left without putting on the brakes and the other car began moving backward, freeing the locomotive, which then gathered speed and hit the concrete-and-metal barrier, exploding.

"The driver left the railcar without taking any measures to brake it," Sadek said in a statement.

Sadek put the death toll at 20 while health officials said at least 25 people were killed and dozens more were injured in the crash and ensuing fire. Some of the bodies were burnt beyond recognition and DNA tests were carried out to determine identities.

The driver of the railcar has been under interrogation and Sadek said the investigation was continuing.

The deadly accident prompted Transportation Minister Hisham Arafat to resign his post, according to a statement released by the Cabinet office.

The Ramses district is among the busiest and most crowded areas of Cairo. The state railway agency briefly halted all train traffic and ordered the evacuation of the station.

The accident triggered an online debate among many Egyptians, with many blaming the government for not improving railway services in Egypt, even after a series of deadly accidents. Several noted previous statements by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi arguing about spending billions of pounds on improving trains.

Video from surveillance cameras showed flames ravaging the station's interior. One video that surfaced on social media showed men and women carrying bags and personal belongings and walking on the rail platforms as the train car crashes and explodes.

Another showed men and women running and searching for exits after the explosion. A man is seen running back and forth, his shirt on fire, until another man rushes to pour water on him.

Mohammed Said, head of the Cairo Railroad hospital, said at least 25 were killed but that the death toll could rise.

Many of the wounded were in critical condition, mostly suffering severe burns, said Egyptian Health Minister Hala Zayed.

Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli vowed harsh punishment for those behind the accident.

Egypt's railway system has a history of badly maintained equipment and poor management. Official figures show that 1,793 train accidents took place in 2017 across the country.

In July 2018, a passenger train derailed near the southern city of Aswan, injuring at least six people and prompting authorities to fire the chief of the country's railways.

In March last year, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said the government lacks about 250 billion Egyptian pounds, or $14.1 billion, to overhaul the run-down rail system. El-Sissi spoke a day after a passenger train collided with a cargo train, killing at least 12 people, including a child.

In August 2017, two passenger trains collided just outside the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, killing 43 people. In 2016, at least 51 people were killed when two commuter trains collided near Cairo.

The deadliest train crash took place in 2002 when over 300 people were killed when fire erupted in speeding train traveling from Cairo to southern Egypt.
State police in Rhode Island are heading to Delaware to bring back a Providence man facing numerous charges in connection with the kidnapping of a young Boston mother whose body authorities say was discovered in the suspect's trunk.

Louis D. Coleman has been charged with being a fugitive from another state in Delaware, and will be moved to Rhode Island to face multiple charges, including kidnapping, refusal to report a death with intent to conceal a crime and mutilation of a dead human body.

It's unclear if he'll face charges in Boston, where authorities say 23-year-old Jassy Correia was last seen enjoying birthday celebrations with her friends just after midnight on Sunday at the nightclub Venu in the city's Theater District.

At a news conference Friday afternoon, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said the case is complicated "with evidence in three jurisdictions."

"There are moving parts in all of them. To protect the integrity of the evidence we have gathered, there are many aspects we simply cannot discuss today," said Rollins. "Whatever this case is ultimately charge, wherever it's charged and tried will be based on the evidence of the law."

Her body was discovered inside the trunk of a vehicle in Delaware on Thursday, authorities said.

"She was a mother, she was brave, she was strong, Correias cousin, Katia Depina, said. "She did not deserve this. She went out to celebrate her birthday and never returned home. She did not deserve this. We want justice for her death."

Rollins said authorities hope to bring the case either to Boston -- either in Suffolk County or in the U.S. District Courts in Massachusetts.

"Right now, for the people who love Jassy most and for the entire Suffolk community, this isn't about jurisdiction," said Rollins. "This is about a daughter. This is about a mother whose 2-year-old daughter doesn't understand where she's gone and will no longer have a mother.

It's about devastating loss for family members who lost a central part of their lives."

Thirty-two-year Coleman, of Providence, was taken into custody on Thursday in Delaware. He was considered a person of interest in Correias disappearance and then later a kidnapping suspect.

At the Friday news conference with Rollins, Boston Police Commissioner William Gross said no woman should fear going out in the city.

"No family deserves this. Women should be able to traverse anywhere without fear of being harmed," said Gross. "We've had tragedies in the past but we just want the folks of ill-intent to know that this just won't be tolerated in the city."

Correia, who was the mother of a 2-year-old girl, was last seen leaving the nightclub just after midnight on Sunday. Surveillance footage captured her getting into a red car with an unknown man, who is believed to be Coleman.

"Women should have the right to go to any nightclub and wear what they want and not worry about being kidnapped and murdered at the end of their night," said family friend Joao Depina.

Her family had been trying to reach her for days and increasingly became worried. They were unable to get in contact with her for her birthday on Tuesday and filed a missing persons report on Wednesday.

Now, Correias family is seeking answers as they process the devastating tragedy. The womans relatives said they had never heard of Coleman and do not believe Correia knew him, either.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh offered his condolences to the Correia family via Twitter. He said the city is mourning the loss of Jassy Correia.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19)  Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the Philippines and Vietnam will refrain from detaining fishermen from both sides caught poaching and crossing territorial boundaries.

Lorenzana told reporters Vietnam's Minister of Defence General Ngo Xuan Lich agreed with the proposal to refrain from arresting and detaining fishermen illegally fishing in contested waters.

"Just tell them to go back to their area. 'Wag na natin silang hulihin. Sakit ng ulo e. [Let's no longer detain them. It's just another headache]," Lorenzana said Wednesday.

Lorenzana was in Hanoi, Vietnam on March 10 to 13. The two defense chiefs discussed security challenges, defense relations, and the recurring incidents of encroachment among illegal fishermen.

In November 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte freed a group of Vietnamese fishermen caught poaching off Pangasinan, upon the request of Hanoi. They were nabbed for violating the Philippine Fisheries Code.

The Defense chief also reiterated the need for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to agree with China on the proposed code of conduct to manage maritime disputes in the South China Sea.

Vietnam, just like the Philippines, is also a claimant in the global waterway.

Lorenzana will meet with U.S. Defense Assistant Secretary Joseph Felter on March 21 "for a couple of hours," with the possible review of the Mutual Defense Treaty seen to be brought up. He earlier expressed concerns over the United States' increasing tensions with China, and sought for a clarification of the extent to which the United States will help the Philippines.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier said attacks on Philippine forces, aircraft, or public vessels in the South CHina Sea will trigger mutual defense obligations under the treaty. But it was not clear if Pompeo was referring to the international waterway or the Philippine-claimed areas in the sea, as Washington repeatedly says it will not interfere on questions of sovereignty over competing maritime claims.
 Flash

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Brussels on Monday that China and Europe have consensus in 10 aspects.

Wang is in Brussels, Belgium, on Monday attending the ninth round of the China-EU high-level strategic dialogue.

At a joint press conference with Federica Mogherini, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Wang said that the cooperation and competition between China and Europe have been the focus of concerns under the China-EU Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The two sides agreed during the strategic dialogue that the cooperation between the two sides far outweighs the competition, and they share far more consensus than divergence.

Summarizing the 10-point consensus, Wang said, first, China and the EU both support multilateralism and oppose unilateral practice; second, the two sides both support the United Nations playing a dominant role in the international affairs, and safeguard the basic norms of international relations based on the purposes of the UN Charter; third, both support an open world economy, and oppose protectionism.

Fourth, both support the rules-based multilateral trading system, and the reform and enhancement of the WTO; Fifth, both support the peaceful settlement of the hotspot issues and regional disputes through dialogue and consultation; Sixth, both support stronger international cooperation against global challenges including the climate change; Seventh, both support the commitment to the international non-proliferation regime and to maintaining global strategic stability; Eighth, both support the implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, and commitment to reduce economic inequality and the North-South divide; Ninth, both support the campaign against all forms of terrorism, and taking holistic measures to contain the spread of extremism; And tenth, both support the post-war international system and order, and will not construct another system anew.

Mogherini agreed with Wang, and expressed her belief that the consensus will be even expanded when the cooperation between the two sides is deepened further.
What to Know Officials said almost three-quarters of Bay County's 68,000 households were affected

FEMA officials said the large numbers of renters and the enormous amount of debris needed to be cleared before trailers could be installed.

A small village of the forgotten has popped up in Diahnn "Shelly" Summers' backyard outside Panama City. Where there once was empty grass abutting almost 5 acres of woods, 10 tents now encircle a fir tree with Christmas lights.

The tents shelter those still homeless more than four months after Hurricane Michael screamed ashore with 155-mph (250-kph) winds, flattening, blowing away or rendering uninhabitable thousands of houses.

"There is nowhere for them to go," Summers said. "When you don't have a home, you have no sense of safety, no sense of belonging, no security. You don't even know where you're going to sleep without getting into trouble. It's the worst feeling."

Of all the Florida Panhandle areas affected by Michael, Bay County was hardest hit: Officials said almost three-quarters of its 68,000 households were affected. Former Florida House Speaker Allan Bense, who is leading a hurricane recovery initiative, estimated about 20,000 people were homeless in the weeks after the October storm.

Some have been able to make their homes livable again with cosmetic repairs. Others left town: The county's student population is down 14 percent. And 7,800 residents are still considered homeless, county officials said.

Many unable to move in with relatives or find a coveted hotel room with the help of federal vouchers have turned to living in tents.

Several obstacles prevent their return to normalcy. Trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have been slow to arrive, and it's hard to find an apartment where the rent hasn't been jacked up in a suddenly tight market. Almost three-quarters of the damaged properties were rental units, which are difficult to replace with temporary shelter, Bay County Manager Robert Majka said.

"If you have 100 units in an apartment complex, you can't put 100 FEMA trailers into that apartment complex and accommodate these folks," he said.

Sue Laurel Shaw was able to stay in her apartment after the storm and said her landlord even agreed to deduct the cost of repairs she made from the rent. But now she faces eviction for back rent after she says the landlord reneged on their agreement.

She is looking for another place to live, but "everything is tripling," said Shaw, who was fighting to stay in her Panama City apartment.

Mystie Gregory said she, her fiance and 2-year-old daughter left their apartment for several days to take a break from living without electricity. When they returned, she said, it had been rented to another family.

Gregory found refuge with more than a dozen others living in tents behind Summers' ranch-style house.

Gregory said she is trying to "make the most" of living in a tent, but "it makes you feel like a failure as a parent, even though it's out of your control."

Among the county's homeless are 4,700 students, said Bay District Schools Superintendent Bill Husfelt. Some schools lost more than 40 percent of their students and the school board is closing at least three schools for now.

"It's all about housing," Husfelt said. "Everything we're dealing with, it's about housing."

In December, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio wrote a letter chastising FEMA for not finding enough sites for trailers or mobile homes. Rubio said families "have not seen an appropriate response to their housing needs and FEMA must immediately act to address this concern."

At the time, more than 1,200 Bay County families were waiting for trailers or mobile homes. By the end of February, that number had fallen to more than 200, partially because more than 500 families had found other options on their own, county officials said.

"The velocity of FEMA's temporary housing improved after the first of the year, although trailers ... never came in consistently at stated goals," said Joel Schubert, Bay County's assistant manager.

FEMA officials said the large numbers of renters and the enormous amount of debris that needed to be cleared before trailers could be installed slowed the process.

In addition, 26,000 Florida households received grants for home repairs, 21,000 residents received temporary rental assistance and 2,000 households were approved for hotel rooms or short-term condo rentals, FEMA spokesman Samuel "Carr" McKay said in a statement.

Even that help took a while to reach some residents. Dennis Myrick, who has no home insurance, said he lived in a tent in the front yard of his decimated Panama City home until mid-January, when he was finally able to get a FEMA hotel voucher.

"It's pure hell, man," Myrick said. "The wind blows, and you get wet. I had to hold the tent down with my hands. It was about to blow away."

Before she landed in Summers' backyard, Jacinta Wheeler, whose apartment was damaged by the hurricane, joined other residents in an encampment dubbed "Tent City" in a different part of town. Officials forced them to leave over safety and hygiene concerns. Lori and Gene Hogan had settled in a tent on the beach after Michael destroyed their home, but police officers threatened to arrest them if they didn't move, so they came here as well.

Wheeler has been working construction jobs and helping repair neighbors' properties while she stays in her tent.

"Everybody wants the American dream," the Trinidad native said. "If this is the dream, I don't want it."

Summers and her husband, Sam, want to build more permanent housing on the property for their guests but said they have run into regulatory roadblocks. In the meantime, they try to make them feel at home, inviting them to their dinner table and leaving the Christmas lights on the backyard tree to retain some cheer.

Summers said she has always welcomed people in need to her home.

"They need help and we were blessed enough that our house was untouched," she said. "We seem to be the outcasts by trying to help people and it shouldn't be that way. This should be a normal thing."
A teenager pleaded guilty Monday to a misdemeanor charge for pushing her 16-year-old friend off a 60-foot bridge in southwestern Washington in August, NBC News reported.

A state prosecutor recommended that Taylor Smith, 19, receive no jail time for pleading guilty to reckless endangerment.

Jordan Holgerson was left with six broken ribs and punctured lungs when Smith pushed her off the Moulton Falls Regional Park bridge on Aug. 7. A short video clip of the incident went viral.

Smith pleaded not guilty in December, but was offered a plea deal last month. Holgerson told NBC's TODAY show that she was unsure what the appropriate punishment would be.
Former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke is making an early impression in Pennsylvania, a late-voting state that may yet play a role in the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.

An animated O'Rourke spoke Tuesday for 50 minutes to a crowd of hundreds in a Penn State auditorium, promising a grassroots campaign and, speaking to reporters later, suggesting that he'd support doing away with the Electoral College.

The Texan's appearance was easily the splashiest of any Democratic presidential hopeful who has ventured into Pennsylvania this year. He attracted a bank of TV cameras and waded patiently through a crowd of hundreds of fans in Penn State's student union who shouted questions or sought autographs, selfies and handshakes.

The Keystone State appears ready to be part of a rising millennial movement, if an analysis of the 2018 midterm elections released in February is any indication.

Three in 10 of Pennsylvania's youth voters (18-to-29 years old) cast a ballot last November, according to a Tufts University Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement study. That was an increase from 13 percent turnout in the 2014 midterm elections, making it one of the largest upticks among young voters in the country.

Many who came to see him said they were drawn by his youth  he is 46 and his rising star reputation after he narrowly lost his bid for U.S. Senate in Texas in November's election. They didn't leave disappointed, struck by his willingness to drive his own car, mingle with crowds and answer questions, including one criticizing him for spouting platitudes.

Later, on his way out, he told reporters that "there's a lot of wisdom" in scrapping the Electoral College system, saying it puts some states out of play in presidential elections. O'Rourke suggested that changing the Constitution to adopt a popular vote for president would ensure that every voter counts.

The idea has traction among Democrats, since Hillary Clinton netted nearly 3 million more votes in 2016 than Republican Donald Trump, yet lost the Electoral College and therefore the White House.

Pennsylvania was one of the states that swung narrowly to Trump, helping deliver his victory.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts also reiterated her support for eliminating the Electoral College while on her Democratic presidential campaign swing through Selma, Alabama.

O'Rourke made his stop in Pennsylvania on a seven-day, six-state tour before he climbed into a minivan and, taking the wheel, headed to the early voting state of New Hampshire.

Onstage in Pennsylvania, he fended off a question suggesting his voting record in Congress didn't reflect his "big ideas," echoing criticism from some that he was too moderate in Congress.

He disagreed with another questioner that he speaks in platitudes, insisting he is specific about where he stands, whether advocating for universal pre-kindergarten, legalizing marijuana, arresting pharmaceutical executives instead of people with addiction, or backing universal health care legislation in Congress named "Medicare for America."

"In every single policy area, I'm trying to describe not just the goal and the aspiration, but the path that we will take to get there,'' O'Rourke responded onstage. "I understand if we disagree or come to different conclusions. That's the genius of our democracy."

That democracy, he said at another point while transitioning from the urgent need to fight climate change to the influence of corporate campaign contributions, "is as broken as it's been in our lifetimes."

"It is captured, it is corrupted, it is being attacked from without, it is being attacked from within," he said.

He spoke at length about humankind having just 12 more years to combat climate change and supporting the Green New Deal, a sweeping environmental plan backed by liberal Democrats. If the planet warms just another degree Celsius, he said, "we are screwed."

"That is the term the scientists use," he said.
What to Know Work at Superfund sites lessens the threat from old nuclear-weapons plants, chemical factories, mines and other entities

Absent imminent peril, it would be up to state governments or contractors to continue any cleanup during the shutdown, according to the EPA

The government shutdown has suspended federal cleanups at Superfund sites around the nation and forced the cancellation of public hearings, deepening the mistrust and resentment of surrounding residents who feel people in power long ago abandoned them to live among the toxic residue of the country's factories and mines.

"We are already hurting, and it's just adding more fuel to the fire," says 40-year-old Keisha Brown, whose wood-frame home is in a community nestled among coking plants and other factories on Birmingham's north side.

The mostly African-American community has been forced to cope with high levels of arsenic, lead and other contaminants in the soil that the Environmental Protection Agency has been scraping up and carting away, house by house.

As President Donald Trump and Congress battle over Trump's demand for a wall on the southern U.S. border, the 3-week-old partial government shutdown has stopped federal work on Superfund sites except for cases where the administration deems "there is an imminent threat to the safety of human life or to the protection of property."

EPA's shutdown plans said the agency would evaluate about 800 Superfund sites to see how many could pose an immediate threat. As an example of that kind of threat, it cited an acid leak from a mine that could threaten the public water supply. That's the hazard at Northern California's Iron Mountain mine, where EPA workers help prevent an unending flow of lethally acidic runoff off the Superfund site from spilling into rivers downstream.

Practically speaking, said Bonnie Bellow, a former EPA official who worked on Superfund public outreach at the agency, the impact of the stoppage of work at sites across the nation "wholly depends" on the length of the shutdown.

"Unless there is immediate risk like a storm, a flood, a week or two of slowdowns is not going to very likely affect the cleanup at the site," Bellow said.

In north Birmingham, Brown said it's been a couple of weeks since she's spotted any EPA crews at people's houses. It wasn't clear if state workers or contractors were continuing work.

But long before the shutdown began, Brown harbored doubts the cleanup was working anyway. "My main concern is the health of the people out here," said Brown, who has asthma. "All of us are sick, and we've got to function on medicine every day."

In terms of time, the federal government shutdown is a chronological blip in the long history of the site  which includes ethics charges in a local bribery scandal to block federal cleanup efforts  but adds to the uncertainty in an area where residents feel forgotten and betrayed.

At the EPA, the shutdown has furloughed the bulk of the agency's roughly 14,000 employees. It also means the EPA isn't getting most of the daily stream of environmental questions and tips from the public. Routine inspections aren't happening. State, local and private emails to EPA officials often get automated messages back promising a response when the shutdown ends.

In Montana, for instance, state officials this month found themselves fielding calls from a tribal member worried about drinking water with a funny look to it, said Kristi Ponozzo, public-policy director at that state's Department of Environmental Quality. The EPA normally provides tribes with technical assistance on water supplies.

With most EPA colleagues idled, Ponozzo said, her agency also had to call off an environmental review meeting for a mining project, potentially delaying the project.

But it's the agency's work at Superfund sites  lessening the threat from old nuclear-weapons plants, chemical factories, mines and other entities  that gets much of the attention.

Absent imminent peril, it would be up to state governments or contractors to continue any cleanup during the shutdown "up to the point that additional EPA direction or funding is needed," the EPA said in a statement.

"Sites where cleanup activities have been stopped or shut down will be secured until cleanup activities are able to commence when the federal government reopens," the agency said.

For federal Superfund sites in Michigan, the shutdown means there are no EPA colleagues to consult, said Scott Dean, a spokesman for that state's Department of Environmental Quality.

At Michigan Superfund sites, day-to-day field operations were continuing since private contractors do most of the on-the-ground work, Dean said.

Bellow, the former EPA official, said the cancellation of hearings about Superfund sites posed immediate concerns.

In East Chicago, Indiana, for example, the EPA called off a planned public hearing set for last Wednesday to outline how the agency planned to clean up high levels of lead and arsenic in the soil.

The EPA has proposed a seven-month, $26.5 million cleanup that includes treating and removing tainted soil from the area, where a lead smelter previously was located.

During a public meeting Nov. 29, some residents complained that the EPA's approach would leave too much pollution in place. But others didn't get a chance to speak and were hoping to do so at the meeting this week, said Debbie Chizewer, a Northwestern University environmental attorney who represents community groups in the low-income area.

The EPA announced the cancellation in an online notice and gave no indication that it would be rescheduled.

Leaders of the East Chicago Calumet Community Advisory Group asked for a new hearing date and an extension of a Jan. 14 public comment deadline in a letter to the EPA's regional Superfund division.

Calls by The Associated Press to the agency's regional office in Chicago this week were not answered.

Local critics fear the EPA will use the delay caused by the shutdown as justification for pushing ahead with a cleanup strategy they consider flawed, Chizewer said, even though the agency has designated the affected area as an "environmental justice community"  a low-income community of color that has been disproportionately harmed by pollution.

The EPA has a "special obligation" when dealing with such communities, Chizewer said. "This would be an example of shutting them out for no good reason."

In North Birmingham, former longtime neighborhood resident Charlie Powell said most of people living in and around the Superfund site had already "just got tired and fed up."

Powell left the area but started a group called PANIC, People Against Neighborhood Industrial Contamination. He believes money would be better spent helping residents move away from the pollution.

"Can I say hell?" Powell said when asked what residents have been through.

Associated Press writers John Flesher and Matthew Brown contributed to this report.
At an Oval Office gathering earlier this year, President Donald Trump began touting his administration's new real estate investment program, which offers massive tax breaks to developers who invest in downtrodden American communities. He then turned to one of the plan's strongest supporters.

"Ivanka, would you like to say something?" Trump asked his daughter. "You've been pushing this very hard."

The Opportunity Zone program promoted by Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner  both senior White House advisers  could also benefit them financially, an Associated Press investigation found.

Government watchdogs say the case underscores the ethical minefield they created two years ago when they became two of the closest advisers to the president without divesting from their extensive real estate investments.

Kushner holds a big stake in a real estate investment firm, Cadre, that recently announced it is launching a series of Opportunity Zone funds that seek to build major projects under the program from Miami to Los Angeles. Separately, the couple has interests in at least 13 properties held by Kushner's family firm that could qualify for the tax breaks because they are in Opportunity Zones in New Jersey, New York and Maryland  all of which, a study found, were already coming back.

Six of the Kushner Cos. buildings are in New York City's Brooklyn Heights area, with views of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan skyline, where a five-bedroom apartment recently listed for $8 million. Two more are in the beach town of Long Branch, N.J., where some oceanfront condos within steps of a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant and a Lululemon yoga shop list for as much as $2.7 million.

There's no evidence the couple had a hand in selecting any of the nation's 8,700 Opportunity Zones, and the company has not indicated it plans to seek tax breaks under the new program. But the Kushners could profit even if they don't do anything  by potentially benefiting from a recent surge in Opportunity Zone property values amid a gold rush of interest from developers and investors.

Ivanka Trump's advocacy for the Opportunity Zone program "creates a direct conflict of interest with her spouse's investment in Cadre," said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Jared Kushner's interests are Ivanka Trump's interests and vice versa."

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's financial disclosures show their personal financial empire is worth between $200 million and $800 million, with much of it in real estate, including Kushner's stake of between $25 million and $50 million in a holding company with an ownership stake in Cadre. Kushner previously had Cadre-related management positions, but he terminated those roles when he joined the Trump administration, holding onto his passive stake.

The disclosures require recusal from dealing with policy matters that touch on real estate and "would have a direct and predictable effect on Cadre." Ivanka Trump also has interests in Trump Organization properties which are not located inside Opportunity Zones.

"Ms. Trump has divested assets, set up trusts, removed herself from businesses and decisions about her investments," Abbe Lowell, ethics counsel for the couple, said in a statement. "In addition, she adheres to the ethics advice she has received from counsel about what issues she can work on and those to which she is recused."

The Kushner Cos. did not respond to requests for comment.

Ivanka Trump continued her promotion of Opportunity Zones in a series of tweets Wednesday. "Opportunity Zones will catalyze private sector investment that will create jobs + economic growth in overlooked communities nationwide," she wrote.

But neither she nor her father commented on the AP investigation later Wednesday during a White House event where the president ordered the establishment of a council headed by Housing Secretary Ben Carson to aid the Opportunity Zone program.

"All America regardless of zip codes should have access to the American dream," the president said.

An administration spokesman earlier told the AP that individual state governors nominate communities for Opportunity Zone designation based on need and the White House "has nothing to do with those decisions."

The Investing in Opportunity Act, which became law last December as part of the Republican-sponsored tax overhaul, never gained traction when it was first proposed during the Obama administration, but it quickly found favor in a White House headed and dominated by real estate developers and investors.

A significant moment came when the law's key GOP sponsor, South Carolina U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, met President Trump after the violence-plagued white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August of 2017.

Trump promised Scott his support for Opportunity Zones as a way to show his administration's outreach to minority communities. But Scott had already found a supporter weeks earlier in Trump's daughter, in conversations that grew out of previous meetings about passing a child care tax credit.

Political sponsors and lobbyists told the AP that Ivanka Trump played an important role in promoting the legislation, while Kushner was also quietly supportive behind the scenes.

"Ivanka was on board with it," said Sean Smith, Scott's communications director. After their first conversation, Smith said Scott and Ivanka Trump talked by phone and in person nearly a dozen times. He added that Scott also spoke to Kushner about the program, but noted, "It was much more Ivanka than Jared."

A team from Economic Innovation Group, or EIG, a Washington think tank that pioneered the Opportunity Zones concept, met with top Kushner aides Reed Cordish and Chris Liddell two weeks before the tax reform bill was passed.

Funded by Napster founder and early Facebook investor Sean Parker, EIG spent more than $1.4 million on lobbying over the past two years, both before and after the Investing in Opportunity Act passed. The group met with White House officials every quarter since the start of the Trump administration, and also met with frequently with officials from Treasury and other White House agencies, records show.

"Creating the incentive to bring capital into communities that are currently being overlooked is just a tremendous opportunity," Ivanka Trump said as her father and a crowd of supporters nodded during the White House session February 14.

Last month, at a dinner in Washington put on by the conservative Kemp Foundation, Scott singled out Ivanka Trump as his point person on the initiative. "When we were looking for help to get the tax bill across the finish line," he said, "I kept looking to the same person for help in the White House."

There is no indication the couple directly intervened in the shaping of the Opportunity Zone program specifically to advance their financial interests. And public officials say there is no evidence that any actions were taken to influence the selection of Opportunity Zone boundaries.

But backers of the program acknowledge that Ivanka Trump's out-front role drummed up interest from public officials and financial stakeholders.

Along with the Kushner-tied Cadre Opportunity Zone funds, more than 50 real estate and private equity interests have made plans in recent weeks to create investment funds under the program, including several with ties to the couple and the Trump administration.

Last month, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci launched an opportunity zone fund tied to his Skybridge Capital investment firm, aiming to build projects worth more than $3 billion. Opportunity Zone funds have also been set up recently by New York-based Normandy Real Estate Partners and Heritage Equity Partners, two firms that have worked with Kushner Cos. on real estate ventures.

They are flocking to what financial analysts say are some of the most generous tax benefits they have ever seen. Investors who plow capital gains from previous investments into Opportunity Zone projects can defer taxes on those gains up to 2026. If they decide not to cash out their investment for seven years, they get to exclude up to 15 percent of those gains from taxes. And they can permanently avoid paying taxes on any new gains from investment in the zones if they hold onto the investment for a decade. With capital gains taxes as high as 23.8 percent, the savings can easily add up.

Government officials have estimated the program would cost $1.5 billion in lost tax revenue over 10 years, but Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has estimated the zones would attract up to $100 billion in renewal efforts.

While the Opportunity Zone program mostly targets census tracts of high poverty and unemployment, it also allows "contiguous" tracts that might not be low-income, but are close enough to deprived communities to be eligible.

Critics say that could allow developers to cash in by targeting zones already teeming with investment and gentrified neighborhoods. Amazon's recent decision to locate a new headquarters in the bustling New York City neighborhood of Long Island City, for example, drew rebukes following reports it was in an Opportunity Zone.

A study by the Urban Institute in Washington found that nearly a third of the more than 8,700 Opportunity Zones nationwide  and all 13 of the ones containing Kushner properties  were showing signs of heavy investment and gentrification, based on such factors as rent increases and the percentage of college-educated residents.

The most immediate advantage could come from the investment in Cadre. CEO Ryan Williams announced late last month that Cadre was starting up an Opportunity Zone fund that would aim to build major development projects in designated areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Miami.

The company said the program "fits with Cadre's commitment to identifying opportunities in less-advantaged areas that are primed for growth."
Negotiators for the U.S. and the Taliban insurgents have reached "agreements in principle" on key issues for a peace deal that would end 17 years of war in Afghanistan, the top U.S. envoy said Monday.

The statement by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad followed six days of talks last week with the Taliban in Qatar, where he urged the Islamic insurgent group to enter into direct negotiations with the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Ghani on Monday assured Afghans that their rights will not be compromised in the name of peace with the Taliban, who have been staging near-daily attacks against Afghan forces, causing scores of casualties every week. Their offensive has not let up despite the severe Afghan winter and the insurgents now hold sway over nearly half of the country.

Khalilzad said in an interview with The New York Times that an agreement in principle was reached with the Taliban on the framework of a peace deal "which still has to be fleshed out" that will see the insurgents commit to guaranteeing that Afghan territory is not used as a "platform for international terrorist groups or individuals."

He said the deal could lead to a full pullout of U.S. troops in return for a cease-fire and Taliban talks with the Afghan government.

In his statement released by the U.S. Embassy, Khalilzad said, "We made progress on vital issues in our discussions and agreed to agreements in principle on a couple of very important issues.

"There is a lot more work to be done before we can say we have succeeded in our efforts but I believe for the first time I can say that we have made significant progress," he said.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said he has been briefed on the talks and described them as encouraging, but he also told reporters that the department has not been directed to prepare for a full withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Speaking before a meeting at the Pentagon with Shanahan, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said any discussion about the withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan would be premature. He said Khalilzad had briefed NATO allies on the talks weeks ago.

"We are in Afghanistan to create the conditions for a peaceful negotiated solution," Stoltenberg said. "We will not stay longer than necessary, but we will not leave before we have a situation that enables us to leave or reduce the number of troops without jeopardizing the main goal of our presence and that is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for international terrorists once again."

He added that he believes it's too soon to speculate on withdrawal because "what we have to do now is to support the efforts to try to find a peaceful solution. We strongly support those efforts."

Ghani sought to assure Afghans that no deals would be made without Kabul's awareness and full participation.

"Our commitment is to provide peace and to prevent any possible disaster," Ghani said in an address to the nation. "There are values that are not disputable, such as national unity, national sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Ghani's office said he and Khalilzad met late Sunday in Kabul to discuss details from the talks.

Khalilzad's statement emphasized the inclusion of the Afghan government in the talks.

"There is a false narrative that Afghans are not included. That is not true. The Afghan voice is there," he said. "We are working together to get to a comprehensive cease-fire. We are working with the Afghan government, with international partners, to find implementing mechanisms to reach these goals."

Khalilzad has met with the Taliban on a number of occasions in recent months in the latest bid to end America's longest war. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to topple the Taliban, who were harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

The statement from Ghani's office also claimed that the Taliban demanded from Khalilzad the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan, but that there was also no agreement on that issue.

The statement added that Khalilzad has no authority to discuss issues such as a future Afghan administration but that his goal is to facilitate an intra-Afghan dialogue, meaning direct talks between the Taliban and Kabul.

Khalilzad had tweeted Saturday about progress in the talks in Qatar, where the insurgents have a political office, saying: "Meetings here were more productive than they have been in the past."

"We made significant progress on vital issues," he tweeted, without offering details.

Abdul Hakim Mujahid, a former Taliban official and currently a member of the High Peace Council, an independent body of clerics and respected Afghan figures, said he believes the Qatar talks resulted in a "good understanding between both sides" but that more discussions are needed in the coming weeks or months.

"Afghanistan's problem is not so simple that it can be solved in a day, week or month, it needs more time and more discussions," Mujahid told The Associated Press.

The Taliban have in the past refused to negotiate directly with Kabul  a standing that does not appear to have changed. They have maintained that they are prepared to talk with U.S. officials only and only about the pullout of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

Afghan political analyst Waheed Muzhda says he believes that Khalilzad and the Taliban have reached agreement on both the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and a cease-fire deal, but that neither side is prepared to say so at this point.

"But peace talks are not possible unless both sides first agree on a cease-fire," Muzhda said.

In Monday's address to the nation, Ghani also stressed that U.S. and other foreign forces are in Afghanistan because they are needed here and that if there is to be any downsizing or pullout, the Kabul government will have to play a role in the talks.

Ghani also reiterated his call on the Taliban to engage "in direct talks with the Afghan government."
Design limitations of the Tesla Model S's Autopilot played a major role in the first known fatal crash of a highway vehicle operating under automated control systems, the National Transportation Safety Board Tuesday.

The board said the direct cause of the crash was an inattentive Tesla driver's over reliance on technology and a truck driver who made a left-hand turn in front of the car. But the board also recommended that automakers incorporate safeguards that keep drivers' attention engaged and that limit the use of automated systems to the conditions for which they were designed.

Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, was traveling on a divided highway near Gainesville, Florida, using the Tesla's automated driving systems when he was killed. Tesla had told Model S owners the automated systems should only be used on limited-access highways, which are primarily interstates. But the company didn't incorporate protections against their use on other types of roads, the board found. Despite upgrades since the May 2016 crash, Tesla has still not incorporated such protections, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said.

"In this crash, Tesla's system worked as designed, but it was designed to perform limited tasks in a limited range of environments," he said. "Tesla allowed the driver to use the system outside of the environment for which it was designed."

The result, Sumwalt said, was a collision "that should never have happened."

In a statement, Tesla said "we appreciate the NTSB's analysis of last year's tragic accident and we will evaluate their recommendations as we continue to evolve our technology." The company added that overall its automated driving systems, called Autopilot, improve safety.

NTSB directed its recommendations to automakers generally, rather than just Tesla, saying the oversight is an industrywide problem. Manufacturers should be able to use GPS mapping systems to create such safeguards, Sumwalt said.

Manufacturers should also develop systems for ensuring operators remain attentive to the vehicle's performance when using semi-autonomous driving systems other than detecting the pressure of hands on the steering wheeling, the NTSB recommended. Brown had his hands on the sedan's steering wheel for only 25 seconds out of the 37.5 minutes the vehicle's cruise control and lane-keeping systems were in use prior to the crash, investigators found.

As a consequence, Brown's attention wandered and he didn't detect the semitrailer in his path, they said.

The Model S is a level 2 on a self-driving scale of 0 to 5. Level 5 vehicles can operate autonomously in nearly all circumstances. Level 2 automation systems are generally limited to use on interstate highways, which don't have intersections. Drivers are supposed to continuously monitor vehicle performance and be ready to take control if necessary.

Investigators found that the sedan's cameras and radar weren't capable of detecting a vehicle turning into its path. Rather, the systems are designed to detect vehicles they are following to prevent rear-end collisions. The board re-issued previous recommendations that the government require all new cars and trucks to be equipped with technology that wirelessly transmits the vehicles' location, speed, heading and other information to other vehicles in order to prevent collisions.

Last December, the Obama administration proposed that new vehicles be able to wirelessly communicate with each other, with traffic lights and with other roadway infrastructure. Automakers were generally supportive of the proposal, but it hasn't been acted on by the Trump administration.

Brown's family defended his actions and Tesla in a statement released Monday. Brown was a technology geek and enthusiastic fan of the Model S who posted videos about the car and spoke to gatherings at Tesla stores. "Nobody wants tragedy to touch their family, but expecting to identify all limitations of an emerging technology and expecting perfection is not feasible either," the statement said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates auto safety, declined this year to issue a recall or fine Tesla as a result of the crash, but it warned automakers they aren't to treat semiautonomous cars as if they were fully self-driving.

While the NTSB was meeting to consider the Tesla crash, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao was in Michigan unveiling new self-driving car safety guidelines for automakers. The guidelines encourage companies to put in place broad safety goals, such as making sure drivers are paying attention while using advanced assist systems. The systems are expected to detect and respond to people and objects both in and out of its travel path "including pedestrians, bicyclists, animals, and objects that could affect safe operation of the vehicle," the guidelines say.

There is a 12-point safety checklist, but the government makes it clear that the guidelines are voluntary and not regulations.

AP Auto Writer Dee-Ann Durbin in Ann Arbor, Michigan, contributed to this report.
 Flash

The man suspected of shooting three people dead and injuring five others on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht on Monday morning has been arrested, local police said.

The arrest coincided with the conclusion of a joint press conference held by Utrecht Mayor, Jan van Zanen, the public prosecutor and the police, who were just describing the continuing hunt for the suspect.

Prior to the arrest, Utrecht police described the suspect as Turkey-born, 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis.

"Finding the suspect is our top priority," said van Zanen. "It is not over yet."

At that point, Rob van Bree, head of operations of the Central Netherlands Police, received a note from a colleague.

"We just heard that the suspect is arrested," van Bree announced. The suspect was arrested at a house in Utrecht's Oudenoord Street.

Following the arrest, the Dutch National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) reduced the threat level for the province of Utrecht from the maximum possible 5 to 4, and for the Netherlands as a whole to 4.

"There are still many questions and rumors," Prime Minister Mark Rutte said after the arrest in The Hague. "It is still not clear what the motives were. We can still not exclude terrorism. We don't know yet. But we have seen what happened, three dead, some seriously injured. That is an attack. Let's not make it smaller."

Rutte added that the flags on all government buildings will be flown at half mast on Tuesday. "It was literally an attack in the heart of the country," he said.

The shooting on the tram occurred at around 10:45 a.m. local time. The square in the western part of Utrecht and the surrounding area was rapidly cordoned off by the police and emergency services arrived at the scene. The incident made all the alarm bells ring at Dutch authorities, also in The Hague, the eat of the Dutch government.

From the very beginning, the police said that it could not exclude a terror motive.

Since the incident came on the heels of the attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, some mosques in Utrecht kept their doors closed, and so did universities and schools.

The roads leading to the city were only partly accessible and public transport was halted. Trains were blocked from entering Utrecht Central Station and the police were present at several locations.
Two long-sleeved shirts, a sweater, a fleece jacket, two scarves and two pairs of socks.

That has been Karen Ericson's go-to outfit in her office in Des Moines, Iowa, in recent weeks.

"I am still shivering," the 39-year-old graphic designer said last week, estimating the temperature in the office was in the mid-60s while outside, the city hit 19 below zero at one point. "Living in the Midwest, I'm well-trained to dress warmly and in layers, but this deep freeze has been difficult to endure, especially when I expect to be comfortable  or at least not shivering  inside."

As much of the nation muddled through bitter weather in recent weeks, office dwellers found they still had to brave the cold even when indoors. Many relied on winter parkas, gloves, blankets and space heaters just to keep working.

"Today I've got two sweaters, a scarf, ear coverings, gloves and a blanket over my lap," Rebecca Miller, a 27-year-old academic adviser at Tennessee State University in Nashville, said last week as temperatures barely ticked above 50 degrees in her office while outside it was 20 degrees or lower in the daytime. "But I'm still having a hard time working. I'm shaking cold, and it's hard to focus. The gloves make it hard to type, and the bulky layers make it difficult to move around."

Like thousands of other chilly Americans, she snapped selfies of herself at her desk in attire usually reserved for the ski slopes and shared them on social media.

Office developments are built with centralized heating systems that make the buildings suitable for a range of uses over many years. The downside is that they provide little climate control to individual tenants  sometimes purposely, said Khee Poh Lam, architecture professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Thermostats are often tucked into hard-to-reach spaces like false ceilings and air ducts so office tenants can't mess with them, Lam said. Other buildings have dummy units out in the open that don't actually do anything except give desperate workers the illusion of control.

Finding the right temperature to please everyone has been an elusive goal for office designers and builders, said Stefano Schiavon, architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-wrote a 2012 study that found roughly 40 percent of U.S. workers were satisfied with their office's temperature. Design standards call for an acceptability rate closer to 80 percent, he said.

The challenge isn't just confined to the winter, of course. Chilly offices have long been the bane of women who complain air conditioning is cranked up in the summer to appease their male, suit-wearing counterparts. And there are certainly many offices with overzealous furnaces that prompt workers to crack open windows even on the coldest days.

Optimal temperature for office work is 72 to 79 degrees  or nearly 10 degrees more than what many buildings typically set their thermostats, said Alan Hedge, a design professor at Cornell University in New York who has researched how temperature affects productivity.

Schiavon suggested that companies, even those based in the draftiest old offices, can invest in safe, relatively inexpensive technology to keep workers warm and productive, like heated chairs, electric blankets and heated floor mats.

"The bottom line is that central heating won't work for everyone, even if designed right," he said. "We're very different people and need some sort of personalization of our environment."

Ericson, the Iowa resident, said the key to getting through the work day has been reminding herself the cold is only temporary.

"Every day that passes," she said, "is a day closer to spring."
Premiums for the most popular "Obamacare" plans are going up an average of 34 percent, according to a study out Wednesday that confirms dire predictions about the impact of political turmoil on consumers.

Window-shopping on HealthCare.gov went live Wednesday, so across the country consumers going online can see the consequences themselves ahead of the Nov. 1 start of sign-up season for 2018.

The consulting firm Avalere Health crunched newly released government data and found that the Trump administration's actions are contributing to the price hikes by adding instability to the underlying problems of the health law's marketplaces.

President Donald Trump puts the blame squarely on "Obamacare" saying the program is imploding, while ignoring warnings that his administration's actions could make things worse.

The Avalere analysis is for the 39 states using HealthCare.gov. Along with the increase for silver plans, premiums also are going up by double digits for different levels of coverage, including bronze (18 percent), gold (16 percent), and platinum (24 percent).

Many states had higher increases. Avalere found that average plan silver premiums will go up by 49 percent in Florida, 43 percent in Missouri, and 65 percent in Wyoming.

Consumers eligible for income-based tax credits will be protected from rising premiums but those who pay full-cost face a second consecutive year of sharp premium increases.

Only three states will see declines  Alaska, Arizona, and North Dakota.

Avalere said market instability is driven by Trump's recent decision to end subsidy payments to insurers, the continued debate over "Obamacare" repeal and replace, and a presidential executive order that could open a path for lower cost plans outside of the Obama-era law.

"You put all that together, and there are a lot of additional forces on top of market forces driving high premium increases for 2018," said Chris Sloan, a senior manager with the health industry consulting firm.

Significant increases also are expected in states that run their own health insurance websites.

Starting Nov. 1, new customers can submit applications, and returning ones can make changes to their coverage. Open enrollment will end early, on Dec. 15, about half the time allotted under Barack Obama's administration.

Sign-up season comes after the president abruptly pulled the plug on federal payments that reimburse insurers for reduced copays and deductibles they're required to provide to people of modest means. That exposes insurers to a potential $1 billion loss for the remainder of this year.

A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday denied a request by state attorney's general to order the payments immediately restored. Administration officials say the payments were not properly approved by Congress and Trump is following the U.S. Constitution by denying them.

Bipartisan legislation to resolve the problem is pending, and the Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday said the bill would reduce federal deficits and have no major impact on coverage. But the legislation by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash. faces an uncertain future. Trump has sent mixed signals about whether he would support it.

Restoring the funds may have little immediate impact on 2018 premiums, but the bill calls for insurers to rebate money to the government and consumers if they collect too much.

Avalere's Sloan said that consumers who receive subsidized premiums would generally be protected from premium increases.

That's not the case, however, for an estimated 7 million unsubsidized customers, most of whom buy individual plans outside the government markets.

"There is a danger that middle-class people who don't get government help in paying their premiums could be increasingly priced out of the market," said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

About 10 million people currently have private health insurance through government-sponsored markets like HealthCare.gov. More than 8 in 10 customers receive tax credits to help pay their premiums, and that aid is still available despite the political turmoil.

Unlike the Obama years, the Trump administration has set no enrollment goal for 2018.

"We are really focused on having a smooth consumer experience," said Randy Pate, director of the HHS office that oversees the program. "That is our target for this year."

Administration officials say they have made a series of improvements to the sign-up process unheeded in the acrimonious political debate over health care.
Rep. Mike Levin introduced a new bill aimed at bettering the health and safety of homes for military families after reports surfaced of substandard and even hazardous conditions, according to the bills sponsors.

Levin, who represents California's 49th Congressional District that includes Camp Pendleton, introduced the Ensuring Safe Housing for our Military Act on March 14.

Servicemembers and their families sacrifice to keep our country safe, and we owe them a debt of gratitude. The last thing they should have to worry about is housing that jeopardizes their health and safety, Levin said in a released statement.

Cosponsored by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Katie Hill of California, Elaine Luria of Virginia, and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, it marks the first time Levin has introduced a bill as a member of Congress.

Our bravest Americans are protecting this nation and deserve good housing, health care, and quality of life. Military families should never have to settle for less. This bill is an important step toward correcting a problem I hope we never encounter again, Luria said.

Levin cited that the bill was created after Reuters investigated the reportedly poor living condition of military bases across the country, including Camp Pendleton.

The investigation outlined persistent mold, water leaks, and rodent and insect infestations, according to Levin.

Unfortunately, reports have unearthed unacceptable living conditions in privatized military housing, said Spanberger. Our bipartisan bill would hold contractors accountable, stop them from imposing unfair damage fees, and ensure they fix hazardous conditions.

The bill would impact private contractor-provided housing for military families.

It would withhold a servicemembers housing allowance until a military housing official can inspect the home for any environmental, safety, or health hazards, according to Levin. The servicemember would also have to agree that the housing is satisfactory.

If a military housing official deems the home unfit, the housing company will pay for all relocation costs, under this bill.

The bill will ensure that servicemembers dont have to pay a deposit or any fee or penalty related to ending a lease early, except for normal wear and tear, Levin said.

Contractors must reimburse servicemembers for any damages to their property caused by a hazard, under this bill.

The bill would also withhold incentive fees by the Secretary of Defense to any contractor who persistently fails to remedy hazards, according to Levin.

The proposed legislation would create a standard for health and safety inspectors that Levin said would ensure consistent inspection practices.

In order to attempt a higher level of transparency, the bill would also create an electronic system so servicemembers can track their work orders for their homes.

The legislation was originally introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California and Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia.

To read Levins full statement on the bill, visit the representatives website.
Mainstream medicine says there's no question that childhood vaccines save lives and prevent outbreaks of serious disease.

But despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, skeptics still insist vaccines are dangerous and can actually cause autism and other illnesses.

Those parents can in some cases get a medical exemption from vaccinations required to attend school in California.

NBC 7s media partner, the Voice of San Diego (VOSD), found that the San Diego Unified School District has approved 486 medical exemptions to the vaccine requirement, since 2015.

Public records obtained from the SDUSD by VOSD, reveal that Dr. Tara Zandvliet has written nearly one-third of those exemptions.

According to Zandvliets website, children will be considered for an exemption if four relatives in their extended family have one of several autoimmune conditions.

Hives, food, bee sting and other allergies might also qualify a student for an exemption.

Critics say Dr. Zandvliet's basis for an exemption is based on an unproven theory that a family history of allergies or autoimmune disease is a medically acceptable reason to avoid a vaccine.

Its another example of somebody basing a decision -- in her case to issue a medical exemption -- based on a theory with no evidence, said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Rady Childrens Hospital.

In the meantime, Ive got lots of evidence that by letting our immunization rates drop, shes creating a problem, because were seeing these outbreaks of disease, Dr. Sawyer told NBC 7.

In a series of emails and phone conversations with NBC 7, Dr. Zandvliet said shes being unfairly vilified for helping families navigate what she said are the complicated medical issues surrounding childhood vaccines.

Dr. Zandvliet, whose office is in South Park, noted that she rejects seven of every ten requests for vaccine exemptions and said she often counsels patients to have their children vaccinated for some or all childhood diseases.

Dr. Zandvliet also said she has vaccinated close to 100 children for measles so far this year.

One outspoken anti-vaxxer told NBC 7 that Dr. Zandvliet refused to give her children a medical exemption, based solely on her childs asthma diagnosis.

I am damned by the anti-vaxxers for having too strict a criteria and being a pro-vaccine doctor, and damned by the pro-vaxxers for being too lenient and being an anti-vax doctor, Dr.

Zandvliet said via email. I just want to be a doctor. Period. For each of my patients individually, I want to be the best doctor I can be for them.
Attorney General William Barr will not recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel's Russia probe after consulting with senior ethics officials, the Justice Department said Monday.

The officials advised Barr against recusal from Robert Mueller's investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump's presidential campaign, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said.

"Consistent with that advice, General Barr has decided not to recuse," Kupec said in a statement.

During his confirmation hearing in January, Barr sought to assuage concerns that he might disrupt or upend Mueller's investigation as it reaches its final stages.

Some Democrats had raised those concerns, citing a memo Barr had sent to Justice Department and White House lawyers in which he criticized Mueller's investigation for the way it was presumably looking into whether Trump had obstructed justice.

Barr downplayed the memo during his confirmation hearing, saying it was narrowly focused and shouldn't be read that he has prejudged the investigation. Barr vowed during the hearing to consult with ethics officials about whether he should recuse himself, but told senators the decision would ultimately be his to make under Justice Department guidelines.

Barr also stated without hesitation that it was in the public interest for Mueller to finish his investigation and that he wanted to release as much information as he can about Mueller's investigation to Congress and the public.

Under Justice Department guidelines, Mueller will provide a confidential report to Barr that explains his decisions to pursue or decline prosecutions. Barr will then prepare his own report that would be released to Congress. He has said he intends to share some information with the public, though it's unclear whether Mueller's actual report will ever be made public.

Former FBI Director James Comey, whose firing is among the things being investigated by the special counsel's office, said in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Monday that "providing detailed information about a completed investigation of intense public interest has long been a part of Justice Department practice."

"Every American should want a Justice Department guided first and always by the public interest," Comey wrote. "Sometimes transparency is not a hard call."

The president had assailed and ultimately pushed out his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from Mueller's investigation because of Sessions' work with the Trump campaign.

The president named Matthew Whitaker, who was Sessions' chief of staff, as acting attorney general in November. But Whitaker came under fire after he declined to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation even though a top Justice Department ethics official advised him to step aside out of an "abundance of caution."

Before joining the Justice Department, Whitaker had made critical comments about Mueller's investigation, including once opining about a scenario in which Trump could fire Sessions and then appoint an acting attorney general who could stifle the funding of Mueller's probe.
The leafy New Zealand city where a self-proclaimed racist fatally shot 50 people at mosques during Friday prayers is known for its picturesque meandering river and English heritage. For decades, Christchurch has also been the center of the country's small but persistent white supremacist movement.

An expert on such fringe groups says it's probably more than coincidence that the accused mosque shooter, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant, settled in the region, known for a whiter demographic than the country's north, after frequently traveling abroad in 2016-2018 in what appears to have been an extreme-right pilgrimage.

He went mostly to areas of Europe with a long history of sectarian dispute, including clashes between Renaissance Europe and the Ottoman Empire and the breakup of Yugoslavia following its ethnic and religious conflicts.

The attack has upended New Zealand's image as one of the world's safest and most tolerant countries. It also has highlighted apparent failings by security and intelligence services to view white supremacists as a real threat or to take seriously warnings from Muslim groups of a rise in Islamophobic and xenophobic incidents in recent years.

Tarrant planned his attack on two mosques meticulously and had resolved two years earlier to kill Muslims, according to a manifesto he published moments before the massacre. He actively planned the Christchurch shootings for the past three months, he said in the manifesto posted online and emailed to the office of New Zealand's prime minister minutes before driving to his first target, the golden-domed Al Noor mosque.

Police say they are certain Tarrant was the only gunman but may have had support and are investigating that possibility. He had five guns, two of which were converted into semi-automatic weapons. It's likely that at least some were legally purchased online from a Christchurch gun store.

Possible links between the shooter and white supremacists in New Zealand's south have been alleged by recreational gun user and hunting guide Pete Breidahl.

In a video posted on Facebook on Saturday, he said he complained in late 2017 to an arms officer  a local police officer who monitors people's gun licenses  about the disturbing behavior of members of a rifle club in the southern city of Dunedin that Tarrant reportedly joined.

In the video and comments posted online, Breidahl said the club members had Confederate flags, wore camouflage clothing with rank insignia, vilified Muslims and had homicidal fantasies. He claimed to have met Tarrant, calling him "not right." Police said they have no record of a complaint but are looking into Breidahl's claims further.

Academic Paul Spoonley, who has extensively researched white supremacist groups in New Zealand, said they have been relatively quiet in Christchurch since a 2011 earthquake that forced whole neighborhoods to move and altered the city's demographics with an influx of migrant workers for reconstruction.

"They've been quieter recently but they haven't gone away. They are still here," he said, citing a 2016 incident in which pigs' heads were left at the Al Noor mosque, where 42 people died in Friday's massacre.

A business owner in Christchurch has also attracted media attention since the massacre because his company's vans were emblazoned with neo-Nazi references including the "black sun" symbol that Tarrant's guns were covered with. The same images, which are used as the company's branding, appear on its website.

When AP visited the registered business address, located in one of Christchurch's poorer neighborhoods, three of its vans were parked opposite, their "black sun" imagery removed but still identifiable by a company website address on them. A visibly hostile man standing beside the vans, who did not appear to be the business owner, did not want to answer questions.

Police on Tuesday said they had arrested a 44-year-old man in Christchurch for distributing objectionable material and he would appear in court the next day.

According to Spoonley, the level of hate crimes in New Zealand is low compared with other countries as is the number of white supremacists, but it's "always a challenge to get people to accept that they exist."

"There's a reluctance to see equivalence between the risks presented by right-wing extremist groups and radical Islamic and leftist groups," he said.

Neighboring Australia's white supremacist scene is more virulent, in part reflecting the history of its "White Australia" immigration policy which existed in various forms from soon after Federation in 1901 to as late as 1973. In modern times, the rise of a succession of prominent right-wing politicians  starting with Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party in the mid-1990s  also legitimized such views.

Spoonley estimates there are 200-250 hardcore white supremacists in New Zealand and about 300-400 people on the edges.

"I would be very surprised if Tarrant didn't make some sort of contact," he said.

The groups, which emerged in the late 1960s, have evolved over time, coalescing for years around fear of New Zealand moving too far from its British roots, anti-Semitism and opposition to Maori sovereignty and Asian immigrants, and then shifting to Islamophobia following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S.

Spoonley, who researched extreme-right groups in the U.K. in the 1970s, said when he returned to New Zealand in the 1980s he was told by authorities there were no similar organizations.

But he quickly found more than 70 extreme-right groups, many of them in Christchurch. He attributes three murders in New Zealand since 1989 to white supremacists, including two that were ideologically motivated  a South Korean tourist in 2003 and a homeless gay man in 1999.

As Tarrant plotted more recently, Muslim groups in New Zealand were growing increasingly concerned by a rise in abuse against the community but say they were ignored.

"There has been an increasing trend which has been brought to the attention of the authorities several times in the last three to four years, including police," said Anwar Ghani, a spokesman for a federation of Islamic organizations. "It was treated not so seriously."

Verbal abuse, hate emails, hate phone calls and assaults that seem to have an Islamophobic and racist motivation, or a combination of the two, are among the hate crimes experienced by Muslims in New Zealand, he said.

The country does not have an official hate crimes database, making it difficult to measure the trend, but some incidents have been widely reported, causing outrage but sparking no real official measures.

Ghani said there are dotted lines between Friday's massacre, hostility to Muslims among a segment of the New Zealand population and the global rise of extreme right-wing movements.

"If the issue is not addressed in a proper manner then the problem will continue to increase," he said. "They are getting bolder and bolder."

Paul Buchanan, a former policy analyst and intelligence consultant for U.S. government security agencies, said the failure of intelligence agencies to detect Tarrant reflects politically based decisions to concentrate resources on monitoring the small number of Islamic extremists in New Zealand.

"My interpretation is that in the past 20 years and since 9/11 a political decision was made to prioritize detection and prevention of homegrown jihadists," he said.

"They decided to go whole hog, 80-85 percent of resources into detecting jihadists," he said. "The rest was devoted to Marxists, environmentalists, animal rights activists. They went for the left."

One such jihadi from New Zealand, along with an Australian, was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in November 2013 while fighting for al-Qaida.

There was no political advantage in targeting alienated young white men seen by the wider population as mostly harmless "Pakeha losers," a Maori word for white New Zealanders, Buchanan said.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said the government will convene an inquiry into the intelligence and security services, seeking to understand why Tarrant was able to escape detection.

Tarrant, according to Buchanan, may have been part of a small cell.

"There could be tacit enablers," he said.

"He was planning for two years," Buchanan said. "To be able to do that in utter secrecy suggests someone had to have an inkling that the guy was going to do something and said nothing about it."
Cooped up in the White House after canceling a vacation to his private Florida club, President Donald Trump fired Twitter barbs at Democrats on Saturday as talks to end a weeklong partial government shutdown remained at a stalemate.

As the disruption in federal services and public employees' pay appeared set to continue into the new year, there were no signs of any substantive negotiation between the blame-trading parties. Trump held out for billions in federal funds for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, which Democrats have said they were intent on blocking.

Trump tweeted Saturday that he was "in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come on over and make a deal on Border Security." But there has been little direct contact between the sides during the stalemate, and Trump did not ask Republicans, who hold a monopoly on power in Washington for another five days, to keep Congress in session.

As he called for Democrats to negotiate on the wall, Trump brushed off criticism that his administration bore any responsibility for the recent deaths of two migrant children in Border Patrol custody. Trump claimed the deaths were "strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally." His comments on Twitter came as his Homeland Security secretary met with medical professionals and ordered policy changes meant to better protect children detained at the border.

Trump earlier had upped the brinkmanship by threatening anew to close the border with Mexico to press Congress to cave to his demand for money to pay for a wall. Democrats are vowing to pass legislation restoring the government as soon as they take control of the House on Thursday, but that won't accomplish anything unless Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate go along with it.

Talks have been at a stalemate for more than a week, after Democrats said the White House offered to accept $2.5 billion for border security last Saturday. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told Vice President Mike Pence that it wasn't acceptable, nor was it guaranteed that Trump, under intense pressure from his conservative base to fulfill his signature campaign promise, would settle for that amount.

Trump has remained out of the public eye since returning to the White House early Thursday from a 29-hour visit to U.S. troops in Iraq, instead taking to Twitter to attack Democrats. He also moved to defend himself from criticism that he couldn't deliver on the wall while the GOP controlled both the House and Senate.

"For those that naively ask why didn't the Republicans get approval to build the Wall over the last year, it is because IN THE SENATE WE NEED 10 DEMOCRAT VOTES, and they will gives us "NONE" for Border Security!," he tweeted. "Now we have to do it the hard way, with a Shutdown."

Meanwhile, the effects to the public of the impasse grew as the Environmental Protection Agency, which had the money to function a week longer than some agencies, implemented its shutdown plan at midnight Friday night. EPA spokeswoman Molly Block said many of the agency's 14,000 employees were being furloughed, while disaster-response teams and certain other employees deemed essential would stay on the job. That includes workers needed for preventing immediate public health threats at more than 800 Superfund hazardous-waste sites.

Also running short on money: the Smithsonian Institution, which said its museums, art galleries and zoo in the capital will close starting midweek if the partial shutdown drags on.

But federal flood insurance policies will continue to be issued and renewed, in a reversal prompted by pressure from lawmakers, said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

Trump appeared no closer to securing money for his signature border wall, which he vowed during the campaign that he would make Mexico pay for. He's failed to do so. Now Democratic leaders are adamant that they will not authorize money for the project, calling it wasteful and ineffective. They show no signs of bending, either.

The shutdown is forcing hundreds of thousands of federal workers and contractors to stay home or work without pay.

The White House has not directly engaged in weeks with the House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who has all but locked up the support she needs to win the speaker's gavel after the new Congress convenes on Thursday.

Pelosi has vowed to pass legislation to reopen the nine shuttered departments and dozens of agencies now hit by the partial shutdown as soon as she takes the gavel.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill added that Democrats are united against the wall and won't seriously consider any White House offer unless Trump backs it publicly because he "has changed his position so many times."

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Lisa Mascaro and Juliet Linderman contributed to this report.
The mayor of Maine's second largest city has resigned in the wake of a controversy over his leaked text messages, one of which included a racist remark.

Republican Shane Bouchard stepped down as Lewiston's mayor, effective immediately Friday morning. Text messages made public by a woman who said she had an affair with Bouchard when he was a mayoral candidate revealed a remark in which he described elderly black people as "antique farm equipment."

Heather Berube Everly said the two had an affair, and that she was the source of emails the Maine GOP used to attack Democratic opponent Ben Chin.

Bouchard admitted making mistakes but also decried media reporting on "rumors."

Everly said her affiliation with Chin and the Maine People's Alliance helped Bouchard's campaign.

"I did work with Ben Chin as a recruiter with MPA," she said during a Lewiston City Council meeting. "I connected with Mayor Bouchard, where I had an affair with him, and he was able to retrieve emails from MPA's and Ben Chin's campaign."

During his 2017 campaign against Bouchard, Chin said hundreds of his campaign signs were stolen. In 2015, when he was facing Mayor Robert Macdonald, a landlord posted signs reading "Don't vote for Ho Chi Chin," which Chin criticized as racist.

In the intial November election of 2017, Chin's 4,239 votes led Bouchard's 2,979. A month later, Bouchard defeated Chin by a much narrower margin of 145 votes, with the Republican receiving 3,663 votes to the Democrat's 3,518.

"The Republican Party has, through Mayor Bouchard, rigged the election," Everly said. "They interfered and affected results, and they were also able to influence the votes of people, especially in the ward that I was in."

The attorney general's office confirmed Friday that it's assisting a Lewiston Police Department investigation into the matter.
The Trump administration's unveiling of criminal charges against the Chinese tech giant Huawei has complicated high-level talks set to begin Wednesday in Washington that are intended to defuse the trade war between the administration and Beijing.

The Justice Department charged Monday that Huawei had violated U.S. sanctions against sales to Iran and stolen trade secrets from T-Mobile, a U.S. partner. In a statement, Huawei denied committing any violations.

The charges cut to the heart of some of the administration's key complaints about China's trade practices.

Analysts said the trade talks would likely proceed, but reaching any substantive agreement would probably be harder. And unless the two sides can forge some sort of accord by March 1, U.S. tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports are set to rise from 10 percent to 25 percent.

"The Chinese will keep talking," said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former U.S. Treasury official. "They won't be happy with the Justice Department action, but I think they would like to keep it separate from the trade talks."

Representatives of U.S. business groups privately raised concerns that the administration's actions could poison the atmosphere between the two sides. Any backlash in China against the indictment of Huawei, one of the country's global powerhouses, could limit Beijing's ability to agree to anything that might be seen as bowing too willingly to U.S. demands.

The Justice Department has also charged Huawei's chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou. The United States is seeking to extradite Meng, who has been held in Canada since Dec. 1.

Chinese officials later called on Washington to "stop the unreasonable crackdown" on Huawei and urged the U.S. to withdraw its extradition request.

Sarah Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, was asked whether the criminal charges against Huawei were linked to the trade talks with China and amounted to a carrot-and-stick approach.

"No, those two things are not linked," she said. "They are a totally separate process."

This week's negotiations were already facing low expectations.

"We are anticipating no big outcomes this week," Erin Ennis, senior vice president at the U.S.-China Business Council, said Monday before the Huawei charges were announced.

The Trump administration, with support from U.S. businesses, wants China to make fundamental changes to its economy that China is reluctant to accept and that will be difficult to verify, analysts say. The administration has accused Beijing of deploying predatory trade tactics, ranging from requiring U.S. and other foreign companies to hand over technology in return for access to the vast Chinese market to outright cyber-theft.

Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative and lead negotiator in this week's talks, wants China to toughen its protections of intellectual property and to stop unfairly subsidizing its state-owned enterprises.

"The scope of these talks will be the broadest and deepest in U.S.-China history," Larry Kudlow, a top White House economic adviser, said Monday.

Yet reaching the kind of deal the United States wants could prove elusive if not impossible. Chinese officials deny that they force U.S. companies to transfer technology. And they regard the support of their state-owned companies and the acquisition of cutting-edge technology, much of it from abroad, as vital to China's economic development.

U.S. companies in China say that forced technology transfers typically happen at the local level and stem from informal pressure by Chinese officials, which would make it difficult to verify whether Beijing has complied with any major agreement.

In previous rounds of talks, China has shown little inclination to yield to the administration's demands.

"China has yet to show any indication that it is ready to address U.S. and global concerns about its structural issues," said Scott Kennedy, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The two sides are pretty far apart."

Beijing has previously offered to increase its purchases of U.S. products, notably soybeans and other agricultural goods as well as natural gas. This would help address Trump's concern about the gaping U.S. trade deficit with China. Beijing could also open more industries to U.S. companies and pledge better protection for U.S. intellectual property. In return, China could press the U.S. to remove the tariffs that President Donald Trump imposed last year.

Derek Scissors, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said that China would likely accept such a deal, if it were offered. Doing so would outweigh any concerns China has about Huawei.

"If they think they can get the deal that they want, they won't cancel the talks over Huawei," he said.

AP Business writers Marcy Gordon, Martin Crutsinger and Joe McDonald contributed to this report.
U.S. regulators on Friday gave the green light to salmon genetically modified to grow about twice as fast as normal, but the company behind it may face legal challenges before the fish can be sold domestically.

The Food and Drug Administration said it lifted an alert that had prevented AquaBounty from importing its salmon eggs to its Indiana facility, where they would be grown before being sold as food. The agency noted the salmon has already undergone safety reviews, and that it lifted its alert because the fish would be subject to a new regulation that will require companies to disclose when a food is bioengineered.

The move comes despite a pending lawsuit filed by a coalition of consumer, environmental and fishing groups that challenged the FDA's approval of the fish.

"We think a remedy in our case would stop sale of the fish before they're allowed to be sold," said George Kimbrell, legal director for the Center for Food Safety, one of the groups suing the FDA.

AquaBounty was founded in 1991, and it has been working through years of safety reviews and regulatory hurdles to sell its fish in the United States. In 2015, its salmon became the first genetically modified animal approved by the FDA for human consumption. But the agency subsequently issued an alert that stopped the Maynard, Massachusetts-based company from importing its fish eggs until disclosure guidelines for genetically modified foods were resolved.

Called AquAdvantage, the fish is Atlantic salmon modified with DNA from other fish species to grow faster, which the company says will help feed growing demand for animal protein while reducing costs.

AquaBounty CEO Sylvia Wulf said the company expects to get a final certification for its Albany, Indiana, growing facility in the coming weeks. Salmon eggs could then be sent from the company's research and development facility in Canada, and would be harvested after about 18 months when they reach 10 pounds, she said.

Wulf said it's been difficult to engage companies in sales discussions because AquaBounty didn't know when it could start growing the fish in the United States. She said the salmon already has been sold in limited quantities in Canada, where it doesn't have to be labeled as genetically modified. Wulf said she doesn't expect the pending lawsuit to affect the company's U.S. plans.

The genetically modified salmon are raised in tanks and bred to be female and sterile, measures designed to address any fears that they might get into the environment and breed with wild fish.

But Kimbrell, of the Center for Food Safety, said the company's own tests have shown it's not 100 percent certain the fish would be sterile, and that concerns about it getting in the environment would grow if the company's operations were to expand.

He also noted the disclosure regulation uses the term "bioengineered," even though most people are more familiar with the term genetically modified. And he pointed out that companies can provide disclosure through codes that have to be scanned.

Implementation of that regulation starts in 2020, though people may start seeing disclosures on packages sooner. Compliance becomes mandatory in 2022.

The genetic modification for AquaBounty's fish is different from gene-editing technology, which lets scientists snip out specific genes to bring about traits without introducing foreign DNA. Companies are also working to develop a variety of gene-edited crops and animals.
 Flash

France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), which is investigating the recent crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX plane, announced on Monday that it had found similarities between the doomed jet and Indonesia's Lion Air flight of the same model that crashed into the sea in October last year.

"During the verification process of the FDR (Flight Data Recorder) data, clear similarities were noted by the investigation team between Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610, which will be the subject of further study during the investigation," the BEA said in a statement.

The French bureau said the data which it had successfully downloaded from the Ethiopian aircraft's black boxes were transferred to the Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau.

The BEA will release a preliminary report within 30 days, French investigators said.

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 people on board.

The crash was the second such accident in five months which involved the Boeing 737 MAX model. In October 2018, a Lion Air flight of the same model crashed in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board.

Pending the final results of the probe into the Ethiopian crash, France's Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGAC) has banned Boeing 737 MAX aircraft from the country's airspace "as a precautionary measure."
An American journalist who lives in Caracas, Venezuela, and works for a South Florida TV station was released Wednesday after being detained at his home.

Cody Weddle, a freelance reporter who works for WPLG, was detained during a raid by military officials at his residence, along with his assistant, Carlos Camacho, the organization tweeted.

According to a tweet posted by WPLG, he was released and is being deported from Venezuela.

Weddle, 28, has lived in Caracas since 2014 and has worked for WPLG, the Miami Herald, ABC, CBS and the Telegraph, the Herald reported.

In a statement released early Wednesday prior to his release, WPLG President E.R. Bert Medina said they were trying to figure out Weddle's whereabouts.

"We have been unable to confirm specific details but a witness at the time of the raid claims Cody was taken into custody and his equipment confiscated. We have been unable to reach Cody today and are obviously very concerned about him," Medina's statement read. "Cody has been dedicated and committed to telling the story in Venezuela to our viewers here in South Florida. The arrest of a journalist doing his job is outrageous and unacceptable."

Weddle's arrest comes a week after Univision journalist Jorge Ramos and his work team were detained and deported from Venezuela, after an interview with Nicolas Maduro.

"Completely unacceptable for @NicolasMaduro and his thugs to detain @WPLGLocal10s Cody Weddle for reporting on the successful return of the legitimate Venezuelan President @jguaido," Florida Sen. Rick Scott tweeted. "He must be released immediately and the U.S. will not stand for this kind of intimidation!"
President Donald Trump is in denial when it comes to the Russia investigation and other scandals besieging him.

The president insists he's been fully vindicated by court filings released Friday that lay out the level of cooperation from two of his former top advisers, whom prosecutors have accused of lying to federal investigators or Congress. In fact, Trump's Justice Department puts him in even greater legal jeopardy by directly implicating him in an illegal scheme involving hush money payments to a porn actress and a former Playboy model.

In comments over the weekend, Trump cites the filings in the cases involving his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as proof that no collusion had been found in the special counsel's investigation. That's also not true. That probe into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election is still ongoing, so the filings do not yet render a judgment on collusion.

The statements capped a week in which Trump also claimed without evidence that Paris protesters were chanting support for him, made questionable assertions about China trade and tariffs and derided U.S. weapons spending as crazy, despite earlier boasts about increasing the military budget.

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez skimmed over the facts when she suggested the Pentagon has a hidden pot of $21 trillion that could help pay for "Medicare for All."

A look at the claims and the reality:

COHEN

TRUMP: "Totally clears the President. Thank you!"  tweet Friday.

THE FACTS: The court filings Friday are the first time that federal prosecutors directly connect Trump to a crime.

The violations stemmed from payments Cohen made to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential campaign. Both women alleged they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which the White House denies.

Prosecutors in New York, where Cohen pleaded guilty in August to campaign finance crimes in connection with those payments, said the lawyer "acted in coordination and at the direction" of Trump. Though Cohen had previously implicated Trump in the payments, the Justice Department is now linking Trump to the scheme and backing up Cohen's allegations.

It's unclear whether Trump will actually be charged with illegal activity, because Justice Department legal memos from 1973 and 2000 have suggested that a sitting president is immune from indictment and that criminal charges would undermine the commander in chief's ability to do the job. But it is possible Congress could use prosecutors' findings to start impeachment proceedings. There also would presumably be no bar against charging a president after he leaves the White House.

Federal law requires that any payments made "for the purposes of influencing" an election must be reported in campaign finance disclosures. Friday's filings make clear the payments were made to benefit Trump politically.

___

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

TRUMP: "On the Mueller situation, we're very happy with what we are reading because there was no collusion whatsoever. There never has been."  remarks to reporters Saturday.

TRUMP: "NO COLLUSION!"  tweet Saturday.

THE FACTS: Trump's incorrect to suggest the filings clear him of collusion. Part of an ongoing investigation, they do not yet draw a conclusion and instead lay out evidence of previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries.

In one of the filings, special counsel Robert Mueller details how Cohen spoke to a Russian in 2015 who "claimed to be a 'trusted person' in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign 'political synergy' and 'synergy on a government level.'" The person repeatedly dangled a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying such a meeting could have a "phenomenal" impact "in a business dimension as well."

That was a reference to a proposed Moscow real estate deal that prosecutors say could have netted Trump's business hundreds of millions of dollars and would likely require assistance of the Russian government. Cohen admitted this month to lying to Congress by saying discussions about a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016 when in fact they stretched into that June, well into the presidential campaign.

Cohen said he never followed up on the proposed meeting, because he was working with a "different individual" with connections to the Russian government.

Cohen also told prosecutors he and Trump discussed a potential meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September 2015, shortly after Trump announced his candidacy for president.

In another filing Friday, prosecutors said Manafort lied about his contacts with Russia and Trump administration officials, including in 2018. Mueller's team cited Manafort's interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate who prosecutors say has ties to Russian intelligence. Mueller's team said they would be able to offer additional information at a hearing, such as the nature of Manafort's contacts with the Trump administration in 2018, to prove Manafort was lying.

Trump's attorneys last month turned over the president's written answers to Mueller's questions about his knowledge of any ties between his campaign and Russia. Mueller hasn't said when he will complete any report of his findings.

___

TRUMP: "The last thing I want is help from Russia on a campaign."  remarks Saturday.

THE FACTS: Actually, Trump did request Russia's help during the 2016 campaign.

In a July 27, 2016, speech, then-candidate Trump called on Russian hackers to find emails from Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the presidential campaign.

"Russia, if you're listening," Trump said, "I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."

Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow appeared to heed the call  targeting Clinton's personal office and hitting more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts. That's according to a grand jury indictment in July charging 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking into the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party as part of a sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election.

That indictment by Mueller says July 27 was the first time Clinton's personal office was targeted.

The attempt to penetrate Clinton's campaign began March 10, 2016, and hit a significant success on March 19 when the Russian intelligence officers busted open the email account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman, an AP investigation last year found.

They "phished" intensively and repetitively. Throughout at least March and April there were repeated efforts to break into about 120 Democratic National Committee, Clinton and left-leaning activists' accounts across the country.

Then they brought Clinton's personal office into their scope, the indictment says  the very evening Trump appeared to beckon Russians to do just that.

___

PARIS

TRUMP: "The Paris Agreement isn't working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries (that are questionably run), in order to maybe protect the environment. Chanting 'We Want Trump! Love France."  tweet Saturday.

THE FACTS: Neither Associated Press journalists covering protests in the city nor any French television networks have shown evidence that supporters were chanting any slogans in support of Trump. The protests that began as a revolt against a gas tax increase have turned increasingly violent and France imposed exceptional security measures Saturday to prevent a repeat of rioting a week ago.

___

JERUSALEM

TRUMP: "We quickly moved the American embassy to Jerusalem and we got it built." remarks Thursday at Hanukkah event.

THE FACTS: Nothing's been built yet. The Trump administration designated an existing U.S. consular facility in Jerusalem for the U.S. Embassy, retrofitting some offices and holding a big dedication ceremony in May. The U.S. has yet to identify a permanent site for the new embassy, a process that is expected to take years. The State Department has estimated that constructing a new embassy would cost more than $500 million.

___

TARIFFS

TRUMP: "China has agreed to reduce and remove tariffs on cars coming into China from the U.S. Currently the tariff is 40%."  tweet on Dec. 2.

THE FACTS: A week later, it's still not clear if this will happen. When asked about the matter, Trump's chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, would only say that he hoped China would remove its tariffs on U.S. autos. "We don't yet have a specific agreement on that, but I will just tell you, as an involved participant, we expect those tariffs to go to zero," he told reporters last Monday. Pressed again Tuesday, Kudlow told "Fox and Friends" that he expected China to move quickly on removing the tariffs "if they're serious about this."

"I think it's coming, OK?" he said. "It hasn't been signed and sealed and delivered yet."

The White House's confusing and conflicting words have left Wall Street skeptical.

"It doesn't seem like anything was actually agreed to at the dinner and White House officials are contorting themselves into pretzels to reconcile Trump's tweets (which seem if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated) with reality," JPMorgan told investors in a trading note.

On Thursday, a Chinese official said that China will "immediately implement the consensus reached by the two sides on farm products, cars and energy," but did not address the auto tariffs specifically or provide any additional details.

Trump has cast doubt on whether a firm agreement had been reached, tweeting that his administration will determine "whether or not a REAL deal with China is actually possible."

___

TRUMP: "I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN."  tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Trump seems to be claiming that tariffs are some kind of a membership fee for foreign companies to trade in the U.S. economy.

They're not. Tariffs are a tax, per Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

The costs of this tax are borne by U.S. consumers and businesses, often in the form of higher prices. Foreign companies may end up selling fewer goods and services if the United States imposes high tariffs. So they pay a price, too.

In some cases, the tariffs exist to protect industries that are vital for national security. Or, the tariffs exist to retaliate against the trade practices of other countries. Or, they might protect politically connected companies.

In the past, White House aides have insisted that Trump's tariffs are a negotiating ploy. Yet the president offered no such qualifications on Tuesday.

Tariffs are not seen as some easy way of generating massive wealth for an economically developed nation. After Trump announced steel and aluminum tariffs earlier this year, the University of Chicago asked leading academic economists in March whether Americans would be better off because of import taxes. Not a single economist surveyed said the country would be wealthier.

Nor do the budget numbers suggest they can come anywhere close to covering the costs of the federal government.

Trump is correct that tariffs did generate $41.3 billion in tax revenues last budget year, according to the Treasury Department. But to put that in perspective, the federal budget exceeds $4.1 trillion.

The taxes collected on imports were equal to about 1 percent of all federal spending.

___

MEDICARE

OCASIO-CORTEZ: "$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions 'could not be traced, documented, or explained.' $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs (tilde)$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon. And that's before our premiums."  tweet Dec. 2.

THE FACTS: Ocasio-Cortez is generally correct to suggest that one way of paying for the huge cost of "Medicare for All" would be to cut spending elsewhere. But she is wrong to suggest that there's a pot of misspent defense dollars that could cover the health care expenses. The New York Democrat also misrepresents the findings of an academic study that found the $21 trillion in Pentagon errors to be accounting "adjustments," not a tally of actual money wasted.

The study by Mark Skidmore, an economist at Michigan State University and Catherine Austin Fitts, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, did find $21 trillion in Pentagon transactions from 1998 to 2015 that could not be verified. Their study is a cited in a Nation article retweeted in part by Ocasio-Cortez, even though that article makes clear that not "all of this $21 trillion was secret or misused funding ... the plugs are found on both the positive and the negative sides of the ledger, thus potentially netting each other out."

Total defense spending from 1998 to 2015 was $9 trillion. That means defunding the military entirely would only cover a small portion of the estimated $32 trillion cost over 10 years for the "Medicare for All" legislation by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Ocasio-Cortez wrongly suggests that fixing Pentagon accounting errors would net 66 percent of costs.

"What she was referencing was the total number of transactions that happened with DoD  there's a lot of double and triple counting as money gets moved around in the department," said Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "All of that basically means is that those transactions don't have a full trail," akin to an employee who submits an expense report without providing all the receipts.

"Just because you don't have the proper audit trail for transactions doesn't mean that those transactions are fraudulent," Harrison said.

David Norquist, the Pentagon's comptroller, has attributed the accounting errors to the department's older bookkeeping "systems that do not automatically pass data from one to the other." He said in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in January that the errors do not amount to a pot of lost money. "I wouldn't want the taxpayer to confuse that with the loss of something like a trillion dollars, it's not. That wouldn't be accurate," Norquist said.

___

MILITARY SPENDING

TRUMP: "I am certain that, at some time in the future, President Xi and I, together with President Putin of Russia, will start talking about a meaningful halt to what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race. The U.S. spent 716 Billion Dollars this year. Crazy!"  tweet Dec. 3.

THE FACTS: His criticism of U.S. weapons spending as "crazy" vastly overstates the amount spent on the arms race. It also is a sudden change of tone from his previous boasts about increased military spending.

Trump's statement appeared to confuse the total Defense Department budget with America's investment in the missile defense systems and strategic nuclear weapons usually associated with the arms race. The Pentagon's budget for 2019 totals about $716 billion, but that includes everything from health care and pay for service members to the costs of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The arms race is just a fraction of that amount, totaling about $10 billion this year for a wide range of missile defense and nuclear weapons programs.

Until recently, Trump has bragged about his increase in military spending, railing about what he claims is previous administrations' neglect of America's armed forces. He said his administration is "rebuilding our military." He has occasionally complained about specific programs such as Air Force One and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but his criticism was leveled at the defense contractors and focused on demanding savings.

He has been far more supportive of the broader defense increases, and specifically has endorsed hikes for missile defense in line with a U.S. defense strategy that targets China and Russia as key adversaries.

___

IMMIGRATION

TRUMP: "Could somebody please explain to the Democrats (we need their votes) that our Country losses (sic) 250 Billion Dollars a year on illegal immigration, not including the terrible drug flow. Top Border Security, including a Wall, is $25 Billion. Pays for itself in two months. Get it done!"  tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He's inflating the cost of illegal immigration. Trump's numbers left even those sympathetic to the president's position scratching their heads.

"I'm not sure where the president got his numbers," said Dave Ray, a spokesman for the nonprofit group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for lower immigration numbers.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to questions about where the $250 billion estimate had come from.

The Heritage Foundation, for instance, estimated in 2013 that households headed by immigrants living in the U.S. illegally impose a net fiscal burden of around $54.5 billion per year.

Even Trump himself has contradicted the figure. During his 2016 campaign, Trump claimed that illegal immigration cost the country more than $113 billion a year  less than half the number he tweeted Tuesday.

That estimate appeared based on a paper by FAIR, which released an updated report in 2017 that claimed taxpayers "shell out approximately $134.9 billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens" at the federal, state and local levels, with "a tax burden of approximately $8,075 per illegal alien family member and a total of $115,894,597,664."

The $116 million figure included services such as health care and education, as well as spending on agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, minus the $19 billon the group concluded those who are living in the country illegally pay in taxes. But it also included costs associated with the children of those immigrants in its tally, even when they are U.S. citizens. The estimate was criticized for making broad generalizations and other major methodological flaws.
Nancy Pelosi often quotes Abraham Lincoln, saying public sentiment is everything. It's a theory that will be put to the test when the new House Democratic majority gavels in this week and votes to end the government shutdown without money for President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico.

The high-stakes move to reopen the government will be the first big battle between Trump and Pelosi as Democrats come into control ready to reassert the power of the legislative branch and confront the White House.

Trump is counting on public support as he holds out for $5 billion to build the wall. He's signaled he's in no rush to give up on a signature campaign issue as he launches his own re-election bid in 2020. But Pelosi just as strongly believes the public will be on Democrats' side as they try to get government working again, and move on to health care and other priorities  including oversight of the White House.

As the shutdown drags into a second week, shuttering popular Smithsonian museums and creating hardship among some 800,000 federal workers, the stalemate is fast becoming a test of wills rarely seen when Republicans had monopoly control of the government in Washington.

"We're going to do our job," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the incoming chairman of the Rules Committee, vowing to pass legislation to re-open the government. "The president should take 'yes' for an answer and go back to tweeting."

As Republicans relinquish their hold on Congress, and House Speaker Paul Ryan gives up the gavel, the White House is eager for a showdown with Pelosi believing the crisis will tarnish the opening of the new legislative session, and with it, her expected return to the speaker's office.

Trump is committed for the long haul, according to administration officials unauthorized to speak publicly and granted anonymity. After early threats to shut down the government over the wall, he now believes he's got public opinion and, at the very least, his base of supporters behind him.

The president has not said he would veto the Democratic legislation if it lands on his desk. But the idea of clouding Pelosi's speakership only emboldens Trump, the officials said. A prolonged crisis could hobble House Democrats' ability to launch their agenda, which includes investigations of the president and oversight of his administration, including Russian interference in the election.

Rather than reach out for negotiations, the president has been holed up at the White House, tweeting. "Veterans on President Trump's handling of Border Security - 62% Approval Rating," Trump tweeted Sunday, referring to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters  including more than 4,000 current and former service members  conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago. It found that veterans overall approved of Trump's job performance, but women, the fastest growing demographic group in the military, defied that trend with a majority disapproving of him.

Other Republicans, though, are more wary of the White House's approach. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said Sunday a prolonged standoff only makes all sides look "silly."

"If we blame each other, this could last a long, long time," Shelby said on CBS' "Face the Nation." ''It's not a question of who wins, who loses ... Nobody wins in a shutdown, we all lose."

Pelosi, meanwhile, shows no signs of wavering, eager to both re-open government and to launch the Democratic agenda.

When the House gavels open Thursday, one of the first votes will be on Pelosi's return as speaker. The California Democrat is confident she has the support needed to win.

Democrats in the House are preparing three legislative options to keep the government running Day One, aides said. One would be a temporary measure, similar to the Senate-passed bill before Christmas, to keep border security at existing funding levels, $1.3 billion, and re-open government through Feb. 8, but no money for the wall. The others would also keep border funds at current levels, without wall money, but for the remainder of the fiscal year, through Sept. 30.

On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has shown little daylight with Pelosi, and has been able to hold Democrats together, effectively neutralizing the White House's attempt to split his ranks, even after their November losses in the Senate.

Schumer immediately began approaching Democratic senators after the midterm election to hear their views on Trump's $5 billion demand for the wall, according to a person familiar with the talks but unauthorized to speak publicly. He quickly learned that even the most vulnerable senators from states Trump won in 2016, while favoring border security, did not want to spend the money on the wall.

One red-state Democrat, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, said Sunday that Trump campaigned on having Mexico pay for the wall, but if the president is now saying, "We're still going to build the wall, but we're going to have the American taxpayer pay for it  we're going to use the American taxpayer like an ATM machine  that's not the direction to go."

Republicans, who will still control the Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have not signaled their next move. They have largely left the negotiations to Trump and Democrats, and it's unclear if McConnell would consider any of the bills the House, under Pelosi, could pass.

Republican senators are eager to get back to confirming Trump's judicial nominees, and they say they don't want to consider any more shutdown legislation unless they know Trump would sign it into law after the president rejected their Senate-passed bill.

House Democrats are pushing forward with other priorities in the first weeks of the new Congress, including a Rules package that will impose new transparency and oversight on legislative operations  including a requirement that all bills be considered in committees before coming to the floor for votes. They're also planning early moves on health care, including a resolution to fight the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.

Rep. Lucille Roybal Allard, D-Calif., the incoming chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee that handles Homeland Security, said in an interview that her office is preparing legislation to keep the government running and moving forward.

"Our goal is to make sure we move on our promises," she said, noting that the public has "tremendous influence on what happens" in Washington.

And if the shutdown drags into the new Congress? "I don't even want to think about that."
The booming Washington region has long been an easy target for Republican lawmakers who want to cut federal spending. Last year, a GOP congressman from Iowa tweeted a picture of construction cranes on the waterfront south of the Capitol with the comment, "D.C. needs a recession.''

In the unlikely event that Congress approves President Donald Trump's budget proposal, Washington could get one.

Trump has proposed deep spending cuts at nearly every federal agency other than the Defense Department and eliminating 19 independent agencies altogether. Although his budget has little chance of being enacted, it offers a glimpse into the priorities of Trump and his advisers, including chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has pledged the "deconstruction of the administrative state.''

While many of the targeted federal agencies have offices outside Washington, Trump's dream budget would hit the region disproportionately, with tens of thousands of jobs at risk. The cuts would be felt throughout the city, with fewer people riding the already-beleaguered Metro subway or eating at restaurants. It would also hurt Washington's already-shaky market for office space.

Economist Stephen Fuller of George Mason University, who has studied the regional economy for decades, estimated 20,000-24,000 federal employees and 10,000 federal contractors would lose their jobs under Trump's proposal. That equates to 5 percent of federal workers in the region.

With those workers earning an average salary of $111,000, the job losses would mean more than $2.2 billion in lost wages, Fuller said. That would reverberate around the city.

"These are basically shutting agencies down whose principal contribution to the Washington economy is jobs,'' Fuller said. "These are really good jobs. The average job in a restaurant (pays) $28,000. You've got to create a lot of restaurant jobs to replace one of these.''

Washington has come a long way since the 1980s, when it was dubbed the nation's murder capital amid a crack cocaine epidemic, and the mid-1990s, when the local government went bankrupt and Congress took over the city's day-to-day operations.

Yesim Sayin Taylor, executive director of the pro-business D.C. Policy Center, said major federal job cuts triggered that fiscal crisis, showing the city can experience a "federally engineered recession.'' She believes Trump's budget could spark a similar recession.

Federal spending increases after Sept. 11, 2001, helped revive the city's economy, and Washington was largely insulated from the impact of the Great Recession because new federal spending made up for the region's private-sector job losses, Taylor said.

Of the 19 agencies that Trump wants to eliminate, 16 are headquartered in Washington, and another is just across the river in Arlington, Virginia. Most of the offices are clustered around downtown.

Agencies on the chopping block include the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Institute for Peace, which has a striking headquarters that was completed just 6 years ago near the Lincoln Memorial.

A loss of 10,000 federal jobs headquartered in Washington would translate into at least 1.5 million square feet of vacant office space, Fuller said.

"That's a lot of space, and nobody's lining up to take it because the private sector's contracting,'' Fuller said. "It sends out the message - if I were the mayor, I would be concerned - that we're not open for business. We're a company town and our core business is shrinking. What message does that send out to other investors and businesses?''

Washington's population is 48 percent black, and African-Americans in the area could be disproportionately affected by the cuts. Earning gaps between whites and blacks in the federal workforce are smaller than in the general population, Taylor said.

"The federal government is an important source of high-paying jobs for the African-American community in the Metro region,'' Taylor said.

Metro, too, could feel the sting. The transit agency has been beset by reliability issues, and ridership has been declining since 2009. The system's board of directors recently agreed to raise fares, reduce service and lay off employees to balance this year's budget, and a continued drop in ridership would mean another round of painful cutbacks next year, a cycle many officials have referred to as a "death spiral.''

Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser's administration released figures last week saying the city has identified $103 million in federal funding to local programs that would disappear under Trump's budget. The city is analyzing what the proposal would mean for local tax revenues, but that, too, is expected to be significant.

"It's going to be a double whammy on the fiscal side at the local level,'' Fuller said.

Fewer workers with less buying power would hurt the city's restaurant industry. While Trump has said there are few good restaurants in Washington, the city has in fact become an international dining destination in the past decade.

"The restaurant and foodservice industry in Washington has expanded significantly in recent years, garnering much-deserved attention from Bon Appetit, Michelin and Zagat,'' said Kathy Hollinger, president of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. "If federal jobs are lost, it will shrink the pool of diners and ultimately result in reduced business for local restaurants that rely on neighboring federal offices to fill their dining rooms.''

Here are the 17 independent agencies based in the Washington area that President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating:
Virginia lawmakers voted to add an extra day to this year's legislative session because of a heated disagreement over whether they'd had enough time to study a proposed budget before voting on it.

It's a contentious end to a legislative session marked by an unprecedented wave of scandals involving the state's top elected officials that have roiled the Capitol and exposed deep fault lines among Democrats.

A large majority of the 140 legislators was ready to finish work Saturday evening when a group of House Democrats balked at the idea of waiving a procedural rule that requires a 48-hour waiting period before voting on a budget after it is introduced.

The House and Senate budget committees unveiled a compromise spending plan Saturday morning that makes adjustments to the two-year state budget that was approved last year.

"We adopt the rules, and they should mean something," said Del. Charniele Herring, explaining why some members of her caucus did not want to vote Saturday on a budget.

House Democrats were also angry that House Republicans had used procedural maneuvers earlier this week to defeat a bid to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, a gender-equality measure.

Under pressure from Senate Democrats, House Democrats eventually relented to wait 24 hours instead of 48 hours. The extra day will cost taxpayers about $30,000 in per diem costs.

Many lawmakers in both parties, eager to leave town after an emotionally trying legislative session, said they felt the House Democrats were being unreasonable.

Democratic Sen. Mamie Locke blasted some House Democrats on Facebook, calling them a "wrecking crew" who didn't know "what the hell they're doing and think they know everything."

The compromise budget unveiled Saturday, and likely to be finalized Sunday, includes increases to already-planned raises to state workers and public school teachers. It also freezes tuition increases at state universities and pads Virginia's rainy day accounts.

A stronger-than-expected state economy helped give lawmakers hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funds to spend this year. Much of it is going into public education, including money for more school counselors and increased undergraduate financial aid.

Lawmakers had previously passed a tax cut package that returns most of the extra state revenues to taxpayers that were projected to be generated by changes in the federal tax code. That includes refunds later this year of up to $110 to single taxpayers and $220 to joint filers. The GOP-led General Assembly balked at Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam's initial proposal to keep most of the money and spend it on areas he said the state has long neglected.

The compromise budget includes new money for many of the priorities outlined by Northam, though not always at the funding levels he requested.

Northam has been the subject of national ridicule after a bungled response to a racist photo in his medical school yearbook that surfaced earlier this month.

Scandals involving the state's other top Democrats soon followed. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax has lost staff and been placed on leave at his law firm after two women accused him of sexual assault, which he denies. And Attorney General Mark Herring has all but disappeared after acknowledging to dressing in blackface in college, an admission that came days after condemning Northam for similar behavior.

The trio of scandals has divided Democrats on how best to respond, with mixed calls for resignations and differing views on how and whether to investigate the allegations against Fairfax.

Northam has resisted widespread calls to resign and said he plans to focus the rest of his term on addressing issues of inequality.

Black lawmakers said Saturday they plan to press the governor to increase funding for school districts with a high concentration of low-income students than what's currently proposed in the compromise budget.

Northam can suggest changes to the budget after it passes Sunday. Lawmakers will reconvene April 3rd to take up the governor's vetoes and amendments.
Amazon will be sorting through 238 proposals from cities and regions in the United States, Canada and Mexico that are hoping to land the company's second headquarters and the investment it'll bring.

The online had retailer kicked off its hunt for a second home base in September, promising 50,000 new jobs and construction spending of more than $5 billion. Proposals were due last week, and Amazon made clear that tax breaks and grants would be a big factor in deciding what entry prevails.

Amazon.com Inc. did not specify which cities or metro areas applied, but many of the location have made their interest public. The company said Monday the proposals came from 43 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, as well as three Mexican states and six Canadian provinces.

In a tweet, the company said it was "excited to review each of them."

Besides looking for financial incentives, Amazon had stipulated that it wanted to be near a metropolitan area with more than a million people; be able to attract top technical talent; be within 45 minutes of an international airport; have direct access to mass transit; and be able to expand that headquarters to as much as 8 million square feet in the next decade.

But that didn't stop some apparent long shots from applying. A bid came from Alaska, according to Amazon, though the entire state has a population below a million.

"Most of the 238 probably lack some of those big-city advantages," said Jed Kolko, the chief economist at job site Indeed. But most places probably could not pass up the chance of getting 50,000 jobs, "even if the odds of winning are low," he said.

Although generous tax breaks and other incentives can erode a city's tax base, Amazon's headquarters could draw even more tech businesses along with their well-educated, highly paid employees.

In New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie has endorsed Newark's bid, saying the state and the city are planning nearly $7 billion in tax breaks. Detroit bid organizers have said its proposal offers Amazon the unique chance to set up shop in both the U.S. and Canada. Missouri officials proposed an innovation corridor between Kansas City and St. Louis rather than a single location.

The seven U.S. states that Amazon said did not apply were: Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.

Ahead of the deadline, some cities turned to stunts to try and stand out: Representatives from Tucson, Arizona, sent a 21-foot tall cactus to Amazon's Seattle headquarters; New York lit the Empire State Building orange to match Amazon's smile logo.

The company plans to remain in its sprawling Seattle headquarters and the second one will be "a full equal" to it, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in September. Amazon has said that it will announce a decision sometime next year.
U.S. prosecutors are looking into the development of Boeing's 737 Max jets, a person briefed on the matter revealed Monday, the same day French aviation investigators concluded there were "clear similarities" in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 last week and a Lion Air jet in October.

The Justice Department probe will examine the way Boeing was regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the inquiry is not public.

A federal grand jury in Washington sent a subpoena to someone involved in the plane's development seeking emails, messages and other communications, the person told The Associated Press.

The Transportation Department's inspector general is also looking into the FAA's approval of the Boeing 737 Max, a U.S. official told AP. The official wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal reported on the probe Sunday said the inspector general was looking into the plane's anti-stall system. It quotes unidentified people familiar with both cases.

The anti-stall system may have been involved in the Oct. 29 crash of a Lion Air jet off of Indonesia that killed 189 people. It's also under scrutiny in the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet that killed 157.

The Transportation Department's FAA regulates Chicago-based Boeing and is responsible for certifying that planes can fly safely.

The grand jury issued its subpoena on March 11, one day after the Ethopian Airlines crash, according to the person who spoke to The Associated Press.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the inspector general said Monday they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any inquiries. The FAA would not comment.

"Boeing does not respond to or comment on questions concerning legal matters, whether internal, litigation, or governmental inquiries," Boeing spokesman Charles Bickers said in an email.

The company late Monday issued an open letter from its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, addressed to airlines, passengers and the aviation community. Muilenburg did not refer to the reports of the Justice Department probe, but stressed his company is taking actions to ensure its 737 Max jets are safe.

Those include an upcoming release of a software update and related pilot training for the 737 Max to "address concerns" that arose in the aftermath of October's Lion Air crash, Muilenburg said. The planes' new flight-control software is suspected of playing a role in the crashes.

The French civil aviation investigation bureau BEA said Monday that black box data from the Ethiopian Airlines flight showed the links with the Lion Air crash and will be used for further study.

Ethiopian authorities asked BEA for help in extracting and interpreting the crashed plane's black boxes because Ethiopia does not have the necessary expertise and technology.

The Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau intends to release a preliminary report within 30 days.

The United States and many other countries have grounded the Max 8s and larger Max 9s as Boeing faces the challenge of proving the jets are safe to fly amid suspicions that faulty sensors and software contributed to the two crashes in less than five months.

Both planes flew with erratic altitude changes that could indicate the pilots struggled to control the aircraft. Shortly after their takeoffs, both crews tried to return to the airports but crashed.

Boeing has said it has "full confidence" in the planes' safety. Engineers are making changes to the system designed to prevent an aerodynamic stall if sensors detect that the jet's nose is pointed too high and its speed is too slow.

Investigators looking into the Indonesian crash are examining whether the software automatically pushed the plane's nose down repeatedly, and whether the Lion Air pilots knew how to solve that problem. Ethiopian Airlines says its pilots received special training on the software.

Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot and a spokesman for their union, said Boeing held a discussion with airlines last Thursday but did not invite pilots at American or Southwest, the two U.S. carriers that use the same version of the Max that crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Tajer said airline officials told the unions that Boeing intends to offer pilots about a 15-minute iPad course to train them on the new flight-control software on Max jets that is suspected of playing a role in the crashes. He called that amount of training unacceptable.

"Our sense is it's a rush to comply  'let's go, let's go, let's go,'" Tajer said. "I'm in a rush to protect my passengers."

A spokesman for the pilots' union at Southwest Airlines also said Boeing representatives told that union they expected the upgrade to be ready the end of January.

The spokesman, Mike Trevino, said Boeing never followed up to explain why that deadline passed without an upgrade. Boeing was expected to submit a proposed fix to the FAA in early January.

Krisher reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers David Koenig in Dallas and Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
What to Know Climate skeptics have endorsed "both sides" approaches taken in the fight that began decades earlier over teaching evolution

The scientific consensus is that global warming is real and man-made

A Connecticut lawmaker wants to strike climate change from state science standards. A Virginia legislator worries teachers are indoctrinating students with their personal views on global warming. And an Oklahoma state senator wants educators to be able to introduce alternative ideas without fear of losing their jobs.

As climate change becomes a hotter topic in American classrooms, politicians around the country are pushing back against the scientific consensus that global warming is real and man-made.

Of the more than a dozen such measures proposed so far this year, some already have failed. But they have emerged this year in growing numbers, many of them inspired or directly encouraged by a pair of advocacy groups, the Discovery Institute and the Heartland Institute.

"You have to present two sides of the argument and allow the kids to deliberate," said Republican state Sen. David Bullard of Oklahoma, a former high school geography teacher whose bill, based on model legislation from the Discovery Institute, ran into opposition from science teachers and went nowhere.

Science education organizations and climate scientists have blasted such proposals for sowing confusion and doubt on a topic of global urgency.

"These efforts are dangerous and require vigilance in the academic community to make sure that they don't succeed," said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University.

He said the proposals reflect bad-faith efforts to undermine scientific findings that "prove inconvenient to vested interests, be they the fossil-fuel lobby or fundamentalist religious groups."

Some climate science skeptics have cast the debate as a matter of academic freedom.

James Taylor, a senior fellow at Heartland, an Illinois-based group that dismisses climate change, said it is encouraging well-rounded classroom discussions on the topic. The group, which in 2017 sent thousands of science teachers copies of a book titled "Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming," is now taking its message directly to students. A reference book it is planning for publication this year will rebut arguments linking climate change to hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather.

"We're very concerned the global warming propaganda efforts have encouraged students to not engage in research and critical thinking," Taylor said, referring to news reports and scientific warnings.

Neither Discovery nor Heartland discloses the identities of its donors.

Instruction on the topic varies widely from place to place, but climate change and how humans are altering the planet are core topics emphasized in the Next Generation Science Standards, developed by a group of states. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted the standards, and 21 others have embraced some of the material with modifications.

Still, a survey released in 2016 found that of public middle- and high-school science teachers who taught something about climate change, about a quarter gave equal time to perspectives that "raise doubt about the scientific consensus."

Climate skeptics have endorsed approaches taken in the fight that began decades earlier over teaching evolution, in which opponents led by conservative Christians have long called for teaching both sides of the issue.

By early February, the Oakland, California-based nonprofit National Center for Science Education flagged over a dozen bills this year as threats to the integrity of science education, more than the organization typically sees in an entire year.

Several of them  including proposals in Oklahoma, North Dakota and South Dakota  had language echoing model legislation of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which says teachers should not be prohibited from addressing strengths and weaknesses of concepts such as evolution and global warming.

Similar measures became law in Louisiana in 2008 and Tennessee in 2012. In states where they may not be feasible politically, Discovery has urged legislators to consider nonbinding resolutions in support of giving teachers latitude to "show support for critical thinking" on controversial topics. Lawmakers in Alabama and Indiana passed such resolutions in 2017.

Discovery officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Florida state Sen. Dennis Baxley is pressing legislation that would allow schools to teach alternatives to controversial theories.

"There is really no established science on most things, you'll find," the GOP legislator said.

Elsewhere, lawmakers in Connecticut and Iowa, which both adopted the Next Generation Science Standards, have proposed rolling them back. Connecticut state Rep. John Piscopo, a Republican, said he wants to eliminate the section on climate change.

"It's one-sided, totally one-sided. The teachers are not able to teach," said Piscopo, a Heartland Institute member. "I want students to have the freedom to understand it's a scientific debate."

Other bills introduced this year in such states as Virginia, Arizona and Maine call for teachers to avoid political or ideological indoctrination of their students.

"If they're teaching about a subject, such as climate change, and they present both sides, that's fine. That's as it should be. A teacher who presents a skewed extension of their political beliefs, that's closer to indoctrinating. That's not good to kids," said Virginia state Rep. Dave LaRock, a Republican.
What to Know The Tao's Travel bus was traveling from Florida to New York when it crashed in Prince George, VA, early Tuesday

Police say 57 people were aboard when the bus overturned on an exit ramp at the 45-mile marker of I-95

Family members of passengers can call the Prince George Emergency Services Center at 804-733-2659 for information

The driver of a charter bus involved in a crash that killed a man and a woman and injured dozens more early Tuesday on Interstate 95 south of Richmond, Virginia, was arrested.

Yui Man Chow, 40, of Staten Island, New York, is charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, Virginia State Police said.

Fifty-seven people, including Chow, were aboard the Tao's Travel bus when it overturned on an exit ramp at the 45-mile marker of I-95 in Prince George County near Kingwood, according to police.

The bus was traveling from Orlando, Florida, to New York City.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the crash.

One person died at the scene and a second died a few hours later at a nearby hospital, police said. Authorities have not released their names.

No information was immediately available on the number of those injured or the severity of their injuries.

Family members of passengers can call the Prince George Emergency Services Center at 804-733-2659 for information. A family reunification center was set up at the Prince George County Central Wellness Center at 11023 Prince George Drive in Disputanta, Virginia.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was at the scene with Virginia State Police's Motor Carrier Safety Team, police said around midday Tuesday. Prince George Fire & EMS crews also responded to the scene.

Drivers traveling north on I-95 through the area were told to expect delays and a detour, authorities said.
A group of Bethesda, Maryland, high school students were disciplined for creating and circulating a list on social media in which they ranked their female classmates based on their physical appearance, school officials say.

Several male students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School targeted 18 seniors by distributing a list with their first names and a rating beside each one, according to the school.

"This incident has been very upsetting for students, staff and families. B-CC High School has no tolerance for bullying. Our school strives to create a sense of belonging and respect for all students. This incident does not reflect those values," Principal Donna Jones said in a letter to students and parents on March 9.

The students involved in the ranking list were disciplined based on the school system's code of conduct, Jones said.

Jones did not say how many were involved or what their punishment was.

"I think, honestly, the consensus was that it wasn't an OK think at all and all the girls, they kind of banded together and took it on as a team because it was really hurtful to a lot of people," one female student told News4.

Jones said in the letter the school held meetings for the students directly affected to discuss how it has impacted them. There are ongoing discussions about how to empower students who are bullied and encourage people to speak out against it.

"Be good humans and see what your actions can do to others because it definitely tore a lot of girls down," another female student told News4.
 Flash

China hopes the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States will cherish the hard-won momentum of dialogue and keep talking until a peaceful denuclearized Korean Peninsula is realized, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Monday.

Spokesperson Geng Shuang made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to a question on DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui's comment on a briefing held in Pyongyang.

Choe Son Hui said on Friday that the recent summit between the top leader of the DPRK Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump failed because the U.S. side lacked sincerity.

"After the Hanoi summit, the DPRK and the U.S. both expressed willingness to continue dialogues. We commend and encourage this," Geng said.

China always believes that the Korean Peninsula issue can only be solved peacefully through political dialogues, he said.

He added that the key to keeping up and advancing dialogue is to accommodate all parties' legitimate concerns in a balanced way, build up mutual trust and consensus, take phased and synchronized steps, and start with easier moves.

"As the nuclear issue has dragged on for decades and complicated factors are at play, one cannot expect it to be solved overnight. All parties need to have reasonable expectations. One shouldn't set the bar too high at the outset or make unilateral, unrealistic demands," Geng quoted Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying.

He also said China hoped that the DPRK and the United States could cherish the hard-won momentum of dialogue, seize the opportunity, meet each other halfway, build up mutual trust and consensus, keep talking till something good comes out of the talks and a peaceful denuclearized Korean Peninsula is realized.

"The international community should encourage both sides to keep moving toward the goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and establishing a peace regime," Geng said.

China will continue to play a constructive role along with other parties, the spokesperson stressed.
An Arizona prosecutor has determined that Uber is not criminally liable in a crash last year in which one of its self-driving SUVs fatally struck a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix.

But it's not known whether prosecutors are considering charges against the driver in the March 18 crash in Tempe that was first fatality in the country involving a self-driving vehicle.

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, whose office in central Arizona was asked to review the investigation, said in a letter released Tuesday that her office was returning the case back to prosecutors in metro Phoenix to determine whether to file criminal charges. Calls left late Tuesday afternoon at the offices of Polk and Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery weren't immediately returned.

In her letter to Montgomery, Polk said her office concluded that video of the crash likely didn't accurately depict the collision and recommended that Tempe police seek more evidence.

Elaine Herzberg, 49, was pushing a bicycle across a street in the darkness when the crash occurred.

The driver, Rafaela Vasquez, told investigators that she didn't use her cellphone before the crash. But authorities had previously said records showed Vasquez was streaming the television show "The Voice" on her phone and was looking downward in the moments before the crash. Investigators had concluded the crash could have been avoided had Vasquez not been distracted.

Attempts by The Associated Press to contact Vasquez through email and phone numbers on Tuesday were not successful.

Uber didn't immediately reply to emails from the AP seeking comment on Polk's letter.

Vasquez told police Herzberg "came out of nowhere" and that she didn't see her prior to the collision. But officers had calculated that had Vasquez been paying attention, she could have reacted before impact and stopped the SUV before hitting Herzberg.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report in May saying the autonomous driving system on Uber's Volvo XC-90 SUV spotted Herzberg before hitting her, but didn't stop because the system used to automatically apply brakes in potentially dangerous situations had been disabled "to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior."

Instead of the system, Uber relies on the human backup driver to intervene.

The death raised questions about the safety of computer-controlled cars being built by Uber and dozens of other companies, including Google spin-off Waymo.

Uber pulled its self-driving cars out of Arizona the day before the NTSB report was released, eliminating the jobs of about 300 people who served as backup drivers and performed other jobs connected to the vehicles.

The company had suspended testing of its self-driving vehicles in Arizona, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto while regulators investigated the cause of the crash. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey prohibited Uber from continuing its tests of self-driving cars after Herzberg was killed.

The case was given to Polk's office after the prosecutor's office in metro Phoenix passed on the case, citing a potential conflict of interest. The agency in Phoenix had previously participated in a public-safety campaign with Uber.
Harold Brown, who as defense secretary in the Carter administration championed cutting-edge fighting technology during a tenure that included the failed rescue of hostages in Iran, has died at age 91.

Brown died Friday, said the Rand Corp., the California-based think tank which Brown served as a trustee for more than 35 years. His sister, Leila Brennet, said he died at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

Brown was a nuclear physicist who led the Pentagon to modernize its defense systems with weapons that included precision-guided cruise missiles, stealth aircraft, advanced satellite surveillance and improved communications and intelligence systems. He successfully campaigned to increase the Pentagon budget during his term, despite skepticism inside the White House and from Democrats in Congress.

That turbulent period included the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis. An effort in April 1980 to rescue the hostages failed when one of the helicopters on the mission struck a tanker aircraft in eastern Iran and crashed, killing eight U.S. servicemen.

"I considered the failed rescue attempt my greatest regret and most painful lesson learned," Brown wrote in his book "Star Spangled Security."

Brown faced numerous obstacles when he took the job as Pentagon chief, including pressure to reduce the defense budget both from within the administration and from influential congressional Democrats.

"When I became secretary of defense in 1977, the military services, most of all the army, were disrupted badly by the Vietnam War. There was general agreement that the Soviet Union outclassed the West in conventional military capability, especially in ground forces in Europe," he wrote later.

Wary of the growing Soviet threat, Brown sought to withstand the pressure to cut defense and, gradually, managed to increase spending.

"The constant Cold War competition raged hot during the Carter administration and preoccupied me throughout the four years," Brown wrote. He noted later that "the Defense Department budget in real terms was 10 to 12 percent more when we left than when we came in," which he said was not an easy accomplishment.

And he cited the technological advances in defense systems, especially weapons systems such as precision-guided cruise missiles, stealth aircraft and advanced satellite surveillance.

"Some of these came to visible fruition 10 years later during Desert Storm, which reversed Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait," he wrote. "The Carter administration initiated and developed these programs, the Reagan administration paid for their acquisition in many cases, and the George H.W. Bush administration employed them."

Brown later maintained that his extensive work with the Soviets on the arms race was not wasted.

"We also reached a specific strategic arms control agreement with the Soviet Union," he wrote. "Though never formally ratified, the agreement was adhered to by both parties and limited Soviet threats that our other conventional and nuclear weapons programs were designed to counter."

The acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, said in a statement Saturday that Brown's "steady leadership piloted our nation through a consequential segment of the Cold War. His focus on deterrence through a strong nuclear triad facilitated long-term peace and stability in the United States and Europe." Shanahan praised Brown for his "devoted leadership and lifetime of service."

Brown was born in New York City on Sept. 19, 1927, attended public schools and went to Columbia University on an accelerated wartime schedule, receiving an undergraduate degree in physics in 1945 "when I was not quite 18," then going to graduate school at Columbia, receiving a doctorate in physics.

Not long after graduation he moved to California and went to work on projects that related to the development of plutonium. He then went to work at a nuclear weapons lab. He worked his way up to director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore in 1960.

In 1961, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara invited him to be director of defense research and engineering in the Kennedy administration. In 1965 he became secretary of the Air Force during the Johnson administration and, as he described it later, "served in that role through some of the most difficult and divisive parts of the Vietnam War."

After the 1968 election put a Republican, Richard Nixon, back in the White House, Brown accepted the position of president at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena serving until he went back into government work and was a delegate to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in the 1970s,

Carter nominated Brown to be defense secretary in 1977. He was quickly confirmed and served throughout Carter's term. During the 1980 campaign Brown actively defended the Carter administration's policies, speaking frequently on national issues in public.

After leaving the Pentagon, he remained in Washington, joining the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies as a visiting professor and later the university's Foreign Policy Institute as chairman. He remained active in matters of national security, including service on the Defense Policy Board, which meets quarterly to offer perspectives to the current secretary of defense. He served as a consultant to many corporations, often serving as a member of the board of directors.

Carter awarded Brown the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Bill Clinton gave him the Energy Department's Enrico Fermi Award for achievement in science and technology.

At a farewell address from his job as defense secretary, Brown said: "Most satisfying of all is that for four years our nation remained at peace despite the world tensions and turmoil that constantly pose challenges to our interest and peace."
At 3, Haley Moss was diagnosed with autism and doctors thought she may never be able to work a minimum wage job or live on her own. Last month, she became the first openly autistic person to be admitted to the Florida Bar.

Not only did the Parkland native graduate from the University of Miami School of Law and pass the Florida Bar, but she has also published multiple books, lives independently and works at a top law firm in Miami, though like many of us, she still sometimes forgets to do her laundry.

A few weeks into her legal career, she has already seen how some of her strengths and struggles affect her work.

"I'm very passionate about things I enjoy and I love to write," Moss said. "That's also part of why I went to law school, and I love to be able to help others, so even with writing, I love that I'm able to express myself completely and what I can say has the ability to help someone else."

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Lisa Walsh administered the oath to Moss at her Jan. 11 swearing-in ceremony in Miami.

Joseph Zumpano is a co-founder and managing shareholder of Zumpano Patricios, the Coral Gables-based law firm founded in 2003 that offered Moss a job before she passed the bar exam. He said his firm's practice areas, which include anti-terrorism and managed care law, are "intrinsically related" to his decision to hire Moss.

Zumpano's firm's notable victories include a 2004 lawsuit against the Cuban government for the killing of an American pilot flying missions for the CIA and a 2015 suit in which he represented Antonio Caballero, whose father, Carlos Caballero, the Colombian ambassador to the United Nations, was kidnapped, tortured and killed by Colombian guerrillas and drug-trafficking groups.

"When I was introduced to Haley by a former lawyer at our firm, I immediately picked up on the fact that she was obviously brilliant  brilliant and a good person," Zumpano said.

"As a core value, we wanted to be the first firm to bring in an openly autistic lawyer and make the point that if you align people to their strengths then given the chance, they excel," he said. "To our knowledge, Haley is the first lawyer that we know of in a substantial law firm in the state of Florida that is openly autistic. There may be others but we haven't found them."

For Zumpano, the decision also comes from a personal place of understanding and a desire to increase diversity among his firm.

"I have a child who is severely autistic," he said. "He is largely nonverbal, he will speak a few words, but he is an angel, and it's been my honor and my wife's honor to have him in our lives, and we raise him and we love him and we hope for a day when there's a better future for what we would consider neurodiversity in our country."

Moss and Zumpano offered a few points of advice for potential employers of people who may be living with autism or other diagnoses.

"To employers, I would say 'don't put limits,' and 'you're investing in what someone can do, and you need to look at what people can do as opposed to what they might not be able to do,'" Moss said. "A disability generally is not all-encompassing, it is just part of who someone is, not everything they are. Everyone is unique, everyone has strengths and weaknesses and everyone has talent."

To those who may be reluctant to increase neurodiversity among their employees, Zumpano says "get ready, here we come."

"The advantages that I'm going to have, tactically, when I open up my firm to people with neurodiverse conditions, with strengths that may be overlooked, I'm going to get the benefit, this firm is going to get the benefit and the clients are going to get the benefit," he said. "Our firm is at a level where we can actually align people with extraordinary strengths to achieve extraordinary outcomes."

They also encouraged people seeking jobs to never give up and capitalize on their strengths, rather than be limited by their weaknesses or perceived weaknesses.

"My advice for people with disabilities and people with autism that are looking for jobs or anything is don't place limits on yourself and knowing what you're good at helps a lot, too," Moss said.

"If you're an autistic individual or a family with an autistic family member, don't let anybody else's perceptions of your limitations dictate your own," Zumpano said. "Haley has broken through this glass ceiling, and the firm is proud to be the hammer that shatters it, there's hope for everybody."

Moss said "even with parents of young children, I always tell them, 'you're going to be amazed at what your child is able to do. Their journey is just beginning when you get a diagnosis. They're going to be so talented and you're going to be constantly surprised and amazed,' and to really embrace that and embrace what makes them who they are, and what they're good at and what makes them special."

For information about the Unicorn Children's Foundation, visit UnicornChildrensFoundation.org.
The world's largest airborne observatory was supposed to be parked in Seattle this week, so thousands of scientists attending the "Super Bowl of Astronomy" could behold this marvel: a Boeing 747 outfitted with a massive telescope used to study the fundamental mysteries of the universe.

But conference-goers will not be able to see NASA's space-exploring plane. Its visit to the 233rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society was canceled, one of a growing list of scientific casualties of the partial government shutdown now stretching into its third week.

Along with the plane, hundreds of government scientists are also no longer allowed to attend the conference or two other major scientific gatherings scheduled to begin this week. Those meetings will address pressing issues in the fields of technology, space exploration, extreme weather and climate change.

But the shutdown's impact on science stretches well beyond the empty chairs at this week's conferences, said Keith Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society. It means some of the nation's smartest scientific minds are sitting at home, not doing science, for weeks, with no clear end in sight.

"That's difficult to recover from," said Seitter. "We'll be seeing ripple effects from this for a long time."

Attendees of the events describe them as crucial opportunities for scientists from the government, the private sector and academia to exchange research and ideas. The gatherings are like three-legged stools, said Kevin Petty, the chief science officer for the private climate company, Vaisala. And this week one of the legs is missing.

"That's the value of these conferences, it's the people I run into in the hallway or the coffee line, start up a conversation and realize there's a connection between what they're doing and what I'm doing," said Amanda O'Connor, a satellite imaging expert who is attending a weather conference. "It's those serendipitous encounters that are lost and really important."

Some 700 federal employees who planned to attend the American Meteorological Society conference in Phoenix are staying home. Another 500 will miss the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' SciTech Forum and Exposition in San Diego. The American Astronomical Society estimates that between 300 and 450 scientists will be absent this week from the world's largest annual astronomical meeting, where the NASA plane was supposed to be. But it's hard to get a firm count, said Rick Fienberg, the organization's press officer: Organizers emailed a survey, but furloughed government employees aren't even allowed to check their email.

Even Jim Bridenstine, NASA's new administrator, and the leaders of the National Weather Service are no longer able to attend the weather conference, and the organizers scrambled to replace their presentations.

Until late last week, Fienberg said the astronomical organization had hoped the politicians in Washington could work out a deal to resolve the impasse over President Donald Trump's demands for $5.6 billion to build a wall on the southern border.

But on Thursday, employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, were told to cancel their conference plans. Scientists and engineers from NASA and the Smithsonian were also told they couldn't attend.

Conference organizers have scrambled to shift speakers, relax the rules to allow non-governmental employees to present the work of their federal colleagues and negotiate with hotels to allow government employee to cancel reservations made long ago.

"In the same week that the Chinese government lands a rover (on the far side of the moon) and the U.S. sends a probe to the furthest object ever visited by humanity," said Kevin Marvel, the astronomy organization's executive officer, "scores of scientists at all career levels are being prevented from attending our meeting."

One concrete casualty could be the government's ability to recruit and retain the next generation of scientists, said Seitter, with the American Meteorological Society. Take E.L. Meszaros, a doctoral student at Brown University, who had been scheduled to present her research on human-drone communication techniques at the San Diego technology conference.

But her work was funded by NASA, as was her trip to the conference. So she's stuck at home in Rhode Island. She always imagined she'd work as a public servant. But now she has scientist friends who work for the government who haven't been paid in weeks and are interviewing at other places.

"If you can't guarantee that you're going to be able to pay your employees," she said, "then it does make you second guess whether that's where you want to work."

Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.


Authorities say an off-duty Indiana State Police trooper has been shot and wounded by his son at the trooper's home in northern Indiana.

The St. Joseph County prosecutor's office says the trooper was shot late Thursday in Granger and was taken to a hospital in semi-stable condition with a single gunshot wound.

The prosecutor's office says the trooper's son, who is 11-years-old, was detained on a preliminary charge of attempted murder pending a review by prosecutors and juvenile authorities.

The Associated Press isn't reporting the name of the trooper to avoid identifying his son. The shooting is under investigation and the prosecutor's office says it planned to release additional information later.
They were living in holes in the ground, with only dry flatbread to eat at the end. Those injured in an intense military campaign had no access to medical care, and those who were sick had no medicine.

Yet, if it were not for the call from their leaders to leave, they would have stayed.

Such is the devotion of several hundred men, women and children who were evacuated Friday from the last speck of land controlled by the Islamic State group, a riverside pocket that sits on the edge of Syria and Iraq. Hundreds, if not thousands, more remain holed up in Baghouz  the last redoubt of the militants' self-proclaimed caliphate that leaders once said would stretch to Rome.

They include militants, of course, but also their family members and other civilians who are among the group's most determined supporters. Many of them traveled to Syria from all over the world. And they stuck around as the militants' control crumbled.

At least 36 flatbed trucks used for transporting sheep carried the disheveled, haggard crowd out of the territory to a desert area miles (kilometers) away for screening. They were the latest batch of evacuees from the territory following airstrikes and clashes meant to bring about the militants' complete territorial defeat.

For now, the civilians are expected to be sent to a displaced people's camp, while suspected fighters will go to detention facilities. Previous evacuations have already overwhelmed camps in northern Syria, and at least 60 people who left the shrinking territory have died of malnutrition or exhaustion.

In a dusty area surrounded by grass, women engulfed in black robes from head to toe and children in dirty jackets  many of them crying for food  formed one line. Men wearing tattered headscarves formed another. Foreign men were in yet a third.

One woman had given birth in one of the trucks. An old man was carried in a blanket by two others to the screening line. A young girl sat under the shade of the wheel of a truck looking dazed, while another moved between the crowd, asking for food.

The evacuees included French, Polish, Chinese, Bengali, Egyptians, Tajiks, Moroccans, Iraqis and Syrians.

It is impossible to know if all are wholeheartedly behind the militant group or how many expressed support out of fear of reprisals. But many vehemently defended ISIS, arguing the group was down  but not out  and said they only left because of an order from the remaining religious leader in the area.

Some referred to the wali, the provincial leader, while others said the order was from the group's top leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is referred to as the "Caliph."

It is not clear if ISIS leaders were in agreement. Amid the military pressure, reports have emerged of disagreements among them. The war monitor group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one ISIS leader was beheaded in recent days for urging civilians to leave.

All those interviewed gave nicknames or spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety.

"Baghouz maybe is the most difficult moments of all my life," said 21-year-old Um Youssef, a Tunisian-French woman who came to Syria at 17 with her mother. "I didn't make Hijrah (migration) for the food, or for the good life. It is jihad (holy war) for the sake of God."

Um Youssef  which means mother of Youssef in Arabic  sent her two kids and her mother out of the pocket last month and stayed with her husband.

She said she had no regrets and was at "peace," describing the last few weeks as "the best" since she moved to Syria because they taught her life lessons.

It was hard to see how that could be from the hills overlooking Baghouz. A four-year international campaign has reduced the self-proclaimed caliphate  which once sprawled over nearly a third of Syria and Iraq  to a tent encampment and a few homes in this village overlooking the Euphrates river.

An estimated 300 ISIS militants are besieged there, hemmed in by the river and the U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militia spearheading the fight against ISIS following an intense push since September. Thousands of civilians have also poured into the area.

The presence of so many civilians and possibly senior members of the militant group  in Baghouz has surprised the SDF and slowed down the expected announcement of the extremist group's territorial defeat.

Recapturing Baghouz would mark an end to the militants' territorial rule, but few believe that will end the threat posed by an organization that still stages and inspires attacks through sleeper cells in both Syria and Iraq and that has active affiliates in Egypt, West Africa and elsewhere. The group also has a presence online, using social media to recruit new members and promote its attacks.

In the past few weeks, nearly 20,000 people have left Baghouz on foot through the humanitarian corridor, but the militants then closed the passage and no civilians left for a week until Wednesday, when a large group was evacuated.

Among those evacuated Friday was a group of 11 Yazidi children. Thousands from the Yazidi minority were kidnapped by ISIS in Iraq in 2014, and are still missing.

In the dusty clearing where the evacuees were being screened Friday, a 16-year-old mother of two from Aleppo said she has not had food for a couple of days, opting to feed her children instead.

A child said he has not showered in a month, and a woman from Tajikistan asked for a phone to call her mother. Frantic and in tears, a mother held out her pale and still toddler, screaming for help. Tears of hungry children rang through the open desert as SDF officials searched the evacuees' belongings.

But of over a dozen people interviewed by The Associated Press, only four said they didn't want to be in Baghouz.

They described living in holes dug in the ground with tents hoisted to protect against airstrikes. Some said they initially got lentil soup, but then only barely-husk bread was available a green-brownish loaf of flatbread.

"We weren't going to leave, but the Caliph said women should leave," said Um Abdul-Aziz, a 33-year-old Syrian mother of five whose moniker means mother of Abdul-Aziz in Arabic. She was referring to ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who calls himself the "Caliph of Muslims." ''I wanted to stay. It is an Islamic State. It is land of Islam."

Her husband stayed behind to fight. "They thought if they let the women out, God may help them. May God help them," she said.

A few were critical. "Order or no order, I wanted to get out," said Aya Ibrahim, an Iraqi mother who said she was unable to secure medicine for her children. "Many families died from airstrikes. Many kids died from hunger."

The 16-year old Syrian mother of two from Aleppo said she lost four husbands, her father, sister and two brothers. Um Mohammed  mother of Mohammed in Arabic  said the last days have been hard, with food prices soaring and intensive bombings keeping them in hiding.

About 2 pounds (a kilogram) of sugar went for nearly 30,000 Liras ($70), more than 30 times the price in other parts of Syria, while a quarter-gallon (liter) of cooking oil cost 10,000 Liras ($23). "I have not eaten in four days," she said.

Then the order came for them to leave.

But, for some, it's not the end.

Um Youssef, the French-Tunisian, said she has no plans or desire to return home in Tunisia, saying she would find her way to another Syrian city.

"Islamic State is over? Says who?" asked a 14-year-old Syrian girl who refused to give her name. "Wherever you go there is Islamic State."
Over strong objections from prosecutors, a federal judge on Monday took the rare step of letting a 25-year-old man charged with plotting to bomb a Chicago bar avert trial and move on to sentencing without ever saying he did anything wrong.

Adel Daoud entered an Alford plea at the end of a three-hour hearing in U.S. District Court, telling Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman he maintained his innocence but that he simultaneously acknowledged prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him had he gone to trial.

Agents arrested Daoud in an FBI sting in 2012, after he pressed the button on a remote he was told would ignite what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb in a car, just blocks from the federal courthouse. Daoud said he wanted to kill at least 100 people, government court filings allege.

Daoud's case has dragged out for six years, delayed in part by his statements that the judge was "a reptilian overlord" and that his own lawyers were in cahoots with the Illuminati. After he received treatment for schizophrenia, Coleman earlier this year declared him fit to stand trial.

Dressed in orange jails clothes Monday, Daoud at times seemed unsure about the right words to use in a plea that's rare for federal cases and rarer still for federal terrorism cases. Standing before Coleman, he paused and remained quiet when the judge asked: "You are saying you didn't do anything illegal or wrong in this case?"

Daoud said he accepted the "factual basis" of the charges against him. But he added, "I deny culpability and maintain my innocence."

Daoud, of the Chicago suburb of Hillside, Illinois, faces a maximum penalty of life in prison when he learns his punishment next year. His sentencing will be April 29. Though Daoud didn't enter standard guilty pleas, Coleman explained to him that a judgment of guilty will be entered in the record for nine counts  two related to the bomb plot case and seven regarding charges brought while he was in prison.

In objecting to the Alfred plea, prosecutor Barry Jonas alluded to statements from Daoud's lawyers that they intended to put "the FBI on trial" for entrapping Daoud. Jonas said that taking the case to a jury would allow the government to show that's not what happened.

"I consider this an FBI success story," Jonas said about the case. "The public has a right to know that."

Daoud also entered Alford pleas Monday on the seven other counts. Those included charges that, while behind bars, he solicited the killing of a FBI agent who participated in the sting and that he attacked a fellow inmate with a shank fashioned from a toothbrush after the inmate drew a picture of the Prophet Muhammad.

In accepting the Alfred pleas, Coleman cited both Daoud's mental health and concerns the defense had raised about what she said was "the overall environment when (the word) 'terrorism' is mentioned." She didn't elaborate.

Daoud's lawyers and other critics have argued for years that federal stings tend to snare psychologically vulnerable youth, not committed would-be terrorists. But in the lead up to Monday's hearing, prosecutors sought to dispel the idea that agents roped Daoud into a bomb plot he never would have contemplated on his own.

In a 19-page description of the evidence against Daoud recently filed with the court, prosecutors alleged Daoud expressed an interest in acts of violence for months before undercover FBI agents ever engaged him online.
An Iowa farmer-turned-reality television star is fighting to avoid prison after driving his pickup into the back of a tractor and killing a neighbor.

Chris Soules, who became known as "Prince Farming" during his 2015 appearance on "The Bachelor" and also appeared on "The Bachelorette" and "Dancing With The Stars," lost a legal battle Friday in the felony case against him.

A judge dismissed his constitutional challenge to an Iowa law requiring the surviving driver in a fatal accident to remain at the scene until police arrive.

Soules rear-ended a farm tractor driven by Kenneth Mosher on a rural northern Iowa road just after sunset on April 24. Mosher died soon after at a hospital.

The accident sent the tractor Mosher was driving and Soules' pickup into ditches on opposite sides of the road. Soules called 911 and identified himself, administered CPR to Mosher and remained at the scene until emergency personnel arrived. But before law enforcement could arrive, Soules was driven home.

One of Soules' attorneys, Brandon Brown, said in a statement Soules did everything he could to assist Mosher. Brown said the Iowa Supreme Court has never considered whether the actions he took could rightfully be punished as a "hit and run."

"Mr. Soules and his attorneys vigorously disagree with the judge's ruling and plan to appeal to give the Iowa Supreme Court the opportunity to review this important issue," Brown said.

Soules was arrested at 1:16 the next morning at his home near Arlington, 12 miles northeast of the accident scene. Sheriff's reports indicate he declined to let officers into his house until after they obtained a search warrant.

He was charged with failure to remain at the scene of a fatal accident, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. He faces trial on Jan. 18.

His attorneys claim Iowa's law violates the constitutional rights of citizens to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and to avoid self-incrimination.

The law in question says, in part, "a surviving driver shall promptly report the accident to law enforcement authorities, and shall immediately return to the scene of the accident or inform the law enforcement authorities where the surviving driver can be located."

Most states consider it a felony to leave the scene of an accident in which someone is injured or dies, but Iowa's law differs in that it has been interpreted to require the surviving driver to be present when law officers arrive.

"No other state has a comparable requirement," Soules' attorneys said in court documents.

A driver forced to meet face-to-face with police is exposed to interrogation and observation by officers and risk self-incrimination, his attorneys argued.

State prosecutors contend the purpose of the law is to prevent drivers from evading liability for driving recklessly, driving while drunk or driving with a suspended or revoked license.

"The state submits the legislature foresaw that drunk drivers could flee the scene of a fatal crash precisely because they wanted to escape and sober up before confronting law enforcement officers who may detect telltale signs of intoxication," prosecutors said in court documents.

Initial court documents Buchanan County Attorney Shawn Harden filed in May said Soules was seen purchasing alcohol at a convenience store shortly before the accident. They allege he attempted "to obfuscate the immediate facts and circumstances surrounding the accident, including a determination of his level of intoxication and an explanation of the empty and partially consumed open alcoholic beverages located in and around his vehicle ..."

Had Soules been tested at the scene or soon after and found to have been legally drunk, a much more serious charge such as vehicular homicide could have been brought. It carries a prison sentence of as much as 25 years.

Soules, 36, pleaded guilty to drunken driving in 2005 and was sentenced to one year of probation and a 60-day suspended jail sentence. In 2001, when he was 19, he twice pleaded guilty to underage possession of alcohol and also was fined for having an open container in a car.

The ruling Friday by Judge Andrea Dryer says Iowa's requirement to remain at the scene is not a seizure under the state or federal constitutions and it does not require the driver to divulge anything to police that would violate rights against self-incrimination.

Soules became a television reality show celebrity after appearing on the ABC network's "The Bachelorette" in 2014 and played the starring role in the network's "The Bachelor" in 2015. He also was chosen to be one of 12 celebrity competitors on "Dancing With The Stars" in that year but was eliminated during week eight of the competition, finishing fifth.

Brown said in court documents that Soules may claim as a possible defense diminished capacity "based upon his then-existing medical condition due to injuries sustained."
A powerful earthquake that struck in the southern Pacific Ocean on Wednesday sent jitters around the region after authorities warned of possible tsunamis, but there were no initial reports of destructive waves or major damage.

The magnitude 7.5 quake hit in the afternoon near the French territory of New Caledonia at a shallow depth, where earthquakes are generally more damaging. It was felt as far away as Vanuatu, about 630 kilometers (390 miles) away

Tsunami sirens blared across New Caledonia minutes after the quake. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said tsunami waves of between 1 and 3 meters (3 and 10 feet) were possible along some coasts of New Caledonia and Vanuatu, before later lifting the warning.

Local authorities in New Caledonia ordered residents to evacuate coastal zones on the eastern edge of the archipelago, including the Loyalty Islands and the island of Ile des Pins. The evacuation order from the regional police said western islands didn't need to evacuate but should remain vigilant.

While residents of the region are familiar with tsunami warnings and evacuations, the quake startled tourists, including communications consultant Eugenie Kerleau, 30, vacationing on the island of Lifou from her home in mainland France.

"It was really surprising, I had a feeling of vertigo, the curtains were moving. We were immediately evacuated from the hotel to a calmer point at higher altitude," she told The Associated Press.

No damage was immediately reported, according to Vincent Lepley, crisis coordinator for the Red Cross in New Caledonia.

Judith Rostain, a freelance journalist based in New Caledonia's capital, Noumea, said there was no damage to the city. She said the situation remained unclear on the east coast and scattered outer islands.

In Vanuatu, Dan McGarry said he heard only of three small wave surges hitting the southern island of Aneityum. McGarry, the media director at the Vanuatu Daily Post, said the waves traveled only a couple of meters (7 feet) beyond the normal tidal waves, and that everybody was fine on the island.

McGarry said he felt the quake where he is based in Vanuatu's capital, Port Vila, as a mild shaking.

"We get a lot of earthquakes every year," he said. "The tsunami warning was what was different this time, though."

The warning center said there was no tsunami threat to Hawaii.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake struck about 168 kilometers (104 miles) east of Tadine in New Caledonia at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles). At least six aftershocks also hit, ranging in magnitude from 5.6 to 6.6.

The populations of Vanuatu and New Caledonia are similar, with just over 280,000 people living in each archipelago.

Last month, voters in New Caledonia elected to remain a territory of France rather than becoming independent. Both New Caledonia and Vanuatu sit on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world's earthquakes and volcanic activity occur.

Charlotte Antoine and Moussa Moussa contributed to this report.
North Carolina's elections board Thursday ordered a new election in the nation's last undecided congressional race after the Republican candidate conceded his lead was tainted by evidence of ballot-tampering by political operatives working for him.

The State Board of Elections voted 5-0 in favor of a do-over in the mostly rural 9th Congressional District but did not immediately set a date.

In moving to order a new election, board chairman Bob Cordle cited "the corruption, the absolute mess with the absentee ballots."

"Today was a great step forward for democracy in North Carolina," the Democrat in the race, Dan McCready, tweeted afterward. He said the voters deserved justice "from the moment the first voice was silenced by election fraud."

The vote came after GOP candidate Mark Harris, in a surprising turn, dropped his bid to be declared the winner and instead called for a new election. He reversed course on the fourth day of an election board hearing at which investigators and witnesses detailed evidence of ballot fraud by operatives on his payroll.

"Through the testimony I've listened to over the past three days, I believe a new election should be called," Harris said. "It's become clear to me that the public's confidence in the 9th District seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted."

At the same time, Harris denied any knowledge of the illegal practices allegedly used by his operatives.

Harris left the hearing room without answering questions. It was not immediately clear whether he intends to run in a new election.

The decision Thursday could leave the seat empty for months. The elections board's attorney plans to review the laws on scheduling new primaries and a new general election and propose dates to the elections board for its approval.

Harris led McCready by 905 votes out of about 280,000 cast last fall in a district that includes part of Charlotte and extends eastward through several counties along the southern edge of the state. But the state refused to certify the outcome as allegations surfaced that Harris political operative Leslie McCrae Dowless may have tampered with mail-in absentee ballots.

According to testimony and other findings detailed at the board hearing, Dowless conducted an illegal "ballot harvesting" operation while working for Harris. Dowless and his assistants helped voters obtain absentee ballots and then gathered up the filled-in ballots from them by offering to put them in the mail, the board was told.

Dowless' workers in rural Bladen County testified that they were directed to collect blank or incomplete ballots from voters, forge signatures on them and even fill in votes for local candidates. It is generally against the law in North Carolina for anyone other than the voter or a family member to handle someone's completed ballot.

Harris told the board that he is still dealing from health problems caused by a blood infection that landed him in a hospital and led to two strokes since the election, adding, "I struggled this morning with both recall and confusion."

But he insisted: "Neither I nor any of the leadership of my campaign were aware of or condoned the improper activities that have been testified to in this hearing."

Harris also testified that Dowless had assured him that he wouldn't collect absentee ballots in violation of state law. "I'll never forget. He said it again and again. He said, 'We do not take the ballot,'" the candidate testified.

No criminal charges have been filed so far in the case.

The congressional seat has been in Republican hands since 1963.

The board is made up of three Democrats and two Republicans.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 6, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that Iran will take legal action against the U.S. sanctions, state IRIB TV reported.

The Iranian ministries of foreign affairs and justice will file a legal case in the Iranian courts against the American officials who designed and imposed sanctions on Iran, said Rouhani.

The case will also be taken to the international courts, he was quoted as saying.

Rouhani said the "enemies will never achieve their ends to weaken the Iranian nation despite their attempts over the past 40 years."

Following the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian international nuclear deal last May, Washington has imposed unilateral sanctions against Iran's financial and energy sectors.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Sunday joined the growing group of Democrats jostling to be president and positioned herself as the most prominent Midwestern candidate in the field, as her party tries to win back voters in a region that helped put Donald Trump in the White House.

"For every American, I'm running for you," she told an exuberant crowd gathered on a freezing, snowy afternoon at a park along the Mississippi River with the Minneapolis skyline in the background.

"And I promise you this: As your president, I will look you in the eye. I will tell you what I think. I will focus on getting things done. That's what I've done my whole life. And no matter what, I'll lead from the heart," the three-term senator said.

Klobuchar, who has prided herself for achieving results through bipartisan cooperation, did not utter Trump's name during her kickoff speech. But she did bemoan the conduct of "foreign policy by tweet" and said Americans must "stop the fear-mongering and stop the hate. ... We all live in the same country of shared dreams." And she said that on first day as president, she would have the U.S. rejoin an international climate agreement that Trump has withdrawn from.

Trump responded to Klobuchar's announcement with a tweet mocking her stance on global warming, a phenomenon he has disputed in the past. He wrote that Klobuchar talked proudly "of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!" Trump often overlooks evidence of record global warming and conflates cold spells and other incidents of weather with climate, which is long-term.

Klobuchar also spoke of the need to "heal the heart of our democracy and renew our commitment to the common good."

Asserting Midwestern values, she told a crowd warmed by hot chocolate, apple cider, heat lamps and bonfires: "I don't have a political machine. I don't come from money. But what I do have is this: I have grit."

Klobuchar, who easily won a third-term last year, has pointed to her broad appeal across Minnesota as she has discussed a 2020 run. She has drawn support from voters in urban, suburban and rural areas, including in dozens of counties Trump won in 2016.

She has said that success could translate to other Midwestern states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, reliably Democratic in presidential races for decades until Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton.

She said the country's "sense of community is fracturing" today, "worn down by the petty and vicious nature of our politics. We are all tired of the shutdowns and the showdowns, the gridlock and the grandstanding."

The list of Democrats already in the race features several better-known senators with the ability to raise huge amounts of money  Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

The field soon could expand to include prominent Democrats such as former Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

A Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll conducted by Selzer & Company in December found that Klobuchar was largely unfamiliar to likely Iowa caucus-goers, with 54 percent saying they didn't know enough about her to have an opinion, while 38 percent had a favorable opinion and 8 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

"She starts out perhaps with a better understanding of Midwestern voters, but I think she faces the same hurdles every one of them face, which is: Are Iowans going to find them either the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump or the candidate that most aligns with their ideologies and issues?" said John Norris, a longtime Iowa-based Democratic strategist. "I don't know that coming from Minnesota gives her any advantage with Iowans."

Klobuchar, 58, is known as a straight-shooting, pragmatist willing to work with Republicans, making her one of the Senate's most productive members at passing legislation.

The rally took place not far from the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi. The span was built after the previous bridge collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people. Klobuchar had worked with then Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., to help fund the new bridge and get it completed at a faster-than-usual pace.

"We worked across the aisle to get the federal funding and we rebuilt that I-35W bridge  in just over a year. That's community. That's a shared story. That's ordinary people doing extraordinary things," she said.

Klobuchar's focus in recent months has included prescription drug prices, a new farm bill and election security. She supports the "Green New Deal," a Democratic plan proposed this past week to combat climate change and create thousands of jobs in renewable energy.

But her legislative record has drawn criticism from both the GOP and some fellow Democrats. Some Republicans say Klobuchar is able to get things done because she pushes smaller issues. Some progressives say she lacks the kind of fire and bold ideas needed to bring significant change and excite voters.

Klobuchar on Sunday also responded to reports in BuzzFeed and HuffPost that she has mistreated staff, saying she "can be tough" but has many staff members who've worked for her for many years.

"I can push people. I know that," she told reporters after the event. "I have I'd say high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for the people who work for me, but I have high expectations for this country. And that's what we need. We need someone who is focused on getting things done for this country."

Klobuchar, a lawyer and the former prosecutor in Minnesota's largest county, raised her national profile during a Senate Judiciary Committee last fall for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman when they were both in high school.

When Klobuchar asked Kavanaugh whether he ever had had so much to drink that he didn't remember what happened, he turned the question around. He asked Klobuchar, "Have you?"

Unruffled, Klobuchar continued as Kavanaugh asked again. Kavanaugh later apologized to Klobuchar, whose father is an alcoholic.

"When you have a parent who's an alcoholic, you're pretty careful about drinking," she said. "I was truly trying to get to the bottom of the facts and the evidence."

Among the other Midwestern lawmakers who could also seek the nomination are Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who has been visiting early voting states, and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who established an exploratory committee last month.

Klobuchar campaigned with Democrats in Iowa last fall, and in December spoke to progressive farmers and activists about the importance of bridging the divide between urban and rural areas. She said the lesson learned after the 2016 election was "we are not going to leave the Midwest behind."

"This is the moment for the Midwest," she said, "and we don't want to be forgotten again in a national election."

___

AP Polling Editor Emily Swanson in Washington contributed to this report.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Tuesday he hopes to extend his high-stakes nuclear summitry with President Donald Trump into 2019, but also warned Washington not to test North Koreans' patience with sanctions and pressure.

During his televised New Year's speech, Kim said he's ready to meet with Trump at any time to produce an outcome "welcomed by the international community." However, he said the North will be forced to take a different path if the United States "continues to break its promises and misjudges the patience of our people by unilaterally demanding certain things and pushes ahead with sanctions and pressure."

Kim also said the United States should continue to halt its joint military exercises with ally South Korea and not deploy strategic military assets to the South. He also made a nationalistic call urging for stronger inter-Korean cooperation and said the North is ready to resume operations at a jointly run factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong and restart South Korean tours to the North's Diamond Mountain resort. Neither of those is possible for South Korea unless sanctions are removed.

Some analysts say North Korea has been trying to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul while putting the larger burden of action on the United States. Pyongyang over the past months has accused Washington of failing to take corresponding measures following the North's unilateral dismantlement of a nuclear testing ground and suspension of nuclear and long-range missile tests.

Washington and Pyongyang are trying to arrange a second summit between Trump and Kim, who met in Singapore on June 12.

"If the United States takes sincere measures and corresponding action to our leading and pre-emptive efforts, then (U.S.-North Korea) relations will advance at a fast and excellent pace through the process of implementing (such) definite and groundbreaking measures," said Kim, who delivered the speech sitting on a leather chair, wearing a black suit and gray-blue tie.

"It is the unwavering position of our party and the republic's government and my firm will that the two countries as declared in the June 12 joint statement ... take steps to establish a permanent and stable peace regime and push toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," he said. "Therefore, we have already declared domestically and internationally and took various actions showing our commitment that we will no further create or test nuclear weapons and will not use or spread them."

Adam Mount, a senior analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, said Kim appears to be hinting at an agreement that falls short of a full disarmament, but could still represent a major limitation of the North Korean threat  a cap that essentially freezes the North's rudimentary nuclear capability from growing or advancing further. In exchange, the United States would have to offer major inducements, including sanctions relief.

"U.S. negotiators should move decisively in the new year to find out how far Kim is willing to go toward a verified cap on his arsenal. Discussions on reducing or eliminating that arsenal come later," Mount said in an email.

However, Kim's statement could prove problematic if there's ongoing evidence the North's nuclear and missile facilities continue to run. Private analysts have accused North Korea of continuing nuclear and missile development, citing details from commercial satellite imagery.

"Over the last year, signs of continued work on the arsenal were alarming but not duplicitous, because there was never a commitment to stop those activities," Mount said. "That may no longer be true, raising the risk that the White House feels cheated rather than just stonewalled."

Kim's speech also points toward a difficult year for the U.S.-South Korean alliance with their military cooperation coming under pressure from Pyongyang, Seoul's process for inter-Korean engagement, and Washington's current inability to reach an agreement on cost-sharing for the U.S. military presence in South Korea. It will be critical for the allies to develop a firmer policy as it's clear the issue of joint drills is coming to a head, Mount said.

In the speech, Kim hailed the results of the North's diplomatic activities in 2018, including his three meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Kim said an inter-Korean military agreement reached in their last summit in September to reduce conventional military threats was "realistically a non-aggression declaration."

Kim also emphasized the development of the North Korean economy and, without elaborating, mentioned nuclear power as part of the country's plans to boost electricity production.

South Korea's government in a statement welcomed what it described as Kim's commitment toward peace and said Seoul plans to work closely with the international community for the denuclearization of the peninsula while also advancing inter-Korean relations to an "irreversible level."

North Korean leaders traditionally use New Year's statements to issue major policy goals for the year ahead. Kim used his New Year's speech a year ago to start a newfound diplomatic approach with Seoul and Washington, which led to his meetings with Moon and Trump. Kim also met three times with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which boosted his leverage by reintroducing Beijing  Pyongyang's main ally  as a major player in the diplomatic process to resolve the nuclear standoff.

But nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled in recent months as they struggle with the sequencing of North Korea's disarmament and the removal of U.S.-led sanctions against the North.

The North has also bristled at U.S. demands to provide a detailed account of nuclear and missile facilities that would be inspected and dismantled under a potential deal.

The hardening stalemate has fueled doubts on whether Kim will ever voluntarily relinquish the nuclear weapons and missiles he may see as his strongest guarantee of survival. In his meetings with Trump and Moon, Kim signed vague statements calling for the "complete denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula without describing when and how it would occur.

But North Korea for decades has been pushing a concept of denuclearization that bears no resemblance to the American definition, with Pyongyang vowing to pursue nuclear development until the United States removes its troops and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan. The North used a blunt statement last month to reiterate its traditional stance on denuclearization, saying it will never unilaterally give up its weapons unless Washington removes what Pyongyang describes as a nuclear threat.

The statement jarred with Seoul's claim that Kim is genuinely interested in negotiating away his nukes and suggested that the North will potentially demand the United States withdraw or significantly reduce the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea, a major sticking point in any disarmament deal.

Washington and Pyongyang have yet to reschedule a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and senior North Korean officials after the North canceled it at the last minute in November. There are views that North Korea wants a quick second summit because it thinks it can win major concessions from Trump that they probably couldn't from lower-level U.S. officials, who are more adamant about the North committing to inspections and verification.
President Donald Trump's company said on Monday that it donated nearly $200,000 to the U.S. Treasury to make good on its promise two years ago to hand over profits from foreign governments using its properties.

The Trump Organization said a check for $191,538 sent to Treasury represents profits from embassy parties, hotel stays and other foreign government spending at its Washington hotel and other properties last year. The voluntary donation is up from $151,470 sent a year ago to cover the president's first calendar year in office.

Trump announced the donation plan before his inauguration two years ago in response to criticism that in refusing to sell off his business, people would suspect his decisions in office would be influenced by spending at his properties and not necessarily reflect the public interest.

Since then, Kuwait, the Philippines and other foreign governments have thrown parties at his Washington hotel, and Trump has been sued by good-government groups and others alleging he is violating the emoluments clauses of the Constitution by opening his door to such business.

Those clauses ban presidents from accepting gifts or payments from foreign or domestic governments without permission from Congress.

The president's adult sons running the business have bristled at the charge they are profiting off the presidency.

"Unlike any other luxury hospitality company, we do not market to or solicit foreign government business," said Eric Trump, an executive vice president of the Trump Organization. "In fact, we go to great lengths to discourage foreign government patronage at our properties."

The company did not respond to requests for detail on how it has discouraged foreign government spending.

In addition to Treasury donations, Trump agreed not to strike any foreign deals for his business while in office, and to hire an outside counsel to vet any domestic deals for possible conflicts of interest. The Trump Organization has said that it has made "tremendous sacrifices" by putting brakes on its business expansion.

Earlier this month, Eric Trump and his brother, Donald Jr., announced they were scrapping plans to roll out two new hotels chains in the U.S. due to intense media scrutiny and what it called a hostile political environment.

Donald Trump Jr. on Monday told Fox News that Manhattan federal prosecutors investigating the president's inaugural committee and family business were engaging in "Stalinist" tactics, where if they "massage things enough," a crime can be found.

The Treasury donations have been criticized by watchdog groups and Democrats as insufficient and shrouded in secrecy. They say the money doesn't cover all of Trump's properties, such as resorts, and its unclear how the company is calculating profits.

Trump is facing two lawsuits charging that he is violating the Constitution's emoluments provisions. The president's lawyers argue that the framers of the Constitution's ban on foreign gifts and payments did not intend for it to include such ordinary business transactions as hotel stays.
After the resignations of three of her party's lawmakers over Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May came away from more talks on preventing the U.K. from crashing out of the European Union with both she and the EU's chief deeming their meeting "constructive" Wednesday.

No breakthrough was announced from the dinner meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels between May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

But a joint communique from the two promised their respective negotiating teams "would continue to explore the options in a positive spirit."

Since Juncker had said ahead of time he expected little to come from the meeting, their second this month, the characterization of it turning out to be constructive could be considered a decent outcome.

"We've made progress," said May.

She and Juncker agreed to have another meeting before the end of the month. It could come as soon as an EU-Arab League summit in Egypt starting Sunday.

May has been trying to persuade the EU to revise the draft agreement on Britain's withdrawal because lawmakers in Parliament have refused to approve it.

But the EU has steadfastly refused to reopen the 585-page legal text. The statement from Juncker and May said they discussed possible "alternative arrangements" and changes to an accompanying political declaration as potential options.

Brexit is currently set to take place on March 29.

The joint statement said negotiators from the two sides "will review progress again in the coming days, seized of the tight timescale and the historic significance of setting the EU and the U.K. on a path to a deep and unique future partnership."

At home in London, May took big hit. She lost three Tory legislators earlier in the day over her handling of the Brexit negotiations. They resigned to join a new centrist group.

Still, it was Juncker who looked most beaten up when their meeting in Brussels started, with a band aid on his left cheek, the result of a bad shaving experience.

"I don't want you to think Mrs. May is responsible for this injury on my face," Juncker said before welcoming the prime minister to Brussels during a stilted ceremony that did not include a kiss or a handshake like previous occasions.

The stalemate over the divorce deal has raised fears of Britain leaving without an agreement on its departure or future relations with the EU, a scenario that could present severe economic disruptions for both sides. It has also raised the possibility of May's government seeking to delay its exit to wrap up negotiations.

"Time is of the essence, and it's in both our interests that when the U.K. leaves the EU, it does so in an orderly way," said May.

The difficulties finding a proper way out of the crisis over Brexit has created Britain's biggest parliamentary crisis in decades.

Brexit-driven political cracks yawned wider Wednesday as three pro-European lawmakers quit May's ruling Conservatives to join a new centrist group of independents who oppose May's determination to take Britain out of the EU with or without a divorce deal.

Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston resigned to join eight ex-opposition Labour Party lawmakers in an alliance dubbed the Independent Group. The defections mark the biggest shake-up in decades for Britain's political parties.

U.K. lawmakers object to a border provision between the U.K.'s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland that would keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU until a permanent new trading relationship is in place.

May wants to change the deal's phrasing to make sure that the mechanism to ensure an open Irish border after Brexit would only apply temporarily.
Carlos Parra used to love waking up to see his pet albino boxer, Nina. Now, seeing her skeletal body on the floor next to his bed has become a daily reminder of the economic crisis engulfing Venezuela.

His other dog's thick fur barely hides her ribcage as Parra struggles to feed his pets after losing his job at a shoe store.

"It's terrible to sit and eat, see them watching me with hunger, and not be able to do anything," said the 30-year-old.

As Venezuela's economic crunch worsens, food shortages and rising poverty are forcing once middle-class Venezuelans to do the unthinkable: let their pets starve or abandon them in the streets.

No figures are available, but activists and veterinarians say they are seeing a growing number of dogs and cats abandoned at parks, shelters, and private clinics.

In Caracas it has become common to see purebred dogs rummaging in the trash or lying outdoors, filthy and gaunt, in posh neighborhoods.

The animal protection and control center in the capital's Baruta neighborhood saw as many as 10 animals abandoned each day this summer, head veterinarian Russer Rios said. Up to about a year ago there were almost none.

"Now people just leave them here because they can't take care of them," Rios said.

Shelters are running classes teaching pet owners to look for food substitutes in the hopes of helping them maintain their pets through the crisis. At one private shelter in the working-class Caracas neighborhood of El Junquito, a popular alternative for dogs that would never have been considered in better times is chickenfeed.

"We have to give it to them because there's nothing else," Katty Quintas, a part owner of the Funasissi shelter, said as three skinny cats looked on hungrily from the top of a refrigerator. The shelter is now home to more than 200 cats and dogs.

One of the country's largest animal shelters is run by Mission Nevado, a government program set up by socialist President Nicolas Maduro and named in honor of independence hero Simon Bolivar's four-legged sidekick, dubbed "Nevado" for its white, snow-like fur. Program veterinarian Angel Mancilla said the shelter, which currently houses about 100 cats and dogs, has collapsed under the influx.

"We're crying every day. You leave each day feeling traumatized," Mancilla said.

Pet owners say the price of dog food has more than doubled in recent months to $2 a pound, more than a day's pay for those earning the minimum wage.

In August, as Parra and his parents in the central city of Barquisimeto struggled to get by on his father's $23 monthly pension, he turned in desperation to a Facebook group that donates dog food to families that cannot afford it. But he received just one bag of food, enough to last a few weeks. He said he feels like he's choosing each day between feeding himself and his parents, or his beloved pets.

"Sometimes we go to bed with empty stomachs," he said. "It's really hard."

The problem is also affecting zoos and racetracks. Zoo workers in Caracas say they do not have enough food for large mammals like tigers and tapirs.

This spring 72 horses died from starvation or malnutrition at the Santa Rita racetrack in the western city of Maracaibo, which was closed due to problems with criminal gangs.

The National Institute of Racetracks said the horses died because owners and trainers were not feeding them.

Some pet owners who can't bear to watch their animals waste away are looking for others to take them in.

Caracas homemaker Maria Galindo is offering Princess, her 5-year-old golden retriever, for adoption. So far the dog has survived on scraps the neighbors give her.

"We're very sad to have to give her up, but the crisis is not giving us another option," Galindo said, looking at Princess' bones sticking out from her yellow fur. "You're thinking, 'If I give the dog something to eat, what will I feed the children?'"
Doctors in scrubs, businessmen in suits and construction workers in jeans gathered on the streets of Venezuela's capital Wednesday, waving their nation's flag and demanding Nicolas Maduro step down from power in a walkout organized by the nation's reinvigorated opposition to ratchet up pressure on the embattled president.

Protesters said they were heeding the opposition's call for another mass demonstration despite the heavy-handed response by security forces over the last week to quell anti-government protests.

"I'm going out now more than ever," said Sobeia Gonzalez, 63. "We have a lot more faith that this government has very little time left."

The latest walkout comes one week exactly after opposition leader Juan Guaido proclaimed himself the nation's rightful president amid a sea of supporters, hurling the nation into a new chapter of political tumult as the anti-Maduro movement tries to establish a transitional government and the socialist leader clings to power.

"We are staying in the streets," Guaido told students at a surprise appearance at the Central University of Venezuela. "Not just in protest of the crisis we are living in all of Venezuela, not just because of how bad things are, but also for the future."

The 35-year-lawmaker has transformed from a little-known opposition figure into a commanding force in the nation's politics with the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump and two dozen other nations recognizing him as Venezuela's interim president.

The turmoil has morphed into a larger geopolitical standoff as Maduro accuses the U.S. of orchestrating a coup by backing Guaido and enacting punishing oil sanctions while powerful Venezuela allies China and Russia continue to stand by the president.

On Tuesday, the government-stacked Supreme Court barred Guaido from leaving the country and froze his bank accounts as a probe into his anti-government activities led by Maduro-ally and chief prosecutor Tarek William Saab advances. U.S. national security adviser John Bolton warned that if Guaido is harmed Venezuela will face "serious consequences."

Guaido has thus far managed to avoid arrest and the Supreme Court did not strip him of his legislative immunity, though the new investigation could signal that Maduro's administration is moving to take a more punitive approach in the days ahead.

Speaking at the walkout, Guaido said he wasn't losing any sleep over the probe. "We don't want to leave the country," he said. "We want people to return."

Maduro huddled Wednesday with military troops, prayed with evangelical supporters and released a video urging the American people to rise up against Trump and support him as Venezuela's rightful leader. He said Trump has his eyes on Venezuela's vast oil reserves and warned against any U.S. military intervention.

"We won't allow a Vietnam in Latin America," Maduro said. "If the aim of the United States is to invade, they'll have a Vietnam worse than can be imagined."

Maduro has been overseeing military training exercises broadcast on state television on a near-daily basis over the past week in an apparent attempt to show he still has the backing of the armed forces, whose support is key to either man's claim to the presidency.

In an interview with Russia's state-owned RIA Novosti news agency, Maduro said he was "willing to sit down for talks with the opposition for the sake of Venezuela's peace and its future," an offer he has repeated often but that the opposition is reluctant to accept. He also accused Trump of ordering a hit on him from Colombia but offered no proof.

The already distressed nation is likely to face even tougher times soon after the U.S. imposed sanctions Monday on Venezuela's state-owned oil company, potentially depriving the Maduro government of $11 billion in export revenues over the next year.

Maduro called the sanctions "criminal" and vowed to challenge the U.S. in court.

Violent street demonstrations erupted last week after Guaido declared during a huge opposition rally in Caracas that he had assumed presidential powers under the constitution and planned to hold fresh elections to end Maduro's "dictatorship."

Under Venezuela's constitution, the head of the National Assembly is empowered to take on the duties of the chief executive under a range of circumstances in which the presidency is vacated. The opposition contends that Maduro's reelection was a sham because, among other things, top opposition candidates were barred from running and that his new second term is therefore illegitimate.

The U.N. human rights office says security forces in Venezuela detained nearly 700 people in just one day of anti-government protests last week  the highest such tally in a single day in the country in at least 20 years  and that more than 40 people were killed.

Maduro's allies blame the opposition for the violence and deny the high death toll as well as reports that minors were among those arrested.

Guaido called on Venezuelans to take to the streets Wednesday holding signs stating "your reasons for fighting" and urging the armed forces to join them.

"I want a free Venezuela," several protesters in the Chacao district of the capital wrote on their signs as passing cars and trucks honked their horns in support. Others chanted, "Maduro is a delinquent, not a president!"

A row of National Guardsmen blocked off one street in Caracas to stop protesters from going through but there weren't any reports of violent confrontations as happened last week.

The walkout drew a cross-section of Venezuelan society ranging from professionals to blue-collar workers, though participation appeared to be lower in some of the poorer enclaves that are traditional government strongholds.

A few of demonstrators from the Catia neighborhood, where protesters set barricades on fire last week, said they didn't feel safe protesting there and joined the walkout from wealthier districts instead.

Among the protesters was Dr. Hugo Rosillo, who stood outside a children's hospital just blocks from Maduro's presidential palace. He said he and others were fed up with not being able to treat their patients facing life-threatening illnesses like cancer because of shortages of medical supplies.

The hospital has turned into just "a storeroom for cadavers," he said.

Armario reported from Bogota, Colombia. Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez and Manuel Rueda in Caracas contributed to this report.
Before Bernie Sanders took the stage to formally launch his 2020 presidential campaign this month, the candidate's most influential adviser took the mic. To cheers, Jane Sanders introduced herself to the Brooklyn crowd as "Bernie's wife," then conceded that wasn't the most politically correct label.

To be sure, identifying Jane Sanders as "the wife" hardly captures the scope of her influence on her husband's political career. Across 30 years and a dozen campaigns for federal office, she has served variously as her husband's media consultant, surrogate, fundraiser, chief of staff, campaign spokeswoman and top strategist.

His political revolution has become her career. And her political and business activities have, at times, become his headache. As the Vermont senator undertakes his second presidential run and scrambles his inner circle, Jane Sanders remains his closest adviser, making her perhaps the most influential woman in the 2020 campaign who isn't a candidate.

"Bernie's top adviser always has been and will continue to be Jane," said Jeff Weaver, a Sanders adviser. She has a voice in almost every major political decision her husband makes, travels with him for major events and is deeply involved in formulating policies, issues and campaign infrastructure. "At every level," Weaver said, "Jane is intimately involved."

That involvement has drawn questions sometimes about her political judgment, family opportunism and flawed ethics  from political foes, good government advocates and longtime Sanders-watchers in Vermont and in the progressive movement. Most recently, critics questioned the role played by the Sanders Institute , a nonprofit co-founded by Jane Sanders and her son, for blending elements of fundraising, family and campaign policy development.

Her dual roles at the institute and in her husband's campaign carried echoes of the Clinton Foundation, which Bernie Sanders criticized in 2016 as a possible ethics conflict and back door for foreign donors seeking to influence his then-rival Hillary Clinton.

"Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016 criticizing her for the vast sums of money she raised and he seems to be following in some of her footsteps," said Lawrence R. Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. "Now he's raising vast sums of money and it's being controlled and shaped by his family."

Jane Sanders acted this past week to remove the think tank as a possible campaign ethics target, telling The Associated Press that the institute's operations and fundraising would be suspended for the balance of her husband's 2020 presidential campaign. Since its creation in 2017, the group raised more than $700,000, but has not disclosed most of its donors. She said the decision to put the Sanders Institute on hiatus was "a forward-looking way to deal with potential concerns."

Sanders may prove an important surrogate for her husband, particularly in a race crowded with female candidates and potentially hinging on how women vote. She publicly defended her husband when he faced criticism for the way his 2016 campaign handled accusations of sexual harassment.

She's become an essential liaison to the progressive activists at the heart of the Sanders' base, using the institute to host meetings of policymakers and activists. An affable, if low-key public speaker, she was the star of the December "Gathering" in Burlington, Vermont, a three-day policy gathering that featured progressive speakers including environmentalist Bill McKibben, actor Danny Glover and her husband.

Steeped in years of involvement in progressive causes, Sanders comfortably slipped into the role as the event's emcee. Before a crowd of more than 250 progressive activists, she stoked applause lines for favored organizations and lavished compliments on institute fellows.

Similarly, in videos posted on the institute's website, she has led numerous policy conversations with experts in a Brooklyn accent fainter than her husband's.

Jane Sanders is not compensated for her role at the institute. Her son, David Driscoll, has been paid $100,000 a year as a co-founder and executive director, she confirmed. Driscoll had been an executive for Nike and the Vermont snowboarding company Burton, but had no previous nonprofit experience, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Like her husband, Jane Sanders "has learned not to trust a lot of people. Family is a lot more dependable than outsiders," said University of Vermont political science professor Garrison Nelson, an acquaintance and veteran Sanders-watcher.

Jane Sanders expressed frustration about concerns that she and some of her children have at times benefited from their activities affiliated with Sanders' expanding political apparatus.

"How can we say nepotism here? It just doesn't fit," she said. She added that the Sanders Institute has "developed policy and the content that we get completely separate" from her husband's campaign.

Politics has long been a family project for the couple.

Jane Sanders first worked with her future husband as director of the mayor's youth Office in Burlington. They were both displaced New Yorkers, Jane noted at the launch rally, stamped by childhood days on Brooklyn's city streets. "We had very similar experiences," she said. "We spent a lot of time playing stickball, running races and just hanging out on the streets with the kids in our neighborhoods."

They wed in 1988  a second marriage for both  two years before Sanders won his first election to Congress. Jane Sanders went to Capitol Hill as his volunteer deputy  gaining experience in policy, legislation and as chief of staff.

In the early 2000s, she took on a new role along with her daughter, Carina. Two women set up a consulting firm, paid more than $90,000 in consulting fees by Bernie Sanders' House campaigns.

In 2004, the year before Bernie Sanders' launched his winning Senate campaign, his wife was named president of Burlington College, a local small liberal arts college. In 2010, she worked out a $10 million deal for the college to buy 32 acres of waterfront land on Lake Champlain and a 77,000-square-foot former orphanage and administrative offices of Vermont's Roman Catholic Church, which needed the money to settle a series of priest sex abuse cases.

She promised at the time the deal would be paid for with increases in enrollment and about $2.7 million in donations. But her plans never took wing and under fire, she resigned from the college in 2011. The school closed in 2016, citing debt from the land deal as a major reason for its failure. Prompted by complaints filed by a Republican lawyer about her involvement in the land deal, federal investigators looked into Jane Sanders' stewardship but informed her last November that she would not be charged.

"We've learned we're going to be attacked," she said during an interview, adding "that's the fact of today's politics."

But she said she was confident that the decision to put the think tank on hiatus was "best for the institute to not have the possibility of misinterpretation."

The move, she said, will allow her to expand her campaign work freely for the Sanders campaign, including more solo stops on her husband's behalf.

"I will be more active throughout," she said.

___

Ring reported from Montpelier, Vermont, and Peoples from New York.
President Donald Trump appears to be taking a more positive view of Capitol Hill talks on border security, according to negotiators who struck a distinctly optimistic tone after a White House meeting with a top Republican on the broad parameters of a potential bipartisan agreement.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama said Thursday's session in the Oval Office was "the most positive meeting I've had in a long time" and that the president was "very reasonable."

Down Pennsylvania Avenue at the Capitol, the mood among negotiators was distinctly upbeat, with participants in the talks between the Democratic-controlled House and GOP-held Senate predicting a deal could come as early as this weekend.

There's a Feb. 15 deadline to enact the measure or a stopgap spending bill to avert another partial government shutdown that neither side wants to reprise. Trump and Republicans are especially eager to avoid another shutdown after they got scalded by the last one.

Trump had previously called the talks a "waste of time" and he's threatened to declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. But Shelby said Trump during their meeting "urged me to get to yes" on an agreement.

Publicly on Thursday Trump took a wait-and-see approach.

"I certainly hear that they are working on something and both sides are moving along," Trump said. "We'll see what happens. We need border security. We have to have it, it's not an option. Let's see what happens."

The White House is committed to letting the negotiations play out, with some saying they are "cautiously optimistic" about getting a deal they could live with, said a senior administration official who lacked authorization to publicly discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Beyond the border security negotiations, the measure is likely to contain seven appropriations bills funding domestic agencies and the foreign aid budget, as well as disaster aid for victims of last year's hurricanes and western wildfires.

"I'm hopeful," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "I do like the idea of getting all of last year's work finished and I hope that's where it ends up."

Any move by Trump to fund a border barrier by executive fiat, however, would roil many Republicans on Capitol Hill, raising the likelihood that both House and Senate could pass legislation to reverse him. Trump could veto any such measure, but he's also certain to face a challenge in the courts.

"If Congress won't participate or won't go along, we'll figure out a way to do it with executive authority," Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said on Fox News Channel's "Hannity" on Wednesday.

Mulvaney said that the administration has identified well more than $5.7 billion to transfer to wall construction, saying they would try to avoid legal obstacles.

"Find the money that we can spend with the lowest threat of litigation, and then move from that pot of money to the next pot that maybe brings a little bit more threat of litigation," Mulvaney said.

It's clear that Trump won't get anything close to the $5.7 billion he's demanded for wall construction, just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will have to depart from her view that there shouldn't be any wall funding at all.

Last year, a bipartisan Senate panel approved $1.6 billion for 65 miles of pedestrian fencing in Texas  in line with Trump's official request. The negotiations aren't likely to veer very far from that figure, aides involved in the talks said, and newly empowered House Democrats were looking to restrict use of the money.

A key negotiator, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said details on nettlesome border wall issues haven't been worked out. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., another participant, said both sides are showing flexibility, including Democrats who insisted during the recently-ended 35-day shutdown on no wall funding at all.

"They are not opposed to barriers," Blunt said about Democrats. "And the president, I think, has embraced the idea that there may actually be something better than a concrete wall would have been anyway."

Pelosi told reporters Thursday that she was hopeful of an agreement that would "protect our borders as we protect our values."

Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., another negotiator, acknowledged that Democrats could possibly lose votes on any final deal and that it's "unrealistic" to think there would be no funding at all for any physical barriers.

"Like in any negotiation  if the Republicans and the White House are saying they need barriers, wall, whatever you want to call it, and that is an absolute objective, and we're saying we want some other things  like in anything else, it's a trade off," she said.

Among the things Democrats are battling against are higher levels of funding for detention beds to hold migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally.
President Donald Trump declared Friday that he rejected a personal appeal from his former lawyer Michael Cohen for a pardon, the strongest assertion yet that Cohen may have lied under oath.

Trump tweeted his claim after days of swirling questions about Cohen over the issue of pardons. It has emerged as a key line of inquiry for Democrats launching a series of sweeping investigations into Trump's political and personal dealings.

"Bad lawyer and fraudster Michael Cohen said under sworn testimony that he never asked for a Pardon. His lawyers totally contradicted him. He lied!" Trump tweeted aboard Air Force One while en route to inspect damage from deadly tornados in Alabama. "Additionally, he directly asked me for a pardon. I said NO. He lied again! He also badly wanted to work at the White House. He lied!"

Cohen took to Twitter minutes later to deny the accusation.

"Just another set of lies by @POTUS @realdonaldtrump. Mr. President" he wrote, before invoking the women whose hush-money payments he helped facilitate. "Let me remind you that today is #InternationalWomensDay. You may want use today to apologize for your own #lies and #DirtyDeeds to women like Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford."

Lanny Davis, Cohen's lawyer, said in a written statement Thursday that his client was "open to the ongoing 'dangling' of a possible pardon by Trump representatives privately and in the media" in the months after the FBI raided Cohen's home, office and hotel room in April 2018.

Davis, who was not Cohen's lawyer at the time, said Cohen "directed his attorney" to explore a possible pardon with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others on Trump's legal team. The statement appears to contradict Cohen's sworn testimony last week at a House Oversight Committee hearing that he had never asked for, and would not accept, a pardon from Trump.

Davis' comment raises questions about whether Cohen  who is slated to begin a three-year prison sentence in May for crimes including lying to Congress  lied to Congress again last week. Cohen's legal team argued that his statement was correct because Cohen never asked the president himself for a pardon.

Trump did not immediately provide evidence of Cohen's attempt to secure a pardon or reveal when the alleged request was made. Earlier Friday, speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, he said that Cohen had told a "stone cold lie" when he testified that he did not seek presidential intervention.

In response to Trump's tweet, Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat and member of the House judiciary and intelligence committees, called on Trump to testify under oath.

"Michael Cohen gave sworn testimony. Will you? Under oath to Mueller or Congress?" he tweeted, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.

There is nothing inherently improper about a subject in a criminal investigation seeking a pardon from a president given the president's wide latitude in granting them. But investigators want to know if the prospects of presidential pardons were somehow offered or used inappropriately.

It is hard to untangle the conflicting narratives given the unreliability of some of the central characters.

Cohen, for instance, has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and saw his credibility attacked last week by Republican lawmakers. Davis has had to walk back at least one bombshell assertion over the last year  that his client could tell investigators that Trump had advance knowledge of a Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign  and Giuliani has fumbled facts and repeatedly moved the goalposts about what sort of behavior by the president would constitute collusion or a crime.

Davis said that instead of attacking Cohen, Trump should "be explaining why he, his son and CFO signed checks for hush money to keep a woman quiet," referring to copies of checks that Cohen presented during his testimony last week showing he was reimbursed for the hush-money payment to Daniels. At least one of the checks was signed by Trump and another was signed by Donald Trump Jr. and Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, Cohen said.

Congressional investigators, meanwhile, appear to be focusing on presidential powers as a significant line of questioning in their probes.

Giuliani said Thursday he was contacted in May or June about a possible pardon for Cohen.

"My answer was the president is not going to consider or give any pardons now," Giuliani said in an interview. "As I have said in the past, the president has the right to, and that doesn't mean he won't consider it when the investigation is over. But there are no plans to do so; that's the answer that Jay and I and the president settled on. 'The best thing for you to do,' I would tell everyone, 'is assume you don't have the pardon.'"

Jay Sekulow is another Trump lawyer.

Cohen has become a key figure in congressional investigations since turning on his former boss and cooperating with the special counsel. During last week's public testimony, he called Trump a con man, a cheat and a racist. Trump, in turn, has said Cohen "did bad things unrelated to Trump" and "is lying in order to reduce his prison time."

As questions grew this week, Cohen's legal team stressed that he was one of Trump's closest confidants and if he wanted a pardon, he would have just asked Trump himself  which the president, for the first time on Friday, claimed is what happened.

Cohen arranged payments to Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels, and McDougal to prevent them from speaking publicly about alleged affairs with Trump. Cohen on Thursday sued the Trump Organization over its decision to stop paying his legal bills, which Trump declared to be "the most ridiculous suit I've ever seen."
Facebook says ads that ran on the company's social media platform and have been linked to a Russian internet agency were seen by an estimated 10 million people before and after the 2016 election.

The company turned 3,000 ads over to three congressional committees Monday as part of their investigations into Russian influence in the 2016 election. In a new company blog post, Facebook's Elliot Schrage said the ads appeared to focus on divisive social and political messages, including LGBT issues, immigration and gun rights. In many cases, the ads encouraged people to follow pages on those issues.

Fewer than half of the ads  which ran between 2015 and 2017  were seen before the election, with 56 percent of them seen after the election. Some of the ads were paid for in Russian currency.

Congressional investigators have recently focused on the spread of false news stories and propaganda on social media and have pressured Facebook, along with Twitter and Google, to release any Russia-linked ads. Facebook's ads were turned over to the House and Senate intelligence committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The company already has given similar material to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Russian meddling.

Facebook said last month that the ads appear to have come from accounts associated with a Russian entity called the Internet Research Agency. The company said it found 450 accounts and about $100,000 was spent on the ads.

Schrage, Facebook vice president for policy and communications, said in the blog post that the ads included "political messages across the ideological spectrum." He said for 99 percent of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.

The company said some of the ads were paid for in Russian currency, but that isn't always a way of identifying suspicious activity. Schrage defended the site's ability to target certain demographic groups, but said "ads containing certain types of targeting will now require additional human review and approval."

The company is also making clear that it takes the right to free speech seriously and will never be able to remove all objectionable content.

"Even when we have taken all steps to control abuse, there will be political and social content that will appear on our platform that people will find objectionable, and that we will find objectionable," Schrage writes.

Another Facebook official, Joel Kaplan, the company's vice president of global policy, said in a blog post Monday morning that the company is planning to hire more than 1,000 people to staff teams that review advertisements globally. Facebook will also update its policies to require better documentation from advertisers who want to run ads related to the U.S. election, including a requirement that the advertisers will have to confirm the business or organization they represent.

Kaplan said the company's policies already prohibit "shocking" content, direct threats and the promotion of the sale or use of weapons, but said "going forward, we are expanding these policies to prevent ads that use even more subtle expressions of violence."

Twitter has said it found postings linked to the same Facebook accounts, and the House and Senate intelligence panels have asked both companies, along with Google, to testify publicly in the coming weeks. None of the companies has yet said whether it will accept the invitations.

It is unclear whether the Facebook ads turned over to Congress will eventually be released publicly. Several lawmakers  including Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence panels  have said they believe the American public should see them.

Schiff said he hopes to release a sampling of the ads at a public hearing with the firms. He said he is committed to making all of these ads public "as soon as possible," while working with Facebook on privacy considerations.

"We will continue to work with Facebook and other tech companies to determine the full extent of Russia's use of online platforms, including paid advertising, since what we now know may only scratch the surface," Schiff said.

Twitter said last week that it had suspended 22 accounts corresponding to the 450 Facebook accounts that were likely operated out of Russia.

Warner criticized Twitter for not sharing more information with Congress, saying the company's findings were merely "derivative" of Facebook's work. The company's presentations to staff last week "showed an enormous lack of understanding from the Twitter team of how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions," he said.

Associated Press writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report.
A day after credit-reporting company Equifax disclosed that "criminals" had stolen vital data about 143 million Americans, it had somehow managed to leave much of the public in the dark about their exposure, how they should protect themselves and what Equifax planned to do for those affected.

The breach is unquestionably serious. It exposed crucial pieces of personal data that criminals could use to commit identity theft, from Social Security numbers and birthdates to address histories and legal names.

That data  the "crown jewels of personal information," in the words of independent credit analysts John Ulzheimer  can't be changed, and once it's in circulation, it's basically out there forever.

But Equifax's response has satisfied almost no one.

UNHAPPINESS EVERYWHERE

Consumers complained of jammed phone lines and uninformed representatives. An Equifax website set up to help people determine their exposure looked like a scam to some, and provided inconsistent and unhelpful information to others. Congress planned hearings.

Anders Ohlsson, a 47-year-old technical manager in Scotts Valley, California, called a hotline multiple times and was disconnected; entered the last six digits of his Social Security number into Equifax's emergency website; and finally spoke with a call center manager. He still doesn't know whether his information has been compromised.

"I don't think I've gotten hold of a person that actually cares," he said. "Now they're fumbling to tell people what's going on. But they really don't know what's going on."

Equifax plays a key role in the financial industry, making this breach more alarming than previous ones at Yahoo or retailers. It's a storehouse of personal information, like how much people owe on their houses and whether they have court judgments against them.

Lenders rely on the information collected by three big credit bureaus  Equifax, TransUnion and Experian  to help them decide on financing for homes, cars and credit cards. Credit checks are sometimes done by employers when deciding whom to hire for a job.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Even if you don't know if you're one of the 143 million, you might want to consider extreme protective measures.

Your strongest immediate option involves placing a credit freeze on their files with the major credit bureaus. That locks down your information, making it impossible for outsiders to open new accounts and bank cards in your name. But it also blocks you from opening new accounts, and might involve fees depending on the state you live in.

"The credit freeze is the nuclear option of credit protection," said Matt Schulz, an analyst with CreditCards.com. "But in the wake of a breach this big, it's worth considering."

You should also be more diligent about checking your credit reports, where you can see if anyone has opened unauthorized accounts in your name . You can get those files for free once a year from the three major bureaus; use the official site, annualcreditreport.com.

It's best to spread those requests out by getting one every four months. And you'll need to be ready to keep checking for a while  potentially years.

"Bad guys can be very patient with data," Schulz said.

If you're not ready for the freeze, Ulzheimer recommends setting up fraud alerts on your files. These force creditors to contact you directly, usually by phone, for approval before approving an account.

And if you've been a victim of repeated identity fraud, you can request a new Social Security number with the Social Security Administration.

In addition to the emergency Equifax website, you can also call 866-447-7559 for information. The company also says it will send mail to all who had personally identifiable information stolen.

HOW EQUIFAX REACTED

Any data breach threatens to tarnish a company's reputation, but Equifax hasn't done much to minimize that damage.

Atlanta-based Equifax said Thursday the breach took place between mid-May and July of this year. It discovered the hack July 29, but waited until Thursday to warn consumers.

Or take the company's emergency-information website. To Georgia Weidman, founder and chief technology officer for security firm Shevirah, it looks a lot like the kind of site scammers would use to trick people into giving up passwords or other crucial information.

"It's teaching people entirely the wrong things about using the internet securely," Weidman said. She said says she's also troubled by Equifax's approach to security generally, including reports that it didn't respond to basic scripting bugs it was warned about last year.

Company executives are also under scrutiny, after it was found that three Equifax executives sold shares worth a combined $1.8 million just a few days after the company discovered the breach, according to documents filed with securities regulators. Equifax said the three executives  one of them the company's chief financial officer  didn't know about the breach at the time of the sales.

Equifax's security lapse could be the largest theft involving Social Security numbers, one of the most common ways to confirm a person's identity in the U.S. It eclipses a 2015 hack at health insurer Anthem Inc. that involved the Social Security numbers of about 80 million people .

FALLOUT

Washington regulators and politicians swiftly criticized Equifax, and Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he will call for congressional hearings.

Equifax's requirement that affected customers sign up for arbitration also drew a backlash. Democrats in the House and Senate called on the company to pull back its requirement that anyone who signs up for credit monitoring give up their right to sue Equifax in a class-action lawsuit.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the nation's chief watchdog for financial services, called the breach "troubling" and said Equifax should drop the arbitration requirement. The CFPB recently passed a rule requiring financial companies to let customers sue together when a large group has been wronged.

New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, said he was starting his own investigation.

In a statement Friday evening, Equifax said it had fixed problems with the emergency website and tripled its call center team to over 2,000 agents. It also declared that the arbitration requirement and class-action waiver will not apply to this particular breach.

Equifax shares fell about 13 percent to $123.75 in heavy trading. The decline equates to about $2.28 billion in lost market value.

AP Technology Writers Michael Liedtke and Ryan Nakashima in San Francisco, and Matt O'Brien in New York, contributed to this report.
Former Indy Racing League driver Sam Schmidt has done a lot in the 16 years since an accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. He runs a racing team and a foundation. He's raced a sailboat using his chin. But the man who raced in the Indianapolis 500 hasn't been able to drive around his neighborhood  until now.

On Wednesday, Schmidt is set to receive the first license restricted to an autonomous vehicle in the U.S. The license allows him to drive on Nevada roads in his specially modified Corvette, which requires no hands on its steering wheel or feet on its pedals. Schmidt uses head motions to control the car's direction.

Fully driverless cars  several steps beyond the car that Schmitt is driving  are expected to reach U.S. roads in the next five to ten years, and the disabled community is eager for their arrival. More than 4 million people in the U.S. need assistance with daily tasks like eating or leaving home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Others have less severe disabilities but are still unable to drive.

Disabled people are less likely than the non-disabled to be employed and are more likely to experience poverty, the bureau says. But that could change with the arrival of self-driving cars.

"It's coming. We're looking for something to help us get that level of independence," Schmidt told The Associated Press.

Schmidt is the bridge to that future. His car isn't fully autonomous; it uses four cameras to monitor his head and transmit his movements to the tires. He breathes into a tube to accelerate and sucks the air out when he wants to brake.

The car isn't practical for most people. Centennial, Colorado-based Arrow Electronics bought and modified Schmidt's $80,000 2016 Corvette Z06. It spent an additional six figures on cameras, sensors and computers and even more to add a steering wheel and brake pedals on the passenger side.

Schmidt's license requires that a licensed driver accompany him in the passenger seat to take over in case of emergency. When he drives, Schmidt must follow a pilot car. He can't drive in ice or snow. Those restrictions could eventually be eased, Nevada officials say.

Some in the disabled community would like to move directly to fully self-driving cars which wouldn't require licenses at all, says Henry Claypool, policy director of the Community Living Policy Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

"There are some people who are just so isolated that it really compromises their ability to enjoy their basic civil rights," Claypool said.

But Claypool says it's important to be patient and work with the industry now so when autonomous vehicles do arrive, they're accessible.

"There are real barriers to transportation and we need to be clear about what those are and make sure we leverage the technology to address them," said Claypool, who is wheelchair-bound but drives a $62,000 modified minivan.

Many companies are thinking inclusively. Google has worked closely with the blind while developing its self-driving cars. Tesla Motors has said it's working on an urban transport vehicle that would accommodate wheelchairs. Arrow is working on other projects, including a modified bicycle for a paraplegic athlete.

"Sam is our astronaut," said Joe Verrengia, Arrow's global director of social responsibility.

Arrow is making its design and software freely available in the hope that other companies will build on what it has done. Over the next 18 months, Schmidt hopes to modify a more advanced, semi-autonomous car that could drive itself for short stretches and could help him override potential mistakes. Right now, for example, he could accidentally turn the car if he looks to the side when he means to go straight. A car that was watching the road ahead could correct that.

But for now, the license means an end to 16 years in the passenger seat of a conversion van for trips around town.

"My wife hates driving that van. It makes us look like we're 75 and retired," said Schmidt, 52.

Schmidt is thrilled by the pace of improvement in technology. Within the first year of his partnership with Arrow, in an earlier version of his Corvette, Schmidt completed qualifying laps at the 2014 Indianapolis 500. Earlier this year, he raced to the summit of Pike's Peak.

"Me driving is a lifetime-old problem and these people came together and solved it in seven months," he said. "When you have the right people and the right resources and everyone concentrates on the goal, it gets done."

Schmidt, who co-owns the racing team Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and is chairman of the Conquer Paralysis Now foundation, can hardly narrow the list when asked where he wants to drive first. One stop is the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where he won a race in 1999. He'd also like to cruise down the Las Vegas strip.

And one simple pleasure: A trip to the drive-thru at In-N-Out Burger.

"It might be kind of fun just to sit there in line with 15 other people," he said.
The Trump administration has targeted an Obama-era regulation credited with helping dramatically reduce toxic mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, saying the benefits to human health and the environment may not be worth the cost of the regulation.

The 2011 Obama administration rule, called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, led to what electric utilities say was an $18 billion clean-up of mercury and other toxins from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants.

Overall, environmental groups say, federal and state efforts have cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 85 percent in roughly the last decade.

Mercury causes brain damage, learning disabilities and other birth defects in children, among other harm. Coal power plants in this country are the largest single man-made source of mercury pollutants, which enters the food chain through fish and other items that people consume.

The proposal Friday from the Environmental Protection Agency challenges the basis for the Obama regulation. It calculates that the crackdown on mercury and other toxins from coal plants produced only a few million dollars a year in measurable health benefits and was not "appropriate and necessary"  a legal benchmark under the country's landmark Clean Air Act.

The proposal, which now goes up for public comment before any final administration approval, would leave the current mercury regulation in place.

However, the EPA said it will seek comment during a 60-day public review period on whether "we would be obligated to rescind" the Obama-era rule if the agency adopts Friday's finding that the regulation was not appropriate and necessary. Any such change would trigger new rounds in what have already been years of court battles over regulating mercury pollution from coal plants.

This move is the latest by the Trump administration that changes estimates of the costs and payoffs of regulations as part of an overhaul of Obama-era environmental protections.

It's also the administration's latest proposed move on behalf of the U.S. coal industry, which has been struggling in the face of competition from natural gas and other cheaper, cleaner forms of energy. The Trump administration in August proposed an overhaul for another Obama-era regulation that would have prodded electricity providers to get less of their energy from dirtier-burning coal plants.

In a statement, the EPA said Friday the administration was "providing regulatory certainty" by more accurately estimating the costs and benefits of the Obama administration crackdown on mercury and other toxic emissions from smokestacks.

Hal Quinn, head of the National Mining Association, charged in a statement Friday that the Obama administration had carried out "perhaps the largest regulatory accounting fraud perpetrated on American consumers" when it calculated that the broad health benefits to Americans would outweigh the cost of equipment upgrades by power providers.

Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, condemned the Trump administration's move.

The EPA has "decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" after the successful clean-up of toxins from the country's coal-plant smokestacks, Carper said.

He and other opponents of the move said the Trump administration was playing with numbers, ignoring what Carper said were clear health, environmental and economic benefits to come up with a bottom line that suited the administration's deregulatory aims.

Janet McCabe, a former air-quality official in the Obama administration's EPA, called the proposal part of "the quiet dismantling of the regulatory framework" for the federal government's environmental protections.

Coming one week into a government shutdown, and in the lull between Christmas and New Year, "this low-key announcement shouldn't fool anyone  it is a big deal, with significant implications," McCabe said.
Israel's attorney general on Thursday recommended criminal charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a series of corruption cases, shaking up an already tumultuous election campaign and threatening to end the Israeli leader's decades-long political career.

The potential charges stretch across an array of embarrassing scandals that have painted Netanyahu as a hedonistic, and sometimes petty, leader with a taste for expensive gifts and an obsession over his public image. They include allegations he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of champagne and cigars from billionaire friends, and allegedly used his influence to help a wealthy telecom magnate in exchange for favorable coverage on a popular news site.

While a final decision on charges is still months away, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit's recommendations threatened to hurt Netanyahu's standing in the heat of a tight re-election battle. Netanyahu quickly faced calls to immediately step aside while he deals with the distraction of trying to clear his name.

Appearing on national TV late Thursday, Netanyahu dismissed the allegations as an "unprecedented witch hunt" by political opponents intent on seeing him lose the April 9 election.

He called the timing of the recommendations "outrageous" and accused prosecutors of caving in to pressure from "the left." Appearing emotional at times, he called the case a "blood libel," said he would debunk all charges and vowed to remain prime minister for many years.

"This house of cards will collapse," he said as he addressed voters. "Don't let this witch hunt affect you."

Mandelblit announced his recommendations after more than two years of intense investigations and deliberations by police, legal experts and financial regulators.

"The attorney general has reached his decision after thoroughly examining the evidence collected during the investigations," his statement said.

Netanyahu was not formally charged. Under Israeli law, he is entitled to defend himself at a hearing before charges are officially filed. That process is expected to take many months and be completed long after the election.

Tomer Naor of the Movement for Quality Government, a watchdog group, said the hearing process could take about a year. While charges are not guaranteed, he said most of the cases, particularly the bribery case, appeared to be solid.

The recommendations nonetheless plunged Israel into uncharted legal waters, marking the first time in its history that a sitting prime minister is so close to facing criminal charges.

While Israeli prime ministers are not required by law to resign if charged, the prospect of a prime minister standing trial while simultaneously running the country could increase calls, even from his allies, to step down.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who spent time in prison for corruption, stepped down a decade ago, months before police completed an investigation against him. As opposition leader, Netanyahu called on Olmert to step down before his indictment, saying he could not devote his full attention to governing.

Netanyahu has a solid base of hard-line, nationalist and religious voters who are likely to rally behind him. For now, Likud officials and his current coalition partners are also supporting him.

But polls have indicated that the upcoming vote, in which Netanyahu is seeking a fourth consecutive term, could be swayed by a small number of voters who abandon him in favor of a new centrist party headed by a popular former military chief, Benny Gantz.

Those voters could well be turned off by Netanyahu's lengthy rule and never-ending scandals.

Gantz, whose campaign has focused heavily on Netanyahu's character, late Thursday called on Netanyahu to resign immediately to deal with his legal problems.

He said Israel could not afford to have a "part-time prime minister."

"Let's imagine our reality when the prime minister needs to divide his time between court and dealing with the critical issues facing the state of Israel," he said.

Even before Thursday's announcement, Netanyahu's campaign had shown signs of trouble.

The alliance formed by Gantz and Yair Lapid, another centrist leader, has been welcomed by voters. Their "Blue and White" alliance enjoys a slight lead in opinion polls, making them the first credible threat to Netanyahu's decade-long rule.

Lapid also called on Netanyahu to step down.

"This is a sad day for the state of Israel," he said. "If Netanyahu loves the state of Israel as he always says he does, then he needs to do what's best for the country. He needs to resign, immediately."

Netanyahu has also come under fire, both in Israel and abroad, for forming a partnership with the political heirs of an ultranationalist party that was banned for its racist views toward Arabs.

The campaign now appears to be morphing into a referendum on Netanyahu as he seeks to become the longest-serving premier in Israeli history. Netanyahu has been prime minister since 2009 and served a previous term between 1996 and 1999.

Netanyahu had previously tried unsuccessfully to persuade Mandelblit to delay publication of his recommendations until after the election. And on Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by the Likud Party to block publication.

The most serious allegations against Netanyahu involve his relationship with Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder of Israel's telecom giant Bezeq.

Mandelblit recommended a bribery charge in the case based on evidence collected that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulatory changes worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Bezeq.

In exchange, they believe Netanyahu used his connections with Elovitch to receive positive press coverage on Bezeq's popular news site Walla.

A related charge against Netanyahu's wife, Sara, was dropped.

Mandelblit's statement said there was a unanimous opinion among investigators that the relationship between Netanyahu and the Elovitches was "give or take," constituting bribery.

Mandelblit also filed breach of trust charges in two other cases. One involves accepting gifts from billionaire friends, including over $300,000 worth of champagne and cigars from Hollywood mogul Arnon Milchan.

The second revolves around alleged offers of advantageous legislation for a major newspaper in return for favorable coverage.

Mandelblit's office said the timing of Netanyahu's hearing would be set in the near future in coordination with the prime minister's lawyers.

President Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu has forged a close connection, offered the Israeli leader a boost earlier Thursday.

"I can say this: that he's done a great job as prime minister. He's tough, he's smart, he's strong," Trump said in Hanoi, where he was holding a summit with the leader of North Korea.

Yohanan Plesner, a former lawmaker who now heads the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent think tank, said he does not expect any dramatic changes in voting patterns, but there could be small enough shifts "that can actually make the difference."

Plesner said from a "practical standpoint," Netanyahu should step down due to the severity of the charges. "But this will probably not happen," he said.

CORRECTION (Feb. 28, 2019, 1:05 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Netanyahu had been charged. Charges were recommended but a final decision will only come after a hearing.


British lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's divorce deal with the European Union on Tuesday, plunging the Brexit process into chaos and triggering a no-confidence vote that could topple her government.

The defeat was widely expected, but the scale of the House of Commons' vote  432 votes against the government and 202 in support  was devastating for May's fragile leadership.

It followed more than two years of political upheaval in which May has staked her political reputation on getting a Brexit deal and was the biggest defeat for a government in the House of Commons in modern history.

Moments after the result was announced  with Speaker John Bercow bellowing "the noes have it" to a packed Commons chamber  May said it was only right to test whether the government still had lawmakers' support to carry on. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn quickly obliged, saying May's government had lost the confidence of Parliament.

Lawmakers will vote Wednesday on his motion of no-confidence. If the government loses, it will have 14 days to overturn the result or face a national election.

Although May lacks an overall majority in Parliament, she looks likely to survive the vote unless lawmakers from her Conservative party rebel. Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which props up May's government, said it would support her.

"The House has spoken and the government will listen," May said after the vote, which leaves her Brexit plan on life support just 10 weeks before the country is due to leave the EU on March 29.

May promised to consult lawmakers on future moves, but gave little indication of what she plans to do next. Parliament has given the government until Monday to come up with a new proposal.

She faces a stark choice: Steer the country toward an abrupt "no-deal" break with the EU or try to nudge it toward a softer departure. Meanwhile, lawmakers from both government and opposition parties are trying to wrest control of the Brexit process from a paralyzed government, so that lawmakers by majority vote can specify a new plan for Britain's EU exit.

But with no clear majority in Parliament for any single alternate course, there is a growing chance that Britain may seek to postpone its departure date while politicians work on a new plan  or even hand the decision back to voters in a new referendum on EU membership.

"If you can't resolve the impasse here in Westminster, than you have to refer it back to the people," said Labour Party lawmaker Chuka Umunna, who supports a second referendum.

May, who had postponed a vote on the deal in December to avoid certain defeat, had implored lawmakers to back her deal and deliver on voters' decision in 2016 to leave the EU.

But the deal was doomed by deep opposition from both sides of the divide over U.K.'s place in the bloc. Pro-Brexit lawmakers say the deal will leave Britain bound indefinitely to EU rules, while pro-EU politicians favor an even closer economic relationship with Europe.

The most contentious section of the deal was an insurance policy known as the "backstop" designed to prevent the reintroduction of border controls between the U.K.'s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. Assurances from EU leaders that the backstop is intended as a temporary measure of last resort completely failed to win over many British skeptics.

Two and a half years after the referendum, Britain remains divided over how, and whether, to leave the EU.

As lawmakers debated in the chamber, there was a cacophony of chants, drums and music from rival bands of pro-EU and pro-Brexit protesters outside. One group waved blue-and-yellow EU flags, the other brandished "Leave Means Leave" placards.

Inside, the government and opposition parties ordered lawmakers to cancel all other plans to be on hand for the crucial vote. Labour legislator Tulip Siddiq delayed the scheduled cesarean birth of her son so she could attend, arriving in a wheelchair

Some Conservatives want May to seek further talks with EU leaders on changes before bringing a tweaked version of the bill back to Parliament, even though EU officials insist the 585-page withdrawal agreement cannot be renegotiated.

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said May was unlikely to get changes to her deal from that could "placate her Brexiteers."

"Or, she reaches out to Labour and goes for a softer Brexit than most Brexiteers would contemplate"  but which the EU might accept, Bale said.

Frustrated EU leaders called on May to make her intentions clear on the future of Brexit.

"Now, it is time for the U.K. to tell us the next steps," said Michel Barnier, the bloc's chief negotiator.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker  who returned to Brussels late Tuesday to deal with fallout from the vote  said the rejection of May's deal had increased "the risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom."

"Time is almost up," he said.

Economists warn that an abrupt break from the EU could batter the British economy and bring chaotic scenes at borders, ports and airports. Business groups expressed alarm at the prospect of a "no-deal" exit.

"Every business will feel no-deal is hurtling closer," said Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry. "A new plan is needed immediately."

European Council President Donald Tusk highlighted the quagmire the U.K. had sunk into, and hinted that the best solution might be for Britain not to leave.

"If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?" he tweeted.

Associated Press writers Danica Kirka and Frank Jordans contributed.
An "armed and dangerous" manhunt suspect wanted in connection with an assault early Monday morning has turned himself in to police in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Twenty-nine-year-old Darren Dyette faces numerous charges, including two counts of witness intimidation, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and strangulation or suffocation.

The search for Dyette started when officers were called to the Extended Stay America hotel on Fourth Avenue around 5 a.m. Monday. The manhunt, which involved several law enforcement agencies, extended to the surrounding areas after Dyette ran away from officers near Main Street and Bear Hill Road.

Aerial footage from NBC10 Boston's Sky Ranger helicopter showed police searching the Avalon apartment complex in Waltham. Officers could be seen with guns drawn, apparently looking for the suspect. A Massachusetts State Police helicopter was also spotted flying overhead.

Waltham officers rushed back to the apartment complex Monday afternoon after getting a call about the suspect, perhaps in one of the buildings. Some people in the complex werent even aware of what happened, despite reverse 911 call from police.

There was a mention of a firearm at the scene of the assault, police said. They said he has a lengthy criminal history.

It's unclear when Dyette will appear in court or if he has an attorney.
The 11-year-old boy who allegedly shot and killed a New Hampshire couple in their Alton home last week is now facing a new charge.

The New Hampshire Attorney General's office said the boy has now been charged under the state's juvenile laws with an additional count of second-degree murder in connection with the death of James Eckert.

The boy was already facing one charge of murder in the death of Lizette Eckert. He was also charged with a count of attempted murder before James, who was critically hurt in the shooting, died from his injuries.

Police responded to a home on Dobbins Way at about 7:30 p.m. Friday after receiving a 911 call. When they arrived, both 50-year-old Lizette and her 48-year-old husband James were found with gunshot wounds to the head.

Lizette was pronounced dead at the scene.

James, a chiropractor in the area, was rushed to an area hospital, where he later died.

Police arrested a juvenile at the scene and sources say he is allegedly the one who pulled the trigger.

The investigation into the deaths remains ongoing.
Police say someone threw a piece of concrete through the window of a registered sex offender's home in Providence, Rhode Island.

The vandalism occurred at the home of Richard Gardner at around 10:30 p.m. Saturday.

Gardner was convicted of multiple child rapes in the 1980s and 1990s in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Residents protested Gardner for weeks after he moved into the neighborhood last year following his release from prison.

Police Maj. David Lapatin says the protests have stopped, and a one-person detail at Gardner's house ended Friday.

A police administrative assistant says they are working to determine the cost of the police detail.

An investigation into the vandalism is ongoing.

Gardner's wife says he is not a danger to re-offend.
What to Know In letters sent to a friend, Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger reminisces on his days at Alcatraz, changes in South Boston and prison time.

Timothy Glass, who was arrested for robbery and other charges, exchanged letters and holiday cards with Bulger.

Bulger's letters will be available for auction on Sunday.

Locked up for life after 16 years on the run, murderous Boston gang boss James "Whitey" Bulger couldn't stand how much the world around him had changed.

Prison was nothing like his days at Alcatraz, with its "great view" and clear-cut rules, Bulger said. And the former Irish Catholic stronghold of South Boston he once terrorized was now filled with "rich college kids living in expensive condos."

"World has changed...everything different, even the neighborhood," Bulger wrote to a friend he met in the lockup in newly public letters.

The letters, which are being auctioned Sunday, provide a glimpse into the once powerful and feared gangster's mundane life behind bars before he was beaten to death by fellow inmates last year. Bulger wrote about the little excitements of prison life -- "tonight we had an ice cream cone!" -- and his treatment by other inmates.

"Almost every time I'm going anywhere, guys ask 'hey old timer, want a push'...or just grab handles and start pushing," Bulger wrote in a letter postmarked in February 2015. "One advantage is we can go in the front of chow line if in wheelchair."

Authorities have said two Massachusetts mobsters are under investigation for 89-year-old Bulger's killing, but no one has been charged. His death hours after he was transferred to a troubled West Virginia prison has raised questions about why the known "snitch" was placed in the general population instead of more protective housing.

Bulger ratted on the New England mob to the FBI, authorities said, though he insisted throughout his trial that he wasn't an informant but was actually paying the FBI for the scoop on his enemies.

The auction house got the letters from a man who says he became friends with Bulger when the geriatric gangster was briefly held at a federal lockup in Brooklyn after being convicted in 2013 of participating in 11 murders, among other crimes.

That man, Timothy Glass, said he took Bulger under his wing, and they bonded over their criminal pasts. Glass recalled how Bulger would sign autographs for inmates who asked but had a tendency to give a "death stare" to guys he didn't like.

"I was like, 'this guy is a stone-cold killer at like 80 years old.' It was wild," Glass, 55, told The Associated Press.

Glass was locked up on robbery and other charges when he met Bulger after spending more than a decade in New York state prison for separate crimes, he said. Inmates weren't allowed to write to one another, so after Bulger was transferred to a different prison, Bulger would send the letters to a friend on the outside, who would get them to Glass, he said.

In the letters, Bulger complained about the cost of books ("$32 for the book!"), the cold weather ("All the liberals like VP Gore made a fortune with his scaring people with talk of 'planet warming'") and the media, which he called "part of and parcel of the corruption instead of society 'watchdogs.'"

He grumbled about his trial, slammed prosecutors for deals they made with his former friends and promised his appeal would "create quite a stir." He also bemoaned what he saw as the unfair treatment of his longtime girlfriend Catherine Grieg, who was sentenced to eight years for helping Bulger avoid capture.

"I played a rough game and accepted the rough treatment. But feel Catherine was treated too harshly," Bulger wrote.

He talked longingly about his time at "The Rock" -- Alcatraz -- where the rules were "plain and understood" and inmates were allowed at Christmastime to buy chocolate, which they would share with prisoners who weren't supposed to have candy.

"Here, 'they,' the 'inmates,' would sell you chocolate! Back then no one ever looked to make a profit on another convict," he wrote. "I look back at those years and place with nostalgia. It's all gone."

Tucked into some of the letters were pictures of Bulger as a young man or Alcatraz. On the back of one of the photo -- a mugshot taken in 1965, the year Bulger was released from prison and returned to South Boston -- he scribbled: "the good old days."

With another letter, Bulger included a holiday card that he apparently made in 2015 with the message in gold script: "Wishing you peace & cheer in the New Year." Next to the cheery greeting is Bulger's Alcatraz mugshot, his piercing blue eyes narrowed and brows furrowed.
The Islamic Society of Vermont is thanking Vermont residents for their support following the deadly mosque shootings in New Zealand.

Imam Abd'Llah Al-Ansari thanked everyone who had observed a moment of silence, prayed, sent messages, held vigils or condemned "this cruel and inhumane act of violence" that left 50 people dead. The Burlington Free Press reports images on the Colchester society's website shows bouquets of flowers from clergy around the state, including the First Congregational Church of Essex Junction.

Al-Ansari says the community support began as soon as the news of the massacre broke and has continued every day.

Colchester Police Chief Douglas Allen says police are providing additional security to the Islamic Society as a result of the New Zealand attacks.
A judge has denied a motion to dismiss a charge filed against a Massachusetts school bus driver who allegedly left a 5-year-old boy on the bus for hours.

The Salem News reports that the lawyer for 71-year-old David Boutros argued that the child was not at substantial risk of harm to qualify for the reckless child endangerment charge.

Salem District Court Judge Randy Chapman rejected that argument Monday, saying the child could have gotten off the bus and wandered onto a highway.

Police say the boy was hit by a car while trying to walk home after he was left on the bus in Beverly in September. He suffered cuts and bruises.

Police say Boutros disregarded protocols when he didn't check for children on the bus.



Boutros pleaded not guilty to a reckless child endangerment charge in November.
Police in Maine are investigating the deaths of an estranged husband and wife from Livermore Falls as a murder-suicide.

State and local police responded around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday to a report of gunshots at 16 Fairview St. in Gardiner, according to Maine State Police.

At the scene, police say they found 48-year-old Kenneth Bryant dead in a pickup truck parked in the driveway. Autumn Bryant, 44, was found shot in the garage. She was taken to MaineGeneral Hospital in Augusta, where she died from her injuries.

State police say investigators believe Kenneth shot Autumn and turned the gun on himself.

Police said divorce proceedings were underway for the couple, who had been estranged since November.

The deaths took place at Autumn's brother's house, where she had been staying.

Police added that there was a connection between the victim and a fire that destroyed a home on Messalonskee Lake in Sidney Tuesday morning. Later Tuesday, police explained that the house was owned by Lawrence Gilman, the husband of Autumn's mother.

The house was unoccupied at the time of the fire, according to police, who said that the Gilmans live in Florida during the winter. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Autopsies will be conducted Wednesday at the Maine Medical Examiner's Office in Augusta.
Maine State Police say the victim of Sundays murder-suicide was a baby boy.

Authorities say 14-month-old Quinten Leavitt was shot and killed by his father, 35-year-old Matthew Leavitt, who then shot and killed himself.

Autopsies revealed both Quinten and Matthew Leavitt died from a single gunshot wound.

Officers were called early Sunday to a home at 728 Reach Road. They discovered the two bodies when they entered the Presque Isle home.

The deaths were treated as a domestic violence murder-suicide based on information obtained by investigators.

Detectives finished gathering evidence at the Reach Road home on Monday.
A Massachusetts man is facing arson charges in connection with a fire that destroyed a building that was once home to a popular bar in Hanson, Massachusetts.

Alfred Russo, 75, of Bourne, was arrested Wednesday by Massachusetts State Police in connection with the July 5 fire at the abandoned commercial property on Liberty Street, according to the Plymouth District Attorney's Office. The property was once home to JJ's Pub.

The 3-alarm fire took crews a few hours to extinguish. Two firefighters were hospitalized with a heat-related illness while working to put out the flames.

The building was deemed a total loss.

The district attorney said while the exact cause of the fire remains under investigation, authorities determined that the cause was ruled incendiary. As a result, police obtained a criminal complaint charging Russo of with one count of burning of a dwelling and two counts of arson causing injuries to a firefighter.

Authorities said Russo served as a member of the Boston Fire Department from 1969 until 1995, when he retired as a firefighter assigned to the Marine Unit.

Russo pleaded not guilty to the charges at Plymouth District Court and was released on personal recognizance. He was ordered to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet.

Russo is due back in court Oct. 5.
Police are investigating anti-Semitic messages and Nazi imagery scrawled on dozens of gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in Massachusetts.

Fall River police say they responded to a report of vandalism at the Hebrew Cemetery at around 1:30 p.m. Sunday. The graffiti and damage was first discovered by a cemetery maintenance worker.

Authorities said about 30 gravestones were tagged with swastikas, and phrases including "heil Hitler," and "Hitler was right" written in black marker. One stone was tagged with "Oy vey! This is MAGA country," an apparent reference to President Donald Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again." Some were also pushed over.



Based on their investigation, officials believe that the vandalism took place sometime on Saturday.

Lewis Brooks was stunned when he found almost all of his family's graves had been defiled.

"Desecration of a religious or holy place, it's just something thats not acceptable," said Brooks.

Carl Superior, of Dartmouth, said his family's graves were not damaged but he worries about the next time.

"It just seems to be getting worse and theres a lot better things that I think people could do with their lives than desecrate other peoples rights to religion," said Superior.

Police met with a neighbor who lived close to the cemtery around 4 p.m. Sunday to speak with them about a suspicious vehicle they had seen parked in the cemetary twice recently. After investigating, authorities concluded that the vehicle was unrelated to the incident.

Officials are still investigating the scene to get a full count of the damaged and vandalized gravestones.

No arrests have been announced.

"It's offensive, obviously it can't be accepted in todays society," said Fall River Police Sgt. J.T. Hoar.

Police are offering a reward to anyone who supplies them with information that leads to an arrest. In addition the Anti-Defamation League of New England is offering a $1,500 reward.

"It may be a Jewish cemetery today but we know that there are many, many other groups that are under the same kind of threat," said Robert Trestan of Anti-Defamation League.

Anyone will knowledge of the incident is asked to contact Sergeant Tom Mauretti and Detective Moses Pereira at 508-324-2796 or give an anonymous tip by calling 508-672-TIPS.
A state police affidavit filed in a killing in the town of Swanville, Maine, indicates a love triangle ended with a man being shot seven times.

Twenty-two-year-old Austin McDevitt of Morrill, who's charged with murder, told detectives he was familiar with the victim, 26-year-old Shane Sauer, of Belfast, because they were both in a relationship with the same woman. A judge on Monday ordered McDevitt held without bail.

The state police affidavit indicates McDevitt was with the woman when Sauer showed up and started punching him early Friday. It indicates McDevitt told police went to his car, retrieved a gun, and shot Sauer.

The affidavit said McDevitt emptied his gun, striking Sauer seven times.

McDevitt is due back in court next month. His attorney didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.
A Massachusetts man accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Boston's South End neighborhood faced a judge on Tuesday.

Twenty-four-year-old Malden resident Anthony Smith-Pacheco was arraigned at Boston Municipal Court on charges of assault with intent to rape and indecent assault and battery.

Smith-Pacheco was arrested on Monday, according to the Boston Police Department. Police said the assault happened around 2 p.m. on Sunday at an art gallery on Harrison Avenue in the popular SoWa Art and Design district.

NBC10 Boston is not identifying the gallery out of respect for the victim's privacy, but the owner of the gallery said the victim is doing OK.

The reported assault had members of the community on edge.

"Not something you want to hear in your neighborhood," one resident said of the attack.

Those who live and work in the artist community said they are reviewing their own security procedures.

"Sometimes theyre harmless and sometimes you have to be really on guard," said Tom Stocker, who sells his art out of a nearby studio, which he says is in a very secure building. "But you would think in the middle of the day, in the middle of the afternoon, it would be fine."

Tess Woods works for New England Home Magazine, just a few doors down from where the alleged incident took place. She said she's relieved someone was finally arrested.

"Of course it was very scary to hear. Living in a city with a lot of office buildings, you should be able to walk in and out and walk through streets and not have concerns, so hopefully this is the last of it," Woods said.

After hearing from the court clinician, the judge ordered Pacheco-Smith to undergo a 20-day mental health evaluation at Bridgewater State Hospital.

A motion for a dangerousness hearing has been filed that will likely be taken up on the next court date which is scheduled for April 18.
Vermont residents are marking their state's 225th birthday.



On March 4, 1791, the 1st Federal Congress admitted Vermont into the Union, making Vermont the 14th state in the United States of America.



Secretary of State Jim Condos and State Archivist Tanya Marshall note the name Vermont was chosen in July 1777 at a convention of 72 representatives known as the "freemen of Vermont." They adopted the state's earliest constitution.



Condos and Marshall are asking residents to tweet their favorite Vermont facts, pictures, memories or thoughts to #Vermont225th.
The death of a 6-month-old girl at a day care facility in Rutland, Vermont highlights several broad concerns for child welfare, say advocates and physicians.

Even over-the-counter medications can be dangerous, warned pediatric critical care physician Dr. Becca Bell of the University of Vermont Medical Center.

Following the January death of Harper Briar at a licensed home day care facility, provider Stacey Vaillancourt, 53, is now facing charges of manslaughter and cruelty to a child.

We would enter a plea of not guilty on each of the counts, defense attorney Robert McClallen said during Mondays court arraignment for his client.

Court documents show the parents of little Harper told investigators after her death that she was a poor sleeper.

In late January, following Harpers second day in Vallaincourts home, the baby girls mom thought something seemed wrong. Harper seemed tired and not as smiley, detectives wrote in an affidavit filed with the court.

The next time at day care brought a frantic trip to the emergency room, according to police. Harper wasnt breathing, investigators said.

According to prosecutors, Harper was poisoned with more than one dose of an over-the-counter antihistamine and sedative, when Vallaincort was the sole person caring for the baby.

To the point that baby could not lift her head, and died, Rutland County States Attorney Rose Kennedy said in court Monday, as sounds of sobbing came from a large group of people gathered in the courtroom, wearing pink T-shirts with Harper Briars picture on them.

Bell said she does not want to see parents or caregivers turn to cold or allergy meds from the drugstore without a doctors specific orders, because of the risk for poisoning.

We dont recommend that infants or toddlers receive these medications, Bell told necn and NBC10 Boston.

Courtney Farrell is the director of child and family services with Lund, a non-profit that aims to strengthen Vermont mothers, children, and families.

She would not comment on the accusations in the Rutland case, but acknowledged caring for kids can be stressful.

Being able to do it on your own is really challenging, Farrell said.

Farrell urges adults to ask for help if they need it, including from a state-wide network of parent/child resource centers.

A list of those resource centers is available here.

Youre not alone and you dont have to be alone, Farrell said.

Vallaincourt was released on conditions that included she not have contact with young childrenaside from supervised contact with a grandchild.

Neither Vallaincourt nor the babys family commented to reporters after Mondays arraignment.

The suspects attorney said the day care facility shut down shortly after Harpers death.
The European Union on Wednesday unveiled new plans to make big tech companies pay more taxes in a move that would, if endorsed, hit online U.S. firms like Google and Facebook.

Insisting that digital companies must pay their fair share, the European Commission said that EU member countries should be able to tax firms that make profits on their territory even if they arent physically present.

It would concern any country where a firms annual revenue exceeds 7 million euros ($8.6 million), or which has more than 100,000 users or more than 3,000 digital service business contracts in a tax year.

The plan also includes an interim measure that would allow countries to tax at a rate of 3 percent companies with total annual revenue of 750 million euros and revenues in Europe of 50 million euros. The European Commission estimates that up to 150 companies could be affected, around half of them from the U.S.

Brussels argues that digital companies are growing faster than the economy as a whole, while corporate tax rules havent kept up, meaning that some make significant profits in Europe yet pay very little tax.

It says that, on average, many digital businesses face effective taxes of only 9 percent, less than half the 21-percent tax rate for brick-and-mortar companies.

Our pre-internet rules dont allow our member states to tax digital companies operating in Europe when they have little or no physical presence here, EU Economy Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said. This represents an ever-bigger black hole for member states, because the tax base is being eroded.

But the 28 EU nations, which must endorse the plan, are divided and it might never see the light of day. EU leaders will discuss the proposal at a summit in Brussels starting on Thursday.

Big EU members  notably France  accuse tech firms of shifting profits through small members like Luxembourg and Ireland, while these minnows in turn see the European Commissions plans as a maneuver to redistribute Europes tax cake in favor of their bigger partners.

In a statement, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain backed the commission said that in the absence of a global consensus at international level over how to tax digital companies we need to move ahead at EU level.

Some opponents also see the plan as an ill-timed move that could backfire by further undermining already-tricky relations with the U.S.

A potential trade war is already looming over President Donald Trumps new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, while his unclear tax plans have left the EU mulling countermeasures. Trumps threat to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal would also hurt European businesses.

But Moscovici insisted that its not anything that could be considered aggressive toward our American friends.

Our proposal doesnt target any company or any country, he said. We are addressing a structural problem with a structural solution.

But the Computer and Communications Industry Association immediately branded the scheme discriminatory and harmful.

We encourage the EU to seek international tax reform through the OECD rather than pursuing discriminatory, unilateral actions with risks to Europes digital economy and international trade relations, said Christian Borggreen, CCIA Europes vice president.

The American Chamber of Commerce, representing U.S. businesses in Europe, also expressed reservations, saying we believe that the conversation should take place in a multilateral context in order to ensure widespread agreement.
From package delivery, to photography, to search and rescue operations, drones are the future of flight. One New England university is preparing students to be the next generation of pilots.

Students at the University of Maine at Augusta taking a non-credit drone course learn how to fly small stunt drones to get familiar with the remote controller.

"It's the wild, wild west of aviation," said Dan Leclair, the course's professor, an aviation instruction and a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol.

The flying is the fun part, but the course work is what's most important. Professor Leclair teaches the students about weather patterns, airport maps and all the rules they need to know to pass the FAAs test for commercial pilots.

"The course teaches you to be safe, and how to fly the air craft in the national air space system," said Leclair, who teaches the class with retired Air Force Lt. Col. Greg Jolda.

UMA is among the few colleges in the nation to offer a course of this kind.

"The opportunity is wide open," said Tom Abbott, the UMA's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Project Manager.

Abbott came up with the idea for the drone course, realizing that companies are on the brink of incorporating drones into everyday business practices. Amazon, for example, is exploring drone delivery for packages.

"This is the future of aviation," said Abbott. "I said, 'Hey. Why can't we do this?'"

Abbott wants to add more drone classes, so UMA can offer a minor in drone piloting in its aviation degree program.

The class is only in its first semester, but has quickly taken off: 38 students are enrolled, between the ages of 16 to 70.

"I've always been into aviation and photography," said Gabriel Roig, a high school student who decided to take the drone course so he can someday open a small business. "I think it would be cool career path [to fly drones] to survey land for real estate companies."

An older student in the course, Jacob Gerritsen, has a similar plan.

"My son and I are starting a company called Pegasus Visuals," said Gerritsen. "We are open for business to do inspections of dams, wind turbines or real estate."

Gerritsen has been flying for years, and wanted his FAA certification to turn his hobby into a business venture. He said the UMA class helped him pass the FAA test with flying colors.

"I understand aviation a lot more," he said. "I understand the rules. I understand why they have the rules."
The main events in a political campaign used to happen in the open: a debate, the release of a major TV ad or a public event where candidates tried to earn a spot on the evening news or the next day's front page.

That was before the explosion of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as political platforms. Now some of a campaign's most pivotal efforts happen in the often-murky world of social media, where ads can be targeted to ever-narrower slices of the electorate and run continuously with no disclosure of who is paying for them. Reporters cannot easily discern what voters are seeing, and hoaxes and forgeries spread instantaneously.

Journalists trying to hold candidates accountable have a hard time keeping up.

"There's a whole dark area of campaigns out there when, if you're not part of the target group, you don't know anything about them," said Larry Noble of the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, which seeks greater transparency in political spending. "And if reporters don't know about it, they can't ask questions about it."

The problem came to widespread attention during the 2016 presidential race, when Donald Trump's campaign invested heavily in digital advertising, and the term "fake news" emerged to describe pro-Trump propaganda masquerading as online news. Russian interference in the campaign included covert ads on social media and phony Facebook groups pumping out falsehoods.

The misinformation shows no sign of abating. The U.S. Senate election in Alabama in December was rife with fake online reports in support of Republican Roy Moore, who eventually lost to Democrat Doug Jones amid allegations that Moore had sexual contact with teenagers when he was a prosecutor in his 30s. Moore denied the accusations.

Politicians also try to create their own news operations. U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes' campaign funded a purported news site called The California Republican, and the executive director of Maine's Republican party last month acknowledged that he runs an anonymous website that is critical of Democrats.

Phony allegations are nothing new in politics. But they used to circulate in automated phone calls, mailers that were often tossed in the trash or, as far back as the 1800s, in partisan newspapers that published just once a day, noted Garlin Gilchrist, executive director of the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan.

The difference now is how quickly false information spreads.

"The problem is something that's always existed ... but social media is a different animal than news distribution in the past," Gilchrist said.

A study released this past week found that false information spreads faster and wider on Twitter than real news stories. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology traced the path of more than 126,000 stories on Twitter and found that the average false story takes about 10 hours to reach 1,500 users compared with about 60 hours for real ones. On average, false information reaches 35 percent more people than true news.

A data analysis by Buzzfeed's news site after the 2016 election found that the most popular fake stories generated greater engagement on Facebook than the top real stories in the three months before Election Day.

Because it's increasingly easy to fabricate videos, which are viewed as the most reliable evidence available online, reporters "need stronger tools" to weed out frauds, Gilchrist said.

Social media also upends campaign advertising practices. Federal regulations require a record of every political advertisement that is broadcast on television and radio. But online ads have no comparable requirements.

Earlier this month, Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey announced that the platform would take new steps to try to stop harassment and false information. Facebook has partnered with media organizations, including The Associated Press, to flag false information on its platform. It recently announced plans to reform its political advertising, including making all ads on a page visible to all viewers, regardless of whether they were intended to see the spots. It also will require a line identifying the buyer on every political ad and create a four-year archive.

Still, because there are so many candidates for office in the U.S., Facebook is limiting itself to federal races at first.

"Facebook is moving faster than regulators are around the world toward some better stuff," said Sam Jeffers of the UK-based group Who Targets You, which pushes for better online campaign disclosure.

He cited three recent elections in which underdog campaigns invested heavily in online ads and beat the polling expectations to win: the 2015 parliamentary races and the Brexit vote and the U.S. presidential race the following year.

Who Targets You designed an online tool that will collect Facebook political ads and deposit them in a database.

In the U.S., the nonprofit investigative outlet ProPublica has a similar project underway with a widget called Political Ad Tracker, which can be downloaded by readers to build a database of online ads. Other organizations, including the AP, have begun publishing stories specifically intended to knock down false information circulating on social media.

Some efforts are more local. In Seattle's municipal election last year, online ad spending increased 5,000 percent over the previous cycle in 2013. Eli Sanders, a reporter for the alternative weekly The Stranger, unearthed a city ordinance that requires any outlet that distributes a political ad to make copies available for public inspection. His reporting inspired the city's ethics and elections commission to demand the data from online outlets.

Google and Facebook have shared some fragmentary information with the Seattle commission, and through them Sanders is getting his own window into the online political marketplace. One outside group that supported the candidate who won the mayoral election, Jenny A. Durkan, spent $20,000 on one ad on a Google platform that the company displayed between 1 million and 5 million times.

"Just like at the national level, locally there is this whole segment of political advertising that is not transparent," Sanders said.

Associated Press writer Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
One woman was lucky enough to have her car stolen  not by a thief, but by someone who was just a bit confused.

Erin Hatzi of Portland, Oregon, had her red Subaru stolen right out of her driveway Tuesday night, NBC affiliate KGW reported. Surveillance video showed a woman calmly taking the vehicle and driving off a few minutes later.

Police were notified and actually came across the stolen car right outside Hatzi's home, according to the report. The driver brought a note  which Hatzi posted to Facebook  that read:

"Hello, So sorry I stole your car. I sent my friend with my key to pick up my red Subaru at 7802 SE Woodstock and she came back with your car. I did not see the car until this morning and I said, 'that is not my car.' There is some cash for gas and I more than apologize for the shock and upset this must have caused you. If you need to speak further, with me, I am ******* and my number is ..........So so sorry for this mistake."

Police said that older model Subaru keys can sometimes work on different cars, according to KGW. Hatzi and the unwitting car thief didn't meet.

"It's like a bad sitcom that nobody would ever buy the story because it's stupid and it makes no sense. But it happened," she told the station.
NTA, Nepal Telecommunication Authority has decided to collect Rs 20 billion from Nepal Telecom (NTC), for the Mobile license renewal. NTA board on Sunday comes to the decision for the payment of Rs 20 billion for the license renewal for five years.

As the license renewal fee was not clear, Nepal Telecom requested for the license renewal, paying 18 crore Rs (180 million). The deadline of the mobile license for Nepal Telecom is on Baishak 2076.

Mobile license

As mentioned in the Telecommunication Act 1997, a telecom company gets a mobile license for ten years. Then, they need to renew their license every 5 years.

The Telecom regulation requires telecom companies to apply for license renewal 3 months before the expiration date. So, Nepal Telecom applied to NTA with the 90 percent of the license renewal fee.

Before Government allowed to pay the huge sum in installment basis for both of the telecom companies, NTC and Ncell. But as such a decision has not been taken now, Nepal Telecom has to pay the whole sum at once.

NTA Acting Chairman Mr. Purushottam Khanal said,  The decision to collect Rs 20 billion from Nepal Telecom for the License renewal will apply the same for all the telcos.

The Mobile license was awarded to Nepal Telecom on Baishak 29, 2056. The first license amount worked for the first 10 years. That time, NTA put the condition that Nepal Telecom to pay the same amount which other telcos will pay for the license renewal.

Mobile license was issued to Nepal Telecom on Baishak 2056 whereas for Ncell, it was on Bhadra 2061.

On the Mobile license auction, Spice Nepal Pvt Ltd. bid Rs 20 billion and got the license on 2061 Bhadra. After multiple sold out, Ncell now holds the license to operate the mobile service in Nepal. Based on the previous condition, Nepal Telecom also needs to pay the same amount of Rs 20 billion.

NTA recommendation

The telcos had been requesting NTA to make the renewal fees reasonable and according to international practices. Following which, NTA recommended the Ministry to make the renewal fee 4 percent of total company revenues. So, if the recommendation had been followed, the telecom companies have to pay 50 percent of the paid amount.

Before Parliaments PAC also directed the Government to take decision-based on international practices. But Financial comptrollers Report (Mahalekha pratibedan) recommends the government for the 20 billion fees as it came from competition. So the board now decides to stick with the 20 billion sums.

UTL and Smart Telecom have also got the unified license which they got by paying 35 crores 75 lakhs (357.5 million) to NTA. After 10 years of operation, they also need to pay Rs 20 billion every 5 years for the renewal.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Viber to get latest news, information about Ntc, Ncell, Smart Cell and phones in Nepal.



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The U.S. Department of Energy says it is working on a supercomputer that will break the target of exaFLOP computation  a quintillion (1018) floating-point computations per second  in order to handle high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.

Being built in conjunction with Intel and Cray Computing, the Aurora supercomputer will cost more than half a billion dollars and be turned over to Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago in 2021, according to a statement by the DoE. [Click here to see the current top 10 fastest supercomputers.]

Aurora and the next-generation of Exascale supercomputers will apply HPC and AI technologies to areas such as cancer research, climate modeling, and veterans health treatments, says Energy Secretary Rick Perry. The innovative advancements that will be made with Exascale will have an incredibly significant impact on our society.

Projects include developing extreme-scale cosmological simulations, discovering new approaches for drug response prediction, and discovering materials for the creation of more efficient organic solar cells, DoE said in a statement.

Argonnes Aurora system is built for next-generation Artificial Intelligence and will accelerate scientific discovery by combining high-performance computing and artificial intelligence to address real world problems, says Argonne Director Paul Kearns, such

as improving extreme weather forecasting, accelerating medical treatments, mapping the human brain, developing new materials, and further understanding the universe  and that is just the beginning.

The underpinnings of Aurora will be
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19)  President Rodrigo Duterte has finally signed the law abolishing the graft-ridden Road Board.

The President enacted Republic Act (RA) 11239 on March 8, according to the document released by Malacanang on Tuesday. The law abolishes the Road Board, which previously manage the road user's tax or motor vehicle user's charge (MVUC) for repair and maintenance of roads. State auditors have repeatedly slammed the agency for supposed fund irregularities.

Under the law which takes effect 15 days after publication in state-run Official Gazette or in a major newspaper, the road users' tax will be transferred to the National Treasury to fund government projects under the budget law.

RA 11239 states that the fund should "be earmarked solely for the construction, upgrading, repair, and rehabilitation of roads, bridges, and road drainage."

The secretaries of the departments of Budget, Public Works and Highways, and Transportation, craft the implementing rules and regulations within 30 days from the effectivity of the law.

House leaders previously insisted that the President did not want the Road Board abolished, but the President himself said otherwise in a speech.

In December 2018, Duterte said he would support the Senate's move to abolish the Road Board and called the agency a "milking cow" of corrupt government officials. The Commission on Audit has flagged billions of pesos worth of unimplemented and unobligated projects, and millions of pesos of excessive costs and overpayment.

From 2001 to May 2018, the board had collected 166.18 billion, of which only 136.87 billion have been released, according to the Senate. Then Budget chief Benjamin Diokno said the agency had a 45-billion fund surplus.
DERBY  A lawyer who is an owner of downtown building that the city claims is in danger of collapsing has until noon Wednesday to submit a structural engineering report.

Michael Hillis, who is a principal in Derby Shores, LLC, told Hearst Connecticut Media he will have a structural engineer inspect the site and report back to the city. However, Hillis said, he does not expect to find any structural issues since Derby Shores spent about $250,000 several years ago on repairs the city ordered.

Meanwhile, the city has closed the sidewalk around the four-story, 195 Main Street building, on the corner of Minera and Main streets. They also stationed a fire watch around the site until a decision is made on its safety.

The property owner has advised us they hired a structural engineer to inspect the interior, said Andrew Baklik, chief of staff to Derby Mayor Richard Dziekan. They have said they will have that report to us by noon Wednesday.

Hillis blamed falling debris on a damaged roof. He said Derby Shores has a pending lawsuit against MESA Underwriters Specialty Insurance Company of New Jersey.

The suit, filed Feb. 9, 2015, and pending in Milford Superior Court, alleges the insurer failed to pay for damage to the roof sustained during the blizzard that began Feb. 9, 2013. The suit claims heavy snow and ice along with strong winds caused damage to the roof.

MESA has hired a lawyer and denies the claim. No court dates have been scheduled.

More for you Derby officials concerned Main Street building may collapse

Baklik said Vincent Marino, the citys corporation counsel, has been in contact with Hillis and urged him to take the necessary steps to prevent anything else falling from the building

The citys Water Pollution Control Authority has also filed a foreclosure suit against Derby Shores, LLC for failing to pay sewer use taxes totaling $4,868.52 for the fiscal years ending July 1, 2015, 2016 and 2017 as well as the accruing interests on those charges.

That suit also claims Derby Shores took out a $600,000 mortgage on the building in 2006 that has been assigned to Hayden Asset VIII in East Hartford. It further claims New England Yankee Construction of Wallingford has a $12,861.58 judgment lien against Derby Shores.

No court dates have been set on the lawsuit, which also is pending in Milford Superior Court. Hillis said Derby Shores hired a lawyer who is in the process of wrapping (it) up.

Meanwhile, three of the four remaining buildings on the south side of Main Street have been demolished. The only one still standing rests at the intersection of Main and Factory Street. A major development is planned for the former Housatonic Lumber site on Factory Street. Site plans are expected to be accepted by the Planning and Zoning Commission during their March 26 meeting.

The demolition is part of the states plan to widen Main Street, also known as Route 34, into a four lane highway beginning next year.
rank Del / For Hearst Connecticut Media

SHELTON  A woman who was found in the bathroom by firefighters on the scene of a fire in her home on Sunday has died.

Police said Barbara Curley, 67, was transported to Bridgeport Hospital after she was taken from the house and died from her injuries on Monday.
HAMDEN  Van Jones, the nationally known TV commentator, met with former inmates and Connecticut justice-reform leaders on Monday to push for better housing, job-training and employment opportunities to help those leaving prison to avoid returning.

When people are trying to turn their lives around, we should throw them a lifeline and not an anvil, said Jones, who in January was named chief executive of the REFORM Alliance, an organization backed by celebrities including Shawn Jay-Z Carter, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and rapper Meek Mill, who want to change the probation and parole systems.

Too often when people come home from prison, if theyve done well on the inside, theyve taken classes, theyve gotten certificates, they think theyre going to come home and do well, and they find doors closed in their faces, Jones said. And the only door that opens is the door back to prison. And thats wrong. And we can do something about that. This is supposed to be a country that loves the underdog, loves the second chance, loves a comeback story.

He said minor offenses committed by former offenders on parole or probation can get blown out of proportion, landing people back in prison for six months or more after merely being late for a meeting. The result is lost jobs and apartments, while children are set adrift, returning to state supervision.

During a symposium on possible advancements to the Second Chance Society initiatives of his predecessor, Dannel P. Malloy, Gov. Ned Lamont said a recent visit to a state prison in Cheshire brought home the need to support offenders resettle into their communities.

It was his first prison visit, which brought home the stark difference that incarceration means in peoples lives, he said after a noontime event on the campus of Quinnipiac University.

The gate closes behind you, the gate in front of you doesnt open up and you go in there and you just see a lot of young people, Lamont said. I saw young men about the same age as my son Teddy. Im looking forward to the day where they can prove everybody wrong by doing right.

The event brought several ex-offenders to this university campus to discuss the issues with state and local officials and Jones. Meek Mill was scheduled to attend the meeting, but canceled due to a conflict.

Louis L. Reed of Bridgeport, a former federal inmate and now the national organizer for #Cut50, a reform organization founded by Jones, said he was called on a violation of the terms of his release, for falling behind on child support payments. An ID card given at the time of release would go a long way to helping inmates, he said.

Its simplistic things like that, Reed said.

It will take both political parties to get us out of this and into a better system, Jones said during a lunch session with 25 people gathered around a table in the faculty dining room. The people who dont quit, who come home job-ready and transformed, we should support them.

Jones praised the strides Connecticut has made in recent years, including record low prison populations and sharp decreases in violent crime. He supported pending legislation aimed at helping those inmates out on probation stay out of prison for minor infractions, such as being late for a meeting with a probation officer.

During the roundtable lunch discussion on the barriers facing former inmates, state Department of Correction Commissioner Rollin Cook said for those who earn certificates, such as hair-cutting, the documents should not refer to the DOC, he said.

The next step is really in our communities, Cook said, stressing the need for offenders to have more mentors in their communities upon their return. Ill tell you, from our agencys standpoint, were ready for those next steps.

Pending bills include anti-discrimination legislation and more transparency in prosecuting cases.

Lamont recalled looking into the eyes of the Cheshire inmates, and he realized they didnt have the advantages growing up that his children had. I walked in there and they said Governor, welcome to our gated community. I thought that was ironic, Lamont said to chuckles around the table.

In addition to Jones, whose full name is Anthony Kapel Jones, Lamont meet with ex-offenders from the state, as well as Project Longevity state director Brent Peterkin and State Rep. Brandon L. McGee Jr., D-Hartford.

I think we can all agree were not satisfied with progress, Peterkin said after a morning session with former inmates. We want to push the envelope forward. We think theres a lot more work that Connecticut can do. But we also recognize the tremendous progress that Connecticut has made, and I would argue as one of the leaders in our nation as far as criminal justice reform efforts, and also re-entry.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
HARTFORD  Lawmakers on Tuesday agreed that a flaw in a 2018 law that could have hindered Connecticuts nascent solar-power industry needs to be fixed.

The Energy & Technology Committee overwhelmingly approved a compromise with Gov. Ned Lamont that solar supporters said will continue to foster the commercial and residential solar-energy markets, even as federal tax credits are reduced from the current 30 percent, down to 10 percent over the next few years.

But the issue, which environmental advocates and industry officials said would help save the current 2,000 industry jobs, might have to be rewritten as soon as next year, when solar power generation for residential uses pushes toward 350 megawatts. The bill, which next heads to the House of Representatives, was approved after a brief discussion.

State Rep. David Arconti, D-Danbury, co-chairman of the committee, said the legislation includes a study of the solar market and industry, with a report from the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority due by July 1, 2020.

There was unforeseen consequences in how fast we were moving toward a successor program, Arconti said after the meeting.I feel like we put together a pretty good framework to address the concerns. We want to make sure theres predictability in the industry.

The bill was hailed by environmental advocates including the Acadia Center, the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, Environment Connecticut, the Sierra Club, and the Northeast Clean Energy Council. Industry officials wanted the legislation to extend until the residential industry is capable of generating 400 megawatts, in about two years.

It begins to fix the damage done last year in a number of ways, said Chris Phelps, state director of Environment Connecticut. One of the key ways its trying to fix, is for homeowners or businesses who own solar and put solar on their roof, will get compensated from the utilities at a fair rate. Last years law was set up for owners not to get compensated fairly, and making it unaffordable for people to go solar, thus harming the industry.

Theres still a lot of moving parts, said Tim Schneider, chief executive officer of Earthlight Solar and Energy Solutions, a company that has been lobbying for the new legislation. But its awesome that it will help us install solar over the next couple of years. Were trying to lower our costs.

In particular, the rewritten law is aimed at a particular section of the 2018 bill.

This is the attempted compromise moving the I-hate-Section-seven, said Sen. Paul M. Formica, R-East Lyme, ranking member of the committee, with a smile. So listen, I think this is a good move forward and I will be supporting this.

The bill was a major issue in the energy landscape that met Gov. Lamont when he took office with an agenda that was at odds parts of the 2018 law.

This was a big one coming into this year, Arconti said just prior to the committee vote, two days before its deadline to act. I think we have a really good framework going forward to a final product, and not having to address it for a while after the session.

Its way better than it was, and its going to save Connecticut jobs, but it wont expand the solar industry, said Amy McLean Salls, senior policy advocate for the Acadia Center.

I think a lot of members of the committee were satisfied, if not happy with the bill, said Rep. Joe Gresko, D-Stratford, a committee member.

Recently the state of Maine approved a similar legal rewrite on the ways that solar generation is measured for sale to the electric grid.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
FAIRFIELD  The northernmost part of Fairfields bucolic Greenfield Hill may seem worlds away from modern conveniences. Its distance from the town center and train station is considered disadvantageous to some prospective homebuyers.

They would be wise to rid themselves of such misperceptions and consider the abundance of assets, seen and unseen, that comes with the 2.62-acre property at 2228 North St. It is an ideal location for lovers of nature, preservationists who appreciate updated vintage houses, anyone involved in equestrian activities, and those who value privacy and yet also a sense of community.

When Sarah Filler and her family first moved into the white Greek revival colonial house with the four stately fluted columns and gabled roof in January 2011, they were surprised by the number of neighbors who stopped by to welcome them to the neighborhood. Several left notes at the doorstep when the Fillers were not home.

They have remained close to their neighbors while also appreciating the tranquility provided by this property.

When you pull into the driveway its quiet, serene. You dont want to leave, Filler said. Its a nice, big, safe place for our kids to play around and get dirty, she said, adding they would climb the apple tree, walk atop the fieldstone wall, and kick around a ball. They could also ride horses, were they so inclined, and at one point they did have ponies.

This horse property features a two-story horse barn with three stalls and room for a fourth; a heated tack room with electricity, hot and cold running water, and laundry facilities, and three paddocks. The barn has 15-foot-tall doors that open to the pasture. The municipally-owned wildlife conservation area, Brett Woods Open Space, is close by. It features 185 acres of forested land including hiking and bridle trails.

Residents of this property could ride their horses to the trails in this rural setting. Also within walking distance is the Connecticut Audubon Society on Burr Street and the 155-acre Roy and Margot Larsen Wildlife Sanctuary. Although, to some, it seems far away from downtown Fairfield the truth is this property is only six miles from the Fairfield train station and downtown restaurants and shopping.

The 11-room, 5,552-square-foot main house, built circa 1802, has been thoughtfully and extensively renovated and offers inviting living and entertaining spaces both inside and out.

A former renovation and remodel by famed local architect, Cameron Clark, laid the groundwork for a more modern interior reimagining by the current owners, according to the listing agent, who describes this house best: Classic Connecticut on the outside meets California Chic on the inside. It is a masterful melange of old and new.

ABOUT THIS HOUSE TYPE OF HOUSE: Updated Antique Greek Revival ADDRESS: 2228 North Street PRICE: $1,787,000 NUMBER OF ROOMS: 11 FEATURES: 2.62-acre level horse property, two-story horse barn with three to four stalls, heated tack room with electricity and water, three paddocks, guest house/home office, screened porch, red brick patio, pergola, audio system, cable - pre-wired, in-law/au pair suite, four fireplaces (in main house, guest house has a wood stove), professionally landscaped, close to the Connecticut Audubon Society at Roy and Margot Larsen Wildlife Sanctuary and Brett Woods Open Space, proximity to the Patterson Club, only six miles from the Fairfield train station and downtown restaurants and shopping, rear stairs, semi-circular driveway, detached three-car garage, shed, zoned central air conditioning and heating, stone wall, attic, partial basement crawl space, four bedrooms, five full and one half baths SCHOOL: Burr Elementary, Tomlinson Middle, Fairfield Warde High ASSESSMENT: $1,043,840 TAX RATE: 26.36 mills TAXES: $27,516 See More Collapse

In addition to the main house, there is a separate guest house, which could be used as a home office. It has a wood stove, kitchenette, living room, bedroom and full bath.

A semi-circular driveway provides ample parking for visitors. The front facade has a dramatic two-story veranda. Its door enters into a sizable foyer, where there is wide-planked flooring and a recessed area with the gracefully curved staircase to the second floor. The same flooring continues in other rooms. There are four fireplaces, including one in the banquet-sized formal dining room and one in the master bedroom suite.

Several rooms have doors to the grounds. There is a screened porch and another two-story veranda on which to sit, relax and take in the surrounding views. Recessed window areas in the dining room contain hidden cabinetry for storage of culinary ware, although there is storage room to spare in the sizable butlers pantry. It and the gourmet eat-in kitchen were designed by the iconic Boffi.

On the second floor, the spacious master features a sitting area, dressing room, walk-in closet and a cavernous and luxurious master bath with a polished marble floor in a herringbone pattern, floating vanities with under-cabinet lighting, a soaking tub, and large shower. The mantle of the fireplace comprises ornately carved marble. There are several more bedrooms on this level including a large guest suite with a vaulted ceiling and French doors into its sizable marble bath.

For more information or to set up an appointment to see the house contact Andrew Whiteley of Al Filippone Associates/William Raveis Real Estate at 203-258-1595 or andreww@afahomes.com.
Australian researchers have used current hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome sequences to deduce ancient human population movements into Australia, adding weight to the theory that the mainland Aboriginal population separated from other early humans at least 59 thousand years ago and possibly entered the country near the Tiwi Islands.

The discovery was made as an offshoot of the Characterising Hepatitis B in Indigenous Australians thRough Molecular epidemiology (CHARM) study, commenced in 2010 by the Menzies School of Health Research (Menzies). Chronic HBV infection is endemic in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and is an important cause of morbidity and mortality due to liver disease and liver cancer.

As part of caring for patients with hepatitis B infections in the CHARM study, the research team collected HBV samples from people living in over 30 communities across the NT and found HBV isolated from Aboriginal Australians is a unique strain not found anywhere else in the world, known as HBV/C4.

In the same way that human genome sequences are used to trace ancient human migration, the researchers predicted they could use modern day viral genomes to infer the movement of the people that have carried these viruses over many generations.

Published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, the study used cutting-edge evolutionary analyses of the HBV DNA sequences together with archaeological fossil and human genome data.

The researchers found that the precursor of the modern HBV/C4 virus entered Australia over 51 thousand years ago, and then separated into two groups; one centred in the northwest region, and a second in the central/eastern region of the NT. Strikingly, the two groups share a similar geographical distribution to the two main divisions of Aboriginal Australian languages spoken in Australia today.

Co-author on the paper, the Royal Melbourne Hospital's Dr Margaret Littlejohn, who holds an honorary position with the University of Melbourne and is a Senior Medical Scientist in the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at the Doherty Institute, said that the entry point and timing of ancient human migration into continental Sahul - the combined landmass of Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania - are subject to debate.

"As we were analysing the sequences of HBV isolated as part of this study, we noted that the virus sequences had very strong geographical connections to the communities we visited," said Dr Littlejohn.

"This led us to postulate that we might be able to use this geographical relationship to find out the origin of HBV and how long it might have been in Australia. This is the first time viral genomes have been used in this way in Australia."

Another co-author on the paper, Professor Josh Davis, Senior Principal Research Fellow at Menzies, said the discovery had generated great interest with Aboriginal research partners and patients.

"Most pleasingly, it has raised the profile of hepatitis B in communities. Community members have asked to find out more about hepatitis B and how they can be tested and treated," said Professor Davis.

"It's really exciting to take a novel approach, and use viral genetics to help tell the story of Australia's first people".

The study was endorsed by an Indigenous Reference Group comprised of members representing six different remote communities from across the NT and established by the Menzies Hepatitis B Research Program. The researchers also ensured that results were fed back to the main communities where samples came from.

Senior Aboriginal Health Practitioner, Sarah Bukulatjpi, who is also a co-author on the paper, said: "I am really pleased that we are finding out more details about HBV found in Aboriginal people. This can only help to eliminate hep B for the future.

"It is good for us to learn about this and for us not to be silent or feel shame; the fact the virus is so old helps to add to the evidence that Aboriginal people have been in Australia for a long long time," she concluded.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today posted a warning letter to Nutra Pharma Corp. for illegally marketing unapproved products labeled as homeopathic with claims about their ability to treat addiction and chronic pain, including pain associated with cancer, diabetes, shingles, fibromyalgia and other serious conditions.

"One of our most important obligations is to protect consumers from those who would prey on them with bogus claims and fraudulent products. We've dedicated new resources to our enforcement work and I consider these activities the cornerstone of our consumer protection mission and one of our most significant institutional obligations. We're especially focused on those who would exploit Americans harmed by the opioid crisis with the false promise of products that can treat pain or addiction, but that offer no such benefit," said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. "Today, we posted a warning letter to a company preying on patients who may be seeking alternative treatments for chronic pain, cancers, arthritis and autoimmune and neurological disorders. Health fraud scams like these are inexcusable. These patients deserve proven treatments not false promises that can deter them from seeking otherwise effective care, and that can also contain ingredients or contaminations that can threaten their health. We have great concern for the millions of Americans who live with chronic pain or cancer, and for whom traditional treatment options have been exhausted, as well as those battling opioid addiction. They deserve new advances in care that can address pain without the risk of addiction, not the deception of bogus products that offer no proven benefit. We'll continue our efforts to protect consumers from such false claims, while also working to advance the development of new treatment options, including non-addictive products for pain management and innovative products for the treatment of opioid use disorder."

The FDA issued a warning letter to Nutra Pharma for their products: "Nyloxin Oral Spray," "Nyloxin Topical Gel," "Nyloxin Topical Roll-On," "Nyloxin Topical Roll-On ES," "Nyloxin Professional Size Pump Topical Gel" and "Regular Strength Sample Pack." These products also may confuse consumers because its name is similar to FDA-approved drugs.

Examples of claims made include:

"Nyloxin . . . treats conditions that cause chronic pain."

"[C]obra venom saw its primary use in the treatment of cancer and arthritis. Reportedly the venom was used to treat liver cancer, lung cancer, esophageal cancer, skin cancer, and leukemia."

"Today, cobra venom is being studied for treating various forms of pain, cancers, autoimmune and neurological disorders."

"Researchers in China are examining the possibility that cobra venom can be used to treat drug addiction."

"Treatment of the Cobrotoxin in 90 cases with heroin dependence."

Health fraud scams like these can pose serious health risks. These products have not been demonstrated to be safe or effective and may keep some patients from seeking appropriate, FDA-approved therapies. Selling these unapproved products with claims that they can treat chronic pain is a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

In addition to supporting the development of alternatives to opioid analgesics for chronic pain, reducing the number of Americans who are addicted to opioids and cutting the rate of new addiction is one of the Administration's highest priorities. This work includes promoting more widespread innovation and access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for the more than 2 million of Americans with an opioid use disorder (OUD). The FDA is taking steps to make safe and effective MAT available to those who suffer from OUD and to reduce the stigma that is sometimes associated with use of these therapies. Using products with unsubstantiated claims may prevent those addicted to opioids from seeking approved treatments that have been demonstrated to be safe and effective, delay their path to recovery and put them at greater risk of death. In fact, patients receiving FDA-approved medication-assisted treatment cut their risk of death from all causes in half, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The FDA has requested responses from Nutra Pharma within 15 working days. The warning letter also states that failure to correct violations may result in legal action without further notice, including, without limitation, seizure and injunction.

In December 2017 the FDA proposed a risk-based enforcement approach that prioritizes enforcement and regulatory actions involving drug products labeled as homeopathic that have the greatest potential to cause risk to patients. Given the concerns about the proliferation of potentially ineffective and harmful products labeled as homeopathic, the FDA previously stated it would consider taking additional enforcement and/or regulatory actions, consistent with its current compliance policies, in the interest of protecting the public. Homeopathic products have not been approved by the FDA for any use and may not meet modern standards for safety, effectiveness and quality.

Health care professionals and consumers are encouraged to report any adverse events related to these products to the FDA's MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program. To file a report, use the MedWatch Online Voluntary Reporting Form. The completed form can be submitted online or via fax to 800-FDA-0178.
The nation's first African-American Neuroscience Research Initiative, aimed at ensuring that genomic research and neuroscience studies are representative of individuals across all populations including African ancestry, launched today. This new enterprise partners the African-American Clergy Medical Research Initiative, comprised of prominent clergy leaders of the Minister's Conference of Baltimore, with the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, an independent, not-for-profit medical research institute working to develop new treatments for brain disorders.

The African-American Neuroscience Research Initiative aims to establish a road map to help close the gap in health disparities and accelerate research efforts that will lead to new treatments for brain disorders.

Research has long been hampered by a lack of diversity in basic science and in clinical trials, particularly in the field of neuroscience. For example, 81% of large-scale genomic datasets are of European descent, even though this group makes up less than 16% of the world population. What science has now shown us is there are genetic differences among races and ethnicity. Genomic research has the potential to provide some of the most personalized and effective medical treatments for many medical disorders, including: heart disease, stroke, asthma, diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease, and schizophrenia. However, minority groups are inadequately represented in these large-scale genomic studies.

Rev. Dr. Alvin C. Hathaway, Sr., Principal of the African-American Clergy Medical Research Initiative, said "My clergy colleagues and I have been studying the emerging science behind precision medicine and believe that this technology has potential for finding cures and treatments for diseases that uniquely affect African Americans. This revolution in medicine has largely left behind ethnic minority groups like African Americans, and it is time to change this."

In neuroscience research studies of brain disorders, underrepresented minority groups, including African Americans, make up less than 5% of research cohorts.

"So far, personalized medicine has not really been for everyone," said Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D., Director and CEO of the Lieber Institute. "Through this initiative we hope to build data sets about the brain that can be used by researchers globally, with the ultimate goal to develop new treatments for people of African ancestry."

Lieber has built the largest, most carefully curated collection of human brains anywhere in the world devoted to understanding brain development and mental illness.

Research shows that African Americans are 20% more likely to experience serious mental health problems than the general population and twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's Disease. Suicide rates for African-American children under the age of 13 are twice as high as children of European ancestry. African-American infant death rates and premature birth rates also are twice that of European ancestry Americans.

The African-American Neuroscience Research Initiative is working to partner with the state of Maryland to catalyze a national effort ensuring that African Americans are not left behind.

"The potential knowledge gained through this research will help not just individuals of African ancestry, but will also help all people," says Weinberger. "It's by studying the most complex representatives of genetic diversity in the context of the human brain that we will ultimately understand how to customize therapy and maximize the effectiveness of treatments."
A new study by King's scientists will monitor air quality exposure of 250 children on their way to school and in the classroom. The announcement was made today at Haimo Primary School in Greenwich by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who is funding the study.

Led by Dr Ben Barratt from the Environmental Research Group at King's, the study will use state-of-the-art toxic air monitoring backpacks developed by Dyson, to help monitor and better understand the levels of toxic air young Londoners are exposed to during their journeys to school and in the classroom.

250 pupils from five London primary schools, situated across five boroughs (Southwark, Richmond, Greenwich, Haringey and Hammersmith and Fulham) will take part in the project, wearing specially adapted backpacks to and from school for a week.

Weighing just over 1kg, the sensors fit into lightweight bags and measure particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels. The children involved will use the backpacks like a normal bag (the monitor takes up one pocket, leaving plenty of room for school equipment), allowing the monitors to record pollutant levels on each child's journey to school and throughout the school day.

The data from this study will allow King's scientists to analyse at which point of their journey to school (or which part of their school day) children are exposed to the most pollution. They will also be able to the compare the exposure of children who have similar journeys but take different routes and travel modes and then make recommendations of how children can reduce their exposure in future.

Dr Ben Barratt from King's said: "Air pollution has been found to restrict lung growth in children. Low lung function in childhood can persist into adulthood and is often associated with other health problems including chronic obstructive lung disease in later life.

"Analysing the impact of air pollution and providing information to our local, national and international communities is a core component of King's civic responsibility. By monitoring the air that children breathe on the journey to and from school, we will gain a better understanding of which pollutants are the most harmful and where they are coming from, helping us to support effective improvements in public health."

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said: "It remains a shameful fact that London's toxic air is harming the lung growth and health of our young children, and City Hall is determined to do everything in our power to protect them.

"An issue this large and complex requires bold and innovative action to protect future generations and ensure our children inherit cleaner, healthier air. I'm proud that we're able to launch world leading studies like this which will help us find new ways to reduce children's exposure to toxic air. I hope the success of this scheme will act as a blueprint for cities around the world as they battle their own toxic air emergencies.

"The health of London's children is key to everything we do to improve air quality. We've already conducted air quality audits at dozens of schools and nurseries across London,resulting in positive changes that are helping reduce pollution and clean the air for thousands of pupils. But alongside these measures, we need strong action, I will continue to prioritise the health of all Londoners with a range of strong measures including cleaning up the bus fleet, funding a scrappage scheme for micro-businesses to remove the most polluting vans and, next month, the launch of the world's first Ultra Low Emission Zone in the central London Congestion Charge area. But we can't win this battle without more help from the Government, who are still failing to take this problem seriously and offer the support London needs to tackle this public health crisis."

The new sensors have been developed by Dyson engineers in co-operation with King's as part of the Mayor's Breathe London project - launched in January.

Jessica Le Dinh, Category Intelligence Engineer, Dyson, said: "Our engineers have been researching clean air technologies for over two decades. Our team of experts applied their leading knowledge to develop intelligent sensors, compact enough to fit in children's backpacks.

"Children can take up to 30,000 breaths a day. Their lungs are still developing, which makes them vulnerable to air pollution. City air can contain potentially harmful pollutants - including nitrogen dioxide and soot-based particulate matter. That's why this study is so vital. It will help us monitor exactly what our children are exposed to, to inform effective solutions."
America's 26 million asthmatics may be able to breathe a sigh of relief, thanks to Dr. Sailaja Paruchuri, a University of Akron researcher who has received a $1.9 million Research Project Grant (R01) from the National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH-NIAID).

The research project seeks to understand how asthma symptoms and other inflammatory conditions are aggravated by examining the link between two lipid mediators formed from fatty acids.

Paruchuri hopes that uncovering the mechanisms of this process will lead to new discoveries for the research and treatment of common respiratory disorders and allergies. Currently, a leukotriene receptor blocker alone is in use for treatment of asthma and similar ailments, branded as Singulair from Merck.

"But it is not as potent as steroids," remarks Paruchuri, the James L. & Martha J. Foght Associate Professor in our Department of Chemistry. "My team proposes that a combination of a leukotriene blocker along with a prostaglandin blocker can be a better treatment."

The Research Project Grant (R01) is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism used by NIH. Paruchuri, one of only a dozen recipients of this grant at UA, has dedicated herself to research on these bio-lipids since her doctorate studies in Sweden, and is pleased to put the grant to use with her colleague and co-investigator, Dr. Adam Smith, an associate professor in chemistry.

"This is a very exciting time, as we have recently published our work in a prestigious journal, Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences, and succeeded in securing this significant R01 grant from NIH, which is a gold standard in health science research," Paruchuri says.

The R01 grant will also help train graduate students to become future scientists and continue to build UA's reputation as a place of research and discovery.

Working with these future scientists to help secure this funding is what Paruchuri says she finds so meaningful.

"I want to take this opportunity to thank my past and present post-docs, graduate students and undergrad students for all their hard work, enthusiasm, and perseverance," she notes.

Paruchuri's five-year R01 grant from NIH-NIAID is titled "Integration of leukotriene and prostaglandin receptor signaling in mast cell activation and pulmonary inflammation during asthma."
Research from the University of British Columbia and McMaster University has led to a new bone implant material made from plant cellulose. The material can be injected into bone cavities to support new growth.

Researchers treated nanocrystals derived from plant cellulose so that they can link up and form a strong but lightweight sponge (an aerogel) that can compress or expand as needed to completely fill out a bone cavity. Clare Kiernan, UBC

The study was published in Acta Biomaterialia on 15th March 2019 and states that chemically cross-linked cellulose nanocrystal aerogels possess many properties beneficial for bone tissue scaffolding applications. The new material is a foam-like substance that is made by treating nanocrystals derived from plant cellulose, which causes the nanocrystals to link and form a strong aerogel. The resulting aerogel has a spongy consistency and is able to compress or expand to fill bone cavities.

Most bone graft or implants are made of hard, brittle ceramic that doesnt always conform to the shape of the hole, and those gaps can lead to poor growth of the bone and implant failure. We created this cellulose nanocrystal aerogel as a more effective alternative to these synthetic materials. Daniel Osorio, chemical engineering PhD student, McMaster University

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) were extracted using sulfuric acid or phosphoric acid, and the hydrazone cross-linked aerogels created from the cellulose nanocrystals were analyzed using a combination of microscopy, tomography, and spectroscopy.

Each aerogel was implanted into the calvarian bone of adult male rats, the part of the skull made up of portions of the frontal bone, occipital bone, and the parietal bones in the human skull. Two groups of rats were used for the study, with one group receiving aerogel implants, and the other not being given any implants.

Consequent results showed that the group of rats receiving implants experienced 33 percent more bone growth after three weeks and 50 percent more bone growth by 12 weeks compared to the control group that did not receive implants.

All aerogels were found to demonstrate hydroxyapatite growth over a period of 14 days while submerged in a simulated body fluid solution. It was found that sulfated CNC aerogels performed slightly better than the phosphated CNC aerogels in the terms of compressive strength and long-term stability in liquid environments.

Co-author of the study Emily Cranston, a professor of wood science and chemical and biological engineering, said:

These findings show, for the first time in a lab setting, that a cellulose nanocrystal aerogel can support new bone growth.

Cranston also holds the Presidents Excellence Chair in Forest Bio-products at the University of British Columbia. She explained that as the bone begins to heal, the aerogel implant should degrade into non-toxic components in the body.

According to the study, these results showed that cross-linked cellulose nanocrystal aerogels are flexible, porous and effectively facilitate bone growth when injected into bone defects.

It is thought that the development of this new material could become a part of the $2 billion bone graft market in North America, according to Kathryn Grandfield, who is a co-author of the study and a professor of materials science and engineering, and biomedical engineering at McMaster University.

We can see this aerogel being used for a number of applications including dental implants and spinal and joint replacement surgeries. Grandfield. And it will be economical because the raw material, the nanocellulose, is already being produced in commercial quantities.

Further explaining the significance of the study, the researchers state that the new aerogel bound for bone regeneration was shown to promote the proliferation of bone-like cells and support the growth of hydroxyapatite on their surface in vitro, and the study demonstrates the potential of cellulose nanocrystals for the purpose of bone tissue engineering.

However, it is unlikely that aerogels will be available for use in operating rooms in a short period of time. The next steps will include further testing and investigations, particularly concerning the way in which the implant degrades.

This summer, we will study the mechanisms between the bone and implant that lead to bone growth, Grandfield said. Well also look at how the implant degrades using advanced microscopes. After that, more biological testing will be required before it is ready for clinical trials.
Patients who stopped taking aspirin three months after receiving a stent to open the heart's arteries but continued taking a P2Y 12 inhibitorclopidogrel, prasugrel or ticagrelordid not experience higher rates of death from any cause, heart attack or stroke after a year compared with those receiving standard therapy, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 68thAnnual Scientific Session. Furthermore, patients who stopped taking aspirin after three months had a significantly lower rate of bleeding.

The trial, known as SMART-CHOICE, comes as doctors seek to determine what drug combinations offer the best complement with the latest generation of drug-eluting stentssmall mesh tubes used to open blocked arteries that release drugs to prevent new blockages from forming around the stent. After undergoing a procedure known as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) to insert a stent, patients can be at risk for adverse events related to clotting, including heart attack and stroke. For this reason, antiplatelet medications are used to reduce the body's ability to clot blood, but they also raise the risk of uncontrolled bleeding.

Current guidelines recommend balancing these risks by prescribing aspirin and one of three P2Y 12 inhibitors for at least 12 months when a patient receives a stent after a heart attack (or six months for patients receiving a stent for angina), a strategy known as dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT). The new trial assessed whether stopping aspirin after three months but continuing the P2Y 12 inhibitor alone for 12 months would offer better results.

"Our study demonstrated that P2Y 12 inhibitor monotherapy after a short duration of DAPT is a novel antiplatelet strategy balancing ischemic and bleeding risk in patients undergoing PCI," said Joo-Yong Hahn, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea and the study's lead author. "Even though this treatment strategy needs to be confirmed in other trials, aspirin may be discontinued in most patients receiving current-generation drug-eluting stents, especially in patients with bleeding risk or in those with stable ischemic heart disease."

The trial enrolled 2,993 patients who underwent PCI and received a drug-eluting stent at 33 medical centers in South Korea. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either standard DAPT for a year or aspirin plus a P2Y 12 inhibitor for three months and continue with only the P2Y 12 inhibitor for nine more months after that.

After one year, 2.9 percent of patients who stopped aspirin early experienced the primary endpoint, a composite of death from any cause, heart attack or stroke, compared to 2.5 percent among those following standard DAPT. Based on thresholds determined before the trial began, these rates indicate that stopping aspirin early was not inferior to DAPT in terms of the trial's primary endpoint.

In addition, stopping aspirin early was found to reduce the risk of bleeding by about 40 percent. Overall, 2 percent of those stopping aspirin experienced major bleeding compared to 3.4 percent among those following standard DAPT. Taken together, the net rate of all adverse clinical events (death from any cause, heart attack, stroke or bleeding) was not significantly different between the two groups.

A little more than three-quarters of the study participants took clopidogrel, the most common P2Y 12 inhibitor, with the rest taking either prasugrel or ticagrelor. Hahn said that the trial's inclusion of different P2Y 12 inhibitors distinguishes it from other trials investigating alternatives to DAPT.

"The SMART-CHOICE trial has a unique design to include all kinds of P2Y 12 inhibitors, including clopidogrel, prasugrel and ticagrelor," Hahn said. "Therefore, we believe that the SMART-CHOICE trial, compared with several ongoing trials on P2Y 12 inhibitor monotherapy after PCI, provides more generalizable answers to the concept of P2Y 12 inhibitor monotherapy across a broad spectrum of patients receiving current-generation drug-eluting stents."

One limitation of the study is that a considerable proportion of patients in the group assigned to stop aspirin early in fact received aspirin after three months, although a more detailed analysis suggested this discrepancy did not undermine the overall findings. Another limitation is that the trial allowed patients to know which medications they had been assigned to take, rather than giving some patients a placebo.

The researchers will further analyze the data to determine whether the type of P2Y 12 inhibitor used or variables reflecting patients' physiological response to the P2Y 12 inhibitor may affect outcomes. In addition, they are investigating whether the risk of ischemic events varied among patients with acute coronary syndrome versus stable ischemic heart disease.

Source: https://www.acc.org/about-acc/press-releases/2019/03/18/09/20/stopping-aspirin-three-months-after-stenting-does-not-increase-risk-of-death
Cancer researchers at University College Dublin (UCD) have led the development of a new test which uses urine to detect prostate cancer. Studies have so far shown the test to be 70% more specific for prostate cancer compared to the blood test currently used by doctors.

If the new 'epiCaPture' test is further validated it could help to more accurately identify which men do or don't need invasive tests. This means that many men could be spared harsh treatments that often have long-term side effects.

The test could also help to identify aggressive prostate cancer early, so that more patients can be potentially cured of their cancer.

This research was funded through donations from the public to the Irish Cancer Society and funding from Science Foundation Ireland, the US Prostate Cancer Foundation and Movember.

In Ireland 3,500 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer annually. One in three of these cases will be aggressive cancers, and around 500 men die from this disease here every year.

When a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer, he will first find out whether doctors think his prostate cancer is likely to spread to other parts of the body or not. If not, the patient can be monitored regularly by his doctor through 'active surveillance' - where regular check-ups and tests are carried out in lieu of immediate treatment. This spares the patient harsh treatments like chemotherapy and radical surgeries that can have life-long side effects like incontinence and erectile dysfunction.

If the man's prostate cancer is already aggressive - i.e. has spread, or likely to spread beyond the prostate if left untreated - then he has no option but to be treated urgently.

This research was part of an international collaboration led by Dr Antoinette Perry, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology and Genetics at the UCD School of Biology and Environmental Science and the UCD Conway Institute, and her team, including Eve O'Reilly, a PhD student at UCD and Alexandra Tuzova, an Irish Cancer Society funded PhD student at UCD.

Dr Perry said, "Prostate cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in Ireland so early detection is vital to catch the disease before it spreads. Unfortunately, the tests we have to detect prostate cancer are not entirely accurate. Our research, funded with the support of the Irish Cancer Society and others, is addressing this problem by developing new ways to catch aggressive, potentially lethal prostate cancer from a simple urine test."

"Over the last four years our research team at University College Dublin has worked with doctors, nurses, patients and other scientists from around Ireland, the UK, USA and Canada to study urine from almost 500 men. We showed that almost 90% of men with aggressive prostate cancer have changes in their DNA that we could find in their urine."

"These changes were absent in healthy men and men with non-aggressive disease. If we can replicate these findings, our research could contribute to a new, more accurate test to help catch aggressive prostate cancer and save lives from this disease."

Dr Perry is currently working closely with UCD's technology transfer team at NovaUCD to bring this test to market. She has recently been awarded Enterprise Ireland funding to validate the epiCaPture technology in the hope that it will be ready for use by doctors to test men for prostate cancer in the coming years.

Dr Robert O'Connor, Head of Cancer Research at the Irish Cancer Society, said, "This major new research highlights the vital work world-class cancer researchers are doing in UCD and across Ireland to identify new ways to improve the diagnosis of cancer. More work is needed before the potential benefits reach cancer patients. But it does show the potential we have to save more lives from this disease."

"The Irish Cancer Society can only invest in vital research like this because of the public's generous support. We currently fund more than 100 researchers across Ireland and are on track to invest 30 million into life-saving cancer research in the decade up to 2020. But we could fund even more research if we had the funds. That's why Daffodil Day this Friday needs to be the biggest one yet."
Molecules medianet editor Oliver Jonke starts the round table discussion with leading scientists and experts in the precision medicine field.

The participants in the discussion all concur that the term personalized medicine is in fact, incorrect. All practicing GPs provide personalized medicine just as every doctor who, for example, practices according to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. The head of the Department of Pathology at the Medical University of Vienna, Renate Kain says, Doctors focus on the patients as people, talking to them and gathering information about them.

 medianet/Joe Haider

Yet, this is not what personalized medicine is about, which is further reason the popular term is also misleading. According to Dr Kain, Nowadays treatment involves incorporating vast quantities of data, comparative data and the corresponding analyses.

Emeritus professor at the Department of Dermatology of the Medical University of Vienna, Georg Stingl, says that is why personalized medicine has nothing to do with doctors rapports with their patients. He recommends using the terms used by scientists instead: individualized medicine, precision medicine, or stratified medicine.

Differences Between Diseases

Stingl says, in principle  it is medicine strongly driven by technology, viewing people or the disease being treated as a molecular whole  and this is where this type of treatment distinguishes itself from treatment focusing on patient rapport.

We can start treatment with a targeted therapy when we establish individualized differences. He says, a simple example is the fact that the same symptoms can be present in distinct but similar diseases. The difference only becomes clear after a precise analysis has taken place.

According to Dr Stingl, Eczema  known as atopic dermatitis among experts  has about three significant types with the same clinical manifestation. But the trigger is different in each case. When we are able to identify these differences, we also know where we can begin treatment in the first place. The same is also true of a number inflammatory diseases.

 TissueGnostics

 medianet/Joe Haider (4)

There are not nearly enough pathologists in Austria. We need more teams and centres to expand the field of individualised medicine. At the moment, however, there is a shortage of funds. Bettina Zelger.

High Costs

The problematic side of this development, where patients receive their own customized medication, becomes readily apparent at the same time, That is a nightmare scenario, because we cannot afford it, says Dr Stingl. He states that he does not feel that it is necessary.

The experts agree that the advantage lies in the analysis of data and its use in the development of new medications. What is important is that appropriate medications can be developed and administered accordingly in the first instance.

Individualised medicine helps us to figure out when we have to use an aggressive form of cancer treatment and when it might be better to leave a tumour untreated. Helmut Klocker.

The importance of these new concepts is evidenced by the growing number of cancerous

diseases. Environmental factors, unhealthy lifestyles, and in particular, demographic developments  the risk of tumors and mutations increases with age  are the causes behind this development. This also explains why the pharmaceutical industry and science are escalating their efforts to fight cancer.

This has already been apparent for many years Dr Kain notes, The developments that have been made in the past few years and what the pharmaceutical industry has been doing in this area is very significant. The therapeutic possibilities which have opened up are enormous. We have experienced quantum leaps in oncology, for example, in the past 15 years. We have seen things that were previously unimaginable. Yet, it is also clear that costs are significantly increasing as a result.

Helmut Klocker, the head of the urology research laboratory at the Medical University of Innsbruck says however, the targeted use of expensive therapies would entail savings potential.

Our goal as researchers is to use therapies and, by extension, funding, as efficiently as possible. If I do not expect the patient to benefit in any way from a particular therapy, I should not use it at all. In extreme cases, such as a prostate carcinoma, you can also determine whether it is really necessary to use an aggressive form of cancer treatment, or perhaps to leave the tumour untreated because it is growing very slowly and is not dangerous.

However, you should also question pharmaceutical companies pricing policies in this context, as Dr. Richard Moriggl suggests. He is a professor of Functional Cancer Genomics at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna.

Some products, such as those that increase survival rates, are very expensive. However, it could be the case that these products can be produced very cheaply. Sometimes it is because of time-consuming research, but this is not always the case.

What is undeniable is that individualized medicine is significantly transforming healthcare, as Dr Kain is convinced. It is also apparent that scientists and researchers all over the world are aware of this development  including in Austria.

This no longer applies exclusively to cancer treatment; it is true of all diseases. There are diseases where we still do not know how they progress, and there will be a great deal of progress here in the years to come.

A Better Framework

There is no interrelationship with medical research, although Austria is now becoming more active with regard to big data and the scientific use of data. The experts critically note there is also a lack of funding. The medianet round table experts are calling for framework to be created which will make this possible.

In Austria, there are not enough pathologists, for example. We need more teams and centres to expand the field of individualized medicine. At the moment, however, there is a shortage of funds, stresses the former head of the Department of Pathology at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Bettina Zelger.

In addition, there are not enough experts being trained in bioinformatics in Austria, as it is still a young profession. At present they can have their pick of the best jobs around the world as these experts are highly sought after.

The idea of every patient receiving individual medication is a nightmare scenario. That is something we cannot afford. Generally speaking, however, we do not need this. The matter at hand is the development of better medications. Georg Stingl.

Austria is suffering a brain drain as a result. The participants agree that Austria does not have the means to keep talent here or to recruit it from abroad.

No Strategy

The experts are also calling for a national strategy to tackle this issue, Over the past ten years, Austria failed to train bioinformaticians, says Moriggl. Countries such as China, India, and the USA are much more advanced in this regard and also have the resources to research and develop new products as a result. According to Dr Moriggl, Austria needs an international strategy which involves experts, and we have to raise awareness about the possibilities available here.

We provide researchers and doctors with tools so that they are better able to understand the fundamentals of cancer and other diseases at a molecular level and to develop specific therapies. Rupert Ecker.

Dr Stingl is even more critical, I cannot think of any country whose politicians are as apathetic about the potential of science as in Austria. At the moment, we dont even have a ministry dedicated exclusively to science. We would need one to be able to show that scientific research is important to us.

When all things are considered, there is a lack of funding for research, both from private investors as well as the public sector. With the exception of a few highlights, such as the Institute of Molecular Pathology funded by the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim or the IMBA in Vienna, when compared to other countries there are minimal opportunities in Austria.

For example, in the United States, entire university faculties and centers dedicated to individualized medicine have received both private and public funding.

New Possibilities

If it is to avoid missing out, this is precisely what a country like Austria needs. For instance, TissueGnostics is able and willing to help; according to CEO Rupert Ecker, the company is trying to provide scientists with new tools. We are working on standardisation procedures and are also cooperating with international universities, says Ecker.

For example, this work includes discovering new signs of tumors or biomarkers which make it possible to predict whether a patient will respond to a therapy or not. At the same time, these biomarkers could also be target substances for new therapies. Still, this also requires appropriate grants and funding.

We provide researchers and doctors with tools so that they are better able to understand the fundamentals of cancer and other diseases at a molecular level and to develop specific therapies, Ecker feels that his company is doing well in that area.

 medianet/Joe Haider (2)

In Austria, we need an international strategy which involves experts, and we have to raise awareness about the possibilities available here. Richard Moriggl.

Nevertheless, the experts maintain that individual countries will be facing another challenge  the large-scale implementation of findings and developments. Dr Klocker asks, The question is how we will deliver it to patients. How do we organise hospitals? Where do we build the centres we need? Also, how will we be able to make it clear to the public in the first place that there is an incredible amount of potential and opportunity here, but that there will also possibly be upheavals in the system?

It would take a huge effort, nationally and internationally, because science is advancing at such a rapid speed.

What we have experienced here over the past few years has been incredible. We have experienced quantum leaps in oncology, for example, that were hitherto unimaginable. Renate Kain.

Important Discussions

The experts who took part in the medianet round table have come to the following conclusions: individualized medicine  or, more accurately, precision medicine  has what it takes to completely alter the face of medical science and so facilitate treatment for diseases that could not be cured previously.

Yet, this will pose serious challenges to healthcare systems, science, universities, and by extension, society as a whole. Discussions about these challenges will have to take place as soon as possible. Unfortunately, however, there is still a lack of awareness of these issues  among politicians and within society.

About TissueGnostics

TissueGnostics (TG) is an Austrian company focusing on integrated solutions for high content and/or high throughput scanning and analysis of biomedical, veterinary, natural sciences and technical microscopy samples.

TG has been founded by scientists from the Vienna University Hospital (AKH) in 2003. It is now a globally active company with subsidiaries in the EU, the USA and China and customers in 30 countries.

TissueGnostics Portfolio

TG scanning systems are currently based on versatile automated microscopy systems with or without image analysis capabilities. We strive to provide cutting-edge technology solutions, such as multispectral imaging and context-based image analysis as well as established features like Z-Stacking and Extended Focus. This is combined with a strong emphasis on automation, ease of use of all solutions and the production of publication-ready data.

The TG systems offer integrated workflows, i.e. scan and analysis, for digital slides or images of tissue sections, Tissue Microarrays (TMA), cell culture monolayers, smears and of other samples on slides and oversized slides, in Microtiter plates, Petri dishes and specialized sample containers. TG also provides dedicated workflows for FISH, CISH and other dot structures.

TG analysis software, apart from being integrated into full systems is fully standalone capable and supports a wide variety of scanner image formats as well as digital images taken with any microscope.

TG also provides routine hematology scanning and analysis systems for peripheral blood, bone marrow and body fluids.

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.
The names of candidates for Surguja, Bastar, Raigarh and Kanker seats, reserved for the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Janjgir-Champa, which is allocated to a Scheduled Caste (SCs) candidate, were declared late on March 17 night.The Election Commission held a meeting with the representatives of various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Google, etc amid growing concern over fake news. The usefulness of social media during elections was also discussed.Issues like grievance redressal, pre- certification and transparency in expenditure of political advertisements were also discussed at the meeting.Meanwhile, the Central Election Committee of the BJP is holding a meeting at the party headquarters in New Delhi, where PM Modi has arrived. The meeting was earlier scheduled to be held on Monday, but was postponed after Manohar Parrikar's death.Meanwhile, Delhi Congress Chief Sheila Dikshit had called an urgent meeting with the three working presidents of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee amid a buzz that the party's top leadership is mulling options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi.The party leaders of the Delhi unit, however, maintained that there was no talk of an alliance during the meeting."An urgent meeting was called and it was decided that the selection of candidates should begin. Around 70 applications have been received by the party from Delhi Congress leaders for seven seats in Delhi," a senior party leader said.Earlier, the Aam Aadmi Party had decided to go solo in Delhi, without joining hands with the Congress. Arvind Kejriwal's party has declared candidates for all seven seats in the state capital.Hours after UP CM Yogi Adityanath blamed SP and BSP for Kairana and Shamli riots, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav took a jibe at the BJP government, saying that "when rioters themselves occupy seat of power, how will riots happen?".Bringing back the focus on Hindu exodus, CM Yogi said that several people of the majority community had to flee Kairana and Shamli during SP-BSP rule. "In 24 months of our rule, we have brought the confidence back and people have returned to their homes. This has been one of the biggest achievements of the government," he said.Congress's east UP in-charge Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said that 'What did they do in 70 years?' argument also has an expiry date. "BJP should now tell what have they done in five years," she said in Bhadohi.Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has promised to make efforts for release of all seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The assurance was made in DMK's manifesto released by party chief MK Stalin. They also assured to give citizenship to Sri Lankan refugees.Seven legislators of Telangana Congress defected to Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), while three more are in touch with Chandrashekar Rao's party. Miffed with switch overs ahead of polls, the local unit of the grand old party has demanded President's rule in the state.The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Tuesday released its first list of party candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. The list of 25 candidates include former Union Minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Guntur MP Jayadev Galla , who had moved the no-confidence motion against the Narendra Modi government.The Congress on Monday night released its fifth list of 56 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, including 22 from Andhra Pradesh and 11 from West Bengal. The list also included eight candidates from Telangana, six from Odisha and five from Assam, besides three remaining seats from Uttar Pradesh. On Saturday, the Congress had called off alliance talks with the Left parties.On the other hand, the Congress in Telangana has appointed senior leaders as in-charges for the 17 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state. The disciplinary action committee of state Congress has also expelled six leaders, including former MLA Arepalli Mohan, M Krishank (official spokesperson) and P Karthik Reddy (who contested as Chevella Lok Sabha candidate in 2014) for alleged anti-party activities.On Monday, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT), a regional tribal party of Tripura, had announced candidates for both the Lok Sabha seats in the state. The INPT decided to declare its candidates after its talks for seat sharing with the opposition Congress failed, party president Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhawl said.Hrangkhawl, an insurgent turned politician, said INPT leaders met Congress president Rahul Gandhi recently in New Delhi and signed a memorandum of understanding for joint fight against the BJP.In Delhi, the AAP made it clear that there would neither be any alliance with the Congress nor would it withdraw any of its nominees for the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi, a day after declaring its candidate for the seventh seat.Asserting that "enough is enough", senior AAP leader Gopal Rai said these are the final seven candidates of the party and there is no question of "any roll back". The ruling Aam Aadmi Party had on March 2 announced the names of its candidates for the six Lok Sabha seats.In the western state of Gujarat, the Gujarat Congress alleged the BJP has violated the model code of conduct by holding a meeting of the party's State Parliamentary Board at Chief Minister Vijay Rupani's official residence, prompting the poll panel to order a probe.The main opposition party lodged a complaint in this regard with the Election Commission (EC). However, the BJP rejected the Congress's charge. On receiving the complaint, sent by the Congress through fax, Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) S Murali Krishna ordered an inquiry into the matter."We have received the complaint. We will conduct an inquiry into the issue," Krishna told PTI. In its complaint, the Congress alleged the CM's official residence in Gandhinagar is a government property and no political activity is permitted from a government premises when the model code of conduct is in force.
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New Delhi:

Prashant Kishor is well-known as the master strategist of elections in India. Known for his quiet demeanour, Kishor was caught in ahate storma on Tuesday after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister called him a aBihari dacoita. Handling the insult rather deftly, Kishor took to Twitter and gave a polite-yet-curt advice to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. aAn imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So Iam not surprised with the baseless utterances,a Kishor said on Twitter while tagging Naidu. aSirji rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice & malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again,a Kishor added.A

Addressing a rally in Ongole, Naidu had said that, aK Chandrashekar Rao is doing criminal politics. He is grabbing the MLAs of Congress and TDP. Bihari dacoit Prasant Kishore has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh.a Nearly six years after he planned poll strategies for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the master election strategist had joined the JDU last year. Both Nitish Kumar and Kishor were attending the JDU's state executive meeting in Patna.

A

An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So Iam not surprised with the baseless utterances of @ncbn



Sirji rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice & malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again. https://t.co/CYSJNRJ43W a Prashant Kishor (@PrashantKishor) March 19, 2019

At that time, Kishore had said that he was "done with campaigning for individuals and he was ready for "electoral politics."

Touted as Chanakya (political mentor) of Nitish Kumar, Kishoras association with the JDU leader goes back to 2015. Interestingly, he was also gifted with a dozen white kurta pyjamas in order to be shifted to his latest 'neta' attire.

There were also reports about Kishor's planning to work on the tensed relations between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav's RJD, but could not turn it to reality, as Tejashwi Yadav, who is currently in charge of RJD in his father's absence, is not ready to mingle with the JD-U.

The election strategist has worked closely with then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The 42-year-old was in the headline for all the right reasons as his campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections succeed to sworn in Modi as the prime minister of India.

However, soon after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into the power, Kishor parted his ways following the growing differences between him and BJP president Amit Shah. Post that, he campaigned for political rivals of the BJP, including JD-U and the Rahul Gandhi's Congress.
Hyderabad:

Ride-hailing platform Ola Monday said it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Telangana to support the latter's efforts in strengthening traffic infrastructure in the city. The partnership would see Ola share intelligent insights that enable the Government to implement smart solutions to enhance mobility experience in the city, an Ola release said.

The first pilot project proposed to be implemented under the MoU is the dynamic mapping of riding quality of various major roads in Hyderabad through the network of vehicles operating on the Ola platform, it said.

This data would be provided to respective state government departments, who monitor road conditions and maintain the overall quality of roads in the city.

The intended outcome of this pilot project was to reduce accidents due to potholes, monitor the quality of road construction, and prioritize road repair budget.

Under the partnership, Ola will work with the government to build innovative solutions for the city, the release said.

It said Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries and Commerce (I&C) and Information Technology (IT), Telangana government, was present on the occasion.
New Delhi:

Indian aviation watchdog DGCA is reviewing the hike in airfare on specific routes across the country and it has advised airlines to increase flights so that the fares remain in check, a senior official said. The DGCA held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the upward spiral in airfares as Jet Airways continues to ground its aircraft and cancel a significant number of flights.

The cash-strapped airline on Monday said it had grounded four more planes, taking the number of aircraft that were non-operational due to non-payment of lease rentals to 41. "We have not issued any diktat to the airlines. We have just advised them that they should increase their capacity to keep airfares in check," the senior DGCA official told PTI.

He added that the regulator is currently "reviewing hike in airfare on specific routes".

He said the airlines have stated that they will keep airfares under control that have increased due to various domestic factors. As per the Jet Airways' website, it has a fleet of 119 aircraft in total. Earlier in the day, the DGCA issued a statement saying that only 41 aircraft of cash-strapped airline are currently available for operation.

Talking about Jet Airways' situation, the DGCA statement said there may be "further attrition" of flights "in coming weeks" as, it observed, the situation as "dynamic".

For the past few weeks, passengers have been venting their ire on social media as the airline's flight cancellations have increased gradually due to the rising number of grounded aircraft.

Moreover, after the DGCA grounded all 12 of SpiceJet's 737 Max aircraft on March 13 following the Ethiopian Airlines crash, which killed 157 people, the problem of rising airfares in Indian market has aggravated.

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New Delhi:

Jet Airways crisis seems to worsen with each passing day. Amid reports that the Naresh Goyal-led airlines may get new lease of life, Etihad Airways has reportedly said no to any fresh fund infusion. Multiple media reports have claimed that Etihad is not okay with the contours of the bailout package. According to an Economic Times report, Etihad may exit the joint venture if Jet Airways doesnt agree to its terms. This essentially means that if the stalemate continues, Jet Airways will not receive emergency funds of Rs 750 crore.

A Business Standard report also said that Etihad CEO Tony Douglas visited Mumbai on Monday, where he met some top bankers including SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar to discuss the Jet crisis. It is in this meeting that Douglas said that Etihad will not infuse fresh funds. The Abu Dhabi based airlines in its statement to the Economic Times said that As a minority shareholder, Etihad is working closely with Indian lenders, the company and key stakeholders to facilitate a solution for Jet Airways."

In a statement to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Jet Airways on Monday said that payment of interest due on March 19, 2019 to the Debenture Holder will be delayed owing to temporary liquidity constraints.

Earlier a March 11 report had said that the Gulf carrier is likely to infuse around Rs 1,600-1,900 crore into cash-strapped Jet Airways under a proposed deal wherein Naresh Goyal would step down as chairman of the domestic carrier, according to sources.

Jet Airways, a full-service airline, has been grappling with acute financial crunch that has also forced it to ground many planes as well as delay payment of salaries and loan repayments.

Under the proposed deal, Goyal would step down as chairman and director of Jet Airways but can nominate two persons to the airline's board. Goyal would be designated as chairman emeritus while his son Nivaan Goyal would be offered an appropriate executive position subject to certain conditions, the sources said.

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New Delhi:

Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu directed the secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways. The secreatary has been asked to look into the issues of advance bookings, cancellation, refunds and safety, if any. Prabhu has asked for a report on Jet compliance issues from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) immediately.

Jet Airways crisis seems to worsen with each passing day. Amid reports that the Naresh Goyal-led airlines may get new lease of life, Etihad Airways has reportedly said no to any fresh fund infusion. Multiple media reports have claimed that Etihad is not okay with the contours of the bailout package. According to an Economic Times report, Etihad may exit the joint venture if Jet Airways doesnat agree to its terms. This essentially means that if the stalemate continues, Jet Airways will not receive emergency funds of Rs 750 crore.

Directed Secretary, @MoCA_GoI to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, Advance bookings, Cancellation, Refunds and Safety issues, if any. Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA. @jayantsinha a Chowkidar Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) March 19, 2019

A Business Standard report also said that Etihad CEO Tony Douglas visited Mumbai on Monday, where he met some top bankers including SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar to discuss the Jet crisis. It is in this meeting that Douglas said that Etihad will not infuse fresh funds. The Abu Dhabi based airlines in its statement to the Economic Times said that aAs a minority shareholder, Etihad is working closely with Indian lenders, the company and key stakeholders to facilitate a solution for Jet Airways."

In a statement to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Jet Airways on Monday said that apayment of interest due on March 19, 2019 to the Debenture Holder will be delayed owing to temporary liquidity constraints.a

Earlier a March 11 report had said that the Gulf carrier is likely to infuse around Rs 1,600-1,900 crore into cash-strapped Jet Airways under a proposed deal wherein Naresh Goyal would step down as chairman of the domestic carrier, according to sources.

Jet Airways, a full-service airline, has been grappling with acute financial crunch that has also forced it to ground many planes as well as delay payment of salaries and loan repayments.

Under the proposed deal, Goyal would step down as chairman and director of Jet Airways but can nominate two persons to the airline's board. Goyal would be designated as chairman emeritus while his son Nivaan Goyal would be offered an appropriate executive position subject to certain conditions, the sources said.

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

A woman intern working at local news magazine in Maharashtras Thane allegedly murdered her editor for sexually assaulting her over a period of two years. The editor has been identified as Nityanand Pandey, who used to run a news portal and a magazine in Thane (rural) area. According to an HT report, the intern was facing sexual harassment for past two years. Pandey would delay her payments and demand sexual favours.

Fed up, the intern decided to take matter in her hands and confided in the publisher, who used to run Pandeys magazine.

Over the past two years, Pandey would allegedly sexually harass the woman at the workplace and she had protested against it. He refused to give her a promotion and coaxed her to have sexual relations with him, Sanjay Hazare, police inspector of Bhiwandi police station was quoted as saying by the HT.

The intern and the printer was arrested by Thane Police on Monday. Pandey was missing since March 15 and later his body was found a bridge in Bhiwandi.

In the wake of #MeToo movement, the UN had conducted survey to understand the prevalence of sexual harassment among its more than 200,000 global staff. One in three UN women workers reported being sexually harassed in the past two years, predominantly by men.

According to the report, 21.7 per cent of respondents said they were subjected to sexual stories or offensive jokes, 14.2 per cent received offensive remarks about their appearance, body or sexual activities and 13 per cent were targeted by unwelcome attempts to draw them into a discussion on sexual matters.

Some 10.9 percent said they were subjected to gestures or use of body language of a sexual nature, which embarrassed or offended them, and 10.1 per cent were touched in a way that made them feel uncomfortable. More than half of those experienced sexual harassment said it happened in an office environment, while 17.1 per cent said it happened at a work-related social event. Two out of three harassers were male, according to the survey.

While harassment goes on underreported, India's crime records show that rapes of minor children had more than doubled between 2012 and 2016. More than 40% of the country's female victims were minor children.

For all the Latest Crime News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

A minor girl, whose headless torso was recovered from the outskirts of a village near Madhya Pradesh's Sagar last week, was kidnapped, gangraped and then brutally murdered by her uncle and three brothers.

The body of the 12-year-old girl was found in a farm in Bunda village on March 13 after her father lodged a missing person report.

According to police, her uncle had misled the investigation by suspecting a land dispute with a land dispute with neighbours as the possible motive behind the murder. He had named one Chote Patel, who lives in the same village, as the culprit.

On Monday, Superintendent of Police, Sagar, Amit Sanghi told media that the most-mortem report had revealed that the deceased was gangraped.

After starting the investigation and collecting all the information, the police grew suspicious about the uncle.

Our two senior officers collected all evidence and recorded the statements of the family members. When everything was pieced together, we found that she was raped and murdered by her brothers and uncle. We arrested the uncle and one of the brothers, Sanghi was quoted by NDTV as saying.

Three of the accused, including the minors uncle have been arrested. The eldest brother aged 22 is still on the run. Also, one of the two brothers arrested is a minor.

Police said that during the investigation, it was revealed that the eldest brother was missing since the day the minors body was recovered.

Describing the sequence of events of the horrific incident, SP Sanghi said that one of the brothers had taken her to the uncles place, where the crime was committed, when she was returning home after exams.

When the victim threatened to go to the police, the accused first strangulated her and then beheaded with a sickle. Blood-stained clothes and sickle were recovered by the police.

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New Delhi:

The Rajasthan State Open School (RSOS), Jaipur has released the admit card for class 10th and 12th. The candidates who are preparing for the examination can now check and download their admit card from the official website of the board i.e. education.rajasthan.gov.in and rsosapp.rajasthan.gov.in.

The admit card is one of the most important documents that the candidates must carry during the examination. The candidates must note that no students will be allowed to appear in the examination without the proper document.



For the convenience of the students, we have mentioned the steps through which the candidates can download the admit card:

Visit the official website of the board

Click on the link of secondary permission letter 2019 or senior secondary permission letter 2019.

On the login window, enter the enrollment number or the reference number

After successful submission of your details, RSOS class 10th and 12th admit card will appear on the screen.

Check the admit card carefully and download it.

Rajasthan State Open School (RSOS) class 10th examinations are going to conduct from March 27 to April 20. While the dates of examinations for class 12th are from March 29 to April 26.RSOS class 10th and 12th admit card consists of the details such as the candidates name, roll number of the candidate, examination name, exam centre details, examination timing, and other instructions.
New Delhi:

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) will be releasing the scorecard tomorrow i.e. March 20, 2019. Candidates who have appeared for the exam can check the scorecard from the official website of GATE i.e. gate.iitm.ac.in. The GATE scorecard can be downloaded from March 20 to May 31, 2019.

The result of GATE 2019 was released by IIT Madras on March 15, one day in advance to the scheduled date. The GATE result was declared in online mode for all the 24 papers.However, the GATE Result 2019 declared at that time was the statement of students raw/normalised marks in the exam out of 100 only.

To download the GATE 2019 Scorecard, the candidates have to visit the GOAPS website, gate.iitm.ac.in, and enter their Enrollment ID / Email Address / Registration ID and Password to check the result.

Steps to download GATE Score Card 2019



Step 1: Open the GATE Online Application Processing System (GOAPS) portal.



Step 2: Log in using Enrollment ID/ Registered ID/ Email ID and Password.



Step 3: Click on submit button to view the scorecard.



Step 4: Download scorecard and keep it for further admission/recruitment process.

IIT Madras had conducted the GATE 2019 exam on February 02, 03, 09, 10, 2019 in online mode only. Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) is a national level engineering exam for the candidates who have completed their UG or in the final year of the graduation programmes. Such candidates can take the exam and apply for admission in Master degree courses at IITs, IIITs, CFTIs etc.










New Delhi:

We have some important news for the candidates who have appeared for GATE 2019. The IIT Madras has released the GATE 2019 Score Card on March 19, 2019, a day before the scheduled date. It contains the AIR of the candidates and the GATE score. The candidates have to log in using their GATE 2019 enrollment number and password to download the score card.

The GATE 2019 Score Card is available for download until May 31, 2019. The GATE 2019 Score Card is going to remain valid for 3 years from the day of release. The GATE 2019 Result was earlier declared on March 15, 2019, a day before the scheduled date which was March 16, 2019.

Apart from the All India Rank and the GATE score, the candidates will also have their name, registration number, exam paper name, marks out of 100, qualifying marks, number of candidates who appeared in your paper and other important instructions.

To get the GATE 2019 Score Card the candidates have to visit the GOAPS portal that is appsgate.iitm.ac.in. Thereafter, they have to log in using their GATE 2019 Enrollment Id and password. The candidates must note that the website is not working at this point of time.

For the convenience of the students, we have mentioned the steps through which they can download GATE Score Card 2019:



Step 1: Open the GATE Online Application Processing System (GOAPS) portal.

Step 2: Log in using Enrollment ID/ Registered ID/ Email ID and Password.

Step 3: Click on submit button to view the scorecard.



Step 4: Download scorecard and keep it for further admission/recruitment process.

IIT Madras had conducted the GATE 2019 exam on February 02, 03, 09, 10, 2019 in online mode only. Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) is a national level engineering exam for the candidates who have completed their UG or in the final year of the graduation programmes. Such candidates can take the exam and apply for admission in Master degree courses at IITs, IIITs, CFTIs etc.




New Delhi:

The Congress on Tuesday night released its sixth list of nine candidates, including two from Kerala and seven from Maharashtra, for the Lok Sabha elections 2019. The party has announced the name of Shanimol Usman as its candidate from Alappuzha Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala, where KC Venugopal is the sitting MP. The Congress has announced the names of 146 candidates so far.

Here's the full list of nine candidates

Kunal Rohidas Patil -- Dhule (Maharashtra)

Adv. Charulata Khajasingh Tokas -- Wardha (Maharashtra)

Manikrao G. Thakare -- Yavatmal-Washim (Maharashtra)

Eknath Gaiward -- Mumbai South-Central (Maharashtra)

Bhausaheb Kamble -- Shirdi-SC (Maharashtra)

Navinchandra Bandivadekar -- Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg (Maharashtra)

Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg (Maharashtra) Shanimol Usman -- Alappuzha (Kerala)

Adoor Prakash -- Attingal (Kerala)

KC Padavi -- Nandurbar-ST (Maharashtra)

The Congress party on Monday night released its fifth list of 56 candidates, including 22 from Andhra Pradesh and 11 from West Bengal. The list also included eight candidates from Telangana, six from Odisha and five from Assam, besides three remaining seats from Uttar Pradesh. On Saturday, the Congress had called off alliance talks with the Left parties.

The Congress has fielded former president Pranab Mukherjee's son Abhijit Mukherjee from Jangipur Lok Sabha seat, former PCC chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury from Behrampur and former minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi's wife Deepa Dasmunshi from Raiganj. The party also fielded former Union minister M M Pallam Raju from Kakinada constituency and party's former Rajya Sabha member JD Seelam from Bapatla reserved seat.

The party also fielded its Rajya Sabha member Bhubaneswar Kalita from Mangaldoi in Assam and former Union minister Bhakt Charan Das from Kalahandi in Odisha. The Congress also fielded its state party chief Uttam Kumar Reddy from Nalgonda in Telangana. The list was declared after a meeting of the Congress Central Election Committee chaired by party chief Rahul Gandhi.
New Delhi:

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) released the list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Tuesday. Ajit Singh will contest the elections from Muzaffarnagar, Jayant Chaudhary from Baghpat and Narendra Singh from Mathura. RLD is in alliance with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh.

The RLD formally joined the SP-BSP Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) on March 5 to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections. The announcement was made at a joint press conference of SP president Akhilesh Yadav and RLD vice-president Jayant Chaudhary in Lucknow.

The RLD settled for three Lok Sabha seats -- Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar and Mathura -- in the SP-BSP alliance. According to sources, the RLD had sought four seats.

The BSP, led by Mayawati, is contesting on 38 seats and the SP on 37 seats, while five seats are left for other parties, including two- Amethi and Raebareli held by Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi -- for the Congress. While announcing the alliance last month, both parties had said they will contest 38 seats each. This put a question mark on the electoral future of the states next biggest regional contestant, the RLD.

Uttar Pradesh accounts for 80 Lok Sabha seats.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi has already said his party will fight the elections in the state alone with its full capacity.

Addressing a press conference in Dubai, Gandhi has earlier said the leaders of the two parties have a right to do what they want to do.

BSP and SP have made a political decision. Its on us on how to strengthen the Congress party in Uttar Pradesh and we will fight with our full capacity, he said, reported PTI news agency

Congress party has tremendous to offer to the people of Uttar Pradesh... I have tremendous respect for the leaders of BSP and SP, they have a right to do what they want to do, he added.
New Delhi:

Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, senior Congress leader and Maharashtra Leader of Opposition has resigned from his post, latest media reports said on Tuesday. Interestingly, last week on March 13, his son Sujay Vikhe Patil had joined the BJP in presence of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. After joining the BJP, Sujay Vikhe Patil had said, I've taken this decision against my fathers wishes. I dont know how much my parents will support this decision, but I'll try my best to make my family proud by working under the guidance of BJP. CM & other BJP MLAs were supportive & helped me take the decision. It is not known yet whether Patil senior will join the BJP or not.

While addressing the media, CM Devendra Fadanavis said, " Sujay Vikhe Patil's name has been forwarded by state unit to Central Parliamentary board for Lok Sabha candidature and we are sure that the recommended name will be accepted by the Central Parliamentary board." After his sons shocking exit from the Party, Vikhe Patil had met Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on March 13 in New Delhi

The latest development will be a major blow to the Maharashtra Congress. Although, the News Nation opinion survey says the Congress-NCP alliance may improve its tally by bagging 15 seats. The BJP-Shiv Sena combine is likely to win 33 seats in Maharashtra. The figures could be a matter of concern for the BJP-Sena as it had bagged 41 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra in 2014. The BJP won 23 while 18 seats by the Sena. The Congress had won only two seats, while the NCP did a tad better by winning four.

As far as vote-sharing is concerned, the saffron parties combine is expected to get 39 per cent of the votes, while the Congress-NCP may settle with 34 per cent of the total votes, the poll predicted.

Meanwhile, NCP chief Sharad Pawar has said that he will not contest next month's Lok Sabha election. The 78-year-old veteran politician said as two members of his family are going to contest the polls, "somebody had to step back."

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the NCP chief's decision to pull out from poll fray was because he had "sensed the change in the air". "Since I have already won elections 14 times, I decided not to contest the poll (this time)," the Rajya Sabha member told reporters after holding a meeting with party leaders.

In Maharashtra, elections will held in four phases - on April 11, 18, 23 and 29.
New Delhi:

On Day 2 of her Ganga Yatra, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra reached Bhadohi on Tuesday. She began her public interaction with a special pooja at Sitamarhi Mandir. Later talking to reporters, Priyanka slammed the BJP leaders over their 70 saal rant. What did they do in 70 years?' argument also has an expiry date. Now they (BJP) should tell what they have done in their five years when they are in power, Priyanka said. She also hit out at the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government over its law and order claims and said that, 'Report card, promotions, all of it sounds good but there's nothing on ground, I'm meeting people everyday, all the people are in distress.

Th Congress general secretary for Uttar Pradesh-East begin her 140-km-long Ganga yatra from Prayagraj to Varanasi on Monday. Ahead of her visit, Priyanka on Sunday wrote an open letter to the people of Uttar Pradesh and promised to have an honest conversation about their grievances.

Meanwhile, a group of lawyers on Monday handed a letter to the district magistrate, claiming that Priyanka should not be allowed to enter the Kashi Vishwanath temple as she is a Christian. The letter claimed that Priyanka was a Christian and she should be stopped from entering the temple, keeping in mind the ancient values of Sanatan Dharma. The letter, addressed to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, stated that her place of worship was a church.

After a night halt in Sitamarhi in Bhadohi district, the Congress leader will resume her onward journey tomorrow morning that will culminate in Varanasi on Wednesday. The party's newly appointed general secretary had said she would contact the people using various means of transportation, including waterways and padayatra (on foot).

The BJP, meanwhile, ridiculed Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's boat campaign, saying every election is a "picnic" for the Gandhi family. "They come, they see and resort to rhetorical speeches. After the elections are over, they head towards Switzerland or Italy," BJP leader and UP Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma said. Polling will be held in seven phases in Uttar Pradesh from April 11 to May 19. Results will be announced on May 23.
New Delhi:

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said that the Congress, if voted to power at the Centre, will not allow the Citizenship Amendment Bill to be passed in the Rajya Sabha.

The Bill, passed in the Lok Sabha on January 8, provides for according Indian citizenship to the the Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six years of residence in India instead of 12 years currently even if they do not possess any document.

The contentious Bill led to violent protests in Assam and other northeastern states. Political parties in Assam have been leading the protests as they feel that the bill goes against the Assam Accord of 1985 and the National Register of Citizens.

It may be recalled, that the BJP appears to have been isolated over the issue. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), a partner in the BJP-led Assam government, broke up with the saffron party while the NDA allies, the Shiv Sena and the JD (U), have opposed this legislation.

The bill will apply to all States and Union Territories of the country and the beneficiaries of Citizenship Amendment Bill will be able to reside in any state of the country.



Sounding the poll bugle in the northeast, Rahul Gandhi, while addressing a rally in Itanagar, also said that if voted to power, the Congress will restore the special category status to Arunachal Pradesh and other northeastern states.

"There are some states in the country which require special status because of their "unique problems and difficulties" such as connectivity, terrain, infrastructure," he said.

During the Congress rule at the Centre, he said, Arunachal Pradesh and other NE states used to enjoy special category status.

The Congress party will never attack the language, culture, customs and tradition of Arunachal Pradesh and other NE states, he said.

Election to the 60-member Arunachal Pradesh Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats will be held on April 11.




New Delhi:

When celebrities lose cool or this time when Jaya Bachchan lose cool. Jaya Bachchan, who isnat much a big fan of the shutterbugs made clear about her stand as she was seen lashing out at a man who took her picture without her permission. In the short video captured, Jaya who was seen exiting Hiroo Joharas birthday party in Mumbai was greeted by a throng of paparazzi, when something happened that made the paps take a step back.

Watch the video here:

While it is unclear if the actor turned politician shed some admonishing words towards the photographers, she can be seen singling out a man out who took her pictures on a mobile phone. She can be seen calling the man and saying this, aMobile se kyun le rahe ho? Tameez seekhoaa.

She can also be seen scolding another man, who also was taking pictures with a aphonea. A When the man says asorrya she tells him, aSorrya, Angrezi mein bas itna hi seekha hai?aa

And with that, it is time to keep in mind that Jaya clearly isnat a fan of unauthorized clicks. While appearing at the Koffee With Karan Abhishek and Shweta Bachchan had also mentioned about their mumas dislike for the paps. They had then told Johar who asked the duo about the same, when they replied, aShe gets very claustrophobic when there are too many people around her. She also doesnat like it when people take her pictures without asking her. She comes from that school of thought.a

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New Delhi:

Francis Lees film Ammonite starring Kate Winslet and actor Saoirse Ronan has been accused of fabricating a lesbian storyline. The upcoming movie which was first announced in December last year details Titanic star as the noted British palaeontologist Mary Anning, who supposedly falls in love with Frances Bell, her nursemaid to be played by Lady Bird star Saoirse Ronan.

Many have however, come forward against the director known for the 2017 gay drama God's Own Country stating that preserved letters between Bell and Anning dont offer much conclusive evidence of a romance. They have questioned the film's storyline, with Anning's real-life descendants claiming that her sexuality was never confirmed.

"Do the film-makers have to resort to using unconfirmed aspects to somebody's sexuality to make an already remarkable story sensational?" Barbara Anning said.

"Imagine the shame and embarrassment this woman would be feeling right now to actually have her private sex life discussed and played out on screen. This adds nothing to her story," she added.

Lorraine Anning, another relative of the palaeontologist, believes the decision to create a gay relationship involving Anning was taken so as to make the film more attractive to the audiences.

"A Sunday thread: It has come to my attention there is huge speculation about my new film and the 'controversial' flames that have been fanned on a slow 'news' story day by newspapers and columnists who haven't read my script or know anything about my film," he wrote.

The director said the LGBTQ history has often been "straightened" in the culture and asked, "given a historical figure where there is no evidence whatsoever of a heterosexual relationship, is it not permissible to view that person within another context?"

"As a working class, queer filmmaker, I continually explore the themes of class, gender, sexuality within my work, treating my truthful characters with utter respect and I hope giving them authentic respectful lives and relationships they deserve," Lee said.

"Perhaps it would be better to wait until that work actually exists before assuming, presuming or critiquing what that work is and how it depicts its subjects and world," he added.

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New Delhi:

Hurriyat Conference (M) chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Monday missed another summon by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The NIA had first summoned Mirwaiz on March 11, asking him to appear before it in a terror-funding probe in which several separatist leaders have already been arrested. Mirwaiz, however, said he was willing to be examined by the NIA, but urged that the questioning be held in Srinagar due to life threats he is receiving.



The NIA has said that letterheads of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jamat-ud-Dawa, Hizbul Mujahideen and other organisations are among various "significant evidences" that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) says are enough to book top separatist leaders, including Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, news agency IANS reported.



Mirwaiz and more than six top separatist leaders may soon face the heat in the case the agency registered in May 2017, IANS quoted an NIA officer, privy to the investigation as saying. The officer, however, did not clarify whether a FIR will be registered against these separatist leaders or they will be arrested. He only confirmed that something big would happen soon before June, report added.



Mirwaizs counsel in his written response to the NIA said, My client has serious concerns about his safety. The security (Z plus category) provided earlier to your knowledge, was withdrawn unilaterally, for reasons too well known.

Your attention is invited to some of the distressing comments which have appeared in the mainstream print media since the news of his summons to New Delhi. There are open calls for his assassination. Having regard to the comments, merely stating in the notice that security will be provided appears to be perfunctory observation, the response said.



Earlier, an NIA team, accompanied by police and CRPF personnel, searched residences of some of the separatist leaders, including the Mirwaiz, Naseem Geelani and Ashraf Sehrai, the chairman of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat.

The houses of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader Yaseen Malik, Shabir Shah and Masarat Alam were also raided. Barring the Mirwaiz and Sehrai, all other leaders have been jailed.

The NIA had questioned two maternal uncles of the Mirwaiz - Maulvi Manzoor and Maulvi Shafat - and his close aides last year. Both Manzoor and Shafat are retired senior government officers.

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New Delhi :

Just a day ahead of the floor test, newly appointed Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Tuesday said that he is confident of proving majority in the state Assembly. Sawant, who took charge after paying a courtesy visit to the family of his predecessor late Manohar Parrikar, said that his party has the support of 21 legislators. We have 21 MLAs, we will pass the floor test tomorrow. Our coalition partners are with us, Sawant was quoted as saying by ANI.

45-year-old Sawant who was sworn in as Chief Minister at Raj Bhavan at around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, heads a coalition government which has 12 legislators of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), three each from the Goa Forward and MGP, and three independent MLAs, taking the tally of the treasury benches to 21 in the 36-member state legislative assembly.

The two-time MLA from Sankhalim in North Goa, Sawant, who was Speaker of the state Assembly, is a dedicated RSS worker.

His elevation to the top post in the coastal state followed hectic parleys between the BJP and its alliance partners. Sawant's political career began in the BJP as a youth leader. A staunch Parrikar supporter, he had worked closely with the late leader.

He won the 2012 and 2017 Assembly elections from North Goa's Sankhalim constituency, which used to be a Congress stronghold.

He was among the few BJP MLAs who got re-elected in their constituencies during the state polls two years ago when the party managed to win only 13 seats as compared to 21 in the 2012 elections. When Parrikar cobbled up an alliance with the Goa Forward Party, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and Independents in 2017 despite the Congress being the single largest party, Sawant was elected the Assembly Speaker.

Sawant holds a Bachelor's Degree in Ayurveda, Medicine and Surgery from Ganga Education Society's Ayurvedic College in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra. His wife Sulakshana heads the BJP Mahila Morcha in Goa.

With PTI Inputs

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New Delhi :

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday attached 13 assets located in Jammu and Kashmir in connection with a terror funding case against Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin. According to reports, the ED has also attached 13 properties of Mohammad Shafi Shah and six other terrorists of Hizbul-Mujahideen worth Rs 1.22 Crores in an ongoing investigation under Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).

Earlier, the Supreme Court had rejected the plea of Syed Shahid Yousuf, son of globally banned outfit Hizbul Mujahideen founder and a 'specially designated global terrorist' Salahuddin, challenging the Delhi High Court order dismissing his bail petition in a terror funding case.

The top court said that once the trial court had granted extension of time to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to complete the investigation in the case, the accused was not entitled to statutory bail.

On May 31 last year, the Delhi High Court had dismissed his bail plea and had upheld the trial court order dismissing his statutory bail petition.

42-year-old Yousuf was posted as agricultural assistant in Budgam of central Kashmir when he was arrested by the NIA on October 24, 2017. The bail plea of Yousuf, currently in judicial custody, was dismissed by the trial court here on March 7 last year.

Yousuf in his plea had said he was entitled to statutory bail and the special court had erred in denying him the relief in its order. He had also challenged the special court's order of February 5 last year allowing the NIA's plea for extension of time up to 180 days to complete investigation and remanding the accused to judicial custody.

The NIA had earlier alleged that the accused had links with proscribed terrorist organisations like Hizbul-Mujahideen. It had alleged that the case was registered on the basis of information about funds from Pakistan being sent to Jammu and Kashmir through hawala channels via Delhi to spread terrorism.

The NIA had in 2011 arrested several persons, including Ghulam Mohd Bhat with Rs 21.2 lakh, and alleged that Yousuf was "one of the several Indian contacts of Bhat" who had been in touch with him for receiving money transfer codes.

It had alleged that Yousuf's involvement was found in collecting funds from a terrorist outfit in Saudi Arabia and from other accused on directions of his father Mohd Yousuf Shah alias Syed Salahuddin, the self-styled supreme commander of the Hizb-Ul-Mujahideen.

Salahuddin was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US Department of State in June last year.

The NIA has claimed that Yousuf has received a total of nearly Rs 4.5 lakh through eight international wire transfers. It had also registered two other cases related to terror funding - one in November 2011 and the other in May 2017. It had filed a charge sheet against 10 people including Salahuddin in the April 2011 case.

With PTI Inputs

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New Delhi:

Delhis Patiala House Court extended Robert Vadra's interim protection till March 25. Earlier on March 2, the court had extended the interim protection from arrest granted to Robert Vadra till March 19 in a money laundering case lodged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

"Robert Vadra is beneficiary of several properties that have been acquired through proceeds of crime. Investigation in this regard is still ongoing and is at a crucial stage. It is important to unearth modus operandi adopted by all accused persons," the probe agency told the court.

Vadra had on February 1 moved to Delhi court seeking anticipatory bail in the money laundering case lodged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

Earlier last month, Delhi's Patiala House Court had extended his interim protection from arrest to March 2, which expired today. During the hearing, the counsel for the Enforcement Directorate (ED) informed the court that Vadra was not cooperating in the case and opposed the extension.

The ED case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property at 12, Bryanston Square worth GBP 1.9 million (British pounds), which is allegedly owned by him. According to the ED, Manoj Arora, an employee of Vadra's Skylight Hospitality LLP, is also an accused in the case. The ED had alleged that Arora was aware of the Vadra's overseas undeclared assets and was instrumental in arranging funds.





Vadra had accused that ED officials 'relentless harassment'. In a Facebook post written last month, Vadra said, "I have had nothing to hide and I am surely not above the law. I have deposed for almost 6 days; ranging from 8 to 12 hours per day with a 40 minutelunch break, n have been escorted to the washroom. I have completely cooperated and adhered to the rules whenever I was called in any part of the country. Attachment of my work place- my office n areas that are subjudiced, shows a complete misuse of assertion of power, a complete vindictive & vicious witch hunt. When truth sustains n prevails, I suppose an apology is all that will suffice. Will stay determined for justice for me. (sic)"

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New Delhi:

Itas payback time for Grammar aficionado Shashi Tharoor. The politician who made known to us decorative English words like afarragoa this time, is at the receiving end of trolls ironically to a troll which he started. The Twitter troll war all started when Tharoor took notice of the a food chain in Ahmedabad called aAppitto 9a which had opened its outlet in Kochi lately. Taking it to Twitter, not for the good food but for the ahilarious consequencea of North Indiansa ignorance of Southa, Tharoor tweeted, aa The hilarious consequences of most North Indiansa ignorance of Southern languages! Popular restaurant chain in Ahmadabad recently opened its outlet in Kochi. But the hotel is struggling to find patrons. If they asked a Malayalam-speaker, they would understand why!aa

For Tharoor this time, he forgot to rego through the spelling of the city of which he is trolling. And the eagle-eyed Twitterati has of course, wasted no time to pin-point the unchecked aAhmadabada spelling, which everyone knows is aAhmedabada!

The hilarious consequences of most North Indiansa ignorance of Southern languages! Popular restaurant chain in Ahmadabad recently opened its outlet in Kochi. But the hotel is struggling to find patrons. If they asked a Malayalam-speaker, they would understand why! pic.twitter.com/tsTMasui3l a Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) March 15, 2019

After Sashi Tharooras tweet air on air, trolls came rolling in for the politician. This time the troller gets trolled.

Check out some of the trolls here:

While this is funny Shashi, but two things:



1. Gujarat is Western India. Why you guys love labeling? If you do, label all 4 parts of India, please.



2. We have 100+ languages. Should we learn all? How many of you Malayalis know Gujarati or even Hindi. Isn't it ignorance? a Pankaj Bengani (@pankaj_bengani) March 15, 2019

How to write #Ahmedabad in Shashi ji's English ? YY a INDIAN Kajal Amdavadi UU (@kajalgshilu) March 17, 2019

First of all it's Ahmedabad!



Second of all, calling Ahmedabad, a city of Gujarat, a part of North India is as same as calling all the South Indians "Madrasi"



I expect better things from you! YS a Naveen Bagga (@naveenbagga1) March 17, 2019

Ahmedabad in North Y a ShailajaMVY (@rustyrajputs) March 15, 2019

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New Delhi:

Former US president George W. Bush on Monday called immigration a "blessing and a strength," as lawmakers tussled with Donald Trump over border wall funding. Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 51 new American citizens at the George W Bush Presidential Centre in Dallas, Texas, the nation's 43th president called for reform of "outdated and ineffective" immigration laws. "Borders are not arbitrary and they need to be respected."



"Amid all the complications of policy, may we never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength," Bush said in prepared remarks, he said.

George W. Bush has largely stayed out of the spotlight after leaving office in 2009, did not explicitly criticize Trump or the border wall policy.

"I hope those responsible in Washington can dial down the rhetoric, put politics aside and modernize our immigration laws soon." Bush's remarks came as Congress and the White House were gearing up for a court fight over Trump's declarations of an emergency to fund construction of a border wall at the US-Mexico border.

Congress had refused to appropriate money for the project -- a central promise of the Republican's 2016 election campaign.

In an embarrassing rebuke to Trump, some fellow Republicans joined Democrats in voting to terminate his declaration of an emergency. Trump vetoed the legislation Friday.

Opponents, who accuse Trump of executive overreach and hyping the problem on the border, could now fight the emergency measure in court.

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19)  Authorities seized a total of 166 kilograms of high-grade shabu after a raid conducted in an exclusive village.

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the Philippine National Police on Tuesday reported that they seized a total of 166 kilograms of the illegal drug from a house in Ayala Alabang Village, Muntinlupa City.

The drugs are worth around 1.13 billion pesos, and were confiscated from four Chinese nationals suspected members of the Golden Triangle Drug Trade.

The drugs were stored in biscuit packs and tea canisters, and meant to be sold in the Philippines, particularly in Metro Manila.

PDEA chief Aaron Aquino said they will also look into possible links between the arrested suspects and the drug syndicate busted in Dasmarinas, Cavite in February.

The PDEA said it will be focusing on high-end drug operations held in exclusive subdivisions, hotels, and clubs.

CNN Philippines' Correspondent Crissy Dimatulac contributed to this report.
New Delhi:

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama said on Monday it was possible that once he dies, his next successor could be from India, where he has lived in exile for 60 years, and warned that any other successor named by China would not be respected, reported Reuters.

The remarks by Dalai Lama came a day after Tibetans celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's escape to India from Tibet.

China considers Dalai Lama's reincarnation as something very important. They have more concern about the next Dalai Lama than me, Reuters quoted Dalai Lama as saying.

In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in free country, one chosen by Chinese, then nobody will trust, nobody will respect (the one chosen by China). So that's an additional problem for the Chinese! It's possible, it can happen he added.

Since he left Tibet in 1959 to escape from the Chinese occupation, the Dalai Lama, 83, has been keeping China on tenterhooks about his successor.

China says that the successor to the Dalai Lama must be chosen according to the religious rituals and historical conventions as well as the backing from the ruling Communist Party.

Since he left Tibet in 1959 to escape from the Chinese occupation, the Dalai Lama, 83, has been keeping China on tenterhooks about his successor.

China says that the successor to the Dalai Lama must be chosen according to the religious rituals and historical conventions as well as the backing from the ruling Communist Party.

The 14th Dalai Lama, who is arguably the most popular and consequential in the tradition's history, is much more inclined to end his lineage and preempt reincarnation.

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Taipei:

Taiwan and the US will hold talks later this year as part of upgraded efforts to counter Beijing's growing pressure on the island for political unification. The talks planned for September in Taipei will include a senior official from Washington, de facto US ambassador to Taipei William Brent Christensen said Tuesday.

Christensen didn't say whether the consultations are meant to provoke China or push it to make changes. The US has formal diplomatic relations with China but maintains strong ties with Taiwan though the American Institute in Taiwan, its de facto embassy in Taipei, which has recently undergone a major upgrade in facilities.

"We believe it's possible to have a good relationship with Taiwan and a good relationship with China at the same time," Christensen said at a news conference. "Things we do with Taiwan should not be regarded as things that we are doing because we are seeking to provoke China or vice versa."

President Donald Trump has elevated 40 years of informal ties with Taiwan through more open contacts and planned arms deals. Meanwhile, China and the US are enmeshed in a dispute over trade, copyrights and tariffs, raising economic and political frictions to their highest level in a decade.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the "Indo-Pacific Democratic Governance Consultations" as the dialogue is termed ? would allow the two sides to "grow closer and more direct in their cooperation ... to protect regional freedom and legal order."

Taiwan has been democratically ruled for about 30 years. It allows freedom of expression and religion in contrast to China's tight restrictions under authoritarian Communist Party rule, and remains a close US ally in the Asia-Pacific region.

While China insists that Taiwan is its territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary, more than 70 per cent of Taiwanese oppose China's goal of unification, the government's Mainland Affairs Council spokesman said in January.

Many fear Beijing would eliminate Taiwan's democratic institutions. While there was no immediate word from Beijing, China will "most definitely" protest the consultations, said Shane Lee, a political scientist at Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan.

China has used military flybys, aircraft carrier movements and diplomatic pressure as warnings to Taiwan since President Tsai Ing-wen took office there in 2016. Tsai's party embraces greater Taiwanese independence from China, resulting in a strong backlash from China.

Beijing has cut all formal ties with Tsai's government, blockaded the island's participation in international forums and persuaded five countries to cut diplomatic ties with it. Washington switched its official recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979. But Taiwan still counts the United States as its staunchest informal ally, particularly as a source of advanced weapons systems.

Last year Trump signed a bill encouraging more high-level exchanges between the two governments, inflaming China. In another sign of stronger US-Taiwan ties, Tsai is expected to stop over in US territory once or twice during a trip starting Thursday to visit diplomatic allies in the South Pacific. China has protested to the United States against her previous stopovers.

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Tourists to Bahrain will be offered VAT refunds through a VAT refund desk at the Bahrain International Airport. This comes as the Kingdoms National Bureau for Revenue (NBR) announced the launch of a VAT refund desk at the Bahrain International Airport yesterday. The set up is in collaboration between the Bahrain Airport Company and international payment specialist Planet Payment. The NBR stated that the new desk will offer VAT refund solutions for tourists and non-residents visiting the Kingdom as well as citizens residing abroad. The VAT refund desk uses an integrated system that allows VAT refund claims on local purchases from over 300 retail outlets across the Kingdom, the NBR stated.

The VAT refund desk represents one of many measures the Kingdom is implementing to expand regional and international tourist base, while increasing market competitiveness and expanding growth across Bahrains established tourism sector, it added. Chief Commercial Officer of the Bahrain Airport Company, Ayman Zainal said, The BAC is pleased to support the Ministry of Finance and National Economy and the National Bureau for Revenue in Bahrain with this important function. Two dedicated stands will be set up at the airport, where tourists can avail hassle-free VAT refunds on their shopping. The Country Manager of Planet Payment, Eyad Al Kourdi, commented, saying, Planet is proud to be working closely with the National Bureau for Revenue and the Bahrain Airport Company to deliver a fast, efficient and state-ofthe-art digital VAT refund scheme as the Kingdoms tourism and retail sectors continue to grow and attract shoppers from across the world. The NBR explained the VAT refund process stating, Claimers are required to present their passports, entry visa permits, GCC National IDs, or residency permits for Bahraini nationals living abroad, when shopping VAT free.

Claimers need to request VAT free tags, available at retail stores, upon completing their purchase. The tags can be attached to receipts, which will be validated along with purchased goods at the VAT refund desk during check out. Refunds will be paid in cash or via a credit/ debit card account provided by the claimer. Workshop The National Bureau for Revenue (NBR) held another interactive workshop primarily aimed at increasing the VAT awareness of professionals working in the retail and wholesale sectors. The workshop attracted 90 representatives from over 50 companies, and recapped general and technical VAT concepts, including VAT record keeping. Following the workshop, attendees visited the unique interactive demo-centre that provides innovative learning experiences to assist vendors in implementing VAT.

Todays workshop is a continuation of the series of workshops organised by the NBR to provide an inclusive platform for all stakeholders from the public and private sectors to ensure the smooth registration of companies with an annual supply of BD500,000 to BD5000,000 by June.
The Assistant Foreign Minister, Abdulla Al Doseri, met with the Executive Director for International Affairs at the Korber Foundation, Nora Muller, in Berlin, Germany, on the sidelines of his visit to the Federal Republic of Germany to enhance relations and bilateral co-operation, namely in the field of human rights. During the meeting, a debate was held between the Assistant Foreign Minister and Nora Muller on the political situation in the Middle East and the enhancement of international peace and security.

The debate included topics such as recent developments in the Arab region and the importance of maintaining peace, stability, fighting terrorism and violent extremism, interference in the internal affairs of States, and the effect of conflict and war on human rights and efforts to address these humanitarian situations and reduce the harmful Iranian interference in the affairs of other countries.

The Assistant Foreign Minister stressed that the only way for States to develop is to achieve peace, security, and stability, which creates a sound environment for growth and prosperity of peoples. He also added that fostering human rights and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is an international cross-border goal that helps countries to develop and eradicate hunger, illiteracy, the growth of extremism and terrorism in societies, all of which hinder national efforts of countries to achieve prosperity.
Dr T Thirunarayanan from the Centre for Traditional Medicine and Research (CTRM) in Chennai has approached the National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA) in Bahrain with the purpose of familiarising the Kingdom with the benefits of a traditional form of treatment known as Siddha. Siddha, a system of traditional medicine originated in ancient Tamilakam (Tamil Nadu) in South India and Sri Lanka. The strength of the Siddha Medical system lies in its holistic approach for healthy living. The healing science encompasses the physical, mental, social and spiritual wellbeing Siddha and Ayurveda both, more or less, have the same basic principles and philosophies. Siddha believes that an individual should be treated in a holistic way and not centered on a disease and its treatment, stated Dr Thirunarayanan. All systems of medicine speak of two major approaches, one is prevention of disease through vaccines and the second is surgery or intervention procedures. Siddha emphasis on two things, prevention and wellness, he added.

He said that the method of treatment attains immense significance amidst the noncommunicable diseases and lifestyle disorders becoming a global issue. Postural disorders is a major issue, people are working in front of computers for hours together without moving from their seat. Traveling long distances, such as a 16-hour flight, causes issues. Siddha will help with the prevention of many issues and prevention is better than the cure. It is also cost effective and affordable, Dr Thirunarayanan said. Most resources used in this system are obtained from renewable biological resources including plant products, animal products, and marine products as well as naturally occurring geological products. The focus has all along been on preventive, promotive, rejuvenate methods for maintaining good health, defying ageing and curative procedures including cleansing therapies and external therapies, added Dr Thirunarayanan.

Meanwhile, Namat Al Subaie, NHRA Consultant-Advisor Allied Medical Profession and Head of Alternative and Complementary Medicine Committee, emphasised on the need to understand Siddha. Siddha is a type of alternative medicine that the people of Bahrain are not very knowledgeable of. It may familiar in India and other countries, we need to educate ourselves. We welcome lectures and information associated with the Siddha treatment, said Ms Al Subaie.

As a regulatory body, I am yet to attend a conference about Siddha. The current need is to fully understand Siddha if we are to regulate it, she added.

As of now, the NHRA recognises acupuncture therapy, ayurveda medicine, massage therapy, Chiropractic, herbal therapy, homeopathy therapy, naturopathy therapy, osteopathy therapy, traditional Chinese medicine, biodynamic craniosacral therapy, cupping therapy, reflexology therapy and unani medicine.
With U.S. authorities lifting a hold separate order this month, Linde and Praxair are now integrating their respective operations into a single structure, even as the industrial gases giant awaits approvals in Asia to complete fully an $86 billion merger.

The new Linde employs nearly 81,000 people, with the company based in the United Kingdom with its main administrative offices in Danbury where Praxair long had its home. CEO Steve Angel led Praxair through the merger with Linde, with Matt White remaining chief financial officer of Linde.

The companies announced the merger in June 2017 and completed the transaction on paper exiting last October, but with multiple approvals still necessary as antitrust regulators in several countries weighed the implications of the merger on marketplace competition. In the United States, Linde sold about 50 plants to Messer Group with backing from the CVC Capital Partners private equity fund.

At facilities positioned near the industrial plants it supplies, Linde extracts oxygen and nitrogen from air, also delivering gases like carbon dioxide packaged in cylinders for use in cafeterias and other settings. The company generates about 40 percent of its revenue in the United States, with rivals besides Messer Group including Paris-based Air Liquide and Air Products and Chemicals of Allentown, Pa.

What were trying to do as a new company is to build a high-performance culture and to get 80,000 people aligned around that objective, Angel said in early March during a conference call with investors. Were working on other large, over the fence projects; and theres one that were working on today that ... would be orders of magnitude larger than anything either Linde AG or Praxair has worked on in the past.

Angel said this month the company has identified $900 million in cost savings, some of it in the form of corporate rightsizing in his words and resulting severance payments, without mentioning any specific impact on jobs.

Angel added he is beginning to get his first granular look at the operations of a Linde that had previously been a rival, with the companies now trying to learn about each other. In one unusual step, the new Linde has installed Bernd Eulitz as head of its Americas operation in Danbury, swapping roles with Eduardo Menezes who is now in Eulitzs previous post overseeing European operations. Angel said the exchange is designed for each regional organization to learn how to adopt practices that work for the other.

Praxair is very strong at oxygen combustion  we have people that we say have grown up in steel mills, Angel said. Linde has a very good portfolio of clean fuels technology. Theyre very strong in health care. ... Its a long, long list of capabilities that we each bring to the equation.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
Connecticut earned a positive credit rating outlook Tuesday from Standard & Poors, marking the first time in 18 years, according to the state Treasurers office, that any of the big three Wall Street bond ratings agencies has raised the states outlook to positive.

A positive outlook  driven by the states budget reserve fund  means S&P could raise the states ratings, including its A rating on the main general obligation bonds.

Were still waiting for the first increase in the states actual bond rating since the first year of the millennium. Surprising that we never had an upgrade in the decent years of 2004-06, but so be it. For a state that remains beleaguered and subject to backsliding, well take what we can get.

The bulging reserve fund, set to exceed $2.2 billion this summer, will amount to more than 10 percent of the budget. OK, lets call it adequately funded, but for us, thats bulging, considering it was at 1.2 percent at the end of fiscal 2017, as S&P noted.

Our positive outlook anticipates at least a one-in-three possibility that Connecticut could retain high reserves through the upcoming biennium, despite weak revenue and demographic trends, or that future debt issuance could be substantially reduced, S&P said in a report.

Only one-in-three? Clearly, Connecticuts shaky fundamentals remain a big worry, of course. Still, if we had online gambling, Id take those odds.

The improvement could be a sign that Wall Street likes tolls, which tend to lower debt.

State Treasurer Shawn Wooden said the outlook change came just days after he, Gov. Ned Lamont and Melissa McCaw, Lamonts budget chief, made presentations to the ratings agencies at the Capitol.

This positive change in Connecticuts credit outlook is another significant step in the right direction, Wooden said. The next step is to follow through on plans to address our current economic challenges and continue building a stable foundation for future growth and financial sustainability.

Thats easier said than done, as we learned last year when few if any of the recommendations of a growth and sustainability commission made it into the budget. The governor has proposed a budget that adds to existing reserves, but doing so in the final adopted budget might require politically unpalatable measures, such as reductions in local aid, the S&P report said.

Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, credited the reserve fund increase to an insistence by Republicans that tax collections on capital gains and dividends over a certain threshold go into the reserve rather than the general fund for spending.

The bipartisan budgets of the last two years put a stop to the one-party Democrat rule that hurt our state, Fasano said in a written release. This news is further evidence that now is not the time to turn back to the tax-and-spend policies of the previous administration that hurt our state for so many years.

Hes right about the reserve fund but overstates former Gov. Dannel P. Malloys budget record; Malloy actually cut spending on regular government, though he increased borrowing. Now Fasano and other Republicans want to borrow to fix the states roads and bridges, starving other capital projects around the state, rather than install tolls, Lamonts preferred method.

As that debate rages on, S&P seems to prefer tolls as a way to reduce debt. The governors proposal to implement new highway tolling could provide a non-tax revenue source to support Connecticuts significant transportation capital needs, the report said.

Moodys and Fitch Ratings both affirmed Connecticuts credit ratings and maintained their stable outlooks, Wooden said in a release.

Connecticut is set to sell $850 million in general obligation bonds this month and the rates investors demand will send a message about Wall Streets view of Connecticuts condition.

The biggest issue as the state plows ahead: In order to keep debt down and avoid dipping into the reserve fund, the state must either raise taxes and risk losing more residents, or cut spending in ways that no one has figured out how to do.

While todays news is welcomed, McCaw said in a written release, it carries with it a caution, as well....Many of the problems our state faces are many decades old and there are not easy fixes to resolve them, but the rating agencies have made clear those reforms and difficult choices will lead to a brighter financial future for our state.

dhaar@hearstmediact.com
A former state lawmaker from Virginia Beach admitted Tuesday that for nearly a decade, he fraudulently won defense contracts set aside for disadvantaged and minority-owned businesses.

Ron Villanueva, 48, a Republican who lost his seat in the General Assembly in 2017, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States. He faces up to five years in prison when sentenced July 2.

According to court documents, in about 2005, Villanueva met a man named Khalil Naim, who was running a struggling government contracting business with his wife. Villanueva and Naim took over the business and ran it for five years while pretending that Naim's wife was in charge so they could keep getting preferential contracts for military and tactical gear. She was not even living in Virginia Beach, where the company was located.

Villanueva helped draft a misleading letter to the Small Business Administration that mischaracterized the degree to which the company relied on other suppliers, according to court documents.

The program that Villanueva and Naim exploited was meant to help small businesses get on their feet; after 2010, the company would no longer qualify. So, Villanueva admitted, he persuaded his brother-in-law, Sam Caragan, to move to Virginia Beach and be the front for a new company. Villanueva used his official House of Delegates letterhead to write to the SBA in support of the new company - not disclosing that he was actually running it with Naim.

Together, the two companies - SEK and Karda - won more than $80 million in government contracts; Villanueva made about a million dollars from them.

Caragan and Naim pleaded guilty last year to their roles in the conspiracy. A larger Virginia Beach contractor affiliated with SEK and Karda paid $16 million to settle fraud claims in 2017. The two companies together agreed to pay the government $220,000.

Thomas Bondurant, Villanueva's attorney, said in an interview that his client "got wrapped up in something, it got complicated, and he crossed a line. But he's a good man, and, hopefully, he'll put this behind him."
The following editorial appears in The Washington Post.

Congress is on the verge of delivering another rebuke to President Donald Trump, this time concerning the war in Yemen. Last week, the Senate passed a resolution that would mandate an end to U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention in that troubled Arab state, which now suffers the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with nearly 10 million people on the brink of starvation. If the House, which already voted for a similar measure, approves the Senate version, it would be the first successful use of the 1973 War Powers Act, which was intended to prevent presidents from waging wars without congressional approval.

The problem is that the congressional action, like the rejection of Trump's declaration of an emergency along the border, is likely to have little practical effect. The resolution is subject to a presidential veto that is unlikely to be overridden. The administration shows no sign of retreating from its fervent embrace of the Saudi regime, despite its reckless and destructive adventurism.

Congress at least is registering a dissent while standing up for its constitutional authority. The Senate action, which won the support of seven Republican senators, mandates an end to an operation that has made Americans complicit in likely war crimes. Since 2015, U.S. forces have been providing targeting and refueling support to Saudi and United Arab Emirates warplanes, even as they repeatedly bomb civilian targets. This is not "collateral damage": Investigations by the United Nations and human rights groups have shown that the Saudis targeted food markets, mosques, hospitals, weddings and funerals, and, in one case last year, a bus full of schoolchildren.

The war has been an abject failure. While killing tens of thousands, threatening millions with famine and triggering the worst cholera epidemic in modern history, the Saudis and their allies have never come close to defeating Houthi rebels who control the capital, Sanaa, and the country's most important port, Hodeida. The two sides are now participating in a U.N.-brokered peace process, though a fragile first step, a cease-fire in Hodeida, is in danger of breaking down.

Without U.S. support, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would likely be forced to end the war. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is doubling down. Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that "if you truly care about Yemeni lives, you'd support the Saudi-led effort to prevent Yemen from turning into a puppet state" of Iran. He was parroting Riyadh's propaganda: While the Houthis have been backed by Iran, they are a legitimate indigenous movement. It is Saudi Arabia, not Iran, that has long treated Yemen as a client state.

It's now clear that a bipartisan congressional majority opposes Trump's fealty to Mohammed bin Salman. If the war powers resolution fails or is vetoed, legislators should pursue more comprehensive legislation. A pending Senate bill would halt U.S. sales of offensive weapons and mandate sanctions for those involved in the murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, among other steps. It, too, likely would advance if the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, allowed a vote. He should not stand in the way of a bipartisan majority.
Kathy Harter is a retired technical writer living in Honolulu and a massive Elizabeth Warren fan. She donated $25 to Warren's Senate campaign in 2012 and tells me she would have given her money in 2016 if the senator ran for president. "I loved the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau," she told me. But when it comes to the 2020 presidential race, Harter's taking a different stance. The reason? Electability. Harter doesn't think Warren has what it takes to beat President Donald Trump.

When you talk to voters - or at least the sort of voters who are engaged this early in the political process - you hear over and over again variations on what Harter said. It doesn't seem to matter that, as Warren's Monday night town hall on CNN made clear, she possesses the gift of making complicated political and economic policy engaging and exciting. Nor does it matter that Americans agree with Warren's policy positions - in fact, her proposed wealth tax is so popular, half of Republicans support it. All too many simply don't think Warren can win. Again and again, I hear things like, A woman can't get elected president. Trump's defined her as "Pocahontas." She's too liberal. She's not liberal enough. Hillary Clinton talked about policy, too. The result: Warren usually (but not always) turns up as a distant third behind - or even further behind - Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in polling. Her fundraising, at least going by the first day after her announcement, is also firmly second-tier.

It's a puzzle, and one that perplexes many political analysts and pollsters. "It's the elephant in the room," says Matt McDermott, a director at Whitman Insight Strategies, who went on to suggest that one issue facing Warren is that her emphasis on economic inequality, once unique, is now mainstream in the Democratic Party. Politico also tried to solve the puzzle, wondering late last year whether Warren could beat back the "ghosts" of Hillary Clinton, or would get dismissed as "unlikable" without the voters even giving her a chance.

But the issue, I thought, watching Warren on Monday night, goes far beyond Clinton, and beyond Warren's mishandling of her claimed Native American ancestry. It's not even particularly mysterious. Warren needs Democratic voters both to move past 2016 and to forgive her for not running that year, not to mention her somewhat standoffish approach to both sides during the primaries.

It's hard to recall now, but Warren was once the golden girl of American politics. In 2014, Daily Kos called Warren a "rock star" and compared her appeal to pre-presidential-candidate Barack Obama's. MoveOn.org attempted to convince her to enter the Democratic race by starting a "Run Warren Run" movement. But, then, Warren deferred to Clinton, and Sanders announced instead. The world both moved on and didn't move on at the same time. We're all still trapped in what happened next - the sexist attacks on Clinton, the surprise emergence and victory of Trump, the man who branded Warren "Pocahontas" so effectively, a recent focus group of Wisconsin swing voters was very aware of the controversy over Warren's Native American heritage but barely knew a thing about her work on consumer protection and economic justice.

Even as we yearn to escape 2016, we turn back to it again and again and again. For Democrats, it's a political reference and set point. We see it in the nonstop Twitter fighting between Sanders and Clinton supporters. We see it every time someone says they are choosing a candidate to support, not based on a politician's decisions or voters' desires, but on this nebulous thing called "electability." We see it in the subtext of every article featuring Trump supporters in Midwestern diners, which is the online equivalent of reading a favorite novel with an unhappy ending, hoping it turns out differently this time. We even see it in part of the support for Beto O'Rourke - "new" and "young" and seemingly untainted by all that unpleasantness.

Those adjectives aren't true of Warren, who, as often happens to women, ends up assuming too much of the burden. With every detailed policy proposal, every fleshed-out agenda, one can almost hear Warren asking the voters for another chance. She's appealing to voters to let her walk through the threshold she declined to even try to cross in 2016.

Could it happen? Well, here is the good news for Warren. Her current difficulties are far from a campaign death sentence. An early inability to gain traction need not be fatal. John Kerry revamped his campaign staff before the first Democratic primary in 2004, when it appeared that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was gaining traction. John McCain experienced so much trouble with initial fundraising, he needed to lay off staffers in 2007, before he won the GOP nomination in 2008. There's almost a year before the first voter casts so much as a ballot in the Iowa caucuses. A lot will happen before then. That gives Warren, the Democratic Party and voters time to leave 2016 behind - once and for all. And that, no matter who ends up being the nominee, will be a very good thing for both the Democratic Party and the American people.
President Trump is transparent, pragmatic and approaches governing just like a business venture, always protecting the bottom line.

Agreed, he is divisive, shoots from the hip, and even logical, his delivery, style, body language and mandate approach is enough to make voters ignore the issues positive benefits. The obvious difference is our president doesnt think like a party politician, he thinks like a CEO whose obligation is to the stockholders, in this case, the voter. Hes not a politician, hes not a party disciple to its dogma, hes not obligated to the lobbyist, political committees, campaign financing or his advisers  he is committed to the voters to fulfill his campaign promises.

President Trump has observed our democratic system, our individual rights and Congress deterioration of democracy and its encroaching socialist approach. Our incumbent Congress, both parties, demonstrates their disregard for the voting public. We observe this daily.

Today the issue is our president refuses to go public with his tax returns. This is a big deal? Well, President Trump is first a citizen and second our president. If he chooses to keep his taxes private, thats his individual right. I wonder if either party would sponsor a bill dictating that Congress must declare their net worth upon election and declare net worth every four years thereafter until retired?

Another non-issue is our 14,000 troops in Afghanistan. The rest of the 38 countries involved collectively contribute 4,000 troops. Isnt the troop inequity obvious? How can Congress continue to allow this country to be the worlds enabler?

Recently our Congress lowered itself to adolescent behavior with a shutdown of government, a ridiculous debate over the Southern border fence, illegal immigrants, sanctuary cities, etc. Its a fact that this country harbors more than 11 million illegal immigrants. Dysfunctional socialist governments are creating caravans adding to this every year. Our immigration laws have been ignored simply because our economy demands this unskilled labor. Our country is governed by the rule of law. Both parties must change the law or enforce existing law. Isnt that their function? If we need varied immigrant laws dictated and enforced by states and regions, then create them. But dont create laws that wont be enforced as in the past.

Our politicians, both parties, have been disingenuous regarding us, the voting public. Our government has stagnated. President Trump has observed this for years and will continue to expose our career politicians rendition of governing, i.e., denigrate the opposition.

A conscientious appraisal by voters in the next election will determine if we remain a democracy or succumb to socialism.

Frank Pellegrini is a resident of Southbury.
3 1 of 3 MOHAMED EL-SHAHED / AFP /Getty Images Show More Show Less 2 of 3 MOHAMED EL-SHAHED / AFP /Getty Images Show More Show Less 3 of 3





The shooting at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand last week was an outrage to all civilized people. Hate driven killings of anyone, let alone those choosing to worship God, cannot be tolerated by any just person or society. The News-Times has extensively covered this heinous crime thoroughly with eight articles related to the shooting in the three days following the crime.

Could we begin to see comparable coverage of crimes which are equally, if not even more, reprehensible than the Christchurch incident? Over the past decade hundreds of Coptic Christians have been murdered and burned alive in Egyptian churches with only scant coverage by The News-Times. In December of 2010 six worshippers were killed by gunmen in a Cairo church, six years later a bombing killed 25, the next year saw eight shot to death by a drive-by shooter.
The following are recent arrests released by the Danbury Police Department on March 9, 2019.

March 15

A 24-year-old Raymond Place woman was charged with risk of injury to a child and interfering with an officer.

A 63-year-old Queens, NY woman was charged with criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct.

March 17

A 47-year-old Spring Street woman was charged with shoplifting and conspiracy to commit larceny.

A 44-year-old Danbury man was charged with breach of peace, threatening and reckless endangerment.

A 22-year-old Foster Street woman was charged with shoplifting and conspiracy to commit larceny.

A 23-year-old Foster Street woman was charged with shoplifting and conspiracy to commit larceny.

March 18

A 27-year-old Manchester, NH man was charged with disorderly conduct/fight with a dangerous instrument and assault.

A 22-year-old Division Street man was charged with criminal mischief, disorderly conduct and threatening.

A 33-year-old Waterbury man was charged with larceny by extortion.

A 33-year-old homeless man was charged with breach of peace and assault.

As of January 2019, Hearst Connecticut Media does not include names in online police blotters.
Asked what adjectives come to mind when she thinks about Riverside, Realtor Tracey Koorbursch of Sothebys International Realty said, Community, neighborhood, beautiful, idyllic, safe, quiet, quaint, international.

Koorbusch knows Riverside as both a Realtor who assists clients in buying and selling homes here, and as a resident of more than 30 years. Its the Greenwich community where she raised four children and discovered that the nucleus of the community is found at the local elementary and middle schools.

Riverside is truly an international area. That diversity makes it interesting not only for lifelong residents but for newcomers who can often feel at home with someone from their native State or country, she said.

Koorbusch is currently serving as the listing agent for 2 Spruce Street in Riverside. Listed for $1.679 million.

The Cotswold-style of the home is classic Riverside, with a stone and clapboard exterior and surrounding stone walls, Koorbusch said. Careful attention was paid by noted Riverside architect, Laura Kaehler, to blend the addition with the existing architecture. The expansion was in the key living areas, including the family room, dining room and master bedroom. Of particular interest is the custom curved window atrium connecting the dining room to the step-down family room with vaulted ceilings. The home can be further expanded if needed, which makes it a great starter home or downsizing option.

Americana charm with international culture

Over the years, people have been attracted to Riverside due to its proximity to Long Island Sound  at the same time to New York City, Ann Simpson explained one of the areas appeal. This common interest has created a close-knit community.

Simpson is a Realtor with the Old Greenwich office of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, New England Properties, and the listing agent for 40 Crescent Road in Riverside, a two-story Cape-style colonial on a 0.39-acre lot.

What also brings them to Riverside are the neighborhoods, Simpson added. The small enclaves of streets where people develop close friendships. On any given morning, you see families coming from all directions, walking their children to Riverside Elementary and Eastern Middle School.

40 Crescent Road is listed for $1.69 million, and the propertys location puts its residents within walking distance to two train stations (Riversides and Old Greenwichs), Binney Park and Old Greenwich Village.

40 Crescent has unexpected space with a flexible floor plan, Simpson said. If someone is looking for one-floor living, there is a master bedroom and second bedroom on the first floor, and still four more on the second. Buyers will also find the interiors to be bright and inviting, thanks to oversized windows and skylights, she pointed out.

Though she worries that the expression may seem trite, Simpson said its apt to describe Riverside as a page out of Norman Rockwells sketch book.

Jane Owen Brash of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage is representing the seller of 12 Dorchester Lane in Riverside, a home the Realtor calls the quintessential New England colonial.

It is utterly charming, on a beautiful landscaped corner lot on a quiet street within walking distance to Riverside Elementary and Eastern Middle School, the train and Binney Park Brash noted. [It is] a real neighborhood, with block parties and a cul-de-sac where children play. It maintains much of the Old World charm of a New England colonial, yet has been updated and expanded to satisfy todays buyers, including with a big family room with cathedral ceilings off the updated kitchen.

The $2.095 million property also has its Riverside location going for it.

Unlike other parts of Greenwich, 95-percent of the children go to the public schools, so your neighbors children and their parents know each other from school, Brash explained. The residents are often from New York City or from somewhere else, with a large number of foreign-born residents. Its common to have students whose parents have relocated from South America, Britain, France or the Netherlands to work in New York City. The schools are excellent, and the drop-off and pick-up at schools are social gatherings.
NEXO is powered by hydrogen, a fully sustainable energy source, which allows the vehicle to emit clean water vapour and purify the air as it is being driven. This technology also provides the vehicle with superior range conservation in cold climates compared to other battery electric powertrains, making them particularly resilient for Canadian winters. What's more  a five minute refill will carry you for up to 570 KM.

Modo will make two NEXO vehicles available for consumer use in the coming weeks through its carsharing services. This collaboration will provide Vancouverites with unparalleled access to fuel cell vehicles, allowing more Canadians than ever to learn about and experience this technology firsthand. Hyundai will also be the first to make fuel cell vehicles available for retail sale through select local dealerships.

"Hydrogen vehicles are the most promising type of alternative powertrain transportation in existence today. It's important for us to make innovative green technologies like NEXO readily available for Canadians to ensure a sustainable future," says Don Romano, President and CEO of Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. "We're thrilled to launch NEXO in B.C, as the province is a leader in implementing important sustainability initiatives and is aligned with our vision of introducing new means of clean mobility."

Hyundai has always been a leader in sustainable transportation, remaining the only automaker in Canada to offer vehicles with four electrified powertrains including hybrid, plug-in hybrid, battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell. With the launch of NEXO, Hyundai becomes the only automotive manufacturer in Canada to offer a second generation fuel cell vehicle  the first being the Tucson Fuel Cell which launched in 2015.

"We are excited to be the first carshare to offer consumers the opportunity to experience a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle for themselves," says Patrick Nangle, CEO of Modo. "Supporting a cleaner BC aligns with Modo's social and environmental purpose as a member-owned co-operative. We are grateful to Hyundai Canada and the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association for their financial contribution in making this possible."

While hydrogen fueling infrastructure is still in the early stages of development, Vancouver is home to one of Canada's only public refueling stations located in the city's Marpole neighborhood. Members of the public who are interested in test-driving NEXO are able to do so at the Vancouver International Auto Show, which runs from March 19 through 24.

About Hyundai Auto Canada Corp.

Hyundai Auto Canada, established in 1983 and headquartered in Markham, Ontario, is a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Company of Korea. Hyundai vehicles are distributed throughout Canada by Hyundai Auto Canada and are sold and serviced through more than 210 dealerships nationwide. Hyundai is the first to offer a second-generation zero-emissions Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle to Canadian customers, called the NEXO. More information about Hyundai and its vehicles can be found at www.HyundaiCanada.com.



For more information about Hyundai and its products, please visit www.hyundainews.ca.

About Modo

Modo opened its doors in 1997, as the first and only carshare co-operative in BC. With a focus on people, not profits, Modo's purpose is to transform communities by connecting people with places in a way that's affordable, convenient, inclusive and sustainable. Today, Modo serves more than 22,000 members across the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, the Okanagan and Squamish; with access to 700 cars, trucks, SUVs, vans and more. Rates start at just $5 per hour, with gas and insurance included. More at www.modo.coop

SOURCE Hyundai Auto Canada Corp.

For further information: Jean-Francois Taylor, Senior Product Public Relations Specialist, Hyundai Auto Canada Corp.Office: (905) 948-6754, Mobile: (416) 770-0842, Email: [email protected]; Bianca Pettinaro, Corporate Communications Specialist, Hyundai Auto Canada Corp., Office: (905) 948-6837, Email: [email protected]; Selena McLachlan, Director, Marketing & Communications, Modo, Mobile: (778) 989-6085, Email: [email protected]

Related Links

www.hyundaicanada.com


TORONTO, March 18, 2019 /CNW/ - Park Lawn Corporation (TSX: PLC) ("PLC") announced today that it will release its year end financial results for 2018 on Tuesday, March 26, 2019. PLC will host a conference call at 9:30 am (EST) on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 to discuss its Q4 2018 financial results. Details of the conference call are as follows:

Date: Wednesday, March 27, 2019





Time: 9:30am EST





Dial-in Number: Local (647) 427-7450 | Toll Free (888) 231-8191 | Conference ID: 1369428

To ensure your participation, please join approximately five minutes prior to the scheduled start of the conference call.

About Park Lawn Corporation

PLC provides goods and services associated with the disposition and memorialization of human remains. Products and services are sold on a pre-planned basis (pre-need) or at the time of a death (at-need). PLC and its subsidiaries own and operate businesses including cemeteries, crematoria, funeral homes, chapels, planning offices and a transfer service. PLC operates in five Canadian provinces and twelve US States.

SOURCE Park Lawn Corporation

For further information: Suzanne Cowan, VP, Business Development & Corporate Affairs, (416) 231-1462 ext 234, [email protected]
Chinas Belt and Road has some questionable economic return potential. However, the Belt and Road is providing geopolitical returns. The Belt and Road has successful projects in Pakistan, Greece and some other countries. The projects are boosting the volume of trade with the countries in the Belt and Road.

After the debate, there was a 5% increase to 39% who voted Yes, the BRI is a large financial blunder.

There is some new development on the BRI. Italy could vote to support the Belt and Road later this month. Italy would be the first G7 country to support the Belt and Road.

China is already second to the United States in large technology companies and second in billion+ dollar technology unicorn companies. Shenzhen is the location of this new silicon valley. Shenzhen is a smartphone center.

After the debate, the number who voted Yes increased 14% to 69% Yes, that the next silicon valley would be in China.

SOURCES- Intelligence 2 Debates

Written by Brian Wang
HAMDEN  Police are investigating after a vehicle was shot twice Sunday evening on Dixwell Avenue, according to a release from Sgt. Anthony Diaz.

Officers were in the parking lot of Off the Hook, a restaurant at 940 Dixwell Ave., shortly after closing when four gun shots were heard, Diaz said in the release.
NEW HAVEN  The consortium that had proposed using the former club area in the Crown Street Garage for theater performances and a cabaret are back taking a deeper look into the costs of such a project.

The New Haven Parking Authority awarded use of the former club space at the Crown Street garage to the nonprofit New Haven Center for the Performing Arts that runs the College Street Music Hall across the street, but the music venue dropped its plans before a contract had been negotiated.

It felt the authority was dragging its feet and should have taken up the proposal it offered before it went to an RFP.

Ultimately however, it found a way to offer performances in a smaller venue without using the Crown Street proposal.

A consortium that includes Long Wharf Theatre, the Shubert Theatre and Albertus Magnus College would split the space into a 200-seat theater on the main floor, with a 90-seat cabaret-style venue on the lower level.

The current cocktail area at the shuttered club would be used for classrooms and a rehearsal area tied to the main productions, as well as enhancement of Albertuss theater program. There was a lot of emphasis on community involvement.

Josh Borenstein, managing director of the Long Wharf Theatre, and John Fisher, executive director of the Shubert Theatre/CAPA, said they visited the cavernous, 10,000-square foot former dance club Friday to get a more realist estimate of what would be entailed to turn it into a professional theater.

Borenstein said they spent a lot of time in the building with their engineers and architects to get cost estimates on such things as gutting the former dance floor, upgrading the electrical capacity, installing a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system and a sound system.

Borenstein said a crucial element is the ability to separate the spaces acoustically so the cabaret does not interfere with the theater on the main floor when multiple productions are running at the same time. He said they also need to dampen any sounds from outside the building and the garage.

To illustrate how expensive these components are, the managing director said the renovation Long Wharf undertook for its main stage on Sargent Drive in 2012 cost $2.7 million, of which $1.4 million was for lighting and HVAC.

Fisher said the consortium never claimed to be able to move as fast as the proposal from the College Street Music Hall.

We are three nonprofits with three boards, who need to give their approval. We are really taking a closer look at the numbers and all the scenarios. It is a major undertaking and we are excited to move forward. We are anticipating a sizable investment.

Both the consortium and the competing New Haven Center for the Performing Arts were only given about three weeks to respond to the request for proposals put out by the New Haven Parking Authority.

Fisher said now was the time to get the numbers right. He said they are glad they are back in the ballgame.

Doug Hausladen, the acting executive director of the New Haven Parking Authority, which runs the garage and owns the space, said the consortiums professional team took a long, long tour Friday, which is the extent of the update on the project at this point.

The major difference between the two competitors involved cost, construction time and subsidies.

The authority said it would make its decision on, among other things, the parking revenue each plan would generate and how many additional people would be attracted to the new offerings.

Despite the emphasis on certain financial terms set by the authority, the consortiums plan requested that the $60,000 signing fee be waved as well as the requested PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes.)

The PILOT would be based on the assessed value of the property as of June 1 of each year and calculated at the tax rate set by the alders.

The consortium also requested the rent be waived for the first five years of the lease, given the financial investment it would have to make. Rent payment would then be $6 per square foot in years 6 through 10 of the lease, according to its plan.

Premiere Facilities was not looking to waive five years of rent payments, nor is it taking issue with the $60,000 signing fee.

Both bidders said they would have to gut the current structure. The consortium estimated it would have to invest $5.7 million to renovate and bring the 10,000-square-foot space up to code. District Ballroom estimated its construction costs at $2 million, almost two-thirds less.

mary.oleary@hearstmediact.comk 203-641-2577
NEW HAVEN  Just over a year ago, Shelly Sutherland was one of 74 tenants abruptly ordered to leave their apartments after the city was advised that the five-story structure at 66 Norton St. where they were living was in danger of collapsing.

She and her fellow tenants, with less than an hours notice, left with what they could carry. For weeks, families stayed in cramped hotels away from their childrens schools and in locations less convenient to their places of work.

Sutherland moved fairly quickly into a new apartment, which they were able to occupy by mid-April 2018, two months after they were blocked from remaining at the Norton Street unit.

Her familys new home however, will cost them $13,000 more over four years than the rent and covered utilities they had at 66 Norton St. Sutherland was paying $875 monthly for rent that included heat and hot water. Her new apartment costs $1,150 and does not cover utilities.

Sutherland is one of eight former 66 Norton St. tenants who took advantage of a state statute that provides up to $4,000 in relocation expenses for persons displaced by situations such as the problems found in the complex.

A total of 74 tenants, 22 of them children, lived in 37 apartments in the century-old building.

Structural Engineer Nic Cuoco wrote at the time that the building was structurally unsound and not safe to occupy ... The cast-iron waste pipes appear to be supporting most of the structural load.

The owners of the building conducted exploratory demolition in the summer and last month they were issued a building permit for structural work in 40 bathrooms estimated to cost $235,884.

On May 9, 2018, Sutherland, through attorney Shelley White at the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, applied for a $4,000 housing assistance payment, the maximum that a tenant can receive under state housing rules. Seven other cases brought by White are pending.

The state Department of Housing ruled this month in favor of the request from Sutherland and it was signed by Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno on March 12. The ruling was critical of the city, which it said did not have a formal program to deal with these issues.

It does not appear that the city took any steps at the time the residents of 66 Norton St. were displaced to inform petitioner of her rights under the act. Although city employees were present at the time of the displacement and participated in directing petitioner to temporary housing, (Sutherland) was not provided with information about her rights or how she could pursue relocation assistance, the department found.

No one from the city met with petitioner to consider her particular circumstances, assist her in locating replacement housing, or arrange for payment of amounts due to her. Rather, it appears that the city deferred in large part to the landlord of 66 Norton St. to handle temporary housing, the moving process and payments to new landlords, without the citys involvement or input, the department found.

The city attorney who worked on the case could not be reached for comment.

White said Raphael Ramos, deputy director of housing code enforcement at the Livable City Initiative was helpful to the tenants, as the person who usually does relocations was on vacation for two weeks when the crisis hit.

At the time of the relocation, attorney Amy Marks of the New Haven Legal Assistance Association thanked Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, executive director of LCI, for negotiating with the landlord to get $75 to $100 food vouchers from Stop & Shop to the tenants as there was no ability to cook or refrigerate food in the hotel rooms.

Mendy Katz, property manager at the complex, owned by Ernest Schemitsch of New York, oversaw much of the relocations, including paying moving expenses. Many of the tenants relocated to properties with ties to Katz.

The city approved the maximum $4,000 payment to Sutherland on May 18, 2018, but said it would deduct the $2,333.75 in payments made by her landlord to her new landlord. The state Department of Housing over-ruled that.

While landlords may participate in the process of assisting displaced persons ... the statutory scheme set forth by the act imposed clear obligations on the city. It is troubling that the city does not have a relocation plan that would detail its obligations and the rights of displaced persons under the act and that it in fact did not fulfill its general obligations under the act, especially since many of the issues arising in this appeal appear to stem from the citys reliance on (Sutherlands ) former landlord to fulfill its statutory responsibilities, the department ruled.

It found that the state law purposefully places the responsibility of payment on the city to establish a uniform policy for the fair and equitable treatment of persons displaced by programs, including code enforcement activities.

Where a municipality is not involved in determinations of eligibility and amount of payment, simply accepting whatever decision a former landlord makes, it cannot effectively ensure that all determinations are done correctly and uniformly by all landlords for all displaced persons. This is especially true where, as here, displaced persons are not informed of their rights or counseled as to how to obtain assistance, it ruled.

White agreed with the state. She said not everyone was treated the same.

The landlord paid different amounts to different people; also, some people got a credit for their rent that they had paid in January, some people didnt, or for February and some didnt, the attorney said.

The whole point of this  relocation plan  to so everyone gets treated equally, services according to need, White said. The attorney said the landlord found housing immediately for some tenants; others he wanted nothing to do with.

The hearing officer said New Haven should have staff responsible for and well-versed in relocation. This concern is illustrated here by the fact that counsel for the city seems not to have had accurate knowledge of the amounts paid by the landlord, claiming one amount in its initial determination and at the hearing, and a different calculation in its post-hearing brief.

It said New Haven can ultimately get the costs back from the landlord or per-emptively, throughout the code enforcement process it can work to prevent condemnations and/or plan for them as necessary.

White tried to get reimbursement for electronic goods stolen from Sutherlands apartment that had not been secured when the tenants left, but the housing department said that is not covered by the act. White said missing X-Boxes, computers and printers were a common complaint from the tenants.

Sutherland, reached at her new home, said she, her husband and their three children love it there.

Best of all, there are no more asthma attacks, Sutherland said. She said she always felt these were caused by the mold and pests in the building at Norton Street.

The five-year tenant said the elevators never worked and she had climb the stairs to their fourth floor apartment carrying groceries and laundry. Im really glad the building got condemned, as her family now has a better living situation, Sutherland said.

mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577
NEW HAVEN  The Board of Alders approved Yesenia Rivera to serve the remainder of Frank Redentes term on the Board of Education Monday after the latter resigned last year.

Rivera, director of the Edgewood PTA Child Care Program and director of housing assessment and integration for The Connection Inc.s Supportive Housing for Families program, will serve until the end of 2020.

Aldermanic Affairs Committee Chairwoman Evelyn Rodriguez, D-4, said Rivera would be a great asset for the Board of Education because of her vast experience with community relationships.

A few hours before the final vote on her confirmation, Rivera sat in on the school boards Finance Committee meeting, where she said she was attempting to learn as much as possible before being seated.

Im feeling like theres a lot of work to be done, she said.

Rivera said she is working to catch up on issues currently before the school board, including a decision to revive the Joint Reform Committee with a mandate to evaluate implementing a portfolio model in the schools, which gives principals more autonomy but also gives them higher stakes accountability.

I know theres parents who were against it, and I know they felt (the board) voted on it too quickly, she said.

One week ago, members of the school board heard the budget is at a current projected deficit of $5.3 million for the end of the fiscal year, down about $19 million from the start of the year. However, district staff have said they project the district will start the next fiscal year at a $30 million deficit.

Superintendent of Schools Carol Birks has said she believes the district can eliminate $20 million of that internally, through measures including reducing staff positions.

Board of Education President Darnell Goldson said the Strong School, which is moving into a new location on Southern Connecticut State Universitys campus, where it will be known as the Barack H. Obama School, has a capacity more than twice its current enrollment. He asked whether the district could save money by colocating two schools in the same building, and abandoning a current building.

Birks was reluctant to share details about her thinking, saying the state would need to receive a letter from the district announcing its intentions to close a school building, and she would need to ensure colocating schools wouldnt jeopardize the districts compliance with state law.

Give us a few more days to have a little more discussion internally; we need to have a clear communication plan so all stakeholders are aware of what were going to say, she said.

The closure of Creed School, which happened around the same time last year, loomed large over the school board. About one month before the end of the school year, members of the Creed community descended on the board to protest the eventual decision to close the New Haven magnet school based in North Haven.

We are behind the ball on this, said Goldson.

Committee Vice Chairman Joe Rodriguez said that, if the district expects to have a $10 million outstanding deficit even after internal budget mitigation efforts, they should be taking preemptive action now, especially if that includes consolidating or closing a school.

Im so glad a new board member is coming on to help us with that, said Goldson, looking at Rivera.

Matt Wilcox, who was also appointed to the school board but has not yet had a hearing with the aldermanic affairs committee, was also present at the school boards finance committee meeting.

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN  A defendant who ran from Guilford police and then resisted arrest during a physical encounter with two officers has had another year added to a previous sentence for a stabbing assault.

Jose Hernandez, 48, whose last listed address was on Wolcott Street, was sentenced to one year in prison on each of two counts: engaging police in pursuit and interfering with an officer/resisting arrest. Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Clifford made those sentences concurrent but that total was made consecutive to the earlier sentence.

The latest sentences add one year to a 20-year sentence Hernandez received in February 2018 after a New Haven Superior Court jury found him guilty of first-degree assault for stabbing a man on Ferry Street in New Haven.

Although Hernandez had that 20-year sentence imposed on Feb. 22, 2018, he was sentenced in absentia because he did not come to court that day. This resulted in his being charged with failure to appear.

Thus Hernandez was not in custody and sharing a room at the Valley Motel in Guilford in April 2018 when his run-in with police occurred.

According to a Guilford police case report, Sergeant John P. OBrien observed a suspicious motor vehicle in the motels parking lot. It had out-of-state plates and was parked far away from all the other vehicles.

Patrol Officer Jared Dillon checked the plates and learned the vehicle, a Jeep Compass, had been stolen in New Haven the previous month. Dillon spoke with the motel manager, who gave him the names of two men staying in a room that the manager associated with the Jeep.

After learning the vehicle had been involved in two pursuits in New Haven since it was reported stolen, OBrien and Dillon remained near the motel in separate patrol vehicles to monitor it. When someone started to drive the Jeep, OBrien tried to block it. Dillon also tried to block the Jeep, but it crossed over the front yard of the motel and onto Route 80, the report stated.

Dillon wrote in the report that he was able to stop the Jeep by accelerating and turning his steering wheel, which effectively spun the Jeep so it was now facing in the opposite direction in the middle of Route 80. Dillon said he saw the drivers side door open.

Dillon said he pulled his gun from his holster and pointed it at the man who was getting out, commanding him to put his hands up. The male did put both hands in the air above his head and continued walking quickly toward me, shouting, Shoot me! Shoot me! The male then suddenly took off running southwest, through the front yard of the Valley Motel toward Little Meadow Road.

Dillon said he put his gun back in its holster, pulled out a Taser and began chasing the man. He ordered him to stop or be tasered. When the man kept running, Dillon tasered him.

The man fell face down on the grass along the side of Little Meadow Road but soon afterward he sat up and shouted at Dillon. The man began to walk toward me while swinging his arms, at which time I pulled the trigger on my taser a second time.

After OBrien arrived on the scene, he used his OC Spray on the mans face because the man had again sat up and was refusing to follow orders, the report stated. But the spray had little effect on the man, who moved toward OBrien. Dillon tasered him a third time and then a fourth time, but the man still was able to get off the ground, threatening the officers, the report stated.

As the man continued to swear at the officers and moved toward them, Dillon struck him once on his lower right thigh with his baton, without effect. OBrien then tasered him two more times but the man still resisted. The two officers continued to struggle with the man. The male at one point began to bite at my left arm, Dillon said. At that point, he said, he punched the man twice in the face.

Eventually the officers were able to handcuff the man. After he was treated on the scene by medical personnel, the officers learned he was Jose Hernandez.

The New Haven police warrant for the first-degree assault case stated officers were dispatched to Yale New Haven Hospital on Sept. 27, 2014 on a report of a walk-in stabbing victim. The man said he had gotten into an argument with a man he knew only as Luis and the man had pulled out a switchblade knife and slashed him in the face, then stabbed him in the stomach.

Police investigated and came up with Hernandez as a suspect. When they showed a photo array to the victim, he picked out Hernandez as his assailant.

The victim said Hernandez had walked into a store where the victim worked and made derogatory statements about Dominicans. The victim asked Hernandez to walk outside with him, where they got into an argument on the sidewalk. The victim said Hernandez then went after him with the knife.

Hernandez attorney on the 2018 charges, Assistant Public Defender Michael Pedevillano, declined to comment on the case. The prosecutor, Senior Assistant States Attorney Stacey Miranda, noted Hernandez had pleaded guilty to the two charges from 2018 and that the failure to appear charge was nolled.

Miranda had no comment on the sentences imposed for the two 2018 charges.

randall.beach@hearstmediact.com
EAST HAVEN  Audio tapes of calls to police made following a racial slur-filled tirade at a grocery store contain instances of the person who identified herself as Corinne Magoveny-Terrone using the n-word multiple time and telling police she used the n-word to another customer.

Former Hamden Public Schools employee Magoveny-Terrone called East Haven police after the incident Friday night to claim that she was verbally assaulted by a man at ShopRite. She told the dispatcher she was walking down the center aisle at the store, got to the registers, said Oh Jesus Christ to her kids, and then a man on a scooter called her an offensive term, so she called him the n-word because of what he called her.

She uses the n-word multiple times and also told police there was spitting back and forth and that I am pressing charges. However, on another call to police, a sergeant asks Magoveny-Terrone to come back to East Haven to talk to police, and she says she wants them to come to her. She gives the officer her home address, and he tells her East Haven police cannot go into New Haven to investigate. She uses vulgar language as she insists police come to her.

Im not gonna sugar coat what I said, she says in one of the calls.

As of Monday no complaint had been made and East Haven police continued to urge the victims to come forward.

A video shared on social media over the weekend shows Magoveny-Terrone yelling racial slurs at two black people at the ShopRite in East Haven Friday night.

In the footage, Magoveny-Terrone, who is white, yells the n-word three times and spits at two people, a black man and woman. The video seemingly starts after the encounter began.

So far, the two people who Magoveny-Terrone was yelling at havent come forward to file a complaint or press charges, East Haven Police Lt. Joseph Murgo said Monday.

Weve done everything we can up to being able to charge her with a crime, Murgo said. We have everything we need, just the victims to charge her with something.

After Magoveny-Terrone says the n-word once, the man appears to rush toward Magoveny-Terrone, who taunts, Put your hands on me, come on! and pulls out her phone to begin recording. The man appears to quickly knock the device from her hand. He does not make further physical contact based on what is visible in the footage.

When the man slowly walks away, Magoveny-Terrone hurries after him, and the black woman steps between them.

As the video gained traction, Hamden school officials issued a statement about the incident, saying Magoveny-Terrone had resigned from the school district.

Superintendent of Schools Jody Goeler said Hamden High School Principal Nadine Gannon held a crisis team meeting that included mental health workers, teachers, school and district administration members to make sure when students arrived at school Monday they had support. High school teachers also ran classes throughout the day that gave students an opportunity to process their thoughts and feelings, he said.

Goeler said the incident sickened and disgusted him.

There is no room in our community, our State and our country for such expressions of hate and bigotry, he said in an email. Certainly, as a school district, we wanted to be absolutely clear that such behavior will not be tolerated. I am proud of our administration and Director of Human Resources for their work in arriving at a swift and permanent separation of employment.

Understanding and responding to this incident requires thoughtful discussions and supports in our school community, he said. Working collaboratively, we will continue to model empathy, kindness and tolerance. Hamden is a community that embraces diversity, and I am proud to work in a district where people come together to counter abhorrent acts such as this.

Whether any charges will be filed by police would depend on statements by any victims in the case, Murgo said, but possible ones include disturbing the peace or assault, since the video appears to show Terrone spitting at two people. Murgo said police are open to other charges as well.

The video sums it up, Murgo said. We know what happened.

But, Murgo said police cant force somebody to come forward to press charges if they want to put the incident behind them.

Murgo said police are also consulting with the states attorneys office while waiting for an outcome of the investigation by the state Department of Children and Families. He said for anyone who comes forward, Were all ears.

School administrators and the East Haven Police filed a report with DCF because two young girls, who appear to be Magoveny-Terrones daughters, were standing nearby when the incident happened.

We dont know whats going on, but that message may be getting relayed to the children and were mandated reporters, Murgo said.

Though no complainant has come forward in the case, the incident remains under investigation, Murgo said.

According to the Hamden school districts website, Magoveny-Terrone was a clerk in the central office. She resigned Saturday morning within hours of the administration learning about the incident, Goeler said. Officials said she did not have direct contact with students when she worked for the district.

A phone numbers listed for Magoveny-Terrone was not in service Monday. Nobody appeared to be home when a reporter stopped by her New Haven home Monday.

A ShopRite spokesperson couldnt be reached for comment.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Magoveny-Terrone called 911. She called the police departments non-emergency phone number.

mdignan@hearstmediact.com
California city officials declared a public safety emergency over the weekend at Lake Elsinore's Walker Canyon amid a massive influx of visitors who came to see and snap photos of the canyon's poppies during a rare super bloom.

The city took to Facebook to declare the emergency, stating that the past weekend has been miserable for the community. "This weekend has been unbearable, Lake Elsinore's City Hall said via Facebook. We will evaluate all options next week including ways to shut this down . We know it has been miserable and has caused unnecessary hardships for our entire community.
CHESHIRE  U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, returned to her roots Tuesday  the educational kind  hosting nearly 30 high school students from a number of communities that she represents.

The former national Teacher of the Year held a late afternoon pancake lunch at Pauls Restaurant on Highland Avenue to update the students on what she has been doing since being sworn in two months ago as Connecticuts first African American congresswoman. She reminded the students that even though they cant vote yet, their willingness to work tirelessly for causes they believe in makes them a force with which to be reckoned.

I want to create a space where I can help you leverage your values, Hayes said. Government is about the people. Its not about businesses and the economy.

Hayes is devoting much of the early days of her first term focusing on educational issues. She serves on the House Committee on Education and Labor.

Before arriving at the Cheshire event, Hayes was at Kennedy High School in Waterbury. There she participated in a press conference announcing legislation she has sponsored in the House that would make it clear the U.S. Department of Education can not allow school districts to use federal funds for the purpose of arming teachers.

One of the reasons Hayes said she ran for Congress was that U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said last year that they agency would no longer prohibit school districts from using federal funds to purchase firearms or provide firearms training for teachers.

There was no way I was going to carry a gun in my classroom, she said.

Hayes said after her meeting with the students that she is optimistic that Democratic controlled Congress will pass some kind legislation to help college students deal with the debt loads they are carrying into young adulthood. The congresswoman said she is still paying off her college loans.

Absolutely, Hayes said when asked whether she had any college loans. I think I have more debt than everybody on the Hill.

Some of the student who attended were members of the Pathways/Senderos Center, a program that is part of a part of Greater New Britain Teen Pregnancy Inc. Program co-directors Heather Mills and Nick Jakubowski said that the 60 students the program has each year really get enthused when Hayes is around them, they hang on her every word.

They liked to be talked with, not at, Jakubowski said. The kids relate to her because shes a teacher and because shes like they are: She grew up poor, was an unwed mother and has still achieved all that she has been able to achieve.

Also in attendance was Dan Moran, a Cheshire High School freshman who worked on Hayes campaign last fall. Moran admitted to being a little star struck when he first met Hayes.

Its like she shines a light on young people, the 15-year-old said. Shes very easy to relate to. Its so rare in politics that you find someone who really excites people.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
Of course, we all remember 9/11. Thats the day when nearly 3,000 men, women and children lost their lives. Thats the day when a handful of men showed us what can happen when there is no respect for life. Lack of respect for life is the subject brought to the Connecticut General Assembly. It came under the heading of legalizing physician-assisted suicide  or legalizing a form of killing. As reported by James Walker of the New Haven Register (March 3), similar attempts have been made in 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018 without success. It is a huge leap to give lawmakers so much control of any individuals life, and Connecticut lawmakers are wise enough to know that attempts to legalize this type of killing would have a negative effect on our society and would raise the question as to who has the right to live.

Mention is made of Compassion and Choices, a well-funded organization that supports physician-assisted suicide initiatives on a national level. It is easy to confuse Compassion and Choices with Compassionate and Humane. The latter is the program Hitler used to sway Germans to his barbaric slaughter of humanity  people just like us who, at the time, thought this program was good for humanity. Similarities exist between these practices and what is currently being debated. We must not allow Compassion and Choices to sway us to their murderous logic.
Connecticut is one of only 11 states that has no provision for being able to cast a vote in advance of Election Day  Early Voting. In 2018, over 45 million Americans, more than one in three voters, cast their votes by voting early. For a truly representative democracy that works for all of us, maximizing voter participation is in everyones best interest

This year, our representatives in Hartford will have an opportunity to allow us to weigh in directly on making it easy for all of us to vote. First, legislation to amend the Connecticut Constitution must be passed. Then, our approval must be given through a referendum on the 2020 ballot. If we approve, our representatives can then redefine how we might vote early and not have to vote only in-person, and only on election day. Lifting the restrictions to qualify for using an absentee ballot could also be addressed.
The 2019 National Magazine Awards for Print and Digital Media were presented recently at a dinner in New York.

No Magazine of the Year was named. The American Society of Magazine Editors dropped the prestigious category in 2018 when the awards were expanded to include social media and digital innovation.

So I guess its up to me to select the 2019 Magazine of the Year. I choose The New Yorker.

This year The New Yorker won four of the awards elephant-shaped statuettes called Ellies, the most of any contender.

Here are brief descriptions of the four by category:

Reporting. For Shallow Graves by Ben Taub about Iraqs bloody campaign to eliminate ISIS.

Feature Writing. For A Theory of Relativity by Elif Batuman about Japans rent-a-family industry.

Columns and Commentary. For three articles by Doreen St. Felix: About racism in the National Geographic, Megan Markles mother at her daughters wedding to Prince Harry, and the Senates contentious hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Public Interest. For No Refuge by Sarah Stillman about the violent fate that many immigrants in the U.S. face if they are sent back to their home countries.

To read The New Yorkers winning entries go to https://www.newyorker.com/.

The New Yorker (not to be confused with the newer and breezier New York) runs listings and reviews that focus on New York City but has a large readership outside the New York area.

The magazine is known for topical cover illustrations, high-quality fiction, pungent satire, in-depth journalism that is supported by rigorous fact-checking and, of course, witty single-panel cartoons.

The weekly publication was founded in 1925 by vagabond newspaperman Harold Ross, and his wife Jane Grant. Ross wanted The New Yorker to be a humor magazine but more sophisticated than Judge, where he had worked.

It is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque, Ross declared in a prospectus for his creation.

As the years went by, The New Yorker published more journalism.

Ross was succeeded as editor in 1951 by William Shawn, an introvert who put a high priority on long, fact-filled reportage. Shawn was succeeded in 1987 by Robert Gottlieb, and Gottlieb was succeeded in 1992 by Tina Brown, a high-profile Brit. She added photographs, letters to the editor and a more open layout.

Brown was succeeded in 1998 by David Remnick, who had been a Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book, Lenins Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire.

Since Remnick was appointed editor, The New Yorker has won 48 Ellies. He must be doing something right.

I think the ASME should revive the Magazine of the Year category.

Folio, an online observer of the magazine industry, quoted a publisher as saying: Its a bit like the Oscars deciding to stop giving out an award for Best Picture.

Paul Janensch, former newspaper editor who taught journalism at Quinnipiac University, writes about the media. He is a Bridgeport resident and formerly of Rowayton. Email: paul.janensch@quinnipiac.edu.
DERBY  The city is poised to receive a $4 million payday during the next 20 years from a renewable energy plant slated to be built on Roosevelt Drive.

The Board of Aldermen recently approved a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) agreement between the city and Danbury-based Fuel Cell Energy.

The company, which also has a manufacturing plant in Torrington, was granted approval by the state Department of Energy and Environment Protection in 2018 to build one of two fuel cell energy plants in Connecticut; the one here and another in Hartford. Construction is expected to begin next year.

The 14.8 megawatt clean energy plant is slated to be built on two vacant parcels on 3.4 acres near the United Illuminating substation on Roosevelt Drive. Officials hope to break ground on the project next year.

According to Andrew Baklik, the citys chief of staff, fuel cells, similar to cell towers, are not subject to local zoning, and instead are regulated by the state Siting Council. In order to make the project work, Fuel Cell Energy needed certain guarantees regarding long-term expenses, according to Baklik, and thats where the city came in.

This is why the Board of Aldermen voted to ensure (Fuel Cell) will have a yearly contribution (taxes) of $200,000 for the next 20 years resulting in a $4 million dollar payment to the city over that span, Baklik said.

Baklik said the parcel where Fuel Cell Energy will construct its plant has only produced roughly $1,500 a year in taxes over the last 20 years.

In addition, Baklik said Fuel Cell Energy will be cleaning up an underutilized parcel next to the UI substation and create a boost to our energy grid in the Valley. One of the benefits provided by this project will be expanded natural gas service to homes on the East side of town near St. Judes Church. Previously, there was no gas service available to that area.

Mayor Richard Dziekan was working directly with company officials long before the aldermens vote, Baklik noted.

This is a significant shot in the arm to Derbys tax base and it is guaranteed to be paid for the next 20 years, said Baklik. Per acre, this Fuel Cell will be the highest tax paying entity in the city. The Mayor has worked directly with Fuel Cell Energy since very early on in his tenure to make this project become a reality. Now that the Board of Aldermen supports it as well, we look forward to a long relationship with Fuel Cell Energy.

Other perks with the project, Baklik said, is that the plant is a quiet facility that doesnt create any pollution and doesnt put any strain on our city services, so we couldnt ask for a better user on that particular parcel.

Derek Phelps of Fuel Cell Energy had said the project will cost his company upwards of $8 million to build.

Alderman Ron Sill, who is chairman of the aldermens community relations committee that recently heard an update from Fuel Cell about the plant, is excited about the project.

Its definitely a promising use for this piece of property and would be a welcome addition to our tax base, said Sill.

jean.sos@snet.net
Japan Data

Social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, and Line are said to be indispensable tools among the younger generation. But a survey of people of all age groups in Japan found that the majority are not regular users.

Only 5.5% of Japanese people are active posters on Facebook, according to a 2018 survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Even including those passive users who mainly or only access Facebook to view other peoples posts, the total reaches just 33%. Nearly 70% of those surveyed said they either rarely or never access Facebook, and it was a similar story for Twitter and Instagram. Only Line, the social media platform that originated in Japan, had a majority of users among those surveyed.

In contrast, five in six Americans use Facebook to some extent at least. There is also a clear difference in enthusiasm for Instagram in the two countries.

Sites like Facebook can have socially beneficial aspects. For example, they were used to send messages of support to encourage Japanese swimmer Ikee Rikako in her battle against leukemia. However, they have also been shown to be a double-edged sword. According to the white paper, 23.2% of those who post on such sites have experienced some sort of trouble, such as misinterpretations of the intention of a post, online arguments, or hurting someone elses feelings.

Many who sign up for Facebook end up almost never using it. One housewife in her sixties said she was hesitant to express her true feelings to her Facebook friends since they include all sorts of different people. She said that it is better to interact online with people with shared interests through blogs, and that she did not like how false information can be diffused in an instant through Twitter. A male company worker in his forties said that he did not see the point in posting information to unspecified people. The man also noted that he is always looking at a computer screen for work, so he wants to clear his mind in his off hours.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo  Pixta.)
Authorities say a sleeping man was knocked from his bed after a vehicle struck in a crash was pushed into his Bergen County home.

The crash in Emerson occurred around 9:30 p.m. Sunday.

Authorities say a car driven by a 37-year-old Teaneck woman hit a guardrail, the driver's side of a parked van and another vehicle before striking a utility pole. The impact sent the second vehicle into the home.

The home's resident, the driver and her 1-year-old son were all treated at a hospital for injuries that are not considered life-threatening. Their names and further details on their conditions have not been released.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation.
Fueled by fear and finances, a new state law will let almost all retired law enforcement under age 65 become armed school police officers, including former correctional officers who spent their careers guarding prisons.

Signed Monday by Gov. Phil Murphy, the law lets retired NJ Transit cops, Port Authority Police, Fish and Wildlife officers and others become part-time school police officers under the direction of the local police chief. It comes amid a push to bolster school security following last years mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.

They are job-tested and proven in high-pressure situations," said Assemblywoman BettyLou DeCroce, R-Morris, a sponsor of the bill. "Their presence in schools will make the halls, cafeterias and playgrounds safer.

While supporters say theres a shortage of affordable armed police for local schools, talk of the new law also sparked concern about how well corrections officers can transition from prisons to schools. While no one questioned their ability to respond during a shooting, skeptics wondered whether they would appropriately handle less violent situations involving young students  and whether their mere presence could negatively affect school culture.

The National School Climate Center called the plan a step in the wrong direction and urged schools to be clear about when officers should  and should not  get involved with students.

Even though he supported the plan, retired Denville Township police chief Christopher Wagner said he worried about retired corrections officers going from working with hardened criminals to working with kids

I am not ecstatic, he said before the law was passed. We have worked really hard with the public to say we dont want our schools to be a prison."

But supporters said corrections officers arent much different from local police. They already have full arrest power and are often deployed as police officers for large-scale events, such as the Super Bowl or the Popes visit to New Jersey, according to William Sullivan, executive vice president of the union that represents the states corrections officers.

If a prison guard can protect the Pope and citizens of this great state I assure you we can protect the children in our school systems, Sullivan said. (Despite his usage of the term, he added that term prison guard is antiquated and doesnt accurately reflect their work.)

The law passed both the Senate and Assembly without a single vote against it.

Districts can already hire anyone to be an armed guard as long as they have a license to carry a gun and hold an Armed Security Officer credential. Those private security guards come cheap, around $30,000 a year but they are not actually police officers. They have no law enforcement authority and have no radio communication with local police.

Full-time school resource officers are recommended, and many districts have them. But they can cost more than $100,000 a year, plus benefits. The happy medium for districts has been a new class of officers, called Class Three special police, that the state created after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Those officers work part-time exclusively serving schools and receive no benefits, making the cost significantly less than a full-time officer.

Prior to the new law, the pool was restricted to retired police officers under the age of 65. Now, the positions are open to any retired officer who served in a position that was eligible for participation in the Police and Firemens Retirement System, or who served as a law enforcement officer for a federal or bi-state law enforcement agency.

Officers must be also be physically fit and have basic police training.

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A state appeals panel has voided the Wall school superintendents contract, ruling that the district tried to sidestep a state law by labeling the terms of her employment as a new contract, instead of an extension of her previous one.

An extension, the ruling said, requires 30 days notice and a public hearing -- steps the district was able to skip by instead labeling the revised deal as an entirely new contract.

The ruling, which ridiculed the labeling as absurd, stems from a lawsuit filed jointly by a Wall taxpayer and members of the districts teachers union, which named the Wall Township Board of Education and Superintendent of Schools Cheryl Dyer as defendants.

The suit asserted that the contract extension awarded to Dyer in 2017 lacked the 30-day notice and public hearing required under the law. In its ruling March 14 ruling, the Appellate Division of State Superior Court agreed.

The Board's September 19, 2017 approval of Dyers' contract is overturned, read the decision, which added that Dyers contract must be re-approved by the board with the required notice and hearing.

The Wall Board of Education is scheduled for a regular meeting Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Wall Intermediate School.

Critics of the district said the ruling affirmed their contention that officials tried to quietly squeeze the superintendents contract extension  and accompanying raise  through a semantic loophole in the law in order to avoid public scrutiny of a move that would be unpopular among taxpayers.

Simply put, to classify the mutual termination of Dyers existing employment contract as a rescission to avoid the public notice and public hearing requirements...would effectively nullify the legislative intent and spirit of the law, the ruling stated.

This would constitute the absurd result of allowing respondents to rescind a superintendents contract to thwart public debate because the word rescind or its derivative was not included in the statute.

The school boards current president, Allison Connolly, declined to comment Monday, but said she would issue a statement at Tuesdays meeting. The boards attorney, Michael Gross, declined to comment.

Dyer issued a statement saying she was disappointed with the appellate ruling but would follow it.

In arriving at her new contact in September of 2017, Dyer said her lawyer and the boards attorney, Gross, were following both the letter of the law and the advice of Monmouth Countys executive county superintendent of schools, Lester Richens, an official of the state Department of Education under then-Gov. Chris Christie.

When my contract was approved, my attorney and the Board's attorney followed the advice received from the Department of Education through the Executive County Superintendent, Dyers email stated. They also relied on the language in the applicable regulation.

Dyer added: I love working for Wall Township Public Schools and will continue to serve the interests of the board and the community.

Richens did not respond to a request for comment.

Dyer became Walls superintendent in September 2014, under a 5-year contract set to expire June 30, 2019, when her salary for all five years was $167,500 a year, the maximum then allowed for Wall under a state-imposed cap on superintendent salaries. The cap was raised in 2017, before Dyers extened contract and higher salary were approved.

The boards September 2017 vote had effectively extended Dyers contract to June 30, 2020. Under new terms retroactive to July 1, 2017, the contract also raised Dyers pay to $173,300 in its first year, with roughly 2.5 percent raises each of the following two years, to $176,666 for 2018-19, and $180,099 for the 2019-2020 school year.

The vote was 5-1, the minimum number of yes-votes required for approval, with three board members abstaining due to conflicts of interest. One of the five members who approved the contract stepped down from the board after the meeting to take a public job that would have barred him from serving, said Betsy Cross, a Wall resident and local watchdog who worked with the plaintiffs on the suit.

The vote was extremely rushed, Cross said.

The suit was filed by Zazzali, Fagella, Nowak, Kleinbaum & Friedman, a Newark firm that has handled cases for the New Jersey Education Association, the Wall unions parent organization. The plaintiffs included six union members and Wall resident Kathleen Doran, who first appealed the boards 2017 vote to the state Department of Education, where an administrative law judge dismissed the appeal.

The education commissioner at the time, Lamont Repollet, then upheld the administrative judges decision, prompting Doran and the union members to appeal to the Appellate Division, leading to last weeks ruling overturning the administrative decision and voiding Dyers contract.

In a phone interview, Doran said she was very, very happy, with the ruling.

You see so much secrecy and slight-of-hand in a financial matter, it just doesnt reflect well on the board, said Doran, a mother of three whose son graduated last year from Wall High School, where her two other children are still enrolled.

The union president, Gail Maher, issued a statement insisting that the suit was part of the WTEAs effort to advocate for our students and staff.

Taxpayers need to trust that elected officials are being open and transparent with how they govern, Mayer stated

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Shes a pioneer among mathematicians. She has revolutionized her field. And, now, shes the first women to win one of the worlds biggest awards for mathematics.

Karen Uhlenbeck, who lives in Princeton, was announced Tuesday as the winner of the Abel Prize, which recognizes contributions to the field of extraordinary depth and influence. Given by The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the prize considered the mathematics version of the Nobel Prize.

Uhlenbeck, a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University, earned the distinction for her work in geometric analysis and gauge theory, which has dramatically changed the mathematical landscape.

Gauge theory is the language of theoretical physics, and Uhlenbecks work improved the modern mathematical understanding of models in particle physics, string theory and general relativity, according to the academy.

Her theories have revolutionized our understanding of minimal surfaces, such as those formed by soap bubbles, and more general minimization problems in higher dimensions, said Hans Munthe-Kaas, chair of the Abel Committee.

The award was created in 2002 and comes with a $700,000 prize.

Uhlenbeck was born in Ohio but her family moved to New Jersey when she was in elementary school. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her PhD in mathematics from Brandeis University.

She taught at MIT, the University of Illinois and the University of Texas before returning to New Jersey, where she also works as a visiting associate at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton.

Uhlenbeck has said shes struggled to come to terms with her own success, according to her biography on the Abel Prize website.

Its hard, because what you really need to do is show students how imperfect people can be and still succeed," Uhlenbeck said. "Everyone knows that if people are smart, funny, pretty, or well-dressed they will succeed. But its also possible to succeed with all of your imperfections. I may be a wonderful mathematician and famous because of it, but Im also very human.

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Cory Booker has long been known as a famously prolific Twitter personality, starting when he was mayor of Newark and would personally address concerns from residents who tweeted him.

As a United States senator, Booker, 49, has kept up with the Twitter habit. So when Toronto-based writer Anna Fitzpatrick set about digging into the presidential hopefuls past tweets, there was no lack of material awaiting discovery.

But Fitzpatrick soon noticed a very specific trend in the form of one very specific joke.

'Sleep' and I broke up a few nights ago, Booker tweeted in May of 2009, when he was still mayor of Newark. Im dating Coffee now. Shes Hot!

this is what im talking about https://t.co/Y2GsK1hGEr  Anna Fitzpatrick (@bananafitz) March 18, 2019

What was truly remarkable, however, was the absolute longevity of this joke in Bookers repertoire.

Fitzpatrick started her thread on Booker by saying we should vet all the presidential candidates, but that digging up their tweets from 2009 is a low blow. every tweet from 2009 is bad.

However, she immediately noticed that Booker had recycled his 2009 joke in 2017.

I broke up with sleep last night and Im dating coffee this morning. . . I appreciate her warmth and stimulating company, Booker tweeted in December of that year.

wait this one is from 2017 its fair game https://t.co/4dWZnyaCXe  Anna Fitzpatrick (@bananafitz) March 18, 2019

Booker is currently dating the actress and activist Rosario Dawson. But that wasnt the end of his love affair with Coffee and decision to spurn his old flame, Sleep.

In sum:

A tweet from 2015 revealed an astonishing continuity in Bookers Coffee-Sleep romance riff. This time he was back to the ol she is hot observation.

Rewind two more years to 2013 and here we have it again, in all of its glory. Booker and Coffee, perfect together.

Apparently Booker was frequently accosted with the do you ever sleep question, so the coffee joke was simply waiting and ready through the duration of the 2010s. (Pictured below: Booker answers tweets in 2012.)

In 2009, Booker considered the caffeinated beverage his smoldering love.

2009, again off limits https://t.co/QvB5UTXP6F  Anna Fitzpatrick (@bananafitz) March 18, 2019

In 2010, she wasnt just hot. She had a stimulating attitude. And it turns out Sleep left him for another man!

People just wouldnt stop asking the mayor if he ever went to sleep. Old Reliable was there. The Sleep-Coffee Complex, of course.

In 2012, Booker maintained that Coffee was not only hot, but also sweet, and that Sleep was just plain uncooperative.

In 2010, Coffee was a special friend." How coy.

By 2012, Booker was insisting that he and Sleep had separated for good due to irreconcilable differences ... and of course, his tall, hot, sweet nu friend.

Fitzpatrick capped her masterpiece  containing 12 nearly identical jokes  with a plea to Dawson, Bookers actual girlfriend.

please dont unfollow me on twitter, rosario dawson.  Anna Fitzpatrick (@bananafitz) March 18, 2019

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.

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Mark Hareliks The Immigrant is a love letter to his grandfather, Haskell Harelik. A Russian Jew who arrived on American shores in 1909 after desperately fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms at home, Haskell embodied The American Dream: rising from a penniless immigrant to a successful business owner and family man.

The play is composed with dewy-eyed veneration for Haskell and his journey, and under the direction of Jim Jack, the production strikes a similar tone of reverence. Haskells story is no doubt admirable and exceptional, epitomizing much that is wonderful about America and its history. The play touches briefly on some of the challenges and prejudices complicating the countrys professed ideals, but exerts most of its energy on framing the glory of Haskells life and journey. In this way, the production becomes mostly a warm biographical story: long on sentiment, short on drama.

The play opens with Haskells (Benjamin Pelteson) harrowing journey from Russia to the unfamiliar ground of Galveston, Texas. Once there, his Jewish religious attire and lack of any English mark him immediately as an outsider among the white Christian community, but Haskell finds himself a wagon, a banana supplier, and begins scraping together some money.

Soon Haskell gains the support of a local couple, Milton (R. Ward Duffy) and Ima Perry (Gretchen Hall), who rent him a bedroom and will go on to support his growth in the community. Once Haskell achieves his first goal of earning enough money to purchase passage for his wife, Leah (Lauriel Friedman), to join him from Russia, he dedicates himself fully to growing Texas roots for himself and his family.

Although their backgrounds are starkly different, the Hareliks and Perrys remain close friends for years (the plays timeline spans much of the twentieth century), with the exception of one argument over Americas evolving immigration policy, which finds the country welcoming far fewer newcomers as World War II approaches and unfolds.

Pictured (from left) are Gretchen Hall and Lauriel Friedman The Immigrant at George Street Playhouse through April 7. (Photo by T. Charles Erickson)T. Charles Erickson

This scene, which begins as a cordial dinner party, is the height of the plays drama. As the two wives try to tamp down any tempers, Haskell and Milton find themselves staunchly planted in opposite corners about Americas responsibility to help suffering populations around the globe. Jacks direction intensifies the conflict, by confining all four characters to a small table as tempers rise and flare. The plays story is to a certain degree timely if a bit idealized, throughout, but this scene seems ripped from any number of family gatherings in the US over the past few years.

Milton espouses the Trumpian notion of American exceptionalism and triumphalism, while Haskell decries such ideas as unethical hypocrisy. Pelteson and Duffy manage these opposing conditions and the boiling tension well, making the stakes of the debate feel at once far reaching and deeply personal.

The scene is a bold standout in part because the rest of the production plays matters relatively safe. Haskell is the victim of some antisemitic threats early on, but the play quickly moves past that, and some more debate about Haskell and Leahs religious identity rises and quickly dissipates. On the whole, this is a play about overcoming adversity with a stress on the success more than the struggle. As such, it often feels timid in its writing and production, eager to hold up the greatness of Haskells story while less interested in the stories of those who have suffered under the broken promises of The American Dream.

THE IMMIGRANT

George Street Playhouse

103 College Farm Road, New Brunswick

Tickets online www.GSPonline.org or by phone (732) 246-7717. Running through April 7.

Patrick Maley may be reached at patrickjmaley@gmail.com. Find him on Twitter and Instagram @PatrickJMaley. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.
When a 2 year old comes to brunch you perform baby shark for them!!! pic.twitter.com/Ikx94mlTxO  Marti Gould Cummings (@MartiGCummings) March 16, 2019

New York drag queen Marti Gould Cummings was performing at a brunch in Jersey City on Saturday when they unexpectedly became the star of a viral video.

Cummings, a regular fixture at the new Whats the Tea Drag Brunch at Talde, a restaurant on Erie Street, simply fielded a request from a 2-year-old boy to sing the hit childrens song/nefarious earworm Baby Shark" (which has racked up 2.4 billion views on YouTube).

As Cummings danced and clapped, the boy clapped along. The crowd ate it up, then the internet followed suit.

The resulting 22-second video, which Cummings posted to Twitter after their shark encounter, currently claims 644,000 views, 6,996 retweets and 40,967 likes.

I just want to say that never in a million years would I think a 20-second video would become the sensation that it has, but I am extremely grateful and overwhelmed, Cummings said in a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday. Drag is such beautiful expression of love and its an expression of joy, and our jobs as drag artists are to entertain and make people escape and have moments of happiness in this crazy, chaotic world.

Drag queen Marti Gould Cummings.Courtesy Talde

Cummings, who originally hails from Maryland, was a cast member on the Fusion TV series Shade: Queens of NYC."

The drag star used their Baby Shark fame to urge those who watched the clip to volunteer for a candidate they believe in and help get them elected.

They also encouraged people to seek out local organizations that support LGBTQIA rights.

Since I seem to have the internets attention for a moment I want to encourage all of the new followers & people engaging with baby shark to contact @AliForneyCenter for Homeless lgbtq youth & @HetrickMartin home of the harvey milk high school & find out how you can help them!!  Marti Gould Cummings (@MartiGCummings) March 19, 2019

Drag is also a form of political resistance, and in todays era, we need that, you know?" Cummings said. 50 years this year, Stonewall happened because police raided the Stonewall Inn and Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera took it upon themselves, along with the queer community, to stand up and fight back and lead the LGBTQ movement, which has today afforded us so many rights. But we have so much further to go. We have a transgender military ban happening right now under this administration. We have laws being put in place to shut down queer people and their rights on state levels, so we have a lot of work to do."

I want you all to now go from reading about Baby Shark and do the work that really matters, they said.

The Whats the Tea drag show is 1 p.m. every Saturday at Talde (8 Erie St.) in Jersey City (brunch runs from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.); taldejerseycity.com

This is truly wild...  Marti Gould Cummings (@MartiGCummings) March 19, 2019

Take a minute and watch! Happy Tuesday  pic.twitter.com/aRUEhyU0Ol  Marti Gould Cummings (@MartiGCummings) March 19, 2019

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A Newark fire captain was injured Monday night while battling a three-alarm blaze that spread to three buildings and forced 10 families from their homes, officials said.

Firefighters were called at 6:55 p.m. for a blaze at a three-story building on the first block of Mt. Prospect Avenue, Newark Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose said. The fire quickly escalated to three alarms and a total of 85 firefighters were called to the scene to battle the blaze.

A fire captain was taken to University Hospital for neck injuries, officials said. No other injuries were reported.

The extensive damage displaced 10 families, including 15 adults, eight children and three pet dogs, though officials said that number could increase.

Newark Fire Divisions Arson Unit is investigating the cause and origin of the fire.

Firefighters from 10 surrounding towns assisted including Irvington, Montclair, Bloomfield, Jersey City, South Orange and Belleville.

Newark U/D 3rd Alarm 147 Mt. Prospect Ave Fire Vacant 2.5 Story Frame ext to Exposures B&D and exposures on C Side on Garside Street. Mutual Aid Cover from Neighboring Towns , Hudson Co and Union County. E26 on FireWatch. pic.twitter.com/Jo36MnMRdC  NorthJersey FireNews (@NJFires) March 19, 2019

Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Spring is nearly here, which means your taxes are due in a few weeks.

But ... you also get free Italian ice.

In case you were not aware of this tradition, Ritas is hosting its annual Italian ice giveaway from noon to 9 p.m. on the spring equinox, aka the first day of spring.

When is the first day of spring? Wednesday, March 20, 2019.

Each person gets one free ice. The cool treat will be served in a 7-ounce limited-edition first day of spring cup. For an extra charge, customers can add a frozen custard topper.

Ritas, which is based in Trevose, Pennsylvania, was founded by former Philadelphia firefighter Bob Tumolo in 1984 as Ritas Water Ice in Bensalem.

The water ice business, which was named after Tumolos wife, began franchising in 1989 and has been serving free Italian ice on the first day of spring for more than 20 years.

Today, Italian ice varieties at Ritas include classics like cherry, lemon, watermelon and chocolate. But you can also get blue raspberry, margarita, vanilla, banana, cotton candy, guava, strawberry lemonade, pineapple, chocolate peanut butter, root beer, Swedish fish, green apple, blueberry, wild black cherry, Florida orange, juicy pear, Key lime, tropical punch, chocolate chocolate chip, honeydew and cantaloupe.

Sugar-free ice varieties, made with Splenda, include tangerine, root beer and mango peach.

Ritas also sells Misto" drinks that blend Italian ice and frozen custard, gelati made with layers of ice and custard, and custard sundaes.

To find your nearest Ritas location, enter your address in this store finder or check the list of all Ritas locations in New Jersey.

Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.

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BAYONNE  Two goat heads and a dead sheep were found along the citys western shoreline Sunday and Monday, prompting law enforcement to investigate how they got there.

Residents told The Jersey Journal their children found one of the goats heads and the dead sheep on Monday near 16th Street Park, while another goat head was found Sunday near Veterans Stadium.

Police responded to the scene on Monday, where they found a brown goat head, but said they had no knowledge of the other head and the dead sheep found as well.

Bayonne police spokesperson, Lt. Eric Amato, said it is undetermined where the animal came from or how it ended up on the shoreline.

"It is unsure if this was a prank but the Bayonne Police Municipal Humane Law Enforcement Officers are following up on the incident," he said.

Irene Borngraeber, the executive director of Liberty Humane Society, which handles animal control for Bayonne, said she was called by a resident about the incident and reported it to the police and health departments.

She said there could be animal cruelty charges that stem from the incident "if anyone can actually be proved to be in connection with it."

It also depends on where the animals came from as well. The keeping of livestock in Jersey City and Bayonne is not permitted, which also begs the question of how did (the dead animals) get there, she added.

Liberty Humane Society has received reports of beheaded birds in Jersey City in the past, which Borngraeber said some people have suggested were part of a ritualistic sacrifice.

We have no grounds to believe that is the case (in this situation), but it is something that we do look out for and we have investigated, she said.

The grisly findings in Bayonne are not the first bizarre animals to be found dead in Hudson County this year. In February, police in Jersey City found a dead 6-foot snake hanging from a Virgin Mary statue at the corner of Seventh and Brunswick streets.

Corey W. McDonald may be reached at cmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @cwmcdonald_. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
HOBOKEN  A portion of Mayor Ravi Bhallas plan to alleviate the citys notorious parking woes will likely be eliminated after a groundswell of complaints from residents, business owners, and visitors regarding increased rates at parking meters.

The plan, implemented on March 4, intended to improve curbside parking availability by charging more for metered parking on the waterfront and Washington Street (75-90 cents for 15 minutes); and less for metered parking away from the citys main drag (50-60 cents for 15 minutes).

On Tuesday, Bhalla announced his support of legislation to return metered parking rates to $1 per hour and permit Hoboken residents with residential permits to park up to four hours in a metered location. Hoboken spokesman Vijay Chaudhuri said a first reading of the ordinance to roll back the dynamic meter rates will take place at Wednesdays City Council meeting.

At the end of the day, it is my job to put Hoboken residents first, Bhalla said in a statement. We will continue to try new things and look to innovative solutions to solve our problems, but I also look to you to help drive our city to reach its highest potential.

Ruben Ramos and Mike DeFusco, two council members who opposed the initial meter rate hikes, said in a joint statement that they are pleased the fees would return to normal.

We are happy the Mayor now sees what the numerous residents who opposed this plan and the members of the Council who voted no saw from the beginning -- that raising parking rates up to 260 percent with no improvements to the overall system and no new parking availability is outrageous, Ramos and DeFusco said.

Ramos and DeFusco said they hoped Bhalla will now work with the City Council to create a more holistic approach for addressing parking concerns, including more garage spaces, using new technology to direct cars to underutilized parking areas, and providing more transportation alternatives.

But other aspects of the mayors parking overhaul, which was passed by the city council, will remain in place, Chaudhuri said.

They include a free HOP shuttle service allowing drivers to park in other areas of the city and be transported to busier destinations where parking is at a premium, and reduced parking garage rates for the employees of city businesses.

Adrian Rivera, a bartender at the Brass Rail on Washington Street, said one of the waitresses he works with complained that she was paying almost double for parking after the changes took effect on March 4.

Anthony Romano, a Hudson County freeholder and owner of Louise and Jerrys Tavern on Washington Street, said any reduction in parking fees helps the businesses, residents, and visitors.

We are competing with Jersey City and we need all the help we can get, Romano said.

When asked if the increase in meter rates hurt his business, Ernie Reyes, owner of City Paint and Ace Hardware on Washington Street, said absolutely, its had an impact on business.

You have to pay $3.60 to park just to make a $1.99 key copy. It doesnt make any sense to do it.
More than a dozen acceptance letters later, Dylan Chidick learned Tuesday that he got in to The College of New Jersey, his top choice school.

For the 17-year-old, the road to college was not an easy one. Dylan, his twin younger brothers and his mother were homeless for several months in 2017. His brothers had heart conditions that left the family with large medical bills, and his mother also lost her job.

But theyve been getting lots of good news as of late, including a surprise visit at his Jersey City high school from TCNJ.

Grecia Montero, TCNJs director of admissions and enrollment management, said the day was an emotional one for everyone.

It really was amazing to watch how people do come together to support such an amazing student, she said in a phone call Tuesday afternoon. It was nice to be able to a part of that support network.

Montero said Dylan is interested in political science as of now, and has mentioned wanting to become a lawyer.

The family of four ended up moving into a shelter with the help WomenRising, a nonprofit based in Jersey City.

They came to the U.S. from Trinidad when Dylan was 7, according to a CBS report. Dylan attends Henry Snyder High School, where he serves as class president and student council president.

Last week, a donor offered to pay for his tuition and board.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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EDITORS NOTE: On April 3, NJ Cannabis Insider will host an all-day live event, featuring industry leaders and the key voices who will shape the industry. Tickets are limited. More information.

After hours of backroom deliberation in Trenton on Monday, two legislative committees advanced a marijuana legalization bill to the full state Legislature, which is expected to vote on it next week. If they pass it, the measure would just need the governors signature to become law.

NJ Advance Media has reported that both the state Senate and Assembly are short the votes required for passage, but Gov. Phil Murphy has now entered the fray and is now helping swing votes. Legislative leaders have shown public confidence that they think legalization will pass on March 25.

So lets take a look at the two possibilities and how that affects when weed sales could start in New Jersey.

What if weed is legalized next week?

Legalization is a misleading way to put it, at least at first. If lawmakers pass the bill next week, you wouldnt be allowed to just start walking around with weed in your pocket the next day.

The measure gives regulators up to six months to make the specific rules of the industry and it wouldnt be legal to use or possess marijuana until the rules are approved and sales start. Lawmakers have done this so as not to legitimize the marijuana black market.

If the bill were to pass next week, the first possible sales would likely be about six months after, assuming the existing medical marijuana dispensaries are approved to start selling to the public. The bill allows medical marijuana dispensaries to sell to the public as early as six months after passage as long as they get permission from the state and they have enough marijuana to sell to their patients first.

So, if a lot of things fall into place, you could buy in New Jersey by this fall. But as weve seen, things dont always fall into place in Trenton.

What if the bill doesnt pass this time?

Weve heard from legislative sources that the Assembly is still a couple of votes shy of the 41 needed for passage and the Senate still needs a few more lawmakers to swing. There was also significant opposition from Republican legislators on Monday, including some who had been considered getable votes.

With less than a week before the scheduled vote, the governor and legislative leaders still have a lot of work to do to get the bill through.

NJ Advance Media had previously reported that if marijuana wasnt legalized this spring it would likely go to the ballot for voters to decide. State Senate President Stephen Sweeney has since said thats not going to happen.

Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said earlier this month that if they cant get legalization done this month that hed push it to after the election in November. If this happens, were looking at the summer of 2020 before weed sales could likely start.

A lot will happen in the next week as we approach the legalization vote, but if and when youll be able to legally buy marijuana is going to be in lawmakers hands.

Payton Guion may be reached at PGuion@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @PaytonGuion.

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Adult-use marijuana is on the cusp of becoming legal in New Jersey. If the legal weed in N.J. measure passes next Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy is sure to sign it. The next steps will likely become a fast trot as regulators would immediately start writing the rules of the industry with an expected launch about a year after passage.

If youre still not ready  and even if you are  there wont be a better time to get informed by the people who are framing New Jerseys industry right now.

On April 3, NJ Cannabis Insider is hosting an all-day event featuring industry leaders at Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway. The event packs in a full day of programming, panel discussions, networking opportunities, and lunch. Space is limited and tickets wont last. (Click here for ticket information).

Check out some of the ground-breaking panelists below. Expect a few more additions to this amazing group before the event next month.

Keynote speaker

Hadley Ford, CEO of iAnthus

Ford is the co-founder and CEO of iAnthus, one of the largest multi-state operators in the cannabis space. With more than 30 years as operating executive, investor and investment banker in the healthcare and technology industries, Ford has a significant amount of operational experience managing large healthcare operations. Before iAnthus, he was the co-founder and CEO of ProCure Treatment Centers, Inc., a leading developer of full-service proton therapy centers for the treatment of cancer.

Panelists

Dara Servis, New Jersey Cannabis Industry Assn.

Servis, who previously served as a director at CLB Partners, performed much of the groundwork responsible for building and creating the New Jersey Cannabis Industry Association and continues to lead the day-to-day operations as the associations executive director.

William Bill Caruso, Archer Attorneys at Law

Caruso, who formerly served as the executive director of the New Jersey Assembly Majority Office and chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, is a prominent fixture in the effort to legalize and regulate the cannabis industry in New Jersey. Caruso, an attorney with Archer Public Affairs and a regular guest on Chasing News, also represents New Jersey United for Marijuana Reform, and has advocated for expungements and patient access to medical cannabis.

Jennifer Cabrera, of Cabrera Cammarota LLC

Cabrera is an attorney who advises clients in commercial litigation before state and federal courts, as well as arbitrations in the U.S. and abroad. Her clients include individuals and businesses operating in telecommunications, software development, financial services, manufacturing, food and wine, and cannabis.

Michael McQueeny, Genova Burns

McQueeny, the chair of Genova Burns cannabis law practice, is deep into the legal issues the industry will face once things open for business.

William Bill Pascrell III, Princeton Public Affairs

Known to many as BPIII, Pascrell is a longtime insider, veteran lobbyist and the son of U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. For the past 15 years, Princeton Public Affairs Group has ranked as the top lobbying firm in New Jersey, based on receipts, ELEC records show. Pascrell also served as counsel to Gov. Phil Murphys transition team, as a member of the campaigns finance committee, as Passaic County counsel for more than 20 years, as an adviser to a number of Democratic politicians.

Colleen Mahr, New Jersey League of Municipalities

Mahr, the president of the New Jersey League of Municipalities and mayor of Fanwood, will speak on the issues facing municipalities with respect to legalization.

April Lee, CEO of Accurate Amendment Solutions

Lee is the founder and CEO of Accurate Amendment Solutions. She has significant experience navigating the complex interplay between federal, state and local laws especially with respect to obtaining grants for municipalities.

Stephen Boracchia, Atlantic Highlands councilman

Boracchia, a councilman in Atlantic Highlands, is also an attorney who previously served as chief compliance officer for the Oakland, Calif.-based cannabis company, Herban Industries.

Tara Sargente, executive director of the New Jersey CannaBusiness Association

Sargente, the founder and CEO of Blazin Bakery, is a longtime operator in the cannabis space. Most recently, she joined onto the NJCBA as its executive director.

Rani Soto, CannaGather NJ

Soto is the co-founder of CannaGather NJ and the national Latinx outreach director for Minorities for Medical Marijuana.

Vikas Desai, WelCan Capital

Desai is the co-founder of one of the first investment funds in the cannabis industry. The firm invests in businesses in the ancillary and plant-touching cannabis sectors.

Carol Gabel, of MGR2

Gabel is a lobbyist with more than 20 years of experience with executive management and government relations, including with two state Chambers of Commerce, five government administrations and numerous legislators and elected officials.

If you want to be on the ground floor of this emerging industry, you wont want to miss this event. Click here for ticket information.

For more information, visit the NJ Cannabis Insider Event page.

NJ Cannabis Insider, an NJ.com premium industry trade journal, features exclusive weekly content geared toward those interested in the marijuana industry. View a sample issue.
A serious crash involving injuries on Route 1 in North Brunswick has forced the closure of all southbound lanes on Tuesday morning.

The crash took place near the intersection of Commerce Boulevard and spilled debris along the busy highway, according to 511nj.org, the state department of transportations website. The southbound lanes are closed between Adams Lane and Commerce Boulevard, SigAlert.com said.

Southbound traffic is getting through on the shoulder. Delays were already 10 to 15 minutes in both directions ahead of the peak morning rush.

Rt 1 southbound all lanes closed, traffic using shoulder at Commerce Blvd in North Brunswick because of a crash with injuries and a debris spill. Use caution, slow down and expect delays  NJDOT (@NJDOT_info) March 19, 2019

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
A 65-year-old driver was killed early Tuesday in Old Bridge when she crashed her car into a tree in front of a hospital, police said.

The woman was driving west on Ferry Road just before 12:30 a.m. when she veered off the road and struck a tree, Capt. Joe Mandola said.

Paramedics performed CPR and brought her to Raritan Bay Medical Center, a few hundred feet away, where she was pronounced dead.

The Old Bridge resident was wearing a seat belt. Her identity will be released after notification of her family.

There were no passengers in the car. The cause of the crash in under investigation.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Over the past 20 years, Americans have been twice as likely to sweat through record-breaking heat rather than shiver through record-setting cold, a new Associated Press data analysis shows.

The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 states that had consistent temperature records since 1920 and counted how many times daily hot temperature records were tied or broken and how many daily cold records were set. In a stable climate, the numbers should be roughly equal.

Since 1999, the ratio has been two warm records set or broken for every cold one. In 16 of the last 20 years, there have been more daily high temperature records than low.

The AP shared the data analysis with several climate and data scientists, who all said the conclusion was correct, consistent with scientific peer-reviewed literature and showed a clear sign of human-caused climate change. They pointed out that trends over decades are more robust than over single years.

The analysis stopped with data through 2018. However, the first two months of 2019 are showing twice as many cold records than hot ones. Thats temporary and trends are over years and decades, not months, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt.

We are in a period of sustained and significant warming and  over the long run  will continue to explore and break the warm end of the spectrum much more than the cold end, Arndt said.

An AP data analysis of records from 1999-2019 shows that in weather stations across America, hot records are being set twice as often as cold ones. In this file photo from August 2006, a construction worker pours water over his face as he takes a break from pouring concrete at a high-rise building project in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, N.Y. (AP file photo)Bebeto Matthews | AP

Former Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, who has been studying hot and cold extreme records since 2000, said the trend is unmistakable.

You are getting more extremes, Walton said. Your chances for getting more dangerous extremes are going up with time.

No place has that been more noticeable than the southern California city of Pasadena, where 7,203 days went by between cold records being broken. On Feb. 23, Pasadena set a low temperature record, its first since June 5, 1999.

Vermont native Paul Wennberg felt it. He moved to Pasadena in 1998 just before the dearth of cold records.

Even with the local cold we had this past month, its very noticeable, said Wennberg, a California Institute of Technology atmospheric sciences professor. Its just been ever warmer.

In between the two cold record days, Pasadena set 145 hot records. That includes an all-time high of 113 degrees last year.

Last year was unbelievable here, Wennberg said. The tops of a lot of the hedges, they essentially melted.

Scientists often talked about human-caused global warming in terms of average temperatures, but thats not what costs money or sends people to the hospital. A study this month found that in just 22 states, about 36,000 people on average go to the hospital because of excessive summertime heat.

The extremes affect our lives, Arndt said, adding that they are expensive, with hospital stays, rising energy bills and crop losses.

National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Gerald Meehl, who has published peer-reviewed papers on the rising hot-to-cold ratio, said people pay more attention to climate when records are broken.

Chart shows annual counts from 1958 to 2018 for high maximum and low minimum temperature records across 424 NOAA weather stations analyzed by the Associated Press.AP

The AP counted daily records across 424 stations starting in 1920 and ending in 2018. The AP only considered daily  not all-time  high maximum temperatures and low minimum temperatures and only used stations with minimal missing data. Temperatures that tied previous records were counted in addition to temperatures that broke previous records.

More typical than Pasadena is Wooster, Ohio. From 1999 on, Wooster saw 106 high temperature records set or broken and 51 cold ones. In the previous eight decades, the ratio was slightly colder than one to one.

At MW Robinson Co., people are lining up for air conditioning installation as the climate seems to get have been getting hotter over the years, said Lori Bowersock, who coordinates the firms HVAC installations.

Its more and more every year, Bowersock said. Usually we dont have them lined up like this.

This chart shows how many record high temperatures have been set in New Jersey each year compared to record low temperatures, from 1969 to 2018.

Other key findings of the climate analysis

The APs other findings:

Since Jan. 1, 1999, just under half the stations had at least twice as many hot records set than cold ones, including Wooster.

In all, 87 percent of the weather stations had more hot records than cold since 1999. There have been 42 weather stations that have at least five hot records for every cold one since 1999, with 11 where the hot-to-cold ratio is 10-to-1 or higher, including Pasadena.

All nine of NOAAs climate regions have seen more hot records set than cold ones since 1999, with the West, Southwest and Northeast having a 3-to-1 ratio.

All four seasons have had more hot records broken than cold for the same time period.

Most decades in the 20th century had close to an even ratio of hot to cold. The 1930s, driven by Dust Bowl summers, had about 1.4 hot records for every cold. The 1960s and 1970s had about 1.5 cold records for every hot. The 21st century has a 1.9-to-1 hot-to-cold ratio.

As a measure of climate change, the dailies (temperature records) will tell you more about whats happening, said climate scientist Chris Field of Stanford. The impacts of climate change almost always come packaged in extremes.

Seth Borenstein, an AP science writer, reported from Washington. Nicky Forster, an AP data journalist, reported from New York. Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears .
When you pick up your dry cleaning, have your nails done, grab a gallon of milk or buy a cup of coffee on any Main Street in New Jersey, you are most likely standing across the counter from an immigrant business owner, according to a new study.

The percentage of small businesses owned by immigrants in New Jersey has nearly doubled since 1990, according to a report released Monday by New Jersey Policy Perspective, a left-leaning think tank in Trenton.

About 47 percent of all neighborhood businesses in New Jersey are owned by immigrants, the study found. Immigrants in New Jersey -- both those living here legally and illegally -- own a higher share of Main Street businesses than in any other state in the nation except California.

On any given day in every corner of the state, immigrants -- both documented and undocumented -- wake up and set out to work at small, local businesses that they themselves own and operate, the report said. This follows a nationwide trend, as immigrants are almost twice as likely to start new businesses than their native-born peers.

Immigrant business owners have all but taken over some categories of neighborhood businesses in New Jersey, according to New Jersey Policy Perspectives analysis of 2016 Census data.

Their researchers focused on Main Street businesses, which they defined as locally-owned retail shops, restaurants and neighborhood services businesses. They dont include corporate-owned chains or large businesses.

Here are the Main Street businesses in New Jersey where immigrants make up more than half of business owners, according to the report:

1. Household maintenance (including cleaning services, landscaping and lawn care)

Immigrant owners: 81 percent

Total businesses: 835

Immigrant owned: 676

2. Dry cleaning and laundry

Immigrant owners: 79 percent

Total businesses: 1,550

Immigrant owned: 1,232

3. Taxi and limousine

Immigrant owners: 73 percent

Total businesses: 1,534

Immigrant owned: 1,114

4. Nail salons and person care services

Immigrant owners: 70 percent

Total businesses: 1,441

Immigrant owned: 1,016

5. Grocery stores (bodegas and local shops)

Immigrant owners: 69 percent

Total businesses: 2,185

Immigrant owned: 1,516

6. Computer systems design and services

Immigrant owners: 53 percent

Total businesses: 5,865

Immigrant owned: 3,129

7. Restaurant and food services

Immigrant owners: 53 percent

Total businesses: 8,064

Immigrant owned: 4,300

8. Truck transportation

Immigrant owners: 52 percent

Total businesses: 3,166

Immigrant owned: 1,650

Immigrant business owners are also close to becoming the majority in other categories in New Jersey, including clothing stores (where immigrants make up 50 percent of owners) and child daycare services (where immigrants own 48 percent of businesses), the study found.

Why do immigrants own so many businesses in New Jersey?

New Jerseys population has long had one of the highest percentages of immigrants in the nation. Immigrants currently make up about 22 percent of the states population, said Erika Nava, the New Jersey Policy Perspective policy analyst who put together the report.

Immigrants are far more likely to start their own businesses than U.S.-born residents in New Jersey, partly because they face discrimination in hiring because they often speak limited English or because of their immigration status, Nava said.

Some immigrants say they started their own businesses because their college degrees and qualifications from their home countries are not recognized in the U.S.

Which immigrants own the most small businesses?

In New Jersey, Asian immigrants own 54 percent of immigrant-owned businesses, more than any other racial group, the study found. White immigrants own 26 percent of local businesses and Hispanics own 15 percent.

In New Jersey, Asian immigrant communities -- including Indian communities -- have a strong tradition of opening and supporting immigrant-owned businesses, Nava said.

Asians who are immigrants are more likely to open their own businesses than Asians who are native born, Nava said.

Where do these numbers come from?

New Jersey Policy Perspective used data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey to estimate the number of immigrant businesses in New Jersey. Their researchers focused on Main Street businesses, which they defined as retail, restaurants and local neighborhood services businesses.

How can undocumented immigrants own businesses if they are in the country illegally?

Some immigrants start their businesses in what researchers call New Jerseys informal market," meaning they do not have legally incorporated or recognized companies. Some, like lawn maintenance companies or cleaning companies, may go door to door to get business. Others might offer services under the table until they can gain legal status.

That allows undocumented immigrants to start and run their own businesses, even though they do not have a Social Security number or legal working papers, researchers said.

How much are they earning?

Immigrant-owned businesses earn about $4.4 billion a year in New Jersey, including $950 million from neighborhood businesses, the report estimated.

But the businesses are not always lucrative for their owners. New Jersey immigrant business owners earn less than the average U.S.-born worker and less their businesses average less than stores and firms owned by U.S.-born residents, according to the statistics.

New Jersey Policy Perspective did the study, in part, to offer numbers to support reforms supported by immigration advocates, including a proposal to offer drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants in New Jersey.

Legislation to offer drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants, which has the support of Gov. Phil Murphy, has some support among Trenton lawmakers but has not moved forward in the state Legislature.

Advocates argue giving undocumented immigrants drivers licenses would ultimately bring more money and buying power to immigrants and more cash to Main Street businesses.

Advocates also called for more training and support for immigrants who want to start small businesses in New Jersey. Most immigrants turn to other immigrants from their home countries for help, said Ray Lamboy, executive director of the Latin American Economic Development Association, a non-profit group.

Lamboy pointed to South Jersey, where there is a large network of neighborhood businesses owned by immigrants from the Puebla region of Mexico.

These immigrants own a majority of the Latino owned businesses in Camden and the Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton metro region, Lamboy said. A majority of these businesses are supported with resources from other immigrant entrepreneurs from the same part of Mexico.

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find her at KellyHeyboerReporter on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Two non-profits and a breeder illegally sold bred designer puppies as rescue dogs to an animal shelter in New Jersey and to pet stores across the country in an effort to circumvent puppy mill laws, the state of Iowa alleges in a suit that aims to shutter the Iowa firms.

The lawsuit, filed on March 11 by the Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, seeks to dissolve Hobo K9 Rescue of Britt, Iowa, and Rescue Pets Iowa and shut down J.A.K.s Puppies, a for-profit breeder also based in Britt.

Hobo K9 Rescue sold at least 1,290 puppies to eight entities in New Jersey, California, Illinois and Florida from September 2016 through July 2018, according to a release from the Iowa Attorney Generals Office.

Twenty five dogs were sent to Shake A Paw Center for Rescue and Adoption, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides animal rescue, shelter and adoption services and has locations in Green Brook and Union Township, Iowa Attorney Generals Office Spokesman Lynn Hicks said. Shake A Paw was not accused of any wrongdoing by the state of Iowa.

The puppies, which included Pomeranians, Shar-Peis, Alaskan Malamutes, Poodle-Yorkies and other breeds, were allegedly sold for $714,510, the suit stated.

Puppy laundering is the practice of using non-profit rescue groups to obscure the source of dogs, deceive consumers and circumvent puppy mill bans, Miller explained in the release.

Hicks said his office sent a subpoena seeking additional information to Shake A Paw and the organizations attorneys responded by saying they do not have to answer questions and dont do business in Iowa.

A woman who answered the phone at Shake A Paw referred questions for the organizations owner, Jeffrey Morton, who she said was out of state. An email sent to Morton was not returned Tuesday night.

The suit states that the people who ran the entities in Iowa violated that states consumer fraud act. They include Hobo K9 Rescue President Jolyn K. Noethe, its treasurer Kimberly Dolphin and its secretary Megan Peterson.

Russell Kirk who serves as the president, secretary, treasurer and director of Rescue Pets Iowa was also named in the suit. Noethe, Dolphin and Peterson are also involved with J.A.K.s Puppies, the state alleges.

No matter where they live, consumers should not be misled about the source of the pets they buy, Miller said in the release. Puppy laundering obscures the identity of breeders who may have animal welfare violations or other problems.

A 2018 investigation by the attorney generals office revealed that Hobo K9 sold pure-bred puppies that it purchased from J.A.K.s Puppies to the out-of-state pet shops, the lawsuit stated.

The breeder acquired the dogs from puppy mills, the state said.

After the attorney generals office began their investigation, a brand-new sham charity called Rescue Pets Iowa Corp. was created by the non-profits and breeder in December, according to the lawsuit.

The state said its investigation showed that veterinary inspections of the dogs sold to California and other states showed that many were purebred and designer puppies.

In addition to shutting down the non-profits and breeders, the suit seeks a temporary injunction prohibiting any of the defendants from any business or charitable activities involving the transfer of animals, and a permanent injunction against deceptive practices."

The attorney generals office also seeks civil penalties of up to $40,000 for each violation and reimbursement to any customers who were sold a dog that they thought was a rescue.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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A person infected with measles may have exposed others at Newark Liberty International Airport earlier this month, health officials said.

The traveler, whose name was not released, arrived at Terminal C from a flight from Aruba on March 4, the New Jersey Department of Health announced Monday.

The individual was infectious on that day and may have traveled to other areas of the airport, according to the release.

The person then traveled to California from Terminal C, authorities said.

The health department said anyone who was at the airport between 9 p.m. on March 4 and 9:30 a.m. on March 5 could have been exposed to measles.

Anyone who was infected at the airport could develop symptoms as late as March 26 and anybody who feared they were exposed was asked to call their doctor.

New Jersey residents identified as potentially exposed on the ill individuals flights will be notified by their local health department, the state said.

People who have not been vaccinated or have not had measles were at risk of getting the disease, which usually starts with symptoms including fever, coughing and a rash that usually starts on the face.

People can also get sick when they come in contact with mucus or saliva from an infected person and anyone who has not been vaccinated or has not had measles was at risk if they were exposed.

Measles can also cause serious complications such as pneumonia and encephalitis, a swelling of the brain, and can lead to a miscarriage, premature birth or low-birth weight baby for pregnant women, the CDC said.

It can be spread through the air when someone coughs or sneezes and an people can get sick if they come in contact with mucus or saliva from an infected person, officials said.

The New Jersey Department of Health declared a new outbreak of measles in Lakewood on March 15 after three people were confirmed to have the highly contagious disease.

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By John DiMaio

Heading into budget season it is more important than usual to look at the past rhetoric of the politicians who control our finances and look at their actions. Because what we have found is what our founding fathers knew: taxes that are too high lead to revenues that are too low, and everybody is worse off as a result.

The facts bear this out. Since Phil Murphy became governor in January of last year, taxes have been raised on already overtaxed New Jerseyans by over $2.25 billion. Income tax revenue is down by over 5 percent and total revenue is 3.5 percent below expectations despite new taxes on the states wealthiest, remarkably low unemployment, and strong wage growth. And New Jerseyans are more dissatisfied with their quality of life than ever recorded.

The vast majority of tax increases have been on the working poor and middle class; the same people that those in charge claim to want to help. Taxes on shore rentals, Uber, rehab, registering and renting cars, and utilities are only a few.

For example, a public retirement program will be established for private sector employees and even those retirement savings will be taxed; so much for trying to help people retire. Another example, Senate President Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin agreed in December that they would not increase taxes  yet they passed another eight tax increases, seven of which came in January on the first chance they got.

Every single person I talk to, on each side of the aisle, will tell you that New Jersey is too expensive. For all the efforts of our states most powerful politicians, they have continually made the state more expensive for the working poor and middle class. Raising taxes on the people we are trying to help is a self-destructive irony.

No matter how many taxes are raised on the working poor, middle class, and wealthier residents, we cannot fund our priorities.

Intuition tells us that when more people have jobs, wages are rising, and income taxes were raised, that income tax revenue would increase well over the amount raised last year. But the opposite has happened. Income tax revenue is still down over 5 percent from last year despite every typical metric pointing toward growth.

The income tax funds our schools and is dedicated to property tax relief. Without a doubt, those are the top issues for the people of New Jersey. And yet, spending will have been increased by $4 billion dollars in the past two years while the state as a whole is receiving no relief. Our pensions are still underfunded, schools are left needing billions, and property taxes continue to be the bane of New Jerseyans efforts to make ends meet.

The lessons are obvious: excessive taxation is harmful to the people, and government should have learned this the first time. Instead, many of our elected officials continually advocate for more. While the finances of the working poor and middle class continue to become dire in the face of living costs, so does our state government  and taxpayers are always on the hook.

This is not a new lesson. The foundation of our republic was built on the clear understanding that taxes do not help people; they make life more difficult. Taxes serve only to fund the government, but government is a necessary evil that feeds off the prosperity of its people.

Government should be kept as small as the taxes that fund it. Instead, New Jersey has ignored this lesson and our taxes are as big as our government.

No matter how many cost savings are found, and there are billions and billions more that can be had, this budget season we must ultimately list our state governments primary functions and make them our priority.

No matter how many taxes are raised, the revenue raised will never be enough because our taxpayers cannot afford it. If they could, income tax revenue would exceed expectations instead of falling short.

The lesson is stated in Federalist Paper No. 12, where Alexander Hamilton wrote:

It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation. Tax laws have in vain been multiplied; new methods to enforce the collection have in vain been tried; the public expectation has been uniformly disappointed, and the treasuries of the States have remained empty.

This lesson was learned and revolution was born. Then, our republic was built upon the idea.

The residents of New Jersey must heed our founding fathers and mothers and fight for their livelihood. Our state is too expensive and it is at the expense of the people who live here. Taxpayers must take action to reduce our tax burden; otherwise, it will continue to increase.

On Wednesday, March 20, and Wednesday, March 27, at 9:30 a.m., in Trenton, the Assembly Budget Committee is opening its ears to taxpayers. The Senate budget committee will hold public hearings on Thursday, March 21 at 11 a.m. at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Campus Center Atrium, 150 Bleeker St., Newark, and Thursday, March 28 at 10 a.m. at Salem County Community College, 460 Hollywood Ave., Carneys Point. I encourage all those who are fed up to let their voices be heard.

Assemblyman John DiMaio is the Republican budget officer. He represents parts of Hunterdon, Somerset and Warren counties in the 23rd Legislative District.

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By James Sues

When President Trump was asked if he saw a rising threat from white nationalists in the wake of the horrific attacks against Muslims in New Zealand, he replied I dont, really.

Mr. President, have you heard the news from Charlotte, Pittsburg, or Charlottesville? This is what a rising threat looks like.

Despite our presidents failure to grasp the gravity of the situation, we cant afford to ignore the looming menace that is radical white nationalism.

In an era where social media algorithms create echo chambers amplifying and legitimizing perverse world views, deviant ideologies are easily spread across the globe amongst like minded individuals who would otherwise have never met. This creates an effective force multiplier for those who would commit violence in the name of hate.

We ignore this phenomenon at our peril.

We cant let a President who built his brand on the premise that non-whites pose a threat to white Americans safety and security, control the conversation. This is the President who has declared a National Emergency in a desperate attempt to fund a border wall that he claims will protect us from the drug dealers and rapists he says are lurking on the other side.

This is the same president who indicted all Muslims by calling for total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. These threatening concepts are the perfect fuel for inflaming the hateful rhetoric that triggers the horrific violence weve just witnessed.

The perpetrator of the horrific attacks against Muslims in Christ Church, New Zealand is not a lone wolf. He is connected to an ideology shared by hateful monsters just like him across the globe. The safety and security of all Americans depends on an intelligent assessment of the situation and a deliberate effort to aggressively address it, starting with an acknowledgement that the situation exists.

James Sues is executive director of CAIR New Jersey.

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The death of a man outside a Paterson bar is now under state investigation.

Steven Sherlock, 25, of Fair Lawn, died Sunday morning after a fight at Duffys Bar and Tavern, the state attorney generals office said in a news release.

Officers arrived at the bar around 2:44 a.m. after hearing of a fight outside. A large crowd had gathered, and witnesses told the officers Sherlock was in a fight with a couple.

A man, woman and Sherlock were taken to the hospital for evaluations. Officers took Sherlock to St. Josephs University Medical Center and relinquished custody so he could be treated.

Sherlock was pronounced dead there around 4 a.m.

The attorney generals office is investigating his death, following a law passed earlier this year requiring it to examine all deaths that occur during encounters with law enforcement or while someone is in custody.

Paterson Police Director Jerry Speziale, reached earlier Monday, referred inquiries to the county prosecutors office, which did not respond to a request for comment.

-Reporter Tony Attrino contributed to this story.

Joe Brandt can be reached at jbrandt@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JBrandt_NJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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An elementary school student in Wayne has come down with a case of highly-contagious whooping cough, the district superintendent said.

The student, who lives the Pines Lake section of town, attends Pines Lake School, Dr. Mark Toback said Tuesday.

Parents were notified immediately and no other students have gotten the respiratory disease, Toback added.

It can be spread by coughing or sneezing.

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis can cause serious illness in babies, children, teens, and adults, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control. Generally symptoms develop five to 10 days after exposure but occasionally it can take as long as three weeks to show.

Serious episodes of coughing spasms can be followed by a high pitched whoop sound when a person tries to take a breath, the state department of health says in describing advanced stages of the ailment.

The pertussis vaccine will generally prevent whooping cough but it is not 100 percent effective.

There were cases on whooping cough in Chatham and Summit earlier this winter.

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Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
WASHINGTON  A $41 million construction project at Picatinny Arsenal could be at risk as the Pentagon moves to fund President Donald Trumps southern border wall.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan included the munitions disassembly complex at Picatinny on a list of possible sources of money for the wall. The list was released Monday by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

After declaring a national emergency, Trump is looking for more than $6 billion in taxpayer funding earmarked by Congress for other projects to fund the barrier wall.

I have already voted for  and the president signed  a bipartisan bill to increase our border security, said Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-11th Dist., a member of the House Armed Services Committee whose district includes Picatinny. "His use of emergency funding will harm our operational security and I strongly oppose it.

Trump Admin finally releases its list of at-risk #milcon projects that could be put on the chopping block in order to divert billions to pay for Trumps ineffective #borderwall. Take a look - military bases in your state could be negatively impacted.

https://t.co/xJyDzjSITS  Senator Jack Reed (@SenJackReed) March 18, 2019

Trump declared a national emergency to get funds for the border wall after Congress specifically refused his request. Both the House and Senate voted to overturn the emergency, but Trump vetoed the resolution on Friday.

Since the moment President Trump made this unconstitutional power grab, I have said it makes America less safe," said Rep. Donald Norcross, D-1st Dist., another member of the House Armed Services Committee.

His actions remained unpopular with the American public, according to a CNN poll released Monday. Half of Americans, 50 percent, supported Congress action to overturn Trumps emergency, with 42 percent opposed.

And by 55 percent to 35 percent, they disagreed with Trumps veto. The poll of 1,003 U.S. adults was conducted Mar. 14-17 with a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.

The list of projects on the Pentagons list also included four projects totaling more than $100 million for Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. Those contracts are scheduled to be awarded in March, April, May and September, and the Defense Department said it would not divert funding from projects scheduled to begin before Oct. 1, but Reed spokesman Chip Unruh said they also could be at risk.

Nothing is set in stone, Unruh said. They could change their policy at any point or could be told to do something by the White House.

Rep. Andy Kim, D-3rd Dist., whose district includes the Joint Base, was on alert.

Critical funding for our joint base shouldnt be a pawn in Washingtons political games," said Kim, the third New Jersey member of the House Armed Services Committee.

But Rep. Chris Smith, R-4th Dist., whose district also houses part of the base, said Pentagon officials have reassured him that base funding is not in jeopardy. In fact, he said, a contract for the biggest share of the money, $72 million for hangers for the new KC-46A tankers, is supposed to be awarded this month.

These projects are not at risk, Smith said.

Even if the money is diverted for the wall, funding for those other projects simply will be pushed back a year, Smith said. Its delay and not denial, he said.

Both Picatinny Arsenal and $10.2 million for a new refueling system for planes with hazardous cargo at the Joint Base were on a list of potential cuts released last month by the House Appropriations Committee

Trump was unable to get funding for the border wall during the two years Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. In December, when the GOP-controlled House and Senate again refused to pay for the wall, the president said he would not sign a spending bill without more than $5 billion for construction, triggering a record-long, 35-day shutdown.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

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State lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are calling for a legislative investigation into a multi-billion state authority thats under scrutiny for hiring practices by a top Gov. Phil Murphy appointee, NJ Advance Media has learned.

A pair Republican lawmakers asked a special legislative committee to launch an investigation into the New Jersey Schools Development Authority and its new CEO, Lizette Delgado-Polanco.

Shes faced criticism for hiring more than two-dozen people with ties to her.

The lawmakers  state Sens. Kristen Corrado, R-Passaic, and Steven Oroho, R-Sussex  called for the investigation in a letter to the leaders of the Legislative Select Oversight Committee.

That panel is investigating how a former Murphy official accused of rape was hired and then kept in his position at the SDA for months amid inquiries into the alleged assault.

We believe this proposed investigation of the SDA is necessary for the committee to fulfill its mission of investigating and proposing fixes to a broken process that has allowed numerous questionable hires to hold employment across the administration of Governor Phil Murphy, the lawmakers wrote to state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, and state Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin, D-Essex.

Weinberg told NJ Advance Media that Democratic senators have also expressed an interest in investigating the SDA.

But she said she needs to speak with leadership before making a final decision on whether to investigate the authority and its CEO.

I sent an email to both the Senate president and the speaker a few days ago expressing something that was expressed by senators  who are not members of the committee  in my own caucus, Weinberg said. Its something that has to ultimately be discussed with my co-chair and with our leadership.

Delgado-Polanco was tapped to run the agency in August. About that time, 26 staffers, many of whom had worked at the SDA under Democratic and Republican governors, were fired. By October, 33 new hires, including many people with ties to Delgado-Polanco, were brought on to fill some of the positions opened by the firings and a host of new jobs titles.

Fourteen of the new hires were brought on at salaries that top six figures and reach as high as $170,000. At least 10 of those top earners either worked with Delgado-Polanco in the past or at companies represented by unions Delgado-Polanco worked for, or had other close ties to the new CEO.

About 200 people work at the authority.

Murphy said last month that his administration was looking into the agencys hiring practices.

Delgado-Polanco was the political director for the Northeast Regional Council of Carpenters before she joined the SDA. She was the executive director of the Service Employees International Union New Jersey State Council prior to that and has maintained her position as vice chair to the state Democratic Party.

She spoke publicly Tuesday about what she referred to as all the craziness being reported about her and the authority during a state Democratic committee meeting in Basking Ridge.

Im not gonna apologize, Delgado-Polanco said, referring to the work shes been doing at the SDA to help children get a quality education.

NJ Advance Media staffer writer Ted Sherman contributed to this report.

Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or Facebook.

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Multiple animals were killed and several vehicles damaged when a barn in Salem County caught fire Monday night.

The fire broke out around 10 p.m. on the 100 block of Newkirk Station Road in Upper Pittsgrove, New Jersey State Police Trooper Charles Marchan said Tuesday.

The fire, which spread to a flat-bed truck and at least one other vehicle parked nearby, is not believed to be suspicious, but remains under investigation, police said.

No firefighters were injured battling the blaze. Marchan didnt immediately have information about the number or type of animals in the barn, one of two on a farm behind a multi-story home.

State Police patrol Upper Pittsgrove, a rural town of about 3,300 residents in eastern Salem County that doesnt have its own police department.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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An animal rights activist facing 15 days in jail after freeing a young bear from a trap in Vernon is drawing support from an online petition aimed at keeping her free.

More than 119,000 had reportedly endorsed the petition in support of Catherine McCartney of Vernon and seeking a pardon of her from Gov. Phil Murphy.

The petition was posted to Care2 on March 7, two days after NJ Advance Media reported that ex-U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli had paid $2,507 in fines for McCartney, 50, and was planning to ask Murphy for a pardon.

McCartney and Mark Nagelhout, 43, of Park Ridge, pleaded guilty in Vernon municipal court Feb. 26 to two charges stemming from freeing the bear from the trap at the Great Gorge Village condominium complex last fall.

However, only McCartney - who was arrested during bear hunt protests in 2016, 2017 and 2018 - was sentenced to jail.

The Care2 petition is entitled, Dont Let This Woman Go to Jail for Freeing Baby Bear From Trap.

Lets join Sen. Torricelli in calling Gov. Phil Murphy to exercise his pardon power to keep McCartney out of jail. She may be guilty by the letter of the law, but many of us would probably make the same decision when faced with a young animal desperate to get back to its mother, it reads.

Doris Lin, an attorney for McCartney, did not immediately return a phone call.

The state Department of Environmental Protection set up two barrel-shaped culvert traps inside the condominium complex last fall after two residents reported being charged at, but not injured, by a bear in separate incidents. Animal rights activists dubbed her Mama Bear," since she reportedly has two cubs.

However, the freed bear was younger and not believed to have been involved in either incident, DEP spokesman Larry Hajna said at the time.

Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@RobJenningsNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Los Angeles Angels center fielder Mike Trout will sign a 12-year, $430 million contract and skip free agency following the 2020 season, ESPNs Jeff Passan reported Tuesday.

Just to give you a sense of how much money that is ...

Trout will have a higher average annual salary than anyone in the NFL.

Mike Trout $35.8M

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Aaron Rodgers $33.5M

Matt Ryan $30M

Kirk Cousins $28M

Jimmy Garoppolo $27.5M

Matthew Stafford $27M

Derek Carr $25M https://t.co/9P6zQMxTyj  Gil Brandt (@Gil_Brandt) March 19, 2019

Trout will make almost $67,000 ... PER AT BAT.

$66,978: What Mike Trout will make per at bat*



$61,372: Median U.S Household Annual Earnings



*Based on $430M number reported by @JeffPassan  Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) March 19, 2019

Trout will make almost $100,000 ... PER DAY.

Mike Trout on cusp of 12 year deal for 430 million.

Just for fun, before taxes that works out to $98,173.52 a day.#MLB  Troy Westwood (@TroyWestwood) March 19, 2019

Trout will make almost $222,000 ... PER GAME.

Mike Trout will make $221,193 PER GAME over the next 12 years.  Steve Benko (@SteveBenko) March 19, 2019

With that money, Trout easily can continue to afford his Philadelphia Eagles season tickets, and then some.

Mike Trout can now build individual mansions for each football Eagles players have given him over the last few years.  Dave Zangaro (@DZangaroNBCS) March 19, 2019

But dont worry Phillies fans. He could still return home to play at Citizens Bank Park ... in 2032, when he would be 39 years old.

Well at least the Phillies can still sign Mike Trout in like 2032.  Zack Rosenblatt (@ZackBlatt) March 19, 2019

Trouts contract will surpass the deal right fielder Bryce Harper received last month from the Phillies: 13 years and $330 million.

Trouts deal with Los Angeles also will blow past the 10-year, $300 million contract Manny Machado signed with the San Diego Padres and the eight-year, $260 million extension Nolan Arenado signed with the Colorado Rockies.

Trout has played seven full seasons in the majors. Hes been an All-Star each year. Hes finished no worse than fourth in voting for the American League MVP Award, winning it in 2014 and 2016, and finishing second four times: 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018.

According to ESPN, the new contract will add 10 years to the final two seasons of Trouts current deal.

Mike Rosenstein may be reached at mrosenstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rosenstein73. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Authorities seized 2 pounds of marijuana, $13,000 in cash and guns inside of a vehicle following a chase in Kenner that ended with a crash Monday afternoon (March 18).

Officers also discovered a 2-year-boy inside the vehicle who, fortunately, wasnt injured during the pursuit despite being unbuckled on the backseat, according to Lt. Michael Cunningham, spokesman for the Kenner Police Department.

Injured Jefferson Parish firefighter Danny Zeigler released from hospital

Im sure (the toddler) got slammed around in that car when they hit the fence and the van, Cunningham said.

Investigators arrested Kolby Manuel, 25, of Marrero, and Jaquan Lampton, 19, of Bridge City and booked the on drug and gun charges.

Kenner police had received a tip that someone would be traveling to Kenner with a significant amount of illegal narcotics on Monday, according to Cunningham.

Officers began looking for the suspect vehicle and spotted a sedan matching the description in the parking lot of Sam Club, 455 31st St., Kenner, about 5:43 p.m.

But when officers tried to conduct a stop on the car, the driver sped off into the neighboring Lincoln Manor Subdivision, Cunningham said. Lampton and Manuel tossed a large bag of marijuana out of the vehicle while fleeing police, according to authorities.

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The chase ended when the car, a silver Chevrolet Malibu, crashed through a wooden fence and hit a parked van in the 3000 block of Huntsville Street, Cunningham said.

Lampton and Manuel hopped out of the car and tried to run off but were quickly taken into custody. Thats when Manuel began yelling that his son inside the vehicle.

Officers didnt realize the child was in the car until it was over, Cunningham said.

Paramedics at the scene checked over Manuels son and handed him over to the custody of his grandmother, according to authorities.

In addition to the marijuana and cash found inside the car, officers seized to semi-automatic pistols, including one with a 50-round ammunition drum, Cunningham said.

Lampton was booked with drug possession with the intent to distribute, possession of a firearm in connection with drug activity, possession of drug paraphernalia, contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, aggravated flight from an officer, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, simple criminal damage, driving with no license and driving with no child restraint.

Manuel was booked with drug possession with the intent to distribute, possession of a firearm in connection with drug activity, possession of drug paraphernalia and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile.
The West Virginia attorney general sued the Catholic diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and its former bishop Tuesday (March 19), saying they knowingly employed pedophiles and failed to conduct adequate background checks for people working in Catholic schools and camps, the New York Times reported.

In an unusual approach to pursuing the Catholic Church over sexual abuse and misconduct, the lawsuit claims the diocese and the bishop violated the states Consumer Credit and Protection Act, the newspaper reported.

The Washington Post reported that some child abuse experts consider the lawsuit precedent-setting, both in terms of targeting an entire diocese rather than individual priests, and by using consumer law to launch a civil lawsuit that could unlock the churchs files through legal discovery.

The lawsuit alleges that, in multiple instances over several decades, the diocese put credibly accused priests back into ministry with children, or failed to conduct proper background checks on school employees.

Read the entire New York Times story here and the Washington Post story here.
Two men killed in separate shootings over the past week have been identified by the New Orleans Coroner as 29-year-old Tyrone Reese and 45-year-old Arvise Martin.

Reese was killed in a shooting about 8:15 a.m. March 14 at the St. Ann Square Apartments in Treme. An eyewitness said two men were arguing when one of the men  a resident of the apartments  grabbed a gun and fatally shot the second man.

Police arrested 29-year-old Gerardo Bugallo-Beret at the scene and booked him into the Orleans Justice Center jail on one count of second-degree murder. He is being held on a $700,000 bond, according to court records.

Bugallo-Beret was an NYPD officer from July 2014 to May 2016, according to records provided by the NYPD. His departure from that department coincides with allegations he attacked a bouncer at a Greenwich Village bar, according to a report from the New York Daily News, which says he was charged with misdemeanor assault.

Anyone with information about this fatal shooting should contact NOPD Homicide Detective Nicholas Williams at 504-658-5300, or Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111.

Martin was killed during a shooting in the 1700 block of Desire Street in the St. Claude neighborhood about 12:40 p.m. March 17. Police found him in the street fatally shot. He had been struck several times in the upper body, according to a preliminary NOPD report.

Homicide Detective Raynell Johnson is in charge of the investigation and be contacted at 504.658.5300. Citizens with information that could help solve this crime are asked to call Crimestoppers at 504.822.1111, or toll-free at 1.877.903.7867.

Staff writers Jonathan Bullington and Heather Nolan contributed to this report.
Dakota Theriot, the 21-year-old South Louisiana man accused of killing five people in January, has pleaded not guilty to three of the murders, WAFB-9 reported Monday (March 18).

Scott Perrilloux, 21st Judicial District Attorney, says his office plans to seek the death penalty in the case, according to the news station.

Theriot entered the pleas in connection with the Jan. 26 shooting deaths of his girlfriend, 20-year-old Summer Ernest, her father, 43-year-old Billy Ernest, and her 17-year-old brother, Tanner, in their Livingston Parish home.

Authorities say that on the same day, Theriot fatally shot his own parents, Elizabeth and Keith Theriot, both 50, in Ascension Parish.

Theriot was arrested the next day at a relatives home in Virginia.

He has not been indicted in his parents deaths, according to The Advocate.

For the full story, click here.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Catholic Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, on Tuesday (March 19) released the names of 37 clergy members it says have been credibly accused of sexual abuse, WLBT.com reported.

None of the priests are still in the ministry, the diocese said in a news release. The list was published on the diocese website.

We know that this list will cause pain to many individuals and communities and I am truly, deeply sorry for that pain, Bishop Joseph Kopacz said in a letter released Monday, in advance of the publication of the names. The crime of abuse of any kind is a sin, but the abuse of children and vulnerable adults is especially egregious. First and foremost, it is a sin against the innocent victims, but also a sin against the Church and our communities. It is a sin that cries out for justice."

The Diocese of Jackson encompasses 65 of Mississippi's 82 counties and has about 48,000 registered Catholics.

In January, the only other Catholic diocese in Mississippi, the Diocese of Biloxi, released the names of three clergy members it said had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct against minors since the diocese was founded in 1977.

The Archdiocese of New Orleans released names of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse in November of last year. Dozens of dioceses across the U.S. have made similar releases.

See the WLTB.com story and the list of accused priests in the Diocese of Jackson here.
After a woman attempted to stop a man from beating his girlfriend in Algiers last April, the man reportedly threatened to shoot her and her child.

Tori Estem, 24, was arrested in connection with the case last Tuesday (March 12). New Orleans police said he was beating his girlfriend inside a home in the 1800 block of Tita Street on April 5, 2018 when a woman attempted to intervene. He then turned his attention toward that woman and began beating her. At some point, she was able to rise to her feet, prompting Estem to pull out a gun and state, B**** I will shoot you and your child," according to a warrant for Estems arrest.

The woman grabbed her 5-year-old child and fled the residence. As she was leaving, she reported hearing a clicking noise that suggested Estem was placing an extended clip inside his gun. An officer arrived at the scene and observed the womans injuries as well as a live .40 caliber live round on the ground, the warrant continues.

The warrant for Estems arrest was filed the day of the alleged attack in April. It was not immediately clear why he was just arrested last week on charges of simple battery and aggravated assault with a firearm connected to the April attack. He was also booked on illegal possession of stolen things, illegal carrying of weapons, possession of a firearm by a felon, possession of heroin, and illegal carrying of a weapon with a controlled dangerous substance. Magistrate Judge Robert Blackburn set his total bond at $26,500 during his first appearance Wednesday (March 13). He was represented by a Orleans Parish public defender and is set to appear in court again April 10.

Estem was previously convicted of criminal negligent discharge of a firearm and aggravated assault with a firearm in October 2013 and sentenced to five and two years for those charges, respectively.
Jeremie Bailey, the man charged with killing Cornell Glover in Algiers in 2014 and trying to kill Glovers cousin three years earlier, pleaded guilty Tuesday (March 19) hours after his trial began.

In a plea deal, Criminal District Judge Tracey Flemings-Davillier sentenced Bailey to 30 years in prison for attempted second-degree murder and a reduced manslaughter charge.

Bailey was charged with killing Cornell Glover in the 3300 block of DeArmas Street in Algiers on Nov. 30, 2014, and with shooting Glovers cousin, Michael, three years earlier.

Bailey, 30, also pleaded guilty to second-degree battery for beating Michael Glover inside the Orleans Justice Center in 2016. He was sentenced to eight years in prison on that charge  the maximum amount of time he could receive.

Flemings-Davillier ordered that sentence to run concurrent to the 30-year sentence, per terms of the plea deal.

Baileys guilty plea came hours after his trial on second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder charges began and after the state called four witnesses against him  including Michael Glover.

Authorities did not allege the homicide and shooting were related, which defense attorney Michael Kennedy said put Bailey in the unenviable position of trying to defend himself on three fronts.

Assistant District Attorney Jason Napoli suggested in opening statements Bailey and the Glovers had an ongoing beef. He called Bailey a cold-blooded killer and said he was part of a group called Slaughter And Bust Em that rapped about killing their enemies.

After Cornell Glover was shot, Napoli said Glover identified Bailey as the gunman who shot him as he lay on the ground bleeding.

To find this man not guilty, you need to turn your back on Cornells dying words, Napoli told the jury.

Napoli said two other people who were present after the shooting were going to testify they heard Glover identify Bailey as the gunman.

Cynthia Glover, Cornells mom, also heard her son name Bailey as the shooter.

The sickest part of all of this is they spoke moments before he took her sons life, Napoli said, referring to Cynthia Glover and Bailey.

Napoli said Cynthia Glover was on her porch about 15 feet away from the sidewalk where her son was gunned down when she saw Bailey walk by. Cynthia Glover, whod known Bailey for years, told him to be careful out there, Napoli said.

She ran to her son when she heard shots, and pleaded with two gunmen to stop as Cornell Glover lay on the ground, Napoli said. Cornell Glover told her Bailey shot him, Napoli said, and the hysterical mother called 911.

A second gunman was never arrested or identified.

'I gave you what you didnt give my child

After he pleaded guilty, Cynthia Glover asked Flemings-Davillier for a moment to address Bailey.

I gave you what you didnt give my child, she said through tears sitting in the courtrooms gallery. You stole my child  but you know what, I forgive you. Ive got to forgive you and I do.

Cornell Glover was the third of Cynthia Glovers four children killed by gun violence in New Orleans. She told Bailey she hopes he gets his life together and thinks before he decides to take another life.

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Michael Glover was not in the courtroom when Bailey accepted the plea. Napoli said Michael Glover approved of the deal.

In New Orleans, a mother surrounded by homicide fears for her last child

Michael Glover, 28, was shot three times  twice in the left shoulder and once in the right leg  by a man he identified as Bailey in the 1400 block of Eliza Street in Algiers on June 27, 2011.

Glover testified Tuesday he didnt know Bailey at the time, but had seen him around town. His sister called him that day, he said, and was upset that Jeremies trying to kill me and my baby.

Glover said he went to her house with one of his friends, and the driver of a red car in the area started shooting.

Witnesses identified Jeremie as the gunman, Napoli said, and police discovered through their investigation that the red car the gunman was driving was registered to Baileys cousin. The two lived at the same address, Napoli said, and Baileys cousin was in jail at the time of the shooting.

Glover spoke with NOPD detectives, but refused to fully cooperate. He said from the witness stand Tuesday he didnt want to be labeled a snitch.

He changed his mind after he learned his cousin was shot, and that Bailey was a prime suspect, Glover testified.

Jail tier assignments questioned

Baileys second-degree battery conviction stemmed from an attack inside the Orleans Parish jail, in which he and two other inmates beat Michael Glover while they were housed in the same tier of the jail in 2016.

Bailey at the time was charged in the attempted murder of Glover and the murder of Cornell.

Defense attorney Michael Kennedy said the men never should have been on the same tier, as a stay away order had been issued in the attempted murder case.

Video of the fight, which was played for the jury, showed Bailey and two other inmates attacking Glover. Deputies did not immediately intervene, as protocol required the deputy assigned to the tier to wait for backup, according to testimony.

Glover suffered facial fractures, three broken teeth and needed stitches above his eye after the fight, he said.

Kennedy said a 30-year sentence was absolutely the best outcome in this situation, and was relieved Bailey agreed.

Having worked with Mr. Bailey for several years now, I have come to know him well, Kennedy said. All evidence aside, I have never witnessed any hint of violence from Mr. Bailey, whereas, fair or not, the Glover family reputation precedes them.

The Glover family has experienced its share of violence over the years, and several family members deaths have made local headlines.

Henry Glover, a cousin to Cornell and Michael, was fatally shot and his body burned in a car by New Orleans police officers a few days into the chaos after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Rebecca Glover, Michaels grandmother, spoke publicly in 2013 after a fourth member of her family was fatally shot, saying the city was not safe and the justice system failed her many times.
As a convicted felon, Daniel Justin Mahan of Ponchatoula was prohibited from possessing guns and ammunition. Yet when federal agents executed a search warrant at his home last year, they found plenty of both.

Twenty-four weapons and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition to be exact, authorities said.

Mahan, 43, was sentenced Thursday to more than 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal gun violations and a child pornography-related charge, the U.S. Attorneys Office said Monday (March 18). After serving his prison sentence, Mahan must serve a five-year term of supervised release.

U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon sentenced Mahan to 151 months in prison for violating of the federal gun control act and receipt of materials involving the sexual exploitation of minors, according to a news release.

Mahan was arrested after agents executed a search warrant at his home on March 15, 2018, and found the weapons and ammunition. They also discovered on a laptop computer images depicting the sexual victimization of prepubescent children, authorities said.

Mahan has a prior felony conviction for bank robbery.

Guns, 26,000 rounds of ammunition seized at North Shore home

The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Tracey N. Knight.
An Orleans Parish Sheriffs Office employee was sentenced Thursday (March 14) to three years probation and eight months of home detention and location monitoring for her role in helping to smuggle various drugs into jail for an inmate who planned to sell the drugs and split his commission with her, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Peter Strasser.

Ciboney Parker, 25, agreed May 20, 2017 to help her relative Elton Williams, 28, who was jailed on state drug charges in May 2017, smuggle drugs into the Orleans Justice Center. Two woman  Brittany Theophile and Rachelle Kelson  who pleaded guilty to their role in the scheme in early November helped coax Parker into smuggling marijuana, heroin and Tramadol into the jail for Williams. Parker, Theophile and Kelson mostly corresponded with Williams via the prison phone system, which is monitored and recorded.

Parker could have faced a maximum term of imprisonment of five years and a $250,000 fine. She was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown.

OPSO employee pleads guilty to attempting to smuggle drugs to inmate
A 25-year-old woman is wanted by police for threatening to shoot a business owner in the 1400 block of North Broad Street, according to the New Orleans Police Department.

Ronica Fields is accused of attempting to shoplift several items about 4:11 p.m. Feb. 9 before being stopped and kicked out by the owner, police said. Fields is then accused of going back to her car, getting a semi-automatic handgun, returning to the store and threatening to shoot the owner, according to NOPD.

Police issued a warrant for her arrest for aggravated assault.

Anyone with information is asked to contact NOPD 1st District detectives at 504-658-6010, or call anonymously to Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 1-877-903-STOP.
Celebrity chef Elle Simone will discuss how she turns food into picture-perfect art and her passion for encouraging black women to pursue their dreams the way she has on Thursday, March 28, at Dillard University. The talk is free.

Simone, the first black woman to join the cast of PBS Americas Test Kitchen cooking show, will discuss her career from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Georges Auditorium. The event is part of the Ray Charles Program Center programming. The center works to research, share and preserve African-American culture and foodways in the South.

The celebrity chef is a freelance food stylist and culinary producer, who has also worked with The Food Network and The Cooking Channel. She has appeared on The Katie Couric Show, ABCs The Chew and Bravos Chef Roble and Co.

Along with food styling, she is the founder and CEO of SheChef Inc., a networking organization for female chefs of color and those who support them. Through the for-profit company she mentors and provides resources for those who are working to build their own businesses.

Along with being on-air talent on Americas Test Kitchen on PBS, she also provides food styling for the ATKs popular online cooking school.

Elle Simone discusses her unexpected transition from food stylist to TV personality

Now in remission after a 2016 diagnosis for ovarian cancer, Simone recently emceed the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliances annual Turn Up the Heat culinary event at The Anthem in Washington, D.C., which honored the citys top female chefs and mixologists while raising money for cancer research. In 2018, she was part of a business on a panel put on by the James Beards Womens Entrepreneurial Leadership program.

The talk will be at the university at 2601 University Blvd. It is free, but if attending, you are asked to register at Eventbrite.com.
Louisiana State University improperly compensated" a faculty member with more than $400,000 in salary and benefits over nearly three years even though he admitted to not doing his job, according to a new state audit.

A report released Monday (March 18) by Louisiana Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera also found the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine failed to address the employee's lack of work. The employee reportedly failed to fulfill his employment duties during the period of August 2015 to September 2018.

The faculty member knowingly received 38 months of LSU salary and benefits without performing commensurate work, the audit stated.

The LSU Office of Internal Audit told state auditors the faculty member acknowledged he did not deserve to be paid for the period of July 2016 thru August 2018, the audit stated. When asked to provide documentation to demonstrate fulfilling his duties to LSU since he submitted the last grant proposal in February 2015, the employee was unable to provide any documentation.

More LSU Health medical grads staying in state and going into primary care

LSUs management told auditors the employee had Satisfactory performance reviews until he was denied a promotion in Fall 2014. After that, his performance declined and resulted in Unsatisfactory performance reviews.

LSU told the employee to appear at the school for the Fall 2018 semester for work, but the audit stated he has substantially failed to do so as of last September. The audit didnt identify the employee, who was still employed with LSU as of Jan. 24.

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LSU did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday morning.

LSUs Internal Audit office advised management to consider recovering the compensation paid to the employee, the audit stated. State auditors also advised LSU to consider a policy for employees regarding abandonment of position to deal with employees who are no longer performing their duties.

The dean of LSUs School of Veterinary Medicine, Joel Baines, agreed with the states findings in a March 7 letter written in response to the audit. Baines said disciplinary action against the employee, including an investigation into ways to recover the funds paid to him, will be completed by Sept. 30.

While it is clear that the faculty member received pay despite the fact that he was not working, it cannot be ascertained easily whether the faculty member was working from home, except from his own reporting, Baines stated.

Baines also stated the employees supervisor was removed as chair of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences last November. The school is also planning to complete a review on June 30 to determine if any other positions should be modified to ensure employees are working effectively.

Tulane Medical School grads celebrate the next phase of their career during Match Day

Wilborn P. Nobles III is an education reporter based in New Orleans. He can be reached at wnobles@nola.com or on Twitter at @WilNobles.
When Patricia Clarkson signed on to star in director Carol Morley's "Out of Blue" -- a crime drama set and shot in Clarkson's hometown of New Orleans -- she knew she could look forward to a lot of familiar things. Familiar faces, familiar places, familiar smells and tastes.

But that was only part of the allure for Clarkson, who -- fresh off a Golden Globe win in January for her turn in the HBO limited series "Sharp Objects" -- says she still cherishes the opportunity to tackle something different. And if "Out of Blue" is anything, it's different.

"Its a very unusual film," Clarkson said. "It's a beautiful, artistic film.  (Director Carol Morley) has such a unique vision and she'll take you on these detours, so you have to kind of be prepared. It's not conventional filmmaking, but it's beautiful."

It's also deeply atmospheric and just as thought-provoking. On the surface, the plot follows the beats of a traditional, twisty murder mystery: It tracks Clarkson's character, a hard-boiled New Orleans police detective named Mike Hoolihan, as she investigates the death of an astronomer. At the same time, the film toys with big, metaphysical ideas. It's the kind of movie that critics might characterize as challenging for mainstream audiences -- but rewarding for those who submit to it.

Patricia Clarkson muses about home, happiness -- and Mardi Gras

"It's a surreal journey you take," Clarkson said. "This is a woman who suddenly has to travel to the stars, she has to think about this existential life, she has to think about what is beyond."

Suffice it to say, "Out of Blue" will be something of a departure for audiences. That's fitting -- because it was a departure for Clarkson, too.

She gets to play a gritty, tough cop, for starters. She punches a guy out in one scene. Her boozed-up character takes to a stage of a strip club in another. None of that is what one would describe as the behavior of a typical Clarkson character.

Then there's the fact that Clarkson's trademark golden tresses are nowhere to be seen in "Out of Blue."

"I'm not unrecognizable," Clarkson said. "I'm just very tough. I do have short, dark hair. It's a very big physical change for me."

(Don't panic. Clarkson's still a blonde off-screen.)

At the same time, she said she and her character aren't entirely different. Bourbon is the drink of choice for both. But there's more than that.

"Mike is within me," Clarkson said. "I think any character you play has to be within you or it's not going to work. I dont want to make every character I play me, but a part of me has to be in every character I play. I have to bring myself to some component of the character. There is a kind of solitary, dark loneliness to Mike, and an ache that I think, for better or for worse, we have to tap into."

That being said, there wasn't much darkness or loneliness on display on this day. Clarkson was back in New Orleans, which is always a mood-lifter. Even better, she was chatting between sips of champagne shortly after being welcomed back to town for her ride as the Krewe of Muses' 2019 honorary muse in February.

She had arrived by police escort at the swanky Windsor Court on the edge of the French Quarter, and she was welcomed by a brass band and second-line.

She took one step out of the SUV that delivered her, and she danced the rest of the way to a second-floor reception room. There, she danced some more.

She appeared to be having the time of her life -- which has been something of a recent theme for her given her recent Golden Globe win.

That trophy -- "it weighs more than I do" -- is on a little side table in her New York apartment, she said, so she can catch a glimpse of it every now and again and appreciate it.

"It's everything you think it is," she said when asked about that big night. "It's such a big stage. The Golden Globe is such a monumental moment in your life, and I'm glad I'm not jaded and callous at this point so that I could take it in and all of its wonder and its beauty."

"Out of Blue" plays at 7:15 p.m. nightly starting Friday (March 19) at the newly relocated Zeitgeist Theatre & Lounge, 6621 St. Claude Ave.

Mike Scott is the movie and TV critic for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. He can be reached via email at mscott@nola.com or on Twitter at @moviegoermike.
June Shannon, better known to fans of reality TV as Mama June of Heres Comes Honey Boo Boo fame, has been arrested in Alabama and booked on drug charges after police said they found her and a friend in possession of crack cocaine and a crack pipe, according to AL.com.

The arrest reportedly stemmed from a call to which police were summoned last Wednesday afternoon (March 13) at a gas station in Tuskeegee, Alabama, for a domestic disturbance. Shannon was listed as the victim in the case, in which 43-year-old Eugene Geno Doak, described as her boyfriend, allegedly threatened to kill her.

As police investigated, they found the crack and crack pipe. According to records made public on Monday (March 18), Doak and Shannon, 39, were both charged with felony drug possession and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, which is a misdemeanor.

Doak was also charged with third-degree domestic, also a misdemeanor.

Visit AL.com for the full story.

The 'Devil Man': Reviving a forgotten New Orleans urban legend
Like the houseplant that Lena Younger dreams of carrying to her familys long-sought new home, A Raisin in the Sun is a hardy perennial.

Director Tommye Myricks new production of Lorraine Hansberrys breakthrough drama, now marking the 60th anniversary of its premiere, proves that it is more than merely the passing of time that creates a classic work. The current staging reveals both the universal timelessness of the play, while also still speaking directly to contemporary issues of culture, race, justice and gentrification.

Now playing at the Ashe Cultural Arts Centers Power House Theater, this small production succeeds in making a large impact both through the power of its storytelling and the emotional realities that Myricks remarkable cast elicits.

A Raisin in the Sun takes its name from a Langston Hughes poem examining the price of deferred dreams. The story revolves around the Younger family, living in a tenement on Chicagos South Side and its decision regarding how best to use a $10,000 life insurance settlement, received after the death of the patriarch. Will they invest in the eldest sons dream of owning a business  a liquor store with two friends  or buy a house in a new white suburb, one that is white and unwelcoming?

As Walter Lee Younger, the son with the vision of enriching his family and leaving his job as a chauffeur behind, Michael C. Forest makes an impressive stage debut. His performance already displays a degree of authority and command of the stage of a seasoned actor. Walter Lee is a driven man persistently reaching for what is just beyond his grasp, often led by those who seek to take advantage of him. Forest brings out the sense of anger that has built up over the years, eating away at the character. It makes his epiphany by the end, however, more powerful, as he is able to rise up to give his family what they seek most from him  moral strength and human dignity.

Strange and intriguing, Le Petit's 'Baby Doll' is a worthy production

Ebony Duely Johnson, playing Beneatha, Walters younger sister, shares in his drive to improve not only her familys lot in life, but her society, as well. Although the play was written before many of the major moments of the Civil Rights Movement, Hansberry was remarkably prescient in her examination of where African-American history was heading in the United States. Through Beneatha, she foretells a black nationalism movement, as well as a black womens liberation movement. In a spirited performance, Johnson captures well the urgency of that commitment.

Martin Bats Bradford is appealing and effective as Asagai, Beneathas boyfriend and Nigerian mentor. Constance Thompson also brings a deep sense of truth and warmth to her performance as Ruth, Walter Lees struggling but supportive wife.

At the commanding moral center of the work, however, is Carol Sutton, who plays the widowed matriarch of the family, Lena Younger. In a performance filled with grace notes, Sutton displays a Gibraltar-like strength. Yet Sutton reveals that it is a durability that is tiring, after a lifetime of struggles. While she is ready to pass on the leadership of her family to her son, she remains unsure if his nature, which leads to rash and what she sees as unwise decisions, leave him up to the task.

Sutton, a genuine treasure of the stage, richly conveys Lenas stern but loving nature, one that holds both a wisdom and compassion for the ages.

The cast is rounded out in smaller roles with well-done performances by Ellington Benoit Tilton, Tracy B. Mann, Christopher Robinson and Jim Holmes.

The single-set drama takes on added claustrophobic tension in the confines of the cramped apartment. As such, Dane Rhodes set becomes a character in itself.

Myrick sets a taut dramatic pace for the piece, while also establishing a natural feel to the family dynamics onstage. While set in the mid- to late 1950s, the emotions behind the conversations and confrontations could easily occur in any family living room today.

This notable revival might easily be overlooked amid other major productions across town. Dont let that happen. A Raisin in the Sun plays through March 31.

A RAISIN IN THE SUN

What: The 60th anniversary production of Lorraine Hansberrys classic family drama about the hopes and deferred dreams of an African American family. Tommye Myrick directs the cast, which includes Carol Sutton and Michael C. Forest.

Where: Ashe Power House Theater, 1731 Baronne St., New Orleans.

When: Performances at 7:30 Thursdays through Saturdays, and at 3 Sundays, through March 31.

Tickets: $25-35. Group discounts are available. For information, call the Ashe Cultural Center
Most urban legends -- the fun ones, anyway -- have a few things in common. There's a mysterious threat, there's a dash of the unexplainable, there's often a moral to be had and, when done right, there's some good old-fashioned storytelling -- all of which combine for an irresistibility that helps the whole thing go viral.

Ordinarily, however, there isn't a paper trail to follow for those hoping to suss out a given urban legend's origin. Or an actual arrest in the case.

Which are just two reasons the New Orleans tale of the so-called "Devil Man" stands out.

As New Orleans urban legends go, the Devil Man hasn't gotten much play for decades. He's sort of the B-side to such frequent hits as the local legends of Mona Lisa Drive, Grunch Road or Hangman's Tree. In fact, many New Orleanians today might not even be aware of the tale of the Devil Man.

That certainly wasn't the case in fall 1938, when word began circulating around town of a mysterious nighttime figure who looked like a man but who, depending on the version of the story, had either a horn or two horns on his forehead. He also had the ability to appear out of thin air -- and disappear just as quickly.

What's your favorite New Orleans urban legend? Join in the conversation

The story spread like wildfire, and residents on both sides of the river -- but particularly in Algiers, it would seem -- were thrown into mass hysteria. The whole thing also prompted multiple newspaper stories, including at least two front-page headlines. (Lets see Hook Hand or Bloody Mary claim that distinction.)

The first mention to be found of the Devil Man in The Times-Picayune's archives came on Sept. 16, 1938, in a story published in The New Orleans Item. The story is a short one, published without a byline, and with a tongue-in-cheek tone that suggests the writer suspected something more fantastical than factual was going on.

Published under the headline "The 'Devil Man' West Bank Tale!," it started:

"Have you had your fantasy today? No? Then how about trying 'The Devil Man'? It's going great guns on the West Bank."

The article then goes on to relate a story about a local woman who was dancing with a man at a West Bank dance hall when she suddenly noticed that a horn was protruding from his forehead. How she missed it when they started dancing is not explained.

The man was arrested -- on what charges is unclear -- and placed in jail. But, according to the story, when the jailer turned and walked out of the jail, who should he encounter on the sidewalk out front? The very same man he just locked up! (Cue gasps.)

The police officer drew his gun and fired from point-blank range, but the bullets apparently bounced off the mysterious horned man, who bent over, picked them up and threw them back at the police officer.

"City Marshal Walter E. White of Westwego was credited in the you-know-how-they-get-around report with being the arresting officer," the Item account continues. "'Lotta baloney,' was his reply to a query on the subject, in case it needed any official denial."

Baloney or not, the story spread. As it did, police were deluged with calls about sightings of the so-called Devil Man, who reportedly had a tendency to use his powers of disappearance to skip out on bar tabs. He was also known to cause ruckuses at other local dances and public gatherings.

Within a week of that first published report, The Times-Picayune carried a front-page story in which police, seeking to allay fears -- and, one must suspect, stop all those panicked phone calls -- announced the arrest of a man calling himself "Lord Harold." (His published description in The Item: "30 years old and no horns.")

Police, directed to him by local residents who insisted he was the Devil Man, booked him with loitering. He is said to have done some masquerading to have worn horns in carrying out of his self-imposed role on both banks of the river, and to have caused more than one scare in Algiers, read a story about the case in The Sunday Item-Tribune.

"Voodoo City" Episode 8: Running with the rougarou

After he refused to pay the $10 fine, he was thrown in jail for 30 days.

"And he ain't disappeared yet," another prisoner told The Item for its story on the arrest.

But the local hysteria didn't stop there. The same day police announced the arrest of "Lord Harold," The New Orleans States published a report that "a near riot" broke out at the Joseph A. Craig School in Treme when older students spread word that the Devil Man was in the school's basement.

"Scores of younger pupils, frightened out of their wits, tried to run from the building when someone shouted '(Devil) Man!,'" according to The States story.

A day later, on Sept. 24, another man -- 22-year-old Reginald Hughes of 1601 St. Ann St. -- was picked up by police for firing a gun twice into the air at St. Ann and Liberty streets, according to The States. He claimed self-defense. Kind of.

"I did it to keep away the Devil Man," Hughes was quoted as having said.

It worked inasmuch as the Devil Man didn't show up. "Squads of police" did, though, and Hughes was booked with discharging a firearm within the city limits and for allegedly carrying a concealed weapon.

Meanwhile, rumors of sightings continued to run rampant among frightened local residents, including an uncorroborated report of the birth of a "devil baby" -- with horns and all -- at an unspecified local address. Also continuing: the flood of phone calls made to police about the mysterious Devil Man by still-rattled local residents.

One woman, identified as Mrs. J.S. Morane of 2617 Ursulines Ave., breathlessly summoned police after she said she received a phone call in which an unknown voice told her the Devil Man was coming to kill her at 8 p.m. that night. Once more, police showed up. Once more, the Devil Man didn't.

It's unclear exactly how long calls about the Devil Man kept coming in to police, but the newspaper reports stopped about then.

Until.

Almost a month later, the Item ran a front-page story about how New Orleans Mayor Robert Maestri showed up to survey a work site at which the city was helping to elevate the Lakeview Presbyterian Church at Catina Street and Polk Avenue. The arrangement: The city would provide the manpower -- in the form of prison laborers -- and the church would handle the rest.

When Maestri got there, he found himself face to face with the Devil Man himself -- real name: Carleton Clark -- who, apparently still in police custody over the dance hall incident, was on the prison work gang assigned to help raise the church.

Which is when things really got weird.

"I am no longer Carleton Clark. I am Carleton Carl," he told the mayor. "The King of Mars has decreed it. It is the better title for me."

Maestri's very reasonable response: "Who's the King of Mars?"

"He is a mighty monarch, sometimes known as the King of Zulu. He is, according to the prophecy of Daniel, you know. He has a queen, the queen of the Southern range. I know you are a great man. I have contacted great men, among them the president of this district."

He then added: "I would appreciate it that you release me from this incarceration.  I assure you that it will receive gratification if they extricate me from the Hall of Detention."

The mayor refused. But when it came time for the Devil Man/Lord Harold/Carleton Carl nee Clark to be released from jail in November, Maestri paid him another visit. He had an offer -- one he hoped would end the Devil Man hysteria once and for all.

"I understand the boys around here are scared of you," Maestri asked him, apparently referring to other prisoners, according to a story in The Item. "You plan to stick around?"

The Devil Man responded that he had no means to get out of town.

"Well, I'll help you," Maestri responded, and reached into his pocket and gave him $3 before outfitting him with a new suit.

"Now," Maestri asked, "you sure you're going?"

"Sure, mayor," the Devil Man replied.

Unorthodox though it was, Maestri's exorcism worked. Just like that, the Devil Man apparently disappeared from New Orleans -- and from local headlines.

Mike Scott writes about New Orleans history for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Got a question about the past or a great story to share? Reach him via email at mscott@nola.com or on Twitter at @moviegoermike.
Jerry Lee Lewis, the Louisiana-born rock and roll pioneer, is in rehab after spending two weeks in the hospital following a stroke, his publicist, Zach Farnum, told CNN. Because of his illness, Lewis will cancel three upcoming shows, including one on April 28 at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Lewis, who was also known by his nickname The Killer, was born in Ferriday. He is 83 years old. Lewis honed his skills with the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison. Among his best-known hits are Great Balls of Fire, Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On and High School Confidential.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer greatly appreciates the prayers and well wishes hes received from fans all over the world, his publicist said. He wants them to know he cant wait to get back on stage and into the studio to make his Gospel record. Read the full CNN report here.

Lewis performed at the Acura Stage at Jazz Fest in 2015. NOLA.com reported: "Jerry Lee Lewis is nearly 80 years old. Its been a long time since hes kicked over his piano bench. Even longer since hes set the instrument on fire. His slicked-back hair - gray, not gold - stays in place onstage these days. His voice cant always stay on key like it used to.

Do not think, because of any of those facts, that a set by the Killer is one to miss. Just a look at Jerry Lee himself, dripping self-confidence and sneering like a cranky wolverine, remains one of the wonders of the New World and worth twice the price of admission.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19)  Much has been said about political dynasties, but sometimes you just can't cruise through with just your family name.

Pasig City Councilor and mayoral candidate Vico Sotto  son of actors Vic Sotto and Coney Reyes, and great grandson of the late Senator Vicente Sotto  will go against a family that has had a more than two-decade reign in local politics.

"Apat na mayor namin iisa apilyedo for the past 27 years. I'm 29 years old, turning 30 so 'yung henerasyon po namin, ito 'yung talagang lumaki na walang ibang kilalang pangalan kundi Eusebio pagdating sa pulitika," the young Sotto said in an interview with CNN Philippines' Politics as Usual.

[Translation: For the past 27 years, four of our mayors have the same last name. I'm 29 years old, turning 30 so my generation grew up knowing no other name but Eusebio when it comes to politics.]

Acknowledging the uphill battle, Sotto is banking on his platform, which includes healthcare for all Pasig citizens, localized freedom of information (FOI), anti-corruption, an end to favoritism, and an end to fear.

And he believes there's enough funds to implement a localized healthcare system in the city with or without the universal heath care law.

"But Pasig city, we have a budget of 10.7B and actually to implement the universal healthcare localized for Pasig, if you look at estimates from the Department of Health and even the World Health Organization, we only need 2.4B," Sotto said.

The budget, Sotto said, would cover a gamut of services from providing maintenance medicines, doctor's consultations, laboratory exams and x-rays.

"Siguro 80 percent or mahigit pa 'yung lumalapit sa city hall, talaga related po sa medical assistance 'yung hinihinging tulong. Ito malaking bagay. Kung masagot ng gobyerno 'yung healthcare expenses nila, more people will be able to escape poverty," he added.

[Translation: Around 80 percent or more of Pasig citizens who come to city hall ask for assistance for medical expenses. This is a big thing. If the government can cover healthcare expenses, more people will be able to escape poverty.]

He had already filed a freedom of information ordinance, but the city has yet to upload an FOI manual on its website required for its implementation.

"The FOI manual which is required in the FOI ordinance, they haven't published it. It should be on the city website. So anyone watching can easily check kung nandun na ba 'yung FOI manual (if the manual is there)," Sotto said.

No fear, no favoritism

Sotto wants two P's to be removed from Pasig politics - palakasan (favoritism) and pananakot (instilling fear).

"Just a few days ago, we were supposed to meet with a tricycle operators and drivers association (TODA). Ime-meet na po namin sila papunta na kami sa venue, tumawag 'yung presidente po nila sabi sa amin kung ituloy 'yung meeting. May pupunta raw from city hall - kung matuloy daw 'yung meeting with myself and Congressman Roman (Romulo)," he said, referring to the former Pasig City representative who is again running for office.

[Translation: We're meeting them in the venue when their president called asking if we pursue the meeting. They said someone from the city hall went there to check if my meeting with Congressman Roman will push through.]

Sotto said that the TODA members were told that their business permits and franchises would not be renewed if they attended a meeting with him and Romulo.

The young politician also added that housing projects in the city tend to be granted not to the person who needs it the most, but to the person who is closest to the incumbent local government.

"Ito po yung naging kultura at sistema ng Pasig noong nakaraang dalawampu't-pitong taon," he said.

[Translation: This has been the culture and system in Pasig for the last 27 years.]

Asked if he's too young or too inexperienced for the position of mayor, Sotto answered that the time is right.

"It's really time for young people who are still idealistic, who are well-prepared to take charge and take the lead in introducing change in our government. Should we wait 10 years, 20 years, until we're already disillusioned? Hanggang hindi na kami (until we're no longer) idealistic? I think now is the right time," Sotto said.

Catch Politics as Usual with Pia Hontiveros every Tuesday at 7 p.m.
The captain of a towing vessel is missing in the Mississippi River after the boat capsized near a port in Plaquemines Parish Monday night (March 18), according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Three people were aboard the Seattle Slew when it capsized near mile marker 55 in Myrtle Grove just after 8 p.m. Two were rescued from the water and taken to the hospital for treatment. As of 10:45 p.m., authorities were still searching for the vessels captain, according to Petty Officer Brandon Giles.

The small town of Myrtle Grove is located between Louisiana 23 and the river, about 30 miles south of New Orleans on the west bank of Plaquemines Parish. The waterway was closed Monday night from mile marker 55 to 58 as investigators canvased the area for the captain.

A helicopter and a Plaquemines Parish Sheriffs Office boat are on the scene, Giles said.

The cause of the incident is still under investigation.
The U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday afternoon (March 19) suspended its search for a tow boat captain missing since his vessel capsized in the lower Mississippi River.

The Coast Guard announced the end of the search for the captain, identified as David Mills, in a news release issued shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday.

"The decision to suspend a search is never easy," Cmdr. Michael Wolfe, a search and rescue mission coordinator at Coast Guard Sector New Orleans, said in the release. "We saturated the search area with search crews but, unfortunately, were unable to locate the missing person.

Mills and two others were aboard the M/V Seattle Slew when the vessel, which was pushing an empty barge, began tilting right and taking on water around 8 p.m. Monday. The tow boat eventually capsized near the rivers mile marker 55, north of Pointe a la Hache in Plaquemines Parish.

Tow boat captain still missing 20 hours after vessel capsized

The crew members jumped into the water when the vessel began to sink, according to Chaun Domingue of the Plaquemines Parish Sheriffs Office. One of the crew members told Domingue that they were struggling to control the boat because of the rivers especially strong current.

The vessel is operated by Turn Services, a fleet operator based in the Lower Mississippi River. According to a spokesperson for Turn, two crew members were rescued by another Turn Services vessel and taken to a hospital.

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Coast Guard crews searched for Mills for about 18 hours, using a helicopter and a boat crew to scour roughly 158 square-nautical miles, according to the news release.

A Plaquemines Parish Sheriffs Office marine asset crew, Plaquemines Port Harbor and Terminal District boat crew and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries also participated in the search.

Turn Services found the M/V Seattle Slew outside the ship channel at mile marker 57. The Mississippi River has been re-opened to all traffic with restrictions requiring minimum safe speed and wide berth from mile markers 56 to 58, the Coast Guard said.

The cause of the incident is under investigation.

Laura McKnight covers crime and breaking news for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and can be reached with tips at 504-655-6571 or lmcknight@nola.com.

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayunes Hanna Krueger contributed to this report.
Mississippi River levels in New Orleans are not likely to be affected by the severe flooding that has impacted residents across four midwestern states, as rising water levels of the Missouri River breached or overtopped nearly 200 miles of levees this week.

The flooding is being blamed for at least three deaths, according to the Associated Press.

Although the Missouri River is one of the major tributaries to the Mississippi River, meteorologists do not expect to see much of an impact on water levels farther south.

Danielle Manning, a meteorologist with the Slidell office of the National Weather Service, said that water levels near the Carrollton gauge in New Orleans are expected to start falling toward the end of March and beginning of April.

Although a secondary crest is expected around mid-April, it is not expected to be as high as current water levels, she said.

The river in New Orleans is currently cresting at 16.9 feet as of Tuesday (March 19), and is expected to remain at 16.9 feet over the next five days, according to the National Weather Services five-day river forecast.

Flood stage at the Carrollton gauge is 17 feet, but the levee system that protects New Orleans can support up to 20 feet of water.

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carre Spillway last month in order to lower river water levels before they reached flood stage. The structure has only been put to use to control the water levels of the Mississippi River 13 times since it was built following the historic 1927 Mississippi River flood, but this opening marked the third time in the last four years. The spillway is located on the east bank of the river at Montz, in St. Charles Parish, and reroutes water from the river into Lake Pontchartrain, where it will flow into the Mississippi Sound and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.

At its maximum flow, the Corps opened 206 bays. On Friday (March 15) the water flow dropped down a little, so the Corps closed 10 bays and have kept 196 bays open since then.

The forecast has the river holding fairly flat for the next few weeks before starting a long, slow drop, said Matthew Roe, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District. Based on the current forecast the river will drop enough before the water in the Midwest causes a second bump, but it will not be as high as the river was during the peak last week.

Manning said that Baton Rouge and the Red River landings further north might see more elevated water levels, while New Orleans levels fall.

Heavier rainfalls over the Ohio Valley tend to have more of an impact on water levels further south in the Mississippi River, which resulted in higher levels a few weeks ago.

Whatever happens, unless there is a ridiculous amount of rain in the Ohio Valley over the next couple of weeks, we wont see the water level coming up to the current levels, Manning said.
Republican gubernatorial candidates Eddie Rispone and U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham may both think incumbent Gov. John Bel Edwards needs to be out of office, but that doesnt mean they agree on everything.

Rispone, the founder of ISC Constructors, took a more conservative approach to answering questions, particularly on Medicaid expansion and teacher pay increases, than Abraham at an event organized in Baton Rouge by the Republican Governors Association on Monday (March 18). It was one of the first joint public appearances by the two Republican candidates for governor since they entered the race in late 2018.

Both men, who sat at opposite sides of a long table, are hoping to defeat Edwards, a Democrat, in his bid for a second term this fall. All three candidates will run against each other in a primary election Oct. 12.

Heres where Abraham and Rispone stand on some of the issues:

Medicaid expansion

Abraham said twice Monday that he wasnt going to kick anyone off the rolls of Medicaid if elected governor, but he would want to tighten up management of the program that costs nearly $14 billion in Louisiana.

Abraham described himself as a country doctor who sees patients enrolled in Medicaid. As a physician, he treats patients near his rural, northeast Louisiana home, and Abraham said he would have the best idea of how to fix the Medicaid system.

Are we going to make this program better for the taxpayer and those that need the program? Absolutely, he said.

Eddie Rispone, who has never held elected office, said he would prefer to freeze Medicaid enrollment in Louisiana in order to address concerns about the programs management. He said the freeze would be a situation in which Louisiana would stop enrolling new people into Medicaid, but keep insurance paid up for those already in the program. Once the kinks of the Medicaid program are fixed, then enrollment could continue as usual, according to Rispone.

We would move as fast as possible, he said.

Medicaid enrollment is often fluid, with thousands of people flowing in and out of it every year for a variety of factors. People can drop on and off the rolls because they lose their jobs or become pregnant for example.

Edwards has adopted Medicaid expansion in Louisiana, which led to more than 500,000 low-income adults joining the government-backed health care program. Medicaid expansion is paid for almost entirely with federal funding, not state tax dollars.

The Medicaid program has been the subject of controversy. Last month, the Edwards administration identified 37,000 people who may earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but have been receiving the benefits anyway. Republicans have complained the program is growing at an unsustainable rate.

Thousands in Louisiana could lose Medicaid coverage

Teacher and school staff pay increases

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Abraham said he supports teacher pay raises, but didnt provide much of an explanation for how to generate the money needed to cover them. The two-term congressman said he wants to cut taxes, which he believes would bring more economic activity to Louisiana. He would then reinvest some money back into education programs.

We should have raised teacher pay long, long ago, Abraham said.

Rispone said teachers definitely need to make more money," but that pay increases should be handled by local school boards and not state government. He said such raises should also be based on individual teachers performances and not given out on an across-the-board basis.

He also cast some doubt on whether school systems would improve if they were given more money. He said some school systems that spend less money per pupil in Louisiana see better outcomes. Its not necessarily the amount of money, its how we do it, he said.

Edwards has proposed a $1,000 raise for all public school teachers and a $500 for school support staff in the 2019-2020 school year. Assuming the governor is re-elected, he said this increase, which he characterized as modest, would be followed by another pay boost for educators in the 2020-2021 school year. The governor, whose wife was a public school teacher, considers teachers unions part of his political base.

Gov. Edwards asks state education board to support school staff pay raises

Industrial Tax Exemption Program

Abraham said he would like the controversial industrial tax exemption program to go back to the way it was before Edwards altered it in 2016.

The governor implemented new rules that allow local taxing authorities -- city councils, police juries, school boards and sheriffs -- to veto local tax exemptions for large industrial businesses and manufacturers that would affect local governments revenues. Prior to the governors changes, local entities had no say in whether large manufacturers and other entities could get out of paying their local tax bills. The state made those decisions.

Rispone, who works in an industry that benefits from the tax exemptions, said he wanted industry leaders and local governments to sit down in a room with each other and hammer out a compromise. He criticized Edwards for not consulting with local business leaders and government officials before making changes to the tax break. He said the governors actions threw the program into chaos.

After school boards turn down tax breaks, business leaders ask for changes

Taxes

Abraham said he would lower taxes, which he believes would generate more business opportunities for Louisiana. Rispone said taxes wouldnt go up under him. We are not going to raise any taxes," he said.

Rispone also said he would try to control spending. He said the state government wouldnt automatically grow under his leadership, but he also couldnt say what government funding he would cut. He said hes an outsider" who is not familiar enough with state government to provide those specifics.

Edwards and the Republican-controlled Legislature have raised taxes twice over the last four years in order to avoid major cuts to Louisiana universities and health care programs. GOP lawmakers have often discussed implementing spending control measures, but have yet to adopt a major reform in this arena, despite controlling both chambers of the statehouse.
St. Tammany Parishs 911 personnel are now working under a single roof in a new state-of-the-art communications center north of Lacombe.

The Communications Districts administration moved into the approximately $7 million building about three weeks ago, with the various police and fire agencies communications personnel moving in last week, said Rodney Hart, executive director of the district. The agencies moved in Monday through Thursday, with Friday being a work-the-bugs-out-of-the-system kind of day," he said.

Its nice to see that it all came together at the end, Hart said. Ive been working the project since Day 1. You always have a vision. Its nice to see it all come together.

The 16,000 square-foot facility is situated on just over two acres of land on Krentel Road off Louisiana 434 in central St. Tammany. About 45 to 50 communications personnel per shift will be working in the building, Hart said.

Working in the building are personnel from the Sheriffs Office, Mandeville police, Slidell police, Fire District 1 (Slidell area) and Fire District 12 (Covington area). Each of those two fire departments handles dispatching for about half of the 14 fire departments in the parish. The Sheriffs Office also dispatches for Covington police, and Slidell PD dispatches for the Pearl River Police Department, Hart said.

The new center is home to the 911 headquarters, which formerly operated in the old parish courthouse on Boston Street in downtown Covington, plus the operations at seven other locations in the parish, Hart said. Having everyone in the same facility will be more efficient financially and operationally, he said.

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Rent at the old courthouse alone was about $150,000 a year.

That building is a very, very expensive building to run, Hart said of the old courthouse. The (911 District) board really felt like the best thing for us to do was to modernize and get to a more state-of-the-art facility.

The design phase began a little more than four years ago, Hart said, with construction taking nearly two years.

St. Tammanys Communications District is separate from parish government, and its funding comes from 911 fees on households, businesses and cell phones.

The parishs Emergency Operations Center continues to occupy part of the old courthouse.

Covington forms committee to ID uses for old courthouse
Driving U.S. 190 through western St. Tammany Parish during the evening commute has never been a picnic. But congestion has become so thick in recent days that St. Tammany Parish President Pat Brister said Tuesday (March 19) shes asking the state what gives.

I hear it everyday. We know traffics a problem," Brister said during her annual state of the parish address to the St. Tammany West Chamber of Commerce at Benedicts in Mandeville.

Brister is seeking a third term as president in October. She has drawn one major challenger so far, Covington Mayor Mike Cooper.

Road congestion in western St. Tammany was the prevalent theme of Bristers presentation, and she found an interested audience. Of the six questions from the audience during the Q&A portion, five were about chronic traffic snarls.

In response a question about traffic jams on U.S. 190 from Interstate 12 north into Covington, Brister said her administration had authored a letter to the state Department of Transportation and Development seeking an explanation for massive traffic jams in recent days. The letter was sent later Tuesday.

Contractors working for the state are in the final stages of a $9.1 million project to help the flow on the 3-mile stretch from I-12 to the Bogue Falaya bridge, another chronic chokepoint. The plan is to eliminate vehicles from turning left onto U.S. 190 from nearly all adjoining roadways and involves a number of turning lanes and new signals aimed at improving flow.

U.S. 190 morphs into 'super street'

DOTD traffic counts show more than 60,000 vehicles use that stretch of roadway each day. Indeed, during some recent evenings, its felt as though each of those vehicles was on the highway from 4-6 p.m.

Its bad, Brister said. It will be better, but right now its horrible.

I mean, to take an hour to get to Mandeville from Covington is ridiculous, she said. Its never been that bad before.

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A DOTD spokesman said Tuesday morning officials were out on U.S. 190 Tuesday checking the signal boxes and timing of the signals in an effort to mitigate delays.

"We suspect a controller is malfunctioning beyond the project limits that has added to the issue, so we are swapping that as we speak,'' spokesman Rodney Mallett said via email. The U.S. 190 Superstreet project is currently between phases, which means only a portion of the new signals are activated. So until all signals are installed and coordinated, we have the U.S. 190 corridor on max recall, which just means we are giving the maximum time to U.S. 190.

Brister fielded questions about other roads as well, including I-12 through the Covington area and Louisiana 22 in the Mandeville and Madisonville areas.

Brister said a contract for widening the stretch of I-12 from Louisiana 21 to east of the Tchefuncte River, including widening the bridges over the river, could be let by early next year at the latest. The parish and DOTD teamed up to win a $25 million federal grant that will be combined with $7.2 million in parish money and $3.8. million from the state to cover the cost of that work.

That work will take two years or so, she said.

I-12 work gets $25M boost

The state plans to eventually widen I-12 from Louisiana 1077 to Louisiana 59, a project that could cost $100 million or more. The most congested portion, between Louisiana 21 and the Tchefuncte River, was pulled out for a quicker start.

The state, meanwhile, has announced that it will begin a widening and drainage improvement project on a stretch of Louisiana 22 in Mandeville on Monday (March 25). That $2.8 million project will add lanes between Dalwill Drive and U.S. 190.

Further west on Louisiana 22, Brister said the drawbridge at Madisonville continues to be a traffic snag. Her administration will continue to push for state highway dollars, stressing that St. Tammany is the states fourth-most populated parish, she said.

They have the money. Theyre just spending it in other places, she said.
It had been 101 years, and the New Orleans Fire Department was primed for a change. It happened that Kathy Wilkerson, a 37-year-old mom of two, was, too.

It was the end of 1992, and Wilkerson had spent the previous 11 years raising her daughters and subsisting on welfare, according to a news report at the time, but she wanted a different life. Wilkerson went looking for jobs and briefly considered the New Orleans Police Department, but she didnt like guns, according to her daughter,

Kemberly Wilkerson. Instead, Kathy Wilkerson applied for the New Orleans Fire Department.

At the time, just a handful of women had submitted similar applications  but only Wilkerson actually made it through the screening tests and physical training to graduation.

Its why, when Kemberlys son, Darrell, was asked in his 1st grade class to create a shoebox Mardi Gras float for Black History Month, he thought of his grandmother.

Im proud of her, Kemberly said recently of her mother, who died in 2013 from cancer. But I never sat down and thought about the magnitude and how it affected people until my 8-year-old said, Hey, can I do my report on Grandma?

Kemberly remembers now how friends and family acknowledged the impact Kathy made on them with her strength and perseverance. Kathy herself credited Kemberly and her younger sister, Nicole, with the drive to push her through the departments training.

"I didn't want them to think their mother was a quitter," Kathy told The Times-Picayune in 1993. "They were really proud of me."

The department required a 20-week training course, which had prospective firefighters running up and down stairs while laden with equipment and completing various physical feats. The training had other challenges, too, for Wilkerson, like the fact that there was no womens restroom at the NOFD training facility. (They converted one for the purpose.)

Still, Wilkersons route to the Algiers unit she eventually joined wasnt without some scandal. After allegations then-City Health Director Dr. Brobson Lutz reported a high-ranking official in the fire department had asked him to certify that Wilkerson wasnt up to firefighting, NOFD Superintendent William J. McCrossen stepped down after 20 years on the job. City Hall intervened after the allegations came to light, and Wilkerson was hired in February 1993. An investigation later revealed that while some rules had been broken, Wilkersons records werent altered, according to The Times-Picayune archives.

Once on the job, Wilkerson loved the work, Kemberly said of her mother. She remembers visiting the firehouse and trying on her mothers firefighting gear.

After Wilkerson faced her first fire, she told The Times-Picayune she was not afraid in the least.

I thought, Lets kick this fires ass, she said. And I prayed.

While the work of any firefighter is tough, Wilkerson took on an additional role: Public speaker. She made visits to local schools to talk about her experience breaking the NOFDs gender barrier and was once featured in Jet magazine.

"I have to do it," she told The Times-Picayune. "I have to do it as an example for the city, for our youth and for my two daughters."

Wilkerson eventually left the department after a 1997 injury left her unable to do the work. At the time, she was still the citys only female firefighter, but her presence there helped pave the way for future diversity on what was traditionally seen as an all-male, all-white job.

In 2010, the NOFD welcomed its first Vietnamese-American and Chinese-American firefighters. Back then, 44 percent of the NOFDs 760 firefighters were minorities and, that year, two women were named captains for the first time.

By the time of Wilkersons death in 2013, the city had seven women on the job, according to WWL.

When Kemberly thinks of her mother now, she thinks of the dinners shed cook at home and how her stubbornness rubbed off on her daughters. She considers, too, the tenacity and the strength it took to land a spot as a New Orleans firefighter.

I was talking to my son about why she did what she did, Kemberly said. She wanted to be independent.
District attorneys are some of the most powerful people in our criminal justice system. But too often, prosecutors engage in a reckless crusade to obtain convictions at any cost  flouting the law, violating the rights of the people theyre sworn to serve, and fueling a mass incarceration crisis of devastating proportions.

Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro is one of them.

In 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Louisiana and Civil Rights Corps sued to end Cannizzaros unconstitutional deception and jailing of crime victims and witnesses.

No crime victim or witness is required to submit to private, out-of-court interrogations unless lawfully subpoenaed. Cannizzaro didnt like this rule, so he decided to break it by routinely issuing fake subpoenas that were not approved by a judge as required by law.

Victims and witnesses who failed to comply with these bogus documents were often thrown in jail  upending their lives and putting their families at risk. In addition to fabricating subpoenas to coerce crime victims and witnesses of crimes into submitting to interrogations, Cannizzaros office presented fraudulent information in court to persuade judges to issue arrest warrants.

Our client, Renata Singleton, was the victim in a criminal case and served five days in jail because she failed to follow the requests of a fake subpoena. She was terrified and worried about her children and about losing her job.

In fact, Cannizzaros office has asked the courts to put at least 150 victims and witnesses in jail and, in a significant number of these cases, prosecutors broke the law to do it. Thats why a recent ruling by a federal judge marked an important win for our client and for the cause of prosecutor accountability nationwide.

Rejecting Cannizzaros attempt to dismiss the case, U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo wrote that the district attorneys subpoena practices, as alleged, amount to systemic fraud and shock the conscience. According to the judge, his request for immunity would grant prosecutors a license to bypass the most basic checks on their authority. We agree.

Judge Milazzos ruling should mean our case against Cannizzaro can proceed, and it sends a strong message that no prosecutor is above the law. However, Cannizzaro recently filed an appeal, rejecting the judges ruling and seeking to block the case from moving forward.

The lawsuit in Orleans Parish is a part of a larger effort to hold prosecutors accountable for abusive practices that fuel mass incarceration.

These efforts have included lawsuits in Orleans Parish; Orange County, Calif.; and Montgomery County, Kan., against sitting district attorneys, voter education and mobilization work in more than 40 district attorney races during the 2018 election cycle, and the development of model legislation that would create transparency standards that would ensure elected prosecutors can effectively be held accountable for their actions.

Here in Louisiana and across the country, theres evidence that the tide is turning. A nationwide survey found that 89 percent of voters say it is very important for prosecutors to actively work towards ending mass incarceration with alternatives to prison. In 2018, pro-reform candidates ascended to powerful roles in cities like Birmingham, St. Louis and Boston, including a historic number of first-ever black and female district attorneys.

Working together, we can end these abusive practices once for all and build a criminal justice system that truly reflects the values and best interests of the people it serves.

Katie Schwartzmann, a leading civil rights attorney and social justice advocate, is legal director for the ACLU of Louisiana.
In February 2009, in a response to President Barack Obama first address to a joint session of Congress, Louisisanas Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal assured us that Americans can do anything! It was, therefore, odd to hear Jindal, in that same speech, declare that America could not  actually, should not  attempt to monitor the volcanoes that remain a threat to lives and property in the American Northwest, Hawaii and its Pacific island territories.

Blasting what he called excessive spending, Jindal mocked the Democrats stimulus bill for including $140 million for something called volcano monitoring. Jindal paused for effect. Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."

Ten years later, President Donald Trump has now signed the National Volcano Early Warning and Monitoring System Act. The system established by the act must include a national volcano watch office that is operational 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, a national volcano data center, an external grants program to support research in volcano monitoring science and technology, and modernization activities including the comprehensive application of emerging technologies. As for funding, $55 million has been appropriated for the system through 2023.

It would be a mistake, though, to suggest that it took 10 years for the ridiculousness of Jindals joke to become clear. He gave his rebuttal to Obama on Feb. 24, 2009. On March 22 of that year, Mount Redoubt in Alaska erupted, sending ash clouds an estimated 65,000 feet (12.3 miles) into the air. It was the first time Redoubt had erupted since 1989-90 and only the sixth time since 1881.

So it was only 26 days after Jindals speech that an American volcano erupted. But heres the thing. The volcano rumbled for six months before it spewed magma. Geologists had detected what they called precursory seismicity since September 2008. So Jindal took a chance and mocked the idea of volcano monitoring even when an American volcano was getting ready to blow.

It would be wrong, though, to focus solely on the timing of Jindals remark and not give adequate attention to the substance of his remark. It was both insensitive and hypocritical for the governor of a state still struggling to recover from deadly disasters to laugh at the idea of folks in other states wanting advance warning of natural disasters that might kill them.

In a February 2017 story in The Atlantic, Estelle Chaussard, an assistant professor of geophysics and volcanology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, said, Most people in the U.S. perceive volcanic eruptions as rare, and [believe] that wed be able to get advance notice because of the advance in science and instrumentation. But many active volcanoes in the U.S. dont even have the equipment to detect seismic activity. Therefore, the assumption that wed know whats about to happen, Chaussard said, is very dangerous, because most of our volcanoes are not as intensively monitored as we think they are or as they should be.

The volcano monitoring legislation was part of a larger set of bills  known as the Public Lands Package that the Senate passed 92-8 and the House passed 363-62.

What do you know? Americans really can do anything. They can even reach across the aisle in this most bitterly divided political climate to work together on legislation that has the potential to save lives.

After all, volcanoes are no joke.

But a speech making fun of those who have reason to fear them certainly is.

Jarvis DeBerry is a columnist on the Latitude team at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Latitude is a place to share opinions about the challenges facing Louisiana. Follow @LatitudeNOLA on Facebook and Twitter. Write Jarvis at jdeberry@nola.com or @jarvisdeberry.
An ugly fight over an audit that found the city of Zachary paid two vendors $3.5 million without having contracts in place has died down some, but the city councilman most upset about the matter has made clear he is not giving up on his quest for 
North Augusta City Council made progress on two hot topics Monday evening: the Meriwether monument and the citys Overlay Districts.

City Council passed a resolution 6-0 that would provide "findings about the Hamburg incident of 1876" and create a committee to evaluate options for an additional display in John C. Calhoun Park.

A monument in the park memorializes Thomas McKie Meriwether, the one white man who died during the Hamburg Massacre, and includes an inscription that the resolution calls "offensive to, and inconsistent with the beliefs of, current day North Augusta citizens." The monument does not mention the seven black men who died during the Hamburg Massacre.

Last year, Mayor Bob Pettit presented City Council with the findings of a committee he created to study the issue, and recommended that the current monument not be altered in any way and that an educational component be added to the park which, among other things, would include the names of the black men who died that day as well as an explanation of what happened during the Hamburg Massacre.

During the meeting, Pettit introduced an amendment to the resolution regarding those education features that would remove a portion of things to be included in the education aspect. That portion of the proposed resolution read: "a discussion of the accomplishments of the African-American citizens during Reconstruction to include the founding of Aiken County, and The Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras.

+4 N.A. Mayor recommends educational additions next to Meriwether Monument The future of the 21-foot tall Thomas McKie Meriwether monument in North Augusta sparked some civil debate Monday evening during a special called City Council meeting.

Pettit said his reason for that amendment is that it would have potentially limited the options that the committee could include, but said they were crucial elements that should be included. The amendment passed 6-0.

The members of the committee authorized by the resolution would include Pettit, City Council member Pat Carpenter, City Council member David McGhee, Charles Allen, Milledge Murray, Trina Mackie, John Felak, Mark Newell, Tony Carr and ex-officio member Mandy Nelson.

Pettit said during the study session before the meeting that the resolution is in my mind, the next step of doing something in John C. Calhoun Park.

City attorney Kelly Zier said the plans laid out in the resolution dont appear to conflict with the South Carolina Heritage Act, which protects certain monuments in the state.

Council also unanimously passed a resolution that would direct the city administrator to file an application for a text amendment to the city's Development Code.

"The Mayor and City Council have determined that some changes to the existing Development Code are appropriate and in the best interest of the City and that changes to the Development Code should be pursued," the resolution states.

The resolution directs that the city administrator should apply for two changes. The first would be to section 3.6.4.5.2 of the Development Code.

If the change is passed, it would make it to where properties with Public Use zoning (P) would not be subject to the dimensional standards of section 3.8, which defines uses allowed in the Corridor Overlay Districts.

The second change is to section 3.8, which would be deleted and amended to read that "This section applies to any lot or parcel within the following Corridor Overlay Districts that are designated on the Official Zoning Map, with the exception of those lots or parcels zoned P."

Mayor Bob Pettit said during the study session that the resolution and the changes would not be specific to any certain properties but would relate to any city property zoned as Public Use. It is a development code issue, he said.

City Council member Bob Brooks was not present for any of the votes Monday night.
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michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today: As Boeing developed a new line of passenger jets, it was determined to avoid costly training for pilots. Then, two of those jets crashed. Its Tuesday, March 19.

natalie kitroeff

The global aerospace business is essentially a duopoly. There are two big companies. Theres Boeing, which is American-owned, and theres Airbus, a European rival.

michael barbaro

Natalie Kitroeff is a business reporter at The Times.

natalie kitroeff

These two are always competing with each other. They are competing on every single aspect of an airplane. And theyre often competing for the same customers.

[music]

natalie kitroeff

So in late 2010 

archived recording Were not redesigning the A320. Its pretty damn good just the way it is. What were doing is offering new, more fuel-efficient engines on todays airplane.

natalie kitroeff

 Airbus announces that it is offering a new, fuel-efficient version of its best-selling A320 plane.

archived recording Well, an A320neo 

natalie kitroeff

Its going to be the A320neo.

archived recording Its a new engine option offered on todays A320 family of aircraft. And now theyre being offered with new, more fuel-efficient engines. Were putting our money on re-engining the worlds best-selling single-aisle aircraft.

natalie kitroeff

This amounts to essentially a frontal assault for Boeing. Fuel savings mean that airlines are saving on costs. And if Airbus is going to offer an option that is going to save airlines money, Boeing better will come up with its own alternative in order to compete in this cutthroat environment, where they have one main rival.

michael barbaro

So what does Boeing do in response to its biggest and most important rival coming up with this fuel-efficient jetliner?

natalie kitroeff

Boeing scrambles to respond quickly.

archived recording [MUSIC] We are making a decision to invest in the 737 family.

natalie kitroeff

And within months, the company comes up with an upgrade of its own.

archived recording Max efficiency, which leads to profitability, max reliability, and to the flying public, max passenger appeal.

natalie kitroeff

Its going to be a fuel-efficient version of their 737 workhorse. It is going to have bigger engines. And its going to save airlines money on this fuel.

archived recording The best single-aisle airplane in the world. [MUSIC]

natalie kitroeff

And theyre going to call it the 737 Max. And one of the main goals of this engineering process is to keep this new plane as similar to its predecessor as possible.

michael barbaro

Why?

natalie kitroeff

Part of the reason is that Boeing is competing with Airbus. And theyre competing with them on every single cost item. And a plane is not just metal and technology. Its also what it costs to operate the aircraft and to train pilots to fly it.

michael barbaro

Hm.

natalie kitroeff

If the 737 Max turned out to be so different from its predecessor that it required training on a flight simulator, one of these giant machines where you have a cockpit and it mimics the experience of flying the plane, it would cost airlines tens of millions of dollars over the life of an aircraft. Its incredibly expensive. So if Boeing were to say, we have this beautiful new jet, but its going to require twice the amount of training that the Airbus model requires, the executives might pause on that. So as the company is manufacturing this plane, it wants to find ways to make it fly exactly the way that its predecessors did.

michael barbaro

So that there is not a need for training.

natalie kitroeff

Exactly. And theres a little bit of a problem.

[music]

natalie kitroeff

There is something that is fundamentally different about this plane. Its engines are bigger, and those engines need to be mounted farther forward on the wings. And that changes the aerodynamics of the plane. So the placement of those engines makes the nose of the plane push upward in certain circumstances. And that can lead to a stall, which is a dangerous situation. So Boeing has to come up with a solution to make the plane act the way its predecessor did and to counteract that force. So what it does is it comes up with this system, this software.

michael barbaro

And what does the new system do?

natalie kitroeff

The new system automatically corrects for that upward motion of the nose. And it pushes the nose down automatically. And its supposed to be working in the background, in a way that pilots dont even notice, correcting for an issue that was not in the prior model of this plane. And its supposed to be something that is just keeping the pilot in a position where he or she feels as though the plane is flying in the same exact way under the same conditions that the prior model did.

michael barbaro

So Boeing thinks even though the engines are different, that they have developed a system that makes the engines operate essentially the same way the old 737 did. And from a pilots point of view, therefore, there would be no need for new training?

natalie kitroeff

Yes. Boeing believed there was no need for extra training for pilots who had flown the previous model. And the Federal Aviation Administration agreed. In March 2017, the F.A.A. certified the plane. It did not require flight simulator training for pilots who had flown the prior model. And regulators around the world followed suit. Two months later, Boeing shipped out its first 737 Max out of Seattle. And the company decided that it does not need to fully inform pilots that this new software even exists.

michael barbaro

Hmm. So they dont even tell the pilots. They think it is so unimportant to the operation of the plane from the experience of a pilot that they dont even need to know?

natalie kitroeff

Yes.

[music]

michael barbaro

So what happens next? This plane is certified, on the market. What happens?

archived recording Well, its wheels up for Boeings new 737 Max.

natalie kitroeff

Orders come pouring in from across the globe.

archived recording Boeing says the Max 8 is the companys fastest-selling plane in its history, with nearly 4,700 orders for more than 100 customers across the world.

natalie kitroeff

And carriers make this the best-selling Boeing jet ever.

archived recording 100 737 Maxes expected to be sold to AerCap. Thats a lessor from the Netherlands. Also, Korean Airlines expected to order 30 of those.

natalie kitroeff

Pilots love it.

archived recording It flew beautifully. Its engines were extremely quiet.

natalie kitroeff

It is a hit.

archived recording 1 Still, take a look at shares of Boeing, which  archived recording 2 Are up! And up today!

natalie kitroeff

Theyre enjoying a ton of success in the stock market.

archived recording 14 Logged orders or commitments for almost 400 aircraft, with a total sticker price of more than $37 billion.

natalie kitroeff

Investors love them, customers love them  until October 29, 2018, when Lion Air Flight 610, a 737 Max carrying 189 people, takes off and, 12 minutes later, crashes into the Java Sea.

archived recording Three days after Lion Air Flight JT610 mysteriously disappeared before plummeting into the sea, there may be hope for answers.

michael barbaro

What do we learn about what went wrong on that flight?

archived recording Military personnel have found one of the black boxes.

natalie kitroeff

So a picture begins to emerge of this flight that suggests that the pilot may be fighting with that system.

archived recording Flight data shows the on-board computers were pushing the planes nose down. Then the pilots aimed the nose higher. That happened 26 times, with the crew never following procedures to correct the problem.

natalie kitroeff

So while the software is pushing the nose down, the pilot is trying to push it back up over and over and over again, multiple times. That is the picture that begins to emerge. But we do not have full conclusive evidence yet.

michael barbaro

So it seems like the pilots on this flight are fighting a flight control system, a self-correcting one thats supposed to keep the nose from going up, that they dont even know exists, right?

natalie kitroeff

Thats exactly right. And what experts believe was happening was that this system was taking in a faulty sensor reading. So it was responding to bad data. And that is why it kept triggering over and over and over again, despite the pilots best efforts to get the plane back on course.

michael barbaro

And eventually those pilots lose their battle against the system.

natalie kitroeff

Eventually, the plane plunges into the sea, killing all 189 people on board.

[music]

michael barbaro

What, Natalie, is the reaction among the airlines that have bought this line of planes to this emerging realization that Boeing hadnt revealed what turned out to be this important piece of information, the existence of this system that may likely have contributed to this crash?

natalie kitroeff

Pilots are furious  livid, in fact  that they have not been informed that this thing even exists. So they have these meetings, in which they told Boeing officials that this was a breach of trust and that it was disrespectful.

michael barbaro

So I have to assume that these angry pilots, in addition to just wanting to be sure everyone knows about this system, are demanding training so that they can properly respond to this system.

natalie kitroeff

No, theyre not. The F.A.A., Boeing, nobody is recommending more training on this system.

michael barbaro

Why not?

natalie kitroeff

The American pilots that Ive talked to, they believe that because theyve been informed about the system, now that they know how it works, they are able to safely fly this plane. They know how to deal with this software if it becomes an issue on their flights. And they feel confident about flying the plane. This is a confidence thats, in part, based on statistics and experience. There has been only one fatality on U.S. airlines in the last decade. Boeing has an enviable safety record. In many ways, they had good reason to be confident. And theyre also promised a fix to the software that pushes the nose down. Thats going to come within the next several weeks. They will be informed of it. And they feel confident that that is enough.

michael barbaro

O.K., so after this Lion Air crash, the only thing that changes is that Boeing vows to fix the system. But no additional training is ordered for any pilot anywhere. And the 737 Max planes are free to keep flying?

natalie kitroeff

Yes.

archived recording 1 A jet has crashed, and the tragedy is being felt around the world. archived recording 2 U.S. aviation investigators and a technical team from Boeing are headed to Ethiopia tonight. Thats where a new 737 Max 8 jetliner crashed today, minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa. archived recording 3 Killing everyone on board, Flight 302 was en route to Nairobi, Kenya, when it crashed in the town of Bishoftu just six minutes after takeoff. The plane was carrying 149 passengers and 8 crew members.

natalie kitroeff

Immediately, it becomes apparent that there are some similarities between this flight and the Lion Air crash.

archived recording 1 Preliminary data shows a, quote, clear similarity to the Lion Air Max 8 crash off Indonesia in October. archived recording 2 Both planes were Boeing 737 Max 8 aircrafts. archived recording 3 What we now understand is what people had suspected, that there are certain similarities between the Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian crash earlier this month.

michael barbaro

What are those similarities?

natalie kitroeff

So the pilot of the Ethiopian Airlines flight reported flight control problems. So that was a first clue. The plane is also moving in the same way that the Lion Air plane was, up and down. The speeds are changing rapidly, suggesting that the pilot may have been fighting with this system, again, with the pilot trying to pull the nose up, and the system pushing it down. Then there is physical evidence recovered at the site of the crash that seems to suggest that the nose was being pitched down. We dont know why. But again, it all points to this system being involved, potentially contributing to another tragedy.

michael barbaro

And so what is the reaction this time, after the second crash of a 737 Max?

natalie kitroeff

Boeing stands firm behind the plane. And American carriers are right there with them. But 

archived recording China has grounded its entire Boeing 737 Max fleet.

natalie kitroeff

 regulators around the world seem a little less confident. The Chinese and Indonesians quickly ground the 737 Max.

archived recording More countries following Chinas lead and grounding the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet.

natalie kitroeff

Once the Europeans follow 

archived recording European Aviation Safety Agency, they have banned flights of the 737 Max series, adding to similar groundings by China, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, the U.K., Singapore, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Turkey. I could go on.

natalie kitroeff

 American regulators are all of a sudden under immense pressure for the F.A.A. to ground these planes.

archived recording (donald trump) Boeing is an incredible company. They are working very, very hard right now. And hopefully, theyll very quickly come up with the answer. But until they do, the planes are grounded.

michael barbaro

All of this looks very bad for Boeing, obviously. And it seems to stem from this original motivation, as you described it, to avoid classifying this new energy-efficient plane that would compete against Airbuses as fundamentally different from older models of the 737 that would require expensive training of the pilots, even though a very crucial part of the plane was different.

natalie kitroeff

Thats right. This motivation to keep this plane as similar as possible to its predecessor permeated the entire engineering process. Remember, this is how Boeing needs to compete with Airbus. Its also raising questions about the entire process for certifying aircraft in the United States. There is renewed scrutiny on the closeness between the F.A.A. and Boeing. The F.A.A. and Boeing work together to certify planes. The F.A.A. actually relies heavily on Boeing employees to help certify its aircraft.

michael barbaro

And is that basically industry practice? Companies that make these planes work with the Federal Aviation Administration on the approval process?

natalie kitroeff

Thats exactly right.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

natalie kitroeff

I mean, folks were talking about this, right? But nobody was kind of raising red flags. I mean, it wasnt like people were up in arms about the way that this certification system works. But now theres been two crashes of the same model in less than five months. And were hearing more and more from regulators and former regulators about how this close relationship may be too cozy.

michael barbaro

Natalie, what do we know about the role that Boeings employees played specifically in the certification of the Boeing 737 Max?

natalie kitroeff

We know that Boeing plays a critical role in helping to certify its aircraft. And we are learning more and more about the role that it played in the case of the 737 Max. The Seattle Times recently reported that not only was the F.A.A. relying heavily on Boeing in this case, but that Boeing itself was turning out an analysis that was downplaying the potential risks of a software system that is now at issue after these two crashes.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

natalie kitroeff

The F.A.A., like any federal agency, has a limited budget. And theres a reason why it would want to rely on the people who are most informed about the inner workings of increasingly complex aircraft in order to determine whether that plane is airworthy. You can see why you would need a relationship, and one where there is a lot of information-sharing, right? Because the one side cant employ as many people as Boeing does. And the other side has a ton of expertise. But is that relationship too close?

michael barbaro

Right. And there seems to be a lot of trust at the center of this system youre describing that allows Boeing to basically be like a co-regulator of itself. And the most important trust involved here seems to be that a business will always put safety above profits. And I guess the question here is whether in a system with that much trust, that balance could get out of whack, and safety might lose out to profits. And the only way we would know that is when theres a tragedy or two tragedies.

natalie kitroeff

Boeing doesnt want planes to crash. So their motivations are, in many ways, exactly aligned with their customers. But whats emerged after these two crashes  I mean, you heard the pilots. They said this was a breach of trust.

michael barbaro

Right.

natalie kitroeff

I think a lot of people are feeling that right now, that feeling of questioning of this process. And this isnt to say anything about Boeings motivations. We are at the very beginning of investigating these two flights, and we do not want to rush to conclusions. But youre asking the questions that the people at the front line of this industry, the pilots, the crew, theyre asking that right now. How do we regain trust in Boeing? And how do we know for sure that we are being told everything we need to know in order to fly these planes?

michael barbaro

Weve been talking about trust, the trust that the F.A.A. had in Boeing, that the airlines, their pilots and crews had or didnt have in this plane. But Im wondering now about the trust that we, as the flying public, have in these planes. And its kind of hard to imagine wanting to fly on a 737 Max anytime soon. Lets say that the software gets fixed. And Boeing and the F.A.A., through their certification process, they all sign off on everything being safe. Why should we trust them after that? Why should we trust them, kind of, ever?

natalie kitroeff

I think that coming up with the software fix is manageable for Boeing, an industrial juggernaut that has dealt with these issues before. And youll remember, the 787 Dreamliner was grounded for three months in 2013, when it had battery fire problems.

michael barbaro

And that was a Boeing plane?

natalie kitroeff

Right, a Boeing plane. And we all fly on it. Its possible that people will be wary right now. But Boeing has the capacity to fix this thing and probably will. The bigger question is whether these two tragedies lead to a more wholesale transformation in the process for regulating the aircraft manufacturers in this country. What, if anything, is going to change in the process by which we determine, in the United States, that planes are safe to fly?

[music]

michael barbaro

Natalie, thank you very much.

natalie kitroeff
How do you answer hatred? How should you respond when your political opponents assault you with insult, stereotype and contempt? Thats the moral question we all have to answer during this election campaign.

Hatred has become the defining emotion of our political life. As my colleague Thomas B. Edsall reported last week, according to a recent paper, 42 percent of the people in each party regard their opposition as downright evil. Nearly 20 percent of both Democrats and Republicans believe that their political adversaries lack the traits to be considered fully human  they behave like animals. Roughly 20 percent of Democrats and 16 percent of Republicans say that the world would be better off if large numbers of the other party died.

Some people believe that fire can be fought only with fire. Weve got to face the world as it is. If the other side is going after you with full viciousness, youve got to find a leader who can do the same to them. This is a knife fight. We need a brawler.

This is the argument white evangelicals made in deciding to back Donald Trump. Were under siege. Hell fight for us.
As authorities rushed to stop a gunman on a mass killing spree in New Zealand, engineers, programmers and content moderators around the globe were scrambling to keep the rampage from going viral.

It didnt work.

The terrorist in Christchurch killed 50 people at two mosques on Friday, livestreaming part of the attack on Facebook. The original video was taken down within an hour. But copies proliferated across the major platforms.

On Saturday night, Facebook announced that it had removed 1.5 million copies of the video, with 1.2 million blocked at the moment they were uploaded. YouTube declined to give numbers, although its chief product officer told The Washington Post that at times, a copy of the video was being uploaded every second.

After decades of shunning responsibility for user content, Big Tech is slowly making its products safer for society  banning anti-vaccine misinformation, for instance, and cracking down on political disinformation. More moderation comes with heavy risks, of course. Decisions about the limits of free speech would shift to companies whose priorities are driven by shareholders. But the viral spread of the Christchurch shooting video shows the limits of the content moderation machine in the face of technologies that have been designed to be attention traps. Stricter moderation or filtering systems are not the answer. It must be a priority to redesign technology to respect the common good, instead of ignoring it.
Many high achievers, particularly women and people of color, suffer from impostor syndrome, the fear that they dont belong in the rarefied realm to which theyve ascended and that they will soon be found out. Even Michelle Obama, who is, according to a Gallup poll conducted last year, the most admired woman in America, has said that she feels it. I share that with you because we all have doubts in our abilities, about our power and what that power is, she told students in London in December.

Well, maybe not all of us. Ive just finished Vicky Wards Kushner, Inc., a scintillating investigation of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trumps White House sojourn, which comes out on Tuesday. Its full of damning details: contempt for the entitled, venal couple may be the one thing that unites all of D.C.s warring factions. Still, the first daughter and her husband remain psychologically mysterious, at least to me. Why dont they have impostor syndrome, given that their total lack of qualifications for the jobs they are doing makes them actual impostors?

According to Kushner, Inc., Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council, has told people that Ivanka Trump thinks she could someday be president. Her fathers reign in Washington, D.C., is, she believes, the beginning of a great American dynasty, writes Ward. Kushner, whose pre-White House experience included owning a boutique newspaper and helming a catastrophically ill-timed real estate deal, has arrogated to himself substantial parts of American foreign policy. According to Ward, shortly after Rex Tillerson was confirmed as secretary of state, Kushner told him to leave Mexico to him because hed have Nafta wrapped up by October.

As political actors, the couple are living exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon which leads incompetent people to overestimate their ability because they cant grasp how much they dont know.
It comes as little surprise, sadly, that the Saudi thugs who slaughtered Jamal Khashoggi were a secret crew of enforcers for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. They had been watching, kidnapping, detaining and torturing Saudi dissidents for more than a year before they traveled to Istanbul to kill and dismember the Washington Post journalist.

According to a report in The Times by Mark Mazzetti and Ben Hubbard, citing officials who have read classified intelligence, the team is known to American officials as the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group and it carried out at least a dozen operations before the Khashoggi murder.

This comes as little surprise because of all the sordid information that has come out about the Saudi hit men and the crown prince since the brazen assassination of Mr. Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul shocked the world in October, and because of the clumsy initial attempts by Prince Mohammed to deny the killing and then to pin it on underlings who purportedly exceeded their orders and are now said to be standing trial in a courtroom no independent witnesses have been to.

In the five months since the killing, most of the world has learned that Prince Mohammed is not the modernizing liberal of the image he cultivated among Western leaders and visitors but rather a despot who suppressed those who challenged his image and his power.
HOUSTON  To Kirby Runyon, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the small distant object that NASAs New Horizons spacecraft flew past on the first day of this year reminds him of monkey bread.

For people not familiar with this sweet pastry, monkey bread consists of balls of dough that are piled into a pan. As they bake, the balls combine into a larger whole. It is a structure that may help explain the process that turned bits of dust and gas into planets in the early solar system.

New Horizons traveled some 4 billion miles to take a close-up look at this 22-mile-long world in the solar systems icy Kuiper belt beyond Neptune; it is officially designated as 2014 MU69 and nicknamed Ultima Thule. Planetary scientists have never been able to do so for an object this distant, a small shard that has been frozen and almost unchanged since it formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Ultima Thule was not as picturesque as New Horizons first target  Pluto, in 2015  but it was full of surprises. The shape turned out to be unlike anything seen in the solar system. It was not just a simple ball, but two objects that at some stage touched and stuck together, like a snowman. Then the scientists discovered that the two lobes of Ultima Thule were not spherical, but more like lumpy pancakes. The larger lobe is also flatter than the smaller one.
What Mr. Guare seems to be after is a dramaturgy that is absurdist not for its own sake but as a kind of last-ditch naturalism, replicating the absurdity of actual life with all its serendipities, hyperlinks, potholes and misprisions. He is one of our few major dramatists who dares to make plays from the kinds of anecdotes about which we say at cocktail parties: If this were a play, youd never believe it.

But if Mr. Guares earlier excursions in the anecdotal style made you feel like guests at just such a party, Nantucket Sleigh Ride (like A Free Man of Color in 2010) makes you feel like youre stranded at one, in a corner with a drunk. Despite some heavy pruning and reshaping since it was first produced (under the title Are You There, McPhee?) at the McCarter Theater in 2012, it remains, in Jerry Zakss zippy, overbright staging for Lincoln Center Theater, both hermitic and hermetic: obscure and airless.

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Thats not a great environment for audiences  or actors  to thrive in. Mr. Larroquette has the right combination of swagger and self-doubt but spends most of the play nursing the harried affect of someone running for a bus that keeps shutting its doors every time he catches up. The rest of the cast, which includes several experienced farceurs and shape-shifters, is forced into more or less impossible contortions of whimsy, a job for which only Douglas Sills (as a shrink, the childrens father and Disney) seems factory-equipped.

Still, you may get a shiver of the dark anxiety hiding in the writing as a ghost hides in a childs crowded closet: Without other people to confirm your identity, you have none. Nor is that an anxiety that, for a playwright, gets better with age. Mr. Guare is 81, and while Nantucket Sleigh Ride is hardly valedictory, it does betray doubts about ongoing fecundity.

Lightning struck me once, Gowery says with an equanimity the play proceeds to topple. Thats once more than it strikes most people. Another character helpfully points out that Verdis Otello and Falstaff were written when the composer was nearing 90  which, perhaps deliberately, is at least a decade off.

Though I find his plays fresher when he writes for female protagonists instead of male ones  the women here are basically tchotchkes  Mr. Guare need not have worried about the friskiness of his imagination or the seaworthiness of his craft. Theyre fine.

Nantucket Sleigh Ride, it seems to me, is simply a story that didnt want to be caught. Even the title seems to know it: Its a local term for what happens when a whaler harpoons a whale. After hours or days of wild exertion, one or the other winds up dead.

Or sometimes the audience does.
Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. Im Lisa Lerer, your host.

[Get On Politics delivered to your inbox.]

The Mississippi Delta isnt a typical stop on the Democratic presidential primary circuit. But there was Senator Elizabeth Warren, on a bright Monday morning, winding her way through a neighborhood of worn-down shotgun houses in Cleveland, Miss.

It wont leave my mind and it wont leave my heart, she told Willie Simmons, a state senator who was giving Ms. Warren a tour, as we walked by burned-out homes, trash-filled yards and empty lots.

The last time a major presidential candidate stopped in Cleveland was 1967, when Robert F. Kennedy came as part of his national poverty tour, Mr. Simmons said, explaining how much he appreciated the opportunity to show a political star the need in his community.
JOHANNESBURG  A deadly cyclone that struck Mozambique and other countries in southern Africa has nearly obliterated the worst-affected areas, flooding vast stretches of land, destroying roads and dams, and cutting off victims from help.

The cyclone, called Idai, has affected more than 1.5 million people, with a death toll now in the dozens but feared to be far higher.

The storm destroyed 90 percent of Beira, a city of about a half-million people that is Mozambiques fourth largest and faces the Indian Ocean, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Monday.
An endangered orangutan who rescue workers named Hope was found blinded and near death last week on an oil palm plantation in Indonesia after she was stabbed and shot 74 times by an air rifle, according to the Orangutan Information Centre, a conservation group. Her malnourished month-old baby was by her side, it said.

Mother and baby were rushed to a veterinary clinic by the groups Human and Orangutan Conflict Response Unit soon after they were found on March 10 in the village of Bunga Tanjung in Aceh province, on the island of Sumatra.

But the child, which the group said was found in serious traumatic and malnourished conditions, died on its way to the clinic.

This orangutan, that we named Hope after thousand hopes for her future, is one of most tragic orangutans that we ever come across, the information center said in a statement last week. The group did not respond to a request for comment on Monday night.
SYDNEY, Australia  Money raised for a teenager who shot to worldwide fame after smashing an egg on the head of an Australian far-right politician will go toward the victims of the New Zealand mosque shootings, according to his fund-raising page.

On Tuesday morning, a GoFundMe page for Will Connolly, now commonly known as Egg Boy, had already surpassed its goal of raising 50,000 Australian dollars, about $35,000. An update on the page said the 17-year-old Mr. Connolly plans to send a majority of the money to the victims of the Christchurch terror attack. The funds were originally intended to cover his legal fees and to help him buy more eggs.

The teenager gained fame after smashing an egg on the head of Fraser Anning, an anti-immigration senator, as the senator spoke to reporters in Melbourne, Australia, on Friday. The incident happened after Mr. Anning was widely condemned for a statement he made that day blaming Muslim immigration for Fridays massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand.

After getting hit with the egg, Mr. Anning turned around and struck Mr. Connolly in the face twice. A brawl broke out that ended with Mr. Connolly being pinned down by men in the crowd. Mr. Connolly was arrested at the scene and released pending further investigation, the police said.
OTTAWA  Canadas top public servant, who was accused of improperly pressing the former attorney general to settle a corruption case involving a major corporation, resigned on Monday as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to put more than a month of political turmoil behind him.

It was the fourth prominent resignation related to the scandal since last month.

In parliamentary testimony, Jody Wilson-Raybould, who stepped down as justice minister and attorney general, had singled out Michael Wernick, the public servant, for making what she called veiled threats to steer her toward using a new law to impose a hefty financial penalty, rather than a criminal conviction, on SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal company accused of bribery in Libya.

A criminal conviction would have barred the company from government work for a decade, which led Mr. Trudeau and others to fear the loss of Canadian jobs.

Mr. Wernick, a career public servant whose role as clerk of the Privy Council is supposed to be impartial and nonpartisan, denied acting improperly or making threats in his own testimony in front of Parliament. Public appearances by the clerk are rare, and past clerks have generally been guarded and careful in their comments, as it is their job to ensure that government workers carry out the laws passed by politicians.
MOSCOW  A Russian court on Monday sentenced a Muslim human rights activist to four years in a penal colony on drug possession charges widely seen as manufactured to further a crackdown on dissent in the Chechnya region.

The activist, Oyub Titiev, 61, had worked for years investigating allegations of abuse ranging from torture to murder under the increasingly autocratic rule of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Mr. Kadyrov publicly called Mr. Titiev a junkie after his arrest in January 2018.

Drug addicts were arrested in Chechnya by the thousands, and no one came to their defense, Mr. Kadyrov said on Chechen television at the time. But as soon as Mr. Titiev was arrested, he complained, the entire world rose up.

The organization where Mr. Titiev worked, a local branch of the Memorial Human Rights Center, was placed on a Russian government registry of foreign agents in 2014.
The spokesman of the Islamic State emerged from nearly six months of silence on Monday to mock Americas assertion of having defeated the group and to call for retaliation over last weeks mosque attacks in New Zealand.

The scenes of the massacres in the two mosques should wake up those who were fooled, and should incite the supporters of the caliphate to avenge their religion, the spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, said in a 44-minute audio recording.

Mr. al-Muhajir portrayed the shootings by a white extremist, which killed 50 Muslims as they prayed in the city of Christchurch, as an extension of the campaign against the Islamic State. He likened the mosque attacks to the weekslong battle raging in the last village under ISIS control in Syria.

Here is Baghuz in Syria, where Muslims are burned to death and are bombed by all known and unknown weapons of mass destruction, he said, painting the people in the town as regular Muslims when in fact coalition officials believe that the majority of them are either Islamic State fighters or their wives and children.
[gunfire] We are learning more about a young Palestinian nurse killed on Friday while  A young medics final moment: Rouzan al-Najjar races to help an injured Palestinian protester. On June 1, 2018, an Israeli soldier shot into a crowd of protesters in Gaza, killing a volunteer medic named Rouzan al-Najjar. There has been a huge reaction across Gaza to the death  Her death sparked outrage and grabbed the worlds attention. She is the latest victim of Israeli gunfire. The U.N. and human rights groups have accused Israel of using disproportionate force. Israel says it uses live fire only as a last resort. We have a very specific record of every shot. Israel only targeted people who were actively engaged in violence. And we only use live fire in a measured and surgical way. But what about Rouzan? Israels army said it would investigate her death, but they offered us little explanation. We dont know exactly how and what happened. The adverse results are clear. Wed met and interviewed Rouzan weeks before she was killed. We returned to Gaza to investigate her death and found that virtually every minute of the day she died was filmed by journalists, medics and protesters. We analyzed over 1,000 of their photos and videos, frame by frame. We mapped the protest area. And with the agency Forensic Architecture, we made a precise 3-D model of it. We studied ballistics evidence and autopsy records. And our reporters reviewed the visual evidence with more than 30 key witnesses. Our investigation reconstructs what happened that day. It reveals how Rouzan was killed, and shows how Israel used lethal force to control the protests, often in a way that has led to tragic consequences. Rouzan was already somewhat of a local celebrity by the time we met her in May. Rouzan al-Najjar. She was known for being the first woman to volunteer as a medic when protests began. By volunteering, Rouzan broke Gazas rigid gender norms. She wasnt a doctor or a nurse. She told us she just wanted to help the wounded. Gazans had been coming to the boundary line with Israel since March. They wanted to protest the blockade imposed by Israel since Hamas seized power in Gaza 11 years ago. [chanting] Thousands came in peace  to highlight their grinding poverty and isolation. But Hamas  which calls for Israels destruction  saw a chance to ride the wave of anger. They backed the protests, and urged participants to break through the border fence. [chanting] Some protesters threw stones, or flew burning kites into Israel. Others cut openings in the fence, one that was built only to detect intrusion, not stop it. To Israel, breaching the fence amounted to an imminent threat to rural communities a few hundred yards from the Gaza side. I can only, you know, use what they publish here. And you can see here, Nahal Oz. This is Gaza. Nahal Oz is 700 meters. Taking no chances, Israel warned that its army would use lethal force against anyone who approached the fence, and it did. On the worst day of violence in May, it shot over 1,000 people. I dont know of any army that would do anything differently if you had to protect your border against people who say, Were going to destroy you. But its soldiers also shot even after violence had passed, and toward nonviolent protesters and bystanders who were far from the fence. [gunfire] And thats what happened on the day Rouzan was killed. Well take you through her final hour. But first, well map out the area around the fence, because the position of soldiers and protesters that day is key to understanding what follows. This is the fence that separates Israel and Gaza. On the Israeli side, snipers in jeeps are positioned here. Around 40 yards into the Gaza side are long coils of barbed wire. And for most of the afternoon, protesters and onlookers are here, about 100 yards back. And what keeps the protesters back there, and away from the fence, is tear gas. As protesters approach the fence throwing stones, the Israel Defense Forces, the I.D.F., repels them with gas. [shouting] Its a scene that replays over and over, and it keeps Rouzan and the other medics busy. As a means to keep back protesters, tear gas is working. But in the 15 minutes before Rouzan is killed, the protesters move closer toward the fence. There are three separate incidents by the barbed wire, and the I.D.F. begins to fire live rounds. The first incident happens here, and it draws the medics in. Two protesters are injured on the ground, and Rouzan leads the medics to rescue them. She waves at soldiers not to shoot. Medics are protected by international law, but the I.D.F. fires a warning shot near them. The medics see a soldier emerge from behind a jeep, his rifle leveled at them. Rouzan is the last to pull back. This is the first time that medics are taken out by gas that afternoon. Back among the protest crowd, Rouzan catches her breath. But the violence around her intensifies. The second incident happens far upfield, about 200 yards from the main protest area. A group of protesters splits off and digs in at the barbed wire. The I.D.F. is caught off guard. They race up in jeeps. The protesters throw stones and firebombs. The I.D.F. responds again with a barrage of gas, pushing many of the protesters back. The I.D.F. told us firebombs escalated matters. After theyre thrown, snipers get ready atop this berm, near where the medics and soldiers were face to face moments earlier. Well come back to these berms, shortly. The third incident happens here, to the other side of the medics and protesters. Protesters attach a hook to the barbed wire and start pulling a segment away. Lamiaa, a medic who was standing with Rouzan, senses danger. Again, the I.D.F. launches gas. The rope pullers tug away a small coil of wire and run off. Much of the crowd follows along. By now, Rouzan and Lamiaa are walking back through the crowd, far from the fence. We spot them in this blurry Facebook Live video. For a moment, the violent protesting seems to be dissipating. [gunfire] Its 6:31, the fatal shot. Three medics fall  Mohammed, Rami and Rouzan. Doctors in a nearby field clinic fail to resuscitate her. Shes rushed to a hospital, but its too late. At 7:10, Rouzan is pronounced dead. How did Rouzan die that day? Well freeze that fatal moment in time. Heres the shot. In the distance are the three medics who are hit. Heres Rami, holding his thigh. Theres Mohammed. And here, to the left, is Rouzan, partially obscured. Shes actually one of eight medics in this particular frame. We worked with the research agency Forensic Architecture to create a 3-D model of the protest field from multiple cameras. Here are the medics in white, and Rouzan in orange. Where did the shot come from? We drew a line through Rouzan and Rami, the two medics who were directly hit by the bullet. Allowing for a margin of error, we traced the bullet back to the same sand berms where the medics stood opposite Israeli soldiers minutes earlier. How did one bullet hit two medics and injure a third? The snipers are aiming almost parallel to the ground and firing a large battlefield bullet. Former snipers told us that a hefty round like this could easily skim like a stone off the rocky soil, endangering everyone in its path  and that appears to be what happened. Heres another angle  [gunfire] the shot. [shouting] Theres Rami and Mohammed, with only his legs visible. Lets rewind. [gunfire] Notice, two people point. They told us they saw where the bullet hit the ground, just a few feet from the medics. The bullet continued onward . Heres Rami. The bullet grazed his thigh. Theres Mohammed. The bullet sprayed his torso with debris, including the copper jacket of the bullet. And thats Rouzan. The bullet pierced her chest and severed her aorta. Two fragments came out through her medics vest. We asked Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus how the I.D.F. decides to shoot live rounds. It would be a very precise identification of a target where the sniper asks for permission. The officer would grant that permission and then the sniper would execute that order. But that, that target has to have been  himself or herself  has to have been doing something violent that poses a threat? Yes. Whenever there was a situation where we would have rioters cutting the fence, throwing grenades and being able to breach inside, those were the situations where we took action against. A senior I.D.F. commander told us that soldiers shot four protesters that day. All of them, he said, were acting violently. We found the first and third targets in the group that broke upfield. The first fell around 50 or 60 yards from the fence. We saw the third target throwing stones a few minutes before he was shot. The fourth target appears to have been alone when he was shot, around 150 yards from the fence. We dont know what he was doing. What about the second shot  the one that killed Rouzan? Who was acting violently at that time? We analyzed videos taken from several angles before the fatal shot, frame by frame. We focus in on the space between the medics and the soldiers at the fence, and we dont see a single protester or violent threat within 100 yards of the fence. Remember, the I.D.F. says it uses live fire only as a last resort. So why take that shot? We know it was fired at 6:31 p.m. Right before this video clip. The senior I.D.F. commander told us that at that time, they shot a protester in a yellow shirt who was pulling at the fence and throwing stones. We reviewed multiple videos and found a few men wearing yellow shirts, but only one near the bullets path. The man in yellow wasnt acting violently in the minutes before the shot, and he couldnt have been an imminent threat. Hes too far from the fence. He also wasnt shot. And most importantly, behind him were the medics in white coats. Really, the question is, even if you had a legitimate target with medics right behind, why would you take that shot? Its very difficult to say. Very difficult to say. I mean, I think its  I mean, isnt it reckless? No, I wouldnt say so. But the soldier fired through a group of medics. We talked to a ballistics expert, and former I.D.F. and U.S. army snipers. They told us its a shot you dont take. In public, Israel says it uses lethal force as a last resort against imminent threats to Israeli life. But at the border fence, we found it took a more permissive approach. It treated the crowd of protesters itself as an imminent threat and allowed soldiers to shoot pre-emptively at targets within it to prevent a breach. That often meant putting nonviolent protesters, bystanders and medics at risk. [shouting] According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israeli soldiers have shot over 6,000 Palestinians in the protests of 2018. In Gaza, we saw many with life-changing injuries. More than 180 have been killed. They include a journalist who was filming the protests, a 15-year-old shot in the chest, a 16-year-old who had his arms raised and a young man shot in the back while carrying a tire. And off-camera in August, a senior Israeli commander told us that by then, 60 to 70 Palestinians were killed unintentionally. Israel has opened criminal investigations into three cases, including Rouzans. But its done nothing to adjust its policy on the use of lethal force. For now, Israel says that protecting its border is a complicated business. Unfortunately, yes, in a situation like that, accidents happen, and unintended results happen.
From the beginning of our collaboration, we were interested in fiction and reality, said Mr. Sonderegger, on a tour of the exhibition, titled Double Take and running through June 1, ahead of its opening. The Swiss duo said they were particularly interested in historically significant shots, like the one taken from a helicopter flying over Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, showing United Airlines Flight 175 fly toward the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

A lot of images are really like a symbol for a change of something, Mr. Sonderegger said. If you look at the history, you see that this image stands for this period, or for the end of this period.

The pairs choice of photographs reflects this focus. For example, one recreates a shot of the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in 2004, using epoxy resin, plastic wrap and feathers; another the shallow crater made by a boot on the moon, the artists own Converse footprints marking the border of the mock-up. Each of these images had a momentous effect on the international audiences that saw them. The first one, on our understanding of natural disasters and their impact on human settlements; the second, for our awareness of our place in the universe.
The Gallery had been considering the gift for over a year, as the controversy around the Sackler family has grown. Nan Goldin, the photographer and anti-opioid activist, drew attention to it last month when she revealed she was in discussions with the gallery over a retrospective. I have told them I would not do it if they take the Sackler money, she told The Observer.

The gallery has an ethics advisory committee that provides advice on whether to accept donations. It met shortly after Ms. Goldins comments, according to The Art Newspaper. Its advice was confidential and will not be released, a spokeswoman for the National Portrait Gallery said in an email.

Im thrilled about the news, and I congratulate them on their courage, Ms. Goldin said in a telephone interview. I dont take credit for it. Maybe I put the last nail in the coffin, she added, but theyve been in discussions for a long time.

She is still talking with the gallery about a retrospective, she added: I wish it could be next week.

Much of the focus on the Sacklers donations to art institutions has been in the United States, where deaths and addiction associated with prescription opioids have become an unrelenting crisis. In February, Ms. Goldin, who was addicted to painkillers, and members of a protest group she founded threw scraps of paper meant to look like OxyContin prescriptions from an upper walkway of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where they floated down on visitors to raise awareness of the donations it has received from the Sackler family.
MAASTRICHT, Netherlands  How can we tell its a real Canaletto?

Its the way he characterizes the figures, just with a few squiggles, said Charles Beddington, a London-based dealer in old-master pictures, standing in front of a painting, Old Somerset House From the River Thames, that he was offering at Tefaf Maastricht, Europes biggest and most prestigious international art and antiques fair.

Like that dog, Mr. Beddington added, pointing to the cheeky detail of a hound squatting to do its business on the terrace of the mansion where Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I, once lived.

That was one of the telltale details that persuaded Mr. Beddington, an authority on 18th-century Italian painting, to include this long-lost picture in his catalog of the 2007 exhibition, Canaletto in England: A Venetian Artist Abroad, 1746-1755, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Before then, it was thought that the original Canaletto of this subject was a canvas sold in 1988 at Christies in New York. But that picture is now considered to be a copy by another artist.

That version doesnt have the dog, said Mr. Beddington, who added that the work available at Tefaf on behalf of its British owner was one of just three known paintings by Canaletto executed on mahogany panel. It was priced at six million pounds, or about $8 million. Mr. Beddington said he was working on its sale.
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous nights highlights that lets you sleep  and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If youre interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox.

It Should Be a Slam Dunk

President Trump has drawn fire from some critics for his response to the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday that left 50 people dead. The suspect in the attack had praised Trump in a manifesto, calling him a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.

Stephen Colbert played a tape of New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, saying that she had asked Trump to express his sympathy and love for all Muslim communities. Colbert then joked that he didnt expect that to pan out.

Thats not really Trumps brand. Trump has trouble showing love for things that are not him. And he has a particularly bad record with Muslims, in this regard.  STEPHEN COLBERT

Trump did publicly express his sympathies for the victims, but Colbert was not satisfied. Over the weekend, Trump continued to push for the building of a border wall, using the word invasion to describe the flow of immigrants on the southern border. (The New Zealand gunman also used that word). And the president tweeted his discontent with Fox News after it suspended the host Jeanine Pirro because she expressed anti-Muslim views.
I cant understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems, Philip Larkin once complained. Its like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.

His interlocutor replied, Theyd do that, too if their agents could fix it.

Truly, all things come to pass. The essayist David Shields has written a new book, The Trouble With Men, which he describes as a short, intensive immersion into the perils, limits and possibilities of human intimacy. More bluntly, its about sleeping with his wife  and addressed to her. Do I love you? Do you love me? What kind of marriage do we want? he asks her. Do you like making love with me? Do you love making love with me? (Dont answer.)

Despite the broad diagnosis promised by the title, the focus is narrow, personal  and frank. Shields breaks the sound barrier for indiscretion. He quotes Harold Brodkey: I dont see the point of privacy. (Fittingly, Brodkeys other appearance here features him trying to pick up Shields at a gym in 1983.)

The book is structured as an investigation into Shieldss own psyche and particular tastes. He is masochistic to his marrow  not just sexually. I check the Mariners score on my phone, hoping theyve won but needing them to lose. He relishes his negative reviews. His entire career owes something to his desire for punishment. Throughout various books, Ive quoted and misquoted hundreds of sentences, without proper attribution  in order to advance a particular literary, aesthetic and philosophical principle but also as a way to be bad and get spanked (for being bad)?
THE SILK ROAD

By Kathryn Davis

If writers can be said to have an animating concern that threads through their work  memory for Proust, love for Austen  then Kathryn Daviss is none other than the animating force itself, the soul. Davis has been quietly publishing a novel every few years since 1988. She has gathered a small devoted following, and yet she is refreshingly unconcerned with wider success.

Her writing exists outside of genre and trends and time. She operates in a mode that could be called surreal realism, where the boundaries between reality and fantasy dissolve into a place where imagination is akin to gravity and exerts a pull just as powerful. Her eighth novel is even more metaphysical and experimental than its predecessors. If a Hilma af Klint painting could become a book, it would be this one.

The Silk Road opens with a mystery. Eight cosmic beings, whose memories of a shared childhood lead us to believe they are siblings (though they are perhaps variations on a single soul, reincarnations of one another), are taking a yoga class in a subterranean labyrinth somewhere in the arctic north. They are referred to only by their professions: the Astronomer, the Archivist, the Botanist, the Keeper, the Topologist, the Geographer, the Iceman and the Cook. The class is led by the enigmatic Jee Moon, who is described as shrouded in something aqueous. Someone, though we never learn who, fails to arise from corpse pose. It is deemed a murder, but no one is especially interested in solving it.

The books other mysteries seem more pressing to a reader  what state of existence are these beings in, who is Jee Moon, where are we, what is the plague that has decimated the population  and yet the novel is just as uninterested in answering them.
ZORA AND LANGSTON

A Story of Friendship and Betrayal

By Yuval Taylor

Yuval Taylors Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal is an overdue study of the famous yet underdiscussed friendship and literary collaboration between Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. It is so easy to see how and why they would love each other, the epigraph, taken from a 1989 essay by Alice Walker, reads. Each was to the other an affirming example of what black people could be like: wild, crazy, creative, spontaneous, at ease with who they are, and funny. A lot of attention has been given to their breakup  but very little to the pleasure Zora and Langston must have felt in each others company.

That final line encapsulates Taylors ambitious project. The dramatic fallout between Hurston and Hughes, triggered by their collaboration on the ill-fated and controversial play Mule Bone, has been fetishized in literary circles for its dramatic nature. Stories of their heated fights, rumors of a love triangle involving their typist, Louise Thompson, and the involvement of lawyers have all made the rounds. Consequently, the qualities that initially drew these artists together  their shared sense of mission and pride in ordinary black people  have long been overlooked. Zora and Langston refocuses our attention on the positive aspects of their relationship, while doing its best to explain  through historical records and firsthand research  what really brought their friendship to an end.

In July 1927, Hurston and Hughes embarked on a tour of the Deep South  part business, part pleasure  which began with a chance meeting in downtown Mobile, Ala., where the two ran into each other outside the train station. Hurston was there to interview Cudjo Lewis, the last living former slave born in Africa; Hughes was giving readings and performing his own research. Hughes, a Northerner, was out of his element, while the Alabama-born and Florida-bred Hurston was firmly in hers, traveling with a gun in her shoulder holster. On this trip, Hughes and Hurston grew conscious of their shared interest in black folklore and everyday people, and their pronounced taste for adventure. This chance encounter kicks off the books most exciting chapter, imbued with the pleasure Hurston and Hughes inspired in each other.

Soon after their meeting, the book describes the pair enjoying a meal of fried fish and watermelon. While most black people would have recoiled at such a meal because of its evocation of racial stereotypes, Hurston and Hughes reveled in defying such expectations. They visited Booker T. Washingtons Tuskegee University, where the only surviving photographs of Hughes and Hurston together were taken, the pair smiling on campus and looking impossibly young and carefree  a highlight of the books somewhat anemic visual offerings.
It was sold as a next generation aircraft. But it has now been involved in two fatal crashes in just five months. The Boeing 737 Max 8 entered the market in 2017, a part of the 737 Max class, and became an instant hit. Within the first six months, more than 4,000 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes had been ordered. It quickly became the companys best-selling plane ever. The new model was advertised as a rare win-win for both airlines and passengers. Its going to give them max efficiency, which leads to profitability; max reliability, and to the flying public: max passenger appeal. The demand for something new. Boeing debuted the new planes in response to market pressures. In late 2010, Boeings archrival, Airbus, had just announced a new fuel-efficient version of its best selling A320. Boeing countered with the introduction of the 737 Max  The Max uses 14 percent less fuel than current 737s  its own version of fuel- and cost- efficient aircrafts. Their message to customers was: These are new planes that arent that new. Boeing 737  Newest arrival in the Boeing family of airliners, the 737 attracts a crowd. Boeings first 737 model took off in 1967. A new queen of the sky. For the Max class, Boeing upgraded the engine and design. They added more cabin space, bigger windows and multicolored ceiling lights to help modernize the planes. But the company kept the 737 name because it evoked a legacy of reliability and built trust. Ill tell you what, its just a beautiful, beautiful airplane. Not only were they able to modernize the airplane with new engines, and new winglets, but they were able to keep that classic iconic 737 look. But that isnt the whole story. The new model was also designed to help carriers save money. Which means CEOs like the Max. Really like the Max. Major changes to the plane would have required pilots to be retrained. But Boeings position was that the new models handled enough like the old ones. Though the 737 Max 8 planes did actually have a number of changes, including the size and location of the engines. The higher and more forward position of the larger engines can cause the planes nose to pitch up, a potential danger. To compensate for this, Boeing added a computerized system called MCAS to prevent the planes nose from getting too high and causing a stall. But the F.A.A. initially said pilots did not need to be informed of this system update. Experts say that the lack of training for the new system may have helped cause a deadly crash with a Max 8 off the coast of Indonesia in October, killing 189 people. All of the Boeing 737 Max 8s in the world are believed to have been grounded, while a second crash in Ethiopia is investigated. Boeing said it supported the decision to ground the planes and is cooperating with investigators.
President Trump on Tuesday named Stephen Dickson, a former Delta Air Lines executive, as his choice to become the permanent head of the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency facing scrutiny after two deadly airplane crashes in less than five months.

Mr. Dickson will be nominated for the post amid intensifying calls worldwide for the aviation agency to explain its approval of the Boeing 737 Max, the jet involved in the two accidents, an Ethiopian Airlines crash this month and a Lion Air crash in October.

Mr. Dickson retired as Deltas senior vice president of flight operations last fall after a 27-year career at the company during which he flew commercial routes and also oversaw safety, pilot training and regulatory compliance. He is a former Air Force officer, Air Force Academy graduate and F-15 fighter pilot, according to Delta.

Steve is passionate about safety and has a deep understanding of the needs of the aviation industry and the traveling public, said Michael Huerta, a former F.A.A. administrator picked by President Barack Obama.
The person who was really most instrumental is Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who had been one of the old-line members who was very much an institutionalist and very much concerned about how the Senate would change. He went home to West Virginia to speak and was introduced in West Virginia, his home state, as the speaker of the House. And its because he had a big shock of white hair, as did the then-Speaker of the House Tip ONeill. And this brought it all home to him. So he convinced some of the recalcitrant members, they did a vote and C-Span went on in June of 1986.

What is one of your most significant memories from your time at C-Span?

The day that the Challenger shuttle exploded we were televising it live, and I believe I was on the air as the shuttle was going up. And it became very clear as you watched that picture of the shuttle that this was a major catastrophe.

We sat and watched as long as NASA took pictures, and then the story began to unfold. Then we opened up our phone lines. There was just an incredible outpouring from around the country of people witnessing this absolute tragedy, human tragedy and also technological tragedy unfold in front of their eyes.

C-Span has given politicians a platform to connect directly with their constituents, but now they can do that on social media. Is C-Span still relevant?

C-Spans relevance comes in the form of not only all of the events that we cover every day but within minutes after we televise them, they are digitized and stored on our video archives. It has 250,000 hours of political video that weve covered since 1987.

That means a member of Congress can pull a clip from their hearing and send it out to constituents. It also means that people on social media or late-night comedians have immediate access to this.

I think most people who are in their 20s or younger, if they have an experience with C-Span it is through social media, it is through the late-night comedians. The creation of our video library in 1987 was every bit as significant as the original creation of C-Span.
BERLIN  A potential merger between Germanys two biggest banks, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, has generated a lot of debate, but Chancellor Angela Merkel sees no role for herself, or her government, in the discussions.

In a speech on Tuesday, Ms. Merkel urged her government not to interfere in the exploratory talks that were announced on Sunday. A merger would aim to create a German banking giant capable of competing globally, but the talks have drawn criticism from unions and opposition lawmakers.

The German government holds a 15 percent stake in Commerzbank, which it acquired as part of a bailout in 2009. But the chancellor insisted that is not large enough to justify involvement in the process.

It is a small stake, therefore, this is an absolutely private decision with all of the challenges, opportunities and risks that only those involved can and must weigh, said Ms. Merkel, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, speaking at the Global Solutions Summit, a policy forum, in Berlin.
At his True Leaf Farm, he depends on chef-friendly ingredients like edible flowers, micro cilantro and squash blossoms, which grow quickly and reliably in greenhouses fitted with hydroponic technology. Before a storm, he can quickly dismantle the operation; even if he loses all his plants and the soil is full of salt water, with power for the well he can be up and running again in a week.

But rebuilding most farms is a slow process, and neither public nor private relief funds have been sufficient to restore the momentum that local agriculture had before the storm.

After Puerto Ricos financial crisis in 2006, local agriculture officials began to offer new incentives for farmers, out of concern for the islands food security. The Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture helped establish about 1,700 new farms. In 2017, agricultural imports still stood at 80 to 85 percent, but progress was being made toward the official goal of 70 percent.

Since the hurricanes, forward-looking farmers are stepping up efforts to close the gap. And chefs say that what is now available is better and more diverse than ever before.

New restaurants like Vianda, Cana, and Paulina Escanes bright new cafe are highlighting traditional dishes on menus and using newly available local ingredients. Eggplants with thin skins, persimmons that are silky and sugary, organic eggs, local bread, she said. Her agricultural and artisanal suppliers are listed on the menu  a routine sight in trendy culinary destinations, but a revolutionary one on this island, where farming has a complicated history shaped by exploitation.

Puerto Rico is an incredibly fertile, lush place, but because of its colonial status, it was organized for industrial agriculture, said Von Diaz, a writer who was born in San Juan and raised in Atlanta.

Her cookbook, Coconuts and Collards, published last year, tells her own story, flavored by the Caribbean and the American South, and that of the islands food. For generations, vast tracts of the island were used by outsiders to grow profitable crops like tobacco, sugar cane and coffee  none of which provided food to those who live here.
Most couples choose to serve wine at their wedding. A glass or two not only shows hospitality and enhances the culinary experience of their guests, but can also act as a sort of social lubricant, especially on the reception dance floor.

The process of picking wedding wines, though, can be challenging.

Brides and grooms want to offer complimentary sips  a cash bar is a wedding-etiquette faux pas  but they also need to stick to their budgets. Costs can quickly add up, alongside other expense like floral centerpieces and cocktail-hour canapes.

Sommeliers say that couples spend, on average, $25 to $70 per bottle. Based on 100 guests, a couple would need to provide around 140 bottles for a 60-minute cocktail hour and five-hour dinner and dance party. This would put the wine bill at between $3,500 and $9,800, before adding in other bar costs.

There are plenty of ways to save, beverage professionals say, without making it obvious that youre serving cheap wine. Couples with wine-savvy guests know that their friends and family will recognize Trader Joes famed two-buck Chuck, just as they might identify the bright yellow label of the more expensive Veuve Clicquot Champagne.
Its stock price dropped a little more than four percent on the F.D.A. news.

Last September, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused its former chief executive, Hani Zeini, of concealing damaging information about the manufacturer of its implants before closing a $60 million stock offering in 2015. The Brazilian manufacturer had had a certificate of compliance required for selling in the European Union suspended. Sientra said its issue with the S.E.C. had been resolved.

The other letter went to Mentor Worldwide, owned by Johnson & Johnson and based in Irvine, Calif. The F.D.A. said the company had not enrolled enough patients in a study of its MemoryShape implant, approved in 2013, and also threatened to rescind approval for the product. Withdrawing approval for a medical device is time-consuming and rarely occurs.

Mindy Tinsley, a spokeswoman for Mentor, said the company was disappointed by the F.D.A.'s decision to issue a warning letter "despite our good faith efforts to address post-approval study requirements." She said Mentor notified the FDA last year that it would fall short of study enrollment targets because of changes in consumer preferences, but did not hear back. J&Js stock remained unaffected on Tuesday.

According to the F.D.A., the other two manufacturers whose breast implants are approved in the United States are Allergan and Ideal Implant, which did not receive warning letters on Tuesday. But their implants have also drawn some illness-related complaints from women.

Plastic surgeons and implant manufacturers often say breast implants are the most intensely studied of all medical devices. But critics and patient advocates say most studies done to date are flawed.

When plastic surgeons tell women that this is the most studied medical device in the world, women assume that means they are proven safe, said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research in Washington, D.C., who has been advising advocates for patients with implant-related illness. But, we still dont know what percentage of women become seriously ill from their breast implants. We still dont know why some women get sick right away, some get sick years later and some never get sick.

Dr. Zuckerman, trained in psychology and epidemiology, will speak at the F.D.A. meeting next week. She wrote a 40-page analysis of breast implant studies, and found that most had not tracked long-term outcomes, or had lost too many participants. In addition, she said, the studies focused only on diseases with specific diagnoses, while ignoring symptoms like joint pain and chronic fatigue. And they were generally too small to detect rare diseases, and were funded by implant manufacturers or plastic surgery associations that had a stake in the outcomes.
For whatever reason  the conviction of its message, its lovably rudimentary design  that sign wove its way into my personal life, and the lives of everyone Ive encountered who remembers it, too. Its not nostalgia. Its because the sign addressed a basic principle we seldom talk about: this idea that humans are expected to communicate truthfully with one another  and that said connection is not only desirable, its also stylish, a trend of an emotional ideal. Its the word Still, I think, that lends the phrase its power  the idea that no matter how life evolves, certain standards remain paramount. In hindsight, every relationship Ive pursued, every opportunity Ive seized in the years since I first saw it, has been heavy with honesty, sometimes to a fault. Over a decade ago, real honesty laid the groundwork with my husband, and I believe that same brutal frankness is what ultimately saved our marriage when it waned. In conversations with my daughter, I emphasize the value of being honest about how you feel, even though shes too young to really get it. As Im settling into life as a 40-year-old, Ive been making a point to be more honest with myself about everything, from how many hours I work to how much sugar I consume, which has led to a heightened self-awareness typically reserved for regulars at Esalen.

Eventually we moved out of the Victorian, and I didnt see the sign as much. So last summer on a jog through the park, I tried to make it my destination, but when I arrived at that familiar corner, the sign was gone. It had come down with very little fanfare, and I was inexplicably heartbroken. I started digging around in hopes of learning its whereabouts, and found an Australian artist who, after a Chicago sabbatical, produced a zine named for the sign. I talked to a local sign painter who paid homage with a synonymous silk banner, hand-lettered in a masonic-regalia style. Instagram led me to a local writer-illustrator who had started a replica at some point. I stopped by a neighboring taco shop and, as if investigating a missing person, flashed a grainy Google Images photo to the owner, who offered a quiet reply from across the counter: Yes, of course I remember it, he smiled. It means everything. Finally, a few days later, I found Maria  the woman who originally curated the sign.

For 15 years, Maria and Jay Feldman owned the currency-exchange building to which the sign was tacked, overlooking a small gravel parking lot. An optimistic Maria had it installed to thwart off bad energy. And it worked  until it didnt. In 2015, a fraudulent check forced the Feldmans to declare bankruptcy, causing them to lose everything: two homes, five businesses, their cars, their credit. Jay, meanwhile, had fallen victim to opiates. He had an affair. Divorce was discussed. When it came time to decide whether the couple would stay together or split, the sign became scripture. What had started off as an existential question for the crooks, Maria told me, had weaved itself into our personal lives. Theyre still married.
Dr. Focazio says his dogs, one of which he says is a police-trained K-9, are mostly quiet  except when there is a visitor or an intruder. Then they bark.

Thats what dogs do, Dr. Focazio said. They dont moo.

It feels ridiculous, he added. All I know is, it is my right to have dogs, and dogs bark. (The family has a fourth dog, a Yorkshire terrier, who is presumably not a prime suspect in the barking on Fox Hedge Road.)

Behind the Focazios live the Mone family, who reside in an approximately 5,000-square-foot home on Coltsfoot Glen. They say their household, particularly its oldest residents, both in their 80s, is woken up at all hours by the dogs.

Its a quality-of-life thing. Nobody gets it, unless you live it, said one member of the Mone family, who asked not to be identified to ward against abuse or online trolling from dog lovers. Attempts were made to settle the issue neighbor to neighbor, the family member said, but when the dogs kept barking, the police were called. Multiple times.

Over the past 12 months, police have issued at least seven summonses to Dr. Focazio. One summons, issued last May, cited animals that caused frequent or long continued loud and raucous noises so as to disturb the comfort or repose of any person in the vicinity.

The Focazios believe the citation in May was unfair and that the dogs barked at the summons writer, Darlene Mandeville, the boroughs environmental health specialist, because she stood at the gate for a prolonged period observing them. Thats what theyre supposed to do, Dr. Focazio said.

Not long after the Focazios moved into the home, an intruder invaded the mansion when Dr. Focazios wife, Debra, was home. The family then obtained the four dogs for protection. But Dr. Focazio said they are also the family pets.
Federal authorities investigating Russian interference in the presidential election obtained search warrants for emails of Michael D. Cohen, President Trumps former lawyer and fixer, beginning in July 2017, according to documents released Tuesday that provided a glimpse into the earliest stages of the inquiry into the president.

The documents show that by the time F.B.I. agents conducted a highly public raid on Mr. Cohens home and office in April of last year, his business dealings had already been the subject of an extensive investigation.



The records, including search warrants and other materials related to the April raid, were among nearly 900 pages of documents that a federal judge unsealed in response to a request by The New York Times and other news organizations.

The records were heavily redacted. More than 150 pages were fully blacked out, and many had names or portions of the material obscured, mostly because they were related to the continuing investigation of the Trump Organization.


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When a top aide to Mayor Bill de Blasio was allowed to quietly resign last year over sexual harassment charges, the city decided to keep the reason for his departure secret. Officials said that they wanted to protect his accusers, but the secrecy had another effect: It helped shield the aide from scrutiny as he sought a new job.

The aide, Kevin OBrien, was the highest-ranking city official known to have been ousted over sexual harassment charges in the #MeToo era, but the circumstances of his departure are not unique.

In at least three other cases in which employees were pushed out because of substantiated sexual harassment allegations in recent years, the city agreed to conceal the behavior from future employers who might inquire as part of a reference check.

In the three cases, all at the Department of Parks and Recreation, investigators determined that the employees had sexually harassed co-workers, and officials moved to have them fired.
Now, the Legislature is joining that push. The expansion will be phased in over three years.

The location of each camera will be determined by the citys Department of Transportation. City officials said they expected every school to be covered by the expansion. The bill also widens the radius of a school zone and allows the cameras to be active for longer hours each day.

Currently, the cameras can operate from an hour before school until an hour after; under the new law, they could operate from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The previous program covered only 7 percent of New York City schoolchildren.

As someone whose own family has suffered a loss to traffic violence, this is incredibly personal, said Mr. Gounardes, a first-term Democratic legislator who unseated a Republican who had a well-documented record of speeding.

Deborah Glick, a Manhattan assemblywoman who sponsored the bill in her chamber, called opposition to expansion inexplicable and indefensible.

Mr. Cuomo said on Tuesday that he would sign the bill. A companion bill passed on Tuesday would also create a pilot program in Buffalo.

Thirteen states currently have some form of speed camera program, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Some, like New Yorks, are limited to certain localities, while others are statewide. Nationwide, 139 communities have adopted speed cameras.

Between 2014 and 2017, New York Citys speed camera program brought in $83 million in net revenue. Proponents have always emphasized that the cameras were intended to improve public safety, not generate money.
Robert Farris Thompson, a professor emeritus of art history at Yale University, wrote in an email that Dr. Nketia was one of the finest scholars in all of post-colonial Africa, adding, He showed that the African history of music was a sacred tradition revealed.

Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia was born on June 22, 1921, in Asante Mampong, Ghana. In the Akan language, Kwabena is the name for boys born on Tuesday. An only child, he was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents after his father died. He credited his grandparents as his first music teachers.

He received training in European music theory as a high school student at the Presbyterian Training College in southeastern Ghana. In 1944, he was one of 20 Ghanaians in the first class awarded Britains Commonwealth scholarship, which sent him to England to study linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He also took classes at the Trinity College of Music and Birkbeck College at the University of London.

In 1952, back in Ghana, he accepted a research fellowship in African studies at what is now the University of Ghana and traveled the country recording musical performances and festivals. He began developing interdisciplinary programs at the university that explored the intersections of language, dance, music and folklore.

Dr. Nketia traveled to the United States for the first time in 1958, on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship; over the course of a year he studied at Juilliard, Columbia University and Northwestern University, and developed relationships with such prominent American musicians and folklorists as Charles Seeger and Henry Cowell.

Dr. Nketia performed The Republic Suite, perhaps his defining musical composition, at Ghanas Republic Day Concert on July 1, 1960, celebrating the election of his friend Kwame Nkrumah as the nations first president. The suites formal elements aligned it with Western classical music, but many of its melodies were drawn from traditional songs recognizable to Ghanaian listeners.

Dr. Nketia became the deputy director of the University of Ghanas new Institute of African Studies in 1961. Three years later, having attained tenure as a full professor, he became the first African to serve as the institutes director. Soon after, he became the founding director of what is now the School of Performing Arts, and he filled its faculty and research positions with prominent Ghanaian artists, including the playwright Efua Sutherland, the author Ama Ata Aidoo and the choreographer Albert Mawere Opoku.
Richard Erdman, a character actor who spanned eras, known to contemporary audiences as the perpetual student Leonard on the sitcom Community and to older generations for his roles in movies like Stalag 17 and television shows like The Twilight Zone, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 93.

His death was announced by the film historian Alan K. Rode, a friend.

On Community, seen from 2009 to 2015, mostly on NBC but later on Hulu, Mr. Erdman played the singularly annoying member of a group of elderly students who were known as the Hipsters because they had had hip replacements.

His character claimed to have been a member of the child comedy troupe the Little Rascals  and while Mr. Erdman himself was not, he played hundreds of other roles in a career that began in the 1940s.

Among his best-known early movies was Stalag 17, the celebrated 1953 Billy Wilder dark comedy set in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, in which he played the barracks chief Sgt. Hoffy Hoffman.
While doing his research, Alan had come to realize one type of object that did often make for a good gift: Mementos of happy experiences. As he was talking to me, Alan explained, he was looking at a framed souvenir from that Giants Super Bowl, hanging in his office. I could hear him smiling.

Friends over fatigue

The second lesson involves spending time with friends . Its one of the best ways to increase happiness, according to the survey data.

Alan said this finding had stayed with him. At the end of a long day or long week, he said his instinct was sometimes to skip a social gathering. In the moment, he felt too tired. But the data had persuaded him to push through his fatigue more often. Sure enough, he was almost always glad he had, he said. When Im debating whether to make the effort to get out of the house and see other people, I often think of Alan.

Economics has the nickname of the dismal science, but it wasnt dismal when Alan Krueger was doing it. It was human.

Alan pushed for economics to become less theoretical and more empirical. He did pathbreaking work on the minimum wage, occupational licensing and other subjects (as you can read in his Times obituary and Susan Dynarskis Twitter tribute). He threw himself into messy policy debates. He wrote not just for other economists but for the rest of us too.

He relished debate: One recent email I received from him took issue  in a friendly but probing way  with an argument in this newsletter. He mentored young economists (and once recommended a young journalist named Catherine Rampell for an entry-level position at The Times, predicting a bright future for her). Three different times, he stepped out of academia to serve in the federal government, including to help the Treasury Department fight the financial crisis in 2009.

Thank you, Alan, for all of it.

Among the many other grateful people he leaves behind are Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jason Furman, Erica Groshen, Jared Bernstein, Jen Psaki, Betsey Stevenson, Arindrajit Dube, Justin Wolfers, Greg Ip, Ezra Klein, Noah Smith and my colleagues Nick Kristof and Paul Krugman.

If you are not a subscriber to this newsletter, you can subscribe here. You can also join me on Twitter (@DLeonhardt) and Facebook.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
The indigenous peoples of the Amazon rain forest are the shock troops in the struggle against climate change. We are the first ones to be affected, says Sonia Guajajara, one of Brazils best known indigenous leaders.

Were seeing floods that last longer, were seeing droughts that are longer, were seeing a reduction in fish with the drying out, she recently told The Timess editorial board. And so it affects our food security. It also affects our culture.

The Amazon rain forest, an environmental treasure of more than two million square miles across Brazil and eight other countries, is sometimes called the lungs of the planet because the trees release so much oxygen and absorb so much carbon dioxide, mitigating the effects of climate change. It is also home to an unparalleled diversity of animal and plant species as well as roughly one million indigenous people in Brazil alone.

Although long imperiled, the forest is at greater threat now under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, a polarizing populist leader in the mold of President Trump who took office in January and will meet Mr. Trump at the White House on Tuesday .
How the commission chooses to respond to Facebooks repeated abuses will determine whether it is willing or able to promote competition and protect consumers. If the commission does conclude that Facebook has violated the consent order, how it fixes this problem through a legal remedy will be a test of its effectiveness. The commission has the authority to impose substantial fines on Facebook. Given that the corporation had more than $55 billion in revenue in 2018 alone, even a fine in the low billions of dollars will amount to a slap on the wrist, a mere cost of doing business.

Moreover, because Facebook is a repeat offender, it is critical that the commissions response is strong enough to prevent future violations. Americas laws are not suggestions. When a company has repeatedly shown contempt for its legal commitments, the remedy must change how the company operates. Enforcement agencies can do this through deep reforms of the companys structure. This includes removing members of the companys board, or even top executives, along with other changes to the companys business model to address dysfunction at the top.

The F.T.C. can also pursue other ways to fix this problem. For example, after German antitrust enforcers found that Facebook abused its dominant market position, it required Facebook to stop combining different sources of its users data without their consent.

But the commission should not stop there.

There is also mounting evidence of anticompetitive conduct by Facebook that may warrant scrutiny by federal antitrust enforcers. For example, the social media goliath has reportedly systematically spied on its rivals, giving it valuable information on how people used competitive products.

Facebooks predatory acquisition strategy has also arguably resulted in fewer innovative services. When it bought TBH, a polling app popular with teenagers, Facebook announced that the app would still operate independently and under its own brand. Less than a year later, Facebook scuttled it due to low usage.

Facebook also appears to have used its dominance to cripple other competitive threats by cutting them off from its massive network. In 2013, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks chief executive, personally approved the companys decision to block Vine, a fast-growing rival, from a critical Facebook feature, to the advantage of its own online video service.
Like its exceptional prime minister, New Zealand has a national culture unlike any other in Europe or the Americas. Its isolation and distance makes its distinctiveness possible, and the difference is palpable. It is a spectacularly beautiful country with a population of five million occupying an area larger than Britain. Though an urbanized country with a stable developed economy, it has a pace and an outlook of life that seem at odds with the extractive demands of modernity.

Migrants from developing countries relate easily to friendly Kiwis and are often surprised to see children and adults walk the streets barefoot. There are superb public libraries and innumerable public spaces in the form of beaches, bays and parks. Community ties are crucial, work-life balance matters, long weekends are sacred.

Public-funded advice bureaus help migrants settle in. The streets are safe, schools are free and university costs are relatively modest. Kiwis complain about lack of public investment in specialized health care but it is already impressive for a foreigner: a full course of prescribed antibiotics costs $3.43. New Zealand grapples with neoliberal pressures but is attempting to hold on to its social democracy.

Of course, the country has its problems. Lack of housing is a serious concern, attributed to a property market spiked reportedly by Chinese investors over the years. Maori communities seek compensation for historical dispossession, which is being addressed by a tribunal and conscious promotion of indigenous culture. Mental health comes up as an underdiscussed issue and public infrastructure needs more investment.

Cities like Auckland grew rapidly in the last decade owing to thousands of foreign students and workers, which increased pressure on services in ways that Kiwis did not expect. Many New Zealanders are still getting used to diversity and often regret that the country has changed. This yields resentment among some that right-wing figures seek to stoke. Muslims have been subject to racial slurs and hate speech since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, but as Mohamed Hassan, a Kiwi journalist put it, not in ways that ones life would be on the line.

But there is a vibrant political debate on immigration and about the need to import skilled labor without provoking domestic tensions  all conducted without rancor or vitriol. Migrants will not deny sensing subtle forms of exclusion in securing jobs or promotions at work, but the ingrained commitment to everyday civility among New Zealanders is something an immigrant appreciates the most.

Ms. Ardern has a tough road ahead to ensure that the countrys profile does not change. The challenges she faces resonate with those in other democracies. It remains to be seen if in her case normative habits and deliberative practice can prevail over nasty right-wing subcultures that are amplified by technology, social media and weapons.
(It is increasingly obvious that social networks and cyber tools are making efficient autocrats, like China, even more efficient. But they seem to be making soft authoritarians, like Jordan, more fragile, and they are making Western democracies increasingly ungovernable.)

Finally, men could dominate women through formal and informal religious, cultural and legal norms. But the recent high-profile cases of young women fleeing male control in Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. spoke for many Arab women who are no longer so willing to submit to male guardianship. This is especially true because women in many countries, Jordan, for instance, are now out-graduating men in both high school and universities.

However, without a change in the laws of marriage, inheritance, divorce and child custody  all of which favor men  all the women doing well in school will never be able to realize their full potential in the work force, where they are still badly underrepresented. Something has to give.

Meanwhile, its hard for men to marry without a job. Having lots of men who have never held power, held a job or held a girls hand is a prescription for social unrest  especially when theyre all on Twitter.

Welcome to the new Middle East!

Where does this go? Leaders across the region are learning that they cant rely on 20th-century tools to keep the populations quiet any longer, remarked Marwan Muasher , the former foreign minister of Jordan, who now oversees research on the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 broke the fear taboo in many Arab countries, and the collapse in oil prices since 2014 has broken the money bargain. Citizens now declare: If you cant guarantee me a government job, I get to say whatever I want.

Does that mean Jordan, for example, should change overnight to democracy? I asked Muasher . No, he said, but there has to be a process of greater power-sharing between the governments and the people and civil society institutions. You cant keep asking people to sacrifice, to give up government jobs and subsidies, to accept higher taxes, but still not have a real voice in their own governance.

So, is all the new news bad news? Actually not  at least in Jordan.

King Abdullah has been slow to share power, but he remains a decent leader, trying to develop a decent country of 10 million that now hosts 1.3 million Syrian refugees. His most important initiative may be his push seven years ago to launch a tech/start-up hub in Jordan that is also a new factor in the region. For the first time here you have hundreds of private-sector start-ups  independent of the government  working on social problems as business opportunities.
The Mexican government shares some of the blame. Warnings that the vaquita might vanish arose years ago when there were still hundreds in the wild , but it failed to take effective actions to protect them. Mr. Lopez Obradors predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, banned the use of gill nets in the porpoises habitat in 2015, for instance, but not their possession.

An attempt to capture porpoises to breed them in captivity in 2017 led to one dying; another nearly did and had to be released. The totoaba, however, is being bred in captivity , giving the species a path to survival. But that effort is likely to be counterproductive for the vaquita, because it will only encourage more poaching of the totoaba.

The vaquitas situation is so dire that Thomas A. Jefferson, a San Diego marine biologist and conservationist, said he feared that extinction was its most likely fate. The conservationist in me doesnt want to admit that but the biologist has to, he said.

Yet the vaquita clings to life. In October , four were spotted in open water. The little porpoise may possess a unique genetic advantage that could allow it to recover in the wild if just left alone. The vaquita was never widely distributed, numbering perhaps only 5,000 at its modern height and located only in the Sea of Cortez. But there is no evidence that it has hit the bottleneck of birth defects from inbreeding often seen in declining populations.

And so, there is hope  if President Lopez Obrador acts swiftly. The vaquita is one of Mexicos national animals , along with the golden eagle and the jaguar. Hes under economic pressure to do so. But by acting aggressively to save the porpoise, he can also fulfill core campaign promises and emerge a hero, not just in Mexico but around the world.

Pressure is coming from the United States. Last year, the United States Court of International Trade in New York temporarily banned seafood imports from Mexico caught in the Sea of Cortez with gillnets . The injunction was issued in response to a lawsuit brought by environmentalists complaining that the Trump administration was not enforcing a 1972 law that protects marine mammals from being killed in the process of fishing.

It has been a crippling blow to the fishing industry in the Sea of Cortez, blocking an estimated 1,400 tons of seafood worth $300 million from being sold in the United States. Even before that, the grocery retailer Trader Joes had banned blue shrimp from the Sea of Cortez from its nearly 500 stores because of con cerns that vaquitas were being killed in gillnets intended for shrimp.
A country as small as Israel, facing our magnitude of threats, cannot be that picky about the way other countries decide to govern themselves, he began. But, he added, we also have a moral duty. I pushed forward in the last Knesset a recognition of the Armenian Holocaust even though this is not the right practical move opposite the Turks. Because there is a point where you say enough is enough.

He was far more careful when I turned to the subject of Donald Trump. I am, like any other Israeli, thankful for President Trump. I sat at the opening of the Embassy in Jerusalem with tears in my eyes, he said.

What of Mr. Trumps recent flurry of statements about how the Democratic Party has become anti-Israel and anti-Jewish? Im going to say this as politely as I can, Mr. Lapid said. He was wrong. I dont think you can say that Eliot Engel and Jerry Nadler and Ted Deutch and Chuck Schumer dont like Israel. They are the most pro-Israel people I know. Mr. Lapid said one of his priorities if he wins would be to rebuild support for Israel among progressives. Israel must be a bipartisan issue, he said.

One of the casualties of Israel becoming an increasingly partisan issue has been American Jews themselves, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic and who see Israels rightward turn as betraying fundamental liberal values. In other words, American Jews find themselves stuck between B.D.S .  the boycott movement against Israel  and Bibi.

I understand the fact that some kind of gap was opened between Israel and the diaspora, Mr. Lapid said of this problem. I think what unites us  culturally, morally  is way bigger than what separates us. And what we need to go back to is this vocabulary of one people.

It is when Mr. Lapid talks about Jewish values and Jewish history that he is the most compelling. Doubly so when it comes to the subject of his father, Tommy Lapid, a Holocaust survivor who built a life in Israel as a journalist and then as a politician, and died in 2008.

My father had a friend in the Budapest ghetto. His name was Thomas Lantos, Mr. Lapid said. After the Holocaust, they went to the same pier in the same harbor and Tom took a boat and went left and my dad took a boat and went right. Mr. Lantos eventually ended up in California, where he became a Democratic member of the House of Representatives and head of the Foreign Affairs Committee. They always felt that if they took the opposite boat, Tom would be the minister of justice and my father would be the head of the foreign committee.
Cebu City (CNN Philippines, March 19)  The National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7) has filed murder charges against the 17-year-old suspect in the brutal killing of a student in Cebu.

The murder case filed Monday was based on the Anti-Cybercrime Act of 2012 since most of the exchanges between the suspect and 16-year-old victim Christine Silawan were done on Facebook Messenger. It is believed that the suspect was the victim's former boyfriend.

Authorities said there are at least 11 different security videos showing Silawan and the suspect together on the night of March 10, hours before the discovery of her body in Barangay Bangkal in Lapu-Lapu City. In the morning of March 11, Silawan was found lifeless in a vacant lot. Her face was skinned, exposing her skull, and she was naked waist down.

"Yung last time na nacaptured silang magkasama ay hanggang 6:38 in the evening at 'yun ay naglalakad sila going to the direction of the vacant lot where the body of Christine was found," NBI-7 Regional Director Tomas Enrile told CNN Philippines Tuesday.

"Ang estimated time of killing, per our medicolegal doctor, was probably committed between 6 and 7 p.m. So yung time interval, malapit na malapit dun sa nacapture na last time silang magkasama doon sa time nung killing kaya napakalakas po ng circumstantial evidence po natin," Enrile added.

NBI agents anchored the complaint on circumstantial evidence including text and online messages between the victim and the suspect. They did not include the supposed confession made by the suspect, since he was a minor and had no legal counsel at the time.

The suspect was arrested in his home in Barangay Maribago, roughly a 21-minute drive from the crime scene, on March 16. He is now under the custody of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. No weapons used in the killing were seized from the house of the suspect.

NBI officials said the motive could be "extreme jealousy" and the case can be considered a crime of passion.

NBI-7 deputy director Dominador Cimafranca said there is a follow-up operation as they believe the suspect could have cohorts. He said the manner of killing led them to believe the suspect could not have done it alone.

Medico-legal officer Superintendent Benjamin Lara said aside from her face being skinned, the right side of Silawan's neck was gone, and other parts like trachea, esophagus, and tongue are all missing. Lara, who examined the victim's cadaver, noted the murder was "carefully and meticulously done."

The Philippine National Police (PNP) considers the case "solved but not yet closed" as it is looking for two other possible suspects.

Silawan's mother, Lourdes, said the arrested suspect is the perpetrator but hoped his cohorts will be arrested as well.

She admitted that she has not met the suspect before even as authorities said he was her daughter's boyfriend. "It was the first time I saw him," she said, noting that her daughter does not usually share her love life.
Instead, you have someone who designed a horrific terrorist attack using all of the power of social media and the internet to spread his vile views, he said. So for us, it was how do you cover it in that context, how do we understand it and explain it, and how do we avoid becoming the tools of a terrorist?

How did the unusual nature of the attack change The Timess calculations around how to cover it?

Our editors often have to decide if we should publish disturbing images or videos from shootings, bombings and war. They must weigh an images news value and our mission to inform the public about the horrors of an attack against how intrusive the image is and how upsetting it could be for our readers or those affected by the tragedy to see it.

We have to have a real reason for showing these things, said Mark Scheffler, our deputy editor of video. The video or images must be used to tell a broader story, not just to say, Heres video of this guys shooting spree.

[Read about a recent debate among our readers and in our newsroom over whether we should have published graphic photographs after a deadly attack in Nairobi.]

This case was different because the person who shot the video was not an eyewitness, journalist or member of law enforcement. It was the attacker himself.

Here, the fact that the video was made by the killer added a whole other dimension to it, said Phil Corbett, our associate managing editor for standards. You have this additional factor of, Are you going to help publicize this terrorist video that the killer has made himself, obviously with the intent of it being seen as widely as possible? That made all of us even more cautious and wary about whether we would use any images.

Ultimately our editors decided not to run any of the gunmans video of the attack or even link to it.
[Follow the OSIRIS-REX missions attempt to collect samples from Bennu asteroid.]

HOUSTON  The asteroid Bennu, with the shape of a spinning top, turns out to be extremely rugged. That is going to make it difficult for a NASA spacecraft, Osiris-Rex, to vacuum up a sample to take back to Earth. It was designed to collect sand and gravel, not boulders.

In addition, Bennu is shooting back.

We are seeing Bennu regularly eject material into outer space, said Dante Lauretta, Osiris-Rexs principal investigator, during a telephone news conference on Tuesday. He and other mission scientists have been presenting their findings at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. We saw the first evidence of this in January of this year and have since observed 11 such events.

The NASA spacecraft, which launched in 2016, entered orbit around Bennu on Dec. 31. It is not the only spacecraft from Earth exploring an asteroid. Hayabusa2, launched by Japans space agency in 2014, began orbiting the asteroid Ryugu last year. Its mission is also to collect samples for return to our planet for study, and members of its team were presenting findings at the Texas conference on Tuesday as well.

Both missions have found that the objects they are studying have terrain much more jagged than anticipated. But while Hayabusa2 already collected its first sample from Ryugus surface last month, the particles erupting from Bennu posed an additional challenge for the Osiris-Rex mission.
For the first time, one of the top prizes in mathematics has been given to a woman.

On Tuesday, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced it has awarded this years Abel Prize  an award modeled on the Nobel Prizes  to Karen Uhlenbeck, an emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The award cites the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics.

One of Dr. Uhlenbecks advances in essence described the complex shapes of soap films not in a bubble bath but in abstract, high-dimensional curved spaces. In later work, she helped put a rigorous mathematical underpinning to techniques widely used by physicists in quantum field theory to describe fundamental interactions between particles and forces.

In the process, she helped pioneer a field known as geometric analysis, and she developed techniques now commonly used by many mathematicians.

She did things nobody thought about doing, said Sun-Yung Alice Chang, a mathematician at Princeton University who served on the five-member prize committee, and after she did, she laid the foundations of a branch of mathematics.
HOUSTON  Is it time to go back to Neptune?

Scientists representing NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory proposed a spacecraft and mission on Tuesday at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas that would explore Triton, Neptunes largest moon.

The unusual satellite is believed to be an object  similar in many ways to Pluto  from the solar systems icy Kuiper belt that was captured billions of years ago by the giant planets gravity. And Triton is thought to harbor an ocean, hinting at the possibility that a world quite distant from the sun may contain the ingredients for life.

Unlike multibillion dollar proposals for spacecraft that the agency has usually sent to the outer solar system, this spacecraft, named Trident, aims to be far less expensive, the missions scientists and engineers said, or the price of a small mission to the moon.

The time is now to do this mission, said Louise Prockter, director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and the principal investigator of the proposed mission. The time is now to do it at a low cost. And we will investigate whether it is a habitable world, which is of huge importance.
Two dozen ornate antique chairs upholstered in densely patterned Ankara, Shweshwe and Malian mud cloth ring the dining room of the actor Gbenga Akinnagbes Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone, as though primed for a Pan-African conclaves formal dinner party. But really, it looks like this most of the time, because the dining room doubles as the stockroom for Enitan Vintage, Akinnagbes three-year-old furniture business, in which he restores baroque settees and wingbacks of Western provenance, then re-dresses them primarily using West African Dutch wax fabrics.

Enitan Vintage started after Akinnagbe, who has appeared on television in The Wire and The Deuce and is currently making his Broadway debut as Tom Robinson in Aaron Sorkins adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, was house hunting in Brooklyn and happened upon a tattered armchair languishing in a damp basement. The actor passed on the property but bought the piece, which set him on a course of upholstery education. It wasnt until he was filming Deep Tour in South Africa a year later that he found a purple-patterned fabric he liked, which he brought to New York to integrate into his rescued chair. Akinnagbe realized he enjoyed the finished piece nearly as much as the process, but the leap to entrepreneurship was more of a soft skip. Im Nigerian, he says, so everything is just shy of being a business already. He often sources pieces and fabrics while on jobs throughout the world; after filming Independence Day: Resurgence in Albuquerque a few years ago, Akinnagbe declined an offer to travel with the films director, Roland Emmerich, on his private jet back to Los Angeles in order to go antiquing. Hes since picked up hand-dyed adire in Nigeria and midcentury chairs in Oklahoma.

[Coming later this spring: the T List newsletter, a weekly roundup of what T Magazine editors are noticing and coveting. Sign up here.]

Enitan Vintage is ostensibly a direct-to-consumer furniture company, but its concept tips it more in the direction of art. Enitan, which is one of Akinnagbes middle names, describes a person with a story in Yoruba culture; indeed, his Hepplewhite shield backs and Eastlake parlor armchairs of the 18th and 19th centuries speak of the violent continuum of imperialism and oppression. Their new upholstery does as well: Dutch wax fabrics have been accepted as a symbol of African culture since at least the 1960s, but they are, in fact, the product of a long history of colonialism. Originally a mechanical reproduction of Indonesian batik textiles made in the Netherlands and sold in West Africa, they were embraced in the market stalls of Accra, Ghana, and Lome, Togo, in the 1950s. By covering antique British, Danish and French chairs in these materials, Akinnagbe is reappropriating that appropriation.
Bordered by the Atacama Desert to the north, the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, Chile has always been defined by its extremes: Its not the middle of nowhere, but it is at the edge of it. At the turn of the 16th century, the Incas claimed the northern half of modern-day Chile as a buffer zone between the rich centers of population in Peru and the wild, primeval forests to the south. The Spanish made it as far as Concepcion, which, until the early 19th century, served as a garrison against the Mapuches. And though Spains monarchy built over the foundations of great pre-Columbian civilizations in Mexico and Peru, in Chile  largely devoid of the precious metals that made other nations rich  the buildings were usually rustic and prone to destruction by frequent earthquakes. Even Chiles upper class has historically shunned ostentation in favor of austere practicality  in Concepcion, for example, the oldest buildings only date to the 1950s.

Covering 2,673 miles from north to south and, on average, only 110 miles from east to west, Chiles landscape is immense yet tenuous, all rocky coast and soaring peaks with little habitable area in between. Every few years, a volcano coats the countryside with ash, an earthquake shakes a city to the ground or a tsunami consumes another foot of coastline. The Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, the first Latin American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote in her first collection, Desolation (1922), of a country where the sea invades the mountain, and compared the Chilean sky to an immense heart that opens, bitter. Her acolyte, and Chiles second Nobel-winning poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote in the first volume of his seminal collection, Residence on Earth (1925-45), of something tenaciously involved between my life and the earth / something openly unconquerable and unfriendly. In those same years, while living abroad in self-imposed exile as an honorary diplomat, Neruda published a manifesto that he titled Toward an Impure Poetry (1935): The constancy of the human presence that permeates every surface, he wrote, this is the poetry we are seeking, corroded, as if by acid, by the labors of mans hand....

Rather than fading deferentially into the terrain that surrounds them, the houses that best exemplify the new Chilean architecture are, like Nerudas impure poetry, emphatically man-made  rough-hewn and, at times, surreal. Built on cliffs over the sea or at the base of the mountains, they stake their claim to a patch of land, declare a human presence in an unconquerable and unfriendly world and deliberately embrace the poetry inherent in their imperfections.

THOUGH CHILE DEBUTED on the global architectural scene only 30 years ago, Modernism had in fact made its first appearance here nearly a century ago. In 1929, Matias Errazuriz Ortuzar commissioned Le Corbusier to design a house on the rocky Pacific Coast, a few hours west of Santiago. At the time, imported materials were all but impossible to source, so Le Corbusier traded his preferred reinforced concrete for locally gathered fieldstone and boulders set onto a frame of local timber. For the roof, he inverted the traditional pitch of nearby cottages to create contemporary architectures first butterfly roof, a form that would later be reproduced on Modernist buildings around the world, notably on suburban ranchers across California. And though the blueprint he designed was never built, the concept for Maison Errazuriz set a precedent for treating country homes as laboratories of Chilean design.
For years, Facebook has made the pitch to customers that its wealth of user data  from birthdays to favorite television shows  allows it to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time. These capabilities helped Facebook, along with its rival Google, to take in most of the more than $100 billion in annual online ad spending.

But Facebooks access to the data that powers this revenue model may be starting to dry up. Last year, a new rule in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation, forced internet companies to comply with stricter safeguards in handling user information. And as customers become more hesitant to share their own data, Facebook and other digital-media companies are moving to regain their trust through additional protections.

Now, some of Facebooks efforts to appease critics who complain of discriminatory practices may further chip away at the model.

In the interview, Ms. Sandberg conceded that the changes could make advertising on Facebook less efficient for some customers who had used the targeting practices in a very fair and nondiscriminatory way, but added, We believe that that was a cost well worth bearing.

Under the new approach, Facebook will require advertisers in the areas of housing, employment and credit to use a separate portal that will not include gender or age as targeting options. It will also preclude selecting an affinity group of people interested in a race, ethnicity or religion. The company has generally allowed advertisers seeking to reach members of a race or religion to aim at such affinity groups.

The company will continue to allow advertisers in other areas to deliver ads on the basis of age, gender or any affinity groups.

Even in the less sensitive areas, advertisers cant exclude groups associated with race, religion or ethnicity from seeing ads. They can only affirmatively aim ads at them.
Twice a year, I travel to Cork, Ireland to see family. It had become expensive to take two trans-Atlantic trips with multiple legs. So, once those March to October Cork flights on Norwegian Air opened up, I booked a $300 dollar leg from Rhode Island immediately for a July visit. It was a couple hundred dollars more to book a flight from Georgia to Rhode Island. If youre looking for similar deals, do some research on when the high season is in the place youd like to visit. That same flight, also five hours longer because of the longer layover and flying past Ireland to Amsterdam for the connection, was nearly $1,400 dollars on KLM.

If peak flight and travel season for, lets say, Iceland is May to September, look out for $99 Wow Air flights for January. Reykjavik, or any new location, is fun, no matter the time of year. Just bring extra sweaters.

Get around baggage restrictions

No one wants to stand in front of the check-in counter shifting headphones and chargers from the carry-on to your backpack, then to your checked bag just to avoid weight or size limits. Just pay for the bag. (Or read the fine print before you book, and be prepared to travel light!)

If youre traveling with someone, though, remember that budget airlines usually charge you for baggage on each leg. That means one person can pay for a checked bag or carry on, while the other books an economy seat with no add-ons. Thats at least a hundred dollars in baggage fees saved. But what that also means is that one of you, the person who didnt pay for a carry-on or checked bag, sometimes will have to pay a little extra to sit next to your flying partner. For example, JetBlue doesnt charge you to choose an economy seat. Spirit Airlines charges begin at $5 per leg. Norwegian Airlines begin at about $12 dollars. Most of the time, it costs about $6 to $15 dollars to choose your seat with this basic price , and you two can choose seats simultaneously and end up next to each other on the flight.
I dont know how theyre going to get everything fixed that needs to be fixed, said Ms. Snowdon, who said she had canceled a teaching assignment in a nearby town because it would have required 143 miles of driving. Its like a dream and youre going to wake up and its going to be all O.K. But its not. This could be a year of traveling.

For nearly a week, Nebraska and other Midwestern states have been inundated with water as rivers were overwhelmed with rain and melting snow that the frozen ground was unable to absorb. After days of harrowing helicopter rescues, frantic sandbagging and urgent evacuation orders, water levels had dropped in much of Nebraska by Tuesday and the daunting cleanup process was in full swing.

[Read more about how the floods have hurt Midwestern farmers.]

We deal with flooding all the time, said Kyle Schneweis, the director of the Nebraska Department of Transportation, but when you talk about 1,500 miles of our system underwater, thats an entirely different scope and scale.

A full damage assessment from the flooding had yet to be calculated, but Mr. Schneweis said it was likely to reach hundreds of millions of dollars. State officials have promised to install temporary bridges and move swiftly with the most urgent repairs. But Nebraskans were bracing for many months of difficult travel in the state; some 200 miles of state highway were believed to be damaged or destroyed, as were 14 bridges. More county roads were also believed to be demolished.
Mr. Nunes singled out Liz Mair, a Republican strategist who said on Twitter that she would not comment on the lawsuit, and two parody accounts: @DevinNunesMom, which was suspended last year, and @DevinCow, which is still active. The complaint says that Ms. Mair coordinated with the anonymous accounts on a vicious defamation campaign but did not offer evidence she was behind them or communicated with them, except for one tweet encouraging people to follow @DevinCow.

Experts generally say the law protects large internet platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube from liability based on what their users publish. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says they should not be treated as the publisher or speaker of the content  allowing the platforms to exist without having to preapprove every post for potential legal issues.

But the complaint by Mr. Nunes seeks to portray the tweets directed at him as evidence of larger efforts by Twitter to undermine Republicans  a frequent rallying cry of conservatives. Mr. Nunes was a key figure in the Houses Russia investigation, and a frequent target for critics who said he was abusing his authority by impeding investigations to protect Mr. Trump.

As part of its agenda to squelch Nunes voice, cause him extreme pain and suffering, influence the 2018 Congressional election, and distract, intimidate and interfere with Nunes investigation into corruption and Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election, Twitter did absolutely nothing, the complaint said.

Twitter declined to comment on the lawsuit. But in public statements, including contentious House committee hearings in September, executives have denied any political bias or agendas. Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, told the House committee they had found no difference in the reach of tweets by Democrats and those by Republicans.
In fact, Mr. Conway withdrew his name from consideration for a top job at the Justice Department, running its civil division, before he ever started. And he has known Mr. Trump for decades, since he lived in Manhattan at Trump World Tower and declined to sit on the condo board, a spot that his wife took in his stead.

In more recent history, Mr. Conway spent time with Mr. Trump on election night and at the wedding of the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, in June 2017, when Mr. Trump even commended him on turning down the job because it would have meant reporting to a weak leader, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Since Mr. Conway has become more vocal in his criticism of the president, Mr. Trump has referred to him repeatedly as Mr. Kellyanne Conway and claimed that in his diatribes against the president, he is simply trying to gain attention through the reflected glory of his wife. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that Mr. Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wifes success & angry that I, with her help, didnt give him the job he so desperately wanted.

In an interview, Mr. Conway dismissed the idea that he was coasting off interest in his wife, and said that in the course of a long marriage, it is hard to separate who is responsible for whose fortune and fame.

The way we structured our lives before the campaign, it enabled her to build her business so she could become the campaign manager, said Mr. Conway, who was previously a partner at the law firm Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz. I helped in ways that enabled her to go off and be the campaign manager, and go off to the White House in the spring of 2017.

When the couple relocated its family to Washington from New Jersey, Mr. Conway gave up his partner status at the law firm, which does not have an office in the District of Columbia, and became of counsel.

Mr. Conway said his motivation to publicly attack the president had been driven, at least in part, by feeling responsible for having played a small role in electing him, even if it was a tangential one of supportive spouse to the campaign manager.
WASHINGTON  President Trump said on Tuesday that he was never a fan of the late Senator John McCain, and I never will be.

The presidents blunt remarks came in response to a reporters question about his recent attacks on the Republican war hero who represented Arizona, and who died last year of brain cancer.

On Tuesday, the focus of Mr. Trumps ire was Mr. McCains historic vote on health care in 2017, when he went against his own party and opposed a Republican measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

He campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years, and then he got to a vote and he said thumbs down, Mr. Trump said on Tuesday after taking reporters questions alongside the president of Brazil, who was at the White House for an official visit. Our country would have saved a trillion dollars and we would have had great health care.
Good Tuesday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today.

_____________________

 For nearly two decades, President Trump relied on Deutsche Bank to lend to him when others wouldnt. The bank, eager to expand in the United States, lent him $2 billion over the years  and once he was elected president, employees were told not to utter his name. Heres what The Times found in an investigation, and here are four takeaways from our reporting.

 Expanding access to insurance animated the Democrats 2018 congressional campaigns. But as House Democrats sit down to draft their vision of health care policy, lawmakers find themselves badly divided on an issue that helped deliver their majority.

 Beto ORourke raised more than $6 million online in the first 24 hours after announcing his presidential campaign last week, outpacing his rivals for the Democratic nomination and making an emphatic statement about his grass-roots financial strength.
ALGONA, Iowa  It was the kind of question that a politician should have been able to handle with ease, but Representative Steve King is not any politician.

Do you think a white society is superior to a nonwhite society? Mary Lavelle, 63, asked, testing his reputation for white supremacist sympathies.

I dont have an answer for that. Thats so hypothetical, Mr. King, Republican of Iowa, told her. Ill say this, America is not a white society  it has never been a completely white society. We came here and joined the Native Americans.

He continued: Ive long said that a baby can be lifted out of a cradle anywhere in the world and brought into any home in America, whatever the color of the folks in that household, and they can be raised to be American as any other. And I believe that every one of us, every one of us, is created in Gods image.
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court on Tuesday adopted a strict interpretation of a federal immigration law, saying it required the detention of immigrants facing deportation without the possibility of bail if they had committed crimes, including minor ones, no matter how long ago they had been released from criminal custody.

The vote was 5 to 4, with the courts more conservative justices in the majority. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said the plain language of a federal law required the result.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer summarized his dissent from the bench, a sign of profound disagreement. He said the majority had violated the nations basic values.

The greater importance of the case, he said, lies in the power that the majoritys interpretation grants the government. It is a power to detain persons who committed a minor crime many years before. And it is a power to hold those persons, perhaps for many months, without an opportunity to obtain bail.
michael barbaro

From the New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today 

archived recording (donald trump) Today, Im very thrilled to welcome President Bolsonaro of Brazil for his first visit to the White House.

michael barbaro

On Tuesday, President Trump held a joint news conference with the newly elected president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro.

archived recording (donald trump) President Bolsonaro, I want to congratulate you again on your tremendous election victory. Last October, it was an incredible feat and, really, a truly incredible challenge. And the end result was something the whole world was talking about.

michael barbaro

The campaign he ran and his brash style have earned Bolsonaro the nickname the Trump of the tropics, a comparison that Trump has embraced and said he is honored by.

archived recording (donald trump) I also know that were going to have a fantastic working relationship. We have many views that are similar.

michael barbaro

My colleague, Ernesto Londono, on the story of Bolsonaro. Its Wednesday, March 20. So who is Bolsonaro, and how did he enter Brazilian politics?

ernesto londono

Bolsonaro is a former army captain. He was a paratrooper who had a pretty short and fairly turbulent stint in the military. He actually got kicked out. But after leaving the military in not the best of terms, he was very successful at sliding into a political career, initially as a city council member in his native Rio de Janeiro. And then very soon, he found his way to the capital, Brasilia, as a congressman.

archived recording The dictatorship was at its most harsh in the late 60s and early 70s.

ernesto londono

And the country was emerging from a pretty traumatic period.

archived recording Student demonstrations in 1968, calling for the restoration of democratic rights, prompted a strong response from the military.

ernesto londono

It was definitely an era of repression, of terror, for many groups that were at odds with the military government, and a pretty widespread censorship and curtailment of civil rights.

archived recording Many of those arrested were to face torture.

ernesto londono

But in 88, lawmakers passed a very progressive Constitution.

archived recording Its 29 years since Brazil last held free presidential elections.

ernesto londono

If there is one point where it became starkly clear that Brazil had reached cruising altitude as a democracy, it wouldve been the election of Luiz Inacio da Silva, commonly known as Lula, in 2002. Lula was a former shoeshiner, son of a single mother, raised poor, rose to prominence as a union leader, started building a political movement during the era of military rule and was briefly jailed as a political prisoner. And when he is sworn in 2003 

archived recording [PORTUGUESE SPEECH]

ernesto londono

 the region really sort of took a look at Brazil and said, wow, this country has really turned a corner. If a man like Lula can get elected in Brazil, Brazil has really matured as a democracy.

michael barbaro

And what role does Bolsonaro play in the midst of this pretty dramatic shift in Brazil?

ernesto londono

Bolsonaro was seen as kind of a loud and obnoxious lawmaker, who would just get into these shouting matches in Congress, would deliver these fiery speeches.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

He became infamous for saying things that were very offensive about women.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

About blacks.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

About gays.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

He made the news, for instance, when he got into a shouting match with a female lawmaker.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

And told her that she was too ugly to rape.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

And the most startling thing, and it was the theme he went back and back to, was his praise for the era of military rule.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

That Brazil needed strong men at the helm and that this experiment with democracy was not taking the country in the right direction.

michael barbaro

So just as kind of modern democratic Brazil is coming into form, it sounds like Bolsonaro is entering politics, but is pushing in the other direction, for less democracy, more authoritarianism.

ernesto londono

Absolutely. He essentially made the case, only the military can run this large, unwieldy country effectively. And were wasting our time thinking that this experiment with democracy is going to take us anywhere productive.

michael barbaro

And what was the response to moments like that?

ernesto londono

Largely speaking, people started saying, well, thats just Bolsonaro being Bolsonaro. He made headlines. He was admonished. He was criticized. But he was not somebody who was really taken seriously. He was not somebody who was center stage when big deals were being negotiated. For most of his career, he was a little bit of a sideshow. And at the same time 

archived recording In Brazil, Petrobras recently made what could be the worlds biggest oil discovery since the 1970s.

ernesto londono

Lula had a remarkably successful first term as president, and Brazilians started seeing some pretty sweeping changes. Brazil, like much of the region, was enjoying a commodities boom.

archived recording The discovery could mean that Brazil will become one of the worlds leading oil exporters.

ernesto londono

There were some pretty groundbreaking policies that paved the way for people from poor families, people from rural communities, for the first time to go to university.

archived recording In just seven years, almost 30 million Brazilians have joined the ranks of the middle class, some helped by government handouts, others through improved education, which leads to higher wages.

ernesto londono

There was a sense that inequality was diminishing in a country where its long been really hard to move up the ladder. And Brazil started aspiring to great things. Brazil started making alliances with other large economies, like Russia and China and South Africa, and kind of projecting itself on the world stage as a rising power. I think this all became crystal clear, just kind of a sense of optimism and the sense that Brazil seemed unstoppable, when 

archived recording I have the honor to announce that the Games of the 31st Olympiad are awarded to the city of Rio de Janeiro. [CROWD CHEERS]

ernesto londono

In 2009, Brazil beat the odds and won the rights to host the 2016 Olympic Games. And, you know, looking back now at how optimistic, you know, the scenes of people partying on the beach in Copacabana, just celebrating this major triumph for Brazil, it seems impossible to think now that the seeds of what would happen next had already been planted. And the reality was that underneath this triumphant country that seemed to be rising into a bright new era, underneath all that, there was a lot of rot. And it would take a few years for people here to discover just how much.

[music]

michael barbaro

So, Ernesto, how did this rot that you describe, this ugliness beneath the surface, eventually get exposed?

ernesto londono

Well, things in Brazil started taking a definite turn for the worse in 2014. Two major things happened. On the one hand, the economy, which had been on a slide, entered into recession. On the other hand, a team of investigators stumbled into a major scandal while they were looking at some funny financial transactions, initially at a gas station.

archived recording 1 In the past week, Brazilians have had wall-to-wall coverage of a political scandal threatening to bring down the countrys government. It first came to light when Brazilian police uncovered a money laundering operation at a car wash. archived recording 2 Its known as Operation Car Wash.

ernesto londono

That quickly reached very, very deeply into very powerful politicians and the top companies in Brazil.

archived recording 1 The investigation centers on a billion-dollar corruption scandal at Brazils mammoth oil corporation, Petrobras. archived recording 2 Petrobras is one of Brazils biggest companies. Its alleged senior officials took almost $700 million in bribes when awarding construction contracts. Many that may have taken bribes are linked to the government.

ernesto londono

Were talking about massive companies that had entire departments with the task of paying bribes to politicians.

archived recording 1 The speaker of Brazils lower house of Congress has been charged over alleged involvement in a corruption scandal at the state-run  archived recording 2 News breaking in the last hour that the former president of Brazil is being detained by police after a raid on his home and office 

ernesto londono

It soon became apparent to Brazilians that corruption had been institutionalized.

archived recording Five former Brazilian presidents, nearly one out of three cabinet ministers, and almost one out of three senators have been indicted or investigated.

michael barbaro

And what was the reaction in the general Brazilian public once all this corruption comes to light?

ernesto londono

There was outrage.

archived recording [CHANTING]

ernesto londono

As these scandals started engulfing some of the pillars of the economy here, some of the biggest companies in the country, unemployment goes up, peoples purchasing power goes down, and state governments start going bankrupt.

archived recording [CHANTING]

ernesto londono

In some places, this means the police arent getting paid. And people start seeing a surge of violence.

archived recording With more than 50,000 violent deaths every year, Brazil has one of the worlds highest homicide rates.

ernesto londono

They go from a period of feeling optimistic and almost euphoric about the future to a period of despair and anguish.

michael barbaro

And where is Bolsonaro in all of this?

ernesto londono

Bolsonaro is one of the rarer veteran lawmakers who has not really been splattered by these corruption investigations. And at this time, he starts getting a fair amount of traction. All of a sudden, this guy who had kind of been a fringe character comes more into sync with how Brazilians were feeling about their lot in life.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

Around 2016, he starts telling people that he wants to take a shot at the presidency.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

And the way he spread his message was unique in the history of Brazilian presidential races. He was campaigning largely by sitting in front of a phone, which was often shaky.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

And just broadcasting videos live on Facebook, on Instagram.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

Where he was speaking to people as though they were long-lost friends.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

It was completely unscripted, oftentimes stream-of-consciousness. He would jump from one subject to another.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

And I think people saw that as pretty refreshing. People were so disgusted with politics as usual in the political establishment that they saw in this guy, who had been in the fringes for so long, somebody who could radically reinvent the system.

archived recording [CHANTING]

michael barbaro

And does he have the stature at this moment to do that?

ernesto londono

When the very first rumblings of a Bolsonaro presidential bid start coming up, people laughed it off. The conventional wisdom was hes too extreme. Hes too outside of the norm. But despite the skepticism, by the end of 2017, it became pretty clear that Bolsonaros message had strong appeal across the country.

archived recording [CHANTING]

michael barbaro

And what exactly is he promising on the campaign trail that the Brazilian people are finding so compelling?

ernesto londono

On corruption, he was very clear in stating that he was going have no patience for business as usual. And that under his tenure 

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

People who were corrupt had tons to fear. But I think the main promise he made to his supporters was that he was going to take extraordinary measures to restore security. And were talking about pretty draconian things. Bolsonaro, for example, once said, A good criminal is a dead criminal.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

He made it clear he was essentially going to give the police free rein to shoot suspected criminals on the spot.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

The third thing he did, which was unusual, was surround himself with military leaders and make them kind of a core base of support. The military had been largely out of sight in politics in Brazil for the past three decades. So this was a pretty bold move, but actually one that captured peoples imagination as they longed for a system that was more orderly and more secure.

michael barbaro

So this cranky, often outrageous character is starting to connect with people.

ernesto londono

Absolutely.

archived recording [CHANTING]

ernesto londono

However, I think its important to note that there were a couple of pretty crucial turning points that turbocharged his presidential bid.

archived recording Brazils former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is to stand trial for allegedly accepting over $1 million in bribes.

ernesto londono

Early last year, former president Lula, who had been the front-runner according to opinion polls, and who was trying to make a bid for a third term in the presidential palace, got jailed. And after he gets jailed on corruption and money laundering charges, he essentially becomes disqualified, and his party is in disarray. And then you fast forward a few months, and in September of last year, theres a very dramatic moment when, on the campaign trail, Bolsonaro is marching through the streets of a small town, surrounded by supporters. And a man lunges toward him with a big kitchen knife and stabs him in the stomach.

archived recording [SIRENS] Jair Bolsonaro has been left in a serious but stable condition in hospital, this after being stabbed while drumming up support ahead of next months vote. Hospital officials say it could take two months for him to recover.

ernesto londono

He was essentially knocked off the campaign trail for the remainder of the race. He was in a hospital bed, and then he was in his apartment, and communicating virtually only through social media.

archived recording (jair bolsonaro) (SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)

ernesto londono

People, I think, saw in this moment the kind of violence that he was railing against in a really crystallized form. This incident that could have easily ended his life ended up propelling his bid.

archived recording [CHANTING] The breaking news is the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro has won Brazils presidential race.

ernesto londono

And after this happens, in October, he has a decisive victory.

michael barbaro

And what is the reaction across Brazil to this victory?

ernesto londono

Brazil emerges from the election pretty polarized. Somebody who had been a very, very long shot for the presidency was able to not just win, but win decisively. However, you also have many communities in the country that feel extraordinarily unsafe in this new Brazil and that worry that the country under Bolsonaros watch could well transition into a new era of authoritarian rule.

michael barbaro

I wonder what Bolsonaros election means for Brazil, which, as you told us earlier, is just 30 years from having been a military dictatorship and turned to democracy and seems to have had a pretty rocky journey.

ernesto londono

I think it illustrates that many people, not just in Brazil but across Latin America, have become very cynical about democracy, at least the version of democracy they were seeing. Many Brazilians felt that they were being governed by thieves, who just kept getting elected by playing the old political playbook. And I think, in the specific case of Bolsonaro, who comes with a history of having championed authoritarian rule, of wanting to govern very closely with senior military leaders, the promise of order, even if it came at the price of a rollback of civil liberties and of democracy, it was a price many Brazilians were perfectly willing to pay.

michael barbaro

So to change this system that seems to not be working, it feels like Brazilians want to shock the system and perhaps test its limits, which sounds a little bit like whats going on in the United States.

ernesto londono

Absolutely. When I talked to people on the campaign trail, you know, I was really startled by the level of anguish that they expressed and their willingness to take big risks on a leader who was untested and who comes with all these question marks.

michael barbaro

Ernesto, thank you very much.

ernesto londono

Thank you.

michael barbaro
WASHINGTON  A panel of federal appeals court judges on Tuesday sharply challenged the legal basis for a lawsuit alleging that President Trumps profits from his luxury Washington hotel violate the Constitutions anti-corruption clauses.

The three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., appeared much less sympathetic to the lawsuit than the federal district judge in Maryland who has overseen the case thus far. The suit, filed by the attorneys general of Washington, D.C., and Maryland, alleges that Mr. Trumps decision to retain ownership of the hotel after he took office violates the Constitutions emoluments clauses.

During the hearing, Judge Dennis W. Shedd, the panels senior jurist, suggested the lawsuit seemed to seek to penalize the president for being a successful business executive. You even want him fired from The Apprentice, dont you, he said, apparently referring to reports that the president benefited from the purchase of rights for the show by government-owned foreign broadcasters.

The lawsuit, the first of its kind, asserts that Mr. Trump is violating the clauses in the Constitution that restrict federal officials from accepting government-bestowed financial gains or emoluments, other than their salaries. The Justice Department asked the appeals court to intervene after a series of rulings against the president by Judge Peter J. Messitte of the United States District Court in Greenbelt, Md.
Its a colossal waste of our time to now have to reorganize hundreds of thousands of cases to deal with language issues and then theres no interpreter, Ms. Tabaddor said.

The small number of interpreters who do have a basic grasp of indigenous languages are still often ill-equipped to help  they must explain legal terms that are difficult to comprehend in any language and there are significant differences between regional dialects.

With migrants who cannot understand or be understood, lawyers and immigration experts say, there is no way to ensure fairness in court.

We have an entire infrastructure set up where the default language is Spanish, but there are thousands of people coming to the southern border who cant communicate that way  and they basically become invisible, said Blake Gentry, a researcher who estimates that as many as a third of the migrants crossing the border through Arizona do not speak Spanish.

Immigration courts across the country have seen a steady rise in speakers of indigenous Guatemalan languages in the last five years, according to the Justice Departments Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the court. And they are only the most recent additions to the list, which for several years has routinely included Zapotec, Mixtec, Ixil and Popti, languages from southern Mexico and Central America.

The lack of interpretation for indigenous people has been a problem for a long time, said Odilia Romero, a Zapotec interpreter who has been an activist with the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations for the last 20 years. But what we see now is something entirely different: We have entire populations showing up with languages that we have not seen in the United States before.
Dr. Amy Wechsler, a dermatologist on the Upper East Side who does laser hair removal, said that its a commonly booked service in her practice with preteen girls.

This phenomenon is the opposite of the movement among millennial women, who often embrace their body hair, sometimes dyeing the hair on their underarms, according to Olivia Guinaugh, a home and personal care analyst at the research firm Mintel. In a 2018 survey, the company found that 25 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 34 agreed that it was acceptable to have visible underarm hair, compared with 5 percent of women who were 55 or older. The millennial generation is all about female empowerment and embracing #MeToo, and being O.K. with body hair is part of that, Ms. Guinaugh said.

Emeral Eden, 25, an Atlanta resident who posts videos about body positivity on her YouTube channel, dyes her underarm hair in bold colors such as green and pink. She was hairy during elementary school, she said, and was bullied relentlessly because of it. I used to get called werewolf and shaved my underarms every day until I realized that I couldnt change myself to please others, she said. If its not your body hair, people will find something else to pick on.

Not everyone sees it that way. Wendy Nash, a child psychiatrist at the Child Mind Institute in New York, said that she and her colleagues frequently work with prepubescent girls who are bothered by their body hair and have been mocked because of it, either at school or by their siblings. She also has appointments with parents who are conflicted about taking their young daughters to have their hair lasered or waxed.

Its a topic thats coming up with younger and younger girls, partly because of the rise of social media and partly because puberty is happening earlier, she said. Its not unusual today for an 8-year-old girl to have arm hair.

Dr. Wechsler said that young girls who have had laser treatments tend to view themselves in a more positive light. Facial hair can negatively impact their lives, and it improves their self-esteem to have it taken off, she said.

That was the case for Lily Levin, 16, who lives in Marietta, Ga. When she turned 14, she noticed that the dark hairs on her chin, the sides of her face and her upper lip were visible against her pale skin. Although she hadnt been teased about it, she fretted that she would become a target. Lily asked her mother, Ilene, if she could have it removed. She didnt think twice about saying yes.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia  When Noelle Jalal was a child, her uncle used to take her to the international airport in Addis Ababa to watch the giant Ethiopian Airlines Boeings come and go.

For years, the airport in Ethiopias capital was not just a hub for travelers: It was also a weekend destination for families like Ms. Noelles who came to see the first Boeings piloted by Africans.

Families took out-of-town visitors to the airport tower. Parents bought their children cotton candy and let them dash around the terminals corridors to work off the sugar high.

Everyone I grew up with in Addis went to the airport, said Ms. Noelle, a 30-year-old humanitarian aid worker who now lives in the Ivory Coast. It was very close to my heart, she said.
Cyclone Idai, the storm that has killed hundreds of people, submerged homes and battered cities in southeastern Africa, may prove to be one of the worst weather-related disasters ever in the Southern Hemisphere, a United Nations official said on Tuesday.

Officials with global aid groups and in Mozambique, where the storm hit hardest, are only beginning to reckon with its destruction. Potentially 1.7 million people were in the direct path of the cyclone, the United Nations estimated on Tuesday, and rain is forecast to continue in parts of the region for several days.

[Rescue workers struggled as heavy rains swelled rivers and isolated flooded communities.]

Herve Verhoosel, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, said in an interview that the agencys workers had described seeing water and water for miles and miles  flooding so severe it resembled an inland ocean where homes and towns had stood.

The situation remained dire, he said, for potentially hundreds of thousands of people in need of food, clean water and evacuation.
MAPUTO, Mozambique  Rescue workers struggled Tuesday to reach areas devastated by a huge cyclone in Mozambique, as heavy rains swelled rivers and further isolated flooded communities in what aid agencies called the worst natural disaster in southern Africa in two decades.

In central Mozambique, the area hit hardest by Cyclone Idai, overflowing rivers created an inland ocean where countless people were still marooned, a United Nations official said.

Rescue workers reported seeing people on rooftops and in trees days after the storm struck. In areas near the rivers, homes were submerged, with water rising near the tops of telephone poles.

We took an aerial survey, and as far as the eye can see, there was flooding, and deep as well, said Jamie LeSueur, who was leading rescue efforts in central Mozambique for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. What we are now facing is large-scale flooding on top of an area already devastated by the cyclone.
BANGKOK  A Cambodian court has issued arrest warrants for eight opposition leaders who fled abroad for safety but say they are now trying to return.

The indictment in recent days by a government-controlled court in Phnom Penh, the capital, was the latest effort by Prime Minister Hun Sen to sideline opposition politicians and independent news outlets as he tries to maintain his 34-year grip on power.

Warrants were issued for Sam Rainsy, a founder of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, which has been dissolved; two of the partys vice presidents, Mu Sochua and Eng Chhai Eang; and five other party members.

They were charged with incitement to commit a felony and plotting to commit treason, charges they say are without merit.
India began voting on April 11, kicking off elections to fill parliamentary seats and choose the next prime minister in the worlds largest democracy. Around 900 million people are eligible to vote this time around.

Voters will be considering, among other things, the faltering economy and debates over womens, Muslim and Dalit rights, as well as Prime Minister Narendra Modis job performance wielding a Hindu-nationalist agenda in a staggeringly diverse country.

Results will be announced in the winner-takes-all system on May 23. What will they mean for Indians, their neighbors and the rest of the world? Over the coming weeks, The Times will be untangling the most fascinating issues, outcomes and stories in this sprawling event. Sign up for free to receive our full coverage by email.
The gunmans efforts were clearly choreographed for internet fame and to spread a message of hate. Minutes before the attacks started, he published a manifesto to message boards where white supremacists gather, and included a link to the page where the streaming video of the shooting would appear.

But experts say it may not be enough to focus just on that content. New Zealand, like many countries, has often struggled with how seriously to take white supremacy, offline and online.

Anjum Rahman, the head of the Islamic Womens Council of New Zealand, reported that her organization had tried to warn the government for years about growing vitriol toward Muslims and the rise of the so-called alt-right in New Zealand. In an op-ed for The Spinoff, a news website, she said her organization had asked for help from New Zealands security agencies and had written a comprehensive report for the government five years ago, outlining the groups concerns.

As far as we know, nothing concrete was done with that report, she wrote.

In fact, one of the two mosques attacked Friday had pigs heads delivered to it in 2016 by men who gave Nazi salutes.

Jarrod Gilbert, a University of Canterbury sociologist who studies gangs in New Zealand, said that when Christchurch had a problem in the 1980s and 1990s with white supremacist skinheads, the authorities tended to dismiss them as a fringe group because people never really wanted them here.
SYDNEY, Australia  They are a collection of oversized, sometimes bizarre, objects that draw roadtrippers to country towns, known as Australias Big Things  the Big Banana, the Big Pineapple, the Big Lobster, to name a few.

Now, a resident of the New South Wales town of Woodenbong wants to add another: a big wooden bong.

Hundreds and thousands of people share the same dream as soon as they hear the towns name, the resident, Paul Pearson, said on Tuesday, a day before he planned to pitch the idea at a meeting of a local tourism council.

Hes not sure how tall he wants the potential landmark to be, but he envisions it being bigger than the Big Merino, a 50-foot concrete merino ram located elsewhere in the state.

Others in Woodenbong, population 381, arent exactly thrilled by the concept.

I havent spoken to one person that thinks its a good idea, said Chris Reid, the president of the Progress Association, an influential local group that raises money for town projects. We dont want to promote drug use.
LONDON  A measure of the strangeness of the times in Brexit Britain is that one can buy T-shirts bearing the face of John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons, in the stylized stencil preferred by street artists and skateboarders, with the word ORDER.

He is spitting the best sassy statements in that charming accent, said Kaarlo Junkkari, a 19-year-old Finnish man who sells the T-shirts online. He said he had become fascinated with Mr. Bercow, whose prolix verbal style and braying cries of order, order! have made him one of Brexits spicy memes.

But this enthusiasm is not universal in Britain, especially on Tuesday, after Mr. Bercow startled the country by blocking Prime Minister Theresa Mays plan to push her withdrawal agreement through Parliament before a trip on Thursday to Brussels. He announced that he would not allow a third vote on her plan for Brexit, as the departure from the European Union is known, unless the plan differed from the one rejected last week.

This ruling  based on an obscure precedent from 1604  has made Mr. Bercow, a wonky arbiter of parliamentary procedure, one of the most admired and hated men in the country.
COPENHAGEN  Describing his work as an undercover agent among a group of heavily armed Qaeda terrorists, Morten Storm said his job as a jihadist-turned-informant was dangerous and grueling.

Spy agencies never acknowledged his secret service. But now a Danish state agency, in a breakthrough ruling for Mr. Storm, has awarded him about $27,000 in damages for loss of work ability because of post-traumatic stress disorder, which he said in his claim was a result of his undercover role for the Danish and other intelligence agencies.

Labour Market Insurance, a state body, concluded that he had experienced exceptionally dangerous events during his tenure, the newspaper Jyllands-Posten reported on Monday. A future review will decide to what extent he may still be able to work, and could award additional compensation.

The payout is, in effect, the first formal recognition by the government of his undercover work; it has never been acknowledged by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, PET, or by other Western intelligence agencies, which generally refuse to comment on secret sources.
BERLIN  Germany, which had already announced that it will fall significantly short of NATOs defense spending goals, annoying the United States, risks provoking Washington further by failing to reach even its own slimmed-down target.

Chancellor Angela Merkels government had a falling-out with the Trump administration last year when it said that, despite signing a commitment to work toward spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense by 2024, its target would instead be 1.5 percent.

Now, projected spending levels are expected to fall below even that lower path in a three-year budget plan due to be announced on Wednesday, portending another confrontation with Washington.

The timing could not be worse, with NATO preparing to celebrate its 70th anniversary in Washington in April.
ROME  Pope Francis has rejected the resignation of a French cardinal, the Vatican announced on Tuesday, despite the cardinals conviction this month for covering up decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by a priest in his diocese.

A French court found Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, guilty on March 7 of failing to report abuse to the authorities, and imposed a six-month suspended sentence.

Cardinal Barbarin, 68, promptly offered to resign, though he is appealing the verdict. He met with Pope Francis on Monday to personally hand in his resignation, but both the cardinal and a Vatican spokesman, Alessandro Gisotti, said on Tuesday that the pope had not accepted it.

Instead, they said, the cardinal, one of the highest-ranking and best-known Roman Catholic officials in France, will step aside for an unspecified length of time.
LONDON  To the casual observer, Britain  an island nation thats no stranger to rain  could not get much wetter.

But, as it turns out, thats a fallacy. And if preventive steps are not taken, in less than three decades, Britain might run out of water, the chief executive of the Environment Agency, a public body responsible for conservation in England, said on Tuesday.

On the present projections, many parts of our country will face significant water deficits by 2050, particularly in the southeast, where much of the U.K. population lives, the agency chief, James Bevan, said at a conference on water use.

In about 20 to 25 years, demand could close in on supply in what Mr. Bevan called the jaws of death  the point at which, unless we take action to change things, we will not have enough water to supply our needs.
Thus far, a terrorist motive is being strongly considered, the national police said on Tuesday.

The reason for this, among other things, is a note found in the getaway car, they said, without elaboration. Other motives arent being ruled out. These are being investigated as well.

The shooting jarred a country where gun violence is rare, and where there has not been the kinds of major terrorist attacks that have rocked Belgium, Britain, France and Germany in recent years. It came just days after a gunman, thought to be a white nationalist, killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, prompting fears of either copycat attacks against Muslims or retaliatory attacks by them.

The police said on Tuesday that they had found a firearm when Mr. Tanis was arrested. They did not say what kind of gun it was, or whether it was the weapon used in the attack.

Mr. Tanis had been arrested several times before and was facing a rape charge. People who knew him from the Kanaleneiland neighborhood of Utrecht, home to many immigrants from Turkey and Morocco, described him as erratic, troubled and aggressive.

Bart Nitrauw, a spokesman for the local prosecutors office, said in a phone interview: We cant say anything about what was in the letter, just that it was one of the reasons for the suspicion of a terror motive  the letter in the car, and what we found at the place where the suspect was arrested.
MEXICO CITY  Popocatepetl, the active volcano that rises some 40 miles southeast of the Mexican capital, exploded Monday night, sending a plume of ash and gas more than two miles into the inky sky and raining glowing rocks onto its slopes.

Video released by Mexicos national disaster prevention agency showed a fiery light at the volcanos crater at 9:38 p.m. The explosion was quickly enveloped in ash and pulverized rock as burning fragments of the volcanos dome fell over a radius of a mile and a half.

Popocatepetl, whose name means smoking mountain in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, sprang back to life in 1994 after a half-century of quiescence. Since then, the residents of the surrounding towns have grown accustomed to frequent emissions of gas and ash and periodic eruptions.

Over the past few weeks, the volcano has become more active, prompting the authorities to repeat warnings to keep a distance of about seven miles away from the summit.
KUWAIT CITY  The United States attempts to isolate Iran, including by punishing Iraqi militias and politicians who are supported by Iranian officials, has deepened tensions not only between Washington and Baghdad but also within the Trump administration.

American military and intelligence officials said the increasing pressure on Iraq risks infuriating its Parliament, including politicians linked to Iran, which could limit the movements of the 5,200 United States troops based in Iraq.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose confrontational stand on Iran has already strained ties with European allies, is leading the push for Iraq to confront its fellow Shiite-majority neighbor. He arrived in the Middle East on Tuesday to speak with officials in Kuwait, Israel and Lebanon about containing Iran.

Under plans recommended by Mr. Pompeo and some White House officials, the State Department would designate Irans military Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. It would be a first instance of the United States designating a unit of another governments military as a terrorist group. American officials said it could put United States troops and intelligence officers at risk of similar actions by foreign governments.
BAGHDADI, Iraq  As he hunted for a seasonal delicacy, Mohaned Salah Yasseen scanned the ground intently, searching for places where the soil is cracked and slightly raised  the telltale sign a desert truffle lies below.

So he failed to notice the two pickup trucks, driven by men in military uniforms, until they were almost upon him.

They ordered me to get into the truck, said Mr. Yasseen, a 31-year-old pharmacist. I thought about saying no, but they were armed.

As he climbed in, he became the latest victim in a new campaign by the Islamic State.

Driven out of most of the territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria, the group has gone underground, its remaining fighters in Iraq carrying out sporadic attacks.
ERBIL, Iraq  American-backed forces in northern Syria have captured a group suspected of organizing a bomb attack that killed four Americans and a number of allied Syrian militia fighters in January, a spokesman for the local forces said on Tuesday.

The spokesman, Mustafa Bali, wrote on Twitter that his group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, had used technical surveillance to find and arrest the suspects.

The bombing, on Jan. 16, was the deadliest attack on Americans in Syria since Washington began a military campaign against the jihadists of the Islamic State in 2014, and it occurred in an area the United States had considered safe. Identifying those involved could help explain how the jihadists were able to strike far from their last stronghold.

The arrests were first reported by Reuters. A United States military official confirmed that Syrian allies had captured a small number of people linked to the attack in recent days but provided no further detail.
SELAMAT DATANG DI MESINSLOT. SITUS JUDI CASINO DAN SLOT TERBAIK DI iNDONESIA - Pemeliharaan Terjadwal: Global Gaming pada 2021-02-26 dari 10:00 AM sampai 2031-02-26 10:00 AM (GMT + 7). Selama waktu ini, Global Gaming permainan tidak akan tersedia. Kami memohon maaf atas ketidaknyamanan yang mungkin ditimbulkan. - Pemeliharaan Terjadwal: Asia Gaming pada 2021-04-07 dari 1:00 PM sampai 2021-04-08 11:00 PM (GMT + 7). Selama waktu ini, Asia Gaming permainan tidak akan tersedia. Kami memohon maaf atas ketidaknyamanan yang mungkin ditimbulkan. - Pemeliharaan Terjadwal: S128 Cockfight pada 2021-02-26 dari 12:00 PM sampai 2031-02-26 12:00 PM (GMT + 7). Selama waktu ini, S128 Cockfight permainan tidak akan tersedia. Kami memohon maaf atas ketidaknyamanan yang mungkin ditimbulkan.
The village of Mafi Dove, in southern Ghana, is home to around 5,000 people, almost none of whom were born here. Because of an archaic belief that childbirth in the village brings offense to the gods, expectant mothers are rushed to neighboring communities to deliver their babies there.

Like many other Ghanaian communities, Mafi Dove has a host of customs and traditions that have been passed down since times immemorial. But apart from minor taboos that dont really impact the lives of its inhabitants, this village continues to enforce three major rules that make it unique in the world. One of the first things you notice when visiting Mafi Dove is the complete absence of animals. Apart from the wild birds flying overhead, theres virtually no bird or mammal to be found here. Rearing animals in Mafi Dove has been forbidden for as long as anyone can remember, and thats not likely to change anytime soon. Interestingly, bringing animals into the village and slaughtering them on the same day is permitted, but people arent allowed to rear them here.

Photo: Pixabay

The second thing youre bound to notice in this Ghanaian village is the lack of a burial ground. Whenever someone dies, they are taken to cemeteries in other communities. And finally, the third strange thing about Mafi Dove is that almost none of its inhabitants were actually born there. Childbirth in the village is considered taboo, so women approaching their due date are transported to neighboring villages or towns and forced to remain there until their babies umbilical cords fall off. Only then can they return.

Because premature births increase the risk of a woman breaking the tradition by having a baby in Mafi Dove, its not unusual for expectant mothers to be sent out of the village 1  2 months before they are due. However, there have been cases where women had to be transported out of the village in excruciating pain, and babies suffering due to birth complications.

Mafi Doves unusual taboos are linked to the founder of the village, a hunter named Togbe Gbewofia Akiti. According to village elders, when Akiti first set foot on the land where Mafi Dove now lies, a voice from the sky told him that this was a sacred and peaceful place and that if he and his people wanted to settle there, they had to abide by the three rules: no animal rearing, no burials and no childbirths.

Wherever there is evil, there is no development, the elders of Mafi Dove said. Because of these taboos, there has never been any bloodshed, crimes and so on. You are allowed to bring animals and slaughter them in the land, women are free to menstruate, but to give birth, no way. We are very proud to be bound by those taboos.

Completely preventing childbirth is almost impossible, and the elders of Mafi Dove admit that there have been cases of babies being born in the village. However, these are rare exceptions that had to be be handled carefully to avoid angering the gods. The mothers family needs to alert the elders as soon as an accidental birth occurs, so they can then carry out a ritual to cleanse the village and appease the gods.

Although childbirths in the village are frowned upon by local leaders, offenders arent punished by the community. The general belief is that mothers who break this ancient rule risk giving birth to abnormal babies, but no one can recall any babies being born with deformities or other health issues as a result of breaking tradition. Perhaps those cleansing rituals are super effective



In recent years, more and more women have been challenging the taboos and demanding to be able to have their babies in the village without being shunned by the community, but the elders refuse to budge. They are convinced that honoring these longstanding traditions is paramount to ensuring the safety and prosperity of Mafi Dove and its people. However, they have made a concession, approving the building of a maternity clinic on the village outskirts, so that women can deliver babies closer to home.
Whenever 19-year-old Optimosprayn Ismael Meza Barbosa tells people his name, they think he is making fun of them. Thats because his name is the phonetic version of how some people pronounce Optimus Prime in Spanish. It was given to him by his father, an avid fan of the Transformers animated series.

The Paraguayan teen recently got his five minutes of online fame after a photo of his ID card went viral on social media. A lot of people thought it was digitally altered to attract attention, but Optimosprayn recently sat down with Paraguayan newspaper Cronica to confirm that he was indeed the Latino namesake of Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots.

Photo: mike bernardo/Flickr

Apparently, Optimosprayns father was a big fan of sci-fi anime growing up. He used to love watching cartoons like Mazinger Z, and when Trasformers started airing in Paraguay, he became fascinated with the Autobots, particularly their charismatic leader, Optimus Prime. He never outgrew his love for the popular Hasbro character, so when time came to name his son, he did everything he could to convince his wife to accept the name Optimosprayn, the phonetic version of how everyone pronounced Optimus Prime back in the day.

Today, the 19-year-old is very proud of his unusual name, but things were very different when he was in school. Every first day of the school year was a spectacle, because students had to introduce themselves, and his schoolmates would always laugh when it was Optimosprayns turn.

Once, in the sixth grade, a new teacher asked the class to introduce themselves, and an embarrassed Optimosprayn decided to avoid the usual spectacle by using his middle name instead, but things didnt work out the way he had hoped. The teacher asked him if he had any other names, and he eventually had to tell her his full name, Optimosprayn Ismael Meza Barboza.

She asked if she had clown written on her forehead and kicked me out of the classroom, Optimosprayn recalled in an interview with Cronica. His classmates came to his aid, telling the teacher that he was indeed named after Optimus Prime and asking her to check his ID card if she didnt believe it.



The Paraguayan teen still gets confused looks whenever he shows his ID to someone, and police routinely confirm his identity via radio, but he has gotten used it. In fact, he embraced his unusual name and even got a large tattoo of the Autobots logo on his neck.

Optimosprayn said he dreams of having two sons of his own and naming them both after Transformers characters. He would pass on his name to one of them and name the other Rodimus Prime, after the lost brother of Optimus Prime.
Registrations are now open for Cycle Against Suicides annual cycle, which takes place from April 27, 2019  May 6, 2019, including here in Tullamore.

Cycle Against Suicide is an awareness charity (CHY 20687) that makes a valuable contribution to the public education of mental health by changing the narrative surrounding suicide.

Each Year, Cycle Against Suicide brings together cyclists of all abilities with different backgrounds and stories to help break the cycle of suicide in Ireland. This years cycle will travel 800km passing through 63 towns, rallying hope and support in localities around Ireland.

This cycle promotes a key message to local people: Its OK not to feel OK, and it is absolutely OK to ask for help.' This simple yet powerful message could save the lives of those within our communities who are feeling alone.

The event will be coming into Tullamore on Saturday, April 27, 2019.

Cycle Against Suicide operates a Homestay Programme that sees people and families from across Ireland open their doors to participants of the Cycle each year, providing them with a warm meal, a chance to freshen up and a bed for the night.

This provides the opportunity to lend your support without necessarily having to get on a bike.

As part of the National Co-ordination Team, organisers are trying to put a Homestay co-ordination team into Tullamore in order to secure a homestay for 200 cyclists and back up crew. Over the last number of years community groups have come together to secure and allocate the beds needed for the overnight stop.

Register your support as a homestay host family today by emailing homestays@cycleagainstsuicide.com.
Fianna Fail TD for Offaly, Barry Cowen, has sought assurances on upgrade works needed on Edenderry Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Deputy Cowen was commenting as Irish Water and Offaly County Council both confirmed that the Edenderry Plant was overloaded, sparking fears among developers about a halting of construction projects.

Deputy Cowen explained, I have been working with my colleagues on Offaly County Council, Cllr Eddie Fitzpatrick and Cllr Noel Burke, and together we have been making representations in regard to the urgent upgrading works needed at the Edenderry Wastewater Treatment Plant. We know that Edenderry is at full capacity and that it needs to be upgraded."

While we appreciate that responsibility for the delivery of water and wastewater infrastructure rests with Irish Water and not Offaly County Council, we have implored the council to work with Irish Water and to ensure the delivery of enhancement works in a timely manner."

It was confirmed to us that Edenderry is proposed for an upgrade in the next investment plan, 2020-2024, subject to CRU approvals and funding. There can be no two ways about it, it is imperative that these works take place and furthermore that they begin at the earliest possible time."

Irish Water has confirmed that in the meantime any developers can contact the Irish Water connections and developers services (CDS) and an assessment will be made as to what capital contribution would be required to meet the proposed load of the development. A developer is currently working through this option and I would encourage any developers who are apprehensive of undertaking investment in the county, to speak with Irish Water or contact my office to discuss this option," Barry said.

Works were undertaken to the treatment plant in 2016 to improve efficiency, however, it is now overloaded and there is a risk of overflow, particularly at times of heavy rainfall. The expansion is required to effectively treat the wastewater generated by existing and future development in the county, concluded Deputy Cowen.
Offaly fashion designer Charlotte Lucas has won national acclaim after being named in the 'Ones-To-Watch' category at this year's Irish Fashion Innovation Awards.

The glamour-filled event took place at the Galmont Hotel in Galway last week, where Charlotte's Next Day designs - a bridal capsule collection - wowed all in attendance as they made their national catwalk debut.

Among those impressed, was celebrity presenter Lorraine Keane, one of the driving forces behind the Fashion Relief fundraiser.

Speaking after the Awards, Mount Lucas native Charlotte, who graduated from the Dublin Institute of Design in 2013, and who has worked in the fashion industry in both London and Paris, said it was an honour to be involved in such a prestigious occasion, as the night also happened to mark the 10th anniversary of the Irish Fashion Innovation Awards.

"I was thrilled to be nominated in the Ones-To-Watch category of the Irish Fashion Innovation Awards this year. It was an honour to be part of such a prestigious event, and especially to be named amongst such immense talent on the 10th anniversary of the Awards. For my work to be recognised at a national level, and showcased among fantastic Irish design talent, that was a dream come true."

Charlotte has worked with bespoke bridal designer Dawn Fitzgerald, as well as Irish fashion houses Jennifer Rothwell and Fee G. Charlotte's Next Day collection is inspired by the romance and decadence of a bygone era, while epitomised by modern elegance with a timeless, feminine, and effortless attitude.

Each piece in the collection is individually handcrafted, using delicate fabrics, fluid silks, and modern lace. The Next Day theme references the day after a wedding, although this luxurious collection is also perfect for rehearsal dinners and bridal showers.

It also offers the ultimate in stylish alternatives for brides looking to take a step away from tradition, and wear something more unique on their big day.

If you want to see Charlotte's work on the catwalk, she will be showing again at the ARC Fashion Show in the RDS in Dublin on March 28, alongside international Irish designers.

You can contact and follow Charlotte on Instagram, @charlottelucasstyle.
Tullamore play centre, Playtown, has been listed as a finalist for the Irish Hospitality Awards 2019.

The Irish Hospitality Awards are back for the third year to celebrate those who provide residents and visitors

with great experience and enhance the hospitality industry in Ireland.

The glamorous ceremony will be held at The Crowne Plaza Dublin Airport, on Monday, March 25, where top contenders will gather together to find out the lucky winners.

The third Irish Hospitality Awards aim to acknowledge those who make a real difference in this sector as well as the efforts that the professionals put in ensuring their customers always receive services that are second to none.

The awards will also provide a platform to thank everyone who is committed to make the country a friendly place to visit, from restaurants that serve delicious dishes to bars and clubs that keep Ireland alive at nights, museums, shopping centres and play centres as well as festivals that promote different cultures.

Playtown Tullamore is one of the finalists in the Childrens Play Centre of The Year category. Playtown Tullamore will find out if they will be crowned winner and will take the trophy home at the elegant ceremony taking place on March 25.

Sinead, Frankie & Priya OReilly are delighted to be shortlisted saying: Since opening in June 2017, we have been blown away by the support of the public for our unique imagination based role play centre."

"As a family-run business, we greatly appreciate this support and having been nominated by our fantastic customers for Childrens Play Centre Of The Year. We are thrilled to be representing Offaly in the upcoming Irish Hospitality Awards 2019 ceremony."

A spokesperson for the Irish Hospitality Awards 2019 said: Working in the hospitality industry can be challenging at times and these awards aim to recognise those who have succeeded in this sector, despite the difficulties."

"The finalists are people who have dedicated their whole career in making the country a great place for its lively atmosphere. It is time to recognise those professionals, whose work often remains over-shadowed. We would like to congratulate all the finalists for their nomination and wish them the best of luck.
The Oneida City Youth Court is entering its 44th running year, which makes this the longest-running youth court in New York state. As the director and on behalf of the students and executive board, I would like to thank the United Way of Greater Oneida. We are grateful for its contributions and the support, so our efforts to help the juveniles in our community and recognize those students are members of youth court are achieved.

With the continued support of the city, the police department, students, area officials, the United Way and concerned citizens, we are able to take a proactive approach in our community. The members of our executive board are: Chief Paul Thompson, Investigator Kip Bailey, Officer Matthew Mosack, Madison County DSS Commissioner Mike Fitzgerald, Madison County Attorney Tina Wayland-Smith, Madison County Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Healy, Madison County Probation Joanne Miller, Oneida High School Teacher Robert Murano, Jackie Carll and Kevin Davies. Both Jackie and Kevin have been with the program since its inception.

The funding is extremely helpful so we can reach the youth of this area. The Youth Court Program wouldnt be possible without the dedication and responsibility of the high school students that are members. The students are held to a higher standard and have always achieved that. They follow the strict rules of confidentiality with respect to the case heard and are very professional. Some of these students are able to use what they learned in Youth Court to pursue their futures in college.

The United Way is a wonderful organization with compassion and a lot of heart. They are able to support different programs and it is made possible by you. I would like to thank those who contribute to the United Way. With your monetary gift of any size to the United Way, it allows contributions and assists many programs, so they can bring hope into peoples lives that need it the most. We are all aware that society in todays world can be difficult. We need to keep programs such as the United Way growing in our area, so our community can continue to thrive in a positive way.
AAP announces candidates for all 7 seats in Delhi, alliance with Congress ruled out

India

oi-Vikas SV

New Delhi, Mar 19: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday announced candidates for all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi for the upcoming general elections, thereby ruling out any possibility of alliance with the Congress, said reports.

Leaders from both the parties have sent mixed signals over the aliance for close to a month now. First, it was Kejriwal who said that AAP wanted alliance, but Congress refrained from it.

Sheila Dikshit writes to Rahul Gandhi over alliance with AAP

Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit vehemently opposed alliance but finally told that she would abide by whatever the high command decides. Some Congress leaders then hinted that they were in favour of alliance with AAP. Reports say that Congress leadership was in talks with AAP leaders and senior leaders within the party were trying to convince Delhi Congress leaders for an alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party.

Both parties have, however, maintained that defeating the BJP remained primary motive of both the parties.

Earlier today, Nationalist Congress Party Sharad Pawar stepped in and tried to bring Congress and Aam Aadmi Party. Pawar also reached out to AAP's Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh soon after.

Lok Sabha elections 2019: AAP, Congress likely to begin tie-up talks soon

Media reports surfaced on Monday that Dikshit, a three-time chief minister whose rule ended with AAP's rise in Delhi, warned in a letter to Congress President Rahul Gandhi informing him that a tie up with the AAP would harm Congress' prospects in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Class 10 student throws acid from beaker at three girls outside science lab in Himachal Pradesh

Acid attack is a heartless crime, deserves no clemency says Supreme Court

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

New Delhi, Mar 19: The Supreme Court has said that acid attack is an "uncivilised and heartless crime" which does not deserve any clemency.

The court observed this while asking two convicts, who have already undergone five year jail for throwing acid on a 19-year-old girl in 2004, to pay Rs 1.5 lakh each as additional compensation to the victim.

The top court also asked the Himachal Pradesh government to pay compensation to acid attack survivor under the Victim Compensation Scheme.

UK: Father attacks 3-year-old with acid; gets 16 years jail

"Indeed, it cannot be ruled out that in the present case the victim had suffered an uncivilised and heartless crime committed by the respondents (two convicts) and there is no room for leniency which can be conceived," a bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Ajay Rastogi said.

The bench further said, "A crime of this nature does not deserve any kind of clemency. This court cannot be oblivious of the situation that the victim must have suffered an emotional distress which cannot be compensated either by sentencing the accused or by grant of any compensation."

The court delivered its verdict on an appeal filed by the state challenging the March 24, 2008 judgment of the Himachal Pradesh high court which had reduced the 10-year jail term awarded to both the men by a trial court to five years.

According to the victim, she was on her way to college on July 12, 2004 when the two men came on a two-wheeler and threw acid on her and fled the spot.

She had suffered 16 per cent burn injury in the incident.

The police had filed charge sheet against both the accused and the trial court convicted and sentenced them to 10 years jail term along with a fine of Rs 5,000 each.

Later, the convicts approached the high court against the lower court's verdict.

The high court reduced their sentence to five years and increased the fine to Rs 25,000 each.

The Supreme Court, in its verdict, noted that the girl had suffered 16 per cent burn injury "which was caused due to acid attack on the darkest day of her life".

Delhi women's panel seeks complete ban on sale of acid in city

The top court was informed that both the convicts had undergone the sentence and deposited the fine as per the high court's judgment and they were released from jail on December 9 last year.

The bench, which said the high court's verdict convicting both the persons needed no interference, asked them to pay additional compensation of Rs 1.5 lakh each to the victim.

It also asked the state to pay compensation to the girl under the Victim Compensation Scheme and deposit the same before the trial court within three months.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 6:50 [IST]
Goa govt likely to allow restaurants to open at 50 per cent capacity from July 5

Will bring an end to 'dirty politics' in Goa: Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal

Goa gangrape case: Heavy police force in CM's Sanquelim town as Cong tries to take out march against him

Cultures of MGP, TMC do not match: Goa BJP on their pre-poll alliance

After hectic parleys, how Pramod Sawant was chosen as Goa CM

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

Panaji, Mar 19: BJP's Pramod Sawant was on Tuesday sworn in as the new chief minister of Goa, succeeding Manohar Parrikar, cremated hours earlier with state honours.

At a much-delayed swearing-in ceremony, held around 2 am Tuesday, 11 other MLAs, part of the Parrikar-led cabinet, were also sworn in as ministers.

The ceremony, held at a cramped Raj Bhavan, was to take place at 11 pm Monday but was delayed due to inexplicable reasons.

Sawant, 46, was the Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly.

As per the power-sharing arrangement reached with allies, an MLA each from MGP and GFP, two small parties backing BJP in the coastal state would be made deputy CMs.

Sawant said his party BJP has given him a big responsibility.

Talking to reporters, Sawant credited Parrikar, who died on Sunday after battling pancreatic cancer, for brining him into politics.

After a stalemate following a series of meetings with the allies, the BJP managed to break the deadlock, offering them their pound of flesh, by accepting the key demand for deputy CM's posts.

There was no such arrangement (Dy CM post) in place when Parrikar was the CM.

"We managed to convince the alliance partners and finalised the formula of two deputy chief ministers for the state," a senior BJP functionary said.

Pramod Sawant, a man groomed by Manohar Parrikar himself

There were a series of meetings involving the Goa Forward Party and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party's three MLAs each, an equal number of Independents, and BJP legislators since late Sunday night to reach a consensus on Parrikar's successor.

Union minister Nitin Gadkari had flown into the state early on Monday to lead the discussions. BJP chief Shah, who was also in Goa, is learnt to have supervised the party's cobbling up the requisite numbers to stake claim to form government.

Parrikar was heading a coalition government comprising the BJP, three MLAs each of the Goa Forward Party (GFP), the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and three independents.

The Congress is currently the single largest party in the state with 14 MLAs. The BJP has 12 legislators in the 40-member Assembly, whose strength now is 36 after Parrikar's death.

The strength of the House has reduced due to demise of BJP MLA Francis D'Souza earlier this year, and Parrikar on Sunday, and resignations of two Congress MLAs Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte last year.

All the state Congress MLAs met Governor Mridula Sinha on Monday and staked claim to form government in the coastal state.

The MLAs, led by Leader of the Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar, went to Raj Bhawan and handed over a letter to Sinha, saying it was the single largest party in the Assembly and should be allowed to form the government.

"We are saddened by the chief minister's demise, but before his final rites are performed, a new government has to be formed...The governor acknowledged that the Congress is the single largest party and she said she will get back to us," Kavlekar told reporters.

Parrikar was cremated with state honours here on Monday, with thousands bidding the affable politician a fond farewell.

BJP president Amit Shah, some Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP-ruled states attended the funeral at Miramar.

Parrikar's eldest son Utpal lit the funeral pyre.

Who is Pramod Sawant? The new Goa CM and ayurvedic doctor

The funeral procession started from the Kala Academy where thousands, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, paid their last respects to the former defence minister.

The mortal remains of the 63-year-old senior BJP leader were kept in a flower-decked hearse which left for the Miramar beach, where the last rites were performed.

The affection and popularity Parrikar enjoyed among ordinary Goans were on display as hundreds of common folks, and his party workers lined up to pay tributes to the chief minister, who died on Sunday after prolonged illness.
After the special talks on Bengal, is BJP struggling to find 42 faces in state for Lok Sabha polls?

India

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Kolkata, March 19: The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) of West Bengal announced its list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha election on March 12, two days after the Election Commission announced the schedule of the election starting April 11.

The Left Front and the Congress, too, have announced their lists, even if partially and that too amid the mess over their probable alliance. However, the BJP is yet to come up with its candidate list for the election and according to many observers, this delay is not helping the party which often claims itself to be the main challenger to the TMC in the state.

The BJP supporters have already started painting graffiti for the upcoming prestige battle but without the candidates' names since they are yet to be finalised. Speculation is on over the candidates the party will field for the seven-phase election. However, the final list of the candidates is yet to be published, 23 days before the first phase of the election.

Lok Sabha polls: Congress calls off seat-sharing deal with Left Front in Bengal

The BJP showed a marked improvement in its vote-share in Bengal in the 2014 election (almost 17 per cent) although they finished with it just two seats as against the TMC's 34.

The saffron party leaderships - both central and state - have targeted TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, who is also the state's chief minister, over the past five years, seeking her ouster. But on the ground, the BJP hasn't been able to produce anything spectacular to walk the talk.

According to experts, the saffron party is waiting to give a last-minute surprise although it is difficult to understand how its surprises can really surprise the ruling party.

The BJP can either contest a whole lot of celebrity faces

The BJP has two options when it comes to picking candidates for the Lok Sabha election. First, it can pick celebrity faces to counter the TMC's celebrity faces. However, one has to keep in mind that even in the TMC, the celebrity candidates do not guarantee success unless they have the backing of the state's tallest leader - Mamata Banerjee.

It's the supremo who is essentially the party's candidate for all the seats and it doesn't matter who is contesting formally. The BJP has no such towering leadership in the state that can give the celebrity candidates a push. Babul Supriyo was an exception in 2014 but that was more because of local reasons.

Lok Sabha election: BJP thinking of releasing mini manifestoes for all 42 seats in Bengal

This time, the TMC has also fielded a celebrity candidate in Moon Moon Sen against Supriyo in the constituency of Asansol and it is to be seen who has the last laugh this time.

Or, the BJP can also go for the TMC leaders who recently left it

The BJP's other option is to field those leaders who made a queue in leaving the TMC and joining its ranks. These leaders have been winners in elections and that might make the BJP feel convinced about their winnability.

But again, it was Banerjee's appeal that sees people winning on TMC's ticket. There is no guarantee that the same leader who won easily for the TMC will repeat the same while contesting for the BJP.

The BJP is not a party to waste time and given the special intensity it has shown towards the election in Bengal which it has also sought to call a "super sensitive state", it is an irony to see that the party is still buying time to announce its candidates for the same election. "There is a process," the party is saying but the delay is certainly not evading eyes.

Election authorities take a cue from Satyajit Ray to encourage voters in Kolkata North constituency

The saffron party may not say it, but inside its war rooms, it must be conceding how difficult it is to find 42 faces in a state where it has remained a fringe power.

Sentiments might be there against Mamata Banerjee but the BJP certainly lacks the mechanism to cash in on them.
Corruption on accelerator and development on ventilator was hallmark of Congress rule: Modi

AgustaWestland case: Court directs Tihar to move Christian Michel out of solitary confinement

India

oi-Vikas SV

New Delhi, Mar 19: A Delhi Court on Tuesday directed Tihar jail authorities to move AgustaWestland chopper scam case accused Christian Michel out of solitary confinement.

Michel had on March 2 sought judicial inquiry over the Tihar Jail authorities having kept him in solitary confinement. He had claimed that it was a violation of his human rights. Delhi's Patiala House court then sought a report from Tihar Jail authorities on March 5.

The Court reportedly watched CCTV footage and observed that Michel was kept in solitary confinement. After this, Special Judge Arvind Kumar directed the jail authorities to file a report regarding the same within three days. Judge Arvind Kumar directed DG Prison to move Michel out of solitary confinement.

Christian Michel levels serious allegations against former CBI chief Rakesh Asthana

Tihar jail authorities on March 14 denied the accusations of torture levelled by Christian Michel. The authorities also told Special Judge Arvind Kumar that the accused was granted all the facilities according to the jail manual. The official appearing for the jail also submitted before the court a hard disk containing the CCTV footage, saying it showed that the accused was allowed to walk, access canteen and meet other inmates.

Michel had earlier told the court that the cell in which he has been shifted remains fully illuminated 24 hours because of which he was having problems sleeping.

Michel was allegedly one of the middlemen who brokered the Rs 3,600 crore UPA-era deal for 12 VVIP helicopters. He is accused of paying bribes to officials and politicians.

AgustaWestland case: Tihar jail rubbishes allegations of torturing Christian Michel

Earlier, the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate had opposed the bail plea of Christian Michel, saying he may abscond from India if released. CBI and the ED, in their separate replies, told special judge Arvind Kumar that Michel is accused of serious economic offences and there is ample evidence against him to prove his guilt.

Michel was arrested by the ED on December 22 last year after his extradition from Dubai.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 15:42 [IST]
India fully capable to act against terror: Ajit Doval

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar P

Gurugram, Mar 19: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval attended the 80th Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Anniversary Parade as the chief guest in Gurugram on Tuesday.

The NSA paid floral tributes to the martyrs of the force, including the martyrs of the Pulwama attack at the memorial. It has been decided not to hold any cultural programme as a mark of respect to the Pulwama martyrs.

Ajit Doval said, "I want to pay tributes to the brave 40 CRPF jawans who sacrificed their lives in Pulwama for the country. The country hasn't forgotten it and it will never forget it."

"Whenever we have meetings and discuss which force to send? How many battalions should be sent [and] where? We say, send CRPF, it's a credible force,we can completely trust them. It takes years to achieve such credibility," said Doval.

CRPF obvious choice in Kashmir, but say no to political adventurism: Strategic expert

Doval assured that leadership is capable to act against challenges posed by terror.

"What we have to do, which path we have to follow, what action is to be taken & at what time, our nation's leadership is capable & strong enough to take this decision & face every kind of challenge, " said Doval.

His speech was followed by a parade, investiture ceremony, speeches, music tunes play by brass band and pipe band, award distribution, daredevil show by CRPF Mahila among others in the presence of the chief guest, CRPF DG and others.

National Security Advisor #AjitDoval attends 80th Raising Day of @crpfindia; says #India will continue to act against #terrorism and those who support and harbour terrorists. pic.twitter.com/RQ2Jxd1vNn  All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) March 19, 2019

CRPF has been decorated with 1825 Gallantry Medals, which includes one Ashok Chakra, one Vir Chakra, five Kirti Chakras and 24 Shaurya Chakras.

On 19th March 1950 Sardar Patel presented the Presidential colours to the CRPF. CRPF said, " It is the greatest honour bestowed upon a force in recognition of exceptional service rendered by it to the nation, both during war and peace. It is the pride of men working incessantly and tirelessly."
BJP govt changed UP's image, law and order a model for country: Adityanath

India

oi-PTI

Lucknow, Mar 19: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserted on Tuesday his government has changed the image of Uttar Pradesh and the state's law and order has become a model for the country as not one incident of rioting happened under his watch.

Presenting a report card on the completion of two years of his government, he said when he assumed office in March 2017, debt-ridden farmers were committing suicides and Uttar Pradesh had become "synonymous with murder, loot and riots."

"Mafia was looting the state's resources under political patronage. Mafia was rampant in SP, BSP rule," he alleged. "There was a long era of scams." Adityanath said he has changed the "perception about the state" and improved its "tarnished image".

The better atmosphere has become a "nazeer" (model) for the country, he said. Hitting out at previous state governments, he said, "In 2012, there were 227 major communal riots. In 2013, there were 247 such riots.

In 2014, there were 242 riots. And 219 riots in 2015 and more than 100 in 2016 - in which properties worth crores were lost." "However during the BJP government, not a single riot took place.

BJP will win Amethi and Azamgarh: Yogi Adityanath

Nor were there any incident of acid attacks or kidnapping," he claimed. Though there has been no major communal violence in Uttar Pradesh during the past two years, a mob of 400 people, including right-wing activists, had fought pitched battles with police in Bulandshahr district in December last year.

The violence in Siana area of Bulandshahr happened apparently after right-wing activists were angered by the discovery of cow carcasses strewn in a nearby jungle.

In January last year, a 22-year-old youth was shot dead during a "Tiranga Yatra" by some people after which a series of violent incidents and arsoning had taken place in Kasganj. Taking lesson from it, the state government that year denied permission for any such procession on Independence Day in the western Uttar Pradesh city.

On Tuesday, at his press conference in Lucknow, Adityanath cited the reported exodus of Hindus in 2017 from Kairana, another city in western UP, "due to anarchic forces".

"However", he said, "today peace has returned as well as the traders who had fled from there."

The exodus of Hindus from Kairana was a major poll issue for BJP in the 2017 assembly election in Uttar Pradesh. The chief minister said the confidence of the state police force has gone up and there is no interference from his government in their functioning.

"There is zero tolerance for crime and criminals and 73 criminals have been killed in police encounters. Unfortunately, half-a-dozen police jawans also attained martyrdom in the encounters," he said.

Adityanath also said that the UP Foundation Day was celebrated for first time after 68 years in 2018. His deputies Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma and Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present at the press conference.

PTI
Be present in Lok Sabha, RS says BJP in 3 line whip to its MPs

BJP has created an artificial majority in Goa says Congress

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

New Delhi, Mar 19: The Congress accused the BJP of creating an "artificial majority" in Goa at the directions of the Centre, and urged Governor Mridula Sinha to invite the opposition party to form a government as it was the single largest party.

The coastal state is in a politically fluid situation after the death of BJP Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Sunday. While the Congress has staked claim to form the next government, the BJP is also meeting its allies to decide on Parrikar's successor.

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said in New Delhi, "I will like to attract the attention of whole country as well as the media that democracy should be established (in Goa). And governors, who sit on the position of a judge, should take correct decision.

"The one who has a majority should form a government. It is not right for democracy if artificial majority is created as per the directions of central government," he told a press conference.

After hectic parleys, how Pramod Sawant was chosen as Goa CM

On Governor Sinha not responding to the Congress' demand for allowing it to form a government in the state, Azad said, "The governor should work as a governor and not for a party."

He also referred to the last Assembly elections in the state and mentioned that the Congress emerged as the single largest party and tried form a government.

"What we tried before, we are trying again. When elections happened in Goa, the Congress emerged as the number one party. The BJP got fewer seats (than Congress). Now, the BJP's MLA count has gone down (further). BJP's MLA count is 11 and Congress's is 14. We have three MLAs more as compared to them," he told reporters.

Azad said among the other parties, the Goa Forward Party has three, the MGP has three, the NCP one and remaining three are independents and there is one speaker.

All the 14 Congress MLAs, led by the Leader of the Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar, went to Raj Bhawan and handed over a letter to Sinha, saying it was the single largest party in the Assembly and should be allowed to form the government.

"We are saddened by the chief minister's demise, but before his final rites are performed, a new government has to be formed...The governor has acknowledged that the Congress is the single largest party and she said she will get back to us," Kavlekar told reporters here.

The opposition party had earlier also written to Sinha, staking claim to form the government on Friday and then again on Sunday.

Union minister and BJP leader Nitin Gadkari is also in Goa to try and find a candidate for the post but a consensus eluded his party and its allies.

Gadkari said in Panaji the BJP had zeroed in on the next CM candidate but its allies were yet to get on board. He, however, did not reveal who the BJP had chosen.
BJP's publicity looks good, but the reality is different: Priyanka Gandhi

India

pti-PTI

Bhadohi (UP), Mar 19: Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday said the ground reality was different than what the Uttar Pradesh government has been portraying and there is an expiry date to the rant that nothing was done in the past 70 years.

The Congress incharge of east Uttar Pradesh was responding to a question about the Adityanath government issuing its report card on completion of two years in office, in which it highlighted various achievements and welfare schemes.

"They (BJP) need to come to the ground to see the reality. This report card and publicity looks good, but the reality is different... all sections are feeling harassed," she said at the Sitamarhi guest house in Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi district, where she had a night halt.

"There is a big difference between polls promises and fulfilling them. As far as the rant about (no development in) 70 years is concerned, it also has an expiry date. You (BJP) are in the government for the past five years, what have you done in five years? the Congress leader asked.

[Priyanka Gandhi embarks on 'Ganga Yatra'; 'Boat pe charcha, temple visits on the cards]

The Bharatiya Janata Party often attacks the Congress by accusing it of not developing the country in the past 70 years. The 47-year-old, who had embarked on a three-day boat journey on Ganga to reach out to the electorate residing on the river banks, offered prayers at the Sitamarhi temple before starting for her next stop en route to Mirzapur.

Priyanka Gandhi alleged that nothing had been done on the ground in the state during Adityanath's rule.

"Everyday, I'm meeting people from different sections of the society and I'm getting to know that students, youngsters, 'shiksha mitras', anganwadi workers and ASHA workers are feeling harassed. At some places, it was announced that they will get Rs 17,000 salary, but till now they have got nothing. For the past two years, they are getting Rs 8,000."

[Aim of Congress, SP-BSP is to defeat BJP: Priyanka Gandhi]

Asked about BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma accusing her and Congress president Rahul Gandhi of coming for a picnic before elections and vanishing just after that, she said: "Well, I haven't been to Italy in the past three-four years. I should go in fact to see my grandmother."

PTI
RTHK: New Zealand PM calls to deny publicity to gunman

New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern declared on Tuesday she would do everything in her power to deny the accused mosque gunman a platform for elevating his white supremacist views.

"He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety," she told the parliament of the 28-year-old Australian accused of the slaughter.

She demurred about whether she wanted the trial to occur behind closed doors, saying that was not her decision to make.

"One thing I can assure you  you won't hear me speak his name," she said. "He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless."

"I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them."

"He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing, not even his name," she urged.

The shooter's desire for attention was made clear in a manifesto sent to Ardern's office and others before Friday's massacre and by his livestreamed footage of his attack on the Al Noor mosque.

The video prompted widespread revulsion and condemnation. Facebook said it removed 1.5 million versions of the video during the first 24 hours, but Ardern expressed frustration that the footage remained online, four days later.

"We have been in contact with Facebook; they have given us updates on their efforts to have it removed, but as I say, it's our view that it cannot  should not  be distributed, available, able to be viewed," she said.

"It is horrendous and while they've given us those assurances, ultimately the responsibility does sit with them."

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also urged world leaders to crack down on social media companies that broadcast terrorist attacks.

Morrison said he had written to G20 chairman Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe calling for agreement on "clear consequences" for companies whose platforms are used to facilitate and normalise horrific acts. (AFP, AP)

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 19)  The International Criminal Court's scrutiny of the country's war on drugs will continue despite the Philippines' withdrawal from the tribunal, the court's prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Tuesday.

Bensouda, in a tweet said, "Pursuant to article 127.2 of the Statute, and based on prior ICC judicial ruling in the situation in Burundi, the Court retains its jurisdiction over crimes committed during the time in which the State was party to the Statute and may exercise this jurisdiction even after the withdrawal becomes effective."

"My Office's independent and impartial preliminary examination into the situation in the Philippines continues," the ICC prosecutor added.

The country officially withdrew from the ICC on Sunday, making good on President Rodrigo Duterte's announcement in 2017 following a case filed against him over alleged extrajudicial killings in the administration's unrelenting campaign against illegal drugs.

The case was filed in April 2017 by lawyer Jude Sabio. It was a 77-page document on the killings, formally called by the tribunal as a "communication." This was followed by supplemental information from opposition lawmakers Senator Antonio Trillanes and Magdalo party-list Rep. Gary Alejano.

Sabio is the lawyer of Edgar Matobato and Arturo Lascanas, who both admitted they were hitmen for the so-called "Davao Death Squad."

Bensouda last year launched a preliminary examination on the situation in the Philippines, and depending on the results of that, may decide to start an investigation.

READ: Lawyer says ICC asked him about witnesses vs. Duterte drug war; decision may be out soon

The administration has consistently maintained that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the country, with Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo saying the Philippines would not assist the court in the investigation.

He also said ICC officials who come to the country to probe the situation may be deported.

READ: DFA chief: ICC weaponizes human rights to defend illegal drug trade

Panelo, in a press briefing Tuesday, lambasted Bensouda's supposed "agenda" of political persecution against Duterte and the current administration.

"I don't know why she's doing it," the spokesperson told reporters in Malacanang.

"What I know is that international organizations appear to have conspired against his President. They opt to believe what they have been receiving from this source in the Philippines, false stories, and false situations about this country," he added.

Meanwhile, O-Gon Kwon, the President of the Assembly of States Parties, expressed his regret over the country's withdrawal from the ICC and hoped it was temporary.

"I sincerely hope that the departure of the Philippines from the Rome Statute is only temporary and that it will re-join the Rome Statute family in the future," he said in a statement Monday.

Panelo, however, noted the country's decision to pullout from the tribunal will stay -- especially under Duterte's watch.

He also reiterated that the Philippines' local courts are capable of making public officials -- including presidents -- accountable.

"We have a judicial system which is robust, and functional and very effective," Panelo added.

Ratified in 2002, the Rome Statute is the treaty which established the ICC.

According to the ICC, "In addition to founding the Court and defining the crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and - as of amendments made in 2010  the crime of aggression, the Rome Statute also sets new standards for victims' representation in the Courtroom, and ensures fair trials and the rights of the defence."
4 dead, some injured in fire at Covid hospital in Maharashtra's Nagpur

Maharashtra unlock 2.0: Despite remaining in level 1 category, some Covid lockdown curbs to remain in Nagpur

COVID-19 vaccine: Nagpur civic body mulls 'no free first dose' after Nov 30

BJP leader with RSS background now Cong nominee for MLC elections in Maharashtra

BJP workers hit the ground in Nagpur as Gadkari readies for electoral battle

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

Nagpur, Mar 19: BJP workers have hit the ground running in the Nagpur Lok Sabha constituency, from where Union Minister Nitin Gadkari will file his nomination again this year, to reach out to voters ahead of the upcoming general elections.

The party workers and office-bearers are making detailed plans to woo voters and leaving nothing to chance.

A massive team of 65,000-70,000 BJP workers and supporters has fanned out in every assembly segment that falls under the Lok Sabha constituency, which has 1,903 voting booths, BJP sources said.

One 'panna pramukh' has been deployed for each voter's list. There are around 55,000 people working as 'panna pramukh' (page in-charge) in the constituency.

Neither do I have aspirations nor RSS any designs to make me PM candidate: Nitin Gadkari

The 'panna pramukh' is the first point of contact for voters under the BJP's election management strategy.

Besides, 10,000-20,000 BJP office-bearers and workers are the part of other campaigning verticals, they said.

BJP's Nagpur spokesperson Chandan Goswami told PTI that party workers have started a door-to-door campaign to reach out to the voters.

The workers will apprise the voters about various welfare schemes launched by the BJP-led states and central governments, he said.

Details of the Nagpur metro project, the first phase of which became operational in early March, and the Multi-modal International Cargo Hub and Airport at Nagpur (MIHAN) will also be shared with the voters, he said.

Gadkari, in his public rallies last month, had said infrastructure projects in Nagpur have attracted investment worth Rs 80,000 crore.

At public rallies, the former BJP chief often highlights the work done by him for the city, the second capital of Maharashtra.

A team of 50 workers will be actively working in each Vidhan Sabha constituency under the Nagpur Lok Sabha seat, Goswami said.

There are six Vidhan Sabha segments in Nagpur.

Similarly, a micro-planning team is working under the leadership of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Gadkari himself is overseeing all the campaigning work in Maharashtra, Goswami said.

Likewise, 'cluster pramukhs' will be working under Nagpur Guardian Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule, he said.

These 'cluster pramukhs' will look after campaigning on social media in assembly constituencies and door-to-door campaigns, Goswami said.

A manifesto team has also been formed under local legislators who will be going to the voters with the BJP's manifesto, he added.

To make villages ideal, crop pattern needs to change

Besides, several public meetings have been lined up. State and Union ministers will address these meetings, he said.

There are a total of 21,26,574 voters, including 10,45,934 women, in the Nagpur Lok Sabha constituency, where voting will take place in single phase on April 11.

The Congress has fielded Nana Patole, a former BJP MP from Gondia Bhandara who joined the party last year, from Nagpur.

The results for Lok Sabha polls will be announced on May 23.
Appeasement vs national security: Forests of South India are breeding grounds for terrorists, naxalites

Cleaning up the inside rot: The importance of gunning down Kashmirs white collared terrorists

Civilian shot dead by terrorists in Pulwama

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

Srinagar, Mar 19: A 25-year-old man was shot dead by terrorists in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, a police official said.

They fired upon Mohsin Wani near his residence in Reshipora area of Tral in the south Kashmir district, he said.

Special Police Officer shot dead in Shopian

Wani succumbed to injuries on the way to a hospital, the official said. Police have cordoned off the area and a hunt has been launched to nab the assailants, he also said.
DMK manifesto promises to release Rajiv Gandhis killers

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar P

Chennai, Mar 19: Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) promised efforts to release seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case in its poll manifesto released on Tuesday.

DMK Chief MK Stalin said, "AIADMK will urge Government of India and the President to give due direction to the Governor of Tamil Nadu for release of the seven Tamil convicts as ordered by Supreme Court and approved by cabinet of Tamil Nadu government."

Rahul keeps realistic manifesto on back-burner, okays populist one

Highlights of manifesto:

Efforts will be taken to release all 7 convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi case. All Sri Lankan refugees will be given citizenship. NEET will be abolished

Education loans will be waived off. South Indian rivers will be connected

Tamil will be made official language in Central Government offices in Tamil Nadu

Free rail facility for school and college students

To create more jobs and fill up all existing vacancies in all central govt departments in Tamil Nadu

DMK on Sunday announced former union ministers Dayanidhi Maran, A Raja and T R Baalu and its Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi among its candidates for the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies it is contesting in Tamil Nadu. Releasing the list of candidates, which included 13 new faces, party president M K Stalin said Maran will contest from Central Chennai, A Raja from Nilgiris (SC) and T R Baalu from Sriperumbudur constituencies.
'If Delhi is to be saved from Islamic State': Giriraj Singh urges people to vote for BJP

Rahul should be sent back to school to know what ministries exist under Centre: Giriraj Singh

Giriraj Singh sulks after Nawada LS seat goes to NDA ally LJP

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

New Delhi, Mar 19: Union minister and senior BJP leader Giriraj Singh was apparently left sulking after the Nawada Lok Sabha seat, which he represents, went to NDA ally LJP.

"Compulsions of seat-sharing may be there. But I wish to underscore that no other union minister from Bihar may have to give up his sitting seat," the veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader told media persons.

"This is despite the fact that I have worked so much to nurture my constituency," Singh added.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had on Sunday announced the list of candidates and their respective seats to be contested by its three constituents- the BJP, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) and Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP.

As per the announcement, the BJP and the JD(U) will contest 17 seats each and six seats were allotted to the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).

Asked whether he had expressed his wish to seek re-election from Nawada to state BJP president Nityanand Rai, Singh said: "I must have done so 200 times".

All places named after Mughals should be changed: Giriraj Singh

"Five years is a long time and I have become attached to Nawada and its people. Rai had assured me that I would get a ticket from wherever I wanted. Why this (denial of ticket) happened is for him to answer," Singh told reporters here.

On reports that he might be asked to contest from Begusarai, the seat which he had wanted to fight in 2014, Singh replied with a hint of bitterness, "I was a party worker, am a party worker and shall always remain a party worker."

The LJP, however, maintained that it has good relations with Singh. "We have good relations with him. I got to know through media that he is little upset. I will call him & ask him if it is so. And if he is, I will try to resolve the issue," LJP leader Chirag Paswan was quoted as saying by ANI.

Besides Giriraj Singh, the other union ministers from Bihar are Ashwini Kumar Choubey (Buxar), R K Singh (Ara), Ram Kripal Yadav (Pataliputra) and Radha Mohan Singh (Motihari).

All these seats have been retained by the BJP and it is believed that the sitting MPs may be fielded again from their respective seats.

Interestingly, in the last general election Giriraj Singh had initially expressed his wish to contest from Begusarai, which is dominated by the Bhumihar caste to which he belongs.

But the seat then went to Bhola Singh, a party-hopper who had been previously associated with the Communist Party of India (CPI), Congress and the Janata Dal.

Giriraj Singh was then given the ticket from Nawada, a less safe seat given its social profile which he won riding the Modi wave.

The Nawada seat has gone to LJP this time in exchange for Munger, which has been given to the JD(U) reportedly at the insistence of Nitish Kumar who wanted it for close aide Rajiv Ranjan alias Lalan Singh.

Lalan Singh had represented Munger from 2009 to 2014 when he lost it to LJPs Veena Devi, who is the wife of mafia don-turned-politician Suraj Bhan Singh.

With Begusarai lying vacant on account of the death of Bhola Singh, speculations are rife that Giriraj Singh may be fielded from there.

However, he is said to be wary of the possibility that former JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar may make his electoral debut on a CPI ticket from the seat.

Belonging to the same caste as Giriraj Singh, Kanhaiya is likely to pose a tough challenge as Begusarai has been a stronghold of the CPI and has earned the epithet- 'Moscow of Bihar'.

Moreover, being a Bhumihar himself, Kanhaiya may cut into votes of the dominant caste besides getting support from a cross-section of other social segments since it is being speculated that the Grand Alliance comprising Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress and other smaller parties may support him.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 6:35 [IST]
Bengaluru: Apartment with 3 or more COVID-19 will be deemed a cluster

'Hugs for Tukde Tukde gang, arrest for pro-Modi youth': Amit Shah slams Congress

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Mar 19: Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Tuesday took a pot shot at Congress president Rahul Gandhi over police action against techies at the Congress chief's rally in Bengaluru on Monday.

"Hugs for 'Tukde Tukde' gang and arrest of peaceful youth raising pro-Modi slogans? Where are the champions of 'Free Speech'? Yuvraj of CONgress must know 'youth decides the future of a period' Stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics," Shah wrote on Twitter.

Shah to launch second poster of movie, PM Narendra Modi

Chaos reigned at Gandhi's rally after several people started raising slogans in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi outside the Manyata Tech Park. The protesters put up placards asking Gandhi to leave the venue.

The police took the protesters, whom the BJP referred to as techies, into custody in order to clear the venue. The BJP condemned police action against the protesters at the Manyata Tech park, where Gandhi's event was held.

The Karnataka BJP posted a video on Twitter claiming that police arrested the techies for raising pro-Modi slogans at the Gandhi's venue. "Democracy in Danger...Police arrests few techies for raising pro Modi slogans at Manyata tech park in Bengaluru. This is the real face of democracy in a Cong JDS ruled state. It's total dictatorship where freedom of choice & expression of citizens is suppressed," read the tweet posted by BJP Karnataka on Monday night.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 18:49 [IST]
As Mamata Banerjee takes swipe at Rahul Gandhi, Cong says such posturing for personal ambition will help BJP

I cancelled events, but PM continued with photo shoot: Rahul's bitter jibe over Pulwama

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Mar 19: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for continuing with his programmes on February 14 depsite having full knowledge about the Pulwama terror attack.

Raking up the issue once again, Rahul who is currently in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh said,"I cancelled my programmes but Modi was at the Corbett National Park making his movie, three and a half hours after the pulwama blast. He had put make up and was posing.''

Rahul also targetted Modi's 'Main bhi chowkidar' campaign. "How are all chors in India Modi - Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi. Earlier he used to say I didn't want to be a PM, but a chowkidar. Now he says 'Hum sab chowkidar.' But it was you who has looted the country."

Rahul keeps realistic manifesto on back-burner, okays populist one

Addressing a rally in Itanagar, Rahul said the party does not want to stifle any voices. Talking about Modi's wish of a "Congress-mukht bharat", Gandhi said, "Look at the hatred in their heart. We would only like to tell them that they are free to lead their lives by this ideology, but they cannot impose it on Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur. We will not allow this."He also targetted PM Modi for allegedly shooting for a film at the Jim Corbet Park post-Pulwama attack.

Rahul also pitched the idea of Guaranteed Minimum Income. "If Narendra Modi can give money to a selected few, Congress will give the money to youth and needy of Arunachal."

Targetting the Modi-Xi "hugplomacy", Rahul said, "At the time when Modi was swinging with Xi Jinping, Chinese forces entered Doklam. But Modi stays mum. He then goes to China without an agenda. This is Modi's patriotism. We don't need this in our country"

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 14:23 [IST]
Agree with Indian govt on need to safeguard citizens' privacy: WhatsApp

State vs national issues: Key lessons for the BJP to learn in Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Haryana

J&K: Pakistan violates ceasefire in Akhnoor, Sunderbani sectors

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Jammu, Mar 19: Pakistan on Tuesday violated ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir's Akhnoor and Sunderbani sectors at 10:45 pm by resorting to shelling with mortars and firing of small arms.

Indian Army is retaliating. The ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Akhnoor sector continued throughout the night till early morning today.

Pakistan had resorted to unprovoked firing in the early hours of the day in Sunderbani sector, resulting in the death of an Indian Army jawan. The firing, which began at about 5:30 a.m on Monday, stopped at about 7:15 am.

On Mar 18, an Army soldier was killed in cease violation by Pakistani forces along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district.

Earlier, on Sunday, Pakistani troops violated ceasefire triggering a strong response from the Indian Army. This came after Pakistan on Wednesday violated ceasefire in Poonch sector of the state.

Pakistani Rangers also initiated an unprovoked ceasefire violation in Chakkan da Bagh crossing point where the Line of Control trade centre is located.
J&K downgraded to UT from state, like a CM demoting to MLA: Ghulam Nabi Azad

If normalcy to be brought in Kashmir, Article 370 has to be reinstated: Farooq Abdullah

JKSSB SI Recruitment 2021: Last date to apply for 800 Sub Inspector posts, direct link here

J&K: Clashes erupt in Awantipora over custodial death of school teacher

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

Jammu, Mar 19: The clashes have erupted in Jammu and Kashmir's Awantipora district over custodial death of a school teacher, who was arrested in connection with a terror case.

The custodial killing of a Kashmir youth, Rizwan Pandit has sparked anger among locals of Awantipora who hit the streets and rained stones on the local Police in the Awantipora area.

Meanwhile, a shutdown is being observed in Maisuma area of Srinagar city.

Lok Sabha elections 2019: The political heat in Kashmir begins

Demanding action against the Police and the NIA, hundreds of Locals shouting pro Independence and Anti India Slogans hit the streets of Awantipora and hurled stones on the Forces deployed in the area.

The Police initially allowed the people to march ahead peacefully, fired tear smoke shells and pellets to disperse them.

Rizwan Pandit, 28, a resident of Awantipora in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, died during the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, a police officer said. Pandit, who was a teacher at a private school, was picked up by the security agencies three days ago in connection with a terror case, the officer said.

The police department has requested a magisterial inquiry under Section 176 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to ascertain the cause and circumstances leading to Pandit's death, the officer said, adding that further details were awaited.
Left Front releases list of candidates for 38 seats in West Bengal, open to alliance talks with Cong

India

oi-PTI

Kolkata, Mar 19: The Left Front on Tuesday announced the names of candidates for 38 seats of the total 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. The Left Front has decided to not field any candidates in Malda Uttar, Malda Dakshin, Jangipur and Berhampore as Congress had won these seats in 2014 Lok Sabha poll.

The Left Front is an alliance of Communist Party of India (Marxist), All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), the Marxist Forward Bloc, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Revolutionary Communist Party of India and the Biplabi Bangla Congress.

Out of 38 seats, CPI (M) will field its candidates from 29 seats, AIFB from three seats, RSP from three seats and CPI from three seats.

After the special talks on Bengal, is BJP struggling to find 42 faces in state for Lok Sabha polls?

Earlier, it was reported that the Left and the Congress were holding talks to fight the Lok Sabha poll together in the alliance but the seat-sharing talks between the two parties failed after Congress announced that it will fight the poll alone.

Meanwhile, Left Front on Tuesday said that it is still open to hold seat-sharing talks with the Congress and will wait for Congress' decision till 4:30pm on Wednesday. Left Front leaders said that if Congress decides against withdrawing its candidates on the two seats - Raigunj and Murshidabad, then Left will also field its candidates from the four seats which it has left for the Congress.

The development comes a day after the Congress announced candidates for 11 constituencies which includes the two which the CPI(M) had won in 2014.

The Left Front last week had announced a list of 25 candidates in the state leaving aside 17 seats for Congress.

But the Congress' state unit took it as an insult and on Sunday evening decided to go it alone in the state.

PTI
Some clowns try to dishonour India, have support of Rahul, Sibal: Narottam Mishra

Madhya Pradesh: Ruckus in school over 'religious conversion' of eight students in Vidisha; rioting case filed

Madhya Pradesh: 12-year-old girl raped and beheaded by her three brothers and uncle

India

oi-Deepika S

Bhopal, Mar 19: 12-year-old girl whose beheaded body was found last week in Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh had been raped by her three brothers and uncle, police said on Tuesday.

She was first raped by eldest brother aged 22 years, after which two other siblings aged 19 and 17 years also raped her taking turns. Subsequently, uncle aged around 40 years also raped the minor. The autopsy report of the girl's body has revealed that the accused also did an unnatural sexual act with her.

According to NDTV, police grew suspicious after her uncle alleged that one Chote Patel, who lives in the same village, was behind the murder. Patel and the girl's family were locked in a land dispute, police added.

The girl was reported missing on March 13 and her body and severed head were found the next day in an agricultural field outside the village.

The police initially declared a reward of Rs 10,000, which was increased to Rs 25,000 for information regarding the accused.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 20:23 [IST]
Nama Nageshwar Rao, one of richest politicians, quits TDP; may join TRS

India

oi-Deepika S

Hyderabad, Mar 19: In a setback to the TDP ahead of Lok Sabha polls, Industrialist-turned-politician Nama Nageshwar Rao on Tuesday quit the party.

In a letter to TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, he said he has decided to resign as the party's "existence has become a question in Telangana" despite his and the TDPs best efforts to rejuvenate it, he said in the letter shared with the media.

The development assumes significance in the light of reports that Mr. Nageswara Rao has been planning to switch loyalty to Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS ) and is aspiring to contest from Khammam Lok Sabha seat on behalf of the ruling party.

The Congress is also trying to woo Rao into the party and reserved the party ticket for Khammam for him. However, the former MP is understood to have preferred TRS to Congress.

TRS hits a century, thanks to series of defections

Rao had served as MP from Khammam. During his stint as an MP from 2009 to 2014, Rao was one of the richest MPs in the country at the time. In 2014 general elections, he declared assets worth Rs 338 crore. In 2018 assembly elections, however, he declared assets worth Rs 113 crore.

He unsuccessfully contested the Assembly polls in December last on TDP ticket.

The Telugu Desam Party managed to win only two seats in the Assembly polls in the 119-member house.

It had contested the elections in alliance with the Congress and others.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 23:47 [IST]
With assurance of good behaviour, three J&K politicians to be released today

BJP is single largest party in Jammu, NC gets 25 of 140

No pact with Congress, NC to contest all six seats in J&K

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

Srinagar, Mar 19: The National Conference and the Congress have been in talks for the past few days for a pre-poll alliance.

The Parliamentary board of the National Conference met here this evening after which a decision to contest all the six Lok Sabha seats was taken, the party said.

Lok Sabha elections 2019: The political heat in Kashmir begins

Seemingly, the talks could not move as there were differences over seat-sharing, sources said.

But, in what could be seen as a possible opportunity for a tie-up, NC sources said the party's Parliamentary Board left the final decision on party's patron Farooq Abdullah. "based on the national scenario".

BJP set to contest all seats in Jammu and Kashmir

Meanwhile, an NC spokesman said Abdullah will seek reelection from the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat while former Jammu and Kashmir speaker Mohammad Akbar Lone will be the party's candidate from the Baramulla constituency.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 7:15 [IST]
Noose tightens around separatists as NIA gathers evidence of anti-national acts

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Mar 19: There is enough evidence to show that the separatists of Kashmir have indulged in anti-national operations, officials from the National Investigation Agency said.

The NIA which is probing a terror funding case says that it has recovered heaps of evidence to suggest that funds had come in from abroad and were being used by the separatists to fuel tensions in the Valley.

The NIA has seized property papers, pen drives, bank account details, laptops and mobiles as part of the evidence. The evidence was collected during a February 26 raid at the residences of these separatists.

The NIA would question more separatists in connection with the case. An NIA official tells OneIndia that they propose calling in Yasin Malik for questioning in connection with the case.

Hitting separatists further, IT department unearths assets worth crores in J&K

The others on the radar of the agency are Mohammad Ashraf Khan, Masarat Alam and Zaffar Akbar Bhat. Evidence is being gathered against these persons and they will be shortly called in for questioning the officer further said.

The NIA is investigating a case related to funding of terror and separatist organisations in Kashmir through hawala channels. The agency last month carried out a series of raids on separatists, including the Mirwaiz.

Ahead of his second notice, the Mirwaiz, during his last Friday sermons, had mentioned about the NIA notice and said from the pulpit of Jama Masjid and said "the NIA wants to know about my hidden treasure, my people are my hidden treasure".

The NIA had questioned two maternal uncles of the Mirwaiz -- Maulvi Manzoor and Maulvi Shafat -- and his close aides last year. Both Manzoor and Shafat are retired senior government officers.

The NIA probe seeks to identify the chain of players behind the financing of terrorist activities, pelting of stones on security forces, burning down of schools and damaging of government establishments.

The case names Hafeez Saeed, Pakistan-based chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), the front for banned Lashker-e-Taiba, as an accused, besides organisations such as the Hurriyat Conference factions led by Geelani and the Mirwaiz, Hizbul Mujahideen and Dukhtaran-e-Millat.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 5:58 [IST]
Goa govt likely to allow restaurants to open at 50 per cent capacity from July 5

Goa gangrape case: Heavy police force in CM's Sanquelim town as Cong tries to take out march against him

Pramod Sawant, a man groomed by Manohar Parrikar himself

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Panaji, Mar 19: Pramod Sawant who took oath as the Chief Minister of Goa was groomed by the late Manohar Parrikar himself.

Sawant has a big void to fill and is the only leader in the party right now who has the backing of the RSS. He takes over at a time when the BJP is looking at a leader who can lead the party in the state for the next 15 years.

During the meetings that were held between the BJP and its allies the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak party (MGP) and Goa Forward Party (GFP), there was no objection to Sawant's candidature. The delay was owing to the allocation of the portfolios.

Pramod Sawant takes oath as Goa CM at 2 am ceremony, two allies get deputy CM post

Sawant has been in the fore-front ever since Parrikar's health began to worsen. He had met with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and said that he was ready to take up the role of leading the party in Goa. He had met with the RSS chief last year along with Goa North MP, Shripad Naik.
Andhra Pradesh floods: Rahul Gandhi asks Congress workers to extend all possible help

As Mamata Banerjee takes swipe at Rahul Gandhi, Cong says such posturing for personal ambition will help BJP

What exactly is home ministry doing: Rahul Gandhi slams Centre over Nagaland incident

Farmers should be given rights, compensation, jobs: Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha

Rahul keeps realistic manifesto on back-burner, okays populist one

India

oi-Hardeep Singh Bedi

New Delhi, March 19: Congress President Rahul Gandhi has decided to put a realistic election manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on the back-burner and instead has okayed a populist one.

The sources say that the Congress manifesto in making would include full of appealing promises with an eye to woo voters and win elections.

The Congress election manifesto is aimed at attracting all sections of the society, particularly the first time voters and the youth.

The grand old party is buoyed with the success of farm loan waiver promise, which rode it into the power in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan in recently held assembly elections.

Guaranteed minimum income scheme if we come to power says Rahul Gandhi

"Though the Congress President Rahul Gandhi wanted a realistic manifesto, the party's strategists have convinced him that populist poll promises are a must to win elections, " say sources.

They have cited the success of Congress' poll promises during assembly polls to drive home their point.

Therefore, the highlights of the Congress manifesto would be loan waiver for farmers, employment guarantee for youth, and reservation for women in jobs.

The main thrust of the Congress manifesto will be on employment for youth.

"The Narendra Modi government failed to provide jobs to youth as per its promise. The Congress has taken it very seriously and hence would promise to provide minimum income guarantee and job guarantee for youth," says a Congress leader.

When asked about how the Congress would fulfil a promise that the BJP couldn't, the Congress leader failed to provide a particular road map.

However, the informed sources tell OneIndia that the Congress has engaged some experts from the foreign countries to chalk out Minimum Income and job Guarantees.

It is pertinent to mention that Rahul Gandhi has been promising in his rallies that if the Congress is voted to power then every poor person in the country would get a guaranteed minimum income.

"The Congress' poll promises will counter the BJP's efforts to target first-time voters," said Congress sources.

They also maintain that the Congress is planning to propose 33 percent reservation for women in the jobs, and it could be a game changer in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The Congress is also eyeing to make farm loan waiver simpler.

Is Rahul Gandhi more likeable than PM Modi? Here's what this survey says

"The party is also contemplating to link Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with agriculture and to increase daily wage guarantee of 100 - day work in a year. This will generate more jobs in the rural areas," say Congress sources.

The Congress strategists also plan to counter Modi Government's mega health scheme Ayushman Bharat with a promise of health guarantee in its election manifesto.

Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY), popularly known as Ayushman Bharat, a centrally sponsored scheme launched in 2018, aims at making interventions in primary, secondary and tertiary care systems, covering both preventive and promotive health, to address healthcare holistically.
SSC CPO SI, ASI Paper 1 Results 2019 date, latest update

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

New Delhi, Mar 19: The SSC CPO SI, ASI Paper 1 Results 2019 will be declared soon. The results once declared will be available on the official website.

A total of 2,32,514 candidates appeared for the exams. The exam was held to fill up a total of 2,164 vacancies for the post of Sub-Inspector (Executive) in Delhi Police, Sub-Inspector (GD) in Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF), and ASI (Assistant Sub Inspector) in CISF (Central Industrial Security Force).

Candidates must keep a close tab on the official website for more information. The results are likely to be released on March 25. The results once declared will be available on ssc.nic.in.
Suresh Prabhu orders emergency meet on grounding of flights by Jet Airways

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Mar 19: Union Minister of Civil Aviation Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday directed the Secretary to hold emergency meeting on the grounding of flights by cash-strapped Jet Airways, its advance bookings, cancellation, refunds and safety issues, if any.

Prabhu has also asked the Secretary to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

In a letter written to the DGCA, their union on Tuesday stated,"It has been arduous for us to meet our financial requirements, result of which have adversely affected the psychological condition of Aircraft Engineers at work and therefore the safety of public transport airplanes being flown by Jet Airways across India and the world is at risk."

While the senior management is finding a resolution to be in business, we the Engineers who inspect, troubleshoot and certify the public transport airplanes for its airworthiness are in tremendous stress due to non-payment of salaries on time, since last 7 months. As of now, 3 month's salary is overdue to us," the letter further said.

Aviation Ministry releases passenger charter specifying rights of air travellers

Earlier on Monday, Jet Airways had said it had grounded four more planes, taking the number of aircraft that are non-operational due to non-payment of lease rentals to 41.

The airline is under significant pressure as 24 percent stakeholder Etihad continues to play hardball with the airline's promoter Naresh Goyal. It has put several pre-conditions to go through with a deal to save the airlines, which has seen been affected by major operational losses since 2018.

On Monday, Jet Airways informed in its stock exchange filing that it would default on bond interest payments dues on Wednesday.

Etihad Airport services in a notification to its passengers on Sunday said,"Jet Airways has cancelled all their flights from Abu Dhabi with immediate effect from March 18 due to operational reasons".
To dodge extradition, Ravi Pujari spends Rs 7 crore in legal fees

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Mar 19: India is looking to extradite gangster Ravi Pujari under the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime in the absence of a bilateral extradition treaty with Senegal.

Leading the process would be a top cop from Karnataka. The Union Home Ministry is understood to have granted clearance to a senior police officer from Karnataka to extradite Pujari, who was detained in Dakar on January 19.

In a bid to speed up the extradition process, the Karnataka police have already dispatched evidence to ascertain Pujari's identity. The evidence also includes chargesheets in which Pujari's aides have been prosecuted.

Pujari a.k.a Fernandez: How this underworld don lived undercover

Meanwhile, Pujari has employed top lawyers in Senegal to contest the extradition. Reports suggest that he has spent close to Rs 7 crore in legal fees. India is however confident that it would be able to get Pujari. One of the pre-conditions for the extradition would be that Pujari is not executed. The laws in Senegal do not provide for capital punishment.

India would take hope from the fact that Senegal has been tough on International criminals. In the past few years, several criminals from Italy have been extradited.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 6:02 [IST]
Willing to be questioned, but in Srinagar says Mirwaiz accused in terror funding case

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Mar 19: Moderate Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq did not appear before the NIA in New Delhi on Monday for questioning in connection with a terror funding case and said he was willing to be quizzed here as he fears for his security in the national capital.

The Mirwaiz, who is one of the religious heads of Muslims in the Kashmir Valley, again wrote to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), saying he had no knowledge of the case mentioned by the agency in its summon served on him on Saturday.

The NIA had issued a summon to the Mirwaiz to appear before the agency headquarters in the national capital on Monday in a case related to funding of terror and separatists organisations in the Kashmir Valley.

Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, chairman of moderate Hurriyat Conference, on Monday again skipped a date with the National Investigation Agency, carrying a probe into a terror funding case, and said that he was willing to be quizzed here as he fears for his security in the national capital.

The spokesman of the Hurriyat Conference, a conglomerate of some separatist groups, issued a statement saying that the Mirwaiz has sent a reply to the NIA summon through his counsel.

Citing security threat, Kashmir separatist Mirwaiz refuses to appear before NIA

In the reply, it has been reiterated that he is willing to cooperate in the matter but has asked for the venue for examination to be shifted from Delhi to Srinagar as the concerns and apprehensions regarding travel to Delhi, expressed by him through his counsel in the earlier response on March 10 continue to remain so, the spokesperson said.

The counsel mentioned in the reply that his client had informed him that on several occasions earlier, many persons have been examined by the agency at Humhama Budgam while conducting investigation and he sees no reason why his client cannot be examined in a similar manner .

Earlier, he had been served a notice for appearing before the agency on March 11 but the lawyer of the Mirwaiz informed the NIA, through a four-page letter, that his client was willing to cooperate as he could not travel in view of the "conditions of hostility".

"Under the prevailing conditions of hostility wherein there is a threat to the personal safety of my client, it becomes unwise for my client to travel to Delhi," counsel for the Mirwaiz, Aijaz Ahmad Dhar, had said.

He had also maintained that his client is not acquainted with the subject matter of the FIR referred to in the NIA's notice.

The NIA is investigating a case related to funding of terror and separatist organisations in Kashmir through hawala channels. The agency last month carried out a series of raids on separatists, including the Mirwaiz.

Ahead of his second notice, the Mirwaiz, during his last Friday sermons, had mentioned about the NIA notice and said from the pulpit of Jama Masjid and said "the NIA wants to know about my hidden treasure, my people are my hidden treasure".

The NIA had questioned two maternal uncles of the Mirwaiz -- Maulvi Manzoor and Maulvi Shafat -- and his close aides last year. Both Manzoor and Shafat are retired senior government officers.

The NIA probe seeks to identify the chain of players behind the financing of terrorist activities, pelting of stones on security forces, burning down of schools and damaging of government establishments.

The case names Hafeez Saeed, Pakistan-based chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), the front for banned Lashker-e-Taiba, as an accused, besides organisations such as the Hurriyat Conference factions led by Geelani and the Mirwaiz, Hizbul Mujahideen and Dukhtaran-e-Millat.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 7:03 [IST]
Cleaning up the inside rot: The importance of gunning down Kashmirs white collared terrorists

13,000 terrorists held in restive Xinjiang says China

International

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

Beijing, Mar 19: China said it had arrested about 13,000 "terrorists" in a massive crackdown against militants in the volatile Uygur Muslim-majority Xinjiang region since 2014, denying criticism that Beijing is "buying" silence of the Muslim world with heavy investments in Pakistan and other Islamic countries.

China has faced mounting criticism for the detention of thousands of Uygur Muslims in massive "education camps".

"Since 2014, Xinjiang has destroyed 1,588 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested 12,995 terrorists, seized 2,052 explosive devices, punished 30,645 people for 4,858 illegal religious activities, and confiscated 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials," a white paper released Monday said.

It said that some areas in Xinjiang were severely disturbed by terrorism and the infiltration of religious extremism.

Tens of thousands of Chinese Uighur Muslim families are being torn apart in a crackdown that's seen as many as one million people detained, according to the U.N. Emily Wither speaks to one mother, now in Istanbul, who has lost her children to the sta

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"For this reason, some people cannot speak, read or write in standard Chinese, have a weak understanding of rule of law, and have difficulty finding employment through a lack of employable skills. As a result, such people are more inclined to be incited or coerced into criminality by terrorist and extremist forces," it said.

Rs 6,000 stipend, reformative measures for terrorists who want to return to mainstream

China has made significant progress in its counterterrorism and de-radicalisation efforts in Xinjiang, it said.

"However, the three forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism are not gone; their influence can still be felt. And the 'East Turkistan' forces are in search of opportunities to create trouble. We still face a severe and complex situation in combating terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang," it said.

Separately, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang has denied China is "buying the silence" of Muslim countries with massive investments through the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a flagship project.

Diplomats from Pakistan and several other Muslim countries, who were recently taken on a guided tour of Xinjiang following allegations of detention of over a million Uygurs, said there was no religious and cultural repression.

Asked whether China's was investing heavily in Muslim countries to buy their silence, Geng told the reporters that the BRI investments had nothing to do with Xinjiang related issues.

"China pursues preventive counter-terrorism measures. I believe the international community recognises this," he said.

The UN human rights panel said in August last year that it had received many credible reports that about a million ethnic Uygurs in China in "massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy".

China defended the camps, saying they are re-education camps aimed at de-radicalising sections of the Uygur Muslim population from extremism and separatism.

The US and several other countries, besides UN officials, have expressed concern over the camps.

Xinjiang has been in turmoil for the last several years following Uygur protests over large scale settlements of Han Chinese into the resource-rich province.

China blames the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) for the violent terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of the country in the last several years.

A number of Uygurs reportedly joined Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and were planning to return.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 6:43 [IST]
Australian Prime Minister puts onus on technology firms to tackle internet extremism

International

pti-PTI

Sydney, Mar 19: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called on world leaders to press technology firms to tackle the "ungoverned" space of extremist internet content in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack.

In a letter published on Tuesday, the Australian leader asked the G20 summit host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that the issue be raised when leaders gather in Osaka this June. Morrison is in the middle of a tough re-election campaign, where his party has faced persistent allegations of fuelling anti-migrant sentiment to appeal to conservative voters.

Morrison has spoken publicly several times to denounce extremism since the attack that killed 50 people in neighbouring New Zealand on Friday. He has also taken aim at tech companies for their seeming inability to stop the propagation of extremist content, such as live footage shot by the gunman as he rampaged through the Al Noor mosque.

[New Zealand Mosque attack: Australian police search homes linked to gunman]

"They've created these capabilities, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, they're available for peaceful and happy purposes, but we do know that they can be used and weaponised by terrorists of any description," he told the press.

"If you can write an algorithm to make sure that the ads they want you to see can appear on your mobile phone, then I'm quite confident they can write an algorithm to screen out hate content on social media platforms.

[Christchurch has affected New Zealand's TV-viewing experience; offensive content removed]

"I'm sure we can work together to make sure they protect our citizens by ensuring that their tools that they have developed are not used by terrorists as weapons to advance their agendas of hate," he said. Opposition leader Bill Shorten backed that call, telling social media platforms: "If you help create the swamp, you can't go missing when evil things start crawling out of it."

PTI
Is China the reason why Pakistan opted to skip Summit for Democracy hosted by Biden?

Come what may, we stand with Pak, says China as Islamabad raises Kashmir in top talks

International

oi-Deepika S

Beijing, Mar 19: China backed its "all-weather friend" Pakistan on Tuesday, hailing its recent counter-terrorism measures at the first strategic dialogue between the foreign ministers of both the countries.

The meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi came days after Beijing foiled for the fourth time the efforts to designate JeM chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN Security Council.

"We also discussed the situation emerging out of the Pulwama incident," Qureshi said during a joint press conference where both sides took two selective questions.

'Masood Azhar's issue will be resolved', says Chinese envoy Luo Zhaohui

"As Wang was suggesting both sides have to show restraint. I think the world has noted that Pakistan did exercise restraint and responsibility," Qureshi said.

He also said Pakistan is always ready for an engagement to "resolve all our outstanding issues."

"We did discuss the impact this (Pulwama) incident had on Pakistan-India relations and the impact this could have risen to different level of escalation and impact it could have had on the peace and stability of the region," he said.

"I briefed Wang about steps Pakistan had taken to safeguard our territorial integrity and the steps we had taken to de-escalate (tensions with India). Pakistan appreciates the role China had played once again in standing by Pakistan in these difficult times," he said.

Qureshi also raked up the Kashmir issue at the press conference saying that he also briefed Wang "on the rapidly deteriorating situation" in Kashmir.

He said the reaction at times creates tension in the region and it must be avoided.

In his comments, Wang said China and Pakistan have agreed to step up counter terrorism cooperation.

"We call on the international community to adopt a fair perspective of the commitments made by Pakistan to combat terrorism over the years. We think a peaceful and stable South Asia is in the common interest of the regional countries and meets the expectations of the world and China," he said.

"No matter how things change in the world and the region, China will firmly support Pakistan in upholding its independence and territorial integrity and dignity...," Wang said heaping praise on Pakistan's counter terrorism efforts.

"The purpose and principles of the UN charter and international norms must be observed in earnest," he added.

Pakistan is facing intense international pressure to rein in the terror groups operating from its soil in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) suicide bomber on February 14 that killed 40 CRPF soldiers. JeM is one of the terror groups operating from Pakistan.

OneIndia News (with PTI inputs)
Cyclone Idai devastates 90% of Mozambiques 4th largest city Beira; 1,000 may have died

International

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Maputo, March 19: Cyclones devastating human settlements are not something new to learn about but what happened in south-eastern Africa recently is indeed terrifying. Ninety per cent of a city in Mozambique called Beira was reportedly "destroyed" by Cyclone Idai and the fates of more than five lakh people who lived there are not known. Beira is the South-eastern African nation's fourth-largest city.

Cyclone Idai lashed into Mozambique as a high-end Category 2 storm at midnight last Thursday (March 14) and left behind trails of devastation. It then hit the neighbouring countries of Malawi and Zimbabwe, also affecting them.

Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi said in a radio address to the nation on Monday, March 18, that though the official death toll was 84, more than 1,000 could be dead in reality. He said bodies were seen floating after two rivers broke their banks and swept away whatever came on their way and called it a "real humanitarian disaster".

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies described the situation in Beira as "terrible" after conducting an aerial assessment on Monday. Aid workers are now struggling to reach the city after the last road accessing it was cut off in the disaster.

The scale of #CycloneIdai in Beira, Mozambique, is truly heartbreaking. Initial assessments from @ifrc estimate at least 90% of the area is completely destroyed. Read what IFRC aid workers are witnessing in the area: https://t.co/reDWmHKw2W  @IFRCAfrica pic.twitter.com/25l3kM2vl3  American Red Cross (@RedCross) March 18, 2019

Mozambique, a poor nation with weak infrastructure, experiences tropical cyclones in the fall season. In February 2000, Cyclone Eline had also left a toll on the nation, killing hundreds and displacing several thousands.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 16:29 [IST]
What is it like to be Black in Germany?

Germany backs move to ban Masood Azhar

International

oi-PTI

Berlin, Mar 20: Germany has initiated a move at the European Union to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, days after China blocked a bid at the United Nations to ban him, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.

They said Germany was in touch with several member nations of the European Union for listing Azhar as a terrorist which will result in his travel ban as well as the freezing of his assets in the 28 countries of the bloc.

Germany has floated a proposal to ban Azhar by the European Union, but no resolution on the issue has been moved yet, diplomatic sources said. They said all 28 member countries of the European Union (EU) will have to support the move to ban the Pakistan-based terrorist as the bloc decides on such issues under the principle of consensus.

'Masood Azhar's issue will be resolved', says Chinese envoy Luo Zhaohui

On March 15, France imposed financial sanctions on Azhar and said it will work with its European partners for putting the JeM chief's name on the EU list of persons and entities involved in terrorist acts.

The decision by France came two days after China put a hold on a fresh move to designate Azhar as a global terrorist by the Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

The proposal to designate Azhar under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UNSC was moved by France, the UK and the US, in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed. JeM had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack. Fourteen out of the 15 members of the UN Security Council supported the proposal, but China was the only country which did not go with the move.

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Story first published: Wednesday, March 20, 2019, 2:02 [IST]
Imran Khan as next Pak PM? Here are some sporting icons who made impact in politics

Have you seen the Schwarzenegger among monkeys? She resides in Finland

International

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Helsinki, March 19: Even though there are primates other than man on Planet Earth, it is only the latter who has mastered the art of body-building. However, recently, a monkey in Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, has left the visitors stunned with his 'Arnold Schwarzenegger looks'.

Yes, you heard it right.

Even though the primate doesn't spend monthly to remain in shape, it has a startling 'muscular' look and a Finnish photographer named Santeri Oksanen took a picture of the animal with its 'bulging muscles' and it has gone viral on social media.

This is Bea. She's in good shape but those are not her muscles. Shes showing off with her fur and fierce frown. Bea is the leader of a white-faced saki troop at Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki. #korkeasaari #helsinkizoo @nypost @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/yLYCnUl7kF  Helsinki Zoo (@Korkeasaari) March 18, 2019

According to a report in South West News Service, the 34-year-old photographer found it difficult to believe when he first saw the monkey and said its mates also looked scared.

40 kg plastic found in Dead whale's stomach

"I couldn't believe the huge muscles that the monkey had. The other monkeys were very small in comparison, they all looked a bit scared of her," Oksanen told SWNS.

"The pictures make it look like it's competing in a bodybuilding contest," he added.

The zoo authorities, however, said in a video posted on their Twitter handle saying the it is not her muscles but the fur that gave such a look.

The monkey, named Bea, is a white-faced Saki monkey which is known for its muscular build.

According to New England Primate Conservancy, Saki monkeys are native to South America and are mostly found in countries like Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela.
Imran Khan, military generals to be responsible if anything happens to Maryam: Nawaz Sharif

Pakistan SC adjourns Nawaz Sharif' bail plea on medical grounds till March 26

International

oi-Vikas SV

Islamabad, Mar 19: The hearing on former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif's bail plea on medical grounds, in connection with Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case, was on Tuesday adjourned by the Supreme Court till March 26.

Sharif, who is serving a seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia case at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore since December 2018, had on March 6 appealed against a judgment by the Islamabad High Court (IHC). The IHC had on February 25 rejected former Pakistan PM's bail application on medical grounds in the case.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo has suffered four angina attacks last week, according to his daughter Maryam Nawaz . The Sharif family is complaining that the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is not providing health facilities to the former premier who has serious health complications, said a PTI report.



[Nawaz Sharif sentenced to 7 years jail in Al-Azizia case, acquitted in flagship reference case]

A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and comprising Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi had taken up the petition. The former premier had twice submitted requests to the apex court for an early hearing of his application.

In January, he filed application in the IHC for bail on medical reasons as he developed heart-related medical complications in jail but it was dismissed.

[Why it is wrong to write off Nawaz Sharif, the Phoenix of Pakistan politics]

Three corruption cases - Avenfield properties, Flagship investment and Al-Azizia steel mills - were registered against the Sharif family by the anti-graft body in 2017 following a judgment by the Supreme Court that disqualified Sharif in the Panama Papers case in 2017.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Avenfiled corruption case in July 2018 which was related to his properties in London. Later he was given bail in September. In December, the accountability court convicted him in the Al-Azizia graft case but acquitted him in the Flagship corruption case.

OneIndia News with PTI inputs

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 17:50 [IST]
Rift deepening in Saudi royal family? Crown prince stripped of some powers

International

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Riyadh, March 19: The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Abdulaziz Al Saud, has been stripped of some of his financial and economic authority by his father, King Salman bin Abulaziz Al Saud. According to a report in The Guardian, the decision of clipping the crown prince's wings was announced to a group of senior ministers of the West Asian kingdom during a cabinet meeting last week where the king spoke on many of the challenges his country is facing. Bin Salman or MBS was also invited to attend it but he failed to turn up.

The move was not announced publicly and according to the Guardian, one of the kings' trusted aides - the Harvard-educated Mausaed al-Aiban who was recently named as the country's national security adviser - was set to informally oversee investment moves on the king's behalf.

Tension between Saudi king and crown prince because of various reasons

Rumours are on that tension is brewing between the father and son owing to a number or reasons, including MBS's alleged role in the gruesome assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey last year. The incident has put Saudi Arabia's human rights record under the scanner and the world opinion has gone strongly against it. It was in November last year, weeks after the Khashoggi incident, the process of clipping MBS's wings had started.

Pakistan PM eats sitting with Saudi crown prince; president asked to stand up and deliver speech

The role of Saudi Arabia in the ongoing conflict in Yemen is also believed to be a reason for the tension between the king and the crown prince.

The king is reportedly unhappy with his son also over the latter's noticeable absence from high-profile meetings. MBS was not present at a meeting with senior economic officials earlier this week and it was being speculated that the rift in the royal family has deepened over the decision to hand Mausaed al-Aiban the authority to oversee investment decisions on the king's behalf.

MBS was also absent during the king's meetings with diplomatic representatives from Russia, India and China.

The Saudi king is also said to be upset with the prince's decision to promote Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan to serve as the Saudi ambassador to the US and his brother Khalid bin Salman, to the ministry of defence, after he left for an official visit to Egypt. Even MBS was not seen welcoming his father back home when he returned from Egypt, something which is against the custom.

The king is also said to be displeased over Prince Salman's decision to promote Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan to serve as Saudi ambassador to the US and his brother, Khalid bin Salman, to the ministry of defence after he left the country for an official trip to Egypt.

Both decisions were reportedly made without the king's approval or knowledge. Then, the prince did not personally welcome his father home at the airport upon his return to Saudi Arabia, which is seen as the customary thing to do.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 12:25 [IST]
Utrecht tram shooting: Our country startled by attack, says Netherlands PM Mark Rutte

International

oi-Shubham Ghosh

Amsterdam, March 19: The shooting inside a tram on the 24 Oktoberplein in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands on Monday (March 16) morning resulting in the death of three persons and injury to nine has "startled" the European country, said its prime minister Mark Rutte.

The PM was speaking in a hurriedly arranged press conference on Monday afternoon where he said: "Our country was startled today by an attack in Utrecht. Now it is certain that the passengers on a tram were shot. There were injuries and possibly fatalities. Our thoughts are with the victims whose lives have been turned upside down."

Utrecht shooting: 3 killed, several injured after gunman opens fire on tram in Netherlands

Rutte also revealed little fresh details at the press conference and neither took questions from the reporters. He continued to hold the official position that the incident might have been a terror attack but investigation was yet underway.

Last week, a horrific shooting incident hit Christchurch in New Zealand where two packed mosques were targeted by a right-wing extremist, resulting in death of 50 people.

European Union Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said he spoke to Rutte over the situation and said the EU stood by the side of the Netherlands in the times of difficulty. "The EU stands side by side with the Netherlands and its people during these difficult times. My thoughts are with the wounded and their families," Juncker stated on Twitter.

I have just spoken with @markrutte to get an update of the situation in #Utrecht. The #EU stands side by side with the #Netherlands and its people during these difficult times. My thoughts are with the wounded and their families.  Jean-Claude Juncker (@JunckerEU) March 18, 2019

The suspect behind the attack is 37-year-old Turkish Gokmen Tanis who was reportedly the suspect in a 2017 rape case that was heard in a court just two weeks ago, NL Times reported.

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Story first published: Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 7:24 [IST]
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Why the Middle East Awaits the Coming of Christ

Ive just recently returned from Israel, a land drenched in history; a land acquainted with war; a land to which all believers will someday return with our great and glorious King, the Lord Jesus Christ. Until then, we can expect conflict, unrest, and the threat of war.

What chance does peace have in the Middle East? In my opinion, none until Jesus returns to establish His kingdom. Naive politicians speak about a two-state solution, land for peace, or other bargaining incentives to bring peace. But I believe all of these plans shall fail for one good reason: the Muslim Palestinian leaders cannot allow peace to come to the Middle East under any settlement. For them, its not just history and land thats at stake, but Islam itself.

While most Palestinians would like nothing better than a reasonable peace with Israel, their leaders refuse to accept the existence of an Israeli state. First, because the radicals do not simply want landthey want Jewish blood to vent their hatred, fueled by the Quran. Second, they believe that God gave the land to Ishmaels descendantsthe Muslims. Third, there is the Islamic teaching that a land once under Muslim control (as Israel was under the Turks) should never be surrendered, but must be reclaimed by a jihad.

Taken together, these three reasons form a permanent roadblock to peace in the Middle East. The Islamic nations that surround Israel cannot rest until Israel is pushed into the sea, as the saying goes.

We can support our politicians for seeking peace, hoping against hope that a two-state solution is both desirable and possible, but I believe their words will eventually fall to the ground. Yes, there might be a temporary peace, such as between Israel and Egypt, but that will last only until the Islamic states think they have enough armaments to finally destroy Israelthey will not make permanent peace. At the end of the day, the cause of conflict in the Middles East is deeply rooted in the religion of Islam, whose radicals insist that they must dominate in the Holy Land, and more ominously, in the entire world.

Zechariah predicted that God would make Israel a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples (12:2). Irans quest for nuclear weapons and the Arab Spring two years ago turned into an open door for the Muslim Brotherhood to take greater controlthe cause of radical Islam is growing and the annihilation of Israel is the goal.

The coming of Jesus will change all of that. He will first come for the church (the rapture) but later, after the Great Tribulation, He will return to the Mount of Olives and peace shall finally be established. What a day that will be!

Meanwhile, God is working mightily in Muslim countries. Tens of thousands are coming to trust Christ, even Muslims in Iraq and Iran. In Africa, whole Muslim communities are turning to Christ. Islam is not a barrier to God; Christ is able to save all who come to God by Him.

Why the Middle East Must Await the Return of Jesus Christ

Most of us have little experience with the Quran or the teachings of Islam, so Pastor Lutzer answers some of the questions most relevant to the situation in the Middle East, and our world, today.

Q: You have written in your article that hatred against the Jews is fueled by the Quran. What passages were you thinking of?

A: At first, Muhammad said complimentary things about the Jews, hoping to win them over to his new religion, but when they refused his offer he turned against them with vicious curses and hatred. For example, three times we read in the Quran that God transformed the Jews into pigs and apes (2:65; 5:60; 7:166). Also, the Quran teaches that (1) the Jews are the greatest enemies of Islam, (2) Jewish people do not love Muslims, (3) Jews start wars and cause trouble on the earth, and (4) Muslims are not to be friends with the Jews (60:13).

And finally, there is a judgment on both Christians and Jews who must be thoroughly humiliated and even tortured. O you who have been given the Scriptures [Jews and Christians]. Believe in what we have revealed [the revelations of Muhammad] confirming what was already with you before. We efface faces [making them like the back of necks; without a nose, mouth, eyes] and turn them hind wards, or curse them as we cursed the Sabbath breakers. And the commandment of Allah is always executed (4:47).

Of course not all Muslims are haters, but unfortunately, for those who wish to be, the Quran offers good reasons to vent such animosities against Jews, Christians, and those who might convert to another religion.

Q: Sometimes we hear Muslims say that Islam is older than Christianity, and that Abraham was a Muslim. Explain.

A: Yes, Ive heard Muslims say that all true Jews and Christians are really already Muslims, if only they were to purify their faith. The problem that Islam has is this: the Quran in various places honors Jews and Christians as people of the Book and even suggests that if people are confused they should check with the people of the Book. However, since Judaism and Christianity differ so significantly from Islam, the idea has arisen that the Bible was corrupted since the time of Muhammad and that accounts for these differences.

Thus, if these two religions were to purify their faith, they would discard the corrupted Bible, accept the Quran , and admit to being Muslims!

Space forbids a detailed reply to this, so I shall simply say that this is false historically, religiously, and textually.

Q: So often we hear that the Muslims are still fighting against Christianity in vengeance because of the Crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. Explain.

A: Within the first century of Islam (Muhammad c. 570-632) the Muslims, unprovoked, laid siege against Jerusalem and captured the city in 637. Although Jerusalem is not even mentioned in the Quran, the city was now regarded as a holy site of Islam.

The first crusade in 1099 was a response to the atrocities Muslims committed against Christian pilgrims who wanted to visit the Holy Land. Monks had been killed in Bethlehem, all crosses were destroyed in Jerusalem, and churches were pillaged. And when the Muslims threatened to destroy the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Pope recruited people for a crusade to recapture the Holy Land.

The Crusades were not an unprovoked attack by Christians signaling Western aggression. Nor did the Christians go there to convert Muslims to Christianity, and yet this is part of the revisionist history blindly accepted by the West. The motive for rescuing the Holy Land was legitimate, but unfortunately, the venture, as undertaken, was wrongheaded for various reasons and has been a blot on Christianity. First, the enlisted were not trained soldiers, thus many went on a rampage in the first crusade and committed atrocities, and secondly, the crusaders fought under the banner of the cross, breeding confusion between the Gospel and warfare.

Q: D you think we are close to the return of Jesus?

A: Good question. I shall give a brief answer, I dont know. However, never before in history has the stage been so prepared for His return. We should look forward to His return not just for our deliverance but also because of the peace it will eventually bring to the world!
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Opalesque Industry Update - Abbey Capital is pleased to announce that Helen Doody has re-joined the company as Head of Abbey Capital (US), assuming responsibility for the US Sales team, based in New York. Helen will re-join the management team and will report to, Paraic Cosgrave, Global Head of Sales, based in Dublin. Abbey Capital is an Irish alternative investment fund manager. Tony Gannon, CEO & CIO of Abbey Capital, commented: "We are delighted that Helen has re-joined Abbey Capital in a pivotal role for the company. Helen will continue to develop and oversee our business in the US, much of which she was responsible for during her previous tenure at the company. Helen's return is a great endorsement of our business and further strengthens our ability to support our US clients". Helen Doody added: "I am thrilled to be coming back to Abbey Capital. I have always believed passionately in the diversification benefits of managed futures and believe I can offer tremendous support to our relationships in the US and also to the team as we further grow our business".
Glycerol Triacetate Market 2019 - Global Trends, Growth, Opportunities and Market Forecast to 2025

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Coalbed Methane Market 2019 by Growth, Size, Share and Forecast Research 2025 - Key Players are Exxon Mobil(XTO Energy), BP, ConocoPhillips, Australia Pacific LNG, Santos, Anglo Coal, Arrow Energy, Etc.

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Global Coalbed Methane Market 2019-2025 Report, which will help the buyer in reviewing the development trends and opportunities. To begin with the report which covers market characteristics, industry structure and competitive landscape, the problems, desire concepts, along with business strategies market effectiveness.Request Sample Copy Of this Report @Coalbed Methane Market research report delivers a close watch on leading competitors with strategic analysis, micro and macro market trend and scenarios, pricing analysis and a holistic overview of the market situations in the forecast period.It is a professional and a detailed report focusing on primary and secondary drivers, market share, leading segments and geographical analysis. Further, key players, major collaborations, merger & acquisitions along with trending innovation and business policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Coalbed Methane Market global status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 2019  2025.The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The numerical data is backed up by statistical tools such as SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, SCOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and so on. The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.The generated report is firmly based on primary research, interviews with top executives, news sources and information insiders. Secondary research techniques are implemented for better understanding and clarity for data analysis.The report for Coalbed Methane Market analysis & forecast 2019- 2025 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.For More Information on This Report, Please Visit @Coalbed Methane Market Segmentation covers:Region- wise Analysis: North America, Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Other regions (Central & South America, Middle East & Africa)Major Players Reported Are:Exxon Mobil(XTO Energy)BPConocoPhillipsAustralia Pacific LNGSantosAnglo CoalArrow EnergyEmber ResourcesEncanaAAG EnergyG3 ExplorationCarbon Creek EnergyCONSOL EnergyPioneer Natural ResourcesGEECLGazpromShell (QGC)Constellation Energy PartnersProduct Segment Analysis:Coal MinesCBM WellsApplication Segment Analysis:Power GenerationIndustrial FuelCooking FuelVehicle FuelOthersRead More details Coalbed Methane Market Analysis and Forecast 2019- 2025 report helps the clients to take business decisions and to understand strategies of major players in the industry. The report also calls for market- driven results deriving feasibility studies for client needs. UpMarketResearch ensures qualified and verifiable aspects of market data operating in the real- time scenario. The analytical studies are conducted ensuring client needs with a thorough understanding of market capacities in the real- time scenario.Key Reasons to Purchase:- To gain insightful analyses of the market and have a comprehensive understanding of the Coalbed Methane Market and its commercial landscape.- Learn about the market strategies that are being adopted by your competitors and leading organizations.- To understand the future outlook and prospects for Coalbed Methane Market analysis and forecast 2019- 2025.If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Avail Discount On this Report @Customization of the Report:Up Market Research provides free customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.About UpMarketResearch:The UpMarketResearch () is a leading distributor of market research report with more than 800+ global clients. 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.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States.
Learn more about banking and business laws in Belize

Author: Luigi Wewege, Senior Vice President of Caye International Bank Author: Luigi Wewege, Senior Vice President of Caye Interna

As more people look to make smart decisions about their money, offshore banking strategies rise to the top of the options list. Whether youre planning to retire internationally, invest overseas, or move your business offshore, banks in Belize can be a smart choice.Thanks to banking laws in Belize, there is an inviting financial climate for investors and account holders from around the world. Take a closer look at some of the many banking and business laws in Belize that could be of benefit to you and your investments.Regulating Bank Liquidity in BelizeAny time that you decide to place your assets in a bank account, youre placing trust in that institution. Thats why it makes sense to do your homework and research various banks before you decide to invest. However, there is one more factor at play that shouldnt be ignored: Liquidity.Banks may advertise high liquidity rates, which simply means that they keep liquid assets on hand for a certain percentage of the total value held in the bank at any one time. If a bank has $100,000,000 worth held in its accounts, and it has half of that in liquid form, then it has a liquidity ratio of 50%.In Belize, banks are required by law to have a set liquidity ratio. That ratio is set at 24%, which is far higher than in many other countries. These bank reserve requirements in Belize are at least four times the reserve requirements of those in the United States for their local banks. With a minimum liquidity ratio of 24%, bank account holders and investors can enjoy peace of mind.In addition to an impressive liquidity ratio, banks in Belize are also required by law to have a set percentage of cash reserves on hand. Once again, this is beneficial because it can help stabilize the bank itself and even the economy. If a bank run ever happened, an unlikely scenario in stable Belize, customers could still withdraw cash as needed. All of these regulations came into law specifically to increase customer confidence in the banks of Belize.The Value of the Belize International Business Companies ActA staggering number of investors who choose to operate and invest within Belize establish an IBC (International Business Company). These companies are possible thanks to the Belize International Business Companies Act, which was first passed in 1990. Not every business established in Belize is an IBC. Instead, an IBC is a specific type of business that can only do business with non-residents of Belize.An IBC can establish an office in Belize, even utilizing only a virtual office. Then, the IBC can take advantage of the excellent international banking system Belize has to offer. Most importantly, an IBC has the ability to operate tax free in Belize.As an added bonus, an IBC can take advantage of a number of regulations reserved exclusively for international business companies. Even the dividends paid to shareholders are exempt from taxes, and you can form share capital using the currency of your choosing. In short, the Belize International Business Companies Act lets you conduct any kind of legal business from a welcoming and financially beneficial environment.Setting up an IBC is not a difficult process. It is straightforward, reasonably priced, and can be done in a matter of one or two days. Plus, an IBC is not just a designation for a large, multinational corporation. A single person can establish an IBC, and it can be a great vehicle for offshore investment, trusts, real estate, or even life insurance wrappers.What to Know About the Money Laundering and Terrorism (Prevention) ActClearly, Belize has created an atmosphere that is ideal for investors from around the world. By keeping taxes low for foreign investors, and by allowing IBCs to operate with minimal interference, Belize is a popular place to do business. However, there are still plenty of banking laws in Belize that ensure compliance with safety and international legislation. Specifically, the Money Laundering and Terrorism (Prevention) Act is designed to keep investors in line with the law.There once was a stigma associated with offshore banking that made some innocent investors feel like they were doing something illegal. Today, however, there are several rules and regulations in place that make it easy to follow the law and difficult to break it.Belize has laws that require investors to disclose key facts about themselves and how they do business. Although you dont have to disclose your records or publish the names of board members, you do have to be upfront and honest when establishing banks accounts or businesses. This makes it easier for the Belizean government and the Central Bank of Belize to ensure compliance. This is also highly convenient for the individual because supplying necessary and helpful information at the outset allows you to operate freely in the future.The same concept applies to laws like FATCA, or the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Although FATCA is an American law enforced by the IRS, compliance is required by Americans banking overseas as well as by any international banks that offer accounts to American residents or citizens.Laws That Created the Offshore Bank in BelizeBelize has two major types of banks within its borders. The first type is a group of commercial local banks, and the second type is a group of offshore or international banks, often referred to as private banks.The two groups are kept distinct to offer great opportunities to foreign investors but still control and stabilize the local economy. If youre looking to Belize for offshore banking or investment, then youll need to look closely at the offshore bank options, such as Caye International Bank.Offshore banks are still relatively new to Belize. It was only in 1995 that the Banks and Financial Institutions Act was passed, followed shortly afterward by the 1996 Offshore Banking Act. These laws made it possible for offshore banks to be formed, and the act established that the Central Bank of Belize would regulate their operation.Belize is the Right Climate for International BankingReputable offshore banks can allow investors to enjoy greater privacy, asset protection, and countless opportunities for financial growth and security. The banking laws in Belize dont limit the movements or actions of the individual, instead, they create a welcoming climate that is ideal for foreign investors.Whether youre looking for a safe place to store assets and diversify your portfolio or youre excited about a new business offshore, banking and business laws in Belize are designed to help you achieve your goals. As the first Belizean bank to become FATCA compliant, Caye International Bank understands applicable banking laws and what is required for individuals and corporations. Let the professionals at Caye help you take the next step toward reaching your offshore banking objectives.Contact Caye International Bank today to get started!This article is copyright  2019Tags: Author, banking laws in Belize, Belize bank liquidity, Belize International Business Companies Act, Caye Bank, International Banking in Belize, Luigi Wewege, Money Laundering and Terrorism Prevention Act, offshore banking in Belize, Senior Vice PresidentAbout Caye International Bank:Caye is the only International Bank headquartered on the beautiful island of Ambergris Caye in Belize, Central America. The bank offers a full range of traditional and non-traditional financial services and accounts in multiple currencies. An application for account opening is a simple process and can be facilitated online from anywhere in the world.About author - Luigi Wewege:Luigi is the Senior Vice President of Caye International Bank in Belize, published author of The Digital Banking Revolution, has co-authored economic research which was presented before the U.S. Congress and currently serves as an Instructor at the FinTech School as well as a Speaker at the Silicon Valley Innovation Centre. He holds an Italian MBA with a major in International Business, as well as a BSBA with a triple major in Finance, International Business, and Management - cum laude from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.P.O. Box 105, Coconut DriveSan Pedro Town, Ambergris CayeBelize, Central Americanotify@cayebank.bz
Online Retailing in Indonesia Summary & Forecasts to 2022 | Matahari, MAP Emall, Bhinneka, Erafone, Amazon, OkeShop, Courts, Nike, Gramedia, Ace Hardware

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Online Retailing in Indonesia Summary & Forecasts to 2022"Online Retailing in Indonesia, Summary & Forecasts to 2022", report provides a detailed analysis of both the historic and forecast market data of retail sales of different product segments in online channel in Indonesia. In addition, it provides an overview of changing shopping trends, the influence of various economic variables on the online retail industry, technology trends and the competitive landscape across product segments. The report also details major online retailers in each category group with their product proposition analysis and market positioning in 2017 along with recent key developments. In-depth analysis of the latest trends in online shopping, covering the factors driving online shopping, consumer insights, market dynamics (covering 26 product categories).Although Indonesia is home for the largest population in Southeast Asia, e-commerce penetration in the country is still low, making it one of the most attractive markets for retailers. The share of online channel is expected to increase in overall retail sales considerably over the next five years and register double-digit growth on the back of an increasing number of young shoppers, growing internet connectivity, and improving telecommunications infrastructure.Get Sample Copy Of this report:Companies Profiled in this report includes: Matahari, MAP Emall, Bhinneka, Erafone, Amazon, OkeShop, Courts, Nike, Gramedia, Ace Hardware, Electronic Solution, Columbia, Lotte Grosir, Charles & Keith, Electronic City, Metro, Dell, Victoria's secret, Mitra10, AdidasScope- Indonesia online retail market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 23.8% during 2017-2022- Online is the fastest growing channel in the Indonesian retail industry- Electricals sector dominates the Indonesian online market in value- Clothing and footwear is the fastest growing sector for online sales- Majority of Top 20 online retailers are physical retailers with a multichannel offer- Top five online pureplay retailers accounted for a market share of 17.3%- Bhinneka achieved the highest sales growth during 2016-2017.Get Discount of this report:Reasons to buy- Gain comprehensive knowledge on 26 product categories in Indonesia online retail market and develop a competitive advantage around consumer behaviour trends from the start of your supply chain- Explore novel opportunities that will allow you to align your product offerings and strategies to meet demand by analyzing the vital economic and population trends, and key consumer and technology trends influencing the online retail market- Investigate current and forecast online trends in each category to identify the best opportunities to exploit- Analyze the recommended actions to align your marketing strategies with the crucial online trends influencing consumer behaviour- Understand the fastest-growing categories in the market with insights on the performance of individual product categories online from 2012, with forecasts until 2022.Table of Content:Drivers and inhibitorsKey trendsMarket contextOnline retail in the countryClothing & accessoriesFood & groceryElectricalsHealth & beautyHomeOthersDefinitions and MethodologyComplete Report:Contact Info:Name: Sameer JoshiEmail: sales@reportsweb.comCompany Name: ReportsWebWebsite: Reportsweb.comPhone: +1-646-491-9876Request for Customization:Any special requirements about this report, please let us know and we can provide custom report.About ReportsWeb:ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of Market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.533, 5th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
What are the Growth Drivers of Masterbatch Market? Clariant, Cabot Corporation, PolyOne, RTP Company, Ampacet Corporation, Plastika Kritis S.A., Tosaf Group, A Schulman, Inc.

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According to a report collated by Global Market Insights, Inc., masterbatch market size is anticipated to surpass a total remuneration portfolio of USD 13 billion by 2024. The swift emergence of masterbatch market on the global business landscape can primarily be attributed to the ever-rising demand for masterbatches in a host of end-user sectors including automotive, agriculture, consumer goods, construction, and packaging among others.The rapid expansion of these end-user industries has, in turn, vigorously augmented the pace at which the masterbatch industry has been progressing in the recent times.Request for a sample copy of this report @Moreover, in a bid to enhance the quality of the existing bio-degradable masterbatches, which are predominantly utilized to manufacture agricultural films, a range of prominent masterbatch industry participants have been initiating a sizeable number of research and development activities which has further embellished the growth potential of this business space. 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Thermal Spray Coating Market to procure substantial returns from aerospace & defence applications | Key Players are Praxair, Inc, Oerlikon, Air Products, Bodycote, Saint-Gobain, Sandvik, H.C. Starck, Flame Spray

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The aerospace & defense domain has evolved extensively since its inception, and now stands as a vital growth avenue for thermal spray coating market. Metal and polymer coatings are widely deployed in the manufacture and finesse of parts such as flame tubes, HPT outer stationary seals, turbine blades, and more. Highly specialized coatings and spray technologies are extensively used in aircraft manufacturing, repair, and maintenance, which in consequence would have a profitable impact on thermal spray coating industry size. As per reliable estimates, in 2016, the top 100 aerospace & defense companies chronicled a cumulative valuation of USD 700 billion  registering an aggregate profit of more than USD 65 billion from the revenue recorded in 2015. Indeed, extensive spending on commercial and military aircraft is likely to massively propel thermal spray coating market size from the aerospace sector.Request for a sample of this research report @Thermal Spray Coating Market Growth drivers  Shifting trends to attain cost optimization in North American aerospace industry Expansion of European healthcare industry Rising automotive production in APAC Opportunities in the LATAM oil & gas industry Growth in the MEA aviation IndustryThe expansion of the aerospace industry has been particularly vivid in North America, given the fact that the region has established itself as a highly lucrative growth ground for aircraft manufacturing and maintenance across the commercial & defense sectors, gradually impelling the regional thermal spray coating market share. Estimates claim that the U.S. civil aviation sector recorded an expenditure of more than USD 79 billion in 2015. Undeniably, the aviation domain stands tall as far as the adoption of thermal coatings is considered. In consequence, the demand for these coatings in the manufacturing process of aircraft components has witnessed an upsurge across major geographies, augmenting thermal spray coating market size from the aerospace & defense sector, which was pegged at USD 2.5 billion in 2016.As on today, the increasing consumer disposable incomes, rising threats from enemy countries, and the growth in air traffic flow has led to a massive demand for general, defense, and commercial aircraft. Estimates claim that in 2017 alone, global annual air traffic witnessed a growth rate of close to 4.5%. This has upscaled the requirement of ceramic, metal, and polymer coating technologies in aerospace, gradually propelling thermal spray coating industry outlook.Merely a few days ago, NASA took notice of a research study in thermal spray coating market that entailed a new technology to be deployed in aerospace gas turbine engines. The study claims that controlled segmented YSZ (Yttria Stabilised Zirconia) plasma-sprayed coating technology has the potential to lower thermal spray coating costs by nearly 50%. Rather, the segmentation (cracks) in the coating prove beneficial for gas turbine engine designs used in aircrafts. Indeed, the new technology has been acknowledged as an inexpensive solution for the existing YSZ thermal barrier coatings developed by the APS (atmospheric plasma sprayed) technique and stands to be in a more accepting position to be commercialized sooner than anticipated. The new technology that may soon officially debut in thermal spray coating industry also seems to have an advantage over expensive techniques such as EB-PVD or SPS deposited coatings.Make an Inquiry for purchasing this report @It is thus vividly coherent that the rising number of R&D ventures have a pivotal role to play in enhancing the commercialization potential of thermal spray coating market. Another prospective growth avenue for thermal spray coating industry however, is that of the repair and maintenance of damaged parts. Processes such as air plasma spray and HVOF (High Velocity Oxygen Fuel) sprays are massively used for component repair in the aviation domain. Say for instance, a few years back in 2014, it came to the attention of a popular turbo-prop aircraft that nickel electroplated coatings used to protect roller wear surfaces wore away after a while accompanied by major wear and tear in the metal substrate. In response, VAC AERO, one of the prominent players of thermal spray coating market specializing in the repair of structural components of airplanes, came up with a solution to deploy the HVOF process for applying a tungsten carbide coating over the worn component area that acted as an apt wear resistant overlay and helped restore the damaged substrate. Post the acceptance of this technology in the aerospace domain, numerous thermal spray coating industry players were known to follow suit, thereby leading to the growth of a lucrative revenue ground in the business.Endorsed by an extensive end-use spectrum, thermal spray coating market stands as a strong niche vertical in the global bulk and specialty chemicals sphere. The aforementioned declaration can be aptly justified by means of reliable estimates that claim thermal spray coating industry size to cross a coveted mark of 900 kilo tons by 2024. Indeed, in the ensuing years, the automotive, energy, healthcare, and aviation sectors have been projected to grow at an unprecedented pace, the impact of which is certain to be felt across the global thermal spray coating market.Browse key industry insights spread across 550 pages with 452 market data tables & 21 figures & charts from the report, Thermal Spray Coating Market in detail along with the table of contents:About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
What's driving the Electronic Shelf Label Market Size Key Players are: Altierre, Advantech U.S., Dislaydata, CEST Ltd., Opticon, SES-imagotag, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Wincor Nixdorf, Teraoka Seiko Co. Ltd., and SoluM

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MarketStudyReport.com present the report on global Electronic Shelf Label Market evaluates the growth trends of the industry through historical study and estimates future prospects based on comprehensive research. The report extensively provides the market share, growth, trends and forecasts for the period 2018-2024.Asia Pacific electronic shelf label market will grow at a high rate due to positively changing consumption patterns and economic development of countries including India and China. Development of retail industry in the region due to swelling sales of consumables will positively impact the growth of industry in the region. Also, expansion of business by the international retailers in the region is one of the major factors for the increasing demand of these products. For instance, in August 2018, Swedish furniture giant Ikea expanded its presence by opening a store in India.Request a sample of this premium report at:The Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) Market report 2018-2024 provides a comprehensive landscape of the industry, accurate market estimates and forecast split By Product, By Technology, By Application and regions. All quantitative information is covered on a regional as well as country basis. The report provides valuable strategic insights on the Electronic Shelf Label (ESL), analyzing in detail industry impact forces including growth drivers, pitfalls and regulation evolution. The report also includes a detailed outlook on the Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) segment competitive environment, diving in to the industry position of each major company along with the strategic landscape.Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) Market is projected to surpass USD 1 billion by 2024. The continuously growing retail sector in addition to the increasing security concerns regarding theft is propelling the electronic shelf label market growth. The retailers are adopting these components for asset and merchandise tracking as these products offer benefits such as real-time tracking, re-programmability, and simultaneous identification.RF-enabled ESL market will witness significant growth due to increasing adoption of radio frequency. Low cost of the technology is encouraging the small retailers to adopt the RF-enabled solutions. Also, RF technology is flexible and allows fast & easy rectification of issues. NFC-enabled electronic shelf label market will grow due to ease of use of these devices with other handheld devices by simply bringing the devices closer. Also, the technology enables communication between labels and tags.Notable Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) market players comprise of Contents, Advantech U.S, Altierre, CEST Ltd, Displaydata, E Ink Corp, Herbert Ltd, LG Innotek, M2COMM, Mirador Marketing, Opticon, Pricer AB, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, SES-imagotag, SoluM, Teraoka Seiko Co., Ltd, Wincor Nixdorf.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:The benefits offered by these products such as low prices, low power consumption, and flexibility is expected to accelerate the electronic shelf label market. These allow the retailers to remotely change prices and promotional offers in a few minutes across thousands of shelves in several stores simultaneously. Increasing competition among the retailers is encouraging them to adopt to technologically advanced solutions such as ESLs to offer enhanced customer experience.Table of Content:Chapter 1. Methodology and Scope1.1. Methodology1.1.1. Initial data exploration1.1.2. Statistical model and forecast1.1.3. Industry insights and validation1.1.4. Definition and forecast parameters1.1.4.1. Definitions1.1.4.2. Assumptions, methodology & forecast parameters1.2. Data Sources1.2.1. Primary1.2.2. SecondaryChapter 2. Executive Summary2.1. ESL industry 360 degree synopsis, 2013 - 20242.1.1. Business trends2.1.2. Regional trends2.1.3. Product trends2.1.4. Technology trends2.1.5. Application trendsChapter 3. ESL Industry Insights3.1. Industry segmentation3.2. Industry landscape, 2013 - 20243.2.1. Retail industry landscape3.2.2. IoT in retail industry landscape3.2.2.1. IoT in retail market size & forecast, 2013 - 20243.2.2.1.1. North America3.2.2.1.2. Europe3.2.2.1.3. Asia Pacific3.2.2.1.4. Latin America3.2.2.1.5. MEA3.2.3. Digital signage industry landscape3.2.3.1. Digital signage market size & forecast, 2013 - 20243.2.3.1.1. North America3.2.3.1.2. Europe3.2.3.1.3. Asia Pacific3.2.3.1.4. Latin America3.2.3.1.5. MEA3.3. Industry ecosystem analysis3.3.1. Component suppliers3.3.2. Technology providers3.3.3. Manufacturers3.3.4. Distribution channel analysis3.3.5. End-user landscape3.3.6. Vendor matrix3.4. Technology and innovation landscape3.5. Regulatory landscape3.5.1. North America3.5.2. Europe3.5.3. Asia Pacific3.5.4. Latin America3.5.5. MEA3.6. Industry impact forces3.6.1. Growth drivers3.6.1.1. Growing competition among the retailers to provide elevated customer experience3.6.1.2. Government initiatives towards the adoption of technology in North America and Europe3.6.1.3. Adoption of ESL in industrial applications in the U.S.3.6.1.4. Growing penetration of retail automation in North America and Europe3.6.1.5. Growing need for increasing in-store operational efficiency in retail stores in Germany3.6.1.6. Adoption of time and cost-efficient alternatives in retail in Asia Pacific3.6.1.7. Precise product pricing norms in India and China3.6.1.8. Expansion of leading retailers in Asia Pacific and Africa3.6.1.9. Development of organized retail sector in Latin America3.6.1.10. Adoption of advanced technologies in retail sector in the MEA3.6.2. Industry pitfalls & challenges3.6.2.1. High initial investment3.6.2.2. Low labor wages and lack of skilled workforce3.7. Price trend analysis, 2013 - 20243.7.1. Product3.7.1.1. LCD3.7.1.2. Segmented e-paper3.7.1.3. Full graphic e-paper3.7.2. Region3.7.2.1. North America3.7.2.2. Europe3.7.2.3. Asia Pacific3.7.2.4. Latin America3.7.2.5. MEA3.8. Growth potential analysis3.9. Porter's analysis3.9.1. Supplier power3.9.2. Buyer power3.9.3. Threat of new entrants3.9.4. Threat of substitutes3.9.5. Internal rivalry3.10. Competitive landscape, 20173.10.1. Company market share analysis3.10.2. Strategy dashboard3.11. PESTEL analysisChapter 4. ESL Market, By Product (Revenue, Shipments)4.1. Key trends in ESL market by product4.2. LCD ESL4.2.1. Market estimates and forecast by region, 2013 - 20244.3. Segmented e-paper ESL4.3.1. Market estimates and forecast by region, 2013 - 20244.4. Full graphic e-paper ESL4.4.1. Market estimates and forecast by region, 2013 - 2024Chapter 5. ESL Market, By Technology (Revenue, Shipments)5.1. Key trends in ESL market by technology5.2. RF5.2.1. Market estimates and forecast by region, 2013 - 20245.3. IR5.3.1. Market estimates and forecast by region, 2013 - 20245.4. NFC5.4.1. Market estimates and forecast by region, 2013 - 20245.5. Others5.5.1. Market estimates and forecast by region, 2013  2024More Details on this Report At:Related Reports: -Global Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) Market 2018 by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2023Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) is a technology-intensive industry. There are less than twenty manufacturers in this industry. The top two manufacturers are Store Electronic Systems (imagotag) and Pricer in 2015. The other competitors include Displaydata, E Ink, Opticon Sensors Europe B.V,DIGI, Altierre, Hanshow Technology and new entrants like Panasonic, LG innotek and Samsung etc. There are also a number of smaller regional companies or companies that are attempting to develop products with a view to establishing a position on the market. With the restructuring of the sector, for example, if one or more competitors were to enter into an alliance with a strong partner, this could constitute a threat to other players in the market. The growth of Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) industry depends on the acceptance of retail store. At present, in developed countries, the Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) industry is generally at a more advanced level. The world's largest enterprises are mainly concentrated in Europe. Meanwhile, foreign companies have more advanced R & D capability and leading technical level. However, foreign companies? manufacturing cost is relatively higher, compared with Asia companies.The worldwide market for Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) is expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 19.2% over the next five years, will reach 1790 million US$ in 2023, from 630 million US$ in 2017, according to a new study.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report LLC4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Blog:
Rapeseed Oil Market Sales, Revenue, Product-Type, Cost Structure and Opportunity Assessment 2018-2028 | Top Players are-Wilmar International Limited, THE SODRUGESTVO GROUP, Oilio (ADM), Biona Organic, The DLG Group

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An up-to-date research report has been disclosed by Market Research Hub highlighting the title Rapeseed Oil Market: Global Industry Analysis 2013-2017 and Opportunity Assessment 2018-2028 which provides an outlook for current market value as well as the expected growth of Rapeseed Oil Market during 2018-2028. The report studies the casing heads market worldwide, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, size, growth, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions.Request for sample copy of this reportThis report provides a forecast and analysis of the global rapeseed oil market. It provides estimated data of 2018, and forecast data up to 2027 in terms of revenue (US$ Mn). The report also includes key macroeconomic indicators influencing the consumption of various food and beverage products, along with an outlook on rapeseed oil for the global market. It includes the market growth drivers and challenges for the global rapeseed oil market, and their impact on each region during the forecast period. The rapeseed oil market report also comprises the study of current issues with consumers, and opportunities for rapeseed oil end products. It also includes value chain analysis.Rapeseed is a member of the Brassica species, which includes turnips and cabbages. The cultivation of this crop first started some thousands of years ago in China, India, and Japan. At present, rapeseed oil is one of the most important vegetable oils for human consumption. The oilseed rape plants can grow up to 175 cm in height, and have unique yellow flowers with green-blue leaves. The seeds are round, small, and black. Large areas where the cultivation of rapeseed for oil is done is mostly in Poland and elsewhere in the European Union. Rapeseed oil is widely used for various applications such as marinating meals, salad dressings, and sauces. Rapeseed oil has low content of erucic acid and glucosinolates, elements that present possible health hazards to individuals, and lessen the palatability and nutritious value as feed. Because of the implicit health aids linked with the lowest saturated-fat content in all main vegetable oils, rapeseed has been recognized as a major source of vegetable oil, globally. Rapeseed contains barely 40 percent oil, which naturally accounts for 50 to 60 percent of the total seed value. Rapeseed oil is suitable for use in cooking oils, salads, and baking. Extending the marketing channel, rapeseed oil reaches customers in processed food products such as salad dressings, potato chips, baked goods, mayonnaise, and candies.Talking about the availability, summer is the peak time for oilseed rape crops, and once pressed or extracted, the rapeseed oil has a very long shelf life, and can be stored for several months as long as its in a vacuum-packed container at room temperature in an area safeguarded from daylight. Rapeseed oil can be bought at most retail channels all year long.Plant oils such as rapeseed oil are mainly used for human consumption, as an ingredient in food, or as margarine and salad oil. The non-edible uses of rapeseed oil include industrial applications, particularly in making soaps, cosmetics, and detergents. Generally, the need for rapeseed oil is completely correlated to GDP growth rate, but additional factors such as variations in appetite and competition with new fats also play a significant role. One can anticipate that the demand for rapeseed oil will stay adequately robust to endure incessant progression in the rapeseed oil market. Also, the development of biodiesel has prompted a remarkable upsurge in both, the production and consumption of rapeseed oil.In order to provide the users of this report with a comprehensive view of the rapeseed oil market, we have included a detailed competitive analysis, key rapeseed oil market players, and their strategy overview. A dashboard view of the entire landscape provides a detailed comparison of rapeseed oil manufacturers on metrics such as total revenue, product offerings, and key differentiators. The study encompasses rapeseed oil market attractiveness analysis by nature, end use, extraction process, and sales channel. The report also covers detailed drivers, restraints, trends, and opportunities assessment in the rapeseed oil market.The report includes rapeseed oil market company profiles, and revenue generated from the companies across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and the Middle East & Africa. By nature, the global rapeseed oil market is segmented into organic and conventional. The conventional segment is leading the market share in terms of both, revenue and quantity. By end use, the global rapeseed oil market is segmented into food processing, cosmetic and personal care products, biodiesel, animal feed, and households (retail). The food processing segment is ruling the market by a significant margin. By extraction process, the global rapeseed oil market is segmented into solvent-extracted and cold-pressed. The cold-pressed rapeseed oil segment should gain special attention. It is free from chemical activities, possess a characteristic taste with a hint of nuts, intense color, and distinct aroma, and developed in popularity not only in Poland, but also in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, and Austria. By sales channel, the global rapeseed oil market is segmented into direct sales, hypermarkets/supermarkets, convenience stores, specialty retail stores, traditional grocery stores, and online retailers. The direct sales segment is a prime segment and leading the share by an enormous margin. This is due to the fact that, oil is majorly used in food processing.For the estimation of market size of rapeseed oil, oilseed rape production in various regions and countries were taken into account, along with the production of different by-products. Yield of rapeseed oil was then estimated based on different methods of extraction. To cross-reference the estimates of overall supply, consumption of rapeseed oil was taken into consideration. Regional production as well as the consumption of rapeseed oil was considered for market sizing. The average utilization of rapeseed oil across different end use applications were analyzed, including industrial, foodservice providers, and retail. This was cross-validated with the market share of rapeseed oil within the overall oilseeds market. The prices of rapeseed oil have been collected at the manufacturer level to arrive at the market size for rapeseed oil.The report provides detailed competitive and company profiles of key participants operating in the global rapeseed oil market. Some of the major companies operating in the global rapeseed oil market are Cargill Inc., Wilmar International Limited, THE SODRUGESTVO GROUP, Oilio (ADM), INTERFAT, O. & L. Sels GmbH & Co. KG, ViOil Group, Geostroy Engineering Ltd., The DLG Group, SCANOLA A/S (Danish Agro), Biona Organic, YORKSHIRE RAPESEED OIL, Cotswold Gold, and SMAKRIK (IKEA), among others.Global Rapeseed Oil Market By NatureOrganicConventionalGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market By End UseFood ProcessingCosmetic and Personal Care ProductsBiodieselAnimal FeedHouseholds (Retail)Global Rapeseed Oil Market By Extraction ProcessSolvent-ExtractedCold-PressedGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market By Sales ChannelDirect SalesHypermarkets/SupermarketsConvenience StoresSpecialty Retail StoresTraditional Grocery StoresOnline RetailersGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market By RegionNorth AmericaLatin AmericaEuropeJapanThe Asia Pacific excluding JapanMiddle East & AfricaBrowse Full Report with TOCGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market - Executive SummaryGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market OverviewIntroductionGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market TaxonomyGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market DefinitionGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market Size (US$ Mn & Volume) and Forecast, 2013-2027Global Rapeseed Oil Market Y-o-Y GrowthGlobal Rapeseed Oil Market DynamicsSupply ChainCost StructurePricing AnalysisRaw Material Sourcing Strategy and AnalysisService Provider ListTo be continue@@About Market Research HubMarket Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports of different sector like food market research and analysis. 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PID Controller Market Future Technological Trends and Business Opportunities 2025- ABB, Eurotherm, Gefran, OMRON, Wachendorff Automation, Calex Electronics Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers are mainly used to calculate the error values and control and regulate parameters such as pressure, temperature, motion, and flow. Simple functions and cost advantage over PLC devices are major advantages for PID controllers in the industrial sector.



The rising need for process efficiency will be one of the major factors that will have a positive impact on the growth of the market.



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The study objectives are to provide the Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers market trends, future opportunities, SWOT analysis, development, key drivers, top players and their analysis etc. Major regions covered in this report are as United States, Europe, Central & South America, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India.



The Global Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers Market focuses on global major leading industry players providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and its Competitors. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out.



Key Players covered in this report are ABB, Eurotherm, Gefran, OMRON, Wachendorff Automation, Calex Electronics, Durex Industries, Enfield Technologies, HANYOUNGNUX, Honeywell, Red Lion Controls, RKC Instrument, TOPTICA Photonics.



Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers Market is analyzed by types like Temperature Controller, Motion Controller, Flow Controller, Pressure Controller. Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers Market is also analyzed by Application like Oil and Gas, Chemicals, Food and Beverage, Power.



INQUIRE FOR DISCOUNT UPTO 50% ON PID CONTROLLER MARKET 2019-25 REPORT AT: https://inforgrowth.com/discount/779075/global-pid-controller-market-research-report-2019



Table of Contents:



1 PID Controller Market Overview



2 Global PID Controller Market Competition by Manufacturers



3 Global PID Controller Production Market Share by Regions



4 Global PID Controller Consumption by Regions



5 Global PID Controller Production, Revenue, Price Trend by Type



6 Global PID Controller Market Analysis by Applications



7 Company Profiles and Key Figures in PID Controller Business



8 PID Controller Manufacturing Cost Analysis



9 Marketing Channel, Distributors and Customers



10 Market Dynamics



11 Global PID Controller Market Forecast



12 Research Findings and Conclusion



13 Methodology and Data Source



List of Tables and Figures



Figure Picture of PID Controller

Table Global PID Controller Production (K Units) Growth Rate Comparison by Types (2014-2025)

Figure Global PID Controller Production Market Share by Types in 2018

Figure Temperature Controller Product Picture

Table Temperature Controller Major Manufacturers



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Commercial Vehicles Market will register a high CAGR Till 2025  Top Players are BMW, Daimle, Toyota, General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, Etc.

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Global Commercial Vehicles Market 2019-2025 Report, which will help the buyer in reviewing the development trends and opportunities. To begin with the report which covers market characteristics, industry structure and competitive landscape, the problems, desire concepts, along with business strategies market effectiveness.Request Sample Copy Of this Report @Commercial Vehicles Market research report delivers a close watch on leading competitors with strategic analysis, micro and macro market trend and scenarios, pricing analysis and a holistic overview of the market situations in the forecast period.It is a professional and a detailed report focusing on primary and secondary drivers, market share, leading segments and geographical analysis. Further, key players, major collaborations, merger & acquisitions along with trending innovation and business policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Commercial Vehicles Market global status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 2019  2025. The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The numerical data is backed up by statistical tools such as SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, SCOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and so on. The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.The generated report is firmly based on primary research, interviews with top executives, news sources and information insiders. Secondary research techniques are implemented for better understanding and clarity for data analysis.The report for Commercial Vehicles Market analysis & forecast 2019- 2025 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.For More Information on This Report, Please Visit @Commercial Vehicles Market Segmentation covers:Region- wise Analysis: North America, Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Other regions (Central & South America, Middle East & Africa)Major Players Reported Are:BMWDaimleToyotaGeneral MotorsFordVolkswagenHondaNissanPeuggeotFIATFotonDongfeng MotorProduct Segment Analysis:Light Commercial Vehicle (up to 10,000 lbs. GVW)Medium Commercial Vehicle (10,001 lbs. to 20,000 lbs. GVW)Heavy Commercial Vehicle (20,001 lbs. to 45,000 lbs. GVW)Extra-heavy Commercial Vehicle (over 45,000 lbs. GVW)Application Segment Analysis:Freight TransportPassenger TransportRead More details Commercial Vehicles Market Analysis and Forecast 2019- 2025 report helps the clients to take business decisions and to understand strategies of major players in the industry. The report also calls for market- driven results deriving feasibility studies for client needs. UpMarketResearch ensures qualified and verifiable aspects of market data operating in the real- time scenario. The analytical studies are conducted ensuring client needs with a thorough understanding of market capacities in the real- time scenario.Key Reasons to Purchase:- To gain insightful analyses of the market and have a comprehensive understanding of the Commercial Vehicles Market and its commercial landscape.- Learn about the market strategies that are being adopted by your competitors and leading organizations.- To understand the future outlook and prospects for Commercial Vehicles Market analysis and forecast 2019- 2025.If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Avail Discount On this Report @Customization of the Report:Up Market Research provides free customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.About UpMarketResearch:The UpMarketResearch () is a leading distributor of market research report with more than 800+ global clients. 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.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States
Global Endoscope Light Source Market to Witness a Pronounce Growth During 2024 Top Key players like Olympus,Boston,HOYA,Inc.

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Market Research Report Store offers a latest published report on Endoscope Light Source Market Analysis and Forecast 2019-2025 delivering key insights and providing a competitive advantage to clients through a detailed report. The report contains 91 pages which highly exhibit on current market analysis scenario, upcoming as well as future opportunities, revenue growth, pricing and profitability.Click to view the full report TOC, figure and tables:The classification of Endoscope Light Source includes LED light source, xenon light source and other type, and the proportion of LED light source in 2016 is about 58%, and the proportion is in increasing trend from 2012 to 2016.North America is the largest consumption place, with a consumption market share nearly 37% in 2016. Following North America, Europe is the second largest consumption place with the consumption market share of 29%.Market competition is intense. Olympus, Boston, HOYA, B. Braun, Fujifilm, Smith & Nephew, Stryker, etc. are the leaders of the industry, and they hold key technologies and patents, with high-end customers; have been formed in the monopoly position in the industry.The worldwide market for Endoscope Light Source is expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 5.9% over the next five years, will reach 1230 million US$ in 2024, from 880 million US$ in 2019, according to a new GIR (Global Info Research) study.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversOlympusBostonHOYAB. BraunFujifilmSmith & NephewStrykerMindrayConmedKarl StorzSchoelly FiberopticRichard WolfTiansongAohuaSonoScapeGIMMIMarket Segment by Type, coversLED Light SourceXenon Light SourceOthersMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoLaparoscopyUrologyGastroenterologyArthroscopyENTOthersFor More Information On This Report, Please Visit @Related Information:North America Endoscope Light Source Market Growth 2019-2024United States Endoscope Light Source Market Growth 2019-2024Asia-Pacific Endoscope Light Source Market Growth 2019-2024Europe Endoscope Light Source Market Growth 2019-2024EMEA Endoscope Light Source Market Growth 2019-2024Global Endoscope Light Source Market Growth 2019-2024China Endoscope Light Source Market Growth 2019-2024Customization Service of the Report :Market Research Report Store provides customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.About Us:Market Research Report Store (MRRS) is a professional organization related to market research reports in all directions .To provide customers with a variety of market research reports, MRRS cooperates with a large of famous market report publishers all over the world. Owing to our good service and the professional market reports in the wide range, MRRS enjoys a good reputation in the market. In pace with the development of MRRS, more and more customers and market report publishers choose to cooperate with us. As a specialized platform, MRRS upholds the supremacy of customers and aims to provide customers with better service and richer select.Contact USMarket Research Report StoreE-mail: info@marketresearchreportstore.comTel: +86-15521064060 00852-58197708(HK)Add: 17890 Castleton Street Suite 218 City of Industry CA 91748 United StatesWebsite:
Hand Instruments Market Overview, Trial Status, Analysis, Companies Overview: AllVascular Pty Ltd, Boston Scientific Corp, FemSuite LLC, Genicon Inc , Carnegie Mellon University , and Scope 2019

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The market for Hand Instruments is growing with the expansion of this Industry Sector Worldwide. Market Research Hub (MRH) has added a new report titled Hand Instruments - Medical Devices Pipeline Assessment, 2019 which offer details about the current trends and analysis, as well as scope for the near future. This research study also covers information about the production, consumption and market share based on different active regions. Furthermore, an anticipated growth at a double-digit CAGR for the Hand Instruments sector is highlighted in the report which indicates a prosperous future.Request for sample report @Hand Instruments - Medical Devices Pipeline Assessment, 2019SummaryGlobalData's Medical Devices sector report, Hand Instruments - Medical Devices Pipeline Assessment, 2019" provides an overview of Hand Instruments currently in pipeline stage.The report provides comprehensive information on the pipeline products with comparative analysis of the products at various stages of development. The report reviews major players involved in the pipeline product development. It also provides information about clinical trials in progress, which includes trial phase, trial status, trial start and end dates, and, the number of trials for the key Hand Instruments pipeline products.This report is prepared using data sourced from in-house databases, secondary and primary research by GlobalData's team of industry experts.Scope- Extensive coverage of the Hand Instruments under development- The report reviews details of major pipeline products which includes, product description, licensing and collaboration details and other developmental activities- The report reviews the major players involved in the development of Hand Instruments and list all their pipeline projects- The coverage of pipeline products based on various stages of development ranging from Early Development to Approved / Issued stage- The report provides key clinical trial data of ongoing trials specific to pipeline products- Recent developments in the segment / industry.Reasons to buyThe report enables you to -- Formulate significant competitor information, analysis, and insights to improve R&D strategies- Identify emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage- Identify and understand important and diverse types of Hand Instruments under development- Develop market-entry and market expansion strategies- Plan mergers and acquisitions effectively by identifying major players with the most promising pipeline- In-depth analysis of the products current stage of development, territory and estimated launch date.Browse Full Report with TOC@1 Table of Contents1.1 List of Tables1.2 List of Figures2 Introduction2.1 Hand instruments Overview3 Products under Development3.1 Hand instruments - Pipeline Products by Stage of Development3.2 Hand instruments - Pipeline Products by Segment3.3 Hand instruments - Pipeline Products by Territory3.4 Hand instruments - Pipeline Products by Regulatory Path3.5 Hand instruments - Pipeline Products by Estimated Approval Date4 Hand instruments - Pipeline Products under Development by Companies4.1 Hand instruments Companies - Pipeline Products by Stage of Development4.2 Hand instruments - Pipeline Products by Stage of Development5 Hand instruments Companies and Product Overview5.1 5G MEDICAL Company Overview5.2 AllVascular Pty Ltd. Company Overview5.3 Boston Scientific Corp Company Overview5.4 Carnegie Mellon University Company OverviewContinued. @@About Market Research HubMarket Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports of different sector like Medical Equipment market research and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of industry reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email: press@marketresearchhub.com
The Baby Food Sector in Taiwan Market Future Trends, Dynamics, Imports, Exports and Overview -2018

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The following research report is a compilation of high-end data that has been researched thoroughly to highlight the various trends prevailing across the Baby Food Sector in Taiwan. This study is titled The Baby Food Sector in Taiwan, 2018, which carefully examines several vital factors such as market share, market revenue, market dynamics and competitive scenario active in the target market for the period 2018Get Sample Copy of this Report@The Baby Food Sector in Taiwan, 2018Summary"The Baby Food Sector in Taiwan, 2018", is an analytical report by GlobalData which provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the Taiwan market.Western foods are now commonly found on supermarket shelves, and imported foods account for the majority of baby food brands in Taiwan. Although many mothers feed their babies home-made food, demand for commercially prepared baby foods is rising due to their convenience. According to major hypermarket RT-Mart, organic vegetable sales were 30% higher in November 2014 than in November 2013. These trends are likely to have a positive impact on the sales of organic baby food too.What else does this report offer?- Consumption data based upon a unique combination of industry research, fieldwork, market sizing work and our in-house expertise to offer extensive data about the trends and dynamics affecting the industry.- Detailed profile of the companies operating and new companies considering entry in the industry along with their key focus product sectors.- Market profile of the various product sectors with the key features & developments, segmentation, per capita trends and the various manufacturers & brands.- Overview of baby food retailing with a mention of the major retailers in the country along with the distribution channel.- Future projections considering various trends which are likely to affect the industry.Scope- In per capita terms, consumption of baby milks has fallen steeply, by 11.3% since 2011, ending 2017. This is largely due to higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding up to 2013, coupled with concerns about product safety.- The baby milk market in Taiwan consists almost entirely of powder products. All the products were packaged in cans, tubs, and sachets.- The cereals category is comprised of rice-based, wheat-based, and oatmeal-based cereals, with the latter being particularly popular. These cereals are reconstituted with milk or water.- Over half of cereals are sold in boxes, although tubs are increasingly popular. A number of cans are also available.- The meals category comprises of wet meals, with sweet varieties thought to be slightly more widely consumed by Taiwanese babies than savory meals.- The baby drinks category is comprised almost entirely of fruit juices, although some mineral water brands have also been identified in previous years. Apple is the most popular flavor. Most drinks are sold in bottles, but a few cartons are available.Reasons to buy- Evaluate important changes in consumer behavior and identify profitable markets and areas for product innovation.- Analyse current and forecast behavior trends in each category to identify the best opportunities to exploit.- Detailed understanding of consumption by individual product categories in order to align your sales and marketing efforts with the latest trends in the market.- Investigates which categories are performing the best and how this is changing market dynamics.Request Report TOC @Table of ContentsIntroductionExecutive SummaryDefinitionsBackground to the MarketBirthThe ConsumerSocio-Demographic TrendsWorking WomenBreastfeeding TrendsRegulationsOverviewOverviewManufacturers SharesCategory AnalysisBaby MilksBaby Cereals & Dry MealsBaby Meals & OthersBaby DrinksProduction and tradeProductionImportsExportsCompany profilesNestl Taiwan LtdStandard Foods CorporationContinued. @@About Market Research HubMarket Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports of different sector like Retail market research and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of industry reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email: press@marketresearchhub.com
Plasma Fractionation Market - Growing Usage of Plasma-Derived Proteins for Various Therapeutics to Bolster the Market Growth

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Plasma fractionation is the first process for large-scale protein purification, which was developed about 60 years ago by Cohn and co-workers. Currently, therapeutically important proteins are human serum albumin (HSA), immunoglobulin (IG), coagulation factor VIII, and protease inhibitors. Presently, plasma protein fractionation is, by far, the largest segment in the global therapeutic protein manufacture industry. Rising indications and therapeutic usage of plasma-derived proteins is an important factor that is expected to boost the plasma fractionation market during the forecast period. The global plasma fractionation market was valued at US$ 18,420.00 Mn in 2017 and is anticipated to reach US$ 33,763.10 Mn by 2026, expanding at a CAGR of 7.1% from 2018 to 2026. Rise in the geriatric population and the demand for plasma proteins is anticipated to drive the demand for plasma fractionation during the forecast period.Report Overview:Increase in demand for plasma proteins, rise in investment in innovation, and increase in prevalence of rare diseases across the world are key factors that are projected to propel the global plasma fractionation market. The plasma fractionation industry has been investing in research and development of new plasma proteins therapies (e.g.: Ceruloplasmin, IgA, Plasmin) leading to innovative treatments for the benefits of patients. For instance, in March 2016, Grifols announced that it would invest US$ 360 Mn to expand its production capabilities for plasma-derived therapies. The investment is expected to increase the capacity of plasma fractionation and purification of several proteins. Moreover, rise in investments in innovation leads to technological advancements in efficient and cost-effective procedures for fractionating proteins from plasma, which in turn boost the plasma fractionation market. However, rising market penetration by recombinant factors and stringent regulations and reimbursement issues are major factors restraining the global plasma fractionation market.The global plasma fractionation market has been segmented based on product type, application, end-user and region. In terms of product type, the global plasma fractionation market has been classified into immunoglobulin, coagulation factor concentrates, albumin, protease inhibitors, and other plasma products. The immunoglobulin segment has been further sub-segmented into intravenous immunoglobulin and subcutaneous immunoglobulin. The coagulation factor concentrates segment factor VIII, factor IX, factor XIII, prothrombin complex concentrate, Von Willebrand factor, and fibrinogen concentrates. In terms of application, the global plasma fractionation market has been classified into neurology, immunology, hematology, critical care, pulmonology, and other applications. In terms of end-user, the global market has been segregated into hospitals and clinics, clinical research laboratories, and academic institutes. In terms of region, the global plasma fractionation market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.Based on product type, the immunoglobulin segment dominates the global plasma fractionation market. The segment dominates the market, owing to the rise prevalence of autoimmune diseases such as primary humoral immunodeficiency (PIDD), multiple sclerosis, immune thrombocytopenia purpura (ITP), autoimmune hemolytic anemia, and Kawasaki syndrome. According to the Immune Deficiency Foundation (IDF), approximately 83 people per 100,000 in the U.S. suffer from primary immunodeficiency, and there are more than 5 million undiagnosed cases in the U.S. alone each year. Hence, these factors boost the rate of adoption of immunoglobulins, which in turn boosts the market. The albumin segment is also anticipated to expand at a steady pace during the forecast period. Wide applications of human albumin as a drug formulation agent, vaccine ingredient, sealant in surgeries, and coating for medical devices and equipment are likely to propel the segment in the next few years.Obtain the Sample Report:Based on application, the neurology segment dominates the global plasma fractionation market. Rise in number of neurological disorders augments the segment. World Health Organization data suggest that neurological and psychiatric disorders are an important and growing cause of morbidity. The magnitude and burden of mental, neurological, and behavioral disorders is huge, affecting more than 450 million people globally per year.Based on end-user, the hospital and clinics segment dominates the global plasma fractionation market. Hospitals are witnessing robust expansion, propelled by joint ventures, acquisitions, and provision of one-stop-shop services under one roof for various medical needs.In terms of region, North America and Europe accounted for a combined market share of 60% in 2017. High prevalence of infectious diseases such as cholera, influenza, and syphilis in North America fuelled the demand for utilization of plasma fractionation. Likewise, Europe accounted for a prominent share, and followed North America in terms of share, of the total global market, due to the presence of a large geriatric population that is more prone to infections. Asia Pacific is regarded as an emerging market for plasma fractionation owing to the presence of large patient population, poor sanitization, and low awareness about plasma fractionation products among the people in the region.Major players operating in the global plasma fractionation market include CSL Limited, Shire plc, Sanquin, Biotest AG., GRIFOLS, Baxter International Inc., Kedrion, Octapharma and China Biologic Products Holdings, Inc. These players adopt organic and in-organic growth strategies in order to expand product offerings, strengthen geographical reach, increase customer base, and capture market share.Request for Report Brochure:About UsTransparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Our 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.ContactTransparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: amanpreet@tmr.comWebsite:
Oncology Drugs Market Global Analysis and Forecasts to 2027 by Top Players Pfizer, Merck & Co, JOHNSON & JOHNSON, Novartis, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, AbbVie

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In the recent years, the increased developments in pharmaceutical industry continue to make cancer more treatable. The rising prevalence of cancer led to rise in demand for cancer drugs worldwide. The oncology drugs are used in the diagnosis of cancer depends upon the stages of the progression. Different types of cancer such as, endocrine cancer, blood cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, bone cancer, genitourinary cancer, breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, head & neck cancer, eye cancer and gynaecologic cancer can be treated by oncology drugs.MARKET DYNAMICSThe oncology drugs market is anticipated to grow in the forecast period owing to driving factors such as, increasing demand for oncology medications worldwide, growing research activities in cancer diagnosis and rising demand for personalized medicines. Moreover, the worldwide growing geriatric population is anticipated to offer more growth opportunities for the players operating in the oncology drugs market.Get Sample copy atMARKET PLAYERSThe reports cover key developments in the oncology drugs market as organic and inorganic growth strategies. Various companies are focusing on organic growth strategies such as product launches, product approvals and others such as patents and events. Inorganic growth strategies activities witnessed in the market were acquisitions and partnership & collaborations. These activities have paved way for expansion of business and customer base of market players. The market payers from oncology drugs market are anticipated to lucrative growth opportunities in the future with the rising demand for oncology drugs market in the global market. Below mentioned is the list of few companies engaged in the oncology drugs market.The report also includes the profiles of key oncology drugs market companies along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. In addition, the report focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, components and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Pfizer Inc.Merck & Co., Inc.JOHNSON & JOHNSON (Janssen Global Services, LLC)Novartis AGF. Hoffmann-La Roche LtdBristol-Myers Squibb CompanyAstraZenecaAbbVie Inc.Astellas Pharma Inc.CELGENE CORPORATIONMARKET SCOPEThe "Global Oncology Drugs Market Analysis to 2027" is a specialized and in-depth study of the pharmaceutical industry with a special focus on the global market trend analysis. The report aims to provide an overview of oncology drugs market with detailed market segmentation by drug class type, indication and geography. The global oncology drugs market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period.The report provides key statistics on the market status of the leading oncology drugs market players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.MARKET SEGMENTATIONThe global oncology drugs market is segmented on the basis of drug class type and indication. Based on drug class type, the market is segmented as, chemotherapy, targeted therapy, immunotherapy (biologic therapy) and hormonal therapy. On the basis of indication, the global oncology drugs market is segmented as, lung cancer, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, liver cancer, esophagus cancer, cervical cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer and others.Inquire for Report atREGIONAL FRAMEWORKThe report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global oncology drugs market based on various segments. It also provides market size and forecast estimates from year 2017 to 2027 with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South & Central America. The oncology drugs market by each region is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments. The report covers analysis and forecast of 18 countries globally along with current trend and opportunities prevailing in the region.The report analyzes factors affecting oncology drugs market from both demand and supply side and further evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities and future trend. The report also provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions namely; North America, Europe, APAC, MEA and South & Central America after evaluating political, economic, social and technological factors effecting the oncology drugs market in these regions.Table of Contents:1. INTRODUCTION2. KEY TAKEAWAYS3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY4. ONCOLOGY DRUGS MARKET LANDSCAPE5. ONCOLOGY DRUGS MARKET - KEY MARKET DYNAMICS6. ONCOLOGY DRUGS MARKET - GLOBAL MARKET ANALYSIS7. ONCOLOGY DRUGS MARKET - REVENUE AND FORECASTS TO 2027 - DRUG CLASS TYPE8. ONCOLOGY DRUGS MARKET - REVENUE AND FORECASTS TO 2027 - INDICATION9. ONCOLOGY DRUGS MARKET REVENUE AND FORECASTS TO 2027 - GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS10. INDUSTRY LANDSCAPE11. ONCOLOGY DRUGS MARKET, KEY COMPANY PROFILES12. APPENDIXContact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.Pune, India
Global Alcohol Sensor Market Competitive Insights to 2025 With Dragerwerk AG & Co., KGaA, Abbott, Alcohol Countermeasure Systems Corp., AlcoPro., Giner Inc., Honeywell International Inc

Global Alcohol Sensor Market  Industry Trends and Forecast to 2026

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Global Alcohol Sensor market studies file is positive to help companies for the long lasting accomplishments in terms of higher selection making, revenue generation, prioritizing market dreams and worthwhile enterprise. With the assist of Alcohol Sensor market record, the records and realities of the enterprise can be focused which continues the commercial enterprise operations on the right path. It also assesses the market fame, increase fee, destiny tendencies, marketplace drivers, opportunities and challenges, dangers and entry obstacles, sales channels, vendors and Porter's five Forces analysis. Target pushed era of file, reliability for the best and transparency in studies method are few of the features with which this marketplace record may be adopted with self-belief. Market research or secondary research is one of the best and fastest methods to accumulate statistics for the enterprise in this speedy-paced industry. This Alcohol Sensor marketplace studies record makes available trendy data about the entire marketplace along with the holistic view of the marketplace.Global Alcohol Sensor Market, By Application (vehicle controlling and healthcare application), End-users (Law enforcement agencies, Commercial and Individuals), Technology (Fuel cell technology, Semiconductor oxide sensor technology and Others) Geography (North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa)  Industry Trends and Forecast to 2026For In-Depth Review | Get a FREE Sample Copy@Global alcohol sensor market is expected to reach USD 4.33 billion by 2026 from USD 1.55 billion in 2018 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 13.7% in the forecast period of 2019 to 2026. The upcoming market report contains data for historic years 2017, the base year of calculation is 2018 and the forecast period is 2019 to 2026.Competitive Analysis: Global Alcohol Sensor MarketGlobal alcohol sensor market is 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 in order to sustain in long run. The report includes market shares of alcohol sensor market for global, Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and South America.Key Players: Global Alcohol Sensor MarketThe renowned players in alcohol sensor market are Dragerwerk AG & Co.KGaA, Abbott, Alcohol Countermeasure Systems Corp., AlcoPro., Giner Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Asahi Kasei Corporation, Intoximeters, Lifeloc Technologies Inc., Quest Products, Inc., Akers Biosciences, Inc., MPD, Inc., AK GlobalTech Corp. and C4 Development Ltd.Market Drivers: Increasing demand for accurate alcohols and narcotics detection systems. Growing demand for diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), cancer and tuberculosis. Research and development took place to improve the measurement of breath carbon monoxide (CO) in smoking activitiesMarket Restraints: Complex structure in heat sensor. High cost of breath analyzers equipment sensors.Segmentation: Global Alcohol Sensor Market By applicationo Vehicle controllingo Healthcare application. By end-users,o Law enforcement agencieso Commercialo Individuals By technologyo Fuel cell technology,o Semiconductor oxide sensor technologyo OthersInquire about this report from our experts atKey Developments in the Market: In 2018, CABLExpress launched a new and enhanced website that used to provide innovative data center infrastructure products and structured cabling solutions which used to increase the space optimization, flexibility, efficiency and bandwidth. In 2015, The American government used the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety (DADSS), which is beneficial in providing better result in national highway traffic safety.Key Insights in the report: Complete and distinct analysis of the market drivers and restraints Key Market players involved in this industry Detailed analysis of the Market Segmentation Competitive analysis of the key players involvedTo Avail 10% Discount On This Report Mail Us on :- sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.comNote: If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.About Data Bridge Market Research: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 endeavors to 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
Retail Banking Market Dynamics: Sweden 2018 | Marginalen Bank, SEB, Nordax AB, Danske Bank, Swedbank, Ikano Bank, Nordea, Handelsbanken, etc

Sweden Retail Banking Market

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The Swedish credit card market reported poor performance during 2013-17, but is expected to recover slowly going forward. The retail deposit and mortgage markets in Sweden are expected to decelerate during 2018-22 after a strong performance in the preceding five-year period, while the personal loan market is expected to remain steady. Swedish banks have reported higher profitability compared to their peers in Denmark and Norway, and their operating efficiency is also on an upward trend.Sweden Retail Banking Market research report is being presented with a motive to enrich readers by offering an extensive and explicit analysis of Sweden Retail Banking industry. The report covers each characteristic of the Sweden Retail Banking industry including market growth.Top Key Players:Marginalen Bank, SEB, Nordax AB, Danske Bank, Swedbank, Ikano Bank, Nordea, Handelsbanken, SBAB.Get Sample Copy of this Report atKey Highlights- Among the top banks in the Swedish retail deposits market, SEB increased its market share the most in 2017.- Credit card balances are expected to record a compound annual growth rate of 1.6% over 2018-22.- Personal loan balances are expected to record a compound annual growth rate of 5.8% over 2018-22.Scope- The outlook for deposits, credit cards, personal loans, and mortgages.- Net changes in market share across all four product areas.- Overall financial performance including profitability, efficiency, and income sources.Get discount on Purchase report @Reasons to buy- Identify factors affecting growth prospects across the deposit, credit card, personal loan, and mortgage markets.- Track competitor gains and losses in market share.- Assess the financial performance of competitors.Table of Contents:Macroeconomic OverviewRetail DepositsCredit CardsPersonal LoansMortgagesFinancial Ratios Market AverageCompetitor Financial PerformanceAppendixPurchase a Copy of Report atAbout UsReportsWeb is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers.The market research industry has changed in last decade. As corporate focus has shifted to niche markets and emerging countries, a number of publishers have stepped in to fulfil these information needs. We have experienced and trained staff that helps you navigate different options and lets you choose best research solution at most effective cost.Contact UsPhone : +1-646-491-9876E-Mail : sales@reportsweb.com
Laminated Bulk Bins Market Forecast Analysis by 2028 | Key Players - International Paper Company, WestRock Company, J Hill Container Company, Inc., Bulk Handling Australia, Elsons International etc

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Laminated Bulk Bins Market: InsightsWith the exponentially increasing industrial output, demand for packaging, particularly bulk packaging has increased significantly where laminated bulk bins market finds lucrative opportunities. As laminated bulk bins are made up of either paperboard or plastic, they find extensive application in the food & beverage, electronics & electrical, and pharmaceutical sectors. Growing reliance on the paperboard packaging solution amidst the trend of eco-friendly packaging is one of the prominent factor driving the progress of the laminated bulk bins market. A wide range of laminated bulk bins is available in the market such as single walled, double walled, and heavy duty laminated boxes to suit a broad client base. Mushrooming SMEs have increased warehousing spaces where heavy duty and foldable laminated bulk bins are highly sought after which serves benefits in terms of saving time, handling efforts, cost, and reduced product damage. This, in turn, assists in maximizing the overall warehousing efficiencies.Manufacturers in the laminated bulk bins market are focusing their manufacturing capabilities to deliver a better design with safety and sustainability. Multiple end-users of laminated bulk bins present divergent demands in terms of capacity, strength and durability. To comply with such demands, manufacturers in the laminated bulk bins market have introduced custom-made, value-added, as well as returnable bulk packaging solutions. As bulk packaging is needed across multiple business sectors starting from production to supply chain to retail, the laminated bulk bins market is likely to witness a robust growth in coming years.Get Free Exclusive Sample Copy of This Report @Global Laminated Bulk Bins Market: Historical AnalysisBulk packaging has made it possible for the shipping industry to transport the products without being heavy on their pockets. Earlier, a crew of 1000 people was required for the shipping purposes but with the advent of bulk containers, a maximum of 21 crew members are enough. This has significantly reduced the shipping costs and in turn has created revenue opportunities for the end use industries. Bulk containers have generated a great level of productivity for the shipping industry and has also helped them achieve subtle profitability.Along with this, the containers used in the intermodal transportation earlier posed problem for the crew during the loading and unloading process which lead to delays as well as increment in the costs. Laminated bulk bins on the other hand are easy to be handled which makes them to be used extensively for intermodal transportation purpose. Intermodal transportation demands bulk containers that reduce the time during the transportation mode change and are cost effective too, so that extra charges are avoided. This ultimately propels the demand of the global laminated bulk bins market.North America is expected to lead the global laminated bulk bins market. The region off late has been witnessing a steep rise in the demand of its food and chemical applications. One third of the agricultural land in the U.S. is meant particularly for exports which drives the need of bulk packaging. Laminated bulk bins offer several advantages such as reusability and cost efficiency, leading to their wide applicability across the various end users.Among the European countries, Germany alone has a share of nine percent in total worlds merchandise exports which is even larger than the export percentage of the U.S. It has not only supported its home states, it has also helped in improving the economy of its Eastern European countries. Germany recorded exports worth 118,248 million euros in the month of January2017 which is self-explanatory of the strong position of Germany all over the globe. This increased demand for exports is further driving the growth of the laminated bulk bins market in the European region.Ask For Customized Report @MEA laminated bulk bins market is expected to expand at a slow pace. Due to the predominance of the oil sector in the Middle East & Africa region, the diversification of economy in the region is considerably low. Excluding the oil and the other government sectors, the GDP per capita is very low in most of the MEA countries. Moreover, the oil producing countries are facing significant drops in their oil prices and consequently, their revenues are dropping.High dependency on the oil industry for the procurement of bulk containers is a restraining factor for the MEA countries and is resulting in a challenge for the laminated bulk bins market to grow in the Middle East & Africa region.Global Laminated Bulk Bins Market: Growth ContributorsThe major growth contributor to the global laminated bulk bins market is the high demand for ecofriendly packaging type that not only can be used for the bulk transportation but also renders no harm on the environment. Laminated bulk bins being made of paper are highly preferred by nations where the government has laid down strict environmental guidelines regarding the use of plastics.Global Laminated Bulk Bins Market: Tier AnalysisKey players under the Tier 1 category having a market share between 3%-5% are International Paper Company and WestRock Company. Players in the Tier 2 category have a market share between 1-3%, this category includes J Hill Container Company, Inc. and Bulk Handling Australia. Other players in the Tier 3 category are Elsons International etc.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFactMR11140 Rockville PikeSuite 400Rockville, MD 20852United StatesEmail: sales@factmr.comWeb:Read Industrial News :
Intraoperative Neuromonitoring Market Growth in the United States Has Risen Dramatically - Industry Forecast, 2018-2025

Intraoperative Neuromonitoring Market

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The U.S. intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM) market generated $1,239 million in 2015 and is projected to reach $1,938 million by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 6.6% from 2016 to 2022.The IONM system segment accounted for nearly half of the total market in 2015. These systems help to identify neural structures during a surgery. This helps the surgeons to prevent any damage to the nervous system, which may be caused during the surgery and also reduce post-operative complications. The U.S. IONM market is driven by rise in number of surgeries, increase in geriatric population, growth in prevalence of chronic disorders, and surge in adoption of IONM during complex surgeries.Download Sample:Based on source type, the U.S. IONM market is bifurcated as outsourced monitoring and insourced monitoring. The outsourced monitoring segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR, owing to its benefits over insourced monitoring. At present, hospitals generally do not prefer insourced monitoring as they have to appoint a full-time employee with the required skill set, and they cannot offer the training standardization to improve the quality of service. Thus, outsourced monitoring is in demand among hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs).Based on product & service, the U.S. IONM market is categorized as system, accessory, and service. The system segment dominates the U.S. IONM market, owing to its critical role in every IONM procedure. On the other side, the service segment is expected to exhibit the fastest market growth during the forecast period, owing to increase in demand for IONM service providers. Based on modality, the U.S. IONM market is segmented into somatosensory evoked potential (SSEP), motor evoked potential (MEP), electromyography (EMG), electroencephalography (EEG), visual evoked potential (VEP), and brainstem auditory evoked potential (BAEP). The EMG segment was the major revenue contributor in 2015 and is estimated to remain dominant during the forecast period, owing to its applicability in complex surgery. However, the BAEP segment is expected to show the fastest market growth during the forecast period, owing to technological advancements and rise in adoption of BAEPs.Based on application, the U.S. IONM market is categorized into spinal surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, ENT surgery, vascular surgery, and other surgeries. The spinal surgery segment was the highest revenue contributor to the U.S. IONM market in 2015, owing to increase in number of spinal surgeries in the U.S and recommended use of IONM during spinal surgery. However, the orthopedic surgery segment is projected to exhibit the fastest market growth during the forecast period, owing to increase in adoption of IONM during orthopedic surgery.Based on end user, the U.S. IONM market is classified into hospital and ambulatory surgical center (ASC). The hospital segment was the major revenue contributor in 2015, owing to increase in number of hospitals, growth in number of surgeries, and rise in outsourced monitoring within hospitals. However, the ambulatory surgery center segment is expected to exhibit rapid growth during the forecast period, owing to rise in number of surgeries within ambulatory surgery centers.State-wise, the market is studied across all the states in U.S., California was the major revenue generating state in 2015, owing to increased usage of IONM procedures, surge in number of neurosurgery & orthopedic surgeries, easy availability of trained medical professionals, presence of developed healthcare infrastructure with higher healthcare spending. However, Washington will witness the fastest market growth over the forecast period, owing to the growing adoption of IONM in various surgical procedures, increasing incidence of chronic diseases, and rising healthcare spending among the population.Get More Information:Key Finding of the Intraoperative Neuromonitoring Market: Based on application, the spinal surgery segment accounted for more than one-fourth of the total market in 2015. As per modality, the electromyography (EMG) segment accounted for more than one-fourth of the U.S. market in 2015. According to product & service, the IONM service segment is expected to grow at a high CAGR of 9.4% during the forecast period, owing to an increase in the demand for IONM service providers. On the basis of end user, the hospital segment accounted for nearly half of the total market share in 2015. State-wise, Washington is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.1% during the forecast period 2016 to 2022.The key players profiled in this report include Accurate Monitoring, LLC., Computational Diagnostics, Inc., Intranerve, LLC., Inomed Medizintechnik GmbH, Medtronic Plc, Moberg Research, Inc. (Dayone Medical, LLC.), Natus Medical Incorporated, Nihon Kohden Corporation, Nuvasive, Inc., and Specialtycare.Read More:About Us:Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions". AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.ContactDavid Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free: +1-800-792-5285UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1855550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:
Automotive Rental Market 2019 Global Analysis By Key Players  Enterprise, Hertz, Avis Budget, ALD Automotive, Arval

Automotive Rental Market

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Automotive Rental Market 2019Wiseguyreports.Com adds Automotive Rental Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2025 To Its Research Database.Report Details:This report provides in depth study of Automotive Rental Market using SWOT analysis i.e. Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat to the organization. The Automotive Rental Market report also provides an in-depth survey of key players in the market which is based on the various objectives of an organization such as profiling, the product outline, the quantity of production, required raw material, and the financial health of the organization.Automotive Rental is the leasing (or the use) of a motor vehicle for a fixed period of time at an agreed amount of money for the lease. It is commonly offered by dealers as an alternative to vehicle purchase but is widely used by businesses as a method of acquiring (or having the use of) vehicles for business, without the usually needed cash outlay. The key difference in a lease is that after the primary term (usually 2, 3 or 4 years) the vehicle has to either be returned to the leasing company or purchased for the residual value.In 2018, the global Automotive Rental market size was xx million US$ and it is expected to reach xx million US$ by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of xx% during 2019-2025.This report focuses on the global Automotive Rental status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. The study objectives are to present the Automotive Rental development in United States, Europe and China.The key players covered in this studyEnterpriseHertzAvis BudgetALD AutomotiveArvalSixtEuropcarLocalizaUnidasCAR Inc.Shouqi GroupGoldcarMovidaFox Rent A CareHi Car ServicesU-SaveYestock Car RentalRequest a Sample Report @Market segment by Type, the product can be split intoLeisure LeasingBusiness LeasingMarket segment by Application, split intoAirportOff-AirportMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaCentral & South AmericaKey StakeholdersAutomotive Rental ManufacturersAutomotive Rental Distributors/Traders/WholesalersAutomotive Rental Subcomponent ManufacturersIndustry AssociationDownstream VendorsIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Complete Report Details@Major Key Points in Table of Content:1 Report Overview1.1 Study Scope1.2 Key Market Segments1.3 Players Covered1.4 Market Analysis by Type1.4.1 Global Automotive Rental Market Size Growth Rate by Type (2014-2025)1.4.2 Leisure Leasing1.4.3 Business Leasing1.5 Market by Application1.5.1 Global Automotive Rental Market Share by Application (2014-2025)1.5.2 Airport1.5.3 Off-Airport1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered.12 International Players Profiles12.1 Enterprise12.1.1 Enterprise Company Details12.1.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.1.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.1.4 Enterprise Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.1.5 Enterprise Recent Development12.2 Hertz12.2.1 Hertz Company Details12.2.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.2.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.2.4 Hertz Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.2.5 Hertz Recent Development12.3 Avis Budget12.3.1 Avis Budget Company Details12.3.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.3.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.3.4 Avis Budget Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.3.5 Avis Budget Recent Development12.4 ALD Automotive12.4.1 ALD Automotive Company Details12.4.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.4.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.4.4 ALD Automotive Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.4.5 ALD Automotive Recent Development12.5 Arval12.5.1 Arval Company Details12.5.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.5.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.5.4 Arval Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.5.5 Arval Recent Development12.6 Sixt12.6.1 Sixt Company Details12.6.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.6.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.6.4 Sixt Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.6.5 Sixt Recent Development12.7 Europcar12.7.1 Europcar Company Details12.7.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.7.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.7.4 Europcar Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.7.5 Europcar Recent Development12.8 Localiza12.8.1 Localiza Company Details12.8.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.8.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.8.4 Localiza Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.8.5 Localiza Recent Development12.9 Unidas12.9.1 Unidas Company Details12.9.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.9.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.9.4 Unidas Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.9.5 Unidas Recent Development12.10 CAR Inc.12.10.1 CAR Inc. Company Details12.10.2 Company Description and Business Overview12.10.3 Automotive Rental Introduction12.10.4 CAR Inc. Revenue in Automotive Rental Business (2014-2019)12.10.5 CAR Inc. Recent DevelopmentContinued.Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Sales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRESS:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Automotive Semiconductor Market 2019 Global Analysis By Key Players  NXP Semiconductors, Infineon Technologies, STMicroelectronics, Robert Bosch GmbH, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Toshiba ROHM Co., Ltd.

Automotive Semiconductor Market

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According to Verified Market Research, The Global Automotive Semiconductor Market was valued at USD 40.28 Billion in 2018 and is projected to reach USD 59.87 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 4.96% from 2018 to 2025.Semiconductors enable most of the innovations in automotive development as the modern car contains features like cell phone integration, heads-up displays, autonomous driving aids, comfort, and performance which needs the aid of the semiconductor. As cars become even more complex, demand for automotive semiconductors will increase progressively and provide a powerful long-term growth engine for the automotive sector.In the report, the market outlook section mainly encompasses the fundamental dynamics of the market which include drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges faced by the industry. Drivers and Restraints are intrinsic factors whereas opportunities and challenges are extrinsic factors of the market.The Automotive Semiconductor Market report aims to provide a 360-degree view of the market in terms of cutting-edge technology, key developments, drivers, restraints and future trends with impact analysis of these trends on the market for short-term, mid-term and long-term during the forecast period. Further, the report also covers key players profiling with detailed SWOT analysis, financial facts and key developments of products/service from the past three years.This report is deeply helpful archive with incorporation of so much reaching market data connected with the crucial elements and subdivision of the "Worldwide Automotive Semiconductor Market" which will have an effect on the event things of the business. The report could estimably encourage exchanges and leaders to deliver the difficulties and to choose up blessings from passing targeted "Worldwide Automotive Semiconductor Market".Global Automotive Semiconductor Market offers complete, proficient report delivering market research data that is relevant for new market entrants or set up players. Key strategies of the companies operating in the market and their impact analysis have been included in the report. Furthermore, a business overview, revenue share, and SWOT analysis of the leading players in the Automotive Semiconductor Market is available in the report.Get | Download Sample Copy @The Major Key Players in the Market are as follows: NXP Semiconductors N.V. (Also Featuring Freescale Semiconductor, Ltd. Products) Renesas Electronics Corp. Infineon Technologies AG Stmicroelectronics N.V. Robert Bosch GmbH Texas Instruments, Inc. ROHM Co., Ltd. Toshiba Corp. Analog Devices, Inc.Global Automotive Semiconductor Market, By Component Processors Discrete Power Devices Memory Devices Lighting Devices Analog ICS SensorsGlobal Automotive Semiconductor Market, By Application Safety Powertrain Chassis Body Electronics Telematics and InfotainmentGlobal Automotive Semiconductor Market, By Vehicle Type Passenger Cars Heavy Commercial Vehicles Light Commercial VehiclesGlobal Automotive Semiconductor Market, By Fuel Type Gasoline Diesel Electric and Hybrid Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVS) Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVS) Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVS)Global Automotive Semiconductor Market, By Geographyo North America U.S. Canada Mexicoo Europe Germany U.K. France Rest of Europeo Asia Pacific China Japan India Rest of Asia Pacifico Latin America Brazilo Rest of the WorldAvail The Discount @Worldwide Automotive Semiconductor Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the Automotive Semiconductor industry with a focus on the global market trend. The report aims to provide an overview of global Automotive Semiconductor market with detailed market segmentation by product/application and geography. The global Automotive Semiconductor market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Automotive Semiconductor players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.Also, key Automotive Semiconductor Market players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.Table Of Content1 Introduction Of The Global Automotive Semiconductor2 Executive Summary3 Research Methodology Of Verified Market Intelligence4 The Global Automotive Semiconductor Outlook5 The Global Automotive Semiconductor, By Systems6 The Global Automotive Semiconductor, By Service7 The Global Automotive Semiconductor, By Verticals8 The Global Automotive Semiconductor, By Applications9 The Global Automotive Semiconductor, By Geography10 The Global Automotive Semiconductor Competitive LandscapeReasons to Purchase this Report Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the market based on segmentation involving both economic as well as non-economic factors Provision of market value (USD Billion) data for each segment and sub-segment Indicates the region and segment that is expected to witness the fastest growth as well as to dominate the market Analysis by geography highlighting the consumption of the product/service in the region as well as indicating the factors that are affecting the market within each region Competitive landscape which incorporates the market ranking of the major players, along with new service/product launches, partnerships, business expansions and acquisitions in the past five years of companies profiled Extensive company profiles comprising of company overview, company insights, product benchmarking and SWOT analysis for the major market players The current as well as future market outlook of the industry with respect to recent developments (which involve growth opportunities and drivers as well as challenges and restraints of both emerging as well as developed regions Includes an in-depth analysis of the market of various perspectives through Porters five forces analysis Provides insight into the market through Value Chain Market dynamics scenario, along with growth opportunities of the market in the years to come 6-month post sales analyst supportComplete Report is Available @About Us:Verified Market Research' has been providing Research Reports, with up to date information, and in-depth analysis, for several years now, to individuals and companies alike that are looking for accurate Research Data. Our aim is to save your Time and Resources, providing you with the required Research Data, so you can only concentrate on Progress and Growth. Our Data includes research from various industries, along with all necessary statistics like Market Trends, or Forecasts from reliable sources.Contact Us:Mr. Rohit P.Call: +1 (650) 781 4080Email: sales@verifiedmarketresearch.com
Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market 2019 Key Player Analysis  A123 Systems, Hitachi, Johnson Matthey Battery Systems, LG Chem, Panasonic, ETC.

Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market

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An Exclusive Market Reports Global Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market Size Status and Forecast 2025, the report classifies the global Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market in a precise manner to offer detailed insights about the aspects responsible for augmenting as well as restraining market.Request Sample Copy Of this Report @Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market research report delivers a close watch on leading competitors with strategic analysis, micro and macro market trend and scenarios, pricing analysis and a holistic overview of the market situations in the forecast period.It is a professional and a detailed report focusing on primary and secondary drivers, market share, leading segments and geographical analysis. Further, key players, major collaborations, merger & acquisitions along with trending innovation and business policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Marketglobal status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 2019  2025.The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The numerical data is backed up by statistical tools such as SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, SCOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and so on. The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.The generated report is firmly based on primary research, interviews with top executives, news sources and information insiders. Secondary research techniques are implemented for better understanding and clarity for data analysis.The report for Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market analysis & forecast 2019- 2025 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.For More Information on This Report, Please Visit @Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market Segmentation covers:Region- wise Analysis:North America, Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Other regions (Central & South America, Middle East & Africa)Major Players Reported Are:A123 SystemsHitachiJohnson Matthey Battery SystemsLG ChemPanasonicSamsung SDISonySAFT BatteriesBYDCoslightTianjin Lishen BatteryToshibaProduct Segment Analysis:1810mah2915mah2750mah1960mah2900mahApplication Segment Analysis:Electric MotorsInternal Combustion EnginesCompressed AirOthersRead More details Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market Analysis and Forecast 2019- 2025 report helps the clients to take business decisions and to understand strategies of major players in the industry. The report also calls for market- driven results deriving feasibility studies for client needs. UpMarketResearch ensures qualified and verifiable aspects of market data operating in the real- time scenario. The analytical studies are conducted ensuring client needs with a thorough understanding of market capacities in the real- time scenario.Key Reasons to Purchase:-To gain insightful analyses of the market and have a comprehensive understanding of the Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market and its commercial landscape.- Learn about the market strategies that are being adopted by your competitors and leading organizations.- To understand the future outlook and prospects for Li-Ion Battery for Power Tool Market analysis and forecast 2019- 2025.If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Avail Discount On this Report @Customization of the Report:UpMarketResearch provides free customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.About UpMarketResearch:The UpMarketResearch () is a leading distributor of market research report with more than 800+ global clients. 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.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States.
Brazil Medical Devices Market Analyzed Globally by Top key Industry Manufacturers and Assessment 2019 - 2025

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Medical devices are used to carry out operations, treatments, and diagnosis, and vary based on complexity and applications. These include primary devices such as, tongue depressors, medical gloves, syringes, and advanced devices such as computers which perform medical testing, implants, and other complicated operations. Technological advancements and innovations that improve the level of quality, safety, and reliability of medical devices present new avenues in the market.Download the Sample Report @The factors that fuel the growth of the Brazilian medical devices market are changing medical technology landscape encouraging the introduction of innovative products, increasing aging population, and rising government investments & trade initiatives. However, a high cost of imported medical devices and high sales tariffs, the challenging regulatory environment for approval, import, and sales of medical devices, and low penetration of medical devices in Brazil are factors restraining the growth of the market.Developing healthcare infrastructure, development of advanced ultrasound with a wide array of applications, and the establishment of manufacturing facilities in the country by global players create opportunities in this market.The Brazilian medical devices market is segmented into patient monitoring, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, defibrillators, and others (endoscopy, ophthalmology, orthopedic, radiotherapy). The market is further classified into product and end user. Based on product, the market is further divided into hemodynamic, cardiac monitoring, respiratory, multi-parameter, fetal and neonatal, remote patient monitor, neuromonitoring, temperature monitor, and weight management monitor.Purchase Inquiry @The ultrasound segment is further segmented into technology, application, and product. Based on technology, the ultrasound market is classified into diagnostic ultrasound and therapeutic ultrasound. Based on the product, the ultrasound market is further classified into display and portability. The application segment of ultrasound is further divided into radiology/general imaging, obstetrics and gynecology, cardiology, vascular system, urology, and others.The Brazilian medical devices market is segmented based on defibrillators into product and end users. By product, the market is classified into implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and external defibrillators. Based on end users, the market is further divided into hospitals, homecare, public access market, and alternate care market.The MRI segment is classified on the basis of architecture, field strength, and application. Based on architecture, the market is further divided into closed and open MRI systems. The market is further classified based on field strength into high field, very high field, and low to midfield. The application segment is further classified into brain & neurological, spine & musculoskeletal, vascular, pelvic & abdominal, breast, and cardiac.The leading manufacturers profiled in this report are GE Healthcare, Philips Healthcare, Medtronic PLC, Boston Scientific Corporation, St. Jude Medical Inc., Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation, Mindray Medical International Limited, Hitachi Medical Corporation, Abbott Laboratories, and Siemens Healthcare. The strategies implemented by the leading manufacturers, to strengthen their position in the market, are mergers & acquisitions, partnerships, joint ventures, and others.KEY BENEFITS FOR STAKEHOLDERS: The report offers a detailed analysis of key driving and restraining factors of the Brazil medical devices market. This report offers an in-depth quantitative analysis of the current market and estimations through 2015 and 2020, which assists in identifying the prevailing market opportunities. The report provides an extensive analysis of current and future market status of the Brazil medical devices market. An extensive analysis of the dominant segment of the market helps in understanding the current market trend. The report provides a piece of exhaustive information about new product launches, research and recent developments of the Brazil medical devices market. An in-depth analysis of key strategies adopted by major companies helps in understanding a competitive scenario. The report offers in-depth information about recent developments and new product launches.KEY MARKET SEGMENTS:Market By Patient Monitoring Product Hemodynamic Cardiac Monitoring Respiratory Multi-Parameter Fetal and Neonatal Remote Patient Monitor Neuromonitoring Temperature Monitor Weight Management Monitor End UserMarket By Ultrasound Technology Diagnostic Ultrasound Therapeutic Ultrasound Application Radiology/General Imaging Obstetrics and Gynecology Cardiology Vascular System Urology Other Applications Product Display PortabilityMarket By Magnetic Resonance Imaging Architecture Closed MRI Systems Open MRI Systems Field Strength High Field Very High Field Low to Mid Field Application Brain & Neurological Spine & Musculoskeletal Vascular Pelvic & Abdominal Breast CardiacMarket By Defibrillators Product Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICDs) External Defibrillators End Users Hospitals Homecare Public Access Market Alternate Care MarketAbout Us:-Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions. AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.Contact Us:-David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesUSA/Canada (Toll Free):+1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022, +1-503-446-1141UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1(855)550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:
Personal Care Ingredients Market 2019 Analysis By Top Companies: Ashlan, BASF, Croda, Evonik, Lonza Group, Solvay, Akzo Nobel, Clariant, DOW Chemical Company, Wacker Chemie AG, Aston Chemicals, Huntsman

Personal Care Ingredients

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Personal Care Ingredients Market provides the detailed analysis of industry share, growth factors, development trends, market size, key players and 2024 forecast. The report also analyzes innovative business strategies, value added factors and business opportunities.Download Sample PDF copy of this report @This 112 pages of report focuses on the Personal Care Ingredients Market in global market, especially in United States, China, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and more.The key players covered in this study Ashlan BASF Croda Evonik Lonza Group Solvay Akzo Nobel Clariant DOW Chemical Company Wacker Chemie AG Aston Chemicals Huntsman and more.Market by Type Emollients Surfactants Emulsifiers Rheology Modifiers Active Ingredients OthersMarket by Application Skin Care Hair Care Oral Care Make-up OthersEnquire before purchase@:Table of ContentsPart 1 Market Overview1.1 Market Definition1.2 Market Development1.3 By Type1.4 By Application1.5 By RegionPart 2 Global Market Status and Future Forecast2.1 Global Market by Region2.2 Global Market by Company2.3 Global Market by Type2.4 Global Market by Application2.5 Global Market by ForecastPart 3 Asia-Pacific Market Status and Future Forecast3.1 Asia-Pacific Market by Company3.2 Asia-Pacific Market by Type3.3 Asia-Pacific Market by Application3.4 Asia-Pacific Market by Forecast.Part 13 Key Companies13.1 Ashland13.1.1 Company Profile13.1.2 Products & Services Overview13.1.3 Sales Data List13.2 BASF13.3 Croda13.4 Evonik13.5 Lonza Group13.6 Solvay13.7 Akzo Nobel13.8 ClariantTOC continued!About Us:Report Hive Research delivers strategic market research reports, statistical survey, industry analysis & forecast data on products & services, markets and companies. Our clientele ranges mix of global business leaders, government organizations, SMEs, Individual & Start-ups, top management consulting firms, universities etc. Our library of 700,000 + reports targets high growth emerging markets in the USA, Europe Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific covering industries like IT, Telecom, Semiconductor, Chemical, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical, Energy & Power, Manufacturing, Automotive & Transportation, Food & Beverages etc. This large collection of insightful reports assists clients to stay ahead of time & competition. We help in business decision-making on aspects such as market entry strategies, market sizing, market share analysis, sales & revenue, technology trends, competitive analysis, product portfolio & application analysis etc.500, North Michigan Avenue,Suite 6014Chicago, IL - 60611United StatesContact UsMike RossMarketing Managersales@reporthive.comPhone Number: +1-312 604 7084
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One of the most notorious crimes in Oregon history will be revisited this Friday, in a 20/20 two-hour documentary about Diane Downs, the woman convicted of shooting her own three children, and killing one. The special will look at the case, in which Elizabeth Diane Downs -- her full name -- was accused of trying to kill all three of her children after she became infatuated with a married man.

She saw the kids as a burden, as one of the interview subjects in the 20/20 documentary says. They were in the way.

As the special recounts, the shocking story began on May 19, 1983, when Downs went to an emergency room in Springfield, with a story about how she had been driving on a rural Lane County road when a shaggy-haired stranger supposedly stopped the car. The stranger, Downs claimed, shot her three children.

But Downs herself was charged, and then convicted of murdering one daughter, and seriously wounding her other daughter, and her son. The case became a national sensation when Downs, who appeared to show little to no remorse, turned up pregnant during her 1984 trial.

Downs made the news again when she briefly escaped from the Oregon Womens Correctional Center in Salem for 10 days, in 1987. After being recaptured, Downs was sent to prison out of Oregon.

20/20 event special - The story of Diane Downs - Friday, March 22nd on ABC Shes been called evil and the devil. A mother of three, In love with a married man, who did the unthinkable. Now, as Diane Downs comes up for parole next year, her daughter speaks out  new interviews and staggering details. The new 20/20 event special  Friday night at 9/8c on ABC. Posted by ABC 20/20 on Monday, March 18, 2019

The case received even more attention when the late true-crime author Ann Rule wrote a book about Downs life and the trial, called Small Sacrifices. The book was adapted for a TV-movie starring Farrah Fawcett, that aired in 1989.

The 20/20 special includes an interview with Becky Babcock, the child with whom Downs was pregnant during the trial. Babcock was adopted by another family, and has already spoken in public about learning about her birth mother and struggles associated with that. She was interviewed by 20/20 in 2010, among other outlets.

According to the ABC press release, the new 20/20 interview with Babcock will include comments about learning the truth about her mother, letters from her mother in prison and life now, including raising her teenage son.

Downs, who again comes up for parole next year, was denied parole previously, in 2008 and 2010.

The documentary also includes new interviews with Doug Welch, lead investigator on the case; Wayne Seifer, the ex-husband of one of Downs fellow inmates, who housed Downs during her brief 1987 escape in Oregon; Loren Glover, who was a detective with the Oregon State Police when Downs escaped; Anne Jaeger, former anchor at KEZI, who covered the case; former Oregonian reporter Eric Mortenson; Jim Pex, a former criminalist with the Oregon State Police Crime Detection Lab; and ABC News archives footage.

The Downs documentary airs on 20/20 from 9 to 11 p.m. Friday, March 22 on ABC. She has continued to claim shes innocent of the crimes.

-- Kristi Turnquist

kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist

Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.
BIRTHDAY GAL: Actress Rachel Blanchard was born in Toronto, Ontario today in 1976. This birthday gal stars as Emma Trakarsky on You Me Her and she played the recurring roles of Endive on Another Period and Kitty Nygaard on Fargo. Shes also appeared on episodes of Childrens Hospital, Psych, and Wedding Band. On the big screen, her film work includes Mad Ship, Snakes On a Plane, and Without a Paddle.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Turn on the charm and get on the good side of people who can put some extra cash in your piggy bank. There may be some unsavory business dealings going on but if you are smart you can avoid becoming involved.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): If you make your work a game it won't seem like work anymore. Your stubborn refusal to give up is likely to win notice and recognition. See things through to the very end even if partners seem pessimistic.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You are more aware of others and their financial situations than usual. If you are having a hard time keeping up maybe the answer is to work a bit harder. Steer clear of new expenditures or investments.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Just because you are mystified doesn't mean someone else must be vilified. You may not be able to see the facts clearly and may see the worst in everyone. Put all negotiations and decisions on the back burner.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): There may be a few ups and downs to face early in the day. Ignore emotional turmoil that wastes energy and avoid complicated debates. A loved one may be less polite but more enthusiastic than usual.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You could be blessed by an understanding and tolerant mate. Loved ones are willing to overlook mistakes and vague assurances. But where business and money are concerned it is best to be as accurate as possible.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): It is a tough task to pin the tail to the donkey because you are blindfolded. You may also be blind when it comes to reaching your goals. Don't take short cuts or move ahead when you are not sure of the direction.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Career and business matters can move forward without effort if you aren't afraid to spend a few extra dollars to smooth the way. This is a good day to learn all you can about a subject close to your heart.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Shine by being poised for action. Use the opinions of others as a ruler by which to measure whether you are taking the appropriate steps. It may be difficult to make accurate appraisals of financial matters.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Put a hold on major undertakings. The energy now in the air is best used to finish up existing projects or explore alternatives for the future. New starts could run into power struggles or result in failure.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You might think that "no" really means "yes," but it is best to be sure. "Yes" could mean "no" if someone changes their mind. Pursue the object of your affection with determination but be sensitive to undertones.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Inspiration and flights of fancy might carry you away. Focus remains on home, family, and relatives. Work behind the scenes to improve certain situations or perform a good deed without recompense.

IF MARCH 19 IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: Your circle of friends may feed your competitive spirit during the next five to six weeks. You could become lost in daydreams or mistake a friendship for a romantic tie. Wait until June to let your love light shines as that is when you have a much better chance of meeting someone who has similar romantic fantasies. This is a perfect time to set off on a glamorous vacation or an inspiring journey. Your business tactics and financial strategies could backfire in September, October and November. You will have a better chance of getting business or career aspirations off the ground in December, when you will have the support of a network of friends.

(c) 2019 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will have new leadership for the first time in more than a decade, ushering in a new era for the renowned theater festival in Ashland. Nataki Garrett will become the sixth artistic director of the festival, its board announced Tuesday, replacing Bill Rauch, who will leave this summer.

The announcement ends nearly a yearlong search for a new leader.

The transition comes as the festival faces financial concerns caused by southern Oregon wildfires. Last summers fires cost the organization $2 million after 26 outdoor performances were canceled; in October, it laid off 16 employees.

In the midst of that difficult year, both Rauch and executive director Cynthia Rider announced their departures. Rauch plans to depart this summer for New York, while Rider decided not to renew her contract.

Garrett has worked in theater for more than 20 years, most recently as acting artistic director at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Shes worked as an administrator, director, producer and educator, and now shell be in charge of a Tony Award-winning festival with a $44 million annual budget.

I am absolutely thrilled to be named incoming artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she said in a news release. [I] look forward to maintaining our commitment to the revolutionary spirit of Shakespeare and classical text, while continuing to explore and expand opportunities for new voices and narratives through new play development.

In addition to preparing for the transition, Garrett will direct a show at this years festival, How to Catch Creation, which opens July 23. She will assume the full artistic director title and duties Aug. 1.

The selection of Garrett also represents a growing shift in the American theater world, which is seeing more diversity in leadership roles. Artistic director jobs have increasingly been awarded to women and people of color, who respectively filled 41 percent and 26 percent of openings since 2015, according to the New York Times.

That fits in line with the approach to theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which is known for producing shows with diverse casts. Garrett will be the second female artistic director of the festival and the first person of color to hold the role.

Natakis historic appointment, as an African American woman running one of the largest-budget theaters in the United States, is a direct expression of OSF's decades-long commitment to helping create a more equitable field, Rauch said in the news release.

The current season of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is underway in Ashland, and will run through October. In 2019, the festival will feature a diverse range of productions, from Shakespeares As You Like It, to be helmed by director Rosa Joshi, to Oregon playwright Octavio Solis Mother Road.

Find tickets online at osfashland.com.

--Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesB
Its no news to anyone who lives on the West Coast that such cities as Portland, Seattle and San Francisco are in the midst of a homelessness crisis, and the issues that are associated with it. A recent TV documentary about the situation for our neighbor to the north takes a particularly grim view, as the title, Seattle Is Dying, may indicate.

The hourlong special, which first aired on KOMO-TV in Seattle on Saturday, March 16, has prompted strong reactions from viewers who say Seattle Is Dying gets it right, and those who object to the special as missing the mark.

Not surprisingly, the documentarys images of homeless campsites, dismayed tourists, business owners talking about shoplifting, and other video clips have prompted some to say it mirrors whats going on in Portland. Seattle Is Dying can be seen on YouTube, where hundreds of commenters have weighed in, including one who says, Portland is just as bad.

Writing on the Nextdoor website, where discussions of homelessness are a common theme, a Portlander posted a link to Seattle Is Dying, writing, This is Portland, too. On Seattles homeless. Very well done.

Another Portland Nextdoor poster responded: Disturbing and way too much like Portland, indeed. Hopefully, we can all learn from this (and other reporting like this) and find solutions to our problems moving forward. Its so hard to remain compassionate and find the necessary level of humanity to deal with these serious problems. I think every part of our political system needs to seek out and find more balance.

The Seattle Is Dying special is written and reported by KOMOs Eric Johnson, who Portland viewers with long memories may recall as a KGW-TV journalist in the early 1990s. In the documentary, Johnson mentions police who say the citys lax enforcement policies have tied their hands; features citizens who say theyre fed up with Seattle officials doing nothing about theft and other crimes they associate with the homeless; includes comments from local business owners who also feel frustrated by what they describe as a lack of action; and shows video clips of people who appear mentally ill or altered as they slump on downtown sidewalks or scream at passersby.

In a post on the KOMO website, Johnson writes: Seattle Is Dying. Its a harsh title. Someone on social media even called it a hopeless title. Ill admit to you that I wrestled with the name for some time. Too dramatic, I wondered? Too dark? In the end I went with it because I believe it to be true. I believe that Seattle is dying. Rotting from within.

Johnson says Seattle Is Dying is really the third in a kind of trilogy. The first report explored homelessness from the inside out, and the second one was about the hellish existence of heroin addiction.

This one, he writes, is about everyone else. Its about citizens who dont feel safe taking their families into downtown Seattle. Its about parents who wont take their children into the public parks they pay for. Its about filth and degradation all around us. And theft and crime. Its about people who dont feel protected anymore, who dont feel like their voices are being heard.

Johnson continues: This program is not about demonizing those who are struggling with addiction and homelessness and mental illness. On the contrary. Instead, it asks the question, Why arent we doing more? Why dont we have the courage to intervene in lives that are, in the face of a grave sickness, reeling out of control?

While many of the commenters on social media have applauded Seattle Is Dying, others have criticized it for painting a sensationalistic portrait. Writing on the website for The Stranger, Charles Mudede called KOMO the local iteration of Trump TV (KOMO is owned, as is Portlands KATU, by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group). Mudede says the special is an example of mainstream media blaming the poor, and how this is a reflection of a society that criminalizes the condition of poverty rather than call out the excessive wealth of the Bezoses or the Shultzes, as Mudede writes.

In one moment of Seattle Is Dying, a camera mounted on a drone rises from the human filth on a hill and slowly turns to the towers of tech, municipal, and financial power, Mudede writes. In this inverted/perverted KOMO world, the shock is not that the business district is right next to a homeless camp, but that a homeless camp is right next to the business district. There is an important difference between the two perspectives. In the second, the camp of misery is not about the city killing many of its people, but extremely poor people killing an affluent city. Now that is rich.

The debate continued on Twitter. A few samples:

A friend and I were walking around Capitol Hill yesterday at midnight and I saw nothing of the decay #SeattleisDying tried to cram down our throats. Neighborhood looked pretty gentrified, like a gated community. Young white couples holding hands. Not a homeless person in sight.  Deepa Bhandaru (@BhandaruDeepa) March 19, 2019

This is why I, a card carrying Washington Dem, cannot support @JayInslee for President. He cant keep a crown jewel like Seattle out of a huge drug/humanitarian crisis, he cant handle the nation or climate change. @TheDemocrats #SeattleisDying https://t.co/7bTO8ILdm1  NickyTsunami (@NickyTsunami) March 19, 2019

To get ratings, say something crazy like "Seattle is Dying."



If it is, it started dying around the time white settlers kicked native Americans off prime real estate. https://t.co/HeT80WevQo  John Walling (@johnwalling) March 19, 2019

I'll bet tourists just can't wait to get this sort of treatment before or after their cruise this summer. #SeattleIsDying @EricJohnsonKOMO https://t.co/K2CG4YvZ1a  Susan (@aerosqxx) March 19, 2019

-- Kristi Turnquist

kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist

Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.
By AUDREY McAVOY Associated Press

HONOLULU  Hawaii would be the first state in the U.S. to ban most plastics at restaurants under legislation that aims to cut down on waste that pollutes the ocean.

Dozens of cities nationwide, including Portland, have banned plastic foam containers. But Hawaiis measure targeting fast-food and full-service restaurants would make it the first state to do so. The liberal state has a history of prioritizing the environment  its mandated renewable energy use and prohibited sunscreen ingredients that harm coral.

A second, more ambitious proposal would go even further and prohibit restaurants, stores, wholesalers and government agencies from distributing and using plastic drink bottles, utensils, stirring sticks, bags and straws.

The Hawaii efforts would be stricter than in California, which last year became the first state to ban full-service restaurants from automatically giving out plastic straws, and broader than in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and other cities that have banned some single-use plastics.

The Oregon Legislature is also considering measures to limit use of plastic bags and straws.

Of the two measures proposed in Hawaii, activists believe the foam container measure has a better chance of passing.

"We have this reputation of setting the example for the world to follow, and that's what we're trying to do here," state Sen. Mike Gabbard, lead author of the more ambitious measure, said to the Senate. "Our state can once again take the lead in protecting our environment."

Gabbard, father of Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, said 95 percent of plastic packaging worldwide is thrown out after being used once. In the U.S., 500 million plastic straws are used and thrown out every day, he said.

Discarded, slow-to-degrade plastic is showing up at sea, as in a massive gyre northeast of the Hawaiian islands, and on beaches.

Plastics also contribute to climate change because oil is used to make them, said Stuart Coleman, Hawaii manager for the Surfrider Foundation.

Eric S.S. Wong, co-owner of two fast-food establishments on Oahu, said not being able to serve food in plastic foam containers would drive up his costs at a time when he faces rising health insurance charges for his employees and a possible minimum wage hike that lawmakers also are considering.

He said he'll have to raise prices.

"Now all of the sudden, your family's $30 dining experience became $37 or $38," Wong said.

Belinda Lau, manager of the Wiki Wiki Drive Inn takeout restaurant in Honolulu, holds a polystyrene foam box containing an order of roast pork, rice and salad. (AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy)AP

His Wiki Wiki Drive Inn takeout counter in Honolulu sells sandwiches, breakfast meals and Hawaii favorites like Loco Moco, which features white rice topped with a hamburger patty, fried egg and gravy.

A package of 200 foam boxes costs him $23, while the same number of biodegradable boxes would cost $57, he said.

Chris Yankowski of the Hawaii Restaurant Association, which represents 3,500 restaurants, said lawmakers are trying to do "too much too fast."

Yankowski, who is also president of Triple F Distributors, argued that good alternatives to plastic products are not yet available. Hawaii's cities and counties also don't provide composting facilities, so there is no organized place to dispose of compostable containers that lawmakers say restaurants should use instead, he added.

"It's almost like we want to do great things for the environment, but we're not ready to handle it when we change it over," Yankowski said.

Customers line up at the Wiki Wiki Drive Inn takeout restaurant counter in Honolulu. Hawaii would be the first state in the nation to ban most plastics used at restaurants, including polystyrene foam containers, if legislation lawmakers are considering is enacted. (AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy)AP

The Hawaii Food Industry Association, which counts the state's biggest supermarkets and convenience stores as members, initially opposed the foam container ban but now supports it.

The group said in written testimony that it's encountered difficulties coping with varied local regulations and it wants the state to create a consistent standard. Two main counties  Hawaii and Maui  have already adopted plastic foam bans. Maui's took effect on Dec. 31, while Hawaii's takes effect on July 1.

The association still opposes the broader measure, which also would ban plastic garbage bags.

The president of Island Plastic Bags, a Hawaii company that makes plastic bags, said the legislation would prohibit his company from selling trash bags to nursing homes and hospitals as well as restaurants and hotels.

Grocery stores wouldn't be able to sell trash can liners, Adrian Hong said in written testimony. It would create a "public health crisis," he said.

Gabbard said his proposal was in the early stages so lawmakers have time to address such concerns.

The state Senate has passed both bills. They still must get through several House committees and the full House before heading to the governor.

Cindy McMillan, a spokeswoman for Gov. David Ige, said he hasn't stated a position on the measures yet.

Justin Macia, a pharmacist in Honolulu, said he would like people to use less plastic and stop using plastic foam entirely because of how long it takes to degrade. Cardboard containers would be a great alternative, he said.

Its definitely something thats got to go, he said, after eating a sandwich from a foam takeout box.

-- The Associated Press
Beto ORourke reported raising more than $6.1 million during the first 24 hours of his presidential campaign, a record-setting haul that narrowly tops the amount announced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and dwarfs everyone else in the 2020 field.

ORourke was a fundraising juggernaut during his U.S. Senate race in Texas last year, but there were significant questions about whether that would translate to a national campaign where he was running against fellow Democrats, not Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

The answer appears to be yes.

O'Rourke's campaign said he raised $6,136,763 from donations that came from all 50 states, D.C., and every U.S. territory.

In just 24 hours, Americans across this country came together to prove that it is possible to run a true grassroots campaign for president  a campaign by all of us for all of us that answers not to the PACs, corporations, and special interests but to the people, ORourke said in a statement.

In his first day as a candidate, Sanders (I-Vt.) reported raising $5.925 million from 223,000 donors, which brought his average contribution to $27.

O'Rourke's campaign would not release the total number of donors or the amount raised any subsequent days.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) reported raising $1.5 million from 38,000 donors in the 24 hours after she announced her campaign. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) did not announce how much she raised, but on her first day, she pulled in at least $300,000 from 8,000 donors, according to fundraising figures reported by ActBlue, an online fundraising organization used by Warren and other Democrats.

Several Democratic campaigns  those of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Gov. Jay Inslee (Wash.) and former governor John Hickenlooper (Colo.)  said they raised about $1 million over 48 hours.

There is no way to confirm the figures the campaigns are releasing until they file reports with the Federal Election Commission in several more weeks.

With at least 15 candidates in the race, fundraising is a crucial barometer for demonstrating who can attract broad enough support to sustain a campaign. It is also a metric used by the Democratic National Committee to qualify for the debates, which are scheduled to begin in June.

But the presence of so many candidates could complicate fundraising, because some of the candidates came into the race with overlapping lists of donors.

The figures so far establish O'Rourke and Sanders as the two most prodigious fundraisers out of the gate and could set up a clash between the two. Sanders is more liberal than O'Rourke and has staked his campaign on specific policy proposals that O'Rourke so far lacks.

Sanders' supporters at times prodded O'Rourke during his Iowa trip last week, asking pointed questions about his positions on health care or his past alignment with more moderate stances.

ORourke eschewed the socialist label that Sanders embraces and said he considers himself a capitalist. When a CNN reporter asked Sanders about ORourkes entry into the race, the senator shrugged. Free country, anybody can run, he said.

During his senate campaign, ORourke raised more than $80 million, the most collected for a single such race, and built a national list of supporters that he has sought to tap since his presidential announcement Thursday morning (March 14).

In the hours after he announced, several emails and text messages were blasted out to his supporters, urging them to donate. At one point during a first day spent campaigning in Iowa, he stopped at a gas station, broadcasting on Facebook Live that it had cost $28.53 to fill up the Dodge Caravan he was driving and urging people to donate to help fuel his road trip.

Several of his rivals also made fundraising appeals tied to him entering the race.

Since Thursday, O'Rourke had declined to release his fundraising figures - "I choose not to," he said several times - which triggered speculation that he wasn't faring as well as he and his campaign had hoped.

O'Rourke has pledged not to take donations from lobbyists or from corporate political action committees. He has not gone as far as Warren, who has said she will not hold any high-dollar fundraisers.

"I'm not planning to do large-dollar fundraisers," O'Rourke told reporters in Dubuque, Iowa, on Saturday night.

But he left open the possibility that he could hold such fundraisers in the future, answering "no" when asked if he was, like Warren, ruling them out completely.

"Right now, we're ruling out taking any PAC money or any lobbyist money ever," he said. "I have no large-dollar fundraisers planned and I don't plan to do them."

O'Rourke has yet to announce his campaign staff, including who will serve as his campaign manager.

He said in Dubuque that he would support his campaign workers unionizing, as Sanders' campaign has announced it would do.

"If that's what the employees of this campaign want to do, I'm very supportive of that," he said. "I hope that we will be paying the most competitive wages, providing the most competitive health-care and child-care benefits to our employees who will comprise the heart of this campaign."

ORourke was scheduled to campaign in Michigan and Ohio on Monday.

- Matt Viser (c) 2019, The Washington Post
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Deforestation in the tropics has led to protests all over the globe, including this one in Germany. (AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach)Associated Press

Todays stories

ILLEGAL TIMBER: An environmental groups investigation determined illegal timber from West Africa is ending up in the products of one of Oregons largest and oldest timber companies. Read more.

CHEAP EATS: In a world of $15 sandwiches, the $5 cheeseburger is king. If you find yourself hungry and downtown, and a food cart just doesnt seem right, we bring you the 10 best brick-and-mortar options. Read more.

MIDDLE SCHOOL RIOT: About 60 students closed in around three deputies and a staff member cursing, yelling racial slurs and threatening to kill officials. Nine students were arrested and 27 have been suspended. Read more.

TEEN SUES COUNCILOR: A student has taken the president of the West Linn City Council to court over her refusal to provide him with public records. Read more.

LAST BLOCKBUSTER: In Bend, the last Blockbuster on Earth is thriving - on a computer system rebooted on floppy disks and business transactions backed up on reel-to-reel tape. Read more.

PROTESTER STRUCK: A driver who struck a protester in downtown Portland last fall got his criminal case dismissed Monday. Read more.

MCDONALDS LAWSUIT: A $15 million lawsuit claims a 7-year-old girl was beaten and sexually abused in a McDonalds play structure in Oregon. Read more.

Snap of the day

The Hillsboro Hops will briefly become "Sonadores de Hillsboro" this season for four games, part of a league-wide effort.

The Hillsboro Hops unveiled its new logo as Sonadores de Hillsboro for four games this season, part of a league-wide outreach effort to Hispanic and Latinx communities. Sonadores translates to Dreamers. Read more.

More news

Its flashed by Trump supporters and mass killers: Has the OK sign really mutated into a white-power symbol?

What theyre saying nationally, in Madison about Oregon vs. Wisconsin in NCAA Tournament

Dear Abby: Niece pregnant for the 2nd time and looking to family for financial support

Ask Amy: Erotic fiction leads to catfishing, which then leads to newspaperman wanting to leave his wife

Carolyn Hax: Ready to skip spring break with my boyfriend since its all about his kids

Only in Oregon

FIFTY YEARS: The oldest record store in the Northwest, Music Millennium, is celebrating 50th years at its Portland location on East Burnside. Read more.

Todays comics: Click here to see todays comics

Todays obituaries: Click here to find area deaths reported recently

Today in history

On March 19, 1953, the Academy Awards ceremony was televised for the first time; The Greatest Show on Earth was named best picture of 1952. On this date in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the start of war against Iraq. (Because of the time difference, it was early March 20 in Iraq.)
UPDATE APRIL 16: Russell Courtier was sentenced to life in prison with a 28-year minimum. Read that story here.

...

A jurys verdict Tuesday that Russell Orlando Courtier acted out of racial malice in driving into and killing African American teenager Larnell Bruce Jr. appears to mark Oregons first hate crime murder conviction in three decades.

Jurors found Courtier guilty of murder, second-degree intimidation and hit-and-run driving for chasing Bruce in a Jeep onto a sidewalk before speeding away in August 2016 after the two fought at a 7-Eleven in Gresham.

Courtier was wearing a hat at the time that displayed the initials and shield of the white supremacist prison gang, European Kindred. The prosecution said Courtier deliberately targeted 19-year-old Bruce with the SUV and witnesses heard his girlfriend egg him on.

The last time a defendant was convicted of a racially fueled murder in the state was in 1989, as far as prosecutors and national hate group watchdog Randy Blazak can remember. It came in the case of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw, who was bludgeoned to death by a group of skinheads with a baseball bat on a Southeast Portland street.

The brutal crime and the racism behind it shook Oregon and the nation and exposed a white supremacist group that was able to bubble up and exist in a liberal community that some thought had eradicated such hate.

Blazak, who has spent his career studying hate groups and testified for the prosecution in the Courtier trial, said part of the reason these murder convictions are so few is that such crimes are truly rare.

Weve gotten plenty of people getting beat up, lots of vandalism, Blazak said of bias defendants who have attacked people or property.

Another reason is that its difficult for prosecutors to prove someones mindset  what the defendant was thinking when he or she turned violent, said Blazak, chairman of the Oregon Coalition Against Hate Crime.

While jurors found Courtier guilty 12-0 of the murder and hit-and-run driving, when it came to the hate-crime charge of intimidation, two jurors voted that the prosecution hadnt proven it beyond a reasonable doubt. The 10-2 vote on that count was just enough to secure a conviction.

Courtier didnt take the stand during the eight-day trial in downtown Portland. His lawyers argued that he suffered a concussion in the fight and wasnt thinking rationally when he drove into Bruce. The prosecution said Courtier, who joined the European Kindred 15 years ago while incarcerated, was a racist who made no secret about his beliefs within his circle.

As Multnomah County Circuit Judge Jerry Hodson read the verdict, members of Bruces family breathed deeply and cried -- a release of emotion after the tense trial. As family members streamed out of the courthouse, some said they thought justice had been served.

Christina Mines, Bruces mother, struggled to find words as she wiped away tears.

Im so happy, Mines said.

The four women and eight men deliberated almost 10 hours over three days.

Larnell Bruce Jr., 19, died on Aug. 13, 2016, three days after Russell Courtier intentionally drove into him.

Under Oregon law, Courtier will face a minimum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of release after 25 years. But prosecutor David Hannon has notified the court that he plans to ask for a longer prison term, given the circumstances of Courtiers crimes.

Courtiers sentencing hearing could still be weeks off and jurors could be asked to return to help decide on factors that would affect his sentence. Given the high-stakes nature of the case and the desire to protect jurors from unwanted contact in the hallways, courthouse deputies escorted the them from the courthouse.

During trial, defense attorneys Kevin Sali and John Robb contended that Bruce suddenly started punching and beating Courtier without provocation on the night of Aug. 10, 2016. Courtier had just driven up to the 7-Eleven at 188th Avenue and East Burnside with his girlfriend.

But Hannon said there was no evidence that Bruce started the fistfight outside the convenience store. Surveillance video shows Bruce peacefully standing outside the store for minutes until Courtier drove up and parked, then suddenly a fight was on, the prosecutor said.

Hannon said he couldnt say what the disagreement was about, but he noted that Bruce was African American and Courtier is white, and Courtier wore a hat with white supremacist symbols recognizable and well-known to some.

Courtier had joined the European Kindred in 2003 or 2004 and also had the gangs initials and logo tattooed onto one of his legs, Hannon said. He also played for jurors a video showing Courtier saying the n-word while in a police interview room hours after the killing.

A defense expert testified Courtier could have suffered a concussion. But the prosecution pointed out that medical records contained no information that Courtier suffered a concussion or brain injury during the fight. A prosecution expert diagnosed Courtier with antisocial personality disorder, typically defined by a lack of remorse for harm caused to others.

The defense urged jurors not to judge Courtier on past ties to the white supremacist gang.

There is an ugliness to this case, Sali said. There is an ugliness to Mr. Courtier himself -- things hes said, things hes done, people hes associated with. ...The truest test of our commitment to the principles underlying our justice system ... is how rigorously and faithfully we apply them with someone we dont identify with  (whose) very existence offends us.

Courtiers mother, Debbie Courtier, said after the verdict that she doesnt believe her son is a racist and that white supremacy didnt motivate her son to fatally strike Bruce.

Courtiers girlfriend, Colleen Hunt, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter last week, in the midst of trial. Witnesses said they heard Hunt yell to Courtier from the passenger seat of the Jeep: Get him, baby! and Run him over!

Hunt has agreed to be sentenced to 10 years in prison at a later date.

Blazak said Courtiers conviction carries an unavoidable paradox.

One of the effects of sending Courtier back to prison is he will be revered by members of European Kindred for the murder.

The irony is this guy is going to go into prison a ranking EK soldier and spend (his prison term) recruiting people, Blazak said. Hes going to have a lot of juice going back into the yard.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

o_aimee

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Details of a police investigation into the 2018 deaths of a Southwest Washington family who died when their SUV plunged off a coastal California cliff will be presented to a special jury as part of a coroners inquest next month, authorities say.

Jurors will be tasked with determining the manners in which all eight members of the Hart family died, said Lt. Shannon Barney, a spokesman for the Mendocino County Sheriffs Office.

The outcome of that public inquest will likely become the final chapter in the year-long inquiry into the crash, he said. The inquest is a highly unusual step for the county and will bring to light all of the evidence gathered, Barney said.

The sheriff offices investigation began March 26, 2018 after a tourist spotted the familys wrecked SUV. Officials eventually found the remains of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 38, and their children, Markis, 19, Hannah, 16, Abigail, 14, Jeremiah, 14, and Sierra, 12. The body of Devonte, 15, has not been found.

Jennifer Hart was driving. Toxicology tests have shown that she was intoxicated. Her wife, Sarah Hart, and at least two of their children had traces of diphenhydramine, an active ingredient in Benadryl, in their systems.

Jurors will deliberate to determine whether each Hart family member died in a natural, accidental, homicidal, suicidal or undetermined manner, Barney said. Although the remains of Devonte have never been found, Barney said investigators believe that he is dead.

The jury will weigh testimony from investigators in California and Washington, where the Harts lived in Woodland, north of Vancouver. They had moved there in 2017 from West Linn.

An attorney contracted by the county will also present evidence at the April 3 and 4 proceeding. The inquest will also be live-streamed on the sheriff offices Facebook page, the agency said.

The family vaulted to prominence in 2014 after a photo of middle son Devonte hugging a police officer gained worldwide attention. At the time, they were living in Oregon.

Jennifer Hart wrote about the instant fame and posted dispatches from the familys frequent road trips to her personal Facebook page. They traveled often to California.

In the days leading up to their final trip, a Washington child protective services worker had attempted to contact the Harts to investigate reports made by a neighbor that the children didnt have enough food to eat. The allegation echoed reports made to child welfare in Oregon and Minnesota. None of the investigations resulted in the children being removed from the couple, who had adopted the three girls and three boys through the foster care system in Texas.

-- Molly Young

myoung@oregonian.com
(CNN)  Dutch authorities have caught the man suspected of opening fire on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht, killing three people and injuring five others.

Gokmen Tanis, 37, who has had previous run-ins with law enforcement, was arrested on Monday night, police said.

Dutch authorities are considering "a possible terrorist motive" for the incident, which happened in 24 October Square at 10:45 a.m. (5:45 a.m ET) Monday. Utrecht Mayor Jan van Zanen said the motive behind the attack is "still unclear."

A second suspect has also been taken into custody, van Zanen said, adding that it's not clear what his involvement was in the shooting.

At a news conference, Rutger Jeuken from the public prosecution service said authorities are considering that the attack had terrorist motives, and maybe others.

"The first indication of what has happened and the statements that have been made and the traces that have been found, we certainly consider a terrorist motive; however we don't exclude other motives," Jeuken said.

During the manhunt, an image believed to be of Tanis, who was born in Turkey, was taken from security camera footage on board the tram and circulated by Dutch police. It was time-stamped at 10:41, roughly four minutes before the incident took place.

Earlier, the Netherlands' national coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, tweeted, "Crisis team is activated."

Authorities downgraded the terror threat level for the province of Utrecht from 5  the highest, or most critical  to level 4 after Tanis' arrest, Aalbersberg said on Twitter on Monday evening.

Following the incident, three rescue helicopters were sent to the scene  which has since been cordoned off  to monitor the situation, police spokesman Joost Lanshage said.

Utrecht police also said a Renault Clio was carjacked just before the shooting, and was later found 2.6 miles away.

Photos from the vicinity posted on social media show the tram stopped in its tracks, with police tape surrounding the area and multiple emergency vehicles nearby.

A CNN crew observed a tarpaulin in front of one section of the tram, which is believed to be shielding a body.

Vincent van Roon witnessed the shooting from his office.

"I was there at the moment of the shooting. I'm in a building next to the tram. I heard the shooting and people came into the building, hiding," he said.

Van Roon recalled seeing a heavy police response and medical personnel working on one of the wounded in the street "for a long time."

At a news conference Monday evening, Prime Minister Mark Rutte expressed his condolences to those who had lost a family member in the attack that happened "literally in the heart of our country."

While "questions and rumors abound," Rutte said, "the motives for the attack are still unclear."

"For now, we are overcome by a sense of horror and disbelief at the terrible events of today," he said.

In a statement, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed condolences for the victims and said Turkey "strongly" condemned the attack, "regardless of the identity of the perpetrator and the motivation behind it."

"In the face of this attack we are in full solidarity with the Dutch people and government," it said.

In response to the shooting, police in Rotterdam  a city around 60 kilometers (37 miles) away from Utrecht  have increased security around mosques and transport stations in the city, according to a post on their official Twitter account.

The Netherlands have largely escaped terror incidents in recent years. But Dutch police previously foiled what they described as a major terrorist attack last September when they arrested seven individuals in Rotterdam.

Earlier that month, a man was shot by police at Amsterdam's central railway station after stabbing two American tourists. Authorities said the suspect had a "terrorist motive" but was believed to have acted alone.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Utrecht tram shooting: Suspect arrested after at least 3 killed."


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'Apollo in the Archives' exhibit offers look at Neil Armstrong papers



March 19, 2019  An exhibition at Neil Armstrong's alma mater is offering the public a new look at the student and man who became the first moonwalker.



"Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers" opened on Monday (March 18) at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The exhibit, which is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Armstrong's Apollo 11 moon landing in July, showcases select documents and objects from the school's research holdings.



"This exhibition offers the public an opportunity to get to know Armstrong and the steps leading up to the Apollo 11 mission through access to Armstrong's papers," said curator Tracy Grimm, the associate head of Purdue Archives and Special Collections and the Barron Hilton Archivist for Flight and Space Exploration in a statement.



Armstrong selected Purdue to house and curate his personal documents in 2008, with the understanding that the university would use his papers to inspire a new generation of students. Four years later, after Armstrong died at the age of 82, his widow kept with her late husband's desires and greatly expanded the donation.



"After Neil passed away in 2012, by far the bulk of the collection came as a result of his widow contacting us," said Sammie Morris, a professor and the head of Purdue Archives and Special Collections. "We only had at that time maybe eight boxes and now we have about 400. And that is because after he passed away, Carol called our dean of libraries and said, 'I'm worried about all this stuff he had in the house and in the garage. Would you send someone out to look at it and take what you want?' And that is an archivist's dream."





Apollo in the Archives. Click to view and enlarge in a new, pop-up window. (Purdue Libraries) The collection comprises Armstrong's years as a student at Purdue, including his notebooks, textbooks and reports cards, through his time as a NASA astronaut and beyond. Students and faculty, as well as researchers outside of academia, can request access to the archives to "see what the day to day was like for a human being who was involved in the endeavors of flight and space exploration," said Grimm.



"it is really a diverse collection, but it is a research collection," she said. "It is not a lot of objects, but there are some."



"Apollo in the Archives" is now providing the public with a glimpse at the collection. Located on the fourth floor of the Humanities, Social Sciences and Education library inside Purdue's Stewart Center, the exhibition focuses on Armstrong's path to the moon, from his training and coursework to the planning that went into how and where he would land on the lunar surface, to the success of the mission itself and its impact on society.



Among the items on display are an Apollo 11 flight suit worn by Armstrong, his NASA astronaut program acceptance letter, a bag of personal items flown aboard the Gemini 8 spacecraft and a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) pilot's flight checklist.



"There is a model of the lunar lander that a contractor made," said Grimm in a video released by Purdue. "We have some star charts [and] we have maps ... lunar surface maps."



"We also have a Purdue Centennial flag that Neil was given to take to the moon. It is a 1969 Purdue Centennial flag that was given back to the university when Neil returned and received an honorary doctorate," said Grimm. "Now here we are in the 150th year of Purdue, it is the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and we have this symbolic item in this flag that is a pretty great part of the collection."



In addition to the "Apollo in the Archives," Purdue's Ringel Gallery will host "Return to Entry," an art exhibit featuring pieces inspired by Armstrong's archival collection. Artists Frances Gallardo, Michael Oatman and Jennifer Scheuer were challenged to bring together science, engineering and art to imagine "new horizons" informed by the documents and artifacts from the Armstrong papers and the papers of other astronauts and engineers.



"Apollo in the Archives" runs through Aug. 16. "Return to Entry" will run March 25 through May 11. Purdue Archives and Special Collections is open from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.



A Purdue University centennial flag that was flown to the moon on Apollo 11 in 1969 is just one of many items on display in "Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers," a new exhibition at the Indiana school. (Purdue University/Mark Simons)





Returning to his alma mater to receive an honorary doctorate in January 1970, Neil Armstrong presents Purdue University president Frederick Hovde with a Purdue Centennial flag that was carried to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission. (Purdue University Archives)





Tracy Grimm, associate head of Purdue University's Archives and Special Collections and Barron Hilton Archivist for flight and space exploration conducts a tour of "Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers" exhibit. (Purdue/Mark Simons)



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A woman who brought a gun to a Portland elementary school where it accidentally went off in a crowded cafeteria pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of reckless endangerment.

Antoinette Riley, 28, was sentenced to three years of probation by Multnomah County Circuit Judge Nan Waller.

The judge also barred Riley from going on any Portland Public Schools property or possessing any guns. Riley must complete 80 hours of community service.

On Oct. 4, Riley went to pick up her children from an after-school program at Jason Lee Elementary in Northeast Portland. She was in the cafeteria with about 50 other people, including children, when the gun went off. She had been carrying it in in a backpack.

The bullet struck Riiley in the buttocks and damaged a table where she and her children were sitting.

Immediately after the gunfire, Riley fled the school, but an after-school program supervisor identified her to police as the source of the gunfire, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Riley and her children were gone by the time officers arrived at the school, but she was later arrested in the area. According to the affidavit, a detective found an apparent bullet hole in the backpack Riley had, but it's not clear where on the bag.

She initially denied responsibility, telling KPTV that she never had a gun, was sitting at a table in the cafeteria with her son, reached for her phone next to her bag and then was struck from an unknown direction.

In court, Riley admitted to bringing the gun to the school and apologized to the court.

Antoinette Riley, 28, was sentenced to 3 years probation for bringing a gun to a Portland elementary school in October where it accidentally went off. Courtesy/Multnomah County Sheriff

Her defense attorney indicated she had the gun in her bag out of fear of an ex-boyfriend. The weapon was never recovered and Riley said in court that she had thrown it into a sewer.

Riley initially was charged with possession of a gun in a public building, unlawful possession of a gun and possession of a loaded gun in public, but Waller accepted her plea to the reduced charges, noting Riley had no criminal record.

Thank goodness no child, no faculty, no other parent were hurt that day, Waller said before she handed down the sentence. This incident could have had an unbelievably devastating impact.

Aimee Green of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.

-- Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048

@sfkale

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Updated: 4:43 pm

Two years ago, the outlook couldnt have seemed grimmer for Portland Public Schools. The educator selected as the next superintendent abruptly bowed out as school board members grew increasingly concerned about his truthfulness. The district, short-staffed and in chaos, delayed plans to open two new middle schools promised to the community. And lingering mistrust over the discovery of lead-contaminated drinking water in schools threatened passage of a $790 million school bond measure.

And now? The district has a capable leader in Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero who has recruited his own team to carry out his academic vision. PPS opened Harriet Tubman Middle School and Roseway Heights Middle School last fall, helping expand educational opportunities in previously neglected neighborhoods. And the district is busy planning school rebuilds with money authorized by voters.

While PPS still has an enormous amount of work to do, such progress shows the transformative power of a determined school board. When voters passed the bond in May 2017, they also sent three new directors to the board who campaigned on accountability and injected the seven-member panel with new energy. In short order, the board brought on Guerrero, set clear priorities, passed new policies to guide the district, negotiated a new teachers contract and investigated district failures to protect students from teacher misconduct.

But you dont get an effective board without a robust race in which strong, dedicated community members share their vision for serving. And unfortunately, with Thursdays filing deadline looming, only a handful of candidates have stepped up to run for the four seats on the ballot this May. While three people have filed for the Zone 2 seat, the inner eastside and North Portland district, only one person has filed in each of the other three zones. And as of Tuesday afternoon, only one of the incumbents is running for re-election.

There are some promising candidates on the list, which should encourage voters. But the relatively small number is disappointing for a community that prides itself on its support for public schools, recognizes the power of education and knows that PPS still has a long way to go on the operational, academic, financial and equitability fronts. Its too easy for the district to backslide without a strong board holding the administration accountable for achieving the communitys priorities.

Competition is key, as well. Competition makes candidates  and the eventual winner  sharper. It forces candidates to define what distinguishes their background, experiences and vision from others and why the district needs them more than anyone else. It pushes people to travel out of the comfort zones of their own school communities and into unfamiliar territory where they can gain an entirely new perspective on the problems plaguing this district.

Certainly, its easy to find reasons not to run. The position, which takes many hours each week, is unpaid. The responsibility of setting policy, approving the districts budget and supervising the superintendent is daunting and difficult. And community members are highly engaged in their schools  an attribute that can be both a plus and a minus when the board must make controversial changes with the greater good in mind.

But the hard-fought progress of the past two years should be both encouragement to run as well as a symbol of what must be protected. Portland has seen the inequities that flourish and the crises that multiply when the district operates under a weak board and an ineffective superintendent. Lets not go back.

-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board

This editorial was updated to note that incumbent Amy Kohnstamm of Zone 3 filed for re-election Tuesday afternoon.

Editorial Agenda 2019 Transform education for students benefit Keep Oregon solvent Work toward more evenhanded justice in Oregon Put Portland on the right track ________________________ Read more about the editorial board's priorities for 2019.
By Elizabeth Bruenig  OPINION

There are the crimes you hear about every day, and then the crimes that are difficult to ever get out of your head. Theft, fraud, drunken driving - all of it is terrible, and all of it blurs in headlines and news broadcasts into background noise. Earth is populated by the imperfect; we know that. But then there are the criminal acts that seem to test the notion that people are flawed but generally suited to our common life; offenses which, even decades after their commission, continue to inspire documentaries and explanatory essays, deep dives and revisitations, as though we are still trying, in some futile way, to understand them. The murders committed by Ted Bundy, for instance, or the innumerable crimes of the Golden State Killer, or the ever-growing list of abrupt mass killings, here and abroad.

Maybe it's the inhumanity of their evil acts - not even strictly their brutality but their senselessness, their bizarre and pointless ends - that makes these perpetrators such a sticking point in our national debates about the death penalty. If they only look human, then the usual inhibitions we have around preserving human life feel less applicable.

Perhaps this is why New Hampshire state Rep. Jeanine Notter, a Republican, brought up the murder of Kimberly Cates during the state's recent debates over abolition of the death penalty. Cates was hacked to death with a machete in 2009 as she lay in her bed, by a pair of killers who were, by their own admission, just looking for a thrill. "I believe that life in prison is not justice for a heinous crime like this," Notter argued in favor of retaining capital punishment in New Hampshire. Some Californians aired similar feelings earlier this month when Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced a statewide moratorium on the death penalty. "When [Newsom] told me that, a little bit of me died," Marc Klaas said of the news. Klaas's 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was kidnapped from her bedroom and murdered in 1993. If her killer were finally executed, Klaas said, "his influence would stop, that I'd never have to think about him again."

New Hampshire's House of Representatives voted to abolish the death penalty, with numbers high enough to override a potential veto. And, despite some protest, Newsom's decision to suspend California's use of capital punishment stands. As the United States inches closer to total abolition of the death penalty, what do we do about the profound emotional reservations people air when capital punishment comes up for debate?

I wonder, in part, because I am not immune to those kinds of feelings - which were intensified when my sister-in-law was murdered three years ago - even though I rationally understand the death penalty to be an unjust and untenable institution. I know that capital punishment means the execution of innocent people, the disproportionate and unfair destruction of black lives, the killing of mentally ill people who could not reasonably be considered culpable for their crimes and, ultimately, the snuffing out of human life, no matter what the guilty have done. For all those reasons, I believe it should be abolished.

But any believer knows that true faith is a process of permanent conversion. And so this month, I sat down with a group of people who spend much of their time elbow-deep in hard missionary work.

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCADP) is a group of right-leaning activists who advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, often in red states. Heather Beaudoin, CCADP's senior manager, told me that she came into this cause through her involvement in the pro-life movement in Montana, where she experienced what "felt like a clear call from God" to work to end executions in the United States. An evangelical herself, Beaudoin took the call seriously. When she thinks about those emotional reservations people have about capital punishment, she considers an alternative reservoir of feelings: her own belief in redemption. "God has a plan for each of us," she said, "even when we make terrible decisions."

Meanwhile, Hannah Cox, CCADP's national manager, has a conversion story of her own. "I have an innate and intense need for justice," Cox told me. "It's why I formerly supported the death penalty, and it's why I changed my mind." Cox remarked on a number of reasons why she had come to believe, over a period of research, that the death penalty is inherently unjust: There are the high estimated rates of mental illness among death row inmates, the fact that prosecutors often ignore victims' families who oppose the death penalty and the preponderance of abuse and victimization in the backgrounds of criminals themselves.

"The people who get [the death penalty] are not the worst of the worst," Cox said, but rather the poorest of the poor, the sickest of the sick. I pressed her: What about the worst of the worst, the serial killers and the unrepentant monsters, those so morally degenerate it's hard to imagine them wanting redemption, much less achieving it? "You don't get to have a utopia where only the most monstrous person gets the death penalty," she said. As long as it exists, it's going to destroy the redeemable, the sick, the innocent and the monstrous - and even then, only sometimes.

It's a reasonable impulse to want to rid the world of evil. But there's no earthly institution capable of reliably doing that, or even coming close. Perhaps that will only be possible in the final accounting of all things. Until then, I think, it's better to hold out hope for redemption - and not to pursue evil so far that one moves away from justice altogether. Then evil wins anyway.

-- Elizabeth Bruenig is an opinion columnist at The Washington Post.
A southern Oregon man was arrested after barricading himself and his 3-year-old daughter inside his home near Roseburg for two weeks and threatening deputies with booby traps and lethal force, authorities say.

Stephen Adam Cain, 42, told law enforcement officials that he would keep his daughter inside his home until she turned 18, records show.

But he released his daughter Monday and surrendered peacefully after talking with negotiators over days, according to the Douglas County Sheriffs Office. Hes being held in the county jail.

At no point did law enforcement deem Cain to be an imminent threat to citizens or neighbors, the agency said.

Court records show an attorney for Cains ex-girlfriend called authorities on March 4 about a custody dispute and that Cain was threatening a standoff if forced to give up custody of their young daughter.

Cain contacted authorities shortly after to acknowledge that he was in violation of a child custody court order but didnt intend to return the girl to her mother.

A Douglas County sheriffs deputy contacted Cain over the phone later that day and he refused to give up the child. He also said he had friends inside his home who would help him protect the girl, records show.

He later told a sergeant that he considered himself a victim of the courts, the records show. He also referred to an email he had sent to his former girlfriends attorney, which included a list of rules for law enforcement in contacting him.

They included a mandate that federal authorities negotiate with him and examine all evidence in his child custody case and that he would return fire if fired upon, records show.

He also warned that all entrances to his home on Willamina Court near Roseburg were rigged, according to the documents. The email included photos of the front door that appeared to show wires connected to the doorknob and running along the frame and mantle.

Another photo included a table covered with several rifles, tactical gear and boxes of ammunition, according to the records.

Do not attempt entry under any conditions or lethal force will have to be applied, he wrote in the email, according to court records.

The sheriffs office said negotiators continually spoke with Cain over two weeks to reach a peaceful resolution.

Court records show hes accused of unlawful use of a weapon, second-degree custodial interference and obstructing governmental or judicial administration.

Hes set to be arraigned Tuesday, records show.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

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The parent company for The Oregonian/OregonLive has reached a settlement with former first lady Cylvia Hayes that slashes the $128,000 in legal fees a judge ordered her to pay the news organization after her unsuccessful lawsuit to stop the release of her emails.

The basic terms of the settlement were read into the record of Hayes bankruptcy proceeding this week. Its potentially the final chapter in a dispute that began in February of 2015, when Hayes filed a lawsuit against the news organization to block the release of emails from her private account concerning state business -- including those she exchanged with former Governor John Kitzhaber.

Hayes contended she wasnt a public official, and not subject to the Oregons Public Records Law, and that the emails would be self-incriminating. Marion County Judge Tracy Prall disagreed and ordered Hayes to release her emails to the court for review. More than two-thirds of the 72,000 emails were eventually released, and Hayes was subsequently ordered to pay The Oregonians legal fees. After the news organization filed a lien against her Bend home, Hayes filed for bankruptcy, disclosing some $339,000 in debts.

Private groups paid Hayes more than $200,000 to lobby for eco-friendly policies, and state ethics investigators later determined she obtained the work because of her access to the governor and his aides, in violation of state law. The influence peddling scandal ultimately lead to Kitzhabers resignation.

According to the settlement, the Oregonians parent company will accept $15,000 to satisfy the debt if paid within one year; or $20,000 if paid within five years, or $25,000 if paid within nine years.

The right of the public to see these records was always foremost in our minds, said John Maher, president of Oregonian Media Group. We are of course disappointed we were not reimbursed for our legal costs as the law allows due to Ms. Hayes bankruptcy, but this legal fight over public records was an important investment in the publics right to know. We will continue to invest in transparency and accountability for the benefit of all Oregonians.

Earlier this month, state ethics commissioners rejected a proposed settlement with Hayes for breaking ethics laws 22 times. Hayes had agreed in January to a $44,000 fine, well short of the maximum . But the settlement needed final approval from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, and after Hayes failed to show up for her hearing this month, the commissioners unanimously rejected the settlement. Due to her bankruptcy, its not clear if the state will recover any money in the case.

Were happy to announce that all remaining legal issues between The Oregonian and our client have been resolved pending approval by Judge (Peter) McKittrick, said Michael Fuller, Hayes lawyer, referring to a federal bankruptcy judge. We expect to resolve all remaining legal issues with the state of Oregon in the coming weeks.
President Donald Trump has sent out dozens of tweets and retweets over the past few days, a Twitter spree that has left his social-media followers variously thrilled, perplexed and worried.

One of those messages -- a retweet -- has prompted a response from the British government.

The post Trump retweeted came from right-wing conspiracy theorist William Craddick, who claimed Great Britain invented the narrative of Russian election collusion to fool the U.S. into instituting tougher measures against Russia. The tweet does not say why the British government would seek a more confrontational Russia policy from its closest ally or why it would need to resort to subterfuge to influence Washington.

Russiagate was designed in part to help the UK counter Russian influence by baiting the United States into taking a hard line against them. Leaves us all with a more dangerous world as a consequence. Just another episode of the Great Game. https://t.co/qYpuzvmSy8  William Craddick (@williamcraddick) March 17, 2019

The British government told The Independent newspaper that the allegation was completely false.

Conservative Member of Parliament Nicholas Soames expressed frustration that the president of the United States was so susceptible to outlandish conspiracy theories.

The trouble is [Trump] allows himself to be subject to these great flights of fancy, which unfortunately there are too many people who take seriously, said Soames, a grandson of legendary British leader Winston Churchill. He pretty much takes up every conspiracy theory there is. Its just ludicrous. I dont think anyone who knows anything about it would take it seriously.

In his tweet, Craddick was commenting on a post by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who has sparked controversy with her support for authoritarian leaders. Gabbard tweeted that short-sighted politicians and media pundits had launched an expensive new Cold War & arms race by spending the last 2 years accusing Trump as [sic] a Putin puppet.

The thesis of Gabbards tweet is that, because of Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian-government ties to Trumps 2016 presidential campaign, the president now does everything he can to prove hes not Putins puppet -- even if it brings us closer to nuclear war.

Trump, who frequently praised Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign and the following year publicly accepted Putins denial that Russia meddled in the U.S. election, claimed in January that hes been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President.

Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, responded by saying the Trump Administrations policy toward Russia is relatively tough, largely continuing steps taken by former President Barack Obama. But he added that Trump has consistently made it clear that he does not support his own administrations policy toward Russia.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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On a party line vote, Democrats passed a bill out of committee Monday that would codify a laundry list of protections for unions threatened by a recent U.S. Supreme Court that undermined their membership and finances.

Unions have portrayed the bill as largely a housekeeping effort that catalogues practices that are already enshrined in collective bargaining agreements and contribute to harmonious workplaces.

HB 2016 helps us continue in the strong tradition of a cooperative relationship between government and its employees, said Steve Demarest, the president of SEIU Local 503. This bill will help level the playing field for those who work hard every day in public service by codifying best practices related to unfair labor practices, release time, dues collection, and access to worksites, members, and lists.

But employer groups and union opponents say the bill is a direct reaction to last years decision in Janus vs. AFSCME, which ruled that public employees cannot be compelled to pay union dues or fees if they opt out of membership.

Public employee union membership and dues have declined in the wake of that decision, and anti union activists says House Bill 2016 is a gift to the entities that have played the largest role in bankrolling and supporting Oregons Democratic party.

Despite objections from public employers who pointed to both practical and potential legal complications with the legislation, the House Business and Labor committee passed House Bill 2016 on a straight 7-to-4 party line vote, with all Republican members voting against the bill and with few amendments.

Before the vote, Rep. Greg Barreto, R-Cove and vice chair of the committee, said 98 percent of union contributions go to Democrats. In my opinion this is just an obvious maneuver by the majority party to give the unions a power grab.

The bill would set in statute a number of issues that are currently the subject of collective bargaining. Cities and school districts currently bargain with unions over allowable shop steward time, with contracts specifying the number of allowable work hours spent on union business. HB 2016 would require public employers to grant reasonable paid time to designated union representatives to conduct union business, an open-ended commitment that employers say will remove any limits on the costs theyd have to cover.

Thats going to end up before the employee relations board, said Scott Winkels, a lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities.

The legislation also would require public employers to deduct union dues and fees from employee pay and send those to the designated union. And it would make it easier for employees to opt in, by telephone, email or in writing.

As it is, we will not take money out unless we have a signed authorization, said Lori Sattenspiel, Legislative Services director for the Oregon School Boards Association. The (Oregon Education Association) doesnt use telephonic authorization. We feel like were in the middle here, balancing the needs of our employees.

In the meantime, the legislation makes it potentially more difficult to opt out of union membership. An authorization for deducting dues would remain in place until the employee revokes it, either in the manner specified in a bargaining agreement, or by delivering an original signed, written statement of revocation to the headquarters of the labor organization.

The bill provides unions with virtually unlimited access to employees work and personal information, including home and cell phone numbers, emails and addresses, while restricting access to that same information to other private entities. And it allows unions to use work email systems to conduct union business while prohibiting any other entity or individual from using the same systems to discourage union membership.

Thats a serious challenge for employers, said Winkels of the League of Oregon Cities. Theres another statute that requires employers be neutral. How do we take action in a way thats respects everyones first amendment rights?

Margaret Kirschnick, legal counsel for Oregon AFSCME, Council 75, submitted written testimony that said none of those rights were new.

Most public employers in Oregon currently provide exclusive representatives with reasonable access to the bargaining unit, she wrote. Most provide the use of their facilities for meetings, and the use of their communication systems to make announcements. Similarly, public employers currently provide unions with the contact information of bargaining unit members.

But Aaron Withe, the Oregon director for the anti-union Freedom Foundation, called the bill a union wishlist that targets our outreach efforts and attempts to provide the pro-tax, big government liberals in this state with a continued funding mechanism from the unions.

If unions like SEIU wouldnt have seen such dramatic losses then they would not be introducing this type of legislation.

HB 2016 could come up for a floor vote in the house later this week. If passed, it would then head to the Senate.
SALEM  Democratic lawmakers leading the Oregon Legislatures quest for new business taxes are pressing the states largest business association to take a final position on which type of tax it prefers.

In a letter sent on Thursday to Oregon Business & Industry President Sandra McDonough, Sen. Mark Hass of Beaverton and Rep. Nancy Nathanson of Eugene laid out three options to raise an additional $1 billion a year in new business taxes.

Were just calling the question, Hass said in an interview Monday.

Specifically, Nathanson and Hass want to know if Oregon Business & Industry will support a value-added tax at the rates necessary to raise a net of $1 billion annually if the state simultaneously cuts personal income taxes for low and middle-income taxpayers. The business group has advocated the value-added tax as a fairer option than a gross receipts tax, which is calculated based on a business sales and can multiply up through the supply chain. The value-added tax is calculated based on a business sales minus inputs.

If this (value-added tax) approach makes sense to you and you are willing to express your support for this tax, under these circumstances, that will be an important consideration for us in moving forward, Hass and Nathanson wrote. If not, we would appreciate knowing that, too.

Hass and Nathanson sent their letter as their committee is gearing up to write the actual tax bill, after spending the first part of the legislative session taking testimony and hearing from state economists about different tax regimes.

Its going to go fast after this week, Hass said, adding that he would like to get a bill out of the Joint Committee on Student Success Subcommittee on Revenue  or at least on the committees doorstep  by the first week of April.

Id like to have this pass sooner rather than later so that its not hanging around til the very end and crashes into other bills and involves a lot of horse trading, Hass said. At the same time, lawmakers already face intense lobbying as everybodys pushing to be left out of the new tax.

Nathanson could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

In a written statement on Monday, McDonough did not say whether Oregon Business & Industry supports the value-added tax scenario outlined by Nathanson and Hass. Instead, McDonough said the group appreciated that lawmakers were taking the groups tax proposal seriously and said Oregon Business & Industry wants to work with lawmakers on an overall package that would include revenue and cost control.

McDonoughs statement hints at an ongoing dispute between businesses, public employee unions and the two major political parties over whether a business tax increase should be conditioned on cost-saving changes to Oregons underfunded public pension system. Rising rates for school district employees threaten to eat up virtually half of the new tax revenue that Democrats and some Republicans want to raise for schools as soon as the 2023-24 school year.

Democrats fear that connecting the two issues could doom any business tax plan, as it did in 2017.

So far, much of the vetting and analysis of possible business taxes has occurred in private meetings. Hass and Nathanson noted that Oregon Business and Industry had provided technical consultants to work out the details of a possible value-added tax with state economists. A competing group, the Coalition for Common Good, is made up of the states largest public employee unions and a couple of businesses, including Nike. It hired economist Paul Warner, the states former legislative revenue officer, to conduct analyses.

According to Hass and Nathanson, Oregon would likely need to implement a value-added tax rate of 0.96 percent in order to raise $1 billion in new business taxes annually plus enough extra to offset reduced income tax collections from cutting low and middle-income tax rates. The state could exempt banks and insurance companies from the tax because it could be difficult to tax them fairly under a value-added system, but it would need to roughly double the corporate income tax to 14.79 percent on those companies in order to still reach $1 billion in tax revenue.

Oregons current corporate income tax rate is 6.6 percent on income up to $1 million and 7.6 percent above that.

Lawmakers want to include low and middle-income tax cuts with the business tax hike, in order to offset some of the impact to consumers when businesses pass along a portion of the cost in the form of higher prices.

Alternately, the state could charge all companies a gross receipts tax of 0.36 percent in order to raise $1 billion, Hass and Nathanson wrote. They did not specify a minimum sales amount when the tax would kick in, nor whether certain items such as groceries would be exempt.

All of the tax proposals would exempt petroleum sales, because Oregons Constitution mandates those taxes must go to the state highway fund, as well as health care providers that already pay a tax to fund the states Medicaid program. Similarly, all of the scenarios would reduce personal income tax rates for the three lowest Oregon tax brackets, for individuals earning up to $125,000 a year and joint filers earning up to $250,000 a year.

Although Hass and Nathanson wrote that a specific revenue target has not yet been determined, Gov. Kate Brown called for $1 billion a year in taxes to spend on education in her budget proposal back in November. And all three scenarios they presented to the business coalition for its consideration would generate a net tax increase of $1 billion in tax year 2020 and 5 percent more in each successive year.

 Hillary Borrud | hborrud@oregonian.com | 503-294-4034 | @hborrud

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Editors note: This is a weekly Q&A focused on the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System. Got a question? Submit it to politics@oregonian.com.

Q: Why doesnt PERS implement an early retirement program for older employees? What impact would that have on pension expenses or the unfunded liability?

A: In theory, an early retirement program could accelerate the transition away from PERS highest cost retirement programs, including the lucrative money match formula as well as the more generous versions of the standard retirement formulas that were afforded to Tier One and Tier Two employees, hired before August 29, 2003. But as with most PERS topics, the answer depends.

For members who havent reached the age or service requirement for a full benefit, PERS could save money by convincing them to retire early. But the final years of an employees career are typically the most lucrative, consequently the most important in generating retirement benefits. So any savings would depend on what was offered to induce employees to retire.

For members who have reached the required age or years of service (31 percent of active and inactive PERS members fall in this bucket), the most expensive day they can retire is today, says Matt Larrabee of Milliman Inc., the systems actuary. Thats because the extra retirement benefits and cost-of-living adjustments they receive by retiring earlier will typically exceed the incrementally higher benefits earned for putting in a few extra years on the job. Employees often decide to stay on the job longer because their pay is higher than their projected benefits, but from a system perspective, the early, full-boat retirees are typically the most expensive.

Pension reform advocates and lawmakers are discussing a variant on this theme, which they call the work back/pay back plan. Tim Nesbitt, the interim executive director of a business-backed group calling itself PERS Solutions for Public Services, suggests it could be used to accelerate the buy down of whats owed to retirees. That is both the largest portion of the systems $26 billion unfunded liability and, because of court rulings forbidding the modification of benefits already earned, very hard to change.

Heres the concept: Lawmakers would eliminate the limits on post-retirement employment (currently 1,040 hours per year for Tier One/Two employees) and allow members to double dip for five years, collecting their pension benefits while continuing to earn their salary. The employees would cease accruing new pension benefits, and they would be required to pay six percent of their salaries to buy down the employers unfunded PERS liability (a salary sacrifice). Meanwhile, the employer would continue paying the same pension contribution rate as if the employee were still accruing benefits, but all the money would go to pay down the employers unfunded liability.

Backers say the plan would triple the rate by which employers are buying down their unfunded liabilities today. Its also the only current proposal that could actually recover some PERS costs from retirees, who are otherwise legally untouchable. Moreover, they say its an incentive for early retirement that would also allow employers to predictably plan workforce turnover, versus a feared rush to the exits that could undermine the current workforce.

Theres some possibility there, said Larrabee, the actuary. Wed really have to look at the specifics of the proposal.
A Portland police officer and another driver were seriously hurt early Tuesday in a crash on Interstate 205, police say.

Early information suggests the officer was working a static detail at a construction site on the northbound interstate south of Southeast Division Street when a driver hit the officers vehicle from behind, according to Portland police.

The officer was pinned in the vehicle and was extracted, police said.

Both the officer and other driver, a woman in a dark-colored SUV, were hospitalized with serious injuries that didnt threaten their lives, according to police.

Neither party has been publicly identified.

They encourage anyone who has information about the crash  specifically anyone who saw the SUV beforehand  to call 503-823-3333.

The crash, which is under investigation, happened about 12:20 a.m. The northbound interstate reopened about 5:30 a.m.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

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Portraiture will be the topic at the 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 19, meeting of the Midland Camera Club.

The club will meet in room 304 of Midland Evangelical Free Church, 7221 N. Jefferson Road.
Accounting student Jamie Dwyer of Midland will be honored for her many contributions to the Delta College community and beyond with a YWCA Emerging Leader Award in a ceremony Wednesday at the Horizons Center in Saginaw.

The award recognizes women between the ages of 18-25 who demonstrate emerging leadership skills and who, through their character, accomplishments, and activities, exhibit a philosophy of empowerment of women and a commitment to the community. The award is given annually to one student from each regional school, Delta College, Northwood University, Saginaw Valley State University and Central Michigan University.
Zareena A. Grewal, associate professor of American studies, religious studies and anthropology at Yale University, will give a public lecture at Saginaw Valley State University at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the Rhea Miller Recital Hall.

Grewal is an author and documentary filmmaker whose research focuses on race, gender, religion, nationalism and transnationalism across a wide spectrum of American Muslim communities. She has received awards for her writing and research grants from the Fulbright, Wenner-Gren and Luce foundations.

Her first book, "Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority," is an ethnography of transnational Muslim networks that link U.S. mosques to Islamic movements in the Middle East through debates about the reform of Islam.

Grewal's first film, "By the Dawn's Early Light: Chris Jackson's Journey to Islam," examines the racialization of Islam and the scrutiny of American Muslims' patriotism.

At SVSU, Grewal's lecture will cover the subject of her forthcoming book, titled "Is the Quran a Good Book?" which combines ethnographic and cultural studies analyses with historical research to trace the place of Islamic scripture in American imagination, especially in relation to national debates about intolerance.

Grewal's visit to SVSU is supported through the Dr. Raana Akbar Memorial Lecture Series in partnership with SVSU's Edwards Lecture Series and Dow Visiting Scholars Lecture Series.

The Raana Akbar Memorial Lecture on Islam and Culture was established in 2011 by Dr. Waheed Akbar in memory of his late wife, Raana, a former member of the SVSU Board of Control, physician and community leader.

The William and Julia Edwards Lecture in Philosophy and Religion is a forum where recognized scholars in religion and philosophy are invited to share their work with the campus community.

The Dow Visiting Scholars and Artists program was established through an endowment from The Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation to enrich our regional cultural and intellectual opportunities.

For more information, visit www.svsu.edu/publiclectures.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriff's Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Mitchell Kukulka.

Wednesday, March 13

11:25 p.m. -- A deputy spoke with a 15-year-old girl from Lee Township who said her 16-year-old ex-boyfriend was sending her messages to her family trying to get back together with her. The ex-boyfriend was contacted and advised to stop sending messages.

9:32 p.m. -- Deputies responded to a car-deer crash in Edenville Township.

8:11 p.m. -- Officers responded to a vehicle crash on private property in the 2200 block of Jefferson Avenue.

5:54 p.m. -- Officers responded to a parking violation in the 1000 block of West Collins Street.

4:12 p.m. -- Officers responded to a crash resulting in an injury in the area of East Chapel Lane and Jefferson Avenue.

3:47 p.m. -- A 77-year-old Jasper Township woman called to report a suspicious situation in which an unknown person had placed photos onto her cell phone, and someone had put a "bug" in her phone and her cat would look toward the window which she said meant someone was outside stalking her. The woman also said her video camera had captured a "shadow," but she no longer had the image of the shadow or the photos on her phone. She wanted detectives to come to her house with special equipment that could detect stalkers.

3:44 p.m. -- Officers responded to vehicle crashing a building in the 5100 block of Eastman Avenue.

1:52 p.m. -- Animal Control received a fax in reference to a cat bite that occurred in the City of Midland in which a woman was bitten by her own cat. An isolation notice was issued.

12:21 p.m. -- Officers responded to a crash in the area of Saginaw Road and Eastman Avenue.

12:18 p.m. -- A deputy responded to a two-vehicle crash in Greendale Township in the area of West Isabella Road near North Alamando Road.

9:35 a.m. -- A deputy was dispatched to the area of West Isabella Road near North 7 Mile Road in Lee Township for a report of a peacock in the roadway, but the animal was gone on arrival.

9:15 a.m. -- Officers performed a warrant arrest in the 200 block of West Ellsworth Street.

5:38 a.m. -- A 53-year-old Isabella County woman was cited for failing to keep her vehicle under control and failing to report a property damage accident following investigation into a report of an unoccupied vehicle in a ditch in Greendale Township. She complained from some minor soreness from the crash. A report will be sent to the Prosecuting Attorney's office for review.

12:45 a.m. -- Officers performed a warrant arrest in the area of Isabella Street and Currie Parkway.

Tuesday, March 12

11:57 p.m. -- Officers performed a warrant arrest in the 1500 block of Renee Drive.

10:26 p.m. -- A 39-year-old Midland Township man was arrested for retail fraud at a Homer Township business.

8:53 p.m. -- Deputies were dispatched to a Hope Township residence for a report of domestic violence occurring about eight days prior. Deputies made contact with an 18-year-old man who said his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend assaulted him. The man did not appear to have any injuries, and the case is under investigation.

8:16 p.m. -- Deputies responded to a Mills Township location for a disorderly patron. Upon arrival deputies spoke with a 59-year-old man who was not disorderly, who left the property for the remainder of the evening.

7:43 p.m. -- Officers responded to a traffic crash on private property in the 1800 block of Saginaw Road.

6:17 p.m. -- Officers responded to a traffic crash on private property in the area of North Saginaw Road and Eastman Avenue.

5:42 p.m. -- A 86-year-old Mills Township man reported receiving a scam phone call wanting money to bail his grandson out of jail. The call was from a Philadelphia phone number.

4:11 p.m. -- Officers responded to a felonious assault in the 1300 block of Illinois Drive.

11 a.m. -- A 34-year-old Edenville Township man came to the Midland County Law Enforcement Center in regards to a suspicious situation. The man had noticed 11 Adderall XR 20 milligram pills were missing out of a prescription he had filled at a local pharmacy. The prescription was for his juvenile son, and he said that the pills could not have been stolen from him as they were accounted for at all times once it was filled.

10:20 a.m. -- Officers responded to a suspicious situation involving harassment in the 2100 block of Wisconsin Street.

10:03 a.m. -- Officers responded to a crash in the area of West Larkin Street and Jerome Street.

9:10 a.m. -- An Ingersoll Township resident dropped off a dog at the Law Enforcement Center to be taken by animal control. The dog was taken to the Humane Society of Midland County. An owner has not been identified at this time.

7:34 a.m. -- Officers performed a warrant arrest in the 100 block of Fast Ice Drive.

6:27 a.m. -- Officers responded to a property damage accident in the area of Isabella Street and Vance Road.
Bujumbura, Burundi (PANA)  Commanders of the military academies of the six member countries of the East African Community (EAC) on Tuesday began meeting in Bujumbura over three days, according to security sources which said the meeting is discussing harmonization of common training and defence programmes
Brussels, Belgium (PANA) - Returning from a visit to the Horn of Africa, the European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Neven Mimica, on MOnday signed a note for 20 million euros for a project to build roads and other infrastructure projects in Eritrea and Ethiopia, an official communique said
Brussels, Belgium (PANA)  Underlining its support to the efforts done by the G5 Sahel countries in the fight against terrorism, organised crime and any other threat to security and peace, the Council of the European Union has decided to make more effective, at regional level, the work of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions in the Sahel
Paris, France (PANA) - The French government Monday renewed its support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) currently facing defections and threats to its powers, an official statement said here
Tunis, Tunisia (PANA)  Tunisia and Italy on Monday signed a deal to support the private sector and finance the agriculture and social economy for an overall amount of 57 million Euros
Cotonou, Benin (PANA) - UN women and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) are organising next Saturday in Marrakesh, Morocco, a conference on best practices and issues in Gender-Responsive Budgeting (BSG) in Africa, PANA learned from the UN institution
Brazzaville, Congo (PANA) - The World Food Programme (WFP) will promote local food production in the Congo in order to ensure food security in the school environment, its regional director, Lola Castro, has said after a visit to the country
Deutsche Post DHL Group has entered a long-term partnership with Austrian Post that will see the post deliver parcels sent by DHL customers to Austria. The agreement is still subject to review by the German and Austrian competition authorities but once it has been approved, the collaboration is expected to launch in 2019.

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According to Deutsche Post DHL Group, customers will benefit from high-quality parcel delivery services, including short delivery times for shipments, while the collaboration will allow both postal operators to create further profitable growth and jointly tap the potential of the growing cross-border e-commerce business.

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The expansion of our parcel business in Europe is proceeding successfully, said Frank Appel, CEO of Deutsche Post DHL Group. This has culminated in a very attractive agreement which enables us and Austrian Post to strengthen and accelerate our growth in Austria and beyond. We will be exploring additional collaboration opportunities with Austrian Post in the future as we continue to focus on developing our international e-commerce business as a key growth driver for our Group. The agreement is a further step toward improving our quality and productivity in the European parcel business.

Georg Polzl, CEO of Austrian Post, added, We are delighted to have Deutsche Post DHL Group as our partner. Our nationwide delivery throughout Austria stands for quality and reliability. Pick-up stations, self-service zones, reception boxes and the features of our app are unique and are very well received by our customers.

This agreement has no impact on Deutsche Post DHL Groups business activities in international express, freight transportation and supply chain solutions in Austria.
I can already hear the dont eat our own! Democratic Party brigade bearing down on this column, so lets just get straight to the Yahoo News report so we can all start this inevitable fight off on the same page:

But as the attorney general of the nations largest state  and therefore one of the most powerful law enforcement officials in the nation  Harris declined to investigate Herbalife, the nutritional supplement company that has been accused of fraudulent marketing practices. Documents exclusively obtained by Yahoo News show that in 2015, prosecutors in the San Diego office of the California attorney general sent Harris a lengthy memorandum that argued for an investigation into Herbalife and requested resources in order to undertake such an investigation. Similar investigations into Herbalife were already taking place elsewhere.

About three weeks after the San Diego letter was sent, Harris received the first of three donations to her campaign for the U.S. Senate from Heather Podesta, the powerful Washington lobbyist whose ex-husband Tonys firm, then called the Podesta Group, had worked for Herbalife since 2013. Heather Podestas own lobbying firm, Heather Podesta and Partners, would soon be hired by Herbalife, too.

Harris did not pursue an investigation, even as the Federal Trade Commission proceeded with an investigation of its own, which had been opened the previous March and which suggested that sufficient grounds for such scrutiny did exist. In fact, the San Diego letter had meticulously laid out those grounds, pointing out that Herbalife presented itself to the public as a lawful enterprise, but that it could nevertheless be engaged in less obvious conduct that potentially harmed both Herbalife distributors and Herbalife customers. Allegations of such conduct, by 2015, had become commonplace in media reports.

In 1986, the state of California imposed a consent decree on Herbalife, saying the company could not make false or misleading representations about the money that Herbalifes distributors could expect to make from selling their supposed health products. In 2011, the Commercial Court in Brussels, Belgium ruled that Herbalife was an illegal pyramid scheme. An appeals court reversed the finding in 2013 (same year that Harriss donors, the Podesta Group, began representing Herbalife), but that didnt stop the investigations here in America. In 2014, the FBI launched a probe into Herbalife.

That same year, a class-action lawsuit filed in Kamala Harriss home state of California was settled, where Herbalife agreed to set aside $15 million for distributors harmed by whatever practices they were not admitting to maliciously doing, and $2.5 million for product refunds. In 2015, Harris declined to prosecute Herbalife (while her husband Douglas Emhoff, was employed by a law firm representing Herbalife). In 2016, Herbalife settled another lawsuitfiled by the Federal Trade Commission (an anonymous source in Harriss office told Yahooonly if they were given anonymitythat Harris helped with the FTC investigation). Herbalife paid a $200 million fine to the FTC, and again avoided admitting it was the kind of pyramid scheme deserving of the nine-figure fine they just paid.

In what Im sure is completely unrelated to the fact of how Herbalife consistently finds itself in troubleonly to pay a fine and avoid admitting its illegality (also known as the Wall Street model)the U.S. began investigating whether Herbalife violated foreign bribery laws in China in 2017. Because time is a flat circle, another class-action lawsuit by Herbalife distributors was brought against Herbalife with a trial date of September 2019, this time in a Miami court for $1 billion.

Herbalife has a documented history of doing things worthy of criminal-ish fines, only to wriggle out of actual criminal responsibility time and time againand this Yahoo report puts Kamala Harris smack-dab in the middle of that documented history which exists independently of these new documents uncovered by Yahoo.

Now, to give Harris some benefit of the doubt, the Connecticut Attorney General launched a probe into Herbalife in 2015, before concluding that we have been unable to substantiate allegations that Herbalife is operating a pyramid scheme. But launching a probe is still more than Kamala Harris did. This just looks bad for her. This is not a leftist versus centrist thing. This is a major business that is almost surely what hedge fund manager William Ackman called a pyramid scheme (in 2014), and it keeps wriggling out of trouble. Kamala Harris is one of many people who seemingly let Herbalife off the hook and conveniently received Herbalife-connected money soon afterwards.

Democrats should take our partisan blinders off for stuff like this and replace Kamala Harris with Attorney General of California. Primary season gets us wrapped up so much in personality and the hope that we will find a new political savior that we become somewhat blinded to the immense power these people have wielded and are campaigning to wield. This report based on verified documents makes the former California attorney general look untrustworthy. Period.

Yahoo noted that Harris never gave a reason for declining to investigate Herbalife and Harris spokesman Ian Sams eschewed addressing the substance of Yahoos report for providing them with a statement that is straight from a Kamala Harris stump speech:

[Kamala Harris] has a long record of going after bad corporate actors engaging in fraudulent behavior and delivering results for people who have been taken advantage of. [Sams] noted that as Californias attorney general, Harris got $20 billion for California homeowners after taking on mortgage fraud by the big banks, secured a billion-dollar judgment against for-profit Corinthian Colleges for scamming students, and put Ponzi and pyramid schemers in prison.

This is important because the next Democratic president has to get it right. The urgency of our twelve-year window to seriously address climate change makes this next election the most important in the history of mankind. Trump is a weak incumbent and every major Democratic contender is polling ahead of him in head to head matchups. We dont need to accept the corruption of the status quo. We can afford to be picky in demanding the Democrats nominate someone we trust to enact our popular will. Its up to presidential candidates like Kamala Harris to convince us that they are worthy of our trust in the first place.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.
This will be a short column about a specific but obvious point going largely unnoticed in our conversations about the 2020 Democratic primaries: If Democrats dont take the Senate in 2020, it doesnt matter who they elect, or what their policy proposals and progressive credentials are. A GOP Senate will either block any progressive legislative agenda or water it down to the point it becomes meaningless and doomed to fail in the long term. In a sense, the intra-party debates were seeing today are not only unnecessarily vicious, they also put the cart before the horse: Winning the Senateand holding the Houseshould be the top priority.

The fact that were not talking about this is shortsighted and self-defeating, but given weve combined our celebrity main event brand of political discoursewhich is really nothing newwith our gradual acclimation to the market saturation of an authoritarian executive branch, its also understandable. We perceive, rightly or wrongly, that the presidency matters more than ever. In some sense this is accurate, because over the last two years Donald Trump has basically put on a clinic for this topic. At the same time, however, weve lost the lessons Mitch McConnell taught us during the Obama presidency: Our system is so at odds with itself that without total control of Congress, any Democratic presidents legislative agenda will fail.

This is frustrating. Today we have in many regards a dream scenario for vaulting progressive policies to the front of national politics: An intellectual vacuum in the Republican executive branch; a Republican legislative branch obsequious and extreme to the point of total dysfunction; and, thanks in no small part to these failings, a general population more open than ever to progressive solutions to the many urgent problems we need our government to resolve. To that last point, for instance, recent polls have reliably shown that seventy percent of Americansnot Democrats; Americanssupport universal healthcare.

But also note that about that same numberaround 65% of Americanswere in favor of a single-payer system in 2009. For a more acute example, an even larger number of Americansbetween 82% and 90%supported universal background checks for gun sales during President Obamas last term. McConnell, however, led an infamously and probably unprecedented obstructionist movement that all but neutered Democratic action for the last six years of Obamas presidency. Republicans then swept the 2016 election.

In other words, public will is one thing; political will another. Our politicians, especially in these hyper-partisan times, wont necessarily reflect our will or advocate policies that even an overwhelming majority of Americans support. One reason is that its much easier, rhetorically, to talk someone out of doing something new. Alternatives abound, and the GOP has become frighteningly adept at appealing to conservative fears about risk and opportunity costs. In other words, not all people who support certain policies when polled will commit all-or-nothing to those policies. Regrettably, relatively few of them will. This means Democrats need to secure not just public support for progressive policies, we also need to secure the legislative mechanisms that are the only way those policies become reality. That is, they have to win the Senate.

Imagine, for instance, a Bernie Sanders presidency. Over the course of these next two years, hes shaped the Democratic party to fit his vision, and on January 21, 2021, he comes out swinging with progressive legislation ready to go: Medicare for All; Green New Deal; assault weapons ban; tuition-free college; voting rights expansion; tax and wealth reform; hell, even the groundwork for UBI. Rad, right?

Now imagine a GOP Senate passing any of it.

In real terms, it doesnt matter who Democrats put at the top of the ticket. No one will be able to override the checks and balances provided the Senate in the Constitution.

One alternative, of course, is extending the authoritarian rails Trump has laid. For instance, when Trump failed to repeal Obamacare (despite complete control of Congress) he turned to executive order to choke it out. When he failed to build the wall (despite complete control of Congress) he declared a national emergency. Examples abound. And though I would argue climate change is an existential threat that would, beyond doubt, justify a national emergency (irrespective of however far Trumps declaration lowered the bar for that definition), Im not so sure whether we can apply that same calculation to some of the other serious crises we face, such as healthcare or gun control. Same goes for the Supreme Court nuclear arms race that led from removing the filibuster to obstructing Merrick Garland to appointing unnecessarily a justice who in all likelihood has a history of serial sexual, gambling, and alcohol abuse. Should a Democratic government pack the court? (Even if you argue they should, that still presumes Democrats win the Senate.)

Thats all to say that if Democrats lose the House or Senate in 2020, we cant in good faith support an agenda enacted entirely by one person. That would affirm and accelerate a national trend thats careening, subtly or not, towards authoritarian rule.

Consider that the first people to sound the alarm about Trumps national emergency werent Democrats, but Republicans who feared Trump would open the door for a Democratic president to circumvent Congress by declaring emergencies for climate change and gun control. Democrats, obviously, welcomed this idea, but until then, Id never heardI dont thinkany serious Democratic politician make a serious argument that a president should declare climate change a national emergency. Trump, in that one act, re-framed the way Democrats see presidential power and democracy generally.

True, Americans have always seen presidents as more powerful than they really are, and Trump isnt, by any stretch, the first president to extend or abuse his executive power. But until this moment the public has always pushed back against such overreach, from Obamas signature drone strikes and immigration executive orders to Bushs torture and surveillance programs, all the way back to the Gulf of Tonkin, which contributed to the 1976 National Emergencies Act designed to curb this executive abuse in the first place. Trump, however, has done everything in and outside his power to expand presidential authority, and if Democrats embrace this strategy, any future American governmentseven progressive oneswill crack and crumble under the pressure of national partisan backlash. We must get serious about correcting this trend, and that means we must get serious about the Senate.

We elect Senators every six years, and those elections are staggered. This means that unlike with the House (every two years) each election year for the Senate has a slightly different map. In short, 2020 looks better for the Dems than 2018 did, where they faced a notoriously difficult election map and ended up losing two seats.

In 2020, Democrats must capture four currently Republican-held seats to regain control. (Three if they win the presidency, because the vice president casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate.) The map looks promising. Of the 34 seats that will be on the ballot, Republicans currently hold 22. However, because most of those GOP seats are in solidly Republican states, Democrats will have to do a lot of legwork. Here are the best bets, per Nate Silvers 538 blog.

The best odds are with two Republican Senators from blue states: Cory Gardner (Colorado), and Susan Collins (Maine). Gardner has a 39% approval rating. Though Collins has an approval rating of 53%, 538 notes that an Emerson poll taken after the Kavanaugh confirmation found that 47% of likely voters were less likely to vote for her as a result of her choice to confirm him.

Then we have Thom Tillis (North Carolina) and Joni Ernst (Iowa). Arizona is also in play. Though 538 notes that Arizona is nine points more Republican-leaning than the nation as a whole (and 4 points more Republican-leaning than Iowa or North Carolina), Democrats just won a Senate seat there by about two points.

Democrats will also have to retain their own seats on the ballot, which includes two openings in red states. One of them, troublingly, is Doug Joness seat in Alabama.

And though 538 doesnt go there, Id put John Cornyns Texas seat on this list. Though the state (where I live) leans Republican by about 17 points, Beto ORourke showed us last November that, depending on the nominee, the state is very much in play for 2020. To that end, considering the argument Ive been making, it might have been better in the big picture for Beto to run for that seat instead of ruling it out early in favor of considering a shot at the presidency.

But take heart: The public will is there. Democrats just need to tap into it. They cant afford to put all our focusor even the majority of iton the marquee event of the presidential race, and they certainly shouldnt encourage toxic intra-party bickering about progressive purity at the top of the ticket. The much bigger concern of an obstructionist Senate obviates even the most pristine progressive credentials. If they dont refocus, they might condemn themselves to four more years that look exactly like the last nine yearsor worseno matter who gets elected.
The Beach Boys may have perfected surf music, but Dick Dale invented it. Dale, who died of heart and kidney failure Saturday at age 81, singlehandedly created the distinctive surf-guitar sound that was echoed by instrumental groups such as the Ventures, Marketts and Surfaris, and that was eventually the foundation for vocal groups such as the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and the Honeys. His influence was felt decades later in the surf-guitar subtext of the Ramones and Green Day.

Like the families of so many surf-music pioneers, Dales came from somewhere else. The former Richard Monsour was an immigrant twice overonce as part of a Lebanese-American family new to the U.S. and then as a New England ethnic new to the melting-pot culture of Southern California. Like many new arrivals there, more than the kids whose parents had grown up there, Dale was a zealous convert to the vision of the beach as a kind of utopia. Unlike those other newcomers, Dale was able to funnel that vision into the sound of a guitar.

Few songs capture that utopian yearning better than Dick Dale & the Del-Tones 1962 single, Miserlou. Dale bursts out of the gate with a galloping run of 16th notes on his left-handed Fender Stratocaster with just enough syncopation to keep the tune leaning ever forward. Each note was soaked in reverb, like the sound of notes bouncing off the walls of a teenagers private refuge, the bedroomor off the wave towering above a surfer as he crouched on a board. Dale was a die-hard surfer himself, and he wanted to translate that experience into song: the roar of the ocean, the splash of the foam, the vibration of board as it surges beachward.

Its wonderful, spiritual experience, the guitarist told me in 1993, to stand in the water at five a.m. and face the majesty of those waves. You paddle out to a 15-footer, stand up, and the wave comes over your head, going tiddle-tiddly-dee. Then youre sucked down in a roll in a big roar. When you witness the power of mother nature that way, it makes you humble.

He found the perfect vehicle for that experience in an old Mediterranean folk song called Misirlou. He remembered hearing his father and uncle play Misirlou on oud in Arab-American nightclubs, and the exoticism of the tunes Mideastern intervals seemed perfect for the eerie feeling of riding a big wavealways on the brink of disaster even as one is taken for a thrill of a ride. Dale Americanized the song by speeding it up and Californized it by amping it up. He respelled it Miserlou and released it as his third single on his fathers Del-Tone Records.

Amid whoops of excitement, it begins with low, fat-toned notes, mimicking the early curl of a wave. Half a minute later, Dales guitar leaps up an octave, spraying trebly notes like the top of a waves bubbly crest. Half a minute after that, a trumpet solo (played by Dale as well) suggests the dizzying momentum as the board picks up speed. Half a minute after that the guitar reappears, joined this time by manic piano and pounding drums. After two minutes and 11 seconds of breathless motion, its over. This was the song, more than Dales first two singles, that captured the idealized beach life.

He had discovered that life as the new kid in town as a high school senior in El Segundo. He took to surfing immediately. When I was in the water, he told me. amid the rumble of the ocean and roll of the waves, you hear this tremendous sound of mother nature. So I played like that.

Dale didnt set out to become a guitar instrumentalist. He wanted to be Elvis Presley. He got his first break in 1956 when he won an Elvis Presley Sound-Alike contest in Los Angeles. He even played an Elvis-like character in Marilyn Monroes 1960 film, Lets Make Love. Dale bought his first reverb unit not for his guitar but to make his voice sound like Elviss in the Sun Studios echo chamber. But when he used that unit on his guitar, his fellow surfers got excited as they never did about his voice.

In 1961 Dale started playing for his surfer pals at the Rinky Dink Ice Cream Parlor in Balboa, Calif. He quickly outgrew that and his business-minded father rented out the Rendezvous Ballroom, a huge palace from the big-band era, right on the beach at the end of the peninsula. Only 17 paying customers showed up for the first show on July 1, but within four months 3,000 youngsters were crowding into the Rendezvous every Friday and Saturday, slapping their sandals on the hardwood floor, creating a dance they called the stomp.

We started with 17 surfers coming into ballroom, he recalled, and we built it up to 4,000 people a night. The city officials said the kids had to wear tieswhich was ridiculous, who ever heard of surfers in ties?but I bought a box of old ties and handed them out at the door. We had to put in 13 new fire exits. We blew up more than 48 amps. But we kept going.

This success led Dales father to start his own Del-Tone label and release the instrumental Lets Go Tripping. The single sold enough copies in Dales Southern California stronghold to reach #60 on the national charts. It was the first true surf-music record, the first to transmute the sound of Mexican-American rock n roll into the brittle staccato, heavy reverb and tricky solos of Dales personal vision. It was the first to evoke the sensation of trying to stay atop a surfboard as it hurtled beachward, and nearly everyone in the California surf sceneboth the hard core and the wanna-besrecognized their own experience in that sound and responded accordingly.

To recreate the sounds of surfing on his electric guitar, Dale invented a whole new way of playing. To reproduce the tiddle-tiddly-dee of the ocean spray, he developed a staccato eighth-note picking style. To replicate the rumbling roar of the undertow, he played the fattest strings he could buy on the fullest sounding amplifiers he could find. To mimic the rise, fall and forward momentum of the waves, he led his rhythm section through fast, rolling phrases.

The Beach Boys Carl Wilson, one of Dales most important disciples, revealed the technique to me in 1982: You play the melody down in a lower register. You play an up stroke on the one-and beat, but everything else is down. To get that clipped sound, you mute the strings a bit with the palm of your picking hand; that gives it a more percussive sound. These kids would buy these huge Marshall amps, crank them up and those simple little melodies would just roar. But Dick Dale was different from the rest, because he had more control and more bite. Ooh, Dick Dale; thats who you wanted to sound like if you were a guitarist in L.A. in those years.

Just as Californians transformed the surfboard with technology, they did the same with the electric guitar. To get the sound in his head, Dale kept trying to make his guitar louder, because when a guitar gets louder it not only increases in volume but also changes its tone. The overtones become easier to hear at higher volumes, and the tone acquires that resonant, buzzing sound.

In nearby Fullerton, California, a Greek-American named Leo Fender invented a solid-body guitar called the Stratocaster in 1954. That got Dale closer to his goal, but the amplifiers couldnt handle the volume he wanted. So the teenager went to Fender directly and asked for bigger speakers. Fender, always eager to experiment with working musicians, started giving Dale amplifiers and he blew up dozens of them. Finally, to satisfy the demanding youngster, Fender built a 15-inch speaker with a 100-watt transformer that he called the Showman amp. At last Dale was pleased. He bought six of the amps, stacked them and blasted the crowds at the Rendezvous. He claims, not without cause, that this was the birth of hard rock.

Capitol Records signed Dale for a $50,000 advance, more money, albeit in 1961 dollars, than RCA had paid for Elvis Presley, and released five albums by Dale between 1961 and 1965. None of the songs became big hits, not even Miserlou, and Dale claims none of the records ever captured his real sound. But Dales lack of success on the national charts shouldnt distract one from recognizing his dominance, according to every witness on the scene, as L.A.s top live act from 1961 through 1963. Virtually every surf act of any consequenceincluding the Beach Boyslaunched their career as an opening act for Dale.

I was never recorded properly, he insisted. I was always fighting with engineers whod tell you how many years theyd been in school, how you couldnt do this, and you couldnt do that. So I did what they said, and when I heard the records, I hated them and smashed them against the wall. At a certain point, I got fed up and said, `If people are going to hear me, theyre only going to hear the way I sound on stage. So I quit recording.

That may be true, but it didnt help that Dale refused to tour, because he didnt want to leave behind his surfboard and his growing menagerie of exotic animalslions, tigers, ocelots, cougars and hawks. Nor did it help that he was diagnosed with rectal cancer in 1967 (at age 29) and had to retire from music for a while. It was left to his imitators to reap the commercial rewards of his musical breakthroughs.

He disappeared to Hawaii for a while. He learned to fly. He played on Keith Moons solo album. He won a Grammy nomination for his duet with Stevie Ray Vaughan on the 1987 soundtrack for Back to the Beach. He joined Brian Wilson and Joe Satriani for a cut on Paul Shaffers 1989 album. Finally Dale was coaxed up to Slims nightclub in San Francisco where he was surprised by the cheering, sold-out crowds. The small Oakland label, Hightone Records, approached him about making another album. He decided to give it another shot, and he moved himself, his second wife Jill and his infant son Jimmy into San Franciscos Brilliant Studios for two weeks.

The producer, Scotty Matthews, asked Ry Cooder, `If you were going to produce Dick Dale, how would you produce him?, Dale recounts. I had just played with Ry at the Guitar Player magazine 25th anniversary show, and Ry told Scotty, `Dont infect Dick Dales brain with whats going on today, because he doesnt care whats going on today. Just plug him in, let him play and dont let the needles go into the red. Thats what they did and thats why it worked.

That was the 1993 album Tribal Thunder, and it got Dale touring nationally for the first time ever, a habit that he never lost until he died (though that was partly self-preservationSure, Id love to stay home and build ships in a bottle and spend time with my wife in Hawaii, he told the Pittsburgh City Paper in 2015, but I have to perform to save my life.) He made three more albums between 1994 and 2001 and was still playing live shows a month ago. When director Quentin Tarantino used Miserlou in 1994s Pulp Fiction, a new generation realized what an original, influential musician he was. He was never as famous as the Beach Boys, but the Wilson brothers could never have climbed as high as they did without standing on Dales shoulders.

Im not some great guitarist like the Satrianis and the Van Halens, he told me in 1993. I never went to school and learned music theory. When I play, I go, `This sounds like a tiger; this sounds like a volcano; this sounds like the lip of the water coming over my head when Im surfing. My bass player says, `When I stand behind you, I dont just see your arms moving, I see your shoulders shuddering, your back straining. Thats because I put all my physical force into my playing. I take people for a ride on a non-chemical wave of sound.

Listen to Dick Dale perform Miserlou at the Laguna Seca Raceway in 1995:
Patna: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday laid a chadar on the tomb of Sufi saint Hazrat Sayyed Shah Makhdum Munam Pak Rahmatullah at Mitan Ghat in Patna City where he prayed for peace, prosperity, and development of Bihar.

Kumar, who was accompanied by other party leaders and prominent Muslim clerics, urged all to maintain peace and communal harmony in Bihar and particularly during the election period when, he said, some people could try to disturb law and order for political gains.

The Chief Minister, after offering prayer, participated in the Mehfil-e-Shama where he enjoyed a Sufi qawwali the theme of it being love and communal harmony.

On the occasion, Kumar also paid tribute to Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar who lost the battle with cancer on Sunday.

When asked about the prospect of NDA in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the Chief Minister refused to answer saying this was not the right place to discuss politics as he was there to pay his respect to the Sufi saint who died preaching for peace and brotherly love.
That dreaded low-resolution screen door effect thats dogged virtual reality imaging since its inception just got blown off its hinges by HPs Reverb VR headset.

Announced Tuesday at HP Reinvent in Houston, the Reverb boasts twice the resolution of its predecessor2,1602,160plus a wider 114-degree field of view. The Reverb is the highest-resolution HMD (head-mounted display) thats shipping among major makers, the company said.

That caveat of major HMD makers obviously excludes such smaller projects as Pimaxs 8K headset. Even so, HPs Reverb will likely ship ahead of Pimaxs unit.

Gordon Mah Ung The controllers dont change for HPs Reverb, but the company has integrated Bluetooth into the headset to improve connection issues. HPs also improved the tracking algorithms.

The same controllers, only better

The headset itself continues to be based on Microsofts Windows Mixed Reality platform. It still uses the standard Mixed Reality controllers, which link via Bluetooth and are tracked using Mixed Realitys Inside Out technology.

When launched, the tracking technology was promising, but it had weaknesses. Rather than the HTC Vive or Facebook Oculus systems, which use separate towers to help tracking, the Reverb uses inside out tracking, which doesnt require additional hardware and calibration.

The advantage to inside out tracking is it can be easily moved from room to room. Its somewhat less accurate than using separate towers, however, and issues arise when a hand moves out of view of the inside out tracking. (Read our review of a Mixed Reality headset for more details.) HP officials say improved algorithms have addressed such issues to some degree.

Whats also really helped is improved Bluetooth. The original Mixed Reality headsets counted on Bluetooth support in a gaming PC to handle the connection. HP discovered that subpar Bluetooth implementations were a weak link in the experience. By integrating a Bluetooth radio directly into Reverbs headset, HP can better guarantee a level of connection quality.

Gordon Mah Ung Screen door? What screen door? With its much higher resolution, clarity of text and the sceen door effect was all but eliminated.

The resolution is astounding

The star of the show, though, is the new Reverb headset and its resolution per eye. At 2,1602,160 pixels, its more twice what was available on HPs original Mixed Reality headset.

We got to compare it to Samsung Odyssey+Mixed Reality headset, which features dual AMOLED screens with a resolution of 1,4401,600 per eye (essentially the same as HTCs current Vive Pro). The difference was astounding. The Odyssey+ with Samsungs Anti-SDE screen technology is already considered one of the better headsets, so thats saying something.

Unlike the Samsung, which uses AMOLEDs, HP continues to rely on LCD screens at up to 90Hz and an impulse backlight to reduce motion blurring.

Gordon Mah Ung HPs original Mixed Reality headset on the left, HPs new Reverb in the middle, and a Samsung Odyssey+ on the right.

With Reverb, HP rethinks the VR headset

HP didnt just drop new screens into an old design and call it a day, either. The company has completely redesigned its Mixed Reality headset. Gone is the clamping headband in favor of a Velcro top band. The weight of the Reverb is about 1.1 pounds, about two-thirds that of the Vive Pro. The Reverb includes integrated earphones, which can be removed.

Gordon Mah Ung HPs Reverb integrate headsets which can be removed.

HP will sell a Reverb Consumer Edition, which features a machine-washable face cushion and longer wire harness. For commercial userswhich is the primary focus of the ReverbHP will sell the Reverb Professional Edition, whose leather-style face cushion can be wiped clean with an alcohol swab. The Professional Edition also includes a shorter wire harness, as the company expects most applications to be used with backpack VR PCs.

The company said it plans to sell the shorter harness to consumers as well, but no pricing was immediately available. The cable itself connects to a PCs DisplayPort and USB port, while a simple Oculink connector joins the harness with the headset.

Gordon Mah Ung HPs new Reverb uses a PCIe-based Oculink connector to connect the HMD with a cable harness.

What your PC needs to run the Reverb

With higher resolution, comes higher system requirements. Obviously, system needs will vary greatly by the actual game or application, but HP officials say a GeForce GTX 1080 or GeForce GTX 2070 are recommended.

Gordon Mah Ung HPs new Reverb rests on your head using Velcro bands and this donut on the back. Its fairly comfortable, and at 1.1 pounds its quite light.

How much will the HP Reverb cost?

HP said the Reverb Consumer Edition should go on sale late next month for $600. Thats an increase in pricing over the originals $450, but also a considerable upgrade. HTCs basic Vive continues to sell for $500 and is the very definition of screen door effect.

HTCs Vive Pro pushes the price (for the headset only) to $800, but the Pro is aimed at commercial users. HPs professional version with two controllers, meanwhile, hits the street at $650 with a 1 year warranty standard and the ability to extend the warranty beyondwhich commercial users are often concerned with since down time can mean loss of productivity.
Microsoft Teams is moving ahead in its gradual replacement of Skype for Business, which was once Microsofts go-to solution for collaborating via video or text. On Tuesday Microsoft announced several new collaborative features that lean toward business use, especially for those who work in collaborative environments at an office.

One of the flagship featuresbackground blurring for remote or home workershas been beefed up with the ability to select a custom background. Other improvements include better whiteboarding, in both virtual spaces and the real world.

When Microsoft Teams launched two years ago this week, Microsoft pitched it as a collaborative messaging environment that would compete with Slack. That foundation has been built up over time with closer ties to other Microsoft Office apps, such as Word or PowerPoint, services like Yammer and OneDrive, and now improved video chat features built upon the Skype technology.

Microsoft The ability to ignore a presenter creates this neat ghosting effect in Microsoft Teams.

What this means to you: Microsoft said Tuesday that it has phased out Skype for Business on its own campusas good sign as any that Skype for Business is dead. Instead, the future is a smarter Teams, and thats good. But there are tougher questions ahead, such as whether Microsoft will implement its Data Loss Prevention tool to sniff out confidential conversations.

A bevy of new collaborative features

Teams smart backgrounds and new whiteboarding features share some common technologynamely, Microsofts ability to use the cloud to recognize the most important element of the scene: you. Previously, the background blurring feature left the background in place, letting participants wonder at what that vague pile of stuff behind you might be. Now you can remove that entirely, selecting a generic custom background instead.

Another new feature for Teams is the ability to add a secondary camera for whiteboarding. Content drawn on physical whiteboards can be captured and brought into the virtual space, using the Office Lens technology Microsoft pioneered for the phone. (Microsoft already has a virtual whiteboard, called Whiteboard, that remote and in-office users can use.) Andflipping the smart background tech on its headMicrosoft can use object recognition to cut whoever is drawing on the whiteboard almost out of the scene, replacing them with a ghost and letting the content itself shine through.

Microsoft said that it will roll out the custom backgrounds later this year, alongside the intelligent whiteboard cameras. The virtual Whiteboard is already in public preview. Smaller features being added include live captions and subtitles, and secured private channels.

One technology to watch is Data Loss Prevention, Microsofts tool for preventing information from leaking outside of corporate walls. DLP is currently available in all Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans that include what Microsoft calls Office 365 Advanced Compliance. It can screen for sensitive information in chats and channel conversations, but not in actual speech. Given that Microsoft touts its ability to perform real-time transcription and translation services, its reasonable to expect that capability to arrive before long in video calls.
Take heed, because hes a lyrical poet. And hes coming to Harrisburg.

The early 90s hip-hop star Vanilla Ice, a.k.a. Robert Matthew Van Winkle, will perform this summer at Club XL, 801 S. 10th St., Harrisburg, at 7 p.m. June 8.

Tickets are $30 in advance and can be purchased at Ticketmaster.com or the Club XL website.

If you were a teenager circa 1990 theres little chance you dont know who Vanilla Ice is. The rapper, actor and television host rose to stardom with the release of his debut album, To the Extreme. Buoyed by such hits as Ice Ice Baby and Play That Funky Music, the album sold 15 million copies worldwide.

In addition to recording and performing, Vanilla Ice also hosts the DIY Networks home improvement TV series The Vanilla Ice Project.

Ices last visit to central Pa. was in 2016, when he played at the York Fair with Tone Loc, Young MC, Color Me Badd, Coolio, and Salt N Pepa as part of the I Love the 90s Fest.

Other upcoming shows at Club XL include The Record Company (April 6), Lotus (April 18), Warrant (May 3) and Men Without Hats (June 7).
Bet you cant eat just one peanut butter egg.

At this time of year the calorie-packed candies crowd counters at diners, beauty shops and auto mechanics.

It can be hard to resist the temptation of a creamy peanut butter egg coated in a chocolate shell, especially when the price is right at about a $1 a pop.

During Lent churches and non-profit groups in central Pennsylvania crank out hundreds of thousands of the homemade candies all in the name of fundraising. Armies of volunteers invest hundreds of hours mixing, dipping and wrapping the eggs.

As fundraisers go, the eggs, also sold in other flavors such as coconut and butter cream, are a lucrative endeavor. Many churches raise several thousand dollars from the sales, even using the profits to fund building additions.

Its kind of a regional thing, said Lee Zimmerman, owner of Zimmermans Nuts and Candies in Penbrook. Its the Pennsylvania Dutch thing.

For decades Zimmermans has supplied groups with peanut butter and other ingredients, from coconut and flavorings to chocolate and wrappers, for egg making. Some travel from as far as Berks County to buy supplies.

Zimmermans also dedicates space in its stores to sell about a half a dozen different churchs eggs.

And if you think the eggs are all the same, think again. No two eggs are identical. Groups stick to favorite recipes and everything from what type of peanut butter to the size of the eggs is scrutinized.

Some use cream cheese or marshmallow. Some use real coconut, others flavorings. Some churches go off the typical flavor grid with cherry, teaberry or walnut.

Of course, coating choices range from milk and dark chocolate to white. Some roll a smaller eggs, white others make eggs large enough for sharing.

No matter what, everyone claims to make the best.

Here we profile eight different groups in the Harrisburg area selling the eggs. They are listed in no particular order.

Not listed? Add your sale to our list.

If you are selling eggs, let us know by filling out our Peanut Butter Egg form.

Epiphany Lutheran Church

Its our biggest fundraiser of the year, said Lynn Shiner, head of the churchs egg committee.

Every season volunteers make more than 10,000 peanut butter, coconut cream and butter cream eggs. But why stop at just eggs? Their confectionary expertise extends to chocolate covered pretzels, marshmallows, peanuts and peanut filled pretzels.

When you are scared about the calories from the peanut butter eggs, you have options, Shiner said.

Still, the 1.5-ounce eggs are the biggest sellers at $1.25 a piece. Peanut butter eggs are made from Zimmermans all-natural peanut butter, which Shiner says is just healthier. Its not as oily. Real flaked coconut, not flavoring is used for coconut eggs.

You can purchase them at the church by calling in advance. Otherwise, find them for sale at Hong Kong Ruby at 2308 Patton Road, Battery Plus Bulbs at 4513 Jonestown Road in Colonial Park and Zimmermans in Penbrook.

1100 Colonial Road, Lower Paxton Township, 717-657-8959

Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church

Bite into a Zions peanut butter egg, and youre immediately notice a roasted peanut butter flavor.

Zions 1.7-ounce eggs stand out, and perhaps its because they use marshmallow. The result is a lighter, smoother texture.

As of Feb. 18, members had already rolled and dipped 13,564 eggs. Find them for sale at the Front Street Diner at 4003 N. Front St. in Susquehanna Township, Philadelphia Steaks & Hoagies at 4401 Carlisle Pike in Hampden Township and Hornungs True Hardware at 509 S. 29th St. in Paxtang.

They sell traditional peanut butter, coconut, double coconut and butter cream along with harder-to-find flavors such as black cherry, peppermint and teaberry. Eggs are priced $1 a piece.

Allegheny and Swatara streets, Dauphin, 717-921-8111

Peanut butters, coconut eggs and even peppermint eggs for sale at Tuckey's Stroehmann Bakery Outlet in Lower Paxton Township. The eggs are made by Chambers Hill United Methodist Church in Swatara Township.

Chambers Hill United Methodist Church

You know a Chambers Hill egg just by the colorful foil wrappers.

Theyre one of the only churches that doesnt wrap eggs in cellophane, making them Easter basket friendly.

The candies sell in six flavors - peanut butter, coconut, butter cream, peppermint, double coconut and maple walnut - for $1 a piece.

The peanut butter flavor is light and the consistency smooth and buttery with a slight hint of cream cheese.

Pre-order eggs by calling 717-561-9958. Pickup is 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday-Thursday and Thursday evenings by appointment. You also can buy them 4:30-7 p.m. at Friday Lenten Fish Dinners at Chambers Hill Fire Company. They also sell at Tuckeys Stroehmanns Bakery Outlet at 5970 Derry St. in Lower Paxton Township.

6300 Chambers Hill Road, Swatara Township, 717-561-0388

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Saint Elizabeths 2-ounce eggs are among the heftiest around.

They are very carefully weighed, said Donna Nebistinsky, pastoral assistant.

Egg making has been a long-standing tradition at the church where volunteers make peanut butter, coconut cream and butter cream in choice of milk, dark or white chocolate.

They sell for $1.50 a piece.

The recipe is a highly-guarded secret, she said.

Secret or not, Nebistinsky revealed cream cheese and Jif Peanut Butter make the ingredient list.

They melt in your mouth. They are very creamy, she said.

The eggs are available for sale after weekend masses and 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the church. In addition, they sell them 4-6:30 p.m. Fridays at the churchs Lenten fish dinners.

310 Hertzler Road, Mechanicsburg, 717-697-2614

Fishing Creek Salem UMC

Last year members made 41,800 eggs.

Egg-making is a more than 30 year tradition. The inventory includes double coconut, coconut cream, vanilla and peanut butter as well as chocolate covered pretzels. The eggs sell for $1 and the pretzels for $2.

You can find the eggs for sale at Red Land Beer & Soda Outlet at 601 Old York Road in Fairview Township or by calling the church at 717-938-1928.

Money raised over the years has been used for a variety of purposes including supporting the churchs many ministries.

402 Valley Road, Goldsboro

Seven Sorrows Blessed Virgin Mary

During Lent nearly 100 volunteers work assembly-line style making thousands of chocolate-covered peanut butter Easter egg candies. The army of helpers starts production in January and works until the week before Easter.

"We're the holy rollers," joked Judy Schaffner, one of the volunteers, last year as she rolled filling for the eggs.

In 2018 Seven Sorrows eggs were named tops by readers of PennLive in a contest. Members of Seven Sorrows have been making candy eggs for nine years. The first year they made 6,000 eggs, a mere drop in the bucket compared to the more than 75,000 they made last year.

They sell peanut butter, butter cream, coconut and peppermint with milk, dark and white chocolate for $1 a piece. Find them at the church and dozens of businesses including Middletown Pharmacy in Middletown, Brownstone Cafe in Middletown, TJ Rockwells in Elizabethtown and the Capitol Diner in Swatara Township.

280 N. Race St., Middletown, 717-944-5370

Eggs from Donnally Mills United Methodist Church in Tuscarora Twp., Perry County.

Donnally Mills United Methodist Church

Church members have been making candy eggs since at least the 1970s.

The eggs are priced at 80 cents apiece, and along with peanut butter they sell coconut, butter cream and cherry. Donnally Mills uses Zimmermans peanut butter and a cream cheese-based recipe, so the eggs melt in your mouth.

Order for pickup 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday-Friday at the Millerstown Senior Center by calling 717-589-3590.

4078 Raccoon Valley Road, Tuscarora Township, Perry County

Geyers United Methodist Church

Egg-making is a more than 50-year tradition at Geyers United Methodist Church. It all started in member Suzy Eplers kitchen with some close friends.

Fast forward to 2019 and members, including Epler who is co-chair of the egg committee, still sell the homemade candies in peanut butter, coconut, buttercream and peppermint patty. Today they are made at the church.

The recipe we have is a very simple recipe. We dont divulge it, said Tim Stine, co-chair.

He admits they are partial to Zimmermans peanut butter and Wilbur Chocolate from Lititz. Members know all the secrets.

Even if we gave someone our recipe, I doubt they could duplicate it. It has to do with how it is mixed and special ingredients, Epler said.

This season they expect to sell 33,000 eggs in a six-week span. Eggs are priced 90 cents apiece or $17 for a box of 20.

You can buy them noon-6 p.m. Tuesdays and 8 a.m.-noon Saturdays at the church or Fridays during fish dinners at the Londonderry Fire Co.

1605 S. Geyers Church Road, Londonderry Township, 717-944-6426

Here are more places where you can purchase peanut butter eggs in central Pa. These were submitted to PennLive.

Paxton United Methodist Church

Flavors: Peanut Butter and Coconut

Price: $1

Buy them: At the church at 3550 N. Progress Ave., Susquehanna Township, and Bagel Lovers at 2237 Paxton Church Road, Susquehanna Township

Our Lady of Lourdes Church

Milk, dark and white chocolate peanut butter and milk and dark chocolate coconut

Price: $1.50

Sold: At the church at 225 Salt Road in Enola after masses, 717-732-9642

The Mt. Laurel Church of God

Flavors: Milk and dark chocolate peanut butter

Price: 85 cents

Sold: At the church at 1295 Piketown Road, Harrisburg, 717-599-5602

United Methodist Church of Osceola Mills

Flavors: Milk and dark chocolate peanut butter and milk and dark chocolate coconut cream

Price: $1

Sold: At the church at 303 Curtin St., Osceola Mills, 814-339-6139

Saint Catherine Laboure

Flavors: Milk, dark and white chocolate peanut butter, Snickers, coconut, caramel and more.

Price: $1

Sold: At the church at 4000 Derry St., Swatara Township 4:30 -7:30 p.m Fridays during fish fry dinners. 717-564-1321

Ebenezer United Methodist Church

Flavors: Peanut butter and coconut

Price: $1

Sold: At Saturdays Market in Londonderry Township or by calling the church at 717-939-0766. The church is located at 890 Ebenezer Road, Middletown.

Hope United Presbyterian Church

Flavors: Peanut butter, butter cream, coconut, chocolate-covered pretzels

Price: $12.50

Sold: At the church at 931 Red Hill Road, Dauphin, 717-921-2253

St. Johns Episcopal Church (Lancaster)

Flavors: Milk and dark chocolate peanut butter and dark chocolate coconut.

Price: $5

Sold: Between Sunday services 9-10:15 a.m. at St. John's Parish Hall at 321 W. Chestnut St. and at Manor Animal Hospital, 2100 Stone Mill Road, Lancaster. 717-333-9133

Centre Point Church

Flavors: Peanut Butter (1-ounce eggs) and custom 7-ounce peanut butter eggs with custom names written on them.

Price: $1

Sold: At the church at 1400 Fox Hill Road, State College, 267-463-3312

Steelton Volunteer Fire Department

Flavors: Milk, dark and white chocolate peanut butter, dark chocolate coconut, dark chocolate peppermint, milk chocolate pretzels, white chocolate pretzels, dark chocolate pretzels.

Price: $1

Sold: At the fire station at 185 N. Front St. or several local Steelton businesses and social clubs

St. Bernadettes Church

Flavors: Milk chocolate peanut butter and dark chocolate coconut cream

Prices: $1

Sold: After masses at the church at 901 N. High St., Duncannon, and Mutzabaughs Market in Duncannon. 717-514-0753

Newville Church of the Brethren

Flavors: Peanut butter and coconut

Price: 80 cents

Sold: At the church at 16A Carlisle Road, Newville, 717-776-9456

United Methodist Church of West Fairview

Flavors: Milk and dark chocolate peanut butter, milk and dark chocolate coconut, and milk and dark chocolate pretzels

Price: $13

Sold: At the church at 1201 Second St., West Fairview, 717-732-0103

Shepardstown United Methodist Church

Flavors: Peanut butter and coconut

Price: Not provided.

Sold: At the church at 1934 S. York St., Mechanicsburg, 717-766-3076

St. Paul Evangelical Luthern Church (Carlisle)

Flavors: Peanut butter

Price: 85 cents

Sold: Middlesex Diner, Carlisle Diner, Advance Auto, Pepperidge Farm Thirft Store and the church at 201 W. Louther St., Carlisle, 717-243-2319

Mt. Rock UMC, Newville

Flavors: Coconut with milk chocolate and peanut butter with milk or white chocolate

Price: 75 cents

Sold: Country Butcher Shop in Plainfield and Dutch Country Store in Shippensburg. 717-776-7016

St Peter Lutheran Church

Flavors: Peanut Butter, Coconut, Butter Cream, Maple Walnut

Price: 75 cents

Sold: At the church at 130 Nittany Drive, Mechanicsburg, 717-766-2701

Trinity United Church of Christ

Flavors: Peanut butter and coconut cream

Price: $1

Sold: At the church at 602 Main St., Watsontown, 570-538-1070
Raystown Lake in Huntingdon County is the largest lake that is entirely within the state of Pennsylvania.

The lake covers 8,300 acres.

The lake  created by damming the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River - was originally built as a hydroelectric project.

The concrete structor center right is the water intake at the dam at Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, Aug. 1, 1990. (Allied Pix for The Patriot-News)

The lake in its current form was completed in 1973 by the Army Corps of Engineers. According to newspaper reports at the time, about 1,000 people attended the June 6, 1974, official dedication of the Raystown Dam and flood control project.

U.S. Vice President Gerald Ford attended the dedication. It is a perfect example of public funds being used for the public benefit, Ford said at the time.

Seven Points Marina at Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, Aug. 1, 1990. (Allied Pix for The Patriot-News)

According to The Evening News story on the dedication, the Raystown Dam and Recreation Project is still several years away from completion.

The entire project cost $67 million, according to the newspaper.

A fall foliage tour at Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, August 1989. (Source unknown)

Completed in October [1973], the dam is backing up a lake that eventually will reach 30 miles long and cover 30,000 acres  The beaches, boating and camping areas are not completed, however, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, which built the complex.

Three boat ramps and two campgrounds will open this year, with the beach and additional facilities not scheduled for completion until 1976, the Corps said. The new lake is expected to attract 1.4 million visitors annually.

Of concern is whether rainfall in the area will be sufficient to raise the level of the lake to the required level for boating.

The level of the lake must reach 775 feet above sea level before boating becomes possible. As of last month, the latest reading available, the level was 750.

The down side of the dam at Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, Aug. 1, 1990. (Allied Pix for The Patriot-News)

The dam was primarily meant for flood control.

Even though the cost of building this complex project was enormous, before the dam was even completed, it nearly paid for itself in the damage it prevented in the 1972 Agnes flood, said state Transportation Secretary Jacob Kassab.

The dam itself is 220 feet high and 1,700 feet long.

Seven Points Marina at Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, Aug. 1, 1990. (Allied Pix for The Patriot-News)

Allegheny Electric Cooperative operates the Raystown Hydroelectric Project and the William F. Matson Generating Station at the Raystown Dam.

The entire area is 29,000 acres with 12 public access areas, picnic areas, scuba diving, beaches, boat launches, campgrounds, trails, hunting, fishing, kayaking and a concession stand. It is operated and maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The gas dock at Seven Points Marina at Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, Aug. 1, 1990. (Allied Pix for The Patriot-News)

From the Lake Raystown Resort, with 400 acres of waterfront, you can take a Proud Mary showboat cruise or enjoy the Wild River Waterpark, which has two 380-foot twisting water slide and a white water innertube ride.

The beach at Seven Points Marina, Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, Aug. 1, 1990. (Allied Pix for The Patriot-News)

Seven Points Marina at Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, Aug. 1, 1990. (Allied Pix for The Patriot-News)

Bucaneeer Bay at Raystown Lake, Huntingdon County, Aug. 1, 1990. (Allied Pix for The Patriot-News)
Arrest records of June Mama June Shannon, mother of Alana Honey Boo Boo Thompson, were made public Monday following her arrest last week on drug charges at an Alabama gas station.

The 39-year-old reality star from Georgia and her boyfriend, 43-year-old Eugene Geno Doak, were arrested March 13 in Macon County. According to a deposition in the case, deputies responded about 3 p.m. that Wednesday to the Sunoco gas station on Pleasant Spring Drive near Tuskegee.

Records list Shannon as the victim in a domestic violence case against Doak, and state she was verbally attacked. During the investigation, however, drugs and drug paraphernalia were found.

Shannon and Doak, according to the criminal complaint, were in possession of crack cocaine and a crack pipe. Both are charged with felony drug possession and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, which is a misdemeanor.

Additionally, Doak was charged with third-degree domestic, also a misdemeanor. Records state Doak told Shannon that he was going to kill her with the intent to carry out the threat.

Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson said he may release more information and mugshots at some point.

TMZ reported an audio of a conversation between Shannon and the tow truck driver after she was released. She was trying to get her car out of impound. June sounds manic as she describes what she says went down, the show reported.

"Mama June and Honey Boo Boo first came on the reality television scene in 2012 on TLCs Toddlers and Tiaras. That led to a spin-off show, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which aired on TLC from 2012 through 2014. The show was cancelled after it was learned that Shannon was dating a registered sex offender.

Another spin-off featuring Shannon aired in 2017 call Mama June: From Not to Hot, documents her weight loss transformation from 460 to 160 pounds.
A man who was accidentally added to a group text created by teen girls became annoyed with their messages and sent them a photo of his penis, according to police in Cumberland County.

Now, Antwine Murray, 41, of Lancaster faces felony charges of disseminating sexual material to a minor and unlawful contact with a minor, as well as a misdemeanor charge of corruption of minors, online court documents show.

According to Upper Allen Township police, officers were notified in December that a teen girl had received an obscene image through a text message.

A later investigation reveled that Murray had accidentally been added to a group chat populated by 13- and 14-year-old girls, police said.

He became annoyed with their messages, and that annoyance led to his decision to send the teens a close-up photograph of his penis, police said.

Police said they later identified Murray, and he was arrested last week.

He was arraigned on his charges before Magisterial District Judge Paul M. Fegley, and he is slated to appear for a preliminary hearing at 9:15 a.m. April 1.
Happy Valley is on the list of campaign stops this week for Democratic presidential hopeful Beto ORourke.

The former three-term congressman from Texas will be at Penn States HUB-Robeson Center from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to his campaign website.

He is the first 2020 presidential candidate to visit Centre County, ORourkes camp reported. Interested individuals must sign up here.

President Donald Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016. But Democrats most likely will spend a lot of time in the commonwealth as it maintains its usual battleground state status.

ORourke joins an already crowded slate of Democrats vying for the partys nomination. ORourke gained name recognition last year when he challenged Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz won the race by a slim margin.

ORourke raised $6.1 million in donations on his first day after announcing presidential bid. It was the highest first-day total for all declared Democratic candidates so far, ORourkes campaign staff confirmed.

Come see Democratic Presidential candidate Beto ORourke in the HUB tomorrow!! He is the first 2020 presidential... Posted by Penn State College Democrats on Monday, March 18, 2019
Elected officials and public employees who commit serious crimes will soon lose their pensions as well as their freedom.

The state House passed legislation Tuesday to cut off pension benefits from elected officials who commit a felony offense or ones punishable by more than five years in prison. The legislation also covers state workers and public school employees.

The Senate-passed government reform measure, authored by Sen. John DiSanto, R-Dauphin County, was approved by a 194-1 vote without any debate. It now goes back to the Senate for approval of the technical changes the House made. The Senate could hold that concurrence vote as soon as Wednesday.

If approved, as is expected, Gov. Tom Wolf said Tuesday he will sign the bill, making it the years first new state law. The governor indicated in 2017, when the bill was introduced in the last legislative session, he would sign it into law.

Providing lifelong benefits to those who have committed serious crimes, especially those related to their elected office, is a betrayal of the publics trust," Wolf said in a statement released on Tuesday. "I am eager to sign this legislation but I urge the General Assembly to take on more ethics reforms, including reforming Pennsylvanias utterly insufficient campaign finance system. Public officials should be held to the highest possible standard and we should expect more out of them and our government.

DiSanto was excited his bill is on track to become a law.

It is past time we ensure lawbreakers face the consequences for violating the public trust, DiSanto said in a recent news release about this bill. Taxpayers expect and deserve nothing less.

The bill seeks to strengthen the states Public Employee Pension Forfeiture Act. It would strip the taxpayer-funded pension of public employees or officials who commit a job-related felony or one that carries a punishment of at least five years in prison, starting on the day they plead guilty or no contest or are found guilty.

Currently, the courts have interpreted the law to mean the forfeiture doesnt occur until the person is sentenced by a judge, which can be many months after guilt is found or an entry of guilty or no contest is made.

It also broadens that law to apply to any federal offense including federal fraud or conspiracy to commit fraud or a crime that occurs in another state that is substantially the same as one that occurs in the commonwealth that would cost someone their pension. They include such crimes as sexual offenses, theft, forgery, bribery, and wagering on an official action, among others.

The driving force behind this measure was a 2017 decision by the State Employees Retirement System board to restore the $245,000 a year pension of former longtime state Sen. Bob Mellow of Lackawanna County. He regained his pension despite his guilty plea and serving prison time on federal conspiracy charges - which currently is regarded as a non-pension forfeiture crime.

House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster County, said he and other House members have worked on a similar bill in each of the last three legislative sessions and applauded its passage this session.

When lawmakers or other public employees commit crimes, they should never receive the benefit of taxpayer-funded retirements," he said. "Public officials and employees should be held to the highest standard and face the financial penalty for breaking the public trust.

* This story was updated to include statements from Gov. Tom Wolf and House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

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Harrisburg school board voted Monday to table a motion to hire new in-house counsel for the city school district, but not before the fault lines of old political battles resurfaced in a debate that dissolved into a shouting match between Board President Danielle Robinson and the districts Chief Recovery Officer Janet Samuels.

Robinson has been heading efforts to restructure the districts legal services since December, arguing that the board should be able to save on annual expenditures for legal costs that have ranged from $800,000 to more than $1 million for years by hiring an in-house counsel working from a consistent, base salary.

She prefaced Mondays discussion by noting she had no concerns with current solicitor Samuel Coopers work; just the practice in recent years of farming so much legal work to outside counsel, over and above the retention fees paid to Coopers firm, Dilworth Paxson.

This was just a suggestion to see how we can save money, Robinson said, because we know we cant keep moving forward like this.

The nerves were exposed when Samuels raised objections to the process that the board used - a public request for qualifications advertised in The Patriot-News - that she said did not comport with best practices for the provision of professional services.

Robinson accused Samuels of overstepping her role in trying to influence the boards decision on the hiring, including what she said was a presentation during an interview session aimed at denigrating the character of one of the two candidates that responded to the advertisement.

Your job is to lead this districts recovery effort, Robinson said. Not to tell these board members what to do and who to vote for. This board needs to become strong again and make its own decisions... and not be pressured from the outside.

Neither candidate was named publicly, but sources familiar with the situation confirmed to PennLive that the applicants were Harrisburg attorneys James Ellison, a private practitioner with 20 years of history in city politics and government, and Trent Hargrove.

Ellison, in particular, comes with a history for the board.

As an attorney with now-defunct Rhoads & Sinon law firm, he played a central role in the controversial 2010 ouster of then-Harrisburg Superintendent Gerald Kohn, a move that came as part of then-Mayor Linda Thompsons desire to sweep the city clean of her longtime predecessor Stephen Reeds bureacracy.

Ellison had run Thompsons 2009 mayoral race against Reed, and was a key, albeit behind-the-scenes advisor to her in the early days of her administration.

Kohn filed a wrongful termination suit against the district which led, in 2013, to a $2.4 million settlement in Kohns favor. The bulk of that award was paid by insurance coverage, but Rhoads & Sinon also agreed to pay $250,000 related to Ellisons representation of Harrisburg School District during the Kohn ouster.

More recently, Ellisons current and former law firms agreed in November 2016 to pay $420,000 in a settlement with the Coatesville Area School District after a lengthy legal battle with officials there over allegations of overbilling and giving unsound legal advice.

Rhoads & Sinon and Ellison collected more than $7.7 million from that school district for work from 2002 through 2013, according to the April 2015 suit, which district officials contended was among the highest costs for school systems across the state.

In addition, in 2012, Ellison was ordered to pay a $2,297 fine as part of an agreement ending a State Ethics Commission probe that found, in part, that he improperly steered work toward Rhoads & Sinon while he was chairman of the Harrisburg Authority.

Those issues notwithstanding, Ellison has no record of public discipline by the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the state board that handles professional complaints against attorneys. His license is listed as active with his current practice, Susquehanna Legal Group.

Once a Reed ally, Ellison was general counsel for the Harrisburg School District during 1997-1999 and again after Reeds takeover of the schools during 2001-2005. However, the district stopped using Rhoads & Sinon in 2008.

PennLive tried to reach Ellison after Mondays session, but was unsuccessful.

Hargrove, meanwhile, has little direct experience in school law. Since wrapping up 20 years in state government in 2012, he has worked in private practice, and served as the Pennsylvania Bar Associations diversity officer.

When Samuels weighed in with her concerns about the hiring during Mondays meeting, she was forcefully shouted down by Robinson.

Samuels said her concerns were about the boards recruitment process, and she said she had asked Robinson to make direct contacts with regional firms that specialize in school law, but likely didnt see the boards initial request for qualifications in December.

It is about ensuring that there is a process that reflects excellence, and a process that is fair... Samuels said, adding that the board needed to reach out to "reputable firms... so that this district can move forward and focus on the business of children."

But Robinson angrily accused Samuels of trying to put her thumb on the scale of the hiring by presenting negative information about one candidate; it was not clear which one.

Harrisburg school board voted Monday to table a motion to hire new in-house counsel for the city school district, but not before the fault lines of old political battles resurfaced in a debate that dissolved into a shouting match between Board President Danielle Robinson and the districts Chief Recovery Officer Janet Samuels.

What you wanted to do was go in and tell the board: I dont like this person, Robinson said. As the chief recovery officer, your job is to make sure we are in line with the recovery plan. Not to tell this board what to do and who to vote for.

Board member Ellis Roy soon after made the motion to table, and it passed on a 5-3 vote with Robinson and directors Lola Lawson and Patricia Whitehead-Myers voting no.

After a 10- minute recess, Robinson reconvened the meeting with a public apology to Samuels for her outburst. My passion should not have come out that way, the president said. Samuels accepted, and the meeting moved on with no further outbursts.

Robinson said the board may revisit the in-house counsel position at its next meeting, and that for now, the two candidates remain in contention to succeed Cooper, who did not seek the in-house job.

Legal costs have long been an issue in Harrisburg schools.

Coopers firm requires the district to hire outside counsel for contract negotiation and labor issues because Dilworth Paxson represents the Pennsylvania State Education Association, for charter school issues because it has no practice in that area, and special education issues, Cooper noted.
A Michigan man faces felony charges in Cumberland County after police said he created a fake social media account to get underage girls to send him sexual photos.

Joey Hoffman, 36, of Lansing, Mich. was identified as a suspect after police received a report in October from a child who received obscene sexual material through social media, according to Upper Allen Township police.

Police said an investigation showed that Hoffman had created a fake social media account, and, during a conversation with the child, he sent her a photo of his penis.

Hoffman then asked the child to send him nude photographs, and, when she did, he sent the images to other social media users, police said.

Hoffman was arrested in Michigan and extradited to Pennsylvania, where he was arraigned last week on his charges, police said.

Hoffman faces felony charges of unlawful contact with a minor, unlawful use of a computer, disseminating sexually explicit material to a minor, criminal use of a communications facility, disseminating photos of child sex acts, child pornography and criminal solicitation of child pornography.

That is according to online court documents, which also show he faces a misdemeanor charge of corruption of minors.

On Monday, Hoffman waived his preliminary hearing, and he is now headed to county court.

He remains in Cumberland County Prison unable to post $50,000 cash bail.
State Rep. Brian Ellis, who resigned from the state House of Representatives while under investigation for sexual assault, wont be collecting any taxpayer-funded paychecks any longer.

However, hell still be eligible to receive the generous health benefits and pension provided to state lawmakers, courtesy of the taxpayers.

The total package of benefits for Ellis and his family could cost taxpayers more than $70,000 annually.

Ellis, 49, resigned on Monday from his 11th House District seat representing a part of Butler County. A Republican, Elllis has served in the House for more than 14 years and had just begun his eighth term. He said his resignation is in the best interest of his families, constituents and his own health.

The Dauphin County District Attorneys office is investigating an allegation from a woman who said Ellis sexually assaulted her in 2015. Ellis has not been charged with any crime.

The woman, who works in the state Capitol, claimed that Ellis sexually assaulted her while she was incapacitated. The woman subsequently filed a formal complaint against Ellis with the House Republicans seeking an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. His resignation effectively ended that inquiry into the allegations.

Because he left his position before the end of the month and had received his nearly $7,400 paycheck for the month on March 1, Ellis will be required to return a prorated portion of his pay to the House comptroller, said House Chief Clerk Dave Reddecliff.

At the same time, Ellis will continue to be eligible for lifetime health and prescription benefits for himself, his wife as long as she is married to him, and their two children up to age 26. (According to a Butler Eagle story, Ellis wife Monica filed for divorce on Feb. 21 following more than 20 years of marriage.)

He and his family also will enjoy dental and vision insurance. He and his wife as long as she is married to him also receive long-term care insurance as part of his post-employment benefit package.

All of these benefits for him and his family are costing taxpayers $35,308 this year, Reddecliff said. Ellis will be required to contribute 1 percent of his final years salary of $88,610, or $886, for his share of the cost of health benefits.

Additionally, he will be eligible to receive a taxpayer-funded pension. Based on estimates calculated by PennLive, the maximum annual annuity he would receive is nearly $40,000.

The financial impact on taxpayers of providing benefits like this to lawmakers rubs conservative lobbyist Matt Brouillette the wrong way.

Although Rep. Ellis hasnt been convicted of the heinous crimes hes been accused of, these gold-plated benefits that most working Pennsylvanians will never get are a big part of the problem in Harrisburg, said Brouillette, president and CEO of the Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs. They are the wrong kind of incentives to stay in office, and move too many people from public service to self-service.

House Republican leaders and Gov. Tom Wolf urged Ellis to resign after the sexual assault allegations emerged in January.

Attorneys representing Ellis have said the allegations against him are false.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

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Roughly 30 people gathered near the state Capitol in Harrisburg Tuesday to show their solidarity and support for the Muslim community and the people of New Zealand.

At the rally, several speakers of different faiths spoke out against hate speech and violence.

They gathered in the wake of the shootings at two mosques during Friday prayer at the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.

They were shot at their house of worship, Aaysha Noor, social justice advocate and co-chair of the Response Team of the Community Responders Network, told the group. People need to feel safe in their place of worship. People need to feel safe in their neighborhoods.

Those gathered wrote notes, some with messages like We Love You, which will be distributed at area mosques.

We are all feeling that pain. We are all hurting, we are all grieving, and we are here because we want our children to grow up in a world better than this, she said.
MIDDLEBURG -- One of two men accused of robbing and pistol whipping the owner of a coin shop in Snyder County has been sentenced to 10 to 20 years in state prison.

The sentence imposed Monday in Snyder County court on David T. Bobe, 40, of Berwick, also includes restitution of $150 that will be shared by co-defendant Michael A. Rodenizer, 39, of Beaver Springs, who is to be sentenced later this month.

Rodenizer pleaded guilty in December to charges of theft and conspiracy charges. He is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.

The reason restitution is low is that the stolen gold and jewelry were recovered when their car struck a guardrail along Routes 11/15 south of Selinsgrove while pursued by state police.

Rodenizer was taken into custody there. Bobe fled and was arrested later.

Bobe last month pleaded no contest to a robbery charge just before his trial was to begin. He has two previous unrelated robbery convictions.

Bobe and Rodenizer were on parole when they robbed Sterners Coin Shop in Shamokin Dam on Sept. 25, 2017, of approximately $45,000 in gold and $30,000 in currency.

Robert Sterner, the coin shop owner, told police that Rodenizer had made arrangements to sell three pieces of jewelry.

He said he paid Rodenizer $60 for a gold class ring and was evaluating the jewelry when he was struck on the head twice with a handgun and several times again after he fell to the floor.

After his hands were duct taped, the intruders placed coins, gold bars, jewelry and currency in the duffle bags each had and fled, he told police. They left behind a .22-caliber handgun, police said.

Rodenizer claimed they committed the robbery because they had been threatened by a man for not paying a debt for methamphetamine, the arrest affidavit states.
City, county and state leaders plan to dedicate a monument next year intended to honor and preserve the history of Harrisburgs Old Eighth Ward, a residential community demolished in 1917 to make space for the Capitol complex.

State lawmakers, Harrisburg City leaders, Dauphin County commissioners, academic researchers and business supporters gathered in the Capitol Rotunda on Tuesday to provide an update on The Commonwealth Monument Project. They say they are continuing to work on plans to install a monument inscribed with 100 names of families from the Old Eighth Ward.

State Rep. Patty Kim, D-Dauphin County, said she is optimistic the city will have a monument that also reminds people of two significant moments in history: when black men won the right to vote; and when women won that right.

Each of the figures depicted on the monument will be well-known speakers in the Capital Citys African-American Old Eighth Ward.

The four life-size figures on a cobblestone circle invite us all to recognize Pennsylvanias deep history of citizen activism and its support fo the constitutional right to vote for African Americans and women, says a description of The Commonwealth Monument Project.

Area leaders seek monument to honor 19th and 15th amendments, as well as Harrisburg's Old Eighth Ward.

Pennsylvania general assembly members were among leaders in securing states ratification of the 19th amendment in 1919, Kim said. The amendment passed in August 1920. Its 100th anniversary is in 2020.

Finally, women were granted the right to vote, Kim said.

The 15th amendment gave black men the right to vote. And the 150th anniversary of that achievement will be celebrated next year.

Harrisburg City Council President Wanda Williams said she is delighted that there are web-based tools being used to find the descendants of the Old Eighth Ward families. The stories of the once-thriving African-American and immigrant neighborhood will be told, she noted.

They were "once valued, now vanished, Williams said.

Digital Harrisburg, created in 2014, is a series of projects created by students and faculty at Messiah College and the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology that explores the history and culture of the Harrisburg area.

Researchers have combed federal census records, city directories, and historic newspapers to identify 100 voices of Harrisburgs historical black community.

Information gathered will reveal the meaningful contributions African Americans have made to society, said Philadelphia Democrat state Sen. Vincent Hughes.

Its by federal decree, under the current White House, that we are obliged at every level of government to recognize in some fashion the 400 year reality, and the presence of blacks in this country for 400 years, Hughes said.

The Commonwealth Monument Project fits into that recognition, he continued.

It fits into that reality," Hughes said. Fits into that conversation, and if you will, fits the need in a small but an extremely important way about the presence of 400 years of blacks in this city.

The monuments dedication is anticipated for June 2020.
Residents from around the state have reported issues and concerns with the Sunoco Pipelines Mariner East II pipeline project, and on Tuesday, many of them gathered at the state Capitol.

About 50 people took part in the Citizens Pipeline Rally over their safety, environmental and property-rights concerns about the project. Many were property owners who have been fighting the 350-mile pipeline that transports liquid natural gas across the state.

State Attorney General Josh Shapiro launched a joint investigation with Delaware County District Attorney Katayoun M. Copeland last week into allegations of criminal misconduct.

This follows a separate investigation by Chester County District Attorney Thomas Hogan into the pipeline blamed for causing sinkholes and polluting water there.

Cumberland County resident Wilmer Baker, who has an upcoming hearing before the Public Utilities Commission over safety concerns with the project, was one of the speakers.

Along with several citizens speaking out against the pipeline, state Sen. Andrew E. Dinniman of the 19th District said he and the rest of the Pipeline Safety Caucus have introduced a package of comprehensive pipeline safety bills.

We have come here today to claim our right to a safe and healthy environment and to protest Sunocos Mariner East project that threatens our safety, Dinniman said.

Just prior to the rally, another group of lawmakers held a news conference taking the opposite stance and highlighting safety and benefits of pipelines.

Pennsylvanias shale gas industry produces 20 percent of the nations natural gas, generating $23 billion in wages for Pennsylvania workers, said state Sen. Camera Bartolotta.

And pipelines are a safe and essential part of that growing industry, she said.

By a wide margin, pipelines are the safest and most efficient means of transporting gas and oil products to consumers, she said. We know that using pipelines to transport products takes up to 200,000 trucks per year off of our highways and bridges."

See the full press conference here.

The pipeline project has had a number of issues.

Last month, the state Department of Environmental Protection halted construction permits for the companys pipelines, saying they have not fixed problems related to an explosion last year.

In August, state officials had levied a $148,000 fine against the company for harming private wells while building the Mariner East 2 pipeline in Lebanon, Berks and Chester counties.

And in April, the company agreed to pay a $355,622 penalty for allowing materials from drilling for the natural gas products pipeline to flow into streams and wetlands in Cumberland, Dauphin, Blair, Cambria, Huntingdon, Indiana, Lancaster, Washington, Allegheny and Westmoreland counties.

The 350-mile pipeline transports domestically-produced ethane, propane and butane east from processing plants in Ohio, across West Virginia and Pennsylvania to Energy Transfers Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in Delaware County, where its stored for distribution locally, domestically and overseas.
Save Three Mile Island?

Its an almost incomprehensible notion to people of a certain age in central Pennsylvania who - for several days in 1979 - worried the nuclear power station on the Susquehanna River was a ticking time bomb poised to destroy the world as they knew it.

But fast forward 40 years, and a major effort to save TMI and the rest of Pennsylvanias relatively large nuclear power fleet is the energy issue du jour in the Pennsylvania Capitol.

The essential question is this: Should state lawmakers and Gov. Tom Wolf agree to a plan to subsidize the states five commercial reactors at a time when the nations natural gas boom is starting to push some of them toward early retirement? Should everyone pay higher electricity bills to keep TMI operating, as some suggest?

Its a high-stakes decision that forces us to think through a lot of questions for which there arent easy answers. And it will force some TMI survivors to set aside some long-held biases stamped on the regions consciousness by the accident.

Whats the problem?

As Pennsylvania and other states have tapped into their vast Marcellus Shale gas reserves, gas prices have lowered and energy companies have begun switching from coal to gas as the primary source for their power plants. Coupled with a stagnant demand for power since the Great Recession, the resulting dip in energy prices has made power generated by some of the states five nuclear power stations less competitive.

So much so that Three Mile Island, operated by Chicago-based Exelon Corp. - the largest nuclear power generator in America - has operated at a loss since 2015.

As a result, Exelon has said it will start taking steps to close the plant by this summer in the absence of state help. A second plant, Beaver Valley in western Pennsylvania, is also being targeted for a 2021 retirement by its operator, First Energy.

If those plants came off line, Pennsylvania would lose 26.8 percent of its nuclear generating capacity.

Do we need it? From a strict keeping-the-lights-on perspective, probably not.

But the question is more complex than that.

Nuclear energy also happens to be the nations largest source of carbon-free power, which means that it is kind of a foundational piece in the building fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit the effects of climate change.

Supporters of the subsidy effort here note that at present, nuclear provides 93 percent of the all the zero-carbon energy produced in Pennsylvania.

Any near-term drop in that nuclear generation would most likely be picked up by burning more natural gas which, while cleaner than coal, is still a fossil fuel and would add to Pennsylvanias carbon loading and undermine progress the state has made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the last decade.

Changes in Pennsylvania's energy mix since the turn of the century.Arcadia Power Blog

"I personally do think its important to keep these plants on line for the zero-carbon power they produce, said Christina Simeone, director of policy and external affairs for the University of Pennsylvanias Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, which has not taken a position on the bail-out.

At the end of the day, if were talking about de-carbonizing our power sector were going to need these resources, Simeone said in a recent interview with StateImpact Pennsylvania. "Renewables (wind, solar, water) are going to be a part of it too, but were pretty slow on that front. And you need a lot of renewable energy to match a nuclear power plant where youre talking about 2000 megawatts (of power generation).

Thats a lot of wind farms.

That is the heart of the case nuclear subsidy supporters are making: American energy markets as structured today simply dont appropriately value the benefit of the carbon-free nature of nuclear energy even as tax credits and other incentives have been used to increase the affordability of renewables.

Here in Pennsylvania you have 16 other technologies that get to participate in an alternative energy portfolio program that rewards them" with inclusion in a sub-set of clean power sources electric utilities must buy a certain share of their power from, said David Fein, Exelons senior vice president of state government and regulatory affairs.

Nuclear power on the other hand has 93 percent of the carbon-free electricity in the state. And they dont get to participate in that program.

Other subsidy supporters say they like having nuclear around because of its proven reliability (accidents at TMI, Chernobyl and Fukishima notwithstanding) and simply for the fact of preserving a long-term diversity of energy sources as a protection in the case of natural gas price spikes.

And if you retire a nuclear power station, its next to impossible to bring it back.

Our energy market has worked well because you had diversity" in the supply, said Sen. Robert Tommy Tomlinson, a Republican from Bucks County who is leaning in favor of the subsidy proposal. But as coal dwindles and nuclear struggles, he worries Pennsylvanias traditional three-legged stool of power sources may be turning into more of a natural gas pillar.

And I am very concerned that if you end up with a monopoly of one, then they can call whatever price they want, Tomlinson said.

The debate.

The primary solution being advanced in the state legislature this spring is a plan to add nuclear energy to Pennsylvanias Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, a 2004 law requiring electric companies to buy part of their power from clean and alternative sources.

Under Rep. Tom Mehaffies plan, electric utilities would face a new requirement to buy clean energy credits - one per megawatt hour of energy produced from a zero-emission power generation source - for up to 50 percent of the total megawatts consumed in their respective service territories.

The price of the new credits would be tied to the value of existing credits for solar, wind and other alternative energy sources in the earlier program. Based on current values for those alternative energy credits, Mehaffies plan has been estimated by the Kleinman Center to cost about $500 million annually.

Rep. Tom Mehaffie, R-Dauphin County, introduces on March 11, 2019 the first of what will likely be several competing bills to assist struggling nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania.WITF

Thats a cost that would be ultimately passed on to industrial, commercial and residential electric ratepayers going forward. Mehaffie, a Dauphin County Republican, estimated that price at about $1.77 per month extra for the typical residential electric bill, though that couldnt be independently confirmed by press time.

In the Senate, Sen. Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster County, and some colleagues are working on a similar bill that, while not introduced yet, is said to be less costly to ratepayers.

The markets do not treat all clean sources of energy the same, and they do not penalize polluters," Mehaffie said as he unveiled his bill at a union hall outside Harrisburg, flanked by ironworkers who get regular work at TMI. "For the state legislature to ignore the challenges facing these nuclear plants, it would be one of the most irresponsible and irreversible decisions weve made in a generation.

Opposition to the subsidy is widespread, coming from groups as varied as natural gas producers seeing artificial limits placed on their sales, to big businesses that count themselves among the states highest users of electricity, to the AARP, which says it is looking out for senior citizens on fixed incomes.

Advocacy groups aligned with the natural gas and coal industries have called the proposed subsidy unnecessary tampering in the energy market that will ultimately hurt consumers both as they pay their own electric bill, and absorb higher costs throughout the business cycle.

When your basic necessities (electricity) are increased because of a decision that the people in Harrisburg make, it makes all of those other nice-to-haves more difficult, especially for individuals that have less income, said Anna McCauslin, deputy state director for the state chapter of Americans For Prosperity.

AFP is a political advocacy group organized and funded by the conservative Koch brothers, whose family made much of its fortune on the fossil fuel side of the energy industry.

Steve Kratz, spokesman for a gas industry-supported coalition called Citizens Against a Nuclear Bailout, argued the evolution of Pennsylvanias energy markets since a 1990s deregulation effort has brought steady declines in wholesale energy prices and a 20-year-low in carbon emissions from power generation.

As a result, Kratz said, our members dont feel like they should have to pay more for electricity just to bail out three major corporations (the owners of Pennsylvanias nuclear fleet) that say theyre struggling.

Opponents also argue that nuclear operators are really trying to leverage the struggles of a few plants to get a payday for the industry as a whole.

According to an economic analysis prepared for PJM Interconection last fall, all but three of the 18 nuclear plants in its grid should be profitable over the next four years. The three that project at a loss, including TMI in Pennsylvania, are all single-reactor sites that have higher operating costs per megawatt hour than multiple-reactor plants.

In other words, some argue, doing nothing wont be a death knell for the overall nuclear industry.

I have a hard time saying that somebody thats making $640 million (the estimated net profit of the five Pa. nuclear plants in 2018) needs help from the government, said Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Williamsport and the chair of the Senate Environmental and Energy Resources Committee.

But subsidy supporters push back on that argument by noting that the same PJM report shows a period of declining profits ahead for all of the nuclear power plants, suggesting that it may be only a matter of time till more of them are losing money.

The politics.

The Pennsylvania Legislature has a decision to make about nuclear energy.file

Most energy policy experts concede that the best way to attack the climate change issue would be to implement some kind of carbon pricing scheme at the national, or even regional, level.

But no energy or policy experts expect that to happen in the near-term future.

Which means that the nuclear subsidy issue is playing out at the state level. Over the last two years, New York, Illinois and New Jersey have all moved forward with policy measures intended to preserve their nuclear fleets.

In Pennsylvania, pro-subsidy forces appear to have already won the first round, which occurred mostly behind the scenes in the 2017-18 legislative session: According to Department of State lobbying disclosures, energy was lobbied as heavily as any industry besides health care in the 2017-18 legislative session, with expenditures in excess of $20 million.

That work has won legislative leaders commitment to take up the issue and see if a plan can be hammered out.

That doesnt mean the leaders have already committed to a specific subsidy proposal. It does mean that they are letting supporters work the issue, and will lend their time and effort to see if a plan can be hashed out that can win majority support in the House and Senate, and in their respective majority GOP caucuses.

I think the nuclear industry is important to Pennsylvania, Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County, said during an appearance before the Pennsylvania Press Club last month. "Its an industry that if it went away, we would regret it in years to come.

Now, Im not interested in a bail-out," Corman continued. ... Im interested in moving this issue forward to continue to have discussions so that hopefully - whether it be nuclear, whether it be alternative energies, whether it be natural gas - all of that can be successful here in Pennsylvania.

So, the subsidy supporters have earned a spot on the agenda.

Winning will be a different story. Heres a starters guide to the political dynamics ahead.

There are a lot of free market Republicans in the legislature - perhaps as many as 35 in the House and seven or eight in the Senate - who start this debate with a broad philosophical opposition to what could be a nine-digit tax on ratepayers to support one industry over other competitors.

Sometimes that means even neighbors to the nuclear plants will be hard to get on board.

Take Sen. John DiSanto, R-Dauphin County.

In an interview last week, he pointed to the inefficiencies of Three Mile Island in particular. DiSanto said it might be wiser and more efficient for the state to create a funding pool that could help local school districts and municipalities absorb the loss of property and income taxes if and when a struggling plant retires.

How many times to we have to continue to assist this industry? DiSanto asked last week, referring to the $1 billion-plus already spent on helping TMIs owners with clean-up and recovery of so-called stranded costs.

Jobs transition in and out all the time; thats a fact in America," DiSanto said. "I think it would be significantly cheaper if the state looked at a five-year window to buffer the loss of some of these tax revenues, if that occurs.

Translation? These subsidy bills are highly unlikely to pass just on majority Republican votes alone, and bipartisan coalitions have to be built.

There are several paths to do that.

Pro-subsidy Republicans can pair with pro-labor legislators - organized labor is strongly behind the subsidy bill, largely because of the thousands of plant maintenance jobs the nuclear industry provides to the construction trades on an annual basis.

Then, there is a group of so-called Green Dog Democrats - estimated at about two dozen in the House alone - whose vote will be driven solely by whether they see the final product as fair to ratepayers and a long-term win for the environment.

Rep. Greg Vitali, a Haverford Democrat who is a leader of that wing, says they see the value in keeping the nuclear plants on board but have their own conditions for any subsidy program, including:

A much more finely-tailored assistance program that only gives financial aid to nuclear plants that show substantial financial distress," and;

Expand the existing market carve-outs for wind, solar, hydro and geo-thermal power and strengthening energy efficiency standards. A memo circulated recently by state PUC Commissioner Andrew Place said as little as a 1 percent increase statewide in energy efficiency could make up for the lost emissions reductions from TMI and Beaver Valley in five to 11 years, respectively.

That latter point has already happened elsewhere. New Jerseys nuclear subsidy program was twinned last year with requirements that renewable energy account for 35 percent of the states power generation by 2025, and 50 percent by 2030.

Vitali said hed like to see a Pennsylvania plan push renewables from their current 8 percent carve-out, to 30 percent by 2030.

The key, all sides know, is getting to a final bill that commands the support of at least a majority of the Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.

And that, as much as anything else, may come down to the costs to constituents.

As Sen. Tom Killion, R-Delaware County, put it recently, I dont think all the nukes are going to be closing... so its not like were going to be losing 40 percent (of Pennsylvanias power generation) tomorrow. So if were going to be increasing costs to constituents, the question is, 'Is it worthwhile?

Senior legislative leaders have been noticeably reticent about the issue thus far, presumably because bills are just now being introduced and they are still getting the pulse of their own memberships at the start of a legislative session with many new faces in the House and Senate.

None responded to requests for interviews for this story.

On the other hand, none have declared themselves outright opponents.

Same with Gov. Tom Wolf. The Democratic governor has very carefully measured his words on the issue to date. Some believe, as on several other controversial issues in his first term, hes going to let the legislature lead, and react if and when the leaders feel theyve reached a plan they can pass.

The last big unknown is the legislative process itself.

The biggest hazard many subsidy supporters worry about is keeping the bill from collapsing under the weight of too many demands as all energy stakeholders work to preserve, or increase, their piece of the pie.

Subsidy opponents biggest concern, meanwhile, is that all of their best defensive efforts get swept away by a late-in-the-game deal in which the issue becomes part of a larger set of inter-locking political deals.

Exelon has said it needs to know what Pennsylvania is going to do by June 1, when it must decide whether to refuel the reactor at Three Mile Island. Senior lawmakers have already interpreted that as meaning that they have to make a decision one way or another before the General Assembly breaks in the summer.

Expect lots of efforts to change your, and your state legislators, minds as the debate continues through the spring.

StateImpact Pennsylvania reporter Marie Cusick contributed to this report.

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. PennLive is collaborating with PA Post and WITF on a multimedia, month-long look at the accident, its impact and the future of TMI and the nuclear industry. That includes new documentary television and radio programs, long-form audio stories, photos, and digital videos. The work will include the voices of people affected as well as community events to engage with listeners, readers and viewers.
WILLIAMSPORT -- A Snyder County man has been accused of being part of a conspiracy to distribute more than 100,000 narcotic pain reliever and muscle relaxer tablets throughout the United States over a two-year period beginning in April 2015.

Clyde Eugene Snyder, 71, is accused in a criminal information filed Monday in U.S. Middle District Court of using his Mount Pleasant Mills home to receive, store and repackage tramadol and carisoprodol tablets.

He is alleged to have sent the packages by Priority Mail to conspirators throughout the country including Maryland, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska, Florida, Texas, Colorado, Washington and Alaska.

Conspirators communicated about shipments through social media including Facebook and used mobile phones to transmit tracking numbers, the charge of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances states.

Snyder is alleged to have been paid via MoneyGram, Western Union and Postal Service money orders.

Filed simultaneously with the criminal information was a signed guilty plea agreement in which Snyder admits being responsible for at least 80,000 units. He remains free pending arraignment.

Tramadol is a pain reliever that when used in large amounts can produce effects similar to heroin. It is described as the drug of choice by the Boko Haram terrorist organization in Nigeria.

Carisoprodol is a muscle relaxer that often is abused with opioid drugs. A combination of it and hydrocodone is known as a Las Vegas cocktail.
A state representative from Butler County who was the subject of a criminal investigation for sexually assaulting a woman in Harrisburg in 2015 resigned from his House seat on Monday.

The resignation of Rep. Brian Ellis, 49, takes effect immediately.

Ellis attorney delivered a letter of resignation to House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny County.

The letter stated: It is with immense gratitude to the sacrifices made by my family, the support of my constituents, and the friendship of my colleagues that I have concluded that it is in the best interests of my family, the residents of the 11th House district, and my own health that I resign from the General Assembly. By this letter, I hereby officially tender my resignation as the state representative for the 11th House district, effective immediately. Serving the 11th House district has been my highest professional honor.

A text message sent to Ellis cell phone drew no response Monday afternoon. His lawyers declined comment at this time.

Ellis resignation comes about two months after the House GOP leaders and Gov. Tom Wolf called on him to resign after learning of the investigation into the womans sexual assault claims by the Dauphin County District Attorneys office. Ellis has not been charged with any crime.

Last week, the woman filed a formal complaint with the House Ethics Committee, which lawyers representing Ellis called just plain false. Ellis resignation ends the ethics committees investigation.

The woman, who works at the Capitol, stated in her complaint to the House Ethics Committee that prior to the night of the alleged sexual assault, she had had a mostly professional relationship with Ellis. However, she said Ellis had made it known he was interested in her sexually. The woman said in the complaint she rebuked his advances.

On that October 2015 evening, the complaint states she recalls having a drink with a friend at Carleys, a Harrisburg restaurant. She asked her friend to buy her another drink before her friend left to go to a fundraiser at nearby McGraths Pub. The two were to meet up later in the evening.

According to the complaint, the woman remembers starting to drink what she was handed but had scant memories of the next 10 hours until she woke up in bed with Ellis, who told her they had had sex.

She later learned from her friend that she encountered Ellis at McGraths and he said he was going to see that she got an Uber to take her home. But Ellis told her friend that she was too drunk to get in a car so he walked her to his house in Harrisburg where she came on to him, the complaint states.

Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo declined comment on Ellis resignation, saying he has nothing to do with what transpires at the Capitol.

The states Victim Advocate Jennifer Storm, meanwhile, called it a new day in Harrisburg.

We had a survivor come forward. She was believed. She was treated with the utmost dignity and respect by the House Republicans through this entire process and it resulted in accountability, Storm said. "We feel really good theres a change happening at the Capitol and its a much needed and necessary change. Were grateful to everyone from the Governor Wolf to the House Republicans who have stood behind this woman and called for Ellis resignation.

Its that support and that belief that has really helped her continue through this process. This is not an easy thing to do especially when its in your workplace and youre dealing with it everyday.

Ellis has been on paid leave from the House, missing every legislative session week that the chamber held after Jan. 1 when he took the oath of office for the eighth time. He requested to be placed on leave again on Monday. Ellis received an annual salary of $88,610.

After the allegation of sexual assault emerged, House Republican leaders removed Ellis from his post as chairman of the House Commerce Committee and from his other committee assignments.

Storm is working with Villanova Law School on a package of bills dealing with workplace harassment and sexual misconduct. She said she hopes both the House and Senate will consider adopting the measures to make the rules uniform for both chambers and simpler for victims to file a complaint.

I really hope this sends a clear message to survivors that you can come forward and you will be believed, Storm said. You will be supported and treated with respect. Thats what were trying to accomplish and his resignation speaks volumes.

* This post was updated to include some reaction from Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo and Jennifer Storm.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

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Pennsylvania voters can expect some important improvements at their polling place in the next year.

More secure voting systems that produce a paper record are on the way. The paper record allows voters to verify their choices before casting the ballot. The systems also will make it easier for people with disabilities to vote without assistance and for officials to conduct better post-election audits.

At least 25 percent of Pennsylvanias 67 counties have already selected new voting systems that meet Pennsylvanias enhanced standards for security, accessibility and auditing. Other counties are in various stages of deciding which certified system will best serve the needs of their voters.

Susquehanna County led the way and installed new voting machines in time for last Novembers election. Pennsylvanias most populous county  Philadelphia  selected their new system last month with plans to implement it in time for this Novembers election.

We know we have little choice but to modernize our election infrastructure.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Senate and House intelligence committees are urging states to upgrade their voting systems. There is nearly universal agreement among national security and election experts that all voters should be casting their ballots on new paper-based systems.

Most other states have already made the vital switch to paper ballots.

Pennsylvania is one of only 13 states  and the only swing state  still using Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines with outdated hardware and software that manufacturers will soon stop supporting. Most, if not all, of these 13 states are in the process of or planning to convert to new paper ballot-based systems by 2020.

Election modernization in as large and diverse a state as Pennsylvania is no small feat. Thats why the Department of State planned ahead in telling counties they must select new voting systems that meet current standards. We gave counties two years to comply. Counties have until the end of 2019 to select their new voting systems and until the primary election in April 2020 to implement them.

Governor Wolf has proposed $75 million in state funding  $15 million a year for five years to assist counties with this significant investment. The proposal supports counties in meeting a critically important expense while also being fiscally prudent with state taxpayer dollars.

The governor is seeking state funding to cover at least half of the cost to counties, on top of the $14.15 million in federal and state funding he earmarked last year for counties purchase of new voting equipment.

Additionally, the department has issued a statewide purchasing contract that counties can use to cut through red tape and negotiate the best deal with voting system vendors. The department continues to investigate other funding sources, including more federal aid, low-interest financing, lease agreements and other means.

We believe that protecting voting, our most fundamental right, is the responsibility of officials at every level of government. That is why we are committed to seeking financing for new voting systems with federal, state and local governments sharing the cost.

We will continue discussions with the General Assembly to determine the most equitable method for allocating funding for new voting systems to counties.

County officials across the commonwealth have shown great diligence and thoughtfulness in the selection process. They have consulted voters, viewed vendor demonstrations and researched financing options.

The department held five regional vendor expos late last year where the public and election officials tried out the new systems.

Under the Pennsylvania Election Code, counties must choose a voting system that is certified by both the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the Pennsylvania Department of State. Four new voting systems that meet our updated standards have achieved this dual certification and two more are undergoing certification.

Voters and candidates can be more confident in election results with the new systems, which offer the latest cybersecurity technology, allow voters to verify their choices before casting their ballot, and provide paper records for use in recounts and post-election audits.

Those Pennsylvania counties that have been using paper ballots all along will benefit as well from the improved scanning technology and the increased security and accessibility of new paper-ballot systems.

Most importantly, by the 2020 election, Pennsylvanias electoral system will be less vulnerable to foreign or other outside interference, and commonwealth citizens will be voting on the most secure and accessible equipment available.

Jonathan M. Marks is Deputy Secretary for Elections and Commissions, Pennsylvania Department of State
Omicron variant identified in Kent County; health officials stress vaccinations

As the first case of the Omicron variant has been detected in Michigan, the Health Department of Northwest Michigan stresses the importance of vaccination.
US. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., right, speaks to John Kane, the Plumbers Union Business Manager for Local 690, in the Philly Shipyard after a press conference, urging that the shipyard receive a government contract for training vessels for the U.S. maritime academies. Read more

Members of Congress and Mayor Jim Kenney took to the waterfront Tuesday, pleading the case for a federal contract to land in the Philly Shipyard, which laid off about two-thirds of its workforce last year.

Officials urged the U.S. Department of Transportation to award a contract for a new training ship quickly.

Philadelphia is the optimal location for this contract, said Kenney, surrounded by about a dozen union workers in front of the shipyards main entrance.

This contract is an opportunity to put this workforce back to work, said U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D., Pa.), whose district includes the shipyard.

Occupying a corner of the storied Navy Yard, the commercially run Philly Shipyard has struggled to line up work beyond a massive container ship -- the second of two such vessels -- that its scheduled to finish this month.

During 2018, the shipyard downsized from about 1,200 workers to about 400.

The shipyard faces significant risks if it is unable to secure new orders and/or financing for vessels after the last container ship is finished, according to its most recent financial disclosures. The companys corporate parent is based in Norway, and the shipyard is traded on the Oslo stock exchange.

Long focused on private customers, the shipyard is trying to attract more work under federal contracts -- including awards to build a heavy polar icebreaker for the U.S. Coast Guard and the new training ship for maritime academy students.

The shipbuilder Fincantieri Marine Group partnered with Philly Shipyard to come up with polar icebreaker design recommendations for the government, before bids on the project were due last fall. Appropriations for the first ship were in flux during the debate over funding President Donald Trumps border wall with Mexico. But with $650 million now in the budget, the Coast Guard expects to award the contract in late 2019, according to the trade publication Homeland Security Today.

In the near term, Philly Shipyard told shareholders its main focus was pursuing the chance to build up to five national security multi-mission vessels" for state maritime academies. The U.S. Maritime Administration will award the contract for the first ship to a vessel construction manager," which will, in turn, choose a shipyard to build it.

Philly Shipyard hopes to win that job in the second quarter and considered itself a leading candidate in its annual report. The company has not been working with any potential vessel construction manager, spokesperson Kelly Whitaker said, but it is familiar with the firms from our commercial business delivering oil tankers and container ships to them over the years.

Scanlon said that Philly was competing against shipyards in other parts of the country but that it has an advantage: This is the only shipyard right now thats ready to go. The others have existing projects.

Last month, a dozen members of Congress from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware lobbied the Department of Transportation to send that work Phillys way, touting the shipyards record of timely, on-budget deliveries and a history of cooperation with labor unions that have never gone on strike there.

Building the maritime training vessels at the Philly Shipyard would ensure the continued vitality of this important shipbuilding asset and preserve a critical component of our defense industrial base, the 12 U.S. representatives said in a letter to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. The signers included Pennsylvania Republican Congressmen Brian Fitzpatrick and Lloyd Smucker.

More than $350 million in public and private funding has gone into the shipyards facilities since 1997, the letter said.

The congressional representatives asked Chao to make sure that the contract for the first ship is signed this spring so that the ship can be delivered in time for the 2022 summer sea term. Delay benefits no one, the delegation wrote.

The shipyard recovered from a previous dry spell, during 2010 to 2011 when its workforce dwindled to 300 people. CEO Steinar Nerbovik told the Inquirer last year that he was optimistic about new orders, but it will hurt in 18 and 19.

Nerbovik did not attend Tuesdays event. Asked afterward whether the shipyard was at risk of closing without the Maritime Administration contract, he said by email that the training ships are essential to the future operations of Philly Shipyard.

The shipyard has already idled parts of the operation, he said, and will continue to do so without work."
Alid Alvarado transports orders for three different Instacart customers to her car at Whole Foods. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/TNS) Read more

Grocery delivery service Instacart, which was the biggest player in the Philadelphia region as of September, is laying off 56 workers from three of its area Whole Foods Market locations, according to notices filed with state officials.

The layoffs come three months after Instacart announced it was beginning to wind down its five-year partnership with Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market. The layoffs will be effective May 11, but Instacart founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta said in a December announcement that he hopes to place up to three-quarters of those workers in another local retailer so they retain employment with the company.

A Whole Foods Market spokesperson said Tuesday that Whole Foods and Instacart have mutually agreed to end their delivery services partnership, effective May 15. Amazon paid $13.7 billion for Whole Foods in 2017, and at the time, analysts predicted that the Seattle company, known for its quick-service delivery, could dominate the growing market.

The layoffs break down as follows, according to the notices filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry: 24 layoffs at the Whole Foods at 929 South St.; 20 layoffs at the Whole Foods at 2101 Pennsylvania Ave.; and 12 layoffs at the Whole Foods at 15 E. Wynnewood Rd. It is unclear whether more Philadelphia-area Instacart employees will be affected by this change, and Instacart did not provide overall employment data for the Philadelphia region.

Instacart was the biggest player in the Philadelphia region as of September, with 33.8 percent market share, according to data from March 2017 to September 2018 compiled by Earnest Research, an analytics company that looked at credit and debit card transactions.

In the Philadelphia market, Instacart partners with various retailers, including Reading Terminal Market, CVS Pharmacy, Aldi, Sprouts Farmers Market, Sams Club, Wegmans, Acme Market, and Costco. Nationally, Instacart is in 5,500 cities and delivers from nearly 20,000 stores.

In the months that follow, we expect to ramp down all remaining Whole Foods in-store shopping operations in preparation for Whole Foods to fully exit our marketplace," Mehta said in December.

Most Instacart shoppers work across grocery retailers to complete orders from customers, though the company does employ shoppers who are assigned one retailer as part-time employees who work up to 29 hours a week. Those employees include 1,415 store-specific shoppers across 76 Whole Foods locations, Mehta said in a December announcement. Almost 250 would be impacted starting last month, he wrote.

Mehta previously said he expected to place more than three-quarters of those employees affected by the notices in another local retailer, along with a transfer bonus. For those who are not reassigned, the company said, it would provide a a minimum of three-months separation package based on your maximum monthly pay in 2018, as well as additional tenure-based compensation."

Instacart is now valued at $7.8 billion after receiving $871 million in new funding, the San Francisco Business Times reported Monday. More than half of the companys $2 billion in funding is reportedly sitting in the bank in case it faces an expensive standoff with Amazon, according to the publication.

The grocery delivery services industry seems fragmented within Philadelphia, despite Instacarts presence, according to the Earnest Research data.

Whole Foods currently offers Prime Now, a one- and two-hour grocery delivery service in more than 60 U.S. metro areas, including Philadelphia, where customers can add items to their virtual cart and check out using an existing Amazon Prime account. Whole Foods will continue offering Instacart delivery services until the partnership ends in May.

Walmart Online Grocery has 22.8 percent of the Philadelphia market, and Peapod, which has the same corporate parent as Giant, had 16.2 percent, Earnest Research data showed. Other retail giants have invested in grocery delivery services, too. Target Corp., for example, acquired Shipt, a grocery delivery start-up, for $550 million in December 2017.

Instacart recently came under fire after criticism that its new payment structure shortchanged employees by counting their tips toward their minimum compensation for orders. Last month, Mehta responded in a post outlining new measures for pay, including ensuring that tips would remain separate from minimum compensation.

The U.S. is nearly a $1 trillion grocery market, and last year, we saw almost every major grocer in North America bring their delivery business online in a significant way," Mehta said in an October 2018 news release. We believe were in the very early stages of a massive shift in the way people buy groceries, and we expect that one in five Americans will be shopping for their groceries online in the next five years.
Turkey Hill Dairy, the Lancaster County manufacturer of premium ice creams and iced tea, is being sold by its parent company, Kroger to Peak Rock Capital, a Texas-based private equity firm.

Peak Rock will continue to operate Turkey Hill out of the dairys facility in Conestoga, Pa.

Customers arent going to see any change or difference in the products and this wont affect employment, said Turkey Hill spokesman David Shoffner. Itll remain business as usual. Same great products same team. There are no great changes planned in the short term.

The dairy, Shoffner said, has been for sale for more than a year. Turkey Hill distributes products in 49 states. The only place we havent cracked yet is Hawaii.

The selling price of the company was not divulged. Closing is expected during Krogers first quarter and the after-tax proceeds will be used to reduce debt, the company said in a release.

Turkey Hill Dairy was founded by farmer Armor Frey in 1931. Over five decades it expanded to include a chain of convenience stores. In 1985, supermarket giant Kroger bought both the dairy and Turkey Hills Minit Markets. In April 2018, Kroger sold off Turkey Hills 260 convenience stores to British gas station operator, EG Group.
Co-owners Raymond Bungay and Patrick Duff inside the Philadelphia Temple of Hemp and Cannabis on Frankford Avenue. Read more

Its a gift store.

Its a head shop.

And its a weed church.

Stoner swag greets you as you walk into this one-of-a-kind shop in Philadelphia. There are also T-shirts and CBD products for sale.

But in the back of Philadelphia Temple of Hemp and Cannabis is something far more unusual  a sanctuary and lounge where medical marijuana patients are encouraged to light up.

Its not your normal church, says Patrick Duff, the co-owner and high priest of the Frankford Avenue shop that brands itself Philly THC. In fact, its licensed as a gift shop. We pay taxes. But the reason we opened is that there was nobody providing a space for marijuana patients to come together and take their medicines socially.

As the wave of marijuana legalization sweeps across the nation, whats missing are safe spaces for consumption, according to advocates. Thats especially critical for those living with friends or family who dont approve of cannabis, or tenants in federally subsidized housing who risk eviction because marijuana is still considered illegal by the U.S. government.

Philly THC, in the citys Kensington neighborhood, seeks to plug that gap. It will be the first lounge of its kind in the region, if not the first to operate out of the shadows to the east of the Mississippi River.

Most jurisdictions forbid consuming any cannabis in public.

A handful of advertised cannabis cafes have popped up in Denver and San Francisco  in states where recreational use of marijuana is legal. Alaska this week enacted regulations that allow on-site consumption of marijuana. Clandestine cafes operate out of sight or by invitation only. Duff presents Philly THC as a place for medical and sacramental use of cannabis.

Someone who is living in government-subsidized housing could lose their housing if they [consume cannabis] at home. Many apartment buildings forbid smoking or vaping of any kind," said Justin Strekal, a Washington-based spokesman for NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Some people dont like to medicate in front of their families. So cafes fill a real need.

The temple

Hanging over the blue vinyl booths in Philly THCs middle room is a bright psychedelic painting of the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, whom cannabis-consuming Rastafarians revere as the messiah. An acrylic portrait of Bob Marley keeps a sloe-eyed watch from the opposing wall.

Farther to the rear is a white leather sectional sofa parked in front of a TV, set up for video games.

Two repurposed diner booths nestle along a brick wall. On each table sits a dab rig, a glass device similar to a small bong. Duff and his Philly THC partner, Raymond Bungay, use the rigs to teach patients how to consume highly concentrated cannabis extracts. Most newbies have never encountered the products  wax, shatter, budder, and live resin  before their first trip to a marijuana dispensary.

This is a place where people can be educated, Duff said. Theres always someone here who can help with the equipment.

Bungay, who views cannabis use as a religious sacrament, quit using opioids 15 years ago with marijuanas help, he said. He also operates a rock and mineral shop two blocks away.

He takes a long puff from a dab rig and slowly exhales the vapor. Want to try some? he asks.

Gray area, legally

Is a commercial space to consume cannabis legal?

Thats a bit of a gray area as far as current laws go. Lounges would be made legal under a recreational marijuana bill pending in New Jersey. Soon-to-be introduced legislation in the Pennsylvania Senate would also provide for cannabis cafes.

But social consumption of cannabis is prohibited even in most states that have legalized marijuana.

Duff insists his cafe is 100 percent legal.

I read the law. I read it carefully, he said. Nothing in the states regulations prevents us from doing this.

Turns out hes right.

We dont have any jurisdiction over it, confirmed a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the agency overseeing the states medical marijuana program.

Theres no restriction, said April Hutcheson, the spokesperson. Patients can use medical marijuana anywhere they are comfortable as long as they have a card and are only using the medication they purchased for themselves. I dont think it violates our regulations. Smoking [marijuana] is prohibited by the law.

Duff, who claimed he checked with 15 attorneys before opening, said smoking anything is absolutely prohibited at Philly THC.

Theres no tobacco use allowed, and no fire, and you cant use a torch, Duff said.

The shop provides ceramic-tipped electronic devices that bring cannabis to a temperature just a few degrees short of combustion.

And, since Philadelphia decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2014, the District Attorneys Office has stopped prosecuting anyone on a marijuana charge if they possess less than 30 grams of cannabis.

It doesnt sound like they are breaking any laws, said Ben Waxman, spokesperson for District Attorney Larry Krasner. We would have an issue if they were distributing or selling marijuana, but that doesnt sound like what is happening at this place.

So Philly THC appears to be in the clear.

A way to make amends

Philly THC opened in early February. The first months take was about $12,000, Duff said. Not bad for a business on a formerly bedraggled block near Kensingtons most notorious heroin corners. Those revenues were primarily generated from the sale of industrial hemp products high in CBD, a compound in the cannabis plant that does not provide the euphoria of THC.

Strekal believes that in the not-too-distant future, it will be relatively common for there to be licensed establishments where people can socially consume cannabis.

Its going to be a multibillion-dollar industry, a subset of the emerging U.S. marijuana economy, Strekal said. They wont be as numerous as alcohol bars, but they will dot the land.

The hemp flowers Duff sells look and smell just like real weed  same color and shape, same dank scent. It doesnt get you high," he said. "It just makes you very relaxed. He and Bungay also produce their own CBD resin, oils, and salves.

A woman at the New Kensington Community Development Corp. across the street said Duff helped her sign up to be a medical marijuana caregiver.

The hardest part of opening the temple was finding a willing landlord. It took nearly half a year, Duff said.

I was very honest, and told them I wanted to open a retail gift shop with a lounge for marijuana patients to medicate. More than 80 percent said no. The landlord who agreed is a former Brooklyn cop who rents the space above the shop on Airbnb, Duff said.

Customers ask Duff if hell franchise the idea.

Shawn Wilson, a retired Philadelphia police narcotics officer, wants to open a similar Philly THC temple in Germantown. I feel really bad for locking up so many people up for marijuana back in the day," Wilson said. "This is a way to make amends.

Its all about wellness, said Wilson, a card-carrying medical marijuana patient who was shopping Thursday at Philly THC. I use both CBD and THC myself for wellness and worship.

Im very serious about opening a space for it, Wilson said. "I already have a building.
The awards gala on April 16 will also be a benefit for C-CAP. Read more

StarChefs, the national restaurant industry magazine, will come to Philadelphia next month to honor recipients of its Rising Stars awards.

The Rising Stars, among them chefs and other hospitality professionals, will be celebrated at an awards ceremony and walk-around tasting gala, open to the public, on April 16 at the Curtis Atrium. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP), a national nonprofit that educates underserved high school students.

The winners and the dishes they will serve at the gala follow:

Chefs

Tyler Akin of Stock: Khao tod neua (Lone Mountain wagyu, curry rice cakes, cilantro, mint)

Matt Harper of Kensington Quarters: Braised short rib, mole, fermented chiles, confit carrots

Jesse Ito of Royal Sushi & Izakaya: Kumamoto oyster sushi, sudachi, soy sauce, chives

Michael Vincent Ferreri of Res Ipsa Cafe: monkfish cavatelli, orange, saffron, breadcrumbs

Alexander Yoon of Little Fish: Verlasso salmon, preserved ramp vinaigrette, citrus

Game Changer award

Chad Williams of Friday Saturday Sunday: Brussels sprouts, smoked celery root puree, citrus chawanmushi, sunchoke chimichurri, mushroom-sherry broth

Community award

Matt Cahn of Middle Child: the Phoagie (a hoagie with eggplant, avocado, cilantro, pho sauce, sesame)

Sustainability award

Judy Ni and Andy Tessier of baology: King oyster mushroom gwa bao

Pastry Chefs

Camille Cogswell of Zahav: chocolate konafi, coconut jam, pistachios

Tova du Plessis of Essen Bakery: chocolate babka and assorted pastries

Samantha Kincaid of Cadence: cider shaved ice, rice pudding, apples, hazelnuts

Bartender

Paul MacDonald of Friday Saturday Sunday: Ovaltine milk punch (Bols genever, Ovaltine, lemon, red wine)

Artisan Baker

Alex Bois of Lost Bread Co.: beet fryes, breads, spreads

Artisan Roaster

Evan Inatome of Elixr Coffee: Guatemala Finca El Injerto and Kopi Sanger

Concept category

Nicole Marquis of HipCityVeg: crispy HipCity Ranch (chickn, lettuce, tomato, onion, peppercorn ranch

Restaurateur

Nick Kennedy & Greg Root of Defined Hospitality: halabi lamb kebab, hummus, charred vegetables

Sommeliers

Alexandra Cherniavsky of The Love

Samantha Germani of Lacroix

Guest chef Townsend Wentz of Oloroso will serve a warm spring vegetable salad with jamon Iberico and Majorero goat cheese. Guest sommelier Etinosa Emokpae of Walnut Street Cafe will pour Spanish wines.

Host chefs are John Suley and Monica Glass of Constellation Catering, and VIP host chef is Pierre Labine of Brulee Catering.

Since 2003, StarChefs has held awards in 22 cities and regions. This will be the 65th class of Rising Stars and the third from Philadelphia.

The April 16 event starts at 5:30 p.m. with a VIP reception, followed at 6:15 p.m. by the awards ceremony at the Liberty View at Independence Visitor Center. At 7 p.m., it proceeds to the Curtis for the tasting gala.

General admission is $95 and grants access to the tasting gala. VIP tickets are $125.

Tickets can be purchased via starchefs.com/risingstars and Eventbrite.
On an early Tuesday morning, my first patient of the day is a month-old boy. He is healthy. But he is from Fairhill, an especially impoverished corner of the poorest big city in America. So, statistically, his life will be an average of two decades shorter than that of a child who lives a few miles south, in Philadelphias Society Hill neighborhood.

Before entering the room with the customary tablet computer, stethoscope and a friendly expression on my face, I grab one more essential: a brightly colored board book, titled Baby ABCs.

Mom and I talk about her babys weight, sleeping, feeding  and also early brain development. I explain the profound impact of early words and attachment through daily reading (and its never too soon to start), singing, talking, that comes from these simple, loving, scientifically proven interventions

For 17 years, physicians, nurse practitioners and pediatric residents at our hospital, and presently, at more than 80 locations throughout the region, have been participating in Reach Out and Read of Greater Philadelphia (www.reachoutandreadphilly.org), a simple yet profound way to harness the power of a book to potentially alter a childs health trajectory.

So, what can a book  or even a library of books  do to level the longevity field for children like my patient?

In 1900, the average life expectancy for a man born in the U.S. was 48 years; women did slightly better at 51 years. Extraordinary public advances since then  vaccines; clean water and sanitation; antibiotics; birth control, and safer childbirth  as well as medical innovations such as cancer treatments and organ transplantation, have improved average overall life expectancy to nearly 79 years.

Yet progress has stagnated and even declined due to the opioid epidemic and other diseases of despair, such as alcohol and substance abuse, and suicide. Less discussed, but no less important, is a lack of investments in alleviating child poverty and stress that have a profound impact on the developing brains and bodies of children, especially in the first five years of life.

Since 1989, the Reach Out and Read (www.reachoutandread.org) national program has helped caregivers create language-rich environments for young children, to promote early brain development. Research on Reach Out and Read shows that when pediatricians promote literacy readiness, there is a substantial effect on parental behavior and attitudes toward reading aloud, as well as improvements in the language scores of young children who participate.

Participants in the program were 2.5 times more likely to read to their children and even more likely to come in for their well-visit checkups.

One of the greatest predictors of high school graduation is third-grade reading levels  which, in turn, can largely be predicted by the vocabulary of a child at age 3. And that depends on a literacy rich, stimulating environment that includes daily reading from birth.

A fascinating article in the American Journal of Public Health, Giving Everyone the Health of the Educated: An Examination of Whether Social Change Would Save More Lives than Medical Advances, demonstrated that supporting children through high school and at least some college could decrease education-associated excess mortality exponentially. There are many factors involved in educational equity but as the authors state, these challenges should not dissuade policymakers from tackling the conditions that cause education-associated excess mortality any more than the obstacles to curing cancer have impeded long-standing investments in that endeavor.

Reach Out and Read is among many interventions that work on decreasing education inequality, but its one of the few that starts soon after birth.

Every so often, a flatbed full of boxes is wheeled to the back of our practice, which takes care of more than 20,000 children. Half the cart holds lifesaving vaccines against flu, measles, mumps and rubella, which our nurses inventory and refrigerate right away.

On the other side of the cart are cartons of books such as Goodnight Moon and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I inventory and store the books on shelves so my colleagues are sure to find just the right one for the families we serve. In their own way, these books are vaccines against educational disparities. As our nurse records the last vaccine, and I shelve the last book, we smile at each other and the empty boxes at our feet, collaborators in the long-term health of our patients.

Daniel R. Taylor, D.O., is an associate professor at Drexel University College of Medicine and director of community pediatrics and child advocacy at St. Christophers Hospital for Children.

Editors note: This article previously stated that Reach Out and Read was founded in 1991, not 1989.
Larissa Larson has worked for the whimsical fashion, lifestyle, and home decor brand Anthropologie for eight years, but shes never been able to buy the specialty stores vintage-inspired clothing  whether slip dress or coat dress, skinny pants or wide legged trouser  because shes a size 22W.

So when Larson, 28, got wind that the Philadelphia company would be launching APlus by Anthropologie, she was beyond excited. Her fashion hunger would be fed. She finally felt like she belonged.

I had to shop on brand without being able to shop the brand, said Larson, who works in the URBN complex in the Navy Yard as Anthropologies assistant buyer for stationery. A huge amount of women just arent being serviced in retail. [Moves like this] make us feel valid, that we can actually be a part of the brand.

On Thursday, the Anthropologie store in King of Prussia was one of 10 nationwide where the APlus line was made available (its not in the Rittenhouse Square location yet). The APlus collection is the first power move of the brands new co-president, Hillary Super, who took over the role last year.

Historically, there have been many iterations of what plus-size clothes look like, from mumu dresses and elastic waistbands to specialty stores catering to women who wear size 14-plus. But even though places like Lane Bryant tried to make trendy clothes, plus-size women did not feel they were being taken seriously in the fashion conversation.

But the market is forcing retailers and designers to consider the needs of plus-size women as equal to those who wear straight sizes. After all, the average size of the American woman is a 16 or 18.

APlus features more than 120 pieces, all very modern with a feel thats old-school chic. Prices range from $48 to $260, and my favorites include a striped wrap dress, animal-print maxi skirts, and moto jackets. Many are the same pieces Anthropologie offers in straight sizes from labels shoppers are already familiar with. It has just expanded the collection to include sizes 16W to 26W. A major fashion treat includes premium denim from DL1961. Thats worth noting because any girl  curvy or otherwise  can attest to how hard it is to find jeans that fit.

Neil Saunders, managing director of Global Data Retail in New York, says Anthropologies move to include more sizes is the latest indication that women who are larger than a 14 are starting to win the war on fashion. It sure took long enough.

In the last year, mall fixtures like Nordstrom and Macys, as well as JCrew and LOFT, have expanded their plus-size offerings, Saunders said. Target has also expanded its line and is using mannequins  even to show off bathing suits that are also full-figured. Like Anthopologie, Target is offering the same styles in sizes up to 26 or 28W that it sells in straight sizes.

The seemingly new interest in achieving size parity is largely due to the fact that several smaller brands  from underwear label ThirdLove to ready-to-wear line Elloquii (recently bought by Walmart)  offer modern clothing that people want to wear and decent service through social media.

Locally, designers including Mary Alice Duff of East Falls Alice + Alexander offer a full range of custom-made pieces for women of all sizes. That combined with suffering sales from traditional retailers give brands like Anthropologie no choice but to offer equitable sizing to all women.

What people dont want is the plus-size offering thats old-fashioned, Saunders said. We are moving away from plus-size being a distinct part of the market as something separate. Its becoming an integrated part of the mainstream fashion market now rather than something that stands alone and is different.

Georgette Niles, 47, the social worker behind the Grown and Curvy Woman blog, tried on clothing Thursday night in between sipping spring cocktails, nibbling from the cheese bar, and enjoying pistachio macaroons. Its nice to to be able to go in a store and actually shop the same clothes as the other women and not just have to rely online  I feel disheartened when I go into the plus size of a store and there are items in plus that have no pizzazz, no color  nothing. The size 20 is a real size 20, not a junior size 20.
A cast plaster "Death Mask of Napoleon" at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. The low-profile library has won a big international award and is partnering with Penn on a ground-breaking library project. Read more

Peering at Joseph Bonapartes traveling toiletry kit, with its scissors, files, brushes, and mysterious cutlery, Peter Conn, director of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, pointed to a small metal stick with a curved prong and said it reminded him of a brain hook. Adding quickly, For the purposes of mummification.

Im glad I saw that, he added.

Its fairly safe to say there are no actual brain hooks in the Athenaeums unusual collection and probably nothing to do with mummies, although the venerable Philadelphia institution was nearly mummified itself before a decades-long turnaround revivified its tradition-encrusted, paneled reading rooms.

But this old place, situated in a National Historic Landmark building on Washington Square, is very well known in the special-collections library world, and it has just forged a unique, high-profile partnership with Penn Libraries. Now, users of the vast university system can gain access to the Athenaeums small, focused collection, and vice versa.

Beyond that, the prestigious John Soanes Museum Foundation, an arm of the museum in London devoted to the legacy of the eclectic 19th-century architect, has just selected the Athenaeum for its annual honors award.

We greatly admire the visionary leadership of the Athenaeum; your acquisition of significant collections over the past two centuries; and in recent times, your transformation from an early 19th [century] special collections library into a vibrant institution that has become an integral part of the cultural fabric of 21st century Philadelphia and beyond, Soanes Foundation chairman Paul L. Whalen wrote in a letter to Conn.

Your investment in preservation, expansion, and accessibility of resources has made the Athenaeum a vital resource for our profession as well as an informative pleasure for enthusiasts.

The award will be given at an October dinner in New York City.

Its very gratifying, said Conn, director of the Athenaeum for three years.

In the glow of the letter, Conn was eager to show off some hidden treasures on a recent afternoon.

The Athenaeum offers multiple public programs and rotating exhibitions largely based on its own collection. And, all day, every day, one of the most extraordinary indoor spaces in the city is free and open for reading  the light-filled second-floor reading room.

Just wend your way past the Alexander Milne Calder maquette of William Penn atop City Hall, past the Napoleon death mask, the Bonaparte china, past the portraits of Thomas Walter and his two wives, the 14-foot-tall Isaiah Lukens case clock, and the members lounge with actual physical Inquirers laid on a round table, ascend the dramatic staircase, and there it is  the reading room with its wood, its green shades, its light, and its books.

For many, the Athenaeums John Notman-designed Italianate building is the institutions greatest artifact.

Theres really nothing like it, said Conn.

Conn is quick to acknowledge that the institution he now heads and the building holding it benefited greatly from the decades-long resuscitation performed by former Athenaeum board president George Vaux X and longtime director Roger W. Moss, who led the Athenaeum out of its years of somnambulance and gave it a purpose.

Moss, who became director in 1968, took over an institution held up largely by the fact that it was already there. The Athenaeums brownstone building on South Sixth Street was more than a bit down in the dumps and showed it.

What had started as a bold, exciting idea in 1814  a membership library where the pooled funds of members served to acquire books for lending  had long lost its sizzle.

Membership was down to less than 200. Membership age was way up. So were deficits.

Moss realized the library needed a focus, and he found it in architecture.

Bruce Laverty, the Athenaeums architecture curator, said that until 1973, the only drawings we had were the 40 architectural drawings used to build this building  and some from a number of competitions.

Moss changed that. Between 1973 and 1983, the collection grew to 30,000 drawings.

Now, said Laverty, the collection includes about 360,000 architectural drawings and about 300,000 photographs, largely by Philadelphia architects and designers. There are also diaries and letters, business documents, you name it.

Thomas U. Walter, Paul Cret, Horace Trumbauer, Louis Magaziner, and many more are well represented in the Athenaeums vaults and file drawers.

It is safe to say the Walter collection alone, with his drawings of his greatest creations  Girard College, the U.S. Capitol dome and expansion, and even his consulting work on Philadelphia City Hall  makes the Athenaeum indispensable for an understanding of 19th-century Americas imperial self-portrait.

Just as important, perhaps more so, in 2000, the Athenaeum began hosting a website focused on its collection, the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings site (Philadelphiabuildings.org). It features images and information on nearly 270,000 buildings and more than 25,000 architects and engineers.

The showpieces of the website are the nearly 150,000 images  plans, drawings, photographs  many of them from the Athenaeums archives and made possible by the Athenaeums enormous Cruse scanner.

Because architectural drawings are often so large, they are difficult to handle, much less digitize. But in 2005, the Athenaeum invested in a large-format scanner capable of producing razor-sharp images up to 4 by 6 feet; it can go even larger if a little digital stitching is incorporated.

The scanner  the only of its kind within a hundred miles  has now been in continuous use for nearly 20 years. And its become a revenue source. Other nonprofits and, most recently, artists have employed it to reproduce paintings and drawings.

In art, size matters.

The PAB site gets over 900,000 hits a year, and gets them from all over the world, said Conn. So there are a lot of people in places like Tokyo and Norway and West Chester, Pa., who only know the Athenaeum as a place to go online to look at architecture. There are probably more people out there who know about us than people across the street.

But architecture isnt the entirety of the Athenaeums digital focus. There are about 7,000 historic maps in its collection  the focus of another website, the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network (philageohistory.org), which allows viewers to zoom in and out of different parts of the city using multiple maps and contemporary map overlays.

About a dozen other institutions have contributed maps, which are scanned on the workhorse Cruse scanner and then uploaded to the website.

On our website, the average time a person spends on a page is about 1 minute, 45 seconds, said Laverty. On the map pages, it tends to average 7 or 8 minutes per page. Which means theyre looking at it very intensely.
Grocer Elvis Nunez, 53, demonstrates four days later how he had defended himself in a fatal shootout with an armed robber March 14, 2014. Read more

Shortly before Elvis Nunez had a chance to close his store last Thursday, putting another 7:30 a.m.-to-9 p.m. shift behind him, a man wearing a black facemask burst through the door of his 54 & Wyalusing Food Market and pointed a handgun at him.

I opened the register and was counting the money, but the guy in the mask took one shot at me right away, said Nunez, 53, who dodged the bullet and drew his handgun from his left hip holster. The gunman doubled back to the front door, still pointing his gun at Nunez, who opened the register areas acrylic glass door and fired a bullet into the would-be robbers abdomen.

The gunman ran about 10 feet from the stores front door, turned, and fired again at Nunez, who remained at the front door of the store on the southwest corner of Wyalusing Avenue and Conestoga Street, he said. The gunman then ran east on Wyalusing to the intersection with 54th Street, where he fired two more shots, said Nunez, who slammed the front door and summoned police.

Police took the gunman  who still had not been publicly identified as of noon Tuesday  to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 11 that night. A Police Department spokesperson said he was not able to say if the shooting was still under investigation or if it had been determined to be a justifiable homicide.

In a city where just 25 percent of armed robberies result in arrests and the homicide rate ticked up 11 percent last year, Nunez, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic in 1993, survived by inches.

It was the only way I could stay alive with my family, Nunez said. It was going to be me or the person. He said he didnt want to shoot anyone or carry a gun, but there are a lot of bad people in Philly and I have to protect my family and I have to protect myself.

He had come to the U.S. seeking a better life, he said, had opened his store about 10 years ago with help from family members, and works seven days a week to help fund his goal of seeing all five of his children graduate from college. His oldest, a 26-year-old daughter, graduated from Immaculata University in Chester County and now works as a nutritionist, he said.

I didnt have the chance to go to college, he said. So I want all my kids to have that chance. Working here is the only way to make sure my children get a good education.

Nunezs family and friends celebrated his survival and praised him as a soft-spoken pillar of the community who frequently gives customers free food when they are low on cash. Regulars call him Papi and say he would never shoot anyone unless in self-defense.

Papi, I know if he had to shoot somebody, he had to do it, said Qiana Grant, 36, who said her daughter was in the store during the shooting and lost her slippers running for safety.

Papi is a nice guy, very easygoing, said Grant, a certified nursing assistant. Theres times I come down here with nothing. If you just talk to him, you get what you need. Hell help you feed your kids. Hes cool for the neighborhood. Hes been around here for years, watching my children grow up and a lot of other peoples children grow up.

It was not the first time Nunez has stared down the barrel of a gun, he said. In 2010 he survived a shootout with two gunmen. In 2016 a gunman stole $500 when his wife was behind the register of their store.

Every time you hold your breath and its a really scary experience," said his son, Kelvin, a senior at a Catholic school who turns 17 Friday and plans to study creative writing in college.

Im just saddened that some people have to resort to these types of things, and be in gangs, and rob stores. When your parent is the one the gun is being pointed at, you dont wish that on anyone else, added Kelvin, who earlier this year participated in The Inquirers annual Acel Moore High School Journalism Workshop.

Nunez said he feels bad that the gunman lost his life, and praised the police for whisking him to the hospital. He advised those with thoughts of arming themselves and robbing someone to take another path.

Its a big mistake. You put yourself in danger, you put somebody else in danger, and you can go to the jail. Go to the classroom. You are living in the U.S.A. I come from a poor country. Everything is different over there. You have opportunity here, he said.

"You will see that you can survive honestly and good. Stay out of the gun problem, the drugs, the alcohol. Focus on yourself and your family.
Founded in 1826, Glen Mills is the oldest school for delinquent boys in the country, set on nearly 800 acres of rolling hills in Delaware County. Read more

Pennsylvania law enforcement officials are investigating why child abuse and cover-ups went on for decades at the Glen Mills Schools, in response to an Inquirer investigation of the Delaware County campus.

State Inspector General Bruce Beemer  whose office has the power to issue subpoenas and search warrants, access criminal justice databases, and coordinate with other law enforcement agencies  will review the practices of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS), which licenses and oversees Glen Mills and other programs for court-ordered youth.

The inspector also will likely investigate the school itself and the allegations of abuse and cover-ups surrounding Glen Mills. This is the kind of case where we have an obligation to follow wherever the facts lead us," said Clarke Madden, chief of staff to the inspector general. And thats what well do.

Last month, The Inquirer reported that Glen Mills counselors routinely beat boys in their care, then kept them quiet with threats of worse placements and longer sentences. Former staff said they were demoted or fired for standing up for children and reporting abuse. Meanwhile, the schools top leaders failed to properly vet or train counselors, and insulated themselves from reports of violence.

Nearly 70 percent of its students have left Glen Mills, the oldest U.S. reform school, since The Inquirer report.

The school has denied wrongdoing, and formed a review panel to probe the allegations. Its executive director, Randy Ireson, has taken a leave of absence, and the president of the Glen Mills Board of Managers has resigned.

Aimee Tysarczyk, a spokesperson for Glen Mills, said the school would cooperate with the inspector generals investigation. We take these allegations very seriously and will continue to provide access to information requested by state and local officials, as well as Glen Mills Schools families, customers, and our independent review panel, Tysarczyk said. Violence is against our mission and against our values  as it has been for nearly two centuries.

Amid calls for a state investigation from local and state lawmakers, Gov. Tom Wolf requested on March 6 a full rundown of DHSs oversight of Glen Mills. In a letter dated March 18, DHS Secretary Teresa Miller referred the review to Beemer.

The Department believes that your agency is in a better position, given your law enforcement role, to coordinate more directly with other investigations of the allegations against Glen Mills, Miller said in the letter.

The Pennsylvania auditor general also is investigating, as is the Delaware County district attorney.

Ali Fogarty, a spokesperson for DHS, said the department felt it was both imperative to do everything in its power to review its current licensing and investigative authority and procedures  to better identify potential incidents of abuse before they can be shrouded by a coordinated cover-up.

We are hopeful that the inspector generals investigation will help us identify opportunities to strengthen our processes to fight institutional failures, Fogarty said.

State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia) is planning to introduce a resolution urging DHS to review child-abuse reporting procedures at not just Glen Mills but all state-licensed schools for court-ordered youth.

One instance of abuse is too many, but what we have here is a broader culture we have to deal with, said Kenyatta. It allowed something like this to fester under our noses. My hope is [the inspector general] comes back with some specific things that we can do, whether its regulatory or statutory.

Madden, the chief of staff, said the inspector would likely review whether Glen Mills complied with state statutes governing youth residential facilities. Chapter 3800 of the Pennsylvania Code forbids staff at these programs from using physical restraints to punish a child. It prohibits all child abuse and requires employees at these facilities to immediately report even the most minor allegations to the state.

The Inquirer found that Glen Mills counselors beat up children  in some cases breaking their bones  over nonviolent infractions, such as running away, mouthing off, or talking poorly about the school. Instead of using state-approved restraint techniques, staff slammed children to the floor, where they punched, choked, and kicked them.

In response to The Inquirer investigation, jurisdictions from across the country removed more than 100 of the 238 boys who were enrolled at Glen Mills last month. At its peak, Glen Mills had more than 1,000 students. As of Tuesday, 74 boys remained at the school, Fogarty said.

Philadelphia was spending upward of $52,000 each year per boy it sent to Glen Mills, before officials decided to remove its 51 youths. City Councilwoman Helen Gym, who led the charge locally for a state-level investigation, said she was encouraged by the inspector generals involvement.

His office is much more far-reaching, because of the scope of what he can look at, said Gym, chair of the Councils Children and Youth Committee. Our hope is it will be a much more systemic and comprehensive analysis of what broke down and what the state needs to do to fix things.

The modern Office of the State Inspector General was established in 2017 with sweeping law enforcement powers. The department has two investigative bureaus, with offices in Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Wilkes-Barre.

Madden said he expects the Inspector Generals Office will make its findings public once the investigation concludes. He could not say how long the probe will take.

Were going to undertake a comprehensive and thorough investigation of the matter, he said. We have to start with the underlying facts and develop our own records and facts."

As for whats on the table, Madden said the inspector general will consider any issue which presents itself, one of which is a matter of concern to citizens."

I do not consider us to be limited in any way.
Feb. 21, 2005, file photo, shows the former bishop of the Wheeling-Charleston diocese, W.Va, Michael Bransfield. West Virginia authorities accused Bransfield and his predecessors in a lawsuit of knowingly employing pedophiles and failing to conduct adequate background checks on other employees, putting children in danger. DALE SPARKS / AP Read more

West Virginia authorities on Tuesday accused Michael J. Bransfield, a Roxborough native and former Roman Catholic bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, and his predecessors of knowingly employing pedophiles  including some priests cited in last years Pennsylvania grand jury report examining decades of clergy sex abuse and cover-up.

In a civil suit, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey alleged that West Virginia prelates had endangered children for decades by failing to conduct adequate background checks or disclose abuse accusations against clerics and diocesan employees to parents in the parishes where those people were assigned.

In some cases cited in the filings, child molesters were allowed to stay in parish assignments that brought them into routine contact with minors for years after they had admitted their crimes.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of high-profile civil actions taken by state authorities across the country in the last year against a church that they say has been too slow to respond to, and in some cases covered-up, a crisis of sex abuse within its ranks.

Bransfield  part of a family of prominent Philadelphia clerics, who resigned last year facing his own allegations of sexual misconduct  dismissed Tuesdays action as little more than a fishing expedition.

I dont understand why there is a sudden concern, he told The Inquirer. Considering the publicity about my own situation, theyre trying to find other things that could have happened. This is all happening because of whats happening to me.

A spokesperson from the diocese disputed the suits allegations, and said in a statement that church officials would address the matter in the appropriate forum.

The lawsuit was brought under the states consumer protection laws and asks for the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese to be barred from advertising its parochial schools and outdoor camps as safe environments for children because top officials were working to cover up and conceal arguably criminal behavior. The attorney general also asked a judge to impose financial penalties against the diocese and Bransfield.

Parents who pay and entrust the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese and its schools to educate and care for their children deserve full transparency, Morrisey said in a statement.

Bransfield abruptly left his post in September and is awaiting judgment from the Vatican after several priests came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct. He was previously accused of abusing a minor during his time as a priest in Philadelphia, although neither prosecutors nor the archdiocese took action against him.

Last week, Bransfield was barred from priestly duties by Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, whom Pope Francis appointed to investigate and manage the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese after Bransfields departure.

Bransfield said Tuesday that he had not been contacted by Lori or the West Virginia Attorney Generals Office since he left the state and returned to his Roxborough home. Lori never talks to me, he said.

Despite Morriseys broad claims against the former bishop, his lawsuit offered few details about Bransfields knowingly harboring pedophiles. Most of its accusations about him centered on the dioceses failure to adequately investigate the backgrounds of priests and civilian staff, including a high school principal hired in 2011 despite being convicted 26 years earlier of statutory rape.

The diocese, the lawsuit states, fired the man once his past was brought to officials attention, but no one warned students or parents about what they had discovered.

Bransfield blamed school administrators  not the diocese  for any failure to check the mans background. They hire, he said. The diocese doesnt hire people.

His predecessors Joseph Howard Hodges, who held the post from 1962 to 1985, and Bernard William Schmitt, who retired in 2004, came in for stronger criticism. Both are deceased.

In one decades-old case cited in the suit, Hodges welcomed to Wheeling the Rev. Victor Frobas months after he was forced out of a Philadelphia seminary because of a 1962 accusation of child abuse that officials deemed to be credible.

After he arrived in West Virginia, Frobas was repeatedly accused of abusing children, yet was shuffled from church-run treatment centers to postings that put him in charge of Boy Scout troops and diocesan summer camps. He was eventually charged and convicted in 1987 for molesting two boys in St. Louis while on leave from the West Virginia diocese after a separate abuse complaint, the lawsuit said.

Morrisey told reporters Tuesday that he launched his investigation after noticing that some priests named in the 2017 Pennsylvania grand jury report had cycled through the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese.

The suit does not mention any by name, but the grand jury report detailed the case of the Rev. Raymond Lukac, a priest from Greensburg, Pa., suspected of being a serial abuser and ultimately sent to Wheeling after he impregnated, secretly married, and divorced a teenager in his Pennsylvania parish in the 60s.

According to the grand jurys findings, William G. Connare, then the bishop of Greensburg, wrote to Hodges in 1964 and asked him to take in Lukac, who he acknowledged was a risk.

Hodges agreed to welcome the accused pedophile to the West Virginia fold. To Connare he replied, according to the grand jury report: We will be happy to cooperate in helping him serve as a real priest.
A mourner lights a candle during a vigil to commemorate victims of Friday's shooting, outside the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, Monday, March 18, 2019. Read more

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP)  The white supremacist accused of gunning down 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand has dismissed his lawyer and opted to represent himself at trial, prompting the prime minister to declare Tuesday that she would do everything in her power to deny him a platform for his racist views.

"I agree that it is absolutely something that we need to acknowledge, and do what we can to prevent the notoriety that this individual seeks," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told reporters. "He obviously had a range of reasons for committing this atrocious terrorist attack. Lifting his profile was one of them. And that's something that we can absolutely deny him."

Asked if she would like the trial to occur behind closed doors, Ardern demurred, saying that was not her decision to make.

"One thing I can assure you  you won't hear me speak his name," she said.

The gunman's desire for infamy was made clear by the fact that he left behind a convoluted 74-page manifesto before Friday's massacre and livestreamed footage of his attack on the Al Noor mosque.

The video prompted widespread revulsion and condemnation by lawmakers and members of the public. Facebook said it removed 1.5 million videos of the shootings during the first 24 hours after the massacre. But on Tuesday, Ardern expressed frustration that the video remained available online, four days after the attack.

"We have been in contact with Facebook; they have given us updates on their efforts to have it removed, but as I say, it's our view that it cannot  should not  be distributed, available, able to be viewed," she said. "It is horrendous and while they've given us those assurances, ultimately the responsibility does sit with them."

Arden said she had received some communication from Facebooks chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, on the issue. The prime minister has also spoken with British Prime Minister Theresa May about the importance of a global effort to clamp down on the distribution of such material.

Lawyer Richard Peters, who was assigned to represent suspected gunman Brenton Tarrant at his initial court appearance on Saturday, told the New Zealand Herald that Tarrant dismissed him that day.

A judge ordered Tarrant to return to New Zealand's High Court on April 5 for his next hearing on one count of murder, though he is expected to face additional charges. He is being held in isolation in a Christchurch jail.

"He seemed quite clear and lucid, whereas this may seem like very irrational behavior," Peters told the newspaper. "He didn't appear to me to be facing any challenges or mental impairment, other than holding fairly extreme views."

Peters did not immediately return a call from the Associated Press on Tuesday.

He said that a judge could order a lawyer to assist Tarrant at a trial, but that Tarrant would likely be unsuccessful in trying to use it as a platform to put forward any extremist views.

Under New Zealand law, a trial is "to determine innocence or guilt," Peters said. "The court is not going to be very sympathetic to him if he wants to use the trial to express his own views."

Peters said Tarrant didn't tell him why he wanted to represent himself.

Separately, Ardern has said gun law reforms would be announced within 10 days of the attack and an inquiry conducted into intelligence and security services that failed to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans. There have been concerns intelligence agencies were overly focused on the Muslim community in detecting and preventing security risks.

New Zealand's international spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, confirmed in a statement that it had not received any relevant information or intelligence ahead of the shootings.

Meanwhile, Christchurch was beginning to return to a semblance of normalcy Tuesday. Streets near the hospital that had been closed for four days reopened to traffic as relatives and friends of the victims continued to stream in from around the world. The hospital said it was treating 31 victims as of Monday, nine of them in critical condition.

The close-knit community has been deeply wounded by the attacks. On Monday evening, more than 1,000 students from rival Christchurch schools and different religions gathered in a park across from the Al Noor mosque, joining voices in a passionate display of unity.

The students sat on the grass in the fading daylight, lifting flickering candles to the sky as they sang a traditional Maori song. Hundreds then stood to perform an emotional, defiant haka, the famed ceremonial dance of the indigenous Maori people.

For many, joining the vigil for the victims of the mass shooting was a much-needed opportunity to soothe their minds after a wrenching few days.

Most of the students spent hours locked down in their schools on Friday as police tried to determine if any other shooters were involved in the attacks.

Those at the vigil told harrowing tales of being forced to hide under classroom tables or on a school stage behind a curtain, of being instructed not to speak, and to urinate in a bucket rather than risk leaving the classroom for a bathroom.

Sarah Liddell, 17, said many of her peers felt intense anxiety since the attack. There was a sense of safety in coming together on Monday, she said.

"I feel like it's just really important to show everyone that one act of violence doesn't define a whole city," she said. "This is one of the best ways to show everyone coming together. Some schools have little funny rivalries, but in times like this we all just come together and that's all forgotten."

The students draped a fence along the park with chains of colorful paper notes, each emblazoned with messages of love and hope and sorrow: "You are not alone." ''This is your home. You are part of us." ''We all bleed the same colour."

Relatives of the dead are still anxiously awaiting word on when they can bury their loved ones. Islamic tradition calls for bodies to be cleansed and buried as soon as possible after death, usually within 24 hours.

Ardern has said authorities hope to release all the bodies by Wednesday and police said authorities are working with pathologists and coroners to complete the task as soon as they can.

Associated Press writers Stephen Wright and Nick Perry contributed to this article.
Pope Francis attends an audience with personnel and families of the Italian Court of Auditors (Corte dei Conti) in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican Monday, March 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) Read more

VATICAN CITY (AP)  Pope Francis has declined to accept the resignation of French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin as archbishop of Lyon after he was convicted of failing to report a known predator priest to police, the Vatican said Tuesday.

The decision greatly disappointed abuse survivors, given that Barbarin had traveled to the Vatican on Monday to present his resignation following the March 7 verdict and six-month suspended sentence he received.

The Vatican spokesman, Alessandro Gisotti, said Tuesday that during the audience, Francis didn't accept the resignation and instead asked Barbarin to do what he thinks is best for the archdiocese. Barbarin has decided to take time away and has asked his deputy in Lyon, the Rev. Yves Baumgarten, to assume leadership of the archdiocese, Gisotti said.

"The Holy See repeats its closeness to victims of abuse, to the faithful of the archdiocese of Lyon and the French church who are living in a particularly difficult moment," Gisotti said.

The French court found that Barbarin had an obligation to report the Rev. Bernard Preynat to civil authorities when he learned of his abuse. Preynat, who is scheduled to be tried on sexual violence charges next year, confessed to abusing Boy Scouts in the 1970s and 1980s. His victims accuse Barbarin and other church authorities of covering up for him for years.

Barbarin has appealed the conviction, which could have influenced Francis' decision to not immediately accept his resignation. Francis has been loath to take such measures lest they influence the outcome of trials.

But the decision nevertheless left French abuse victims disillusioned, particularly given Francis' recent comments about ending cover-up that he pronounced at the end of a high-level Vatican summit last month.

Bertrand Virieux, a victim and co-founder of the association La Parole Liberee (Lift the Burden of Silence), told France Info radio he doesn't understand Francis' decision and doesn't expect anything anymore from the church.

He noted the disconnect between the "strong words pronounced a few weeks ago that might have given hope to victims and to those who want some change within the church" and "the daily reality in the church."

Another victim, the president of the association Francois Devaux, called Francis' decision a mistake.

"It shows that we are right and that the problem is inherent to (religious) dogma," he told French media.

Last year, Francis reluctantly accepted the resignation of one of his key supporters, Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, after he was implicated in cover-ups from decades ago.

The cases were revealed by a Pennsylvania grand jury report. Wuerl was never criminally charged, but he determined he could no longer effectively lead the archdiocese after he lost the trust of the flock and some of his priests.

Francis also accepted the resignation last year of Philip Wilson, archbishop of Adelaide, Australia, after he was convicted of covering up abuse. Wilsons conviction was reversed on appeal, but he had already had been replaced. His future status is unclear.
Rochelle Nichols-Solomon leads protesters from Pay Up PPA, a group seeking to encourage the Philadelphia Parking Authority to provide more funding for the city's schools. Read more

The Philadelphia Parking Authority on Tuesday passed a 2020 budget that gives more than $14 million to the Philadelphia School District and contains a 2 percent increase in payroll costs, but has no increases in fines or fees.

The budget, passed at the authoritys monthly board meeting, anticipates $277.8 million in revenue from April 2019 through March 2020, the budget year. On-street parking violations are expected to generate $56.4 million, of which $14.5 million would go to the schools. Thats about $366,000 more than the PPA is expected to pay the district in the current fiscal year.

The amount for the schools was a source of conflict Tuesday, as dozens of protesters gathered at the PPAs headquarters at Seventh and Market Streets to insist on more money for the district and to call for the resignation of PPA Board Chairman John Ashdale.

We have attended every PPA meeting for 15 months, said Jolley Christman, a member of Pay Up PPA, a group that advocates for a more transparent agency and dedicated school funding. You have continually turned your back on us, not engaged in dialogue with us. Pay Up PPA calls for your resignation.

Sources have identified Ashdale as the person who is alleged to have offered a bribe of new windows to City Councilman Bobby Henons chief of staff in exchange for help in killing an audit of the PPA in 2016. The allegation was part of the federal corruption indictment involving Electricians Local 98, in which Henon, a union official, was charged with 19 counts. Ashdale has not been charged, and his lawyer has denied that the windows were a bribe. Ashdale declined to comment Tuesday.

>>READ MORE: Sources in Johnny Doc case: PPA board chair Joseph Ashdale bribed councilman to squash agency audit

After the meeting, Scott Petri, the PPAs chief executive, argued that payments to the School District are limited by state law, which requires the PPA to give the majority of on-street parking revenue to the city before the schools receives any funds. The city will receive $40.8 million in the coming budget year.

The agency cannot do what th e protesters ask and give $25 million to the schools before paying the city, Petri said. We have to do whats directed, and were going to continue to do that whether these people attend or not.

Petri is asking the Pennsylvania legislature this year to create a 50-cent surcharge for every ride-share trip taken in Philadelphia, which he said could generate an additional $8 million for the School District.

The PPA budget is broken down into 21 sources of expenses and revenue, which include numerous parking garages and lots around the city and the red light camera program. That revenue projection includes $2.9 million from the division that oversees ride-share companies Uber and Lyft. The number is an approximation, as the taxi and limousine division, which handles ride-share oversight, operates on a different fiscal calendar than the rest of the PPA.

Still, it demonstrates the growth of the ride-share industry in Philadelphia. The 2020 budget projection is more than six times as much as ride sharing generated for the PPA just two years earlier. Taxis, by contrast, are generating just $69,000 more than they did in 2018. The taxi and limousine division revenue goes in part to the School District, and it generated $2.2 million for schools from July to December 2018.

>>READ MORE: Uber revenue error prompts renewed call for new Philly tax on ride-share trips

Critics of the agency, including Pay Up PPA, have labeled it a patronage mill for Republicans in a city dominated by Democrats. In a wiretap of Henons 2016 conversation with the person identified as Ashdale, the person allegedly said there would be no jobs available at the PPA if the audit happened.

Petri, who took the top job in 2018, has tried to present a different profile of the PPA. He noted hiring is now done on a point system in which references from political patrons have no worth.

It does not serve that function, and it hasnt in a while, he said.

The PPA payroll is projected to be about $112 million for 1,057 employees, a nearly 2 percent increase over the previous year.
Bob Brady, leader of Philadelphia's Democratic Party, said Tuesday that nominating petitions turned in for a number of judicial candidates were "atrocious," filled with fake signatures and other flaws. He is shown in this file photo announcing his retirement from the U.S. House in 2018. Read more

Petition challenge season started at 5 p.m. Tuesday officially. But the usual panic began even earlier.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, chairman of the Democratic City Committee, said he advised several candidates for Common Pleas and Municipal Court judgeships to inspect the signatures on their nomination petitions after hearing about serious problems with them.

Brady said the candidates all hired the same political consultant, Rasheen Crews, to help collect the 1,000 signatures from registered Democrats needed to gain a spot on the May 21 primary ballot. Tuesday was the deadline for legal challenges to nominating petitions.

Ive got four or five people dropping out, Brady said of judicial candidates. Now were panicking. He did a lot of these candidates.

Brady said the petitions were atrocious, and appeared to be what are known as kitchen-table jobs, when people fill in the names of voters who did not actually sign the petitions. Brady also said some of the petition packages had what appeared to be photocopied pages from other petitions, which is not allowed.

Crews, who Brady said was paid $2 to $3 per signature, did not respond to requests for comment.

Crews also worked for other candidates, collecting petitions for Mayor Jim Kenney and one of his Democratic primary challengers, former City Controller Alan Butkovitz. A spokesperson for former Lt. Gov. Mike Stack IIIs campaign for City Council at large said Crews collected 40 percent to 50 percent of its petitions.

Brady said he spoke to Crews on Monday evening and the consultant blamed any problems on people he hired to circulate the petitions.

This creates a quandary for the local Democratic Party, which is scheduled to consider which judicial candidates to endorse next Monday and Tuesday. How can we endorse someone if they have fake petitions? Brady asked.

Wanda Murren, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State, said nomination paperwork for three judicial candidates from Philadelphia was rejected last Tuesday after a man showed up in the Harrisburg office just a few minutes before the filing deadline of 5 p.m.

One, Common Pleas Court Judge Timika Lane, was rejected in her bid for Superior Court because she did not have the required number of signatures. Another, Brian McLaughlin, was rejected in bids for Common Pleas and Municipal Courts for the same reason.

The third, Gary Silver, was rejected for Common Pleas Court because his candidate affidavit was not notarized. Murren said Silver has gone to court to appeal that rejection.

McLaughlin and Silver used Crews for petitions, Brady said. It was unclear whether Lane did.

Jason Rubin, a candidate for Common Pleas Court, withdrew from the race because of the petitions Crews turned in on his behalf. Its apparent when you look at them, Rubin said. Theyre duplicates.

He declined to say how many signatures Crews gathered for him or whether he would seek damages from Crews.

James Berardinelli is one of the several judicial candidates who also hired Crews to collect signatures. In a brief interview Monday, Berardinelli said that Crews collected about half of the signatures he turned in but that he didnt think his were fraudulent.

Looking at mine, I dont think they were photocopied, he said, noting that he was in Crews office last Monday as circulators were coming back from the field with signatures.

Berardinelli is running for both Municipal Court and Common Pleas Court. He said Crews collected about 900 of the 1,740 signatures he filed for Common Pleas and 600 of the approximately 1,600 he collected for Municipal Court.

Petitions usually have a crinkly feel to them from people passing them around, he said. And these felt that way. They did not feel like they had been photocopied.

Berardinelli said he used Crews in 2017 and didnt have an issue then. Obviously the allegations are concerning, he said.

Staff writer Julia Terruso contributed to this article.
Rashad Heard was a fugitive wanted in a July 2018 killing until he was arrested in December 2018 by Philadelphia Police. Read more

After being held for trial Tuesday on murder charges in a July 2018 fatal shooting in Hunting Park, Rashad Heard hurled some unkind words toward Municipal Court Judge Wendy Pew.

B! he yelled at the judge, who told him to sit down. Im not going to sit down, he said, repeating the expletive as two sheriffs deputies pushed him into his chair at the defense table.

As Pew told Heard that she was finding him in contempt, Heard, a tall, bearded man in a black skullcap, yelled, Who gives a [expletive]?

Earlier, Pew was telling Heard, 29, of Strawberry Mansion, that he was being held for trial on murder, weapons, and related offenses in the death of Khalil Madison, 34, when Heard again began cursing at her.

Madisons fatal shooting took place about six months after Heard had been released from a city jail after the District Attorneys Office withdrew gun-possession charges against him on Jan. 12, 2018, in a separate matter stemming from July 2017.

Court records indicate the charges were dropped based on prosecutorial discretion."

Ben Waxman, spokesperson for District Attorney Larry Krasner, who took office last year, said by email Tuesday that charges were dropped in the 2017 gun-possession case because additional investigation in January 2018 "revealed newly available video and physical evidence; after review, one of our prosecutors determined that the original allegations were inconsistent with the available evidence.

At Heards preliminary hearing Tuesday in the murder case, Assistant District Attorney Steven Patton called two witnesses to the stand.

Donald Green testified that about 11:10 p.m. on July 27, 2018, he was driving a Nissan Rogue SUV with a man nicknamed Weezy in the front passenger seat and Madison, nicknamed Gorilla, and Heard, who introduced himself as M, in the backseat.

Green said Heard was supposed to give them Suboxone, a drug used to help with opioid or heroin addiction.

But, Green testified, Heard and Madison began arguing about the money, and Heard pulled out a gun and put it to Madisons chest.

The two men started tussling over the gun, and there was a pop" as Heard shot Madison, Green testified.

Me and Weezy jumped out of the car, said Green, who had stopped the SUV on the 600 block of Rising Sun Avenue.

Heard and Madison also got out of the car, and Heard shot Madison two more times, testified Green, who said he then jumped back into the SUV and drove off alone.

Police took Madison to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:33 p.m.

Heard was a fugitive until police arrested him Dec. 23.

Police Officer Kyle Bobiy testified that about 10:15 a.m. that day, he responded to a radio call of a person with a gun at 19th Street and Erie Avenue in Tioga. Bobiy testified that Heard was at the corner and that after getting out of his police car, he ran after Heard, who threw something under a car.

Bobiy said he caught up to Heard and arrested him, then recovered a Glock from under the car.

After Pew held Heard for trial on the murder case and Heard yelled at the judge, he was taken out of the courtroom, then brought back two hours later so the judge could address him on his outbursts.

This time, Heard was calm as Pew sentenced him to five months and 29 days behind bars for contempt.

I apologize, Heard said.
Amira Patton-Johns (left) and Becky Howell (right) at work at Camden Printworks on March 19. The business is printing T-shirts again after being robbed recently. Owner Adam Woods vows to stay. Read more

A man hired last summer to do occasional odd jobs at the Camden Printworks was arrested Tuesday and charged in connection with a burglary that left the shop on Broadway with little of the equipment it needs to operate.

James Philips, 42, of the 400 block of Viola Street in the citys Waterfront South neighborhood, was apprehended at his home without incident around 6 p.m. by the Camden County Police, spokesperson Dan Keashen said. He was charged with two counts of second-degree theft and one count of third-degree burglary and was remanded to the Camden County Jail.

Some of the silk-screening and other equipment, including electronics and tools, that were taken while Printworks was closed during the March 9 weekend was expected to be recovered, said Keashen. About $150,000 worth of equipment was taken.

The suspect was like a friend from the neighborhood, and hadnt worked here in a while, said Adam Woods, who has owned the proudly progressive, civic-minded and LGBTQ-friendly business at 1621 Broadway since 2006.

Im sad  sad that he got to a place where he felt that [burglary] was the best way to get ahead," Woods said. "Im especially sad because I was his friend, and he knows I would have helped him if he was down on his luck.

Earlier Tuesday, two substantial orders of T-shirts were being screen-printed at Printworks for the first time since the burglary.

Weve cobbled together a production pipeline, Woods said. Its not ideal, but were open for business.

Printworks project manager Becky Howell said 100 T-shirts for Root Down Brewing Co. in Phoenixville and 300 for the Philly Dyke March were in production Tuesday. Its good not to feel so beaten down, and to know we can keep doing this," she said. "Its more difficult, but were just trying to push through.

Camden Printworks  its motto is printing with a purpose  was founded in the city in 1990.

The company screen-prints hoodies and T-shirts for local and national customers, and has forged deep bonds with arts organizations and other nonprofits inside and outside Camden. It has printed more than 1,000 Black Lives Matter T-shirts; they are free for anyone who comes into the shop and asks.

On countless occasions Ive watched Adam and his crew lift up all those around them, said Allison Heishman, artistic director at Philadelphias Simpatico Theatre. They grow with their community, and because of what they give, everybody wins.

In a Facebook post, Laura Nicholas Sanchez of the Bridge of Peace Community Church in Camdens Fairview section said, Weve had our T-shirts done by Camden Printworks for 20 years, and urged others to pray for and order merchandise from the shop.

The outpouring of support from the community and from other businesses has been a great boost. Were getting so much love, said Howell.

Ill say: A GoFundMe account set up by friends of the business was more than $14,000 on its way toward a goal of $20,000 Tuesday.

Its our intention to stay in Camden, Woods said. We felt it was a moral obligation for us to locate our business in an area that the American economy has left behind.

The company has between 8 and 12 employees, depending on the season, and often hires city residents, including people who live nearby in Waterfront South.

Im going to continue hiring people from the neighborhood, said Woods. Im not going to let this guy change my views about that.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke speaks to a crowd at Penn State University in State College, Pa., Tuesday, March 19, 2019. Several hundred were in attendance for O'Rourke's three state inaugural campaign. Read more

Look at the losers running, or considering a run, for the Democratic presidential nomination.

I don't mean that pejoratively. I mean it literally.

Beto ORourkes presidential candidacy is the ultimate expression of the participation trophy culture on the left. It used to be you had to win on the state level before taking the national stage. Barack Obama won a Senate seat from Illinois before immediately declaring his intention to run for president. At the time, that was considered pretty audacious. He hadnt accomplished anything in the Senate before he decided on a presidential run. But at least he won. ORourke lost his race to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) last year. He got a participation trophy. Apparently, he thinks that qualifies him to be the leader of the free world.

Well, he must have some accomplishments other than almost winning a Senate seat, right? Not really. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was flummoxed when asked what ORourke had accomplished in Congress, saying he brought a great deal of vitality to his work preserving our planet and protecting our people. (In fact, ORourke passed a single bill, H.R. 5873, which renamed a courthouse in his hometown of El Paso.) Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa was questioned by Ed Henry on Fox News, What would you say is Beto ORourkes top accomplishment that he brings to the table? Hinojosa could not name a single one. Im not even talking about Congress, Henry said. What has he done in his life? Your question is meaningless, Hinojosa replied.

So, if ORourke hasnt accomplished anything, he must at least have some clear ideas of what he wants to accomplish in the Oval Office, right? Nope. The Washington Post reports that unlike candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who launched their campaigns with clearly articulated policy platforms, ORourke focuses more on sweeping calls for unity and pitching himself as the best antidote to the countrys toxic politics. The motivation for his run, apparently, is him. As Vanity Fairs Joe Hagan explains in a recent profile, ORourke cant deny the pull of his own gifts. He tells a reporter, Man, Im just born to be in it.

Hes not the only statewide loser taking the national stage. Stacey Abrams lost the governors race in Georgia in 2018, yet national Democrats tapped her to deliver the official rebuttal to the State of the Union  a task normally given to those who actually won their races. And now, the Washington Post reports, she is considering a race for president as well. I think that I am a skilled communicator, she said. I think Im a very good thinker. No, I know Im a good thinker. I know I have policy chops. I have foreign policy experience.

Foreign policy experience? She served as minority leader of the state House of Representatives. Her official bio lists her as former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations (a temporary membership for young people) as well as a Council on Italy Fellow, a British-American Project Fellow, a Salzburg Seminar-Freeman Fellow on U.S.-East Asian Relations, a Salzburg Seminar Fellow on youth and civic engagement, and a Yukos Fellow for U.S.-Russian Relations. That might qualify her for an entry-level job at a left-wing think tank, but it hardly qualifies her to be commander in chief. Even ORourke can claim experience on the House Armed Services Committee.

Democrats point out that President Trump had never won statewide office before running for president. Thats true. But he also had not run for state office and lost. He ran as a successful outsider, not as a failed insider. And unlike ORourke, he had actual accomplishments  including a multibillion-dollar real estate empire.

This is not to dismiss ORourkes chances. He raised a whopping $6.1 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate, just edging out Sanders first day haul of almost $6 million. That is the best of any Democrat running for president so far. As the New York Times noted, In a single day online, he raised nearly a quarter of what Barack Obama, then a senator, did in the entire first quarter of 2007.

Apparently, Democrats like losers. We'll soon see if one can win the presidency.

Marc Thiessen writes a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post on foreign and domestic policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. @marcthiessen
At a news conference at an Ironworkers union hall, Pennsylvania lawmaker Rep. Thomas Mehaffie discusses legislation he is introducing to pump hundreds of millions of ratepayer dollars into the state's five nuclear power plants, Monday, March 11, 2019, in Harrisburg, Pa. Read more

It would be interesting to see the reaction of Lewis L. Strauss, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, to the $500 million bailout of Pennsylvanias nuclear power plants that a handful of state legislators proposed last week. In 1954, Strauss famously predicted nuclear power would be too cheap to meter. We are finding out he might as well have added that one size fits all, and the check is in the mail.

Nuclear power has always been more costly than other types of generation. The 1960s, 70s, and 80s saw mistakes, cost overruns, and accidents. Time and time again, the utilities, which owned nuclear plants, sought rate increases, forcing consumers to pay for the industries mistakes. Granting ever-growing rate increases was the first bailout for nuclear power.

The costs and dangers of building and operating nuclear power plants have been exceptionally high. (There have been four major nuclear power plant accidents in the United States). After Pennsylvania restructured the electric industry in 1997, the government handed over billions of dollars to nuclear plant owners to cover their industrys bad investments  the second bailout.

Now the companies who bought the nuclear power plants are unhappy with their decisions, saying the investment isnt making as much they want. The industry has asked Pennsylvania legislators to place a surcharge on everyones electric bill. Consumers, the utilities argue, should be forced to pay for the companies poor investments. They are seeking a third bailout.

Groups representing consumers and seniors are not having it, urging legislators to vote against raising everyones electric bill so a handful of corporations can increase their profits.

Apologists for the nuclear industry counter by saying consumers must be surcharged for the good of the environment and to save jobs and money in the long run. Both arguments fall into the too cheap to meter category of unjustified optimism.

Nuclear power is not renewable. It relies upon uranium mining that pollutes, irradiates, and causes devastation to what were once pristine areas, leaving deadly waste behind. The uranium has to be processed, leaving behind dangerous by-products. The few regulations in place to stop the worst practices were rolled back by Trumps EPA in October.

Many environmental advocacy groups in Pennsylvania  including the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Clean Air Council, PennEnvironment, Keystone Progress, Clean Water Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility Philadelphia/Pennsylvania, and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania  oppose the bailout. The groups issued a statement saying: Pennsylvanians need and deserve a forward-thinking, long-term strategy to fight climate change and invest in a clean energy economy centered around renewable energy. This legislation does nothing to advance the deployment of renewable energy in Pennsylvania and further locks us into increasingly expensive nuclear power from old and outdated equipment."

As to the argument that we should do something to save good-paying jobs  of course we should. Its just hard to listen when multinational corporations who lay off workers to increase their profits all of a sudden worry about their employees. In the long term, building renewable energy generators creates more jobs and conservation efforts than what the corporations are threatening to lay off.

The last argument for a third bailout is we need nuclear power to fight global warming. And if that were really our only choice, nuclear power or global warming, it might be worth considering. But its not.

The real choice is between surcharging consumers for an old polluting, nonrenewable power source, or focusing on a cost-effective, sustainable, renewable energy future.

As easy as it should be to persuade our elected officials to vote against the expensive, polluting dinosaur and for the future, it will not be. We cannot avoid the reality of campaign contributions and self-interest of those targeted by the nuclear lobby. We must respond with demands: meaningful jobs in conservation and building renewable power sources; affordable electric bills; and having elected officials represent us, our children, and the environment, not the dying nuclear power industry. Two bailouts are more than enough.

Lance Haver is policy director for the PA Save Our Safety Net Coalition. Lance@LanceHaver.com
Recently I finished listening to the Serial podcasts remarkable (and remarkably underrated) third season  a deep dive into the cesspool of the criminal justice system in Ohios Cuyahoga County, the vast metropolis that includes Cleveland. Sarah Koenig and her team from the NPR podcast spent more than a year inside the countys towering criminal justice center to lift up that rock and expose a system rigged to dig holes that that everyday citizens who fall in can never climb out.

It was staggering to learn about devastated, de-industrialized communities like East Cleveland, where its barely functioning civic government doesnt keep any records, and criminal suspects deprived of their civil rights can sue all they want because theres no money to collect. The Serial team exposed cases where people were arrested and simply thrown into a storage closet for days with no charges  and no toilet. The listener is compelled to ask, how can this even happen? And theres no easy answer. But one partial answer is more of the sunlight that Serials journalism threw onto East Clevelands problems.

Simply put, greater Cleveland needs more journalists, But its about to get even fewer of them. Last week, the only daily newspaper in Ohios largest city  the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, published by the Advance Communications chain  announced its latest batch of layoffs, with 12 more reporters and editors getting a pink slip, This is in addition to another nearly simultaneous move of eliminating 24 copy editors and designers and moving their work to a faceless (and non-unionized, of course) centralized location.

The villain, according to the announcement, was a familiar one: Declining print advertising revenue. And the cumulative effect of years of job losses at the P-D  which six years ago reduced home delivery to its print subscribers to three days a week  have been devastating. (At that time, Terry Egger was president, publisher and chief executive of the P-D. He is currently the publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer.) In just a decade, the papers union  the very first News Guild local in America  went from 340 jobs to only 30. Thats not a typo. Thats one journalist for every 70,000 people in metro Cleveland. And if youre a corrupt cop or public official in East Cleveland, you can sleep a lot easier tonight, knowing your sordid secrets are safe.

It may not meet the official definition, but Cleveland is fast becoming a news desert, a term that didnt even exist 10 years ago. It refers to the growing number of American places  from rural prairies to Midwestern towns in the shadow of abandoned smokestacks  that have few or, increasingly, no sources of local journalism. This week, Facebook  of all corporate people!  shined its gigantic spotlight on the shrinkage of local news reporting by publishing a map showing where the flow of information has dried up.

The areas in the lightest shade of green are news deserts. Not surprisingly, rural areas suffer the most  you could literally drive on a line straight north from the border with Mexico in west Texas all the way to Canada and not pass a vibrant news environment. But why is Facebook bothering to tell us this?

About a year ago  in part after stinging criticism that its platform was drowning in literally fake political news that had ultimately swamped the U.S. 2016 presidential election  Facebook announced a new initiative called Today In. The idea was to give Facebooks gazillion readers five local news stories every day about their hometown, from trusted mainstream news sources. But the plan faltered in its execution. Team Zuckerberg soon learned a lot of American towns simply arent blessed with five reported news stories every day.

About one in three users in the U.S. live in places where we cannot find enough local news on Facebook to launch Today In. two Facebook execs wrote in a blog post on Monday. What does that mean exactly? In the last 28 days, there has not been a single day where weve been able to find five or more recent news articles directly related to these towns. This does not vary much by region: 35 percent of users in the Midwest, Northeast, and South  and 26 percent in the West  live in places where we cant find much local news on Facebook. Not all of the areas are ones youd expect. Facebook had a problem finding local news in parts of New Jersey  a sad commentary on the way that balkanized state is covered by its news orgs.

Who killed the local journalism that Facebook wanted to promote? Its not exactly the whodunnit of the century. The calls are coming from inside Mark Zuckerbergs big glass house in Menlo Park, California. OK, Facebook may not be the only killer of legacy news orgs, but the crime scene is littered with its DNA.

Over the last 15 years, as Americans became addicted to the electrons of their laptops and then their mobile phones and ditched the messy ink and day-old headlines of a printed newspaper, Facebook  offering not just news of the world but news of your actual friends  sopped up much of that bandwidth. And advertisers know it. The companies that spent most of their 20th Century ad dollars on newspapers when those papers had a monopoly on reaching local consumers are now on Facebook, which attracted 22 percent of all digital advertising dollars last year. The newsrooms that lost those ad dollars are laying off journalists. Its Econ 101.

The tragedy is that Facebook is run by smart people who understand this is a bad downward spiral. Many people  young people entering our allegedly democratic system in particular  have been increasingly getting most or all of their news from posts on social media, so the implosion of modern journalism will rob Facebook of valuable content. But Facebook is built for quarterly profits, designing algorithms to keep you on its site and to keep sucking out those ad dollars like a vampire squid. The greater civic good will never be programmed in. America is going to see more and more towns like Waynesville, Missouri, which recently lost the Daily Guide newspaper and where one retiree told the Associated Press, candidly, for the most part, Im ignorant.

But wait, everybody: Facebook has a solution to the problem that it helped cause in the first place. The blog post announcing the problems with its 2018 news initiative revealed a new plan for 2019, which includes a $300 million fund to philanthropically support local news initiatives across the United States. Thats great news, but ... isnt this the giant Catch-22 of 21st Century philanthropy? Millions of dollars meant to deflect your questions about a rigged system that brings in billions of dollars for the status quo.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren  whom, you may have heard, is also running for president  has a better idea. Shes proposed an innovative plan to end the monopoly power exercised by Facebook and at least two other tech mega-giants, Amazon and Google. Much like the way that government stepped in to save capitalism and reduce unfairness in the 19th Century caused by monopoly-seeking robber barons, Warren wants to regulate the largest tech platforms like other utilities, with laws to prevent anti-competitive mergers (in the case of Facebook, its ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp) and practices that allow these platforms to monopolize product sales and information on their sites, as well as the sale of our private information.

Todays big tech companies have too much power  too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy, Warren wrote. Theyve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else.

Shes right. And the destruction of Americas local news landscape is only part of the trouble with Facebook. As last weeks mass murder in New Zealand powerfully showed, a lack of leadership has allowed Facebook (and other social media) to become platforms less for democratic dialogue and more for spreading hate, with violence that can now be broadcast live to the world in real time. The 2016 election showed how Facebook was manipulated by fake news scammers in Macedonia, Russian spies, and firms like Cambridge Analytica that found it way too easy to abuse our private data.

For local news, a less powerful Facebook would be only part of the solution. Theres a need for civic-minded (as opposed to self-interested) philanthropy, a public that understands the value of journalism and is willing to pay for it, and for those of us to work in media to constantly do a better job. And Warrens proposal is just a starting point  but its a conversation that needs to urgently be had, as social media increasingly becomes the artery for spreading the cancers of a new millennium.

Even as were still trying to figure out what the hell hit us in 2016, the 2020 presidential election is here  and the warning signs are terrible. Already, Russian trolls are said to be developing new strategy to ensure that divisive political content finds its way onto Facebook ahead of the vote. More importantly, Axios reported on Tuesday that President Trumps campaign has already spent a whopping $3.5 million on Facebook advertising  double all of the Democratic campaigns combined  with much more to come.

Nature abhors a vacuum  and, apparently, a news desert. Those dry, barren lands are about to be flooded with propaganda.
How we select the occupant of the White House could change under a national initiative that is gaining ground. (Robert Alexander/Getty Images) Read more

Slowly and with little notice, an effort to alter how we choose our presidents is making incremental gains.

Its one of those sensible, pro-democracy things that, therefore and naturally, tends to get the old no-chance treatment.

Or it gets lost in the shuffle of presidential cycles dominated by attention to candidates, not process.

And in the current and surging cycle, whos thinking about process when we can push, praise, or pick at Beto, Biden, Bernie, Booker, Buttigieg, et al., and President Donald Trump?

Yet, its out there. It deserves some notice.

Ive watched it since 2008. Advocated for it. Still do.

Its a way to make every vote in America count, to keep the Electoral College, to avoid amending the U.S. Constitution, and to decide elections on the stunningly simple premise that whoever gets the most votes wins.

Started in 2006 by a California-based nonprofit group, the National Popular Vote initiative seeks a compact of states to enact laws giving their electoral votes to whoever wins the most votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The Constitution (Art. II, Sec. 1) gives state legislatures control over their electoral votes.

If (or when) enough states join  and enough means, together, their electoral votes total at least 270, the number needed to win the Electoral College  picking presidents by popular vote kicks in.

There is some movement.

Colorado last week joined the compact, which now includes 12 states and D.C. (and, yes, D.C. has electoral votes, three of them), with a total of 181 electoral votes.

Also last week, Delawares legislature voted to join. Delaware Gov. John Carney indicated hell sign the bill. And New Mexico just passed a join-in bill thats now sitting on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grishams desk.

Plus, John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote, said hes optimistic Nevada, Oregon, Maine, and Michigan will join this year.

If that happens, the total electoral vote count, including those from Delaware and New Mexico, rises to 222  just 48 shy of the needed goal.

I think theres an outside chance, though a very outside chance, we can get to 270 by 2020, because as other states see it getting close theyll look at it more closely, Koza said, And, if not, I think we get it done by 2024.

The issue could also emerge in the 2020 campaign.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren raised it Monday night at a Mississippi town hall event, though she called for national voting to replace the Electoral College. That would require amending the Constitution. The compact keeps the college.

Five presidents  John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Trump  won election without winning the popular vote.

Still, the effort these days often is labeled as anti-Trump. But, as mentioned, it started in 2006, largely in response to Bushs 2000 victory over Al Gore.

And, yes, states in or looking to join the compact are blue or lean-blue. So, its mostly seen as a pro-Democratic agenda item.

To me, its a pro-democracy agenda item. Just count the votes. If Republicans believe they lose if more people have a direct say in elections, maybe the party should concentrate on broadening its appeal to more people.

Wheres Pennsylvania, you ask?

(I cant believe youd ask. Dont you know your state by now?)

Although our neighbors Maryland, New York, and New Jersey are in the compact  Maryland since 2007; New York since 2016; New Jersey since 2008  we, of course, are nowhere near joining.

Measures have been introduced in Pennsylvania over the years, including last session by State Rep. Chris Rabb (D., Phila.), who plans to eventually introduce compact-joining legislation again.

But when I checked with Rabb this week, he noted: Coordinators around this national movement are trying to get wins in state legislatures where theres actually a critical mass of support.  Needless to say, Harrisburg doesnt yet have the stomach for this type of push for representative democracy.

Ah, yes, Pennsylvania and political reform, ever a study in polar opposites.
New York City Police Department auxiliary officers are shown at a graduation ceremony after training. Read more

As someone who has complained about the citys lack of enforcement for mostly vehicular violations, Im intrigued by Council President Darrell Clarkes bill to create a force of Public Safety Enforcement Officers.

It would require a change to the City Charter that voters would have to approve on the May 21 Philadelphia primary ballot. But theres a problem: a criminal lack of details.

To get an idea of what it might look like, look north: New York City has an all-volunteer 4,500-person auxiliary police force that reports to its police department. Volunteers write tickets and make arrests. They carry batons but not guns. They are not police officers but are considered city employees.

I know more about New York than Philly on this issue because King Clarke has ignored my requests for an interview. But I have to call his proposed force something, and Public Safety Enforcement Officers is a mouthful, so Im going to call it the Faux Police Force.

Since King Clarke wont listen to my questions, Ill put them here for him to see, along with anyone else who is interested:

How many Faux EnForcers would be hired?

Where would they be deployed?

Would they report to police or a civilian body?

As salaried employees, how much would they be paid?

Where will the money come from?

What laws would they enforce?

From previous stories, we get a hint of whats bubbling in King Clarkes brain, but none of that is official.

The Kings bill mentions quality of life issues  I take that to include speeding, sidewalk safety, red-light-running, right-of-way  and I would want the Faux Police Force to focus on those, in addition to traffic logjams.

Some causes of our traffic nightmare mentioned in September by my colleague Jason Laughlin are population gain, which is minor; ride-sharing services, which are major; plus the explosion of trucks making deliveries both to local businesses and homes.

Overlooked in the story are bicycle lanes, which obviously increase congestion on Pine and Spruce, and cross streets.

The envisioned role of the Faux Police Force would be to unsnarl traffic. But couldnt that be done by expanding the jurisdiction of the existing Philadelphia Parking Authority? Why invent a new wheel when you already have one?

FOP president John McNesby agrees. He tells me he sees no need for another level of bureaucracy. Its always better having a visible police officer on the street rather than a glorified crossing guard," he says, quickly adding: Nothing against crossing guards.

Nothing against cops either, but the data show police enforcement has fallen off a cliff in recent years.

Lets start with the most dangerous  automobiles. Cops wrote 150,444 moving-violation tickets in 2011 and 97,216 in 2018. Thats a drop of more than one-third.

Why? Have Philadelphians greatly improved their driving skills? More likely, cops are dogging it. Lets not pretend, as police spokespeople sometimes do, that the cops are too busy investigating rapes, burglaries, and murders. Thats not what beat cops do. If they are lax, its because commanders dont make enforcement a priority.

Bicyclists receive glaring non-enforcement: In 2011, cops issued 80 tickets to bicyclists, but that number dropped 46 percent to 43 in 2018. Pedestrians received 373 tickets in 2011, but 310 in 2018, a decline of 16 percent.

King Clarke and Mayor Jim Kenney say they want safer streets, but they should put enforcement where their mouths are.

Ask pedestrians and theyll tell you cars often dont yield to them and the streets are filled with wild bicyclists violating traffic laws with impunity.

If some Faux Police Force would reduce that, Id probably be for it  but first I want to know how much its going to cost and that the jobs wont go to relatives of insiders.
Organic baby kale that has been reduced in price appears on sale at a Whole Foods Market in New York, Monday, Aug. 28, 2017. Amazon has completed its $13.7 billion takeover of organic grocer Whole Foods, and the e-commerce giant is wasting no time putting its stamp on the company. Prices were lowered; Whole Foods brands will soon be on Amazon's site; and Amazon's Prime members could soon get discounts at Whole Foods. The deal could also spur changes in the wider grocery industry. Read more

Amazon's blockbuster deal to buy Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion last August was met with much fanfare about lower prices.

The internet giant, which has dominated the retail industry by undercutting its rivals, immediately slashed prices of some items after acquiring the notoriously expensive grocery chain. The cost of organic Fuji apples, for example, fell 43 percent on the first day of Amazon's ownership.

The quick cuts prompted some observers to assert that Whole Foods had officially shed its pricey reputation. "The days of 'Whole Paycheck' are over," declared the Washington Post, the newspaper that has the same owner as the grocery, billionaire Jeff Bezos.

One year later, though, shopping at Whole Foods will still cost you much of your paycheck  unless you're an Amazon Prime member. Whole Foods prices have fallen modestly overall, and the grocery is still more expensive than much of its competition, research shows.

>> READ MORE: Amazon-Whole Foods: A year later, what's changed?

Whole Foods prices fell 2 percent year-over-year in July, according to Morgan Stanley. A basket of 60 items including fresh and processed goods cost $195, roughly 13 percent more  or $22.49  than at a typical conventional grocery store. Driving that premium were the grocery's protein products  eggs, chicken and beef  which were 28 percent costlier than the competition's, Morgan Stanley's analysts found.

An earlier study by Gordon Haskett Research Advisors found that prices were effectively flat from November to March at a Whole Foods store in Princeton. The price of 108 items fell 0.1 percent, or 40 cents, from $408.23 to $407.83, during the four-month period.

"When Amazon bought Whole Foods, everyone thought  'Now I'm going to be able to buy quality stuff at Whole Foods at Amazon prices,'" said Kevin Brasler, executive editor of Consumers' Checkbook, which recently conducted its own grocery price study in the Philadelphia area. "They've lowered prices based on our most recent research, but not a lot."

>> READ MORE: Amazon expands Whole Foods grocery delivery service to Philadelphia area

A Whole Foods spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. The chain, with 467 U.S. stores including nine in Southeastern Pennsylvania and three in South Jersey, recently rolled out new perks for Prime members that will give Amazon's loyal customers special discounts. Consumers who pay $119 per year for Prime can save 10 percent off sale items and some other products at Whole Foods.

Prime members can also receive 5 percent cash back on Whole Foods purchases when using an Amazon-branded Visa rewards card. And Amazon included Whole Foods in its Prime Day festivities last month, giving Prime members a $10 Amazon.com account credit if they spent $10 in the store.

Some industry analysts say linking Whole Foods to Prime could be a game-changer as Amazon looks to snag a larger share of the $800 billion grocery market. Whole Foods has less than a 2 percent share of the fragmented food retail market.

"We believe that the inclusion of Whole Foods in Prime Day was a watershed event, driving Prime members to shop at Whole Foods with prices that were even below some supermarkets, and driving Whole Foods shoppers back to Amazon to participate in Prime Day," Wolfe Research analyst Scott Mushkin wrote in July.

>> READ MORE: How Amazon could use Whole Foods more, U.S. Postal Service less

Roughly 62 percent of Whole Foods shoppers are Prime members, Morgan Stanley reported in May.

That survey also found that Whole Foods hasn't shaken its "Whole Paycheck" moniker since the Amazon takeover. About 70 percent of people who don't shop at Whole Foods say it's too expensive.

Brasler, the Consumers' Checkbook editor, said Whole Foods is still the most expensive supermarket chain in greater Philadelphia. The nonprofit publication plans to release all of its findings on regional grocery prices after Labor Day.

Brasler said Amazon has lowered prices at area Whole Foods stores, especially in the produce department, where it's now competitive against major chains like Acme.

>> READ MORE: Amazon expands Amazon Restaurants, gears up for 'grocery wars' with Whole Foods rethink

But Whole Foods still has a long way to go before competing against the likes of Wegmans, which Brasler said gives consumers "the best of both worlds"  low prices and high-quality food.

"When you start off 40 to 45 percent more expensive than Wegmans, to lower your prices even by a double-digit number doesn't do much for you if you're a shopper," Brasler said of Whole Foods' recent price cuts.

Brasler said the best way for consumers to save money on groceries is to shop at cheaper stores or wholesale clubs like BJ's or Costco, if you don't waste the larger quantities of food.

But Brasler says it's hard to persuade consumers to change their grocery shopping habits.

"With supermarkets, people have made up their minds," Brasler said.
Cameron Whitelock delivers groceries to a home in East Coventry Township from the Giant Supermarket as part of their Peapod Grocery Delivery Service at their North Coventry, Chester County, location on Friday, September 14, 2018 TOM KELLY III/ FOR THE INQUIRER Read more

As the Peapod by Giant truck pulled up, June Henion, 81 and Richard Henion, 84, opened their front door and waited for Cameron Whitelock to lug in their groceries.

Whitelock knew where to place the water bottles so June and Richard would not have to move them. He knew to pass the popsicles to Richard, who was ready to put them into the freezer.

After three back operations, June said she prefers delivery during her recovery. Once the pain in her right leg subsides, she said, she is going to check out Walmart's pickup option when it launches nearby because the prices might be lower.

The willingness of consumers such as the Henions to try buying groceries online has helped fuel a fiercely competitive market, and one that analysts expect to grow. The Food Marketing Institute and Nielsen predicted this year that 70 percent of consumers will regularly shop for groceries online by 2022 or 2024.

The biggest players in the Philadelphia region last month were Instacart with 33.8 percent market share, Walmart Online Grocery with 22.8 percent, and Peapod with 16.2 percent, according to Earnest Research, an analytics company that derived the data from credit and debit card transactions. Peapod and Giant have the same corporate parent.

Michael Maloof, a senior grocer analyst at Earnest, called the Philadelphia region "on the more competitive side of the markets that we're looking at. It's still up for grabs."

Though Giant and its competitors anticipate an increase in online grocery shopping, 84 percent of adults report never ordering groceries online, according to a July 2018 Gallup report. Just 4 percent of consumers order groceries online for pickup or delivery at least once a week, the poll found.

Consumers are hesitant to have "someone else pick out their groceries. We typically like to look at our produce and look at our meat," said Stephanie Cegielski, a spokesperson for the International Council of Shopping Centers. "People aren't necessarily quite ready to give up all of that control."

Still, retailers in the $700 billion grocery sector must invest in online, said Lauren Gilchrist, director of research in the Philadelphia office of JLL, a commercial real estate firm.

"It's something people are trying to figure out because the grocery segment is so huge," Gilchrist said. "The company who can deliver a seamless experience can potentially win the day in market share."

Retail giants have been expanding online. When Amazon.com Inc. paid $13.7 billion last year for Whole Foods Market, analysts expected the Seattle company to dominate the market with its quick delivery services. More than 1,000 Kroger stores have delivery through Instacart and a ClickList pickup service. Target Corp. last year acquired Shipt, a grocery delivery start-up, for $550 million and continues to expand into urban areas.

>> READ MORE: Amazon-Whole Foods: A year later, what's changed?

Costco Wholesale Corp. now sells meal kits from Blue Apron. Walmart works with DoorDash to deliver to what they predict will be 40 percent of U.S. households by the end of the year. Tom Ward, vice president of digital operations for Walmart U.S., has said that 90 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store.

Peapod, which was founded in Chicago in 1989, has felt the heat. Frans Muller, CEO of Ahold Delhaize, the parent of Giant and Peapod, said on a recent earnings conference call that he was dissatisfied with the company's 8 percent growth in online sales in the U.S.

Giant started delivering with Peapod in 2011 and among the ordering options is a flat delivery fee of $7.95 for orders over $60 and a $2.95 pickup fee. When asked about delivery errors, Brand declined to provide a rate and said the company provides substitutions or exchanges when needed.

Justin Hadwin, Giant/Martin's director of e-commerce, knows his team is competing among a buffet of options and that customers have "high expectations."

"If you deliver something to a customer and it's not perfect, you really have failed them," he said, while standing in a Giant warehouse attached to its store in North Coventry Township, near Pottstown. Items are arrayed in a way that makes it easier for employees to get customers exactly what they ordered.

Whereas in a grocery store, products are usually arranged by brands, the warehouse purposefully separates them so the employees bagging the orders don't accidentally grab the wrong item.

To fill an order of 31 items, Giant employee Fran Howard strapped the bar code scanner around her finger and then attached a display around her wrist. This is where the customer's order appears, item by item, instructing her which aisle to head to, which shelf to look at, and what quantity to grab. After scanning each item to make sure it's correct, she placed it in the box.

Howard grabbed everything  the whole milk, chicken salad, pack of burgers, mint chocolate chip ice cream  with the same precision. Referring to her scanner, Howard said: "This is like my brain, my heart, my blood flow. This is everything."

Unlike the store for customers, the Peapod warehouse is "not about appearance," said Tim Weighknecht, a Giant store manager. "The customer getting deliveries at home doesn't necessarily care how pretty this is. They care can they get it accurate and fresh and on time."

Later that afternoon, Nick Dippolito opened his front door for his family's first Giant grocery delivery order.

"I've been trying to get my wife to do it for a while," said Dippolito, 40. "This is really the first time we're, like, 'Well, do you try to drag three kids food shopping every week?'"

The couple decided that delivery would be easier. Once the food was all inside, Whitelock, the driver, asked him to check the eggs to make sure none was cracked.

"If you ever find anything wrong, the expiration date a little too close to your liking, bread's a little smushed, don't be afraid to call," Whitelock said, adding that customer service would "gladly help you out.  They'll do anything to make you happy."
Beto ORourke, Democratic presidential candidate from Texas, speaks at Pennsylvania State University as part of a multi-state campaign tour. Read more

STATE COLLEGE, Pa.  As Beto ORourke stood Tuesday amid a throng of students leading a We Are!  Penn State!" chant in the student union, the former congressman showed the youthful energy that has rocketed him into the Democratic presidential primary.

Yet even some of those Democrats intrigued by the 46-year-old on Tuesday were left wondering what he would do with that enthusiasm. The former Texas congressmans speech before several hundred mostly liberal voters at Pennsylvania State University, like many in his early campaign, was heavy on applause lines and calls to a more unified America, yet light on policy.

ORourke, who has stirred national attention and comparisons to the Kennedys with his lean looks and charisma, and who blew away rivals with a $6.1 million fund-raising haul on the first day of his campaign, arrived riding an early burst of momentum in the crowded primary field. A new CNN national poll Tuesday found him running fourth, with 11 percent.

In staging an early visit to Pennsylvania, ORourke drew attention to the states importance.

Though other states that vote earlier in the primary season will likely have more say in deciding the Democratic nominee, any candidates hoping to prove their general election viability need to show that they can win back swing states, such as Pennsylvania, that tipped to Donald Trump in 2016. ORourkes stop was believed to be the first public event in the state by any of the Democrats officially running for president.

Some people in the crowd saw a vigor that reminded them of another youthful candidate, Barack Obama, while others worried that beating Trump calls for a more substantive approach than the one offered by a former three-term congressman.

We need to take ourselves very seriously," said Jeanmarie Higgins, 51. Were in a lot of trouble. We need someone who wants to solve problems and does not want to draw attention to themselves as a personality.

Higgins supports Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand specifically because the New Yorker lacks the celebrity appeal of some of the other Democrats. But her friend Ronda Craig said she had put ORourke at the top of her list, hailing the energy he has stirred.

Having somebody thats charismatic may be important, said Craig, 46.

Added a third member of the group, the Bernie Sanders-supporting Amy Vashaw, 49, I hope he says something of substance.

In visiting Penn State, ORourke, who has become known for his upbeat persona and punk-rock past, seemed to be pairing his youthful image with his vows to reach beyond typical Democratic power centers. Centre County, home to Penn State and situated in a conservative region of Pennsylvania, supported Democrat Hillary Clinton by just 2.4 percentage points in 2016, although it voted much more heavily for Democrats for governor and U.S. Senate last year.

ORourke, wearing a white Penn State cap with an open-collar shirt, said he would campaign everywhere. He reminded the audience that he visited all 254 Texas counties while running a close but unsuccessful campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz last year.

Wherever you are, whoever you voted for last time for president  I do not care. All that matters now is that we are Americans, we are human beings, and we have the opportunity to meet the greatest challenge of this countrys history, he said.

His visit came amid a swing that began in Iowa and took ORourke through Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, all key swing states, with a message that has mostly avoided the liberal promises that have defined other high-profile contenders.

We have a good mix here of both moderate-to-conservative Democrats to liberal Democrats, along with Republicans, said Greg Stewart, chairman of the Centre County Democrats. Its kind of a microcosm of the state. That may be why hes here.

Stewart said the contenders will have to show staying power.

From people Ive talked to, theyre looking for candidates who can win. Theyre looking for candidates who have new ideas and who can organize a national campaign, he said. Youll soon, over the next six to nine months, see who can really organize it and run a national campaign. Its hard.

In Texas, ORourke was known for an unscripted approach, and Tuesdays event was pulled together on short notice, with local Democrats learning about it only Sunday.

His initial swing came as many Democrats anticipate a campaign launch from former Vice President Joe Biden, who has emphasized his own centrist appeal to middle-class voters in his native Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest. ORourke presents centrism with a younger face.

In a propulsive cadence Tuesday, ORourke railed against economic inequality, climate change, the opioid crisis, and the treatment of undocumented immigrants.

Our democracy right now is as broken as it has been in our lifetime, he said. It is being attacked from without, it is being attacked from within.

He pointed to the recent college cheating scandal as an example of drastic inequality affecting opportunity.

We have fellow Americans who have an extra three or four million dollars which they can use to game the college admissions process  and there are families of kids who cant put together $300 or $400 to be able to go to this university, he said.

For many in the audience, calls for unity and a better style of politics were what they wanted.

When I see him speak, I think of Obama, said Theresa Cummins, a 57-year-old mortgage broker.

Hes well-spoken and kind, and I think we need more of that in our country, said Amanda Green, a 22-year-old in her fifth year of college, who viewed ORourkes Instagram account as the event began.

Others, however, wanted detail. Graduate student Jordan Lawson, 22, said he hoped to hear where he stands specifically, because there are so many candidates out there.

In a question-and-answer session, one person pointedly asked, When are we going to get an actual policy from you, instead of platitudes and nice stories?

ORourke mentioned support for legalizing marijuana and a Medicare buy-in program proposed by congressional Democrats. But mostly he decried problems without stressing specific solutions.

Evelyn Ripley, 65, said she would be skeptical of anyone who claimed to have all the answers. As she watched ORourke drive away at the wheel of his minivan, Ripley said she was impressed by his energy and the fact that he wasnt making big promises he cant keep.

Hes on the same fact-finding mission that I am, she said.
U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa during the annual American Conservative Union CPAC conference on March 3, 2016, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. (Gage Skidmore / Planet Pix / Zuma Press / TNS) Read more

Rep. Steve King has civil war on his mind.

The Iowa Republican broached the subject in a Saturday evening Facebook post  a bizarre meme of two fighting figures, one red and one blue, each an amalgamation of states based on their political leanings.

"Folks keep talking about another civil war," the meme read. "One side has about 8 trillion bullets, while the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use."

King, whom Congress recently stripped of committee assignments over his comments about white supremacy, annotated the image with a winking emoji and mused, "Wonder who would win "

King was openly pondering violent, armed conflict, apparently joking about Republican-leaning states fighting their Democratic-leaning neighbors in a second American Civil War.

But King, an Iowa native and sitting congressman, may have been confused about which side he was on. There, forming the blue warrior's bicep, was his home state, delivering a cartographic uppercut to the jaw of its red opponent.

King deleted the post, which he shared on an official campaign page, Monday. His office did not respond to questions about the picture or his reasons for posting and removing it.

Observers pilloried him for the post, which many saw as further provocation in a divisive political climate that has already seen signs of civil war rhetoric. Many called for King's expulsion from Congress, a punishment that would end his nine-term run in office.

"This is treason," said Richard Painter, the Bush administration ethics chief, on Twitter. "Steve King should be expelled from the House immediately."

Responding to Painter, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe modified his criticism: King "isn't actually COMMITTING treason, but he is fomenting and inciting it. Ample reason to expel him."

The Democratic Party in Clay County, Iowa, which is located in King's district in the northwestern area of the state, told its representative, "Iowa would be better off if you just resigned."

Some criticized King's timing, as he posted the meme the day after a white supremacist killed 50 people in New Zealand mosques. Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, tweeted that King had ignored the "gun violence in America and across the world caused by division and fear of one another" when he posted the image.

Others accused King of promoting transphobic language, and at least one scholar attempted a history lesson.

"I grew up in SC where the #CivilWar began, a war that eventually freed 4 million slaves, a war that left 620,000 soldiers dead-including 40,000 Black soldiers," wrote Cornell Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former president of the NAACP. "Don't use #transphobia to legitimate #WhiteSupremacy, or bathrooms to spit on graves."

Over his nearly two decades as a national political figure, King has furnished a long history of racist remarks and comments widely viewed as anti-Semitic, white nationalist, or insulting to immigrants and to women seeking abortions.

He has also made at least two other nods to civil war.

In 2018, King himself said the country was on the brink of civil war. In a tweet, he said, "America is heading in the direction of another Harpers Ferry. After that comes Ft. Sumter."

Harpers Ferry was the site of abolitionist John Browns raid of a federal armory, an attempt to begin an antislavery rebellion, that helped spark the Civil War. The attack on Fort Sumter was considered the start of the war.

King has even kept a reminder of the war placed prominently on his desk  a small Confederate flag, peeking out from a display that also sported a Gadsden flag.

Iowa was part of the Union.
FILE - In this May 3, 2014 file photo, Meghan McCain, and Sen. John McCain attend the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington. Meghan McCain says President Donald Trump's life is pathetic after his Twitter attack against her father, the late Sen. McCain. She fired back Monday, March 18, 2019, at Trump on The View after the president tweeted comments over the weekend criticizing her father, who died last year after battling brain cancer. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) Read more

(Bloomberg)  President Donald Trump renewed his attack on John McCain, calling the deceased Arizona senators vote against repealing Obamacare disgraceful.

Im very unhappy he didnt repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. He campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years and then it got to a vote and he said, Thumbs down!

I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be, Trump said.

Trump was referring to McCains vote against the GOP Senate majoritys attempt to repeal former President Barack Obamas signature health-care law in 2017.

Trumps criticism follows a weekend in which the president repeatedly faulted McCain, a onetime Navy pilot who was North Vietnams most prominent prisoner of war. McCain died of cancer about seven months ago.

In a tweet over the weekend, Trump criticized McCain over the role he played in sharing the so-called Steele Dossier with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the media. McCain gave a copy of the first 33 pages of the dossier to the FBI in December 2016, which Fox News said was confirmed by former senior counterintelligence FBI agent Bill Priestap in a newly released filing. British intelligence officer Christopher Steele assembled the dossier that allegedly suggested a coordinated Russian effort to help Trump win the presidency.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum, Joshua Gallu

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Pet hair can be a problem for all travelers, even the ones who are without allergies or who travel without their furry companions. Read more

Two weeks after Kim Bruno returned his rental car in San Francisco, he received a surprise $285 charge from Budget.

The reason? "Pet hair," says Bruno, a lawyer in Washington. He and his wife had visited the Bay Area with her emotional support animal, an Australian cattle dog named Sprite.

"The customer service department sent me photos of the car," he says. "There was some pet hair below the rear passengers seat. It did not look excessive to me. It could be vacuumed up."

If you dont own a cat or dog, then you probably dont give a second thought to pet hair when you travel. (An exception, of course, is if you suffer from pet allergies  then youre likely to be hyperaware.) But it can be a problem for all travelers, even the ones who are without allergies or who travel without their furry companions.

After leaving a vacation rental in Arizona last year, I received a phone call from the property manager, who wanted to know what kind of dog I had. Ive been dogless since our beloved cockapoo, Taffy, crossed the rainbow bridge years ago. And yet dark pet hair covered one of the sofas, according to the manager. She threatened to deduct even more money from my security deposit, even though Id already paid almost $400 in routine cleaning charges.

What could have left pet hair in the living room? Had a wild animal somehow entered the rental after we checked out? But I had locked the door.

Finally, after quizzing my kids, I found the culprit: The rental had supplied several fuzzy blankets, which shed on the couch during our stay.

Eventually, the manager agreed to clean the blanket residue at her expense. But for me, it was a warning about the perils of pet hair. The travel industry generally takes a hard line on fur, although it may see pets as a potential profit center.

Budget is clear about its pet policy. "Housebroken pets are invited to travel in your rental car, just as they do in your personal car," Budget says on its website. "Although Budget doesnt assess an extra fee for pets, pet owners will incur an additional charge for any damage caused by animals, or any special cleaning required as a result of shedding or accidents."

Alice Pereira, a Budget spokeswoman, says that when a customer returns a vehicle with "excessive soilage," it takes extra time to clean it. "When this happens, the car must be taken out of service to address whatever the problem is, whether its a stain or excessive hair on the upholstery," she says. "So the customer is assessed a cleaning fee."

After what Bruno describes as a "contentious" exchange with a Budget employee in San Francisco, and then several polite emails, the company dropped its $285 cleaning fee.

I asked folks who travel regularly with their pets how they handle the hair problem.

Beware of fees, says Kathryn McGinnis, an executive assistant from New York who travels with her pug, Garp. Hotels and vacation rentals that charge pet fees  usually between $100 and $200 per stay  are more likely to charge additional fees for pet hair cleanup, she says.

She tries to find hotels without pet fees. On a recent visit to San Diego, she booked a room at the Kimpton Palomar in the Gaslamp Quarter. "They charged zero pet fees and were awesome with Garp," she says.

Pet travelers have noticed an uptick in hotels that welcome their animal companions. Ali Jarvis, CEO of Sidewalk Dog Media in Minneapolis, a resource for pet travel, says the Twin Cities offer plenty of dog-friendly options.

"Radisson RED and Home2 Suites by Hilton both welcome our furry friends with open arms and pet-focused amenities," she says. "Shed happens, and its wonderful to see more and more hotels opening up their spaces to our four-legged family members."

How can you tell if a hotel is pet-friendly? The El Portal Sedona Hotel in Sedona, Ariz., for instance, doesnt charge a pet fee or cleaning charge unless Rover decides to go on a rampage. The hotel is designed for pets, with wood-and-tile flooring throughout, so cleaning is easy.

"Guests are given a pet welcome basket with a blanket to put on the bed, sofa, chair to protect it from shedding," co-owner Steve Segner says. "There are treats and poop baggies in it as well. We want guests to bring their pets on vacation with them."

Even so, you have to be extra vigilant about hair, says Michael Cobb, an account executive based in Chicago. He travels with Roxy, an 8-year-old female boxer who "sheds a lot."

"Be prepared to do cleaning yourself," he says. "Your lint roller is not going to work. Get a nice Dustbuster to help clean up that hairy mess. An investment in a portable vacuum cleaner could save you in the long run."

That sounds a little extreme, but if youre driving, you might already have a handheld vacuum cleaner in the car. And Cobb makes a valid point: If you think upfront pet fees are bad, you dont even want to know about post-stay pet-related cleaning fees.

Hotel guests, car renters, and vacation rental guests can pay hundreds of dollars, even thousands, to fix the pet hair problem. And, as my experience in Arizona suggests, you dont even have to travel with a pet.

But is the travel industry profiting from the pet hair problem? From a pet owners perspective, it certainly looks that way. And if youre not a pet owner and have to pay for pet hair, then definitely.

"I think it depends," says Amy Burkert, author of The Ultimate Pet Friendly Road Trip. "When Ive discussed this with hotel managers, theyve indicated that the pet fee is not just about cleaning the room. Hotels also end up comping rooms for guests who are disturbed by barking dogs, for example. Gaining that perspective shed new light on the pet fees hotels charge."

In other words, the extra fee you pay to deal with the pet hair more than covers the cost of the cleanup. In some instances, it offsets the complaints about your fur baby barking all night. As more Americans travel with pets, the problem of pet hair doesnt belong solely to them and their dogs and cats. Its everyones problem now.

Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist, and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. Contact him at elliott.org.
The act of generosity has been shown to have several health benefits, but its also important to be generous to yourself. This is especially true during the holiday season when anxiety, tension and added pressure are common.
Anietra fishing on Sabine Lake | Photo Copyright: Anietra Hamper

Sabine Lake is one of the best spots in southern Texas to target spotted seatrout. I teamed up with expert guide Jerry Norris of Sabine Lake Guide Service to uncover what makes Texans so passionate about this kind of trout.

"They're great to eat, fun to catch, and available year-round," said Norris.

With our rods strapped down to the boat, Norris heads across Sabine Lake in Port Arthur, which is a half hour outside of Beaumont, to show me the techniques that work for spotted seatrout on most coastal waterways.

To my right is Louisiana and on my left is Texas with the state line running right down the middle of the five-mile-wide lake for 14 miles. With 90,000 acres of water branching off into smaller channels, there is plenty of territory to cover.

Norris decides to use artificial bait since the weather of the day will serve up changing conditions. We are using Bass Assassin artificial bait and a MirrOlure topwater She Dog with a rattle on our casting rods to attract the fish in the murky water.

The water is only four to five feet deep, which is ideal for seatrout. Norris has guided for trout on Sabine Lake since 1986, so he knows that this time of year the trout hover near the bank. The trout are feeding on mullet that are often seen jumping out of the water, so we know exactly where to cast our lines.

"The trout stay along the shoreline in the winter. The mullet come in to feed on the algae, and the trout feed on them," said Norris.

The water is calm for now, but the approaching front will change that in a few hours. Norris says ideal conditions are somewhere in between, when there is a slight current. While weather conditions are more unpredictable in the fall and winter, those are the best times to target seatrout in Sabine Lake.

The only downside of targeting seatrout is that they aren't the only species that feed on mullet. Redfish, which often run in schools, are also competing for the bait. We caught several of them.

Redfish are exciting to reel in as their aggressive dives in the water cause a lot of commotion. Then, there's the biggest food competitor, the bull sharks that frequent the lake. They have been known to eat fish right off anglers' lines while reeling in a catch.

While we had a number of great catches during the day, the seatrout that we came for were not in the cards on this trip. As most fishing trips go, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but you always get the gift of the outdoors and fishing someplace new.

Accommodation: Where to Stay in Port Arthur
Anietra and guide Darrell Taylor | Photo Copyright: Anietra Hamper

Lake Conroe is less than an hour drive from Houston, and it is known for its catfish. Anglers come to target either large numbers of channel catfish for eating or trophy-size blue catfish for bragging rights. My guide, Darrell Taylor of Catfish Killer Professional Guide Services, a nickname he earned from his nearly 40 years guiding for catfish on the lake, takes clients out for both. We are targeting eating-size channel and blue catfish on this trip because that is why most clients come to Lake Conroe.



"The bottom of the lake is carpeted with catfish," Taylor says, referring to the sheer volume of catfish that live in the 22,000-acre lake. "They are the best tasting catfish you can get because it is a clean lake. That is why so many people come to catch them."



Taylor sets me up with a casting rod and reel and a tub of his indulgently scented secret recipe Catfish Killer Cheese Bait. It applies like dough bait to the treble hook. Taylor tells me that his secret to pulling in the cats from this lake is positioning the bait in what he calls the "strike zone." It is two to three inches off the bottom. Any higher or lower than the strike zone, and the catfish keep going.



Our depth is 27 feet, which is a bit deeper than the average 20 feet in most areas of the lake. Some locations on Lake Conroe get to 70 feet deep. We pull in 15 channel catfish in the three to five pound range, which is excellent considering the slow bite caused by the cold front pushing through. Taylor says it is not uncommon for a full boat of clients to pull in over 100 catfish on a four-hour trip.

Anglers also target Lake Conroe for trophy-sized catfish, which requires trolling with fresh bait and much larger tackle. A local man recently caught a 67-pound blue catfish near the bridge where we are fishing. Most anglers catch and release the trophy-size catfish while keeping the smaller channel catfish to eat. We donate our catch to a local family for food.

An easy way to fish at Lake Conroe is to set up a home base at a hotel like SpringHill Suites Houston The Woodlands, so you are close to amenities to pick up snacks and drinks to take on your fishing trip and hire a local guide to meet you at the marina.

While we are specifically fishing for catfish from the boat, there are 157 miles of shoreline on the lake, so there is plenty of bank fishing available. Besides catfish, Lake Conroe has great fishing for black bass, hybrid stripers, white bass, and crappie.

After a long day on the water fishing, grab some barbecue and local Boudin Balls at the Pacific Yard House in historic downtown Conroe, which is located inside a restored 1907 ice warehouse.
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The FBI didnt just raid Michael Cohens offices. They also raided his hotel room, which is an indication that the FBI has probable cause that there was evidence of a crime in his hotel room.

Vanity Fair reported, The paparazzi lingering outside the Loews Regency on Park Avenue, hoping to get a photo of U.F.C. fighter Conor McGregor, appeared not to notice the stream of F.B.I. agents who entered the New York hotel early Monday morning, as they made their way up to the room where the presidents personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has been staying. A handful of them remained upstairs for several hours, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Former US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg explained what the search warrant means, The Fourth Amendment protects us and our stuff from government intrusion unless an application is made to a federal judge and she signs a search warrant based on probable cause. And so the government must have concluded two things. Probable cause that a crime had been committed, and probable cause that stuff or evidence that would prove that crime would be located in Mr. Cohens office.

Video of Chuck Rosenberg on MSNBCs Deadline: White House:

Here is what the FBI's raid of Michael Cohen's offices and hotel room means. https://t.co/B5geDzXGxs #MichaelCohen pic.twitter.com/Y8Cfz7JkOb  Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) April 9, 2018

When the government raided Michael Cohens hotel room, they concluded that they had probable cause that a crime had been committed, and that evidence of that crime or crimes could be found in the hotel room.

The FBI and Mueller arent playing. The Special Counsel and the FBI now have Trumps communications with Cohen. It is tricky to know how or if those communications can be used because of attorney/client privilege, but there is no way that this is good news for Trump.

With each new development, a little more of Trumps world collapses. Investigations take time, but the heat is now on Michael Cohen, and the investigation is closer to Trump than it has ever been.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
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Newly minted presidential candidate Beto ORourkes whirlwind campaign rollout continued on Monday with a swing through Michigan and Ohio  two states key to winning the White House in 2020.

One stop, in particular, is likely to get under Donald Trumps ultra-thin skin.

In the Buckeye State, ORourke met with United Auto Workers 1112 President David Green in Lordstown, where one of General Motors plants is set to close. Green, of course, has been one of the latest victims of Trumps Twitter tantrums.

Video of ORourkes visit with the UAW leader:

The two men discussed how the Republican tax legislation has hurt workers  like the 4,500 who were employed at the Lordstown plant  and they explored ways to bring back similarly struggling towns across the country.

Green told ORourke that encouraging companies to stay in the U.S. and invest in this country, instead of outsourcing jobs  which is what the GOP tax scam has incentivized  is the right prescription to help his union workers.

I just want to tell you that so many of us around the country  are so proud of the way you conducted yourself, ORourke told the union president, a stark contrast to the presidents attacks.

Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce. G.M. let our Country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves. I want action on Lordstown fast. Stop complaining and get the job done! 3.8% Unemployment!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019

I want to show up everywhere

Since announcing his candidacy last week, ORourkes presidential campaign has adopted the same effective strategies he used during his Texas Senate bid in 2018.

He drives to each of his campaign stops, he holds unscripted Facebook Live sessions and he isnt afraid to go just about anywhere and meet just about anyone.

Despite what self-appointed Twitter pundits have said, it has been a successful kickoff for ORourke as he raised a stunning $6.1 million in his first 24 hours as a presidential candidate.

Beto ORourke has said that he wants to show up everywhere. Early in his campaign, he has certainly upheld that commitment.

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Former Vice President Joe Biden isnt only expected to launch a presidential campaign within the next few weeks, but new reporting indicates that he could select a running mate early in the primary process.

According to CNN, Biden is considering revealing his VP choice early to raise the excitement level around his candidacy and to keep the focus on defeating Donald Trump in 2020.

Joe Bidens advisers are looking at potentially having him name his running mate early, said CNNs Mark Preston. To do so would be to try to solidify his position with the Democratic base.

Preston noted that former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is a name that has popped up as Biden gets closer to a potential campaign announcement.

More via CNN:

.@PrestonCNN says sources have told CNN that Joe Biden, who is expected to launch his 2020 campaign in April, is considering selecting a running mate early, which would add an element of excitement & help keep the campaigns focus on the ultimate goal of defeating President Trump pic.twitter.com/osbygBqALZ  The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) March 18, 2019

Joe Biden recently met with Stacey Abrams

The news that Biden is considering an early reveal on his running mate comes days after the former vice president met with Stacey Abrams, a rising Democratic star who nearly won the 2018 governors race in deep-red Georgia.

Abrams also received rave reviews after delivering the official Democratic response to Trumps State of the Union address earlier this year in which.

Its unclear if Biden is potentially grooming Abrams to be his running mate, but adding her to the ticket would, indeed, give a jolt to his candidacy.

As Abrams said in her rebuttal to Trumps address to Congress this year, Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party, and we cant take that for granted. Period.

Choosing Stacey Abrams as his running mate would be an acknowledgment by Biden that he understand what fuels the Democratic base. It could help the former vice president solidify his standing in the early primary polls, which consistently show him leading the other candidates.

Regardless of Joe Bidens ultimate decision, its clear that the Democratic primary race is about to get even more exciting.

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Rep. Devin Nunes is suing Twitter after his account was temporarily banned for tweeting Russian propaganda.

Devin Nunes Has Filed A Bogus Lawsuit Against Twitter

Here is the Nunes lawsuit:

Nunes Complaint  3.18.19 by on Scribd

The lawsuit is a cheap political stunt designed to pander to the conservative persecution complex. It is also a way for Trumps House toadie to take attention away from the avalanche of bad news that has buried this president.

Nuness lawyer cried to Fox News, Twitter is a machine. It is a modern-day Tammany Hall. Congressman Nunes intends to hold Twitter fully accountable for its abusive behavior and misconduct.

The Real Reason Why Devin Nunes Was Banned From Twitter

Rep. Nuness account was caught up in a Twitter purge of Russian bot and fake news spreading account. In other words, Rep. Nunes was banned from Twitter for spreading Russian propaganda and fake news.

This is not the targeting of a political ideology, but an indictment of the Trump Republican Partys embrace of fake news and Russian propaganda. The lawsuit should be laughed out of court, but if Nunes wants to go there, he should be forced to testify about the Russian propaganda and fake news that he has been tweeting.

If Nunes wants to throw down with Twitter, he better be careful, because what he is wishing for could backfire on the entire Republican Party.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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Rachel Maddow hammered Donald Trump on Monday with a list of his shady financial dealings with Deutsche Bank.

Citing a New York Times report, the MSNBC host said Trump materially misrepresented his wealth and his assets and his ability to repay loans, but Deutsche Bank continued to give him money anyway.

Is that just the way banks operate? Maddow asked in disbelief. Is bank fraud still bank fraud if the bank is in on it? If they know that the person to whom theyre going to give this loan is lying to them about their ability to pay that loan back?

We really dont know what was going on between Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump  over the course of their long relationship, when every other bank on Wall Street had sworn him off but Deutsche Bank kept shoveling him money, Maddow said.

Video:

Maddow hammered Trump with a list of his shady dealings with Deutsche Bank:

He materially misrepresented his wealth and his assets and his ability to repay the loan, but eh, they decided to do it anyway. What? Who else gets to live in that world? Where do I sign up for that? I mean, first of all, what explains that? Is that just the way that banks operate? It would seem like it wouldnt be or they wouldnt be able to stay banks for too long.  Is bank fraud still bank fraud if the bank is in on it? If they know that the person to whom theyre going to give this loan is lying to them about their ability to pay that loan back? If the bank is in on it, then why would they do it? Its very strange.  I mean, going along with the loan they know he was lying about was weird. The Times reports tonight that in another loan they considered for Trump early on, they discovered that somebody had forged the signature of a credit officer who supposedly had approved a deal that was going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump. Thats a little bit of a red flag. Trump defaulted on his deals with Deutsche Bank. He lied to Deutsche Bank and they knew it. He sued Deutsche Bank to avoid paying back loans that he had taken from them. He took money from one part of the bank and used it to pay off another part of the bank. At least one banker who did multiple deals with Trump was fired from the bank apparently for misconduct. But somehow they kept managing to shove more money his way. Well over $2 billion in total.

Trumps financial and business dealings could hurt him most

With most of the media attention is focused on the highly anticipated Mueller report, which deals with Russian conspiracy and obstruction of justice, Maddow highlighted where Trump could be most vulnerable: his finances.

Before his time in the political arena, Trump spent decades skirting the law to enrich himself and his businesses. A flurry of investigations being conducted in New York and, now, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, continues to dig into those areas of the presidents past.

Its no surprise then that as the probes uncover more of Trumps dirt, he is increasingly unhinged. This past weekend was the clearest example yet of Trumps deteriorating state of mind.

While the Mueller report is expected soon, the heightened scrutiny of Trumps career running a criminal business enterprise could do the most damage to his presidency.

Follow Sean Colarossi on Facebook and Twitter
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Leader Chuck Schumer issued a joint statement calling for the FBI and other agencies to launch a criminal and counterintelligence investigation into Trumps massage parlor madam, Li Cindy Yang.

Pelosi and Schumer said in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA, The facts in this situation are very concerning and we urge Director Wray to adhere to the joint bicameral requests of the Democratic Senate ranking members and Democratic House chairmen and start an investigation.

The New York Times reported on a scandal that involves campaign finance violations by the Trump campaign involving illegal foreign donations that went through Yang.

In their letter the Democrats make it clear that they see serious criminal and national security concerns:

Since Trump does virtually no vetting on where the cash comes from that flows into his party and campaign, it would not be difficult for the Chinese government to use Yang to compromise Trump. Just like the Russians, the Chinese appear to have been able to take advantage of Trumps corruption and willingness to take money from anywhere with no questions asked.

Democrats want answers and they are flexing their political muscles to turn up the heat on Trump, because the next major scandal to rock Trump world may have nothing to do Russia, and everything to do with how China also has compromised a US president.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters)  Acting Pentagon Chief Patrick Shanahan said on Monday he had provided Congress with a list of projects from the military construction budget that could be cut back in order to help pay for a wall on the border with Mexico.

Last month Trump declared a national emergency in a bid to fund his promised wall at the U.S.Mexico border without congressional approval.

The emergency declaration allows the Trump administration to use money from the military construction budget, if needed.

Trump issued the first veto of his presidency on Friday to block a measure passed by Democrats and Republicans in Congress that would terminate his emergency declaration for a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico to stem illegal immigration and crime.

Speaking before the start of his meeting with his French counterpart, Shanahan was asked if he had sent the list of projects to Congress.

I have, Shanahan said.

The more than 20-page document seen by Reuters included all the projects that were not awarded funding as of Dec. 31 2018.

The list includes a cemetery at the U.S. Military Academy in New York and a command and control facility at Camp Tango in South Korea.

It is essentially up to Congress to go through the list and figure out which projects will not be affected, including military housing, barracks and projects that have already been awarded funding.

In a statement, the Pentagon said the pool of projects included was valued at about $12.9 billion. The Pentagon has said it could use about $3.6 billion from the military construction budget this year, if needed.

The issue was highlighted during a tense Congressional hearing on Thursday, when Democratic Senators demanded that they be provided a list of military that could be impacted if funding was used to build a wall.

We know President Trump wants to take money from our national security accounts to pay for his wall, and now we have a list of some of the projects and needed base repairs that could be derailed or put on the chopping block as a result, Senator Jack Reed said in a statement.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Richard Cowan.; Editing by Alistair Bell)
By Charlotte Greenfield and Tom Westbrook

CHRISTCHURCH (Reuters)  New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday she would announce new gun laws within days, after a lone gunman killed 50 people in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday. Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5 where police said he was likely to face more charges.

Within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer, Ardern told a news conference after her cabinet reached in principle decisions on gun reform laws in the wake of New Zealands worst ever mass shooting.

In addition to the 50 killed, dozens were wounded at two mosques in the South Island city during Friday prayers.

The owner of gun shop Gun City, David Tipple, said the suspected gunman had legally bought four weapons and ammunition online from it between December 2017 and March 2018, but it did not sell him the high-powered weapon used in the massacre.

The MSSA, military-style automatic, reportedly used by the alleged gunman was not purchased from Gun City. Gun City did not sell him an MSSA, only A-category firearms, Tipple told a news conference in Christchurch.

Under New Zealand gun laws, A-category weapons can be semi-automatic but limited to seven shots. Live-streamed video of a gunman in one of the mosques showed a semi-automatic weapon with a large magazine.

Tipple said he supported Arderns decision to reform gun laws as the Christchurch shootings had raised legitimate concerns.

Ardern did not give details on new laws, but has said she supports a ban on semi-automatic weapons following the Christchurch shootings.

Australia introduced some of the worlds toughest gun laws after its worst mass killing, the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in which a lone gunman killed 35 people using a semi-automatic AR-15  the same weapon used in the Christchurch massacre.

Australia banned semi-automatic weapons, launched a gun amnesty in which tens of thousands of weapons were handed in, and made it much tougher to own them.

TIME TO ACT

Ardern encouraged gun owners who were thinking of surrendering their weapons to do so.

The clear lesson from history around the world is that to make our community safer, the time to act is now, she said.

I strongly believe that the vast majority of gun owners in New Zealand will agree with the sentiment that change needs to occur.

New Zealands top online marketplace Trade Me Group said it was halting the sale of semi-automatic weapons in the wake of Fridays attack.

New Zealand, a country of only 5 million people, has an estimated 1.5 million firearms.

Radio New Zealand said in a report based on police data secured through an Official Information Act request, that more than 99 percent of people who applied for a firearms license in 2017 were successful.

A New Zealand standard A-category firearm license is issued after a police and background check. Only firearm owners are licensed, not weapons, so there is no monitoring of how many weapons a person may possess.

Still, violent crime is rare in New Zealand and police do not usually carry guns.

Before Friday, New Zealands worst mass shooting was in 1990 when a man killed 13 men, women and children in a 24-hour rampage in the seaside village of Aramoana. He was killed by police.

Ardern said an inquiry will be held into what authorities knew or should have known about Tarrant and the events leading up to the massacre, to see whether the attack could have been prevented.

There were 250 detectives and specialists across the country working on the investigation, said police.

Tarrant had declined to be represented by a lawyer but the court appointed duty lawyer Richard Peters to handle the case.

Peters told media Tarrant was lucid and understood the situation facing him.

He was lucid, Peters told Australian TV network Channel Nine. He seemed to appreciate what he was facing and why he was there.

BURIAL FRUSTRATIONS

Ardern was the first person to sign a national condolence book that she opened in the capital, Wellington.

On behalf of all New Zealanders, we grieve together. We are one. They are us, she wrote.

The majority of victims were migrants or refugees from countries such as Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Somalia, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The youngest was a boy of three, born in New Zealand to Somali refugee parents.

Six Pakistanis, five Indians and five Bangladeshis were killed, officials said.

Frustration was building among the families of victims as under Islam it is custom to conduct burials within 24 hours, but bodies will not be released until post mortems are carried out.

About 60 volunteers, some who have flown in from Australia, have gathered to help with the ritual cleansing of the victims before burial.

It is a spiritual process, preparing the body to go into the next life, said Taufan Mawardi, one the volunteers.

The two mosques involved in the shootings have been closed since the massacre, but are expected to reopen by Friday prayers after cleansing blessings were carried out.

Over the weekend, tens of thousands flocked to memorial vigils around New Zealand and a victim support website raised more than NZ$5.5 million ($3.8 million).

(Additional reporting by John Mair and Praveen Menon in WELLINGTON; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Michael Perry)
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In an interview on the ABC News podcast The Investigation, Vicky Ward said the presidents grown daughter and son-in-law, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, went into government not for public service but for self-service.

Most people go into government for public service, the author said on the podcast. They do seem to have gone in for self-service.

Watch here:

The British-born author of Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. said the couple failed to live up to the publics hopes, The books main theme really is about two people who we all hoped, at the outset of this administration, would be the moral center of it  would be moderating influences on a president known for his extreme character and extreme policies.

Ward isnt sure the couple will ever face accountability, even though theyre exploiting their power for personal enrichment.

Either they will (face scrutiny from) a combination of Congress and prosecutors. Or their path, their trajectory, will continue as it has, which seemingly is remarkably unstoppable.

While her book offers any threads that might interest prosecutors, Ward said that her book does not conclude that Kushner or his wife broke any laws.

It does, however, paint yet another picture of unflattering anecdotes about Ivanka and Jared, describing a world of clashes between Trump advisers and the couple, saying that she was careful to get stories from at least two sources because of the vendettas after interactions with the couple.

The White House has gone out of their way to deny Wards entire book.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told CNN that Ivanka Trump could conceivably certainly, I cant say. Quite conceivably be named on the nest list. All the people on the list have given information already, Nadler said, either to Special Counsel Robert Mueller for his probe of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election or to federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York in their corruption probe.

All were asking for at this point is information theyve already turned over so that can be done quickly and without questions of (presidential) privilege, Nadler told CNN. Democrats sent requests for documents to 81 individuals and entities, including the presidents sons, however Ivanka Trump was left off of the list even though former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who is now cooperating with Mueller, said he briefed Ivanka numerous times on the Trump Tower Moscow deal.

But Ivanka Trump was omitted, even though former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen told lawmakers last week he briefed her numerous times about a Trump skyscraper project in Moscow.

The probe is focused on alleged obstruction of justice, the alleged cover-up of violations of the law, corruption, emoluments clause violations, abuses of power, using official positions for personal gain, and more. To that end, Wards book suggests that Jared pushed Trump to fire former FBI Director James Comey.

The Trump White House is reportedly refusing to even acknowledge the power of Congress in regards to the document requests, which is yet another example of how this mafia-styled family assumes they are above the law.
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New York Prosecutors on Tuesday unsealed copies of search warrants and other documents obtained in last Aprils FBI raid on former Trump lawyer Michael Cohens home, office and hotel room.

JUST IN: Partially redacted search warrant materials pertaining to the April 2018 raid on Michael Cohens home, office and hotel room have been released

JUST IN: Partially redacted search warrant materials pertaining to the April 2018 raid on Michael Cohen's home, office and hotel room have been released https://t.co/uDVTkD16LA pic.twitter.com/VaNZfFxq5A  CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 19, 2019

The documents include a treasure trove of search warrants, warrant applications and supporting affidavits connected to the raids on Cohens properties.

They also relate to the underlying searches of Cohens email, cellphone location data and other electronic devices.

In total, the release shows that federal prosecutors filed eight exhibits totaling 895 pages. Much of the documents have been redacted to hide Cohens private information, such as his email address, phone numbers, apartment number and safety deposit box.

The government will also hide details about Cohens and Trumps campaign finance violations in order to protect the ongoing federal investigation into Trumps hush-money payments to porn stars he had sex with.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley III ordered the release of the documents in February after being petitioned for them to be made public by several news organizations.

Cohen has pleaded guilty to several federal charges since the raids, and has been sentenced to three years in prison.

According to the Associated Press (AP):

The FBI was investigating President Donald Trumps former personal attorney and fixer for nearly a year before agents raided his home and office, the newly released documents show.

The documents show that the federal inquiry into Michael Cohen had been going on since July 2017  far longer than had previously been known.

Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, said the release of the search warrant furthers his interest in continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump organization to law enforcement and Congress.

CLICK HERE to watch the MSNBC video on the release of the Cohen documents
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When I started writing this piece, it was going to be in defense of Nancy Pelosis argument against a premature rush to impeachment. Her reasoning still stands. I was going to point to the fact that she wants a real investigation (vs. what the Republicans did ) and bi-partisan support  since the Republicans do control the Senate. Impeachment by the House, followed by acquittal in the Senate would reduce a trial about Trumps multiple abuses of power, lack of temperament, immaturity, and general incompetence to an exercise in partisanship.

Call me crazy, but if were going to go through the process of impeachment, Id like to know that conviction is, at least possible. Otherwise, its all for nothing and yes, it is divisive.

Anyone still wondering what the big deal is hasnt been paying attention to Trumps ongoing effort to divide America between cookie cutter white supremacist nut jobs and everyone else.

The most recent example is his inhumane and unpresidential response to the mass murder in New Zealand before announcing his first veto over Congresss resolution rejecting Trumps attempt to grab the purse strings.

Trump expressed similar sentiments to that of white nationalists, including the idea that immigrants are invaders.

He did it hours after the shooting.

Trum p doesnt have his creepy eye on the spending power to say, improve education, or healthcare, or even subsidize his forgotten people. Hes doing it to finance a vanity project that no one wants and, dare I say, he promised Mexico would pay for.

The reason for the power grab, however, has nothing to do with the vanity project. Thats just to keep his base excited. This is really about reducing Congress from a co-equal branch of government to pathetic lap dogs like Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz and Louis Golmert.

Trump has committed a catalogue of impeachable acts. Everyone who has been paying attention knows it. The problem is that a lot of people havent been paying attention. For impeachment to succeed, it means capturing the votes of 20 Republican Senators. Republicans will only defy Trump by supporting impeachment if supporting Trump proves to be a political disadvantage. That means making a case compelling enough for Republican voters to support.

Such a case means proving to them that Trump is a clear and present danger to national security. To be honest, until I read Lawrence Tribe and Joshua Matzs article in the Daily Beast, I wasnt 100 percent certain that being a danger to national security would be an impeachable offense. As much as I thought it ought to be, Ive been around the law long enough to know it doesnt always reflect common sense morality.

Yet common sense dictates that our president protect the nation from attacks by hostile foreign powers. That includes interference in our elections by Russia. Tribe and Matz opine that Trumps inaction against Russian interference in the 2016 election is, on its own, an impeachable offense.

It is possible to argue that Trumps inaction is, by itself, an impeachable offense. On this view, Trump is guilty of nonfeasance: a failure to act when action is required. Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar has written that gross dereliction of duty imperiling the national security might well rise to the level of disqualifying misconduct.

The mere fact that Trump has inspired more than one terrorist, within and beyond our borders, designates him a threat to national security. One may doubt whetherTrumps rhetoric rises to the level of incitement, but when terrorists themselves say they are inspired by him, there is little room to doubt that Trumps words matter to people who share his white nationalist ideals.

One notable example is Christopher Paul Hasson, the coast guard lieutenant whose long planned terrorist attack was detected before he could carry it out.

Hasson had a list of targets, including prominent Democrats and journalists who are critical of Trump based on internet searches that coincide with Trumps toxic rhetoric.

8:54 a.m.: what if trump illegally impeached 8:57 a.m.: best place in dc to see congress people 8:58 a.m.: where in dc to congress live 10:39 a.m.: civil war if trump impeached 11:26 a.m.: social democrats usa

The suspect in the massacre of 11 people in a Pittsburgh Synagogue was reportedly inspired by Trump, Like Trump, he described immigrants as invaders.

And the New Zealand terrorist said in his manifesto that Trump inspired him. Per the Washington Post,

The 74-page manifesto posted online hailed Trump as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.

The second point, also argued by Tribe and Matz, is the possibility and extent to which Trump violated the law to influence the 2016 election outcome and subsequent to taking his oath of office.

Theres little doubt that Trumps promise to drain the swamp reeled in a lot of voters. They need to see that Trump is the biggest swamp creature of them all. He silenced his mistresses with payoffs. He was bribed by foreign leaders seeking policies that are detrimental to our national interests  including national security.

Republican voters also need to see whether any of Trumps actions in this area amount to impeachable offenses  something that can only be determined by a proper congressional investigation. As noted by Tribe and Matz, it isnt enough to prove that Trump did something unseemly. It must qualify as a high crime and Misdemeanor

As we detail in To End A Presidency, pre-inauguration wrongdoing aimed at the corrupt acquisition of office is impeachable. So Trumps misconduct cant be set aside on the ground that it occurred before Election Day. This raises a question: how do we decide when pre-inauguration conduct is properly ranked as a high Crime and Misdemeanor?

Building this case can be done through public hearings. In fact, it must be done, because relying on Trumps Roy Cohn to protect our constitutional order is like asking a mouse to protect the cheese.

There is no shortcut to impeachment and there shouldnt be one. We have to do the work that Republicans failed to do during the past two years  regardless of whether it provides the basis for impeachment or not.

Congress must re-establish its power and responsibilities as a co-equal branch of government. Nancy Pelosi knows it. That is why she insisted on doing the work  which is not, as some have claimed, the same as opposing impeachment.

Her objection is to avoid giving Trump anything to hang his victim complex on.

So far, Nancy Pelosi has shown an ability to understand and defeat Trump at his own game. Odds are highly in favor of her being right about this too.
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Donald Trumps White House has completely ignored House Democrat requests for documents, and the administration expects to get away with it reported POLITICO this morning.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) wrote to the White House last month demanding information about Trumps national emergency declaration. Nadlers February 22 deadline came and went without a response  or even an acknowledgement of the request from anyone in the Trump administration.

Washington veterans who have worked in previous administrations and in Congress said Trump and his administration employees are violating established norms. They are disregarding congressional requests for documents and other information. In some cases they have responded  with aggressively hostile letters.

The White House is taking the exact right tactic to ignore the requests and see what comes of it, said David Bossie, a Trump confidante who led the investigation into Bill Clinton in the 1990s. I wouldnt respect [the Democrats] process.

Bossie said the White House was justified in ignoring the demands, which he dismissed as partisan, and predicted they would face no serious legal consequences for stonewalling Democratic oversight.

Administration officials met with congressional staffers last week to discuss requests for documents related to security clearances for the presidents family members. But Trumps intent is clear: He doesnt plan to negotiate with Congress over their demands for information and witnesses the way his predecessors did.

Instead, House Democrats are going to have to fight him for everything.

I think they have an arrogant attitude toward Congress, said Charles Tiefer, former solicitor and deputy general counsel of the House. You have to go back to the Nixon administration to find this.

POLITICO contacted the 17 House committees that unsuccessfully requested records or witnesses from the Trump administration over the last two months in writing their report.

Despite hopes among Democrats that they would quickly receive many internal Trump administration documents, and be able to interview administration witnesses, it appears instead they are facing a long and frustrating fight with Trump lawyers. It is likely that their fight will end up in court.

And Democrats are furious over what they call the brazen stonewalling by Trump.

Still, House Democrats will probably be able to get documents from agencies and departments that dont have as many protections as the White House. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can use House parliamentary tactics to hold up appropriations and authority for government programs.

In addition, aggressive Trump lawyers cant prevent Democrats from obtaining records from people and entities who are not associated with the federal government, such as Trumps children and business associates.
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Trumps paranoia is growing by the minute as he claimed during a joint press conference with the president of Brazil that Facebook and Twitter are colluding against him.

Trump said:



Well, we have to do something. I tell you, I have many, many millions of followers on Twitter, and its different than it used to be. Things are happening, names are taken off, people arent getting through. Youve heard the same complaints. It seems to be if theyre conservative, if theyre Republicans, if theyre in a certain group, theres discrimination and big discrimination. I see it absolutely on Twitter and Facebook, which I have also, and others. I really focus more on the one platform. I guess we have almost 60 million on Twitter. If you add them all up, its way over 100 million people.

I get to see firsthand whats going on, and its not good. We use the word collusion very loosely all the time, and I will tell you there is collusion with respect to that because something has to be going on. When you get the back scene, back office statements made by executives of the various companies and you see the level of, in many cases, hatred they have for a certain group of people that happen to be in power, that happen to have won the election, you say thats really unfair.

Video:

Trump is claiming that Facebook, Twitter, and Google are colluding against him. https://t.co/Kr9gONd0av pic.twitter.com/LjktF6DL3W  PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) March 19, 2019

So something is happening with those groups of folks that are running Facebook and Google and Twitter, and I do think we have to get to the bottom of it. Its very fair. Its collusive and very, very fair to say that we have to do something about it. And if we dont, you know, the incredible thing is that we can win an election and we have such a stacked deck. That includes networks, frankly. You look at the networks, you look at the news, you look at the newscasts. I call it fake news. Im very proud to hear the president use the term fake news.

But you look at whats happening with the networks, you look at whats happening with different shows, and its hard to believe we win. Ill tell you what it really shows, the people are smart. The people get it. Theyll go through all of that, whatever it is theyre fed, and in the end, they pull the right lever. Its a very, very dangerous so I think I agree. I think something has to be looked at very closely.

Trump is threatening social media because he is trying to silence criticism

Trump was trying to pressure Facebook, Google, and Twitter into silencing critics of him and his administration. The president is sending a warning to social media companies that they better cut out the criticism, or he will make them pay. Notice how Trump is trying to reassign the word the collusion to the media and not his own potential behavior with Russians.

Donald Trump is trying to stifle criticism by trying to close down venues for dialogue about him and his administration. The social media companies dont hate Republicans. They are trying to clean up the Russian propaganda that Republicans are spreading on social networks.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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Trump is terrified because both Mueller and the Southern District of New York have mountains of evidence of his crimes.

Frank Figliuzzi said on MSNBCs Deadline: White House, And these are still, for the most part, dynamic, pending investigations. Judges  judge still saying I dont want this out yet, its going to reveal too much and reveal names. And for those who say, you know what, we shouldnt believe Cohen and his testimony because hes a convicted liar, lets look at what weve learned today. That is that these mountains  this mountain of evidence is such that you almost dont have to believe Cohen because prosecutors, the special counsel, the southern district of New York, the FBI, have so much evidence to back up what they do that you could almost discount public testimony from Cohen and realize that the data is there and the data will win the day. 

Figliuzzi was referring to some unsealed court documents that gave a small glimpse into the amount of evidence that law enforcement has against Trump.

Video:

Prosecutors and the FBI have mountains of evidence against him, which is why Trump is scared. https://t.co/u6WjDA5ggk pic.twitter.com/r8WW1VZKIy  Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) March 19, 2019

The search warrants used in the Cohen raid provided the first glimpse of just how much info has been gathered against Trump:

Trump is scared because there is a mountain of evidence against him

Trump cant hide all of the evidence. Prosecutors have the goods on potential criminal activity that the public has not heard about yet. Donald Trumps strategy has shifted to making sure that the evidence never sees the light of day because he knows that investigators have it all. His mission now is to make sure that the American people never see it.

The evidence is in the hands of law enforcement, which means that Trump is fighting an uphill battle against the inevitable tide of justice that will be served.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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Donald Trump may be in trouble in Ohio. He won the states electoral votes in the 2016 election after promising to bring back factory jobs. But recent events show that factory workers have lost faith in the president they voted for.

David Green of the United Auto Workers (UAW) of Ohio spoke with CNN this morning and slammed Trump for breaking his campaign promises for workers.

The UAW leader was targeted by Trump in an angry tweet this week, so this morning he hit back at the president.

On Sunday Trump tweeted:

Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce. G.M. let our Country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves. I want action on Lordstown fast. Stop complaining and get the job done! 3.8% Unemployment!

Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce. G.M. let our Country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves. I want action on Lordstown fast. Stop complaining and get the job done! 3.8% Unemployment!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019

During a CNN segment about the closing of an Ohio General Motors (GM) plant, Green identified the Republican Partys 2017 tax law as the main reason for GMs decision to shut down plants in the area.

The union leader said on CNN:

The GOP tax cut gave corporations like GM an incentive to build products outside the state.

I just wanted him to understand that the regulations on books arent really helping working people, its not helping companies that actually employ people.

He then reminded viewers of Trumps 2016 campaign vows about helping factory workers. And he said the president has fallen far short of even coming close to meeting his promises.

A lot of people here voted for him, Green said. He came here and told folks, Dont sell your house, those jobs are coming back. And weve seen job losses.

The GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio closed two weeks ago, resulting in layoffs of 1,400 auto workers, causing widespread economic problems in the area.

Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown also was interviewed by CNN and complained about Trumps lack of help. The interview was reported via tweet:

We just finally woke him up. Ive been talking to him about the plant for over a year, Ohio @SenSherrodBrown says about Pres. Trumps criticism over the closure of Ohio General Motors plant.

Hes only now getting engaged when he thinks he has to.

We just finally woke him up. Ive been talking to him about the plant for over a year, Ohio @SenSherrodBrown says about Pres. Trumps criticism over the closure of Ohio General Motors plant. He's only now getting engaged when he thinks he has to. https://t.co/1mjMbW9R2k pic.twitter.com/EeBJWmBDdc  New Day (@NewDay) March 19, 2019

On Sunday presidential candidate Beto ORourke also met with Green:

ORourke met w/ UAW 1112 Pres David Green, where one of GMs plants is set to close. Greene has been one of the latest victims of Trumps Twitter tantrums Beto O'Rourke Storms Ohio And Offers Support To The GM Workers That Trump Has Been Attacking https://t.co/NVDlOqoGml  Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) March 19, 2019

Donald Trump Is In Trouble So He Is Blaming Union Workers and Democrats

Donald Trump has gone back to his playbook of blaming others for his mistakes and broken promises, but it wont work in Ohio anymore. Union workers and other people who voted for Trump in 2016 know that his promises were nothing but lies. They also know that the GOP tax scam gave benefits to rich people and corporations, but not to workers.

Trumps desperate and unhinged tweets show that he knows hes in trouble. And theres nothing he can do about it. His unhinged tweets arent helping him at all.

CLICK HERE to see the CNN interview with David Green
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Aircraft Survivability Equipment Market Overview:

Aircraft survivability equipment includes various types of systems and fittings that increase an aircrafts survivability and reduce its vulnerability to all kinds of external threats. Simply put, the role of aircraft survivability equipment is to minimize the vulnerability of aircraft to all possible threats. This involves physical equipment meant to reduce damage from traditional missiles and other projectiles as well as electronic equipment designed to prevent the aircraft from falling prey to electronic attacks.

Aircraft survivability equipment performs a crucial role in air defense and is thus allotted a major part of air force expenditure. The growing importance of air combat in modern warfare is likely to drive the global aircraft survivability equipment market at a steady growth rate over the 2018-2023 forecast period.

The global aircraft survivability equipment market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.20% over the 2018-2023 forecast period, rising from a valuation of USD 3,620 million in 2017 to USD 4,910 million in 2023.

The major drivers for the global aircraft survivability equipment market include the rising demand to replace traditional equipment and systems with advanced versions, and the rising prevalence of asymmetric warfare. Militaries around the world are investing heavily in technological upgradation to provide their units with the most advanced equipment, resulting in increasing demand from the aircraft survivability equipment market.

The rise in asymmetric warfare is likely to elevate the importance of aircraft to modern military forces, forcing them to invest in aircraft survivability equipment. Increasing troubles related to insurgency and guerilla warfare around the world are thus likely to drive the global aircraft survivability equipment market over the 2018-2023 forecast period. Surface to air missiles are a vital resource for insurgents looking to counter air attacks. As a result, countries are likely to invest in protection against the same over the coming years, resulting in steady growth of the aircraft survivability equipment market over the forecast period.

On the other hand, the high cost of advanced aircraft survivability equipment and the high cost of replacing the existing systems in aircraft fleets en masse is likely to hurt the prospects of the aircraft survivability equipment market in the short term. While advanced countries such as the U.S. have committed significant expenses towards large-scale modernization of their armed forces, not all countries can afford to follow suit and apply the latest aircraft survivability equipment. This has led to a disparity among the major regions as to their role in the global aircraft survivability equipment market. However, demand from the defense sector is likely to remain the major driver for the global aircraft survivability equipment market over the forecast period.

Segmentation:

The report segments the global aircraft survivability equipment market by fit, subsystem, platform, and region in order to provide readers with a comprehensive picture regarding the present conditions in the global aircraft survivability equipment market and its growth prospects over the forecast period.

By fit, the global aircraft survivability equipment market is segmented into line fit and forward fit. By subsystem, the report examines the electronic attack, electronic support, and non-combat systems segments. By platform, the report divides the market into combat aircraft, military transport aircraft, combat helicopters, UAVs, and others. By region, the report looks into the performance of the aircraft survivability equipment market in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America.

Competitive Analysis:

The report provides detailed profiles of the leading players in the aircraft survivability equipment market in order to present a comprehensive picture of the markets competitive landscape. Leading players in the global aircraft survivability equipment market include BAE Systems (US), Elbit Systems Ltd. (Israel), Northrop Grumman (US), Chemring Group (UK), Israel Aerospace Industries (Israel), Thales Group (France), Terma A/S (Denmark), Ruag Holding AG (Switzerland), Raytheon (US), and Saab AB (Sweden), among others.

Research Methodology:

The report contains primary and secondary information gathered from reliable sources. The information is vetted with rigorous cross-examination and corroboration with primary interviews. The market is analyzed with a top-down and bottom-up approach to deliver a comprehensive view of the market to the readers. Accuracy of the data provided in the report is paramount for analysts at Market Research Future, and every step has been taken to ensure the accuracy of every data point given in the report.

Get Free Sample Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/6744
Russias ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, was asked during last weeks Carnegie Endowment nuclear policy conference whether Russia would use nuclear weapons to prevail and win a conventional conflict that it was previously losing. Antonov categorically rejected such a notion, claiming it was a fairy tale and lots of fake news.

Speaking on March 11, the Russian ambassador stated: There is no first strike concept in the Russian doctrine. There is a clear reference in our doctrine when and under which circumstances we can use our nuclear weapons: when there is an attack on the Russian Federation, when there is a threat for the existence of the Russian Federation as well as our allies.

Ambassador Antonov further denied the view held by many Western experts that Moscows military doctrine includes an escalate-to-deescalate nuclear strategy. That strategy entails using a limited nuclear strike in response to a large-scale conventional attack that exceeds Russias defense capacity in order to prevent a conflict from further escalating.

Antonov advised the audience to read all Russian public documents on this issue. We did, and found his statements deceptive.

The current Russian military doctrine appears to allow a first-strike with nuclear weapons, even if Russia and/or its allies are threatened only by conventional weapons, not nuclear arms.

Article 27. Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against it and (or) its allies, and in case of an aggression against it with conventional weapons that would put in danger the very existence of the state.

The Defense One newsletter, for example, asserted that this provision in Russias military doctrine clearly allows for the first-use of nuclear weapons.

The text of article 27 is ambiguous at best, as it opens the door for interpretation of what constitutes a danger to the state and under which conditions Russia would launch nuclear weapons. Moscow habitually claims that the Russian state is endangered by Western policies. Thus the doctrine is merely a data point, not hard evidence, wrote Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.

According to Stefan Forss, a professor at the Finnish National Defense University, the Russian military doctrine is basically defensive, as its main goal is to avoid war with peer antagonists.

However, if a war is unavoidable, things change immediately, Forss told Polygraph.info. Then Russia goes on the offensive. The grim lessons WW II and Operation Barbarossa are such that a similar course of events can never be allowed to happen again. War is to be waged outside the borders of the Fatherland.

Most Western military analysts agree that there is a fundamental difference between what Russia says in its public documents and what it does to increase its nuclear arsenal. The countrys procurement and deployment prioritize nuclear weapons by a huge margin. Pentagon officials have reported that Russia is aggressively building up its nuclear forces and expected to deploy a total of 8,000 warheads by 2026. They will include both large strategic warheads and thousands of new low-yield and very low-yield warheads to support Moscows new doctrine of using nuclear arms early in a conflict.

Senior U.S. experts concluded in their 2017 report A New Nuclear Review for a New Age, that Russian nuclear doctrine has undergone fundamental changes since the end of the 1990s, with an increasing salience of nuclear weapons. Open-source reports and testimony by U.S. NATO officials indicate that Russia has developed an escalate-to-deescalate or, more accurately, an escalate to win nuclear strategy that includes the possibility of nuclear first use in regional and local conflicts in order to terminate a conflict on terms favorable to Russia.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis described the Russian nuclear doctrine as escalate to victory and then deescalate.

Stefan Forss cites the famous Russian nuclear weapon designer, Yuri Trutnev, who believes that the credibility of deterrence depends on an unbroken chain of functioning nuclear weapons, designed for the whole spectrum of war.

Russias present massive investment in a whole range of traditional and unorthodox nuclear weapon systems is proof that Russia follows Trutnevs thinking and advice in its massive nuclear build-up, concludes Forss.

In a new book, Russia's Military Strategy and Doctrine, Trutnev is quoted that a material basis means the weapon system defines the doctrine that exists in reality as opposed to the declared doctrine.

Russias declared military doctrine may indeed differ substantially from the real doctrine, just as Moscows official statements in favor of nuclear non-proliferation appear at odds with its actions aimed at getting out of nuclear treaties. During last weeks Carnegie Endowment conference, Ambassador Antonov, who led the Russian delegation to the New START negotiations ten years ago, dealt a blow to this last remaining major nuclear non-proliferation agreement. He rejected the idea of broadening the treaty by including newly developed nuclear weapons and delivery systems. For Antonov that was a non-starter. He said the two sides had to stick with the provisions of the treaty. This means leaving out new Russian nuclear weapons such as the Poseidon nuclear-armed submarine drone, the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, and new missiles.

But Antonov is familiar with the changes in Russian nuclear policy since Vladimir Putin came to power. As Russias ambassador to the United Nations back in 2008, he strongly resisted introducing U.S. disarmament on the agenda of the UN Security Councils Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. Evidently, Russia had changed course and no longer followed the Gorbachev's vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Partly cloudy skies in the morning will give way to cloudy skies during the afternoon. High near 75F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy in the evening then periods of showers after midnight. Low 56F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Q: I misplaced my recipe for spaghetti sauce from LaBrascas Restaurant recently and I really thought I would not be able to find it again. I, like many others, miss the "Loved and Lost recipe column.

A: When I was very young, one of my favorite books was a compendium of general knowledge questions that readers had mailed to a syndicated newspaper columnist in the 1930s.

I dont remember the name of the columnist or his column, but he was a champion score-settler who could tick off the biggest cities, youngest presidents, hottest planets and smallest animals. It was scintillating reading, although I remember being surprised to learn in school that Somaliland had become Somalia and the U.S. had grown to include 50 states.

Of course, those reader mailbag features have gone the way of couch for sale signs pinned to coffeehouse bulletin boards. Nowadays, it would only take a few minutes of internet searching to figure out not just the name of the columnist, but the answer to every question he was ever asked.

In short, Google has obliterated the need for Loved and Lost, which was a fixture of The Post and Couriers food section for almost 50 years. Id wager I dont get more than half a dozen recipe requests a year.

But when food editor Charlotte Walker launched her recipe column in 1962, she was deluged by requests from desperate home cooks. Initially titled You Asked for It, the column in 1966 ran under the headline Loved, Lost? and a chastising headnote from Walker. Clearly exasperated with readers who werent keeping their clippings sorted, she warned, Because so many requests for reprints of recipes are received at this office, ONE favorite loved-and-lost recipe will be repeated each week.

Walker had relaxed her stance by 1968, when the column first ran under the Loved and Lost banner. The first Loved and Lost featured a recipe for Mystery Muffins, made from self-rising flour, mayonnaise and milk; preparation tips for liver-giblet spread and a request for a hogs head cheese recipe.

Diversity was a hallmark of Loved and Lost, which over the years included recipes for fish stew, pear butter, fennel seed cookies, beet relish, salt-rising bread, macaroon cake, won ton soup and never-fail meringue, among hundreds of other meaningful delicacies.

There was also a recipe for Shrimp Creole Gingell, which a reader had managed to lose after wowing her husbands boss with it. With the boss scheduled to return to her house for dinner, she wrote, My husbands future, and the well-being of my family, may depend on locating your recipe  if you can produce it, life will be beautiful once more.

Considering the circumstances, that correspondent might have wished for a tool like Google. But its true that the sense of community forged through the print column was loved, and is now lost.

In any case, heres your recipe:

Spaghetti sauce recipe LaBrascas spaghetti sauce
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March 19, 2019: This report focuses on the global Weather Information System status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. The study objectives are to present the Weather Information System development in United States, Europe and China.

In 2017, the global Weather Information System market size was million US$ and it is expected to reach million US$ by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of during 2018-2025.

The key players covered in this study

All Weather Inc.

Sutron Corporation

Campbell Scientific Inc.

Climatronics Corporation

Morcom International Inc.

Munro Instruments

Download sample Copy of This Report at: https://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-weather-information-system-market-size-status-and-forecast-2018-2025/request-sample

Skye Instruments Ltd.

Columbia Weather Systems Inc.

Met One Instruments Inc.

Lockheed Martin Corporation

Vaisala OYJ

Coastal Environmental Systems, Inc.

Market segment by Type, the product can be split into

Weather System

Monitoring Devices

Software

Mounting Hardware

Communication Devices

Click For Report Details @ https://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-weather-information-system-market-size-status-and-forecast-2018-2025

Market segment by Application, split into

Agriculture

Oil and Gas

Railways

Construction

Aerospace and Defence

Others

Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers

United States

Europe

China

Japan

Southeast Asia

India

Central & South America

The study objectives of this report are:

To analyze global Weather Information System status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players.

To present the Weather Information System development in United States, Europe and China.

To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their development plan and strategies.

To define, describe and forecast the market by product type, market and key regions.

In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Weather Information System are as follows:

History Year: 2013-2017

Base Year: 2017

Estimated Year: 2018

Forecast Year 2018 to 2025

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INSIGHTS

Why is it that we Americans seem to need a war to be happy? Its not that we start the wars exactly, but we embrace them with a strange fervor Read more
NORRISTOWN  A Willow Grove man was sent to jail for selling cocaine, oxycodone and heroin to undercover detectives in Montgomery County, including one drug deal during which he brought along his 2-year-old child.

Eric Ward Erkle Rice, 40, of the 1600 block of Reservoir Avenue, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to 111/2-to-23-months in the county jail after he pleaded guilty to charges of possession with intent to deliver controlled substances and endangering the welfare of a child in connection with incidents that occurred between May and August 2018.

Rice, who also listed an address in the 1700 block of Mayland Street in Philadelphia, is eligible for the jails work release program during his incarceration, according to court documents.

Judge Risa Vetri Ferman, who accepted a plea agreement in the matter, also ordered Rice to complete three years probation following parole, meaning Rice will be under court supervision for about five years.

The investigation involved several undercover drug buys of cocaine, heroin and oxycodone from Rice at locations in Montgomery County and Philadelphia, according to court documents.

Rice instructed me to tell my friends about him, the undercover detective wrote in court papers.

When undercover detectives sought to purchase two bundles of heroin or fentanyl from Rice in July 2018, Rice allegedly told them he had to go through another drug dealer to obtain the heroin and or fentanyl, according to the arrest affidavit.

Rice subsequently agreed to sell $120 worth of heroin and $280 worth of cocaine to an undercover detective during a meeting on a parking lot along West Cheltenham Avenue in Cheltenham on July 18, according to the criminal complaint. Detectives placed the area under surveillance and witnessed the transaction.

Rice arrived and stated his 2-year-old child was in the vehicle, detectives alleged in the criminal complaint, adding the child was observed in a rear seat of the vehicle. Rice provided (the undercover detective) with two bundles of suspected heroin and two knotted plastic bags containing suspected powdered cocaine.

Rice, according to court documents, later contacted the undercover detective and asked him about the quality of the heroin and the detective responded it was good.

From my training, knowledge and experience, heroin and or fentanyl dealers typically check on their customers after they have used the product to see if the product is good or to see if they have overdosed and died, the undercover detective alleged in the criminal complaint.

Other charges of possession of controlled substances, possession of drug paraphernalia and recklessly endangering another person were dismissed against Rice as part of the plea agreement.

Members of the Pennsylvania State Police Strike Force assisted with the investigation.
Francisco Molina knows what it takes to overcome adversity. Raised by a single mother from just three years old, Molina endured severe abuse. His home life was so bad, he wore long-sleeved shirts to school to cover the scars from his mothers beatings.

Such experiences can make or break a person. Molina did not break. Instead, he got stronger.

Molina started a family, earned a degree in human services, and, in 2006, took a job as a social services aide with the Lehigh County Office of Children and Youth to help abused children. He eventually joined the union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 668, and became a shop steward.

While he sometimes held views different from union leadership, Molina appreciated the chance to represent his colleagues and took it on himself to share useful information with them. For example, he once posted the responsibilities of a shop steward  taken from the SEIUs own handbook  on a workplace bulletin board. After all, knowledge is power.

But Molina soon learned SEIU leaders want to keep power in their own hands. They were none too pleased with his attempts at transparency. The tipping point came a year ago, when SEIU asked workers to sign new membership cards pledging to pay union dues  even if they found another job or stopped being union members. Molina refused to sign the coercive membership card and, in the spirit of transparency, alerted his colleagues to the fine print.

Why was SEIU so eager for members to recommit? For decades, government union leaders have taken a cut of public workers paychecks. Even workers who chose not to be union members had to pay a fair share fee to keep their jobs. But a lawsuit brought by Illinois government worker Mark Janus was about to change all that.

Just a few months after Molina exposed SEIUs membership card scheme, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that government workers could no longer be forced to pay union fees as a condition of employment.

Frustrated with how SEIUs leaders were treating him and his colleagues, Molina quickly sought to act on his newly-restored rights and submitted his resignation letter to the union.

But what should have been the end of Molinas story turned out to be just the beginning.

SEIU officials rejected Molinas resignation, citing a contract clause called maintenance of membership, which locks workers in union membership for years at a time, and continued taking dues from his paycheck. Molina refused to back down. Then, a few weeks later, he was suddenly dismissed from his job of more than a decade in what he feels was a retaliatory act.

Union leaders may have thought theyd finally bullied Molina into silence. Instead, he raised his voice even louder.

They didnt take me seriously, Molina says. So, I chose to stand up for my rights.

In January, he sued the union, with assistance from nonprofit law firm the Fairness Center, for refusing to let him resign and for unconstitutionally taking his money.

Unfortunately, Molinas experience isnt isolated. The Fairness Center also represents a group of government employees from Greensburg in a class-action lawsuit against SEIU over resignation restrictions. And the Liberty Justice Center, the law firm that brought the Janus case, recently filed similar lawsuits on behalf of Philadelphia and Lebanon County public workers.

While these cases work their way through the courts, state lawmakers should fight to remove draconian resignation restrictions and other obstacles standing between workers and their rights. One problem is a simple lack of information. Many government workers dont even know about the Janus ruling, and union leaders benefit by keeping them in the dark.

Thats why state Rep. Kate Klunk (R-York County) has introduced legislation ensuring public workers know their union membership is voluntary, and that they cannot be forced to pay a union as a condition of employment. Sen. Scott Martin (R-Lancaster County) is taking the lead on similar legislation in the state Senate.

Francisco Molina is standing up for himself and other public workers because he believes everyone deserves the opportunity to know and act on their rights. Thats the kind of bedrock value every lawmaker, regardless of party, should be happy to support.

Charles Mitchell is president and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation (www.CommonwealthFoundation.org), Pennsylvanias free market think tank.
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Bharat Book Bureau Provides the Trending Market Research Report on Latest Guidebook for Review and Approval Procedures of Overseas Imported New Drugs for Chinese Clinical Urgent Demand (2019 Edition) under Drugs Category. The report offers a collection of superior market research, market analysis, competitive intelligence and Market reports.

China is one of the fastest growing global economies with one fifth population in the world. Nowadays, China has become the world's second largest healthcare market after the United States. Facing a gigantic population and rapid population aging, the Chinese government accelerated the priority approval of innovative drugs and relaxed the market access for overseas drugs to cope with the clinical urgent demand. .

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China is one of the fastest growing global economies with one fifth population in the world. Nowadays, China has become the world's second largest healthcare market after the United States. Facing a gigantic population and rapid population aging, the Chinese government accelerated the priority approval of innovative drugs and relaxed the market access for overseas drugs to cope with the clinical urgent demand. In recent years, Chinas fast-track approval time is much shorter than any other country, which attracts more and more overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers to enter into the Chinese healthcare market. Undoubtedly the Chinese healthcare market of nearly 1.4 billion populations is a huge business opportunities for the overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The Chinese National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) and the National Health Commission (NHC) jointly issued the latest Review and Approval Procedures of Overseas Imported New Drugs for Clinical Urgent Demand on October 23, 2018, which provided a dedicated pathway for priority review and approval of overseas drugs importing to Chinese healthcare market and clarified the specific review and approval procedures.

To capture the huge business opportunities of the Chinese healthcare market and seize a larger part of Chinese healthcare market, how do the foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers in compliance with the latest Review and Approval Procedures of Overseas Imported New Drugs for Clinical Urgent Demand? How do the overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers operate business smoothly in China? The overseas and multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers and their senior executive officers engaging in regulatory affairs need a thorough knowledge of the latest regulations for priority review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs for Chinese clinical urgent demand. The Chinese regulatory approach is unique.

The Latest Guidebook for Review and Approval Procedures of Overseas Imported New Drugs for Chinese Clinical Urgent Demand (2019 Edition) is an essential resource for overseas and multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers to successfully acquire the marketing authorization in China, which provided a detailed guidance for comprehensive knowledge of the latest regulations on review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs for Chinese clinical urgent demand to navigate regulatory requirements step by step.

This guidebook is organized as follows.

Chapter 2 provides a latest description of the Chinese changing healthcare market landscape and rapidly changing regulatory framework as background for audience.

Chapter 3 introduces that review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs of Chinese clinical urgent demand are applicable to what scope of drug varieties.

Chapter 4 expounds the selection process of drug varieties.

Chapter 5 elaborates the details of review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs of Chinese clinical urgent demand.

Chapter 6 expounds the Chinese drug regulatory authority's requirements for application materials that overseas applicants apply for overseas imported new drugs of Chinese clinical urgent demand.

Chapter 7 expounds the duties and obligations of overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers for drugs exported to Chinese healthcare market.

Chapter 8 elaborates the Chinese drug regulatory authority's latest Administrative Measures for Communication and Exchange on Drug Research and Development and Technical Review and Approval to guide the overseas applicants to take the key first step entry into the dedicated pathway of priority review and approval procedures and to smoothly pass the review and approval procedures.

Chapter 9 exhibits the first batch list of overseas imported new drugs of Chinese clinical urgent demand that has been selected by the Chinese drug regulatory authority, which is calling the overseas applicants to submit the application for marketing in China to the Chinese drug regulatory authority, also let the overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers understand the Chinese drug regulatory authoritys distinctive regulatory current status.The list covers 40 drug varieties that have been approved to market in the United States, EU or Japan but that have not been yet marketed in China, and involves with 33 overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers.

The audiences of this guidebook are the overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers wishing to enter into the Chinese healthcare market, and the multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers have penetrated into the Chinese healthcare market, as well as their senior executive officers engaging in regulatory affairs expecting to understand the latest regulations on review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs for Chinese clinical urgent demand. After having skimmed through this guidebook, audiences can clearly acquire a comprehensive and thorough knowledge of the latest regulations on priority review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs for Chinese clinical urgent demand. Access China Management Consulting Ltd hopes this guidebook, based on the full and accurate regulations, can guide the overseas and multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers to achieve a successful entry into the Chinese healthcare market, and smoothly operate their companies in China.

Reasons To Buy

The Chinese National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) and the National Health Commission (NHC) jointly issued the latest Review and Approval Procedures of Overseas Imported New Drugs for Clinical Urgent Demand on October 23, 2018, which provided a dedicated pathway for priority review and approval of overseas drugs importing to Chinese healthcare market and clarified the specific review and approval procedures. This is a huge business opportunities for the overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers. To capture the huge business opportunities of the Chinese healthcare market and seize a larger part of Chinese healthcare market, how do the foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers in compliance with the latest Review and Approval Procedures of Overseas Imported New Drugs for Clinical Urgent Demand? How do the overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers operate business smoothly in China? The overseas and multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers and their senior executive officers engaging in regulatory affairs need a thorough knowledge of the latest regulations for review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs for Chinese clinical urgent demand. The Chinese regulatory approach is unique.

The Latest Guidebook for Review and Approval Procedures of Overseas Imported New Drugs for Chinese Clinical Urgent Demand (2019 Edition) is an essential resource for overseas and multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers to successfully acquire the marketing authorization in China, which provided a detailed guidance for comprehensive knowledge of the latest regulations on review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs for Chinese clinical urgent demand to navigate regulatory requirements step by step.

Key Highlights

-A latest description for the Chinas changing healthcare market landscape and rapidly changing regulatory framework that let the overseas and multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers clearly understand the present-day realities of the Chinese healthcare market landscape and rapidly changing regulatory framework, and tell the overseas and multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers the opportunities and challenges.

-The latest regulations on priority review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs of Chinese clinical urgent demand to smoothly navigate regulatory requirements step by step.

-The scope and selection of drug variety for the priority review and approval procedures of overseas imported new drugs for Chinese clinical urgent demand.

-The detailed Chinese drug regulatory authority's requirements for application materials that the overseas applicants apply for the overseas imported new drugs of Chinese clinical urgent demand. The overseas applicants should prepare the application materials in strict accordance with these requirements.

-The duties and obligations of the overseas applicants on the drugs on the post-marketing in China that are stipulated by the Chinese drug regulatory authority. The overseas applicants must undertake their duties and obligations of their drugs on the post-marketing in China. Otherwise, when the drug on post-marketing has been confirmed to have serious adverse reactions, the Chinese drug regulatory authority will take the emergency control measures to stop sale and use of the drug.

-The detailed Chinese drug regulatory authority's latest Administrative Measures for Communication and Exchange on Drug Research and Development and Technical Review and Approval to guide the overseas applicants to take the key first step entry into the dedicated pathway of priority review and approval procedures and to smoothly pass the review and approval procedures.

-A full set of the English and Chinese bilingual application form, materials and minutes template for Communication and Exchange Meeting, which cover the Application Form of Communication and Exchange Meeting (annex 1), The Materials for Communication and Exchange Meeting (annex 2) and the "Communication and Exchange Meeting Minutes Template" (annex 3) to guide the overseas applicants how to communicate with the Chinese drug regulatory authority.

-The first batch list of overseas imported new drugs for Chinese clinical urgent demand that has been selected by the Chinese drug regulatory authority, which is calling the overseas applicants to submit the application for marketing in China to the Chinese drug regulatory authority, also let the overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers understand the Chinese drug regulatory authoritys distinctive regulatory current status. The list covers 40 drug varieties that have been approved to market in the United States, EU or Japan but that have not been yet marketed in China, and involves with 33 overseas pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Browse our full report with Table of Contents:

https://www.bharatbook.com/marketreports/latest-guidebook-for-review-and-approval-procedures-of-overseas-imported-new-drugs-for-chinese-clinical-urgent-demand-20/228059

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Yahoo News reports that when she was the attorney general of California, Kamala Harris declined to investigate Herbalife, the nutritional supplement company that has been accused of fraudulent marketing practices. In 2015, prosecutors in the San Diego office of the California attorney general sent Harris a lengthy, detailed memorandum urging such an investigation. However, Harris did not initiate one.

Other states did. So did the Federal Trade Commission. It obtained a $200 million settlement from Herbalife. Illinois obtained a settlement too. But California remained on the sidelines, notwithstanding the recommendation of the San Diego prosecutors in a memo described as meticulous.

According to Yahoo News, Harris never explained her decision not to investigate Herbalife. The explanation may lie in two facts.

First, three weeks after the San Diego letter was sent, Harris received the first of three donations to her campaign for the U.S. Senate from Heather Podesta, the Washington lobbyist whose ex-husband Tonys firm, then called the Podesta Group, had worked for Herbalife since 2013. Heather Podestas own lobbying firm, Heather Podesta and Partners, would soon be hired by Herbalife.

Second, Harris husband, Douglas Emhoff, was employed by a law firm that was representing Herbalife at the time.

The left has already questioned Harris claim to be a progressive prosecutor, complaining that some of her criminal law policies and practices were actually regressive. The Herbalife case threatens to blow her progressive cred out of the water.

As one left-leaning source admonishes:

Democrats should take our partisan blinders off for stuff like this and replace Kamala Harris with Attorney General of California. Primary season gets us wrapped up so much in personality and the hope that we will find a new political savior that we become somewhat blinded to the immense power these people have wielded and are campaigning to wield. This report based on verified documents makes the former California attorney general look untrustworthy. Period.

True. If Harris makes any headway, perhaps President Trump will call her corrupt Kamala.
Have President Trumps uncompromising denunciations of Bob Muellers witch hunt been effective? It appears so, based on this USA Today/Suffolk University poll. Currently, 50% of Americans consider Muellers investigation to be a witch hunt, while 47% disagree. Independents believe Trump has been the victim of a witch hunt, by 54%/42%.

And that is before Mueller releases his findings. While the press will spin Muellers report in an anti-Trump direction, the one unavoidable conclusion will be that after searching high and low, Mueller and his team of Democratic Party partisans couldnt find any evidence of collusion. That should increase the number of voters who think the two-year-long investigation was a witch hunt all along.

Support for impeachment is fading as well. The USA Today poll finds that currently, only 28% of respondents think the House should seriously consider impeaching the president. That is down ten points since October.

These trends put Democratic presidential candidates in a difficult position. Their partys base demands ever more insane denunciations of President Trump, even as the larger public is growing more sympathetic to the view that attacks on the president have gone too far. Likewise, House Democrats intention to spend the next 20 months investigating the presidents family and businesses appears to be at odds with the public mood.

I think the Democrats over-the-top conduct has helped to move public opinion in Trumps favor, along with the fact, as now appears clear, that claims of collusion by Simpson and Steele were fabricated. I also think President Trump has helped himself by unequivocally denouncing the Democrats and the the Mueller investigation, on Twitter and elsewhere.
When it comes to the creation of wealth, socialism is worse than worthless. It is a great destroyer. For the promotion of equality by immiseration of the people who suffer under it, socialism is a powerful tool. But as a means of social control by the ruling elite, it is unparalleled.

Yesterdays long New York Times story by Nicholas Casey  It Is Unspeakable: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Venezuela Voters  can serve as a case study in social control. This being the New York Times, the word socialism does not appear in the article, but you get the drift:

To maintain their hold over Venezuela, Mr. Maduro and his supporters have often used the nations economic collapse to their advantage, dangling food before hungry voters, promising extra subsidies if he won, and demanding that people present identification cards tied to government rations when they came to the polls. But participants in the schemes say Mr. Maduro and his supporters have deployed another tool as well: Cubas international medical corps. In interviews, 16 members of Cubas medical missions to Venezuela  a signature element of relations between the two countries  described a system of deliberate political manipulation in which their services were wielded to secure votes for the governing Socialist Party, often through coercion. Many tactics were used, they said, from simple reminders to vote for the government to denying treatment for opposition supporters with life-threatening ailments. The Cuban doctors said they were ordered to go door-to-door in impoverished neighborhoods, offering medicine and warning residents that they would be cut off from medical services if they did not vote for Mr. Maduro or his candidates. Many said their superiors directed them to issue the same threats during closed-door consultations with patients seeking treatment for chronic diseases.

The article includes much more in the way of devastating detail. Its a good article and Casey is a dogged reporter even if he may not have extrapolated from the case study he reports.

Casey notes that several of the Cuban doctors spoke on the condition of anonymity because [one such doctor] and her relatives could face retaliation by the Cuban or Venezuelan authorities. Casey notes that several of the Cuban doctors have abandoned Cubas medical missions around the world for points west and south. Casey writes: Its unclear how many other doctors have abandoned Cubas medical missions around the world  informal estimates are in the thousands  but the consequences are stark. Dr. Arias and the others are considered deserters by the Cuban government and cannot return to their families. Casey doesnt raise the question whether socialist tyranny back home in Cuba might have anything to do with it.
Anesthesia Breathing Bags Market

Anesthesia Breathing Bags Market

PR-Inside.com: 2019-03-19 14:20:55

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Prevalence of respiratory disease such as asthma have increased tremendously following changes to a modern and urban lifestyle. According to WHO, 300 million of all ages suffer from asthma, a disease which leads to difficulty in breathing. Anesthesia breathing bag falls under the category of hand held medical device which is used to provide medical ventilation to patients with difficulties in breathing. Along with an oxygen source, anesthesia breathing bags also monitor tidal volume, control respirations, provide constant positive airway pressures, and sense compliance during ventilation. Improvement in the medical knowledge and ameliorating healthcare infrastructure is propelling the growth of the anesthesia breathing bags market. Anesthesia breathing bags are thin and durable in use. Moreover, these bags are easily gripped which is further expected to bolster the demand of the global anesthesia breathing bags market over the forecast period.Global Anesthesia Breathing Bags Market: DynamicsRising prevalence of bronchial and respiratory diseases is fuelling the demand of anesthesia bags market. Additionally, the increase in the geriatric population globally is also leading to surging demand for anesthesia breathing bags market. Rising adoption of safe health care practices in emerging economies is expected to create ample opportunities of growth for the global anesthesia breathing bags market. The growth of the global anesthesia breathing bags market is marred by the presence of all other alternatives which are being extensively used in hospitals and among other end users.Additionally , certain regions witness the lack of skilled personnel. Not only this, increased risk of cross contamination and strict government regulations concerning the efficacy and safety of these bags is expected to hamper the growth of the global anesthesia breathing bags market. High taxation on the healthcare devices is also expected to restrain the growth of the global anesthesia breathing bags market. Use of raw materials that are rendered safe for environment is expected to open up new avenues of market growth for the global anesthesia breathing bags market.Request Report for Table of Contents @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-5149 Global Anesthesia Breathing Bags Market: Regional OutlookThe global anesthesia breathing bags market is segmented on the basis of the region into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America. North America is expected to lead the global anesthesia breathing bags market attributed to a high percentage of healthcare expenditure of the region. Asia Pacific anesthesia breathing bags market is expected to witness steady growth over the forecast period due to rising technological innovations among the healthcare organizations in the region. Europe anesthesia breathing bags market is expected to witness moderate growth over the forecast period. The region is expected to grow at a slow pace as compared to Asia Pacific due to declining economy in certain regions. Middle East & Africa is expected to witness sluggish growth due to comparatively low GDP and a low percentage of healthcare expenditure.Global Anesthesia Breathing Bags Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players operating in the global anesthesia breathing bags market are Armstrong Medical, Nolato group, Bemis Inc., Qosina Corporation, SunMed Medical, CMVI ltd., Westmed, Inc., Medline Industries, Inc., Tri-anim Health Services, Smiths Group plc and Anaesthetics India Private Limited.The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies. Report 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 footprint.Request to Sample of Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-5149
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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / Gainey Capital Corp. (TSX-V: GNC) (OTC: GNYPF) ("Gainey" or the "Company") is pleased to report that follow-up mapping and sampling at its newly-optioned Las Margaritas project in Durango, Mexico has extended the strike extent of the main vein system to approximately 3,500 metres and collected grab samples with assays of up to 73.7g/t gold. As previously reported (see Gainey news release of February 7, 2019), preliminary sampling obtained assays up to 40.0g/t gold from grab samples, indicating the locally high-grade nature of the mineralization.A total of 39 samples were collected during the Phase II program at Las Margaritas, consisting of chip samples from old pits, chip-channel samples across exposed veins and grab samples from old mine dumps. The best mineralization appears to occur along a strike length of approximately 1,750 metres, where 25 assays ranged from NIL to 73.7g/t gold, with 15 samples assaying more than 1.0g/t gold and 6 of those assaying more than 5.0g/t gold."The Phase II sampling at Las Margaritas is demonstrating excellent continuity of gold mineralization along strike," stated Gainey CEO, David Coburn. "This is allowing the field team to focus on the most prospective areas in order to begin generating drill targets. While there are several artisanal mine workings along the vein system, it has never been drilled and we look forward to testing the vertical continuity of the gold mineralization." The Las Margaritas vein system strikes northwest-southeast and dips moderately to steeply southwest, with variable widths up to two metres. The 1,750 metre mineralized strike length has been divided into the Northwest (NW) and Southeast (SE) Zones according to geological characteristics. The NW Zone trends N15W and is hosted in a crystal tuff unit near the contact with an overlying rhyolitic lithic tuff. The SE Zone strikes N45W and is hosted within a package of stratified volcanic flows and tuffs. The change in strike direction coincides with the transition between host lithologies and could be important in localizing gold mineralization. Host rocks are commonly clay-altered and/ or silicified. Gold mineralization occurs within druzy quartz veins, veinlets and stockworks with up to 3% disseminated pyrite, typical of a low sulphidation epithermal system, as is common throughout the prolific geologic belt known as the Sierra Madre Occidental.Gainey's Exploration Manager, Jorge Rafael Gallardo commented that, "this recent work shows that early stage mapping and prospecting in underexplored areas can dramatically increase the strike length of mineralized vein systems. We have furthered our understanding of the mineralization controls and this will allow more focused work in the future." Gainey follows a strict QC/QA protocol for sampling and transportation of samples to ALS Labs in Hermosillo, Mexico and then on to ALS Labs in Vancouver, BC. Canada.David Dupre, P.Geo. is the designated Qualified Person for the El Colomo Project, as defined by National Instrument 43-101, and has approved this news release.About Gainey Capital Corp.Gainey is a gold and silver exploration, development and ore processing company exploring an aggregate of 14,000+ hectares strategically located in the gold/silver-rich Sierra Madre Occidental Trend in western Mexico. The Company's mill, located on its El Colomo property, is capable of processing up to 300 tons of ore per day. Additional information on Gainey, its current operations and its vision, is available on the Company's website at www.gaineycapital.com or from info@ gaineycapital.com ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS"David Coburn"David Coburn, Chief Executive OfficerFor information, please contact the Company:Phone: 480-347-8904E-mail: info@ gaineycapital.com Website: www.gaineycapital.com FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date such statements were made. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) has reviewed or accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this Release.SOURCE: Gainey Capital Corp.
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There has been a tremendous increase in agricultural and food exports and imports globally. Growth in production, consumption, and trade of perishable, processed, and packaged food items has driven the need to design and manufacture efficient and effective refrigeration equipment for the commercial sector. Refrigeration is one effective method to store and transport perishable food items across and within nations. Rise in income level has raised the spending capacity in economically developed as well as developing nations. Level of income in an economy has a huge impact on the spending capacity of the population on consumption of processed and packaged food items. Export of meat demands the need for effective transportation refrigeration equipment. Appropriate refrigeration equipment play a vital role in preventing food wastage due to spoilage during storage and transportation.Get Report Sample Copy @ https://www.mrrse.com/sample/951 Production, storage, and transportation of perishable food items require appropriate refrigeration equipment and the rise in food trade has increased the demand for refrigeration equipment in the commercial sector significantly. The rise in income levels of an economy also boosts the spending capacity of the population on leisure travel. To meet the accommodation and meals of travelling population, the hospitality industry has witnessed a tremendous growth. This industry also keeps pace with the changing food consumption patterns due to huge penetration of stored, processed, and packaged food in the food industry. Out of which arises the need to equip the restaurants and food storage areas with efficient and energy saving refrigeration and storage equipment. Hotel industry relies largely on refrigeration in order to maintain food supply. The Increasing number of restaurants also is a vital reason to drive the demand for efficient commercial refrigeration equipment.This research report provides an in-depth analysis of the Commercial Refrigeration Equipment Market in Latin America based on product type, application, refrigerant type, and country. On the basis of product type the commercial refrigeration equipment market in Latin America is segmented into transportation refrigeration equipment, refrigerator and freezer, beverage refrigeration, commercial refrigeration equipment parts, and others. On the basis of application the commercial refrigeration equipment market in Latin America is segment into food services, food and beverage retail, food and beverage distribution, food and beverage production, and others. On the basis of refrigerant type the commercial refrigeration equipment market in Latin America is segmented into fluorocarbons, inorganic, hydrocarbon/Natural.The report segments the Latin American commercial refrigeration equipment market by country into Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Rest of Latin America. It also encompasses the key factors by country in the commercial refrigeration equipment market in Latin America. It further offers analysis of the factors that drive and restrain the growth of commercial refrigeration equipment market in Latin America. It discusses the prevailing market trends and prospective growth opportunities in the commercial refrigeration and equipment market country wise and segment wise. It provides market estimates and forecasts for all the segments in terms of revenue (in US$ Mn). Also provided in the report is the competitive landscape of the major players in the Latin American commercial refrigeration equipment market.Complete Research Report with TOC @ https://www.mrrse.com/commercial-refrigeration-equipments The major players profiled in the report include Metalfrio Solutions SA, Beverage-Air Corporation, Illinois Tool Works, Inc., Dover Corporation, Daikin Industries, Ltd., United Technologies Corporation - (Climate, Controls and Security Unit), Hussmann International, Inc., Lennox International Inc. The company profiles offer a descriptive overview of the companies with respect to the company details, company description, SWOT analysis, revenue and regional market share, and strategic overview. The report also offers a competitive landscape of these players for the year 2016.The Latin America commercial refrigeration equipment market is segmented as below:By Product TypeTransportation Refrigeration EquipmentRefrigerator and FreezerBeverage RefrigerationCommercial refrigeration equipment partsOthersBy ApplicationFood ServicesFood and Beverage retailFood and Beverage distributionFood and Beverage ProductionOthersBy Refrigerant TypeFluorocarbonsInorganicHydrocarbons/NaturalBy CountryBrazilMexicoArgentinaChileRest of Latin AmericaEnquire Now @ https://www.mrrse.com/enquiry/951 About MRRSEMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsEmail: sales@ mrrse.com Website: https://www.mrrse.com/ Read More Industry News At: https://www.industrynewsanalysis.com/
Global foot and mouth disease (FMD) vaccine market is expected to reach USD 3.0 billion by 2025

PR-Inside.com: 2019-03-19 14:18:29

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Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is an infection caused by aphthovirus belonging to the family Picornaviridae. FMD is caused by seven different types of serotypes: O, A, C, Asia 1 and Southern African Territories (SAT) 1, 2 and 3. Currently available vaccines are serotype-specific, hence multiple vaccinations are required to cover the antigenic diversity. Cloven-hoofed animals especially cattle, pigs, sheep and goats are susceptible to FMD. The major symptoms of FMD are high fever, sudden weight loss, increased death rate in newborn animals, low conception rate, painful lesions in and around mouth, lips and feet, and excessive salivation. High frequency of FMD outbreaks especially in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America is fueling the demand for FMD vaccines. In addition, government initiatives to eradicate the disease is resulting in increased awareness about FMD vaccines, thereby driving market growth. This report covers the market analysis of various types of vaccines that are used to control FMD.Request for Free Sample Report @ https://www.mrrse.com/sample/979 The executive summary of the report comprises market snapshot of the global foot-and-mouth disease vaccines market and comparative analysis by geography in terms of value % for 2013 and 2020. The global foot-and-mouth disease vaccines market has been segmented based on types of vaccines: conventional and emergency vaccines. The conventional vaccines segment has been sub-segmented based on adjuvants: aluminum hydroxide/saponin and oil-based vaccines. In-depth market analysis and forecast for all the segments mentioned above has been provided in the report, in terms of market revenue (USD million) from 2012 to 2020. The report includes the compounded annual growth rate (CAGR %) for each application segment (cattle, pigs, sheep and goat and others) for the forecast period from 2014 to 2020, considering 2013 as the base year.The market overview section of the foot-and-mouth disease vaccines market report analyzes the market dynamics and trends such as drivers, restraints and opportunities that influence the current nature and future status of the global FMD vaccine market. Impact factors such as market attractiveness analysis by geography and Porters five forces (bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes and competitive rivalry) analysis of the global foot-and-mouth disease vaccines market have been provided in this section of the report. In addition, market share analysis of key players (value %) for the year 2013 has also been explained in the market overview section of the report in order to provide a thorough analysis of the overall competitive scenario in the global FMD vaccines market. Furthermore, the report includes value chain analysis and regulatory framework analysis of the FMD vaccines market.Geographically, the global FMD vaccines market has been classified into four regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). The current and future market sizes (in terms of USD million) of the regional markets mentioned above have been provided in the report for the period from 2012 to 2020 along with the growth rate (CAGR %) for the period from 2014 to 2020. The study further offers recommendations for the foot-and-mouth disease vaccines market, which would be useful for existing and new players to sustain and grow in the market.To View Complete Research Report with TOC Visit @ https://www.mrrse.com/foot-mouth-disease-vaccines The foot-and-mouth disease vaccines market report concludes with the company profiles section that includes key information in terms of company overview, financial information, product portfolio, business strategies and recent development about the major players operating in the FMD vaccines market. Detailed analysis of these companies is included in this section in order to give a thorough analysis of the overall competitive scenario in the global FMD vaccines market. Key players profiled in the section include Agrovet Co., Bayer AG, Biogenesis Bago, Brilliant Bio Pharma Limited, Indian Immunologicals Ltd., Inova Biotechnologia, Intervac (Pvt.) Ltd., Merial, and Merck Animal Health (MSD).The global foot and mouth disease vaccines market is segmented as follows:Global Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccines Market, by TypesConventional VaccinesAluminum Hydroxide/SaponinOil BasedEmergency VaccinesGlobal Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccines Market, by ApplicationsCattlePigsSheep and GoatsOthersGlobal Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccines Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificChinaIndiaSouth KoreaMalaysiaRest of APACRest of the WorldLatin AmericaAfricaSouth AfricaAlgeriaNigeriaRest of AfricaRest of RoWSend an Enquiry @ https://www.mrrse.com/enquiry/979 About Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Pharmaceutical Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.
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PR-Inside.com: 2019-03-19 14:07:58

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A new report added to the repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine RFID Blood Monitoring Systems is a comprehensive repository of information, providing market share, size, and forecast.Get Free Sample Report@ https://www.mrrse.com/sample/960 Radio frequency identification or RFID, is a technology that enables the wireless transfer of data via electromagnetic fields. RFID tags, which contain electronically-stored information, can be used for tracking objects. The healthcare industry is now becoming aware of the various uses of RFID, especially as a means to prevent human error and promote overall efficiency in the tracking and monitoring of products and devices. The report on the RFID blood monitoring systems primarily studies freezers and blood refrigerators that are typically deployed in hospitals and blood banks.The report analyzes the RFID blood refrigerators and freezers market on the basis of both volume and revenue from sales. The key end-users considered for these valuations are blood banks and hospitals. The sales revenue and volume is calculated basis average selling price of RFID blood freezers and refrigerators. These prices have been obtained from sources such as expert interviews, device manufacturers and journals.The report comprises a detailed analysis of the market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities. In-depth analysis is carried out for all major geographical markets in the global RFID blood monitoring systems market. These include: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. The regulatory status of each of these markets is discussed in a separate section.Overall, the report on the global RFID blood monitoring systems market is a valuable resource for both new and established market players. It will serve as a decision-making tool thanks to its pool of accurate and useful data.Browse Complete Report with TOC @ https://www.mrrse.com/blood-monitoring-systems RFID refrigerators serve many needs in hospitals, blood banks, and diagnostic laboratories, and research institutions. Storing and accurately tracking blood samples becomes far more efficient and time-saving when RFID refrigerators and freezers are used. As this trendline progresses, it is expected that manual tracking of blood samples will gradually become obsolete and RFID blood monitoring systems will eventually take over.A sharp focus on reducing errors during blood storage and transfusion has create a lucrative opportunity for companies manufacturing and selling RFID blood monitoring systems (blood freezers and refrigerators). As more hospitals and blood banks become aware about the availability of RFID-enabled blood storage cabinets and refrigerators, they also show more willingness to invest in them. Most hospitals customarily use bar coded tracking systems as well as note-taking systems. If errors continue to persist despite the implementation of these systems, it creates a white space that companies in the RFID blood monitoring systems market can fill.In developing regions, the divestments by public healthcare organizations will boost the demand for state-of-the-art blood monitoring and tracking systems, which private healthcare establishments are ready to invest in. Despite these push factors, the high costs of investing in RFID technology means that not all organizations show the same degree of readiness; this a major pull factor in the global RFID blood monitoring systems market.Send an Enquiry @ https://www.mrrse.com/enquiry/960 Nevertheless, penetration rates of RFID blood monitoring systems are still low in the overall healthcare industry, and this represents a space that can be monetized effectively. When companies plan their strategies, it is recommend that they do so in close compliance with the latest global standards.Companies ProfiledCurrently, there are a handful of companies that rake in the lions share of revenues in the global RFID blood monitoring systems market, freezers, and refrigerators market. Companies that lead include: Biolog ID, Magellan Technologies, and Terso Solutions. With the FDA having recently given its stamp of approval for RFID-enabled blood tracking systems, the market will receive an impetus.The global RFID blood refrigerators and freezers market is segmented as follows:RFID Blood Refrigerators and Freezers Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaHospital blood centersBlood banksEuropeHospital blood centersBlood banksAsia-PacificHospital blood centersBlood banksRest of the World (RoW)Hospital blood centersBlood banksCheck Discount @ https://www.mrrse.com/checkdiscount/960 About MRRSEMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.
Hinged Dispensing Caps Market

Hinged Dispensing Caps Market

PR-Inside.com: 2019-03-19 14:22:19

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Convenience to the consumer has been the top priority of packaging manufacturers all over the globe. New formats of caps & closures are being introduced in the market, the hinged dispensing cap being one of them. Hinged dispensing cap market is expected to be driven by the demand for added value and premium products. The soaring demand for plastic caps and closures in the beverages sector is allowing the overall hinged dispensing caps market to gain impetus. The spiralling use of PET-based disposable bottles is translating into the greater sales of hinged dispensing caps. Also, higher levels of R & D investment and technical expertise are expected to further fuel the hinged dispensing caps market. The global hinged dispensing caps market is expected to expand at a healthy CAGR over the period of next five years.Global Hinged Dispensing Caps Market: DynamicsGrowing popularity among the end users such as pharmaceuticals where traditional forms of caps & closures were used is bolstering the demand of the global hinged dispensing caps market. Hinged dispensing caps are now being used for various other pouch formats as they promote not only the reusability but also ensure longer shelf life of the packaged product. The regulatory restrictions laid by the government in certain regions regarding the disposal of plastics is restraining the growth of the global hinged dispensing caps market. Introduction of hinged dispensing caps in pouch formats such as spout pouches is expected to bring in ample opportunities of growth for the global hinged dispensing caps market. Introduction of features such as child resistant hinged dispensing caps is a key trend prevailing in the global hinged dispensing caps market. The advent of bio based caps is also expected to create ample opportunities for growth of the global hinged dispensing caps market.Request Report for Table of Contents @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-5184 Global Hinged Dispensing Caps Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of geography, the global hinged dispensing caps market is segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. North America is expected to lead the global hinged dispensing caps market attributed to its well established end user segments. The cosmetics and beverage end use industry is highly advanced in North America region which is anticipated to bolster the demand of the hinged dispensing caps. Asia Pacific is expected to expand at a comparatively high CAGR, mainly attributed to rising middle class population and disposable income in the region. Consumers in the APAC region are willing to pay for enhanced packaging types. Europe hinged dispensing caps market is anticipated to witness moderate growth due to economic slump in certain regions. Middle East & Africa hinged dispensing caps market is expected to witness sluggish growth over the forecast period.Global Hinged Dispensing Caps Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players operating in the global hinged dispensing caps market are Mold-Rite Plastics, Maynard & Harris Plastics, O.Berk Company, Taplast SPA, Gil Plastic Products ltd., and Berlin Packaging L.L.C.The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies. Report 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 footprint.Request to Sample of Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-5184
PR-Inside.com: 2019-03-19 12:34:10

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The Linerless Labels are being used for a long time in the market. They come on the products we buy from the grocery stores having a sticky tape with a logo or name on it. They are used for the purpose of tracing and tracking of the product. They provides high quality printing which is good for brands to print their name and logo. Linerless Labels are considered to be environment friendly and they dont create any waste and are available in various types of adhesive options.Report For Sample with Table of Contents@ https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/upsample/120124898/Linerless-Label-Market Linerless Labels Market are segmented On the basis of Composition: Facestock, Adhesives, Others; on the basis of Printing ink: Water-based ink, Solvent-based ink, Holt melt-based ink, UV curable ink; on the basis of Printing technology: Digital printing, Flexographic printing, Gravure printing, Lithography printing, Screen printing, Letterpress printing; on the basis of Application: Food & beverage, Pharmaceuticals, Personal care, Consumer products, Retail, ; Others (apparels & textiles, industrial lubricant & paints, gifts); on the basis of region; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, RoW.Being easily printable, cost effective and providing high quality printing are the main key drivers for Linerless Labels Market for which it becomes the preferred type of labelling for food and beverage sector. Food and beverages market is never ending thus it will drive the Linerless Labels Market to peak heights and open new prospects for growth.The Linerless Labels are proved to be the suitable labels for the high definition printings for the growing packaging industry. These labels require a special printer to get printed thus adding another machinery and the cost. This is the major downside of Linerless Labels.Request For Report Discount@ https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/updiscount/120124898/Linerless-Label-Market On the basis of the market segment by application, Food and Beverages industry has the largest market share. With the growing packaging industry, it has now became necessary for the products to be hygienic but also to look attractive. Thus, Food & Beverages sector are focusing more on the packaging these days.Geographically, Asia Pacific is has the leading market in the world followed by European Market. The rapidly growing industrialization in the developing countries of Asia Pacific region like India, China etc. are encouraging the markets of food & beverages, Dairy, pharmaceuticals to grow. Thus adding growth to the market of Linerless Labels to expand with itself to a higher level.The major key players include: 3M Company, Coveris Holdings S.A., CCL Industries Inc., Constantia Flexible Group GMBH, RR Donnelley & Sons Company, Innovia films, Reflex Labels limited, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company.Report Analysis@ https://www.researchreportinsights.com/report/upcomming/120124898/Linerless-Label-Market
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The Global Saliva Collection Devices Market was valued at US$ 1,571.7 million in 2017, and is expected to witness a CAGR of 10.8% over the forecast period (2018  2026).

Saliva is the most favored sample of choice in diagnosis due to ease of collection. Salivary biomolecules have provided an aperture in surveying a persons health and well-being. Saliva contains a myriad of salivary proteins, which could serve as biological markers for diagnosing and tracking the progression of various health conditions, as well as monitoring the effectiveness of medication. Saliva collection devices allow a person to collect resting (unstimulated) saliva or stimulated saliva either via mechanical stimulation or acid stimulation.

Market Dynamics

Rising research activities for saliva collection devices is expected to boost growth of the saliva collection devices in the market. For instance, in July 2017, EquiSal Tapeworm saliva test was launched in the U.S. for detecting tapeworms from saliva of horses. EquiSal saliva collection kits are used for saliva collection, which comprises swabs to be kept in oral cavity of horses.

Furthermore, new marketing strategies by key players are expected to drive growth of the saliva collection devices market over the forecast period. For instance, in October 2018, Mayo Clinic and Helixs lab launched a solution called, Mayo Clinic GeneGuide. It allows shipment of saliva collection kits to the individual within two days and furthermore, DNA is sequenced for identifying diseases.

Increasing number of saliva collection device approvals is expected to drive growth of the saliva collection devices market

Increase in the number of approvals for saliva collection devices due to its rising need for rapid diagnosis of life threatening diseases is expected to drive growth of the saliva collection devices market. For instance, in February 2015, 23andMe, Inc., received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) approval to market the first direct-to-consumer genetic Oragene Dx saliva collection test kits under a regulatory classification for novel devices. The company works with DNA Genotek, a subsidiary of OraSure Technologies, Inc, for Oragene Dx saliva collection kits. Saliva collected by these kits is then used to screen for Bloom Syndrome, a genetic disease.

Furthermore, in January 2015, DNA Genotek Inc., received USFDA approval for Oragene Dx intended for use in the non?invasive collection of saliva samples. DNA from the saliva sample is then isolated, stabilized, and legally marketed for DNA carrier screening genotyping tests.

Moreover, technological advancements for saliva collection of infants are also expected to increase growth of the saliva collection devices market. For instance, Oasis Diagnostics, developed Pedia SAL collection kit for infants. It allows saliva collection process with simplest design intended to not only collect saliva samples but also relax infants during procedure. Saliva can then be expressed from the collector using a compression tube directly into any of a variety of common laboratory vials.

Saliva Collection Devices Market- Competitive Landscape

Key players operating in the saliva collection devices market include Quest Diagnostics, Neogen Corporation, AboGen, Inc., OraSure Technologies, Inc., Oasis Diagnostics Corporation, Alere, Porex Corporation., and Salimetrics, LLC.

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Saliva Collection Devices Market- Regional Analysis

Regional segmentation of the global saliva collection devices market comprises North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa.

North America held the major share in the global saliva collection devices market during the forecast period, owing to increasing number of new and innovative product launches in the U.S. For instance, in June 2016, DNA Genotek launched saliva sample collection device ORAcollectDx, an alternative to buccal swabs. The device, ORAcollectDx, is part of saliva-based DNA collection and stabilization devices.

Asia Pacific is expected to witness the fastest growth in the global saliva collection devices market the forecast period, due to increasing awareness for safe and easy diagnosis of various diseases through number of symposiums and conferences organized in the region. For instance, in October 2016, Saliva Technology Application Research Symposium was held by Queensland University of Technology, in Australia. The conference highlighted emerging research, translational and technological advances such as saliva biomarker development, innovative saliva collection devices, improving saliva stability and transportation, rapid disease identification, saliva rheology, and many more.

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PR-Inside.com: 2019-03-19 16:35:05

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FFCON19 FEARLESS to address the challenges and successes of entrepreneurs and innovators in the vanguard of transforming the financial industryTORONTO, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 19, 2019 / The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA), the non-profit cross-body organisation that promotes and supports fintech and funding throughout Canada, is proud to announce additions to the speaker line-up and programme for its flagship Fintech and Financing Conference - FFCON19: FEARLESS - taking place in Toronto April 3-4.Now in its 5th year, FFCON19 will bring together prominent industry experts, entrepreneurs, professionals, regulatory bodies and ecosystem stakeholders in fintech, blockchain, crypto, AI, capital markets innovation and alternative finance to discuss Canadian fintech and its ability to innovate and globally compete, the latest industry developments, emerging regulation, trends and thought leadership in a fearless framework and forum.The two-day event will feature inspiring keynote addresses and panel discussions with industry leaders, pitching competitions, awards, and prime networking opportunities.Prominent speakers include The Honorable Bill Walker, Minister of Consumer and Government Services, Ontario, and steward of the Province's new Data policy; and Teri Kirk, Founder & CEO of Fundingportal who will discuss Open Data vs. Proprietary Data, examining public and private sector values, views, and issues.Notable investors speaking at FFCON19 include Robert Antoniades General Partner and Co-Founder Information Venture Partners, Karim Gillani General Partner Luge Capital, Christian Lassonde Founder & Managing Partner Impression Ventures, Russell Samuels Partner Whitecap Venture Partners, and Sunil Sharma Managing Director Techstars Toronto.''FFCON19 is very honoured to have such influential speakers at this year's conference,'' said Craig Asano, Founder and CEO of NCFA. ''FFCON is proving to be an increasingly important event for promoting innovation in the fintech and funding industry in Canada. The support and contributions of these authoritative leaders will serve to further advance innovation in the sector.'' Among the featured entrepreneurs and innovators sharing their FEARLESS strategies for innovation and growth are Anthony Di Iorio Co-Founder, Founder & CEO of Ethereum, and Jaxx & Decentral; Dr. Dan Rosen Chief Executive Officer d1g1t Inc., the enterprise financial technology company serving the wealth management industry; Eli Fathi President and CEO Mindbridge AI, recognised as a CIX Top 20 in 2017; and Toufi Saliba Founder and CEO TODA Network.Keynotes and Program Speakers:Hon. Bill Walker, Minister of Government and Consumer Services OntarioAlan Wunsche, CEO & Chief Token Officer, TokenFunderAli Pourdad, CEO, ProgressaAndrew Dix, Co-Founder & CEO, Crowdfund InsiderAnthony Di Iorio, Founder & CEO, Decentral & Jaxx | Co-Founder, EthereumBernd Petak, Investment Partner, Northmark VenturesBrice Penaud, Founder & CEO, Commercial PassportBruce Silcoff, CEO, Shyft Network InternationalBryan Uyanwune, Co-Founder & CIO, KorapayCharlene Cieslik, Chief Anti Money Laundering Officer, CoinsquareDenise Hearn, Co-Author, The Myth of CapitalismDenise Weeres, Director, New Economy, Alberta Securities CommissionDr Dan Rosen, CEO, d1g1t Inc.Eli Fathi, CEO, Mindbridge AIEytan Bensoussan, Co-Founder & CEO, NorthOneHussein Hallak, CEO & Co-Founder, Next DecentrumIliana Oris Valiente, Managing Director, Canada, Innovation Hub & Blockchain Lead, AccentureJason Saltzman, Partner, Gowling WLG (Canada) LLPJennifer Reynolds, President & CEO, Toronto Finance InternationalMuhammad Rashid, Co-Founder & CEO, MoregidgePeter-Paul Van Hoeken, Founder & CEO, FrontFundrRobert Antoniades, General Partner & Co-Founder, Information Venture PartnersRussell Samuels, Partner, Whitecap Venture PartnersSafwan Zaheer, Head of Fintech (US), KPMGSharon Zohar, Founding Partner, The Big PushShidan Gouran, President, Global Blockchain Mining Corp.Teri Kirk, Founder & CEO, Funding PortalToufi Saliba, Founder & CEO, TODA.network The growing list of speakers can be found at the conference speaker page.The ProgrammeDay 1 will feature an afternoon program of interactive sessions to discuss topics key to industry growth, regulatory challenges in fintech sectors, and advanced workshops such as applying design thinking to develop consumer-centric, data-driven products followed by a VIP networking reception at Gowling WLG (Canada) LLP.Day 2 will feature the full day FFCON19 conference that showcases new technologies and fresh thinking around challenging topics from open banking, digital securities, crypto commodities and investment crowdfunding to the latest developments in AI finance models and enterprise blockchain adoption, use cases and projects. Twelve people's choice emerging fintech start-ups will pitch and the main stage will host a consultation with the Ontario Government, CSA Regulators and fearless dialogues on Canada's ability to innovate, compete, grow and sustain industry.The full agenda can be accessed on the FFCON programme page and interested parties are invited to cast their vote for the most innovative emergingfintech start-ups they would like to see pitch on the main stage.New for 2019Building on the success of last year's sold-out conference, NCFA has expanded this year's program with the formal launch its inaugural Global Fintech Education program for entrepreneurs in conjunction with Next Decentrum Technologies. Attendees will get an exclusive first look at the program and VIP attendees will receive complimentary enrolment with conference registration.SupportingStart-UpsTo promote innovation and funding for early stage companies FFCON19 is offering start-ups discounted tickets which can be applied for via this link:RegistrationRegistration for FFCON19 is open. Learn more at https://fintechandfunding.com/tickets/ Connect with usTwitter | LinkedIn | FacebookAbout the NCFAThe National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works c
PR-Inside.com: 2019-03-19 23:02:02

Winners of the second annual Lyfebulb-Helsinn Innovation Summit & Awards in Oncology announced

Mihir Shah of UE LifeSciences Inc. has been selected as the winner of the 2019 Lyfebulb-Helsinn Innovation Award in Oncology

Pierluigi Paracchi of Genenta Science has been selected as the winner of the 2019 Squinto-LePera Award

MONACO, PRINCIPALITY OF MONACO and NEW YORK, NY, MARCH 19, 2019:

Lyfebulb, a patient-empowerment platform that connects patients with industry to support user-driven innovation, and Helsinn, a Swiss pharmaceutical group focused on building quality cancer care, today announced that Mihir Shah of UE LifeSciences and Pierluigi Paracchi of Genenta Science were chosen as winners of the second Lyfebulb-Helsinn Innovation Summit and Awards in Oncology. Mihir received the Lyfebulb-Helsinn Innovation Award, and Pierluigi received The Squinto-LePera award, which was presented by Dr. Stephen Squinto and Denise LePera. The awards recognize outstanding innovations by Patient Entrepreneurs which advance solutions in the prevention, management or care of cancer, and have the potential to be commercialized.

Mihir Shah founded UE LifeSciences to enable affordable and scalable access to early diagnosis of cancer for women everywhere, after seeing his mother-in-law go through breast cancer. The companys iBreastExam, a US FDA-cleared, hand-held device, enables health workers to identify non-palpable breast lumps in just a few minutes, without pain or radiation and at a fraction of the cost of a mammogram.

Inspired by his mothers brush with cancer, Pierluigi Paracchi, an experienced venture capitalist, co-founded Genenta Science, a clinical stage immune-gene therapy company which leverages the ground-breaking science from Professor Naldini at the San Raffaele Milano hospital. Genenta has phase 1 / 2 trials ongoing in multiple myeloma and glioblastoma.

Ten inspiring finalists were invited to compete at the 2019 Lyfebulb-Helsinn Innovation Summit in Oncology, which was hosted on March 18-19 by Lyfebulb and Helsinn in Monaco. All finalists were Patient Entrepreneurs, meaning that they are cancer patients, survivors or people with a close relative or loved one who has been affected by cancer. Over the course of the Summit, the finalists presented their businesses to a jury with diverse expertise in cancer. Each winner received a $25,000 monetary grant.

The innovations demonstrated at this Summit clearly show how the personal experiences of each of the ten finalists have informed and driven them in developing impactful solutions for people affected by cancer. We look forward to following their progress and believe that the Lyfebulb Patient Entrepreneur Circle and its Innovation Summits can play a significant role in their journey, said Dr. Karin Hehenberger, CEO and Founder of Lyfebulb.

Riccardo Braglia, Helsinn Group Vice Chairman and CEO, added, We were very impressed by the quality of applications received for this Innovation Summit and the finalists who competed in Monaco. We congratulate the winners and know the jury chose worthy award recipients, Mihir and Pierluigi. Helsinn is proud to be supporting dynamic entrepreneurs who are bringing innovation and personal experience to developing solutions to the challenges of cancer, and the second year of this event has demonstrated that this is a powerful idea with momentum. Looking ahead, we hope that this Innovation Summit will inspire more Patient Entrepreneurs to come forward in providing further solutions in cancer.

The Lyfebulb-Helsinn Award recognizes outstanding potential among entrepreneurs who have demonstrated an ability to develop and bring to market solutions that improve quality of life of people with cancer. The Squinto-LePera Award by Lyfebulb was generously donated by Dr. Stephen Squinto and Denise LePera, and was added to the Summit to provide additional recognition among a highly talented pool of finalists.

About Lyfebulb

Lyfebulb is a chronic disease-focused, patient empowerment platform that connects patients and industry (manufacturers and payers) to support user-driven innovation. Lyfebulb promotes a healthy, take-charge lifestyle for those affected by chronic disease. Grounded with its strong foundation in diabetes, the company has expanded disease states covered into cancer, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis.

See www.lyfebulb.com , Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , Lyfebulb LinkedIn , and Karin Hehenberger LinkedIn .

About Helsinn International Services sarl

Helsinn International Services sarl is the Helsinn subsidiary which provides a range of advisory services and strategic activities to the Group and its specific companies. In particular, it acts as the advisory company to Helsinn Investment Fund.

About Helsinn Investment Fund S.A., SICAR

The Helsinn Investment Fund is focused on early-stage investments in areas of high unmet patient need. Backed by the Helsinn Group, and guided by Helsinns core values of quality, integrity and respect, Helsinn Investment Fund aims to help companies with innovative technologies to transform new ideas into commercial solutions with the potential to impact health-related quality of life of patients.

Drawing on Helsinns over 40 years of investment into research and development and commercial expertise, the investment fund selects companies with technologies in a range of areas including cancer therapeutics and diagnostics, cancer supportive care, metabolic and gastrointestinal disorders, and dermatology conditions.

For more information, visit www.helsinninvestmentfund.com

About the Helsinn Group

Helsinn is a privately owned pharmaceutical group with an extensive portfolio of marketed cancer care products and a robust drug development pipeline. Since 1976, Helsinn has been improving the everyday lives of patients, guided by core family values of respect, integrity and quality. The Group works across pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices and nutritional supplements and has expertise in research, development, manufacture and the commercialization of therapeutic and supportive care products for cancer, pain and inflammation and gastroenterology. In 2016, Helsinn created the Helsinn Investment Fund to support early-stage investment opportunities in areas of unmet patient need. The company is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, with operating subsidiaries in Switzerland, Ireland, the U.S., Monaco and China, as well as a product presence in approximately 190 countries globally.

To learn more about Helsinn Group please visit www.helsinn.com

For more information:

Helsinn Group Media Contact

Paola Bonvicini

Group Head of Communication

Lugano, Switzerland

Tel: +41 (0) 91 985 21 21

Info-hhc@helsinn.com

For more information, please follow us on Twitter , LinkedIn and Vimeo .

Press Contact for Lyfebulb:

Karin Hehenberger, MD, PhD

CEO & Founder, Lyfebulb,

Phone: + 00 1 917-575-0210

Email: karin@lyfebulb.com




The Transcorp Hotels Plc has announced an impressive operational performance with a 26 per cent increase in its turnover for the 2018 financial year.

At the companys 5th Annual General Meeting at the Congress Hall of the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja, shareholders extolled the achievement of the management of Transcorp Hotels Plc for the financial year ended December 31, 2018.

Following the companys 26 per cent increase in turnover, the shareholders unanimously endorsed the recommendation of its board of directors for a final dividend payout of 1.14 billion for the 2018 financial year.

The final dividend translated to about 15kobo per ordinary share, which is about 20 per cent improvement over the 12kobo per ordinary share paid in 2017.

Speaking on the companys growth, the chairman of the board of directors, Emmanuel Nnorom, said the company exceeded expectations.

Transcorp Hotels Plc has exceeded the bar with an impressive turnover of 17.4billion from 13.8billion recorded in 2017, representing an improvement of about 26 percent, he said.

This is an unprecedented achievement in the history of the company. It is a further demonstration of our ability to adapt quickly to a changing business environment and keeping pace with global best standards in the hospitality industry, the chairman said.

While thanking the shareholders for their continued support and faith in the board and management of the company, the chairman pledged the commitment of the management to continue to lead the company in the direction of sustainable growth in the years ahead.

The president, New Dimension Shareholders Association, Patrick Ajudua, commended the company for its overall performance, saying Transcorp Hotels Plc is an embodiment of what privatisation in Nigeria should be.

He said good corporate governance and the presence of a focused management team who are concerned with giving returns to shareholders are some underlying factors behind the companys continued success story.

The managing director/CEO, Owen Omogiafo, reiterated the companys commitment to quality and global standard customer experience, drawing on the varied international awards conferred on the company.

We are redefining the hospitality landscape in Africa and positioning our continent as a preferred destination for local and international tourists. Our numerous awards and recognition are proof of this. she said

On the prospects for 2019, Ms Omogiafo noted that Transcorp Hotels will continue to leverage on its unique value proposition and proven strategies to exceed 2018 performance.

She further said that growth and efficiency underpinned by a strong culture of service excellence and cost optimization will drive the company.
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) on Monday arraigned Fortless Global Concept Limited and Everyday Wine Shop alongside their representatives at the Federal High Court, Abuja for alleged tax evasion, obstruction and attack on revenue collection staff on duty.

In the charge, No: FHC/ABJ/CR/48/2019, Fortless Global Concept Limited, which operates the Fortless Supermarket and Stores, was charged along with Chukwu Ejike on six counts bordering on tax evasion and assault on FIRS staff on duty.

The court said the charge was pursuant to Section 174 (1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (As Amended) and Section 47 of the FIRS Establishment Act No: 13, 2007.

Similarly, in the charge No: FHC/ABJ/CR/47/2019 was preferred against Everyday Wine Shop and Bar, along with Mbah Sunday and Epkeha Peter, for committing a similar offence.

Messrs Sunday and Peter Ejike were granted administrative bail after they pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Justice Taiwo O. Taiwo of the Federal High Court 10, Abuja granted the application of the leader of FIRS prosecution counsel, James Binang, and scheduled March 21 for hearing.

Following undertaking by the counsels of the defendants (Sanya Amos for Everyday Wine Shop) and M. A Ejeh for Fortless Global Concept Limited) the court also asked the counsel to bring the defendants to court on the adjourned date.

Mr Binang said FIRS was prosecuting the defendants to serve as a deterrent for others who would want to evade taxes or prevent tax officers from carrying out their responsibilities.

We cannot allow this to continue. Our staff were assaulted and their dresses were torn. The FIRS wants to prosecute these cases to their logical conclusions to send signals to other people who would want to commit similar offences, Binang told the court.

Everyday Wine Shop and Bar and its representatives, Mbah Sunday and Epkeha Peter, were accused of conspiring to commit the offence on or about the January 24 at the Federal Housing Estate, Lugbe, Abuja.

They were accused of failing in their obligation to deduct and remit Value Added Tax (VAT) due to the Federal Government in the course of their business, as well as participating in tax evasion, an an offence punishable under Section 49(1) and (2) of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (Establishment) Act, No. 13 of 2007.

The accused persons were also accused of conspiring to obstruct and assault Funke Shodunke, an authorised official of the FIRS from performing her lawful official functions.

A statement from the FIRS sent to the media alleged that the accused conspired to stop Ms Shodunke from pasting the VAT non-compliance notice on their business premises among those of persons and individuals adjudged by the Service to be non-tax compliant.
The head of Canadas federal bureaucracy on Monday said he was quitting over his role in handling a corporate corruption case that has sparked a political crisis and damaged the ruling Liberals hopes of re-election in October.

Michael Wernick, the Clerk of the Privy Council, said in a letter to Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, that he wanted to leave well before the election because he had lost the confidence of opposition leaders.

The Scandal

Mr Trudeau has been on the defensive since February 7 over allegations that top officials leaned on former Justice Minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to ensure engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc avoided a corruption trial.

Mr Wernick, who was appointed by Mr Trudeau to the job in early 2016, is the latest victim in a scandal that has already cost the prime minister his closest personal aide and two senior cabinet members.

The civil service and Mr Wernick are supposed to be non-partisan, but his strong defence of government officials and his insistence that no one had done anything wrong triggered widespread criticism from opposition legislators that he was siding with the Liberals.

Recent events have led me to conclude that I cannot serve as clerk of the Privy Council  during the upcoming election campaign, Mr Wernick said in his letter.

It is now apparent that there is no path for me to have a relationship of mutual trust and respect with the leaders of the opposition parties, he said.

Mr Wilson-Raybould told the House of Commons justice committee in February that Mr Wernick had put intense pressure on her to help SNC-Lavalin avoid prosecution over allegations it bribed Libyan officials.

The scandal is the most serious faced by the 47-year-old Mr Trudeau since he led the Liberals out of the political wilderness and into power in 2015.

Recent opinion polls show the Liberals could be ousted by the resurgent Conservatives in October.

The Conservatives, the largest opposition party in parliament, accuse Mr Trudeau of a cover-up of the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer, told the House of Commons that Mr Wernick had resigned in disgrace and repeated his calls for a full public inquiry.

Replacements

Earlier this month, Mr Trudeau denied he or his officials had interfered in Canadas judicial system, and he offered no apology.

He admitted lessons could be learned and blamed himself for not having realised Mr Wilson-Raybould was unhappy.

Mr Trudeau praised Mr Wernick for his almost 40 years in the federal bureaucracy but did not answer directly when asked by reporters whether he had asked for his resignation.

Mr Wernick will be replaced by Ian Shugart, currently the top bureaucrat at the foreign ministry.

In a surprise move on Monday, Mr Trudeau named Joyce Murray, a 64-year-old Liberal backbencher, as president of the Treasury Board, where she will be in overall charge of government spending.

Ms Murray replaces Jane Philpott, who quit on March 4 in protest over how the government was handling the SNC-Lavalin case.

Mr Wilson-Raybould, who was demoted in January, resigned from Mr Trudeaus Cabinet the next month.

SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal-based firm that employs some 9,000 people in Canada and tens of thousands of others abroad, is accused of bribing Libyan officials to get contracts between 2001 and 2011.

The firm had strongly lobbied in favour of a deferred prosecution agreement, or out-of-court settlement, instead of going to trial.

SNC-Lavalin has said it removed the executives in charge at the time and overhauled its ethics and compliance systems. It vowed to vigorously defend itself.

(Reuters/NAN)
Journalists in Zambia on Tuesday welcomed the announcement that cabinet has approved the Access to Information Bill, local media reported.

On Monday, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services, Dora Siliya said cabinet approved the long-awaited bill during its meeting on Monday.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Zambia Chapter said the bill was meant to promote proactive and organised dissemination of information to the public.

MISA said the announcement was welcome as stakeholders had been waiting for the same bill for years.

Hyde Hanguta, Vice-Chairperson of the media body said stakeholders are finally happy that the bill has been approved although he noted that the battle was not yet over.

Hanguta told journalists that the government should now inform stakeholders on when the bill will be tabled before parliament.

The vice-Chairperson stressed that mere approval by cabinet was not enough.

He further said the government should share with stakeholders the contents of the bill so that they can see what was contained in it in order to avoid speculations.

Stakeholders in Zambia have been fighting for the access to information law for years, with successive governments failing to provide it in spite of repeated promises to do so.

(Xinhua/NAN)
Two South-south states are among the three states with the highest HIV prevalence rate in Nigeria.

Akwa Ibom tops the prevalence rate chart with about 5.5 per cent of its residents living with the virus. It is followed by Benue which has a prevalence rate of 5.3 per cent while Rivers is third with a prevalence rate of 3.8 per cent.

The details were contained in the Nigerian HIV/AIDs Indicator and Impact Survey (NAIIS) whose result was released last week in Abuja.

The result shows that about one per cent of Nigerians (1.9 million people) are currently living with HIV/AIDs.

This figure, according to the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, moves Nigeria from second to the fourth position among countries battling the HIV epidemic.

With an earlier estimate of about 3.2 million people living with HIV, Nigeria was second after South Africa which ranks first with about 7.1 million people living with HIV.

Announcing the NAIIS result in Abuja on Thursday, the Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDs (NACA), Sani Aliyu, said the percentage of People Living with HIV among adults is 1.4 per cent (1.9 per cent among females and 0.9 per cent among males.)

The National AIDS survey was launched in June 2018 to determine the true distribution of HIV and AIDS, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C in the country.

The survey reached around 220,000 people in about 100,000 households and was conducted between July and December 2018.

According to the survey, the South-south zone of the country has the highest HIV prevalence, at 3.1 per cent among adults.

HIV prevalence is also high in the North-central zone with 2.1 per cent and in the South-east zone, 1.9 per cent.
Nigeria must explore other sources outside the budget to effectively finance its health sector, the Director-General, Budget Office, Ben Akabueze, has said.

Mr Akabueze spoke on Tuesday at a workshop in Abuja organised by the Collaborative Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI), under the theme: Nigeria Value for Money in the Health Sector.

The workshop examined how the Nigerian health sector could be better financed to improve the quality of health services rendered to the populace. In attendance were participants from the ministries of finance, health and financing partners working in the health sector.

Mr Akabueze while delivering his presentation on Reprioritising Health in the National Budget, said the federal government is not able to allocate more funds to the sector than it is doing because the country is experiencing fiscal constraints.

He said it is unfair to look up to the federal government alone to address the issues in the health sector.

Mr Akabueze said the federal government has in the past few years increased its effort in financing the sector. This, he said is evident in the amount allocated to the sector in the 2018 and 2019 budgets as well as the accommodation of the Basic HealthCare Provision Funds in the 2018 Budget.

There has been a slight increase in budgetary allocation to the health sector, but Nigeria has not met the commitment made by African countries on funding of healthcare services for their citizens.

In the 2001 Abuja Declaration, countries under the African Union pledged to commit at least 15 per cent of their annual budgets to the health sector.

Since the declaration, the Nigerian federal government has not voted more than six per cent of its annual budget for the sector.

The highest allocation since the declaration was in 2012 when 5.95 per cent of the federal budget went to health.

Due to the inability of the government to increase its commitment to the sector, the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) was proposed as an alternative fund to cater for the health needs of Nigerians.

Every fiscal year, one per cent of the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) is meant to be earmarked for the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF).

Unfortunately, the BHCPF has not been performing since it was signed into law in 2014. For the first time, BHCPF was inserted in the 2018 Budget but the fund is yet to be fully released.

The BHCPF in the 2018 appropriate bill was N55 billion and in the proposed 2019 Budget, N51.22 billion.

Half of the fund is meant for the National Health Insurance Scheme, 45 per cent for the National Primary Health Care and the remaining five per cent for emergencies treatments among others.

In January, President Muhammadu Buhari launched the rollout of the BHCPF but Nigerians are yet to feel the impact of the scheme.

Mr Akabueze said the delay in the release of the BHCPF is due to the fact that the fund cannot be treated as a statutory transfer.

This is because there is no mandate or law that supports such.

He said though it was included in the 2018 and proposed 2019 budgets, the countrys financial challenges made the government unable to fulfil its financial mandate.

He said this is the reason it is necessary to start thinking of alternative means of funding the health sector.

This does not stop with the fact that the funds available to the federal government are limited as there are large non-discretionary expenditures and there are loans to be serviced. The government first takes care of the non-discretionary expenditures before considering how much remains in the governments treasury to be disbursed.

Clearly, we have a significant fiscal constraint, we are having challenges with funds. That is why we are not allocating more money to the health sector. It is unfortunate, but the fact is that we are constrained. The budget is already in deficit. Until we can comfortably generate more income, it will hard to adequately release the funds, he said.

Mr Akabueze said the government can have more resources to fund the health sector if it increases the tax on sugary beverages, alcohol, tobacco and other related items that increase the disease burden in the country.

He also said one of the reasons why the allocation to the health sector seems to be underperforming is the staff strength of the agencies in the sector. He said the workforce is high, therefore cutting into its budgetary allocation.

Speaking in a similar vein, the Executive Secretary of CABRI, Neil Cole, said Nigeria needs to start making plans to involve the private sector in health financing and service provision.

He said Nigeria needs to answer the question how much it intends to invest in the health sector and what services it intends to achieve with the financing.

I cannot give you a figure but you should figure it out on your own. The country needs to know how much the nation needs to spend in the health and the services to be rendered. It needs to know what to invest in immunisation coverage. It is not about Nigeria attaining the 15 per cent Abuja declaration pledge, but appropriate enough to achieve the expected desired services for the people, he said.

He also advised the private sector to invest in the health sector as their Corporate Social Responsibility to society.
One evening in early September last year, Pius Adesanmi, telephoned me frantically from his base in Ontario. He had been calling for days and due to my excessively busy schedule at the time and the time difference between Canada and Nigeria, we missed each other repeatedly. He would call while I was asleep, and I would do the same while he was perhaps dreaming away in Ontario.

In frustration, the man I called Akowe (Book man), left a message for me on WhatsApp: O ga o. Olorun a fun alagbara yin ni suuru o. (May God give the powerful the patience to be gentle with the masses). He was tactically and wittingly and proverbially reminding me that my editor-in-chief job was making me more and more unavailable to my friends.

I started calling Pius Akowe in April 2012 after he delivered a funny, brilliant and illuminating keynote at the African Literature Association in Dallas. At that event, the writer had cracked ribs when he narrated how his uneducated palmwine tapper in his native Isanlu, perched at the neck of a tree, would telephone him with a Blackberry to announce that his regular supply of palmwine would be delayed.

Akowe, mo ti gbe de o, (Book man, Ive brought your wine), the tapper would say anytime he arrived the professors home, Pius wrote in the keynote entitled: Face Me, I Book You: Writing Africas Agency in the Age of the Netizen.

So from the day I read that piece, I began calling Pius Akowe. I would say, Akowe, e tun tide (Book man, you have come again) whenever he telephoned me. He would laugh animatedly, and respond: Musikilu Oniroyin agbaye, mo ti de o (Musikilu the global journalist, I have come again o). He would then launch into the real reason for his call.

I returned Pius call that day last September, and he updated me on his recovery. It was then about two months since he had a ghastly accident in Nigeria, and was evacuated to Canada. He had been away from work and from his column for PREMIUM TIMES and from social media. I convinced the professor to grant us an interview. He agreed. He wanted it done on the telephone, but I told him WhatsApp was better. He agreed.

But two days later he left me a message: Musikilu can we do the interview by email instead? Wont be easy for me to type answers here (WhatsApp).

If you insist, I responded. But its better here. It allows for follow-up questions.

Pius: Ok. But my responses will be slow in coming o. U know Naija has adapted u people to doing serious work in certain conditions 

Me: Yeah.. it can be slow. But its better.

As agreed, both of us showed up on WhatsApp at the agreed time for the interview.

Ok, fire the questions, the professor said on arrival on September 17. Today makes it exactly two months since the accident so we should start.

The interview you are about to read, conducted between September 17 and November 17, was never concluded. Pius was as busy as a bee. He would disappear for weeks and then for months. I was hoping we would complete it this March. But my Akowe slipped into mortality, devastating everyone who encountered him in person or through his exceptional work.

Below, for posterity, is what appears his last extensive media interview on earth.

PT: You have been out of circulation for two months since you had a car crash. How has life been so far? How are you recovering? What has life been not being able to tweet, Facebook and write your column for PREMIUM TIMES?

PIUS ADESANMI: Thank you very much. Its been a very long and tough battle to recovery. The car crash was pretty serious and I still dont know how I made it out alive. It was after my medical evacuation to Canada that I came to terms with the full extent of my injuries. It has been one complication after another since then. It has also taken quite an emotional toll. Im still doing intense physiotherapy. Of course, Ive missed life in the public trenches of Nigeriana. Ive missed my readers and followers in the public sphere. Ive missed my column. Ive missed my Facebook and Twitter communities. Not being able to engage at this critical conjuncture in the life of our nation has been tough. However, my accident taught me one lesson: only the living can fight for Nigeria.

PT: How close are you to full recovery? When are you likely back to work and to travels?

PIUS ADESANMI: You know, Ive started to write a book about this entire ordeal so I should be careful not to give too much away to Premium Times in an interview in order not to incur the wrath of my publisher, Premium Times Books.

On a serious note though, I am hoping to be fully back to work and travels before the end of the year. I still have three problem areas: my right leg which was nearly amputated because my injuries were badly infected in Nigeria before I was evacuated to Canada, my right wrist and right shoulder also suffered ligament and nerve damage.

As I heal, I am eager to return to work and travel. You know, this accident happened in July in Nigeria. That was my fifth working trip to Africa this year. Id been to Kenya (twice), Ghana (twice), and South Africa before Nigeria nearly got me. Since the accident, Ive cancelled lecture trips to South Africa, Ghana, and France. I was in fact on my way to an African Union consultative meeting in Senegal when the accident happened so, obviously, I didnt make it to Dakar. So, I am keen to get back to life as a peripatetic public intellectual.

PT: Sorry about the troubles this accident has caused you. I recall you were returning from a training tour when it happened. It was an emergency. Hope Nigeria did not do badly evacuating you and driver from the crash site. And then stabilising you.

PIUS ADESANMI: If you think of Nigeria as a system, as a state in a social contract with the citizen, then, obviously she failed me tragically and nearly killed me. But is that not the story, the personal tragedy of every Nigerian? That we have not been able to create even the most rudimentary forms of civilizational frameworks to secure our lives in the 21st century. I spent the first five hours after the accident in what is said to be the emergency unit of the general hospital in Oyo. If you put pigs in such a filthy environment in Canada, no, Canada is too much, make it Ghana, if you put pigs in such a place in Ghana, youd go to jail for animal cruelty. That is where Nigeria puts her ordinary people in hospitals all over the country. As I said, my injuries were so badly infected in that filthy hospital environment in Oyo that I nearly lost my leg when I got to Canada.

PT: Hope this incident will not slow your commitment to Nigeria, your country of birth. The country that nurtured you and then exported to the world to rise, shine and explode.

PIUS ADESANMI: I am in an abusive relationship with Nigeria. No experience, no matter how horrific, can reduce my commitment to Nigeria. Nigeria is that malevolent, abusive, beastly husband who is physically violent, beats and hurts you but you remain in that relationship and people wonder why.

Well, you know that Nigerias beastly, cannibalistic nature (she feeds on her own ordinary citizens) is the handiwork of a few. The road that nearly claimed me is the handiwork of the visionless animals in the political leadership of the country. To reduce my commitment is to surrender to our enemies in the leadership. As I always say, Nigeria is a struggle for meaning and we must not allow the filthy political leadership to have the last word in that argument.

PT: Again, we are sorry about all you went through. We thank God you are alive and recovering. The last time we interviewed you, you agonized about those kinds of situations ordinary folks go through everyday. I recall you lamenting that your social activism was not making an impact. You said you were considering running for political office to aggressively push for change. Is that plan still alive?

PIUS ADESANMI: I think you are missing out on some of the nuances I teased out in my response to that particular question in the interview. I believe it was in specific reference to a political appointment. I recall saying that I wanted no such thing. Remember it was even still early days in the Buhari administration when Buharis cluelessness, incompetence, and irredeemable nepotism were not as manifest as they turned out to be.

I said I was not out for a political appointment precisely because we have a certain depraved national culture which makes what ought to be a transient phase of service in a citizens life become a shameful stage of accumulation and conspicuous consumption. This is what we mean when we say a person has arrived or God has blessed the person.

A political appointment becomes our singular indicator of success. Here I am for instance. Without being immodest, Ive been one of Nigerias most prominent academic experts in my generation for over a decade now, highly in demand in Universities in North America, Europe and all over Africa. I average 30 keynote lectures per year across continents. I won the Penguin Prize for African Writing in 2010. Yet a Nigerian will look at me and consider a political appointment a promotion.

Here, at my level, colleagues who accept political appointments see it as a demotion. It is a sacrifice they make for the collective. I said I aspired to be one of the very few Nigerian public intellectuals to change the Nigerian perception of appointments as arrival instead of service. I want no part in the culture of arrivism. If you want me to address the part about the limitations of activism, I am happy to do that.
An attack by Boko Haram insurgents on Michika town of Adamawa State on Monday night claimed many lives and left many more injured, fleeing residents have told PREMIUM TIMES.

The military high command in Abuja had confirmed the attack in a statement by the director of Army Public Relations, Sagir Musa.

According to Mr Musa, an army Colonel, the attack on Michika by Boko Haram was effectively repelled to by government troops whom he said inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers.

But residents of the town said the attackers did not only force them to flee their homes but also killed many.

According to witnesses who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES on phone, many displaced residents of Michika fled to Mubi, Uba and some to Yola, the state capital, as the attackers shot sporadically, loot houses and set buildings ablaze.

One witness, who identified himself as Bala, said he knew four people who were killed.

I can confirm to you that many people were killed last night and many were injured as well, said Bala, who did give a second name.

I may not know all of those who lost their lives but I am sure of four persons whom I know personally, that were killed in the attack.

My aunts husband and their daughter were killed. I also know of a retired soldier and local businessman that were killed in front of their houses.

Another resident, who would not want to be named for fear of his safety said many people may have lost their lives or be injured and left stranded in the bush because their relatives had not been able to get in touch with them since.

As I am talking to you now, people are still on the run, some going as far as Yola because people fear of the attack spreading to neighbouring towns of Baza and others, he said.

In its statement, the military said the attack was repelled and Boko Haram attackers were completely routedand many neutralized, even though none of their corpses were recovered.

The army spokesmans statement was also silent on civillian casualties as well as the displacement of the residents.

Residents said they did not witness a rapid response by troops.

Colonel Musas statement reads:

Troops Repel BHT Attack on Michika in Adamawa State. BHTs met their Waterloo and suffered heavy casualties yesterday evening 18 March 2019 when they attempted to infiltrate Michika in Adamawa State.

At about 7.20 pm, gallant troops of 115 Task Force Battalion deployed at Lassa in Borno State received a distress call from vigilantes at Maikadiri village on movement of suspected BHTs along Road Maikadiri  Shuwari enroute Michika.

Consequently, the gallant troops with reinforcement from 143 Battalion Gulak engaged the terrorists on Two Front Coordinated Attacks. The BHTs were completely routed by the troops, neutralizing many of them while others fled in disarray due to superior firepower.

As a result, they hastily evacuated most of their corpses under the cover of darkness. The entire area has been dominated by own troops and the situation is completely under control. Items captured from the terrorists include One Ford vehicle, two Toyota Starlet vehicles loaded with foodstuffs, one motorcycle and one tyre inflating machine. Further exploitation is to be conducted this morning.

Calm has since returned to the city and inhabitants of the town are hereby enjoined to report the presence of strange faces in their localities and go about their normal businesses.
The Federal Government is to increase Value Added Tax by 50 per cent to pay the new national minimum wage, Bugdet and National Planning Minister Udo Udoma said Tuesday.

Mr Udoma said the raise, first announced by the chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Babatunde Fowler, will create the required funds to meet the new wage obligation being approved by the National Assembly.

Messrs Udoma and Fowler were amongst senior government officials who today appeared before the Senate Committee on Finance headed by John Enoh.

The Senate on Tuesday passed for third reading a bill seeking to increase Nigerias minimum wage from N18,000 to N30,000.

The House of Representatives earlier passed the same bill. Both houses must agree and the president must sign the bill to become law.

The officials were summoned by the Senate committee to explain details of the 2019-2021 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP).

Mr Fowler said the proposed payable VAT based on the increment would be between 6.75 per cent and 7.25 per cent as against the 5 per cent on all products in the country.

This implies an increase of between 35 per cent and 50 per cent.

He added that the increment will affect the Company Income Tax and the Petroleum Profit Tax.

By the end of this year, we should be ready for an increase in the VAT. A lot of Nigerians travel to Ghana and other West African countries and they can see that theirs is much higher. They pay when they go for those trips. We should be ready for an increase on VAT, he said.

I can certainly see an increase in VAT of at least 35 per cent to 50 per cent this year based on our enforcement activities. There certainly will be an increase in Company Income Tax and also on Petroleum Profit Tax, Mr Foweler said.

Mr Udoma explained that the increment is necessary in order to create funds for the minimum wage.

It will be recalled that as a result of agitations from the unions that the President set up a tripartite committee to look at the Minimum Wage.

Every five years, it is supposed to be reviewed. It has not been reviewed even though there is no doubt that for both the Federal Government and states; it is a tough time to review wages. But the N18,000 is really too low and it is difficult for people to live on N18,000.

The President supported a revision but it is important that as we are revising (the Minimum Wage), we make sure that it can be funded. That is why we set up the Bismark Rewane Technical Committee.

So we will be coming to you. There may be some changes maybe in VAT and other things. But we will be coming to you in order to make sure that we can fund the Minimum Wage.

Not just fund the Minimum Wage but as you announce it, you now enter into negotiations with those above the Minimum Wage and we have to be prepared for that.

On wages of workers above the minimum wage, Mr Udoma said a new scale would be subject to negotiations which will start soon.

On minimum wage, there is an issue of what about the other levels. Those will be subject to negotiation. Normally after you announce minimum wage, youll now (go) into negotiations, probably demands from people who are earning more than that.

It (new wage) will be subject to those negotiations. Federal government will have negotiation, state government will have negotiations. At this level, well also throw open our books and show in terms of ability to pay will be taken into account.
The federal government has been urged to ensure that all aircraft operating within Nigeria are airworthy in order to keep Nigerians safe at all times.

The Senate gave the charge while mourning the two Nigerians who died in the ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 302 on March 11.

Pius Adesanmi, a professor of Literary Arts in Carleton University, Canada and Abiodun Bashua, a former United Nations and African Union deputy Joint Special Representative, were aboard the Boeing 737 aircraft.

A motion to mourn the Nigerians was presented by Gbenga Ashafa (Lagos-APC).

Mr Ashafa said both Nigerians that lost their lives in this unfortunate air disaster, are individuals that have distinguished themselves in their fields and till their deaths remained worthy ambassadors of the country in the Diaspora.

The lawmaker noted that pilots have reportedly complained about the anti-stall system installed on the aircraft models Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 series.

Following his prayers, the Senate observed a minute silence for the deceased while commending the Federal Ministry of Aviation and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority for moving swiftly in mitigating the operations of the Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 series aircraft within the Nigerian Airspace in order to ensure the safety of all Nigerians.

The lawmakers also urged the Federal Ministry of Aviation and the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority to ensure that all aircraft: operating within Nigeria are airworthy in order to keep Nigerians safe at all times.
The French Embassy in Nigeria on Tuesday said the country was set to host the biggest French dinner in Nigeria.

Damilola Ayodeji, the Press Officer/Attache of the French Embassy in Nigeria, said in a statement that the dinner, scheduled to hold on Thursday, was part activities to celebrate the 2019 International Francophone Week.

This years celebration is holding from March 18 to March 23 with the theme: French Language, Connecting for Action.

Gout de France / Good France, the key event showcasing France gastronomy has taken a greener approach in 2019 aimed at better respecting the planets resources.

On March 21, six Chefs from Abuja will be hosted at the Institut Francais in Nigeria, to present style dinner inspired by French region Province with focus on more responsible cuisine.

The Institut Francais in Nigeria will host a six-course banquet for 100 people.

The Institut Francais will transform its courtyard to create a cross between live cooking show and tasty banquet, to host the biggest French dinner in Nigeria and maybe worldwide.

She said the event would showcase inspired dishes while culinary experts would give critique of the food.

She, however, said that participation at the event would be strictly on invitation.

NAN reports that the week is often celebrated globally by the International Organisation of Francophone countries.

The organisation, also known as Francophonie, consists of 88 member states and governments, accounting for population of 300 million French speakers globally.

(NAN)
To mark the World Kidney Day (WKD), a non-governmental organisation, Omotayo Kidney Care Foundation, on Saturday held free kidney screening for Nigerians in Abuja.

The WKD is a global health awareness campaign focusing on the importance of the kidney and reducing the frequency and impact of kidney disease and its associated health problems worldwide.

The day is celebrated across the globe on every second Thursday of March.

The founder of the NGO, Omotayo Akinrinde, who is a registered nurse and works with the Garki Hospital in Abuja, said the aim of the foundation is to create awareness on kidney diseases and the preventive measures.

We aim at reducing the number of people living with high chronic disease, Ms Akinrinde said.

The foundation started in November 2017 and since then, we have had about seven medical outreaches, she said.

Initially, I started on Facebook as Your kidney and your health where we tell people the ways to care for their kidneys, she said.

Ms Akinrinde said the foundation undertook the free kidney check to reduce the number of people living with the chronic disease and to commemorate the WKD.

The cost of treatment for chronic kidney disease is high. It imposes a big burden on individuals and the government, she said.

Ms Akinrinde said the leading causes of the disease are diabetes and hypertension.

Most people are not aware of this, they have symptoms of headache and they take paracetamol which cures the headache but not the main illness, she said.

Speaking at the event,a medical doctor ,Yomi Ekperinpa, advised people to take water regularly and avoid intake of alcohol.

Mr Ekperinpa, who works with Police College Comprehensive Hospital, said avoiding foods low in potassium and sodium is also a way of caring for the kidney.

The kidney excretes waste, urine, toxic products and regulates blood pressure, he said.

A beneficiary, Abdulkaheem Abdulsalami, thanked Ms Akinrinde for the initiative and called on international and local agencies to assist in moving the foundation forward.

Another beneficiary, Sidi Ali, urged people to learn how to appreciate good work which is being offered to them free.

I went to a hospital and was charged N20,000 for this particular test and I had to do it, he said.
The new Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Communications, Istifanus Fuktar, says it is time for Nigeria to move away from running its affairs manually and embrace digitisation.

Mr Fuktur said this on Tuesday during the handing over ceremony in the ministry in Abuja. He was the Permanent Secretary of the Police Service Commission before he was redeployed to the Ministry of Communications.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mr Fuktur said the contributions of Information Communication Technology (ICT) to economic growth cannot be overemphasised

He said there is a need for Nigeria to be digitised, noting that it would save the country a lot, including from environmental hazards and wastages. He said digitisation would also ensure transparency in the system.

Mr Fuktur said improving the lives of Nigerians through ICT would be his major focus at the ministry.

There is so much that ICT can do for our country, we have seen it in other countries, he said.

He said many countries have gone e-governance but Nigeria is yet to get to that level.

We have seen the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) complain about the voting process in the country.

He said many journalists, police officers and election monitors could not vote because they were involved in electoral duties

So, using the identity management data, one should be able to vote from his house, he said.

Also we do a lot of transactions using telephone and hacking has not prevented us from doing so.

He said ICT also has a lot of advantages for farming, businesses, education and every other sector.

Mr Fuktar said that continued felling of trees to produce papers for various activities were contributing immensely to environmental degradation.

He urged staff of the ministry to be committed to their duties and responsibilities. He said the cooperation of staff will assist in achieving the set goals of the ministry and urged the management staff, the union leaders and the entire staff to extend their unalloyed support and cooperation to him.

The departing Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Ngozi Ejele, who was represented at the ceremony by the Director of Human Resources, El-Baff Abubakar, said her absence during the handover ceremony was unavoidable.

The outgoing Permanent Secretary is unavoidably absent, so the activities of government must have to move on,he said.

The handover ceremony was scheduled for three weeks ago but due to some reason it is holding today, he said.
The House of Representatives has called on security agencies to intensify their efforts in stemming the tide of attacks and killings in Kaduna State.

The lawmakers made this call on Tuesday while adopting a motion brought under matters of urgent national importance by Yakubu Barde (Kaduna, PDP).

Adopting the motion, the House urged security agencies to ensure that peace and normalcy return to the affected areas.

At least 30 people were killed and homes burnt in Kajuru local government area of Kaduna in what appeared to be a reprisal attack following earlier incidents in the area.

The latest incident occurred in Unguwar Barde Community of the same local government.

Mr Barde who moved the motion recalled that sometime last year precisely in October, the Paramount Ruler of Adara people, the Agom Adara was abducted by gunmen and days after, the corpse of the monarch was found by the roadside at Kateri village along Kaduna-Abuja highway.

He reminded the House that a motion was moved on the floor of the house to that effect, calling on the security agencies to leave no stone unturned until the perpetrators of the crime were fished out.

Though it was reported in the media that the suspects were after that apprehended, however, nothing has been heard since then about the prosecution of the suspects.

The activities of these armed bandits of recent, have taken a strange dimension, and have become a major concern to the various communities, he said.

On Sunday the 10 of February 2019; Ungwan Barde village was attacked leaving 11 persons dead. On Tuesday 26th of February, 2019, Karamai village was attacked, and 40 people were killed with over 100 houses burnt down.

Between Sunday the 10th and Wednesday 13th of March, 2019, in Ungwan Barde, Inkirimi, Dogon Noman, Ungwan Gora and Kyamara villages, over 90 people were killed with several people injured and houses burnt down.

He said it had been the trend until a few days ago when the state government imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the area.

Unanimously adopting the motion, the lawmakers called on the House to observe a minute silence in honour of those who lost their lives.

The House further urged the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to move to these communities with relief materials.

Relevant committees of the house were also mandated to carry out a investigations.
President Muhammadu Buhari has sent condolences to families who have lost loved ones, homes and means of livelihood in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi as Tropical Cyclone Idai takes a toll on Southern Africa.

In a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, in Abuja on Tuesday, the president said he deeply shared in the pain and struggle of the governments and people in the region.

Mr Buhari noted that the affected governments had been working hard to ensure safety of citizens and minimize the devastating effect of the cyclone.

The president assured the governments and people of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi of the prayers and support of Nigeria as they passed through the trying period.

He also commended all the humanitarian organisations that intervened in the affected countries.

(NAN)
The lead lawyer representing Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Livy Uzoukwu, has said the former vice president has all the needed facts to successfully prosecute his court case that seeks to unseat President Muhammad Buhari after last months election.

Mr Abubakar is contesting the result of the election, alleging Mr Buhari and his ruling All Progressives Congress rigged the polls.

Mr Uzoukwu said in an interview Monday night, shortly after leading other lawyers to file a petition on behalf of Mr Abubakar at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja, that the case will be successful.

The challenge came in a bit to meet up with the 21 days stipulated by section 134 of the Electoral Act, 2010.

The petition, which was signed by Mr Abubakar himself, has the PDP as co-petitioner while INEC, APC and Mr Buhari as respondents.

Mr Uzoukwu expressed optimism that his client would emerge victorious at the tribunal, saying he was convinced that PDP won the presidential election in the first place.

I believe we have sufficient facts to move the court to appreciate our case and grant us our reliefs.

We are ready and prepared to prove our case because it all depends on proofs and we are ready to prove our case.

We have filed the petition, which is most fundamental, with some documents, he said.

Though he admitted the team was currently having challenges accessing documents from INEC, he said that would not deter them from continuing with the suit.

We may be having some challenges accessing documents from INEC, notwithstanding, we have filed the petition and with time, INEC shall be made to obey the orders of the court of appeal and grant us access to electoral documents.

That we have filed petition does not mean we cannot make use of those documents when we eventually secure them from INEC.

Some members of the team were at the INEC office three times last week. They were at INEC on Sunday and even on Monday, but were asked to come tomorrow (Tuesday), that by then, they will provide them with some documents.

I do hope that INEC will keep to its words and do the needful, because they have no option as far as the matter is concerned. Because we are talking about the compliance with an order of the court, he added.

Considering what has recently happened in Nigerias judiciary system , when asked if he still believes in the justice system, Mr Uzoukwu said, I dont want to speculate, I still believe, with all honesty, that we have in this country, very knowledgeable and very courageous judges, and bearing in mind that, with this petition, I seriously believe the judiciary will be on trial. Also, the democracy will be on trial.

To successfully prosecute the case at the tribunal, Mr Abubakar and the PDP are said to have assembled about 20 senior advocates and 400 witnesses.

The lawyers are praying the tribunal that, their client, Mr Abubakar, be returned as person who won majority of lawful votes cast at the election.

In an event that the main prayer does not scale through, the lawyers also pushed for an alternative prayer, that the election be set aside and for the court to order a rerun.

But, according to Mr Uzoukwu, the alternative prayer can only come to play if the court does not agree with us in the main prayer.

But I believe we have substantial facts to prove our case, to prove our entitlement to the main relief. Im convinced beyond any doubt that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar won the election.

Having successfully filed the case, the petitioners now await the respondents to file their reply.

After filing their reply, the petitioners also have seven days to react to what they file, thereafter, the pre-trial will commence.

The tribunal has 180 days, under the electoral act, to adjudicate the petition.
Members of the House of Representatives have suspended plenary for two weeks to enable committees to interact with various ministries, departments and agencies.

Making the announcement on Tuesday during plenary, the Deputy Speaker of the House, Yusuff Lasun, said plenary would resume on April 2.

The lawmakers had shortly before the 2019 general elections passed the appropriation bill for a second reading.

The speaker, while putting the bill to vote, referred it to the committees on appropriations and all other relevant committees and subcommittees.

President Muhammadu Buhari had in December 2018 proposed a budget of N8.83 trillion for 2019.

The president presented the budget at a joint session of the National Assembly on Wednesday.

The proposed budget shows that about a quarter of the sum (N2.14 trillion) will be used for debt servicing while capital expenditure is expected to gulp N2.031 trillion.

Further breakdown presented by the president shows that proposed recurrent expenditure is N4.04 trillion while the statutory transfer is N492.36 billion.

There is a sinking fund of N120 billion, while capital expenditure is N2.031 trillion.
The kidnappers of a famous Islamic scholar and prominent reciter of the Holy Quran, Ahmad Sulaiman, have demanded a ransom of N300 million before his release.

PRNigeria gathered that the abducted cleric, a prayer-warrior and fanatical supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari, had offered prayers for the re-election bid of the president at some political rallies organised by All Progressives Congress (APC), in the build to the 2019 general elections.

The Islamic scholar was returning to his base in Kano, after attending a religious function in Kebbi State when he was abducted.

However, in an audio clip obtained by PRNigeria, the kidnappers are demanding N300 million as ransom, before releasing the cleric.

The supposed ringleader of the gang spoke in Hausa with a close associate of the kidnapped Quran reciter, saying they were mandated by an influential politician to abduct and kill Mr Sulaiman, who their sponsor allegedly claimed is a terrorist.

However, after taking a close observation, we noticed that our victim has no semblance to a terrorist. We discovered that he is rather a God-fearing Muslim and very knowledgeable preacher. We also interrogated him, and he told us everything about himself, the kidnapper told the reciters sympathizer, in the nine-minute telephone chat.

When asked by his caller what they should offer for the speedy release of the notable Islamic teacher, the Hausa-speaking gang leader with Fulani accent, said they were never interested in carrying out the murderous assignment, in the first place.

But it will be unfair that we fritter the three hundred million naira the politician gave us without executing his work, he said, adding that, So, we are intending to give him back his money since we may not be able to do his bidding. And again, we will also express our displeasure to him for wrongly accusing the Sheikh to be an insurgent, when in reality, he wasnt.

But in the meantime, you (his people) should first raise the three hundred million we will return back to the politician. And then, you will also give us money for fueling the vehicle we used to convey him to Kebbi.

But if you people cannot raise the money we demanded, we will not hesitate to eliminate Mallam, and collect the additional sum the politician promised us if we should kill him.

Katsina is becoming a den for kidnappers as there is hardly a day without reported case(s) of kidnapping in the state.

PRNigeria gathered that kidnapping cases have been reported in most local government areas of Katsina State especially in Jibia, Dandume, Faskari, Sabuwa, Danmusa, Safana, Kankara, Batsari, Dutsinma, Kurfi, Funtua and Katsina metropolis.

While many of the abductions were not reported for undisclosed reasons, the recent reported kidnapping cases included that of a group of Islamic caregivers of about 20 members of First Aid Group who were abducted in Jibia and that of an 80-year-old Mother-in-Law to Governor Aminu Masari who was abducted at her Dandume Crescent, Sabon Gari area of Katsina metropolis.

Early in the year, Governor Aminu Bello Masari blamed the continued kidnapping and other heinous crime on informants who support the bandits saying Katsina State is under kidnappers siege.

He said the daily security reports reaching him indicate that no day passes without a reported case of kidnapping, armed robbery and cattle rustling.

According to him, Kidnappings, cattle rustling and armed robbery are now the order of the day in Katsina. Informants have made it difficult for security agencies in the state to operate effectively.
Gbenga Daniel has reiterated his exit from partisan politics.

The former Ogun State governor has come under ridicule amongst opposition figures, amidst allegations of betrayal after announcing a sudden retirement from politics only to start consultation with the All Progressives Congress.

Mr Daniel, a top strategist for Atiku Abubakar presidential campaign, recently wrote a letter to Uche Secondus, the chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, announcing his urgent retirement from politics.

He cited no political reason for his move, which many of his PDP associates received with shock, only saying he felt he had achieved all that was needed in politics and it was time to focus on his charity works.

The March 14 letter to Mr Secondus was published by PREMIUM TIMES and other media outlets on Saturday.

By Saturday evening, Mr Daniel was seen holding talks with Dapo Abiodun, who visited him at his residence with some political associates, according to those familiar with the meeting.

On Sunday, Mr Daniel held a press briefing where he said his supporters were clamouring for his move to the APC, especially because he directed them to support Mr Abiodun at the governorship election earlier this month. When asked at the time whether he was indeed set to join the APC, Mr Daniel ambiguously replied that his supporters had spoken.

Many in the PDP said they saw through Mr Daniels plot, which was not unique as many politicians had deployed such purported demands of their followers to move across political parties.

Mr Daniel, 62, was criticised for the move, with PDP chieftains like Femi Fani-Kayode accusing him of betraying Mr Abubakar.

Mr Fani-Kayode and others feared Mr Daniel might have undermined Mr Abubakars presidential campaign, adding that his decision to cosy up to APC even as Mr Abubakar was preparing to challenge results of the presidential election was enough to suspect foul play by Mr Daniel.

Although Mr Daniel did not publicly or formally express reservations for his resignation from the PDP, his associates who knew the move said it was because he felt slight by the party, twice.

The first was his loss of the partys chairmanship to Mr Secondus despite an ardent campaign in 2017; and the second was when he was passed over for the director of PDP presidential campaign, for which Senate President Bukola Saraki was selected in October.

Not true

Mr Daniel pushed back against all speculation on Tuesday afternoon, saying in a statement that he was only dissociating from the PDP and not Mr Abubakar, and had no plan to join the APC.

I have not, will not and will never abandon Atiku, Mr Daniel said.

Mr. Atiku Abubakar

Atiku is different from PDP. I have resigned from PDP and lost interest in partisan politics having put in about 20 years of my life in a thankless process.

I will commit my God-given resources to help the less privileged through my Foundation and will contribute to sharing the body of knowledge through our not-for-profit political academy. That will be a thankful process.

I will continue to support the political process in a non-partisan manner. I am clear with my position, without any ambiguity.

There is no need to insinuate, speculate, extrapolate, anticipate or draw conclusions on my behalf. I did not expect such a simple personal decision can generate such national discourse and for that, I remain grateful to God. I am however most grateful to all my friends and well-wishers, he said.

Mr Daniel said the phones have not stopped ringing about his political consultations.

Mr Daniel led the team that handed Mr Abubakar a successful primary at the PDP convention in Port Harcourt early August.

His duty ranged from scheduling to top-level consultation for endorsements ahead of the primaries.

Mr Abubakar has not publicly commented on Mr Daniels move, but a source close to the former vice-president told PREMIUM TIMES it might not be necessary after all.

Atiku Abubakar that I work with would not have asked Gbenga Daniel not to take any decision he likes for his own interest, the source said under anonymity. Although most of us feel betrayed, Atiku Abubakar showed no sign of betrayal; this could be because he had seen it all where Nigerian politics is concerned.
President Muhammadu Buhari has declined assent to the Chartered Institute of Training and Development of Nigeria Bill.

The president also declined assent to the Nigerian Aeronautic Research Rescue Bill.

The communication from the president to the House of Representatives was read on the floor of the House by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, at Tuesdays plenary session.

Mr Dogara read: The president declines assent to the chartered institute of training and development of Nigeria bill.

This is because there are concerns that the Institute does not possess the capacity of the requirements that might be imposed on it if the bill is assented to.

And some aspects of the bill might run fowl of the stipulated guidelines as they should be, he said.

The speaker further read that the president also declined assent to the Nigerian Aeronautic Research Rescue Bill recently passed by the National Assembly.

Presidential decision to decline assent to this bill is because of the numerous discrepancies of the bill which makes it not in tandem with international best practices guiding the aviation industry worldwide.

Certain sections are just a duplication of the functions of NEMA and other Agencies, he said.

The president also wrote the House on the burning need to settle local debts for Delta and Taraba, following approval of disbursements received from the NASS.

The National Assembly should also review the reimbursement proposed for Kogi and Bauchi states, Mr Dogara read.

(NAN)
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has explained why Nigeria has no official records of what transpired during the nations civil war.

Mr Obasanjo also said writing the history of the civil war, has been overtaken by events.

The civil war that occurred between 1967 and 1970 was fought between the Nigerian forces and Biafran forces, who wanted an independent nation.

The war led to the deaths of thousands of Nigerian and Biafran soldiers.

The two-term former president spoke on Tuesday at the Shehu Musa Yaradua Centre Abuja, at the launch of a book written by Abdullahi Shehu, titled Election in Nigeria: The Long Road To Democracy.

The event attracted dignitaries, including a former Head of State, Yakubu Gowon; human right activist, Femi Falana; a former deputy president of the Senate, Ibrahim Mantu; Chido Onumah, author of We Are All Biafrans, among many others.

Mr Obasanjo narrated how a committee launched by Mr Gowon, refused to write the Nigerian civil war history.

When we had our civil war, General Gowon established a committee to write the official history of the Nigerian civil war. After about four-five years, the committee would not agree to write an official history, and up till today, we have no official history of the war, Mr Obasanjo said.

Maybe now, we can say it is overtaken by events, maybe people can sit down and write an official history of the war, he added.

He also explained how a former head of state, late Murtala Muhammed forcefully dissolved the committee.

And I can remember, when we relieved General Gowon of his appointment, we looked at that committee, and one day, Murtala angrily said, we as a nation we cannot come together and prevent a civil war, and we fought a civil war because we disagreed.

Should we not be able to come together to write the official history of the Nigeria civil war and because we have failed to write the official history, our committee has failed. He disbanded the committee. And that committee remains disbanded till today, he said.
Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State on Tuesday in Abuja raised alarm over stock piling of arms by bandits operating in the state.

Mr Yari made this known while speaking with State House correspondents after he had updated President Muhammadu Buhari on the socio-political and security developments in the state.

The governor, who ruled out dialogue with bandits, said: I have told my people that dialogue will no longer take place during my time because I have done that three times, but it did not work.

This is in the sense that we know their capacity.

For instance, during the first dialogue, they invited some of our team, army, DSS, police, and my chief security officer as well as some representatives of traditional rulers and we have seen what they have.

They are in control of the kind of weapons that the security command in Zamfara does not have.

In one armoury alone, they have more than 500 AK 47 rifles; we saw it.

Our people were even given the chance to take pictures.

But when we said we will dialogue and offer them amnesty if they surrendered their arms, they refused.

I can tell you that till date we have not received up to 90 AK 47 rifles.

So it is deceit. That is why I said no more dialogue during my tenure.

During dry season they try to get us to dialogue because they know the security forces can get to them anywhere in the forest and they would not have a place to hide.

But when the rainy season comes and the forest becomes thicker they return to their normal practice.

That is why I said there has to be a show of force before anything else.

I know that in any war, eventually you have to come to the table and dialogue, but at this point and given the situation we are in right now, dialogue is not needed.

The governor expressed the hope that the federal government would soon address the security challenges facing the state as it would soon take delivery of military hardware and modern weapons to check the activities of the bandits in the area and beyond.

The federal government has already given procurement contracts, inter-government transactions to the United States, China, and other European countries.

In 2018, the Nigeria Governors Forum, approved one billion dollars to help the federal government equip the security agencies.

We believe the equipment will soon come into the country and it is our hope that the equipment will be used so that this worrying situation that we are in will become history, he added.

(NAN)
The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) will on Saturday graduate 20,799 students, with 103 of them to be awarded First Class certificates.

The event will be the eighth annual convocation ceremony of the university.

The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Abdalla Adamu, disclosed this at a press conference on Tuesday at the institutions headquarters, Jabi District, Abuja.

Mr Adamu said as a weapon of mass instruction, people are now accepting Open Distance Learning (ODL) as a way and system of self-training.

He said following President Muhammadu Buharis assent December 7, 2018 to the National Open University Amendment Act, graduates of the university will henceforth participate in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

He said its law graduates can also go to the Nigerian Law School.

Mr Adamu said the Act allows the National Open University to operate as other universities in Nigeria.

He said NOUN also has the same power and functions and the same administrative structures as other universities, thus eliminating discrimination against its products.

Negotiations have started between NOUN and agencies responsible for NYSC and Law School. We are also willing to accept whatever conditions are given to accept our students in Law School and NYSC.

The vice-chancellor said NOUN gives hope to the hopeless in Nigeria in the pursuit of university education.

It is only NOUN that gives opportunity to prisoners to study, while at the same time serving their jail terms.

Presently, we have more than 400 prisoners who are studying under NOUN. There is also a particular prisoner who was sentenced to life imprisonment, but he is undergoing his PhD studies. Very soon we will engage him as our facilitator.

Mr Adamu also revealed that a former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, receives N40,000 annually as an allowance for being a facilitator of the university.

Mr Obasanjos allowance is N40,000 a year and he is happy being our facilitator. He has an office in our Abeokuta Study Centre, where we attached to him two students of Christian Theology.
Former Kano governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, on Tuesday said that the governorship supplementary election scheduled for Saturday in Kano State would determine the credibility of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

,Mr Kwankwaso, now a senator, said this in an interview with BBC Hausa service, monitored by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Damaturu, Yobe.

The INECs credibility or otherwise will be assessed by the way and manner it will conduct the Kano State re-run election come March 23, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain said.

The re-run elections will be conducted in 234 polling units, in more than 88 registration areas (wards) of 30 local government areas.

The elections will make up the 141,694 votes cancelled by INEC in the March 9 Governorship and State House of Assembly elections in the state.

Kano State is one of the five states where INEC declared the March 9 elections inconclusive.

The PDP had scored 1,014,474 votes against the All Progressives Congress (APC) which scored 987,819 votes. (NAN)
Victims of the recurrent killings in Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State on Tuesday held a peaceful rally in Abuja, during which they cried out to the Nigerian government for justice.

Speaking at the event, the convener of the rally, Williams Abba, said it was to call the attention of the world to the insecurity in Kaduna State.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how gunmen again attacked two communities in the troubled local government area last week Monday.

Multiple sources confirmed the attack to PREMIUM TIMES, although the police and the state government did not immediately react.

The attacks occurred in Ikirimi village and Iri, Dogon Noma in Ungwar Gamo, both in Kajuru Local Government Area.

Insecurity in Kaduna State is alarming. Every day we wake up to people being killed in their sleep, Mr Abba said.

We feel that coming to the nations capital to make a statement about the challenges going on in the southern part of Kaduna and the threat of lives there will make a difference, Mr Abba said.

He said over 130 people have been confirmed dead in the area.

It was the reckless statement of the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, about 66 Fulani people killed that triggered the killings in Kajuru, he said.

This newspaper also reported that Governor El-Rufai said the death toll in the attacks on Fulanis had risen to 130.

Mr El-Rufai had earlier on February 15 announced that 66 persons were killed by unknown attackers there.

Mr Abba said the indigenes were mostly the victims of the killings. He said the people expected unbiased handling of the situation by the government.

We cannot remain silent in the face of these gruesome killings and deliberate agenda to annihilate people whose only crime is being natives, he said.

He called on the state and federal governments to muster the courage and political will to halt the incursion of the non-state actors to the area.

Government should provide adequate healthcare services for the wounded, and food and shelter for the victims, he said

We call on the federal government to set up an independent commission of enquiry to probe the Kajuru killings, including the exhumation of Fulani corpses if any, he said.

Also speaking, the state secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Joseph Maigida, said the two parties have the same leader who should be unbiased.

He lamented the arrest of the leaders in Kajuru who have not been charged to court or released.

One of the major causes of confusion is the arrest of our leaders, he said.

There is no crueller tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice, and that is exactly what is happening in Kaduna state.

The unfortunate aspect is that political and religious considerations have made so many to even turn their backs on the carnage taking place in our villages, he said.

One of the community members, Martha Adams, said the killings started early in the morning and mostly women and children were killed.

The victims are now residents of other communities because they have no houses or farmlands, she said.

She called on the government to intervene and also release the detained elders.

They are our leaders, they hold our leaders and they are killing us, she said.

Aleriba Magaji is the daughter of Bawa Magaji, one of the arrested elders. She said no fight occurred on February 15 when Mr El- Rufai announced that 66 Fulani people were killed.

My father was detained and accused of inciting the violence that killed the 66 Fulani people, she said.

The problem we have with the announcement was that he said Fulani people were killed. He failed to mention that Adara People were killed as well, she said.

Earlier, a press statement was made available to Premium Times by Adara Development Association through the National Secretary, Waziri Luka.

Detainees

It contained the names of the elders allegedly arrested. Below is the list of the alleged detainees:

1. Engr, Bawa Magaji, Wazirin Adara, acting Agom Adara, arrested on 16th February.

2. Retired Commissioner of Police, Mr Sani Magaji, the Baradan Adara, arrested on 19th February

3. Awemi Dio Maisamari, National President of the Adara Development Association, arrested on 16th February.

These others were all arrested between 12  15th February

4. Mr Joseph Abdullahi, National Treasurer, ADA

5. Mr Tanko Maisamari, village head of Maro

6. Mr Hosea Danladi, Village head Ungwan Gamo

7. Mr Joseph Ayuba, Village Head of Kutura

8. Mr Tanko Wada, Village head of Ayuba

9. Mr Ulu Maitumbi, elder Ungwan Barde village
The Nigerian Army has continued to be a target of critical reviews over the elections in Rivers State, with a call, on Monday, by some prominent citizens of the state, for investigation of the role of the military in the electoral violence affecting the oil-rich state.

The citizens, including Atedo Peterside, the founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank, Onueze Okocha, former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, and Herbart Wigwe, Access Banks chief, expressed disbelief and horror at the widespread violence that followed the general elections in Rivers State.

Their statement titled Rivers lives also matter bears an evocative photo of a crying kid placed on the map of the state.

During the presidential and National Assembly elections, at least 11 persons, including a soldier and a youth corps member, were killed, and the Independent National Electoral Commission had to suspend the collation exercise for the governorship and state parliamentary elections because of violence last Sunday.

These violent incidents have led to the needless loss of so many lives, especially youths in various communities, said the group, which also includes George Etomi, a lawyer, Tein George, a businessman, Emmanuel Georgewell, an engineer, and John Azuta-Mbata, a former senator. We do not believe that elections which are designed to enable the people choose their leaders should lead to their death instead.

Therefore, every single death must be investigated and the culprits brought to justice.

We are particularly concerned about the role played by the Nigerian Army in these events and welcome the announcement by the Army Command that they have set up a panel to investigate the conduct of their personnel who were deployed on election duties.

In the light of numerous disturbing video footages which have gone viral across the globe, it is important and imperative that the investigation is thorough, professional and unbiased, they added.

Before now, the INEC had blamed some soldiers and armed thugs for the violence and disruptions that compelled a resort of suspension of collation exercise last Sunday.

That INECs statement was a betrayal, the army replied on Monday, expressing regret at the indictment by the electoral body.

This clearly indicates a lack of trust by an institution that the Nigerian Army sacrifices so much to assist in the course of performing their role, said Aminu Iliyasu, the spokesperson for the 6 Division of the army based in Port Harcourt.

Representatives of the 6 Division met with the Fact-Finding Committee on Tuesday 12 March 2019 at the INEC Headquarters in Port Harcourt and had honest discussions and made a written submission to aid the Committee in its task. Regrettably, none of the Divisions input form any of the findings of INEC as made public, Mr Iliyasu, a colonel, added.

Failure of political leadership

The group further expressed concern about the inability of the political leaders in our state to manage their rivalries and differences within acceptable norms of a civilised society as has been done in several other States in Nigeria.

They said Rivers State is multi-ethnic and there is a risk of general and more troubling anarchy where some communities become angry because they hold others responsible for the needless loss of lives in their own immediate vicinity.

Our fear now is that, if not checked immediately, the escalating cycle of violence will drive away investors and investments thereby leaving our people impoverished.

Rivers State hosts some of Nigerias critical oil and gas facilities and it is crucial that we do not inadvertently encourage a return to pre-amnesty acts of vandalism and destruction that could send the national economy into a tailspin.

We, therefore, urge all indigenes of Rivers State who are engaged in politics and their Political Parties to act with restraint at all times and avoid utterances that may further inflame passions.

We are willing to work with sincere and responsible stakeholders and all genuine friends of Rivers State (who understand and agree that Rivers lives also matter) to find a lasting solution to the problems that have bedevilled the state of recent, they said.
Two non-governmental organisations in Nigeria have asked the federal government to reconsider its order for the resumption of oil exploitation in Ogoni land.

The organisations, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation and We the People were reacting to a memo said to have emanated from Nigerias presidency.

The memo directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its subsidiary, the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) to take over OML 11 from Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).

OML 11 is located in Ogoni land, Rivers State.

The memo instructed NNPC and NPDC to ensure smooth re-entry given the delicate situation in Ogoni Land.

Shell stopped oil exploration in Ogoni land and pulled out of the area in 1993 due to violence from the community who protested against the continuous pollution of their environment.

The mass agitation in the area resulted in the November 10, 1995, brutal execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a playwright, environmental activist and Ogoni leader, by the Nigerian government under the leadership of the then military dictator, Sani Abacha.

Ogoni production was some 28,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of 1992, about three per cent of SPDCs total production, according to a Guardian newspaper report.

The Health of Mother Earth Foundation, and We the People said in a statement in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, that the instruction by the presidency was insensitive, ill-advised and capable of inflaming suspicions and conflict in an area that is already very fragile and prone to crisis.

Read the joint press statement below.

Government Should Withdraw the Order for Resumption of Oil Exploitation in Ogoni Land.

The Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and We the People notes with alarm and unease the recent memo reportedly originating from the Presidency and addressed to the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation; and signed by Chief of Staff to the President, Mr. Abba Kyari. In the said memo dated March 1, 2019, with reference number SH/COS/24/A/8540, the NNPC and NPDC are directed to take over OML 11 (located in Ogoni, River state) from Shell Petroleum Development Company.

The letter states;

NNPC/NPDC to take over the operatorship, from Shell Petroleum Development Company, of the entire OML 11 not later than 30 April 2019 and ensure smooth re-entry given the delicate situation in Ogoni Land.

It goes further to instruct

NNPC/NPDC to confirm by May 2, 2019, the assumption of the operatorship.

We consider this instruction by the Presidency insensitive, ill-advised and capable of inflaming suspicions and conflict in an area that is already very fragile and prone to crisis.

Recall that in 1993, Shell was forced to abandon its OML 11 operations located in Ogoni and pull out of the area, following campaigns by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) led by environmental rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa , for fairer benefits to the Ogoni people from oil wealth, as well as compensation for the damage of their environment. The campaigns by the Ogoni ethnic nationality for a better deal from the Nigerian state also including restitution for the dearth of poverty in Ogoniland, as well as recognition and responsibility for the ecological damage of Ogoniland occasioned by the activities of oil companies.

The response of the Nigeria government to these peaceful demands was terrifying. MOSOP was brutally repressed using the Nigerian military. The mass killings and widespread carnage which the military visited on the Ogonis remain largely undocumented. Thousands of Ogonis lost their lives, and many others went into forced exile around the world. In May 1994, capitalizing on the unfortunate killing of 4 prominent Ogoni leaders by a mob of yet to be identified persons in Gokana local government area, Ken Saro Wiwa and other leaders of MOSOP were arrested and detained. After a few months of trial by a special military tribunal, a sentence of death was pronounced on Ken Saro Wiwa and 8 others on October 31, 1995. 10 days after, the nine were immediately executed on November 10, 1995.

It is important to note that the fears of ecological damage which the Ogonis expressed was confirmed in 2011 when the United Nations Environment Programme UNEP released its assessment report of soil and water samples from Ogoniland. The report confirmed massive soil and water contamination which has significantly compromised sources of livelihood and was slowly poisoning the inhabitants of the area. So alarmed was UNEP about the findings that it recommended that inhabitants of the area immediately stop using water from all their traditional sources, while the government was to immediately commence a clean-up exercise which could take up to thirty years, and amount to the biggest soil and water remediation exercise ever embarked on. As damning as the Report was, its recommendations remained unattended until 2016 when the government established administrative structures to commence the clean-up.

Given the above, it is worrying why the government will decide to resume oil extraction in Ogoniland when the pollution of the last decades is yet to be cleaned and the recommendations of UNEP have not been fully complied with. The action of the government at this time gives the impression that it only flagged off the Ogoni Clean up through the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) in order to purchase the goodwill to resume oil extraction in the area. How else does one explain the fact that a site supposedly being cleaned up will resume full oil extraction activities with all the pollution that comes with it?

HOMEF and We the People also note that the demands of the Ogoni people which led to the abuses they suffered in the hands of the Nigerian Military in the 1990s, and the termination of oil operations in the area, have still not been addressed. It is disappointing and demonstrates a lack of initiative for the government to imagine that those concerns have simply withered away with time. Those of us who have remained connected to the communities know for a fact that the Ogoni people remain resolute in their resistance to any renewed hydrocarbon extraction in their domains.

We fear that the manner the Presidency has approached this subject through an order, without any consultation with stakeholders in Ogoniland or concern for the reservations the people may feel, is capable of threatening the peace in the area and conveying the message that their complaints and demands have been blatantly ignored. It is important to note that since the ugly events of the 1990s, the government has not initiated any peacebuilding processes in Ogoniland, neither has any kind of amelioration for the pains, losses, and suffering sustained by the people been provided.

HOMEF and We the People strongly recommend that the government withdraws this order for the resumption of oil activities in Ogoniland, and rather concentrates on redeeming the ecological disaster in the area, and replacing the lost sources of livelihood of the people.
Some aspirants, who failed to secure the APC ticket to contest elective positions in Ebonyi, have urged the APC leadership to probe the deployment of funds released for all elections in the state.

The group, who addressed a press conference on Monday in Abakaliki, accused Sonni Ogbuoji, the Ebonyi APC governorship candidate, of anti-party activities and diverting funds released for the prosecution of all elective positions.

Ogbonnaya Onu, an aspirant for the Ohaozara/Onicha/Ivo Federal Constituency seat, who spoke on behalf of the aspirants, urged APC chairman Adams Oshiomhole, to urgently institute a probe panel to investigate the governorship candidate.

He specifically accused Mr Ogbuoji of engaging in anti-party activities and diverting Election Support Fund (ESF).

Mr Onu described Ogbuoji as killer of APC in Ebonyi due to his alleged nonchalant attitude and failure to mobilize members of the party and supporters for the elections in the state.

The aspirants blamed the candidate for APCs failure to make any meaningful impact in the general elections, saying that he did not campaign sufficiently to sway voters.

Ogbuoji abandoned the party, the campaign team and the supporters for three weeks before the governorship and state house of assembly elections.

He (candidate), was in Abuja and only appeared around 6:30 p.m. on the eve of the governorship election; when he came, he was claiming that the presidency had directed INEC to declare him winner, the group alleged.

The group also accused Mr Ogbuoji of substituting validly nominated candidates with unpopular candidates who later defected to the PDP on the eve of the governorship election.

He substituted genuine party members with people who abandoned the party when it needed them most. That was clearly an indication that he was working with the PDP to kill the APC.

Our feeling is that Ogbuoji was just a mole in our great party.

We do not believe that Ogbuoji was serious about winning the governorship race. We believe that he was only interested in the election support fund because he did not campaign anywhere and could not deliver his ward in any of the elections.

The group noted that some stakeholders of the party donated huge sums of money to the Ogbuoji campaign council, and particularly recalled that the Minister of Science and Technology, Ogbonnaya Onu, was among such donors.

Unfortunately, Ogbuoji did not utilize the funds to mobilize the electorate for the election and justify the essence for which the funds were donated, the aspirants fumed.

The group, however, urged APC supporters to keep hope alive, saying that the leadership would do everything to reinvent the party in Ebonyi and make it a formidable opposition.

Reacting to the allegations, Mr Ogbuoji dismissed them as unfounded and unfortunate.

Mr Ogbuoji, who spoke through Ikenna Emewu, Director of Media, Ogbuoji Campaign Directorate, said that he put in his best during the election.

The APC did better in the 2019 election compared to what it scored in 2015. Ogbuoji showcased the best in him.

We want anybody with proof that Ogbuoji diverted election funds or indulged in anti-party activities to come forward and prove his or her allegation.

We implore members of the public and supporters of Ogbuoji to discountenance such baseless accusations; Ogbuoji could not have diverted funds meant for his own election.

There is also no sense in the claim that the candidate was involved in anti-party activities because there is no way he would have worked against himself and his candidature, Mr Emewu said.

(NAN)
Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State, says Ondo State University of Science and Technology (OSUSTECH), will be renamed after late Olusegun Agagu, former governor of the state.

Mr Akeredolu disclosed this during a tour of Okitipupa Local Government Area of the state on Tuesday.

He urged the two newly-elected House of Assembly members representing Okitipupa 1 and 2 constituencies to move the motion for renaming the university.

According to the governor, it is a decision that can only be taken by the House of Assembly and he urged them to move the motion as their first assignment.

You know we have Adekunle Ajasin University in Akungba and it wont be bad to have Olusegun Agagu University in Okitipupa.

When we came on board, we noticed that the institution lacked infrastructure facilities, a good road network and other areas, which we looked into.

The project would have been added to the museum of abandoned projects, hence the need for major upgrades, he said.

The Abodi of Ikaleland, Babatunde Faduyile, congratulated the governor for the success recorded in the just concluded House of Assembly election across the state.

He also commended the governor for his giant strides in area of infrastructure, especially the restoration of light to the area, and the revival of the Okitipupa Oil Palm Ltd.

The monarch further appealed for the construction of Okitipupa township roads, and adequate security guards for the resuscitated oil palm industry, among others.

(NAN)
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




"Mount Huangshan has the name of 'Fairyland on earth' in China. We sincerely welcome friends from all over the world to Mount Huangshan to enjoy the beautiful nature scenery and to understand more about Chinese history and culture," said Wang Kun, assistant president of Huangshan Tourism Development Co., Ltd (HSTD) at the event.

Michal Veber, executive director of Association of Czech Travel Agencies, was deeply impressed by the photo exhibition. "I've been in China before, but not in Huangshan. I will make it my next destination."

Located in eastern China's Anhui Province, Mount Huangshan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, renowned for magnificent natural scenery which includes massive granitic boulders, old pine trees and the sea of clouds.

Targeting German tourists, another promotion event was held in Berlin early. "We just paid a visit to ITB Berlin travel trade show for first time, with this event, we want to play a role in the international tourism market, while HSTD already being one of the most attractive destinations for the Chinese tourists for long time," Wang said.

"I visited Huangshan twelve years ago, and this promotion event recalled a lot of my sweet memories. The scenery there is amazing, but the culture there is much more fantastic," said an attendance Jacob.

A German student will go to China to study in this August and he said, "This promotion event has displayed so many attractions of Huangshan, I look forward to visiting this mount soon. It seems there isn't any reason to not visit there."

In recent years, Mount Huangshan has received an average of nearly 3 million visitors per year. And it was also acclaimed through art and literature during a good part of Chinese history. Today it holds the same fascination for visitors, poets, painters and photographers all over the world.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/837163/Xinhuanet_Mount_Huangshan.jpg

SOURCE Xinhuanet
NORTH CHICAGO, Ill., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV), a research-based global biopharmaceutical company, today announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has placed a partial clinical hold on all clinical trials evaluating venetoclax (VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO) for the investigational treatment of multiple myeloma. The partial clinical hold follows a review of data from the ongoing Phase 3 BELLINI trial (M14-031), a study in relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, in which a higher proportion of deaths was observed in the venetoclax arm compared to the control arm of the trial. As a result of this action, no new patients should be enrolled in any studies of venetoclax for multiple myeloma until a further analysis of the data is completed. Patients who are currently enrolled in studies and receiving benefit from the therapy may continue with treatment, after consultation with their physician.

This action does not impact any of the approved indications for venetoclax, such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and is limited to investigational clinical trials in multiple myeloma. AbbVie remains confident in the benefit/risk profile of venetoclax in those approved indications.

"We are committed to patient safety and are thoroughly analyzing the results observed in the BELLINI trial. We will continue working with the FDA and worldwide regulatory agencies to determine appropriate next steps for the multiple myeloma program," said Michael Severino, M.D., vice chairman and president, AbbVie. "We will continue to further the research and development of venetoclax and other therapies with the potential to transform the standards of care in blood cancers."

AbbVie has informed clinical trial investigators involved in the studies evaluating venetoclax for the treatment of multiple myeloma of the results and will work with them to proceed as appropriate and in the best interest of each patient who may be receiving benefit from venetoclax and who elects to continue receiving treatment. Additional analyses are ongoing, and data will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and/or presented at a future medical meeting.

Venetoclax is being developed by AbbVie and Roche. It is jointly commercialized by AbbVie and Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, in the U.S. and by AbbVie outside of the U.S.

About BELLINI

BELLINI is a multicenter, randomized, double blind study of bortezomib and dexamethasone in combination with either venetoclax or placebo in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received 1 to 3 prior lines of therapy and are sensitive or naive to proteasome inhibitors.1 The BELLINI study met its primary endpoint of progression-free survival (22.4 months vs. 11.5 months, hazard ratio [HR] 0.63, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.44-0.90) and demonstrated statistically significant improvements in overall response rate (82% vs. 68%) and very good partial response or better (59% vs. 36%) in the venetoclax arm compared to the control arm.

Patients should talk to their doctor immediately if they are receiving venetoclax for the treatment of multiple myeloma. For medical-related questions, please call: 1-800-633-9110.

The details of the FDA review of the Phase 3 BELLINI study included the following safety updates:

In a pre-planned analysis of the primary endpoint and ranked secondary endpoints, in the venetoclax arm 41 out of 194 (21.1%) deaths were observed, among which, 13 (6.7%) were treatment emergent (HR 2.03, 95% CI [1.042  3.945]). Of the 13 treatment-emergent deaths in the venetoclax arm, 8 were attributed by the investigator to an event of infection, and more than half were in the setting of refractory or progressive disease.

In the placebo arm 11 out of 97 (11.3%) deaths were observed, among which, 1 (1.0%) was treatment emergent (occurred less than 30 days after last dose of study drug).

The incidence of severe, grade 3-5 toxicity (86.5% vs. 87.5%, investigational vs. control arm) and serious adverse events (48.2% vs. 50.0%) was similar between the two arms. The incidence of infections (Infections and Infestation System Organ Class) was 79.8% in the investigational arm and 77.1% in the control arm. The incidence of pneumonia was 20.7% in the investigational arm and 15.6% in the placebo arm.

Serious adverse events of infection were reported in 28.0% of patients in the investigational arm and 27.1% in the control arm. Serious adverse events of pneumonia were reported in 14.0% of patients in the investigational arm and 12.5% of patients in the placebo arm. Frequent causes of death not related to disease progression identified in the venetoclax arm were: sepsis, pneumonia, and cardiac arrest.

Patients deriving benefit in all ongoing trials evaluating venetoclax in multiple myeloma can continue treatment, in agreement between the individual patient and physician.

About VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO (venetoclax)

VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO (venetoclax) is a first-in-class medicine that selectively binds and inhibits the B-cell lymphoma-2 (BCL-2) protein. In some blood cancers, BCL-2 prevents cancer cells from undergoing their natural death or self-destruction process, called apoptosis. VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO targets the BCL-2 protein and works to help restore the process of apoptosis.2

VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO is being developed by AbbVie and Roche. It is jointly commercialized by AbbVie and Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, in the U.S. and by AbbVie outside of the U.S. Together, the companies are committed to BCL-2 research and to studying venetoclax in clinical trials across several blood and other cancers.

VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO is approved in more than 50 countries, including the U.S. Venetoclax is not approved by any regulatory authority, in any country for the treatment of multiple myeloma. AbbVie, in collaboration with Roche, is currently working with regulatory agencies around the world to bring this medicine to additional eligible patients in need.

Uses and Important VENCLEXTA (venetoclax) U.S. Safety Information2

Use

VENCLEXTA is a prescription medicine used:

to treat adults with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), with or without 17p deletion, who have received at least one prior treatment.

in combination with azacitidine, or decitabine, or low-dose cytarabine to treat adults with newly-diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who:

are 75 years of age or older, or



have other medical conditions that prevent the use of standard chemotherapy.

It is not known if VENCLEXTA is safe and effective in children.

Important Safety Information

What is the most important information I should know about VENCLEXTA?

VENCLEXTA can cause serious side effects, including:

Tumor lysis syndrome (TLS). TLS is caused by the fast breakdown of cancer cells. TLS can cause kidney failure, the need for dialysis treatment, and may lead to death. Your healthcare provider will do tests to check your risk of getting TLS before you start taking VENCLEXTA. You will receive other medicines before starting and during treatment with VENCLEXTA to help reduce your risk of TLS. You may also need to receive intravenous (IV) fluids into your vein. Your healthcare provider will do blood tests to check for TLS when you first start treatment and during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

It is important to keep your appointments for blood tests. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any symptoms of TLS during treatment with VENCLEXTA, including fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, confusion, shortness of breath, seizures, irregular heartbeat, dark or cloudy urine, unusual tiredness, or muscle or joint pain.

Drink plenty of water when taking VENCLEXTA to help reduce your risk of getting TLS.

Drink 6 to 8 glasses (about 56 ounces total) of water each day, starting 2 days before your first dose, on the day of your first dose of VENCLEXTA, and each time your dose is increased.

Your healthcare provider may delay, decrease your dose, or stop treatment with VENCLEXTA if you have side effects.

Who should not take VENCLEXTA?

Certain medicines must not be taken when you first start taking VENCLEXTA and while your dose is being slowly increased because of the risk of increased TLS.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. VENCLEXTA and other medicines may affect each other, causing serious side effects.

including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. VENCLEXTA and other medicines may affect each other, causing serious side effects. Do not start new medicines during treatment with VENCLEXTA without first talking with your healthcare provider.

Before taking VENCLEXTA, tell your healthcare provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you:

have kidney problems.

have problems with your body salts or electrolytes, such as potassium, phosphorus, or calcium.

have a history of high uric acid levels in your blood or gout.

are scheduled to receive a vaccine. You should not receive a "live vaccine" before, during, or after treatment with VENCLEXTA, until your healthcare provider tells you it is okay. If you are not sure about the type of immunization or vaccine, ask your healthcare provider. These vaccines may not be safe or may not work as well during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. VENCLEXTA may harm your unborn baby. If you are able to become pregnant, your healthcare provider should do a pregnancy test before you start treatment with VENCLEXTA, and you should use effective birth control during treatment and for 30 days after the last dose of VENCLEXTA. If you become pregnant or think you are pregnant, tell your healthcare provider right away.

are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known if VENCLEXTA passes into your breast milk. Do not breastfeed during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

What should I avoid while taking VENCLEXTA?

You should not drink grapefruit juice or eat grapefruit, Seville oranges (often used in marmalades), or starfruit while you are taking VENCLEXTA. These products may increase the amount of VENCLEXTA in your blood.

What are the possible side effects of VENCLEXTA?

VENCLEXTA can cause serious side effects, including:

Low white blood cell counts (neutropenia). Low white blood cell counts are common with VENCLEXTA, but can also be severe. Your healthcare provider will do blood tests to check your blood counts during treatment with VENCLEXTA. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have a fever or any signs of an infection during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

The most common side effects of VENCLEXTA when used in combination with rituximab in people with CLL include low white blood cell counts, diarrhea, upper respiratory tract infection, cough, tiredness, and nausea.

The most common side effects of VENCLEXTA when used alone in people with CLL/SLL include low white blood cell counts; diarrhea; nausea; upper respiratory tract infection; low red blood cell counts; tiredness; low platelet counts; muscle and joint pain; swelling of your arms, legs, hands, and feet; and cough.

The most common side effects of VENCLEXTA in combination with azacitidine, or decitabine, or low-dose cytarabine in people with AML include low white blood cell counts; nausea; diarrhea; low platelet counts; constipation; fever with low white blood cell counts; low red blood cell counts, infection in blood; rash; dizziness; low blood pressure; fever; swelling of your arms, legs, hands, and feet; vomiting; tiredness; shortness of breath; bleeding; infection in lung; stomach (abdominal) pain; pain in muscles or back; cough; and sore throat.

VENCLEXTA may cause fertility problems in males. This may affect your ability to father a child. Talk to your healthcare provider if you have concerns about fertility.

These are not all the possible side effects of VENCLEXTA. For more information, ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit http://www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

If you cannot afford your medication, contact: www.pparx.org for assistance.

The full U.S. prescribing information, including Medication Guide, for VENCLEXTA can be found here. Globally, prescribing information varies; refer to the individual country product label for complete information.

Important VENCLYXTO (venetoclax) EU Safety Information3

VENCLYXTO (venetoclax) Indication

Venclyxto in combination with rituximab is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia(CLL) who have received at least one prior therapy.

Venclyxto monotherapy is indicated for the treatment of CLL:

in the presence of 17p deletion or TP53 mutation in adult patients who are unsuitable for or have failed a B-cell receptor pathway inhibitor, or

in the absence of 17p deletion or TP53 mutation in adult patients who have failed both chemo immunotherapy and a B-cell receptor pathway inhibitor.

Contraindications

Hypersensitivity to the active substance or to any of the excipients is contraindicated. Concomitant use of strong CYP3A inhibitors at initiation and during the dose-titration phase due to increased risk for tumor lysis syndrome (TLS). Concomitant use of preparations containing St. John's wort as VENCLYXTO efficacy may be reduced.

Special Warnings & Precautions for Use

Tumor lysis syndrome (TLS), including fatal events, has occurred in patients with previously treated CLL with high tumor burden when treated with VENCLYXTO. VENCLYXTO poses a risk for TLS in the initial 5-week dose-titration phase. Changes in electrolytes consistent with TLS that require prompt management can occur as early as 6 to 8 hours following the first dose of VENCLYXTO and at each dose increase. Patients should be assessed for risk and should receive appropriate prophylaxis, monitoring, and management for TLS.

Neutropenia (grade 3 or 4) has been reported and complete blood counts should be monitored throughout the treatment period. Serious infections including events of sepsis with fatal outcome have been reported. Supportive measures including antimicrobials for any signs of infection should be considered.

Live vaccines should not be administered during treatment or thereafter until B-cell recovery.

Drug Interactions

CYP3A inhibitors may increase VENCLYXTO plasma concentrations. At initiation and dose-titration phase: Strong CYP3A inhibitors are contraindicated due to increased risk for TLS and moderate CYP3A inhibitors should be avoided. If moderate CYP3A inhibitors must be used, physicians should refer to the SmPC for dose adjustment recommendations. At steady daily dose: If moderate or strong CYP3A inhibitors must be used, physicians should refer to the SmPC for dose adjustment recommendations.

Avoid concomitant use of P-gp and BCRP inhibitors at initiation and during the dose titration phase.

CYP3A4 inducers may decrease VENCLYXTO plasma concentrations. Avoid coadministration with strong or moderate CYP3A inducers. These agents may decrease venetoclax plasma concentrations.

Co-administration of bile acid sequestrants with VENCLYXTO is not recommended as this may reduce the absorption of VENCLYXTO.

Adverse Reactions

The most commonly occurring adverse reactions (>=20%) of any grade in patients receiving venetoclax in the combination study with rituximab were neutropenia, diarrhea, and upper respiratory tract infection. In the monotherapy studies, the most common adverse reactions were neutropenia/neutrophil count decreased, diarrhea, nausea, anemia, fatigue, and upper respiratory tract infection.

The most frequently occurring serious adverse reactions (>=2%) in patients receiving venetoclax in combination with rituximab or as monotherapy were pneumonia, febrile neutropenia and TLS.

Discontinuation due to adverse reactions occurred in 16% of patients receiving venetoclax plus rituximab and 9% receiving venetoclax monotherapy. Dosage adjustments due to adverse reactions occurred in 15% of patients receiving venetoclax plus rituximab and 2% receiving venetoclax monotherapy. Dose interruptions occurred in 71% of patients treated with the combination of venetoclax and rituximab.

Specific Populations

Patients with reduced renal function (CrCl <80 mL/min) may require more intensive prophylaxis and monitoring to reduce the risk of TLS. Safety in patients with severe renal impairment (CrCl <30 mL/min) or on dialysis has not been established, and a recommended dose for these patients has not been determined. VENCLYXTO should be administered to patients with severe renal impairment only if the benefit outweighs the risk and patients should be monitored closely for signs of toxicity due to increased risk of TLS.

VENCLYXTO may cause embryo-fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise nursing women to discontinue breastfeeding during treatment.

This is not a complete summary of all safety information. See VENCLYXTO full summary of product characteristics (SmPC) at www.ema.europa.eu. Globally, prescribing information varies; refer to the individual country product label for complete information.

About AbbVie in Oncology

At AbbVie, we strive to discover and develop medicines that deliver transformational improvements in cancer treatment by uniquely combining our deep knowledge in core areas of biology with cutting-edge technologies, and by working together with our partners  scientists, clinical experts, industry peers, advocates, and patients. We remain focused on delivering these transformative advances in treatment across some of the most debilitating and widespread cancers. We are also committed to exploring solutions to help patients obtain access to our cancer medicines. With the acquisitions of Pharmacyclics in 2015 and Stemcentrx in 2016, our research and development efforts, and through collaborations, AbbVie's oncology portfolio now consists of marketed medicines and a pipeline containing multiple new molecules being evaluated worldwide in more than 200 clinical trials and more than 20 different tumor types. For more information, please visit http://www.abbvie.com/oncology.

About AbbVie

AbbVie is a global, research and development-based biopharmaceutical company committed to developing innovative advanced therapies for some of the world's most complex and critical conditions. The company's mission is to use its expertise, dedicated people and unique approach to innovation to markedly improve treatments across four primary therapeutic areas: immunology, oncology, virology and neuroscience. In more than 75 countries, AbbVie employees are working every day to advance health solutions for people around the world. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram.

Forward-Looking Statements

Some statements in this news release are, or may be considered, forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project" and similar expressions, among others, generally identify forward-looking statements. AbbVie cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, challenges to intellectual property, competition from other products, difficulties inherent in the research and development process, adverse litigation or government action, and changes to laws and regulations applicable to our industry. Additional information about the economic, competitive, governmental, technological and other factors that may affect AbbVie's operations is set forth in Item 1A, "Risk Factors," of AbbVie's 2018 Annual Report on Form 10-K, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AbbVie undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law.

1 Clinicaltrials.gov (2018). NCT02755597: A study evaluating venetoclax (ABT-199) in multiple myeloma subjects who are receiving bortezomib and dexamethasone as standard therapy. Accessed March 2019.

2 VENCLEXTA (venetoclax) [Package Insert]. North Chicago, IL.: AbbVie Inc.

3 Summary of Product Characteristics for VENCLYXTO (venetoclax). Ludwigshafen, Germany: AbbVie Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG.

SOURCE AbbVie

Related Links

http://www.abbvie.com


"As purification, preparation and separation are essential steps in every analytical workflow, scientists across the life sciences spectrum are demanding improvements across each step and higher levels of confidence in any data produced," said Molly Flick, vice president and general manager, chromatography columns and consumables, Thermo Fisher Scientific. "Introducing our new workflow and column provides rapid access to high-quality data, revealing insights that will enable customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer."

Accelerated peptide mapping workflow

The Thermo Scientific SMART Automation workflow is a comprehensive, easy-to-use liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based analytical solution that overcomes the inefficiencies typically associated with protein characterization techniques by bringing together the existing Thermo Scientific SMART Digest Trypsin Kit with Magnetic Bulk Resin option with the Thermo Scientific KingFisher Duo Prime system with automated magnetic bead technology for flexible, fast and reproducible peptide mapping. The combination of these solutions into the SMART Automation workflow enables pharmaceutical, biopharma or drug manufacturing laboratories to achieve trypsin digestion in one hour with high levels of recovery, sensitivity and data quality in a format that is compatible with automation.

"Biotherapeutics must be analyzed to guarantee their safety and efficacy, but traditional peptide mapping techniques are often slow and time consuming," said Jonathan Bones, characterization and comparability laboratory, NIBRT  The National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training. "With the application of the SMART Automation workflow, biotherapeutics can now be prepared for analysis using a robust, reproducible approach that helps to accelerate mapping characterization and the confirmation of multiple proteins in a sample."

Fast, reproducible separation of drugs of abuse and steroids hormones

Thermo Scientific Accucore Biphenyl LC Column provides robust and reliable separation of isomeric compounds by pharmaceutical, clinical research and forensic laboratories, such as drugs of abuse and steroid isomers, and is designed to avoid the challenges of unresolved peaks, long run times and insufficient lot-to-lot consistency traditionally introduced by C18 columns. The Accucore Biphenyl LC column can support the optimization of critical parameters such as retention time stability and peak asymmetry while offering improved column life and compatibility with 100% aqueous conditions for the fast and sensitive separation of aromatic and moderately polar analytes from a variety of sample matrices.

For more information on Thermo Fisher's solutions showcased at Pittcon 2019, please visit http://thermofisher.mediaroom.com.

About Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with revenues of more than $24 billion and approximately 70,000 employees globally. Our mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We help our customers accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, improve patient diagnostics, deliver medicines to market and increase laboratory productivity. Through our premier brands  Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific and Unity Lab Services  we offer an unmatched combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and comprehensive services. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com.

Media Contact Information:

Laura Bright

Thermo Fisher Scientific

+1 562-335-8318

[email protected]

Ronan Muir

BioStrata

+44 (0) 1223 627133

[email protected]

SOURCE Thermo Fisher Scientific

Related Links

https://www.thermofisher.com


DUBLIN, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Dental Bone Graft Substitutes and Other Biomaterials Market - Australia - 2018-2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Dental implant training programs have improved the general knowledge of dental professionals in the Australian market. General practitioners (GP) are more informed on DBGS procedures and, as a result, consumer awareness for DBGS procedures is also improving. Dental professionals are now better trained to demonstrate what is critical to achieving a successful dental implant surgery. As a result, recommendations for DBGS procedures are growing, and more patients who stand to benefit from a bone grafting surgery are now opting to have one conducted. The full report suite on the Australian market for dental bone grafts and other biomaterials includes dental bone graft substitutes and dental barrier membranes.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Executive Summary

Australian Dental Bone Graft Substitutes And Other Biomaterials Market Overview

Competitive Analysis

Market Trends

Market Developments

Markets Included

Key Report Updates

Version History

Research Methodology

2 Disease Overview



3 Product Assessment

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Product Portfolios

3.3 Fda Recalls

3.4 Clinical Trials



4 Australian Dental Bone Graft Substitutes And Other Biomaterials Market Overview

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Currency Exchange Rate

4.3 Market Overview

4.4 Trend Analysis By Segment

4.5 Market Penetration

4.6 Drivers And Limiters

4.6.1 Market Drivers

4.6.2 Market Limiters

4.7 Competitive Market Share Analysis

4.8 Mergers And Acquisitions

4.9 Company Profiles

4.10 Swot Analysis



5 Dental Bone Graft Substitute Market

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Market Overview

5.3 Market Analysis And Forecast

5.3.1 Total Dental Bone Graft Substitute Market

5.3.2 Allograft Market

5.3.2.1 Mineralized Allograft Market

5.3.2.2 Demineralized Bone Matrix Market

5.3.3 Xenograft Market

5.3.4 Synthetic Market

5.4 Drivers And Limiters

5.4.1 Market Drivers

5.4.2 Market Limiters

5.5 Competitive Market Share Analysis



6 Dental Growth Factor Market

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Market Overview

6.3 Market Analysis And Forecast

6.3.1 Emdogain Market

6.3.2 Gem 21S Market

6.3.3 Infuse Market

6.3.4 Osteocel Market

6.4 Drivers And Limiters

6.4.1 Market Drivers

6.4.2 Market Limiters

6.5 Competitive Market Share Analysis



7 Dental Barrier Membrane Market

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Market Overview

7.3 Market Analysis And Forecast

7.3.1 Total Dental Barrier Membrane Market

7.3.2 Resorbable Dental Barrier Membrane Market

7.3.3 Non-Resorbable Dental Barrier Membrane Market

7.4 Market Penetration

7.5 Drivers And Limiters

7.5.1 Market Drivers

7.5.2 Market Limiters

7.6 Competitive Market Share Analysis



8 Abbreviations



9 Appendix: Company Press Releases



Companies Mentioned



Geistlich

BioHorizons

Zimmer Biomet

MIS Implants

Osteogenics

Straumann

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dg3vgm/australia_dental?w=5

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Axiom now uses its Refrigeration Battery platform to provide two major services - Energy Bill Management and Grid Services - to its customers simultaneously. The Refrigeration Battery platform enables real-time control of a grocery store's power consumption using an advanced cloud platform, predictive analytics, and a thermal energy storage retrofit.

The Refrigeration Battery platform actively manages the grocery store's power consumption by intelligently modulating its refrigeration systems. It intelligently charges by freezing tanks of salt water when power demand and utility rates are low - then it autonomously discharges the cooling to offset refrigeration consumption when electricity demand and prices are high, lowering the customer's utility bills.

During peak hours when demand for energy is high and the grid is stressed, grid operators in California and many other markets also provide direct financial incentives to reduce power consumption in order to balance the grid. Axiom's new Grid Services application enables its customers to tap into these direct financial incentives for the first time. Grid services participation requires no additional work from the customer, and revenue reports are accessible through the customer web portal.

"We are pleased to expand our use of innovative platforms like Axiom Exergy's to unlock new value streams and increase sustainability in our stores," said Tristam Coffin, Director of Sustainability & Facilities at Whole Foods Market. "After a previous successful installation, we are happy to continue partnering with Axiom to implement more cutting-edge power management strategies."

To make grid service participation possible, Axiom is working with energy technology company Leap, which serves as an aggregator of flexible loads to the California Demand Response Auction Mechanism (DRAM) market. Alongside Axiom, Leap works with other flexible loads like EV chargers, battery storage systems, and smart thermostats to form a virtual power plant. Utilities pay Leap's virtual power plant to reduce load on demand, and Leap then compensates its load providers for their participation. As a load provider, Axiom receives signals from Leap's Distributed Energy eXchange (DEX) API, bids flexible capacity into the market on an hourly basis based on available capacity, and delivers load reductions by modulating its customers' thermal systems accordingly.

"We are always looking for new, innovative partners who can provide flexible loads on our platform," said Thomas Folker, CEO of Leap. "Given that commercial and industrial customers spend 28% of their electricity on thermal services, we're thrilled to partner with Axiom who can unlock these loads and make them dispatchable for the first time."

The addition of grid services follows Axiom Exergy's Series A funding, which included new investments from Shell Ventures and Evergy Ventures (formerly GXP Investments). The news also follows multiple successful deployments of the Refrigeration Battery platform for major grocery retailers, each of which can autonomously reduce a store's peak load by up to 160 kW for 8 hours without any changes to staff behavior or daily operations.

"With so many grocery stores and cold storage facilities operating on razor-thin margins, we are thrilled to offer a service that creates a low-risk and logical revenue stream," said Amrit Robbins, CEO and co-founder of Axiom Exergy. "Sixty to seventy percent of a typical grocery store's electricity bill is driven by power, or WHEN energy is consumed. With this robust platform, we can leverage our customers' existing thermal systems to reduce their utility bills, unlock new grid services revenue streams, and protect against expensive food spoilage during power outages throughout their portfolio of buildings."

About Axiom Exergy

Axiom Exergy provides active power management services to portfolios of commercial and industrial buildings with large thermal loads. Its cloud-based platform uses predictive analytics and optional thermal energy storage capacity to intelligently "shape" a customer's load profile by modulating refrigeration, cooling, and/or heating systems. With unique expertise in thermal systems, power grid dynamics, building power management, machine learning, and computational thermal modeling, Axiom provides the first turnkey power management platform that generates meaningful value for customers with large thermal loads. Axiom Exergy also offers fully-financed power management "as-a-service" so that its customers can receive the benefits with no up-front cost. www.axiomexergy.com

About Leap

Leap provides a marketplace for grid services that allows every connected device to help balance the grid, regardless of capacity, availability or location, with one simple integration.

Leap is based in San Francisco and backed by well known energy investors. They were recently awarded a significant contract with the two largest utilities in California, enabling them to kickstart their marketplace. The company was founded by Thomas Folker and Remco van den Elzen, experienced entrepreneurs with track records in energy and tech.

CONTACT:

Technica Communications

Tyler Allen

225-205-8107

[email protected]

SOURCE Axiom Exergy

Related Links

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Seeking Entrepreneurs with Solutions and Services that Augment Banking Customer Experiences and Attract New Customers

CHICAGO, March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - BMO Harris Bank today announced that this year's BMO Harris / 1871 Innovation Program will open to startups nationwide, with applications due by April 19. This year's program is focused on mentoring startups that have created services or solutions for the financial sector, offer insights and advice to customers, or help identify customer needs.

Over the past two years, 10 startups have participated in the program and over 75 subject matter experts from across BMO Financial Group's (BMO) North American offices have shared their expertise with the selected startups. The mentorship program is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to bring their cutting-edge technology and ideas forward to see if they are a good fit for BMO's ongoing focus to deliver exceptional experiences through all channels, including digital.

For the first time, the BMO Harris / 1871 Innovation Program will be open to startups in all 50 U.S. states. The program is again supported by Green Bay, Wisc. - based entrepreneur support organization Kinnektor. This year's cohort will also have the opportunity to pitch venture capital investors for feedback, mentoring, continued connections, and/or funding.

"BMO is investing in technology to transform the banking experience for our customers," said Ernie Johannson, Group Head, U.S. Personal and Business Banking, BMO Harris Bank. "We are nimbly bringing to market products and services designed to fit customers' needs and making both self- and assisted-service banking easier and faster for customers and our team. With our partners at 1871, this mentorship program allows us to support the startups and technology that are also transforming the banking experience."

Startups from across the U.S. are welcome to apply by April 19 for one of the five or six placements. The program includes a three-month mentorship period with BMO subject matter experts, access to the space at 1871  including their community, recruiting, mentorship and workshop resources and the opportunity to pilot their technology with BMO. The winners will receive cash prizes following their Fall presentation to a panel of BMO judges who will review their solution or service.

"This program has been valuable for Chicago's startup and entrepreneur community, and we're thrilled once again to partner with BMO Harris  except this time, we're taking it nationwide," said 1871 CEO Betsy Ziegler. "Innovation occurs when startups and major corporations sit on the same side of the table. I'm confident that the resources, mentorships, and access to investors afforded through this partnership will provide founders all over the nation with the tools they need to thrive."

BMO is introducing new customer experience enhancements in 2019, which focus on efficient technology capabilities that include high security across all channels for customers' advantage. BMO puts customer experience at the center of every decision.

"This program provides BMO with an opportunity to develop further collaborative partnerships and proof of concepts that may benefit our customers and a platform for the bank to build community among emerging startups," said Ben Schack, Head, U.S. BMO Partners.

Applications to the BMO Harris / 1871 Innovation Program are due by April 19, 2019, at 11:59 p.m. CT. For more information on the program, eligibility and how to apply, visit: https://1871.com/bmo-harris-1871-innovation-program-2019/.

About BMO Harris Bank

BMO Harris Bank provides a broad range of personal banking products and solutions through nearly 600 branches and fee-free access to over 40,000 ATMs across the United States. BMO Harris Bank's commercial banking team provides a combination of sector expertise, local knowledge and mid-market focus throughout the United States. For more information about BMO Harris Bank, visit the company fact sheet. Accounts are subject to approval. BMO Harris Bank N.A. Member FDIC. BMO Harris Bank is part of BMO Financial Group, a highly diversified financial services provider with total assets of CDN$807 billion (as of Jan. 31, 2019), and more than 45,000 employees.

About 1871

1871 is a not-for-profit organization that exists to inspire, equip, and support founders to build great businesses. It is the #1 ranked university-affiliated business incubator in the world, and the home of ~500 high-growth technology startups and ~1,500 members supported by an entire ecosystem focused on accelerating their growth and creating jobs in the Chicagoland area. Located in a 140,000 square-foot space in The Merchandise Mart, 1871 has 500 current mentors available to its members, as well as more than 100 partner corporations, universities, education programs, accelerators, venture funds and other organizations that make its extensive matrix of resources possible. Visit www.1871.com for more information.

SOURCE BMO Harris Bank
Gordon Smith, Dean of BYU Law congratulated the following selected participants, whose names, submission titles and law schools are listed below:

"The Merits of Applause," Dorie Arthur , University of Richmond School of Law, Virginia

, School of Law, "The World Was Designed for People Like Me," Erin Bartenstein , University of Wisconsin Law School, Wisconsin

, Law School, "The Law: Comingling Life and Death," Lora Church , University of New Mexico School of Law, New Mexico

, School of Law, "Slow Down," Walter Garcia , Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Illinois

, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, "A Is for Animus," Sloane Henry , University of Florida , Levin College of Law, Florida

, , of Law, "After the Order," Vanessa Kubota , Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona

, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, "Me v. Astrophysics v. the Drug Wars v. Queen of England II," Erling Oster , University of Nevada Las Vegas , William S. Boyd School of Law

, , of Law "They Don't Wait for White Men's Chances," Katie Rane , Brigham Young University , J. Reuben Clark Law School , Utah

, , J. , "Catch and Release," Shaunna Sanders , Brigham Young University , J. Reuben Clark Law School , Utah

, , J. , "War Songs, Wounded Sounds," Carlisle Shelson , University of Illinois College of Law, Illinois

"Congratulations to these outstanding authors whose compelling stories illuminate the transcendent power of law in our daily lives," said Gordon Smith, Dean, BYU Law. "We believe initiatives like BYU LawStories can help further prepare students for their legal careers, and we are pleased to recognize these students in the inaugural BYU LawStories initiative."

Selected storytellers received an expenses-paid trip to Brigham Young University's campus March 1316 where they presented their nonfiction narrative stories tying together their life and law at BYU LawStories on the Mainstage, a public storytelling event. Before their presentations, participants received a half-day seminar on storytelling taught by Sam Payne, who hosts "The Apple Seed: Tellers and Stories"  a national radio show. At the conclusion of the seminar, participants recorded their stories for broadcast at state-of-the-art BYUradio studio.

About BYU Law School

Founded in 1971, the J. Reuben Clark Law School (BYU Law) has grown into one of the nation's leading law schools  recognized for innovative research and teaching in social change, transactional design, entrepreneurship, corpus linguistics, criminal justice, and religious freedom. The Law School has more than 6,000 alumni serving in communities around the world. In its most recent rankings, SoFi ranked BYU Law as the #1 best-value U.S. law school in their 2017 Return on Education Law School Ranking. For more information, visit http://www.law.byu.edu/ .

SOURCE BYU Law

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RALEIGH, N.C., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CAPTRUST Financial Advisors (CAPTRUST), one of the nation's leading independent wealth management and retirement plan advisory firms, today announced the addition of Watermark Asset Management and Rogers Financial to its growing family. These deals rounded out 2018 for CAPTRUST, a strong year of growth for the firm, and that momentum is expected to continue in 2019.

Led by Mark Miller, Watermark Asset Management is an independent investment advisor located outside of San Francisco. The firm, which handles individual client accounts with a high-touch approach, has $400 million in assets under management (AUM) and close to 400 clients. Miller joins CAPTRUST, along with four other financial advisors and three staff members.

Headquartered in Harrisonburg, VA, Rogers Financial is an institutional advisory firm that advises on more than $2.5 billion in assets for 35 retirement plans. Founded in 1994, the firm is run by Ken Rogers, who has worked in the retirement plan industry since 1987. Rogers joins CAPTRUST along with Financial Advisor Jenifer Nesselrodt. Additional terms of both deals are not being disclosed.

"We see both of these organizations as complements to our existing culture and growth trajectory," said Rick Shoff, managing director of the CAPTRUST Advisor Group. "Their cultures align perfectly with ours, and they bring top-notch talent and experience to our wealth management and institutional retirement advisory businesses."

During 2018, CAPTRUST announced the addition of four new wealth management firms to its growing advisor team: Knox Capital Group, Catawba Capital Management, Morton Wealth Management, and FCE Group. These acquisitions brought in more than $3 billion in AUM, bringing the total acquired assets for the year to $5.8 billion. Coupled with strong organic growth, CAPTRUST reported a 26% increase in total assets.

"CAPTRUST is well positioned to provide our advisors with best-in-class technology, investment management, and back office resources so they can focus on taking care of clients and winning new business," said J. Fielding Miller, CEO of CAPTRUST. "We create scale and efficiency for successful, like-minded firms who join us while they help us expand our client offering and culture nationwide."

CAPTRUST has completed more than 30 deals since 2006. The firm now has 174 advisors across 39 locations and advises on more than $300 billion in client assets across its wealth management, retirement plan, and endowment and foundation client base.

For media inquiries regarding this press announcement, or to speak to a CAPTRUST spokesperson, please contact: [email protected]. For information about joining the CAPTRUST team, visit: captrust.com/advisorgrowth.

About CAPTRUST Financial Advisors

CAPTRUST Financial Advisors is an independent, employee-owned firm that provides investment advisory services to retirement plan fiduciaries, endowments and foundations, and comprehensive wealth planning services to executives and high-net-worth individuals. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, the firm represents more than $300 billion in client assets from its offices located across the U.S.

To learn more, visit captrust.com.

SOURCE CAPTRUST Financial Advisors

Related Links

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DES MOINES, Iowa, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- International leaders in insurance and technology will headline the 2019 Global Insurance Symposium held in Des Moines, Iowa, on April 23-25. Speakers will bring exclusive insights on new ideas and challenges facing insurance companies, insurtech, startups, and industry professionals.

The 2019 Global Insurance Symposium keynote speakers include:

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley

President and CEO of LIMRA, LOMA, and LL Global David Levenson

International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) Secretary General Jonathan Dixon

U.S. Department of Commerce Deputy Assistant Secretary for Services James Sullivan

President and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) Susan Neely

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is Iowa's senior U.S. senator and serves as the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. Senator Grassley will discuss his work on the Committee on Finance, along with its impact on the financial services and the insurance industry. Additionally, Senator Grassley will make remarks on retirement security and relevant policies.

David Levenson, President and CEO of LIMRA, LOMA, and LL Global (the world's largest association of life insurance and financial services companies), will explore shifting market forces and their impact on the industry. He will offer his perspective on how leaders can best respond to these changes to achieve their business goals.

Jonathan Dixon, Secretary General for the International Association of Insurance Supervisors, will describe how the IAIS is set to deliver on its commitments to the post-financial crisis reform agenda later this year. Find out what's next for this global standard-setting body as it embarks on a new set of strategic priorities for 2020-24.

James Sullivan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Services for the U.S. Department of Commerce will discuss the state of global insurance markets and key trends. Sullivan will use real examples of trade and investment barriers impacting U.S. insurers including data localization, foreign equity caps, discriminatory treatment, and highlight the role of the International Trade Administration in addressing those challenges.

Susan Neely, President and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), the leading trade association representing 95% of industry assets will discuss how the life insurance industry is helping policymakers grapple with big societal challenges ranging from longevity and the retirement savings gap to privacy and responsible use of data. An Iowa native with over 30 years experience in policy and politics, Neely served as senior adviser to President George W Bush and Governor Terry Branstad. She will offer perspectives on the unique ways the industry can lead, share knowledge, and help shape policy that's good for consumers, communities, and the country.

"The Global Insurance Symposium is honored to host Senator Chuck Grassley as its closing Keynote," said Erik Askelsen, Global Insurance Symposium co-chair. "As a senior leader in Congress and the chairman of the committee on finance, we are excited to hear the Senator's perspective on national policy issues influencing the insurance industry."

"The great thing about the Global Insurance Symposium is its broad variety of topics. Each keynote and session addresses a particular issue affecting the insurance industry. There is something there for everyone," said Nathan Schelhaas, Global Insurance Symposium co-chair.

In addition to hearing these keynote speeches, Global Insurance Symposium attendees will have the opportunity to listen to sessions focused on a variety of topics, including:

The Global Food System: Are Insurers Keeping Up with Risk?

Advanced Analytics for Insurance Industries.

Fighting and Preventing Fraud in the Insurance Industry.

How the Political Landscape Affects Healthcare Legislation.

Can Big Data Save Long-Term Care?

The full schedule and session details are now available here.

Those wishing to attend the symposium must register online here.

The Global Insurance Symposium's 2019 platinum sponsor is Faegre Baker Daniels Law Firm.

Media Registration

Media are invited to attend the Global Insurance Symposium. To register, contact Sydney Kistenmacher at [email protected] or online here.

About the Global Insurance Symposium

Established in 2014, the Global Insurance Symposium is the premier symposium for insurance professionals and regulatory authorities to hear from the world's most renowned insurance experts and to interact with fellow insurance industry colleagues from around the world. The Global Insurance Symposium is presented by the Iowa Insurance Institute, the Federation of Iowa Insurers, Iowa Economic Development Authority, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, the Global Insurance Accelerator, Insurance Thought Leadership, and the Iowa Insurance Division. For more information, visit https://globalinsurancesymposium.com/.

Media Contact:

Jackie Cale

[email protected]

515-901-9470

SOURCE Global Insurance Symposium

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ALBANY, New York, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- As said in the report of TMR, the global intracranial stents market was valued at US$298.7 mn in 2017. It is projected to achieve US$705.5 mn by 2026 by stretching out at a CAGR of 10.4% for the duration of 2018 and 2026. Based on the product type, the intracranial stents market is categorized into self-expanding intracranial stents, and embolization coil support intracranial stents. Of these product types, the embolization coil support intracranial stents will lead the market in terms of size, in the forthcoming years. On the basis of disease indication, the global intracranial stents market is segmented into brain aneurysm and intracranial stenosis.

Geographically, North America held the largest share in the intracranial stents industry in 2017, followed by Europe. The intracranial stents market North America is primarily driven by an increase in the adoption of technologically advanced intracranial stents, along with presence of key established players in the region. According to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, it is estimated that almost 6 mn people in the U.S. have an aneurysm disorder. These rising numbers of patients require stenting, which in turn is expected to boost growth of the regional market.

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Technically Advanced Treatment is factoring the Global Intracranial stents Market

Increasing number of neurological disorders and traumatic accidents is propelling demand of the global intracranial stents market. Introduction of technically advanced intracranial stents to treat brain aneurysms is directly contributing to growth of the global intracranial stent market. The growing prevalence of high blood pressure is considered as a high-risk factor for cerebral aneurysm and stroke boosts the market. Growing aging population and technological advancements are some of the significant factors driving the global intracranial stents market.

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According to 2011 data of the U.N., almost 1 bn people, i.e., 1 in every 6 of the world's population suffers from neurological disorders. Major neurologic disorders are epilepsy, Alzheimer's strokes, multiple sclerosis, and migraines. Furthermore, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data of 2014, around 2.5 mn cases of traumatic accidents are registered in U.S. These traumatic accidents led to brain infection, meningitis, and aneurysm, which in turn are propelling the global intracranial stents market's growth.

Stringent Government Regulations, the Biggest Challenge for the Market

However, the intracranial stents market appears to be highly concentrated due to the presence of few vendors in the market. Moreover, the product is facing lesser acceptance among surgeons due to the risks of complications such as improper stent movement and bleeding in the brain after surgery. Furthermore, stringent government regulations regarding the use of intracranial stents to a specific age group of patients and severity of the condition of the patient, could delay entry of product in this market.

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The global intracranial stents market consists of a few global and local players. The market is considerably fragmented says Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a report. The global intracranial stents market share is evenly categorized among a few major companies. There are some noteworthy players heading the global intracranial stents market to deliver quality products to end-users. The most important enterprises operating in the global intracranial stents market are Stryker Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc., Terumo Corporation, and Cook Medical.

Browse Press Release - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/intracranial-stents-market.htm

This review is based on Transparency Market Research's report, titled "Intracranial Stents Market (Product Type - Self-expanding Stents, Balloon Expanding Stents, Stent-assisted Coil Embolization; Disease Indication - Intracranial Stenosis, Brain Aneurysm; End user - Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centers) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2018 - 2026."

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The company to invest $400,000 in Veoli, which is developing breakthrough technology for medical cannabis oil consumption in precise dosages  without requiring heating

Sanara Ventures, Philips and Teva's investment platform, is Merchavia's partner in this venture

The unique technology does not require that the cannabis oil will be heated up, thus fully keeping its original and unchanged medical attributes, while allowing the administering of medical cannabis according to a predefined dose, directly to the patient's lungs (maximum effectiveness)

RAMAT GAN, Israel, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Merchavia Holdings and Investments (TASE: MRHL), an Israeli investment company specializing in early stage life sciences companies, announces that it has signed an investment agreement for allocating shares of Veoli, which develops technology for consuming cannabis in precise dosages without requiring heating or burning.

Merchavia will invest $400,000 for an allocation of 20% of Veoli share capital.

Veoli, a medical device sector company, will make use of innovative nebulization technology in the framework of an exclusive licensing agreement in the cannabis sector as part of a spinoff of one of Sanara Ventures portfolio companies. The licensing agreement is subject to approval and the signing of other agreements with a third party. In addition to Merchavia's investment, Sanara Ventures will invest $250,000.

This development represents part of the implementation of Merchavia's business strategy to invest in breakthrough technologies with significant global potential and with high rates of growth.

Eli Arad, CEO Mechavia: "We continue to build Merchavia's portfolio of promising companies. The Veoli deal represents the fulfillment of the business strategy of investing in breakthrough technologies, which provide an answer to existing medical needs in huge markets. Veoli's unique technology allows for the consumption of medical cannabis oil through inhalation, in a precise dosage without needing to be heated up, evaporated or burnt. This capability represents a massive advantage in the medical market where the need today, whether through smoking, evaporating or eating is not precise and cannot be controlled. In addition, Veoli's technology keeps the cannabis oil's properties without creating substances that enter the body during consumption as a result of heating up or burning. The medical cannabis sector has earned supportive regulation, legalization and legitimacy within the medical community both from the regulators and the physicians, so that we believe that the company's solution can be integrated into the cannabis market, which is demonstrating a high rate of growth. Due to this, we believe that the investment in Veoli will lead to creation of significant value for Merchavia's shareholders."

The aim of the investment is to adapt the technology to the cannabis sector and prove its technological ability to convey cannabis oil to the lungs in an effective and safe way.

About Veoli

Veoli makes use of medical device technologies in the field of pulmonary medicine for developing a unique device for the cannabis sector. This device is based on innovative technology that will allow patients to consume medical cannabis by inhaling a precise dosage that does not need to be heated up, evaporated or burnt. Veoli's main technology is based on a unique nebulizer device which is able to convert liquid (in this case a formula including cannabis extract) into isolated micron-sized drops, which can be inhaled and absorbed into the patient's lungs and conveyed into the bloodstream in a precise and effective way. This technology is seeking to overcome the existing restrictions in the existing methods of consuming cannabis, which for the most part cannot be consumed in a precise dosage. In addition, researchers have recent presented data according to which burning the active substance in cannabis at high temperatures (so that it will be active) may release damaging bi-products. According to research carried out by Global Market Insights Inc., the medical cannabis market, the medical cannabis market is expected to grow to $55 billion annually by 2024[1]. Sales of cannabis concentrates to the cannabis market are expected to pass the $3 billion threshold by 2018[2]. Cannabis users currently consume cannabis mainly through smoking, evaporation or through food products with these methods having several main disadvantages  a dosage that is not precise and cannot be controlled, changing the attributes of the cannabis and creating bi-products during the heating up or burning (which enter the patient's body in addition to the medical substances) and the inability to control the amount of active substances. Competition in the market includes evaporation devices of various types most of which do not include options for precise dosages, evaporators that include options for dosages including Syqe Medical, Ryah, and Cannakorp Inc. These evaporators require heating up the cannabis and thus changing the attributes and making it difficult for a precise dosage. To the best of the company's knowledge, as of this date, there are no existing technologies allowing the release of cannabis oil directly into the lungs without heating it up and without sufficient precision to allow dosage.

About Merchavia

Merchavia Holdings and Investments (TASE: MRHL) is an Israeli company specializing in investments in early-stage and promising startups operating in leading high-demand areas of the life sciences, working together with leading medical institutes worldwide  including Cleveland Clinic in the US. The company's management offices are in Ramat Gan. https://www.merchavia.com

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/at-36-cagr-medical-marijuana-market-will-bypass-55-bn-by-2024-2018-09-21

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/julieweed/2018/09/20/vaping-propels-cannabis-concentrates-market-to-3-billion/#4624ad5c78a7

Contact:

Eli Arad

[email protected]

SOURCE Merchavia Holdings and Investments

Related Links

https://merchavia.com/


LOS ANGELES, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- National Asset Services (NAS), one of the Nation's leading commercial real estate companies, has promoted Roxanne Acree to the key position of Asset Transactions Manager at NAS and its affiliated company, NAS Investment Solutions.

Roxanne Acree | Asset Transactions Manager National Asset Services (NAS), one of the Nation's leading commercial real estate companies, has promoted Roxanne Acree to the key position of Asset Transactions Manager at NAS and its affiliated company, NAS Investment Solutions.

The Asset Transactions Manager is responsible for the ongoing management of real estate transaction activities for properties within the existing NAS Management Portfolio, as well as new property acquisitions through NAS Investment Solutions. In her new role, Ms. Acree is instrumental in coordinating all facets of the transaction process with federal, state and local agencies, brokers and vendors to ensure an accurate and timely completion.

"Roxanne has proven to be an invaluable asset in all facets of daily operations for NAS and NAS Investment Solutions," commented Karen E. Kennedy, President and Founder of NAS and NAS Investment Solutions. "The continued growth of NAS and the accelerated upward trajectory of NAS Investment Solutions has generated the need to have someone of Roxanne's caliber focused on the ever-critical transaction process."

Roxanne Acree joined National Asset Services in 2015, as a portfolio associate, responsible for asset management, property management and investor relations at selected properties within the company's nationwide management portfolio consisting of over 90 properties in 25 states

About National Asset Services (NAS) and NAS Investment Solutions (NASIS)

NAS is a commercial real estate management company that works with over 90 investment groups in properties of a nationwide portfolio valued at over $2 billion. The company manages a wide range of diverse commercial real estate: Office, medical office, multifamily, retail, student housing, assisted living and industrial flex properties. The company manages solely owned and multi-owner properties. NAS offers a wide range of asset management capabilities. They include: Property management; project management; lease administration; acquisition and disposition services; real estate strategy analysis; long-range business objectives; monitoring changing market conditions; investor relations; real estate and investor accounting; loan modification and workout solutions; exit and hold strategies; leasing & marketing; tenant retention plans; research studies; site selections; feasibility studies; insurance risk management; capital improvement planning and tracking; property tax appeal services and cost segregation services.

NAS Investment Solutions (NASIS) offers quality real estate investment opportunities that are 1031 Exchange eligible and qualify for self-directed IRAs. By leveraging the company's vast experience and expertise in investment property management, NASIS maintains a strong competitive advantage in the acquisition of commercial property for sponsorship of quality real estate investments. The company's latest acquisition is a Class-A, Industrial Office property in Springdale, Arkansas. The property's single tenant is on a long-term triple net lease and is a wholly owned subsidiary of a Fortune 100 Company.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, NAS operates regional offices in Orlando, FL and Austin, Texas.

For more information about NAS and NASIS, visit nasassets.com or nasinvestmentsolutions.com

JW Robison

310-795-8985

[email protected]

SOURCE NAS Investment Solutions

Related Links

http://nasinvestmentsolutions.com


FORT COLLINS, Colo., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, New West Genetics announced that its proprietary hemp varieties, NWG-ELITE and NWG-RELY, placed in the top of trials conducted last summer at the University of Kentucky (see https://bit.ly/2CmVOEq). The dual-purpose trial included seven other varieties from various suppliers in Canada and Europe. NWG-RELY, which was optimized for growing in the Southeastern US, won first place in both grain and straw yield, and NWG-ELITE, which is adapted for growing conditions in the Mountain West and Great Plains, won third place.

New West Genetics' Director of Breeding, Dr. Richard Fletcher comments, "Our commitment to breeding hemp varieties containing high value cannabinoid traits and high yielding agronomic traits is paying off. These traits bring increased value to farmers and hemp product makers, which in turn establishes a solid foundation for the emerging industry."

New West Genetics has used its deep understanding of the hemp genome and conventional breeding to create several varieties for rapidly growing markets of hemp pharmaceuticals, edibles, cosmetics, and feed. The Company, which launched its breeding effort in 2014, has been intently focused on cannabinoid content and the broad terpene spectrum, and has protected its products with US and international patent filings. New West Genetics has used GMO-free methods to create varieties with enhanced CBD and CBG, and a true THC zero trait, all the way through harvest and drying, trademarked as THC. The Company will grow its first high CBD / low THC variety at production scale this coming season, and will roll into production multiple new traits each successive season.

CEO and President Wendy Mosher said, "New West Genetics brings a leadership team with deep experience in the seed industry. With this expertise, we are rapidly transitioning from variety trials to full-scale production. I look forward to getting this season underway as we have a number of customers in the pipeline waiting for product. I also look forward to our ongoing contributions to our burgeoning industry. Building an industry takes time, as does creating stable, predictable genetics. Both are well worth the wait."

New West Genetics, a global leader in plant genetics, combines traditional breeding, modern genomics, and agronomic expertise to create premium, proprietary hemp seedspecifically bred for high-yield and sustainable, large-scale production.

[email protected]

SOURCE New West Genetics

Related Links

http://www.newwestgenetics.com/


BOSTON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- PhysicianOne Urgent Care and Wellforce today announced a partnership to provide coordinated urgent care to patients at PhysicianOne Urgent Care's four locations across Greater Boston. PhysicianOne Urgent Care will clinically affiliate with Wellforce members Tufts Medical Center and MelroseWakefield Healthcare.



PhysicianOne Urgent Care patients in Chestnut Hill, Waltham and Westwood will have access to the physicians of Tufts Medical Center for follow up appointments and specialty care. In the Medford location, patients will be connected to MelroseWakefield Healthcare, including the Lawrence Memorial Hospital campus and physicians in Medford and MelroseWakefield Hospital in Melrose; and to Tufts Medical Center should an academic center be needed. Tufts Medical Center and MelroseWakefield Healthcare patients will benefit from increased access to evening, night and weekend care at PhysicianOne Urgent Care's convenient locations. PhysicianOne Urgent Care's providers will share their urgent care visit notes with each patient's Tufts Medical Center or MelroseWakefield Healthcare primary care physician or specialist.

PhysicianOne Urgent Care's Massachusetts locations include:

1210 Boylston Street , Chestnut Hill, Mass.

, 1019 Trapelo Road, Waltham, Mass.

4110 Mystic Valley Parkway, Medford, Mass.

211 University Avenue, University Station, Westwood, Mass.

"This partnership supports our mission to provide care when and where our patients need it. We have been impressed with the way PhysicianOne Urgent Care works collaboratively with the physicians and hospitals of Yale New Haven Health in Connecticut and New York, and look forward to introducing a similar model here in Massachusetts," said Dr. Michael Wagner, interim Wellforce CEO.

"Inevitably, people get sick or injured after their primary care office has closed, but they don't require the advanced services of an emergency department," said Dr. Michael Apkon, Tufts Medical Center CEO. "Our relationship with PhysicianOne Urgent Care provides a seamless way to bridge this gap and ensure coordinated care, including communication with patients' primary care doctors and appropriate referrals to Tufts Medical Center's specialists."

"We founded PhysicianOne Urgent Care with the goal of providing convenient access to high-quality, evidence based medical care in a state-of-the-art facility that focuses on the patient," said Dr. Jeannie Kenkare, PhysicianOne Urgent Care co-founder and chief medical officer. "We've provided that great care for more than 10 years, and we look forward to working with the expansive network of providers within the Wellforce and Tufts Medical Center system to further expand access to patients across the Greater Boston area."

"We are happy to see access to urgent care services extended throughout the community with PhysicianOne Urgent Care working collaboratively with our local community hospitals and physician practices, expanding our geographic availability upon on our current Urgent Care locations in Medford and Reading," said Sue Sandberg, CEO, MelroseWakefield Healthcare.

The new partnership with PhysicianOne Urgent Care will expand Wellforce's urgent care offerings to a total of 10 in Eastern Massachusetts. Circle Health has four urgent care sites in the Merrimack Valley and MelroseWakefield Healthcare has urgent care sites in Medford and Reading

PhysicianOne Urgent Care accepts most commercial insurances and no appointment is needed. Patients can walk in for same day care or check in online seven days per week, including holidays. PhysicianOne Urgent Care locations are open weekdays 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and weekends and holidays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Please visit the Wellforce , Tufts Medical Center or PhysicianOne Urgent Care websites for more information.

About Wellforce

Wellforce is the health system formed by Tufts Medical Center and Circle Health in 2014. On January 1, 2017, MelroseWakefield Healthcare (formerly Hallmark Health) joined the system and in October 2018 Home Health Foundation became the fourth member. Wellforce provides hospitals and physicians with a better option for collaboration. Our system brings together the strengths of academic medicine and community care in a model that respects both equally. Our members are dedicated to providing patients with the highest-level of care when and where they want it. Wellforce includes more than 2,000 physicians, 12,000 employees, four community hospital campuses, one academic medical center, a children's hospital, home health and hospice services, and $2 billion in revenue.

About Tufts Medical Center

Tufts Medical Center is an exceptional, not-for-profit, 415 bed academic medical center that is home to both a full service hospital for adults and Floating Hospital for Children. Conveniently located in downtown Boston, we're the principle teaching hospital for Tufts University School of Medicine. We offer a level one trauma center with a rooftop helipad, are the largest heart transplant center in New England and our renowned research program ranks among the top 10 percent of hospitals to receiving NIH research funding. Our physician network of 1,800 New England Quality Care Alliance doctors represents our strong commitment to health in the community. Tufts Medical Center is a founding member of Wellforce.

About MelroseWakefield Healthcare

MelroseWakefield, formerly Hallmark Health, is a coordinated system of hospitals, physician practices and community-based services providing care for communities throughout north suburban Boston. Since its inception in 1997, Hallmark Health has been committed to its mission of providing quality care for its communities and achieving clinical excellence for the patients it serves. The system includes MelroseWakefield Hospital, Lawrence Memorial Hospital of Medford; Hallmark Health Medical Center, Reading; Tufts MC Community Care; Hallmark Health VNA and Hospice; and Lawrence Memorial/Regis College School of Nursing.

More at https://www.melrosewakefield.org

About PhysicianOne Urgent Care

PhysicianOne Urgent Care provides quality, easily-accessible, walk-in medical care for non-life-threatening illnesses and injuries. All 18 locations throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York are open 365 days per year; 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., weekdays, and 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., weekends and holidays. Experienced providers are on-site at all times. X-ray and lab services are available on-site. Insurance is accepted; self-pay options are also available. Parking is available at all locations.

Founded in 2008, PhysicianOne Urgent Care was the first in the region to be accredited and certified by the Urgent Care Association. In Connecticut and New York, PhysicianOne Urgent Care is proud to be an Affiliate of Yale New Haven Health.

For more information, including a list of services, locations, insurances accepted, career opportunities, to view wait times, and more, please visit https://physicianoneurgentcare.com/ .

SOURCE PhysicianOne Urgent Care; Wellforce
Selected for podium presentation: novel antibody candidates bind only the toxic species of alpha-synuclein offering potential advantages over less selective therapies in development

TORONTO and CAMBRIDGE, MA, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - ProMIS Neurosciences, Inc. (TSX: PMN) (OTCQB: ARFXF), a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of antibody therapeutics targeting toxic oligomers implicated in the development of neurodegenerative diseases, will present data for new antibody candidates that show stringent selectivity for the toxic forms of alpha-synuclein, considered a root cause of Parkinson's disease. ProMIS Neurosciences' Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Neil Cashman will discuss the preclinical data at a podium presentation on March 31 as well as co-moderate the March 30 panel discussion on disease mechanisms in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

In the March 31 presentation, "Targeting of Pathogenic Aggregated Alpha-Synuclein: Refining Antibody Epitopes by Design," Dr. Cashman will present data showing how the ProMIS novel drug discovery and development platform created antibodies that:

Selectively bind to toxic forms of alpha-synuclein while sparing healthy forms of alpha-synuclein that are critical for proper cell metabolism and communication





Block the neurotoxicity and the spread of the toxic forms of alpha-synuclein in vitro

"The ability to bind toxic forms and only the toxic forms of misfolded proteins in the brain has been a frustratingly elusive challenge in both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's drug development," explained Dr. Neil Cashman, a leading researcher in protein misfolding diseases. "This is largely because the toxic species of the affected proteins still share many similarities with the healthy forms of the protein, making them impossible to target with precision using traditional tools for developing antibodies. Using our unique discovery platform, we have been able to successfully address this problem. Our data show we can raise antibodies that bind the toxic species and only the toxic species of alpha-synuclein with exquisite precision while preserving the healthy forms of the protein."

Alpha-synuclein is an essential protein in the brain that can form toxic, misfolded clumps (aggregates), leading to progressive destruction of neurons in the brain. Two decades of research indicate that these toxic forms of alpha-synuclein are a root cause of Parkinson's disease and represent a major therapeutic target for drug development.

At the conference, Dr. Neil Cashman will also co-moderate the panel discussion, "Disease Mechanisms in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases," which will highlight efforts to deepen understanding of the detailed mechanisms involved in these diseases.

AD/PD 2019, the 14th International Conference on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases and related neurological disorders, takes place in Lisbon, Portugal from March 26-31, 2019. For more information or to register, please visit the AD/PD 2019 conference website.

About ProMIS Neurosciences

ProMIS Neurosciences, Inc. is a development stage biotechnology company focused on discovering and developing antibody therapeutics selectively targeting toxic oligomers implicated in the development and progression of neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimer's disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson's disease (PD). The Company's proprietary target discovery platform is based on the use of two complementary thermodynamic, computational discovery engines -ProMIS and Collective Coordinates  to predict novel targets known as Disease Specific Epitopes on the molecular surface of misfolded proteins. Using this unique precision approach, the Company is developing novel antibody therapeutics for AD, ALS and PD. ProMIS is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ProMIS is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol PMN, and on the OTCQB Venture Market under the symbol ARFXF.

Visit us at www.promisneurosciences.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn

The TSX has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This information release contains certain forward-looking information. Such information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by statements herein, and therefore these statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. All forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to it as well as other factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Due to risks and uncertainties, including the risks and uncertainties identified by the Company in its public securities filings, actual events may differ materially from current expectations. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE ProMIS Neurosciences Inc.

Related Links

http://www.amorfix.com/


BASKING RIDGE, N.J. and PHILADELPHIA, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Reproductive Medicine Associates, a national network of industry-leading infertility clinics, and Family Equality Council, the nation's premier advocacy organization for LGBTQ family building, have joined forces to expand opportunities for family building and to enhance patient experience for hopeful parents.

Two of RMA's legacy clinics, Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey (RMANJ) and Reproductive Medicine Associates of Philadelphia, both have well-established programs for the LGBTQ community, with specialized departments and staff. Over the last year, the RMA network has expanded into additional markets, including Orlando, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Allentown, Pa.

As a National Corporate Sponsor, Reproductive Medicine Associates (RMA) will leverage Family Equality Council's training platform, Open Door, to enhance LGBTQ competency for patient-facing staff across its network of U.S. clinics, elevating the already high standard of care members of the LGBTQ community can expect from all RMA providers.

"Since our inception in 1999, RMA has been guided by a singular and noble mission: to help patients complete their families," said Dan Kaser, MD, FACOG, an RMANJ physician who oversees the organization's LGBTQ programs. "Most members of the LGBTQ community are not contending with an infertility diagnosis, but nevertheless need some assistance in fulfilling their dreams to become parents and we are proud to help them on their path."

"Over the last 25 years I have had the privilege of helping members of Philadelphia's and the Delaware Valley's LGBTQ community build their families. Medically and scientifically, much has changed over this time, but the fundamental premise remains the same: provide everyone with the highest quality care and the utmost compassion," said Jackie Gutmann, MD, FACOG, a physician with RMA of Philadelphia who leads the clinic's LGBTQ programs.

"As the only national LGBTQ organization focused specifically on supporting LGBTQ families and those who seek to form them, Family Equality Council is uniquely positioned to assist RMA in its care of LGBTQ patients," said The Rev. Stan J. Sloan, CEO of Family Equality Council. "We are grateful for RMA's vision, commitment to and support of LGBTQ patients present and future, and thrilled to be working with a team so dedicated to inclusion and compassionate care."

Over the next few months, patient-facing staff in RMA clinics across the country will begin the Family Equality Council's competency coursework training, enhancing RMA employees' ability to deliver an inclusive patient experience that is sensitive to LGBTQ patients. These courses include LGBTQ 101, Trans Fertility Considerations, and Building an Inclusive Practice.

In addition, RMA staff and patients will have access to Family Equality Council's wide array of family formation educational tools, including workbooks, fact sheets and toolkits. Topics include Paths to Pregnancy, Family Building for Transgender Men and Women, and Parenting Options for the LGBTQ Community.

Family Equality Council's groundbreaking LGBTQ Family Building Survey reveals significant growth in the number of people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer who are interested in becoming parents. It is imperative that the medical community, and in particular fertility physicians, be fully prepared to meet the unique needs of this community with the same compassion and sensitivity afforded members of the heterosexual community. RMA is proud to partner with Family Equality Council as it pursues this agenda.

About Reproductive Medicine Associates (RMA)

Reproductive Medicine Associates (RMA) is the U.S.-based network of infertility clinics that are part of IVI-RMA Global. Founded in 2017 when the Valencian Infertility Institute (IVI) merged with Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey (RMANJ), IVI-RMA Global comprises the largest group dedicated to assisted reproduction in the world.

IVI-RMA Global currently has more than 70 centers in 11 countries with clinics in the United States, Spain, Portugal, Italy, United Kingdom, Panama, Argentina, Chile, Brazil and the UAE.

Self-funded research, a fundamental pillar of the organization, supports the group's high success rates around the world. To learn more about the research being conducted at IVI-RMA Global, visit www.ivi-rmainnovation.com.

Media Contact:

Melissa Drake

U.S. Marketing & Communications Director

RMA

973-871-1266

[email protected]

SOURCE Reproductive Medicine Associates

Related Links

http://www.ivi-rmainnovation.com


VANCOUVER, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - Rubicon Organics Inc. (CSE:ROMJ) (OTCQX:ROMJF) ("Rubicon Organics" or the "Company") a super-premium, organic cannabis producer with operations in Canada, Washington and California, is proud to announce their membership in the Global Cannabis Partnership (the "GCP").

The Global Cannabis Partnership is a collaboration of leaders in the government-sanctioned adult-use recreational cannabis industry. With representation from government, private-sector and affiliate organizations, the GCP works to create international standards for the safe and responsible production, distribution and consumption of legal recreational cannabis.

"Rubicon Organics is fully committed to supporting our communities, protecting and preserving our natural resources, and ensuring that cannabis plays a positive role in society" said Jesse McConnell, CEO and Co-Founder. "Joining the GCP further strengthens this commitment, enabling us to work with likeminded partners to develop a governance framework which promotes the safe and responsible production, distribution and consumption of legal cannabis."

A full list of Founding Members and Members can be found at globalcannabispartnership.com

ABOUT RUBICON ORGANICS INC.

Rubicon Organics Inc. ("Rubicon Organics" or the "Company) (CSE:ROMJ) (OTCQX:ROMJF) is a Licensed Producer focused on building super-premium organic cannabis brands* with operations in Canada, Washington and California. Rubicon Organics' flagship Canadian facility is a 125,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art hybrid greenhouse with industry leading LED lighting and is located on a 20-acre property in Delta, British Columbia. The Company's Washington facility is a newly constructed, 40,000 sq. ft. hybrid greenhouse and extraction facility. Rubicon Organics has commenced production in both facilities with a combined Phase I capacity of 15,500 kg per year, including 4,500 kg leased to a Washington State licensed operator applying Rubicon Organics' proprietary organic cultivation methods*. The Company also owns two award-winning U.S. cannabis brands: 1964 Supply Co.TM in California and Doctor & Crook Co.TM in Washington.

* Organic certification pending from FVOPA

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements that are not historical facts, including without limitation, statements regarding future estimates, plans, programs, forecasts, projections, objectives, assumptions, expectations or beliefs of future performance, statements regarding Rubicon Organics' plan to cultivate, timing and estimates of production for its facilities, are "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans" or "is expected", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results are "to begin", "ramping up to", "imminent", "set to" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, events or developments to be materially different from any future results, events or developments expressed or implied by such forward looking statements.

The forward looking information in this press release is based upon certain assumptions that management considers reasonable in the circumstances, including that its capital needs will be as currently projected, that Rubicon Organics will be able to successfully obtain all necessary permits and approvals to conduct its business as currently proposed to be conducted, that Rubicon Organics will not be prosecuted in the U.S. for its involvement in the cannabis industry.

Risks and uncertainties associated with the forward looking information in this press release include, among others, dependence on obtaining and maintaining regulatory approvals, including acquiring and renewing state, local or other licenses and any inability to obtain all necessary governmental approvals licenses and permits to complete construction of its proposed facilities in a timely manner; engaging in activities which currently are illegal under U.S. federal law and the uncertainty of existing protection from U.S. federal or other prosecution; regulatory or political change such as changes in applicable laws and regulations, including U.S. state-law legalization, particularly in California, due to inconsistent public opinion, perception of the medical-use and adult-use marijuana industry, bureaucratic delays or inefficiencies or any other reasons; any other factors or developments which may hinder market growth; Rubicon Organics' limited operating history and lack of historical profits; reliance on management; and the effect of capital market conditions and other factors on capital availability; competition, including from more established or better financed competitors; and the need to secure and maintain corporate alliances and partnerships, including with customers and suppliers. These factors should be considered carefully and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Although Rubicon Organics has attempted to identify important risk factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other risk factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements. Rubicon Organics assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, even if new information becomes available as a result of future events, new information or for any other reason except as required by law.

SOURCE Rubicon Organics
MIAMI and WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. and FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The South Florida Business Council (SFBC) today released its Top Five Watch List of issues that are critical to the region's success. The Watch List gives an overview of each priority and notes key opportunities in the year ahead that will determine how these issues may unfold in South Florida.

"The SFBC intends to harness the power of its members to showcase the value of taking a regional approach to our most pressing needs," said Christine Barney, Chair of the SFBC and CEO of rbb Communications. "We must keep a spotlight on the issues of the day, speak with one voice and ensure our legislators and local leaders take aggressive action to deliver solutions."

The SFBC's Top Five Watch List includes:

Mobility/Transportation: Increasing commute times have a direct effect on the local economy through decreased worker productivity, delays in shipping and deliveries and dissuading outside companies from moving into our community. The push is on for laser-focused plans, funding solutions, transit-oriented development (TOD) and partnerships with new technology companies (ride sharing, dock-less bikes, scooters). Education Quality: Education is the building block of economic development. Companies move here and stay here because there is strong talent to hire and because their workforce feels there is quality K-12 education for their children. This year will see intense scrutiny on school funding, school choice and student safety. Water Management: Sea level rise, flooding, water management, beach health -- the list of issues surrounding this critical resource is long. Political will is stronger than ever to avoid repeating the negative impacts of red tides and algae blooms that plagued parts of the state last year. That means more debates on funding and how to meet the needs of the various "customers". Affordable Housing: As the nation's 12th most expensive metro area, South Florida needs to incentivize developers to build and maintain homes and apartments that workers can reasonably afford. That means protecting affordable housing program funds such as the Sadowski Trust Fund, State Housing Initiative Partnership (SHIP) and State Apartment Incentive Loan (SAIL) and encouraging transit-oriented development. Reducing the need for workers to move further away from job centers and on to already highly congested roads will also help mobility. Tourism Growth: Tourism adds revenue not only directly to those in the hospitality industry but to retail, arts & culture and more. In a state that relies on sales/fuel tax vs. income tax, tourism is a key driver of our economic health. Whether it's Visit Florida funding, ensuring our natural resources remain attractive, or regulating the new sharing economy, critical decisions being made this year will impact our tourism viability in the future.

"While there are clearly many other issues on our radar affecting the success of the region's business community, such as healthcare and workforce training, these five rose to the top because of their critical regional economic impact and likelihood of turning point legislation/activity this year," noted Barney.

The Top Five Watch list can be found on the news section of www.soflobusinesscouncil.com .

ABOUT SFBC

The SFBC is a partnership between the Chamber of the Palm Beaches, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce and Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. Its mission is to assist with South Florida's regional issues and use its resources to create solutions. The Chambers expect to use the power that comes from speaking with one voice to drive South Florida forward and make it a better place to live, work and enjoy. To learn more, visit www.soflobusinesscouncil.com .

Media contact: George Protopapadakis, 305-448-5839, [email protected]

SOURCE South Florida Business Council

Related Links

http://www.soflobusinesscouncil.com


MIAMI, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In keeping with its mission to provide Canadians with "the best value in air travel with a focus on safety and reliability", startup ultra-low cost carrier Canada Jetlines has selected the web-based TRAX eMRO software as its ERP maintenance solution. "TRAX's products provide the means to manage and maintain all information generated and allows for complete information flow with leading-edge tools for customization that will enable Jetlines to maintain an efficient process and tight cost control as a result," said Phillip Larsen, Vice President of Maintenance.

Jetlines is set to fly across Canada and offer non-stop service from Canada to the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. The carrier plans to fly some 27 routes, including to unserved or underserved markets by other airlines, such as Hamilton, Ontario to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Delivery of two Airbus A320s are expected by early 2nd quarter of 2019, with long term plans to expand to 24 aircraft. The sister aircraft have a high-density seating configuration of a single class seating capacity of 180 seats. An Airbus A320 fleet was selected based on its fuel-efficient narrow-body framework, making it an ideal choice for Jetlines to start operations with.

The TRAX eMRO software is a web-based, device-agnostic ERP product that will keep its users connected from where ever they work. It is a complete system with complete information flow. The numerous system modules cover technical, maintenance, materials, financial, and quality management to help reduce downtime, provide access to real-time data, and ensure full regulatory compliance.

About TRAX

TRAX provides comprehensive software solutions designed to cater to all aspects of aircraft maintenance management. With over 170 customers, TRAX is the best-of-breed global provider of aviation maintenance mobile and cloud products in the market today. TRAX products support digital signatures, paperless Workpacks and manuals, RFID-capability for logistics, Biometric security, offline capability for mobile apps, web-based applications and the ability for users to work anywhere with easy access to real-time information.

SOURCE TRAX
The ASEAN SUPER 8 event is hosted by Ministry of Works, Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) Malaysia, and Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) supported by Royal Malaysia Police, Fire and Rescue Department Malaysia, Malaysia Civil Defence Force. Endorsed by Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE) and a total of 73 stakeholders from the industry.

Various free seminars from large industry players such as PETRONAS, CIDB, British Standards Institution and many more were held right after the opening ceremony. More several conferences and seminars of various topics will be held in the following remaining two days of the exhibition. Conglomerate namely Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), The Institution of Engineers, Malaysia (IEM), NBS, United Kingdom, Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) and many more will touch on numerous topics on vast pressing issues such as sustainability, construction, ISO, managing human resource and future trend which are not to be missed.

ASEAN Super 8 is the leading regional exhibition for the construction, engineering, energy, heavy machinery & equipment and security industry. The leading event comprises of eight power-packed industry leading events including ASEAN M&E, TENAGA Expo, ASEAN SOLAR & ECOLIGHT, ASEAN LIFT Expo, IFSEC SEA, HEAVY MAC and ECOBUILD SEA.

"With climate change happening at a rapid rate today, we need smart infrastructure that brings economic benefits alongside environmental care. CIDB worked in collaboration with industry players to develop Sustainable INFRASTAR for the industry. Various technical committees and taskforces had been established and coordinated by CIDB leading up to the launch. I urge all industry players and relevant government agencies, be it at the federal, state or regional level, to come forward to have their infrastructure projects assessed by CIDB using the Sustainable INFRASTAR," said Tuan Baru Bian, the Minister of Works.

ASEAN SUPER 8 is expected to attract over 20,000 trade visitors, over 500 participating companies from 18 countries, 4 country group pavilions, 300 group visits from corporate, government bodies, associations and universities.

ASEAN SUPER 8 will feature more than 200 sessions to conduct Business Matching by MATRADE and CIDB Trade Visitors.

General Tan Sri Dato Seri Panglima Mohd Azumi (RTD) said, "ASEAN SUPER 8 will be one of UBM Malaysia's leading events showcasing the latest developments across the entire spectrum of construction in under one venue"

ASEAN SUPER 8 is being held at Malaysia International Trade & Exhibition Centre (MITEC). MITEC is Malaysia's largest and most innovative exhibition centre with over 13.1 acres of flexible function or exhibition space and fully equipped state-of-the-art facilities.

SOURCE UBM Asia (Malaysia)
DUBLIN, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Research Report on Wine Import in China, 2019-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

According to this market survey, there is neither well-developed wine culture nor well-known wine brands on the Chinese market.

Most Chinese consumers find it difficult to identify the types and grades of wines. Therefore, low-end imported wines prevail in China. Some inferior wines are even sold at high prices by the advantage of marketing techniques.

China's wine market will become standardized as consumers grow more mature and the market is better regulated. But it may take 5 to 10 years or longer. It is important for wine importers to select brands and products suitable for the Chinese market and spread consumption concept in a way acceptable to Chinese consumers.

Market Summary

With the improvement of living standards and the change of lifestyle, the demand for wine in China keeps increasing. China is the fifth largest wine consumer in the world. The fixed wine consumer groups in China are no longer limited to the middle class and the well-heeled.

An increasing number of young people are starting to drink wine, and some middle-aged and elderly people are becoming wine drinkers for health reasons. At official banquets and business dinners, the consumption of Chinese spirits far exceeds that of wine but the gap in market share is narrowing.

The development of e-commerce boosts wine sales in China - and consumer groups vary greatly in preference and purchasing power. The output volume and quality of domestic wine can hardly be improved, and wine making costs more in China than in other countries, which pushes up the import volume of wine in China.

Many Chinese wine producers repackage imported bulk wine to produce a wine of their own brands. As the Chinese government has no special restrictions on wine import, the number of wine importers in China stays above 5,000 in recent years.

According to this analysis, the import volume of wine in China reached 729.68 million liters in 2018. It decreased as compared to 2017 but increased by about 80% as compared to 2013.

About 20% of China's wine imports are bulk wine in containers holding more than 10L, and the rest are bottled wine in containers holding 10L or less. In 2018, the import value of wine in China reached USD 3.91 billion, increasing by about 6.5% as compared to 2017.

France was the largest source of China's wine imports. The value of China's wine imports from France was about USD 1 billion in 2018, decreasing by nearly 9% YOY.

Australia was the second largest source of China's wine imports. The value of China's wine imports from Australia was about USD 700 million in 2018, decreasing by 3.5% YOY.

Chile was the third largest source of China's wine imports. The value of China's wine imports from Chile was about USD 340 million, increasing by 4.5% YOY.

In 2018, the average import price of wine in China was lower than 6 USD/liter, which shows that China's wine imports are mostly medium-to-low end products.



Key Topics



Economic and policy environments of wine import in China

Wine import in China from 2013 to 2018

from 2013 to 2018 Major sources of China's wine imports

wine imports Product segments and prices of wine imports

Major wine importers in China

Forecasts on wine import in China from 2019 to 2023

List of Topics Covered



1 Overview of the Wine Industry

1.1 Definition of Wine

1.2 Classification of Wine

1.3 Industry Chain of Wine



2 Development Environment of China's Wine Industry

2.1 Economic Environment

2.2 Policy Environment

2.3 Social Environment



3 Analysis on Supply of and Demand for Wine in China

3.1 Analysis on Supply of Wine in China

3.2 Analysis of Demand for Wine in China

3.2.1 Wine Consumer Groups in China

3.2.2 Consumption Volume of Wine in China



4 Wine Import in China, 2013-2018

4.1 Analysis on Scale of Wine Import in China

4.1.1 Import Volume of Wine in China

4.1.2 Import Value of Wine in China

4.2 Analysis of Average Import Price of Wine in China

4.3 Analysis of China's Reliance on Wine Imports



5 Analysis of China's Wine Imports by Type

5.1 Analysis of Bottled Wine Import in China

5.1.1 Sources of China's Bottled Wine Imports

5.1.2 Import Volume of Bottled Wine in China

5.1.3 Import Value of Bottled Wine in China

5.1.4 Average Import Price of Bottled Wine in China

5.2 Analysis of Bulk Wine Import in China

5.2.1 Sources of China's Bulk Wine Imports

5.2.2 Import Volume of Bulk Wine in China

5.2.3 Import Value of Bulk Wine in China

5.2.4 Average Import Price of Bulk Wine in China

5.3 Analysis of Sparkling Wine Import in China

5.3.1 Sources of China's Sparkling Wine Imports

5.3.2 Import Volume of Sparkling Wine in China

5.3.3 Import Value of Sparkling Wine in China

5.3.4 Average Import Price of Sparkling Wine in China



6 Major Wine Importers in China

6.1.1 Enterprise Profiles

6.1.2 Analysis on Wine Business



7 Prospect of Wine Import in China, 2019-2023

7.1 Factors Influencing Wine Import in China

7.1.1 Major Driving Forces and Market Opportunities

7.1.2 Threats and Challenges

7.2 Forecast on Import Volume of Wine in China

7.2.1 Forecast on Total Import Volume

7.2.2 Forecast on Structure of Wine Imports

7.3 Forecast on Demand for Wine Imports in China



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/fftr5j/the_market_for?w=5

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

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Available starting on March 19 at the Anaheim location, this personal pie is loaded with more than TWO HEADS of garlic, including both minced garlic AND roasted cloves. The flavor profile is rounded out with spicy tomato sauce, caramelized onion and mozzarella. For those who can't handle the funk, you can order the pizza 'Regular Stinky' to omit the additional garlic cloves on top.

"Anaheim's culinary scene continues to serve up Instagram-worthy experiences, and creating this one-of-a-kind pizza hotel package with our partners presents guests with ample opportunity to get that double tap," says Charles Harris, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Visit Anaheim.

The FOODBEAST pizza is part of a greater hotel package available at The Anaheim Hotel, which includes a one-night stay at the hotel, one 'Stinky FOODBEAST' Pizza, one pizza of the diner's choice, and two root beer floats, starting at $149. If you want to enjoy it like a FOODBEAST, order your meal to be delivered poolside, as The Anaheim Hotel has the only Olympic-sized swimming pool in Anaheim.

"When I was first approached by FOODBEAST and Visit Anaheim about the 'Stinky Pizza,' I had serious doubts when I saw it on paper," said Dara Maleki, founder & CEO of The Pizza Press. "But the unprecedented amount of garlic on this pizza will surprisingly have you coming back for more."

The Pizza Press also worked with beer connoisseurs Beer Savage to pair the pie with Beach Grease Beer Company's 'Surf Zombie Hazy IPA,' which lends its flavor nicely to the pie and helps mitigate some of the heat from the garlic. This beer will be available on tap for a limited time at the Anaheim location of The Pizza Press.

Book The Anaheim Hotel pizza hotel package here .

Follow @foodbeast, @VisitAnaheim , @theanaheimhotel , and @thepizzapressanaheim on Instagram. You can view additional photos and video clips here .

About FOODBEAST

FOODBEAST Inc. is an independently-owned national publication, publisher agency, influencer network, and experiential activation company based in Santa Ana, California. Inspired by the lack of a millennial-driven voice in the food & beverage media landscape, FOODBEAST was founded in 2008 to report on food in an unpretentious way. FOODBEAST reaches over 50mm+ monthly users across FOODBEAST.com & affiliated social platforms, and has garnered widespread attention for its national campaigns with Taco Bell, Coca-Cola, Hormel, Kellogg's and more.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Analiese Trimber - FOODBEAST

[email protected]

949-344-2633

SOURCE FOODBEAST

Related Links

https://www.foodbeast.com


Together, Thermo Scientific BeerCraft software and GENESYS UV-Vis Spectrophotometers are an affordable, easy-to-use system that provides the American Society of Brewing chemist-quality testing methods for more than 20 beer attributes, including color, bitterness, protein, sugar, carbohydrate, polyphenol levels and more. Unlike other solutions, BeerCraft software is configurable for use with reagents and chemistries from many vendors.

"Batch-to-batch consistency is critically important to the craft brewing industry, so we've developed quality assurance and quality control analytical capabilities for the craft brewing process," said Karnel Walker, director of UV-Vis and NMR spectroscopy products at Thermo Fisher Scientific. "Our new BeerCraft software seamlessly integrates a library of beer-specific testing methods with the highly configurable and user-friendly GENESYS UV-Vis spectrophotometers, reducing the dependency on sensory testing methods such as visual, taste or smell inspection."

Launched in early 2018, the GENESY UV-Vis Spectrophotometer is an affordable and easy-to-use solution for the quality assurance/quality control market, featuring a 7-inch high-resolution touchscreen interface, versatile onboard software and Wi-Fi capabilities. The BeerCraft specialized software extends the GENESYS product offering to users specifically in the food and beverage industry.

Thermo Fisher is exhibiting this new offering at Pittcon in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 17-21, 2019, and again at the Craft Brewers Conference in Denver, Colorado, April 8-11, 2019.

About Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with revenues of more than $24 billion and approximately 70,000 employees globally. Our mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We help our customers accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, improve patient diagnostics, deliver medicines to market and increase laboratory productivity. Through our premier brands  Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific and Unity Lab Services  we offer an unmatched combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and comprehensive services. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com.

Media Contact Information:

Kathy Gill

Thermo Fisher Scientific

(971) 294-9262

[email protected]



SOURCE Thermo Fisher Scientific

Related Links

http://www.thermofisher.com


ATLANTA, March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, American Trucking Associations' Technology & Maintenance Council opened the doors on a sold out exhibit hall as part of TMC's 2019 Annual Meeting & Transportation Technology Exhibition.

"We are pleased to welcome more than 4,500 attendees to this exhibit hall and annual meeting," said Robert Braswell, TMC executive director. "TMC's Annual Meeting & Transportation Technology Exhibition experienced strong growth in 2019, and remains a premier destination for manufacturers and suppliers. Our meeting is one of the few times that key industry decision makers and technology providers can come together and demonstrate the latest advances in trucking and it remains an event that ATA and TMC's members should take pride in."

This year's exhibit features approximately 400 vendors spanning nearly 500,000 square feet. Featuring technology and equipment touching aspects of the trucking industry, this year's exhibition is the largest tradeshow in the Council's history. The grand opening of the Exhibit Hall was sponsored by ATA Featured Product provider Spireon Inc.

"For more than six decades, TMC has worked to raise professional and technical standards for the trucking industry," said TMC General Chairman Jeff Harris, vice president of maintenance at USA Truck Inc. "This annual meeting is an important part of that  not just to see what is available in the field on the exhibit hall floor  but to have the opportunity to discuss and learn about the latest advances in truck technology in our myriad of task forces and educational sessions."

TMC's 2019 Annual Meeting & Transportation Technology Exhibition, presented by premier sponsor the Allied Committee for the Trucking Industry, ACT1, is open through Thursday, and registration is open at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.

TMC is America's premier technical society for truck equipment technology and maintenance professionals. TMC features a diverse membership of equipment managers, service-dealers, owner-operators, industry suppliers and manufacturers, educators, academia and others that support the trucking industry. TMC member fleets represent the broad range of industry vocations, including truckload, less-than-truckload, municipal, private, on/off-highway, construction and other operations. Find out more about TMC online at http://tmc.trucking.org.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward

SOURCE American Trucking Associations

Related Links

http://www.trucking.org


BROOKLYN, N.Y., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- United Wind, the nation's leading distributed wind energy developer, announced today it has signed an agreement with Smithfield Foods, Inc., a global food company and the world's largest hog producer and pork processor, to power dozens of Smithfield hog farms in Colorado with on-site wind energy. The partnership will provide Smithfield with long-term, low-cost renewable energy for its agricultural operations and contribute to its industry-leading goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2025  the first commitment of its kind from a protein company.

"At Smithfield, we are committed to seeking out innovative ways to reduce our environmental impact, all while creating value for our company and stakeholders," said Stewart Leeth, vice president of regulatory affairs and chief sustainability officer for Smithfield Foods. "This partnership with United Wind is part of our efforts to produce the food needed to feed a growing world population, while minimizing our use of natural resources."

"We're excited to bring competitive distributed wind energy options to food and agricultural companies like Smithfield in wind-rich environments throughout rural areas of the country," said Russell Tencer, CEO of United Wind. "The economics and land-use attributes of distributed wind just make more sense in the areas we serve."

United Wind's WindLease provides farms and other rural businesses with a distributed wind system, sized to meet each customer's on-site load, and priced at a fixed monthly rate for the twenty-year lease term. United Wind handles all aspects of the project, from permitting and construction to monitoring and maintenance, with no upfront or ongoing project related costs.

Since its founding in 2013, United Wind has developed, financed, and commissioned more than 100 distributed wind projects ranging from 10kW  100kW in rated capacity throughout Western New York and the Midwestern U.S.

ABOUT UNITED WIND:

United Wind is a leading provider of low-cost distributed wind energy solutions through its WindLease program. Founded on the belief that wind energy must be affordable to compete with conventional energy sources, United Wind provides customers with wind energy options that make sense today and into the future. For more information, visit www.unitedwind.com.

ABOUT SMITHFIELD FOODS:

Smithfield Foods is a $15 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathan's Famous, Farmland, Armour, Farmer John, Kretschmar, John Morrell, Cook's, Gwaltney, Carando, Margherita, Curly's, Healthy Ones, Morliny, Krakus, and Berlinki. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental, and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

SOURCE United Wind

Related Links

http://www.unitedwind.com


CHICAGO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- 280 CapMarkets continues its growth trajectory as part of its mission to serve registered investment advisors (RIAs) who invest in individual bonds. The firm has opened a new office in Chicago which includes a dedicated U.S. Government Agency desk.

"Our expansion into the Midwest, and the acceleration of the adoption, usage, and engagement of our BondNav technology, demonstrate the need in the marketplace we are filling for not only municipal bonds, but also investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds, and other taxable products," said Gurinder Ahluwalia, Co-Founder and CEO of 280 CapMarkets. "Our growth is key to carrying out our mission to give advisors and investors across the country the clarity, confidence, and technology they need to make better fixed-income investment decisions."

"280 CapMarkets continues to deliver superior access and execution. While BondNav allows us to easily compare bonds to the universe of offerings and institutional pricing, the trading team behind the technology consistently delivers best-in-class execution," said Mike Galanowsky, Senior Portfolio Manager at One Capital Management. "280 CapMarkets is without a doubt a key partner for us in delivering fixed-income products and capabilities to our clients."

280 CapMarkets has augmented its new office in Chicago with two fixed-income industry experts:

David Monks recently joined 280 CapMarkets as Head of Government Agency Trading. Mr. Monks has more than 28 years of fixed-income trading and underwriting experience, and spent over 18 years working at Stifel Nicolaus, where he was instrumental in building the agency desk into a significant regional player. Mr. Monks was head of the Stifel Nicolaus agency desk, and the firm's lead agency underwriter, for more than 10 years.

recently joined 280 CapMarkets as Head of Government Agency Trading. Mr. Monks has more than 28 years of fixed-income trading and underwriting experience, and spent over 18 years working at Stifel Nicolaus, where he was instrumental in building the agency desk into a significant regional player. Mr. Monks was head of the Stifel Nicolaus agency desk, and the firm's lead agency underwriter, for more than 10 years. Pete Buinauskas joins the firm as Director, Institutional Sales. Mr. Buinauskas has more than 25 years of experience specializing in rates and mortgage-backed securities sales. He was most recently Senior Vice President at BB&T Capital Markets, and prior to that, worked for R.W. Baird and RBC.

In addition, 280 CapMarkets welcomes Matthew Duffy as Head of Institutional Credit Sales in its New York office. Mr. Duffy most recently spent seven years specializing in investment-grade and high-yield credit as Senior Vice President of Institutional Sales at BB&T Capital Markets. Prior to BB&T, Mr. Duffy was Vice President of Institutional Sales at Wall Street Access, where he played a key role in building the firm's fixed-income trading and sales desks. Earlier in his career, Mr. Duffy was part of the institutional sales teams at Bank of New York, Piper Jaffray, and Mellon Securities.

"Having had an opportunity to participate in the building of applications and technology, I see where the markets are moving and the technology-enabled servicing of clients is what I feel 280 CapMarkets' vision and growth is all about," said Matthew Duffy, Head of Institutional Credit Sales at 280 CapMarkets.

"David, Pete, and Matt possess the experience, leadership, and in-depth knowledge to help us continue to level the fixed-income playing field," said Alex Buchler, Co-Head of Institutional Sales for 280 CapMarkets. "They share our commitment to delivering broad, seamless access and best execution support as part of a full-service bond platform, and we look forward to working with them."

About 280 CapMarkets



Our BondNav platform helps independent advisors level the playing field by providing access to a deep and rich selection of bonds from multiple market sources, along with the tools and information to help advisors select the bonds for their clients. Behind BondNav is an experienced, high-touch, and full-service capital markets team that can serve as a conflict-free extension of an advisor's practice. Our capital market's team contributes market insight, portfolio review, and pre-trade best execution support. We employ the combined efforts of our advisor liaison, institutional sales, and market-making trading desks to ensure independent advisors have an advocate on their side of the table.

Headquartered in San Francisco, with additional offices in New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles County, we enable independent RIAs and wealth managers to build stronger practices and serve their clients' fixed income needs. Securities are offered through 280 Securities LLC, a member of FINRA/SIPC. For more information visit www.280capmarkets.com and follow @280capmarkets.

Media Contact:

Dana Taormina

JConnelly

[email protected]

973-850-7305

SOURCE 280 CapMarkets

Related Links

http://www.280capmarkets.com


GAITHERSBURG, Md., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- While most kindergartners spend their free time on play dates, one kindergarten philanthropist, Cavanaugh Bell is on a mission to spread positivity and change the world with his organization, Cool & Dope.

Following his month-long bullying awareness campaign in February that culminated in a kid-led bullying vigil, featured on CBS, and the distribution of 150 "We're Cool" bags to local school counselors for bullying victims, Cavanaugh was presented with a Certificate of Congressional Recognition.

Cavanaugh Bell, Kindergarten Philanthropist

After being bullied in preschool for being advanced, Cavanaugh stopped eating for weeks. He has since channeled his experience to give other bullying victims a voice. His bullying campaign began in late January when he delivered a moving 2-minute anti-bullying speech to area lawmakers to get February 21 designated as "Bullying Awareness Day," in honor of children who have committed suicide due to bullying. His message of positivity has even spread all the way to Capitol Hill, garnering him recognition from government officials, including Representatives Ayanna Pressley, Jahana Hayes, David Trone and State Senator Cheryl Kagan.

"There's so much hate in the world and I want to change that," explained Cavanaugh during a recent interview. "I'm only six, but I want to show every kid that they can have an impact  at any age."

By supporting a different cause each month, Cool & Dope gives kids, as young as two years old, the power to give back. From his Cards for Sick Kids campaign, to his Bullying Awareness campaign, and now with his Love for Senior Citizens give back initiatives, Cavanaugh's goal is to help 1,000 people this year.

To learn more about Cavanaugh Bell and his inspiring nonprofit, visit www.coolanddope.com and follow his philanthropic journey on Twitter .

Cool & Dope  Making Positivity a Thing

Cool & Dope is a Maryland nonprofit that is raising awareness and giving young kids ways to give back. With a new community service campaign each month, families learn kid-friendly ways to make a difference. Started by 6-year-old Cavanaugh Bell after being told that he was "too young" to volunteer, the growing tribe of "positivity creators" stay inspired by his daily motivational videos and are showing the world that no one is too small to create change.

Name: Llacey Simmons

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 240-838-4223

SOURCE Cool & Dope

Related Links

http://www.coolanddope.com


"Firefly is pleased to enter into an MOU with Airbus to formulate an integrated market offering that will provide Airbus customers rapid deployment of Airbus manufactured satellites," said Firefly CEO Dr. Tom Markusic. "We are very impressed by the versatility and low cost of the Airbus ARROW platform and Airbus's investment in leading edge satellite mass production capabilities. We look forward to working closely with Airbus to bring economical launch solutions to their customers. This initial MOU covering several launches is the first step of a long-term relationship which will provide Airbus customers the highest level of flexibility for their small satellite launches."

Frederic Sotenberg, Head of Constellations Launch Solutions at Airbus Space Systems, said, "Our partnership with Firefly will provide launch options with direct access to specific orbits, flexibility, and short notice. The Alpha vehicle addresses an unmet need in small satellite launch and will provide a further option for our customers in addition to legacy medium and large launchers in Europe."

Les Kovacs, Firefly Vice President of Business Development, added that, "This flexibility will enable rapid deployment of and replenishment of Airbus customer constellations. We look forward to working closely with Airbus to develop integrated solutions that accelerate the global small satellite revolution and the commercialization of cis-lunar space."

ABOUT AIRBUS

Airbus is a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. In 2018 it generated revenues of  64 billion and employed a workforce of around 134,000. Airbus offers the most comprehensive range of passenger airliners. Airbus is also a European leader providing tanker, combat, transport and mission aircraft, as well as one of the world's leading space companies. In helicopters, Airbus provides the most efficient civil and military rotorcraft solutions worldwide.

ABOUT FIREFLY AEROSPACE

Firefly is developing a family of launch vehicles and in-space services that provide industry-leading affordability, convenience and reliability. Firefly's launch vehicles utilize common technologies, manufacturing infrastructure and launch capabilities, providing LEO launch solutions for up to four metric tons of payload. Combined with Firefly's in-space services, Firefly provides the space industry with access to frequent launches at the lowest cost/kg, enabling ambitious commercial and exploration missions from LEO to the Moon. Headquartered in Cedar Park TX, Firefly has additional presence in Washington, D.C., Dnipro, Ukraine and Tokyo, Japan. Firefly is financed by Noosphere Ventures of Menlo Park, CA.

Contact

Eric Salwan

512-277-6959

[email protected]

SOURCE Firefly Aerospace, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.firefly.com


TRONDHEIM, Norway, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Aker BP has successfully completed the Froskelar Main exploration well in licence 869 in the Alvheim area. The well has proved oil and gas. The gross resource estimate is 60-130 mmboe. A part of the discovery may straddle the UK-Norwegian border in the North Sea.

The Froskelar Main well is part of a drilling campaign in the Alvheim area launched on the back of the exploration success at Frosk in 2018, and more exploration and appraisal wells will follow.

Evy Glrstad-Clark, SVP Exploration in Aker BP commented:

"The exploration success at Froskelar Main is an encouraging result of a long-term strategy to unlock the exploration potential in the Alvheim area. This strategy has involved extensive data acquisition and detailed technical analysis. In parallel, we have been expanding our acreage position in the area through licensing rounds and business development activities. The Froskelar Main discovery represents a significant addition to the resource base in the Alvheim area. The discovery also illustrates the significant resource potential yet to be uncovered on the Norwegian Continental Shelf."

Aker BP is the operator and holds 60 percent interest in licence 869. The partners are Lundin Norway (20 percent) and Var Energi (20 percent).

For a more detailed technical description of the well results, please see today's press release from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate at https://www.npd.no/en/facts/news/Exploration-drilling-results/.

Contacts:

Investor contact:

Kjetil Bakken,

VP Investor Relations,

tel.: +47-918-89-889

Media contact:

Ole-Johan Faret,

Press Spokesman,

tel.: +47-402-24-217

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/aker-bp-asa/r/akerbp--successful-exploration-well-on-froskelar,c2765882

The following files are available for download:

SOURCE Aker BP ASA
SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Jackson Square Capital was launched on March 13th 2019. Under the leadership of Founder & Managing Partner, Andrew Graham, the San Francisco, California based firm offers investment management and wealth advisory services through a highly-personalized, client-centric model designed to help clients achieve their individual financial goals. Jackson Square Capital advises over $250 million in assets under management.

Graham has over 34 years of investment and wealth management industry experience and is a CFA charter holder. He founded Jackson Square Capital after 17 years as a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at J.P. Morgan Securities, a wealth management division of J.P. Morgan, which he joined through its predecessors Bear Sterns' Private Client Services in 2002. Between 2000 and 2002, Graham served as a Senior Managing Director at Credit Suisse First Boston through their acquisition of Donaldson Lufkin and Jenrette, where he was a Senior Managing Director from 1988-2000. Graham began his career at Dean Witter in 1984. He will be joined at Jackson Square Capital by Client Associates, Joy Budnik and Michael Cordano, who were part of Graham's team at J.P. Morgan Securities.

"At Jackson Square Capital we take our fiduciary responsibilities very seriously and seek to become a trusted, transparent and reliable ally to our clients," said Graham. "As a privately-held RIA we now have the freedom and flexibility to offer our clients customized plans to safeguard their financial welfare."

Jackson Square Capital services ultra-high-net-worth families, family offices and corporate executives by providing tailored, high-touch investment management solutions that align with each client's evolving circumstances. The Jackson Square team advises their clients through experience, a commitment to continued learning and constant attention to markets. Graham brings an expertise in Corporate Executive Services, attracting clients who need an advisor that understands the regulatory challenges and risks involved with concentrated equity positions. The firm actively manages tax-efficient investment portfolios according to each client's unique needs and goals. Through in-depth client conversations the team develops and maintains customized plans to achieve client goals. Regular quarterly risk-adjusted performance reviews ensure transparency and tactical flexibility as clients track towards their goals. Jackson Square Capital also advises on estate planning, wealth transfer, retirement planning, tax minimization and philanthropic strategies. Combining custom portfolio management services and exceptional operational services, the Jackson Square team are able to offer fully-customizable investment management and wealth advice that truly puts the interests of their clients first.

"The thorough due-diligence we conducted with the assistance of Joe Agresto an independent consultant while creating Jackson Square Capital led us to retain the consulting services of tru Independence," added Graham. "tru's experienced team of professionals has allowed us to confidently represent our client's interests and improve our fiduciary functionality. Their best-in-class services have given us the compliance and operational peace of mind to service our clients to the high standard required."

For media inquiries, please contact Tony Kono at (973) 525-6855 or [email protected].

About Jackson Square Capital

Jackson Square Capital is a SEC Registered Investment Advisor based in San Francisco, California. The firm was founded by Andrew Graham with a focus on serving ultra-high net worth individuals, senior corporate executives and family offices with an emphasis on offering a fully comprehensive and customized client experience. For more information, please call 415-854-5011 or visit jacksonsquarecap.com.

About tru Independence

Through uncompromising investment in people and technology, tru Independence delivers a premier consulting and services platform for wealth management firms seeking independence and current RIA firms looking to maximize their core strengths. The firm diligently focuses on and invests in three core disciplines - business consulting, investment consulting and a commitment to drive new business to their partner firms.

To deliver open architecture solutions tru Independence leverages their intellectual capital, robust platform and its relationship with best in class vendors/providers. The company's consultative process is defined by simplicity, clarity and transparency, grounded on the belief that its partners can best control their future by maintaining a majority interest in their firm. Drawing upon decades of industry experience, tru Independence is dedicated to ensuring its partner advisory firms maximize their enterprise value by adhering to the highest level of fiduciary care for their clients. For more information, please call (971) 371-3444 or visit us at www.tru-ind.com.

CONTACT:

Tony Kono

JConnelly

(973) 525-6855

[email protected]

SOURCE Jackson Square Capital
SAO PAULO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Apex-Brasil, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotions Agency that works to promote Brazilian products and services abroad and attract foreign investment to strategic sectors of the Brazilian economy, today shared insights following another successful year at South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual conglomerate of film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences that take place in Austin, Texas.

Since 2014, Apex-Brasil has supported Brazilian companies and startups at SXSW  an event the agency considers to be one of the world's largest and most important creative economy festivals. During SXSW 2019, Apex-Brasil supported more than 40 of the most innovative companies from Brazil, ranging from startups focused on healthcare and wearables, to audiovisual (animation, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality), to artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and other emerging technologies.

Throughout the interactive media festival, held this year from March 9-14, these Brazilian startup companies had the chance to participate in panels at Apex-Brasil's Casa Brasil, a "house" located in downtown Austin that offered attendees a peek into Brazil's business and culture. They also had the opportunity to showcase their products, solutions, and innovations on the trade show floor and present their "elevator pitches" during a Brazil Innovation Hour at the International Innovation Platform, which also took place on the SXSW trade show floor.

The following quotes underscore the value and power of the SXSW experience for these Brazilian entrepreneurs:

Marco Poli , Chief Investment Officer, Apex-Brasil : "SXSW conference is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for entrepreneurs from all around the world. Brazilian startups travel with Apex-Brasil to Austin each year with the goal of raising not only awareness about their companies and innovative ideas, but also to raise capital and attract international investors. Beyond SXSW, we are extremely proud of the innovation and startup ecosystem in Brazil . The growth we have seen over the past several years has been truly incredible. Consider the number of unicorns in the country  in November 2016 we did not have any unicorn companies and within less than three years' time, we have seen seven unicorns emerge. I expect this growth will continue in the future and I strongly believe that the future is bright for Brazilian entrepreneurs."

: "SXSW conference is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for entrepreneurs from all around the world. Brazilian startups travel with Apex-Brasil to each year with the goal of raising not only awareness about their companies and innovative ideas, but also to raise capital and attract international investors. Beyond SXSW, we are extremely proud of the innovation and startup ecosystem in . The growth we have seen over the past several years has been truly incredible. Consider the number of unicorns in the country  in we did not have any unicorn companies and within less than three years' time, we have seen seven unicorns emerge. I expect this growth will continue in the future and I strongly believe that the future is bright for Brazilian entrepreneurs." Tracy Mann , Brazilian Consultant, SXSW : "The number of Brazilians who attend SXSW has consistently increased over the past several years. I am proud to share that 2019 marked the first year that Brazil had the largest international delegation at the conference, with more than 1,600 Brazilians traveling to Austin to experience SXSW. This year, Apex-Brasil's manifesto at SXSW was 'Meet the True Makers,' which I saw come to life at Casa Brasil and during my conversations with the different startups in this year's SXSW delegation. Brazilians, especially entrepreneurs, are some of the most creative people I've ever met  they have an uncanny ability to create solutions and make the world a better place by evolving with the changes taking place around the world, especially within the area of technology."

: "The number of Brazilians who attend SXSW has consistently increased over the past several years. I am proud to share that 2019 marked the first year that had the largest international delegation at the conference, with more than 1,600 Brazilians traveling to to experience SXSW. This year, Apex-Brasil's manifesto at SXSW was 'Meet the True Makers,' which I saw come to life at Casa Brasil and during my conversations with the different startups in this year's SXSW delegation. Brazilians, especially entrepreneurs, are some of the most creative people I've ever met  they have an uncanny ability to create solutions and make the world a better place by evolving with the changes taking place around the world, especially within the area of technology." Fernando Godoy , Founder and Executive Director, Flex Interativa: "In our journey to create immersive experiences for consumers using virtual reality and augmented reality, we have seen time and time again that demonstrating and allowing people to interact with our products at technology conferences helps our business. As one of the most important technology and creative conferences in the world, I can already say that it was valuable for us to be here at SXSW to share our innovations on a global stage. For example, I am happy to say that we met and had good conversations with at least three interesting companies  one in the U.S., one in China , and one in the United Kingdom  that I anticipate will lead to new business partnerships in the months following SXSW."

About Apex-Brasil

The Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotions Agency (Apex-Brasil) acts to promote Brazilian products and services abroad and attract foreign investment to strategic sectors of the Brazilian economy. Apex-Brasil carries out diversified commercial promotion actions and works with public and private actors to develop the competitiveness of Brazilian companies and the country at large.

Media Contacts

Clarissa Furtado

Apex Brasil

[email protected]

+55 (61) 98141 2255

McKenzie Naylor

Ruder Finn  PR on behalf of Apex-Brasil in the U.S.

[email protected]

(212) 593-6434

SOURCE Apex-Brasil
DUBLIN, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Vectra, the leader in network detection and response, today announced that Ardagh Group selected the Cognito network detection and response platform from Vectra to expose attackers hidden inside its network and perform conclusive incident investigations. Ardagh Group makes metal and glass packaging for the world's biggest brands, producing 35 billion containers a year for food, beverages, spirits and pharmaceuticals.

Trade secrets, intellectual property, human resources and financial payment data make manufacturers like Ardagh Group a lucrative target for cybercriminals. "Rerouting a single invoice between us and our customer could result in the loss of millions of euros. It's not surprising that every attack we've seen involved an attempt to steal," said David Whelan, group IT director at Ardagh Group.

With 100 manufacturing facilities in 22 countries, the manufacturer needed clear visibility into in-progress attacks that have slipped past its well-crafted defences. Ardagh Group uses Cognito to expose attackers hidden in data centre workloads and user and IoT devices across its global operations.

"Cognito opened our eyes to attacker behaviours in our network that we would not have otherwise seen," said Whelan.

Cognito accelerates threat detection and investigation using sophisticated AI to collect, store and enrich network metadata, giving IT leaders at Ardagh the right context to detect, hunt and investigate known and unknown threats at scale.

"Cognito offers a better way of identifying if an attacker got past Stage 1," said Whelan. "If someone is determined to get in, they will. But with Cognito, we can stop threats before they cause damage."

Ardagh Group has a strong history of data privacy, and Cognito enables the company to protect its assets while complying the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, European Works Council, and other laws. Cognito extracts metadata from packets, rather than performing deep packet inspection, which enables protection without prying and without performance penalties associated with deep packet inspection.

For more information, please read the Vectra case study about Ardagh Group at www.vectra.ai/resources/ardagh-group

About Ardagh Group

Ardagh Group is a global leader in glass and metal packaging solutions, producing packaging for most of the world's leading food, beverage and consumer brands. We operate more than 100 facilities in 22 countries, employ approximately 23,000 people and have global sales of approximately $8.6 billion. For more information, visit www.ardaghgroup.com

About Vectra

Vectra is the world leader in network detection and response. Vectra is revolutionizing network security with the Cognito platform that replaces legacy technology which fails to solve today's detection and response challenges  from cloud and data center workloads to user and IoT devices. The Cognito platform accelerates customer threat detection and investigation using sophisticated artificial intelligence to collect, store and enrich network metadata with the right context to detect, hunt and investigate known and unknown threats in real time. For more information, visit vectra.ai.

Media Contact

John Kreuzer

Lumina Communications for Vectra

[email protected]

(408) 896-3307

SOURCE Vectra

Related Links

https://www.vectra.ai


OSLO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors of Asetek A/S hereby gives notice of the annual general meeting to be held on April 10 2019 in Aalborg, Denmark.

The notice convening the general meeting, the agenda, and the full text of all proposals can be downloaded from https:ir.asetek.com/AGM2019.

On the day of the notice of the general meeting there are 25,784,841 shares and 25,784,841 voting rights in Asetek A/S.

The following documents will be submitted to the general meeting:

- Annual Report 2018

- Proposed Remuneration Policy

For further information, please contact:

Peter Dam Madsen

Chief Financial Officer

Mobile: +45 2080 7200

e-mail: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/asetek/r/asetek---notice-of-annual-general-meeting-april-10-2019,c2765878

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/6758/2765878/1009351.pdf PDF https://mb.cision.com/Public/6758/2765878/bd5a7eae99f8be04.pdf Asetek Annual Report 2018 https://mb.cision.com/Public/6758/2765878/915adf7c805b4c40.pdf Proxy Postal Vote Agm 2019 https://mb.cision.com/Public/6758/2765878/8c02ede43a1c0e5b.pdf Notice of annual general meeting 2019

SOURCE Asetek
HOUSTON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas-based Civil Trial Attorney Aaron Heckaman has earned a reputation for successfully protecting the rights of victims and families in a range of complex personal injury cases across the nation. Partner at the law firm of Bailey Cowan Heckaman PLLC, Aaron has also garnered accolades from a number of professional organizations and rating services. That includes Super Lawyers Rising Stars, one of the industry's most respected attorney-rating publications.

This year, Aaron earned his second selection to the Texas Super Lawyers Rising Stars list, a distinction which places him among just 2.5% of all practicing lawyers in the entire state. He was previously recognized in 2010. The list is reserved for lawyers who are 40 years of age or younger, or who have been in practice for 10 years or less.

About Aaron Heckaman

Aaron Heckaman has been fighting on behalf of the injured since he's been licensed to practice law, and was selected to the Texas Super Lawyers Rising Stars list for his work in Personal Injury (General, Product Liability), Class Action / Mass Torts, and Civil Litigation.

Partner at Bailey Cowan Heckaman PLLC, Aaron has successfully represented clients throughout the nation in complex civil cases involving dangerous pharmaceutical and medical devices, toxic torts, defective consumer products, and serious injuries. Aaron is a featured speaker at many legal seminars on asbestos litigation and trial techniques, and in 2018 was named to Houstonia Magazine's Top Lawyers list.

Selection to the Super Lawyers List of Rising Stars

Selection to the Super Lawyers Rising Stars list is an achievement held by few attorneys, and it speaks volumes about the demonstrated abilities, legal acumen, and professional reputations chosen lawyers have cultivated among their colleagues and within their communities.

The proprietary selection process used to compile the Super Lawyers Rising Stars list is known for its rigorous, objective, and meticulously peer-reviewed procedures, which evaluate potential candidates based on:

Nominations from colleagues, research panels, and other third-party sources;

Multiple professional achievement and peer recognition criteria, from noteworthy verdicts and settlements and representative cases to professional and community involvement; and

Assessments conducted by a Blue Ribbon Panel comprised of top-rated attorneys in the same areas of practice.

Attorneys selected for inclusion are regarded among the top in their field. The Super Lawyers vetting process is also intended to instill a sense of trust in local legal consumers searching for an objective resource to help them choose the right representatives for their cases.

Aaron Heckaman is a Partner at Bailey Cowan Heckaman PLLC, a national trial practice that has helped resolve complex claims, class actions, and multi-district litigation for thousands of seriously injured victims and families across the country. Comprised of highly experienced, value-driven, and award-winning litigators, the firm focuses on asbestos litigation, defective products and medical devices, dangerous pharmaceuticals, wage and overtime claims, serious injuries, and commercial litigation. Visit www.bchlaw.com for more information about the firm and its areas of practice.

SOURCE Bailey Cowan Heckaman PLLC

Related Links

https://www.bchlaw.com


MIAMI, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorney Elan I. Baret and his associate attorney Nicole Sanchez represented Rubman Ardon Chinchilla, a roofer and father of three who has lived illegally in the United States for 16 years, used a phony immigration document to get a Florida driver's license, a crime agents say was organized by a conman posing as a government officer. Chinchilla claimed that he believed the document to be real.

A Miami federal judge has now thrown out criminal charges against Chinchilla, saying there's no actual law that says the form can even be used to prove an "authorized stay in the United States." It's a highly technical legal argument, but Attorney Baret and Sanchez were able to argue it due to their experience in Immigration and Criminal defense law. Their victory opened the door for the others arrested in the sting to beat their cases, and maybe even stay in the United States.

The criminal probe into the fake orders was conducted by agents from Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, and the Identity, Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force. The task force, run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is a nationwide effort to crack down on document fraud that "may enable terrorists, other criminals and illegal aliens to gain entry to and remain in the United States."

Investigators say the "mastermind and ringleader" of the scam was a Cuban-American resident named Valois Nunez, who posed as an immigration agent and charged undocumented workers $2,000 for the bogus orders.

He asked undocumented immigrants to provide birth certificates and passports, photos and their personal details, even having them put their fingerprints on the forms. He also instructed them to go to specific DMV branches. Sometimes Nunez accompanied them to the DMV to turn in the forms, federal prosecutor Yisel Valdes wrote in one court motion.

"They are being conned by these people," lawyer Elan Baret stated. "The government, instead of focusing on the people who take advantage of these desperate immigrants, they arrest the victims."

Baret and attorney Nicole Sanchez challenged the indictment, saying that there wasn't any actual law or regulation that allowed for the relatively common form to be used at the Florida DMVHS. As proof, they pointed to a 2013 case in which a California appeals court threw out the conviction under the same law for a Chinese man who got two driver's licenses while living in the U.S. commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

If the decision stands, and Chinchilla remains conviction free, his lawyers believe they might be able to keep him in the US legally with his USC children.

Elan I. Baret, Esq.

Baret Law Group, PA

Tel: (954) 486-9966

E-mail: [email protected]

www.BaretLawGroup.com

SOURCE Baret Law Group, PA

Related Links

http://www.baretlawgroup.com


LOS ANGELES, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan is improving healthcare outcomes for Medi-Cal members with ConsejoSano's language appropriate and culturally relevant text-messaging service that helps patients engage with their physicians and care providers.

ConsejoSano offers its services in 22 different languages. It has successfully held several health engagement campaigns for Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan members, achieving meaningful results. The campaigns have included childhood and adolescent immunizations, well child visits, maternal health, diabetes and cervical cancer screenings.

Reaching plan members in their preferred language with timely prompts has resulted in more members receiving the care they need. So far, the campaigns have generated more than 127,000 texts in 22 languages, reaching nearly 18,000 members.

"Care gaps develop when patients miss important medical services such as childhood immunizations, cancer screenings and well child visits. This is why it is so critical for us to figure out new ways to help our members engage with their providers and receive the care that they need and deserve," said Tanya Dansky, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan. "ConsejoSano helps us to do that in a way that's culturally and linguistically relevant to each person in our health plan."

One in three Californians is a Medi-Cal beneficiary. Those individuals come from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and they can feel disconnected from the healthcare system when they are not reached in a way that shows respect for their culture and language.

"As a result, patients can become disengaged, and may not seek the care they need," Dr. Dansky said. "To address this issue, Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan is taking a patient-centered approach to engage with its Medi-Cal members."

"This is an important step in communicating with a diverse population and helping them understand the complex world of healthcare via their preferred method, which is text messaging," said Abner Mason, CEO of ConsejoSano. "Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan has shown tremendous foresight in meeting Medi-Cal patients where they are, understanding them, and communicating with them in their preferred way."

Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan and ConsejoSano have developed multiple unique engagement campaigns to help improve clinical quality outcomes for multicultural populations of Medi-Cal members in Antelope Valley and San Diego. They include:

Well Child Visit Campaign that educates parents about the importance of well child visits. The effort has resulted in nearly 1,400 well child visits, closing an estimated 40 percent of care gaps. The two-way messaging feature allows members to notify the health plan when the child has been seen by their provider. This helps the health plan better understand any disparities in preventive care or barriers such as access to transportation which can impact a family's ability to attend appointments.

Cervical Cancer Screening Campaign that helps notify Medi-Cal members who are due for cervical cancer screenings such as Pap tests, which can be a difficult topic to address in some cultures. Through a campaign designed with these cultural sensitivities in mind, nearly 2,500 additional women have received these important screenings which may have an impact in the future on morbidity and mortality for a leading cause of cancer death in women.

Type 2 Diabetes Care Campaign that provides outreach to Medi-Cal members who have type 2 diabetes and utilize the Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan clinics located in Los Angeles County's Antelope Valley. Patients' response was so outstanding that the health plan redesigned the campaign to help the clinics with the high demand for appointments by motivated and engaged members.

For more information, please visit www.blueshieldca.com/promise to learn more about Medi-Cal health plan options in your area.

About Blue Shield of California

Blue Shield of California strives to create a health care system worthy of our family and friends that is sustainably affordable. We are a not for profit, independent member of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association with care for four million members, 6,800 employees and more than $20 billion in annual revenue. Founded in 1939 and headquartered in San Francisco, Blue Shield of California and its affiliates provide health, dental, vision, Medicaid and Medicare health care service plans in California. The company has contributed more than $500 million to Blue Shield of California Foundation since 2002 to have an impact on California communities. For more news about Blue Shield of California, please visit www.news.blueshieldca.com.

About ConsejoSano

ConsejoSano is a patient engagement platform that helps connect payers, providers and health systems with their multicultural Medicaid and Medicare patient populations. The company utilizes multi-channel engagement tools to reach patients in a culturally relevant way that increases engagement, lowers costs, and improves health outcomes. For more information, visit www.consejosano.com

Media Contact: Vikram Bakhru, [email protected].

SOURCE ConsejoSano

Related Links

http://www.consejosano.com


The program, The Invisible Shape of Music, on April 11 at 7:30PM, creates this invisible but powerful exhibition of a wide range of emotions, displaying all musical styles with the resolve of Beethoven, baroque Bach, capricious Schumann, and impressionistic Debussy. Cellist Misha Quint and pianist John Owings will perform this concert presented by InterHarmony International Music Festival at the Modern Museum of Art in Fort Worth, Texas.

Tickets are $35 for Adults, $30 for Seniors, and can be bought at www.interharmony.com/interharmony-concert-series-fort-worth-texas or 2 hours before the concert at the door.

ABOUT THE MUSIC

Starting with the meditation-like opening of the first movement of Beethoven's late Sonata No.4, his invisible melodic lines transform into heroic struggle. It almost feels as though Beethoven is fighting his own feelings, where every movement resurfaces something that somehow has not yet been said.

Following the Beethoven, J.S. Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suite No.2 brings solitude as emotions transfer into the shape of the invisible prayer where each person may hear a desirable note for their heart.

Robert Schumann's Adagio and Allegro brings you through the cascades of subtle nuances and delicate phrases full of passion that are reflected in his major works.

At the end of the evening, spent with emotion, suddenly Misha Quint and John Owings bring Debussy's Clair de Lune to the stage, with its charm and finesse, melodic lines of Nocturne and Scherzo , and full fire of his Cello Sonata.

Mission finally accomplished.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Cellist MISHA QUINT, Global Music Award winner for his CD Matryoshka Blues, performed with celebrated orchestras around the globe. Quint is Founder and Music Director of InterHarmony International Music Festival in Acqui Terme, Italy and Suzlbach-Rosenberg, Germany, InterHarmony Concert Series at Carnegie Hall in NYC & Modern Museum of Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Quint teaches at Mannes College in Manhattan. www.mishaquintcello.com

Praised for his exciting pianism and sensitive artistry, pianist JOHN OWINGS versatile career has ranged from solo and chamber music recitals to concerto appearances in major cities around the world. He is Professor of Music at Texas Christian University.

SOURCE The InterHarmony International Music Festival
AUBURN, Ala., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Chicken Salad Chick, the nation's only southern inspired, fast casual chicken salad restaurant concept, announced today it will be expanding in Georgia with its newest company-owned location in Grovetown, marking the brand's 24th location in the state. The restaurant is the newest addition to the growing corporate presence in Georgia, following the acquisition of 11 existing locations across the Atlanta, Augusta and Athens markets late last year. Marking the third Chicken Salad Chick location in the Augusta area, the Grovetown restaurant features a drive thru and will offer free chicken salad for a year to the first 150 guests.

"As Chicken Salad Chick catapults its growth into new markets, we haven't forgotten about the places that welcomed the brand in our early years and have remained loyal supporters ever since. Georgia has shown passion and excitement for Chicken Salad Chick over the years and that's why we continue to expand in the state," said Scott Deviney, CEO of Chicken Salad Chick. "With lines out the door and dozens of repeat customers, we are proud to have spread our craveable favorites to more than 20 cities across Georgia and look forward to adding Grovetown to the growing list of communities we serve."

Located off Interstate 20, exit 190, at 4990 Steiner Way, the Grovetown restaurant will celebrate its grand opening on March 27th with giveaways and specials that include:

Wednesday, March 27  Free Chicken Salad for a year  The first guest will receive one large Quick Chick of chicken salad per week for an entire year; the next 149 guests receive a free large Quick Chick of chicken salad per month. * Any guest not part of the first 150 in line can make a purchase and enter to win free chicken salad for a year.**

 Free Chicken Salad for a year  The first guest will receive one large Quick Chick of chicken salad per week for an entire year; the next 149 guests receive a free large Quick Chick of chicken salad per month. * Any guest not part of the first 150 in line can make a purchase and enter to win free chicken salad for a year.** Thursday, March 28  Free Chicken Salad of the Month Club  The first 50 guests at 10a.m. and the first 50 guests at 6p.m. to purchase a Chick Special will be automatically enrolled in the Free Chicken Salad of the Month Club. Each guest will receive one free scoop of chicken salad per month for a year.***

 Free Chicken Salad of the Month Club  The first 50 guests at and the first 50 guests at to purchase a Chick Special will be automatically enrolled in the Free Chicken Salad of the Month Club. Each guest will receive one free scoop of chicken salad per month for a year.*** Friday, March 29 The first 50 guests at 10a.m. and the first 50 guests at 6p.m. to purchase a Chick Trio will receive a free 32oz. RTIC Chick tumbler.

The first 50 guests at and the first 50 guests at to purchase a Chick Trio will receive a free 32oz. RTIC Chick tumbler. Saturday, March 30  The first 100 guests to purchase two large Quick Chicks will receive a free large Chick cooler.

The Chicken Salad Chick concept was established in 2008 by founder, Stacy Brown. With more than a dozen original chicken salad flavors as well as fresh side salads, gourmet soups, signature sandwiches and delicious desserts, Chicken Salad Chick's robust menu offers a variety of options suitable for any guest. In 2015, Eagle Merchant Partners purchased a majority stake in Chicken Salad Chick, and under the leadership of CEO Scott Deviney and team, the company now has more than 110 restaurants currently open in 13 states and remains a standout brand within the fast casual segment.

Chicken Salad Chick in Grovetown will be open Monday  Saturday from 10:00 a.m.  8:00 p.m. For more information, visit http://www.chickensaladchick.com or call (706) 432-9622. Follow Chicken Salad Chick on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for the latest news and trends.

*Eligible winners must be over 16 years of age, purchase a Chick Special and are required to download the Craving Credits app. Redemption will start 4/4.

** Eligible winners must be over 16 years of age, purchase a Chick Special and are required to download the Craving Credits app. 10 winners will be drawn at the end of the day. Redemption will start 4/4.

***Eligible winners must be over 16 years of age, purchase a Chick Special and are required to download the Craving Credits app.

For more information on giveaways and specials, visit www.facebook.com/chickensaladchickgrovetown/

About Chicken Salad Chick

Founded in Auburn, Alabama, in 2008, Chicken Salad Chick serves full-flavored, Southern-style chicken salad made from scratch and served from the heart. With more than a dozen original chicken salad flavors as well as fresh side salads, gourmet soups, signature sandwiches and delicious desserts, Chicken Salad Chick's robust menu is a perfect fit for any guest. Today, the brand has more than 110 restaurants in 13 states and is continuing its rapid expansion with both franchise and company locations. Chicken Salad Chick has received numerous accolades including rankings in Franchise Times' Fast & Serious in 2019, Fast Casual.com's top Movers and Shakers, Nation's Restaurant News' Next 20 in 2017 and Inc.'s list of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the U.S. in 2016. See www.chickensaladchick.com for additional information.

Contact:

Nikki Rode

Fish Consulting

954-893-9150

[email protected]

SOURCE Chicken Salad Chick

Related Links

http://www.chickensaladchick.com


GOTEBORG, Sweden, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The shareholders of Concordia Maritime AB (publ), 556068-5819, are hereby summoned to the Annual General Meeting to be held on Thursday, 25 April 2019, at 1 p.m. The Annual General Meeting will be held at Elite Park Avenue, in Gothenburg. Entrance to the venue opens at 12:15 p.m.

Right to attend and notice of attendance

Shareholders who wish to attend the Annual General Meeting must:

be registered as shareholders in the share register kept by Euroclear Sweden AB on Wednesday 17 April 2019 ;

in the share register kept by Euroclear Sweden AB on Wednesday ; notify the company of their intention to participate and the number of guests (max. two) who will accompany the shareholder at the following address: Concordia Maritime AB, SE-405 19 Gothenburg, Sweden , by telephone +46 (0)31-855102 or by e-mail [email protected] no later than Wednesday 17 April 2019 .

At notification, name, the name of the guests, personal identification number/registration number, address and telephone number must be stated.

Nominee-registered shares

Shareholders whose shares have been registered in the name of a nominee must temporarily re-register their shares in their own name to be entitled to vote at the Annual General Meeting. Such registration must be effected at Euroclear Sweden AB no later than 17 April 2019. This means that shareholders must inform the nominee to effect such registration well before 17 April 2019.

Nominee

Shareholders who are represented by proxy shall issue a power of attorney for the representative. A copy of the certificate of registration (and should such certificate not exist, a corresponding document of authority) of the legal entity shall be attached to a power of attorney issued by a legal entity. In order to facilitate the registration at the Meeting, powers of attorney in original, certificates of registration and other documents of authority should be sent to the company so as to be available by Wednesday 17 April 2019. A form for proxy is available at the company's head office and on the company's website, www.concordiamaritime.com.

Agenda

Election of Chairman of the meeting. Preparation and approval of the voting list. Approval of the agenda. Election of persons to verify the minutes. Consideration if the Annual General Meeting has been duly convened. Presentation of the Board of Directors and statement by the Chairman of the Board. Statement by the Managing Director. Presentation of

a) the annual accounts and the consolidated annual accounts;

b) the audit report and the audit report for the group;

c) the auditor's statement regarding the company's compliance with the guidelines for remuneration to members of the executive management in effect since the previous Annual General Meeting. Resolutions regarding

a) adoption of the income statement and balance sheet and the consolidated income statement and the consolidated balance sheet;

b) the allocation of the company's profit according to the adopted balance sheet;

c) the discharge from liability towards the company in respect of the Board of Directors and the Managing Director. The Nomination Committee's report on its work and the Nomination Committee's motivated statement concerning its proposals regarding the Board of Directors. Resolution regarding the number of members and deputy members of the Board of Directors to be elected by the Annual General Meeting and the number of auditors and deputy auditors. Resolution regarding the remuneration to the Board of Directors and the auditors. Election of members of the Board of Directors and the Chairman of the Board. Election of auditor. Resolution regarding the establishment of an Nomination Committee for the next Annual General Meeting. Resolution regarding guidelines for remuneration to the executive management.

Election of a Chairman for the meeting (item 1)

The Nomination Committee proposes that the lawyer Stefan Brocker is elected as Chairman of the meeting.

Proposal of profit allocation (item 9 b)

The Board of Directors does not propose any distribution of dividend.

Resolution regarding the number of members and deputy members of the Board of Directors and the number of auditors and deputy auditors (item 11)

The Nomination Committee proposes that the number of Board members elected by the shareholders shall be six and that no deputies should be appointed. The number of auditors is proposed to be one.

Resolution regarding the remuneration to the Board of Directors and the auditors (item 12)

The Nomination Committee proposes that remuneration to the Board members shall remain unchanged at SEK 400,000 to the Chairman and SEK 225,000 to each of the other Board members elected by the shareholders. The proposed Board remuneration accordingly amounts to SEK 1,525,000 (last year SEK 1,300,000).

The remuneration to the auditors shall be paid according to invoice approved by the company.

Election of members of the Board of Directors and the Chairman of the Board (item 13)

The Nomination Committee proposes that Carl-Johan Hagman, Stefan Brocker, Mats Jansson, Michael G:son Low and Helena Levander shall be re-elected as Board members and that new-election shall be made of Henrik Hallin. Carl-Johan Hagman is proposed to be re-elected as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Board members proposed for new election:

Henrik Hallin, born 1972, holds a M Sc. in Business Administration and Economics from University of Gothenburg and Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam. Henrik has extensive experience in corporate finance, and has held various CFO and financial management positions. Henrik is the CFO of Stena Adactum and Stena Sessan and has served as secretary of the Board of Concordia Maritime. Henrik also serves as Board member of Ballingslov International AB, Envac AB, S-Invest Trading Aktiebolag (Blomsterlandet), Captum Group AB and Stena Sessan Fastighets AB. Henrik holds no shares in Concordia Maritime.

Election of auditor (item 14)

In accordance with the Audit Committees recommendation, the Nomination Committee proposes that KPMG is re-elected as auditor of the company. If the Annual General Meeting resolves to elect KPMG as auditor, KPMG has announced that the current authorised public accountant in the company, Jan Malm, will continue as the main responsible auditor at KPMG.

Resolution regarding the establishment of Nomination Committee for the next Annual General Meeting (item 15)

The Nomination Committee proposes that the Annual General Meeting resolves to establish a Nomination Committee for the Annual General Meeting 2020 in accordance with the Nomination Committee's proposal that comprises the following procedure. The members shall comprise one representative from each of the two largest shareholders (in terms of voting power) as of the last bank day in August the year before the Annual General Meeting members of the Nomination Committee, provided they desire representation on the committee, and the company's Chairman of the Board. After the shareholders have been contacted they shall inform whether they wish to serve on the Nomination Committee or not within fourteen days. If no response is received from the shareholder, contact is made with the next largest shareholder. The largest shareholder in terms of voting power appoints the Chairman of the Nomination Committee. The names of the members of the Nomination Committee shall be published on the company's website as soon as they have been appointed, but no later than six months before the Annual General Meeting of 2020. The Nomination Committee's period of mandate lasts until a new nominations committee has been appointed.

Resolution regarding guidelines for remuneration to the executive management (item 16)

The Board of Directors proposes that the following guidelines for remuneration for the executive management are resolved.

Remuneration consists of a fixed salary, variable remuneration, a pension and other benefits. In order to attract and retain expertise, the company aims to offer employees an attractive, competitive fixed salary. The absolute level depends on the scope and complexity of the position in question and on the individual employee's annual performance. Performance is reflected in particular in the variable remuneration. Variable remuneration shall be based on annually established factors with respect to, among other things, the development of the company and reaching e.g. commercial, operational and financial targets. These targets are to be determined by the Board of Directors. Agreements on additional remuneration can be entered into when considered necessary to be able to attract and retain key expertise, or to persuade individuals to move to another location or to accept a new position. Such remuneration shall be of limited duration.

The company's policy regarding pensions is to follow the practice applied in the local market in each country. A premium corresponding to 35 per cent of the Managing Director's monthly pensionable salary and remuneration at any time is paid up until the pension. For other senior executives in Sweden, a defined contribution plan is applicable for retirement pensions over and above the base pension plans on the Swedish labour market.

The basic rule is that other benefits, e.g. a company car, should be in accordance with the local market. For senior executives in Sweden, the mutual period of notice is 3 to 12 months depending on the position. Severance pay amounting to a maximum of 24 monthly salaries is paid in the event of termination of the Managing Director by the company.

Annual Report, etc.

The Annual Report in Swedish, the audit report, the auditor's opinion in item 8 c), and complete proposals and motivated statements regarding items 10-16 are available at the company's headquarters and the company's website, www.concordiamaritime.com, in connection to the issue of the summons. The above documents will also be sent to shareholders upon request, provided that such shareholder states a postal address. Such a request may be made in the same manner as notice of attendance must be made as described above. The Annual Report in Swedish will be available at the Annual General Meeting.

Shares and votes

The total number of shares in the company amounts to 47,729,798 shares, whereof 4,000,000 Series A shares and 43,729,798 Series B shares, representing a total of 83,729,798 votes. The company does not own any of its own shares.

Information at the Annual General Meeting

The Board of Directors and the Managing Director shall, if requested by a shareholder and if the Board considers that it will not cause significant damage to the company, provide information on circumstances that could affect the assessment of a matter on the agenda, circumstances that could affect the assessment of the company's or a subsidiary's economic situation and the company's relations with another group company.

Processing of personal data

For information on how your personal data is processed, see https://www.euroclear.com/dam/ESw/Legal/Privacy-notice-bolagsstammor-engelska.pdf.

After the Annual General Meeting, light refreshments will be served.

Gothenburg in March, 2019

Concordia Maritime AB (publ)

Board of Directors

Kim Ullman

CEO, Concordia Maritime AB

Tel +46-31-855003

Mob +46-704-855003

Email: [email protected]



Ola Helgesson

CFO, Concordia Maritime AB

Tel +46-31-855009

Mob +46-704-855009

Email: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/concordia-maritime/r/summons-to-the-annual-general-meeting,c2766092

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/1948/2766092/1009675.pdf Summons to the Annual General Meeting (PDF)

SOURCE Concordia Maritime
ATLANTA, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Looking ahead to a momentous year of accelerated growth and strong operational performance, Davidson Hotels & Resorts announces the promotion of Thom Geshay from chief operating officer to president. Geshay continues a 30-plus-year career with one of the largest privately held management companies in the lodging industry and is only the fourth president in the company's 45-year legacy. He succeeds John Belden, who will retain the role of chairman and CEO after serving as the company's president and CEO for nearly 14 years.

As president, Geshay's focus is furthering strategic growth and performance excellence while Belden, as chairman and CEO, concentrates on vision casting, organizational development, and ensuring the company's culture and values continue to strengthen as business expands. Davidson Hotels & Resorts is poised to reach major milestones in 2019 with record-breaking annualized portfolio revenues projected to surpass $1.2 billion by year end, the forthcoming launch of its restaurant group, the significant expansion of its resort portfolio, and a robust development pipeline including 12 new-build projects, eight of which are slated to open between 2019 and 2021.

"While I've had the privilege of helping to inspire the greatest era of change and growth in Davidson's history, we are now at a stage where Thom's exceptional skills and strong leadership can take us to even greater heights," said John Belden, chairman and CEO, Davidson Hotels & Resorts. "The prosperity of our company and strength of our portfolio is due to our dedicated team members, and we are committed to cultivating the next generation of leadership talent from within our current team while also attracting best-in-class talent externally in order to expand our capabilities and perspectives for property owners and investors."

Geshay, who began his hotel career at an early age as a bellman, has been in a management position with Davidson Hotels & Resorts since 1988. He became COO in 2016 and was responsible for overall operations of the company's two distinct divisionsDavidson Hotels & Resorts, managing hard-branded assets, and Pivot Hotels & Resorts, comprised of soft brand and independent luxury and lifestyle assets. His strategic corporate experience also includes positions as senior vice president of business development, regional vice president of operations, and vice president of sales and marketing. Prior to that, Geshay served as general manager of several properties within the Davidson Hotels & Resorts portfolio.

Geshay is an active member of Marriott's Distribution Strategy Advisory Committee and the American Hotel & Lodging Association's Hospitality Investment Roundtable, a frequent industry conference speaker, and a past member the Urban Land Institute's Hospitality Development Council. He earned his Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University.

About Davidson Hotels & Resorts

Davidson Hotels & Resorts is an award-winning, full-service hotel management company providing management, development/renovation, acquisition, consulting and accounting expertise for the hospitality industry. Amassing one of the purest full-service hotel portfolios in the industry, Davidson, along with its lifestyle and luxury operating division, Pivot Hotels & Resorts, specializes in independent and branded assets in the upper-upscale to near-luxury segments including 45 hotels, over 13,000 rooms and over 1.5 million square feet of meeting space across the United States. Davidson is a trusted partner and preferred operator of Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Margaritaville, More information can be found at www.davidsonhotels.com.

About Pivot Hotels & Resorts

Pivot Hotels & Resorts, the lifestyle and luxury division of Davidson Hotels & Resorts operates with a deep-rooted passion for continuous innovation, exceptional service delivery, revenue generation, inspired marketing and financial responsibility. Constituted by some of the most accomplished leaders in lifestyle hospitality, Pivot Hotels & Resorts caters to today's experience-oriented, adventure-minded traveler through inspiring design, thoughtful service, and one-of-a-kind experiences at each of its hotels and resorts. The Pivot Hotels & Resorts portfolio encompasses 16 hotels and resorts across the US with more in development. More information may be found at www.pivothotels.com.

MEDIA CONTACT

bread & Butter

213.739.7895

[email protected]

SOURCE Davidson Hotels & Resorts

Related Links

http://www.davidsonhotels.com


LONDON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 94 finalists have been received; executives and companies from 18 countries have been selected as finalists for the 7th annual S&P Global Platts Global Metals Awards. It recognizes exemplary accomplishments in 14 categories, according to program host S&P Global Platts, the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets.

Vishaal Majevadia, Global Metals Awards organizer, S&P Global Platts, said: "With increasing trade tensions and fears about the impact of global overcapacity, it's been quite a year for the metals industry across the value chain. This year's nominations reflect those that were able to adapt effectively, boost efficiency where needed, utilize technology where it mattered and remained innovative at their core who have stood out from the crowd. We congratulate the finalists of the Global Metals Awards on their achievements and look forward to a great event in May."

This year, there is noticeable interest for the Steel Industry Leadership award while the prestigious CEO of Year award will be hotly contested as always with CEO finalists from 10 different countries. Other categories, such as The Breakthrough Solution of the Year indicates a commitment to efficiency and offers a window into the evolution of technology and how it is shaping this sector moving forward. The scene is set for a great award ceremony.

The program's independent panel of judges will select winners from the list of finalists in each individual awards category. The 2019 Metals Company of the Year will be chosen from the entire list of finalist companies.

Winners of the Global Metals Awards will be announced on May 16 at 8 Northumberland Avenue in London at a black-tie dinner. The Awards will be emceed by CNBC's Julianna Tatelbaum.

Corporate and industry representatives, as well as accredited media, may attend the Awards dinner with advance registration at this link. Television cameras are welcome.

The Global Metals Awards 2019 program is sponsored by Metalloinvest Trading, MMSteel Club & Braidy Industries. For sponsorship opportunities and information, contact Irina Bondareva at +44 207 176 0253.

For event and program updates, visit www.GlobalMetalsAwards.com.

Global Metal Outlook Summit, May 16, Corinthia Hotel, London

Additionally, S&P Global Platts is proud to announce a new moment in the calendar via the Global Metals Outlook Summit, which will be taking place on the day of the Awards. Our new GMOS summit will provide an unrivalled cross metal sector view and outlook with a particular focus on upcoming trends and economic developments in raw materials, steel, aluminium, precious and battery metals. spglobal.com/GMOS.

About S&P Global Platts

At S&P Global Platts, we provide the insights; you make better informed trading and business decisions with confidence. We're the leading independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets. Customers in over 150 countries look to our expertise in news, pricing and analytics to deliver greater transparency and efficiency to markets. S&P Global Platts coverage includes oil and gas, power, petrochemicals, metals, agriculture and shipping.

S&P Global Platts is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), which provides essential intelligence for individuals, companies and governments to make decisions with confidence. For more information, visit www.platts.com.

SOURCE S&P Global Platts

Related Links

http://www.platts.com


CHICAGO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- First Nonprofit (FNP), a leading provider of insurance programs to nonprofit and government entities, today announced the endorsement of FNP's unemployment insurance programs by Community Action Partnership (CAP), a national non-profit membership organization that provides technical assistance, training, and other resources to Community Action Agencies (CAA).

FNP will provide CAP and its employer network with state-compliant, individually insured, cost-saving options to satisfy State Unemployment Insurance (SUI) tax requirements. By participating in FNP's insurance programs, CAAs will benefit from enduring savings and improved efficiencies to better serve constituents and further their missions.

Denise Harlow, Chief Executive Officer of the National Community Action Partnership, said, "As the hub for over a thousand of the nation's local Community Action Agencies, we are always looking for opportunities to connect local agencies to products and solutions that generate savings on the operational side of the business, so they are able to invest more money in their missions. First Nonprofit is the ideal partner, having already worked with many of our members to implement savings options. We look forward to working together to strengthen the positive social impact of our member agencies."

FNP currently serves more than 50 CAAs across the country. Over the past two years, FNP has helped CAA customers generate significant savings on more than $400,000 on SUI taxes in their first year alone.

About FNP

More than 2,000 organizations with over half a million employees nationwide rely on FNP for state-compliant, individually insured, cost-saving options that satisfy SUI requirements for 501(c)3 nonprofit, government and tribal entities. FNP operates within The Amynta Group, an industry leading group of warranty, managing general agent and specialty risk companies.

About CAP

Community Action Partnership is a national, 501(c)3 nonprofit membership organization that provides technical assistance, training, and other resources to CAAs, nonprofit and public groups funded by the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG), a federal program that allocates funding to states to connect Americans to greater opportunity.

SOURCE First Nonprofit

Related Links

http://www.firstnonprofit.com


NEW YORK, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- We The People (WTP), the world's only multichannel crowdfunding retail chain and creator support community, today announced that it is bringing its national tour, For Creators, By Creators (FCBC): From Crowdfunding to Global Launching, to New York City. Visit our event page to learn more details on the New York FCBC event and to register to attend.

WTP's mission is to connect U.S. startups, innovators, and the global markets. The FCBC tour is designed to provide networking opportunities for entrepreneurs and to help creators, who successfully crowdfunded a product idea, to launch globally. The FCBC event will be held at Civic Hall on April 25, 2019 from 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

"After tremendously successful events in Boston, St. Louis, and Las Vegas, we are thrilled to be able to bring our FCBC tour to the vibrant New York City creator community," said Jay Kang, CEO of WTP. "Our mission is to help creators bring their ideas to life because we are creators ourselves and we know the thrills and pitfalls of creating and distributing an exciting innovation on international markets."

There is no shortage of events for entrepreneurs in New York City, but FCBC is unlike any other. The event will include more than 100 of the most successful crowdfunded companies, experts and media to meet and mentor new creators seeking advice on funding, manufacturing, retail partnerships, and legal hurdles. Attendees can learn how to use crowdfunding to bring their ideas to scale fast.

In addition, five creators will have the opportunity to pitch their idea to the panel of experts, including a Guest Shark from Shark Tank, and get critiques, advice, or even funding. Finally, the FCBC event will include space to showcase exciting new products from local creators.

The forum will feature a couple of panel discussions, a networking dinner, and featured speakers and moderators including:

Matt Higgins , Co-founder and CEO of RSE Ventures, a Guest Shark from Shark Tank

, Co-founder and CEO of RSE Ventures, a Guest Shark from Shark Tank John Fiorentino, Creator and Co-Founder, Gravity Blanket and Moon Pod

Alice Chun , Co-Founder and CEO of Solight Design, Inc.

, Co-Founder and CEO of Solight Design, Inc. Hanson Grant , Founder and CEO of Think Board

, Founder and CEO of Think Board Jacob Durham , Co-Founder, NOMATIC

, Co-Founder, NOMATIC Melvin Poh , The Asian Entrepreneur & Cavendish Ventures

, The Asian Entrepreneur & Cavendish Ventures Jon Richards , Co-Founder, NOMATIC

, Co-Founder, NOMATIC Clarissa Redwine , Design and Technology Outreach Lead, Kickstarter

, Design and Technology Outreach Lead, Kickstarter Salvador Briggman , Published Writer and the Founder of the Popular Blog, CrowdCrux

, Published Writer and the Founder of the Popular Blog, CrowdCrux Arthur Limpens , Co-Founder, allocacoc

, Co-Founder, allocacoc Suzy Im , Vice President, TribalVision Worldwide

To date, WTP has brought more than 200 brands and more than a thousand products to the public via its brick-and-mortar and online stores, and it is engaging creators who want to take their brand global in two to three months in New York and around the U.S.

Current sponsors include WTP, while FCBC is also partnering with The Asian Entrepreneur, Maekyung Media Group and Women's Entrepreneurship Day to host the event.

For more information about WTP, visit https://wtpstoreusa.com .

ABOUT WE THE PEOPLE

Established in 2016, We The People (WTP) is the world's only multichannel crowdfunding retail chain and community. Founded for creators by creators, Ryan Sim, Joel Liew, Nison Chan, and CEO Jay Kang, WTP has gone from 14 brands to more than 200 brands with multiple product lines, featured in six stores in Singapore, Malaysia and St. Louis, MO. In the U.S., consumers can purchase top crowdfunded products through wtpstoreusa.com .

Providing education, e-commerce, and brick-and-mortar retail space for crowdfunded entrepreneurs, WTP is quickly becoming the hub of innovation in Asia and around the world. With its goal to bring together the global creator community, WTP is expanding internationally to the United States, Australia, Spain, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Media Contacts

Joshua Milne, PR Specialist, TribalVision, 617-501-1620, [email protected]

Ryan Sim , Managing Director, Marketing & Business Development, We The People, [email protected]

SOURCE We The People

Related Links

https://wtpstoreusa.com


Expedites innovative cannabinoid medicine program, covering 60 disease and health conditions including Parkinson's Disease, neuropathic pain and cardiac hypertrophy

LAS VEGAS, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- GB Sciences, Inc. (OTCQB: GBLX) today launched a global expansion strategy with the formation of GBS Global Biopharma Inc. ("GBS Global"), a cannabinoid medicine company based in Canada. GBS Global will expedite the development of clinical programs and IP currently indicated for 60 disease and health conditions.

GBS Global is dedicated to developing cannabinoid medicines for medical cannabis, nutraceutical, and prescription drug markets. The Canadian entity will operate in a fully legal, open business environment allowing for greater international collaboration, cross border expansion, access to capital, and cost-effective R&D supported by the country's legal market, tax credits and favorable exchange rates.

GBS Global proprietary discovery platform generates "complex mixture" cannabinoid/terpenoid active ingredients (APIs) for specific disease and health conditions. GBS Global researchers are working with scientists in the United States, Spain, and Greece on nutraceuticals, delivery technology, and prescription drug programs.

"Canada's policies will allow GBS Global to bring our next-generation cannabinoid medications to market quickly, safely and legally. Canada's regulations, in particular, mean treatments can be evaluated and approved in less time than it would take in the U.S.," said GBS Global Board Chair and CEO of GB Sciences, Inc. John Poss. "This creates vital new opportunities for GBS Global, benefitting both our patients and investors."

GBS Global intellectual property portfolio of natural and synthetic cannabinoid-based complex mixtures are indicated for Parkinson's (PD), neuropathic pain, and cardiac hypertrophy Rx programs in late pre-clinical stage of development. OTC programs for irritable bowel syndrome, sleep disorders, and psoriasis are at formulation stage in step with ongoing discussions with strategic partners in the field.

"Developing our life sciences assets in Canada will expedite work to validate the safety and effectiveness of our proprietary therapeutics through expanded access to research partners and capital," said Dr. Andrea Small-Howard, Chief Science Officer and Board Member of GBS Global. "In addition, Canada's medical cannabis legislation provides an alternative channel for supporting health claims on some of our OTC patent-pending formulas. Plus, these products can be exported to Europe, the world's fastest growing market."

About GBS Global Biopharma, Inc.

GBS Global Biopharma Inc. is a cannabinoid medicine development company located in Ottawa, Canada. Cannabinoid medicine is new science featuring 480+ active ingredients modulating GPCR and Ionotropic receptors involved in many disease conditions and notably those with no treatment or related to opioid addiction. GBS Global proprietary HTS/in Silico platform generates APIs for for medical cannabis, nutraceutical supplement and prescription drug markets. The company currently has Rx programs in late pre-clinical and OTC programs at the formulation stage. GBS is working with nanotech time release and rapid dissolve technology for effective oral delivery of their formulations.

About GB Sciences, Inc.

GB Sciences, Inc. (OTCQB: GBLX) is a diverse cannabis company, focused on standardized cultivation and production methods; as well as biopharmaceutical research and development. The Company's goal is creating safe, standardized, pharmaceutical-grade, cannabinoid therapies that target a variety of medical conditions. To learn more about GB Sciences, Inc., go to: http://gbsciences.com .

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain statements relating to future results or events, which are forward-looking statements. Words such as "expects", "intends", "plans", "may", "could", "should", "anticipates", "likely", "believes" and words of similar import may identify forward-looking statements. These statements are not historical facts, but instead represent only the Company's belief regarding future events, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of the Company's control. It is possible that the Company's actual results and financial condition may differ, possibly materially, from the anticipated results and financial condition indicated in these forward-looking statements. Further, information concerning the Company and its business, including factors that potentially could materially affect the Company's business and financial and other results, are contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, available at www.sec.gov. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date of this press release, and we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or correct any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that subsequently occur or of which we hereafter become aware.

Note: Although the Company's research and development activities are not illegal, the production and sale of cannabis products violate federal laws as they presently exist.

Contact Information

Corporate:

GB Sciences, Inc., 3550 West Teco Ave., Las Vegas, NV 89118

866-721-0297, or Liz Bianco, Director of Publicity, [email protected]

SOURCE GB Sciences, Inc.

Related Links

http://gbsciences.com/


COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- An international coalition of public pension funds, governmental entities, and asset managers have sued Danske Bank A/S, asserting fraud claims stemming from a massive Russian money-laundering scheme and multi-year cover-up by Denmark's largest bank and its senior leadership.

The lawsuit, filed in the Copenhagen City Court on March 14, was brought by leading U.S. shareholder law firms Grant & Eisenhofer P.A. and DRRT. The firms represent claimants from 19 countries across Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. To date, more than 169 institutional investors, including many of the world's largest pension funds, suffered substantial losses at the hands of Danske Bank's unchecked laundering of funds passing through its branch in Estonia. The claimant group seeks $475 million USD in damages.



The investor suit follows a multi-month probe which found that Danske Bank's senior management had knowledge of illicit money laundering at its Estonian branch. Danske Bank had been informed by an internal whistleblower that suspicious Russian sources were behind one of the companies laundering money through the Estonia branch.



Last September, an independent investigation ordered by the bank's board of directors revealed that more than $230 billion in suspicious transactions passed through the Estonia branch from Russian sources. The report found that Danske's senior leadership had known of the problem as far back as 2013, but failed to make appropriate disclosures even after the laundering was confirmed in 2014. Investors accuse Danske Bank of engaging in a concerted cover-up to keep the findings as well as the magnitude of the laundering from investors and financial regulators in Estonia and Denmark.

"Although the criminal laundering scheme flowed through the little Estonia branch, our lawsuit asserts that something was indeed rotten in the state of Denmark, namely that Danske Bank leadership failed to take any corrective action for nearly five years," said Olav Haazen, a lawyer with Grant & Eisenhofer who represents the investor group. "No one would have expected an elite, well-established European bank like Danske to be involved in money-laundering of any sort, let alone of the scale uncovered in this case  it's one of the most egregious money laundering scandals in history."

In addition to criminal and regulatory investigations pending in Estonia, Denmark, France and the UK, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced last month it was opening its own probe of Danske Bank. Investors lost nearly $9 billion following the various disclosures of Danske's fraud and money-laundering scheme, which caused the bank's stock price to be sliced by more than half.



"The real scandal isn't about a small foreign bank branch going rogue  it's about the shocking concealment of criminality that went straight to the top of the enterprise," said Mr. Haazen. "Danske Bank's management engaged in a concerted cover-up of its enormous money laundering exposure, while continuing to paint a rosy picture to investors. For years, leadership made no disclosures about the problem and then misrepresented the extent of its participation in the scheme, while touting the bank's anti-money laundering policies and practices."



Following the release of the September 2018 report, Danske Bank CEO Thomas Borgen and general counsel Flemming Pristed resigned. Danske Bank earlier announced the release of business banking head Lars Mrch from his work duties, while he would remain formally employed until October 2019.



The action was filed on behalf of all investors who purchased and/or acquired Danske Bank A/S securities during the relevant period of Dec. 31, 2012 through the present.



Grant & Eisenhofer regularly represents European and international investors. The firm has successfully acted as counsel in connection with major investor lawsuits in Germany, France, the U.K. and the Netherlands. G&E has led coalitions of global investors in successfully bringing securities class actions against Fortis in the Netherlands and against Royal Bank of Scotland in the U.K., which were both accused of vastly overstating their liquidity and understating their exposure to the toxic U.S. subprime market. These unprecedented securities actions led to settlements of $1.5 billion and $1 billion respectively  among the largest securities fraud settlements ever in Europe. G&E also directed litigation against Royal Dutch Shell which led to a $400 million investor settlement in 2007, the largest securities fraud settlement in Europe at the time.

About Grant & Eisenhofer P.A.

Grant & Eisenhofer is one of the nation's leading litigation firms, with a highly successful track record representing plaintiffs in complex litigation and arbitration matters. The firm has offices in Wilmington (Delaware), New York, and Chicago, and an international docket of high-profile cases. G&E's clients include institutional investors and other plaintiffs in U.S. and international securities matters, derivative and corporate governance lawsuits, shareholder activism matters, bankruptcy litigation, antitrust actions, consumer class actions, whistleblower cases involving the False Claims Act, mass tort and environmental suits, birth injury litigation, intellectual property disputes, and civil rights suits. The firm has recovered over $27 billion for clients in the last ten years, and has twice been cited by RiskMetrics for securing the highest average investor recovery in securities class actions. G&E has been named one of the country's top plaintiffs' law firms by The National Law Journal for more than a decade, and was named one of the nation's "Most Feared Plaintiffs Firms" as well as one of Delaware's "Regional Powerhouses for 2018" by Law360. For more information, visit www.gelaw.com.

SOURCE Grant & Eisenhofer

Related Links

http://www.gelaw.com


ZURICH, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- People in emerging markets have great difficulty funding their healthcare needs, as overall expenditure in healthcare is growing faster than gross domestic product, according to a research report published by The Geneva Association, the leading international think tank of the insurance industry.

The share of healthcare expenditure has risen globally over the last two decades from about 8% to almost 10% of aggregate gross domestic product. In emerging markets, higher healthcare costs are driven both by communicable diseases and by lifestyle-related diseases. However, in these markets, the global trend of higher healthcare expenditure has not led to increased penetration of private health insurance, which remains insignificant with a 2% share of total healthcare expenditure.

The report 'Healthcare in Emerging Markets: Exploring the Protection Gaps' analyses the health protection gap as out-of-pocket spending that is financially stressful for households. Based on assumptions on the relationship between stressful out-of-pocket spending and per capita income, The Geneva Association estimates the annual health protection gap in emerging markets at about USD 310 billion or approximately 1% of these countries' aggregate gross domestic product.

Jad Ariss, Secretary General of The Geneva Association, said: "Healthcare funding is one of the biggest societal challenges of our time and the insurance industry can play a major role in offering sustainable solutions. Health protection gaps in emerging markets require flexible and creative approaches that address the needs of vulnerable people who have so far been denied suitable and affordable access to healthcare."

Kai-Uwe Schanz, Director of the Protection Gap research programme at The Geneva Association, said: "There is a broad consensus that private health insurance is preferable to out-of-pocket spending which can be financially catastrophic for households. With the right regulatory framework, private health insurance can have an important and beneficial effect on the sustainability of health schemes to which individuals, governments and employers contribute."

From a public policy point of view, private health insurance can help governments in emerging countries to mitigate their population's vulnerability to catastrophic out-of-pocket spending.

Download the report

Watch a 3-minute interview with the author

Visit the Health Protection Gaps hub

SOURCE The Geneva Association

Related Links

https://www.genevaassociation.org/


Versify's mission is present books to "electrify, edify, and exemplify" with accessible and powerful prose and poetry that celebrates the lives and reflects the possibilities of all children. Its debut list includes four books: The Last Last-Day-of-Summer by Lamar Giles; Vamos! Let's Go to the Market by author/illustrator Raul the Third; White Rose by Kip Wilson; and Alexander's own picture book, The Undefeated , which is illustrated by Kadir Nelson, who will join the tour for select events. The books, which go on sale April 2, have earned a combined 13 starred reviews from industry media to date.

In addition to a number of classroom visits, the Versify team will make public appearances with the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, N.Y. (April 1); Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. (April 2); An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Mass. (April 3); Words Bookstore in Maplewood, N.J. (April 4); Children's Book World in Haverford, Pa. (April 5); and The National Gallery of Art and Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C. (April 6).

"I love visiting schools and meeting readers as much as I love writing the books," said Alexander. "The bus is a way for me to reach tons more kids in a short period of time. And look cool doing it. I really want to make all books cool for ALL kids. That the Versify authors get to launch their books is apropos, 'cause they're all rock stars!"

Immediately following the Versify tour, Kwame Alexander will embark on a national bus tour to celebrate the paperback editions of his Newbery Medalwinning verse novel, The Crossover, and its acclaimed follow-up Booked. Starting in Virginia, Alexander will visit children at bookstores, schools, libraries and other venues in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri and Tennessee. He will be joined by musician Randy Preston throughout the tour.

"Kwame Alexander events are as dynamic and inspiring as his books," said Catherine Onder, SVP and Publisher of HMH Books for Young Readers. "These back-to-back tours create a celebratory launch for the Versify imprint while highlighting the groundbreaking books that have earned him fans worldwide."

Both book tours are supported by education solutions provider Follett, which announced a partnership with Kwame Alexander in fall 2018 to launch All Books for All Kids, a literacy campaign to ensure children have access to a wide range of books, no matter their background.

For additional tour details, visit kwamealexander.com or versifybooks.com.

Visit FollettBookFairs.com for more information about Follett Book Fairs in elementary and middle schools and #AllBooksforAllKids.

About Kwame Alexander

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, and the New York Times Bestselling author of 28 books, including Rebound, the follow-up to his, Newbery Medal-winning middle grade novel, The Crossover. Some of his other works include Booked, which was longlisted for the National Book Award, The Playbook: 52 Rules to Help You Aim, Shoot, and Score in this Game of Life, Swing, and the picture books, Out of Wonder and The Undefeated.

A regular contributor to NPR's Morning Edition, Kwame is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Coretta Scott King Author Honor, The NCTE/Charlotte Huck Honor, Three NAACP Image Award Nominations, and the 2017 Inaugural Pat Conroy Legacy Award. He believes that poetry can change the world, and he uses it to inspire and empower young people around the world through The Write Thing, his K-12 Writing Workshop. Kwame is the founder of Versify, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and the host and producer of the literary variety/talk show, Bookish, which airs on Facebook Watch. He's led cultural exchange delegations to Brazil, Italy, Singapore, and Ghana, where he built the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic, as a part of LEAP for Ghana, an international literacy program he co-founded. www.kwamealexander.com Twitter: @kwamealexander Instagram: @kwamealexander

About Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media

For nearly two centuries, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has published some of the world's most renowned novels, nonfiction, children's books, and reference works. As part of a leading global learning company, it is uniquely positioned to offer educational and entertaining content for all audiences. Its distinguished author list includes ten Nobel Prize winners, forty-eight Pulitzer Prize winners, fifteen National Book Award winners, and more than one hundred Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, and Sibert Medal and Honor recipients. Current and recent authors include Tim O'Brien, Natasha Trethewey, Tim Ferriss, Amos Oz, Ursula K. Le Guin, and a celebrated roster of children's authors and illustrators including Kwame Alexander, Lois Lowry, and Chris Van Allsburg. HMH is also home to The Best American series; The Whole30, Weber Grill, How to Cook Everything, and other leading lifestyle properties; books by J.R.R. Tolkien; and many iconic children's books and characters, including Curious George, The Little Prince, and The Polar Express. HMH Audio, a newly launched imprint, will publish audio books of HMH front list and backlist titles starting in fall 2019.

Contact

John Sellers

Director of Publicity

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers

(212)420-5878

[email protected]

SOURCE Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Related Links

https://www.hmhco.com


DALLAS, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Simmons Bank, as Trustee of the Hugoton Royalty Trust (OTCQX:HGTXU) (the "Trust"), today declared there would not be a cash distribution to the holders of its units of beneficial interest for March 2019. Properties underlying the Wyoming net profits interests contributed net profits income of $131,000, after fully recovering the excess costs balance including interest. The Trustee has decided to increase the cash reserve by withholding the proceeds remaining after paying current month administration expenses. The following table shows underlying gas sales and average prices attributable to the net overriding royalty for both the current month and prior month. Underlying gas sales volumes attributable to the current month were primarily produced in January.





Underlying Gas Sales







Volumes (Mcf) (a)

Average Gas



Total

Daily

Price per Mcf













Current Month

783,000

25,000

$4.24 Prior Month

914,000

29,000

$5.50



(a) Sales volumes are recorded in the month the Trust receives the related net profits income. Because of this, sales volumes may fluctuate from month to month based on the timing of cash receipts.

XTO Energy has advised the Trustee that it has deducted budgeted development costs of $2,774,000, production expense of $1,632,000 and overhead of $1,023,000 in determining the royalty calculation for the Trust for the current month.

Litigation and Arbitration Proceedings  Chieftain

As previously disclosed, XTO Energy advised the Trustee that it reached a settlement with the plaintiffs in the Chieftain class action royalty case. On July 27, 2018 the final plan of allocation was approved by the court. Based on the final plan of allocation XTO Energy has advised the Trustee that it believes approximately $24.3 million in additional production costs should be allocated to the Trust. On May 2, 2018, the Trustee submitted a demand for arbitration styled Simmons Bank (successor to Southwest Bank and Bank of America, N.A.) vs. XTO Energy Inc. (the "Arbitration") through the American Arbitration Association seeking a declaratory judgment that the Chieftain settlement is not a production cost and that XTO Energy is prohibited from charging the settlement as a production cost under the conveyance or otherwise reducing the Trust's payments now or in the future as a result of the Chieftain litigation. In the Arbitration, the Trustee also made claims for disputed amounts on the computation of the Trust's net proceeds for 2014 through 2016 in excess of $5 million. The hearing on the claims related to the Chieftain settlement has been scheduled for October 7, 2019. The remaining claims related to the computation of the Trust's net proceeds were bifurcated and will be heard at a later date, which is still to be determined.

If the approximately $24.3 million allocated portion of the Chieftain settlement results in an adjustment to the Trust's share of net proceeds, it would result in additional excess costs under the Oklahoma conveyance that would likely result in no distributions under the Oklahoma conveyance for several years, or more depending on the results of operations of the underlying properties, while these additional excess costs are recovered.

Development Costs

XTO Energy has advised the Trustee that the monthly development cost deduction for March was reduced from $2,825,000 to $2,774,000. The deduction is based on the current level of development expenditures, budgeted future development costs and cumulative actual costs under or over the previous deductions. XTO Energy will continue to evaluate the development cost deduction and revise as necessary.

Excess Costs

XTO Energy has advised the Trustee that increased costs in the current month distribution caused costs to exceed revenues by $122,000 on properties underlying the Kansas net profits interests. Underlying cumulative excess costs remaining on the Kansas net profits interests total $1,086,000, including accrued interest of $176,000.

XTO Energy has advised the Trustee that excess costs increased by $2,766,000 on properties underlying the Oklahoma net profits interests primarily due to budgeted development costs. Underlying cumulative excess costs remaining on the Oklahoma net profits interests total $20,968,000, including accrued interest of $0. XTO has advised the Trustee that it has determined not to accrue interest on the Oklahoma excess costs balance at this time.

XTO Energy has advised the Trustee that improved gas prices in relation to costs resulted in the full recovery of remaining excess costs consisting of $109,000 of excess costs and $39,000 of accrued interest on properties underlying the Wyoming net profits interests.

For more information on the Trust, please visit our web site at www.hgt-hugoton.com.

Statements made in this press release regarding future events or conditions are forward looking statements. Actual future results, including development costs and future net profits, could differ materially due to changes in natural gas prices and other economic conditions affecting the gas industry and other factors described in Part I, Item 1A of the Trust's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017 and Part II, Item 1A of the Trust's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2018.

SOURCE Hugoton Royalty Trust

Related Links

http://www.hgt-hugoton.com


SAN JOSE, Calif., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Inspur, a leading datacenter and AI full-stack solution provider, today released the NF5488M5, the industry's first AI server supporting eight NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs interconnected with ultra-high bandwidth NVSwitch in a 4U form factor. The Inspur NF5488M5 is designed to facilitate a variety of deep-learning and high-performance computing applications, including voice recognition, video analysis and intelligent customer service.

The NF5488M5 is a single server whose key features include:

Superb Performance

Eight NVIDIA Tesla V100 Tensor Core 32GB GPUs with 5,120 Tensor Cores, providing up to 1 PFlops of AI computing performance

The option of two 28-core CPUs to provide top-level, general-purpose computing performance, and 6 TB of persistent memory for high-speed data access

Flexible & Ergonomic

A design that fits a broad range of data center power and a space-conserving environment, especially for power-constrained racks

Flexible GPU cluster expansion over PCIe fabric

Designed to operate on 54VDC, a more power-efficient voltage for GPUs

A multi-layer heat dissipation design and intelligent PID adjustment that provide industry-leading thermal management and control

"Inspur has been committed to providing world-class AI computing products and solutions to AI users worldwide through innovative design," said Jun Liu, Inspur general manager of AI and HPC. "The rapid development of AI keeps increasing the requirements for computing performance and flexibility of AI infrastructure. The NF5488M5 help users shorten AI model development cycles, and accelerate AI technology innovation and application development."

"NVIDIA's GPU-accelerated computing has transformed AI and HPC," said Paresh Kharya, director of Product Marketing at NVIDIA. "Inspur has efficiently innovated computing systems based on the latest NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs, and the new NF5488M5 will help AI and HPC users worldwide break through their computational bottlenecks."

For more information about the NF5488M5, visit Inspur at Booth No. 1111 at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) .

About Inspur

As the world's leading AI computing provider, Inspur is fully engaged in the development of AI infrastructures on four layers, including computing platform, management and performance suite, optimized deep-learning frameworks, and application acceleration to deliver end-to-end, agile, cost-efficient and optimized AI solutions for its industry customers. According to IDC's First Half 2018 China AI Infrastructure Market Survey Report, with 51% market share, Inspur ranks first in the AI server market. IDC and Gartner's worldwide server market tracker for 2018 ranked Inspur No. 3 in the worldwide x86 server market. Committed to offering state-of-the-art computing for global customers through innovative design, Inspur has become a business partner of many leading companies in the world. To learn more, visit www.inspursystems.com.

SOURCE Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd

Related Links

http://www.inspursystems.com


DALLAS, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- John Galt Solutions is happy to announce their 2019 global call for applications to their higher-education scholarship for business forecasting and supply chain solution leaders of the future.

Deadline for Applications: July 1, 2019

Aimed at supporting the next generation of expert forecasters and supply chain leaders, this $10,000 scholarship will be awarded to a student who shows a solid commitment to their career in one of these fields. Eligible applicants do not have to be studying in the USA but should be currently enrolled full-time at an accredited institution for the current academic year, in supply chain management, business forecasting, or similar programs.

"It's great to see the difference this scholarship has made in the life of our first recipient, and to be part of impacting a promising career in Supply Chain leadership," said Anne Omrod, president and CEO of John Galt. "We want to continue to make a positive and much-needed transformation in someone's life and goals, by supporting their passion and talent to make a positive difference."

John Galt Solutions are seeking dedicated students who are always looking for opportunities to further develop character and skills. We want to be told about any leadership, volunteer, academic or personal achievements that set each applicant apart as an individual  to hear their story and learn what makes them exceptional. Applications should also tell us the inspiration behind their pursuit of supply chain excellence, and why business forecasting and supply chain are their passion. Students with a major in any field are welcome to apply, as long as they can demonstrate their potential as a future supply chain leader and their commitment to the supply chain world.

"Winning the scholarship meant that I have less to worry about for the next school year. With my state scholarship just having run out because of my high credit hours, I just did not have funding for grad school," said 2019 Spring Scholarship winner, Marie Ozenua. "This scholarship is helping me take care of a majority of my costs for the year, which means that my parents have one less thing to worry over as well. I couldn't be more grateful to John Galt Solutions for their assistance."

John Galt looks forward to receiving applications from upcoming leaders in the field and helping them to fulfill their professional goals within the supply chain solution and business forecasting industry. Applicants must be committed to personal growth and have genuine financial need to be considered for the scholarship.

For more information and for applications, go to https://johngalt.com/scholarship.

Additional Resources

Learn more about John Galt Solutions

Contact our press office at 312-701-9026 or visit www.johngalt.com.

SOURCE John Galt Solutions

Related Links

http://www.johngalt.com


NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) will host a conference call for investors at 8:30 a.m. (Eastern Time) on Tuesday, April 16th, to review first-quarter results. Joseph J. Wolk, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Christopher DelOrefice, Vice President, Investor Relations will host the call. The question and answer portion of the call will also include the following executives: Ashley McEvoy, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, Medical Devices; Thibaut Mongon, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, Consumer and Jennifer Taubert, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chairman, Pharmaceuticals.

Investors and other interested parties can access the webcast/conference call in the following ways:

The webcast and presentation material are accessible at Johnson & Johnson's website www.investor.jnj.com. A replay of the webcast will be available approximately three hours after the conference call concludes.

By telephone: for both "listen-only" participants and those financial analysts who wish to take part in the question-and-answer portion of the call, the telephone dial-in number in the U.S. is 877-869-3847. For participants outside the U.S., the dial-in number is 201-689-8261.

A replay of the conference call will be available until approximately 12:00 a.m. on April 24, 2019 . The replay dial-in number for U.S. participants is 877-660-6853. For participants outside the U.S., the replay dial-in number is 201-612-7415. The replay conference ID number for all callers is 13688797.

on . The replay dial-in number for U.S. participants is 877-660-6853. For participants outside the U.S., the replay dial-in number is 201-612-7415. The replay conference ID number for all callers is 13688797. The press release will be available at approximately 6:45 a.m. (Eastern Time) the morning of the conference call.

About Johnson & Johnson

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe good health is the foundation of vibrant lives, thriving communities and forward progress. That's why for more than 130 years, we have aimed to keep people well at every age and every stage of life. Today, as the world's largest and most broadly-based health care company, we are committed to using our reach and size for good. We strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere. We are blending our heart, science and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity.

SOURCE Johnson & Johnson

Related Links

http://www.jnj.com


RESTON, Va., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Leidos (NYSE: LDOS), a FORTUNE 500 science and technology leader, has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Army Contracting Command-Redstone to provide aircraft logistics and maintenance in theaters of operations. The multiple award, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity, firm-fixed-price contract has a five-year base period of performance, one five-year option ordering period, and a total potential value of $25.5 billion. Work will be primarily be performed in Afghanistan and Greece in support of U.S. Army operations.

Under the Worldwide Logistics Support Services  Contractor Logistics Support contract, Leidos will provide services that support rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft across the globe for the U.S. Army's Multi-National Aviation Special Project Office. Support services include sustainment engineering, supply support, maintenance planning and management; furnishing or maintaining support equipment, aircraft modifications; manpower and personnel; facilities and infrastructure; packaging, handling, storage, and transportation.

"Our company is a recognized leader in operations and logistics with a history of working on complex programs that support military missions worldwide," said Senior Vice President Kevin Lansdowne, Leidos Airborne Solutions. "We look forward to providing superior services that help the Army rapidly respond to the evolving needs of warfighters."

About Leidos

Leidos is a Fortune 500 information technology, engineering, and science solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, civil, and health markets. The company's 32,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $10.19 billion for the fiscal year ended December 28, 2018. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com.



Statements in this announcement, other than historical data and information, constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause our actual results, performance, achievements, or industry results to be very different from the results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 28, 2018, and other such filings that Leidos makes with the SEC from time to time. Due to such uncertainties and risks, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof.

SOURCE Leidos

Related Links

http://www.leidos.com


MENLO PARK, Calif., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- At the 62nd Annual Laureate Awards, Aviation Week & Space Technology named LeoLabs, Inc. winner in the Space Operations category, honoring extraordinary achievements for innovation in operations and services for low Earth orbit. LeoLabs was among other industry leaders honored on March 14 at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC.

LeoLabs provides access to critical mapping and Space Situational Awareness (SSA) data for low Earth orbit, with services including collision avoidance, risk assessment, constellation monitoring, and commercial SSA. The company works with space agencies, commercial satellite operators, defense, insurance underwriters and scientific/academic organizations that are driving generational change in LEO.

LeoLabs and all of the winners were selected by Aviation Week Network editors after reviewing dozens of nominations. The focus was on space industry leaders who embody the spirit of exploration, innovation and vision that will inspire others to strive for broad-reaching progress in aviation, aerospace and defense.

"Aviation Week's annual Laureate Awards are intended to reach deep into aerospace to recognize achievements that can benefit or change our industry," said Graham Warwick, managing editor, technology at Aviation Week. "LeoLabs' technology for making low Earth orbit safer through improved surveillance of orbital debris is critical to enabling the hoped-for growth of the commercial space industry."

The award categories were Space, Business Aviation, Commercial, and Defense. In addition, Aviation Week & Space Technology bestowed two Philip J. Klass Awards for Lifetime Achievement. Four cadets and midshipmen from U.S. military academies were recognized as Tomorrow's Leaders, honoring young men and women who have chosen career paths in the armed forces.

"We are honored to be recognized for our work in the space operations category," said Dan Ceperley, CEO and co-founder of LeoLabs. "The Aviation Week Network's Laureates Awards have a long history of recognizing the very best in the industry and we are thrilled to win this distinction."

In addition to the Laureates Awards, Aviation Week & Space Technology hosted a luncheon early in the day, honoring the "20 Twenties" in partnership with American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). This program recognizes the accomplishments and drive of 20 science, technology, engineering and math students in their 20s and currently enrolled in a master's degree or bachelor's degree program.

About LeoLabs

Founded in 2016 as a venture-funded spinout of Silicon Valley research pioneer, SRI International, LeoLabs provides access to critical mapping and SSA data for low Earth orbit. LeoLabs' services include collision prevention, risk assessment, constellation monitoring, and commercial SSA. LeoLabs today serves space agencies, commercial satellite operators, defense, and scientific/academic organizations that are driving generational change in LEO. LeoLabs' core technology includes a patent-pending global phased-array radar network which tracks debris and satellites in LEO. Observations generated from this network are the foundation of the LeoLabs mapping and SSA software platform, providing timely and accurate orbital and situational data.

About Aviation Week Network

Aviation Week Network, an Informa business, is the largest multimedia information and services provider for the global aviation, aerospace, and defense industries, serving 1.7 million professionals around the world. Industry professionals rely on Aviation Week Network to help them understand the market, make decisions, predict trends, and connect with people and business opportunities. Customers include the world's leading aerospace manufacturers and suppliers, airlines, airports, business aviation operators, militaries, governments and other organizations that serve this worldwide marketplace. Aviation Week Network's portfolio delivers award-winning journalism, data, intelligence and analytical resources, world-class tradeshows and conferences, and results-driven marketing services and advertising. principle

About Informa Exhibitions

Aviation Week Network, part of Informa Exhibitions, the global exhibitions division of Informa PLC, enables communities across the globe to engage, experience and do business by providing them with powerful platforms to connect across key regions and market verticals. Industry insight, coupled with an innovative and customer first approach, provides Informa Exhibitions' customers and partners with the opportunity to create business advantage and access markets, both digitally and face-to-face, 365 days of the year.

SOURCE LeoLabs, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.leolabs.space


BEIJING, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Luokung Technology Corp. (LKCO) ("Luokung" or the "Company"), one of the global leading spatial-temporal big-data processing technology companies, and a leading interactive location-based services company in China, today announced it had signed a Service Cooperation Framework Agreement (the "Agreement") with Shenzhen Ping An Comprehensive Financial Services Co. Ltd. ("Ping An Financial Services"). Pursuant to the Agreement of establishing resource, information, and technology cooperation, Luokung will provide its spatial-temporal cloud indexing technology and the world's leading vector data processing and algorithm technology to be integrated with Ping An Financial Services' business operation. On the strength of the full vector, non-tiled, mobile Internet map, Luokung is able to provide Ping An Financial Services a stable, flexible, and efficient spatial-temporal cloud computing platform. Ping An Financial Services will provide Luokung with Internet financial platform services including online financial security, settlement and third-party payment.

Luokung and Ping An Financial Services will utilize their respective resources and capitals, and leverage on Luokung's expertise in spatial-temporal big data technology. The two parties will provide leading products and services to domestic and overseas clients and seek opportunities to expand cooperation in related business domains. Meanwhile, both parties also have agreed to establish a regular communication mechanism for the senior managements to further collaborate and coordinate in strategy and operations. Both parties will work together to optimize mutual resources to achieve win-win and synergy.

About Shenzhen Ping An Comprehensive Financial Services Co. Ltd

Ping An Financial Services is the online platform providing comprehensive financial services to individual customers and it is a subsidiary of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd.("Ping An Group"). Ping An Group has been developing into an integrated and vastly diversified financial services group including financing, insurance, banking and investment. It is ranked the 10th in The World's 2,000 Largest Public Companies by Forbes, and ranked the 1st among global insurance companies. It is also ranked the 29th in US Fortune 500. In accordance to the "finance + technology" and "financial + ecological" strategy of Ping An Group, Ping An Financial Services focuses on three major aspects including services, sales and strategy, its business covers customer service, customer management, shared services, strategic synergy and product sales and It has formed six core competencies of intelligent customer service, value service sales, strategic coordination, data marketing, lean operation and online migration of group customers. It is providing comprehensive financial services for 184 million Ping An individual customer and 65 professional companies.

About Luokung Technology Corp.

Luokung Technology Corp. is one of the global leading spatial-temporal big-data processing technology companies, and a leading interactive location-based services company in China. The core brands of the Company are "Luokuang" and "SuperEngine". "Luokuang" is a mobile application to provide B2C services and "SuperEngine" provides B2B and B2G services in connection with Spatial-Temporal big data. The Company's mobile application LuoKuang, which provides location- based interaction services for users based on the world's first non-slicing, full-vector and full-function mobile internet map. It also provides SDK embedded services to third-party mobile application providers based on its full-vector and non-slicing mobile internet map. The Company provides SaaS services in relation to spatial-temporal big data internet and internet of things relying on its proprietary patented spatial-temporal cloud indexing technology, in fields including but not limited to HD Map, 3D Map, Satellite Remote Sensing Data and Real-time trajectory. More information may be found athttp://www.luokung.com

Business Risks and Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will", "expects", "anticipates", "future", "intends", "plans", "believes", "estimates", "target", "going forward", "outlook" and similar statements. Such statements are based upon management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the Company's control, which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties or factors is included in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under law.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

The Company:

Mr. Jay Yu

Chief Financial Officer

Tel: +86-10-5327-4727

Email: [email protected]

INVESTOR RELATIONS

PureRock Communications Limited

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Luokung Technology Corp.

Related Links

http://www.luokung.com


FLORHAM PARK, N.J., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Managed Health Care Associates, Inc. (MHA), a leading health care services and software company focused on the alternate site health care provider marketplace, is honored and excited to announce that the company has earned the distinction of being named one of the 2019 Best Places to Work in New Jersey.

The Best Places to Work in New Jersey program recognizes the state's top employers that show a dedication to employees' professional growth, quality of life and commitment to the customer experience. The awards program, created in 2005, is produced by NJBIZ.

Louise DeBellonia, MHA Vice President of Human Resources, shared, "MHA offers a casual yet professional work environment. We recognize the importance of investing in our associates, and offer competitive salaries, comprehensive health, dental, and vision benefits, and a 401(k) plan with company match. What's more, 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the company and our dedication to Exceptional Service. Extraordinary People."

Michael J. Sicilian, MHA President, commented, "One of my priorities is to try and provide the best work environment possible so our associates feel valued and want to invest in building their careers at MHA. For MHA to receive this distinguished award is a recognition of the excellence, pride and competitive spirit of our associates. I am proud of our many talented and dedicated associates who make MHA the best at what we do!!"

MHA is currently recruiting for roles within its Florham Park, NJ headquarters, and across the country. To explore working at MHA, visit https://www.mhainc.com/Careers/

About MHA

Managed Health Care Associates, Inc. (MHA) is a leading health care services and software company that offers a growing portfolio of services and solutions to support the diverse and complex needs of the alternate site health care provider. MHA provides expertise in Group Purchasing, Managed Care and Payor Contracting, Reimbursement Management, Specialty Pharmacy Solutions, Pharmaceutical Data Analytics, Consultant Pharmacy Software and Legislative Advocacy. Through the delivery of innovative health care services and solutions, MHA helps Members increase operational efficiency, maximize business growth and provide optimum care for their patients. For more information, visit www.mhainc.com.

For More Information Contact:

Elisabeth Overend

VP of Marketing

Managed Health Care Associates, Inc.

800-642-3020 X9374

[email protected]

SOURCE Managed Health Care Associates, Inc. (MHA)

Related Links

http://www.mhainc.com


IRVINE, Calif., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- MiDOG, LLC announced the launch of its new All-in-One Microbial Test. Eliciting the power of Next-Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS), the test identifies all aerobic and anaerobic bacteria, fungi, as well as antibiotic resistances. The results are presented in a comprehensive report, available within two to five business days after the sample is received at the MiDOG laboratory.

The MiDOG All-in-One Microbial Test for canines detects all bacteria, fungi, and antibiotic resistance in all types of samples, allowing veterinarians a more accurate diagnosis and treatment options.

Culture tests can only detect a miniscule subset of all microorganisms and do not adequately represent the total microbial profile that may be causing an infection, and, in many cases, culture tests come back negative indicating 'no growth'. The MiDOG test can be used to accurately quantify the absolute abundance of all bacteria and fungi that comprise a sample, both at the site and at the time of collection.

A sample is collected by swabbing a subject's skin, ear, feces, or other site, at the veterinarian's location, and sent to the MiDOG service laboratory for processing using the supplied, pre-paid FedEx envelope. The microbial DNA is extracted, the genomic analysis run using NGS technology, the data analyzed and filtered using proprietary software, and a comprehensive report generated for the veterinarian. Even complex samples, including biofilms, are compatible with the test.

MiDOG has worked with many veterinarians to procure clinical data and built its proprietary, reference databases on healthy dogs. The comprehensive report provided to the veterinarian not only shows the absolute abundance of bacteria and fungi, but it shows the data in comparison to healthy canines.

"Traditional culture methods can only detect less than 1% of all microorganisms. Using NGS technology, the MiDOG All-in-One Microbial Test, which integrates proprietary bioinformatic algorithms to extract more meaningful data, detects all infectious agents from the sample. In addition, it identifies antibiotic resistance which helps veterinarians diagnose and treat canine infections," said Dr. Janina A. Krumbeck, Director of MiDOG, LLC.

"We make it convenient to swab the sample, whether it be skin, feces, or saliva, with the state-of-the-art sample collection kit. The kit includes a proprietary DNA preservation agent that stabilizes the sample at ambient temperature for prolonged periods, so there is no need to refrigerate samples."

Dr. Michael Kavanagh, Practice Owner of Saddleback Animal Hospital in Tustin, California, explained, "I have had great results using the MiDOG Test. Compared to traditional culture tests, I am better able to target the treatment for dogs because the MiDOG Test is so sensitive that it identifies all pathogens including bacteria and fungi, as well as antibiotic sensitivity. The cost and turnaround time are about the same as a culture test, but I get much more data. The test has great performance and I believe the NGS technology will be a game changer for veterinarians treating dogs with lesions or other infections."

The MiDOG All-in-One Microbial Test first debuted at the 91st Annual Western Veterinary Conference (WVC) held on February 17-20, 2019, in Las Vegas, Nevada. MiDOG, LLC owns the exclusive rights to the MiDOG All-in-One Microbial Test but is open to licensing and distribution prospects. The test is currently marketed in the USA but will be available worldwide in the near future.

For more information about the MiDOG All-in-One Microbial Test, visit midogtest.com or email [email protected].

About MiDOG, LLC

MiDOG, LLC is a privately held company based in Irvine, California. Since its inception in 2018, its main focus has been to pinpoint the microbial makeup of disease-causing microbes. Using NGS, MiDOG procures a snapshot of all microorganisms in the sample. They have worked with a number of practitioners and veterinarians who provided clinically healthy canine samples that allowed MiDOG to develop a comprehensive comparative database to determine the microbial makeup of collected samples.

MiDOG's mission is to expand this database to other species. Their goal is to bring complete and accurate microbial identification of canine infections to help veterinarians make better treatment decisions. MiDOG is using the only standardized and controlled pipeline for accurate microbiomic measurements and assessments in dogs that leads to absolute quantitation of the microbiome at the site and time of collection. Follow MiDOG, LLC on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Media Contacts:

Shea Biondi, Marketing Manager Sheila T. Brann, Media Relations Zymo Research Corp. KIWI Communications, Inc. 949.679.1190 714-979-3464 [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE MiDOG, LLC

Related Links

http://www.midogtest.com


"Manufacturing of high-quality plasmid and viral vectors is one of the most critical components in the commercialization of cell and gene therapy, and we are one of the world's largest manufacturers of viral vectors," said Udit Batra, CEO, MilliporeSigma. "This collaboration will give GenScript access to MilliporeSigma's nearly three decades of experience in gene and cell therapy manufacturing."

"We are excited about the planned collaboration with MilliporeSigma to better serve our local and overseas customers with cGMP manufacturing facilities, and to accelerate the drug commercialization process," said Daniel Wang Dongliang, vice president of Operations, Biologics Development Business Unit, at GenScript.

The parties envision an alliance that will accelerate the industrialization and commercialization of cell and gene therapy in China. GenScript, a leading biotech company headquartered in Nanjing, China, aims to create a global-standard platform of plasmid and virus manufacturing service in the country. MilliporeSigma plans to provide GenScript with comprehensive products, training and consulting services covering process design, facility concept design and quality management system set-up from lab development to large-scale GMP manufacturing.

MilliporeSigma is among only a few manufacturers that have an industrialized process to make viral vectors. To create personalized therapy products, genes are delivered into immune cells using viral vectors, such as the ones that MilliporeSigma makes. The company offers a unique combination as a contract manufacturing organization, serving other companies to provide services, and as a bioprocess manufacturing equipment maker.

A confluence of demand, growth and subsequent need to scale the cell and gene therapy market in China is an important driver for MilliporeSigma to deliver its expertise to this region. According to clinicaltrials.gov, China is the world-leader in terms of where gene-modified cell therapy clinical trials are conducted. Today, more than 130 companies in China are developing cell and gene therapies ranging from chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy (CAR-T) / T cell receptor therapy (TCR-T) and adeno-associated virus (AAV) to oncolytic virus1. Moreover, 28 cell and gene therapy Investigational New Drug applications2 were submitted in China between Dec. 2017  Dec. 2018 with more than a third already approved for clinical trials.

MilliporeSigma plans to provide a complete set of process products, services and staff training to support GenScript in building a world-class plasmid and viral vector manufacture platform to accelerate the industrialization of cell and gene therapy in China.

References

1) HSmap report 2017  Chinese Gene Therapy Industry Atlas

2) Source: Yaozhi database

Follow MilliporeSigma on Twitter @MilliporeSigma, on Facebook @MilliporeSigma and on LinkedIn.

About GenScript

GenScript Biotech Corp. is a world leader in biological reagent service industry. Headquartered in Nanjing, China, the Group currently has a couple of R&D, production and operation centers in Nanjing and New Jersey, two production bases in Zhenjiang and Jinan, two European bases for its subsidiary Legend in Netherlands and Ireland, and a wholly-owned subsidiary in Japan.

With the fast growth in developing biological reagents, the Company now expands its business into immunotherapy, contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), lab equipment, and industrial microbiology applications. To support these businesses, it has established open and innovation-driven technological platforms, GMP facilities for pre-clinical drug discovery and pharmaceutical product development, and a full-range industrial microbial R&D and industrialization platform for enzyme screening, GMP plasmid and virus production, antibody drug discovery (Bispecific antibodies technology; Hybridoma technology; Humanized Antibody technology; Phage display technology), genetic engineering, protein engineering and fermentation process optimization. The Company is uniquely positioned and well equipped to further fulfill its mission in making people and nature healthier through biotechnology.

All Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany news releases are distributed by email at the same time they become available on the EMD Group website. In case you are a resident of the U.S. or Canada please go to www.emdgroup.com/subscribe to register again for your online subscription of this service as our newly introduced geo-targeting requires new links in the email. You may later change your selection or discontinue this service.

About the Life Science Business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

The Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the U.S. and Canada, has 20,000 employees and 60 manufacturing sites worldwide, with a portfolio of more than 300,000 products enabling scientific discovery. Udit Batra is the global chief executive officer of MilliporeSigma.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany completed its $17 billion acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich in November 2015, creating a leader in the $125 billion global life science industry.

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company, operates across healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 52,000 employees work to make a positive difference to millions of people's lives every day by creating more joyful and sustainable ways to live. From advancing gene-editing technologies and discovering unique ways to treat the most challenging diseases to enabling the intelligence of devices  the company is everywhere. In 2018, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany generated sales of 14.8 billion in 66 countries.

The company holds the global rights to the name and trademark "Merck" internationally. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the business sectors of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany operate as EMD Serono in healthcare, MilliporeSigma in life science, and EMD Performance Materials. Since its founding 1668, scientific exploration and responsible entrepreneurship have been key to the company's technological and scientific advances. To this day, the founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed company. For more information about Merck, KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, visit www.emdgroup.com.

SOURCE MilliporeSigma
J&J Sheet Metal will fabricate and install all of the duct work for this federal project at the U.S. port of entry between Alexandria Bay, New York and Ivy Lea, Ontario. Work began this year and is expected to be complete in the next two and a half years.

The Revit software that J&J Sheet Metal acquired for the job is a drafting tool that produces three-dimensional, real-life building information modelsa tool that President Michael Azersky's grandfather James Azersky, who founded J&J Sheet Metal in 1941, could never have dreamed might one day exist.

"My grandfather would definitely be yelling at me that I wasted so much money on software. He came to America from Lithuania and never wanted to pay for so much as a new screwdriver," says J&J Sheet Metal President Michael Azersky. "But Revit was required for this border crossing job and now we're using it for everything. It's a competitive industry, so these are the kinds of investments you make to stay at the top of your game."

J&J Sheet Metal has changed dramatically over the last 79 years, although the company is still a family-run business. When James Azersky began in the 1940s, he was primarily working on architectural and residential projects, including metal roofing. His first three employees were his sons, Irving, Julius and Simpson. After returning from serving in the military in 1946, the three brothers took over their dad's business, leveraging their military experience and former employment in the HVAC industry to build a family-owned business that fabricated and installed millions of pounds of ductwork.

Azersky and his cousin Ralph took J&J Sheet Metal to a new level in the early 1970s by bringing the company a high-tech edge through computer-guided equipment and technology. Today the company has about 35 employees and performs public works and federal contracts throughout the northeast as well as large-scale projects for medical facilities and schools.

J&J Sheet Metal's primary focus is on largescale duct work. In addition, the company performs custom fabrication work for metal roofing, electrical enclosures and commercial kitchens. Among the company's current jobs, in addition to the border crossing project, are a $1.3 million ventilation and energy recovery project for a New York State prison, duct work upgrades for operation rooms in Our Lady of Lourdes Memorial Hospital, and fabrication and installation work in the physics lab at Binghamton University.

For more information about J&J Sheet Metal, visit www.jjsheetmetalworks.com.

About Moro Corporation

Moro Corporation is a multi-subsidiary construction products and services company. Moro's contracting subsidiaries provide electrical, structural steel, sheet metal ductwork and HVAC products and services to a variety of commercial and residential customers located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Moro Corporation is comprised of six operating units: J&J Sheet Metal, Apollo Heating & Cooling, Roundout Electric, Titchener Iron Works, J.M. Ahle Co and Whaling City Iron. Each of these companies established their reputations and established a loyal customer base prior to being acquired. For additional information, visit www.morocorp.com.

Media Contact:

April White

President, Trust Relations

[email protected]

323-216-8589

SOURCE Moro Corporation

Related Links

http://www.morocorp.com


NEW YORK, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Navy Capital, a New York-based asset manager focused on the rapidly growing global cannabis sector, has hired Chetan Gulati, who will join the firm as a Partner and Head of Research. Mr. Gulati brings nearly 20 years of experience to Navy's team, having begun his career practicing law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz where he focused on corporate restructurings and finance. He then joined Perry Capital in 2007, and was ultimately appointed to run Perry's London operations from 2010-2016. Most recently, Mr. Gulati was a Partner at Smith Cove Capital. He holds a BA from the University of Rochester and a JD from Yale Law School.

"We are delighted to welcome Chetan to our growing team," said John T. Kaden, President and Managing Partner of Navy Capital. "His substantial experience in the industry will be a tremendous asset to Navy Capital at a time when institutional investors are increasingly looking for ways to gain exposure to secular trends in the global cannabis industry. We are committed to identifying the most attractive opportunities around the globe for our investors, and Chetan will play an integral part in leading that charge."

"I am thrilled to join John and Sean at Navy Capital and look forward to furthering their presence as the thought leader in the global cannabis sector," said Mr. Gulati. "Navy's expertise and relationships in the industry are second to none, and the growing institutional investor interest and historic growth rates in the cannabis space make their positioning extremely attractive."

In addition to Mr. Gulati, Navy Capital has also recently hired Kevin McLaughlin as CFO and Jaci Daudt as Director of Investor Relations. Mr. McLaughlin brings over 25 years of experience in CFO and CCO roles in the hedge fund industry, while Ms. Daudt brings nearly 10 years of industry experience and will lead the firm's IR effort. In conjunction with the recent additions to the team, Sean Stiefel (Navy Capital's Co-Founder and Portfolio Manager) has assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer, while Peter Watts (Head Trader) and Jeffrey Schultz (General Counsel) have been named partners of the firm.

About Navy Capital

Navy Capital is a research-oriented, fundamental-driven investment manager focused on identifying best-in-class opportunities, both Public and Private, within the global cannabis sector. Navy seeks to make investments in companies profiting directly or indirectly from the legalization of adult-use and medicinal cannabis.

575 Lexington Avenue, 4th Floor

New York, New York 10022

Tel: +1 (646) 916-4878

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Navy Capital Green Management, LLC
Connecting participants in Blue Star Families' Spouse and Caregivers Careers Program with Hiring Our Heroes Transition Summits.

Connecting Blue Star Families veterans and families with Hiring Our Heroes Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zones to address employment challenges for military spouses, caregivers, and their families.

Leveraging MFAN's expertise in building connections to local resources and enabling advisory board members to participate in Blue Star Families and Hiring Our Heroes events.

Military spouses and veteran caregivers face unique career challenges. They are employed at lower rates and earn less than their civilian counterparts. Military life comes with frequent moves, operational deployments, and long hours away that impose significant stress on families. Additionally, military bases are frequently located in areas with poor labor markets. These conditions negatively impact employment opportunities for military spouses.

"For some caregivers and spouses of transitioning service members, and veterans, there are significant economic challenges relating to employment and economic security," said WWP CEO Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Mike Linnington. "RAND research shows when military spouses and caregivers feel financially secure, whether through availability of resources or employment opportunities, the quality of life improves for everyone in that household, including the service members in their lives. We're proud to work alongside organizations affecting positive change at the grassroots level through economic empowerment initiatives that assist our nation's military families and caregivers."

"As we enter the eighteenth year of America's longest-running war, it is unacceptable that our nation's military spouses and caregivers are facing a battle on the home front to carve out economic opportunity and financial stability for themselves and their families," said Eric Eversole, president of Hiring Our Heroes, and vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Hiring Our Heroes is proud to work alongside Blue Star Families and the Military Family Advisory Network on the collaborative efforts made possible through this grant."

"Military families tell BSF their struggles through the Blue Star Families annual Military Family Lifestyle Survey," said Kathy Roth-Douquet, BSF Chief Executive Officer. "Just as civilian families want dual incomes, so do actively serving families and this partnership is one way we're fostering stronger communities to mitigate isolation, lend support, and increase employment opportunities for spouses."

"There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for military spouse employment," said Shannon Razsadin, MFAN's executive director. "MFAN is grateful for Wounded Warrior Project's leadership and the opportunity to collaborate with these organizations to promote employment programs and events through our diverse network."

To learn more about how these partnerships are transforming the way America's injured veterans and military families are empowered, employed, and engaged in our communities, visit https://wwp.news/Newsroom.

About Wounded Warrior Project

Since 2003, Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) has been meeting the growing needs of warriors, their families, and caregivers  helping them achieve their highest ambition. Learn more: http://newsroom.woundedwarriorproject.org/about-us.

About Blue Star Families

Blue Star Families builds communities that support military families by connecting research and data to programs and solutions, including career development tools, local community events for families, and caregiver support. Since its inception in 2009, Blue Star Families has engaged tens of thousands of volunteers and serves more than 1.5 million military family members. With Blue Star Families, military families can find answers to their challenges anywhere they are. For more information, visit bluestarfam.org.



About Hiring Our Heroes

Established in 2011, Hiring Our Heroes is a nationwide initiative to help veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses find meaningful employment. Working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's vast network of state and local chambers and other strategic partners from the public, private and nonprofit sectors, Hiring Our Heroes has helped hundreds of thousands of veterans and military spouses find meaningful employment through more than 1,200 job fairs in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, and on military installations overseas; a suite of free online career-based resources; and the Hiring 500,000 Heroes campaign. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is dedicated to strengthening America's long-term competitiveness. We educate the public on the conditions necessary for business and communities to thrive, how business positively impacts communities, and emerging issues and creative solutions that will shape the future.

SOURCE Wounded Warrior Project

Related Links

https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org


LOS ANGELES, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Last Saturday, Paw Works hosted its 5th Annual Ties & Tails Gala - Mardi Paws, at the Four Seasons Westlake Village. The evening's Mardi Paws theme created a night to remember, with exciting auctions, specialty cocktails, a delicious 3-course dinner, and a live show hosted by Paw Works Ambassador and Master of Ceremonies, Jai Rodriguez (Queer Eye For the Straight Guy) with rousing musical performances by Trenyce (American Idol Finalist, Season 2) and David Hernadez (American Idol, Season 7).



"Pawsitive Awards" given to those instrumental in creating "pawsitive" change in the lives of animals in Southern California and beyond, were presented by Paw Works Ambassadors, Rachel Lindsay (The Bachelorette), Parker Bates (This Is Us), Raegan Revord (Young Sheldon), Larissa Wohl (Home & Family "Adoption Ever After"), and Bob DeCastro (Fox 11 News At Noon). Those awarded included Melanie Scherer (SNIP Bus), Dr. Singh (Somis Veterinary Hospital), Sal Valdepena (Balooja's Foundation), Larissa Wohl (Hallmark's Home & Family, "Adoption Ever After"), and Arhaus, who have donated over $20,000 to Paw Works in the last year.



Later in the evening, Paw Works Child Pet Ambassador (CPA) volunteers, D'Lila Star and Jessie James Combs, Ava Baroni, and Lily Felippe, were honored on stage with a surprise appearance by Sean Combs (Diddy), who came to present stunning bouquets to congratulate his daughters on their contribution.



"Our goal was to raise funds and awareness for abandoned shelter pets, in an effort to reduce the millions of animals unnecessarily euthanized in the U.S. each year," said Chad Atkins, Founder and Executive Director of Paw Works. "We have successfully rescued and rehabilitated over 5,000 dogs and cats in our first five years, and run costs exceeding $1.2 million every year to do so. Mardi Paws Ties & Tails was not only a tremendous opportunity to shine a light on those who assist us in our life saving, daily work and thank our supportive community of friends and family, but was also the perfect occasion to set our sights firmly on our future goals to shift the status quo, and save more animals in-need!"



ABOUT PAW WORKS:



Chad Atkins and Christina Morgan founded Paw Works, a non-profit with two storefronts in Ventura and Thousand Oaks, in 2014. Their initial intent was to make Ventura County "No Kill," a goal they achieved less than one month after starting the organization. Paw Works is now the largest animal non-profit 501(c) (3) in Ventura County, already placing over 5,000 abandoned shelter dogs and cats in permanent homes. Now in its fifth year, Paw Works recently acquired its first boarding facility and sanctuary, continuing the organization's growth from its foster-based roots. Actress, Kaley Cuoco, (Big Bang Theory), is both a Celebrity Ambassador and previous Board Member. Other Celebrity Ambassadors include Natalie Morales (Today Show, Access Hollywood), Rachel Lindsay (The Bachelorette), Raegan Revord (Young Sheldon), Parker Bates(This Is Us), Bob DeCastro (Fox 11 News), Jai Rodriguez (Queer Eye), Larissa Wohl (Home & Family "Adoption Ever After"), and Mikalah Gordon (American Idol). http://Pawworks.org



Photos:

https://www.prlog.org/12760091



Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE Paw Works, Inc

Related Links

http://www.pawworks.org


SANTA CRUZ, Calif., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Santa Cruz County Bank (OTC: SCZC), a top rated, high performing bank, announced its Board of Directors' declaration of a quarterly cash dividend in the amount of $0.075 per share. The dividend is payable on April 10, 2019 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on March 29, 2018. This is the twenty-fourth consecutive quarterly cash dividend declared by the bank. In addition to cash dividends, a 10% stock dividend was granted to shareholders in November 2017.

The Bank reported a record $11.4 million in net income for the year ended December 31, 2018, an increase of 68%, compared to the prior year. This represented an 18.05% return on average equity. The book value per share of Santa Cruz County Bank's common stock at December 31, 2018 was $27.98, compared to $23.64 as of December 31, 2017. Shareholders' equity grew to $68.5 million, a 20% or $11.2 million increase compared to December 31, 2017.

ABOUT SANTA CRUZ COUNTY BANK

Santa Cruz County Bank, founded in 2004, is a locally owned and operated community bank with offices located in Aptos, Capitola, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Watsonville. The bank offers a variety of competitive deposit and lending solutions for businesses and individuals; including business loans, lines of credit, commercial real estate financing, agricultural loans, SBA and USDA government guaranteed loans, credit cards, merchant services, remote deposit capture, mobile and online banking, bill payment, and cash management. The Bank's SBA Department is recognized as a top SBA lender in Santa Cruz County, Silicon Valley and Central San Joaquin Valley. Santa Cruz County Bank is a top USDA lender in the state of California.

Santa Cruz County Bank stock is publicly traded under the stock symbol SCZC. Stock purchase orders may be placed through a brokerage firm, online, or through one of our Market Makers listed in the Investor Relations section of the bank's website. For more information about Santa Cruz County Bank, please visit our website www.sccountybank.com.

NATIONAL, STATE, AND LOCAL RATINGS AND AWARDS

S&P Global Top 100 Community Banks: Santa Cruz County Bank ranked 63rd in the nation out of nearly 3,000 banks with assets under $1 billion based upon 2017 performance. The Bank has ranked in the Top 100 Community Banks by S&P Global for two consecutive years.

Financial Management Consulting (FMC) Group: Santa Cruz County Bank is the top bank in California in overall performance among 148 banks, and also ranked 1st in asset quality as well as 1st (lowest) in non-performing assets for its financial performance in the first, second and third quarters for 2018. The Bank ranked 2nd in overall performance for California banks for the full year in 2018. The Bank has ranked in FMC's top ten banks in California for the past four years.

The Findley Reports, Inc.: Santa Cruz County Bank was named a Super Premier Performing Bank for its 2017 financial performance. The Bank has received the top ranking of Super Premier by Findley for eight consecutive years.

Bauer Financial Reports, Inc.: Santa Cruz County Bank is rated 5-star or "Superior" based upon its financial performance.

American Banker Magazine: Santa Cruz County Bank ranked 22nd out of 633 institutions in American Banker Magazine's "Top Performing 200 Community Banks & Thrifts in the United States" based upon 3-year average return on equity. The Bank ranked 4th out of 26 California banks. The Bank has ranked in the Top 200 Community Banks in the United States for five consecutive years.

The Bank ranks 8th in the Silicon Valley for the number of SBA loans lent to Silicon Valley businesses for the SBA's 2018 fiscal year.

2018 COMMUNITY AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce, Business of the Year Award.

Second Harvest Food Bank, Platinum Level Award for 2018 Holiday Food Drive.

Farm Bureau of Santa Cruz County, Al Smith Friend of Agriculture Award, for support of the agricultural industry.

Voted "Best Bank" by the readers of Good Times, a weekly publication with distribution throughout Santa Cruz County for six consecutive years.

Voted "Best Bank" by the readers of Santa Cruz Sentinel, a daily publication with distribution throughout Santa Cruz County for four consecutive years.

ABOUT SANTA CRUZ COUNTY BANK

Santa Cruz County Bank, founded in 2004, is a top rated, locally owned and operated full-service community bank headquartered in Santa Cruz, California. The bank operates five branches located in Aptos, Capitola, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Watsonville. The bank offers a variety of competitive deposit and lending solutions for businesses and individuals; including business loans, lines of credit, commercial real estate financing, agricultural loans, SBA and USDA government guaranteed loans, credit cards, merchant services, remote deposit capture, mobile and online banking, bill payment, and cash management. The bank's SBA Department has been recognized as a top SBA lender in Santa Cruz County and in the Silicon Valley. Santa Cruz County Bank is a top USDA lender in the state of California.

Santa Cruz County Bank stock is publicly traded on the OTC marketplace under the stock symbol SCZC. Stock purchase orders may be placed through a brokerage firm or one of the Market Makers listed in the Investor Relations section of the bank's website. For more information about Santa Cruz County Bank, visit www.sccountybank.com.

SOURCE Santa Cruz County Bank

Related Links

http://www.sccountybank.com


COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- International freight forwarding company, Scan Global Logistics aim for the globally expanding e-commerce market. They now launch a new easily integrated plug-and-play fulfilment solution that will enable any brand seamlessly to do B2C and B2B business locally and globally. A customer centric solution, which is supported by a global network of fulfillment centers in Europe, Asia and North America.

"Online sales has been booming the last number of years and it will continue to change the consumers buying behavior in the years to come. Logistics, people and technology plays a crucial role for brands to succeed in the future B2C and B2B market and our wish is to make it a little less complicated for our customers to grow their business in existing and new markets," says Hans Elmegaard, CEO, SGL E-Commerce.

The solution is appealing to any business format and size of e-commerce business as it is highly scalable and the startup costs to go internationally are low. Being able to provide variable costs based on a brands sales activities is attractive to most small and medium brands with ambitions to grow their business internationally.

"As a leading logistics company, Scan Global Logistics is always looking to improve business opportunities for ourselves and our customers. Our new e-commerce solution is a natural part of our growth strategy and plays well into the needs and demands of the rapidly growing international e-commerce market. Together with our final mile offerings we believe it will have a major impact on our business," says Allan Melgaard, Group CEO, Scan Global Logistics.

Read more about our SGL E-commerce (www.scangl.com/e-commerce) or watch our e-commerce film (https://vimeo.com/320472174).

About Scan Global Logistics

Scan Global Logistics is a Nordic based full-service global freight forwarding provider with 1600 employees working out of 96 offices in 26 countries, specialized in complex logistics solutions. The Group offers customers a wide range of global transportation and logistics supply chain solutions with a complete coverage on air, ocean and overland transportation.

For more information, please contact:

Allan Melgaard, Group CEO, Scan Global Logistics

Tel: +45-3248-0045, e-mail: [email protected]

Hans Elmegaard, CEO SGL E-commerce, Scan Global Logistics

Tel: +4532480052, e-mail: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.comhttps://news.cision.com/scan-global-logistics-a-s/r/scan-global-logistics-aim-for-the-global-e-commerce-market,c2766239

The following files are available for download:

https://news.cision.com/scan-global-logistics-a-s/i/hans-elmegaard-ceo-sgl-e-commerce-scan-global-logistics,c2593651 Hans Elmegaard CEO SGL E-commerce Scan Global Logistics https://news.cision.com/scan-global-logistics-a-s/i/allan-melgaard-group-ceo-scan-global-logistics,c2593652 Allan Melgaard Group CEO Scan Global Logistics

SOURCE Scan Global Logistics A/S
SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The global spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) treatment market size is expected to reach USD 3.9 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is estimated to register a CAGR of 12.9% during the forecast period. Due to the rare nature and complexity of these diseases, scientific knowledge pertaining to them is scarce. However, there are various initiatives undertaken to increase awareness regarding rare diseases and to support SMA communities. This is anticipated to boost the market development over the coming years.

Key suggestions from the report:

The global spinal muscular atrophy treatment market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 12.9% over the forecast period

Based on disease type, type 1 accounted for the largest revenue share owing to rising incidence of type 1 SMA

By treatment, the drug segment accounted for the largest revenue share in 2017

North America will retain its lead as the largest regional market; however Asia Pacific is anticipated to register the fastest CAGR over the forecast period

The market is presently led by Biogen Inc. Biogen's Spinraza is the only approved commercialized treatment for SMA, owing to which market is not competitive. However, this trend is expected to change after the commercialization of other treatment therapies post 2020

Read 98 page research report with TOC on "Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Treatment Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Route of Administration (Oral, Intrathecal), By Treatment (Gene Therapy, Drug), By Disease Type, And Segment Forecasts, 2018 - 2025" at: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/spinal-muscular-atrophy-sma-treatment-market

Various SMA communities and companies have collaborated for developing disease treatment therapy. For example, RG7916, which is an investigational therapy being developed by Roche in collaboration with SMA Foundation and PTC Therapeutics. Thus, heavy investments in R&D by major companies are also projected to contribute toward the growth of this market. CureSMA, SMA Foundation, and SMA Europe are some of the organizations actively supporting R&D pertaining to SMA.

CureSMA provided funding to a research project to Biogen and Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for developing Spinraza, which received U.S. FDA approval in 2016. This organization has invested nearly USD 70 million in the research pertaining to SMA, which also included a planned investment of USD 5 million in the coming years.

Grand View Research has segmented the global spinal muscular atrophy treatment market on the basis of disease type, treatment, route of administration, and region:

SMA Treatment Disease Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

Type 1

Type 2

Type 3

Type 4

SMA Treatment Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

Gene Therapy

Drug

- Spinraza

- RG6083 (Olesoxime)

- RG7916

SMA Treatment Route of Administration Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

Oral

Intrathecal

SMA Treatment Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2015 - 2025)

North America

U.S.

- Canada

Europe

- U.K.

- Germany

Asia Pacific

- Japan

- China

Latin America

- Mexico

- Brazil

Middle East & Africa

& South Africa

Find more research reports on Pharmaceuticals Industry, by Grand View Research:

Melanoma Therapeutics Market - The global melanoma therapeutics market size was valued at USD 4.2 billion in 2016 and is anticipated to witness CAGR of 11.21% during the forecast period.

Superdisintegrants Market - The global superdisintegrants market size was valued at around USD 258.6 million in 2016 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.2% over the forecast period.

Clinical Trial Supplies Market - The global clinical trial supplies market size was valued at USD 1.7 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.3% over the forecast period.

Gain access to Grand View Compass, our BI enabled intuitive market research database of 10,000+ reports

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc.

Phone: +1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.grandviewresearch.com

Follow Us: LinkedIn | Twitter

SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
DALLAS, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas based Snell Automotive Group announced today the purchase of Bob Hurley Ford in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The dealership will be renamed Riverside Ford of Tulsa.

"We are excited to expand into the Tulsa market and represent a great brand like Ford," stated Jimmy Snell, Dealer Principal of Snell Automotive Group. "We look forward to working with the team there and will continue the dealerships history of being a top selling Ford dealership in Oklahoma, while focusing on delivering a great customer experience."

The acquisition of Bob Hurley Ford to Snell Automotive Group was completed March 12, 2019. Riverside Ford of Tulsa is located at 745 W. 51st St., Tulsa, OK 74107 and store information can be found at RiversideFordofTulsa.com.

About Snell Automotive Group

Snell Automotive Group is comprised of Jaguar Land Rover Dallas, Jaguar Land Rover Austin, Jaguar Land Rover Frisco, Snell Collision Centre and Riverside Ford of Tulsa. Family owned and operated, the Snell family began serving the Dallas community in 1973 with Snell Buick. They were one of the first and continue to be one of the largest Land Rover dealerships in North America. Between their three Jaguar Land Rover dealerships, they have earned more than 15 Pinnacle Awards for outstanding performance in customer service, sales and business excellence.

SOURCE Snell Automotive Group
CHARLESTON, S.C., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Stoner's Pizza Joint, a millennial-focused, quick-service pizza franchise, announced today that it is accelerating its national franchise development efforts and will be meeting with qualified prospective franchisees at the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference (MUFC), March 24-27, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Recently appointed president and chief culinary officer, Glenn Cybulski, along with Stoner's Pizza Joint's owners, Nick Bergelt and Drew Ciccarelli, invite experienced multi-unit operators interested in being a part of the edgy brand's early growth to visit booth #113 at this year's show.

Originally founded in 2013, Stoner's Pizza Joint was acquired in January 2018 by the experienced restaurateurs behind HospitalityX, Nick Bergelt and Drew Ciccarelli, who own and operate several proprietary restaurant concepts throughout the Hilton Head, South Carolina area like Charbar Co., Whiskey Room, Holy Tequila! and Healthy Habit. The business partners developed and launched Stoner's franchise program in 2018 with the goal of growing the brand to 100 locations by 2023. Last month, Bergelt and Ciccarelli appointed Glenn Cybulski to president and chief culinary officer, tapping his extensive expertise in cannabis to propel the Stoner's brand footprint and impact across the country.

"There is a definite shift happening in the business landscape and within our culture when it comes to cannabis and CBD oil, where now the two are blending and people are really excited about it," said Glenn Cybulski. "With some of the largest corporations in the world investing in the cannabis industry, there is a massive growth opportunity, especially within the franchise business model  which is where Stoner's comes in. We're looking forward to meeting with everyone at the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference and sharing what Stoner's is all about."

Stoner's Pizza Joint is currently seeking qualified franchisees to help the brand grow nationwide in college town markets and progressive cities. Prospective franchisees should have a minimum net worth of $250,000. The ideal candidate is a proven multi-unit operator in the restaurant industry and has a strong knowledge of their market. Stoner's Pizza Joint's franchise disclosure document (FDD) reveals an estimated initial investment range of $90,000 to $206,000 for the first location, including a franchise fee of $25,000. If franchisees chose to develop multiple units, the franchise fee for three units is $65,000 and, for five units, $95,000.

"Stoner's is occupying a very unique and advantageous niche in both the franchising industry and quick-service segment right now, and we're energized at the direction it's heading. We're excited to meet with qualified multi-unit operators interested in joining our brand at this very pivotal time," added Nick Bergelt.

Stoner's Pizza Joint features fresh, high quality non-GMO food prepared in-house daily with minimal production time, including proprietary recipes for the pizza dough, sauce, and cheese blend. Menu items are prepared in state-of-the-art conveyor ovens, and include a simple variety of specialty pizzas, calzones, strombolis, hickory-smoked chicken wings made daily in-house, freshly prepared salads, and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.

For more information about ownership opportunities with Stoner's Pizza Joint, visit https://www.stonerspizzajointfranchise.com/ or contact the Stoner's Pizza Joint Franchise Development team at [email protected] or 843-518-1972.

About Stoner' s Pizza Joint

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, Stoner's Pizza Joint is a millennial-focused, quick-service pizza restaurant that uses high quality, fresh ingredients. The company offers a variety of specialty pizzas, hickory-smoked wings made daily in-house, salads, strombolis, and calzones. Today, Stoner's Pizza Joint has grown to 11 locations in South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Florida. For more information about Stoner's Pizza Joint, visit www.stonerspizzajoint.com.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Caitlin Willard

Fish Consulting

[email protected]

954-893-9150

SOURCE Stoner's Pizza Joint
Ambassador Monroe said that the tragedy of the two mosques will not alter New Zealand's national harmony or diversity and welcomed Dr. Alissa's visit.

In a statement issued on Friday, March 15, 2019, Dr. Alissa said, "To address the scourge extremism and Islamophobia, we need governments and faith organizations around the world to work together to encourage religious tolerance and understanding and prevent all forms of incitement and hatred, including all types of hatred leveled against any religion or ethnicity."

The Muslim World League has pledged to increase its efforts to work with multi-faith groups in order to create initiatives that promote greater understanding and tolerance.

SOURCE Muslim World League
NEW YORK, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascend Pinnacle's third Asian Corporate Directors Summit will be held March 2224, 2019 at The Ritz-Carlton New York, Westchester. The by-invitation event is the largest gathering of Asian American experienced corporate directors and aspiring directors. Deloitte is the Summit founding partner, and event sponsors include Archegos Capital Management, Equilar, Southwest Airlines and TPG.

Attendees at the Ascend Pinnacle Asian Corporate Directors Summit

The goal of the Summit is to provide a platform to share and educate, increase the dialogue and facilitate trusted conversations around strategic boardroom issues. This year's theme "Building on the Best" speaks to the focus on building the pipeline of future leaders as we look to increase Pan-Asians on corporate boards through the Aspiring Directors Academy ("ADA") for which EY is the lead sponsor. The ADA is part of an expanded year-long, cohort based program Ascend Pinnacle has developed.

Ascend Pinnacle, the only network of its kind, focuses on Asian American directors on US public company and large private company boards and launched with a simple goal: increase the number of Asian Americans on public company boards. Asians are the least likely to be promoted to managerial or executive positions, despite being the largest minority group of professionals and the most likely to be hired. Asian women made progress in 2018 in gaining Fortune 500 board director seats, but white men still hold 66% of all Fortune 500 board seats and 91.1% of chairmanships on these boards.

"Every year we see more dialogue around the importance of diverse boards and actions taken for businesses to gain competitive advantage through diversity of thought, experiences and viewpoints (proven many times over)," said Anna W. Mok, Co-Founder, Ascend Pinnacle; President Elect, Ascend and Partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP. "Currently, Asians (including Asian Americans and all Asians) occupy less than 4 percent of the nearly 5,700 Fortune 500 board director seats. One key goal is to disrupt the traditional board recruitment process and for businesses to really focus on diversity and inclusion as a key business imperative."

"At Ascend Pinnacle, we are so proud of our work to increase the number of Asians on corporate boards and build a robust pipeline of future board leaders. We've seen an increased interest by well-qualified attendees for the Aspiring Directors Academy as well as an increase in inquiries for diverse director candidate referrals, which is further testament to the critical importance of these initiatives," said Janet S. Wong, Lead Executive Advisor, Ascend Pinnacle and Independent Board Director, Enviva Partners.

In addition to celebrating the potential of Ascend Pinnacle's aspiring directors, Ascend will recognize recently retired S. K. Gupta, co-founder of Ascend Pinnacle.

About Ascend

Ascend is the largest, non-profit Pan-Asian membership organization for business professionals in North America. Established in 2005, Ascend, a career lifecycle organization, reaches 60,000+ senior executives, professionals, and MBA/undergraduate students involved in its 50+ chapters in the United States and Canada. Visit http://www.ascendleadership.org/ for more information.

Media contact:

Sofia Poyhonen

[email protected]

212-248-4888

SOURCE Ascend

Related Links

http://www.ascendleadership.org


Inspired by the belief that urban families live better when they're part of a strong community, Kin will create and manage multi-family buildings purpose-built for families and supported by state-of-the-art technology. This includes building ground-up new developments as well as implementing Kin's community, programming, and technology in existing multi-family buildings, providing a variety of family-driven amenities not seen anywhere else in the country. Combining Tishman Speyer's leading mixed-use development platform with Common's signature hands-on approach to end-to-end technology-enabled property management, Kin will address the difficulties of raising a family in and around cities.

"We are focused on meeting the needs of America's rapidly changing cities and the people who live in them," said Rob Speyer, CEO and President of Tishman Speyer. "Kin is a natural extension of our ongoing efforts to ensure people can access the lifestyle they crave in and around our nation's urban centers. We partnered with Common to create this new model for young parents who prefer to stay in cities and want community, support, amenities and tech infrastructure to help them navigate the demands of parenting."

"As a parent of two young children in New York City, I know the challenges firsthand and how truly isolating it can feel. Parenting should be a community experience, and we wanted to create a place where families can make connections with people going through the same problems, experiences, and joys," said Brad Hargreaves, Founder and CEO at Common. "We identified a real need for families living in cities, which became a natural progression for Common as our coliving members get older and start families. Partnering with an industry titan like Tishman Speyer is the perfect way to bring this solution to millions of people across the country, and enhance urban living for a generation of parents."

Today, families are favoring cities over the suburbs, choosing shorter commutes and walkable neighborhoods, and as a result, community and childcare can become costly and hard to find. In a national survey of city-dwelling families, Common and Tishman Speyer found the cost of childcare and community as respondents' top family concerns. Additionally, more than half of survey respondents highlighted that family support systems are often far away, with less than 15% of families using grandparents and relatives as their primary method of childcare. The vast majority of families are extremely eager for shared experiences where they live, providing opportunities to bring children and parents together from all different households. Kin will fill this gap, enabling families to share resources and live better.

Kin will provide the following to families:

Community: The close proximity of families within a building coupled with the power of technology will allow for the sharing of resources, ranging anywhere from nannies to toys, driving affordability. Kin families will be able to meet, make connections and foster tight communities with individuals going through the same life stage through building-specific events like swimming lessons, holiday parties, cooking classes, and more.

The close proximity of families within a building coupled with the power of technology will allow for the sharing of resources, ranging anywhere from nannies to toys, driving affordability. Kin families will be able to meet, make connections and foster tight communities with individuals going through the same life stage through building-specific events like swimming lessons, holiday parties, cooking classes, and more. Convenience: Kin will provide parents with much needed conveniences, such as daycare drop-off, stroller parking, on-demand child care, and personalized in-unit cleaning, allowing them to spend more time with their families.

Kin will provide parents with much needed conveniences, such as daycare drop-off, stroller parking, on-demand child care, and personalized in-unit cleaning, allowing them to spend more time with their families. Value: Kin buildings will also be purpose-built and designed for families, inherently providing value over traditional apartments typical in major cities.

Kin will launch its innovative technology and community platform in Long Island City this May, and will expand nationally in the coming years. At its first property, Jackson Park, residents who choose to join the Kin community will pay a monthly fee for access to the Kin app and its unique suite of family oriented services and programming. Jeff Mandel, Senior Managing Director of US Acquisitions, spearheaded the development of Kin at Tishman Speyer and will sit on Kin's advisory board. Britt Zaffir led the initiative within Common and will serve as Kin's General Manager.

About Kin

Kin is the country's first residential brand tailor-made for families in and near cities, created by Common and Tishman Speyer. By designing a modern housing brand around the belief that urban families live better when they're part of a strong community, Kin addresses the difficulties of raising children in and around cities that millions of households face. Innovative technology and dedicated physical spaces allow Kin to enable families to meet, raise their children together, share resources and ultimately live better. Kin will launch in 2019 in Long Island City. For more information, visit www.kinfamilies.com and follow up on Instagram @kinfamilies .

About Tishman Speyer

Tishman Speyer is a leading owner, developer, operator and fund manager of first-class real estate around the world. Founded in 1978, Tishman Speyer is active across the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia, building and managing premier office, residential and retail space in 28 key global markets for industry-leading tenants. The firm has acquired, developed and operated a portfolio of over 167 million square feet with a total value of approximately US $88 billion spread over 406 assets. Signature assets include New York City's Rockefeller Center, Sao Paulo's Torre Norte, The Springs in Shanghai, Lumiere in Paris and OpernTurm in Frankfurt. Tishman Speyer currently has projects at different stages of development in Boston, Brasilia, Frankfurt, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Los Angeles, New York City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Washington, DC. The firm also operates portfolios of prominent office properties in Berlin, Chicago and London. For more information, visit tishmanspeyer.com and find us on social @tishmanspeyer .

About Common

Common is the nation's leading residential brand enhancing the value of real estate by offering convenience and community to our members through coliving and traditional apartments. Our signature approach to end-to-end property management and technology offerings allow us to deliver unparalleled experiences across 24 buildings, six markets, and over 700 members. Common is the preferred choice for both residents looking for a stress-free and all-inclusive living environment, and for real estate owners seeking reliable, above-market returns. Launched in October 2015, Common operates homes in New York City , Los Angeles , Chicago , San Francisco Bay Area , Seattle , and Washington, D.C. and receive over 2,500 new member applications per week. For more information, visit www.common.com or visit our real estate page to partner with us. Follow us on Instagram @hi.common .

Media Contacts

Molly Graizzaro: [email protected]

Matt Lawyue: [email protected]

SOURCE Kin

Related Links

https://www.kinfamilies.com


ATLANTA, March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, American Trucking Associations' Technology & Maintenance Council honored three professionals with its highest honor  the Silver Spark Plug at the opening of TMC's 2019 Annual Meeting & Transportation Technology Exhibition.

"The Silver Spark Plug is our industry's highest honor, recognizing professional excellence in commercial vehicle maintenance," said TMC Executive Director Robert Braswell. "This year's winners represent the pinnacle of our industry and we are pleased to bestow this honor on them."

This year's honorees are: Winston Minchew, training manager, Old Dominion Freight Line, Thomasville, N.C.; Dave Dettman, president, QTC Transportation Holdings LLC, Freeport, Ill.; Homer Hogg, manager, technical development, Travel Centers of America, Lakeland, Fla.; Joe Long, director, heavy duty business development, Old World Industries LLC, New Fairfield, Conn.; and Larry Rambeaux, national fleet and truck representative, Purkeys, Lowell, Ark.

"I congratulate these tremendous individuals for their efforts to keep our trucks, and America, moving," said ATA President and CEO Chris Spear. "More than half of the 7.3 million people employed by the trucking industry do something other than drive a truck, and without them, our nation's goods don't get to our stores, hospitals and factories. These individuals are examples to all of us in this industry and they're to be commended."

"Only individuals who represent the best of our council in their commitment to improved engineering and maintenance standards through the development of TMC recommended practices are honored with the Silver Spark Plug," said TMC General Chairman Jeff Harris, vice president of maintenance at USA Truck Inc. "I congratulate all these winners for their achievement and commitment."

TMC is America's premier technical society for truck equipment technology and maintenance professionals. TMC features a diverse membership of equipment managers, service-dealers, owner-operators, industry suppliers and manufacturers, educators, academia and others that support the trucking industry. TMC member fleets represent the broad range of industry vocations, including truckload, less-than-truckload, municipal, private, on/off-highway, construction and other operations. Find out more about TMC online at http://tmc.trucking.org.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward

SOURCE American Trucking Associations

Related Links

http://www.trucking.org


WASHINGTON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --

More than 50 members of group to discuss autonomous vehicles in Washington, D.C.

Group will hold meetings prior to show's MobilityTalks International Global Conference and SAE National Government Meeting

More than 50 representatives from 40 countries around the world, all focused on automated vehicles and part of a United Nations Economic Commission Europe Working Group 29, will be meeting on April 1 and 2, prior to the next Washington D.C. Auto Show's MobilityTalks International conference, Washington Auto Show President and CEO John O'Donnell announced today. The group is the United Nations World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP 29) Informal Working Group Validation Method for Automated Driving (VMAD) under the Groupe de Rapporteurs Vehicle Automation (GRVA).

"The attendance of this group which is leading the creation of vitally important rules and regulations to govern autonomous vehicles is another sign of the growth of the Washington Auto Show's MobilityTalks on the world stage," O'Donnell said. "The auto show is proud to have a part in not just the discussion on, but the creation of, the rules for self-driving vehicles."

The group's members will be meeting during the Washington D.C. Auto Show's MobilityTalks International , a major global conference on automotive regulatory issues that will be focused in 2019 on autonomous vehicles and self-driving. The U.N. Working Group meets several times a year around the world, most recently in Hongzhou, China.

Top members of the group at the April meeting include: Co-Chairs Takao Onoda, Director General Japan Automobile Standards Internationalization Center and Dr. Peter Striekwold, Manager Vehicle Standards Development, RDW Japan. Co-Secretaries for the organization are Ryuzo Oshita, Professional Partner, Tokyo Engineering Division, Toyota Motor Company; and Bill Gouse, SAE International

MobilityTalks International

Sponsored by The Washington Auto Show, MobilityTalks International gathers government policy makers from around the world to exchange ideas on best practices related to the development and regulation of connected and autonomous vehicles. Organized and sponsored by The Washington D.C. Auto Show, MobilityTalks will take place April 3 and April 4, 2019, both on Capitol Hill and at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

For more information on MobilityTalks and The Washington, D.C. Auto Show please visit:

www.washingtonautoshow.com.

Also:

Twitter: @MobilityTalks

Facebook: /MobilityTalksInternational

Instagram: WashAutoShow

SOURCE Washington Auto Show

Related Links

https://www.washingtonautoshow.com


STAMFORD, Conn., March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Tronox Limited (NYSE: TROX) ("Tronox" or the "Company"), a global mining and inorganic chemicals company, today confirmed that its proposed acquisition of the titanium dioxide ("TiO 2 ") business of The National Titanium Dioxide Company Limited ("Cristal") will be presented to the Federal Trade Commission for its consideration. The FTC staff joined Tronox in moving to withdraw the case from adjudication and asking the Commission to consider the transaction with the proposed remedy. In addition to the motion, the submission to the Commission consists of the proposed orders necessary to authorize the transaction, including an Agreement Containing Consent Orders, a Decision and Order, and an Order to Maintain Assets, together with a definitive agreement for the sale of Cristal's North American TiO 2 business to INEOS Enterprises, a division of INEOS, ("INEOS"). All the proposed orders have been executed by the parties. The transaction, modified to include the proposed divestiture, has garnered widespread support from Cristal and Tronox's North American pigment customers.

"This joint submission with FTC staff represents significant progress toward obtaining clearance from the FTC to proceed with both the consummation of our transaction and the proposed remedy," said Jeffry N. Quinn, president and chief executive officer of Tronox. "We are hopeful this proposed settlement encompassing a complete structural remedy, the result of months of consultation and collaboration with the FTC staff, will allow the Commissioners to approve the transaction. The acquisition of Cristal's remaining TiO 2 business will position us to become a stronger, more resilient, vertically integrated producer, capable of delivering better value to our customers, while fully addressing the FTC's concerns with the original transaction."

Closing of the Cristal transaction is conditioned on the issuance of a Decision and Order by the FTC, which would allow Tronox's acquisition of Cristal's global titanium dioxide business to be consummated.

About Tronox

Tronox Limited is a vertically integrated mining and inorganic chemical business. The company mines and processes titanium ore, zircon and other minerals, and manufactures titanium dioxide pigments that add brightness and durability to paints, plastics, paper and other everyday products. For more information, visit tronox.com.

About Cristal

Cristal (also known as The National Titanium Dioxide Company Limited) operates eight manufacturing plants in seven countries on five continents and employs approximately 4,100 people worldwide. Cristal is owned 79 percent by Tasnee (a listed Saudi joint-stock company) and 20 percent by Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC), a company equally owned by the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), headquartered in Kuwait. One percent of the company is owned by Dr. Talal A. Al-Shair, who also serves as vice chairman, Tasnee and chairman of Cristal.

About INEOS

INEOS Enterprises is comprised of a portfolio of businesses manufacturing and distributing chemical products from its facilities and offices in Europe, USA, Canada, and Asia with global sales of more than 1bn. INEOS Enterprises is focused on meeting the developing needs of its customers and rapid growth both through acquisition and through investment in new manufacturing facilities/products.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this release that are not historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements, which are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about us, may include projections of our future financial performance based on our growth strategies and anticipated trends in our business. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations and projections about future events. There are important factors that could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from the results, level of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These and other risk factors are discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including those under the heading entitled "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018.

Specifically, there can be no assurance that the proposed remedy transaction will be accepted by the FTC Commissioners and that our proposed acquisition of Cristal's TiO2 business will be consummated. There can also be no assurance that we will be able to complete the re-domicile transaction from Australia to the United Kingdom and that we will be able to complete the transaction with Exxaro. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for our management to predict all risks and uncertainties, nor can management assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. Although we believe the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, level of activity, performance or achievements. Neither we nor any other person assumes responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Unless otherwise required by applicable laws, we undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information or future developments.

Tronox Media Contact: Melissa Zona

+1 636.751.4057

Tronox Investor Contact: Brennen Arndt

+1 646.960.6598

SOURCE Tronox Limited

Related Links

http://www.tronox.com


Vonage's Number Programmability enables any VBC phone number to be programmatically routed to a host of API-driven capabilities, allowing enterprises to customize their communications system to meet their unique business needs - with just a few lines of code. Number Programmability also brings increased capabilities to the new CX Cloud Express contact center package.

Leveraging APIs via Nexmo, the Vonage API Platform , Number Programmability solves business needs that can't be addressed easily in most off-the-shelf, unified communications solutions. With Number Programmability, Vonage customers now have the building blocks to enhance internal collaboration and external engagement with customers, driving a better employee and customer experience.

"Companies must focus on innovation to move forward, and digital transformation initiatives often lead the way," said Jay Patel, Senior Vice President of Product Management for Vonage. "Vonage Number Programmability provides enterprises with unprecedented capabilities to customize communications applications with common web technologies to fuel transformation."

Mr. Patel added, "Vonage is blurring the boundaries between business communications applications by leveraging cloud unified communications and contact center capabilities with communications APIs, all built from a single stack. Both services are increasingly critical for modern communications, and Vonage is the first to productize these fully extensible communications applications."

"Vonage is the first provider to bridge the rapid evolution of enterprise applications and programmable communications with a fully integrated offering," said Dave Michels, Principal Analyst of TalkingPointz. "With Number Programmability, the company is both creating and redefining a full-stack communications solution by combining its unified communications solution, Vonage Business Cloud, and cloud contact center solution, CX Cloud Express, with rich programmable capabilities enabled through its Nexmo API Platform."

Built for Business, Loved By Developers

By connecting with a Nexmo Voice application, Number Programmability enables developers to:

Programmatically route calls

Enable chatbots

Create custom communications applications with standard web technologies

Create customizable voice and messaging workflows layered on top of unified communications and contact center functionality

Integrate with third-party systems, and so much more

With Number Programmability, Vonage's network of 700,000+ registered developers also receive access to Vonage platform data needed to dynamically route calls. This combination of voice API flexibility, platform data and rich communications applications has never been offered before.

At launch, additional Number Programmability features and functionality that can be enabled via APIs include IVR-driven workflows, voicebots, voice broadcast, call tracking, local proxy dialer and click to call.

Vonage Number Programmability is currently in beta and will be generally available in the second quarter of 2019.

About Vonage

Vonage is redefining business communications, helping enterprises use fully-integrated unified communications, contact center, and programmable communications solutions via Nexmo, the Vonage API Platform, to improve how business gets done. True to our roots as a technology disruptor, we've embraced technology to transform how companies connect, collaborate and communicate to create better business outcomes. Vonage's fully-integrated cloud communications platform built on a microservices-based architecture enables businesses to collaborate more productively and engage their customers more effectively across all channels, including messaging, chat, social media, video and voice.

Vonage Holdings Corp. is headquartered in Holmdel, New Jersey, with offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and Israel. Vonage is a registered trademark of Vonage Marketing LLC, owned by Vonage America Inc. To follow Vonage on Twitter, please visit www.twitter.com/vonage . To become a fan on Facebook, go to www.facebook.com/vonage . To subscribe on YouTube, visit www.youtube.com/vonage.

(vg-a)

SOURCE Vonage

Related Links

http://www.vonage.com


ATLANTA, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Worldwide Facilities, a national wholesale insurance brokerage, managing general agent and program underwriter, is pleased to announce that Shane Holden has joined its Atlanta team as Senior Vice President / Property Broker.

Holden brings 25 years of insurance and risk management experience to his position at Worldwide Facilities. He is a graduate from St. John's University - The College of Insurance in New York, holding a BBA in Insurance and Risk Management and an MBA in Finance.

Prior to joining Worldwide Facilities, he worked as a Senior Vice President - Property Broker. With various positions in the insurance industry, his previous experience includes working as a Retail Broker, E&S Broker and a Risk Manager.

As a broker, his expertise ranges from small E&S placements to complex, layered national property schedules and catastrophe business. He offers expertise in traditional E&S insurance placements, captive and reinsurance programs, and the design and placement of risk purchasing groups.

"Worldwide Facilities has seen outstanding growth in the past few years, and I'm excited for the opportunity to contribute to its success," says Holden. "I'm looking forward to making a difference with the team."

"Shane offers a broad range of experience, from E&S property placements to large, multi-layered complex risks," adds Jordan Connelly, Senior Vice President at Worldwide Facilities. "We're confident he will be an excellent addition to our property team in Atlanta."

Contact: Shane Holden - Senior Vice President / Property Broker

Direct: (678) 533-4044

[email protected]

About Worldwide Facilities

Worldwide Facilities is a national wholesale insurance broker, managing general agent and program underwriter that has been in business since 1970. Its brokers and underwriters are industry leaders providing expertise in a wide range of specialty lines, as well as extensive contacts with carriers domestically and overseas. For more information, please visit wwfi.com.

Media Contact: Erika Guerra, [email protected], Direct: (213) 236-4509

SOURCE Worldwide Facilities, LLC

Related Links

http://www.wwfi.com


LOS ANGELES, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Xsolla, the gaming-only business engine for developers to launch, monetize and scale games globally, announced a partnership with Keymailer, the leading content creator resource and game influencer marketing platform. The new alliance will give Keymailer's community of over 650,000 influencers access to industry-leading revenue sharing programs powered by Xsolla Partner Network. Just one of the tools in a comprehensive suite of services to help developers self-publish, Xsolla Partner Network provides intuitive products to manage influencer and affiliate relationships at scale. The partnership will offer developers a brand-new way to access an aggregate audience of over 1.25 billion viewers.

Games with revenue share opportunities will be highlighted for content creators on Keymailer, giving developers the freedom to select influencer partners and set corresponding revenue share percentages. Xsolla and Keymailer will track key performance indicators, such as viewership metrics and how much revenue is driven by each influencer from the Keymailer community. Additional premium analytics and essential PR tools, which were only available by purchasing Keymailer's premium subscription tier, will also be made available for free to developers who enroll in the program. All of these benefits will be available to any developer/publisher that has partnered with Xsolla and signed up for the new joint offering.

Those attending GDC (Games Developers Conference) 2019 in San Francisco this week, can learn more about the advantages of the partnership on Tuesday, March 19 at 4pm in the Moscone West #2024. Brooke Van Dusen, Senior Director of Business Development at Xsolla, will be giving a talk, "Maximizing the Influencer Potential of your Game," during Xsolla's all-day Developer Day Summit presentations.

About Xsolla:

Xsolla is the gaming-only business engine for developers to launch, monetize and scale games globally. The Xsolla product suite caters to businesses from indie to enterprise, with: Pay Station and its #1 Anti-fraud solution, Partner Network, Site Builder, Store, Login and Launcher. These Xsolla tools work seamlessly to eliminate the friction in distribution, promotion, sales and payments so developers, publishers, and platform partners can increase their audience, sales and revenue. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices worldwide, Xsolla operates as a merchant and seller of record for major gaming entities like Valve, Twitch, Ubisoft, Epic Games, and PUBG Corporation. For more information, visit www.xsolla.com.

About Keymailer:

Keymailer is the leading game influencer community resource and marketing platform used by over 4500 developers, publishers and PR Agencies to distribute over 50,000 game keys a month for review by to verified YouTube, Twitch and Mixer content creators with a combined reach of over 1.25 billion viewers. Essential and scalable services include PR tools, game discovery, campaign insights, and content analytics. For more information, visit www.keymailer.co.

SOURCE Xsolla

Related Links

http://www.xsolla.com


BOSTON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- On Saturday, March 9, global insights leaders at Zappi, PepsiCo and Mars Wrigley Confectionery took the stage at SXSW 2019 to reimagine the future role of insights. Panelists Ryan Barry, Chief Revenue Officer at Zappi; Tim Warner, Vice President, Insights & Analytics, Europe & Sub-Saharan Africa and Global Digitization at PepsiCo; and Michelle Gansle, Director, Global Gum & Mints Insights at Mars Wrigley Confectionery, joined to discuss new ways of navigating an often traditionally-driven industry. Through leading with the voice of the consumer and using new marketing tools and platform technologies, insights can help companies make better decisions more quickly, cost effectively and ultimately bring a new wave of disruption to the insights industry.

During SXSW, the panelists addressed these shifts, discussing how today's brands need access to new tools that provide more than just static results, siloed data and agency dependency, but fundamentally better insights: smarter, more precise and more predictive to inspire ideas and fuel creativity. This shift will help marketeers and brands build consumer intimacy and purpose that meet the needs of the rapidly changing consumer and provide a significant source of competitive advantage and accelerating growth.

"While many traditional market research providers are now seeing the value in automation, we see how important it is to push past that," said Ryan Barry, Chief Revenue Officer of Zappi and panelist of the session at SXSW. "At Zappi, our vision is much bigger; it's to help our customers create an insights function that delivers fundamentally better insights and is embedded in all important commercial decision making across the organization. Through our work, we're advancing this shift by building future-proofed, close-looped and market-validated research products. Our goal is to fundamentally change the way businesses, like our partners at PepsiCo and Mars, think of consumer insights for the better."

The panelists focused on how to best deliver value through real-time consumer feedback to validate business decisions, and how marketing and insights managers can maximize spend and team impact. By continuing to focus on innovation, Zappi is committed to delivering on these industry needs by creating the market research tools of the future that allow insights professionals to shape the future role of insights internally and bridge the chasm between the understanding, consumption and utilization of insights.

"Just as technology has changed the way humans live, it is also changing how the industry captures insights and creates value for businesses. At Mars, we are embracing technology to capture true human behaviour while also working to increase speed and agility to meet the changing needs of our consumers and customers." - Michelle Gansle, Director, Global Gum & Mints Insights at Mars Wrigley Confectionery



"Profound changes in society and tech mean that consumers have more choice, significantly higher expectations and more control than ever before. Therefore, organisations that can detect, intimately understand and respond to consumer change better and faster will have a significant source of competitive advantage. At PepsiCo, we are co-creating with key strategic partners a new Digital Insights Platform and suite of tools to fuel, guide and amplify brand building, innovation, creative content and go-to-market activation across the enterprise," said Tim Warner, VP, Insights & Analytics, Europe & Sub-Saharan Africa and Global Digitization at PepsiCo.

ABOUT ZAPPI:

Zappi is the world's most powerful automated consumer insights platform. Zappi helps global brands make better decisions to drive business growth, shape product development, and enhance their advertising and branding efforts. Zappi puts the consumers at the heart of all your business decisions and eliminates risk. To learn more about Zappi, visit https://www.zappi.io/web/

SOURCE Zappi
"2getthere has more than three decades of experience in the market of autonomous passenger transport vehicles as well as unique engineering and software competences. This acquisition supports our strategy to become a leading autonomous transportation systems supplier in the booming new mobility market", said Wolf-Henning Scheider, Chairman of the Board of Management at ZF Friedrichshafen AG.

With this strategic investment, ZF is strengthening its position in the growth markets of Mobility-as-a-Service solutions, autonomous transport systems, and shared autonomous vehicles. The majority stake in 2getthere complements ZF's existing investments and co-operations, such as the e.GO Moove, a joint venture with e.GO Mobile AG, which targets the production of the e.GO Mover autonomous minibus, as well as Transdev, a leading operator and global provider of integrated mobility solutions.

2getthere was founded in 1984 and has accumulated more than 100 million kilometers of autonomous mileage with driverless passenger and cargo transport systems in several major cities worldwide, including Rotterdam, Abu Dhabi and Singapore, as well as numerous ports and airports. 2getthere' s fully electric driverless systems at business parks in Rivium (Capelle aan den IJssel) and Masdar City (Abu Dhabi) have transported more than 14 million people reliably and safely. The reliability of the systems installed by 2getthere, including vehicle controls and software architecture, exceeds 99.7 percent.

"The market for driverless electric transport systems is developing dynamically. We want to continue to lead the market and the involvement of ZF is helping us to realize our growth plans, accelerate our technology roadmap and provide the required security for new and existing customers," said Carel C. van Helsdingen, founder and CEO of 2getthere. "The technological cooperation with ZF will support 2getthere's work for the delivery of mixed traffic applications like Rivium and Brussels Airport." Looking at the past three years alone, the company's revenue has increased by 60 percent.

In the future, ZF and 2getthere will work closely together to further develop technologies for autonomous transport systems.

"We have developed into a complete systems supplier for automated functions and we are therefore in an ideal position to support 2getthere. We can deliver electric drivelines, solutions for sensor technology, high performance computing, and actuators for all levels of automated applications," explained Scheider. Conversely, ZF will also benefit from the vast field experience of the Dutch company and its extensive engineering and software competences when it comes to configuring and implementing complete autonomous transport systems. 2getthere's engineering and software development teams in Utrecht are expected to grow significantly over the next years, approximately doubling its current 60 employees.

The two companies agreed not to disclose the transaction volume.

ZF Friedrichshafen AG

ZF is a global leader in driveline and chassis technology as well as active and passive safety technology. The company has a global workforce of 146,000 with approximately 230 locations in some 40 countries. In 2017, ZF achieved sales of 36.4 billion. ZF is one of the largest automotive suppliers worldwide.

ZF allows vehicles to see, think and act. The company invests more than six percent of its sales in research and development annually  in particular for the development of efficient and electric drivelines and also in striving for a world without accidents. With its broad portfolio, ZF is advancing mobility and services in the automobile, truck and industrial technology sectors.

For further press information and photos, please visit: www.zf.com

2getthere B.V.

2getthere delivers driverless transit applications, in mixed traffic, on dedicated lanes or segregated infrastructures. The systems are based on over 30 years of experience with automated vehicles in different demanding environments.

Our vision is to continually develop the landscape of automated transit technology by maintaining our entrepreneurial spirit. 2getthere has been at the forefront of introducing new transit systems since 1984. We will continue to push and innovate, providing efficient, high-quality transit systems for point-to-point connections, corridors and networks.

For further press information and photos, please visit: www.2getthere.eu.

SOURCE ZF

Related Links

https://www.zf.com


Washington, March 19 : US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the US will "re-engage" with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over issues of mutual concern.

Pompeo made the remarks on Monday in an interview with B98 FM, a radio station of the US state of Kansas via teleconference, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We believe we're still moving forward. It's certainly difficult -- we knew it would be. It's been a decades-long challenge," he said, according to the interview transcript circulated by the State Department.

"But we have the toughest economic sanctions in history," Pompeo said, adding that there was the most promising diplomatic engagement in history as well.

"And so we made a little bit more progress in Hanoi," he said, referring to the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader.

"We'll re-engage with him. It's incredibly important that we take down the threat not only for America and for Kansas, but for the entire world," said the US top diplomat.

Pompeo said on last Friday that Washington is still hopeful for continued talks with Pyongyang, confirming there is ongoing negotiation between the two sides.

After ending the summit in Hanoi on February 28 without reaching an agreement, Trump told a press conference that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of North Korea's nuclear programme, something the US could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that his country only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.
New Delhi, March 19 : The Ministry of External Affairs has said one of the seven Indians abducted in Baghlan province of Afghanistan has safely returned.

Militants had abducted seven employees of an Indian company KEC in May 2018 in Bagh-e-Shamal village.

"We are grateful to the Afghanistan government for their support in securing the release and repatriation of the Indian national," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

"We continue to work closely with the Afghanistan government for safe and early return of the remaining six Indian nationals," it added.

The Indian employees were kidnapped when they were travelling to an area where the company has a contract for an electricity sub-station.
Panaji, March 19 : BJP youth leader and former Speaker of the state legislative assembly Pramod Sawant, who on Tuesday was sworn-in as Goa's 11th Chief Minister, assumed the top political mantle despite never having served as a minister in the state cabinet.

Much like Sawant's mentor and immediate predecessor late Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who was sworn in as Chief Minister in 2000, without every having served as a minister in the state cabinet.

Sawant, 45, holds a Bachelor's degree in Ayurvedic Medicine from the Ganga Ayurvedic Medical College in Maharashtra's Kolhapur district and has practiced as a doctor of alternative medicine in Goa. He has completed his Masters in Social Welfare from the Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, a deemed university in Pune.

Sawant has been elected to the state assembly on two occasions in 2012 and 2017 from the Sanquelim assembly constituency.

Sawant, a Maratha by caste, served as a Speaker of the state legislative assembly from 2017.

He rose up in the ranks in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) through the party's youth brigade and was one of the younger BJP leaders who was considered close to Parrikar.

Speaking to IANS, Goa BJP spokesperson Dattaprasad Naik said that had worked under Sawant's leadership, when the latter was the state president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, described the new Chief Minister as a "humble, down to earth person" who understood the aspirations of the youth.

"I definitely hope that people don't start fitting him in Parrikar's larger-than-life shoes. People should give him due time to perform," Naik said.

Sawant's wife Sulakshana is currently the state president of the BJP's Mahila Morcha and his daughter studies in Class 6.

Sawant in his political career has generally managed to steer clear from controversy and was handpicked by Parrikar to assume the Speaker's post in 2017.

Sawant, who is a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteer, hails from the Sanquelim constituency, which is one of the key regions in the North Goa mining belt, where the BJP in recent times has found itself unpopular, especially after the state as well as Central government failed to work towards resumption of mining operations, which were banned by the Supreme Court last year.

Apart from his proximity to Parrikar and the fact that he has been with a member of the BJP for a long spell of time -- unlike several other sitting MLAs -- Sawant's lineage as an MLA from the mining belt, was one of the reasons why he was picked by party seniors, according to a BJP leader, who was involved in the process of selecting the chief minister candidate.

"Apart from choosing a Chief Minister from the cadre, we also had to send a signal to the mining regions, which have been severely impact by the mining ban, that we are serious about their concerns. We hope that this outreach will convince them to vote for the BJP during the Lok Sabha and assembly bypolls," the BJP leader requesting anonymity said.

It is perhaps ironic that Sawant, an alternative medicine professional has succeeded Parrikar, who died after suffering from pancreatic cancer for over a year.

Whether he will actually be able to fill in Parrikar's larger than life and trademark sandals, remains to be seen.
Washington, March 19 : US President Donald Trump has said that he would be donating part of his annual presidential salary to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

On Monday, Trump posted a photo on Twitter of a cheque for $100,000 -- one quarter of his annual $400,000 salary -- made out to DHS, CNN reported.

"While the press doesn't like writing about it, nor do I need them to, I donate my yearly Presidential salary of $400,000.00 to different agencies throughout the year, this to Homeland Security," he said in a tweet.

"If I didn't do it there would be hell to pay from the fake news media."

Since taking office, Trump has donated his salary to a series of government agencies and efforts.

Parts of his salary, according to the administration, have gone toward government efforts including combating opioid addiction, a camp promoting science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers, and restoration projects at Antietam National Battlefield.

He has previously donated to the Departments Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Education, Health and Human Services and also the National Park Service.

In January, the President donated a quarter of his salary to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, according to The Washington Post.
Jammu, March 19 : Heavy firing exchanges took place between Indian and Pakistani troopers on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, a defence official said on Tuesday.

"The Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked ceasefire violation in Rajouri's Sunderbani sector and Jammu's Akhnoor sector on Monday night," Defence Ministry spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand told the media.

Firing exchanges in the Sunderbani sector started at 10.45 p.m., but stopped soon, Anand said.

"In Akhnoor, the Pakistan Army resorted to mortar shelling and firing of small arms which continued till Tuesday morning. Our troops retaliated effectively," the spokesman added.

There were no immediate reports of any casualties.
Amaravati, March 19 : Telugu actor Pawan Kalyan's Jana Sena party on Tuesday announced candidates for one more Lok Sabha seat and 13 Assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh.

Bellamkonda Saibaba will contest from the Ongole parliamentary constituency. With this the party has announced a total of nine Lok Sabha seats.

The party also announced 13 candidates for the Assembly elections, taking the total number of for the Assembly polls to 77.

Pawan Kalyan's name did not figure even in the latest list. He, however, tweeted on Tuesday that he will contest from two seats.

"General body is in their final discussion from which two constituencies , I should be contesting. Hopefully, they will let me know in an hour or later," he said in the tweet.

Elections to the 175-member Assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh are scheduled for April 11. Polling for all 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana will also be held on the same day.

Jana Sena has decided to leave two Lok Sabha and seven Assembly seats each for the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).

Though it also decided to have seat adjustment with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), it is yet to make a formal announcement.

Jana Sena has already declared candidates for two Lok Sabha candidates in Telangana.
San Francisco, March 19 : The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has once again pulled up Tesla CEO Elon Musk for blatantly violating a settlement pact reached last year over securities fraud allegations.

The SEC said in a statement on Monday that Musk, who is supposed to get approval from Tesla's board before communicating company information to investors via Twitter, has constantly been violating the agreement, TechCrunch reported.

The US SEC in February asked a US federal judge to hold Musk in contempt for violating the settlement deal.

The development came in response to Musk's tweet on February 19 that "Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500K in 2019".

Hours later, the billionaire sent a follow-up tweet indicating that the company will actually deliver just 400,000 cars this year.

Musk tweeted on February 19 that Tesla would produce "around" 500,000 cars this year, correcting later to clarify that the company would actually produce at an annualized rate of 500,000 vehicles by year end.

"The SEC told a judge on Monday that Musk has regularly published substantive information about Tesla and its business in tweets, beyond the February 19 instance," the report noted.

The SEC pointed to tweets about "Tesla vehicle tax credits and pricing, vehicle maintenance costs, plans for expansion of charging stations internationally, the EPA rating of Tesla vehicles, construction and production plans for a new Shanghai factory, and the results of government safety testing of Tesla vehicles as evidence of Musk's non compliance".

In August 2018, the US SEC filed a lawsuit against Musk after he tweeted that he was considering taking the company private.

Musk and Tesla later settled with the SEC. Tesla agreed to pay a $20 million fine and Musk stepped down as Tesla Chairman for at least three years.
Canberra, March 19 : The Australian government will slash the nation's permanent migrant intake from 190,000 to 160,000 in the lead-up to May's general election, authorities said on Tuesday.

Fairfax Media and News Corp Australia said the government will place an official cap on the figure at that level, reports Xinhua news agency.

The announcement will be made as part of the Federal Budget, which will be released by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on April 2, and comes months after Morrison first signalled the move in November 2018.

The budget is widely considered the government's major opportunity to make up ground on the opposition Australian Labor Party.

Australia allowed 162,417 permanent migrants in financial year 2017-18.

The government will also announce measures to encourage new migrants to Australia to work in regional areas to ease the burden of rapid population growth on Sydney and Melbourne.

As many as 87 per cent of the 112,000 skilled migrants who arrived in Australia in 2017-18 settled in either Sydney or Melbourne.
Wellington, March 19 : New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday vowed that she will never mention the name of the lone gunman who carried out the March 15 Christchurch mosques massacre, in order to deprive him of the notoriety he was looking for.

"I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them. You will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist, but he will, when I speak, be nameless," Efe news quoted Ardern as saying at Parliament here.

"And to others, I implore you, speak the names of those who are lost, rather than the name of the man who took them," the Prime Minister said where she also remembered some of the victims, including Haji-Daoud Nabi, a 71-year-old Afghan man who opened the door of the Al Noor mosque to the shooter and whose last words were "Hello brother, welcome".

"He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing, not even his name," Ardern said, adding the perpetrator of the attack that claimed the lives of 50 people, will have to face more charges and will be punished by "the full force of the law" in New Zealand.

She stressed that the doors of her country will remain open as always for anyone who respects the values of tolerance and "must close on all of those who espouse hate and fear".

The Prime Minister confirmed that the actions of the security agencies prior to the events will be reviewed, gun laws will be reformed and the role of social networks will be analysed, while at the same time support will be given to the families of the deceased.

Meanwhile, Australian Brenton Tarrant, aged 28, who police considers to be solely responsible for the attack, will remain in custody until he appears before the judge on April 5.

The assailant resided in Dunedin, about 400 km south of Christchurch, where he used semi-automatic weapons to attack hundreds of people who had flocked to the Al Noor and Linwood mosques for their usual Friday prayers on March 15.

The terrorist filmed his actions for 17 minutes and published a long manifesto of more than 70 pages, justifying his extreme right-wing ideology and hatred of Muslims, which together with the video were published on social networks.
Chennai, March 19 : Shops and hotels downed their shutters in Pollachi on Tuesday in protest against the sexual abuse-cum-blackmail case that hit the Tamil Nadu town.

"It is an apolitical protest demanding punishment to all the culprits. Almost all the shops have downed their shutters as people of the town are shocked at the sordid episode. There may be one or two shops open here and there," K. Mahalingam, Taluk Secretary of the CPM told IANS from Pollachi.

He said permission for a rally slated for Tuesday was denied.

Mahalingam also demanded a fresh probe into the suicides of girls that happened during the last seven years.

Echoing him was R. Ganesh, District Secretary (South) of Pattali Makkal Katchi party.

"All the shops are shut except pharmacies. Couple of vegetable shops selling perishables are open but they too will be closed soon. Autorickshaws too are not plying."

The picturesque Pollachi part of Coimbatore district is located about 543 km from here.

Four persons -- Thirunavukkarasu, Sathish, Sabarirajan and Vasanthakumar -- all in their 20s, have been accused of sexually assaulting women in Pollachi and filming the act to blackmail them for money or for physical submission for over seven years.
Lucknow, March 19 : Blaming the Congress for turning Uttar Pradesh into a BIMARU state, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said on Tuesday that the state was now violence free.

"After 1990, there had been governments of BSP and SP. During this period, the state witnessed a new level of anarchy and violence," the saffron-robed BJP leader told the media to mark his two years in office.

"There were rapes, murder, looting and corruption (earlier). This gave an identity crisis to youths and forced farmers to commit suicide.

"The state witnessed hundreds of communal riots during the last regime of Samajwadi Party. But in the last two years, there has been no communal incident," he said.

The Chief Minister claimed there was no political interference in police work since he took office on this day in 2017 and said the law and order in the state was under control.

Adityanath said the Congress, which ruled Uttar Pradesh for the longest time since independence, brought the state under the BIMARU (sick) category, forcing youths to migrate in search of employment.

BIMARU as an acronym stood for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, which were once considered the most backward states economically.

The Chief Minister said that "members of the majority community" who were forced to leave their homes in Kairana and Kandhla in Uttar Pradesh due to fear of anti-social elements were returning to their homes.

Citing the achievements of his government, he also praised the Modi government for extending cooperation to the state.

Under BJP-rule, the state got investment of Rs 1.5 lakh crore, which created job opportunities for over 15 lakh youths, he said.

His two years in office had achieved a turn round in the fortunes of the state, he added.

He said that loans worth Rs 17,000 crore was disbursed to 1.78 lakh people under the 'Mudra Scheme' and that one lakh artisans had been given training tool kits.

"We came to power under very challenging circumstances as most sectors were in distress and chaos.

"We purchased 48 lakh tonnes of paddy in 2018-19 and we are giving 1.5 times to farmers than their investment."

The farmers, he added, had been given additional irrigation facility in 20 lakh hectares.
Hyderabad, March 19 : Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has postponed the release of his controversial movie "Lakshmi's NTR" to March 29.

"Get ready to know all the truths on March 29," Varma tweeted on Tuesday.

The movie based on Telugu Desam Party (TDP) founder and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. T. Rama Rao's second marriage with Lakshmi Parvathi and subsequent developments, was earlier scheduled to release on March 22.

RGV had announced on Sunday that he plans to move the court against the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for what he called illegally trying to stop the movie.

He had also planned to address a news conference along with his lawyer over the issue on Monday, which was later cancelled after a "misunderstanding with the CBFC was cleared".

"There has been an unfortunate misunderstanding between our office and the CBFC which has now been cleared. The CBFC is now doing the necessary action as per the laid down procedure," the filmmaker tweeted.

He had earlier revealed that he received a letter from CBFC informing him that his application to view the film for certification cannot be processed till the elections are held in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on April 11.

"The CBFC has no authority to postpone watching the film on the ground of model code of conduct even before viewing, which amounts to a blatant violation of the fundamental right of Freedom of Expression guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution of India," Varma had said.

"CBFC is assuming the jurisdiction of Election Commission which is not vested in it and is withholding certification of 'Lakshmi's NTR', and constitutionally it cannot partake the role of Election Commission," he had said.

Last week, a TDP worker had petitioned the Election Commission urging it to stop the release of "Lakshmi's NTR" on the ground that this could impact the coming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh.

The petitioner complained that the film has portrayed TDP President and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in a negative light, which could influence voters. He demanded that the film's release be stopped till April 11.
Ghaziabad: The helicopter of BSP supremo Mayawati arrives at the venue of party rally in Ghaziabad of poll bound Uttar Pradesh on Feb 7, 2017. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Mumbai, March 19 : With canvassing for the 2019 general elections in full swing, it's a "houseful" notice outside most companies hiring out small fixed wing aircraft and helicopters for campaign purposes, aviation industry players said.

Top politicians of various parties covet choppers as they afford ease of mobility and access to the country's remotest corners, and small planes which can land on short airstrips.

Flying at average 100-140 nautical miles per hour at a height of between 2,000-3,000 feet, helicopters are the favourite as they help politicians reach out to the maximum constituents during the campaign.

Unlike many developed countries, there are not many choppers or small planes available for hire during poll season and the charter companies go in for the pre-election 'kill'.

According to the Western Chapter of Rotary Wing Society of India (RWSI) President Captain Uday Gelli, there are around 275 registered civilian helicopters in the country.

These include choppers owned by the central or state governments, corporates, public or private sector undertakings, and those that are privately-owned -- leaving around barely 75, mostly with the charter companies, for election purposes.

Mumbai-based aviation expert Pradeep Thampy said that among the small fixed wing aircraft, single-engined aircraft like Cessna are not permitted for poll-related purposes due to various reasons, but twin and multiple engine turbo-props are in great demand.

"The pilot plus five King Air C90 and the two-pilot plus eight King Air B200 are in great demand. There are an estimated two dozen in India but not available now. The bookings are full till the third week of May," Thampy told IANS.

Nevertheless, he said that top political leaders like Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah or Congress President Rahul Gandhi would not travel in small aircraft and helicopters.

"They generally take a flight to the nearest good airport, then hop onto either a small aircraft or a chopper for safety and security reasons," explained Thampy.

There are single- or twin-engined choppers of different companies like Eurocopter, Robinson, Bell and Sikorsky, ranging from pilot plus three to 11-seater variants, but all those which are airworthy have been fully booked for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

"Though exact data of chopper hiring is not available, according to estimates, the (ruling) BJP is said to be the biggest customer, accounting for around 50 per cent of the choppers. Most political parties make bulk bookings of 45-60 days with a minimum three hours of flying daily," Gelli told IANS.

Depending on the kind of aircraft, the average cost of hiring a chopper can work out to anything between Rs 75,000-Rs 350,000 per hour, with a minimum three-hour contract per day, irrespective whether the chopper flies or not, and the normal flying time can be 15-30 minutes, according to Thampy.

The Election Commission has issued stringent guidelines on use of choppers and small aircraft during elections.

In fact, in February, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) convened a meeting of the helicopter charter companies and discussed the various Dos and Don'ts to be adhered to, while the RWSI issued an advisory on this sometime back.

"The charterers must ensure that the pilots carry out all pre-flight checks -- relating to route, weather and landing sites -- ensuring the security of the chopper at the remote sites and not transport cash/valuables, etc, since safety and security is the highest priority," said Gelli.

The biggest worry for the pilots, the VVIPs on board and the security and political activists on the ground is the public frenzy which seems to build up as soon as a chopper is sighted on the horizon, and the novelty of viewing a flying machine so close to them, especially among the rural masses, said a former chopper pilot, requesting anonymity.

Nevertheless, all agree that choppers help star campaigners cover vast geographical areas in the limited campaign time available and interact with the maximum constituents.

Barring the Prime Minister -- who is permitted an Indian Air Force helicopter for security reasons -- the EC's Model Code of Conduct does not permit anybody else to fly in a government chopper and they must rent out one.

The EC has also stipulated that all expenses on using fixed wing or rotary wing aircraft must be paid by the parties with suitable accounting, maintain detailed passenger manifests, exact departure/arrival timings, proper maintenance records with the district administration, etc.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at quaid.n@ians.in)
Bhadohi : , March 19 (IANS) Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying no one was happy with his government.

Demanding to know what Modi had done in the last five years, Gandhi told the media here: "Be it farmers, youth or anybody, no one is satisfied with the government. Together they will change the government this year."

Gandhi, 47, is on a three-day boat ride on the Ganga as part of the Lok Sabha election campaign that will end on Wednesday in Varanasi, Modi's parliamentary constituency.

Gandhi began the day after offering prayers at the Sita Samahit Sthal temple in Sitamarhi.

She was asked to comment on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's claim that the Congress had ruled Uttar Pradesh for most years since the country's independence and so it was to blame for keeping the sprawling state economically backward.

"This 'what they did in last 70 years' has an expiry date. Now the BJP should tell the people what it did in the last five years (after Modi took office).

"Shiksha mitras and anganvadi workers did not get anything. The BJP had announced Rs 17,000 per month for them," she said.

"It is good to produce report cards but what has actually happened? There is nothing on the ground. I am meeting people daily, they are distressed," Gandhi said.

Gandhi, who set out from Prayagraj on Monday in a specially-built vessel with supporters, earlier met Congress leaders here and exhorted them to work hard during the elections.

She spent Tuesday night at a guest house in Bhadohi.

Before resuming her journey on the Ganga, Gandhi met Congress leaders in the area.

Shivam Dubey, a party leader who attended the meeting, told IANS: "We will work hard to ensure that the Congress is strengthened and wins with a huge majority."

Gandhi is expected to reach Chunar in Mirzapur on Tuesday evening.
New Delhi, March 19 : The Election Commission on Tuesday met representatives of Internet companies, including Facebook and Twitter, to discuss issues related to the use of social media for campaigning in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls while the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) is in force.

The meeting comes after the Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) sent a notice to the poll panel, urging it to take action against the misuse of social media to influence voters.

The agenda of the meeting was to find ways to avoid misuse of social media during elections and create a mechanism for the poll panel to flag violations.

With the Election Commission on March 9 outlining stringent guidelines for social media usage during elections, political parties and candidates won't be able to post unverified advertisements, photographs of defence personnel, hate speeches and fake news on their accounts.

According to the new guidelines, candidates are required to furnish details of their social media accounts at the time of filing nominations and their activities on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google would be under the Election Commission's close scrutiny.

Provisions of the model code of conduct will also apply to the content being posted on social media by candidates and political parties. Any violation may lead to action by the Election Commission.

It also asked Facebook to remove political posters shared by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders referring to Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman and his pictures.

In this regard, the Election Commission had summoned Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google and TikTok for a meeting on Tuesday.

During the meeting, the issues of pre-certification for online political advertisements and setting a time-line for social media companies to remove content after violation being flagged were also expected to be discussed.
Srinagar, March 19 : A 28-year-old man belonging to Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district died in police custody in Srinagar.

Police said Rizwan Asad Pandit, belonging to Awantipora who worked as a teacher in a private school, was arrested three days back in connection with a militancy related case.

"He died during Monday night," a police officer said, adding that a magisterial probe had been ordered.

"In addition, a departmental inquiry has been ordered into the circumstances that led to the death," the officer said.

As a precaution, all exams scheduled for Tuesday in the Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST), Awantipora, have been postponed.
New Delhi, March 19 : After facing flak for briefly banning one of India's most active Pages on Facebook that warned people about the dangers of fascism, the social media giant has restored the Page and apologised to its creator Dhruv Rathee.

A popular YouTuber with more than 1.7 million subscribers, Rathee on Monday pointed out that he was banned from posting on his Facebook Page after he wrote how Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power, which implicitly drew a parallel with the rise of right wing politics in India.

He highlighted in the post how Hitler remained unmarried, was more popular than the Nazi party, used propaganda and received support from industrialists.

While the post was a criticism of fascism, and not an endorsement, Facebook first determined that it was against its Community Standards, drawing severe criticism from several public figures.

Facebook, however, later realised its mistake and restored the Page.

"Account restored! Thanks for your support guys! See the second photo, the reason Facebook had banned me," Rathee said in a post, while adding a note from Facebook in which the social media giant apologised for the mistake.

"It looks like we did a mistake and removed something you posted on Facebook that did not go against our Community Standards. We want to apologise and let you know that we have restored your content and removed any blocks on your account related to this incorrect action," Facebook said in the note.
Beijing, March 19 : China has described as "one of the most notorious terror attacks" the 2008 Mumbai killings for which Pakistan was blamed.

The statement was made in a white paper called "The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang" released by the Chinese government on Monday.

In the chapter "International Counter-terrorism Exchanges and Cooperation", the white paper bracketed the Mumbai attack with the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people, the Paris 2015 attack which left 132 dead and the 2017 Sinai mosque attack that killed 235 people.

"China opposes all forms of terrorism and extremism, and opposes double standards on fighting terrorism. It opposes linking terrorism and extremism with specific countries, ethnic groups or religions," the white paper said.

It said that "as a responsible member of the international community", China also supported the UN in "playing a leading and coordinating role in international cooperation against terrorism".

The white paper came on the day when Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi arrived in Beijing on a three-day visit during which he will hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi under the first China-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue.

The Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 was carried out at multiple locations within a small geographical area by members of the Pakistan-based terror group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.
New Delhi/Mumbai, March 19 : Jet Airways flight maintenance engineers have written to the aviation regulator DGCA stating that the company's aircraft are fit and safe to fly.

According to the Jet Aircraft Maintaince Enginners Welfare Association, the company has a 99.50 per cent technical dispatch reliability which is the highest in the industry.

The corrigendum from the association comes after it had written to the DGCA on the issue of overdue salaries.

The development also comes after the Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday directed senior officials to hold an emergency meeting on the grounding of flights by Jet Airways.

The Civil Aviation Minister tweeted: "Directed Secretary, MoCA, to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, advance bookings, cancellation, refunds and safety issues, if any.

"Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation)."

The development comes a day after passengers were left stranded at Abu Dhabi as Jet Airways cancelled flights. The cash-strapped carrier, which has been forced to ground over 40 aircraft of its fleet due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors, is regularly grounding aircraft as it is unable to pay the lessors.

IANS

rv/sn/bc
Beijing, March 19 : China on Tuesday indicated that it won't recognise the successor of the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama if found in India.

The 14th Dalai Lama has been living in India in exile since 1959 after a failed revolt against Communist rule in Tibet. Beijing calls him a "dangerous secessionist" and is worried about his successor.

In an interview with Reuters, the Dalai Lama said China worries more about the next Dalai Lama than him.

"In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in a free country, one is chosen by Chinese, then nobody will trust, nobody will respect (the one chosen by China). So that's an additional problem for the Chinese. It's possible, it can happen," the 83-year-old monk said.

Reacting to the interview, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the reincarnation of Dalai Lama should follow China's laws and regulations and religious rituals.

"I knew you were going to ask this question. Well, here is the answer. Reincarnation is the unique way of Tibetan Buddhism. It has fixed rituals and systems. The Chinese government has a policy of freedom of religious beliefs. We have the regulation of religious affairs and regulations on the reincarnation of Tibetan Buddhism. We respect and protect such ways of Tibetan Buddhism," Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said.

"The reincarnation system has been there for hundreds of years. The 14th Dalai also was recognised in the religious rituals and was approved by the Central government. So the reincarnation of Dalai Lama should be following the national laws and regulations and the religious rituals," he added.

Beijing says it reserved the right to appoint the Dalai Lama's successor in line with the conventions set by Chinese emperors.

However, many Tibetans believe that the soul of a venerated Buddhist monk will reincarnate in the body of a child after his death.

The current Dalai Lama was born in 1935 and identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two years old.

India is also home to some 100,000 Tibetans, many of who fled Tibet along with the Dalai Lama.
New Delhi, March 19 : Congress leader K.V. Thomas, who was miffed after being denied a Lok Sabha berth, on Tuesday said he was "a happy person" after meeting UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

The outgoing Ernakulam Lok Sabha member said: "I was with her (Gandhi) for 30 minutes and even though I won't be able to tell you all that transpired in the meeting, what I can say is that I am a very happy person.

"I am a member of the Congress family and have been in it since 1968 and will continue to be so. I am a happy man, after the meeting," said Thomas.

Two days back, Thomas was denied a Lok Sabha ticket from Kerala, which he described as "most shocking moment in his entire political career".

Congress sources said Thomas might be given the post of the United Democratic Front Convenor as incumbent Benny Behanan has been asked to contest against Lok Sabha member and CPI-M-backed Independent and comedian Innocent from Chalakudy.
Hyderabad, March 19 : In a major blow to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Telangana, its senior leader and former MP Nama Nageswara Rao resigned from the party on Tuesday.

Nageswara Rao, a member of the TDP's politburo, the highest decision-making body of the party, was unhappy with the party leadership for some time.

In the recent Assembly elections, he had contested from Khammam constituency as the candidate of the Congress-led People's Alliance but was defeated.

An industrialist, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Khammam in 2009. He was then one of the richest MPs in the country with declared assets of Rs 338 crore. In December 2018, his assets stood at Rs 113 crore.

Apparently, feeling that the TDP has no future in Telangana, he decided to quit the party. He had called on Chief Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) President K. Chandrashekhar Rao a couple of days ago.

He is likely to join the TRS and may contest next month's Lok Sabha elections on the party ticket from Khammam.

Nageswara Rao is one of the last key leaders of the TDP in Telangana to quit the party.

In the recent elections, the TDP won two seats in the 119-member Assembly with one of the MLAs switching loyalty to the ruling party.
Amaravati, March 19 : Popular Telugu actor and Jana Sena President Pawan Kalyan will contest from two constituencies in next month's Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections, the party announced on Tuesday.

Following the footsteps of his elder brother and superstar K. Chrainjeevi, Pawan will make his electoral debut by contesting for two seats.

The actor, who has a good following among youth, will file his nomination from Bheemavaram in West Godavari district and Gajuwaka in Visakhapatnam district.

According to a party statement, its general body surveyed eight constituencies across the state and zeroed in on two constituencies.

Chiranjeevi, who had floated Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) in 2008, contested from Palakollu in his native West Godavari district and Tirupati in Chittoor district in the 2009 elections. He was defeated from Palakollu but won Tirupati.

PRP, which won only 18 seats in 294-member undivided Andhra Pradesh Assembly, later merged with the then ruling Congress party.

In the 2014 election, Jana Sena had not contested but Pawan Kalyan had campaigned for TDP-BJP alliance. This time the party decided to contest the polls in alliance with the Left parties.
Chennai, March 19 : Chennai-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) unicorn Freshworks which provides Cloud-based business software has expanded to the Asean market with the setting up of a regional hub in Singapore.

By opening its first regional hub for the Asean market, Freshworks on Tuesday said it aims to expand adoption of its customer engagement suite and increase its network of partner resources to meet rising customer demand in the region.

The Freshworks regional hub was set up with support from the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).

"Asean is an exciting market for us, we look forward to playing our role in supporting businesses to scale and achieve their full business potential. Singapore is a great launch pad into the region, as businesses are focussing on technologies to innovate," Sidharth Malik, Chief Revenue Officer, Freshworks, said in a statement.

Freshworks was one of the eight start-ups in India that became unicorns in 2018.

The company had raised $100 million in its latest round of funding from Accel Partners, Tiger Global, Sequoia and CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) in July 2018.

Freshworks products are widely used by businesses in consulting, retail and shipping industries from the region.
Taipei, March 19 : The health of Taiwanese pro-democracy activist Lee Ming-che, sentenced in 2017 to five years in jail for subversion of state power, is at risk in the Chinese prison where he is being held, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Tuesday.

On the second anniversary of Lee's arrest, human rights groups in Taiwan and abroad said that the 44-year-old's health has deteriorated since he was imprisoned, reports Efe news.

In a statement, HRW said China has "forcibly disappeared and prosecuted citizens of other countries for helping Chinese activists or speaking critically of the government".

Among those are "Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, British bookseller Lee Bo and Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai, whose whereabouts remain unknown", the statement added.

The activist has been transferred twice to different prisons and is forbidden from sending letters or receiving books, including those that meet government approval, says HRW.

His wife, Li Ching-yu, has only been allowed to visit him six times since his imprisonment even though the country's Prison Law allows prisoners visits by family members at least once a month.

Lee, a volunteer with the Taiwan-based NGO Covenants Watch, was sentenced in November 2017 for having "online discussions about transitional justice and democracy in Taiwan and sharing books on human rights with friends in the mainland", the HRW said.

Lee, a former member of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, is a professor at the Wenshan Community College in Taipei.

He had disappeared mysteriously in March 2017, after entering China from Macau while on a private visit and his whereabouts had remained unknown until May, when Chinese authorities had said they had detained him on suspicion of subversion of state power.

Lee's case marks the first-ever extraterritorial trial against critics of China.

He is also the first Taiwanese dissident charged with subversion of state power as well as the first non-Chinese member of a non-governmental organisation, who was tried in China after a new law, that aimed to regulate nonprofits in the Asian country, was approved in 2016.
New Delhi, March 19 : The BJP on Tuesday said its campaign 'Main Bhi Chowkidar' has turned into "a mass movement" with over one crore people taking a pledge to be a 'watchman' and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with them through video conference on March 31.

BJP leader and Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told the media that while the movement was becoming popular among the common man, those who were out on bail and facing various legal action were troubled by it.

"Over one crore people have joined the campaign and it is now a people's movement. While it is becoming popular among the people, there are some who are opposing it.

"Those who are out on bail with their families or have something to hide are opposing the movement. Some people are saying 'Chowkidar' is for the rich. These are the same people who looted about 12 lakh crore from poor people."

He said Modi will interact with those who took the pledge across the country via video conference on March 31.

Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Modi last week tweeted a video with hashtag '#MainBhiChowkidar' (I am also a watchman) and called all those fighting corruption, dirt and social evils a 'watchman'.

BJP leaders have added 'Chowkidar' before their names on Twitter.
Patna, March 19 : Janata Dal-United (JD-U) national Vice President Prashant Kishor on Tuesday slammed Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for his prejudice against people of Bihar, and asked him to focus on his job at hand.

"Rather than using derogatory language that shows your prejudice and malice against Bihar, just focus on why people of AP should vote for you again," the election strategist-turned-politician tweeted.

His retort comes a day after Naidu called Kishor a "Bihari dacoit".

Kishore also said: "An imminent defeat can rattle even the most seasoned politicians. So I'm not surprised with the baseless utterances of Chandrababu Naidu."

The Telugu Desam Party chief said on Monday at a public meeting in Andhra Pradesh: "K. Chandrashekar Rao is doing criminal politics. He is grabbing the MLAs of Congress and TDP. Bihari dacoit Prasant Kishore has removed lakhs of votes in Andhra Pradesh."

Naidu also reportedly said, "the Bihari man PK is behind the Form 7 scam in Andhra Pradesh. He helped the YSRCP (YSR Congress Party) to delete lakhs of voters sympathetic towards the TDP".

"Not only that, he is also behind the data theft in Hyderabad in which micro-level details of lakhs of our cadres were removed."

There was speculation in political circles here that Prashant Kishor, popularly known as PK, has been sidelined in the JD-U after he made numerous statements that were different from the party line.
New Delhi, March 19 : The Congress appears to be caught between its goal of defeating the ruling NDA in the Lok Sabha elections and expanding its own base in various states, leading to its failure to seal crucial alliances including in Bihar.

The Congress has also fielded candidates on two seats won by the CPI-M in West Bengal in 2014 and has rejected the "no contest in sitting seats" offer of the Marxists, after the seat sharing talks broke off.

The party has also not been able to reach an understanding with the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir and appears to be in two minds vis-a-vis the AAP in Delhi.

In Bihar, which is crucial for the possibility of post-poll alignments, the two major constituents of Grand Alliance - the RJD and Congress - have not come to an understanding yet despite many rounds of talks at various levels.

Under pressure from other allies, the RJD is apparently not keen to give more than nine of 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state to Congress but the latter is keen to contest at least 11.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) constituents, on the other hand, have decided not only the numbers but also specific seats they would contest in Bihar.

In West Bengal, the Congress on Monday night announced candidates for Raiganj and Mushirabad, seats on which CPI-M has sitting MPs and where it has announced candidates. Former Union Minister Deepa Dasmunsi will contest from Raiganj while Abu Hena would be the party candidate from Murshidabad.

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member Mohammad Salim defeated Dasmunsi by a slender margin in 2014 while Badaruddoza Khan entered the Lok Sabha from Murshidabad. The CPI-M is now likely to field candidates on seats won by the Congress.

A senior RJD leader told IANS said that their patience was running out and if the Congress does not take a decision soon, they may not be together in the alliance.

"There are so many other parties that are part of the Grand Alliance and they have to be accommodated. I am surprised the Congress is not looking at the larger goal of defeating the BJP. We cannot wait indefinitely as we have to go ahead with seat distribution and campaign," he said.

He said that in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, which the Congress and the RJD fought together, the former had contested on 12 seats and the latter had on 27.

The Congress does not appear to have taken a final view on a possible alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi. While some of its leaders favour this to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, many others want to contest alone.

And in Kashmir, the National Conference has refused a tie-up with the Congress in the Valley but said it was open to seat sharing in Ladakh and Jammu region.
Mirzapur : , March 19 (IANS) Pro-Modi slogans were raised by BJP supporters gathered outside a temple near here on Tuesday as Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi offered prayers.

As Gandhi got out of her car outside the Vindhyavasini Devi Temple, eight kilometres from here, hundreds of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers started shouting slogans hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The slogan shouting continued even as Gandhi entered the temple to pray.
New Delhi, March 19 : Aiming to take on the likes of Google Pay and Paytm, Chinese handset maker Xiaomi on Tuesday launched its Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based payments application "Mi Pay" for its MIUI users in India.

According to the company, the Mi Pay service aims to be an all-in-one payments solution for its users. It would be available for all Xiaomi devices running its proprietary MIUI OS based on Android.

"Payments for us is a core functionality within our operating system (OS) business," Manu Jain, Vice President, Xiaomi and Managing Director, Xiaomi India, told IANS here.

The app is integrated within MIUI interface across SMS, contacts, scanner, app vault and settings and ICICI Bank is the payment service provider.

Users can effectively make payments using UPI and other debit cards, credit cards and Internet banking across more than 120 banks and over 120 billers.

"We have introduced our innovative Mi Pay service for our consumers in India. This is the ultimate solution to a variety of consumer payment needs, and hence empowers millions of Xiaomi users with access to digital payments," said Muralikrishnan B, Chief Operating Officer, Xiaomi India.

The payments service would also allow several utility payments ranging from phone bills, phone recharges, water or electricity bill payments.

Mi Pay provides safe and secure transactions with all data stored locally in India servers in an encrypted format, the company added.

Mi Pay UPI has been approved by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) under the multi bank Application Programming Interface (API) model and it has been audited by CERT-IN empanelled auditors E&Y and Lucideus.
Mirzapur : , March 19 (IANS) Pro-Modi slogans were raised by BJP supporters gathered outside a temple near here on Tuesday as Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi reached a temple here.

As Gandhi got out of her car outside the Vindhyavasini Devi Temple, eight kilometres from here, hundreds of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers started shouting slogans hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The slogan shouting continued even as Gandhi entered the temple to pray. Most of the people in the crowd were regular worshippers, who were stopped from entering the temple given the VIP protocol.

Even shops and other establishments near the temple had to down their shutters, which led to the gathering of an angry mob, who shouted: "Har Har Modi".

Clad in a red sari, the eastern Uttar Pradesh in-charge of the Congress, who spent some 20 minutes praying at the temple, however, remained unperturbed.

As the sloganeering continued, she drove off to offer a chadar at the Kantit Sharief dargah near by.

There was a huge crowd outside the mosque waiting to meet her. Most had arrived at 7 a.m., they claimed.

Earlier in the day she attacked Modi saying no one was happy with his government. Demanding to know what Modi had done in the last five years, Gandhi told the media in Bhadohi: "Be it farmers, youth or anybody, no one is satisfied with the government. Together they will change the government this year."

The younger sibling of party chief Rahul Gandhi is on a three-day boat ride on the Ganga as part of the Lok Sabha election campaign that will end on Wednesday in Varanasi, Modi's parliamentary constituency.

Gandhi began the day after offering prayers at the Sita Samahit Sthal temple in Sitamarhi. Before resuming the second day of her river ride campaign, she held a meeting with party workers and leaders at the Sitamarhi guest house, where she had halted for the night on Monday.

She urged her party workers to strengthen the Congress and ensure it's victory.

She was asked to comment on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's claim that the Congress had ruled the state for most years since the country's independence and so it was to blame for keeping the sprawling state economically backward.

Priyanka Gandhi hit back at the BJP saying "this 'what they did in last 70 years' has an expiry date.

"Now the BJP should tell the people what it did in the last five years (after Modi took office).

"Shiksha mitras and anganwadi workers did not get anything. The BJP had announced Rs 17,000 per month for them," she said.

"It is good to produce report cards but what has actually happened? There is nothing on the ground. I am meeting people daily, they are distressed," Gandhi said.

Gandhi, who set out from Prayagraj on Monday in a specially-built vessel with supporters, earlier met Congress leaders here and exhorted them to work hard during the elections.

Before resuming her journey on the Ganga, Gandhi met Congress leaders in the area.

Shivam Dubey, a party leader who attended the meeting, told IANS: "We will work hard to ensure that the Congress is strengthened and wins with a huge majority."

Gandhi is expected to reach Chunar in Mirzapur on Tuesday evening.
Los Angeles, March 19 : Movies must be judged on artistic merit, and not windowing strategy, said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings amidst an ongoing debate on whether films on streaming services deserve a chance at the Oscars.

Hastings spoke about it at a Netflix Labs event here when asked if the streaming service would consider prioritising theatrical experience to a greater degree than it did for "Roma".

"I'd like to take it case by case. Today, the rules are the rules that they are, and we comply fully with those rules. And I think all of you here would say that 'Roma' is an Oscar quality movie.

"We really believe films should be judged upon their artistic merit, not upon its windowing strategy," Hastings said.

By the rules, he meant the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' rule book which says that films which, in any version, receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release will not be eligible for Oscars in any category.

Non-theatrical public exhibition or distribution includes, but is not limited to, broadcast and cable television, video on demand, DVD distribution and Internet transmission.

The film is also required to have a run of at least seven consecutive days at the theatres.

Alfonso Cuaron's Mexican drama "Roma" got a limited number of theatres for a three-week run before the film appeared on the service.

The film pocketed three Oscars this year, becoming the first Mexican feature to win the golden statuette for Best Foreign film. Cuaron took home the awards for cinematography and directing.

Hastings said that while "Roma" has got them to win at the 91st Academy Awards, they would like to continue "to win Oscars".

"It's great for the talent and shows," he added.

Ever since the black and white drama scored nominations, it sparked a debate on whether movies for streaming services be allowed to compete at big award ceremonies, traditionally meant for feature films which get full theatrical release.

There have been multiple reports claiming filmmaker Steven Spielberg has been planning to ask the Oscars' board of governors at their April meeting to vote for a new rule that would require an Oscar-qualifying movie to play for four weeks in theatres, thinning chances of films of streaming services to make the cut.

In a recent interview to IANS, Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke had said this doesn't quite suit "the ecosystem of this evolving business" and that a common ground would have to be found.

(Radhika Bhirani is in Los Angeles on an invitation by Netflix. She can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)
Mumbai, March 19 : Politics in Maharashtra in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections took another twist on Tuesday as Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh chief Prakash Ambedkar on Tuesday raked up the oft-repeated issue of fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar's purported offer to surrender.

At a media briefing here, Ambedkar claimed that Dawood was willing to surrender in 1993, but the then Chief Minister and present Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar allegedly took no steps in the matter.

"The proposal had gone through then Rajya Sabha member, Raj Jethmalani... I was also a member of the upper house and we were friends. He mentioned this to me.

"It was up to the PM to decide on what terms and conditions the mafia don could have been brought back. He (Pawar) must clarify whether he had informed the then Prime Minister (P.V. Narasimha Rao) or kept the information to himself," Ambedkar demanded.

However, the NCP hit back at Ambedkar, wondering why he was raising the issue of Dawood's reported readiness to surrender - which has been a matter of debate since over 25 years.

"This is being done to help the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming elections. Pawar has repeatedly made it clear in the past that the terms and conditions on which the fugitive criminal sought to surrender were not acceptable to the government," NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said.

"Moreover, he wondered if Jethmalani was such a nationalist, then why didn't he inform the Interpol about meeting Dawood. Later, he was a Union minister and there was a BJP government twice in the centre and state. Then why they could not get Dawood to surrender? Did Jethmalani ever raise the issue with the BJP government or not?" he asked.

Malik also questioned the "motives" of Ambedkar in highlighting the issue now, and asked if it was intended to benefit the BJP, particularly since the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi-All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen alliance is fighting the Lok Sabha polls independently in Maharashtra's 48 parliamentary constituencies.

The alliance, led by Ambedkar and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, has decided to put up candidates in all seats after its talks with the Congress-NCP collapsed last week.

Incidentally, in September 2017, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena President Raj Thackeray had publicly stated that Dawood was very ill and wanted to return to India and spend his final days here.

However, he alleged that the Modi government would claim this return as its "big achievement" and exploit it for political gains.
Mumbai, March 19 : Actress Mouni Roy, who will be seen in the forthcoming film "Romeo Akbar Walter", says the espionage thriller celebrates the unnoticed people who have sacrificed their lives for the love of their country.

"Romeo Akbar Walter" is set against the backdrop of the India-Pakistan War of 1971. In the film, actor John Abraham plays the title role who works as an undercover agent for the Indian intelligence agency.

Asked what made her join the cast of "Romeo Akbar Walter", Mouni said: "I really liked the script of 'Romeo Akbar Walter'. I remember when the film's director Robbie Grewal was narrating the story to me... in the middle of the narration, I realised that I wanted to be a part of this film. It's a very interesting story. It's about a man who gives up everything for his country. He sacrifices his name, family and love."

"This film celebrates those nameless people who go unnoticed and nobody even gets to know the amount of courage and sacrifice they displayed for the love of country."

Talking about her character in the film, Mouni said: "I am playing the love interest of Romeo in the film. She is a simple girl who works in a bank."

Mouni made her Hindi film debut with Akshay Kumar-starrer "Gold". She also has "Brahmastra" and "Made in China" in her kitty.

How does she select her films?

"I guess it's always the instinct and the story. When I read scripts, I always see what is the story about and if it's an interesting story and if I want to be a part of the story then comes my character.

"If I think that I have something to do or it challenges me or excites me as an actor, I agree to be a part of that project," she said.
New Delhi, March 19 : Aviation regular DGCA on Tuesday said that Jet Airways only has 41 aircraft in its fleet for operations and that there may be further attrition in the fleet size and flights ahead.

The Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) made the disclosure after meeting Jet Airways' representatives here.

"DGCA reviewed the performance of Jet Airways on operational, airworthiness & passenger facilitation today.

"Current availability of aircraft in the fleet for operation is 41 and accordingly, a schedule for 603 domestic flights and 382 international flights has been drawn. However, it is a dynamic situation and there may be further attrition in coming weeks," a DGCA statement said.

According to the statement, the DGCA instructed the airline to comply with the relevant provisions of the applicable CARs (civil aviation rules) for facilitation of passengers regarding timely communication, compensation, refunds and providing alternate flights, wherever applicable.

"DGCA is ensuring that all aircraft in the fleet whether in operation or on ground are maintained in accordance with Approved Maintenance Programme (AMP)," it said.

Jet was also directed to ensure that no pilots/cabin crew/aircraft maintenance engineers, who had reported stress of any nature, be rostered on duty. "Additionally, all such staff should be current with all mandatory training requirements."

The development comes after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday directed senior officials to hold an emergency meeting on the grounding of flights by Jet Airways.

"Directed Secretary, MoCA, to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways, advance bookings, cancellation, refunds and safety issues, if any."

"Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues immediately from DGCA," Prabhu tweeted.

His direction came a day after passengers were left stranded at Abu Dhabi as Jet Airways cancelled flights. The cash-strapped carrier, which has been forced to ground over 40 aircraft of its fleet due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors, is regularly grounding aircraft as it is unable to pay the dues.

Industry sources say that the airline has grounded over 50 per cent of 123 aircraft strong fleet.

On Monday too, following a similar pattern, Jet Airways informed the BSE that four aircraft were to be grounded due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors.
Utrecht : , March 19 (IANS) The suspect of tram shooting in the Dutch city of Utrecht and his victims were not linked, said the police and the prosecutor on Tuesday and added they were, therefore, "seriously considering a terrorist motive".

According to a joint statement by the police and the prosecutor, investigations so far showed no relation between the shooter and the victims, and a note found in a seized car is one of the other reasons to think of a terrorist motive. But other motives are not excluded and the probe is on.

Three people were killed and seven others injured in the tram shooting in Utrecht on Monday. The police arrested the main suspect and another person for involvement. On Monday, Dutch police arrested a third suspect. "We are investigating the role of this third person," said the police.

All three suspects are being interrogated in the custody. The main suspect is 37-year-old GAkmen Tanis from whom a weapon was recovered.
New Delhi, March 19 : Accusing the Congress of suffering from "ego" issues and "inflated arrogance", Delhi's ruling AAP on Tuesday it will not waste any more time to sew an alliance with the grand old party.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Gopal Rai told the media that the Congress was not interested in saving the country.

"It (Congress) is more interested in its ego and inflated arrogance. It is not much interested in defeating the Modi-Shah duo," he said, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah.

"This is clear from across the country, be it Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi, Bihar or Andhra Pradesh. In all these states, the Congress is thinking about saving its own party and its ego, not the country."

He added: "They are not coming out with a clear stand about Delhi."

He said the AAP will go ahead with all its seven candidates in Delhi.

"We will now focus on how to defeat BJP on our own. Post Holi, we will beef up our election campaign."

Rai said the way Congress was divided over an alliance in Delhi was a shame. This, he said, would harm the anti-BJP alliance.

"They have wasted so much time. Even a common man will not take so much time in taking decisions. This is about national interest. If a party is taking too much time in taking decisions, this shows that there are doubts in its intentions or that it is incapable of fighting in the current situation."

Rai said AAP will start the campaign in full swing from March 23 -- the death anniversary of Bhagat Singh.

"In our campaign, the focus will be on the full statehood for Delhi."
Kolkata: Traders burn Chinese goods as they protest against China for blocking India's bid to have Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) Chief Masood Azhar designated as a global terrorist by the United Nations (UN), in Kolkata on March 19, 2019. (Ph Image Source: IANS News

Kolkata: Traders burn Chinese goods as they protest against China for blocking India's bid to have Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) Chief Masood Azhar designated as a global terrorist by the United Nations (UN), in Kolkata on March 19, 2019. (Ph Image Source: IANS News

Kolkata: Traders burn Chinese goods as they protest against China for blocking India's bid to have Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) Chief Masood Azhar designated as a global terrorist by the United Nations (UN), in Kolkata on March 19, 2019. (Ph Image Source: IANS News

Kolkata, March 19 : Protesting against China for blocking India's bid to have Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) Chief Masood Azhar designated as a global terrorist by the UN, traders on Tuesday set fire to Chinese goods at more than 1,500 places across the country.

"Traders across the country gave a strong message to China by burning Chinese goods ahead of the Holi festival. They set Chinese goods on fire at more than 1,500 places all over the country," Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) National Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said.

China had recently blocked India's fourth attempt at the United Nations (UN) to declare Azhar as a global terrorist.

India's attempts to impose sanctions against the Pakistan-based terrorist came again after a suicide attack claimed by the JeM in Kashmir's Pulwama district killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel.

The traders' body also asked its members to boycott Chinese goods in the country.

The demonstrators held placards in their hands urging people to "boycott Chinese goods and warning both China and Pakistan to break their nexus against India".

Condemning the neighbouring country, CAIT West Bengal President Komal Jain said the traders are very "annoyed with China" and urged the government to put restrictions on trade with it.

According to the traders, the items being imported from China are largely toys, electronics, mobiles, FMCG products, hardware goods, electrical items and festival material, which do not involve any major technology.

"Since our SMEs are capable enough to produce these goods with good quality and at affordable prices, the government should encourage small industries and give them a special package so that our people can compete with China," CAIT West Bengal Secretary General Raja Roy said.

The traders also urged the government to conduct a "strict investigation" at Indian ports on each import from China as "goods being imported from China are highly undervalued".
Dharwad: People gather at the site where an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving two people killed and 50 others trapped in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 19, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Dharwad: People gather at the site where an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving two people killed and 50 others trapped in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 19, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Dharwad: People gather at the site where an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving two people killed and 50 others trapped in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 19, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Bengaluru, March 19 : Two people were feared killed and 50 others were trapped when a multi-storey commercial building under construction collapsed in Dharwad in Karnataka on Tuesday, police said.

Five persons extricated from the debris told rescuers that at least two people had been killed in the tragedy that occurred close to 4 p.m. and that some 50 others were still under tonnes of cement and mortar, Dharwad Superintendent of Police L.K. Talwar said.

The reason for the accident was not immediately known.

Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy said he had told the Chief Secretary to send expert rescuers to Dharwad by a special flight.

He said rescue operations were on and that five people had been extricated from the debris. "I have instructed the concerned officials to be on location."
Dharwad: People gather at the site where an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving two people killed and 50 others trapped in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 19, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Dharwad: People gather at the site where an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving two people killed and 50 others trapped in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 19, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Dharwad: The site where an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving two people killed and 50 others trapped in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 19, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Dharwad: People gather at the site where an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving two people killed and 50 others trapped in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 19, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Bengaluru, March 19 : Two people were feared killed and about 50 others were trapped when a multi-storey commercial building under construction collapsed in Karnataka's Dharwad on Tuesday, police said.

"Five persons extricated from the debris told rescuers that at least two people had been killed in the tragedy that occurred close to 4 p.m.," Police Inspector L.K. Talwar told IANS from Dharwad, about 400km northwest of here.

Nearly 40-50 others were still under tonnes of cement and mortar, he said.

The reason for the accident was not immediately known.

The injured were rushed to hospitals in the district.

Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy said he had told the Chief Secretary to send expert rescuers to Dharwad by a special flight.

He said rescue operations were on and that five people had been extricated from the debris. "I have instructed the officials concerned to be on location."

A total of five fire tenders and 10 ambulances were deployed to carry out the rescue operations.

State unit Congress leader Vinay Kulkarni's kin was one of the owners of the building which was under construction.
Mumbai, March 19 : Actor Rajkummar Rao and filmmaker Anurag Kashyap have come out in support of actor Savi Sidhu, who is now working as a security guard here due to a financial crisis.

Rajkummar on Tuesday took to Twitter to extend support to Savi saying: "Will ask my casting friends to reach out to you."

Savi has featured in movies such as "Black Friday", "Gulaal" and "Patiala House". In a video shared by Film Companion on YouTube, Savi spoke about his struggling days and what led him to take up a security guard's job.

As the video is trending online, Rajkummar thanked the portal for sharing Savi's story.

The "Stree" actor also praised Savi. He wrote: "Very inspired by your story Savi Sidhu Sir. Have always admired your work in all your films. Love your positivity. Perseverance is the key to overcoming obstacles."

Savi, who started his Bollywood career with Anurag's films, currently works for 12 hours a day as a security guard.

"It is a 12-hour tough job. It's a mechanical job. I don't even have money to buy bus tickets. To watch a film in theatre is like a dream now. My financial condition is not good," he said in the video.

On seeing the video, Anurag tweeted: "I respect Savi Siddhu as an actor and have cast him thrice when he earned the role. I respect him that he chose to live his life with dignity and picked a job unlike so many entitled out of work actors who have either become alcoholics or wasted themselves away."

Sharing examples of actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui and others, Anurag wrote: "He used to be a watchman. I used to be a waiter, I met one actor who sells bhelpuri on streets, I know an actor from 'Black Friday' who drives a rickshaw."

"I have seen the great Uday Chandra who did 'Hum Paanch' and 'Khel Khiladi Ka' in my early days walking the street. This is also true for many people in all walks of life. To give an actor a role out of sympathy, is insulting."

Anurag believes that Savi will have to help himself.

"Only thing one can do is get the casting directors to audition him for him to earn the role and for that, he will have to walk to that casting director's office like million others. He has made a conscious choice and one should be proud of him that he did not allow the vanity of the artiste to destroy him, and he actually does a job."

He doesn't see being a watchman as a "small job or big".

"At least, he is not begging. I genuinely believe that charity does not make art or an artiste. You want to help artistes like him then you need to start watching their art by paying for it."
Imphal, March 19 : Launching his party's election campaign in the Northeast from Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh, Congress President Rahul Gandhi arrived here on Tuesday evening for a two-day visit to Manipur.

Party sources said during his stay, the Congress Chief will finalise his party's candidates for the two constituencies in Manipur. The BJP hasn't announced its candidates for the state as yet.

Soon after his arrival, Gandhi paid tributes at Shaheed Minar and visited vendors at Ima Keithel or the women's only market. He also addressed workers at the local Congress party office.

Gandhi is slated to interact with students at the Palace compound auditorium on Wednesday morning. Later, he will address a public meeting at Hafta Kangjeibung.

The Congress, which ruled Manipur for three consecutive terms, secured 28 seats in the 60-member House in the last Assembly elections, while the BJP got just 21. However, the BJP managed to form a government in the state with the support of MLAs from other parties and some independents.

Former Chief Minister and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Okram Ibobi told IANS that Gandhi's visit to Manipur was meant to motivate people to fight for the restoration of their democratic rights, which were "snatched" away after the Assembly elections.
New Delhi, March 19 : Representatives of Internet companies, including social media platforms, on Tuesday had an inconclusive meeting with Election Commission officils on the use of social media for campaigning in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls while the Model Code of Conduct is in force.

Sources said the poll panel has called another meeting on Wednesday.

The two sides took up the misuse of social media during elections and pre-certification of political advertisements. They also discussed fake news and expenditure by political parties on online advertisements.

The Election Commission asked the tech companies to come up with mechanisms on their platforms for flagging model code violations and taking action within the given time-frame.

Sources said representatives from Google told the poll panel that it can set up the system to check fake news within 24 hours.

The meeting was attended by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora, along with Election Commissioners Sushil Chandra and Ashok Lavasa. Among the tech companies, representatives of Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google, Sharechat and Tiktok were present.

After the meeting, Berges Y. Malu, Policy Head of ShareChat, said the company reaffirmed its commitment with the CEC. "We look forward to working with the Election Commission of India to uphold the integrity and legality of social media campaigns by political parties on our platform," he said.

The meeting comes after the Centre for Accountability and Systemic Change (CASC) sent a notice to the poll panel, urging it to act against the misuse of social media to influence voters.

With the Election Commission on March 9 outlining stringent guidelines for social media usage during elections, political parties and candidates won't be able to post unverified advertisements, photographs of defence personnel, hate speeches and fake news on their accounts.

According to new guidelines, candidates are required to furnish details of their social media accounts at the time of filing nominations. Their activities on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Google would be under the Election Commission's close scrutiny.

Provisions of the model code of conduct will also apply to the content being posted on social media by candidates and political parties. Any violation may lead to action by the Election Commission.

The poll panel also asked Facebook to remove political posters shared by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leaders referring to Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman and his pictures.
Kolkata, March 19 : The Election Commission on Tuesday slapped a show cause notice on Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Asansol MP and Union Minster Babul Supriyo for failing to seek its permission before releasing the video of campaign song for Bengal on the social media.

"The song was noticed during our media watch. We have served him a show cause notice as he did not seek permission from the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC)," said Sanjay Basu, Additional Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal.

He called it a violation of the model code of conduct and sought a reply from Supriyo within 48 hours.

Before sharing any campaign material in print, electronic or social media, candidates and parties must obtain a certificate from MCMC, Basu said.

"The All India Trinamool Congress has also lodged a complaint regarding its content. It is being investigated," he said.

"The song cannot be played till the time he files reply and gets clearance. We expect everyone to maintain the process," he said.
San Francisco, March 19 : Facing the flak over its inability to spot and remove the livestreaming of New Zealand mosque's shooting, Facebook on Tuesday said 4,000 people viewed it before being taken down.

"The video was viewed fewer than 200 times during the live broadcast. No users reported the video during the live broadcast," Chris Sonderby, VP and Deputy General Counsel, said in a blog-post. "Including the views during the live broadcast, the video was viewed about 4,000 times in total before being removed from Facebook," Sonderby added.

Strapped with a GoPro camera to his head, the gunman broadcasted graphic footage of shooting via Facebook Live for nearly 17 minutes. It was later shared in millions on other social media platforms.

Fifty people were killed in the shootings at Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Avenue Masjid in Christchurch on March 15 after 28-year-old Australian national Brenton Tarrant opened indiscriminate firings.

According to Facebook, the first user report on the original video came in 29 minutes after the video started, and 12 minutes after the live broadcast ended. "Before we were alerted to the video, a user on '8chan' posted a link to a copy of the video on a file-sharing site," said Sonderby.

"We removed the personal accounts of the named suspect from Facebook and Instagram, and are identifying and removing any imposter accounts that surface," he said.

Facebook said it removed the original video and hashed it to detect other shares visually similar to that video and automatically remove them from Facebook and Instagram.

"Some variants such as screen recordings were more difficult to detect, so we expanded to additional detection systems, including the use of audio technology," Sonderby said.

"In the first 24 hours, we removed about 1.5 million videos of the attack. More than 1.2 million of those videos were blocked at upload, and were therefore prevented from being seen on our services," he said.
Beijing, March 19 : China on Tuesday told the international community not to target Pakistan following the Pulwama suicide bombing in Kashmir and said it will stand by Islamabad during testing times and firmly support its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The two long-standing allies at a meeting of Foreign Ministers Wang Yi and Shah Mehmood Qureshi discussed the Pulwama attack which killed 40 CRPF troopers and led to a major crisis in India-Pakistan relations.

Qureshi told his Chinese counterpart about the increase in what he claimed were violations of human rights of Kashmiris in India after the attack.

Qureshi also said that Pakistan "was and is" ready for a dialogue with India to arrest the deteriorating bilateral situation which he said could have spiralled out of control after India bombed a terrorist training camp at Balkot.

The two Ministers met under the framework of China-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Beijing a week after China for the fourth time blocked a resolution at the UN to declare JeM leader Masood Azhar an international terrorist. His outfit claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack.

Pakistan is faced with international opprobrium for not acting tough against terror outfits at home, with France sanctioning Azhar and freezing his assets.

On Tuesday, China came to the defence of its ally Pakistan, again asking other countries not to vilify it.

"No matter how things change in the world and in the region, China will firmly support Pakistan in upholding its sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and dignity," Wang said.

Wang said that a peaceful and stable South Asia was in the common interest of regional counties.

"China commends the constructive efforts taken by Pakistan to ease the situation. We call Pakistan and India to exercise restraint and peacefully resolve their differences."

After the Indian air raid, Pakistan tried to pay back in kind by scrambling its fighter jets which led to a dogfight with Indian jets. Both sides lost one jet each while an India pilot was captured by Pakistan, only to be released within days.
Moscow, March 19 : Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Tuesday resigned from his position after nearly 30 years in power.

Nazarbayev, 78, who has led Kazakhstan since its independence from the Soviet Union, announced his resignation in a pre-recorded television address.

"I have decided to end my duties as President," Nazarbayev said in the surprise address and added that the decision had "not been simple".

Nazarbayev said the Speaker of the upper house of Parliament, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, would take over as acting president for the remainder of his term.

The announcement came weeks after Nazarbayev sacked the Kazakhstan government, citing failures to improve the economy.

There has been speculation that Nazarbayev, who has ruled the oil-rich country since the Soviet collapse in 1991, might step down as President but continue to hold power in another capacity.

Nazarbayev's authoritarian regime focused on economic reform, while persistently suppressing dissent and resisting moves to democratise the country's political system.
Mirzapur : , March 19 (IANS) Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday said that people compared her looks with her grandmother Indira Gandhi as they still remember the late Prime Minister with respect for the work she had done for them.

She also countered the Bharatiya Janata Party's allegations about elections as a picnic for the Gandhi family, saying that she has not been to Italy in last three to four years.

Addressing a large gathering waiting for her since afternoon at the Sindaura ghat here, she said, "Many people say that I look like my grandmother. You compare us because you have a lot of love and respect for her because she had done a lot of work for you all."

She also hit out at the Narendra Modi government for not fulfilling the promises it made to the people.

During her river journey from Bhatoli ghat to Sindaura, Gandhi even switched to a smaller boat so that she could interact with the people residing near the Ganga's banks.

As the sun was setting, the people switched on the flashlight of their mobile phones and she went to meet them by taking her motorboat near the banks.

Earlier in the day, pro-Modi slogans were raised by BJP supporters gathered outside the Vindhyavasini Devi Temple, eight kilometres from here, as she reached there.

As Gandhi, who was clad in a red sari, got out of her car, hundreds of BJP workers started shouting the slogans and continued even as she entered the temple to pray. Most of the people in the crowd were regular worshippers, who were stopped from entering the temple due to her visit.

Even shops and other establishments near the temple had to down their shutters.

Gandhi, who spent some 20 minutes praying at the temple, however, remained unperturbed.

As the sloganeering continued, she drove off to offer a chadar at the Kantit Sharief dargah near by where there was a huge crowd outside waiting to meet her. Most had arrived at 7 a.m., they claimed.

Soon after ending the second day of her journey, Gandhi asked what the Modi government had done in the last five years.

"Be it farmers, youth or anybody, no one is satisfied with the government. Together they will change the government this year," she told the media in Bhadohi.

Asked to comment on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's claim that since the Congress was to blame for the state's backwardness since it had ruled the state the most after Independence, she hit back, saying "this 'what they did in last 70 years' has an expiry date."

"Now the BJP should tell the people what it did in the last five years. Shiksha mitras and Anganwadi workers did not get anything. The BJP had announced Rs 17,000 per month for them.

"It is good to produce report cards but what has actually happened? There is nothing on the ground. I am meeting people daily, they are distressed," Gandhi said.

The younger sibling of party chief Rahul Gandhi is on a three-day boat ride on the Ganga as part of the Lok Sabha election campaign that will end on Wednesday in Varanasi, Modi's parliamentary constituency.

Having set out from Prayagraj on Monday in a specially-built vessel with supporters, Priyanka Gandhi, who is the party's in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, began the day after offering prayers at the Sita Samahit Sthal temple in Sitamarhi.

She also held a meeting with party workers and leaders at the Sitamarhi guest house, where she had halted for the night on Monday. She also met several other delegations including that of the weaver community, Shiksha Mitra, and Anganwadi workers in the area.

Shivam Dubey, a party leader who attended the meeting, told IANS: "We will work hard to ensure that the Congress is strengthened and wins with a huge majority."
Beijing, March 19 : China on Tuesday said it would stand by Pakistan during its testing times and firmly support it to uphold its sovereignty and territorial integrity and also told the international community not to target it following the Pulwama suicide bombing.

At the meeting of Foreign Ministers Wang Yi and Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the two long-standing allies discussed the Pulwama attack in Jammu and Kashmir that left 40 CRPF troopers dead and led to a major crisis in India-Pakistan relations.

Qureshi told his Chinese counterpart about the increase in what he claimed were violations of human rights of Kashmiris in India after the attack and "rapidly deteriorating situation" in "the Indian side of Kashmir".

He also stressed that Pakistan "was and is" ready for a dialogue with India to arrest the deteriorating bilateral situation which, he said, could have spiraled out of control after India bombed a Jaish-e-Mohammed training camp at Balakot.

The two Ministers met under the framework of China-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Beijing, a week after China - for the fourth time - blocked a resolution at the UN to declare JeM leader Masood Azhar an international terrorist. His outfit had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack.

China's move has left India frustrated and disappointed with many questioning if the path-breaking meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Wuhan last year yielded any substantial result.

Pakistan, however, is faced with international opprobrium for not acting tough against terror outfits at home, with France sanctioning Azhar and freezing his assets.

On Tuesday, China came to the defence of its ally Pakistan, again asking other countries not to vilify it.

"No matter how things change in the world and in the region, China will firmly support Pakistan in upholding its sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and dignity," Wang said.

"We also call on the international community to adopt a fair perspective of the commitment and efforts made by Pakistan over the years to combat terrorism."

Stressing that a peaceful and stable South Asia was in the common interest of regional counties, Wang said, "China commends the constructive efforts taken by Pakistan to ease the situation. We call Pakistan and India to exercise restraint and peacefully resolve their differences."

After the Indian air raid, Pakistan tried to pay back in kind by scrambling its fighter jets which led to a dogfight with Indian jets. Both sides lost one jet each while an India pilot was captured by Pakistan, only to be released within days.

At a joint press conference, Qureshi said that he discussed the situation emerging out of the Pulwama incident.

"As the Foreign Minister (Wang) was suggesting that both sides have to show restraint.. I think the world has noted that Pakistan did exercise restraint and showed responsibility.

"Pakistan was always ready for engagement and dialogue and still is to resolve all our outstanding issues. We did discuss the impact the incident has had on Pakistan-India relations and the impact it could have had if this would have risen to a different level of escalation," he said.

Qureshi said he briefed his Chinese counterpart "on the steps Pakistan has taken to safeguard our territorial integrity and steps we have taken to de-escalate".

"Pakistan appreciates the role China has played once again in standing by Pakistan in the difficult times.

"I also briefed the foreign minister on the rapidly deteriorating situation on the Indian side of the Kashmir... the intensification of human rights violations, especially after Pulwama. This is a concern because that leads to a reaction and that reaction at times creates tension in the region which must be avoided.

"I think there's a need for a new assessment on how the the situation on the Indian side of Kashmir should be handled by the Indians. There are now voices within India that are questioning the efficacy of the policy that they've followed for the last so many years."

The two sides also discussed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor where Islamabad reassured Beijing of its commitment to the project's expeditious implementation. China has infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars under the scheme in disputed Kashmir claimed by India.
New Delhi, March 19 : Experts on Tuesday discussed the alignment of the Kartarpur corridor, the coordinates and engineering aspects of the proposed crossing points, government sources said.

They also conducted a survey of the site after a meeting of engineers and surveyors.

India had been seeking this meeting for a long time and had even suggested to holding it on February 15. Pakistan, however, linked it to the meeting on draft Agreement.

The outcomes from today's site visit and survey would be further discussed at the next meeting of the two sides on April 2.
March 19 : Amid uncertainty over seat sharing in the 'mahagathbandhan' (grand alliance) in Bihar, Congress President Rahul Gandhi is likely to address a rally in Purnea district on March 23.

Rahul Gandhi will officially kickstart the 'grand alliance' campaign for the Lok Sabha polls.

According to Congress leaders, all leaders of the 'grand alliance' will attend Rahul Gandhi's rally in Purnea. "By the time of rally after Holi, seat sharing will be settled and the rally will showcase the face of unity among the allies.

The Purnea parliamentary constituency in Seemanchal region is considered a stronghold of the 'grand alliance'. Other constituencies in the region are Kishanganj, Araria and Katihar. All three were won by Congress and RJD last time.

In 2014 Purnea seat was won by JD-U which had gone it alone. However, it won only two seats, including Purnea and Nakanda.
New Delhi, March 19 : The Election Commission on Tuesday directed all political parties and candidates to desist from "indulging in any political propaganda" involving activities of the defence forces.

The advisory issued to presidents of all political parties comes a week after the poll panel had on last Wednesday issued a show-cause notice to Delhi BJP MLA Om Prakash Sharma for posting a picture on Facebook featuring him along with Indian Air Force officer Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.

"The political parties/candidates are advised that their campaigners/candidates should desist, as part of their election campaigning, from indulging in any political propaganda involving activities of the defence forces," the advisory said.

The poll panel had on March 9 issued another advisory directing political parties to advise their candidates and leaders to refrain from displaying photographs of defence personnel or photographs of functions involving defence personnel in advertisements as part of their election campaign.

The earlier advisory had outlined stringent guidelines for social media usage during elections as well barring political parties and candidates from posting unverified advertisements, photographs of defence personnel, hate speeches and fake news on their accounts.

According to the guidelines, provisions of the model code of conduct will also apply to the content being posted on social media by candidates and political parties. Any violation may lead to action by the Election Commission.
Firozabad, March 19 : The police continue to remain clueless about the whereabouts of an alleged rapist who abducted a minor from a village in Sirsaganj area. The eight-year-old victim's blood-stained was found in an agricultural field.

Villagers have accused the police of dragging its feet under pressure.

On a complaint by the father of the victim, an FIR has been registered in the Sirsaganj police station, against Bantu, a DJ, who lured the girl to a desolate place, molested and strangled her.

Superintendent of Police (rural) Rajesh Kumar said the accused named in the FIR would be nabbed soon.

Meanwhile, a few relatives of the alleged rapist were taken into police custody for inquiry. Some local boys had seen Bantu, around 24, with the girl outside the village where a DJ music had been organised for a function.

The girl too had gone there to join the dance programme. But when she did not return till late in the evening, a futile search was launched.

In the complaint, the father of the girl said he and other members of the family spent the whole night looking for the girl. It was only in the morning that her body was found by some villagers.

The forensic team has taken samples. Liquor glasses and water bottle were found on the spot.

Villagers said the victim's family was too poor and members were totally broken.
Kolkata, March 19 : Taking a dig at the BJP-led central dispensation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said while they could not even construct one Ram temple, her government has spruced up the pilgrimage spots as part of its development programmes.

"There are many beautiful temples in the country. You cannot see them? One Ram Mandir (temple) could not even be constructed. You cannot see how Dakhineswar, Tarapith , Tarakeswar temples were beautified? Skywalk at the Kalighat Temple is being constructed. You only utter lies" she said.

Amid controversy over BJP's demand before the Election Commission that West Bengal be declared "sensitive", the Trinamool Congress supremo said some people from outside the state were making baseless claims that there was no peace and religious ceremonies cannot be celebrated.

"There is peace in Bengal. Some time, some people claim that there is no peace here. Is it true? They often claim that there is no democracy, people cannot walk on streets or cannot do business. No one is allowed to worship god and goddess. What is this? Will they teach us religion?"

Banerjee said she follows the religion of humanity.

She had recently attacked the BJP for urging the Election Commission to declare Bengal as a super sensitive state in the 2019 elections and claimed that saffron party leaders are insulting the state as she and her party are fighting against the Modi-Shah duo.

Without taking anyone's name she said, "If one kills people, no one talks. If I do something, some people start criticising it. But you must continue your work and keep promises what you have made."
Kolkata, March 19 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee here on Tuesday announced that she would not celebrate Holi this year as a tribute to the CRPF troopers slain in the recent Pulwama terror attack.

Kolkata, March 19 (IANS) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee here on Tuesday announced that she would not celebrate Holi this year as a tribute to the CRPF troopers slain in the recent Pulwama terror attack.

"We will not celebrate Holi, but the people will find colourful ways to celebrate the festival," said Banerjee conveying her wishes to the people ahead of Holi at a programme.

She said, "We do not want to politicise the incident (Pulwama terror attack). But the jawans died despite the government having intelligence inputs about a possible terror strike."

Forty CRPF troopers were killed in one of the worst terror strikes in the Kashmir valley on February 14.
Kolkata, March 19 : The police and Election Commission officials have made a cumulative seizure of cash amount of over Rs 68 lakh and fake Indian currency notes of more than Rs 2 lakh face value across West Bengal, an official said on Tuesday.

"The cumulative status of seizure made so far includes an amount of Rs 68,17,320 cash and Rs 2,30,000 FICN across the state," said Additional Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Basu.

He said 71 arms, 250 rounds of ammunition, 38 bombs, 580 litres of country spirit, 5057.105 litres of illicit liquor and other items have been recovered.

Sharing the details of 'c-Vigil App' Basu said, "As many as 1,261 complaints have been registered so far out of which 788 have been "resolved".

Also, they have received 428 complaints via ECI's National Grievance Services (NGS) portal and 359 of them have been resolved.

The citizens portal of NGS recorded 555 complaints out of which 478 have been addressed, Basu said.

He also mentioned that out of total seizure, an amount of Rs 23,80,000 was seized on Tuesday from Kumarganj in Dakshin Dinajpur by the static surveillance team. The cash is kept with the district treasury for temporary possession.
New Delhi, March 19 : Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday said the Congress has officially conveyed its "no" for an alliance in the city.

Interacting with the media after a public rally in East Delhi's Laxmi Nagar, he said no talks are going on between the two parties.

"As far as I know, the Congress has officially conveyed to us that there will be no alliance. We don't have to do anything with their meetings. We are not in talks with Congress.

"The stories in the media about the alliance are planted by the Congress. I have no clue about it," he said.

In his address at the rally, Kejriwal attached the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party for not working for the people and not letting the AAP work.

"These BJP-Congress are all one. They felt insecure from us (AAP). All they wanted was to stop me from working," he said, while citing the achievements of his government in Delhi in the past four years.

The AAP has announced all its candidates for the seven Lok Sabha seats in the city, for which voting will take place on May 12.
Hyderabad, March 19 : Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao on Tuesday said it was not job of the Prime Minister or political parties to decide where is the Ram Janmabhoomi.

In his first-ever comments on the issue, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief lashed out at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for pursuing politics of communalism.

Addressing an election rally in Nizamabad town, he said the political parties should work to solve people's problems.

"Ram Janmabhoomi, Ravana Janmabhoomi, Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi. Do political parties need to decide this?" he asked and said these issues should be best left to seers and the religious heads.

"This is not the job of political parties. We should work to solve people's problems, provide water and electricity to farmers, solve problem of unemployment and remove their hardships. If we go on talking of Janmabhoomi, it is not going to solve people's problems," he said.

KCR, as Rao is popularly known, said if there was a dispute between two communities, there were courts to deal with it. "The issue is in Supreme Court. We should not interfere," he said.

"They say we are Hindus. Are we not Hindus. Are we not following Hindu traditions," the TRS chief asked.

He alleged that for BJP leaders, Hindus were those who target people of other religions. "Hinduism has not said this. It asks you to respect all and love all."

"Yours' is political Hindutva. Ours is real Hindutva. You are duplicate Hindus. Your game will not last long," said KCR.

At an election rally in Karimnagar on Sunday, KCR had said that he was an original Hindu. In response, BJP's Telangana unit chief K. Laxman had asked him make his stand clear on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue.

"You first spell out whether your party is a political party working to solve people's problems or it is a party to propagate religion," KCR told Laxman.
Itanagar, March 19 : Launching his party's Lok Sabha campaign for the northeast, here on Tuesday, Congress President Rahul Gandhi said the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill would be scrapped if his party came to power.

"The BJP has said it will bring the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 if it comes to power. But we are against it. We are not going to allow this Bill. It is against the interests of the people of northeast. We will scrap it forever," said Gandhi at a public rally in the Arunachal Pradesh capital.

The Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on January 8. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, failed to get it cleared by the Rajya Sabha due to opposition by some of its own allies.

BJP President Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have defended the Bill and have said their party would revive it on return to power.

The Congress chief also promised to restore the special category status of northeastern states. "Some states require special status due to unique issues of connectivity, terrain and infrastructure. We will restore the special category status of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeastern states," said Gandhi.

Launching a scathing attack on the BJP, he said the RSS and the BJP wanted to push one political, cultural ideology and one thought process across the country, thereby destroying the unique cultural heritage and history of northeast.

"Just look at universities of the country. Merit is no longer the criteria to select the vice-chancellors. The determining criteria is their proximity to the RSS. The Planning Commission was replaced by the Niti Aayog, no one knows what this Aayog does," Gandhi said.

Slamming the five years of the National Democratic Alliance government, he said, "Prime Minister Modi wants a Congress-free India. Just see how much hatred he has in his heart. We do not want to spread hatred. We don't want to destroy the BJP and the RSS. But we will not allow them to impose their ideology on people."

Accusing the BJP of politicising the martyrs' sacrifice, Gandhi said, "Modiji talks about patriotism, but he was busy in shooting (film) for over 3 hours after the Pulwama attack took place."

"Before that, a few years ago, when the Chinese President came to India and Modiji was sitting with him in Gujarat, the Chinese army entered Doklam. But Modiji did not utter a word. On the contrary, he went to China after that without any agenda. This is Modi's patriotism," Gandhi said.

Criticising death of three people in February during protests against grant of permanent residence certificate (PRC) to the non-Arunachal Pradesh Scheduled Tribal (APST) communities of Namsai and Changlang districts, he said why the government didn't talk to the agitators.

Large-scale violence against PRCs had resulted in death of three youths and a huge loss of public and private properties.
Rome, March 19 : The Italian government will aim to safeguard Italian citizens and businesses in the "undesirable" event of the UK's scheduled withdrawal from the European Union on March 29 without a deal, Premier Giuseppe Conte said on Tuesday.

"Given the current uncertainty around Brexit, the Italian government will keep working to ensure the protection of citizens' rights and those of our businesses, as well as financial stability in the undesirable event of Great Britain's exit from the EU without an accord," Conte told lawmakers.

Conte was briefing the Italian parliament on the summit of European leaders on Thursday, at which Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May will ask for a delay to smooth its exit from the bloc after parliament Speaker John Bercow ruled she must substantially change her twice-defeated divorce deal to put it to a third vote.

"It is to be hoped that decisions taken this week in London guarantee the UK's orderly departure from the EU so that a future relationship properly reflects the deep and special ties that have been built on over four decades of joint participation in Europe's integration process," Conte said.
Rome, March 19 : Italian authorities have expelled a radicalised former imam on security grounds, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.

The 36-year-old Moroccan citizen was deported aboard a direct flight to Casablanca from Milan's Malpensa airport, the statement said.

The Moroccan, who held a regular Italian residence permit, was in 2017 appointed imam of Vercelli in northwest Italy, where he preached firebrand sermons and fiercely criticised Muslims who kept company with Italians, sometimes coming to blows with them, according to the statement.

The man came to the attention of Italian security services in 2012 after his radicalisation became apparent when he suddenly changed his lifestyle, adopted a rigourous interpretation of the Koran and started behaving aggressively towards other Muslims at Novara's cultural centre, where he was imam for a few months, the statement noted.

The former imam's expulsion brings to 21 the number of people deported from Italy this year on national security grounds, according to the statement. A total 384 suspected extremists have been expelled since 2015, the statement added.

The number of expulsions has continued to climb with 126 last year, 105 in 2017, and 66 per year in 2016 and in 2015, said the statement.
New Delhi, March 19 : To intensify the "Main Bhi Chowkidar" campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would interact with people, mainly security guards, across the country through audio bridge technology on Wednesday a day ahead of Holi, the festival of colours.

The Prime Minister will again on March 31 address the people who have pledged support to the "Main Bhi Chowkidar" through video conferencing.

BJP media cell convenor Anil Baluni, who announced the two events of the Prime Minister, said that the campaign initiated has been turning into "a mass movement".

"The outreach programme, which is already turning into a mass movement, is aimed at the common man of the country who silently work in the background and as such is one of the invisible pillars of the country. The address with chowkidars on March 20 is a significant step towards meeting the objectives of 'antyodaya' and 'sabka saath sabka vikas'," Baluni said in a statement.

He said under the campaign on Twitter, at least 20 lakh people came out to support it and tweeted on their accounts with hashtag 'MainBhiChowkidar.

Earlier, BJP leader and Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told the media that while the movement was becoming popular among the common man, those who were out on bail and facing various legal action were troubled by it.

"Over one crore people have joined the campaign and it is now a people's movement. PM Narendra Modi will interact with those pledged for it at 500 locations in the country via video conference on March 31,: he said.

Not Delhi but from one of these locations, Modi may address the 'Chowkidars', who include political workers, leaders, professionals, farmers, sanitation workers, retired armed force personnel, the youth, sportsmen, women, among others, he added.

While the campaign was becoming popular among the people, there were some who opposed it, the Minister said.

"Those who are out on bail with their families or have something to hide are opposing the movement. Some people are saying 'Chowkidar' is for the rich. These are the same people who looted about 12 lakh crore from poor people," he said.

Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Modi last week tweeted a video with hashtag '#MainBhiChowkidar' (I am also a watchman) and called all those fighting corruption, dirt and social evils a 'watchman'.

BJP leaders have added 'Chowkidar' before their names on Twitter.
New Delhi, March 19 : Airlines have been advised by the government to increase capacity to keep a check on spiralling air fares, official said on Tuesday.

A meeting was held between the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and all the airlines on Tuesday.

A senior DGCA official said the government did not issue a directive, but advised airlines to increase capacity and keep fares in check.

The regulator is undertaking sector-specific reviews on price hike.

The government has already advised domestic airlines not to go in for predatory air fare pricing as several 737-MAX aircraft were grounded due to safety reasons in the wake of a plane crash in Ethiopia.

India suspended operations and overflight permission for all Boeing 737-MAX aircraft in India from 4 p.m. on last Wednesday.

Since March 14, air passengers have faced the grim prospect of high air fares and fewer flight choices as several airlines cancelled operations for a number of reasons, including the grounding of the Boeing 737-MAX aircraft.

Industry insiders pointed out that with no short-term relief in sight, some sectors will continue to see a rise of more than 100 per cent in last minute bookings.

Operations of airlines like SpiceJet and Jet Airways have been hit due to the government's decision on last Wednesday to join a global grounding of 737-MAX aircrafts following a crash in Ethiopia.

In India, SpiceJet and Jet Airways operate 17 Boeing 737-800 MAX aircraft -- Spice (12) and Jet (5). A part of Jet's fleet has already been grounded due to other reasons.

Apart from SpiceJet, financially challenged Jet Airways has already grounded more than 40 aircraft due to non-payment of lessors' dues. The Jet Airways Group operates a fleet of 123 aircraft.

However, around 50 per cent of its fleet is said to be grounded due to a host of reasons, including lack of spare parts.

Budget carrier IndiGo is going through massive turbulence on account of pilot shortage, leading to a truncated flight schedule.

The airline said earlier that 30 of its flights that have been affected represent only 2 per cent of its network. It has decided to curtail its schedule till March 31, by about 30 flights a day.

For sometime now, Air India has grounded 17 aircraft due to technical reasons. The national passenger carrier has also cancelled several international flights on account of low passenger yields on the sectors which include Delhi-Madrid.

The airline said that 6 international flights from Delhi to places like Birmingham have been cancelled.
New Delhi/Mumbai, March 19 : The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday held an emergency meeting with Jet Airways to discuss ways to resolve its debt crisis, which has caused financial stress to its employees as well as problems like fleet depletion and flight cancellations.

Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu asked the regular to hold the meeting with Jet Airways, a day after it cancelled flights leaving passengers stranded at the Abu Dhabi airport on Monday.

After the meeting, the DGCA said Jet has only 41 aircraft for operations and there may be further depletion in the fleet size and flights.

"The DGCA reviewed the performance of Jet Airways on operations, airworthiness and passenger facilitation. The current availability of aircraft in its fleet for operation is 41. Accordingly, a schedule for 603 domestic and 382 international flights has been drawn. But it's a dynamic situation and there may be further attrition in coming weeks," a DGCA statement said.

Jet was asked to ensure that no pilots, cabin crew, aircraft maintenance engineers who had reported stress of any nature be rostered for duty. "Additionally, all such staff should be current with mandatory training requirements," it added.

In another development earlier in the day, Jet Airways flight maintenance engineers wrote to the aviation regulator stating the company's aircraft are fit and safe to fly.

The Jet Aircraft Maintenance Engineers Welfare Association said the company has 99.50 per cent technical dispatch reliability, which is the highest in the industry.

The letter comes after the company pilots wrote to the DGCA about overdue salaries. "We have decided either the management let us know about the progress of the resolution plan and the future of the company by March 31 or we will refrain from flying duties," National Aviators Guild (NAG) Vice-President Captain Asim Valiani told IANS in Mumbai.

"We can discuss about salaries and dues later, but the future of the company is paramount. We need to know where are we headed," Valiani said.

Following the letter, Jet founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal made a renewed plea asking employees to remain patient till the resolution process is completed.

Jet Airways has been in a tight spot financially and a rescue plan is being negotiated between the airline, its partner Etihad and a consortium of banks.

Meanwhile, the beleaguered airline's lessors have offered 50 of its Boeing aircraft to SpiceJet.

According to industry insiders, at least 50 aircraft are on offer under dry lease terms from Jet's lessors. These lessors got these aircraft grounded after the airline failed to clear their dues, said a source.

The development has been received well by SpiceJet, which had to ground 12 of its 737 Max 8 aircraft following the safety restrictions.

Meanwhile, sources said the government might ask public sector banks to rescue Jet Airways in an apparent bid to avert thousands of job losses, weeks before the general election.

According to sources, the government wants the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), in which it owns 49 per cent stake and whose mandate is to invest in stalled and new infrastructure projects, to buy a stake in Jet to save the cash-strapped airline.
Mirzapur, March 19 : Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday said that people compared her looks with her grandmother Indira Gandhi as they still remember the late Prime Minister with respect for the work she had done for them.

She also countered the Bharatiya Janata Party's allegations about elections as a picnic for the Gandhi family, saying that she has not been to Italy in last three to four years.

Reaching the Chunar ghat in the evening, she paid tribute to Nishad community leader Raj Nishad at the river bank.

Also holding a small road show for the party's Mirzapur candidate Lalitesh Pati Tripathi, the great-grandson of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Union Minister Kamalapati Tripathi, Gandhi also hugged and interacted with several women party workers at the Chunar ghat before ending her second day's programme.

Earlier in the day, addressing a large gathering waiting for her since afternoon at the Sindaura ghat, she said, "Many people say that I look like my grandmother. You compare us because you have a lot of love and respect for her because she had done a lot of work for you all."

She also hit out at the Narendra Modi government for not fulfilling the promises it made to the people.

During her river journey from Bhatoli ghat to Sindaura, Gandhi even switched to a smaller boat so that she could interact with the people residing near the Ganga's banks.

As the sun was setting, the people switched on the flashlight of their mobile phones and she went to meet them by taking her motorboat near the banks.

The Congress leader, who also visited the Vindhyavasini Devi Temple, eight kilometres from here, earlier faced pro-Modi slogans from BJP supporters gathered outside as she reached there.

As Gandhi, who was clad in a red sari, got out of her car, hundreds of BJP workers started shouting the slogans and continued even as she entered the temple. Most of the people in the crowd were regular worshippers, who were stopped from entering the temple due to her visit.

Even shops and other establishments near the temple had to down their shutters.

Gandhi, who spent some 20 minutes praying at the temple, however, remained unperturbed.

As the sloganeering continued, she drove off to offer a chadar at the Kantit Sharief dargah near by where there was a huge crowd outside waiting to meet her. Most had arrived at 7 a.m., they claimed.

Meeting media in Bhadohi, Gandhi asked what the Modi government had done in the last five years.

"Be it farmers, youth or anybody, no one is satisfied with the government. Together they will change the government this year," she said.

Asked to comment on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's claim that since the Congress was to blame for the state's backwardness since it had ruled the state the most after Independence, she hit back, saying "this 'what they did in last 70 years' has an expiry date."

"Now the BJP should tell the people what it did in the last five years. Shiksha mitras and Anganwadi workers did not get anything. The BJP had announced Rs 17,000 per month for them.

"It is good to produce report cards but what has actually happened? There is nothing on the ground. I am meeting people daily, they are distressed," Gandhi said.

The younger sibling of party chief Rahul Gandhi is on a three-day boat ride on the Ganga as part of the Lok Sabha election campaign that will end on Wednesday in Varanasi, Modi's parliamentary constituency.

Having set out from Prayagraj on Monday in a specially-built vessel with supporters, Priyanka Gandhi, who is the party's in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, began the day after offering prayers at the Sita Samahit Sthal temple in Sitamarhi.

She also held a meeting with party workers and leaders at the Sitamarhi guest house, where she had halted for the night on Monday. She also met several other delegations including that of the weaver community, Shiksha Mitra, and Anganwadi workers in the area.

Shivam Dubey, a party leader who attended the meeting, told IANS: "We will work hard to ensure that the Congress is strengthened and wins with a huge majority."

She will again commence her river ride on Wednesday from Chunar ghat and arrive in Modi's parliamentary constituency Varanasi.
Just as the Townsville residential property market appeared cemented in the start of the recovery phase, according to Herron Todd White, floods have hit and perhaps turned that on its head.

After a mining downturn, Townsville has been dealing with heightened levels of unemployment, said the valuer.

Now, there is some fear the recent flooding will lead not only to a reduction in tourists but economic strength as the clean-up slows down activity.

HTW's latest residential report stated the rental vacancy rate has fallen throughout the year, while there has also been a slight increase in rents in some locations, primarily inner city postcodes.

There is also concern over the rental housing market.

However, the report noted there had not been the ripple effect of the increased activity transfer through to the market in the fringe or outer suburbs.

It is these fringe and outer suburbs which were hit hardest by the flooding.

In fact, insurers have received more than $100 million in claims so far.

The State Government and Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill have requested insurance companies to use local businesses as much as possible to support the local economy.

Townsville Chamber of Commerce chief executive Marie-Claude Brown said she is concerned industries like retail and hospitality in particular will now take a hit as these businesses can't be supported in the same way a construction/renovation business can.

HTW's report cited major projects such as the Townsville Stadium and Haughton pipeline duplication underway along with a number of projects in the pipeline as reasons for optimism and improving economic conditions.
LandMark White has been reinstated by Commonwealth Bank to its panel for residential valuations.

Marking a significant step for the company after the recent cyber-attack, Keith Perrett, Chairman of LandMark White, said the decision made by Commonwealth Bank is an endorsement of the actions taken by the company in response to the incident.

"Were pleased a number of financial institutions have reinstated LMW to its panel of valuation providers, including one of Australias major lenders.

"Commonwealth Bank recognised the risk to our company, our staff and shareholders, and reviewed the enhancements to our systems and networks in an efficient manner while also ensuring its affected customers were supported, Mr Perrett said.
National capital city residential property prices fell a further 2.4 percent in the December quarter 2018, according to figures released by the ABS.

It follows a 1.5% national decline in the September quarter 2018, taking prices down 5.1% over the year.

The December quarter decline was driven by Sydney more so than Melbourne.

Melbourne's 2.4% loss was consistent with its losses in the September quarter (2.4%), however Sydney's decline increased sharply, jumping to 3.7% in the December quarter from 1.5% in the September quarter.

Sydney's total annual decline now stands at 7.8%, followed by Melbourne's 6.4% losses and then some way back to Darwin where prices are 3.5% down.

Click here to enlarge the December quarter statistics.

Bruce Hockman, chief economist for the ABS, said Australias two largest cities continue to lead the fall in property prices.

"These falls follow a period of solid growth, where prices in Sydney rose 68 per cent and Melbourne rose 54 per cent, over the five years to December quarter 2017," Hockman said.



"While property prices are falling in most capital cities, a tightening in credit supply and reduced demand from investors and owner occupiers have had a more pronounced effect on the larger property markets of Sydney and Melbourne."

Hobart continued its strong property market, with gains of 0.7 percent over the December quarter.
The Catalent Applied Drug Delivery Institute today announced that it is to hold a one-day symposium entitled Advances in Biologics Development and Delivery on Thursday, March 28, 2019 at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Mission Bay Campus, San Francisco.

The symposium will be chaired by Cornell Stamoran, Ph.D., Co-Chair of the Catalent Applied Drug Delivery Institute, and will bring together world-leading experts on biological drug development and delivery from across the industry, including Wesley Jackson, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder, Valitor, Inc.; and from academia, including David Schaffer, Ph.D., Professor, University of California, Berkeley and Francis Szoka, Ph.D., Professor, UCSF.

The event will include presentations on leading-edge biological research and will cover key industry topics, from cell line development through to commercialization. The symposium will close with a networking reception.

Established in 2012, the Catalent Applied Drug Delivery Institute employs a multi-tiered approach to accelerate the adoption of advanced drug delivery technologies to improve patient outcomes.

Registration and full details of the agenda can be found here.

About the Catalent Applied Drug Delivery Institute

The Catalent Applied Drug Delivery Institute was founded to serve as a link between industry and academia, advance education and training in drug delivery in academia and the industry, accelerate adoption of applied drug delivery technologies to develop better treatments, and foster industry collaboration on major issues pertaining to drug development, formulation, and delivery. It is pursuing a multi-tiered approach of research, strategic counsel, and educational programs to advance the adoption of emerging technologies.

For more details on the Catalent Institute, visit http://www.drugdeliveryinstitute.com and follow the Catalent Institute on Twitter: @DrugDeliveryIns

About Catalent

Catalent is the leading global provider of advanced delivery technologies and development solutions for drugs, biologics and consumer health products. With 85 years serving the industry, Catalent has proven expertise in bringing more customer products to market faster, enhancing product performance and ensuring reliable clinical and commercial product supply. Catalent employs over 11,000 people, including over 1,800 scientists, at more than 30 facilities across five continents, and in fiscal 2018 generated approximately $2.5 billion in annual revenue. Catalent is headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey. For more information, visit http://www.catalent.com.

More products. Better treatments. Reliably supplied.
"We look forward to a fruitful partnership with (America II)." - GRE Alpha CEO Executive Director, Richard Fong

America II Electronics, LLC, one of the worlds largest distributors of semiconductors and electronic components, has entered into a global distribution agreement with GRE Alpha Electronics, Ltd. A manufacturer of solid-state lighting power supplies and lighting control accessories.

We are proud to announce the addition of GRE Alpha to our growing line card, said Douglas Gilchrist, VP of Global Procurement for America II. America II is strategically focused on adding the very best products to our line card, and GRE Alpha Electronics is a leading manufacturer of lighting solutions for high-performance applications. We are excited to carry their full line of LED power supplies and accessories.

GRE Alpha Electronics provides exceptional performance, reliability and usability, by incorporating best-in-class power management technologies and usability features, to enable seamless and efficient operation and management of LED lighting systems.

GRE Alpha CEO Executive Director, Richard Fong, expressed, America II has an experienced sales team with a global outreach that will offer customized and tailored support to our lighting OEM customers. We look forward to a fruitful partnership with them.

With four billion components in stock at their St. Petersburg, Florida distribution facility, America II Electronics has one of the largest inventories in the industry. The company offers the most complete range of products, from active, passive and electromechanical components to memory and specialty products. In addition to hundreds of franchise and direct manufacturing lines, America II provides supply chain solutions, cost-saving programs, and inventory solution programs to industries ranging from telecommunications, industrial and lighting to healthcare, automotive and military. The distributors deep experience in global markets allows America II to provide superior service and a broad array of solutions to its partners around the world.

To learn more, contact America II Electronics at (800) 767-2637 or visit http://www.americaii.com.

About America II Electronics:

Established in 1989, America II Electronics, LLC is a global leader in component distribution. The company stocks more than four billion components, making it one of the worlds largest distributors of semiconductors and electronic components. Through its franchise and direct distribution lines, America II serves as a primary partner for all OEM and EMS customers. Headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida and with offices in the UK, Germany, China, Japan, Singapore and Mexico, the company also provides value-added services and inventory solutions from its ISO 9001:2015 and ESD-certified North American distribution facility.

About GRE Alpha:

GRE Alpha Electronics, Ltd. specializes in the design and manufacture of solid-state lighting power supplies and lighting control accessories that are the lifeblood of indoor and outdoor LED lighting systems. Unlike many in the LED industry, GRE Alpha focuses on a modular approach. Their products can be used either with existing systems or with new setups.

With over two decades of power conversion expertise and a commitment to innovation, GRE Alpha engages with industry pioneers to deliver efficient, installation-ready and agency-approved LED power conversion products for a wide variety of industry applications.

You may go their website to get more information: https://grealpha.com/

Contact:

Kristofer Strong, Marketing Director

America II Electronics

800-767-2637

kstrong(at)americaii(dot)com
Since 1984, our focus has always been helping clients to be energy efficient and save money. From our client testimonials and the mention of our company in this list, people can see that our solid commitment and work for our clients truly speaks for itself.

Mokena-based American Combustion Service, Inc. (ACSI) was recently honored by being named in Mechanical Contractor Industry Leaders of Illinois top 10 list presented by Chicago Construction News.

The publication, which provides news and information for the Chicagoland architecture, engineering and construction community, composed this special list to highlight forward-thinking businesses that welcome community engagement, high standards of service, delivery and innovation to support the construction industry.

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, ACSI provides consultation and specialized services for any type of fuel burning equipment to clients in the Chicago area and Northwest Indiana. The company serves various industries that include automotive, chemical, food production, gas and oil and the medical field with a concentration on hospitals and medical centers. The company also has three divisions: a 24-hour Service Department, Piping and Mechanical Installations and Refractory Repairs & Installations.

We are very honored to be recognized by Chicago Construction News, said Frank M. Lacny, ACSI president and founder. Since 1984, our focus has always been helping clients to be energy efficient and save money. From our client testimonials and the mention of our company in this list, people can see that our solid commitment and work for our clients truly speaks for itself.

Lacny oversees a team of 25 employees that includes highly qualified service technicians. The company is also a member of several associations such as the Mechanical Contractors Association of Chicago (MCA), National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA), Healthcare Engineers Society of Northern Illinois (HESNI), and are also affiliated with the Local Pipefitters, Bricklayers and Laborers unions in the greater Chicago area.

For more information about ACSI, visit https://www.acsigroup.com/ or just call (773) 7379200.

About American Combustion Service, Inc.

American Combustion Service, Inc. was founded by Frank M. Lacny in December 1984. The company has always been based in the southwest suburb of beautiful Mokena, Illinois. Its spacious building is home to corporate offices, stock room and shop for in-house fabrication and repairs. The company is made up of three divisions, Service (AMERICAN COMBUSTION SERVICE, INC.), Mechanical Installations and Piping (ACSI MECHANICAL) and Refractory repairs and installations (AMERICAN REFRACTORIES).

Find more information at http://www.acsigroup.com/
With record unemployment rates and acute talent shortages in STEM industries, our Immigration Trends Report aims to give organizations the resources they need to improve or build upon their existing immigration processes.

Envoy Global, the technology leader in global immigration and workforce mobility, today announced the findings from its Fourth Annual Immigration Trends report.

Conducted by The Harris Poll, the report surveyed 405 human resources professionals and hiring managers with employment-based immigration experience across different industries and company sizes. The annual report aims to gauge how employers approach inbound and outbound global immigration processes and challenges.

"Our findings confirm that despite the governments tightening of employment-based immigration policies, U.S. companies need and search for foreign talent hasnt slowed, said Richard Burke, CEO of Envoy. With record unemployment rates and acute talent shortages in STEM industries, our Immigration Trends Report aims to give organizations the resources they need to improve or build upon their existing immigration processes.

Some of the top findings and trends from the 2019 report include:

Demand For Foreign Talent in the U.S. Remains at an All-Time High

The report reveals that the need for foreign talent in the U.S. remains high  95 percent of employers said sourcing foreign nationals is important to their talent acquisition strategies. Sponsoring green cards is another method employers are using to gain a competitive edge in their recruiting approaches  two-thirds of employers said they sponsor green cards for their foreign talent and 80 percent cover all associated fees.

In addition, 80 percent of employers said they expect their foreign national headcount to either increase or stay the same this year. At the same time, many respondents are having a difficult time securing approvals for visas to keep up with this demand  likely due to processing delays and increased scrutiny evaluating submissions. For instance, 47 percent of employers said the visa application process for their foreign national employees has become more difficult.

Sourcing and Retaining Foreign Talent is Top of Mind for C-Suite Executives and Boards

Driven by the tight labor market, skills gaps and political attention, immigration has become top of mind for C-suite and board level executives. In response to this trend, employers are seeking better ways to manage their internal immigration processes.

In the past year, weve seen more employers reassessing their immigration processes as C-suite executives look at immigration with a critical eye, said Burke. This is reflected in our reports findings, as 47 percent of employers said awareness of new and better ways of handling the immigration process was the driving factor behind why they decided to evaluate their program. Moving forward, we anticipate that the C-suite will continue to become more involved in creating or evaluating global mobility programs as they look to attract and retain the best talent at their organizations.

Employers Crave Government Policy Changes to Expedite Immigration System

Employers are expressing the need for government policy changes that will accelerate the immigration process for highly-skilled foreign talent. The most frequently cited change theyd like to see is quicker processing time (97 percent), followed by expedited filing (95 percent) and better insights from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), such as processing (95 percent) and initiatives (93 percent) for both employers and employees.

The need for expedited policies also likely stems from Canadas plan to bring 350,000 foreign nationals into the country each year between now and 2021  making the competition for top talent even greater. According to the report, 65 percent of employers surveyed said they view Canadas immigration policy to be more favorable than the U.S.s and 35 percent said they are sending more people and hiring more foreign nationals in Canada.

To access the full report, please visit link. For more information on Envoy Global visit: envoyglobal.com.

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Survey Methodology

The national survey was conducted online by The Harris Poll from November 27 to December 17, 2018, with 405 HR professionals and hiring managers participating across a variety of industries and company sizes. All participating companies have experience with employment-based visa sponsorship or green card sponsorship. Questions covered internal and external global immigration processes and challenges. The data is weighted; a full methodology is available.

About Envoy

Founded in 1998, Envoy is a global immigration services provider offering the only immigration management platform that makes it seamless for companies to hire and manage an international workforce by combining expert legal representation  for both inbound and outbound immigration  and proprietary technology. Envoy empowers companies to acquire the best talent regardless of where they are in the world; helps mobilize employees around the world to take advantage of business opportunities; and enables the management of entire global workforces, providing a strategic, proactive view into workforce and financial forecasting and compliance. Envoy has managed more than 30,000 cases and served more than 2,000 customers in a broad range of industries.

Website, technology platform and administrative services are provided by Envoy Global Inc., a Delaware corporation. Legal services are provided by Envoy-affiliated attorneys. Please visit envoyglobal.com for more information.

About The Harris Poll

The Harris Poll is one of the longest-running surveys in the U.S. tracking public opinion, motivations and social sentiment since 1963 that is now part of Harris Insights & Analytics, a global consulting and market research firm that strives to reveal the authentic values of modern society to inspire leaders to create a better tomorrow. We work with clients in three primary areas; building twenty-first-century corporate reputation, crafting brand strategy and performance tracking, and earning organic media through public relations research. Our mission is to provide insights and advisory to help leaders make the best decisions possible. To learn more, please visit http://www.theharrispoll.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
An expansion to the Brennity at Melbourne will add 38 independent living apartments. This expansion creates 24 one-bedroom and 14 two-bedroom apartments. We are excited to deliver the resort-style living that our residents deserve and desire. We are also adding more of the conveniences that give our community a wow-factor.

Sagora Senior Living is seeing progress in the $13 million expansion of its existing independent living campus at The Brennity at Melbourne, which began in July 2018. Vratsinas Construction Company (VCC) from Little Rock, Arkansas was contracted to add 300,000-square feet by October 2019.

This expansion means that we can meet the needs of the older adults in the Melbourne area, said Michelle Boiles, Executive Director Specialist for The Brennity at Melbourne. We are excited to deliver the resort-style living that our residents deserve and desire. We are also adding more of the conveniences that give our community a wow-factor.

The current three-story community will add a total of 38 independent living apartments. This expansion creates 24 one-bedroom and 14 two-bedroom apartments. Two elevators will serve the new expansion as well as a parking lot enlargement that adds more covered parking.

In addition, VCC will add a new 7,000-square-feet community clubhouse to complement the existing and new cottages. New resident amenities include an exercise park with a sidewalk walking trail, a pavilion, pickleball court, horseshoe pit, life-size chess and a dog-park area.

Boiles, says existing community improvements are in the works such as new corridor finishes, carpet, paint and fixtures. The renovations are slated to be complete by June 2019.

For more information or to schedule a tour, call The Brennity at Melbourne at (321) 253-7440.

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About Sagora Senior Living

Sagora Senior Living, based in Fort Worth, Texas, currently operates 39 retirement communities in five states, each with a unique focus on retirement lifestyle choices including independent living, assisted living, respite and memory care. The companys mission is to serve and celebrate the wisdom of their residents and family members by enriching their lives with a Resident First philosophy developed locally within each community. For more information about Sagora Senior Living, visit http://www.Sagora.com.
Bright Now! Dental

In Partnership with the Smiles for Everyone Foundation, Bright Now! Dental will provide free dental services for low-income, underinsured individuals at its Mesa, Arizona office on April 14th.

Dental services provided include same-day procedures such as exams and x-rays, fillings, cleanings and extractions. For more information, please visit the Bright Now! Dental website.

About Bright Now! Dental

Bright Now!  Dental provides general dentistry, childrens dentistry and, in select locations, specialty care services such as orthodontics, oral surgery, periodontics and endodontics at over 150 offices across Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Washington. Bright Now! Dentals Mesa office is operated by Modern Dental Professionals - Arizona, Inc., P.C. (the Group). The Group is affiliated with Smile Brands Inc., one of the largest providers of business support services to dental groups in the United States. Smile Brands Inc. provides comprehensive business support services through exclusive long-term service agreements with affiliated dental groups, so dentists can spend more time caring for their patients and less time on the administrative, marketing and financial aspects of operating a dental practice. Smile Brands is a portfolio company of Gryphon Investors (Gryphon), a leading middle-market private equity firm based in San Francisco, CA. For more information, visit http://www.smilebrands.com.

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About the Smiles For Everyone Foundation

The Smiles for Everyone Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission of delivering smiles for everyone by providing free dental care for those in need, both at home in the U.S. and around the world. Since 2011, the Smiles for Everyone Foundation has delivered over 19,000 smiles and $14.5 million in donated dentistry. The foundation currently supports programs which provide free dental care to those in need in Cambodia, Ghana, Laos, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Thailand, and the United States. For more information or to make a donation, visit http://www.smilesforeveryone.org.

Contacts:

Bright Now! Dental

Jody Martin

PR@smilebrands.com

714.427.1299

Smiles for Everyone Foundation

Crystal Strait

crystal.strait@smilesforeveryone.org

714.824.5037


BrightWave, the leading email marketing agency, and Braze, the global customer engagement platform, announced a partnership to deliver personalized, relevant and actionable messaging experiences throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

BrightWave uses customer insights and innovative strategies to take their clients email programs to the next level and maximize return on investment. Leveraging the cross channel orchestration of Braze the agency can provide better connected experiences to consumers, as both BrightWave and Braze are laser focused on upleveling messaging to meet the demands of ever-changing consumer expectations.

"As a strategy and innovation focused agency, BrightWave is continually evaluating best-in-class partners. We seek partners that can best serve our clients at every level of today's customer experience, and weve found that in Braze, said Thomas Barnhart, Vice President of Business Development for BrightWave. He added, Brazes leadership in facilitating personalized and relevant experiences across email, push, in-app and SMS is what BrightWave clients are seeking. BrightWave is ecstatic to cement this partnership and help augment Braze's solutions partner ecosystem."

Were thrilled to announce our partnership with BrightWave to drive further impact on building sophisticated, next generation email strategies across the entire customer lifecycle, said Matt McRoberts, SVP of Global Alliances at Braze. BrightWave has demonstrated strong leadership in helping reimagine email and serve as a respected voice across the email community.

About BrightWave

BrightWave is the leading email marketing agency. With over 15 years of experience managing the best email programs in the country, BrightWave elevates eCRM and cross-channel programs through industry-leading innovation, relationship orchestration and pioneering inbox experiences. Learn more at https://www.BrightWave.com.

BrightWave also is the creator of EiQ: The intelligent email gathering. This one-day event on March 14, 2019 is where the industry community convenes and focuses on innovation and business impact. For more information on the event, please visit https://www.eiqgathering.com.

About Braze

Braze is a customer engagement platform that delivers messaging experiences across push, email, apps, and more. Braze is built specifically for todays mobile-first world and tomorrows ambient computing future. Braze is set apart as the platform that allows for real-time and continuous data streaming, replacing decades-old databases that arent built for todays on-demand, always-connected customer. With data, technology, and teams working together in unison, the Braze platform makes marketing more authentic, brands more human, and customers more satisfied with every experience. Braze is a venture-backed company with hundreds of employees. Offices are located in New York City, San Francisco, London, and Singapore. Weve been named a Leader in the Forrester Wave: Mobile Engagement Automation, Q3 2017 evaluation, recognized by Forbes Cloud 100 at #85, ranked #225 on Inc.'s 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies, and listed as #21 in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 List, and recognized by The New York Times as The Next Wave of Unicorn Start-Ups. Learn more at http://www.braze.com/?utm_content=brightwave
With nearly 700 miles of pristine beaches and the home of the beloved Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Prince Edward Island has long been a sought-after destination for families. Canadas smallest province is also known as the countrys food island, boasting 600,000 acres of farmland, which also yields a mighty number of hands-on experiences for families that include farm visits, animal interaction, oyster shucking, and even cooking classes.

Island Hill Farms

Locally known as one of the cutest places on earth,Island Hill Farms in Hampshire is home to roosters, alpacas, miniature donkeys, bunnies, and more. The farm also hosts nine different varieties of goat, who wear knitted sweaters when its cold and often snuggle up to visitors. Families can catch a glimpse into life on a farm and learn about the importance of farming, animals, sustainability, and supporting local communities. Theres also a local store filled with fresh products, including homemade soaps from the goat milk produced on the property. The farm is open daily, the entrance fee is $10 per person and $6.50 per child (2-4-years old).

Learn How to Shuck Oysters

Seafood lovers can take part in a farm-to-table experience with the Valley Pearl Oysters Get Shucked tour. Participants will practice tonging oysters, the process of gathering oysters off the ocean floor with long rake-like tools. After collecting oysters, the group will return to the plant to learn about oyster processing methods, practice shucking, and taste some of the worlds best oysters. Guests will learn from owners and competitive oyster shuckers, Jeff Noye and Damien Enman. This experience is offered July 1  September 30 by appointment, from $90 per person.

Anne of Green Gables Experiences

Millions of Anne of Green Gables fans have visited Prince Edward Island to discover the land of Lucy Maud Montgomerys stories that were published in 1908. In 2019, visitors can experience the story in a new way by joining The Tables Annes Picnic, which includes a cooking class with the award-winning culinary studio to create sweet and savory treats, followed by an outdoor picnic based on Annes first social gathering  the Sunday School Picnic. Fans can also buy tickets to view Anne of Green Gables  The Musical, visit Green Gables Heritage Place, or take a ride on Matthews Carriage Ride past the Lake of Shining Waters at the Anne of Green Gables Museum. Learn about more Anne of Green Gables experiences by visiting https://www.tourismpei.com

Taters, Tractors and Tales

French fry lovers can visit the Roberts Family Farm for Taters, Tractors, and Tales to explore the islands 200-year history of potato production. The farm maintains antique farming equipment from the 1800s, and guests can take a turn ploughing the fields or picking their own potatoes. The family farm has been in business for generations, allowing visitors to listen to their stories about the evolution and changes of the farming industry. At the end of the day, visitors eat a helping of fresh French fries. This experience is offered from June 4  September 30, Monday through Saturday from 10:00am  12:30pm, priced at $75 per person.

Beaches and Sandcastles

Parks Canada provides annual programming along the coast for children and adults alike to explore the provinces famous beaches and stunning red sandstone. Families can join the renowned sand sculptor and art teacher Maurice Bernard for a Sensational Sand Castles lesson, where participants build their own small beach front property in less than two hours. Theres also a dedicated Beach Hut located at Prince Edward Island National Park that hosts a touch tank, nature demonstrations, and interactive activities. During free time, the islands beaches offer plenty of opportunities to collect sea glass or take a scenic drive to spot all 63 lighthouses that line the coast. Learn more at https://www.tourismpei.com

For more information about the province, visit Tourism PEI.

About Atlantic Canada Agreement on Tourism (ACAT):

This project has been made possible through funding provided by the Atlantic Canada Agreement on Tourism (ACAT). ACAT is a nine member pan-Atlantic initiative comprising the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the four Atlantic Canada Tourism Industry Associations, and the four Provincial Departments responsible for tourism.

For more information on the four provinces, visit these websites or follow on social media:

New Brunswick

Web: http://www.tourismnewbrunswick.ca

Instagram: @DestinationNB

Twitter: @SeeNewBrunswick

Facebook: @DestinationNB

Nova Scotia

Web: http://www.novascotia.com

Instagram: @VisitNovaScotia

Twitter: @VisitNovaScotia

Facebook: @NovaScotia

Newfoundland and Labrador

Web: http://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com

Instagram: @newfoundlandlabrador

Twitter: @NLtweets

Facebook: @NewfoundlandLabradorTourism

Prince Edward Island

Web: http://www.tourismpei.com

Instagram: @tourismpei

Twitter: @tourismpei

Facebook: @tourismpei

MEDIA CONTACT:

Gina Dolecki/Ashley Mindnich

Redpoint

212.229.0119

dolecki(at)redpointspeaks(dot)com

mindnich(at)redpointspeaks(dot)com

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Angelina Rice, winner of the t-shirt competition, holds her winning design.

The Winston-Salem, North Carolina based non-profit, Safe Sober Prom Night, is pleased to announce that Angelina Rice, a senior at Career Center and Walkertown High Schools, has won the Safe Sober Prom Night T-Shirt Design Contest for 2019.

At a surprise presentation in the Graphic Arts II classroom of Mrs. Stephanie Messer, the winning design was unveiled. Angelina was presented with the first shirt off the press, framed for display. Honored guests joining attorneys Griff Shuler and David Daggett included Winston-Salem Mayor, Allen Joines; Winston-Salem Police Chief Katrina Thompson; Principals Misty Walker of Walkertown High and Dr. Chris Nichols of Career Center High School; Angelinas grandparents; and various other school system dignitaries and media.

For the second consecutive year, Safe Sober Prom Night honored the classroom of the winning student with a $500 grant. Mrs. Stephanie Messer will use the money for supplies for her Graphic Arts classroom to ensure that her students have all the tools they need to succeed in class.

Safe Sober Prom Night is a non-profit organization co-founded in 1991 by David Daggett of Daggett Shuler, Attorneys at Law.

The goal of Safe Sober Prom Night is to provide ongoing awareness of the dangers of drugs and alcohol and to encourage positive peer pressure to reduce underage drinking and drug use, explains Griff Shuler.

The program is currently active in 50 high schools across 10 counties throughout the greater Triad region of North Carolina.

Now in its 29th year, Safe Sober Prom Night encourages high school students to be safe with a written pledge to stay drug and alcohol free on prom night. Each student who signs a pledge card receives a t-shirt bearing Angelinas winning design. Students are given incentives to keep their commitment, including scholarships and a chance to win $1,000 for their school. To date, more than 500,000 students have signed the Safe Sober Do it Right! pledge.

As part of the Safe Sober Prom Night program, Triad students submit their own designs for consideration to be printed on the front of 15,000 t-shirts. These shirts are given to area high school juniors and seniors who sign the pledge. Angelina Rice is the sole winner of the competition selected from over 150 contest entries from all across the Triad. She received a $500 scholarship and her name is printed on the back of each t-shirt. Many schools incorporate these t-shirts into their spirit week leading up to prom, creating an atmosphere of positive peer pressure encouraging their students to make safe decisions on prom night.

We are so proud of these young people in our community. Kids like Angelina are our future! Safe Sober Prom Night has become a tradition they have embraced and helps students see a positive future!

Photos attached. Additional information available upon request.

Daggett Shuler, Attorneys at Law, principal office is based at 2140 Country Club Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27104. The firm handles personal injury claims including serious injuries, automobile accidents, workers compensation and social security disability. They have received national recognition for their Safe Sober Prom Night program.

http://www.SafeSober.com

http://www.DaggettShulerLaw.com
Smart Care Starts Here We have partners who are spread across the country, so geographically we identified Smart Care Medical Centers that can provide outstanding care, said Tom Emerick, President and Co-Founder of Edison Healthcare.

The cost of medical care continues to rise across the country and Edison Healthcare is helping self-insured employers overcome this obstacle. Edison Healthcare provides access for its employer partners by providing their employees with the best Smart Care Medical facilities across the country. And for heart care, many of the employees they work with will now be headed to Cleveland Clinic, offering access to complex cardiac surgery at Cleveland Clinics Heart & Vascular Institute.

For 24 consecutive years, U.S. News & World Report has ranked Cleveland Clinics heart program No. 1 in the nation for cardiovascular care.

Employees and their dependents who are part of the Edison Healthcare program will now be able to have consultations and heart care at Cleveland Clinic with no out-of-pocket cost. Edison Healthcare also covers the cost for travel, lodging, and food for the patient and their caregiver. Programs like Edison Healthcare bring employers and leading hospitals together to help keep costs down through better outcomes and bundled pricing  a single payment that covers a patients specific treatment while giving employees greater access to the best possible care.

We have partners who are spread across the country, so geographically we identified Smart Care Medical Centers that can provide outstanding care, said Tom Emerick, President and Co-Founder of Edison Healthcare.

Cleveland Clinic will review each patient's medical records, create a customized care plan, provide education to the patient and caregiver on treatment, manage the patient's transition home, and work alongside the patient's local physician.

Cleveland Clinic is passionate about working with companies, like Edison Healthcare, to develop innovative solutions that provide employees high-quality healthcare while also managing costs, said Dr. Lars Svensson, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of Cleveland Clinics Sydell and Arnold Miller Heart & Vascular Institute.

About Edison Healthcare:

As an independent Smart Care program, Edison Healthcare helps self-insured employers receive access to leading health systems committed to providing multidisciplinary, team-based approaches in the evaluation and treatment of patients. The emphasis is on appropriate care. Our Smart Care Centers ensure that the original diagnosis is correct, and the treatment is appropriate. For more information please visit us at http://www.edisonhealthcare.com. Like us at http://www.facebook.com/edisonhealthcare

About Cleveland Clinic:

Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit multi-specialty academic medical center that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. Located in Cleveland, Ohio, it was founded in 1921 by four renowned physicians with a vision of providing outstanding patient care based upon the principles of cooperation, compassion and innovation. Cleveland Clinic has pioneered many medical breakthroughs, including coronary artery bypass surgery and the first face transplant in the United States. U.S. News & World Report consistently names Cleveland Clinic as one of the nations best hospitals in its annual Americas Best Hospitals survey. Among Cleveland Clinics 52,000 employees are more than 3,600 full-time salaried physicians and researchers and 14,000 nurses, representing 140 medical specialties and subspecialties. Cleveland Clinics health system includes a 165-acre main campus near downtown Cleveland, 11 regional hospitals, more than 150 northern Ohio outpatient locations  including 18 full-service family health centers and three health and wellness centers  and locations in Weston, Fla.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Toronto, Canada; Abu Dhabi, UAE; and London, England. In 2017, there were 7.6 million outpatient visits, 229,000 hospital admissions and 207,000 surgical cases throughout Cleveland Clinics health system. Patients came for treatment from every state and 185 countries. Visit us at http://www.clevelandclinic.org. Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/ClevelandClinic. News and resources available at http://www.newsroom.clevelandclinic.org
LocalBlox is the only platform that can acquire, scale and correlate diverse, conventional, non-traditional data points and social sentiments mapped into real identities of people and businesses. Weve experienced tremendous success because we are the first data technology company whose platform can launch globally, said Ashfaq Rahman, Founder and CTO of LocalBlox.

LocalBlox, a global data technology company with an industry-leading focus on integrity, announced today additional large enterprises covering Canada, USA and APAC have selected LocalBlox resulting in an exceptionally strong first quarter. With a focus on integrity and privacy, LocalBlox has steadfastly expanded its global footprint. Customers worldwide utilize its platform to power B2B, B2C customer intelligence, customer retention and relationship management, sales and marketing campaigns, location-based services, search and mapping portals, demographic targeting, sales lead generation, programmatic advertising and personalization.

Weve experienced tremendous success because we are the first data technology company whose platform can launch globally, said Ashfaq Rahman, Founder and CTO of LocalBlox. Artificial intelligence allows our next-generation Data Discovery and Creation platform to continuously learn to create the most accurate, complete and freshest data that is designed for enterprises which value precise insights in real-time and at scale. Our solution can collectively save organizations who may be purchasing our competitors stale, inaccurate and limited data approximately $50 billion. This is why our customers recognize us as one of the premiere database suppliers in the world.

LocalBlox attributes its continued success to the fact that it is the first global intelligence platform that can search, combine and validate deep business and personal profiles at scale. The firm also marries social data, web behavior and real-world data physical movement data with the individual contact data and all of its associated demographics, firmagraphics and psychographic data. LocalBlox provides its customers with benefits such as:



Data that is 20% to 30% more accurate than competitors data.

Lowering a typical cost of customer acquisition by 300%.

1.5 to 10 times coverage increase in business, POI and contact level data in various countries.

Demonstrated 85% to 95% match rate against any random input of valid identities.

A 3 times match rate of audience identities in programmatic advertising through Ad Exchanges.

Visit http://www.localblox.com for more information about LocalBlox.

About LocalBlox

Founded in 2015, Bellevue, Washington-based LocalBlox is a trusted global data management and technology firm that is committed to serving its clients nationwide and worldwide. It is the only platform that can acquire, scale and correlate diverse, conventional, non-traditional data points and social sentiments mapped into real identities of people and businesses. Its technology leverages machine learning and human insight. The platform automatically crawls, discovers, extracts, indexes, maps and augments data in a variety of formats from the Web and from exchange networks, adding crowd-sourced verification as needed. Clients include numerous Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. and well as companies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with the ability to launch new countries quickly.

Media Contact

RPR Public Relations, Inc.

Tel. 786-290-6413
Edwin Schklar and Maggie Heim Our approach is simple. We refuse to accept anything less than the best result we can obtain for our clients.

Attorneys Edwin Schklar and Maggie Heim were recently named to the list of Georgia Super Lawyers via the patented award program run by Thomson Reuters. Schklar was named to the list of Super Lawyers for the ninth time, an honor reserved for 5% of attorneys in the state. Heim was also selected to the list of Super Lawyers after having been recognized as a Rising Star for the past six years. The Super Lawyers honor is determined by attorney voting, independent research by the Thomson Reuters editorial team, and a final peer review.

Schklar, who started his career nearly 40 years ago as a prosecutor in the U.S. Army, believes the awards represent a shared commitment to excellence in the practice of law. Our approach is simple. We refuse to accept anything less than the best result we can obtain for our clients, said Schklar. That means we will out-prepare, out-learn, and out-work our adversarys legal team until all possible avenues for success are exhausted.

Heim agrees that preparation is an important component of the firms impressive results on behalf of clients, but also believes that the firms structure is a key to their success. We only accept a small number of cases each year, said Heim. This strategy gives us the opportunity to dedicate the right amount of resources required to produce an excellent result.

About Schklar & Heim, LLC: Schklar & Heim, LLC is an AV Rated law firm based in Atlanta, Georgia. The firm is nationally recognized for obtaining superior results in the most complex litigation matters, while providing unmatched attention to detail and client service. The firm routinely handles cases involving business litigation, legal malpractice, securities litigation, and estate and trust litigation.
Fred Horrell has completed his new book Blind Success: a gripping tale that follows two individuals, Sulley Loneoakwho has been blinded in a car accident that also took the life of his father, and Petula Tynethe founder of Blind Success, a program dedicated to increasing mobility and independence for recently blinded adults. Although their connection seems obvious enough, their destinies are more entwined than it appears on the surface.

Petula Tyne and Sulley Loneoak encountered each other on Vanderbilts campus as Petula completed her nursing degree and Sulley breezed through his MBA, Fred Horrell explains of his novels characters. When they find themselves together and ambushed by the terrorist group Athens in an unexplained shootout, they must learn to trust each other enough to survive the dangers that surround them both.

Published by New York City-based Page Publishing, Fred Horrells Blind Success contains interweaving plotlines with characters whose personal secrets enrich the tension of the national crisis.

Athens have recently obtained control of the voting membership within the European Union, and America is their next target, Horrell explains of the major plot. They have secretly threatened the president of the United States and the chairperson of the Federal Reserve. Athens has given the president one week to comply with their demands or suffer the consequences.

Lovers of mystery, intrigue, and political thrillers can purchaseBlind Success at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Google Play or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional New York based full-service publishing house that handles all of the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create - not bogged down with complicated business issues like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes and the like. Its roster of authors can leave behind these tedious, complex and time-consuming issues, and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.


Bowman School

Bowman School, an internationally recognized, Montessori-accredited school located in Palo Alto for nearly 25 years, announced today that the Head of School and two teachers have been selected to present at The Montessori Event, the annual conference of the American Montessori Society. The event will be held in Washington D.C. March 21 -24, 2019 and Mary Beth Ricks, Head of School at Bowman, and teachers, Pam M. Yulo and Katie Mueller, will lead presentations at this largest gathering of Montessori educators in the world.

Friday, March 22, 8:00  9:15 a.m.

Mary Beth Ricks will lead a workshop on Building Community Through a Capital Campaign. Designed for the growing number of Montessori school administrators, Ricks will discuss steps to building and executing successful fundraising campaigns, while maintaining the Montessori philosophy and integrity of the schools culture, mission, and values.

Saturday, March 23, 8:00  9:15 a.m.

Pat M. Yulo Pat M. Yulo and Katie Mueller will present Hands-On Astronomy for Early Childhood to help other Montessori teachers transform abstract science concepts into concrete notions. Through hands-on lessons and activities, Yulo and Mueller will cover four course units to support implementing in-depth astronomy curriculum for younger students.

About Bowman School

Bowman School is an innovative, accredited Montessori program serving students in Palo Alto, Calif. Founded in 1995, the independent, non-profit school provides an academically rigorous program in a self-directed and individual learning format. Bowman helps students build a strong foundation for life-long decision making, problem solving and critical thinking as they develop a sense of responsibility, independence and self-confidence about themselves and the world around them. The school is located at 4000 Terman Drive and will open its new Learning Village campus in Fall of 2019. More information can be found at http://www.bowmanschool.org.
Shadow IT Discovery Lifecycle "The Microsoft Office 365 suite is powerful and a staple for agile high-performance organizations. Taking advantage of Microsoft Office 365 tenant restrictions with ease ensure compliance and security can be applied easily without burdening IT staff or users, said Paul Martini, CEO of iboss

iboss today announced that it has extended the native Microsoft tenant restrictions available within Microsoft Office 365 suite with the ability to apply the restriction based on a users group membership or department. Microsoft Office 365 tenant restrictions are a feature offered by Microsoft to ensure users within an organization only access the applications within Office 365 associated with the organization. This feature is typically a global feature within network security products that is either enabled or disabled for an entire organization. This makes it difficult to bypass these restrictions for groups of individuals within the organization, such as contractors, that need access to Office 365 applications from another organization. The iboss cloud has enhanced this capability so that IT administrators can apply the tenant restrictions based on the user attempting to access Office 365. This ensures security and compliance while allowing the flexibility needed to perform day to day business activities.

Through 2022, at least 95% of cloud security failures are predicted to be the customers fault according to Gartner. This is due in part to the lack of granular security controls for devices accessing cloud applications.

The dynamic Office 365 tenant restrictions within iboss cloud will intelligently map a user based on the users Active Directory group or Organization Unit and apply the tenant restriction if it is enabled for that group. In addition, IT administrators can lock different groups of users to different tenant restrictions so that restrictions are still in place depending on the user needing access. In addition, the iboss cloud will automatically adapt Microsoft Office 365 traffic to ensure tenant restrictions are in place without having to create complex configuration or networking rules. Enabling Microsoft Office 365 tenant restrictions can be accomplished in seconds within the iboss cloud platform.

"The Microsoft Office 365 suite is powerful and a staple for agile high-performance organizations. Taking advantage of Microsoft Office 365 tenant restrictions with ease ensure compliance and security can be applied easily without burdening IT staff or users, said Paul Martini, CEO, and co-founder of iboss. We continue to partner with Microsoft to create the innovations necessary for modern cloud-enabled businesses.

About iboss

iboss is a cloud security company that provides organizations and their employees secure access to the Internet on any device, from any location, in the cloud. This eliminates the need for traditional security appliances, which are ineffective at protecting a cloud-first and mobile world. Leveraging a purpose-built cloud architecture backed by over 100 patents and over 100 points of presence globally, iboss protects more than 4,000 organizations worldwide. To learn more, visit http://www.iboss.com.
INTELITY exemplifies the sort of innovative industry leader with whom we look to collaborate with as we build for the future," said Venkat Kandru, Executive Vice President of Information Technology at The Howard Hughes Corporation.

INTELITY, the provider of the travel industry's broadest enterprise guest engagement and staff management platform, announced today that its voice solution has been successfully utilized during a voice technology pilot program conducted by The Howard Hughes Corporation.

Using INTELITYs in-room tablets and unique, customizable voice request skill, the pilot program tested the ability to request services, place orders, and request information about the local area, weather, events, and much more. Using this technology, individuals would also have the ability to control the climate, lights, and TV in their guest room solely by voice, enhancing the immersive experience.

Our goal is to leverage existing technologies and explore new, game-changing ways to give our guests and residents a truly meaningful, interactive experience that is easy and intuitive to use, said Michael Caplovitz, Vice President of Innovation at The Howard Hughes Corporation. We are committed to implementing smart city technology across the portfolio, letting innovative systems such as voice technology be a brand differentiator and a way to greatly enhance the way people live, work and playwhether at a residential building, a hotel or an office space.

Guests adapt easily to voice since many already use devices such as Siri on their phones and Alexa and Google Voice in their homes, added Venkat Kandru, Executive Vice President of Information Technology at The Howard Hughes Corporation. INTELITY exemplifies the sort of innovative industry leader with whom we look to collaborate with as we build for the future.

The Howard Hughes Corporation partnered with INTELITY on this project due to INTELITYs custom voice request skill, deeply integrated back-end platform, and ability to deploy solutions at scale. The idea of smart cities has been teased throughout the technology spheres but has yet to come to fruition in any real way. Implementing voice technology at this large scale, across multiple markets, is cutting-edge for any real estate company and developer  The Howard Hughes Corporation is ahead of the curve, says David Adelson, INTELITYs President & COO.

About INTELITY

INTELITY is the global provider of the most advanced hospitality technology platform for the hotel, casino, cruise, and luxury residential markets. INTELITY offers its customers comprehensive end-to-end solutions to manage guest experience and staff operations, in a single platform. In 2018, INTELITY merged with KEYPR yielding a combined 15 years of hospitality experience, rapid growth, and the most complete hospitality technology platform on the market. For more information, please visit http://www.intelity.com.

About The Howard Hughes Corporation

The Howard Hughes Corporation owns, manages and develops commercial, residential and mixed-use real estate throughout the U.S. Its award-winning assets include the country's preeminent portfolio of master planned communities, as well as operating properties and development opportunities including: The Seaport District in New York; Columbia, Maryland; The Woodlands, The Woodlands Hills, and Bridgeland in the Greater Houston, Texas area; Summerlin, Las Vegas; and Ward Village in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Howard Hughes Corporation's portfolio is strategically positioned to meet and accelerate development based on market demand, resulting in one of the strongest real estate platforms in the country. Dedicated to innovative placemaking, the company is recognized for its ongoing commitment to design excellence and to the cultural life of its communities. The Howard Hughes Corporation is traded on the New York Stock Exchange as HHC. For additional information visit http://www.howardhughes.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements made in this press release that are not historical facts, including statements accompanied by words such as will, believe, expect, enables, realize, plan, intend, assume, transform and other words of similar expression, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on managements expectations, estimates, assumptions, and projections as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are set forth as risk factors in The Howard Hughes Corporations filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Quarterly and Annual Reports. The Howard Hughes Corporation cautions you not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this release. The Howard Hughes Corporation does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future events, information or circumstances that arise after the date of this release.


Irene Forte, wellness director for Rocco Forte Hotels and daughter of Sir Rocco Forte, British hotelier and philanthropist, will join the Global Wellness Summit Advisory Board. With millennials representing the first wellness generationand as the age demographic that will have the highest spending power by 2025*Irene will help us stay relevant and keep evolving toward the next-generation wellness consumer.

The Global Wellness Summit (GWS), the foremost gathering of international leaders in the $4.2 trillion global wellness economy, today announced that Irene Forte, wellness director for Rocco Forte Hotels and daughter of Sir Rocco Forte, British hotelier and philanthropist, will join its Advisory Board. Forte oversees the wellness strategy and offerings for the 14 Rocco Forte Hotels, has just launched Irene Forte Skincare, and has won awards for her achievements as a rising young entrepreneur. And she will be instrumental in helping the GWS address the powerhouse demographic in the wellness industry: millennials.

Its with great pleasure that I welcome Irene to our board, said Susie Ellis, GWS chairman and CEO. Were a conference devoted to the business of wellness, and she will bring invaluable expertise to help ensure that our organization reflects the very future of this industry: millennials and even younger generations. With millennials representing the first wellness generationand as the age demographic that will have the highest spending power by 2025*Irene will help us stay relevant and keep evolving toward the next-generation wellness consumer.

Forte oversees the wellness proposition for the Rocco Forte Hotels group, which operates award-winning luxury hotels across Europe and has had recent openings in Saudi Arabia and China. Founded by her father Sir Rocco Forte, knighted for services to the UK tourism industry and a recipient of the highest Italian accolade, the Gran Croce dellOrdine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, the success of their hotel group demonstrates how intergenerational collaboration and management can be a unique force in helping businesses embrace new generations of consumers. Her new skin-care line, Irene Forte Skincare, has been described by Tatler as beauty with a conscience as kind to your skin as it is to the planet. Handmade in Italy with ingredients from the familys organic farm in Sicily, the entire range is vegetarian, free from artificial colors and fragrances, and sustainably packaged with recycled materials.

In 2015, Irene Forte was awarded government funding to create a careers app (Map My Future) designed to attract and retain a younger, more tech-savvy workforcewhich has been available at the hotel group since 2016. She was awarded the 2016 Rising Star Shine Award and an Acorn 30 under 30 award (given to the brightest prospects in the hospitality industry) in 2017. A very popular keynote speaker at the Summits in 2016 and 2018, her talk "Millennials: Spoiled for Choice and Very StressedHow to Attract this New Generation of Traveler" is one of the most downloaded in the conferences history.

I immediately fell in love with the spirit of the Global Wellness Summit when I attended my first almost four years ago. With its mission of industry collaboration, this international gathering has been shaping the future of the $4.2 trillion wellness industry for 13 years, noted Forte. Im delighted to be part of such a worthy and important community and event.

The Global Wellness Summit is a conference for senior executives and wellness thought leaders; first-time delegates should apply to attend soon, as its always a sellout event.

For sponsorship information, contact Michelle Gamble: michelle(dot)gamble(at)globalwellnesssummit(dot)com.

*World Data Lab research, 2018

About the Global Wellness Summit: The Global Wellness Summit is an invitation-only international gathering that brings together industry leaders and visionaries to shape the business of wellness and the future of the $4.2 trillion global wellness economy. The gathering is held annually in different locations across the globe and has taken place in the US, Switzerland, Turkey, Bali, India, Morocco, Mexico, Austria and Italy. The 13th annual Summit will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong from October 1517, 2019.
Attendees will also be able to share their views and experiences with the current set of standards as well as provide feedback for inclusion in several new standards currently under development including problem solving and quality management requirements.

Mr. Richard Gallagher, Propulsion Systems Core Quality / Supplier Quality Leader, Boeing, will present the Keynote at the upcoming Aerospace Engine Supplier Quality (AESQ) Strategy Group Supplier Forum hosted by Pratt & Whitney April 10 in Hartford, CT. Gallagher will focus his remarks as the Voice of the Customer from the Boeing perspective. In addition, Mr. Ludovic Chevet, Lead Supply Chain Manager, Airbus, will deliver a Voice of the Customer from the Airbus perspective.

Supplier Forum attendees will learn the latest information on the SAE G-22 Committees AS13xxx series of aerospace engine supplier quality standards. This series was developed to set common quality requirements for the global aerospace engine supply chain to operate more efficiently.

Attendees will also be able to share their views and experiences with the current set of standards as well as provide feedback for inclusion in several new standards currently under development including problem solving and quality management requirements.

About AESQ

The Aerospace Engine Supplier Quality (AESQ) Strategy Group, a program of the SAE ITC, was established to develop, specify, maintain, promote and deploy quality standards specific to the Aerospace Engine supply chain. This work is intended to reduce customer specifics through a focused set of standards that integrate industry best practice and aerospace engine unique elements.

AESQ member companies include GE Aviation, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, Honeywell, Safran, GKN, PCC, MTU and Arconic.

Further information about AESQ including G-22 standards, future events, training opportunities and supporting documents can be found on AESQ's website at: http://aesq.saeitc.org/

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The SAE ITC team specializes in establishing and managing consortia by providing proven processes, tools and resources. SAE ITC enables public, private, academic and government organizations to connect and collaborate in neutral, pre-competitive forums thus empowering the setting and implementation of strategic business improvements in global highly engineered industries. (http://www.sae-itc.com)

SAE International is a global association committed to advancing mobility knowledge and solutions for the benefit of humanity. By engaging nearly 200,000 engineers, technical experts and volunteers, we connect and educate mobility professionals to enable safe, clean, and accessible mobility solutions. 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.


Our goal at KMPM is to uniquely unite genetics, imaging, pathology and artificial intelligence, uncovering the insights that enable pharmaceutical developers and clinicians to progress from sick care to healthcarefrom reactive to preventiveand continuously improve quality of life.

Konica Minolta Precision Medicine, Inc. (KMPM), a subsidiary of Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) today announced the formation of their inaugural Scientific Advisory Board.

Founded in late 2018, KMPM is dedicated to the advancement of precision medicine that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle to more accurately predict, detect, treat and ultimately defeat disease.

Our goal at KMPM is to uniquely unite genetics, imaging, pathology and artificial intelligence, uncovering the insights that enable pharmaceutical developers and clinicians to progress from sick care to healthcarefrom reactive to preventiveand continuously improve quality of life, stated Kiyotaka Fujii, Senior Managing Executive Director of Konica Minolta, Inc., Chairman and President of Konica Minolta Precision Medicine, Inc. To achieve that goal, we must collaborate with the highest levels of expertise and weve certainly achieved that in our inaugural Scientific Advisory Board.

John E. Niederhuber, MD, President and CEO of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Institute (GBRI), Fairfax, Virginia, a joint venture between Inova Health System and the University of Virginia, and former Director of both the National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health, has been named Chairman of KMPMs Scientific Advisory Board.

Additional members are:

Judy Garber, MD, MPH, Susan F. Smith Chair and Chief of the Division of Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Garber has played a major role in the development of national guidelines in cancer genetics and is a leader in research into the characteristics and treatment of triple negative or basal-like breast cancer.

Geoffrey Ginsburg, MD, PhD, Founding Director, Center for Applied Genomics & Precision Medicine at the Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Ginsburgs research addresses the challenges for translating genomic information into medical practice and integrating precision medicine into healthcare.

Giovanni Parmigiani, PhD, Associate Director for Population Sciences of the Multi-Institutional Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), and Director of the Postdoctoral Training Grant in Quantitative Sciences for Cancer Research at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he is a Professor. Dr. Parmigianis research focuses on finding innovative ways to use data science and data technologies to fuel cancer prevention.

David Rimm, MD, PhD, Professor, Departments of Pathology and Medicine (Oncology) at the Yale University School of Medicine, and Director of Yale Pathology Tissue Services. Dr. Rimms research lab group focuses on quantitative pathology to predict response to targeted and immune-therapy in cancer and standardization of those assays for CLIA labs.

Howard Scher, MD, Co-Chair, Center for Mechanism Based Therapy and Head of the Biomarker Development Initiative; Member and Attending Physician, Genitourinary Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MKSCC). Dr. Schers research focuses on the co-development of targeted therapies and biomarkers which can be used to guide treatment selection for individual patients, improve evaluation of drugs in the clinic, and accelerate regulatory approvals.

About Konica Minolta Precision Medicine

Konica Minolta Precision Medicine, Inc. (KMPM) based in Aliso Viejo, CA is a subsidiary of Konica Minolta, Inc. that includes Ambry Genetics Corporation and Invicro LLC. Founded in 2018 on the belief that groundbreaking medical breakthroughs are possible by concentrating efforts on the health expression map, the undiscovered territory between an individuals genetics and biological impacts, and quantifiably measuring health over time. KMPMs health intelligence and visualization platform brings together the most novel and diverse set of data from genes, proteins, cells and tissues with sophisticated analytics and world-leading scientific and medical expertise, enabling more prescriptive, proactive and preventive care. For further information, visit: http://www.KonicaMinoltaPrecisionMedicine.com

About Konica Minolta

Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) is a global digital technology company with core strengths in imaging and data analysis, optics, materials, and nano-fabrication. Through innovation, we create products and digital solutions for the betterment of business and societytoday and for generations to come. Across our Business Technologies, Healthcare, and Industrial-facing businesses, we aspire to be an Integral Value Provider that applies the full range of our companys expertise to offer comprehensive solutions to our customers most pressing problems, work with our partners to ensure our solutions are sustainable, anticipate and address tomorrows issues, and tailor each solution to meet the unique and specific needs of our valued customers. Leveraging these capabilities, Konica Minolta contributes to productivity improvement and workflow change for our customers and provides leading-edge service solutions in the IoT era. Headquartered in Tokyo and with operations in 50 countries, Konica Minolta has more than 43,000 employees serving approximately two million customers in over 150 countries. Konica Minolta is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, (TSE4902). For further information, visit: http://www.KonicaMinolta.com

Contact:

Jackie Copp

press@ambrygen.com

480.606.8180
A lot of companies claim to offer support, but our experience with DigitalPhone.io has been that they deliver. On top of this, the product quality is great. Were happy that we selected them.

DigitalPhone.io, a leading hosted VoIP and telecommunications firm that serves businesses, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions nationwide, is proud to announce that it has completed installing a flexible and feature-rich hosted VoIP phone system for Stand Up, Inc.

Headquartered in Forest, VA, Stand Up, Inc. is dedicated to assisting individuals with disabilities increase their independence by providing unequalled personalized planning, ongoing support, resources, and opportunities for success. They also provide businesses with resources to recruit, hire, retain and advance individuals with disabilities.

Stand Up, Inc. had been experiencing significant challenges. Their legacy phone service was not supporting effective and efficient communications, both for staff at the organizations head office, and for its roster of remote team members located throughout Virginia. Key challenges included: routinely missing calls due to the phone line being busy, inability to give individual voicemail accounts to each team member, lack of control over how incoming calls were handled, and prohibitively high costs of giving each team member their own phone number.

We were interested in a hosted VoIP phone service for quite some time, but we only knew what we were able to read about options online," commented Len Richardson, Business Development Specialist at Stand Up, Inc. Our main concern about purchasing a hosted VoIP phone was not knowing exactly what we needed to get it all working. Lisa Green, and the team at DigitalPhone.io, worked with us to ensure that we bought what we needed, and help us get up and running. This was the key reason that we selected DigitalPhone.io.

DigitalPhone.io solved all of Stand Up, Inc.s challenges with its affordable, flexible, feature-rich, scaleable and HIPAA-compliant hosted VoIP system, that offered team members the ability to communicate with clients, without utilizing personal phone numbers. Establishing service and delivering IP phones was finalized in late 2018, and key staff were oriented in using the systems easy-to-use features and web-based system management dashboard.

Added Mr. Richardson: As a result of the new hosted VoIP phone system, each member of our team has their own extension, so one phone call doesnt tie up the phone for the rest of the team. We also purchased a conference phone for our conference room which has really been useful, and the quality of the calls is outstanding. Now were able to engage in multiple calls at the same time, transfer and direct calls to personal extensions and voicemails, and the conference calls are super clear. The thing that has been the most impressive about dealing with DigitalPhone.io is the availability of support when we need it. A lot of companies claim to offer support, but our experience with DigitalPhone.io has been that they deliver. On top of this, the product quality is great. Were happy that we selected them.

It remains a pleasure to work with Len and his incredible team at Stand Up, Inc., commented Lisa Green, Regional Manager at DigitalPhone.io. The work they do every day is truly changing lives, and it is an honor to help enable the organization streamline their communications processes. We are proud to have earned their trust and praise by delivering on our promises. We look forward to growing the relationship into the future!

For additional information regarding DigitalPhone.io, visit https://digitalphone.io or email inquiry(at)DigitalPhone.io.

About DigitalPhone.io

DigitalPhone.io (formerly Carolina Digital) is a pioneer of hosted phone services, and provides products that improve the capabilities of business, education and government telephony, while reducing their overall cost. The companys offerings stand out for their excellent value, including very competitive pricing, the industrys deepest feature set, ease of deployment, and many user-friendly packages  from a full turnkey set-up including dial tone and VoIP phones, to automated call answering and routing solutions that work with existing land lines, cell phones or VoIP phones. Learn more at https://digitalphone.io.
Women Helping Women Feel Better MyJane is thrilled to be attending the Roth Conference, doing our part to both promote womens wellness issues and further normalize the cannabis experience for women, said Kovacs.

MyJane, Californias first curated cannabis service created for women, by women, is pleased to announce that its Co-founder and President Kim Kovacs, and Chief Experience Officer, Michelle Patterson, have been invited to attend the 31st annual Roth Conference in Dana Point, California.

Kovacs and Patterson will participate in investor requested one-on-one conversations between March 17-20 alongside key executives from MJIC, MyJanes parent company, including Chief Executive Officer Sturges Karban, Chief Strategy Officer Urban Smedeby, and Chairman Larry Horwitz.

MyJane is thrilled to be attending the Roth Conference, and will be doing our part to both promote womens wellness issues and further normalize the cannabis experience for women, said Kovacs. MyJane is about empowering women and through our community, we can continue to educate and make consumers feel comfortable with their choices.

MyJane, one of 550 health and technology companies, will showcase its curated canna-boxes at exhibits on the final day of the conference.

Founded in May 2018, MyJane developed the first premium, curated cannabis service for women after conducting a first-of-its-kind study among 42,000 women in Orange County, California. MyJane has developed a technology-driven wellness community providing women access to cannabis education and products curated just for them. MyJanes data science platform selects cannabis products to help them get a better nights sleep, combat stress, relieve pain or use as a replacement for alcohol and opiates. These curated cannabis experiences are delivered to members homes by a team of all-female brand ambassadors educated on products and usage.

About MyJane

Created by women for women, MyJane is a new cannabis wellness community designed to empower women to feel better. Its mission is to normalize the cannabis experience for women by offering the first premium, curated cannabis experience in a box  tailored to meet womens individual needs, address their most-cited wellness concerns and delivered to their door by a team of all-female brand ambassadors. To learn more and become a member, visit myjane.com.
The United Nations Foundation today announced the appointment of Lord Mark Malloch-Brown as its newest Board member. An experienced diplomat and strategic thinker, he will bring valuable guidance to how the UN Foundation can support the UN in delivering progress for everyone, everywhere.

Lord Malloch-Brown served as United Nations Deputy Secretary-General as well as Chef de Cabinet under then Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006. Before that he spent six years as Administrator of the UN Development Programme, leading the UNs development efforts globally. He also previously served as Minister of State in the UK Governments Foreign Office and as a Vice President at the World Bank.

Additionally, Lord Malloch-Brown has extensive experience in the private sector; he is currently a Senior Advisor with political risk consultants at the Eurasia Group. He has also served as Chair of the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, which worked to align business practices with the Sustainable Development Goals. He began his career as a journalist for The Economist.

We are honored to have Mark Malloch-Brown join the UN Foundation Board of Directors, said UN Foundation Founder and Chairman, Ted Turner. In our work to help the UN advance its critical mission, Marks vast experience will be deeply valued.

The United Nations remains indispensable to tackling humanitys greatest challenges and driving global progress. As the world grows more connected, problems are becoming more complex, including the impacts of climate change, the changing nature of conflict, the resurgence of global diseases like measles, and the uncharted risks of frontier technology.

The role of the United Nations cannot be understated, said Lord Malloch-Brown. We are in a race against time to solve monumental challenges like climate change, and we have huge gains to make against poverty, disease, and insecurity if we act together. I look forward to joining my eminent fellow Board members to guide the UN Foundations work as a strategic partner, helping the UN tackle challenges and harness opportunities for all.

The UN Foundation Board includes accomplished leaders from around the world. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was a serving Board member at the time of his passing in 2018.

UN Foundation Board of Directors include:

Ted Turner (U.S.A)  Founder and Chairman of the Board, UN Foundation

Kathy Calvin (U.S.A)  President & CEO, UN Foundation

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah (Jordan)  Chair, Jordan River Foundation

Valerie Amos (UK)  Director, SOAS University of London

Fabio Colletti Barbosa (Brazil)  Chairman of the Board, Endeavor Brazil

Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway)  Vice Chair, Former Prime Minister of Norway, Director-General Emeritus, World Health Organization

Julio Frenk (Mexico)  President, University of Miami

Narayana Murthy (India)  Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Infosys Limited

Hans Vestberg (Sweden)  CEO, Verizon Communications

Timothy E. Wirth (U.S.A)  Vice Chair, Former President, UN Foundation

Yuan Ming (China)  Dean of Yenching Academy, Peking University

Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh)  Founder, Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, Nobel Peace Prize Winner

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About the United Nations Foundation

The United Nations Foundation acts as a strategic partner to help the United Nations mobilize the ideas, people, and resources it needs to drive global progress and tackle urgent challenges. We focus on issues at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals, build initiatives across sectors to solve problems at scale, and engage citizens who seek action. Founded in 1998 by entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner, the UN Foundation works with philanthropic, corporate, government, and individual partners. Learn more at: http://www.unfoundation.org.
Our competitive credit card program is part of our commitment to help customers with every part of their financial lives. Our partnership with Corserv allows us to make solid credit decisions for our customers by considering relationship history, not purely credit scores.

Midwest BankCentre has partnered with Corserv, Inc. to offer new credit card options to consumer, business and commercial customers.

Existing bank staff will administer the new bank-branded MasterCard Platinum, Platinum Rewards and World cards for consumers and businesses, and the Corporate, Corporate Rewards and Purchasing cards for commercial customers.

Midwest BankCentre's credit card offering is equipped with self-service features for customers. Businesses can manage and authorize new cards within their credit limit using the Midwest BankCentre website. Transaction data can be exported easily into business expense management systems. Cardholders can manage their accounts online, on mobile phones, through a multi-lingual interactive voice response (IVR) system, and with alerts and controls that cardholders set.

All nine MasterCard credit products are available now at http://www.midwestbankcentre.com and at the banks 19 branch locations in the City of St. Louis and St. Louis, St. Charles and Jefferson counties.

Our competitive credit card program is part of our commitment to help customers with every part of their financial lives, said Orvin Kimbrough, CEO of Midwest BankCentre. Our partnership with Corserv allows us to make solid credit decisions for our customers by considering relationship history, not purely credit scores.

With over 100 years in the St. Louis area, Midwest BankCentre can offer outstanding credit card options that suit the needs of local consumers, businesses and organizations, added Jerry Craft, CEO of Corserv. Bank team members can make the best credit decisions through personal knowledge of customers, local businesses, municipalities and non-profits, and provide personalized service to customers.

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About Midwest BankCentre

Midwest BankCentre has been a mainstay of St. Louis community banking since 1906. It ranks among St. Louis largest locally owned banks with assets of about $1.9 billion and deposits of $1.4 billion. Midwest BankCentre works to empower people, enable businesses and energize neighborhoods through the strength of its commercial, retail and digital banking, business cash management, mortgage lending, home equity loans, financial planning and investments, and insurance. The bank is a local leader in the St. Louis Regional Unbanked Task Force and its Bank-On Save-Up St. Louis initiative. Since 2001, Midwest BankCentre has consecutively achieved the Bauer Financial 5-Star Superior financial rating each quarter. Further details are available at http://www.midwestbankcentre.com.

About Corserv

Corserv provides a turnkey credit card issuing program that enables financial institutions to deliver competitive, branded credit cards to consumer, business and commercial customers. Corservs secure hosted programs combine its credit, compliance and marketing expertise with a modern online solution for everything clients need to quickly build a successful card-issuing business. Corservs financial institution clients deepen their customer relationships while also increasing earnings per share by owning customer loans and benefitting from loan interest, interchange, fee income and economies of scale. For more information, visit http://www.corservsolutions.com.

For more information, contact Marie Casey at Casey Communications, Inc., 314-721-2828, or David Luther, Chief Business Officer at Corserv, Inc., 404-822-8418.
For all these reasons, were very pleased to award LegalZooms Name Change service our highest rating in 2019.

TopConsumerReviews.com once has just awarded their highest five-star rating to LegalZoom, a leader in the legal industry for Name Change services.

Name Changes may be required for any number of reasons: marriage and divorce, adoption, or even as a part of making a gender transition. Although its possible to carry out all of the necessary paperwork on ones own, using a reputable Name Change service makes it easier to ensure that all of the requirements are met and that the process will happen smoothly and accurately. These services may also include notifying creditors, financial institutions, and governmental departments. The best Name Change services are even available online and can be processed in just minutes.

LegalZoom frequently ranks first across a wide range of legal services, including those offered for making a Name Change, affirmed Brian Dolezal of TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC. Using LegalZoom to change your name can be completed in a simple three-step process: answer their online questions, allow time for their legal team to go over your answers, and then file the required paperwork according to LegalZooms instructions. Their representatives are available to answer any questions that arise, and previous customers say that the LegalZoom team is helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable. Youre also protected by an excellent money-back guarantee, giving you extra peace of mind when working with them. For all these reasons, were very pleased to award LegalZooms Name Change service our highest rating in 2019.

To find out more about LegalZoom and other providers of Name Change services, including reviews and comparison rankings, please visit the Name Change category of TopConsumerReviews.com at https://www.topconsumerreviews.com/name-change/.

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. However, 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, LLC is a leading provider of reviews and rankings for thousands of consumer products and services. From Name Change Services to Online Divorces and Wedding Dresses, TopConsumerReviews.com delivers in-depth product evaluations in order to make purchasing decisions easier.


Individual communities know what they need to do to get their students on the path to success  the Together for Students grants will help our communities make those ideas a reality," said Dale Erquiaga, Communities In Schools president and CEO.

Coalition for Community Schools, Communities In Schools and StriveTogether today announced four communities across the country will receive a combined $3.75 million to implement student-centered blueprints for learning. Through the Together for Students initiative, these grants will transform how entire communities support student-centered learning by funding a more integrated, intentional system for meeting the unique needs of every child. The collective goal is to showcase how collaborative decision making among families, educators and partners can create better outcomes for nearly 100,000 youth.

As a former local affiliate of the Coalition for Community Schools, I cant tell you how excited I am about elevating the lessons learned from these four communities on how we all can unite our efforts on behalf of all young people, said Jose Munoz, Institute for Educational Leadership vice president of Equity and Impact.

The following communities will receive Together for Students grants to implement their blueprints for student-centered learning:

Chicago, IL (Thrive Chicago)



Project summary: Give Chicago youth access to engaging learning opportunities  in and outside the classroom  to develop critical social-emotional learning skills

Grant award: $750,000

Dayton, OH (Learn to Earn Dayton)



Project summary: Continue to increase parent, youth and teacher involvement in planning and overseeing programs and changing policy through community organizing

Grant award: $1 million

Lehigh Valley, PA (Lehigh Valley Reads)



Project summary: Provide a holistic, culturally and linguistically relevant learning community, including creating a regional data warehouse and embedding students and families in decision making

Grant award: $1 million

Memphis, TN (Communities In Schools of Memphis)



Project summary: Expedite academic growth for students by co-designing a strategy with the community, school system, nonprofits, social services and city government

Grant award: $1 million

There is no one-size-fits-all fix for the challenges facing Americas students, said Dale Erquiaga, Communities In Schools president and CEO. Individual communities know what they need to do to get their students on the path to success  the Together for Students grants will help our communities make those ideas a reality. From giving youth access to engaging learning opportunities to expediting academic growth, these community-designed, student-centered plans will create real change with generational effects.

We refuse to settle for a world where a childs potential is dictated by the conditions in which the child is born, said Jennifer Blatz, StriveTogether president and CEO. Through the Cradle to Career Network, we see the power of communities to create local change that gets better results for kids. This initiative shows we can accomplish even more by working together across our three networks and truly putting students at the center.

This set of grants is the second phase of the Together for Students initiative. The first phase involved giving grants of up to $150,000 to 10 communities to support development of student-centered learning approaches.

With support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Coalition for Community Schools, Communities In Schools and StriveTogether launched Together for Students to accelerate the progress of communities in transforming how they meet the needs of individual learners, particularly the most vulnerable. Over the past few years, they have advanced student-centered learning  an approach that combines quality educational opportunities with health and wellness services, mentoring, college readiness activities and work-based learning experiences.

All three organizations support networks that focus on students from early education through postsecondary completion and employment. Together, they lead a movement that aligns resources and unites families, educators and local partners around this student-centered goal, with their combined networks totaling nearly 300 communities.

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About Coalition for Community Schools

The Coalition for Community Schools, an initiative of the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL), is an alliance of national, state and local organizations that utilize community schools as an equitable continuous improvement strategy for public schools, and an approach to build stronger and healthier families and communities.

About Communities In Schools

Working directly in more than 2,350 schools in 26 states and the District of Columbia, Communities In Schools is the nations largest organization empowering at-risk students to stay in school and on the path to graduation. For the 2016-2017 school year, Communities In Schools served nearly 1.6 million students and successfully helped 99 percent of our case-managed students stay in school.

About StriveTogether

StriveTogether is a national movement with a clear purpose: help every child succeed in school and in life from cradle to career, regardless of race, zip code or circumstance. In partnership with nearly 70 communities across the country, StriveTogether provides resources, best practices and processes to give every child every chance for success. The StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network reaches 13.7 million students and has partners in 29 states and Washington, D.C.
Randy Young, CEO of ArcDesign, highlights the impact of Florida legislation regarding flood insurance coverage for homeowners. The insurance policy clarification is good news for new home buyers, however, it does nothing for existing homeowners who have not read the fine print of their extant insurance policies. Homeowners might want to contact their insurance companies before hurricane season to see if theyre covered.

When Hurricane Michael hit Florida in 2018, the third-most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in recorded US history, many residents were shocked to discover their insurance didnt cover damage caused by flooding. As Sen. Annette Taddeo, D-Miami recalls, I met many constituents who had no idea that their hurricane coverage did not include protections when their homes flooded. As a result, she introduced the Senate version of bill HB 1011.[1] The new law went into effect the beginning of 2019, requiring all new homeowner insurance policies to make clear if they do not cover flood damage. Randy Young, CEO of ArcDesign, residential design and drafting specialists, says, The insurance policy clarification is good news for new home buyers, however, it does nothing for existing homeowners who have not read the fine print of their extant insurance policies. If not sure, homeowners might want to contact their insurance companies before hurricane season to see if theyre covered.

Boston-based, Karen Clark & Company, an insurance company that produces models for catastrophes, is estimating Hurricane Michael caused about $8 billion in insured losses. It includes the privately insured wind and storm surge damage to residential, commercial and industrial properties and automobiles. The figure does not include losses covered by the National Flood Insurance Program.[2]

The Sunshine State has three times the homes at risk of flooding than any other state. When hurricane Irma struck Florida in 2017 3.3 million homes were damaged.[3] Now homeowners flood insurance premiums are going up again  and under a new policy change, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is considering, premiums could skyrocket even more in coming years. Coastal communities may be hit the hardest. FEMA reportedly is looking into switching to risk-based pricing in 2020, which would end the subsidies most coastal communities presently enjoy on their flood insurance premiums and show the true dollar cost of living in areas pounded by hurricanes and drenched with floods.[4]

Randy Young of ArcDesign suggests another way to avoid damage due to flooding. The best way to safeguard your home against flood damage, and at the same time lower your insurance premiums, is to elevate your house above the flood plain.

According to FEMA: Because so many elevation techniques are available, elevation is practical for almost any flood situation. In general, the most economical approach to elevating a house is to use as much of the existing foundation as possible. A design professional must evaluate the ability of your existing foundation to support the loads that will be imposed by the elevated house.[5]

For those that have homes in a flood zone, the 50% Rule, or Substantial Damage/Improvement Rule, states that a building must be elevated and brought into compliance if damaged by any cause for which the repair costs are 50% or more of the value of the building, and the building is both in a Special Flood Hazard Area and at a non-compliant elevation.[6]

If a home gets damaged and will cost more than 50% of the value of the house, homeowners are not allowed to repair their home without lifting it first. Young notes, In the case of a heavy storm where extensive improvements are necessary, homeowners may be out of their home for years. Not only are the insurance companies slow handling all of the claims, but specialists available to lift homes would also be stretched very thin. Elevating the home before a storm hits, in addition to saving money on insurance, would protect their investment and their home.

About ArcDesign

ArcDesign, headquartered in Clearwater, Fl has been providing custom home design, renovations and permit designs for residents and contractors since 2003. With an unrelenting commitment to quality, they have been awarded the prestigious Best in Houzz Service Award six years running. Influenced by a multitude of 5-star reviews, clients often refer to ArcDesign as the home designers that people recommend. They excel in design, permits, additions, remodeling and rebuilding. ArcDesign also specializes in raising houses in flood zones to protect the homes from flooding. For more information visit: https://www.arcdesign7.net

1. Writer, Times Staff. Florida Legislature 2018: What Passed and What Failed. Tampa Bay Times, 2018

2. Press, Associated. Hurricane Michael's Destruction, by the Numbers. PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 12 Oct. 2018

3. Passy, Jacob. After Hurricane Michael, What Homeowners Need to Know about Disaster Insurance. MarketWatch, 13 Oct. 2018

4. Harris, Alex. Your Flood Insurance Premium Is Going up Again, and That's Only the Beginning. Miamiherald, Miami Herald, 24 July 2018

5. https://www.fema.gov/pdf/rebuild/mat/sec5.pdf

6. FEMA's 50% Rule & How It May Affect Property, Wind vs Flood. Complete, Inc, 11 Feb. 2019


Landon Ridge Alamo Ranch Independent Living announces its sponsorship of the Texas Senior Games which occurs from March 28 - April 11. The highlight of the sponsorship is an open-house brunch on Sunday, March 31, 2019.

This event is a way to let all older adults know that we encourage and support them, said Michael Dorazio, Executive Director for Landon Ridge Alamo Ranch Independent Living. We are delighted to be a part of the Texas Senior Games and remind those of any age that they dont have to be an athlete to be healthy. The brunch is our way to spread this message.

An open-house brunch, complete with mimosas, will be hosted at Landon Ridge Alamo Ranch Independent Living at 11300 Wild Pine from 11 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

Tours of the community, which features spacious cottages and apartments, resort-style amenities, fine dining and a 24-hour concierge, will be offered with the brunch. In addition, visitors will have the opportunity to tour Landon Ridge Alamo Ranch Assisted Living and Memory Care at 11349 Alamo Ranch Parkway.

Please RSVP to Landon Ridge Alamo Ranch Independent Living at 210-816-4700 to reserve brunch seating or for a tour.

About Sagora Senior Living

Sagora Senior Living, based in Fort Worth, Texas, currently operates 39 retirement communities in five states, each with a unique focus on retirement lifestyle choices including independent living, assisted living, respite and memory care. The companys mission is to serve and celebrate the wisdom of their residents and family members by enriching their lives with a Resident First philosophy developed locally within each community. For more information about Sagora Senior Living, visit http://www.Sagora.com.
The merger of Xtelesis into Protel not only further advances our accretive growth plans but, with the addition of Mr. Krietzberg, it concurrently bolsters our Executive team with the talent and skill-set required to manage this growth.

In the latest in a series of strategic mergers and acquisitions, Protel Communications Inc., has announced it will merge with Xtelesis, a full-service IT Services and Unified Communications provider headquartered in Burlingame, CA.

In addition, Protel has also announced David Krietzberg as its new chief Financial Officer. Krietzberg is an industry veteran bringing more than 30 years of strategic and financial management experience. He began his telecommunication career with Isoetec and Executone, and has since served as CFO for industry luminaries such as Inter-Tel Technologies, Mitel US, Crexendo, and, most recently, Vertical Communications. Protel Communications CEO, Michael Promotico commented, The merger of Xtelesis into Protel not only further advances our accretive growth plans but, with the addition of Mr. Krietzberg, it concurrently bolsters our Executive team with the talent and skill-set required to manage this growth.

Xtelesis CEO Scott Strochak commented the combined companies will be the first major Mitel Blue and Mitel Orange company in the United States, That fact itself is significant, but more importantly shows our commitment to service the legacy ShoreTel customers, the legacy InterTel and Mitel customers, and provide a full suite of data and cloud offerings to all customers.

Promotico continued by saying, As a world-class IT services organization focused on customer service and support, Xtelesis not only helps Protel broaden our suite of offerings but with offices in Salt Lake City and the San Francisco Bay area, we significantly expand our geographic footprint and customer base.

The merger of Xtelesis will be the latest in a series of strategic and accretive transactions that Protel has entered into. It was preceded by the purchases of Advantel Networks in 2017 and Mills Communications and Tranquilnet Solutions, both in 2018.

Xtelesis CEO Scott Strochak commented, I am truly thrilled to align our team with an organization such as Protel Communications, and believe that this transaction will be beneficial to our collective customer base, both currently and well into the future.

The addition of Mr. Krietzberg further bolsters the Protel Executive Management team to now include a CFO who has overseen the integration, mergers and acquisitions of some of the largest and most impactful transactions in the telecommunications vertical. Included amongst these were the growth of Inter-Tel US direct sales from 22 offices to 65 branches, mainly through M&A activities.. More recently, Mr. Krietzberg, as CFO of Fulton Communications, established financial controls and leveraged growth transactions that subsequently led to the companys merger with Vertical Communications in 2014.

Promotico further commented, Dave is not only a consummate professional, but someone upon whom I have relied for advise, counsel and financial acumen for many years. I couldnt be happier to have our professional relationship evolve by having him now join the Protel team at such an exciting and pivotal time in the companys evolution. Mr Krietzberg replied, I have enjoyed working with the Protel and Xtelesis organizations and will now merge two great complementary business and advance our growth strategies.

Our mission is simply to make a material difference in our customers organizations by providing them with the most innovative, cost effective and market-leading business and IT solutions.

ABOUT PROTEL

Founded in 1995, and headquartered in San Diego with additional offices in San Jose and Sacramento, Protel is a premier provider of enterprise communications including cloud and data for 10,000+ customers across multiple vertical markets in multiple countries. Our customers include companies like Petco, eHarmony, Spokeo, St. Joseph Hospitals, Bose, Rabo Bank, and Hyatt Hotels.

Protel Communications provides clients with state-of-the-art communication technology, both hosted and on- premises, through a team of knowledgeable people in various locations across the country. Since our founding, the business communication professionals at Protel have always put the needs of the customer first. In doing so, we understand that successful communication technology depends upon professional, helpful people, making certain that the equipment works as intended and as needed. We recruit and reward some of the best and most talented people in the industry, and empower each team member to act in our customers' best interests.

For more information, please visit http://www.goprotel.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. For Protel media inquiries, please contact: dm (at) goprotel (dot)com

ABOUT XTELESIS

Xtelesis is a leader among IT Services and Unified Communications Providers headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area in Burlingame California with offices in Salt Lake City, Utah; and Bangalore, India. We provide technology solutions across six major practice areas: Unified Communications, Managed Services, Carrier Services, Data Networking, Security, and Analytics. This breadth allows us to be the one back to pat and simplifies all of your IT needs under one roof. Whether you are a single-site or have multiple locations, are simple or complex, feel old school or cutting-edge, well bring you cost savings, increased efficiency and more time for you to focus on your business.

For more information, please visit http://www.xtelesis.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
QuisLex As companies across industries try to comply with increasingly complex and new regulations and requirements globallyparticularly in the data privacy and security spaceI look forward to discussing and highlighting new and innovative approaches with my colleagues on the panel.

QuisLex, a leading alternative legal service provider, announced today that it will host a Lunch & Learn panel discussion at SIFMA's 2019 Compliance & Legal Annual Seminar. QuisLex's Senior Vice President Joseph Polizzotto and Associate Vice President of Corporate Solutions Chase DAgostino will be joined by Mark Harris, Global Head of Regulatory Compliance, Global Markets, at HSBC and Angie Karna, Managing Director, Legal, at Nomura Securities, Inc., in a session titled Managing Todays Compliance Challenges. The session will provide insight into approaches taken by leading financial institutions to build and effectively manage their programs.

The panelists will focus on five themes related to compliance: The steps to take before kicking off a project to set yourself up for success; where technology can be effectively used to automate tasks; how to build the right cross-functional teams to deploy on the right tasks; tips for gaining buy-in to your plan across the organization; and how things like prioritization and consolidation of outreaches can drive savings and ensure timelines are met.

For more than 50 years, SIFMAs C&L Annual Seminar has enabled compliance and legal professionals in the financial services industry to engage and discuss regulatory issues with industry-leading experts, says Polizzotto, who is also the former General Counsel  Americas at Deutsche Bank. As companies across industries try to comply with increasingly complex and new regulations and requirements globallyparticularly in the data privacy and security spaceI look forward to discussing and highlighting new and innovative approaches with my colleagues on the panel.

For the third consecutive year, QuisLex is a Presidential Sponsor of the Annual Seminar, which is the premier event for compliance and legal professionals working in the financial services industry. Now in its 51st year, the 2019 Annual Seminar provides a unique opportunity for industry leaders and regulators to gather for three days of information sharing, collaboration and networking.

The event will be held at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge in Phoenix from March 2427, 2019. Learn more at https://www.sifma.org/event/clannual/.

About QuisLex

QuisLex is an award-winning legal services provider that specializes in managed document review, contract management, compliance services, legal spend management, and legal operations consulting. Our full-time highly trained attorneys, process experts, legal technologists, statisticians and linguists work closely with our clients to reduce cost, mitigate risk and maximize efficiency. QuisLex is regularly acknowledged as a leader in the legal services industry, and is proud to be recognized by the Financial Times as an FT Intelligent Business 35, ACC as an ACC Value Champion, Chambers and Partners as a Band 1 Legal Process Outsourcing Provider, New York Law Journal as a Top Managed Document Review Services Provider, and the IACCM as its Outstanding Service Provider for contract management solutions. To learn more, visit http://www.quislex.com.


Rigaku at Pittcon 2019 The Rigaku booth - 3151 in Hall D - highlights their new corporate unified brand.

Rigaku Corporation is pleased to introduce a new unified brand identity at the 70th annual Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon 2019), held Sunday, March 17 through Thursday, March 21, 2019 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA USA.

The Rigaku booth - 3151 in Hall D - highlights their new corporate unified brand. As white light is a combination of all colors, so the new white motif, with blue signage, is designed to symbolize all of Rigaku Corporations operational segments blended together into a global one Rigaku. Rigaku provides the worlds most complete line of X-ray analytical instruments and will be exhibiting their diverse line of lines of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and handheld Raman and LIBS instrumentation.

As part of their new brand identity, a Rigaku Digital Portal Initiative (R-dpi) was launched today, at www2.rigaku.com, in English, with Google neural machine translations for other languages. Developed in Drupal 8, the new web site features a state of the art design and is fully responsive for mobile devices. It features predictive search with faceted results to enable rapid discovery of potential solutions to customer problems.

Another technology debuting at PittCon 2019 is the Rigaku C-Cast System, a branded marketing asset portal designed to facilitate global sales by providing fast retrieval of product information from within an easy-to-use graphical user interface environment. There will be three tablet computers in the booth to provide real-time product data during conversations with customers on-site. In conjunction with the new electronic kiosks for signage, Rigaku will deliver a superior customer experience.

Rigaku is showing the Rigaku Supermini200 benchtop wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) spectrometer, and the new sixth generation Rigaku MiniFlex benchtop X-ray diffractometer.

Rigaku is also presenting the Rigaku NEX QC series of low-cost benchtop energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometers. Rigaku NEX DE series of high-performance, direct excitation EDXRF elemental analyzers are also featured.

The latest Raman and laser induced breakdown (LIBS) analyzers, including the Rigaku Progeny and Progeny ResQ 1064 nm handheld analyzers and the Rigaku KT-100S handheld LIBS spectrometer, are also presented at the event

About Rigaku

Since its inception in Japan in 1951, Rigaku has been at the forefront of analytical and industrial instrumentation technology. Rigaku and its subsidiaries form a global group focused on general-purpose analytical instrumentation and the life sciences. With hundreds of major innovations to their credit, Rigaku companies are world leaders in X-ray spectrometry, diffraction, and optics, as well as small molecule and protein crystallography and semiconductor metrology. Today, Rigaku employs over 1,400 people in the manufacturing and support of its analytical equipment, which is used in more than 90 countries around the world supporting research, development, and quality assurance activities. Throughout the world, Rigaku continuously promotes partnerships, dialog, and innovation within the global scientific and industrial communities.

For further information, contact:

Michael Nelson

Rigaku Global Marketing Group

tel: +1. 512-225-1796

michael.nelson(at)rigaku.com
As consumers choices for video continue to grow, the overarching importance of quality has fuelled customer interest in our solutions,"

SSIMWAVE, an innovator in the science of perceptual video quality measurement, today announced that Jim Daves, an integral contributor to the adoption of new technologies throughout his cable career, has joined the company as Director of Sales.

Daves, who most recently had been senior director of sales, strategic accounts for Verizon Medias Volicon arm, will be responsible for meeting expanded customer interest in SSIMWAVE solutions within the content, service provider and advertising sectors. Earlier this year, SSIMWAVE announced the hiring of Carlos Hernandez as vice president of sales, international and Brent Ross as director of sales to drive global growth.

As consumers choices for video continue to grow, the overarching importance of quality has fuelled customer interest in our solutions, said Dianne Mercer, vice president, sales for SSIMWAVE. Jim Daves skill in communicating the value of new technologies significantly increases our ability to collaboratively work with customers on solutions that virtualize how humans perceive video and apply quality metrics to enterprise environments.

With Volicon, Daves worked closely to drive deployment of video monitoring and logging solutions with North American Tier 1 and Tier 2 pay-TV providers. Previously he successfully helped the industry maximize the value of emerging technologies as senior director, sales with Ericsson, Triveni Digital and Scientific Atlantas Power TV arm and as senior account executive with Technicolor. Earlier in his career, he was a regional sales manager with General Instrument Corporation and later with Hybrid Networks, for which he helped to pioneer the growth of broadband services.

SSIMWAVE Inc.

A company at the forefront of Viewer Intelligence (VI), SSIMWAVE is built on an Engineering Emmy Award-winning algorithm. SSIMWAVE is defining the future of video delivery by beginning with the end-viewer in mind. SSIMWAVE provides the most accurate measure of how humans perceive video. By modeling, measuring and optimizing viewer experience at every stage of the digital video distribution system, broadcasters, streamers, and content creators can deliver the ultimate viewing experience to consumers on any screen over any network.
According to Dewosky, There truly is no one more deserving...of this recognition....[Robert] truly is the perfect representation of the stellar customer service our company strives to provide for every client, on every project, every time.

The Trade Group is pleased to announce that one of its installation and dismantle veterans was recognized by Exhibit City News (ECN) at the first annual ECN I&D ACE Awards. Robert Lassiter, an I&D Supervisor, has worked for The Trade Group since 2002. He was nominated for the ACE award by his coworker Becca Dewosky.

According to Dewosky, There truly is no one more deserving and more appreciative of this recognition. Everyone always has such great things to say about Robert and his dedication to The Trade Group and our clients. He truly is the perfect representation of the stellar customer service our company strives to provide for every client, on every project, every time.

Exhibit City News, a magazine that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, launched the awards in 2019 to honor the I&D contractors and laborers who make trade shows and events HAPPEN. The awards program pays tribute to individuals who bring excellence to the show floors and exhibit houses. I&D ACES are to be recognized for their dedication to company, customer, facility, union and coworkersfor going above and beyond with their hard work, loyalty and dedication.

In order to be considered for nomination, award submissions needed to include a minimum of one testimonial from both a client and a coworker. Award criteria also required the submission of a story demonstrating how the nominee went above and beyond on the show floor or through charitable works for an industry association.

Dewosky submitted two client and two coworker testimonials on Roberts behalf. There are two common themes that always come up when people share what they appreciate most about Robert. First, they all say they wish Robert could be the I&D Supervisor on ALL of their projects. Second, in the event that problems arise during an install, they know they can rely on Robert to go above and beyond to resolve things, Dewosky says.

For the ECN I&D ACE Awards, Lassiter was recognized as one of four Traveling Leads of the Year ACEs. Other ECN awards included Rookie of the Year ACE, Regional I&D ACE, Best City/Regional Manager of the Year ACE, Best Firefighter of the Year ACE and Seasoned Show Floor Veterans of the Year ACEs. The awards ceremony coincided with EXHIBITORLIVE week and took place at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas.

To learn more about The Trade Groups installation and dismantle services or the companys innovative solutions for trade shows, live events, brand activations and more, call 800-343-2005 or visit http://www.tradegroup.com.

About The Trade Group

The Trade Group is an award winning, full-service event marketing and creative design firm, specializing in trade shows, esports events and activations, corporate events, brand activations, retail merchandising, commercial graphics and experiential solutions. Since 1986, the companys team of live event, design and engineering experts has helped thousands of clients amplify their brands and successfully navigate a wide range of events and experiences. Clients rely on The Trade Group for: event ideation, creation and production; esports expertise; exhibit design and fabrication; graphic design and production; strategic marketing solutions; technology integration and more.
Official Poster A deeply moving visual film that interweaves love, fear, beauty, nature and hope.

The Wake of Light (https://www.thewakeoflightmovie.com) is a romantic drama about a young woman (Rome Brooks) caring for her aging father and their broken-down farm who meets a charismatic young man (Matt Bush, from the TV Series, The Goldbergs) on a cross-country road trip, who falls for her and asks her to come with him. In confronting the heart-rending choice to leave her father and journey with Cole, Mary is forced to confront the real issue keeping her from having a life of her own make the hardest decision in her life.

"I'm absolutely thrilled that The Methodfest Film Festival has selected The Wake of Light for our World Premier. It's a festival that showcases breakout acting performances in independent film. As a husband and wife team, Rome Brooks being my wife of 13 years, it makes me extremely proud of this recognition for her amazing performance in the lead role," said Renji Philip.

Tickets for The Methodfest Film Festival's World Premiere screening of The Wake of Light on March 27th at 7:15pm can be purchased at http://www.methodfest.com

With The Wake of Light, writer-director-producer Renji Philip has done the impossible. He's crafted a film about the timely topic of caring for an aging parent, while simultaneously interweaving themes of spiritual longing, overcoming fear and embracing hope, with gorgeous cinematography by Cinematographer Rainer Lipski and emotive piano music by lauded composer/performer Josh Kramer that makes the spirit soar. The character of Mary is both tender-hearted and sympathetic yet ultimately strong and quietly courageous. She embodies the inspiring character traits of a new kind of female hero.

Academy and Bafta award-winning editor, Thom Noble, quotes: "The Wake of Light is a film from the heart. Beautifully told and beautifully acted. Congratulations to Renji Philip for bringing it all together."

Following The Methodfest Film Festival in Los Angeles, The Wake of Light will be screening at Worldfest-Houston, Ozakfoothills Film Festival in Batesville, AK, Marietta Film Festival in Marietta, GA, Silicon Beach and Culver City Film Festivals in Los Angeles and will be toured to Universities, both stateside and through select European cities with Renji Philip speaking to film departments on how to write, direct and produce a film with a 3-person crew and a unique set of rules the inspires unlimited creativity.

The Wake of Light is scheduled to be released theatrically to select theaters in North America and via streaming after the first of the year.

About Renji Philip:

Renji Philip feels compelled to make films that endorse gender equality, including writing female lead parts that make empowered, sometimes atypical character choices. He grew up in Littleton, Colorado, graduated from the University of Miami and studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory in New York for 2 years and with Howard Fine as a scholarship student in Los Angeles for 4 years. He's written, directed and produced 5 short films and 2 features (including The Wake of Light). His work has been featured at the Palm Springs, Raindance-London, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Cinequest, Starz-Denver, Mill Valley, Bel Air and Clermont-Ferrand film festivals and markets.

About Axispacific Filmworks:

Axispacific Filmworks is a Los Angeles-based production company formed by Renji Philip to produce films that challenge stereotypes, often suggest connections between chance, destiny and coincidence and films that endorse gender equality, including female lead parts that make empowered, sometimes atypical character choices.

Official Website:

https://www.thewakeoflightmovie.com/

Janie Somers / Philip Patrick

Axispacific Filmworks

Outreach Coordinators

800-509-9256

janiesomers(at)axispacificfilmworks(dot)com

philip(at)axispacificfilmworks(dot)com
Tiff's Treats will begin delivering warm cookies, baked to order, this May in Lubbock. Our passion is making people happy through warm cookie moments, as we call them  the experience of receiving a box of warm cookies to help celebrate a milestone or brighten a tough day, said Tiffany Chen. Were excited to start sharing these moments with our new neighbors in Lubbock.

Tiffs Treats, the Austin-based original warm cookie delivery company, will open this May in Lubbock, Texas, serving Texas Tech University, Lubbock Christian University, downtown and most neighborhoods in the Central Lubbock area with its classic warm cookie delivery.

Located at 411 University Avenue near Jones AT&T Stadium, the store is perfectly situated between the Texas Tech campus and downtown, allowing both areas to receive deliveries of warm, fresh-baked cookies and brownies and cold milk and ice cream in a hurry when doors open in mid-May. Customers can place delivery orders for homes or businesses, or can drop in to satisfy a cookie craving or pick up their order if they prefer.

Tiffs Treats founders Tiffany and Leon Chen, who started the business 20 years ago as friends at The University of Texas at Austin, said the company has heard its social media followers requests for a Tiffs Treats in Lubbock, and is delivering on those requests. They also cite Lubbocks collegiate energy and significant economic growth and development as factors in choosing this newest Texas location.

Our passion is making people happy through warm cookie moments, as we call them  the experience of receiving a box of warm cookies to help celebrate a milestone or brighten a tough day, said Tiffany Chen. Were excited to start sharing these moments with our new neighbors in Lubbock.

Lubbock residents can look forward to a grand opening party benefitting a local charity when the store opens in May. Each Tiffs Treats stores grand opening celebration features warm cookies for $5 a dozen, free cookie gift cards and giveaways, and the featured local charity receives all of the days cookie sales up to $5,000.

The charitably-minded cookie company took on $25 million of investor funding in 2017 thats allowed recent expansion throughout Texas and into new markets including Atlanta, Nashville, and later this summer, Charlotte, North Carolina.

About Tiffs Treats

Tiffs Treats created the warm cookie delivery concept. Tiffs Treats makes classic, baked-to-order cookies and brownies and delivers them straight from the oven to the home or office, WARM, in about an hour or so. Orders can be placed on demand or scheduled for a later date or time. Customers can order seamlessly via phone, online or the newly released Tiffs Treats app, all of which are supported by industry-leading technology and customer service. Founded in 1999, what started as two friends baking cookies at The University of Texas at Austin to help fellow students get through exams has now grown to 48 stores in Texas, Georgia and Tennessee with more than 900 employees, baking more than 100 million cookies since its inception. And the company is consistently focused on giving back: with grand opening fundraisers that fill needs for charities (and hungry bellies for Tiff's Treats fans!), Tiffs Treats has donated more than $150,000 to worthy causes. To learn more, please visit

http://www.cookiedelivery.com.


Trust Automation Inc. announced today that it is moving to a larger facility at 125 Venture Drive, San Luis Obispo, California. It was important for us to remain in the Central Coast Region, which has nurtured our rapid growth with the best technical talent pool we could hope to find, says Ty Safreno, Trust Automations Chief Executive and Technical Officer.

Trust Automation Inc., a supplier of automation and cyber defense systems for industrial and military applications, announced today that it is moving to a larger facility at 125 Venture Drive, San Luis Obispo, California.

At 96,000 square feet, the new facility more than doubles the amount of space Trust has for its U.S.- based engineering, manufacturing and business operations. The companys current facility, at 44,000 square feet, is located less than a mile away at 143 Suburban Road.

It was important for us to remain in the Central Coast Region, which has nurtured our rapid growth with the best technical talent pool we could hope to find, says Ty Safreno, Trust Automations Chief Executive and Technical Officer.

Trust will use the extra space to expand its established semiconductor, defense and industrial businesses. The new facility also includes additional room for the companys recently announced Trust Intelligence Systems division, which focuses on cyber defense devices for legacy IoT networks.

Trusts new facility was formerly occupied by Lockheed Martin and includes dedicated areas for engineering, research-and-development, quality control and manufacturing.

Without a doubt, its the premier industrial space in the San Luis Obispo area, says Charley Senn, SIOR, the Anderson Commercial Real Estate broker who represented Trust in the search for a new facility.

Trust Automation is not disclosing terms of the transaction.

Ends

About Trust Automation

Trust Automation has 25 years of experience in custom; motors, linear drives, digital drives and systems which meet the unique needs of its customers. Its product line includes motors, linear drives, digital drives custom assemblies and products to fit unique applications and ground-up system design and manufacturing solutions.

As of today, Trust Automation has grown to a 50,000 square foot facility that supports its 70+ team of engineers, designers, manufacturers and customer service employees.

Click here to download a high-resolution image of 125 Venture Drive, San Luis Obispo, CA.
At National Center for Housing Management we know that a bright future for veterans awaits them in the housing industry, said Ms. Burke.

The National Center for Housing Management (NCHM) unveiled the Veterans for Housing Initiative (VHI)  a landmark effort to attract veterans of the U.S. military to jobs in the housing industry.

Beginning in July, NCHM will offer scholarships to qualified veterans to attend any of the 400+ courses it offers nationwide and earn its industry-leading certifications. The commitment has a value of $1,000,000.

The housing industry is a great place for veterans to start or re-start their civilian careers, said NCHM President Paul Votto. Many of the skills and competencies developed in service to our country are in strong demand in the housing industry. This program will enable veterans to find a rewarding career while they provide great help to our industry. Thus, the name Veterans for Housing  vets will be able to contribute to their own well-being and that of their families while helping to strengthen neighborhoods and communities across America.

The scholarship program is named in honor of the late Chairman and CEO of NCHM, John Burke, who guided the organization from 1981 until 2017. It is the first step in what will be a major push to attract veterans to careers in housing management.

The second step of the Initiative will be the Veterans for Housing Internship Program. NCHM is in the process of securing commitments for twenty-five, year-long paid positions. The public and private organizations we have reached out to so far have expressed overwhelming enthusiasm, said Votto. They recognize the great potential that veterans represent for our industry.

NCHM will train candidates for the positions at no cost to the participating veterans. Applicants will be assisted by NCHM career advisors who will match the veterans skills and interests with the appropriate education and internship.

The twenty-five, year-long internships are just the start, said Votto. It is our intention to substantially expand the program in the future.

Wendy Burke, current Chair of NCHM and the daughter of Mr. Burke, said the Veterans for Housing Initiative is not a NCHM-only program and emphasized its grassroots nature.

We hope to fulfill the mandate of the Executive Order of the President that created NCHM in 1972 by providing leadership in this important area, said Ms. Burke. And we believe that the entire industry will get behind this effort for our veterans, who have done so much for our country.

NCHM will hold a summit in June where representatives of the housing industry, veterans groups, government and other interested organizations will explore ways to expand the Initiative.

At NCHM we like to say, the future is bright and we know that a bright future for veterans awaits them in the housing industry, said Ms. Burke.

The website address for this initiative is: veteransforhousing.org

NCHM is a non-profit organization created by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1972 pursuant to an Executive Order of the President of the United States. The organization provides objective and independent leadership in helping to meet the Nations housing management needs through education, professional certification, and technical assistance. Annually, more than 10,000 professionals attend NCHM programs and scores of public and private clients rely on its technical assistance to improve the quality of both affordable and market-rate multi-family and senior housing.
Bogey I'm relieved to say that the therapy has him back to his original self. I love having my walking buddy back.

Bogey was nine years old when he injured both of his cruciate ligaments. On top of that, Bogey has advanced arthritis in his left hip. These ailments caused Bogey to experience problems with his mobility. According to his owners, he could barely walk and required assistance getting into vehicles, up stairs, and onto his special spot on the couch.

His owners, devastated at the sight of Bogey in so much pain and the possibility that they might lose him, sought the opinion of veterinarian Dr. Eva DeCozio of VCA Apache Junction Animal Hospital. Fortunately, Dr. DeCozio recommended treatment with VetStem Regenerative Cell Therapy. In July of 2018, Bogey had fat collected from beneath his skin in a minimally invasive surgical procedure. The fat was packaged in a temperature-controlled shipping container and shipped overnight to the VetStem laboratory in San Diego, California. Once received, VetStem lab technicians aseptically processed the fat to extract Bogeys stem cells and create injectable doses of his own stem and regenerative cells. These injections were shipped back to Dr. DeCozio who received and injected them within 48 hours of the initial fat collection. Bogey received one injection into each knee along with one injection into his left hip and one intravenous injection. All remaining stem cells were stored in Bogeys stem cell bank for potential future use.

During the first month after Bogeys stem cell therapy, he still required assistance moving around. Slowly, he began to do more and more on his own. By the third month following stem cell therapy, he was back to taking his regular walks. According to his owners, his energy level and personality was also back to normal. His mom stated, I'm relieved to say that the therapy has him back to his original self. I love having my walking buddy back. Now, over eight months after Bogeys stem cell treatment, he continues to do well. According to his owner, though he is slowing down in his older age, he still takes his daily walks to the park.

Stem cells are regenerative cells that can differentiate into many tissue types, reduce pain and inflammation, help to restore range of motion, and stimulate regeneration of tendon, ligament and joint tissues. In a peer-reviewed study of dogs with chronic osteoarthritis of the hip, it was found that stem cells reduced lameness and pain.

About VetStem Biopharma, Inc.

VetStem Biopharma is a veterinarian-lead Company that was formed in 2002 to bring regenerative medicine to the profession. This privately held biopharmaceutical enterprise, based near San Diego, California, currently offers veterinarians an autologous stem cell processing service (from patients own fat tissue) among other regenerative modalities. With a unique expertise acquired over the past 15 years and 17,000 treatments by veterinarians for joint, tendon or ligament issues, VetStem has made regenerative medicine applications a therapeutic reality. The VetStem team is focused on developing new clinically practical and affordable veterinary solutions that leverage the natural restorative abilities present in all living creatures. In addition to its own portfolio of patents, VetStem holds exclusive global veterinary licenses to a large portfolio of issued patents in the field of regenerative medicine.
This show highlights the Midwifery practice at Womens Excellence and the Karmanos Natural Birth Center at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.

Womens Excellence in Obstetrics and Gynecology hosts the Healthy Woman Show on WJR 760AM radio on the third Wednesday of each month. The March show airs Wednesday, March 20 at 7pm.

This show highlights the Midwifery practice at Womens Excellence and the Karmanos Natural Birth Center at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak.

Special guests include Danialle Karmanos, Barb Crone, and Laura Smuts. Danialle Karmanos is a Michigan philanthropist that funded the Karmanos Natural Birth Center. Danialle discusses the reasons behind creating a natural birth center and all of the amenities for women. Barb Crone and Laura Smuts, Womens Excellence Midwives, discuss the benefits of natural birth and other services midwives can provide.

For more information about Womens Excellence or to schedule an appointment, visit http://www.WomensExcellence.com. Online Patient Support Specialists are available Monday through Friday from 8am-5pm to assist new, current, and prospective patients. The chat is located at the bottom right corner of your computer or mobile device screen at http://www.WomensExcellence.com.

Womens Excellence is the most comprehensive obstetric and gynecologic office in Michigan. Additionally, they specialize in menopause, weight control, bladder control, endometriosis, robotic surgery, oncology, and midwifery services. Womens Excellence is committed to staying at the forefront of innovation with cutting edge technologies utilizing robotic surgery and minimally invasive surgical options when possible. The knowledgeable, compassionate physicians and healthcare providers of Womens Excellence focus on patient-centered processes to deliver the highest quality of care. They are affiliated with most insurances. They offer seamless medical record access via a state-of-the-art patient portal and use the latest technology for record keeping and sharing, making the patient experience easier and more efficient. Womens Excellence is taking new patients and is conveniently located throughout southeastern Michigan in Birmingham, Lake Orion, Clarkston, Rochester, and West Bloomfield. Coming soon, Womens Excellence will open locations in Royal Oak and Lapeer, Michigan. For more information, visit http://www.WomensExcellence.com.
Bob Schmid, a longtime Simon & Schuster sales representative, died February 28 in Baltimore, Md. He was 74.

An avid reader from a young age, Schmid attended the Great Books program at St. Johns College in Annapolis, Md. After working at Remingtons Books in Baltimore, Schmid joined the Pocket Book division of S&S in the early 1980s, selling mass market paperbacks. Among his major accounts was Crown Books.

In the 1990s, Schmid joined the trade division of S&S in a reorganization of the sales groups. His territory at that time included the Baltimore and Washington markets. Around the year 2000, his territory was expanded to include Virginia and part of North Carolina.

Schmid retired from S&S for health reasons in 2007. He is survived by two sisters, three nieces, and two grand-nieces.
Penguin Innovations, a Purdue University-affiliated startup, created a virtual interactive cleanroom to teach future pharmacists and technicians how to properly prepare and handle medications and other products found in pharmacies. (Image provided)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  A deadly meningitis outbreak linked to a Massachusetts pharmaceutical lab has drawn new interest to the way drugs are made in the United States and the training for those who work in pharmacies.

Now, a Purdue University-affiliated startup has come up with an interactive and virtual way to teach future pharmacists and technicians how to properly prepare and handle medications and other products found in pharmacies.

Penguin Innovations, founded by Steve Abel, a professor of pharmacy practice in Purdues College of Pharmacy and Purdues associate provost for engagement, created a virtual interactive cleanroom (VIC). Those sterile rooms, where medications are prepared, are common in hospitals and pharmaceutical labs. A video about the VIC is available at http://bit.ly/vic-Purdue.

The more you practice, the better you become, Abel said. Our virtual cleanroom environment provides a space to accelerate learning while overcoming the barriers of cost and limited resources.

Abel said colleges and pharmacy technician training programs could save up to $18,000 per student in drug and supply costs from preparing just one dose of the available products in the VIC. The virtual room has about 70 of the most commonly prescribed drug products, along with their actual product labeling, including adult, pediatric and hazardous products.

The virtual interactive cleanroom is divided into two environments: the standard cleanroom and a special room for hazardous products. The on-demand instructional format provides direct real-time feedback and testing capabilities. It offers training consistent with accreditation standards for pharmacy technician and pharmacist education and training programs.

At Purdue we are all about taking our knowledge and resources out into the world to improve the quality of life for people near and far, Abel said. This is an extraordinary example of Purdue taking our expertise in pharmacy and turning it into a useful tool to save lives through better medication preparation.

Abel worked with undergraduate and graduate students in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute to create the virtual cleanroom.

Abel also received entrepreneurial support from Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization accelerator in Discovery Parks Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship. He is looking for training programs, hospitals and other partners interested in the VIC.

The technology aligns with Purdue's Giant Leaps celebration, acknowledging the universitys global advancements in health as part of Purdues 150th anniversary. This is one of the four themes of the yearlong celebrations Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues.

About Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship

Discovery Parks Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship is Purdue Universitys gateway for innovation and entrepreneurship on campus. It houses a number of programs and competitions for student and faculty entrepreneurs designed to encourage innovation and discover big ideas that have potential to benefit society. The Burton D. Morgan Center works closely with the Purdue Foundry and Purdue Ventures to enhance the universitys robust entrepreneurial ecosystem and to provide meaningful access to capital and talent for Purdue entrepreneurs. The center also houses Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program, which is administered through Purdues Office of the Provost, and is the primary vehicle for delivering entrepreneurship education to over 1,800 students across campus each year.

Writer: Chris Adam, 765-588-3341, cladam@prf.org



Source: Steve Abel, abels@purdue.edu
IRAN: President Hassan Rouhani opened the 164 km Qazvin  Rasht railway with a ceremony on March 6. He said Iranian engineers had overcome many complexities since the project was launched in 2002.
RUSSIA: Central Suburban Passenger Co has awarded Transmashholdings Demikhovsky factory a contract to supply 21 Class EP2D electric multiple-units, to be financed by Sberbank Leasing.
Bharti Telemedias direct-to-home (DTH) company Airtel Digital TV is reportedly in exploratory talks with rival Dish TV India for what is being described as a mega merger by the Economic Times.





The merger, if realised, would create a satellite TV platform with over 38.6 million subscribers and a 63% share of Indias DTH market.The talks follow the acquisition by Mukesh Ambanis ** Reliance Jio of controlling stakes in cable TV companies DEN Networks and Hathway Cable and Datacom . Although the company is new to thetelevision distribution sector, Jio has successfully disrupted Indias mobile sector and is now planning to do the same for fixed line broadband and IPTV services.Currently, Dish TV India is the biggest TV distribution company in the country with 23.6 million subscribers at the end of 2018. Airtel Digital TV registered 15 million subscribers as of the third quarter (Q3) in the 2019 financial year, Dish TV, which merged with Videocon d2h in March 2018 , held a 41% market share in Q2 2019, while Airtel Digital TV held a 22% share, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).Dish TV and Airtel Digital TV have each refused to comment on the merger speculation in the Indian daily business newspape r.
International quality assurance (QA) specialists Testronic has opened a testing facility in Santiago De Chile to service the growing Latin American over-the-top market.





The company says that the drive to expand into Latin America is driven by the predicted explosion of OTT media consumption in the region. Additionally, Testronic noted that it has had interest from several OTT providers wanting to launch services in the region, which has spurred on the founding of the testing facility.Established over 20 years ago, Testronic already has facilities in London, Warsaw and Burbank and claims to have teams of quality assurance experts who are able to test the consumer experience on all platforms, ensuring OTT services deliver the best possible experience to end users.The Latin American OTT market represents a huge growth opportunity, especially for sports. Our QA testing services help ensure the successful delivery of the best possible end user experience from launch, said Chris Parry, VP of strategic partnerships, Testronic , Santiago is the best place to initiate our expansion in the LATAM market with one of the most open, stable economies and a rich pool of talent. We are excited to join the growing media services community in Santiago.
Headquartered in Barcelona, the leading European audio-visual company says that the move is a part of its strategy of evolving in its role as the benchmark content producer in Spain, growing into an active protagonist on the international stage by driving productions designed for the global market.The Mediapro Studio has ten creative offices around the world, with 34 series underway in 2019 and a global investment of 200 million for producing series, films, shows, short formats and documentaries in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, Finland, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, the United States and the Middle East. It will use the funding to create, produce and distribute 34 series in Spanish and English in a bid to cement its reputation as a significant player in content creation.After more than 20 years of producing content and making contributions to the international Spanish fiction productions, the Group is now acting as representative and the driving force behind projects designed for all markets and operators. The studios structure is said to encompass development, creation, production, audio-visual services, artistic direction and distribution.In addition, The Mediapro Studio will be involved in funding new projects. This it says entails a paradigm shift for traditional production models in Spain, by creating a global brand that will enable the Group to create large franchises, fund projects and control distribution and intellectual property rights in association with major international partners.Javier Mendez Zori, Javier Pons and Laura Fernandez Espeso will oversee the Studio's productions in all territories to drive creation, production, funding and content distribution. It will also reinforce its presence in the USA through its New York office which opened three years ago.The time has come to move beyond our role as a production company and to become a Studio, explained Jaume Roures, managing partner of The Mediapro Group . For 25 years, we have produced hundreds of high-quality projects all around the world, with the ability to develop global content, all the way from concept through broadcasting, including executive production and artistic direction. Because of this, we feel we are ready to go one step further and create unique content.Tatxo Benet, Group managing partner added: We want to be a global company, a key player in the international content industry, strengthening our presence around the world as a part of our growth. We are very excited about this step, which will enable us to increase our audience and production capacity.
The head of Army Materiel Command said recently that he is putting a high priority on munitions readiness to make sure Army units are prepared for the next war.

"This means having the right munitions  small-caliber to precision munitions  where we need them at the right time and the right place," Gen. Gus Perna told an audience at a March 14 Association of the United States Army event. "That means we must first ensure that the capability we have here in [the U.S.] can receive, store and issue munitions in a timely, effective manner."
Fascist agenda must be stopped

The fascistic political shades present in the current federal government and in mainstream politics are making themselves known, encouraged by successive Coalition governments; from the snarling, attack dog approach of former PM Tony Abbott; former Attorney General George Brandis (I want the right to be a bigot) to the abuse of children, women and men in offshore detention centres and the dispossession of Indigenous Australians driven by continued policies underpinned by genocide.

The left has a challenge to defeat the enemies of reason and humanity.

To Queensland Liberal MP George Christenson speaking at rallies of fascist groups; former One Nation Senator Fraser Annings final solution speech in parliament and now his statement on the mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by a fascist terrorist, (at the time of writing 50 dead, another 50 in hospital) as being caused by Muslim immigration.

An Australian man, Brenton Tarrant, has been charged with murder in New Zealand.

This rise of the fascist right has been aided and abetted by the homogenisation of the various interconnected fascist groupings in Australia  their normalisation  by the media and the two major parties.

Ideologically, the common propaganda line of aligned fascist forces in the industrialised Western countries  among them National Front in France, Freedom Party in the Netherlands, Alternative for Germany party, UKIP in Britain, and its most prominent member, the Trump administration, is based on a mantra that Western Civilisation (the civilised world) is in a global war against Islam.

But in fact law enforcement agencies in the Western hemisphere have for a long time been warning that the number one terror threat comes from right-wing extremism. In the USA, 100 percent of all terrorist attacks on US soil have been carried out by right-wing extremists, attacks carried out with increasing frequency and ferocity in mosques, synagogues and Black churches.

(It should be noted that PM Scott Morrison has avoided the use of the words terrorist and fascist when referring to the Christchurch attack.)

The election of Pauline Hanson and other One Nation candidates to the Senate is just one indicator of the trend in promoting fascists in the formal political structure. Hanson - and her ilk in the Liberal-National Coalition (the clique behind the ouster of Malcolm Turnbull) have ridden a wave of racism, nationalism and anti-scientific attitudes into Parliament. These sentiments had already been stirred up by major conservative parties and by hate-mongers in the corporate media. The resuscitated career of Hanson et al and the emergence of a brace of other extreme right political forces are not an exclusively Australian phenomenon.

Similar scenarios are playing out across the capitalist world as economic crisis bites hard, governments make savage cuts to social spending, corporate taxes are cut and working people are expected to foot the bill for massive military budgets. Racism and other scapegoats and distractions are trotted out to divert attention from the real causes of the crises facing the working class.

The left has a mighty challenge on its hands to defeat these enemies of reason and humanity.

Hanson plays the populist, to instil fear in an environment where people are already feeling insecure over their jobs, wages, the future of Medicare, housing and what future their children have.

It should not come as a surprise that One Nation had its best results in working class suburban and rural electorates where discontent with the major parties is the greatest.

Fuelling hatred and division

Hanson and her ilk fuel hatred and division. They tap into peoples fears and ignorance. The corporate media play a key role in keeping people in the dark with a constant stream of non-news and outright lies about the economy, government policy, Australias involvement in US wars, the so-called illegal asylum seekers and other important issues.

A massive operation is also underway in the media and elsewhere in the ideological apparatus to trivialise the left and other progressive forces that embrace concepts of equality, collectivity and multiculturalism. Indulgence is being encouraged for ideas once correctly identified as ignorant and harmful, as fuelling hatred, division and violence.

Not a day goes by where there is not some beat-up about the threat of terrorism, always linked to Islam  all concepts taken up and exploited by Hanson and other ultra-right outfits.

Today it is the Muslim community that is scapegoated, when the real threat to social harmony is the ultra-right politics of One Nation and other fascist groups.

Hansons election also arises from a spike in institutional racism. Right-wing commentators allege that the left has successfully substituted minority rights for the inclusive values of what she refers to as western civilisation.

Hanson has strong support within Liberal Party ranks.

The right is networking and building, supported by major institutions of the capitalist state, advancing their reactionary political agenda. The left will have to unite as never before and gather the support of the decisive force for progressive change, for workers and other exploited people. The anti-human, fascistic agenda is becoming clearer. It must not pass!
According to Royster, Pueblo was a cocklebur ship, and public indignation...[was] hardly surprising; how what happened happened [sic] is something to get indignant about. At the time, however, many called out against even the existence of the court:

Many newspapers, and quite a few Congressmen, have denounced the Navy for calling the Board and subjecting Commander Bucher to the ordeal of recounting what happened. One newspaper has called it a "drum head" court; another speaks of the "cruelty" of asking the captain to relive his agony. There was an especial furor when Commander Bucher was told that he need not testify since he might be later court-martialed for losing his ship; this, so runs the allegation, was nefarious because it damned him without trial. One Congressman has likened the inquiry to a crucifixion, and several newspaper stories have implied that it wouldn't happening if Commander Bucher were a Naval Academy graduate instead of a "mustang," an officer up from the ranks.[7]

Rather, Royster praises the Navy for the public inquiry, for how else might the countrythe very citizens the Navy serveshave learned what happened on January 23, 1968, or the following eleven months? Without the public inquiry the American people would never have learned how misjudgments in higher places...sent an ill-prepared ship on an impossible mission.[8]

Now, as in Roysters time, there are many who think that whats done is done and seeking an account of what happened when, what someone knew, and when it was known doesnt matter. Royster presciently wrote:

What, indeed, could be a greater cruelty to this captain than to have left him with the onus of having surrendered his ship, of having made false confessions against his country, with no public place to tell us why, so that we can give him the compassion which is, his due? Yet however that may be, there is another thing. Whatever, in the end, our judgments of this captain and the admirals who sent him to this ordeal, it is right to ask what happened. When men accept responsibility they should also accept accountability for what they do with it.[9]

As in 1952, Royster saw a country moving away from holding government accountable, where many wanted to let what was done be done:

Everywhere, that is, except on the sea. There, since time immemorial admirals, commanders and lowly lieutenants have been asked to account for what they did. Not necessarily to be blamed, for the accounting can absolve as well as condemn; but simply to say, "This is what I did and why" so that others may judge, and perhaps learn. It may seem cruel, this tradition of asking good and well-intentioned men to account for their deeds. But what ought truly to be lamented is that it is a tradition so little honored elsewhere.[10]

In the last eight years, U.S. Navy ships were involved in almost 20 collisions and a half dozen groundings. In no case was a public hearing or inquiry held. In most of them, the investigations were classified as dual-purpose investigations conducted in anticipation of litigation. This classification also exempts the investigations from mandatory release under the Freedom of Information Act. At least one retired officer, Captain John Cordle, believes an investigation he conducted between USS Porter and an oil tanker might have prevented the later collision between USS Fitzgerald and ACX Crystal that claimed seven lives.

Navy regulations provide a process for investigating incidents of all sortsfrom petty theft to the loss of a ship. For simpler issues, a commander can order a single officer investigation wherein facts are gathered, presented to the commander, and the matter disposed of. These administrative investigations are just that, administrative. They are not judicial, though the recommendations may include options for criminal charges. For administrative investigations, a preponderance of the evidence or a more likely than not finding by the investigator is sufficient to establish fact.[11] Administrative investigations vary in format but usually include a preliminary statement, findings of fact, opinions, and recommendations. The preliminary statement provides a summation of the investigations results, the nature of the investigation, and any difficulties the investigator encountered.

For a major incidentdefined in the U.S. Navys Manual of the Judge Advocate General as an extraordinary incident...resulting in multiple deaths, substantial property loss, or substantial harm to the environment, where the circumstances suggest a significant departure from the expected level of professionalism, leadership, judgment, communication, state of material readiness, or other relevant standardthe Navys regulations require convening of a formal Court of Inquiry or Board of Inquiry.[12]

A Court of Inquiry has at least three commissioned officers and appointed legal counsel. The court uses hearings to obtain information; individuals under suspicion of misconduct are designated as parties to the court and granted specific rights, including legal counsel. The court may also order military personnel to appear and testify and may issue subpoenas to civilian witnesses. The Board of Inquiry differs from the court only in that it may not subpoena civilian witnesses, but may compel naval personnel to appear and testify. These procedures date to at least 1937, were in place for Bucher and Pueblo, and they are the processes Royster experienced and wrote about. However, since 1969, the implementation and execution of courts and boards are radically different. In fact, despite almost two dozen collisions, significant groundings, and a series of shore-based incidents leading to multiple deaths, in the last two decades the Navy has convened only one court of inquiry.
Chinas Belt and Road Initiative has been making significant inroads in Europe despite repeated U.S. warnings to its European allies. On March 8, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte confirmed that Italy would become the 17th European country to join BRI. According to Conte, Italy will sign a memorandum of understanding during Chinese President Xi Jinpings trip to Rome later this week. Italys ANSA news agency reported that Luxembourg is also in advanced negotiations with China to sign a similar agreement.

(click to enlarge)

Washington was quick to respond to Contes remarks. The day after his announcement, the U.S. National Security Council took to Twitter to express its displeasure, warning that Italys participation in BRI would bring no benefits to the Italian people. The Italian government is also facing backlash from its own foreign policy establishment, at least some of which is aghast at the potential sale of the cornerstone of Italian strategy since 1945  strong relations with the U.S.  for the low price of unspecified amounts of Chinese capital to build infrastructure.

MOUs are nonbinding and generally full of unrealistic aspirations rather than concrete plans. Still, the deeper problem is that Italy is counting on the U.S. to buy significant amounts of Italian debt in 2019. This is especially crucial for Italy since the European Central Bank concluded its bond-buying program in December. If the U.S. decided to voice its displeasure by, say, encouraging investors to eschew buying Italian debt, it could increase Italian borrowing costs at a time when the country is already in recession and its debt-to-gross domestic product ratio is at 133 percent. At least on the surface, Italy appears to be risking an awful lot for an awful little.

Why, then, would it be willing to make such a move? Thus far, U.S. warnings against cooperating with China have been more bark than bite. Stalwart U.S. allies such as Poland, New Zealand and Israel have also signed MOUs on BRI with little consequence. Even France and the European Commission have appeared open to cooperation with China on BRI projects in various joint declarations. Italy is debt-ridden and cash-starved, and if China is willing to throw some money its way, Italy has every reason to accept it. Its taking a calculated risk, but considering U.S. reactions to other MOUs, its not an especially dangerous one.

For China, Italys participation in BRI is an insignificant though welcome step toward its much broader strategic ambitions. Chinas success in this long-term endeavor will not be determined by the endorsement of a single country, even one as important as Italy. The broader project is to connect the entire Eurasian landmass via ports, roads and rail. Even if successful  and thats a big if  it will be many decades before such infrastructure can be built let alone pay dividends. It will also take a lot more than MOUs for such a plan to work.

Many have described BRI as a Chinese version of the Marshall Plan. But its a faulty comparison because it misunderstands the scope and goals of both projects. The Marshall Plans aim was to rebuild Western Europe so it could hold the line against the Soviet Union. In trying to reorient Eurasia away from the Western Hemisphere and toward the Middle Kingdom, BRI is entirely different in scope. The United States would never have contemplated a Eurasian-wide Marshall Plan because it would have laid the groundwork for precisely the type of power the U.S. has been obsessed with thwarting for over two centuries.

As overly ambitious as Chinas larger strategic goal may be, it is precisely that strategic aim that so irks the United States. While it doesnt particularly care if China builds a port in Italy or high-speed rail in Poland, it does care about the potential emergence of a dominant power in Eurasia. Whether its China or some other power bridging the Eurasian landmass, the threat to the United States is the same. Being able to seamlessly connect markets from Shanghai to Lisbon would hamper the United States ability to prevent the rise of a Eurasian hegemon or a Eurasia less dependent on Washingtons support and approval.

Theres just one small problem with Chinas plan: It would be nearly impossible to execute. China doesnt possess the levels of financial and political capital needed to complete such a project. Even if it did, it would face tremendous political challenges in implementation. Many great powers have dreamed of ruling Eurasia. They have all been thwarted by Eurasias tremendous diversity. Chinas vision of two continents stitched together by shared economic interests is wildly idealistic because not everything is about shared economic interests. Consider the European Union, and the level of discord in that multilateral organization despite its immense wealth. China has promoted the idea that Eurasian countries should cooperate to build a more prosperous and stable Eurasia. Its a noble idea, but the promise of infrastructure spending will not be enough to encourage countries as varied as Italy, Iran and Uzbekistan to work together to build a Chinese-led Eurasian order.

Even if Chinas ultimate aim to link Eurasia is more dream than reality, BRI is still potentially problematic because Chinas ability to convince countries to sign MOUs undermines U.S. relationships throughout the world. The United States insistence that its allies reject BRI funds or Huawei 5G equipment falls on deaf ears because the United States hasnt offered any compelling alternatives. The U.S. built and sustained a global world order based on maximum freedom and independence for all actors. Countries that agreed to play by U.S. rules gained unfettered access to trade and protection from potential adversaries. At its best, the system is largely non-coercive and works in the interests of its stakeholders. But it wasnt envisioned as a kind of American empire, in which an American emperor could direct countries not to buy the best technology available because the U.S. didnt like who was making it. Indeed, in 1945, the U.S. was interested in destroying empires, not building one of its own.

When the U.S. takes such a heavy-handed approach on issues like BRI and 5G, it plays directly into Chinas hands because such is the behavior of an empire. The aspect of U.S. policy that is most attractive to most countries is precisely how hands-off U.S. foreign policy is. The U.S. has no desire to dominate Eurasia  it simply wants to make sure no one else does. China, with its authoritarian system and historical preference for social stability over the protection of individual rights, does have an interest in dominating Eurasia, not to mention a history of conquering vast swaths of it. Thats why, at a political level, even a country as distant as Italy cant seriously contemplate an alliance with China. Accepting investment is one thing, but Italy isnt about to seek to replace a system that has sustained it through the most united and profitable period in Italian history since the Roman Empire.

The only thing that could really push countries like Italy and Poland into Chinas waiting arms is if the U.S. breaches the rules of its own system and, in doing so, harms the national interests of those who participate in it. The U.S. is insisting other countries ban Huawei technology or not sign BRI MOUs, without providing better, or at least comparable, alternatives. If the best the U.S. can do in these situations is threaten to impose tariffs or other economic penalties, it is indicative of the kind of sclerotic self-righteousness that often appears when global superpowers either take power for granted or fail to maintain their relative advantages. Six years after China announced the Belt and Road Initiative, the U.S. response is to send angry tweets. That is far more of a boon to Chinese strategy than any MOU could ever be.

Reprinted with permission from Geopolitical Futures.
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By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/19/2019



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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.

TLC has formally announced the three remaining couples that will be part of : Happily Ever After?'s Season 4 cast.The network has confirmed : Happily Ever After?'s fourth-season cast will include Elizabeth Potthast and Andrei Castravet Nicole Nafziger and Azan Tefou , and Ashley Martson and Jay Smith TLC made the announcement by posting a Facebook video on Tuesday showing the three confirmed couples for Season 4.The news comes just a day after the network confirmed Season 6 couple Colt Johnson and Larissa Christina Dos Santos Lima and prior Happily Ever After? cast members Russ Mayfield and Paola Mayfield would also be two of the six couples starring on Season 4 the spinoff.The five couples join prior Happily Ever After? cast members Chantel Everett and Pedro Jimeno , whose Happily Ever After? Season 4 return was announced in a promo that aired during 's Season 6 Tell-All reunion special back in January.While the network hasn't disclosed an exact premiere date yet, : Happily Ever After?'s fourth season is scheduled to debut this spring.Elizabeth and Andrei originally appeared on Season 5 of .Elizabeth was 27 and from Tampa, FL, when she met Andrei Castravet , a 31-year-old from Chisinau, Moldova, while Elizabeth was visiting Dublin, where Andrei lived and worked as a bouncer.The couple tied the knot in late 2017 and are currently living together in Florida.Elizabeth and Andrei later welcomed their first child -- a baby girl -- in January 2019.Nicole and Azan's : Happily Ever After? return had been expected as reports that the couple -- who previously appeared on Season 3 of the spinoff -- had begun filming footage in November 2018 for Season 4 had surfaced last year.Nicole was 21 and from Bradenton, FL, when she met Azan, a 23-year-old from Agadir, Morocco, through a mobile dating app. Nicole decided to travel to Morocco for five weeks, leaving her toddler daughter May at home.Nicole and Azan's wedding in Morocco has been delayed multiple times, with the latest being in June 2018 due to financial constraints.Nicole expected it would take two years for Azan to be able to move to her country. Despite the wait, they appear to still be together but living in different countries.Azan, however, has been accused by Nicole's family of using her for money and getting wrapped up in get-rich-quick schemes.Prior to Happily Ever After?, Nicole and Azan also appeared on Season 4 and Season 5 of .Ashley and Jay's 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After? participation had also been widely expected as Ashley previously revealed the controversial couple had filmed scenes for the show However, Ashley announced in February she and Jay had decided to "quit the show."In her announcement, Ashley publicly accused TLC and producers of being the reason the couple had scammed their fans by faking marriage problems as well as a separation late last year Ashley -- who filed for divorce in early January, but then withdrew the filing only days later -- claimed she and Jay never separated and TLC "ruined" the credibility of her marriage."The final straw was when our story started to become inconsistent because of what we were being asked to hide and not tell followers... We want our old life back. We're over being celebrities," Ashley told RadarOnline last month.TLC has not commented on Ashley's allegations.
Editorial

School students demand action on climate change

Last Friday 150,000 primary and secondary school students and supporters marched in 53 different locations around Australia, protesting about the appalling lack of Coalition government policies to tackle the climate change menace.

The well-managed nationwide strike was part of an international effort that began in August last year when 15-year old student Greta Thunberg started a series of strikes on Fridays, sitting outside the Swedish Parliament. Students in many countries followed her example in November, and strike action was taken last Friday in more than 9,783 events across 112 countries.

In Melbourne, Anica Renner, one of ten students who interviewed Bill Shorten about Labors climate policy, outlined their three demands: ... one is to stop [the] Adani [coal mine], two is no new coal or gas [mines] in Australia, and three is 100 percent of energy through renewables by 2030. We told Shorten that Labors current climate policy is not good enough, but he would not commit to any of those things.

Sydney student Meg Raven commented: Well be at the point of no return in 12 years. I would much rather be caring about travel and work and having fun in my 20s rather than about hundreds of millions of people suffering floods, droughts and climate-related poverty.

Some conservative politicians threatened disciplinary action over truancy. Prime Minister Scott Morrison ranted, demanding more learning and less activism from students. Resources Minister Matthew Canavan sneered, telling them The best thing youll learn about going to a protest is how to join the dole queue ... not actually taking charge of your life and getting a real job.

But parents are backing the students. Sydney student Manit Annand said his parents understand climate change is an important issue and feel that I should have a say in a matter that will affect me a lot.

Adelaide student Doha Khan commented  I think a big reason why my Mum and Dad are so supportive is that theyve always pressed that as people who have privilege it is our job to speak out for people who do not.

The strike was backed by 23 unions. Correna Haythorpe, federal president of the Australian Education Union declared: The commitment of the teaching profession in educating the next generation about climate change is critical. Tomorrows workers will need to be empowered with the problem-solving skills to make a just transition, negotiate new global trade markets [and] new technologies, and understand which industries will expand and which will disappear in a potential carbon neutral economy.

In Queensland, Townsville student Tully Bowtell-Young said that the floods that ravaged her home town recently after a long drought caused widespread public discussion among the residents who up till now have been quite divided on the issue of climate change. She said: Its easier to talk to people about climate change when they have experienced it.

Australia has suffered heatwaves, extraordinarily long droughts, devastating floods, impending extinction of species, loss of forests and reduced agricultural harvests.

Yet were still one of the biggest exporters of coal and our per-capita carbon emission rate is the worlds highest. Our total emissions reached a record level last year, rather than declining. Under the Coalition government we have no hope of meeting our Paris emission reduction target.

Climate change hasnt just arisen because of the actions of a few greedy corporations, its the result of a system in which the most powerful blocs of capital effectively control governments and maximise their profits with no sense of public responsibility.

Jean Hinchcliffe from Fort Street High School initiated the Sydney campaign last year after she discovered that a march was being organised in Melbourne. She told her parents it was important that students took climate change action themselves.

When translated from the Latin, Fort Streets motto emphasises initiative, declaring: Every person is the maker of their own destiny. Students want a productive, fulfilling life, rather than having a bleak future imposed on them by others, and last Friday 150,000 Australian students took collective action in pursuit of that ambition.
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Students strike for Climate Change

Rally and March in Perth

In Perth, Western Australia, over 2,000 public and private school children and their supporters responded to the call for a lunchtime strike for climate action as part of the March 15 national day of action. Despite the front page of the West Australian newspaper suggesting the school strike was the students responding to brainwashing rather than passion and the ALP Minister for Education Sue Ellery saying she had a responsibility to ensure the children attended school rather than miss two hours of tuition, school students who attended the rally had no doubt where their priorities lie.

One student, quoted on the ABC news, in response to those claims, said it was Governments who had wasted 30 years of time to take action on climate change.

Supporters for the climate action rally also came from churches (the march commenced at the St Georges Anglican Cathedral where the rally was held) trade unions, Greens politicians, environmental NGOs such as 350.org and WA Conservation Council whose president Piers Verstegen was in attendance at the rally. Students I spoke with said it was often hard to convince some students to come as there was a lot of pressure being put on them not to attend.

That pressure coming sometimes from their parents, the schools and commercial media. However, their banners, placards and chants spoke volumes of their passion, concern, knowledge of the issues and commitment. NO COAL, NO OIL, KEEP THE CARBON IN THE SOIL and CLIMATE NOT PROFIT, SCOMO GET OFF IT!

The march went along St Georges Terrace which temporarily caused traffic to be diverted and then went to Elizabeth Quay near where an oil and gas industry conference was being held.

At the Quay there were a couple of speeches by the children and two songs were performed, the lyrics which spoke of the difficulty being optimistic with the current inaction by our government on climate change. It was only last week that the north-west town of Roebourne recorded the hottest March day of 48C anywhere in the world  eclipsing a 44-year-old record set in Mexico.

The Communist Party of Australia supports the students school strike for climate action and calls on the Liberal government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison to set real targets for the take up of renewable energy and to embrace the phasing out of coal, which even the conservative government of German President Angela Merkel is pouring billions of Euros into initiatives to bring about.
Athens, GA (30605)

Today

Showers developing during the afternoon with the possibility of a thunderstorm. Storms may contain strong gusty winds. High near 70F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Showers in the evening, then cloudy overnight. Low near 40F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
While the airline is accommodating passengers on available flights, this is resulting in extending travel time and detour for customers.

Travel plans of hundreds of passengers have gone haywire due to last minute cancellations by Jet Airways.

The airline has grounded over half its 119 aircraft fleet and cut down its flights to West Asia and domestic routes as lessors grounded four more planes on Monday.

Passengers queued outside the airline's ticket counter at the Mumbai airport vented their ire on long wait time at the call centre and were seeking rerouting, refunds or alternate flights.

While the airline is accommodating passengers on available flights, this is resulting in extending travel time and detour for customers.

A group of passengers traveling to Zagreb in Croatia through Dubai were offered flight via Amsterdam as the Mumbai-Dubai flight on Tuesday morning was cancelled.

"I spent my entire afternoon to seek alternate flight as my Chennai flight for Friday has been canceled.

"It is not a happy situation. Frankly, it is distressing and the civil aviation ministry should do something about it," said Tarun Kishore, country marketing manager, Clearscore Technology Services.

Kishore got rebooked on an alternate flight but remains worried whether the airline will keep up its schedule.

"There is no guarantee," he said.

Krisha Rathore, a city resident, too queued up at the call centre as her flight to Kochi was cancelled twice.

The airline offered an alternate flight and that too has been cancelled.

"Now we have been given a ticket for Mumbai to Kochi via Delhi for March 23.

"It is a two-hour flight and is going to take us more than eight hours.

"Luckily we have not booked any hotels," she said.

On Sunday evening, Jet Airways announced the suspension of service to Abu Dhabi and is also curtailing services to Dubai and other destinations.

Etihad is planning a fourth frequency between Abu Dhabi-Mumbai for a few days to cater to the load caused due to Jet cancellations.

The Abu Dhabi airline is said to be awaiting approvals for the same.

"Jet Airways is currently operating a curtailed schedule having made certain proactive adjustments bearing in mind the likely yet interim non-availability of some aircraft in its fleet in the near future.

"As a priority the airline has been focusing to minimise guest inconvenience by ensuring that guests, as well as the regulator, are informed of these interim changes well in advance given the temporary yet network-wide impact of these changes," the airline said.

It added that the 24x7 contact centre, guest relations and social media response times have been extremely proactive and responsive in handling the schedule adjustments addressing guest concerns on priority and in line with defined regulatory guidelines offering re-accommodation, choices or extending applicable refunds according to the situation.

Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters
The promoters who own the Leela brand will also be transferring the label to Brookfield for all hospitality businesses.

Hotel Leela Venture on Monday announced sale of four hotels, including one in the national capital, and a property to Canadian investment fund Brookfield Asset Management for Rs 3,950 crore.

The company has entered into a binding agreement with a Brookfield Asset Management sponsored private real estate fund to sell, by way of slump sale, four owned Leela hotels located at Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Udaipur and the property that it owns in Agra, Hotel Leela Venture said in a BSE filing.

The transaction includes assignment of all hotel management contracts currently in operation as well as all under-development, along with the employees of the hotels, it added.

"The total transaction value is Rs 3,950 crore plus the applicable transaction costs," the filing said.

Simultaneously, the promoters who own the Leela brand will also be transferring the label to Brookfield for all hospitality businesses, it added.

Proceeds of the sale "will be paid to the lenders of the company towards repayment of dues," the filing said.

"After completion of the aforesaid transaction, all borrowings of the company from all banks and financial institutions would stand repaid," it added.

Commenting on the development, Hotel Leela Venture Chairman and MD Vivek Nair said: "The Leela is rated amongst the top hospitality brands in the world and I am confident that the brand will receive a boost and be further strengthened and continue to be known for its world-class services."

Post sale, the company will continue to operate the hotel in Mumbai and own certain land in Hyderabad and the joint development project of residential apartments with Prestige Developers in Bangalore, the filing said.

Brookfield will have a right of first refusal over the company's hotel in Mumbai, as a part of the transaction, it added.

"We are excited with this opportunity and look forward to completing this transaction at the earliest, while ensuring that all operations remain unaffected. We expect the Leela hotels to continue to be market leaders," Brookfield Asset Management MD and Head-India Real Estate Ankur Gupta said.

JM Financial acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Hotel Leela Venture for this transaction, the filing said.

Shares of Hotel Leela Venture closed at Rs 11.08 per scrip on BSE, up 1.09 per cent from its previous close.
The pilots and other senior staff have not been getting their full salaries since December.

In more trouble for cash-strapped Jet Airways, an umbrella body of its domestic pilots Tuesday threatened to stop flying from April 1 if their dues are not paid by March-end even as aviation regulator DGCA said only 41 aircraft of the airline were in operation.

As situation at the beleaguered airline deteriorated, Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu directed senior officials of his ministry to continuously monitor developments relating to the crisis.

In a related development, the Jet Airways' Aircraft Maintenance Engineers' Union wrote to the DGCA on Tuesday morning saying they were not paid salaries for last three months and that their "adverse psychological" condition has put flight safety at risk.

However, they issued a clarification, hours later, saying Jet Airways aircraft are safe to fly and are being maintained at highest levels of safety standards.

Terming the situation at the airline "dynamic", the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said only 41 aircraft of the Jet Airways were currently available for operation and there may be "further attrition" of flights "in coming weeks".

As per the website of Jet Airways, it has a fleet of 119 aircraft in total.

For the past few weeks, passengers have been venting their ire on social media as the airline's flight cancellations have increased.

A senior official of DGCA said the regulator is reviewing the hike in airfare on specific routes across the country and it has advised airlines to increase flights so that the fares remain in check.

The DGCA held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the upward spiral in airfares owing to Jet continuing to ground more aircraft while cancelling a significant number of its flights.

In a statement, Prabhu's office said he has also issued direction for safeguarding the public interest and giving "paramount importance" to ensure safety as well as convenience of passengers.

In Mumbai, National Aviators Guild, a body representing around 1,000 domestic pilots of the airline, in its annual meeting warned the management of the Jet Airways that they will stop flying from April 1 if their pending salaries are not paid by end of this month.

They also demanded implementation of the "resolution plan" to resolve financial issues of the airline.

The plan was announced few weeks ago.

"If there is no proper clarity on the resolution process and salary payments, by March 31, we will stop flying from April 1," the guild said in a statement.

The pilots and other senior staff of the airline have not been getting their full salaries since December.

After the DGCA took stock of the situation at Jet Airways, its spokesperson said the regulator reviewed the performance of the airline on operational, airworthiness and passenger facilitation.

Current availability of aircraft in the fleet for operation is 41 and accordingly scheduled for 603 domestic flights and 382 international flights have been withdrawn.

However, it is a dynamic situation and there may be further attrition in coming weeks, he said.

The spokesperson added that the DGCA has instructed the airline to comply with "the relevant provisions of the applicable CARs (Civil Aviation Requirements) for facilitation of passengers regarding timely communication, compensation, refunds and providing alternate flights wherever applicable".

The DGCA spokesperson said the aviation watchdog is ensuring that all aircraft in the fleet "whether in operation or on ground" are maintained in accordance with Approved Maintenance Programme (AMP).

"The operator was also directed to ensure that no pilots/cabin crew/AMEs be rostered on duty who had reported stress of any nature. Additionally, all such staff should be current with all mandatory training requirements.

"The DGCA is continuously monitoring overall situation and based on the same, will take appropriate steps by the end of the month, if needed," the spokesperson added.

Jet Airways has a debt of over Rs 8,200 crore and needs to make repayments of up to Rs 1,700 crore by the end of March.

On March 8, Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal wrote to Etihad Airways Group CEO Tony Douglas seeking an urgent funding of Rs 750 crore and also warned that any delay in fund infusion might result in its grounding of the carrier.

Ethihad Group has stakes in Jet Airways.

Photograph: Abhirup Roy/Reuters
Pacific Ocean: environmental disaster zone

Oil spilling from the stricken oil tanker Solomon Trader on Rennell Island in the Solomon Islands has created an environmental disaster. On February 5, the ship, which had been loading bauxite despite cyclone warnings, ran aground on the island, the largest raised coral atoll in the world.

Rennell Island in the Solomon Islands. (Photo: Luke Kiddle)

Part of the island, plus a three kilometre marine zone around it, is World Heritage Listed. However, the owners delayed taking action to deal with the spill, and the ship is now in danger of breaking apart. Meanwhile the bauxite mine is still operating and the ore is being loaded into other ships manoeuvring around the Solomon Trader and stirring up the thick black sludge over the reef.

The Solomon Islands government has no insurance cover for ship spillages and the acting Prime Minister, Rick Hou, is threatening to organise an international blacklisting of the company if they dont pay for the clean-up, which could cost $50 million.

Since the 19th century, major western imperial powers have polluted the Pacifics exquisite islands or endangered its marine ecology. Some species of whales were hunted almost to extinction. Pollution from ships wrecked during the cataclysmic naval battles of the Second World War is still creating problems.

After the War the US, France and Britain used Pacific islands and atolls for nuclear testing, and nuclear waste was later deposited in the Ocean depths. In 2002 the Solomon Trader, then known as the Doric Chariot, ripped its way across the coral when it ran aground while shipping coal across the Great Barrier Reef, and a few years later another vessel ran aground on the Reef, discharging oil and coal onto the exquisite coral formations.

And now climate change, the result of human industrial activity, is threatening to inundate the low-lying islands and coral reefs, which will necessitate the mass emigration of island communities.

Australias double standard

Journalist Ben Doherty recently wrote: As a region, the Pacific has produced the least carbon of any area on Earth but its citizens have felt the impacts of climate change first and most acutely ... .

Australia has helped Pacific nations deal with environmental crises, for example by providing oil spill teams and equipment to deal with the Solomon Trader disaster. But island peoples are now asking why the federal government isnt tackling the problem at its source by promoting renewable energy generation in order to reduce Australias carbon emissions.

Some federal Coalition MPs are backing a proposal to construct a huge new coal-fired power station in the NSW Hunter Valley, despite the carbon emissions and despite the likelihood of huge public opposition.

The issue of climate change has split the Coalition. In an astonishing interview on BBC TV last Saturday, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull claimed that he was deposed by other Coalition MPs last August because he would have won the coming elections, not because he would have lost.

Turnbulls statement was garbled, but it had a grain of truth. His removal from office and subsequent events have proved that a group of Coalition MPs are willing to risk committing political suicide by backing coal-fired power production rather than supporting Turnbulls national energy guarantee scheme, which was weak but gave some minor encouragement to renewable energy generation.

Last October Melissa Price, then the federal Environment Minister, stated that climate scientists were drawing a long bow by arguing that ending coal-fired power would limit climate change.

Later, during a parliamentary dinner she accused former President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, of being in Australia just to get a cash handout. Tong was actually here in an attempt to persuade the government to do more to reduce emissions, but that didnt deter Price. She declared: I know why youre here. It is for the cash. For the Pacific, it is always about the cash. I have my chequebook here, how much do you want?

She now denies that the conversation took place, but it has been verified by several witnesses, including Labor frontbencher Pat Dodson. The supremely arrogant statement speaks volumes about the racist attitude of the super-conservative Coalition MPs. For them, people from underdeveloped countries who protest about mining corporation activities can be silenced with a bribe, and we shouldnt lose any sleep over their plight.

Pacific nations demand action

International emission reduction pledges made so far under the Paris agreement are inadequate; theyre consistent with a catastrophic 3 degree rise in average global temperatures, an impending catastrophe for the world.

The first victims of climate change will be the Pacific Islands peoples. Long before the islands are inundated by the rising sea their aquifers will be contaminated by salt water, making the islands uninhabitable.

The rising ocean temperature has also resulted in an increase in the frequency and severity of cyclones. In the last four years cyclones have wrecked homes, schools, hospitals and vital infrastructure in Fiji and Vanuatu. A US military study has indicated that dozens of Pacific islands will be uninhabitable by 2050.

Pacific Island leaders are now pressuring certain countries to increase their commitments to tackle climate change, and are attempting to convince the US to re-join the Paris agreement. The obduracy of the Trump administration is retarding the international struggle over climate change, but ironically some of the Pacific islands most at risk host vital US military installations.

As a member of the Pacific Forum, Australia has signed the Boe Declaration that describes climate change as the biggest single threat to Pacific nations. But were not even on track to meet the very poor emission reduction targets to which were committed under the Paris agreement, and our emission rates are actually rising. In comparison, New Zealand has committed to reaching a net zero emissions target by 2050. Pacific nations want that target adopted as a regional standard.

But that certainly wont be carried out by the Morrison government, which despite its recent payment of lip service to renewable energy is actually fighting to retain the domination of fossil fuels in the energy market.

To fight climate change the immediate necessity is to remove the Morrison government and to ensure that a new government maximises its efforts to not only meet our Paris target but to far exceed it.
The comments from Das assume importance as the government for two consecutive terms have missed its fiscal deficit targets by 10 bps

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

Reserve Bank governor Shaktikanta Das on Tuesday underlined the need for sticking to the fiscal roadmap by adopting a commonly agreed expenditure code-based spending plan to address the socio-economic challenges.

He also advocated giving permanent status to the finance commission.

The comments from the former economic affairs secretary turned central banker assume importance as the government for two consecutive terms have missed its fiscal deficit targets by 10 bps in the outgoing fiscal year.

Many analysts fear that even the upwardly revised fiscal deficit target of 3.4 per cent may be difficult to meet given the massive shortfall in indirect tax collection and also shortfall in other budgeted non-tax revenue.

Das, speaking at the launch of a book 'Indian Fiscal Federalism', by former RBI governor YV Reddy along with GR Reddy in Mumbai on Tuesday evening, said there is now general agreement about the importance of fiscal consolidation roadmaps both at national and state levels.

"While adhering to fiscal deficit targets and debt-to-GDP ratios, it is equally important to undertake a robust expenditure planning based on a 'commonly agreed expenditure code' to address the socioeconomic challenges without diluting the goals of fiscal consolidation," he said.

Das, however, said his views do not represent the deliberations or the direction of thinking of the 15th Finance Commission, where he was a member for more than a year.

Das said over the past several decades, the successive finance commissions have adopted different approaches with regard to principles of tax devolution, Central grants to be given to the states and fiscal consolidation issues.

While at one level, there has to be a framework for fresh and innovative thinking by every finance commission, there is also a need to ensure broad consistency between various finance commissions so that there is some degree of certainty in the fund flow, especially to the states, he said, adding this has become more critical in the post-GST scenario.

"There has to be continuity and change between finance commissions. Increasingly, it is felt that there is a need to give permanent status to the finance commission," Das said.

According to him, the principle of decentralisation works better when powers and functions are delegated based on which tier of governance is best suited to fulfil that responsibility.

Although the Constitution has provided for delegation of certain functions to the urban and rural local bodies, it is seen that there is still a good distance to traverse when it comes to devolution of funds to these local bodies.

"It is, therefore, essential that state finance commissions are constituted every five years as well, he said.

Das said recent initiatives in fostering cooperative federalism have opened new chapters of cooperation between the Centre and the states, as reflected in the GST Council, which is functioning on the principle of shared sovereignty.

"We are, however, a union of states in which both the Union and the states have to be fiscally strong.

While this issue has to be addressed by the finance commission, the challenge for GST council is to realise the full potential of GST for enhancing tax-GDP ratio and work on other areas of the economy to enhance competitiveness," he said.

Das mooted that the GST Council can expand its scope and agree to work on other areas of reforms to generate national consensus.

But he warned against cooperative federalism breeding inertia instead of encouraging competitive federalism.
The move will help address apprehensions as well as potential disputes on various computational and transitional issues such as the loss of input credits and pricing that were bound to arise on account of the change.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

The all-powerful GST Council on Tuesday allowed builders an option to choose between old tax rates and the new ones for under-construction residential projects to help resolve input tax credit issues.

The council, headed by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, which also included representatives from all states, at its 34th meeting in New Delhi laid out transition rules for implementation of the new tax rates for the real estate sector.

Builders will get a one-time option to continue paying tax at the old rates (effective rate of 8 per cent or 12 per cent with Input Tax Credit or ITC) on ongoing projects (buildings where construction and actual booking have both started before April 1, 2019, but which will not be completed by March 31, 2019), revenue secretary A B Pandey told reporters in New Delhi.

The new tax rate of 1 per cent for affordable houses and 5 per cent for others, without ITC, will apply on new projects.

The move will help address apprehensions as well as potential disputes on various computational and transitional issues such as the loss of input credits and pricing that were bound to arise on account of the change.

"GST Council today has approved transition plan for the new rate structure for real estate residential projects... from April 1, builders have to choose either of the options for which they will get time," he said.

On the time-frame for transition, Pandey said the council has agreed on providing reasonable time to developers.

The matter would be decided in a next few days in consultation with the states, he said, adding that it could be 15 days or one month.

The council also clarified that projects with upto 15 per cent commercial space will be treated as residential property.

This will resolve issues faced in cases where buildings have commercial amenities such as clubs and restaurants as well as in case of residential-cum-commercial projects.

Additionally, a condition has also been imposed that 80 per cent procurement by developers should be from registered dealers to avail the composition scheme.

The new tax rates of 1 per cent (on the construction of affordable houses) and 5 per cent (on other than affordable houses) shall be available subject to the condition that input tax credit shall not be available and that 80 per cent of inputs and input services shall be purchased from registered persons.

Any shortfall in purchases according to these norms would be levied a tax of 18 per cent.

Tax on cement purchased from unregistered person shall attract a 28 per cent duty.

The council approved the formula for calculating ITC.

"ITC rules shall be amended to bring greater clarity on a monthly and final determination of ITC and reversal thereof in real estate projects.

The change would clearly provide a procedure for availing input tax credit in relation to commercial units as such units would continue to be eligible for input tax credit in a mixed project," an official statement issued after the meeting said.

Pandey further said that the decision will help the builders in clearing inventories.

"This go-ahead by the GST Council brings quite a relief for this sector in handling transition issues in specific," EY India Partner Abhishek Jain said.

For upcoming projects, reduced rates of 5 per cent and 1 per cent will be applicable beginning April 1.

On the next GST Council meeting, the Revenue Secretary said that is unlikely till the election process is over.

He, however, said that if any emergent situation arises then a meeting could be called with the permission of the Election Commission.

On apprehensions being raised on possible price rise due to new tax structure, the secretary said if prices escalate, the National Anti-profiteering Authority will look into it and take appropriate action.

Deloitte India partner M S Mani said the pragmatic move to segregate under construction projects from new projects would provide relief to builders who were worried about the loss of input tax credit.

"This would also enable them to price the loss of input tax credits in the new projects.

Reversal of Input tax credit on a proportionate basis would entail significant computational issues for builders as each project would be in various stages of construction and have differing pre and post-completion sale patterns," Mani said.

Pratik Jain, Partner & Leader, Indirect Tax, PwC India said the council giving developers an option would be beneficial for those who had already factored the entire input credits of the project while arriving at the sale price and in many cases these benefits may already have been passed on to customers.

"Further, the new composition rates would be mandatory for all projects for which construction starts after 1 April 2019 and hence, such tax blockage would need to be factored at time of budgeting.

"In such case, the council has mentioned that the credit reversal would need to be done proportionate to area space, the details of which are awaited.

The developers would need to work out the amount of input credit for various projects (where certain projects are covered under composition and certain under normal scheme or projects having both residential and commercial segments)," he said.

These changes made by the GST Council would have substantial impact on real estate sector, he said, adding the industry will have to work out which option works best and come up with the revised price structure quickly.
Keen to back start-ups while they are half-unicorns, SoftBank plans to invest $100 million in a firm with $500-million valuation.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

OYO, FirstCry, Delhivery, and now Grofers.

After exiting Flipkart, SoftBank is picking up its next set of bets in India.

After missing out on companies such as Swiggy and Zomato, it wants to identify future stars early and back them while they are half-unicorns.

We would like to invest $100 million in a firm with $500-million valuation, a senior SoftBank executive told journalists when the Saudi Prince visited India last month.

Saudi Arabia invested $40 billion in SoftBank's $100-billion Vision Fund.

To identify companies early before they become too expensive, SoftBank has put its feet on the ground.

Last November, it hired Sumer Juneja as India head from venture capital (VC) firm Norwest Venture Partners.

VCs are good at picking up start-up winners.

In December, it hired ex-Facebook India head Kirthiga Reddy as partner for the $100-billion Vision Fund.

Recently, it led a $350-million funding into logistics company Delhivery, co-investing with the Carlyle Group and Fosun International.

SoftBank would have liked to back food delivery firms and others like Freshworks, but their valuations were too steep by the time they came on its radar.

It did not repeat the mistake with firms like OYO and PolicyBazaar, and invested early.

Earlier this month, the Vision Fund also invested $60 million in grocery delivery app Grofers.

The companys biggest bet after Flipkart was hotel aggregator OYO, in which it now holds a 49 per cent stake.

SoftBank is bullish on India and is backing companies that can be category leaders, the CEO of a VC firm said.

Despite Grofers and Delhivery deals, the CEO said SoftBank was going slow in India, especially after the pushback it got from investors on WeWork.

In January, it cut a planned investment in WeWork to $2 billion from $16 billion after pushback from Saudi Arabias Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabis Mubadala Investment, who contributed almost two-thirds of the Vision Funds pledged capital.

SoftBank met both Zomato and Swiggy, sources said, but no deal was reached.

This shows that SoftBank was not willing to invest at high valuations.

In fact, the West Asian investors of Vision Fund have complaints on investing at high valuations.

Vision Fund expects a bunch of its portfolio companies, including a few from India, to tap the public markets by the end of next year.
Sixty-eight paintings that once belonged to fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi will go under the hammer next week.

Nirav Modi with his collection of art in Mumbai before he fled the country. Photograph: Kind courtesy Nirav Modi/Facebook. Photograph: Courtesy Nirav Modi/Facebook

A little over a year after fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi was accused of siphoning off billions from Punjab National Bank through fraudulent means and fleeing the country, his art collection, which he leveraged to gain credibility and climb the social ladder, is up for auction.





Leading Indian art auction house Saffronart will put up 68 lots for sale at its Spring Live Auction on March 26. According to its website, Saffronarts auction is being conducted on behalf of the tax recovery officer, Central-3 in Mumbai, for the Government of Indias income-tax (I-T) department.



The catalogue is estimated by experts to be valued between Rs 30 crore and Rs 50 crore, but as is the case with most auctions, the reserve price determines the net collections at the end of the sale.



Reserve prices are prices set by the seller and the auction house as to which they are agreeable to liquidate and can be lower than the lower-end estimate set for the artwork.



The art is being auctioned in a bid to recover around Rs 96 crore due from Camelot Enterprises, one of the dozens of subsidiaries and shell companies Nirav Modi was operating, according to a sale notice on the website of the I-T department in Mumbai.



The lots will include works by established masters like F N Souza, V S Gaitonde, Jogen Chowdhury, and Raja Ravi Varma, as well as emerging modern artists such as Reena Kallat, Jitish Kallat, and Subodh Gupta.



Dinesh Vazirani of Saffronart wasnt available for comment till the time of going to press.





Art at Nirav Modi's seaside home in Alibaug, Maharashtra. Photograph: Kind courtesy Nirav Modi/Facebook. Photograph: Courtesy Nirav Modi/Facebook

This is the second time that Saffronart is doing an auction of seized assets, the first time being for assets YES Bank had received from a defaulter around seven years ago, say sources.



The authorities had invited six auction houses to submit tenders for the auction and four participated. Those included Pundoles, Christies India, AstaGuru, and Saffronart. Saffronart was selected.



While earlier news reports had suggested many of his paintings and objets dart were fake, experts say that was a misrepresentation and for Nirav Modi, buying authentic art was a way of establishing his credibility in elite social circles.



Anytime an individual buys a painting by a famous master that is worth a few million dollars, it gets everyones attention in that universe, says Ashvin Rajagopalan, director at the Piramal Art Foundation. In fact, Nirav Modis collection was a well-curated one, with a diverse range of work from both modern and contemporary Indian and Chinese artists as well.



Chinese artists include Xu Lei, Miao Xiaochun, Chen Ke, and Ge Guanzhong.



While professionals say art going up for auction reflects a top-shelf selection of the finest works on the market, they arent as sure if most collectors will be at ease buying works that are tainted by association with a fraud.



Its almost like buying blood diamonds or conflict diamonds, because while the paintings were created by artists with a noble intention, the means to buy them are under a cloud of fraud and anyone who buys them may find themselves in an awkward position, says Rajagopalan. Equally, some cold-blooded die-hard collectors wont give a fig and go right ahead.



Dadiba Pundole, who runs long-time art gallery Pundoles, says, The matter of stigma in buying a piece of art that was purchased through money gotten by fraud is for an individual to decide, but the reality is that the proceeds realised will benefit the government.





An artistic ceiling installation at Nirav Modi's seaside home in Alibaug, Maharashtra. Photograph: Courtesy Nirav Modi/Facebook

Saffronart is conducting a second online auction that also features works by F N Souza, Jogen Chowdhury, and Jagdish Swaminathan, and will kick off on March 27, right after the Nirav Modi auction, which means there may be a wait-and-watch approach as far as the first auction is concerned.



Recently, the authorities had used dynamite to demolish Nirav Modis farmhouse, called Roopanya, in Alibaug, which had a number of expensive paintings in it as well as an art installation by Vishal Dhar on the roof, which, sources say, have most likely been destroyed.



Success or failure, the Saffronart auction will do two things: Liquidate a collection of works that Nirav Modi had passionately put together over a decade, and then generate some revenue for the taxman, regardless of whether it misses or beats estimates.
BJP strategists need to remember even at this late hour that negativism sells when you are in the Opposition as the Indian voter has mostly voted anti-incumbency, and not when you are in power. You still needed to highlight your achievements and promises, and let the voter draw his conclusions, says N Sathiya Moorthy.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing a rally. Photograph: Abhishek N Chinnappa/Reuters

Independent of the BJPs claims about its governments five-year performance, to sweep the upcoming Lok Sabha polls as in 2014 the party strategists have to make it an all-out Modi-centric affair.

Indications are that they are unable to strike a balance, rudely woken up by the unanticipated SP-BSP alliance in Uttar Pradesh, for instance.

If the BJP thought that by keeping the Congress rival and party chief Rahul Gandhi in focus through high-voltage and unverifiable criticism from the past, accompanied by undignified attacks on the latter, they may have overdone their bit, and far too long. In the process, they forgot that the voters would be evaluating the five-year performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and not that of predecessor governments of the Congress rival.

The young, first-time voters are more susceptible to evaluating the performance of the incumbent, not even against their promises at the previous elections but against their own vague and unfamiliar yardstick of the time. The BJP benefited hugely from this segment in elections- 2014, as they also contributed to the Modi wave.

Yet, in elections 2019, the composition of the first-time voters has changed, in every respect -- but the BJP strategists seem unable to shed their hangover from the past. If they have among themselves first-time voters from 2014 providing inputs and undertaking electoral work, the latter have already become committed voters and cadres, whose views may have been coloured by what they are unable to see. Their unwillingness to see them, if there is any, comes only next.

If in 2014, the BJP thought that it had to keep the campaign Congress-centric, it was justified by the fact that the latter was in power at the Centre. The BJP strategists also rightfully concluded that raising the anti-incumbency bogey very early on would pay them rich dividends.

Given that the Congress-UPA and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were in their second term, anti-incumbency in 2014 dated back to their first term in office. Given their lackadaisical, lethargic ways, the Congress election machinery was unable to counter the BJP onslaught especially after an unfamiliar campaigner in then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi hit the nations streets. The rest, as they say, is history.

But elections 2019 is a different ball-game. Rather than marketing the Modi achievements, the BJP and the prime minister both were still busy running down the Congress rival and Rahul Gandhi. It remains to be seen if their campaign hit the target or may bounce back on them -- especially, a certain voter-sympathy for Rahul Gandhi, who a section of the voters may still feel they might have treated too unfairly for their own comfort.

The Congress and Rahul Gandhi may not have time to go too far on attracting the first-time voters, especially after the relative success of his conversation with students of a womens college in Chennai in mid-March. If however it was a representative response, the BJP and their poll-ally in ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu getting upset over it.

Thus far, BJP strategists, the media and social media have all gone on the continued assumption that the first-time voters may after all be with Modi, as they were in 2014. The state government has issued notice to the Chennai college management for organising the Rahul meet after the Election Commissions Model Code of Conduct had come into force.

On contemporary voting and alliance patterns, the states and seats across the country could be broadly categorised under four heads. First, are the states where the BJP and Congress face direct fights, or something close, without heavy dependence on allies, new or old. Together, Chattisgarh (11), Gujarat (26), Haryana (10), Himachal Pradesh (4), Madhya Pradesh (29) and Rajasthan (25) account for 119 seats. In the overall context, this category comes only in the third of the electoral demographic list, as far as parties and alliances are concerned.

The second list comprises states, where either parties are dependent on allies new or old. This comprises the highest category of 241 Lok Sabha seats in the nations total of 542. They are: Assam 14, Andhra Pradesh 25, Bihar 40, Goa 2, Karnataka 28, Jharkhand 14, Maharashtra 48, Punjab 13, Telangana 17 and Tamil Nadu 40 (including the lone PuducherryUT seat, where the same alliances remain). In these states, the governmental/electoral performance of the allies can make or mar the chances of the two national rivals.

The third category comprises states where one or the other of the two parties are either non-existent or has to prove themselves again. Better still, in states like Uttar Pradesh, the electoral initiative may rest as much with other/regional parties as with one or both of the Big Two national competitors. Thus, Orissa (21), Tripura (2), Uttarkhand (5), Uttar Pradesh (80), West Bengal (42) and Delhi (7) add up 157 seats. The figure may change if AAP and the Congress strike a last-minute poll-deal in Delhi. Its impact, either way, may be felt in neighbouring states like Haryana, too.

Broadly composed, the fourth and last category accounts for a total of 38 seats, and is topped by Kerala (20) and Jammu & Kashmir (6). Here, one or the other national party has to prove itself substantially. The list also includes some of the single/twin-seat north-eastern states and also left-out Union territories, together accounting for five seats among themselves.

In these states, especially Kerala, the Opposition Congress-led combine continues to be vying with the ruling CPM-led alliance, with the BJP seeking to make inroads. In some of the north-eastern states, barring Assam, the BJP is in power because regional parties want the Congress out. The LS polls may decide who between the two national parties will stick on for a longer innings, and how. J&K is a different kettle of fish, where issues and alliances remain murkier, for now at the very least.

So, does it pay the BJP and Modi their times worth by focussing near-exclusively on the Congress and Rahul Gandhi long after the five-state assembly polls is well past them? If anything, it only focussed excessive attention on the anti-incumbency in states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh, more than might have been necessary from the BJPs LS poll-perspective. It was so earlier in the case of Modis native Gujarat, where he needed to prove a point -- and did so with great effort and by expending more time than any prime minister had possibly done in a single-state assembly election.

As if to shake off a mind-set and pattern, the BJP has been shifting their campaign focus, slowly but surely, on Modi and his achievements as prime minister. In doing so, however, they did not seem to have noticed the haste and hurry with which the prime minister went about launching and/or inaugurating new projects worth thousands of crores, all at one go, and often through video-conferencing invariably from a venue closer to a political rally venue.

If the idea was to let the so-called affected sections of the common voters to get over the hangover from demonetisation and GST, in the form of job-losses and personal funds hiccups, that purpose may not have been served. The results of them all had deeply sunk in, one way or the other -- depending on which end of the stick one was holding, for anything fresh and fast to take away their collective impact, positive or not-so-positive.

It is instead possible that the voter is yet to get a grasp of the PM-centric fast-tracked projects, especially those for which the PM launched the work, which were all otherwise in the future. There were also those like a brand new National War Memorial in the Capital, when there was already one that the nation and its services personnel and veterans have come to respect and revere.

Yet, throughout his political career, up to becoming PM, Modi has survived mostly on negative publicity -- and also drawn further inspiration and possible energy from them all. What they received, he gave back, and in fuller measure -- at least for the object of criticism went, if not all the subjects, too.

But then, the BJP strategists need to remember even at this late hour that negativism sells when you are in the Opposition as the Indian voter has mostly voted anti-incumbency, and not when you are in power. You still needed to highlight your achievements and promises, and let the voter draw his conclusions -- which is what the voter does ultimately, whatever be the BJP strategists understanding and that of the media, from Elections-2014.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and political analyst, is Director, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.
'The sentiment against immigrants and particularly against Muslims is produced by the climate of hatred and bigotry we see all around us.'

'It is produced by the politics of division and spread by a reckless media around the world including unfortunately in India,' says Aakar Patel.

IMAGE: People place flowers as a tribute to victims of the mosque attacks outside the Masjid Al Noor in Christchurch, New Zealand. Photograph: Jorge Silva/Reuters

I learned about the New Zealand shooting massacre on the morning of March 15, while listening to news on the radio. The reporter was speaking to local Muslims about their reaction and the voices were distinctly South Asian.

A newspaper report on Saturday morning said nine Indians are among those missing after the attack, including men from Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. (Eight Indians died in the attack.)

After the shooting report, the commentary (this is BBC's Radio 4, which I listen to every morning) turned to another story. The first piano ever to come to Australia had been located and sent to England for repairs. Why England? Because that is where it was made.

It came to Australia in January 1788 with 11 ships that are known as the First Fleet. These were the original vessels from Portsmouth in England, that brought over a thousand Europeans to Australia, beginning its colonisation.

This is not that long ago: It is after the last Battle of Panipat between the Marathas and the Afghans, long after the fall of the Mughal empire. The British first came to Surat in 1608 and so Australia and New Zealand are very new in the colonisation process.

This is of interest because of the beliefs that the shooter in New Zealand has about immigration and foreigners.

In a note he wrote before the massacre, he says his motive for murdering people is to 'directly reduce immigration rates to European lands.'

He considers New Zealand and Australia (where he was born) to be European lands, though Europeans are themselves immigrants.

The colonisation of Australia and New Zealand brought great misery to its original inhabitants, called the aborigines (with whom we Indians have genes in common).

Aboriginal means something existing from the earlier times, just like we refer to India's most ancient inhabitants as Adi-vasis.

The aboriginal population was destroyed by the European colonists, who brought ruthlessness in taking over the land and they brought disease. The takeover came with its own names.

Victoria, New South Wales, Wellington, Auckland, Queensland are names we are familiar with today.

They are ones that the colonisers imposed on the land they occupied against the will of the aborigines.

New Zealand was annexed in 1840 by the British from the local Maori population.

The Europeans inflicted severe cruelty on the aborigines even after they conquered their land.

Under acts of their parliament, they began officially separating aboriginal children from their parents. '

This is known today as the Stolen Generations.

This policy continued into the 1960s. Even today the aboriginal people face discrimination, including in the criminal justice system.

All of this is hidden under their cheerful and sporty demeanour which supposedly reflects the Aussie spirit (of course, these days we also know Aussie spirit through its cheats).

What I have written above is common knowledge and every Australian and New Zealander will be familiar with it. European colonisation devastated populations on the other side of the world also and if today we are familiar with names like Canada, Virginia, Georgia, Washington, America, Bolivia and Argentina, it is because foreigners conquered these lands and imposed names on them.

It is this European colonisation that around the world produced gun laws that allowed people, meaning White settlers, to keep firearms, ostensibly for their defence.

The prime minister of New Zealand said after the massacre that she would change the country's gun laws. This will, of course, help prevent future violence.

It is astonishing that nations allow civilians to purchase and keep high powered rifles with large magazine capacities whose only purpose is war.

America's resistance to gun control has inflicted the greatest massacres on its population, including its children.

All this is why it is so remarkable that the shooter Brenton Tarrant should feel that it is only others who are immigrants and imposing on his culture.

It may interest readers to know that the word Tarrant, which is of British origin, shares the same root as the word 'trespasser', meaning someone who enters without permission, which in Hindi is called 'ghuspethiya'.

Tarrant says he does not hate people if they live in their own country, but he had a problem with 'invaders who colonise other people's lands'. However, he also wrote that 'the origins of my language is European, my culture is European, my political beliefs are European, my philosophical beliefs are European, my identity is European and, most importantly, my blood is European.'

Perhaps he should have moved to Europe if he felt so strongly, instead of taking out the problems of his identity crisis on innocent people.

But we should ask ourselves why the descendants of violent conquerers and colonisers still claim victimhood. It is not natural.

The fact is that this sentiment, against immigrants and particularly against Muslims, is produced by the climate of hatred and bigotry that we see all around us.

It is produced by the politics of division and spread by a reckless media around the world including unfortunately in India.

Aakar Patel -- winner of the 2018 Prem Bhatia Award for Political Reporting -- is Executive Director, Amnesty International India. The views expressed here are his own.
IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and party's leaders during the BJP Central Election Committee meeting for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, at BJP headquarters in New Delhi, on Tuesday. Photograph: Kamal Singh/PTI Photo

In a major decision, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday announced it will drop its all 10 incumbent MPs from Chhattisgarh and replace them with new faces in the Lok Sabha polls, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in the recent assembly elections.

BJP general secretary Anil Jain, also the party affairs in-charge for the state, made the announcement as the BJP's Central Election Committee, which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders, met here to deliberate over its candidates for the polls.

"We have decided to fight the elections with new candidates and new zeal," Jain told reporters.

The party decision means that Union minister Vishnu Deo Sai and seven times Lok Sabha member and former Union minister Ramesh Bais will not be fielded in the polls.

The announcement underscores the BJP's bid to wrest its lost territory back from the Congress, which handed it a massive defeat in the assembly polls last year.

The Congress had won 68 seats, reducing the tally of the BJP, which was in power in the state for 15 years, to a mere 15. The difference in the vote share of the two parties was a huge 10 per cent.

The BJP is also considering not fielding any family member of these sitting MPs, sources said. If the party indeed adopts this criterion, the likely candidature of former chief minister Raman Singh, whose son Abhishek Singh is a sitting Member of Parliament, will also be in question.
'The Congress agreed to it, but the RJD has some problem with Kanhaiya.'

'Some people are working to stop him from contesting polls and creating hurdles for him to enter Parliament.'

M I Khan reports from Patna.

Come what may, the Communist Party of India is determined to field former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar from Begusarai parliamentary seat in Bihar to contest the Lok Sabha elections.

There are no ifs and buts as far as Kanhaiya contesting from Begusarai is concerned. He is the party candidate and we will not make any compromise at all, come what may, Bihar CPI secretary Satyanarayan Singh said.

Har haalat mein Kanhaiya Begusarai se hi chunao ladega (Kanhaiya will contest from Begusarai under any circumstance), Singh told Rediff.com in Patna.

Singh said while the Congress was ready to accept Kanhaiya as a candidate of the oppositions Grand Alliance or Mahagathbandhan, the Rashtriya Janata Dal had some objections to it.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi has favoured Kanhaiya as the candidate of the Grand Alliance and we had talked to the Congress about it. They agreed to it, but the RJD has some problem with Kanhaiya, Singh said.

He said like the Congress, the RJD should also support Kanhaiya as he is a vocal voice against the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

There is a consensus, Singh said, at the national level from intellectuals to progressive people that Kanhaiya should reach Parliament to challenge and counter the BJP and Modi inside the Lok Sabha.

Some people are working to stop Kanhaiya from contesting polls and creating hurdles for him to enter Parliament, Singh alleged.

Another CPI leader said Kanhaiya has been visiting villages and semi-urban pockets in Begusarai since December to canvass support among the people.

Kanhaiya has emerged as a symbol of a democratic fight across the country. He is getting full support during his village level meetings in Begusarai since early January, he said.

However, sources in RJD circle said the party was reluctant to support Kanhaiya on the ground that in last the Lok Sabha polls RJD candidate Tanveer Hasan got nearly 3.5 lakh votes in Begusarai.

Though he was defeated by the BJP's Bhola Singh, Hasan managed to prove his popularity and so was keen to contest this time as well.

Singh said the CPI along with other Left parties, including the CPI-ML and the CPI-M, will decide soon on whether to contest alone or go with the Grand Alliance.

In Bihar, the Grand Alliance comprises the RJD, the Congress, Upendra Kushwahas Rashtriya Lok Samta Party, Jitan Ram Manjhis Hindustani Awam Morcha and Vikassheel Insaan Party of Mukesh Sahni.

He said there was a need for a left and secular alliance in Bihar to defeat the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha polls.

So far, our talks over seat-sharing are not fruitful. We have not met RJD chief Lalu Prasad. The matter is pending, Singh added.

Singh was the only Left leader who shared the stage with Congress president Rahul Gandhi at his February 3 rally in Patna and even addressed it.

Unlike the Lok Sabha polls in 2014, when the Left parties were divided, with each contesting on its own, this time they have announced their decision to contest polls together.

The Left leaders said they were keen to be part of the Grand Alliance, but the response from the RJD and the Congress for seat-sharing was not positive so far.

However, the Grand Alliance is yet to finalise seat-sharing and the delay was leading to growing restlessness among the allies.

The CPI-ML said the Left parties will contest unitedly if the Grand Alliance will not give them "respectful seats.

Left parties are a strong political force on the ground. We have cadres, supporters and sympathisers as Left parties are working with the people and fighting for their rights on the ground, CPI-ML leader Kunal said.

Left party leaders charged that RJD leaders were behaving like big brother while the Congress leaders were more interested in their own politics.

According to Grand Alliance leaders, both the RJD and the Congress want to keep the Left parties in the Grand Alliance in view of their pockets of influence in over a dozen districts of the state but are not willing to give them more than three or four seats.

Sensing this, the CPI-ML, which is considered a strong political force with three legislators in the state assembly and a huge support base across several districts, particularly in the rural areas, has made it clear that the Left must not be neglected.

In the 2014 general elections, the RJD won only four seats and the Congress two.

The Nationalist Congress Party won one seat.

The Janata Dal-United, which contested separately, also won only two seats.

However, the BJP-led NDA won 31 seats, with the BJP's tally being 22.
Days after having unanimously decided to go it alone in Delhi, the Congress is again mulling options to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in the national capital, with Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar actively involved in getting the two parties together.

In this context, AAP leader Sanjay Singh met Pawar on Tuesday at the latter's residence and held discussions over seat-sharing with the Congress and in taking steps to get all parties together and fielding a common candidate in all the seats to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party in Lok Sabha elections.

Sources said the Congress leadership is also in talks with AAP leaders and senior leaders within the party are trying to convince Delhi Congress leaders for an alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP.

The Congress had earlier decided to go alone in Delhi after talks with AAP failed and local leaders favoured that the party contests LS polls alone.

The Delhi Congress leaders felt that 'saving' the party was crucial in Delhi in view of impending assembly elections in the state slated later.

The Congress has also failed to forge an alliance with left parties in West Bengal and has been kept out of the 'mahagathbandhan' (grand alliance) of Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh.

It is learnt that the Congress-Rahstriya Janata Dal seat-sharing is also in troubled waters as the two parties did not declare their candidates on March 17 as promised earlier.

All India Congress Committee general secretary in-charge of Delhi Congress, P C Chacko, said: "I am in consultation with Congress party leaders in Delhi on the possibilities of forging an alliance with AAP.

"The Congress Working Committee has decided to align with like-minded parties across the country to defeat the BJP in Lok Sabha elections."

"I hope Delhi Congress leaders also go by this sentiment and decide on an alliance with the AAP, but a final decision will be taken by the Congress president very soon," Chacko told PTI.

Chacko's views are at variance with Delhi Congress president Sheila Dikshit, who has made it clear that aligning with AAP will not be in the party's interests keeping in view the assembly election in the national capital slated later.

AAP leader Sanjay Singh also told reporters after meeting Pawar that with the Constitution, democracy and the country in 'danger' under the Modi government, attempts should be made by all opposition parties to unite and come together to fight it out.

"The party can be saved later.... there will be enough time to save the party. Right now the attempt should be to save the country and democracy, which is in danger due to the Modi government," he said, without giving details of his meeting with Pawar.

The talks of Congress-AAP alliance gained ground after a meeting of opposition leaders at Pawar's residence on February 13, which was attended by both Congress president Rahul Gandhi and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, besides West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

It was here that Pawar proposed that AAP and Congress come together and thereafter talks started between the two leaders.

Chacko said some senior leaders in Delhi, who think defeating BJP is the party's immediate responsibility and for which an alliance should be forged with AAP, have written to Gandhi on the matter.

He, however, said Gandhi will take a final call shortly after consultations within the party.

"I hope our Delhi leaders also follow the policy decision of the CWC (Congress Working Committee). I am talking with them and trying to convince them about this, but if they still decide not to forge an alliance, it is up to them," he said.

The party has announced it will go it alone in Delhi after the Delhi Congress unit told Gandhi that aligning with AAP in LS polls was not in the party's interests.

The Lok Sabha elections in Delhi are slated for May 12.

Sheila Dikshit calls urgent meeting with DPCC working presidents

Delhi Congress Chief Sheila Dikshit on Tuesday called an urgent meeting with the three working presidents of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee amid a buzz that the party's top leadership is mulling options to align with the AAP.

The party leaders of the Delhi unit, however, maintained that there was no talk of an alliance during the meeting.

"An urgent meeting was called and it was decided that the selection of candidates should begin.

"Around 70 applications have been received by the party from Delhi Congress leaders for seven seats in Delhi," a senior party leader said.

He said,"A screening committee of the party including Dikshit has to shortlist names from among the applications and send a list of 2-3 names per seat to top leadership for final announcement."
"If I hadnt looked upon her with my own eyes, I might not have believed that such an elephant could exist in our world."

All photographs: Will Burrard-Lucas in partnership with Tsavo Trust

Towering high above the Kenyan landscape, this female elephant is huge, her long tusks curving right down to the ground.

Known as a "big tusker" she's a rare and extraordinary sight -- it's estimated that fewer than 30 of these animals still exist in Africa.

British photographer Will Burrard-Lucas captured these incredible images shortly before she died of natural causes.

The awe-inspiring photos of the giant animal -- known as F_Mu1 -- were taken by British wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas during an 18-month project working in partnership with the Tsavo Trust and Kenya Wildlife Service.

Will spent days searching for the elephant, as the national park area she called her home was the size of Switzerland.

-- Please click here for Will Burrard-Lucas' full story on his meeting with F_Mu1

Will was able to capture intimate shots from below using a specially-concealed remote controlled camera buggy known as a 'BeetleCam', which he developed in 2009 to capture close-up photos of potentially-dangerous African wildlife.

Will, 35, has been quoted as saying: "If ever there were a Queen of Elephants, it surely would have been her."

The portraits not only show off her colossal size but also her dignified and noble temperament.

Recalling his life-changing experience meeting the Elephant Queen, Will said he was left "speechless".

He wrote in his blog: "F_MU1 was skinny and old but she strode forward with stately grace.

"Her tusks were so long that they scraped the ground in front of her. She was like a relic from a bygone era.

"She had survived through periods of terrible poaching and it was a victory that her life was not ended prematurely by a snare, bullet or poisoned arrow."

Speaking about his time with F_MU1, Will in his blog wrote, "As a wildlife photographer, a subject like F_MU1 is incredibly rare; a creature that is unique -- possibly the most remarkable of her kind -- and yet an animal that few have photographed before. The time I spent with her was a real privilege."

The photographs will be the subject of a book -- conceived by the Tsavo Trust as a means of raising awareness and funds -- called "Land of Giants" and featuring 150 shots of the elephants of Tsavo.

The book -- Land of Giants -- will be out on March 20.

Tsavo is home to the largest elephant population in Kenya and covers about 16,000 square miles.

This makes it difficult to patrol - forcing conservationists to not make F_MU1 more widely known in case she attracted poachers.

Burrard-Lucas hopes the photographs carry an uplifting message.

"I find [the photos] inspiring to look at because it's just very positive and inspiring to think that elephants like this are still out there -- they haven't been hunted or poached," he says.

This isn't the first time Burrard-Lucas' photos have hit the headlines -- he previously took a photograph of a rare black leopard, which was shared widely online.

The photographer says that elephants with tusks like the one are even rarer than the black leopard.
Film launch

Cubanas: Women in Revolution

As part of the IWD 2019 activities, the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society, ACFS WA Branch launched the Australian premiere of Maria Torrellas documentary Cubanas, Women in Revolution (Cuban women, Women in Revolution).

The film was produced by Resumen Latinoamericano in 2018 and launched in Santiago de Cuba, several cities in the United States and Perth, Western Australia on Thursday March 7 as part of the international day of working women.

The director Maria Torrellas of Basque-Argentinian background takes the audience through a revolution inside the Cuban revolution.

Maria interviews several women from all ages about their experiences as women in Cuba and asks them about the women they think helped to shape Cuban society and acted as an inspiration for them.

Revolutionary women like Vilma Espin, founder of the Cuban Federation of Women, and Celia Sanchez, who fought with Fidel and Raul Castro in the revolutionary struggle for liberation, are highly featured. Cuban women made a contribution to the revolution to shape a socialist society which wouldnt be possible without them.

Socialism has given Cuban women true liberation and the opportunity to be equal players in society. For example, more than 60 percent of scientists in Cuba are women, 48.9 percent parliamentarians, 47 percent of construction workers; across all spheres of society women play a crucial role.

This film should be screened everywhere to educate viewers on the benefits of a socialist society in the struggle for womens rights. It also touches on the role played by the Cuban National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX) led by Mariela Castro in the struggle against homophobia and involving the Cuba people in strengthening the rights of LGBTIQ people.

The Australian premiere was well attended with a full house at the Perth Trades Hall, May Holman Room. Organised by ACFS and supported by the CFMEU WA, CPA, and the Workers Weekly the Guardian.
In one of the rare occasions, President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday awarded Shaurya Chakra to 16-year-old Irfan Ramzan Sheikh for fighting terrorists who attacked his residence in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir.

IMAGE: President Ram Nath Kovind confers Shaurya Chakra upon Irfan Ramzan Sheikh of Jammu and Kashmir during Defence Investiture Ceremony-II, at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi, on Tuesday. All photographs: Shahbaz Khan/PTI Photo

Shaurya Chakra is usually awarded to armed forces and para-military personnel for 'gallantry otherwise in the face of the enemy'.

During the intervening night of October 16-17 of 2017, terrorists cordoned off the house of Sheikh. His father Mohammad Ramzan was an ex-sarpanch with affiliations to the People's Democratic Party.

When Sheikh, the eldest son of Mohammad Ramzan, opened the door, he found three terrorists in the verandah of the house armed with rifles and grenades.

'Sensing that the militants could harm his family, he exhibited highest degree of courage and faced the militants for sometime so as to avoid their entry inside the house.

IMAGE: Sheikh was bestowed with the Shaurya Chakra for foiling an attack by three terrorists on his house in 2017.

'In meantime, his father came out and the militants pounced on him, resulting in scuffle,' the citation for the award read.

Sheikh did not think for a moment for his own safety and pounced upon the militants for safeguarding the life of his father and other family members, it read.

The terrorists also resorted to indiscriminate firing, resulting in severe injury to Sheikh's father. He later succumbed.

However, Sheikh did not lose courage and continued to engage in scuffle with one of the militants, who resorted to indiscriminate firing resulting in severe injuries to the terrorists as well.

IMAGE: Wife of late Sepoy Vijay Kumar of the Indian Army recieves Kirti Chakra conferred on him posthumously. Kumar was martyred during counter-terrorist operation in Jammu and Kashmir.

On seeing one of their associates injured, the terrorists tried to flee. However, Sheikh chased them and they left the body of their fellow behind.

'Irfan Ramzan Sheikh exhibited the extraordinary show of bravery and maturity in such a small age,' the citation read.

Currently, studying in Class X, Sheikh aspires to become an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer.

IMAGE: President confers Shaurya Chakra upon Kuldeep Singh Chahar, Deputy Commandant 182 Battallion of Central Reserve Police Force.

The President also awarded two Kirti Chakras and and an equal number of Shaurya Chakras posthumously to soldiers who laid down their lives in Army operations in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast.

The Kirti Chakras were awarded to Sowar Vijay Kumar of the Armoured Corps and Constable Pradip Kumar Panda of the Central Reserve Police Force.

IMAGE: Parents of late Sepoy Ajay Kumar of mechanised infantry/42nd Battalion, Rashtriya Rifles, receive Shaurya Chakra conferred on him posthumously.

The two died in two separate operations in Jammu and Kashmir.

Rifleman Jaiprakash Oraon and Sepoy Ajay Kumar were awarded Shaurya Chakras for their role in counter terror operations in Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir respectively.

Shaurya Chakras were also awarded to CRPF Deputy Commandant Kuldeep Singh Chahar, Major Pawan Kumar, Rifleman Rathva Lilesh Bhai, Naib Subedhar Anil Kumar Dahiya, CRPF Assistant Commandant Zile Singh, Havildar Jaweed Ahmad Bhat, Havildar Kul Bahadur Thapa, Lieutenant Colonel Arjun Sharma, Captain Abhay Sharma, Major Imliakum Keitzar, Major Rohit Lingwal and Lieutenant Colonel Vikrant Prasher for displaying gallantry during Army operations in the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir.

IMAGE: President confers Uttam Yudh Seva medal upon Lieutenant General Anil Kumar Bhatt for successful counter-terrorist operations conducted under him in Jammu and Kashmir.

Kirti Chakra is awarded for 'conspicuous gallantry otherwise than in the face of the enemy' while Shaurya Chakra is awarded for 'gallantry otherwise in the face of the enemy'.

Kovind also awarded the Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) to 13 senior officers of the three armed forces.

He presented the Uttam Yuddh Seva Medal (UYSM) to two Army officers, including Lieutenant General Anil Kumar Bhatt, currently the Military Secretary at the Army Headquarters.

Bhatt is also the general officer commanding (GoC) of Srinagar-based 15 corps, that takes care of anti-militancy operations in the Valley.

IMAGE: Wife of late Constable Pradip Kumar Panda of CRPF accepts Kirti Chakra conferred on him posthumously.

Twenty-six officers of the three armed forces were also awarded Ati Vishisht Seva Medal.

The PVSM is awarded to officers for 'distinguished service of the most exceptional order'.

The UYSM is awarded to officers for 'distinguished service of an exceptional order during war/ conflict/ hostilities' while AVSM is conferred to armed forces personnel for 'distinguished service of an exceptional order'.
The two-time MLA from Sankhalim in North Goa, Sawant, who was speaker of the state assembly, is a dedicated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker.

IMAGE: In this file photo dated March 22, 2017, is seen Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar greets Pramod Sawant, after he was elected as the speaker of the Goa legislative assembly in Panaji. Photograph: PTI Photo

From being an ayurveda practitioner to being the Goa chief minister, 46-year-old Pramod Sawant has come a long way.

The two-time MLA from Sankhalim in North Goa, Sawant, who was speaker of the state assembly, is a dedicated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker.

The politician, recently seen in the RSS uniform at a Sangh event, was on Monday sworn in as the new chief minister of Goa following Manohar Parrikar's death.

His elevation to the top post in the coastal state followed hectic parleys between the Bharatiya Janata Party and its alliance partners.

Sawant's political career began in the BJP as a youth leader. A staunch Parrikar supporter, he had worked closely with the late leader.

He won the 2012 and 2017 assembly elections from North Goa's Sankhalim constituency, which used to be a Congress stronghold.

He was among the few BJP MLAs who got re-elected in their constituencies during the state polls two years ago, when the party managed to win only 13 seats as compared to 21 in the 2012 elections.

When Parrikar cobbled up an alliance with the Goa Forward Party, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and independents in 2017 despite the Congress being the single largest party, Sawant was elected the assembly speaker.

He is a former chairman of the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation, a special purpose vehicle set up by Parrikar to take up various infrastructure works in the coastal state.

Sawant holds a Bachelor's Degree in Ayurveda, Medicine and Surgery from Ganga Education Society's Ayurvedic College in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra.

His wife Sulakshana heads the BJP Mahila Morcha in Goa.
Close friend Tarun Vijay pays tribute to the four-time Goa chief minister and former defence minister who passed into the ages on Sunday.

IMAGE: Manohar Parrikar, as defence minister, at a defence exhibition in Mumbai, October 12, 2016. Photograph: Press Information Bureau

He was so simple that it is difficult to write about him in an extraordinary manner.

He spoke of watermelons and how the young generation, bereft of right education, is ruining the future of the nation (Hint: Full story at the end).

He passed out of IIT-Mumbai, but was so unassuming he looked more like a village boy who was too straight-forward and frank to be a politician.

He feared no one except his conscience and god.

For him the comforts of Delhi were absolutely immaterial -- he loved his Goan fish curry and non-veg food and was delighted to share when my wife specially prepared a few things for him and sent it to his Delhi's Akbar Road bungalow.

His breakfast was the simplest on Earth and one shared with all his staff who would sit with him at his table while he went through the daily newspapers.

His nights were almost never-ending, and so was the completion of file work.

He was often angry and frustrated at the snail's pace at which defence ministry babus worked. He tried his best to have some speed injected into it.

"It is all a colonial legacy, we have not been able to get rid of babudom," he would lament.

His decision-making was at lightening speed -- yes meant yes and to be implemented immediately.

And no meant no further discussion.

One has to be very strong from within, like steel, to have a persona like him.

As editor of Panchjanya I was invited to speak on World Press Day in Goa by the state government, where Parrikar was the chief guest. I tried to dress properly -- in a light bandhgala -- and had a well prepared speech. This was about two decades ago.

So we waited for the chief minister to arrive. Suddenly, the state information secretary asked meto come to the dais as CM sahib was already there.

I looked around -- no one looked like a typical Indian political heavyweight -- and was shocked to be introduced to a gentleman who was dressed in a casual shirt, pants and chappals!

I was visibly embarrassed and said meekly when the programme began, "I am sorry, I got ready for the event like a CM and Manoharji has arrived like a genuine journalist!" The audience laughed and Parrikar's laughter was the loudest.His friends -- a few in Goa and in Mumbai -- from RSS circles and also from out of it simply called him Manohar. He was as normal and a person in a crowd as anyone else. His best he gave to Goa and the defence ministry.

It was difficult to persuade him to wear a bandhgala for the Republic Day parade and for the formal inspection of military parades. He would come to office in his simple attire and finish all the work.

He was responsible for pursuing the announcement and implementation of OROP. The post-Uri surgical strike and the Rafale deal showed his best attacking form while putting the Congress in the dock.

He was guiding BJP leaders to ensure that Narendra Damodardas Modi was chosen as the party's prime ministerial candidate at the 2013 BJP national executive meeting.

Too many undercurrents concerned him and he said to me in the hotel lobby where the meeting was going on, "These people don't understand if we don't choose Narendrabhai, there is no future for the party."

For Narendrabhai, Goa always proved historical -- in 2002 also, it was the Goa national executive meet that resurrected him and put the strong opposition within to rest.

Parrikar was absolutely sure of supporting Modi in the interest of the nation's greater good, and Modi recognised that.

It was only the persuasive power of his close friend Modi that made Parrikar come to Delhi in spite of his initial hesitation, for Modi wanted a strong man, and a man of the highest integrity, to head the Raksha Mantralaya.

Manohar's only weakness was good pens, and he had a large collection of world-famous pens in his cupboard.

It was easy to greet him on his birthday even if you did not carry a bunch of flowers. Why bring flowers, just come and have sweets with me, he would say.

Every time I met him, and during his tenure, the Raksha Mantralaya was always open to me. I felt like listening to a new raga, with new excitement. He had that aura.

Once I saw him at Jaipur airport, when he was returning after attending a defence meet and I was coming back from an RSS programme. He was standing in the queue to board the plane --- just one of many passengers.

"Manoharji, tumhi hey line madhe kashala? (How come you are standing in line?)," I said to him in Marathi, "when you could have come later like a 'normal VIP'." He saw the lighter side of my sentence and laughed. I took his picture and that went viral on social media.

In Uttarakhand, soldiers' organisations have been demanding a war memorial for more than three decades. Everyone, every party, okayed it, but things never moved an inch. I gave Rs 2.5 crores for it from my member of Parliament local area development funds.

The MoD was slow and indecisive, rather unenthusiastic as ever, so I had no choice but to approach Manoharji. He saw all the material, discussed it and said, "Chalo, karte hain."

Orders were issued, the date was given, communication was released -- August 20, 2015.

Still, some file work was left unfinished, and he was not happy to change the date, but said, "Dekho, ab theek nahin kiya toh baad mein tumko takleef karenge (if we don't do it correctly now they will trouble you later), let's finish with what they (MoD file work babus) want."

Finally, on April 30, 2016, he came to lay the foundation stone of Uttarakhand's first-ever war memorial in the public domain -- overcoming many a hurdle and throwing political issues to the shredder.

However, the inauguration of this war memorial, of which he became the founder patron, is still awaited.

He tamed death and lived like a warrior king.

Last September, when I saw him at AIIMS, doctors were shocked to see his willpower -- he wouldn't have served this long unless he had something very strong in him -- the power to live.

He defeated death with his struggle and power to realise his dream project -- the Mandovi bridge that his closest friend Nitin Gadkari made possible -- to be finished in record time. He bid his final adieu peacefully after that.

Goa will be never be the same again. He walked on Mandovi's waters as a warrior monk, a son in the lap of his mother.

Oh yes, the water melons...

A true story narrated by Manohar Parrikar:

I am from the village of Parra in Goa, hence we are called Parrikars. My village is famous for its watermelons.

When I was a child, the farmers would organise a watermelon-eating contest at the end of the harvest season in May. All the kids would be invited to eat as many watermelons as they wanted.

Years later, I went to IIT Bombay to study engineering. I went back to my village after six-and-a-half years, and went to the market looking for watermelons. They were all gone. The ones that were there were so small.

I went to see the farmer who hosted the watermelon-eating contest. His son had taken over. He would host the contest, but there was a difference.

When the older farmer gave us watermelons to eat he would ask us to spit out the seeds into a bowl. We were told not to bite into the seeds.

Actually he was collecting the seeds for his next crop. We were unpaid child labourers, actually.

He kept his best watermelons for the contest and he got the best seeds which would yield even bigger watermelons the next year.

His son, when he took over, realised that the larger watermelons would fetch more money in the market so he sold the larger ones and kept the smaller ones for the contest.

The next year, the watermelons were smaller, the year later even smaller...

In seven years, Parra's best watermelons were finished.

In watermelons a generation is one year, whereas in humans a generation changes after 25 years.

It will take us 200 years to figure out what we were doing wrong while educating our children.

Unless we employ our best to train the next generation, this is what can happen to us. We must attract the best into the teaching profession.

Tarun Vijay, former BJP MP, was the chief editor of the RSS weekly, Panchjanya, for 20 years.
If you still have old-style, home telephone service with copper wires in Connecticut, congratulations!

Youre one of about 220,000 customers of that historic service of Southern New England Telephone Co., operating these days under the Frontier Communications brand name. Thats down from more than 2 million at the peak in 1994, according to the state Office of Consumer Counsel.

A smaller number, perhaps just a few thousand, have no-frills, Plain, Old Telephone Service thats still subject to price regulation and other rules. Frontier  which bought the SNET franchise from AT&T in 2014  says the time has come to end price regulation of the most basic, copper-wire service, with more than 30 companies in the state, including itself, providing unregulated phone service, wireless and wireline combined.

And Frontier wants the state to exit, or partly exit, the chore of overseeing a more complicated chunk of the market, in which those dozens of competing companies use SNETs wires and switches to route their calls.

Connecticut is in danger of being left behind. It is imperative for Connecticut consumers, as well as its traditional voice providers, that state statutes be updated to reflect the changing competitive landscape for voice services, Allison M. Ellis, a Frontier senior vice president, said in written testimony to a legislative committee last month.

She added, Frontier alone is subject to the outdated regulatory regime, which negatively impacts its ability to compete fully and fairly in Connecticut.

Hold on, some of Frontiers competitors and the states utility consumer watchdog say. The multi-state phone company, with its corporate headquarters in Norwalk and Connecticut base in the historic SNET building in New Haven, is trying to pull a fast one, they say.

On Tuesday, the energy committee is scheduled to decide whether to grant that deregulation request from Frontier, sending it to the full House and Senate for possible votes  or kill it. Dry as it seems, this remaining vestige of telephone regulation is a hot potato that could be worth millions of dollars to customers, Frontier or its competitors.

And it speaks to whether Connecticut is, or is not, finally in 2019 a truly open market for phone service, no longer in need of state regulation.

This bill is merely Frontiers annual attempt in deregulating itself at the expense of its ever-dwindling universe of customers and this bill essentially grants the ILECs the right to walk away from retail landline service, state Consumer Counsel Elin Swanson Katz said in written testimony to the General Assemblys energy and technology committee, which handles most utility regulation issues.

Pardon the acronym. Katz was referring to incumbent local exchange carriers, or ILECs, such as SNET, which were, way back in time, the monopoly providers. Most ILEC service in the United States were part of the Bell System, which the federal government broke up in 1984 into a handful of Baby Bells, which, in turn, consolidated into AT&T and Verizon, basically  along with smaller, regional companies such as SNET.

The bill would not strictly speaking let Frontier end the service, but, opponents say, by allowing prices to float upward, it would in effect end universal basic service, long a hallmark of phone regulation. A similar bill passed in the Senate last year and this years version leaves more regulation intact.

Katz and the Frontier competitors, including Altice, which owns the Cablevision franchise, have a strong point. Frontier, like the Millstone nuclear power station in its recent benefits-grab, is attempting to play both sides of the market  freedom when the company wants to raise prices for basic phone service, and protection when it wants to act like a monopoly.

Heres the kicker: Under state rules, Frontier must repair outages of basic, wireline phone service within 24 hours. Freeing itself would mean that rule would in essence go away, even though its not explicit in the bill, because it is through the pricing rules that the repair rule is enforced.

But Frontier cant say, hey, legislature, we dont need to be regulated anymore. On the contrary, SNET, through the previous owner, AT&T, paid the state a settlement of $525,000 in 2012, negotiated with Katzs office, and often paid out $5,000 a month for missing the repair targets afterward. Frontier paid the $5,000 fine for last July, August, September and November.

On the wholesale side, Frontier still controls wires and switches that its competitors need to rent as they route their calls. Regulation of these deals stems from the days when the ILECs controlled the whole phone system, and in the 90s, reforms were written to allow competitors in.

The outcome of this action would inevitably be to reduce competition and increase prices for consumers, Altice said in its testimony.

And its not like the federal government is doing its job regulating utilities these days.

Frontier says its being held to a higher standard than its competitors.

Most states have significantly reduced or eliminated oversight of wireline telecommunications and SB 847 would modernize Connecticut statutes on voice services, many written decades ago when phone service was a monopoly, the company said in a written statement to me Monday. Frontier alone is subject to the outdated regulatory regime that is in place today, which negatively impacts its ability to compete in Connecticut.

Perhaps so, but as Tom Swan, director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, said in his testimony, Frontier bought its way into the state understanding our regulatory framework. ... There is no benefit for consumers from this bill, which would disproportionately impact older residents of Connecticut.

Katz went into detail in her testimony about how poorly Frontier is doing, with its stock price depressed, facing high debt for copper wireline phone systems that are outdated. But, she and Swan pointed out, thats not the customers problem  and weve got plenty of utility cost headaches already.

But, said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, whose district includes the Frontier corporate headquarters, cable companies have no regulationseven though the service is the same. He wondered whether the company could lower its rates if it were out from under the regulations.

That seems unlikely. It does raise the question of whether theres a way to sort this out without a political solution.

There is. Frontier has a right to bring a deregulation case to the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, or PURA. Let the pros, not the pols, decide based on technical merits whether competition is robust enough for the state to drop the rule.

If the SNET franchise is in grave danger, the state has other remedies.

A previous version of this story said Frontier paid a $525,000 fine in 2012; the fine was paid by the prior SNET owner, AT&T.

dhaar@hearstmediact.com
TORRINGTON  A former city resident was sentenced to serve three years in prison after pleading guilty to three felony charges in connection with what police said was an assault that occurred during an arguments with family members.

Wilbert A. McCullough, 37, who has lived in Torrington but whose last known address was in Stratford, was sentenced to concurrent terms of five years in jail, to be suspended after serving three years, with five years of probation, for charges of violating a protective order, risk of injury to a child, and failure to appear, which are felonies. He also was sentenced to one year in prison on the a charge of third-degree assault.

The 2018 arrest on the protective order violation occurred, according to Torrington police Detective Kevin Tieman, after McCullough tried to make contact with a previous victim through a third party.

The arrest came after an argument with family members, Tieman said. It was about money to use for food for the family members. McCullough didnt use the the money for food, but allegedly used it for drugs, Tieman added.

The 2017 case, involving a disturbance with an assault on the adult and the child, Tieman said, led to the third-degree assault and risk of injury charges.

The sentences for all four of the charges to which McCullough pleaded guilty are to run concurrently, according to a court clerk.

McCullough faced 15 more charges last Friday, including four felony counts, two for violating protective orders and two for first-degree failure to appear, both in October 2018.

Those charges will not be prosecuted. There are no outstanding counts, the prosecutor told the judge following the sentencing procedure.

Superior Court Judge Paul Matasavage replied they are appropriate (sentences), I understand, based on the evidence.

A victims statement was read to the court by the prosecutor prior to the sentencing.

My son and I have anxiety over this. I hope (McCullough) serves the time thats required and that he gets help.

This is a highly emotionally charged case. No one deserves to go through what the victim has, said Matasavage.

This is a substantial sentence for a relatively young guy, the judge said to McCullough. McCullough did not respond to the judges comments.

McCullough is required to complete a domestic violence course as part of his sentence and perform 25 hours of community service during his probation.

He has been held at the New Haven Correctional Center since October 2018.

McCullough has also served several prior prison sentences.

In January 2010, he was arrested and held on a $100,000 bond for first degree burglary. According to police, McCullough entered his former girlfriends house on James Street in Torrington around midnight. The victim told police she was no longer involved with McCullough because of his lengthy criminal past, court documents stated.

McCullough was put on probation for the charge, but violated the conditions of the agreement in March, 2010 and his probation was revoked. He received a sentence of 30 months in jail.

In 2013, he was found guilty of second-degree breach of peace and received a sentence of six months in jail.
A special place

The 36th Australian-New Zealand Brigade of the Southern Cross reports from Cuba

Every year since the mid 1980s a brigade of intrepid and progressive citizens of Australia and New Zealand have signed up for a brigade in friendship with the Cuban Revolution to see how socialism is travelling in that distant Caribbean island.

Brigade in front of the Fighting Rooster of Moron.

The brigade which ran from December 27, 2018 to January 16, 2019, consisted of 19 Brigadistas from all Australian states and from New Zealand, almost even numbers of males and females with the youngest being 35 years and the oldest celebrating his 80th birthday while on the brigade. The brigade leader was comrade Maria Hilario of the Sydney Branch of the Australia Cuba Friendship society and the Communist Party of Australia: three other comrades from the Party also participated in the Brigade.

Each year the brigade has its program designed in advance by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People (ICAP) in association with the Friendship Societies in Australia and New Zealand.

This was the authors fourth Brigade in seven years and an opportunity to visit places and undertake activities that included the visit to the Mausoleum of the Martyrs in Artemisa which recalls the sacrifices of the Cuban youth that joined Fidel Castro in his unsuccessful bid to storm the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953.

The program included: the remembrance of Julio Antonio Mella who died in January 1929 in Mexico after whom the International Camp where we spent most of our time was named; a visit to the Memorial to Che Guevara in the city of Santa Clara; a visit on New Years Day to the ballet at the Gran Teatro de Habana with the grand dame of Cuban ballet, Alicia Alonso in attendance to see an outstanding production of Swan Lake; and a visit to see contemporary Cuban song and dance at the Club Tropicana.

The brigades special attractions this year were the celebrations of the 60th Anniversary of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, made more important with the build-up for the referendum for renewal of the Cuban Revolution to be held on February 24  now a triumphant seal of approval given by 86 percent of Cuban voters and the annual Convoy of Freedom which originally followed the triumph of the Revolution.

The Convoy of Freedom (Caravana de la Libertad)

The Convoy of Freedom is an annual re-enactment across the Cuban nation of the journey in a series of open trucks by Fidel Castro and other revolutionary figures from the city of Santiago de Cuba in the east to Havana in the west.

As members of the Brigade we were invited twice in the provinces to stand with the local people including the veterans of the Revolutionary struggle in the provincial cities of Ciego de Avila and Santa Clara as the Convoy of Freedom passed through their cities.

In each of these two cities revolutionary poems were read, songs were sung and speeches in praise of the accomplishments of the revolutionary struggle were given. The Brigadistas were also special guests at the arrival of the of the Convoy of Freedom on January 8 at Ciudad Escolar Libertad, with guests from other countries, school children, representatives from civil society and officials from the Cuban government including President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez and the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party of Havana, Luis Antonio Torres Iribar who gave a speech acknowledging the historical significance of the day for the Cuban people and the world.

A visit to the provinces

On this Brigade a visit was made to the province of Ciego de Avila where we visited the city which bears the same name, founded by the Spanish in 1577. The brigade also visited the town of Moron, home to the large sculpture of the fighting rooster  a symbol of the rebellious character of the Cuban people which featured on the brigade t-shirt. Next to the rooster was also a monument to Roberto El Vaquerito Rodriguez Fernandez who fought with Che Guevara during the third revolutionary war in the 1950s.

In Moron we also visited the local teaching hospital where the director of the hospital, Dr Juan Carlos Villares Vazquez, gave us an overview of the 486 bed hospital staffed by 1,755 staff including 352 doctors and 519 nurses, followed by a tour of the facilities. Dr Villares explained that despite the challenges caused by the US economic blockade in maintaining the hospital, it is well-resourced in equipment and spare parts.

Despite the blockade Cuba had still been able  with its human capital  to develop two important vaccines; Heberprot B which helps to regenerate the tissue of the feet of diabetics who develop foot ulcers; and a preventative vaccine for lung cancer. An example of the effect of the blockade on medical equipment was that it left it with only two of its four ultrasound machines in working order.

The hospital also has an international wing where foreigners can receive quality medical care at cost which helps to generate 250,000 CUC a year which is paid to the central government but redistributed to the hospital for maintenance.

In Moron we also visited a project called the Nicolas Guillen Foundation where culture and its values and principles are transmitted to school children of various ages through music, song, dance, theatre and poetry which the brigade were able to see through presentations by the various groups of students and their teachers.

Following the visit to the hospital we drove towards the coast to a large and beautiful lagoon of fresh water  Laguna Redonda  where we were taken on large outboard motor-powered boats to view the lagoon itself and a beautiful mangrove-lined channel that branches off from the lagoon.

History stopover

In the city of Cienfuegos we were shown around the beautiful historic centre of the city with its shopping mall and central plaza of Jose Marti surrounded by many historic buildings, including a theatre built in the early 19th century that still retains many of its original furnishings and fittings. Cienfuegos was therefore an ideal stopover for tourists to visit Cuba with 18 cruise liners visiting the port every week.

While in Cienfuegos Reinaldo Reyes, an official from the local ICAP, also invited us to visit the Vilma Espin School of Austism. Back in Australia, the Sydney Branch of the Australian Cuban Friendship Society had undertaken a project to raise $500 to provide a washing machine. The Brigades team leader Maria Hillario presented the money to the centre which has a large number of qualified staff including 31 teachers and five specialists, among them psychologists, speech pathologists and a psychiatrist for its 36 children.

This allows the centre to have one or two teachers per student and the brigade were able to have a tour to see the teaching in action. Members of a previous brigade from 2014/15 who had previously been there were also on this brigade and could see the improvement which had taken place in the facilities and an increase in the number of students at the school.

Cuban agriculture

The brigade visited an agroecological farm near the town of Caimito not far from the international camp. La Burgambilia (the bougainvillia) was part of the Jesus Menendez Cooperative of Credit and Services which has 83 members who worked for and attended the facility. The farm grows fruit and vegetables which it sells and we were given a tour and shown the native bee hives which were made in the shape of various landmark buildings in Havana, along with a series of sturdy, enclosed structures covered with a strong clear plastic so the farm could grow and sell tomatoes in the Cuban summer when it is normally too wet to grow the fruit.

We were also shown the library which was on stilts and worm pits and rabbit hutches before it was time to contribute to the economic activity of the farm by filling thousands of small bags with soil which would be used to plant cuttings of shrubs to be used in roadside verge beautification projects.

The afternoon of the same day we also visited the Bosque Martiano del Ariguanabo (Martian Forest) outside of San Antonio de Banos, lovingly attended to for over 20 years by its founder Rafael Rodriguez. The significance of the Jose Marti Forest is that all the trees planted in the forest are referred to in the diaries of Jose Marti as he travelled around Cuba  though the trees such as the Ceiba, Jucaro, Ateje, Yogruma and Jubaban are indigenous to Cuba as well as those introduced to Cuba over the years by the Spanish who invaded in 1511. The site for the forest had previously been the towns rubbish tip and was carefully rehabilitated as it was an ideal site for its fertile soil and moisture from a large water table beneath.

Memorial of the Denunciation (Memorial de la Denuncia)

On most Brigades a visit to the Museum of the Revolution in Old Havana is included so brigadistas can see photos, documents and objects from the revolutionary struggle in the 1950s up until the triumph on January 1, 1959. However, there is a struggle to defend the revolution from counter-revolutionary attacks which continues to this day. In Havana there is a lesser known but equally important museum to this struggle called Memorial de la Denuncia which is part memorial to the victims of ongoing terrorist attacks and subversion against Cuba and an exposition of the varied forms of this subversion which has taken place since 1959.

The museum consists of six expositive halls, which through texts, animation, multimedia, computer graphics and videos, denounces to the world the magnitude and sensitivity of the attacks on Cuba since that historic moment.

One can access electronic copies of declassified CIA documents which detail various operations carried out against the Cuban state and the Cuban people including Operation Mangota from July 1962 from which arms and ammunition was seized by the Cuban state; 637 assassination plots against Fidel Castro; expat organisations such as Alpha 66 and Brothers to the Rescue which planned and carried out attacks on the Cuban state and its people and also propaganda missions.

There are details of the biological warfare carried out not only against the people of Cuba but also on agricultural crops and farm animals such as pigs. There is an exhibit which details the sabotage planned by Posada Carriles on the Cubana Airlines fight which took off from Barbados and exploded in mid-air killing all 73 passengers of which 56 were members of the Cuban fencing team.

There is the display of the triumph of the Cuban armed forces at the Bay of Pigs over the invasion force consisting of Cuban expats. Finally, there are details about the radio and other media used to project imperialist propaganda such as Radio Marti and other misinformation transmissions.

In the final days of the Brigade there were also meetings with representatives of the Young Communist League, Federation of Cuban Students, Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), Communist Party of Cuba and Cuban Institute of Solidarity with the People. Barbara Cantero Isasi of the FMC explained that while her organisation is concerned about the role of women in Cuban society they are also concerned for the wellbeing of the whole family.

In Cuba today 4.2 million women are members of the FMC which gives them a powerful voice in the many forums and processes in which they participate. It also means they are very representative of Cuban society and attack problems which are real and look for solutions in a meaningful way. Though incidences of domestic and family violence are low in Cuba, the FMC is confronting manifestations of violence in new technologies online and with mobile phones, and sponsoring a billboard campaign using the slogan Evolution  Abuse takes you backwards.

Cantero also spoke about free counselling services in all the provinces for women and developments in ensuring enough childcare is available to allow women to participate in the workforce.

International solidarity

Fernando Gonzalez, the president of ICAP and former member of the Cuban Five, spoke of the continuing need for international solidarity to help Cuba put pressure on the US to lift the blockade on the island which is the single most important factor which holds back the Cuban economy.

Gonzalez said the Australian people must be made aware the Blockade is still on and cripples the economy by holding back the value of its economic activity and punishing those countries which trade with Cuba and have subsidiaries in the US.

There have been multimillion dollar fines against French, Canadian and even the Australian New Zealand Bank. As Cuba prepared to vote in their Constitutional Referendum on February 24, the Brigadistas of the 36th Southern Cross Brigade went back to Australia and New Zealand with the experience of Cuba as a country with a special place on the world stage.
Bread and Peace

This is a speech by Dorothy Costa at an IWD function at the Cyprus Community Club in Sydney  Abridged.

Thank you friends and comrades and warmest greetings to all of you for International Womens Day!

Dorothy Costa addresses the crowd.

Before I begin I would like to acknowledge that we meet on the country of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and express respects to their elders past, present and future. The elders, both women and men for tens of thousands of years looked after this country respectfully and with the accumulated knowledge passed down from generation to generation.

The question I am going to try to answer today is ... Have we come a long way towards achieving equality for women in the last 80 years and, if as I suspect, we have not then why not?

The intuitive response is to say of course we have. Women receive a similar education to men nowadays, there have been major electoral and legislative reforms which have given women unprecedented rights under family law, the electoral system, laws against discrimination and legal protection through industrial awards and agreements including, maternity leave, etc. We have had a sexual revolution and we are free to dress as we prefer.

The situation today is clearly different from that over 100 years ago when socialist theorists talked about womens double oppression. Does that mean capitalism has been able to remove the double oppression of women i.e. class and gender?

A woman from the middle or upper classes would laud the above achievements and focus their attention on the need to break the glass ceiling, get more women on the boards of big companies and achieve gender pay equity for women who have made it onto the executives of multinational companies.

I want to look at the issue from a working class perspective. The only perspective that can understand the position of the greater majority of working women while also offering solutions that are in the interests of all women, including Indigenous women, rural, self-employed, young, single, married, migrant or refugee women and older women.

This backward trajectory for the working class coincided with the decline of union membership and the abandonment of class positions by social democratic-dominated unions that began with the Wages and Income Accord introduced by the Hawke/Keating Labor government in 1983. The idea that technological development had heralded an era of common interests and an end to the necessity for class struggle in society was presented to the Australian working class in the form of social contracts and enterprise bargaining agreements.

In the nearly four decades since, Australian workers have experienced a steady and relentless decline in their living standards and working conditions. Wage stagnation has gone on for 25 years. The ACTU is desperately trying to claw back what has been lost in these decades through its Change The Rules campaign but has lost a massive bulk of membership as well as the ideological high ground.

Australian women now make up close to half of the Australian workforce. This has not changed since the 1970 and 80s when there was a large rise in female participation in the workforce. This was largely driven by economic necessity. A single income family could no longer keep up with the cost of their aspirations for better living standards. What has not changed since that time is that women remain concentrated in female dominated areas of employment which are on the whole still the lower paid jobs, such as teaching, nursing, secretarial, cleaners, child care workers. They are more likely to be in insecure and /or part-time work. They are still the primary carers of children and as they often go in and out of the workforce, or employed part-time, they have less superannuation and/or savings and assets when they are older.

Briefly this confirms the early theories of socialist activists and leaders of womens struggle for equality, including Clara Zetkin: women in Australia today continue to experience double oppression, gender and class.

How can we say we have come a long way when childcare costs make it prohibitive for women to work full-time, when women have to negotiate an increasingly underfunded public health system for themselves and their families, when public education is being attacked and a two-tier society is being created? How can we say women are equal or have even come a long way when they are concentrated in the lowest paid jobs, are increasingly not in the full-time workforce but in the part-time, insecure workforce? When they face retirement with little or no super and when one crisis can lead down the slippery road to impoverishment and even homelessness.

How can we say we have come a long way when womens newfound freedoms are on the surface and do not challenge exploitation of their labour and the transfer of the wealth they create into the hands of the monopolies and their bourgeois servants in government?

Domestic violence is not just a gender issue, we need to recognise the link between this and a society that treats people as disposable resources that turns basic human needs into commodities and peddles the lowest of values through mass culture, we need to recognise how this society condones gambling because its profitable, enables the spread of drugs and alcohol but does less and less to support families. Domestic violence is intimately about how we live as a society and the values we champion. Exploitation is the root of the values we are being sold.

Today and every day as women we struggle in solidarity with women everywhere whose plight is intimately connected with ours. Our struggle in Australia for real equality and against exploitation, against the monopolies, against the aggressive US alliance, against the militarisation of our economy, for socialism and communism is the same struggle women are engaged in, in Palestine, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba  for their right to live in peace, against the invasion of their homelands and for the right of all women to a decent life for themselves and their families. Our oppressor is a common one and our victories against the aggressive and predatory imperialist beast wherever we are, are common victories.

We must express our solidarity with our Venezuelan sisters who are fighting against foreign interference in their internal affairs by focusing our demands on the hypocritical complicity of the Australian government which has come out in support of the US position to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela.

On this day of international solidarity with women, lets raise a toast to all those revolutionary women who came before us and helped to open the way forward not only for working class women but for all the majority of women who have nothing to lose but their chains when they work with each other and with the working class for socialism and communism.

Lets raise our voices and build our actions for a better life for our daughters and sons where their potential can be realised in harmony with society, not despite it. Lets stand up against the militarisation of our economies, imperialisms policy of rolling wars and the creation of a refugee pandemic. Lets express our solidarity with our Indigenous sisters and with the women who today struggle just to live in peace and for their daily bread!
A European Union delegation arrived in Cambodia as NGOs in the Southeast Asian country called on the government to uphold the constitution as a way to avoid losing preferential trade terms the EU has threatened to withdraw in response to Prime Minister Hun Sens crackdown on opponents.

The EU decided in February to launch a six-month monitoring period to determine whether Cambodian exports should continue to enjoy tax-free entry into the European market under the Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme.

The EU trade measure, and a similar one proposed by the U.S. Congress, was motivated by the September 2017 arrest of opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) President Kem Sokha for alleged acts of treason and the dissolution of his party two months later, along with a wider crackdown on media and civil society.

EU Cambodia mission spokesman George Edgar told RFAs Khmer Service that the EU delegates will meet senior Cambodian government representatives on Wednesday.

This is not a fact-finding mission like the one that took place last July. It is a short visit that is part of the process of engagement between the EU and the Cambodian authorities in the context of EBA, he said by e-mail.

The visit prompted a group of 66 local and international NGOs, trade unions, and activists to issue a statement calling on the government to address EU concerns.

The coalition of groups are deeply concerned about the launch of the European Union (EU) Commissions procedure to temporarily suspend Cambodias access to its Everything But Arms (EBA) trade agreement, they said in a statement.

As defenders of fundamental rights and labor rights, we fully understand the European Union position and decision. However, we are deeply worried that the EBA suspension will directly and negatively impact Cambodian peoples welfare and livelihood, said the statement.

Cambodia could avoid loss of trade preferences by upholding the countrys constitution, particularly the articles that require the government to recognize and respect human rights, and freedoms of association, expression and assembly, said the statement.

We believe that this situation can be avoided if the RGC takes appropriate steps to fulfil its obligations towards its citizens and effectively implement the Cambodian Constitution, it said, using the initials for the Royal Government of Cambodia.

In response to NGOs statement, government spokesman Phay Siphan told RFA that Hun Sens regime wont bow its head in exchange for benefits.

The government already said that we wont kneel down for EBA in exchange for our integrity or destroying the Supreme Courts verdict [to ban 118 CNRP officials from politics], said Phay Siphan

NGOs should praise Cambodias situation, he said without elaboration.

Soeung Sen Karuna, a spokesman for Adhoc, a human rights group which signed the joint NGO statement, said Phay Siphans remarks underscored how the government always disregards NGOs recommendations.

We want all stakeholders to pay attention to people to avoid any negative consequences resulting from losing EBA. We know for sure that it would be a devastating loss for the nation, he said.

At the end of the EBA monitoring period, the EUCambodias largest trading partnerwill take three months to produce a report based on its findings, and in February 2020, the European Commission will conclude the procedure with a final decision on whether or not to withdraw trade preferences, as well as the scope and duration of the withdrawal.



Any withdrawal would come into effect after a total of 18 months.

The renewed focus on the imperiled EU trade policy came days after Phnom Penh Municipal Court made public its decision to issue arrest warrants for Sam Rainsy, who has said he plans to return to Cambodia in 2019, and seven other top CNRP officials living abroad on charges of treason and incitement to commit felonies.

Also named in the warrant, dated March 12, are CNRP vice presidents Mu Sochua and Eng Chhay Eang, and CNRP lawmakers Ou Chanrith, Tok Vanchan, Long Ry, Ho Vann, and Men Sothavrin.

The eight were in attendance at the first CNRP Permanent Committee meeting in Lowell, Massachusetts on Jan. 20, when Sam Rainsy was official appointed acting party president while Kem Sokha remained in pre-trial detention facing charges of treason.

The ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), issued a statement Tuesday strongly condemn the arrest warrants filed against Mu Sochua, who is an APHR board member, and the seven others.

The criminal charges that led to the warrants are entirely politically motivated and baseless, and mark yet another attempt by the Cambodian government to harass opposition politicians, the group said in a statement.

Ministry of Justice spokesman Chin Malin dismissed the APHR criticism as a political statement.

The arrest warrants were issued according to the laws in a democratic country based on investigations, the minister said.

Kang Savang, a spokesman for Cambodian electoral watchdog the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL), told RFA March 19 that the arrest warrants make the situation with the EU worse.

If I were the government, I would have responded to the EUs concerns, he said.

Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Paul Eckert.
A subway operator in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong has apologized for forcing a member of the Goth subculture to remove her make-up before boarding one of its trains, following an outcry from fellow Goths on social media.



The Guangzhou Metro has apologized to a woman known only by her social media nickname EIGA-ziwoxinzhong, after one of its security officers forced her to remove her make-up.



"I was stopped while I was going through the security check at Xiaogang station this afternoon," EIGA-ziwoxinzhong wrote. " The female security inspector ... called her team leader, saying that there was "a problem" with my make-up, which is too horrific."



"On the basis of which Chinese laws and regulations did you stop me and delay me?" the woman wrote on the Twitter-like social media platform Sina Weibo.



"If you can say, I will obey, and I will also put up a notice outside the Xiaogang subway station at my own expense, warning that it is forbidden to ride the subway wearing heavy make-up and Goth dresses."



"If they want to stop you, they're gonna stop you; there's no rhyme nor reason to it," commented user @yiduanyoubugdedaima, while user @linqianLam wrote: "It's 2019 -- how long since the end of the Qing Dynasty?" in a reference to the end of imperial rule in 1911.



"I am so angry about this," wrote @_qishu. "They really need to broaden their minds."



Other users posted photos of themselves in Goth attire, in a show of moral support.



Guangzhou Metro apologized to the woman via its official Sina Weibo account on .



"After investigation, we found that the incident was improperly handled by security personnel," it said in a statement. "We sincerely apologize to the affected service user, and will be ... reviewing our management of subway security checks."



The team leader was suspended pending further training, it said, adding that it will be reviewing security procedures across the network.



"Passengers are welcome to contribute ideas and help us improve our management," it said. "The Metro is for everyone."



Guangzhou-based rights activist Ou Bo said the subway security officers had violated the woman's rights, and had no basis in law.



"It's not against the law to wear make-up, not even against any directives, rules or regulations," Ou told RFA. "There's nothing about make-up in the rules for entering the subway station."



"There is nothing political about this, and yet she doesn't even have the right to wear make-up, which is pretty poor when it comes to human rights," he said.



Reported by Lau Siu-fung for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Authorities have ordered the closure of three Chinese clinics this month in the northern Laotian province of Luang Namtha after issues such as unsanitary conditions and unqualified doctors have led to multiple patient deaths, RFAs Lao Service has learned.

The three clinics, Hong Sing clinic in Hong Chareun village, Pafa clinic in Thong Mai village, and Kham Chanh clinic in Chiang village are all located in the provinces Sing district. Four other Chinese clinics in Luang Namtha will remain open under close monitoring by authorities.

The reason we closed the Chinese clinics is for the safety of patients, said a local health official in an interview with RFAs Lao Service.

We want to protect peoples health, said the official.

The official said that the clinics were established in 2014 and the three that are being shut down are sub-standard and unsanitary.

A patient who received treatment at the three clinics told RFA, I was unhappy with the treatment I received because the doctor used a strong dosage of medicine that actually made my condition worsen.

They treated me with several unknown medicines and I was not allowed to refuse them, he said, adding, I started feeling really cold and my body started to shake. I told them to stop, but the doctors wouldnt.

The patient refused to set foot in Chinese clinics again.

If Im going to die, I would rather die at home surrounded by my family, he said.

Another villager from Sing district revealed how three people died visiting a newly-opened Chinese clinic in her town.

Of the three, two were ethnic Akha people and the third, a 48-year old woman named Boua Vanh, was of a highlands ethnic minority.

The villager said Boua Vanhs husband is contemplating litigation against the Chinese owner of the clinic, who has offered compensation of 40 million kip (about $4,660) to settle.

A local health official who requested anonymity told RFA, Its true there are patients that have died in that clinic. Those clinics belong to Chinese but register in Lao names.

There are other Chinese clinics in Laos where patients have died.

One such clinic in Xieng Khouang provinces Peak district performed an illegal abortion for a woman in May 2017 that lead to her death.

To avoid a lawsuit, the clinic owner paid 172 million kip (about $20,000) in a settlement.

A provincial health official told RFA after the incident that three other women contracted infections after the clinic performed abortions on them.

Authorities closed the clinic shortly after investigating the clinic, finding it had no permit to be open.

There are four foreign-owned clinics in Xieng Khouang province, but only the Chinese one was shut down.

Foreign medical clinics are widespread in Laos, and many are accused of engaging in illegal activity.

In June 2017 Lao officials ordered a clinic in Vientiane to close its doors for illegally employing Thai women to be surrogate mothers for infertile couples.

Laotian authorities are cracking down on many of these clinics and are being more strict with the opening of new clinics, according to an official from Laos Ministry of Public Health.

Reported by RFAs Lao Service. Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Prominent Myanmar lawmaker and former Arakan National Party chairman Aye Maung is taken to prison following his sentencing on charges of high treason and incitement in Sittwe, western Myanmar's Rakhine state, March 19, 2019.

A Myanmar court on Tuesday sentenced a prominent lawmaker and a writer to 20 years in prison on charges of high treason and incitement for making inflammatory speeches against the government at a public event, those involved in the case said.

Sittwe District Court sentenced Aye Maung, a member of parliament and former chairman of the Arakan National Party (ANP), and writer Wai Hin Aung to 20 years in jail for high treason and two years for incitement with their sentences to be served concurrently.

Both men were arrested in January 2018 after giving speeches at a public event in Rathedaung township in Myanmars volatile Rakhine state, and formally charged in September 2018.

During his speech at the event commemorating the 233rd anniversary of the fall of the Arakan Kingdom in Rakhine, Aye Maung is said to have accused the ethnic Bamar-dominated ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) government of treating the ethnic Rakhine people like slaves, according to a report in the magazine Frontier Myanmar.

A day after the speech, police opened fire on a crowd of ethnic Rakhine protesters, killing at least seven of them.

After the sentencing, hundreds of Rakhine locals who came to court to show their support chanted slogans to show their disapproval of the lengthy prison sentences for the Rakhine politician.

Aye Maung was elected to Myanmars lower house of parliament in 2017 as an ANP representative for Ann township, though he later held the seat as an independent after resigning from the party later that year.

After he was arrested, Aye Maung sought to form a new political group called the Arakan Front Party, which the countrys Union Election Commission approved in October 2018, Frontier Myanmar said.

Politics is very terrifying, Aye Maung told reporters after his sentencing.

If it becomes apparent that the political engagement approach with the creation of various political parties is not viable, then the Union and the Panglong Agreement that make this union will become a curse, he said, referring to the 1947 accord in which General Aung San, father of current leader Aung San Suu Kyi, promised equal rights and self-determination to Myanmars ethnic minority groups.

Legally flawed sentence

The court initially charged Aye Maung and Wai Hin Aung with high treason, unlawful association, and incitement, but later dropped the second charge because of insufficient evidence.

The defendants' attorneys cited Section 22 of 1973 Interpretation of Expressions Law, which states that if one action violates two or more existing laws, then the perpetrators should be charged with only one crime under the law that they broke.

They opened three charges for his [Aye Maungs] actions [which was a single speech] under the 1973 Interpretation of Expressions Law, said attorney San Shwe Maung, who has been assisting with Aye Maungs case.

We argued in the Rakhine State Court that it was wrong to bring up three charges, and we appealed [the ruling] ... but it wasnt accepted, he said.

Aung Than Wai, a friend of Aye Maung, agreed that the sentence raised legal questions.

I must say that the sentences disregard clauses in the existing laws, he said. I think it is a completely legally flawed sentence.

Aung Htay, chairman of the ANP in Sittwe township, called the sentencing totally unacceptable.

We are going to consult legal experts to continue to fight within legal boundaries, he said. With regards to the sentences, I think it is totally unfair.



Warning shot

Members of parliament and political analysts criticized the courts decision, calling the jail term handed to Aye Maung unjust and a disgrace for a democratic government.

Oo Hla Saw, an ethnic Rakhine lawmaker who represents Mrauk-U township in Myanmar's lower house of parliament, said Aye Maungs lengthy sentence is an example of the lack of freedom of speech in the country.

Aye Maung is a member of parliament elected by the public, he said. He is also a respected leader among the Rakhine people. The government is giving him harsh prison sentences for exercising his right to freedom of speech.

Sentencing such a harmless person to prison for high treason is evidence that peoples basic rights are violated in this so-called democratic society, he added.

Htu May, a prominent female Rakhine politician and lawmaker from Rakhine state constituency No. 11, said sentencing a leader who has widespread support among the Rakhine public to such a prison term would harm the ongoing political engagement process in the armed conflict between the government army and rebel Arakan Army in the western state.

There is an ongoing civil war in Rakhine state, she said. Regardless of whether one is a Rakhine or a member of any other ethnic group, sentencing an ethnic leader to such a harsh punishment is a warning shot for all other ethnic leaders in the country. Todays sentencing will intensify the anger of young Rakhine people and their pursuit of self-determination.

Prominent Muslim politician and political observer Mya Aye, who said he was at odds with Aye Maung on several topics, said the handing down of a lengthy term to the lawmaker would not bode well for the countrys peace process.

We are now seeing a suspension of peace talks with ethnic groups as part of a greater goal of transforming Myanmar to a federal union, he said, referring to the governments largely stalled formal peace negotiations among ethnic armies and the Myanmar military.

Giving a lengthy prison sentence to a Rakhine ethnic leader at such a critical time will have no good impact on the peace process, he added.

NLD not involved in verdict

Aye Maung was known to be an active collaborator with the former opposition NLD after several of the party's candidates, including Aung San Su Kyi, won by-elections in 2012 and become members of parliament.

Before the general election in 2015, Aye Maung was selected to represent ethnic groups in six-party talks on constitutional reform, a peace agreement, and the upcoming vote with then President Thein Sein, military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, NLD chairwoman Aung San Su Kyi, and the two parliamentary chairmen Shwe Man and Khin Aung Myint.

Despite Aye Maungs connections to the NLD, Ye Htun, a former lower house lawmaker from the Shan Nationalities Development Party who keeps a close eye on what happens in parliament, said the current civilian-led administration did not likely have a hand in the courts verdict.

I think the judicial bodies are making the sentences independently, he said. I notice that Daw [honorific] Aung San Su Kyi is pretty cautious about not influencing court verdicts. I think she has drawn a clear boundary that the government administration and the politicians should not interfere with judicial independence.

Reported by Min Thein Aung and Wai Mar Tun for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung and Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
KABUL -- A female Afghan lawmaker who slapped and cursed a police officer during a Kabul traffic stop is defending her actions, telling RFE/RL the officer first struck her with his fist, pushed her, insulted her, and smashed the butt of his rifle against her car in an attempt to provoke her.



Afghanistans acting Interior Minister Masud Andarabi has praised the officer for showing patience and not retaliating when he was slapped in the face on March 17 by parliamentary deputy Parwin Durrani.



The officer, identified by the authorities as Yassin from the Interior Ministrys 01 Unit in Kabul, has also been praised on social media by many Afghans after video showing part of the altercation was circulated online:

And many Afghans, angered by what was captured on the video, are now calling for Durrani to be put on trial for attacking a uniformed police officer.

As that video clip begins, Durrani can be heard shouting damn your father in Dari as she confronts the officer from a close distance at a Kabul roundabout near the U.S. Embassy.



The police officer responds by forcefully shoving Durrani backwards against her car and she nearly loses her balance.



Durrani approaches him again and continues to insult him with profanities as she tries to slap him, but he blocks the blow and scolds her, saying, You are a member of parliament.



She replies: I am a member of parliament. There will be consequences.

The officer then asks Durrani to show him a special Interior Ministry permit required in Kabul for her bulletproof car. She tells him she doesnt have the card.



When the officer tells Durrani, You should be ashamed of your behavior, she slaps his face and continues to curse him.



'It Was A Setup'



Durrani tells RFE/RL she thinks the incident was set up by officials in Afghanistans central government who want to defame her and prevent her from taking up a seat when the next Afghan parliament convenes.

She says shed been stopped at the same traffic circle, Masud Circle, three days earlier because of the tinted, bulletproof windows on her car.



On March 17, she says, cameramen were already posted at the roundabout when her car was stopped in the same place.



Durrani says her own video footage of the March 17 incident captured the voice of the officer she slapped telling a cameraman to film it, quickly.



That means it was a setup, and I think it was meant to destroy my reputation, Durrani said.



Durrani won more than 4,000 votes from Kabul in October in her bid to be reelected as a representative for the nomadic Kochi in Afghanistans lower chamber of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga.



But in February, all votes cast in Kabul Province were invalidated over fraud allegations -- effectively stalling the official release of results and preventing the new parliament from convening.



As of March 19, only 123 of the 250 Wolesi Jirga seats have been certified. If the results for the remaining seats are canceled, Durrani would have to run again in a new ballot.

They tried to provoke me to make me angry and they insulted me, Durrani told RFE/RLs Radio Free Afghanistan about the police who stopped her on March 17, adding that the officer she slapped started to hit her car before she got out of the vehicle.



I was scared to open the door of the car. I was afraid they would attack me, Durrani said in a video she made for social media on March 18 to explain her version of the altercation:





I was afraid I would be another Farkhunda, Durrani said, referring to Farkhunda Malikzada -- an Afghan woman who was brutally beaten to death by an angry mob in Kabul in March 2015.

Durrani told RFE/RL she decided to get out of her car to film the officer she later slapped because he was beating my car with his gun.



Then he started hitting me with his fist and he pushed me, and I have footage to prove it, she said. Thats why I retaliated and slapped the guy and insulted him.



They didnt have any reason to do that to me, Durrani said. I didnt have any bodyguards. I didnt cause any problems. I didnt have weapons.



I was beaten and I retaliated courageously, she told RFE/RL. I could not tolerate that he assaulted me and insulted me. I am a female diplomat and a politician. If he had insulted his own mother and sisters, they would have responded in the same way. I will leave it to God to be the judge.

'Evident' Crime



Interior Ministry spokesman Nusrat Rahimi said the online video of Durrani slapping the officer proves that crime is completely evident in the case.



Rahimi said the ministrys Kabul Police Command has been ordered to take legal actions under a special constitutional provision regarding parliamentary deputies.



That provision, Article 102, allows authorities to summon an accused lawmaker for questioning without the permission of the house of which the accused is a member in cases of an evident crime.



It says holding an Afghan lawmaker in detention requires approval of their parliamentary chamber.



If parliament is in recess, as it is now, the constitution says permission for detention of an accused lawmaker shall be obtained from the administrative board of their chamber and the issue shall be referred to the first session after the chamber reconvenes.



Durrani tells RFE/RL she was summoned to the Interior Ministry on March 19 and instructed that she must report to the Kabul Police Command.



I cannot escape from the law, and I will not try to do so, she said.

Written by Ron Synovitz in Prague based on reporting from Kabul by Khan Mohammad Seend
More than a dozen supporters of jailed Iranian rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh have gathered outside Irans Embassy in Yerevan to call for her release.



The protesters held placards reading slogans such as "We are standing for Nasrin" and "Nasrin, you are not alone," as they held their silent demonstration on March 19.



Human rights activist Arman Gharibian, who was among the protesters, told RFE/RLs Armenian Service: "We cannot remain indifferent when this kind of repression against a human rights activist takes place in the neighboring country."



Sotoudeh, the co-winner of the European Parliament's 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, last year represented several of the women detained for removing their head scarves in public to protest against the countrys Islamic dress code.



The 55-year-old activist was arrested in June last year and reportedly sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes after what Amnesty International called two grossly unfair trials.

Vardges Gaspari, a prominent Armenian activist who was born in Iran, said he participated in the Yerevan protest to "encourage the jailed activist morally, [...] so that she can feel that she is not forgotten, that there are people, even if few, who are concerned about her fate."



The United States, the European Commission, and the European Parliament have also called for Sotoudeh's release

Written by Naira Bulghadarian of RFE/RLs Armenian Service
The French defense minister has expressed concerns about the U.S. long-term commitment to NATO and said loyalty to the alliance should be "unconditional."

Florence Parly, speaking at the Atlantic Council in Washington on March 18, said that "what Europeans are worried about is this: Will the U.S. commitment [to NATO] be perennial?"

"Should we assume that it will go on as was the case in the past 70 years?" Parly asked ahead of a meeting later in the day with acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan for talks on Syria.

Her comments reflect increasing doubts in Europe about President Donald Trump's commitment to the 70-year-old Western alliance, which was highlighted by U.S. military strength and leadership during the Cold War.

Trump has demanded that NATO allies pay more for their defense to ease the burden on U.S. taxpayers and has also often failed to mention a commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which states that if one member is attacked, it is considered an attack on all members.

While acknowledging Trump's demands that Europe spend more on shared defense, Parly also said that "the alliance should be unconditional. Otherwise, it is not an alliance.

"NATO's solidarity clause is called Article 5, not article F-35," the French defense chief in a reference to the F-35 jet fighter.

Trump has often pressed allies to purchase more U.S. defense products and touted what he has called the superiority of their design and quality.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters
A senior U.S. diplomat has told President Hassan Rohani that he should give Iranians jobs and employment instead of urging them to curse the United States for their country's deteriorating economic situation.

In a tweet in Persian on March 19, U.S. special representative for Iran Brian Hook, who sometimes responds to similar statements by senior Iranian officials, said: "In response to the paralyzed economy, Rohani asked the Iranian people to put a curse on United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia! By resorting to curses and magic he is after blaming others for his economic record."

"The people of Iran would like to have jobs, instead of putting curses," Hook added.

Rohani, in televised remarks on March 18, called on all Iranians to put a curse on the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism for economic hardships following Washington's withdrawal from a nuclear deal and the reinstatement of U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

"Put all your curses on those who created the current situation," Rohani said, adding that "the United States, the Zionists [Israel]," and Saudi Arabia were to blame. He didn't say what kind of curses the Iranians should invoke.

Rohani, who came to power in 2017 promising to improve the economy, has claimed that the United States wants to "dominate" Iran.

After the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran in May 2018 and reimposition of tough economic sanctions, Iran's economy has nosedived, with a steep devaluation of its currency, skyrocketing prices for essential goods, and frequent protests and strikes.

The crisis has hurt Iranians and prompted Rohani's critics to openly call for his ouster.

U.S. officials have repeatedly said that their aim is not to hurt the Iranian people, but to force the Islamic republic to renegotiate the nuclear agreement.

On March 17, Rohani also asked Iran's judiciary to pursue legal action against U.S. officials on the grounds of "crimes against humanity."

With reporting by Reuters and AP
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has abruptly resigned after nearly 30 years in office, but will continue to head the ruling party and keep his lifetime post as chairman of the influential Security Council.



"I have decided to end my duties as president," Nazarbaev said in a televised address to the nation on March 19, speaking hours after his office said that he would make an important announcement.



"This year I will have held the highest post for 30 years," said Nazarbaev, 78, who has headed the energy-rich country since before the Soviet collapse of 1991. "The people gave me the opportunity to be the first president of an independent Kazakhstan."

Nazarbaev indicated that the speaker of the upper parliament chamber, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, will be acting president for the remainder of what would have been his term, in accordance with the constitution.

Toqaev is to be sworn in on March 20, and the next presidential election is due to be held in 2020.

Even as he resigned, Nazarbaev pointed out that he has been granted the status of "elbasy," or leader of the nation, a title bestowed upon him by the loyal parliament in 2010.



"I remain chairman of the Security Council, which has been granted serious authority," he said, adding that he is also staying on as chairman of the Nur Otan party and as a member of the Constitutional Council.



"So I am staying with you," Nazarbaev said. "The concerns of the country and the people remain my concerns."



The roles he is keeping could allow Nazarbaev to retain a great deal of power.

In July 2018, the Security Council's status was changed from consultative to constitutional, increasing its authority, and Nazarbaev became its chairman for life.

Many in Kazakhstan saw those changes as a sign that Nazarbaev was seeking to ensure that he would maintain his grip on power if he stepped down as president.

Among other things, the Security Council is responsible for "organizing control over the implementation of laws" on national security and defense.

In a statement, the spokeswoman for the European Unions foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini praised Nazarbaev for driving forward "modernisation reforms, including constitutional reforms," and for playing "an important role in promoting cooperation both regionally and globally, with a particular emphasis on promoting peace, stability and security."



"We look forward to a smooth transition in accordance with the Constitution of Kazakhstan," said the spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic.



Kazakhstan's presidential press service said that Nazarbaev had discussed his decision to step down as president in a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that the two leaders " agreed to continue regular contacts in the future.



Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin had spoken with Nazarbaev by telephone, but didn't say what they had discussed.

Rights activists and critics say Nazarbaev has persistently suppressed dissent, prolonged his time in office through undemocratic votes or referendums, and used the levers of power to neutralize potential opponents.

Nazarbaev was last elected in 2015, securing a five-year term after moving the date of the vote up from 2016 in a move was widely seen as an attempt to strengthen his grip on power.



With the death of autocratic Uzbek President Islam Karimov in 2016, Nazarbaev became the only leader of a former Soviet republic to have held power since before the U.S.S.R. fell apart in 1991.



While his announcement was unexpected, there had been several signs that he might be considering stepping down as president.



In early February, Nazarbaev set off speculation about his intentions by asking Kazakhstan's Constitutional Council to provide an official interpretation of an article from the country's constitution that deals with the termination of presidential duties.

His resignation comes after he dismissed the government on February 21, citing its failure to raise living standards and diversify the economy away from the energy sector.



The move followed unusually persistent protests in which demonstrators in several cities across the country of some 18.7 million have accused the government of ignoring the needs and demands of ordinary people.

The protests were spurred in part by anger and grief over the deaths of five children from a single family in a house fire in Astana, the capital, on February 4.

The predawn fire destroyed a tiny family home in Astana while both parents were away working overnight shifts, killing five girls aged 3 months to 13 years.

Nazarbaev moved the capital of Kazakhstan from Almaty to Astana in 1997 and the city was built up substantially, making it a modernized symbol of his power.

Nazarbaev's eldest daughter, Darigha Nazarbaeva, 55, has been seen as a possible successor to her father.



She has chaired the International Affairs, Defense, and Security Committee in the upper house of parliament since September 2016, and before that served as a deputy prime minister.



Toqaev, 65, is a career diplomat who has served as foreign minister and prime minister in the past. Educated in Moscow, he is fluent in Kazakh, Russian, English, and Chinese.



Once a steelworker, Nazarbaev has been the senior leader in Kazakhstan since June 1989, when he became Community Party boss in what was then a Soviet republic.



As president, he has maintained close relations with Russia while courting investment from Europe, the United States, Asia, and other regions to develop Kazakhstan's plentiful oil and natural-gas resources.

The "leader of the nation" status handed to Nazarbaev in 2010 granted him and his family lifelong immunity from criminal and civil prosecution.

With reporting by Merhat Sharipzhan, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, Current Time, RFE/RL correspondent Rikard Jozwiak in Brussels, Reuters, and TASS
Having ruled Kazakhstan with an authoritarian grip since the 1980s, President Nursultan Nazarbaev shocked many when he unexpectedly announced his resignation on March 19.



"This year marks the 30th anniversary of my term as the supreme leader of our country," Nazarbaev said during a hastily arranged nationwide address. "[But] I have made the difficult decision to resign as president of the Republic of Kazakhstan."



Nazarbaev is credited by many with turning Kazakhstan -- the world's ninth largest country -- into an energy powerhouse during his long reign, but strongly criticized for trampling upon democratic norms and freedoms while brutally suppressing all opposition to his rule.



"My generation and I have done everything we could for the country," he said in the TV address. "The results are well known to you."



Though leaving the presidential post, Nazarbaev will retain many other influential positions in the Kazakh government, leaving many to wonder if he's really giving up power.



Still Holding The Reins?



Nazarbaev, 78, will continue to head Kazakhstan's powerful Security Council, the ruling Nur Otan political party that he founded, and the country's Constitutional Council.



The last Soviet-era president to leave office, Nazarbaev noted during his announcement that he was also granted the lifetime status of "Elbasy," or "leader of the nation," by parliament in 2010.



"So, I am staying with you," Nazarbaev said. "The concerns of the country and the people remain my concerns."

"He isnt leaving the scene but when a new president is installed, he will lose some of his power," Paul Goble, a longtime analyst of Russian and post-Soviet affairs, told RFE/RL. "I think we are in the midst of a transition that will likely take a year or more but that wont have the discontinuities which might have occurred had he left by dying."



Erica Marat, an associate professor at Washington's National Defense University, thinks Nazarbaev's presence will be felt in Kazakhstan for some time.



"He will remain a central political figure until the end of his days," she told RFE/RL. "His cult is likely to live for decades as well, with future leaders building their legitimacy on the notion they continue building on the legacy of Nazarbaev."



Nazarbaev announced that veteran politician and diplomat Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, currently the speaker of the Kazakh Senate, would take over presidential duties as of March 20 and serve until the scheduled presidential election in 2020.



As head of Nur Otan, Nazarbaev would likely select that party's candidate for next year's presidential election.



And his position as head of the Security Council, which he noted in his resignation address has "serious authority," would allow him to control the country's foreign policy.



Timing Is Everything



Nazarbaev's resignation comes just two days before Norouz, the springtime new year's holiday that is celebrated in many predominantly Muslim countries.



The timing could be seen by many as symbolic of a new beginning and give people in Kazakhstan time over the holiday to discuss and digest the big political change taking place in their country.

While certainly a surprise announcement for many Kazakhs, others saw it coming.



"It was both long anticipated and an abrupt change at the same time," Marat said. "Nazarbaev has been considering various options for power transition and has chosen one that will allow him to oversee the succession process and normalize the idea that Kazakhstan can also be ruled by a leader other than himself."



The longtime leader had shown his hand about resigning, Goble said.



"Nazarbaev signaled that he wanted to resign by asking Kazakhstans highest court to clarify the conditions under which a president could leave office," he said. "He clearly wants to leave but to manage the transition to a new generation rather than serving until his death with unpredictable consequences thereafter."

Nazarbaev said during his resignation that he wanted to "ensure the coming to power of a new generation of leaders who will continue the reforms under way in the country."



He added: "Let them try to make the country better."



Nazarbaev's resignation comes less than a month after he sacked the government of Prime Minister Bakhytzhan Sagintaev for a lack of economic development.



The move also comes just weeks after the early February house-fire deaths of five children in a tragedy that shocked the country and led to criticism of the government and women-led protests.



Diverse Reactions



The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken with Nazarbaev earlier on March 19 to discuss the resignation.



The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, said Nazarbaev's resignation was "serious" and "unexpected" but said if it was his decision it "was necessary."



She credited Nazarbaev with being behind the initiative to create the Eurasian Economic Union and said he had "bolstered cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan."



William Courtney, a former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, credited Nazarbaev with carrying out economic reforms and bringing in Western companies to exploit the country's energy resources.

But he added that the transition of power would be a good opportunity to promote "political discourse" and to release "imprisoned journalists and [allow] peaceful demonstrations and independent political parties [to exist]."



Marat said Nazarbaev's resignation could spark the largely dormant political opposition in Kazakhstan into action.



"But the opposition has been weakened by Nazarbaev and no political debate has been allowed [under his rule], sono strong reserves of opposition forces exist in Kazakhstan or outside the country that could gain significant popularity in the population," she said.

Goble said the lack of an opposition could lead to outside countries gaining influence.



"The opposition in Kazakhstan is relatively weak. This [resignation] will certainly cause it to take notice of some new possibilities," he said. "More disturbingly, it may lead some in other countries -- read Russia but also China -- to try to get involved so as to dominate the next generation [in Kazakhstan]."



Possible Successors



While Nazarbaev is not leaving the scene altogether and will still hold many levers of power in Kazakhstan, the country will have a new president.



But just who might that be?



Interim President Toqaev, if he remains in the post until next year, will certainly have a decent chance of getting Nazarbaev's nod to run in the presidential election as the Nur Otan candidate, making him a virtual certainty to win the election.



Toqaev, 65, is a Moscow-educated former prime minister and foreign minister who also served as a UN diplomat in Geneva. In announcing Toqaev as interim president, Nazarbaev said the ex-premier "can be trusted to lead Kazakhstan."



Others suggest new Prime Minister Askar Mamin, 53, the former mayor of Astana who also served as transport and communications minister, could be tapped as Nazarbaev's successor.

Nazarbaev's eldest daughter, Darigha, has in the past also been mentioned as a possible replacement for her father. The 55-year-old is currently a senator and formerly headed her own political party, while also serving as deputy prime minister.



Another possible future leader of the country is Karim Masimov, 53, who was prime minister twice and also served as Nazarbaev's chief of staff.



"I dont think we will see another Nazarbaev or Nazarbaeva in the presidency," said Goble. "[Nazarbaev] doesnt want that from what I can see. What we will see will be someone in the first instance who comes out of his entourage and whom he has groomed."



Whoever ultimately succeeds Nazarbaev as president next year will certainly at least need the approval of the former steel worker and long-time Communist Party member who has ruled Kazakhstan with a steady but iron hand since 1989.
The existential question

The recent military clash between India and Pakistan underscores the need for the major nuclear powers  the US, Russia, China, Britain, and France  finally to move toward fulfilling their obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The treatys purpose was not simply to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, but to serve as a temporary measure until Article VI could take effect: the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

The 191 countries that signed the NPT  it is the most widely subscribed nuclear treaty on the planet  did so with the understanding that the major powers would de-nuclearise. But in the 50 years since the treaty was negotiated, the nuclear powers have yet to seriously address eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

While over the years the Americans and the Russians have reduced the number of warheads in their arsenals, they  along with China  are currently in the midst of a major modernisation of their weapon systems. Instead of a world without nuclear weapons, it is a world of nuclear apartheid, with the great powers making no move to downsize their conventional forces. For non-nuclear armed countries, this is the worst of all worlds.

The folly of this approach was all too clear in the recent India and Pakistan dust-up. While both sides appear to be keeping the crisis under control, for the first time in a very long time, two nuclear powers that border one another exchanged air and artillery attacks.

While so far things have not gotten out of hand, both countries recently introduced military policies that make the possibility of a serious escalation very real.

On the New Delhi side is a doctrine called Cold Start that permits the Indian military to penetrate up to 30 kilometres deep into Pakistan if it locates, or is in pursuit of, terrorists. On the Islamabad side is a policy that gives frontline Pakistani commanders the authority to use tactical nuclear weapons.

The possibility of a nuclear exchange is enhanced by the disparity between India and Pakistans military forces. One does not have to be Karl von Clausewitz to predict the likely outcome of a conventional war between a country of 200 million people and a country of 1.3 billion people.

Pakistan reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first. India has a no first use policy, but with so many caveats that it is essentially meaningless. In brief, it wouldnt take much to ignite a nuclear war between them.

If that happens, its effects would not be just regional. According to a study by the University of Colorado, Rutgers University, and UCLA, if Pakistan and India exchanged 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear warheads (15 kilotons), they would not only kill or injure 45 million people, but also generate enough smoke to plunge the world into a 25-year long nuclear winter.

Both countries have between 130 and 150 warheads apiece.

Temperatures would drop to Ice Age levels and worldwide rainfall would decline by 6 percent, triggering major droughts. The Asian Monsoon could be reduced by between 20 and 80 percent, causing widespread regional starvation.

Between the cold and the drought, global grain production could fall by 20 percent in the first half decade, and by 10 to 15 percent over the following half decade.

Besides cold and drought, the ozone loss would be between 20 and 50 percent, which would not only further damage crops, but harm sea life, in particular plankton. The reduction of the ozone layer would also increase the rate of skin cancers.

The study estimates that two billion people who are now only marginally fed might die from starvation and disease in the aftermath of a nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India.

In short, there is no such thing as a local nuclear war.

Article VI is the heart of the NPT, because it not only requires abolishing nuclear weapons but also addresses the fears that non-nuclear armed nations have about the major powers conventional forces. A number of countries  China in particular  were stunned by the conventional firepower unleashed by the US in its 2003 invasion of Iraq. The ease with which US forces dispatched the Iraqi army was a sobering lesson for a lot of countries.

In part, it is the conventional power of countries like the US that fuels the drive by smaller nations to acquire nuclear weapons.

Libya is a case in point. That country voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Less than seven years later, Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by the US and NATO. At the time, the North Koreans essentially said, We told you so.

The NPT has done a generally good job of halting proliferation. While Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea obtained nuclear weapons  the first three never signed the treaty and North Korea withdrew in 2003  South Africa abandoned its program and other nuclear capable nations like Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia have not joined the nuclear club  yet.

But it is hard to make a case for non-proliferation when the major nuclear powers insist on keeping their nuclear arsenals. And one can hardly blame smaller countries for considering nuclear weapons as a counterbalance to the conventional forces of more powerful nations like the US and China. If there is anything that might make Iran abandon its pledge not to build nuclear weapons, it is all the talk in Israel, the US, and Saudi Arabia about regime change in Tehran.

There are specific regional problems, the solutions to which would reduce the dangers of a nuclear clash. The US has taken some steps in that direction on the Korean Peninsula by downsizing its yearly war games with South Korea and Japan. Declaring an end to the almost 70-year old Korean War and withdrawing some US troops from South Korea would also reduce tensions.

Halting the eastward expansion of NATO and ending military exercises on the Russian border would reduce the chances of a nuclear war in Europe.

In South Asia, the international community must become involved in a solution to the Kashmir problem. Kashmir has already led to three wars between India and Pakistan, and the 1999 Kargil incident came distressingly close to going nuclear.

This latest crisis started over a February 14 suicide bombing in Indian-occupied Kashmir that killed more than 40 Indian paramilitaries. While a horrendous act, the current government of Indias brutal crackdown in Kashmir has stirred enormous anger among the locals. Kashmir is now one of the most militarised regions in the world, and India dominates it through a combination of force and extra-judicial colonial laws  the Public Safety Act and the Special Powers Act  that allows it to jail people without charge and bestows immunity on the actions of the Indian army, the paramilitaries, and the police.

Since 1989, the conflict has claimed more than 70,000 lives and seen tens of thousands of others disappeared, injured, or imprisoned.

India blames the suicide attack on Pakistan, which has a past track record of so doing. But that might not be the case here. Even though a Pakistani-based terrorist organization, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) claims credit, both sides need to investigate the incident. It is not unlikely that the attack was home-grown  the bomber was Kashmiri  although possibly aided by JeM. It is also true that Pakistan does not have total control over the myriad of militant groups that operate within its borders. The Pakistani Army, for instance, is at war with its home-grown Taliban.

The Kashmir question is a complex one, but solutions are out there. The United Nations originally pledged to sponsor a plebiscite in Kashmir to let the local people decide if they want to be part of India, Pakistan, or independent. Such a plebiscite should go forward. What cannot continue is the ongoing military occupation of 10 million people, most of whom dont want India there.

Kashmir is no longer a regional matter. Nuclear weapons threaten not only Pakistanis and Indians, but, indeed, the whole world. The major nuclear powers must begin to move toward fulfilling Article VI of the NPT, or sooner or later our luck will run out.

Peoples World
President Vladimir Putin has urged Russian prosecutors to protect the rights of businesspeople "with a view to improving the business climate."



Speaking to a gathering of prosecutors in Moscow on March 19, Putin said that a "more effective defense of the rights of business owners" was important "so we can make up for restrictions imposed from the outside by improving the quality of work within the country."



The Russian economy has been hard hit by economic sanctions imposed by Western countries over Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and its ongoing military, political, and economic support for separatist formations in eastern Ukraine, as well as by Russias countersactions.



Putin's comments come a month after the February 14 arrest of Michael Calvey, a U.S. citizen and the founder of the multi-billion-dollar Baring Vostok investment fund.

Calvey and several business colleagues have been charged with fraud, accusations the accused deny.



Former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin on February 18 called Calvey's arrest an "emergency" for the Russian economy that would damage the country's reputation and investment climate.

On February 25, Baring Vostok appealed to Putin to "ensure a comprehensive, independent, and objective investigation."



Putin has frequently called for greater protections for entrepreneurs from baseless investigations and charges.



But critics accuse the Kremlin of turning a blind eye to the politically or economically motivated abuse of law enforcement powers, citing high-profile examples such as the 2001 takeover of the independent NTV television channel by state-controlled Gazprom and the 2004 takeover of key assets owned by the private Yukos oil company by state-owned Rosneft.



During his state-of-the-nation address on February 20, Putin said "honest businesses" should not live in fear of prosecution.



In his speech to prosecutors, the Russian president also urged prosecutors to do more to ensure proper conditions for those awaiting trial.



Human rights activists have documented numerous cases of torture and abuse in Russian remand prisons, including the 2009 death in custody of tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky after 358 days in Moscow's Butyrka prison.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters
A Russian soldier charged with beating an Armenian woman to death will remain in custody on the premises of the Russian military base in Armenia's northwestern city of Gyumri, a local court has ruled.

Andrei Razgildeyev, 23, was arrested in December in connection with the violent death of Julieta Ghukasian, a 57-year-old street cleaner from Gyumri, and was charged by Armenian law enforcement bodies with brutal assault and involuntary manslaughter.

Although being charged under Armenian law, Razgildeyev has remained under arrest inside the Russian military base where he serves, despite complaints by the victim's family and human rights activists.

On March 19, the Shirak regional Court of General Jurisdiction rejected a request by the victim's family to transfer Razgildeyev to Armenian custody and have him tried by Armenian authorities.

Motives for Razgildeyev's alleged attack, for which he risks between five and 10 years in prison under Armenian law, remain unclear.

Arayik Zalian, a lawyer for Ghukasian's daughter, Anahit, says that a thorough and impartial investigation is only possible if Razgildeyev is handed over to Armenian authorities.

Mihran Martirosian, from the Armenian Prosecutor-General's Office, said that holding Razgildeyev inside the Russian base was legitimate, since it is stipulated by the Armenian-Russian intergovernmental agreement.

"The accused was arrested on the territory of the Russian Federation's 102nd base. Therefore, getting him out of the territory of the base is contrary to the Russian Federation's legislation," Martirosian said.

In 2015, another Russian soldier killed seven members of an Armenian family in Gyumri. A local court in August 2016 sentenced Private Valery Permyakov to life in prison.

Permyakov was held in detention at the Russian base before and during his trial. He was transferred to Russia to serve his sentence. The case sparked protests in Gyumri and elsewhere in Armenia.

With reporting by Satenik Kaghzvantsian
Afghanistan's Defense Ministry says Taliban militants have captured 58 soldiers after days of fighting during which dozens of troops briefly chased into neighboring Turkmenistan in the latest blow to Kabul's beleaguered security forces.

The troops came under attack by militants in Bala Marghab district of Baghdis Province, which shares a border with Turkmenistan, almost two weeks ago.

The ministry statement was issued after reports of days of intense fighting in Bala Marghab.

"Unfortunately, 58 BSS [border security soldiers] are captured by the enemies," a Defense Ministry tweet said on March 18, adding "Search Ops will continue until we release them."

The ministry also said that an identical number of border troops -- 58 -- had "returned home from Turkmenistan."

Jamshid Shahabi, the Badghis provincial governor's spokesman, said earlier this week that that some security forces had "tactically retreated" across the border into Turkmenistan.

The Taliban on March 17 claimed it had captured 72 security forces in the district.

The captures come days after the latest round of talks between the United States and the Taliban ended in Doha, amid U.S. efforts to find a way out of the nearly 18-year war.

The government in Kabul has complained of being left out of the negotiations.

Based on reporting by AFP and Tolo News
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is a leading candidate in the country's March 31 presidential election, has defended her support for Kyiv's 2014 decision not to use military force to resist Russia's annexation of the Black Sea region of Crimea. Tymoshenko said that if elected she would reject the Minsk process for resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine and launch a new process guided by the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. In an interview with RFE/RL in Kyiv on March 18, Tymoshenko also slammed incumbent Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko  also a candidate -- accusing him of embezzling "the defense budget through illegal deals with the aggressor [Russia]" and calling on him to resign, a demand she has expressed before.
The United States and Russia have held "useful" and substantive talks on Venezuela, but the two sides remain split on how to resolve the South American countrys crisis, according to the U.S. special representative Elliott Abrams.



Abrams made the comments in Rome on March 19 after meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who described the talks as "difficult" but frank.



Venezuelan opposition leader and parliament speaker Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in January, and was recognized by the United States, most European Union countries, and the majority of Latin American states.



Russia, along with other countries including Iran, Cuba, China, and Turkey, continues to recognize Nicolas Maduro as president.

"No, we did not come to a meeting of minds, but I think the talks were positive in the sense that both sides emerged with a better understanding of the other's views," Abrams said after the meeting in a Rome hotel that lasted more than two hours.



The U.S. envoy said that the sides "agreed very much on the depth of the crisis in Venezuela," adding: "We are, as they, deeply concerned about the nature and the seriousness of the humanitarian crisis."



Ryabkov emphasized the need for dialogue with Washington, but warned the United States against military intervention in Venezuela.



We assume that Washington took our priorities, our approaches, and warnings seriously," Ryabkov said, according to Russia's state-run news agency TASS.



The meeting in the Italian capital took place as the United States imposed fresh sanctions on Venezuela, this time targeting the state-run mining company Minerven and its head.

At the White House, President Donald Trump said that "all options are open" when dealing with the crisis in Venezuela, and suggested that Washington could impose "a lot tougher" sanctions on the Latin American country if needed.



Maduro, a socialist who took office in 2013 after the death of Hugo Chavez, was sworn in for a second term in January following elections in May 2018 that were marred by an opposition boycott and claims of vote-rigging, leading to mass street protests.



Russia -- who has loaned Venezuela billions of dollars in recent years -- has been Maduro's biggest international supporter since the dispute with Guaido began.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, TASS, and Interfax
Outsourcing air safety

Unable to resist the demands of the public, the airline workers, congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, former US regulators and safety officials, and the nations of the rest of the world, Donald Trump and the Federal Aviation Administration finally grounded Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 jets. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, called the grounding good news, adding, Lives must always come first.

She warned, however, in a statement that a brand is at stake as well and that brand is not just Boeing. Its America. Nelson was referring to the US as the country that has set the standard for safety and competence and honesty in the management of aviation.

The rest of the world, it seems, may have already concluded those days are over. The Ethiopians refused FAA demands that the black box from the doomed flight there be sent to the US for analysis. They opted instead to send the box to European regulators. The Ethiopian decision is not at all surprising considering what is going on amongst Boeing, the Trump administration, and the FAA.

On Tuesday morning, Boeings chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, had phoned Trump to tell him the planes were fine. Muilenburg was no stranger to the president; his company wrote a $1 million check to the 2017 Trump inaugural committee, a body which is itself under investigation over questions about where all the donations it solicited eventually ended up.

The New York Times on Tuesday reported that as many as 1,000 FAA inspectors are Boeing employees. This is because the Trump administration has stepped up the practice of outsourcing government inspections to private companies, allowing them to essentially inspect themselves. That situation, of course, makes Muilenburgs promise to have Boeing cooperate with FAA inspectors a relatively easy one to keep.

The cosy arrangement between Boeing and government inspectors is similar to arrangements the chicken processing industry has with the government which allows company managers to inspect their own chickens. That deal was struck, over union objections, during the Obama administration and was one Obama deal that Trump has left in place.

The crash of the Ethiopian plane happened only minutes after it took off, killing all 157 on board. Last October, the same model 737 crashed in Indonesia under very similar circumstances, killing 189 passengers and crew.

Daniel Elwell, the acting director of the FAA (acting because Trump has left many top government posts unfilled), tried to cover up the fact that his agency, with its close ties to Boeing, had dragged its feet on ordering the shutdown. Since the accident, we were resolute in our position that we would not take action until we had data to support taking action. That data coalesced today, and we made the call.

The two deadly crashes, the warnings from pilots that the aircraft were not safe (incident reports on malfunctions written by at least two of them), pleas from the workers who operate the aircraft and attend the flights, and the grounding of planes by the rest of the world were all apparently not enough data for the Boeing-friendly FAA to act. Elwell says what finally moved him was satellite pictures of what was obvious to people standing on the ground the day of the second crash  pictures that show disturbing similarities in flight trajectory between the first and second crashed planes.

After the first crash in Indonesia six months ago, pilots unions started complaining that they had not been made aware of changes or trained in the flight control systems aboard the new model of aircraft. Boeing says it had been planning to roll out a software update on those systems in April, a full month after the second crash that took place last Sunday.

Peoples World
Culture & Life

Miss Fisher revisited

Last year I had occasion to criticise the ABC series Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries for the gratuitous anti-Communism in its portrayal of trade unionists. The series is set in Melbourne in the late 20s-early-30s, in other words, at the height of the Great Depression. It would be hard to ignore the activity of the Reds at that time as they fought to defend working class people from the twin predations of greedy employers and fascist goons.

Essie Davis as the very wealthy flapper-with-a-conscience turned amateur sleuth, Phryne Fisher.

The Miss Fisher series did indeed acknowledge the presence of the Comrades in the community. Indeed, the working class chaps who drive her private taxi and act as her bodyguards in rough neighbourhoods are on nodding terms with the Comrades. However, the series chose to portray the latter as essentially akin to US labour racketeers. In other words: hoodlums.

At the time of writing my comments I had not read any of the original Phryne Fisher books and so could not judge how faithful the TV adaptation was to Kerry Greenwoods multiplicity of novels about her very wealthy flapper-with-a-conscience turned amateur sleuth.

I have now had the pleasure of reading her 2012 Phryne Fisher mystery, Unnatural Habits, and find that the books are far more progressive than the TV series would lead you to believe. Admittedly I have reached this conclusion on the basis of having read only the one book, but I am confident that Unnatural Habits is fairly typical of her work.

Ms Greenwoods heroine might be wealthy, but the authors sympathy for the poor and the destitute shines through on every page. Her descriptions of Melbournes suburbs around 1929, with their dusty unpaved streets, are not nearly as glamorous as the big houses and shining vintage cars of the TV series suggest. And the ravages of poverty on working people is a constant throughout the book.

Unnatural Habits plot is about dirty work within the Catholic church, but not the current high profile issue of child sexual abuse. Kerry Greenwoods concern instead is with the interlinked themes of the churchs treatment of unwed mothers, religious hypocrisy, and  always  the overriding effects of poverty.

Indicative of the ways the books differ from the TV series is the fact that in the books, Phryne is a keen subscriber to The Woman Worker, and also reads the magazine of the Militant Women organisation. She is interested in her mail from the Socialist Women and thinks an art show whose proceeds are to go to feeding the unemployed might be intriguing.

The attitude of the TV series to the Comrades ranges from cynicism to outright hostility, but in Unnatural Habits they are welcome allies. Seeking clues to the disappearance of three young women who might have been abducted to be sold into white slavery, Phryne has her able working class assistant Bert drive her to an unsavoury part of Collingwood.

The streets were unpaved, the dust endemic and the smell indicated that the sewerage commissioners had not explored this far into the wastelands. It was poor, mean, dirty and overcrowded ...

The emergence of Phryne was greeted with whistles and crude comments. The emergence of the driver, however, produced a profound silence which was only broken when a thin, tow-headed young man said meekly, Gday Bert.

Fraternal greetings, Comrade Scott, said Bert. Hows it goin?

There aint no work, said Comrade Scott. No money, neither.

Just as usual, eh? Bert smiled. This is Miss Fisher. Friend of the workers, and not bad for a bloated capitalist.

The chapter headings are worth noting, too. They are composed of quotations  which is common enough  but the choice of quotes, when they are not from Shakespeare, is frequently from progressive sources. For example, chapter four is headed with a quotation from Oliver Goldsmith, no less: Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

Chapter ten is headed with a quote from a speech by William Pitt to the House of Commons in 1783: Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants: it is the creed of slaves.

The success of the TV series (it has even spawned a modern sequel) means that your local library may well have some of Kerry Greenwoods Phryne Fisher mystery novels. If theyre anything like Unnatural Habits, they will be worth asking for.
Canadian diver still missing off Cozumel

Cozumel, Q.R.  A Canadian man who went diving March 16 off Cozumel has yet to be found. The man, 35-year-old Cameron Donaldson, failed to resurface Saturday after a dive with his mother.

The pair went diving around 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Playa Rocas in the northern hotel zone. They separated under water so Cameron could dive deeper, however, while his mother Bonnie resurfaced at the agreed upon time, Cameron did not.

The Navy of Mexico did set out in search of the man, but to date, he has not been located. Concerned friends and family say they fear Cameron has been taken into the open sea by strong currents.

Local boats have also set out in search of the Canadian man, but to no avail. Members of the Search and Rescue Station of the Navy of Mexico continue looking.

Cameron Donaldson, missing in local waters since March 16

Cameron, who is from the Montreal suburb of Lachute, lived on Cozumel part of the year. He is an experienced diver and instructor. Friends and family have requested the support of residents and boaters in particular, along the entire Yucatan Peninsula to keep watch in the local waters for Cameron.

They say due to the strong Caribbean currents, he could be in areas around Cozumel, Puerto Morelos, Isla Mujeres, Cabo Catoche, Holbox, Yum Balam, Contoy Island, Rio Lagartos Reserve or Celestun.

With news that local marine authorities are likely to end their search efforts, the family is requesting the support of a helicopter. They ask anyone who may see Cameron to please call 55 23 58 72 50.

A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to help raise search and rescue money for Cameron.
Cozumel police arrest man carrying cocaine

Cozumel, Q.R.  Quintana Roo police have arrested a man who they found in possession of cocaine. During a routine surveillance tour in Cozumel, Seguridad Publica police came upon the man while on his motorcycle.

When he noticed police, he began acting suspiciously, which is what caused him to be pulled over, however, instead of pulling over, he attempted to flee. Police caught up with the man and after an inspection, found he was carrying 10 small bags of cocaine inside a black waist pouch.

Public Security police say they have arrested 20-year-old Moises N for being in possession of cocaine. When stopped, police say Moises N was also without a drivers license or legal documents for the motorcycle he was driving.

The arrest took place on 8th street of the Emiliano Zapata neighborhood. The detainee, cocaine and motorcycle have been turned over to the Ministerio Publico del Fuero Comun.
Staff at the Greenoaks unit at Rotherham Hospital are raising awareness for World Down's Syndrome Day.

If YOU see people wearing mismatched socks next week, dont worry  they havent got dressed in the dark.

Fundraisers will be rocking their odd socks at Rotherham Hospitals Greenoaks unit to mark World Downs Syndrome Day this Thursday (March 21).

The antenatal and newborn screening teams are out to raise awareness of the condition with the colourful stunt.

Midwife Jackie Durban said she hoped the campaign would get people talking.

Just like any diagnosis, learning about Downs syndrome can be an unsettling and anxious time for parents, she said.

Our role in the antenatal and newborn screening unit is to support families through the screening process and to help them make informed decisions about their future if they are given unexpected results.

Ms Durban said the awareness day would also help people find out about the support on offer for parents affected by a Downs diagnosis

Patients, families and other staff will also be encouraged to wear and show off their funky footwear.

There will also be a raffle between 9am and 5pm, raising money for the Downs Syndrome Association and the Rotherham Hospital and Community Charity.
Lord Ahmed arriving at court this morning

ROTHERHAM peer Lord Nazir Ahmed has appeared in court alongside his two brothers accused of sexual offences dating back to the 1970s.

The lord (pictured) is charged with three sexual offences against a boy and a girl aged under 13.

Ahmed (61), of East Bawtry Road, Rotherham, appeared before magistrates this morning alongside Mohammed Farouq (68), of Worrygoose Lane, Rotherham, and Mohammed Tariq (63), of Gerard Road, Rotherham.

During the hearing at Sheffield Magistrates' Court, the men only spoke to confirm their names, addresses and date of births.

Ahmed is charged with two counts of attempting to rape a girl aged under 13 between 1973 and 1974, when he would have been aged 16 or 17.

He is also accused of indecently assaulting a boy aged under 13 between 1971 and 1972, when he would have been aged 14 or 15.

He did not enter any pleas.

Farouq faces four counts of indecent assault on a boy aged under 13 between 1968 and 1972, while Tariq is charged with two counts of indecent assault on a boy aged under 13 between 1970 and 1972.

They both entered not guilty pleas to all charges.

The case was sent to Sheffield Crown Court, where the men will next appear on April 16. All three defendants given unconditional bail.

Before the hearing, Ahmeds solicitor, Mr Haroon Shah, briefly addressed reporters and photographers gathered outside the court.

He denies the allegations and will be doing everything he can in order to prove his innocence, said Mr Shah, declining to comment further as court proceedings had begun.

Lord Ahmed, who is one of Britain's first Muslim peers, sat as a Labour councillor in Rotherham between 1990 and 2000 and was chairman of the partys South Yorkshire branch between 1993-2000, before resigning from the party in 2013.
Hailed as among the most gifted musicians of his generation with a dazzling natural keyboard affinity who made quite an impression by the Washington Post, American pianist/composer/improviser CHARLIE ALBRIGHT has been praised for his jaw-dropping technique and virtuosity meshed with a distinctive musicality by The New York Times.

This highly gifted young pianist will appear in Watford City on Tuesday, March 26 at 7 p.m. at the Watford City High School Auditorium. His appearance here is part of the Watford City Area Concert Series, where members have access to a four-concert series in Watford City as well as reciprocity with concert series events in Dickinson, Williston, Hazen and Crosby.

Born in Centralia, Washington, Charlie began piano lessons at the age of three. He earned an Associate of Science degree at Centralia College while he was in high school and was accepted to Harvard College/New England Conservatory of Music joint program, where he completed his Bachelors degree as a Pre-med and Economics major at Harvard in 2011 and his Master of Music degree in Piano Performance at the New England Conservatory in 2012. He has recently earned his Artist Diploma from the Juilliard School of Music.

Performance highlights include concerts at: Alice Tully Hall, Aspen Institute, BBC Concert Orchestra, Boston Pops, Kennedy Center, Kymi Sinfonietta (Finland), Lansing Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Salle Cortot (Paris), San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Victoria Symphony (Canada), and four concerts with Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, one of which was for a ceremony at which Sen. Ted Kennedy received an honorary degree from Harvard. His many awards include Steinway Artist/2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Charlie completed a highly successful 48 concert tour in the mid-west in the 2013-2014 concert season under the auspices of Allied Concert Services, and returns to thrill audiences that didnt hear him then, plus many that did.

Concert series memberships are $50 for an adult, $150 for a family and $25 for students and can be purchased online at longxarts.com/concert-series.html.

Non-concert series members can purchase a Charlie Albright ticket for $35 at the door or online at longxarts.com/charlie-albright-concert.html. Or call Jessie at 701-770-8659.

Charlie will also be performing for students at the Watford City High School as part of his visit, sponsored by the Watford City Veterinary Center.

If youre interested in a bussing option or have questions, contact Jessie at 701-770-8659 or email [email protected]
Virginia Elliot will remain in her seat as mayor of Arnegard after a recall election. The efforts to remove the mayor failed by a 63-47 vote margin on Monday, March 11.

Running against Elliot in the recall election was Arnegards previous mayor, Jeff Kindle. A petition was circulated last November to recall Elliot due to claims of nepotism centering on the hiring of her sons construction company to do work for the city. Also cited in the recall petition was Elliots allegedly failing health and memory, and misunderstanding of city laws and ordinances. The majority of Arnegard residents ultimately rejected those allegations, or at least voted in spite of them, to retain Elliot as mayor.

The Roundup reached out to Mayor Elliot after her victory and asked about how the small town of Arnegard might progress into the future.

Elliot said, I think we just need to start working together, make it the community that it was a few years ago.

One point of contention within Arnegard in the past week has been the firing of the citys only two police officers. Elliot cast the deciding vote to make that decision, and rumors have since circulated that there will be no police department. Elliot rebuffed the claim.

We are going to hire different deputies, Elliot explained. Were not getting rid of the police department. Were hiring deputies who will work with the community. Hopefully we can just heal and move forward.

When asked about the situation that caused such animosity that led to the recall petition, which was signed by 18 people, Elliot gave her perspective.

Elliot said of the recall effort, I dont appreciate the comments they made about me being senile and not knowing how to run a town because Ive been on that city council for 20 years and have been mayor for four. The way I understand it, that [nepotism] that they accuse me of, there is no [nepotism] because in a town this size, everybody is related. I was not the one who chose my son to do the work, it was a council member and the park maintenance man.

When asked about her opponent, Jeff Kindle, and how involved he was in the recall effort, Elliot responded, I just kind of stayed in the background with that, and let them go forward and do whatever they felt they had to do. Jeff was mayor for four years, and I was mayor for four years before that. But, it is what it is.

Elliot was thankful for her support, stating, I just want to thank everybody who supported me and I hope I can move forward and do what the people of this town want. We are elected officials and our duty is to do what the people want.
Indian Flag

New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) Ten months after being kidnapped in Afghanistan's Baghlan province, one of the seven Indians has returned to India, the External Affairs Ministry said Monday. It said India continued to work closely with the Afghan government for safe and early return of the remaining six Indian nationals. The seven Indian engineers were kidnapped by Taliban militants in the restive northern Baghlan province on May 6 last year.

India has been requesting the Afghan government to secure release of the Indians. "One of the seven Indian nationals, who was kidnapped in Baghlan province of Afghanistan in May 2018, has safely returned to India," the MEA said. "We are grateful to the Government of Afghanistan for their support in securing the release and repatriation of the Indian national," it said.

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The Indian engineers were working on a project for the construction of a power sub-station and they were kidnapped by Taliban militants from the vicinity of Cheshma-e-Sher area. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had taken up the issue with the Afghan government on multiple occasions. India has been carrying reconstruction activities in the war-torn country. It has already provided at least USD 2 billion aid to Afghanistan.
Peter Mukerjea undergoes angiography

Mumbai, Mar 19 (PTI) Former media baron Peter Mukerjea, an accused in the Sheena Bora murder case, Monday underwent angiography, which revealed he is suffering from triple vessel disease, a hospital official said. The 65-year-old, who is in jail since his arrest by the CBI in 2015, was Sunday admitted to the state-run J J Hospital after he complained of chest pain.

On Monday, he underwent angiography, an imaging test that uses X-rays to view body's blood vessels, at the hospital.

"The doctors found triple vessel disease and available options are multi-vessel angioplasty or coronary artery bypass grafting (a major cardiac operation)," the official said. "The patient is, however, stable," he added. Triple vessel disease means three big vessels (the left anterior descending, right coronary and circumflex arteries) of a patient have blockages from atherosclerotic plaques (clogging of arteries with fatty deposits).

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Earlier in the day, a special CBI court here allowed Peter Mukerjea to get admitted to a private hospital of his choice for treatment after it was told he had suffered a mild heart attack. Peter Mukerjea is facing trial along with his estranged wife Indrani Mukerjea in the Sheena Bora murder case. Bora was the daughter of Indrani Mukerjea, a former media executive, from a previous relationship. He is accused of being a part of the murder conspiracy.

Indrani Mukerjea's former husband Sanjeev Khanna is the third accused in the case. Her driver Shyamvar Rai was also arrested in the case but he later became an approver and was pardoned. Bora (24) was allegedly killed in a car in April 2012 and her body was disposed of in adjoining Raigad district. The CBI has claimed a financial dispute led to Bora's killing, which came to light in 2015.
Sikh Student Organizations Unite Under One Roof

Panjab University Sikh Student Organization Academic Forum of Sikh Students organized a seminar on the topic of Sikh Student Organizations : History, Future and Challenges. Prominent sikh journalist Jaspal Singh Sidhu spoke on the history of sikh student organizations and the challenges faced by them.

Sikh thinker Mandhir Singh gave an outline of sikh student politics. Alliance of Sikh Organizations youth leader Sukhdev Singh Phagwara expressed his thoughts on organizational essence and also the crucial points for maintaining conceptual integrity within the organization. Speaker Parampal Singh Sabhra shared his concern while also awaring the present audience over the existing issues faced by sikh student organizations.

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He congratulated the university students for uniting together under the name of AFSS and also encouraged them to organise such events in future. Sukhmander Singh secretariat of AFSS read the organizations proclamation. The seminar Stage was managed by Kiratpreet Kaur. In the end, organizations Parmveer Singh thanked all the present sikh scholars and students.
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MALTA, N.Y.  A couple was arrested for possession of heroin.

Michael S. Croote, 27, of Delanson and Michelle Nespica,43, of Sloansville, were arrested at 8:30 p.m. on March 11, after State Police responded to a fight in progress at a Town of Malta hotel.

When they arrived, troopers speaking with Nespica were told that Croote was involved in a physical altercation with another male in their hotel room. When troopers entered the hotel room they found the unknown male had left the area.

Several items of drug paraphernalia were observed throughout the room, as well as a quantity of heroin.

Both Croote and Nespica were placed in custody for criminal possession of a controlled substance seventh degree, transported to State Police Saratoga for processing, and issued appearance tickets.

Both are due in Malta Town Court at a later date.
10 floors up and a mile away

Bates House turns 50

Bates House opened in 1969.

When Mel Wright came to the University of South Carolina in the fall of 1969, he had a choice: sign up for one of the older dormitories in the heart of campus  near Russell House, near the Horseshoe, near just about everything  or move into a 10-story high rise a mile down the road.

Despite the obvious drawbacks, Wright chose Option B. As in, Bates House.

It was brand-spanking new, says Wright, whose room on the 10th floor looked out over Wheeler Hill. The downside was that it was off campus, for all intents and purposes, but it was absolutely beautiful. The rooms, the study carrels at the end of the hall  it was just a great design. And the cafeteria was excellent. It was a downright sin how much we ate.

What Wright remembers best, though, was the community, which served as the Florence, S.C., natives introduction to the late 60s counterculture. He never really strayed from his conservative roots  after graduating with a degree in English in 1973, he attended seminary, then spent 15 years as a Presbyterian minister before entering finance  but living among the resident hippie community opened his eyes to a world of other perspectives.

There were the traditional Southern guys like me, but there were also the Northern guys, a lot of guys from New Jersey, who seemed to be ahead of us with the long hair, the clothes  even their music was different, he says. They were great guys, but they were something else. I came up to Columbia with my khaki pants and my ironed white Gant shirts and penny loafers, and I was soon overwhelmed by blue jeans and tie-dye.

He was also caught in a changing tide when it came to social issues. When he was elected president of Bates House his first semester, he drew support from across the spectrum, even if some of his positions ran counter to the prevailing libertine spirit.

Back in 1969, there was no such thing as co-ed dorms, we didnt even have open houses, he explains. But as president of Bates House, I sat in on a meeting with the board of trustees to discuss changing the visitation rules, and I took a strong stand against it. Of course, by the time I was a senior, I was living in Preston and there were guys on my hall who had girls practically living with them. It was a tumultuous time.

Wright also had a front-row seat for the protest movement, albeit accidentally. In the spring of 1970, when riots erupted on campus following the bombing of Cambodia and the Kent State massacre, Wrights English professor was arrested at a sit-in and asked Wright to testify on his behalf before the board.

The day the riots really kicked in, were sitting in Osborne, waiting to be examined by the board of trustees, when a group of students broke down the doors and took over the building, he says. Shortly thereafter, back at Bates House, SLED agents started showing up, knocking on peoples doors to arrest them. Thankfully, they realized I wasn't one of the people throwing papers and computer cards out the windows!

Fifty years later, Wright can see his first dorm on the horizon from his office on the 16th floor of the Bank of America Financial Center on Gervais Street. Freshman year feels a lifetime away, but the memories are just down the street.

We were kind of in our own little world over there because we were so isolated geographically, he says. But at the end of the day, Bates House was a melting pot, with a lot of different perspectives, and thats really what college is about.

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African refugee women experience healthier pregnancies than women born in the United States, despite receiving less prenatal care, found a recent University at Buffalo study.

Compared to U.S.-born black and white women, African refugee women had fewer pre-pregnancy health risks, fewer preterm births and higher rates of vaginal deliveries. Surprisingly, the refugee women were more likely to delay beginning prenatal care until the second trimester.

The disparity, says the researchers, may be tied to various unhealthy behaviors and practices present within U.S. culture. For African refugee women, acculturation may negatively impact health.

"It is often thought that refugees immigrating to the United States from war-torn nations will experience a better quality of life once here," says Kafuli Agbemenu, PhD, assistant professor in the UB School of Nursing and lead investigator on the study, published in February in the Journal of Women's Health.

"However, some of the elements of U.S. life such as eating processed food, an increased reliance on cars or buses for transportation, extended inclement weather, a more individualistic society, and drug and alcohol use may, in fact, contribute to African refugee women having poorer reproductive health outcomes."

Reproductive health disparities between U.S.-born white and black women are well documented, says Agbemenu. However, few comparisons have been made between African refugee women and U.S.-born women.

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African refugee women are susceptible to numerous health disparities as a result factors such as socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, low-levels of education and language. Another risk-factor specific to their population is the high prevalence of past traumatic experiences.

These risks led researchers to believe African refugee women would have poorer reproductive health outcomes than women born in the U.S. The unexpected results reveal that the healthy immigrant effect -- a phenomenon where immigrants experience healthier outcomes than native populations -- extends to reproductive health.

The researchers examined electronic birth certificate data from hospitals within Erie County, an area of Western New York that resettles a large number of refugees. The data contained clinical, psychosocial, socioeconomic and demographic information, as well as the mother's country of birth.

Women born in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Rwanda and Somalia were considered of refugee status for the study, due to the large refugee populations in Western New York resettled from these nations.

The data contained information on nearly 60,000 white, almost 17,500 black and close to 800 African refugee women who gave birth from 2007-16. The information was limited to mothers who used Medicaid to cover medical expenses to control for socioeconomic status.

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Researchers discovered that African refugee women had significantly less maternal medical risk factors, such as pre-pregnancy hypertension or diabetes, compared to U.S.-born women. Refugee women experienced more vaginal births, and were less likely to undergo cesarean sections or to be medically induced into labor.

Less than 1 percent of refugee women smoked or took illegal drugs during pregnancy, compared to white women (12 percent smoked, 4.5 percent took illegal drugs) and black women (15 percent smoked, 18 percent took illegal drugs).

Refugee women also had the fewest preterm birth (6 percent) compared with white women (9 percent) and black women (13 percent).

While most of the women from all groups began prenatal within the first trimester, African refugee women were more likely to delay prenatal care until the second trimester. Refugee women also received higher amounts of inadequate prenatal care (27 percent) compared to white women (12 percent) and black women (24 percent).

These favorable health outcomes for African refugee women also occurred in spite of the group experiencing higher rates of meconium staining, the earliest stool of an infant that when passed in the womb is a sign of fetal distress.

The high rate of inadequate prenatal care for African refugee women is troubling, says Agbemenu, and indicative of the disconnect between refugee populations and the health care community.

"These women have reported feeling ostracized and marginalized by the medical community," says Agbemenu. "They are at times hesitant to seek care, and when they do, it is typically at a time when the problem has escalated."

The development of culturally-targeted reproductive health education is urgently needed, she says. Health care professionals also need to understand that refugee women are likely to have histories of trauma and, therefore, need care delivered from a trauma-informed perspective.
Researchers from the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute have found that a widely prescribed drug for multiple sclerosis (MS) is associated with longer survival for patients.

The study, published today in the journal Brain, found that people with MS who took a beta interferon drug had a 32 per cent lower mortality risk than those that did not take the drug. This was particularly evident among MS patients who took beta interferon for more than three years.

The study, which followed nearly 6,000 people with MS in Canada and France over a period of more than two decades, is the first and largest of its kind to look at mortality associated with beta interferon for the treatment of MS.

"This is a significant study," said lead author Elaine Kingwell, a research associate and epidemiologist in the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health and the faculty of medicine at UBC, and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. "Although these drugs have been prescribed since the mid-1990s, it takes time before scientists can look at the effect of these treatments on a long-term outcome like survival. We found that patients who were treated with these drugs during routine clinical practice survived longer overall than patients who had not taken beta interferon."

MS is a disease that affects the central nervous system, in which cells from the immune system attack and damage the nerve cells' protective sheath. The disease often results in disability and can have a significant impact on quality of life.

The beta interferons were the first drugs to be approved for the treatment of relapsing-onset MS, which is the most common form of the disease. They have been used to treat MS longer than any other disease-modifying therapy.

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Comparing mortality rates between two countries

For the study, the researchers followed 5,989 people with relapsing-onset MS from as early as 1986 until 2013, in British Columbia and France, to determine what disease modifying drugs they took and how long they survived. The mean age of the study participants (who had not received drug treatments for MS before the start of the study) was 42 years. The mean age at death for the 742 people who did not survive to the end of the study was 61.

The findings were consistent between the two geographic groups and between men and women. MS patients who took beta interferon for at least six months had a reduced mortality risk when compared to MS patients who did not take beta interferon. Taking the drug for more than three years had an even stronger association with increased survival. Moreover, increased survival was noted even for individuals who started the drug after age 40, or five or more years after disease onset.

Findings are encouraging to those on beta interferon

Vancouver resident Sharon Roman, who was diagnosed with MS two decades ago, describes the results as "encouraging."

"The study findings could impact a lot of people, not just because of the sheer number of patients that are on beta interferon worldwide, but also because it offers comfort in terms of our longevity -- and comfort is in short supply for those with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis," she said.

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"This offers a potential incentive that could conquer a dislike or a fear of injections and might encourage people to adhere to the prescribed dosing schedule," she added.

Quality of life needs to be considered, too

Despite the positive findings, the researchers caution that longevity isn't everything.

"Now that we know that life might be extended for people with MS who take these drugs, we do have to consider quality of life," said the study's senior author Helen Tremlett, professor in the division of neurology at UBC and the Canada Research Chair in neuroepidemiology and multiple sclerosis. "Further research to look at this aspect of treatment outcomes is certainly warranted."

The researchers hope to now look at the association of survival with some of the newer MS drugs. Tremlett has received a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to undertake this work.
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, diagnosing disease faster and potentially with greater accuracy than physicians, some have suggested that technology may soon replace tasks that physicians currently perform. But a new study from the Google AI research group shows that physicians and algorithms working together are more effective than either alone. It's one of the first studies to examine how AI can improve physicians' diagnostic accuracy. The new research will be published in the April edition of Ophthalmology, the ournal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

This study expands on previous work from Google AI showing that its algorithm works roughly as well as human experts in screening patients for a common diabetic eye disease called diabetic retinopathy. For their latest study, the researchers wanted to see if their algorithm could do more than simply diagnose disease. They wanted to create a new computer-assisted system that could "explain" the algorithm's diagnosis. They found that this system not only improved the ophthalmologists' diagnostic accuracy, but it also improved algorithm's accuracy.

More than 29 million Americans have diabetes, and are at risk for diabetic retinopathy, a potentially blinding eye disease. People typically don't notice changes in their vision in the disease's early stages. But as it progresses, diabetic retinopathy usually causes vision loss that in many cases cannot be reversed. That's why it's so important that people with diabetes have yearly screenings.

Unfortunately, the accuracy of screenings can vary significantly. One study found a 49 percent error rate among internists, diabetologists, and medical residents.

Recent advances in AI promise to improve access to diabetic retinopathy screening and to improve its accuracy. But it's less clear how AI will work in the physician's office or other clinical settings. Previous attempts to use computer-assisted diagnosis shows that some screeners rely on the machine too much, which leads to repeating the machine's errors, or under-rely on it and ignore accurate predictions. Researchers at Google AI believe some of these pitfalls may be avoided if the computer can "explain" its predictions.

To test this theory, the researchers developed two types of assistance to help physicians read the algorithm's predictions.

Grades: A set of five scores that represent the strength of evidence for the algorithm's prediction.

Grades + heatmap: Enhance the grading system with a heatmap that measures the contribution of each pixel in the image to the algorithm's prediction.

Ten ophthalmologists (four general ophthalmologists, one trained outside the US, four retina specialists, and one retina specialist in training) were asked to read each image once under one of three conditions: unassisted, grades only, and grades + heatmap.

Both types of assistance improved physicians' diagnostic accuracy. It also improved their confidence in the diagnosis. But the degree of improvement depended on the physician's level of expertise.

Without assistance, general ophthalmologists are significantly less accurate than the algorithm, while retina specialists are not significantly more accurate than the algorithm. With assistance, general ophthalmologists match but do not exceed the model's accuracy, while retina specialists start to exceed the model's performance.

"What we found is that AI can do more than simply automate eye screening, it can assist physicians in more accurately diagnosing diabetic retinopathy," said lead researcher, Rory Sayres, PhD.. "AI and physicians working together can be more accurate than either alone."

Like medical technologies that preceded it, Sayres said that AI is another tool that will make the knowledge, skill, and judgment of physicians even more central to quality care.

"There's an analogy in driving," Sayres explained. "There are self-driving vehicles, and there are tools to help drivers, like Android Auto. The first is automation, the second is augmentation. The findings of our study indicate that there may be space for augmentation in classifying medical images like retinal fundus images. When the combination of clinician and assistant outperforms either alone, this provides an argument for up-leveling clinicians with intelligent tools."
Bromethalin, a common rat poison, is the agent responsible for a neurological disease that has sickened or killed birds from a popular flock of naturalized parrots that reside primarily in the Telegraph Hill area in north San Francisco, according to a new study led by the University of Georgia Infectious Diseases Laboratory and funded by Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue.

The study, published today in PLOS ONE, caps a multi-year effort to determine the cause of the disease, which has been observed in parrots from this flock since at least 1999.

"The investigation, inspired and funded by Mickaboo, required a team of veterinarians, pathologists and researchers. It is only because the poisoned birds were feral parrots that the condition was so thoroughly investigated," said first author Fern Van Sant, whose clinic, For the Birds, in San Jose, California, provided care for many of the affected parrots. "The findings offer us an opportunity to assess the true risk of this rodenticide to pets and feral animals and to clarify the risk of potential soil and water contamination."

The study focused on four parrots that presented in 2018 with a set of characteristic neurologic signs that attending veterinarians say most affected birds exhibit to varying degrees: ataxia, circling, seizures and tumbling. Three of these parrots, like many before them, were euthanized when their condition worsened and they could no longer self-feed.

The study team looked for bromethalin, or its active metabolite desmethyl-bromethalin, based on their findings in 15 historic cases from 2013 through 2017. The historic cases lacked evidence of viruses known to cause neurologic disease in parrots, as well as of exposure to lead or other toxins. But pathologists found consistent lesions in the central nervous system that suggested bromethalin poisoning.

Bromethalin is difficult to detect, especially in living animals, and particularly in free-ranging birds. Some assays have successfully detected bromethalin in fat tissue of animals, but birds typically do not have surplus fat from which samples can be drawn and tested. In their study, the UGA-led team screened fecal samples from live birds, as well as liver and brain samples from deceased parrots. Co-author Sayed M. Hassan, director of the UGA Laboratory for Environmental Analysis in the Center for Applied Isotope Studies, detected both bromethalin and desmethyl-bromethalin in brain, liver and fecal samples utilizing high-performance liquid chromatography.

The study's findings suggest that parrots do not metabolize the potent neurotoxin in the same manner that has been described in other species, and/or that the parrots are ingesting a sublethal dose. The authors do not know how the parrots are being exposed to bromethalin, but they are planning a follow-up study to determine the source.

"We now need funding from individuals and groups interested in protecting our environment to help us understand if this toxin is accumulating in a space where it could pose a health risk in other free-ranging animals, or, possibly, in companion animals and people," said co-author Branson W. Ritchie, a veterinary research professor and co-director of the Infectious Diseases Laboratory.

The birds primarily reside in neighborhoods near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and frequent the area's parks, but affected birds have been found throughout San Francisco, including on busy streets and downtown sidewalks. The total number of birds affected to date is difficult to estimate, but from 2003 through 2018, Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue had established records on 158 San Francisco parrots, of which 55 died, 53 were adopted, 22 were released including three that escaped, and 25 remain in foster care. Of the birds in foster care or adopted, many have persistent neurologic deficits, including paresis and ataxia, that require special care.

Members of the public who come in contact with a possibly affected parrot should immediately report the bird and its location to San Francisco Animal Care and Control, 415-554-9400; the poisoned birds need professional help and should not be handled or harmed. If necessary, a towel can be used to move the bird to a secure box or dog kennel.

"Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue is grateful to Dr. Van Sant, the University of Georgia, and all of the skilled professionals who have worked so hard and so long to find out what was killing these beautiful birds," said Michelle Yesney, current CEO of Mickaboo. The parrots and their plight gained notoriety after being featured in a book and a documentary both titled "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill."

Coauthors on the study included Drury Reavill, of the Zoo/Exotic Pathology Service, Carmichael, California; Elizabeth W. Howerth and Mauricio Seguel, of the Department of Pathology in the College of Veterinary Medicine; Rita McManamon, Christopher R. Gregory, and Paula G. Ciembor, of the Infectious Diseases Laboratory in the College of Veterinary Medicine; Kathy M. Loftis, of the Center for Applied Isotope Studies; and Richard Bauer, a graduate student in the Laboratory for Environmental Analysis.
Bats fly, whales swim, gibbons swing from tree to tree, horses gallop, and humans swipe on their phones -- the different habitats and lifestyles of mammals rely on our unique forelimbs. No other group of vertebrate animals has evolved so many different kinds of arms: in contrast, all birds have wings, and pretty much all lizards walk on all fours. Our forelimbs are a big part of what makes mammals special, and in a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have discovered that our early relatives started evolving diverse forelimbs 270 million years ago -- a good 30 million years before the earliest dinosaurs existed.

"Aside from fur, diverse forelimb shape is one of the most iconic characteristics of mammals," says the paper's lead author Jacqueline Lungmus, a research assistant at Chicago's Field Museum and a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago. "We were trying to understand where that comes from, if it's a recent trait or if this has been something special about the group of animals that we belong to from the beginning."

To determine the origins of mammals' arms today, Lungmus and her co-author, Field Museum curator Ken Angielczyk, examined the fossils of mammals' ancient relatives. About 312 million years ago, land-dwelling vertebrates split into two groups -- the sauropsids, which went on to include dinosaurs, birds, crocodiles, and lizards, and the synapsids, the group that mammals are part of. A key difference between sauropsids and synapsids is the pattern of openings in the skull where jaw muscles attach. While the earliest synapsids, called pelycosaurs, were more closely related to humans than to dinosaurs, they looked like hulking reptiles. Angielczyk notes, "If you saw a pelycosaur walking down the street, you wouldn't think it looked like a mammal -- you'd say, 'That's a weird-looking crocodile.'"

About 270 million years ago, though, a more diverse (and sometimes furry) line of our family tree emerged: the therapsids. "Modern mammals are the only surviving therapsids -- this is the group that we're part of today," explains Lungmus. Therapsids were the first members of our family to really branch out -- instead of just croc-like pelycosaurs, the therapsids included lithe carnivores, burly-armed burrowers, and tree-dwelling plant-eaters.

Lungmus and Angielczyk set out to see if this explosion of diversity came with a corresponding explosion in different forelimb shapes. "This is the first study to quantify forelimb shape across a big sample of these animals," says Lungmus. The team examined the upper arm bones of hundreds of fossil specimens representing 73 kinds of pelycosaurs and therapsids, taking measurements near where the bones joined the shoulder and the elbow. They then analyzed the shapes of the bones using a technique called geometric morphometrics.

When they compared the shapes of arm bones, the researchers found a lot more variation in the bones of the therapsids than the pelycosaurs. They also noted that the upper part of the arm, near the shoulder, was especially varied in therapsids -- a feature that might have let them move more freely than the pelycosaurs, whose bulky and tightly-fitting shoulder bones likely gave them a more limited range of motion.

Lungmus and Angielczyk found that a wide variety of different forelimb shapes evolved within the therapsids 270 million years ago. "The therapsids are the first synapsids to increase the variability of their forelimbs -- this study dramatically pushes that trait back in time," says Lungmus. Prior to this study, the earliest that paleontologists had been able to definitively trace back mammals' diverse forelimbs was 160 million years ago. With Lungmus and Angielczyk's work, that's been pushed back by more than a hundred million years.

The researchers note that the study helps explain how mammals evolved traits that have made us what we are today. "So much of what we do every day is related to the way our forelimbs evolved -- even simple things like holding a phone," says Angielczyk.

"This is something that's so cool about our evolutionary lineage," says Lungmus. "These animals are in the same group as us -- part of what makes this research compelling is that these are our relatives."
Women who shared their mother's womb with a male twin are less likely to graduate from high school or college, have earned less by their early 30s, and have lower fertility and marriage rates when compared with twins who are both female, according to new Northwestern University research.

In the largest and most rigorous study of its kind, Northwestern University and Norwegian School of Economics researchers examined data on all twin births in Norway over a 12-year period to find that females exposed in utero to a male twin experienced adverse educational and labor outcomes along with altered patterns of marriage and fertility as adults.

"Nobody has been able to study how male twins impact their twin sisters at such a large scale," said study corresponding author Krzysztof Karbownik, an economist and research associate at Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research (IPR). "This is the first study to track people for more than 30 years, from birth through schooling and adulthood, to show that being exposed in utero to a male twin influences important outcomes in their twin sister, including school graduation, wages and fertility rates."

The study, "Evidence that prenatal testosterone transfer from male twins reduces the fertility and socioeconomic success of their female co-twins," will be published the week of March 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The researchers used data on 13,800 twin births between 1967 and 1978 to show that females exposed in utero to a male twin are less likely to graduate from high school (-15.2 percent), to complete college (-3.9 percent) or to get married (-11.7 percent). They also have lower fertility rates (-5.8 percent) and life-cycle earnings (-8.6 percent.)

The study supports the "twin testosterone-transfer hypothesis," which posits that females in male-female twin pairs are exposed to more testosterone in utero via the amniotic fluid or through the mother's bloodstream that they share with their twin brother. One explanation for the long-term effects the researchers discovered is changes in behavior, which have previously been demonstrated in girls with male twins. Unlike the females, the researchers found that male twins do not experience long-term consequences of being exposed to a female twin in utero.

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"This is a story about the biology of sex differences," said co-author David Figlio, Dean of Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy and IPR fellow. "We are not showing that exposed females are necessarily more 'male-like,' but our findings are consistent with the idea that passive exposure to prenatal testosterone changes women's education, labor market, and fertility outcomes."

During sensitive developmental periods in utero, steroids produced by the ovaries and testes, including testosterone, help establish biological differences between males and females. Previous, smaller studies have suggested that such exposure to opposite-sex hormones can lead to lasting changes in behavior and other traits. On the other hand, it has also been noted that socialization effects -- or being a female raised alongside a twin brother -- could likewise explain the different behaviors and outcomes shown by past studies.

To separate the effects of fetal testosterone from postnatal socialization, the research team repeated their analyses focusing only on female twins whose twin sibling -- either twin sister or twin brother -- died shortly after birth, and thus they were raised as singletons. The results were unchanged in this sample, providing strong evidence that the long-term effects that the study documents are due to prenatal exposure, rather than postnatal socialization.

The near-doubling of twinning rates in many countries since 1980 -- a result of women conceiving later in life and increased reliance on in vitro fertilization (IVF) -- means that an increasing number of females worldwide are exposed to prenatal testosterone from their male twin.

The researchers caution that they lack information on all possible outcomes, and it is possible that some positive effects from testosterone exposure also exist. Moreover, the long-term impacts of prenatal testosterone exposure, which likely involve behavioral changes, may shift as societal norms surrounding gender change.

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"It is important to emphasize that our findings apply to Norwegian society during the timeframe of the study, but may not apply equally across other societies or cultural settings. For instance, if gender norms change within a society, acceptance of a wider array of behaviors could minimize later effects on outcomes like school completion or entering a marriage," said study co-author Christopher Kuzawa, professor of anthropology and an IPR fellow, whose research focuses on the roles that the intrauterine and early postnatal environments have on development and long-term health.

"Basically we find that there are some very interesting long-term biological effects of being a sister to a twin brother," Kuzawa said. "But whether we view those effects as 'positive' or 'negative' may be culturally dependent."

"While we found moderate effects at the national level, these results reflect mean differences," Karbownik said. "Not everyone will be affected in the same way, and some female twins may not be affected at all. And, these effects are highly unlikely to result from any individual fertility decision made by a woman or couple, given that twins are a small subset of births and male-female twin pairs even rarer yet."

"We certainly do not advocate against delayed reproduction or the use of IVF, which are complex decisions made by individuals balancing a range of personal factors," Karbownik said.

Caveats aside, "our results suggest that in utero testosterone transfer could present a hidden impact of practices that increase multiple zygote implantation, and provide long-term perspectives concerning the risks and returns of these fertility decisions," the researchers wrote.
Studies have shown women are more risk-averse than men, more likely to opt for the smaller sure thing than gamble on an all-or-nothing proposition, a trait experts say could help to explain the persistent wage gap between men and women.

New research suggests those gender differences in risk aversion are shaped by culture and the social environment and that those differences can shift, at least in children.

"Environment is extremely important in shaping risk aversion," said Elaine Liu, associate professor of economics and author of a paper on the subject published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "If we can teach girls that they should be more risk loving, perhaps that will shape their future decision-making."

Liu and co-author Sharon Xuejing Zuo of Fudan University looked at the behavior of children from two distinct cultures -- the matrilineal Mosuo and the traditionally patriarchal Han -- who attended the same school in Yunnan, China.

When the children first began elementary school, Mosuo girls took more risks than Mosuo boys, while Han girls were less likely to take risks than Han boys, in keeping with their parents' cultural norms. But that began to change as the children were exposed to the other culture.

It worked both ways, Liu said. Mosuo girls became more risk-averse, while Han girls became more risk-loving.

"There was a convergence," Liu said. "The Mosuo girls took more risks than Han girls at the beginning, but their attitudes toward taking risks become more similar as they spent more time together."

The researchers studied children in elementary and middle school; Liu said it's not clear whether the changes will be sustained as the children return to their home villages. She and Zuo hope to launch a long-term study to determine if the shift in attitudes toward risk-taking is permanent.

They measured students' attitudes toward risk-taking through a lottery-style game, offering the students six choices ranging from a guaranteed three-yuan payout to a 50/50 percent chance of winning 10 yuan or nothing. Ten yuan would allow the children to buy five notebooks or about five popsicles at a local store; the amount of the reward was chosen after consulting with school principals.

Liu and Zuo conducted their research in Yunnan, a province in southwestern China, because it is one of the few places where children from cultures with distinctly different gender norms come together in one place. But Liu said the basic discovery -- that risk aversion is quite malleable at a young age -- should be applicable across cultures.

"Gender norms are slow to change, but there are social influences that could play a role in how we shape that behavior," Liu said. And that could have long-term economic consequences, she said, even potentially shrinking the gender pay gap if it led to women choosing riskier but higher-reward career paths.
Japanese investors, including those major players in the indebted coal fired technology, are looking at backing up projects on a large-scale renewable resource across Asia. When this pushes through, it would be a monumental shift in the market analysis that will put an end to people's dependence on thermal coal energy.

At the time when Japan's largest investors including trading houses and traditional banks are turning their back on coal investments. They are selling out plans of investing in Australia's mining to build coal-fired power plants across the country.

Japan remains to be one of Australia's largest customer on coal export products. There are several proposed projects involving thermal energy produced from coal. However, according to the figures presented by The Global Coal Plant tracker, almost  of the projects are not likely to proceed. In fact, the most recent proposal included a 1.3GW coal-fired plant to be established in Akita, Japan's foremost coast region in the Northwest has been canceled.

Sojitz Corporation, the investor has expressed its intent to further divest from coal-fired power plants, following the announcement of Itochu, concerning their exit on coal in November of 2018.

The sources of reliable renewable energy in Asia says that the banks in Japan including Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the Japan International Cooperation Agency have expressed their growing desire to invest in renewable sources of energy. They would like to look into the renewable sector to see how such could bring about change in their current source and all its positive effects on a global scale.

The increased interest in investing in renewable resources have become notable among the great investors in Japan. Though the demand for electricity in Japan only grows by the day, the population is also looking at using electric energy from a source that helps save the environment. In the market today, coal appears to be the most viable option, until Japan discovered the many ways renewable energy can be harvested and used for people's consumption.

Other investors are looking at putting their money on Akita. It is part of the country that is next to the Sea of Japan. Their offshore investments and development could find a good home in Akita.

At the moment, there are 13 offshore wind turbine developments across Japan. The environmental assessment they are doing has a total investment of about 2 trillion yen. This is according to the investment report by the Mizuho Bank.

The question is when will the rest of the world be ready to choose the renewable source?


On Early March 2019, the 10th International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology was held at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Here, Dr. Majid Al Ruqeishi, an Omani scientist, won the title of "Best Oral Presentation" for discussing his concept on hydrophobic cement.

Al Ruqeishi explains that his invention could protect homes from deterioration, especially for those that are along the coastal areas. The scientist also stressed out how important the hydrophobic cement is for both coastal buildings and for drilling wells, either for oil and gas. Formations can be plastered using this type of cement. Roads can also be done using the new invention, however, this requires that the nanoparticles be mixed in a certain way with stabilizers before use.

The core of the new-found building material repels water. When water is poured on the blocks, the water would bounce or slide off the material much like the behavior of mercury when poured on any surface. Al Ruqeishi worked with Tariq Mohiuddin, an associate professor, and Al Mutasim Al Zakwani, a student finishing his final year in the university. The three were inspired by an observation they had noted when the walls would naturally deteriorate as time would pass by but the walls in the homes along the coastal area would start to deteriorate from inside.

The three explained further that humidity is the main culprit when it comes to damages that homes near coastlines undergo. The accumulation of water droplets would cause small fractures within the blocks. In time, this will corrode the metal materials inside the blocks. As of the moment, there are commercially available solutions. However, these are more of remedies as these would only deal with problems that a protected surface could offer. This means that when the protection on the surface has thinned out, the block is left open for corrosion. Al Ruqeishi and his team found a solution which involves nanotechnology to come up with cement blocks that are hydrophobic starting from its core.

The team of scientists is now updating their research and putting more effort to take their invention to the next level with their superhydrophobic blocks. The three expressed their plans to commercialize the product after its patent comes through and that collaboration with the industry of building materials is welcomed.

Al Ruqeishi and his team developed their hydrophobic cement in the physics department of Sultan Qaboos University. Their team is grateful for the nanotechnology and synthesis techniques made available for them by the said university.
It can be quite hard to keep up with technology and how it has kept everyone's lives easy. The continuous development of wind turbines, one better than the last, has indeed changed the way electricity is collected on the coast of the United Kingdom. From the turbines that were build standing in shallow seas, people will see that they will cover hundreds of square miles off the coast of UK providing at least a third of all of UK's electricity needs.

And then, researchers are also looking at the floating turbines. It took quite a while for Aberdeen to create the first ever floating turbine. Fifteen years have been spent in extensive research to make it happen. The best part of it all is that the wind turbines were able to exceed the expected output of the people behind it.

A Norwegian State Oil Company said that it has appointed Equinor to create a much "greener" image for the company. Their extensive study has them realize that they could build floating wind power to more than half of the North Sea. The electricity produced from these turbines are anchored in the deep water for stability. What is collected could be used as the European Union's electricity at least four times over what they require.

The cost of these wind turbines are not easy to cover. They don't come cheap. But their designs through time have become bigger and better. Each machine is able to produce thirty times the electricity than what is expected of it through research. Perhaps the greatest boost to those who hope to lessen the burden of killing the environment is that the cost of such turbine technology has become less as more companies are looking at developing their own design.

Many maritime states including power countries like Japan and the US are looking at the possibility of using floating turbine technology to lessen their use of non-renewable energy. No one is worried about the wind ceasing to blow because it looks like it wouldn't. Rather, research studies are looking into other possible means of storing the energy in batteries and these studies are moving forward too.

Indeed, the advancements are technology has made a lot of things possible. Some of it has equipped people with more ways to use up the natural resources of the world. And then there are those that push people to discover more ways to keep living comfortable lives while saving the world in the process.
The wrinkled little peppercorn has played a big role in the history of food.

It is the world's most important spice, due to its near-worldwide popularity and the effect meeting its demand had on global trade and exploration. It has long been thought to contain healing qualitiesSanskrit medical volumes dating back more than 3,000 years include advice on how to administer it. By the fifth century, pepper was so wildly valuable it was used to pay off taxes and levies in place of currency; rent and dowries were sometimes paid in pepper; and when Rome was besieged by the Visigoths in 408 CE, 3,000 pounds of peppercorns were included in the ransom paid for the citys release. At its most valuable, pepper was worth its weight in gold.

All through the ancient world and into Europes Middle Ages, pepper appears to have been universally beloved, as prized in India as it was in northern Europe, as eagerly traded in the ports of Venice as it was in the ports of Egypt. And while the worlds consumption of pepper was enormous then, it is, naturally, even more enormous now: It accounts for about one-fifth of the worlds spice trade today.

Pungent, earthy, hot, woody, brashpeppers distinct flavor somehow pairs well with just about any savory food, and some sweet ones, too. If salt helps bring out flavors, black pepper makes foods bolder versions of themselves.

The word pepper is used to describe dozens of different types and varieties that come in a medley of colors, a spectrum of grades, and a range of qualities. It is even used for imitators that are not pepper at all. But it applies first and foremost to the dried fruit of Piper nigrum, a climbing shrub native to India.

The plants vine wraps itself around trees in the wild, and in commercial growing, its manually wrapped around sturdy stakes. Small flowers produce rows of berries, drooping off the vines as the berries mature and the flower fades away. Once the first berries on the spike go from green to red, the whole spike is plucked, harvested, and dried under a hot sun, going from round and fleshy fruit to the hard and wrinkly orb familiar to almost everyone all around the world.

Black Pepper

Tellicherry peppercorns.

Black peppercorns begin as green berries on the vine. Once the bunch of berries has ripened and the first go from green to dark red, the spikes are harvested and shriveled by the sun into puckered, dark brownish spheres, which we call black peppercorns. (Look closely, and youll see coloring ranging from gray to brown to dark red to black.) A spike of peppercorns will contain different-sized berries, as the ones at the very top grow larger than the ones at the bottom.

After theyre dried, the peppercorns are sifted through mesh screens to sort them into different grades according to size. The larger the peppercorn, the better and stronger the flavor, with the largest peppercorns sorted into the highest grades.

The top 10 percent of the pepper cropthe largest peppercornsare Tellicherry peppercorns. And the best of the top 10 percent are further sorted into Tellicherry Extra Bold or Tellicherry Special Bold varietals. If Tellicherry is the wagyu beef of the black peppercorn world, the bold Tellicherry is a wagyu ribeye: the best of the best, truly some of the strongest, most pungent peppercorns in the world. The flavors are brash and punchy, with an undisputed depth of flavor that comes from their specific terroir and the growers long centuries of perfecting production.

Malabar peppercorns.

Other types of black peppercorns are named for the regions theyre grown in, or their names are derived from the ports of India they were historically shipped out of. Malabar black pepper is named for Indias Malabar Coast in Kerala, along Indias southwestern point, where it was historically grown. (Over the centuries, pepper production expanded from the state of Kerala to much of southern India.)

Tellicherry also grows in this region, along the Malabar Coast, so Tellicherry can be thought of as the top 10 percent of the Malabar crop. Malabar pepper, however, refers to the next best thing after the top Tellicherry variety. Its a solid option, especially if you want good-quality pepper without paying the premium price for Tellicherry or if you go through a lot of pepper quickly. Malabar peppercorns are smaller and milder in flavor, pungent but not quite as sharp and full-flavored as Tellicherry, and have a lighter brown coloring.

Lampong peppercorns.

Not all pepper is grown in India. Lampong pepper is a very good Indonesian variety. Though its still not as good as Tellicherry, it provides a nicely bold flavor thats somewhat hotter and more aromaticnot a ribeye cut from the worlds finest cows, but a high quality tenderloin.

If youre not looking for a cut of beef alone on a plate, but maybe taco meat that goes well with other fixings, Sarawak pepper is a perfectly good option. It comes from Malaysias Sarawak state, an area better known for its white pepper. But it also produces this pleasant, mild black pepper. For stand-alone black pepper flavor, Malabar or Tellicherry is a better option; Sarawak black pepper is nice when used in a blend of spices, adding a simple, wispy note of black-pepper flavor.

Sarawak black peppercorns.

Pepper has been growing in India for thousands of years, and New World pepper crops find it hard to compete, flavor-wise, with the depth of flavor that comes from Indian growers. Brazilian peppercorns are inferior in flavor, but provide an important resource for large companies that need enormous quantities of cheap pepper. Brazilian pepper is thin and one-dimensional; youll probably get just a hint of it when its used in prepackaged foods.

The differences between Brazilian and Tellicherry pepper is night and day, but among the higher quality peppersthe grades of Tellicherry, Malabar, and Lampongit can be difficult to distinguish the differences if each is taken on its own. Direct side-by-side comparisons are the best way to see, smell, and taste these differences. And, be warned: testing for quality also assumes all the peppercorns are fresh. While the flavor of peppercorns survives far longer than many other spices, you still want to be cooking with freshly harvested pepper; usually not an issue for high-demand grades like Tellicherry, which sell quickly, but something to look out for in lower-quality peppercorns.

Green Pepper

Green peppecorns.

Like other fruits, young peppercorns start out green and grow darker as they age. Once picked, green peppercorns continue to ripen (just like bananas). Todays pepper producers dehydrate green peppercorns after harvesting to prevent them from ripening into black pepper. In the past, green peppercorns were pickled in a brine, but that method is less common today, as drying technology has improved.

Brined green peppercorns.

Green peppercorns lack the rich complexity of older, black peppercorns. Its similar to the difference between a green tomato and a ripe red onethe green is younger and fresher tasting, not as complete as the red but still tasty on its own terms. Green peppercorns offer a zesty brightness that black peppercorns lack, and add a fruity vitality to dishes. Green pepper can be used in place of black pepper for a milder, brighter flavor. You can replace green peppercorns in pepper sauce recipes like steak au poivre for an interesting twist or mix green pepper with black pepper to coat a pork tenderloin or pork chops. Its mellow zest lends itself well to fish and other seafood, chicken, and in sauces of a delicate disposition, like cream sauces and vinaigrettes.

White Pepper

Penja white peppercorns.

If you examine white peppercorns closely, youll see they lack the characteristic wrinkles of black peppercorns. Thats because all white peppercorns start as young black peppercorns, picked when ripe. Instead of drying these peppercorns out, they are put under running water or left to soak; the water dissolves the fruits skin, leaving a burnished white-gray color behind. This is also why white peppercorns are smaller than black peppercorns.

White peppercorns have quite a different flavor from black peppercorns. Theyre not as richly complex and they lack black peppers bite, but they offer instead a floral, more delicate, yet pungent, fruity, flowery spiciness with a hint of fermentation due to how theyre processedsome have described the fermented smell as a kind of barnyard funk.

While white pepper isnt very popular in the United States, it has a big fan base in Europe and parts of Asia. Its bite comes through in Chinese soups, like hot and sour soup, or in stir-fry dishes like Cashew Chicken Ding where it adds complex floral notes. In Europe its more frequently used in place of black pepper, and some cooks like it for its ability to blend in to light-colored dishes like whipped potatoes and vichyssoise, where black pepper could show up as black spots.

Sarawak white peppercorns.

White peppers qualities vary depending on where it is grown and how it is processed. Sarawak white pepper, from Malaysia, is left under running water until the outer husk dissolves, which produces a brighter-tasting white peppercorn. Sarawak is potent, has a nice heat, and is generally stronger in flavor than the other main varietal, Muntok white pepper. This white pepper hails from Indonesia and the ripened berries are left sitting in water, which makes the end product a grayish color. Muntok is milder in flavor than Sarawak, but it is still a quality option that can be bought for cheaper.

Penja white peppercorns.

The most interesting of the white pepper options, though, is Penja white pepper. This expensive, hard-to-find white pepper has a more robust flavor profile than its fellow whites, with a hot, dazzlingly intense initial burst of fragrance. Penja grows in Cameroon and was granted PGI (protected geographical indication) status after counterfeiters tried to take advantage of its popularity and price.

Cubeb and Long Pepper

Long pepper.

The black, white, and green peppercorns above are all made from the same true pepper plant. But there are two more members of the Piper family: cubeb pepper and long pepper. While both were once popular in ancient Rome, Greece, and parts of China, today theyre little more than curiosities, found only at speciality spice shops. Both, however, are very tasty additions to your spice rack, especially if your love for black pepper runs deep.

Cubeb pepper

Long pepper, one of the most appealing-looking spices in its whole form, is hotter and sweeter than standard black pepper, adding a splash of spiciness reminiscent of gingers punchy flavor. Cubeb pepper (also called Java pepper, Benin pepper, and tailed pepper) has a sharp, astringent flavor, with a strain of nutmeg-like warmth. Both long and cubeb peppers are suitable substitutions for black pepper.

Long pepper adds an especially interesting, complex note, making it a good addition to foods where a lot of pepper is added at the table, like poultry, beef, and stews. Try grinding some in a mortar and pestle (the long shape wont go through a regular pepper grinders mechanisms) and mixing half-and-half long and regular black pepper for a dazzling, but grounded, pepper flavor.

Other Peppers

Other spices sought to capitalize on peppers popularity by co-opting its name. This name-borrowing was mostly contained to other spices with a similar piquant bite, but pink peppercorns adopted it solely because they were roughly the same shape and size.

A similar impulse was at work with the naming of the New World capsicum plant family, now better known as chili peppers. These fleshy fruits, ranging in hotness from the mild bell pepper to the fiery habanero and beyond, originated in South and Central America, but were so quickly and thoroughly adapted by cultures around the world that many people are confused about their origins.

Along with vanilla and allspice, the Old Worlds discovery of what we today call chili peppers or hot peppers marked a new era in the spice trade, one in which New World goods added to the spices coming out of India, China, and the Maluku Islands (a.k.a., the Spice Islands). And the capsicums were given the familiar name pepper because of their heat. The doctor on Christopher Columbuss ship called the fruits Indian peppers. His letter home describes the first taste of the pungent wild fruits that his men, not very prudently, tasted: Upon only touching them with their tongues, their contenances [sic] became inflamed, and such great heat and pain followed, that they seemed to be mad.

Pink pepper

Pink pepper is a berry in the cashew family thats roughly the same size as black peppercorns. It has a pleasantly sweet, bright, and fruity depth of flavor, and a little friendly heat. It brings a refreshing flavor to meat dishes, especially when used in conjunction with black pepper in game and poultry dishes. Used alone, its mild character nicely seasons blander foods like eggs, chicken, and white fish. Pink pepper is used to great effect as a flavor in chocolate, and it has been gaining popularity in ice cream. Its color is beloved by chefs for adding a splash of pretty crimson to light-colored sauces and as a garnish. Bartenders, too, use it to add an attractive element to drinks, especially to enhance the appearance of pink and red drinks like the spicy Marrakesh Express.

This ruby of the spice world has a fragile outer shell that crumbles easily, and, as such, you shouldnt place it in a black pepper grinder, as the grinders mechanism is too forceful. Instead, it should be crumbled by hand or gently ground in a mortar and pestle.

Grains of Paradise

Grains of paradise.

Grains of paradise may get their name from shrewd merchants who capitalized on peppers mystical, far-away origins: A popular tale in the ancient world and Europes Dark Ages described pepper and other spices as flowing out of paradise in a river of spice. Grains of paradise come from West Africa and are also known as ossame and melegueta pepper. They taste like a spicier, more cardamom-forward version of black pepper, with a hint of sweet ginger and cinnamon, plus a dash of citrus. If this sounds like a lot of flavors in one little seed, it is, and the wide-ranging flavor profile makes the grains a versatile addition to your spice rack. They can be used wherever you would use black pepper for a rounder, almost buttery version of black peppers signature sharpness. Try grains of paradise on steak and burgers or on roasted vegetables, or, really, in any dish youd normally sprinkle with pepper.

Sichuan Pepper

Sichuan pepper has long been a staple of Chinese cooking. It doesnt taste much like black pepper, but its distinct numbing property somewhat mimics true peppers heat. Its also very aromatic. Sichuans numbing spiciness makes it a natural addition to hot fried chicken and other dishes where hot spice is at the forefront, like chili sauces, kung pao chicken and tofu, and dry-rubbed meats. Sichuan works especially well when used in conjunction with flavors that will cool and soothe Sichuans sting; think yogurt sauces for dipping spicy Xi'an-style chicken wings, and mint salads to go on top of a steak or lamb rubbed with a Sichuan-peppercorn-heavy seasoning.

Sansho Pepper

Sansho pepper is Sichuan peppers Japanese cousin, and it produces an even stronger numbing, tingling sensation on the tongue. Like Sichuan pepper, sansho is often added to already spicy seasonings, can make almost any rice dish more interesting, and is called upon to cut fatty flavors in pork, eel, and rich mushrooms. Its electric sensation is gaining in popularity as a condiment for ramen, too.

Editors' Note: We're very excited to welcome Caitlin PenzeyMoog to our digital pages. PenzeyMoog is the managing editor of The A.V. Club, but more importantly (to us!), she's the author of the book On Spice: Advice, Wisdom, and History With a Grain of Saltiness. You could say spice runs in her blood, since her family runs both Penzeys Spices and The Spice House, two spice purveyors all of us here at Serious Eats turn to in our moments of spice need.
A jury in the first federal court trial of thousands of lawsuits by cancer victims against the manufacturer of the worlds most widely used herbicide found Tuesday that Monsantos Roundup was a likely cause of a Sonoma County mans non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

The six jurors deliberated for nearly four days after a two-week trial in San Francisco before agreeing unanimously that Edwin Hardeman, 70, had proven the herbicide was probably a substantial factor in causing the cancer with which he was diagnosed in 2015. Hardemen said hed sprayed Roundup on his property for decades.

The jury returns Wednesday to hear evidence on whether Monsanto is legally responsible for Hardemans cancer and, if so, determine the amount of damages he should receive. The case is one of three bellwether trials scheduled before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria and could establish guidelines for settlements of about 760 cases against Monsanto from around the nation that have been transferred to his court, and more than 10,000 pending elsewhere.

The first trial against the company took place in state court last summer in San Francisco, where a Superior Court jury awarded $289 million in damages to Dewayne Lee Johnson, 46, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma after years of spraying school grounds in Benicia with a concentrated brand of the same herbicide. A judge later reduced Johnsons damages to $78.5 million. Monsanto is appealing.

Unlike Johnson, whose doctors have described his illness as terminal, Hardemans cancer is in remission. He testified that he sprayed Roundup for nearly 30 years to kill poison oak on his 56-acre tract in Forestville, often feeling the liquid on his hands or inhaling it.

The herbicides active ingredient, glyphosate, was classified in 2015 as a probable cause of cancer in humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization. Californias Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment lists it as a chemical known to cause cancer.

But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and regulatory agencies in other nations have found glyphosate to be a safe product, and it remains legal in both the United States and Europe. Monsanto, now a subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG, held the initial patent and remains its leading distributor.

The verdict brought an audible sigh of relief from Hardeman, who hugged his lawyers and declined to speak to reporters.

In pretrial rulings, Chhabria described evidence linking Roundup to cancer as shaky but decided there was enough to bring the case to a jury. He rejected Monsantos motions for dismissal. Federal law, he said, allows states to regulate or ban pesticides that have been federally approved.

Chhabria granted the companys request, however, to divide the trial into phases, requiring jurors to consider first whether Roundup was a likely cause of Hardemans illness without hearing evidence of Monsantos conduct in marketing the product, a central factor in determining the companys liability for damages. That will come in the next phase.

Lawyers for Hardeman and other plaintiffs contend the company hid evidence of the herbicides danger from its users and ghost-wrote some of the purported favorable research findings.

Now we can focus on the evidence that Monsanto has not taken a responsible, objective approach to the safety of Roundup, Hardemans lawyers, Aimee Wagstaff and Jennifer Moore, said in a statement after the verdict.

Instead, it is clear from Monsantos actions that it does not particularly care whether its product is in fact giving people cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about the issue.

Environmental groups chimed in.

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It is also a resounding verdict against our pro-industry EPA regulators, who have failed miserably in their duty to protect us all from the known health risks of dangerous pesticides, said Nathan Donley, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Bayer, Monsantos parent company, said it was disappointed by the verdict but still maintains that the science confirms glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer and that it was not responsible for Hardemans illness.

Roundup and glyphosate have been used safely and successfully for over four decades worldwide and are a valuable tool to help farmers deliver crops to markets and practice sustainable farming by reducing soil tillage, soil erosion and carbon emissions, Bayer said.

During the trial, Monsanto lawyers argued that there was no provable cause of Hardemans illness, but that the most likely factor was hepatitis C, from which he suffered for nearly three decades.

His lawyers countered that Hardeman had been free of hepatitis since 2004, but an oncologist testifying for Monsanto said the illness had lasting effects on the genetic system  a hit-and-run impact, as the witness put it  that left its victims vulnerable to cancer.

A pathologist testifying for Hardeman told the jury that Roundup was the most likely cause of his illness.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
SF Chronicle Graphics, Nextzen, OpenStreetMap

A multi-vehicle crash sent one person to the hospital and temporarily shut down the Powell-Hyde Cable Car service on on Tuesday afternoon, fire officials said.

Roughly five vehicles crashed at Bay and Hyde streets just after 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, according to the San Francisco Fire Department.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Monday that shes ready to confront the controversies and neighborhood squabbles that will inevitably accompany her attempts to grapple with the citys homelessness crisis and housing shortage.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Public Policy Institute of California, Breed told PPIC President and CEO Mark Baldassare that though shes sensitive to calls by some to maintain neighborhood character, the humanitarian imperatives of the citys two biggest problems had to come first if San Franciscans want to see progress.

The need to build more housing is critical to our ability to provide places for people to live, Breed said. She has committed to adding at least 1,000 shelter beds for homeless people by 2020 and getting 5,000 units of housing built annually.

Since taking office in July, much of Breeds work has centered on chipping away at bureaucracy holding up new shelter and housing development.

Everyone wants to do that, but as soon as we want to build it in some neighborhoods, were met with a lot of opposition, Breed said. Every neighborhood has to share in an increase of housing units. Its the only way were going to get to a better place.

It wasnt unreasonable, she added to expect to build a little bit taller  four, five, sometimes six stories  where it typically may not be zoned for that particular purpose.

Her remarks follow a pair of contentious meetings last week on her proposal to build a 200-bed Navigation Center  a 24-hour shelter with intensive services meant to guide people to stable housing  on whats now a parking lot on the Embarcadero.

The concept was met with resistance from people who said they live near the proposed site. Many were concerned the homeless people residing at the center would bring dirty, dangerous behavior to the tourist-heavy neighborhood and urged city officials to find other locations for it, considering the volume of homelessness services already in supervisorial District Six, where the site lies.

Its a very controversial thing for the people who live there, who feel very strongly, Breed said. I understand the concerns, but at the same time, everyone wants the mayor to fix the problems. I am proposing solutions, and a homeless shelter has to go somewhere. Theres one two blocks from where I live. They have to be somewhere.

Like her continued support for safe injection sites, where drug users are offered clean equipment and supervision to prevent overdoses and direct access to addiction services, Breed said, we need to take some risks and propose things that may make people uncomfortable to improve street conditions and the lives of those currently living on them. Safe-injection sites have been largely sidelined in San Francisco and elsewhere in the U.S. because of legal concerns, primarily the threat of federal prosecution.

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Breed isnt likely to inspire quite the same backlash over her attempts to untangle the red tape holding back shelter and housing production. To date, shes mandated faster review of accessory dwelling units, introduced legislation to eliminate permitting fees for affordable housing projects and plans to champion a charter amendment on the November ballot that would eliminate appeals for affordable housing and teacher-housing developments.

She described attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony for an affordable housing development in South of Market. Developing the site, she said, took 11 years.

From the time they found the site, to the process, the permitting, the drama  enough is enough, she said.

Weve piled so many laws on top weve put ourselves in a situation where were not going to be as successful unless we start getting rid of some of this stuff.

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
Cars double-parked in bike lanes. Doors that swing open out of nowhere. Motorists who are so distracted, theyll roll past the scene of an accident without noticing.

San Francisco, as seen by the citys pedestrians and cyclists, is a pinball-like maze of dangers and obstacles. They painted that portrait Tuesday at an emotional meeting of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agencys Board of Directors, which voted to build a protected bike lane  a brightly painted path with some kind of barrier to separate it from traffic  on a three-block stretch of Howard Street by April 18.

The shielded lane would run from Third Street to Sixth Street on the SoMa artery, including the block where 30-year-old Airbnb worker Tess Rothstein was killed earlier this month. Transit officials will also start designing a segment for Howard Street down to the Embarcadero. Before work begins on that section, the transit agency must consult with nearby merchants and residents, a mandatory community outreach process that often stalls or dilutes safety projects in San Francisco.

The board decision followed a rally on City Hall steps that drew dozens of cyclists, who tethered their bikes to poles along Polk Street and the adjacent blocks. They packed the meeting in a fourth-floor hearing room and crowded into an overflow room down the hall. More than 30 people lined up to share stories of being struck by doors or dodging cars in a crosswalk.

Some praised the citys quick triage on Howard Street, but many urged the city to do more. They said it shouldnt take a death to spur the agency to act.

Id like to be in a place where we feel like were not dragging the board to react to something, said SoMa resident Jeff Ferland. Others echoed that point, arguing that a city known as an innovation capital should be completely awash in bike infrastructure.

Every single day  and Im not exaggerating  I see multiple cars and trucks blocking crosswalks ... and unprotected bike lanes, said Keziah Plattner, a member of the bike and transit advocacy group YIMBY Mobility. She commutes by bicycle through SoMa and often has to merge into traffic to avoid illegally parked vehicles.

It doesnt matter whether Im wearing a helmet, following all the rules, anything, she said. When it comes to me vs. a 2-ton vehicle, I will lose.

Board Director Amanda Eaken expressed sympathy for the cyclists and called on SFMTA staff to develop a 90-day action plan that prioritizes improvements that can be made quickly and easily. Mayor London Breed made a similar request in a letter she sent to the board Tuesday, the latest in a series of sternly worded directives.

Because I bike in SoMa all the time, I can deeply relate to your fear and terror, Eaken said to the 32 people who lined up for public comment.

Breed urged the transit agency to replicate its work on Howard Street elsewhere in SoMa and in the Tenderloin. The board already approved projects on Sixth Street and Taylor Street, but that work hasnt started.

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These efforts will require trade-offs, and SFMTA must seek creative solutions and reprioritize resources to put peoples lives first, Breed wrote in her letter.

Other board directors agreed that more work lies ahead.

And SFMTA director Ed Reiskin had more grim news in his executive report: A 14-year-old pedestrian was recently hit on John Muir Drive near Lake Merced. The girl is in grave condition.

Every single one of these is tragic, he said.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the California Trucking Association on Monday in a case that could classify tens of thousands of California truck drivers as employees of freight-hauling companies, with the right to minimum wages, overtime pay and reimbursement for business expenses.

The drivers sign up with freight haulers under standard contracts that describe them as owner-operators of their trucks. The Trucking Association and its members contend those drivers are independent contractors, paid at a specific rate and responsible for their own expenses.

More than 400 of the drivers have challenged their classification before the state Department of Industrial Relations, which has found nearly all of them to be employees rather than contractors. Other drivers have joined in class-action suits against trucking companies, seeking employee status.

California labor officials have relied on a 1989 state Supreme Court ruling that classified workers as employees if the company had substantial control over the work they did, and that put the burden of proof on the company to show contractor status.

Last April the court, in a case involving package delivery drivers, said a company must prove workers are running their own independent businesses to classify them as contractors. Labor unions are backing legislation that would affirm that ruling as state law.

In federal court, the Trucking Association argued that a 1994 federal deregulation law prohibited California from determining the drivers employment status. That law bars states from enforcing any statutes or regulations related to a price, route or service of any motor carrier ... with respect to transportation of property.

In this case, the association contended, the state seeks to regulate transportation services by refusing to honor contracts that describe drivers as owner-operators independent of the trucking companies.

Using state law to rewrite the terms on which motor carriers transport property cannot be squared with Congress deregulatory objectives, Adam Smedstad, a lawyer for the Trucking Association, said in a court filing.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the state regulation in September and said the classification of drivers as employees or contractors did not regulate a companys prices, routes or services.

The Trucking Association has not shown that if a driver is found to be an employee, its members will no longer be able to provide the service it was once providing through that driver, or that the route or price of that service will be compelled to change, Judge A. Wallace Tashima said in the 3-0 ruling. At most, carriers will face modest increases in business costs.

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On Monday, the Supreme Court denied review of the associations appeal, without comment.

Over the last eight years, the Labor Commissioners office has awarded millions of dollars to truck drivers to help them recoup wages stolen from them through minimum wage and overtime violations, state Labor Secretary Julie Su said in response to the court decision. We are committed to protecting drivers who are retaliated against for asserting their rights.

While the Supreme Courts decision to not review our case is disappointing, it is not altogether surprising given that the Court agrees to take less than two percent of the cases petitioning for a hearing, said Shawn Yadon, CEO of the California Trucking Association, in a statement. He said the association intends to pursue a separate legal challenge against a different California ruling that also limited the classification of many workers as independent contractors.

The case is California Trucking Association vs. Su, 18-887.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that a Trump administration program that provides tax breaks meant to spur investment in low-income areas could boost Californias economy.

Newsom said the Opportunity Zones program could help address two of the states major challenges: promoting energy investment to meet its climate change goals and providing funding for housing amid a shortage that has exacerbated income inequality.

Newsom is also open to encouraging investment in other sectors, he said at the Opportunity Zone Investor Summit at Stanford University. Accelerator For America, an economic development nonprofit co-founded by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, organized the event.

The program, which was part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, reduces capital gains taxes for real estate and business investors in designated low-income areas. Those include southern parts of San Francisco, much of Oakland, and parts of other Bay Area cities such as San Jose, Berkeley and Vallejo. After holding an investment for 10 years, investors pay no capital gains taxes, which can otherwise run as high as 20 percent.

Newsom acknowledged that it was unusual for a Democrat to endorse a Trump program, particularly given how frequently he and the president have sparred.

We all heard about these opportunity zones. We were a bit perplexed, Newsom said. A lot of us, at least on my side of the political aisle said, That actually sounds like a good idea. Wait a second, it came out of which administration? Im still trying to get my arms around it. Maybe its too good of an idea.

The programs roots date back to a proposal from the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank backed by Bay Area venture capitalist and former Facebook and Napster executive Sean Parker.

A newly formed White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, which includes 13 federal agencies, will oversee the program. State governors designate census tracts from among those eligible. In 2018, Gov. Jerry Brown recommended nearly 800 census tracts in the state. A tract typically contains about 4,000 people.

Newsom said the zones could be a way to draw investors into California and prevent them from prioritizing lower-tax states. We want to address the issue that we have the highest tax rate in the United States. Were not naive about that, Newsom said.

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However, he said for the program to succeed, it has to spur investment while benefiting existing residents, rather than just investors.

We dont just believe in growth. We believe in inclusion. You cant have one without the other, Newsom told summit attendees. I appreciate your interest. I hope its not just to make a quick buck.

Newsom closed his speech with a reference to his predecessor Brown, who was fond of quoting philosophers.

Newsom cited the first century Greek philosopher Plutarch, who is thought to have said, The imbalance between the rich and the poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Roland Li is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf
San Francisco has made remarkable strides against HIV over the past half decade: New infection numbers are the lowest since the start of the epidemic. Two-thirds of people with HIV have the virus so well under control that its undetectable in their blood.

But these health improvements in the overall population stand in stark contrast to the stubborn effect of HIV among one subset of patients: people who are homeless. They have the highest rates of new infections in San Francisco, and they are half as likely as their housed peers to have the virus under control.

Now a new program aimed to meet their specific needs has opened at San Francisco General Hospitals Ward 86, where people with HIV and AIDS have gotten care since the early 1980s. The program  called Positive-health Onsite Program for Unstably-housed Populations, or POP-UP  started in January and has enrolled 23 patients, each homeless, HIV-positive and either not on medications to treat HIV or unable to take the meds consistently enough to keep the infection under control.

The idea is to aggressively pursue the citys most vulnerable population of people with HIV, and make it as simple as possible for them to access health care.

Were seeing how society has failed this group of people. And we dont want to fail them anymore, said Jon Oskarsson, nurse manager for the program.

Getting people with HIV onto antiretroviral drugs to control the virus is critical for two reasons: It improves the individuals overall health and it helps prevent spread of HIV. When the virus is undetectable in a persons blood  a concept called viral suppression  that person cant infect others. So improving treatment of HIV among homeless people could dramatically slow down new infection rates in that population.

But for many reasons closely tied to being homeless, people without stable housing often struggle to access or retain treatment for HIV or any other health problem. Many homeless people with HIV report that their antiretroviral drugs are often stolen. Or in the chaos of just trying to find food or a safe place to sleep, they forget to take their meds every day.

Plus, people who are homeless and have HIV have high rates of mental illness and drug abuse. In the POP-UP program, two-thirds of the patients enrolled have a mental health diagnosis and nearly 90 percent use methamphetamine.

The new program is a bridge between urgent and primary care. The staff at Ward 86 realized that many of their homeless patients were coming in a few times a year for complaints unrelated to HIV  a sprained ankle, the flu, a wound that was taking too long to heal. But they were having a hard time making appointments with their primary care doctor and staying on their meds.

Once theyre enrolled in POP-UP, theyre encouraged to stop by Ward 86 any time  once or twice a month at least, or every day if theyd like  to talk to a doctor or nurse. If they need to, they can take their HIV meds in the clinic every day or get a supply to last them a few days. If their HIV drugs are stolen, they can come back for more.

They can also get other primary care services like a flu shot, cancer screenings or blood tests for sexually transmitted infections. They can access psychiatric and addiction care. Patients in the program get bus tokens to cover the cost of travel to Ward 86, located on the San Francisco General Hospital campus, along with vouchers for food.

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Dr. Elizabeth Imbert said when new people start the program, one of the first questions she asks is what their goals are for their health. She knows what she wants: to get them on HIV meds and get the infection under control. But that might not be a priority for them.

The most common thing weve heard so far is, I want to look healthier, so that I can go home and see my family, Imbert said. Many of her patients are thin and frail-looking  not unlike the early images of people with HIV who went on to die from AIDS.

Housing, of course, is also a common goal. But its not something Imbert or her colleagues can do much about.

The POP-UP program is an offshoot of San Franciscos Getting to Zero campaign, which aims to end all new HIV infections. Other programs have targeted certain populations of people affected by HIV, but this is the first to address homeless people specifically.

The most important thing that can be done for these patients is to get them housed, said Dr. Diane Havlir, chief of the division of HIV/AIDS at San Francisco General.

But short of us doing bake sales and building a hotel on our own, Havlir said, we had to ask, Was there anything else we could do?

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com
In the middle of the crowd at the Hayes Street Grill, co-owner Patricia Unterman told the tale of a musician who was playing in Davies Hall when he first visited the restaurant in 1982. Hed come from afar to play with the San Francisco Symphony, he told them, and had been astounded to find himself two blocks away from the peanut sauce hed read about in the New York Times. He was hooked.

And thats why  dressed in formal clothes to play with the Symphony on Saturday night, March 16  this longtime steadfast customer had stopped by on the way to work to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the restaurant. It has stayed true to itself, said Jennifer Biederbeck, who was at the party with her husband, restaurateur (Bix and Florio) Doug Biederbeck.

Lawyer Marilyn Waller, whose office was nearby when the restaurant opened, recalled that none of us would walk out at night by ourselves. Co-owner Dick Sanders recalled a man whod been shot in the leg running into the dining room. A staff member took him into the kitchen and wrapped a tablecloth around the wound. Before they could figure out what to do with him, he ran out the back door.

Doron Weinberg, a former law partner of Wallers, said that like many who worked in the neighborhood, he used to have lunch at Hayes Street two or three times a week. We always thought that we were honorary owners,Weinberg said.

The restaurant was one of the first to serve un-gussied-up fresh food, locally sourced and simply prepared. Its fans, many of whom were there to pay homage, appreciated, as Biederbeck had said, its allegiance to those ideals.

The feeling of the evening was generous and gregarious, the longtime waitstaff seeming to enjoy the occasion alongside the longtime patrons. In a town where restaurants come and go, theres a lot to be said for camaraderie, and even more for constancy.

P.S.: To mark the anniversary, the restaurant is offering three-course dinners for $40 until Sunday, March 24, and a Farmers Market booth lunch through Friday, March 22.

Mike Monti has been a friend of correspondent Tina Martin since they were both volunteers  she from the U.S., he from New Zealand  in Tonga, in 1970.

He emailed Martin over the weekend that at his granddaughters school on Friday morning, there was a Maori welcome  a powhiri  for a family of newly arrived refugees from Syria. That afternoon, the list of victims in the mosque attacks included the father of the family.

The good neighbors of the Yerba Buena district culture gulch have banded together to form Culture for Community, and they have declared Thursday, March 21, a free day in all the institutions (California Historical Society, Childrens Creativity Museum, Crown Point Press, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Mirus Gallery, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, SOMArts, SPUR, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Alliance and 111 Minna Gallery).

Notice of this day varied, depending on who was spreading the word: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which asks that visitors make reservations, describes it as a unique partnership that  arose out of the Culture for Climate initiative, when participating cultural organizations provided free admission for the community in conjunction with the Global Climate Action Summit last September. The Contemporary Jewish Museums notice described the free day as a chance to celebrate Purim and Womxns History Month, and noted that after the museums regular hours, Night at the Jewseum will feature a rollicking Purim drag cabaret. There will be a second free day this year in September (when the CJM can call it a celebration of the Jewish New Year).

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Restaurants are joining in, too: Pizzeria Delfina is offering free dessert, and theres a 10 percent discount at ThirstyBear.

The ceremonial observation of Lawrence Ferlinghettis 100th birthday on Monday, March 18, was a particularly touching one, reports Eleanor Bertino. Admirers of the poet, publisher and artist  including son Lorenzo Ferlinghetti, Italian Consul General Lorenzo Ortona and Sheila Pierce Ortona, Aaron Peskin, Angela Alioto, Diane Roby and Tony Dingman  gathered at Via Ferlinghetti, on Union Street just above Stockton, for the planting of an olive tree in honor of him.

Echoing the long life of the honoree, theres every good prospect for the long life of the tree, said Bertino. It was planted on the sunny side of the street.

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING

Its like his Facebook.

Woman to friend as her dog sniffs a fire hydrant, overheard by Dave Berry

Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, 415-777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik
Central Valley U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes said Monday he is suing Twitter, alleging that the San Francisco-based company allowed abusive, hateful and defamatory tweets attacking the Republican politician.

Nunes made his comments on Fox News, which uploaded a copy of the complaint it said Nunes filed in a Virginia state court. It seeks more than $250 million in damages, charging Twitter with allowing two Nunes parody accounts - one jokingly purporting to be the voice of Devin Nunes mom and the other of Devin Nunes cow - to spread derogatory falsehoods about Nunes, who is one of President Trumps most vocal supporters in Congress.

In addition to @DevinNunesMom and @DevinCow the complaint singles out Virginia-based political consultant @LizMair, a right of center operative who the complaint says is famous for her appearance on CNN, where she referred to then presidential candidate Donald Trump as a loud mouth dick.

The complaint also accuses Twitter of shadow banning conservatives, including Nunes. Shadow banning is the deliberate act of making someones content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster, according to the complaint.

The complaint states that between February 2018 and March 2019 Twitter allowed @DevinNunesMom to post hundreds of egregiously false, defamatory, insulting, abusive, hateful, scandalous and vile statements about Nunes that without question violated Twitters Terms of Service and Rules.

A spokesman for Twitter declined to comment. Nunes and his lawyer could not be reached for comment.

The @DevinNunesMom tweets falsely suggested that Nunes had white supremacist friends and distributed disturbing inflammatory racial propaganda, the complaint states. It falsely called him a presidential fluffer, a swamp rat, and a treasonous Putin shill, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It also tweeted out an illustration in which a figure labeled Nunes has his head buried in the rear end of a figure labeled Trump, who in turn has his noggin embedded in the posterior of a figure labeled Putin.

The @DevinCow Twitter account sent a tweet stating that Devins boots are full of manure. Hes udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison. While Twitter suspended the Mom account earlier this month, the Cow account is still active.

While parody accounts are common in politics, these were allowed to continue despite violating Twitters rules, according to the complaint. Twitter Terms of Service and Rules state that while you may maintain parody, fan, commentary, or news feed accounts, you may not do so if the intent of the account is to engage in spamming or abusive behavior.

Defendant, Devin Nunes Mom, is a person who, with Twitters consent, hijacked Nunes name, falsely impersonated Nunes mother, and created and maintained an account on Twitter (@DevinNunesMom) for the sole purpose of attacking, defaming,disparaging and demeaning Nunes, states the complaint.

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Twitter contributed materially to the illegal conduct of defamers Mair, Devin Nunes Mom and Devin Nunes cow, stated the complaint.

The complaint argues that the Twitter platform is a vital part of modern citizenship.

A presence on Twitter is essential for an individual to run for office or engage in any level of political organizing in modern America, it states.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
U.S. judicial leaders are proposing to add five more judges to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, an expansion that could potentially shift the majority from Democratic to Republican on a federal appellate court whose liberal rulings have long made it a favorite target for conservatives.

The recommendations from the Judicial Conference, whose members are judges representing the nations federal courts, are intended solely to ease the Ninth Circuits workload. If approved  with legislation that would require at least some Democratic support  it would increase the number of seats on the court from 29 to 34.

The Ninth Circuit now has 24 judges, 16 appointed by Democratic presidents and eight by Republicans, including three by the courts most vocal critic, President Trump. He has called the circuit hostile and biased for its rulings against him on issues such as immigration, birth control and transgender military service.

But Trump has nominated candidates to fill five current vacancies on the court, and their confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate would narrow the division to 16-13, increasing the prospect of a Republican-appointed majority on the randomly chosen three-judge panels that decide most cases and the 11-judge panels that can overrule past precedents.

And if Trump could appoint five more judges in the next year, the court would have 34 members, 18 of them chosen by Republican presidents.

Dont count on it. At least not without a bipartisan agreement that seems foreign to the current political climate.

The main reason Congress hasnt significantly enlarged the federal courts since 1990, despite substantial increases in workloads, is that whoever doesnt have the White House doesnt want to give the opposition party all the vacancies to fill, said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who tracks federal court appointments.

Adding federal judges requires legislation, which Democrats could block with their majority in the House or with a filibuster in the Senate. A possible compromise could be modeled on 2008 legislation that added one seat to the Ninth Circuit. It was signed by President George W. Bush, but drafted to take effect when the next president took office in 2009.

Something might happen next year if it looks like the presidency is close and the Senate is close in the 2020 elections, Tobias said. Another approach, he said, would be to divide the five new seats, with Republicans choosing three judges and Democrats two.

But that would require a concession from Trump, whose judicial selections so far have been confirmed by Senate Republicans at a record pace, largely on party-line votes.

The Ninth Circuit hears appeals from federal courts in California and eight other Western states. It was once a relatively conservative tribunal, with 10 judges appointed by Republican presidents and three by Democrats. That was before its last major expansion, in 1978, when a Democratic Congress, with little resistance from Republicans, added 10 seats for President Jimmy Carter to fill.

The new members, joined by more Carter picks after a spate of judicial retirements, transformed the circuit into a liberal bastion for most of the next four decades, motivating civil rights groups and others challenging conservative policies to file national suits in states within the courts jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, a Supreme Court with a conservative majority was overturning many of the circuits most prominent rulings which declared unconstitutional the addition of one nation under God to the Pledge of Allegiance, barred federal prosecution of medical marijuana users in California, gave terminally ill patients a right to die and, most recently, struck down Trumps ban on U.S. entry of anyone from a group of predominantly Muslim countries.

It was the most thorough transformation of a federal appellate court that I think has ever happened, perhaps comparable to the U.S. Supreme Courts turnaround under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the late 1930s, said Arthur Hellman, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and former director of the Ninth Circuits central legal staff. People didnt see federal appellate courts in the politicized way that they do today.

As Mary Schroeder, one of the Carter appointees and later the Ninth Circuits chief judge, recalled, until 1978 it was a small court, very conservative, that badly needed judges.

In recent years, Republicans have sought to break up the Ninth Circuit, with legislative proposals to carve out six states into a presumably more conservative court and leave California, Oregon and Hawaii in the current court. Backers say a smaller court would decide cases more quickly, but most Ninth Circuit judges from both parties oppose a breakup, and it offers nothing to Democrats.

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Republicans who controlled both houses in 2017-18 might have been able to win support for a Ninth Circuit split along with a sensible judgeship bill that gave Democrats a voice in new selections to the court, Hellman said. Instead, he said, congressional leaders, along with Trump, focused on breaking up a court that contains one-sixth of the nations federal appellate judgeships.

As for the Judicial Conferences recommendations, conservative scholar John Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University in Orange County, said, The proponents of a split are unlikely to let a bill go through that would add to the existing oversized Ninth.

The proposal to enlarge the Ninth Circuit came as part of a package of recommendations from the Judicial Conference, which advises federal court expansions to Congress every two years to keep up with workloads. This years plan would also add 60 judgeships  22 of them in California  to the heavily backlogged District Courts that handle trials.

Republican leaders have allowed Californias Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, to approve or reject District Court judges in the state but have scrapped a long-standing practice of giving senators a veto, known as a blue slip, over circuit court nominees in their state.

Shortly after announcing her presidential candidacy, Harris said she would vote against all of Trumps appeals court nominees. Feinstein, who has been open to negotiations in the past, has recently accused Trump of backsliding on plans to present a joint slate of court candidates.

I agree that more qualified, mainstream judges would help address the case backlog, Feinstein said in a statement. In fact, I introduced legislation during the Obama administration to do this, but it was blocked.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@BobEgelko
In horse racing, as in life, timing is everything. When we think of Pioneerof the Nile, it naturally is as the sire of Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. That is enough of a legacy for any horse.

But if Pioneerof the Nile were a human athlete he would always have regrets - regrets of what might have been. Success, as impactful as it might be in the breeding shed, is not the same as success on the racetrack, where a Thoroughbred can use his or her God-given talents to thrill racing fans and leave everlasting images in their mind.

If fans have a tendency to forget Pioneerof the Nile's heroics on the racetrack, it is because they were on a synthetic surface during the four years Santa Anita switched to a Pro-Ride surface...bad timing.

If fans have a tendency to forget his second-place finish in the Kentucky Derby it is because for a fleeting moment it looked as if Bob Baffert was about to win his first Derby in seven years and the Zayat family, newcomers to the sport, were going to win their first Derby and make an immediate impact on the sport. It was right there for the taking; an eighth of a mile from Kentucky Derby immortality. But then from out of nowhere came the most shocking, incomprehensible, unexplainable move in Derby history that resulted in the most shocking, incomprehensible, unexplainable result in Derby history. From out of the gray foreboding clouds came 50-1 shot Mine That Bird to rip Pioneerof the Nile's name right out of the history books. Not only rip it, but tear it to shreds, just as it tore the Zayats' heart out...more bad timing.

Pioneerof the Nile ran one more time, finishing far up the track in the Preakness Stakes, suffering a soft tissue injury that resulted in his retirement, after which he reopened the history books and stamped his name there for all time by siring the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years and one of the most beloved horses of our time.

But who really was Pioneerof the Nile, especially as a racehorse? Rather than try to recall his races and his attributes, let me go back to my impressions and the words I used at the time, beginning on April 6, 2009 when I wrote in my Kentucky Derby Trail column:

"Whether you have a concern about Pioneerof the Nile's inability to reach a triple-digit Beyer figure in his career or his relatively narrow margins of victory (his average margin is three-quarters of a length), the fact is, this colt is a winner. In some ways, he is reminiscent of Buckpasser, a stone closer who liked to beat you in the final furlong or even final sixteenth, never by big margins, but who was also undefeated in his eight starts in which he had the lead at the eighth pole. Buckpasser on occasion would inherit the lead too soon and would do just enough to hold off his opponents. On six of those occasions, his margin of victory was two lengths or less.

"No one is putting Pioneerof the Nile in the same class as Buckpasser at this point in his career, but, like Buckpasser, he is flawless in his stride and determination.

"In the Santa Anita Derby the pace scenario once again did not favor Pioneerof the Nile, who in his last four starts has been able to utilize his late stretch kick only once. His only flaw is his habit of loafing on the lead, and he deserves credit for winning the San Felipe and Santa Anita Derby despite having to run counterproductive to his best running style. That will not happen in the Kentucky Derby.

"The son Empire Maker once again did just what he had to to maintain a length advantage to the wire. This horse is not going to dazzle you with big winning margins and track records, but because of that he will be going into the grueling Triple Crown relatively fresh, with his best races still to come. And as we said earlier, all he does is win. Scoring four consecutive graded stakes victories on the Derby trail is no easy task. And you can bet a month's salary that trainer Bob Baffert hasn't gotten anywhere near the bottom of him yet. Now that Baffert has booked his ticket back to his hallowed grounds, watch him knuckle down on this horse as the scent of roses grows stronger.

"What is so pleasing to the eye about Pioneerof the Nile is his long, fluid stride and the way he hits the ground so effortlessly. Watching him on the head-on his legs are perfectly aligned under him and there is no wasted movement. He has proven he can beat you from anywhere, regardless of how the race unfolds. Wait until he gets to the Derby, where Garrett Gomez, or whoever rides him, is able to let him settle back in the pack and unleash the powerful late run we saw in the Robert B. Lewis Stakes."

Earlier, after the Robert B. Lewis, I wrote, "From a visual and statistical standpoint, Pioneerof the Nile's victory in the Robert B. Lewis Stakes was as impressive as we've seen this year. Sure, there were more brilliant performances with outrageous speed figures, but the bottom line is, Pioneerof the Nile looked like a Kentucky Derby winner."

And he still looked like a Kentucky Derby winner after training at Churchill Downs.

As I wrote in my column, "Getting back to the Derby works, Pioneerof the Nile beat everyone on the track to steer clear of traffic, and he had the whole track to himself before the onslaught. It's difficult to state definitively that a horse will make a successful transition from synthetic to dirt, especially in the Derby, but if anyone has concerns about Pioneerof the Nile, it is safe to say that there is a good possibility he will actually be better on dirt than synthetic. You had to love the extension in his stride and the way he built up momentum coming through the final furlong. He was just floating over the ground and galloped out very strong, with an additional eighth in :13 1/5."

And finally in my selections column I wrote: "Going by their potential odds, I would bet Pioneerof the Nile as my value horse, based on what I've observed over the past eight days. I have not seen a single negative, and you can't ask a horse to be doing any better. From a handicapping angle, he still has to answer the synthetic to dirt question, but he gets my vote for best work and overall physical appearance of any of the Derby horses. If he should win the Derby, then my colleague Jon White could be right; this horse is more than capable of sweeping the Triple Crown. He meets my criteria of what it takes to accomplish racing's most difficult feat. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves."

Unfortunately, Pioneerof the Nile never got the chance to accomplish racing's most difficult feat. His dream ended at the eighth pole, jolted back to reality by arguably the most freakish performance in the history of the Kentucky Derby, and then by a career-ending injury in the Preakness. But Jon White and I really didn't get that far ahead of ourselves with that claim, as Triple Crown immortality awaited him after all.

I remember going to visit Pioneerof the Nile the day before the 2015 Kentucky Derby. The Zayats had already paid a visit. When Pioneerof the Nile was brought out, Ahmed Zayat walked up to him and whispered in his ear, "Your son is going to do it for you."

I wrote of my visit, "With all the hoopla at Churchill Downs, a vastly different scene was being played out about 60 miles away at WinStar Farm, as Pioneerof the Nile finished up his first of three breeding sessions for the day. Brought out of his stall, he stood for at least 10 minutes, staring into the breeding shed, ears pricked, and not moving a muscle. He coat had a bright gleam to it and he looked racing fit.



"He's all class, said general manager Dave Hanley. "This is him. He never bites; he's just amazing. Look how well balanced he is." Hanley then had the horse walk to show off another of his attributes. "Now watch the way he moves," he continued. "He has that big walk.



"Sounds like he might have also been describing a certain son of his, who the next day would be showing the world his class and how he moves."

I visited Pioneerof the Nile one more time about a year ago and have wonderful memories and photographs of my wife petting him and photos she took of me petting him. He was not your typical stallion, And he still looked spectacular, as if he could start up training again.

Pioneerof the Nile left us way too soon following a successful, but brief, racing career of what might have beens and a stud career that stamped him as one of the most sought after stallions in the country.

Digging up my old columns, it brought his racing career back in focus and conjured up memories of a special horse who was on his way to stardom until history threw him a curve at the eighth pole of the Kentucky Derby.

But he eventually hit that curve out of the ballpark. And for that he will always be remembered.
The Journalist Protection Act, which would make certain violent acts to intimidate or stop news reporting a federal crime, went nowhere last year in the Republican-controlled Congress. The measure is back, with Democratic control of the House and a years worth of evidence that the atmosphere in this nation is only becoming more precarious for those in pursuit of truth and transparency.

In June, five staffers of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., were shot to death by a gunman reportedly angered by a news article about him. In October, a CNN office in Manhattan was among the destinations of 16 pipe bombs mailed to critics of the president by a Florida Trump supporter whose van was coated with posters and stickers assailing the dishonest media generally and CNN specifically.

Trump rallies continue to be cauldrons of media hatred, never far from the edge of violent outbreak, as they have from the 2016 campaign, with Trump stirring the invective.

It was all too predictable that one of the common Trump audience shout-downs of the assembled press corps turned physical in El Paso last month, with a red-hatted Make America Great supporter screaming F the media as he shoved a BBC cameraman.

Its gotten worse not only by the anecdotes, but also by the data, said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, one of the primary sponsors of the Journalist Protection Act. The Senate sponsors are Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, both Democrats. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont, is among the co-authors.

Reporters Without Borders, which annually ranks 180 nations on the level of press freedom, puts the United States at No. 45, a slip of two spots (now behind Romania) in a world where free expression is in decline generally.

Of course, Trumps hostility toward media watchdogs and his constant claims of fake news and use of the Stalinesque phrase enemies of the people are major contributing factors.

For this president, more is becoming less, Swalwell said in a phone interview. The more lies he is telling, the less we are able to digest and do something about it. That is what worries me: He keeps telling lies, particularly about the press, and it becomes so overwhelming that it muddies the conversation and people say: Maybe this story is true, maybe its not ... I dont know.

Swalwell tells an illuminating story about a conversation he had with an intelligence operative during the 2016 campaign when Trump refused to acknowledge compelling evidence that the Russians shot down a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over eastern Ukraine two years earlier.

Incitement from the top President Trump has stirred the passions of his followers against the news media in militant, even violent, terms. "Enemies of the people" Within a month of taking office, Trump tweeted, "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" He has invoked that phrase multiple times since. Cheering violence against a journalist Then-congressional candidate Greg Gianforte, a Montana Republican, assaulted a Guardian reporter in May 2017. At a Missoula, Mont., rally in October, Trump said of Gianforte, "Any guy that can do a body slam, he's my kind of - he's my guy." Trump then mimicked the act to the crowd's delight. The remark came even as global outrage was mounting over the barbaric murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. See More Collapse

That is right out of the Putin playbook, the operative told Swalwell. Vladimir Putin does not try to convince the people of Russia that the sky is red rather than blue. He just tries to convince them that maybe its not blue after all. Its a very subtle way of creating confusion among the people.

Trump similarly accepted the seeds of doubt from a foreign leader when confronted with overwhelming evidence that the Saudi government was complicit in the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its consulate in Istanbul last year. Trump refused to take strong action against Saudi Arabia or its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Khashoggi killing underscores why violence against a journalist doing his or her job is so insidious for any society that cherishes democracy. It wasnt intended to take the life of just one human being: It was designed to have a chilling effect on others who dared to expose the corruption of the regime.

But Swalwell emphasized that the acts value goes well beyond the thuggery at Trump rallies or the attempts to target the high-profile media organizations. He said the danger extends to local cases in which someone reporting on a city hall or a police department could be attacked in a community where a prosecutor could feel political pressure to look the other way.

Freedom of the press is a right that is truly enshrined in the Constitution and is something that is fundamental to our democracy, Swalwell said. We want to make sure its protected everywhere.

John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicles editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron
Five California counties moved a step closer to all-mail-ballot elections by replacing their polling places with a far smaller number of full-service voting centers in last years elections. All five beat the state average for voter turnout.

So why arent more counties doing the same?

All-mail elections have significant benefits. They increase turnout, which is critical for healthy democracies. They usually result in cost savings for local jurisdictions. (Poll workers and equipment hauling are expensive.) Theyre more convenient for most voters, too.

The Voters Choice Act allows all California counties to adopt this hybrid model for the 2020 elections. If they so choose, counties can mail every registered voter a ballot, expand early voting options, and shrink the number of polling places they run in favor of a few full-service voting centers.

Yet so far, only a few counties have chosen to participate in the voluntary switch. Whats taking everyone so long?

Despite the great advantages of all-mail elections, they also have some drawbacks.

People who lack permanent street addresses and people who live in places where mail delivery isnt uniform struggle with all-mail. These groups tend to be lower-income and disproportionately minority; the impact on their voting patterns must be considered.

Some counties may not yet have the equipment necessary to scan so many paper ballots. Some counties are concerned about the loss of tradition and civic community.

Some may be concerned about how to educate voters about the change during a time of increased skepticism toward leaders of all kinds.

The Voters Choice Act is an important modernization of Californias voting process that will eventually reap rewards for all of the states voters.

But its going to take some time to roll out, and thats for the best. When it comes to changing a sensitive and critical duty of citizenship, local jurisdictions shouldnt leave any voter behind.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

State Sen. Scott Wieners bill to overrule low-density zoning near mass transit lines isnt the political pariah it used to be. Thanks to a series of conciliatory amendments and perhaps the accumulating devastation of the housing shortage, Senate Bill 50 has substantial new support from previously unlikely sources, including the local governments that have put up some of the most determined resistance.

The BART Board of Directors voted last week to endorse SB50, the successor to the San Francisco legislators ambitious and contentious SB827, which his fellow Democrats killed in committee last year. San Franciscos Planning Department signaled a more sympathetic view of the revised legislation in a report released the same day, finding it likely to result in significantly greater housing production and more affordable housing. Even in San Mateo County, that hotbed of anti-housing sentiment, Supervisor David Canepa urged his colleagues to support the bill, albeit unsuccessfully.
San Francisco Mayor London Breeds plans to add 280 new beds for the homeless has two supervisors worried she is prioritizing the quantity of beds over the quality of care.

Supervisors Hillary Ronen and Matt Haney say the mayors expansion plans in their districts  60 beds to the Division Circle Navigation Center, 20 beds to Civic Center Navigation Center and building a new, 200-bed center on the Embarcadero in South Beach  doesnt seem to include a corresponding increase in services and security. This has put them on edge about adding new beds in their districts, which already host the majority of the citys homeless services.

In particular, Ronen said adding too many beds to the Division Circle Navigation Center could erode the model that we spent years creating.

This could lead to worse outcomes for both the unhoused residents of the Navigation Center as well as their surrounding neighbors, Ronen said in a recent letter to Jeff Kositsky, director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, regarding the Division Circle expansion.

Meanwhile, Haney said he is not convinced that a proposed 200-bed Navigation Center on Seawall Lot 330, which would be the biggest in the city, will offer the same level and quality of services as a traditionally smaller shelter. The number of beds at other centers around the city ranges from about 60 to 130.

Adding 100 more people to a Navigation Center is not something we have seen yet, and that hasnt been proven successful yet, he said. Weve got a lot of questions about how to get this right.

But Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for the mayor, said the larger centers will offer a similar level and quality of services as existing facilities. Funding for the expansion, which comes from the citys recent $415 million windfall, include both capital and operational costs for increased on-site staffing.

Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

Breed, who is steadily chipping away at her promise to add 1,000 beds  in both standard shelters and Navigation Centers  by 2020, originally proposed a plan to fund the extra beds for four years through the windfall. But the supervisors, including Ronen and Haney, voted to slash that funding to two years to make room for other priorities such as increased teacher salaries and energy independence.

Navigation Centers are temporary structures that have more relaxed rules than traditional shelters, offer robust services to steer people into permanent housing and allow round-the-clock stays. But since they are expensive to build and operate for just a few years at a time, the mayors office is pushing a new model called the SAFE Navigation Center, which offers similar services as Navigation Centers  but will be bigger and exist longer.

If the Port of San Francisco allows the city to use the land, the 200-bed shelter on the Embarcadero will be the citys first SAFE Navigation Center.

The timely opening of the shelter relies heavily on two ordinances sponsored by the mayor, which would exempt shelters and Navigation Centers from the building permit process and expedite the hiring of contractors to manage the facilities. The Board of Supervisors will vote on both pieces of legislation Tuesday.

Even though the mayors office said there would be a corresponding increase in services at the proposed center, Haney said he is still apprehensive to support a model that has yet to be tested in the city.

The big shelter warehouse model is not one that we seek to replicate in our city, and thats why weve pursued the Navigation Center model, he said. And its important that we stick to those principles.

Residents of Rincon Hill, South Beach, South Park and Mission Bay jammed two community meetings last week in overwhelming opposition to the Embarcadero Navigation Center. Meanwhile, Ronen said she has received concerns from her constituents about the Division Circle expansion.

Their comments also come a few weeks after a number of supervisors blasted the Department of Homelessness for the bureaucracy and logistics involved in creating more Navigation Centers. Ronen particularly criticized the department, saying there is a lack of specifics on when and where the city would provide more shelter beds. She also said that her colleagues need to step up and welcome more services to their districts, too.

In her letter to the department, Ronen asked for assurance that the expansion would also come with increased neighborhood security and a promise that the homeless will not be asked to leave the center until suitable housing is obtained.

I just want assurance, Ronen said, of her letter to the department. I never agreed to the weakening of the very carefully crafted model that we know works.

Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani
There will be at least one presidential forum in California.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation  the education arm of the nations largest LGBTQ rights organization  and UCLA will co-host a Democratic presidential candidate forum in Los Angeles.

The event is scheduled for Oct. 10, the eve of National Coming Out Day, in Royce Hall at UCLA. It will focus on the candidates plans to move LGBTQ equality forward, according to the co-hosts.

Only candidates who receive 1 percent or more support in three national polls or receive donations from 65,000 different people in 20 different states can participate in the forum. That is similar to the standard being used by the Democratic National Committee to determine who can participate in its first two debates.

While same-sex marriage has been legal for several years, LGBTQ Americans face discrimination in other ways, organizers said. It is still legal to fire, evict or deny services to people in 30 states for being LGBTQ, according to the organization.

If any LGBTQ person were to take a cross-country drive from HRC headquarters in Washington, D.C., to UCLAs campus, their rights and protections under the law would change dozens of times at every city line and state border, Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights campaign, said in a statement.

No candidates have confirmed their attendance yet, but organizers expect a robust crowd given that several Democratic candidates have already reached out to the Human Rights Campaign.

Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey and former Vice President Joe Biden either attended or addressed the Human Rights Campaigns national dinner last year. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota have recently appeared at events sponsored by the organization, as has candidate Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.

Also, the top Democratic candidates attended debates that the organization held during the 2004 and 2008 campaigns.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
Central Valley Rep. Devin Nunes lawsuit against Twitter, claiming that the San Francisco company allowed abusive, hateful and defamatory tweets attacking the Republican politician, has resulted in one unintended side-effect: Its drawing tens of thousands of Twitter followers to one of the parody accounts Nunes targeted.

Before Nunes filed his complaint Tuesday in Virginia state court, seeking more than $250 million in damages, @DevinCow  a.k.a. Devin Nunes cow  had 1,000-plus followers. By Tuesday evening the total topped 214,000, still short of the congressmans 393,000 followers, but closing in.

It might be the ultimate illustration of the Streisand effect, the phenomenon of drawing attention to the very thing you want to go away by complaining about it. (The name comes from actress Barbra Streisands 2003 attempt to remove aerial photos of her Malibu estate from a photographers website, which caused online interest in the photos to explode.)

Devin Nunes cow was busily retweeting supportive messages Tuesday, including from some of the scores of parody Nunes accounts that sprang up after the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee filed his suit. The cow promised not to quit its day job and tweeted, I might be able to afford the lawsuit after I dig up the rubles Devin buried around the dairy.

Nunes, meanwhile, was deadly serious, saying the lawsuit against Twitter was the first of many he intends to file over slanderous content.

Nunes central complaint is that Twitter allowed the cow and another parody account, purporting to be the voice of Nunes mom, to spread derogatory falsehoods about Nunes, one of President Trumps most vocal supporters in Congress. (Why a cow? Nunes family has a long-running dairy operation, though Democratic activists working against the congressmans re-election last year disputed that he still has ties to the farm.)

A spokesman for Twitter declined to comment on the lawsuit.

In addition to @DevinNunesMom and @DevinCow, the complaint singles out political consultant Liz Mair, a right of center operative who the complaint says is famous for her appearance on CNN, where she referred to then presidential candidate Donald Trump as a loud mouth dick. 

Mair tweeted a statement in which she said, I have very different views on the applicable law (including the First Amendment) than Rep. Nunes.

Nunes complaint also accuses Twitter of shadow banning conservatives, including the congressman. Shadow banning is the deliberate act of making someones content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster, according to the complaint.

On Sean Hannitys Fox News show Monday night, Nunes said his lawsuit was the first of many lawsuits that are coming. Twitter is at the front of the line, he said, because they are the main proliferator of slanderous news.

When theyre regulating us, theyre regulating what people can see on my tweets  which theyve done  and then theyre proliferating out things that they agree with the algorithms that they develop, the Tulare congresssman said. They need to come clean. Theyre not a public square. They are content developers.

The legal bar for Nunes winning his case is high. Plaintiffs who are public figures, such as a sitting congressman, must show that defendants published a false statement with reckless disregard for whether it was true. Statements of opinion are broadly protected.

People get to say nasty things about you, said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. We allow that in this country.

Nunes complaint says that from February 2018 to March 2019, Twitter allowed the now-deleted @DevinNunesMom to falsely suggest that the congressman had white supremacist friends and distributed disturbing inflammatory racial propaganda. The account called him a presidential fluffer, a swamp rat and a treasonous Putin shill, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It also tweeted out an illustration based on the infamous movie The Human Centipede, in which a figure labeled Nunes has his head buried in the rear end of a figure labeled Trump, who in turn has his noggin embedded in the posterior of a figure labeled Putin.

While parody accounts are common in politics, these were allowed to continue despite violating Twitters rules, according to the complaint. Twitter Terms of Service and Rules state that while you may maintain parody, fan, commentary, or news feed accounts, you may not do so if the intent of the account is to engage in spamming or abusive behavior.

Chronicle staff writer John Wildermuth contributed to this report.

Trapper Byrne and J.K. Dineen are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: tbyrne@sfchronicle.com and jdineen@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @trapperbyrne @SFjkdineen
Democrats might want to cut short the victory laps that started when Orange County flipped four Republican-held congressional seats in November.

Voters there elected Irvine Mayor and former GOP Assemblyman Don Wagner to an open Board of Supervisors seat last week, preferring him to former 20-year Rep. Loretta Sanchez, probably the best-known Democrat in Orange County.

As of Monday, Wagner led Sanchez by more than 3,500 votes, 42 percent to 37 percent, with far fewer votes than that still left to count. The six Republicans on the ballot combined for 63 percent of the total vote.

The result was a much-needed confidence booster for a local Republican Party devastated by the midterm elections, which left Democrats in control of every Orange County congressional seat. It also suggested that all might not be lost for the GOP in 2020.

The Orange County comeback starts now, Fred Whitaker, the Republican Partys county chair, said in a statement. As Supervisor-elect Wagner often said in the campaign, this was not the last race of 2018, it is the first race of 2020.

Thats a little over the top. The race for the District Three seat, which includes Irvine, Tustin and Yorba Linda, was a special election to replace Republican Todd Spitzer, who was elected Orange County district attorney.

The election brought out only a bit more than 21 percent of registered voters, compared with the 71 percent turnout in November. Lower-turnout elections typically attract older, wealthier and whiter homeowners, all groups that tend to back Republicans.

Wagner also had a serious home court advantage. Hes mayor of Irvine, which has better than a third of the districts registered voters. The 58-year-old Wagner also represented much of the area in his six years as a state assemblyman.

But Republicans didnt have all the advantages. Sanchez, with strong backing from unions, raised more money than Wagner. And party leaders persuaded other Democrats to stay out of the race, clearing the field for the former congresswoman.

Democrats, though, had another serious disadvantage, said Thad Kousser, chair of the political science department at UC San Diego. President Trump wasnt on that special election ballot, even by proxy.

Democrats rode to victory last November on the negative coattails of Donald Trump, Kousser said in an interview. The reason the Democrats were so charged up wasnt because they wanted to turn Orange County blue, but because they wanted to cast a vote against Trump  even if that only meant opposing the congressional candidates the president supported.

Orange County is one of the few large California counties where Republicans hold a registration edge, albeit a tiny one at 34 to 33 percent. Wagners win also gives the GOP four of the five seats on the technically nonpartisan Board of Supervisors.

Democrats not only took the four Orange County congressional seats last year, they also grabbed an Assembly seat and a state Senate seat held by Republican. And that was without having Trumps name at the top of the ballot, where its likely to be in November 2020.

A January poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that two-thirds of the states adults were unhappy with the job that Trump is doing as president and that the opposition was solid even in the most conservative parts of the state.

That long-running antipathy toward the president could color the Orange County election results next year, Kousser said.

We might have to wait until 2022 to see whether the 2018 election was a sign of the permanent transformation of Orange County politics, he said.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
Burning furniture wasnt a requirement Dennis Leung ever thought would be necessary to open a restaurant in San Francisco.

As the general manager of Dragon Beaux, a dim sum hot spot in the Richmond District, hed been through the opening process before. Still, when a fire marshal last month told him some of the chairs at his upcoming Ghirardelli Square restaurant, Palette, would need to be incinerated to test them for harmful chemicals, Leung couldnt help but think: Well, this is new.

Chefs and business owners have long bemoaned the process of opening a restaurant in the Bay Area, and especially San Francisco. Not only is it an expensive endeavor  costing on average about $750,000 for a brick-and-mortar in the city, according to the Golden Gate Restaurant Association  the process is fraught with a curious number of permits and approvals.

Notice the light from those open candles at the end of the table? That means the restaurant obtained an open flame permit from the San Francisco Fire Department.

Hear the voices of Frank Sinatra or Drake playing overhead during dinner service? The owners are paying fees to artists and performing rights organizations to allow those tunes.

For Palette, Californias flame retardant ban just happens to be the latest hurdle in an already arduous process. Leung is still waiting to hear back about the chemical composition of the chairs. For now, theyre being stashed away, and replacement chairs are occupying the dining room.

In 2018, the state banned the use of flame retardants in a number of items, including new upholstered furniture. Some of the furniture at Palette came from the buildings previous tenant  a restaurant by celebrity chef Jonathan Waxman  which opened before the law was enacted. Leung said a chair was missing a tag signifying it was free of the banned chemicals.

We had to pick out chairs to send to a lab to burn it and see if they were OK for us to use, Leung said with a laugh. The weeks-long process, necessary for passing the fire inspection, pushed back the restaurants opening date from February to at least April.

The potential roadblocks dont stop there. Place of Assembly Permits are required for restaurants that may have 50 or more people there at any one time. Sign permits through the citys planning department are necessary for any business that may want to use signage. And if a restaurant uses more water than a buildings previous tenant, a water and wastewater capacity charge comes via the citys public utilities commission.

Even before the avalanche of permits and fees, opening a restaurant in the region follows an identifiable arc, in most cases. It all begins with a business owner obtaining a business registration certificate to operate in the city.

The next most important step is finding a space. This means searching lots in the city while adhering to zoning codes. Sometimes there is a need for a conditional use permit, which is approved through the citys planning commission. Along with this step comes procuring an all-important liquor license, if available, from the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

From there, restaurant owners have to obtain everything from food handlers cards from the health department, to extended-hours permits for late-night spots, to cafe table and chair permits for outside seating.

Mixed into this process are the series of inspections  fire and building checks  culminating in a health inspection that finally allows the restaurant to open its doors.

Its different between each business owner. Some are familiar with whats going on and they know what to expect. Others, like I was, are just kind of learning about all the permits as they come up, said Lila Owens of her experience opening Cupcakin Bake Shop in Oakland. She now plans to take over the former home of Berkeleys Virginia Bakery on Shattuck Avenue later this year.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Bar industry veteran Jennifer Colliau, best known for her pioneering work at the Interval at Fort Mason, is now spearheading a restaurant and bar in Oaklands Uptown neighborhood that is named Heres How. It, too, has seen its fair share of delays.

One of the biggest hurdles Colliau has faced in both cities is scheduling inspections. Colliau said that she scheduled her final fire inspection, one of the last hurdles a restaurant owner must get through before opening, in late 2018. It didnt happen until February.

The delays arent without consequences. Colliau had already hired her staff, but as the debut was pushed back due to permitting, some of her workers were starting to grow restless. At Palette, Leung said employees have started to find other jobs amid the delays.

Then theres the rent. Inspection and construction delays often require the owner to pay for a space that isnt generating revenue, which is true for Leung. He wouldnt say how much is rent at Ghirardelli Square is, but Colliaus is $17,000 per month in Oakland.

But theres always light at the end of the tunnel for the chefs and business owners. What makes the process worth it, despite the hurdles, is finally opening the doors.

Its a lot of work to open a place, Colliau said. By the end it, you just need some patience.

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @JustMrPhillips
The San Francisco Fire Department rescued a man clinging from a forested cliff at Marshall's Beach Tuesday morning.

The department first reported the incident on Twitter after 8:30 a.m. An update said a technical rope was used to reach the victim, who was conscious. After 10:30 a.m., the department shared the victim had been successfully rescued and was uninjured.

Marshall's Beach is a small patch of sand south of the Golden Gate Bridge accessed by a steep trail. Within the Presidio, it has the reputation for being the city's "most hidden" beach.

The national park website description reads, "If you're looking for a secluded experience, Marshall's Beach is the spot for you. Located just north of Baker Beach, this is one of our beaches near the Golden Gate Bridge. It's incredibly photogenic, offering spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean and the Marin Headlands."
The Department of Energy disclosed details Monday of one of the most expensive computers being built: a $500 million machine based on Intel and Cray technology that may become crucial in a high-stakes technology race between the United States and China.

The supercomputer, called Aurora, is a retooling of a development effort first announced in 2015 and is scheduled to be delivered to Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago in 2021. Lab officials predict it will be the first American machine to reach a milestone called exascale performance, surpassing a quintillion calculations per second.
This article, Amazon's Rekognition software lets cops track faces: Here's what you need to know, originally appeared on CNET.com.

Amazon Rekognition is the company's effort to create software that can identify anything it's looking at -- most notably faces.

Business organizations and, yes, law enforcement agencies are already licensing that software for their own use. That means that you don't need to use Facebook or buy a face-scanning iPhone or a fancy video doorbell from Google-owned Nest or Amazon-owned Ring in order for facial recognition to be a part of your everyday life. With Rekognition, maybe it already is.

And maybe you aren't OK with that. Civil liberties groups such as the ACLU have already raised concerns about the speedy adoption of facial recognition tech among US law enforcement agencies and the potential for its abuse, particularly against immigrants and people of color. Many -- including some of Amazon's own employees and shareholders -- want the company to hit the brakes.

The controversy caught the attention of Congress last year, and now, with the Senate recently proposing a bill that would limit businesses from collecting and tracking facial recognition data without consent, it seems that Rekognition might be in for a reckoning.

All of which is to say that it's a good time to dive in and get a better understanding of what Rekognition is, how it works and what it's being used for.

Read more: Facial recognition 101: Your face is your fingerprint

What exactly does Amazon Rekognition do?

Glad you asked. Let's start by looking at what Amazon says:

"Amazon Rekognition makes it easy to add image and video analysis to your applications. You just provide an image or video to the Rekognition API, and the service can identify objects, people, text, scenes and activities. It can detect any inappropriate content as well. "Amazon Rekognition also provides highly accurate facial analysis and facial recognition. You can detect, analyze and compare faces for a wide variety of use cases, including user verification, cataloging, people counting and public safety."

Like a lot of what Amazon is up to these days, Rekognition centers on artificial intelligence and machine learning. If Alexa is Amazon's effort to give AI ears and a voice, then Rekognition could be seen as the company's effort to give AI a sense of sight and the intelligence to recognize what it's looking at. The difference is that Alexa is built for consumers like you and me, while Rekognition is an enterprise offering intended for businesses and organizations.

All of that sounds simple enough, right? It's image- and face-detecting software that developers can license from Amazon for their own applications. But start thinking about the ways that businesses and organizations might be putting Rekognition to use -- and some of the ways that they might in the future -- and things get more complicated.

How does Amazon Rekognition work?

Amazon says that its Rekognition software is based on deep learning technology developed by computer vision scientists. It's actually two separate software tools, or API sets: Amazon Rekognition Image, which analyzes images, and Amazon Rekognition Video, which analyzes video.

Like other image recognition applications, Rekognition looks for common structural identifiers called "landmarks" in whatever it's looking at. With an apple, that might be the shape and color of the fruit, along with characteristics like the stem. With a face, it's the shape of the features and the distance between them.

Once it's scanned the evidence, the software assesses how confident it is that it knows what it's looking at. That confidence variable acts as a threshold for declaring a match -- one Rekognition user could say that anything above 75 percent confident is good enough to label as a positive match, while another user with a more high-stakes application might want to set the number at 99. The higher the confidence level, the more certain the software needs to be in order to declare a match.

A lot of that confidence is dependent on the quality and angle of the image in question, but software like this that's programmed to recognize what it's looking at has come a long way in recent years. That's thanks in no small part to intense research interest from the titans of tech, not just Amazon, but Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others.

"Rekognition is always learning from new data, and we're continually adding new labels and facial recognition features to the service," Amazon says.

With facial recognition, it's important to note that Amazon doesn't keep its own database of faces to match against. Instead, it's up to the user to provide a "face collection" that they own and manage. For a photo storage service, that face collection could be the photos that users upload. For a law enforcement agency, the face collection could be an existing database of mugshots.

What does Amazon Rekognition cost?

Companies don't pay an upfront cost to use Rekognition. They pay as they go based on how much they use it.

"With Amazon Rekognition, you pay for the images and videos you analyze and the face metadata that you store," the company explains, adding that customers can analyze 5,000 images and 1,000 minutes of video per month for free during their first year using the service.

Rates after that vary based on region, but in the US, Rekognition customers pay 10 cents for each minute of video analyzed and $1 for every 1,000 images processed. Customers also pay to store the metadata from images and videos they analyze within Amazon's servers. Discounted bulk rates apply for customers who process more than 1 million images.

What's Amazon Rekognition being used for?

Amazon

That really depends on who's using it (more on that in just a bit), but Amazon lists the following use cases as examples:

Other uses include analyzing the demographic makeup or even the emotional state of whoever the software is looking at, as well as something Amazon calls "People Pathing." Like it sounds, People Pathing uses Rekognition to track specific people as they move within the frame of a video feed. According to Amazon, it's capable of tracking:

The location of the person in the video frame at the time their path is tracked

Facial landmarks such as the position of the left eye, when detected

Amazon did not respond when we asked if there was anything preventing any specific businesses, organizations or law enforcement agencies from using any of the different APIs for Rekognition's different use cases. The fair assumption is that all of Rekognition's tools are on the table for all customers acting in accordance with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) acceptable use policy.

Who's using it?

That's a good question, and one that gets to the heart of what makes Rekognition controversial.

Though the company has highlighted Rekognition's use by nonprofits such as Thorn and the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children to find potential leads on missing children and human trafficking victims, Amazon doesn't disclose its Rekognition customers without their consent -- and it wouldn't tell me the number of total Rekognition customers, either. According to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in May 2018, the list includes multiple US law enforcement agencies. (We have more reporting on some of the ways law enforcement agencies in places like Oregon and Florida are already using Rekognition, which you can read about here).

Police around the world have been using facial recognition technology for years now, but the disclosure was still enough to raise questions about Rekognition's capabilities, about how it might be used and about who exactly was using it. Before long, the ACLU was calling for Amazon to stop selling its Rekognition software to governments and law enforcement agencies altogether.

"The rights of immigrants, communities of color, protesters and others will be put at risk if Amazon provides this powerful surveillance system to government agencies," said Shankar Narayan, the technology and liberty director of ACLU of Washington.

Some of those concerns have even come from within Amazon itself. In June of last year, a group of Amazon employees released a letter to Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos calling on the company to implement strong transparency and accountability measures and to stop selling Rekognition services to law enforcement agencies.

"We already know that in the midst of historic militarization of police, renewed targeting of Black activists and the growth of a federal deportation force currently engaged in human rights abuses -- this will be another powerful tool for the surveillance state, and ultimately serve to harm the most marginalized," the letter reads.

Amazon declined to comment in response at the time and didn't respond to a request for comment ahead of this piece, either.

ACLU

Where do things stand now?

The controversy hasn't subsided. The ACLU continues to press its argument that Amazon shouldn't be selling Rekognition to government law enforcement agencies, even releasing a report showing that the software misidentified 28 members of Congress as criminals when the confidence level was set to 80 percent. The false matches disproportionately affected people of color, the report notes.

Amazon disputed that report, issuing the following testy rebuke via blog post:

"When Rekognition is used as recommended for public safety (with 99 percent confidence levels), the same reports that the ACLU claimed contained 5 percent error rates yielded 0 percent error rates. This is inconvenient for the ACLU's rhetoric, but these are also the facts."

Even so, in November 2018, eight Democratic members of Congress expressed their concerns with Rekognition in a letter to Amazon:

"Facial recognition technology may one day serve as a useful tool for law enforcement officials working to protect the American public and keep us safe," they wrote, "However, at this time, we have serious concerns that this type of product has significant accuracy issues, places disproportionate burdens on communities of color and could stifle Americans' willingness to exercise their First Amendment rights in public."

The issue isn't going away. In January of this year, a group of the company's own shareholders urged Amazon to stop selling Rekognition software to law enforcement agencies.

Perhaps complicating things is Amazon's ownership of Ring, the makers of a popular line of smart video doorbells. Recent patents from the company lay out a vision for face-detecting video doorbells that keep an eye out for convicted felons, sex offenders and the like, then relay the information directly to police. Amazon has already begun to let owners of its popular line of Echo smart speakers use the things as makeshift security devices that listen for trouble whenever they're away from home.

"Amazon is dreaming of a dangerous future," the ACLU's Jacob Snow said in a statement, "with its technology at the center of a massive decentralized surveillance network, running real-time facial recognition on members of the public using cameras installed in people's doorbells."

What does Amazon say about all of this?

Amazon didn't offer any comments about Rekognition ahead of this story's publication.

This February, amid the criticism, Amazon wrote at length on the topic in a company blog post. Along with defending Rekognition, Amazon seemed to join companies such as Microsoft that have already called for greater oversight and transparency with regards to the ways facial recognition tech is being put to use.

"In the two-plus years we've been offering Amazon Rekognition, we have not received a single report of misuse by law enforcement," wrote Amazon Web Services' vice president of global public policy, Michael Punke. "Even with this strong track record to date, we understand why people want there to be oversight and guidelines put in place to make sure facial recognition technology cannot be used to discriminate. We support the calls for an appropriate national legislative framework that protects individual civil rights and ensures that governments are transparent in their use of facial recognition technology."

The blog post goes on to lay out some suggested standards for facial recognition, which I'll list here:

Facial recognition should always be used in accordance with the law, including laws that protect civil rights

When facial recognition technology is used in law enforcement, human review is a necessary component to ensure that the use of a prediction to make a decision does not violate civil rights



When facial recognition technology is used by law enforcement for identification, or in a way that could threaten civil liberties, a 99 percent confidence score threshold is recommended



Law enforcement agencies should be transparent in how they use facial recognition technology



There should be notice when video surveillance and facial recognition technology are used together in public or commercial settings



"New technology should not be banned or condemned because of its potential misuse," the blog concludes. "Instead, there should be open, honest and earnest dialogue among all parties involved to ensure that the technology is applied appropriately and is continuously enhanced."

"We will continue to work with partners across industry, government, academia and community groups on this topic because we strongly believe that facial recognition is an important, even critical, tool for business, government and law enforcement use."
OZARK, Ala.  A truck-driving preacher accused of killing two teenage girls from Alabama nearly 20 years ago was found with the same genealogy database techniques used to apprehend a suspect last year in the notorious Golden State serial killings.

Law enforcement interest in using genetic genealogy to crack cold cases has ballooned since the high-profile arrest of a suspect in the California serial killings, who was found by running crime scene DNA through a genealogy database, said CeCe Moore, chief genetic genealogist with Parabon NanoLabs. The same company did the searches in the Alabama case.
For $1,790 a month, you can rent a master bedroom in San Francisco's West Portal with ocean views and easy access to public transit. The major catch: No cooking allowed.

In North San Jose, you'll get a master bedroom suite with a walk-in closet and a private entrance for $1,400 a month. But read the fine print of the Craigslist ad: "No cooking, No drugs, No marijuana/pot, No smoking, No pets, No overnight guests."

Some Craigslist ads forbid kitchen use, but give tenants microwave and hot plate privileges. Others lack kitchens entirely, and even more say cooking isn't forbidden outright, but discouraged.

A listing near Stanford University for a $1,500-a-month "fully furnished" studio lacks some obvious furnishings; namely, a stove and oven. Though the Craigslist ad says a "fridge, microwave, and toaster" come with the rental, there is "no cooking inside the room or kitchen access." But concessions can be made: "An outdoor area is set up with cabinet/countertop, microwave and electric outlet right outside the room for light cooking."

ALSO: SF renters reveal secrets for snagging rooms in a crazy market

In an expensive city like San Francisco, tenants must sometimes take desperate measures  like renting apartments where food preparation is forbidden. It's not just renters feeling the pinch. Some homeowners may feel compelled to rent rooms in their private homes to simply stay afloat. In this case, a landlord might ask a tenant to abstain from using common spaces, like the kitchen, especially if there are other occupants in the home, including children.

A recent Bay Area Craigslist search with the term "no cooking" returned 93 hits, some of which specified "no cooking" in the unit or, less rigidly, "light cooking," for which no definition was given.

SFGATE reached out to some of these Craigslist posters, asking for clarification and explanation, but none responded.

We included some of the listings in the above gallery.

The legality of renting units without kitchen access or cooking abilities appears to vary among jurisdictions. No federal law enforced by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires rental units to have kitchens, a spokesperson for the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Office told SFGATE.

At the state level, things get more complicated. California Health and Safety Code (2.17920.3) says tenants must have access to necessities like a working toilet, heat, running water and a "kitchen sink" made of non-absorbent material. It does not specify if tenants must have access to cooking facilities, nor does it provide a definition of "kitchen."

California law does not require landlords to supply appliances, such as refrigerators and stoves. Different rules apply to single-room occupancy units, which are considered residential hotels.

SAY WHAT? 69 percent of San Franciscans think their rent is a 'good deal'

By this token, if a master tenant or landlord advertises a room in a unit that has a kitchen, he could ostensibly forbid the tenant from cooking or using the kitchen as long as the restriction is clearly stipulated in a contract, and the tenant continues to have access at least to the kitchen sink, said Joseph Tobener, an attorney specializing in tenant law and the managing partner at Tobener Ravenscroft in San Francisco.

In theory, this applies even in cities whose housing codes require that every dwelling unit comes equipped a kitchen, including municipalities like San Francisco and San Jose. "Kitchen" is defined as "any room used, or intended or designed to be used, for cooking and preparing food" in the San Jose Municipal Code (20.200.590).

To add to the complexity of the cooking issue, California law requires all rental units to have certificates of occupancy, a precedent established in the 1978 case Gruzen v. Henry. To qualify for a certificate of occupancy, the unit must have a kitchen, Tobener said. Without a certificate, the landlord cannot legally collect rent.

In the case that a landlord rented a unit with a kitchen, then took kitchen privileges away, the tenant could file a "decrease in housing services" complaint with the city, said Jennifer Rakowski, a San Francisco Rent Board supervisor. In San Francisco, the Rent Board "has no authority to compel the landlord to restore the service," according to documents on the agency's website, "but can only order a rent reduction for the loss of the housing service."

It's wise to know your rights, and to be aware that not every listing on Craigslist and similar sites meets legal requirements, Rakowski warns.

"If a landlord is renting a unit without kitchen facilities," she said, "it may be that the space is un-permitted."

Read Michelle Robertson's latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfgate.com.

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Over the past 20 years, Americans have been twice as likely to sweat through record-breaking heat rather than shiver through record-setting cold, a new Associated Press data analysis shows.

The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 states that had consistent temperature records since 1920 and counted how many times daily hot temperature records were tied or broken and how many daily cold records were set. In a stable climate, the numbers should be roughly equal.

Since 1999, the ratio has been two warm records set or broken for every cold one. In 16 of the past 20 years, there have been more daily high temperature records than low.

The AP shared the data analysis with several climate and data scientists, who all said the conclusion was correct, consistent with scientific peer-reviewed literature and showed a clear sign of human-caused climate change. They pointed out that trends over decades are more robust than over single years.

The analysis stopped with data through 2018. However, the first two months of 2019 are showing twice as many cold records than hot ones. Thats temporary and trends are over years and decades, not months, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt.

We are in a period of sustained and significant warming and  over the long run  will continue to explore and break the warm end of the spectrum much more than the cold end, Arndt said.

Former Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, who has been studying hot and cold extreme records since 2000, said the trend is unmistakable.

You are getting more extremes, Walton said. Your chances for getting more dangerous extremes are going up with time.

No place has seen the trend more clearly than the Southern California city of Pasadena, where 7,203 days (more than 19 years) went by between cold records being broken. On Feb. 23, Pasadena set a low temperature record, its first since June 5, 1999.

In between the two cold record days, Pasadena set 145 hot records. That includes an all-time high of 113 degrees last year.

Scientists often talked about human-caused global warming in terms of average temperatures, but thats not what costs money or sends people to the hospital. A study this month found that in just 22 states, about 36,000 people on average go to the hospital because of excessive summertime heat.

The extremes affect our lives, Arndt said, adding that they are expensive, with hospital stays, rising energy bills and crop losses.

Seth Borenstein and Nicky Forster are Associated Press writers.
Sure, yoga is great, but have you tried the remix?

Half Moon Bay's Lemos Family Farm is switching up the flexibility activity by corralling in more than a dozen tiny goats into each class held at their facility.

At $31, each class costs less than one morning at SoulCycle, but is infinitely more memorable.

RELATED: 'Rage Yoga' encourages posing while cursing, drinking, and listening to metal

"Fifteen small goats will roam around during yoga class, perhaps licking at your toes, nibbling your yoga mat, climbing on your back during cat/cow and cuddling up with you during savasana," the site reads. "Expect the unexpected, but also expect a lot of laughter and levity."

Since posers are definitely going to lose focus during meditation with tiny animals frolicking about, Lemos' yoga class includes a 15 minute wind-down for guests to hang out to meet, hold, and pet the goats.

RELATED: I tried 'goga,' or goat yoga  and it was more fun than fitness

The same goes for the farm's Mommy & Me yoga classes (for children aged 12 months to six years), wherein even smaller goats wander around the room. Those classes, it should be noted, are shorter (30 min.) and are sold in six-class packages.

Find out more at Lemos' farm website.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.


Nearly two years after social media watched from afar as what was billed as a "once-in-a-lifetime musical experience" devolved into a maelstrom of mass confusion and very sad-looking sandwiches, the United States Marshals Service's Manhattan office is putting what remains of the official merchandise up for auction.

"We have an assortment of the 'real thing' Fyre Festival-branded tee-shirts, sweatpants, sweatshirts, hats, wristbands and medallions," a spokesman for the United States Marshals Service's Manhattan office told Vulture. "We know that there is tremendous interest in these items in the NY metro area in particular."

RELATED: These photos reveal why the 27-year-old organizer of the disastrous Fyre Festival has been sentenced to 6 years in prison

Fyre Festival organizer Billy McFarland, who was sentenced to six years in prison for running the scam, owes investors around $26 million. However, the U.S. government hasn't been able to find much as far as his assets go to help mitigate his debt. What they did find, according to a court filing, was some money in a couple of bank accounts and "two large boxes containing Fyre-branded T-shirts, sweatshirts, shorts and other clothing items that were intended for sale at the Fyre Festival."

RELATED: Ja Rule wants to put on another event like Fyre Fest: 'In the midst of chaos, there's opportunity'

It's not yet clear when or where in the digital ecosphere the auction will take place, nor is it known what merchandise will hit the bidding block, but the USMS says it will be up to their undisclosed "contracted partners to handle the marketing and sale (for the) online auction."

When the sale wraps, the government will divvy up and distribute money to those investors and the ticket vendor stiffed by the fest (based on a percentage of their respective financial losses).

The Fyre Festival, which was scheduled to take place in April and May 2017, was billed as a luxury festival on a Caribbean island to be attended by celebrities, #influencers, models and wealthy scenesters. The event turned into a catastrophe, however, when weather and poor planning derailed the event. Two documentaries, on Netflix and Hulu, were subsequently made to detail what happened after thousands were stranded at the festival site.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.


WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the Trump administrations power to arrest and hold immigrants indefinitely if they have past crimes on their records that could trigger deportation, even if they had served time years ago for minor drug offenses.

The justices, by a 5-4 vote, agreed that Congress authorized mandatory detention of noncitizens who were subject to deportation because they had committed crimes ranging from violent felonies to drug possession. And they may be taken into custody by immigration agents long after they had been released from state or local custody.

Justice Samuel Alito, speaking for the courts conservatives, said Congress in 1996 gave federal authorities broad power to arrest and hold noncitizens for past crimes, and they were given no right to seek release on bail.

The decision overturns a ruling of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which had extended bail hearings and possible release to immigrants who had served time for their crimes and were living and working in their communities.

The legal dispute turned on a provision of the law that said the mandatory federal detention was triggered when an alien is released from state prison or local jail. Based on that clause, the 9th Circuit judges said the mandatory detention rule did not apply to immigrants who had been released months or years earlier.

The high court heard arguments on the case in mid-October the same week that Justice Brett Kavanaugh took his seat. He spoke up in defense of the Trump administrations view that the law was intended to authorize federal agents to arrest and hold immigrants with past crimes on their records regardless of when they were released. He questioned whether we should be putting in a time limit on taking immigrants into custody.

Both sides in the case agreed that the mandatory detention rule applied both to immigrants who were in the country legally as well as to those here illegally.

Early last year, the high court broadly upheld the governments power to detain immigrants in jail for months or years as they fight deportation. In a 5-3 decision, the court ruled federal law gave these detainees no right to a bail hearing and a chance to go free. The decision, in Jennings vs. Rodriquez, did not resolve whether this indefinite detention rule was constitutional. Dissenting, Justice Stephen Breyer emphasized that the Constitution says no person shall be  deprived of liberty without due process of law, which he said requires a hearing.

The case decided Tuesday, Nielsen vs. Preap, was a follow-up to last years ruling and is more limited in its scope. It involved only detained immigrants who had been earlier released from custody. The practice of detaining such immigrants went into effect under President Obama but accelerated under Trump.

David G. Savage is a Los Angeles Times writer.
Kelly Beardsley has been going to Richmond twice a day for the past 12 years. As soon as he gets there, he leaves.

Not that theres anything wrong with Richmond, he said on Monday, but he has a schedule to keep. A few moments in Richmond is about all he gets.

Beardsley is a BART train operator, which means the Richmond-to-Millbrae train doesnt leave Richmond until he says so. The way he says so is by pushing a blue button.

On a good day, pushing the blue button is about all a BART operator must do. BART trains are automated. When the computer says its time for a train to leave a station, an orange light flashes in the cab. That tells Beardsley to hurry up already and push the blue button to close the doors, because a train cant leave a station with the doors open.

Its all routine  and routine, said Beardsley, is good. Open the cab window and stick your head out. Check that the train doors are clear. Push the blue button. Close the window.

Do it again at El Cerrito Del Norte. Then El Cerrito. Then North Berkeley. Keep doing it, about 100 times a day, until your two daily round trips are over and its time to go home.

Wait longer than a minute or so to push the blue button and a dispatcher calls on the radio from the control center in Oakland. How come you havent pressed the blue button? Whats going on?

Beardsley, 46 years old and a 12-year BART veteran, is one of a handful of operators certified to run the shiny new trains. Thats the kind he was running on Monday. BART managers call the new trains the Fleet of the Future. BART managers call the old trains the Legacy fleet. Everyone else calls them the new trains and the old trains.

The new trains, Beardsley said, have a lot more buttons, switches and knobs to push. There are five green buttons, three blue ones, two red ones and a black one. There are several dozen blue circuit-breaker switches, two black touch-screen control panels and one silver throttle. The idea is to touch nothing except the blue button.

On an automatic elevator, which is the closest thing to a BART train there is, pushing the door close button hardly ever does anything. On a BART train, pushing the door close button is the whole ballgame.

Its anything but boring, Beardsley said. Something could happen at any moment. A breakdown, a medical emergency, a police activity or every operators nightmare  a jumper. And when the train is above ground, theres plenty to look at.

In the wetlands near San Bruno, there was a heron. In an empty lot in West Oakland, there were two dogs. Along Martin Luther King Boulevard in Oakland, there was a pedestrian who could have been an acquaintance of Beardsley if hed had time for a closer look, which he didnt.

You cant slow down for a heron, and you certainly cant make the train turn when it isnt inclined to.

With a train, Beardsley said, you pretty much have to go where the track does.

From the drivers cab, a BART ride is anything but routine.

The Transbay Tube turns out not to be straight and flat but undulating and slightly curved. The rail line between stations is full of trash, even though its hard to imagine how it got there. A little blue sign appears trackside every 2/100ths of a mile. Theres a 9.56 sign followed by a 9.54 sign followed by a 9.52 sign. Every once in a while  every couple of weeks, perhaps  the phone rings in his cab with a passenger calling from one of the train cars saying a thief just stole his or her cell phone and ran off. Beardsley is sympathetic but if a BART operator stopped a train every time a thief stole a passengers cell phone, no one would get anyplace.

On Monday, BART was feeling pretty good about itself. It was something called Transit Operator Appreciation Day, and there were signs and friendly waves and free doughnuts for train drivers, which will not happen the rest of the week.

Beardsley has a thing about wheels. He used to drive school buses, operate big rigs and deliver parcels by bicycle. He likes BART trains the best.

Is it fun? he said. Yes, I think it is. Its challenging, especially when something goes wrong and things get a little crazy. That happens rarely.

Rarely is relative. Rare things seem to happen more often for a passenger than for an operator.

Except that, on Monday, one of those rare things actually happened.

By coincidence, a Dublin-bound train was departing the Daly City Station at about the same time that Beardsleys Richmond-bound train was arriving, and the computer disabled the automatic door-opening function on Beardsleys train.

There it sat in the Daly City Station while Beardsley called the control center in Oakland to tell them what happened. But the dispatcher was busy with another minor problem, in Hayward, and so Beardsley and his train had to wait, doors still shut.

By the time Beardsley received permission to override the computer, put the train into manual mode, operate the silver throttle to nudge the train forward into a new position and then open the doors, the train was about three minutes behind schedule.

These things happen, Beardsley said.

For the rest of the run to Richmond, the automated system attempted to make up time by slightly increasing train speed and by slightly reducing the dwell time in stations. But when the train arrived in downtown Oakland, it was still running late.

As a result, the central computer automatically switched Beardsleys Richmond train onto the Antioch-bound track to make way for a Fremont-to-Richmond train that, because of the Daly City delay, was arriving at about the same time. That meant Beardsley had to make a bunch of loudspeaker announcements to passengers waiting on the Oakland platforms at 12th and 19th streets that his train was not an Antioch train but a Richmond train using the Antioch platform.

What happens in Daly City can affect faraway Oakland. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

These things make life interesting, Beardsley said.

Even with such minor  and occasionally major  kerfuffles, BART is the best way to get around, Beardsley said. Especially if you can take it to go someplace besides work. Going to work during rush hour is something that can make people cranky even though the need that people have to go to work is not BARTs fault.

In my opinion, said Beardsley, pushing the blue button to signal all was well with the world, its a lot more pleasant to take BART when you dont have to take it than when you do.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com
A Sacramento man who fell into the American River on Sunday while taking pictures with his fiancee was found dead, the Placer County Sheriff's Office said.

The body of 23-year-old Andy Odon Ortega Fonseca was recovered Monday by the Placer County swift-water dive team and air operations unit, the sheriff's office said.

Fonseca fell in the North Fork American River confluence near No Hands Bridge around 7 p.m. Sunday and was unable to get out of the swift-moving water, Lt. Andrew Scott said.

First responders called off the search around 9 p.m. Sunday because of darkness.

The Sheriff's Office's swift-water rescue team and air operations unit resumed the search Monday, combing the area from the confluence to Folsom Lake.

Officials did not say where Fonseca's body was found.

"We can't stress how dangerous river water is, especially during this time of year when the temperature ranges from 38-45 degrees Fahrenheit and the flows are swift and choppy," the Placer County Sheriff's Office said on Facebook. "It is easy to get swept under the current, even when the water APPEARS to be calm. It is merely a deception. PLEASE avoid getting into the river until after June when the flows have calmed down, and instead, visit your nearest lake -- the water is warmer and less dangerous."

No other details were released.
Thomas Burchard, a 71-year-old psychiatrist from Salinas, Calif. (Monterey County) was found dead in the trunk of a car parked near a recreation area outside of Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas Review Journal reported that Burchard's body was found by officers near the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on March 7, and the cause of death was blunt force to the head.

Burchard's death was ruled a homicide, and police have yet to make any arrests related to the case.

RELATED: Ex-Peru president, wanted by Interpol, arrested in Menlo Park for public intoxication

The body was discovered after a man driving through the area with his kids spotted a parked vehicle on the side of the road that had a rock thrown through one of its windows. The area is remote, and the man reported the suspicious vehicle to police.

Community Health of the Monterey Peninsula confirmed Burchard's death to the Salinas Californian.

"He's a longstanding physician in the community who was very helpful to many of his patients," spokeswoman Mary Barker said. "It was a sad situation and our hearts go out to his family."

ALSO: 1 injured after car crashes into pole in Haight-Ashbury neighborhood

Barker said that Burchard worked for nearly 40 years in behavior health, and had a small number of adolescent patients and a larger number of adult patients.

Police in Las Vegas continue to investigate his death.

Eric Ting is an SFGATE staff writer. Email him at eting@sfchronicle.com and follow him on Twitter

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REDWOOD CITY (BCN)



An eldercare worker has been sentenced to two years in jail and a year of supervised release for tricking an 80-year-old autistic man who was dying of lymphoma into signing over the deed to his Redwood City home.



Prosecutors say that victim Donald Kennedy was admitted to a hospital in April 2016 after he was found laying in his own feces and urine during a home check. He was living alone, undergoing chemotherapy for Stage III cancer and suffering from the side effects.



Kennedy was introduced to Muath Zghoul, 35, of Daly City, who was working for All Around Senior Services, and was supposed to help Kennedy get into an appropriate care facility. A few days later, however, Zghoul had the victim sign a durable power of attorney and turn over the deed to his home and recorded the transfer with the county recorder's office, according to prosecutors.



He allegedly would later tell investigators that he had given Kennedy a check for $150,000 - but prosecutors say Kennedy never received any of that money for the house.



Kennedy would not live long enough to see Zghoul convicted in May 2018. Kennedy died the previous month.



In addition to jail time and supervised release, Zghoul has also been ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution.



Speaking on his client's behalf, defense attorney Majeed Samara said Zghoul and his family are, "saddened by what transpired and they will see that the restitution is paid in full."



"My client accepts responsibility for his actions," Samara said.



Samara also added that when Zghoul took over the deed to Kennedy's house, there was an outstanding mortgage for $650,000 that he had intended to pay off.



Zghoul was remanded to the custody of the sheriff to begin serving his sentence. He has 40 days credit for time served.





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San Francisco firefighters responded Tuesday morning to a cliff rescue at Marshall Beach south of the Golden Gate Bridge.



A fire department spokesperson wrote on Twitter that the person was "clinging to the edge" of the cliff as of shortly after 8:30 a.m.





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A former president of Peru was arrested Sunday in unincorporated Menlo Park on suspicion of being drunk in public, San Mateo County sheriff's officials said Monday.



Alejandro Toledo Manrique, 73, was arrested at 10:27 p.m. at the Dutch Goose restaurant at 3567 Alameda de las Pulgas after he allegedly caused a disturbance and restaurant staff asked him to leave.



Manrique allegedly refused and law enforcement was called. Manrique was booked into the county jail Sunday night and released Monday morning. He lives in Los Altos.



Before his release, sheriff's officials were contacted by Interpol about possible charges against Manrique in Peru.



Sheriff's officials said they followed up with Interpol and Peruvian officials and afterward learned that charges against the former president in Peru do not authorize his arrest in the U.S.



According to the sheriff's office, Peruvian officials were unable to have the former president extradited and he had no other charges against him so he was released.





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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)



Hundreds marched to Wells Fargo's headquarters in San Francisco Monday, at the end of a 34-mile protest from Palo Alto to demand that the bank divest from fossil fuel companies.



From noon to 3 p.m. demonstrators gathered around 464 California St., one of the entrances to the bank's headquarters to call on the financiers to invest instead in clean energy.



Demonstrators chanted, performed street theater and blocked an entrance by locking arms in oil barrels as they have dubbed the bank "Oily Wells" for its investments in big oil firms.



Of the bank, Vanessa Warheit, campaign program manager for 350 Silicon Valley, which organized the groups for the march, said, "We definitely got their attention."



She said on the march they also got the attention of people in places where the issue isn't discussed usually, such as parts of San Mateo County. Part of the march was along El Camino Real in the county.



Warheit and Ruth Robertson of the Raging Grannies, which participated in the march, said many people expressed their support for the demonstrators by honking their horns and stopping to talk to marchers.



More than 50 organizations came together for the demonstration.



Warheit said the bridges built among the organizations at the march are critical for the movement to address climate change.



"This was another brick in that wall," Warheit said.



Organizers want Wells Fargo to be the first major bank to divest entirely from the fossil fuel industry.



A representative of Wells Fargo was immediately available for comment Monday night.





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A San Mateo County sheriff's deputy accused of using excessive force on inmates at the Maguire Correctional Facility in Redwood City pleaded not guilty to the charges against him Friday morning.



Blake Lycett, 42, allegedly beat three inmates on camera in August 2018. Two of the incidents happened on Aug. 18, while the inmates were being booked, according to prosecutors.



Luis Cardenas, one of the victims, had been arrested on suspicion of being drunk in public and had been uncooperative. Lycett allegedly jumped on top of him and struck the man in the back and in the back of the head.



Milan Jackson was arrested on suspicion of trespassing. He was also uncooperative during the booking process, and Lycett struck him multiple times, according to prosecutors.



Four days later on Aug. 22, Lycett allegedly took inmate Zephaniah Coon to the ground and kneed him repeatedly into the torso before pushing the man's head into a closed elevator door for refusing to go back into his cell.



After the incidents in question, he filed inaccurate use of force reports, according to District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, who said the reports were not consistent with video evidence.



Lycett has been charged with three misdemeanor counts of assault under color of law. He was initially arraigned in February, but defense attorney Gregory Thoming asked for a continuance.



Thoming declined to comment on his client's behalf Monday.



Lycett is out of custody on his own recognizance. He is scheduled to return to court for trial on June 24.



Sheriff Carlos Bolanos has issued a statement saying his office takes the allegations very seriously, and that the conduct in question is not something that's condoned.





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FREMONT (BCN)



A Newark man with two prior drunk driving convictions was charged with murder Tuesday for a hit-and-run collision in Fremont on Sunday night that killed a 70-year-old woman.



Juan Antonio Martinez, 47, was scheduled to be arraigned in Alameda County Superior Court in Fremont on Tuesday afternoon in connection with the collision on Central Avenue just east of Blacow Road at about 6:15 p.m. Sunday that claimed the life of Erlinda Domingo of Newark.



Fremont police Officer Jacob Shannon wrote in a probable cause statement that Martinez was driving a Honda Odyssey van that collided with a Honda Civic in which Domingo was a passenger.



Martinez was traveling east on Central Avenue and the Honda Civic was traveling west but for some reason Martinez crossed over the central median, which is about 16 feet wide, and entered the westbound lanes and collided head-on with the Civic, Shannon wrote.



Domingo was unconscious and displayed labored breathing when paramedics responded to the scene and eventually succumbed to her injuries at the scene, according to Shannon.



The driver of the Honda Civic suffered minor injuries to his chest, legs and forehead and is still hospitalized, Shannon wrote.



Martinez fled the scene on foot but officers found him in a nearby neighborhood a short time later and arrested him, according to police.



Officers observed objective signs of intoxication on Martinez, including an odor of an alcoholic beverage so they performed tests on him, Shannon wrote.



Shannon recommended that Martinez be charged with murder because he has two prior drunk driving convictions and it is standard for a person with such a record to be warned that if they continue to drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs and someone is killed as a result of that driving, they could be charged with murder.



Shannon also wrote that Martinez's identification indicates that he's from El Salvador and there's no record that he's ever possessed a valid California driver's license.



In addition to murder, Martinez is charged with two counts of drunk driving causing injury with prior convictions, one count of leaving the scene of an accident and a misdemeanor count of driving while his license was suspended because of an alcohol-related conviction.



Martinez was sentenced to 20 days in jail and placed on three years' probation for a drunk driving conviction for an incident in Hayward on July 25, 2015, and sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on five years' probation for an incident in Newark on Oct. 15, 2016, Shannon wrote.



Martinez was scheduled to be arraigned at the Fremont Hall of Justice Tuesday afternoon.





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SANTA ROSA (BCN)



The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a $150,000 contract for immediate homeless services in the flood-stricken west county area.



The contract with West County Community Services for a flood survivor rapid re-entry housing program will use the money in the county's Community Development Commission's 2018-2019 budget that was intended for shelter programs.



West County Community Services locates housing and provides limited move-in assistance for displaced residents of homes, apartments and recreational vehicles who need to relocate. Grants of up to $3,000 for housing repair are available to low-income homeowners, including seniors.



Displaced residents must be able to document that they lost housing or will soon lose housing because of the floods.



The money also will provide short-term rent assistance including deposits, transportation services for those without vehicles and services for people displaced by the flooding.



The flood last month damaged more than 2,500 structures in the lower Russian River area, one of the few remaining affordable housing communities in the county.



The structural damage to homes and rental units along the river left low-income families and seniors on fixed incomes struggling to restore their homes or find a new rental unit.



Thirteen federal Housing Choice Voucher-assisted households were yellow tagged after the flood, and an 80-year-old veteran continues living in his yellow-tagged home because he has no place to stay, according to the Community Development Commission.



Twenty-five low-income and vulnerable households in the lower river area and Sebastopol have sought help because of the floods, and dozens of others have sought help at a Local Assistance Center that opened in the Guerneville area.





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Cloud cover will increase across the San Francisco Bay Area Tuesday afternoon before a weak storm moves in after sunset, delivering a final dose of winter rain before the start of spring on Wednesday.

Drew Peterson with the National Weather Service suspects the first showers will arrive around 8 p.m. "Those will be very light, and they won't bring much precipitation," Peterson says.

The rainfall is expected to begin picking up between 11 p.m. to midnight, with the heaviest rain overnight.

Lingering showers will continue into Wednesday, impacting the morning commute. There's a slight chance of thunderstorms on Wednesday, especially south of the Bay Area in Monterey County.

The storm will be aimed south of the Golden Gate, with isolated locations in the Santa Cruz Mountains expected to accumulate up to 3 inches of rain. The North Bay could see only about .25 inches in valleys.

Here are more projected rainfall totals with this storm:

San Francisco: .5 inch

Santa Rosa: .25 inch

San Rafael: .25 inch

Oakland: .5 inch

Half Moon Bay: .5 to 1.25 inches

San Jose: one-third of an inch

Thursday is forecast to be cloudy but dry, before a second storm arrives late Friday morning.

"The way the system will differ is it won't have as much rain," says Peterson, "It'll be cooler since it's coming from the Gulf of Alaska. Heaviest rain will be in the North Bay, with progressively less rain as you move southward." With this storm, S.F. is expected to see two-tenths of an inch.

ALSO: 'They're everywhere': Butterflies swarming SoCal expected to reach NorCal any day

Saturday and Sunday look dry, says Peterson, and a third storm is projected to arrive early next week. "There's still a bit of model inconsistency around when it will arrive," he says.

The television meteorology community has reported next week's system could be a moisture-rich atmospheric river, but Peterson says it's too early to tell.

After a spell of warm weather, temperatures will cool by a couple degrees Tuesday, with highs forecast to be in the low 70s inland and 60s on the coast. The cooling trend will continue into Wednesday and through the weekend with afternoon highs in the low-60s inland and in the high-50s on the coast.
An energetic westerly swell reached the West Coast early Tuesday, leading the National Weather Service to issue a beach hazard statement with the warning: "Never turn your back to the ocean."

The agency forecasts sneaker waves through 11 p.m. for the Bay Area's west-facing beaches, including Ocean Beach in San Francisco, Montara State Beach and Half Moon Bay State Beach.
CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe  Aid workers rushed to rescue victims clinging to trees and crammed on rooftops against rapidly rising waters Tuesday after a cyclone unleashed devastating floods in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. More than 238 were dead, hundreds were missing and thousands more were at risk.

This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambiques recent history, said Jamie LeSueur, head of response efforts in Beira for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. At least 400,000 people were left homeless.

The rapidly rising floodwaters created an inland ocean in Mozambique, endangering tens of thousands of families, aid workers said as they scrambled to rescue survivors of Cyclone Idai and airdrop food, water and blankets.

Mozambiques President Filipe Nyusi said the death toll could reach 1,000.

Emergency workers called it the regions most destructive flooding in 20 years. Heavy rains were expected to continue through Thursday.

This is a major humanitarian emergency that is getting bigger by the hour, said Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program. Many people were crammed on rooftops and elevated patches of land outside the port city of Beira and WFP was rushing to rescue as many as possible, he said.

Mozambiques Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, creating inland oceans extending for miles and miles in all directions, Verhoosel said. Dams were at 95 percent to 100 percent capacity.

People visible from the air may be the lucky ones and the top priority now is to rescue as many as possible, he said.

The extent of the damage was not yet known as many areas remained impassible. With key roads washed away, aid groups were trying to get badly needed food, medicine and fuel by air and sea into hard-hit Beira, a city of some 500,000 people.

Cyclone Idai swept across central Mozambique before dropping huge amounts of rain in neighboring Zimbabwes eastern mountains. That rainfall is now rushing back through Mozambique, further inundating the already flooded countryside.

Its dire, said Caroline Haga of the Red Cross from Beira. We did an aerial surveillance yesterday and saw people on rooftops and in tree branches. The waters are still rising and we are desperately trying to save as many as possible.

The waters flooded a swath of land more than 30 miles wide in central Mozambique, putting more than 100,000 people at risk, said the aid group Save the Children.

Farai Mutsaka and Andrew Meldrum are Associated Press writers.
BUENOS AIRES  Jorge Altieri runs his hands over old blood stains on a helmet that saved his life in 1982 when Argentina and Britain went to war over the Falkland Islands.

Looking at the treasured object is still a novelty: The helmet was recently returned to Altieri decades after he lost it on the battlefield where he was almost killed by shrapnel.

I have it next to me now and I use it like a teddy bear, Altieri said. I look at it and I get teary-eyed from all the memories.

Argentina lost the war for the South Atlantic archipelago after its troops embarked on an ill-fated invasion nearly 37 years ago, an international humiliation that claimed the lives of 649 Argentines and 255 British soldiers.

Argentina still claims the islands, which it calls the Malvinas. Britain says the Falklands are a self-governing entity under its protection.

After decades of tense relations, though, both countries have experienced a thaw, including a deal that allowed a multinational team of experts to exhume and identify the remains of dozens of Argentine soldiers.

Today, veterans and relatives of those who died also say the recovery of objects taken as war trophies has helped heal their scars.

I cant stop looking at it, thinking of what it did to stop the bomb shrapnel blowing my head off, Altieri said about his helmet, although he still lost an eye and part of his brain in a blast during battle for Mount Longdon on June 12, 1982, two days before fighting stopped.

In a parallel tale of reconciliation, Argentine veteran Diego Carlos Arreseigor announced March 7 that he is planning to return the blood-stained helmet of fallen British soldier Alexander Shaw, who was killed at Mount Longdon at age 25.

The helmet is expected to be delivered to Shaws sister, Susan, in April or May.

Arreseigor said he had picked up the helmet in a pile of discarded equipment and hid it from a British soldier by keeping it under his jacket.

I kept it these 37 years, always considering it a trophy of war, a sort of consolation for the loss and the pain of so many fallen friends, he said.

Some years ago he became curious about who had worn it and noticed it had a last name written on one of its interior belts. Arreseigor eventually found out Shaws identity and learned he had been a victim of Argentine artillery.

For Altieri, having his helmet has helped him find similar closure.

After the wars cease-fire, Altieris helmet was taken to London by a British paratrooper who had pulled it from a heap of military equipment. After the man passed away, it was kept by his family until it was put up for auction four years ago.

At the time, Altieri offered about $520, but a British man who collects war objects paid twice that amount and Altieri failed to persuade him to sell it.

Some days ago, however, the helmet briefly went up for auction again on eBay for about $13,000. When it was taken off the site, Altieri feared he had lost it for good until he heard the news: An anonymous Argentine entrepreneur had bought it for Altieri.

Almudena Calatrava is an Associated Press writer.
Giuseppe Cacace / AFP / Getty Images

BAGHOUZ, Syria  U.S.-backed Syrian forces on Tuesday seized control of an encampment held by the Islamic State in eastern Syria, after hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, a spokesman said, signaling the groups collapse after months of stiff resistance. A group of suspects involved in a January bombing that killed four Americans in northern Syria were among militants captured by the Kurdish-led forces.

The taking of the Islamic State camp was a major advance but not the final defeat of the group in Baghouz, the last village held by the extremists where they have been holding out for weeks under siege, according to Mustafa Bali, spokesman for the Kurdish-led force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. Still, fighters from the force were starting to celebrate anyway.
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A suspect shot into a home full of people in Phoenix, Arizona in the USA early on Tuesday morning, killing two and hurting four others, according to police.



The suspect was attending a house party on Dunlap Avenue and Interstate 17 when he got into an argument with some of the party-goers, police said.



Police said the suspect left the party and returned armed with a gun.



He knocked on the door and when the door opened, he shot the party-goers, according to police.



Police said a man and an 18-year-old woman were found dead at the scene.



Another four men were also found with gunshot wounds.



They were rushed to a hospital where they are expected to survive.



Police said the suspect fled the scene but is known to the victims.
Page Content

About half (48 percent) of surveyed HR professionals said their organization had at some point experienced workplace violence, according to research released today by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

SHRM surveyed 1,416 members in February 2019. The total of those who say violence has occurred at their workplace is up from 36 percent in 2012 and includes incidences of harassment and intimidation, as well as physical assaults and homicides.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 458 of the over 5,000 fatal injuries that happened in a workplace in 2017 were homicides. About 15 percent of those were perpetrated by co-workers or other work associates.















A majority (82 percent) of 545 employees surveyed by NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent research institute, reported feeling safer in organizations that provide programs to prevent workplace violence and train employees to respond to violent incidents. But less than half say their organization has a program to prevent workplace violence (45 percent) or provides training to workers on how to respond to an act of workplace violence (49 percent). Less than one-third of workers (29 percent) said that they are unsure or don't know what to do if they witness or are involved in workplace violence.

"Education has to start from the top down, and often that starts with HR," said SHRM President and Chief Executive Officer Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP. "There's naturally a lot of fear when people think of workplace violence. But preparing and providing employees with hands-on training helps empower them to react and take action in the event of a worst-case scenario."

Preventing Workplace Violence

A culture of safety starts with a firm commitment and active involvement from senior leadership, said Hector Alvarez, founder of Alvarez Associates, a Sacramento, Calif., firm specializing in preventing workplace violence. Employers should then conduct an audit to identify and correct gaps in workplace safety and security.

"It has been my professional experience that many organizations address threats of violence on a case-by-case basis without the benefit of a structured and formal assessment process," he said. "This lack of structure supports, even encourages, a poor crisis-response environment. The time to prepare for and prevent workplace violence is before threats happen."

Programs to prevent workplace violence should highlight a zero-tolerance policy for violenceincluding threats, intimidation and harassmentat work, said Beth Zoller, legal editor at XpertHR, an online HR resource site. "Train employees in what constitutes workplace violence and the procedures to report any form of workplace violence. A clear structure for reporting acts of violence should be implemented."

She added that employers should have policies addressing workplace-violence prevention, visitor security and weapons at work.

"The employer should also develop an emergency response plan detailing how an incident of workplace violence will be managed, including securing the premises, contacting law enforcement, informing employees of impending danger, notifying families during and after an incident, dealing with media, and providing any counseling or other employee assistance after an act of violence has occurred," Zoller said.

Supervisors should be trained on how to recognize signs of potential workplace violence, and employees should be trained on safe evacuation routes, safe hiding spots and how to interact with law enforcement.

Employers may also need to rethink their termination procedures. Five people, including two HR representatives, were shot to death during a termination meeting at the Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, Ill., in February.

[SHRM members-only sample presentation: Workplace Violence Training for Supervisors]

Experts advise employers:

Keep termination meetings brief, and schedule them for the end of the day to minimize confrontation and embarrassment.

Work with building security and local law enforcement in risky terminations.

Review what can and cannot be done to lawfully restrict employees from possessing weapons on workplace property.

Counsel those in the meeting on de-escalation techniques; the use of a calm, nonconfrontational approach; and avoiding physical contact with the affected employee.

Offer outplacement services, resume help and, if appropriate, a letter of reference.

SHRM Resources

SHRM's newly released online toolkit Understanding Workplace Violence Prevention and Response provides information and resources to address workplace violence, including:

Creating a prevention plan.

Recognizing warning signs.

Implementing a response team.

Responding to violent incidents in the workplace.

"The goal for employersand this is something we address in our toolkitis making your workplace a difficult target for violent offenders and being prepared to react quickly," Taylor explained. "If you make the investment in security and preparation, your employees will feel safer and respect you for valuing their security."



[Visit SHRM's resource page on workplace violence.]


From left, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Vice President of State Strategies and Engagement Robert Carragher moderates a discussion between Virginia Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria, and Delaware Rep. Ruth Briggs King, R-Georgetown, at the 2019 SHRM Employment Law & Legislative Conference.

Page Content

More states are considering paid-family-leave bills, and lawmakers said they want to hear from human resource professionals about how these laws might affect the workplace.

"When there are bills related to employment law  you really need to reach out to your legislators," said Delaware Rep. Ruth Briggs King, R-Georgetown, at the 2019 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Employment Law & Legislative Conference on March 18. "You might say, 'What are you thinking?' 'What are you doing?' or 'We're here to help.' "

While many workplace issues haven't moved at the federal level, state lawmakers across the country have been considering paid family leave, minimum wage, predictable scheduling and other laws that will have an effect on the workplace. "Never neglect your state legislatures," said Virginia Del. Mark Levine, D-Alexandria. "The hard work gets done in your state capitals."

Ivanka Trump participated in an earlier session at the conference to discuss the initiatives of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, which she co-chairs. She has advocated for passing a paid-family-leave law at the federal level.



Support for paid leave is growing. Eighty-two percent of Americans who responded to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll said they think new mothers should have access to paid leave, and 69 percent said new fathers should have the same. And employer paid-parental-leave offerings have increased significantly from 2016, according to SHRM's 2018 Employee Benefits survey.

A federal law addressing paid family and medical leave would be particularly helpful for multistate employers by ensuring that matters were handled similarly in all states, King said. "We certainly like to have state sovereignty," she added, but "it would be nice if some of these decisions were made at the federal level."

Levine said state lawmakers will continue to push for paid family leave. If the federal government doesn't act, "we will," he said.

Debating the Details

California was the first state to provide paid family and medical leave in 2004. Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Washington state and Washington, D.C., followed suit in recent years. However, each state offersor will offera different amount of leave time and wage replacement. For instance, Rhode Island pays about 60 percent of wages for up to four weeks and has a weekly maximum payout of $795.

In 2018, Delaware passed a paid-family-leave law that will apply only to public employees and cover 100 percent of wages for up to 12 weeks following the birth or adoption of a child. King said she was "a little disheartened by the language" in the bill. As a human resource professional herself, King has had to administer leave, and she had some practical questions that she said weren't properly addressed by state legislators. She wished that Delaware lawmakers had more conversations with the people who administered leave and understand the associated challenges.

[SHRM members-only how-to guide: How to Develop and Administer Paid Leave Programs]

Although the Delaware law covers only public-sector employees, King noted that many large employers in the state realize that offering paid family leave is a good recruitment and retention tool and are voluntarily offering such benefits.

Levine supports a paid-family-leave bill that was introduced in the Virginia House of Delegates this session. Republicans currently control the state legislature, but Levine expects that a paid-family-leave measure will pass if Democrats take the majority.

"So if you have a view on it, you need to let me know," he said, inviting HR professionals in Virginia to reach out to him.

The bill in its current form would provide up to 12 weeks of wage replacement at 70 percent of the employee's average weekly income.

"I'm not wedded to any specific proposal," Levine said. If companies aren't already offering paid-family-leave benefits, they will eventually be required to do so. "I'd much rather work with you than against you," he said.


STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- Authorities say a Staten Island man was speeding early Tuesday morning when the New York City-bound charter bus he was driving careened off the highway, killing two passengers and injuring several others.

Yui Man Chow, 40, is being held on bond at Riverside Regional Jail in Prince George County, Virginia, for two counts of involuntary manslaughter, according to a Virginia State Police spokeswoman.

Authorities allege Chow, who according to public records lives in Rosebank, attempted to take an exit ramp off Interstate 95, south of Richmond, when the vehicle overturned. Emergency crews responded at about 5:22 a.m. to a report of multiple injuries. It was foggy at the time of the crash on a ramp that, according to a NBCNewYork report, was considered a problem area in the past.

Of the 56 New York-bound passengers on board, an adult male died at the scene, an adult woman died three hours later at a nearby hospital and multiple other passengers ranging in age from toddlers to adults suffered minor to serious injuries, officials said.

State and federal authorities are investigating a fatal crash Tuesday morning in Virginia involving at least two deaths, and possible charges against the Staten Island man behind the wheel. (Twitter)

Patients were transported to John Randolph Hospital in Hopewell, Virginia, Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg, Virginia, and Chippenham Hospital and Johnston Willis Hospital in Richmond, Virginia.

The driver was not injured.

Officials said the bus departed from Orlando, then stopped in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, to switch drivers before continuing north to New York City. The crash was investigated Tuesday afternoon by members of Virginia State Police (VSP) and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration remained on scene, according to the VSP Twitter account.

Family of passengers can call the Prince George, Virginia, Emergency Services Center at 804-733-2659 for more information. A family reunification center has been set up at Prince George County Central Wellness Center, at 11023 Prince George Drive.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- North Shore residents might remember Howie Fisk from his days as the wise-cracking store manager at Key Food in West Brighton. Now that Howies retired from the grocery business, he spreads his good food spirit at the strip mall across the street from his old digs. On Monday at S&T Bagels & Deli, a little store at 463 Forest Avenue known for its plump, doughy bagels and Lenten fish sandwiches, Howie put a jar of jellybeans on display.

Person must fill out a slip stating the amount of jelly beans they think are in this canister," wrote Howie on a poster.

And whoever guesses closest to the number without going over wins the jelly beans plus a pair of his and her stuffed bunnies. In the event of a tie, the participant must also guess a number of jelly beans captured in a pink, plastic egg inserted into the container. (Howie hint: That number of candies in the egg can be anywhere from 1 to 15.)

Howie instructs that its only one entry per piece of paper, which then goes into a locked box.

Is there a strategy for cracking the case of the counted candies?

We asked math teachers at a handful of Staten Island schools just how to tackle Howies Easter-time exercise.

I would look at the bottom and count around the jar. Then I would count up to see about how many rows and then multiply those together, said Celeste Catalano, a former math instructor who is now principal at Sacred Heart Elementary School in West Brighton.

Notre Dame Academy High Schools Mary Haugen pointed to algebra for a solution: If you know the circumference and height of the jar, then youll know the volume -- in jellybean units, of course.

It seems like a pretty reasonable way to make an educated guess, said the Grymes Hill math maven.

Teacher Mary-Frances Bullone of St. Joseph By the Sea High School, Huguenot, advises, Measure the jars height and radius in inches and compute the volume of the jar using the formula for a cylinder -- Pi times the radius, squared, times height -- and divide that by the volume of the average jelly bean which is .15 cubic inches.

As for the mystery number in the pink egg, added Ms. Bullone, Find a plastic egg and see how many jelly beans fit in the plastic egg and adjust your answer accordingly."

Howie will tell you the answer is right there in front of you: If you concentrate.

He elaborated: I went to the supermarket and I see a lady and shes sitting and staring at the orange juice. I said, Maam what are you doing? You need help? She said, No, why? I said, What are you staring at? She said, Look at the label. It says concentrate.

S&T Bagels & Deli is located at 436 Forest Ave., West Brighton; 718-981-2100. The store is open daily from 6 to 7 a.m. except Sunday when it closes at 5 p.m.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A horrific crash early Tuesday morning on a Virginia highway killed at least two passengers on a New York City-bound charter bus, and left dozens injured.

Charges are pending against a 40-year-old Staten Island man who was behind the wheel, according to a Virginia State Police spokeswoman.

One passenger died at the scene and the second a few hours later at a nearby hospital. The remaining passengers injuries ranged from minor to serious, the spokeswoman said.

The driver was reportedly headed north on I-95 in Prince George County when it attempted to take an exit ramp and careened off the left side of the ramp and overturned. The bus, belonging to Taos Travel Inc., was reportedly chartered by a Chinatown-based company that sells tickets and hires a bus for destinations.

Officials said the bus departed from Orlando, then, stopped in Rocky Mount, N.C., to switch drivers before continuing north to New York City with more than 50 passengers aboard, including children. One passenger died at the scene and the second a few hours later at a nearby hospital, the spokeswoman said.

The remaining passengers injuries range from minor to serious.

The crash remained under investigation Tuesday afternoon as members of Virginia State Police (VSP) and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration remained on scene, according to the VSP Twitter account.

Investigation continues into cause of Tao's Travel bus crash in @PrinceGeorgeVa Tuesday AM on I-95 that claimed 2 lives & injured dozens. Charges pending. Bus was traveling from #Orlando #FLA to #NYC. @FMCSA on scene w/#VSP Motor Carrier Safety Team. pic.twitter.com/pT2Yg6EtGO  VA State Police (@VSPPIO) March 19, 2019

Officials said they were looking into whether fog may have played a role, and investigating claims that the ramp is a problem area, according to a NBCNewYork report.

Virginia State Police also said that they were notified that the particular ramp where the incident took place is a problem area, and were looking at that as a possible factor in the crash as well.

Family of passengers can call the Prince George, VA Emergency Services Center at 804-733-2659 for more information. A family reunification center has been set up at Prince George County Central Wellness Center, at 11023 Prince George Drive.
UPDATE: Latest twists and updates in Anthony Comello case, the alleged mob boss killer from Staten Island

Anthony Comello, the 24-year-old arrested in New Jersey Saturday for allegedly gunning down a mob boss in Staten Island last week, will return to New York to face the murder charge against him.

Comello waived his extradition rights Monday during a hearing in Ocean County Superior Court before Judge Wendel Daniels. He is expected to appear in court in Staten Island next Monday, March 25.

He willingly, knowingly and voluntarily returns to New York to face these charges, Brian Neary, a New Jersey attorney representing Comello Monday, told reporters after the hearing. He described Comello, who said only yes, sir during the hearing, as resolute.

In the courtroom, Comello held his open handcuffed palm up to reporters, showing a symbol and several words scrawled in pen. MAGA forever and united we stand were some of the phrases he had printed, while others were not entirely legible.

A court officer approached Comello and said something inaudible to him, leading Comello to put his palm down.

Neary referred all other requests for comment on the facts of the case to New York lawyer Robert Gottlieb, Comellos lead counsel. He did not answer questions regarding whether or not Comello has maintained his innocence, and said he had not seen anything written on his clients hand.

Anthony Comello displays writing on his hand during his extradition hearing in Toms River, N.J., Monday, March 18, 2019. (Seth Wenig | Associated Press)AP

Gottlieb issued a statement Monday afternoon sayin Comello has received threats and is in protective custody. As I previously stated, Mr, Comellos family and friends simply can not believe what they have been told. There is something very wrong here and we will get to the truth here as quickly as possible.

Police arrested Comello, who lives in Staten Island, in at a relatives house in Brick. He is charged with murder of 53-year-old Francesco Cali in New York, and was lodged in Ocean County Jail on a charge of being a fugitive from justice in New Jersey prior to Mondays proceedings.

Cali, who went by Frank or Franky Boy, was a Gambino family mob boss. He is the first New York City crime boss to be killed in more than 30 years, dying Wednesday after he was shot 10 times with a 9-millimeter handgun outside of his home in the Hilltop Terrace section of Staten Island.

No motive for the killing was addressed Monday, but preliminary information suggests it might not be related to organized crime, according to SILive.com. The report, citing sources, said Comello may have been denied after pursuing a relationship with a female member of Calis family.

The Gambino family was once among the most powerful criminal organizations in the U.S., but federal prosecutions jailed top leaders during the 1980s and 1990s, shrinking its power. Cali never faced a criminal charge as a mob boss, but authorities have referred to him as the underboss of the Gambino organization.

Cali did have one mob-related conviction, doing 16 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to taking part in an extortion conspiracy to build a NASCAR track. The attempt failed. He was released from prison in 2009.

Comello has no criminal history, but has had runs in with the New York Police Department, mostly for traffic violations.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Jeff Goldman contributed to this report.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  The St. George woman who scaled the base of the Statue of Liberty last Independence Day wont be spending any time behind bars, but will be devoting lots of her time to the community.

Therese Okoumou, 45, was sentenced Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to five years probation and 200 hours of community service stemming from her political protest on July 4 which resulted in the evacuation of about 4,000 people from Liberty Island.

Okoumou said she had climbed the statue to protest the administrations immigration policies, including separating children from parents at the border.

In a December bench trial, a magistrate judge found Okoumou guilty of misdemeanor counts of trespassing, disorderly conduct and interference with agency functions.

During the trial, prosecutors said Okoumou had scaled a national symbol before - allegedly climbing the outside of the Eiffel Tower twice, but was not prosecuted by Parisian authorities.

In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors recommended a sentence of 30 days in jail and three years probation.

The defendants actions on the Fourth of July were designed to be dangerous and unlawful, wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett M. Kalikow. The defendant could have lessened the hazard to law enforcement by coming down from the statue on her own. She did not. Her behavior since her arrest, and especially since her conviction, has shown flagrant disregard for the law and for the court.

More recently, last month, Okoumou was arrested for trespassing after climbing the Southwest Key building in Austin, Texas, according to the Austin Police Department.

The incident was reported at 12:14 p.m. on Feb. 20, and officers were able to talk her down by 8 p.m.

Authorities said Okoumou ascended to the top of the building and made her way to the roof to hang protest banners. The building houses children who were separated from their families after crossing the United States border, according to media reports.

Okoumou was charged with criminal trespass, said police.

That case is pending, and she faces up to 180 days behind bars.

Okoumous lawyers maintained a non-jail sentence was appropriate in the Statute of Liberty incident.

In a pre-sentencing submission, attorneys Ronald Kuby and Rhidaya Rhiya Patricia cited non-confinement sentences of other protestors for acts of civil disobedience on and at the statue dating to 1980.

Incarcerating Okoumou, they argued, would create a sentencing disparity.

"The Statue of Liberty is known as a symbol of freedom from persecution the world over  indeed, the statue herself cries out to those who yearn to be free.' Ms. Okoumou is far from the first to heed this call  to take up political protest at or on the statue and to refuse to leave after doing so, the lawyers wrote.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A 43-year-old man sold jewelry valued at $22,900 after it was stolen from a womans home in Eltingville, according to the authorities.

The suspect is a friend or acquaintance of the 37-year-old victim and the house was looted while the woman and her family were on vacation, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

Ralph Debiase, who lives on Arden Avenue near Pompey Avenue in Annadale, was arrested on March 11 at the 123rd Precinct stationhouse in Tottenville in connection with the 24 pieces of jewelry that went missing starting on Feb. 16 from the home in the vicinity of Arden Avenue and Moffett Street, according to information in the criminal complaint.

The suspect allegedly sold 17 pieces of jewelry on Feb. 18 for $850 cash and seven pieces of jewelry on Feb. 19 for $1,100 cash. The bling included gold chains, pendants, bracelets, charms and rings. An unnamed shop in the 5800 block of Amboy Road in Princes Bay bought the items, according to the criminal complaint and police.

He has been charged with multiple counts of criminal possession of stolen property, according to the criminal complaint. Debaise was not implicated in the theft that occurred when a man entered the unoccupied house without permission, but did not force his way inside, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

Bond has been set at $7,500 for Debiase and he is due back in Criminal Court on April 17, according to public records.

An attorney for the suspect could not immediately be reached for comment.
RIKERS ISLAND, N.Y. -- Whats next for Rikers Island when the massive prison facility closes in 2027?

How about a solar farm and wastewater treatment plant, says Queens Councilman Costa Constantinides.

Other recommendations for the future of the gigantic, 413-acre site include housing or a new runway for LaGuardia Airport.

Youre not going to bring large buildings there, Constantinides said, according to a Crains New York report Tuesday. Youre not going to build a new runway, tear up the [marine] ecosystem there. Its not appealing to anyone in this neighborhood."

Constantinides, a Democrat from Astoria, said just a quarter of Rikers surface being dedicated to solar panels and battery installations to store solar-generated energy would allow the city to close the gas- and oil-burning power plants in his district and beyond, writes Crains.

As for where inmates will stay when Rikers closes in eight years, four smaller, safer and fairer jails are expected to open in every borough except Staten Island.

While Mayor Bill de Blasio has maintained Staten Island will not be home to a prison, a recent report released by an independent commission, which the Advance wrote about in December, says the city should re-examine constructing a jail on Staten Island.

The borough previously housed the state-run Arthur Kill Correctional Facility. It closed in 2011.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  A new charitable fund, launched in memory of an inspirational nurse at a Tottenville special needs school, aims to improve the lives of children with disabilities and those who care for them.

The Maureen Elkins Fund for Families, launched in 2017 to help Staten Island families with special needs children and organizations serving the developmental disabilities community, has $15,000 in funds to share and is seeking applicants.

The organization, founded by the family of the late Maureen Elkins, raised the money at its first-ever fundraiser  a roast of her son Kevin Elkins -- in September 2018. Theyre looking to distribute the funds beginning in April.

Maureen Elkins, of Tottenville, was a mother to eight children and a lifelong nurse to special needs children. Her career at the Volunteers of America Early Intervention Center in Tottenville, which prepares developmentally delayed 3- to 5-year- old children for kindergarten, spanned nearly 25 years.

Throughout her life, which ended in 2015 at the age of 58, the mother of eight also cared for dozens of foster children, including disabled children and mothers in their teens.

Since sharing funds with special needs families is the perfect way to honor his mother, Kevin Elkins didnt even mind being roasted last September at the first fundraiser in the Vanderbilt at South Beach.

It was so much fun, the West Brighton resident recalled with a laugh, admitting that his ego did take a good hit.

It suffered a little bit, he mused.

To be eligible for the funds, a family or organization must be based on Staten Island, have at least one special needs child for which funding is requested, and complete the online application form. Applicants can self-nominate or be nominated by others in the community, Kevin Elkins said.

The fund, and future fundraisers, are the perfect way to honor his mothers legacy, he said.

We will be able to touch and assist people and organizations who do need it, and thats what she was all about, he said. She was all about helping those who needed it the most. I think because she loved her job so much, this is, in many ways, the only responsible way we can honor her.

All applications will be reviewed by the funds board of directors, siblings Kevin and Jennine and their father, Thomas. And the entire family -- including sons, Michael and Joseph; daughters, Gabriela Dennis, Melissa Powell, Nicole El-Maraghy and Maddy Elkins -- will all have input, Kevin Elkins said.

Growing up with such a generous mother affected all of their lives, he added.

It made us more aware, he said. We were very lucky to be aware of people enduing challenges. It made us more tolerant and, frankly, compassionate. We were very, very fortunate in that regard.

Families who receive funding will be able to use it for extra services, respite care and fun, family-centric activities they may not otherwise have a chance enjoy, he said. Whatever people think is important, we want to make that happen, he said.

Grants to organizations will support the establishment and enhancement of recreational opportunities, further educational opportunities or help enable greater access to a network of local professionals (teachers, therapists, attorneys, etc.).

There is already a playground named in Maureen Elkins honor at the Tottenville early intervention center, paid for with the initial flood of donations received at the time of her death.

At her wake and funeral, we realized how many lives she touched on a daily basis, Kevin Elkins said. We felt a responsibility to continue that legacy forward.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The controversial trial-by-combat lawyer facing money laundering and kidnapping charges in an alleged scrap-metal fraud scheme agreed to a plea agreement Monday afternoon in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Richard Luthmann, 39, agreed to plead guilty to a count of wire fraud conspiracy and a count of extortion conspiracy in a written agreement with the government.

In court, Luthmann was reserved as the judge confirmed that he was aware of the contingencies surrounding the plea deal.

This is a serious decision that you have to make, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ramon E. Reyes said to Luthmann at the hearing.

Luthmann spoke firmly about his intentions to accept the written plea deal. However, during questioning Luthmann said a hospital visit in April 2018 led him to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and anxiety.

Luthmann said he takes daily medication for bipolar disorder, but the medication does not interfere with his decision making.

Yes, yes it is, Luthmann said when the judge asked if his mind was clear Monday afternoon.

Luthmanns attorney, Arthur Aidala, said he was confident Luthmann was fully aware of his decision to agree to the plea deal.

In June, a federal judge ordered the Staten Island lawyer to undergo a mental competency evaluation after Luthmann allegedly wrote a threatening Game of Thrones-inspired letter to a potential government witness, who sources identified as his wife.

Reyes asked Luthmann to explain the circumstances surrounding the charges he pled guilty to in order to be able to effectively convince a jury and United States District Court Judge Jack Weinstein, who will accept or decline the plea agreement at a later date, that there was an agreement by Luthmann to commit the acts of conspiracy.

After reading back the court statute to Reyes, Luthmann was required to speak more specifically about the charges against him, and why he should be considered guilty.

I was representing a company that was ripping off Chinese people and companies in the scrap metal business, Luthmann said of the count of wire fraud conspiracy.

While Luthmann said that he was not present at the Dec. 5, 2016 incident in which a gun was brandished in an effort to settle a business debt, he said he participated in the conspiracy.

Luthmann arranged for a co-conspirator to come to his office under the guise of signing some paperwork, a criminal complaint said.

George Padula and Michael Beck, two individuals identified as conspirators in the case, entered the room and when the co-conspirator tried to run out the door, Beck pushed him into a seat, said the indictment.

Beck told the man he owed him $10,000. Beck pointed a gun at the mans head and knee, the indictment said, then Beck gave the gun to Padula and left the room, telling Padaula to shoot the man in the knee, said the complaint.

Padula removed the bullets, told the man Beck was serious and walked him out of the office, instructing him not to go to police, the indictment said.

Beck and Padula have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Luthmann faces a maximum of 20 years in prison; however, the current suggested sentence, according to Reyes, is between 63 and 78 months.

Weinstein will not be bound to the suggested sentence, depending on the circumstances surrounding the case.

Luthmann agreed not to pursue an appeal if Weinstein sentences him to 83 months or less. If the judge accepts the plea deal, the other charges will be dismissed.

In addition, Luthmann agreed to pay $130,000 for criminal forfeiture in connection with the scheme at an annual rate of 5 percent of his total income until the amount is paid in full.

Luthmann has been in federal custody since the summer and is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  Just when you thought the tale of the Staten Island mob boss murder couldnt get any odder, President Donald Trump and Mayor Bill de Blasio make cameo appearances.

Hey, this is Staten Island. Were known for a couple of things: The mob. Voting for Trump. Hating on de Blasio.

Now weve got them all in the same whacky story.

Its been an odd tale from the beginning.

Reputed Gambino family crime boss Francesco Franky Boy Cali is gunned down outside his home. Its the first assassination of a Mafia don since Islander Paul Castellano was shot to death on John Gottis orders in 1985. A coming gang war, perhaps. That made it tabloidy enough.

But then the swerve: Eltingville resident Anthony Comello, 24, is arrested for the crime. And the murder apparently had to do with the fact that Cali didnt want Comello dating Calis niece.

Forget the mob. This was crime of passion. What a way for a mob chieftain to go.

The way the police have laid things out, its appears Cali didnt see it coming. Comello is said to have backed into Calis car outside the home. Cali comes out. They talk. Comello hands him a license plate. The two men shake hands. When Calis back is turned, Comello allegedly fires 10 shots from a 9mm handgun.

So many questions. Its created its own parlor game of speculation.

What kind of mob boss just walks out of his house into the night without a bodyguard? Or a gun? Had Cali never seen a mob movie in his life? He couldnt smell a potential setup? Maybe 30 years of mob peace had dulled the senses. Or maybe Cali thought that Comello was just some off-the-wall punk, so Calis guard was down.

Or maybe it really was a mob hit, with Comello set up as some kind of unwitting patsy. But if thats the case, why didnt his mob runners eliminate him after the murder? In the Martin Scorcese movie, someone would have been sent with Comello to take him out. Or a couple of hoods would have been waiting to ambush him down the street.

So, as Comellos attorney has famously said, something is very wrong here.

But then it gets even wackier: While handcuffed in court, Comello held up his open palm to reporters so they could see the Trump-inspired MAGA Forever written there, along with Patriots In Charge USA and United We Stand. A symbol for the conservative conspiracy theory group QAnon was also visible.

What, youre surprised to see this coming from a 24-year-old Staten Islander?

This just days after Trumps fiery invective was blamed for inspiring the slaughter at two New Zealand mosques, killings that were carried out by an avowed white supremacist.

So Trump figures into the New Zealand massacre and the murder of a reputed Staten Island crime boss. Thats some reach the presidents got.

While liking Trump, Comello apparently has some beef with de Blasio. According to the New York Post, Comello showed up at City Hall a few months ago to protest de Blasio, saying the mayor deserved to be in jail.

Not the first time Ive heard that from a Staten Islander, either.

It all takes the story out of GoodFellas mob territory and puts it squarely into the lone-gunman realm of Taxi Driver.

Theres no telling where the story will go next.
The senseless killing of 50 people at two New Zealand mosques is just the latest in a crisis that no one seems to care about. Over the past several years, there has been a rise in violent killings and attacks perpetrated by the far-right, and what do our leaders do to address the situation?

Nothing.

In fact, many believe that the rise in attacks by extremists has been helped by the rhetoric of our President.

Donald Trump may deny it all he wants, but the truth is that his words are encouraging this rise in hatred. When one in such a position of power calls Muslims, immigrants and people of color terrorist, rapist, and criminals, and says that they are invading the country, he is condoning, if not outright encouraging, white nationalists and extremists to come out in the open and commit acts of violence.

In such troubled times as these, our political leaders should acknowledge the problem and do what they can to make the nations of the world safer. Instead, they deny the existence of this growing crisis, even as their words give extremists the go-ahead to terrorize and kill.

We can do better than that, and, in fact, we must, unless we want our children to live in a world where they can be harmed or killed for their religion, place of origin or the color of their skin.

(William Henri IV is Grymes Hill resident.)
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South Africa: SACU, Moz negotiations on Brexit to continue

Negotiations to ensure uninterrupted trade between the Southern African Customs Unions (SACU), Mozambique and the United Kingdom will continue as uncertainty continues over Brexit, says Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies.

We didnt conclude on Friday but we did make progress. There were two main issues outstanding in our quest to establish a parallel EPA [Economic Partnership Agreement], said the Minister.

South Africa, as part of the SACU group of countries, together with Mozambique, has been in negotiations with the United Kingdom (UK) to try to negotiate preferential trade agreements after the British exit (Brexit) from the European Union (EU).

Briefing reporters in Cape Town on Monday, Davies said a meeting held on Friday did not conclude all outstanding negotiation issues. The sticking issues revolved around sanitary and phytosanitary legislation (certificates, which are issued to individual exporters) as well as cumulation under the rules of origin.

The rules of origin facilitator defines cumulation as a provision that allows considering goods obtained in or processing taking place in one free trade agreement (FTA) member country as originating in another.

At a media briefing prior to the ministerial engagement on Friday, Davies had said the parties were stuck on the issue of cumulation.

On Friday, an agreement was still not reached at the ministerial meeting between SACU and Mozambique, as well UK Junior Trade Minister George Hollingbery.

The two issues were on the sanitary and phytosanitary SPS [legislation]. The proposal of the British was that all the certificates, except for established listings would be rolled over for one year, after which the British would decide on their own system, Davies said.

For established listings, these would be recognised for six months and then there would be another six months renewable. Davies said the UK would only be able to withhold these certificates on reasonable grounds.

SACU and Mozambique, said Davies, argued for a one-year extension on everything.

We wanted to know what the reasonable grounds would be for withholding [the certificates]. We were told that there would be a letter coming from the Department of Agriculture and we said we need to see that letter and see if it gives adequate comfort.

The group is yet to receive the letter.

The other issue is that the UK wants SACU and Mozambique to recognise full cumulation on anything they have from the EU, which the group can concede for a period of time but not in perpetuity. However, under the EPA, the group does not get cumulation in reverse.

They [the UK] want full cumulation, we had quite a lot of discussion with Minister Hollingbery around that, said the Minister, adding that the UKs intention is to ensure continuation with the arrangements of the EU.

At the meeting, the UK acknowledged that what they were asking is something different.

At the end of the day, Davies said, that was the red line and they would not budge.

Clause on the current EPA

The UKs standpoint has some implication for the group, as a result of a clause in the current EPA with the EU. This means that if the group offers Britain anything better, this would have to be extended to the rest of the EU.

If we were to agree to the British proposal in this regard, we would be bound to extend it to the rest of EU and I think we need time to consider our position on that. This is the position of the group as a whole - not just that of South Africa, so we left the discussion there, said Davies.

Withdrawal agreement and implications for parliament

Last week, the British parliament voted on the Withdrawal Agreement and subsequently voted that they would not accept a withdrawal without an agreement. They also voted to ask for an extension to the leave the EU at the end of June, as opposed to the 29 March 2019 deadline.

That extension is not just dependent what the British want but also on what the EU is prepared to agree to, said Davies.

The Withdrawal Agreement entails no transition period from the time the UK leaves the EU and EU laws would stop applying immediately to the island nation.

South Africa was initially hopeful of concluding a deal before the National Assembly is dissolved on Wednesday ahead of the elections on 8 May.

 The possibility of us putting down something through this fifth Parliament has basically passed. We have lost that opportunity but we still think that there are a number of possibilities that will ensure that we dont have a serious interruption of trade with the UK.

While a lot of uncertainty still remains, the UK is scheduled to have another vote on the Withdrawal Agreement this week.

If there is a Withdrawal Agreement in place, the UK will leave the bloc next Friday. However, all existing trade agreements between the EU and third parties will continue to be applied as is until the end of 2020.

During this time, the UK is expected to negotiate a trade agreement with the EU, which would ultimately affect SACU and Mozambiques options.

However, if the UK is granted extension until the end of June, then there will be time for South Africas sixth Parliament to meet and consider the agreement.

We agreed that we will continue to discuss these issues while we await clarification on the interpretation of the reasonable grounds on which the UK would not recognise the establishment listings, said Davies.

In the meantime, the group will analyse the matter as well as formulate a response on the cumulation matter.

Tariff schedule

The UK on Wednesday published its schedule of tariffs that it will charge countries if it leaves the EU without any agreement.

The SACU and Mozambique groups preliminary analysis of the tariffs is that except for 469 products or tariff lines, their products will enter the UK duty free. These products will include agricultural exports like fruit.

But there would be items in the 469 products that would apply to items that we export. That would include vehicles and components -- that would be the big one for us. They would also include fish and meat. All of the other countries would have products that would not be treated as well as they currently are, explained Davies.

If the UK leaves without an agreement, then they would revert to the schedule that was put in by the EU into the WTO (World Trade Organisation) in the 1990s.

In a number of cases, the tariffs would be higher than what would be charged under the EPA.

Responding to a question on whether the negotiations are worth being pursued, Davies said SACU and Mozambique are trying to replicate the rules of origin that the group currently has in the existing EPA.

Our conclusion was that the first thing we need to do is to do a deep dive. Its not just whether or not the individual products in our trade with the UK could cause us a problem, but it also could be the implications of extending the same to the EU -- thats the issue.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2019-03-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Flying to the Moon without actually taking off

Four months before the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing by the Apollo 11 astronauts, six 'cosmonauts' will embark on a simulated journey to the Moon.





Space station on Earth (Credit: DLR)

The special experiment will begin at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IBMP RAS) in Moscow on 19 March 2019 at 14:00 local time. Three female and three male 'cosmonauts' will embark on a simulated journey to our terrestrial neighbour. Closed off from the outside world, they will live, work and research in conditions of complete isolation in the Moscow NEK Habitat.

"Only biomedical research of this nature will make future journeys to other celestial bodies possible. Six of these experiments have been developed in Germany," notes Christian Rogon, SIRIUS Project Manager at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) Space Administration. DLR is participating in the SIRIUS-19 isolation study together with the French space agency CNES under the leadership of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the US space agency NASA.

Three women and three men on board

In recent times, the Moon has again become a focus of attention for all the major space agencies. "However, before any meaningful research can be conducted on the Moon, crews must be trained to successfully complete such a mission. For this, as in SIRIUS-19, they must be able to live for a long time under conditions in which they will be subjected to a mixture of psychological stress, due to total isolation, and a high degree of pressure to perform well.

Only in this way can we learn more about the interaction of body and mind in isolation," Rogon explains. These insights are best gained when a simulated lunar mission takes place in a setting that is as realistic as possible. The SIRIUS-19 experiment is being conducted under the command of 44-year-old Russian cosmonaut Evgeny Tarelkin, who has already carried out one space mission. During the experiment, Tarelkin will embark on a 122-day lunar journey together with his crew  Reinhold Povilaitis, Allen Mirkadyrov (both US Americans), Daria Zhidova, Anastasia Stepanova and Stephania Fedeye (all Russian).

"The interesting thing for SIRIUS-19 is that the crew is composed of an equal number of men and women. How does a mixed-sex crew cope with the challenges of isolation? How does it deal with potential mishaps? How does it react to increased performance pressure? These are all fascinating questions, and we are very curious to find out the answers," says an enthusiastic Christian Rogon as the study begins.

Closed doors (Credit: DLR)

The daily work routine on an orbital lunar station

After travelling for three days, the crew will enter lunar orbit and approach an orbital Moon station; their small capsule will finally dock on the 10th day. The 'cosmonauts' will then be able move into their new living quarters and use the entire station, which from this point on will be their home and their workplace for 100 days. They will undergo daily health and fitness checks, engage in sporting activities, complete safety training, keep the station germ-free, and dock and undock the spacecraft.

Numerous experiments will complete their eight-hour workday. In the morning, they will eat breakfast together. All other meal times will vary, depending on the daily schedule of the 'cosmonauts'. Every 30 days, a space freighter will deliver food and consumables to the orbital lunar station. Sleeping and waking periods will remain, as far as possible, the same as on Earth. "Since the monotony of working in a very limited space can become a major challenge, the crew will also have to respond to unexpected technical failures and malfunctions, such as a five-day break in communications with 'ground control'," Rogon explains. Radio communication with Earth is generally delayed by five minutes in each direction.

Docking manoeuvres in the isolation trial

During their stay on the orbital lunar station, the cosmonauts must carry out a total of 70 experiments. Six of these have been developed in Germany and are for the most part funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) via the DLR Space Administration. For example, researchers at the DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Cologne are testing a new training programme that allows astronauts to practise docking spacecraft with space stations. In this way they can independently learn the mental and motor skills they need to manually control objects with six degrees of freedom. The Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart is also focusing on docking manoeuvres. In a project devised by former German astronaut Reinhold Ewald, the six 'cosmonauts' have to simulate steering the brand-new Russian spacecraft PTK Federatsiya and docking at a Moon station, the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G).

The SIRIUS crew (Credit: DLR)

Training and sleeping for space exploration

Two experiments developed by the German Sport University Cologne are investigating the most effective training methods for astronauts, meant to counteract the reduction in muscle and bone mass as well as impairment of the cardiovascular system and risks to psychological wellbeing that occur on space missions. Sleep doctors from the Berlin Charite hospital are testing whether and how healthy, well-trained 'cosmonauts' in isolation, who do not get enough (or any) sleep, find that this affects their performance the next day, and their autonomous nervous systems. In addition, the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin would like to find out how crews on long-term missions can remove bacterial contamination or prevent it altogether in the first place, thus avoiding risk of infection and damage to the technical equipment. For this purpose, they are testing surfaces of structured and refined silver (AGXX) and chemically modified graphite surfaces (GOX).

At the halfway point  an excursion to the lunar surface

In addition to the numerous experiments and the many everyday challenges, one very special highlight awaits the crew  a visit to the Moon. "Exactly halfway through the SIRIUS isolation study, four 'cosmonauts' will land on the lunar surface in a small capsule. Once there, they will carry out several 'Moon walks' while wearing spacesuits, collect samples and prepare a 'settlement' on the Moon  a very special experience," Christian Rogon emphasises.

Two 'cosmonauts' will stay behind in the orbital lunar station and monitor the excursion. After the return and successful docking of the lander with the station, the whole crew will orbit the Moon together for another 30 days. During this time, they will remotely control rovers on the lunar surface, dock more spaceships with the orbital station, and carry out numerous experiments before returning to Moscow.
People fleeing violent relationships, unexpectedly diagnosed with a long-term illness or at risk of elder financial abuse will be the focus of a new banking guideline to help vulnerable customers.

The Australian Banking Association (ABA) will on Wednesday open public consultation on the guideline - the latest move by banks to rebuild community trust in the wake of the royal commission, which uncovered widespread evidence of misconduct in the financial sector.

"There is no doubt the royal commission showed that banks need to lift their game when it comes to vulnerable customers, particularly in the design of products and offering of support services," ABA chief executive Anna Bligh said. Credit:Jessica Hromas

The ABA said the guideline would outline banks' commitment to ensuring customers could access "appropriate banking products and services, which are suitable and fair for their circumstance". It will be launched later in the year.

There is no doubt the royal commission showed that banks need to lift their game when it comes to vulnerable customers, particularly in the design of products and offering of support services," ABA chief executive Anna Bligh said.
Ethical investment funds are reviewing their shareholdings in Facebook after the platform was used to livestream the Christchurch terror attacks, as digital giants scramble to defend their practices amid growing global criticism.

Amid a bipartisan push for tougher laws in the absence of voluntary changes, the Morrison government will convene a meeting next week with social media companies, internet providers and agencies to address how platforms were "used and abused" in the New Zealand tragedy.

Facebook is facing scrutiny from shareholders and governments. Credit:SHUTTERSTOCK

Facebook, Google's YouTube, Twitter and other platforms struggled to contain the viral circulation of the video of Friday's mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 50 people. Facebook said it deleted 1.5 million uploads in the first 24 hours and YouTube has deleted "tens of thousands".

As the political pressure grows, superannuation and managed investment fund business Australian Ethical said it was "monitoring the information about Facebook's actions to remove the content" to determine whether to continue investing in the US-based behemoth.
David Teohs TPG is a company in limbo - experiencing a sliding doors moment. In May, the competition regulator will decide which of these doors the telco can move through - either down the path of a merger with Vodafone or to a less palatable place which includes dealing with a $1.2 billion 4G spectrum white elephant.

Some of the value of this spectrum has been written down (by $92 million) but if we follow the piece of string that leads to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission successfully blocking the TPG/Vodafone merger, then TPG spectrum does not have $1.2 billion or even $1.1 billion of value.

An auction of this spectrum (or any asset) requires interested buyers. Its hard to see how there could be any more than three potential parties - Telstra, Optus and Vodafone - and even harder to see any of them mounting a bidding war for it.

David Teoh. Credit:

The main reason is that these established mobile telecommunications operators (mostly) already have sufficient 4G and might be interested in bits to fill out any gaps in their networks.
Retail giant Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has moved into the residential build-to-rent sector after forming a new partnership worth 750 million ($1.2 billion) adjacent to Westfield Stratford City in London.

In a tie-up to be called Cherry Park Partnership, it is with the Canadian Public Sector Pension Investment Board and global real estate company QuadReal Property Group.

Construction work is set to start in the second quarter of 2019, with a phased completion and a delivery expected post 2023.

The Westfield Stratford City centre in London will see new apartments developed nearby as build-to-rent. Credit:Bloomberg

The Cherry Park Development will feature about 1200 new homes with amenities including a residents gym, swimming pool, workspace and high-quality public areas. These will be rented instead of owned by tenants.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison must declare Indigenous child suicides a national emergency and overhaul current strategies, peak medical and health bodies have demanded.

The call comes in the wake of harrowing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child suicide rates, and the WA coroners inquest into the deaths of 13 young people, five aged between 10 and 13 years in the Kimberley region.

A joint statement from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) and the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) has urged Mr Morrison and all state and territory leaders to make Indigenous youth suicides an urgent national health priority.

The organisations called on the leaders to launch a "coordinated crisis response and invest in Aboriginal-led strategies before more young lives are tragically lost.

In January, five Aboriginal girls aged between 12 and 15 years took their own lives.
"In their minds, in this clash of civilization, white men are in a weaker position because their women are not doing the work of reproducing," said Arun Kundnani, a professor at New York University and author of "The Muslims Are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror.""They are saying, 'Look, Muslims have got their women where they need to be, and we're not doing a good job at that.'" They are saying, 'Look, Muslims have got their women where they need to be, and we're not doing a good job at that.' The concern over birthrates has hit a fever pitch in part because of recent studies showing sperm counts and testosterone declining. Some men are buying sperm counters to use at home, and some are turning to testosterone replacement therapy, convinced that modernity has feminized them. These have given old fears a new scientific sheen and led many in these communities to more apocalyptic, violent politics. "It's all related to lower sperm counts and increasing sexual dysfunction," said Paul Elam, head of A Voice for Men, a men's rights group. "In my community right now, there's almost this nihilism and cynicism that says, 'Let it burn.'" And so an old rallying cry is getting refurbished for a new generation.

"The way that emotion gets engaged in the right wing today is almost always around questions of fertility," said Paola Bacchetta, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who serves on the board of the Center for Right-Wing Studies. "It's about their anxieties about their male others. They fear that they will overproduce them and eliminate them." Though these fears fester in online message boards, it is spreading to more mainstream right-wing conversations. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, for one, has engaged in some of these conversations. In January, he opened his show with a segment he said was on "the biggest issue facing this country going forward," bigger than wars and gross domestic product: the collapse of families. The major cause of that collapse, he said, was that some women now out-earn some men. Loading "This is why important science is no longer being conducted," Carlson said. "It's why art isn't being made and comedy is dying." The birthrate panic has been bubbling back up for some time. In a 2012 book by French philosopher Renaud Camus, he argued that all Western countries were reckoning with erasure by birthrate. That has helped fuel nativist campaigns such as the one by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. It became the animating philosophy in the Charlottesville, Virginia, attack. And Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, tweeted in 2017: "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."

Many of these groups have seized on statistics showing a slowing birthrate in some Western countries. In the United States, the birthrate is now about 1,765.5 births per 1,000 women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is below the level necessary to keep the population stable without immigration. The birthrate conversation  and the question that goes with it, of women's continued freedom  has become a key recruitment tool for white supremacists. It is often the first political point of agreement a white supremacist recruiter online will find with a target, especially with young people. Loading "In gaming and comic books and all these things that aren't politically related, anti-feminism is an easy access point to make your case and then begin people's journeys," said Annie Kelly, a doctoral student at the University of East Anglia in Britain who is researching the impact of digital cultures on anti-feminism and the far-right. Clifford Leek, a professor of sociology at the University of Northern Colorado and the president of the American Men's Studies Association, said the recruiters would focus on teenagers who were experiencing insecurities and who had already been exposed to some of these ideas online.

That has made old debates new again. And in the loose collection of anti-feminist blogs known as the "manosphere," basic ideas around gender equality that have long been taken for granted are now being relitigated. Ideas like banning women from the workplace are bandied around casually in these communities. And most of it is presented amid memes and jokes, as was the case throughout the New Zealand suspect's manifesto. "Good-faith proponents have this naive understanding that bad ideas can be defeated by the power of argument," Kelly said. "Bad-faith proponents have a vested interest in the idea being back on the table." In the loose collection of anti-feminist blogs known as the "manosphere," basic ideas around gender equality ... are now being relitigated. Once a group of people in an online forum agree that declining white birthrates are an existential threat, then the conversation turns to policies. In some cases the response is that nonwhites should be killed. Often the response is white women need to be re-educated. "What's gaining more of a foothold is the idea of reversing a woman's right to vote," she said. "That was something I used to see in the overtly neo-Nazi spaces, but now I'm seeing it introduced in less extremist spaces. First introduced as a joke, of course, then as an acceptable policy that maybe not all users agree with but is worth discussing."
Driving a car or riding a motorcycle into the path of Canberra's light rail will cost you a fine of $464 and three demerit points under an extensive list of road transport offences which are now in operation.

If a driver fails to move out of the path of an approaching light rail then that would incur a $200 fine and a loss of three demerit points, while the same penalties would apply for any driver failing to give way to light rail.

An incident like this could cost the driver an automatic three demerit points and a $464 fine. Credit:ACT government

Both offences sit under road transport regulations which were introduced in 2005, years before light rail was considered for the ACT.

Now that light rail testing is in full swing in Canberra ahead of its official April start-up, all drivers, motorcyclists, bicycle riders and pedestrians will need to keep a watchful eye out for the big red carriages or face some significant penalties.
Three-month-old alpaca Paprika is settling into her new home in Giralang, under the careful eye of Nils Lantzke.

Although the curious young alpaca only arrived from Sutton on Monday, she is getting on well with her new companion Hercules and the people around the pair.

Nils Lantzke, pictured, feeds three-month-old Paprika, centre, and Hercules, left. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Mr Lantzke was surprised during a radio interview with weekend breakfast on Hit 104.7 Canberra on Saturday morning with the news that some local businesses had banded together to buy him a new alpaca after a tragic event earlier in the week.

Terracon Legal, Papas Painting, Papas Projects and Lit Consulting all pitched in to help Mr Lantzke get a new alpaca.
Der beruchtigte One-Night-Stand- also einfacher Sex ohne Liebe, ohne Verpflichtungen, Chats, Telefonanrufe oder nochmalige Treffen- wohl Jeder in Osterreich kennt in seinem Freundes- oder Bekanntenkreis eine oder mehrere Personen, die bereits schon einmal einen ONS (One-Night-Stand) hatten. Doch wie sieht es am Morgen danach aus? Bereuen Frauen- als das emotionale Geschlecht den ONS eher als Manner? Und wenn ja, wieso?

Wie kommt es uberhaupt zum One-Night-Stand?

Zum ONS kommt es in der Regel mit fremden Mannern, die die Frau meist auswarts, zum Beispiel in einer Bar oder einem Club kennen lernen. Meist spricht der Mann die Frau an oder sie tanzen im Vorfeld miteinander, tauschen auch erste Zartlichkeiten wie Kusse oder Streicheleinheiten miteinander aus. Erreicht die Stimmung ihren prickelnden Hohepunkt, folgt meist die Frage: Zu mir oder zu dir?, ein oft untrugliches Zeichen, dass das Gegenuber an mehr interessiert ist, als die Frau zum Beispiel nur nach Hause zu bringen. Nach der miteinander verbrachten Nacht geht der Ubernachtungsgast in der Regel schnell seiner Wege- sofern nicht explizit ein weiterer Kontakt oder zu Beispiel ein ausgedehntes Fruhstuck mit (oder ohne) zweiter Runde vorgeschlagen wurde.

Der kleine, aber feine Unterschied zwischen Frau und Mann

Obwohl in den meisten Lebensbereichen nahezu Gleichheit zwischen Frau und Mann herrscht, kann dieser Fakt nicht ganzlich auf die One-Night-Stands ubertragen werden. Etliche Studien, beispielsweise aus den USA haben ergeben, dass Manner im Gegensatz zu Frauen nicht nur haufiger die Chance auf einen ONS ergreifen, wenn sie sich ihnen bietet, auch die Reue am nachsten Morgen betrifft in der Haufigkeit eher das weibliche Geschlecht. Doch warum ist das so?

Auf der einen Seite steht der Sex an sich- Manner konnen in den haufigsten Fallen einen Orgasmus erreichen, selbst wenn sich die Frau im Bett als eher mittelmaig entpuppt, somit mussen sich die Manner nicht unbedingt von ihren Gefuhlen leiten lassen und kommen schneller und unkomplizierter auf ihre Kosten. Frauen hingegen brauchen oft eine Warmlaufzeit, ein mitunter langeres Vorspiel, um zum Orgasmus zu kommen- wenn sie ihn uberhaupt bekommen. Zum anderen spielen Emotionen und Gefuhle, dass eigene Wohlbefinden eine groe Rolle, gerade wenn es ins Schlafzimmer geht. Zudem ergab eine weitere Studie der Universitat Texas, dass sich Frauen auch Sorgen vor Geschlechtskrankheiten oder gar ungewollten Schwangerschaften machen. Der Mann ist auf den ersten Blick beim ONS also gar nicht von diesen Problemen betroffen.

Der gute Ruf- warum die Gesellschaft Frauen und Manner nicht gleichbehandelt

Aus weiteren Umfragen lasst sich ableiten, dass Frauen ebenso Lust auf einen ONS verspuren wie Manner, sie sich aber nach dem ONS (oder auch mittendrin) sehr groe Gedanken um ihren Ruf machen. In etlichen Gesellschaften- auch den westlichen- gelten Frauen, die gerne ONS nachgehen als Schlampe, billig leicht zu haben und vieles weitere mehr. Gehen Manner hingegen auf die Jagd konnen sie sich ohne Scham vor ihren Freunden oder Kollegen brusten, Frauen hingegen haben es nicht so einfach und halten sich mit ihren Erzahlungen auch im Freundeskreis eher zuruck.

Wer macht den ersten Schritt?

Ein weiteres Indiz, warum Frauen einen ONS ofter bereuen als Manner, fordert eine Umfrage einer Studie aus den USA zu Tage: dort wurde festgestellt, dass Frauen, die aus Eigeninitiative einen Mann angesprochen und mit ihm einen ONS verbracht hatten, diesen oft weniger bereuten als Frauen, die vom Mann angesprochen worden waren. Das Frauen ihr Objekt der Begierde uberhaupt ansprechen, hat auch mit einem Selbstbewusstsein und auch Korperbewusstsein zu tun. Frauen, die sich nicht wegen ihres Korpers oder ihrer Lust schamen, sprechen eher die Manner ihrer Wahl an, behalten somit ein Stuck Kontrolle und konnen den ONS ganz anders erleben und ggf. genieen. Frauen, die hingegen von Mannern angesprochen werden und somit ein Stuck Kontrolle abgeben, haben eher ein schlechtes Gefuhl nach einem ONS. Zwar konnen sie die Avancen eines Mannes, der sie zu sich nach Hause einladt, aber ablehnen, dennoch bleibt ein ungutes Gefuhl zuruck, selbstverstandlich nicht bei allen Frauen.

Schnelllebige Apps: der nachste ONS ist nur einen Klick entfernt

Ob Tinder, Lovoo und wie sie nicht alle heien- gerade Dating Apps machen es den Osterreichern Frauen (und Mannern) einfach, unkompliziert zu einem ONS zu gelangen. Dennoch sind die Frauen hier eher zuruckhaltender, wenn es um ONS geht, fragen zum Beispiel nicht direkt, ob man Interesse an einem ONS hatte, wahrend Manner viel subtiler vorgehen. In Hook-Up oder Pick-Up Foren tauschen sich vor allem Manner uber ihre Eroberungen oder Frauentypen aus, die sie am liebsten aufgabeln, als seien die ONS eine Art Volkssport. Auch hier unterscheiden sich Manner und Frauen. Gerade gesellschaftstechnisch ist ein Umdenken notig, um Frauen bei einem ONS die gleichen Rechte und guten Gefuhle zuzugestehen wie den Mannern.

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A man who was arrested after being seen having sex in the Civic skate park avoided a jail sentence in the ACT Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

Carl Murphy, 38, was slapped with a 12 month good behaviour bond for committing an act of indecency without consent and must attend rehab and accept supervision from ACT Corrective Services.

He was also sentenced for unrelated matters, including possessing two large knives in Civic and consuming liquor in an unauthorised place.

The knife charge attracted a four month prison sentence, but considering Murphy had already spent more than five months in jail he was released having served his time.

The act of indecency occurred on a busy Friday night just before 6pm at the skate park on Cooyong Street. A woman, cycling home from work, called the police saying she had witnessed a man and woman having sex but held fears the woman was unconscious.
Commuters from Sydney's waterfront suburbs who frequently use ferries will be among the biggest beneficiaries of the Berejiklian government's promise to lower the weekly cap on fares for public transport to $50.

With cost-of-living pressures a key election issue, the Coalition has vowed to cut the weekly cap on Opal fares by 21 per cent from $63.20 to $50 if it is returned to power.

Ferry users will be among the biggest winners from a cut to the weekly Opal fare cap. Credit:Michele Mossop

They argue up to 55,000 commuters will benefit from the lower cap and thousands will save up to $686 a year.

While long-distance train commuters will be beneficiaries, Sydney University senior transport lecturer Geoffrey Clifton said ferry users would be among the biggest winners.
Pill testing needs to be part of the response to drugs at music festivals to help prevent any more deaths, Queenslands peak medical body says.

The Australian Medical Associations Queensland branch has thrown its weight behind calls for pill testing to be used at all music festivals, after six people died from drug-related causes over the summer.

AMAQ President Dr Dilip Dhupelia said it made medical sense to use pill testing at events where drugs were being used by young people.

Josh Tam, 22, died after falling ill at the Lost Paradise music festival near Gosford, NSW. Credit:Facebook

AMA Queensland supports a controlled, holistic approach to minimising harm and stopping deaths amongst young and unsuspecting drug users, Dr Dhupelia said.
Melbourne mother Rebecca Gleghorn calls her 18-month-old son Jack her "$40,000 miracle baby".

Ms Gleghorn was single and on the cusp of celebrating her 40th birthday when she decided to try and fall pregnant via a course of in-vitro fertilisation.

Rebecca Gleghorn and her son Jack. Credit:Joe Armao

She thought she knew what was ahead but nothing could have prepared her for the emotional roller coaster of fertility treatment.

"You go through everything from pure elation to reality checks to some really down days," she said.
A nine-year-old boy has spent the night with two other children in a room filled with boxes at Melbourne Airport after his flight to Sydney was diverted.

A Queensland mother is now demanding answers after she says she wasn't informed her son was spending the night sleeping at the airport.

Virgin Australia has apologised for a "breakdown in communication" after the boy, who was flying as an unaccompanied minor to Sydney from Brisbane to visit his grandparents, slept in a room near the airline's lounge with two other children.

The boys were able to make forts in the storeroom while they stayed overnight in Melbourne airport. Credit:Sunrise/Channel Seven

However, the airline says they "communicated regularly" with the child's nominated guardian - understood to be his grandparents - during the night.
NSW Labor leader Michael Daley has been forced to repeatedly apologise for comments he made about Asians "taking local jobs", with the controversy threatening to derail his fight to win key marginal Sydney seats with a high share of Chinese voters.

Just three days from the state poll, Mr Daley spent Tuesday defending the comments from last September in which he claimed young people were leaving Sydney and being replaced by foreigners.

The Opposition Leader conceded on Tuesday that some concerned Labor colleagues had called him after the video was released on Monday night, and he apologised to anyone who felt offended.

"A couple [of MPs] have rung up and wanted clarification and Ive spoken with them and theyve accepted what Ive said," Mr Daley said.
In a matter of days, the people of NSW will be asked to make a choice about the future of our state.

The stakes could not be higher, especially when it comes to the economy.

For the Liberals and Nationals, the economy matters. Not for its own sake, but for what it represents: millions of men and women, families, small business owners, workers and employers, all striving for a better future for themselves and their children.

Right now, the NSW economy is the strongest in the nation - a stark contrast to when Labor left office and NSW ranked last.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr has hit out at abhorrent hate-speech that may have fuelled the horrific massacre of 50 people at two Christchurch mosques last week, as territory politicians say they stand with the Muslim community.

Mr Barr on Tuesday morning led a series of speeches on a condolence motion in the Legislative Assembly expressing deep sorrow and support for all New Zealanders and the global Islamic community over the tragic killings last Friday.

Hundreds gathered at Canberra Islamic Centre to remember the Christchurch massacre victims. Credit:Jamila Toderas

During an emotional debate, Mr Barr, Opposition Leader Alistair Coe and ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury said they stood with the New Zealand and Muslim community here and abroad and defended Canberra's reputation as a welcoming city.

Mr Barr said the views that were apparently behind the attack were abhorrent and there was no place for such views in our society, and that the territory government stood against extremism, hatred and violence.
Canberra: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has denounced comments made by Turkey's president linking the Australian suspect in the New Zealand massacre with Australia and New Zealand's role in the WWI battle of Gallopoli.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison Credit:Peter Rae

"I find it a very offensive comment...and I will be calling in the Turkish ambassador to meet with me and discuss these issues," Morrison said on an ABC radio interview.

In inflammatory comments on Monday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that anyone who comes to Turkey with anti-Muslim sentiments would meet the same fate as ANZAC soldiers who died during the Gallipoli campaign.

Erdogan, speaking at a political rally, suggested Australia and New Zealand sent troops to Turkey in the World War I Gallipoli campaign as part of an anti-Islam-oriented campaign.
The Morrison government is vowing to triple the number of skilled workers heading to regional Australia as part of a bid to relieve population pressures on Sydney and Melbourne in a policy overhaul that cuts 30,000 places from the permanent migration intake.

The government will also give overseas students a new incentive to study outside the big cities by allowing them to work in Australia for a year after their courses as long as they stay in regional areas.

The changes raise the prospect of a hit to the economy from a cut in the overall intake, enabled in part by a reduction in the number of independent skilled workers coming to Australia without sponsorship from an employer.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday. Credit:AAP

But they stop far short of the drastic changes sought by NSW Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian last October when she called for migration to the nation's most populous state to be cut in half and brought back to the growth rate seen two decades ago.
London: Schoolchildren from five London areas will wear backpacks fitted with air sensors and become 'walking field scientists' in the fight against air pollution.

The experiment, which London mayor Sadiq Khan hopes will spread to other cities like Sydney and Melbourne, will see 250 children from five boroughs carry backpacks containing a 700-gram sensor and battery.

The sensor  made by Dyson using technology from their commercial air purifiers  is held in one pocket, leaving the rest of the bag free for the student's belongings.
He said the public debate and subsequent security response required to deal with the threat posed by far-right extremists had not kept pace with the response to that of Islamist radicalism despite a "big increase in far-right activity."

Khan also said media and social media companies should examine their roles and that tech companies should not be surprised if they are subject to tougher regulation after the alleged killer was able to livestream his murderous rampage on Facebook and YouTube.

"One of the consequences of the sort of language used by politicians, one of the consequences of the amplification of those messages is that it gives people the impression that their views and thoughts are acceptable."

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"We need to make sure that if somebody is identified as being somebody who is embarking on this path, then they're prevented from doing so, which means greater enforcement as well," he said.

"One of the things that I do know as the mayor and the briefings that I receive is that there has been an increase in the number of far-right extremists, far-right terrorists [and] the police and the security services are well aware of this. What there's not been is a discussion in the public about this phenomenon.

"There is a discussion, rightly so, about the phenomenon [of] Islamist terrorists but we need to make sure that we realise that actually there's been a big increase in the far right and actually there's a mirror  both of these groups say it's irreconcilable to be a Muslim and a Westerner, both of these groups say there is some sort of conspiracy from institutions.

"It's really important we learn from each other because I'm afraid this is a worldwide phenomenon."
London: British Prime Minister Theresa May will ask the European Union to delay Brexit for at least three months after the speaker of the House of Commons threw her plans for another vote on her twice-defeated divorce deal into crisis.

Nearly three years after Britain voted to leave the EU, its departure is still uncertain. Possible outcomes still range from a long postponement, leaving with May's deal, a disruptive exit without a deal, or even another referendum.

Just 10 days before the March 29 exit date that May set two years ago by submitting a formal 'Article 50' request to leave  and two days before a crucial EU summit  she was on Tuesday writing to European Council President Donald Tusk to ask for a delay, her spokesman said.

It was not immediately clear how long a delay she would seek. She had warned Parliament that if it did not ratify her deal, she would ask to delay Brexit beyond June 30, a step that Brexit's advocates fear would endanger the entire divorce.
After May they could wield influence on appointments to the organs of power in the EU, shaping European policy in the medium term and threatening the EU itself in the long term. Loading The battle of ideas that they are launching looks set to reshape Europes political landscape for years to come, they wrote. The term the great replacement, since adopted by white supremacists and nationalists, originated with French author Renaud Camus, who published Le Grand Remplacement in 2012. In it he argued native white Europeans were being reverse-colonised by non-white immigrants. The great replacement is very simple, he has said. You have one people, and in the space of a generation you have a different people.

In Europe his argument formed part of the core creed of the so-called Generation Identity, or Identitarians, a group of often young far-right activists. It spread quickly to the white supremacist and alt-right movements in America, where marching neo-Nazis and alt-right supporters shouted you will not replace us at rallies such as the notorious one in Charlottesville, Virginia. French far-right politician Marine Le Pen. Credit:Thibault Camus And it spread through viral videos: Canadian alt-right vlogger Lauren Southern, who is close to several members of Generation Identity in Europe, posted a video in 2017 titled The Great Replacement that has been viewed more than 600,000 times. Camus himself rejects the term identitarian, saying he doesnt want to play the identity politics game, and simply wanted France to stay French. However he has expressed his support for anti-immigrant politician Marine Le Pen.

In December an undercover Al Jazeera investigation revealed close ties between Generation Identity and National Rally  the rebranded populist National Front that Le Pen leads. Loading Reporters filmed the leader of GI in Lille claiming he wrote speeches for leaders of the RN (National Rally) and helped GI members find jobs within it. Al Jazeera saw evidence of entryism into RN, which has tried to purge itself of overtly racist members: a broader bid by GI to infiltrate Le Pens party and shape its policies. Le Pen's right-hand man, Florian Philippot, a reformer who led FNs "de-demonisation" strategy, left the party in September 2017 claiming it was making an "absolutely terrifying" return to the dark days of its most hardline past.

Former RN MP Marion Marechal, Le Pens niece who has left politics but is seen as a potential leader of the future should Le Pen fall, has reportedly called Camus Great Replacement theory not absurd, quoting a study that suggested indigenous French would be a minority by 2040. We want our country back: Marion Marechal-Le Pen. We want our country back, she told a US audience in 2018, saying France is in the process of passing from the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church to the little niece of Islam this is not the France that our grandparents fought for. She added there is a youth ready for this fight in Europe today. Marechal, like most Identitarians, insists she is opposed to violence but wants to achieve her aims through politics.

It is a common disclaimer deployed for extreme views. In the Netherlands, Party For Freedom leader Geert Wilders is even more frank than the French. Firebrand Dutch anti Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders. Credit:AP We are being replaced with mass immigration from non-western Islamic countries, he Tweeted in October, saying the solution was close our borders and stop Islam, now. His express aim is to de-Islamise the Netherlands, calling Islam an existential threat to our survival as a free nation.

He has claimed 77 million immigrants would enter Europe in the next 50 years and most of them are Islamic. If we do not stop them we will be colonised and Islamised. We will cease to exist. An election campaign poster of the German nationalist anti-migrant party AfD, Alternative for Germany, reading "Burkas? We like bikinis." Credit:AP Across the border in Germany, the far-right AfD used Identitarian tropes in its campaign for the 2017 election which put its MPs in the national parliament for the first time. One advertisement featured a pregnant white woman with the slogan New Germans? Well make them ourselves. Other slogans included get your country back. The party warned that Angela Merkels welcoming of refugees was leading to slow cultural extinction.

The AfD has fed off a wider radical street movement, dubbed Pegida or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West. And both are linked to the Identitarians. German publisher Gotz Kubitschek has close ties to Pegida and the Afd, and he attended one of the first meetings of the Bloc Identitaire in France in 2012. In northern Europe, so far, most Identitarian-friendly parties are far from power. But in Italy they are in government. Lega leader, deputy prime minister and the countrys most powerful politician, Matteo Salvini, has called for a Europe-wide alliance against mass immigration, linking the defence of borders with the wellbeing of children. Salvinis Lega party used to be a separatist movement for northern Italy. Then it adopted a new slogan: Italians first!. In 2016 Salvini complained that the Popes welcome to immigrants would encourage and fund an unprecedented invasion.

Salvinis close Lega ally Lorenzo Fontana has said he sees an identitarian conception of politics awakening all across Europe, with the turning point coming in the May 2019 election. It will change a lot, he told Politico last year. EU figures are worried. The Brexit debacle has helped to dampen anti-EU sentiment, they say, but European Parliament elections are seen as a second order vote and low turnout means anti-establishment parties do disproportionately well, one official said. Internal EU polls show clearly that immigration is a big concern for voters across the continent, though not the only one. In Italy, Hungary, Germany and Austria voters pick immigration as their top concern.

Extrapolating from current polls and we see a shrinking middle ground, the official said. Two decades ago the centre-left and centre-right combined for two-thirds of all EP seats, but in this election they are expected to get less than a half. In theory, the extremists are in the majority. If there is hope for centrists, it is in the likelihood that the wide range of anti-immigrant and anti-EU parties will not be able to work with each other. Attitudes to Russia , for example, vary strongly between right wing politicians in Poland (where the legacy of World War 2 and the Cold War still rouse strong emotions) and Italy (Salvini is reportedly a big fan of Vladimir Putin). Dennison and Zerka, from the ECFR, dont predict a stable anti-immigration compact in parliament  but they do expect extremists to cooperate tactically on migration issues. More anti-immigrant MEPs in the next parliament means their voices would become much stronger than they are today, which could limit the capacity of member states and the Council to seek a humanitarian and solidarity-based approach towards migration challenges  instead of securitising the issue, they say
Ankara: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invoked the history of Gallopoli to denounce the Australian shooter of two mosques in New Zealand.

Speaking at a campaign rally in the northern town of Eregli, Erdogan criticised New Zealand and Australia for sending troops to Turkey in the World War I Gallipoli campaign, claiming their motive was anti-Islam-oriented.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Credit:AP

"What business did you have here? We had no issues with you, why did you come all the way over here?" Erdogan said. "The only reason: we're Muslim, and they're Christian."

Erdogan told supporters: "If New Zealand fails to hold the attacker accountable, one way or another we will hold him to account."
Los Angeles: The University of Southern California said it may expel students tied to a brazen US college-admissions scam after reviewing their records, which could lead the college to throw out Full House actress Lori Loughlin's two daughters.

University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Credit:AP

The school said on Monday night it has already "placed holds on the accounts of students who may be associated with the alleged admissions scheme," preventing them from registering for classes or acquiring transcripts.

"Following the review, we will take the proper action related to their status, up to revoking admission or expulsion," the college said in a tweet on Monday night.

It did not name specific students, but Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli are among 50 people charged last week with participating in what federal prosecutors called a $US25 million bribery and fraud scam.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she will never speak the name of the Australian man charged over last Fridays Christchurch massacre, because he had sought notoriety by his actions.

"That is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless," she said in her first address to Parliament since the atrocity.

She called on New Zealanders to do the same. "Speak the name of those who were lost, rather than of the man who took them," she said.

"One of the roles I never anticipated having, and hoped never to have, is to voice the grief of a nation.
~ Minister of Justice has no say in pretrial detention decisions.~

PHILIPSBURG:--- The Prosecutors Office in a press release says that leader of the United Democrats and suspended Member of Parliament Theodore Heyliger will remain in Bonaire as he is currently in pretrial detention.

The release further states that on March 14th, 2019 during the proceedings circumstances associated with being detained in another country was elaborated on and the judge established then, that there are compelling arguments for the continued detention of Theodore Heyliger in Bonaire.

The court upheld the petition of the OM and ruled that Heyliger will remain in detention in Bonaire for the 60 days. The staff at the JCI prison on Bonaire is addressing the health concerns of Theodore Heyliger as it also does for others in the institution.

The Minister of Justice has no role in this judicial proceeding concerning pre-trial detention, contrary to what is suggested in some media. These are autonomous judicial decisions, without political interference. The Minister is responsible for the presence of an adequate detention facility on Sint Maarten, where all detainees can be housed.

At the moment, apart from Theodore Heyliger, there are other Sint Maarten prisoners being housed in detention facilities throughout the Kingdom. The Prosecutor considers this situation unfortunate because prison is an important institution for any country and prisoners should be able to be housed without risks and in a humane manner. Currently, Sint Maarten still has insufficient capacity for the number of detainees. For these reasons, the OM adjusted its detention policy a few months ago.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The Local Board of the Union ABVO (Algemene Bond van Overheidspersoneel), through their president Mr. Sharlon Cathalina, acknowledges the very important role that many women on Sint Maarten play in the workplace as well as in the community. It was with that in mind that they saw it very fitting recently, to use the opportunity surrounding International Womens Day, to recognize the female members of the Union.

The ABVO Union consists of members from among others the Immigration Department, the Tax Office, the Point Blanche Correctional Facility, the Police Force, Kooyman, Sint Maarten Port, SZV, Mental Health, Princess Juliana Airport, WINAIR. The Ladies were guests at a ceremony held by the union at their honor at the Princess Port the Plaisance Hotel.

The guest speakers at the event were Ms. Henrietta Doran-York and Ms. Daisiray Lake, who both provided captivating presentations, which were pleasantly received by those present.

Henrietta Doran-York, who was asked to share about herself as a hardworking woman in this society, began by sharing a little about herself as a born and raised St. Maarten (Middle Region) woman. She went on to speak about her experiences growing up in a large family, about her parents, neighbors, and others that stood out during her childhood and even after becoming an adult and forming her own family, which consist of her husband, 4 children and 3

grandchildren.

She went on about previous times when women in the village assisted each other and stuck together when times were rough. She observed this expression of closeness amongst the village women in those times. These women would feed and care for especially the neighborhood children as if they were all one family. Henrietta went on to mention a few names of some of the great women in the neighborhood who were greatly respected for their kind gestures and

tremendous strength. Women such as Ms. Maria, Ms. Alice Philips, Ms. Elly, Ms. Marjorie, Ms. Eva, Ms. Almin, Ms. Mary, Ms. George, Ms. Cynthia, her own grandmother Ms. Rose Ruan, Ms. Whilma, Ms. Muriel Lake and Ms. Eulalie Meyers who among many others gave much more their normal share.

Furthermore, Henrietta gave a synopsis of her work experiences over the years from being the first female prison official on Sint Maarten, then becoming the first female prison supervisor of the Netherlands Antilles, Member of Parliament of the Netherlands Antilles, Deputy Prison Director, Deputy Minister Plenipotentiary, President of the WICSU/PSU Union and Minister Plenipotentiary.

She encouraged the ladies to use their strength, resilience, and uniqueness to ban together and continue to aim high while standing up for what they perceive to be right and just.

In the end, she reminded the attendees that the women back in the day thrived on the fact that real Strength can only to be found in Unity. Therefore only through genuine togetherness, and with the help of the Almighty, can what may seem to be impossible, become possible.

Daisiray Lake, summarized her definition of success, with the intention of creating a level of awareness to each attendee.

She encouraged all to note areas in their life that they would like to be more successful in as the old adage goes .a goal is a dream set to paper. Dont just think it - ink it!

Daisiray further explained that her growth in certain areas of her life is due to her membership in Toastmasters International. I didnt know how much I would grow and how much fun Id have while doing it! Her 3 main reasons for remaining a toastmaster are:

1. Improved Confidence,

2. Networking,

3. The ability to travel and discover other cultures.

She also challenged all attendees to think about which misgivings are holding them back from achieving success, and also reminded them to Stand up, despite failures.

Cheer up, despite sorrow, and Succeed, despite the pain!

Her message was powerful but simple as she ended with the following:

"Ladies the universe is filled with stars, my wish to you is, just be sure to shoot for your very own star"

The MC for the event was the well-known Fernando Clark, who entertained and amused the attendees, almost bringing them to tears of laughter with his jokes and comedy.

The attendees were treated to a wonderful local lunch and had the time to socialize and bond with their union leaders and colleagues.

Mr. Cathalina as president of the Union thanked all members of the board of the ABVO and everyone else who worked tirelessly to make this event a tremendous success, mentioned that the Union plans to continue with these stimulating events with their members.

He extended a special word of thanks to Ms. Lake and Ms. Doran-York for their contribution as guest speakers at the event and presented them with flowers and tokens of appreciation.

The board of ABVO also presented all Ladies in attendance with a gift in appreciation of there hard work and contribution to the workplace in particular and the society in general.
USMCA: Noteworthy Changes

Posted by Publisher Internet

On 30th November, 2018, after a whole year of negotiations, the presidents of the USA and Mexico and the prime minister of Canada signed the new trade treaty titled United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) at the G20 Summit in Argentina. The ratification of the treaty is expected in the first semester of 2019.

Unlike NAFTA, USMCA should be considered as a new-generation treaty. It includes changes in digital commerce, where unnecessary obstacles are eliminated, guaranteeing the provision of a safe environment for consumers and certainty for investors.

Moreover, the paragraph on pharmaceuticals and medical devices has been revised, committing the parties to promoting healthcare and to providing incentives for research into and development of pharmaceutical products. Changes to the chemistry sector are also applied to make trading in the said pharmaceuticals more effective.

Key Revision 1 ? Competitiveness

This paragraph, proposed by Mexico, seeks to recognise the need for an integrated and coordinated focus to improve competitiveness (within USMCA and with other countries throughout the world).

A committee consisting of governmental representatives of the parties is to be responsible for providing incentives to production and the circulation of goods and services.

This paragraph recognises Mexico as a platform for trade with other countries, allowing for the autonomy of the party to handle international trade with limited USMCA jurisdiction.

Key Revisions 2 ? Environment

Promising content: it guarantees the application of environmental legislation in the territories of the parties through evaluation procedures, and more specifically:

commitment to prevent and reduce sea waste; promote sustainable forest practices; avoid whale poaching for commercial means; establish international trafficking of protected species as a serious felony.

Key Revisions 3 ? Significant Sector Changes in the Automotive Industry

A Regional Content Value (RCV) rate has been defined based on the net cost of the vehicle, resulting in the following percentages:

They will have to incorporate value of labor content (VLC):

40% of the vehicle?s value: wages of 16 USD per hour

70% steel and aluminum origin of the region

Limitations to the elaboration of the vehicle (except the United States):

Company certification

Parallel letter

Vehicles up to 2.6 million units

Car parts up to 108 billion USD

Percentages diverse light-transport and heavy-transport

USMCA is a response to emerging global issues, including those in healthcare, environment and technology, say the experts at Ecovis. USMCA has an initial term of 16 years, with a renewal of 16 years, and so forth consecutively. It may be subject to revision until its sixth year, with an option to leave at six months? notice.

At the office in Mexico, ECOVIS Quibrera Saldana, we provide consulting to international and national corporations handling trade within and outside the USMCA.

Author:

Benjamin Segura Garcia, Tax Consultant, ECOVIS Quibrera Saldana, Santa Fe, Mexico

Email: Benjamin.segura@ecovis.mx

Ecovis is a leading global consulting firm with its origins in Continental Europe. It has over 6,500 people operating in over 70 countries. Its consulting focus and core competencies lie in the areas of tax consultation, accounting, auditing and legal advice.

The particular strength of Ecovis is the combination of personal advice at a local level with the general expertise of an international and interdisciplinary network of professionals. Every Ecovis office can rely on qualified specialists in the back offices as well as on the specific industrial or national know-how of all the Ecovis experts worldwide. This diversified expertise provides clients with effective support, especially in the fields of international transactions and investments ? from preparation in the client?s home country to support in the target country.

In its consulting work Ecovis concentrates mainly on mid-sized firms. Both nationally and internationally, its one-stop-shop concept ensures all-round support in legal, fiscal, managerial and administrative issues.

The name Ecovis, a combination of the terms economy and vision, expresses both its international character and its focus on the future and growth.
4 smart ways to use security to power the business of the future

In the new era of work, our relationship with the workplace is defined by flexibility and mobility. Employees are working across the home, office, and blended spaces more than ever before, as well as working varied hours to suit the modern work schedule. This new hybrid workforce model holds the potential for more diverse talent and better productivity, but it also comes with its challenges  one being how to ensure security, health, and safety in the workplace. Strong and smart security ecosystem While nearly one-third of companies report that theyve implemented a hybrid model, according to a recent survey by STANLEY Security, many still have much to do to prepare their office for the future. Building a strong  and smart  security ecosystem is crucial in preparing for the future. As such, businesses should consider technologies that help protect their people, as well as safeguard their assets, optimise their operations, and secure their network. 1)Protect your people Implementation of a security ecosystem combines health, safety, and security hardware and software solutions seamlessly Nearly 60% of mid-market and enterprise businesses across the UK and US report that the health and safety of their employees and customers are a primary concern when implementing modern and hybrid working models. This begs the question: How can businesses create a safe and healthy work environment when 59% are planning to bring employees back on-site in some capacity within the next 18 months? The answer lies, in part, in the implementation of a security ecosystem that combines various health, safety, and security hardware and software solutions seamlessly. Integrating platform Nearly half (46%) of business decision-makers say they are interested in adopting an integrated platform such as this. This means integrating traditional and digital security solutions, then leveraging the data and insights they produce to further enhance the workplace experience. Take this example: With employees and visitors moving in and out of the office at different times, a business may lack oversight of occupancy or density levels, people flow, workspace scheduling, visitor check-in processes, and more. However, with visitor management, access control, and other building/business systems integrated, employees can reserve a workspace for a specific date and time and be granted access to the building. Leveraging AI and machine learning Visitors can pre-register, answer a health screening questionnaire, and receive a mobile credential before arriving. Once the visitor arrives on-site, the system can alert the respective department  all without the close contact typically required for traditional visitor check-in processes. When layering artificial intelligence and machine learning on top of the data, a business may identify trends in people flow and opportunities to optimise congested areas. They may also see that certain rooms within the building get more use than others and leverage these insights to manage their space more effectively. All of this is powered by a security ecosystem that can help a business better protect its people while realising other benefits in the process. 2) Safeguard your assets Businesses are concerned about the security of their assets when it comes to the hybrid workforce model Even more, businesses are concerned about the security of their assets when it comes to the hybrid workforce model. About 72% of leaders say this is, in fact, their primary concern with the hybrid approach. This figure isnt surprising when you consider the impact of the pandemic, which left many businesses closed either temporarily or permanently, with few people allowed on-site to manage facility operations. As a result of the pandemic, we saw tech adoption accelerate at an astonishing rate  simply because businesses had to implement cloud and remote technologies to survive during a time when buildings were closed indefinitely. Remote management and visibility This was particularly true for security solutions, such as cloud video surveillance and cloud access control solutions like wireless IoT-connected locks. Nine out of 10 businesses (91%) report that they have already implemented cloud security technology; of those, nearly half (48%) stated that this was due to the pandemic. These technologies allow for remote management and provide visibility into business operations at the same time. In a retail setting, for example, cloud video surveillance allows businesses to identify and track not only criminal activity, but also foot traffic patterns, peak operating hours, staff shortages, and more. Loss prevention strategy When integrated with the retailers point-of-sale (POS) system, businesses can gain greater insights into their traffic counts, end cap effectiveness, loyalty card activity, and a variety of POS exceptions, such as high-dollar transactions, repeated transactions, excessive returns, employee discounts, and more. For retailers especially, a security ecosystem means a more efficient loss prevention strategy that helps safeguard assets and profits. 3) Optimise your operations The future of work is still very much a work in progress, but one thing is clear: Businesses are looking for ways to increase efficiencies, drive cost savings, and, ultimately, optimise their operations  especially now with the challenges posed by price inflation. A relatively untapped opportunity for businesses to achieve these goals lies within their security infrastructure. Security technology and solutions gather incredibly rich data which, when unlocked, can help businesses understand how their buildings are being used, when the busiest times are, where there are highly trafficked areas, and more. Leveraging cloud video surveillance systems, businesses could identify emerging staff training needs Cloud video surveillance systems For example, by leveraging the insights produced by cloud video surveillance systems, businesses could identify emerging staff training needs, which could ultimately result in improved employee satisfaction and reduced attrition. However, much of this data sits untouched within the infrastructure, leaving businesses unaware of the opportunities in front of them. 44% of businesses that currently use a cloud security system for its primary use say they want to know how else this technology can be utilised, and an additional 20% arent even aware that it could be used in other ways. AI and analytics The interest in adoption is promising for the office of the future, especially when we see that the majority of businesses (78%) would consider using AI and analytics technologies to optimise their operations, helping their business to operate more effectively and efficiently. The increase in adoption of cloud technology  paired with the rise in interest in AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics  could make it possible for businesses to uncover invaluable insights from their security infrastructure and leverage them to adapt and build business resilience. 4) Secure your network Advanced technology help businesses improve their cybersecurity, making it harder for hackers to gain entry With cyber threats becoming more prevalent, businesses are increasingly looking to secure their networks and protect their data. More than half (54%) of those surveyed expressed interest in using AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics to secure their network by identifying and eliminating cybersecurity threats. Advanced and automated technology can help businesses improve their cybersecurity, making it harder for hackers to gain entry to the larger corporate network. Modern cybersecurity tools that use AI and machine learning can detect anomalies in network traffic or alert and act on suspicious behaviour. Cybersecurity software For example, if an IoT device suddenly begins broadcasting and establishing connections with multiple devices, cybersecurity software could detect this abnormal behaviour, send an alert, and suspend traffic or quarantine an endpoint immediately  saving precious time during a potential breach. A single data breach could result in widespread distrust from workers and customers, potentially leading to decreased business as well as litigation issues. As such, businesses need to take action to update and strengthen their defences so that they can avoid downtime and continue to operate with peace of mind. Prepare your business for the future Businesses will continue to look for more ways to extract value out of their existing infrastructure, including their security technology. For many, the tools to do so are already in place, its just a matter of unlocking the insights with a security ecosystem. With such an ecosystem  one that helps protect a business people, assets, and network, while optimising operations  companies can better safeguard the future of their workspaces and usher in the new era of work with confidence.


By Sara A. carter , March . 18, 2019





Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that he would take legal action against the U.S. for sanctioning Iran, according to a Reuters report. Rouhanis speech was broadcasted on Iranian state television.





The Trump administration has pushed more sanctions on Iran after scrapping the failed JCPOA nuclear deal. Iran is also one of the worlds largest sponsors of terrorism providing enemies of the U.S. with ammunition and military support. Additionally, Iran is cozied up to some of the most repressive leaders including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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An artist's conception of a quasar surrounding a supermassive black hole, which has a mass many times that of Earth's sun. Although nothing that falls into the black hole can escape, its massive gravity accelerates an "accretion disk" of luminous particles and gases around it.

Astronomers have discovered 83 supermassive black holes birthed by the universe in its infancy.

More precisely, the researchers have detected quasars, or huge, luminous disks of gases and dust that surround supermassive black holes. (The black holes themselves emit no light or energy, of course, though friction from the matter that swirls around and ultimately into a black hole's "mouth" does spit out immense light.) The quasars and their central black holes are 13 billion light-years away from Earth, meaning scientists are seeing the objects now as they appeared only 800 million years after the universe formed.

Prior to the new discovery, which was made using Japan's Subaru Telescope, only 17 supermassive black holes were known from the region surveyed. [Stephen Hawking's Most Far-Out Ideas About Black Holes]

Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe, and they are found only around black holes that are millions of times the mass of Earth's sun. The most distant quasar ever found was detected by the light it gave off only 690 million years after the Big Bang. Of the 83 newfound quasars, the most distant one is 13.05 billion light-years away from us. That means its light started its journey to the telescope lens within the universe's first billion years. This quasar is tied with an earlier discovery as the second-most distant quasar ever found.

Light from one of the three most distant quasars ever found, which surrounds a supermassive black hole 13.05 billion light-years from Earth. (Image credit: NAOJ)

The researchers, led by astronomer Yoshiki Matsuoka of Ehime University in Japan, used a special instrument called the Hyper Suprime-Cam mounted on the Subaru Telescope; the observatory sits on the volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii. According to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the camera has a huge field of view and is surveying the entire sky over five years.

The new finds suggest that in every cube of space that's a billion light-years per side, there is about one supermassive black hole and an associated quasar.

A hundred quasars found in a survey by the Subaru Telescope: The top seven rows are 83 newfound quasars; the bottom two are 17 quasars that were already discovered. (Image credit: NAOJ)

The study's findings are important because they're a window into the earliest days of the universe, after it transitioned from a melange of hot subatomic particles into something a bit cooler and more organized. The early universe spent several hundred million years in darkness before its first stars formed; the oldest sign of the universe visible to astronomers goes back about 13.6 billion years.

Soon after the first stars formed, hydrogen gas across the universe went through a period of re-ionization, when something very energetic split the atoms back into individual protons and electrons. Scientists don't know exactly what provided this energy, and quasars were one potential suspect. But the Matsuoka team's work, published Feb. 6 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there weren't enough quasars to do the job. Instead, the source of the re-ionization energy may have been newborn galaxies.

Originally published on Live Science.
This view of the asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on Jan. 19, 2019, was created by combining two images taken by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft: a short-exposure photo, which shows the asteroid clearly, and a long-exposure version, which shows the particles clearly. Other image-processing techniques were also applied, such as cropping and adjusting the brightness and contrast of each layer.

The near-Earth asteroid Bennu is a lot weirder and more interesting than scientists had thought.

The 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) space rock ejected particles of dust and gravel into space multiple times over the past few months, newly announced observations from NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reveal. So, Bennu is one of just a dozen or so known "active asteroids"  and the only one to be observed up close.

The discovery "is probably the biggest surprise of the early stages of the OSIRIS-REx mission and, I would say, one of the biggest surprises of my scientific career," OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, of the University of Arizona, said during a news conference today (March 19).

Related: OSIRIS-REx: NASA's Asteroid-Sampling Mission in Pictures

The $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission launched in September 2016 and arrived in orbit around Bennu on Dec. 31 of last year. If all goes according to plan, in mid-2020, the probe will dip down and grab a sample of Bennu material, which will come down to Earth in a return capsule in September 2023.

Analysis of this pristine cosmic dirt and gravel will help scientists better understand the solar system's early days. It could also help reveal the role that dark, carbon-rich asteroids like Bennu may have played in delivering water and the chemical building blocks of life to our planet, mission team members have said.

OSIRIS-REx's observations will additionally shed light on how potentially dangerous asteroids move through space and which of the space rocks miners may want to target down the road, among other things. Indeed, there are numerous subsidiary goals, as indicated by the mission's full name: "Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer."

(Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin/KinetX Inc.)

But the team didn't expect to get an up-close look at an active asteroid. So, it came as a big surprise when OSIRIS-REx photos showed particles streaming from Bennu's rugged surface on Jan. 6, just a week after the probe's arrival in orbit around the space rock.

And that was hardly an isolated incident: Mission team members have now identified 11 such events, three of which were "substantial" ones involving dozens to more than 100 particles, Lauretta said. And researchers are still going through the imagery.

The ejection events involve bits of space rock ranging from a few centimeters to up to tens of centimeters in diameter, Lauretta said. And the particles' velocities vary widely, too. Some move at up to 7 mph (11 km/h), fast enough to escape Bennu's weak gravity and cruise into interplanetary space. And other pieces merely mosey out, becoming trapped in orbit around Bennu for a spell and then falling back down onto the asteroid's surface.

"Basically, it looks like Bennu has a continuous population of particles raining down on it from discrete ejection events across its surface," Lauretta said. "This is incredibly exciting."

The team doesn't know what's spurring the ejection events. The ejections have been observed around the time of Bennu's closest passage to the sun during the asteroid's elliptical orbit, which occurred this year on Jan. 10. So, solar heating of the asteroid's surface and near-subsurface may be the main driver. But that's just speculation at the moment, Lauretta stressed.

(Bennu's orbit takes the space rock as close as 0.9 astronomical units, or AU, to the sun, and as far away as 1.36 AU. Reminder: One AU is the Earth-sun distance, which is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

Related: Asteroid Basics: A Space Rock Quiz

But let's get back to those particles that manage to break free of Bennu's tenuous grip. It's possible that these little asteroid pieces cause a meteor shower here on Earth every year, Lauretta said. The putative "Bennid" shower would appear in September and be best-observed from the Southern Hemisphere.

The mission team is working with meteor experts from the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute to hunt for the Bennids, Lauretta said.

After a series of analyses, the OSIRIS-REx team has concluded that the ejected particles don't pose a serious risk to the spacecraft or its mission objectives. But other complications have arisen, suggesting that the 2020 sampling sortie will be more difficult than previously imagined.

OSIRIS-REx scientists announced today in a series of papers that Bennu is far more rugged and boulder-strewn than ground-based radar imagery and modeling work had indicated.

The original mission design called for OSIRIS-REx to sample material from a relatively smooth, flat patch of Bennu's surface at least 165 feet (50 m) wide. But there don't appear to be any such oases on the asteroid; the biggest flat patch appears to be in the 65-foot (20 m) size range, mission team members announced today.

OSIRIS-REx will likely require an update to its navigation software to pull off a sampling run in a tighter space, Lauretta told Space.com. And the team will probably need to take more high-resolution photos of the sampling site than had been anticipated.

But Lauretta and his fellow team members think OSIRIS-REx will meet the challenge.

"Our navigation performance has been exquisite," OSIRIS-REx project manager Rich Burns, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said during today's news conference. "We feel confident that our systems and our teams are up to the task."
A Purdue University centennial flag that was flown to the moon on Apollo 11 in 1969 is just one of many items on display in "Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers," a new exhibition at the Indiana school.

An exhibition at Neil Armstrong's alma mater is offering the public a new look at the student and man who became the first moonwalker.

" Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers " opened on Monday (March 18) at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The exhibit, which is timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Armstrong's Apollo 11 moon landing in July, showcases select documents and objects from the school's research holdings.

"This exhibition offers the public an opportunity to get to know Armstrong and the steps leading up to the Apollo 11 mission through access to Armstrong's papers," said curator Tracy Grimm, the associate head of Purdue Archives and Special Collections and the Barron Hilton Archivist for Flight and Space Exploration, in a statement.

Related: NASA's Moonwalking Apollo Astronauts: Then and Now

Armstrong selected Purdue to house and curate his personal documents in 2008 , with the understanding that the university would use his papers to inspire a new generation of students. Four years later, after Armstrong died at the age of 82, his widow kept with her late husband's desires and greatly expanded the donation.

"After Neil passed away in 2012 , by far the bulk of the collection came as a result of his widow contacting us," said Sammie Morris, a professor and the head of Purdue Archives and Special Collections. "We only had at that time maybe eight boxes and now we have about 400. And that is because after he passed away, Carol called our dean of libraries and said, 'I'm worried about all this stuff he had in the house and in the garage. Would you send someone out to look at it and take what you want?' And that is an archivist's dream."

Returning to his alma mater to receive an honorary doctorate in January 1970, Neil Armstrong presents Purdue University president Frederick Hovde with a Purdue Centennial flag that was carried to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission. (Image credit: Purdue University Archives)

The collection comprises Armstrong's years as a student at Purdue, including his notebooks, textbooks and reports cards, through his time as a NASA astronaut and beyond . Students and faculty, as well as researchers outside of academia, can request access to the archives to "see what the day to day was like for a human being who was involved in the endeavors of flight and space exploration," said Grimm.

"it is really a diverse collection, but it is a research collection," she said. "It is not a lot of objects , but there are some."

"Apollo in the Archives" is now providing the public with a glimpse at the collection. Located on the fourth floor of the Humanities, Social Sciences and Education library inside Purdue's Stewart Center, the exhibition focuses on Armstrong's path to the moon, from his training and coursework to the planning that went into how and where he would land on the lunar surface, to the success of the mission itself and its impact on society.

Related: Apollo 11's Scariest Moments: Perils of the 1st Manned Moon Landing

Tracy Grimm, associate head of Purdue University's Archives and Special Collections and Barron Hilton Archivist for flight and space exploration conducts a tour of "Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers" exhibit. (Image credit: Purdue University/Mark Simons)

Among the items on display are an Apollo 11 flight suit worn by Armstrong, his NASA astronaut program acceptance letter, a bag of personal items flown aboard the Gemini 8 spacecraft and a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) pilot's flight checklist.

"There is a model of the lunar lander that a contractor made," said Grimm in a video released by Purdue. "We have some star charts [and] we have maps ... lunar surface maps."

"We also have a Purdue Centennial flag that Neil was given to take to the moon. It is a 1969 Purdue Centennial flag that was given back to the university when Neil returned and received an honorary doctorate," said Grimm. "Now here we are in the 150th year of Purdue, it is the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and we have this symbolic item in this flag that is a pretty great part of the collection."

In addition to the "Apollo in the Archives," Purdue's Ringel Gallery will host "Return to Entry," an art exhibit featuring pieces inspired by Armstrong's archival collection. Artists Frances Gallardo, Michael Oatman and Jennifer Scheuer were challenged to bring together science, engineering and art to imagine "new horizons" informed by the documents and artifacts from the Armstrong papers and the papers of other astronauts and engineers.

" Apollo in the Archives " runs through Aug. 16. "Return to Entry" will run March 25 through May 11. Purdue Archives and Special Collections is open from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Watch a video about Purdue Universitys Neil Armstrong archives at collectSPACE.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is coming back to TV soon after completion of an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct.

Neil deGrasse Tyson will be back on the air soon, according to media reports.

Fox and National Geographic have wrapped up an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct by the astrophysicist and science communicator, clearing him to return to TV, The Hollywood Reporter reported Friday (March 15).

National Geographic will begin airing Tyson's talk show, "StarTalk," which had been on hiatus since November , next month. And both Fox and National Geographic plan to run the Tyson-hosted series "Cosmos: Possible Worlds" at some unspecified point in the future, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"The investigation is complete, and we are moving forward with both 'StarTalk' and 'Cosmos,'" Fox and National Geographic said Friday in a joint statement published by The Hollywood Reporter. "'StarTalk' will return to the air with the remaining 13 episodes in April on National Geographic, and both Fox and National Geographic are committed to finding an air date for 'Cosmos.' There will be no further comment."

Three women have publicly accused Tyson of inappropriate conduct. Astronomer Katelyn Ayers said Tyson groped her at a 2009 conference, and Tyson's former assistant Ashley Watson said she quit after the famed astrophysicist made inappropriate sexual advances. The two women detailed these claims in November 2018, in an article on Patheos .

The third woman, Tchiya Amet, said that Tyson raped her in 1984, while the two were graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin.

Tyson has denied the allegations and said he welcomes an investigation.






Eric McCandless/ABC

Eric McCandless/ABC

ABC aims to deliver a dramatic series that follows in the footsteps of the similar OJ Simpson trial. If the show feels eerily familiar, it was intended to be. Marcia Clark is one of the creators aka, the lead prosecutor in the OJ Simpson trial.After FX's, one would think Clark was done with trying to re-frame her story but now she's trying her hand at a fictional retelling. Honestly, I'm not sure if it's the type of story we need right now but I am intrigued by the legal thriller aspect of it all.The story begins 8 years prior when Sevvy Johnson, a big-time celebrity actor, was accused of a double murder. The jury ruled him innocent and Maya Travis (played by Robin Tunney in the "Marcia" role of the show) felt as if her life crumbled in the aftermath. It was the big case she staked her entire career on and when it all went sideways, she escaped to a quiet farm life with her boyfriend.But then, Maya gets her chance to rise from the proverbial ashes when another one of Sevvy's girlfriends, Jessica Meyer, winds up dead. In a case of history repeating itself, Maya is convinced they will nail him this time.She is initially reluctant to take on the case. After looking into the investigation and finding a secret storage facility where Jessica recorded damning video messages documenting the abuse she took at Sevvy's hand, it was only going to be a matter of time before Maya became embroiled again.Her team welcomes her back with open arms. Well, not all of her team. Clearly dismayed by Maya waltzing back into her old stomping grounds and easily snapping up the case,fellow prosecutor, Loni Kampoor, doesn't appreciate being benched. In a moment of revenge, she tips of Sevvy's lawyers about the video granting them a search warrant and Johnson has time to get a bag of things he doesn't want found out of the house.As per the last time, Sevvy has enlisted the same defense attorney and is ready to defend his name against anything thrown at him. He even willingly walks into the police headquarters to allow them to question him without counsel, although the meeting doesn't go nearly as well as he'd hoped it would. At present, Sevvy is living with his kids, one of who was from his previous marriage.His daughter Star, could prove to be his downfall as she clearly has doubts about her father's innocence. Sevvy met Jessica through Star, as she was her roommate in college. Ick. It is also Star who gives Maya access to Jessica's storage facility, unbeknownst to her father.By episode end, Maya and Sevvy come face-to-face once more as she and her team execute their search warrant on his house. The message sent between them is plenty obvious: Game on.
HAMDEN  Van Jones, the nationally known TV commentator, met with former inmates and Connecticut justice leaders on Monday to push for better housing, job-training and employment opportunities to help those leaving prison to avoid returning.

When people are trying to turn their lives around, we should throw them a lifeline and not an anvil, said Jones, who in January was named chief executive of the REFORM Alliance, a justice reform organization backed by celebrities including Shawn Jay-Z Carter, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and rapper Meek Mill.

To often when people come home from prison, if theyve done well on the inside, theyve taken classes, theyve gotten certificates, they think theyre going to come home and do well, and they find doors closed in their faces, Jones said. And the only door that opens is the door back to prison, and thats wrong. And we can do something about that. This is supposed to be a country that loves the underdog, loves the second chance, loves a comeback story.

He said minor offenses committed by former offenders on parole or probation can get blown out of proportion, landing people back in prison for six months or more after being late for a meeting. The result is lost jobs and apartments, while they lose children, again to state supervision.

Louis Reed of Bridgeport, a former federal inmate and now the national organizer for #Cut50, a reform organization founded by Van Jones, said he was called on a violation of the terms of his release, for falling behind on child support payments.

During a symposium on possible advancements to the Second Chance Society initiatives of his predecessor, Dannel P. Malloy, Gov. Ned Lamont said a recent visit to a state prison in Cheshire brought home the need to continue the support many offenders need to get back into their communities.

His first time in a prison brought home the stark difference that incarceration means in peoples lives, he said after a noontime event on the campus of Quinnipiac University.

The gate closes behind you, the gate in front of you doesnt open up and you go in there and you just see a lot of young people, Lamont said. I saw young men about the same age as my son Teddy. Im looking forward to the day where they can prove everybody wrong by doing right.

The event brought a variety of ex-offenders to this university campus to discuss the issues with state and local officials and Jones, who in January was named chief executive of the REFORM Alliance, a justice reform organization backed by celebrities including Shawn Jay-Z Carter and rapper Meek Mill, who was scheduled to attend the meeting but canceled due to a conflict.

It will take both political parties to get us out of this and into a better system, Jones said during a lunch session with 25 people gathered around a table in the faculty dining room. The people who dont quit, who come home job-ready and transformed, we should support them.

Jones praised the strides Connecticut has made in recent years, including record low prison populations and sharp decreases in violent crime. He supported pending legislation aimed at helping those inmates out on probation stay out of prison for minor infractions, such as being late for a meeting with a probation officer.

Lamont appeared with Jones, who has worked with Mill on prison reform.

During the roundtable lunch discussion on the barriers facing former inmates, state Department of Correction Commissioner Rollin Cook said he would like to see inmates leave prison with fresh identification cards to make job hunting easier. And for those who earn certificates, such as hair-cutting, the documents do not refer to the DOC.

The next step is really in our communities, Cook said, stressing the need for offenders to have more mentors in their communities upon their return. Ill tell you, from our agencys stand point, were ready for those next steps.

Pending bills include anti-discrimination legislation.

Lamont recalled looking into the eyes of the Cheshire inmates, and he realized they didnt have the advantages growing up that his children had. I walked in there and they said Governor. welcome to our gated community. I thought that was ironic, Lamont said to chuckles around the table.

In addition to Jones, whose full name is Anthony Kapel Jones, Lamont meet with ex-offenders from the state, as well as Project Longevity state director Brent Peterkin and State Rep. Brandon L. McGee Jr., D-Hartford.

I think we can all agree were not satisfied with progress, Peterkin said after a morning session with former inmates. We want to push the envelope forward. We think theres a lot more work that Connecticut can do. But we also recognize the tremendous progress that Connecticut has made, and I would argue as one of the leaders in our nation as far as criminal justice reform efforts, and also re-entry.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
Two Mississippi girls arrested in connection with the slaying of their mother spoke to reporters on Sunday.

Amariyona Hall, 14, and her 12-year-old sister spoke to WJTV about the stabbing and shooting death of their mother, Erika Hall.

Hall was killed in January in Pike County. The 14-year-old and her 12-year-old sister were arrested. The younger girl was charged as a juvenile.

Amariyona was released over the weekend after $10,000 bail was posted. Her sister was released from the Pike County Juvenile Detention Center.

When a reporter asked Amariyona Hall if she could take back what happened, she said yes.



Despite admitting to that, Amariyona Hall and her sister said they are not responsible for the death of their mother and that they were at an aunt's home when it occurred.

Amariyona Hall also told reporters there was abuse taking place in the home where she and her sister lived. However, the Pike County Sheriff's Department said it never received any reports of abuse.

Their father, Eddie Isaac, said he is still trying to get to the bottom of what happened the day Erika Hall died.

"It feels good to have them out. A lot of people don't think they should be, but they are kids. It was a lot. We didn't come to the bottom of it. There was a lot of stuff we didn't know. But it's coming out," he said.

Children 13 and older accused of certain crimes are automatically charged as adults in Mississippi. Judges can transfer cases to youth court. District Attorney Dee Bates has said he would oppose a transfer.

Amariyona Hall's attorney has said the defense will be based on a self-defense theory.

"I can tell you that I anticipate my client and her sister are both going to be defended on a theory of self-defense," lawyer Greg Malta said previously.

Ebony Hall, Ericka Hall's sister, said one of the girls tried to run over their mother in a car several nights before she was killed.

Pike County Sheriff's Chief Investigator Chris Bell has testified that the girls confessed to planning the killing in advance, faking a knock at the front door to lure Ericka Hall from her bedroom.
We talked with Case Mandel, co-founder of the California-based Cannadips company, about his product's origin story and development, and how it may be a better consumption method than vapes and edibles.

Cannadips come in a small fiber pouch that kind of looks like a chewing tobacco pouch. But they're much smaller and modeled after Swedish Snus. The pouch is made of coconut fiber, essential oils, monk fruit, and the dry tincture. We have three flavors: American, Citrus, and Mint (which comes in THC and CBD)

How does it work?

When you put the product in your mouth, it gets absorbed under the tongue and into the back of the mouth, where there is the buccal artery. We believe this causes it to go directly to the brain and bypass the liver completely. We don't know what percent of our products get absorbed in the mouth verse the gut at this point. There is some small level of the delayed absorption, but, unlike edibles, our product is rapid acting.

Image credit: Cannadips



How is this delivery system different?

The cannabinoids in cannabis are fat soluble. So generally to intake these products, they need to either be combusted --which has a harmful effect, get combined into food products and are eaten. The problem with consuming things through the digestive system is that it goes through your liver and can be super psychoactive. In developing Cannadips, we were introduced to a couple of chemists who found a way to make the cannabinoids water dispersible, meaning that they dispersed in liquid or saliva. This increased their bioavailability, or how much you absorb into the bloodstream. We propose that our product gets absorbed under the tongue and in the back of the mouth in the b buccal artery that goes directly to the brain and bypasses the liver completely. So in the whole process of trying to create weed dips, we embarked on this little-known journey: How to create a fast-acting bioavailable efficacious way to consume cannabinoids.

Related: Why Cannabis Oil Is Big Business (and How to Capitalize on It)

How did you come up with the idea for Cannadips?

My co-founder Cliff Sammet, who has always been a brilliant outside-the-box thinker, came up with the idea. He called it "Weed Dips." Initially, I hated the name, but I thought it was a brilliant idea. I thought it had probably been done five or six times already, but when we went online, we couldn't find anything. I saw this as an opportunity, not just another flower brand or vape pen or cookie, but something that had potential.

Did you use regular smokeless tobacco?

Yeah, we grew up in Santa Cruz, California, which is considered Surf City, USA. In the surfer community, a majority of men dipped tobacco. That was a ritual. But it's highly addictive and not good for you. So that's something that we were trying to find a solution for. Something that people can use to help them get off smokeless tobacco or use as an adjunct to smokeless tobacco. That was our original idea. Little did we know, at that point, there was so much more to it. We were designing a much more effective delivery system.

What were some of your first steps?

We raised $150,000 and started to design the brand. We invested in a machine from India that takes our mulch and matrix and shoots it into the pouch. We sourced tins from the Netherlands, and then we embarked on product development, working with an amazing chemist for 9 to 12 months improving the product.

Did you face any challenges early on?

The initial challenges were testing, especially on the THC side. We've developed entirely new technology and process, and when we take our finished product to a lab, it's hard for them to test what's in it because it's an emulsion that they don't know how to break down. So there's a lot of unreliability with testing because we're not a normal form factor of a flower or a simple oil.

Related: This Week in Weed: Cannabis Battles Alcohol & Tobacco!

Another early challenge was how much opposition we would face from the gatekeepers. There's a stigma around tobacco and dip. So we've had to spend a lot of time educating about our product how it works, doing tons of demo days statewide, so people understand what this product is and isn't.

Did you encounter the same problem with your CBD product?

We haven't had that issue. We're sold in 40-plus states in at least 1,500 to 2,000 stores nationwide, and that's growing at a rapid rate. We just picked up a large chain in Pennsylvania. There isn't as much of a stigma in other states.

Any advice for future cannabis entrepreneurs?

If there's someone in the industry, some company, a new idea or technology that excites you, don't hesitate to reach out. Do some due diligence, go to the website find out who's in charge of that company and send them an email. Tell them how excited you are about what they're doing. Ask pertinent questions. Cannabis is such a young, new industry that when I get emails from people out there who have a general passion and excitement for what we're doing or just for other things in the industry, I take my time to respond. So I think taking some initiative and reaching out is key.

Related: 10 Ways to Maximize Your Time at the Next Cannabis Conference

Related:

Cannabis Chew? Yep, It's a Thing And It Just Might Be Revolutionary

Over 2 Billion Served: How This Cannabis Company Got There

Cannabis Boxes Curated by Celebrities Are Big Business



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Empathy -- the ability to understand and be sensitive to others thoughts and lived experiences -- is one of the most important elements of any business. To illustrate, think about the top reasons great workers leave their jobs. Employees might not see a future for themselves at the company theyre leaving. They might also feel overloaded with work compared to their compensation level and benefits. And management might not even be listening to them.

These reasons, particularly the ones directly related to manager-employee relationships, all tie back to empathy. Consider that a 2018 survey from Businessolver found that 60 percent of employees polled said they would actually accept lower pay for the chance to work at an empathetic company.

This makes sense. Leaders who prioritize empathy are truly able to connect with their employees, clients and customers. Workers should feel heard and want to know that their experiences matter. Empathy helps leaders cultivate this environment -- and empathetic organizations deliver products and services that get to the heart of what their audiences want.

Related: Does Empathy Have a Place in Your Workplace?

Skills you bring from home matter in the office.

I believe so strongly in the power of empathy that it also became an integral part of my parenting philosophy. My wife, MJ, and I decided early on to raise our son and daughter with a founders mindset. We wanted them to grow up feeling capable and knew they would need a strong sense of empathy to connect with the people they wanted to serve.

There was some evidence for our parenting strategy. Children can start to feel empathy as early as 2 years old, according to an article in Parents magazine. An example would be a toddler noticing her classmate's distress and giving that unhappy child a hug.

So, MJ and I took every opportunity to cultivate empathy in our children. When people visited, we encouraged the kids to think about how to make them feel welcome. We shared details with our children about who the guests were, their relationships to us and their hobbies or career highlights. This provided material our children could draw from to start interesting conversations. The result? They could demonstrate respect for visitors and actively engage with them.

I see a direct correlation between those empathy-building exercises and the kids founding achievements today. Annie started a running program for children with autism, and Blake launched a biosciences company. Helping others is the principle that guided their vision and shaped their success.

Related: 6 Important Values Entrepreneurial Parents Can Teach Their Children

Ive also experienced the significance of empathy -- or a lack thereof -- in my own career. When Lehman Brothers failed in 2008, our venture capitalists requested a 40-person cut to our 120-person staff. No business owner wants to lay off a third of his or her employees, but market uncertainty demanded prompt action.

Some painful mistakes were made during these cuts, including my failure at that time to alert my loyal assistant to the situation -- she was on vacation --until she returned and found herself jobless. This was a result of my having lost focus on empathy and I've regretted my mistake ever since.

How founders can cultivate empathy.

You dont have to be a parent or child to hone a sense of empathy, however. Even business leaders who havent actively practiced empathy in their careers can still strengthen those instincts, and their businesses will improve as a result. Consider that in companies where leaders practice empathetic communication, employees respond more positively to critical feedback, according to this British Psychological Society study. When people dont feel belittled, theyre more receptive to criticism and are motivated to improve. Here are some tips to help you practice empathy:

1. Tune in to your emotional side (and help employees to do the same).

Emotional intelligence, or the ability to recognize and deal with emotions both in yourself and in others, has sparked a lot of cultural conversation recently. In fact, when True Ventures surveyed its portfolio of customers in 2017, it found that emotional intelligence was a must-have in those investors relationships with founders.

This means that inviting employees to discuss their emotions wont seem so out of left field. The next time a meeting turns tense, diffuse the situation by acknowledging the tone in the room. Ask if anyone would like to share experiences, feedback or thoughts.

People might be reluctant to speak up at first, but theyll open up if you demonstrate that their feelings are welcome. Over time, youll build an emotionally resilient culture in which people are less likely to get hung up on resentment and interpersonal conflict. You can achieve this outcome by establishing trust. Meetings with direct reports, safe environments and a collective sense of trust among entire teams are necessary here.

2. Consider nonverbal cues.

Without even knowing someone, you can likely gauge his or her mood just by examining nonverbal cues. The more you learn to key in on those actions, the better youll be able to empathize with others.

My wife and I taught Blake and Annie to always offer a firm handshake and look people in the eye. We wanted them to connect with people -- to discover their mindset and needs right away. You can do the same as a leader by really engaging in conversations with colleagues and employees.

You can learn a remarkable amount about people by paying attention to what they dont say. Consider why they might not feel comfortable contributing to a conversation and whether their body language is negative. Are they fidgeting, sluggish or taking on a defensive posture? These cues may open up conversations about any stress theyre feeling related to a project or general unease thats crept into the workplace. You can also adjust your body language to create a comfortable environment. Start by maintaining eye contact instead of gazing at your phone or laptop.

Related: Dont Work Your Employees to the Bone: Minimize Their Stress to Boost Productivity

Remember when Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress last year? Simply observing his facial expressions and mannerisms during the hearings -- as well as those of other of the companys executives -- offered clues into which questions and interrogators made him and his staff uncomfortable.

Observing and experimenting with your own body language can be fun. What signals are you sending by yawning, crossing your arms, not making eye contact or reaching for your phone during any lull in a conversation?

3. Practice engaged leadership.

No matter what your schedule, search for chances to be more empathetic. When you walk into the break room and a junior associate is having a coffee, dont just smile and move on. Ask how hes doing, what hes working on or what interests him about his projects. Notice how he reacts.

Research from Harvard Business School shows that businesses with hands-on startup leaders performed better than ones with aloof, distant bosses. In order for you to be hands-on, your employees must also trust you and feel comfortable when youre around.

If youre serious about building a sustainable, successful company, empathy is your linchpin. Without it, your venture will sink. Push more energy toward encouraging empathetic communication, and youll drive increased morale and performance -- and create a deeper sense of camaraderie at work.

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Mark Ojakians biggest strategic error may have been dubbing his initiative to consolidate Connecticuts 12 community colleges as Students First.

Even the whisper of rankings reliably sparks competitiveness in some quarters.

Board of Regents First!

No, Taxpayers First!

Wait, Legislators First!

This should not be a spoiler alert: No one likes consolidation. Not even Ojakian, who is under fire as architect of the plan in his role as president of the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities (CSCU). If he had his way, he would surely prefer to keep the colleges whole.

Which is essentially what hes trying to do. The systems finances just havent been cooperating. As any business professor will tell you, sentiment belongs in the history department.

Ojakian is positioned as the villain but could be painted as the hero trying to prevent the closure of some of the 12 campuses. The obstacle is a financial gap estimated at $57 million.

Theres been an admirable resistance from stakeholders (those would be the educators and students) who protested at the Capitol last week and collected some 1,300 names on a petition.

Now lawmakers are trying to climb to the top of the scrum with proposed bills that would empower them to nix the deal.

Within the fine print is that if the General Assembly failed to act within a year of receiving notice, their silence would be deemed as approval.

Weve seen this before. The General Assembly has a dismal record of voting on union contracts that were automatically approved after 30 days of legislative ignorance.

Not surprisingly, Ojakian would prefer the lawmakers mind their own business, reasoning that the governor appoints the Board of Regents for Higher Education (which Ojakian heads). He also fears the process becoming politicized.

Both bills won unanimous support in the Higher Education Committee last week.

The first bill, which would enable lawmakers to stop the plan, is evidence that politics is already an obstacle. Giving lawmakers the power to stop the plan is going too far.

The second bill seeks to have the Board of Regents provide quarterly reports to the Higher Education Committee on the status of the proposal. Its worth further discussion and scrutiny, as it could provide the transparency and data needed to earn more support.

The Board of Regents doesnt have the power to act cavalierly, as they have to earn approval by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which rejected the last draft of the concept.

Meanwhile, Ojakian and Co. are in the process of hiring three regional presidents to replace individual heads of each college.

The campuses would each retain a chief executive officer, chief financial officer and a chief academic office. More importantly, they retain a campus.

We dont like consolidation either. But the General Assembly should be looking under other rocks for savings instead of throwing stones at leaders accepting the realities that tough choices have to be made in Connecticut.
B ROKER TP Icap could move almost 100 of its staff to Europe to handle a hard Brexit, chief executive Nicolas Breteau said today.

With 10 days to go until the UK is meant to leave the EU and no deal in place, the middle-man on trades between big banks and hedge funds has activated his plans to handle a worst-case scenario. Breteau said the work its UK broking desks do for EU clients would have to be shifted to places such as Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid or Amsterdam after a hard Brexit, entailing moving some brokers on the ground.

He added: Were talking less than 100  around 4% of our brokers in a worst-case scenario. We believe that whatever happens, the UK will probably remain the main financial centre for financials and energy products but a lot will depend on the type of Brexit deal we end up having and the reaction of our clients.

The company is also seeking approval from the French financial regulator for a subsidiary dealing with EU clients.

TP Icaps shares jumped 11.6p, or 4%, to 315.2p today as pre-tax profits of 245 million  up 5% on last year  beat City hopes despite a tough trading environment.

Global broking revenues  the biggest part of the business  saw revenues up 3% thanks to higher volatility, which particularly aided its rates and equities division. But its energy and commodities arm was hit by weaker US markets, trade war fears and Iranian sanctions.
B ritain's biggest fund manager Standard Life Aberdeen won a 100 billion funds row with Lloyds Bank on Tuesday, paving the way for a multi-million pound payout.

The FTSE 100 fund manager, which manages 550 billion, won a crucial legal case against Lloyds over the banks decision to terminate a fund management contract, depriving Standard of around 330 million in fees over three years.

Lloyds ditched the deal last February saying the newly-merged Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA) was a material competitor to its Scottish Widows division, led by Antonio Lorenzo.

SLA said Lloyds had no right to terminate and a three-person arbitration panel agreed , scuppering Lloyds plans to withdraw.

In a worst case scenario for Lloyds, SLA could hang on to the money until 2022 when the contract expires.

More likely is that SLA will receive compensation from Lloyds so the bank can end the deal early. Analysts predict that this could be between 300 million and 330 million.

The two sides will now enter talks to thrash out a compromise.

Keith Skeoch, SLA chief executive, said: Now that the arbitration panel has ruled in our favour, we will carefully consider our next steps, working constructively with Lloyds to bring the matter to resolution, he said.

The stakes are high for both sides, with the funds worth around 110 million of fees per year to Standard Life Aberdeen  330 million over three years  according to analysts.

Lloyds has already agreed to hand the bulk of the 100 billion to SLAs rival Schroders.

Around 13 billion has been earmarked for a joint wealth management venture between Lloyds and Schroders. The tie-up is still expected to launch in June, analysts said.

Lloyds Scottish Widows unit said it was disappointed, saying it would start talks to begin the orderly transfer of funds to BlackRock and Schroders.

Skeoch, who took sole charge of the firm last week, struck a conciliatory tone, suggesting he wants to maintain a relationship with the bank.

Hargreaves Lansdowns Laith Khalaf said the two sides may work together again. We think there could even be a bit of mix and match, where Lloyds pays to release some assets to get its joint venture with Schroders up and running, while leaving some funds with Standard Life Aberdeen, he said.
S ee if you can spot a pattern.

When Theresa May calls an election and loses the Tory majority, her two political advisers are blamed  and sacked.

When the Prime Ministers Brexit deal fails to deliver her impossible red lines, Downing Street offers up the head of civil servant Olly Robbins.

When members of the Cabinet openly defy their boss and shes too weak to fire them, its her hard-working chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, who gets the black spot.

Now, when Mrs May is unable twice to get a majority for that deal, its the Speaker whos in the firing line because he wont bend the rules to let her try and fail for a third time.

Conservatives insist that people should take responsibility for their actions  unless they happen to be their prime ministers. Its pathetic.

In private, senior ministers have barely a good word to say about Mrs May; in public, they cast around for scapegoats and excuses.

Her premiership has foundered not because she has been ill-advised but because she has failed.

Tory MPs all know it but most lack the courage to do anything about it. Now they may have no other option. Her deal is dead. It was killed by Boris Johnson not John Bercow .

Mrs Mays claim that she could negotiate a better one with the EU has been exposed. It was her own Attorney General who exposed the vacuity of the concessions she trumpeted.

Her ability to reach out across the party divide to find a majority for a new approach is non-existent.

It is not the Ministers she appointed but the Tory backbenchers she fired who are today meeting with Jeremy Corbyn to find a compromise.

She would perhaps prefer now for Britain to leave the EU next week without a deal, so that at least her legacy was that Brexit meant Brexit. But Parliament has moved to stop her doing that.

All she has left to offer is the one thing she said she would never do: delay Britains departure beyond March 29, 2019, the date she manufactured for a press release for her first party conference way back in 2016.

Curious alliance

But delay for how long?

Last week, Mrs May said it should be a technical delay of no more than three months, to the end of either May or June, to implement her deal.

Since there is no deal there is no one in Brussels or Westminster who thinks that will achieve anything, other than prolonging the life of the May premiership.

Thats why a curious alliance is emerging. The hardliners of the ERG are coming round to the merits of a lengthy delay.

As one former Cabinet minister, David Jones, says today, hed be considerably happier with a long extension than with entering the transition and backstop currently on the table.

Essentially, the hard Brexiteers want to press rewind and start the negotiations again, knowing that theyre best conducted while Britain is still in the room, and theyre confident that this time they can get a true believer into Number 10 to lead the charge.

Those who want to reverse Brexit with a second referendum also seek a delay. They know there isnt enough support for a new poll right now, thanks to the obstruction of the Labour leader  which is why, in a farcical twist, the Peoples Vote campaign recommended that MPs should not back a peoples vote last week.

A long delay would give a chance for minds to change and momentum to build. The European Union would probably grant a short stay of execution if asked at the Council later this week but Brussels is also coming to think, with good reason, that anything less than a long delay of 21 months wont achieve anything.

European Council President Donald Tusk said last week he would appeal to the rest of the EU to be open to a long extension so the UK could rethink its Brexit strategy. We know President Macron agrees.

So who is the big loser if a departure date is put back? Mrs May. For there really then will be no reason for her to remain in office.

Shes run out of ideas, authority and people around her to blame. She can use party rules to cling on until December but a strike by some of her MPs (refusing to back her Government) would quickly shorten that.

The political logic is simple: the longer Brexit is delayed, the sooner she has to go.

TODO: define component type apester
I n his 1986 film, Clockwise, John Cleeses doleful character got to the point a few decades in advance of the Brexit tragicomedy. Its not the despair, moans Brian, whose life disintegrates as he tries to get to Norwich in time for a conference. I can take the despair. Its the hope I cant stand. Impeded by diversions, reversals and acts of the unsparing gods on the railways and motorways, Brian is reduced to a victim of circumstances, wondering how an orderly life veered into the realms of the absurd.

Brexit has now entered the Clockwise phase, in which every glimmer of hope of reasonable resolution is duly buried under an avalanche, just when things were looking up. This time last week it was Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, phrasing his legal advice on the Irish backstop, after the Prime Minister negotiated a tweak with the EU in an attempt to bring the DUP onside to support her deal and peel away Eurosceptic resistance in her own ranks.

Whether or not this had much hope of success, it was clumsily undermined by Cox, whose phrasing of his legal opinion was guaranteed to kill off any progress. Now it is the turn of the Speaker, John Bercow, to play the part of the Greek Furies, with his ruling yesterday that blocks Parliament from being asked to vote again on the same issue (Theresa Mays withdrawal agreement) in a single session.

All of this is convention and interpretation (inevitably under an unwritten constitution). And ultimately, as this newspaper has long pointed out, it is about whether the Government has the numbers and the heft to get its version of Brexit through the Commons.

Because it has not, the UK is in a paralysed constitutional crisis, a situation that feels more painful when we lift our heads from the marshland of process and seek to explain it to outsiders.

Anne McElvoy

I rarely feel as embarrassed about the Horlicks we have made of the referendum and its consequences, than when doing so to bemused audiences overseas. Last week, I headed to Berlin for Germanys Question Time equivalent, the primetime Maybrit Illner show, for a second time in the Brexit era.

It inevitably features politician of a lofty, well-informed sort (in my recent case, a member of the Liberal Graf Lambsdorff dynasty), a businessman selling luxurious German bathrooms to the power-shower elite in the UK, and an economist who inevitably concludes in a Mark Carney-ish way that we were crazy to contemplate Brexit but doesnt much engage with the fact that it did and has to be dealt with.

Illner is, as it goes, a very adept host  think Fiona Bruce with a better sense of mischief. Yet some of the suppressed premises on these occasions do make the travelling Brit think that whatever European integration is achieving, it isnt doing so much for a deeper understanding of national stories. Brexiteers on European news channels wave Union Jacks and look a bit gormless. Remainers inevitably wave EU flags. It is a bit like watching the BBCs coverage of South Africa in the days when every item featured a chorus of singing schoolchildren.

Its also amusing to hear that a possible solution to the Irish backstop headache is simply to put the border in the Irish Sea (Jonathan Swifts satirical capacity for modest proposals would be exhausted by the ideas on offer).

Add to that the oddly parochial discourse about what makes the Brits tick (often with eye-rolling comments about the island), which sophisticated Germans in 2019 would find a bit odd if applied to themselves as a psychologically bizarre, faintly backward species.

"Its amusing to hear that a possible solution to the Irish backstop is simply to put the border in the Irish Sea"

And yet while everyone has finished not understanding each other, theres a vestigial desire, applauded by the bemused audience, for it to work out in the end, which is something to hold onto now in a Europe that carries more uncertainties and security risks than its institutions have yet woken up to.

The parallel weakness of our own coverage is that we are good at making deep dives on the Brexit process  were all Erskine May scholars now, or if were not we will be by the 10 oclock news. Yet our own broadcast coverage generally treats the European response as monolithic, when it has many more gradations and subtleties. So Donald Tusk, the confident blunderbuss of the European Council, is, very obviously, a proponent of a long extension, which he reckons will facilitate a second referendum.

But the German government is far keener on a swift resolution and a short extension. That is why the Bercow ruling causes indigestion in the EU  it would like a quick second referendum which is not (or not yet) on the cards, or a quick demi-Brexit via the May deal.

The French minister for European affairs, Nathalie Loiseau, calls her cat Brexit because, she says, he wakes me up miaowing because he wants to be let out. When I open the door, he stands in the middle, unsure whether he wants to go out. How we laughed. But the underlying force of the joke-jibe is that much of Europe does not much care what Britain does, but would rather we did it quickly.

Full of righteous indignation on this point, I return to find that the events on our doorstep look even harder to explain, even to the most fair-minded European, than when I left. Events career along  out of control and yet grimly predictable.

Number 10, which has struggled to find the numbers for a deal since May set her course in the Chequers plan last summer, still cannot find enough votes. Her placemen today declare themselves outraged by the Speaker doing what he had always sort-of threatened to do: prevent her proceeding to her goal by means of sheer attrition.

Such is the present curse of Brexit, an odyssey of panic and choices which are urgent but never resolved. Its a very British show indeed: its Clockwise with all the heart-racing panic and none of the laughs.
T he decision of the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to never utter the name of the Christchurch terrorist is both a moral choice and a practical way of making future attacks less likely. The media need to learn from her example.

In the two-and-a-half years since my wife Jo died, I have never uttered the name of the person who killed her. My children have never heard it and it doesnt appear in the book that I wrote about Jo. He has been forgotten by our family and by the vast majority of the public. And thats how it should be. Because as a bereaved family you want the focus to be on your loved one; the joy they brought to your life and the lives of others. You want their story to be heard.

But its much more important than that. One of the reasons that many terrorists attack is to gain notoriety. Thats because while extreme ideology is an important part of what drives terror, personal motivations are at least as great. Terrorists are often people seeking recognition, affirmation and meaning in their empty lives. Thats why they wear cameras. Its why they write manifestos. Its why they film videos of themselves.

All of that makes sense from their perspective but what doesnt make sense is our media playing into their hands; promoting their videos, hosting their manifestos, telling us their life story again and again.

Im not suggesting that the media shouldnt say who carried out the attack  of course they should. But theres a difference between reporting the facts and obsessively promoting the name, image and agenda of the perpetrator.

This mornings Today programme coverage of the story was a masterclass in how to get it wrong. Every time the newsreader announced that Ardern would no longer mention the name of the killer, they handily added what it was.

Jacinda Ardern has vowed never to mention the name of the alleged Christchurch gunman

Numerous studies of mass shootings in the US have shown that along with notoriety, high-profile media coverage of a killer makes so-called contagion effects more likely. In other words, it leads to copycat attacks.

Some media organisations are starting to change the way they report. Anderson Cooper, the leading CNN anchor, refuses to name those responsible for attacks after the first mention. The news organisation AP aims to restrict mentions in cases where attacks were conducted for publicity. Le Monde has stopped publishing the names and photographs of terrorists. After the coverage of last weeks attack, some introspection from our own media would be welcome.

Of course its not just about what media organisations do. Survivors Against Terror, a network of 300 UK survivors of terror attacks, has recommended that we can all play a role in this. We can deny terrorists the notoriety they crave. Forget their names, dont repost their images and keep the focus where it belongs  on the victims and survivors.
When menswear designer Bethany Williams heard that she was to be honoured with the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, a sense of panic must have ensued.

She had just two weeks to organise her first show at London Fashion Week  a showcase that would be attended by everyone from Vogues editor-in-chief Edward Enninful to the Duchess of Cornwall. I burst out crying when they told me, says the 28-year-old. It was so amazing.

Williams pulled it off with aplomb. But this was no ordinary fashion show. Taking to the catwalk on the final day of the capitals five-day showcase, her show stood alongside productions from big- budget brands including Burberry and Christopher Kane with a collection devised to honour Adelaide House, a womens shelter for former offenders in Liverpool.

Along with model of the moment Adwoa Aboah, Williams cast a series of homeless individuals (each of whom was paid industry rates) to model her vision before promising to donate 20 per cent of the profits made from the collection to the shelter.

Designer Bethany Williams at the launch of the Fashion District / PA

Her approach, which had already caught the eyes of Buckingham Palace, which bestows the Queen Elizabeth II award to designers who recognise the role the fashion industry plays in society and diplomacy, has ensured the socially conscious designers status as one of British fashions most exciting new additions.

Addressing Williams, and a room of industry insiders, the Duchess of Cornwall praised the designer for bringing ideas and people together, putting change for the good at the heart of her business.

When we meet four weeks later its clear that Williams  who follows in the footsteps of Richard Quinn, who went from jobbing designer to Amal Clooneys favourite after receiving the prize in 2018  hasnt had her feet on the ground since.

In the weeks since the show she has visited Milan, where she took part in an exhibition of sustainability-focused designers, held in partnership with Italian Vogue, and Paris, where she was shortlisted for the prestigious LVMH prize. She also found the time to relocate her studio from Peckham to Canning Town. What has just happened? Williams exclaims over an almond-milk flat white in Dalston. I just feel so overwhelmed.

Undoubtedly, its been a whirlwind for the sustainability aficionado, whose processes have caught the eyes of Anna Wintour, Naomi Campbell and Louis Vuittons Nicolas Ghesquiere.

Duchess Of Cornwall and Edward Enninful applaud during the Bethany Williams show / Getty Images

A fine art graduate of the University of Brighton and alumna of the London College of Fashion, where she completed a masters degree in menswear, Williams set up her own label in 2017 with the aim of creating the unlikely phenomenon of a fashion label that gives back.

Since then she has been quietly making a name for herself with a label that has charity at its core. I didnt want to go into fashion, but I always loved textiles and I could never work in an office, she explains of her unorthodox approach. You have to be a part of the problem to be a part of the solution.

Her label, which has been picked up by a host of discerning stockists including Farfetch, Odd92 in New York and Galeries Lafayette in Paris, is the most socially conscious of its generation.

A host of meaningful collaborations with suppliers, which include the female inmates at HM Prison Downview in Sutton  who create the jersey for her collections  and recovering addicts in the San Patrignano commune in Italy, position it in a field all of its own. Williams regularly donates a proportion of profits to charities and organisations including homeless shelters and food banks.

Bethany Williams AW19 show during London Fashion Week 2019 / EPA

Despite spells drinking the Kool-Aid of London style magazines, it was while volunteering at a homeless shelter and soup kitchen in Brighton that Williams decided to start her project. She was struck by the disparity in circumstances. There is a lot of waste in fashion, she says. When I started, the budgets you get for shoots  compared to that at the homeless shelter  seemed like worlds apart. I wanted to be able to connect them in some way.

Her motivation is to address how an ethical label might look in 2019. When people think about this side of fashion, they think still think of hemp, she says.

Her clothes are very much a luxury product. They are expensive (prices start at 210 for organic screen-printed T-shirts and go up to 3,500 for recycled hand-woven jackets). I need to support the communities I work with through my work, so its important that people buy it, she says. Far from the business of fast fashion, Williams is a purveyor of slow appreciation that benefits people and the planet.

The aesthetics matter too. Embracing the demand for clothes that are non-gender specific, she is passionate about silhouette.
The unannounced visit saw the couple lay flowers and sign the a book of condolences, after the young couple released a joint statement with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge last week saying: We have all been fortunate to spend time in Christchurch and have felt the warm, open-hearted and generous spirit that is core to its remarkable people. No person should ever have to fear attending a sacred place of worship.

The newlywed couple, who are expecting their first child imminently, carried out their first international royal tour in October 2018, when they visited New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and Australia.

In addition to offering her condolences, Meghan used her choice of jewellery to subtly pay her respects. She accessorised her black ensemble with gold studs adorned with the native Miromiro feather, which had been a gift from the New Zealand of Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit New Zealand House - In pictures 1 /22 The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit New Zealand House - In pictures Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visit the New Zealand House to sign the book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family Reuters The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duchess of Sussex leaves flowers she arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex arrive at the New Zealand House to sign the book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family Reuters The message written by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at New Zealand House in London, in the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duchess of Sussex receives a hongi from the High Commissioner of New Zealand Jerry Mateparae to the United Kingdom as she arrives with the Duke of Sussex at New Zealand House in London, where they will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duchess of Sussex leaves flowers she arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visit the New Zealand House to sign the book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family Reuters The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House PA The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA Meghan, Duchess of Sussex places flowers at a makeshift memorial at the New Zealand House in London Reuters Prince Harry places flowers at a makeshift memorial at the New Zealand House in London Reuters The Duchess of Sussex leaving New Zealand House in London, where she signed the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duke and Duchess of Sussex following a visit to New Zealand High Commission in London EPA The Duke and Duchess of Sussex leaving New Zealand House in London, where they signed the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duke and Duchess of Sussex leaving New Zealand House in London, where they signed the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA

The heavily pregnant duchess covered up her bump in a billowing, elegant black coat with statement buttons and a heavily embellished collar.
I t might be grey outside, but the most colourful event of the year is back in London this month, with the Hindu festival of Holi taking place in March.

The celebrations signal the end of winter and the triumph of good over evil, with the official festival taking place on March 10.

It's being marked with events throughout the coming weeks, from fantastic dining to technicolour parties, and promises to be one of the most uplifting and feel-good moments of the year for everyone involved.

From colour powder parades to one-off special menus, here's our pick of how to celebrate Holi in London.

Get colourful at the Cinnamon Kitchen

Curry favourite Cinnamon Kitchen is hosting its annual paint throwing pop-up in the name of Holi. As well as trying out the special seasonal dishes on the menu, theres a chance for guests to step into the venues print pod, grab a few handfuls of paint powder and create their own expressive artwork. Just dont turn up in your Sunday best  things are sure to get messy.

March 4-15, 9 Devonshire Square, EC2M 4YL, designmynight.com

Holi Festival supper club at Little Yellow Door

A special supper club is coming to this Notting Hill Spot on Sunday, with the team behind Yaatra Diwali Brunch Party whipping up a colourful feast. The four course menu of traditional dishes will reflect the arrival of spring and theres also the option to make the meal bottomless, with a selection of Holi inspired cocktails on offer. DJs will spin a selection of Bollywood and Bhangra tunes until 6pm.

March 8, 6-8 All Saints Road, W11 1HH, eventbrite.co.uk

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Magic of India Holi Colour Dance Festival Harrow

This indoor event from Magic of India at Harrows Byron Hall will feature DJ sets, live music, dancing and, of course, all the dry colour powder people can throw at each other. The community event is sure to be one of the liveliest parties taking place this month  theres also a Magic of India outdoor event on March 21 in Greenfords Horsenden Hill West to look out for, which will be just as fun.

March 15, Byron Hall, Harrow Leisure Centre, HA3 5BD, eventbrite.co.uk

Dance the night away at Bang Bang Oriental

North west Londons shrine to Asian cuisine, Bang Bang Oriental, is marking this years festival with an evening of dance. Bollywood dance group Bollywood Belles will take centre stage at this Holi celebration. There is, of course, huge choice when it comes to food too  there are 30 food kiosks packed into the Colindale food hall, offering an eclectic mix of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Taiwanese and Malaysian dishes.
The story of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes (not to be confused with the other Elizabeth Holmes, who provides witty sartorial commentary about the Royal Family) might be one of the most high stakes scandals in recent history.

Once one of Silicon Valley's most high profile wunderkinds, feted by the likes of Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, Elizabeth Holmes convinced investors to give her millions of dollars for what would turn out to be a completely false enterprise.

Following investigations into Holmes, with the release of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup and the popular podcast The Dropout, a new documentary about the Theranos CEO has aired on HBO - The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. And now, not one but two high profile onscreen projects have been green-lit: a dramatic Hulu miniseries called The Dropout starring SNL's Kate McKinnon and Bad Blood; a feature film starring Jennifer Lawrence, directed by Anchorman's Adam McKay and produced by Will Ferrell.

Here's everything you need to know about the woman who was once tipped to be the next Steve Jobs (right down to her penchant for wearing black polo necks).

Who is Elizabeth Holmes?

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley Trailer

Elizabeth Holmes was born to a wealthy family in Washington, D.C. in 1984. She later attended Stanford University, where she first came up with the idea for her company, Theranos.

(Getty Images)

When she told her professor Dr. Phyllis Gardner about her idea, Gardner told her it was ambitious but also impossible. Her idea was to invent a machine which could run hundreds of complex tests on blood with a single finger pinprick.

Holmes nevertheless went on to launch the company and lied for years about what her blood testing company, Theranos, was actually capable of doing.

Holmes was positioned as the female Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk after dropping out of Stanford during her sophomore year to pursue Theranos, which was named after therapy and diagnostics. The former Theranos founder is now facing fraud charges from the SEC.

(Getty Images)

The former Theranos founder is now facing fraud charges from the SEC, as well as battling a class-action civil case and a federal crime case (which saw her incited by a grand jury in 2018).

Her class-action suit has now been complicated by her lawyers filing a civil case against her, claiming that she hasnt paid them in over a year. According to Mercury News, the law firm Cooley LLP said in documents, Ms. Holmes has not paid Cooley for any of its work as her counsel of record in this action for more than a year.

Further, given Ms. Holmess current financial situation, Cooley has no expectation that Ms. Holmes will ever pay it for its services as her counsel, they continued.

Calling it unfair and unreasonable for them to continue allegedly doing unpaid work for Holmes, they asked to be allowed to stop representing Holmes. According to The Mercury News, Elizabeth Holmes could not be reached for comment whereas Jeffrey Lombard, one of three Cooley LLP who filed the civil case against her, told CNBC they dont have any further comment.

She notably modeled her behavior on Steve Jobs, hiring former Apple employees and even wearing his signature black turtlenecks. After she made his turtleneck her go-to wardrobe choice, she also started speaking in what people who knew her before insisted was a completely fake deep voice.

Where is Elizabeth Holmes now?

She was living in Los Altos, California, but shes now in a luxury apartment in San Francisco, where according to friends shes plotting her comeback.

According to Vanity Fair, Holmes, 35, is currently engaged to Billy Evans, an eight years younger hospitality heir and MIT graduate who also works in tech. She was spotted wearing his class ring as a necklace when the pair partied at Burning Man (how very Carrie Bradshaw).

Evan is now a dog dad to her infamous pup Balto, a Husky who she was convinced was half wolf. She brought the dog into the lab with her even though he could contaminate samples and he was not potty trained.

Did she go to jail for the Theranos fraud?

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Holmes is currently awaiting trial on charges that could result in a maximum of 20 years in prison. She and her former COO, Ramesh Sunny Balwani, both pleaded not guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. In her deposition, Holmes said I dont know more than 600 times. She also revealed that she and Balwani had been in a romantic relationship and had been living together - a fact they hadnt disclosed to the investors who they took hundreds of millions of dollars from.

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The pair were released on $500k bail and had to give up their passports. Her trial date for her criminal charges has been set for August 2020 according to the Daily Mail, whereas no date has been set for her civil lawsuit. Holmes has denied all charges.

Not only did they fool the investors, they fooled patients, they fooled doctors, Reed Kathrein, who sued Theranos on behalf of investors, told ABC News. She was lying about the accuracy of the blood tests.

And even when the scandal was uncovered, Holmes remained almost eerily calm. During the final days of Theranos, she was pictured partying at Burning Man.

What is Elizabeth Holmes net worth?

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By 2014, Theranos was valued at $10 billion and attracted investors including the founders of Walmart, Rupert Murdoch and the DeVos family. In 2015, Forbes estimated Holmes' net worth as $4.5 billion, making her the youngest self-made female billionaire.

As of 2016, Holmes' net worth is estimated by Forbes to be zero.

How to watch The Inventor documentary

The documentary aired earlier this year on HBO and is now available on its streaming platform. It can be watched on demand until April 22, 2019. The film follows Holmes from her time as a billionaire to her 2018 indictment.

How to watch The Dropout on Hulu

Hulu's show The Dropout has only just been announced by Deadline and while there's no concrete release date set, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine the Kate McKinnon-led series will air exclusively on Hulu's streaming platform.
S elf-styled yellow vest protester James Goddard appeared in court today to deny abusing Anna Soubry MP outside Parliament.

Goddard, 29, is accused of repeatedly haranguing and insulting the MP by calling her a Nazi, a traitor, and scum as she walked out of the House of Common and tried to conduct media interviews.

It is said he pursued Ms Soubry while filming her on his mobile phone, while loudly and repeatedly demanding that she answer questions.

However Goddard is set to argue at trial that it was fair comment, reasonable behaviour and true comment, Westminster magistrates court heard this morning.

James Goddard at Westminster Magistrates' Court / PA

Goddard waved and blew kisses from the dock as he denied the charges against him, and let out a smile as Ms Soubrys name was mentioned.

When his lawyer was asked whether Goddard had said the words alleged, the defendant shouted from the dock Its not illegal to heckle an MP.

His supporters applauded from the public gallery as they repeatedly disrupted the hearing.

James Goddard takes a selfie with a supporter outside court / PA

Goddard, who is a leading figure of the so-called yellow vest protest movement in the UK, is also charged with racially abusing a police officer and a public order harassment charge on January 7.

Wearing a white t-shirt bearing a British flag and the slogan Our Boys, he pleaded not guilty to harassment without violence, using threatening or abusive word or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress, and racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm, or distress.
P olice investigating a fatal stabbing in Fulham have issued a description of a man who was in the area at the time of the attack.

Nathaniel Armstrong, 29, was stabbed to death in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Just days earlier, his cousin, Good Morning Britain weatherman Alex Beresford, had delivered a powerful speech on air about the state of knife crime in the UK.

Mr Beresford paid tribute to Mr Armstrong as a "bright young man" who was "yet one more example of a needless life lost to knife crime.

Nathaniel Armstrong: 'Big friendly giant' / PA

Police are now trying to track down a light-skinned black male who left the scene on Gowan Avenue shortly after the attack.

Detective Chief Inspector Glen Lloyd, from the Homicide and Major Crime Command, said: "I am still eager to hear from anyone who was in the area of Gowan Avenue shortly after midnight on Saturday.

Any information you have could be vital in establishing what happened that night.

"My team is particularly keen to trace a male who was seen near the scene at the time of the incident.

A forensic tent at the scene of the stabbing / Victoria Jones/PA

He was described as a light-skinned black male, approximately 6ft tall with facial hair on his cheeks and a moustache.

He was wearing a brown bomber style jacket and following the stabbing he left the scene in the direction of Fulham Road.

"Did you see him? Do you know who he is? Anyone with information on his identity or whereabouts is urged to contact police."

Enquiries including forensic analysis and the review of local CCTV footage at the time of the incident continue.

There have been no arrests.
A n urgent security investigation has been launched by the courts service after supporters of yellow vest protester James Goddard disrupted his hearing.

The judge at Westminster Magistrates' Court was forced to temporarily halt his plea hearing after people in the public gallery began calling Remain-supporting MP Anna Soubry - an alleged victim in the case - a Nazi.

The mob were also accused of "intimidating" journalists, with one reporter complaining to the court and claiming she was called "scum of the earth."

Goddard is accused of repeatedly haranguing and insulting the MP by calling her a traitor and scum as she walked out of the House of Common and tried to conduct media interviews.

James Goddard at Westminster Magistrates' Court / PA

It is said he pursued Ms Soubry while filming her on his mobile phone, while loudly and repeatedly demanding that she answer questions.

Judge Kenneth Grant temporarily adjourned the case at Westminster Magistrates' Court 15 minutes into the hearing after several people in the public gallery began shouting about Brexit, made derogatory comments about Ms Soubry, and chanted: "Shame on you and Soubry is a Nazi."

A female journalist said she complained to the courts service and to the police after she was "intimidated" by supporters as she attempted to cover the case.

Yellow vest protesters storm the Attorney General's office in London 1 /16 Yellow vest protesters storm the Attorney General's office in London Police officers remove a group of yellow vest protestors from the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA A group of yellow vest protestors inside the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA Police officers arrive at the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA Police rush up the stairs after yellow vest protesters get into the building where the Attorney General's office is in Westminster PA A woman looks out of the window of the Attorney General's office in London after it was stormed by yellow vest protesters PA A group of yellow vest protesters in the window of the Attorney General's Office PA A protester carrying a megaphone PA A screengrab taken from a video posted on the FaceBook page Fighting For Justice of scenes showing a group of protestors inside the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA A group of yellow vest protesters have stormed the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA Yellow vest protesters outside the Attorney General's Office in London PA Police try to disperse protesters who have gathered inside the Attorney General's office in Westminster PA Yellow vest protesters from the Fighting For Justice group shout chants using megaphones inside the Attorney General's office PA

She said Goddard identified her as a journalist who had covered the yellow vests protests with court officials being told by his supporters not to let her into the hearing.

The reporter said she was called "vile" and "scum of the earth", and has been told by her editor that she will not cover any further cases involving Goddard due to concerns for her safety.

A spokesman for Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) said: "The safety and security of all court users is our priority and we're deeply concerned to hear of intimidating behaviour at Westminster Magistrates' Court this morning.

"We apologise to all those affected and are urgently investigating what happened. This sort of behaviour will not be tolerated."

James Goddard: "She's called a Nazi because she's acting like one." / Twitter

Goddard, 29, denies two counts of harassment and one count of racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.

He waved and blew kisses from the dock as he denied the charges against him, and let out a smile as Ms Soubrys name was mentioned.

When his lawyer was asked whether Goddard had said the words alleged, the defendant shouted from the dock Its not illegal to heckle an MP.

He is set to argue at trial in July that it was fair comment, reasonable behaviour and true comment.
A top London headteacher today said blanket mobile phone bans are doomed to failure because children sneak secret phones into school.

Stephen Lehec, head of Kingston Grammar School, argued that schools should instead teach children to use their smartphones responsibly.

The school, where fees are 18,000 a year and whose former pupils include Olympic rowing gold medallist James Cracknell, allows students and staff to have their phones in lessons as long as they are on silent.

It has also created its own social media app, described as a junior LinkedIn, to teach online dos and donts.

Mr Lehec told the Evening Standard: You cant be educating them in maths, English, healthy eating, computer use, sport and not be saying this is how to appropriately use what is going to be one of the major tools in your life.

An increasing number of UK secondary schools are banning phones, with staff collecting devices at the start of the day and returning them to the students when school finishes.

Mr Lehec described the move as illogical, counterproductive and doomed to failure because children simply brought in decoy devices.

He said: We know from the teenagers in our school, from parents with children in other schools and headteachers conversations, its relatively common that what children would call a brick gets taken in and handed in. In most homes parents have old phones.

Then a smartphone is kept on the person or in their bag and ends up getting used in toilets or changing rooms. Which means its not a visible use. Its the forbidden fruit and pushes the problem into another area rather than addressing potential issues.

He added: I teach using my mobile phone  its my computer in my pocket. I use it to project things on the screen. If I banned it, what am I saying about double standards?

Kingston Grammar pupils are encouraged to interact online via the schools app, and teachers observe students online behaviour and interactions.

We can see at a glance, for instance, who may be being left out of gaining kudos and what kind of posts are most popular, or ask students to reflect on the impact of their posts, Mr Lehec said. We think it could be a game-changer when it comes to monitoring student wellbeing and online safety.

France recently banned mobile phones for primary and middle school pupils to try to improve pupils focus.
A n Arsenal fan who survived a widow-maker heart attack during the north London derby has thanked the medics who saved his life.

Bruce McKenzie, 55, went into cardiac arrest twice after seeing Arsenal go 4-2 up against Tottenham Hotspur at the Emirates stadium in December.

He was saved after a club steward took him to St John Ambulance first-aiders, who realised something was wrong and referred him to a match doctor.

An ECG test showed Mr McKenzie, a fan of the club for more than 45 years, was having a heart attack. His heart arrested as he was being put into an ambulance, and again travelling to the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead.

He was fitted with stents to reopen the blocked main left-side artery. Last Thursday, on his second match back at the Emirates, he was reunited with the medics before Arsenals Europa league game against Rennes.

Mr McKenzie, who works for Thames Water, said the attack came out of the blue as he was in good health.

A blockage in this artery, I am told, is invariably fatal without very prompt and expert treatment, he said. The good news is that the excellent work of the steward, the St John Ambulance first-aiders, the doctors, the London Ambulance Service paramedics and staff at the Royal Free hospital meant that not only was my life saved, but I was discharged just days later with very little damage to my heart.

LAS team leader John Harrison said: Theres no doubt that the speed of the response to get lifesaving treatment to Bruce ... helped to save his life. We are all immensely proud of what we achieved that day.
Footage live-streamed on Facebook showed a group of protesters in yellow vests inside Geoffrey Cox's office building in Westminster.

The demonstrators sat in stairwells, shouted on loudspeakers and criticised the police as alarms were heard ringing out.

They then knocked on an office door within the building, shouting: "Hello, the little people are here." It was unclear how they had got inside.

Dozens of police officers were called to the scene in Victoria Street, close to Westminster Abbey.

Yellow vest protesters storm the Attorney General's office in London 1 /16 Yellow vest protesters storm the Attorney General's office in London Police officers remove a group of yellow vest protestors from the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA A group of yellow vest protestors inside the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA Police officers arrive at the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA Police rush up the stairs after yellow vest protesters get into the building where the Attorney General's office is in Westminster PA A woman looks out of the window of the Attorney General's office in London after it was stormed by yellow vest protesters PA A group of yellow vest protesters in the window of the Attorney General's Office PA A protester carrying a megaphone PA A screengrab taken from a video posted on the FaceBook page Fighting For Justice of scenes showing a group of protestors inside the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA A group of yellow vest protesters have stormed the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London PA Yellow vest protesters outside the Attorney General's Office in London PA Police try to disperse protesters who have gathered inside the Attorney General's office in Westminster PA Yellow vest protesters from the Fighting For Justice group shout chants using megaphones inside the Attorney General's office PA

More than 20 people sang "justice for the three" and chanted "we want a new Attorney General" while one man held an England flag aloft.

One 63-year-old man from south London, who did not want to give his name, said: "We are not far-right. We are a peaceful movement. We have our views on politics which we're entitled to have."

He said they will march to Parliament later to "demand Brexit".

A group of yellow vest protestors inside the Attorney General's Office on Victoria Street in London / PA

When police officers asked the protesters to come off the steps a number refused to move and told the officers: "No violence."

Security guards for Westminster Abbey also moved in and told protesters: "Time to make a move now please."

Protesters stayed put and continued to chant: "Justice for the three."

It is not clear how the yellow vest protesters managed to get inside the building / PA

It is believed that the protesters are part of the "Fighting for Justice" group who are unhappy with the way police investigated a hit-and-run crash that killed teenage boys Harry Rice, Josh McGuinness and George Wilkinson in Hayes, west London, in January last year.

In March last year, drink-driver Jaynesh Chudasama was jailed for 13 years for three counts of causing death by dangerous driving.

The boys had been walking to a birthday party when he crashed his Audi into them at more than 70mph and then fled the scene leaving them to die.

Police and yellow vest protesters outside the Attorney General's office / PA

The Met Police confirmed it was dealing with the incident.

A spokesman said: "Police were called to Attorney Generals office on The Sanctuary at 1.43pm on Tuesday to reports of a protest/demonstration.

"A number of protesters had entered the building.

"Officers are on scene and dealing. No arrests at this point."

By 4.15pm, police said the protesters had left the building and officers remained at the scene monitoring the crowd outside.

Earlier on Tuesday self-styled yellow vest protester James Goddard appeared to in court to deny abusing MP Anna Soubry outside Parliament.
T he European Union's chief negotiator has warned that Britain will need to propose "something new" and "concrete" to justify a long Brexit delay.

Michel Barnier told reporters today that a long extension to Article 50 would only be considered if there was "a new political process" in the UK to warrant it.

He also cautioned that the EU will need to know "the reason and the usefulness" of any UK request for a delay to Brexit before deciding whether to grant an extension.

And he said EU leaders would need a "concrete plan from the UK in order to be able to make an informed decision."

It came as the Prime Minister, who earlier admitted the country was in "crisis", was due to write by the end of Wednesday to European Council president Donald Tusk, setting out her proposal to extend the two-year process of negotiating withdrawal under the EU's Article 50 rules.

Chief EU negotiator for Brexit Michel Barnier addresses a press conference on Tuesday / AFP/Getty Images

But a delay to Brexit beyond the scheduled date of March 29 needs the approval of all 27 remaining member states at a summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Mr Barnier told a news conference in Brussels: "It is our duty to ask whether this extension would be useful because an extension will be something which would extend uncertainty and uncertainty costs."

Unconfirmed reports suggest that Mrs May could ask for a lengthy extension to Article 50, with the option of an early break in May or June if she manages to get her Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament.

But Mr Barnier appeared to pour cold water on this possibility, telling a reporter: "You said both short and long.

"Well, it's either one or the other, isn't it?"

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He added: "My feeling is ... a longer extension needs to be linked to something new.

"There needs to be a new event or a new political process."

Mr Barnier said that in making the decision, EU leaders would have to assess what is in the best interests of the EU.

He continued: "Does an extension increase the chances for the ratification of the withdrawal agreement? Will the UK request an extension because it wants a bit more time to rework the political declaration (on future EU-UK ties)?

"What would be the purpose and the outcome of an extension? How can we ensure that at the end of a possible extension we are not back in the same situation as today?"

Theresa May was today forced to ask the European Union to postpone Brexit / Getty Images

Mr Barnier said the British Government and parliament must decide quickly on how to move forward.

"The European Council will need to assess what is in the best interest of the EU," he said.

"Extending uncertainty without a clear plan would add to the economic costs to our businesses but could also incur a political cost for the EU."

If the EU agrees an extension, Brexit will be delayed by the passage of a statutory instrument through both Houses of Parliament removing the date of March 29 from the legislation.

MPs will be given an opportunity in the House of Commons on Monday to debate how the process should go forward.

Speaker John Bercow sporting a colourful jumper on his way to work this morning / BBC

At a meeting of Cabinet in Downing Street, Mrs May voiced her "absolute determination" that MPs should have another chance to vote on her Brexit deal, despite the bombshell intervention of the Commons Speaker.

John Bercow provoked uproar at Westminster on Monday when he ruled that the Government cannot bring the Prime Minister's deal back for a third "meaningful vote" unless there were substantial changes.

However, in the course of a 90-minute discussion at the weekly meeting of the Cabinet in Downing Street, Mrs May made clear she wanted MPs to have another vote "as soon as possible".

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "What you can see from the Prime Minister and her colleagues is an absolute determination to find a way in which Parliament could vote for the UK to leave the European Union with a deal.

"The Prime Minister has been very clear throughout that she wants that to happen as soon as possible."

John Bercow: Government cannot hold another Meaningful Vote unless it is substantially different

Nevertheless, there was said to be concern among some ministers that Brexit appeared to be slipping away.

The Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom is understood to have told the meeting: "This used to be the Cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what I'm hearing it's not."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Brexit was in a state of "flux" and that EU leaders will "try to react" to whatever Mrs May proposes on Thursday.

The Prime Minister has previously said if her deal is not agreed there will have to be an extended delay to Brexit, with the UK staging elections to the European Parliament in May.

However, her spokesman said: "She has said in the House of Commons that she does not want there to be a long delay and that she believes asking the British public to take part in European elections three years after they voted to leave the EU would represent a failure by politicians."

Downing Street confirmed discussions were continuing with the Democratic Unionist Party, which props up the Government at Westminster, in an effort to build support for the deal after last week's 149-vote defeat.

And Mrs May held talks on Brexit with former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, one of the most strident critics of her Withdrawal Agreement.

Jeremy Corbyn met leaders of the other opposition parties, but declined to sign up to joint action on a Brexit alternative.

Green co-leader Caroline Lucas said the chances of a People's Vote were "moderately higher" after the meeting, also attended by the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru.

A Labour spokesman said: "Should there not be a majority in Parliament for May's deal or a public vote, Corbyn called on the other parties to engage constructively to find a parliamentary majority for a close economic relationship with the EU that can work for the whole country."

Meanwhile, Mr Tusk met Irish premier Leo Varadkar in Dublin to discuss the backstop arrangement which both the EU and Ireland insist is necessary to keep the border open.

In a joint statement, they said Mr Tusk had expressed "strong and ongoing solidarity" with Ireland and they had agreed they needed to see what proposals would now emerge from London.
J ohn Bercow has faced a huge backlash for ruling out a third vote on Theresa Mays Brexit deal as he was accused of triggering a constitutional crisis.

The Speaker invoked a convention dating back to 1604 to stop the vote from taking place, sparking fury in the Commons as ministers accused him of failing to respect MPs.

Mr Bercows dramatic intervention on Monday will have huge reverberations for the process of UKs divorce from the EU, Solicitor General Robert Buckland warned.

With less than two weeks to go before the UK is scheduled to leave the EU, Mr Buckland warned of a "constitutional crisis".

Speaker of the House John Bercow faced a backlash over the move / REUTERS

Mr Bercow ruled that the Prime Minister cannot bring her EU Withdrawal Agreement back before MPs unless it is substantially different from the package which was decisively defeated last week.

The Speaker's ruling throws a further obstacle in the way of the Prime Minister's scramble to get a deal agreed by the scheduled date of Brexit on March 29.

Downing Street has indicated that Mrs May will not table a motion on a third "meaningful vote" ahead of Thursday's EU summit in Brussels unless there is a realistic prospect of securing a majority in the Commons.

Feud between John Bercow and Andrea Leadsom grows after Commons exchange

If no vote takes place over the coming days, she is expected to ask the leaders of the remaining 27 EU members for a lengthy extension to the two-year Article 50 negotiation process, delaying Brexit for months or even years beyond March 29.

The PM had been expected to then make a last-ditch attempt to get her deal through the Commons next week, effectively presenting MPs with a choice between the Withdrawal Agreement which they have already rejected twice, or a long wait for Brexit.

But Mr Bercow's ruling could make that plan impossible, unless Mrs May is able to negotiate some change to her deal before presenting it once more to MPs.

A Number 10 spokesman said: "We note the Speaker's statement. This is something that requires proper consideration."

Mr Buckland suggested ministers may need to prorogue Parliament and call a new session in order to get round the ruling.

"There are ways around this," he told BBC News.

"Frankly we could have done without this. Now we have this ruling to deal with, it is clearly going to require a lot of very fast but very deep thought in the hours ahead."

The Speaker cited the Commons rulebook Erskine May as he set out a convention dating back to 1604 that a defeated motion cannot be brought back in the same form during the course of a parliamentary session.

Under pressure: Theresa May / REUTERS

He said it was within the rules for a second vote to be held on the Withdrawal Agreement in March, because it had been substantially revised - including by the addition of three new documents - since its defeat by 230 votes in January.

"If the Government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same nor substantially the same as that disposed of by the House on March 12, this would be entirely in order," said Mr Bercow.

"What the Government cannot legitimately do is resubmit to the House the same proposition - or substantially the same proposition - as that of last week, which was rejected by 149 votes.

"This ruling should not be regarded as my last word on the subject. It is simply meant to indicate the test which the Government must meet in order for me to rule that a third meaningful vote can legitimately be held in this parliamentary session."

Mr Bercow was asked by Commons Brexit Committee chairman Hilary Benn whether there would have to be "new political agreement" for the Government to bring its deal back before MPs.

He replied that "in all likelihood" this would be needed.

The change must be "not different in terms of wording but different in terms of substance" and "this is in the context of a negotiation with others outside the UK", he told MPs.

Mrs May's hopes of rallying Conservative MPs behind her agreement were dealt a blow by 23 Leave-backing backbenchers who signed a letter to The Daily Telegraph backing a no-deal Brexit.

And former foreign secretary Boris Johnson called on the PM to postpone any further vote on her deal, warning it would be "absurd" to bring it back to the Commons without first securing change from Brussels.

Boris: it would be absurd to bring deal it back to the Commons without first securing change from Brussels / NurPhoto via Getty Images

Discussions were continuing between the Government and DUP over the course of Monday, including over the question of how the Northern Ireland Assembly could block any new regulatory barriers to trade with the rest of the UK.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman confirmed ministers would want to be confident they had a "realistic prospect" of success before deciding to call a third vote.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, attending a meeting of EU foreign ministers, said there were some "cautious signs of encouragement", but added: "There is a lot more work to do."

Under House of Commons rules, the Government must table a motion by the close of business on Tuesday if a vote is to be held before the Prime Minister goes to the summit in Brussels.

Leading Tory Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg said he would wait to see what the DUP decided before finally making up his mind which way to vote. He warned that if a third meaningful vote was lost, it might mean the UK never leaves the EU.

Jacob Rees-Mogg said if a there is not another vote Brexit may not happen / Getty Images

"If it is thwarted now, no-one is ever going to allow us another chance to have a vote," Mr Rees-Mogg told LBC radio.

"The whole weight of British establishment opinion will prevent that ever happening again."

He added: "As long as people think we can get to no deal, they will vote the deal down. That is my position."

The 10 DUP MPs are viewed by Downing Street as pivotal, not just for the votes they provide but the influence of their stance on Conservative Eurosceptics.

DUP MLA Jim Wells denied that the party was taking part in a financial "auction" for its support, insisting that "money is not being discussed on the table at the moment".

Mr Wells told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We still have a huge difficulty with the backstop, because we see it as a waiting room for constitutional change.
P rime Minister Theresa May will today convene a meeting of her Cabinet to decide what her next steps will be after her Brexit plans were dealt a significant blow by the Commons Speaker.

John Bercow scuppered the chance of another meaningful vote on Mrs Mays deal before Thursday's EU summit, leading one minister to warn that the Government faces a "major constitutional crisis".

However, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has now indicated ministers will continue to press on with the Prime Minister's deal despite Mr Bercow's decision that there cannot be a third "meaningful vote" without substantial changes.

Mr Barclay said the Cabinet would give "serious consideration" to Mr Bercow's decision but that the Speaker had made clear in earlier rulings that the Commons should not necessarily be bound by precedent.

Stephen Barclay in Downing Street / PA

"What we need to do is secure the deal," he told Sky News. "What the Speaker has said in his ruling is there needs to be something that is different. You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed.

"Obviously that has a difference in terms of how Members of Parliament would vote on a particular motion. So we need to look at the details of the ruling, we need to consider that in the terms of earlier rulings that don't particularly align with yesterday's.

"That the fact that a number of Members of Parliament have said that they will change their votes points to the fact that there are things that are different."

Theresa May returns to Downing Street on Monday / Getty Images

Mr Bercow ruled on Monday that Mrs May cannot bring her EU Withdrawal Agreement back before MPs unless it is substantially different from the package that was decisively defeated last week.

The Speaker's ruling, announced in an unexpected statement to the Commons, throws a further obstacle in the way of the Prime Minister's scramble to get a deal agreed by the scheduled date of Brexit of March 29.

A Government source said it seems "clear that the Speaker's motive here is to rule out a meaningful vote this week which also stands in the way of a securing a shorter extension".

"This leads you to believe what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit. But anyone who thinks that this makes no deal more likely is mistaken - the Speaker wouldn't have done it if it did."

Commons Speaker John Bercow / REUTERS

However, there are ways the Government can get around the ruling by Mr Bercow, which Solicitor General Robert Buckland said would have huge reverberations for the Brexit process.

The Prime Minister could firstly demonstrate MPs are in favour of a third vote on her deal, which she could do by holding a vote in the Commons ahead of a third meaningful vote.

Another option is Mrs May could prorogue Parliament and call a new session to get around the ruling, which would mean dissolving Parliament and bringing forward a new Queens Speech.

However, unless the Government manages to secure an Article 50 extension beforehand, it would mean leaving the EU without a deal.

Theresa May's deal was dealt a huge blow in the Commons / AFP/Getty Images

Speaking to BBC News, Solicitor General Mr Buckland said: There are ways around this.

Frankly we could have done without this. Now we have this ruling to deal with, it is clearly going to require a lot of very fast but very deep thought in the hours ahead.

But Tory former attorney general Dominic Grieve said Mr Bercow was "completely within his rights".

On Tuesday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will meet leaders of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Green Party to discuss Brexit.

In a joint statement ahead of the talks, Ian Blackford, Vince Cable, Liz Saville Roberts and Caroline Lucas said: "The UK faces an unprecedented crisis with Brexit, and Westminster remains deeply divided.

"The best and most democratic way forward is to put the decision back to the people in a new vote - with the option to Remain on the ballot paper."

Mr Corbyn will also meet members of the "Norway Plus" group of MPs in a separate meeting on Tuesday.
"We will be legally and politically at the mercy of Brussels, since we will be obliged to accept all EU legislation, during the so-called implementation period: the first time since the Norman Conquest that a foreign power has passed the laws of this country.

"Worst of all, the Irish backstop arrangement gives the EU an indefinite means of blackmail, so that they will be able to keep us locked in the customs union and large parts of the single market, unless we are prepared to abandon Northern Ireland; and they will use this blackmail to get their way throughout the negotiations, notably over the free movement of people.

"If we agree this deal  and unless we have a radical change in our approach to the negotiations  we face an even greater humiliation in the second phase."
B rexit Secretary Stephen Barclay today backed delaying the UKs departure from the EU - having voted against such a move just days ago.

The Cabinet minister, who supported Leave, appeared to make a second U-turn in less than a week on Brexit Day being put back from March 29.

He sparked derision last week when he argued for an extension from the Despatch Box, only to vote against it minutes later.

In a further twist this morning, he came out defending an extension, with the Government still seemingly unable to get a majority for its Brexit plans and Speaker John Bercow ruling out allowing another vote on it unless the proposition on the table changes substantially.

Mr Barclay told Sky News: I stand with the Prime Minister which is the best way forward is to get a deal which will require now a short extension...

Pressed on whether he supported an extension to Article 50, the two-year process of quitting the EU, he added: Well I do, I have been clear that I dont want an extension but we are now in a situation where we do need to have an extension to pass the legislation for the Withdrawal Bill...

There will need to be a short extension.

He admitted there had been confusion after he opposed, in a free vote, the Government motion for an extension on Thursday, having told MPs: It is time for this House to act in the national interest. It is time to put forward an extension that is realistic.

Mr Barclay, whose North East Cambridgeshire constituency voted overwhelmingly to Leave, insisted his speech had largely been against a series of amendments to the motion and that it had floated the possibility of a longer extension, as well as a shorter one.

But shadow Brexit minister Matthew Pennycook said: The Brexit Secretary is all over the place. First he called for an extension, then he voted against that extension and now he is calling for an extension again.
C huka Umunna today condemned nasty, bullying and racist behaviour in the Labour Party amid a furious public row with Diane Abbott.

He hit out after Ms Abbott, the shadow home secretary, questioned his commitment to race equality and other forms of equality in an extraordinary attack on her former colleague.

Mr Umunna, who left Labour to co-found The Independent Group of MPs, told the Standard: It is, in part, precisely because of the nasty, bullying, racist behaviour of a significant number of Labour members, and the leaderships collective failure to deal with it, that I left the party.

In a recent interview, Mr Umunna said that supporters of Jeremy Corbyn who joined his old Labour branch did not reflect the ethnic make-up of his south London constituency, which has one of the highest levels of BME voters.

The Streatham MP went on: Above all my constituency, which scored the highest Remain vote in the country, elected an MP that would fight Brexit which is what I am doing and why the overwhelming majority of correspondence from constituents has supported me going independent - the Labour Partys leadership wants to facilitate Brexit which is not acceptable to those I represent.

Ms Abbott fired the first shot in the row at the weekend by launching a Labour campaign to unseat Mr Umunna at an event organised by left-wing group Momentum.

In a speech to around 130 activists at Streatham Common, she said: Our task is to get the people in this part of South London...to get them their Labour MP back.

They need a Labour MP that will fight for equalities, race equality, gender equality, LGBTQ+ equality in a way that Chuka is not standing up for.

Ms Abbotts criticism of Mr Umunnas record on race equality stood in sharp contrast to comments she made in 2015 when she lavished praise on him in a Standard interview and said he would have made a brilliant leader of the party.

Mr Umunna has been a target since his decision to leave the party and since he accused Labour last September of becoming institutionally racist over of its poor handling of anti-Semitism.

The decision by Momentum to pour activists into the safe seat, where Labour had a solid 26,000 majority at the 2017 election, has divided Labour MPs facing local elections. MP Lilian Greenwood MP tweeted at left-winger Owen Jones, who spoke at the event: Cant help thinking that with an actual by-election going on in Newport & local council elections all over the place on 2nd May, there are more important places to be knocking doors than Streatham.

A by-election in the far more marginal Newport West in Wales taking place on April 4 and local elections are being held around the country outside London in May. Momentum has advertised various campaigning events in the seat.

Momentum is organising canvassing events in the seats of other Labour MPs who quit to join The Independent Group, including Angela Smith in Penistone & Stocksbridge and Ann Coffey in Stockport.
U S President Donald Trump sees "huge opportunity" for a trade deal if the Brexit impasse is solved, according to his national security adviser

John Bolton told Sky News that America is ready to go on a trade deal with a newly independent Britain.

"Trade minister Liam Fox would be welcome here; any member of the government would be welcome here, we can do these deals quickly. We are ready to go. We want to partner with a newly independent Britain, he said.

"The president has been clear he wants a resolution to this issue that allows the United States and Britain to come to trade deals again.

His remarks come as Prime Minister Theresa May, who earlier admitted that the UK is in crisis after her deal was voted down by MPs for a second time, prepares to send a letter to the UK asking for a delay to Brexit.

Mr Trump sees "huge opportunity" for a trade deal with "newly independent Britain." / REUTERS

Before he joined the Trump administration, Mr Bolton expressed his support for Brexit.

On Tuesday, he accused UK politicians of failing to implement the result of the 2016 referendum.

"The people of Britain have voted. When is the political class going to give effect to that vote?" Mr Bolton said.

National Security Advisor John Bolton. / AFP/Getty Images

"[Mr Trump] sees huge opportunity if Britain's status can be resolved, and I think the point he has made that I would stress is, people of Britain have voted. Where is the political class going to give effect to that vote?"

Mr Trump recently weighed in on Brexit and trade deals that could follow, saying he thinks a second referendum would be unfair."

During a meeting with Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Varadkar he said is surprised at how badly the UKs negotiations with the European Union have been handled.

"It's a very complex thing right now, it's tearing a country apart, it's actually tearing a lot of countries apart and it's a shame it has to be that way but I think we will stay right in our lane," Mr Trump said.

The same day he tweeted: My Administration looks forward to negotiating a large scale Trade Deal with the United Kingdom. The potential is unlimited!

After it leaves the EU, Britain will head to the negotiating table to broker its own commerce pacts with other countries, including the US, for the first time in decades.

Mr Fox said he looked forward to sitting down at the negotiating table to strengthen the trading relationship with the US.
T heresa May was today forced to ask the European Union to postpone Brexit after admitting the country is facing a crisis.

With just 10 days to go before the long-planned March 29 exit date, the Prime Minister told Cabinet she will send a letter to European Council president Donald Tusk asking for an extension of the Article 50 process.

Mrs May was said to have ducked the decision on how long the delay would be, suggesting she may seek a delay with a provisional end date of June 30 but extendable for up to two years.

It was confirmed to the Standard that there was a heated Cabinet row in which Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom, a leading Brexiteer, complained this is now a Remain Cabinet, not a Brexit Cabinet and said the Government should be prepared to crash out on no-deal terms.

In an angry intervention, Mrs Leadsom told her colleagues: "This used to be the cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what I'm hearing it's not."

Under pressure on Brexit: Theresa May / AFP/Getty Images

The decision is a humiliation for Mrs May, who repeatedly dismissed warnings that she could not deliver a withdrawal blueprint on time without cross-party backing.

Downing Street would not say how long the delay would last for, but MPs and European sources believe Britain could remain in the European Union for another nine months to two years.

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier told a news conference in Brussels that it would need to know "the reason and the usefulness" of any UK request for a delay to Brexit before deciding whether to grant an extension.

He said: "It is our duty to ask whether this extension would be useful because an extension will be something which would extend uncertainty and uncertainty costs."

He warned that the UK would need to propose "something new" to justify a lengthy extension, he said.

Chief EU negotiator for Brexit Michel Barnier addresses a press conference on Tuesday / AFP/Getty Images

Mrs May is now set to have one final attempt in the Commons next week to get her withdrawal deal through, by telling MPs they can have a shorter delay of two or three months if they finally vote it through. The Prime Minister even invited her diehard critic Boris Johnson into No 10 for private discussions about next weeks vote this afternoon in an attempt to leave no stone unturned in the search for support.

Meanwhile, the EU was considering holding a special summit next week to decide the length of the delay after the Commons votes. A decision at a summit this week may not be taken because officials doubt whether Mrs May has the authority to keep her promises. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, commenting on Speaker John Bercows decision to prevent a vote on the deal this week, said: I admit I wasnt aware of the rules of procedure of the British Parliament from the 17th century.

Mrs Mays hopes of wearing down opposition at Westminster in a series of votes on her deal was torpedoed last night by Mr Bercow.

He made a ruling, based on a 1604 convention, that there must be substantial changes to any deal before it could be voted on again. The Prime Ministers official spokesman said: Its a fact that any extension will have to be agreed by the 27 [other EU leaders] but the Prime Minister will be writing to Donald Tusk.

Speaker John Bercow sporting a colourful jumper on his way to work this morning / BBC

Asked whether there was a constitutional crisis following Mr Bercows ruling, he added: If you were to look back to the speech which the Prime Minister gave just before Meaningful Vote 2, she said that if MPs did not support Meaningful Vote 2, we would be in a crisis.

Events yesterday tell you that that situation has come to pass.

The developments came as the battle to replace Mrs May gathered pace.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss will tonight say governments should not behave like an overbearing helicopter parent in a speech that is likely be interpreted by some MPs as a sign she aims to stand in a leadership contest.

Speaker John Bercow derailed the Brexit process last night after refusing to allow a third vote on the PM's deal / REUTERS

She will also burnish her credentials as a hawk on spending by attacking handouts and vanity projects in the speech at the Onward think tank.

The Governments inability to pass Mrs Mays deal produced fury among European ministers gathered in Brussels ahead of an EU summit on Thursday, when they will consider the PMs request for more time.

Germanys Europe minister Michael Roth told reporters: It is not just a game. It is an extremely serious situation, not just for the people in the United Kingdom, but for the people in the European Union. He said the EU was really exhausted by these negotiations, adding: I expect clear and precise proposals [from] the British Government why such an extension is necessary ... Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking.

Nathalie Loiseau said Britain must come up with a reason for any Brexit delay / AFP/Getty Images

French Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau said Britain must come up with a reason for any Brexit delay  and said a no-deal divorce could still happen.

This uncertainty is unacceptable, she said. How do we get out of this deadlock? This is a question for the British authorities.

She asked: Grant an extension  what for? Time is not a solution, its a method. If there is an objective and a strategy and it has to come from London.

TODO: define component type apester

DUP sources said there were no plans at present for their party leader Arlene Foster to fly to London to meet Mrs May. Downing Street is pinning its hopes of a breakthrough on the 10-strong bloc of Northern Irish MPs getting behind her deal in return for assurances on future talks, and possibly a cash injection for the province as part of a renewal of the confidence-and-supply deal with the Conservatives.

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said ministers will continue to press on with the deal. He told Sky: The EU is clear it is the only deal on the table. Businesses need the certainty of this deal and it is time that Parliament comes together and gets behind it.

Mr Barclay ruled out ending the session of Parliament early to get round Mr Bercows ruling. I think the one thing everyone would agree on is involving Her Majesty in any of the issues around Brexit is not the way forward so I dont see that as a realistic option, he said.

The Speaker refused to be drawn when he was asked a series of questions regarding his ruling as he walked towards the Palace of Westminster this morning.

George Ciamba, the Romanian minister chairing the EU talks, tweeted a picture of dense clouds over Europe as he flew into Brussels. The biggest issue right now is that its getting more foggy, he said. We need to have more clarity from London.

One Brussels official asked how diplomats could negotiate successfully with a Prime Minister whose promises to deliver in the Commons might be blocked by the Speaker.

We can change the date, add some new words, but how will anyone be able to establish that Bercow views any changes as substantive? asked the official. She could go for a revised political declaration, but is that a substantial change?

Todays summit was held to prepare for a full-scale summit starting on Thursday, where Mrs May will formally ask for an extension of Article 50. However, the length of any delay and any conditions that might be attached is a matter for the EU 27 to rule on. Trust in the UK was further reduced when Brexiteer MPs said they would use a lengthy extension of Britains membership to demand concessions from the EU.

Tory MP Marcus Fysh was quoted in The Times saying: I think the leverage an extension would give us would be greater than the current transition period.

Fellow ERG member David Jones said: A strong leader could make life difficult for the EU in an extension and force Brussels to engage on alternatives to the backstop.

He added: With an extension you would have full membership rights and the opportunity to be able to reopen the bad deal that is on the table.

Tory leadership hopeful Liz Truss will tonight say governments should not behave like an overbearing helicopter parent. The Treasury chief secretary will also burnish her credentials as a hawk on spending by attacking handouts and vanity projects in a speech at the Onward think tank.
G ood Morning Britain presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid clashed with Tony Blair over Brexit this morning as the former PM renewed his call for a Peoples Vote.

Mr Blair, who denied claims he has been telling European leaders to hold firm as Britains divorce date looms closer, said Theresa May should ask the EU for more time to get a Parliamentary consensus on a Brexit deal before putting the final decision back to the people.

But in a fiery exchange, Piers told him there would "be hell to pay" if Brexit doesnt happen and claimed people "driving the train" wanted to defy the referendum result.

He said: Our democratic process surely rests on at least enacting the result of the first referendum and seeing if it works before you bring in another referendum.

"If you dont, why should we ever trust the will of government or Parliament to enact the will of the people ever again with any vote.

Tony Blair renewed his call for a People's Vote on Good Morning Britain / ITV

Mr Blair responded: To be fair to Theresa May I think she actually does want to deliver Brexit even though she voted Remain and I think youve got a whole set of Labour MPs who voted Remain and now say weve got to deliver the Brexit result.

I completely get it, and I also get the fact that the vast majority of British people are just saying why dont you get on with it, we voted for it why dont you get on with it."

He added: The problem is that when we just say get on with it, when you come to study the detail, it is actually important to know, roughly at least, in reasonably clear framework, your future relationship with Europeans before you leave, otherwise youre moving house before you have any idea what the new house looks like.

So even now I think it would be possible for her to correct this flaw by going to Europe and saying to them, because I think they would respond perfectly well to this, say ok I need some more time to put some more options before Parliament.

Countdown to Brexit: 10 days until Britain leaves the EU

Once those options come before Parliament Parliaments got to vote, they want a soft Brexit, they want a hard Brexit, theyve got to make up their minds and then the question I think would then be, because I think when people see the detail of what soft and hard means, it may be that members of Parliament think actually the final say should go with the people.

Meanwhile Susannah Reid defended Mrs Mays deal, saying she he been very clear on the Governments position to leave the single market and customs union but only fell short when it came to the issue Northern Irish backstop.

Many people praised Morgan and Reid's handling of the debate, with one Twitter user saying: Good interview with Tony Blair Piers and Susanna. You highlighted what many of the British public are thinking and hoping. We had a referendum, we voted and we got a result so let's get on with it!

Another said: I must admit Piers is doing a cracking job with Blair. When they have to drink water its when they are buying time to think of an answer."

However others claimed it was Blair who came across well.

Regardless of your previous opinion of Tony Blair, hes talking more sense than most in respect of Brexit," said one person.

"Thats one of the most sensible conversations Ive heard on the subject for a while.
T he Duke and the Duchess of Sussex today told New Zealanders "we are with you" as they paid an emotional tribute to the 50 people who were killed in the Christchurch terror attack.

Prince Harry and Meghan offered their condolences on behalf of the whole Royal Family on Tuesday.

Their act of solidarity comes after 50 people were gunned down while attending Friday prayers at two mosques in New Zealand.

Heavily-pregnant Meghan wore a pair of earrings featuring a crossed feathers design given to her by the country's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The Duke of Sussex receives a hongi from the High Commissioner of New Zealand Jerry Mateparae / Reuters

The duchess and her husband Harry were greeted by the New Zealand High Commissioner to the UK, Sir Jerry Mateparae.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit New Zealand House - In pictures 1 /17 The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit New Zealand House - In pictures Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visit the New Zealand House to sign the book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family Reuters The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duchess of Sussex leaves flowers she arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex arrive at the New Zealand House to sign the book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family Reuters The message written by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at New Zealand House in London, in the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duchess of Sussex receives a hongi from the High Commissioner of New Zealand Jerry Mateparae to the United Kingdom as she arrives with the Duke of Sussex at New Zealand House in London, where they will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duchess of Sussex leaves flowers she arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex visit the New Zealand House to sign the book of condolence on behalf of the Royal Family Reuters The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House PA The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House in London, where she will sign the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA Meghan, Duchess of Sussex places flowers at a makeshift memorial at the New Zealand House in London Reuters Prince Harry places flowers at a makeshift memorial at the New Zealand House in London Reuters The Duchess of Sussex leaving New Zealand House in London, where she signed the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duke and Duchess of Sussex following a visit to New Zealand High Commission in London EPA The Duke and Duchess of Sussex leaving New Zealand House in London, where they signed the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA The Duke and Duchess of Sussex leaving New Zealand House in London, where they signed the book of condolence for the victims of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on behalf of the Royal Family PA

They both placed bouquets of flowers outside the building in central London.

The Duchess of Sussex receives a hongi from the High Commissioner of New Zealand Jerry Mateparae / PA

The duke and duchess were among the first to sign the book of condolence, which opened to the public on Tuesday.

On a single page, they left the message: "Our deepest condolences... We are with you."

We are with you: a book of condolence signed by the royal couple / REUTERS

Beneath their signatures was the Maori word "Arohanui", meaning much love.

The duke and duchess met with members of staff at the High Commission to discuss their response to the atrocity.

Both Prince Harry and Meghan laid flowers / REUTERS

Meghan said "we are with you", adding she was "just devastated" by the atrocity, as she cradled her baby bump.

Harry said "it's just very sad" as he asked about their connections to Christchurch.

Sir Jerry said: "We are overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of support we've received from across the UK.

Solemn Meghan arrived dressed in black to sign the book in memory of the New Zealand victims / PA

"Their Royal Highness's visit is reflective of this outpouring of support and it was wonderful to welcome them to New Zealand House."

Across the world vigils have been held for the victims of the terror attack, with world leaders condemning the shooting.

Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian, has been charged with murder and appeared at court on Saturday. He was remanded until April 5.

Tributes laid in New Zealand / REUTERS

Among the victims was a three-year-old boy, as well as a 42-year-old woman who died while attempting to save her wheelchair-bound husband, Farid Uddin.

New Zealand's Prime Minister has praised some of the stories of bravery in the wake of the shootings.

The couple visited New Zealand House on Tuesday / REUTERS

Jacinda Arden said: "Naeem Rashid died after rushing at the terrorist and trying to wrestle the gun from him.

"Abdul Aziz, originally from Afghanistan, confronted the armed terrorist after grabbing the nearest thing he could find, a simple Eftpos (card) machine.

"There will be countless stories of bravery, some of which we may never know. But to each of you, we thank you."

Thirty people remain in hospital after being injured in the attacks, nine of them in a critical condition.

In the wake of last week's terror attack, the Queen led heartfelt messages of condolence from senior royals to the people of New Zealand.

In a joint message, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said: "We have all been fortunate to spend time in Christchurch and have felt the warm, open-hearted and generous spirit that is core to its remarkable people.
A petition that could unseat disgraced MP Fiona Onasanya, who was convicted for lying about a speeding offence opened today to voters in her Peterborough constituency.

The 35-year-old served 28 days of a three-month prison sentence for perverting the course of justice and has continued to receive her 77,379 salary.

A recall petition opened this morning and constituents will have six weeks to sign before it closes at 5pm on May 1.

If it attracts the signatures of 10 per cent of eligible voters - about 7,000 people - Ms Onasanya will be forced out and a by-election called.

Under recall rules, she will be permitted to stand for re-election.

Fiona Onasanya pleads her innocence after conviction

She is the second MP - and the first in England - to be subjected to a recall petition since the procedure was introduced in 2015 to give voters a means of ousting errant MPs in between elections.

North Antrim MP Ian Paisley Jr narrowly avoided recall last year when 9.4 per cent of eligible constituents signed a petition demanding his removal after he was suspended from Parliament for failing to declare a holiday paid for by the Sri Lankan government.

Ms Onasanya was elected for Labour in the Cambridgeshire city in 2017 by a wafer-thin majority of 607 votes, but was expelled from the party after her conviction.

She was not subject to automatic removal as an MP as her sentence was less than 12 months, and has resisted calls to resign her role.

Recall petitions are launched when MPs receive a custodial sentence - including suspended sentences - are barred from the Commons for 10 sitting days or are convicted of providing false information about their expenses.

Voters in Peterborough will be allocated to one of 10 signing stations around the constituency and can also apply to make a postal or proxy signature.

Peterboroughs petition officer Gillian Beasley said no updates on the progress of the petition would be made while it remains open.

PA

After it closes, the result will be sent to the Commons Speaker and Peterborough City Council will await his reply before publishing it.

The petition process will cost around 500,000, funded by central government.

Ms Onasanya posted a video on her social media channels the day before the petition opened in which she pleaded with voters to let her continue as their representative in Parliament.

In the clip, recorded in front of an image of what appeared to be a New York city skyline, she claims she is innocent of perverting the course of justice.

Jurors at the Old Bailey were told that she colluded with her brother Festus after her car was clocked speeding at 41mph in a 30mph zone in the village of Thorney, near Peterborough, in July 2017.

She was sent a notice of intended prosecution to fill out, but it was sent back naming the guilty driver as Aleks Antipow, an acquaintance of her brother, who was away visiting his parents in Russia.
T he hero imam of Finsbury Park suffered sad and reckless Islamophobic abuse after attending an inclusion event at a London mosque to promote unity in the wake of the New Zealand massacre, in a new sign of the hate crime blighting the capital.

Imam Mohammed Mahmoud said he was called despicable and a s***hole by a man on a bus and later spat at by a cyclist as he made his way home from meeting the Home Secretary, religious leaders and London Mayor Sadiq Khan at Regents Park mosque yesterday.

They had been there to promote inclusion and tolerance and to hear Mr Javid  who today announced a boost in security funding for mosques - pledge to do all in his power to protect Muslims in this country from aggression and intolerance.

Imam Mahmoud  who was acclaimed for calming fellow Muslims to prevent retaliation against far-right terrorist killer Darren Osborne after the Finsbury Park attack in June 2017  said the Regents Park event had been important and beautiful and praised the great work that had led to it.

Mr Mahmoud with Prince Charles in the wake of an attack in Finsbury Park / Getty Images

But he said that his experiences as he returned home had illustrated the continuing threat posed by Islamophobia in this country as he described how he had been subject to Islamophobic abuse in two separate incidents on my way home from the event.

The first was on public transport on my route home, he said.

A middle aged white male on the bus told me I was despicable and a s***hole and that the whole country was f***. When I asked why - he said it was because I was wearing a dress.

Mohammed Mahmoud said he would be reporting the incidents to police / Matt Writtle

Imam Mahmoud said that a white lady on the bus had clearly showed her disapproval of the Islamophobe and support for me - which was nice to see but that, after getting off, he was abused for a second time on Whitechapel Road where a cyclist spat at me.

The Imam added: I chased after him but he got away. It was so sad to see such reckless hate and Islamophobia after the event and after all we have been through this week.

Imam Mahmoud said he would be reporting both incidents to police after returning from a trip to New Zealand, which he is flying to today to visit the mosques that were attacked in Fridays massacre and to meet survivors and show support for Muslims there.

The abuse directed at the Imam will heighten concern about the number of Islamophobic incidents occurring in London and other parts of Britain over recent years.

They include a suspected far-right stabbing in Stanwell, near Heathrow, over the weekend, and several other incidents of alleged Islamophobia in other parts of the country in the wake of the New Zealand killings.

In the capital, Met figures show that the number of Islamophobic crimes peaked in June 2017  which was also the month of the London Bridge attack  with 368 offences recorded then. Numbers have dipped since then with 79 such crimes recorded in February this year.

One of Londons chief crown prosecutors, Ed Beltrami warned earlier this year, however, that he believed many incidents were not being dealt with properly by police with cases being rushed through the courts without the hate crime element being pursued.

Campaigners also argue that the true scale of Islamophobia, and other hate crimes, is not always being reflected in official statistics because of the reluctance of some victims to come forward to report such incidents.

In response to such concerns, the Home Secretary today announced that the budget for the government places of worship protective funding scheme will be increased to 1.6 million next year  double the sum allocated this year.

The hero imam was spat at by a cyclist and subjected to abuse

The criteria to qualify for a grant under the scheme, which can also be used to protect synagogues and churches, will be relaxed so that any site which is deemed at risk will be eligible for financial support to install security measures.

An additional 5 million will also be provided over the next three years for protective security training to enable worshippers and others to gain instruction on how best to safeguard those who attend mosques or other religious venues.

Announcing the extra money today, Mr Javid said: The horrific events in New Zealand are a direct attack on the values of tolerance and freedom of worship that unite us all.

Nobody should ever fear persecution of their faith and its vital we stand together to reject those who seek to spread hatred and divide us.

I know many Muslim communities are feeling vulnerable and anxious. But they should seek comfort from knowing we are doing everything to tackle hate and extremism.

Thats why we are doubling next years places of worship fund - providing physical protection as well as peace of mind.
A woman found dead in the Yorkshire Pennines 15 years ago who was dubbed the 'Lady of the Hills' has been identified in a long-running cold case investigation.

Authorities in Thailand have matched fingerprints to 36-year-old Lamduan Seekanya, who was married to British school teacher, David Armitage, 55.

The Thai womans remains were found by walkers near Horton-in-Ribblesdale in 2004.

The body was unidentified for years and the advanced decomposition meant pathologists could not formally establish a cause of death.

55-year-old Mr Armitage said he was aware of a whispering campaign against him in Thai media: I know the inferences are there but Im just getting on with my life. Its been a long time, he told the Sun.

There is no suggestion Mr Armitage is the subject of any police investigation.

The English teacher, who works at Kanchanaburi Rajabhat University, also added that the British Embassy advised him not to talk about the case.

North Yorkshire Police are investigating her marriage with Mr Armitage, who moved to Thailand after friends and family were told Ms Seekanya had disappeared,' according to The Sun.

Police have not publicly revealed the results from the fingerprints, but Thai authorities confirmed them from Ms Seekanyas records.

It is understood that Ms Seekanya, mother to Mr Armitage's two children, was killed up to three weeks before her body was found on September 20, 2004.

She was discovered face down in a stream, wearing socks, jeans and a ripped bra, which hung from her left arm.

A T-shirt was recovered nearby but her shoes were never found.

Pathologists ruled out that she was stabbed, bludgeoned or shot, concluding that a possible cause was hypothermia.

Medical experts determined that she was of south-eat Asian origin.

In 2007, a coroner returned an open verdict, and she was buried in an anonymous grave after locals paid for her funeral.

Her headstone reads: The Lady of the Hills. Found 20th Sept 2004. Name Not Known. Rest in Peace.

Police, who made fresh appeals in October, believed the woman was a "Thai bride" who had moved to England to marry a local man.

Advances in technology yielded new leads with carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen levels in her hair, teeth and bones suggesting she lived in the south Cumbria-north Lancashire area.

In fact, Ms Seekanya had been living with Davids parents in Burton-in-Kendal, Cumbria, which is only 25 miles from where her body was found.

She was wearing a gold band on her wedding finger which was later traced to Bangkok, where the couple had married in 1991 before moving to England.

In 2003, they moved in with Davids parents in Rugby before she disappeared.

Ms Seekanya's family, from Udon Thani, in north-east Thailand, sent DNA samples to be tested in January after not hearing from their daughter since 2004.

Her mother Joomsri Seekanya, 73 previously told the BBC: A part of me hopes that its not my daughter  I want her to come back alive.

But if its really her, I can finally sleep at night.

She also said that her daughter had made a phone call to her just before vanishing: She said she had no money, not even a single penny. She said she missed home so much.

It was a very short call. Weve not heard from her since.

Mrs Seekanya also said: Hes British and Christian and were Thai and Buddhist.
The royal pair shared a blanket in the back of the car as they pulled up to open Bush House, the latest education and learning facilities on the Strand Campus.

Kate, 37, and the Queen, 92, have attended dozens of events together with the wider family, but it is believed to be the first time they have carried out an engagement without other royals since March 2012.

The duchess, who was later due to visit the Foundling Museum, looked chic in a grey Catherine Walker dress.

Her Majesty opted for a Stewart Parvin rose-coloured coat.

The Queen and Duchess of Cambridge visit King's College - In pictures 1 /18 The Queen and Duchess of Cambridge visit King's College - In pictures The Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge arrive for a visit to King's College London, where they opened Bush House, the latest education and learning facilities on the Strand Campu AP PA Reuters Reuters EPA Reuters Getty Images EPA Getty Images AP Reuters PA PA PA

The Queen, who is patron of King's College and visited in 2002 and 2012, will tour the facilities with Kate and meet supporters of the development.

Kate and the Queen will tour the new facilities / EPA

They will view a robotics demonstration, including robotic surgery, and a demo showing how sensors made from textiles can measure useful information about the body.

They will also visit a virtual trading floor and meet students from the Entrepreneurship Institute, which supports entrepreneurial thinking, skills and experiences amongst King's students, staff and alumni.

Kate waves to well-wishers as the pair arrive for the engagement / Getty Images

The Queen is expected to unveil a plaque to formally open Bush House.

Later, Kate will visit the Foundling Museum to understand how it uses art to make a positive contribution to society by engaging with vulnerable and marginalised young people.

The museum tells the history of the Foundling Hospital, the UK's first children's charity and public art gallery.
T ropical Cyclone Trevor is set to make a second landfall over northeastern Australia this weekend, after hitting the sparsely populated Cape York Peninsula in Queensland on Tuesday.

However, a separate tropical depression is also now forming off the Kimberly coast in the north-west of the country.

This tropical low is expected to track towards the southwest over the coming days, steadily intensifying and reaching tropical cyclone strength on Thursday.

There is uncertainty in the forecast track but there is potential for a severe tropical cyclone impact for the Pilbara coast over the weekend.

Cyclone Trevors very destructive core has already made landfall to the south of Lockhart River in Queensland with 220km gusts.

Winds up to 125km/h are set to hit the coast between Cape Grenville and the small Queensland town of Coen.

Storm tide, large waves, abnormally high tides, heavy rainfall and even flash flooding are also expected along the Queensland peninsula.

The storm will remain a category 1 cyclone and is likely to weaken as it moves west across the peninsula at eight km/h until Wednesday.

However, it is expected to rapidly intensify in the Gulf of Carpentaria on Wednesday before tracking towards the Northern Territory.

Australias Bureau of Meteorology has warned residents to be prepared for flooding and take measures to protect their properties as much as possible.

The Bureau warned said: People between Orford Ness and Cape Melville and adjacent inland areas (including Lockhart River and Coen), should remain in a safe place during the rest of the night.
A man claimed a bad reaction to caffeine induced him to headbutt a cinema worker, squirt water at customers, and resist police arrest.

Bruce Ellery Royal, 43, pleaded guilty in Hastings District Court in New Zealand to charges of common assault and resisting police on Tuesday.

He said had downed five cups of black coffee in a short period of time, before entering Focal Point Cinema, where he threw up in the foyer on October 10 last year.

After helping staff to clean up with a mop and bucket, he then walked over towards the counter where he pushed a staff member aside to take four $4 bottles of water out the fridge.

His behaviour quickly escalated when he emerged from behind the counter and pushed the staff member out of his away again.

Royal began to drink from the bottles before squirting members of the public with water.

The Focal Point Cinema manager approached Royal, who became aggressive and head-butted him in the face, suffering a sore nose and lip.

Police were then shortly called to the scene.

The 43 year-old pushed an officer away on being told he was under arrest.

He then ran towards the exit and dodged another officer before tripping over onto the ground, where a police constable and several other police officers struggled to restrain him.

After refusing to put his hands behind his back, Royal was warned to stop resisting but three officers were ultimately needed to handcuff the 43-year-old.

Defence counsel Mathew Dixon told Judge Chris Sygrove that Royal had successfully completed anger management classes and said cinema staff were understanding, according to the New Zealand Herald.

He said: They hold no ill-will towards him.

Judge Sygrove added: I hope as a result of being arrested and being dragged through the court, that you wont repeat this performance.

Royal was ordered to pay 300 for emotional harm reparation by April 2 and to appear in court whenever called upon.

At the time of his arrest, Royal reportedly told police: He was stressed out, but was sorry for his actions.

A spokesperson from the countrys Ministry of Health told the NZ Herald:"Tea and coffee both contain caffeine (a stimulant) and tea contains tannins, which lower the amount of iron that the gut absorbs.
A small city in southern California was forced to ban tourists from visiting a golden poppy super bloom amid safety concerns as thousands tried to glimpse the amazing natural spectacle.

About 150,000 people flocked to the hills around Lake Elsinore, roughly a 90-minute drive from San Diego and Los Angeles, over the weekend.

Authorities were forced to shut down viewing of the colourful poppies on Sunday after massive traffic jams developed.

"It was insane, absolutely insane," said Mayor Steve Manos, who described it as a "poppy apocalypse."

California Super Bloom - In pictures 1 /24 California Super Bloom - In pictures A couple takes a selfie photo in a super bloom of poppies in Lake Elsinore, California REUTERS Getty Images AP AP AP Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images Getty Images AFP/Getty Images EPA EPA EPA EPA EPA EPA AFP/Getty Images

Lake Elsinore had tried to prepare for the crush of people drawn by the super bloom by offering a free shuttle service to the top viewing spots, but it wasn't enough.

Roads leading to Walker Canyon became completely jammed with neighbouring areas even requesting police assistance to deal with the crush.

A couple walks on a trail among poppies in bloom on the hills of Walker Canyon / AFP/Getty Images

The city cancelled the shuttle service and then completely shut down access to the poppy-blanketed canyon, saying the weekend had become unbearable.

People left trails and started trampling flowers as the problems surfaced, and later #poppyshutdown began spreading on Twitter.

A man photographs a woman painting the super bloom of wild poppies blanketing the hills of Walker Canyon / Getty Images

By Monday the #poppyshutdown announced by the city on Twitter was over and the road to the canyon was re-opened.
A teenager accused of injuring her friend by pushing her off a 60-foot bridge has pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment.

Taylor Smith will be sentenced next week but is likely to escape prison.

The 19-year-old pushed Jordan Holgerson, 16, off the Moulton Falls Regional Park bridge in south-western Washington state last August. She suffered six broken ribs and punctured lungs.

Smith, 19, was charged with one count of reckless endangerment, an offence which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. However a state prosecutor yesterday recommended she receive a non-custodial sentence.

A 10-second video clip of the incident captured on a mobile phone went viral on the internet.

Miss Holgerson initially planned to jump off the bridge into a river about 60 feet below, but said she changed her mind.

Following yesterdays hearing at Clark County District Court, Miss Holgerson said she just wanted to put the whole ordeal behind her.

I dont really want to wait for next Wednesday, she said, referring to the day Smith is scheduled to be sentenced.

Taylor Smith appeared in Clark County District Court where she admitted reckless endangerment

Mother Genelle Holgersonsaid her daughter was still going to physical therapy for an injured shoulder and was being treated for anxiety.

At the time, Clark County Fire Chief Ben Peeler told of dangerous rock shelves along the deep river channel.
U S-backed Syrian forces have said they are close to defeating Islamic State in its final scrap of territory in eastern Syria.

Mustafa Bali, the head of the media office of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said the battle at Baghouz is ongoing and clashes continue after an encampment was seized from the jihadists on Tuesday.

Hardened militant fighters had been mounting a last-stand defence of the Baghouz enclave, which is all that is left of Islamic State's self-proclaimed "caliphate" that once spanned a third of both Syria and Iraq.

"This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight against Daesh," Mr Bali said on Twitter, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The SDF captured hundreds of wounded militants when it overran the camp on Tuesday, Mr Bali said. It also captured 157 mostly foreign fighters.

Asked by Reuters how long it would take to defeat the remaining jihadists, Mr Bali said he expected the operation to end "very soon".

Some remaining militants had fallen back to the bank of the nearby Euphrates River, he said.

Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the "V" for victory sign as they come back from the frontline in the Islamic State group's last remaining position in the village of Baghouz. / AFP/Getty Images

"The battles are not yet over," he said. "Some of the terrorists have taken their children as human shields. There are intermittent clashes."

Islamic State's fighters and followers have been steadily forced back to Baghouz after years of retreats in the face of military campaigns by foreign and local forces.

The group's defeat at Baghouz will mark a milestone in the struggle against the jihadists, although adherents are still widely seen as a big security threat with a presence in remote territory and capable of mounting guerrilla attacks.

The capture of Baghouz will also mark a significant moment in the wider Syrian war, wiping out the foothold of one of the main combatants.

But in a rare interview in February, M16 boss Alex Younger expressed concern at describing military defeat as a victory.

We are not triumphant because I think from triumphant you get to hubris," he said.

The reality is this is a societal, generational problem that we face in the West and it can only be addressed at that level.

So, of course, the military defeat of the caliphate does not represent the end of the terrorist threat. You cant use military force to kill an idea but you can use it to denigrate and disrupt the sharpest end of the problem.

Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the "V" for victory sign. / AFP/Getty Images

Diehard jihadists have been mounting a desperate defence of the camp at Baghouz, deploying suicide bombers and car bombs.

Over the past two months, more than 60,000 people have poured out of the dwindling enclave, nearly half of whom surrendered as Islamic State supporters, including some 5,000 fighters, according to the SDF.

Even facing defeat, Islamic State's propaganda machine still functions. An audio recording released overnight purported to carry a message from spokesman Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer saying the group would stay strong and urged fresh attacks.

IS fighters walking as they hold the group's flag inside Baghouz. / AP

It has also put out a video from inside the Baghouz camp, showing fighters among bullet-pocked cars and lying on earth ramparts as they fired assault rifles.

The scarred landscape around them was littered with vehicles, makeshift shelters and debris and shaded by clouds of billowing smoke.

Against this scene, a man with a scarf wrapped around his head stood to declaim a message of defiance, a small group of women and toddlers to one side of him.

The US military has warned that Islamic State may still count tens of thousands of fighters, dispersed throughout Iraq and Syria, with enough leaders and resources to present a menacing insurgency.

The Pentagon's own internal watchdog released a report last month saying Islamic State remained an active insurgent group and was regenerating functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria.
B ercow faces backlash over Brexit bombshell

John Bercow has faced a huge backlash for ruling out a third vote on Theresa Mays Brexit deal as he was accused of triggering a constitutional crisis.

The move sparked fury in the Commons yesterday as ministers accused him of failing to respect MPs.

Mr Bercow ruled that the Prime Minister cannot bring her deal back before MPs unless it is substantially different from the package defeated last week.

Solicitor General Robert Buckland warned of a "constitutional crisis" following the Speakers decision to block the vote.

NZ PM: Never mention mosque killer's name

New Zealands Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has called on the public to speak only of the mosque shooting victims and not mention the killers name.

Her remarks came as she delivered an impassioned speech to parliament, in which she promised the alleged gunman would face the full force of the law.

Ms Ardern implored the public to speak the names of those who are lost, rather than the name of the man who took them.

Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian, has been charged with one count of murder and appeared at court on Saturday. He was remanded until April 5.

50 people were killed in the shootings in Christchurch on Friday.

UK pledges 6m of aid for Cyclone victims

Britain has pledged up to 6 million of aid to send humanitarian relief to the victims of Cyclone Idai in Mozambique and Malawi.

International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said a team of experts was on the ground in Mozambique helping to co-ordinate the UK's response.

Filipe Nyusi, the president of Mozambique, said more than 1,000 people are feared dead in the country four days after the cyclone hit.

Forecasts should include climate change segments - veteran weatherman

Veteran weatherman Bill Giles has called on broadcasters to radically overhaul forecasts to incorporate segments about climate change.

The former head of BBC weather presenters urged for the reality of the crisis to be faced more squarely and openly.

Mr Giles, who presented the forecast at the corporation for almost two decades, called for a radical approach to keep viewers properly informed.

The 79-year-old told Radio Times that understanding and explaining climate change is one of the most important things facing humanity today.

100m to tackle knife crisis 'nowhere near enough'

A promised 100 million cash boost to tackle knife crime is nowhere near enough, the chairman of the Police Federation has warned.

John Apter claimed the fund, which was announced by Chancellor Philip Hammond in his Spring Statement, would help only as a short-term fix.

He said the extra government money has got to be welcomed but added it would not be enough to ensure a solution.

The fund announced by Mr Hammond falls short of the 200m to 300m requested by police chiefs earlier this month.

'Lewis Hamilton of racing pigeons' sold for 1m

The Lewis Hamilton of racing pigeons has been sold for more than 1 million.

Joel Verschoot's bird Armando was sold in Belgium by auction house Pipa after a two-week online bidding war.

The price was three times the previous record of 322,000, which was set in November.

On this day...

721 BC: The first recorded eclipse was observed by the Babylonians, according to the Greek astronomer Ptolemy.

1834: The six 'Tolpuddle Martyrs', who fought the decline of agricultural wages, were sentenced to seven years' transportation to Tasmania. Public outcry had them released after two years.

1920: The US Senate rejected for a second time the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and prevented the US joining the League of Nations, fearing they would have to go to war again if another member state was invaded.

1932: Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened. It was the world's longest single-span arch bridge.

1976: Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon announced their separation after 16 years of marriage.

1986: Buckingham Palace announced the engagement of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. Her engagement ring was a ruby surrounded by 10 diamonds.

1988: Two British soldiers who blundered into an IRA funeral cortege in West Belfast were killed by a lynch mob.
Deputy PM and Acting Minister of Agriculture Bob Loughman receives a copy of ASTC concept from CEO Rafael Dayan (c) while Israeli businessman Jakobi (r) looks on.
A riana Grande appeared to pay tribute to her late rapper ex-boyfriend Mac Miller as she kicked off her world tour.

One of Millers songs was played out across the Times Union Center in Albany, New York, moments before the pop star took to the stage to launch her seven-month Sweetener tour  her first since the terror attack at her Manchester concert in 2017.

Fans wrote on Twitter that they were moved to tears by the gesture. Grande then opened the concert with her song Raindrops, which many of her fans have speculated is about Miller.

The rapper, who dated Grande for two years until May 2018, was found dead at his home in California in September.

Emotional: Ariana Grande with her ex Mac Miller / Splash News

A coroner ruled the cause of death was an accident, due to drugs and alcohol. After the performance Grande, 25, wrote on Twitter: my mind is all over the place and v emotional... tonight was too much. thank you thank you thank you. i love you.

Last night her friend Nicki Minaj paid tribute to those killed in the Manchester attack during a concert in the city.

The rapper, who was performing there as part of her Nicki Wrld Tour, took time between songs to mention the victims and their families.

Minaj said: Put your light in the sky for everybody we lost.

God bless the families of everyone who survived and God bless Manchester for being resilient and not bowing down to fear. For being strong no matter what.
K atie Price has appealed to her fans to help her get a Facebook hacker and impersonator shut down after returning from Thailand to find herself locked out of her account.

The reality star and former model shared a screenshot of a page featuring inspirational quotes, which was claiming to be her.

This is NOT ME!!! My FACEBOOK has been hacked please all report the account! Facebook please give me my access back! Price wrote on her Twitter on Monday.

Price also posted the same message on her Instagram stories to appeal to more fans for help and urged them not to be fooled into thinking it was her.

The mother-of-five found out she had been the target of a hack hours after she returned from a holiday in Thailand with boyfriend Kris Boyson.

The loved up pair showed off snaps and videos from the luxurious holiday in the idyllic location, amid claims they were going to get engaged on their trip.

Last week, reports claimed that Boyson, 30, had taken an engagement ring with them on holiday to pop the all-important question.

According to The Sun, Boyson told Prices friends that he was really serious about marriage and that the big moment would be captured on her reality show My Crazy Life.

Loved up: Katie Price and Kris Boyson (Instagram / Katie Price) / Katie Price

However, representatives for Price denied that cameras had followed them on holiday.

Price was said to have been very drunk in the back of the car, slurring words and smelling of alcohol, after the pink motor collided with a hedge.

The star insisted that she was not at the wheel, claiming Boysons friend was driving, but a District Judge said he did not have any degree of confidence in her story before finding her guilty.
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Flu has killed 178 people in Romania, according to the latest data release issued by the National Centre for Communicable Disease Supervision and Control with the National of Public Health Institute.

The last victims was a man aged 81 of Caras-Severin County, confirmed to have had the type-AH1 flu virus. He had pre-existing medical conditions and had not been vaccinated against flu.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Teodor Melescanu on Tuesday welcomed the Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation in Bucharest, Arthur Mattli, for the presentation of the copies of the letters of credence, informs the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) in a press release.

The quality of the Romanian-Swiss relations was appreciated, according to the release, reflected both in the intense political dialogue at high level during 2018 and in the level of the Swiss investments in Romania, the two officials expressing the hope that this will be followed by similar dynamics in the area of bilateral trade.

The Minister brought to mind the considerable development potential of the bilateral cooperation identified in the context of the official Romanian-Swiss contacts and expressed the hope that it will be capitalised on as best possible during the mandate of the new ambassador.

The head of the Romanian diplomacy also mentioned the results achieved in the programs carried out on the basis of the Swiss financial contribution to EU cohesion, appreciating their role in strengthening the bilateral relationship at the sectoral level.

The two officials highlighted the contribution that the Romanian community in Switzerland brings to the socio-economic development of the two countries and the intensification of decentralized cooperation at the local level.

In the context of Romania's presidency of the Council of the EU in the first half of 2019, Minister Teodor Melescanu expressed his willingness to support the continuation and consolidation of the dialogue between Switzerland and the EU, MAE shows.
A series of contingency measures aimed at diminishing the possible negative effects of a possible Brexit without agreement were adopted at the General Affairs Council (GAC) meeting chaired by Minister-delegate for European Affairs George Ciamba, in the context in which Romania is holding the presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Approved legislative acts prepare the European Union and its citizens for lack of an agreement with the UK, says a press release of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent to AGERPRES on Tuesday.

Among the 11 documents approved at the GAC meeting are the draft regulation on the protection of social security rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom, reads the cited source.

Another adopted piece of legislation will ensure the protection of young people participating in the Erasmus program so that they can continue their studies even in a no-deal scenario. Other measures with impact on citizens were also taken in the areas of aviation safety, road transport or fisheries.

At the beginning of Tuesday's meeting, the Council adopted conclusions on increasing the resilience of Member States to cyber threats. One of the provisions of the document is to develop educational programs related to cyber security and to increase citizens' awareness of threats from cyber space.

Another important document adopted by the Council refers to the decision to sign an agreement with Montenegro on the actions carried out by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency in Montenegro. "These documents represent an important step in the cooperation between Montenegro, a candidate country, and the European Union in the field of strengthening the European security and protecting the external borders of the Union," MAE specifies.
In the context of the visit by Pope Francis to Romania this year, the National Operational Command "Visit Pope Francis I - 2019" was established at the command level of the institutions of the national defense system, public order and national security - MApN, MAI, SRI, SIE, STS and SPP, informs a press release issued on Tuesday.

Each institution, within the limits of its legal competence, will establish and adapt the necessary security measures to allow normal daily activities to be carried out and without imposing any particular restrictions.

Pope Francis I will be in Romania from 31 May to 2 June and will visit the cities of Bucharest, Iasi, Blaj and the Sanctuary of Sumuleu Ciuc.

According to the quoted source, given the importance of the visit and the large number of participants expected at the four events, the National Operational Command organized working sessions both in Bucharest and in the territory. There have also been several meetings with the local authorities in Iasi, Alba and Harghita, as well as with the representatives of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
Prime Minister Viorica Dancila on Tuesday announced, in the beginning of the government meeting, that she will pay a visit to Brussels in the afternoon, to preside, alongside other European officials, the Tripartite Social Summit and to open a debate on what Europe means for the citizens.

"This afternoon I will go to Brussels for a two-day visit to focus social aspects, to which we pay a special attention while holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. Together with the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, I will be presiding on Wednesday the Tripartite Social Summit. This is a very important event to also enjoy the participation of representatives of the trade and employers unions, and also officials from Finland and Croatia - the next two states to hold the rotating presidency of the Council of EU in Romania," said Dancila.

The event, with the theme "A stronger, united and future-oriented Europe," will be focusing economic growth and employment, a field in which the Romanian presidency of the Council of EU has made sustained efforts and managed to close the negotiations with the European Parliament for the majority of the legislative files.

The PM mentioned on Thursday that she will open a debate on what Europe for the Europeans and especially what changes can be brought to improve the citizens' life.
Prime Minister Viorica Dancila on Tuesday announced, in the beginning of the Government meeting, that she will pay a visit to Brussels in the afternoon, to preside, alongside other European officials, the Tripartite Social Summit and to open a debate on what Europe means for the citizens.

"This afternoon I will go to Brussels for a two-day visit to focus social aspects, to which we pay a special attention while holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. Together with the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, I will be presiding on Wednesday the Tripartite Social Summit. This is a very important event to also enjoy the participation of representatives of the trade and employers unions, and also officials from Finland and Croatia - the next two states to hold the rotating presidency of the Council of EU in Romania," said Dancila.

The event, with the theme "A stronger, united and future-oriented Europe," will be focusing on economic growth and employment, a field in which the Romanian presidency of the Council of the EU has made sustained efforts and managed to close the negotiations with the European Parliament for the majority of the legislative files.

The PM mentioned on Thursday that she will open a debate on what Europe means for the Europeans and especially what changes can be brought to improve the citizens' life.

"On Thursday I will open a debate on what Europe means to Europeans and especially what changes we can make to improve the lives of European citizens. During this working visit I will also have meetings with European officials. I will also continue the constructive dialogue that we have with the First Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans," she said.

Dancila also reminded a series of events to be organized in Bucharest.

"The Minister of Transport is organizing the International Road Safety Conference this week. Experts from the member states are meeting in Romania to discuss the lines of action in the fields of urban development and territorial planning, in the field of research and innovation, as well as in the field of healthcare. All these events organized by the Romanian Presidency are aimed at finding the best solutions to provide European citizens with a better life but at the same time to bring European citizens closer to the Brussels policies," she added.
Prime Minister Viorica Dancila on Tuesday welcomed the promulgation of the budget, stating that the Government is in the homestretch with the projects we have set out to achieve, "so necessary for the development of Romania", and will continue to take measures to give Romanians a better life.

"I welcome the promulgation of the budget, it is a development budget that will benefit all Romanians. As we have already said, the Government will continue to take the necessary measures to provide a better life for Romanians. It is from this principle that we have started the building of the state budget, a budget of investment and development. We are in the homestretch with the projects we have set out to achieve, so necessary for the development of Romania. As you know, we have allocated more than 15 billion lei for investments compared to last year, of which six billion lei for the transport infrastructure. The budget for 2019 provides for the highest allocation of funds for healthcare in the entire history of Romania. Last year, we substantially increased the salaries in healthcare, this year we focus our attention on investments, so that we can offer the Romanians access to performing healthcare services," Dancila said at the start of the Government meeting.

She added that the education sector is receiving 9.9 billion lei this year, in addition to 2018.

"By investing in children, we actually invest in the future of Romania. We also have money to raise pensions and salaries, as we proved that we had last year. By the amendments brought by the Government to the budget ceilings law, we also ensured the increase in child allowances - from 84 lei to 150 lei, and in the case of children with disabilities from 200 lei to 300 lei. We will continue through this budget to support the business environment and to ensure co-financing for many European projects", she mentioned.
The Government will approve on Tuesday the modification of the new car purchase incentive program so as to become "more dynamic and attractive" in order to encourage the purchase of "green and energy-efficient cars," announced Premier Viorica Dancila.

"The Government continues to stimulate the automotive market through measures adapted to the European market. We are adopting today a normative act with a significant social, economic and environmental impact. We are modifying the program to stimulate the purchase of new cars, known to the citizens as the "First Car", so as to become more dynamic and attractive. We want to support as many Romanians as possible to buy a new car," Dancila said in the opening of the Government's meeting.

The Prime Minister added that the Government, through the measures adopted, will encourage "the purchase of green and energy-efficient cars".

"Specifically, in addition to the incentives already offered by this program, citizens will benefit from governmental guarantees also for the loans taken out for the purchase of hybrid, electric-hybrid and 100-percent electric automobiles. In addition, individuals will be able to buy a new car even if they have previously owned such a car. In addition to the environmental benefits, we also had in mind the good effects for the auto industry and automotive components one with a significant share in the national economy," Dancila added.
President Klaus Iohannis said Tuesday that he is "almost decided" to convene a national referendum on May 26 at the same time with the elections to the European Parliament.

"We are already working hard on this, we are analyzing the data, the alternatives, the legal part. I am almost determined to convene a referendum on May 26, when we have elections to the European Parliament," the head of state said at the debate "President or citizen / politician and civil society", organized at the International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival by One World Romania.
President Klaus Iohannis said Tuesday that he is "almost decided" to convene a national referendum on May 26 at the same time with the elections to the European Parliament.

"We are already working hard on this, we are analyzing the data, the alternatives, the legal part. I am almost determined to convene a referendum on May 26, when we have elections to the European Parliament. Allow me some leeway, due to the need for a thorough analysis, to a thorough discussion, because it is not that I want to do a referendum on something, if I do a referendum then I want to have partners not only the parties, perhaps more from the Opposition, the civil society, Romanians who want to give a clear signal, and for this I can tell you that, for a week now, we have been working very intensely. I asked my team to propose tomorrow - the day after tomorrow a draft agenda, which will certainly involve a meeting with a few very resolute representatives of the civil society," the head of state said at the debate "President or citizen / politician and civil society", organized at the International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival by One World Romania.

Klaus Iohannis said that the discussion on the referendum is not back by accident.

"There has been much talk about the referendum and I have said on several occasions that things have to be evaluated from many points of view. The desire is one, being able is another. I did not want to convene a referendum just to be be in the make-do business and for it not to pass because people do not participate in it or there is not enough interest.The discussion is back and not by chance.We received not many weeks now a law for promulgation that clarifies certain legal issues and that issues that belong to the elections to the European Parliament and other elections in which PSD [Social Democratic Party, major at rule, ed.n.] representatives introduced a paragraph - "nothing can be organized at the same time with the European Parliament elections," no elections, no referendum. It looked very suspicious to me so that I challenged with the CCR [Constitutional Court of Romania, ed.n.] having something in my mind as to what might follow. CCR agreed with me. That provision is unconstitutional and, as such, I began to analyze with my Cotroceni team what it would be like if I convened a referendum exactly on the election date. At first there were relatively few enthusiasts for this idea, that is, I and two or three others, but I managed to convince more because we have to think this issue through very well," the president explained.

The head of state said that "a referendum cannot produce a law" and that he would like the nation to express itself in this ballot.
The UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) adopted 23 resolutions and three decision regarding the global environment issues within the 4th session which took place between 11 and 15 March in Nairobi, Kenya, a release of the Environment Ministry sent to AGERPRES on Tuesday informs.

The event was also attended by Romania's delegation, headed by Secretary of State Ion Cimpineanu, who coordinated, as Presidency of the EU Council, the delegations of the EU member states which participated in the 4th session of the UN Environment Assembly.

"In this capacity, the Environment Ministry representatives organised and chaired the EU coordination meetings, intervened in negotiations together with experts of the EU, the European Commission, the European External Action Service and the EU Delegation to Nairobi (...). An intensive work was carried out, with a record number of 29 draft resolutions being analysed and negotiated, which included a wide variety of topics. As the world's highest-level decision-making body, the UN Environment Assembly succeeded in adopting the Ministerial Declaration, 23 resolutions and 3 decisions," the release mentions.
Written by ACM

*Strasbourg/CoE/Angelo Marcopolo/- "Too Long", and "did Not get All of it": It's with such Symbolic, Key Words that World Famous American WhistleBlower for Human Rights and Democracy, Edouard Snowden, (After having spontaneously "explosed" with an exceptionally Big Laugh, earlier, when he First Heard about it : See relevant Photo+Video), left "without comment" the Hypothesis that "Special Investigator" Mueller might, perhaps, Continue to Spy on, and "Investigate" even new US President Don Trump, not only during "4 Years" now (2016-2019), but, in fact, as long as ..."20 Years" (See relevant Facts Infra), as "Eurofora" had, provocativelly but factually Questioned in the 2nd of two Queries raised during a Direct Video-Debate at a CoE Conference organized in Strasbourg by French National Assembly's vice-President, MEP Sylvain Waserman, and the experienced Head of CoE's Parliamentary Assembly's Human Rights' Committee, Gunter Schirmer, from Germany, (See f.ex.: http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/whistleblowersineuandcoe.html , etc, and for Snowden's full Reply to a Different Question by "Eurofora" on anOther Issue, at: http://www.eurofora.net/newsflashes/news/snowdenfriendshelpwhistleblowers.html).

But, Facts are Facts, and a Question is Legitimately raised by simply examining the real Situation : Indeed, "Eurofora"s relevant Query to Snowden, had simply asked him if, given his Experience, he found "Not Excluded", that even simple Critics of at least Some Points of the "Official Version" on what really happened during the "9/11" Islamist Terrorist Attacks, (which has notoriously faced Many and Various Kinds of Criticisism, here or there : Including even by German ChristianDemocrat Chancellor Angie Merkel's current Press Spokesman, previously Journalist !), might, eventually, have been routinely Spied upon, by Mr. Robert Mueller's agents, (the Current controversial "Special Investigator" on alleged "Russian Interference" in the 2016 US Elections, in "collusion", or not, with New US President Don Trump), since Mueller was, then, (i.e. Back on 2001+), Head of the FBI.

'''''''''''''''''''''''''



=> In that case, this might, practically, mean, that POTUS Don Trump would have been, in fact, "Investigated" (alias "Spied upon") by Mr. Mueller "not only 4 Years" (2016-2019), i.e. since the Latest US Presidential Election, "but during ... 20 Years !", i.e. since 9/11 : 2001-2019, as "Eurofora" had observed earlier in 1 of our 2 Questions to Snowden, obviously highlighting (with an ironic but serious smile) the Absurd character of such a possible situation, if it, eventually, it became true...

>>> Why ? Simply because the current US President has notoriously been, himself, one among the 1st and most Famous Critics of at least 1 Key point in the Official Story on 9/11, particularly because he Strongly Criticized the Way that "World Trade Center"'s Towers' Collapse in a vertical free Fall (which Killed about 3.000 innocent, Civilian People), as he had clearly said and Discussed in Public, then, almost "Live", Commenting at a TV Program, immediately after that Tragic Event, particularly that Strange Way the WTC Towers went Down, one by one, 100% Vertically, withOut falling aSide, and by being Spectacularly Transformed into a strange kind of White Powder, (even from the Top), dispersing around in a kind of "Clouds" of tiny Particles.

In Fact, Trump, (whose Family was dealing with Real Estate Business, HeadQuartered at New York), apparently Suspected that, in Addition to the Initial Shock and Fire provoked by Airplanes Crashed into the Upper Middle-Floors of each WTC Tower, there might have been also some kind of Supplementary, Local Accomplices, who would have intervened (f.ex. by placing Explosives and/or something else, on the doomed Buildings), in order to Completely Destroy them 100%, as it was done in fine.

According to "New York Times", it's about 1.800 People (mainly at Top Floors), who had initially Survived the First Shocks of an Airplane thrown in each WTC big Tower, but Perished atrociously, Afterwards, during the Total Collapse, (Comp. Supra).

+ Moreover, those Strange "White Clouds" of Fine Particles which Suddenly Appeared (even from the very Top) when WTC's Towers started to Collapse many Hours After the Initial Airplanes' Schock, notoriously Provoked various Serious Health Problems to the Civilian Population living around that Manhattan's area, which were, for a Too Long Period, scandalously Ignored or too Downplayed by the Public Auhorities then in charge, who practically Denied, right from the Start, Any serious Risk of Grave Sickness and/or Death, until too Many innocent People started to Fall, Afterwards, Sick (f.ex. from Pulmonary Diseases, various Cancers, etc) and/or Die, even Long After...

Even when "Eurofora"s co-Founder was at New York, back on UNO's landmark 2005 Heads of State/Government's Summit, for the 60th Anniversary of the Internationlal Organisation's Reform, (focused on the Creation of UNO's World Human Rights' Council, at nearby Geneva), i.e. 4 whole Years After 9/11, we were Surprized by the Fact, while Waiting in a Manhattan Church, Near WTC"s "Ground Floor", a suddenly announced venue of USA's State Department's Secretary (Foreign Minister), then Dr. Condoleeza Rice, for a Memorial Event on 9/11's Anniversary, a lot of Local NY Residents, Simple Authentic Civilian People, sitting all around us, were actively engaged in a "Hot" Discussion about various, unusual Healh Problems which had, reportedly, already emerged among the Local Population, (provoking Sufferings or Death)...

=> Nevertheless, it seems that it's mainly just Nowadays, towards the End of February 2019, (i.e. about 18 Years after 9/11), that New US President Don Trump Welcomed a Boost on a Federal Program of Support to 9/11's Victims and their Families, particularly in the domain, precisely, of Health...

However, former "Security" Authorities, including Mr. Mueller's FBI, had reportedly Ignored, or even Denied, from the Beginning, such serious Risks against Human Health, which had been Threatening the Civilian Population of Manhattan's "Bulb" (probably through a Polluted Atmosphere that they had been Obliged to Breath there after WTC's Collapse : Comp. Supra), already Since 9/11, until Recently !

---

++ More important, Other Critics had notoriously claimed, already Since 9/11 and Aftewards, that various but converging Early Warning Informations had arrived (particularly from Europe), revealing that Islamist Extermists were reportedly Preparing a Major and Deadly Terrorist Attack, somewhere in the USA, etc, at least Since mid-August 2001 : I.e. 1 Month Before that Mass Killing of about 3.000 People, mainly at New York, but also at Washington DC and elsewhere, in a Series of coordinated Attacks in just 1 Day, as Never Before in all US' History !

=> So that Mr. Mueller, who took office, at the Head of FBI, on September 4, 2001, (i.e. precisely 1 Week Before 9/11, and almost the Same Days that various strange "Plumbers" had been, reportedly, visiting WTC's Buildings, under pretext to make some unspecified "Maintainance" Fixes, ...shortly before the Metallic Joints of its Structure are Found Weaker than Expected, its Water Spray Mechanisms against Fires in Bad Shape, and a Recent but still Persisting Ban of Helicopter Flying, added to a Blockade of WTC's Emergency Exits to their Flat Tops for evenual Rescue, which practically Condemned some 1.200 more "Trapped" People to Death, according to "NYT" and other mainstream US Newsmedias), should not be A Priori dismissed from any legitimate Suspicion of Wrong-doing during all this Crucial period of Time...

A Fortiori when :

- Astonishingly, Mr Mueller, even after many Years at FBI's Direction, proved Unable to Find ...not even 1 alive Suspect for any kind of possible Local Complicity to the Mass Killings of about 3.000 People inside the USA on 9/11 ;

- Republican former US President GWBush had allowed 3 Independent Enquiries on that Controversial Issue of WTC's strange Implosion at 9/11 (Comp. Supra): By US Congress (Late 2001), USA's Architects (2002), and NIST's Federal Experts (2005). But "Socialist/Liberal" Dems' former US President Barack Hussein Obama, on the Contrary, did Not let Any such Investigation on Any aspect of 9/11 during 2 Mandates in Office. Instead, even the Wife of a Killed Senior Officer in a Big Insurance Corporation HQ in Chicago, who had naively tried to meet Obama shortly after his Election, in order to ask for a New Enquiry on WTC's strange Implosion, and who was Leader of an NGO of 9/11 Victims' Families, was ...Killed at a strange Airplane Crash, immediately after meeting Obama !

=> Thus, IF New US President Don Trump, eventually Decided, later-on (f.ex. during 2018 - 2020), to Launch a brand New, Independent and Efficient Investigation on what really happened on 9/11, and whether there are any Unpunished Complicities, Scandalous Blunders and/or Inactions, Ommissions etc., given all the Above-mentioned Facts, very probably, Mr Mueller might Not be so Happy from the Results... So, ...Better keep Investigating on Trump, his Friends, all his Staff, and his Family, (Prosecuting and ImPrisoning several among them, even for Unrelated petty matters Dating More than a Decade in the Past, when they hadn't even met Trump yet, and/or Threaten him, in Parallel, with "Impeachment", etc., under various Fallacious Pretexts), instead of Letting the new, Democraticaly Elected US President Free to ask himself to Investigate what he may Believe Good for the General Interest !

-----------------

- Mr. Mueller Worked much More under "Socialist/Liberal" Dems' Barack Hussein Obama's Presidency, than under Republican GWBush's term in office, (3,5 Years with the Republicans, against 5 Years with the "Socialists/Liberal" Dems);

- He remained in charge of the FBI during all that Period of enactement and use of that System of secret Mass Surveillance of Millions of UnWarned Citizens, that Snowden dared Denounce in Public since June 2013. Mr. Mueller was Dismissed, and obliged to Leave FBI almost Immediately After that Scandal's revelation Spreads Worldwide, on September 4, 2013 ;

- Finally, Mr. Mueller was chosen and Hired, as "Special Investigator" of alleged Russian interference in the US Presidential Election" of 2016, won by Don Trump, after a relevant Decision taken by controversial US Deputy Attorney General Rud Rosenstein, ...who Owes himself a Service to Mueller for having given him the 1st Jobs in his Life, at the Attorney General's Offices, in the Past : I.e. an obvious Conflict of Interests and Exchange of personal Favours !

(Rosenstein himself has been Denounced, recently, for having reportedly, planned, during Obama's era, to Spy on Trump since 2015, and to have considered, later-on, to push Trump out of the White House under Amendment 25, i.e. as unfit for that jobn ! Recently, Rosenstein was reportedly ready to Resign asap. on Spring 2019).

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+ Meanwhile, by a Surprizing Coincidence, US President Don Trump himself, has just taken the Initiative, exactly ...this Same Day that "Eurofora" Questioned Snowden about an eventually "Too Long" Period of "Investigations" on Trump by the FBI a.o., including by Mr. Mueller himself, (Comp. Supra), to Strongly Denounce, indeed, a Longer than expected Spying/Investigation against him, which would have Started Not from 2017 (Official Apointment of Mueller), neither from 2016 (US Presidential Elections), but, already from Earlier : ... 2015, (full Obama Administration and Primaries for the Presidential Election), while also being too Controversial and even "illegal", as he criticizes !

- Indeed, it's on "March 15" that Trump tweeted about <<"New Evidence" revealing "that the Obama era team of the FBI, DOJ & CIA were working together to Spy on (and take out) President Trump, all the way Back in 2015>>, (i.e. Already Before the US Presidential Election). "Then, the Special Counsel (Mueller) should Never have been Appointed (on 2017), and there should be No Mueller Report", Don Trump points out. Indeed, "This was an illegal & Conflicted Investigation (i.e. full of "Conflicts of Interest" : Comp. also Supra) in Search of a crime. Russian Collusion (Hypothesis) was nothing more than an Excuse by the Democrats for Losing an Election that they thought they were going to win... THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!"

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1106554458383806467

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- Meanwhile, however, Mueller's probe has reportedly brought, until recently, about 200 Criminal Charges, 39 Indictments/Guilty Pleas, and 4 Prison Sentences. + More are already in the Pipeline, or risk to appear asap.

But the Heaviest Cases are ...totaly UnRelated to Mueller's Legal Mandate on alleged collusion with Russian Interference in 2016 US Elections :

- F.ex., Paul Manafort, former Trump's Chief Campaigner's main condemnation to Prison concerns simply ...Tax avoidance accusations, allegedly Committed almost ... a Decade Before he Started to work with Trump, and involve Ukrania's internal politics.

+ Even More UnExpected, the main Charges against General Michael Flynn, a former Trumps' Advisor, do Not concern Russia, but ...Turkey !

Indeed, he, and his Business Partner, Bijan Kian, who was arrested, face accusations for Conspiracy to illegally Lobby the US Government for the sake of Foreigners, by secretly serving the Turkish Government's attempts to Change USA's Policy on self-exiled Dissident Gulen, as Ankara Paid them a sum of Money in order to seek his Extradition...

++ Similar Controversial Methods as against Manafort (Comp. Supra) were abused also by Mr. Mueller against Trump's former Lawyer, Michael Cohen : He was Harasssed and Convicted, asking Years in Jail, merely for totaly UnRelated to 2016 Elections' Russian Interference allegations, most of them committed much Earlier in the Past, (including, f.ex., Tax Fraud, Campaign Funds' Irregularities, etc).

And once Cohen had been seriously "Cornered" and sentenced to Prison with Unrelated Convictions, he was suddenly Pushed to prolonge his Testimony on the Date that Trump droped a Project in Moscow, from January to June 2016, (i.e., at any case, Before his Nomination as GOP's Candidate).



+++ Recently was Added also Roger Stone, a former Trump Campaign Agent, who was accused by Mueller for allegedly "False and Misleading" testimony on his suspected Contacts with ..."Wikileaks", after it became known that the International Organisation of World Famous "Whistle-Blower" Assange, already had many Hillary's hidden E-Mails... I.e. a Strange Accusation, from a Democracy point of view, as if Stone was Accused to Help Reveal to the Peuple the Truth !

Other indictments, (and 3 out of 4 Prison Sentences) concern Minor, almost Tiny matters:

- As, f.ex., allegedly Inaccurate Statements made by a Greek and a Dutch Foreigners (Papadopoulos and Van der Zwaan), Merely about the exact Timing (sic !) of some among their lawful Contacts.

- Or a Latino Web Seller of Bank Accounts' Numbers, allowing to Hide Real Identities at the Internet : Mr. Pinedo at California, who is totally UnRelated to Trump !...

+ Last Year was also indicted Samuel Patton, an Independent Long-Time Lobbyist at Wash. D.C., accused to have allegedly helped an Ukranian Businessman to buy Tickets for Trump's Inauguration Events, and to have Not yet Declared Officially that he was Working also for Foreigners, (an Ommission which is, reportedly found in Many Lobbyists)...

Now, How "Russians" might "Interfere in US Elections", through Ukranian Businessmen appearing ...AFTER those Elections have ended (Comp. Supra), ...

... it's only Mr. Mueller's "Genius" which could tell us !



- Finally, as, obviously, it could not exist a "collusion" with "Russian Interference", withOut any Russian being involved, Mr. Mueller strived to Find at least one (1) alleged "Russian" with some Relation (as Small as it might be) with some People around Trump :

- Thus, he Found "KK", (alias : Konstantin Kilimnik"), a Young Ukranian speaking Russian, reportedly suspected for alleged relations with Moscow's Secret Services, and former occasional Collaborator to Trump's former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, that Mr. Mueller accused for "Conspiracy" and "Obstruction of Justice" (sic !)... I.e. an Ideal Prey ?

- Unfortunately Not : In Fact, "KK", apparently did Nothing more than, Simply ...explain to 2 Foreign Clients that, as a matter of principle, Manafort's Private Company did not accept to work for Foreigners Inside the USA, but Only Abroad. That's all ! (See, f.ex. "Daily Mail", etc. On the Contrary, curiously, "Wikipedia" does Not even mention ANY Concrete Fact on "KK" alleged Behavior !)...

+ And that, reportedly concerned a remote Past of Manafort's business, Long BEFORE the US Presidential Election of 2016, almost a ...Decade Earlier, when he notoriously had some Dealings Abroad, with a former Ukranian President's entourage, and some Ukranian Oligarchs, i.e. withOut Any Relation to the 2016 Vote in the USA...

++ Moreover, the alleged "Witnesses" were European (Not USA) Politicians, and merely ..."Potential" Witnesses (i.e. Not Real, Neither Effective) according to Mr. Mueller, while, also, the alleged "Attempt" by K.K. took place as Late as on ... 2018 !

>>> I.e., to Sum up : An alleged Contact Not with American but with European Politicians ; which were Not even Witnesses then ; Not in the US but Abroad ; related to Ukranian but Not Russian Clients ; about an Operation Dating from Many Years BEFORE the 2016 US Elections and even Before Manafort starts to work for Trump much Later-on ; ... but in a Meeting which took place Only ...2 Years AFTER that US Election : on 2018 ; Limited into merely Confirm a Private Company's General Policy ; (Comp. Supra); according to Mr. Mueller, might be Important for Manipulating the ...2016 US Elections ! How ? ... Only Mr Mueller knows ....

------------------------------

=> So, Things becoming obviously Nasty, Mr. Mueller Needed now something "Big" and Mediatic in order to Change the ambiant Impression that, Despite an awful lot of Time and Money Wasted, (some Press Sources claim about 10 Millions $ each Year !), he had Failed to Discover Anything really interesting...

- He attemped to do precisely that, on 2018, when he suddenly Indicted several ...Dozens of Russians for "Conspiracy" to various "Frauds" related to the USA, including Wire Fraud, Money Laundering (sic !), Identity Fraud, etc. And, this time, it reportedly was linked to the 2016 Elections...

>>> But, in Fact, what was it Exactly about ?

- The Indicted Persons were about Only a Dozen, and their alleged Modus Operanti (Way of Acting) was mainly Limited into Writting and Publishing through Internet's "Social Medias", etc... But, How could they manage to eventually ..."Affect" thus a Big Country as the USA with a Population of More than 350 Millions ? (Even Mueller's investigation team reportedly Admitted that they did Not Affect the Electoral Result)...

- Moreover, they were simple Individuals, Civilian People, (including also a ... "Catering" Private Business, etc !), acting Independently, and withOut Any known Link to Trump's Staff, (etc). In addition they were also Supporting Dems' Candidate Bernie Sanders, etc.

- As for some Accusations to allegedly have, sometimes, offered to Help one or another Poor US Citizen, located at a far away province, to eventually Pay a Bus, etc. in order to Join a Public Rally, and/or to have allegedly participated, in certain cases, to the popular activity of publishing some Local "Ads" in favour of Trump or Sanders, etc.,

this Obviously is ...Peanuts, or Nothing, at least Compared to Many Millions $ reportedly Paid by various Foreign Governments to Obama or Clinton's "Foundations" and/or Pre-Electoral Funds on 2008, 2012 and 2016 !...

---------------------

+ As that, obviously, didn't fly high, Mr. Mueller advanced further, Later-on, chosing the Date of US President Don Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, on July 2018, in order to reveal that he Indicted anOther Dozen of Russians for alleged Interference in the 2016 US Elections, but, this time, he claimed to have found mainly Agents of a Russian State Security Service.

However, now it was no more for alleged Direct Interference in the US Electoral Debate, but rather for alleged Search, Findings, and Helping Publications by American Mass Medias, on Hillary's and/or "Democratic" Party Leadership's emails a.o. Computer Data, etc., reportedly Revealing various Scandalous Wrongdoings, (to the point that even the DNC's Heads had to Resign)...

- But, (according f.ex. even to the British Newspaper "Daily Mail"), the Russian President Vladimir "PUTIN RIDICULED" such alleged Mueller's Findings, (that the Newspaper don't even bothers to present analytically, contrary to other allegations, as if it was an obvious nonsense !) :

- These are mostly simple Individuals, Citizens who, may be, heard that Trump appeared to be somewhat Less Negative for their Country (Russia) than other candidates, and, naturally, they tried to support him in World Wide Web's Public Discussions, he pointed out, (particularly for the 1st Group : Comp. Supra). What's the problem ?, he wondered.

+ On Mr. Mueller's accusations for a Dozen of alleged "Agents" of the State to have reportedly "Hacked" for Hillary's and DNC's Emails and/or other Computers' Data (Comp. Supra), after Questioning the Evidence as insufficient, and observing that there is no allegationn, neither proof of eventual "Collusion" with Trump, Putin went as ar as to make even a Concrete Proposal :

- Russia and USA have concluded a Legal Treaty for "Judicial Cooperation" : Let's use it, as it's normaly done between Civilized Nations, on condition of "Reciprocity" ! We shall Help USA's Authorities to Interview those that they suspect for alleged wrongdoings, and make relevant Investigations even here, in Russia, if they accept to Do the Same for the Russian Authorities' interest to Interview a Rich Businessman, accused also for Tax Fraud and several Hundreds of Millions $ of Debt, in addition to reportedly Slandering the Russian Government also during Elections' Time, even for alleged "Murder", f.ex. in the "Magnitsky" case, in the recent Past, he reminded, proposing to cooperate in reciprocal investigations asap.

But, Despite a Positive Backing by US President Don Trump to such a proposal then, nevertheless, Nothing of this kind didn't emerge from Mr Mueller's side, (during 9 Months now)...



+ Last, but no least, the Russian President, in Concluding, pointed at the Substance of the matter;

- "After all, it seems that what they Revealed was Not Fake, but simply the Truth ! Wasn't it ? What's Bad into simply Revealing the Truth about Politicians, to the People ?", Putin reportedly Wondered.

Indeed, it seems that Neither Hillary, Nor Mr. Podesta, or the DNC, did Not ever Dispute the Truefullness of the Contents in their Emails and/or other relevant data, Published by "Wikileaks", etc.

=> Shouldn't the People know the Truth (on Public Issues and the Politicians for whom they were going to Vote) ?...

------------------------------

Snowden is apparently cooperating, sometimes, inter alia, also with "Intercept"'s Journalist Greenwald, a declared Leftist, who has, nevertheless, Strongly Supported recently New US President Don Trump, against "Deep State"'s Harassment and Threats, Opposing them elementary Principles of Democracy, which exclude anyone's attempts to Hinder a Democratically Elected US President from applying the Program for which the People Elected him, (particularly in "Hot" Areas of General Interest, such as World Peace, etc : See f.ex. ...).

Greenwald is Friend also to Famous, Historic "Guru" of Leftists Worldwide, Philosopher Noam Chomsky, who has, even himself, felt, more recently the Need to Defend Trump against his various "Deep State", UnDemocratic Persecutors' Harassment, brandissing even Higher, Otherwise, a Growing Risk of Dangerous International Tensions, and even War, (See, f.ex.: ..., etc).

It's, perhaps, the 1st Time in the History of USA that even Leftist Intellectuals felt the Need to Struggle for a Traditional Conservative Rightist, a Real Estate Businessman from a "Family Capitalism", as US President Don Trump...

Recently, Dems' Shamefull and dangerously Damaging Behavior, seeking to Slander US President Don Trump, by organizing a Public Hearing of a Controversial "Witness", (in fact a Prosecuted former Lawyer, notoriously ready to say anything that Mr. Mueller and his Cronies might desire, just to Ease the Prison Sentences threatening him), at precisely ...the Same Day that Trump was notoriously Trying to Solve the Crucial and Complicated Issue of Korea's DeNuclearisation, at a Bilateral Summit with North Korean Leader Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam, i.e. Adding Heavy Pressure over the embattled US President, with the Result to Push towards its Failure, with Dangerous Conseqences against World Peace, proved that Professor Chomsky's and Greenwald's Warnings were, unnfortunately, Right (Comp. Supra).

----------------------

"Eurofora"s 2nd Question to Snowden (Comp. Supra) might have been, indeed, "Too Long", but "Whistle-Blowing" Journalism often Needs an elementary Vital Time in order to resume hastily some Complicated Issues, while also trying to avoid too many Risks.

On the Contrary, Mr. Mueller's Oppressive Circus, obviously Threatening the American Democracy and even the World Peace, (Comp. Supra), has unequestionably Durated for Too Much, already Harmed too Many People, and must urgently Stop, at last, in one way or another, Before it might provoke Serious and Irremediable Harm also for the Society and the World.

But the Real Questions, previously Censored or Skiped during a Too Long Time, should, at last, Freely Bloshom and Flourish !

Without excluding also the Question : Why Mr. Mueller is so Eager to Harass the new US President Don Trump and his Staff ?

Perhaps, because he might be Afraid that Trump (if he had enough Time to Govern without Imposed Distractions) would, eventually, ask also for an Investigation on what Mr. Mueller himself had been doing (or not doing..) since 9/11, until 2019 (Comp. Facts cited Supra) ?

Is that one of the most Important "Conflicts of Interest" that Trump has been denouncing recently ?...

(../..)
Romania proposed at the meeting of the SME ambassadors the amendment of the European legislation in this sector by including the principle of digitization, Stefan Oprea, Minister for the Business Milieu, Commerce and Entrepreneurship, told AGERPRES on Tuesday.

"Yesterday and today [Monday and Tuesday] we had the meeting of SME ambassadors, within the Presidency of Romania at the EU Council, in which we have a debate to come up with the best public policies, with the most appropriate measures, in the legislating process at European level and of the member states, so that SMEs be at the heart of these public policies and the way they are regulated meet the real needs of SMEs," the minister said.

He pointed out that, within the discussions, Romania proposed the amendment of the Small Business Act, which regulates, by ten principles, the way in which public policies should be designed at European level and that of the member states, starting from the idea that one must think small, that is, the regulations should correspond to the needs of SMEs, and then one must think big.

The idea has enjoyed a great deal of appreciation among those present and new debates on this topic will follow, he added.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Ministry for the Business Milieu, Commerce and Entrepreneurship (MMACA) issued a press release stating that the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union intends to propose an amendment of the European legislative framework on small and medium-sized enterprises in the European Union.

This is because SMEs need to facilitate private investment, eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks and create a digital infrastructure at European level.

Europe needs a mature, proactive and innovative policy to support the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises in the long run, ensuring employment opportunities and prosperity for local and regional collectivities, Minister Stefan-Radu Oprea was quoted as saying in the press release.

The Ministry for Business Milieu, Commerce and Entrepreneurship organized on Monday and Tuesday the conference of the SME Ambassadors Meeting, in the context of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
President of the Senate Calin Popescu-Tariceanu present on Tuesday in the interparliamentary meeting dedicated to the Common Agricultural Policy and Cohesion Policy, drew attention to the fact that following the new European Commission proposals, the budget allocated to the traditional structural policies is under pressure.

"The Common Agricultural Policy and the Cohesion Policy address the wellbeing of citizens and are designed to combat the emergence of divisions and the fragmentation effect between the various regions of the EU. However, following the new European Commission's proposals, we see the budget allocated to traditional structural policies, meant to bring added value to our citizens is under pressure. On the one hand, the budget allocated to the Common Agricultural Policy in the next Multi-Annual Financial Framework is significantly lower than the current one and its share of the total EU budget falls to about 28.5 percent, as compared to 37 percent in the current framework. On the other hand, the 'new delivery model', presented as a reform by the European Commission, of the post 2020 Common Agricultural Policy seems to be firmly connected with the new Multi-Annual Financial Framework 2021 - 2027," said Tariceanu at the meeting organized by the Chamber of Deputies in the context of the parliamentary dimension of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Calin Popescu-Tariceanu said that, given the novelty factor and the envisaged budget reduction, a debate on the impact of these measures on Europe's food security and sovereignty as well as on the ecological and territorial balance is useful.

"With regard to the Cohesion Policy, a policy with positive effects appreciated by all Member States - from the Mediterranean borders to the eastern ones of the Union - the Commission also proposed a reform comprised in the next long-term EU budget, which ultimately leads to a reduction in allocated funds. We are currently analyzing the pros and cons of these changes as well as their long-term value in the unitary development of the Union," he added.

The President of the Senate brought to mind that the European Parliament in its resolution of 14 November 2018 on the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2021-2027 declared its opposition to any reduction in the level of long-standing EU policies enshrined in the treaties. The Committee of the Regions also rejected the 28 percent reduction of the rural development budget as it was considered contrary to the EU's territorial cohesion objective and opposed any reduction of EU funds for the Common Agricultural Policy post 2020. Also, in its opinion of 5 December 2018, it voiced its concern that the Commission's proposal for the Multiannual Financial Framework provides for a considerable reduction of the Cohesion Fund budget.

Tariceanu reminded that the motto of the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council is "Cohesion, a common European value", our country wishing to underline the importance of returning to the fundamental objectives of the community project.

"We therefore believe that an extended and inclusive consultation should be facilitated to properly assess the impact on existing disparities that the European Commission's proposal to reduce the Cohesion Policy budget by 10 percent in real terms as compared to the current Multiannual Financial Framework would have on the regions and the communities. It is up to the Member States, in consultation with the executive branch of the Union and the European Parliament, to find solutions to keep this budget at the level set for 2020, given that the Cohesion Policy is one of the more concrete EU policies with an impact on citizens' daily lives," he said.

The President of the Senate also advocated for the adoption of "all necessary precautions" to prevent Brexit's repercussions on farmers across the European Union.
The Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) calls for the postponement of the entry into force of Emergency Ordinance (OUG) 114 until 2020, considering it needs amendments in relation to more than 40 points.

"The Union would change in more than 40 points the OUG that provides for fundamental changes in the fiscal and economic system, after having repeatedly stated that it cannot agree to the OUG hurriedly adopted by the relevant ministry. The leader of the UDMR group in the Chamber of Deputies, Korodi Attila, stressed that, as part of the parliamentary debate on the simple motion against the Finance Minister, UDMR said it would ask for the postponement of the OUG's entry into force and the initiation of a large parliamentary and professional debate on this topic," a press release issued by UDMR on Tuesday informs.

According to Korodi Attila, OUG 114 would amend over 50 laws with immediate effect, without prior studies.

"The UDMR's parliamentary group considers that the OUG has positive aspects, but it also includes measures that do not serve to the development of the economic sphere and local administrations. Therefore, for all the economic actors concerned to have enough time to prepare themselves as regards the enforcement of the OUG's provisions, UDMR callf for the postponement of the entry into force of the new normative act until 2020," the release states.

Among other things, UDMR also proposes changes aimed at eliminating the "tax on greed", considering that introducing such a measure, without carrying out an impact assessment, significantly puts individuals and companies at a disadvantage.

"In the parliamentary debate on Government Emergency Ordinance No. 114, UDMR calls for private pension funds to invest their funds in strategic projects and the share capital to be in proportion to the amounts they manage. Given that the private pension funds do not profitably manage the contributions of citizens to mandatory private pensions, it is necessary to give these private pension funds the opportunity to invest in strategic projects, thus capitalizing on the taxpayers' money," the quoted document states.
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During the period of 17 September to 11 December of 2016, the United States and its allies carried out a massive operation to move ISISs surviving jihadists who were in the oil-producing Iraqi region of Mosul, into the Syrian oil-producing region of Deir Ezzor and Palmyra. This was done so that those oil-stealing-and-selling jihadists in Iraq would now be stealing Syrias oil and would thereby increase the likelihood of overthrowing Syrias long-existing non-sectarian Government. The US and its allies would then replace that Government by one which would be controlled by the fundamentalist Sunni Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia, the long-time leading oil-power, and which family are Americas main foreign ally. The Sauds are crucial to maintaining the US dollar as the worlds reserve currency. The US aristocracy rely upon them.

Now that ISIS is being defeated by Syrias Government (and by its allies Russia and Iran) in Syria, the United States and its allies are trying to find other governments that will take them in as refugees. Its part of a deal the US regime reached with ISIS.

The issue of what to do with the thousands of surviving but (temporarily) defeated ISIS members  and with their spouses and children  has raised hypocrisy to perhaps the highest level in all of history. Its background needs to be understood if one wants to understand the sources of that enormous hypocrisy. Heres this background:

When Russia started bombing ISIS in Syria on 30 September 2015, it greatly disturbed the US regime, which therefore started on 12 October 2015 to air-drop weapons into that area so as to help the jihadists to shoot down Russias jets, which were bombing ISIS. Americas Fox News Channel headlined "US military airdrops 50 tons of ammo for Syrian fighters, after training mission ends. The US didnt start bombing ISIS in Syria until 16 November 2015, and the US Governments excuse for not having bombed them earlier was "This is our first strike against tanker trucks, and to minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike. They pretended that it was done out of compassion  not in order to extend for as long as possible ISISs success in taking over territory in Syria.

And then on 26 February 2019, Syrias government news-agency reported that the US had sent to the US Federal Reserve 40+ tons of gold that ISIS had accumulated from selling, on the international black markets, oil from Syrias oil-producing region around Deir Ezzor  Syrias oil stolen by ISIS and the proceeds now being stolen yet again by the US regime  and this gold now being sent to the US (On March 8th I reported the further background and context of that US theft from Syria.) The US regime had offered to ISIS-members who were in Syrias oil-producing region a choice either to become captured and killed by Syrias Government, or else for them to give to the US that gold, and the option which was selected by the jihadists was to give the gold to the US, which is therefore now trying to find other countries to send the jihadists to as refugees (since Syria certainly doesnt want them, and neither does the US regime). The US regime is honoring its commitments to those former ISIS members and their families, to assist them to find countries which will accept those people as refugees. Sweden, being very liberal (meaning ideologically very confused), happens to be one of these countries, and is actually considering and debating whether to allow them in.

Zero Hedge is perhaps the keenest news-site for exposing The Wests rampant hypocrisies (and so all of The Wests propagandistic news-sites hate it and call it fake news even though it actually is more reliably accurate than the mainstream ones themselves are); and, on March 10th, it pointed out that Sweden was in a flurry over whether to accept, as refugees, ISIS jihadists who have escaped, and their spouses and children. Zero Hedge truthfully pointed out that,

Sweden's new government, which was finally formed in January after months of delay, is introducing policies that will lead to more immigration into Sweden  despite the main governing party, the Social Democrats, having run for office on a promise to tighten immigration policies.

The right to family reunion for those people granted asylum in Sweden who do not have refugee status is being reintroduced  a measure that is estimated to bring at least 8,400 more immigrants to Sweden in the coming three years. According to the Minister of Migration, Morgan Johansson, this measure will "strengthen integration," although he has not explained how.

"I think it is a very good humanitarian measure; 90 percent [of those expected to come] are women and children who have lived for a long time in refugee camps, [and] who can now be reunited with their father or husband in Sweden", Johansson said.

This is supposed to be democracy'?

However, that article, as noted at Zero Hedge, was written by Judith Bergman, of the Gatestone Institute. Sometimes, even such vicious propaganda-organizations, as that, produce authentic news, and here was such an instance. (Its yet another reason why arguing ad-hominem, instead of strictly  that is, 100%  ad-rem, is essential to avoid, in order to determine truth and reject lies. That was a truthful article. Though Bergman wrote for a hate-mongering anti-Muslim site, the reporting in it was honest and factual. So, heres some ad-hominem background to it, not as a part of the argument in this particular case  regarding Swedens debate over whether to accept former ISIS members as refugees  but instead as context explaining how this truth came to be published by the hate-mongering Gatestone:)

The Gatestone Institute is a rabidly pro-Israeli-Jews, and rabidly anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim operation, which was founded and is run by the heir and grand-daughter, Nina Rosenwald, of the biggest early (1895) investor in Sears Roebuck & Co., Julius Rosenwald. He died in 1932. His heir and son was Ninas father, and in 1939 hewas one of three founding members of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA).[12] [Nina] Rosenwald's mother, a professional violinist, was a refugee from both the Russian Revolution and Nazi Germany.[9]. Nina, being not very bright, was never able to rid herself of the prejudices her parents felt against Palestinians and generally against Muslims (since Israels main supremacism is against Muslims, because Israels ruling ethnicity, Jews, have been stealing land from Muslims). Nina identifies herself as a human rights activist. (As was said at the start here, this issue has raised hypocrisy to perhaps the highest level in all of history.) She had, in fact, hired John Bolton as Gatestones Chairman; and, for his service as that, during June 2017 to March 2018 (when he became hired as Trumps National Security Advisor), Bolton received $310,000. So, Bill Berkowitz headlined on 27 September 2018 "Meet Nina Rosenwald, the Sears Heiress Seeding Islamophobia at Home and Abroad, and he brought together and linked to the great reporting by Max Blumenthal and by Lee Fang, documenting the Gatestone Institutes rabid global hate-mongering for Israel.

But, in this particular case (the article by Judith Bergman), there was no deceit, because nothing in her reporting violated Nina Rosenwalds biggest hatred, hatred of Muslims  so, these truths were acceptable to Rosenwald. Bergmans article happened to be truthful Israeli propaganda. (After all: some propaganda is truthful.)

The Israeli regime wont have any credibility whatsoever unless it condemns Swedens compassion for jihadists and for the wives and children of jihadists. Israels Minister of Justice had endorsed exterminating all Palestinians, but that rationale  sheer bigotry  for opposing them, isnt suitable for foreign consumption, and so it was almost immediately disappeared from its public posting (shown there at that link). If Israel cant pretend to be against Muslims on account of jihadists, then Israels barbaric treatment of its Palestinians wont make any sense at all to the many fools (mainly in America, Israels chief patron) who support Israel (such as the Rosenwalds do). The US regime hides the barbarous reality of Israel, but that reality isnt blacked-out quite as much in the rest of the world; so, Israel cant afford to be publicly silent regarding jihadists, even in cases where the US regime would prefer such silence. Obviously, the US regime wants Sweden to accept those former ISIS members (because the US regime aims to conquer Russia and all nations  such as Syria  that are allied with Russia, and uses ISIS, Al Qaeda, and nazis, as boots-on-the-ground mercenaries, in order to do that), and so this ISIS-as-refugees issue is one on which the American regime and the Israeli regime happen to disagree.

Bergman closed her article by describing the Swedish Governments efforts to be compassionate toward jihadists while the Swedish Government also provides an appearance of caring for the safety of non-jihadist (the vast majority of) Swedes:

On a positive note, however, at the end of February, the Swedish government presented plans to introduce legislation that would criminalize membership of a terrorist organization. This new law would enable the prosecuting of returning ISIS fighters who cannot be connected to a specific crime, but who were proven to have been part of a terrorist organization. Critics have pointed out that it has taken years for the government to take steps to criminalize membership of terror organizations.

Sweden is hypocritically neutral, but actually a vassal nation of the United States. Sweden is being pushed by its master, the US regime, to accept some of the people the US Government had been protecting in order for the US to become enabled to take over Syria and to deliver it to the US aristocracys chief ally the Sauds; and, so, the Swedish Government is now trying to square this circle, in order to satisfy everyone at least somewhat. This split loyalty (between the imperial master, and the domestic public) is whats called democracy, nowadays. The master pulls one way, the public are confused or undecided, and the US regimes other main Middle Eastern ally, Israel, is pulling in the exact opposite direction, on this particular matter. This is how international affairs actually are being decided. The various aristocracies come to an agreement on how to proceed. The respective publics are virtually ignored, except as fronts for their PR. Thats todays international order, just as has been the case for thousands of years: it is agreements that are reached between aristocracies.

Back in September of 2018, the US regime was backed by the United Nations in opposing Russias and Syrias plan simply to slaughter all of the tens of thousands of Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists (and their families), whom the Syrian Government had exiled to Idlib, Syrias most pro-jihadist province, and who were being collected there with the intention to destroy them all at the very end of the war  finally to finish them off there. Both Syrias Government and Russias Government wanted simply to destroy them en-masse, at the wars end. However, because of the success of that US-based (and also U.N.-backed) international propaganda campaign arguing that bombing them would be inhumane, those jihadists survive, and will probably also be moved to other nations. Sweden could become one such nation, if they decide to take in not only former ISIS but former Al Qaeda, as refugees. The US has protected both of those groups, against Syrias Government.

Hypocrisy exists when people dont care enough about their values so as to think carefully through to decide what values  if any  they actually hold, and what their actual priorities are. Fools like that are the meat upon which their aristocrats constantly feast, producing, as the aristocracys excrements, bigots (such as jihadists, and such as the majority of Israelis  and such as people who accept those bigots). Without those fools, aristocrats would need to actually earn a living, instead of merely to live off the fat (the fools) of the land and thereby producing this waste-matter, bigots, who make things difficult for everybody else, including for any decent people who might happen to exist in the given receiving nation (such as in Sweden).

The origin of The Wests hypocrisies that claim to be supporting human rights and democracy around the world, while actually invading or overthrowing target-governments, go back at least as far as Cecil Rhodes in the late 1800s, and the rationale thats given of it is entirely fraudulent. It is the difference between, on the one hand, an authentic revolution, which can sometimes produce a democracy, versus, on the other hand, a coup or else an invasion, neither of which can, nor is actually designed to, produce a democracy. But the PR has to say the reason for an invasion or coup or sanctions (such as against Venezuela or Iran or Syria or Libya or Iraq or Ukraine) is to promote human rights or democracy or oppose corruption in the given target-country thats to be, basically, destroyed. Suckers are necessary, in order for this fraud  the actual aristocratic control of international relations  to succeed. And thats how the system works. It works by that combination, of liars and fools.
In a controversial snub to international law, the United States signaled last week that it is moving to officially recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israeli territory. If the US does so, then it forfeits any moral authority to sanction Russia over allegations of annexing Crimea.

In its annual US State Department report, the section dealing with the Golan Heights reportedly refers to the contested area as Israeli-controlled, not Israeli-occupied. The change in wording deviates from United Nations resolutions and international norm which use the term Israeli-occupied to designate the land Israel annexed from Syria following the 1967 Six Day War.

Israel has occupied the western part of the Golan since 1967 as a spoil from that war. In 1981, Tel Aviv formally annexed the Syrian territory. However, the UN Security Council in 1981, including the US, unanimously condemned the annexation as illegal. The resolution mandates Israel to return the land to Syria which has historical claim to the entire Golan. The area of 1,800 square kilometers is a strategic elevation overlooking the northern Jordan Valley.

If Washington confirms its recent indications of recognizing the Golan as officially part of Israel, the development would mark an egregious flouting of international law.

But whats more, such a move totally prohibits Washington from posturing with presumed principle over the issue of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which since 2014 voluntarily became part of Russia.

Just last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated accusations against Russia of annexing Crimea. Pompeo insisted that US sanctions against Moscow would be maintained until Russia returns Crimea to Ukraine.

The world has not forgotten the cynical lies Russia employed to justify its aggression and mask its attempted annexation of Ukrainian territory, he said. The United States will maintain respective sanctions against Russia until the Russian government returns control of Crimea to Ukraine.

Last year, Pompeos State Department issued a Crimea Declaration in which it was stated that, Russia undermines a bedrock of international principle shared by democratic states: that no country can change the borders of another by force.

Claims by Washington and the European Union of illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia are the central basis for five years of economic sanctions imposed on Moscow. Those sanctions have contributed to ever-worsening tensions with Russia and the build-up of NATO forces along Russias borders.

Those claims are, however, highly contestable. The people of Crimea voted in a legally constituted referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and to join the Russian Federation. That referendum followed an illegal coup in Kiev in February 2014 backed by the US and Europe against a legally elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. Historically, Crimea has centuries of shared cultural heritage with Russia. Its erstwhile position within the state of Ukraine was arguably an anomaly of the Cold War and subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union.

In any case, there is scant comparison between the Golan Heights and Crimea, save, that is, for the latest hypocrisy in Washington. While Crimea and its people are arguably historically part of Russia, the Golan Heights are indisputably a sovereign part of Syria which was forcibly annexed by Israeli military occupation.

The illegality of Israels occupation of Golan is a matter of record under international law as stipulated in UNSC Resolution 497.

There is no such international mandate concerning Crimea. Claims of Russias annexation are simply a matter of dubious political assertion made by Washington and its European allies.

The latest move by Washington towards recognizing Golan as part of Israel  in defiance of international law  comes on the back of several other recent developments.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham made a tour of Israeli-occupied Golan last week in the company of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pointedly transported by an IDF military helicopter. Graham said following his tour that he would recommend the Trump administration to officially recognize the area as under Israeli sovereignty.

Currently, there is legislation going through both the US Senate and House of Representatives which is aimed at declaring the entire Golan as Israeli territory.

The stark shift in pro-Israeli bias in Washington under the Trump administration is consistent with the White House declaring at the end of 2017 that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Again, that move by President Trump overturned international consensus and UN resolutions which have stipulated Jerusalem to be a shared capital between Israel and a future Palestinian state, to be worked out by (defunct) peace negotiations.

Why Washington has taken up the Golan issue as a prize for Israel at this time is not precisely clear. It could be seen as the Trump administration giving a political boost to Netanyahu for next months elections.

There has been previous speculation that Trump is doing the bidding for a US-based oil company, Genie Oil, which is linked to his administration through his son-in-law Jared Kushners family investments. The New Jersey company has a subsidiary in Israel, is tied to the Netanyahu government, and has long been aiming to drill the Golan for its abundant oil resources.

The Golan move could also be retribution meted out to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over his countrys historic defeat of the US-backed covert war for regime change. The nearly eight-year war was also covertly backed by Israel which sponsored jihadist militia operating out of the Golan against the Syrian army. Having vanquished the US regime-change plot, thanks to crucial military support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the payback could be Washington stepping up Israeli claims to annex the Golan.

But whatever the background explanation is, the initiative by Washington to legalize the annexation of Golan by Israel is a brazen violation of international law. In doing so, the US is officially sponsoring war crimes and theft of Syrias sovereign territory. Or as the Crimea Declaration would put it: changing the borders of another country by force  supposedly a bedrock principle that Washington continually sermonizes about to Russia.

Crimea and Golan are different issues of territorial dispute, as noted already. Nevertheless, the duplicity of Washington over Golan makes its posturing on Crimea null and void. If the Europeans meekly go along with the US move on Golan, then they too should shut their mouths and their moralizing sanctions over Crimea.
ADAZI TRAINING AREA, Latvia - U.S. Marines with Fox Battery, 2nd Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, launch rockets from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System during live-fire training at Adazi Training Area, Latvia, March 7, 2019, in support of exercise Dynamic Front 19. Exercise Dynamic Front 19 includes approximately 3,200 service members from 27 nations who are observing or participating from Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany; Riga, Latvia; and Torun, Poland; during March 2-9, 2019. Dynamic Front is an annual U.S. Army Europe exercise focused on the readiness and interoperability of U.S. Army, joint service, and allied and partner nations artillery and fire support working together in a multinational environment. Photo By: Sgt. Andy Martinez

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The UN has been trying, for months to get major donor nations to provide $4.2 billion for Yemen aid in 2019. Thats a third more than in 2018. The UN has only been able to obtain pledges for 62 percent of what was asked. Most of what was raised came from four donors (the U.S., Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait). What is discouraging donors is the absence of any reliable distribution system in Yemen. Only in the last year has the UN admitted that the Shia rebels are the major obstacle to effective distribution. For years the rebels used their control over Hodeida, the largest port in Yemen (and main port for central and northern Yemen) to steal aid and use what was delivered .selectively, denying tribes or provinces food if they opposed the rebels.

Yemen government forces were poised to take Hodeida in late 2018 when the UN arranged a ceasefire that was to make the port a neutral zone controlled by the UN. Great plan but the rebels have refused to withdraw as agreed to in the December peace deal. The rebels also block access to warehouses and grain silos in Hodeida holding huge quantities of food. Now the rebels are planting explosives in these storage facilities. Most of the aid now coming in is via southern ports, which cannot match the port capacity of Hodeida, so many donors are holding off until the distribution problems are solved.

Many UN members are demanding that the Arab sea/land and naval blockade of Yemen be lifted so food and other aid can get through. Yet recent UN investigations now admit that Iran has been smuggling in weapons and even North Korea was willing to supply the rebels but was unable to because of the blockade. Another problem most outsiders fail to acknowledge is that Yemen is not and never has been a stable, united country. Southern tribes are still demanding partition while the northern Shia tribes want autonomy and a united Yemen that will protect them from Saudi "aggression", i.e. retaliation for the smuggling and cross border attacks the Shia tribes persist with. Since unity was achieved in the 1990s the various factions have refused to cooperate for the good of the country because for most Yemenis the faction (usually a tribe or local coalition) come first. The UN has not helped by throwing donor money at the problem without admitting that a lot of it was being stolen and not used for its intended purposes. Then again the Shia rebels are not the only Yemenis who will steal aid rather than use it as intended.

Dead December Deal

The Shia rebels still refuse to implement the December pace deal that was supposed to reopen the Red Sea port of Hodeida, which is essential for delivering emergency food and other aid to northern Yemen. Iran has persuaded the Shia rebels to stall but that advice is losing its appeal as the rebel situation worsens. While the rebels have stolen and stockpiled a lot of food and other aid, their coalition continues to unravel. The rebels seemed unstoppable in 2014 because they could depend on the cooperation or neutrality of many Sunni tribes and all the Shia tribes in the north. That cooperation often came in the form of reliable neutrality. After 2016 there were a lot fewer neutral Sunni tribes and some had turned against the rebels. Now key neutral Shia tribes in the northwest (the rebel homeland) are renouncing their neutrality and fighting, or just blocking rebel movement. The latest example of this is in the northwest (Hajjah province). In 2018 Saudi troops finally drove Shia rebels out of the province, after more than two years of fighting. This province is on the Saudi border and largely populated by Shia. But many Saudis believe Hajjah province should be part of Saudi Arabia. At one time in the 1920s, a decade before the Saudi kingdom was founded, Saudi forces conquered Hajjah province. British threats caused the Saudis to withdraw but the Saudis never forgot.

Another reason to take the province is to halt the smuggling that still takes place along the Red Sea coast. Pacifying Hajjah province meant making deals with the Shia tribes to assure them they would not be mistreated. To help with that the Saudis had the experience of the many Shia tribes in southwest Saudi Arabia, who have done much better economically over the decades than their Shia brethren across the border in Yemen. The Saudi pitch was classic Arabian; support the Saudi cause and the Saudis and Saudi Arabia will provide protection and aid. By January 2019 it was obvious to the Shia rebels that the key Shia tribes in Hajjah province had switched sides. The rebels shifted forces from the south to launch an offensive against their new enemies. The Saudis had persuaded the Hajour tribes in Hajjah province to accept Saudi military support to block Shia rebels from entering Hajour territory. That was a problem for the rebels because Hajour lands contained some key routes. The Shia rebel campaign involved attacking, or rather besieging many villages. The Saudis countered that with airdrops of food, ammo and other supplies while organizing group operation to break the siege. This put more pressure on the rebels because this was yet another Saudis success in or near the Shia rebel home province of Saada. This is not a new situation but has been growing worse over the last two years and caused a manpower shortage for the rebels as well as a worsening morale problem.

The Shia rebels have become weaker in other respects. Their failure to meet the terms of the December 2018 Hodeida ceasefire backfired on the rebels. The Arab Coalition brought in food from the less capable Gulf of Oman ports and are working to expand the capabilities of those ports. In the meantime, there was less food aid for the areas once dependent on supplies coming in via Hodeida. Thus the Yemeni government has done something about the problem while the Shia rebels are simply making matters worse without helping the rebel coalition or the core rebel Shia tribes back north in Saada province.

The Shia rebels, faced with a complete breakdown of the Hodeida ceasefire and resumption of the government advance have threatened to launch more ballistic missiles at key targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. That sounds ominous but the Arab coalition doubts the rebels have many ballistic missiles left. Moreover, the Saudis and UAE have been able to shoot down all of the missiles that were going to hit important areas instead of unpopulated ones as many of the missiles have done. Another threat that the rebels pose, but will not admit openly, is destruction of the port facilities and food storage sites before they leave the city.

The Arab Coalition is also slowly taking apart the legal income sources the rebels had because they captured the national capital in 2014 and held on to it. That meant they maintained control over vital, and profitable (via taxation) industries. One of the most valuable, the telecommunications business, has been generating about $60 million a month in taxes since the rebels seized the capital. The Arab coalition created a rival national telecommunications authority and has persuaded most of the foreign telecommunications firms to abandon the Shia rebels and pay the legitimate government operating from the temporary capital of Aden. The rebels have already lost enormous sums because Hodeida is closed and all those bribes, extortion payments and stolen aid are no longer available as is most aid smuggled in from Iran. Some still gets in but because the rebels no longer run Hodeida Iran has a much more difficult, and expensive, time getting contraband to the rebels.

Iran

Iran, facing growing domestic unrest because of expensive foreign wars, and lack of tangible results, desperately needs a clear cut win and Yemen is one area where that is still possible, despite numerous setbacks. For one thing, Iran still has a lot of support from leftist politicians in the West. This is partly resentment against the United States, which has always been the primary supporter of Saudi Arabia, and Gulf Arab oil states in general. Now the majority of legislators in the American Congress are willing to demand the U.S. halt military aid to Saudi Arabia. This is unlikely to pass into law but even if it comes close it is a major win for Iran.

While the Iranian Information War campaign (with the help of Russia) to demonize the Arab coalition efforts in Yemen, continues more Western analysts are pointing out that the main cause of civilian casualties is the Shia rebels, who deliberately use civilians as human shields. This is not a unique situation because the same problems were encountered fighting ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) in Syria and Iraq. Arab armies will attack despite the presence of civilians. The Syrians were condemned for deliberately attacking pro-rebel civilians on a large scale from 2012-2018. This drove millions of pro-rebel civilians out of Syria and from an Arab perspective that was a win. The Assad government is not the only Arab government that operates that way and anyone who becomes an ally of an Arab nation must either put up with that medieval attitude towards civilian casualties or step away from the situation. Iran, Russia and Turkey still adhere to this approach as does China. Aware of that the Yemeni rebels make sure any civilian deaths in their territory get publicity (photos, video and staged interviews) that puts all the blame on government or Arab coalition forces. This is done mainly to manipulate Western media. This has been more obvious during the current ceasefire. The main cause of ceasefire violations and dead civilians has been Shia rebels. Despite all that the casualties have been low in Yemen compared to other combat zones (Syria, Iraq, Sinai, South Sudan and Nigeria)

One major loss for Iran is that their smuggling efforts are no longer able to bring in ballistic missiles (broken down and later reassembled under the supervision of Iranian technicians) into Yemen. There is still some threat from Iranian UAVs, but while these are smaller and easier to smuggle in, there appears to be a limited number of them left in Yemen because of the numerous Arab air raids during 2019 against bases they operate from. The Saudis are pleased that the ballistic missile attacks have been halted along with the reduction of armed (with explosives) UAV attacks. The Arabs will probably prevail in Yemen but it is the only one of Irans wars where Iranian prospects are good. Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Lebanon are all more expensive and less likely to provide the Iranian theocracy with a much needed victory. That means the growing domestic protests in Iran will become more of a problem because already Iran has been forced to sharply cut the budget for these operations.

March 18, 2019: In the southwest (Taiz province), Shia rebels are still present in about 30 percent of the province, even though the Taiz city has been under government control since early 2018 and the rebels no longer control any territory on a permanent basis. Taiz is the third largest city in Yemen and the province occupies a strategic location. For that reason the province has seen nearly constant fighting for eight years now and it is still one of the most active areas for fighting in the country.

March 14, 2019: In the northwest (Hodeida province), a rebel ballistic missile hit an army base, killing one soldier and wounding 14. This base was not protected by Patriot missile defense systems the UAE has brought in to protect major bases from attack. Cut off from Iranian supplies of ballistic missiles and still unable to penetrate the Saudi ballistic missile defenses the rebels apparently decided to hit a smaller target in Yemen and do what damage they could.

March 10, 2019: In the northwest (Hodeida province), major fighting broke out between the Shia rebels and government forces in the port of Hodeida. There had been a growing number of minor violations of the Hodeida cease fire this year but this was the first major outbreak of violence since the ceasefire agreement was signed in December 2018.

March 9, 2019: In the northwest (Hajjah province), Shia rebels took heavy casualties (from Arab coalition air strikes) as the rebels attacked villages belonging to another Shia tribe (the Hajour) who had switched sides over the last few months and were blocking routes the rebels had long used. In response the Shia rebels went after Hajour tribal leaders and their families. The rebels wanted to take hostages but managed to kill more than fifty civilians, which made the Hajour more determined to fight.

March 8, 2019: In the northwest (across the border in the Saudi province of Asir), air defense systems shot down another Iranian UAV that the rebels had sent off in an attempt to cause some damage and casualties in Saudi Arabia. This one was aimed at Abha, the capital of Asir province and 230 kilometers from the border.

March 3, 2019: The government pointed out that the rebels were planting landmines and other explosives around the UN aid warehouses in the port of Hodeida. This was visible to some of the remaining UN observers assigned to Hodeida. The rebels have been deliberately firing at these UN personnel, not with the intention of hitting them but to make the inspectors less curious about any illegal (according to the ceasefire) activity by rebel forces.

February 17, 2019: In the northwest (Hodeida province), the government and the Shia rebels finally agreed on the details of how to carry out the first withdrawal of combat forces in the port of Hodeida so that aid shipments can resume. This withdrawal agreement did not work as the rebels expressed doubts that they could trust the government. But the pressure is on the rebels, who have controlled the port since 2014 and never allowed the UN or aid groups any real control over aid supplies moving through the port. The rebels do not want to lose control of the port (which has already happened as government forces have been in the port city since late 2018) and they do not want the port to resume operation until they receive more concessions (as yet not described in any great detail).
TICKERS: IOM; ARHH, VIV; VIVXF, GPV; GPVRF, JJ; JPOTF; LVH1, LVWL; LXLLF

Source: Streetwise Reports (3/19/19)

Steve Palmer, Founding Partner, President and Chief Investment Officer for AlphaNorth Asset Management, talks about a handful of companies in diverse industries that have his attention.



Streetwise Reports: Steve, would you give us an overview of the AlphaNorth Capital Conference?

Steve Palmer: We held our 6th conference in Nassau, Bahamas, in January; it's focused on small-cap non-resource companies. This past year we had a lot of technology and cannabis companies. There were also healthcare and consumer products companies.

SWR: How many companies attend the conference?

SP: It's grown every year since we started it. This year we had three tracks with 18 companies in each track.

SWR: Would you tell us about a couple of the companies that you're excited about?

SP: One that I'm particularly excited about is Vancouver-based Jackpot Digital Inc. (JP:TSX.V; JPOTF:OTCQB; LVH1:FSE). It has developed an electronic poker table that is like a giant touchscreen. It eliminates the requirement for a dealer, so casino operators are very keen to have this because it lowers their costs. Also, with poker there's some idle time with the players. If you fold early on in the hand, let's say, you're just sitting there waiting for everybody else to finish. But at your station, you can switch, and you can play electronic blackjack on the table, for example. So it keeps the players engaged, and it generates more revenue than a typical table would.

SWR: At what stage is the company now? Is its product in use or is it still in the prototype phase?

SP: It has tables in use. It has a new generation table that it's getting orders for now. It has a bunch of its older generation tables currently in use, mostly on Carnival ships. It has current orders for 30 new generation tables to ship in the next few months. It just did a small private placement to fund the building of those tables.

What's exciting about Jackpot Digital is the product, and it's getting lots of new orders now. It's at an inflection point, in my view, of turning cash flow positive. When these tables go out, they are expected to generate about $5,000 per month each to the company.

SWR: The company receives a share of the earnings of the table?

SP: Yes, that's how it works in most places. Jackpot Digital has recently won some orders in France, where the rules are different. The casino industry is very regulated, and in France you're not allowed to take a share of the winnings. So Jackpot sells the tables outright, and it's building a couple for there right now.

We're pretty excited about the company; it's just getting to the critical mass now where it's going to be cash flow positive and the momentum on the table orders is ramping up. The biggest hurdle the company faces is having enough working capital to facilitate orders, which is a good problem to have.

SWR: What is the next company you'd like to talk about?

SP: Another company at the conference I like is in the cannabis sector. I don't normally talk about cannabis companies because I'm not a huge fan of the sector in general. It's LiveWell Canada Inc. (LVWL:CSE; LXLLF:OTCMKTS). Its shares are currently halted. It's going to be a CBD extraction company, and it's going to be one of the largest producers of cannabidiol (CBD) oil using hemp. The change with the Farm Bill in the U.S. has really ignited this industry, and there's a huge demand. LiveWell is getting very good margins, and it's just ramping up a big facility in Montana to produce CBD oil.

The numbers are actually quite silly, if you believe them, in terms of what the going rate is for CBD oil and the volumes that these guys are going to be able to produce.

SWR: Do you expect, as more CBD oil comes out onto the market, that prices might go to a more reasonable level? Are states regulating prices?

SP: The states are not meddling in the pricing. It's the supply and demand that's created a very strong pricing environment. I've asked many of the operators in the space about it because obviously these prices can't stay where they are indefinitely. People involved in the space believe that there's going to be maybe a two- to three-year window where prices will stay where they're at until the supply catches up to the demand. But you're right, over the longer term, these kind of prices won't last. For example, CBD oil sells for $6,50010,000 per kilogram; that's the going rate right now. And it's been at that level for many months. And LiveWell is producing at less than $500/kg, so it has very strong margins.

LiveWell is currently merging with a company called Vitality CBD Natural Health Products Inc., and that's expected to close in the next few weeks. It is guiding to having the stock back trading in March. So I'm excited to see, when it starts trading, how investors react to that.

SWR: Is this a merger of equals or is LiveWell acquiring Vitality?

SP: It's a reverse takeover situation, and Vitality's the bigger entity. It is acquiring LiveWell.

SWR: You mentioned LiveWell is building a large facility in Montana. Does it have other facilities also at this point?

SP: LiveWell is producing currently out of another, much smaller facility. The Montana facility is going to have a huge capacity. LiveWell announced recently that it produced 200 kg of CBD equivalent in the first week of February. It expects to ramp that up to 200 kg per day by the second half of 2019. So if you do the math on that, at US$6,500 per kg, that's US$1.3 million a day in product. So you can get to some pretty big numbers.

SWR: Is there anything else you want us to know about this company?

SP: Just that its numbers look very attractive to me based on the current pricing environment and it should be trading sometime this month. It has plans for a U.S. listing shortly thereafter. So it could be quite an exciting one to watch.

SWR: What is the next company?

SP: Another one I like that was at the conference is Assure Holdings Corp. (IOM:TSX.V; ARHH:OTCQB). This is an interesting one because it has some decent revenue already. It has equipment for neuromonitoring certain surgical procedures, and it's only in one or two states at the moment. But it has expansion plans to move into other states in the United States. Revenue in 2018 was about $25 million with roughly $15 million in earnings. The revenue growth profile, once it starts adding these other states, is quite significant.The company is forecasting a 70% increase in revenue growth for 2019.

SWR: Any other companies you would like to mention?

SP: Avivagen Inc. (VIV:TSX.V) is worth talking about; it's fairly timely. The company recently received a very significant order in the U.S. for its product, OxC-beta. It's a proprietary supplement that it has developed that it can put into animal feed, and the trials have shown that the animals, compared to the control group, are healthier and they grow more quickly. It eliminates the need, in many cases, for adding antibiotics to the animal feed.

My understanding is the initial volumes for the U.S. are fairly significant. It has been selling into East Asia, the Philippines mainly, for the last several quarters, and that's been ramping nicely. But the U.S. market is much larger, the second largest market in the world, I believe, for animal feed. So we think this is going to be a huge catalyst for the company. The third largest market in the world is Brazil, and we think that it will probably follow suit in ordering product now that the U.S. seems to be on board. There have been many trials that show that the product works. There's a big initiative to cut back on the use of antibiotics in animals, and this is a theme that we like.

SWR: Do you have a final company for us?

SP: Yes, I could mention one more. It's a Vancouver-based electric bus manufacturer, GreenPower Motor Company Inc. (GPV:TSX.V; GPVRF:OTCQX). It's making great gains. It's one of the few companies that I've come across in the last year that has actually exceeded its expectations in guidance. It is selling buses mainly into the California market, where there are huge incentives for school districts and other transportation municipalities to switch to electric buses. It is ramping up production this year. It should more than triple revenue in 2019 versus 2018.

SWR: Thanks for your insights, Steve.

Steve Palmer is a Founding Partner, President and Chief Investment Officer of AlphaNorth Asset Management and currently manages the award-winning AlphaNorth Partners Fund, AlphaNorth Growth Fund and AlphaNorth Resource Fund. Prior to founding AlphaNorth in 2007, Palmer was employed as Vice President at one of the world's largest financial institutions, where he managed equity assets of approximately CA$350M. Palmer managed a pooled fund, which focused on Canadian small-capitalization companies, from its inception to August 2007, achieving returns of 35.8% annualized over a nine-year period, which ranked it No. 1 in performance by a major fund ranking service in its small-cap, pooled-fund category. Palmer earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Western Ontario and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

[NLINSERT]

Disclosure:

1) Patrice Fusillo conducted this interview for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee. She owns, or members of her immediate household or family own, shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. She is, or members of her immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this interview are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Avivagen. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. As of the date of this article, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports has a consulting relationship with Avivagen. Please click here for more information. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

3) Steve Palmer: I, or members of my immediate household or family, and/or AlphaNorth funds, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: All of the companies mentioned. I, 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 interview: None. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector. I had the opportunity to review the interview for accuracy as of the date of the interview and am responsible for the content of the interview.

4) The interview 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 interview, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Avivagen, Jackpot Digital and Assure Holdings, companies mentioned in this article.
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Prayer vigils continue across the Western Bay of Plenty community this week.

Te Puke Anglican Church will host a vigil this evening, Tuesday March 19 at 7.30pm. The service will last about one hour, and provide an opportunity for people to come and pray for the nation and those affected, and light a candle.

On Friday evening from 6-8pm the Sikh community will hold a prayer vigil at their temple in Burrows St, Tauranga.

On Saturday evening the Te Puke community held a vigil in Jubilee Park to show their support and to share in the nations grief following the tragic shootings in Christchurch.

People started gathering for the 6.30pm vigil, with many placing flowers and candles in a heart outline drawn in chalk on the concrete. Other messages were written in chalk across the pavement.

The heart was filled up with flowers, says Epic Te Pukes Rebecca Larsen, who helped organise the vigil. It was really beautiful. People wrote notes and were going to compile them into a card. We also had buckets for donations.

The vigil for Christchurch was organised within 24 hours by many individuals from Te Puke, says Monique Lints, who also helped organise the vigil, as an expression of our solidarity and support to the victims of the shootings in Christchurch and to show our support to our Muslim community in Te Puke.

A lot of individuals from the local community organisations pulled together really quickly to pull this off, says Rebecca. It meant a lot, as a lot of us work separately in our organisations. It worked out really well.

Col Gardiner from the Its Not Ok campaign led the gathering in a Karakia, with a minute of silence following, providing time for reflection.

Marama Rice sang Te Aroha and Tutira mai nga iwi.

Rotorua MP Todd McClay addressed the gathering. Western Bay of Plenty Mayor Garry Webber was unable to attend but sent a message.

Unfortunately Carole and I have another commitment so please accept our heartfelt apology.

I commend you for this initiative as there is no place in our community for such behaviours and we must take every opportunity to condemn any person or organisation that supports such thoughts as those we have seen in Christchurch. Nga mihi, Kia kaha, read the mayors message.

Western Bay of Plenty Councillor John Scrimgenour read out lines from the National Anthem such as In the bonds of love we meet, Men of every creed and race gather here before thy face, asking thee to bless this place, God defend our free land, and preaching love and truth to man.

Te Puke Community Board member Peter Miller and Labour List MP Angie Warren-Clarke both spoke.

Marama Rice then led the gathering in singing the NZ National Anthem.

Te Puke High School Head Boy and Head Girl, and the high schools cultural leader all spoke, following by Issac Gunson, the ex-head boy of Te Puke High School, who phoned in from Christchurch where he is currently studying.

Karyl Gunn Thomas and Col Gardiner spoke on behalf of Te Puke Its Not OK group, and Chief Glen Williams spoke on behalf of the Te Puke Fire Brigade. The fire station had its flag flying at half mast.

Ministers from Te Puke Harvestpoint church and Te Puke Anglican also spoke.

Donations with proceeds going to the families of Christchurch victims were acknowledged and Rebecca reminded veryone where people can go for support in Te Puke.

Ring the mental health helpline 'Need to talk' 0800 1737 1737 or text them  1737,

or phone victims support on 0800 842 846 and these details were also posted on to the EPIC Community Facebook Group, says Rebecca.

Marama Rice closed the gathering with singing Welcome Home by Dave Dobbyn.

That was really beautiful, says Rebecca.

Harvest Point Church opened its doors to provide refreshments afterwards.
Syracuse, N.Y. -- New Yorks attorney general wants to hear about Spectrum customers experience redeeming no-cost streaming video services the cable provider is required to offer as part of a settlement with the state over claims the company failed to provide promised internet speeds.

In a news release Tuesday, AG Letitia James encouraged Spectrum subscribers to use an online survey to share their experience redeeming the offers of free premium movie channels or the Spectrum TV Choice streaming service.

The offers are part of an agreement that Charter Communications, which operates under the Spectrum brand, reached with the AGs office in December to settle allegations that the company failed to provide the blazing fast internet speeds it advertised.

Under the settlement, the company is required to issue $62.5 million in bill credits to customers. The credits, which began showing up in customers bills earlier this month, will amount to either $75 or $150 for eligible subscribers. There is nothing customers have to do to claim them.

James said the credits are the largest-ever consumer payout by an internet service provider.

In addition, Spectrum must offer the following streaming video services to approximately 2.2 million current internet subscribers at no extra charge:

Current customers who subscribe to both internet and cable television from Spectrum will have a choice of either three months of HBO or six months of Showtime. (Only customers who do not already subscribe to both of the offered services are eligible for this offer.)

Internet-only subscribers will get one month of Spectrum TV Choice streaming service -- providing local broadcast television channels and a choice of 10 pay TV networks -- and access to Showtime for one month.

This offer of three months of HBO or six months of Showtime free of charge is showing up in Spectrum customers' bill in New York as part of a settlement with state regulators over the company's internet speeds. Customer bill screenshot

However, subscribers must call Spectrum at 1-833-422-8795 by May 31 to select the free premium video services they want.

Current internet service subscribers who leased a DOCSIS 2.0 modem on a tier of 20 Mbps or higher or an 802.11n wireless router on a tier of 200 Mbps or higher, or who subscribed to a legacy Time Warner Cable plan of 100 Mbps or higher as of Feb. 1, 2017, will receive a credit of $75. Subscribers who leased a DOCSIS 2.0 modem on a tier of 20 Mbps or higher for 24 months or longer will receive an additional $75 credit.

Customers eligible for the credits and free video streaming services will be notified in their bills. Customers who provided their own modems are not eligible for the credits. Neither are former customers.

When the offers began showing up in customer bills earlier this month, several customers told syracuse.com that when they called the company to sign up for the free movie channel offers, the customer service agents they spoke with were not yet aware of the offers. A spokesperson for the attorney generals office said any customers having trouble redeeming the offers should fill out the online survey. The office will contact Charter to make sure the customers receive the services they are eligible for, she said.

Did you try redeeming the offers? Let us know your experience in our comments section.

Rick Moriarty covers business news and consumer issues. Contact him anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
Winston Duke prepared for Jordan Peeles new horror movie much more differently than he did for Black Panther.

The fast-rising actor from Upstate New York stars in Us, opening this weekend, as a father whose family gets terrorized by their own doppelgangers. It will be Dukes first lead role on the big screen after a breakout year as Wakanda warrior MBaku in 2018s Marvel superhero movie Black Panther.

Dukes Black Panther co-star Lupita Nyongo will play his wife in Us, forcing Peele to go to great efforts to make sure the new film didnt remind fans of their MCU characters. In an interview with Seth Meyers on Monday, the Late Night host noted that Dukes character actually resembled the former Key & Peele star and even sounded like his voice.

He and I talked about essentially not feeling like MBaku is in this movie. Because the family really couldnt be in danger if MBaku was around," the 6-foot-5 Duke noted. So you know, we talked about changing my body and changing my physicality and we came up with, you know, lets do a dad bod."

Lets really lean into this comfortable guy whos this all-American dad, working for the weekend, weekend warrior kind of guy. So thats kind of what happened, and then the glasses happened, and before I knew it, I guess I was Jordan Peele.

Meyers laughed, and then tried to summarize the process.

So basically he said MBaku would be too intimidating and you said, Okay Ill be you,' Meyers joked.

During the interview, Duke also predicted that the films lookalike family -- scary versions of the main cast in red jumpsuits -- would be a popular Halloween costume this year. He also sidestepped questions about Avengers: Endgame" spoilers, but noted that Marvel fans do recognize him frequently in public by grunting and chanting.

They dont really use my name anymore. They just go Maya fa, ooh! Duke said with a smile. And I know exactly who theyre talking to.

Duke, 32, attended Brighton High School near Rochester and studied theater at the University at Buffalo, then took acting classes at Yale University. He was born in Tobago before emigrating to the United States at the age of 9.

Us, written and directed by Peele, opens in theaters nationwide Friday. Peele recently won an Oscar for his directorial debut, Get Out, and next hosts the CBS All-Access reboot of The Twilight Zone.

Besides Avengers: Endgame and Black Panther 2, Dukes upcoming roles include Wonderland with Mark Wahlberg and a Kimbo Slice biopic.
AUBURN, N.Y.  Auburn Community Hospital is denying allegations that a former doctor endangered the lives of patients by practicing recklessly.

In documents filed in federal court, the hospital denies charges Dr. Jeremy Barnett admitted patients the hospital is not capable of treating and refused to transfer patients when required. It also denied allegations that hospital administrators ignored numerous staff complaints about Barnett.

The hospitals denials are in a response filed Friday to a federal lawsuit brought by Dr. Gregory Serfer, who resigned from the hospital a year ago. In his suit, Serfer alleges Barnett rejected advice of a surgery team that recommended a patient with a blocked artery be transferred to another hospital and the patient died as a result.

In its response the hospital is asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit.

A state Health Department inspection conducted in August found an Auburn hospital doctor, later identified in lawsuits as Barnett, harassed employees, used profanity and misbehaved in front of patients for at least nine months before the hospital intervened.

Barnett has not returned phone calls.

Daniel Dennis, a former nurse practitioner at Auburn hospital, filed a sexual harassment complaint against Barnett and the hospital on March 11 with the state Division of Human Rights.

Dennis says in his filing the hospital did not respond to multiple complaints he made about Barnett.

In a prepared statement, the hospital said the allegations in the sexual harassment complaint are  unproven and made from the perspective of a former employee.

The hospital also is being sued by Dr. Karen Odrzywolski, another former Auburn doctor. Her suit filed last month alleges the hospital retaliated against her for complaining about Barnett. The hospital has also called her claims unproven allegations.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A Syracuse cop accused of beating and threatening to kill his girlfriend quietly resigned from the force earlier this year as his legal troubles mounted in a sprawling domestic abuse case.

Ahmad H. Mims, 35, resigned from the Syracuse Police Department on Jan. 4, syracuse.com/The Post-Standard has learned. Mims resignation came two weeks after he was charged with a felony for violating a restraining order from a former girlfriend -- his third arrest in three months.

Mims had been with the department since 2011 and was a member of the highly active Crime Reduction Team, a specialized unit tasked with disrupting the citys most violent criminal networks.

He was suspended Sept. 17 after state police arrested him twice and charged him with assault, menacing and criminal weapon possession. A criminal complaint accused him of beating up his girlfriend on multiple occasions and holding his gun to her head while drunk. Two months later, he was arrested again for violating the restraining order.

After the felony arrest in December, a police spokesman said Mims would remain suspended, with pay, until his criminal cases were resolved. That would have taken more than five months. Instead, Mims resigned several weeks later.

Mims pleaded guilty to third degree assault in Lake George earlier this month and pleaded guilty to second degree menacing in the Town of Cicero last week. Both charges are misdemeanors. He is scheduled to be sentenced in both courts on May 16.

According to a court clerk in Lake George, Mims recently moved to North Carolina and is no longer living in the area.

Mims is still facing a felony contempt of court charge for the restraining order violation. That case was referred to a grand jury on Jan. 24 and is still unresolved, according to the Town of Clay court.

During a court hearing in December, Mims lawyer, Eric Jeschke, said Mims had surrendered all his guns and was seeking counseling for psychiatric problems.
Its been three years since then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced Central New York civil rights hero Harriet Tubman would become the new face of the $20 bill. Three years later, the currency still features Andrew Jackson, a slave owner whose Indian Removal Act of 1830 led to the death of more than 4,000 Native Americans on the Trail of Tears.

Whats taking so long? Thats the question being raised by civil rights attorney and advocate Ben Crump in a new editorial for NBC News.

U.S. Rep. John Katko (R-Camillus) introduced a bipartisan bill in June 2015 that would have required the Treasury Department to place Tubmans likeness on U.S. currency by 2017. Legislation stalled, in part because Tubman was originally proposed for the $10 bill but the popularity of the Broadway musical Hamilton led to a campaign to keep the nations first Treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton on the $10 -- pushing Tubman to the $20 bill in Jacksons place. President Barack Obamas administration ultimately approved a plan in 2016 to put Tubmans portrait on the $20 bill by 2020.

But after the 2016 election, President Donald Trump and Lews replacement, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, both began to stonewall Jacksons removal. Mnuchin said in 2017 that they were reconsidering the Obama-era initiative, and still havent made any progress two years later.

We havent made any decisions as to whether well change the bill, or wont change the bill, Mnuchin said in January 2018, his last public comments on the subject, according to CNN. A Treasury spokesperson said earlier this month that Mnuchins position remains the same."

Trump told the Today show in 2016 that he thought putting Tubman on the redesigned $20 bill was pure political correctness." His only related comments since have been in praise of Jackson, the seventh U.S. president.

I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later, you wouldnt have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart, Trump said in 2017. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said Theres no reason for this.

Jackson, who served as president of the United States from 1829 to 1837, died in 1845. The American Civil War began 16 years later, while Abraham Lincoln was president.

Katko and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) co-signed a letter in September 2017 urging the Trump administration to move forward with putting Tubman on the $20 bill. The letter also invited Mnuchin to visit Tubmans former home in Auburn in Cayuga County, where she lived after escaping from slavery. Tubman went on to help others gain freedom through a network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.

I have long stated the need for U.S. currency to honor and celebrate the accomplishments of American women, and applauded last years decision to feature Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, Katko wrote.

Tubman, whose home in Auburn, N.Y., was recently approved to become a national historical park, would become the first black woman to have her portrait on U.S. currency.

The only thing standing in the way of this enormously symbolic and fitting tribute is a tone-deaf President Trump and his stonewalling Treasury Department, Crump wrote Monday. What could possibly be the holdup? Americans should want to replace President Andrew Jackson, a former slave owner, with the picture of a woman who was just the opposite: A person who escaped slavery and a civil rights hero who truly stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Similar changes were also announced for the $5 and $10. The $10 bill would keep Hamilton on the front, but honor the suffrage movement on the back with an image of the historic march for womens rights, while the back of the $5 bill would honor events at the Lincoln Memorial with icons like Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr.

All three redesigns were scheduled for 2020 to honor the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

Ahh just saw this! so cool! #20 pic.twitter.com/5ax5gCfifG  Harriet Tubman for the 20 (@Harriet75022539) March 15, 2019
Competent adults should have power to decide

To the Editor:

In her op-ed opposing the legalization of assisted suicide (5 myths about legalizing assisted suicide, March 17, 2019), Stephanie Woodward makes a series of claims which need careful examination. A few are just irrelevant, such as her contention that aid in dying is just a marketing tool or that the main opposition is not organized religion but disability groups. Surely the central issue is whether the legalization of assisted suicide will be the first step on a slippery slope leading to a nightmarish society in which respect for life is seriously diminished. She claims that this is already starting to happen in states like Oregon, where assisted suicide has been permitted for two decades.

Now I certainly agree that allowing people to have access to this practice will inevitably involve some abuses. That is just human nature. The same is true of granting people the right to drink alcohol, drive cars, climb mountains or undergo routine surgery. But in general we allow competent adults to make these decisions out of respect for their autonomy. Of course, we would need to enact careful safeguards (something that all the states that have legalized this practice have already done). Woodward insists these precautions will not suffice but -- like most defenders of slippery slope arguments -- she offers no hard evidence for such a claim.

However, I would like to end on a point of agreement. If we had an adequate health care system, it is likely that the demand for aid in dying would be significantly reduced. Perhaps that should be the focus of our efforts, regardless of our views on assisted suicide.

Michael Gorr

Skaneateles

I want that right,' and so do majority of New Yorkers

To the Editor:

Regarding the March 17, 2019, letter from Stephanie Woodward, Id like her to think about the rights of people who want medical aid in dying -- under very limited circumstances. I want that right and am disappointed that she is working against bills in the New York state Legislature which would provide such assistance. I support the Medical Aid in Dying Act A.2694/S.3947, as do many organizations and individuals.

The bills have widespread support from diverse organizations including, to name just some, Harlem United, Hispanic Health Network, Housing Works, Latino Commission on AIDS, Latinos for Healthcare Equity, League of Women Voters of New York State, Mobilizing Preachers and Communities, New York Civil Liberties Union, New York Society for Ethical Culture, New York State Academy of Family Physicians, New York State Public Health Association and the New York Statewide Senior Action Council. A poll of citizens across the state revealed support for medical aid in dying by a 63 percent to 29 percent margin, and physicians support the Medical Aid in Dying Act by a 67 percent to 19 percent margin, according to another poll.

Linda DeStefano

Syracuse
State Forest rangers recently came to the rescue of three unprepared hikers wearing sneakers who lost their way on an Adirondack High Peak.

Those and other incidents involving wilderness recoveries and searches by state Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers occurred March 15-17. All specifics were supplied by the DEC.

Town of Keene, Essex County

Wilderness Search: "On March 16 at 3:25 p.m., DECs Ray Brook Dispatch received a transferred call from Essex County 911 reporting three hikers from the Clifton Park area were lost on Giant Mountain. The three hikers  ages 21, 21, and 19  required assistance to relocate the trail. Under Lt. Gary Friedrichs authority, Rangers Robert Praczkajlo and Kevin Burns were dispatched to the Giant Mountain Wilderness to search for the hikers. At 5:10 p.m., voice contact was made with the subjects. By 5:52 p.m., Rangers located the subjects in good but tired condition. The hikers were wearing sneakers and were unprepared for the backcountry hike. The subjects slowly made their way back to the trailhead and the incident concluded at 6:15 p.m.

Town of Black Brook, Clinton County

Wilderness Recovery: At 2:04 p.m. on March 17, DECs Ray Brook Dispatch received a call through Franklin County 911 reporting a hiker in distress on Catamount Mountain in Clinton County. The caller reported that a 52-year-old male from Glen Falls had collapsed while taking a break and was unresponsive. Ray Brook Dispatch provided assistance to the caller and dispatched Forest Rangers to the scene at Taylor Pond Wild Forest. Under the direction of Ranger Lt. Gary Friedrich, Rangers Glen Bronson, David Russell, and Peter Evans responded with snowmobiles for rapid access to the patient. Au Sable Forks Ambulance Service was also on scene with the New York State Police. Rangers made their way to the group by 2:30 p.m. After an hour of CPR, the male hiker was pronounced deceased.

Town of Shandaken, Ulster County

Wilderness Search: At approximately 3:30 p.m. on March 17, DEC Central Dispatch received a call from Ulster County 911 regarding a stranded male hiker on Friday Mountain in the town of Shandaken. The hiker reportedly was having difficulty descending the mountain due to steep, icy terrain. The 59-year-old from New Windsor became disoriented and lost the trail. Under the direction of Lt. Robert Morse, Rangers Kevin Slade, Patrick Lee, Lincoln Hanno, Russel Martin, and Robert Stratton responded to the subjects location. The coordinates were unreliable, however, hampering search efforts. With nightfall approaching, Rangers contacted State Police Aviation out of Newburgh to assist in locating the subject. At 7:24 p.m., Rangers Stratton and Lee located the subject and escorted him back to the trailhead.

Town of Elizabethtown, Essex County

Wilderness Recovery: On March 15 at 12:22 p.m., DECs Ray Brook Dispatch received a request for assistance for a 51-year-old male hiker from Plattsburgh. The subject was in medical distress at the top of Blueberry Hill Trail. At the time of the call, Essex County 911 dispatch advised they would also be sending Elizabethtown Ambulance. Under Lt. Julie Harjungs authority, Rangers Robbi Mecus, Logan Quinn, and James Giglinto were dispatched to the hikers location. As Rangers and EMS were responding, the subject went into cardiac arrest. Rangers and EMS performed CPR and employed an automated external defibrillator, but the subject remained unresponsive. New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation personnel arrived on scene and assisted with recovery efforts. The hiker was transferred to the Essex County Coroner.

**Be sure to properly prepare and plan before entering the backcountry.

Visit DECs Hiking Safety and Adirondack Backcountry Information webpage for more information.
New York  A New York City police officer who officials said over the weekend had been killed in a 1999 shooting is actually alive.

The confusion began when authorities announced a Florida man was arrested in the 20-year-old case. New York Police Department Commissioner James ONeill tweeted that the officers killer had been caught, according to the New York Post.

The officer, Vincent Ling, was 27 at the time and was certainly shot. But police confirmed Monday that Ling, now 47 and retired, is still alive.

His uncle told the New York Daily News that he saw his nephew last year.

Authorities said a misreading of the attempted murder charge on Pearsons arrest warrant caused the confusion about whether Ling was dead, according to the Post. Police apologized for the mistake, the Post said.

Ling was off duty when he was shot, but was working at the time as an undercover officer. His name was not released at the time of the incident, the News said.

Lester Pearson, 43 of Jacksonville, Florida, was arrested Friday in connection with the case.

Pearson and Ling grew up in the same Bronx neighborhood and had a long-running dispute over Ling's sister, who Pearson once dated, according to the News. The 1999 shooting began when Pearson opened fire and Ling fired back.

At least 11 shots were fired, according to the News.

Pearson turned himself into prosecutors a little over a month after the shooting, but skipped bail.

Pearson is being held in Florida until he can be extradited to New York.

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598
NEW YORK (AP)  The spiritual leader of an alleged sex cult in Upstate New York pleaded not guilty on Monday to newly filed child pornography charges at a hearing where it became clear that his co-defendants are trying to avoid going to trial with him next month.

Keith Raniere was charged last week with exploiting a child and possessing child pornography. He had previously pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of operating a secret society within his NXIVM group that forced women slaves to have unwanted sex with him and branded them with his initials.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Moira Penza told a judge on Monday that the government is in "active plea negotiations" with Allison Mack, best known for playing a teenage friend of Superman on the "Smallville" TV series, and two other defendants in the sex-trafficking case. Additionally, defense attorney Mark Geragos said that his client, Seagram liquor fortune heiress Clare Bronfman, will be asking for a separate trial on charges she bank-rolled the Albany-based group that has been compared to a cult. Bronfman and Mack have previously denied the charges.

"We don't need to be the collateral damage," Geragos said.

It remains unclear whether Raniere will face the child porn charges at the upcoming trial in federal court in Brooklyn or if he will be tried on them separately in Upstate New York at a later date. His lawyers have accused prosecutors of tainting the jury pool by making the sensational accusations with the start of jury selection only three weeks away.

"The gravity of these charges is monumental," one the attorneys, Marc Agnifilo, said Monday.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis told the defense lawyers that he wants them to file briefs by the end of the week before he would rule on how to go forward.

The prospect that the 58-year-old Raniere  known as Vanguard within his group  could stand trial alone began to take shape last week when NXIVMs chief executive, Nancy Salzman, became the first defendant to plead guilty. She admitted to stealing identities of the groups critics and hacking into their email accounts, as well as conspiring to doctor videotapes before they were turned over to plaintiffs in a New Jersey lawsuit against the group.

According to a government filing, the new charges against Raniere involve "a 15-year-old girl who was employed by Nancy Salzman and who  ten years later  became Raniere's first-line 'slave'" and "a child whose sexual relationship with Raniere was known to, and facilitated by, members of the Enterprise."

Regarding the teen, the papers say the evidence includes child pornography Raniere created and possessed and "electronic communications between the victim and Raniere reflecting their sexual relationship and indicating that it began when she was fifteen years old."

Raniere has denied the allegations. Hes been jailed without bail since being brought to the U.S. in 2018 following his arrest in Mexico.

NXIVM, based in Colonie, N.Y., claims to be a self-help group with over 16,000 members in chapters nationwide, as well as in Canada and Mexico. Officials and associates have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and dispute any allegation that it is a cult.
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand - New Zealands coalition government plans to announce gun law changes within the next week in response to Fridays deadly shooting rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday.

The measures could include restricting the military-style semiautomatic weapons that were used in the attacks, which killed 50 Muslim worshipers and injured more than 40. Similar weapons have been used in recent mass shootings in the United States.

The death toll exceeds New Zealand's annual homicide rate; 35 people were killed in 2017, the latest year for which figures are available.

"As a cabinet, we were absolutely unified and very clear. The terrorist attack in Christchurch on Friday was the worst act of terrorism on our shores," Ardern said. "It has exposed a range of weaknesses in New Zealand's gun laws. The clear lesson from history around the world is that, to make our community safe, the time to act is now."

The cabinet is dominated by the center-left Labour Party but includes four members of the right-wing New Zealand First party. It is supported by the progressive Green Party, which attended Monday's meeting.

It made a decision "in principle" about changing gun laws, Ardern said, adding that she will provide further details before the cabinet meets again next Monday.

"Within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism, we will have announced reforms which will, I believe, make our community safer," she said.

The politicians' broad agreement highlights the consensus in New Zealand that making certain types of guns less accessible could have prevented or limited Friday's massacre.

The attacks have sent shock waves through this country of 4.5 million people at the bottom of the South Pacific.

New Zealand has long been considered safe from terrorism and from the outside world in general. American tycoons flocked to buy property here in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other terrorist attacks on the United States.

Vigils continued nationwide on Monday, from Auckland in the north to Queenstown in the south.

Hundreds of high school students gathered for a candlelight vigil in Hagley Park, directly opposite the Al Noor Mosque where the first and deadliest attack occurred. Students from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds sang songs and performed a ceremonial haka dance of the indigenous Maori culture, joined by crowds of people who had come to the park to pay their respects to the victims.

Jitters remain high. One student told her friends she thought a journalist's camera was a gun at first glance. There were bomb alerts in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, but they turned out to be false alarms.

Brenton Tarrant, 28, of Australia was arrested after the attacks and has been charged with one count of murder. He is expected to face more charges when he next appears in court on April 5. He did not enter a plea during his initial court appearance Saturday and was remanded in custody.

His court-appointed lawyer, Richard Peters, said Tarrant has fired him. He said Tarrant plans to represent himself in court.

Tarrant appeared to be "quite clear and lucid" on Saturday and did not show any regret, Peters said.

"He didn't appear to me to be facing any challenges or mental impairment, other than holding fairly extreme views," Peters told the New Zealand Herald.

The lawyer suggested that Tarrant might want to use his trial to espouse his extremist white nationalist beliefs. The suspect left behind a 74-page hate-filled manifesto in which he said he wanted to"directly reduce immigration rates to European lands." He also praised President Donald Trump as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose."

In response to criticism that he has implicitly encouraged white nationalism, Trump tweeted Monday: "The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!"

Tarrant sent a copy of the manifesto to government offices, including the prime minister's office, which received it nine minutes before the attack. Ardern said there were no details about the timing or location of the impending attack.

Ardern announced an inquiry into what the immigration and intelligence agencies knew about the alleged attacker.

Investigators will also look into Tarrant's social media usage. The gunman live-streamed the attack on the Al Noor Mosque, where 42 people were killed, on Facebook. The video was deleted but not before it had been widely shared.

Facebook and other social media companies "have to step up" and do more to fight hate speech, the prime minister said.

In Wellington, the capital, Ardern was the first person to sign a national condolence book Monday. "On behalf of all New Zealanders, we grieve together,"she wrote. "We are one. They are us."

Most of the victims of the attacks were immigrants or visitors from countries with Muslim majorities or large Muslim populations. Among the dead were worshipers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Somalia and Afghanistan, officials said. The youngest was a 3-year-old boy born in New Zealand to refugee parents from Somalia.

In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan played clips from the video of the mosque attacks and highlighted excerpts of the manifesto as he sought to rally Islamist supporters ahead of local elections. Referring to threats in the manifesto against Muslims in Istanbul, Erdogan also warned that anyone who tried to reclaim the city for Christianity would be sent home "in caskets." His use of the Christchurch massacre for domestic political purposes drew a stiff rebuke from New Zealand.

Tarrant had been living sporadically in Dunedin, at the south of New Zealand's South Island, since the end of 2017 and had practiced at a gun club there. The club closed Monday, and the vice president said it might never open again.

Presently, people in New Zealand must obtain licenses to own guns. But they are almost always approved: 99.6 percent of the 43,509 license applications filed in 2017 were successful.

Tarrant had a gun license and allegedly used a variant of the AR-15, a semiautomatic weapon that has been used in many mass shootings in the United States, including at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018; and on the Las Vegas strip in 2017. A similar weapon was used at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.

Since the shooting, Ardern has talked about requiring licenses for individual guns, rather than for users, and banning semiautomatic weapons.

A separate police investigation is continuing.

Australian counterterrorism police raided two houses in New South Wales on Monday. One was that of Tarrant's sister in Sandy Beach, halfway between Sydney and Brisbane.

The counterterrorism officials then stormed a second house at Lawrence, a bit farther north and close to Grafton, where Tarrant grew up. This house reportedly belongs to the boyfriend of his mother, who is a schoolteacher. Tarrant's father, a garbage collector, died in 2010.

"The primary aim of the activity is to formally obtain material that may assist New Zealand Police in their ongoing investigation," Australian police said in a statement. Tarrant's family was helping the police with their investigation, they said.

More than 250 police officers are already working on the investigation of the attacks, the largest number ever deployed to a case in New Zealand. FBI officers are also helping police with "a number of specialist areas," Police Commissioner Mike Bush said Monday.

That investigation has led to delays in returning victims' bodies to their families. Police said that although they are gathering evidence, they are conscious of the need to return the victims' bodies to their families so they can be buried in line with Muslim customs.

Multiple graves have been dug at a cemetery in Christchurch, and mosques are expected to reopen for Friday prayers.

With many mosques nationwide closed since the attacks, some churches welcomed Muslims into their buildings over the weekend to allow them to pray in sacred spaces.

Thirty-four people wounded in the attacks remain hospitalized, 12 of them in critical condition.
Forward-looking: Intel has announced that it will build America's first exascale supercomputera system that can perform a quintillion calculations per second. Along with subcontractor Cray, the tech giant will develop the machine, expected to be ready by 2021, for the Department of Energys Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago.

The $500 million Aurora supercomputer will be powered by Intels future Xeon Scalable processor Intel Xalongside Optane DC memory, the X compute architecture, and Intel's ONE API suite of developer tools. Cray will be providing its Shasta system architecture, which can support multiple CPUs, GPUs, and high-performance interconnects such as Slingshot.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, who attended yesterdays announcement ceremony, said, "Achieving exascale is imperative, not only to better the scientific community, but also to better the lives of everyday Americans."

"Aurora and the next generation of exascale supercomputers will apply [high-performance computing] and AI technologies to areas such as cancer research, climate modeling and veterans' health treatments."

Aurora will have a wide range of uses, from predicting how patients will respond to experimental drugs, to extreme-scale cosmological simulations, to helping develop more efficient organic solar cells and other materials.

In the world of supercomputers, the US is constantly competing with China. America currently has the worlds fastest machinethe 200 petaflop Summitbut it has fewer computers (108) than China (229) in the TOP500 rankings.

The US might not be the first country to build an exascale computer. China said it has already put into operation a prototype exascale machine, and it expects the final version to be ready by the second half of 2020 or the first half of 2021. Japan, meanwhile, hopes its Post-K exascale computer will be ready by next year.

We dont know what everybody else is doing, so we can only really talk to the plans in the United States, said Rick Stevens, associate laboratory director for computing, environment, and life sciences at Argonne. We know other countries are working on the path to exascale, but we dont know precisely when they will deploy their systems.
Knowing the incidence of dementia in first-degree relatives, as well as distant family members, may indicate an individual's risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers from the University of Utah School of Medicine suggest that chances of developing Alzheimer's are high even if the parents, siblings, or children are unaffected. Predicting outcomes can help clinicians prescribe preventive measures instead of aggressive treatments that could worsen the symptoms.

Double Trouble

The risk of having Alzheimer's disease is doubled when a person has one close relative and one distant relative who have the same disease. If the incidence of Alzheimer's disease is present in at least one first-degree and two second-degree relatives, the risk increases by 21 times.

"Family history is a very powerful piece of information that can accurately predict someone's risk of Alzheimer's disease, and this study shows there are more people at risk than we know," said lead author Lisa Cannon-Albright, an epidemiology professor at UUSOM.

Genealogy is a known risk factor for Alzheimer's, a progressive type of dementia characterized by deteriorating cognition and memory.

The study analyzed death certificates of more than 270,000 people in Utah dating back to the 1800s. About 4500 of those people had Alzheimer's disease.

Having a parent or a sibling with Alzheimer's increases the risk of developing the disease by 73 percent. The odds are quadrupled if there are two first-degree relatives with the same disease.

Although the association of family history Alzheimer's incidence is interesting, the authors noted that it was not the cause of death in the majority of the cases they followed.

An Expected Reality

Rebecca Edelmayer, Alzheimer's Association director of Scientific Engagement, said the results of the study are not unique. However, it could provide additional information to look outside the first-degree population.

Men with one or more affected first-degree relatives are more at risk compared to women. The same is true for men with one or more second-degree but no affected close relatives. Similarly, affected individuals from the maternal side pose a greater risk to their close or distant relatives compared to the paternal side.

"This is a surprising observation," said co-author John Kauwe, professor and chair of the biology department at Brigham Young University. "However, the overall evidence for paternal, versus maternal, inheritance in our data is mixed. We will need additional analysis in this and other datasets to be more certain about these results."

The study was published in the journal Neurology.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Methylene chloride found in popular paint removers has been banned for consumer use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency following controversial deaths linked to its use.

The ban prohibits the manufacturing, import, processing, and distribution of the said toxic chemical in all paint strippers for consumer use.

A Final Ban

"After analyzing the health impacts and listening to affected families, EPA is taking action to stop the use of this chemical in paint removers intended for consumers," said Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the EPA.

EPA said the ban reflects the agency's commitment to ensuring that chemicals in the retail marketplace are safe for the American public.

However, the ban does not cover industries and workplace. It did not also include the banning of N-methylpyrrolidone or NMP, a common alternative to methylene chloride that can cause reproductive issues and birth defects.

In compliance with the EPA ruling, several hardware retailers and companies have announced their commitment to stop selling products containing methylene chloride.

Lethal Chemical

Methylene chloride or dichloromethane is a colorless, nonflammable, and volatile liquid chlorinated hydrocarbon.

It has a strong but pleasant chloroform odor. It is commonly used as a solvent in paint removers, a solvent in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, and as a degreasing and blowing agent for industrial use.

Methylene chloride in paint strippers can be inhaled and can also be absorbed by the skin. Inhalation of this chemical can cause instant dizziness, loss of consciousness, and irritation of the nose and throat.

Acute exposure can cause death due to nervous system depression. A tablespoon full of this lethal chemical is enough to kill a person. It is considered toxic both by health and consumer experts.

The EPA first proposed a federal ban on methylene chloride for commercial and consumer use in January 2017 but President Donald Trump excluded the workplace use in the final ban. The chemical has been banned in Europe since 2012.

Groups demanded a full ban on the chemical saying the EPA ruling leaves workers blatantly exposed to deadly chemicals.

"The methylene chloride rule sends a clear message to workers that their lives matter less than chemical industry profits," said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a staff attorney at Earthjustice.

Cause Of Deaths

The chemical has been implicated in the deaths of several people. Since the 1980s, at least 64 people have died due to acute exposure to methylene chloride including the death of four Michigan residents according to environmental health organization Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families.

In October 2017, small business owner Drew Wayne from South Carolina died after he had been overcome by vapors of methylene chloride in Goof Off paint stripper manufactured by W.M. Barr.

Then-31-year-old Wayne was resurfacing the floor of a walk-in refrigerator when he inhaled the toxic chemical.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Agents from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection have confiscated 1 million pounds of pork smuggled from China.

African Swine Fever

The pork was smuggled into the Port of Newark in New Jersey amid concerns the meat may contain African swine flu disease.

The African swine fever is a highly infectious hemorrhagic viral disease that affects pigs. The disease spreads through contact with infected animals, bites from infected ticks, ingestion of infected meat or contact with contaminated surfaces.

The disease cannot infect humans, but it can kill the entire hog herds. ASF can kill hogs in as little as two days. No vaccine or cure is available for the disease.

African swine fever has not been reported in the United States, but so far killed more than 1 million pigs in China. The Asian country, which houses the largest hog population in the world, has reported 112 outbreaks in 28 provinces and regions since August.

Smuggled Meat Hidden In Containers Of Detergents And Noodles

The seizures were announced during a press conference on Friday at a warehouse in Elizabeth, where three rooms were filled wall to wall with packages of the illegally imported meat. Authorities said the seizure is an effort to battle the spread of the disease.

"Agriculture specialists made a critical interception of these prohibited animal products, and stopped them from entering the U.S. before they could potentially cause grave damage," said Troy Miller, director of Customs and Border Protection Field Operations in New York/Newark.

The seizures were the largest of agricultural products in the United States. The contraband arrived in more than 50 shipping containers over the past few weeks hidden in containers of laundry detergents and ramen noodles.

It took the work of more than 100 CBP agriculture specialists and canines from the Department of Agriculture to uncover the illegally imported meat.

CBP spokesperson Anthony Bucci said the meat was primarily cured and the cargo containers were not refrigerated. He said that an ongoing investigation is being done in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Southern California turned orange last week as swarms of painted lady butterflies make their way to the Pacific Northwest.

The insects are known to travel from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest every year. However, this time around, residents noticed the sheer number of migrating butterflies. Experts estimate that millions of painted lady butterflies are currently flying toward the north.

Millions Of Butterflies Dazzle Southern California

Arthur M. Shapiro, a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis, explained that the increased amount of rainfall that the desert near the Mexican border received this year is responsible for a large number of butterflies in the area.

The wet winter, which allowed the plants to thrive and bloom, provided nutrition to the insects in the desert where they are known to lay their eggs.

Shapiro said that a similar outbreak was seen in 2005 when millions of painted lady butterflies were witnessed migrating from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest. He expects the same number of butterflies, or perhaps more, to move toward the north this year.

Passing By On The Way To The North

Experts also revealed that the painted lady butterflies are flying really fast. The insects can reach up to the speed of 25 miles per hour.

"The striking thing is they're moving very rapidly and directionally," stated Shapiro. "So it's almost like being in a hail of bullets."

Moreover, according to Monika Moore who is a butterfly enthusiast, the insects seem to be moving in a strange way. They navigate the area with expertise: flying low in an open field and then high whenever they encounter buildings and homes.

Painting The Town Orange

Painted lady butterflies are the most pervasive around the world. They exist in every continent except Antarctica and South America.

They are also often confused with monarch butterflies because of the colors of their wings.

"I like to think of them as being like the plagues of locust that used to be around the world, except they eat plants we don't care about," commented Brian Brown, an entomology curator at the Natural Museum of History in Los Angeles. "They're looking for what we consider weeds, and as they feed, they build up big populations."

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Netflix, one of the biggest online video streaming service companies in the world, will not be joining forces with Apple for its upcoming TV offering.

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, announced this week that the company will not sell subscriptions to any of its shows through Apple's planned TV and video streaming platform. He said the company has decided not to integrate with Apple's new offering, preferring to let subscribers watch its content on Netflix itself.

"Apple's a great company," Hastings said. "We want to have people watch our shows on our services,"

Netflix's choice not to partner with Apple comes as no surprise, given that the two companies have already started to shore up their video streaming offerings for a potential head-to-head matchup.

Netflix Vs. Apple

Despite working closely on earlier projects, Netflix started to distance itself from Apple's ecosystem after news about the tech company's planned television and video service came out last year.

The popular streaming platform does not seem to be interested in adopting Apple's revamp of its TV application for iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV boxes.

It also stopped accepting Netflix subscriptions paid for in-app through the iTunes. By not using the App Store for new subscriptions, the company is able to avoid Apple's policies on revenue sharing.

Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer at Netflix, explained why the company has decided to move away from App Store use. He said the digital distribution platform was not an important source of revenue for Netflix.

Apple's Video Streaming Service

Apple is set to unveil its own TV and video streaming service on Monday, March 25. While no details have been made available yet, the new platform is expected to compete with similar services such as Amazon Prime, Disney, HBO, and Netflix.

Since Apple has yet to build up its library of original content, it is rumored that the video streaming service would offer subscriptions to shows from other networks and companies such as CBS, Viacom, and Lionsgate's Starz.

When asked about his thoughts on Netflix's new competition, Hastings claimed that the biggest challenge for the company is to stay focused but still be able to learn lessons from its rivals.

"These are amazing, large, well-funded companies with very significant efforts," the Netflix boss noted.

"They are going to do some great shows. I'm going to be envious. They're going to come up with some great ideas. We're going to want to borrow those."

He added that they will be able to make the video streaming industry better if they have great competitors.

Hastings has long been asked about competitors such as Amazon and HBO. He said that these streaming services have grown while Netflix has grown, which is why his company's success does not have to come at their expense.

However, it is unlikely that this will remain the same in the future. With more video streaming platforms entering the market, it will become more difficult for all of these services to maintain subscribers' interest in them.

Some people might want to subscribe to more than one service, such as Amazon Prime, Apple, CBS All Access, Disney Plus, HBO, Hulu, and Netflix. However, observers believe there will not be enough of those kinds of people around. Some video streaming platforms will simply not be able to win.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A Baton Rouge man was sentenced to 97 months in federal prison for possession of child pornography, U.S. Attorney Brandon J. Fremin announced Monday.

The criminal case against Steven Everhardt, 52, began when the FBI conducted an undercover operation that resulted in them discovering over 50,000 images of child pornography on Everhardts computers, according to the Department of Justice.

Images ranged from depictions of the sexual abuse of toddlers to sadistic conduct involving other minors.

Everhardt pleaded guilty in December to one count of knowingly possessing material which contained images of child pornography.

He faces five years of supervised release, registration as a convicted sex offender upon his release from prison and payment of a special assessment of $5,100.

Everhardt must also pay a total of $66,000 in restitution to the victims who were identified as children photographed in the images.

Baton Rouge man accused of 900 counts of child pornography possession, State Police say A Baton Rouge man was arrested Monday on nearly 1,000 counts of possession of child pornography, according to a State Police arrest report.

Steven Everhardt preyed upon vulnerable and innocent children, many of whom were too young to communicate they were being abused, FBI New Orleans SAC Eric Rommal said. The FBI remains committed to working with our ICAC partners, the Louisiana Attorney General's Office, Louisiana State Police, Homeland Security Investigations, and East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office to eradicate all forms of child sexual abuse."
A lead criminal investigator at the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office received the highest honor at the Beyond the Badge award ceremony Tuesday afternoon for his work bringing justice in a years-old homicide while ensuring the safety of the victim's child  a case that crossed many borders and continues to impact his life.

Maj. Todd Morris received the 'Service Before Self' award for going beyond the call of duty in how he tracked the 2011 homicide case of slain Busly teacher, Sylviane Finck Lozada, finally arresting her husband Oscar Lozada last year, while focusing on the well-being of the couple's daughter, Angelina.

Oscar Lozada fled with Angelina to his home country of Venezuela days after his wife was last seen in Baton Rouge. They remained there, a non-extradition country, until last year when they moved to Mexico  where Morris worked with local officials to arrest Lozada and bring Angelina home.

+6 Husband of slain Brusly teacher arrested after 7 years, daughter rescued, sheriff says More than seven years after a Brusly High School teacher disappeared, her husband has been arrested in her death and her daughter, now 12 year

"For seven years, Maj. Morris relentlessly sought justice for Sylviane and the return of her young daughter to Sylviand's family," said Beyond the Badge emcee Kiran Chawla, a reporter with WAFB-TV.

The whole time, Morris stayed in contact with Sylviane's family in Belgium, her home country, and eventually helped them come to Baton Rouge to reunite with Angelina. He even hosted Sylviane's family in his own home, until they were able to gain legal custody of Angelina and take her home with them.

"Even though the Finck family and Sylviane's daughter have returned to Belgium, Maj. Morris has remained in constant contact with them, even to this day," Chawla said.

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East Baton Rouge Sheriffs Deputies Jennifer Gonzalez and Fred Kimble were also honored with a Heart of Law Enforcement award Tuesday. The two community policing officers were nominated for stepping up to help a child in the Gardere area find a safer way to get to school: he had been walking further to a bus stop than the actual school was from his home. The two deputies surprised him at school with a bicycle, helmet and lock, which they purchased with their own money.

Our Views: Oscar Lozada would not have been arrested without hard work of Baton Rouge investigators On the police shows of television, complicated crimes get neatly resolved in an hour. In the real world, justice can take much longer, as resi

I love my job beyond words, said Gonzalez, after the ceremony. Being recognized for making a small impact, it means everything to me.

Recipients of the Heart of Law enforcement awards were all given a gift card, a dedicated U.S. flag, letters from President Donald Trump and Gov. John Bel Edwards as well as a free crawfish or shrimp boil to share with their fellow officers.

Five officers were also honored from the Lafayette Police Department  including Cpl. Heather Martin who won the other Service Before Self award for helping a veteran in need , two from the Lafayette Parish Sheriffs Office, one from the St. Charles Sheriffs Office, one State Police trooper, an investigator with the Orleans Parish District Attorneys Office, as well as one officer from the Pineville, Alexandria, and Village Dodson Police Departments.

"The vast majority of law enforcement officers were caring, kind people who put their lives on the line everyday, said Linda Hull, the founder of Beyond the Badge, a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit. "They see a need in their community and they fulfill it, quietly,  with no expectations of acknowledgement. ... We see it. We acknowledge it.
The two Republican candidates for governor joined Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday to try to make their case for a Republican to win election this fall over Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards.

I see all the makings of a very strong and robust business sector in Louisiana, Abbott said, arguing that Texas has fared better under Republican leadership. Part of our success is businesses having second thoughts about Louisiana.

Baton Rouge businessman Eddie Rispone and U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham have both announced plans to run in this falls election and have begun campaigning. The RGA event, held at the Pelican Chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, was among the first public joint appearances for the two Republican candidates. It also highlighted the policy areas where they differ.

Louisiana abortions hit 10-year low, as state lawmakers continue push toward more restrictions Abortions in Louisiana hit a 10-year low in 2018, as state lawmakers passed some of the nation's strictest abortion regulations.

Either of these candidates could get Louisiana back on track, Abbott said.

The election is Oct. 12. A Nov. 16 runoff will take place between the top two vote-getters if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary, regardless of party.

The RGA isn't expected to endorse either Republican candidate before the runoff and likely will focus its efforts on an anti-Edwards message until the GOP has a single candidate in the race.

But the national group has identified this year's race in Louisiana as a "top pick-up opportunity for Republicans" as Edwards, the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, seeks a second term. The race could be the most expensive gubernatorial election in Louisiana history.

Abbott and Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant were expected to be featured guests at an RGA fundraiser in New Orleans Monday evening.

We dont want to see the Louisiana economy struggle, Abbott said. Louisianans can make a change in just a few months.

Democrats, meanwhile, have sought to link Abraham and Rispone to ex-Gov. Bobby Jindal, who chaired the RGA while in office.

Gov. John Bel Edwards officially receives Louisiana Democratic Party endorsement for re-election Gov. John Bel Edwards has accepted his party's endorsement for a second term in office, as he attempts to retain his position as a Democratic 

Like Eddie Rispone and Ralph Abraham, the RGA was one of the biggest supporters of Bobby Jindal during his time as governor, Edwards campaign spokesman Eric Holl said. Now that Gov. Edwards has cleaned up Jindals mess and turned a $2 billion budget deficit into a surplus, Jindals supporters want to take us back to budget cuts and a bad economy. The people of Louisiana dont want to go back.

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Rispone, who is running for office for the first time, and Abraham, who is in his third term in Congress, have been traveling the state in recent weeks, trying to woo supporters.

Both have sought to portray the Edwards administration as unfriendly to business and sought to link the governor to more liberal Democrats on the national scene.

What weve got now is businesses are crawling to get out of the state, Abraham said. Texas is booming. We are not.

Rispone, a co-founder of ISC Constructors, has pitched himself as an outsider candidate who will take a business approach to running government. He said his outsider status means that he doesnt have a specific state budget cut to advocate, but he believes that government should start each year with reviewing spending priorities, rather than comparing year-to-year spending.

We dont have a revenue problem, Rispone said. We have a spending problem.

Edwards signed an executive order to expand the state Medicaid health care program shortly after taking office, under an optional provision of the federal Affordable Care Act.

Both Rispone and Abraham said that they believe Medicaid needs a more thorough review to prevent fraud and waste.

Were not going to kick anyone off the rolls, said Abraham, who is a doctor who treats Medicaid patients. We can make the program better.

Risponse said he would immediately freeze Medicaid enrollment if elected to allow for a deeper evaluation. The implementation was not done properly, he said.

Edwards has said his No. 1 priority for the legislative session that starts next month will be an across-the-board pay raise for teachers.

Rispone and Abraham said they support paying teachers more.

We should have raised teacher pay long, long ago, Abraham said.

Rispone said he doesnt support the across-the-board method and thinks that pay increases should be dependent on performance.
President Donald Trump has nominated a Louisiana native and LSU graduate to become the new U.S. ambassador to the African nation Cabo Verde.

John Jefferson Jeff Daigle is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service who currently serves on detail as the designated federal official for the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Hes previously served in diplomatic positions in Cambodia and Iraq.

Cambodia welcomes repatriation of 3 looted statues PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)  Cambodia has welcomed back three statues that had been in Western art collections after having been looted from a 

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, congratulated his fellow LSU alum online: "Looking forward to the Senate considering his nomination," he tweeted.

Daigle is a distinguished career senior foreign service member, and I'm sure he will represent our country well! Sen. John Kennedy, R-Madisonville, said.

The Republic of Cabo Verde, also known as Cape Verde, is an island chain off the coast of northwest Africa.
Your recent article Rising Above tells us the story of Yusef Salaam, who was one of the Central Park Five, a group of young men who were a
Guests get a preview of IBM's Baton Rouge Client Innovation Center during a February open house. IBM filed paperwork to show that it exceeded state incentive requirements that it employ at least 800 workers at the center.
On May 7, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell will mark the end of her first year in office. Depending on how things go between now and then, she could have quite a bit for show for it.

Two of Cantrells major funding priorities are currently in play, and while both are complicated, theres a real chance that shell get some if not all of what shes seeking.

First up is Cantrells quest to claim some money that currently goes toward tourism and use it for badly needed city infrastructure improvements, particularly those under the troubled Sewerage & Water Board. She probably has most voters on her side, but the fight pits her against the citys dominant industry and a state Legislature that generally doesnt jump when New Orleans mayors ask it to. So word that negotiations are going pretty well hints at a real breakthrough, particularly given where both sides started off.

Cantrell first broached the idea in public, but key players such as Gov. John Bel Edwards and Senate President John Alario showed little inclination to go along. Stephen Perry, president and chief executive officer of New Orleans & Co., pushed back too, at one point suggesting the citys track record showed that it couldnt be trusted to spend more money well.

Still, Cantrells public campaign started a conversation, and The Advocates Tyler Bridges reported that both tourism leaders and Edwards, who will need a strong showing out of Democratic New Orleans in his fall re-election bid, are trying to work something out.

+2 Working groups zeroing in on cash to meet Mayor LaToya Cantrell's demands for S&WB help Two groups  one created by the mayor and the governor, the other consisting of tourism and business leaders working behind the scenes  are z

One working group formed by the mayor and the governor and another composed of business leaders are zeroing in on sources of money that could help address the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Boards immediate and long-term spending needs, Bridges wrote. They could have something to announce by the end of the month, before the annual legislative session begins. Any agreement would likely meet some but not all of Cantrells demands.

The mayors other outstanding request will soon be in the hands of voters. Shes strongly backing a proposal to renew and redirect some property tax money for recreation toward the Audubon Commission, City Park, and the citys recreation commission and parks and parkways department. This wouldnt be a tax increase, which is one reason to believe it could succeed.

It also marks an admission of sorts that Audubon blew it when it prematurely sought a 50-year renewal a few years back, only to be roundly rejected at the ballot box. The new proposal, which will appear on the May 4 ballot, has the commission give up some of its existing take, and City Park, which currently doesnt receive any money from property taxes, finally getting some public support.

Still, passage isnt a shoo-in. New Orleans voters have shown a good bit of skepticism toward millage requests in recent years, and theres another tax proposal on an earlier ballot March 30. This one, passed by the City Council and opposed by Cantrell, would raise taxes to support the Council on Agings activities. It could also create confusion and add to any tax fatigue thats already out there.

If Cantrell succeeds on both of these fronts, it would be more than a personal victory. It would also validate her particular political approach.

Clancy DuBos: Cantrell's first electoral battle lines NEW ORLEANS MAYOR LATOYA CANTRELL HAS DRAWN HER FIRST ELECTORAL BATTLE LINES since taking office last year. She opposes a new 2-mill property 

Cantrell served on the City Council before winning the mayors office, but the insiders game hasnt always been her strong suit. And indeed, both of these campaigns started off as adversarial, with the tourism industry and state officials on the other side in one case, and the City Council on a different page in another.

Cantrell excels, though, in building the outside case. It showed in her decisive victory over Desiree Charbonnet, who had the support of many established political figures. And if she has a good spring, it will prove that this is one strategy that translates from campaigning to governing.
Ex-Mississippi cop admits to having sex with supervisor while her 3-year-old was dying in hot patrol car
Louisiana-born rock 'n' roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis has canceled his scheduled appearance at the 2019 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

A neurologist treating the 83-year-old Lewis told CNN that the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer is undergoing "aggressive" rehabilitation after suffering a stroke two weeks ago.

He was recently transferred from a hospital to a rehab facility in Memphis.

"Jerry Lee Lewis is expected to fully recover with aggressive and intensive rehab," said Dr. Rohini Bhole. "From what I have seen thus far, he is heading in the right direction."

However, he has canceled several upcoming shows, including his scheduled April 28 performance at Jazz Fest.

Lewis "greatly appreciates the prayers and well wishes he's received from fans all over the world," publicist Zach Farnum said in a statement. "He wants them to know he can't wait to get back on stage and into the studio to make his Gospel record."

The Killer last performed at Jazz Fest in 2015, when he preceded one of his fans, fellow piano man Elton John, at the Acura Stage.

The festival announced Tuesday afternoon that Lewis' replacement is Johnny Rivers, whose hits include "Secret Agent Man" and "Mountain of Love."

The festival's producers generally release the "cubes," the scheduling blocks with performance times and stage assignments, a month ahead of opening day. If they hold to that timeline, the cubes will be out by early next week.
Imagine more than 40 years in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day, in a 6-by-9 cell in one of the most brutal penal institutions in America, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Thats Albert Woodfoxs story, told in Solitary: My Journey of Transformation and Hope written with Leslie George.

How do you survive the loneliness, the isolation of such a cruel and damaging form of punishment? Especially when you know you are innocent of the crime that put you there?

Only one man in America has survived such an ordeal, with the scars and strength to prove it.

When you visit Albert Woodfoxs home in New Orleans East, the first thing you notice are the panther figurines on the tables in the dining and living rooms. A teal Black Panther flag hangs on the living room wall, a symbol of the identity that sustained Woodfox through years of incarceration.

Photos of friends and family are proudly displayed. A print depicting fists raised in a black power salute hangs on another wall. When Woodfox first discovered the Panthers, he writes, It was as if a light went on in a room inside me that I hadnt known existed. The 10 principles of the Panthers, its insistence on dignity and equality and social justice, would give him strength over the dark years to come.

Woodfox was serving a 50-year sentence for armed robbery in Angola when a prison guard, Brent Miller, was killed in 1972. Along with fellow Panther Herman Wallace, Woodfox was convicted of that crime and sentenced to life in solitary confinement despite a lack of evidence and the mens insistence on their innocence.

With the aid of dedicated lawyers and prison reform activists, they spent decades working to get that conviction overturned. Woodfox was released in 2016, on his 69th birthday.

What did Woodfox hold onto over the years? Friendship, most of all. Woodfox and Wallace along with Robert Hilary King, the trio in long-term solitary confinement that became known as the Angola Three, bonded together, looked out for one another, shared what they had, established an unbreakable trust.

Wallace died of cancer in 2013, a few days after his release from prison; King got out in 2001. He and Woodfox are in close touch. I talked with him this morning, Woodfox said. Ill be seeing him soon at a Panther alumni event. The three had a motto  Never touching, always connected.

Woodfox doesnt gloss over the early parts of his life, which led to two brief stints in Angola in the 60s when he was a teenager. He met his father only once. His mother struggled to keep the family cared for and together, and the young man was out on the streets of Treme, coming up with his own hustles.

He writes, Id seen guys in my neighborhood come back from Angola throughout my childhood. They were given the highest respect. I thought it would be an honor to go there.

An armed robbery conviction put Woodfox in Angola for the third time.

As Woodfox settled into a 50-year sentence, he began reading the writings of James Baldwin, Nelson Mandela, Frantz Fanon, Eldredge Cleaver and Malcolm X. And in a chapter called My Greatest Achievement, he describes teaching a fellow inmate to read.

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He also points to acts of resistance  a 45-day hunger strike rather than eat dirty food that had been pushed under a cell door  that inspired change. Food slots were installed in cell doors as a result.

His activism extended to resistance to strip searches, advocating for better medical care, protecting young prisoners from the prisons rape culture  the abuses were many and the chance of reform was slim.

So many parts of this story are unforgettable and none more so than Woodfoxs internal struggle. He battles claustrophobia, holding onto his sanity, and to control fear and anger. His details in the book are tactile. Readers will feel the brutal heat of a Louisiana summer, the bruising cold of a concrete floor, the unbreathable air after guards release tear gas. But, as Woodfox says, he turned his cell into a university, a hall of debate, a law school. In his 40s, he says, he became a man of compassion, a man with a moral center.

Woodfox and his "Solitary" writing partner, George, met in 1998 while she was a reporter and producer with Amy Goodmans Democracy Now program. As soon as he was released from prison, Woodfox and George began the hard work of writing the book, going through notes and articles, and talking for hours about his time in Angola.

Woodfox lights up with the smile at the mention of George.

She made me face it all, he said. She never let me off the hook. And if I didnt want to talk about something, she kept pushing.

Woodfox has a larger voice in the conversation about prison reform now. Hes spoken at Harvard and Yale and other universities, the Innocence Project, and Amnesty International events all over the world.

This is my life now, he said. I became an activist in Angola, but now its in a different way.

His book sends a clear message to the reader: Dont turn away from what happens in American prisons.

To those of you who are just entering the world of social struggle, welcome.

**************

Book event

WHAT: Albert Woodfox appears in conversation with Emily Maw of Innocence Project New Orleans and signs Solitary: My Story of Transformation and Hope

WHEN: 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 20

WHERE: New Orleans Public Library Main Library, 219 Loyola Ave.
TOUGALOO, Miss.  He speaks only in whispers now, his mind clear and strong but his 96-year-old body ravaged by Parkinsons disease.

And while Thomas Hawkins Sr. cant touch things with his fingers anymore, he still can feel with his heart. That is why his daughter, Carmen J. Walters, recently drove from a meeting in Alabama to New Orleans, where her father is in hospice care at his home.

Guess what? she said softly, nestling next to him. Your daughter is a college president.

At the school you are at now? he asked.

No, she answered. Youll never believe it. Tougaloo College.

Walters could see the emotion build in his eyes and across his face as he began to realize the scope of her achievement.

Emphasizing each word, he said: I am so proud.

The first person on either side of her family to attend college, Walters was publicly introduced Monday as Tougaloos 14th president. She succeeds Beverly Wade Hogan, who will retire June 30 after 17 years of leading the private liberal arts college in Jackson, Mississippi. The school, which enrolls 720 students, is celebrating its 150th year.

The whole thing seems like a dream, said Walters, who has two grown daughters with her husband, Wayne.

She credits her father as one of the primary reasons she wanted the job.

I grew up in New Orleans, Walters said. So one of the questions (during the interview process) was, How can you tell the Tougaloo story? I can tell it because of my father."

He was born and raised in Natchez, and hes always been a historian and a storyteller. He knew everything happening everywhere in Mississippi," she said.

When she was a child, her father made her and her siblings watch the progress of the civil rights movement on the evening news. He would explain to them what was happening and why.

"Tougaloo was at the center of all that," Walters said. "It was a time of saying, We deserve better. We want better. And were willing to lay down our lives for it.' I lived that story every day with him. And I am so grateful and blessed that the Lord opened the door to Tougaloo for me  and then to let me share that news with my dad.

Walters graduated a year early from John Ehret High School in Marrero, then earned a degree in accounting and business administration from Southern University in New Orleans  like Tougaloo, one of more than 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the U.S. She received a masters degree in 1990 in post-secondary counseling from Xavier University in New Orleans, another HBCU.

During her 18 years at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, Walters worked in numerous areas, including grant writing, counseling and serving as assistant vice chancellor of human resources. It was there she decided to earn her Ph.D. Her goal was to become president of a four-year college.

After working 40 hours each week at Delgado, she drove 10 hours round-trip to take Friday-night and all-day Saturday classes at Mississippi State. It paid off in 2009 when she was awarded her doctorate in postsecondary leadership.

She left Delgado in October 2012 and was named vice president of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community Colleges Jackson County campus. Four years later, she moved to the main campus as executive vice president of enrollment management and student success.

Walters was invited to apply for several president positions, but none sparked her interest until about a year ago. She was a finalist at a university in Texas, but the job went to someone else.

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Then came the chance to apply for the job at Tougaloo.

I have such a love for HBCUs, she said. Im a product of that. When I learned the Tougaloo position was open, I knew I wanted to apply.

Tougaloo received more than 70 applications.

We were looking for someone with leadership skills and the background to drive the items we believe are important, said the search committee chairman, Edmond Hughes, a 1985 Tougaloo graduate.

Hughes said that Walters brought "poise, confidence, a calming leadership style and a student-centered approach, which made "a huge impact" on the selection committee.

Others agree with Hughes' assessment, including Janice Bolden, who worked with Walters at Delgado.

Every single thing Carmen has done has been in preparation for this moment, the Tougaloo job, Bolden said. She was always eager to learn. If she brought something to the admissions department for them to do, she wouldnt just watch. She wanted to learn how to do it herself."

Bolden laughed when recalling how Walters preached the power of education anywhere and everywhere.

Well go out to eat and shell ask the waiter, Are you working here while youre going to school? " Bolden said. "If theyre not, Carmen will give them her card and say, You should think about getting your education. Give me a call. 

While education is her passion, Walters has other interests.

She is a New Orleans Saints season-ticket holder who still isnt over the blown call in the NFC title game Jan. 20 that probably cost the Saints a trip to the Super Bowl.

She comes from a musical family. In fact, she and one of her brothers, T.C. Hawkins, played gospel concerts in Scandinavia and Germany during her summer breaks from Delgado.

We both sang and we had a backing band, said Walters during an interview recently on the Tougaloo campus. There is nothing quite like walking into an auditorium and people are coming in to hear you.

Walters also was a narrator, explaining during the interview that she would tell stories leading into each song.

I might say, Imagine walking down the street, the church windows are open and you hear this from faraway,  said Walters, before closing her eyes and singing, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound 

Walters' mother died in 2013, and thinking about how her mother would react to her appointment as Tougaloo president brought on tears. She lowered her head and took nearly a minute to try and choke them back. When she was able to continue, she did so with a chuckle.

When I received my doctorate, my mother went through her phone book, calling everyone she knew to tell them about it, Walters said. If she were here, she would be walking with me all over campus and saying, This is my child, you know. 

Editor's Note: This article originally misstated the university where Walters received her undergraduate degree. It has been corrected.
In an appearance before the financial services royal commission last year, Westpacs Brian Hartzer conceded that the economics of providing financial advice were being increasingly challenged. Hes now conceded defeat, with Westpac becoming the last of the major banks to announce a strategy for exiting the sector.

Westpac is shedding its salaried and aligned advisers as part of a restructuring of the group that will see its residual wealth and insurance businesses transferred into its business and consumer divisions.

The restructure, which will involve one-off costs of between $250 million and $300 million but produce productivity gains of about $20 million a year, will also result in two senior and highly-regarded executives leaving the group.

Westpac chief Brian Hartzer has changed the group's structure and exited financial advice in response to its challenging economics. Credit:Trevor Collens

The departure of Brad Cooper, who headed up Westpacs wealth management business and helped devise the restructure, could be regarded as predictable, given that his unit will be shrunken and dismembered.
In the DVD commentary, Rowling says: "Their relationship was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship. But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows, really, what the other person is feeling. You can't know, you can believe you know. So I'm less interested in the sexual side - though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship - than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other, which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationships."

Seemingly unsatisfied with the shock value of making the characters in her Harry Potter franchise racially ambiguous, J.K. Rowling has decided to double-down on her 2007 declaration that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, a beloved elderly male character, is gay. Last week, in an interview added to the Blu-Ray DVD for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Rowling confirmed something fans have long wondered: Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, a dark wizard who's a friend-cum-rival, had "a relationship with a sexual dimension."

Viewers and readers especially can't know feelings between two characters when neither uses words nor actions to express them. There's a word for that: Closeted. By imbuing Dumbledore with a sexuality that does not speak its name, ink its page, or fill its screen in 2019, Rowling outs herself again as a 1990s throwback of a grandstanding faux-ally. "Do not pity the dead, Harry," Dumbledore tells Harry in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. "Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love." Pity characters penned in fictional, unnecessary closets even more.

Rowling published the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, in Britain in 1997. She wrote six more Harry Potter books before she outed Dumbledore, which she did only after the final novel was published. Just like this time, that revelation came not in the text, but in a 2007 question-and-answer session with fans, who broke into rapturous applause. She described Dumbledore not just as a gay man, but as broken, pathetic, unrequited, lonely, doomed. In those intervening years - when 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in an anti-gay hate crime, when same-sex marriage was illegal in most U.S. states and in Britain - the children reading her books could have used a beloved gay character, which might have given gay life some sorely needed heroes. Rowling has said she wrote some aspects of the novels, such as Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley's relationship, as "a form of wish fulfillment." An openly gay Dumbledore was not her wish.

Michael Gambon as Professor Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films.

What if she had heeded Dumbledore's own wisdom? "It's our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities," the Hogwarts headmaster tells the boy wizard in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. "Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself."

Here's a sharper take from WNYC's Nancy, a queer podcast, which, in a 2017 episode called There Are No Gay Wizards, took issue with Rowling getting too much credit for writing an "iconic gay character," as the show's producer Matt Collette put it. "Of all J.K. Rowling's many accolades, there's one I find particularly noteworthy: Queerbaiter," Collette said. "That's a writer who puts in just enough of a queer story line to appease the fans who'd like one, but not so much as to offend anyone who doesn't like gay people. There's subtext - hints at queer stories - throughout her work, but nothing more." (Collette is now a producer on The Washington Post's podcast, Post Reports.)
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size More than two-thirds of the $2.3 trillion in household wealth generated in Australia in the first half of this decade went to those aged 55 or older. The net worth of an average Australian household almost doubled from $468,000 in 2003-04 to $929,400 in 2015-16, analysis of the ABSs Household Income and Wealth report shows. Net worth is the value of all your assets, including superannuation, minus your debts. But the spoils have not been spread evenly among generations. Older generations have always had more wealth than younger, as they have had a lifetime to accrue it, but the gap is growing. In 2003-04, people aged 55 and over owned 48 per cent of Australian household wealth, a figure that has jumped to 56 per cent. Part of that is down to the ageing population increasing the number of older households, but the individual wealth of older households has still increased significantly faster than younger counterparts.

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In 2003, for every $100 held by a household led by a 70-year-old, a 30-year-olds household had $33. By 2016 that was down to $24. The house wins This decade has been particularly kind to retirees thus far. Those aged 65-plus enjoyed almost half the total gains in wealth from FY10 to FY16, compared to a quarter from FY04-10. The later period coincided with the end of the global financial crisis and a large housing boom in Australias major cities. While property made up the largest component of older Australians gains to 2016, which may have fallen now the market has turned, they also saw significant gains in financial assets and superannuation.

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In a 2014 report titled The Wealth of Generations, the Grattan Institute found that declining rates of home ownership among younger Australians were driving the growth in inequality. It said the tipping point was the unprecedented growth in house prices relative to wages since the mid-1990s. And while prices have since come off the boil in the past year, its still a minor blip compared to the overall trend. "The rise in housing prices generated windfall gains for those who owned property before 1995," the report says. "These could be considered unearned gains  the result of policy and economic factors rather than productive activities or as compensation for taking an investment risk."

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While some retirees likely bristle at the idea of "unearned gains", Roger Wilkins, a professorial research fellow at the University of Melbourne, said such people were showing "wilful ignorance" when it came to acknowledging their run of luck. "Its a human trait. If you have success in life you tend to put that down to your hard work but not consider the role that luck played in that. As in, plenty of other people worked hard but didnt enjoy the same luck. "Perhaps what some older Australians dont sufficiently acknowledge is that plenty of young people work hard but arent making they same economic progress as the Baby Boomers did." But National Seniors Australia Interim CEO, Professor John McCallum said the framing of the debate as one of old versus young was "a bit muddled". "People feel like whatever bad happens to young people happens because of older Australians. Its not that simple," Prof McCallum said. "Life stages are different now. People are having children later, living longer, giving their inheritances to children in Sydney and Melbourne to help them buy a house. "Society has changed, basically."

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Prof McCallum said having researched aged care issues for several decades, he could remember similar arguments about how Baby Boomers parents had it so much better. "This sort of argument is perennial. It hasnt just come about." He acknowledged that house price booms had advantaged older people and left substantial policy challenges. "But what we must resist is that casting of things as young against old which is unreal. "There is a third dimension, which is that this is an inequality, class division, not just a young versus old debate." Professor Wilkins helps run the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, which has also studied the growth in generational inequality.

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Josef Rack saw a registered nurse three to four times in seven years, despite being billed for 92 hours a year through his home care package.

The royal commission into aged care quality and safety heard evidence from Mr Rack on Tuesday, as hearings into people getting care at home continued.

Under his package with Southern Cross Care, Mr Rack was charged an hourly rate of $70 for work done by a registered nurse equating to $536.66 a month.

"Over the whole seven years I had a registered nurse about three or four times in my house," Mr Rack said.
The reams of teal-coloured posters blanketing Melbournes Mornington Peninsula as Chisholm MP Julia Banks attempts a political seachange to Flinders have been well documented by this column.

But if it looks as if the independent campaigning in the beachside locale is flush with political operatives who've earnt their stripes in Canberra, then its with good reason.

Parliamentary services officials confirmed this week that MPs can use staffers to support their re-election  even in new electorates.

The particularly accommodating rule even stretches to MPs who are recontesting - as Banks is - in their beach-house electorate some 60 kilometres away from their original seat.

(Heaven help the Burwood residents who need their local MP to sort out their parking fines, much less sensitive immigration issues in the multicultural electorate.)
More than a quarter of a century after the High Courts historic Mabo ruling confirmed Indigenous land rights, the court has delivered a similarly significant decision, this time placing a financial valuation on First Australians cultural and spiritual connection to the land. The nations native title law is evolving from establishing rights to determining compensation for unlawful loss.

The ruling is as significant as Mabo. Credit:Greg Newington

The finding that members of Northern Territory town Timber Creek are due compensation for the spiritual pain of being cut off from ancestral land by external decisions to build infrastructure is thought likely to trigger similar claims that could cost governments and mining companies billions of dollars.

After sitting in Darwin for the first time, the court gave its first assessment of constitutionally just terms in compensating people for unilateral extinguishing of native title. Compensation comprises two components  economic loss and cultural damage. Governments and courts have determined the former (it has fallen in recent years from 75 per cent of freehold value to 50 per cent). Until now, the latter was unsettled.

The High Court, hearing an appeal against a Federal Court judgment that gave the title holders 80 per cent, reduced the freehold proportion to 50 per cent  the Indigenous community acknowledges it has also benefited from the school, public housing, water pipelines and other projects created by 53 decisions by Northern Territory governments. But the pivotal aspect is the unprecedented financial assessment for extinguished native title  such cases have only recently started to go before courts.
A six-year-old boy and four-year-old girl died, a woman was left fighting for life and a girl was recovering in hospital after a horrific crash near Ipswich on Monday.

The three children and the woman, reported to be family, were in a car that left the road and hit a tree on Middle Road in Peak Crossing about 2.45pm.

The horrific scene in Peak Crossing, between Ipswich and the Scenic Rim. Credit:Nine News Queensland - Twitter

Ethical Standards Command has been brought in to investigate the involvement of police manning a "static traffic enforcement" position near the crash scene.

This has been described as either a roadside breath test or an officer with a hand-held speed camera.
A man has been arrested in New South Wales and extradited to Brisbane in relation to the 12-year-old cold case suspected murder of a young north Queensland man.

Jay Brogden. Credit:Facebook

Jay Anthony Brogden was 21 years old when he disappeared from Cannonvale, a coastal area in the Whitsunday region, on April 21, 2007.

On Tuesday morning, a 33-year-old man landed at Brisbane Airport from Sydney under police guard.

He was extradited for a breach of parole related to a stabbing in Airlie Beach in 2009 but was also placed under arrest in relation to Mr Brogden's disappearance.
Female students will be able to join the University of Queenslands King's College for the first time in 108 years from next year.

Within five years the colleges 317 male students could be divided 50 per cent male and 50 per cent female.

Kings College students in 2018 at the University of Queensland

The college's decision on Monday to admit women students from 2020 means that of the 10 University of Queensland colleges, only one  Leos College  remains men-only from 2020.

The University of Queenslands 10 colleges include three womens only colleges; The Womens College, Duchesne College and Grace College.
In a broad-ranging conversation, the panel explored food waste, genetically modified crops, veganism, obesity, a sugar tax, organic farming  and a host of other issues. Whose job it is to ensure we grow the right foods sustainably in Australia? Questions from the audience included:

These were just some of the questions tackled by The Ages National Editor Tory Maguire and a special panel line-up  Jessica Irvine (senior economics writer, The Age ), Ralph Ashton (director, Australian Futures Project), Tony Bacic (director of the La Trobe Institute for Agriculture and Food) and Joost Bakker (environmental activist and restaurateur)  as they examined solutions to short-termism in Australian policy making, specifically related to food security for the future.

Just how will we feed 50 million Australians and a ravenous growing region? Is business filling the innovation void? And is Government prepared to make the brave long-term calls?

This event was part of The Future Fix, a collaboration between The Age and the not-for-profit Australian Futures Project, designed to address short-termism in Australian policy making.

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As The Age's Tory Maguire told the audience, "Political leaders and political parties can float a policy balloon at breakfast time and it can be dead by lunchtime, which makes it very hard to address the big issues. And so we started this series, which we called The Future Fix."

Ralph Ashton, from Australian Futures Project, said: "I find it very frustrating that, in such a rich country with so much opportunity  and great expertise on what the big issues are  that we keep dropping the balls on the things that really matter. We know that climate change is important, we know that infrastructure is important, we know that food security is important, and as a society we seem unable to make really good progress on those sorts of topics  and we're rich enough to."

From climate change to infrastructure, tax reform and addressing chronic health, were working out why Australian politics and policy is stuck in neutral and what we can do about it.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The High Court overturned Cardinal George Pell's conviction for historic child sex offences in a judgment handed down April 7, 2020. In a unanimous decision all seven High Court judges found Victoria's Court of Appeal should not have upheld Pell's conviction. It found the evidence could not support a guilty verdict.

Lawyers for a former Ballarat priest who was shuffled from parish to parish and has pleaded guilty to multiple sex crimes tried to have the case delayed because of the "anti-priest sentiment" after the George Pell case.

The attempt to adjourn the case against Paul David Ryan was made after the news that Cardinal George Pell was found guilty of abusing two choirboys boys became public last month, The Age confirmed. It is understood Ryans defence lawyers were worried the former priest - who was shuffled from parish to parish by the late Bishop Ronald Mulkearns - would not receive a fair trial in the wake of the Pell verdict because of the "anti-priest sentiment" in the community.

Father Paul Ryan was shuffled between parishes.

The County Court judge dismissed the application and on Tuesday, Ryan pleaded guilty to three offences following an investigation by Detective Senior Constable Jason Rowles.
A controversial plan to create an open air restaurant in the heart of Chinatown is expected to be appealed in the planning tribunal after a divided Melbourne City Council narrowly voted to issue a permit.

Councillors were split over whether to greenlight Section 8 bar owner Maz Salts vision to plant trees in an ugly vacant car park on Little Bourke Street and open an outdoor restaurant.

The proposal got over the line after planning chair Cr Nicholas Reece exercised his casting vote.

Maz Salt at the site of the controversial proposed development in Chinatown. Credit:Eddie Jim

The venue - to be called Park - has sparked fierce debate over the type of development that is appropriate for Australias oldest Chinatown.
A woman has been jailed for kidnapping a 73-year-old man with Parkinson's disease and subjecting him to a violent and bizarre ordeal.

Debra Hobbs, 44, was the "leader and instigator" of the frightening attack alongside her then 18-year-old friend, Jesse Couzens, with whom she regularly smoked cannabis.

The pair previously pleaded guilty to kidnapping, burglary, theft and assault on March 8 and 9, 2017, in the Geelong suburb of Norlane.

County Court of Victoria Judge Gerard Mullaly, while sentencing on Tuesday, described the pair's behaviour as "frightening and at times violent conduct".

"Circumstances were unusual and at times approached the bizarre but for the 73-year-old victim, it was a difficult and frightening experience," he said.
Five people were treated by paramedics and one taken to hospital after an incident at the Malmsbury Youth Justice Centre on Tuesday afternoon.

An Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman said paramedics were called to the Mollison Street centre in the central Victorian town just after 5pm where they assessed five people. One was taken to hospital.

The Malmsbury Youth Justice Centre. Credit:Paul Jeffers

It is believed the centre is still in lockdown.

The spokeswoman referred all other questions to the Department of Justice and Community Safety.
Canberra Liberal Giulia Jones has invoked the Christchurch mosque massacre while opposing new child abuse laws, saying the tragedy should have exposed the perils of targeting groups based on religion.

Adults in Canberra will face up to two years' in jail if they fail to report child sexual abuse, under legislation passed by the ACT Legislative Assembly on Tuesday.

Canberra Liberal Giulia Jones was critical of new failure to protect laws that will force all adults - including priests - to report child abuse or face jail. Credit:Canberra Times

Information from the confessional will not be exempt from the laws, and ministers of religion will also become mandatory reporters under the legislation.

Labor, the Liberals and the Greens united to pass the bill, which is part of the territory's work to act on the recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.
Women's groups have lobbied Treasury after being blocked from the stakeholder budget lock-up, finding a compromise where four groups will be represented by one economist, but other groups are still locked out.

The National Foundation for Australian Women, the Women's Electoral Lobby, National Women's Alliances and the Equality Rights Alliance will now be represented in the stakeholder lock up by Professor Helen Hodgson. In previous years the groups have sent representatives individually.

Scott Morrison, then treasurer, speaks with members of the media during the budget lock-up in May 2018. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Women's, children's and Indigenous organisations have been joined by disability, youth and student organisations in speaking out about being barred from the lock-up.

The National Foundation for Australian Women and Equality Rights Alliance thanked the Office for Women for its assistance in gaining a partial back-down from Treasury.
NSW Labor leader Michael Daley has received a letter threatening defamation action over his explosive interview with broadcaster Alan Jones during which he declared he would sack the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust board.

Standing in front of Sydney's Allianz Stadium on Tuesday, Mr Daley said he had received the letter from one of the 14 members of the SCG Trust board.

Former government architect, Andrew Anderson with Labor leader Michael Daley and his deputy Penny Sharpe outside Allianz Stadium on Tuesday. Credit:Louise Kennerley

"The motivations for that letter aside, I can tell you I will continue to push on to save this stadium," he said, as heavy machinery tore down the Moore Park stadium.

"There are four days to go now until the election ... it's an absolutely ridiculous proposition that we, in caretaker mode and four days until an election, are seeing a government rushing headlong, dripping with arrogance and full of political spite to knock this thing down."
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has expressed concern over copycats in the wake of the Christchurch tragedy, while addressing a security forum south of Perth.

Addressing a crowd of hundreds at an hour-long event hosted by Canning MP Andrew Hastie in Mandurah on Monday, Mr Dutton said agencies would be monitoring people of interest to ensure a similar incident could not take place in Australia.

Canning MP Andrew Hastie and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton addressing a security forum in Mandurah on Monday evening. Credit:Caitlyn Rintoul/Mandurah Mail

"We do worry about retaliatory attacks. We worry about copycat attacks," Mr Dutton said.

"One of the things that we know now about this monstrosity is that the alleged perpetrator has spent about 45 days in Australia in the past three years. He has certainly travelled extensively over the course of the past eight or nine years.
The 'Lewis Hamilton' of racing pigeons has set a new world-record fee after Chinese bidders went head-to-head in an online auction for the bird.

The victorious pigeon fancier, whose identity is a secret, spent $2 million to land Armando, a Belgian bird considered to be the "best long-distance pigeon of all time". The previous record was $635,000, for a bird called Nadine.

The 'Lewis Hamilton' of racing pigeons: this bird's real name is Amando. Credit:PIPA

Pigeon racing is big business in China, with millionaire enthusiasts striving to outdo each other with extravagant coops and outlandish bets laid on the outcome of races. While the sport has been flagging in popularity in Europe, wealthy Chinese interest has revitalised it.

Joel Verschoot, Armando's breeder, was left stunned when in the final moments of the fortnight-long auction it emerged that two Chinese bidders were directly competing. Every time the bidder "XDDPO" increased the offer by 100,000 ($160,000), another, "Champ Team", bid an extra $3000. After an hour-long battle, XDDPO emerged triumphant with a 1 million ($1.99 million) bid.
Today I write from Berlin, staying in what was old East Berlin. Last week I spoke at an event in Malaysia. Both societies that have experienced and are experiencing (respectively) political, social and economic change that was once unimaginable.

As the tide washes out on corrupt regimes, compliance and commercial leaders arrive who want to take advantage of new opportunities in developing and emerging markets. During my week in Singapore and Malaysia, it was exhilarating to sit with hundreds of compliance and business leaders who want to keep their workforces successful and safe during difficult marketplace challenges. And some of those challenges come from financial pressures within the organization, causing inevitable tension between the pressure to succeed and the pressure to comply.

As my week in the region was yet another reminder that we are not in a one size fits all world when it comes to anti-bribery challenges and solutions, here are a few observations and themes that I saw throughout my visit:

Isolation. I often share how, during my life as a sales executive, I thought I was on an island, that my decision making didnt impact innocent customers and employees. I never saw myself as the guardian and gatekeeper for my former employers reputation. To me, working alone, remotely and thinly supervised, I sadly thought of my conduct as a win-win, whereby my company enjoyed tremendous sales increases, my channel partners moved to the next opportunity, and poorly paid public officials got a little something to make ends meet.

I didnt appreciate the daunting responsibility that was entrusted to me. I didnt understand my role as an ambassador of my former employers values on the front-lines of business, no matter where I operated. During my visit last week to Asia, that was something I discussed with audiences in detail. How do we get everyone to embrace the crucial idea that ethics, compliance and the law applies to them 24/7, no matter how far from HQ where they might work and reside?

Dangerous Silence. We also talked about how to encourage people to speak up, not only about something that they might see or observe, but about themselves. That can be a special challenge in Asia. Again, during my prior work life, I decided on behalf of my employer that they didnt want to know what was going on in high-risk markets (I kept what Amy Edmonson refers to as dangerous silence). This problem can be even more pronounced in regions, such as Asia, where respect for seniority and hierarchy is both professionally and personally deep-rooted.

Even with robust compliance training, some employees might still think they have a personal responsibility to decide entirely on their own what management really wants. That was a trap for me. As Catherine Bulgarella has shared in some of her work, delegating those decisions to the front lines of business, either by design or default, can put an entire workforce and the companys brands at great risk.

Shortcuts. Audiences in Asia talked about compliance challenges created when business shortcuts are tolerated. That happens more often when personnel are close to the line of meeting their objectives and need some small advantage to get them to the finish. For example, that can be when accounting violations like channel and distribution stuffing are tolerated by business leaders.

Im often asked, What do channel stuffing and bribery have to do with one another? My answer is simple: Everything, and its a stubborn problem. When I talk to business leaders about my experience with distribution stuffing, including not writing down bad debt to make plan, well, thats when their eyes usually fall from my presentation to the floor. Thats not good.

When its an open secret that an organization tolerates shortcuts to make target, a clear and harmful message flashes across the enterprise: win above all else. Especially in regions where ethics and compliance is a new way of thinking and operating, where emerging markets are opening at a rapid pace, with young and energetic sales teams eager to demonstrate success to their supervisors, we all need to be extra attentive to any sign of open secrets and dangerous silence. Both can emerge quickly and cause long term harm.

____

My week in Asia talking with a new generation of compliance leaders about keeping people successful and safe was absolutely invigorating, jet-lag and all. As the week ended, my enthusiasm was starting to outstrip the ability of my voice to keep up with it all. But thanks to some wonderful, local herbal teas, I made it to my own finish line  without any shortcuts, and with a special thanks to all my hosts.

____

Richard Bistrong, pictured above, is a contributing editor of the FCPA Blog and CEO of Front-Line Anti-Bribery LLC. In 2010 he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to violate the FCPA and served fourteen and a half months at a U.S. federal prison camp. He was named to Compliance Weeks list of Top Minds in 2017 and was one of Ethispheres 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics in 2015. He was named by Thomson Reuters in 2018 as a Top 50 Social Influencer in Risk, Compliance and RegTech.

His award winning compliance training video, Behind the Bribe, produced in cooperation with Mastercard, was released in 2017. To request a demo of the full eleven-minute video or a licensing fee schedule, please click here.
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Shadows are reflected on an American Flag as people line up to speak with Ohio Governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich on Feb. 11, 2016, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

5 Words Conservatives Should Never Use, Starting With Conservative

Commentary

Words are weapons. In the culture war, words are the most powerful weapon.

Control of words is how revolutionaries get us to think a certain waythe way they wish us to think.

Early 20th-century Italian Communist Party leader and leading cultural warrior Antonio Gramsci put it this way: Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously born in each individual brain: they have had a center of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasiona group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality.

The tool for planting these ideas is words.

According to Monica Showalter, writing for Investors Business Daily, Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin weaponized words to win the Bolshevik Revolution:

As early as 1903, at a party congress, Lenin won a membership issue by a single vote. But from then on, he called his faction the Bolsheviks, or majoritarians, and his opponents Mensheviks, or minoritarians. It didnt matter that the Bolsheviks never were a true majority among Russias revolutionaries; what mattered was the perception of power.

Lenin repeated the tactic by dubbing Bolsheviks Reds to signal an affinity with the bloody violence of the French Revolution, while their battlefield opponents were saddled with Whites to link them with the discredited French Bourbon dynasty. Lenin also took title to the word democracy, disarming opponents who were then unable to project a coherent message. By controlling words, Lenin controlled perceptions of reality.

Why, then, do freedom fighters and anti-communists persistently use the words of our enemies to our own disadvantage?

Why do we define ourselves using our opponents terms? Why do we label the enemy in their own terms, not ours?

To win the war, we must control the language. We cant set the terms of battle while using the language of the enemy against our own best interests.

Here are five words that I believe we should stop using. They are all tainted and inaccurate. They have all been weaponized against us.

Conservative has become almost synonymous with fascist in modern America. Once it meant to conserve the Constitution, American values, and the American way of life. Today, to much of America, it means someone who supports the status quo and big business, maybe even a reactionary, a racist, or a white supremacist.

Socialism has advanced so far in America that the only thing conservatives usually end up conserving is big government. In my home country of New Zealand, conservatives oppose selling off state-run businesses. They want to conserve state control! We even hear of conservative old guard communists in China and Russia trying to preserve traditional socialism.

Lets abandon the word. Its a terrible word for attracting young people to the liberty movement. Until we can come up with something better, lets use Constitutionalist. Its a little clumsy, but its accurate and seizes the moral high ground. Its also hard to attack. Who wants to be identified as an anti-Constitutionalist?

Capitalism/Capitalist

To most Constitutionalists, capitalism and capitalist mean supporting business, industry, and the American Way. To socialists and most young Americans, these words mean heartless multinational corporations seeking profit at all costs and degrading the environment. Capital means money, huge wealth, and extravagance to most young people. Its no longer understood as intellectual or material property used to produce wealth for all.

The word capitalism has been around since the 16th century but was popularized in the 19th century by French socialist Louis Blanc and the founders of communism: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Capitalism is essentially a Marxist word that our enemies use to beat us with.

Lets resurrect free enterprise. Its accurate, its idealistic, and its dynamic. When people hear the words free enterprise, they dont think of faceless mega-bankers and Wall Street hustlers. Free enterprise conjures up images of young entrepreneurs taking on the world, family farms, and mom and pop stores. Most Americans believe in free enterprise, not so much in capitalism.

Democracy

The United States is not and never has been a democracy, although you wouldnt know that from watching Fox News or most Democratic and many Republican Party politicians.

The United States of America is a republic, derived from the Latin res publicathe peoples thing.

Democracy means simply the will of the majority. The Founding Fathers were scholars of history. They knew that majority rule would inevitably lead to tyranny. Rights that are subject only to the whim of 50 percent plus one, are no rights at all.

The Founding Fathers designed a far superior system: the constitutional republic. Rights were to be enshrined in law and protected by a written constitution that would be protected from the tyranny of the majorityor mob rule. Some elements of democracy were incorporated into the system, to elect public officials and later to vote on ballot measures, but the fundamental rights of the people were seen as coming from God, never to be subjected to the popular vote.

A republic is far superior to a democracy in that it uses checks and balances to protect individual liberties against oppression from any quarterincluding majorities.

The United States is a republic. We should always use that term. Never should we play into our enemies hands by downgrading this nation to democracy status.

The Green New Deal isnt a liberal proposalit is socialist. The $15-per-hour minimum wage is not a liberal measureit comes directly from the Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party USA. Antifa isnt a liberal group, as Fox News often labels itits communist/anarchist. Socialist groups regularly label their opposition fascists, Nazis, and white supremacists. We call them liberal. Socialist is the appropriate label.

Almost every policy coming out of todays Democratic Party is demonstrably socialist. Most of the liberal commentators we see on TV are in fact socialists. The word liberal is far too kind and no longer accurate. Lets call socialists socialists. No more giving them a respectability they dont deserve.

Progressive

The currently fashionable word progressive has partially replaced liberal as a euphemism for socialist. There is, however, a subtle difference. Progressive, in its current usage, came out of the socialist and communist movements of the 20th century. According to Marxist theory, humanity is slowly and inevitably progressing toward communism. Therefore, anyone assisting this historical process was, by definition, a progressive.

Progressive was used by Marxists as a code word. Put progressive into an organizations name and all the comrades would know it was communist, even if the general public didnt. Former communist David Horowitz was active in the Sunnyside Young Progressives as a teenager. In the 1950s, the Communist Party of New Zealands junior wing was known as the Progressive Youth League. Progressive also was used to identify friends and allies in the movement. Shes a good progressive didnt necessarily mean the woman in question was a Communist Party member, but that she was at least working in the interests of the movement.

Never should we talk about progressives. These people and the movements they promote are working, whether they acknowledge it or not, to advance communism. Progressives are, whether they know it or not, Marxists. Thats how they should be labeled: Marxists promoting Marxist ideas.

President Donald Trump has shown us how to use weaponize words like no other president in generations. Who can forget Lyin Hillary (Hillary Clinton), Low-energy Jeb (Jeb Bush), Pocahontas (Sen. Elizabeth Warren), or his masterful use of fake news, which drives the liberalwhoops, I mean socialistmedia nuts.

In his 2019 State of the Union speech, Trump didnt attack liberalism or progressivism; he specifically and accurately attacked socialism.

We all need to follow the presidents example. We must stop using the enemys lexicon. Any good duelist understands that he who chooses the weaponry has the advantage.

Lets stop using the weapons our enemy chooses for us. We are in a fight for the survival of our civilization. This is a life-or-death battle between good and evil. Lets choose our own weapons of war and fight this war to win it.

Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
6 Signs that Point to Mental Illness in KidsWorried that its ADHD or Schizophrenia?

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Flowers and signs laid at a memorial for victims of the Christchurch mosque attacks outside Masjid Al Noor in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 17, 2019. (Jorge Silva/Reuters)

Accounts Emerge of Heroism in New Zealand Mosques: Bodies to Be Released

CHRISTCHURCH/WELLINGTONAccounts emerged on March 17 of heroic attempts to tackle a gunman who slaughtered 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand, as authorities prepared to begin releasing the bodies of victims to their families for burial.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on March 16. Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5 where police said he was likely to face more charges.

The March 15 attack in the city of Christchurch, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern labeled terrorism, was the worst ever peacetime mass killing in New Zealand.

Ardern also said she wanted to talk to Facebook, as footage of the attack on one of the mosques was broadcast live on Facebook, and a manifesto denouncing immigrants as invaders was posted online via links to related social media accounts minutes before the violence began.

Amid the shock, outrage, and recriminations that have consumed New Zealand over the past two days, tales of heroism and self-sacrifice emerged.

Abdul Aziz, 48, was hailed for confronting the shooter at the second mosque and preventing more deaths.

Aziz, originally from Afghanistan, ran outside after the shooting started and picked up a shotgun that the gunman had dropped. The gun had no shells in it, he said.

I chased him, Aziz said. He sat in his car and with the shotgun in my hands, I threw it through his window like an arrow. He just swore at me and took off.

Another man, Naeem Rashid from Pakistan, was seen on the gunmans video confronting the shooter before he was killed, the BBC reported. Rashids 21-year-old son, Talha, was also killed.

The death toll climbed to 50 when police found another body at the Al Noor mosque, where more than 40 people died after a gunman burst in and opened fire on worshippers with a semi-automatic rifle with high-capacity magazines, driving to attack a second mosque.

Police rammed the suspects vehicle and arrested him as he drove away from the second mosque in the suburb of Linwood.

Police Commissioner Mike Bush said the man was apprehended 36 minutes after police were alerted and he was the only person charged in connection with the shootings. Three people detained earlier were not involved, he said.

Incomprehensible

Huge piles of flowers were laid at sites near the mosques and crowds of people of all faiths gathered to pay respects. Some played guitar, sang, and lit candles as darkness fell.

Members of a Maori motorbike gang performed a haka war-dance at one site.

Church services for the victims were held, including at Christchurchs Cardboard Cathedral, a temporary structure built after a 2011 earthquake.

But the priority for grieving family and friends on March 17 was laying their loved ones to rest. It is customary in Islam to bury the dead within 24 hours but no bodies have been released because of the investigation, police said.

Ardern said victims would be handed over to families from late March 17.

It is likely, however, to be a small number, to begin with, she told a media briefing, adding that all should be returned by March 20.

Wearing a black scarf, Ardern hugged members of the Muslim community at a refugee center on March 16, saying she would ensure freedom of religion.

Thirty-four people were in Christchurch Hospital, with 12 in intensive care, while a child was moved to a childrens hospital in Auckland.

Greg Robertson, head of surgery at Christchurch Hospital said the staff was used to gunshots and other severe injuries, but the scale and nature of the attacks were different.

The magnitude of this is the thing that is the most significant issue for people. Its just comprehending what is the incomprehensible.

The majority of victims were migrants or refugees from countries such as Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

The youngest was a 3-year-old boy, according to an unofficial list of the dead.

Pakistans high commissioner said six citizens had been killed and three were missing. Five Indians were killed, its High Commission said.

Tarrant did not have a criminal history and was not on any watchlists in New Zealand or Australia.

Ardern said a manifesto was emailed to more than 30 recipients including her office, nine minutes before the attack but it gave no location or specific details. She said her office sent it to parliamentary security two minutes after getting it.

In the manifesto, which was also posted online, Tarrant described himself as Just an ordinary White man, 28 years old who used profits from cryptocurrency trading to finance travels through Europe from 2016-2018.

Facebook said it had removed 1.5 million videos of the attack in the first 24 hours, and it was also removing all edited versions, even those without graphic content.

Ardern told the briefing that she had been contacted by Facebook operations chief Sheryl Sandberg who had acknowledged what had happened.

This is an issue that I will look to be discussing directly with Facebook, Ardern said.

By Tom Westbrook & Praveen Menon
The Confucius Institute Building on the Troy University Campus in Alabama on March 16, 2018 (Kreeder13 via Wikimedia Commons)

Australian Foreign Interference Laws, US Senate Report Latest Blows Against Declining Confucius Institutes

In his testimony to Torontos school board on the issue of partnering with Chinas Confucius Institute in 2014, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior manager with Canadas intelligence agency, said the Beijing-run institutes are on the decline in Canada.

In 2013, the number of Canadian educational institutions partnering with Confucius Institutes (CI) was 14, including the Toronto District School Board, which had inaugurated its CI but eventually shut it down due to protests by the community. After the New Brunswick Department of Education goes ahead with plans to close its CI in June 2019, that number will stand at 11.

Last weeks news that institutes in Australia may be subject to the countrys newly-enforced foreign influence transparency laws was the latest in a series of blows against CIs in recent years.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 CIs in Australia have been issued letters by the attorney generals department informing them of the new laws so they can first consider whether they should register as foreign agents. A government source cited by the Herald said that CIs are among the logical first targets of the new laws and would likely be pursued by the authorities if they dont self-register.

The countrys new anti-foreign interference laws were passed following what then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in December 2017 were disturbing reports about Chinese influence in the country. Shortly before the laws came into effect on March 1, two former Australian cabinet ministers and a former premier resigned their posts with organizations that have strong links to the Chinese Communist Party. The new laws require those acting on behalf of foreign powers to publicly register their names and provide details of their activities.

Last month, the U.S. Senates Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report on its eight-month investigation into CIs, saying they act as propaganda arms for the Chinese regime, and should be either changed or shut down. It also said the Department of Justice should decide whether any CIs or their employees should register as foreign agents.

Compromising Academic Freedom

The Senate report states that Confucius Institute funding comes with strings that compromise academic freedom.

The report says the Chinese regime approves all teachers working at the instituteswhich are branded by Beijing as educational organizations promoting Chinese language and cultureas well as events and speakers organized by them.

By propagating the regimes soft power, the report says, the CIs encourage complacency in their host countries toward Beijings crackdown on dissidents at home and long-term initiatives against businesses and academic institutions in host countries.

Schools hosting CIs enter into an agreement with Hanban, the agency of Chinas Ministry of Education that oversees the institutes. The contracts typically contain clauses stipulating that the laws of both the host country as well as China are to be adhered to.

A Chinese director assigned to an institute has to report to the Chinese Embassy within one month of arrival in the United States, and must conscientiously safeguard national interests of China, the report says.

The report notes that China has provided over US$158 million in funding CIs in the United States since 2006.

CI Closures

Since the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law last year, theres been a wave of CI closures in the United States due to loss of funding, as the law prohibits the U.S. Department of Defense from funding Chinese-language programs offered by CIs.

At least 10 U.S. universities have closed their CIs since 2017, the majority of them after the new law came into effect. The University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University had already closed their CIs years ago.

In 2018, the National Association of Scholars recommended that all universities close their CIs, citing concerns about intellectual freedom and transparency, as well as being used to advance Chinas soft power.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers also urged universities and colleges to cut ties with their CIs in 2013, saying they are supervised by the authoritarian government of China. The American Association of University professors followed up with its own statement in 2014, saying CIs function as an arm of the Chinese sate.

Following the announcement of his decision to end his provinces partnership with CIs, New Brunswick Education Minister Dominic Cardy said in an interview with CBC that the job of the institutes is to create a friendly, cheerful face for a government that is responsible for more deaths than nearly any other in the history of our species. He said he hopes the institutes would be gone by June.

Besides the Toronto School Board, McMaster University has closed its CI, as has the University of Sherbrooke. A number of institutions have also rejected prospective partnerships with CIs, among them the University of British Columbia and University of Manitoba. Catenbury College, affiliated with the University of Windsor, has also distanced itself from the institutes.

An increasing number of universities in Europe are closing their CIs as well, the latest being the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, which announced its decision in February.

Educational institutions in Canada that continue to host CIs include Edmonton Public Schools, Coquitlam School District, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Saint Marys University, Dawson College, Carleton University, University of Regina, University of Waterloo, Brock University, University of Saskatchewan, and Seneca College.
In this file image policeman keeps watch near a police cordon of the crime scene in the Shakti Mills area, where a female photographer was gang-raped overnight, in Mumbai on August 23, 2013. (Indranil Mhukherjee/AFP/Getty Images)

Brothers, Uncle Accused of Rape and Murder of 12-Year-Old Girl in India

The brothers and uncle of a 12-year-old Indian schoolgirl whose headless body was found last week have been accused in her rape and murder.

The shocking case is the latest high-profile sexual assault to shake the country, which has long-struggled with sexual violence and the surrounding social mores of family shame, honor, and cover-ups.

Her brothers are aged 17, 19, and 22 according to reports.

The girl, who has not been named by authorities, was reported missing on March 13, and her decapitated head was found along with her body the following day in an agricultural field near Berkhedi, reported the Hindustan Times.

The police offered a reward of 25,000 Rupees ($360) for information on the murder of the girl, who belonged to the Dalit, once known as the untouchables, the lowest level of Indias rigid 1,300-year-old caste system.

Investigators determined that she had been raped and strangled to death before her head was cut off with a sickle, reported NDTV.

The family had initially claimed that she had been kidnapped and killed by neighbors in their village in Sagar as revenge over a land dispute.

On March 19, however, authorities announced that her family members were being charged over her rape and murder. The girls aunt is also being accused for her alleged role in the crime.

The incident took place in Madhya Pradesh, a populous central state with the highest number of rape cases.

Our two senior officers collected all evidence and recorded the statements of the family members, Sagars superintendent of police Amit Sanghi said, according to the Hindustan Times. When everything was pieced together, we found that she was raped and murdered by her brothers and uncle.

The girls eldest brother, 22, is accused of first abducting her and taking her to his uncles house, according to the police account, reported the New Indian Express.

On that day everyone was out for work except the elder brother, and taking advantage of this he raped his sister, he said. While in the act, the other two brothers, including the minor, came and they both raped her. Meanwhile, the girls uncle, who is in his late forties, also came by. Initially, he scolded everyone and then he too raped her.

When she threatened to tell the police, they allegedly killed her.

According to police, the aunt may have been present during the assault, assisted in the murder, and later tried to cover up the crime by implicating the neighbors.

Three of the four accused, including the deceased girls uncle and her two brothers, have been arrested, while police are carrying out raids to track down the eldest brother. Police said that the aunt would also be charged, according to media reports.

Indias sexual violence problem was highlighted in 2012 by the high-profile case of an 8-year-old girl who was drugged, raped multiple times and murdered before her body was thrown out on the street.

She later died of her injuries, making headlines across the globe. She became known by the name of Nirbhaya, which means fearless in Hindi, since Indian law prevented disclosure of her real name.

In 2017, four men were sentenced to death for her rape and murder.

Earlier this month, a woman killed the man who sexually assaulted her, dragging him into the flames after he set fire to her, according to reports.

Police said the woman survived the attack and suffered burns to her hands and face, while the man died from his injuries at a nearby hospital.

The 35-year-old woman, who was not identified, told police that her 42-year-old male assailant attacked her inside her home in February in India, according to the AFP news agency. Her three daughters were out of the house when it took place.

Then he poured kerosene on her body and set her on fire, police officer Sajal Kanti Biswas told the news agency. The Times of India reported she grabbed him while she was still on fire, leading to his death.
California Bill Could Put Planned Parenthoods Hotline Number on Student IDs

SACRAMENTO, Calif.California Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel has introduced a measure that could see Planned Parenthoods hotline phone number printed on students school ID cards at public, charter, and private California schools.

The bill is directed toward students in all middle schools, high schools, and colleges.

Also known as the Pupil and Student Health bill, AB 624 would mandate that three hotline numbers be added to the ID cards: the National Sexual Assault Hotline, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and a sexual or reproductive health hotline. The bill would also allow the numbers of a local sexual assault hotline and a local domestic violence hotline to be added to the cards, but that wouldnt mandatory.

Some worry that the sexual or reproductive health hotline could be Planned Parenthood.

This isnt going to sit well with parents and private school educators who vehemently oppose abortion and the sexual behavior promoted by Planned Parenthood, the California Family Council (CFC) said in a statement. The CFC strives to educate Californians on public policy issues, based on Gods people living as principled citizens of both heaven and earth, according to its website.

Planned Parenthood is the leading provider of abortions in the United States. It receives approximately $500 million a year in government funding. However, new rules from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will reduce the amount of government funding provided to the organization.

Gabriel, who introduced AB 624, was endorsed by Sarah Mitchell, public affairs and communications manager at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, in April. Gabriel also received a monetary contribution from Planned Parenthood to his 2018 campaign.

Planned Parenthood is proud to endorse Jesse Gabriel for State Assembly, Mitchell said. Jesse has a long record of standing up for those most in need, and we know that he will be a strong partner in protecting womens health and ensuring access to vital servicesincluding life-saving cancer screenings, birth control, and STD testing and treatment.

However, legal experts have questioned whether AB 624 would violate the First Amendment for freedom of speech, according to CFC.

Compelled speech violates free speech, so the government cannot compel someone to say something, especially things that they have some firmly held beliefs against, Greg Burt, director of capitol engagement at CFC, said in an interview with The Epoch Times.

Parents and educational institutions that oppose the views and messages of Planned Parenthood worry the bill could infringe on their right to voice their opinions.

This outrageous California bill proposed by Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel is an attack on the First Amendment by forcing every California student to become a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, Mat Staver, Liberty Counsels founder and chairman, said in a statement. Liberty Counsel advocates for religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and other traditional values, according to its website.

Others say the addition of the hotline number could pose additional concerns for parents and families who want to stay informed about their childrens behavior.

If a young kid finds themselves pregnant, you want them to make an informed decision; you want them to turn to their parents for help. Planned Parenthood doesnt want you to turn to your parents; they want people to turn to them, Burt said.

Burt said the introduction of AB 624 may further encourage young students to seek guidance from anonymous hotline phone receptionists, rather than their own parents.

Planned Parenthood is right there to provide their version of morality to young kids, Burt said.

Last year, California passed SB 972, which required the suicide prevention number to be placed on the back of student ID cards for public, charter, and private school grades 7 to 12. That bill opened the door for government officials to add the contact information of other organizations.

AB 624 will go to the California Assembly Education Committee on March 27 for a hearing.
Firefighters battle a petrochemical fire at the Intercontinental Terminals Company in Deer Park, Texas, on March 18, 2019. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)

Crews Work to Control Fire at Texas Petrochemicals Plant

HOUSTONA large fire at a Houston-area petrochemicals terminal will likely burn for another two days, authorities said on March 18, noting that air quality around the facility was testing within normal guidelines.

The fire erupted Sunday at Intercontinental Terminals Company in Deer Park, about 15 miles southeast of Houston. Firefighters were working to control the blaze, and the company said the risk of explosion remained minimal.

ITC has said all employees have been accounted for and no injuries have been reported. A huge plume of smoke could be seen for miles, including from the Galveston Ferry, about 35 miles southeast of the blaze. Officials estimated the plume rose 3,000 feet to 4,000 feet into the air.

The company said the fire spread to seven storage tanks holding components of gasoline and also used in nail polish remover, glues and paint thinner. ITC initially said the fire had spread to eight tanks, but company official David Wascome scaled back the number Monday, saying one of the tanks was empty.

Monday afternoon, ITC spokeswoman Alice Richardson said fire crews had made progress battling the blaze as three of the tanks were now only intermittently on fire.

A report done by the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, a local environmental consultant hired by ITC, shows the air quality around the facility was below levels that would represent a health concern, Richardson said. Data for the companys report was collected from multiple locations in Deer Park and in surrounding communities from Sunday through Monday morning.

City of Deer Park update:

Please see the image below of the latest Intercontinental Terminals Company (ITC) press release concerning the fire at ITC Deer Park. pic.twitter.com/j6d9pLu2Yc  City of Deer Park (@DEERPARKTXGOV) March 19, 2019

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said Monday the county is performing its own monitoring of air quality and reviewing data from the state.

The latest information available doesnt show levels beyond a threshold that would make this dangerous, she said.

Hidalgo, the highest elected official in the county, said if conditions change, residents would be alerted about any potential health hazards.

A shelter-in-place order was issued Sunday for Deer Park, which has about 34,000 residents.

The order was lifted early Monday after air-quality tests showed no unsafe levels of chemicals, according to the city.

But city and county officials warned that smoke from the fire could cause skin and eye irritation, and respiratory issues. Schools in the area were closed Monday as a precaution. Deer Park and the school district in neighboring La Porte planned to resume classes on Tuesday.

Isaias Lopezs grandson stayed home after classes in La Porte were canceled. The two walked his dog at a park on Monday and looked at the dark plume of smoke coming from the fire.

Update from the City of Deer Park: The fire at the International Terminals Company (ITC) Deer Park facility continues  City of Deer Park  2019318

Ive seen the smoke since yesterday, Lopez said. Its been blowing like that. Today its been making more wind than yesterday. So its not so bad as long as the smoke dont come around this area. I guess well be OK.

Fire crews used foam to protect storage tanks that have not caught on fire.

We are controlling the fire and keeping it off the rest of the tanks, said Ray Russell with Channel Industries Mutual Aid, an organization that coordinates rescue and emergency capabilities of the local petrochemical industry.

Russell estimated the fire would burn for another two days. He said firefighters were now in a defensive mode.

Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen said investigators from her office are on the scene of the fire and are still determining a cause of the blaze.

The fire was the second in as many days at a Houston-area petrochemical facility. A fire at an ExxonMobil plant in nearby Baytown that broke out Saturday has been contained.
A man stands next to wrecked vehicles on March 18, 2019, in Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe, after the area was hit by Cyclone Idai. (Zinyange Auntony/AFP/Getty Images)

Cyclone Idai: Widespread Flooding and Devastation Impacting Millions in Southern Africa

CHIMANIMANI/MUTARE, ZimbabweWhat started out like a normal day for Dale Tauya, a 14-year-old student at St. Charles Lwanga Secondary School in Chimanimani district in Zimbabwe, ended as anything but.

Tauya was asleep in one of the dormitories at the school when there was a loud crash. He awoke to find muddy water flowing into the dorm and splashing him in the face.

A huge boulder had loosened and rolled into the school dining hall and then into our dormitory. Before I knew it, I was under a big log and my friends were struggling to remove it, he said.

The students managed to lift the log off Tauya and took him to a safe place.

But the cyclone that lambasted Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi on March 15 left two students dead at the school and 16 injured, including a security guard.

According to the U.N., widespread flooding and devastation triggered by Cyclone Idai has impacted possibly millions of people across southern Africa. The cyclone first hit Beira in Mozambique and then went on to lash Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Massive and horrifying is how Jamie LeSueur described the damage to Beira after leading a Red Cross aerial assessment of the city.

The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous. It seems that 90 percent of the area is completely destroyed, said LeSueur on the Red Cross website.

At least 1,000 people are feared dead in Mozambique alone, according to the U.N., with half a million displaced.

A statement released by the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society stated that flooding caused by the tropical cyclone weather system continues to cause massive destruction, with heavy rains reported in Manicaland and Masvingo provinces.

Crops and livestock have been destroyed, and power supply and communication continue to be disrupted in affected areas. The hardest-hit district of Chimanimani remains inaccessible as heavy rains have damaged roads and main access bridges have been washed away, according to the statement.

As of March 19, the death toll in Zimbabwe was at 98, with more than 200 injured, mainly in Chimanimani. Meanwhile, 217 people are missing and more than 900 homes destroyed, affecting an estimated 12,500 to 15,000 people.

However, an accurate assessment of the number of people impacted and displaced is still difficult to establish, as many district wards remain inaccessible.

Albert Mapunga, a teacher at St. Charles Lwanga Secondary School, said help only arrived on March 17, when students and staff were ferried to another district for safety.

Until then, we were sleeping in classrooms because the dormitories were destroyed, he said.

Lack of Preparedness

Bishop Sebastian Bakare, the director of the United Mutare Residents and Ratepayers Association, told The Epoch Times that Idai was forecast two to three weeks ago but lack of disaster preparedness and complacency on the part of government has resulted in death and displacement.

The government cares little about peoples lives. It didnt care to prepare and now is reacting too late. In fact, the government should have made some provisions for a cyclone such as this, he said.

The damage is beyond measure at the moment as everything from bridges to homes have been destroyed.

Sekai Nzenza, minister of public service, labor, and social services, said in an interview that the government wasnt expecting the cyclone to have such a severe impact.

Minister of Agriculture Perence Shiri noted that the government will find ways to manage and mitigate such occurrences in the future, including creating an early warning system.

We didnt know the magnitude and pattern of the cyclone and this time around it came in a very big way, he said.

The government has put $50 million toward repairing infrastructure such as roads and bridges, and to provide medical and food supplies to assist those impacted.

As for Tauya, he has been having nightmares and said it is going to take time to get over what happened. He and the other students have received medical support.

Trace Kashiri, a parent of one of the students at the school, said she was in shock when she heard two students had died.

I couldnt stop thinking, what if one of the dead students was my child, she said, adding that it may be difficult for parents send back their kids to the school after such a horrific incident that almost took their lives.

Mapunga, the teacher, said the reopening of the school may be a long way off as much of the school was damaged and will need to be rebuilt.
Alcatraz AI, a Palo Alto, CA-based startup advancing a facial authentication product for the enterprise, raised $6m in funding.

Backers included the Hardware Club, Ray Stata, Ruvento Ventures, Hemi Ventures and JCI Ventures (Johnson Controls).

The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and develop the technology behind its solutions.

Led by CEO Vince Gaydarzhiev, Alcatraz AI replaces badging as an access point identification method by leveraging facial recognition, 3D sensing and artificial intelligence to enable secure and frictionless entry into physical locations.

The solution uses real-time 3D facial mapping and deep neural networks to automatically enroll an individual based on any current access control method. Entry is granted based on secure facial recognition with first in the industry instant one-factor authentication for multi-person in-the-flow sensing.

Alcatraz learns as employees are badging and switches to one factor face-only mode once ready.

The technology features long scanning range and large field of view, which authenticates multiple faces in-the-flow and alerts based on policy. Auto-tagging and real-time notifications with video and analytics, along with single-factor face-only authentication create an efficient and guard-less entry flow.

FinSMEs

19/03/2019
Danske Still Hasnt Found a CEO as Executives Go Without Bonuses

Danske Bank A/S is still looking for a permanent replacement for Thomas Borgen as chief executive officer, half a year after he was removed from his job amid a $230 billion money laundering scandal.

Chairman Karsten Dybvad said Danske is working intensively on finding someone to run the bank long-term, as he addressed shareholders at an annual general meeting in Copenhagen on March 18. He also made clear that the banks executive board agreed not to have its bonuses paid out for 2018, given the ongoing dirty money case.

Danskes management and board are trying to restore confidence in the bank as it faces criminal investigations over claims that it became a central causeway in Europe for Russian money launderers to channel their funds into the West until as recently as 2015. Investors are now bracing for fines potentially in the billions of dollars, as they come to terms with the likely consequences of Danskes failures.

Previous efforts to replace Borgen failed after Danskes board tried to propose the banks head of wealth management, Jacob Aarup-Andersen, for the CEO role. The 41-year-old was rejected by the financial regulator for lacking the relevant experience. The bank has been run by Jesper Nielsen since October, who has taken on the CEO role on an interim basis only. Hes head of Danskes Danish banking operations.

Danske went through one of its worst years in 2018, leaving employees struggling to take any pride in their work, according to the chairman. Dybvad, who has been running the board since December, described last year as a low point in the history of Denmarks biggest bank.

Dybvad said hell do everything in his power to exploit all available options to claw back bonuses to a number of senior staff in Estonia and Denmark, as criminal investigations continue. Denmarks Shareholders Association said it welcomed the stance.

Meanwhile, there are signs that the laundering case hasnt severely impacted Danskes business. According to Claus Wiinblad, head of equities at shareholder ATP, the core operations remain robust, even though funding costs have risen amid concerns over potential fines.

According to Bloomberg Intelligence, Danske may be facing total fines between $2 billion and $2.5 billion for its money laundering scandal. That should be manageable for the bank, given it has a common equity Tier 1 buffera measure of capitalof more than $6 billion, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Philip Richards, Jonathan Tyce, and Elliott Stein said on March 18.

By Frances Schwartzkopff & Christian Wienberg
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke answers questions from voters during his second day of campaigning for the 2020 nomination at The Sing-A-Long Bar and Grill in Mount Vernon, Iowa, on March 15, 2019.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Democratic Presidential Hopeful ORourke Appears to Endorse Third-Trimester Abortion

Democratic presidential candidate Robert Beto ORourke appeared to endorse third-trimester abortions during a campaign event in Ohio on March 19.

A woman in the audience asked ORourke if he would protect unborn babies considering that third-trimester abortions are not a medical emergency or necessity.

Are you for third-trimester abortions? Are you going to protect the lives of third-trimester babies? Because there is really not a medical necessity for abortions. Its not a medical emergency procedure, because typically, third-trimester abortions take up to three days to have. So, in that sense, if there was an emergency, the doctors would just do a C-section and you dont have to kill the baby in that essence. So are you for or against third-trimester abortions?

ORourke replied: The question is about abortion and reproductive rights. And, my answer to you is, that should be a decision the woman makes. I trust her.

Heres Beto ORourke at a campaign event in Cleveland responding to a question about third-trimester abortions: That should be a decision that the woman makes. I trust her. pic.twitter.com/nBrlazlMob  Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) March 18, 2019

As the crowd broke out into loud cheers, ORourke quickly took another question.

ORourke co-sponsored a bill in Congress in 2017 that would have lifted most state restrictions on abortion.

Americans consistently oppose third-trimester abortions, with at least 80 percent saying it should be illegal, according to every Gallup poll since 1996.

The national discussion about late-term abortion flared recently after a Virginia politician promoted a bill allowing for abortions up to the moment a mother is about to give birth. After a video of the politician defending the bill went viral, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam went a step further and endorsed the killing of infants after birth.

All of the 2020 presidential candidates in the Senate voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act in February, including Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The bill would require doctors to provide the same level of care to infants who survived an abortion as they would to other infants. All but one Democrat voted against the bill.

Senate Democrats just voted against legislation to prevent the killing of newborn infant children. The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they dont mind executing babies AFTER birth, President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter on Feb. 25, in response to the vote.

This will be remembered as one of the most shocking votes in the history of Congress. If there is one thing we should all agree on, its protecting the lives of innocent babies, he said.

ORourke entered the 2020 race on March 14. The Texas Democrat gained national attention running and losing a longshot bid for the Senate against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Like most Democratic 2020 candidates, ORourke embraces the socialist Medicare for All and Green New Deal policies. Unlike most of the Democrats, ORourke has refused to disavow socialism.

Shortly after he announced his run for the White House, ORourkes disturbing teenage writings surfaced in a Reuters report. In one piece, he wrote about killing two children because they were happy and the happiness belonged to him. By the end of the story, ORourke wrote about killing 38 people. He has since apologized for the writings.

In an average of early polling data tallied by Real Clear Politics, ORourke is behind five other Democratic candidates: former vice president Joe Biden, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ).

Despite trailing in the polls, ORourke raised more than $6.1 million within 24 hours of announcing his candidacy, his campaign said on March 18, highlighting his fundraising prowess in a crowded field.

The former three-term Texas congressmans haul put him at the top of a Democratic pack of more than a dozen candidates so far including Bernie Sanders who raised $5.9 million in the first 24 hours of his 2020 campaign.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Deutsche Banks DWS Soars Most on Record on Allianz Interest

Deutsche Bank AGs DWS Group soared the most ever in Frankfurt trading on news that Allianz SE is exploring the possibility of combining it with its asset management arm to create a national champion in active money management.

The Munich-based insurer is looking at the feasibility of a deal with Germanys largest lender to create a business with 1.17 trillion euros ($1.33 trillion) under management, people with knowledge of the matter said, asking not to be identified in discussing internal matters. Allianzs deliberations are at an early stage and may not lead to any formal talks or agreement, the people said.

DWS soared as much as 14 percent in Frankfurt and was trading 6.6 percent higher at 29.79 euros as of mid-afternoon. The stock is up 27 percent this year.

DWS is one of Deutsche Banks crown jewels and the lender is reluctant to sell its holding, one of the people said. Still, such a transaction could help the bank finance a merger with Commerzbank AG. The lender may have to come up with about 8 billion euros for restructuring expenses and revaluation of certain assets should it decide to combine with its cross-town rival, according to Christian Koch, a DZ Bank analyst.

Deutsche Bank has already tapped shareholders for about 30 billion euros this decade, making the sale of an asset like DWS potentially more palatable. Representatives for Deutsche Bank, Allianz and DWS declined to comment.

DWS has a market capitalization of 6.1 billion euros, valuing Deutsche Banks 78 percent stake at about 4.8 billion euros. Deutsche Bank may need to fetch at least 32 euros per share to avoid a write-down on the value booked on the lenders balance sheet, according to people familiar with the matter.

If Deutsche Bank were to acquire Commerzbank, theyll look at how to finance it, and one of the options is to dispose of their stake in DWS, said Neil Smith, an analyst at Bankhaus Lampe.

Any sale of DWS could also attract interest from other firms looking to bolster their asset management business, including Amundi SA, Europes largest asset manager, UBS Group AG, and Morgan Stanley. Amundi, majority owned by Credit Agricole SA, would take a look at DWS if it became available, according to people briefed on the matter. An Amundi representative declined to comment.

For asset managers seeking scale and there are a lot these daysa sale of DWS would present a rare opportunity for a large deal. The firm has one of Europes biggest offerings of exchange-traded funds, as well as a sizable real estate business.

Deutsche Bank tried to sell much of the asset management business in 2012 but stopped when it couldnt get the price it wanted. It raised about $2 billion last year when it sold a minority stake in an initial public offering of the firm.

By Steven Arons, Jan-Henrik Forster, Harry Wilson & Dinesh Nair
Elderly Woman Dies After Drinking Mysterious Substance Given by Chinese Police

An elderly Chinese woman got sick and died after drinking a bottle of water that was given to her by authorities at a local police station in Xiangshan District, Guilin City. Some suspect that the water was poisoned.

Tang Xiaoyan died at the age of 69. She was arrested and detained multiple times because she refused to give up her faith. She came from a family of scholars in Guilin of southern Chinas Guangxi Province. Her death brought endless grief to her family.

Tang is not the only Falun Gong adherent who was sickened and died from being poisoned while incarcerated. There were other victims.

Sickly Child From a Scholars Family

Tang came from an intellectual family. Her father was a physicist and vice president of Guangxi Normal University.

Other prominent relatives include He Fuzhao, former chief bridge designer of Chinas Ministry of Transportation, and He Fuxi, a metallurgical expert.

Tang was very smart but she suffered from physical ailments at a young age. She suffered from anemia, endometriosis, ovarian cysts, diabetes, malnutrition, and other illnesses.

A relative introduced the meditation practice Falun Gong to Tang in the late 1990s after hearing about the health benefits. After she started practicing, most of her illnesses were eventually healed.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice based on the moral teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was once promoted and praised by the Chinese Communist Party, after millions of Chinese improved their physical and mental health upon taking up the practice.

But as Falun Gongs popularity grewofficial estimates of roughly 100 million by 1999then-Party leader Jiang Zemin feared that it would undermine the Partys authority.

On July 20, 1999, Jiang ordered a nationwide persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Hundreds of thousands have been arrested and detained in prisons, labor camps, brainwashing centers, and other facilities. They are often tortured in an effort to coerce them into giving up their faith.

Persecution

According to a March 15 report by Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website dedicated to documenting the persecution of Falun Gong in China, details are only now emerging of how Tang died in March 2017 after celebrating the Chinese New Year.

Two days before her death, Tang suddenly had symptoms of diarrhea. Several hours later, she fell unconscious.

Tangs family sent her to the hospital for emergency treatment. But it was too late. Tang passed away two days later due to organ failure.

After Tangs death, her family refused to comment. They have kept silent until now.

According to the Minghui.org report, her friends and relatives claim that Tang died from the effects of drinking a bottle of water that police gave her in August 2015 while she was detained.

On May 1, 2015, Chinas highest court, the Supreme Peoples Court, launched a new policy of filing all cases, and processing of all complaintsallowing citizens to file against any Party official, regardless of rank.

When Tang heard this news, she decided to file a lawsuit against Jiang. Tang had been detained several times since 1999 for her faith. Because she believed she was wrongfully detained, she decided to file the complaint.

Tang prepared her case and mailed her paperwork to the supreme court and the supreme procuratorate, the countrys highest prosecutors office. However, the supreme court refused to file Tangs complaint. Instead, the local police arranged to detain her.

On Aug. 28, 2015, local authorities took Tang from her house and brought her to the Xiangshan District police station.

After she was released, Tang told family and friends that a police officer slammed her head hard against the wall, and also hurt the ligament of her arms during the process.

Tang said that she then was sent into the national security office of the police station. While she was there, the national security agent gave Tang a bottle of water. Tang was thirsty and drank from it.

She suddenly came down with a painful headache and even banged her head against the wall to release the pain. Then, Tang lost consciousness.

Tang later regained consciousness but was very thirsty. She tried to drink more water from the bottle, but was stopped by a police who was beside her. The police told her: Dont drink any more, dont drink! Then he took the water away.

A while later, another police officer told Tang: Look at you. I guess you cant live for a long time.

Tang remained at the detention center as police prepared documents to indict Tang for breaking the law.

The court rejected the case due to lack of evidence. Tang was then released, but by then, she was in poor health.

At home, Tangs health continued to deteriorate. She started to lose her memory, slept a lot, and could not control her bowel movements. Several months later, she started to lose her hearing and eventually, her vision.

Other Victims of Persecution: Poisoned by Authorities

Tangs case is not an isolated incident. Minghui.org documented many Falun Gong practitioners who suffered from similar ailments.

Feng Juan, 67, a retired woman from Foshan City of Guangdong Province, was detained at the Sanshui Brainwashing Center in April 2017.

According to a Minghui report, on the tenth day of being detained, Feng started vomiting and had diarrhea. She was then released. After two months, a doctor announced that all her organs have started failing. Feng said she suspected the food she consumed at the brainwashing center was poisoned. She died in October 2017.

Zhao Bing, 30, from Linghai City of Liaoning Province, became mentally disoriented after she ate a bowl of noodles that was given to her by police in 2009.

According to Minghuis report, early morning on April 17, 2009, police took away Zhaos family as they were sleeping. They were abused by police for a whole day until midnight at the police station.

The family was very hungry, as they had not been given any food all day. At night, the police brought four bowls of noodles, one for each family member. Wei Xiuying, the mother, ate about one-third of the noodles. She stopped eating after she felt the noodles tasted strange. Zhao ate the whole bowl of noodles. Zhaos father and older sister did not eat because they did not feel well after being abused for the whole day.

Several hours later, Wei had a headache and started to vomit. She was sentenced to prison for five years because she refused to give up her belief in Falun Gong.

Zhao was sent home, along with her father and sister. But she has been mentally ill since then. Zhao stays in her room all day and does not allow anyone to enter. Every day, her father has to place her meal on the windowsill, but Zhao would not even come out of her room to eat. Zhao refused to take a shower or wash her face.
Escaped Cow Stops By Chick-fil-A While Chased by Police

A cow on the loose was chased around Saturday afternoon, March 16, by the local police department of Noblesville, Indiana, just a 40-minute drive northeast of Indianapolis.

The errant bovine was seen running around Hamilton Town Centre, a Simon-owned outdoor mall, and it even crossed a busy traffic-filled street to get to the Chick-fil-A on the other side.

NPD was able to run with the bulls last night, the Noblesville Police Department (NPD) said in a good-humored Facebook post the next day. We were chasing this running wild bovine all over the east side. If you got a picture of our cowboy adventure comment with it! We love to see it.

Indiana resident Kristen Short was in her car when the cow crossed in front of her. She was able to capture some pictures of the cow as it walked across the road in front of her, a police vehicle visible in the background of one of the photos.

Short posted the photos to Facebook afterwards.

Cow on the loose in Noblesville, we are dying laughing!!, Short said in the post. No one can catch it.

 Kristen Short  2019316

She even got a picture of the cow standing by the Chick-fil-A restaurant after it successfully crossed the street.

 Kristen Short  2019316

Athena Hopkins, another Indiana resident, managed to film the cow crossing the street to the Chick-fil-A. The video quickly went viral after she shared it to her Facebook page, racking up over 800,000 views.

So this just happened!!!!  Hopkins said in the posts caption.

So this just happened!!!!  Michael E. W. Hopkins  Athena Hopkins  2019316

In the video, the cow trots across the street despite the busy traffic. A police car can clearly be seen following the cow before pulling over to the side of the road. As the officer exits the vehicle, the cow continues its journey at the mall.

Somebody have a lasso or something? she asks jokingly in the video.

Many people found it humorous that the cow ended up by the Chick-fil-A. One person joked LMAO. He knows where its safe. Hes about to become their mascot! while several people drew a comparison with Chick-fil-As Eat Mor Chiken ad campaign that involves cows advocating for the consumption of chicken.

A busy week with lots of smiles celebrating @ChickfilAs opening at Clinton National Airport. #EatMorChikin pic.twitter.com/GK1k6FSBwJ  Clinton Natl Airport (@LITAirport) March 17, 2019

In response to Hopkinss video, the NPD said she captured a hilarious moment and thanked her for sharing the video.

Another Indiana resident, Rodney Heil, also posted a video to Facebook of the cow jumping down from a short wall before running along the sidewalk of Campus Parkway towards the I-69, while a man in a black jacket and jeans runs after it.

 Rodney Heil  2019318

The NPD said nobody, including the cow, was injured during its adventurous escape. In response to a question on Facebook, they said they were able to successfully herd the cow back to the trailer of its owner.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel takes part in a panel at the annual Global Solutions Summit in Berlin on March 19, 2019. (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

European Union Impatient With Brexit, but Resigned to Delay

BRUSSELSEuropean Union governments are exasperated by British dithering over quitting the bloc but have little appetite for pushing it out on schedule next week without a divorce deal, senior figures said on March 19.

EU ministers in Brussels in preparation for a summit with British Prime Minister Theresa May on March 21 voiced frustration after the speaker of parliament threw up a new obstacle for her plan to get her Brexit deal ratified before the March 29 deadline.

Our patience as the European Union is being sorely tested at the moment, German Europe minister Michael Roth told reporters. Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking.

But Roth also echoed comments in Berlin by Chancellor Angela Merkel, the EUs pre-eminent leader, who said she would fight to the last minute until midnight on March 29 to ensure an orderly exit for the EUs second-ranked economy.

He said Germanys main aim was to avoid a no-deal Brexit, which would disrupt business across the continent.

However, after two defeats for the Withdrawal Agreement that May negotiated with the EU, it isnt clear how May can avert this without asking fellow leaders for more time.

All Depends on May

Leaders expect to discuss such an extension at the two-day summit starting Thursday afternoon. But if May has yet to make a concrete proposal on her next move then, then the summit can do little more than outline possible stepssuch as a readiness to give her a couple of months, or maybe longer.

If there is no move from London, the leaders can also decide to wait, said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. It really depends on what May will say at the summit.

Diplomats said member states were still discussing options for extensionpossibly only for two to three months, if May persuades them she can clinch a deal at home, or for much longer if May accepts that radical reworking is needed.

Merkel said there was far too much in flux to forecast the outcome of the summit.

By Thomas Escritt and Gabriela Baczynska
A police officer stands guard in front of the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand on March 17, 2019, where one of two mass shootings occurred. (Vincent Yu/AP Photo)

Facebook Says No One Flagged NZ Mosque Shooting Livestream

LONDONFacebook says none of the 200 or so people who watched live video of the New Zealand mosque shooting flagged it to moderators, underlining the challenge tech companies face in policing violent or disturbing content in real time.

The social media giant released new details about its response to the video in a blog post. It said the gunmans live 17-minute broadcast was viewed fewer than 200 times and the first user report didnt come in until 12 minutes after it ended.

Facebook removed the video within minutes' of being notified by police, said Chris Sonderby, Facebooks deputy general counsel.

Weve shared digital fingerprints of more than 800 visually-distinct videos related to the attack via our collective database, along with URLs and context on our enforcement approaches. https://t.co/o0v6fvaFno  Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 19, 2019

No users reported the video during the live broadcast, and it was watched about 4,000 times in total before being taken down, Sonderby said. We continue to work around the clock to prevent this content from appearing on our site, using a combination of technology and people.

Facebook has previously said that in the first 24 hours after the massacre, it removed 1.5 million videos of the attacks, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload, implying 300,000 copies successfully made it on to the site before being taken down.

In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload  Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 17, 2019

The videos rapid spread online puts renewed pressure on Facebook and other social media sites such as YouTube and Twitter over their content moderation efforts. Many questions why Facebook, in particular, wasnt able to more quickly detect the video and take it down.

On March 19, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expressed frustration that the footage remained online four days after the killings. She said she had received some communication from Facebooks Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg on the issue.

It is horrendous and while theyve given us those assurances, ultimately the responsibility does sit with them.

Facebook uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect objectionable material, while at the same time relying on the public to flag up content that violates its standards. Those reports are then sent to human reviewers who decide what action to take, the company said in a video in November, which also outlined how it uses computer vision to detect 97 percent of graphic violence before anyone reports it. However, its less clear how these systems apply to Facebooks live streaming.

To report live video, a user must know to click on a small set of three gray dots on the right side of the post. When you click on report live video, youre given a choice of objectionable content types to select from, including violence, bullying, and harassment. Youre also told to contact law enforcement in your area if someone is in immediate danger.

Before the company was alerted to the video, a user on 8chan had already posted a link to copy of it on a file-sharing site, Sonderby said. 8chan is a dark corner of the web where those disaffected by mainstream social media sites often post extremist, racist and violent views.

In another indication of the videos spread by those intent on sharing it, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group of global internet companies led by Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter, said it added more than 800 different versions to a shared database used to block violent terrorist images and videos.

The group said it added digital fingerprints for visually distinct versions of the video to its database. The move came in response to attempts by internet users to share the video by editing or repackaging versions with different digital fingerprints to avoid detection.

Weve been in close contact with @Google, @Twitter, and @Microsoft since last weeks terrorist attack in New Zealand through the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT).  Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 19, 2019

The incident highlights the importance of industry cooperation regarding the range of terrorists and violent extremists operating online, said the group, which was formed in 2017 in response to official pressure to do more to fight online extremism.

In a series of tweets a day after the shootings, Facebooks former chief security officer, Alex Stamos, laid out the challenge for tech companies as they raced to keep up with new versions of the video.

Each time this happens, the companies have to spot it and create a new fingerprint, said Stamos. What you are seeing on the major platforms is the water leaking around thousands of fingers poked in a dam, he said.

Stamos estimated the big tech companies are blocking more than 99 percent of the videos from being uploaded, which is not enough to make it impossible to find.
First Lady Melania Trump, speaks during a meeting of the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, on March 18, 2019. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

First Lady Looks for Ways Bureaucracy Can Advance Be Best

WASHINGTONMelania Trump took a deep dive into the federal bureaucracy on March 18 at a briefing on government youth programs as she looks for ways to promote her Be Best initiative.

My focus has and always will be on our children, the next generation, the first lady said as opened a meeting of the Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs. Theyre our future doctors, nurses, firefighters, scientists, teachers, chefs, generals, pilots, designers, reporters and missionaries, just to name a few.

The first lady noted her domestic and international travels during the past year to promote Be Best, which focuses on child well-being, online safety and avoiding drugs. The initiative is nearing its one-year mark. Mrs. Trump told representatives of nearly 20 departments and agencies, including five Cabinet secretaries, that she wants to learn more about government programs and how we can work together to continue creating more opportunities to help and empower our children.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who chairs the group, said Mrs. Trumps initiative is timely and has certainly influenced many of the plans and objectives of this working group.

Azar went on to describe resources on a government website that can help people recognize opioid abuse in young adults. The site also has information on the risks of tobacco and e-cigarettes, he said.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pushed a proposal for billions in federal tax credits for people who donate to groups that offer scholarships to help students attend private schools, apprenticeships, and other educational programs.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson spoke about his departments literacy programs.

The first lady learned that the National Institutes of Health is preparing to enroll up to 10,000 pregnant women, including some who are addicted to drugs, in a healthy brain and child development study and follow them and their children for 10 years.

And the Federal Emergency Management Agency has produced an old-fashioned card game to help teach children how to stay safe and help others during an emergency.

First Lady Visits School in Malawi, Promotes Be Best Campaign

First Lady Melania Trump headed to a primary school in Lilongwe, Malawi, an area locals call the warm heart of Africa as part of the third day of her week-long solo trip to the continent.

The White House said Malawi was chosen because of the high poverty rate and the difficulties childrenespecially girlshave in accessing education. Trump is advocating for childrens welfare as part of her Be Best campaign during her first international solo tour as first lady.

Flying from Ghana, Trump arrived at Kamuzu International Airport on Oct. 4 where she was greeted by Gertrude Maseko, the first lady of Malawi, in a ceremony that featured drummers, dancers, and students waving the flags of both countries.

During the 20-minute drive from the airport to Chipola Primary School in Lilongwe, locals gathered to try and catch a glimpse of Trump. At one intersection, hundreds of people lined up smiling and waving.

The school is struggling with only 75 teachers looking after around 8,000 enrolled children. According to the White House, the average class has 110 students.

Trump greeted two administrators as she arrived at the school with Virginia Palmer, the U.S. ambassador to Malawi. She approached a crowd of children in royal-blue-and-orange school uniforms who sang in English, Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome all of you. We are happy today, we are happy today, we are happy to see you.

What followed next was a whirlwind visit of both inside and outside classrooms of second and third graders. Trump first observed two outside lessons conducted in their native language, Chichewa. More girls than boys were in the first outside lesson, which totaled 275 students.

The first lady then ducked inside to observe an English classroom with 186 children in attendance. The teacher managed to impressively command the children, who wore name tags around their necks, to sound out the letters L and U. At the front of the room, the first lady sat next to a student called Miliam and helped her find the correct page in her textbook.

As Miliam sat sounding out letters and words, Trump sat with her hands clasped and smiled as she watched the group. Later she visited another Chichewa classroom and laughed when a little boy stood up and, in English, proclaimed, I am the best.

At one point, a teacher led the students in a song in English: We say goodbye but not forever. We know that one day we shall meet again.

Thank you, Trump said. Beautiful.

The Epoch Times reporter Bowen Xiao contributed to this article.
Former CIA Contractor Nellie Ohr Provided Husband at DOJ With Russia Research

Testimony reveals Ohr sought job at Fusion GPS; emails reveal she frequently sent Russia research to Bruce Ohr and other DOJ officials

Two key players in the FBIs investigation of Donald Trump were husband and wife Bruce and Nellie Ohr.

At the time, Bruce Ohr was the highest-ranking career official at the Department of Justice (DOJ), and Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPSthe firm hired by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to produce the so-called Steele dossier on Donald Trump.

In congressional testimonies reviewed by The Epoch Times, both Bruce and Nellie Ohr testified separately to congressional investigators last year that they had minimal contact with each other about their work, which could have posed an inherent conflict of interest.

Newly released documents and emails obtained by Judicial Watch, however, show that Nellie emailed Bruce dozens of times about Russia-related topics between October 2015 and September 2016. Nellie also routinely included several other DOJ officials in these communications.

The emails also indicate that both Nellie and Bruce were in contact with Nellies boss, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.

Russia-Related Emails

Nellie Ohr told congressional investigators in her Oct. 19, 2018, closed-door testimony, that part of her work for Fusion GPS was to research the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, including campaign associate Carter Page, early campaign supporter Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and campaign manager Paul Manafort, as well as Trumps family members, including some of his children.

In court documents filed on Dec. 12, 2017, Simpson referred to Nellie Ohr as a former government official expert who was hired to help our company with its research and analysis of Mr. Trump.

Prior to her work for Fusion GPS, Nellie had worked as an independent contractor for the CIA for as long as six years.

Email communications between her and her husband show that she routinely sent Bruce articles on Russiamost carrying a similarly negative slant.

The emails continued throughout the duration of Nellies employment with Fusion GPS and usually contained a brief, often one-line comment from Nellie, such as the following shown on page 319 of the Judicial Watch release:

Lesins death (This looks fishy) See the 6 November notes.

The responses Nellie received were minimal, when she received one at all, but she continued to forward emails to Bruce, along with several other DOJ officials, during her employment at Fusion GPS. The result was a steady stream of negative articles and brief commentaries on Russia being fed to the DOJ through her husband that almost certainly was the result of her work for Fusion GPS.

Bruce, however, had previously testified that he and Nellie typically didnt discuss details of their work with each other.

Ms. Hariharan: When she works on sensitive projects, does she discuss those details with you?

Bruce Ohr: Generally, no.

Ms. Hariharan: And on the flip side, have you discussed details of your cases with her?

Mr. Ohr: No.

Nellie also provided her husband with a USB stick containing all her research from her time at Fusion GPS to pass to the FBI in late 2016 after she officially left the firm in September 2016.

Nellie Ohr Approached Fusion GPSs Glenn Simpson

In her testimony, Nellie Ohr described her work as online, open-source efforts that utilized Russian sources, media, social media, government, you know, business registers, legal databases, all kinds of things. Ohr said that she would write occasional reports based on the open source research that I described about Donald Trumps relationships with various people in Russia.

The work Nellie conducted for Fusion GPS matched the same skill set used when she worked for the CIAs Open Source Works, which is a division within the agency that uses open-source information to produce intelligence products.

Notably, she was hired by Fusion GPS approximately eight months before the firm hired former British MI6 spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier.

When asked how she came to be hired by Fusion GPS and who had approached her, Nellie responded, Nobody approached me, telling investigators that she had initiated contact and approached Fusion GPS after reading an article on Simpson:

Nellie Ohr: I believe it was in September of 2015 that I read an article in the paper that mentioned Glenn Simpson. And I remembered because he had been a Wall Street Journal reporter working on things like Russian crime and corruption, so I recognized the name. I was underemployed at that time and I was looking for opportunities.

Mr. Jordan: So you called him up?

Ms. Ohr: I sent an email.

A search for Simpsons whereabouts during that period of time shows that he was in the news in August 2015 over the work his company conducted for Planned Parenthood, following a controversy involving undercover videos filmed by the California-based Center for Medical Progress. Simpson had claimed that the editing of the videos rendered them unreliable for any official inquiry.

Nellie Ohr said that following her email, Simpson told her to come in and well meet. When questioned as to how well she knew Simpson prior to this meeting, Ohr responded that she had been at a conference that Simpson attended, but indicated that she had never met him personally:

I dont recall directly talking with him at that conference, and I dont know whether he knew who, you know, who I was other than the fact that I attended that conference.

In her response, Nellie was referring to a June 2010 conference organized by the National Institute of Justice where Nellie, in her capacity as a researcher for the CIAs Open Source Works, was listed as a participant.

The conference was a two-day interactive event with just 39 participants. Bruce Ohr and Simpson, who at the time was a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, were facilitators at the event. It is unlikely Nellie Ohr and Simpson wouldnt have had any interactions during this two-day, small-scale conference.

Another participant at the conference was DOJ official Lisa Holtyn, who was listed as a senior intelligence adviser at the DOJs Organized Crime and Racketeering Section Criminal Division.

Notably, Holtyn is the same DOJ official Nellie included on many of her emails to Bruce that contained her Russia-related research.

Holtyn previously played a role in the DOJs handling of Operation Fast and Furious, as documented in a July 18, 2011, email she sent titled TOC Strategy QAs on Operation Fast and Furious.

How would you advise that we respond to the first proposed question on Op Fast and Furious? FYI, there are numerous references throughout the strategy (see attached pdf file) to weapons and firearms trafficking, the email read.

Ties Between Simpson and the Ohrs

Nellie Ohr acknowledged in her testimony that Simpson must have been aware of her prior work for the CIA, given that they had both participated in the same conference.

Mr. Jordan: Do you have any knowledge that your experience as a contractor for various Federal agencies was marketed to Simpson ahead of your employment?

Ms. Ohr: I gave them a resume.

Mr. Jordan: So he knew about that. But do you think they  any knowledge that he knew about even prior to you handing him or submitting your resume to him?

Ms. Ohr: Well, he knew that  we had been at a conference together, so  and at the time of the conference, my name was listed as open  as working for open-source work.

Nellie Ohr also testified that Simpson was aware when he hired her that her husband worked at the DOJ.

Rep. Jordan: And did he know at the time that he hired you that your husband worked for the Department of Justice?

Ms. Ohr: Yes.

But Simpson was not just aware of her husband and his position; the two men were also acquainted.

Rep. Jordan: Was Glenn Simpson acquainted with your husband, Bruce? Did they have a friendship or relationship prior to you going to work for Fusion?

Ms. Ohr: They were acquainted, yes.

Bruce Ohr, in his own testimony before congressional investigators on Aug. 28, 2018, confirmed that he was acquainted with both Simpson and Steele:

In the course of this many years, I met with both  I had become acquainted with both Chris Steele, Glenn Simpson, and other people. And from time to time, these people would give me information about Russian oligarchs and other Russian organized crime figures, and then I would pass that to the FBI, or introduce people to the FBI so that they could continue.

He also said that Nellie knew Glenn Simpson for several years as well, because he was interested in Russian organized crime.

My wife was a Russia analyst. And so I think they met, he said.

Ive seen Glenn Simpson at various  on various occasions over the years, and I believe my wife has as well.

Bruce, however, appeared particularly cautious regarding his personal knowledge of how his wife came to be employed by Fusion GPS: I dont remember who made the contact, whether she spoke with Glenn Simpson directly or whether there was another party or someone else involved. I just know it wasnt me. Bruce also claimed to have no idea how much Nellie was paid for her work with Fusion.

Bruce Ohrs Knowledge About His Wifes Work

Bruce and Nellie Ohr both met with Christopher Steele at a breakfast meeting in Washington on July 30, 2016. Also present at the meeting was another undisclosed, younger man, whom Nellie said had a British accent.

The meeting proved to be pivotal, as it marked the beginning of Bruces role as a backchannel from Steele to the FBI, which he would continue to do even after the FBI formally terminated its relationship with Steele over unauthorized contacts with the media.

Bruce noted in his testimony that following the meeting, he certainly tried to keep separate what I was getting from Chris Steele and from Glenn Simpson from any conversations with my wife.

Bruce said he was aware of his wifes work peripherally, telling investigators: She was a Russia analyst, and she would research people and companies that Fusion GPS asked her to look into. She would do her research on the internet, open sources; and she would report her findings to Fusion GPS.

Bruce also acknowledged that [at] some point, I became aware that some of the people she was investshe was researching were some of the same people that I had heard about from Chris Steele and Glenn Simpson.

Marital privilege was invoked during both testimoniesbut far more often in Nellies testimony than in Brucesto avoid answering questions about what the two knew about each others work.

During one of the few times when marital privilege was not invoked, Nellie stated: I dont recall telling him the content of what I was researching, but Im not sure about that. The fact that I was doing work for GPS, clearly, he was aware of that.

Nellies Involvement in Bruces DOJ Work

Email communications reveal Nellie Ohr played an active part in her husbands career, helping to host two high-profile delegations during a period of less than two months.

One dinner involved a visit by European analysts specializing in Russian organized crime, while the other involved a high-profile British delegation and took place while she was working for Fusion GPS.

Email records show that the Ohrs hosted the Russia analysts for a dinner at their home on April 25, 2016.

At the time, Bruce Ohr was the head of the DOJs Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force Section (OCDETF). Among those meeting with the delegation from Europe were Ivana Nizich and Joe Wheatley, then both trial attorneys in the DOJs Organized Crime and Gang Section. Nizich had previously worked for Bruce.

A March 7, 2016, email sent by Stefan Bress, a first secretary at the German Embassy, to Bruce Ohr and Lisa Holtyn showed the proposed agenda for the visit:

Stability of the Putin regime before the Duma elections

Impact of Russian influence operations in Europe (PsyOps/InfoWar)

Situation of Eurasian organized crime (how organized crime is used for politics within Russia and abroad)

Although no further details of the dinner are available, both Nizich and Wheatley would continue to appear in the communications of both Nellie and Bruce.

On March 23, 2016, Lisa Holtynthe DOJ official who had been copied in on most of Nellies Russia-related emails that were sent to Bruce at the DOJsuddenly reached out to Bruce, asking for Nellies help researching an unknown matter.

Holtyn was asking for Nellies help on behalf of Nizich and Wheatley:

She and Joe Wheatley are working on one of the [redacted] and trying to get some general background info that may be helpful to them. I told her Nellie might be a great resource.  Do you think she would be comfortable with talking to them, and would it present any conflict of interest issues for her or for you?

Bruce forwarded Holtyns email to Nellie, saying: Hi honey! I trust you are okay with this? Nellie responded almost immediately with Sure!

Notably, starting on May 3, 2016, Nellie began to include both Nizich and Wheatley in the emails containing articles and notes on Russia that she had previously been sending to Bruce and Lisa Holtyn.

The first email that Nellie included them on contained a lengthy set of notes and articles on Russia that had been compiled by Wayne Allensworth, who previously worked as a Russia analyst at the Foreign Broadcast Information Servicethe predecessor to the governments open-source resource center, Open Source Enterprise, which is managed by the CIA.

The second dinner Nellie helped to host involved a high-ranking British official.

A May 6 email sent by Denise Turcotte to Bruce Ohr references the June 5 dinner with Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions (DPP) in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Saunderss tenure as DPP was marked by ongoing scandals, including a series of collapsed rape trials, in which individuals had been wrongly imprisoned as a result of disclosure failings, according to a July 20, 2018, Guardian article. She was the first-ever head of the Crown Prosecution Service not to receive a knight- or damehood at the end of their service.

Nellie was forwarded Turcottes email, which said, DPP and her party would be delighted to have dinner at your home, by Bruce, with a short note that said, The British are coming! Nellie responded to Bruce, Cool, thanks!

Both Ohrs Were in Contact With Simpson

Nellie Ohr testified that she and her husband shared a personal email account. The email address appears to have been the primary account used by Nellie, as many of the emails she sent to Bruce Ohrs official DOJ email account originated from their shared account.

On Dec. 11, 2016, Glenn Simpson sent an email to the shared account that contained an article from ThinkProgress about the NRAs ties to a Russian gun rights group run by Maria Butina and her boss, Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian central bank.

Approximately 50 minutes later, someone, likely Nellie, responded to Simpson with Thank you!

Nellie, though evasive, acknowledged during her testimony that it may have been her who responded to Simpson:

Rep. Meadows: So you could have been exchanging back and forth with the Think Progress article?

Ms. Ohr: It could have been.

The following day, Dec. 12, 2016, Simpson emailed againusing the existing email thread from the previous daywith the short message Please ring if you can.

Six minutes later, Nellie forwarded the Simpson email to Bruce, saying, I assume Glenn means you not me.

How did Nellie know the email from Simpson was intended for her husband? The email account was used primarily by her and shed previously responded to an earlier email within the same email chain.

Two days prior, on Dec. 10, 2016, Bruce Ohr had met with Simpson in person, according to Bruces testimony. At this meeting, Simpson provided him with additional information regarding contacts with the Trump campaign. Simpson also provided him with a memory stick to pass on to the FBI.

Mr. Ohr: He provided me with a memory stick, and he provided additional information regarding the contacts between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

Bruce testified that he gave Simpsons memory stick, along with one he received from his wife, to FBI agent Joseph Pientka, who had been assigned as his handler at the time.

If Nellie was aware of Bruces Dec. 10 meeting with Simpson, its possible she assumed the email request for a phone call was intended for her husband. It still raises the question of why Nellie, in that case, was aware of her husbands meetings with Simpson.

When questioned about the email, and how she intuitively understood Simpsons request to call was intended for Bruce, Nellie responded evasively. But, unlike during her husbands testimony, congressional investigators kept pressing the matter:

Rep. Meadows: But you get an email that says  please call me, and you say, This must be for you, referring to your husband. How would you know?

Ms. Ohr: Because I couldnt think of a reason that he would need me to talk to him because I had finished working for him.

At one point, Nellie claimed she was very busy on a new job and told investigators that my work for them was done. As the questioning continued, Nellie once again invoked marital privilege, telling Meadows, As I understand, any communications between my husband and myself are privileged.

As time in her interview session ran out, Nellie stuck to her basic answer:

Ms. Ohr: I just didnt see a reason why he would want to talk to me on the phone.
House to Modernize But More Transparency Not on the Agenda

WASHINGTONAmong Nancy Pelosis first moves as Speaker of the House was to create the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, with six members from each political party and chaired by Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.).

She did so, Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed, because voters demanded a Congress that would be ethical, transparent, unifying, and responsive to their needs and aspirations.

But making the House more transparentand thus more accountable to votersgot lost somewhere along the way between the November 2018 election that restored Democrats to the majority for the first time since 2010 and the official House rules adopted Jan. 4, that created the select panel.

The rules direct the committee to recommend policies on everything but improving transparency, including developing the next generation of leaders; staff recruitment, diversity, retention, and compensation and benefits; administrative efficiencies, including purchasing, travel, outside services, and shared administrative staff; technology and innovation; and the work of the House Commission on Congressional Mailing Standards.

Thirty House membersincluding Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)testified at the committees first hearing on March 12.

But the word transparency was mentioned by only three of the 30. McCarthy, for example, reminded the committee that part of rebuilding the confidence of the American people is more transparency in the legislative process. Even as a member of Congress, we sometimes find out whats in a bill just hours before it comes to the floor.

McCarthy then asked, Can Congress institute block-chain technologies to add transparency to the lawmaking process? Just as the blockchain documents every financial transaction, can it document every legislative alteration?

If that fails, McCarthy asked if perhaps we can utilize the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in bill drafting, introduction, markup, scheduling, and voting. Imagine Microsoft Words track changes feature, but for the U.S. Code.

Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Franking Commission, which oversees members use of tax-paid postage for communications to constituents, told the committee that we are behind the times when it comes to transparency. In an era when constituents can follow our actions online and Google our financial disclosures, campaign reports, and office spending online, they should be able to access our franked mail and communications, too.

Davis acknowledged that much of the materials regulated by the commission are technically available to the public, but she pointed out that you can only see it if you come to Washington, go to the Clerks office, and pay 10 cents a page to print.

Davis also pointed out that taxpayers who view such records have to identify themselves. I believe it is simply good government to let the public view the franked materials theyve paid for without being asked for personal information about themselves, she said.

Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) was the third member to mention transparency, as she encouraged the committee to consider her proposal to require the House Ethics Committee to make its reports public.

Others among the 30 testifying at the hearing recommended things like improving the design of congressional office buildings and furniture (Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.), paying higher salaries to congressional aides (Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J.), and convening a bipartisan congressional retreat to encourage more harmony among members.

Another, Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), even proposed restoring anonymity to members who sign discharge petitions, which are a legislative tool for forcing a recalcitrant committee chairman to send a bill to the full House for a vote. House rules have required signers names to be made public since 1993.

Political strategists from across the ideological spectrum expressed disappointment with the committees early performance.

The entire scope of the purposes of the committee is subject to potential abuse unless its work is done with great transparency, warned Mark Fitzgibbons.

Fitzgibbons is president of corporate affairs for American Target Advertising, the political strategy and communications firm based in Manassas, Virginia, and founded by direct mail fundraising pioneer Richard Viguerie.

And just as much as the executive branch and administrative state should be open to transparency under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, it is time to ensure Congress is subject to the sameor even greaterlevel of legally compelled transparency, and make FOIA apply to the first branch, Fitzgibbons suggested.

The FOIA was approved by Congress in 1966 and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, but the representative branch has never been subject to the law.

Democratic strategist Jimmy Williams said members of Congress should be required to make their tax returns public.

Members should have to release their tax returns anytime theyre on the public payroll. The same goes for the president and anyone confirmed by the Senate. Do that and you will see who is being bought and paid for.
Ease (fka EaseCentral), a San Francisco, CA-based HR and benefits software solution for SMBs, insurance brokers, and insurance carriers, closed a $19m Series B funding round.

The round was led by Centana Growth Partners with participation from Propel Venture Partners, Compound Ventures, Freestyle Capital and Upside Partnership.

The company intends to use the funds to build new product capabilities and hire talent.

Started in 2012 by CEO David Reid and Courtney Guertin, Ease is an online benefits enrollment system built for insurance brokers and employers. The company allows people to set up and manage benefits, onboard new hires, stay compliant, and offer employees one destination for all their human resources information.

The company, which has offices in Las Vegas, New York, Omaha, and San Diego, recently hired COO Petar Nedyalkov and VP Engineering Toshi Kureha.

In addition to the funding, it announced an update to their system, used by over 60,000 businesses. In collaboration with MetaLab, the update will include a new product design and system enhancements, such as the ability for businesses to directly submit benefit enrollment to national insurance carriers, and partner collaboration features that connect key industry players, like third party administrators and carriers.

FinSMEs

19/03/2019
The corporate headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, on Nov. 29, 2018. German law enforcement and tax authorities raided the offices over suspicions of tax evasion and money laundering. (Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)

How Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank May Stack up as a Single Bank

Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG have finally confirmed merger talks. In a sparsely-worded regulatory filing on March 17, Deutsche Bank said its engaging in talks with its cross-town rival as it seeks to boost growth and profitability. The banks gave no indication on how a deal would be structured or financed and said it may not happen at all.

The talks raise plenty of questions. Estimates of how much capital Deutsche Bank would have to raise to acquire Commerzbank vary widely. Then theres the issue of whether the banks would be forced to sell some of their best-performing businesses. Allianz SE is already said to be exploring the possibility of a combination of its asset management arm with Deutsche Banks DWS asset management unit, though that could be wishful thinking.

Investment bankers will also be watching closely for any sign of a retreat from New York, London or Hong Kong. Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing has repeatedly ruled out a withdrawal from the U.S., which is home to the worlds deepest capital markets, and said in a letter to employees on March 17 thattalks notwithstandingthe bank continues to target a leading position in Germany and Europe, with a global network.

Pooling the assets of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank would make the combined firm Europes fourth-largest lender with a 1.81 trillion-euro ($2.05 trillion) balance sheet, based on data from the end of December. Deutsche Banks retrenchment meant it lost that spot to Spains Banco Santander SA last year.

Deutsche Banks revenue has declined for three years running , with no end in sight. Adding Commerzbanks earnings to the mix could take Deutsche Banks revenue to slightly above its 2012 peak of 33.7 billion euros, assuming clients stick around and the lenders dont sell assets.

The banks would face upfront costs to combine their operations and fire staff, but the resulting savings could reduce their annual expenses by more than 2.2 billion euros over the longer term, according to the average of four analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Thats still just a small fraction of their overall expenses.

Together, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank employ about 140,000 people, more than half of whom are located in Germany. Eliminating a large chunk of those jobs could substantially reduce the costs of a merged bank. As many as 30,000 positions could be at risk if a deal is reached, people familiar with the matter have said. Deutsche Bank executives are looking for reassurances theyll get government backing for job cuts as they consider going public with their merger discussions.

While a deal would leave only one German bank with global reach, the combined firm wouldnt be dominant at home. A merged Deutsche-Commerzbank would control less than 10 percent of German bank branches and would still face competition from savings and cooperative lenders. Those firms arent under the same pressure to generate profits and they have ruled the market for retail banking.

By Nicholas Comfort & Steven Arons
Majority Say Economy in Good Shape Under Trump: CNN Poll

A sizable majority of Americans say that that economy under the Trump administration is flourishing, according to a new CNN poll (pdf) conducted by SSRS, an independent research company. At the same time, President Donald Trumps approval rating shot up.

The polling data, released on March 18, revealed that 71 percent overall think that the countrys economy is in good shape, the highest number since February 2001 and the best rating Trump has received during his presidencyby two points. On the same question, 26 percent said they thought the economy was very good.

Another majority, 51 percent, approved of the way Trump has handled the nations economy. In the new poll, the presidents approval rating ticked up to 42 percent. The percentage who disapprove of Trumps job performance was at the lowest number since CNN has polled his presidency. Meanwhile, a daily presidential tracking poll by Rasmussenthe most accurate poll in predicting the 2016 presidential election resultsshowed that 47 percent of likely U.S. voters approved of Trumps job performance as of March 19.

Other sections were more partisan. When asked to compare their current financial situation to three years ago, 65 percent of Republicans reported an improved financial situation while 19 percent of Democrats said the same.

A different poll earlier this month showed Trumps handling of the economy reached the highest point of approval in his presidency, according to a Gallup poll published on March 5.

Polling data revealed that 56 percent of Americans approve of how the president is handling the economy, marking a new high for Trump by Gallup. The percentage was also the highest number out of all the 14 domestic and foreign issues tested in the latest Gallup poll. Not far behind was Trumps handling of unemployment, where he gained an approval rating of 54 percent.

.are all coming back to the U.S. So is everyone else. We now have the best Economy in the World, the envy of all. Get that big, beautiful plant in Ohio open now. Close a plant in China or Mexico, where you invested so heavily pre-Trump, but not in the U.S.A. Bring jobs home!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2019

Gallup pollsters noted that Trumps overall rating appears to be stabilizing at a higher level than it had been in late 2018 and early 2019. Trump wrote in a March 19 Twitter post that We now have the best Economy in the World, the envy of all.

Trump unveiled a new outline for government spending on March 11, titled A Budget for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First. This will be Trumps third budget resolution sent to Congress.

My 2020 budget builds on the tremendous progress we have made and provides a clear roadmap for the Congress to bring federal spending and debt under control, Trump said in his proposal.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Fox News in an interview on March 10 that funding for the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was a major issue for the president.

The whole issue of the wall and border security is of paramount importance, Kudlow said. We have a crisis down there; I think the president has made that case very effectively. Its a crisis of economics; its a crisis of crime and drugs; its a crisis of humanity.

Hes going to stay with his wall, and hes going to stay with the border security theme, he continued. I think its essential.
A man walks past a billboard for 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a state investment fund, at its flagship Tun Razak Exchange development in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on February 27, 2015. (Olivia Harris/Reuters)

Malaysia to Summon Two Goldman Sachs Units Ahead of 1MDB Case

KUALA LUMPURMalaysian prosecutors on March 18 said they would issue summonses to units of U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs in London and Hong Kong, requiring them to respond by June to criminal charges filed against them last year.

Soon after being elected in May 2018, a new government charged three units of Goldman Sachs for misleading investors by making untrue statements and omitting key facts in relation to bond issues totaling $6.5 billion for state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

On March 18, only the Singapore unit of Goldman Sachs appeared at a pre-trial hearing in a Kuala Lumpur court as a respondent.

Fresh summonses will be served on the United Kingdom and Hong Kong offices of Goldman Sachs ahead of the next court hearing on June 24, prosecutor Aaron Paul Chelliah told reporters.

The 1MDB scandal played a major role in the electoral defeat that ended Najib Razaks near-decade in power, and a new government led by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad promptly re-opened corruption investigations.

Najib, who has consistently denied wrongdoing, is facing multiple criminal charges, mostly linked to 1MDB, and has been barred from leaving the country.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has estimated that a total of $4.5 billion was misappropriated by high-level 1MDB fund officials and their associates between 2009 and 2014, including some of the funds that Goldman Sachs helped raise.

Malaysia has said it was seeking up to $7.5 billion in reparations from Goldman Sachs, including $600 million in fees paid to the bank for the bond issues.

Goldman Sachs has consistently denied wrongdoing and said certain members of the former Malaysian government and 1MDB lied to it about how proceeds from the bond sales would be used.

A separate Kuala Lumpur court also set April 15 for prosecutors to serve documents to the defense for former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng.

Ng, a Malaysian, was charged on Dec. 19 last year with abetting the bank to provide misleading statements in the offering prospectus for the 1MDB bond sales.

Prosecutor Zaki Arsyad told the court he needed more time to obtain documents as most of them were overseas.

Ng was originally set to be extradited to the United States to face money laundering charges filed against him by the DoJ.

Malaysia, however, has said it may postpone the extradition until Ng can face a domestic trial first.

Tim Leissner, another former Goldman Sachs official, and Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho have also been charged in the United States over the alleged theft of billions of dollars from 1MDB. Leissner has pleaded guilty.

Low, whose whereabouts is unknown, has issued denials of any wrongdoing and has refused to return to Malaysia, saying that the case against him is politically motivated.

By Rozanna Latiff
Google in New York on Nov. 1, 2018. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images)

Mans Fall Down Staircase Captured on Google Street View

Warning: An image in this article might be disturbing to some viewers.

A Google Street View image captured the terrifying moment a man fell backward down a set of stairs in New Jersey.

The Google car, which is equipped with several cameras, was driving down Willow Avenue in Hoboken when the man was seen tumbling backward.

Still, at least there was no-one there to see him. Oh, wait  Yahoo UK & Ireland  2019318

In the picture, the man appears to try and catch the stairs railing but isnt successful in preventing his fall.

In the next Street View image, the man is seen hitting his head on the step.

While some social media described his fall as hilarious, its anything but. A closeup of one of the images shows the mans head making contact with the concrete, which could be potentially fatal.

That looks like it hurt!  Daily Mail  2019318

Google also captured bystanders looking in the direction of the man.

According to Patch.com, Googles Street View image of 725 Willow Ave. in Hoboken apparently changed on March 18 after the pictures went viral.

The man who fell was apparently blurred.

The original image was captured in August 2018.

Other details about the incident are not clear.

Fox News reported that the photos were first surfaced by users on Twitter.

Its not clear if the man was seriously hurt.

Google Street View Makes Dog a Star

A Google Street View car apparently captured the moment an excited dog chased after it for a number of frames.

The photos were taken in Kumage, Japan, several years ago.

In the several Google photos, the dog is seen sprinting down the road to catch up to the Google Street View car, which has a giant, globe-like camera attached to the top.

The dog appears to have first spotted the car as it was sitting next to a boat along a road.

Its not clear who owns the dog or if it was a stray.

SORA News reported that the dog became a hit on blogs that observe Google Street View.

A closeup photo shows the dog (Google Street)
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks to media outside his office on Capitol Hill in Washington, on June 22, 2016. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

Marco Rubio Rebukes Democrats Attempt to Get Rid of the Electoral College

Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio rebuked Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other leading presidential contenders who have endorsed abolishing the electoral college.

In a Tuesday morning tweet storm, the 2016 presidential candidate accused 2020 Democrats of trampling on Americas constitutional norms, arguing that the proposal is politically motivated.

The Democrat plan to get rid of the Electoral College has nothing to do with making sure every vote counts, Rubio said. Its about diminishing the electoral power of what liberals arrogantly call the flyover states & of Americans they habitually disrespect as uneducated & backwards.

#ElectoralCollege was work of genius by founders. It requires candidates for President to earn votes from various parts of country. And it makes sure interests of less populated areas arent ignored at the expense of densely populated areas. 1/2  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 19, 2019

Ironically same people always preaching about our constitutional norms want to change the ones they find inconvenient. In addition to getting rid of #ElectoralCollege they also want to pack #SCOTUS. I will soon file a bill to prevent this court packing scheme. 2/2  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 19, 2019

Rubios tweets came in response to Warrens call for the elimination of the electoral college in an MSNBC town hall. The elimination of the electoral college has been a rallying cry for Democrats ever since 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton lost the electoral college, despite winning the popular vote.

Twelve states have passed laws mandating that their electoral college votes go to the winner of the national popular vote, although all of them are solid blue states.

By William Davis
Cockroaches locked in a container at a laboratory at the center of research on infectious diseases of the University Hospital Institute (IHU) Mediterranean Infection in Marseille, France, on March 29, 2018. (Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images)

Michigan Man Throws Loaded Shoe at Cockroach, Accidentally Shoots Himself

A Michigan man throwing a shoe containing a loaded gun at a cockroach accidentally shot himself in the foot.

Police said the 50-year-old Detroit man lobbed his shoe at the insect in a bid to kill it, WDIV ClickOnDetroit reported, but he ended up wounded instead.

The victims name was not disclosed in the report.

Detroit police responded to the incident, which took place in the 18700 block of Albion Street on Tuesday, March 19, at the home of the wheelchair-bound man.

Citing police sources, WDIV reported that when the man threw the shoe at the bug, a loaded revolver that had been stashed inside fell out and discharged.

A bullet then hit the man in the foot.

No further details were provided on the mans condition, nor on the fate of the cockroach.

Child Shoots Mom With Shotgun

The incident recalls the recent case of a young California boy who accidentally shot his mother in the torso with a shotgun.

Los Angeles County authorities made an arrest after a boy less than 5 years old shot and wounded his mother with a shotgun that had been left in a car.

The Sheriffs Department said 24-year-old Brandon Ambriz of Norwalk was in custody on Jan. 24, 2019, on charges of a parole violation, illegally possessing a firearm, and child endangerment, according to The Associated Press.

#GUN #SAFETY TIPS

Always store unloaded

Use trigger or cable lock

Store in locked container (safe, cabinet, vault, etc.)

Store ammo separately Talk to your #children about guns and gun safety. If you have unwanted firearms, turn them in (unloaded) to us for destruction.#LASD pic.twitter.com/AjwSCibv5Y  LASD Norwalk Station (@NorwalkLASD) January 24, 2019

Authorities said the mother, another woman, and four children were in a car on the afternoon of Jan. 23, in a preschool parking lot in Norwalk when the boy discharged the firearm from the backseat.

The blast went through the drivers seat and hit his mother in the torso. Shes in stable condition.

Police arrested Ambriz on the same day as the shooting.

The four children were placed in the custody of county child welfare workers.

UPDATE  WOMAN SHOT BY CHILD

The woman remains hospitalized, listed in stable condition. Four children placed in care of #DCFS. Male suspect arrested yesterday for various felonies, incl. a warrant, #criminal storage of a #firearm and #ChildEndangerment. #LASD #Norwalk pic.twitter.com/K52tTzM6b6  LASD Norwalk Station (@NorwalkLASD) January 24, 2019

Accidental Shootings

Far fewer Americans fall victim to firearm accidents than some two decades ago, even though people own more guns, according to new data.

Accidental firearm discharges killed 486 people in 2017, down more than 50 percent since 1997, according to mortality data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Meanwhile, gun sales increased more than 80 percent between 1999 and 2017, according to The DataFace, a San Francisco data analysis company, which based its estimates on FBI background check data.

Gun Locks

There has also been a prominent push for the safe storage of guns.

Gun makers have partnered with law enforcement for a nationwide education drive called Project ChildSafe that has distributed over 37 million gun locks. But that project only started in 1999, while the decline in accidental death rates started decades before, dropping about fourfold between 1974 and 1999, according to CDC and the National Safety Council nonprofit (pdf).

Epoch Times reporter Peter Svab contributed to this report.
Search crews have found the body of missing Newcastle woman Ruth Maguire in a sea inlet along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland on March 18, 2019. (Ruth Maguire/Facebook)

Missing Mother of Three, Ruth Maguire: Body Found in Sea

A body has been found in the search for an Irish woman missing after a bachelorette party.

Ruth Maguire, 30, was last seen on the night of Saturday, March 16, in Taaffes Bar in Carlingford, where she was partying with friends, according to the BBC.

Multiple news outlets reported that search crews discovered a womans body on Monday in Carlingford Lough, a sea inlet along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Police later said the remains belonged to the missing mother of three.

A spokesman for the Irish policecalled Gardaiwas cited by The Metro as saying, The body is believed to be that of missing woman Ruth Maguire. Gardai wish to thank the public for their help in this instance, the help of the volunteers and the Coastguard. No further assistance is required.

Search ongoing for missing girl in Carlingford. Greenore Coastguards and local Gardai involved. Please God she will be found safe. pic.twitter.com/Xa7VVAQYvy  Carlingford Lough (@CarlingfordIRE) March 17, 2019

Out of Character

Maguire, of Newcastle, was part of a group of 32 people who traveled to Carlingford, which is in the Republic of Ireland, to celebrate an upcoming wedding.

Some members of the group were cited by The Metro as saying that at around 11:30 p.m. they noted that she was nowhere to be seen.

The search for Maguire was launched the following morning when one of the group alerted the authorities that she was not at their rented property, located about five minutes away from Taaffees Bar.

One of her friends told BBC that her disappearance was completely out of character.

Friend Colette Delaney was cited by The Metro as saying that Maguire had no coat and it was freezing, adding that she was worried sick.

Please God help her be found safe, Delaney added.

Search is ongoing in Carlingford for missing woman Ruth Maguire, with various rescue organisations from early light this morning. Anyone with any information on Ruths whereabouts is urged to contact Carlingford Garda Station on 042 937 3102. pic.twitter.com/oaVW8uSsKT  Carlingford Lough (@CarlingfordIRE) March 18, 2019

Another member of the 32-strong group Katrina OHare told Belfast Live there was talk of Maguire planning to return home to Newcastle that night.

We thought she was going to head home to Newcastle because she had said to a bouncer she was going to get to Newcastle from here but her partner and kids were at her mums house in Ligoniel (Belfast).

OHare said Maguires boyfriend went back to Newcastle, but Maguire was not there.

He drove down today and she was not there. Her mobile is going straight to voicemail. It was 11:30 p.m. last night she was last seen.

Security cameras captured Maguire walking toward the waterfront at Carlingford Lough after leaving the pub, according to The Mirror.

Thoughts and Prayers

The large-scale hunt for the missing woman involved multiple agencies, including the Irish Coast Guard, crews from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), members of a scuba diving club, and a helicopter.

Coastguard Helicopter In carlingford now searching for Ruth Maguire pic.twitter.com/Yp84i66Ab2  Dundalk News (@DundalksNews) March 17, 2019

Responders from the Kilkeel Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) found the womans body.

John Fisher, from Kilkeel RNLI, was cited by the BBC as saying, This was not the outcome we or the family wanted and at this difficult time our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the casualty. I would also like to thank the volunteer crew for their commitment and energy. We train for such an incident but always pray that it has a better outcome.

No cause of death has been announced.
Trinity Love Jones, along with a police sketch, whose body was found on a trail in LA County, Calf., on March 5, 2019. (Los Angeles County Sheriffs Departmen)

Mom Charged in Killing of LA-Area Girl Found in Duffel Bag

LOS ANGELESA woman was arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of her 9-year-old daughter was found in a duffel bag along a suburban horse trail near Los Angeles, authorities said on March 18.

Taquesta Graham, 28, is expected to be charged with murder on Wednesday, Los Angeles County sheriffs officials said.

Taquesta Graham, 28, the mother of Trinity Love Jones whose body was found in a duffel bag in Hacienda Heights, has been booked on homicide charges. https://t.co/sxDK4dEoFx  FOX 11 Los Angeles (@FOXLA) March 19, 2019

Prosecutors last week charged Grahams boyfriend, Emiel Hunt, with murder in the killing of Trinity Love Jones.

The dead girl was found March 5 at the bottom of an embankment in the suburb of Hacienda Heights. She was wearing pants with a panda pattern and a pink shirt that said, Future Princess Hero.

There were no obvious signs of trauma on her body. Authorities have not revealed a cause of death or motive.

Graham was extradited from Texas to California last week and was initially held on an unrelated warrant. Graham was in custody Monday and could not be reached for comment.

Hunt, 38, has a previous child abuse conviction from 2005 in San Diego County, according to prosecutors. His arraignment is scheduled for April 16.

Friends and family members described Trinity as a joyful and talented girl who did well in school. A memorial near where her body was found featured stuffed animals, heart-shaped balloons, dozens of votive candles, and notes expressing love for Trinity and one that said, Rest in heaven, Princess.

Antonio Jones, the father of the victim, said the girl had been living with her mother, and she hadnt let him see the girl.

He and other family members were in Los Angeles County Superior Court in Pomona on March 12, as Hunt made a brief appearance but did not enter a plea.

I felt like a monster. I wanted to do to him what he did to her, Barbara Jones, the girls grandmother, told reporters outside the courthouse.

If convicted, Hunt faces a sentence of up to 50 years to life in state prison, prosecutors said.

Hunt was being held on a $2 million bail and could not be reached for comment.
US President Donald Trump (L) walks towards Marine One while departing the White House in Washington, on May 17, 2017; Former FBI Director Robert Mueller (R) during his farewell ceremony at the Justice Department in Washington, on Aug. 1, 2013. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters; Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)

More Americans Shun Russian Election Interference Probe, Believe Trump Is Victim of a Witch Hunt

Half of the Americans surveyed in a new poll agree that the U.S. president is the victim of a witch hunt in relation to the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference.

The latest USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll reveals that public trust surrounding Robert Muellers ongoing probe into President Donald Trumps alleged involvement in suspected Russian government attempts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election is falling.

The poll, which asked 1,000 registered voters about their views on the investigation, found half of the pollsters agreed that the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt, echoing Trumps consistent claims of being investigated for political reasons instead of credible allegations of wrongdoing. Only 47 percent disagreed and 3 percent did not have an opinion.

There are still clear partisan divisions over the question, with 86 percent of Republicans and 14 percent of Democrats agreeing that Trump is the victim of a witch hunt. Among independents, 54 percent echo this view.

Trump welcomed the poll result in a tweet and seemed to suggest that more details are expected to be revealed in the near future.

Wow! A Suffolk/USA Today Poll, just out, states, 50 percent of Americans agree that Robert Muellers investigation is a witch hunt, Trump said in a Twitter post dated March 18. MSNBC Very few think it is legit! We will soon find out.

Wow! A Suffolk/USA Today Poll, just out, states, 50 percent of Americans agree that Robert Muellers investigation is a Witch Hunt. @MSNBC Very few think it is legit! We will soon find out?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2019

Suffolk Political Research Center Director David Paleologos believes the shift in public sentiment is thanks to Trumps very persuasive communication skills.

Even among people who said they had some trust in the Mueller investigation, half agreed with President Trumps witch hunt allegation, he told USA TODAY.

Many people who were surveyed are convinced that Trumps allegations that he is being targeted are true.

Trump, he gets badgered every single day, said Republican Robert Lynch, 62, of Selden, New York. Lynch says that Muellers report will say no collusion, absolutely none. Mueller has not brought any charges of collusion. It has, however, resulted in indictments for dozens of Russian nationals and companies as well as a number of former Trump associates.

The highest percentage of respondents to date believe Trumps denials are highly credible, at 30 percent, while support for the House of Representatives to consider impeaching the president is dwindling by 10 percentage points to just 28 percent, compared to that in October 2018.

This downward trend could be explained by House Speaker Nancy Pelosis (D-Calif.) recent remark that any attempt to remove Trump from office will not be worthwhile and even further divide the nation. Pelosis comments against impeachment influenced the opinion of 41 percent of Democrats compared to 42 percent who said her comments had no impact.

Overall 53 percent of Democrats support impeachment compared to 6 percent of Republicans.

The president accused the Democrats of trying to use impeachment to steal the U.S. presidency away from him.

What the Democrats have done in trying to steal a presidential election, first at the ballot box and then, after that failed, with the Insurance Policy, is the biggest scandal in the history of our country, Trump said in a Twitter post.

What the Democrats have done in trying to steal a presidential election, first at the ballot box and then, after that failed, with the insurance policy, is the biggest Scandal in the history of our country!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019

The survey also shows the nation is almost evenly divided on Trumps honesty and leadership style, with 52 percent saying they either do not trust or have little trust in the presidents denials that his campaign colluded with Moscow to win the election. This figure is 5 percentage points lower than it was in 2018, suggesting that more people now are believing the president.

Only 28 percent of people surveyed still highly trust that former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Muellers investigation has been conducted fairly and accurately, down 5 points since December and representing the lowest level to-date.

As part of the investigation, Mueller also took over several other existing FBI investigations, including those into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort. Manafort was recently sentenced to a total of 7.5 years in federal prison for financial crimes unrelated to the Russian interference investigation.

Mueller is due to deliver his final report to Attorney General Bill Barr shortly.
Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada, Minister of Energy and Industry of Qatar and President of the OPEC Conference talks with Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo (L-R) OPEC Secretary General of Nigeria prior to the start of a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, at their headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 30, 2016. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

OPECs Barkindo Says Rebound in Oil Investments Very Minimal

BAKU, AzerbaijanThe investments needed to ensure stability in the global oil industry are returning after a downturn, but the pace is still slow, OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said.

Barkindo was talking to Reuters and an Azeri TV station Real on the sidelines of an OPEC and non-OPEC monitoring committee, which is meeting this weekend in the Azeri capital of Baku.

He also said leading oil producing nations have made significant achievements in terms of cooperation and efforts to avoid imbalance between the supply and demand on the global oil market.

Barkindo added he would welcome greater engagement with the United States to tackle industry issues.

According to estimates from Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Officer Amin Nasser last year, the global oil and gas industry needs to invest more than $20 trillion over the next 25 years to meet expected growth in demand and compensate for the natural decline in developed fields.

A number of challenges are arising from the down cycle that we have seen, and at the top of that list is an issue of investments. We have seen investments contract for a couple of years and even at the moment the rebound is very, very minimal, Barkindo said.

For the long cycle projects, which are the base for the global economy, the picture is still not encouraging. Therefore we welcome the United States to join us in this global energy dialogue to address this and other issues affecting this industry.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other large oil producers led by Russia have agreed on joint efforts to curb their oil production in order to restore the balance on the global oil market and support the price.

The first such deal was signed at the end of 2016 in Vienna.

We remain on course and we have made significant progress in ensuring that we do not allow the market to return to an imbalance, Barkindo said, speaking in English.

All participating countries are committed to ensuring that supply and demand remain balanced through stock movement that would remain within the five-year industry average, Barkindo added.

That remains our key metrics in assessing the state of the oil market and so far so good.

By Nailia Bagirova & Vladimir Soldatkin
While there is no wonder regarding the impact of technology over the financial industry, the rapidity with which non-traditional financial products are making their way towards consumers took the brick-and-mortar banks by surprise. But as mobile banking and wireless payments were quickly assimilated by the industry, terms like blockchain and cryptocurrency have yet to overcome the stigma thats been put on them. But what exactly is financial technology and what do financial specialists expect to happen in the years to come?

What is Financial Technology?

Financial technology or Fintech, for short, represents all technology that seeks the improvement and automatization of financial services. While in the beginning, fintech was used more to describe the processes and technologies applied by financial institutions, it has since shifted its orientation more towards the customers. In essence, fintech is used to ease the customers access and management of financial products.

Along with the evolution of technology and smartphones, fintech has evolved to englobe any type of technological inventions utilized for financial purposes. From stock trading to money transfer and credit applications, everything can now be done online, with just a few clicks. Research shows that a little over 33% of consumers are constantly utilizing at least two fintech products and acknowledge the importance of those products in their everyday life.

Financial technology is considered to have disrupted the traditional financial system, by offering consumers easy access to financial products they would otherwise not qualify for, such as secured loans and mortgages. While banks use traditional lending models to extend loans to customers, fintech companies use new lending models that often focus on peer-to-peer transactions.

With the rapid evolution of technology, it is only expected for fintech products to continue revolutionizing the industry as we know it. Specialists predict that, although cryptocurrencies have conquered the media nowadays, other fintech products will soon take the spotlight and consolidate the idea that fintech is more than a passing phase.

Automation and Artificial Intelligence

With AI being the next trend in every developing industry, it was only a matter of time until it reached the financial domain. In the recent years, software that deals with money laundering, compliance and transaction monitoring have been intertwined with AI to facilitate data processing and product customization. In the near future, fintech companies will see an increment in ROI, as more and more products continue to flood the market.

Robotic process automation (RPA) programs will be used for repetitive tasks that are performed by humans, allowing the process to be faster and more precise, eliminates human errors and allowing employees to focus on other tasks. Although the initial costs of RPA software are quite big, revolving around $50,000 per robot, the annual maintenance and running costs are significantly lower than a human employees annual wage. Annual costs per robot unit can reach about $15,000, but companies are expected to see a return of investment between 40-100% in the first 3 to 8 months of implementation.

Mobile Payments

Recent studies reveal that the mobile banking and payment industry worldwide is processing over a billion dollars daily. The more economically disadvantaged areas, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, are the ones benefiting the most from these types of products, due to financial exclusion.

Traditional financial institutions typically have a more strict qualification criteria, driving individuals more and more towards mobile banking accounts. While in 2014, the number of individuals utilizing mobile money accounts in sub-Saharan Africa was a little over 10%, it has since then increased tremendously, reaching 21% in 2017. Based on these facts, financial experts predict the numbers will continue to increase at the rapid pace, especially in regions with low financial inclusion.

Blockchain solutions are also expected to be completely included in financial technology, providing a thicker security layer, which will prevent fraud and protect the customers personal data.

From Disruptors to Partners

In the near future, fintech companies are expected to transform from disruptive competitors to collaborators of traditional financial institutions. The main reason why fintech products have been perceived as disruptors by the financial industry is the hype revolving around cryptocurrency and blockchain. The industry is mainly trying to prevent fintech companies from operating outside the wall of regulations, which is how cryptocurrencies have been perceived.

But there is more to the fintech industry than cryptocurrencies, with applications including insurance technologies, regulatory technologies and smart contracts. This way, fintech companies are expected to partner up with traditional financial institutions and contribute to their evolution.

Online lending programs have experienced a massive increment over the last years, leading to the apparition of other products, such as LoanStar, which is a loan comparison website that helps individuals determine the best lending program that suits their needs. These types of programs can be easily modified to include traditional financial products.

Real-Estate and Smart Contracts

The way smart contracts work is they help individuals exchange money, products or property in a transparent way, replacing the services of an intermediary. To better understand how smart contracts work, lets take the example of renting an apartment. The tenant pays the amount stipulated in the contract through a blockchain and the landlord will provide the tenant with a digital entry key by a set date. After that, the amount will be directed towards the landlord. If the key is not provided on time, the money, which is held in a virtual account, will be refunded to the tenant. This type of system can reduce money laundering and guarantee the legitimacy of the transaction. Smart contracts will completely dismiss intermediaries, which are believed to slow down transactions and will ease the communication between buyers and property owners.

Experts estimate that by 2020, over 20% of real estate transactions will be made utilizing smart contracts and by the end of 2019, the first tokenized real estate projects are expected to reach the market.

Blockchain Technology

The inclusion of blockchain technology will benefit the underbanked or unbaked individuals, with their number expected to drop by under 1 billion, by the end of 2020, as opposed to over 1,7 billion, which is the current total. This way, people or businesses which have experienced trouble in financial products will now have the opportunity to take out loans or open bank accounts, contributing to the global movement of money.

With blockchain and cryptocurrency being the elements that brought fintech into the spotlight, it would only be natural for them to be the ones taking it to the next level.
Parents Protest Over Moldy Food Served to Students at Local School in China, Suppressed by Police

Rotten and expired food served as lunches to students at the Chengdu Number 7 Experimental Middle School in Sichuan Province, China, has caused outrage, rioting, and suppression among parents involved since March 12.

From March 13 to 16, almost 1,000 students in the area were hospitalized.

Police used pepper spray at least once to subdue angry parents during a protest, and a public statement made by the school was allegedly attended by actors posing as parents.

The local authorities later claimed the food was examined and met all safety standards.

School Food Revelation

According to a report from Radio Free Asia, parents discovered the rotten meat on March 12. Children were having abnormal symptoms at that time. Several hundred parents gathered at the school gates and demanded an explanation.

The pictures included food that was moldy and expired.

The parents sued the government education bureau. Pictures of the food that was discovered were also shared on social media.

On March 13, after the revelation, local police in Sichuan said there would be an investigation of all school cafeterias, from kindergartens to universities.

The cafeteria in the school isnt technically connected to the school. School meals are provided by a contracted company called Sichuan Deyu Logistics Service Management Ltd. According to its website, it provides food for 100,000 students.

The foods discovered included meat that had been kept for an uncertain amount of time. There was squid, pig stomach, jerky, and chicken thighs, as well as flavorings and additives.

Some of the food had already begun giving off a foul odor.

The fees for the Number 7 Middle School are $6,000 per year. Many government officials children are reported to attend the school.

Teachers and children eat together, said Li, a mother of one of the students at the school, in an interview with the Chinese language Epoch Times. They all eat this stuff, and the teachers would all be shocked.

In 2017, the schools cafeteria won an award as a model example for cafeterias, according to many mainland media reports.

Parents Protest

On March 13, several thousand parents demonstrated in front of the Number 7 School. A mother by the name of Liu said that the front gate and the playground were packed with parents.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Liu also said that some parents went to petition at the local government bureau; parents carried large banners and blocked roadways during their protest.

More than 1,000 police arrived to suppress the protest, using pepper spray on the parents. The banners were torn up by the police, and many parents were beaten and detained.

Li, who was at the scene since the issue began, said that on the evening of March 12, a truck came to clean out the food storerooms, and ship the food off-site. The parents also reported that to police.

There were a lot of people, they were at the cafeteria, and they surrounded the trucks, Li told The Epoch Times. The police were surrounding and protecting the contractors.

One parent said that those who petitioned were beaten by the police, and instead, the boss of the company was protected by the police.

The lawyer for Sichuan Deyu Logistics Service Management was protected by the police, and all information regarding the event was quickly censored from social media. All related information from the lawyers website was also deleted.

The appeal by the parents included seeking the release of parents who had been detained, removing the vice principal who was in charge of the cafeteria, and suspending the principal.

Other demands included investigating the person in charge, freezing the assets of the associated companies, punishing the contractors and suppliers, and installing closed circuit television to monitor the cafeteria.

The parents demanded that students be offered physicals and given health checks over an extended period of time, and that the schools with tainted food must cover the costs. The school would also have to repay affected students, at triple the amount that parents paid for meals.

Since the school is a public school, its connected to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Parents were informed that the school would cover the cost of students checking into hospitals. However, the exams given were defined by the school. If parents took their children to a hospital on their own, then the hospital wouldnt accept them.

Between March 13 and 16, a large number of students checked into six hospitals. There were 929 students who checked into the area hospitals, 852 received physical examinations, and 77 received treatment.

Government Cover-Up

On March 15, a press conference was held in the school cafeteria, and no parents were allowed into the school. Ten buses of people posing as parents were instead taken into the school to portray happiness and harmony between parents and officials, according to social-media posts.

Police continued their crackdown on the protest, and began to gather information about the protesting parents, including names, phone numbers, and addresses. People were sent to the houses of parents on claims of understanding the lawsuit filed against the government education bureau, but were likely dispatched by the police.

The area around the school was cut off by the police. Thirty police cars surrounded the parents there, and all businesses in the vicinity were closed. After intense censorship of original comments on social media about the moldy food, all comments instead became critical of the parents.

Social-media messages also stated that children werent allowed to transfer to other schools. The local private schools in that area were said to reject students from the Number 7 school.

Several parents currently being investigated by the police are accused of disorderly behavior. The parents were accused of counterfeiting the claims about moldy and expired food. Another internet user who spread the information was detained.

The inspection of the food by the CCP claimed that only several pieces of food were found to have mold.

Some internet users said that the CCP is untrustworthy. [The CCP] finds whoever brings up a problem and takes them out.

No one believes anything the government says, another user said. This is what a government with low credibility does.

At the press conference, the CCP official said that there will be an investigation into the companies involved with the cafeteria.

The principal has been dismissed and will be replaced.
Dr. Johnnie Barto heads into Cambria County Courthouse, in Ebensburg, Pa.,for his sentencing in the sexual assault of over two dozen children,on March 18, 2019. (Todd Berkey/The Tribune-Democrat via AP)

Pediatrician Gets at Least 79 Years for Assaulting Patients

EBENSBURG, Pa.A former Pennsylvania pediatrician was sentenced to at least 79 years in prison on Monday, March 18, for the sexual assault of 31 children, most of them patients, in a case that state medical regulators failed to act on nearly two decades ago.

Dr. Johnnie Barto of Johnstown was sentenced on dozens of counts, including aggravated indecent assault and child endangerment. Prosecutors say he spent decades abusing boys and girls in the exam room at his pediatric practice in western Pennsylvania and at local hospitals, with his victims typically ranging in age from 8 to 12. One was an infant.

Nineteen people gave victim impact statements, both in person and through a prosecutor, describing how Barto caused them to feel hopelessness and despair, caused depression and anxiety, and instilled a fear of doctors.

UPDATE: Pediatrician Johnnie Barto gets at least 79 years for assaulting patients: https://t.co/KItx2QW42P pic.twitter.com/qnspRc3PVd  ABC 7 Chicago (@ABC7Chicago) March 18, 2019

Bartos wife, Linda Barto, was among them.

He has been lying to me about everything for all of the 52 years I have known him.  He spent his whole sinister life lying and sneaking around, so he could carry on his abuse uninterrupted, she said. She said her heart was heavy for the victims.

The attorney generals office had asked for 31 to 62 years in prison.

Barto declined to make a statement.

He pleaded guilty in December to some counts and no contest to others. Hes been jailed pending sentencing. His lawyer, David Weaver, has said Barto opted to enter pleas, so the healing could begin for his family, his victims and for himself.

Authorities had a chance to stop Barto in 2000, when he appeared before the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine on administrative charges that he molested two young girls in the 1990s. But regulators threw out the case and allowed him to keep practicing medicine, saying the allegations were incongruous to his reputation. At the time, the prominent pediatrician had a lot of support in the community.

Barto, now 71, went on to molest at least a dozen more young patients before his arrest in January 2018, according to the state attorney generals office.

Pediatrician gets at least 79 years for assaulting patients https://t.co/nZX3LHZ36Y pic.twitter.com/RjPkuG0Duf  CBS 2 News (@CBS2Boise) March 18, 2019

The medical boards 7-2 decision to let him off the hook in 2000 sparked outrage from victims and at least one former board member. Vivian Lowenstein, who had voted to strip Barto of his license, told The Associated Press last year that she was sick about it and that the case was as an example of how Pennsylvanias physician-regulators typically looked out for their own.

The Pennsylvania Department of State, which provides legal and administrative support to the board and prosecutes administrative cases of doctor misconduct, said last year that the Board of Medicine takes allegations of sexual misconduct by professional licensees very seriously.

Regulators have not commented on the boards 2000 decision.

By Michael Rubinkam
Pentagon Finds $12.8 Billion for Border Wall

The Department of Defense has identified $12.8 billion in funds from projects that can be reallocated to the construction of a wall on the U.S.Mexico border.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) released a spreadsheet from the Pentagon on March 18 that lists military construction projects from which funds can be taken for the construction of a border wall.

President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on the southwest border in February and ordered the Pentagon to shift $3.6 billion from the military construction budget to the border wall.

The Pentagon list represents an initial step in the vetting process to decide which project funds will be tapped for the wall. The criteria for the selection included only projects that have not yet been awarded as of December 2018. Projects with award dates in the fiscal year 2019, military housing, barracks, and dormitory projects will not be impacted, according to the fact sheet.

The Defense Department identified construction projects on overseas bases, including in Spain, Japan, and Italy, as well as domestic bases across the nation, including in New York, Texas, and California.

The appearance of any project within the pool does not mean that the project will, in fact, be used to source [national emergency] projects, the Defense Department said in a statement (pdf).

Congress passed a resolution last week to terminate Trumps emergency declaration, but the president issued his first veto to block it. A dozen Republican senators defied Trump on the termination vote, but it is unlikely more will defect if there is a vote to override the veto. The declaration also faces legal challenges, although the White House is certain it will prevail.

Trump declared a national emergency after Democrats in Congress blocked all efforts to approve $5.7 billion for a border wall requested by the Department of Homeland Security. Congress appropriated $1.4 billion for border wall construction, far short of Trumps request.

Id like to thank all of the Great Republican Senators who bravely voted for Strong Border Security and the WALL, Trump wrote on Twitter on March 15. This will help stop Crime, Human Trafficking, and Drugs entering our Country. Watch, when you get back to your State, they will LOVE you more than ever before!

In addition to shifting $3.6 billion by using the emergency declaration, Trump ordered the reallocation of an additional $3.1 billion from the Treasury and Defense departments, which did not require an emergency declaration.

Illegal border crossings are on pace to reach nearly 1 million this year. In February alone, 66,000 people crossed the border illegally, according to the border patrol. An additional 10,000 were detained after presenting at a port of entry without proper paperwork.

Large groups of more than 100 migrants crossing the border illegally are a new trend at the border this year.

In one instance, Border agents encountered 334 illegal aliens who had been dropped off by eight commercial buses right at the U.S.Mexico border, according to Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

More than 70 such large groups have been apprehended by Border Patrol so far this fiscal yearcompared to 13 such large groups in all of fiscal 2018.

Epoch Times reporter Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report.
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan gestures while speaking to members of the media aboard a military plane prior to his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. on Feb. 23, 2019. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Reuters)

Pentagon Tells Congress of Project Funding That Could Be Reallocated to Pay for Wall

WASHINGTONActing Pentagon Chief Patrick Shanahan said on March 18 he had provided Congress with a list of projects from the military construction budget that could be cut back in order to help pay for a wall on the border with Mexico.

Last month Trump declared a national emergency in a bid to fund his promised wall at the United States-Mexico border without congressional approval.

The emergency declaration allows the Trump administration to use money from the military construction budget if needed.

Madisons Truax Field on Pentagon list of projects that could be affected by border wall #news3now https://t.co/lGOM7P3QlO  News 3 Now / Channel 3000 (@WISCTV_News3) March 19, 2019

Trump issued the first veto of his presidency on Friday to block a measure passed by Democrats and Republicans in Congress that would terminate his emergency declaration for a wall on the United States border with Mexico to stem illegal immigration and crime.

Speaking before the start of his meeting with his French counterpart, Shanahan was asked if he had sent the list of projects to Congress.

I have, Shanahan said.

The more than 20-page document seen by Reuters included all the projects that were not awarded funding as of Dec. 31, 2018.

The list includes a cemetery at the U.S. Military Academy in New York and a command and control facility at Camp Tango in South Korea.

It is essentially up to Congress to go through the list and figure out which projects will not be affected, including military housing, barracks, and projects that have already been awarded funding.

Here is the Pentagons list of construction projects that could be cut to fund a border wall https://t.co/ZUrKUTqg3B pic.twitter.com/VNLMFzmwYy  Military Times (@MilitaryTimes) March 18, 2019

In a statement, the Pentagon said the pool of projects included was valued at about $12.9 billion. The Pentagon has said it could use about $3.6 billion from the military construction budget this year if needed.

The Defense Department has provided Congress with a list of military construction projects that could see their funding diverted  about $12.9 billion in total  to pay for a border wall under Trumps declared national emergencyhttps://t.co/ACxn2yJkbV  Axios (@axios) March 19, 2019

The issue was highlighted during a tense Congressional hearing on Thursday when Democratic Senators demanded that they be provided a list of military assets that could be impacted if funding was used to build a wall.

We know President Trump wants to take money from our national security accounts to pay for his wall, and now we have a list of some of the projects and needed base repairs that could be derailed or put on the chopping block as a result, Senator Jack Reed said in a statement.
People stand in the lobby for Amazon offices in New York on Feb. 14, 2019. (Mark Lennihan/AP Photo)

Poll: Losing Amazon Second HQ Deal Was Bad for New York

ALBANY, N.Y.Most voters in New York think it was bad for the state when Amazon dropped plans to put a second headquarters in Queens and many think U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) bears the blame for the deal falling through, according to a new poll released Monday, March 18.

The Siena College poll of registered voters in New York state found that 67 percent of those surveyed said the internet retailers decision last month was detrimental to New York. Sixty-one percent support the state and city again offering Amazon up to $3 billion in incentives to create 25,000 jobs if the internet giant reconsiders.

While some may have celebrated Amazons announcement to pull the plug, the vast majority of New Yorkers of every stripe thought it was bad for the Empire State, said Siena pollster Steven Greenberg. Clearly, jobs outweigh the cost of government incentives in the minds of most voters.

Siena Poll: 2/3 of Voters Say Amazon Cancelling Queens HQ Bad for NY; 2-to-1 Support for Deal if Ama https://t.co/jUJDS1sf5M  SienaResearch (@SienaResearch) March 18, 2019

The company scrapped plans to redevelop a Long Island City neighborhood for one of its second HQs after the deal met mounting opposition from local elected officials who mostly objected to the incentives package going to a company owned by the worlds richest person, Jeff Bezos.

Among those leading the charge against Amazon was Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens. When asked if several key players in the Amazon situation were a hero, villain or role player, 38 percent of poll responders said Ocasio-Cortez was a villain, compared to 12 percent who call her a hero and 24 percent who considered her a role player.

When Amazon announced Feb. 14 that it was backing out of the Queens deal, Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet: Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazons corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world.

Corbin Trent, a spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez, declined to comment on the poll.

Local Queens activists were deemed the villain by 34 percent. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, fellow Democrats who brokered the Amazon deal, came in at 28 percent and 29 percent, respectively, followed by Amazon itself (26 percent), the Democrat-controlled state Senate (21 percent) and labor unions (17 percent).

Yikes: AOC favorability awfully weak in NEW YORK (state), per new Siena poll. Schumer fav: 51-41 (+10)

Gillibrand fav 43-33 (+10)

Cuomo fav 46-48 (+2)

AOC fav: 31-44 (-13)

De Blasio fav: 34-50 (-16)https://t.co/mLBgJWHSZm  Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) March 18, 2019

Speaking on WAMC radio Monday morning, Cuomo said hes not surprised by the polls finding that most New Yorkers believe the collapse of the deal was bad for the state.

Nothing that I didnt know, he said.

While Cuomo said hes trying to get Amazon to reconsider, he isnt optimistic.

The horse is out of the barn, he said.

The survey included questions on several other issues being debated at the state Legislature, including whether immigrants who entered the country illegally should be allowed to obtain drivers licenses.

A majority of voters61 percentoppose allowing immigrants to get a New York license if they didnt enter the U.S. legally, while 34 percent support the idea.

The poll of 700 registered voters was conducted March 10-14. It has a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.

By Chris Carola
Presidential Hopeful Elizabeth Warren Pushes to Abolish Electoral College

Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren spoke at a town hall meeting in Mississippi where she called for the Electoral Collegethe mechanism the nation now uses to elect its presidentsto be junked.

The Massachusetts Democrat said at the March 16 meeting broadcast on CNN that she would back a plan to scrap the Electoral College and replace it with a system wherein the presidency goes to the victor in a national popular vote.

My view is that every vote matters, Warren said in Jackson, the states capital, in the middle of a three-day swing through the South. And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral Collegeand every vote counts.

While Warren has criticized the Electoral College before, Mondays comments are her most pointed call to dismantle the institution.

Tyranny of the Majority

Warrens push to dismantle the Electoral College adds to calls made by other Democrats to junk the institution.

Fellow Democratic presidential hopeful and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, said during an appearance on CBS This Morning earlier this year that the Electoral College has made the United States less and less democratic.

Socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently said in a tweet that it was beyond time to abolish the Electoral College, calling it a shadow of slaverys power on America today that undermines our nation as a democratic republic.

Gary L. Gregg II, director of the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville and editor of Securing DemocracyWhy We have an Electoral College, argued in an editorial for the Epoch Times that the institution was not created to protect slavery.

In recent years, opponents of the way we have elected presidents have turned to a new strategy to undermine itpainting our electoral system with the indelible stain of racism, he wrote.

He said there is no evidence to support claims of racism and the overhang of slavery in criticisms of the Electoral College system.

Those who value diversity, for instance, should remember that Clinton won her national popular vote margin on the basis of massive margins in major U.S. citieswinning more than 1.6 million more votes than Trump in Los Angeles County alone. It is only the Electoral College that gives rural voters any influence at the presidential level.

Speaking at the town hall in Jackson on Monday, Warren said the current arrangement prevents the voices of voters in states dominated by one party from being heard.

Come a general election, presidential candidates dont come to places like Mississippi, they also dont come to places like California or Massachusetts, because were not the battleground states, Warren said.

But according to Hans von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, the Electoral College mechanism was devised at Americas founding to balance the competing interests of large and small states, and to temper the tyranny of the majority.

It prevents candidates from winning an election by focusing only on high-population urban centers (the big cities), ignoring smaller states and the more rural areas of the countrythe places that progressives and media elites consider flyover country, von Spakovsky wrote for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

He added that the Electoral College forces candidates to seek the support of a larger cross-section of the American electorateto win a series of regional elections.

One can see its importance in the fact that despite Hillary Clintons national popular vote total, she won only about a sixth of the counties nationwide, with her support limited mostly to urban areas on both coasts, he said.

According to von Spakovsky, those who want to junk the Electoral College are ignorant of how our federal system of elections works.

Our Electoral College system has provided us with orderly elections and a stable government for more than 200 years, he said.

The Electoral College is a democratic way of electing presidents through constitutional math, said Gregg. It works in producing competitive elections that both sides have a chance to win. It provides some influence to small and rural states that otherwise would be ignored because of the concentration of power and people in and around urban centers.

Bypassing the Electoral College

The push to move to a national popular vote comes as several Democratic states in recent years have entered into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

This an agreement that would allow the Electoral College to be bypassed without going through the effort of amending the U.S. Constitution.

Constitutional amendments need two-thirds approval in each chamber of Congress, and then ratification by three-quarters of the states.

The compact is an end run around the Constitution. It would lead to litigation, said von Spakovsky, who also served as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, in comments for The Daily Signal. The national popular vote backers realize they will never convince the public to amend the Constitution. But they can convince [the public] to enter a compact.

According to a tally maintained by the group called the National Popular Vote, enabling legislation to bypass the Electoral College has been adopted in 12 states plus the District of Columbia, representing a total of 181 electoral votes.

Those states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The National Popular Vote Compact will go into effect if enough states sign on and bring the total Electoral College votes to 270.

President Trump won the 2016 election with 304 electoral votes compared to 227 for former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Probe of FAAs Oversight of Boeing 737 Began Before Second Crash

The U.S. Transportation Department began an investigation of how Boeing Co.s 737 Max was certified to fly passengers before the latest crash in Ethiopia involving the new jet, according to a person familiar with the probe.

The investigation was prompted by information obtained after a Lion Air 737 Max 8 crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta on Oct. 29, said the person, who wasnt authorized to speak about the investigation and asked not to be named.

The investigation has taken on new urgency after the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8 near Addis Ababa that killed 157 people. It is being conducted in part by the departments Inspector Generals office, which conducts both audits and criminal investigations in conjunction with the Justice Department.

Boeing shares were down 2.6 percent to $369.22 at 12:44 p.m. March 18 in New York, heading toward a new low since the deadly crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that a grand jury in Washington, D.C., on March 11 issued a subpoena to at least one person involved in the development process of the Max. And a Seattle Times investigation found that U.S. regulators delegated much of the planes safety assessment to Boeing and that the company, in turn, delivered an analysis with crucial flaws. Ethiopias transport minister said March 17 that flight-data recorders showed clear similarities between the crashes of that plane and Lion Air Flight 610 last October.

A possible criminal investigation during an aircraft accident investigation is highly unusual. While airline accidents have at times raised criminal issues, such as after the 1996 crash of a ValuJet plane in the Florida Everglades, such cases are the exception.

U.S. Federal Aviation Administration employees warned seven years ago that Boeing had too much sway over safety approvals of new aircraft, prompting an investigation by Transportation Department auditors who confirmed the agency hadnt done enough to hold Boeing accountable.

The 2012 investigation also found that discord over Boeings treatment had created a negative work environment among FAA employees who approve new and modified aircraft designs, with many of them saying theyd faced retaliation for speaking up. Their concerns pre-dated the 737 Max development.

In recent years, the FAA has shifted more authority over the approval of new aircraft to the manufacturer itself, even allowing Boeing to choose many of the personnel who oversee tests and vouch for safety. Just in the past few months, Congress expanded the outsourcing arrangement even further.

It raises for me the question of whether the agency is properly funded, properly staffed and whether there has been enough independent oversight, said Jim Hall, who was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001 and is now an aviation-safety consultant.

At least a portion of the flight-control software suspected in the 737 Max crashes was certified by one or more Boeing employees who worked in the outsourcing arrangement, according to one person familiar with the work who wasnt authorized to speak about the matter.

Both Boeing and the Transportation Department declined to comment about that inquiry.

In a statement on March 18, the FAA said its aircraft certification processes are well established and have consistently produced safe aircraft designs, adding that the 737 Max certification program followed the FAAs standard certification process.

Ethiopian Crash

The Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed minutes after it took off from Addis Ababa. The accident prompted most of the world to ground Boeings 737 Max 8 aircraft on safety concerns, coming on the heels of the October crash off the coast of Indonesia that killed 189 people. Much of the attention focused on a flight-control system that can automatically push a plane into a catastrophic nose dive if it malfunctions and pilots dont react properly.

In one of the most detailed descriptions yet of the relationship between Boeing and the FAA during the 737 Maxs certification, the Seattle Times quoted unnamed engineers who said the planemaker had understated the power of the flight-control software in a System Safety Analysis submitted to the FAA. The newspaper said the analysis also failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot respondedin essence, gradually ratcheting the horizontal stabilizer into a dive position.

Boeing told the newspaper in a statement that the FAA had reviewed the companys data and concluded the aircraft met all certification and regulatory requirements. The company, which is based in Chicago but designs and builds commercial jets in the Seattle area, said there are some significant mischaracterizations in the engineers comments.

Certification Process

The newspaper also quoted unnamed FAA technical experts who said managers prodded them to speed up the certification process as development of the Max was nine months behind that of rival Airbus SEs A320neo.

The FAA has let technical experts at aircraft makers act as its representatives to perform certain tests and approve some parts for decades. The FAA expanded the scope of that program in 2005 to address concerns about adequately keeping pace with its workload. Known as Organization Designation Authorization, or ODA, it let Boeing and other manufacturers choose the employees who approve design work on the agencys behalf.

Previously, the FAA approved each appointment. Under the new approach, which was fully implemented in 2009, the ODA representatives are still under U.S. legal requirements and the FAA has the authority to oversee them and request that their management be changed.

In 2012, a special investigator of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Transportation sent a memo to the FAAs audit chief warning him of concerns voiced by agency employees about the new process. Some allegations were made in anonymous faxes sent to the inspector generals office, and the office followed up by interviewing employees in the FAAs Transport Airplane Directorate.

The agency doesnt have the budget to do every test, and the use of designees is absolutely necessary, said Steve Wallace, the former head of accident investigations at the FAA. For the most part, it works extremely well. There is a very high degree of integrity in the system.

There is strong support among airlines for the 737 family, based on its long history as a reliable, dependable aircraft, said John Strickland, an independent air-transport consultant. Its not easy to suddenly switch horses, sort to speak.

Airbuss order book is full for several years, and airlines have fleet philosophies that affect training, the pilot force, and maintenance, for example. Having said that, obviously airlines need to have the confidence in the aircraft that they can fly, he said. That equally reflects in confidence in their own customers and the traveling public.

By Alan Levin & Peter Robison
Rep. Nunes Sues Twitter and Several Users for $250 Million for Defamation

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, filed a defamation and negligence suit against Twitter and several Twitter users, claiming damages of at least $250 million.

If accepted by the Virginia court, the suit could open a deluge of others to follow, as it argues that Twitter has escalated its content policing to a point where it should be treated as a publisher liable for user-submitted content. Such a legal challenge, however, would need to overcome the immunity that online services enjoy under the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is unlikely, two experts, one on defamation law and one on the First Amendment, told The Epoch Times.

The suit further alleges insulting words and civil conspiracyviolations under Virginia law.

Smear Job

Nunes, now a ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, alleges that several Twitter users, including @LizMair, @DevinNunesMom, and @DevinCow, conspired with unknown donors and members of the Democratic Party to run a smear campaign on him throughout 2018, during his reelection year, and during the height of his investigation on the Justice Department and the FBI for alleged violations in spying on Trump campaign associates, an affair that has become known as Spygate.

The Twitter accounts inundated Nunes with insults and false accusations of crimes and ethical violations, including treason and bribery, as well as insinuations he frequented prostitutes and abused cocaine, the suit lays out (pdf).

The suit alleges one of the conspirators was Liz Mair, a former Republican campaign communication strategist who runs communications and opposition research outfit Mair Strategies.

What do I do for these clients? Anonymously smear their opposition on the Internet, the suit cited from her LinkedIn account.

Mair came out against Donald Trumps presidential bid in 2015, and founded a Political Action Committee to oppose the future president. Nunes, on the other hand, has been an ally to Trump.

Some of the insults and accusations came directly from Mairs twitter account. Her nonprofit Swamp Accountability Project spent more than $36,000 in the 2018 election cycle targeting Nunes.

Mair said her formal response to the suit is forthcoming, in a March 19 statement posted on Twitter.

I have a very different view on the applicable law (including the First Amendment) than Rep. Nunes, she said. Beyond that, I am disinclined to discuss the details of the lawsuit itself, since I am a defendant in it.

Twitter Materially Contributing

The suit alleges that Twitter didnt act as a mere platform, but created and developed the content at issue in this case by transforming false accusations of criminal conduct, imputed wrongdoing, dishonesty and lack of integrity into a publicly available commodity used by unscrupulous political operatives and their donor/clients as a weapon.

The suit asserts that the behavior of the Twitter accounts was reported to the company, but Twitter let it happen because it has a political agenda. By refusing to self-regulate, the company was selectively amplifying the message of defamers  and materially contributing to the libelousness of the hundreds of posts at issue in this action.

Twitter has long been accused of political bias against conservatives.

In July 2018, multiple media reported that four prominent Republican congressmen had their Twitter accounts scrapped from the platforms search suggestion function.

Twitter claimed the issue was caused by an error that affected tens of thousands of accounts. Yet, it appears that among Congress members, the issue only affected Republicans and especially those heavily involved in the Spygate investigationMatt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, and Devin Nunes.

As it happened, Mairs nonprofit also spent $18,500 targeting Jordan in 2018.

Nunes accused Twitter of shadow-banninghiding a users content from other users without informing them.

The shadow-banning was intentional, the suit states. It was calculated to interfere with and influence the federal election and interfere with Nunes ongoing investigation.

Twitter as a Publisher

Online platforms enjoy broad protection from liability for user-generated content. Yet the suit asserts that Twitter is arranging, sorting, and policing content to a point where it acts as a publisher.

Twitter uses its platform, including proprietary algorithms, selectively to convey its corporate/institutional viewpoint, its position on issues and candidates for office, the suit states.

The companys political leanings were examined by radio host Joe Rogan and journalist and commentator Tim Pool in their March 5 interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde, Twitters global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety.

Dorsey acknowledged that the companys workforce has a liberal bias, but maintained that it doesnt affect how the company manages content.

Pool pointed out though, that Twitters content policy, such as its hate speech rules and prohibition of misgendering, inherently reflect left-leaning worldview.

I would be willing to bet that a conservative running a social network would not have a hate speech policy, Pool commented.

A Twitter engineer, Pranay Singh, previously told undercover reporters from the Project Veritas that most algorithms designed to identify automated bot accounts were actually centered around conservative topics.

You look for Trump, or America, or any of, like, 5,000 keywords to describe a redneck, he said.

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.

Nunes told Fox News Sean Hannity that the suit was the first of many.

When theyre regulating us  and then theyre proliferating out things that they agree with with the algorithms that they develop, they need to come cleanthey are not a public square, they are content developers, he said.

Nunes will face an uphill battle with the suit, said Virginia attorney Lee Berlik, who has expertise on internet defamation.

First of all, as a public figure, he will be held to a higher standard in terms of proving his defamation claim. Unlike private persons, who only need to prove that a defamatory statement was made negligently, public officials and public figures need to prove a false statement was made with knowledge of its falsity, or at least reckless indifference, he said via email. Virginia courts tend to allow the public a lot of leeway in the exercise of their right to criticize public figures, which is why you dont see a lot of politicians bringing defamation actions.

Twitter is likely immune to the lawsuit under the Section 230, Berlik said. Furthermore, the Blumenthal v. Drudge case of 1997 established that online platforms are immune even if they give a special platform to the user who posted the defaming content, said Eugene Volokh, law professor and First Amendment expert at the University of California in Los Angeles. Twitter would only be liable if it solicited the defaming content itself, he said in a phone call.

Update: The article has been updated with additional information provided by Virginia attorney Lee Berlik and Eugene Volokh, law professor at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Rep. Devin Nuness name in the headline. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Seeking to End Suffering by Ending Energy Poverty

A former Texas state lawmaker is spearheading a campaign against radical environmentalists and powerful international organizations, whose policies keep people in developing nations in desperate poverty and misery by discouraging the development of electricity-based networks worldwide.

Jason Isaac is taking aim at those promoting the scourge of energy poverty, which keeps people in underdeveloped countries poor and sick, shaving decades off life expectancies on the African continent and elsewhere by making it difficult for consumers to access electric power for their daily needs.

Isaac represented District 45 in the Texas House of Representatives from January 2011 to January 2019 as a Republican. While there, he was a member of the Energy Resources Committee.

Isaac recently joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan research institute in Austin. At TPPF, he is senior manager and distinguished fellow of the Life: Powered initiative, whose mission is to ensure that Americans understand the connections between energy, prosperity, and freedom.

Energy Poverty

The idea of energy poverty itself is a media-savvy, pro-economic growth reframing of an issue in a way that is apparently calculated to put left-wing, anti-growth environmentalists on defense.

An educational video produced by Life: Powered explains the importance of combating energy poverty in the developing world in order to save human lives.

Irfan Ali, chairman of Tharpak Consortium, says that life in itself without energy is poverty.

Why? Because imagine trying to do what we do on a daily basis without energy. We would not be able to work. We would not be able to educate our kids. We would not be able to do anything without energy.

Worldwide, 1.3 billion people do not have electricity, according to the video. Another 2.5 billion have extremely limited access to electricity. This means that 3.8 billion people on the planetout of the world total of about 7.7 billion human beingsare suffering from energy poverty.

Youre closing on almost half the population of the world  living in energy poverty and thats why I say it is the leading problem facing mankind today, explains Frank Clemente, professor emeritus at Penn State University.

When we get those people access to electricity, Isaac told The Epoch Times, its amazing what happens. You get improved air quality.

Roughly a million people around the world die every year from respiratory illnesses that are caused by indoor air pollution, he said. When you have people that are burning, wood, coal, dung in their homes without any kind of pollution control, their indoor particulate matter is awful and it leads to respiratory illnesses.

Caleb Rossiter, an adjunct lecturer at American University, explains in the video the harm caused to people in Africa when they dont have electricity.

Energy poverty is when you go talk to a grandmother in Swaziland and you realize inside that shes cooking and lighting and staying warm by a fire of some material in the middle of the hut and you find out from her that the material  is dried cow dung.

About one billion people live in Africa and only about 25 percent have access to electricity at home, he said. African life expectancy is 55 years, but in the energy-abundant United States and most developed countries, it is about 76 years.

Thats 20 years of life lost per person, Rossiter said.

Why do I say thats linked to electricity? Because electricity is what you use to clean water. To make sure you can drink the water without getting sick, without your kids getting diarrhea, dehydrating, and dying. Water is why Africas infant mortality rate is about 80 kids out of 1,000 born [who] die before their fifth birthday; in the United States, its well under 10. Clean water is the holy grail of African health and development.

Advocacy Groups

But are there people who are actually trying to prevent developing nations populations from getting hooked up to an electric power grid?

Sadly, there are many of them, according to Isaac.

There is an untold number of advocacy groups that are trying to force us to go 100 percent renewable, they mean wind and solar, [but] they dont talk about the environmental hazards posed by those methods of power generation.

We have just been scared to death here in the United States that the worlds going to end in 11 years and 9 months and 20 days because of CO 2 , he said, adding that polling shows more than 70 percent of Americans believe the false notion that carbon dioxide, the naturally occurring gas we constantly expel from our lungs in order to stay alive, is bad for plants.

In fact, photosynthesis, the process by which green plants and some other organisms grow, would be impossible without CO 2 , as schoolchildren used to learn in science class. And the manmade global-warming hypothesis that human-generated carbon dioxide, as opposed to solar activity and other natural factors, is driving supposedly catastrophic climate change lacks monolithic support among the scientific community.

We are being lied to, and people are believing it, Isaac said.

There is intense pressure to be so-called green and embrace supposedly renewable energy sources like wind and solar power across the globe, Isaac said, and theyre getting it mostly from the United Nations.

It is perceived as free and its renewable and reliable when in fact its none of those.

The U.N. has become this heavy-handed bureaucratic governmentand it really is a form of government exerting its control throughout the worldkeeping two and a half billion people in poverty.

The U.N. applies pressure by scoring corporations according to ESG goals. ESG stands for environmental, societal, and governance.

Its almost like a credit rating for how you run your business and encouraging people and countries not to invest in those companies that may not meet their ESG goals, Isaac explained.

The U.N., which controls the World Bank, threatens to withhold money and launch boycotts, he said.

In the United States, the San Francisco-based Bank of the West succumbed to environmentalist pressure and announced last year it would no longer invest in businesses unless they were moving away from fossil fuel exploration.

The decision outraged elected officials in energy-rich Colorado and Wyoming. Wyoming Treasurer Mark Gordon blasted the bank. The Bank of the West has said they will no longer fund coal, oil, and natural gas projectskey components to the Wyoming economy and Wyoming way of life, Gordon said. Well, under my watch, Wyoming investment dollars will not be placed with the Bank of the West.

American Universitys Rossiter, who was the Democratic candidate in New Yorks 31st congressional district in 1998, was fired by the left-wing Institute for Policy Studies for questioning the rigid orthodoxy of man-made global warming theorists in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Investors Business Daily reported in 2014. He argued in the column that abandoning fossil fuels in Africa, as international actors are pressuring the nations on that land mass to do, will lead to needless widespread suffering.

But pressure to do the politically correct thing in energy policy is also intense abroad.

Isaac recalled meeting with government energy officials in Myanmar in August 2016 as part of an official trade mission to promote Texas energy.

The electricity went out three times during our meeting. And we were talking about opportunities for them to utilize Texas natural gas for electricity generation. They were more interested in talking about wind and solar.

This undue emphasis on wind and solar power hurts non-Americans and Americans alike.

In Texas, we heavily subsidize the production of wind and solar electricity  [and] weve actually seen where wind producers are paying the grid to take their electricity, Isaac said.

Imagine going to a restaurant and being paid to eat their food. How could the restaurant across the street thats expecting you to pay for the food compete with someone thats paying the customers to eat their food?

Federal and state subsidies are taking their toll on the grid, leading to decreased investment in clean coal technology, he said. Why would anybody invest in new coal or natural gas or nuclear generation when youre competing against someone thats paying their customers to take their product?

As a result, reserve margins of electricity in Texas are dropping dangerously low, he said. The normal margin is about 12 percent to guard against the arrival of extreme cold or extreme heat but the current margin in the Lone Star State has fallen to around 7 percent because were just not seeing investment in new power generation.

If the reserve dips too low during a hot summer or a bitterly cold winter, the power will start going out and thats when people will immediately go back into poverty.

This is what is happening right now in Venezuela where they just dont have access to electricity and theyve been without power for days, he said. The last thing we need to be doing is having policies that replicate whats happening in Venezuela.
Glossier, Inc., a NYC-based beauty company, raised $100m in Series D funding.

The round was led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Tiger Global Management, Spark Capital, and existing investors Forerunner Ventures, Thrive Capital, IVP, and Index Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and its business reach.

Founded in 2014 by Emily Weiss, CEO, Glossier is a direct to consumer business offering beauty and skincare essentials. The company now has more than 200 employees across three offices, and operates in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, France, Denmark, and Sweden.

Earlier this month, Glossier launched a second brand, Glossier Play, as part of a broader strategy to grow by offering more choices to its diverse community.

The company, whose annual revenue more than doubled in 2018 and surpassed $100 million, also announced that technology industry veteran Vanessa Wittman will be joining as its Chief Financial Officer.

Edith Chen and Nick DeAngelo also recently joined as Vice President of Supply Chain Operations and Vice President of Operations, respectively.

FinSMEs

19/03/2019
GOYANG, South KoreaShen Yun Performing Arts World Company kicked off the first leg of its 2019 South Korea tour by presenting two full house performances in Goyang City on March 17, 2019.

Aiming to revive a once almost-lost culture, Shen Yuns inspiring performance with perfect skills and seamless coordination deeply touched the audiences in Goyang City.

This is a world-class performance. It was truly wonderful and touching, said Ha Chulkyung, Chairman of the Korean Fine Arts Association, after he attended Shen Yuns matinee performance at Goyang Aram Nuri.

Shen Yun presents a colorful and exhilarating performance of classical Chinese dance and music. According to its Website, at the core of Shen Yuns performances is classical Chinese dance, with Chinas numerous ethnic and folk dance styles.

The classical Chinese dance [performed by Shen Yun] is different from Korean dance. It is full of vigor and vitality, he continued. The exotic style of performance is really very creative and dynamic.

Marveling at Shen Yun performers high-level dancing skills, Ha Chulkyung praised, Take the piece Mongolian Spirit for instance. It requires highly difficult skills throughout the performance. But all the movements are very dynamic and natural. Thats why it is so touching.

New York-based Shen Yun brings 5,000 years of Chinese civilization to the stage with classical Chinese dance, along with animated backdrops, solo vocalists, and an orchestra combining East and West. Every aspect of Shen Yuns all-new performance every season shows the deeply spiritual traditional Chinese culture and values.

The synchronization among dancers on the stage, the images on backdrops and the sub-lines was perfect, he said. The connection of dancers and images of characters on backdrops was very natural. It is something truly unique. The overall coordination is seamless.

Watching Shen Yun the second time, Ha Chulkyung was further inspired by the connotation implied in the performance. He noted, Rather than using vocal language, Shen Yun uses dance to portray the 5,000 years of Chinese culture. It made the audience feel very warm and intimate, and [we] got motivation from it.

The coherence of the overall performance was perfect. It was a very dynamic performances, he added. Every piece of the performance was spectacular from the very beginning to the end. This kind of magnificent performance is hard to come by, even in other countries.

With reporting by Kim Gook-Hwan and Billy Shyu.

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time and has covered audience reactions since the companys inception in 2006
Stories From the Students Rules: Humility and Duty as a Sibling and Before Elders

The Standards for Being a Good Student and Child (Di Zi Gui) is a traditional Chinese textbook for children that teaches children morals and proper etiquette. It was written by Li Yuxiu in the Qing Dynasty, during the reign of Emperor Kang Xi (1661-1722). In this series, we present some ancient Chinese stories that exemplify the valuable lessons taught in the Di Zi Gui. The second chapter of the Di Zi Gui instructs readers to fulfill their duties as siblings.

It is written in the Di Zi Gui:

The older brother shall be friendly

And the young brother respectful.

When elder and younger are harmonious,

Xiao (filial piety) is achieved. Taking riches lightly,

There is no cause for resentment.

Speaking with tolerance,

Anger will dissipate naturally.

A good sibling should always place his elder and younger siblings before himself. A famous example is the descendant of Confucius Kong Rong, who learned to share at an early age.

Kong Rong (153-208 A.D.), the 20th-generation-descendant of Confucius, was a high-ranking official during the reign of Emperor Ling in the Eastern Han Dynasty. As he was once the chancellor of Beihai (present-day Weifang, Shandong Province), he was also known as Kong Beihai. During his tenure, Kong Rong built cities and schools, and advocated Confucianism. He was also a famed poet and essayist.

Kong Rong was known to be good-tempered and hospitable, and his house was always full of guests. Kong Rong upheld etiquette, and as a child he became a household name when he demonstrated great generosity among his brothers.

There were seven brothers in Kongs family and he was the sixth son. When Kong Rong was four years old, being the youngest child then, he was given first priority in choosing from a basket a pears. However, he chose the smallest pear, leaving the big ones for his elder brothers. Even after his younger brother was born, Kong Rong would give his older and younger brothers the larger pears, leaving the smallest for himself.

When asked why, Kong Rong said, My elder brothers should have the bigger pears because theyre older, but my younger brother should also have the bigger pear as its my responsibility to take care of my younger brother. Kong Rongs response earned the praise of the Kong family and of those who heard of it.

This story has been handed down as a much-told story of etiquette and fraternal love, and to this day it remains an essential part of childrens formative education.

Prime Minister Li Mian Forfeits his Friends Gold

Li Mian (717-788 AD) was an official and general of the Tang Dynasty, serving as a chancellor during the reign of Emperor Dezong. He was a descendant of Tangs founding emperor, Emperor Gaozu.

Li was poor during his early years, but he did not try to seek ill-gotten wealth. He instead spent his time studying texts, from which he acquired an honest and trustworthy character. One day, Li met a rich scholar who was going to the capital to complete his studies and take the Imperial Exam.

The two became very good friends. But the scholar became seriously ill one day, and Li took care of him and treated him just like his own sibling.

The scholar eventually succumbed to his illness. Before his death, he begged Li to keep the balance of his gold that remained after paying for his funeral arrangements. Li had no choice but to accept the gift, in order for the scholar pass on in peace. Ultimately, however, Li did not keep a single dime. He secretly hid the gold under the scholars coffin, and returned the scholars silver to the scholars family.

During his appointment as Jie du shi in Lingnan, Li didnt use his power to usurp the fortunes or property of the foreign merchants. He always politely declined any gifts from merchants, and, on his retirement, he even threw all the rhino horns and ivory his family had received into the river.

During his two decades of service as an official, Li distributed his salary to his relatives and subordinates, leaving little for himself. As a result, he was found to have no savings when he passed away. Li was honored greatly and given the posthumous title of Zhen Jian, meaning He Who is Pure and Simple.

Be Humble Before Your Elders

It is stated in the Di Zi Gui:

When addressing a distinguished elder,

Do not use his personal name.

When before a distinguished elder,

Do not show off your talents.

Aside from requiring the use of proper salutations when speaking with elders, an important aspect of traditional Chinese etiquette is modesty.

An ancient calligrapher from the Jin Dynasty, and Han Dynasty founding hero Zhang Liang famously respected their elders in their youth. They learned to be humble and hence acquired knowledge and skills from their elders.

Renowned calligrapher Wang Xizhi, known as the Sage of Calligraphy in China, lived during the Jin Dynasty (303361 A.D.) and had seven children, among whom his youngest son, Wang Xianzhi, (344-386) was also a distinguished calligrapher.

By the time Xianzhi was 15 years old, he had already achieved a great level of skill in calligraphy and often received praise from his father and other elders. Xianzhi hence became arrogant and lazy, thinking that his ability was already excellent and that he no longer needed to put in the effort to work hard and improve himself.

There is a story about how Wang Xizhi helped his son realize the foolishness of his arrogance and understand the importance of diligence. One day, Wang Xizhi was summoned to the capital and to bid him farewell, his family held a lavish dinner. Fine food and wine were served at the feast. While slightly intoxicated, Wang Xizhi had a sudden inspiration to write some words of wisdom as guidance for Xianzhi.

Wang Xizhi wrote a poem on the wall called Precepts Against Arrogance ( ), advising Xianzhi not to be arrogant but to work hard. Xianzhi, however, was not entirely convinced. He copied the poem dozens of times each day, and just before his father returned home, he erased his fathers words when no one was looking and rewrote it in the same location on the wall, imitating his fathers calligraphy.

Xianzhi was very proud of himself. In his arrogance, he thought his calligraphy was just as good as his fathers and that no one would be able to tell the difference.

When Wang Xizhi came home, he looked intently at the poem on the wall for a long time, then scratched his head and sighed.Could I have drunk too much wine that night, to have written such clumsy characters? he exclaimed.

His son instantly blushed, feeling deeply uneasy and ashamed. Wang Xianzhi finally realized that only through diligent study and hard work could he eventually become a renowned calligrapher.

Zhang Liang and the Shoes of the Old Sage

Zhang Liang (around 262189 B.C.), courtesy name Zhifang, was born in the State of Han (located around what is now the center of Henan Province). In order to avoid the chaos of war, his family moved to Nanyang in Henan and then moved to the Pei Kingdom. Later on, he settled down in Pei Kingdom and became a citizen there.

In Zhang Liangs childhood, on a windy, snowy winter day, he happened upon Yishui Bridge in the town of Xiapi. There he met an old man wearing a yellow shirt and a black hood. The old man threw one of his shoes down to the bridge on purpose and said to Zhang Liang:

Little boy, please go to pick my shoe back up for me. Zhang Liang did not hesitate. Regardless of the danger of slipping into the river and being exposed to the cold wind, he went down to the bridge and picked up the shoe for the old man. The old man did not take the shoe, but offered his foot to Zhang Liang and asked him to put the shoe on for him. Zhang Liang did not mind and respectfully did what the old man told him to do. The old man smiled and said: Boy, I see much promise in you. Come here tomorrow morning and I will teach you some things.

Zhang Liang respected the elder and put his shoes on for him.

The next day, before the crack of dawn, Zhang Liang came to the bridge and saw that the old man was already there. The old man said: You came here later than me. I cannot teach you the Tao today. It happened like this three times.

The third time, Zhang Liang finally got to the bridge earlier than the old man. The old man finally gave Zhang Liang a book and said: When you fully understand this book, you will be able to serve as the chief military counselor for a king in the future. If you need my help in the future, come to see me. I am the yellow stone at the foot of Gucheng Mountain.

Zhang Liang went back home and he studied the book very carefully. Finally he mastered its essence. He was able to understand all of its intricacy and became very familiar with military tactics. Later, he assisted Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han dynasty, to found the Han dynasty and unite China.
Supreme Court Sides With Trump on Detention of Criminal Aliens

The Supreme Court affirmed the federal governments authority to detain illegal aliens with criminal records at any time after they have completed their prison terms, handing a victory to immigration authorities and the administration of President Donald Trump.

The court ruled 54 that federal authorities could apprehend and detain aliens with criminal records at any time, not only immediately after their release from prison.

Under federal immigration law, aliens convicted of certain offenses are subject to mandatory and indefinite detention during their deportation process.

Challengers seized on a provision in the law which stated that the government can detain convicted aliens when the alien is released from criminal detention. The challengers argued that the language limits the time of legal detention to a 24-hour window immediately after aliens are released. The Trump administration argued the government should have the power to detain such aliens anytime.

The top courts decision is significant because dozens of so-called sanctuary cities around the nation have passed laws instructing local law enforcement officers against cooperating with federal immigration authorities. As a result, immigration officers face mounting obstacles to detaining convicted aliens when they complete their prison terms.

The ruling, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, stated that it isnt the courts job to impose a time limit for when aliens can be detained after serving a prison sentence. Alito noted that the court has said in the past that an officials crucial duties are better carried out late than never.

Alito said the challengers assertion that aliens had to be detained within 24 hours of ending a prison sentence is especially hard to swallow.

The March 19 decision follows a February 2018 ruling in a similar case in which the court curbed the ability of aliens held in long-term detention during deportation proceedings to argue for release.

In both of the detention cases, the Supreme Court reversed the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a leftist court that Trump has frequently criticized. In each case, litigation against the federal government started before Trump took office.

In the latest case, the administration had appealed a 2016 9th Circuit ruling that favored immigrants, a decision it said would undermine the governments ability to deport immigrants who have committed crimes.

The appeals court had said that convicted immigrants who are not immediately detained by immigration authorities after finishing their sentences but then later picked up by immigration authorities could seek bond hearings to argue for their release.

The plaintiffs included two legal residents involved in separate lawsuits filed in 2013, a Cambodian immigrant named Mony Preap convicted of marijuana possession and a Palestinian immigrant named Bassam Yusuf Khoury convicted of attempting to manufacture a controlled substance.

In the most significant immigration-related case recently before the court, the conservative justices were also in the majority in June 2018 when they upheld a 54 vote on Trumps travel ban that targeted terrorism-prone countries.

In April 2018, the court issued a ruling that could hinder the administrations ability to step up the removal of aliens with criminal records, invalidating a provision in another law, the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo (C) is escorted by deputies as he is brought into court to be identified by a witness during the murder trial in courtroom 10 at the Virginia Beach Circuit Court in Virginia Beach, Virginia on Oct. 22, 2003. (Davis Turner-Pool/Getty Images)

Supreme Court to Review Sentence of Beltway Sniper Co-defendant

WASHINGTONThe Supreme Court has agreed to review the life-without-parole sentence of mass murderer Lee Boyd Malvo who was 17 years old when he and his older companion, dubbed the Beltway Sniper, committed 10 murders, terrorizing greater Washington for nearly two months in 2002.

The Supreme Court agreed on March 18 to review the case. The court will examine the life sentences without the possibility of parole that Malvo received in 2004, years before a landmark court ruling that found mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for those under 18 violated the Constitution in most cases.

Malvo, now 34, formed a team with John Allen Muhammad. Born John Allen Williams, Muhammad was an expert marksman who converted to Islam and joined the radical group, Nation of Islam. Muhammad, who was 25 years Malvos senior, illegally brought Malvo into the United States from Jamaica.

During their killing spree that lasted from Sept. 5 to Oct. 22, 2002, they shot victims at various locations from a rolling snipers nest they created by cutting a hole in the trunk near the license plate of a 1990 Chevy Caprice. Muhammad was executed by lethal injection in Virginia in 2009.

At Muhammads sensationalized trial in 2006, Malvo said Muhammad provided him with clothes and food and turned him into a monster. Malvo admitted to shooting three people and serving as a spotter in other shootings.

In June 2013, Malvos lawyers filed petitions in federal court, arguing the life sentences he received years before in Virginia were inconsistent with the Supreme Courts 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama which held that mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendments prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.

In 2016, the Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that the Miller ruling announced a substantive rule of constitutional law that must be given retroactive effect in cases where direct review was complete at the time Miller was decided.

A district court refused to review Malvos sentence and he appealed. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case to the district court for reconsideration. The district court then vacated all of Malvos life sentences in Virginia and ordered him resentenced and the 4th Circuit upheld that ruling.

The circuit court found that the ruling in Montgomery confirmed that a sentencing judge  violates Millers rule any time it imposes a discretionary life-without-parole sentence on a juvenile homicide offender without first concluding that the offenders crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility, as distinct from the transient immaturity of youth.

Malvo is also appealing the life imprisonment without the possibility of parole sentences imposed on him in Maryland.

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring and Virginia Solicitor General Toby Heytens stated in an Aug. 16, 2018, brief opposing review that Malvo committed one of the most notorious strings of terrorist acts in modern American history. They argued that the 4th Circuit misapplied legal precedent in ordering that Malvo be resentenced.

The date for oral arguments in the case known as Randall Mathena, Warden v. Lee Boyd Malvo has not yet been scheduled.
Tens of Thousands Converge on California Poppy Apocalypse

LAKE ELSINORE, Calif.Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, the Southern California city of Lake Elsinore is being overwhelmed by the power of the poppies.

About 150,000 people over the weekend of March 16-17, flocked to see this years rain-fed flaming orange patches of poppies lighting up the hillsides near the city of about 60,000 residents, about a 90-minute drive from either San Diego or Los Angeles.

Interstate 15 was a parking lot. People fainted in the heat; a dog romping through the fields was bitten by a rattlesnake.

A vibrant field of poppies lures Dorothy into a trap in the Wizard of Oz when the wicked witch, acknowledging that no one can resist their beauty, poisons the wildflowers and she slips into a fatal slumber until the good witch reverses the spell.

Lake Elsinore had tried to prepare for the crush of people drawn by the super bloom, a rare occurrence that usually happens about once a decade because it requires a wet winter and warm temperatures that stay above freezing.

It offered a free shuttle service to the top viewing spots, but it wasnt enough.

Sunday traffic got so bad that Lake Elsinore officials requested law enforcement assistance from neighboring jurisdictions. At one point, the city pulled down the curtain and closed access to poppy-blanketed Walker Canyon.

About 150,000 people over the weekend flocked to see this years rain-fed flaming orange patches of poppies lighting up the hillsides near Lake Elsinore, about a 90-minute drive from either San Diego or Los Angeles. (March 18)

Tap to unmute

It was insane, absolutely insane, said Mayor Steve Manos, who described it as a poppy apocalypse.

By Monday the #poppyshutdown announced by the city on Twitter was over and the road to the canyon was re-opened.

And people were streaming in again.

Young and old visitors to the Lake Elsinore area seemed equally enchanted as they snapped selfies against the natural carpet of iridescent orange.

Some contacted friends and family on video calls so they could share the beauty in real time. Artists propped canvasses on the side of the trail to paint the super bloom, while drones buzzed overhead.

Patty Bishop, 48, of nearby Lake Forest, was on her second visit. The native Californian had never seen such an explosion of color from the state flower. She battled traffic Sunday but that didnt deter her from going back Monday for another look. She got there at sunrise and stayed for hours.

Theres been so many in just one area, she said. I think thats probably the main reason why Im out here personally is because its so beautiful.

Stephen Kim and his girlfriend got to Lake Elsinore even before sunrise Sunday to beat the crowds but there were already hundreds of people.

The two wedding photographers hiked on the designated trails with an engaged couple to do a photo shoot with the flowers in the background, but they were upset to see so many people going off-trail and so much garbage. They picked up as many discarded water bottles as they could carry.

You see this beautiful pristine photo of nature but then you look to the left and theres plastic Starbucks cups and water bottles on the trail and selfie sticks and people having road rage because some people were walking slower, said Kim, 24, of Carlsbad.

Andy Macuga, honorary mayor of the desert town of Borrego Springs, another wildflower hotspot, said he feels for Lake Elsinore.

In 2017, a rain-fed super bloom brought in more than a half-million visitors to the town of 3,500. Restaurants ran out of food. Gas stations ran out of fuel. Traffic backed up on a single road for 20 miles.

The city is again experiencing a super bloom.

The crowds are back. Hotels are full. More than 6,000 people on a recent Saturday stopped at the visitors center at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Californias largest park with 1,000 square miles.

But it helps that the masses of blooms are appearing in several different areas this time, and some sections are fading, while others are lighting up with flowers, helping to disperse the crowds a bit.

Most importantly, Macuga said, the towns businesses prepared this time as if a major storm was about to hit. His restaurant, Carlees, is averaging more than 550 meals a day, compared to 300 on a normal March day.

We were completely caught off guard in 2017 because it was the first time that we had had a flower season like this with social media, he said. It helps now knowing whats coming.

By Amy Taxin and Julie Watson
This Nonprofit Helps Homeless People Reunite With Long-Lost Loved Ones

For years, Jasmine Cornett wandered the streets of San Francisco looking for her uncle Wayne, whom she hadnt seen since she was 12 years old. She often snapped photos of the homeless people she saw and sent them to her father and her aunt Lisa, asking if maybe this time shed caught a glimpse of Wayne.

Each time they texted back and said it wasnt him.

Then one day in August, while sitting in her office, the recruiter got an email with a short video from a nonprofit called Miracle Messages, saying they had found her uncle. She immediately forwarded the video to her father and aunt.

The unkempt man with a scraggly, gray beard had the right eyes. Its Wayne, her father said.

Want to help end homelessness? @MiracleMessages is a nonprofit that reconnects our neighbors experiencing homelessness with their loved ones (and us). Weve reunited 170 families, disconnected 20 years on AVERAGE. Id love your support this #GivingTuesday! https://t.co/Y4lu1HWhWc  Kevin F. Adler (@kevinfadler) November 27, 2018

Everyone is Someones Somebody

Kevin Adler is the man behind Miracle Messages, the nonprofit that helped reunite Wayne and Jasmine. It has done the same for nearly 200 other families since December of 2014.

Miracle Messages premise is simple. Volunteers with the organization canvas city streets looking for homeless people and ask if theres someone to whom theyd like to address a short video message.

Adler was inspired by growing up with his own uncle, named Mark, who also frequently experienced homelessness. And while completing his masters thesis in sociology at Cambridge University, he was able to reflect more deeply on how a breakdown in social bonds can ruin a life.

He had witnessed it growing up when Mark often came over for Thanksgiving dinner. Though Mark regularly experienced homelessness, he wasnt a homeless person. He was family.

Adlers organization was born at Christmas time in 2014 when he started walking down Market Street in San Francisco asking people who were homeless if theyd like to record a holiday message for a loved one.

He was struck by how, perhaps even more than unemployment or mental illness, frayed social bonds were a primary driver of homelessness. Early on in his work, someone on the street told him, I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing, only when I lost my family and friends.

Now Theyre Partnering With Communities

Adler recognizes that the organizations best hope for true staying power and scalability lies in partnering with cities.

Reuniting loved ones is just the spark for what inevitably becomes a long process of rebuilding a shattered life or shattered family. Cities often hold the keys to getting struggling individuals into government-subsidized housing, mental health treatment, or substance abuse programs, and can work alongside family members who must keep holding their loved ones accountable.

In San Francisco, Adlers group has partnered with the Union Square Business Improvement District on a pilot project. Officials working with the district saw how Miracle Messages helped Jasmine and Wayne and realized they could help dozens more in their area.

Ten months ago, officials in Riverside, California, working on homelessness services also reached out to Adler to formally partner. I hope the partnership is long term and theres no real end, said Emilio Ramirez, the citys deputy director of community and economic development.

Family unification is key, and an effective method of ending homelessness.

In the past weeks, Adler has been in Riverside helping train a volunteer group that will ultimately be spearheaded by a church in the area.

Last year we partnered with @TEDTalks and @miraclemsg to see how much impact a super fast internet connection can have on the world. Recently, we checked in on their inspiring work. You dont want to miss this: https://t.co/6lwDKfrHg0  NCTA  The Internet & Television Association (@NCTAitv) April 25, 2018

Im Sorry

The Miracle Messages volunteers had told Jasmine that Wayne would be near the Powell Street BART Station, just off Union Square, and she felt flush, white, and anxious, as she walked to find him. She embraced the man she hadnt laid eyes on in 18 years. Wayne is 67, and losing his hearing, but he recognized his niece. Jazzy, was the first thing he said to her. Then: Im sorry.

He repeated it again and again. Im sorry.

Now, six months after their reunion, Jasmine says Wayne is staying indoors in a transitional living facility. That means hes been in a sober living situation for two months. He works out 3-5 times weekly at a nearby Planet Fitness. And last week he quit smoking.

Jasmine has lunch with Wayne every Tuesday. Her brother has lunch with him every Thursday. And her aunt, 90 miles away, sees him every month.

During his time on the street, Wayne was often in and out of jail. He used intravenous drugs and struggled with schizophrenia. He regularly committed petty crimes just to get a roof over his head and three meals a day. He told CNN he was glad Miracle Messages found him when they did, and that it was good to reconnect with my family before time comes calling.

But after nearly two decades spent in fight-or-flight mode, he still has a tough road ahead. For Wayne, reintegrating means learning tasks many of us take for granted, like simply using a cell phone.
Top US Trade Officials Head to China Next Week for New Trade Talks

WASHINGTONU.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plan to travel to China next week for another round of trade talks with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, a Trump administration official said on March 19.

The resumption of face-to-face talks, the first since President Donald Trump delayed a March 1 deadline to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, marks an acceleration of negotiations aimed to end an eight-month trade war between the worlds two largest economies.

Talks with China are going very well, Trump said at the end of a White House news conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on March 19.

Since Trumps delay of the March 1 tariff hike, the two sides have only negotiated by telephone and video link.

The administration official who confirmed the new round of talks didnt provide further details on the expected duration of the talks or any further rounds. The source, who wasnt authorized to comment publicly on the matter, spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Wall Street Journal reported that following next weeks negotiation in Beijing, Liu would travel to Washington the week of April 1 as the two sides aim for a deal by the end of the month. The report, citing unnamed administration officials, said the trade talks were in the final stages.

The Journal report and Trumps latest upbeat comments contrasted with a Bloomberg report on March 19 that progress in the talks was slowing as Chinese officials have stepped back from some initial promises they made on improving intellectual property protections demanded by the United States.

Washington and Beijing have placed import duties on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of each others products.

Washington has demanded that Beijing implement stronger protections for intellectual property rights and end policies that it says coerce U.S. companies to transfer technology to Chinese firms in exchange for access to the Chinese market. The United States has also demanded that China rein in hefty industrial subsidies that it blames for the buildup of excess production capacity in China.

Since late February, the two sides have worked to refine language on reform pledges that China intends to take, along with an enforcement mechanism aimed to ensure that Beijing will follow through on such changes.

But Chinese officials have sought an immediate end to the tariffs that Trump has imposed on about $250 billion worth of Chinese imports. Trump administration officials have not specified any plans to roll back such duties.

The deal under negotiation is also widely expected to include increased Chinese purchases of American goods, including farm and energy commodities, to help reduce the U.S. goods trade deficit with China, which hit a record $419 billion in 2018.

Among purchases of U.S. goods under consideration are new Chinese orders for Boeing Co. jetliners. But the grounding of the companys 737 MAX models following the recent Ethiopian Airlines crash has cast a shadow over immediate hopes for such a deal, according to industry sources.

China also made its biggest purchases of U.S. pork in nearly two years last week, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data on March 14, as Chinese hog prices surged after an outbreak of a deadly swine disease.

Buyers in the worlds biggest hog producer and pork consumer struck deals for the meat despite import tariffs of 62 percent imposed by China on U.S. pork.

The duties had slashed Chinas imports of U.S. pork since last summer.

But the months-long outbreak of African swine fever in China, which has spread to 111 confirmed cases in 28 provinces and regions across the country since August 2018, has left the country with no choice but to purchase U.S. goods.

China also recently resumed purchases of other U.S. farm products, including soybeans and sorghum, that face retaliatory import tariffs.

By David Lawder & Roberta Rampton
U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro attend a joint news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, on March 19, 2019. (Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images)

Trump and Bolsonaro Pledge Historic Remaking of USBrazil Relations

President Trump praised Brazils position on Venezuela, saying, 'The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere'

WASHINGTONPresident Donald Trump hosted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been dubbed the Trump of Tropics, at the White House on March 19.

After decades of anti-Americanism in Brazilian politics, Bolsonaros visit marked a new chapter in relations between the United States and Brazil.

Both leaders said their policies were aligned on many issues, including Venezuela, security, and trade. Trump praised Brazil for recognizing Juan Guaido as Venezuelas interim president and supporting the United States in providing humanitarian aid to Venezuelans.

During a joint news conference with Bolsonaro at the White House, Trump urged Venezuelas military to end its support for socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, calling him a Cuban puppet. In a joint statement, both leaders reiterated that they would stand with Guaido, the democratically elected National Assembly, and the Venezuelan people.

I think that all possibilities, all options are open, Trump said when asked about the odds of military intervention.

But we havent done the toughest of sanctions yet, he said, adding that they may have to increase the sanctions against Venezuela.

Trump also condemned socialism during the news conference and said both the United States and Brazil were united in support of the long-suffering people of Cuba and Nicaragua.

The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere. And hopefully, by the way, it has also arrivedthat twilight hourin our great country, Trump said. The last thing we want in the United States is socialism.

Both leaders spoke of being closely aligned views on values.

Brazil and the United States stand side-by-side in their efforts to ensure liberties and respect to traditional family lifestyles, respect to God, our creator, against the gender ideology or the politically correct attitudes and against fake news,' Bolsonaro said.

Trump praised the Brazilian president for using the term fake news.

First Official Visit

Bolsonaro, who has often expressed his admiration for the United States and Trump, said he was happy to visit Washington, particularly after decades of anti-U.S. leaders in his country.

Trump was the first foreign leader to call Bolsonaro to congratulate him on his election victory in October. The meeting between the leaders also marked many firsts in the relations of both countries. This is the first bilateral overseas visit of Bolsonaro, and its the first time in history that a Brazilian president has visited Washington as his or her first official overseas visit.

Trump also praised Brazils president for his quick recovery from a truly horrible ordeal.

Last September, a month before the elections in Brazil, Bolsonaro was stabbed during a campaign rally, losing 40 percent of his blood.

Its an incredible recovery. The people of your country know that youve shown tremendous bravery, Trump said.

Trump also said he intended to designate Brazil as a major non-NATO ally or maybe a NATO ally.

Ill have to talk to a lot of people but maybe a NATO ally, which will greatly advance security and cooperation between our countries, he said.

Trump also said the United States supports Brazils aspirations to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of mostly rich nations.

The two leaders agreed to work together in combating terrorism, narcotics and arms trafficking, cybercrimes, and money laundering, as well as enhancing border security. Bolsonaro announced Brazils intent to exempt U.S. citizens from tourist visa requirements.

The United States had a trade surplus of about $27 billion with Brazil last year. Both leaders made commitments to reduce trade barriers and facilitate investment across a range of industries, particularly energy, infrastructure, agriculture, and technology.

According to the joint statement, Brazil agreed to implement a tariff rate quota, which would allow the purchase of 750,000 tons of U.S. wheat annually at a zero rate. In addition, Brazil will allow the importation of American pork.

After 20 years of talks, both countries are finalizing a technology safeguards agreement to allow U.S. companies to conduct space launches from Brazil. Because of its proximity to the equator, Brazil is an ideal location and will help save tremendous amounts of money, according to Trump.

To improve business relationships, both countries agreed to revive the U.S.Brazil CEO Forum and start a new U.S.Brazil Energy Forum.

Against the Establishment

A former military officer, Bolsonaro served for nearly three decades in Congress and became the president on Jan. 1. Many draw parallels between him and Trump.

Speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce event on March 18, Brazils new economy minister, Paulo Guedes, said Bolsonaro won based on great principles and values.

There were a lot of people there with good manners and very bad principles. And the Brazilians understood that and vote massively for President Bolsonaro, he said.

It was a disruption of social networks against the establishment, political parties, conventional media, he said, adding that there were a lot of similarities between Trump and Bolsonaro.

A former investment banker from Rio de Janeiro, Guedes is leading the reform of Brazils pension scheme and other economic policies.

Brazilian stocks have broken records since Bolsonaros victory in October. The countrys benchmark Bovespa stock index rose more than 20 percent since the election, touching 100,000 points for the first time in its history. Growing optimism about Bolsonaros reform agenda has boosted Brazilian stocks.

A half-dozen ministers joined Bolsonaro during his three-day visit to Washington.

The U.S.Brazil relationship has always been one of potential, but yet, it always seemed that that potential has never been met, said a senior administration official, in a call with reporters on Mar. 18. This time, it is different. This is a historic remaking of the U.S.Brazil relationship, where theres truly going to be a North-South axis of the two largest economies in the Western Hemisphere.
President Donald Trump speaks during a joint news conference with Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, on March 19, 2019. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Trump Says He Sees Collusion Against Republicans on Social Media Platforms

WASHINGTONRepublican President Donald Trump said on March 19, that social media platforms discriminated against members of his party, and accused the companies of collusion.

It seems to be if theyre conservative, if theyre Republicans, if theyre in a certain group, theres discrimination, and big discrimination, and I see it absolutely on Twitter and Facebook  and others, Trump said at a joint White House news conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

We use the word collusion very loosely all the time, and I will tell you there is collusion with respect to that because something has to be going on, Trump said.

by Roberta Rampton

Ex-Google Engineer Claims Anti-Conservative Discrimination in Lawsuit

A former Google engineer who wrote a controversial memo criticizing the companys diversity policies sued the tech giant on Monday for allegedly discriminating against white male conservatives.

James Damore, who was fired in 2017 in the aftermath of the scathing memo, brought forward the class action lawsuit on Jan. 8, the Guardian reported. Appended to the suit are nearly 100 pages of screenshots of internal communications in which employees discuss sensitive political issues.

According to the lawsuit, Google employees who expressed views deviating from the majority view at Google on political subjects raised in the workplace and relevant to Googles employment policies and its business, such as diversity hiring policies, bias sensitivity, or social justice were/are singled out, mistreated, and systematically punished and terminated from Google, in violation of their legal rights.

Damore and lawyer Harmeet Dhillon held a news conference in San Francisco and said the company discriminated against white men who held political views different from those of Google executives.

Today, former Google engineer James Damore filed a lawsuit against Google for discriminating against whites, males, and conservatives https://t.co/Y0HYn9R0UZ  WIRED (@WIRED) January 9, 2018

Googles open hostility for conservative thought is paired with invidious discrimination on the basis of race and gender, barred by law, the lawsuit says. Googles management goes to extremeand illegallengths to encourage hiring managers to take protected categories such as race and/or gender into consideration as determinative hiring factors, to the detriment of Caucasian and male employees and potential employees at Google.

Another former Google engineer, David Gudeman, is also a member of the suit, according to the complaint filed in Santa Clara Superior Court in northern California.

Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males, the suit says.

Damore was sacked last August in the wake of his contentious 10-page memo, published in full on Gizmodo, and has been unemployed ever since.

Widely reported as controversial is his assertion that biological differences are why there are fewer woman engineers.

Note, Im not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are just, the memo reads. Im simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we dont see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and theres significant overlap between men and women, so you cant say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai denounced the memo for advancing harmful gender stereotypes. The company told the Los Angeles Times that it fired Damore for violating its code of conduct.

We look forward to defending against Mr. Damores lawsuit in court, a Google spokesperson stated in an e-mail.

Googles workforce, akin to the entire the tech industry, is overwhelmingly white, Asian, and male.

Of its workers, 56 percent are white and 35 percent are Asian, while Hispanic and black employees make up 4 percent and 2 percent, respectively, according to the companys latest diversity report.

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Labor accused Google of extreme pay discrimination against women, and a group of women have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging systemic wage discrimination.

But the Damore suit says its exposing a cultural bias toward promoting diversity and social justice that, according to the suit, has created a protected, distorted bubble of groupthink.

It charges that efforts to increase representation of women and minorities amount to illegal discrimination against the majority.

Appended to the lawsuit are many examples of internal Google communications that allegedly support the claims.

One of these is a 2014 email from former vice-president of PR at Google Rachel Whetstone:

It seems like we believe in free expression except when people disagree with the majority view  I have lost count of the times at Google, for example, people tell me privately that they cannot admit their voting choice if they are Republican because they fear how other Googlers react.

The suit also reveals internal backlash Damore allegedly faced after his memo went viral, including a mass email in which a Google director called the memo repulsive and intellectually dishonest.

Theres also reference to an email to Damore from a fellow engineer, the Guardian reported, calling him a misogynist and a terrible human, and they would keep hounding you until one of us is fired.

According to legal experts cited by the Washington Post, Google the right to fire employees it deems incompatible with the companys values.

Companies based in the United Statessome of which are global entities with employees numbering in the hundreds of thousandsare exempt from the First Amendments free-speech guarantees, which are only aimed at the government.

The Epoch Times reporter Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump attends the Greek Independence Day Celebration at the White House in Washington, March 18, 2019. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Trump to Nominate Washington Lawyer Ambassador to Mexico: White House

President Donald Trump will nominate a Washington attorney, Christopher Landau, to be the next United States Ambassador to Mexico, the White House Press Office said on Monday, March 18.

The nomination comes at a time of strained relations between the neighbors amid trade disputes, Trumps complaints about illegal immigrants crossing the border, and his efforts to build an extended border wall.

Roberta Jacobson, the previous U.S. ambassador, stepped down in May, joining a list of senior U.S. State Department officials who resigned during Trumps presidency.

Landau, now a partner at the law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, and then for Justice Clarence Thomas, both considered court conservatives.

The White House described Landau as a constitutional and appellate attorney who has briefed and argued appeals before the Supreme Court, Federal courts of appeals, and State appellate courts.

He previously headed the appellate litigation practice at the firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

In 2017, Landau served a three-year term as a member of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules, the White House said.

No formal diplomatic experience was mentioned in the White House statement, which said Landau is fluent in Spanish. Landau could not immediately be reached for comment.

By Rich McKay & Darren Schuettler
Turkeys President Broadcasts Footage of Terrorist Attacks As Social Media Giants Under Pressure to Remove It

As global pressure is mounting for social media giants to remove footage of the New Zealand Christchurch mosque attacks from their platforms, Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used part of the footage as an election campaign prop in his rallies to secure votes for local elections this month.

Erdogan screened partially blurry footage of the shootings with the caption, A terrorist who is the enemy of Islam and the Turks, during a number of election campaign events over the weekend, the Financial Times reported.

Turkish President Erdogan is using a montage of New Zealand massacre to motivate pious voters before local electionhttps://t.co/pZkpSCS2Wb  Bloomberg (@business) March 17, 2019

The 17-minute footage of the fatal mosque shootings was first live-streamed by the accused gunman on Facebook, and the social media tech giantalong with Twitter and Googles YouTubeis struggling to spot new uploads despite enforcing a ban on the clip, reports The Guardian.

The calls follow Facebook admitting to removing 1.5 million videos around the world in the first 24 hours following the massacre which claimed the lives of 50.

In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload  Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 17, 2019

In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload  , Facebook Newsroom wrote on Twitter on March 16.

But Facebook failed to remove one version of the footage monitored by the Guardian for over six hours, while other versions on YouTube were left live for at least three hours.

The governments of New Zealand, Britain, and Australia have urged the tech giants to do more to halt the spreading of offensive material and terrorist content online.

Speaking to the Daily Express, UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid said social media platforms must do more to tackle offensive content or face legal ramifications, saying they had a responsibility not to do the terrorists work for them.

Meanwhile, Australias opposition leader Bill Shorten said during a press conference, that online platforms had an obligation to better monitor and prevent hate speech.

We wouldnt allow television or print media to put some of the filth and rubbish and violence and perversion that gets put out on social media, so we cant just have one standard for old technology and give a leave pass to new technology, he added.

International media sites such as the Mirror, MailOnline, and the Sun have also been met with intense scrutiny over their decision publish parts of the footage.

MailOnline published a story which included an 18-second clip of the attack in al-Noor mosque in Christchurch on autoplay, with part of the clip featuring on the sites homepage. The media site also uploaded an alleged 74-page manifesto from the suspected gunman.

For a brief period this morning the Mirror website ran some edited footage filmed by the gunman in Christchurch. We should not have carried this. It is not in line with our policy relating to terrorist propaganda videos  Lloyd Embley (@Mirror_Editor) March 15, 2019

Both the footage and the manifesto were removed after the site received barrage of complaints, while The Mirror also removed its edited footage filmed in the Christchurch mosque, the Guardian reported.

New Zealands foreign minister, Winston Peters, hit out at the move saying such politicization of the attacks imperils the future and safety of the New Zealand people and our people abroad, and its totally unfair.

The death toll from the fatal attack on two Christchurch mosques rose to 50 on Sunday, with victims from at least 15 countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, The Times reported.
Tyler Perry arrives at the premiere of "The Single Moms Club" in Los Angeles, on March 10, 2014. Perry has reportedly offered to help pay for funeral expenses and rent for four children whose mother was killed in Alpharetta, Ga., on March 16, 2019. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

Tyler Perry Offers to Help Children of Single Mother Killed in Alpharetta Shooting

Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry is stepping in to help a family who lost their mother in a bank shooting, WSB TV reports.

The station said Perry reached out to the family and offered to arrange for 45-year-old Tynesha Evanss body to be flown to Wisconsin for her funeral, offered to take care of the familys rent so that they dont get evicted, and also offered to cover the tuition of Sharadiant Turner, who is currently a freshman at Spelman College in Atlanta.

It was a call I wasnt even going to answer. I said, Well, let me answer it to see who it is. I answered and the person on the other end said, This is Tyler. I said, Who? He said, This is Tyler. I said, Tyler who? And he said, Tyler Perry. At that point, I just broke down crying, Evanss daughter Audrey Turner told WSBTV.

Family who lost mother in bank shooting gets help from Tyler Perry https://t.co/nMHDtiGBNi pic.twitter.com/Era5I3giD9  WSB-TV (@wsbtv) March 19, 2019

Evans, a single mother of four, was shot outside a Wells Fargo bank in Alpharetta, Georgia, on the morning of March 16. She later died at North Fulton Regional Hospital. Police arrested the suspect, Othniel Inniss, 58, at the scene.

At the time of the shooting, police said an armed witness who was driving by the bank heard the shot and jumped out of his vehicle to help Evans. The witness confronted Inniss, ordered him to drop his weapon, and held him at gunpoint until officers arrived at the scene. Inniss was immediately taken into custody and questioned by detectives. Police thanked the witness for his actions.

Hearing reset due to health issue for man suspected of shooting his girlfriend to death in #Alpharetta. Police report says Othneil Inniss worked as a Fulton County School bus driver. Tynesha Evans leaves behind 4 children. pic.twitter.com/xZRPvcALOA  Mike Petchenik (@MPetchenikWSB) March 18, 2019

Inniss was charged with murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. His first court hearing, which was set for Monday, was pushed back due to a health issue. On Tuesday, the judge did not grant Inniss bond, WSBTV reports.

Police also said Evans and Inniss were in an on-again, off-again relationship that sadly ended in senseless violence during an argument. Its unclear if the two were together at the time of the shooting.

Detectives on scene gathering evidence. Well be here for several hours. No roadways are affected. pic.twitter.com/GRYs4MwPIF  AlpharettaPublicSafety (@AlpharettaDPS) March 16, 2019

Sharadiant told WSBTV that Inniss had offered to help them after her mother, Evans, fell on hard times despite working full-time as a health care worker. Evans dropped her daughter at the store before going to meet Inniss at the bank.

I wanted to get groceries and come out and shes gone and I called her and asked her where she was and she said she had to meet him, Sharadiant said.

After the shooting, Evanss children set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to cover their mothers funeral expenses as well as rent. The page says Evans was the breadwinner in their family, and that two of her four children are still minors. The campaign reached its $50,000 goal in one day.

According to WSBTV, the family was worried they could lose their home, as Evanss daughter said that their mother owed $3,200 in rent and that Webb Bridge Crossing Apartments was planning to evict them.

The family is grateful for the generosity Perry has offered.

We cant thank him enough, Shardiant told WSBTV while 14-year-old Shakemia Turner called him an angel.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) speaks during a Capitol Hill briefing in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, on June 25, 2015. (Kris Connor/ Getty Images)

US House Bill Proposes Measures to Counter Chinas Political Influence in America

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) has introduced legislation to tackle Chinas harmful political influence in the United States.

Beijings influence operations are sophisticated and threatening. They include efforts to coerce and corrupt U.S. interests, institutions and individuals, while fostering attitudes and outcomes favorable to the Chinese Communist Party, Smith said in a March 18 statement from his office.

The new bill, named Countering the Chinese Government and Communist Partys Political Influence Operations Act, calls for an unclassified U.S. interagency report to be compiled on how Beijing carries out its political influence operations in the United States.

If the bill is passed, the Secretary of State, together with the Director of National Intelligence and other federal departments and agencies, would draft the report and submit it to congressional committees.

The bill defines political influence operations as coordinated and often concealed application of disinformation, press manipulation, economic coercion, targeted investments, corruption, or academic censorship.

My bill would help ensure that Congress and the American public are fully informed of Chinas malign goals, and would help identify the key institutions, entities, and individuals that carry out these activities, Smith said in the statement.

The proposed bill, which would increase public awareness of Chinas agenda, is an indication that Western democracies are finally realizing Chinas sinister moves and taking measures against them, Vincent Wang, a professor of politics at Ithaca College in New York, said in a phone interview with The Epoch Times.

Wang added that the bill would help reveal the severity of Chinas sharp power.

The bill also calls for requiring Confucius Institutes, as well as think tanks, academic programs, and nongovernmental organizations funded by Beijing, to register with the federal government through the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

More than 100 U.S. universities and colleges host these Beijing-funded education programs.

Since 2006, the Chinese regime has channeled more than $158 million to fund Confucius Institutes, according to a report published in February by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, after an eight-month investigation. Senate investigators found that Beijing controls every aspect of the institutes, including funding, the hiring of staff, and programming.

The report also found that CI instructors must sign contracts in which they pledge that they wont damage the national interests of China, while certain subjects deemed taboo by the Chinese regime are banned from CI classrooms.

There are serious and well-founded concerns about academic censorship and self-censorship at these institutes, Smith said.

FARA, passed into law in 1938, requires organizations and individuals to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) if they seek to influence U.S. officials or American public opinion on behalf of foreign governments. As part of registration requirements, organizations and individuals must disclose their annual budget and expenditures.

The international arm of Chinas state-owned broadcaster, China Global Television Network (CGTN), recently registered as a foreign agent after the DOJ ordered it to do so in September 2018.

By requiring Confucius Institutes to register under FARA, Wang believes the bill will have the effect of restricting or lowering their activities, because these institutes would be directly considered an extension of a foreign government and serve as a tool of a foreign government, rather than legitimate academic institutions.

The bill also calls for greater cooperation and coordination with U.S. allies that are also targets of Beijings political influence, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Mongolia.

Wang applauded the cooperation measures, saying that democratic governments can share intelligence, expertise, and coordinate best practices, which symbolizes that they are not just taking notice [of Chinese influence], but effectively beating it back.

The bill also proposed secure outlets for reporting on intimidation and surveillance incidents that Chinese-Americans, and members of the Chinese, Uyghur, and Tibetan diaspora may face. Practitioners of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and exiled Uyghurs have been targeted by Chinese operatives.

We need to empower Chinese-Americans and visiting Chinese students with the knowledge that coercion and threats from Beijing are an unacceptable intrusion of their civil liberties and will not be tolerated, Smith said.
Stacey L. Vaillancourt, 53, of Rutland is seen in this booking photo taken on March 18, 2019. (Vermont State Police)

Vermont Day Care Owner Charged in Death of 6-Month-Old

A Vermont child care provider has been arrested in the death of a 6-month-old baby who police said suffered a fatal overdose of antihistamine given to help her sleep.

Stacey Vaillancourt, 53, of Rutland, was taken into custody on Monday, March 16, on suspicion of manslaughter and cruelty to a child arising from the January death of 6-month-old Harper Rose Briar, Vermont State Police said in a news release.

Vaillancourt ran a state-licensed day care out of her Rutland home.

Manner of Death Was Homicide

An autopsy report cited by police revealed the infants cause of death.

Toxicology testing determined that Harper Briar had high concentrations of diphenhydramine in her body, the news release said.

The Chief Medical Examiners Office determined the cause of Harper Briars death was diphenhydramine intoxication, and the manner of death was homicide.

Diphenhydramine, the active sedating ingredient in over-the-counter antihistamines such as Benadryl, should not be used on infants without a doctors order, according to the news release.

Police said there was no doctors order recommending the drug be given to the deceased child.

Infant Unresponsive

Emergency Medical Services personnel responded to a 911 call made on Jan. 24, 2019, from a registered in-home day care facility in Rutland City, according to the police.

When the medical crew arrived, they found the 6-month-old infant unresponsive. The child was transported to Rutland Regional Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.

Investigators initially believed there was nothing to indicate the death was suspicious but noted in a Jan. 25 news release the inquiry remains active and ongoing.

Detectives from the Vermont State Polices Bureau of Criminal Investigation joined the investigation, officials announced in the news release, adding, Together with the Rutland City Police Department and Vermont DCF are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding Harpers death Vaillancourt was arrested following the results of the autopsy.

The arrest Monday, March 18, 2019, follows continued investigation and the completion last week of a final autopsy report from the Chief Medical Examiners Office in Burlington, the police said.

The police noted further information about the case would be available in the affidavit of probable cause filed with the court.

The Burlington Free Press reported as of 4:30 p.m. Monday, no sworn police statement nor other documents in the case had been made publicly available.

The news outlet reported that a judge had found probable cause.

The babys obituary in the Rutland Herald said she was the daughter of Marissa Colburn and Blake Briar, and taught her parents the true meaning of unconditional love and happiness.

Harper Rose quickly gained the title of Perfect Princess, her beautiful smile made everyone instantly fall in love with her, the obituary said.

Day Care Employees Fed 2-Year-Olds Laced Gummy Bears

The case of the tragic death of Harper Rose recalls an incident in which three day care employees were arrested in Illinois after police said they were caught feeding children gummy bears laced with a drug.

Police officers were called to the Kiddie Junction Daycare Center in Des Plaines on Friday afternoon, March 1, over a suspicious incident, reported NBC.

Daycare employees gave 2-year-olds laced gummy bears to calm them down for nap time: Police https://t.co/jJXKRei1xa pic.twitter.com/jkZMD8HxSz  NBC Chicago (@nbcchicago) March 5, 2018

Three female day care staff members reportedly admitted giving 2-year-olds gummy bears laced with melatonin.

Melatonin is a hormone found naturally in the body, according to WebMD.

Melatonin used as medicine is usually made synthetically in a laboratory. It is most commonly available in pill form, but melatonin is also available in forms that can be placed in the cheek or under the tongue. This allows the melatonin to be absorbed directly into the body, the website stated.

People use melatonin to alleviate the effects of jet lag or when they cant sleep.

Police officers said that the use of melatonin at the day care was not approved by parents.

Allegedly, this was done in an effort to calm [the kids] down before nap time, a release from Des Plaines police read.

The employees told police they didnt think that giving the children melatonin was inappropriate since it can be obtained over-the-counter.

Epoch Times reporter Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Virginia Republicans Ask Supreme Court to Redraw Districts

WASHINGTONVirginia Republicans urged the Supreme Court to quash a lower court ruling that redrew 11 districts in the Virginia House of Delegates after finding their boundaries had been drawn to dilute the power of black voters.

The racial gerrymandering case is important because the redistricting imposed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia could help determine which party controls the House in Richmond after future elections. Currently, party standings in the chamber are 51 Republicans to 49 Democrats. Republicans also narrowly control the state Senate, where they occupy 21 of the 40 seats.

Republicans, led by Speaker of the House Kirk Cox, want to discard the court-ordered map and revive the old one. Democrats, on the other hand, prefer the new map. The case has made it to the Supreme Court twice before. Both times Democrats prevailed.

Republicans say the map abandoned by the lower court was approved with bipartisan and black leaders support and was cleared by the Obama-era Department of Justice, which was enforcing the Voting Rights Act to guarantee that black voters were treated fairly. Despite this, the lower court found that black voters were bunched together in districts in a manner that unconstitutionally deprived them of representation.

But this time, the justices may not even get around to considering the merits of the complex case. This is because the legal standing of the House to bring a lawsuit on behalf of Virginia is hotly disputed. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, argues that the members of one of the two chambers of the General Assembly have no legal right to speak for the Old Dominion and have usurped his authority to defend state laws in court.

During oral arguments March 18, Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed to agree with Herrings position.

The Supreme Court would take a radical new step if it determined that a legislative chamber could participate in a lawsuit separately from the state, she said.

Sotomayor suggested the Houses claim that it was harmed by the district court ruling, which failed to fundamentally alter the institution, was weak.

It may change the membership of individuals, she said. But it doesnt change the processes of the legislature.

Justice Stephen Breyer wondered aloud if anyone had the legal right to challenge the district court ruling if the states Democratic-controlled executive branch failed to do so.

The governor wont, he said in reference to Gov. Ralph Northam. Because he likes it politically, so who will?

Breyer asked if there was a way to challenge standing.

Virginia Solicitor General Toby Heytens, representing Herring, replied, I dont think the court needs to decide in this case.

Id like to decide, Breyer shot back, to laughter from the audience.

Responding to Justice Samuel Alito, Heytens said no one is disputing theres a judicially cognizable injury here  [but it] is to the sovereign whose law was declared unconstitutional, and that sovereign is the Commonwealth of Virginia, not to the House of Delegates which is just one of the constituent parts of the state government.

As to the merits of the case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to defend the Houses use of race in drawing the map.

If the chamber allowed the black voting population in districts to drop all the way down to 50 percent, Kavanaugh said, lawmakers would get hammered from the other side for blocking black voters from having electorally significant majorities.

Im wondering why 55 [percent] is so problematic here, given that the states have to have some flexibility, he said.

Sotomayor said evidence showed detailed racial sorting, sometimes so precise that lines divided streets between white households on one side and black households on the other.

Race has to be the dominant factor when theyre getting down to the nitty-gritty of what side of the street you live on, she said.
Mariah Michelle Logan, 23, was killed in a hit-and-run after falling out of a car window in Miami, on March 17, 2019. (Mariah Michelle Logan/Facebook)

Woman Hanging Out of Car Window Falls Out and Is Killed in Hit-and-Run

A woman who Florida police said was hanging out of a car window, fell out and died when she was struck by a vehicle which then fled the scene.

Mariah Michelle Logan, of Chicago, died in the hit-and-run as she was heading to Miami International Airport at about 4:45 a.m. Sunday, March 17, according to the Florida Highway Patrol, as cited by the Miami Herald.

Logan and three friends were returning from a three-day stay at South Beach, where they had been celebrating a birthday and enjoying spring break.

It was a birthday trip, said Xylina Griffin, Logans sister, according to WLS. They went to have fun. They did have fun. I saw so many pictures and things. It just didnt end the way it was supposed to.

She fell out of the right rear passenger seat of a Hyundai Accent as it changed lanes and was struck and killed by a passing Range Rover, according to a Florida Highway Patrol incident report obtained by the Miami Herald.

Chicago woman, Mariah Michelle Logan killed in hit and run after falling out of back seat of rental car while leaning out  minutes before arriving at Miami airport to return home. Girl's trip with Trina Frazier, 24, Aaliyah Frazier, 23, and Kenyatta https://t.co/L1QaHh8PmN  Scallywagandvagabond (@ScallywagNYC) March 19, 2019

Police said the driver of that vehicle initially stopped but then left before authorities arrived on the scene.

Authorities said the incident is being investigated as a homicide.

Bye, Miami

The heartbroken boyfriend of the deceased 23-year-old was cited by the Herald as saying that Logan fell out just as she was saying Bye, Miami.

She was just being silly. She loved life, her boyfriend, Ray Olden, told the Herald.

Olden said Logans friends called him the moment it happened, saying that my baby was gone, fell out the window and was hit by a car. I started screaming and they were crying and said they had to call her sisters and that they were so sorry.

UPDATE: FHP says woman who fell out of car window and was killed by a hit-and-run driver may have been in town for Spring Break and was heading to airport when the incident happened: https://t.co/giXIlAXL0G  NBC 6 South Florida (@nbc6) March 18, 2019

A Silence In the Air

The other women in the vehicle24-year-old Trina Frazier, 23-year-old Aaliyah Frazier, and 23-year-old Kenyatta Burchwere distraught in the wake of the tragic accident, New York Post reported.

They are devastated, as am I, Olden told The Herald. Theres just a silence in the air. Its not real yet.

She brought energy and life, Logans boyfriend told the paper. She never looked at the bad. I was told I was a special man and she made me believe it. We had the next five years mapped out.

The way it happened, its not easy to accept a person going out like that. She was an angel, Griffin said, WLS reported.

A Walking Angel

Griffin told the news outlet Logan was one of 13 brothers and sisters.

She was a walking angel to everybody and anybody she met. Her friends, family. Anyone will tell you, Griffin told WLS.

Her smile would brighten up a room. She didnt have to say anything. She was always praying for people, letting them know that God was there if you need him. She was big on church.

Logan worked as a mental health technician at a residence for people with developmental disabilities.

Were just trying to get her home now. Send her home beautifully and everything, she said.
General Electric estimated at more than $5 million the compensation paid last year to former CEO John Flannery after the cancellation of stock benefits worth $11.5 million more, with the companys chief financial officer getting a bonus of more than $1.1 million even as the company ratcheted down bonuses paid to executives in underperforming units.

GE had a tumultuous 2018, capped by the board of directors installing Larry Culp Jr. as CEO in October, replacing Flannery and shedding jobs through subsidiary sales and cutbacks. The Boston-based companys stock lost more than half its value as the company struggled to contain losses at its GE Capital division, based in Norwalk, including the revelation of a $1.5 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over its management of a former subprime mortgage subsidiary.

This is a game of inches  every single day, Culp told investors last week during a conference call in which he described 2019 as a reset year for GE. This year will be more about what we do than what we say. ... This is a year of intensity, of focus and transparency.

Culp received $15.4 million in his first three months on the job, most of it in up-front compensation pegged to the estimated value of GEs stock based on the performance of the company going forward. The company calculated Culps annualized pay at $20.1 million, about 345 times the $58,000 in compensation received by the median GE employee, at a GE Baker Hughes facility in Louisiana.

Under a similar compensation model, Michael Holston received $13.5 million as GEs new general counsel. Jamie Miller, who was promoted to chief financial officer in October 2017 and who has continued as CFO under Culp, saw a 50 percent increase in estimated compensation last year to $7.4 million. That was about $4 million less than her predecessor Jeff Bornstein made in his final full year as CFO.

GEs compensation committee is chaired by Tom Horton, the former CEO of American Airlines. In a letter prefacing the companys annual investor proxy published on Monday, Horton noted GEs overhaul of its compensation plans with the goal of improving corporate results.

While this plan entails a significant amount of transition, particularly for GEs employees, we believe it is key to unlocking value for (shareholders) and laying the foundation for a stronger GE going forward, Horton stated in the proxy document. For 2018, the bonus pool was redesigned to make payouts for business executives based on business unit performance, rather than overall company results. ... Smaller or no bonuses were paid to businesses that fell short of expectations.

GE has scheduled its annual meeting for May 8 at the Westchester Marriott in Tarrytown, N.Y., with the meeting to begin at 10 a.m. In past years, the company has allowed individual investors to pose questions to executives and board members about the companys management, past practices and future direction.

Correction: Due to a reporting error, an initial version reported former CEO John Flannerys compensation at $16.6 million; in its annual proxy to investors, GE noted that it canceled $11.5 million in performance-based stock Flannery had been in line to receive prior to leaving the company.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
Pequot Library / Contributed photo

Author Rhiannon Navin will discuss her debut novel, Only Child, about a boy who survives a school shooting, at Pequot Library on Sunday, March 24.

Told from the perspective of a 6-year-old boy, Only Child is a story of healing, family and the exquisite wisdom of children, who remind us that sometimes the littlest bodies hold the biggest hearts, and that the quietest voices speak the loudest, the library said in a news release.
A former Mississippi Gulf Coast police officer told a judge Monday that she had sex with her supervisor and then fell asleep while her 3-year-old daughter was dying inside an overheated patrol car.

Cassie Barker pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter in a plea bargain after being indicted on a second-degree murder charge. The Sun Herald reports prosecutors recommended the 29-year-old Barker spend 20 years in prison. Harrison County Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois said he wanted more time to consider the case and would sentence the ex-Long Beach officer April 1.

Cheyenne Hyer died Sept. 30, 2016, after her mother left her strapped in a car seat for four hours while Barker was with her then-supervisor at his home. The car was running with the air conditioner turned on, but it wasnt blowing cold air.

The girl was unresponsive when Barker returned. Authorities say Hyers body temperature was 107 degrees when she arrived at a nearby hospital.

I dont know what I could ever do to you that could be worse than what youve already experienced ... You will forever be entombed in a prison of your own mind, Bourgeois said to Barker.

Barker had been free on bail, but was arrested Monday after pleading guilty.

Barker, who was working two jobs at the time, originally claimed she had been talking to Clark Ladner at his house early on a hot weekday morning when she fell asleep. Ladner and Barker were fired by the city of Long Beach within days. Ladner hasnt been criminally charged, telling officials he didnt know the girl was in the car. Reports at the time indicated Ladner told officials he had taken a sleep aid and also fallen asleep.

The mother had left her daughter alone in a car at least once before, at a store in nearby Gulfport in April 2015. Police responded and child welfare officials took temporary custody of the girl at the time. Barker was suspended from the Long Beach police for a week without pay. The girls father, Ryan Hyer, said he was never notified of that first incident.

Every time I close my eyes, I picture her suffering and then I picture her laying in this coffin, Ryan Hyer said Monday. I still see her smiling and laughing in my head and I would assume that smile and laughter turned to pain and suffering in that instance.

The father is suing the Long Beach Police Department and the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services for the wrongful death of his child, saying the child welfare agency should have taken stronger action after the first incident.

As a parent, you are supposed to protect your child, and Cheyenne is gone because her mother didnt protect her, not once but twice, Hyer said.

Barker herself was hospitalized after the girls death for what officials described as shock. A psychological exam showed Barker suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder attributed to childhood trauma and her daughters death. She was found competent to stand trial.

A GoFundMe page for Cheyenne's burial raised more than $8,000.

"I'm not one to ask for help, but I want my little girl home and laid to rest," Ryan Hyer wrote. "She was a wonderful, sweet, beautiful girl. Full of life and excitement and cannot believe she's gone. She did not deserve this. Please help me give her the best and, most importantly, proper burial that she deserves so she can be at peace and hopefully give me peace."
NORWALK  The citys Traffic Authority approved a plan that would put a two-hour parking limit throughout the Golden Hill neighborhood, located across West Avenue from the SoNo Collection Mall. Residents who live in the neighborhood would be excluded from the restrictions.

Mayor Harry Rilling said officials would also check to determine if it was possible to make the area a tow-away zone.

We are very intent to figure out what we can do, he said. I travel Garner Street a lot ... I recognize the problem.

With more construction workers anticipated to start in the next couple of months, the citys Parking Authority was concerned that the employees would clog up the residential neighborhood even more than they already had been doing.

Over a dozen residents showed up to tell the authority that they were concerned about parking, safety and road access since the roads have become full of cars, making it hard to get around.

I havent before had to put cones out in front of my house on a regular basis, one resident said, describing how he tries to make sure he has parking available. I cant even get out of my driveway.

In order to exempt residents from the restrictions, the Traffic Authority authorized the Parking Authority to utilize its license plate scanning system that it will be implementing at the citys beaches later this year. Those doing the enforcement will scan the license plate and if that plate is not registered, the car would be subject to ticketing or potentially towing.

The goal is to force the workers to park in the designated off-site lots, set up by the mall property owner, Parking Authority Chair Dick Brescia told those gathered. The workers have permits in multiple city parking garages as well as space at the Norden Manufacturing location, where they are shuttled to the site.

Our primary concern here is to alleviate the pressure you have, Brescia said.

Rilling said officials would also look into giving certificates or some type of designation that homeowners could give to visitors whose cars wouldnt be in the database. But for now, if there is someone who gets ticketed incorrectly, Brescia said that person can contact the authority and attempt to correct the problem.

Members of the neighborhood were encouraged to come back to Aprils Traffic Authority meeting to check if the two-hour limit and its enforcement made a difference on the neighborhood.

kelly.kultys@hearstmediact.com
NORWALK

By DANIELLE CAPALBO

Hour Staff Writer

It wasn't altogether uncommon for passersby in the late 1940s to peek inside West Avenue School. They were checking to see if the news was true: If Norwalk had really hired its first black teacher.

"They were looking to see if I was there," said Marguerite Fuller, 85. "And I was, of course."

For her outstanding contributions to education, Fuller -- a 32-year veteran of Norwalk Public Schools who was born and raised in the city -- was honored this past weekend by the Educational Advancement Foundation of the regional chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

She was among four teachers from Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts to be recognized during the Salute to Excellence in Community Education Awards Luncheon.

"The award is for community members who have made a difference in creating a love of lifetime learning," said Constance R. Pizarro, director of the North Atlantic Regional chapter of the sorority.

That description matches Fuller to a T, colleagues said -- a pioneering woman whose life has been defined by firsts and who, decades after she retired from teaching, continues to work with children through Literacy Volunteers of America of Southeastern Fairfield County.

"She's a devoted, caring, wonderful and phenomenal woman," said Barbara Smart, the school readiness coordinator for Norwalk Public Schools and Fuller's longtime sorority sister.

What became an illustrious career began at West Avenue School, Fuller said -- a building across from Lockwood-Mathews Mansion -- in a first-grade classroom.

"I had some very positive experiences, but some negative experiences, as well," she said. "There were parents who wanted to remove their children from my class."

Later, when Fuller moved to Tracey Elementary School, Principal Edith Vogel gave her powerful advice.

"She said to me, 'Don't you worry about it. I'm not taking any of the children out of your class and we're going to move forward.'" I wound up teaching them so well, their parents became my best allies."

As for the children, Fuller said, they never saw color.

"They only saw people," she said.

In her decades-long career in Norwalk Public Schools, Fuller taught in several buildings and ultimately became the assistant supervisor for language arts, establishing the first remedial reading clinic in a public district in Connecticut, she said.

She spent another 10 years in Bridgeport Public Schools, where she developed its reading and language arts. She has also taught courses and workshops to undergraduates and graduates at the University of Bridgeport, Fairfield University and the University of Connecticut.

Before she was a Norwalk teacher, Fuller was a Norwalk student. She graduated from Norwalk High School in 1944, having been selected to join National Honor Society.

From there, it was a roundabout journey to education, she said. Her sights were set originally on the medical field.

At the time, she said, the United States military was paying high school graduates $15 per month to train as nurses. After being rejected from programs between Greenwich and Hartford on account of her skin color, Fuller became the first black student in the training program at Norwalk Hospital.

Yet a rigorous physical examination revealed that Fuller had a heart murmur -- a vestige of undiagnosed rheumatic fever -- and could not train.

As she prepared to leave, the head nurse asked Fuller if she had ever considered a future in education. That woman would eventually help Fuller finance her studies at Danbury Teacher's College.

"I wanted to be something," Fuller said, "but I didn't know what yet. So I told her, 'Yes,' I was interested."

It was two weeks before Fuller said she realized she found her calling.

"It wasn't her first love," Smart said, "but we are so thankful she found her way to education, and it became her passion."

As for Fuller, a love for teaching grew naturally from a lifelong love of learning.

"I didn't realize I'd made any history," Fuller said, the day after she accepted her plaque from Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. "The things I did, I did because I was interested and eager to learn new things, to do new things."
As it was with George W. Bush and every other president who preceded him, Barack Obama made policy decisions I found troubling.

Obama once described the driving principle of his foreign policy as little more than "don't do stupid s---." That reflexive reaction to Bush's military adventurism led to U.S. inaction in the face of some 500,000 Syrian deaths and the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Domestically, Obama failed to pass a significant piece of legislation during his final six years in office.

And yet, 100 years from now, Obama's presidency will be hailed as the most transformative of our lifetimes and Donald Trump's will be viewed with the same scorn that followed the Dred Scott decision. Like that pre-Civil War Supreme Court case, Trump will forever be condemned as a racial reprobate whose words and actions inspired white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Last week's slaughter of Muslims in New Zealand was committed by a fascist who claimed to draw inspiration from Trump and others. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies that our president failed to clearly condemn. After the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump proclaimed a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and their opponents. After the killings in Christchurch, the president dismissed the threat of white supremacy while claiming the rising tide of violence coming from the far right was limited to a few troublemakers with "very serious problems."

Trump's acting chief of staff appeared on national television to declare that "the president is not a white supremacist." White House counselor Kellyanne Conway once again shamed herself by dismissing the fascist mass killing from Australia as an "eco-terrorist." The president's apologists denied that the current commander in chief was inspiring right-wing violence. But the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported in November that far-right attacks rose in Europe by 43 percent since 2016, while right-wing terrorist attacks have quadrupled in the United States over the same time. Hate crimes rose 17 percent in 2017.

This troubling chapter in American history has one author - and his name is Donald Trump. This sputtering reality star has created a political identity and corrupt presidency inspired by the wave of racism that followed Obama's. The Manhattan multimillionaire's 2016 calls for a Muslim ban and creation of a Muslim registry, the claim of ignorance toward former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, the attack on a Hispanic judge's integrity, the callousness shown toward a Muslim Gold Star family, and the anti-Semitic tweet featuring a Star of David and piles of $100 bills next to Hillary Clinton's face. These are just a few of the racially charged offenses that Trump committed even before Americans elected him president.

The shocking conclusion to the 2016 campaign made millions of Americans, including me, look foolish for believing that Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 had proved that the United States had emerged from the scourge of racism infecting it for more than two centuries. I remain shocked that this strain of bigotry still fuels the political careers of Trump and his enablers on Capitol Hill.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., often said that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." That is but one reason why the rise in bigotry shown to Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, blacks and "others" has been so discouraging in the age of Trump. Like those who believed these racists were relics from a bygone age, I had also convinced myself that my Republicans colleagues were so repelled by racism that they would never support a leader who provided inspiration to neo-Nazis and white supremacists; the manifesto of the New Zealand killer and the words of David Duke after Charlottesville showed just how wrong I was.

That's why any policy differences I had with Obama now seem so insignificant. Americans who still have faith in the upward arc of King's moral universe should be grateful for Obama's presidency and the way his election exposed the white racism that is still at large in our land. If changing the Constitution and re-electing Obama two more times would break the fever that now ravages Trump's Washington, I would cheerfully champion the passage of that constitutional amendment, slap a "Hope and Change" sticker on my shirt and race to the nearest voting booth to support the man historians will remember as the most significant president since Abraham Lincoln.
In the early summer of June 1983, former Norwalk teacher and future mayor Thomas C. OConnor dedicated the grand opening of the Heritage Wall, on West Avenue, across the street from Stepping Stones and Lockwood-Mathews Mansion. This wall would be a testimony to the diversity of Norwalk. Even though the project was created under then-Mayor Frank Zullo, OConnor was part of a team that would implement the rollout of this project. To this day, the wall stands as a testament to OConnors planning and vision to showcase the ethnicities of our city.

OConnor was a state representative for Norwalk in 1978. He took part in the Common Council of Norwalk from 1982 to 1983. OConnor was an educator for 35 years for Norwalk. In 1945, he served in the military; he did two tours of service in the US Navy Air Force during World War II and the Korean War. Perhaps because of his exposure to all these different ethnicities and cultures as a teacher, serving in the military, and helping around Norwalk, he was inspired to represent those cultures and heritages in what would later become the Heritage Wall.

The wall was constructed with the first plaque, the Hungarian plaque, which went up on June 27, 1983. Seventeen plaques were added that year, including the French-Canadian, Italian, and Polish plaques. In the center of the wall, a plaque was added honoring the United States of America. Other plaques represent the cultures of Greece, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, England, Native Americans, the Black Community of Norwalk, Haiti, Portugal, Italy, and China. The history behind these plaques is unknown and information about who sponsored them is limited, but many cultural groups in Norwalk and surrounding areas have paid to put up plaques honoring their heritage. It is important that each of the cultures on the Heritage Wall is documented for future generations.

Throughout the years following OConnors death, the Thomas C. OConnor Park  across the street from Matthews Park  has gained new monuments, including a statue of Christopher Columbus that was formerly at Columbus Elementary School in 1983. The park has also been the site of many parades and cultural festivities. A memorial for the Hungarian Freedom Fighters was rededicated in 2012 after being moved from Freeze Park. A dedication plaque to Thomas C. OConnor was placed at the park in 2001, shortly after his death to pay tribute to a man who dedicated his life to finding a way to showcase Norwalks diversity.

Looking at data from the 1980 U.S. Census (which was when the Heritage Wall was erected), Hispanics made up about 6 percent of Norwalks population, African-Americans made up about 14 percent, and Caucasians made up around 80 percent. Therefore, the Heritage Wall is not currently accurate to Norwalks population trends. According to an article published Jan. 18, 2019, in The Norwalk Hour, titled ELL, Hispanic populations on the rise, the population of Hispanics in Norwalk is now about 40 percent of the total population. The census from 2010 says that the percentage of Hispanic or Latino citizens is 26.9 percent. However, as of now, there are only three Hispanic-related plaques on the Heritage Wall: Colombia, Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. Therefore, this emphasizes the need to update the wall. Other cultures missing include Eastern-European, Middle Eastern, as well as various Asian and African regions.

To get a plaque on the Heritage Wall, the process involves filling out an application called City of Norwalk Public Art, Gifts and Donations and Loans Form, which you can get at Parks and Recreation in City Hall. If you would like to learn more information on how to apply to have your nationality represented on the Heritage Wall, then visit the Parks & Recreation Department at City Hall.

The writing on the plaques is very poetic when it comes to the representation of their culture. For example, the Italian plaque states, Strong through the teaching of our forefathers. Lovers of work and freedom. Humble we came honoring the laws. We pursued our dreams, achieved our goals, strengthened our beliefs, and proudly we are Americans.

Applicants have to pay between $8,000 and $10,000 to have the plaque constructed of bronze, with a dimension of 3- feet wide by 4-feet tall. However, the amount may vary depending on various decorations or extra wording on the plaque. Religious groups or nationalities can combine to have a plaque made as well.

All groups are welcome to have their cultures represented in order to portray a more accurate depiction of Norwalks diversity.

Ella Dino, Gia Magana-Garcia, Rosie Strickland, Raisa Yousuf and Roshni Yousuf are seventh-graders at Roton Middle School. Mark Jackson is their social studies teacher.
Located in the luxury condominium community of Thomas Place, 3 Thomas, a full- and top-floor unit in the building that was the 1929-era boathouse for the former Rock Ledge Estate. It is listed by Christa FitzPatrick of Halstead Connecticut for $1.149 million.

The current owners acquired the property in 2016 as a second home, a retreat. It afforded them the whole package, they recalled. This slice of Rowayton has history; this particular unit had great architectural character. The waterfront setting and spectacular views sealed the deal.

This unit felt very unique and special, the co-owner recalled. What we later discovered is that we are the only unit in our building that has light and views on all four sides, and three terraces, and the sunrises and sunsets that come in from every window are breathtaking!

Among the improvements the owners have made to the unit are the installation of smart-home technology and energy-efficient systems.

We installed a new energy-efficient air-conditioning unit, all new kitchen appliances and LED lighting, the seller explained in writing. We also installed a Ring doorbell, a Wi-Fi-enabled lock on the entry door, and two Nest thermostats  all of which can be monitored or controlled from our smartphone when we are away from home.

The condo has 1,320 square feet of living space with a spacious living-dining room great room, with a fireplace.

The kitchen is modest in size, but efficiently laid out and well equipped. The sellers put in a new fridge, dishwasher and range.

I also want to note that it is a delight to have the kitchen open to the living and dining space, able to see the fireplace and look outside through any window to see water, the seller said.

3 Thomas Place has two bedrooms and two baths.

The master bedroom is very serene with views of light and nature everywhere, the owner described the sanctuary space. The bench seat, with storage, running along the southern wall is a comfy perch to enjoy the sun and water view all times of the day. The French doors face the west, so the sky lights up with sunset colors later in the day, and the Palladian window reflects on the ceiling and light shimmers all around the room.

The property includes an oversized garage that accommodates one car and still provides additional storage space.

Being front row on the water offers practical benefits, too.

Having shoreline access has been incredible, the seller said. We are boaters, so we had a vantage point of seeing our home from the boat channel in Wilson Cove, which we look out to. The dock on the property also enabled us to store a kayak  others store paddle boards  waterside during warm-weather months.

For easy access to launching, just walk downstairs and be out on the water in a matter of minutes. There is also a swim ladder. We have a unique setting that provides peace and privacy on our outdoor terrace, viewing bird and marine life, the tide coming in and out, the boats going by on the channel, overlooking the Norwalk Yacht Club and its mooring field filled with sailboats. We are surrounded by three yacht clubs, the seller pointed out.

Details Address: 3 Thomas Place, Rowayton Price: $1.149 million Number of Rooms: 4 Features: This top- and full-floor condominium is situated waterfront, with 1,320 square feet of living space, two bedrooms and two baths. It has an outdoor deck, an oversized one-car garage with additional storage, and access to a boathouse and dock. Schools: Rowayton Elementary, Roton Middle, Brien McMahon High See More Collapse

The Thomas Place property enjoys a boat house of its own; on the shoreline, poised on the pier, its a lovely place for recreation, relaxation and occasional entertaining.

We have gathered there with neighbors for impromptu cocktails and used the fireplace there on cool nights, the seller recalled. We have also had a catered waterside dock party for 70 people there, too. It is a casual spontaneous gathering spot for neighbors in the community.

The new owner of 3 Thomas Place will also enjoy the low-maintenance perks of being members of the Association.

Thomas Place Association maintains all exterior aspects: insurance, landscaping, snow removal, leaf clean up, tree and shrub trimming, drains, gutters, painting of the garages and exterior of the units, roofing.  Homeowners insure and maintain the interiors of their units only, the seller explained.

The sellers described Rowayton as unique and a vibrant, active community. Some of the local events theyve enjoyed are the annual ball drop on New Years Eve at Brendans 101; the Easter Egg hunt at Pinkney Park, the Memorial Day parade, the Summer Music Festival, Shakespeare on the Sound, Octoberfest and the tree lighting in December.

We face Bluff Avenue, which is a wonderful walkway to East or South Beach. There are always people riding bikes, running, walking, pushing a stroller or walking their dogs. People are very friendly, the seller said.

Listing Agent: Christa FitzPatrick, Halstead Connecticut, Darien office; (203) 656-6518 office; (646) 530-4756 cell; cfitzpatrick@halstead.com
FAIRFIELD  The northernmost part of Fairfields bucolic Greenfield Hill may seem worlds away from modern conveniences. Its distance from the town center and train station is considered disadvantageous to some prospective homebuyers.

They would be wise to rid themselves of such misperceptions and consider the abundance of assets, seen and unseen, that comes with the 2.62-acre property at 2228 North St. It is an ideal location for lovers of nature, preservationists who appreciate updated vintage houses, anyone involved in equestrian activities, and those who value privacy and yet also a sense of community.

When Sarah Filler and her family first moved into the white Greek revival colonial house with the four stately fluted columns and gabled roof in January 2011, they were surprised by the number of neighbors who stopped by to welcome them to the neighborhood. Several left notes at the doorstep when the Fillers were not home.

They have remained close to their neighbors while also appreciating the tranquility provided by this property.

When you pull into the driveway its quiet, serene. You dont want to leave, Filler said. Its a nice, big, safe place for our kids to play around and get dirty, she said, adding they would climb the apple tree, walk atop the fieldstone wall, and kick around a ball. They could also ride horses, were they so inclined, and at one point they did have ponies.

This horse property features a two-story horse barn with three stalls and room for a fourth; a heated tack room with electricity, hot and cold running water, and laundry facilities, and three paddocks. The barn has 15-foot-tall doors that open to the pasture. The municipally-owned wildlife conservation area, Brett Woods Open Space, is close by. It features 185 acres of forested land including hiking and bridle trails.

Residents of this property could ride their horses to the trails in this rural setting. Also within walking distance is the Connecticut Audubon Society on Burr Street and the 155-acre Roy and Margot Larsen Wildlife Sanctuary. Although, to some, it seems far away from downtown Fairfield the truth is this property is only six miles from the Fairfield train station and downtown restaurants and shopping.

The 11-room, 5,552-square-foot main house, built circa 1802, has been thoughtfully and extensively renovated and offers inviting living and entertaining spaces both inside and out.

A former renovation and remodel by famed local architect, Cameron Clark, laid the groundwork for a more modern interior reimagining by the current owners, according to the listing agent, who describes this house best: Classic Connecticut on the outside meets California Chic on the inside. It is a masterful melange of old and new.

In addition to the main house, there is a separate guest house, which could be used as a home office. It has a wood stove, kitchenette, living room, bedroom and full bath.

A semi-circular driveway provides ample parking for visitors. The front facade has a dramatic two-story veranda. Its door enters into a sizable foyer, where there is wide-planked flooring and a recessed area with the gracefully curved staircase to the second floor. The same flooring continues in other rooms. There are four fireplaces, including one in the banquet-sized formal dining room and one in the master bedroom suite.

Several rooms have doors to the grounds. There is a screened porch and another two-story veranda on which to sit, relax and take in the surrounding views. Recessed window areas in the dining room contain hidden cabinetry for storage of culinary ware, although there is storage room to spare in the sizable butlers pantry. It and the gourmet eat-in kitchen were designed by the iconic Boffi.

ABOUT THIS HOUSE TYPE OF HOUSE: Updated Antique Greek Revival ADDRESS: 2228 North Street PRICE: $1,787,000 NUMBER OF ROOMS: 11 FEATURES: 2.62-acre level horse property, two-story horse barn with three to four stalls, heated tack room with electricity and water, three paddocks, guest house/home office, screened porch, red brick patio, pergola, audio system, cable - pre-wired, in-law/au pair suite, four fireplaces (in main house, guest house has a wood stove), professionally landscaped, close to the Connecticut Audubon Society at Roy and Margot Larsen Wildlife Sanctuary and Brett Woods Open Space, proximity to the Patterson Club, only six miles from the Fairfield train station and downtown restaurants and shopping, rear stairs, semi-circular driveway, detached three-car garage, shed, zoned central air conditioning and heating, stone wall, attic, partial basement crawl space, four bedrooms, five full and one half baths SCHOOL: Burr Elementary, Tomlinson Middle, Fairfield Warde High ASSESSMENT: $1,043,840 TAX RATE: 26.36 mills TAXES: $27,516 See More Collapse

On the second floor, the spacious master features a sitting area, dressing room, walk-in closet and a cavernous and luxurious master bath with a polished marble floor in a herringbone pattern, floating vanities with under-cabinet lighting, a soaking tub, and large shower. The mantle of the fireplace comprises ornately carved marble. There are several more bedrooms on this level including a large guest suite with a vaulted ceiling and French doors into its sizable marble bath.

For more information or to set up an appointment to see the house contact Andrew Whiteley of Al Filippone Associates/William Raveis Real Estate at 203-258-1595 or andreww@afahomes.com.
A rare explosion of California poppies in the hills surrounding a Southern California town has attracted "Disneyland-size crowds," forcing city officials to temporarily close the wildflower-viewing area on Sunday.

The city of Lake Elsinore declared the situation "unbearable," shutting off access to Walker Canyon and canceling shuttle service as a massive traffic jam developed.

The area was reopened late Monday morning with a warning that "parking is extremely limited."

"We truly understand how difficult this natural phenomenon has been on our residents," a message on the city's Facebook page reads. "This is something unlike anything we have ever experienced in our City and may never again."

The city initially shared a message on Saturday, discouraging people from coming to the area as traffic on Interstate 15, that passes by the Riverside County town, stopped moving.

"We have brought in all available staff, as many outside traffic controllers that we could, more shuttles, and our small City can not sustain crowds of this magnitude," the message reads. "The wait times are increasing, the shuttles are stuck in traffic, and we encourage you to consider waiting for another day."

But throngs of wildflower-obsessed tourists continued to descend on the area, leading to a complete shutdown.

ALSO: 'They're everywhere': Butterflies swarming SoCal expected to reach NorCal any day

Rain is a key ingredient in the recipe for spectacular wildflower displays. Amid a winter marked by strong storms, botanists predicted wildflowers would pop up across the state, especially in Southern California, because the desert landscape has fewer invasive plants and grasses that push out wildflowers.

Lake Elsinore was the first place to see a so-called "super bloom," a colloquial term describing wildflower spectacles that exceed a typical season. (Anza Borrego was the second spot to see an abundance of flowers.)

The bloom started the last week of February, and now the hillsides are carpeted in velvety orange.

"The color is super vibrant," Jonathan Reinig, the natural resources manager for Riverside County Parks, told SFGATE. "You fee like you need to shade your eyes from it."

Photos of the display flooded social media, and Reinig says the county posted signage encouraging shutterbugs to tread lightly around the flowers.

"People love to get out there and get their Instagram photos," he says. "They'll plop themselves in the middle and trample the flowers. People need to stay on the path."

The super bloom was originally met with excitement in the community, which is about a 90-minute drive from both Los Angeles and San Diego.

But problems began surfacing, including people leaving trails and trampling flowers.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
HIGHLAND  The Cluckin for a Cure chicken and beer dance will be held on Saturday, March 30 at the Highland Knights of Columbus Hall, 12454 State Rte. 143.

Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. with live music starting at 7 p.m.
SPRINGFIELD  Supporters of legalized marijuana in Illinois have launched efforts aimed at making it easier for legitimate businesses that sell the product to have bank accounts and accept credit card transactions.

State Treasurer Michael Frerichs, a Democrat, said Monday he supports legislation in the General Assembly that would prohibit state banking regulators for punishing banks or credit unions that provide basic banking services to legitimate cannabis-related businesses.

He also said he is joining with other state treasurers around the country in lobbying Congress for changes in federal laws that prohibit banks from doing business with the cannabis industry.

The inability of the legal cannabis industry in Illinois to use a bank or credit union for basic services such as check writing, savings or access to capital is a sleeping giant, Frerichs said during a news conference in Chicago. We have an industry that handles money hiding in the shadows because banking rules built decades ago have not kept up with changes in behavior and in law.

Illinois legalized the use of marijuana for certain medical conditions in 2015, and Frerichs said the business now accounts for $136 million a year in retail sales. State lawmakers this year are also considering legislation, which Gov. J.B. Pritzker supports, to legalize adult use of recreational marijuana.

However, marijuana is still illegal in all forms under federal law, and it is also a violation of federal banking laws for any bank to knowingly engage in transactions involving proceeds generated from marijuana-related activity.

During the Obama administration, the Justice Department relaxed some of its enforcement of those laws, especially in states that had legalized at least some kinds of marijuana use, saying it would focus its resources on certain priorities, such as preventing the sale of marijuana to minors; preventing revenue from marijuana sales from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels, and preventing the shipment of marijuana from states where it is legal to states where it is not.

But the Trump administration reversed that policy in January 2018 when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions distributed a memo to federal prosecutors, effectively instructing them to go back to enforcing federal laws as they were originally intended to be enforced.

Prior to last year, about 85 percent of our cannabis industry was banked with a single bank in the state of Illinois, Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat, said during the news conference. As the Trump administration ramped up threats towards the legal cannabis industry, that bank got nervous about potential backlash and informed all of these businesses that they would cease to have a banking relationship with them

Frerichs said the result of that has been to move the finances of the legal cannabis industry into a kind of underground cash-based economy.

As residents of this state, we needlessly invite risk to people and property as that $136 million is shuffled from place to place in duffle bags, in the front seat of cars, or the trunk of a car, he said.

In addition to supporting changes in state-level banking regulations and lobbying Congress for changes in federal law, Frerichs said his office is exploring ways to provide incentives for banks and credit unions to serve the legal cannabis industry.

The companion bills pending in the General Assembly are House Bill 2980 and Senate Bill 2023.

Reach reporter Peter Hancock at phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
EDWARDSVILLE  At least one University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign tradition endures: since 1925, a new bronze tablet has been placed in the Main Library each year to memorialize students achieving the universitys highest academic honors.

Miriam Horsley, daughter of Mitchell and Julie Horsley of Edwardsville, graduated at the May 12, 2018 commencement of UIUC with undergraduate degrees in linguistics and East Asian languages and cultures.
GODFREY  Local artist Sun Smith-Foret will be the featured speaker at the next Visiting Artist Lecture Series at Lewis and Clark Community College.

Sponsored by 1st MidAmerica Credit Union, the free, public event will be held at 12:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 20, at the Hatheway Cultural Centers Ann Whitney Olin Theatre.

A professional studio artist, teacher and independent curator, Smith-Foret has been active in textile construction, quilts, sculpture, functional and amuletic objects since completing graduate school at Washington University.

Ill discuss living and working alongside the Mississippi in Elsah after decades of studio practice in St. Louis, Smith-Foret said. Well talk about the greater influence of nature and how new art is sparked by new locations and new colleagues.

Smith-Foret currently has her Riverwork Project on display at Lambert St. Louis Airport and at the Audubon Riverlands Rivers Edge Art Walk.

The presentation will focus on origins of thought, choice of media, scale and modes of expression, Smith-Foret said. Other topics will include nature and spirit, sacred geometry, as well as sign and symbol in new work.

Smith-Foret will also discuss her 2012 installation at L&C, which was designed by the late Professor and Art Curator Jim Price.

See more of Smith-Forets work at www.sunsmithforet.com.

For more information about the series and other upcoming artists, visit www.lc.edu/visitingartists.
EDWARDSVILLE  A welfare check became a crime Monday morning after an elderly couple was found dead in their home in the 800 block of North Kansas Street. The street has been closed to traffic.

Found were Michael Ladd, 79, a local contractor, and his wife, Dr. Lois Ladd, 68, who worked as a chiropractor. They were both Edwardsville Rotarians.
After Jussie Smolletts story fell apart, a Minnesota state lawmaker suggested toughening penalties for false police reports, an idea promptly shot down by his chambers Democratic majority leader: We should be encouraging people to report.

Should we? Does it matter whether the reports are true?

The way some advocates tell it, hate crime reports are sharply on the upswing and hardly ever prove unfounded.

Start with the second point. Quoting a center at a California university, the New York Times reported recently that of an estimated 21,000 hate crime cases between 2016 and 2018, fewer than 50 reports were found to be false.

Thats a curiously low figure, one that depends crucially on the artful phrasing found to be false.

If someone withdraws a disintegrating allegation and the police simply drop the matter, the incident has not been found to be false. The same is true if the bogus report, as often happens, arises on a college campus where police never get involved in the first place.

From the Times wording you might think that of the sorts of claimed hate crimes that ignite social media frenzies, only a fraction of 1 percent prove false. Youd be ever so wrong. While only a minority of alleged hate incidents draw much public notice, examples of bogus hate crime claims that did gain attention have been variously catalogued at more than 400.

In a continuing Twitter thread that has gone viral, Oregon journalist Andy Ngo has strung together dozens of click-and-share outrages later to blow up, such as that of a faculty member at Central Michigan University who punched herself in the face and lied about it to bring awareness to LGBT issues.

Other instances result from the social-justice version of pareidolia, the pattern-finding tendency that leads people to find the face of a saint in a piece of toast. A report of a KKK hood at Ohios Bowling Green State University turned out to be a white cloth draped over a piece of lab equipment. A supposed noose at Michigan State turned out to be a lost shoelace.

In 2015 both the New York Times and the Washington Post investigated a seeming wave of church arsons and concluded that there was no indication of hate motivation. Church fires turn out to be surprisingly common.

Other times the crimes are sinister indeed but the motivations were not those that were guessed. The perpetrator of more than 2,000 bomb threats that terrorized Jewish institutions around the U.S. turned out to be a disturbed Israeli teenager.

Some hate crimes, we know, are horrifyingly real, such as the murderous assaults by lone gunmen on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012, and Freddies Fashion Mart in Harlem in 1995.

Are such crimes on the upswing? An oft-repeated talking point is that FBI statistics last year, to quote Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, revealed a 17 percent increase in the number of hate crimes in America.

Lets be polite and say those FBI figures are difficult to interpret.

To begin with, theyre based on purely voluntary reporting by law enforcement agencies around the country. Agencies in Mississippi  the whole state  reported exactly one hate crime. Arkansas reported five and Alabama eight. Relatively liberal states like Massachusetts and Washington reported hundreds apiece, which doesnt mean they have more hate crimes.

Moreover, the number of local agencies participating in the FBI survey rose by 1,000 in 2017, contributing to the higher count.

In the state of Oregon, the college town of Eugene reported 72 hate crimes to the FBI in 2017, about as many as the rest of the state put together. According to the Daily Emerald, the difference reflects the citys active approach.  The city carefully catalogs reported instances  and even classifies certain crimes  such as vandalism  as a hate crime that other cities would classify in a different way.

Word is that the Eugene approach is spreading as other cities get interested in steps such as asking officers to write up on their own initiative as a hate incident a graffiti epithet they might see, rather than only if a public complaint happens to come in.

Should those methods spread in coming years, the FBI count of reported hate incidents is sure to mount  yet still not demonstrate with any certainty a genuine rise.

We know less about this topic than we imagine.

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
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Linkedin Editorial Board (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 08:49 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee828b408 1 Editorial #Editorial,skilled-workers,labor-issues,2019-presidential-debate,Maruf-Amin,Sandiaga-Uno,vocational-education,vocational-programs,vocational-schools Free

The concepts and programs of action to bridge the gap between supply and demand for skilled workers elaborated on by both vice-presidential candidates during their debate on Sunday night were by and large similar.

Incumbent Joko Jokowi Widodos vice-presidential candidate, Maruf Amin, and challenger Prabowo Subiantos running mate, Sandiaga Uno, fully realize that skill mismatching has been among main barriers to employment in the country. Both candidates emphasized the importance of expanding well-targeted vocational education or training so that the skill profiles of jobseekers matched the demands of the labor market.

Better designed, well-targeted vocational training to meet the demand of companies seems to be imperative after the recent revelation by Statistics Indonesia that over 60 percent of vocational school graduates remained unemployed.

Maruf explained a new program incumbent Jokowi planned to implement next year, whereby jobseekers would be issued pre-employment cards to enter vocational training and would be given living allowances for up to one year until they gained employment. Sandiaga mentioned a link-and-match program also designed to custom tailor training according to the demands of the labor market.

While this program may be appropriate because skills development will play a more important role in future economic development, while the world and nature of work has been increasingly reshaped by technological changes, funding by the state budget alone will not be enough to fulfill the needs of the unemployed.

Hence, the expansion of vocational training should be implemented in cooperation with the private sector. It is encouraging to learn that the Finance Ministry is preparing a scheme that will allow companies to double the deduction of their expenditures on vocational training and apprenticeships from taxable incomes.

Communications and information exchange between local labor offices, business associations and the Investment Coordinating Board would also be able to keep vocational schools and other training centers well posted on the market demand of skills. The whole process should be well-targeted, right down from planning to identifying the need for specific skills, as technology has been changing the skills being rewarded in the labor market.

Unfortunately, the vice-presidential debate, which also discussed health, education, culture and social issues, did not touch on the demand side of unemployment.

Neither candidate mentioned any plan to improve manpower regulations, which most domestic and foreign companies consider too rigid as they are not given any flexibility to hire and fire workers as the job landscape has been reshaped by technological changes.

The government has legislated employment protection rules on hiring and dismissals to enhance workers welfare and to provide stability by moderating employment fluctuations over the business cycle. They protect workers rights, reduce the risks of job loss and support equity and social cohesion.

But what we have now is seen as overregulation, which discourages job creation and hinders the movement of workers from low to high productivity jobs. Stringent employment protection rules seemed to have segmented the labor market into formal and informal sector workers, and permanent and contingent workers.
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Linkedin Juhaeri Muchtar (The Jakarta Post) Chapel Hill, North Carolina  Tue, March 19, 2019 15:25 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82b543a 3 Opinion research,history,Indonesia,war,Dutch,Dutch-colonialism,Independence-Day Free

Fia Hamid-Walkers opinion Decolonizations and White Supremacy in Disguise (The Jakarta Post, Feb. 20, 2019) reminds us how colonialist mentality remains alive and well. In her piece, Hamid-Walker describes, in a meeting to discuss Dutch governments research project on Independence, decolonization, violence and war in Indonesia, 1945-1950, how she was silenced for speaking and her presence was erased, in stark contrast to how others  white activists  were treated.

This is very consistent with how I perceive the project as no more than a half-hearted effort of the Dutch government, supported by a number of Dutch researchers, with their colonialist arrogance to portray their dark colonial history with a more positive narrative and to somehow de-criminalize their occupation of Indonesia.

I attended a meeting (sponsored by Indonesian Student Association in The Netherlands) with some of the researchers of that project, in person, in Amsterdam in April 2018. My opinion is, among others, based on that discussion.

Lets start with the objective of the project, to answer questions regarding the nature, scale and causes of structural violence in Indonesia, considered in a broader political, social and international context; attention will be paid to the chaotic period spanning August 1945 to early 1949. There were many factors that caused the violence and chaos, but the only one relevant to the Dutch people was (and still is) the fact that they annexed Indonesia after its independence.

Before performing this project, the Dutch government should first and foremost evaluate the socio-economic and political factors that lead to the Dutch decision to re-occupy the country. Why did the Dutch come back after their defeat by the Japanese imperial army and after Indonesia gained its independence?

To ignore that very question is not only offensive but also unhelpful to improve our lack of understanding of the history; it would create more suspicion and even weaken the narrative of progress in Indonesia-Netherlands relations that we all want to foster.

The source of the budget is the Dutch government, the very government who refuses to formally recognize Indonesians independence of Aug. 17, 1945 to avoid the legal implication of their Indonesian occupation; had they recognized that date, their occupation in the period of 1945-1949 would have been illegitimate with myriad negative legal implications against them.

This is the very government whom Indonesia paid 4.5 billion guilders (approximately US$10 billion nowadays) to leave the independent nation that they had long occupied in peace. This reminds me of tobacco companies which funded research projects to show the positive impact of tobacco on health in the US 60 years ago. How could the public value the results with any sense of credibility?

So, who should fund the project to uncover Dutch colonial history? It is time for the good people of the Netherlands, via their no-tprofit organizations, to initiate more independent research projects. The good news is that there have been a few research projects funded by citizens but a more structural change, a change in the mindset and approach to addressing the issue, from non-governmental organization is needed.

Any research projects would produce results with a certain degree of believability only with involvement of all necessary stakeholders, in this case the government, academics (researchers or experts) and the public. I am not going to challenge the academic integrity of the researchers, but their careers depend on the projects and it will be difficult to completely ignore public perception of their compromise, consciously or not, to funders agenda.

To make real progress in the improvement of the knowledge on the still-largely-unknown Dutch colonial history in Indonesia, especially in the 1945-1949 period, and to make a real and tangible impact in both Dutch and Indonesian societies, what is needed is involvement from the public, including non-governmental organization; their voice needs to be heard as well to lend more credibility to the project. This concern was raised in that meeting in Amsterdam and in other occasions but it has been ignored.

Some of Indonesian academics were invited and are participating in the project. While I am not going to criticize their involvement, but with all due respect as an academic myself, I would challenge them to approach this project not only using rigorous scientific principles but also to consider a larger social and political context in their approach to performing the study, and to be more inclusive by including Indonesian public as co-investigators from Indonesian side as well.

As academics, we often are caught up in the mindset and framework of Ivory Tower mentality and underestimate, sometime ignore, the importance of public input. Indonesian society is also a critical stakeholder in this undertaking and needs to be included.

The timing is also suspicious, both the time period being evaluated (why not pre-World War II first, for example) and the timing of the project itself, almost 70 years after the Dutch left the country for good. Why so late? This is largely due to the colonial arrogance of the Dutch government and the ignorance of its society. Other colonizing countries were far more active in their self-evaluation and they did their studies much earlier; perhaps this is their reluctant attempt to do something to catch up with other colonial powers in their social and moral standing with regard to their stained colonial past.

Dutch colonial history is absent from the Dutch educational curriculum and consequently not too many people, especially among the younger generations, know what the colonial Dutch did in Indonesia. The public needs to know this and this project could have been used to improve the understanding constructive to both nations, to right the wrong.

Given its current approach, however, at least to me as an Indonesia, it has become another example of Dutch governments ignorance and arrogance and, in the end, a lost opportunity for a truly collaborative and objective research project.

***

The writer is adjunct assistant professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Binar Mentari Malahayati (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019

On a supposedly peaceful Friday afternoon in Christchurch, the citys very own mosque, al Noor, was attacked by a guy with not only a gun, but also a recording device. Livestreamed to thousands of people, both knowing and unknowing, the terrorist on March 15 casually shot everyone he could find inside the mosque with neither hesitation nor qualms, using a first-person shooter game-like format.

By the end of the video, the terrorist told the viewers to subscribe to Pewdiepie, a well-known YouTube gamer who is also infamous for supporting alt-right ideologies in his past videos, as if the violent hateful attacks he committed was simply a game.

Sane people could never imagine the reason behind recording such an inhumane atrocity, but the fact is there was a community online filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of people cheering and commenting throughout the livestream as if it was a harmless vlog streamed on Instagram.

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Linkedin Amelie Baron (Agence France-Presse) Port-au-Prince, Haiti  Tue, March 19, 2019 07:06 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82875a4 2 Lifestyle Cuba,Haiti,shopping,lifestyle,Trade Free

You wouldn't think the poorest country in the Americas would be anyone's shopping dream. Yet Haiti has become just that for Cuban merchants.

Cubans, in the region's only communist country with a still mostly state-led economy, face very high prices and not much selection at all.

So at the Hippolyte street market in Haiti's capital, vendors -- amid piles of clothing and shoes -- call out in Spanish trolling for their likely clients: Cubans on short shopping trips.

They will exchange your Cuban pesos to Haitian gourdes, they promise.

"I buy everything: clothes, electronics, shoes ... In Cuba, it's so expensive and, above all, there is not all this choice," explains Wilfredo Sotolongo, checking the size of beach sandals he was buying.

At home in Cienfuegos, southeast of Havana, the 39-year-old was on his third trip to Port-au-Prince. He never stays as long as a week, and his shopping missions are carried out with almost military precision, in this one small area of Haiti.

Just a few meters (yards) away, his compatriot Maria Carmen from Sierra Maestra, in southwestern Cuba, was in cutthroat negotiations on a lot of women's underwear.

"They limit us to 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of luggage at home. And we can't have more than twelve items of the same kind: twelve T-shirts, twelve jeans, twelve bras," she explains, a roll of tape on her wrist to seal her purchases in a huge plastic bag.

"When the sellers do lots of ten, we (Cubans) do not have a problem, sometimes we divide things up between us to meet the rules: we all know each other on the plane," she joked.

Just as many American or other western shoppers might be interested in outlets, or online bargains, some Cubans -- struggling to make ends meet in their country's devastated economy -- are finding it ever more worthwhile to pop over to Haiti to stock up.

Cuba's state-run stores offer a range of goods that seem expensive in the country of 11 million. Most people make from $20 to $30 a month.

Launched in 2010, the Haitian airline Sunrise now serves the Cuban cities of Havana, Camaguey and Santiago with four to five weekly flights for each of these destinations.

Read also: Cuba taps into high-end luxury tourist market

'Little Havana'

Cubans are easy to identify in the terminal of Port-au-Prince airport. They are the ones juggling big bundles of clothes, flat-screen TVs or even toys -- with not a suitcase in sight.

"I think the Cubans are making a lot of money or they would not come back as often," said Ketia Louis, at her mother's stall at the Hippolyte market.

"We do not sell expensive stuff here. But it's too expensive for many Haitians: now the vast majority of my clients are Cubans -- so I like them," said the 27-year-old.

A neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, located near the airport, has even started to be called "Ti Havana" -- "Little Havana" in Creole -- because so many of its winding streets include cheap hotels popular with locals from the island to the west.

Near a restaurant decorated with a painted portrait of Cuban revolutionary hero Ernesto Che Guevara, Yamel was picking out hair accessories with the few gourdes she had left.

"The visa, the airline tickets and the hotel for three days: in Havana, I have an agency that takes care of everything," she explained.

It may be more expensive, but it is less complicated than visiting the Haitian embassy, where people are asked many questions, said the young woman, who preferred not to give her last name.

She said she paid $900 for the package of services -- but offered no details about how she could afford such a high price.

Even a Cuban doctor's salary does not top $30 a month, and the government is sensitive about income inequality.

This was her fifth trip to Port-au-Prince in one year.

So what does she do with all her purchases?

"All this is for me and for my family," she says, before putting an index finger to her mouth -- suggesting the truth is another story.

Despite sometimes dangerous areas around the Hippolyte market, linked to clashes between gangs, Yamel wants to continue her back-and-forth between the two countries.

"We are so close, we couldn't not," she said.

"Cuba and Haiti are one family."
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Linkedin Vassilis Kyriakoulis (Agence France-Presse) Thessaloniki, Greece  Tue, March 19, 2019 06:04 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8286280 2 Art & Culture greece,Train,Jewish,Auschwitz,nazi,Holocaust,Thessaloniki Free

Two thousand people held a silent march in Greece's second city Thessaloniki on Sunday, marking the anniversary of the departure in 1943 of the first train taking members of its Jewish community to the Auschwitz death camp.

Participants held white balloons bearing the message "Never Again". They gathered at the city's old railway station where that train pulled out on March 15, 1943.

Among those present for the 76th anniversary commemoration was Jurgen Haus, grandson of a German soldier, who expressed his "deep regret" for the actions of his Nazi forebears.

"I am here to break the silence... I love Israel, I cannot remain silent in the face of antisemitism," he said in a speech.

Holocaust survivors Heinz Kounio and Achileas Koukovinos were honoored during the commemorations.

Thessaloniki had a population of more than 50,000 Jews before World War II some 46,000 of whom were deported and killed at German Nazi death camps.

People hold a banner and balloons reading 'Never Again' as they walk towards the old railway station to mark the departure of the first train from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on March 15, 1943, during a silent march in memory of Holocaust victims in Thessaloniki, on March 17, 2019. (AFP/Sakis Mitrolidis)

Before the deportations started the community in the city, which mainly comprised Sephardic Jews chased out of Spain in 1492, had developed to the point where it earned the nickname the "Jerusalem of the Balkans".

But then came the horrors of 1943, when virtually all of the town's Jews were deported, just four percent of them surviving the Nazi death camps to which they were dispatched

In recent years, Thessaloniki has held commemorations in mid-March instigated by mayor Yannis Boutaris to remember the first of the convoys of Jews rounded up and sent off to the camps from Thessaloniki's railway station. Sunday's turnout was the biggest yet.

Before that the fate of Greek Jews had become something of a taboo subject.

This combination made on March 17, 2019 shows villas and buildings built or owned by influential Jewish families in Thessaloniki. (From up L) The Villa Mordoch, the Casa Bianca, the Malakopi Arcade, the Gatenio and Florentin House, the Hirsch Hospital, the Salem Mansion, the Villa Modiano, Synagogue of Italia Yasan, the Villa Joseph Modiano, the Villa Allatini, the Jewish Primary School, and the Modiano Market. Of 65,000 Greek Jews that fell victim to Nazism, 50,000 were citizens of Thessaloniki and almost 45,000 perished at the Auschwitz concentration camp. (AFP/Sakis Mitrolidis)

It was only in 2004 that teaching about the Shoah became compulsory in Greece and ten years later that a monument would be erected at the site of the former Jewish cemetery which the Germans razed and where the city university now stands.

Last year Israeli President Reuven Rivlin visited to lay the first stone of Thessaloniki's 7,000 square metre (75,000 square feet) Holocaust Museum, financed by Germany and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and which is due to open in 2020.

However antisemitism showed its ugly face again in January when the Jewish Memorial Cemetery in Thessaloniki was vandalised two days before Holocaust Memorial Day.

The Jewish Memorial Cemetery was constructed on the site of an old Jewish Cemetery that was destroyed by the German Nazis forces occupying Greece during World War Two.
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse)  Tue, March 19, 2019 10:42 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8296c2d 2 Science & Tech Apple,Apple-stores,iPad,iPad-mini Free

Early Monday, the Apple Store went down before quietly rolling out a brand new 10.5-inch iPad Air and refreshed mini ahead of next week's March 25 event.

Apple has announced two new iPads a week ahead of the company's March 25 event: a 10.5-inch iPad Aid and a refreshed iPad mini.

Not only does the new iPad Air have a larger display with over half a million more pixels than the previous generation, but it also "delivers a 70 percent boost in performance and twice the graphics capability" thanks to an A12 Bionic chip.

The refreshed iPad mini also features the same A12 Bionic chip that amps up the 7.9-inch tablet's power, performance, and graphics speed. This generation comes with Apple Pencil support and, according to Apple, has a Retina display that's 25 percent brighter than before and now has "the highest pixel density of any iPad."

Read also: Indonesia's Apple Academy graduates ready to develop iOS apps

Both models feature upgraded front and back cameras that can capture 1080p HD videos, scan documents, and create AR experiences.

The company also announced on Monday that an update coming to iWork for iOS next week will feature a slew of new Apple Pencil capabilities in Keynote including the easy implementation of build effects like rotate and scale.

The new iPad Air and iPad mini are available starting today online and next week in stores starting at $399 and $499, respectively. Each comes in three color options with either 64GB or 256GB configurations.

The release of new hardware this week further suggests that the March 25 event will focus on the launch of Apple's Netflix-like streaming service.
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Linkedin Natacha Yazbeck (Agence France-Presse) Dubai, United Arab Emirates  Tue, March 19, 2019 20:05 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82c42ee 2 Lifestyle Dior,Dubai,fashion,Maria-Grazia-Chiuri,Christian-Dior Free

In a tent in Dubai surrounded by fire-breathers and circus performers, Dior unveiled a 15-piece capsule collection that dug into the house's archive to honor the woman of today.

Italian designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, the first woman to lead the legendary French label, and her hallmark feminism were present in force, with a limited collection that drew on motifs popularized by Christian Dior himself, redefined to accommodate the contemporary woman

Pleated skirts in muted, metallic rainbow colors and redingotes laced with hand-embroidered gold frogging were paired with pedestrian-friendly, fantastically glittery flats and chunky-heeled boots -- with neither stiletto nor peep-toe in sight.

"In this specific show we made a little capsule, that is like a small, new collection, of 15 pieces," Chiuri told AFP ahead of the show.

"Every time we move to another country, in some ways it's the location that gives us inspiration.

"When you think about Dubai, you think of a place that in a sense is very Mediterranean, where there is the sun. So we use more color, different techniques, different shapes."

Chiuri's closing look was a three-piece, multi-colored polkadot ensemble featuring a structured leotard, billowing full-length skirt and ruffled cape.

Pulling from her last show at Paris Fashion Week, the Dubai catwalk also featured Chiuri's circus-inspired organza and tulle dresses, ringmaster blazers and lion-tamer jackets -- a nod, she says, to the sisterhood that binds women.

Read also: Dior celebrates 1950s rebels at fashion week lacking Lagerfeld

"In the circus, in specific -- because it's the circus that we used -- all the women worked together. And each woman trusted the other woman, because it's impossible to make this kind of exercise if you don't trust each other," Chiuri said.

Celebrated milliner Stephen Jones' eye-catching glitter skullcaps topped every look, part Pierrot-joins-Instagram, part glam Amelia Earhart.

"There is this element in the circus that fascinates me a lot. That is the clown. Behind the mask of the clown, you don't know if there's a man or a woman. You know that it's a person," Chiuri explained.

"So I covered the hair, because I would like for people to focus on the clothes."

One black-and-gold pattern on both boots and skullcaps in particular stood out -- a star, polka dot and paisley combination, a tribute to the star Christian Dior found on the sidewalk outside of what would become his flagship store, and a nod to the arabesque of the Arab world.

"The more I go around the world the more I think that the women are the same around the world," said Chiuri, an advocate of the idea of a global sisterhood.

"There is perhaps differences in taste, but this is also about personality, for women and for men."
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse)  Tue, March 19, 2019 23:05 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82c68c6 2 Entertainment Disney,Guardians-of-the-Galaxy,James-Gunn,director,#MeToo Free

In a surprise move, the studio has reinstated the filmmaker James Gunn as the director of the third movie in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" series.

He previously helmed the first two movies in the franchise, which launched in 2014, and which is one of the Marvel universe's most profitable.

Read also: More than 240,000 people seek James Gunn re-hire

Disney parted ways with James Gunn in July after a series of offensive tweets written by the filmmaker, dating from 2008 and 2011, came to light. The dismissal proved a controversial move, and several of the project's stars -- including actors Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper and Karen Gillan -- demanded that the director be reinstated. The studio, however, stood firm.

"Guardians of the Galaxy 3" has been on hold since July. The film's distributors sought a replacement director to helm the movie but to no avail. In the end, Disney reportedly turned back to Gunn in the fall, offering him a second chance. According to Variety, an agreement between the two parties was then quietly reached at this time.

"I am tremendously grateful to every person out there who has supported me over the past few months," James Gunn said on Twitter, Friday, March 15. "I am always learning and will continue to work at being the best human being I can be. I deeply appreciate Disney's decision and I am excited to continue making films that investigate the ties of love that bind us all. I have been, and continue to be incredibly humbled by your love and support. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Love to you all."

After being fired, James Gunn moved from Marvel to DC Comics to write and direct the "Suicide Squad" sequel, slated for August 2021. The filmmaker is now expected to direct both films, with "The Suicide Squad" taking priority.
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Tue, March 19, 2019 22:01 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82c6620 2 Science & Tech Fisker,tesla,electric-car,united-states,Henrik-Fisker Free

Fisker, the electric car brand which was an early rival to Tesla, announced Monday it would produce a new sport utility vehicle priced below $40,000 that will be available next year.

The move could relaunch the brand which attracted celebrity buyers before a 2013 bankruptcy.

The brand led by former BMW designer Henrik Fisker underwent a lengthy restructuring and its latest move suggest it is out to revive its challenge to Tesla in the market for mass-market electric vehicles.

Fisker, which made its announcement in a press release with images of the new vehicle, said a drivable prototype would be available later this year.

Like Tesla, Fisker will sell directly to consumers without dealers.

The company said it is "currently finalizing the selection of a facility, located in the United States, to produce the all-electric SUV."

The relaunch comes after a high-profile bankruptcy by Fisker Automotive, which received $192 million in US government loans and left $139 million of that unpaid.

The $100,000 Fisker Karma released in 2012 attracted buyers including Justin Bieber, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher.

Read also: Elon Musk's Tesla adds 'Model Y' SUV to line-up

But that company filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and a year later its assets were sold to Chinese auto parts maker Wanxiang.

The new car, with an expected range of some 300 miles (500 kilometers) between charges, comes from a new corporate entity called Fisker Inc.

A year ago, Henrik Fisker unveiled plans for a $129,000 electric luxury car, but the group said that vehicle launch will be pushed back until after the lower-priced SUV.

The company projects to eventually have three different vehicles.

"Our team set out on a mission to create an affordable EV that's more exciting and emotion-stirring than what the market has been offering," Henrik Fisker said in the statement.

"We're now excited to be introducing a vehicle that truly reinvents the SUV."

Fisker is among several startups in the US and elsewhere moving into the electric vehicle market which is expected to see strong growth.

The move by Fisker comes as Tesla ramps up efforts for more affordable electric cars including a Model 3 priced at $35,000 and a Model Y SUV starting at $39,000.
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Paris, France  Wed, March 20, 2019 01:02 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82c6ec4 2 Food France,Paris,market,Rungis-market,world-record,Guinness-World-Record Free

France's Rungis market near Paris celebrated its 50th anniversary by throwing a giant banquet of record-breaking proportions, reserving its spot in the Guinness Book of Records.

Organizers said lunch was served to nearly 2,000 people along just over 401 meters' length of table, between the market's fruit-and-vegetable stands.

Officials from the Guinness Book of Records approved the bid, which beat the previous record of 322 meters set in 2017 on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion.

Read also: Paris tops ranking of world's healthiest cities

Rungis, seven kilometers south of Paris, replaced the old market in the heart of Paris, Les Halles, when it was closed in 1969.

It is the world's biggest fresh produce market, covering 234 hectares and employing 12,000 wholesalers, producers, porters, restaurateurs and other workers in 1,200 separate businesses.

Many of the people who work at the market took part in the record bid.
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Linkedin Stefanno Reinard Sulaiman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 07:57 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82891f9 1 Business antam,aneka-tambang,mining,mining-companies,nickel,nickel-export,nickel-ores,nickel-processing,smelter,Australia Free

Publicly listed diversified mining company PT Aneka Tambang (Antam) is optimistic about finishing the construction of downstream facilities before the relaxation of ore exports ends in January 2022.

The termination of the relaxation of ore exports could affect Antams main commodities, namely nickel and bauxite, the full-year production of which grew by 50 percent in 2018.

Antam finance director Dimas Wikan Pramudhito said recently the company was racing against time to complete building all of its smelters and would determine how to finance them.

Antam is racing against time with all the resources that we have to focus on how to complete our smelter projects. Our aim is that after 2022, Antam could generate revenue from the downstream business, he told the press.

A ban on the export of raw and unprocessed ore was imposed in January 2014 because the government wanted to develop the downstream industry by curbing the export of raw minerals.

However, three years later in January 2017 the government retracted the policy  arguing that a slump in the price of commodities at that time made it difficult for mining companies to meet their smelter development obligations.

The relaxation of the ore export ban, which was granted only to mining companies that could show progress building smelters, was enacted under Government Regulation No. 1/2017 on mineral and coal businesses and by ministerial regulations that followed not long after.

Therefore, the governments initial goal to prevent exports of unprocessed mineral product would only take effect after 2022, five years after the policy was relaxed.

With a backdrop of regulatory uncertainty, Antam is currently attempting to complete two key processing construction projects, namely the Haltim Ferronickel Plant Development Project (P3FH) in East Halmahera and the Smelter Grade Alumina Refinery (SGAR) Project in Mempawah, West Kalimantan.

The P3FH project is set to complete its construction phase this semester and then will be followed by a commissioning test. Only after the test can we start operations, Dimas said, adding that construction was 92 percent complete in December 2018.

However, Dimas said the company could only utilize the facilitys maximum capacity of 13,500 tons of nickel in ferronickel (TNi) two years after it starts operation because a trial run of the facility would be conducted first.

Hence, we could only produce 5,000 TNi per year for two years after the operational date to reach its maximum capacity, he said, adding that the project cost about US$250 million.

Currently the firm, which is listed on Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), has a ferronickel production capacity of 27,000 TNi and with the new facility with a capacity of 13,500 TNi, the total output of ferronickel would be 40,500 TNi per year.

Previously, Antam president director Arie Prabowo Ariotedjo said the P3FH project, which would boost the companys ferronickel production capacity by up to 50 percent, was set to complete construction in July.

[P3FH] is getting an EPC evaluation and we hope it could kick-off soon. The fastest target [for commercialization] is 2021, he said.

Ferronickel would not be affected by the export ban as it is a material processed from nickel and iron ores. For Antam, the commodity was the second-biggest revenue contributor for the company last year at 18 percent.

Meanwhile, for the SGAR project, Dimas said the firm, along with its parent holding company PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (Inalum), has set a target date for the ground breaking this year after the two firms recently set up a joint venture: PT Borneo Alumina Indonesia.

Antam's future role in the SGAR project in Mempawah is to supply bauxite, which is the raw material for producing alumina.

In the project we will open a new mining site [for bauxite] to supply the SGAR when it has start to operate. The amount of investment is estimated to be $50 million, he said.

Antam is likely to get ore export permits as its smelter construction has met the governments standards.

Dimas of Antam, meanwhile, said the companys progress in its downstream efforts through smelter development have paid off with a series of limited ore export permits granted by the government in the last few years.

We are committed to supporting the governments downstream goal through smelter development and so we have been granted limited ore export permits, he said.

Last week, Antam got an additional export quota of 2.7 million tons of nickel ore for this year on the basis of its ferronickel smelter development in Pomalaa, Southeast Sulawesi.

While mining companies like Antam do not want to gamble on the possibility of the ore export ban being enacted after the relaxation policy ends, the government and lawmakers are still unsure about the policy continuing.

When asked about the policy continuing, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministrys mineral director, Yunus Saefulhak, said legally speaking the relaxation of ore export should be ended in 2022.

Basically it [the ore export ban] is a law and should be enacted. However, we dont know if the new government in 2022 would keep the ore export ban or not, he said.

Ramson Siagian, a lawmaker from the opposition Gerindra Party, concurred with Yunus, saying it is better for the upcoming government to continue the ban on unprocessed mineral exports as it is in accordance with Law No.4/2009 on mining.

[It would be] better that the relaxation [on unprocessed mineral exports] would be revoked after it has ended [in 2022], but I think we should see the situation later, said Ramson, who is a member of House Commission VII overseeing energy.
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Linkedin Marchio Irfan Gorbiano and Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta and Batam, Riau Islands  Tue, March 19, 2019 07:14 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee828866d 1 Business shipyard,shipbuilder,Batam,steel,hot-rolled-plates,anti-dumping-duties,Trade-Ministry,finance-ministry Free

Ship manufacturers in Batam, Riau Islands, are urging the government to revise an antidumping regulation as it is could affect the competitiveness of local companies.

The controversial regulation in question is Finance Minister Regulation No. 120/2017 on the mechanism of antidumping duties.

Since Jan. 25, the customs authority in Batam has been collecting levies from imported hot-rolled plates, mostly from Singapore, as well as from the end product using those raw materials.

Article 5 of the regulation stipulates that manufactured goods that are shipped from Batam to other parts of the country are subject to antidumping duties, among others.

Such a policy would reduce the local industrys competitiveness against foreign competitors, and it could disrupt the business process, said Sarwo Edie Setijono, the chairman of the Batam Shipyard and Offshore Association .

He said shipyards, which had completed their shipbuilding work, could not immediately deliver their products to their customers as the customs authority would only provide clearance if antidumping duties had been paid.

For example, the antidumping duty for a 300-foot barge can reach Rp 3 billion [US$210,763]. Customs and excise officers said if the duties are not paid, they will not release documents [authorizing the release of the ship from the customs area], which is the same as not allowing the ships to be delivered to customers, Sarwo added.

So far, 20 companies, which are members of the association, could not fulfill their commitment to customers on time due to the policy, he said.

Sarwo argued that should the levies be collected, 110 shipyards in Batam would go bankrupt as they relied on imported hot-rolled plates from Singapore, which is cheaper.

The price of Singaporean hot-rolled plates are more competitive than the ones produced by Krakatau Posco, which is a joint venture between state-owned steel company Krakatau Steel and South Korean steel giant Posco, in Cilegon, Banten.

Were also quite puzzled as to why it [the price of hot-rolled plate] is cheaper in Singapore than the ones bought directly from Krakatau [Posco]. It probably has something to do with [high] logistics costs [in Indonesia], he said.

Ali Ulay, the chairman of the Riau Islands chapter of the Indonesian Shipbuilding Association (Iperindo), said the government should offer more incentives rather than taking levies from the ship manufacturing industry, which is by nature labor intensive and highly competitive.

Responding to the concerns, Oke Nurwan, the director general of international trade at the Trade Ministry, said the government planned to revise the regulation.

In the planned revision, the government would allow shipbuilders in Batam to deliver their products to the domestic market without being charged duty fees, even though they used imported hot-rolled plates from Singapore as raw materials.

The antidumping duties for hot-rolled plates will not be erased, but there should be equal treatment for ships manufactured in Batam with others that are built in, for example, Singapore, which enjoys zero import duties, said Oke.

The 2017 regulation is a follow-up to Finance Minister Regulation No. 50/2016, which applies antidumping duties on imported hot-rolled plates from China, Singapore and the Ukraine.

The 2016 regulation has been in effect since April 2, 2016, but it has only recently been enforced by the customs authority.

Susila Brata, the head of the customs and excise office in Batam, said it had spent a year, between 2017 and 2018, disseminating the regulation to businesses. The authority had only recently enforced the regulation as it needed time to determine the best possible process to collect the levies, he added.

The Indonesian Anti-Dumping Committee (KADI) recently initiated a sunset review of the 2016 regulation, which will expire in April 1, following a request from Krakatau Posco and another steel maker, Gunung Raja Paksi.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said her ministry would support any favorable policies geared toward domestic industries, including easing companies taxation burden -- including the antidumping duties -- in order to boost investment and exports.
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Linkedin Kharishar Kahfi and Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019

Fridays arrest of United Development Party (PPP) chairman M. Romahurmuziy, who has since resigned from that post, once again casts an unfavorable light on the Religious Affairs Ministry, which has seen two ministers sent to prison for graft in the past.

In 2005, then-religious affairs minister Said Agil al-Munawar was sentenced to five years in prison for the embezzlement of haj funds causing state losses of Rp 719 billion. In 2016, the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced Romahurmuziy's predecessor at the PPP, Suryadharma Ali, to six years in prison, again for embezzling haj funds and misusing the ministry's operational funds.

Following the arrest of Romahurmuziy, investigators of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) are now zeroing in on the possible role of current Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Syaifuddin, also a senior PPP politician, in an influence-peddling scheme that has implicated the partys leader.

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Linkedin Riza Roidila Mufti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 07:58 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8289e8e 1 Business airplane,Lion-Air,lion-air-group,Lion-Parcel,railway,KAI,logistics,logistics-jointh-venture,courier-service,delivery-service Free

Courier company Lion Parcel, a subsidiary of the Lion Air Group, is aiming to maximize its parcel delivery service by using rail this year because the company expects it will save time and money.

Lion Parcel president director Farian Kirana said rail-based transportation was an alternative to optimize business amid the increasing demand for courier services and the rising price of air cargo, adding that delivering parcels by rail would give the company a wider reach.

In the past, to deliver parcels to Purwokerto [Central Java], for example, we had to fly from Jakarta to Yogyakarta first, before carrying the parcel from Yogyakarta by car to Purwokerto. Meanwhile, by train, we can deliver it directly from Jakarta to Purwokerto.

In the past, Farian added, delivering parcels to cities like Bojonegoro in East Java from Jakarta was expensive and took longer as Lion Parcel had to fly from Jakarta to Surabaya first, before delivering it to Bojonegoro by car, and the process could take up to two days.

By rail, it would be faster and cheaper. It will be much more efficient than using planes, especially to reach small cities.

In terms of cost, delivering parcels by train would definitely be cheaper and it could reduce courier costs by 40 to 50 percent, said Farian.

To meet this goal, Lion Parcel has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Kereta Api Logistics (Kalog), a subsidiary of state-owned railway operator Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI). Under the agreement, Kalog will give cargo space to Lion Parcel, with prices that will be adjusted and agreed upon by both parties.

Farian said the partnership would also enrich Lion Parcels distribution channel.

Kalogs acting president director, Junaidi Nasution, said the partnership would definitely be beneficial for both parties.

With Kalogs distribution networks, it could give Lion Parcel a wider reach, especially in Java. At the same time, the partnership could also increase Kalogs load capacity.

Currently, we have 75 outlets that are situated at train stations [mostly in Java]. For example, we have outlets in Purwokerto and Kroya [both in Central Java], places where planes cannot land. We also plan to open and develop [outlets] outside Java such as Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Denpasar [Bali], Junaidi said, adding that Lion Parcel could potentially contribute 2,000 to 10,0000 tons to Kalog's load every day. It currently has 370,000 tons of daily load capacity.

Currently, Lion Parcel still relies on air transportation for its courier service with 90 percent of deliveries being delivered by air and 10 percent by land transportation. However, with the cooperation with Kalog, the company expects to change it to 50 percent by air and 40 percent by land transportation in this year.

Farian said Lion Parcel had seen an increase in demand in line with the e-commerce boom across Indonesia. Last year, it delivered up to 2 million kilograms of parcels each month.

The company aims to deliver four to five times more parcels this year compared to last year. For its courier service, Lion Parcel uses Lion Air passenger planes, which fly to more than 26 destinations across Indonesia.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 07:02 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8286808 1 City MRT-Jakarta,trial-run,quota,passengers Free

PT MRT Jakarta has increased its quota for the MRT trial run from March 18 to 23 in response to the publics enthusiasm about the new mode of transportation.

MRT Jakarta corporate secretary M. Kamaluddin said it had increased the quota from 28,800 passengers a day to 50,000 during the public trial run, which has been held since March 12. Trips during the trial run are free-of-charge.

That means weve increased the quota by 21,200 passengers a day, Kamaluddin said on Sunday as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com.

Kamaluddin added it had also extended the MRTs operational hours to 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. to accommodate passengers who would like to use the service to travel to and from work.

Previously we operated from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., but we have extended the operational hours, he said.

The first day of the trial run saw 4,000 passengers hop aboard.

For the two-week trial run, MRT Jakarta has opened all 13 stations along the 16-km route from Lebak Bulus to the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, which includes 10 km of elevated railway and 6 km of underground tunnel.

The train headway will be 10 minutes with each train consisting of seven cars, including one allocated as a standby car.

Those who want to try out the MRT during its trial run can register at ayocobamrtj.com or via online marketplace Bukalapak.
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Linkedin News Desk (Reuters) Utrecht, Netherlands  Tue, March 19, 2019 09:49 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82936c8 2 World #Netherlands,#ShootingRampage,police,arrested,Turkish-man,shooting-incident Free

Dutch police arrested a Turkish man suspected of shooting dead three people and wounding five on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht on Monday.

Police said the suspect, 37-year-old Gokmen Tanis, had been taken into custody after an hours-long manhunt and had earlier run-ins with authorities in the Netherlands.

The city was put into lockdown after the shooting, shortly after the morning rush hour, which authorities initially said was an apparent terrorist attack. Police conducted raids in several locations after issuing an image of Tanis and warning the public not to approach him.

But hours after the shooting, the gunman's motive remained unclear. A prosecutor said it could be for "family reasons" and Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency, quoting relatives of the gunman, said he had fired at a relative on the tram and had then shot at others who tried to help her.

The Turkish intelligence agency said it is investigating whether the attack was personally motivated or an act of terrorism, President Tayyip Erdogan said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Dutch authorities had raised the terrorism threat in Utrecht province to its highest level, schools were told to shut their doors and paramilitary police increased security at airports, other vital infrastructure and at mosques.

The threat level was reduced by one notch to where it had been after the suspect was arrested, the National Counter-Terrorism Agency said.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte convened crisis talks immediately after the incident, which came three days after a lone gunman killed 50 people in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand.

"Our country has today been shocked by an attack in Utrecht... A terrorist motive cannot be excluded," Rutte said. "The first reports have led to disbelief and disgust. Innocent people have been struck by violence."

The mayor of Utrecht, Jan van Zanen, said three people had been killed and five injured, three of them critically.

CRIMINAL RECORD

The suspect had previously been arrested, regional prosecutor Rutger Jeuken told reporters, without giving further details.

The shooting took place in Kanaleneiland, a quiet residential district on the outskirts of Utrecht with a large immigrant population.

"It's frightening that something like this can happen so close to home," said Omar Rahhou, who said his parents lived on a street cordoned off by police. "These things normally happen far away but this brings it very close, awful."

Witness Daan Molenaar, who said he had been sitting at the front of the tram when the shooting started, told national broadcaster NOS he did not believe it was a terrorist attack.

"The first thing I thought was, this is some kind of revenge or something, or somebody who's really mad and grabbed a pistol," he said.

Utrecht, the Netherlands' fourth largest city with a population of around 340,000, is known for its picturesque canals and large student population. Gun killings are rare in Utrecht, as elsewhere in the Netherlands.
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Linkedin Riska Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 09:13 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee828ca29 1 Business tourism-industry,foreign-exchange-earning,target,revision,Arief-Yahya,perry-warjiyo Free

The government has lowered this years revenue target for the tourist industry from US$20 billion to US$17.6 billion.

Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said on Monday that the lower projection was based on last year's low forex earnings, which, according to Bank Indonesia, amounted to $15.6 billion, lower than the governments target of $17 billion.

"Last year's natural disasters saw us miss our forex earnings target. So we're setting a rather conservative target this year" Arief told the press after attending a coordination meeting with BI and the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister in Jakarta.

He acknowledged disaster threats might still loom over the country's tourist industry this year but was upbeat that the target could be surpassed, because the government had prepared a set of strategies to increase revenue.

Despite the projected lower earnings, BI Governor Perry Warjiyo said the target for foreign tourist arrivals remained at 20 million this year.

Perry said he knew that the government had some strategies to accelerate tourist arrivals, including the construction of tourist infrastructure, introducing more tourist attractions and improving the quality of destinations.

He went on to say that the government was also aggressively promoting tourism online and encouraging investment in the sector.

In anticipating further disasters that may hit tourist destinations, he added, the government had developed crisis management procedures. (bbn)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19 2019

Police in North Jakarta have arrested a 28-year-old man for allegedly selling airguns via social media.

Tanjung Priok Police criminal unit head Adj. Comr. Faruk Rozi said the arrest was the result of his teams investigation. The polices cyber patrol initially received information that the suspect, identified as Rachmat Norman Taufiq, was selling the airguns via social media.

The police placed an order online to buy a colt defender style airgun, in an attempt to discern the sellers identity.

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Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung, West Java  Tue, March 19, 2019 17:39 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82bcebc 1 Business EU,palm-oil,Enggartiasto-Lukita,WTO,settlement Free

The government is preparing to take its latest dispute with the European Union on crude palm oil (CPO) to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a bid to settle to issue.

Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita expressed concern about the draft of a supplementing directive to EU Directive 2018/2001 on renewable energy, which was submitted by the European Commission on March 12.

Enggartiasto said Indonesia protested the classification of CPO as a high risk and unsustainable commodity by the European Commission. The decision [to take the issue to the WTO] was just made at a meeting yesterday. It is now being drafted. We will send the letter to the WTO and assign a lawyer, the minister said in Bandung on Tuesday.

He was referring to a coordination meeting attended by Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution, Foreign Ministry policy expert Peter F. Gontha, Trade Ministry International Trade Negotiation Director General Imam Pambagyo and Togar Sitanggang of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki).

He said if the draft of the supplementing directive, which would still be reviewed by EU leaders for several months, was agreed, it would close the door for exports of palm oil commodities to EU countries.

International Trade Director General Oke Nurwan said his office was still studying the draft, although he already knew the impact on the major Indonesian commodity should it be approved by EU leaders.

He said the government officials were studying the draft together with law experts to establish in detail the discriminative treatment of palm oil and its derivative products.

We feel there are discriminative elements. Why is it only for palm oil? How about soybean, rapeseed and sunflower oils, he asked, adding that the technical language in the draft needed to be interpreted by legal experts.

The Trade Ministry would coordinate with the Coordinating Economic Ministry in dealing with the issue, Nurwan said, adding that, although the diplomacy was so far led by the Foreign Ministry, the government had not made a decision on what institution would take charge in dealing with the case.

Nurwan said while the government was taking the case to the WTO, the business community could also file a discriminative treatment case to a court in the EU to create a more effective combined effort. (bbn)
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Linkedin Riza Roidila Mufti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19 2019

Courier company Lion Parcel, a subsidiary of the Lion Air Group, is aiming to maximize its parcel delivery service by using rail this year because the company expects it will save time and money.

Lion Parcel president director Farian Kirana said rail-based transportation was an alternative to optimize business amid the increasing demand for courier services and the rising price of air cargo, adding that delivering parcels by rail would give the company a wider reach.

In the past, to deliver parcels to Purwokerto [Central Java], for example, we had to fly from Jakarta to Yogyakarta first, before carrying the parcel from Yogyakarta by car to Purwokerto. Meanwhile, by train, we can deliver it directly from Jakarta to Purwokerto.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Bekasi  Tue, March 19, 2019 14:15 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82adb2f 1 City murder,murder-case,Murder-trial,Bekasi,PremeditatedMurder,trial Free

A man accused of murdering a family of four in Bekasi, West Java, is facing multiple charges that include premeditated murder and thievery.

Haris Simamora has been charged under Article 340 of the Criminal Code on murder and article 363 on thievery. He faces the death penalty if found guilty.

Haris allegedly murdered Daperum Nainggolan, 38, his wife Maya Boru Ambarita, 37, and their two children Sarah Boru Nainggolan, 9, and Arya Nainggolan, 7, on Nov. 13 last year. He also allegedly stole Rp 2 million (US$135), four mobile phones and a car.

On Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, at around 3 a.m., the defendant left the victims house carrying a crowbar and some of the victims belongings, prosecutor Faris Rahman told the Bekasi District Court as reported by kompas.com.

The murders were allegedly motivated by revenge.

After court proceedings on Monday, some angry family members of the victims attacked Haris, hitting him on the head. (vla)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 08:12 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee828b337 4 Business coal-business,coking-coal,demand,increase,2019 Free

Coal miners are looking to boost coking coal production in line with projected growth in the steel industry and the construction and manufacturing sectors, which require the substance as an energy source.

We project that steel production will grow moderately this year in line with global economic growth, said coal miner PT Adaro Energy spokeswoman Febriati Nadira over the weekend as quoted by kontan.co.id.

She said through two of PT Adaro Energys subsidiaries, Adaro MetCoal Companies (AMC) and Kestrel Coal Resources Pty, the company wanted to boost production of coking coal.

She said Adaro MetCoal Companies (AMC) planned to produce 1 million tons of coking coal, the same amount as last year, while Kestrel Coal Resources Pty aimed to produce 6.5 million tons this year, 39 percent more than last years production of 4.67 million tons.

Febriati expressed hope Adaro would boost its coking coal exports to India, Europe, Brazil, Vietnam and Japan. Nadira noted that Indias coking coal market grew significantly this year on the back of increased activity in the construction and the manufacturing sectors.

The coking coal produced by Adaro MetCoal is to be exported to Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, India, China and Europe, she said, adding that the coking coal produced by Kestrel would be mostly exported to Japan.

Meanwhile, Astra Groups PT United Tractors, through its subsidiary PT Suprabari Mapanindo Mineral, also planned to produce 1.5 million tons of coking coal this year, which was higher than last years production of 807,000 tons.

We exported coking coal to Japan, said Sara K Loebis, United Tractors corporate secretary, adding that the demand for coking coal would increase this year.

PT Golden Energy Mines, is another player in the coking coal industry. The company, through Golden Energy and Resources Limited (GEAR) acquired a coking coal mine from Stanmore Coal in Australia worth US$202 million. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 16:31 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82bc1eb 4 Business link-and-match,industry-ministry,vocational-schools,industry Free

In response to a criticism from vice presidential candidate Sandiaga Uno on vocational schools, the Industry Minister said that the ministry's "link and match" demand-driven vocational program had been running smoothly over the last two years, involving 2,612 vocational schools and 899 companies.

The government has run the link-and-match program for two years. We hope industry players will supervise and develop vocational schools. Meanwhile, the schools also have to actively participate in the link-and-match program, Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto said in Jakarta on Monday, as quoted by kontan.co.id.

He added that the number of participating schools and companies had exceeded the government target of 2,600 schools and 750 companies, and that the ministry had signed 4,997 cooperation agreements in implementing the program.

During the third presidential debate on Sunday, Sandiaga pointed out that a large number of vocational school graduates were unemployed.

According to Statistics Indonesia (BPS), vocational school graduates contributed only 11.24 percent of working-age people who were employed in 2018. The country had an unemployed working-age population of 7 million last year.

Airlangga said that 40,000 vocational school students in Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi had participated in the link-and-match program since it was launched in 2017.

He said, for example, that the ministry had signed 646 cooperation agreements that involved 133 industries and 440 vocational schools in West Java.

He added that the country had 14,260 vocational schools, of which 10,600 were privately run, and that at least 5,000 schools had not established cooperation with the business sector.

The government was also planning a new regulation to offer a 200 percent "super" tax deduction for companies that contributed to developing vocational schools.

For example, a company that spends Rp 1 billion to purchase school equipment could receive a Rp 2 billion tax cut, the minister said, and that a company that assisted vocational schools in producing innovations could receive a super tax deduction of up to 300 percent. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 12:59 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee829c0da 4 Business ride-hailing-application,regulation,Transportation-Minister-Budi-Karya-Sumadi,tariffs Free

The Transportation Ministry has issued a regulation on ride-hailing applications, but Ministerial Regulation No. 12/2019 only details rules on safety, while the anticipated regulation on fares will be stipulated in a separate decree.

Land Road Director General Budi Setiyadi said on Monday the regulation was the result of discussions involving nearly all stakeholders, including the government and ride-hailing app providers and drivers.

A regulation on fares would be issued later this week in the form of a ministerial decree, which could be revised every three months, he said, adding that the ministry continued to face difficulties determining the fare because of the different aspirations of drivers and ride-hailing app providers.

Drivers have demanded the fare be increased to Rp 3,000 (21 US cents) per kilometer, while the providers have insisted on maintaining it at Rp 1,600 per km. The providers also offered an alternative scheme for minimum fares of between Rp 9,000 and Rp 10,000.

With the scheme, if a passenger rides only 1 km, they have to pay the minimum fare, Budi added.

Meanwhile, Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi offered a compromise of Rp 2,400 per km, but no agreement has been reached between the two parties.

The minister said he would make a decision on the fare by the end of this week.

The proposed fare of Rp 3,000 per km would place too high a burden on users, Budi said, adding that the ministry was still negotiating with both drivers and ride-hailing app providers.

The drivers have proposed a fare that is two times higher than the existing fare. Hopefully, they will change their proposal after we talk with them, he said as quoted by tribunnews.com. (bbn)
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Linkedin Tom Westbrook and Praveen Menon (Reuters) Christchurch and Wellington  Tue, March 19, 2019 10:05 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8295f98 2 World New-Zealand-shooting,Christchurch,terror-attack,Muslims,migrants,violence,gun-control,Australia,Brenton-Tarrant,#ShootingRampage,#ShootingIncidents,white-supremacist,mosque-attack Free

Preparations were underway on Tuesday to begin burials of victims from the Christchurch mosques attacks after days of intense grieving for the 50 people killed by a lone gunman in New Zealand's worst-ever mass shooting.

Bodies of the victims of Friday's attacks were being washed and prepared for burial in a Muslim ritual process, with teams of volunteers flown in from overseas to assist with the heavy workload.

"We've been very conscious of the need to work sensitively with requirement of each family," Sarah Stuart-Black, Director for the Ministry of Civil, Defence & Emergency Management, said at a press conference in Christchurch.

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island, was charged with murder on Saturday. Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5, where police said he was likely to face more charges.

The victims, killed at two mosques during Friday prayers by a gunman with semi-automatic rifles, were largely Muslim migrants, refugees and residents from countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, Kuwait, Somalia and others.

Families of the victims are desperately seeking to come to New Zealand for the funerals. Immigration New Zealand said 65 visas have been granted for travelling family members.

The attack also left 50 people injured of which 30 still in the Christchurch hospital, authorities said. Nine of them are in a critical condition. One four-year-old child was transferred to a hospital in Auckland in a critical condition.

In a condolence speech in parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called on the country to support its grieving Muslim community, especially when they return to pray on Friday.

"We are one. They are us," Ardern said, ending her speech with the Arabic greeting "Al salam Alaikum," meaning "Peace be upon you".

Read also: New Zealand wants answers from tech giants after mosque attack livestream

Gun law debate rages

The gunman used a semi-automatic AR-15 during the mosque shootings, police said. A New Zealand gun shop owner said the store had sold Tarrant four weapons and ammunition online between December 2017 and March 2018, but not the high-powered weapon used in the massacre.

Ardern has said she supports a ban on semi-automatic weapons and that cabinet has made in-principle decisions to change gun laws which she will announce next Monday.

But a debate is raging in the country on gun laws. While some New Zealanders have voluntarily surrendered guns, others have been buying more from gun stores to beat the ban.

A gun club in the northern town of Kaitaia burned down early on Tuesday and police were treating the blaze as suspicious.

Simon Bridges, leader of the opposition National Party, said he wanted to get details of the changes to see if there could be bipartisan support in parliament. The Nationals draw support from rural areas, where gun ownership is high.

"We know that change is required. I'm willing to look at anything that is going to enhance our safety - that's our position," Bridges told TVNZ.

Ardern has said that Tarrant emailed a manifesto to more than 30 recipients including her office, nine minutes before the attack but it gave no location or specific details. In the document, which was also posted online, Tarrant described himself as Just a ordinary White man, 28 years old.

Andrew Little, the minister who oversees New Zealand's intelligence agencies, said monitoring of online activity had been stepped up in the wake of the Christchurch attacks.

"There are people who have been online making statements who have been interviewed by the police; that will continue. There is a level of intervention, there is a heightened level of monitoring," Little said on TVNZ on Monday night.

Ardern said there would be an inquiry into what government agencies "knew, or could or should have known" about the alleged gunman and whether the attack could be prevented.

More than 250 New Zealand police staff are working on the inquiry in the attacks, with staff from the US FBI and Australia's Federal Police working with local investigators.
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Linkedin Theresia Sufa (The Jakarta Post) Bogor  Tue, March 19, 2019 17:06 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82bc395 1 City bogor,social-media,duel,students,death Free

A senior high school student was killed on the evening of March 14 in a duel with another student that involved sickles in Bogor, West Java, after a heated argument on Facebook.

The 17-year-old student, identified as AH, died from head wounds he sustained in a duel with MR, 14, a student at a different school.

In a press release made available to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday, Bogor Police crimes division head Adj. Comr. Benny Cahyadi said that MR was under arrest. The police had also confiscated the sickles used during the duel and AH's clothes as evidence.

Benny said MR and AH had not known or met each other prior to the duel, which took place in Ciampea. The two had met on Facebook, where they became embroiled in a heated argument.

"The two, the victim and the perpetrator, taunted each other on social media [] They agreed to a one-on-one duel witnessed by their supporters, said Benny.

The two students had arrived with their friends at the agreed location of the duel in Ciampea, but the duel only involved AH and MR.

The two started fighting immediately using the sickles they had brought, and MR sustained open wounds to his shoulder and mouth. AH received wounds to his left hand and a fatal blow to the head, which killed him at the location.

Benny stressed that the duel was motivated by a personal grudge resulting from the online argument, and was unconnected to rival school gangs, which was common in Bogor.

In connection with the widespread duels among students that often resulted in fatalities, Benny appealed to parents to supervise their children closely, in particular by not allowing them to go out after dark.

At the end of 2017, Ahmad Raih Syahdan, 16, was killed in a fight that involved 14 junior high school students armed with machetes at a rubber plantation in Rumpin, Bogor. Ahmad died from blood loss at a local puskesmas (community health center) after sustaining wounds to his stomach, back and right arm.

In a separate incident, 15-year-old Hilarius Christian Event Raharjo, who attended SMA Budi Mulia senior high school, was killed in a duel with a student of another school.

The incident became publicly known last September when Hilarus mother, Maria Agnes Tri Darmawati, shared the story on Facebook and asked for President Joko Widodo's help in seeking justice for her son. (gis)
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Linkedin Dian Septiari and Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19 2019

Indonesias Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi summoned resident Australian Ambassador Gary Quinlan on Monday in response to the uninformed comments of a right-wing Australian senator over last weeks mosque shootings in New Zealand.

A white supremacist shooter, believed to be Brenton Tarrant from Australia, opened fire on worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday, live-streaming the attack on social media. He left a trail of 50 dead and several injured in his wake, including children.

In a closed-door meeting with Quinlan in Jakarta, Retno strongly condemned the statement from Queensland senator Fraser Anning, who said victims of the bloodshed in Christchurch were not blameless because of their faith.

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Linkedin Neil Jerome Morales and Fanny Potkin (Reuters) Manila  Tue, March 19, 2019 14:19 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82adefb 2 Business Go-Jek,failure,ownership,the-philippines Free

Indonesian ride-hailing firm Go-Jek lost an appeal on Tuesday against the Philippines decision to refuse to grant it a license due to its failure to meet local ownership criteria, in a major blow to its Southeast Asia expansion plans.

Go-Jek, whose backers include Alphabet Incs Google and Tencent Holdings Ltd, had hoped to take on Singapore-based Grab which is the dominant player in the Philippines ride-hailing sector.

The firm applied for a license to operate in Manila in August through wholly owned subsidiary Velox but was denied in January, after ride-hailing was added to a list of industries where foreign ownership is limited to 40 percent.

They filed a motion for reconsideration, but failed to fix Filipino ownership requirement, Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) Chairman Martin Delgra told Reuters.

A Go-Jek spokesman said the firm was disappointed and will now explore our options.

Several Philippine ride-hailing firms have started operations in the capital Manila and in major provinces over the past two years but have had limited success in eroding Grabs domestic market share, which stands at over 90 percent. (bbn)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 12:17 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee829ba9d 1 City fire-accidents,Fire-and-Rescue-Agency,Jakarta-administration,Jakarta-fire,anies-baswedan,West-Jakarta Free

Everything Ahmad Yono Sumaryono had ever dreamed of for himself and his family perished in a matter of minutes when a blaze destroyed hundreds of houses on Jl. Thalib in Krukut subdistrict, Tamansari, West Jakarta.

That night, Yono, a 63-year-old musician, was about to go to sleep after watching television in his living room. His wife and two children were already in their rooms asleep.

Suddenly a fire engulfed our house from behind around midnight. I could not save any important documents. Everything was black and orange around me, Yono told The Jakarta Post on Monday while picking up debris from his burned house.

The only thing I saw clearly that night was my keyboard. It was the only thing I brought with me, he added.

More than 300 houses were razed in a blaze that struck in the early hours on Sunday morning, displacing more than 2,000 residents. Fortunately, no causalities were reported in the incident.

Some victims have taken shelter at their relatives houses while others are staying in shelter tents and at the nearest mosques.

Yono said the residents suspected the fire started at a house with a catering business, given the size of the fire and the rate at which it spread.

Tamansari Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Ruly Indra said police had begun an investigation and had questioned four witnesses.

"We can't confirm the cause yet as were still waiting for the results from the national police forensic laboratory center," Ruly said.

Sucipto, whose house was behind the house where the fire is believed to have been sparked, said he managed to save important documents such as house certificates and family cards. Everything else was destroyed in the fire, he said. Sucipto lived with his mother who ran a warteg (food stall).

We lost our home and warteg. My money, Rp 400,000 [US$ 28.13] in a piggy bank, and my mother's money, Rp 500,000 in her closet, also vanished. We don't know what to do after this," said the 30-year-old massage therapist.

Both Yono and Sucipto said they did not know what their fates would be after the fire. They were also uncertain about how long they would live in the shelter.

A government official has recorded our identity, but we don't know if we will get money or not. We have received food, medicine and used clothes, but we still need more blankets to sleep, Yono said.

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan visited the area and met with the victims on Monday. He distributed Rp 100 million in relief funds to the residents and said the Jakarta administration would also provide Rp 2.5 million in cash assistance for each family to renovate their burned houses.

The fire was just the latest in a series of similar incidents in the area. A fire also occurred on Jl. Keutamaan Dalam, 500 meters from Jl. Thalib, a year ago. The fire, which began after a man set fire to his house over a family inheritance dispute, spread over 10 neighborhood units (RT) and left more than 2,000 people homeless.

Syarif Hidayatullah, a 28-year-old ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver, only managed to save one of his two bikes, which he uses to earn an income.

Syarif and his family have struggled to recover since the fire, which also injured at least five other people. Syarif said he still lived in his heavily damaged home, which has only had minor renovations.

"We were given money by the government but it was not enough to rebuild the house. We still use zinc and tarpaulin as a roof, he said.

Among the city's areas, West Jakarta has recorded among the highest number of fire incidents. According to the West Jakarta Fire Department, the number of fire incidents increased by 22 percent in 2018 compared to 2017. Electrical short circuits were the main cause.

Tamansari district has had among the fewest recorded incidents in area, with 24 incidents in 2018 compared to Cengkareng district where 70 incidents occurred.

"Fires are very frequent in West Jakarta. Its like a fire arisan [social gathering] because the incidents rotate around our districts. However, we have taken measures to minimize them by educating residents about how to prevent and extinguish fires immediately," Jakarta Fire Department spokesman Saifullah told the Post.

The fire department had also provided equipment to the 96 most fire prone community units (RW) in West Jakarta, Saifullah said, including 6 kilogram fire extinguishers, fire blankets and wheeled extinguishers. Every RW has two of each equipment. Fire fighters also provide residents with training every year to help prevent fires.

Moreover, the fire department also checks the residents' electricity usage and gas installations regularly.

We want to check how the residents use their power outlets, are they overloading them? Or do they exceed their electricity use without considering the cable capacity?" Saifullah said. (ggq)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 19:22 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82c3769 1 City motorcycle,theft,Central-Jakarta,teenagers,arrest Free

Police in Central Jakarta have arrested a teenager after months of pursuit, for allegedly stealing 15 motorcycles.

"The thief told us he had stolen 15 motorcycles," said Johar Baru Police crime unit chief M. Rasid on Tuesday.

The police had been trying to catch him since December last year, but always failed because the teenager, identified only as ANT, frequently moved to other places.

He usually operated in Central Jakarta, East Jakarta and Bekasi in West Java.

On March 15 at 3 a.m., the police finally caught him on Jl. Narada Ujung in Johar Baru.

"During the arrest, we also seized letter T and Y keys and four regular keys that he usually used to steal motorcycles," Rasid said.

ANT was usually helped by friends to carry out the crimes. They allegedly walked to wherever there were motorcycles parked and stole one of them.

"ANT was tasked with stealing the motorcycle while his friends guarded him," he added, noting that the police were still looking for ANT's partners.

ANT will be charged under Article 363 of the Criminal Code on theft, which carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison. (vla)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, March 19, 2019 13:36 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82a3618 1 National fish,sharks,Karimunjawa-Islands,death,farmer Free

At least 110 sharks and dozens of other fish were found dead at a fish farm in the Karimunjawa Islands, Central Java.

Cun Ming, the owner of the fish farm, explained that he found hundreds of fish floating in the farm's ponds on Feb. 7.

It happened over a holiday in two ponds that had breeding sharks. Theyre all dead, Cun Ming told kompas.com on Tuesday.

He added that such a mass die-off had never happened before at the farm, where hundreds of sharks, 20 goatfishes and 10 tigerfish lived.

Cun reported the incident to the local police three days later and sent samples of water from the pond and the dead fish to a laboratory to investigate the cause of death.

They say that it is impossible for large fish like sharks to die suddenly. This is not a disease. Someone is probably unhappy [with me or the fish farm], he said.

Cun established the Hiu Kencana shark farm in 1960, which has attracted local and foreign tourists alike, as well as scientific researchers from outside Indonesia.

Today, he also breeds other fish and marine animals, including sea turtles.

However, around 25,000 travelers have signed a change.org petition addressed to Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo and Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti that call the Karimunjawa shark farms "exploitation".

The petitioners claimed the sharks were bred in "inappropriate" environments, with the ponds usually lacking live fish and marine plants and that the sharks were stressed by people in "dirty clothes" with "loud and raucous" behavior.

One of the solutions the petition suggested was a fund-raising campaign to help improve the sharks' living conditions and provide training for their caretakers. (mai)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 20, 2019 05:45 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82c8ccd 1 Politics MarufAmin,social-media,survey,analysis,election,vice-president,debate Free

During the first election debate back in January, vice presidential candidate Maruf Amin became an object of online mockery for his poor performance.

However, the 76-year-old cleric has made a comeback following his solo performance in the vice presidential debate against his younger rival Sandiaga Uno on Sunday.

Analysis by social media monitoring site PoliticaWave has found that Maruf, who is the non-active head of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), may have outshined his competitor Sandiaga in Sundays debate.

Overall, Pak Maruf Amin dominates netizens conversation on social media by 58.26 percent to Sandiaga Unos 41.74 percent, PoliticaWave analytics head Nadia Shabilla said at a press conference on Tuesday, as quoted by Antara.

Similarly, the survey revealed that 98 percent of the discussion was positive toward the senior Muslim cleric, higher than the businessmans 79 percent.

Even when social media users' dialogues were examined for each segment of the debate, Maruf still garnered an average of 97 percent positive remarks.

We can conclude from our analysis that KH. Maruf outplayed [his opponent] in all segments of the debate. This is thanks to his ability to address every matter in a composed manner during the debate, Nabila said.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 20 2019

In ruin: Residents walk among ruins of houses burned down in Krukut, Tamansari, West Jakarta, on Sunday. The fire, reportedly caused by a short circuit, destroyed more than 300 houses and displaced around 2,000 people.(Antara/Sigid Kurniawan)

Everything Ahmad Yono Sumaryono had ever dreamed of for himself and his family perished in a matter of minutes when a blaze destroyed hundreds of houses on Jl. Thalib in Krukut subdistrict, Tamansari, West Jakarta.

That night, Yono, a 63-year-old musician, was about to go to sleep after watching television in his living room. His wife and two children were already in their rooms asleep.

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Linkedin (Reuters) Bangkok  Tue, March 19, 2019 14:22 997 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82aed71 2 SE Asia Thailand,poaching,tycoon,protected-animals,Court,Premchai-Karnasuta Free

A Thai court sentenced a construction tycoon to 16 months in prison without probation on Tuesday after finding him guilty of charges related to poaching of protected animals.

A provincial court sentenced Premchai Karnasuta, president of Thailand's largest construction company Italian-Thai Development (ITD) Pcl, for possession of a firearm without a permit, enabling poaching and possession of a Kalij pheasant carcass, a protected animal.

When asked if he had anything to say to society, Premchai said: "Only one thing, I'm sorry."

Premchai and a huntsman, Thani Thummas, were also ordered to pay a fine of 2 million baht ($63,200).

Premchai, who remained the ITD's president since his indictment, has previously denied charges.

His legal team says they would file an appeal. Meantime, he has been released on bail, but he is barred from leaving the country.

Last year, wildlife officials found Premchai and three others in the Thungyai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary with carcasses of protected animals including a black Indochinese leopard near their jungle campsite.

Charges of foraging in a wildlife sanctuary and possession of black leopard carcass were dropped.

"We prosecuted Premchai for poaching, but courts found that Premchai was not at the scene and so found him guilty for supporting poaching and dropped other charges," Phanomrit Homnitsakul, a prosecutor on the case, told Reuters.

Premchai's associates including a driver and a huntsman received sentences of up to three years and five months on firearm and poaching-related charges, including possession of a black leopard carcass.

"I am pleased with the decision... we brought justice to the black leopard," Wichien Chinnawong, the wildlife officer who found Premchai in the sanctuary told reporters, adding that the department and prosecutors will discuss next steps.
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Linkedin Anusak Kongland and Joe Freeman (Agence France-Presse) Kanchanaburi, Thailand  Tue, March 19, 2019 11:10 998 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82983f9 2 SE Asia #Thailand,#Conservation,tycoon,arrested,poaching,Leopard,verdict Free

A Thai tycoon accused of poaching a black leopard at a wildlife sanctuary arrived in court Tuesday for the highly anticipated verdict -- a case that has fuelled outrage in a country fed up with impunity and corruption.

Construction magnate Premchai Karnasuta, whose company is behind major infrastructure projects such as Bangkok's monorail and its airport, was arrested by rangers in a national park in February 2018.

He was detained with three others after rangers stumbled upon their campsite and found guns and animal carcasses, including a Kalij pheasant, a red muntjac -- or barking deer -- and the pelt of a black leopard.

The high-profile ruling is expected less than a week before a general election on March 24, the first polls since the junta seized power in 2014 vowing to expunge graft and uphold the rule of law.

Wearing a suit, Premchai arrived at the Thong Pha Phum courthouse in a black Range Rover around 8 am.

He calmly walked through the scrum of cameras and did not stop to respond to questions.

The striking images of the skinned leopard went viral, inspiring protests that saw demonstrators don black leopard masks, as well as graffiti of the cat across city walls and a Change.org petition calling for an investigation.

Thai media followed every detail of the case, including the authorities' investigation of human faeces found at the scene and a raid on Premchai's home where police uncovered a stash of ivory and guns.

"(It) struck a chord with everyone who sees a double standard in the country's law enforcement," said Human Rights Watch's Sunai Phasuk.

"While poor people and forest dwellers are often punished for foraging or hunting to feed their families, tycoons and officials can hunt for leisure with little fear of getting punished."

Arrests and convictions for poaching happen often in Thailand but they are rare when it comes to prominent individuals.

Premchai is the president of the publicly traded Italian-Thai Development, a Bangkok-based company that helped build Thailand's Suvarnabhumi airport and the city's skytrain public transit system known as the BTS.

Alhough he was listed as one of Thailand's 50 richest people by Forbes in 2016, he dropped off the list the following year as the government delayed infrastructure spending.

Amid a mounting outcry, junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha said last year that if the courts found Premchai guilty, it would not "matter how big he is".

Requests for comment from Premchai's company were refused.
A Farwell native was killed in New Port Richey, Florida after he was hit by a vehicle.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that a 59-year-old motorcyclist was killed Saturday when a driver struck him in an intersection, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

David Brasington of New Port Richey, originally of Farwell, was found dead at the scene, troopers said. He was not wearing a helmet when the accident occurred, according to the Highway Patrol.

The crash occurred around 12:49 p.m. at the intersection of Rancho Del Rio Drive and Via Segovia in New Port Richey, Florida, according to the Tampa Bay Times report.

Brasington was using his Honda motorcycle, heading east on Rancho Del Rio, troopers said, approaching the intersection.

At the same time, 21-year-old Tajh Martin of Largo, Flordia was driving a 2003 Toyota Celica north on Via Segovia, also moving towards the intersection.

Martin stopped at the stop sign and drove into the intersection, troopers said. He moved into Brasingtons path and hit the back of the motorcycle, according to the Tampa Bay Times report.

Troopers were still investigating the incident Saturday night, according to the Tampa Bay Times report.
Newsbrief: Unity and Nvidia have joined forces to launch real-time raytracing tech through Nvidias RTX platform.

For Unitys part, this means that the companys High Definition Render Pipeline will offer devs a way to implement real-time raytracing in their Unity-based projects and drastically improve the lighting effects in those games.

The tech is launching into as early-access, production-focused version today with a full preview launch due out later this year. The partnership, meanwhile, aims to open up the ability to render photorealistic image and lighting quality in real time to a larger pool of developers.

On Nvidias side, the partnership could give its RTX tech a potentially-need boost. The company cut its financial forecasts earlier this year after sales of the RTX GPU line were below expectations, a shortcoming that could be attributed to the fact that not many yet-released PC games have implemented the raytracing tech RTX offers up.
Gollum or Smeagol, who will have the upper hand in the upcoming stealth-action adventure? Coming to PC and consoles in 2022
French expat, pregnant Thai woman killed in motorbike collision in Rawai

PHUKET: Three people have died in a motorbike collision in Rawai early this morning (Mar 19), including a 48-year-old French expat and a Thai woman who was five months pregnant, police have reported.

transportaccidentsdeathpolice

By The Phuket News

Tuesday 19 March 2019, 08:23PM

Rawai Municipality rescue workers and police at the scene of the accident early this morning (Mar 19). Photo: Rawai Municipality rescue team

Rawai Municipality rescue workers and Chalong Police were called to the scene of the accident, opposite of the Rawai Health Center on Wiset Rd (see map below), at 1:05am.

At the scene officers found two wrecked motorbikes, one a white Ducati and the other a Honda Wave.

They also found two people dead and two critically injured.

One of the people killed was a 48-year-old Frenchman, reported Capt Somkiet Sarasin of the Chalong Police, who declined to name any of the people involved in the accident.

The Frenchman was the person riding the Ducati motorbike, Capt Somkiet said.

Capt Somkiet identified the Frenchman by his Thai drivers licence, which was issued two years ago. I have already informed French consular officials of his death, he noted.

The other fatality was a Thai woman who was riding as a passenger on the Honda Wave. She was five months pregnant, Capt Somkiet confirmed.

Rescue staffers transported both bodies to Vachira Phuket Hospital in Phuket Town, he added.

Of the two people who suffered critical injuries in the accident, one was a Thai man who was driving the Honda Wave.

He was unconscious with critical injuries and was taken to Dibuk Hospital, but later transferred to Vachira Hospital (in Phuket Town), Capt Somkiet said.

Today I was informed that he had died from his injuries.

The other person heavily injured was a Thai woman who was a passenger on the Ducati with the French expat.

She has critical injuries, and was taken to Vachira Phuket Hospital, Capt Somkiet said.

At this stage we are not even sure exactly how the accident happened, Capt Somkiet admitted.

We are still continuing our investigation into that, he said.

However, he added, Blood tests are being carried out on all four people who were involved in the accident to determine if alcohol was a factor.

Also, what we can confirm is that no helmets were found at the scene. Other than that, all other details we are still investigating, Capt Somkiet said.

Additional reporting by Eakkapop Thongtub
Men injured by bomb placed to protect birds nest operation

PHUKET: Two men have been seriously injured by an explosive device placed near the entrance to a cave used by a private birds nest operator on a small island in the northern reaches of Phang Nga Bay, east of Phuket.

crimeSafetypolicenatural-resourcesenvironment

By The Phuket News

Tuesday 19 March 2019, 02:06PM

One of the seriously injured men was brought ashore at Klong Kruat Pier in Krabi yesterday evening (Mar 18). Photo: Krabi Pritakpracha Foundation

One of the seriously injured men was brought ashore at Klong Kruat Pier in Krabi yesterday evening (Mar 18). Photo: Krabi Pritakpracha Foundation

One of the seriously injured men was brought ashore at Klong Kruat Pier in Krabi yesterday evening (Mar 18). Photo: Krabi Pritakpracha Foundation

One of the seriously injured men was brought ashore at Klong Kruat Pier in Krabi yesterday evening (Mar 18). Photo: Krabi Pritakpracha Foundation

The men, all fishermen from Krabi, landed on Koh Lao Pai*  just six kilometres off the northern tip of Koh Yao Noi  to collect orchids.

Two of the men suffered serious injuries in the blast. A third man with the group escaped serious injury.

Police were alerted to the incident yesterday evening (Mar 18), when Ao Nang Police along with rescue staff from the Krabi Pritakpracha Foundation were called to the Klong Kruat Pier in Tambon Khao Thong to receive one of the wounded men.

At the pier, the rescue workers provided first aid to a 38-year-old man, a resident of Moo 6, Khao Thong, who suffered blasted injuries to his right leg, his right arm was broken, injuries to his left shoulder, left ankle and wounds to his face.

The man, who was not named in initial reports, was taken to Krabi Hospital for further treatment.

Another man, 25 years old and whose name was also withheld, remained on the island, police were told.

Officers said they were coordinating with Phang Nga officials to recover the stranded injured man.

Police were told that the men went to the island in the morning to collect orchids.

In the afternoon the three of them were climbing a cliff near the mouth of a cave when one of them stepped on an object that exploded, causing the injuries.

Ao Nang Police said they have requested that Phang Nga Police inspect the area.

Officers believe that an explosive device was placed by people hired to protect the birds nest operation from poachers.

Officers assured that they will continue their investigation into the incident.

* Ao Nang Police Chief Col Chaowarit Petchsripia later confirmed the island where the incident took place as Koh Lao Pai, not Koh Lao Dua, which is only 2.5km away, as originally reported by rescue workers.
Phuket honours Rama V, the importance of decentralised government

PHUKET: Phuket Governor Phakaphong Tavipatana led a ceremony yesterday (Mar 18) to honour King Chulalongkorn, also known as Rama V, revered for bringing much modernisation to Thailand at the turn of the last century.



By The Phuket News

Tuesday 19 March 2019, 01:06PM

A large cleanup event was held at Queen Sirikit Park and along the Bang Yai Canal in Phuket Town. Photo: PR Dept

A large cleanup event was held at Queen Sirikit Park and along the Bang Yai Canal in Phuket Town. Photo: PR Dept

A large cleanup event was held at Queen Sirikit Park and along the Bang Yai Canal in Phuket Town. Photo: PR Dept

Phuket Town Mayor Somjai Suwansupana (right) joins the large cleanup event at Queen Sirikit Park in Phuket Town yesterday (Mar 18). Photo: PR Dept

A large cleanup event was held at Queen Sirikit Park and along the Bang Yai Canal in Phuket Town. Photo: PR Dept

A large cleanup event was held at Queen Sirikit Park and along the Bang Yai Canal in Phuket Town. Photo: PR Dept

Phuket Governor Phakaphong Tavipatana led a formal ceremony yesterday (Mar 18) to honour King Chulalongkorn, also known as Rama V. PR Dept

Phuket Governor Phakaphong Tavipatana led a formal ceremony yesterday (Mar 18) to honour King Chulalongkorn, also known as Rama V. PR Dept

Phuket Governor Phakaphong Tavipatana led a formal ceremony yesterday (Mar 18) to honour King Chulalongkorn, also known as Rama V. PR Dept

Phuket Governor Phakaphong Tavipatana led a formal ceremony yesterday (Mar 18) to honour King Chulalongkorn, also known as Rama V. PR Dept

Governor Phakphong presided over the formal ceremony at Phuket Provincial Hall at 9am yesterday to mark Thai Local Day, as celebrated around the country, joined by Vice Governors Prakob Wongmaneerung and Thanyawat Chanpinit.

Also present was a large ensemble of heads of local government offices, local administrative organisations and local government officials.

Thai Local Day is held each year to honour the great improvements Rama V  in full, Somdetch Phra Paramindr Maha Chulalongkorn, but often referred to by Thais as Phrachunlachomklao  brought to the country, including the understanding of the importance of local government as an important foundation of democratic governance.

As such, government officials, administrators, council members, local administrative organisations, and officials were yesterday all urged to continue to perform their duties with diligence.

To also mark the occasion, Phuket Municipality together with a network of other agencies and volunteers held a large cleanup event at Queen Sirikit Park in Phuket Town and along the Bang Yai Canal through town.

Governor Phakaphong presided over the event, joined by Phuket Town Mayor Somjai Suwansupana.

Mayor Somjai explained that by the Cabinet resolution on June 22, 2010, the date of March 18 of each year is to be celebrated as Thai Local Day in order to commemorate Rama Vs grace and vision in bringing decentralisation of government to Thailand.

The date marks when Tha Chalom in Samut Sakhon Province was designated a sanitation division, today the simplest form of local administration, making Tha Chalom the first local administration in the country.

The establishment of Tha Chalom sanitation division was the starting point of decentralisation of Thai government, laying the foundation for local development. It is a form of self-government that continues today, allowing local administrative organisations nationwide to prosper and provide stability as the core of local development, she said.
Police hunt Phuket spa shooter

PHUKET: Police have identified the man wanted for shooting two people at a beauty spa south of Phuket Town this morning (Mar 19) and have begun their manhunt for the suspect.

violencecrimepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Tuesday 19 March 2019, 04:26PM

Police prepare to enter the suspects rented room at Saphan Hin, where they found only the suspects wife home alone. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Police prepare to enter the suspects rented room at Saphan Hin, where they found only the suspects wife home alone. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Police prepare to enter the suspects rented room at Saphan Hin, where they found only the suspects wife home alone. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

UPDATE: Police have confirmed that the suspect "Mr Somporn" has been found dead with a gunshot wound to his head near his rented room in Saphan Hin.

The alarm was raised when police were called to The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd near the Naka Market in Wichit at 10:30am. (See story here.)

Capt Ratthanachai Siengsanoh of the Wichit Police identified the shooter only as Mr Somporn, who worked as cleaning and service staff at the spa.

Capt Ratthanachai declined to reveal Mr Somporns full name, but did disclose that officers have already raided Mr Somporns rented room at Moo Baan Sapan Hin.

However, police arrived to find only Mr Somporns wife at home, he said.

Officers are continuing their search for Mr Somporn, he added.

One of the two people shot this morning was 73-year-old South Korean national Kwanghee Kim, Capt Ratthanachai explained.

Mr Kim is the father of Mrs Eun Mikim, who is the owner of The Beauty Spa, he said.

Mr Kim was shot once in his left chest.

The other person shot this morning was 55-year-old Somsri Chueathonghua, who worked at the spa.

She was shot in the back and her right arm. Another bullet grazed her right cheek, Capt Ratthanachai said.

Both Mr Kim and Ms Somsri were taken to Vachira Phuket Hospital.

Mr Kim remains in serious condition, Capt Ratthanachai said.

Police so far have yet to reveal any motive for the shooting.
Two injured in shooting at Phuket spa

PHUKET: A South Korean man and a Thai maid have been injured in a shooting at a spa near the Naka Market, south of Phuket Town, this morning (Mar 19).

violencecrimepolice

By The Phuket News

Tuesday 19 March 2019, 12:23PM

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

POlice investigate the scene of the shooting, at The Beauty Spa on Wirat Hongyok Rd in Wichit. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The South Korean man sustained serious injury in the shooting, Wichit Police Chief Col Nikorn Somsuk confirmed to The Phuket News.

Both the South Korean man and the Thai woman have been rushed to Vachira Phuket Hospital in Phuket Town, he added.

The shooting occurred at about 10:30am.

We are at the scene investigating right now, Col Nikorn said.

Police at the scene found blood on the floor in room No 19 at the spa, he confirmed.

Towels stained with blood were also found outside the spa.

Col Nikorn declined to reveal any further details of shooting.

I cant reveal more details right now. We are still investigating, he said.

One witness at the spa told The Phuket News, The man who was shot is the father of the owner of spa. The woman is a maid. That is all I know.

Additional reporting by Eakkapop Thongtub
Southern Pines, NC (28387)

Today

Cloudy. High 74F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers late. Thunder possible. Low 44F. SW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
'Be kind and keep going to church'
But the 48 people hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Thursday was down 12 from the 60 that were hospitalized last week.
Carol and her colleagues provide drug screening and confirmation for all offenders under the jurisdiction of the MDOC. They also process samples from MDOC employees statewide, who are subject to routine drug screening, and from potential employees during the pre-screening process. The samples, all urine, arrive from across the statevia regular mail, couriers, overnight delivery, etc.and, in most cases, are processed within 24 hours.

The toxicology lab for the Missouri Department of Corrections (MDOC) is a busy place. In 2013 alone, it processed more than 118,000 samples. That work is primarily done by a laboratory staff of eight, led by Carol Bates, the labs manager.

Since 2005, Carols lab has used Thermo Scientific DRI drugs of abuse assays to screen as many as 600 samples each day. Screening is done for everything from opiates and cocaine to barbiturates and THC (Cannabinoid). Last year, the MDOC lab confirmed more than 6,400 of the screened samples as positive for a banned substance using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry.

Carol cant imagine doing her job without the benefit of DRI drugs of abuse assays. According to her, the liquid, ready-to-use screening assays are the most cost-effective method for screening, and this is especially key in state government where costs are closely watched.

MDOC measures its screening performance on a per-test basis, and they constantly look for ways to lower the average cost. You cant do what were doing for lower cost than were doing it today, she adds.

What makes DRI assays so ideal for labs such as MDOCs is the versatility, ease and speed. First introduced in the mid-1990s, DRI assays have filled a critical need for speed without sacrificing accuracy and lot-to-lot consistency. There is no need for time-consuming reagent preparation and DRI assays can run on a range of analyzers.

So why is all this important? Because drug use in prison has been a historic problem. But thats changing, and more frequent, accurate and faster testing may be an important factor. But we still have work to do, and a recent Washington Post blog post, Ron Paul thinks drug use is rampant inside prisons. Hes wrong, highlights this. The post suggests that perception of drug use in prison doesnt match reality and further education is needed to see what progress is beingand can bemade.

The posts author, Prof. Keith Humphreys, uses the example of the Louisiana state prison system, where there were 1,402 positive drug tests of prisoners over a three-year period. As Prof. Humphreys points out, however, given that Louisiana administered 120,000 tests during that same period, that would put drug use system-wide around one percent, 50 times lower than wed expect to see outside prison. In Missouri, the number would be approximately five percent based on its own 2013 figures.

The situation in Californias prisons seems to argue for testing as well. A recent San Francisco Examiner article claimed that California prisons find 1 in 4 inmates used drugs. But, as of the writing of that piece, California didnt require mandatory drug testing across its prisons. If the data from Louisiana and Missouri are any indication, California and other states would be wise to consider a more comprehensiveand streamlineddrugs of abuse screening and confirmation regimen.

The last word here goes to Carol Bates, however. She says that, at least for the screening and confirmation part of that regimen, todays rapid, reliable assays will make testing at this scale a whole lot easier. The Show Me state  particularly its MDOC lab  is indeed showing other states the way.
I have had an abiding interest in the question of antimicrobial resistance and public health microbiology since entering graduate school. As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, I had absolutely stupendous teachers in microbiology. They ignited a passion that shifted my interest from chemistry and physics to bacterial genetics and public health microbiology. I began to read voraciously about pioneers in microbiology. During my postdoctoral studies, my supervisor, Dr Charles C Brinton Jr, began working on Neisseria gonorrhoeae, investigating pili as possible candidates for a gonococcal vaccine. Time in his laboratory exposed me to newly emerging recombinant DNA methods and the emerging genetic knowledge of N. gonorrhoeae. After my postdoctoral work, I made pilgrimages to Louis Pasteurs birthplace and the World Health Organization (WHO) to see what they did. Ever since, I have tried to link research in public health microbiology and molecular biological methods. My service in the Government of Canada allowed me to work on both national and international issues regarding sexually transmissible infections, especially the molecular epidemiology and antibiotic resistance of N. gonorrhoeae. I have been privileged to be the founding co-ordinator for WHOs Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Program (GASP) in Latin America and the Caribbean. Throughout my career, I have balanced the role of administrator with my passion for research and public health. I have also been an advocate of the positive benefits of volunteering to work with various scientific organizations in my field. I have had the pleasure of leading several such organizations and this has facilitated my meeting scientists, clinicians, other researchers and health care workers from around the world.
Introduction

The development of ultra-high-throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies coupled with the initiation of large-scale population sequencing projects such as Genomics England 100,000 Genomes Project and the Genome Canada initiative has led to a dramatic reduction in the cost of genomic sequencing. Very high profile projects like Genomics England give the impression that whole-genome sequencing (WGS) or whole-exome sequencing (WES) are the most appropriate strategy for human genomics in a clinical or research environment. These approaches bring many benefits as the amount of information delivered aids discovery and increases our understanding of the interactions between genetics and human health. However, there are many considerations to take into account before deciding whether WGS, WES, or a more targeted approach using gene panels is the right solution, such as experimental aim, cost, time to results, and data analysis and management. Data analysis and management is an area that is often overlooked in the decision-making process.

The software used to analyze sequencing genomic data has matured greatly over recent years and most platforms provide a solution that allows mapping and variant calling of the data. WGS identifies millions of variants, creating challenges that need to be overcome to properly handle so much data:

Provision of the computing power to undertake the analysis

Interpretation of the results

Development of a truth dataset to determine specificity and sensitivity using an alternative method such as Sanger sequencing.

High-throughput WGS requires a large investment in infrastructure and with projects such as Genomic England there is a trend to centralize these resources. Setting up such a facility independently is cost prohibitive for most institutes outside of the main genome institutes. WES seems to offer a more viable approach. A few groups, such as the Cincinnati Childrens Hospital, have managed to set up high-throughput clinical exome sequencing. Using cloud technology to reduce the cost burden of the computing infrastructure is one option, but users need to understand the data governance regulations and whether the data can be transferred to a cloud provider located in another country. Even in this digital age transferring files of many tens or hundreds of gigabytes may put a major strain on the local network.

WGS and WES generate vast amounts of information that are invaluable for a research project. In a clinical setting, though, this raises the problems of increases in the false positive rate and detection of incidental findings. Often it is not clear what the functional implication of an incidental finding is. The software may predict that the variant is likely to cause a serious impact on the protein, but the consequences are not truly known until functional studies are undertaken. One approach to circumvent this issue is to provide the results for a subset of genes (in effect, a virtual gene panel). The advantage of this is that with increased knowledge of a disease, the virtual gene set can be easily expanded to include extra genes without having to redo the sequencing.

There is ongoing debate in the community regarding the most cost-effective strategy, not just for the actual sequencing but also for the effects on the health care system. Mulin Khoury at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention argued in a blog that due to the consequences of incidental findings, a targeted approach should be used in a clinical setting. A small panel allows for the development of assays that more adequately test the full sequence of the specific genes. The Saudi Mendeliome project shows that this approach generates favorable results compared to WES, at a much reduced cost per sample (article). It is important to note that the extent of knowledge of the genes implicated in a disease needs to be understood. If only a small percentage of the genetics is accounted for then a WES approach is likely to prove more successful.
The screening and routine quantitation of veterinary drugs in diverse sample matrices are demanding applications that require laboratories to develop workflows that will not only address regulatory guidelines, but also enable detection of compounds beyond the scope of routine targeted quantitative assays.

This presentation will discuss two workflow solutions. First, we will present a new multi-class, multi-residue veterinary drug method using a new LC- triple quadrupole mass spectrometer system with high sensitivity and robustness for routine analysis. The method was evaluated using extracts of bovine muscle, salmon (fillet), and milk obtained using a modified QuEChERS sample preparation protocol. Secondly, examples will be shown to demonstrate how powerful HRAM MS technology can enhance quantitation and screening beyond targeted analysis and be a key problem-solving force in your laboratory.
Following on the success of last years Innovation Day, Thermo Fishers Life Sciences Solutions business segment held its second Innovation Day Europe on May 11 at its Darmstadt, Germany, site.

This event, which was focused around our Biosciences business, provided our customers with the unique opportunity to network with like-minded scientists, innovators, and entrepreneurs, as well as with researchers, business development managers, and executives from Thermo Fisher. By sharing their innovative ideas during this one-day event, participating scientists also had the chance to advance the commercialization of their technology in partnership with us.

We received more than 30 innovation submissions and 12 were invited to present during the event to a panel comprising representatives from Life Sciences Solutions Business Development, In-Licensing and Partnering, Licensing and Commercial Supply (LCS), and Global R&D teams. The presentations covered a wide range of innovations like single cells on demand, novel methods for neural reprogramming, and microchip sequencing.

"The notion of open innovation is continuing to gain ground within Thermo Fisher, and a great proof point is the terrific event we hosted in Darmstadt. We had absolutely superb presentations from 12 companiesthe highest caliber of innovative ideas presented at these events so farand countless others that attended to learn and network, said Erik Tyrrell-Knott, Director, Business Development, Biosciences. "Innovation Day Europe felt like a big win for our customers, our brand, our Europe-based colleagues, and ultimately the Thermo Fisher business, because many of these opportunities will likely drive incremental revenues.
Proceedings after attack stopped : Jewish professor criticises Bonn police

Bonn Following the attack on the Israeli visiting professor Jitzchak Jochanan Melamed at the Hofgarten in Bonn, the public prosecutors office has halted investigations against four police officers. Melamed has sharply criticised the suspension of the investigations.

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In the end, mistake, was the key term in the investigation proceedings following the attack on a Jewish professor and an unsuccessful police operation last summer. As reported on Saturday, the Bonn public prosecutors office has halted the investigations into the four police officers involved in the operation. The police officers had mistaken Professor Jitzchak Jochanan Melamed, who teaches in the US, for the attacker and overpowered him. He had then accused them of hitting him dozens of times. As he had defended himself against the police, he was also investigated  the public prosecutors office has now also stopped these proceedings. Investigations continue into the actual attacker.

Both possible punishable acts were largely based on a mistake, said Sebastian Bu, spokesperson for the public prosecutors office, summing up the findings.

Melamed sharply criticised the halting of the investigations. My only reaction is that you unfortunately have a racist and corrupt police system, said the philosophy professor, who teaches in the US, on Tuesday.

Melamed, who was in Bonn for a lecture visit, had misjudged the situation when he assumed officers had intervened against him illegally, said the public prosecutors office. The situation further escalated when he actively defended himself, so that the academic was also investigated on suspicion of resisting enforcement officers. According to Bu, however, the police officers acted within the scope of their powers and were therefore justified under police law.

Investigations are continuing against the man who attacked Melamed. The 21-year-old German with Palestinian roots is currently in custody  but not because of his attack against Melamed, whose kippah he knocked off his head in the Hofgarten.

Huge interest nationally

The incident in the Hofgarten briefly became a national political issue. International media reported on it and Bonns Lord Mayor spontaneously brought forward the Day of the Kippah planned for November, in which 2000 people took part as a sign of solidarity with Jews. Police commissioner Ursula Brohl-Sowa apologised to Melamed and the NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul also phoned the victim.
At the XVIth meeting of the European Microscopy Congress in Lyon, France, we are presenting our new Pathfinder software for X-ray microanalysis. Pathfinder software promises to change the way SEM/EDS is used.

Built on over 40 years experience in X-ray microanalysis, the Pathfinder platform uses the most advanced data processing routines to bring comprehensive results to you in minutes. Pathfinder software uses our exclusive COMPASS PCA routine to present the ideal analytical representation of your electron microscopes imagery.

See it live at EMC 2016.

Sign up for a personal demonstration today!
Thermo Fisher Scientific has a strong commitment to supporting laboratories charged with the task of researching and monitoring environmental pollutants. Our commitment ensures high productivity, added value solutions for some of the most challenging environmental pollutant determinations.

To reinforce our commitment, we have established a Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Center of Excellence; staffed with experts in POPs analysis, to be used as a direct resource for our customers and associates. Located in Bremen, Germany the center will look to support our customers and associates internationally.
New database programs are on the rise, but much work needs to be done globally for criminal offender databases to hit their full potential

In the last twelve months, a number of countries have been actively positioning to begin criminal offender DNA database programs. Ireland and South Africa became the 53rd and 54th countries respectively to implement legislation to create a national DNA database program. Ireland passed their legislation in June 2014, and officially began collecting DNA last November from most convicted criminals. South Africa passed its legislation in January 2014 to require DNA from the most arrested and convicted criminals. Albeit slowly, the collection of DNA in South Africa has officially started.

The 55th country to fully implement their database program will likely be Italy. The Italian Ministry of Justice announced in March 2016 that it has completed all of the regulations and lab preparations necessary to begin their long-awaited criminal DNA database program. The collection of samples is expected to begin in late 2016.

In addition to the countries moving forward with legislative implementation, there are a number of countries that are working to advance legislation for the first time. Take for example, Algeria, which on April 20, 2016, became the first country in northern Africa to pass criminal offender DNA database legislation. The legislation will require the most convicted and arrested criminals to have their DNA placed in the database. Algeria will now start working on the implementation process in the next few years and hopes to join the other 54 countries that have implemented this legislation. Based on the discussion on DNA database legislation at the ministry and parliamentary level, Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs expects an additional 10 countries to pass and implement DNA database legislation in the next 5 to 10 years.

While the growth of new DNA database programs are on the rise, much more work needs to be done to make the existing 54 nationwide DNA programs more effective. There are over 70 million offender profiles contained in the national database programs. This is an impressive number. However, if the four largest databases are not counted (China, The United States, The United Kingdom, and France) only 11 million offender samples exist. This suggests that very few countries have robust databases capable of the hit rates necessary to realize the full potential of DNA databasing.

Countries with mature arrestee databases, such as New Zealand and the United Kingdom, can achieve hit rates near 70%. If countries wish to achieve similar hit rates to solve and prevent crime, they need to evaluate their legislation and consider policies that will allow more criminal offender profiles to be added to the database.
SGS Group is the globally recognized leader in providing inspection, verification, testing and certification services for a wide variety of industries. Founded in 1878, SGS has a long-standing international reputation for innovation, quality and integrity. With more then 55,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 1,000 offices and laboratories around the world.

"For OGC, it is imperative to have an analytical instrument that measures sulfur at ultra-low concentrations in a wide range of fuels with high accuracy within a few minutes..." Erwin V. at SGS Oil, Gas & Chemical laboratory (OGC )

One of OGCs main daily concerns is analyzing sulfur concentrations in fuels in compliance with various international standard methods such as ISO 20884, ISO 14596 and ASTM D 2622. Due to increased worldwide environmental regulations related to greenhouse emissions, sulfur analysis demands have recently increased dramatically. Based on the 2009 Euro 5 standard, maximum sulfur content in regular diesel, biodiesel and gasoline is 10 ppm.

The SGS Oil, Gas & Chemicals laboratory (OGC) located in Antwerp harbor, Belgium is one of the largest contract laboratories in the world specializing in analysis of all manner of light and heavy fuels, lubricating oils, biofuels, chemicals, additives and industrial gases. Operating 24 hours per day 7 days per week, the OGC Antwerp lab not only manages a large daily sample turnover but also reports results directly and rapidly to terminals and customers

Ease of use

For OGC, it is imperative to have an analytical instrument that can measure sulfur at ultra-low concentrations in a wide range of fuels with high accuracy within a few minutes.

The Thermo Scientific ARL OPTIM'X Analyzer satisfied these requirements in combination with extreme ease of use. For most measurements, no sample preparation is required as with other analytical techniques, so operators come up to speed with very little training necessary.

Daily analyses are simple: an operator fills the sample cup, places it in the sample holder, selects the required method and presses start. Results are ready in three minutes and the cup is disposed of. As OGC analyst Erwin V. said, Now everybody who reads this description can use the ARL OPTIMX."

One of the reasons we chose a system from Thermo Fisher Scientific is thatbesides the fact that this company is well known in the petroleum industry  weve had very good experiences in maintenance and support from them.
With the increasing number of targeted therapies in NSCLC, simultaneous testing for multiple biomarkers is becoming progressively important to ensure a timely diagnosis and start of treatment. Professor Smit will discuss the advantages of existing, new, and emerging targeted therapy; and the importance of timely diagnosis for patients with oncogene-driven NSCLC.

New targeted treatments give hope to patients, but at the same time, form a challenge to the laboratories that have to deal with the increasing demands for biomarker testing. Especially in NSCLC, as increasing numbers of genomic alterations are found to be clinically relevant and actionable, sequential or parallel testing of individual driver mutations using independent tests (one marker/one test/one drug paradigm) can be a significant resource and time challenge for clinical laboratories and can consume scarce and valuable tumour samples. Dr Quagliata will share his experiences in the comparison and evaluation of multiple biomarker NGS testing vs single-gene methods in NSCLC testing for EGFR , BRAF , KRAs , ROS1 , and others, and describe results of optimising and standardising current testing algorithms, including possible pitfalls and practical advice.

Evaluation of NGS and other methods for ALK tranclocation detection in European NSCLC patients - results of the European Thoracic Oncology Platform (ETOP) Lungscape Project The detection of translocation and fusion biomarkers is of particular importance in NSCLC. Over the years, there has been a lot of discussion about which is the best method  IHC or FISH or a combination of the two. Now, NGS is entering the field, allowing for the detection of multiple fusions as well as mutations in one test, from one sample. How does it correlate with the FISH and IHC? Is it as robust and efficient? Professor Finn will discuss the results of a large study comparing FISH, IHC, PCR, and NGS techniques for ALK translocation/fusion detection in 96 resected NSCLC samples from the large ETOP Lungscape cohort and give his opinion on the NGS case.
Jeff Lynne has named Dhani Harrison, son of his long-time friend, ex-Beatle George Harrison to open for all the Jeff Lynne ELO summer shows.

Dhani and Lynne have previously collaborated on George's last album release, 'Brainwashed' (2002), which was completed posthumously.

Lynne first collaborated with George in the '80s on his 'Cloud Nine' comeback album as well records made as part of the Travelling Willburys.

Dhani and Lynne has shared the stage together before in gigs like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's 2004 induction ceremony where they performed a rocking version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" along with Tom Petty, Steve Winwood and Prince. Watch the video below.

The 20-show tour will kick off this 20th June at Anaheim's Honda Center in California and is expected to finish on the 1st Aug in Pittsburgh.
NEW YORKAt least two airlines have pulled their forecasts as they assess the financial impact of last weeks grounding of the Boeing 737 Max jetliner after the second deadly crash of the plane in five months.

Analysts are expecting a short-term hit to flying capacity while Boeing resolves safety concerns and trains pilots.

Yet the financial impact remains in question, with WestJet withdrawing its forecasts Monday, echoing a similar move from Air Canada last week.

U.S. airlines expect the Max grounding to be short-lived as schedule adjustments, when made, are short in duration, Stifel analyst Joseph DeNardi wrote in a March 18 note.

His expectation for available seat miles, a measure of capacity, was unchanged from the prior week for the first quarter, and down 30 basis points for the second quarter, he said, suggesting a more limited impact than some had feared.

Securing used aircraft to replace the grounded planes would cost about $250,000 (U.S.) a plane each month, said George Ferguson, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

For Southwest Airlines, the biggest buyer of the revamped single-aisle workhorse, that would mean an extra cost of around $8.5 million for its 737 Max fleet of 34 planes.

Even so, the world doesnt have enough used or parked planes to replace more than 350 grounded Max jets, and airlines are likely to press Boeing for compensation.

Heres a look at how the airlines may be affected:

Southwest Airlines

With more than 30 Max aircraft, representing about 7 per cent of its capacity, the airline has the greatest U.S. exposure, Morgan Stanley analyst Rajeev Lalwani wrote in a note Monday.

The resulting impacts are expected to lift first-quarter cost per available seat mile to nearly 9 per cent, up from the companys January forecast for about 6 per cent.

Southwest is having a tough quarter operationally, Kevin Crissey, an analyst at Citigroup Inc., said in a March 14 note.

Because of the Max grounding, the airline is facing a larger aircraft shortage, with essentially no notice.

Southwest was already struggling with a spate of groundings for maintenance amid tense labour talks with its mechanics.

American Airlines

While any hits to American Airlines will be less than those for peer Southwest, Lalwani still anticipates an adverse impact to capacity with its 25 Max planes grounded, hurting first-quarter capacity by 50 basis points and second-quarter by 100 basis points.

The companys annual cost per seat mile is now expected to rise around 2.5 per cent, exceeding the carriers own forecast, which the analyst sees crimping earnings.

Air Canada

Air Canada has suspended its financial forecast for the first quarter and full year because of the grounding.

It left financial guidance for 2019-2021 in place, and BMO analyst Fadi Chamoun said he considered the Max grounding to be a short-term issue.

The airline, which operates 24 737 Max jetliners  about 10 per cent of its fleet  likely has some tools to help make up the capacity, Cormark analyst David Ocampo wrote in a note Monday.

Nevertheless, we believe there will be some negative impact in Q1 and Q2 from the cost associated with rebooking delays and the lost capacity, Ocampo added.

WestJet Airlines

WestJet said Monday its suspending all 2019 financial guidance as the company continues to carry out and execute its contingency plan.

Max models made up 7 per cent of the airlines fleet, totalling 13 planes, Cormarks Ocampo notes.

WestJet expects it will be able to protect approximately 86 per cent of guests booked on Max and cover approximately 75 per cent of the flights that were intended to operate on the Max with other aircraft, the carrier said.

United Continental

United Continental said it wasnt experiencing a significant operational or financial effect from the grounding.

But in a regulatory filing Friday, the airline cautioned that the impact was likely to worsen if the Max ban stretched into the busy summer travel season.

Morgan Stanleys Lalwani expects minimal impact relative to other airlines, as United Continentals Max capacity is about 1 per cent.

The analyst sees the grounding hurting first-quarter capacity by about 20 basis points, and second-quarter capacity by about 50 basis points, he said.

Ryanair

The Irish carrier will be among the most-affected by the grounding because it has among the largest number of Max planes in operation and scheduled for delivery this year, BIs Ferguson said.

The airline has robust expansion plans that may have to be reduced if the Max ban lasts more than a few months, he said.

Norwegian Air

The grounding affects about 1 per cent of Norwegian Airs overall seat capacity, according to chief executive officer Bjorn Kjos.

The carrier has said it will seek reimbursement from Boeing for the costs of the grounding, which a DNB analyst estimates at between NOK5 million and 15 million a day. Norwegian has 18 Max 8 planes.

Air China, China Southern

Chinese carriers shouldnt see a material impact to profits or growth plans because the Max accounts for 2.7 per cent of combined air fleets in the country, said Rahul Kapoor, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.

China Southern and Air China operated 24 and 16 of the models, respectively, too few for a huge blow to their operations and traffic growth, he said in a March 14 report.

The impact to Chinese carriers growth is also likely to be limited, as they have no major outstanding orders. But that could change in the event of a longer-term flight ban.

China Eastern has said it wants to talk to Boeing about losses caused by the Max grounding.

Other Asian carriers

Planned capacity growth by Indian low-cost carriers Spicejet and Jet Airways, as well as Vietnams VietJet, are at risk of being delayed on Boeings suspension of Max deliveries, Kapoor said.

SpiceJet, VietJet and Indonesias Lion Air are among carriers with the largest order books for the 737 Max.

A Lion Air 737 Max 8 crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, killing 189.

Less than five months later, an Ethiopian Airlines plane of the same type slammed into the ground minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

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The terrorist killings in Christchurch proved two truths.

The first is societal: the unification of New Zealand against hatred is emerging stronger than ever.

The second is commercial: Facebook and its ilk have failed, yet again, to censor content and have proved, yet again, that promises to moderate content effectively cannot be met, as the company persistently demonstrates.

Lets add a failed sense of urgency to respond meaningfully to the slaughter of the innocents at Masjid Al Noor and Linwood Masjid.

It fell not to Mark Zuckerberg, but Chris Sonderby, vice-president and deputy general counsel at Facebook, to provide what the company called an update on New Zealand. We continue to work around the clock to prevent this content from appearing on our site, using a combination of technology and people, said Sonderby in a published statement from the company.

The phrase is telling. Technology continues to fail the tech company. And in response, the tech company keeps pledging to add more and more people to moderate hate spewing (hiring more Burmese speakers to attempt to combat hate speech against Rohingya Muslims, by example).

The hard facts of the Christchurch massacre expose the folly of the exercise. We removed the attackers video within minutes of their outreach to us, Sonderby informed.

By their he means not company monitors (insiders) but Facebook users.

Within minutes. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.

There were no reports to Facebook during the live broadcast. The first user report was received 29 minutes after the video started. The live-streamed broadcast had ceased 12 minutes earlier. Think about that. Ponder the microsecond world of social media. By the time Facebook became aware, a user on the extremist forum 8chan had posted a link on the file-sharing site.

The video was viewed fewer than 200 times during the live broadcast, Sonderby noted, a meaningless number in the context of the viral character of social media. Including the views during the live broadcast, the video was viewed about 4,000 times in total before being removed from Facebook.

So 200 became 4,000 became millions. In the first 24 hours, we removed about 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, Sonderby said. More than 1.2 million of those videos were blocked at upload. Stated another way, 300,000 were not. Facebook failed to state what happened to the unblocked, or why they were unblocked, but we must imagine the ping, ping, pinging of the noxious content.

The response in New Zealand has poked sharply at the arrogance that Facebook has consistently displayed on its home turf. On Monday, the Association of New Zealand Advertisers and the Commercial Communications Council issued a joint release with the question we should all be asking: The events in Christchurch raise the question, if the site owners can target consumers with advertising in microseconds, why cant the same technology be applied to prevent this kind of content being streamed live?

The two groups issued a challenge to Facebook and other platform owners (YouTube, Twitter) to immediately take steps to effectively moderate hate content before another tragedy can be streamed online.

The corporate world is paying attention. Tony Fernandes, group CEO of AirAsia, announced he was shutting down his Facebook account with 670,000 followers. Facebook could have done more to stop some of this, he tweeted. 17 mins of a live stream of killing and hate!!!! Its need (sic) to clean up and not just think of financials.

As for Twitter, Fernandes said he was thinking on that.

On Tuesday, Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, called upon the Federal Trade Commission to immediately investigate whether Facebook has broken antitrust laws through its avariciously anticompetitive behaviour. Thats light years away from the tragedy in New Zealand, but worth pointing out as perhaps the world is closing in on Mr. Zuckerberg. The voices calling for a breakup of the Facebook monopoly grow louder by the day. Cambridge Analytica? Election interference? Those scandals have not gone away.

The present tragedy prompted Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to write Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe requesting that the G20 Osaka Summit, to take place in late June, add governance and enforcement to the agenda. It is unacceptable to treat the internet as an ungoverned space, he wrote. It is imperative that the global community works together to ensure that technology firms meet their moral obligation to protect the communities which they serve and from which they profit. He said he would be calling on G20 leaders to ensure that there are clear consequences, not only for those who carry out such horrific acts, but for those who facilitate them.

Fittingly, the most eloquent words were those of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and what is said is not the responsibility of the place where they are published, she said in addressing parliament this week. They are the publisher, not just the postman.

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CALGARYThe day after a gunman opened fire inside two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand  killing at least 50 people  a fringe political party hostile to immigration live-streamed families at a diverse northeast Calgary community centre in what the head of a national anti-hate group calls a concerning display of white nationalism.

At no point during the nearly 15-minute video posted to social media accounts of the National Citizens Alliance on Friday does the unidentified cameraman and narrator make overtly threatening remarks, but he claims the people around him at the Genesis Centre represent the replacement of traditional Canadians, and present an existential threat to Canada.

Traditional Canadian populations are being replaced, the cameraman claimed in the video. That is a fact. Canada is being turned into a UN globalist village.

For much of the video, the unidentified cameraman wanders around the Genesis Centre, commenting aloud on how those he encountered at the community centre  women, men, and children of all ages and ethnicities  are examples of the changing demographic realities seen in Canada.

In one occasion, he stands beside and films a row of Sikh men sitting in chairs beside the community centres door. On another, he trails behind a young boy walking down a hallway holding his fathers hand.

This is the demographic reality, the cameraman says as he follows them. We can own it, or we can just let it continue on.

Read more:

Edmonton mosque gets threatening letter promoting white supremacy

Canadas yellow vest movement looks like its here to stay  but what is it really about?

UCP nomination candidate Lance Coulter says he knew who Soldiers of Odin were, defends photo

The timing of the video is particularly troubling in light of the recent mass shootings in New Zealands third-largest city. A gunman inspired by white nationalists, including convicted Quebec City mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette, opened fire inside two mosques during Friday prayers. Dozens continue to recover from their wounds in hospital.

A 74-page manifesto released by the alleged gunman cites an irrational fear about white population displacement by non-white immigrants as one motivation for the attack. The NCA video is framed along the exact same concerns, although NCA founder Stephen Garvey claimed theres no relation. He declined to identify the narrator, but said he could speak on behalf of the video and the organization.

We dont feel theres an equivalency to that, Garvey said in an interview on Sunday. We dont have anything to do with whats happened in New Zealand. Theres nothing wrong with talking about this subject.

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, has followed Garveys activities for some time. While he doesnt believe Garvey himself is violent, he said acts such as the posting of a live-stream in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacres are nonetheless unsettling.

I would certainly be concerned if I was part of that community, Balgord said.

The cameraman says the NCA is using the video to simply start a debate about immigration, but claims the presence of non-white immigrants is replacing what he described as traditional Canadians. This rhetoric is an example of a white nationalist belief sometimes known as replacement theory, according to Balgord. The cameraman claims several times during the video that globalist politicians in Canadas federal government are responsible and insists immigrants themselves arent to blame.

Whats most troubling about this theory is the means by which its adherents would go about reducing Canadas non-white population. The NCA video leaves it up to the viewers imagination, but Balgord explained the logical conclusion to such rhetoric given the diversity of Canadas population would be mass deportation or genocide.

Whenever we talk about white nationalism, thats the framework its in, because if they actually wanted to achieve their stated goal, theyd have to kill people, Balgord said.

In spite of the videos intent, Garvey claimed it wasnt racist. He also claimed the NCA doesnt want to spread hate. But in an interview with the Star Calgary on Sunday, he said welcoming more immigrants from developing countries to Canada would end in a future where white people  European Canadians  are going to be brutalized.

In response, the Genesis Centre  which hosts a YCMA and a library among its facilities  said it values diversity and inclusion in a statement on Monday. The statement did not address the video itself, nor whether the centre would take any action, but said more needs to be taught about the benefits of a diverse community.

We are reminded that there is always a need for more education on the benefits of inclusive diversity, the statement reads.

Live-streaming diverse groups of people as evidence of these theories also isnt new. Balgord noted how far-right live-streamers recorded footage of a hotel in Toronto used to house refugees last September. Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy would go on to claim in an erroneous column that these refugees had been slaughtering goats in the hotels public bathrooms. The night before her column appeared, an unknown person was caught on security footage attempting to set fire to it with a gas can. The act of live-streaming isnt necessarily dangerous, he explained, but it may inspire others to commit more aggressive acts.

We dont know the motives behind that perpetrator, but it very easily could have been something inspired by that, and it can be dangerous, Balgord said.

Despite repeatedly saying the NCA is on the fence, the partys policy is overtly hostile to immigration. According to the partys website, it would cut intake to 50,000 people or less per year, and oppose the non-binding UN Migration Pact. It vows to prevent the entry of persons who pose a cultural threat to Canada, but states Canadas immigration policy should be based on an immigrants values, not their physical characteristics.

Canada must remain Canada and not submit to the globalist social engineering that we see playing out across Europe, the NCAs platform reads.

In spite of the videos rhetoric, Balgord said there isnt much one can do to prevent someone from shooting such a video. The cameraman did not harass or intimidate anyone on camera, and a community centre is intended to be open to members of the public.

Hes probably within his legal rights to do so, despicable as it is, he said.

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VANCOUVERThe British Columbia governments last-ditch legal attempt to restrict Alberta heavy oil  sparked by controversy surrounding the Trans Mountain pipeline  is finally getting its week in court, opposed by Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ottawa.

On Monday morning, roughly 36 lawyers in black gowns shuffled into the provinces highest court, the B.C. Court of Appeals, representing governments, oil companies, unions, several cities, First Nations and environmental groups on both sides of the much-anticipated constitutional dispute.

This is obviously an act of far-reaching implications, said B.C.s lead lawyer Joseph Arvay in his opening arguments Monday, insofar as it deals with many ways the province has seen it necessary to protect the environment.

(B.C.) accepts it could not stop a federally regulated pipeline  But so too a federal undertaking is not immune from provincial environmental laws.

Five top judges began hearing five days of arguments on three questions, all related to a single principle: Does B.C. have the right to issue or deny permits for diluted bitumen from the Alberta oilsands on environmental grounds?

B.C.s New Democrat government launched the case after it took power. It promised before the 2017 election: We will use every tool in our tool box to stop the project from going ahead.

Read more:

Constitution allows B.C. to regulate, but not stop, national pipeline: experts

B.C. politics experts debate if pipeline feud really a constitutional crisis

Flawed from the get-go: In pipeline feud, NEB process questioned

The provinces opponents are citing that pledge as proof that the plan to restrict bitumen is simply a smokescreen for halting Trans Mountain. B.C.s proposal is controversial because projects between provinces are federally regulated, and therefore under Ottawas jurisdiction  and because Ottawa and Alberta say getting heavy oil to the Pacific is critical for the countrys economy.

Such restrictions on bitumen raise a significant concern that the proposed legislation is in fact a legislative Trojan Horse, the federal governments factum stated, a bill that has been carefully crafted to appear constitutionally valid so that it might receive a preliminary judicial seal of approval in this reference, but which in substance is an unconstitutional tool whose only logical purpose is to limit federally regulated pipelines and railways.

Albertas attorney general, in that provinces submission to the court, echoed the accusations that B.C.s proposal was a veiled attempt to breach the constitutional division of powers.

The current government of B.C. has repeatedly committed publicly to doing everything it can to prevent the (Trans Mountain) Pipeline Expansion Project from going ahead, Alberta submitted. It lacks the constitutional authority to do it directly, that is: stop the project or place sufficient roadblocks in its way that it cannot realistically proceed.

But B.C.s lawyer Arvay countered Monday that the provinces aim is purely environmental.

The likelihood of an event is uncertain but carries the possibility of catastrophic impacts, he said. Yes, when the present government was in opposition, it said it would use every tool in the tool box to stop the project.

After it became government, they received legal advice that said you cant do that.

Ottawa purchased the pipeline and its at-least-$7.5-billion expansion plan for $4.5 billion, though the Parliamentary Budget Officer recently concluded Ottawa overpaid.

The provinces original reference request asked the court to give its opinion as to the constitutional validity  (of) a scheme that creates a permitting system for possession of hazardous substances and applies it to a substance like heavy oil that indisputably can cause harm.

The former BC Liberal government imposed five conditions for it to support the pipelines expansion and later said theyd been met. The federal government, meanwhile, approved the proposal to twin the project from the Alberta oilsands in 2016.

That sparked a raft of lawsuits against the decision from environmental groups, cities and Indigenous governments, including B.C.s current case. Last August, one of those cases overturned the federal decision to approve Trans Mountain, ordering it to redo consultations with First Nations and perform a study of a bitumen spills impact on the marine environment.

The province argues bitumen can sink in water and be difficult to clean up if a pipeline leaks or an oil tanker breaches. Arvay cited a 2010 bitumen spill into Michigans Kalamazoo River, which took years to clean.

The Trans Mountain expansion would see oil tanker traffic increase sevenfold through Vancouvers port and bitumen flow triple from the current pipeline.

A reference case is one way for a government to test in advance whether a proposed law is valid before passing it  potentially preventing future constitutional challenges to that law.

Several of the Appeals Court judges Monday interrupted Arvays opening statement, asking pointed questions about his arguments on B.C.s constitutional rights.

Provincial matters are touched by the pipeline, but its almost impossible to conceive of any provincial powers that are not impacted by federal legislation; where is the line drawn? asked Justice Harvey Groberman. The (proposed B.C.) statute doesnt give us very much of an idea of what the limits will be.

Political and constitutional experts the Star spoke with have expressed divided opinions on whether B.C.s arguments on environmental jurisdiction can outweigh Ottawas rights under the constitution. But all agreed that the provinces have such rights only if they do not impede or impair an interprovincial project.

Last April, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: The Government of Canada (has) jurisdiction in this matter, which we know we clearly have.

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New ICE route : Railways plan speed of 300 km per hour between Cologne and Berlin

Hanover/Bielefeld To speed up rail traffic between the Ruhr area and Berlin, a new ICE route with a speed of 300 kilometres per hour is being planned between Hanover and Bielefeld. The goal is a four-hour connection time between Cologne and Berlin.

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To speed up rail traffic between the Ruhr area and Berlin, a new ICE route with a speed of 300 kilometres per hour is being planned between Hanover and Bielefeld. The federal governments rail commissioner, Enak Ferlemann (CDU), told the German Press Agency that a route along Autobahn 2 is preferred. Our core aim is Berlin to Cologne in four hours.

The railway wants to attract more passengers to the fast and environmentally-friendly tracks and lose fewer to domestic air traffic. The result will be half-hourly connections, which is a dream for the entire region. The ICE currently runs hourly between Cologne and Berlin and takes around 4 hours and 40 minutes.

Ferlemann said the plans for the new route between Hanover and Bielefeld should be advanced enough this year for a preferred option to be discussed next year at a dialogue forum with citizens and municipalities. Trains between Berlin and Amsterdam should also become faster as a result.

The route is a priority requirement in the governments expansion plan with estimated costs of almost 1.9 billion Euros. Up to now, only an increase in speed to 230 kilometres per hour was planned, although the question was left open whether an extension of the existing line was sufficient or whether a new route from Porta Westfalica/Bad Oeynhausen to the gates of Hanover would be necessary.
VANCOUVERAs Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares to release the federal budget on Tuesday, Canadians broad fear of a declining economy has splintered into many forms, according to a new Angus Reid Institute public poll.

When respondents were asked earlier this month to choose the two most important national issues, health care was the most common answer at 23 per cent, followed by the environment, income inequality, corruption, government spending, housing affordability, the economy, energy, immigration and finally taxes, which polled at 10 per cent.

When a similar poll was conducted in early 2016, as the federal Liberals prepared their first budget, Canadians ruled the economy the most important issue. Jobs ranked second.

But that doesnt indicate an end to Canadians anxiety. Four-in-10 respondents expect the economy to worsen over the next year. Fifty-five per cent say its not a good time to make a big-ticket purchase. Nearly half of respondents were worried that someone in their household could lose their job because of the economy.

There is a growing group of Canadians who feel left behind or on the margins, said Stewart Prest, Simon Fraser University political scientist. They are looking for security, he said, and this will manifest in different ways ahead of Octobers general election.

The economy affects people in concrete ways, which varies by personal circumstances a lot, Prest explained. We are going to be having multiple, distinct conversations, and it may be harder to have broader national conversations that bring people on the same way.

The budget is expected to address pharmacare, specific jobs training and potentially housing.

While Prest said its difficult to determine how things will play out, six months ahead of the general election, he speculated the Liberals will double down on issues that resonate with their base, such as immigration or Islamophobia.

During Mondays Question Period in Parliament, Trudeau was vocal about denouncing white supremacy and racism, saying the fight will be major but Canada cannot put it off anymore.

I suspect the Liberals will give up on trying to please everyone, Prest said. They are going to try to build a winning coalition and wont necessarily be casting as wide a tent as they did in 2015.

The issues on Canadians minds  including housing affordability, inequality, taxation and spending  break in two different directions, according to Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid executive director.

This splits along political lines. Those who would consider voting Conservative Party are more concerned about the latter issues. Those who would consider the Liberals and/or NDP key on the former, she said in an email.

There are marked provincial differences as well. Respondents in Alberta and Saskatchewan are feeling the most bleak, with nearly half of residents believing their standard of living worsened in the last year. Those regions also have the highest anxiety over potential job losses, with six-in-10 residents concerned for the household.

However, Albertans are more likely to expect their standards of living to improve next year, while Saskatchewanians are more likely to believe it will worsen.

Meanwhile, poverty in Canada is lower than ever. The Liberal government attributes its decline to the Canada Child Benefit and an increase in the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors, the poll report noted.

However, middle-class growth  a key component of the governments 2015 platform  has largely been stagnant. Recent income-tax data suggests these households have seen little to no increase in income. Meanwhile, unemployment has dropped and the economy has grown relatively steadily, the poll report explained.

Thats why the Trudeau government will have to straddle making life more affordable while showing theyre taking deficit spending seriously, Kurl said.

From a political standpoint, this is an absolutely crucial budget, Kurl said, given the governments need to change the channel on the contentious SNC-Lavalin affair.

MPs in caucus are likely clamouring for something more to talk about on the doorstep and community events than the PMs explanation of what happened, she explained. Theyre getting hammered in the polls and desperate to move on.

The Angus Reid Institute conducted the self-commissioned online survey from March 8 to March 10, polling 1,594 Canadian adults who are members of its forum. The margin of error is +/- 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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Its a tale of two colleges  and two approaches to sick days.

Following labour law changes late last year that eliminated two mandatory paid emergency leave days for all Ontario workers, George Brown College says its removing them for its non-union faculty  in compliance with the new legislation.

The catch: employers arent required to eliminate paid sick days. The legislation simply spells out a new legal minimum: eight days of unpaid absence for illness, family leave, and bereavement leave.

A topsy turvy year of labour legislation  paid sick days and equal pay for equal work legislated by the Liberals through Bill 148, then removed through Bill 47 by the Conservatives  has presented employers with a choice: keep what they initially implemented, or revert to the minimum standard.

Unlike George Brown, Humber College chose the former. In an internal memo obtained by the Star, Humber College said it recognized the need for paid sick days and decided to maintain them following Bill 47.

It has also publicly stated its commitment to maintaining the now-defunct equal pay for equal work principles that required part-time, temporary, and casual employees to be paid the same as their permanent counterparts.

Read more:

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Ontario moves to hold minimum wage at $14 and end paid sick days

Ministry of Health not consulted about health impacts of removing paid sick days, advocates told

Humber supports the principle of equal pay for equal work and has undertaken a process to determine roles in which part-time staff have been performing work equal to full-time staff, college president Chris Whitaker said in a January blog post.

We will continue to use the newly created part-time wage grid for faculty, as well as move ahead with the implementation of revised wage grids for impacted support staff.

In a statement to the Star, George Browns vice-president for human resources Leslie Quinlan said Bill 47 left non-union staff with several unpaid leave opportunities.

In compliance with the legislation, in conversation with the College Employer Council, and along with many other Ontario colleges and employers, we implemented the changes under the amended Employment Standards Act.

We value all of our employees and are committed to their continued engagement and to the success of our students, she added.

What do you think?

Jeff Brown, a full-time professor who teaches philosophy and English as a Second Language at George Brown, calls his employers response disingenuous.

It was just, this is what Bill 47 calls for and this is the new normal, he said. A lot of people know that thats not the case. The college doesnt have to do this.

I was disappointed to see the college do the least they were legally permitted to do, he added. It really seems to me that a socially responsible, progressive employer like George Brown is really well placed to set an example here. To say, this is something we believe in.

The Star sent questions to every GTA-based college to ask them how they have responded to the changes introduced by Bill 47. College Employer Council (CEC) chief executive officer Don Sinclair replied on behalf of all of them, noting that colleges must pursue fiscal responsibility as the majority of our funding comes from student tuition and Ontario taxpayers.

To this end, the governments measures in Bill 47 will give the colleges more flexibility to manage these escalating cost pressures, he said.

We would hope that these colleges would be leaders and were very happy to see at least one is saying, yes, its important to keep these provisions, said Gilleen Witkowski, a business owner and spokesperson for the Better Way Alliance, a network of businesses that believe in investing in employee well-being.

These provisions are a bare minimum for employees and theyre the right thing to do on a personal level and on a business level.

While unionized professors at Ontario colleges already largely enjoyed standards beyond the minimum requirements set out in the Employment Standards Act, non-union part-time and sessional faculty dont have protections beyond what is set out by law.

Last year, a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that temporary roles have steadily risen over the past two decades at Ontario universities and colleges  making the promise of new precarious work protections introduced under the Liberals of particular importance, says Brown.

At George Browns School of ESL, where Brown teaches, some 79 out of 95 faculty members are sessional or part-time  and now, without paid sick days.

The rolling back of fairly meagre labour reforms as soon as theyre legally permitted is sort of an ominous approach, said Brown.

Brown, who is also a steward for his local union, says hes made personal efforts to try to mobilize support for keeping the sick days, including circulating a petition among full-time staff that garnered 130 signatures.

Hes also pressed his employer to clarify whether they will maintain pay bumps given to part-time and sessional staff when equal pay laws were in effect.

The only answer Ive gotten when I pursue this is that the college will maintain all current contractual agreements, which is not what the question is, he said. The question is, what are the plans to honour equal pay for equal work provisions down the line?

Asked about those provisions, CEC spokesperson Sinclair said there had been no rollbacks to employees that had wages adjusted under Bill 148s equal pay for equal work provisions.

The CEC has previously welcomed the repeal of Bill 148, which it says would have cost Ontario colleges over $300 million in 2024-25.

Nobody would argue that the colleges should not be fiscally responsible, said Brown. But you can balance fiscally responsible with social responsibility. Two paid sick days in an entire year is not really overreaching.
Ottawa will soon start collecting data on every person leaving Canada by land and air in a bid to identify and track anyone from potential terrorists to snowbirds who lie about their residency to claim government benefits.

The new measures, expected to take effect later this year, aim to strengthen border security, enforce residency requirements for permanent residents and pinpoint those who fail to leave the country as required.

It is not known how many visitors whove overstayed their welcome, failed asylum seekers and criminals the new exit system will catch, but both Employment and Social Development Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency, which will have access to the data, are expected to nab many Canadians who are outside of the country and ineligible to receive further benefit payments.

The estimated savings for the government in employment insurance and old age security over 10 years could add up to $206 million, plus another $151 million in family and child tax credits and other benefits, according to an analysis of the proposed changes to the Customs Act published Saturday.

The Canadian Snowbird Association has been following the exit control changes closely and warns its 100,000 members against breaking U.S. immigration law by overstaying beyond the six-month limit and risking the loss of their federal benefits such as old age security and guaranteed income supplements.

The move between the U.S. and Canada is inevitable and we are reminding our members to be mindful of the limitation on their time travelling abroad, said Evan Rachkovsky, the associations spokesperson.

Read more:

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Data exchange with U.S. fuelling Canadian visa scrutiny

Canada Border Services Agency does not currently collect exit information from commercial air carriers on travellers and only has access to U.S. records of foreign nationals and Canadian permanent residents arriving from Canada at land ports of entry.

The new reporting scheme  a final phase of whats known as the Entry/Exit Initiative, similar to programs in Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe  will allow Canadian officials to track the 97 per cent of all outbound travellers who leave the country by land and air. The effort will ultimately be expanded to travel by rail and sea. Officials will start collecting land exit data this summer, followed by air-travel data within 12 months.

The government cannot easily determine who is inside or outside the country at any given time, which adversely impacts Canadas ability to manage the border and support pressing and substantial public policy objectives related to national security, law enforcement and federal program integrity, the border agency said in its 35-page report published in the Canada Gazette.

By implementing a new regulatory framework that prescribes the source, time, manner and circumstance related to the collection of information, the CBSA would have access to reliable, timely and accurate information that could be effectively safeguarded and managed.

Immigration policy analyst and lawyer Richard Kurland said this marks a shift to a continuum tracking system, where peoples movements are going to be monitored by the government.

People do not know, generally, that by consenting to Canada, they also consent to having their personal information donated to other countries, such as the U.S.A., due to the many information-sharing agreements between Canada and other countries, said Kurland.

Canadians cannot fix information that goes to other countries, and it is a real issue. You may be wrongly netted by the system. Mistakes are going to happen, and there is no oversight, monitoring, or control over the system.

Right now, commercial air carriers are required to provide Canadian border officials with advance information that identifies air travellers and flight crew arriving on international flights. Officials rely on passengers to provide the information on customs declaration cards or electronically via the primary inspection kiosk, with travellers self-declaring the date they originally left Canada.

The proposed exit control measures will operate similarly with Canadian officials collecting basic biographic information  name, nationality, date of birth, gender and time and place of departure  from airlines on all passengers leaving Canada, in the form of electronic passenger manifests.

Canada already receives information from the U.S. on departures of foreign nationals and permanent residents at land ports of entry. The new rules will expand to include records of Canadian citizens entering the U.S. by land.

The federal auditor generals office has in the past highlighted a number of security concerns stemming from the absence of reliable exit data, the border agency report says.

In recent years, the Government of Canada has seen a number of individuals travelling to foreign destinations to engage in terrorist activities, the report says.

These individuals often pose a danger to countries in which they operate and may become a direct threat to Canadians upon their return to Canada through acquiring combat experience and training and potentially establishing terrorist networks and recruitment capabilities, the report adds.

Ottawa said the exit data will help officials:

Identify outbound movement of known high-risk travellers;

Track visitors who overstay their visa and remain in Canada illegally;

Verify travel dates to assess applicable duties, tax exemptions and benefits for returning residents;

And check if permanent residents returning to Canada have fulfilled their physical residence requirement to maintain their status or qualify for citizenship.

Data collection on air travellers is expected to take longer to implement because it requires commercial air carriers to register, test and certify that they meet the government-specific IT requirements. The whole scheme is expected to cost about $110 million, with almost $80 million assumed by the federal government and the rest by the commercial air industry. Airlines failing to provide the information will face fines.

Once fully implemented, personal information collected under the Entry/Exit Initiative will be retained for up to 15 years, after which it will be purged  unless it is otherwise required to be retained under Canadian law.

Meghan McDermott, a staff counsel of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said Canadians should be concerned about the sharing of the personal data among government agencies and with foreign partners. Its a vast new collection of data  I dont know what recourse we have and where to go, when inaccurate personal information has to be corrected, she said.

Both the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Security Intelligence Review Committee must constantly monitor the program and provide independent oversight to prevent abuse and breach of privacy and civil liberties, McDermott said.

Changes to the Customs Act received royal assent in December. The public has until mid-April to submit feedback.

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It started with a chance encounter in a coffee shop. He was charming and attractive, and everything he said mirrored her life.

The relationship developed into a romance but the seduction ended months later in apparent deception, an elaborate scheme by an alleged serial con man to whom she lost thousands of dollars.

Everything he said to me was a lie, says Andrea Speranza, an athletic 49-year-old with long brown hair. I couldnt understand how he could make love to me with the sole purpose of ripping me off.

She has since found multiple alleged victims of Marcel Andre Vautour, a man with a criminal record, warrants for his arrest and several aliases.

His suspected victims say he targets busy career women between the ages of 45 and 50, leaving a trail of broken hearts and empty bank accounts across the country.

The Canadian Press has spoken with three women across the country who say they fell victim to his romantic schemes, and one man who was promised a job and ended up losing tens of thousands of dollars. Each alleged victim has positively identified photos of the same person.

Vautour did not respond to requests for comment by phone, email or social media. None of the new allegations against him have been proven in court.

Speranza says shes sharing her story to prevent more people from falling victim to his alleged scams.

I want to stop him from hurting more people, Speranza says. Im going to catch a criminal.

Originally from Ontario, Speranza had a hardscrabble childhood.

Despite her hard upbringing, she graduated from university and moved to Nova Scotia, where she became a firefighter and one of the first female captains in Halifax.

Speranza has dedicated her life to helping others, running an award-winning camp that educates girls about emergency services careers.

When she met a man who called himself March Hebert last summer, they seemed like kindred spirits.

He told her a story about his difficult family life, saying his parents struggled with addictions. But he turned his life around, worked on offshore oil rigs, and purchased hundreds of acres in rural Nova Scotia to build a youth-at-risk facility.

It was almost like everything about my life he was saying back to me, Speranza says.

She says she now realizes it wasnt a chance encounter. He targeted her, she says, using a well-honed script and asking pointed questions to develop a plan.

It started off very casually  she wasnt looking for a relationship. But she was attracted to his desire to help youth and to give back to the community.

The five-foot-eight, 185-pound man with green eyes and a disarming smile eventually persuaded her to hang out. They went hiking and kayaking, and attended charity events.

He told her she was beautiful. She made him a better person. She was the best thing that ever happened to him. He was falling hard and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

Everything was just perfect, she says. He was super accommodating and helpful and complimentary. Nothing I could say or do was wrong.

Speranza now believes he targeted her to invest in his apparently fabricated youth-at-risk facility. When she instead offered to help him apply for grants, she believes he implemented an exit strategy.

He said he suffered from Crohns disease and one day he called her to say hed been hospitalized.

She recalls him saying he was OK, but his wallet had been stolen. He needed money to buy costly medication. Then he had to go to Toronto to get his dog from his ex, and borrowed money for a train ticket and hotel room. He promised to pay her back.

She gave him $5,000.

He ghosted me after that, Speranza says, adding that he never repaid her. I pride myself on good decisions. But I had no inkling whatsoever.

She filed a police report and encouraged another alleged victim she met, Jean-Baptiste Joachin, to do the same.

The French citizen had met Vautour at a hostel in Quebec City and had travelled with him to Halifax, where he was promised a job on an offshore rig.

Joachin allegedly paid Vautour thousands of dollars for training courses. He also opened up Canadian bank accounts and credit cards, which Vautour had access to.

By the time Vautour skipped town last fall, Joachin had lost $30,000.

He completely blindsided me, Joachin said. Everything he told me was bullshit.

Halifax police spokesman John MacLeod confirmed the force has received two complaints of fraud based on case file numbers provided to The Canadian Press by Speranza and Joachin. But he said one incident had been closed while the second was deemed a civil matter.

Meanwhile, Speranza has discovered more alleged victims in other provinces through social media. They exchanged photos of the fraudster to confirm his identity, and have shared information about their cases.

Together, theyve pieced together a string of allegations against Vautour across the country.

The Canadian Press has contacted police forces, court houses and justice departments in several provinces and has confirmed hes a wanted man with a criminal past.

Documents obtained from Quebecs Justice Department show Vautour pleaded guilty in 2005 to unauthorized use of credit card data and received a suspended sentence of one years probation.

In 2015, Quebec courts issued an arrest warrant for Vautour for fraud.

Victoria Law Courts confirmed a warrant for the arrest of Vautour was issued in 2001, and executed in 2009. He pleaded guilty in August 2009 to obtaining by false pretence and served a six-month conditional sentence in the community, followed by two and half years of probation.

Meanwhile, West Kelowna RCMP said they are aware of a recent incident and have a police file open on the matter. But spokesman Jesse ODonaghey said specific details are not released until charges are laid by Crown counsel.

The Winnipeg Police Service confirmed Vautour is currently the subject of two arrest warrants. Const. Rob Carver said the charges pending from 1998 include possession of goods obtained by crime over $5,000 and personation.

Records from the Court of Queens Bench of New Brunswick indicate Vautour was charged in 1996 with stealing a Volkswagen Jetta in Dieppe.

Despite efforts by law enforcement, some alleged victims have launched their own investigations  even hiring a private investigator.

Theyve tracked down more than 20 phone numbers, 10 email addresses and multiple physical addresses used by Vautour in Canada and overseas.

The alleged victims have even narrowed down his method.

They say he told them all variations on a theme: He had a successful career either working on offshore rigs, as a remotely operated underwater vehicle operator, or running companies.

He claimed he made it big investing in precious metals, cryptocurrency and cannabis, the alleged victims say. He said he owned a white convertible Porsche, a Ford F-350 truck, a baby blue Aston Martin. He even had pictures to show off his upscale possessions.

He had money and was well-travelled, says Jodi McMullin, a woman from the Okanagan area of B.C. who met him on a dating site in January 2018.

The whirlwind romance moved quickly, and they began planning a future together.

He told her he had been working in Vietnam and wanted to stay with her in Canada. But he had tax issues, and needed help cashing a business cheque.

The businesswoman offered to help him out. When she had doubts, he was always ready with an explanation.

Every time I questioned him on something, he had a response right away, she says. There was never any hesitation.

She provided him with her bank account number, and he deposited a cheque and then pressured her to transfer him the money, she says.

McMullin acquiesced and then left for a wedding in the U.S. When she returned, the cheque  which she later learned was a fake purchased online  bounced, she says.

He ended up stealing just over $45,000 from me, she says. My trust is shot. Theres not a day that goes by that I dont think about it.

Speranza is determined to bring the man she knew as March to justice, launching

This man ruins peoples lives and I am in the business of saving peoples lives, the firefighter says. I have to stop him.
ST. JOHNS, N. L.A Newfoundland-based military reservist faces several charges related to alleged conduct at the Fort Pepperrell mess in St. Johns.

The Canadian Armed Forces says Major Kirk Kendall faces one count of disgraceful conduct, one count of drunkenness, and three counts of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline.

The charges are in connection with incidents last September that the military says were sexual in nature.

A possible summary trial or court martial date and location is yet to be determined for Kendall, who is a member of 37 Combat Engineer Regiment.

Lieutenant-Colonel Kevin Cadman, commander of the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, said in a statement that all Armed Forces members should expect to serve in a professional environment safe from inappropriate sexual behaviour.

Read more:

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Two Canadian Armed Forces members charged with sexual assaults in Nova Scotia

Military crackdown on sexual misconduct is failing victims, auditor general says
FREDERICTONNew Brunswicks minority Tory government tabled a budget Tuesday that makes a series of targeted cuts while offering the first net debt reduction in 13 years.

Finance Minister Ernie Steeves said the province is at a crossroads, and it would be irresponsible to delay hard decisions.

His $9.8-billion budget projects a $23-million surplus.

He said New Brunswickers paid $1 billion in increased taxes over the last four years under the previous Liberal government.

There is simply no reason the budget could not have been balanced earlier. Instead, nearly $1 billion was added to New Brunswicks net debt over the last four years, he said.

The provinces debt is estimated at $14.1 billion, and is expected to decline by $49 million by this time next year.

Steeves said the budget, titled Acting with Urgency, represents a new beginning for the province.

It contains no new taxes or fee increases.

Read more:

Its budget day! What to expect and what to watch for

Province adds funding for on-campus sexual violence services

Opposition threatens to delay budget in call for answers in SNC-Lavalin affair despite probes end

For us its a victory seeing the government balance its books and start reducing the debt, said Louis-Phillipe Gauthier of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Steeves says about 100 civil service jobs will be cut, and expects most will be done through attrition.

Funding for the New Brunswick Womens Council is being cut by about $390,000  or roughly 48 per cent  but Steeves said it returns its funding to the level from two years ago.

Provincial revenues are projected to grow by 1.5 per cent for 2019-20, while spending growth is being limited to 1.3 per cent.

The government will spend more than $16 million to increase wages for home support workers.

Thats good news to Green Leader David Coon, but said hes worried about cuts in assistance to the poor.

The budget allocates a slight increase for the Department of Social Development, but will make cuts in programs such as Child Welfare and Disability Support Services (about $3 million less), Income Security (about $10 million less) and Housing Services (about $9 million less).

Significant cuts for social assistance, significant cuts on affordable housing, and depending on how you look at it, spending less money than they did this year on child welfare and disabilities. Those concern me, Coon said.

The budgets most visible impact will likely be the elimination of front licence plates on vehicles  a move that was sought by the Peoples Alliance party. As well, the fee paid by volunteer firefighters for their licence plates will be eliminated.

Steeves said $2.4 million will be spent in 2019-20 to recruit and retain more nurses.

The budget will have to win the support of at least one opposition party, but the Peoples Alliance has previously announced it would back the minority government through its first 18 months.

Peoples Alliance Leader Kris Austin said hes pleased with the money to recruit nurses, and efforts to reduce the wait times for surgeries like hip and knee replacements. Austin said his party will support the budget.

The government will introduce legislation to reintroduce the New Brunswick Tuition Tax Credit, and will unveil a renewed bursary program for students attending universities and colleges in the province.

We are facing a serious labour shortage in this province with nearly 25 per cent of our labour force aged 55 or over, workers who are at or approaching retirement age. We need workers. Our economy depends on our ability to recruit them, Steeves said.

He said the province will ask the federal government to allow for a reduction in the scope of work to improve Route 11 to allow for the completion of twinning to Bouctouche and allow for improvements on the route to Miramichi.

The highway passes through the riding of Benoit Bourque, the Liberal member for Kent South, and hes not happy the new government is not doing all the improvements planned by the previous Liberal government.

Its a step in the right direction, but its still not good enough, Bourque said.

Steeves said the province will also seek help from Ottawa for the health care system.

In our view, the only reasonable solution is to seek a one-time demographic weighted health care agreement from the government of Canada, Steeves said. This would allow New Brunswick to navigate through this unavoidable financial crisis being caused by our demographic situation.

About 16 per cent of New Brunswickers are over the age of 65.

As promised, the government is increasing the annual budget for the auditor general by $1 million. It is also giving the language commissioner a 25-per-cent funding increase, or $136,000 a year.

Premier Blaine Higgs had repeatedly stated his government would present a balanced budget.

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Students at the University of Toronto staged a silent protest and a sit-in Monday calling on the university to improve its mental health services after a suicide on campus Sunday night.

About 100 students gathered in a silent protest at the university president Meric Gertlers office at around 2 p.m. before moving to the Medical Sciences Building, where the schools governing council was meeting in the evening.

We want to make UofT take the mental health crisis seriously, Shervin Shojaei, a third-year political science student and one of the protest organizers said. The wait times here are extremely long. It could take up to six months to a whole year to get a slot of maybe 45 minutes to an hour.

Shojaei and other protestors said this is the third suicide on campus in the past academic year. The university declined to comment on the number of suicides but acknowledged the latest suicide on Sunday night through a series of tweets and in a statement to the Star.

This is a sad day for the university, Vice-Provost of Students Sandy Welsh wrote in an email.

Welsh said the students family has asked for privacy and the school is providing whatever assistance it can.

Shojaei said the protest started as a silent sit-in in the hallway of the presidents office. A non-silent protest simultaneously broke out outside the building when campus security stopped letting people inside. Eventually, Gertler invited three students to speak at the governing council meeting.

Arjun Kaul, a co-organizer and a fifth-year neuroscience student who was at the meeting, said the council acknowledged services could be improved.

At the meeting, student Kristen Zimmer pointed out the Ontario Human Rights Commissions criticism of the University Mandated Leave of Absence policy, established on June 27, 2018.

The policy provides a nonpunitive option to the university, giving it the right to ask students to leave when they exhibit serious concerning behaviour that is threatening or results in negative academic consequences.

In a letter to the university on Jan. 28, 2019, the Ontario Human Rights Commission chief commissioner Renu Madhane said the policy could possibly contradict the human rights code and allow the university to discriminate on the basis of mental health disability.

The policy does not require the university to assist students who pose a serious risk of harm to themselves  either in terms of accessing additional supports or calling emergency services, wrote Mandhane. Rather, the policy appears to allow the university to immediately put the student on leave and withdraw essential services (housing, health, and counselling services) at a time when the student is in crisis and most in need of support.

Welsh said the university is working with community partners to offer support and continuing to put in place measures to help students facing mental health issues.

The university has a moral obligation to fix this issue, said Shojaei. We hope ... all the students that have come out signals to the university that we want this crisis to end.

If you or someone you know need help, call Crisis Services Canada at 1-833-456-4566. If you require emergency assistance please go to the nearest hospital or call 911.
When Lance Soskin was told he would go to school without shoes, like his brother and all the other children at his 1970s-era South African junior school, he was having none of it.

He asked his mother to not only put sandals on his feet, but pack him an extra shirt in case the one he was wearing got dirty.

He was 3 years old.

This was the first time Barbara Soskin noticed her son was not like the other children.

It was at age eight that Soskin  with his two brothers and parents Barbara and Steve, who were at odds with the governments philosophy  moved out of apartheid-era South Africa to Thornhill.

Soskin attended nearby German Mills Public School and then Thornlea Secondary, as he developed into a bright, ambitious, high achiever.

He was a beautiful person and an honourable guy, his mother said. He never lied, he didnt like to tell untruths. He was extremely trustworthy and reliable. He was incredibly bright, he had a wealth of knowledge. He could discuss anything with anyone.

His body was found by Toronto police last month. Soskin was 47.

In everything Soskin did, he wanted only the best, including during his time on the Canadian national gymnastics team, which took him around the world for various meets.

He wanted perfection in himself and those around him, Barbara said. Everything had to be perfect, from the way he dressed to the way he looked after himself . . in every respect.

Very little made him truly happy, even when he managed to come so close to the perfection he sought in life, school or sports.

Nothing excited him, said his father Steve, recalling the time Soskin won the national championship, but struggled to put a smile on his face.

I remember everyone begging Lance to smile for the judges, he just wouldnt. He was bored with life.

Soskin also had a keen sense of right and wrong. When that was challenged, a mix of mischievousness and antagonism could shine through.

As an articling student, Soskin felt as though the law firm he worked for didnt treat his fellow law students with respect.

After he was sent out of town by the firm to have documents signed, he asked his boss what kind of car he could hire.

They told him he could rent what he liked, Steve said.

He rented a Ferrari.

It was such a shot across the bow in Canadas traditional and sometimes stodgy legal circles that the story appeared in Frank Magazine, a Canadian satirical publication.

Steve recalled another story when his son tried to have his bedroom soundproofed so he could focus on his law and business degree from Osgoode Hall, a degree for which he finished third in his class.

After hiring a contractor who all but destroyed his room, Soskin set about trying to get his money back.

But when the contractor said he was broke, Soskin set about discovering the truth  riffling through the mans garbage to prove he was lying, before suing him and winning in small claims court.

It was with this determination and resourcefulness that Soskin would come up with a number of business ventures, including launching eQuibbly, an online dispute resolution website.

He then began another firm called Contracts, Law and More.

Despite this ingenuity in the business world, Soskins personal life grew more complicated, compounded by the obsessive compulsive disorder that would eventually take over his life.

It was as though Soskin was living in a bubble, as Barbara put it, for the past 17 years.

His parents visited his Yorkville apartment only a few times, having to place their shoes in a certain small area and wash their hands the minute they entered the apartment.

When Soskin, an extreme germaphobe, was at their home for dinner, Barbara had to promise to make the food with gloves on and never pick up anything from the floor.

Over time, even his sanctuary became his nightmare. A water leak behind his shower caused mould on his closet carpet.

Soskin left the minute he saw it, moving to a hotel.

When this happened to the apartment he just fell apart, Barbara said. He was not thinking straight anymore.

Although he expected to find an apartment soon after, the citys high rents forced him to move back with his parents in Thornhill, where things became markedly worse.

He grew frustrated and dour, with depression setting in. Over his years in therapy he tried some 20 different types of medications, all of which ultimately failed.

It was his search for help, or lack thereof, in Ontarios mental health system that would grow into his greatest tormentor, his parents said.

Barbara said he spent the final year of his life trying to find help for, among other things, repeated panic attacks and anxiety. He repeatedly bemoaned how difficult the system made it for sufferers of mental health issues.

You go and see five different people in five different departments and each makes you fill out another form, Barbara said he told her before his death.

He would say: Here I am trying to save my life and Im being sent from pillar to post. When you speak to one you have to speak to another and another and still you end up nowhere.

Barbara said her son felt there should be one person for sufferers to speak with.

They make it so difficult for people. I heard him on the telephone, its disgraceful, she added. The mental health care system absolutely failed him. They made it so difficult that he felt like he was fighting with the system. He told me that Canada was a first-world country, but it was like living in a Third World country when it came to mental-health care.

When Barbara returned home Feb. 25 evening to find Soskin and his vehicle missing, she knew something was awry, considering how little he ventured out of the house.

The next four days the family and Soskins friends frantically searched for the 47 year old.

Although his body had been found by Toronto police on the Monday, the same day he went missing, family and friends werent told by York Region police until three days later.

Barbara said the individual officers were both compassionate and caring, but she lamented the lack of communication between the two forces resulting in days without answers.

It was heartbreaking, she said.

York police said it could do little until the Toronto Police Service, whom they contacted immediately, notified them of the discovery. Soskin had died by suicide.

I wish I could have done more, Barbara said. I showed him all the love and support I think I could have, but I wish I could have done more.

If you or someone you know need help, call Crisis Services Canada at 1-833-456-4566. If you require emergency assistance please go to the nearest hospital or call 911.
TORONTOA Roman Catholic priests sexual abuse of an 11-year-old altar boy more than 50 years ago warranted an award of more than half a million dollars in compensation, Ontarios highest court ruled on Tuesday.

In reaching its decision, the Court of Appeal rejected arguments from the Toronto diocese that the victims lawyer had inflamed the jury with closing comments.

However, in a split decision on one part of the appeal, the court set aside the jurys award of $15,000 in punitive damages, saying the Toronto diocese did nothing wrong in refusing to admit liability until after the trial started.

Court documents show the boy was raised in a devout Catholic family who believed a priest, as Gods representative, was to be respected and obeyed. In 1963, newly arrived priest, Father Alphonse Robert, befriended the 11-year-olds family, and ended up inviting him on a trip to visit the Basilica of Notre Dame in Montreal.

According to agreed facts, Robert arranged to spend the night in a motel room in Cornwall, Ont., where the priest fondled the boy sexually and performed a sex act on him.

The boy came to believe the incident was his fault and that he was damned to hell, court documents show. The result was decades of difficulties with family relationships and alcoholism.

Read more:

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The victim sued the parish in 2014, by which time Robert had died. He sought various damages for mental distress and loss of income, as well as punitive damages.

The church, which spent years denying liability, admitted fault on the opening day of the jury trial before Superior Court Justice Gordon Lemon. As a result, the only issue at play was the amount of compensation.

In May 2017, after hearing expert evidence, the jury awarded the plaintiff general and aggravated damages of $250,000, another $280,000 for loss of income, and punitive damages of $15,000.

The diocese appealed. Among other things, the church argued inflammatory closing comments from the plaintiffs lawyer led to a miscarriage of justice that required a new trial. Those comments included the lawyer urging jurors to identify with the victim as an 11-year-old and to do the right thing.

The Appeal Court rejected the arguments, saying the judges instructions to the jury  including about the comments  were fair, and that the damages award was reasonable and supported by the evidence.

I note that the impugned statements came at the conclusion of a 16-day trial, which was devoid of any allegation of inflammatory comments to the jury, Justice Mary Lou Benotto wrote for the court. The jury was not acting out of an impermissible sense of outrage caused by the closing submissions of the respondents counsel.

On the sole issue of $15,000 in punitive damages, Benotto found herself off-side with her two appeal-panel colleagues, Justice Lois Roberts and Chief Justice George Strathy.

Benotto said she would have let the award stand as symbolic condemnation of the dioceses uniquely egregious conduct in only admitting liability after the trial started.

There was specific evidence that (the victim) was suffering physically and mentally during the time that the appellant was denying liability, Benotto wrote in her dissent.

However, in quashing the punitive damages award, the majority said the church was entitled to deny liability as long as it did. Exercising its litigation rights could not be characterized as egregious misconduct, Roberts wrote for herself and Strathy.

In essence, the trial judge created a new and unprecedented category of punitive damages arising out of the timing of the appellants admission of liability, Roberts said. To create such a category of punitive damages would completely undermine the foundation of the litigation process.
CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe - Aid workers rushed to rescue victims clinging to trees and crammed on rooftops Tuesday after a cyclone unleashed devastating floods in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. More than 350 people were confirmed dead, hundreds were missing and thousands more were at risk.

In Mozambique, the rapidly rising floodwaters created an inland ocean, endangering tens of thousands of families, aid workers said as they scrambled to rescue survivors and airdrop, food, water and blankets to survivors of Cyclone Idai.

This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambiques recent history, said Jamie LeSueur, head of response efforts for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Mozambiques President Filipe Nyusi said late Tuesday more than 200 people had been confirmed dead in his country. Earlier he said the death toll could reach 1,000.

At least 400,000 people were left homeless.

In Zimbabwes eastern mountain areas bordering Mozambique, residents struggled to cope with the disaster.

There was a house there, it was buried and the owners may have been buried with it. They are missing, said Zacharia Chinyai of the Zimbabwean border town of Chimanimani, who lost 12 relatives in the disaster.

The cyclone took residents by surprise, Chinyai said.

We heard news on the radio about the flooding in neighbouring Mozambique, he said. But we never thought we could also be victims. ... No one told us it was going to be this devastating.

Chipo Dhliwayo lost her daughters, 4-year-old Anita and 8-year-old Amanda.

I wasnt able to save anything except this baby, she said of her lone surviving child, a 6-month-old son, who suffered an eye injury and scars to his face.

The family was sleeping when theit house collapsed, the 30-year-old said.

Trees, rocks and mud were raining on us. I grabbed my son, my husband took Anita and we ran to a hut, but that also collapsed. Anita died there, she said.

Amanda was trapped in the rubble of their house and her body was not found until the next day.

I knew she was already dead. I cried the whole night, Dhliwayo said. I lost so much that I wish I had just died.

The cyclone created southern Africas most destructive flooding in 20 years, said emergency workers. Heavy rains were expected to continue through Thursday.

Mozambiques Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, creating inland oceans extending for miles and miles in all directions, said Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program.

This is a major humanitarian emergency that is getting bigger by the hour, Verhoosel said.

He said people were crammed on rooftops and elevated patches of land.

People visible from the air may be the lucky ones and the top priority now is to rescue as many as possible, he said.

Many areas remained impassible. With key roads washed away, aid groups were trying to get badly needed food, medicine and fuel into the hard-hit city of Beira, on Mozambiques coast, by air and by sea.

Its dire, Caroline Haga of the Red Cross told The Associated Press from Beira, a city of 500,000. We did an aerial surveillance yesterday and saw people on rooftops and in tree branches. The waters are still rising and we are desperately trying to save as many as possible.

Satellite images were helping the rescue teams target the most critical areas, Haga said. Rescue operations were based at Beira airport, one of the few places in the city with working communications.

The waters flooded a swath of land more than 150 square miles (290 square kilometres) in central Mozambique, according to the European Unions global observation program, which was mapping the crisis, putting more than 100,000 people at risk.

The full horror, the full impact is only going to emerge over coming days,Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane told reporters in Geneva.

Thousands of homes were destroyed in Beira, and the city and surrounding areas were without power and nearly all communication lines were destroyed. Beiras main hospital was badly damaged, and in large areas flood waters completely covered homes, telephone poles and trees, the Red Cross said.

Beira could face a serious fuel shortage in coming days, the WFP said, and its power grid was expected to be non-functional through the end of the month.

In Zimbabwe the death toll was 98 but expected to rise, a local government minister, July Moyo, said.

He said bodies of Zimbabweans had been reported floating all the way into Mozambique. Some of the peasants in Mozambique were calling some of our people to say, We see bodies, we believe those bodies are coming from Zimbabwe, Moyo said.

Among those fleeing Chimanimani on foot was Luckmore Rusero, who carried a small bag with his remaining possessions. His wife carried their 1-year-old while their 11-year-old son struggled to keep pace as they joined many others in seeking refuge.

Thank God we survived. There are no roads, no transport, so we have been walking for more than 20 kilometres now through the forests and the mountains, Rusero said.

Some escaped with nothing but their lives.

I fled naked, said Tecla Chagwiza, whose home in Chimanimani was destroyed, I only received clothes in the morning from well-wishers who are also helping me with food.

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa arrived in the flooded area on Tuesday and was expected to fly by helicopter to disaster sites on Wednesday. He said the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and Angola, were offering aid.

Malawis government confirmed 56 deaths, three missing and 577 injured in the flooding, which caused rivers to burst their banks, leaving many houses submerged and around 11,000 households displaced in the southern district of Nsanje.

The United Nations allocated $20 million from its emergency response fund to ramp up the humanitarian response in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said that the bulk of the funding will kick start the response in worst-hit Mozambique. But he stressed that $20 million is insufficient for the needs of cyclone victims and urged donors to contribute generously.

The U.N. money will complement government efforts to provide health care, food and protection and help humanitarian groups restore emergency telecommunications and scale up the provision of water and health services, he said.

The European Union and Britain also pledged aid, and the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe said the U.S. was mobilizing to provide support to partners in the three affected countries, but provided no details.

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Associated Press journalist Farai Mutsaka reported in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe, and AP writer Andrew Meldrum reported from Johannesburg. AP writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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An emerging coalition of Algerian opposition figures Tuesday rejected President Abdelaziz Bouteflikas plan to remain in office while overseeing a political transition from his 20-year rule, echoing the demands of street protesters that he step down next month.

The group also urged the military to stay out of any political handover and not repeat the mistakes of other Arab countries where armies stepped in to take control, often violently, as longtime rulers were ousted during the Arab Spring protests of 2011.

The opposition figures call for the president to step down came as Bouteflika and his allies were trying to steady themselves following a month of massive street protests, sparked by his announcement he would seek a fifth term in office.

Last week, Bouteflika, 82, said he would drop his re-election bid and postponed elections set for April 18. That move unleashed a wave of euphoria throughout the country that has since turned into a renewed round of street protests demanding he leave immediately.

He confirmed in a statement carried on state media Monday that he intended to remain in office beyond the end of his current term on April 27, while suggesting he would spearhead political, constitutional and economic reforms before handing over power to a newly elected president at a yet unknown date.

Read more:

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Crowds throng Algerian cities to demand president step down

Algerian prime minister promises new government in days

The plan received an important boost from Russia on Tuesday, when Algerias newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister Ramtane Lamamra met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Russia is one of Algerias closest allies and biggest arms suppliers.

Lavrov said Russia was concerned by the protests and suggested they were the result of interference by foreign nations that he did not name, according to the Reuters. Lavrov endorsed the plan detailed by Lamamra that would see presidential elections held after a new constitution is ratified.

But thousands of Algerians, civil society groups, trade unions and professional associations have already rejected Bouteflikas proposal and begun to organize around a coalition of prominent opposition figures.

Calling itself the National Coordination for Change, the group is composed of a range of Bouteflika critics, including prominent human rights activists and lawyers, a former government minister and members of a banned Islamist party. They have demanded that Bouteflika, his cabinet and Parliament step down when the presidents term expires, then hand over power to a temporary presidential council that will establish a Government of National Salvation to manage the day-to-day affairs of the state.

There is an urgent need to make radical changes of the system in place with new personnel, the group said in a statement released Tuesday. It amplified the central themes of the street protests, including frustrations with high youth employment, corruption and an economy battered by low oil prices.

The statement also expressed a deep distrust of Bouteflikas ruling clique, which includes relatives and business elites backed by the nations powerful military.

During nearly a month of large and peaceful protests in the capital of Algiers and other major cities, the military has stayed out of the fray  but Monday signalled its unease at the continuing demonstrations and suggested it could intervene. Army chief of staff Ahmed Gaid Salah, a member of Bouteflikas inner circle, called for a quick solution to what he termed a political crisis. Leaders of Algerias protest movement understood his statement to mean that the military is prepared to step in.

In its statement, the National Coordination for Change said Algerias military and security services should ensure their constitutional missions without interfering in the political choices of the people.

Algerias military has asserted its power from behind the scenes in recent years, but it has previously intervened directly in politics, with bloody results. In the 1990s, the armed forces cancelled a national election that Islamists were expected to win, sparking nearly a decade-long civil war that killed as many as 200,000 people.

Bouteflika came to power as the war ended in 1999, building a durable regime that relied on strict control by the nations security and intelligence services and tightly controlled political participation by opposition political movements.

Questions over Bouteflikas fitness to continue in office began six years ago, when he suffered a stroke and has used a wheelchair. He has largely remained out of public view since then.
JOHANNESBURG - The lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at risk after a cyclone ripped into central Mozambique and heavy rains continue to fall. Aid groups report people clinging to rooftops and trees as rivers burst their banks and waters rise. Authorities openly worry that the world has not grasped the severity of the crisis.

Here is a look at the disaster that has killed untold hundreds of people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

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WILL THE DEATH TOLL RISE?

Almost certainly. Emergency responders are struggling to reach parts of the three countries after some roads, bridges and communications networks were washed away or destroyed.

A massive storm surge when Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique over the weekend created what one World Food Program staffer calls inland oceans extending for miles and miles in all directions. The city of Beira with its some 500,000 residents is said to be 90 per cent destroyed.

The European Unions global observation program, mapping the crisis, said some 394 square kilometres (152 square miles) of Mozambique had been flooded.

Further deaths could occur if people clinging to hope are swept away by the rising waters or are not reached in time with critical water, food and other aid.

And now authorities are warning of water-borne diseases after what infrastructure existed in the largely impoverished countries was stripped away.

Mozambiques president, after flying over the region, has warned as many as 1,000 people could die.

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WHAT IS BEING DONE TO HELP?

Mozambique and Malawi are two of the poorest countries in Africa, and the economy of once-prosperous Zimbabwe has collapsed in recent years.

Aid appeals for millions of dollars have begun as the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations rush to deliver food, water, fuel and medicines to the vast affected area. In Beira, a staging point for emergency responders, electricity could be out through the end of the month and a fuel shortage is reported. The Beira hospital is severely damaged.

The European Union and Britain have been among the first to pledge aid. The EU says its initial package to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi is worth about $3.9 million, while Britain says it will provide up to $7.9 million.

The U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe says it is mobilizing support for partners in the three countries, with no further details. Tanzanias military airlifted some 238 tons of emergency food and medicine to the three countries.

Zimbabwes president has said a number of countries, including the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola, also were offering aid.

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WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Aid organizations and authorities are rushing humanitarian aid to Beira and other areas by air and sea, while rescue efforts push on. The torrential rains are expected to continue in central Mozambique until Thursday.

As the water begins to recede throughout the region, the extent of the devastation will become clearer.

And thousands, perhaps scores of thousands, of families could be on the move, seeking new refuge after their homes were washed away.

I salvaged nothing except this baby, Chipo Dhliwayo told The Associated Press in eastern Zimbabwe, referring to her 6-month-old son.

Burials, which already have begun, will continue.

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JOHANNESBURG - The latest on tropical cyclone (all times local):

12:10 a.m. Wednesday

The United Nations has allocated $20 million from its emergency response fund for the humanitarian response to Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said Tuesday that the bulk of the funding will kick start the response in worst-hit Mozambique. He said rapid assessments of immediate needs are underway.

But Lowcock stresses that the $20 million is insufficient to respond to the expected increase in needs. He urges donors to generously contribute.

He says the U.N. funds will complement efforts by the three governments to provide health care, food, protection and education to affected communities. The money will also help humanitarian groups in critical areas such as reviving emergency telecommunications and scaling up the provision of water and health services.

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11:05 p.m.

Mozambiques president says more than 200 people are confirmed dead in his country alone after a tropical cyclone roared ashore in the southern African nation over the weekend.

President Filipe Nyusi announced the death toll while meeting with his ministers in the largely destroyed city of Beira, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported late Tuesday.

The president also announced three days of national mourning and said his government would declare a national emergency.

Hundreds of thousands of people remain at risk as rivers burst their banks, torrential rains continue and flood waters rise, stranding some people on rooftops and in trees.

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10:45 a.m.

Hundreds are dead, many more missing and thousands at risk from massive flooding in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe caused by Cyclone Idai and persistent rains.

International aid agencies and government officials are scrambling Tuesday to rescue families trapped by the floodwaters from rivers that have burst their banks and are still rising.

Mozambiques President Filipe Nyusi said the death toll could go as high as 1,000 from the cyclone and flooding. Although emergency workers caution they do not know if the fatalities will reach that estimate, they say this is the most destructive flooding in 20 years.

Hardest hit by the cyclone is Mozambiques Beira port, a city of 500,000, where thousands of homes have been destroyed. Flooding waters have inundated large areas of rural Mozambique and its neighbouring countries.
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Jorge Altieri runs his hands over old blood stains on a helmet that saved his life in 1982 when Argentina and Britain went to war over the Falkland Islands.

Looking at the treasured object is still a novelty: The helmet was recently returned to Altieri decades after he lost it on the battlefield where he was almost killed by shrapnel.

I have it next to me now and I use it like a teddy bear, Altieri said. I look at it and I get teary-eyed from all the memories.

Argentina lost the war for the South Atlantic archipelago after its troops embarked on an ill-fated invasion nearly 37 years ago, an international humiliation that claimed the lives of 649 Argentines and 255 British soldiers.

Argentina still claims the islands, which it calls the Malvinas. Britain says the Falklands are a self-governing entity under its protection.

After decades of tense relations, though, both countries have experienced a thaw, including a deal that allowed a multinational team of experts to exhume and identify the remains of dozens of Argentine soldiers.

Today, veterans and relatives of those who died also say the recovery of objects taken as war trophies has helped heal their scars.

I cant stop looking at it, thinking of what it did to stop the bomb shrapnel blowing my head off, Altieri said about his helmet, although he still lost an eye and part of his brain in a blast during battle for Mount Longdon on June 12, 1982, two days before fighting stopped.

In a parallel tale of reconciliation, Argentine veteran Diego Carlos Arreseigor announced March 7 that he is planning to return the blood-stained helmet of fallen British soldier Alexander Shaw, who was killed at Mount Longdon at age 25.

The helmet is expected to be delivered to Shaws sister, Susan, in April or May.

Susan touched me with her spirituality. She was 15 when her brother left for the war, Arreseigor told The Associated Press.

Arreseigor said he had picked up the helmet in a pile of discarded equipment and hid it from a British soldier by keeping it under his jacket.

I kept it these 37 years, always considering it a trophy of war, a sort of consolation for the loss and the pain of so many fallen friends, he said.

Some years ago he became curious about who had worn it and noticed it had a last name written on one of its interior belts.

Arreseigor eventually found out Shaws identity and learned he had been a victim of Argentine artillery.

The story moved me. Knowing that he died just hours before the cease-fire. ... its sad like all war stories, he said. I just turned 60 and I demand our sovereignty over Las Malvinas, but I also pay homage to all of those who died  Argentine and British  because I think thats the way to rebuild.

For Altieri, having his helmet has helped him find similar closure.

After the wars cease-fire, Altieris helmet was taken to London by a British paratrooper who had pulled it from a heap of military equipment. After the man passed away, it was kept by his family until it was put up for auction four years ago.

At the time, Altieri offered about $520 (400 pounds), but a British man who collects war objects paid twice that amount and Altieri failed to persuade him to sell it.

Hed say: Even if the queen comes asking for it, I wont give it away, Altieri recalled.

Some days ago, however, the helmet briefly went up for auction again on eBay for about $13,000 (10,500 pounds). When it was taken off the site, Altieri feared he had lost it for good until he heard the news: An anonymous Argentine entrepreneur had bought it for Altieri.

All the memories of what I lived in the Malvinas came back to me, Altieri said.

He now hopes to display it at home before donating it to a Falklands war museum. I want people to see it and see what happened to us there.

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Associated Press journalists Paul Byrne and Natacha Pisarenko contributed to this report.
CARACAS, Venezuela - U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States could impose harsher sanctions on Venezuela in its campaign to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

Recent power outages across Venezuela show that something terrible is going on down there and we need to put an end to the current dire situation, Trump said at a joint news conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the White House.

Both Brazil and the United States have voiced support for Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has been recognized as the countrys legitimate leader by about 50 countries. In a bid to force a change of leadership, the United States has imposed oil sanctions on Venezuela as well as sanctions on individuals associated with the government of Maduro, who charges that he is the target of a U.S. coup plot.

The U.S. could impose a lot tougher sanctions on Venezuela if needed, Trump said, and he also repeated that all options are open when dealing with the crisis in Venezuela. He added that the United States is not looking for anything other than taking care of a lot of people.

Venezuelas government rejected the dangerous statements of Trump and Bolsonaro.

The U.S. warlike influence on Brazil and the supremacist theses of Donald Trump on Jair Bolsonaro are of great concern, it said in a statement. Undoubtedly, both presidents reflect the most retrograde ideas for the peoples of the region, as well as for world peace and security.

U.S. officials say they are focused on putting diplomatic and financial pressure on Maduros government, which says Trump is preparing for military intervention in a country struggling with hyperinflation and shortages of basic goods. In recent years, more than 3 million Venezuelans have fled a country that was once one of Latin Americas wealthiest nations because of its vast oil reserves.

The U.S. and Guaido attributed recent nationwide blackouts on alleged graft and mismanagement under Maduro, who blamed what he said was U.S.-directed sabotage.

On Tuesday, the U.S. added a Venezuelan state-owned mining company to a growing sanctions list as it seeks to increase pressure on Maduro. The move bars any U.S. citizen or entity from any financial transactions with the Minerven gold mining company and its president, Adrian Antonio Perdomo Mata. The company is helping prop up Maduro, the U.S. Treasury Department said.

The Treasury Department also lifted sanctions on the wives of two Venezuelan TV magnates close to Maduro two months after their U.S. assets were frozen as part of a crackdown on corruption.

Maria Alexandra Perdomo and her husband, Raul Gorrin, were among seven individuals sanctioned in January for allegedly running a graft network that stole $2.4 billion from state coffers through corrupt currency deals.

Her removal from the blacklist Tuesday, along with the wife of Gorrins brother-in-law and business partner, Raul Perdomo, suggests the two women may be co-operating with U.S. authorities trying to untangle the web of corruption that proliferated during two decades of socialist rule in Venezuela. Prosecutors in Miami indicted Gorrin last year on charges of bribing Venezuelan officials.

In Rome, officials from the U.S. and Russia remained split on how to resolve the crisis in Venezuela after talks there. Elliott Abrams, the Trump administrations special envoy to Venezuela, met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

We did not come to a meeting of the minds, but the talks were positive in the sense that I think both sides emerged with a better understanding of the others views, Abrams told reporters.

Russia backs Maduro and has accused Washington of meddling in Venezuelas affairs by pressing him to step down and hand over power to Guaido, the leader of the opposition-controlled congress who wants to hold elections.

Speaking to Russian media, Ryabkov emphasized the need for dialogue with the U.S. but warned Washington against any military intervention.

We have warned the U.S. against that reckless approach, Ryabkov said in remarks that were carried by the state Tass and RIA Novosti news agencies.

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Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Ben Fox in Washington contributed to this report.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Dutch police have detained a Rwandan man suspected of involvement in his countrys 1994 genocide.

Prosecutors say in a statement that authorities in Rwanda have requested extradition of the man, identified only as Venant R. The 69-year-old was arrested Tuesday by the Dutch polices International Crimes Unit.

Rwanda alleges he was regional director of an agricultural institute located outside of the southern Rwandan city of Butare in 1994 where more than 1,000 Tutsi men, women and children were killed during the genocide.

According to Dutch prosecutors, Rwandan authorities accuse the suspect of summoning to the institute soldiers and militias who killed the Tutsis.

Venant R. sought asylum in the Netherlands in 2000, but his application was rejected. It was not immediately clear when he will be extradited.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Nearly a quarter of a century since Bosnias devastating war ended, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is set to hear the final judgment on whether he can be held criminally responsible for unleashing a wave of murder and destruction.

United Nations appeals judges will on Wednesday rule whether to uphold or overturn Karadzics 2016 convictions for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as his 40-year sentence. They will also rule on an appeal by prosecutors against his acquittal on a second count of genocide during Bosnias war, Europes bloodiest conflict since World War II.

The appeals judgment comes at a time when the global project to hold leaders accountable for crimes is under pressure  last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington will revoke or deny visas to International Criminal Court personnel seeking to investigate alleged abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere, and may do the same with those who seek action against Israel.

Amnesty International described the move as the latest attack on international justice and international institutions by an administration hell-bent on rolling back human rights protections.

Karadzic was convicted by a different court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, but should the judges overturn his convictions, it would likely be seen as another damaging blow to international courts.

As the leader of Bosnias Serbs during the countrys devastating 1992-95 war, Karadzic is one of the most senior figures tried by the Hague war crimes court. His case is considered as key in delivering justice for the victims of the conflict which left over 100,000 people dead and millions homeless.

Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Ratko Mladic is also awaiting an appeal judgment of his genocide and war crimes conviction, which earned him a life sentence.

At an appeals hearing last year, prosecution lawyer Katrina Gustafson told a five-judge panel that Karadzic abused his immense power to spill the blood of countless victims. Justice requires that he receive the highest possible sentence  a life sentence.

Last week, Bosnian war wounds were revived when it was revealed that the white supremacist suspected in the mosque shootings that left at least 50 people dead in New Zealand appeared to show admiration for Karadzic and his legacy. In a video, the self-proclaimed white supremacist is seen driving apparently on his way to the attack and listening to a wartime Bosnian Serb song praising Karadzic and his fight against Bosnias Muslims.

Bosnian war survivors believe that appeals judges must keep in place his 10 convictions and his sentence.

We expect that hell get (the punishment) he deserves, said Sehida Abdurahmanovic, who lost 30 relatives in the Bosnian wars bloody climax, the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. We expect (the appeals court) to confirm the first-instance verdict and that he will not be allowed at any price to avoid the responsibility for genocide.

But Karadzic supporters are hoping for a reduction in his sentence or even acquittal.

I believe that, at worst, the (appeals) verdict will be much, much more favourable than the first-instance verdict, said Momcilo Krajisnik, Karadzics political right-hand man during the war. If we are lucky, he will be a free man.

Krajisnik, himself, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for persecuting and forcibly expelling non-Serbs and crimes against humanity. He was released in 2014 after serving two-thirds of his sentence.

Azir Osmanovic, 36, curator of the Srebrenica memorial, who survived the massacre as a child but whose older brothers remains have not been found, fears that Karadzics sentence could be reduced.

We believe that for the crimes he had organized here in Bosnia-Herzegovina he does not deserve 40, but rather 400 years in prison, he said.

Karadzic was also tried for an orchestrated campaign to drive the Muslims and Croats from Serb-held territories in Bosnia, as well as the more than three-year siege of Sarajevo, Bosnias capital.

Karadzic remained at large for years before he was arrested in Serbia in 2008 as a disguised new-age therapist.

A U.N. peacekeeper in Srebrenica ahead of the massacre, Boudewyn Kok has been returning to the eastern Bosnian town annually to pay his respect to the victims. This year, he came with his teenage son so he could tell him about what happened in Srebrenica.

But unfortunately, the war crimes court has no death penalty, Kok said.

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Stojanovic reported from Belgrade, Serbia. Sabina Niksic contributed to this story from Sarajevo, Bosnia.
BUDAPEST, Hungary - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will be travelling to Brussels to attend a meeting of the main centre-right alliance in the European Parliament, set to discuss the expulsion or suspension of Orbans Fidesz party from the group.

Thirteen of the European Peoples Partys 49 full-member parties are calling for Fideszs ouster after years of disagreement. EPP delegates will meet Wednesday in Brussels to debate the matter, one of several on the agenda for the occasion.

Some EPP members believe Orban  known for his anti-EU rhetoric and anti-migration views and policies  has strayed too far from the alliances Christian Democratic values.

Manfred Weber, the EPP candidate to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission, has called on Orban to meet certain conditions to stay in the alliance, like putting an end to the anti-EU campaigns and allowing Budapest-based Central European University, founded by Hungarian-American financier George Soros, to continue issuing its U.S.-accredited diplomas in Hungary.

While pro-government media in Hungary have called for Fidesz to leave the EPP and are increasingly critical of Weber and EPP President Joseph Daul, Orban appeared to favour staying.

Id rather prefer to achieve ... the transformation of the Peoples Party so there is room for anti-immigration forces like us, Orban said recently on state radio. Whatever happens in the future, no compromise is imaginable regarding the protection of Christian culture and immigration.

Fidesz has 12 deputies in the EPP group and polls expect the party to win up to 14 seats in Mays EU parliament elections.

The EPP is forecast to lose nearly 50 seats from the current 221.

Weber has repeatedly said that Fideszs status in the EPP depends on its adherence to EU democratic values, not the number of its deputies.

We want to guarantee that Fidesz is committed to EPP values and Hungary is a clear pro-European country which sticks to European values including democracy and rule of law, Weber said last week during a visit to Budapest to meet with Orban.

Analysts say Fideszs continued presence in the EPP could complicate Webers ambition to lead the EUs executive Commission.

The biggest problem is that Manfred Weber needs the votes of the greens, but most probably the socialists and the liberals, too, to secure the post, said Peter Kreko, executive director of Political Capital, a research and consulting firm in Budapest.

Its not obvious that keeping Fidesz ... really helps the EPP and Manfred Weber to gain more power, Kreko said. Probably, it can be the guarantee of losing power.
BAGHDADI, IRAQAs he hunted for a seasonal delicacy, Mohaned Salah Yasseen scanned the ground intently, searching for places where the soil is cracked and slightly raised  the telltale sign a desert truffle lies below.

So he failed to notice the two pickup trucks, driven by men in military uniforms, until they were almost upon him.

They ordered me to get into the truck, said Yasseen, a 31-year-old pharmacist. I thought about saying no, but they were armed.

As he climbed in, he became the latest victim in a new campaign by Daesh (also know as ISIS or Islamic State).

Driven out of most of the territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria, the group has gone underground, its remaining fighters in Iraq carrying out sporadic attacks.

Since late January, they have been kidnapping and, in some cases, executing Iraqi truffle hunters, mostly in the deserts of western Anbar province. The Iraqi security forces confirmed the kidnapping of 44 truffle hunters this year and more have probably gone unreported.

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The abductions are only a fraction of the Daesh attacks now taking place in Iraq, where every day brings one or more reports of a checkpoint shooting, skirmish or kidnapping. But the attacks on truffle hunters reflect a renewed emphasis on inciting sectarian tensions.

While Sunni Muslim truffle hunters typically pay a ransom to win release, as Yasseen did, Shiite Muslim truffle hunters never get that chance. They are killed.

Daesh considers Shiites infidels, and since its inception the group has killed them and destroyed their mosques.

Iraqi intelligence and military authorities view the groups treatment of hostages as an attempt to incite the kind of sectarian strife that tore Iraq apart from 2003 to 2008, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and was reprised from 2012 to 2014.

Abu Ali al-Basri, director general of Iraqi intelligence, said his fear was that the killings could goad Shiite politicians into verbally tarring Sunnis collectively. That message would then be amplified by the media and could set off a cycle of violence.

The kidnappings are a way for Daesh to raise money and signal to the civilian population it remains a potent force. Some 5,000 to 6,000 Daesh fighters remain in Iraq and Syria, according to Iraqi officials, who consider the group a manageable threat.

Despite the danger, desert truffle hunters seem undeterred. The delicacy is prized and can bring up to $6 a pound in local markets.

The desert truffle is far less fragrant and flavourful than its European counterpart, but is valued in Iraq for its meaty texture and subtle taste. Known in Iraqi Arabic as chimay, almost every family in this region of Iraq has a favourite recipe.

In local lore, chimay is a gift from God. One story goes that Mary, the mother of Jesus, asked for meat without bones, and God gave her chimay.

Yasseen had driven several hours into the desert from his home in Bhagdadi to a place so idyllic and remote it was hard to imagine it could be dangerous. Truffle hunting is a favourite activity of many families in western Iraq during the cool winter days when the arid landscape is briefly verdant.

It was a flat area, beautiful, very green, nothing but earth and sky, Yasseen said.

After his captors blindfolded him and five cousins who had been hunting truffles with him, they seemed surprisingly eager to make sure their hostages knew who had seized them.

They asked us: Do you know who we are? Yasseen said. Then they said: Just to let you know, we are the Daesh (Daesh).

Yasseen recalled immediately thinking Im dead. This is it, they will kill me.

Instead, he and his cousins were driven to the mouth of a tunnel that led into a small underground room where there was already another group of captives.

The Daesh fighters did not speak, but brought food and invited them to pray.

The next day, a Daesh operative came to question the first group of captives, but he seemed to already know facts about them and ticked off personal details, like where one man worked and what his political sympathies were.

Yasseen suspected that Daesh had agents embedded in the local government who could look up such details.

In one case, the Daesh inquisitor accused a man of lying about his occupation, according to a captured elementary school principal.

We found out you work with the civil defence and so your sentence is death, the inquisitor said. (So far, the only Sunni truffle hunters killed have been off-duty police officers.)

Its true, I used to work for civil defence, the accused man said, but then I quit and now I am a butcher.

The school principal, Salah Malik Flayah, 62, said he rose to the mans defence: He is telling the truth. I know him. He is my neighbour and he is a butcher.

The butchers life was spared.

Flayah was told he would have to pay $50,000 for his freedom, an inconceivable amount on his $1,200 a month salary. Eventually, the price dropped to $20,000. Some were asked to pay $10,000. For Yasseens group, the ransoms were similar.

Hamza Kadhim al-Jubori, 42, a Shiite farmer, had a very different story. The remote area where he and two of his brothers, his nephew and two neighbours went to gather truffles was about 65 miles south of where Yasseen was kidnapped.

Like Yasseen, they were captured by men wearing military uniforms and were taken through an underground tunnel into a room where there were other captives. The similarities ended there.

The extremists brought Juboris group only a single date and a half cup of water each while the Sunni captives were given a full meal. The Sunnis were invited to pray, but not Jubori and his relatives. The Sunnis handcuffs were removed, but not those of Juboris group, whose shoes were also taken.

A Daesh operative called each of the Sunni captives names, noting their hometowns, but when he turned to the Shiites, he just said  apostate, a death sentence.

During the night, the fighters drove Jubori and his companions into the desert. An M16 rifle was between the Daesh driver and the guard in the passenger seat.

Fearing he would be killed at any moment, Jubori said he pulled at the ropes that bound his hands until he freed them, whispering to his brother to do the same.

I just was hoping to survive, to live. I watch a lot of American films, Jackie Chan, Arnold, he said, referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I thought maybe I could save myself.

He and his brother and neighbour grabbed their captors from behind. The driver turned the car off, jumped out and ran into the desert. Jubori dove into the drivers seat, turned the key in the ignition but the engine would not start.

He grabbed the M16, poked it into the other fighters stomach and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He later realized he had failed to take off the safety lock.

I lost hope, he said. The car doesnt work, the rifle doesnt work, I cant see anything because were driving without lights.

Terrified, he jumped out of the pickup. I wasnt thinking about anyone else, I couldnt think of anything, he said. I was just holding the rifle and running.

Then other Daesh fighters in a second vehicle began shooting toward him in the dark. Jubori flung himself under some desert scrub and lay still until they drove away.

He said he walked for a week before he was rescued by Bedouins, desert nomads, who were out collecting truffles.

Three days later he was home  but without his two brothers and his nephew, leaving Jubori feeling like he had failed his family. A few days later, they were found shot to death.

Really, I am eating myself, Jubori said, adding that in his tribal culture, leaving behind family members is tantamount to betrayal.

Now in a wheelchair because his feet were badly damaged during his barefoot trek, Jubori looked bleakly at the M-16 that he had seized.

Usually, it would have been a prized possession.

I lost two of my brothers, my nephew; all I did was save myself, he said. The rifle doesnt mean anything to me.

He leaned his head against the wall and began to weep.

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JERUSALEM - Israel and the U.S. have successfully intercepted a series of medium to long-range ballistic missiles in a joint drill.

The missile test in southern Israel was conducted Tuesday by the Israeli Ministry of Defence along with the U.S. Missile Defence Agency and Rafael, an Israeli defence technology company.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded the tests, noting that Israel has earned a place among global leaders in the development of missile defences.

The test follows a temporary U.S. troop deployment in Israel during the installment of an advanced American missile defence system earlier this month.

The countries close military co-operation against the backdrop of tensions with Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah reflects their shared concerns about Irans development of long-range missiles.
JERUSALEM - The Israeli military says it has shot and killed two Palestinians who attacked troops in a West Bank city.

The military says several explosive devices were hurled on Wednesday morning at soldiers securing Jewish worshippers at Josephs Tomb in Nablus. Troops opened fire and killed two of the assailants.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified them as 21-year-old Raed Hamadan and 20-year-old Zeid Nouri.

Late Tuesday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian suspected of carrying out a weekend stabbing and shooting attack that left two Israelis dead near a West Bank settlement. The military says 19-year-old Omar Abu Leila was fatally shot when he opened fire on soldiers trying to arrest him.

The two-day manhunt for Abu Leila had raised tensions in Israel and the West Bank following a period of calm.
BEIRUT - The Latest on developments in Syria (all times local):

7:45 p.m.

Russias defence minister has visited Damascus to deliver a letter from President Vladimir Putin to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Russian Defence Ministry said that during Tuesdays visit, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Assad discussed the issues related to fighting international terrorism along with various aspects of Mideast security and post-conflict settlement.

It said the talks also focused on efforts to help Syrian refugees return and to deliver humanitarian assistance.

Shoigu said Western nations have sought to hamper positive changes in Syria and create new obstacles for ending the crisis.

Russia launched a military intervention in Syria in September 2015, eventually helping Assads forces to regain large areas of the country. Western nations supported the Syrian opposition, and have refused to aid in Syrias reconstruction without a political settlement.

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5:15 p.m.

A Kurdish force fighting the Islamic State group in Syria is confirming the death of an Italian national killed while battling the extremist group.

The Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, say Lorenzo Orsetti, 33, joined their ranks in 2017 and died on Monday during operations to capture the last area occupied by IS in the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria.

The extremist group had claimed Monday the killing of five U.S.-backed fighters, including Orsetti, publishing pictures of his body and his documents.

The Italian news agency ANSA confirmed Orsettis death. His father told ANSA he was proud his son, who died for a cause he believed in.

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2:40 p.m.

A spokesman for U.S.-backed forces fighting the Islamic State group in Syria says they have captured a group of suspects involved in a January bombing that killed four Americans in a town in northern Syria.

Mustafa Bali says the suspects were captured following technical surveillance by the group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. He did not elaborate on the number of suspects or when they were captured.

The Americans were killed in a suicide bombing in January in the town of Manbij that was claimed by IS.

In a statement posted on Twitter on Tuesday, he said the outcome of the ongoing investigation will be shared at a later time.

Balis statement came few hours after the SDF said it had captured an IS encampment in the eastern village of Baghouz after IS militants surrendered.

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11:35 a.m.

A spokesman for U.S.-backed forces fighting the Islamic State group in Syria says his fighters are in control of an encampment in the village of Baghouz where IS militants have been besieged for months.

Mustafa Bali, of the Kurdish-led force known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, says clashes however are continuing elsewhere in the village in eastern Syria as IS militants continue to fight back.

Bali says on Twitter on Tuesday that controlling the encampment in Baghouz marks significant progress in the fight but that its not a victory announcement.

The area held by IS in Baghouz is the last pocket of territory in Syria controlled by the extremist group, which once held a vast area of Syria and Iraq, calling it an Islamic caliphate.
SAN FRANCISCO - Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, wanted in his home country in connection with Latin Americas biggest graft scandal, was arrested in California on suspicion of public intoxication and spent the night in jail before being released Monday, authorities said.

Toledo is accused of taking $20 million in bribes while leading Peru. He has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Peruvian authorities have been seeking his extradition since 2017.

However, the arrest appears unlikely to hasten that process.

The 72-year-old Toledo was arrested after officers were called to a restaurant in Menlo Park just south of San Francisco, said San Mateo County Sheriffs Office spokeswoman Rosemerry Blankswade. Toledo was drunk and had refused requests to leave the establishment, she said.

He was released without charges, which Blankswade said is routine for most public drunkenness arrests.

Toledo was Perus president from 2001 to 2006 and developed a reputation for partying. His presidential aircraft became known as the party plane after a government official was caught on camera drunkenly singing a popular tune called Pass Me the Bottle while aboard a flight to Europe.

Toledo has denied reports about drinking.

After Toledo left power, incoming President Alan Garcia published a tally of Toledos liquor purchases during his time in the presidential palace: $164,000 in spirits, whisky, wine, beer and other alcoholic beverages.

Peruvian prosecutors accuse Toledo of taking $20 million in bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht while president. He has denied wrongdoing. In February 2017, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski asked President Donald Trump to deport the ex-Peruvian president.

Blankswade said the international police organization Interpol issued a warning to law enforcement agencies around the world to notify it when Toledo was arrested. Interpol officials told the San Mateo County sheriffs office they had no immediate plans to take Toledo into custody.

After reaching out to Peruvian officials and Interpol, we learned that the existence of charges in Peru alone does not authorize the subjects arrest in the United States, Blankswade said.

Toledo brushed off questions about his arrest on suspicion of public drunkenness during a brief radio interview Monday with Perus RPP radio.

Im at my home, writing my book, he said when a reporter reached him on the phone.

Asked if he could clarify whether he had been detained, he said, Im not falling into that trap.

Interpol officials did not immediately return phone messages left with the organizations U.S. office in Washington.

In a statement, Perus foreign ministry said Toledos detention has no relation with the extradition process underway, which is being handled with the utmost zeal and in co-ordination with various institutions.

Odebrecht in 2016 acknowledged in a plea agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to paying some $800 million in bribes to politicians throughout Latin America. The scandal has hit a particularly rough note in Peru, where nearly every living president is suspected or under investigation for ties to Odebrecht.

All of Perus former presidents have denied wrongdoing.

Toledo moved to Northern California shortly after leaving office to work and study at Stanford University in Palo Alto, according to a 2007 San Francisco Chronicle report.

Toledo earned a doctoral degree in education and two masters degrees from Stanford, where he delivered the commencement speech to the schools graduating class of 2003 while still in office.

He has held a variety of fellowships and visiting scholar positions at Stanford until 2017, according to university announcements. In 2017, the same year Peruvian officials announced they were seeking to arrest Toledo, Stanford spokeswoman Brooke Donald told a Latin American media outlet that the college was severing its ties with Toledo, who she said was an unpaid volunteer who didnt teach.

Stanford officials didnt respond to email and phone inquiries Monday.

The public drunkenness arrest marks the latest chapter in what has been a stunning fall from grace for the man who rose out of poverty to become Perus first president with indigenous roots.

Toledo grew up shining shoes and selling lottery tickets in northern Peru, one of 16 children, at least seven of which did not survive to adulthood. A happenstance meeting with a U.S. humanitarian worker couple set his life on an unexpected trajectory: With their help, he applied and won a scholarship to the University of San Francisco.

His jovial nature, ease with the masses and opposition to strongman Alberto Fujimori helped him clinch the presidency in 2001. He proudly called himself El Cholo  a term referring to his indigenous ancestry.

The nations economy boomed under his leadership, with gross domestic product rising from 0.2 per cent to 6.8 per cent.

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Armario reported from Bogota, Colombia. Franklin Briceno in Lima, Peru contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES - A woman was arrested on suspicion of murder after the body of her 9-year-old daughter was found in a duffel bag along a suburban horse trail near Los Angeles, authorities said Monday.

Taquesta Graham, 28, is expected to be charged with murder on Wednesday, Los Angeles County sheriffs officials said.

Prosecutors last week charged Grahams boyfriend, Emiel Hunt, with murder in the killing of Trinity Love Jones.

The dead girl was found March 5 at the bottom of an embankment in the suburb of Hacienda Heights. She was wearing pants with a panda pattern and a pink shirt that said, Future Princess Hero.

There were no obvious signs of trauma on her body. Authorities have not revealed a cause of death or motive.

Graham was extradited from Texas to California last week and was initially held on an unrelated warrant. Graham was in custody Monday and could not be reached for comment.

Hunt, 38, has a previous child abuse conviction from 2005 in San Diego County, according to prosecutors. His arraignment is scheduled for April 16.

Friends and family members described Trinity as a joyful and talented girl who did well in school. A memorial near where her body was found featured stuffed animals, heart-shaped balloons, dozens of votive candles and notes expressing love for Trinity and one that said Rest in heaven, Princess.
JACKSON, Miss. - The Latest on Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (all times local):

9:05 p.m.

Elizabeth Warren supports the elimination of the electoral college, the most pointed instance of the Democratic presidential candidate opposing the polarizing mechanism the nation uses to elect its presidents.

Warren has been critical of the electoral college before. The Massachusetts senator said last year that President Donald Trumps 2016 victory, despite Democrat Hillary Clinton winning 3 million more votes than him, is not exactly the sign of a healthy democracy.

But Warrens comments Monday during a Mississippi town hall broadcast on CNN represent her most straightforward endorsement of an end to the electoral college system.

Warren says, I think everybody ought to have to come and ask for your vote.

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8:55 p.m.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren supports a new flag for Mississippi, which is the only state to have Confederate imagery on it.

Warren made the comment Monday at a CNN town hall broadcast from Jackson, the states capital, in the middle of a three-day swing through the South. The Mississippi state flags use of a Confederate battle emblem was legally challenged in 2017, but the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

The Massachusetts senator gave a succinct answer to the appreciative crowd in Mississippi when asked about the state flag: Yes, Warren said, the state should choose a new one.

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8:35 p.m.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is embracing a congressional proposal to study a framework for reparations to African-Americans hurt by the legacy of slavery as the best way to begin a national, full-blown conversation on the issue.

Warren first voiced support for reparations last month, becoming one of three 2020 Democratic candidates to do so. But her comments about a study on reparations, made Monday night during a CNN town hall broadcast from Mississippi, mark a keener focus from the Massachusetts senator on her preferred route to tackle the thorny question of how best to deal with systemic racial inequality.

The Democratic fields ongoing debate over reparations comes as African-American voters are poised to exert significant influence over the selection of the partys nominee to take on President Donald Trump.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - Seven states that rely on a major waterway in the U.S. West have finished a yearslong effort to create a plan to protect the Colorado River amid a prolonged drought, the federal government declared Tuesday.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman commended Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming for reaching a consensus on the Colorado River drought contingency plan. Now the states are seeking approval from Congress to implement it.

It is time for us to work with our congressional delegations to move forward to make sure we can implement DCP this year, Burman said on a call with reporters.

The Colorado River serves 40 million people and 7,812 square miles (20,232 square kilometres) of farmland in the West.

Under the drought plan, states voluntarily would give up water to keep Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border and Lake Powell upstream on the Arizona-Utah border from crashing. Mexico also has agreed to cuts.

The push for federal legislation comes after the Colorado River Board of California voted Monday to move ahead without a water agency that has the largest entitlement to the rivers water.

The Imperial Irrigation District was written out of Californias plan when another powerful water agency, the Metropolitan Water District, pledged to contribute most of the states voluntary water cuts.

Imperial had said it would not commit to the drought plan unless it secured $200 million in federal funding to help restore a massive, briny lake southeast of Los Angeles known as the Salton Sea. The district also accused others in the Colorado River basin of reneging on a promise to cross the finish line together.

IID has one agenda, to be part of a DCP that treats the Salton Sea with the dignity and due consideration it deserves, not as its first casualty, Imperial board President Erik Ortega said.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority called Imperials refusal to approve the plan shortsighted and manipulative. Burman has said the drought plan would have no effect on the Salton Sea, and Imperial could choose to join the deal later.

The Bureau of Reclamation had given states until Tuesday to submit comments on what to do next after California and Arizona failed to meet federal deadlines to wrap up their drought plans. The agency received no comments, and Burman cancelled the request.

Arizona says it doesnt expect its remaining work to delay implementation of the drought plan. But the state cannot officially sign on until Congress approves it.

At least two congressional subcommittee hearings on the drought plan are scheduled for later this month.

The states plans are meant to supplement existing guidelines that dictate water deliveries to Arizona, Nevada and California. The Bureau of Reclamation previously predicted a more than 50 per cent chance that Arizona and Nevada would not get their full allocations of water in 2020.

The latest study shows a shortage might be averted because of above-average snowpack, though the call for 2020 wont be made until August. In New Mexico, the basin that feeds the Rio Grande is about 135 per cent above median levels.

But officials say one good year of snowpack wont reduce long-term risks for the Rio Grande or the Colorado River.

The drought contingency plan takes the states through 2026, when existing guidelines expire. The states already are preparing for negotiations that will begin next year for new guidelines.

We all recognize were looking at a drier future, said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
SAN DIEGO - Several asylum seekers who are being forced to wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration court told a judge Tuesday that they are afraid to return to Mexico as they await their next hearing  a development that introduces a new wrinkle to a major U.S. policy shift.

The seven cases being heard in a downtown San Diego courtroom are among the first to advance under the Trump administration policy that calls for people seeking asylum in the U.S. to be held in Mexico.

The initial appearances came three days before a federal judge in San Francisco is set to hear arguments by advocacy groups to halt the policy.

Attorney Robyn Barnard asked for access  at least by telephone  to any interviews conducted with her Honduran client with U.S. officials about whether his fears of returning to Mexico are well-founded.

Jason Aguilar, an attorney for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, didnt object but deferred the request to other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.

Customs and Border Protection said it wouldnt comment due to pending litigation, and Citizenship and Immigration Services had no immediate comment.

The developments raised more questions about the administrations new approach to handling the claims of people who say they fear returning to their homelands because of danger related to race, religion, political beliefs, nationality or membership in particular social groups.

The administration hopes that making asylum seekers wait in Mexico will discourage weak claims and help reduce an immigration court backlog of more than 800,000 cases. Currently, families are typically released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court and can stay until their cases are resolved, which can take years.

Critics say asylum seekers are forced to wait in unsafe environments and will struggle to find legal advice while in Mexico. Tijuana had more than 2,500 homicides last year.

The policy shift was introduced as families from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador arrive at the U.S. border to seek asylum.

Five of the seven people who were scheduled to appear Tuesday were represented by attorneys. Six were Honduran; one was Guatemalan.

Gerson Alonzo Beltrand of Honduras, who had Barnard speak on his behalf, expressed fear of returning to Tijuana, but the government attorneys response left unclear whether Homeland Security would grant his request. A judge scheduled an Aug. 6 hearing on the merits of his asylum claim.

Sir, we made significant progress in your case this afternoon, Rico Bartolomei, chief immigration judge in San Diego, told him.

The Associated Press witnessed one of the seven cases in the small courtroom before security guards cleared the aisles of an overflow crowd.

Lisa Knox, an attorney for two Honduran men, was in the courtroom and said three asylum seekers had expressed fear of returning to Mexico.

Knox said the judge continued her cases to early May to give her more time to prepare. One man failed to appear because he was in U.S. custody in another part of the country.

The policy change, which followed months of high-level talks with Mexico, has been introduced slowly with an average of 40 people a week being returned to Tijuana from San Diego in the first six weeks. Mexico agreed to accept up to 120 a week.

U.S. officials began returning people to Mexicali, Mexico, from Calexico, California, last week and say they intend to sharply expand such activity across the entire border.

Mexicans and children travelling alone are exempt from the policy.

U.S. and Mexican officials characterize the policy change as a unilateral move by the Trump administration. Mexico has said it will allow asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for humanitarian reasons.

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AP photographer Gregory Bull contributed from Tijuana, Mexico.
MADISON, Wis. - The attorney for Laurie Bambi Bembenek, Wisconsins most famous runaway fugitive who insisted until her death in 2010 that she did not kill her husbands ex-wife, hopes Gov. Tony Evers will finally clear her name with a posthumous pardon she unsuccessfully sought for decades.

Bembeneks attorney sent Evers the parson request earlier this year. Evers, a Democrat, has said he will once again consider granting pardons after his predecessor, Republican Scott Walker, didnt issue a single one during his eight years in office.

I am hoping (Evers) will do something about this, Bembeneks attorney, Mary Woehrer, said Tuesday. Granting Laurie Bembenek a pardon would be the right thing to do. It would be justice.

Woehrer argues that new ballistics and DNA evidence prove Bembeneks innocence.

Evers has declined to comment on specific pardon requests. Hes in the process of establishing a process for considering pardons after eight years of inaction.

Bembenek worked briefly as a Playboy Club waitress in Lake Geneva before becoming a police officer in Milwaukee in 1980, where she married Detective Fred Schultz. Bembenek was convicted in 1982 of fatally shooting his ex-wife after complaining about the alimony he had to pay.

Bembenek was sentenced to life in prison but maintained her innocence. In 1990 and now divorced, she escaped from Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac and fled to Canada with her fiance, who was the brother of a fellow inmate. She escaped by crawling through a laundry room window.

In Milwaukee, more than 200 supporters  many wearing Run Bambi Run  T-shirts  rallied to show support for her flight from the law. Bembenek and her fiance were living under fake names when they were captured in Thunder Bay, Ontario, about three months later after the case was featured on Americas Most Wanted.

In 1992, Bembenek was released on parole after her original conviction was set aside and she agreed to plead no contest to second-degree murder as part of a deal. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing purposes.

She moved to Washington state to live with her parents, where she fought to clear her name until her 2010 death from liver failure at age 52.

Bemebenek had a pardon request pending with then-Gov. Jim Doyle when she died. Doyle, a Democrat, didnt act on the pardon request.

Woehrer, Bembeneks attorney, said it was the dying wish of Bembenek and her parents to clear her name.

Laurie Bembenek was not a murderer, Woehrer said. She murdered no one. She was wrongly convicted.

Bembeneks colorful case was tabloid fare, the subject of multiple books, a 1993 TV movie starring Tatum ONeal and the focus of an Investigation Discovery episode of Vanity Fair Confidential last year.

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Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbauerAP
JACKSON, Miss. - A Catholic diocese in Mississippi on Tuesday released the names of 37 clergy members who it says have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children.

Officials with the Diocese of Jackson said 30 of the clergy were accused of sexual abuse in Mississippi and the others worked in the Mississippi diocese but were accused of abuse in other states.

The bishop of the diocese, Joseph Kopacz, publicly apologized Tuesday during a news conference outside a cathedral in downtown Jackson.

Every case of abuse represents shattered lives and damaged families and communities, Kopacz said. I hope that releasing this list will demonstrate a new level of transparency and a sincere desire to accompany victims of sexual abuse as our God of compassion and justice demands. I apologize to all the victims of abuse, to their families and to the faithful who have been hurt by this scandal.

The diocese published the list Tuesday on its website as part of the Catholic Churchs international reckoning with allegations of sex abuse that have proliferated around the world.

The victims in the Jackson Diocese were boys and girls ages 5 to 17, diocese chancellor Mary Woodward said. Woodward said the cases date from 1939 to 1998, and none of the accused clergy are still in active ministry.

Woodward said there are two additional cases involving clergy whose names were not released Tuesday. One is on appeal. The other, still under investigation, involves abuse that allegedly happened in 1961 but was just reported recently.

Woodward, members of an independent fitness review board and retired bishops reviewed about 1,400 files from five bishops of the diocese from 1924 to this year, she said.

In some cases, psychologists treated a priest and deemed him safe to go back into ministry, the diocese said in a message that accompanied the list on its website.

Any clergy member, employee or volunteer found to be abusing minors from now on will be permanently removed from ministry, the post said.

The diocese also said it provided information about the past abuse allegations to the Mississippi attorney generals office in 2002, before the current attorney general was elected. The diocese said it gave the attorney general an updated list Monday.

Kopacz said in a letter released Monday that he is truly, deeply sorry for any pain the list may cause.

The crime of abuse of any kind is a sin, but the abuse of children and vulnerable adults is especially egregious, Kopacz wrote. First and foremost, it is a sin against the innocent victims, but also a sin against the Church and our communities. It is a sin that cries out for justice.

The bishop said he encourages anyone who has been sexually abused by a clergy member or church employee to come forward. He wrote that the diocese has a legal duty to report the cases to law enforcement, and helping victims find healing and wholeness is our moral imperative.

He also said the church is taking steps to prevent abuse, including screening and educating employees and volunteers.

The Diocese of Jackson encompasses 65 of Mississippis 82 counties and has about 48,000 registered Catholics.

In January, the only other Catholic diocese in Mississippi, the Diocese of Biloxi, released the names of three clergy members who it said had been credibly accused of sexual misconduct against minors since the diocese was founded in 1977. All three were prohibited from the ministry and allegations were reported to authorities, the diocese said. One was accused in 2015 of misconduct with an adolescent boy in Laurel, and is serving a 10-year prison sentence. Another was accused of misconduct with an adolescent girl in Biloxi during the mid-1980s; and the third, with adolescent girls in Biloxi in 1989, the diocese said.

A grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania last year identified nearly 300 predator priests going back nearly 70 years, and it accused Roman Catholic Church leaders of covering up the abuse. The Associated Press reported that in the final four months of 2018, Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States released the names of more than 1,000 priests and others accused of sexually abusing children.

More information has been released since then. In January, 14 Catholic dioceses in Texas identified 286 priests and others accused of sexually abusing children.
RALEIGH, N.C. - A North Carolina man imprisoned for stalking had his conviction overturned Tuesday when a state appeals court ruled the social media posts that prompted the charges were protected by free speech rights.

A three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals vacated the convictions of 46-year-old Brady Lorenzo Shackelford, who had been sentenced to more than two years for stalking a woman he met at church in 2015.

Shackelford repeatedly called her his soul mate and future wife in Google Plus posts, and he also sent handwritten letters and cupcakes, despite her turning down a dinner invitation, according to court documents.

The ruling says Shackelfords conviction was primarily based on social media posts, and thus violated his First Amendment rights. It says that while his posts were understandably offensive to the woman, it is clear that Defendants convictions violated his constitutional right to free speech.

Shackelford will remain in prison for now because of the lag between when an appeals ruling is filed and when its mandate, or final effect, is issued.

State prosecutors could also appeal and ask for him to remain imprisoned. The state attorney generals office was reviewing the ruling Tuesday, spokeswoman Laura Brewer said.

The case began in April of 2015 when Shackelford and the woman, whos not named in the ruling, spoke briefly before a service at a United Methodist church, according to court documents. Several weeks later the woman, who worked at the church, unexpectedly received emails from Shackelford asking for help with a business plan, offering to include her in an offshore venture and inviting her to dinner.

Sensing red flags, the woman told Shackelford she couldnt meet with him, but he later sent five- and seven-page handwritten letters to her home and work addresses asking to take her on a date, according to court documents.

Soon after, a minister at the church called Shackelford to ask him to stop contacting the woman. While the defendant sent no more letters or emails to her, the ruling says, she soon noticed Google Plus postings referring to her as his soul mate.

She then blocked his account and deleted her own, but he continued to make public posts referring to her, sometimes by initials or a nickname, the ruling says. After the cupcakes arrived at the womans office, she notified police and Shackelford was arrested on a charge of misdemeanour stalking.

According to the ruling, that same day he posted a Google Plus message saying: The pain hurts because I dreamt about this woman and believed that she was my soul mate. How could God be so wrong???

After more postings, the woman obtained a no-contact order in court that prohibited him from posting any information about her on social media. Yet several more posts followed, and Shackelford also emailed her friend, court documents state.

Based on the emails to the friend along with social media posts, Shackelford was then charged with felony stalking. A jury convicted him in 2017 on four stalking counts.

His defence attorneys argued in a legal filing last year that Shackelfords posts couldnt constitute stalking of someone who had blocked that page and could only view it by intentionally accessing it.

The difficulty in balancing free speech rights against harmful or intrusive comments was noted in Tuesdays appeals court ruling written by Judge Mark Davis, who was appointed this month to the state Supreme Court. The two other judges concurred.

As this case aptly demonstrates, difficult issues arise in attempting to balance, on the one hand, societys laudable desire to protect individuals from emotional injury resulting from unwanted and intrusive comments with, on the other hand, the free speech rights of persons seeking to express themselves on social media, the ruling said.

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Follow Drew at www.twitter/com/JonathanLDrew
RENO, Nev. - Conservationists want to join a legal battle in opposition to off-road vehicle users who are trying to overturn U.S. protections for a type of imperiled bird found only along the California-Nevada line.

Four environmental groups filed the request to intervene in the case over the bistate grouse in U.S. District Court in Reno on Friday. Thats the same day the Trump administration finalized changes to federal land use plans that eased restrictions on energy companies across 11 Western states where the larger population of greater sage grouse lives.

The conservationists argue that those changes are one of the reasons they should be granted intervenor status for the bistate grouse, which they say is more at risk than the greater sage grouse. Scientists say as few as 5,000 of the chicken-sized, ground-dwelling birds remain.

The Fish and Wildlife Service in 2015 scrapped a proposal to list the bistate grouse as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but a federal judge reinstated it last year.

The Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and FWS once made promises to conserve the bistate sage grouse and its habitat, Steve Holmer, vice-president of the American Bird Conservancy, said in the request to intervene, along with the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians.

The governments failure to list the bird is indicative of the agencies unwillingness to commit to conservation measures for the birds, he said.

The California Four Wheel Drive Association and off-road groups in the Sierra Nevada and Nevadas Pine Nut Mountains sued the Forest Service in December, arguing that a bistate protection plan enacted last year could increase fire danger across the birds rangeland habitat.

They say protection measures in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest werent included among the alternatives subjected to scientific scrutiny and public comment as required by federal law.

The off-road groups say the Forest Service nearly doubled the size of buffer zones around bird breeding grounds, known as leks, to 4 miles (6.5 kilometres) between an initial draft and final guidelines on off-road travel.

It also extended the season when motorized traffic is banned through June 30, forcing the Sierra Trail Dogs Motorcycle and Recreation Club to postpone by a month a 250-mile (402-kilometre) motorcycle race typically done in mid-June.

Racing through high-desert sagebrush after June 30 greatly increases fire risk and safety concerns due to greater heat and reduced moisture, according to the lawsuit. It is nearly impossible to design a viable route system in the project area ... that does not include a route passing within 4 miles of such leks.

Paul Turcke, an Idaho-based lawyer for the off-roaders, said he didnt anticipate opposing the environmentalists request but declined further comment.

A Forest Service spokeswoman said the agency doesnt comment on pending litigation.

Patrick Donnelly, Nevada director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said bistate grouse are teetering on the brink of extinction across much of their range.

Running a motorcycle race through this imperiled birds habitat during the lekking season would only add to threats that are pushing this population over the cliff, said Laura Cunningham, California director for the Western Watersheds Project.
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Tuesday that hell soon decide whether to join the sprawling field of candidates seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Ive said clearly, in the next couple of weeks, Ill make the final determination, McAuliffe said during a visit to the Statehouse in South Carolina, home of the first Southern presidential primary of 2020. So, Im travelling around, but out of all those early states, I have a lot of strength here in South Carolina.

McAuliffe, 62, began popping up in early-voting states late last year, campaigning with candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire as he explored a possible run for the White House. In January, the longtime Democratic power player used his old state political action committee to raise big money and cut checks to Democrats in both states, with campaign finance reports showing the PAC raised $300,000 in the second half of 2018.

Part of the pitch McAuliffe said hes making to power brokers in early-voting states is his ability to make Democratic inroads in Virginia, under Republican control for nearly two decades. In the 2017 elections, the last of McAuliffes four-year tenure as governor, 15 House of Delegates seats shifted from Republican to Democratic control, reducing the GOPs majority to two seats.

I took a red state and made it blue, the former Democratic National Committee chairman said. We had the biggest pickups in 140 years under my four years as governor, and if we did it there, we can do it here in South Carolina.

Some have expressed concern that it could be difficult for McAuliffe to garner broad-based popularity in the wake of the political crisis that engulfed three of Virginias top Democrats, turning the state that has trended toward the left back into a potential battleground in the upcoming presidential race.

Voters could take this out on Democrats ... less as an ideological shift but more as an issue of repercussions for genuine political scandal, Josh Schwerin, who worked for McAuliffe, said earlier this year.

Last month, President Donald Trump gleefully agreed, predicting in a tweet that he will reclaim a state he lost by 5 percentage points to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Democrats at the top are killing the Great State of Virginia, he tweeted. If the three failing pols were Republicans, far stronger action would be taken. Virginia will come back HOME Republican) in 2020!

Part of McAuliffes calculus could be timed around an expected announcement from former Vice-President Joe Biden, with whom many of McAuliffes potential supporters may also fall politically in line. Like Biden, McAuliffe is largely seen as a centrist Democrat angling to tap into a network of supporters and donors cultivated over the last three decades during the Clinton and Obama administrations. During an event Monday at George Mason University in Virginia, McAuliffe said he believes Biden is 95 per cent in the race, but he hasnt made a 100 per cent decision to do it.

As part of his trip to South Carolina, McAuliffe met with House members and planned to make a stop at Allen University, a historically black school in Columbia. Later Tuesday, he was expected to attend a reception at the home of longtime Democratic activists Don and Carol Fowler. Don Fowler chaired the DNC in the 1990s. His wife, Carol, headed the South Carolina Democratic Party in the 2000s.

Were sort of getting the lay of the land, seeing old friends, firing folks up and seeing where we go, McAuliffe said.

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Associated Press writer Christina L. Myers contributed to this report.
COEBURN, Va. - Former coal miner John Robinsons bills for black lung treatments run $4,000 a month, but the federal fund he depends on to help cover them is being drained of money because of inaction by Congress and the Trump administration.

Amid the turmoil of the government shutdown this winter, a tax on coal that helps pay for the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund was cut sharply Jan. 1 and never restored, potentially saving coal operators hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

With cash trickling into the fund at less than half its usual rate, budget officials estimate that by the middle of 2020 there wont be enough money to fully cover the funds benefit payments.

As a surge of black lung disease scars miners lungs at younger ages than ever, Robinson worries not only about cuts to his benefits, but that younger miners wont get any coverage.

Coal miners sort of been put on the back burner, thrown to the side, Robinson said recently, sitting at his kitchen table in the small Virginia town of Coeburn, near the Kentucky border. They just aint being done right.

President Donald Trump, who vowed to save the coal industry during the 2016 campaign, has repeatedly praised miners. At an August rally in West Virginia filled with miners in hard hats, he called them great people. Brave people. I dont know how the hell you do that. You guys have a lot of courage.

Retired coal miner John Robinson uses a nebulizer during his daily breathing treatments for black lung disease on Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019 in Coeburn, Va. Robinson was 47 when he was diagnosed with black lung disease, part of a new generation of black lung sufferers who are contracting the deadly disease at younger ages.







Trump made no mention of restoring the 2018 tax rate in his proposed budget released in mid-March.

The White House said in a statement Tuesday that President Trump and this administration have always supported the mining industry by prioritizing deregulation and less Washington interference.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose home state of Kentucky is third in the nation in coal production, told a reporter from Ohio Valley ReSource in October the tax rate would be taken care of before we get into an expiration situation.

That didnt happen. McConnell spokesman Robert Steurer didnt repeat that pledge this week; rather, he wrote in an email, benefits provided through the Black Lung Disability Fund continue to be provided at regular levels and that McConnell continues to prioritize maintaining and protecting the benefits.

Trump and McConnell have reaped large contributions from the coal industry, according to the political money website Open Secrets.

Trump received more than $276,000 during the 2016 presidential election from political action committees and individuals affiliated with coal companies. His inaugural committee received $1 million from Joe Craft, CEO of Alliance Resource Partners in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and $300,000 from the Murray Energy Corporation, the nations largest privately-owned coal-mining company.

McConnell received more than $297,000 in coal industry donations since 2014, when he was last up for election.

Congress established the trust fund in 1978. Until the rate expired, money came from an excise tax of $1.10 per ton on underground coal and 55 cents on surface-mined coal that brought in $450 million last year. Rates fell to about 50 cents and 25 cents when lawmakers failed to act on its Dec. 31 expiration date.

The fund provides health benefits and payments to about 25,000 retired miners. Most worked for companies that are now bankrupt. Many, including Robinson, struggle to breathe as their lungs are slowly stifled by tiny dust and particles trapped there.

Robinson was 47 when he was diagnosed, part of a wave of younger miners that doctors and experts say have been swept up in a new black lung epidemic in Appalachia. Robinson, now 53, and others who depend on the fund are disappointed in McConnell and other leaders who typically enjoy miners support.

I just feel that Mitch McConnell has let the citizens of Kentucky down, especially the miners, said Patty Amburgey, whose husband, Crawford, died of black lung disease at age 62 in 2007. She draws a monthly widows payment through his black lung disability benefits. And now theres an epidemic of black lung.

Dr. Brandon Crum has watched that epidemic unfold at his Pikeville, Kentucky, radiology clinic. In less than four years, Crum has seen 200 miners diagnosed with a severe form of black lung disease, called pulmonary massive fibrosis. The nation had 31 such diagnoses in the 1990s, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Were looking at men in their 30s and 40s on oxygen, being evaluated for lung transplants, Crum said. Those are usually middle-age individuals with younger families, so it affects their wives, a lot.

His findings were published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a December 2016 report that showed a shockingly high level of severe black lung cases at his clinic.

Amburgey, of Letcher County, Kentucky, said there will be fewer benefits for the growing number of younger miners with black lung if the fund is depleted. Robinson said hes now worried the trust funds pot of money will dry up.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and other coal-state Democratic senators are pushing a bill to shore up the fund by restoring the larger tax for 10 years. Manchin said in a statement that lawmakers cannot continue to allow these solutions to be put off again and again. That bill is in a Senate finance committee.

The mining industry supported the increased tax rates expiration, calling the effort to maintain it an unnecessary tax increase. The National Mining Association, which speaks for the industry, says the lower rate will be sufficient to cover monthly benefit costs for the fund. The group argued extending the rate would lead to job losses.

The May 2018 GAO report contradicts that claim, saying the funds beneficiaries could multiply due to the increased occurrence of black lung disease and its most severe form, progressive massive fibrosis, particularly among Appalachian coal miners.

The increase in younger black lung sufferers will put more pressure on the fund, as the industry continues to shrink.

I think people always thought they would get (black lung) if they worked long enough in the mines, but I think its a disease they thought would affect them at the end of their life, in their 70s or 80s, Crum said.

Amburgey says Trump reneged on his pledge to support miners.

Mr. Trump promised that he would bring the mines back and take care of the miners, and that is not happening, she said. He promised us a snowball in July.

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Follow Lovan on Twitter at twitter.com/dylanlovan
ABBEVILLE, Ga. - More than 13 years after a south Georgia high school teacher and one-time beauty queen vanished without a trace, a trial has begun for a man charged with concealing her body and lying to police.

Tara Grinsteads disappearance in October 2005 stumped her hometown of Ocilla for more than a decade until authorities charged two men in 2017. Prosecutors say Ryan Duke killed Grinstead after breaking into her home to steal money for drugs, then enlisted his friend Bo Dukes to help him move the body and burn it in a pecan orchard.

A trial for Dukes, the alleged accomplice, opened Monday in nearby Wilcox County south of Macon. Dukes is charged with concealing a death, hindering apprehension of a felon and lying to police.

John McCullough, who said he met Dukes during Army basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, testified Tuesday that Dukes confessed to him one night during a Christmas break visit to Georgia.

Dukes had been drinking and using cocaine, McCullough said, and they were sitting in his mothers car late at night.

He seemed like something was bothering him, McCullough told the jury. It started to come out. He said, Youre my battle buddy, right? He was like, Man, I need to tell you something.

He said Dukes told him a friend had killed Grinstead, whose face loomed large on a billboard in the area seeking tips in her disappearance. Dukes said he helped the friend put the body in his pickup truck, according to McCullough, and they drove to a pecan orchard owned by Dukes family.

They burned her body and let it burn as long as they could, McCullough testified. And once they were satisfied, they buried the rest.

McCullough told his story to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent years later, in 2016. Dukes defence attorney, John Fox, asked McCullough why he didnt alert police sooner.

McCullough said he waited until he and Dukes went their separate ways after Army basic training, to avoid confrontation, and then tried calling police in February 2007. He said several phone calls to police agencies in the area either werent returned, or those who he talked to didnt take him seriously.

One had made the comment: We get tips like this all the time, McCullough said.

News outlets reported that during opening statements Monday, Fox told the jury all charges against Dukes in Wilcox County stem from accusations that he lied to investigators during a June 2016 interview. He asked jurors to listen carefully to the recording of that interview.

That evidence is not going to show you that he concealed information, said Fox, who noted charges against Dukes for burning Grinsteads body are tied to a separate case in a separate county.

District Attorney Brad Rigby also cautioned jurors that Dukes isnt charged with killing Grinstead.

This case is not about her murder, Rigby said. This case is about lies, this defendants lies. This case is about his secrets, his denial.

Duke is scheduled to stand trial on charges of murder and other crimes April 1 in Irwin County, where Grinstead lived. GBI agent Jason Shoudel testified at a pretrial court hearing that Duke confessed to killing Grinstead and burning her body. He said DNA from both Duke and Grinstead was found on a latex glove recovered outside her home.

But Dukes defence attorneys say Duke gave a false confession while he was under the influence of drugs. They have said in court documents that Duke was at home asleep the night Grinstead was killed.
JACKSON, Miss. - A black Mississippi man who has been tried six times for murder says his latest conviction and death sentence should be thrown out for a familiar reason  the prosecutors practice of keeping African-Americans off the jury.

Curtis Flowers has been jailed in Mississippi for 22 years, even as prosecutors couldnt get a murder conviction against him to stick through his first five trials.

Three convictions were tossed out, and two other juries couldnt reach unanimous verdicts.

The justices on Wednesday will examine whether District Attorney Doug Evans history of excluding black jurors should figure in determining if Evans again crossed a line when he struck five African-Americans from the jury that most recently convicted Flowers of killing four people.

In overturning Flowers third conviction, the Mississippi Supreme Court called Evans exclusion of 15 black prospective jurors as strong a prima facie case of racial discrimination as we have seen in challenges to jury composition. This time around, though, the states high court has twice rejected Flowers claims, even after being ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to take another look.

Wednesdays arguments at the high court are the latest stop on a twisting path that began July 16, 1996. Thats when four people were found dead inside Tardy Furniture in downtown Winona. Shot in the head were 59-year-old owner Bertha Tardy and three employees  45-year-old Carmen Rigby, 42-year-old Robert Golden and 16-year-old Derrick Bobo Stewart.

It was months before officials arrested and charged Curtis Flowers for the murder. Prosecutors say Flowers was a disgruntled former employee who sought revenge against Tardy because she fired him and withheld most of his pay to cover the cost of merchandise he damaged. Nearly $300 was found missing after the killings.

Defence lawyers, though, say witness statements and physical evidence against Flowers are too weak to convict him. A jailhouse informant who claimed Flowers had confessed to him recanted in recorded telephone conversations with American Public Medias In the Dark podcast. Theres a separate appeal pending in state court questioning Flowers actual guilt, citing in part evidence that reporters for In the Dark detailed.

Flowers, now 48, has been imprisoned at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman since 1997, following his first conviction. That and two subsequent convictions were overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court. Then two hung juries couldnt reach verdicts. Finally, Evans won conviction in Flowers sixth trial, in 2010, the case at issue here.

The first two cases were overturned in part because Evans impermissibly introduced evidence relating to all four deaths in cases where Flowers was on trial for killing only one person. In the second trial, Evans got into trouble for striking black jurors, with a judge overruling one of the strikes. Then, the state Supreme Court overturned the third verdict, again citing racial bias in removing jurors. Lawyers for Flowers argue the guilty verdict from the sixth trial should be tossed for the same reason, noting Evans has overwhelmingly used his ability to strike individual jurors to remove black people.

Mr. Evans has a history of keeping black folks off the jury ... so he can guarantee himself a victory, pretty much, said Ray Charles Carter, who represented Flowers in his last four criminal trials.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Jim Hoods office declined to comment. Evans did not reply Monday to a request for comment.

In the course of selecting a jury, lawyers question potential jurors and first try to weed out people for specific reasons including unwillingness to impose a death sentence or personal relationships with people involved in the case.

Both sides also can excuse a juror merely because of a suspicion that a particular person would vote against their client. Those are called peremptory strikes, and they have been the focus of the complaints about discrimination.

Evans has removed black jurors at 4.5 times the rate that he struck white jurors, according to an In the Dark analysis of 6,700 jurors in 225 trials over 26 years.

The U.S. Supreme Court tried to stamp out discrimination in the composition of juries in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986. The court ruled then that jurors couldnt be excused from service because of their race and set up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and the race-neutral explanations by prosecutors.

Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the nations pre-eminent civil rights attorney, was part of the Batson case majority, but he said the only way to end discrimination in jury selection was to eliminate peremptory strikes.

Flowers case had previously come to the U.S. Supreme Courts attention. In 2016, the justices ordered Mississippis top court to re-examine racial bias issues in Flowers case following a high court ruling in favour of a Georgia inmate because of a racially discriminatory jury. But the Mississippi justices divided 5-4 in upholding the verdict against Flowers. The state, defending the conviction, argues that justices must narrow the focus from Evans broader record to the case at hand.

Any potential relief must be confined to the events of this, his most recent conviction and sentence, Assistant Attorney General Jason Davis, who will argue the case for the state, wrote in a brief.

The state argues that each of the five black women who were removed from the jury were struck for legitimate reasons  that they knew Flowers, worked with his relatives, had been sued by Tardy Furniture, or opposed the death penalty on principle.

The race-neutral reasons provided by the state were valid and were not the result of pretext, Davis wrote.
WASHINGTON - Its a witch hunt, a vendetta, the worst presidential harassment in history.

Thats what President Donald Trump has shouted for two years about the special counsels Russia probe. Now, barring an eleventh-hour surprise, Trump and his allies are starting to see it as something potentially very different: a political opportunity.

With Robert Muellers findings expected any day, the president has grown increasingly confident the report will produce what he insisted all along: no clear evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and his 2016 campaign. And Trump and his advisers are considering how to weaponize those possible findings for the 2020 race, according to current and former White House officials and presidential confidants who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

A change is underway as well among congressional Democrats, who have long believed the report would offer damning evidence against the president. The Democrats are busy building new avenues for evidence to come out, opening a broad array of investigations of Trumps White House and businesses that go far beyond Muellers focus on Russian interference to help Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Its a striking role reversal.

No one knows exactly what Mueller will say, but Trump, his allies and members of Congress are trying to map out the post-probe political dynamics.

One scenario would have seemed downright implausible until recently: The president will take the findings and run on them, rather than against them, by painting the special counsel as an example of failed government overreach and Trump himself as the victim who managed to prove his innocence.

The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, said on the House floor last week that he had a news flash for Democrats who had high hopes that the report would be damaging to Trump.

What happens when it comes back and says none of this was true, the president did not do anything wrong? Collins asked. Then the meltdown will occur.

Trumps tweeted version was even more graphic: The Democrats House investigative committees were going stone cold CRAZY.

That was in reaction to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadlers document requests to 81 people, businesses and organizations related to Trump. Nadler said his panel must look at a much broader question than Mueller has.

Adam Schiff, chairman of the intelligence committee, also said theres much more to look into. Mueller, he said, cant be doing much of a money laundering investigation if he hasnt subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, which has loaned millions of dollars to Trump. Schiffs panel, along with the House Financial Services Committee, is looking into money laundering and Trumps foreign financial entanglements.

We have a separate and independent and important responsibility, Schiff has said. And that is to tell the country what happened.

The Russia probe, taken over by Mueller in May 2017, has posed a mortal threat to the presidency since Trump was elected  a possible case for collusion or obstruction of justice that could begin a domino effect ending with impeachment. Those fears still exist, but as the investigation winds down, other feelings have taken hold in the White House, namely a cautious optimism that the worst is over, that no smoking gun has been found.

Even if Muellers final report does not implicate the president in criminal conduct, the investigation was far from fruitless. His team brought charges against 34 people, including six Trump associates, and three companies. His prosecutors revealed a sweeping criminal effort by Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and showed that people connected to the Trump campaign were eager to exploit emails stolen from Democrats.

Trump, of course, has railed relentlessly against the probe, deeming it a baseless witch hunt, sometimes in all capital letters, and has said it was based on unfounded allegations perpetrated by his deep state enemies in the Department of Justice, as well as his foes in the Democratic Party and the media.

If the report proves anticlimactic, says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a strong Trump ally, there would no longer be any justification for what the House Dems want to do. They have their report, they had the guy they wanted writing it, and he had the full power of the federal government behind him and they still didnt get the president.

Trump can say: Here is the report. I didnt fire Mueller, I didnt interfere with him. If you want to keep investigating me, it just shows that it is purely partisan.

In fact, Trump has told his inner circle that, if the report is underwhelming, he will use Twitter and interviews to gloat over the findings, complain about the probes cost and depict the entire investigation as an attempt to obstruct his agenda, according to advisers and confidants.

The presidents campaign and pro-Trump outside groups will then likely amplify the message, while his advisers expect the conservative media, including Fox News, to act as an echo chamber. A full-throated attack on the investigation, portraying it as a failed coup, could also be the centerpiece of Trump campaign events, including rallies, they say.

While Trumps base has long been suspicious of Mueller, the presidents team believes independents and moderate Democrats who backed him in the last election but have since soured may return to the fold if convinced he has been unfairly targeted.

In the meantime, the president and his surrogates will labour to link the report with the mounting investigations launched by House Democrats.

One of Trumps most ardent defenders, North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, tweeted last month that Democrats will keep investigating if Mueller doesnt find what they want. Amazing.

Meadows wrote in a separate tweet: Their message is shifting. The Russian collusion narrative is falling apart, and they know it.

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Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

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Follow Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@MCJalonick and Lemire at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire
DWIGHT, Ill. - A Virginia-based company is one step closer to building a private immigration detention centre near Chicago after trustees of a small village approved the plan despite pushback from activists.

Dwight trustees last week voted to annex and rezone 88 acres (36 hectares) where Immigration Centers of America plans to build a detention centre. More than 200 people attended the village meeting, which was repeatedly interrupted by protesters.

The project could stimulate the regions economy by creating about 300 jobs, said Jared Anderson, the president of the village board. Dwight, which is about 80 miles (130 kilometres) southwest of downtown Chicago, lost jobs and businesses when the state closed a womens prison in the village, he said.

There have been multiple failed attempts in recent years to bring a detention centre to the Chicago area. The most recent effort stands out because village officials backed the plan, said Fred Tsao, the senior policy counsel with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a non-profit that advocates for immigrants and refugees.

All the others were basically killed either at a vote of the village officials or never got a vote because the proposal was withdrawn, Tsao said.

Anderson said he received more than 100 emails opposing the Immigration Centers of America project, but almost all of them were sent by people who live outside the village.

John Truscott, a spokesman for the Immigration Centers of America, agreed that most of those against the centre were outsiders.

We are more than happy to listen to what they have to say, Truscott said. In the end, this is a decision for the citizens of Dwight.

Those against the plan complained that the only goal of for-profit facilities is to increase the number of inmates for financial gain, and have raised concerns about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies that separate children from their parents.

Opportunities built on the back of another person arent opportunities, said Eva Garcia, of the Chicago-based United Workers Center.

Immigration Centers of America, which already operates a detention centre in Farmville, Virginia, must secure a contract with the federal government by September 2020 for the Dwight facility.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in February rejected ICAs effort to purchase a former state prison in Ionia, Michigan, because the company wasnt able to ensure detainees wouldnt be people being separated from their families.

The firm is still looking for a location in Michigan, according to a company spokesman.
PORTLAND, Ore. - A jury on Tuesday convicted an Oregon man wearing a hat with white supremacist symbols of murder, a hate crime and hit-and-run in the death of a black teenager, who was run down in suburban Portland after an altercation in a convenience store parking lot.

Prosecutors argued Russell Courtier was motivated by white supremacist beliefs in killing 19-year-old Larnell Bruce Jr.

The jury deliberated for a little more than a day following an eight-day trial.

As family members left the courthouse after Multnomah County Circuit Judge Jerry Hodson read the verdict, a few said they thought justice had been served, the Oregonian/OregonLive reported .

Christina Miles, Bruces mother, was overcome with tears. Im so happy, she said.

Defence attorneys Kevin Sali and John Robb contended that Bruce suddenly started punching and beating Courtier unprovoked on the night of Aug. 10, 2016, after Courtier drove up to a 7-Eleven in Gresham, Oregon, with his fiancee.

The defence said Courtier, 40, has had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder since childhood and suffered a concussion or brain injury during the beating, causing him to react impulsively and without thinking clearly by getting in his Jeep and fatally striking Bruce.

Prosecutor David Hannon said there was no evidence that Bruce started the fight. Video shows Bruce peacefully standing outside the store when Courtier drove up and parked, then suddenly a fight began, the prosecutor said. Bruce was leaving the area when Courtier got into a Jeep and started driving toward him and onto a sidewalk, striking him while Bruce tried to get away, Hannon said. Bruce died three days later.

Hannon said he couldnt say what the fight at the convenience store was about, but noted that Bruce was black and Courtier is white. He also noted that Courtier joined a racist white prison gang, European Kindred, in 2003 or 2004 and had the gangs initials and shield logo tattooed onto his leg.

Hannon played a video for jurors in which Courtier said the N-word while in a police interview room. He also said there was no evidence in medical records that Courtier suffered a concussion or brain injury during the fight.

Courtiers girlfriend, Colleen Hunt, pleaded guilty to manslaughter last week. Witnesses said they heard Hunt egg on Courtier from the passenger seat of the SUV, yelling Get him, baby! and Run him over!

She has agreed to be sentenced to 10 years in prison at a later date.

A sentencing date for Courtier has not yet been set.

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Information from: The Oregonian/OregonLive, http://www.oregonlive.com
CHICAGO - Attorneys who have represented clergy abuse victims across the United States say they are releasing a report that lists the names of every Catholic priest and lay person in Illinois who has been publicly accused of sexual misconduct.

On Wednesday, the attorneys say they will release a 185-page report that includes background information and work histories of 395 priests and lay people accused in the states six dioceses.

Attorney Mark Pearlman says this is the first time such a comprehensive Illinois list has been compiled. It aggregates previously reported information and its not clear how much is new.

The Archdiocese of Chicago says it already releases the names of every priest whos had a substantiated allegation against him and turns over the names of those accused to law enforcement.
AUGUSTA, Maine - A proposal to trade the Columbus Day holiday for a tribute to Native Americans has received initial approval in the Maine House.

The House voted 88-51 Tuesday in support of the bill, which faces further votes.

Democratic Rep. Benjamin Collings of Portland sponsored the bill renaming the state holiday celebrated on the second Monday in October to Indigenous Peoples Day.

At least five states have done away with celebrating explorer Christopher Columbus in deference to Native Americans, though the federal Columbus holiday remains.

Republican Rep. MaryAnne Kinney previously said some critics are concerned eliminating history could lead to repeating it.

But Rep. Rena Newell, a non-voting representative of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, said the bill would correct long-standing history.

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This story has been corrected to show that the House voted Tuesday, not Wednesday.
SEDALIA, Mo. - A kidnapping suspect who escaped from a Missouri jail and days later drove off in an Oklahoma patrol car while handcuffed was arrested Tuesday back in Missouri after nine days on the run.

Authorities said Travis Lee Davis, 30, was found in the early morning trying to hide in the attic space of a garage after a call from a citizen who believed Davis was in there.

Sedalia Police Chief Matt Wirt told the Sedalia Democrat that Davis tried to escape before he was arrested.

He tried to get away from the officers through going over the rafters, but officers were able to grab him when he got over by a wall and quickly handcuff him, Wirt said. We didnt give him the opportunity to run, to fight, and got him into custody quickly.

Davis claimed he had a medical issue after being discovered and was transported by ambulance to the Bothwell Regional Health Center where he was found fit for confinement, according to a news release. Officers then took him to the Pettis County Jail, where Sedalia officers had brought him five weeks ago after a hostage situation in Buckner Court.

Davis had been the subject of a two-state manhunt since escaping from the Pettis County Jail in Sedalia on March 9.

He was recaptured four days later in Heavener, Oklahoma. But police said he was able to escape from a patrol car by crawling into the front seat while handcuffed. He drove the car about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometres) before crashing.

Police suspect he later stole a pickup truck and drove back to Missouri.

Davis is now in isolation at the Pettis County Jail, Bond said.

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Information from: The Sedalia Democrat, http://www.sedaliademocrat.com
WASHINGTON - Jim Mattis, who resigned as Pentagon chief three months ago, is returning to Stanford University.

The Hoover Institution at Stanford announced Tuesday that Mattis will join the public policy think-tank to research and write about domestic and international security policy. He was in the same role at Hoover when President Donald Trump nominated him to be secretary of defence in December 2016.

Mattis resigned in December 2018 after a series of policy conflicts with Trump, capped by the presidents decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Syria, a plan he has since partially reversed. Trump has not yet nominated a successor; Patrick Shanahan, who was the deputy secretary during Mattis tenure, has been serving as the acting secretary since Jan. 1.

Mattis, who served more than 40 years in the Marines before retiring as a four-star general in 2013, had been working as a national security specialist at Hoover when Trump nominated him to lead the Pentagon.

A Hoover announcement said Mattis will start May 1 as the Davies Family Distinguished Fellow. The announcement quoted Mattis as saying he believes he has an obligation to pass along lessons, for the benefit of future generations.

The wealth of knowledge and experience of an already extraordinary career has been made even richer by Gen. Mattis latest endeavour as secretary of defence, and we are fortunate to once again be beneficiaries of his acumen, said Tom Gilligan, director of the Hoover Institution.
TUSKEGEE, Ala. - Reality television star June Mama June Shannon has been arrested on drug charges in Alabama.

News outlets report that Shannon and a friend, Eugene Doak, were arrested March 13 at a gas station in Macon County where he was heard threatening her.

The reports say that in the course of the investigation authorities found drugs and drug paraphernalia.

Al.com says the criminal complaint states the two had crack cocaine and a crack pipe.

Both are charged with felony drug possession and misdemeanour unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia.

The 39-year-old Shannon is the mother of Alana Honey Boo Boo Thompson, who starred in a reality TV show on TLC. Shannon later starred in her own show documenting her weight loss.

The reports did not say whether she had a lawyer.
RENO, Nev. - A 20-year-old Salvadoran immigrant in the U.S. illegally has pleaded not guilty to charges that he killed four people in Nevada in January.

Wilber Martinez-Guzman entered the pleas to four counts of open murder at his arraignment in Washoe County District Court on Tuesday. He also pleaded not guilty pleas to burglary and possession of stolen weapons charges.

His trial was scheduled for April 6, 2020.

Prosecutors announced last week they want Martinez-Guzman to be executed if he is convicted.

The case has drawn the attention of President Donald Trump, who says it shows the need for his proposed border wall.

Prosecutors say the presidents opinion played no role in their decision to seek the death penalty.
San Francisco is trying to crack down on electronic cigarettes that critics say aggressively target kids, with an official on Tuesday planning to propose whats believed to be the first U.S. ban on their sale until the federal government regulates vaping products.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera said he, Chicago and New York sent a joint letter demanding that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration evaluate the effect of e-cigarettes on public health.

Herrera said that the review should have been done before e-cigarettes entered the market but that the federal agency has given companies until August 2022 to submit applications for the evaluation.

The result is that millions of children are already addicted to e-cigarettes and millions more will follow if we dont act, he said Tuesday.

Most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is addictive and can harm adolescent brains that are still developing. In the U.S., youth are more likely than adults to use e-cigarettes.

San Francisco Supervisor Shamann Walton said he plans to introduce legislation banning the sale of e-cigarettes in the city unless they get an FDA review. Supporters say that if the measure is approved, it would be the first such prohibition in the country. Its chances are not clear.

We have people addicted to nicotine who would have never smoked a cigarette had it not been for the attractive products that target our young people, said Walton, a former president of the San Francisco Board of Education.

Anti-tobacco activists say e-cigarette makers target kids by offering products incandy flavours and using marketing that portrays their products as flashy gadgets.

San Francisco was the first city in the United States to approve an outright ban on the sale of flavoured tobacco and flavoured vaping liquids, which voters upheld in 2018. The city prohibits smoking in parks and public squares and doesnt allow smokeless tobacco at its playing fields.

The city has often been on the forefront in passing liberal social policies that clash with business interests, whether its banning single-use plastic bags or the sale of fur products.

The FDA did not respond to an email requesting comment on the letter from the three cities.

Manufacturers were supposed to submit most products for review by August 2018, but FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb in 2017 delayed the deadline until 2022. He said at the time that both the agency and the industry needed more time to prepare.

In 2018, more than 3.6 million U.S. middle and high school students used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, including nearly 5 per cent of middle school students and nearly 21 per cent of high school students, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Walton also plans to introduce legislation to bar making, selling or distributing tobacco on city property. That proposal is aimed at Juul Labs, an electronic cigarette company that rents space on Pier 70.

We dont want them in our city, Walton said.

A spokesman for Juul said the proposed legislation would limit adult smokers abilities to access e-cigarettes that could help them kick regular smoking habits.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The owners of an air ambulance that disappeared in Alaska with three people on board in January say searchers have recovered the planes black box recorder.

Guardian Flight officials said Tuesday that a landing gear and engine of the King Air 200 also were located in the waters of Fredrick Sound, but they have not been recovered.

The company, based in Utah, says it continues its search for the three people on the plane. It disappeared Jan. 29 flying to pick up a patient in the southeast community of Kake.

The pilot, flight nurse and flight paramedic were Guardian Flight employees.

The Coast Guard searched hundreds of square miles (kilometres) before suspending its search Jan. 31.

An aircraft wing and other debris were found at the search site.
PITTSBURGH - The Latest on the homicide trial of a white Pennsylvania police officer in the shooting of an unarmed black 17-year-old (all times local):

6:35 p.m.

Jurors have seen a video recording of the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager outside Pittsburgh.

Prosecutors played the eyewitness video on Tuesday, the first day of the homicide trial of former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld.

Rosfeld, who is white, shot and killed Antwon Rose as the 17-year-old high school student fled a traffic stop last June. Rosfeld had stopped the car Rose was riding in because it had been used in a drive-by shooting minutes earlier.

A neighbour who recorded the confrontation says the tone of Rosfelds voice got her attention. Lashaun Livingston says it was an angry tone, like he was mad at something or someone.

A defence lawyer says Livingston was 60 yards away at the time. The defence says the shooting was justified.

The trial will resume Wednesday.

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5:15 p.m.

A woman who saw a white police officer shoot and kill an unarmed black teenager is testifying at his homicide trial.

Debra Jones is telling jurors that she saw East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld shoot Antwon Rose II as the 17-year-old high school student fled a traffic stop. Rosfeld had stopped the car Rose was riding in because it had been used in a drive-by shooting minutes earlier.

Jones says she saw Rose lying face down and in handcuffs 20 minutes after the shooting. She says Rosfeld stood off to the side with other officers, upset and crying.

The defence says the shooting was justified.

Rosfelds trial opened Tuesday.

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11:55 a.m.

Opening statements have been delivered in the homicide trial of a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager near Pittsburgh last summer.

Prosecutors say former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld gave inconsistent statements after he shot and killed 17-year-old Antwon Rose II, including that he thought Rose had a gun.

Deputy District Attorney Daniel Fitzsimmons told jurors Tuesday that what really, really matters is what Michael Rosfeld knew and what he believed and what he thought when he pulled the trigger.

Defence attorney Patrick Thomassey said Rosfeld did not intend to shoot anyone that day.

Rosfeld shot Rose three times after pulling over a car Rose was riding in. Another passenger in the car had committed a drive-by shooting minutes earlier.

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This item has been corrected to show the drive-by shooting took place minutes before Rose was shot, not hours.

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9:10 a.m.

Relatives of Antwon Rose say they are seeking the justice they so deserve as a white police officer goes on trial in the fatal shooting of the unarmed black teenager.

A statement released Tuesday by family attorney Fred Rabner says Michael Rosfeld was hair-triggered and overly aggressive when he killed the 17-year-old high school student during a traffic stop in East Pittsburgh last year.

Rosfeld is charged with homicide. His lawyers have said he thought someone in the unlicensed taxicab that Rose was riding in had pulled a gun on him.

Rabner represents the family in a wrongful death suit against Rosfeld, the borough and its mayor and police chief.

The family statement says Rosfelds service weapon left an irreparable hole in their collective souls.

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1:30 a.m.

A white Pennsylvania police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager last year is headed to trial in a case that could put him behind bars for life.

Lawyers for 30-year-old former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld are expected to argue that the June shooting of Antwon Rose II was justified.

The trial starts Tuesday morning and is expected to last about a week.

Rosfeld is charged with criminal homicide for shooting 17-year-old Rose in the face, elbow and back.

Authorities have said Rose had an empty ammunition clip in his pants when he was killed but not a weapon.

Police say Rosfeld made conflicting statements, including that he saw something in Roses hand that Rosfeld thought was a gun.
CHICAGO - The Latest on the Illinois Supreme Court letting Chicago officers sentence stand (all times local):

6:10 p.m.

Illinois attorney general has acknowledged his office is effectively out of options to get a new sentencing hearing for a white Chicago police officer convicted of slaying black teenager Laquan McDonald.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul spoke Tuesday after the Illinois Supreme Court denied a request from him and a special prosecutor for the court to toss Jason Van Dykes sentence of less than seven years.

Critics say the sentence is far too lenient. With credit for good behaviour, Van Dyke could go free in three years.

Both Raoul and Kane County States Attorney Joseph McMahon said they respected the courts decision to let Van Dykes sentence stand. Neither had any specific criticism of the court.

An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court doesnt appear to be an option, including because the core legal issues have to do exclusively with Illinois law.

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1:30 p.m.

A lawyer for a white Chicago police officer convicted of killing black teenager Laquan McDonald says hes extremely pleased with a decision by the Illinois Supreme Court to let stand a prison sentence of less than seven years for his client.

The Tuesday decision denies a bid by the Illinois attorney generals office and a special prosecutor to have Jason Van Dyke resentenced. Critics said the sentence was far too lenient. With credit for good behaviour, Van Dyke could be freed in three years.

In an emailed statement, attorney Dan Herbert said he hopes the courts decision will strike a fatal blow for what he called the political exploitation of McDonalds death.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has previously denied politics ever entered into the decision to seek a new sentencing hearing.

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11 a.m.

The Illinois Supreme Court has let stand a less than seven year prison sentence for a white Chicago police officer convicted of killing black teenager Laquan McDonald that some critics characterized as lenient.

A Tuesday decision denies a bid by the Illinois attorney generals office and a special prosecutor to resentence Jason Van Dyke.

Jurors in October convicted Van Dyke for second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery. Second-degree murder carries a maximum 20-year prison term. Each count of aggravated battery carries up to 30 years.

The February request focused on highly legalistic issues surrounding sentencing guidelines.

Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan sentenced Van Dyke for second degree murder only. Van Dyke likely would have received a stiffer sentence if hed been sentenced on the 16 counts of battery.
HOUSTON - The Latest on fire burning at a Texas petrochemical facility (all times local):

1:30 p.m.

Authorities say a plume of pitch-black smoke from a fire at a Houston-area petrochemicals terminal is travelling thousands of feet into the atmosphere and lessening concerns about air quality in the region.

Harris Countys top administrator, Judge Lina Hidalgo, said at a news conference Tuesday that the plume is moving at least 4,000 feet (1,219 metres) into the air and staying high enough so that the air quality is not cause for alarm.

Officials say the fire that began Sunday at the Intercontinental Terminals Company in Deer Park, southeast of Houston, remains intense enough to create its own micro weather system, causing shifting winds in the area.

Harris County Health Authority Dr. Umair Shah says there continues to be low risk to our community, but explains that vulnerable groups such as the elderly should be cautious.

There have been no reports of injuries from the fire.

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11:30 a.m.

Officials say its unclear how long it will take to extinguish a fire at a Houston-area petrochemicals storage facility where a large blaze is burning several storage tanks filled with gasoline components.

Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen said at a news conference Tuesday that she doesnt know how long it will take for the fire to burn itself out.

Officials previously said the fire at the Intercontinental Terminals Company facility in Deer Park could burn itself out by Wednesday. The fire started Sunday.

Authorities say a drop in water pressure caused the fire to intensify overnight and spread to additional storage tanks.

Company officials said Tuesday that five tanks are still burning and three have burned out. Two tanks that didnt have anything in them have collapsed.

___

9:40 a.m.

Authorities say a drop in water pressure caused a large fire at a Houston-area petrochemicals terminal to intensify overnight and spread to additional storage tanks.

The Deer Park Office of Emergency Management says the fire spread early Tuesday to two additional tanks, bringing to eight the total number of tanks overwhelmed by flames at Intercontinental Terminals Company in Deer Park, about 15 miles (24 kilometres) southeast of Houston.

Two of the tanks were empty but the others contain components of gasoline and materials used in nail polish remover, glues and paint thinner.

The water pressure later normalized and authorities say the fire could continue to burn for at least another day.

Students returned to classes Tuesday but outside activities will be restricted as the fire continues to emit a huge plume of smoke that can be seen for miles.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrapped up a three-state Southern swing on Tuesday with appearances in Alabama, where the Democratic presidential candidate ramped up her call to eliminate the Electoral College.

Warren told an enthusiastic audience of 500 in the states largest city, Birmingham, that a popular vote would help refocus candidates energy on the concerns of the entire nation, not simply states that are in play as they seek the White House.

We get to a general election for the highest office in this land, and no presidential candidate comes to Alabama. Or to Mississippi, the senator from Massachusetts said, describing the Electoral College as a system that means, in the final analysis, your vote just doesnt count ... and that is wrong.

President Donald Trumps Electoral College victory, which came as Democrat Hillary Clinton won about 3 million more votes, has engendered long-simmering Democratic frustration with the system the nation uses to elect its presidents. Trump himself weighed in Tuesday night, tweeting that without the Electoral College, the Cities would end up running the Country. Smaller States & the entire Midwest would end up losing all power - & we cant let that happen.

Warren, when pressed Tuesday on how she would accomplish a shift to a national popular vote, said it could happen through a constitutional amendment, someday. But instead she urged the crowd  to laughter from some voters who doubted the viability of the idea  to push for the passage of a state law that would award Electoral College votes for president to the winner of the most votes nationwide.

Colorado recently became the 12th state, all of them Democratic-leaning, to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an alliance organized to advance toward that goal. Alabama is among the reddest states in the nation.

Warren also tackled health care during her question-and-answer session with voters, describing a Medicare for All single-payer system as where were aiming but also drawing attention to the urgency of protecting former President Barack Obamas health care law in the nearer term. She is backing a single-payer health care bill written by her Democratic presidential rival Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, while two other White House hopefuls  Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and former Texas Rep. Beto ORourke  have stopped short of endorsing that full transition to a government-run system.

Warren began the day with a walking tour of Selma, a centre of the civil rights movement where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a 1965 march to draw attention to the disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Accompanied by Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell, who grew up in and represents Selma, Warren visited local businesses and toured a historic church that served as a meeting point for civil rights marchers.

In addition to her affordable housing plan, Warren reiterated her commitment to prioritizing voting rights if she wins the White House. She told the Rev. Leodis Strong at Brown Chapel AME Church that she would put federal muscle behind ensuring ballot access for all Americans, a critical issue to African-American voters in the South.

Warren also connected her case against the Electoral College to the importance of making every voters concerns count.

The Electoral College dissuades candidates from coming to her Democratic-leaning home state of Massachusetts as well as to GOP-leaning Alabama in the general election, Warren said, because they figure were not in the game. She spoke with reporters alongside Sewell after walking to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a landmark site in the civil rights movement where police attacked marchers in 1965. Warren previously visited Selma in 2015 on the 50th anniversary of those demonstrations.

Alabama holds its primary on Mar. 3, 2020, also known as Super Tuesday for the number of states casting their ballots that day. Warren made the state her last stop in a Southern visit that began in Tennessee on Sunday. Warren moved to Mississippi on Monday, holding a nationally televised CNN town hall there. During that event, Warren also endorsed a congressional plan to study potential reparations to the African-American community.
CHICAGO - A woman whos been dubbed a serial stowaway was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months of probation after pleading guilty to sneaking past Chicago airport security last year, boarding a plane and flying to London without a ticket.

As part of her plea deal, Marilyn Hartman, 67, cant go to Chicagos OHare or Midway airports without a ticket. She entered the plea to a criminal trespassing charge but had originally faced counts of felony theft, burglary and other charges.

I do apologize for the airport and ... causing problems for them, Hartman told Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas.

The plea is the latest chapter in a story thats played ou t over the past decade in Chicago, Hawaii, San Francisco, Florida and elsewhere. Hartman has been nabbed in and near airports dozens of times and made it onto planes maybe a half-dozen times.

Authorities have said she boarded the flight to London by walking past two British Airlines ticket agents who were checking other passengers. Hartman darted into a small room off to the side and walked quickly past customs and a Border Patrol agent who was looking at passports of people entering the ramp.

Hartman was arrested after her London trip and free on bond in January 2018 when she was again discovered wandering at OHare. This time, a judge ordered her held without bond and she was later found unfit for trial. Hartman spent time at a state mental institution and in July she was moved to a halfway-house style mental health centre in Chicago called A Safe Haven.

The judge Tuesday praised Hartman for receiving a glowing progress report from the centres staff.

A Safe Haven has been your safe haven, and I am really proud of the progress you have made, Chiampas told Hartman.

The facility has agreed to help Hartman find permanent housing.
OTTAWACanadas top public servant is stepping down after opposition MPs openly questioned his neutrality and demanded his resignation for his role in the SNC-Lavalin affair.

Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick announced Monday he will retire from the public service before the coming federal election.

Wernick has been under intense criticism by opposition MPs over his actions in the SNC-Lavalin affair, and accused of partisanship for his defence of the Prime Ministers Office attempts to influence Jody Wilson-Rayboulds on the SNC-Lavalin file.

Recent events have led me to conclude that I cannot serve as clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to cabinet during the upcoming election campaign, Wernick wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, released publicly Monday afternoon.

Wernick said its now apparent that there is no path for (him) to have a mutual trust and respect with the leaders of the opposition parties.

It is essential during the writ period the clerk be seen by all political parties as in impartial arbiter of whether serious foreign interference has occurred, Wernick added. Therefore, I wish to relinquish these roles before the election.

Read more:

Michael Wernick, Clerk of Privy Council, addresses critics over SNC-Lavalin affair

Trudeau to keep Wernick on election interference file, despite opposition misgivings

Michael Wernicks part in the SNC-Lavalin affair means he shouldnt be trusted to sound alarm on election meddling, opposition MPs say

In two remarkable appearances before the House of Commons justice committee, Wernick sparred with opposition MPs over his actions on the SNC-Lavalin file.

Wernick met three times with former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould about a potential plea deal for SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal construction and engineering firm facing criminal fraud and bribery charges.

Wilson-Raybould said Wernick and the PMO attempted to improperly pressure her to grant the company a deferred prosecution agreement. Wernick repeatedly and forcefully denied any of the interactions were improper.

Part of the issue is the dual nature of the role of minister of justice and attorney general. As justice minister, Wilson-Raybould could consider the political implications of a company like SNC-Lavalin being banned from public works projects. As attorney general, any decision on prosecution must be above political considerations.

On Monday, Trudeau appointed former Justice Minister Anne McLellan as a special adviser to examine the question of whether or not the two roles should be made separate.

The events of the last few weeks have raised important questions about the relationship between the federal government and the minister of justice and Attorney General of Canada, a statement from Trudeaus office read.

Ms. McLellan will assess the structure that has been in place since Confederation of a single minister holding the positions of minister of justice and Attorney General of Canada  She will also analyze the operating policies and practices across the cabinet, and the role of public servants and political staff in their interactions with the (minister).

Opposition MPs also took issue with Wernicks alarming statements on foreign interference in the upcoming election, as well as the tone and tenor of political discourse in Canada.

Wernick said he is concerned somebody will be assassinated in the upcoming campaign. He also tabled seven angry messages sent to him after his first committee appearance, saying they constituted intimidation of a witness.

As clerk, Wernick was the most senior member of a five-person committee tasked with assessing possible foreign intervention in the upcoming election  and whether or not the Canadian public should be warned.

Last week, the opposition parties expressed no confidence in his ability to do that.

The task now falls to Ian Shugart, who Trudeau named as Wernicks replacement on Monday. Shugart is a lifelong bureaucrat and the current deputy minister of foreign affairs.

Global Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters that Shugart is someone I trust completely, someone who is 100 per cent devoted to the Canadian national interest, and someone with excellent judgment.

I cant think of a better person to fill the role, Freeland said.

I want to thank Michael Wernick for his extraordinary service to Canada over many, many decades, Trudeau told reporters outside the House of Commons.

Weve accomplished a lot as a government over these past three and a half years, and it was definitely in large part because of extraordinary public service and Michael Wernicks leadership.

With files from Tonda MacCharles and Alex Ballingall.

Read more about:
Conservatives and New Democrats were less than impressed when Justin Trudeau rolled out three big steps on Monday to address the damage of the SNC-Lavalin affair.

But the opposition wasnt the intended target of the measures  which included the resignation of Canadas top bureaucrat, a mini-shuffle of the cabinet and the appointment of former deputy prime minister Anne McLellan as a special adviser.

Disaffected Liberals  and former minister Jody Wilson-Raybould in particular  are clearly the top-of-mind concern for the prime minister in this new repair effort hes launched.

So the test of Trudeaus fix-it measures isnt whether they placate the critics, but whether they help bring Liberals back to the fold in the days ahead. That in fact may be a theme of the week  or even this entire election year.

Take Mondays damage-control measures one at a time.

The departure of Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick is significant. As testimony has unfolded at the Commons justice committee, it became evident that much of the undue pressure on Wilson-Raybould came from Wernick himself.

Read more:

Canadas top public servant Michael Wernick announces surprise retirement

The political casualties of the SNC-Lavalin affair

Unwelcome global spotlight shines on Canada

It was Wernick who had multiple conversations with Wilson-Raybould on subjects ranging from the prime ministers mood, to the looming Quebec election, to SNC-Lavalins economic worries. It was Wernick who took a call from SNC-Lavalin board chair (and former clerk) Kevin Lynch at one point last fall and who talked to Wilson-Raybould about the need to consider an upcoming board meeting at SNC-Lavalin and possible relocation of headquarters if she failed to give the Quebec firm a plea deal on corruption charges.

All of that came from Wilson-Rayboulds own, searing testimony a few weeks ago.

Wernick talked in his exit statement on Monday about how the opposition had lost confidence in him  which is true. Its also true that he needed the opposition parties confidence to do his job on election oversight later this year.

But if Trudeau is interested in keeping Wilson-Raybould in caucus, Wernicks departure could be reassuring, if not a price for regaining her confidence in the prime minister.

Then theres the appointment of McLellan, who also served as a long-time justice minister in past Liberal governments. Conservatives and New Democrats mocked this measure as Liberals judging Liberals, but McLellan has been appointed to address a concern that has arisen in this whole SNC-Lavalin saga  one that Wilson-Raybould has addressed herself.

This is, namely, the question of whether its time to separate the jobs of justice minister and attorney-general, to eliminate any blurring of lines between legal and political functions.

McLellan has already served the Trudeau government as lead adviser on introducing cannabis legalization  which went well, despite predictions of chaos or reefer madness in the streets.

Moreover, its precisely her connection to past Liberal governments that could prove to be an asset for Trudeau, much criticized for keeping veteran Liberals at arms length from his government. Bringing McLellan into the SNC-Lavalin repair effort signals to diehard Liberals that voices of the past arent being totally discounted by the Trudeau team, as is often alleged.

That brings us to the cabinet shuffle on Monday as well.

Many Liberals were surprised, even disappointed when Trudeau failed to put Vancouver MP Joyce Murray into his first cabinet in 2015. Murray ran a strong second to Trudeau in his leadership race and its customary for prime ministers to include former rivals in the cabinet. (The exception was Paul Martin, who expelled Sheila Copps from the ministry when he was sworn into office in 2003.)

Murray has been a team player, even as Trudeau turned his back on democratic reform  one of her big issues in the leadership. She also made it clear that she disagreed with the Liberal governments purchase of the Trans-Mountain pipeline.

Murray isnt the only Liberal disappointed in these decisions; she in fact symbolizes some disenchantment that has set in within Liberal ranks about the way that Trudeau in office has failed to live up to the promise of Trudeau on the campaign trail.

By putting Murray in cabinet, Trudeau is again sending a signal to Liberals: you can disagree with the PMO and stay in the fold; that the Liberal caucus and government is big enough to handle disparate views. And yes, that includes differences that Wilson-Raybould has expressed  or those expressed by former minister Jane Philpott, another casualty of the SNC-Lavalin affair.

On Wednesday, Philpott and Wilson-Raybould will be at the big Liberal caucus meeting, and one item on the agenda is whether they can remain in caucus after expressing dissent with the PMs leadership.

The wider question, though, is whether Trudeau has replied to that dissent  and wider disenchantment that has set into Liberal ranks because of the SNC-Lavalin saga.

The measures rolled out on Monday are that reply. Trudeau may have had his eyes on the opposition on Monday when he talked in the Commons about addressing the SNC-Lavalin concerns, but his words and repair efforts were aimed at Liberals sitting beside and behind him.

Susan Delacourt is the Stars Ottawa bureau chief and a columnist covering national politics. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt

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Premier Doug Ford is angrily denying a former Progressive Conservative MPPs allegations that there is possible illegal and unregistered lobbying by his inner circle.

With the opposition New Democrats urging the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate claims made by maverick MPP Randy Hillier, the premier was on the defensive Tuesday.

Theres absolutely no truth to any of the allegations. The accusations are absolutely ridiculous, Ford thundered in the legislature under aggressive questioning from NDP MPP Taras Natyshak.

In a letter to his constituents Monday, Hillier, who was expelled from the PC caucus last week, said he was turfed for raising concerns of possible illegal and unregistered lobbying by close friends and advisers employed by Premier Ford.

The Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston MPP, who was not available for comment Tuesday, has provided no specifics about the alleged improper lobbying.

Ford, who has been under fire since the Star first disclosed that the Tories asked lobbyists to peddle tickets to his $1,250-a-ticket fundraiser last month, countered that NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is herself holding an $800-a-head fundraiser this Saturday.

Read more:

Opinion | Martin Regg Cohn: How Doug Ford became Ontarios empathy premier

NDP wants OPP to investigate Hilliers accusations of improper lobbying by Ford friends, advisers

Hillier says suspension from Tory caucus was over clashes with Ford advisers

They sent out an email: Come and join the leader of the NDP, Andrea Horwath, for $800. Its an open bar. And you actually get a reward. That is what it said in the letter: You will get a reward by having access to her highness, he said, taunting Horwath.

But the premier appeared rattled when Natyshak (Essex) cited Hilliers letter, which mentions Fords chief of staff Dean French and Chris Froggatt, head of the Tory election readiness committee.

The member from Essex walks around here like hes a big tough guy ... but why doesnt the big tough guy walk outside and make those accusations outside this door if hes so tough? the premier said, referring to the fact that MPPs statements in the legislature are privileged.

Hes not tough. He knows he doesnt have a good enough lawyer to walk outside those doors. He walks around as a tough guy, but hes nothing but a coward.

Natyshak, who contacted police with his concerns Monday, countered: I guess we know why the premier wanted his buddy to head up the OPP so badly.

That was a reference to the Tories unsuccessful bid to have Toronto police Supt. Ron Taverner, 72, a long-time Ford family friend, head the provincial police.

After months of controversy and an ongoing ethics probe by integrity commissioner J. David Wake, Taverner finally withdrew his name from consideration earlier this month.

York Regional Police deputy Chief Thomas Carrique, who has never met Ford, was appointed the new commissioner last week.

Hillier was originally turfed after being accused of saying yada yada yada to parents of children with autism who had packed the public gallery in the legislature over recent government changes last month.

But he maintained his barb was directed at NDP MPP Monique Taylor.

Now, the Tories say Hillier was exiled for not wanting to be a part of the team.

The reason that Randy was removed from caucus is that Randy didnt show up for work, said government house leader Todd Smith.

We knew that Randy was going to make some noise on his way out the door, said Smith.

But hes given no evidence of his claims at all. Theres been nothing.

Robert Benzie is the Stars Queens Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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The Bank Job, a current popular movie set in East London in the 1970s, follows the escapades of a band of robbers who successfully raid a bank's safe-deposit boxes.

Could this type of scheme really happen today?

Surely, this "based on a true story" tale is either typical Hollywood mythologizing or hopelessly out of date. Advances in electronic security must make such cops-and-robbers plots pure fiction, right?

Yes, for the most part, but that hasn't stopped people from trying.

With today's advancements in security systems and the fact that banks are aware the systems are indeed necessary, the feat would be extremely difficult to pull off.

"Security systems now are designed with heat, vibration and noise sensors. If anyone were drilling or using a jackhammer to get into a vault, the alarm would almost certainly go off," says Dave McGuinn, president of Safe Deposit Specialists."If it didn't, it would need to be checked."

But McGuinn believes that in the 1970s it would have been entirely feasible. "Back then there was barely any attention paid toward vault and bank security," he says.

In the movie, the criminals -- with a little help from inside a British government agency -- are tipped off that the Lloyd's Bank on Baker Street will be closed for the weekend as repairs are made to the security systems.

The group of old friends, headed by Terry and Martine, take full advantage of the situation. They rent a leather-goods store two doors down and promptly begin drilling into the basement. Their plan to drill a tunnel underneath the shops and up into the vault goes accordingly and the thieves make their way into the room of safe deposit boxes without setting off a single alarm.

After raiding at least 300 safe-deposit boxes the criminal's loot in excess of 4 million pounds (approximately $8 million today) in cash, jewels and other valuable items.

Although their success was almost cut short when a ham radio operator overhears the communication between the robbers and their roof-top look out, they are able to get away with the raid and completely elude law enforcement.

The movie is said to be based on a true story although the facts of the real event were never released. The British government stopped the investigation when compromising photographs of a number of royals became involved.

Such schemes may be far-fetched today, experts say, but some undeterred criminals still give it a shot -- even though the odds of success are next to impossible.

In February 2006, police found an underground passageway just 50 feet from the entrance to a bank vault in Moscow. And, just this past February, robbers pulled off a similar underground tunnel heist at a jewelry store in Milan, Italy. While company heads were in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards the thieves made off with $20 million in gems.

So while unlikely, underground entry to a bank's vault may be a plausible idea. And if thieves were able to gain access to a vault, they would then be faced with a room full of vulnerable safe-deposit boxes.

"The boxes themselves are a little more sophisticated than a filing cabinet. Someone with general knowledge of how they are constructed and the proper tools would be able to break in," McGuinn says.

But anything lost in a theft would be covered by the bank, right?

Wrong.

Banks are not responsible for items kept in a safe-deposit box. The bank doesn't know what is in the box, nor does it want to know and for that matter it would have no way of insuring it. "The relationship is like a landlord and tenant," McGuinn says.

That means that the most important thing people must do to guarantee the safety of items they choose to keep in a safe deposit box would be to take out insurance on the items. This is relatively easy to do, especially for those with homeowner's insurance. People can simply take out a rider or what is sometimes called a personal articles floater on their pre-existing insurance policy.

The only downside, people will need to disclose to their insurance company what items they would like to have covered, removing the anonymity that is sometimes the main appeal of a safe-deposit box.

"You will have to have proof that what you say you have is what you have and worth what you say it is worth," says a spokesperson for State Farm Insurance.

The upside is that the personal article floaters will cover jewelry, furs and collectibles beyond the limits of normal homeowners insurance and will cover them even if they are kept in a safe deposit box.

Actually, keeping them in a safe-deposit box may even prove beneficial to the policy. For certain items owners sometimes receive a discount on the premium they pay for their policy.

"For jewelry that is the case but, the owner is allowed to take it out for 10 days a year and must tell the insurance company when it is going to be out," Diggs says.

The personal article floaters also offer extended coverage that most homeowners' insurance policies do not. While both policies cover fire, only the floater covers items damaged in a flood.

Meaning that items in the 250 vaults that went underwater after Hurricane Katrina and the 13,000 safe deposit boxes that were destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks would have been covered by insurance.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- California marijuana legalization efforts took a step back as proponents of what is seen as the ballot initiative with the best shot at success decided to call off their signature drive ahead of an April 18 deadline.

The Control, Regulate and Tax Marijuana Act would have allowed anyone over 21 to grow, own or give away up to an ounce of marijuana and grow up to four plants for personal use.

But backers of the proposal told The Los Angeles Times they lacked sufficient funding and would focus instead on getting a proposal on statewide ballots in 2016.

While at least two other marijuana legalization initiatives are circulating, they lack the high-profile backing of this one. Supporters for the Control, Regulate and Tax Marijuana Act included the George Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), and an organization put in place by the late billionaire Peter Lewis, according to the Times report. The DPA didn't immediately respond to an email message. Jesse Mainardi, who was an attorney with the Sutton Law Firm in December when he was listed on the proposed legislation as the main contact for the measure, is no longer at that firm, according to a voice message there.

Follow @dan_freed

Related:The 5 States Most Likely to Legalize Pot Next

Disclosure: TheStreet's editorial policy prohibits staff editors, reporters and analysts from holding positions in any individual stocks.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that hedge fund Marble Ridge Capital LP brought against Neiman Marcus after the retailer had shuffled its assets.

Judge Tonya Parker signed the ruling on Tuesday which dismissed the lawsuit for "lack of subject matter jurisdiction," according to a court document filed in Dallas, Texas. Marble Ridge, a debtholder, objected to Neiman Marcus's moving its MyTheresa unit out of the reach of creditors.

"While we had hoped the court would rule differently on our standing to bring the fraudulent conveyance claims, this particular ruling does not address the key issues, which are the inappropriate transfer by Neiman Marcus of the MyTheresa assets," Marble Ridge said in a statement sent to Bloomberg.

In the lawsuit filed in December, Marble Ridge alleged that the shuffle of MyTheresa constituted a "fraudulent transfer of assets totaling approximately $1 billion of value for no consideration." Marble Ridge has also claimed the retailer owes more than it's worth and was either insolvent at the time of the transfer or was made insolvent by the deal.

Neiman disputed Marble Ridge's claims, saying the fund made a series of false public statements with the intent to harm the company and for other "improper uses." In a statement sent to Bloomberg on Tuesday, the company said it is pleased with the judge's decision to dismiss the lawsuit, and that it looks forward to "continuing to work with holders of more than $2 billion of its debt" to advance negotiations.

The luxury retailer has been in talks with creditors about a proposed transaction that would push out maturities on Neiman debt by three years. The preliminary deal calls for unsecured bondholders to swap their holdings for preferred equity in MyTheresa, the fast-growing German e-commerce unit, plus new debt that would give them a partial claim on that business.

"These holders chose to engage in constructive discussions with the company rather than engage in a campaign of false and misleading statements designed to harm the company and disrupt those negotiations," Neiman Marcus said in a statement.

Dallas-based Neiman Marcus is the latest retailer to face pushback over whether asset transfers unfairly deprive creditors of claims on assets if a borrower needs to restructure. The allegations echo complaints against retailers including PetSmart Inc. and J. Crew Group Inc., which transferred assets in a way that complicated restructuring talks.

"To the degree that some portion of MyTheresa is in the pot," the ruling is "a partial success for the company and creditors involved in negotiations," Noel Hebert of Bloomberg Intelligence said in an interview. "The key to a compromise is everyone has to feel like they won something and lost something," he said.
EDWARDSVILLE  Additional legal bills from the Madison County Veterans Assistance Commission will be the subject of a special meeting of the County Boards Executive Committee.

The committee will meet at 4 p.m. Wednesday prior to the 5 p.m. County Board meeting, where a Resolution to Pay Veterans Assistance Commission Bill is on the agenda.

County Administrator Doug Hulme said the issue would probably go back to the Finance and Government Operations Committee before final County Board action.

The County Board recently approved a $56,000 emergency appropriation to the VACs 2016 budget to pay legal fees stemming from legal actions relating to the previous administrations barring of Chairman Brad Lavite from the Administration Building because of a post-traumatic stress breakdown.

The Illinois Fifth District Appellate Court recently ruled that the county must pay the bills.

Wednesdays meeting and any subsequent action will deal with bills incurred after the bills covered in the previous action, Hulme said he expected Wednesday meeting to deal specifically with the remainder of bills from 2016.

According to audio recordings of the meeting, Lavite talked extensively about the issues at last weeks County Institutions Committee meeting.

There are more legal fees because when the auditor said in a meeting that he wasnt going to pay any of our bills, that created an adversarial relationship with the VAC, Lavite said. So from that day forward we stopped submitting invoices because they said they will not pay them.

Which actually did the county a favor, because if the invoice had been submitted then interest and penalties would have been assessed for the last 3 years, he added.

Two issues still awaiting resolution are the federal civil rights lawsuit stemming from the countys actions, and a county lawsuit relating to what Lavite said was a long-term improper reduction in the VACs tax levy over the past decade.

At no time did the VAC ever want to have this problem, he said. It wasnt our intent, we never set out to have this problem.

Lavite noted he has been working with the Madison County Treasurers Office in unraveling a lot of the mistakes of the last 10 years.

We are to a point now where were having conversations, he said at last weeks meeting, adding a big part of that is taking the attorneys for both sides out of the equation.

The funding suit, filed Dec. 24, stems from what Lavite called an improperly set property tax levy that funds the VAC. He said it began in 2008 under then County Clerk Mark Von Nida (now Circuit Clerk), and continued under his successor, Debra Ming-Mendoza.

The suit claims that since then the County Clerks Office improperly determined the levy, resulting in a shortfall of approximately $1 million.

The other issue to be dealt with by the Executive Committee is a resolution authorizing Access to USL Financial Systems. This deals with an ongoing dispute between the administration and the Auditors Office over access to detailed financial information.

Hulme has argued that the administration needs access to those records for budgeting and to track current finances. Auditor Rick Faccin disagrees, and during sometimes heated debate had said he did not trust County Board Chairman Kurt Prenzler or Hulme.

The resolution is also set for discussion or possible approval at the full County Board meeting.

Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6447.
BRUSSELS - British Prime Minister Theresa May's efforts to steer her nation out of the European Union remained in a state of chaos Tuesday, as she struggled to get around a shock parliamentary ruling that may force her to beg fellow European leaders for a long divorce delay.

May huddled with her advisers for hours to try to devise a new strategy for getting lawmakers to sign onto the divorce deal before Britain's scheduled departure from the EU on March 29. Her old plan - not that it appeared popular enough to succeed - was upended Monday by the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, when he said he would not permit a third vote on a divorce deal that British lawmakers have already twice rejected.

May's top lieutenants acknowledged publicly that Bercow's unexpected announcement means she is likely to go mostly empty-handed to a crucial EU summit, starting Thursday, where the remaining 27 EU leaders will mull how long to let Britain stay in the club beyond this month. May might propose a time frame in advance: One plan floated in the British press was a long delay of at least nine months, unless she can pass the current divorce deal before July, when a new European Parliament is scheduled to sit.

"For my Brexit colleagues, I think they can see that there is a growing risk of no Brexit," Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told the BBC. He said that May might still try to hold another vote before the Brexit deadline but noted that either way, she will have to seek an extension from fellow EU leaders.

On Monday, Bercow invoked a parliamentary convention dating to 1604 that he said banned putting a measure to a vote in Parliament if it has already been rejected in the same session of the legislature. May had hoped that Brexiteer lawmakers would be sufficiently spooked by the prospect of getting stuck in the EU to pass her plan on the third try.

One way to short-circuit Bercow's injunction would be to flicker the light switches in Parliament, declaring an end to the current session and starting a new one, legal experts said. But that would require summoning Queen Elizabeth II for some ceremonies, a step Barclay said the leaders would not force her to take. (She turns 93 next month, after all.)

The spinning of wheels in London left European leaders in disbelief at a process many of them already felt had hit rock bottom.

"I will fight until the last hour of March 29 so that we still come to an orderly exit," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin. "I'll admit that I wasn't actively familiar with the rules of the British Parliament from the 17th century."

French leaders appeared to be in a tougher mood, embracing a good-cop, bad-cop routine that has developed in concert with Germany on Brexit issues in recent months.

The British "have said 'no' to a no-deal, and they have said 'no' to a realistic deal. Now they have to change their mind on one or the other," France's Europe minister, Nathalie Loiseau, told reporters in Brussels.

Loiseau recently wrote on her private Facebook page that she had named her cat Brexit because it could not decide whether it wanted to be inside or outside, according to France's weekly Journal du Dimanche.

Asked about her cat on Tuesday, she said: "I think I need to have a certain sense of humor to deal with Brexit."

European leaders were not ruling out the possibility of a chaotic, safety-net-free departure for Britain in 10 days - a step that could snarl trade between Britain and the rest of the world and trigger an economic earthquake.

But even assuming they grant some sort of extension, which most European policymakers appear to favor, they will confront a thicket of practical problems about how much time to give. The biggest challenge is connected to European Parliament elections that are scheduled for the end of May. If Britain decides not to participate, the longest that most European leaders are willing to allow for an extension is until the end of June.

Longer than that, and the new parliament will be in session. If Britain is still an EU member without any lawmakers in its parliament, that would be a violation of EU treaties, and the parliament's actions could be subject to legal challenge.

Britain's European Parliament members are already packing their boxes to depart. But even if Britain does win an extension and organizes its elections for the Brussels body in May, EU policymakers fear it could play a spoiler role in the bloc's discussions. So long as Britain remains in the club, it has a voice in its decision-making - an oddity that means that May will also sign off on a raft of non-Brexit EU policies at the summit this week.
It was a scorching Mississippi day, former police officer Cassie Barker said, when she strapped her daughter Cheyenne into a car seat, cranked the vehicle's nonfunctioning air conditioning and entered her supervisor's home to have sex.

Barker was inside for four hours on Sept. 30, 2016, while her 3-year-old daughter was restrained in a police patrol car; the child's body temperature climbed unbearably high.

The two Long Beach officers eventually fell asleep. Cheyenne was unresponsive when Baker returned. Authorities said her body temperature reached 107 degrees before she died.

It is not clear whether Baker intentionally left her child in the car.

Barker, 29, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter in a plea deal Monday.

"I don't know what I could ever do to you that could be worse than what you've already experienced," Harrison County Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois told her. "You will forever be entombed in a prison of your own mind."

Barker avoided a second-degree-murder conviction after she admitted in court that a chain of events that began with a sexual encounter led to her daughter's death, the Biloxi Sun Herald reported.

Prosecutors recommended a 20-year sentence. Bourgeois said he would consider the punishment before an April 1 sentencing.

Barker and Clark Ladner, her supervisor, were fired within days of the child's death, The Associated Press reported. He avoided charges after he told authorities that he did not know Barker's child was in the car.

Cheyenne's father, Ryan Hyer, said Monday that his daughter's death has haunted him in the years since.

"Every time I close my eyes, I picture her suffering, and then I picture her laying in this coffin," Hyer said Monday, the AP reported. "I still see her smiling and laughing in my head, and I would assume that smile and laughter turned to pain and suffering in that instance."

Hyer later learned that Barker had left their daughter in a car during a separate incident the year before.

Barker went into a store in nearby Gulfport, and a concerned passerby called police. Child protective services took temporary custody of her, and Baker was suspended for a week without pay, the AP reported.

But Hyer was never notified, he said. He is suing the Long Beach Police Department and the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services in a wrongful-death suit, the AP reported.
It's embarrassing and painful every time he does it. It never gets easier.

After the third time Maryland Del. C.T. Wilson stood before his colleagues to revisit his years of sexual abuse as a child, the beefy Army veteran in a fine-cut lawyer suit thought it would be over.

"I thought I'd done something," said Wilson, 47, a Democrat. "I was going around the country, helping other states do the same work."

But it wasn't over, even after his fellow legislators finally listened to him, his horrible story of trauma, and passed a law that gives adults who were sexually abused as children more time to file civil suits.

Wilson is back out there this week - the nervous movements, the strained voice - even though "it was very painful to get back into it."

And here's why. He wants to send a message to sexual predators, pedophiles and the institutions that harbor them: Maryland is sick of being their sanctuary state.

"Maryland," Wilson said, "had become a dumping ground for the Catholic Church," a place to stash pedophile priests because of the state's "soft laws."

Wilson argues that the 1,400-page Pennsylvania grand-jury report last year shows that Maryland was one of the prime places for society's monsters to dodge the long-buried secrets of their sexual conquests, because of the still-narrow statute of limitations. Plus, additional language embedded in recent legislation creates an even narrower window that keeps cases from being retroactive, thus protecting the Catholic Church.

Sure, a criminal case could be pursued by someone abused as a child at anytime in Maryland. But a civil suit - the kind of thing that can cost a church or a school millions of dollars and public exposure - had to be filed within seven years of adulthood. So if you weren't ready to confront your shame in open court by your 25th birthday in Maryland, tough luck.

This bothered Wilson because of the way he managed his demons. He was in foster care as a child. When he was adopted, his father, Tom Wilson, beat and sodomized him from the time he was 9 until he was 18.

Tom Wilson is dead. C.T. Wilson never told anyone about the abuse while he was alive.

Instead he did all kinds of things to avoid talking - or even thinking - about his nightmare childhood.

He joined the Army, became a beast in combat training, womanized, raged, sulked and never slept a full night for 20 years. The nightmares woke him every single night.

But he had a breakthrough at 38 and he finally began counseling, began healing.

And in 2015, after years as a successful lawyer, a father of three girls and a respected state delegate, he stood in front of his peers and finally told them. It wasn't cathartic, he said. It was terrifying. And totally utilitarian.

He did it because of a bill he sponsored, Maryland House Bill 1215, and its counterpart, Senate Bill 69, which would give victims 20 years to file a civil suit after reaching adulthood.

That means people sexually abused as children would have to confront their abuser by the time they're 38. See that? 38.

The House of Delegates heard him, members shifting uncomfortably. But they didn't listen. They put his bill in a drawer in 2015.

"It's usually the case when we tell our stories," Wilson told me in April of 2016, when he summoned up the courage to tell the story again while reintroducing the bill. "Nobody wants to hear this. And we want to be heard."

And again, it was ignored, the House didn't even bring it up for a vote. But something changed in 2017.

After he gathered his courage to tell the story of his abuse, his shame, his lifelong struggle to reckon with it for the third year in a row, his colleagues listened.

The Catholic Church lobbyists who opposed his past bills were quieter. And at the time, the USA Gymnastics scandal that showed our golden team was being sexually abused by their doctor was beginning to unfold, exposing yet again the pervasiveness of child abuse and the brazen cunning of predators.

So finally, on April 18, Wilson stood beside Maryland's Republican Gov. Larry Hogan as he signed the bill that Wilson fought so hard for.

Back then, he was relieved the battle was over. But it wasn't.

The Catholic Church report from Pennsylvania set it back into motion. Wilson drew the lines tracing priests back to Maryland and realized that even the way his 2017 bill was worded, the church was relatively safe from really old civil suits.

Wilson introduced another bill, this one lifting the statute of limitations completely as more and more states are widening their investigations into decades-old sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

The new legislation includes a two year "look back window," allowing victims who previously couldn't file a civil case to do so retroactively until October 2021.

But the bill is unlikely to pass the Maryland Senate, Wilson said.

And that means he will have to keep fighting, even though he doesn't want to.

"Emotionally, it does a horrible job on my psyche. My kids, they see how cranky I am when I'm doing this," he said. "I was hoping this wasn't the legacy I'm leaving."

But he believes he's the one who has to do it.

And no, he still hasn't slept through the night.
GODFREY  Lewis and Clark Community College Honors College student Vanessa Perkinson will host Faith and Feminism: A Conversation About Equality, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 27.

The panel is Perkinsons honors research project this year.

Vanessa is a dedicated learner and the ideal Honors College student, full of energy and excitement to understand the world around her, Honors College Coordinator Jen Cline said. This event is particularly important because the faces we are typically shown of religious leaders are men, but she is disrupting the traditional narrative by showing us the women leaders in faith.

This free event, which will be held in the Hatheway Cultural Center, is open to the public and will include free pizza and soda for attendees.

Panelists will include Pastor Amy Brooks, from the First Unitarian Church of Alton; Rabbi Karen Kriger Bogard, from the Central Reform Congregation; and Venerable Kongyan, from the Mid-America Buddhist Association.

As the chair of Diversity Council here at Lewis and Clark, Im so excited about this upcoming event and Vanessas desire to bring this remarkable group of women to our campus, L&C Professor of Music/Percussion Peter Hussey said. To have an Honors College student coordinate such an event is a testament to not only Vanessas own personal conviction for the subject, but to the nature of our Honors College students, and their willingness to dive into meaningful topics and meaningful projects in meaningful ways.

Students of the L&C Honors College choose one course each semester to designate as an honors course, in which they work with their professor to create a research or action project, in addition to their regular studies.

Honors College is the reason I have opportunity to make this panel happen, Perkinson said. The panel is the product of inspiration from Lewis and Clark courses Ive taken and my own exploration of a topic in my chosen field of study.

To view the event on Facebook, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/622057914931079/.

To learn more about the L&C Honors College, visit www.lc.edu/honorscollege.

This L&C Diversity Council event is presented by the Mannie Jackson Endowment and Center for the Humanities with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information visit www.lc.edu/diversity.
EDWARDSVILLE  Madison County is keeping an eye on its flood risk this spring, but officials are hopeful areas behind the levees will remain dry.

We were initially told we could experience moderate to low-level flooding, Madison County Emergency Management Agency Director Todd Fulton said. The latest levels are showing that the flooding will be much lower than expected. At this point its not even in the moderate flooding levels.

This comes as hundreds of homes flooded in several states after rivers breached at least a dozen levees following heavy rain and snowmelt in the region, authorities said Monday.

About 200 miles of levees were compromised  either breached or overtopped  in four states, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. Even in places where the water level peaked in those states  Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas  the current was fast and the water so high that damage continued to pile up. The flooding was blamed for at least three deaths.

The National Weather Service stated that flooding in the Metro East would not be as severe as earlier predicted. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers warned local officials earlier that there could be an above-normal chance of the Mississippi River reaching high to moderate flood stages mid-April due to the snow melt in the north and possible spring rains.

Weve got 90,000 sandbags if we need them, Fulton said. I dont think we will, but we also have the resources in place and communication with all the countys fire departments and the states Emergency Service Disaster Agency just in case.

Chairman Kurt Prenzler said its good to hear that the flood predictions changed. He said, however, due to work on the levees within the county  Wood River Drainage and Levee System and Metro East Sanitary District  they are in good shape to handle the high waters.

The goal was to get to the 100-year flood stage, Prenzler said. With help from the Corps weve done that and are now moving forward to bring the levee system to a 500-year flood protection level.

The federal government, along with the Southwestern Illinois Flood Prevention District Council, are planning to spend more another $130 million to upgrade the levees during the next three to four years. The projects will include new relief wells, upgrading cutoff walls, ditching and pipe collector systems, a seepage pump work on a lift station, seepage berms, among other things, with the majority of the work done between Cahokia and Edwardsville.

The Corps is set to pay for 65 percent of the work through the Water Resources Development Act. The flood prevention council will cover the remaining 35 percent brought in by a local sales tax, which voters in Madison, Monroe and St. Clair counties approved.

Prenzler said that 100-year level work took place in order to maintain Federal Emergency Management Agency accreditation. The accreditation prevented an increase in flood insurance rates for the thousands of residents and businesses located behind the levees.

He said to date the investment to improve the levees is approximately $170 million. By 2022, upgrades on the 500-year level should be complete.

Fulton said he is not as concerned about a breach in the levees, but more about flooding in low-lying areas such as Altons riverfront or drainage areas where water cannot recede.

Outside of Alton, most of what we see is caused by interior flooding, he said. Its the flooding that takes place behind the levee systems and is caused by clogged ditches and high levels in the creeks because they are unable to drain into the river or nearby lakes.

Prenzler said that the flooding issues in the low-lying areas within MESD are not as bad as in past years. He said improvements were made with storm water and drainage systems in both MESD and the countys Special Services Area No.1, preventing properties within Choteau and Nameoki townships from flooding, plus Horseshoe Lake was lowered to accommodate the increase in water flow.

Fulton said as a reminder anyone whose property has flooded in the past should prepare for it to happen again.

The countys EMA is planning to hold an emergency coordinator/elected official spring flooding briefing within the next two weeks. The NWS will be present information, along with the Corps and Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

We will know well in advance what to expect, so we want to prepare people for whats coming, he said.
Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, who touts himself as a model of how to work across the aisle, lashed out Monday at the Democrats who control Maryland's General Assembly, calling their policies financially "reckless."

As lawmakers entered the frenzied final three weeks of their annual legislative session, Hogan said bills that would significantly increase spending on education and raise the minimum wage would "devastate" the state's economy.

He accused Democrats of "pandering" to special interests on school funding. And he lambasted them for ignoring his proposal to impose mandatory minimum sentences for repeat violent offenders who use guns and rejecting a bill to allow school resources officers in Baltimore City to carry guns.

"This seems to be like the most pro-criminal group of legislators I've ever seen," Hogan said of the House of Delegates and state Senate, each of which has a Democratic supermajority. "And it's not what most people in the state want to see happen. They want to see us stop the violent crime."

His tirade brought rebukes from lawmakers on social media and puzzlement from Senate President Thomas Mike Miller Jr., D-Calvert, who said he socialized with the governor over the weekend and Hogan seemed positive then about the 90-day session.

"I'm not sure where he's coming from," Miller said. "To paint us all with a broad brush is very much a mistake."

House Speaker Michael Busch, D-Anne Arundel, called Hogan's attacks disingenuous and untrue. "Please," Busch said, shaking his head. "The General Assembly is not pro-criminal. They do everything they can do to prevent crime. . . . Every governor has complained and cried at the end of session that they didn't get what they want."

Sen. Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City, vice-chair of the Budget and Taxation committee, wrote on Twitter that he "genuinely" wants to work with Hogan on "some of the big issues our state faces. . . . It makes it so much harder when press conferences like this morning's are built on false narrative of 'reckless and irresponsible' legislators."

Hogan, who easily won a second term in November, is being courted by Republican critics of President Trump to run for president in 2020. The governor says he won't launch a bid unless Trump is severely weakened. But Hogan has given interviews and speeches on the national stage and next month will visit New Hampshire, home of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

In his appearances, Hogan often says his experience governing a blue state and working with Democrats is an important example for an increasingly polarized nation. On Monday, however, the divisions in Annapolis were as sharp as anywhere.

Hogan called the legislature's embrace of recommendations made by the Kirwan Commission, a landmark panel tasked with reworking the state's public school system, "irresponsible."

Democratic leaders committed to $1 billion over the next two years as a down payment on the 10-year plan. Hogan described the spending blueprint as "outrageous pandering" to special-interest groups, and vowed that "no additional state tax dollars will be handed over to local school districts without significant accountability attached."

Busch disputed Hogan's criticism that Democrats were being financially "reckless," noting that Hogan campaigned in favor of a "lock box" on casino revenue that effectively forces the state to come up with about $125 million more for education each year. "For him to suggest this all snuck up on him, well, it falls on deaf ears," Busch said.

The governor also predicted that legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 for most businesses would lead to a loss of 99,000 jobs and $61 billion over the next decade.

Proponents of the measure say it would boost the economy and lessen pay disparities, and they note that the legislature has proposed easing the transition by giving smaller businesses more time to comply.

Miller said the country's second-wealthiest state "can afford to pay a decent - not even a living - wage, but just a wage that people can get by on. The benefits far outweigh any negative."

Last year, Hogan teamed with Democrats to ban bump stocks and enact laws keeping guns away from domestic abusers and individuals deemed to pose an immediate and present danger to themselves or others.

On Monday, he criticized lawmakers for "talking about silly things" such as banning 3-D-printed guns, instead of advancing bills to impose mandatory minimums or allow officers in Baltimore City schools to carry guns.

"No one has ever committed a crime in the history of the state with a 3-D-printed gun," Hogan said. "Sure let's do it, let's step away from the copier, but what are we going to do about the people committing crimes with real guns?"

The House passed the 3-D-printed gun ban on Monday, along with bills that would regulate private sales of rifles and other long guns, raise the smoking age to 21 and make it easier for people sexually abused as children to sue their attackers.

The Senate gave final approval to a bill that essentially overturns Hogan's executive order that requires schools to start after Labor Day and end by June 15. Hogan has indicated that he will veto the measure and would support a petition to put the question of who controls school calendars to the voters.
BEARDSTOWN  When the little dark bay mustang worked up the courage to hop out of a trailer at a farm outside of Rushville this January, it was into deep snow.

He was a long way from the Nevada desert.

In September, 303 mustangs were rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management in Eagle, Nevada. Though the agency does roundups to control wild horse populations, these horses were dying in drought conditions.

One colt from that herd eventually arrived in Ewing, where 9-year-old Hunter Reich and his family picked him up to bring him to his new home in Schuyler County.

Hunter named the horse Martin and has 90 days to gentle him before the 2019 Mustang Challenge in April.

In just the two months since they brought Martin home, the horse has gone from refusing to be touched to loving affection from his new human companions.

They gave Martin time to get acclimated and Hunter said early on they had to leave halter and lead rope on  and reach it with a cane  to catch the horse.

It took us a long time to get here into this pen, Hunter said of the arena where he works with Martin.

Videos  on the Facebook page @HAThorses  show how Hunter and Martin have progressed. A video of Martin arriving at the snow-blanketed farm shows him nervously jumping off the trailer and trotting awkwardly through the snow.

He was scared out of his mind because he didnt know what snow was, Hunter said.

Now, Martin can be led calmly over and through obstacles, and is learning to bow and lay down, as part of the routine they will compete with.

Hunter will be the youngest competitor in the Mustang Challenge, where he will go up against 40-50 adults and kids who have gentled mustangs this winter. The Mustang Challenge will be part of the Midwest Horse Fair in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hunter has only been working with horses for about a year and a half. He is training Martin using natural horsemanship techniques with the help of his father, Adam Reich; his fathers fiancee and her mother, Tiarra and Gwen Paschall; and Cindy Chaffin.

With different levels of experience among them, but limited experience gentling a mustang, Tiarra said they found a helpful online community of people who have worked with mustangs before. Gwen said the experience has been an adventure.

According to the Bureau of Land Management, 245,000 wild horses and burros have been placed in homes since they received protection from the federal government in 1971. Each year thousands are removed by the agency and in 2018 more than 11,000 were removed  a higher number than in the prior six years.

Wild horse and burro populations are managed because herds can double in size every four years. Since the 70s, the number of wild horses and burros rose from around 25,000 to 82,000 in 2018.

Horses that arent kept by competitors in the challenge are sold and the proceeds go to the Mustang Heritage Foundation, Adam said. The Mustang Heritage Foundation is a nonprofit organization that works with the Bureau of Land Management to keep wild herds healthy and find homes for excess animals.

Kids who compete in the challenge can keep their mustangs and Adam said they plan to keep Martin and continue working with him.

The family does a lot of trail riding around Illinois and out of state. This summer, Adam said theyll take Martin along so he can get used to the trailer and following along on the trails.

When Martin is ready to train under saddle, Hunter hopes to do barrel racing and pole bending in 4-H.

Gwen said the experience has been an adventure.
ALTON  This years Riverbend Earth Day Festival will be held on Saturday, April 13, from noon to 6 p.m. at The Old Bakery Beer Company.

For this years 8th annual festival, the brewing company, at 400 Landmarks Blvd., Alton, has partnered with The Nature Institute and Sierra Club to host as TNI undergoes some staffing changes.

The structure of the event is in keeping with previous years, but the event will be held at The Old Bakery Beer Company rain or shine. This decision was made to reduce the chance of a rainout and to make the event manageable for the crew from The Old Bakery Beer Company.

Management of the event is expected to be placed back into the hands of The Nature Institute in 2020.

Riverbend Earth Day Festival is a great asset to our community, and we hated the idea of missing it, even just for one year, said Lauren Pattan, owner-operator of The Old Bakery Beer Company, So, we decided to see what we could do to make it happen. We will be working together with The Nature Institute and Sierra Club to make sure that the event is in keeping with the wonderful atmosphere they have created for the past seven years

The event will feature nature activities and information from a variety of environmental non-profits. It is free, open to the public, and all ages are welcome.

Educational animal presentations will be given by Serengeti Steve at 12:30 p.m. and Treehouse Wildlife Center at 2:30 p.m.

A second stage will feature live music throughout the day from a variety of local musicians. An artisans market will feature a variety of vendors including Once Design, State Street Soap Company, Fire and Hammer Rings, and more.

Organizers expect 50 non-profits and artisans in total.

For more information, contact Pattan, at lauren@oldbakerybeer.com.
Four homes damaged Sunday

The Jacksonville Police Department is investigating four reports of criminal damage to property from incidents Sunday.

According to reports, police responded to four separate criminal damage to property calls Sunday.

Police first responded to the 900 block of North East Street at 12:38 a.m. Sunday to a report of a door that had been forced open, causing damage to the door and door jam, although it did not appear that anything was disturbed inside the home, according to reports.

A second door appeared to be pried open between 5:45 a.m. and 4 p.m. Sunday in the 300 block of Finley Street, according to reports.

A third home was damaged about 10 p.m. Sunday after an unknown person shot at the home using what appeared to be a BB gun,causing damage to a window and the homes siding.

The fourth home was damaged at roughly the same time, as police responded to the 900 block of North East Street about 10:20 p.m. to second report of a window being shot at with a BB gun.

All four incidents are still under investigation.



Morgan County

Sheriff

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Nancy J. Tobin, 56, of 813 S. Church St. was booked into the Morgan County jail at 12:01 a.m. Sunday on a battery charge.

BURGLARIES, THEFTS

 A semi trailer was taken from the 1700 block of Ore Road in Chapin, according to a report filed at 8:26 a.m. Monday.



Jacksonville Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Saun D. Ballard, 30, of 342 W. State St. was booked into the Morgan County jail at 4:32 a.m. Sunday on charges of driving while license is revoked or suspended and operating an uninsured motor vehicle.

BURGLARIES, THEFTS

 Campaign signs were taken from a yard in the 200 block of Caldwell Street, according to a report filed at 10:01 a.m. Sunday.

 The lock was removed and items were taken from a storage unit in the 900 block of East Morton Avenue, according to a report filed at 10: 21 a.m. Monday.

OTHER REPORTS

 A tire on a vehicle was punctured while it was parked in the 800 block of North Church Street, according to a report filed at 8:37 p.m. Sunday.



Cass County

Virginia Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Ricardo A. Alvarado, 59, of 815 W. Seventh St., Beardstown, was booked into the Morgan County jail at 8:40 p.m. Saturday on charges of driving under the influence and improper lane use.

Compiled by Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree and Rosalind Essig
EDWARDSVILLE  Prospective students and the general public are invited to learn more about graduate studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsvilles joint Graduate Admissions Open House and Graduate School Research Symposium on Monday, April 1.

The Graduate Admissions Open House will be held from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. in the Pre-Function Room, adjacent to the Morris University Centers Meridian Ballroom. The Graduate School Research Symposium will be held from 2:30-4 p.m. in the Meridian Ballroom.

At the Open House, prospective students will learn about SIUEs more than 100 masters programs, post-baccalaureate certificates, specialist degrees, doctoral degrees and cooperative doctoral programs. They will also receive information on graduate admission requirements and financial support, including graduate assistantships and competitive graduate awards.

SIUEs diverse array of programs make it an excellent option for the pursuit of an advanced degree, said Jim Monahan, director of graduate admissions at SIUE. We invite prospective students to discover the many opportunities for educational advancement during our open house. Graduate admissions representatives will be on site and happy to discuss the admission process.

The $40 Graduate School application fee will be waived for prospective students who apply during the Open House. Register now at siue.edu/graduate-admissions/visits.

Prospective students and the general public are invited to become inspired at the Graduate School Research Symposium. The annual event celebrates the research efforts and accomplishments of students, featuring research poster displays, creative exhibits and oral presentations.

Visitors can talk to current graduate students about their projects and experiences at SIUE, as well as meet faculty and admissions staff.

Our graduate students make significant contributions to their fields of study that is presented in national and international conferences, published in peer-review journals, and contributes to patented discoveries, said Jerry Weinberg, PhD, associate provost for research and dean of the SIUE Graduate School. The Symposium is an opportunity to showcase their scholarship, recognize achievement and inspire future scholars.

Student presentations will span academic disciplines from an action research project aimed at assessing perceptions and policy preferences regarding global climate change to developing telepresence teaching robots with social capabilities. The array of projects will also feature important research on Alzheimers Disease, the prevalence of the Male Athlete Triad, and the fostering of connection and sustainment via artmaking.

A list of student research presentations is available via siue.edu/graduate-school-symposium/index. Registration is not required to attend the Graduate Research School Symposium.

By preparing the next generation of leaders in a knowledge-based economy, SIUEs Graduate School fulfills the regions demand for highly trained professionals. Graduate school offerings include arts and sciences, business, education, engineering, nursing and interdisciplinary opportunities. SIUE professors provide students with a unique integration of theoretical education and hands-on research experiences.

Students can obtain graduate certificates or pursue masters degrees, and be part of a supportive learning and rich intellectual environment that is tailored to the needs of adult learners. The Graduate School raises the visibility of research at SIUE, which ranks highest among its Illinois Board of Higher Education peers in total research and development expenditures according to the National Science Foundation.

Doctoral programs are available in the Schools of Education (EdD) and Nursing (DNP). The School of Engineering and the Department of Historical Studies feature cooperative doctoral programs (PhD), and the College of Arts and Sciences features an Environmental Resources and Policy cooperative PhD.
Virginia State Police.

A bus driver was charged with involuntary manslaughter Tuesday after two people died and several others were injured when a charter bus overturned on an Interstate 95 exit ramp near Richmond, Virginia, authorities said.

Virginia state police said 57 people, including the driver, were onboard the Tao's Travel Inc. bus when it overturned at the Crater Road exit near Kingwood. The bus had been traveling from Orlando, Florida, to New York.
EDWARDSVILLE  A suspect has been taken into custody and charged with murder in the double homicide investigation after a well-known Edwardsville couple was found dead in their home Monday morning.

Zachary I. Capers, 23, with a last known address of Collinsville, Illinois, has been charged with four counts of first-degree in the stabbing death of Michael Ladd and Dr. Lois Ladd. Charges were filed by the Madison County States Attorney Tuesday. Capers was taken into custody over the weekend in an unrelated incident. Judge Kyle Knapp signed the charges.
If Congress seems dysfunctional to you, consider the spectacle recently on display in London.

This month is a crucial one for decision-making on Brexit, Britains looming withdrawal from the European Union. But a chaotic and bitterly divided Parliament has managed to do nothing beyond kicking the Brexit can furtively down the road and hoping the EU will play along.

The initial vote by British residents in 2016 to split from their continental partners may have shocked the countrys political establishment, but that was nearly three years ago. You might think that the many intervening months would have provided enough time to arrange for a smooth transition back to the status quo before England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland exchanged people and goods freely with the rest of Europe. Parliaments formal approval of the withdrawal in March 2017 started a two-year countdown, and Brexit is now set for liftoff in less than two weeks  ready or not.

But one thing thats become abundantly clear is that there can be no smooth transition. The formation of an essentially borderless Europe in 1993 has changed much about the countries and economies involved. So too did the 1998 Good Friday peace deal to end the violence in Northern Ireland  a deal enhanced by a relatively open intra-EU border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

What to do about that border has been probably the thorniest of the issues raised by the Brexit referendum; others include questions about trade and customs terms, regulatory parity, the divorce payment the Britain would have to make to part ways with the EU, and the rights of British citizens living in EU countries (and of Europeans in Britain). Most of those issues remain unresolved, but Prime Minister Theresa May  the leader of the Tory party that championed Brexit  negotiated a deal with the EU that would allow goods to continue to pass across the border in Ireland without duties even if there were no larger trade agreement between the two sides.

Mays deal would be better than nothing, but she has been singularly unable to push it through Parliament. On Tuesday, she tried a second time to win approval for the deal, and again she suffered a resounding defeat, opposed not just by members who want Britain to stay in the EU, but also by many Brexit supporters (including Tories) who want a cleaner break. Then, as the week progressed, lawmakers further muddied the waters, voting against leaving the EU without a deal, against seizing control of the process from the prime minister, and against holding another referendum.

The one thing they could agree on was that theyre not ready for Brexit. Parliament voted Thursday to put off the withdrawal indefinitely, a delay that requires the approval of every other EU member nation. EU leaders, who have opposed Brexit from the start, have expressed support for a delay that could stretch on for more than a year, evidently hoping that the would-be defectors will come to their senses and reembrace the union.

Its entirely possible that Britain will put Brexit up for another nationwide referendum; the Parliaments recent vote against it was warped by the Labour Party leaderships inexplicable decision to oppose another vote of the people. Brexit was a bad idea from the start, and the case against it has only grown stronger over time as businesses leave or limit investments in Britain to avoid the possible increase in tariffs and taxes.

Yet the British government seems to have lost the ability to learn from experience and change course, a problem that seems common among democracies these days. The country is sharply polarized over Brexit  just for one illustration, witness the death threats reported by members of Parliament who came out against withdrawing. In the minds of its supporters, the narrow vote in favor of Brexit in 2016 locks Britain into the split, regardless of the mounting evidence about how difficult and damaging it would be.

In short, an exercise in direct democracy has stymied the mother of all Parliaments. The events of the last few days have challenged the legitimacy of all the leaders involved; Mays position in particular may not be saved even if she somehow manages to persuade Parliament in the coming days to approve the Brexit terms she negotiated with the EU. That would clearly be a better outcome than a no-deal Brexit, but perhaps the best hope now is that the EU grants Britain a very long stay of its own economic execution.

 Los Angeles Times
Back in 1991, a poll commissioned by the American Bar Association revealed that only 33 percent of Americans could successfully identify the Bill of Rights, which are the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In light of the shocking historical and political illiteracy now found in most Americans, such a poll conducted today would surely yield even more depressing results. Id be astounded if more than a handful of Americans are familiar with the Second Bill of Rights.

Sometimes referred to as the Economic Bill of Rights, the Second Bill of Rights can be found in President Franklin D. Roosevelts State of the Union address, which he delivered to congress on January 11, 1944. It was a grim time in our nations history. We had been at war with the Axis powers since late 1941 and victory was by no means certain. D-Day, when the Allies established a western front, was still six months away and the atomic bomb had not yet been developed.

FDR came to the presidency in 1933 during the depths of the Great Depression. The New Deal, his bold course to lift our nation from the economic disaster that had paralyzed it, gave hope to Americans. Government programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration provided jobs for millions of young Americans. The enactment of Social Security ensured that elderly Americans would no longer be forced to live in poverty.

Roosevelt noted in his speech that while the American standard of living in 1944 was higher than ever before known, we cannot be contentif some fraction of our people are still ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and insecure. In other words, the Republican philosophy of Ive-Got-Mine-Screw-You should be morally unacceptable to Americans who possesses a conscience.

We have come to a clear realization.that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence, FDR said. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. Quite true. Hitler rose to power by exploiting issues such as unemployment and economic insecurity. Trump won the presidency in part by promising to put unemployed steel workers and coal miners back to work.

Our Second Bill of Rights, Roosevelt said, must include The right to a useful and renumerative job that would pay enough money to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. Too many Americans in 2019 must work multiple minimum-wage jobs just to eat and avoid eviction from rat-trap dwellings.

And speaking of inadequate housing, the right of every family to a decent home is also included in the Second Bill of Rights. When I worked for Habit for Humanity back in the 1990s, I told the public that we regarded decent, affordable housing as a basic human right. I still very much believe that.

Roosevelt believed that Americans should have the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. Since the 1960s, Medicare has ensured that senior citizens have access to medical care. Obamacare represented a big step in the right direction, but many now believe that its time to extend Medicare to all Americans.

The Second Bill of Rights includes the right to a good education. No one should graduate from college with a mountain of debt that takes decades to pay off. Is free college the answer? Joe Biden said that we should make the same commitment to a college education today that we made to a high school education 100 years ago.

Roosevelt believed that Americas own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. Contrary to Trumps claim, America has never ceased being great. It will be even greater if we implement the Second Bill of Rights.

John J. Dunphys latest book, Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials, includes interviews with veterans of the U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group, who apprehended and prosecuted Nazi war criminals after World War II.
The Accountant serves as the primary point ofcontact and accounting specialist for all accounting for a budget comprisingprogram funds, Operating Expenses (OE), Trust Funds and Inspector General (OIG)funds. The incumbent reports directly to the Chief Accountant, and serves asthe principal expert for all program, trust funds, IG and OE budgeting,accounting, financial analysis, and reporting functions for USAID/Uganda.Maintains all levels of financial activity for USAID/Uganda through the accountingsystem, Phoenix, such as Mission budget allowances, program and operatingexpense accounting records, accrued expenditure records, disbursement andadvance controls, determining the legality and validity of all potentialobligations in accordance with 5 USC Section 1311 and taking into accountGeneral Accounting Office and USAID funding source policies. Pre-audits andposts financial transactions from a wide variety of documents, such ascontracts and grants, purchase orders, travel authorizations, miscellaneousobligating documents, SF1221 disbursing office reports of disbursements, andinter-agency payment and collection (IPAC) reports. The incumbent providesprofessional advice to USAID/Uganda Mission staff on USAID accounting andfinancial management regulations. The incumbent provides expert advice onfinancial matters relating to project and OE accounting, analysis and financialreporting (both written and oral presentations).
Organization: Enabel Enabel

Duty Station: Uganda

Salary Package: UGX 5,700,000 and UGX 6,500,000

Reports to:

National Technical Assistant National Technical Assistant

About US:



development agency, formerly BTC), together with different Government

Ministries, are implementing the bilateral co-operation between Uganda &

Belgium. Enabel (Belgiandevelopment agency, formerly BTC), together with different GovernmentMinistries, are implementing the bilateral co-operation between Uganda &Belgium.

About the Project:

ENABEL, Belgian

development agency, together with the United States Agency for International Development (USAlD),

is implementing a new project in the Acholi sub region with details below. The

Project assists Ugandan authorities and civil society stakeholders to roll out

the National Result Based Financing (RBF) Policy in the Acholi Sub-region of

Uganda. The execution of the Project is planned to last 4 years with 3 years of

operational implementation of the core RBF mechanism and will work in synergy

with other implementers in the same region. The Objective of the Project is,

To reinforce the health systems in the Acholi sub region in order to provide

better health, financial protection and greater equity to the most vulnerable

populations.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:



(40%) Project Management(40%)



discussion at the Project Steering Committee meetings, to facilitate

discussions of important issues and evidencebased decision-making; Through the National Technical Assistant, give input to points ofdiscussion at the Project Steering Committee meetings, to facilitatediscussions of important issues and evidencebased decision-making;



and quarterly regional working plans: Support the National Technical Assistant in implementation of annualand quarterly regional working plans:



implementation of grant agreements of Enabel with District Health Offices

and Health facilities; Support the National Technical Assistant in supervisingimplementation of grant agreements of Enabel with District Health Officesand Health facilities;



facilities, based on rotation. Support planning and implementation of verification visits to healthfacilities, based on rotation.



facilities: Support implementation of counterverification visits to Healthfacilities:



District Health Offices and Health facilities; Support implementation of strategies to improve performance ofDistrict Health Offices and Health facilities;



Performance Improvement Plans, referenced to the Business Plans: Assist the Health facilities in development and implementation ofPerformance Improvement Plans, referenced to the Business Plans:



at the level of District Health Offices and health facilities; Support implementation of training and capacity building activitiesat the level of District Health Offices and health facilities;



region. Lead and support other Health system strengthening activities in theregion.



Management (15%) FinancialManagement (15%)



provide inputs for the quarterly and annual regional budget projection; Based on the provisions of the project Technical and Financial File.provide inputs for the quarterly and annual regional budget projection;



for payment Review the RBF documents to be submitted to Kampala project officefor payment



Evaluation (20%) Monitoring andEvaluation (20%)



progress reports; Contribute to elaboration of quarterly and annual regional projectprogress reports;



Framework indicators. which are measured at region allover Contribute to elaboration of annual regional reports on logicalFramework indicators. which are measured at region allover



progress reports; Contribute to elaboration of quarterly and annual regional projectprogress reports;

Contribute to elaboration of annual regional reports on

Logical Framework Indicators, which are measured at regional level:



to the Business Plans; Monitor implementation of Performance Improvement Plans, referencedto the Business Plans;



to the Business Plans; Monitor implementation of Performance Improvement Plans, referencedto the Business Plans;

Support regional RBF performance review meetings:

Support the organization of annual joint annual review meetings.



Visibility (10%) Communication andVisibility (10%)



level; Implement the Enabel Communication and Visibility Plan at regionallevel;



activities at regional level: Ensure utilization of Enabel visibility items in all projectactivities at regional level:



i.e. articles, audio and visual materials. etc. Provide inputs for communication materials developed by the project,i.e. articles, audio and visual materials. etc.



Project Exit Strategy (15%) Development ofProject Exit Strategy (15%)



capitalization of project experience. Document best practices and lessons learned. contribute tocapitalization of project experience.

Contribute to elaboration of project exit strategy:

Contribute to improvement of the National RBF manual.









Qualifications, Skills and Experience:



Degree in Clinical Medicine, Economics, Pharmacy, Health Administration,

Public Health or other Medical related field from a recognized University; The ideal candidate for the Enabel Training Officer job must hold a BachelorsDegree in Clinical Medicine, Economics, Pharmacy, Health Administration,Public Health or other Medical related field from a recognized University;



related field is an advantage; Master Degree in Public Health, Health Economics, or Medical otherrelated field is an advantage;



in the field of Public Health or Health Economics and Health

Administration: A minimum of six (6) years professional experience as a specialistin the field of Public Health or Health Economics and HealthAdministration:



system of Uganda in management or implementation positions At least Two (2) years experience in working with the public healthsystem of Uganda in management or implementation positions

Experience of working in international development is an advantage

Knowledge of Project Cycle Management principles

Knowledge of Logical Framework approach

Proficiency in utilization of MS Office applications



the duty stations Excellent knowledge of English and of a local language, according tothe duty stations

Excellent communication skills



under stressful conditions Ability to work in cooperation with team members independently, andunder stressful conditions



willingness to complete difficult and timeconsuming tasks. Solid work ethics. initiative, result orientation, ability andwillingness to complete difficult and timeconsuming tasks.

How to Apply:



qualified and interested applicants should submit their hard copy applications

including a cover letter, curriculum vitae (CV) of 4 pages maximum and copies

of relevant academic documents with names of at least 3 professional referees;

their emails and telephone contacts to: All suitablyqualified and interested applicants should submit their hard copy applicationsincluding a cover letter, curriculum vitae (CV) of 4 pages maximum and copiesof relevant academic documents with names of at least 3 professional referees;their emails and telephone contacts to:



Officer, Human ResourceOfficer,

Enabel in Uganda



Terrace Plot 1B Lower KololoTerrace



Kampala. P.O. Box 40131,Kampala.

Deadline: 29th March 2019 by 5pm
The People Performance Group (PPG) is a Human Resource (HR) consultancy

firm which is highly committed to the provision of expert advice in

Recruitment, Search and Selection, Team Building, Training, HR systems and

Outsourcing of Staff since 2005.



Our client is a privately owned multinational company providing traceability

and authentication solutions and services. They develop cutting edge technology

to defend the things which matter most to their clients. Our client is a privately owned multinational company providing traceabilityand authentication solutions and services. They develop cutting edge technologyto defend the things which matter most to their clients.
All qualifiedcandidates are invited to submit applications, resume, copies of academiccertificates, testimonials and three referees (who are not relatives) withtheir day time telephone contacts. Only short listed candidates will becontacted. Applications may be hand delivered to JMS Head office Reception Deskor Email to store@jms.co.ug . Pleaseaddress your applications to:
The Programme Management Officer willcoordinate the Country Office planning, budget management, monitoring andevaluation processes. In emergency settings, s/he will act as an advisor to theWHO emergency team on Planning & Performance Management activities. Theincumbent will work closely with the other members of the Country Office teamand the respective technical leads, across the three levels of the Organizationto coordinate strategic and operational planning. S/he ensures that planning isbased on accurate data and that the expected results with the associated inputs(human and financial resources) are clearly defined and tracked.
UNFPA, the UnitedNations Population Fund, is the lead UN agency for delivering a world whereevery pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, and every young personspotential is fulfilled. UNFPA expands the possibilities for women and youngpeople to lead healthy and productive lives. Since UNFPA started working in1969, the number  and rate  of women dying from complications of pregnancy orchildbirth has been halved. Families are smaller and healthier. Young peopleare more connected and empowered than ever before.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation says cash-strapped Jet Airways is now operating only 41 aircrafts, which is just a third of its original fleet of around 120. The company had placed orders to buy 225 Boeing 737 Max planes, but is in immediate needs of funds. It has delayed salaries to employees, not paid lessors and also could not meet the interest payment to debenture holders on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Union Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu had sought an immediate report from the DGCA on the Jets compliance issues.



Directed secretary, ministry of civil aviation to hold an emergency meeting on grounding of flights by Jet Airways. Advance bookings, cancellation, refunds and safety issues, if any, Prabhu said.



DGCA says the situation is dynamic and more aircraft could grounded in the coming weeks.



Promoter Naresh Goyal, who holds 51 per cent stake in Jet Airways, had last week sent an SOS to Etihad CEO Tony Douglas seeking Rs 750 crore in immediate funding. But, Etihads board meeting last week remained inconclusive. Rather, new reports suggest that Etihad, which holds 24 per cent stake, may be even willing to exit from Jet Airways. This could partly be because the Gulf carrier is itself not in a great health; it reported $1.28 billion loss in 2018. It has also reportedly had reservations over some terms in the memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the proposed resolution.



Etihad has so far not commented on the same, since a joint statement was issued along with Jet Airways on February 25. In that statement, the two airlines had said that Jets key stakeholders were working towards a finalisation and subsequent implementation of the bank-led provisional resolution plan (BLPRP) that was approved last month.



However, there has been no breakthrough yet, despite the BLPRP being approved by the board of directors of Jet Airways as well as its shareholders. The BLPRP includes fresh equity infusion, debt restructuring and sale and leaseback of planes. If implemented, the consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India would become largest shareholders in Jet Airways, which has a gross debt of Rs 7,654 crore. The BLPRP estimates a funding gap of Rs 8,500 crore, including proposed repayment of aircraft debt of Rs 1,700 crore.



With Parliamentary elections around the corner, the government would not want to see a large airline crash. Typically, lenders can take defaulting companies to the National Company Law Tribunal or NCLT for bankruptcy resolution. They havent done so in the case of Jet Airways till now. But, each passing day that new funds are not secured from existing or new investors, banks options will only reduce.



Last week, bankers had sounded optimistic that a resolution could be finalised in a week. All eyes will be now on whether an agreement can be reached among the key stakeholders and the lenders this week.


Chinese smart device maker Xiaomi on Tuesday announced its foray into the digital payment segment with launch of MiPay app and expansion of its mobile manufacturing.

"We have introduced our innovative MiPay service for our consumers in India. MiPay serves as the ultimate solution to a variety of consumer payment needs, hence empowering millions of Xiaomi users with access to digital payments. Thus, acting as an equaliser providing a seamless experience across all smartphones," Xiaomi India Chief Operating Officer Muralikrishnan B. said here.

He said there are security concerns around data of individuals, hence, the company stores all MiPay data in India.

The company has received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and has partnered ICICI bank for the service.

Xiaomi announced partnership with electronics manufacturing services firm Flex to expand its mobile production in the country.

"We are proud to announce that we'll be officially unveiling a new manufacturing plant in India in collaboration with Flex. We now have 7 smartphone manufacturing plants across 4 campuses in India with the recent one spanning 1 million square feet in Sriperumbudur," Xiaomi India Managing Director Manu Kumar Jain said.

The company also announced partnership with Navitasys India Pvt Ltd, a TDK group subsidiary to manufacture Mi Power banks locally.

The Chinese firm claims that 99 per cent of its mobile phones sold in India are manufactured locally.

Xiaomi officials said the company is also bringing the component ecosystem to India and 65 per cent of the value of the smartphones is sourced locally.

The company also unveiled a 4G smartphone RedmiGo for Rs 4,499 with Rs 2,200 cashback offer from Jio. The handset will be available from March 22 through its own website, Flipkart and Mi Home stores.
Touched by the compassion of the nurses who tended to her...
Four days after the body of 26-year-old journalist, Chirag Patel, was found from the eastern part of Ahmedabad, the police is yet to solve the mystery behind the death.

Patel, who worked with a local vernacular television channel, left his home on March 15 and his body was found in Kathwada and Nikol area on March 16 afternoon.



His body had burn marks and his phone is missing.



Police said that they were exploring all angles, including that of suicide and homicide.



Sources in the know-how said that the probe moved at a snail's pace until Gujarat Congress in-charge and MP, Rajiv Satav tweeted, I am shocked to hear about the brutal killing of journalist Chirag Patel. This incident is another reminder of bad law and order condition in Gujarat under BJP rule where no one is safe and even members of the press are being targeted and killed.



Akshay Raj, DCP of Zone V in Ahmedabad, said that they had not concluded that it was a suicide. He claimed that the police had also got some points for homicide. He appealed to the media not to spread the message on social media that the police was treating the case as suicide.



There was a flutter among the BJP leaders, who were meeting in Gandhinagar to prepare a list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya expressed grief over Patel's death and said that Minister of State for Home, Pradipsinh Jadeja has issued instructions for swift action.

Independent MLA from Vadgam, Jignesh Mevani, appealed to the national media in Twitter to take up the issue of "murder of Patel".

In a letter to the DGP Shivanand Jha, Gujarat Media Club (GMC), a representative body of media professionals in Gujarat, urged to fast-track the investigation and take required measures to identify and capture the perpetrators of this heinous act and bring them to justice.

In the letter, Darshan Desai, the president of GMC, said that the GMC stands firmly with the family for its fight for justice.


Two persons, including a 24-year-old woman, have been arrested for allegedly killing the editor of a news magazine in Maharashtra's Thane district and then disposing of his body, police said on Monday.

The body of India Unbound editor Nityanand Pandey, with injuries to the head, was found on Sunday near a creek in Khardi village in Kharbao in Bhiwandi in Thane. Pandey (45) had gone missing on March 15 and his kin had filed a missing person complaint with Kashimira police station.

Addressing a press conference on Monday, Thane Superintendent of Police Shivaji Rathod said the killing was the result of alleged sexual harassment faced by the arrested woman at the hands of Pandey over the last two years. "Based on our probe, we have arrested Ankita Mishra, who worked as an assistant to Pandey, and Satish Umashankar Mishra (34), who ran a printing press where the deceased's news magazine was printed," Rathod told reporters.

"Ankita was working with Pandey for three years and she has said she was facing sexual harassment at his hands for two years. She then conspired with Satish to eliminate him," he said.

"On March 15, the two accused took Pandey on the pretext of showing him a row house in Uttan. They spiked his protein drink, which rendered Pandey unconscious. They then strangled him and threw his body in a creek near Khardi village," he said.

A case under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered against the two accused, the SP said.

India Unbound, as per its website, is a monthly news and views magazine mailed directly to over 1 lakh households across the country.
With speculation over the alliance partners scuttling each other in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the coalition partners in Karnataka called for truce and vowed to unitedly fight the BJP. However, the allies will soon appoint an observer from each party in every parliamentary constituency to keep a tab on any "anti-coalition" activities by leaders or workers.

During a joint press meet held in Bengaluru on Tuesday, coordination committee chief Siddaramaiah announced a joint election rally near Mysuru on March 31.

"We will kick-start the joint campaign from Mysuru in the presence of AICC president Rahul Gandhi and leaders of both parties to show unity of coalition," said Siddaramaiah, who addressed the reporters along with former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, KPCC chief Dinesh Gundu Rao, Water Resources Minister D.K. Shivakumar and KPCC working president Eshwar Khandre.

"Both parties will give a stern direction to their respective MPs, MLAs, leaders and cadres. We must bury our differences, and work with a single point agenda of defeating the BJP. We will appoint observers in each parliamentary constituency to monitor the situation. I believe our party workers will abide by our decisions to help us defeat the political opponents, Siddaramaiah said.

Ironically, the joint rally will kick off from Mysuru as the district had turned into a battleground between the JD(S) and the Congress during the last assembly elections, resulting in the humiliating defeat of incumbent chief minister and Kuruba strongman Siddaramaiah in Chamundeshwari. It was alleged that the region saw mobilisation of Vokkaliga community against Siddaramaiah and the Congress party.

While the arch rivals came together to form a coalition after the assembly elections threw up a fractured verdict, the hostility between the two continues in the Old Mysuru region. The alliance was welcomed by only senior leaders and not the local leaders and cadres in many constituencies.

Now, with the seat-sharing agreement splitting the 28 seats between the two allies (Congress- 20 and JD(S)-8), there is growing unrest among the local leaders and potential candidates. The Deve Gowda family senses trouble in their own bastion, Mandya, where Nikhil Kumaraswamy will take on veteran actor Sumalatha Ambareesh. The Congress leaders in Mandya are openly pledging their support to Sumalatha too.

The leaders of both parties went into a huddle and worked out a strategy to unite and send a strong message to the party cadres and rebels, who might jeopardise the coalition's prospects in the polls.

"In the bypolls held in Bellary, Ramanagara, Mandya, Jamkhandi and Shimoga, the coalition lost only Shimoga, but by a small margin of 50,000 votes. Yeddyurappa had won the seat in 2014 by a huge margin. This time, we want to totally defeat BJP, which wants to see a "Congress-mukt" Karnataka, added Siddaramaiah.

Admitting there were minor issues in a few constituencies, Kumaraswamy said they could be easily resolved with talks. "Both Deve Gowda and Siddaramaiah are capable of tackling any challenges. The March 31 rally will be a historical election campaign, which will send out a strong message of unity," said the chief minister, who also stressed upon the need to build confidence among the party workers and people.

Deve Gowda urged Siddaramaiah to ensure spokespersons of both parties give a joint statement on every issue rather than give separate statements, which may lead to misunderstandings.

"We will not wait till March 31 to launch the campaign as it is already too late. In the Old Mysuru region, the first phase of elections will be conducted on April 18. Any differences and difficulties in any constituency will be tackled by me, Siddaramaiah, Kumaraswamy, D.K. Shivakumar and Parameshwara,"said Deve Gowda, adding that the parties would issue a stern warning to the district heads against making any comments that would adversely impact the coalition.

"What will happen in Mysuru and Mandya is being speculated. We will sit and iron out all differences and ensure we win in both seats. You wait and watch the results. We will surely succeed," said Deve Gowda, who hoped that the rally in Mysuru would set new precedence for future coalitions.

"We decided to launch a joint campaign to send out the secular message not only at the national level but to the world. Modi speaks lightly of Mahagathbandhan. But he doesn't realise the BJP is running a coalition government in 15 states," he noted.

The JD(S) patriarch also declared that the coalition would not allow the BJP to reach double digits this polls, saying, "At present, the BJP holds 16 seats, Congress 10 and we hold two. This time, we will not allow the BJP to reach double digits. Our decision is in favour of Rahul Gandhi. We are taking the message to the people that both parties are united and we will highlight the good work done during the Siddaramaiah government and now the coalition government."
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy wants all newly graduating lawyers to have an understanding on Mimamsaan ancient Hindu school of legal thought.

In the next term of BJP 2019-2024 the government must require all newly graduating advocates to pass a question paper on Mimamsa School of legal logic, Swamy tweeted on Tuesday.

Mimamsa is one of the six systems of Indian philosophy and has deeply influenced the formulation of Hindu law. Mimamsa principles were the traditional system of interpretation of legal texts.

The Supreme Court had earlier lamented how the traditional Indian reasoning and logic of legalese have been ignored over the years.

MIP (Mimamsa Principles of Interpretation) which were our traditional principles of interpretation for over 2,500 years, but are unfortunately ignored in our Courts of law today. It is deeply regrettable that in our Courts of law, lawyers quote Maxwell and Craies but nobody refers to the MPI. Most lawyers would not have even heard of their existence, a top court bench of then justices Markandey Katju and A.K. Ganguly had observed in 2009.

The top court had said that most of the Mimamsa principles are rational and scientific and can be utilised in the legal field.

Our ancient thinkers had created a system of interpretation called the Mimamsa Rules of Interpretation, which appears to have been totally suppressed by the British, evidently because they wanted to create an impression that Indians are a race of fools and savages with no worthwhile intellectual achievement to their credit, Justice Katju later said in a Facebook post in 2014.

The original works on Mimamsa are in Sanskrit, however, Justice Katju recommended Prof. Kishori Lal Sarkar's The Mimamsa Rules of Interpretation as a good English introduction.

In his book, Legal and Constitutional History of India, senior advocate and Rajya Sbah MP Rama Jois writes: Leading Smriti writers and commentators of the Smritis fully utilised the fundamental rules of Mimamsa laid down by Jaimini for clarifying and expounding the several complicated provisions of law. Therefore, Mimamsa, though originated in interpreting the rules governing principles of religious acts, came to occupy an important position in the ancient legal system of this country.
Tibetan Buddhist leader and Nobel peace laureate Dalai Lama feels his next reincarnation could be from India. In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in free country, one chosen by Chinese, then nobody will trust, nobody will respect . It's possible, it can happen, he said.

China, which took control of Tibet in 1950, brands the year-old Nobel peace laureate a dangerous separatist. Dalai Lama spoke after Tibetans in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh celebrated the anniversary of him escaping from Lhasa, Tibet in 1959. Dalai Lama fled to India during the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule and has since called for linguistic and cultural autonomy in Tibet. China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lama's successor, as a legacy inherited from China's emperors. "The Chinese government has policy of freedom of religious belief. We have regulation on religious affairs and regulation on the reincarnation system in Tibetan Buddhism. We respect and protect such ways of Tibetan Buddhism," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang.

As per Tibetan traditions, Dalai Lama is reincarnated after his death and the new person is appointed his successor. The tradition is a sacred one for Tibetans. They suspect any Chinese role as a ploy to exert influence on the community. Born in 1935, the current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was just two years old. The Dalai Lama said contact between Tibetans living in their homeland and in exile was increasing, but that no formal meetings have happened between Chinese and his officials since 2010. Whether or not to retain the role of a Dalai Lama should be retained after his death could be discussed during a meeting of Tibetan Buddhists in India later this year, he said.

If the majority of really want to keep this institution, then this institution will remain, he said.

Our strength, our power is based on truth. Chinese power based on gun, the Dalai Lama said. So for short term, gun is much more decisive, but long term truth is more powerful, he said about the Tibet situation.


New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) In a move to aid the real estate sector, the all-powerful GST Council Tuesday approved a transition plan for the implementation of new tax structure for housing projects.

As per the decision taken by the GST Council, the developers of residential projects which are incomplete as on March 31, will have option either to choose the old structure with Input Tax Credit (ITC) or to shift to new 5 per cent and 1 per cent rates without ITC.

In the previous meeting on February 24, the Council slashed tax rates for under-construction flats to 5 per cent from 12 per cent and affordable homes to 1 per cent from 8 per cent, effective April 1.

"GST Council today has approved transition plan for the new rate structure for real estate residential projects...from April 1, builders have to choose either of the options for which they will get time," Revenue Secretary A B Pandey told reporters after the 34th meeting of the GST Council here.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley chaired the meeting with state finance ministers via video conferencing.

On the time-frame for transition, Pandey pointed out that the council has agreed on providing a reasonable time to developers.

The matter would be decided in a next few days in consultation with the states, he said, adding that it could be 15 days or one month.

Pandey further said that the decision will help the builders in clearing inventories.

"This go-ahead by the GST Council brings quite a relief for this sector in handling transition issues in specific," EY India Partner Abhishek Jain said.

For upcoming projects, reduced rates of 5 per cent and 1 per cent will be applicable beginning April 1.

On the next GST Council meeting, the Revenue Secretary said that is unlikely till the election process is over.

He, however, said that if any emergent situation arises then a meeting could be called with the permission of the Election Commission.

On apprehensions being raised on possible price rise due to new tax structure, the secretary said if prices escalate, the National Anti-profiteering Authority will look into it and take an appropriate action.

Deloitte India Partner M S Mani said the pragmatic move to segregate under construction projects from new projects would provide relief to builders who were worried about the loss of input tax credit.

"This would also enable them to price the loss of input tax credits in the new projects. Reversal of Input tax credit on a proportionate basis would entail significant computational issues for builders as each project would be in various stages of construction and have differing pre and post completion sale patterns," Mani said. PTI DP MKJ
Mumbai/New Delhi Mar 19 (PTI) In more trouble for cash-strapped Jet Airways, an umbrella body of its domestic pilots Tuesday threatened to stop flying from April 1 if their dues are not paid by March-end even as aviation regulator DGCA said only 41 aircraft of the airline were in operation.

As situation at the beleaguered airline deteriorated, Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu directed senior officials of his ministry to continuously monitor developments relating to the crisis.

In a related development, the Jet Airways' Aircraft Maintenance Engineers' Union wrote to the DGCA on Tuesday morning saying they were not paid salaries for last three months and that their "adverse psychological" condition has put flight safety at risk.

However, they issued a clarification hours later saying Jet Airways aircraft are safe to fly and are being maintained at highest levels of safety standards.

Terming the situation at the airline "dynamic", the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said only 41 aircraft of the Jet Airways were currently available for operation and there may be "further attrition" of flights "in coming weeks",

As per the website of Jet Airways, it has a fleet of 119 aircraft in total. For the past few weeks, passengers have been venting their ire on social media as the airline's flight cancellations have increased.

A senior official of DGCA said the regulator is reviewing the hike in airfare on specific routes across the country and it has advised airlines to increase flights so that the fares remain in check.

The DGCA held a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the upward spiral in airfares owing to Jet continuing to ground more aircraft while cancelling a significant number of its flights.

In a statement, Prabhu's office said he has also issued direction for safeguarding the public interest and giving "paramount importance" to ensure safety as well as convenience of passengers.

In Mumbai, National Aviators Guild, a body representing around 1,000 domestic pilots of the airline, in its annual meeting warned the management of the Jet Airways that they will stop flying from April 1 if their pending salaries are not paid by end of this month.

They also demanded implementation of the "resolution plan" to resolve financial issues of the airline. The plan was announced few weeks ago.

"If there is no proper clarity on the resolution

process and salary payments, by March 31, we will stop flying from April 1," the guild said in a statement.

The pilots and other senior staff of the airline have not been getting their full salaries since December.

After the DGCA took stock of the situation at Jet Airways, its spokesperson said the regulator reviewed the performance of the airline on operational, airworthiness and passenger facilitation.

"Current availability of aircraft in the fleet for operation is 41 and accordingly scheduled for 603 domestic flights and 382 international flights has been drawn. However, it is a dynamic situation and there may be further attrition in coming weeks," he said.

The spokesperson added that the DGCA has instructed the airline to comply with "the relevant provisions of the applicable CARs (Civil Aviation Requirements) for facilitation of passengers regarding timely communication, compensation, refunds and providing alternate flights wherever applicable".

The DGCA spokesperson said the aviation watchdog is ensuring that all aircraft in the fleet "whether in operation or on ground" are maintained in accordance with Approved Maintenance Programme (AMP).

"The operator was also directed to ensure that no pilots/cabin crew/AMEs be rostered on duty who had reported stress of any nature. Additionally, all such staff should be current with all mandatory training requirements.

"The DGCA is continuously monitoring overall situation and based on the same, will take appropriate steps by the end of the month, if needed," the spokesperson added.

Jet Airways has a debt of over Rs 8,200 crore and needs to make repayments of up to Rs 1,700 crore by the end of March.

On March 8, Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyal wrote to Etihad Airways Group CEO Tony Douglas seeking an urgent funding of Rs 750 crore and also warned that any delay in fund infusion might result in its grounding of the carrier. Ethihad Group has stakes in Jet Airways. PTI IAS/DSP MPB

MPB
London, Mar 19 (AFP) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will write to EU President Donald Tusk with a plan for delaying Brexit beyond March 29, her spokesman said Tuesday, admitting the parliamentary deadlock had reached crisis levels.

The letter will be sent before May heads to a Brussels summit on Thursday, where she has already promised to seek what could be a lengthy postponement of Britain's exit from the European Union.

May had hoped to persuade MPs before then to back the divorce agreement she has struck with the EU, but her plan to hold a fresh vote was dramatically blocked by the speaker of the House of Commons.

Exasperated European leaders are now demanding London tell them clearly what it wants, warning that the risk still remains that Britain could crash out of the bloc in 10 days, ending its 46-year membership without formal arrangements.

Michel Barnier, the European Union's chief negotiator, warned on Tuesday that any extension of the Brexit talks would have "political and economic costs" for the remaining 27 EU states.

"A long extension... should be linked to something new, a new element or new political process," Barnier told reporters, urging May to secure the backing of the British parliament for any request.

"How can we ensure that, at the end of a possible extension, we are not back in the same situation as today?" he asked.

May's letter to Tusk would come by Wednesday, her spokesman said, as reports spoke of her seeking a 12-month delay.

The British premier is struggling to keep control of the Brexit process after MPs last week decisively rejected her divorce deal for a second time.

She has reluctantly accepted that Brexit must be postponed, amid fears of an economic shock if Britain ends its 46-year membership of the EU with no new arrangements in place.

But she said that if MPs backed her deal this week, it might only be a short delay to ratify the text.

This plan was scuppered on Monday when Speaker John Bercow delivered a surprise ruling that she could not keep bringing her deal back to MPs without changes.

May had previously warned that without a deal, the EU might impose a lengthy delay that could mean Britain having to hold European Parliament elections. AFP

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Pune, Maharashtra, India(NewsVoir)



 The Pune CoE is the Second in India after Hyderabad; Plans to Increase Headcount by 70% by 2020



 Columbus is the Largest Independent Partner to Infor M3 worldwide, a global ERP solution major for the manufacturing industry







Columbus, the leading digital business services provider in the Nordic region, today announced the opening of its new Center of Excellence (CoE) in Pune. The Pune CoE will complement the Global Development Center in Hyderabad, which currently employs 300+ employees. Columbus plans to grow its headcount by more than 70 percent, to nearly 500 by 2020, across the two centers in India.







Sara Larsson, General Manager of The Swedish Chamber of Commerce India (SCCI), congratulated Columbus on this achievement. "Congratulations to the Columbus team on the opening of their new Center of Excellence in Pune. I'm excited about their growth plans that directly align with our mission to support Swedish companies to drive long-term, sustainable business in India. Columbus is a great addition and will further strengthen the identity of the Swedish business community in India."







The Pune CoE will act as a backbone to the company's Infor M3 partner practice, providing consulting and transformative solutions to some of the world's leading manufacturing companies. Headquartered in New York, Infor M3 is a global leader in business cloud software that helps companies achieve business-wide digital transformation. Columbus is the largest independent partner to Infor M3 worldwide, with 350 consultants globally.







"Our new center of excellence in Pune further fortifies our position as a global leader in the Infor M3 and Digital manufacturing space. It is also a testament to our confidence in India as a key growth driver for us. The Pune CoE will further accelerate our growth complementing our existing setup at the Global Development Center (GDC) in Hyderabad," said Kapil Mishra, Managing Director, Columbus India. The market opportunity in India has never been greater. Our compelling portfolio of business applications, solutions and services are ideally poised to help companies in their digital transformation journey, added Kapil.







With more than 350 consultants and hundreds of global implementations - the Infor M3 practice, for long, has been a source of pride within the company. We're excited to be growing our team in India, which is going to be a huge competitive edge for our customers," said Lars Steen, Global Head, Infor M3 Practice.







He added, "Infor M3 is all about the community. We're fully invested in building and fostering a huge user community and ecosystem in India, over the next few years."







At Columbus, our vision is to deliver a compelling customer experience through leading edge digital solutions using a people first approach to attract and nurture the best talent. Pune has a vibrant Infor M3 ecosystem which we plan to tap into to grow our consulting practice, said Samaresh Mahapatra, Director HR & Talent Acquisition at Columbus.







About Columbus



Columbus is a global IT services and consulting corporation with more than 2,000 employees serving our customers worldwide. We bring digital transformation into your business and position you to thrive far into the future.







We are experts in designing, developing, implementing, upgrading and maintaining digital business applications that help your business succeed in the digital transformation. Our consultants have experience in developing businesses in many different industries all over the world.







We offer a comprehensive solution portfolio with deep industry knowledge, extensive technology expertise and profound customer insight. We have proven this through 29 years of experience serving more than 5,000 customers worldwide.







To know more, please visit: www.columbusglobal.com.



Image: Columbus Leadership at Pune Office Launch - (L- R) Lars Steen, Global Head, Infor M3 Practice, Kapil Mishra, Managing Director, Columbus India, Samaresh Mahapatra, Director, HR & Talent Acquisition PWR

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- New funding to start mass production of satellites



- Combined with its successful first launch of satellites, OneWeb gains clear first mover advantage



- New fundraising demonstrates strong investor support for OneWeb



LONDON, March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- OneWeb, a global communications company with a mission to bring connectivity to everyone, everywhere, announces it has secured its largest fundraising round to date with the successful raise of $1.25 billion in new capital. This brings the total funds raised to $3.4 billion. This round was led by SoftBank Group Corp., Grupo Salinas, Qualcomm Technologies Inc., and the Government of Rwanda.



The new funds, following the successful first launch of OneWeb's satellites, enable the company to accelerate the development of the first truly global communications network by 2021. OneWeb's system will deliver high speed, low latency, seamless broadband access, everywhere on Earth.



"This latest funding round, our largest to date, makes OneWeb's service inevitable and is a vote of confidence from our core investor base in our business model and the OneWeb value proposition," said Adrian Steckel, CEO of OneWeb. "With the recent successful launch of our first six satellites, near-completion of our innovative satellite manufacturing facility with our partner Airbus, progress towards fully securing our ITU priority spectrum position, and the signing of our first customer contracts, OneWeb is moving from the planning and development stage to deployment of our full constellation. Our success is made possible thanks to the backing of our investors and the cooperation of our world class commercial partners including Arianespace, Airbus, Qualcomm Technologies Inc., Virgin, and Hughes."



OneWeb's satellites, produced through its joint venture with Airbus doing business as "OneWeb Satellites", will ramp-up production this spring at its new, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Exploration Park, Florida. Following the company's successful launch of satellites on February 27th, OneWeb will embark on the largest satellite launch campaign in history. Starting in Q4, OneWeb will begin monthly launches of more than 30 satellites at a time, creating an initial constellation of 650 satellites to enable full global coverage. After this first phase, OneWeb will add more satellites to its constellation to meet growing demands.



On the additional investment, Marcelo Claure, COO of SoftBank Group Corp. and CEO of SoftBank Group International said: "OneWeb has extended its first-mover advantage and is on track to become the world's largest and first truly global communications network. At SoftBank, our aim is to invest in transformative companies at the leading edge of technology disruption. OneWeb's potential is undeniable as the growth in data from 5G, IoT, autonomous driving and other new technologies drives demand for capacity above and beyond the limits of the existing infrastructure."



OneWeb's priority rights to a large block of globally harmonized spectrum and its Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation design will enable a unique combination of high speed, low latency, and truly global service. OneWeb's network will go beyond the limits of existing infrastructure, enabling connectivity for rural communities and schools as well as for business and industries that demand seamless global connectivity solutions such as Aviation, Maritime, Backhaul, and Land Mobility. OneWeb's customers will be able to develop and support a wide range of emerging applications that require real-time communication and collaboration.



"I have worked for over 20 years to bring network access to people throughout Mexico and Latin America and have seen first-hand the power of connectivity to change and improve lives. OneWeb will have the ability to reach places that have previously been impossible to connect. We are proud to be supporting Adrian and the entire OneWeb team and are looking forward to creating new opportunities for people everywhere," said Ricardo Salinas, Founder and Chairman of Grupo Salinas.



Greg Wyler, Chairman and Founder of OneWeb, added "We are committed to bridging the digital divide, and this funding helps ensure our globally shared dream will soon become a reality. We look forward to continuing our work with the many supportive and forward-looking Governments, ISP's, and Telecom Operators to help them broaden the reach of connectivity to connect people everywhere."



OneWeb's network will provide services to billions and will support the emerging digital economy and advanced mobile application needs. To support the deployment of the system, OneWeb relies on high-tech satellite operation centers in both Virginia and in London, and has installed ground stations in Italy, Norway, and Canada, with more on the way. A global company, OneWeb now has offices in Virginia, London, Florida, California, and has recruited top talent around the world to execute the rollout of its system.



For more information please visit www.oneweb.world or follow us on Twitter & Instagram.



About OneWeb



OneWeb's mission is to enable Internet access for everyone, everywhere. OneWeb is building a communications network with a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites that will provide connectivity to people around the world. OneWeb is creating business solutions for Broadband, Government and Cellular Backhaul. Its high speed, low latency, network will offer game-changing Mobility solutions to industries that rely on global connectivity, such as Aviation, Maritime, Automotive, Trains and more. http://www.oneweb.world PWR

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Tappy Tech provides the 'Missing Element' -- a unique card provisioning solution for the timepiece and jewellery market that will facilitate the mass adoption of wearable payments.



HONG KONG, March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Tappy Technologies is proud to introduce its one-of-a-kind portable card provisioning solution - Universal Passive Provisioning Unit - at Money20/20 Asia in Singapore. This technology allows consumers to input their credit or debit card information into their traditional watch and jewellery, providing them with the convenience in making purchases while remaining stylish.











Tappy Technologies' one-of-a-kind portable card provisioning solution - Universal Passive Provisioning Unit (UPPU)

Tappy Technologies (Tappy Tech or "Tappy") has been making the headlines in recent years by developing a payment solution in the form of a battery-less chip that can be embedded into any watch or jewellery. This technology is highly secure as users must verify their identity with their fingerprint before being able to make purchases.



Speaking to the world's leading technology experts at the Mobile World Congress last month, Tappy Tech's CEO Wayne Leung explained that there are two main factors in attracting consumers into purchasing a watch -- one being the prestigious design and second, the functionality.



With this in mind, Tappy is aiming to merge the US$20 billion traditional watch industry with its technology to further popularize wearable payments.



"If we want to see mass adoption of payment enabled wearables then we must look beyond traditional methods of card personalization. Tappy aims to scale the wearable payment business globally by empowering the end users themselves to seamlessly, 'On The Go' transfer their existing card information securely into their favourite branded watch, jewellery or accessory," said Leung.



Tappy has already established a complete Wearable Payment Ecosystem which includes companies from the traditional watch, jewellery, major card schemes and the banking industries. Tappy offers its certified Wallet Application and Platform to its brand partners, enabling them to turn their products into cutting-edge mobile payment carriers and allowing them to tap into this thriving mobile payment market.



About Tappy Technologies



Tappy Technologies is a world-leading wearable payment integrator connected to banking partners and card networks with operations that span across North America, APAC and EMEA. Tappy's white labelled digital offerings and hardware solutions are fully trusted and certified by industry standards including PCI and EMVCo.





Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/837087/TappyTechnologiesMWC.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/837088/TappyUniversalPassiveProvisioningUnit.jpg PWR

PWR
(Eds: Disclaimer: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with Business Wire India. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.)

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India  Business Wire India



o Recognized by League of American Communications Professionals (LACP), for the 3rd consecutive year

o Ranked 6th Best among 6,000 participating companies around the world

o Rated as the Best annual report from India

o Platinum Award in Conglomerates category

o Gold Award in Diversified Financials category



Piramal Enterprises (PEL) (PEL, NSE: PEL, BSE: 500302) has been ranked 1st in India and 6th globally, for its FY2018 Annual Report by the League of American Communications Professionals (LACP), at the Vision Awards Annual Report Competition 2017-18.



Additionally, PEL has also won the Platinum Award (Rank 1st globally) in Conglomerates category and the Gold Award (Rank 2nd globally) in Financials category globally. PELs ranking has consistently improved over the last 3 years.



PELs FY2018 Annual Report, titled 30 Years of Responsible Entrepreneurship, presented the companys journey over the last three decades. It also demonstrated the Companys ability to constantly transform itself in the ever-changing external environment, while remaining focused on its core values of knowledge, action care and impact, thereby delivering sustained long-term value for all its stakeholders.



Some of the other global companies in the Top-100 rankings were: Hyundai Elevator (rank #5), Cisco Systems, Inc. (rank #19), Deloitte (rank #21), Panasonic Corp. (rank #34), Emerson (rank #66), BMW Group (rank #67), Daimler AG (rank #68), Coca-Cola FEMSA (rank #69), Citigroup (rank #75) and Intel (rank #98).



Mr. Vijay Shah, Executive Director, Piramal Enterprises Limited, said, We are delighted that Piramal Enterprises Limiteds Annual Report has once again been recognised by LACP at the Vision Awards, alongside some of the top global companies. 1st rank in India and 6th rank globally, clearly demonstrates our commitment to excellence in reporting and is a testament to our continued efforts at improving the quality and transparency of our disclosures, that facilitate informed decision making by our stakeholders.



The League of American Communications Professionals LLC (LACP) is an association established in 2001 to create a forum within the public relations industry, that facilitates discussion of best-in-class global practices within the profession while recognising those that demonstrate exemplary communication capabilities.



The Vision Awards benchmark and recognise best practices in international financial reporting, and is one the largest annual report competitions in the world. In 2017-18, these Awards drew an unprecedented number of submissions from companies across a broad range of industries and organisation sizes. Over 6,000 entries were received this year, that included several Fortune 500 companies, from more than 24 countries.



About Piramal Enterprises Ltd



Piramal Enterprises Limited (PEL) is one of Indias large diversified companies, with a presence in Financial Services, Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Insights & Analytics. PELs consolidated revenues were over US$1.6 billion in FY2018, with ~46% of revenues generated from outside India.



In Financial Services, Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Ltd is registered as a housing finance company with National Housing Bank (NHB) and engaged in various financial services businesses. It provides both wholesale and retail funding opportunities across sectors. In real estate, the platform provides housing finance and other financing solutions across the entire capital stack ranging from early-stage private equity, structured debt, senior secured debt, construction finance, and flexi lease rental discounting. The wholesale business in non-real estate sector includes separate verticals - Corporate Finance Group (CFG) and Emerging Corporate Lending (ECL). CFG provides customized funding solutions to companies across sectors such as infrastructure, renewable energy, roads, industrials, auto components etc. while ECL focuses on lending towards Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). PCHFL through its group companies provides customized strategies for institutional and retail investors such as Mumbai Redevelopment Fund and Apartment Fund focused (through Piramal Fund Management) and strategic partnerships with leading global pension funds such as CPPIB, APG and Ivanhoe Cambridge. The division has also launched a Distressed Asset Investing platform with Bain Capital Credit - IndiaRF that will invest in equity and/or debt in assets across sectors (other than real estate) to drive restructuring with active participation in turnaround. PEL also has long term equity investments worth ~US$1 billion in Shriram Group, a leading financial conglomerate in India.



In Pharma, through an end-to-end manufacturing capabilities across 13 global facilities and a large global distribution network to over 100 countries, PEL sells a portfolio of niche differentiated Pharma products and provides an entire pool of Pharma services (including in the areas of injectable, HPAPI etc.). The Company is also strengthening its presence in the Consumer Product segment in India.



PELs Healthcare Insights & Analytics business is the premier provider of healthcare analytics, data & insight products and services to the worlds leading pharma, biotech and medical technology companies and enables them to take informed business decisions.



PEL is listed on the BSE Limited and the National Stock Exchange of India Limited in India. PWR

PWR
Mumbai, Mar 19 (PTI) Alia Bhatt is set to star as female lead opposite Salman Khan in filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali's next, which is titled, "Inshallah", the makers announced Tuesday.

The film be co-produced by Khan and Bhansali's production banners.

Bhansali is re-teaming with Khan after two decades as a lead in the film, which is described as a "love story".

Salman took to Twitter to share the news.

"It's been 20 years but I am glad Sanjay and I are finally back in his next film, 'Inshallah'. Looking forward to work with Alia and inshallah we will all be blessed on this journey. #Inshallah #SLB @aliaa08 @bhansaliproduc @SKFilmsOfficial," the actor wrote.

Bhansali Productions also confirmed the announcement.

"Finally all speculations and wait end as 2019 brings together #SLB, @BeingSalmanKhan and @aliaa08 in his next film, #Inshallah. Wishing that this entire journey be filled with a lot of love and Inshallah, the team is blessed with hope and faith @SKFilmsOfficial @prerna982," the tweet from their official handle read.

The film also marks Bhatt's first collaboration with both Khan and Bhansali.

She said working with the actor-director duo is a dream come true for her.

"I was nine when I first walked into Sanjay Leela Bhansali's office, all nervous and hoping and praying that I would be in his next film. It's been a long wait.

"Dream with your eyes wide open they say and I did. Sanjay Sir and Salman Khan are magical together and I can't wait to join them on this beautiful journey called 'Inshallah'#SLB @BeingSalmanKhan @bhansaliproduc @SKFilmsOfficial @prerna982," Bhatt tweeted.

The development came almost a month after Prerna Singh, CEO of Bhansali Productions, revealed Khan will star in Bhansali's next venture.

The filmmaker made his directorial debut with 1996's "Khamoshi - The Musical", which starred Khan. The actor went on to feature in the director-producer's classic "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" in 1999 opposite Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Ajay Devgn.

Khan also made a cameo in Bhansali's "Saawariya", which launched Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor. PTI RDS

RDS
Islamabad, Mar 19 (PTI) Pakistans Supreme Court Tuesday postponed the verdict of jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's application seeking bail on medical grounds till March 26, according to media reports.

Sharif filed an appeal on March 6 against a judgment by the Islamabad High Court (IHC) which on February 25 rejected his bail application on medical grounds in the Al-Azizia steel mills case.

During the hearing on Tuesday, a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa issued a notice to National Accountability Bureau to submit reply in the matter in the next hearing fixed for March 26.

The apex court will announce the judgment on the same day, the Express Tribune reported.

Defence counsel Khawaja Haris presented arguments in the case and cited medical reports. He claimed that the three-time premier is taking 17 different medications.

We know that Nawaz receives medical care in London. We want to know whether his health deteriorated in prison, the paper quoted the chief justice questioning the counsel during the hearing of the petition.

The chief justice further remarked that the reports from London were not provided to the doctors in Pakistan, and that the court would examine the medical reports of tests conducted at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad, the Geo News reported.

Sharif, 69, is serving a seven-year imprisonment in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills corruption case at the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore since December 2018.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo has suffered four angina attacks last week, according to his daughter Maryam Nawaz .

The Sharif family is complaining that the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is not providing health facilities to the former premier who has serious health complications.

The bench headed by Chief Justice Khosa also comprises of Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and Justice Yahya Afridi will take up the petition.

The former premier had twice submitted requests to the apex court for an early hearing of his application.

In January, he filed application in the IHC for bail on medical reasons as he developed heart-related medical complications in jail but it was dismissed.

Three corruption cases - Avenfield properties, Flagship investment and Al-Azizia steel mills - were registered against the Sharif family by the anti-graft body in 2017 following a judgment by the Supreme Court that disqualified Sharif in the Panama Papers case in 2017.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Avenfiled corruption case in July 2018 which was related to his properties in London. Later he was given bail in September.

In December, the accountability court convicted him in the Al-Azizia graft case but acquitted him in the Flagship corruption case. PTI SH RUP RUP
Christchurch, Mar 19 (AFP) The bodies of six of the Christchurch massacre victims have been released to their families, New Zealand police said Tuesday, but they warned only a fraction of the 50 people killed had been fully identified, with the delay angering anguished relatives.

Muslims whose loved ones were gunned down by an Australian white supremacist at two mosques last Friday have had their grief compounded by the failure of the authorities to return bodies to families in time for a speedy burial, as required under Islamic custom.

Police in Christchurch said only 12 of the 50 victims had been identified, and appeared to warn next of kin to brace for further delays.

"We are doing all we can to undertake this work as quickly as possible and return the victims to their loved ones," a police statement said.

"While identification may seem straightforward the reality is much more complex, particularly in a situation like this." Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed on Tuesday that gunman Brenton Tarrant would face the "full force of the law" as she opened a sombre session of parliament with an evocative "as-salaam alaikum" message of peace to Muslims.

But the black-clad Ardern pledged to grieving Kiwis that she would deprive the 28-year-old gunman of the publicity he craved by never uttering his name.

"That is why you will never hear me mention his name. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless," she told assembled lawmakers.

"I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them." The 38-year-old leader closed by noting that Friday marks a week since the attack, and urged New Zealanders to grieve along with them.

"Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh," she said.

But the forensic delays are casting a cloud over New Zealand's handling of the horrific ordeal.

Dozens of relatives of the deceased have already begun arriving from around the world ahead of expected funerals which have already been delayed far beyond the 24 hours after death usually observed under Islam.

Peter Elms of New Zealand's immigration department said 65 visas had been granted for overseas family members so far.

Christchurch police said post-mortems had been completed on all 50 victims.

But only 12 had been "identified to the satisfaction of the coroner" nearly a week after the rampage.

Javed Dadabhai, who travelled from Auckland to help bury his cousin, said families and volunteers had been warned of a slow process.

"The majority of people still have not had the opportunity to see their family members," he told AFP.

Mohamed Safi, 23, whose father Matiullah Safi died in Al Noor mosque, pleaded for officials to let him identify his father and set a date for his burial.

"There's nothing they are offering," Safi, an Afghan refugee, said outside a family support centre.

"They are just saying they are doing their procedures, they are doing their process. But what process? Why do I not know what you are going through to identify the body... Why am I not contacted as an immediate family member?" In a rambling manifesto, the gunman had said he was motivated partly by a desire to stoke a violent response from Muslims and a religious war between Islam and the West.

The Islamic State group, in a message on social media, appeared to encourage retaliatory attacks.

"The scenes of killing in the two mosques... incite members of the caliphate living there to avenge their religion and the children of the umma (Muslims) who were are being slaughtered in all corners of the earth with the sponsorship and blessing of the Crusader countries," it said.

Following the mass shooting, Ardern has promised to reform New Zealand laws that allowed the gunman to legally purchase weapons used in the attack.

New Zealanders have already begun answering government appeals to hand in their weapons, including John Hart, a farmer in the North Island district of Masterton.

Hart said it was an easy decision for him to hand in his semi-automatic and tweeted: "on the farm they are a useful tool in some circumstances, but my convenience doesn't outweigh the risk of misuse. We don't need these in our country."

The tweet drew a barrage of derogatory messages to his Facebook account -- most apparently from the US, where the pro-gun lobby is powerful.

Ardern has said details of the proposed reform will be announced by next week, but she indicated they could include gun buybacks and a ban on some semi-automatic rifles. (AFP)

MRJ

MRJ
New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) Following are the top foreign stories at 1700 hours:



FGN9 UK-SPEAKER-BREXIT-LD VOTE

UK Speaker rules out 3rd vote on PM May's Brexit deal

London: In a fresh blow to embattled Prime Minister Theresa May on Brexit, House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, in a surprise move, disallowed any attempt to hold a third vote on her withdrawal deal with the EU which has already been rejected by MPs twice. By Aditi Khanna



FGN10 CHINA-DALAILAMA

China says Dalai Lama's successor has to be approved by it

Beijing: China Tuesday rejected the Dalai Lama's assertions that his successor could be from India and a nominee by Beijing would not be respected, saying the next spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has to be approved by the Communist government. By K J M Varma



FGN5 UN-ABUSE-REPORT

UN received 259 allegations of sexual exploitation, abuse in 2018: report

United Nations: The UN received a total of 259 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by the staff working in its agencies and their partner organisations in 2018, an increase of more than a hundred in such incidents from the previous year, according to a report presented by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. By Yoshita Singh



FGN11 NZ-ATTACK-LD BODIES

NZ returns first shooting dead after delay angers families

Christchurch:The bodies of six of the Christchurch massacre victims have been released to their families, New Zealand police said Tuesday, but they warned only a fraction of the 50 people killed had been fully identified, with the delay angering anguished relatives. (AFP)



FGN6 NZ-PM-2NDLD ATTACK

NZ PM Ardern vows mosque killer will face 'full force of law'

Christchurch: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed Tuesday never to utter the name of the twin-mosque gunman as she opened a sombre session of parliament with an evocative "as-salaam alaikum" message of peace to Muslims. (AFP)



FGN13 NETHERLANDS-ATTACK-LETTER

Letter in Dutch suspect's getaway car suggests terror motive: prosecutors

Utrecht:Dutch prosecutors and police said they were "seriously" investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack because of evidence including a letter found in the main suspect's getaway car. (AFP)



FGN12 US-TEMPLETON-PRIZE

Physicist Marcelo Gleiser: 'Science does not kill God'

Washington: The annual Templeton Prize, which recognises outstanding contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension," was awarded Tuesday to Brazilian Marcelo Gleiser - a theoretical physicist dedicated to demonstrating science and religion are not enemies. (AFP)

RUP
Utrecht, Mar 19 (AFP) Dutch prosecutors and police said they were "seriously" investigating a terrorist motive for the Utrecht tram attack because of evidence including a letter found in the main suspect's getaway car.

"So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts," they said in a joint statement.

Turkish-born main suspect Gokmen Tanis, 37, and two unnamed men from Utrecht aged 23 and 27 remain in custody. Police found a red Renault Clio after Monday's attack which they said he had used to flee.

The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, which is near Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said.

"So far our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims," police and prosecutors added.

Dutch and Turkish media reports had previously reported that a family dispute may have been the motive for the shooting.

However the police and prosecutors said that "other motives are not excluded, they are also being investigated." Armed police arrested Tanis in Utrecht after a huge manhunt on Monday during which police released his picture on social media.

"A firearm was found during his arrest," the statement added. (AFP) AMS

AMS
New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) Following are the top foreign stories at 2000 hours:



FGN18 CHINA-LD QURESHI

Indo-Pak tensions dominates first strategic dialogue between China, Pak

Beijing: The Indo-Pak tensions following the Pulwama terror attack became the focal point of the first strategic dialogue between the foreign ministers of Pakistan and China as Beijing urged the global community to take a "fair perspective" of Islamabad's commitment to fight terrorism. By K J M Varma



FGN10 HINA-DALAILAMA

China says Dalai Lama's successor has to be approved by it

Beijing: China Tuesday rejected the Dalai Lama's assertions that his successor could be from India and a nominee by Beijing would not be respected, saying the next spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism has to be approved by the Communist government. By K J M Varma



FGN9 UK-SPEAKER-BREXIT-LD VOTE

UK Speaker rules out 3rd vote on PM May's Brexit deal

London: In a fresh blow to embattled Prime Minister Theresa May on Brexit, House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, in a surprise move, disallowed any attempt to hold a third vote on her withdrawal deal with the EU which has already been rejected by MPs twice. By Aditi Khanna



FGN5 UN-ABUSE-REPORT

UN received 259 allegations of sexual exploitation, abuse in 2018: report

United Nations: The UN received a total of 259 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse committed by the staff working in its agencies and their partner organisations in 2018, an increase of more than a hundred in such incidents from the previous year, according to a report presented by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. By Yoshita Singh



FGN17 PAK-AIRSPACE

Pakistani airspace restrictions keep routes closed, carriers off balance

Karachi: Restrictions over large swathes of Pakistani airspace continued to affect numerous flight routes, officials said Tuesday, weeks after clashes between Pakistan and India brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war.(AFP)

PTI AMS

AMS
Ottawa, Mar 19 (PTI) Indian-origin Jagmeet Singh has created political history in Canada when he made his debut in the House of Commons as the first non white-leader of a major opposition party in the country.

The arrival of the turbaned leader into the house on Monday, cheered by all members, coincided with the induction of a senior woman member into Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus cabinet.

Singh, the leader of the New Democratic Party, placed his hand over his heart as he walked into the Commons before the daily question period.

Singh, 40, was elected in federal by-elections held on February 25.

Singh's first words as an elected lawmaker were about last week's terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand.

"I want to begin by expressing our solidarity with the people of New Zealand who are mourning the attack on Muslim brothers and sisters... in Christchurch," Singh said.

About 50 people were killed last week in the Pacific country's worst-ever mass shooting.

He then launched his first question about housing in Burnaby-South.

"I met a mom in Burnaby. She bought a home, but cannot afford to live there anymore. Her daughter has a good job, but only gets by because she lives in the basement. Her son does not see a future. Like too many Canadians, he has lost all hope," Singh said.

"However, the prime minister is telling families like theirs to wait for help. I believe that better is possible. Will the government commit to building half a million new affordable homes?"

Prime Minister Trudeau responded by congratulating Singh for his entry into the Commons, before touting the government's record on fighting poverty.

Singhs remarks echoed the mood of the House on a crucial day when the prime minister beleaguered by the resignations of his two key cabinet colleagues.

Speculations are rife that the last budget of the Trudeau government with an eye on the general elections in October is expected to have several attractions for the middle class. PTI Corr NSA
Washington, Mar 20 (AFP) US Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has formally directed an internal watchdog office to audit the certification process for Boeing's 737 MAX 8 aircraft following recent deadly crashes.

Chao's request comes amid reports US authorities have also launched a criminal probe into the certification of the top-selling jet, which has been grounded around the world.

Nearly 350 people have died aboard 737 MAX 8 aircraft in crashes less than five months apart in Indonesia and Ethiopia, with the most recent occurring March 10 outside Addis Ababa.

Preliminary reports have identified similarities in between the two crashes, in which the planes plunged to earth shortly after takeoff.

In a Tuesday memo to Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel, Chao said Boeing had requested an "amended type certification" for the 737 MAX 8 in January 2012, which it received in March 2017.

Chao said she was requesting the audit to develop "an objective and detailed factual history" of the process of certifying the aircraft.

The memo confirmed earlier media reporting that such a probe was underway.

An inspector general's office is an independent oversight body within a US federal agency that conducts audits but can also refer matters it discovers to law enforcement authorities.

Investigators so far are reportedly focusing on the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, implicated in October's Indonesian crash.

Ethiopian authorities and France's Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA), which examined data from the most recent crash, say they have found "clear similarities" between the Ethiopian and Lion Air crashes.

Boeing said Sunday it was finalising a software update and pilot training tied to the MCAS. (AFP) IJT
Washington, Mar 19 (AFP) President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that the United States could impose "a lot tougher" sanctions on Venezuela as he urged the country's military to depose leftist leader Nicolas Maduro.

Meeting Brazil's new right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, an avowed opponent of socialism, Trump declined to predict a time-frame for the fall of Maduro, who has clung to power for nearly two months since the United States and Latin American powers declared him illegitimate.

"We haven't done the toughest sanctions," Trump told a joint news conference with Bolsonaro.

"We've done, I would say, right down the middle, but we can go a lot tougher if we need to do that," Trump said.

"What is happening there is a disgrace. This was one of the wealthiest countries in the world and all of a sudden, it is grief-stricken, poverty-stricken -- no food, no water, no air-conditioning, no anything," Trump said.

Trump renewed his call on Venezuelan security forces to desert Maduro, who still enjoys support from the leadership of the military.

"We call on members of the Venezuelan military to end their support for Maduro, who is really nothing more than a Cuban puppet," Trump said.

Bolsonaro, an outspoken foe of leftist ideology, said he had spoken to Trump about allowing the US military to position itself in Brazil near the Venezuelan border.

Trump has repeatedly said that "all options" are open on Venezuela, although Latin American and European allies have broadly warned against the use of force.

"Brazil will be more than willing and ready to fulfill this mission and take freedom and democracy to that country," Bolsonaro said.

Despite Trump's threats, the United States has already imposed a wide range of sanctions on Venezuela including the key step of cutting off the regime from revenue of its state oil company -- which counts on the United States as a key market through operator Citgo.

A sweeping embargo on Venezuela -- of the sort imposed for half a century by the United States against communist Cuba -- is seen as unlikely to gain wide support in Latin America, despite frustration with Maduro. AFP

NSA
BJP gets clean chit in poll-related meeting at Rupani's house

Ahmedabad, Mar 19 (PTI) Gujarat's Chief Electoral

Officer (CEO) Tuesday said the ruling BJP has not violated the

model code of conduct by holding a meeting of its State

Parliamentary Board at Chief Minister Vijay Rupani's official

residence.

CEO S Murali Krishna had Monday ordered an inquiry

into the matter after receiving a complaint in this regard

from the Congress.

The inquiry into the matter did not suggest any

violation of the model code of conduct, which is in force for

the next month's Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat, he said.

"We have conducted an inquiry into the matter and

found no violation of the model code of conduct," Krishna told

PTI.

In its complaint, the main opposition party had

alleged the CM's official residence in Gandhinagar is a

government property and no political activity is allowed from

a government premises when the poll code is in force.

On learning about the CEO's clean chit to the ruling

party, the state Congress announced it will approach the

Election Commission (EC) over the issue.

"This is a clear case of misuse of state machinery and

property. Though BJP was at fault, the local election

authorities chose not to take any action.

"We have decided to make a representation to the EC

about this issue in coming days," said Gujarat Congress

spokesperson Manish Doshi.

Polling for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat will

be held in a single phase on April 23.

The model code of conduct came into force when the

poll schedule was announced on March 10.

A three-day meeting of BJP's State Parliamentary Board

was held at Rupani's official residence to prepare a panel of

probable candidates for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats. The

meeting concluded Tuesday.

State BJP president Jitu Vaghani had Monday defended

the move of organising the meeting at the CM's official

residence, claiming the gathering does not violate any rules.

"We have to also take care of the CM's security.

Arranging such meetings at CM's residence is an old tradition.

"Party leaders are only doing brainstorming here. We

have not arranged any political rally or engaged in any poll

campaigning here," Vaghani had said. PTI PJT PD

RSY RSY
Maha minister refuses to contest on BJP symbol in Baramati

Mumbai, Mar 19 (PTI) Despite sustained pressure from

the BJP, Rashtriya Samaj Paksha (RSP) chief Mahadev Jankar

Tuesday said he would not contest Lok Sabha polls from

Baramati seat on the former's lotus symbol.

Jankar, who offered stiff competition to Nationalist

Congress Party (NCP) leader Supriya Sule from Baramati in the

2014 general elections, said he wanted to fight on his RSP

symbol.

"I have already told the BJP leadership that I will

contest the Lok Sabha polls only on the symbol of our party.

Even in Vidhan Sabha polls, our stand would be the same," he

told reporters at Mantralaya.

"We have apprised the BJP of out stand and are

awaiting their response. But there has not been any headway so

far," said Jankar, a prominent Dhangar community leader and

Minister for Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries Development

in the Maharashtra cabinet.

There is a demand from the BJP that Jankar contest on

the lotus symbol in Baramati, considered a bastion of NCP

chief Sharad Pawar.

In 2014, Jankar had contested on the RSP symbol from

Baramati against Supriya Sule, the NCP chief's daughter, and

had given a tough fight before losing by nearly 70,000 votes.

It was the lowest ever victory margin for the Pawar

family from Baramati. Sule had won in 2009 with a margin of

over three lakh votes.

BJP sources have maintained that the result in the

2014 Lok Sabha polls in Baramati would have been different had

Jankar fought on the lotus symbol.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday

reiterated that its candidate from Baramati will contest polls

on the lotus symbol.

Sources said if Jankar is not ready to contest as a

BJP candidate, he may have to relinquish his claims on the

Baramati seat. PTI MM

BNM BNM
PM Modi an 'Ambedkarite', won't change Constitution: Athawale

Mumbai, Mar 19 (PTI) Union minister and RPI (A) chief

Ramdas Athawale Tuesday said his party has "differences" with

the RSS on the issue of Hindutva but not with "Ambedkarite"

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and trashed the opposition's

allegation that the Centre will alter the Constitution.

Athawale said the BJP and other parties were not

"anti-Dalit", but added efforts should be made to punish

those who commit atrocities on the community.

Minister of State for Social Justice Athawale also

claimed the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), led by Bharip

Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar and AIMIM's

Asaduddin Owaisi, will not be able to win a single seat in

Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha polls.

"The BJP supports the ideology of Babasaheb (BR

Ambedkar). The RSS too supports the ideology of Babasaheb. But

we do have differences with the RSS on the issue of Hindutva,"

Athawale said during an interaction with BBC News Marathi

here.

"But there are absolutely no differences with Narendra

Modi who is an Ambedkarite. He (Modi) says he would not have

become prime minister had Babasaheb's Constitution not been

there," Athawale added.

Referring to Modi's statement, Athawale said the prime

minister was not for changing the Constitution as is often

alleged by some opposition parties including the Congress.

"The Congress and the NCP have no other issue left but

to allege that Modi will change the Constitution," Athawale

said.

To drive home his point that the BJP was not "anti-

Dalit", Athawale listed works the Central government carried

out to preserve the ideology of BR Ambedkar, including its

efforts to set up a memorial of the Dalit icon in Mumbai.

Athawale claimed his party workers wanted him to

contest forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, and that he had talked

about filing nomination from the Mumbai South Central seat,

currently represented by Shiv Sena's Rahul Shewale.

"But the Shiv Sena did not consider the idea," he

said.

He stressed that the RPI(A) would continue to be part

of the BJP-led NDA.

Polling will be held in 48 Lok Sabha seats in the

state in four phases next month. PTI ENM

BNM BNM
Ahmedabad, Mar 19 (PTI) The fate of the Patidar quota agitation hangs in balance with its leader Hardik Patel and his supporters saying that the issue is over and they now want to focus on problems of farmers and jobs for youth.

However, many from the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), headed by Patel, want to continue their fight for quota for the Patidar community in government jobs and education.

Patel, who first came into the limelight with the Patidar quota stir in 2015, joined the Congress here last week in the presence of party president Rahul Gandhi.

The 25-year-old firebrand leader claims "the issue of reservation is over now".

"How can you talk about reservation when you have already been granted 10 per cent quota benefits. Now my focus is on raising issues concerning farmers and youth. I will make people aware of the BJP's wrong policies and of the Congress's vision," he said.

Patel admitted that at the beginning of his agitation, he had demanded reservation for the Patidar community under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category and later, stressed on quota under the Economically Backward Classes (EBC).

"Now, my priority is to ensure that the 10 per cent EBC quota gets implemented properly. Talking about reservation despite having already got it is definitely politics, and I don't want to indulge in such politics," said Patel, who is keen on contesting the Lok Sabha polls.

His close aide and PAAS core committee member Geeta Patel said now their main demand is withdrawal of cases against those booked for violence and other offences during the quota stir in 2015.

However, PAAS organisation in-charge Dilip Sabva said the fight was not yet over as their main demand of reservation for Patidars under the OBC category remained unfulfilled.

"The EBC quota was also granted by the erstwhile Anandiben Patel government in Gujarat. But, it was struck down by the high court. What if the Centre's move (of EBC 10 per cent quota) also hits a roadblock?" Sabva asked.

He said he was not happy with the EBC quota.

"If someone wants to put aside the issue to contest polls, it is his personal choice. I am not concerned about somebody taking a political stand on the issue," he said.

Another PAAS leader Dinesh Bambhania also said the agitation cannot be over till the time Patidars are not granted reservation under the OBC category.

"Since Hardik has now joined a political party and wants to fight the Lok Sabha polls, he is saying that the issue is over," Bambhania said.

He added that jailed PAAS convener and Patel's close aide Alpesh Kathiriya is the "new leader" of their organisation and he will lead the agitation for their core demand.

"Those from PAAS, who want to go with Hardik, can join the Congress. The remaining team of PAAS will work under the leadership of Kathiriya. All of us will follow whatever Kathiriya says," Bambhania said. PTI PJT PD GK VT DIV

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Kolkata, Mar 19 (PTI) The CPI(M)-led Left Front Tuesday announced candidates for 38 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal and said it will wait for Congress's response on an alliance in the state, before declaring nominees for the remaining constituencies.

Left Front chairman Biman Bose said they will wait till Wednesday evening for the Congress's response.

"We announced a list of 38 candidates. We are not announcing the names of four seats which the Congress had won last time (2014). We will wait till Wednesday evening for a response from the Congress. If there is no response, we will go ahead with the remaining four seats," Bose told reporters here.

"We hope good sense will prevail and the Congress will realise the need for maximum pooling of anti-BJP and anti-TMC votes in the state. We will wait for their response," he said.

The development comes a day after the Congress announced candidates for 11 constituencies which includes the two which the CPI(M) had won in 2014.

The Left Front last week had announced a list of 25 candidates in the state leaving aside 17 seats for Congress.

But the Congress' state unit took it as an insult and on Sunday evening decided to go it alone in the state. PTI PNT NN ANB

ANB
Kolkata, Mar 19 (PTI) Following are PTI's top stories

from the eastern region at 4.30 pm.

CAL6 AR-RAHUL-MODI-CHINA

Rahul questions Modi's patriotism, asks why he keeps

silent on China

Itanagar: With fervent nationalism becoming the

flavour of the election season, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi

Tuesday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's patriotic

credentials and accused him of not raising the issue of

India's "territorial integrity" during his meetings with

Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

CAL16 WB-POLL-LD CPI(M)

LS polls:CPI(M) announces 13 more candidates,to wait

for Cong response on alliance till Wed evening

Kolkata: The CPI(M)-led Left Front Tuesday announced

candidates for 13 more Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, taking

the total number of its contestants to 38.

CAL14 OD-POLL WOMAN

Naveen Patnaik chooses village SHG member for Aksa L S

seat

Bhubaneswar: A 68-year-old village self help group

member in Odisha has been allotted the BJD ticket for the Aska

Lok Sabha seat, from where party president and Chief Minister

Naveen Patnaik had begun his political career around 20 years

ago.

CAL15 WB-MAMATA-RELIGION

Mamata lashes out at BJP for questioning her religion

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee

Tuesday lashed out at the BJP for questioning her religion and

said neither she nor the people of the state need to learn the

meaning of 'communal harmony' from the "divisive BJP".

CAL17 WB-POLL-EC-BABUL

Election Commission issues notice to Babul Supriyo for

campaign song

Kolkata: The Election Commission Tuesday issued a

show-cause notice to Union minister Babul Supriyo for putting

out a campaign song, composed and sung by him, without prior

permission, officials said.

CES3 TR-CONG-JOIN

3 Tripura BJP leaders including state vice-president

join Cong

Agartala: The ruling BJP in Tripura received a jolt as

three of its leaders including state unit vice-president Subal

Bhowmick joined the Congress here on Tuesday.

CES5 OD-POLL CONG

Congress candidates list has 27 new faces in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: The opposition Congress, which was routed

in Odisha in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and put up a poor

performance in the simultaneous assembly elections, has

fielded 27 new faces so far.

CES7 AS-ULFA-SURRENDER

Seven ULFA(I) militants surrender in Assam

Tinsukia: Seven hardcore ULFA(I) militants surrendered

in Tinsukia district following a joint operation by a team of

Assam Police and the Indian Army, a senior official said on

Tuesday.

CES8 NG-POLL-CM

Naga issue: Rio hopes NDA's return to power would

bring "something positive"

Dimapur/Kohima: Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio

Tuesday expressed confidence that "something positive" would

be achieved on the Naga political issue if the NDA government

returns to power at the Centre. PTI

NN NN
3 Tripura BJP leaders including state vice-president join Cong

Agartala, Mar 19 (PTI) The ruling BJP in Tripura

received a jolt as three of its leaders including state unit

vice-president Subal Bhowmick joined the Congress here on

Tuesday.

Congress Tripura unit president Pradyot Kishore

Debburman welcomed Bhowmick, senior leader Prakash Das and

vice-president of the BJP kishan morcha Premtosh Debnath to

the party and said "today is a historic day. Their joining our

party is like returning of family members to their own home."

Bhowmick, Das and Debnath were earlier with the

Congress.

Debburman claimed that many leaders who have left the

party would return to the Congress at the rally to be

addressed by Congress president Rahul Gandhi here on

Wednesday.

CPI(M) leader and member of Kailashahar Municipal

council in Unakoti District, Debasish Sen also joined the

Congress on Tuesday.

The Tripura Congress president appealed to former

Congress leaders and worker who have left the party to return

to the Congress.

Bhowmik had joined the BJP in 2014 and was appointed

the vice president of the partys state committee.

Bhowmick said he along with many other Congress

leaders and workers had joined BJP to change the 25 years rule

of CPI-M and restore democracy in the state.

"However, after BJP came to power we could understand

that there was no virtual change in the government and there

was no democracy in the party. The government is corrupt and

inefficient and failed to deliver any good to people. I am

sure BJP would be ousted in the Centre and Congress under

leadership of Rahul Gandhi would secure absolute majority, he

said.

When contacted, BJP spokesperson, Ashoke Sinha said,

"Everybody is free to join any party. I can only say that

their joining other party would not harm the poll prospect of

the BJP in the state."

Election to the two Lok Sabha seats in Tripura would

be held on April 11 and 18. PTI JOY

RG RG
Seven ULFA(I) militants surrender in Assam

Tinsukia (Assam), Mar 19 (PTI) Seven hardcore ULFA(I)

militants surrendered in Tinsukia district following a joint

operation by a team of Assam Police and the Indian Army, a

senior official said on Tuesday.

The militants joined the mainstream on Monday, while a

huge cache of arms and ammunition were also recovered from

them during the operation, Col S Karki, Commanding Officer of

21 Para Special Forces of the Army, told reporters here.

"The surrender was possible because of our operation

on March 7 that was based on specific intelligence," he said.

Karki, however, declined to share the location of the

exercise and said that 15-20 columns were engaged.

"We got information that the ULFA cadres were hiding

at a place. We persuaded them and recovered the arms.

Ultimately, they surrendered," the Army official said.

Karki said the security personnel recovered three

AK-81 rifles, two HK-33 rifles and one AK-56 rifle and 17

magazines.

Besides, 617 rounds of ammunition and one hand grenade

were also seized from the militants, he added. PTI TR CORR

RBT RBT
New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) BJP president Amit Shah Tuesday targeted Congress chief Rahul Gandhi over the alleged arrest of some techies in Bengaluru for raising pro-Modi slogans, saying youngsters give direction to the future and he should "stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics".

"Hugs for 'Tukde Tukde' gang and arrest of peaceful youth raising pro-Modi slogans? Where are the champions of 'Free Speech'? Yuvraj (prince) of CONgress must know that time follows the course taken by youngsters. Stop intimidating youth of India, which has rejected your brand of politics," Shah tweeted.

The BJP chief in his tweet tagged a post by his party's Karnataka unit which said the state police had arrested some techies for raising pro-Modi slogans at Manyata tech park in Bengaluru. Gandhi was to address a meeting at the venue.

"This is the real face of democracy in a Cong-JD(S) ruled state. It's total dictatorship where freedom of choice & expression of citizens is suppressed," it had said, posting a purported video of some people being taken away by cops. PTI KR KR ABH

ABH

ABH

ABH
Portuguese English

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New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) Intensifying his 'Main Bhi Chowkidar' (I too am watchman)campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 31 will interact with people, who have pledged their support to the campaign, from 500 places across the country.

Speaking at a press conference here, senior BJP leader and Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the campaign has become a "people's movement" as the 'Main Bhi Chowkidar' hashtag has been tweeted 20 lakh times and had 1680 crore impressions.

Replying to a question if the campaign was a counter to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's 'chowkidar chor hai' (watchman is the thief) barb, he rejected the suggestion and asserted that Modi in his campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls had projected himself as the "first servant" and 'chowkidaar' of the country.

On Saturday, Modi had urged his supporters to take the 'main bhai chowkidar' (I too am watchman) pledge, saying he is not alone in the fight against graft and social evils.

Following his appeal all BJP leaders, including party chief Amit Shah and Union ministers, prefixed the word 'chowkidar' to their names in their Twitter profile as they sought people's support in the Lok Sabha elections. PTI KR JTR JTR SNE

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Bhadohi (UP), Mar 19 (PTI) Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday said the ground reality was different than what the Uttar Pradesh government has been portraying and there is an expiry date to the rant that nothing was done in the past 70 years.

The Congress incharge of east Uttar Pradesh was responding to a question about the Adityanath government issuing its report card on completion of two years in office, in which it highlighted various achievements and welfare schemes.

"They (BJP) need to come to the ground to see the reality. This report card and publicity looks good, but the reality is different... all sections are feeling harassed," she said at the Sitamarhi guest house in Uttar Pradesh's Bhadohi district, where she had a night halt.

"There is a big difference between polls promises and fulfilling them. As far as the rant about (no development in) 70 years is concerned, it also has an expiry date. You (BJP) are in the government for the past five years, what have you done in five years? the Congress leader asked.

The Bharatiya Janata Party often attacks the Congress by accusing it of not developing the country in the past 70 years.

The 47-year-old, who had embarked on a three-day boat journey on Ganga to reach out to the electorate residing on the river banks, offered prayers at the Sitamarhi temple before starting for her next stop en route to Mirzapur.

Priyanka Gandhi alleged that nothing had been done on the ground in the state during Adityanath's rule. "Everyday, I'm meeting people from different sections of the society and I'm getting to know that students, youngsters, 'shiksha mitras', anganwadi workers and ASHA workers are feeling harassed. At some places, it was announced that they will get Rs 17,000 salary, but till now they have got nothing. For the past two years, they are getting Rs 8,000."

Asked about BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma accusing her and Congress president Rahul Gandhi of coming for a picnic before elections and vanishing just after that, she said: "Well, I haven't been to Italy in the past three-four years. I should go in fact to see my grandmother." PTI CORR NAV SAB SMI

HMB
New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) The armies of India and Sri Lanka will hold a two-week military drill beginning March 26 in the island nation with an aim to deepen anti-terror cooperation, officials said Tuesday.

The aim of the exercise is to build and promote close relations between armies of both the countries and to enhance operational cooperation, they said.

The officials said the 'Mitra Shakti' exercise will involve tactical level operations to effectively deal with the challenge of terrorism as well as transnational crimes.

"The exercise will go a long way in further cementing relationship between both the nations and will act as a catalyst in bringing synergy and cooperation at grassroots levels between both the armies," the Indian Army said. PTI MPB CK
New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) The Election Commission Tuesday asked political parties to "desist" during their Lok Sabha poll campaigns from indulging in any propaganda involving actions taken by defence forces.

The fresh advisory came days after the poll panel asked parties and their candidates against using pictures of defence force personnel in their campaign material.

"...parties/candidates are advised that their campaigners/candidates should desist, as part of their election campaigning, from indulging in any political propaganda involving activities of defence forces," the advisory issued on Tuesday said.

The commission said the new advisory is in continuation to its earlier one on use of pictures of defence personnel in campaigning.

The latest advisory of the EC comes against the backdrop of complaints against parties for using the armed forces for political gains, especially in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack and the February 26 air strike by the Indian Air Force (IAF) deep inside Pakistan.

The poll panel had on March 9 asked political parties to "desist from displaying photographs of defence personnel".

The EC's direction came after a picture showing a hoarding with images of IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman and leaders of a party.

In a separate case, the commission had also issued a show-cause notice to Delhi BJP MLA Om Prakash Sharma for putting up two posters featuring him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and IAF pilot Varthaman on Facebook.

The EC had also asked him to take down the post.

The Lok Sabha election is scheduled to begin on April 11 and will continue till May 19. .

Referring to attempts at politicising armed forces, former navy chief Admiral L Ramdas (retd) had written to the EC recently urging it to intervene. PTI NAB NAB ANB

ANB
New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) The BJP Tuesday decided to drop all its 10 sitting MPs from Chhattisgarh, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in recent assembly elections.

BJP General Secretary Anil Jain, who is also in charge of the state, said the party has decided to face the Lok Sabha elections with "new candidates and fresh energy" to make it victorious under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Jain said the state BJP made the proposal to drop the MPs to the central election committee of the party, which gave its nod.

Former Chief Minister Raman Singh is likely to be the party's candidate from Rajnandgaon, sources said.

The state sends 11 MPs to the Lok Sabha. PTI KR JTR

JTR TIR

TIR
(Eds: Adds details, updates on Raman Singh's likely candidature)

New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) In a major decision, the BJP Tuesday announced it will drop its all 10 incumbent MPs from Chhattisgarh and replace them with new faces in the Lok Sabha polls, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in the recent assembly elections.

BJP General Secretary Anil Jain, also the party affairs in-charge for the state, made the announcement as the BJP's Central Election Committee, which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders, met here to deliberate over its candidates for the polls.

"We have decided to fight the elections with new candidates and new zeal," Jain told reporters.

The announcement underscores the BJP's bid to wrest its lost territory back from the Congress, which handed it a massive defeat in the assembly polls last year.

The Congress had won 68 seats, reducing the tally of the BJP, which was in power in the state for 15 years, to a mere 15. The difference in the vote share of the two parties was a huge 10 per cent.

The BJP is also considering not to field any family member of these sitting MPs, sources said. If the party indeed adopts this criterion, the likely candidature of former chief minister Raman Singh, whose son Abhishek Singh is a sitting Member of Parliament, will also be in question. PTI KR JTR TIR

TIR
Lucknow, Mar 19 (PTI) Shivpal Yadav's Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) Tuesday announced its alliance with Peace Party and a faction of Apna Dal for the Lok Sabha polls.

"We have entered into an alliance with Peace Party. We were ready for an alliance with secular parties to defeat the BJP but some parties gave priority to their personal interests," Shivpal told reporters a press conference here.

"The BJP government in the state is the worst ever which cheated farmers, youths, minorities and backwards," he added.

"It's unfortunate that due to self interest of SP, BSP and Congress an alliance could not be formed against BJP. These parties have weakened the fight (against the BJP) and are doing politics instead of fighting for the common man," he added.

He later announced that Apna Dal-- led by Krishna Patel-- will be supporting his party in the Lok Sabha polls.

Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) had on Saturday sealed an alliance with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh.

As part of the seat-sharing agreement, Apna Dal was allocated two parliamentary constituencies-- Basti and Pilibhit.

Soon after the finalisation of the alliance, Patel's son-in-law Pankaj Niranjan Singh Chandel had joined the Congress in the presence of party president Rahul Gandhi.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had finalised a seat sharing deal with the Apna Dal (Sone Lal), the other faction of the party led by Anupriya Patel, a Minister of State in the Narendra Modi government.

The Anupriya Patel faction will be contesting on two seats.

The Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) is led by its founder and widow of Sone Lal Patel-- a regional leader of Patels, who had died in a car crash in 2009.

The party was later split between his widow and elder daughter. PTI ABN SMI RHL
Lucknow, Mar 19 (PTI) Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav Tuesday said his father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav had forged the relationship with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and he only had to "mend" it.

He also said it was not time yet for Mulayam Yadav to become the prime minister.

"Netaji (Mulayam) had relations with the BSP and had forged an alliance earlier. I only had to mend the relationship," Akhilesh Yadav said, replying to questions during a TV programme.

When asked to answer in 'yes' or 'no' whether Mulayam Yadav would become the prime minister this time, he said, "No, not as of now. But he will be given the due honour."

Responding to reports on the possibility of him contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Azamgarh, the seat represented by his father, Akhilesh Yadav indicated that the option was open.

"Let a proposal come from the district unit," he said.

The SP chief rebuffed claims that leaving 38 seats for alliance partner BSP would weaken his party.

"We have done the ground work. The SP and the BSP have forged an alliance on 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state," Akhilesh Yadav said.

"Before the alliance was struck, we succeeded in defeating the BJP in Gorkahpur, Phulpur, Kairana Lok Sabha bypolls and Noorpur Assembly bye-election. The cadres were mentally prepared and after the announcement also they had ample time. There will be no problem in the chemistry between workers of the two parties," he said.

According to the seat-sharing arrangement, the SP will contest 37 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and the BSP will contest 38.

They have left three seats for the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and two for Congress president Rahul Gandhi (Amethi) and his mother Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli).

Asked if the BSP and the RLD had the credibility to carry forward the alliance, the SP chief said, "The scenario has changed and we are together."

Speaking about Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's entry into politics, Akhilesh Yadav said, "All youths should come forward."

Asked if the air strike in Balakot, which followed the February 14 Pulwama attack, had changed the political narrative in the country, Akhilesh Yadav said the BJP was using the strike to distract people.

"The BJP is an expert in distracting people. Everyone knows that if the US and other countries had not supported India on (Wing Commander) Abhinandan's release, the fighter pilot would not have returned," Akhilesh Yadav said.

"He returned not because of the BJP," he said.

"The soldiers were martyred and there was an intelligence failure (in the Pulwama attack). What have they (BJP) done for the Army men? People of the country want 'ann' (food) not gun," he added.

Akhilesh Yadav said the plight of farmers and unemployed youths and the BJP's false promises will dominate the electoral discourse in the upcoming parliamentary polls.

"The youths of the state will defeat the BJP this time," he asserted.

Polling in Uttar Pradesh will be held in seven phases from April 11 to May 19. The results will be announced on May 23. PTI ABN SMI DIV

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\R Mathura (UP), Mar 19 (PTI) He has lost eight Lok Sabha elections and as many assembly polls. But that does not deter Fakkar Ramayani to file his nomination as an Independent candidate for the 17th time.

"It is my ninth Lok Sabha election that I am contesting," Ramayani told PTI after filing his nomination papers on Tuesday for the Mathura constituency of Uttar Pradesh.

Ramayani, the 'mahant' (head priest) of Galteshwar temple in Mathura, has so far contested eight Lok Sabha and assembly polls each, with the first being the general election after withdrawal of the Emergency.

The 73-year-old had lost his security deposit in the 2014 election, but he is not disappointed with his failures. "I am sure that ultimately people would realise the cause I am fighting for."

Like the previous elections, Ramayani said, he would contest on a two-point election manifesto -- ensuring construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya and making the Yamuna river pollution-free.

After winning the election, the Independent candidate said, he would try to convince other parliamentarians for a Ram temple at the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid site and clean the Yamuna.

A devout Hindu, the candidate claims of cramming the mythological epic, Ramayana, in verbatim.

The priest said he would use a car since he had a knee problem, saying that the expenses on his car and the security deposit were borne by his disciples.

Like the previous elections, Ramayani had offered a puja to pay obeisance to the Yamuna before filing his nomination papers.

Meanwhile, District Magistrate Sarvagyaram Mishra said Ramayani was among the two candidates who have filed their nomination papers on the first day on Tuesday. The second nomination was filed by Jaswant Singh Baghel of the Rashtriya Shoshit Samaj Party.

Due to Holi, the next phase of nomination will be held from March 22-26, the official added.

Mathura will go to polls on April 18. The 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh will go to polls in seven phases from April 11 to May 19. PTI CORR HMB MIN

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Lucknow, Mar 19 (PTI) Shivpal Yadav's Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L) Tuesday claimed it has the support of the Apna Dal faction led by Krishna Patel, days after that party announced a tie-up with the Congress.

The PSP-L also announced a pact with Mohamed Ayub-led Peace Party in Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha polls.

The Apna Dal faction, however, has not made clear whom it will support if both the Congress and Shivpal Yadav's party are contesting in the same constituency.

While the PSP-L said it is not averse to an alliance with the Congress as well to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

When contacted, Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) spokesperson R B S Patel parried a direct reply.

"We have a pact for seats with the Congress but we are giving policy-based support to all secular and like-minded parties," he said, without elaborating further.

At a press conference here, Shivpal Yadav, who was flanked by Peace Party leader Mohamed Ayub, said, "We have entered into an alliance with the Peace Party."

He later announced "support" from the Apna Dal faction as well.

Asked if the Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) will support the PSP-L or the Congress candidates contesting from the same seat, PSP-L spokesperson Deepak Mishra said, "I know that they (Apna Dal) have supported our party. We have got a support letter from them."

The Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) had on Saturday sealed an alliance with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh.

As part of the seat-sharing agreement, it was allocated two parliamentary constituencies --- Basti and Pilibhit.

Soon after the finalisation of the alliance, Patel's son-in-law Pankaj Niranjan Singh Chandel joined the Congress in the presence of party president Rahul Gandhi.

BJP has finalised a seat sharing deal with the Apna Dal (Sone Lal), the other faction of the party led by Anupriya Patel, a minister in the Narendra Modi government.

The Anupriya Patel faction will contest on two seats.

The Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) is led by its founder and widow of Sone Lal Patel-- a regional leader of Patels who had died in a car crash in 2009.

The party later split between his widow and elder daughter.

On whether the PSP-L can enter into an alliance with the Congress, Mishra said, "All possibilities are there. For defeating the BJP, we are ready for everything."

Earlier, Shivpal Yadav said, "The BJP government in the state is the worst ever which cheated farmers, youths, minorities and backwards."

"It's unfortunate that due to self interest of SP, BSP and Congress an alliance could not be formed against BJP. These parties have weakened the fight (against the BJP) and are doing politics instead of fighting for the common man," he said. PTI ABN SMI RHL
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March 18, 2019



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New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) The Haryana Congress Coordination Committee met for the first time Tuesday, led by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and it decided to hold a bus tour from March 26 to 30.

The meeting was held at AICC headquarters a day after party general secretary incharge of Haryana Ghulam Nabi Azad announced the committee comprising 15 members.

The members are all senior leaders, including state party president Ashok Tanwar, Congress Legislature Party Leader Kiran Choudhry and former minister Kumari Selja.

A member of the committee, Adampur MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi did not turn up for the meeting, raising questions on the Haryana Congress' claims of unity.

The bus travel in the state has been planned to ensure that the warring factions of the state Congress move together and display unity ahead of Lok Sabha elections.

The tour will start in Faridabad and end in Jhajjar.

Before the tour the Haryana Congress will hold a workers' meeting on March 23.

Azad, meanwhile, ruled out any alliance in Haryana amid reports that the AAP wanted a pact with the party in Haryana and Punjab, in lieu of an understanding in Delhi. PTI SKC AAR
Ahmedabad, Mar 19 (PTI) The Gujarat High Court Tuesday issued a notice to the ECI over its decision to announce by-election on the assembly seat of Talala after disqualification of its sitting MLA Bhagvan Barad following his conviction in a theft case.

In his petition, Barad has challenged his disqualification as a legislator by "an order passed by the assembly Speaker" and also sought a stay on the ECI's decision to announce by-election on the seat in Gir Somnath district.

The bypoll is to be held on April 23 alongside Lok Sabha elections in the state.

In his plea, the Congress leader has said that the Election Commission of India's (ECI) decision on holding bypoll in Talala was taken "in haste".

A division bench of Justices S R Brahmbhatt and V B Mayani issued the notice to the ECI, seeking its reply on Barad's petition on March 25.

Barad was disqualified from the House after he was sentenced to two years and nine months in jail in an illegal mining case by a magistrate's court at Sutrapada taluka in Gir Somnath district on March 1.

On an appeal, a sessions court at Veraval in the same district had later stayed his conviction in the 24-year-old case.

Barad's lawyer has argued that the ECI went ahead and declared by-election for Talala on March 10 even when the sessions court's March 7 order, staying his conviction, was duly conveyed on the same date to both the poll panel and the assembly Speaker.

The sessions court's order staying the 60-year-old politician's conviction was set aside by the high court on March 15.

Barad has also argued before the high court that Assembly Speaker Rajendra Trivedi's March 5 decision to disqualify him from the House membership was "arbitrary, biased, illegal" and was taken in "undue haste".

The state government has defended the Speaker's March 5 order, saying Barad was "automatically disqualified" on March 1 when the magistrate's court sentenced him to over two years in jail, as per the order of the Supreme Court in the Lily Thomas case.

The government counsel has told the high court that Barad's disqualification was automatic and therefore, the ECI was right in declaring by-election on his assembly seat which fell vacant.

Barad won from Talala in the 2017 assembly elections.

The magistrate's court had held Barad guilty of theft for excavating limestone worth Rs 2.83 crore through illegal mining on government land in 1995.

Setting aside the sessions court order staying his conviction, the high court had ordered it to hear Barad's plea afresh "without further loss of time". PTI KA PD RSY SNE

SNE
Chennai, Mar 19 (PTI) The Madras High Court Tuesday directed the Tamil Nadu government and the CBI to file their replies on a petition seeking a court-monitored probe into the Pollachi sexual harassment case.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani and Justice M Duraiswamy gave the direction when the petition by an advocate came up for hearing.

It then posted the petition to April 10 for further hearing.

Petitioner P Pugalenthi referred to the Tamil Nadu government order transferring the case to the CBI based on a recommendation by the state DGP.

A gang of four men had on February 12 allegedly tried to strip a 19-year-old woman inside a car near Pollachi in Coimbatore district, shot a video of the act and blackmailed her using the visuals.

With the incident triggering outrage amid reports that more women had been assaulted by the gang, the state government had last week issued an order transferring the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The petitioner submitted that the DGP had recommended the CBI probe since the case involved technical issues, including analysis of social media accounts.

He also referred to the government order mentioning the name of the victim and said it was "unfortunate" the state ignored the fundamentals of justice and disclosed her identity.

He wanted the court to monitor the probe by the CBI, saying the DGP himself had stated the case demanded more laborious and dedicated investigation.

Meanwhile, a report from Coimbatore said the CB-CID, which is at present investigating the case, summoned editor of "Nakkheeran" R R Gopal to appear before it on March 25 in connection with the release of a video by the Tamil magazine reportedly containing visuals of some women being harassed by the gang.

Gopal had Monday moved the high court seeking anticipatory bail, apprehending arrest by police. He has alleged that the case had been foisted on him.

In Pollachi, almost all shops and other commercial establishments Tuesday downed shutters in support of a call given by various organisations seeking a court-monitored probe into the harassment case. PTI COR NVM NVG VS SNE

SNE
Cong-JDS to campaign jointly, vow to reduce BJP to single

digit in Karnataka

Bengaluru,Mar 19 (PTI) The ruling Congress-JD(S)

coalition in Karnataka Tuesday said they would jointly

campaign for the Lok Sabha polls and vowed to reduce the BJP

to a "single digit" in the state.

Leaders of both parties said they would resolve all the

issues and fight the polls unitedly, amid tension between them

at the local level.

The alliance partners also gagged their partymen from

airing any differences to the media.

TheCongress and JD(S) have decided to launch their

joint campaign on March 31 by organising a mammoth rally near

Bengaluru, likely to be attended by Congress president Rahul

Gandhi.

"Our relentless fight is for keeping our (Congress and

JDS) 12 seats with ourselves, and win majority of the 16 seats

that is with the BJP, as we are going together in this polls,"

JD(S) chief and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda said.

Addressing a joint press conference along with Congress

leaders, he said, "I'm not saying this with pride, we will

not allow them (BJP) to see two digits..will not allowthem to

reach two digits.."

"Our primary objective is to stop the communal forces,"

he added, as he also expressed confidence that the alliance

will not only make efforts to win the seats, but will win.

In the 2014 general election, BJP had bagged 17,

Congress 9 and JD(S) two seats. However in the bypolls, the

BJP had yielded the Bellary seat to Congress.

Coalition leaders, including Gowda, Chief Minister

H DKumaraswamy, coalition coordination committee chairman

Siddaramaiah and Karnataka PCC chief Dinesh Gundu Rao held a

long meeting Tuesday morning.

It followed a similar meeting involving AICC general

secretary K C Venugopal late on Monday night to discuss poll

preparations and campaigning.

Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara was conspicuous

by his absence at the meeting and press conference.

Sources said he was upset with Congress leadershipfor

ceding Tumkur seat, his home turf, to JD(S), despite the party

having its sitting MP there. However, both the KPCC chief and

Parmeshwara himselfmaintained that he was out of town to

attend a pre-scheduledevent.

Against the backdrop of seat sharing, both parties

have decided to resolve the differences at the local level

immediately, without giving any opportunity for it to

continue further, Gowda said.

He said "before the filing of nomination,resolving

few minor differences that are there is our duty. Time is very

short, we are working on it.

If there are anydifferences between both the parties

in any of the constituency, coalition leaders, including me,

Siddaramaiah, Kumaraswamy should resolve it."

Gagging party men from making statements to the media,

Gowda said from now on MLAs or district leaders of both

Congressand JD(S) should not be airing any differences to the

media, and if there are any issues it should be addressed

withcoalition leaders.

"I have requested Siddaramaiah that both parties

should appoint spokespersons who can speak to the media.

We should not allow any one to speak differentiating

between the Congress and JD(S). There should be one united

reaction onthe decisions we take," he said.

He appealed to MLAs, Ministers and leaders of both

parties to abide by the decision and have a united voice.

The Congress will contest 20 Lok Sabha seats and

JD(S)eight under a deal between the coalition partners

finalisedlast week.

The Congress and JD(S) that had bitterly fought each

other in the May 2018 assembly polls had sewed up a post

pollalliance after a hung verdict with the BJP emerging as

the single largest party but falling short of required

numbers.

For the coalition to emerge as a formidable

oppositionto the BJP, and win more number of seats, it is

crucial for theCongress to transfer its votes to JD(S), and

vice-versa.

Conceding that there are some minor issues between

both parties at few places, Kumaraswamy said, they can be

resolved and coalition leaders were working to resolve them.

"Both parties are going ahead for the polls with an

aim to win all 28 seats in the state, and I'm confident we

will be successful," he said.

Karnataka will go for polls in two phases, on April

18 and 23.

Coordination committee chief and CLP leader

Siddaramaiah said list of candidates will be finalised and

announced in a couple of days.

"Partymen from both Congress and JD(S) have been

given strict instructions that, even if there are minor

differences, forgetting all of them, keeping BJP's defeat as

our main aim, everyone should work with unity," he said.

One observer each from both parties will be appointed

at all constituency levels for coordination.PTI KSU RA BN

BN BN
KCR slams Cong, BJP; favours federal front

Hyderabad, Mar 19 (PTI) Accusing the Congress and BJP

of failing to ensure comprehensive development in the country

in spite of the natural resources it is endowed with, TRS

president and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao

Tuesday favoured a federal front government in the country.

Campaigning in Nizamabad, Rao alleged that Hindutva

followed by the BJP was "political Hindutva."

"Dont we have resources? There are (resources) in the

country. But, there is no intelligence to use... There is no

water policy in the country because of the alleged misrule of

the two parties (Congress and BJP)," he said.

Irrigation projects are not built to provide water to

agriculture, he claimed.

The situation should change, he said.

"If federal front government comes, if a true peoples

government comes and governance is done with people as the

central point, these are problems that can be solved and not

problems that cannot be solved.

The existing policies need to change completely," Rao

said.

People were fed up the Congress and BJP which

together ruled for over 60 years, he claimed.

China and Singapore have achieved rapid progress in

various spheres, he said.

A new economic model and a new agriculture policy

need to come in the country and the alleged unrest among poor

and farmers should go, he said.

The speeches being made everyday in the country were

painful, he said.

"Congress president Rahul Gandhi says the Prime

Minister is a 'chor' (thief), while Modi says Gandhi and his

mother are on bail (in National Herald case)," Rao said.

"Are these leaders of the country? Are they who

should become Prime Minister," he said.

Rao hit out at state BJP president Laxman who

criticised him on Monday.

On Rao's remarks that BJP leaders spoke as if they

have taken "contract for Hindu religion", Laxman had said it

was "devil quoting the scriptures" as the TRS joined hands

with the AIMIM which is "anti-Hindu".

"What is your party's stance on Ram temple issue?"

Laxman had asked.

Rao said Laxman should first reveal if his party

works for people or a party that does religious campaign.

Should political parties deal with 'Janmabhoomi'

(birth place) of Lord Ram or other figures in mythologies, he

asked.

Religious gurus would deal with issues like birth

place of gods and the political parties should address

problems like providing water and electricity to farmers, he

said.

The matter (Ayodhya issue) was in the Supreme Court

and the courts will decide the issue and "we" need not

interfere, he said.

BJP talked about Hindu-related issues but "are we not

Hindus," he asked.

Alleging that BJP spoke as if Hindus abuse other

religions, he said Hindu faith preached love and respect for

all.

"Yours is political Hindutva. Ours is true Hindutva..

Ours is spiritual Hindutva. You are duplicate Hindus, Laxman

ji. Your games would not work for long," Rao said.

Reiterating TRS stance of seeking 16 Lok Sabha seats

in Telangana (leaving Hyderabad held by ally AIMIM), Rao said

he would announce party candidates on March 21.

Telangana goes to polls in the first phase on April

11.

TRS MP MP from Nizamabad K Kavitha, Rao's daughter,

mentioned the problems of red jowar and turmeric farmers in

the region.

There have been reports that turmeric and red jowar

farmers planned to file 1,000 nominations in the Lok Sabha

elections as an expression of their protest against failure of

governments to provide remunerative price for their produce.

"The BJP government, which boasts about their farmer

centric schemes, should first and foremost know the plight of

farmers... Thus we want there should be 1000 nominations to be

filed by turmeric farmers," she said, according to a TRS

release.

Noting that TRS has stood with the turmeric farmers,

also raising the demand for a national turmeric board in

parliament, she said the party would continue to speak for the

farmers.

She slammed the Congress and BJP for allegedly saying

thousands of nominations should be filed in Nizamabad

constituency to highlight the problems of red jowar and

turmeric farmers at the national level.

Such a thing can be done if a permanent solution can

be found, Kavitha told the gathering.

However, the problems of farmers would be

highlighted and addressed if 1,000 nominations are filed in

Amethi and Varanasi, the constituencies of Rahul Gandhi and

Prime Minister Narendra Modi respectively, she added. PTI SJR

BN BN
Chennai, Mar 19 (PTI) The DMK on Tuesday promised to do away with the National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical admissions and ushering in quota in the private sector in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha election.

"The NEET for medical admissions will be scrapped," DMK chief M K Stalin said while unveiling the salient features of his party's manifesto.

Opposition to NEET in Tamil Nadu from major political

parties and students had taken emotive overtones in the past.

Stalin said steps would be taken for implementing

reservation in the private sector.

The party also assured steps for waiver of all educational loans taken by students.

Against the background of agitations by state

government employees seeking reversion to the old pension

scheme in place of the newly-introduced contributory scheme,

the DMK chief said: "We will bring back the old pension scheme for both the central and state government employees."

The DMK president said the party would revert to the administered-price mechanism to regulate the prices of petrol, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

Another key feature of the manifesto is doing away

with the direct cash transfer of subsidy for the LPG and bringing down the prices of cylinders.

The DMK is contesting 20 seats in the state, allotting

the remaining 19 to its allies. The state goes to polls in a single phase on April 18. PTI VGN SS

HMB
\R Lucknow, Mar 19 (PTI) Lucknow Metro services will be available on Holi on Thursday from 2.30 pm to 10 pm, an official release issued here said.

"Metro train service will start on Holi at 2.30 pm from both the terminals -- Chaudhary Charan Singh Airport metro station and Munshipulia station and will run normally thereafter," it said.

Passengers are requested to not carry colours or wear clothes smeared with colours inside the metro premises, it added. PTI ABN CK
New Delhi, Mar 19 (PTI) An unidentified man decamped with Rs 1.80 lakh after cheating a 25-year-old woman at a bank in Anand Vihar area, police said Tuesday.

The victim, a resident of Shreshtha Vihar area, had gone to HDFC bank to deposit the money, according to a police complaint filed by her.

When she did not find the deposit slip there, she asked for help from a man dressed like a bank employee. He gave her a slip and asked her to fill it fast saying the bank was about to close, police said.

When the woman was counting the cash, he came there and said there were some mistakes on her slip. When she went to take a new slip, the accused fled with the cash, they added.

A case has been registered and police have checked the CCTV footage of the bank. They have got the pictures of the accused person and teams have formed to nab him, the police said. PTI NIT DPB
CHARIHO: Charihos girls and boys soccer teams both won Division II titles in dramatic fashion. The girls won in penalty kicks and the boys in the final two minutes of double overtime. The football team reached the D-III title game, as did the field hockey team. The girls volleyball team played in the D-II semifinals. Erin vonHousen was All-State in girls cross country.

STONINGTON: Stoningtons boys soccer team earned its second straight Class M state title, closing the season with 21 straight victories. The field hockey team lost in the Class S title game.

WESTERLY: Westerlys girls volleyball team reached the Division III semifinals, losing to eventual champion Scituate. The football team played in the D-II semifinals. The girls soccer team reached the D-III semifinals. Jake Serra and Kaya West were All-State in cross country.

WHEELER: Wheeler boys and girls soccer teams qualified for the Class S state tournament.

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The annual general meeting of Akastor ASA will be held on Tuesday 9 April 2019 at 09:00 CEST at Oksenyveien 10, 1366 Lysaker, Norway.

Please find attached the following documents:

* Notice of annual general meeting including notice of attendance/proxy forms

* The board of directors' proposed resolutions

* Proposal from the nomination committee

* The board of directors' statement on remuneration to the executive management

All the documents to be processed at the general meeting are available at the company's website www.akastor.com.

For further information, please contact:

Eirik Thomassen

Head of Legal, Risk & Compliance

Mobile: +47 99 51 35 80

E-mail: eirik.thomassen@akastor.com

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5 -12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.
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.

Read More
Mallinckrodt plc (NYSE:MNK) issued its earnings results on Tuesday, August, 4th. The company reported $1.89 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the Thomson Reuters' consensus estimate of $1.34 by $0.55. The business had revenue of $700.90 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $630.19 million. Mallinckrodt had a negative net margin of 89.94% and a positive trailing twelve-month return on equity of 34.26%. Mallinckrodt's revenue was down 14.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $2.53 earnings per share.

View Mallinckrodt's earnings history.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chemesis International Inc. (CSE: CSI ) (OTC: CADMF ) (FRA: CWAA ) (the Company or Chemesis), announces a partnership with First Medical Cannabis LLC, to commence exclusive cultivation of hemp with high yields of CBD. With the anticipation of hemp legalization in Puerto Rico, the Company continues to increase its foothold on the island and now has the ability to cultivate high yield CBD derived from hemp on a large scale for distribution on the island and the mainland USA.



Initially, Chemesis will have access to 1,000 acres for hemp cultivation, and will have the option to expand up to an additional 5,000 acres of prime agricultural estate. In total, the partnership and joint venture with the First Medical Cannabis provides the Company with access of up to 6,000 acres of agricultural land in Puerto Rico.

Chemesis will leverage its fully compliant facility to manufacture, process, and distribute hemp-derived CBD products. The facility has the ability to off-take all hemp produced by First Medical, and process into finished goods for sale in domestic and international markets, including the continental United States.

The sole member of First Medical holds one of the largest privately-owned land estates in the Valley de Lajas, Puerto Rico, an area that is well known for being one of the most agriculturally prolific regions in the Caribbean. Puerto Rico has a competitive advantage as the climate, soil, and geographical region allow for a much longer growing season. Since the last of Puerto Ricos sugar mills closed in 2000, the island has been in need of an agricultural revolution and the hemp industry promises much needed jobs, said Chemesis CEO, Edgar Montero. Puerto Ricos tropical climate makes the island an ideal competitor in the hemp industry, furthermore it will allow the Company to harvest up to 3 crops per year compared to 1 in many areas around the world.

As previously announced, the Company has begun cultivating high potency CBD strains and will leverage its licenses and registered seed strains to develop high quality crops. With the passing of the 2018 Farm Bill, Chemesis has acquired the necessary assets and built strategic relationships which will allow the Company to cultivate, manufacture, and ship finished goods across the United States, added Montero.

Under the terms of this partnership, the company will issue 1,000,000 shares subject to 36 month leak-out and grant the option to purchase up to 1,000,000 shares of Chemesis stock for a period of 24 months, at an option price of $2.12.

On Behalf of The Board of Directors

Edgar Montero

CEO and Director

About Chemesis International Inc.

Chemesis International Inc. is a vertically integrated global leader in the cannabis industry, currently operating within California, Puerto Rico, and Colombia.

Chemesis is developing a strong foothold in key markets, from cultivation, to manufacturing, distribution and retail. Chemesis has facilities in both Puerto Rico and California, allowing for cost effective production and distribution of its products. In addition, Chemesis leverages exclusive brands and partnerships and uses the highest quality extraction methods to provide consumers with quality cannabis products.

Chemesis will add shareholder value by exploring opportunities in emerging markets while consistently delivering quality product to its consumers from seed to sale.

Investor Relations:

ir@chemesis.com

1 (604) 398-3378

Social Media:

Chemesis.facebook

Chemesis.twitter

Chemesis.instagram

DesertZen.instagram

CaliforniaSap.instagram

Jay&SB.instagram

Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to statements regarding the Company's business, products and future of the Companys business, its product offerings and plans for sales and marketing, including finalizing an acquisition in Colombia. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance and developments to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the Company's products and plan will vary from those stated in this news release and the Company may not be able to carry out its business plans as expected. Except as required by law, the Company expressly disclaims any obligation and does not intend to update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information in this news release. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct and makes no reference to profitability based on sales reported. The statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release.

The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this press release
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arena Minerals Inc. ("Arena" or the "Company") (TSX-V: AN) is pleased to announce that Mr. Eduardo Morales, who joined the Board of Directors in September 2018, has been appointed Executive Chairman of the Board of Arena Minerals, effective immediately.



Mr. Morales is a chemical engineer with 40 years of experience in project engineering, construction and start-up of lithium plants who formerly built and operated one of the world's largest lithium operations. As President of Rockwood Lithium Latin America, he successfully led the development, commissioning, and operation of Rockwood's Salar de Atacama project. His tenure with Rockwood Lithium culminated with the company's sale to Albemarle Corporation for US$6.2 billion in 2014. In 2016, Mr. Morales was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Lithium X Energy Corp. and focused on advancing the Sal de los Angeles lithium brine project, located in the Salta province of Argentina, until construction stage. Lithium X was acquired in 2018 by Nextview New Energy Lion Hong Kong Limited in a $265M transaction.

Additionally, the Company is pleased to announce the nomination of Mr. Peter Damouni to its Board of Directors. Mr. Damouni has nearly 18 years of experience in investment banking and capital markets with notable expertise in natural resources. Throughout his career, Mr. Damouni has worked on, and led, equity and debt financings valued at over $5 billion. He has comprehensive experience in equity financing, restructuring, corporate valuations, and advisory assignments. Mr. Damouni has established and serves as a Director of a number of mining companies listed on the TSX, the LSE and the AIM markets. Mr. Damouni is a graduate of McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is a Canadian and British citizen residing in the United Kingdom.

Will Randall, President and CEO of Arena Minerals, commented: "I am delighted to have Eduardo assume a leadership role in this exciting new direction for the Company. It is a great vote of confidence for us, and our unique approach to the lithium space, to have a world renown leader become Executive Chairman of the Board. I would also like to take to opportunity to welcome Peter to the Board where his unique network and expertise are sure to greatly benefit the Company."

Arena Minerals announces the promotion of Mr. Simon Marcotte to Vice-President, Corporate Development. Mr. Marcotte has more than 20 years of experience in Capital Markets having held senior positions with CIBC World Markets, Cormark Securities, Alderon Iron Ore Corp., Belo Sun Mining Corp., and Mason Graphite Inc. Mr. Marcotte will now be a reporting insider of the Company.

The Company reports that Mr. Dan Bruno will be stepping down from the Board of Directors, effective May 1st, 2019. The Company would like to sincerely thank Mr. Bruno for his help and guidance over the years.

Lastly, the Company announces that is has granted an aggregate of 750,000 stock options to various directors of the Company effective March 19, 2019. The stock options vest immediately, are exercisable at $0.06 for a period of five years and remain subject to the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. The stock options remain subject to a statutory hold period of four months and one day expiring on July 20, 2019.

About Arena Minerals

Arena owns three lithium brine projects in Argentina, consisting of three claims covering a total of 4,000 hectares of the central portion of Salar de Antofalla, located immediately south of Albemarle Corporation's Antofalla project, claims covering 290 hectares in Salar de Hombre Muerto, and an option over 2,000 hectares in the Pocitos Salar.

Arena also owns 80 percent of the Atacama Copper property, consisting of two projects covering approximately 7,000 hectares within the Antofagasta region of Chile. The projects are at low altitudes, within producing mining camps in infrastructure-rich areas, located in the heart of Chile's premier copper mining district.

The technical and scientific aspects of this news release have been reviewed and approved by Mr. William Randall, P.Geo, who is a qualified person pursuant to NI 43-101. As the President & CEO of the Company, Mr. Randall is not considered independent.

To view our website, please visit www.arenaminerals.com. In addition to featuring information regarding the Company, its management, and projects, the site also contains the latest corporate news and an email registration allowing subscribers to receive news and updates directly.

For more information, contact William Randall, President and CEO, at +1-416-818-8711 or Simon Marcotte, Vice-President Corporate Development, at +1-647-801-7273 or smarcotte@arenaminerals.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of

Arena Minerals Inc.

William Randall, President and CEO

Cautionary Note Regarding Accuracy and Forward-Looking Information:

This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements, projections and estimates relating to the future development of any of the Company's properties, the anticipating timing with respect to the private placement financing, the ability of the Company to complete the private placement financing, the results of the exploration program, future financial or operating performance of the Company, its subsidiaries and its projects, the development of and the anticipated timing with respect to the Atacama project, and the Company's ability to obtain financing. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". The statements made herein are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors discussed in the management discussion and analysis section of the Company's interim and most recent annual financial statement or other reports and filings with the TSX Venture Exchange and applicable Canadian securities regulations. Estimates underlying the results set out in this news release arise from work conducted by the previous owners and the Company. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; the actual results of current exploration activities; other risks of the mining industry and the risks described in the annual information form of the Company. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Arena Minerals does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.




PHOENIX, AZ, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- For The Earth Corporation (the Company or FTEG) (OTCMKTS: FTEG), an emerging vertically integrated CBD producer and retailer, is excited to announce the opening of the Companys primary distribution facility in Phoenix, AZ. The 2,450 square foot facility will officially open for business on April 1, 2019, and act as the principal hub for the Companys product logistics going forward.



This facility will powerfully augment our efficiency as a vertically integrated player in the space, noted FTEG CEO Nelson Grist. Everything will move efficiently through this hub. We love the location, with so much of the addressable market nearby. According to our analysis, the California CBD market will remain the leading growth driver in the space, with the western US region collectively powering the industrys growth in the years ahead.

Management notes that the facility has sufficient space to store inventory levels that will allow the logistical flexibility to smoothly meet demand without delays or perishability risk. The facility will also have a small fulfillment production module for product samples and minor orders as well as a testing lab to ensure product quality and composition.

At present, the facility will house and circulate all of the Companys diverse products, including its CBD Topicals line (Day Cream, Night Cream, Face Serum, Eye Serum, and Face Mask), its mint CBD tincture oil, its line of CBD softgels, its CBD vaping line, its CBD pet product line, and its line of non-toxic, nanotech-based Clean Life bacteria-elimination cleaning products.

As we see it, it will pay to be vertical and efficient, and build the most trusted brand, continued Mr. Grist. The CBD space is expected to explode over the next 24-36 months, with some research and analysis firms now anticipating well over a twenty-fold increase from current levels in that time to more than $20 billion in sales. We are building a brand based on purity and integrity. The only way to pull that off is to know exactly what you are selling, and to convince your end-market of that same idea. That necessitates a vertical organization, and this new distribution hub is a major piece of that puzzle.

About For The Earth Corporation

For The Earth Corporation is an emerging integrated CBD producer and retailer in the United States. The Company is in the process of establishing a vertical framework that will extend from cultivation to extraction and production to a strategic retail footprint that includes multiple locations in Las Vegas and New York featuring mall kiosks, vending machines, e-commerce, and full store locations serving both the human and pet CBD markets. Two mall leases have been signed recently in Las Vegas, with another vending machine location secured in New York City. The Company plans to expand its New York vending machine penetration by the end of 2019. In addition, the Company has begun early-stage work to establish a state-of-the-art CBD extraction and production facility in Eugene, OR.

Forward-Looking Statements

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties. See For The Earths filings with OTC Markets, which may identify specific factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release includes forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions and reflect management's current expectations. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations. Some of these factors include: general global economic conditions; general industry and market conditions, sector changes and growth rates; uncertainty as to whether our strategies and business plans will yield the expected benefits; increasing competition; availability and cost of capital; the ability to identify and develop and achieve commercial success; the level of expenditures necessary to maintain and improve the quality of services; changes in the economy; changes in laws and regulations, including codes and standards, intellectual property rights, and tax matters; or other matters not anticipated; our ability to secure and maintain strategic relationships and distribution agreements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
WHITEMARSH  Last November, the British health secretary introduced a public initiative that pronounced involvement in the arts a valid alternative to the pill-popping and over-medicalising favored by traditional mental and physical health protocols. At the very least, the measure noted, so-called social prescribing would complement traditional medical approaches.

Organizers of 2019s Colonial School District Art Show arent claiming the exhibit is good for what ails you, but they promise it will impress and inspire you.

The annual show isnt scheduled to open until March 20 at 6:30 p.m., but a sneak peek at some of its 300 or so entries bears out CSD Superintendent Dr. Michael L. Christians assertion that art education fosters innovation and ingenuity.

This years work ranges from the textured quilt created by Plymouth Elementary art teacher Laura Gojeskis second-graders to the ceramic, metal and wood pieces  among them totems  completed in Krystyn Satkos class at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School and photographs shot by students in Candance Maggioncaldas PW class.

The theme for 2019s districtwide exhibit is Creating a Difference, a leitmotif that dovetails perfectly with CSDs ongoing making a difference initiative, says spokesman Traci Rovinsky, art curriculum liaison for grades six to 12.

In Colonial, we Make a Difference daily in our schools and in our community, continues Rovinsky, a visual art teacher and Art Club sponsor at Colonial Middle School. In the eighth-grade visual art classes, students thought about how they could create a difference in the lives of others. They decided to do this by creating clay masks that would represent the masks each of us wears. This symbol would remind us to reach out to others and to look for simple acts of kindness. Any kind act may help others remove their masks and, in turn, make a difference in someone elses life.

The masks will be displayed on a yarn-bombed frame suspended from the CSD District Office, and the installation will include a video.

Elizabeth Mascaro, the CMS sixth-grader who designed the shows invitation and poster, explains the rationale behind her illustration.

To me, creating a difference means taking something unfair, boring or tiresome and making it better than before, Mascaro says. My digital drawing relates to the title of our show because within each persons head, there are ideas waiting to be displayed through art. My drawing shows that through the eyes lightbulb you see the ideas, and the art tools behind it are the ideas being displayed through art.

Whitemarsh Elementary teacher Rochelle Rocchi believes the process of creating art is transformative.

It also teaches us to see ourselves and to see the world around us, notes CMS educator Julie Horwitz.

My art students are encouraged to create their differences in the world with art materials but also with their actions and reactions, Horwitz adds. I love the district show because it gives me an opportunity to see my students ideas shared with our community, and I also love seeing the growth and success of my former students as they continue their work in the high school studios.

Those students include Mollie Hamaday, a PW junior whose surreal photo received an award at the 2019 Montgomery County Community College High School Exhibit. Hamaday is vice president of PWs chapter of the National Art Honor Society, an organization that recognizes creativity, academics and contributions to the community.

Not that such contributions are limited by an artists age.

Conshohocken Elementary teacher Jen Fitzgerald points to projects completed by CSD kindergartners through third-graders.

Its a powerful concept when students see how their actions can make a difference, especially with a cause that has meaning to them  like raising awareness of endangered species through their art or using recycled materials and trash to create, Fitzgerald says.

The 2019 CSD Art Show will take place in Colonials administrative offices (located in Colonial Elementary School) at 230 Flourtown Road, Plymouth Meeting. March 20s opening reception  from 6:30 to 8 p.m.  will also feature music, refreshments and assorted art activities. The event is free and open to the public.

Additional information about the districts art program is available at colonialsd.org.
WASHINGTON  A handful of military sites in upstate New York could be impacted if President Donald J. Trumps plan to divert Pentagon construction funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall ever comes to fruition.

Among them are the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, which could lose $325 million intended for a wastewater treatment plant, engineering center and parking garage.

An Air Force research lab at the mothballed Griffiss Air Force Base in Oneida County is facing a $14.2 million loss of funds earmarked for an entry control point to improve security. Construction projects at two Air National Guard facilities  Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Suffolk County on Long Island and Hancock Field in Syracuse  appear to be safe.

Also safe is Fort Drum, the sprawling post outside Watertown that is home to the Armys 10th Mountain Division. A spokeswoman for Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, referred to a previous statement in which the third-term lawmaker said, the House "needs to work together on a bipartisan legislative solution to fund comprehensive border security. I will continue to advocate that all Fort Drum projects be fully funded and appropriated."

Trump turned to the emergency declaration to build the wall after the weeks-long federal shutdown prompted by the debate. Both the Democratic House and Republican Senate have voted to override the declaration, but Trump exercised his veto power for the first time since taking office.

Trumps plan is to access $3.6 billion according to Section 2808 of the U.S. code, which empowers the president to access military construction money during a national emergency  with no Congressional approval required.

But his ability to follow through may be in doubt. Several lawsuits, including one from 16 state attorneys general including New York's Letitia James, challenge the constitutionality of Trumps assertion of power to circumvent congressional disapproval.

The Pentagon on Monday released a document laying out where diversions might come. It states that no military housing, barracks or dormitory construction will be affected. And all projects awarded in fiscal 2019 will be allowed to proceed. Future awards made after the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 may be in jeopardy, however.

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At least 700 miles of wall or barrier are already up along the 1,933-mile border. Congress last year approved funding for 33 miles of barriers in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, long a favored crossing point for undocumented immigrants.

Rep. Antonio Delgado  whose 19th Congressional District's southern border runs close to West Point but does not include it  said military construction money should not be sacrificed to build Trumps ineffective, unnecessary border wall.

And Trump never should have sought to pay for it by diverting funding that our military specifically requested for projects across the country, including in upstate New York at West Point, Delgado said.

A national emergency should never have been declared in the first place," he said, "and it goes against our national interests to pay for the wall by taking away from projects that were actually deemed necessary.




A man, played by Dev Patel, going through security at Heathrow Airport in London. He doesn't smile, but he seems pleasant enough. He lands in Pakistan, rents a car, then buys two guns.

He gets to his destination, then kidnaps a woman who is to be married that day, accidentally killing a security guard on the way out.

That's the setup for "The Wedding Guest," a film in which, in grand film noir tradition, nothing is as it seems.

For example, the woman, Samira (Radhika Apte), doesn't want to be married. She wants to be with her lover, Padesh (Jim Sarbh), who has paid our nameless professional to extricate her.

But as the two head to their rendezvous in New Delhi, even that is not what it seems. Add some hot jewelry, fake passports, loads of money and a few more twists  and then we discover Samira is addicted to thrills.

If this were a 1940s Hollywood noir, maybe it would have starred Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer  or Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. But Patel and Apte do just fine in this British thriller directed by Michael Winterbottom.

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Patel, now 28, came into most moviegoers' consciousness as the lead teenager in the Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire," and he has been working steadily ever since ("The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," "The Newsroom"). But "Lion" (2016), about an adoptee who goes looking for his real family in India, proved he could carry a movie, and in "The Wedding Guest" he is smooth and professional, like his character, oozing confidence and, when called for, danger.

Like the best noirs, "The Wedding Guest" is an efficient crime thriller that clocks in at around 97 minutes. It's a B movie with style  the stuff that dreams are made of.
Troy

When a teenager was hit and injured by an allegedly speeding car earlier this month, nearby sidewalks along Eighth Street were unusable because they were covered by snow and ice.

That's a common problem in Troy, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Disability Rights New York on behalf of two residents who use wheelchairs and say they struggle to move around the city.

City Hall, the lawsuit says, fails to enforce a law that requires property-owners to clear the sidewalks soon after a snowstorm. And that isn't the only obstacle to mobility cited by plaintiffs Moses Lugo, an artist with multiple sclerosis, and Cheryl Seaton, who uses a wheelchair since having a leg amputated.

Troy sidewalks are often blocked by light poles, trash cans and other impediments. Sidewalks are dangerously uneven and poorly maintained. Crosswalk ramps often don't meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards, the lawsuit says.

"The terrible condition of the streets and sidewalks in the city Troy is well known," said Timothy Clune, executive director of Disability Rights New York, based in Albany. "It is past time for Troy to meet its legal obligations and provide a safe and accessible city."

You don't have to use a wheelchair to realize the essential truth of the lawsuit, which was filed in January and asks that a federal judge force the city to implement a plan for removing barriers to movement. Anyone who has walked the city  or pushed a stroller around it  fully understands how difficult the task can be.

That isn't just true of Troy. It's the case in nearly every city or town in this sprawling, car-centric region.

Actually, Troy is probably better for those in wheelchairs than suburbs like Colonie, where sidewalks are often missing entirely. For all its faults, the city is also one of the region's best places to walk. That is especially the case downtown.

John Salka, spokesman for Mayor Patrick Madden, didn't respond directly to the lawsuit but said that "no city administration has been more committed to improving accessibility for people of all ages and abilities."

To that end, the Madden administration has replaced 65,500 square feet of sidewalk and 79 corner ramps in the North Central neighborhood, and another 54,700 square feet and 80 ramps in Lansingburgh  no small thing for a cash-strapped city.

Obviously, the consequences of bad sidewalks are not the same for able-bodied pedestrians and wheelchair users. Sidewalk problems that are merely inconvenient for pedestrians can be impossible for the disabled.

The Disability Rights New York lawsuit even cites examples when Lugo and Seaton had their wheelchairs damaged by city sidewalks and streets. In one case, Lugo's wheelchair took a month to fix, the lawsuit says, and he was confined to his apartment until the repair was completed.

Still, the interests of walkers and wheelchair users are obviously linked. Safe streets and sidewalks are beneficial to both  and both can be put in harm's way by streets and sidewalks that aren't.

The 16-year-old girl hit on narrow, residential Eighth Street was walking in the roadway when she was hit at about 7 p.m. on March 5, perhaps because sections of bordering sidewalk were impassable. A day after the girl was hit, sustaining head and leg injuries, neighbors described the street as a "raceway" of speeding cars.

Nothing has changed in the nearly two weeks since, longtime resident Rick Wagar told me Monday.

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"It doesn't surprise me," Wagar said. "In my opinion, the neighborhood is considered the ghetto part of Troy, so the city could care less."

That may seem harsh, but maybe you can understand Wagar's frustration. Neighborhood complaints about speeding traffic have gone unanswered for years, he said.

Asked about Eighth Street, Salka said police can't be everywhere to enforce the city's 30 mph speed limit. That's certainly true, which is why the city should address speeding in residential neighborhoods with physical changes, including speed bumps, designed to slow traffic. The city also should crack down on property owners who fail to clear sidewalks.

Yet making Troy's streets safer for pedestrians and wheelchair users is not entirely within City Hall's control.

Yes, better pedestrian behavior, especially in the walking-while-texting age, is part of the answer. But it is more important that drivers abandon a car-centric mindset that, in my experience, has a particularly strong hold on the Capital Region. Drivers here are way too oblivious to pedestrians.

On Wednesday afternoon, cars continued to race up Eighth Street as they attempted to beat the light at the intersection with Hoosick Street. That wasn't the only insult for pedestrians or wheelchair users.

More Information Contact columnist Chris Churchill at 518-454-5442 or email cchurchill@timesunion.com See More Collapse

On the east side of the street, on the same block where the teen was hit, a truck was parked on the sidewalk.
ALBANY  Two years after it opened, the Albany Capital Center will undergo about $500,000 in additional renovations because of increasing business, Capital Center officials said.

The Albany Convention Center Authority, the quasi-government entity that owns the $78 million Capital Center on Eagle Street, recently asked for bids for construction of three mezzanines that will be built between floors for storage and additional office space.

The authority said the construction will not disrupt activities at the center: The renovations will be in empty ceiling spaces that are not occupied by heating and air conditioning systems.

It is estimated the work will cost about $500,000, the authority said. In its 2019 budget, it anticipated $635,000 for a "capital outlay" between February and June.

Some of the new space will be used to store the center's removable sport floors, which are currently being stored near the truck dock. Additional office space would be used by the sales and management staff of Mazzone Catering, which supplies the food at the convention center.

The new office space will be also used by the authority's staff, which currently leases space nearby. The authority budgeted $1,500-a-month to lease its office space this year.

The Albany Convention Center Authority was created by the state more than a decade ago to oversee construction of a new convention center in the city. Once the Albany Capital Center opened in March 2017, SMG took over operation of the center.

While the authority owns the Capital Center, one of its main tasks now is to oversee downtown properties bordered by Hudson Avenue and Broadway that were once eyed as the site for a much larger convention center. The center was eventually built at 55 Eagle St.

The authority, which is governed by an appointed board, has faced criticism in the past after two of its buildings  6 E-Comm Square and 50 Hudson Ave.  had to be demolished over fear they would collapse.

Capitalize Albany, the city's development agency, is trying to purchase the remainder of the privately-owned parcels around the site where the convention center was originally planned. They hope to redevelop the mostly vacant area that critics deride as "the parking lot district."

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On Tuesday, the authority touted the two-year-old Capital Center, saying events hosted there have generated $18.5 million "in direct spending to the regional economy."

The center said it hosted 338 events between March 2017 and December 2018 - most consisting of meetings, followed by social and sporting events. The authority has said the mix of smaller events is essential to the building's vitality. The authority also said it is expecting more business from conventions, noting New York State United Teachers, the union that represents most teachers in the state, has a contract to host a yearly event at the center.

The Capital Center runs on a deficit, which is expected to be about $1.2 million by year's end. The amount is covered with about $4 million Albany County provides in hotel and motel taxes each year. Authority officials said the deficit was expected and a minor price to bring visitors into downtown Albany, authority officials have said.
Over the past 20 years, Americans have been twice as likely to sweat through record-breaking heat rather than shiver through record-setting cold, a new Associated Press data analysis shows.

The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 states that had consistent temperature records since 1920 and counted how many times daily hot temperature records were tied or broken and how many daily cold records were set. In a stable climate, the numbers should be roughly equal.

Since 1999, the ratio has been two warm records set or broken for every cold one. In 16 of the last 20 years, there have been more daily high temperature records than low.

The AP shared the data analysis with several climate and data scientists, who all said the conclusion was correct, consistent with scientific peer-reviewed literature and showed a clear sign of human-caused climate change. They pointed out that trends over decades are more robust than over single years.

The analysis stopped with data through 2018. However, the first two months of 2019 are showing twice as many cold records than hot ones. That's temporary and trends are over years and decades, not months, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt.

"We are in a period of sustained and significant warming and  over the long run  will continue to explore and break the warm end of the spectrum much more than the cold end," Arndt said.

An Ulster County, N.Y., weather station, the closest station that was part of the AP analysis, has recorded 37 cold temperature records since 1997 compared to 227 high-temperature records set during the same period.

Former Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, who has been studying hot and cold extreme records since 2000, said the trend is unmistakable.

"You are getting more extremes," Walton said. "Your chances for getting more dangerous extremes are going up with time."

No place has that been more noticeable than the southern California city of Pasadena, where 7,203 days went by between cold records being broken. On Feb. 23, Pasadena set a low temperature record, its first since June 5, 1999.

Vermont native Paul Wennberg felt it. He moved to Pasadena in 1998 just before the dearth of cold records.

"Even with the local cold we had this past month, it's very noticeable," said Wennberg, a California Institute of Technology atmospheric sciences professor. "It's just been ever warmer."

In between the two cold record days, Pasadena set 145 hot records. That includes an all-time high of 113 degrees last year.

"Last year was unbelievable here," Wennberg said. "The tops of a lot of the hedges, they essentially melted."

Scientists often talked about human-caused global warming in terms of average temperatures, but that's not what costs money or sends people to the hospital. A study this month found that in just 22 states, about 36,000 people on average go to the hospital because of excessive summertime heat.

"The extremes affect our lives," Arndt said, adding that they are expensive, with hospital stays, rising energy bills and crop losses.

National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Gerald Meehl, who has published peer-reviewed papers on the rising hot-to-cold ratio, said people pay more attention to climate when records are broken.

The AP counted daily records across 424 stations starting in 1920 and ending in 2018. The AP only considered daily  not all-time  high maximum temperatures and low minimum temperatures and only used stations with minimal missing data. Temperatures that tied previous records were counted in addition to temperatures that broke previous records.

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More typical than Pasadena is Wooster, Ohio. From 1999 on, Wooster saw 106 high temperature records set or broken and 51 cold ones. In the previous eight decades, the ratio was slightly colder than one to one.

At MW Robinson Co., people are lining up for air conditioning installation as the climate seems to get have been getting hotter over the years, said Lori Bowersock, who coordinates the firm's HVAC installations.

"It's more and more every year," Bowersock said. "Usually we don't have them lined up like this."

The AP's other findings:

 Since Jan. 1, 1999, just under half the stations had at least twice as many hot records set than cold ones, including Wooster.

 In all, 87 percent of the weather stations had more hot records than cold since 1999. There have been 42 weather stations that have at least five hot records for every cold one since 1999, with 11 where the hot-to-cold ratio is 10-to-1 or higher, including Pasadena.

 All nine of NOAA's climate regions have seen more hot records set than cold ones since 1999, with the West, Southwest and Northeast having a 3-to-1 ratio.

 All four seasons have had more hot records broken than cold for the same time period.

 Most decades in the 20th century had close to an even ratio of hot to cold. The 1930s, driven by Dust Bowl summers, had about 1.4 hot records for every cold. The 1960s and 1970s had about 1.5 cold records for every hot. The 21st century has a 1.9-to-1 hot-to-cold ratio.

"As a measure of climate change, the dailies (temperature records) will tell you more about what's happening," said climate scientist Chris Field of Stanford. "The impacts of climate change almost always come packaged in extremes."

Cathleen F. Crowley/Times Union contributed to this report.
ALBANY  State Sen. Jessica Ramos is one of many progressive Democrats who want to abolish ICE, the federal immigration enforcement agency. But first, she'll settle for reducing the maximum sentence for certain misdemeanors by one day  364 instead of 365  to prevent deportations of undocumented New Yorkers.

On the second point, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo agrees with her.

Under current law, if undocumented immigrants commit any of the non-violent class A misdemeanors  such as shoplifting or spraying graffiti  that carry a maximum sentence of one year, they automatically face deportation.

New Yorkers with such convictions receive non-jail sentences, like probation, 40 percent of the time, according to state Division of Criminal Justice Services data collected by the Immigrant Defense Project, an advocacy organization. Only 4 percent were actually sentenced to a full year, and many of those people don't serve the full term.

Even if undocumented immigrants don't serve the full time or accept a guilty plea deal in spite of being innocent, they could still be deported.

New York Democrats' simple solution? Shorten the punishment.

"The difference is really one day; it's 24 hours; it's one-seventh of a week," Ramos said. "This is largely to protect undocumented immigrants who may not understand their rights, who may end up pleading guilty because they don't understand the system."

When asked whether the Queens lawmaker was tipping the scale of justice toward immigrants, Ramos said that's was precisely what she was attempting: "I am favoring immigrants, and there is nothing wrong with that," she said.

Ramos' bill, which has been put before the chamber in past years, is sponsored in the Assembly by Marcos Crespo, a Democrat from the Bronx. Both bills are currently in committee.

But Ramos believes this is the year the proposed legislation will pass, in large part because the Senate is for the first time in almost a decade controlled by Democrats. Also encouraging: The governor's executive budget plan included the proposal to shave a day off the maximum sentence.

Senate Republican leader John Flanagan's office didn't respond to request for comment.

California, Washington and Nevada have changed their criminal codes in the midst of stepped-up ICE enforcement aimed at the country's estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. Of the more than 158,000 deported by ICE in fiscal year 2018, 66 percent were convicted criminals.

New York's bill doesn't apply to crimes such as child abuse, domestic violence or a firearm or controlled substance offense that immigration law defines as crimes "involving moral turpitude" regardless of the sentencing time.

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Albany County District Attorney David Soares, currently the president of the state district attorneys' association, said he supported the proposal "to address the disproportionate unjust consequences on our immigrant neighbors," he said in a statement.

"We often work to assist in sealing and expungement of past criminal convictions under available state laws," Soares said. "Providing judges with sentencing options for specific circumstances is the right thing to do. It should not matter where you are from  the law should be applied equitably in this regard."

Jim Milstein, managing attorney of the immigration unit at Prisoners Legal Services of New York, said there's a need for the legislation.

"I think the legislation will benefit immigrants who could potentially suffer and devastating immigration consequences that can result from being convicted for a relatively minor crime," said Milstein, formerly the Albany County Public Defender and head of the county's Regional Immigration Assistance Center.

Albany County Executive Dan McCoy said he hopes shortening punishment by one day will limit ICE's ability to "round up" and deport a person for low-level offenses.

"Currently," McCoy said in a statement, "these practices by ICE fly in the face of the values of our county, and our constitution."
SEATTLE, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to Coherent Market Insights, the global Primary Biliary Cholangitis Treatment Market was valued at US$ 526.4 million in 2017, and is projected to exhibit a CAGR of 36.3% during the forecast period (2018  2026).

Key Trends and Analysis of the Primary Biliary Cholangitis Treatment Market:



Rising prevalence of primary biliary cholangitis is expected to drive the market growth. For instance, as per National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) data, the prevalence of PBC from 2006 through 2016, increased from 21.7 to 39.2 per 100,000 persons in the U.S.

Request Sample Pages of this Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/2555

Moreover, increasing number of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for the drugs to treat PBC is contributing to the market growth. For instance, in May 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Ocaliva (obeticholic acid) in combination with ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) for the treatment of Primary Biliary Cholangitis (PBC) in adults with an inadequate response to UDCA. Moreover, in 2016, Ocaliva was assigned fast track designation and orphan drug designation by the U.S. FDA.

Furthermore, increasing initiatives such as acquisitions by key players is anticipated to drive the market size. For instance, in June 2016, Retrophin, Inc. acquired ownership of a liquid formulation of ursodeoxycholic acid from Asklepion Pharmaceuticals, LLC. Ursodeoxycholic acid is a naturally occurring bile acid that dissolves gall stone rich in cholesterol and improves the flow of bile in primary biliary cholangitis.

Among regions, North America is anticipated to witness lucrative market share in primary biliary cholangitis treatment market, owing to growing initiatives by market players to develop advance treatment options for PBC. For instance, in October 2016, TARGET PharmaSolutions, Inc., U.S.-based Company, in collaboration with Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc., launched its TARGET-PBC (Primary Biliary Cholangitis) platform. TARGET-PBC platform has been created to advance the understanding of real world treatment patterns in PBC.

To know the latest trends and insights prevalent in this market, click the link below:

https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/primary-biliary-cholangitis-treatment-market-2555

Key Market Takeaways:



The global Primary Biliary Cholangitis Treatment Market is projected to witness CAGR of 36.3% during the forecast period (2018  2026), owing to increasing U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals for the treatment of primary biliary cholangitis. For instance, in February 2018, the U.S.FDA granted orphan drug designation (ODD) to Calliditas Therapeutics AB for the treatment of Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC).

Among region, Asia Pacific is expected to show significant growth for Primary Biliary Cholangitis Treatment Market, owing to increasing initiatives by various association in Asia Pacific, which in turn is expected to drive growth of the primary biliary cholangitis treatment market. For instance, in 2017, the Japanese Biliary Association (JBA) and the Intractable Hepatobiliary Disease Study Group of Japan estimated that there were 2,000 to 3,000 patients with PBC in Japan. Also, in 2017, Japanese researchers planned to collect DNAs from Japanese PSC patients, to examine difference in genetic background between the East and the West of Japan.

Major players operating in the global Primary Biliary Cholangitis Treatment Market include Novartis AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb, NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Lumena Pharmaceuticals, Inc., TARGET PharmaSolutions, Inc., Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Retrophin, Inc., Calliditas Therapeutics AB., and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) pharmaceutical.

About Coherent Market Insights:

Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.
Toms River, N.J.

The man charged with killing the reputed boss of the Gambino crime family wrote pro-Donald Trump slogans on his hand and flashed them to journalists before a court hearing Monday.

Anthony Comello, 24, was arrested Saturday in New Jersey in the death of Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali last week in front of his Staten Island home.

While waiting for a court hearing to begin in Toms River, New Jersey, in which he agreed to be extradited to New York, Comello held up his left hand.

On it were scrawled pro-Trump slogans including "MAGA Forever," an abbreviation of Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." It also read "United We Stand MAGA" and "Patriots In Charge." In the center of his palm he had drawn a large circle. It was not immediately clear why he had done so.

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Comello's lawyer, Brian Neary, would not discuss the writing on his client's hand, nor would he say whether Comello maintains his innocence. Asked by reporters after the hearing what was on Comello's hand, Neary replied, "Handcuffs."

He referred all other questions to Comello's Manhattan lawyer, Robert Gottlieb, who said in an emailed statement his client has been placed in protective custody due to "serious threats" that had been made against him, but gave no details of them. Ocean County officials could not immediately be reached after hours on Monday.
[March 19, 2019] 3iQ Appeals Decision of OSC Director on The Bitcoin Fund

3iQ Corp. (3iQ) announced today that it has filed an application with the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) for a public hearing and review of the decision to refuse to issue a receipt for the final prospectus of The Bitcoin Fund. The application requests the OSC to set aside the decision that The Bitcoin Fund is not in the public interest on the grounds that the decision ignores the purpose of securities law to promote fair and efficient capital markets and applies operational standards to the Fund which are more onerous than what is required by law. 3iQ filed a preliminary prospectus for The Bitcoin Fund in October 2018 following two years of working closely with OSC Staff to establish a secure, regulated, professionally managed investment vehicle to give Canadians access to this exciting new asset class in traditional investment and registered accounts. The Bitcoin Fund is not intended to be a complete investment program for any investor, but rather an allocation within an investment portfolio to provide diversification to an uncorrelated asset class and innovative technology. "This hearing request is an important step for Ontario and indeed for Canada, to show leadership and address global concerns regarding the regulation and custody of cryptoassets," said 3iQ's President & CEO Fred Pye. "With all the proper pieces in place, we have created an investment vehicle that we believe complies with Canada's securities laws and seeks to address the needs of all Canadians, including the 5% of Canadians who have invested in bitcoin." According to 3iQ's Chief Investment Officer Shaun Cumby, "working with our custody prtners, we have established industry-leading operational risk management processes to safeguard the Fund's bitcoin in accordance with our standard of care as investment fund manager and in compliance with applicable securities laws."



"The Fund's net asset value pricing will be based on the MVIS CryptoCompare Bitcoin Index maintained by MV Index Solutions GmbH, a leading index administrator in this space," said John Loeprich, Chief Financial Officer of 3iQ. "With all the regulatory concerns dealt with, we believe it is necessary to have a hearing of independent OSC Commissioners to debate the issue of public interest based on factual evidence," said Howard Atkinson, Chairman of 3iQ. "As seen in the recent collapse of QuadrigaCX, Canadians are investing in cryptoassets without the benefit of any securities regulation. We believe the industry has progressed sufficiently and the timing is right for the acceptance of The Bitcoin Fund. We have worked long and hard with industry participants and the regulators to get to this stage, and we hope to successfully conclude this process at a hearing. We believe that The Bitcoin Fund is an opportunity for advancing fintech efforts in Toronto, Ontario and Canada and will help attract businesses, employees and investors to this exciting space."

About 3iQ Corp. 3iQ is a Canadian investment fund manager focused on providing innovative investment products of institutional quality. 3iQ currently manages the 3iQ Global Cryptoasset Fund, a private investment fund which holds bitcoin, ether and litecoin and is eligible for investment by accredited investors in Canada or in reliance on other exemptions from the prospectus requirement. Founded in 2012, 3iQ is currently focused on disruptive technologies and the cryptoasseet space. Please visit www.3iQ.ca to learn more or contact Frederick T. Pye ([email protected]) or Howard Atkinson ([email protected]) to schedule a call. About MV Index Solutions GmbH MV Index Solutions (MVIS) develops, monitors and licenses the MVIS Indices, a selection of focused, investable and diversified benchmark indices. The indices are especially designed to underlie financial products. MVIS Indices cover several asset classes, including equity, fixed income markets and digital assets and are licensed to serve as underlying indices for financial products.Approximately USD 13 billion in assets under management are currently invested in financial products based on MVIS Indices. MVIS is a VanEck company. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005428/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Bridge Alliance Acclaimed as a Top 10 IoT Solution Provider -- 2019

SINGAPORE, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Bridge Alliance was named one of the Top 10 IoT Solution Providers -- 2019 by APAC CIOoutlook, an independent publisher of a technology magazine. The annual listing, now in its fourth edition, highlights the most prominent organisations in the industry who are competent in leading their clients towards excellence by offering innovative solutions in the Internet of Things (IoT) landscape. Around 250 subscriber-nominated companies were scrutinised before an evaluation panel came together to assess a shortlist of 25 nominees. Among the assessment criteria were how effectively the company addresses market pain points and how future-proof the solution is. "Our evaluation panel is duly impressed by Bridge Alliance's expertise in offering outstanding services in the machine-to-machine (M2M) or IoT deployment space for premier operators and their customers in the APAC. Their vision to provide a platform for enterprises to deploy services without border restrictions is highly regarded and it made way for Bridge Alliance to be on the finalist of Top 10 Companies," commented the evaluation panel. Bridge Alliance comprises 34 premier operators in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, with strategic partnerships in Europe and the Americas extending its coverage of leading networks. Banding together top tier operators around the world simplifies the workflow for companies looking to deploy IoT-powered solutions or products in multiple countries. "The technology space is advancing so quickly thatenterprises are looking for partners that can help them navigate the fragmented market with speed and at scale. Simplicity is a crucial factor to a smooth integration and shorter go-to-market periods for enterprises with regional IoT needs," said Ong Geok Chwee, CEO of Bridge Alliance.



"It is all about designing with the customer in mind. By bringing top tier networks across the region onto a single platform with a master service agreement, Bridge Alliance helps reduce the complexities in logistical operations and system integration. This lowers the cost and time to contract for enterprises, enabling them to concentrate more on their business." This is the second recognition the IoT solution has received for its borderless vision. In June 2018, Bridge Alliance's Regional IoT Connectivity Management won the Most Innovative IoT Solution at the 2018 Asia Communication Awards.

"Making the Top 10 IoT Solution Providers is affirmation to the power of collective strength that working together as an alliance of trusted partners brings, not only to our member operators and their customers, but to the wider ecosystem as well," added Geok Chwee. "Bridge Alliance is thrilled to work more closely with our members and ecosystem of partners to drive digital transformation as an IoT gateway to Asia." For further illustration of how Bridge Alliance's Regional IoT Connectivity Management helps simplify regional IoT deployment workflows, watch this example of smart car production. ABOUT BRIDGE ALLIANCE Bridge Alliance is the leading mobile alliance for premier operators and their customers in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Our alliance covers 34 members who serve more than 800 million customers collectively across these regions. Our goal is to build group capabilities and create value for our members by enabling compelling roaming services and experience, offering multi-market enterprise and IoT solutions, and delivering savings and benefits through leveraging group economies. Bridge Alliance's members include: Airtel (India, Sri Lanka and the Airtel subsidiaries in Africa: Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia), AIS (Thailand), CSL Mobile (Hong Kong), CTM (Macau), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), MobiFone (Vietnam), Optus (Australia), Singtel (Singapore), SK Telecom (South Korea), STC (Saudi Arabia), SoftBank Corp. (Japan), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan), Telkomcel (Timor-Leste), Telkomsel (Indonesia), Turk Telekom (Turkey), and Viva (Bahrain and Kuwait). For more information, visit www.bridgealliance.com. Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190319/2407241-1LOGO SOURCE Bridge Alliance

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[March 19, 2019] KoreConX Advisor Appointed to the OSC Fintech Advisory Committee

NEW YORK, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Randee Pavalow, a member of KoreConX's advisory board, was appointed to be a member of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) Fintech Advisory Committee. This is another example of the quality roles that our advisors play in working with regulators and the industry to encourage innovation. The OSC administers and enforces compliance for the securities industry in Ontario and is aimed at protecting investors, fostering fair and efficient markets and contributing to the stability of the financial system. Ontario is the principal regulator for more than 80 percent of all Canadian Investment Funds and the OSC has specifically focused on addressing the emergence of new market sectors, including burgeoning fintech and cannabis industries and explosive growth in offerings involving digital assets. Ms. Pavalow's new role at the commission specifically focuses on the oversight and advisement of the developments in the fintech space in Ontario, as well as the unique challenges encountered by innovative businesses in the securities industry. Ms. Pavalow has an impressive background in capital markets and is considered a thought leader on the topic. She is not new to the OSC. Between 2001 and 2007, Ms. Pavalow acted as director of capital markets, when she managed a group of 90 staff members and provided strategic direction and leadership. "Having Ms. Pavalow appointed to the Ontario Securities ommission only reiterates the quality of our advisory board. She is an extremely valuable resource for us, as she is to the capital markets industry as a whole," said Oscar Jofre, co-founder and CEO at KoreConX. "We are confident she will make a positive impact on the digital securities space - expanding opportunities without compromising security and compliance."



The Fintech Advisory Committee meets quarterly, with members serving at the minimum a one-year term. About KoreConX

KoreConX is the world's first highly secure permissioned blockchain ecosystem for fully compliant digital securities worldwide. To ensure compliance with securities regulation and corporate law, the KoreConX all-in-one, AI-based blockchain platform manages the full lifecycle of digital securities including the issuance, trading, clearing, settlement, management, reporting, corporate actions and custodianship. KoreConX connects companies to the capital markets and secondary markets facilitating access to capital and liquidity for private investors. KoreConX is the first secure, all-in-one platform for private companies to manage their capital market activity and stakeholder communications. Removing the burden of fragmented systems and inefficient tools across multiple vendors, KoreConX offers a single environment to connect companies, investors and broker/dealers. Leveraged for investor relations and fundraising, private companies can share and manage corporate records and investments including portfolio management, capitalization table management, virtual minute book, security registers, transfer agent services and virtual deal rooms for raising capital. www.KoreConX.io Media Contact:

KoreConX

Oscar A Jofre

[email protected] Related Links KoreConX View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/koreconx-advisor-appointed-to-the-osc-fintech-advisory-committee-300814462.html SOURCE KoreConX

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[March 19, 2019] More Customers Choose Avaya Cloud Solutions To Create Enhanced Customer Experiences, Drive Business Growth and Reduce Costs

Enterprise Connect 2019 - Avaya (News - Alert) Holdings Corp. (NYSE: AVYA), a global leader in solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration, continues to see increased adoption of its cloud solutions across a wide range of industries including healthcare, hospitality, financial services, manufacturing, retail, pharmaceutical, education, government agencies, tourism & travel, energy, BPOs and more. Organizations of all kinds, including Datamark Inc., Marine Rescue Technologies and Olitel are choosing Avaya OneCloud solutions to deliver improved customer experiences. Avaya OneCloud solutions for Unified Communications (News - Alert) as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), provide enterprise organizations with a fast, convenient and automated path to the benefits of cloud communications. Avaya currently has 3.7 million cloud seats between its public and private offerings, and continues to experience significant growth in new cloud customers each quarter. The company will showcase AI solutions, and more, at the Avaya booth #1519, Hall D at Enterprise Connect, March 18-21, in Orlando, FL. Founded in 1989, Datamark provides a wide range of outsourced back-office services serving Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and other larger enterprises. The company's innovation philosophy focuses on relentless dedication to improving the customer experience through flexible application of people, process and technology. When peak volume hit, Datamark was faced with short time lines and it needed a contact center partner who could provide agile solutions that could be up and running quickly and with a high-quality experience for its customers. "It is really about leveraging expertise from a partner like Avaya, and our experience has been phenomenal," said Jacob Bailon, Client Solutions Manager, Datamark Inc. "It is a partnership where we can collaborate and brainstorm ideas and effectively bring them to fruition. The public cloud is a really good solution that allows us to be agile with our customers so whenever there is peak volume, there is never a doubt that we can bring on new agents very quickly with a quality solution. What's important to Datamark is that it really comes down to customer experience and it's through our collaboration with Avaya that we provide this consistently." For over 15 years, Marine Rescue Technologies (MRT) has manufactured safety systems for vessels and facilities in the offshore oil and gas, defense, commercial marine and renewable energy industries worldwide. MRT works very closely with each of its customers to develop highly customized solutions, and by implementing the Avaya OneCloud CPaaS platform, customers experience has improved significantly. "Avaya OneCloud CPaaS has improved our ability to respond to customers quickly and with very specialized, specific solutions to meet their needs," said Michael Ritchie, founder and owner, Marine Rescue Technologies. "Our company is unique in that we offer personnel accountability in the form of muster through our emergency notification system. The Avaya OneCloud provides a communications platform whereby MRT can offer outbound and inbound notification campaigns and business automation for any vertical market in any language. The OneCloud API , Avaya Cloud Notification Service, was very easy to integrate for providing a response and location request to anyone with a mobile phone. We use it for mass notification purposes such as catastrophic weather, it can also be used during any emergency situation, and has been purchased also by state governments and airports. The API is very well documented and all of the functionality you need-even the small nuances involved with the telecom side-is all in there. We view Avaya and OneCloud as a valuable part of our business. The've delivered what we needed."



Olitel is an IT services and telecom integration company from Brazil and an Avaya business partner. The company has successfully implemented Avaya OneCloud solutions with customers throughout Brazil with significant positive business results. Olitel expects its revenue from Avaya OneCloud solutions will double in 2019 and that the number of cloud seats will grow three times higher compared to 2018. "We have been working with Avaya for more than 20 years and during this time we have made significant advances for our customers," said Mario Mendes, CEO, Olitel. "The demand for cloud solutions has grown exponentially and we believe this market will continue to grow. Over the next year we plan to deploy tens of thousands of seats, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises in Latin America. Our success with Avaya OneCloud is contributing decisively to the growth of our customers, generating cost optimization and a considerable gain in efficiency and scalability."

"At Avaya we are committed to delivering solutions that enable our customers to create enhanced experiences across their business," said Gaurav Passi, president, cloud business group, Avaya. "We are seeing increased traction in adoption across all parts of our cloud portfolio. In the previous quarter, we added over 200,000 total cloud seats, and our Mid-market cloud revenue grew over 150% year over year. We're excited to help companies like Olitel, Datamark and Marine Rescue Technologies, across diverse global industries, find the right mix of cloud deployment options for unified communications and contact center the way that best meets their needs." Avaya OneCloud UC and CC solutions are provided through a network of data centers in the United States, Germany and Singapore for availability in 34 countries. The company will continue to expand its network of global data centers in the coming months to meet the growing needs of customers worldwide. Additional Resources Read about 'Why the Cloud Might be Right for You'

Check out our whitepaper, CAPEX vs OPEX: The Financial Implications of Going Cloud

Request a demo on Avaya's Cloud solutions and the options for you

Read how Avaya Streamlines Internal Processes, Opens New Markets for Marine Rescue Technologies

Learn how Datamark is on Cloud Nine After Shifting to a Scalable, Flexible Platform About Datamark Inc. Founded in 1989, DATAMARK, Inc. is a leading business process services (BPS) company headquartered in El Paso, Texas. We serve Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and other large enterprises at our delivery centers worldwide, including the U.S., Mexico, and India. DATAMARK provides a wide range of outsourced back-office services, including call center services; high-volume digital mailroom and mail center management; and data entry, document processing and document management. Our Business Engineering and Client Solutions teams deliver process improvement consulting, applying Lean Six Sigma methodologies to streamline workflows and improve process quality. About Marine Rescue Technologies ISO 9001 certified Marine Rescue Technologies (MRT) is located in Sebastian, Florida, and offers the highest quality marine safety and rescue systems available; approved by the United States Coast Guard, the EU Marine Equipment Directive and SOLAS/IMO. Their recommendation for a rescue solution is based on the end user's perceived risk, mitigation objectives and their own extensive experience, MRT's AutoCrew System (ACMS) has been designed and deployed in many mission critical sites in the harshest environments requiring personnel accountability. The design objectives were clear; web based (cloud), holistic in approach, non-proprietary in hardware, and open architecture for true interoperability. Our design team proudly introduced multiple first-ever features to the automatic POB/Muster market, including bunk management, multi-lingual interface, and certificate tracking to both onshore and offshore installations. MRT works closely with a wide range of customers, including nuclear power plants, oil platforms and fleets Worldwide to understand their needs and mitigate inefficiencies in their operation and safety protocols. About Olitel Brasil S/A Olitel Brasil S/A has been in the market for 38 years, acting as Integrator of ICT (Information and Communication Technology). With portfolio of services in Consulting, Project design, planning, installation, training, maintenance and monitoring of the operation. In the last 5 years, it has been seeking more equity in business, simplifying the communication process and opening new horizons with end-to-end solutions. https://www.olitel.com.br/ About Avaya Businesses are built on the experiences they provide, and every day millions of those experiences are built by Avaya (NYSE: AVYA). For over one hundred years, we've enabled organizations around the globe to win - by creating intelligent communications experiences for customers and employees. Avaya builds open, converged and innovative solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration - in the cloud, on-premise or a hybrid of both. To grow your business, we're committed to innovation, partnership, and a relentless focus on what's next. We're the technology company you trust to help you deliver Experiences that Matter. Visit us at www.avaya.com. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This document contains certain "forward-looking statements." All statements other than statements of historical fact are "forward-looking" statements for purposes of the U.S. federal and state securities laws. These statements may be identified by the use of forward looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "our vision," "plan," "potential," "preliminary," "predict," "should," "will," or "would" or the negative thereof or other variations thereof or comparable terminology and include, but are not limited to, expected cash savings and statements about growth, exchange listing and improved operational metrics. The Company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While the Company believes these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond its control. The factors are discussed in the Company's Registration Statement on Form 10 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, may cause its actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a further list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to the Company's filings with the SEC (News - Alert) that are available at www.sec.gov. The Company cautions you that the list of important factors included in the Company's SEC filings may not contain all of the material factors that are important to you. In addition, considering these risks and uncertainties, the matters referred to in the forward-looking statements contained in this report may not in fact occur. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law. Source (News - Alert): Avaya Newsroom View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005186/en/

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[March 19, 2019] More than 70% of Shoppers Willing to Try Cross-Channel Shopping Methods in New Research from Periscope By McKinsey

NEW YORK AND LONDON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Periscope By McKinsey, which offers a suite of Marketing & Sales Analytics Solutions to help companies achieve sustainable revenue growth, today announced the findings of a survey conducted of 2,624 consumers in France, Germany, UK and the US. The research entitled, 'The Future of Shopping: connected, virtual and augmented', highlights the speed with which cross-channel retail is evolving, and how consumers are eager to try new digital channels that eliminate friction or frustration from their in-store shopping journeys. Consumers take a resolutely multichannel approach

60% or more of consumers in Germany, the UK and US say they engage equally with online and offline shopping channels, suggesting that multichannel is certainly becoming the new norm. Only France, at 35%, was lagging behind the trend, with 44% saying they primarily or only shop in stores. Despite this surge in multichannel behavior, the physical store still remains king with 50% of consumers in all countries surveyed saying that the bulk of their shopping activity in the past year was in-store. Computers are the second most popular method for shoppers in France, Germany, and the UK however, in the US, the immediacy of smartphone shopping (19%) has caught up with the popularity of the computer (19%). For 18-39 year-olds, despite in-store remaining a powerful channel, it is clear that the smartphone is now their second go-to channel. Interest in voice-activated internet-connected devices appealed to only 4-6% of shoppers in all markets. The future of shopping is virtual and augmented

New virtual and augmented technologies are enabling customers to interact digitally within the physical store environment to address immediate needs and preferences. They remove friction and allow retailers to reinvent their store experience. Over 60% of consumers in all countries surveyed had yet to encounter VR or AR applications in-store, yet the majority had future plans to utilize a virtual shelf for a number of activities that they say would improve their in-store shopping experience. When asked which AR/VR applications they would definitely/probably utilize, those that made it easy to access additional product information or 'virtually' explore product functionality/suitability scored most highly with consumers in all markets. The ability to conveniently tap into more extensive product information on-demand held a particularly strong appeal for all shoppers. This was especially the case in France where 65% said that they would definitely/probably use VR/AR applications that provided more information, followed by the US (62%), the UK (57%) and Germany (54%). 62% of French respondents also said that they would definitely/probably use VR/AR applications to see a product in context for example, "test outside store", where a consumer may visualize how a paint color would look on a wall. This sentiment was also echoed by shoppers in the US (59%) and the UK and Germany (56%). When it comes to interacting with digital in-store extensions, AR/VR applications that deliver an enhanced experience were th least appealing to consumers in all markets, most notably in Germany where only 41% said that they would definitely/probably use AR/VR applications for this purpose.



Digital shelves score high with consumers

The touch screen or smart 'virtual shelf' gives consumers visiting stores fast fingertip access to the entire product portfolio, while also supporting features they're already familiar with from online retail. The overwhelmingly positive attitude of respondents in all geographies highlights the appeal of virtual shelves for consumers. Browsing products was the top use-case for respondents in France (65%), the US (64%) and the UK (59%), followed closely by receiving similar product recommendations (US 59%, France 58%, UK 54%). For German consumers, browsing products (54%) and getting similar product recommendations (54%) scored equally high as the top application choice.

Interestingly, the convenience of being able to use a branded virtual shelf outside a store's location to make purchases held a universally strong appeal for consumers in the US (58%), France (55%), the UK (54%) and Germany (46%). In-store shoppers embrace convenient (mobile) payment options

Today's time-pressed and smartphone-savvy consumers have a vast array of frictionless payment instruments at their fingertips that enable them to speed through transactions. More and more consumers plan to utilize mobile payment options when shopping in-store in the future. For future use of mobile payments, US consumers lead the way with 65% saying they are definitely/probably likely to opt for making payments at the cashier with their smartphones. They were followed closely by UK (61%), French (53%) and German (52%) shoppers. Similarly, consumers expressed a particularly strong intent to make more use of their phones to scan-pay-go in the future  thus avoiding the need to go through a cashier point. Once again, US consumers (60%) are most eager to embrace this option, but a significant number of consumers in the UK (55%), Germany (49%) and France (48%) also plan to use this method. Consumers aren't prepared to compromise on privacy or security

Eliminating friction in retail through digital innovation is great, but retailers should be mindful that consumers are concerned about how these innovations could impact privacy and security. For example, having in-store movements tracked was the top security concern for German (43%) and UK (39%) consumers. Meanwhile, in the US, the top concern was the need to surrender phone and email information (38%). In France, the biggest concern was putting payment card information online (47%), which came second in Germany (40%) and the US (37%). The research also highlighted that Generation Z and Millennial shoppers are just as concerned about security and privacy risks, and not as apathetic as they are usually portrayed. Having their in-store movements tracked proved a top concern for consumers aged 18-39 in Germany (45%) and the UK (35%). However, for 46% of French and 37% of US shoppers in this age group, placing their card information online was their biggest concern. "Consumers are eager to embrace innovations in retail technologies and demanding more from retailers" said Brian Elliott, Partner and Head of Innovation at Periscope By McKinsey. "In-store experiences are getting a new lease on life, and for those retailers able to bridge their online and offline channels in a way that consumers can seamlessly interact with will be the winners. The real challenge for retailers is learning how to personalize the experience for individual consumers by powering cross channel analytics using the data available to them, without neglecting customers' security and privacy." To read more about the survey's findings, download the "The Future of Shopping: connected, virtual and augmented" report at: https://www.periscope-solutions.com/download.aspx?fileID=3600 Study Methodology

In February 2019, Periscope By McKinsey conducted online research targeting consumers in France (503), Germany (516), the UK (504) and the US (1101). Respondents were aged between 18 and 69 and responses were selectively evaluated by age category, income, gender and residential location (urban or rural). About Periscope By McKinsey

Founded in 2007, the Periscope By McKinsey platform combines world-leading intellectual property, prescriptive analytics and cloud based tools with expert support and training. It's a unique combination that drives revenue growth, both now and into the future. The platform offers a suite of Marketing & Sales solutions that accelerate and sustain commercial transformation for businesses. Periscope leverages its world-leading IP (largely from McKinsey but also other partners) and best-in-class technology to enable transparency into Big Data, create actionable insights and new ways of working that drive lasting performance improvement, and typically sustain a 2-7% increase in return on sales (ROS). With a truly global reach, the portfolio of solutions is comprised of: Insight Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Customer Experience Solutions, Category Solutions, Pricing Solutions, Performance Solutions and Sales Solutions. These are complemented by ongoing client service and custom capability building programs. To learn more about how Periscope's solutions and experts are helping businesses continually drive better performance, visit http://www.periscope-solutions.com/ For further information please contact: For Periscope: General information, Christian Koestler, [email protected], +43-1-5370 6342. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/more-than-70-of-shoppers-willing-to-try-cross-channel-shopping-methods-in-new-research-from-periscope-by-mckinsey-300814068.html SOURCE Periscope By McKinsey

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SAN DIEGO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ImageWare Systems, Inc. ( OTCQB: IWSY ), a leader in mobile and cloud-based, multi-modal biometric identity management solutions, today announced that on April 1, 2019 the Company will file its Form 10-K shortly after the close of the stock market and will host an investor update call the same day at 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET).



2018 Year-End Results Investor Update Call

The Company will host an investor update call on Monday, April 1, 2019 at 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET). The Participant Dial-In Number for the conference call is Domestic/International 1-631-891-4304. Participants should dial in to the call at least five minutes before 1:30pm PT (4:30pm ET) on April 1, 2019. The call can also be accessed live online at http://public.viavid.com/index.php?id=133630.

A replay of the recorded call will be available for 90 days on the Companys website ( https://www.iwsinc.com/corporate-updates/ ) . You can also listen to a replay of the call by dialing toll-free 1-844-512-2921 (international only - 1-412-317-6671) starting April 1, 2019, at 7:30pm ET through April 8, 2019 at 11:59 pm ET. Please use PIN Number 10006361.

About ImageWare Systems, Inc.

ImageWare Systems, Inc. is a leading developer of mobile and cloud-based identity management solutions, providing two-factor, biometric and multi-factor authentication solutions for the enterprise. The company delivers next-generation biometrics as an interactive and scalable cloud-based solution. ImageWare brings together cloud and mobile technology to offer two-factor, biometric, and multi-factor authentication for smartphone users, for the enterprise, and across industries.

ImageWares products support multi-modal biometric authentication including, but not limited to, face, voice, fingerprint, iris, palm, and more. All the biometrics can be combined with or used as replacements for authentication and access control tools, including tokens, digital certificates, passwords, and PINS, to provide the ultimate level of assurance, accountability, and ease of use for corporate networks, web applications, mobile devices, and PC desktop environments.

ImageWare is headquartered in San Diego, California, with offices in Portland, Oregon; Ottawa, Ontario; Tokyo, Japan; and Mexico City, Mexico. To learn more about ImageWare, visit https://iwsinc.com/ and follow us on Twitter , LinkedIn , YouTube and Facebook .

Forward-Looking Statements

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, forecast, intend, may, plan, project, predict, if, should and will and similar expressions as they relate to ImageWare Systems, Inc. are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. ImageWare may from time to time update publicly announced projections, but it is not obligated to do so. Any projections of future results of operations should not be construed in any manner as a guarantee that such results will in fact occur. These projections are subject to change and could differ materially from final reported results. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, see Risk Factors in ImageWares Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017 and its other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the dates on which they are made.


[March 19, 2019] Nodal Labs Hires The Mill's Former Global Head of Talent to Lead Talent Engagement Team

Garreth Gaydon joins the company as the Director of Talent Engagement LONDON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Nodal Labs, the world's first blockchain-powered freelance marketplace, has today announced the appointment of Garreth Gaydon as Director of Talent Engagement. Formerly the Global Head of Talent at The Mill, Garreth directed talent acquisition across London, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Bangalore. Garreth's role at Nodal will focus on helping the company to continue to attract the best talent while also driving sign-ups amongst both freelancers and agencies to the platform. The role will see him report directly into Founder and CEO, Oliver Hibbs-Brockway, ahead of the launch of the world's first blockchain-powered recruitment platform this Spring. Commenting on the announcement, Oliver Hibbs-Brockway, Founder and CEO of Nodal, said:

"Garreth brings a wealth of experience to the role, having spent years heading up talent teams at exactly the kind of agencies we want to be working with. He is an expert within creative industry recruitment and his knowledge, contacts and experience are seond to none. I have every confidence that Garreth will be a driving force in the ultimate success of our platform."



Gaydon joins Nodal with nearly two decades of experience within the creative service industry. Originally training as an artist, he soon moved into production before transitioning into a career within recruitment. Gaydon spent over six years with Escape Studios as Head of Recruitment and later Head of Commercial before moving to The Mill, one of the UK's leading VFX and Creative Content studios, in 2015. Leading The Mill's talent team for three years, Gaydon oversaw the company's overall talent strategy, with a focus on hiring and retaining the sector's best talent.

Garreth Gaydon, Director of Talent Engagement, added:

"Having worked agency side for more than a decade, I've seen first-hand the significant pressures that are placed on talent teams to find the right people, at speed, in order to get the job done. Verifying the skills and experience of potential candidates is a crucial but exceptionally difficult process  and something that all recruiters would love to solve. "Having spent time with Oliver and discussed his concept for the Nodal platform, I knew instantly that it was an important project and something I wanted to be part of. I believe that Nodal will transform the recruitment industry, both for employees and employers  and I look forward to being part of its growth story." Founded in 2017, Nodal is a fully-automated talent platform that aims to dramatically reduce the amount of time and money spent on recruitment, onboarding, payroll and management for both freelancers and employers. The organisation recently announced a significant Series A funding round. Developed to reinvent the recruitment process by creating a fairer, more transparent system for both freelancers and their clients, Nodal uses a custom-built blockchain to record and verify all transactions. Using blockchain, the platform will seamlessly automate timesheets, the on-boarding of freelancers and compliance, while guaranteeing that the skills and experience quoted matches those of the candidate  with data kept securely on a decentralised ledger. The platform will launch across the Creative, VFX, Film, Construction, Property and Engineering sectors in Spring 2019. Further sector expansions are planned.



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[March 19, 2019] Sagent Lending Technologies Announces 2018 Auction of the Year

Sagent Lending Technologies has announced its 2018 Auction of the Year award winner, ADESA Cincinnati/Dayton. At the start of each year, Sagent analyzes the prior year's performance metrics for all of its auction partners, awarding the top performer with the designation of 'Auction of the Year.' To qualify for the award, an auction must be a member of the NAAA (National Auto Auction Association), reside within Sagent's preferred auction network, and outperform its peers within the designated calendar year. As determined by its accumulation of points within Sagent's National Quality Control Program (NQCP), the company's 2018 Auction of the Year award winner is ADESA Cincinnati/Dayton located in Franklin, OH. Runners up include Manheim Louisville located in Clarksville, IN and Manheim Dallas located in Dallas, TX. ADESA Cincinnati/Dayton auction provides registered dealers, brokers, automobile manufacturers, rental agencies, as well as corporate and government fleets with a complete vehicle marketing solution in Ohio. When speakig of the honor, John Hammer, president, ADESA said, "ADESA Cincinnati/Dayton and all ADESA auctions are committed to quality and focused on creating a seamless, efficient customer experience. Recognition of our efforts from a remarketer like Sagent Lending Technologies is an indication that we're doing something right."



"Sagent expects the highest quality and standards from their vendor partners. ADESA Cincinnati/Dayton is one such partner that goes above and beyond expectations and deserves the 2018 recognition as 'Auction of the Year,'" remarked Charles Sutherland, CPO, Sagent Lending Technologies. ADESA Cincinnati/Dayton was presented with the award at an appreciation dinner held by Sagent Lending Technologies on March 18, 2019.

About Sagent Lending Technologies Sagent Lending Technologies improves the lending experience for everyone. The company's suite of comprehensive origination, servicing, and processing offerings come together to deliver flexible, scalable, and configurable solutions that deliver on the brand commitments of our clients. With solutions from Sagent, lenders and servicers can delight borrowers, increase efficiency, and improve agility in a demanding compliance environment. Sagent is a joint venture that combines Fiserv Inc.'s decades of market-leading lending expertise with Warburg Pincus' (News - Alert) skill in growing technology companies. Visit www.sagentlending.com to learn more. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005149/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Strata Oncology Launches Expanded StrataNGS for Patients with Advanced Cancer

ANN ARBOR, Mich., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Strata OncologyTM, a leading precision oncology company, today announced the launch of version 3.0 of StrataNGSTM, its pan-cancer assay for solid tumors. The updated 500-gene assay utilizes DNA and RNA from tumor samples to detect all clinically actionable biomarkers  including microsatellite instability (MSI), tumor mutational burden (TMB), and PD-L1  recommended by leading guidelines, in a single test. Test results are provided in a streamlined report that facilitates rapid, confident interpretation and identification of potential treatment options and clinical trials. "Our expanded assay, providing deep cancer insights and leading performance, represents our commitment to bring a best-in-class diagnostic to oncologists and pathologists across the Strata network of health systems," said Scott Tomlins, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer of Strata Oncology. "In addition to providing physicians with all relevant genomic information needed to make an informed treatment decision, the test will help inform new trial design and accelerate drug development." StrataNGS is provided at no cost to advanced cancer patients enrolled in the Strata TrialTM at the company's partner health systems. Results are returned in less than 10 business days using industry-low sample input requirements. The test employs RNA sequencing and DA sequencing to simultaneously detect mutations, small frame-preserving insertions/deletions (indels), amplifications, deep deletions, de novo deleterious mutations, gene fusion events, MSI, TMB, and PD-L1.



In addition, the updated assay includes analytical validation of 36 gene expression markers that represent emerging immuno-oncology and antibody-drug conjugate targets. Although these biomarkers are not yet reported clinically, the data is available to Strata Oncology and investigators at partner cancer centers for correlative analyses and new trial design. About Strata Oncology, Inc.

Strata Oncology, Inc. is a precision medicine company dedicated to transforming cancer care by systematizing precision oncology across a network of health systems and pharma companies. Strata empowers health systems to deliver a cost-effective, system-wide, precision oncology program, one that integrates cutting-edge molecular profiling and precision therapy trials with routine care, so that all advanced cancer patients have the opportunity to benefit. This large network of trial-ready health systems provides a mechanism to rapidly and predictably enroll precision therapy trials. For more information visit www.strataoncology.com.

Strata Oncology was founded in 2016 by leaders in the fields of cancer genomics, molecular pathology, and clinical oncology from Harvard Medical School and the University of Michigan. The company is funded by Arboretum Ventures, Baird Capital, Deerfield Partners, Merck Health Innovation Fund, and Pfizer Ventures. Contact: Strata Oncology Media Relations, 734-527-1000, [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/strata-oncology-launches-expanded-stratangs-for-patients-with-advanced-cancer-300814348.html SOURCE Strata Oncology, Inc.

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Two Mississippi Nonprofits Receive Partnership and Affordable Housing Program Grants

BancorpSouth Bank (NYSE: BXS) and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas) will award $225,000 in grants to Restoration Home, Inc. and Corporation for Global Community Development (CGCD), two Mississippi nonprofits.

Restoration Home, Inc. will receive $8,000 in Partnership Grant Program (PGP (News - Alert)) funds. The organization provides transitional housing and services for recovering addicts in Mississippi and surrounding states.

CGCD, which provides affordable housing, education and enrichment opportunities to the community, will receive a $210,000 Affordable Housing Program (AHP) grant to rehabilitate 14 senior living rental units at Dorothy L. Biard Hearts of Compassion Independent Living for Seniors facility. CGCD will also receive $7,500 in PGP funds to assist with capacity building.

The media is encouraged to join local dignitaries and bank representatives at a check presentation at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 19, 2019, at Hearts of Compassion Independent Living's offices at 4653 Terry Road in Jackson.

For more information about the programs visit fhlb.com/pgp or fhlb.com/ahp.







WHAT: Check Presentation WHEN: 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 19, 2019 WHO: Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Mayor, City of Jackson Brad Ferguson, Field Director, Office of U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-MS Evelyn Edwards, Vice President, Community Development Grant Specialist, BancorpSouth Bank Edward Hubbard, Executive Director, Restoration Home LeRoi Gray, Corporation for Global Community Development Greg Hettrick, First Vice President and Director of Community Investment, FHLB Dallas WHERE: Dorothy L. Biard Hearts of Compassion Independent Living for Seniors 4653 Terry Road Jackson, Mississippi 39212

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005004/en/
[March 18, 2019] Hillstone Networks Included in the Gartner Market Guide for Network Traffic Analysis

SANTA CLARA, California, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Hillstone Networks, a leading provider of Enterprise Network Security and Risk Management solutions, announced today that Hillstone Networks has been included in the Gartner Market Guide for Network Traffic Analysis* for its Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) solution, Hillstone Server Breach Detection System (sBDS). We believe this inclusion is a testament to Hillstone's vision in delivering security that works, as well as its breadth of reach in the market. The Hillstone NTA solution is based on the most advanced techniques in machine learning and behavioral analytics. These techniques include Abnormal Behavior Detection (ABD), Advanced Threat Detection (ATD), Complete Kill Chain Mapping (CKCM), combined with threat correlation and analysis. As a platform, the Hillstone strategy moves past the typical security analytics to actionable anlytics that allows for actual decision making. It empowers and enables the business to see, understand, and act on their security posture.



"Protecting valuable information is a mandate and a major challenge for all organizations in today's unpredictable cybersecurity landscape," says Timothy Liu, CTO & Co-Founder of Hillstone Networks. "With Hillstone's AI-enabled NTA solution, organizations can protect their assets and reputation with the most comprehensive and actionable cybersecurity technology and strategy available." *Source : Gartner, Market Guide for Network Traffic Analysis, Lawrence Orans, Jeremy D'Hoinne, Sanjit Ganguli, 28 February 2019

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Hillstone Networks Hillstone Networks' Enterprise Network Security and Risk Management solutions provide visibility, intelligence, and protection to ensure enterprises can comprehensively see, thoroughly understand, and rapidly act against cyber-threats. Recognized by leading analysts and trusted by global enterprises, Hillstone's solutions cover the enterprise from edge to cloud while improving total-cost-of-ownership. To learn more visit www.hillstonenet.com. Contacts: Hillstone Networks

Zeyao Hu

Marketing Manager

[email protected] Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/765968/Hillstone_Logo.jpg SOURCE Hillstone Networks

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[March 18, 2019] H2O.ai Accelerates Automatic Machine Learning with New NVIDIA-Powered Data Science Workstations and NVIDIA RAPIDs

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- H2O.ai, the open source leader in AI and Machine Learning, today announced that H2O Driverless AI , the award-winning automatic machine learning platform , and H2O4GPU , the open source GPU-accelerated machine learning package, are now optimized for the new NVIDIA-powered Data Science Workstations with NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs and NVIDIA CUDA-X AI acceleration libraries. H2O.ai also announced it will integrate NVIDIA RAPIDS to take advantage of its GPU-optimized machine learning algorithms. When combined with H2O Driverless AI, NVIDIA-powered Data Science Workstations allow data scientists to work on extremely complex models and pipelines easily with highly optimized infrastructure that reduces time to results. Models and pipelines can be easily re-trained on the Data Science Workstations to support larger datasets or even include an H2O Sparkling Water cluster that runs on massive datasets. "H2O.ai is excited for our partnership with NVIDIA towards accelerating machine learning for everyone. With H2O Driverless AI on NVIDIA-powered Data Science Workstations it is faster, cheaper and easier to build and deploy machine learning models. Recipes from our open source community and some of the world's greatest data science grandmasters make solving a whole class of data problems fast, explainable and easy," said Sri Ambati, CEO and founder of H2O.ai. "Our mission to democratize AI for the enterprise is now witin reach with automatic machine learning from H2O.ai on GPUs by NVIDIA."



NVIDIA RAPIDS builds on popular open-source projects  including Apache Arrow, Pandas and Scikit-learn. With the addition of GPU acceleration to the most popular Python data science toolchain, it becomes a natural choice to improve workflows inside Driverless AI by taking advantage of GPU-accelerated machine learning algorithms. The combined offerings deliver the fastest and most accurate iterations of machine learning models. Driverless AI uses the following GPU-accelerated algorithms giving data scientists flexibility:

LightGBM for a high performance and scalable implementation of Gradient Boosted Machines optimized for large datasets

TensorFlow-based models and network for NLP use cases

Truncated SVD (singular value decomposition) and PCA (principal component analysis) for dimensionality reduction and feature engineering

Improved K-means and XGBoost performance on multi-GPU workloads for faster performance and ability to handle larger datasets In addition, H2O.ai continues to democratize AI by making H2O Driverless AI and H2O4GPU available from the NVIDIA NGC software hub. "The NVIDIA-powered Data Science Workstation combined with H2O Driverless AI and H2O4GPU provide a comprehensive solution for enterprises looking to transform their businesses with automatic machine learning," said Bob Pette, Vice President of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA. "Our financial, healthcare and insurance customers are able to see real growth from the collaboration by gaining tremendous speed to insights and interpretability." Automating Data Science Workflows

H2O Driverless AI empowers data scientists to work on projects faster and more efficiently by using automation and state-of-the-art computing power to accomplish tasks that typically takes months in just minutes or hours. By delivering automatic feature engineering, model validation, model tuning, model selection and deployment, machine learning interpretability, time-series, NLP and automatic pipeline generation for model scoring, H2O Driverless AI provides companies with a data science platform that addresses the needs of a variety of use cases for every enterprise in every industry. The latest release of H2O Driverless AI on Data Science Workstations is available now. Connect with H2O.ai at GTC in San Jose, March 18-21

See H2O.ai in action at Booth #637 H2O.ai will be delivering two sessions at the event: Implementing Machine Learning on GPUs

Practical Machine Learning Interpretability Techniques Connect with H2O.ai Visit H2O.ai at GTC San Jose, March 18-21 . Booth #637

. Booth #637 Download Driverless AI for a free 21-day trial: h2o.ai/try-driverless-ai/

Visit us to learn more: h2o.ai

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/H2Oai

Connect with us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/0xdata/ About H2O.ai H2O.ai is the open source leader in AI with a mission is to democratize AI for everyone. H2O.ai is transforming the use of AI with software with its category-creating visionary open source machine learning platform, H2O. More than 18,000 companies use open-source H2O in mission-critical use cases for Finance, Insurance, Healthcare, Retail, Telco, Sales and Marketing. H2O Driverless AI uses AI to do AI in order to provide an easier, faster and cost-effective means of implementing data science. H2O.ai partners with leading technology companies such as NVIDIA, IBM, Intel, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform and is proud of its growing customer base which includes Capital One, Progressive Insurance, Comcast, Walgreens and MarketAxess. For more information and to learn more about how H2O.ai is driving an AI Transformation, visit www.h2o.ai. Media Contact:

Amber Winans

[email protected]

510-984-1526 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/h2oai-accelerates-automatic-machine-learning-with-new-nvidia-powered-data-science-workstations-and-nvidia-rapids-300814223.html SOURCE H2O.ai

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[March 18, 2019] depa Joins Hands with 6 Top Leaders in IoT Innovation from Singapore to Bolster Digital Park Thailand & IoT Institute Initiative Under the 'Thailand 4.0' Policy for the Exchange of Know-how and Technology

BANGKOK, March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In recent weeks, the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa) officially signed MoUs with regional giants Willowmore, UnaBiz, Gobi Partners, and Ascent Solutions during February 18-20, 2019 in Singapore. These companies are leaders in building global and regional IoT platforms and solutions, as well as venture investing. This will enable the utilization of innovative platforms and technologies, elevating Thailand to global standards as well as its people's skillsets. Dr. Passakon Prathombutr, Senior Executive Vice President of depa officially signed a Tri-Party MoU with UNITY and Spotwerkz on February 27, 2017 at Amara Bangkok Hotel to promote the exchange of technical know-how and technology exchange for the Digital Park Thailand and IoT Institute under the 'Thailand 4.0' policy.



When asked about the signing of the MoUs, Dr. Passakon Prathombutr said, "The official purpose of this trip to Singapore is to meet and exchange ideas, sign and initiate our partnerships with these companies and simultaneously commence work on our government's 'Thailand 4.0 Policy'. depa and our MoU partners have now met to exchange both academic and technical knowledge on new IoT technology, which will be used to spur the economic development of Thailand, as well as stimulate the flow of foreign investment into the country. These partnerships will strengthen and enhance Thailand's resources and help us gain a competitive position in the IoT industry within the ASEAN market. Ultimately, these agreements will improve the lives of the Thai people." Unity, is a leading gaming platform, providing professional 3D automotive design, industrial and architectural services as well as film and animation services. This is essential to support digital transformation efforts for SMEs and Manufacturing as well as Thailand's creative industries in film and animation. Moreover, Spotwerkz is a big data analytics company, the licensee of Unity in Thailand.

Willowmore Singapore Pte. Ltd., an industry leader in enterprise-grade smart padlock, smart cabinet locks, and a pioneer in the world's first-ever portable Sigfox-Bluetooth gateway SigWAV, is all about developing brilliant innovations and providing awesome solutions, from state-of-the-art access control, security systems technology, and IoT gateways. While Gobi Partners has a long history of working with government agencies. As part of developing a Matching Fund for this initiative; the firm is looking to invest in local startups from sectors such as AI, Data Analytics, and IoT. Simultaneously, the firm will be providing depa and the Thai government with expertise on funding startups, which should help to further increase the availability of funding for startups in the Thai entrepreneurial ecosystem. depa has also explored investment and development opportunities with UnaBiz, Asia's first IoT dedicated network operator in Singapore and Taiwan selling solutions in 28 countries. "Thailand is a key market in ASEAN to develop digital capabilities in the area of industrial automation, agriculture, tourism, education and healthcare," said Henri Bong, CEO and founder of UnaBiz. The MOU covers opportunities such as opening a training centre within the Thailand EEC digital park to explore the development turnkey IoT solutions for Thailand's small-medium enterprises and large companies. Ascent Solutions, a Singapore-based IoT company, provides services in various industries such as warehouses, logistics, freight forwarding, intelligent transportation, and e-passport tools with state-of-the-art technologies such as NB-IoT, Satcom, GPRS, and Active and Passive RFID. Partnership with depa, Ascent Solutions aims to develop and expand innovative technologies and provide its solutions to the Digital Park Thailand and IoT Institute in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) to increase the potential customer base of various industries with advanced technology that provides solutions and convenience in transportation both local and abroad. Dr. Passakon Prathombutr added, "This official depa MoU signing with the six major companies in Singapore is considerably a continuing progress of integrated development, reinforcing the growth of Thailand's digital economy to international standards as part of 'Thailand 4.0' policy. Given Thailand's goals to enhance digital technology, developing personnel capabilities through partnerships with leading Singapore companies, and its pursuit to exchanging knowledge with partners from many countries, 'Thailand 4.0' policy will be a kick starter to the future generation of Thai digital business operators." Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190318/2406026-1-a

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190318/2406026-1-b SOURCE depa

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[March 18, 2019] VALE SHAREHOLDER ALERT: ClaimsFiler Reminds Investors with Losses in Excess of $100,000 of Lead Plaintiff Deadline in Class Action Lawsuits against Vale S.A. - VALE

ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have until March 29, 2019 to file lead plaintiff applications in securities class action lawsuits against Vale S.A. (NYSE: VALE), if they purchased the Company's securities between April 11, 2017, and January 28, 2019, inclusive (the "Class Period"). These actions are pending in the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York. Get Help Vale investors should visit us at https://www.claimsfiler.com/cases/view-vale-sa-securities-litigation-1 or call toll-free (844) 367-9658. Lawyers at Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC are available to discuss your legal options.



Vale and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On November 5, 2015, Brazilian authorities reported that a mine co-owned by Vale had burst, killing dozens of people and devastating the local community. Then, on January 28, 2019, news sources reported that Brazilian authorities were pursuing criminal prosecutions and that "Brazilian securities industry regulator CVM has opened a probe into miner Vale SA's filings," both relating to the disaster. On this news, the price of Vale's shares plummeted. The first-filed case is Rauch v. Vale S.A. et al, 19-cv- 19cv526. About ClaimsFiler ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. At ClaimsFiler.com, investors can: (1) register for free to gain access to information and settlement websites for various securities class action cases so they can timely submit their own claims; (2) upload their portfolio transactional data to be notified about relevant securities cases in which they may have a financial interest; and (3) submit inquiries to the Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC law firm for free case evaluations. To learn more about ClaimsFiler, visit www.claimsfiler.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190318005838/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Tech Leaders Pave way for the Convergence of IT & OT at Future Factory India Confex 2019

MUMBAI, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Tech experts from Tata Communications, Bosch, Infor, Microsoft, Unlimit (A Reliance Group Company) and Software Technology Parks of India converged at the Future Factory India Confex 2019 in Mumbai to discuss the convergence of IT & OT and the many changes brought about by emerging digital technology in the smart manufacturing landscape. Discussions by digital technology enablers and innovators in IIoT, M2M, AI, Blockchain, hardware independent augmented reality reigned the two-day Confex that was held on 11-12 March 2019 at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Mumbai drawing 134 attendees. Inaugurating the two-day Confex, Dr. Omkar Rai, Director General, Software Technology Parks of India announced: "As the largest outsourcing nation, India holds 56% of the share of global outsourcing of tech services. The nation holds the position to empower and enable migration to industry 4.0. To support this vision, government of India has announced NPSP 2019 policy (National policy on Software) which aims to make India move beyond an IT service nation and make it a technology product nation. Overall market size for technology product is USD 445 billion whereas India's share currently is only 7.1 billion. Through this policy and subsequent measures, India aims to capture 70-80 BN market share by 2025 - both through domestic and export technology requirements." He further added, "Messe Frankfurt has once again put up a focused exhibition and conference where there is lot information that will be exchanged on developments that fuel industry 4.0. I urge the industry to exchange ideas and information here at Future Factory India and create an eco-system for Indian entrepreneurship." Discussing the challenges in adopting IoT, Mr. Dattatri Salagame, Head - Digital Business, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business solutions, shared, "Most enterprises get stuck in 'Digital Dilemma'. Managements and businesses are focusing on ROI rather than long-term sustainability of the model. We want to ensure simplification of digital processes to drive efficiency and enable business design." The Indian subsidiary of Bosch had on display a multiple range of solutions in IoT, AI, Automation, Data Analytics etc. at the two-day business event and undertok live demonstrations of their solutions for digital supply chain management.



Emphasising on connected solutions for future factories, Mr. Kishore Suprabha, General Manager - Business Development, Unlimit said, "25% GDP share is projected to be contributed by the manufacturing sector by 2022. Everything will be connected. Defining an Industry 4.0 strategy within the ambit of one's business environment that is most probable should be integrated into enterprise strategy going forward." A Reliance Group Company, Unlimit had on display their key innovation Ocupro - a visual inspection for quality product offering alongside demos running for OmniP & OmniC IoT platforms, asset and production management and predictive maintenance solutions. "While 81% early AI adopters prioritise new revenue potential over cost reduction; 91% enterprises expect AI to deliver new business growth by 2023," shared Mr. Virendra Chaudhari, Intelligent Cloud, IoT Global Black Belt, Microsoft at his session on Collaborate to Innovate. The joint session by Microsoft and together with Chief Digital Officer Mr. Poorav Sheth introduced to the audience an interesting case study on how the tech-giant has collaborated with Piramal Glass for real time manufacturing insights and the need for partnership for operational effectiveness.

Mr. Shyamanta Sharma, Sr. Manager - IoT Business Unit, Tata Communications said that the company has set up one of the largest dedicated IoT network in India to provide end-to-end solutions around the factory be it safety, lighting, energy management and more. The company which was also present at the Confex displayed innovations in industrial IoT devices including load protect, ModBus to Lora and worker safety wearables which gained attention. Day two of the Confex brought forth an exciting mix of tech-innovations by STPI start-ups such as Unisoft Systems, WITS Interactive Pvt Ltd, World Vision Infotech Pvt Ltd, Lexicon Networks India Pvt Ltd showcasing new solutions that made their market entry in 2017-18. Among the highlights were Go Phygital AR-VR Solutions for enhancing customer experience, and Order Management systems for businesses. With changing times, businesses are preparing for the transition of their organisations to the converging, aligning and integrating of IT and OT environments. Concluding the panel on what will comprise the essential components in the smart CXO's tool kit, Mr. Sharad Nigam, Principal Consultant - Industry X.0, Accenture Management Consulting said, "Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning together with IoT will be the most important technologies for the factories of the future." "It is important to capture Data through the three step process of people, machine and decision making," he concluded. Organised by Messe Frankfurt Trade Fairs India Pvt Ltd & Thinc India, co-hosted by Software Technology Parks of India and supported by MIDC (Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation), the two-day Confex paved the way for collaboration and integration between OT and IT leaders on one platform. For more details, please visit: www.futurefactoryindia.com About Messe Frankfurt Messe Frankfurt is the world's largest trade fair, congress and event organiser with its own exhibition grounds. With more than 2,500* employees at 30 locations, the company generates annual sales of around 715* million. Thanks to its far-reaching ties with the relevant sectors and to its international sales network, the Group looks after the business interests of its customers effectively. A comprehensive range of services - both onsite and online - ensures that customers worldwide enjoy consistently high quality and flexibility when planning, organising and running their events. The wide range of services includes renting exhibition grounds, trade fair construction and marketing, personnel and food services. With its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main, the company is owned by the City of Frankfurt (60 percent) and the State of Hesse (40 percent). For more information, please visit our website at: www.messefrankfurt.com *preliminary figures 2018 Media Contact:

Ruhi Shaikh

[email protected]

+91-22-6144-5914

Manager - PR & Corporate Communications

Messe Frankfurt Trade Fairs India Pvt. Ltd.





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[March 19, 2019] 10th Gaidar Forum: Business Education has Entered the Era of Digital Transformation

MOSCOW, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Business education has become one of the main topics of the 10th Anniversary Gaidar Forum "Russia and the World: National Development Goals and Global Trends" traditionally held within the walls of the Presidential Academy. More than 15 plenary sessions and round tables devoted to training of managers and leaders of the digital economy were organized and held with the support of IBS-Moscow RANEPA, the leader of the Russian business education. It is worth noting that the 10th Gaidar Forum completed its work a month ago. However, the issues related to the development of national and global business education deserve to be considered and analyzed again. The results of the National Accreditation Council for Business and Management Education (NASDOBR) Presidium meeting On the first day of the Forum, an open meeting of the Presidium of NASDOBR was held under the chairmanship of Alexander Zhukov, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma. It has become the most important and significant, as the discussion focused on the most pressing issues of the formation of a new paradigm of domestic business and management education. In his report, Alexander Zhukov reminded that the Association was established during the Gaidar Forum, exactly 6 years ago. Its founders were all major employers of Russia: RSPP, CCI, Association of Russian Banks, Association of Managers, Business Russia, OPORA Russia, Russian Association of Business Education. It was then that the Memorandum on the need to create an independent Association of NASDOBR was signed at the plenary session on the initiative of the Russian Association of Business Education (RABE). Alexander Zhukov stressed that the Report on the activities of the Association for five years was discussed at the last meeting of the NASDOBR Presidium in the summer of 2018 and focused on the most important aspects of the Association activities in the second half of the year. First, the most important event is the decision to confirm the authority and expand the range of programs and the levels of education in which NASDOBR will, for the next three years, act in the official status of "expert organization for accreditation assessment". The corresponding meeting of the Accreditation Commission of ROSOBRNADZOR was held on December 7, 2018. "We appreciate the high confidence placed in NASDOBR assessment by the country's leading state agency for quality control of education. Dear colleagues, we must justify this trust by our active and responsible work, new forms and formats of cooperation in the framework of PPP!" the First Vice-Speaker of the State Duma said. He further suggested to establish, under the umbrella of NADSOBR, an intersectoral Professional Qualifications Council (PQC) in the field of management. As noted by the moderator of the discussion, Sergey Myasoedov, President of RABE, Vice-Rector of RANEPA, Director of the Institute of Business Studies (IBS-Moscow), the current system of sectorial PQCs breaks the system of training of senior and middle managers into "patchwork" of departmental interests, creating a kind of "specific feudal principalities", which is unacceptable in an environment where the country's leadership pays increasing attention to training of managers who use the best world practices of management and leadership. According to him, the creation of PQC in management disciplines is designed to create a single national framework of requirements for managers of the upper and middle levels, reflecting the set of competencies required to manage enterprises and inter-sectoral complexes in the digital economy. The proposal of Alexander Zhukov to establish an intersectoral PQC in management disciplines was eagerly welcomed and unanimously supported by all the founders, experts of NASDOBR, members of RABE, representatives of educational organizations, employers' associations and mass media. One of the most important events of the second half of 2018, according to Alexander Zhukov, is the completion of the work on the creation of a system of testing teachers of management disciplines for management programs and SMM at various levels. "I am pleased to note that the results revealed a number of reserves, unexpected both for the tested and for the testing sides, in the field of professional and personal development of teaching staff of various age and qualification groups," Alexander Zhukov said. He proposed to discuss the use of the system as one of the tools of independent quality assessment that complements the state accreditation. "It seems to me that the Presidium of NASDOBR should offer our partners in ROSOBRNADZOR and National Accreditation Agency to create a joint working group that will work in this area: it will concretize the conditions of a competition or skills contest, its stages, etc.," the Chairman of the Presidium said. He also noted the close cooperation of NASDOBR with leading accreditation associations in the field of business education. "This allowed the working group of our Association, which worked with leading experts of the RANEPA and HSE, to use the best international accreditation practices in the creation of the updated standard of NASDOBR "National criteria and requirements for the general content and conditions of implementation of programs of "Master of public administration" (MPA) level", the Chairman of NASDOBR Presidium said. He noted that this standard had been adapted and brought into full compliance with foreign requirements. Sergei Kravtsov, Head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science, outlined the key areas of relations between NASDOBR and Rosobrnadzor, which, according to him, are an example of successful public-private cooperation. "It is very important to note the relevance of teaching evaluation, and we are moving in this direction. We support both the proposals and the work of NASDOBR, especially in view of the fact that in 2016 NASDOBR was accredited by Rosobrnadzor as one of the leading subjects of development of education in the field of management, the Head of Rosobrnadzor said. Business education is a lifelong learning On the first day of the Forum, participants of the discussion "The future of business schools. Agile-transformation" discussed the conditions for creating an ideal model of a business school in a 20-year perspective. According to AACSB President Thomas Robinson, Lifelong learning is becoming extremely relevant. He also noted that business schools should adapt to changes and not teach students non-existent professions. According to social entrepreneur Ruben Vardanyan, business education has faced a number of challenges today. "First of all, we are getting younger, today more and more young people go into business, and often they don't have any education. The next point is narrow specialization which is characteristic of business education of the 20th century, and which has lost its relevance in the 21st century," the entrepreneur says. He specified that earlier the production society was narrowly specialized in the professional training and functioning: marketing, finance, management, etc. "Today, business education is much broader: it is about exchange, linking different industrial areas into one project, getting rid of stereotypes, it is about ambition and taking risks," Ruben Vardanyan says. "There has been a transformation of business class," he continued. "Business class is gone." And, if earlier business education was a pass to the middle class, now it is an opportunity to be different, to realize your dream with the help of breakthrough technologies, information and thinking. Charles Iacovou, Dean of the Wake Forest University School of Business, drew attention to the growing gap between the scientific and industrial world, and the slow growth rate of business schools compared to the pace of companies. "We train our student for the past, not for the future. Flexibility promotion and shifting the emphasis to what will be relevant in the future is essential. Lectures are not fruitful now, on-the-job training becomes actual. Our school changes the company every few months, inviting their representatives to conduct classes and respond to the changing needs of the market," Mr. Iacovou said. In response to foreign colleagues, Sergey Myasoedov, Director of the Institute of Business Studies (IBS-Moscow), Vice-Rector of RANEPA, said that the International Advisory Council of the Presidential Academy has made a number of recommendations for the development of a new strategy of development of business and management education in RANEPA, taking into account the rapidly changing priorities and requirements in this area. He argued that today education needs to conduct a continuous dialogue with business to get feedback and active participation in the development of joint educational programs. This is particularly important in connection with the dynamics of changes taking place in the economy. "I have a feeling that, in order to remain competitive, business schools must be ready for rapid and radical changes, constant adaptation to new conditions and challenges of the digital economy," the Vice-Rector said. The topic of lifelong learning was discussed at a separate session "Three-L concept of learning, or lifelong learning". The discussion's moderator Timothy Mescon, Senior Vice President of AACSB International, noted that lifelong learning is necessary for everyone. The formation of conditions for the development of continuing professional education is one of the important prerequisites for the education system modernization. According to the expert, people who stand at the origins of business education should keep perfecting themselves in order to speak the same language with the new generation. Mikhail Andronov, President of Rusenergosbyt, has cited in his speech the words of 85-year-old Michelangelo: "I'm still learning!" He fully agreed with his colleagues, but stressed that the older generations of Russians were not willing to learn. "The older people get, the less time they want to spend on self-education. Only 56% of the Russians are ready to improve themselves every day," the expert commented. The speaker cited the following data: to become a true expert in a particular issue, you have to spend 10,000 hours, which means that in 42 years one can master about seven professions. According to Andrei Sharonov, President of the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, an important factor in the education system is the interest in future knowledge. In his report, he paid attention to the technologies of the LifeLongLearning program. According to the expert, all the education criteria will rapidly lose their value, since the employer will have more reliable ways to check your level of competence. Thus, it is not necessary to strive for a high-status education. Steve Harvey, Dean of School of Business at the American University of Beirut, noted that many professions would disappear over time, and technology would release a significant part of the working population, who would need to be retrained. According to experts, such training will require changes in existing educational programs and development of new ones. Also, the sphere of education itself can undergo significant changes, as people begin to learn new professions, and the desire for status education will disappear. Stop getting the hype Representatives of the banking and FinTech community also spoke about the need to change educational programs in universities during the discussion "Digitization of Financial Services: a New Round in the Development of FinTech", organized by the Center for Design of Corporate Programs (IBS-Moscow). The experts discussed the prerequisites and trends of digitization, changing the role of banks, the introduction of FinTech innovations, as well as training of highly qualified personnel. It was noted that today, in terms of training specialists for the banking industry, there was a problem in universities, and therefore corporate universities occurred. "There are skills that cannot be levelled up in universities," Ruslan Vesterovskiy, Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, said. "It's all about "software" things, team work, decision-making in situations of uncertainty, skills, feedback, planning etc. I would make a special focus on this block of issues. As for digital stories  digital skills and kowledge  we are now developing them very seriously at our corporate university. This is a large area: skills in programming, technology, this is what will help you become competitive and successful."



The expert also recommended universities to accelerate. "Now the dynamics are so high that while you develop the program, it is already losing its relevance. Universities today need to add momentum. We need to move faster for 3-4 years," the Central Bank representative stressed. Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, supported his colleague. "A person comes to work and has to be retrained for two main reasons. First, it's obviously soft-skills. Second, the banks have very specific knowledge, which have to be transferred to the graduate within the first six months. And he needs to be very flexible, adaptive, creative, and understand the corporate culture," Alexander Vedyakhin said.

Aleksey Zhdanov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Rosselkhozbank, added that, among other things, now we need to pay attention to theoretical knowledge and science, which are at the junction of different professions, as, for example, in case of business analysts. In confirmation of the topic, the moderator of the discussion, Sergey Myasoedov, Vice-Rector of RANEPA, addressed the audience with a question on the availability of basic higher education. It turned out that the FinTech section attracted students not only with financial or economic education, but also with technical and basic humanitarian education. "Today, the disciplines are mixed  astrophysics, biochemistry. And now it goes to the management science and the financial sector," Sergey Myasoedov concluded. Alexey Minin, Director of the Institute of Applied Data Analysis of Deloitte CIS, disagreed with the representatives of the banks. In his speech, he said that universities should not look to corporate universities. "The human capital that universities are now producing, is of absolutely adequate quality, and higher education institutions do not need to convert into corporate universities! You produce basic education, and the quality of this education is sufficient. We just need to raise this bar," Alexey Minin said. Paying attention to the banking industry itself, he called for the unification of human capital, resources and the focus set by the country's policymakers. According to the Director of Deloitte, the main problem now is that banks have a large number of "poison" people  hipsters of science  who move from bank to bank and do nothing. "You come to another bank - and here he is again! He had already done everything in the previous bank and now came here! How did you do all this, when I'm doing it all instead of you now?! If these people really do everything they had to, we would have lived in the 22nd century, while we are still in the 20th. I think this is the main reason  you need to stop getting the hype and start systematic work. And very carefully look towards open innovations, because closed innovations are a long story, it is expensive, it is difficult," Alexey Minin concluded. The death of classical education This verdict was made by the participants of the discussion "Digital talents: how to train digital business leaders?". In particular, Grigory Avetov, Rector of Synergy Business School, put forward the thesis that the current education system is dying, and, based on the analysis of the development of foreign educational cases, it will not last more than 5-10 years. In the way of evidence the expert said that only 27% of people with higher education work in their specialty. "Today, the employer is no longer interested in the question what university the employee graduated from. Although this issue used to be a priority. And there are more and more companies that are ready to accept employees without higher education. Of course, if this activity is not related to the fundamental sciences," Synergy Rector said. Evgueny Plaksenkov, representative of another business school, member of the Supervisory Board of RANEPA IBS-Moscow, noted that business is already digitized and business needs digital talents. Who are they? And what competencies should they have? He cited the WorldSkills research data on such skills in the future, as the concentration and control of attention, emotional literacy, creativity, cross-cultural approach, digital literacy, ecological thinking, ability to be trained (retrained). Mikhail Zhukov, Director General of HeadHunter, presented a kind of digitalized bridge between employers and job seekers. He cited in figures the view of HR specialists on artificial intelligence. 69% of them believe that artificial intelligence will never defeat emotional intelligence, 23% believe that artificial intelligence will replace people, 11% believe that artificial intelligence is a threat to human life. The Director of HeadHunter also cited the data of the research on the issue of what professions are likely to disappear and be replaced by artificial intelligence (robots, systems, etc.). The banking sector, finance, insurance, transport and logistics are primarily in the risk zone. At the end of the discussion, moderator Anna Morozova, Director of RANEPA Centre for Corporate Programs, Academic Director of FinTech Master's degree program, invited the speakers to express their views on who is a digital leader. "A digital leader is a person who knows how to do what a robot cannot do," says Mikhail Zhukov. Igor Baranov, Vice Rector of the Sberbank Corporate University, said: "A digital leader is a person who can lead a mixed team and sees the full range of technologies that can be used." Gregory Avetov is convinced that the digital leader is the company with the highest capitalization, which invests in what will become a monopoly in 20-30 years. The leader is the master of predictive effect The topic of leadership was deeply considered by the participants of the expert discussion "How to Liberate the Brain to Achieve Effective Leadership?" The discussion was moderated by Dzhangir Dzhangirov, Senior Vice President of Sberbank, Chief Risk Officer. Experts tried not just to talk about how a person of the future can meet the information challenges of the 21st century, but also tried to "look" into his brain. How will the highspeed response of the human brain change and how to make it work for leadership? Steven Poelmans, professor of Neuroscience and Strategic Leadership at Antwerp Management School, saidthat leadership skills can only be developed in practice, facing obstacles through blood, sweat and tears, correcting your own mistakes until you succeed at last. "Through a series of exercises, we put a manager in a real social context. Personally, I believe that management schools failed to solve the problem of leadership development  it is impossible to develop leadership skills, speaking about it in the classroom," the Professor said. He cited the research data from the NeuroTrainingLab: "We monitor the activity of the frontal part of the cerebral cortex to see how our leaders are able to control themselves, how they can focus their attention on the right moments and at different times." It was noted that leaders can quickly switch between different styles of paradoxical behavior, between opposite activities. This requires a metacognitive approach. "Speaking of leaders, who do I want to hire? The last person I want to take is a student who counts well, because there is a computer for that. I need some madman, who does not do everything as it should be"  such concept of leadership was given by Tatiana Chernigovskaya, Professor in the field of neuroscience and psycholinguistics. She spoke about the man of the future and his place in the world of digital technology and rapidly changing reality. "Are we losing ground in this digital world? If we have plans for life, then we need to think about how to live. Can we tell which brain is smart or stupid, or ingenious? And what kind of artificial intelligence do we create? Smart?! What does that mean? Is an ingenious artificial intelligence possible? And what does that mean?"  these words of Tatiana Chernigovskaya forced the audience to ponder. According to her, artificial intelligence will never replace a person, and so, from an early age, we must learn to adapt to live in the digital world, in order to preserve humanity. "We have to give an account of what we have in the skull and not to err about what we thoughtlessly call "my brain". Who belongs to whom is still a question," the neuroscientist sums up. Psychologist Alexander Asmolov, Director for Humanitarian Policy at RANEPA, believes that "The leader is not the one who is authoritarian. A leader is someone who can determine the zone of the nearest development of his employees. The leader is the one who is the master of predictive effect, i.e the one who has no ready-made algorithms. A key characteristic of any educational system, as well as a key characteristic of leaders, is the greatest predictive effect". In his opinion, in order to prepare such leaders, education should be a school of uncertainty  an education without ready-made algorithms. Today, education is a school of behavior in uncertain situations. In conclusion, the psychologist urged the audience to read science fiction, citing the words of writer Neil Gaiman about why our future depends on reading. According to the writer, those people who became the leading developers in such high-tech corporations as Apple, Microsoft, Google, used to read good science fiction books in their childhood. Transformation of MBA programs The 10th Gaidar Forum hosted the discussion "Transformation of MBA programs: overcoming the syndrome of traditions "virginity". The meeting moderated by Andrew Main Wilson, CEO of AMBA&BGA, established the direction of the debate  the transformation of classical learning into the online MBA format. He also said that it is necessary to unite all MBA schools for the joint development of online programs, as this process requires serious investments. Koen Vandenbempt, Academic Director, Executive MBA, Antwerp Management School, said that students studied at his school on the job. Accordingly, they are in dynamics with the changes taking place in the economy, and this imposes requirements on both teachers and the process of building the education. "Teachers should take into account new trends affecting the digital economy. They have to keep up with the times, because the success of an MBA will depend on it," said the expert. He added that the transition of the economy into a digital one had an impact on business education. He called this process not just globalization, but global diversification. "Our students need skills that correspond to the new reality. The training itself should take place in conditions relevant to the modern economy, on the basis of digitization and globalization, so that education could meet modern challenges," the Director from Antwerp says. Continuing the idea of his Belgian colleague, Andrey Kolyada, Rector at Eurasian Management and Administration School, called the current technological revolution the most significant of all those ever occurred, and said business education did not keep up with technological progress. He spoke about his business school, which had both full-time and online training. "Online education cannot compete with on-campus education. There is no team feeling, it's hard to get together online due to the time difference. There is no opportunity to come together and feel the emotional unity, solving common problems," Andrey Kolyada said. He also noted that it was difficult to remotely control a process that had gone the wrong way, and that online programs required an outstanding engineering system of presentation. Jean-Philippe Muller, Dean of the Monaco Business School, who has been participating in expert discussions at the Gaidar Forum for several years, said that people, who run companies, should be able to manage a new generation. "Earlier, engineers were sent to business schools; today, on the contrary, we must send managers to technical institutes. These areas should be combined to get the maximum result," the expert said. The trend is that the MBA schools tend to develop programs together with innovative companies and banks all over the world. He also addressed the interaction of MBA and DBA programs. Jean-Philippe Muller expressed his opinion on this matter: "The hybrid of MBA and DBA is the future of business schools." Another opinion was expressed by Sergei Kalendzhyan, Dean of the Graduate School of Corporate Management, RANEPA. He believes that the MBA program is a "breakfast", and the DBA program is a "dinner", therefore they cannot be combined. During his speech, Sergei Kalendzhyan noted that ethical values are a criterion for the quality of education at his school. The dean expressed his support for the introduction of cultural studies and philosophy in the course of the disciplines studied, because students should think about the future. The expert is convinced that modern transformation should not lead to the complete loss of traditions. He came to this conclusion: "MBA students should combine the spiritual, material, social and virtual worlds." A good conclusion to the discussion was the words of one of the experts: "People will continue working with people, and we will find a way to deal with machines." In addition, the moderator of the meeting Andrew Main Wilson, Executive Director of AMBA&BGA, outlined the main points that are important for the topic of discussion: continuous learning, online learning transformation, global alliance and innovative learning. The credibility of the rankings of business schools The role of rankings and accreditations in the activities of business schools as well as approaches to assessing the quality of business education were discussed on the third day of the 10th Gaidar Forum. Over the past decade, there has appeared a paradoxical situation concerning the rankings of programs and schools. Focusing on quantitative indicators to the detriment of other objective criteria and the subjectivity of expert assessments reduce the credibility of rankings. Moderator of the discussion Sergey Myasoedov, Director of the Institute of Business Studies (IBS-Moscow), Vice-Rector of RANEPA, explained to the audience why business education was often scolded in our country. The reason lies in the mixing the University type, pre-experienced Master of Science programs oriented to the young researchers and Dusiness school type, post experienced MBA programs focused for enrichment through sharing and market driven skills development. The result is the confusion of the customers and dissatisfaction of business. The understanding that those programs have different customers and goals is often absent both at the Universities and at business communities."Is a Master of Science Degree owner a creative intellectual? Yes, he is. Does he have to be a manager? Or a manager with the talent of an entrepreneur?" Sergey Myasoedov asks. "The answer is "NO". "It is different when we speak about MBA. The people who apply to MBA program of IBS-Moscow (the leading number one business school of today's Russia) have to have at least 5-6 years of practical work experience. They have to prove at the enrollment tests, esse and interview that they have a talent for management and entrepreneurship, emotional intelligence for agile leadership. MBA programs do not exist for scientisits and researchers. They exist for the business practitioners and leaders. In our country, we still have a constant mix of genres. And because of this, business education is so often scolded. And in the national rankings the university education indicators are often used to evaluate business schools and MBA programs". Andrew Jack, Global Education Editor at Financial Times, agrees with his Russian colleague. In his opinion, an MBA program should be aimed exclusively at the training of professionals in the field of business. "Business schools should shape the image of a new leader, develop managerial, communication skills, soft skills, and motivate students," Andrew Jack said. In continuation of the topic of leadership, George Iliev, Director of Development Markets at the Association of MBAs (AMBA International), explained that "Rankings and organizations involved in the accreditation of business schools compete in one indicator  this is the time of business leaders." In his opinion, it is impossible to make a ranking on the basis of accreditation data, because too many factors are taken into account  300-400 different quantitative and qualitative factors, criteria, indicators. He compared the rankings with beauty pageants. If your business school is really strikingly different from others, you do not need to compete with other schools, because people will recognize you even without the beauty queen crown," the Director of Emerging Markets at AMBA said. "The most serious issue that arises in many rankings is the accuracy of the information," Yuri Tazov, President of the Russian MBA League and the co-creater of the independent, crowdsoucing-voting-based Russian MBA program ranking system, said. He spoke about the Russian experience of creation of National ranking of business schools and MBA programs published annually at the web-site: www.mba.su How the team of Russian businessmen graduated from several best MBA programs of the country desided to create independent web-site, to provide balanced and objective information to the business community. The ranking is based on the opinions of graduates and involves minimum participation of the estimated business schools. "Invitations are sent to business schools and there is only one request  to disseminate information about the ongoing online survey among its graduates. This ranking has no more contacts with schools," the Head of the Russian MBA League explained. The ranking is based on such criteria as income growth, career growth, level of professional connections, and personal and professional development of a graduate. The most important principle of the rankings is the openness of the data on the criteria: the consumer can rank business schools in accordance with the criterion that is the most important to him. Marco De Novellis, Editor of BusinessBecause, said the credibility of the rankings was a key factor. In his opinion, when choosing a business school, in addition to its position in the ranking, people watch for other factors, such as accreditation, programs provided, recognition and local reputation, and the cost of education. Sergey Ermak, Deputy Director of Expert RA, said that the agency did not use the word "ranking" any more and called their studies the "maps" of global visibility of schools. "Facing the growing global academic mobility, we evaluated business schools from the perspective of foreign students who receive education in Russia," the expert says. He also noted that more and more Russian business schools are becoming popular on the international market, their publishing and partner activity is increasing. At the end of the discussion, Danica Purg, President of CEEMAN Association, stressed the need to revise the criteria for assessing the quality of business education in the rankings according to the real needs of the market. The experts agreed that the focus on accreditation and rankings hinders the most important goal of business schools  the constant modernization of educational programs and their orientation towards real market needs, and called for the development of new methods for evaluation of the business education efficiency. Do we need responsible managers? On January 17, on the final day of the Gaidar Forum 2019, representatives of business education from Russia and other countries met at the "Innovative Technologies and Social Responsibility of Business" discussion platform. How business schools can implement PRME principles in life". As research shows, the Corporate Social Responsibility concept is differently interpreted and perceived in various cultures. In Russia, as in many other Eastern and Central European countries, the Corporate Social Responsibility concept is regarded by business representatives with mixed feelings. At that, in business schools the amount of academic hours allocated to the relevant courses is steadily growing. The moderator of the event, Natalya Evtikhieva, Director General of RABE and National Accreditation Council for Business and Management Education (NASDOBR), added a new vector of the discussion saying that "the global development trends of business corporations have led to a new focus on assessing the quality of management education with an emphasis on its effectiveness, practical orientation and compliance with the best international standards and practices." Irina Sennikova, Rector of RISEBA business school (Latvia), UN Commissioner for the implementation of PRME principles in business schools in Eastern and Central Europe, addressed the audience with the question: "How can responsible managers be trained? And do we need responsible managers? The scandals of the last few years make you think: there is a feeling that neither fines, nor a chance to go to prison for life or a death sentence  nothing frightens people! What can educational institutions do to improve this world?" She said that companies should draw a clear red line in this matter  should business schools help them? Is it possible to use a universal approach? Or you need to practice an individual approach in each case? Jonas Haertle, Head of PRME Secretariat at United Nations Global Compact Office reminded the topics that were discussed at the Plenary Session at the opening of the Forum. "Of course, we live in a global world, but there is a danger that the world will be split, there is a threat of climate change, there are geopolitical problems  all this should be taken into account by business schools in their programs in those aspects that relate to responsible management," says Jonas Haertle. He cited the words of the head of BlackRock company that, for prosperity, a company should show results not only in financial terms, but also to prove how it helps society. Management issues should be linked to financial results, so school professors who deal with financial issues should take this into account. Andrew Main Wilson, Executive Director of AMBA & BGA, said that, in terms of saving humanity and preserving natural resources, social responsibility of business is a central element in the development of new management strategies. "We are gathered here as representatives of business schools, and we talk about training business leaders of the future. It is necessary to unite scientists, students, experts to solve these problems  seventeen sustainable development goals," the expert said. It is worth reminding that, on September 25, 2015, the UN member states adopted the agenda for sustainable development until 2030. It contains a number of goals aimed at eradicating poverty, preserving the planet's resources and ensuring well-being for all. Each of the 17 Goals contains a set of indicators to be achieved within 15 years. Joint efforts by governments, private sector, civil society and the people of the Earth are needed to achieve the sustainable development Goals. Asylbek Kozhakhmetov, President of Almaty Management University, President of the Civil Alliance of Kazakhstan noted: "We see that the role of universities in the system of innovative development of territories is gradually increasing. Today this issue is widely discussed both within the academic community and at a state level. A modern university should act as a leader in interaction with the state, business, and society". Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is expressed in the readiness of a business corporation to voluntarily bear non-binding social expenditures beyond the limits established by tax, labor, environmental and other legislation, based not on the requirements of the law, but on moral and ethical considerations. Experts agreed that the introduction of CSR ensures the development and stabilization of the organization in the market: the growth of production volumes, the improvement of the company's reputation, the formation of corporate identity.

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HERSHEY, Pa., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY) today announced its Makers of Good Teen Summit on June 20 in New York City. The one-day event will bring together teens from across the country to collaborate and develop strategies for overcoming social isolation in their communities.



Recent studies1 describe Gen Z (currently ages 13-23) as the loneliest generation. Despite much of their lives coinciding with the age of personal sharing online and in social media, members of Gen Z often feel they are lacking in meaningful, interpersonal connections. Loneliness and social isolation among this generation are considered an epidemic with health impacts as severe as those caused by smoking and obesity.

Hershey has remained relevant with consumers for the past 125 years because of our commitment to making meaningful connections between people  a legacy dating back to our founder, Milton Hershey, said Leigh Horner, Vice President, Corporate Communications and Sustainability, The Hershey Company. There are pressing issues facing teens today, and we believe we can help make a positive difference with Gen Z in tackling social isolation and loneliness in a uniquely Hershey way.

The Makers of Good Teen Summit is a program of The Heartwarming Project, Hersheys initiative dedicated to helping teens, parents and teachers create more inclusive and empathetic communities. Beyond Differences, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Making Caring Common and WE are among the nonprofit collaborators for the teen summit. Beyond the summit, students across the country will have the opportunity to apply for grants from The Heartwarming Project to bring their social inclusion strategies to life in their hometowns.

Back to School Anxiety

While summer break will have just started for some of the summit attendees, its a critical time for teens. Many teachers report that students experience high levels of stress and anxiety, especially during back-to-school season. The timing of the summit will help equip students with resources and tools ahead of the following school year.

The summit allows teens to identify ways they can increase empathy and connection in themselves and their schools, and then develop action plans to create community impact as they head into a new school year, said Erin Blanding, Head of Global Program Innovation and Development at WE, which will facilitate action planning sessions during the Summit. Were helping to support young people to bring positive change to their communities.



A Summit for Teens Designed by Teens

Hershey is inviting teens to co-create and help shape the conference itself by crowdsourcing the graphic identity of the event. Teens are invited to submit an original piece of artwork to inspire the look of the summit. Hershey will select one teens design to be brought to life in conference materials and attend the summit as a participant.

Contest details, entries and speaker information will be shared on the summits Instagram channel at: https://www.instagram.com/MakersofGood

About The Hershey Company

The Hershey Company, celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2019, is headquartered in Hershey, Pa., and is an industry-leading snacks company known for bringing goodness to the world through its iconic brands, remarkable people and enduring commitment to help children succeed. Hershey has approximately 16,500 employees around the world who work every day to deliver delicious, quality products. The company has more than 80 brands around the world that drive more than $7.8 billion in annual revenues, including such iconic brand names as Hersheys, Reeses, Kit Kat, Jolly Rancher, Ice Breakers, SkinnyPop and Pirates Booty.

For 125 years, Hershey has been committed to operating fairly, ethically and sustainably. Hershey founder, Milton Hershey, created the Milton Hershey School in 1909 and since then the company has focused on helping children succeed.

To learn more visit www.thehersheycompany.com

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[March 19, 2019] Startup carrier Canada Jetlines launches with eMRO

MIAMI, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In keeping with its mission to provide Canadians with "the best value in air travel with a focus on safety and reliability", startup ultra-low cost carrier Canada Jetlines has selected the web-based TRAX eMRO software as its ERP maintenance solution. "TRAX's products provide the means to manage and maintain all information generated and allows for complete information flow with leading-edge tools for customization that will enable Jetlines to maintain an efficient process and tight cost control as a result," said Phillip Larsen, Vice President of Maintenance. Jetlines is set to fly across Canada and offer non-stop service from Canada to the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. The carrier plans to fly some 27 routes, including to unserved or underserved markets by other airlines, such as Hamilton, Ontario to Halifax, Nova Scoti. Delivery of two Airbus A320s are expected by early 2nd quarter of 2019, with long term plans to expand to 24 aircraft. The sister aircraft have a high-density seating configuration of a single class seating capacity of 180 seats. An Airbus A320 fleet was selected based on its fuel-efficient narrow-body framework, making it an ideal choice for Jetlines to start operations with.



The TRAX eMRO software is a web-based, device-agnostic ERP product that will keep its users connected from where ever they work. It is a complete system with complete information flow. The numerous system modules cover technical, maintenance, materials, financial, and quality management to help reduce downtime, provide access to real-time data, and ensure full regulatory compliance. About TRAX

TRAX provides comprehensive software solutions designed to cater to all aspects of aircraft maintenance management. With over 170 customers, TRAX is the best-of-breed global provider of aviation maintenance mobile and cloud products in the market today. TRAX products support digital signatures, paperless Workpacks and manuals, RFID-capability for logistics, Biometric security, offline capability for mobile apps, web-based applications and the ability for users to work anywhere with easy access to real-time information.

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/startup-carrier-canada-jetlines-launches-with-emro-300814599.html SOURCE TRAX

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[March 19, 2019] Tinyclues Unveils Results of Independent Research Study Showing 199% ROI with Its AI Marketing Solution, At Major Retail Event in Monaco

Tinyclues releases the results of a new, commissioned Total Economic Impact (TEI) study conducted by Forrester (News - Alert) Consulting, at E-commerce One to One in Monaco, a leading event for retail and e-commerce experts. Tinyclues will be in Monaco for the full 3-day event, where it will also host a conference with Conforama, focused on Tinyclues' role in the home furnishing leader's digital transformation. The Forrester TEI study is based on an independent case analysis of a large retailer who has used Tinyclues' solution for several years and measures the solution's 3-year economic impact on the company. The findings reveal additional 3-year campaign revenue of $9 million (8 million) present value and an ROI of 199%. The study also uncovered a number of quantified benefits experienced by the retailer: Better targeted email campaigns, with higher message relevancy and up to 30% uplift in revenue.

New revenue streams from campaigns that were previously not possible to target, including new and niche products.

Higher-performing trade marketing campaigns, driving partners to spend more on these campaigns.

Improved customer experience, fewer opt-outs and higher customer lifetime value, once the retailer entrusted its entire fatigue management strategy to Tinyclues.

Gains in productivity for campaign managers and data scientists. "Tinyclues has changed the way we think about customer marketing" 1, explained the retailer's digital marketing director. "Before, we had a traditional, 'one-to-many' approach. Now, we are at 'one-to-few' and tomorrow we will be 'one-to-one'. That's a real game changer. We know that one of the keys for success in retail is personalization, and Tinyclues helps us in this journey." 1



Tinyclues offers a new, unique targeting and planning experience for marketing campaigns. The solution uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to allow B2C marketers to find the future buyers for any product, easily and with unparalleled precision. For Tinyclues founder and CEO David Bessis, the TEI findings are a welcome validation: "Marketers love Tinyclues because they see successful results within a very short period of time. On average, our clients have measured +79% campaign revenue, -80% time spent on campaign creation, -19% unsubscribes and +51% client engagement. To have Tinyclues' economic impact confirmed in a study by a leading analyst like Forrester reinforces our vision of how campaign intelligence is reinventing marketing and transforming businesses."

Download the full study covering the benefits and costs associated with Tinyclues here. Tinyclues will be present at the leading retail event E-commerce One to One Monaco from March 19-21, and will take the stage with Conforama's own Romain Roulleau, Deputy CEO Digital & Customer. Conforama will provide an exclusive look at their digital transformation project, and how Tinyclues has helped them to reinvent their relationship marketing communications through personalized, more relevant campaigns, with an immediate effect on revenue. The presentation will be held March 19 at 3pm, in Room 1. About Tinyclues

Tinyclues is the leading AI-first marketing campaign intelligence solution enabling companies to maximize revenue and customer engagement through intelligent campaign targeting and planning. Tinyclues' solution uses deep learning to identify future buyers for any offer, in the days following a campaign. Companies such as AccorHotels, Air France, Brandalley, Cdiscount, Clarins, Club Med, Fnac Darty, Holland & Barrett, Kenzo, Lacoste, Manor, Rakuten, Road Scholar, Thomas Cook, TUI, Veepee, and Vestiaire Collective are using Tinyclues to optimize and orchestrate more than 600 million messages per month across channels such as email, mobile push notifications, direct mail, call centers, and Facebook (News - Alert) to generate quantified and sustainable additional revenue. For more information, visit http://www.tinyclues.com

Twitter (News - Alert): @tinyclues 1 The Total Economic Impact Of Tinyclues' Campaign Intelligence Solution For A Large Retailer, a Tinyclues-commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, February 2019 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005080/en/

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[March 19, 2019] The Next Generation of Innovators to Compete in Two Student Competitions at the 2019 Inmar Analytics Forum

Winston-Salem, NC, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Inmar announced a partnership between the Inmar Analytics Forum, Wake Forest University School of Business and GENYOUth to support the next generation of analytics innovators through two competitions at the 2019 Inmar Analytics Forum , March 25-27, 2019 in Winston-Salem, NC.



In partnership with Wake Forest University School of Business, the 2019 Inmar Analytics Forum will feature the 2019 Wake Forest University Graduate Business Analytics Case Competition on March 27, 2019. Students enrolled in business analytics and similar masters programs at seven colleges across the U.S. will participate in a data-driven business strategy challenge that aims to solve a real-world business problem with insights derived from data. The colleges and universities participating in the 2019 Wake Forest University Graduate Business Analytics Case Competition include: College of William and Mary

Duke University

University of Cincinnati

University of Denver

University of Tennessee Knoxville

Virginia Tech

Wake Forest University The Wake Forest University Graduate Business Analytics Case Competition provides analytics students from around the country the opportunity to showcase and enhance their analytical skills by focusing on a real business problem, said Jeff Camm, Associate Dean of Business Analytics at Wake Forest University School of Business. To be successful, the students not only need to utilize their analytical skills, but they also need to work under pressure as a member of a team and effectively communiate the results of their analysis to management. All these skills are critical to being successful in analytics and as an extracurricular activity, the competition helps ensure that participants are market-ready when they graduate.



In addition, the 2019 Inmar Analytics Forum and GENYOUth have partnered to empower area students and inform the next generation about health and wellness technology. Area middle and high school students will work with mentors to design and pitch their big ideas around health innovation technology in the Healthy App Innovation Challenge on March 26, 2019. GENYOUth is thrilled to partner with the 2019 Inmar Analytics Forum to provide local students with the opportunity to work alongside Inmar experts, share their feedback on existing Inmar apps and design their own tech-focused solutions to help their peers become healthier, said Alexis Glick, CEO of GENYOUth. As weve learned through our social entrepreneurship program, AdVenture Capital, inviting students to be a part of the development process builds trust and buy-in. I look forward to seeing what these incredible young people come up with. 

Area middle and high schools participating in the Healthy App Innovation Challenge include: Hanes Magnet Middle School

West Forsyth High School

The Middle College at Bennett

Reidsville High School

Page High School

North Forsyth High School

Mt. Tabor High School

Lumberton Jr

Southern Guilford

James B. Dudley High School The brightest minds and voices of todays students will bring a perspective to the 2019 Inmar Analytics Forum that we, as todays leaders, are encouraged to hear, said David Mounts, Chairman and CEO of Inmar. Their ideas and approaches are framed from experience we do not have, especially in this age of digital transformation, and that is why the student case study competition is such an important element in our annual Forum. I look forward to learning from their innovative solutions. The 2019 Inmar Analytics Forum expects to attract more than 600 attendees to learn how to implement data-driven strategies for improving consumer and patient outcomes. The registration deadline is March 26, 2019. For more information, and to register, please visit https://inmarforum.com/ . ####

About Inmar Commerce Accelerated. With an eye to accelerating commerce, we reimagine everyday business challenges through advanced analytics, technology-enabled and market-driven solutions built to solve some of industries biggest obstacles to growth. Inmars customer-centric approach is evident through our success helping companies dynamically engage audiences, build brand loyalty, create efficiencies and drive profitable growth. We help leading Fortune 500 companies and emerging brands stay relevant and propel growth while providing their consumers with personalized and precision-driven tools to save money, improve health and safety, and more conveniently go about their lives. For more than 35 years, we have served retailers, manufacturers, healthcare providers, government and employers as their trusted intermediary and helped them redefine innovation. For more information about Inmar, please visit us at www.inmar.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. About GENYOUth GENYOUth is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that empowers students to create a healthier future for themselves and their peers by convening a network of private and public partners to raise funds for youth wellness initiatives that bolster healthy, high-achieving students, schools and communities nationwide. We believe that all students are change-agents, who deserve the opportunity to identify and lead innovative solutions that positively impact nutrition, physical activity, and student success. GENYOUth has had Fuel Up to Play 60 and Adventure Capital programs in over 73,000 schools, reaching over 38 million students in nearly 10 years of operation. For more information about GENYOUth, visit www.genyouthnow.org . About Wake Forest University School of Business The Wake Forest University School of Business offers undergraduate programs in finance, accounting, mathematical business, and business and enterprise management, and graduate programs including a Master of Science in Management, Master of Science in Business Analytics, Master of Science in Accountancy and Master of Business Administration. Our programs are consistently ranked among the worlds best in surveys by U.S. News & World Report, the Economist, Forbes, and the Financial Times.







Sharon Joyner-Payne Inmar, Inc. (336) 631-7663 [email protected]

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[March 19, 2019] Triple Bottom Line Results Is the New Education Business Model

SHERBROOKE, Quebec, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Classcraft , an award-winning Engagement Management System for schools, announced today it has been officially certified as a B Corp. In order to receive certification, companies must meet the highest standards of overall social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability and aspire to use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. Brothers Shawn and Devin Young, along with their father Lauren, founded the business in 2013 and launched their innovative edtech product in 2015.

Shawn, Devin and Lauren Young



Were very proud to be one of the few ed-tech companies worldwide to meet the high standards required to be B Corp certified, said Classcraft CEO Shawn Young, headquartered in the companys Sherbrooke office. Through this process, you cant just say you're doing good for kids, you have to prove it with data and research. For us, it was easy to offer proof of our results because we provide impact measurement to educators nearly every day. Classcraft President Devin Young, based in New York, explained, Classcrafts Engagement Management System (EMS) provides real-time data on student engagement, academics, social emotional behavior, and skills development, data that is critical to driving innovation and measurable results in schools and districts today. Being a B Corp is one way to have an independent body validate that the way we are doing our work is aigned with the actual work we do.



Shawn added, Were committed to a triple bottom line, having a successful company, providing powerful impact to our customers, and positively contributing to society and our environment. Thats always been our mission. The MaRS Catalyst Fund is thrilled to have supported Classcraft through the B Corp process and ultimately as a certified B Corp, said Kathryn Wortsman, Fund Manager for the MaRS Catalyst Fund. As a mandate of the Catalyst Fund, all of our portfolio companies complete the assessment to build best-in-class environment, social, and governance practices. We believe this sets up our portfolio companies for success as mission alignment combined with good governance, employee practices, and environmental policies support a motivated and healthier culture for improved overall company performance and customer satisfaction.

Classcraft received a rating of 86.6, compared to the average score of similar educational companies seeking B Corp certification at 50.5. Companies must score 80 or higher to be certified. Classcraft joins 2,778 companies worldwide that have received B Corp certification. B Lab , the nonprofit that provides the certification, describes B Corporations as a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. B Labs Country Manager of Canada, Kasha Huk, stated, Were proud to have Classcraft join the ranks of the B Corp community of leaders that are driving a global movement of people using business as a force for good. It's exciting to see this leadership within the education technology space and across the more than 150 industries and 60 countries currently representing the B Corp community globally. Classcraft

Founded in 2013 by brothers Shawn and Devin Young and their father Lauren Young, Classcraft is an award-winning ed-tech company serving more than 5 million students and educators worldwide and a Quebec- and New York City-based certified B Corporation. Its proprietary Engagement Management System (EMS) uses the cultural phenomenon of video games to help educators drive measurable academic performance, non-cognitive skills development, and school climate. By blending students physical and virtual learning, the program reframes their progress in school as a game they play together throughout the year. Classcraft is used in more than 160 countries and is available in 11 languages.



Shawn Young

Shawn Young is the co-founder and CEO of Classcraft. Shawn taught 11th grade physics for 9 years, holds a bachelors degree in physics and a master's in education from Universite de Sherbrooke, and is a seasoned web developer. Shawn sits on the Scientific Advisory Board for UNESCOs MGIEP, the corporate advisory board for Future Ready Schools New Jersey, and the corporate advisory board for SETDA. Hes the vice president of the Edteq Association and an Ambassador for the Education Faculty of the University of Sherbrooke. Hes guest lectured at Harvard and advised the White House on the future of assessment and the roles games have in K-12 education. Devin Young

Devin Young is the co-founder and president of Classcraft. Well-versed in education and experience design, he leads the companys communications, marketing, design, and storytelling teams. Devin is a serial entrepreneur and creative director whos previously run an ed-tech company and a production company whose clients included Chanel, Microsoft, Intel, See.me, and The Future of Storytelling Summit (FOST). He has served as an advisor to the White House, SETDA, and Future Ready Schools New Jersey. Hes also guest lectured at Harvard and spoken at ISTE, SXSW Interactive, Games for Change, ASUGSV, the Department of Educations ED Games Expo, Creative Mornings, and the New York Tech Meetup. For information, contact:

Barbara Webber, 443-534-9938

[email protected] A photo accompanying this announcement is available at //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/700dbb16-99f1-44c9-b10d-8b97e456206b

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[March 19, 2019] Carvana Launches the New Way to Buy a Car in Three Additional Texas Markets

Carvana (NYSE: CVNA), a leading e-commerce platform for buying and selling used cars, has expanded its Texas presence, launching the new way to buy a car in Killeen, College Station and Waco. From the comfort of home or on the go via their mobile device, customers can shop more than 15,000 vehicles on Carvana.com, finance, purchase, trade-in, and now schedule as-soon-as-next-day delivery, all in as little as 10 minutes. Area residents can also sell their current vehicle to Carvana, even if they aren't purchasing a vehicle, and receive a real offer in just minutes. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005222/en/



Carvana continues rapid expansion in Texas, now offering as-soon-as-next-day vehicle delivery to Killeen, College Station and Waco area residents. (Photo: Business Wire)

Customers who visit Carvana.com get a great selection, great prices and a great customer experience by skipping the dealership and shopping on their own terms. All 15,000+ vehicles are photographed in 360 degrees, so customers get a high-definition virtual tour of every vehicle. Additionally, all Carvana vehicles come with a seven-day return policy, giving customers the peace of mind and time to ensure the vehicle fits their life. Every Carvana vehicle is Carvana Certified, meaning it has undergone a rigorous 150-point inspection, has no frame damage and has never been in a reported accident. Features, imperfections and updated information about open safety recalls are listed on the car's vehicle description page. "Today's launches put us in nine markets in the Lone Star State," said Ernie Garcia, founder and CEO of Carvana. "Many Texans have welcomed the new way to buy a car, and we're looking forward to bringing online car buying and home delivery to Killeen, College Station and Waco area residents." With today's triple play in Texas, Carvana now offers as-soon-as-next-day vehicle delivery in 105 cities across the U.S. About Carvana (NYSE: CVNA) Founded in 2012 and based in Phoenix, Carvana's (NYSE: CVNA) mission is to change the way people buy cars. By removing the traditional dealership infrastructure and replacing it with technology and exceptional customer service, Carvana offers consumers an intuitive and convenient online car buying and financing platform. Carvana.com enables consumers to quickly and easily shop more than 15,000 vehicles, finance, trade-in or sell their current vehicle to Carvana, sign contracts, and schedule as-soon-as-next-day delivery or pickup at one of Carvana's patented, automated Car Vending Machines. For further information on Carvana, please visit www.carvana.com, or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005222/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Zenergy to Participate in the CEO Roundtable at Energy Marketing Conference in Houston, Texas

Dallas, TX, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Zenergy (OTCPK: ZNGY), the nation's leading next-generation utility, announced today that their CEO, Alex Rodriguez, will participate in the CEO Roundtable hosted and produced by Energy Marketing Conferences (EMC). EMC is renowned, widely respected and is responsible for the largest and most effective industry events of the year.

Zenergy is proud and honored to participate in this event, which is to be held in Houston, TX on April 2, 2019. Its been a privilege watching and experiencing the EMC Conference grow and evolve over the years. It is a testament to their strong leadership and we are happy to participate, said Ryan Samuel, Vice President of Zero Cost Solutions. While EMC Conferences largely deal with the challenges and opportunities associated with the retail aspects of deregulated electricity and natural gas markets, they also take a larger holistic view by incorporating energy retailers, utilities, marketers, vendors and other players across the supply chain. We are excited to have a company like Zenergy, whose focus is conservation and smart controls, participate along-side energy retailers. It is a signal to where the future of the energy industry is going, said Jack Doueck, Principal of EMC. I believe in the mission of EMC, and I a happy to bring the Zenergy perspective to the ongoing discussion and evolution of the retail energy industry, said Rodriguez.



Through its trademarked, Zero Cost Program, Zenergy is delivering the value proposition at no upfront out of pocket cost, while at the same time creating a positive impact to the bottom line. Energy professionals who desire to attend any of the EMC Conferences or learn more about the largest retail energy industry event, can do so by visiting EMC online by clicking here.

Prospective clients wanting to learn more about the Zero Cost Program can do so by visiting Zenergy online at www.whatiszenergy.com. ABOUT ZENERGY BRANDS, INC. Zenergy Brands, Inc. (OTCQB: ZNGY), is a next-generation energy and technology company operating in the emerging smart energy/utility industry. The Company provides energy conservation, smart controls, and efficiency-based products and services as a fully integrated energy company. Zenergy is a public company, fully reporting to the SEC and currently trading on the OTCQB, a venture market designed for early-stage and developing U.S. and international companies. To learn more, visit www.whatiszenergy.com and connect with the Company on its social media accounts: Facebook: whatiszenergy Twitter: @whatiszenergy Instagram:@whatiszenergy FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release may contain forward-looking statements. The words believe, expect, should, intend, estimate, projects, variations of such words and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not a forward-looking statement. These forward-looking statements are based upon the Company's current expectations and are subject to some risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Among the critical factors that could cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements are risks detailed in the Company's filings, which are on file at www.OTCmarkets.com. INVESTORS & MEDIA CONTACT: Email: [email protected] Phone: (469) 228-1400 Fax: (469) 626-5101

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[March 19, 2019] Geotab Awarded World's Largest Telematics Contract by General Services Administration

Geotab, a global leader in IoT and connected transportation, today announced it has been awarded the largest single-source telematics contract to date by GSA (News - Alert) Fleet, a division of GSA (General Services Administration), which provides centralized procurement for U.S. federal agencies. With one of the largest non-tactical fleets in America, GSA Fleet will equip its 217,000 vehicles with Geotab's (News - Alert) trusted fleet management technology. Since 1954, GSA Fleet has been providing quality vehicles and efficient and economical fleet management services to over 75 participating federal agencies. Its end-to-end fleet management services include vehicle acquisition, leasing and disposal, as well as maintenance control, accident management and fuel and loss prevention services. "This rare, single-source award from GSA Fleet reinforces Geotab's ability to provide secure and highly specialized technology to the government sector," said Jean Pilon-Bignell, Geotab's associate vice president, government and smart city. "This partnership helps Geotab expand our portfolio of services and solutions to the public sector while enabling GSA Fleet and other federal agency fleets to optimize their operations via leading analytics capabilities." As a vertically integrated telematics provider Geotab manages the entire technology stack, from the in-cab hardware and embedded firmware used to encrypt and transmit data, to the secure server-side hosting and software applications. As the first telematics companies to achieve FIPS 140-2 validation for its cryptographic library, Geotab places security at the forefront of its innovations, ensuring rigorous security measures that meet industry best cybersecurity practices. As part of this award, Geotab has also received a GSA sponsorship for FedRAMP certification, which will position MyGeotab as the first SaaS (News - Alert) telematics platform to achieve this prestigious cybersecurity accreditation.



"With GSA paving the way, we believe the U.S. government leads the world in the adoption of telematics in the public sector," stated Geotab CEO Neil Cawse. "Particularly within local, state and federal agencies where fleet vehicles typically account for a large portion of their annual budget, our intelligent integrated solutions have the potential to protect capital assets, reduce associated risk, improve accountability and decrease operating costs." For more information visit: www.geotab.com/gov.

About General Services Administration The mission of the U.S. General Services Administration is to deliver value and savings in real estate, acquisition, technology, and other mission-support services across government. To learn more about GSA visit gsa.gov or join the conversation on social media at @USGSA and @GSAEmily. About Geotab Geotab is advancing security, connecting commercial vehicles to the internet and providing web-based analytics to help customers better manage their fleets. Geotab's open platform and Marketplace, offering hundreds of third-party solution options, allows both small and large businesses to automate operations by integrating vehicle data with their other data assets. As an IoT hub, the in-vehicle device provides additional functionality through IOX Add-Ons. Processing billions of data points a day, Geotab leverages data analytics and machine learning to help customers improve productivity, optimize fleets through the reduction of fuel consumption, enhance driver safety, and achieve strong compliance to regulatory changes. Geotab's products are represented and sold worldwide through Authorized Geotab Resellers. To learn more, please visit www.geotab.com and follow us @GEOTAB and on LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005184/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Room40 uses Nokia's machine-learning powered video, audio and IoT analytics to flag emergencies and crime at service stations, parking lots and construction sites

Press Release Nokia Scene Analytics solution processes thousands of simultaneous streams from CCTV cameras, audio and IoT sensor data, allowing for real-time incident alerts

solution processes thousands of simultaneous streams from CCTV cameras, audio and IoT sensor data, allowing for real-time incident alerts Security teams are immediately notified when the solution flags emergencies and criminal activity such as vandalism, theft and drug and human trafficking

Solution leverages existing CCTV infrastructure and new audio and IoT sensors for lower-cost solution 19 March 2019 Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced that Room40, a company specializing in context aware and audio security monitoring analytics solutions, has adopted Nokia Scene Analytics in its video and audio security monitoring analytics solution to increase security and safety in various sites across Belgium. The solution will use machine-learning algorithms to identify anomalies in thousands of simultaneous streams of video, audio and sensor information, and flag incidents in real-time. Highway service stations are often the site of vandalism, theft and coordinated drug and human trafficking. The cost of 24/7 video and audio monitoring, either by personnel or software, is prohibitively expensive. Room40 and Vias Institute, the Belgian knowledge center for road safety and security, are jointly tackling this issue on Belgian highways and other public spaces using the Nokia Scene Analytics solution. The same solutions will also become available for construction companies to monitor productivity and safety on site. Typically, up to 99 percent of video, audio and sensor data is normal behavior. The Nokia Scene Analytics software uses machine-learning to establish what is 'normal', enabling it to track and record only irregular behavior that might be connected to safety or security incidents. This reduces the amount of data to process and more quickly and efficiently alerts personnel to incidents. It is also capable of extracting information from older, low-resolution CCTV cameras, as well as audio and other IoT sensors, which protects investment and lowers costs. Harald Oymans, CEO and co-founder of Room40, said: "In a world that changes so drastically almost every minute, it is of the utmost importance to be able to see what's really there. Scenario based patterns only provide insight in what was, not in what is. The self-learning capability of Nokia Scene Analytics enhances true insight in what's really there, therefore enhancing the existing knowledge base with new information based patterns, which in turn enable the collection of the really needed data. In short, Nokia Scene Analytics enables true insights in a quickly changing world without any human assumptions, and in doing so it enables the structural growth of knowledge." Josee Loudiadis, Vice President Enterprise Analytics and IoT, said: "Real-life situations require an intellient platform that can proactively detect, select, and track only relevant video streams for a variety of surveillance tasks. An important element of our Future X for industries strategy, the Nokia Scene Analytics software is a game-changing solution to the problem of security monitoring and will have wide-ranging applications in many other smart city and industrial applications. We are very proud to work with Room40 and VIAS to develop this security solution and help make Belgian highway service stations safer."



Resources Website: Nokia Scene Analytics

Website: Nokia Enterprise Analytics and IoT

Application note: Scene Analytics for Smart Cities

Ebook: Go Allwhere: The Architecture of the Industry's Digital Age

Website: Go Allwhere

Whitepaper: Networking solutions for the new age of industry

451 Research Pathfinder Report. Business-Critical Industrial Networks: THE MISSING LINK AS INDUSTRY GOES DIGITAL , by Rich Karpinski, Research Director, Voice of the Enterprise - IoT Principal Analyst, Mobile Operator Strategies About Room40

Room40 is a Belgian start-up specialized in contextual solutions for information overload by using text, video, images and sound. These solutions are made by an experienced team of specialists with various backgrounds and expertise. For more information, visit the Room40 website: www.roomfourzero.com About Nokia Scene Analytics Nokia Scene Analytics analyzes motion flow to detect anomalies and combines this with deep learning to deliver enhanced detection capabilities. Scene Analytics is built upon Nokia Bell Labs World Wide Streams (WWS) which processes these computer vision algorithms in real-time. Unlike many security solutions that have to be programmed to recognize security scenarios, Scene Analytics' ML software can learn what is normal. This gives it the ability to identify anomalous behavior that might not be anticipated by scenario-based (deep learning only) solutions. Room 40 will leverage existing Nokia algorithms, but will also be able to develop their own algorithms and integrate them into the product. About Nokia for Industries Nokia has deployed over 1,000 mission-critical networks with leading utilities, railways, air traffic controllers, mining companies, banks and healthcare institutions around the globe. Leading enterprises across industries are leveraging our decades of experience building some of the biggest and most advanced IP, optical, and wireless networks on the planet. The Nokia Bell Labs Future X for industries architecture - which includes emerging technologies such as advanced data streaming and analytics -- offers a framework for how companies can seize the Industry 4.0 opportunity. Connect with Nokia Subscribe to receive information on specific areas of interest

to receive information on specific areas of interest Website

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Facebook About Nokia We create the technology to connect the world. We develop and deliver the industry's only end-to-end portfolio of network equipment, software, services and licensing that is available globally. Our customers include communications service providers whose combined networks support 5.7 billion subscriptions, as well as enterprises in the private and public sector that use our network portfolio to increase productivity and enrich lives. Through our research teams, including the world-renowned Nokia Bell Labs, we are leading the world to adopt end-to-end 5G networks that are faster, more secure and capable of revolutionizing lives, economies and societies. Nokia adheres to the highest ethical business standards as we create technology with social purpose, quality and integrity. www.nokia.com Media Enquiries: Nokia

Communications

Phone: +358 10 448 4900

Email: [email protected]

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[March 19, 2019] Rudolph Technologies Introduces New JetStep Lithography Systems at SEMICON China 2019

Rudolph Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: RTEC) today announced the immediate availability of its new JetStep lithography systems for advanced packaging processes on wafer and panel formats. The JetStep systems incorporate an option for a new, proprietary submicron lens design, as well as up to 25% increased productivity over the previous JetStep systems. The JetStep wafer stepper will also feature a 20% smaller footprint to reduce associated cleanroom facility costs. The new systems will be highlighted at the SEMICON China trade show March 20-22 in the Rudolph Technologies booth 4559 in hall N4. Advanced packaging technologies, such as system-in-package (SiP) and fan-out packages (FOWLP and FOPLP) are being driven by demand from mobile, automotive and high-power computing applications. The new JetStep systems now feature a submicron lens option that accommodates critical customer roadmap requirements such as ultra-fine SiP interconnects and large-scale 50mm package sizes with significant intrafield variation. This field-proven lens with recipe controlled variable NA (numerical aperture) will allow customers to balance resolution and field size for a broader range of applications. In addition, these advanced packages now require lithography systems specifically designed to create redistribution layers (RDLs), silicon interposers, through silicon vias (TSVs), copper pillars and micro-bumps on non-flat, reconstituted wafers. Achieving this with cost in mind, the new JetStep systems include a higher power lamp and unique illumination optics that increase wafer plane light intensity by 250% over the previous JetStep systems to deliver higher prouctivity and throughput.



"Our latest JetStep systems provide the greatest combination of high resolution and wide field size to address our customers' longer-range needs for finer and denser features and more integrated systems-in-packages," said Rich Rogoff, vice president and general manager of Rudolph's Lithography Systems Group. "The 20% footprint reduction, manufacturing-proven warped wafer handling, on-the-fly optical focusing, inter-field magnification compensation, and new edge focus and alignment capabilities result in reduced total time per wafer, and, of course, higher throughput clearly reduces cost." Alex Chow, Rudolph Technologies' vice president for strategic marketing, concluded, "Next-generation packaging processes require tighter overlay and finer pitch interconnects on reconstituted wafers and panels where die have shifted from their desired position. Displacement errors can be measured on the lithography tool, but the measurements are slow, typically taking as much time as the exposure. Moving the measurement to a separate system and feeding corrections to the stepper can double throughput. Rudolph's exclusive StepFAST solution is a feed-forward adaptive shot technology that addresses process variations, die placement errors and dimensionally unstable materials. This new method uses a parallel die placement measurement process and advanced analytics to provide a means to balance throughput against yield, adding an extra dimension of flexibility for optimizing profitability."

For more information about Rudolph's JetStep systems and StepFAST solution, visit our team of experts at SEMICON China or www.rudolphtech.com. About Rudolph Technologies Rudolph Technologies, Inc. is a leader in the design, development, manufacture and support of defect inspection, lithography, process control metrology, and process control software used by semiconductor and advanced packaging device manufacturers worldwide. Rudolph delivers comprehensive solutions throughout the fab with its families of proprietary products that provide critical yield-enhancing information, enabling microelectronic device manufacturers to drive down costs and time to market of their devices. Headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts, Rudolph supports its customers with a worldwide sales and service organization. Additional information can be found on the Company's website at www.rudolphtech.com. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Act") which include the benefit to customers of Rudolph's products, Rudolph's business momentum and future growth and the market demand for semiconductors generally as well as other matters that are not purely historical data. Rudolph wishes to take advantage of the "safe harbor" provided for by the Act and cautions that actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of various factors, including risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Rudolph's control. Such factors include, but are not limited to, Rudolph's ability to plan and manage its resources and production capability, including its supply chain and fluctuations in customer capital spending. Additional information and considerations regarding the risks faced by Rudolph are available in Rudolph's Form 10-K report for the year ended December 31, 2018 and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the forward-looking statements are based on Rudolph's current expectations, the company cannot guarantee any related future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Rudolph does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005458/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Predictive Technology Group Names Senator Orrin G. Hatch and Ronald Barhorst to Its Board of Directors

SALT LAKE CITY, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Predictive Technology Group, Inc. (OTC PINK: PRED), a leader in the use of data analytics for disease identification and subsequent therapeutic intervention through precision therapeutic treatments, announces the appointment of Senator Orrin G. Hatch and Ronald Barhorst to the companys Board of Directors, effective immediately. Senator Hatch brings experience from his seven terms as a U.S. Senator including serving as a member and/or chair of various U.S. Senate committees. Mr. Barhorst brings 25 years of experience as a senior executive in the financial services industry and has served as an advisor to the company or its predecessors for nearly 10 years. These two appointments expand Predictives Board to six including four independent directors.

We are pleased that Senator Orrin Hatch and Ronald Barhorst have chosen to join Predictives Board, bringing their wealth of experience and proven expertise in governance, regulatory, commercial, legal and financial matters, said Bradley C. Robinson, CEO of Predictive Technology Group. Their extensive backgrounds and experience are ideally suited for contributions to Predictive as we continue to mature and evolve as a publicly reporting company. We are honored that Senator Hatch and Mr. Barhorst have offered to generously share their time and expertise in support of our goal at Predictive of improving the quality of life of millions who may benefit from applying our novel precision medicine approach to underserved indications. We welcome them to our Board. Im excited to join Predictive and support its mission of delivering needed personalized care to millions of individuals through the commercialization of industry-leading breakthroughs in both genetics and cellular therapy, said Senator Hatch. Predictives approach to precision medicine holds the promise of offering tremendous relief to those suffering from chronic ailments and debilitating pain. I have witnessed the pain and suffering of endometriosis at a personal level as it has impacted my family. I look forward to working toward achieving the companys goals. Senator Hatch is an attorney and retired politician who served as a U.S. Senator from Utah for 42 years. First electedin 1976, he was the longest-serving Republican U.S. Senator in history. Senator Hatch served as either the chair or ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1993 to 2005. He previously chaired the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions from 1981 to 1987. Senator Hatch also served as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. On January 3, 2015, after the 114th United States Congress was sworn in, Hatch became President pro tempore of the Senate. Senator Hatch retired from the U.S. Senate in 2019.



Similar to Senator Hatch, my family has had personal experience with the chronic pain and suffering of endometriosis, said Mr. Barhorst. Having had the opportunity to work with Predictive or its predecessor companies for close to a decade, I am deeply committed to the companys mission and team. Im accepting a position on Predictives board of directors to represent all stakeholders, including those suffering from diseases such as endometriosis. Mr. Barhorst is chair of The California State University Foundation. He is retired as president and chief executive officer of ING Financial Advisers, LLC and ING Investment Advisors, LLC and Systematized Benefits Administrators, Inc. He was also head of national accounts, healthcare and government markets. He previously served as director of residential services for Montgomery County Board of Mental Retardation and Development Disabilities and as treasurer for the Ohio Private Residential Services Association and Executive Director of Choices in Community Living, a non-profit organization he developed. Mr. Barhorst has served on numerous non-profit boards, including the California Business Roundtable for Education Excellence.

About Predictive Technology Group, Inc.

Predictive Technology Group aims to revolutionize patient care through predictive data analytics, novel gene-based diagnostics and companion therapeutics through its subsidiaries Predictive Therapeutics, Predictive Biotech, Predictive Diagnostics and Predictive Laboratories. These subsidiaries are focused on endometriosis, scoliosis, degenerative disc disease and human cell and tissue products. The subsidiaries use genetic and other information as cornerstones in the development of new diagnostics that assess a persons risk of illness and therapeutic products designed to identify, prevent and treat diseases more effectively. Additional information is available at Predtechgroup.com ; Predrx.com and Predictivebiotech.com . Forward-Looking Statements

To the extent any statements made in this release contain information that is not historical, these statements are essentially forward-looking and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the difficulty of predicting FDA approvals, acceptance and demand for human cell and tissue products and other pharmaceutical products, the impact of competitive products and pricing, new product development and launch, reliance on key strategic alliances, availability of raw materials, availability of additional intellectual property rights, availability of future financing sources, the regulatory environment, and other risks the Company may identify from time to time in the future. Contact: Investors

LHA Investor Relations

Jody Cain [email protected]

Kevin Mc Cabe [email protected]

310-691-7100

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OTTAWA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Focus Graphite Inc. (TSX-V:FMS) (Focus or the Company) announces today that it has closed its previously announced equity financing (the Offering). The Company closed the Offering in two tranches as announced on December 11, 2018 and January 14, 2019. In total, the Company has raised gross proceeds of $1,275,000 and issued a total of 25,500,000 Flow-Through Shares under the Offering, which Offering remains subject to the final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.



About Focus Graphite

Focus Graphite Inc. is an advanced exploration and mining company with an objective of producing graphite concentrate at its wholly-owned Lac Knife flake graphite deposit located 27 km south of Fermont, Quebec. In a second stage, to meet Quebec stakeholder interests of transformation within the province and to add shareholder value, Focus is evaluating the feasibility of producing value added graphite products including battery grade spherical graphite.

Focus Graphite is a technology-oriented graphite mining development company with a vision for building long-term, sustainable shareholder value. Focus also holds a significant equity position in graphene applications developer Grafoid Inc.

For more information about Focus Graphite, please visit www.focusgraphite.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.

Contact:

Focus Graphite Inc.

Mr. Gary Economo

Chief Executive Officer

+1-613-241-4040

geconomo@focusgraphite.com

www.focusgraphite.com
[March 19, 2019] InterSystems IRIS for Health Empowers MediWay Technology to Accelerate the Digital Transformation of Healthcare in China

InterSystems, a global leader in information technology platforms for health, business and government applications, today announced that MediWay Technology, one of the largest healthcare software companies in China, has built and deployed its new iMedical Cloud healthcare IT ecosystem platform using InterSystems IRIS for Health. IRIS for Health, the only unified data platform engineered specifically for healthcare, empowers MediWay to support all stakeholders in the Chinese healthcare system - including government, healthcare organizations, and consumers - in an environment where medical reform policies are driving increased collaboration, information sharing, and use of big data. MediWay's iMedical healthcare information system (HIS) is used by around 500 healthcare organizations, including more than 300 tertiary hospitals and 30 top-100 hospitals in China. To accelerate the digital transformation of healthcare, however, MediWay and its partner Tencent Cloud require higher levels of accessibility, scalability, and interoperability. Two iMedical Cloud applications, available to all healthcare stakeholders hosted on Tencent Cloud, have been launched with two core functionalities - transactional cloud collaboration (Cloud HIS) and data cloud collaboration (HealthChain). iMedical Cloud can be used within a region for real-time healthcare information exchange, centralized management control, and unified allocation of resources. IRIS for Health supports the vastly increased data volumes required with features like sharding. This distributes daa across a number of cloud-based servers to provide flexible, inexpensive performance scaling.



"A cloud solution solves many pain points in healthcare," said William Han, Chairman and CEO of MediWay Technology. "For example, it can provide a healthcare information system for county clinics, community healthcare centers and small-to-medium sized hospitals without the need for computer rooms, local servers, or maintenance staff. By supporting our strategic pivot, InterSystems (News - Alert) and its IRIS for Health technology have yet again shown the true partnership we've come to expect after 20 years of collaboration." IRIS for Health empowers healthcare organizations with a unified data platform that combines analytical and transaction processing with native interoperability for all data types, including seamless transitions between healthcare-specific standards such as HL7 FHIR (Health Level Seven Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources).

IRIS for Health's support for cloud-first development using container technology also allows MediWay Technology to take full advantage of the strategic partnership between its parent company, DHC Software, and Tencent Cloud. This enables MediWay to continue to integrate technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, and speech input with its cloud-based healthcare solution. DHC Software became one of InterSystems' first partners in China more than 20 years ago, and developed the original iMedical hospital information system on InterSystems data platforms. "During two decades of partnership, InterSystems has witnessed the fast growth of DHC Software and MediWay Technology, and we are very proud to see our latest data platform technology empower them to accelerate the digital transformation of healthcare," said Luciano Brustia, Country Manager for Australia and Greater China, InterSystems. "InterSystems and our partners are committed to implementing the medical reform policies in China by promoting new healthcare approaches such as consortiums, making sure that each and every citizen benefits from better healthcare services and a healthy future." About MediWay Technology

MediWay Technology Co., Ltd. was incorporated in 2012, with a registered capital of RMB 100 million. It has a workforce numbering 2,200, and its predecessor is the Healthcare Business Unit of DHC Software founded in 1999. Over the past 20 years or so, MediWay has provided more than 500 hospitals, hospital consortiums, insurers, health commissions, social security bureaus and other relevant institutions with a variety of products and solutions, including the smart hospital solutions family, regional healthcare solutions family, Internet-based healthcare solutions family, and integrated Medicare payment and cost control solutions family. MediWay makes the most of the latest IT technologies to create and update its portfolios of products and solutions, is committed to achieving software as a service, and leverages its new thinking and ideas to support a sustainable healthcare industry. About InterSystems

InterSystems is the engine behind the world's most important applications. In healthcare, finance, government, and other sectors where lives and livelihoods are at stake, InterSystems is the power behind what matters. Founded in 1978, InterSystems is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), with offices worldwide, and its software products are used daily by millions of people in more than 80 countries. For more information, visit InterSystems.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005160/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Figure Technologies, Inc. Expands Leadership Team as It Builds Out Financial Empowerment and Wealth Offerings

SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Figure Technologies, Inc. (Figure), a leading fintech company in both the home equity and blockchain space, announces that John Sweeney has joined the company as the head of Wealth and Asset Management, along with Dr. Michael Dooley, who joined as chief economist. These hires reflect Figure's commitment to empowering consumers and building out products to improve their financial well-being. "John's wealth of experience in asset management, retirement planning and personal finance will fuel our work to provide simple, transparent and smart solutions to empower homeowners. His expertise working with asset managers, broker dealers and registered investment advisors will allow Figure to work hand in hand with financial advisors to deliver innovative solutions that solve real challenges," said Mike Cagney, co-founder and CEO at Figure. "Figure Home Lease Back is a great example of how we can work together to help retirees and their advisors enhance income, simplify life and improve retirement. It can also open up new opportunities for homeowners who want to lock in gains in their home prices while building flexibility in their lives." Among his roles at Fidelity, John was executive vice president of Retirement and Investing Strategies, where he was sought out as an expert on retirement, investments and the markets and testified before the Senate Finance Committee on America's retirement preparedness. John was also the co-founder and managing partner of Momentum Capital Partners and served as the chairman of the board of governors of the Money Management Institute, the trade organization serving asset managers, investment advisors and broker dealers. Dr. Dooley joins Figure as chief economist and is professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Previously, he served the National Bureau of Economic Research, the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System and the International Monetary Fund. His published research covers a wide range of issues in macroeconomics, including work on financial crises and the liberalization of financial markets. Empowering homeowners to improve their financial well-being. Figure is continuing to build on the momentum from its flagship product, Figure Home Equity Line (formerly named Figure Home Equity Plus), which is afixed-rate line of credit that provides approval in as little as five minutes and funding in five days, all online. It combines the best characteristics of a traditional home equity loan and a HELOC. It allows consumers to borrow against the equity in their homes without the paperwork-intensive, 45-day process traditional lenders require. Since September 2018, Figure has funded more than 1,500 HELOCs for members across 37 states.



Figure built and deployed Provenance, a distributed stakeholder blockchain, in 2018. The company leverages the security, efficiencies and cost advantage of blockchain for loan origination, financing and sales and has a diverse set of funds, banks and dealers active on Provenance today. While Figure was the first loan originator on Provenance, several other originators plan to use the platform by mid-2019. Additional use cases, such as investment funds on chain, are also planned for this year. The team at Figure believes that many Americans will face challenges funding their retirements. Many homeowners may be able to access the equity in their homes to fund the shortfall in retirement income. To meet this need, the company introduced Figure Home Lease Back (formerly named Figure Home Advantage), a more transparent and straightforward alternative to reverse mortgages. Figure Home Lease Back members can sell their homes to Figure, get cash up front and stay in place as renters for as long as they wish. Figure covers all expenses, including property taxes, upkeep and insurance. Figure Home Lease Back is being rolled out across Texas, Illinois and Nevada now, with plans for a national rollout midyear. As with Figure Home Equity Line, members will benefit from the speed and efficiency of the Provenance blockchain.

"Figure's transformative technology and innovative products will make it significantly easier for financial advisors and our members to incorporate home equity into their retirement plans," Sweeney said. "I'm excited to be part of an organization working to educate and empower people to improve their financial lives, whether increasing the success of their longer-term retirement plans or enabling them to achieve shorter-term goals like paying off their debt more quickly or funding a major renovation." On March 21, Figure will celebrate the launch of its Facebook Community with its inaugural Facebook Live event at 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT hosted by John Sweeney. Free educational tools and resources are available at https://blog.figure.com/, including the monthly outlook by Chief Economist Dr. Dooley. About Figure: Figure Technologies, Inc. creates innovative consumer financial solutions for home improvement, debt consolidation and retirement while providing its members with financial education and financial empowerment. Its mission is to build and promote innovative financial products on blockchain that benefit consumers and eliminate rent-seeking, illiquidity and other inefficiencies present in current financial markets. The company's flagship product, the Figure Home Equity Line, uses Provenance, the blockchain protocol Figure created. Based in San Francisco, Figure was co-founded by Mike Cagney, former co-founder and CEO of SoFi, along with Alana Ackerson, Cynthia Chen, June Ou and Sara Priola. Figure has more than 100 employees in offices in California, Nevada and Montana. Figure has raised over $120 million since its founding in January 2018. For more information about Figure and its offerings, visit Figure.com and follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Figure/. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/figure-technologies-inc-expands-leadership-team-as-it-builds-out-financial-empowerment-and-wealth-offerings-300814385.html SOURCE Figure Technologies, Inc.

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[March 19, 2019] WhiteHat Sentinel Source Standard and Essential Editions Receive Highest OWASP Benchmark Accuracy Ratings of All Submitted SAST Solutions

WhiteHat Security, the leading application security provider committed to securing digital business, today announced that both WhiteHat Sentinel Source Standard and Essential Editions received the highest OWASP Benchmark for Security Automation accuracy ratings of all static application security testing (SAST) solutions compared publicly. This accomplishment supports WhiteHat Security's mission to help businesses build the most secure applications by providing the deepest coverage, faster speeds, and the highest accuracy available on the market. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005173/en/ OWASP Benchmark Results Comparison (Graphic: Business Wire) The OWASP Benchmark is a free and open testing suite that evaluates how automated software vulnerability detection tools stack up in those three categories. It is considered neutral, well-respected and a true indicator of accuracy when comparing solutions. It calculates an overall score for a tool based on both true positive rate and false positive rate. According to the most recent SAST evaluations, Sentinel Source (News - Alert) Standard Edition (SE), WhiteHat Security's fll SAST offering that covers the deployment phase of the software life cycle (SLC), scored 77 percent, and Sentinel Source Essentials Edition (EE), which provides SAST for the DevOps build/test phase, received a 42 percent accuracy rating. For reference, the commercial average totaled just 26 percent.



The Sentinel Source SE solution scans applications' entire source code, identifies vulnerabilities and provides detailed descriptions and remediation advice, as well as precise, ready-to-implement remediation solutions for certain vulnerabilities. The SE also comes with Threat Research Center-verified findings focused on high coverage and accuracy and delivered within 24 hours. Sentinel Source EE's findings are comprehensive and highly accurate due to the use of WhiteHat Security's Attack Vector Intelligence (AVI) technology, which is a combination of human and machine intelligence. WhiteHat Security has the largest database of verified security vulnerabilities that helps WhiteHat Security's AVI technology improve its accuracy. Discovered vulnerabilities are prioritized according to their severity, thus providing guidance on what should be remediated first.

"Having our experienced and efficient Threat Research Center engineers thoroughly vet vulnerabilities often saves organizations time compared to providing raw results fast that contain false positives," said Monier Jalal, WhiteHat Security's vice president of Products. "However, with the release of Sentinel Source EE, WhiteHat Security is the only vendor that offers customers the choice of full-service verification, or the 'do it yourself' approach. Adversaries are targeting vulnerable applications at an alarming rate, and the OWASP Benchmark accuracy ratings further show how WhiteHat Security is leading the effort to stem the tide of this alarming trend in the digital era." For more details, visit the WhiteHat Security blog: https://www.whitehatsec.com/blog/benchmarking-accuracy-automated-appsec-testing/. About WhiteHat Security WhiteHat Security has honed its 18 years of experience in the application security space to provide developers with the tools and services they need to write and deliver the most secure software at the speed of business. The award-winning WhiteHat Application Security (News - Alert) Platform, which has been featured on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Security Testing for the last five years, is empowering true DevSecOps by continuously assessing the risk for organizations' software assets and helping them to embed security throughout-and beyond- the software life cycle (SLC). The company is based in San Jose, California, with regional offices across the U.S. and Europe. For more information on WhiteHat Security, please visit www.whitehatsec.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005173/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Booz Allen Hamilton Receives Americas 2018 NVIDIA Partner Network Consulting Partner of the Year Award

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has wide-ranging applications across government and is increasingly seen as a strategic priority for federal agencies. Booz Allen Hamilton (News - Alert)-a leading provider of machine learning services to the U.S. Federal Government-helps organizations design and implement strategic and ethical uses of AI. Today, Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) was recognized with the Americas 2018 NVIDIA Partner Network (NPN) Consulting Partner of the Year Award. For the second year in a row, Booz Allen Hamilton was presented with this award at the NPN Reception and Awards Ceremony held during the 2019 NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC). The NVIDIA (News - Alert) Partner Network honored Booz Allen Hamilton for continuing to grow awareness around graphics processing unit (GPU) in the artificial intelligence (AI) market through their leadership, co-marketing, and key strategic wins. "We are quickly moving from artificial intelligence breakthroughs to AI implementations that are accelerating the adoption of this critical technology across the priate sector, Federal Government, and at the tactical edge," said Dr. Josh Sullivan, a Booz Allen senior vice president and leader of the firm's analytics and AI practice. "Our work with NVIDIA empowers clients to tackle data analysis at a scale out of reach for traditional computing solutions. In turn, new insights are driving operational efficiencies and other real results for our clients, delivering the long-promised benefits of AI today."



"There has been no technology transformation which offers as much value to the Federal Government as AI," said Anthony Robbins, Vice President, North America Public Sector at NVIDIA. "Partners like Booz Allen Hamilton, who have been serving this market for more than 100 years, are critical to both the adoption and implementation of AI." The NVIDIA Partner Network hosts an annual awards ceremony during GTC in Silicon Valley honoring its top North American partners that have shown growth in their GPU business through their leadership and investments they have made throughout the year.

To learn more about Booz Allen's work in artificial intelligence, visit BoozAllen.com/AI. About Booz Allen For more than 100 years, business, government, and military leaders have turned to Booz Allen Hamilton to solve their most complex problems. They trust us to bring together the right minds: those who devote themselves to the challenge at hand, who speak with relentless candor, and who act with courage and character. They expect original solutions where there are no roadmaps. They rely on us because they know that-together-we will find the answers and change the world. We solve the most difficult management and technology problems through a combination of consulting, analytics, digital solutions, engineering, and cyber expertise. With global headquarters in McLean, Virginia, our firm employs approximately 24,600 people globally, and had revenue of $6.17 billion for the 12 months ended March 31, 2018. To learn more, visit www.boozallen.com. (NYSE: BAH) BAHPR-CO View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005492/en/

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Paul Richardson Joins LTC Global as Capital Markets Executive

LTC Global, Inc. today announced that Paul Richardson (News - Alert) has joined the company as Senior Vice President - Capital Markets. Prior to joining LTC Global, Richardson was a Managing Director in the Asset-Backed Securitization Group of KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005189/en/

Paul B. Richardson, Senior Vice President - Capital Markets for LTC Globa (Photo: Business Wire)





"Paul will manage and expand our warehouse financing relationships and take the lead on future rated term securitizations," said LTC Global Chief Executive Officer Daniel G. Schmedlen, Jr. "We have known Paul for a long time and are thrilled that he is joining us," Schmedlen said.

Richardson completed 95 public and private asset-backed term securitizations worth approximately $12 billion during his 25 year investment banking career with KeyBanc, BB&T Capital Markets and others. Richardson earned his A.B., magna cum laude, from Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

About LTC Global

LTC Global, headquartered in Fort Myers, Florida, is the leading provider of capital to insurance agents and agencies through commission advance programs and renewal commission purchases. LTC Global is also a leading national distributor of life and health insurance products through its licensed agency subsidiaries, including ACSIA Partners, United Insurance Group Agency, the Smith Companies and Pacific Southwest Financial. For more information about LTC Global, visit www.ltcglobal.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005189/en/
[March 19, 2019] Freshfields Antitrust Partners to Speak at 67th Annual American Bar Association Antitrust Law Spring Meeting

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP ("Freshfields") has today announced that several of its partners and attorneys will participate as moderators and speakers during the 67th Annual American Bar Association Antitrust Law Spring Meeting. The event will be hosted at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, DC from March 26 - 29, 2019. Freshfields' partners and attorneys will moderate and participate in the following panel discussions: Bankers (And Other Third Party) Privilege?: Mary Lehner, Antitrust Partner in Freshfields' Washington, DC office, will moderate a discussion about the protection of legal privilege in the context of M&A and other settings where bankers and other third parties can be crucial to the proceedings. The panel will take place from 1:45 - 3:15 pm on Wednesday, March 27.

Mary Lehner, Antitrust Partner in Freshfields' Washington, DC office, will moderate a discussion about the protection of legal privilege in the context of M&A and other settings where bankers and other third parties can be crucial to the proceedings. The panel will take place from 1:45 - 3:15 pm on Wednesday, March 27. Global Class Action Developments: Mark Sansom, Litigation and Antitrust Partner in Freshfields' London office, will participate in a discussion on antitrust class action developments in the US and Canada and compare them to the collective redress mechanisms and developments in the UK and Europe. The panel will take place from 1:45 - 3:15 pm o Wednesday, March 27.

Mark Sansom, Litigation and Antitrust Partner in Freshfields' London office, will participate in a discussion on antitrust class action developments in the US and Canada and compare them to the collective redress mechanisms and developments in the UK and Europe. The panel will take place from 1:45 - 3:15 pm o Wednesday, March 27. China: Looking Back and Looking Forward: Ninette Dodoo, Co-Head of Freshfields' Antitrust practice in China, will moderate a discussion on the past decade of, and what the future holds for, antitrust enforcement in China. The panel will take place from 1:45 - 3:15 pm on Wednesday, March 27.

Ninette Dodoo, Co-Head of Freshfields' Antitrust practice in China, will moderate a discussion on the past decade of, and what the future holds for, antitrust enforcement in China. The panel will take place from 1:45 - 3:15 pm on Wednesday, March 27. Abuse of Superior Bargaining Position: Avoiding Trouble : Kaori Yamada, Antitrust Partner in Freshfields' Tokyo office, will participate in a discussion on the controversial Abuse of Superior Bargaining Position doctrine and whether it is consistent with the current objections and competition law and economics principles. The panel will take place from 3:30 - 5 pm on Wednesday, March 27.

: Kaori Yamada, Antitrust Partner in Freshfields' Tokyo office, will participate in a discussion on the controversial Abuse of Superior Bargaining Position doctrine and whether it is consistent with the current objections and competition law and economics principles. The panel will take place from 3:30 - 5 pm on Wednesday, March 27. Deconstructing Depositions: Laura Collins, Antitrust Senior Associate in Freshfields' Washington, DC office, will moderate a discussion on the taking, defending, and use of depositions in both antitrust investigations and litigation. The panel will take place from 9 - 10:15 am on Wednesday, March 27.



Notes to editors:

About Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP is a global law firm with a long-standing track record of successfully supporting the world's leading national and multinational corporations, financial institutions and governments on groundbreaking and business-critical mandates. Our 2,800-plus lawyers deliver results worldwide through our own offices and alongside leading local firms. Our commitment, local and multinational expertise, and business know-how means our clients rely on us when it matters most. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005077/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Christopher Stratas, New President of R&M USA Inc.

WETZIKON, Switzerland and MILPITAS, Calif., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Swiss cabling specialist, R&M, has appointed Christopher Stratas as its new Executive Vice President for its North American business, effective March 1, 2019. Christopher Stratas has more than 20 years of international business management experience with leading companies such as Nortel, IBM, Murata Power Solutions and Flex. Most recently, Christopher Stratas was General Manager of Flex Lighting Solutions, building its Global OEM business. "I am delighted to have Chris on board at R&M. He brings with him significant experience in building new markets, long-term customer relationships as well as cross-functional organizations in similar industries to ours," said Michel Riva, CEO R&M. "His strong leadership experience will be instrumental in integrating our recent acquisitio, Optimum Fiberoptics Inc., and in executing our growth strategy for the North American market."



Christopher Stratas said, "It is exciting to join such an established and reputable technology company. The ability to deliver the highest levels of product quality coupled with flawless execution is critical for customer success. Localized support and rapid-response solutions are a winning combination, especially when coupled with an ability to execute globally in a coherent manner. I look forward to helping our team grow a vibrant and invigorating business in North America!" Christopher Stratas replaces Markus Huber, who has successfully integrated the REALM business into the R&M Group over the past three years and built the U.S. business. Markus Huber will return to Switzerland where he will take over a new management function at R&M headquarters.

About R&M

R&M (Reichle & De-Massari AG) is a leading global producer of future-proof products and systems for communication and data networks. The company's close collaboration with certified partners results in pioneering connectivity solutions in the sectors LAN, Public and Telecom Networks as well as Data Centers. The Swiss family company stands for innovation, quality and proximity to customers. More information can be found at www.rdm.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/christopher-stratas-new-president-of-rm-usa-inc-300814601.html SOURCE R&M

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[March 19, 2019] Zoom and HP Collaborate to Create Modern Workspaces for Today's Workforce

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zoom Video Communications, Inc. today announced a partnership with HP Inc. to meet the collaboration needs of todays teams for video-first unified communications for all workspaces and workstyles. This partnership kicks off with the development of three HP conference room solutions that are pre-configured with Zoom Rooms software. These scalable and versatile solutions are built not only for end user simplicity, but also for ease in IT deployment and management.

This pre-configured, turnkey all-in-one device is a purpose-built plug-and-play solution that provides an immersive and intuitive experience for small and huddle rooms.



This device features pre-configured Zoom Rooms software and offers greater flexibility as enterprises can deploy this device in environments with existing AV infrastructure or when they need to connect to third-party audio and video peripherals.



This PC with pre-configured Zoom Rooms software pairs with third-party A/V peripherals and controls so enterprises can customize and ensure compatibility with three-screen displays, ceiling microphones, video cameras, and so forth.







HP Elite Slice G2 with Zoom Rooms

This pre-configured, turnkey all-in-one device is a purpose-built plug-and-play solution that provides an immersive and intuitive experience for small and huddle rooms. It provides the complete Zoom Rooms experience with integrated 12.3 diagonal anti-glare CoRC that easily manages conference calls, 90dBa audio for high-fidelity sound, and secure port cover to prevent damage by users. Planned to be available in Q3 2019, this device is simple to deploy and manage. HP Elite Slice G2 Audio Ready with Zoom Rooms

This device also features pre-configured Zoom Rooms software and offers greater flexibility as enterprises can deploy this device in environments with existing AV infrastructure or when they need to connect to third-party audio and video peripherals. Designed for medium to large-sized rooms, this device lets you simplify meetings and seamlessly connect with an intuitive Center of Room Control. This solution is planned to be available in July 2019. Audio hardware is sold separately.

HP Collaboration PC with Zoom Rooms

This PC with pre-configured Zoom Rooms software pairs with third-party A/V peripherals and controls so enterprises can customize and ensure compatibility with three-screen displays, ceiling microphones, video cameras, and so forth. This device can be deployed as a single-purpose appliance that is optimized for Zoom Rooms. With planned availability in July 2019, the HP Collaboration PC works well for any space and is particularly helpful in rooms with specialized needs such as boardrooms, classrooms, and training centers. Zoom is proud to partner with HP to bring these versatile, end user and IT-friendly Zoom Rooms solutions to market. The fact that our customers can take these systems right out of the box with Zoom Rooms already pre-configured means that they can roll out hundreds or thousands of these rooms quickly, and the options for integrating with other A/V systems allow them to use Zoom Rooms for any space, from small team huddle rooms to large-scale or specialized spaces, said Zoom head of product management, Oded Gal. As todays workstyles and workplaces are constantly changing, it has never been more critical to create technology for workers to seamlessly communicate both in and outside of the office, said Andy Rhodes, global head of commercial PCs, HP Inc. With HPs solutions for Zoom Rooms, we are expanding our HP Elite Slice G2 portfolio and making it easier for IT decision makers to choose an intuitive and seamless meeting room experience that empowers employees and frees up IT resources to focus on critical business needs. Visit Zoom at Enterprise Connect - booth #213 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, Florida, now through March 20. Zoom founder and CEO, Eric S. Yuan, will also join Alex Cho, HPs president of personal systems, keynote at HP Reinvent World Partner Forum 2019, March 19, in Houston, Texas. About Zoom

Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done. Our easy, reliable cloud platform for video, voice, content sharing, and chat runs across mobile devices, desktops, telephones, and room systems. Zoom is a private company headquartered in San Jose, California. Visit zoom.com and follow @zoom_us . Press Contact

Priscilla Barolo

Manager, Communications for Zoom

[email protected] Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:

//www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3d86faf5-f58a-439e-9498-afdc3361aece //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f87dbb37-7419-4e2c-96b0-d071bbf721ef //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e56d2d5d-30c2-48dd-b66b-9903fb5a0b9d

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[March 19, 2019] Delaware Innovation Space Launches First Fund Investment Program

First Fund provides early stage startups with critical funding to easily and quickly access Delaware Innovation Space's business building expertise, core programs, scientific equipment, and extensive multi-use wet laboratories. Eligible startups can each secure up to $75,000 investment from the First Fund Program, via a convertible note, funding monthly site-license costs for residency at the Delaware Innovation Space. "One of the biggest barriers in building a science based business is access to early stage capital," said William D. Provine, Delaware Innovation Space President and CEO. "Science startups require specialized capabilities that routinely incur substantial cash outlays even at the earliest stages of development," according to Provine. Raising funds for scientific startups can take in excess of 12 months in today's economic climate, delaying the start of critical work by more than a year. First Fund provides science entrepreneurs a mechanism to start critical lab and business development work today, getting them to successfully reach early important business milestones in rapid fashion. First Fund is designed for early stage science startups with the following characteristics: Main focus area in Healthcare, Industrial Biotechnology, Advanced Materials, Nutrition, Renewable Energy, or Chemical Ingredients.

Compelling business model focused upon a validated problem or opportunity

Under 3 years since company formation

Raised less than $500,000 total to date, including both dilutive and non-dilutive funding



"Science based companies truly impact our current daily lives in so many ways, from the strength of the vehicles we travel in, to the powerful medicines which heal us, to the latest electronics and batteries in our smartphones enabling our digital lifestyles," says Provine. He continues, "It is our mission at Delaware Innovation Space to enable the next generation of science companies & entrepreneurs to create the materials and products to improve our future daily lives. First Fund will be the tool providing rapid access to critical scientific resources to speed up the arrival of that future."

Find additional First Fund information at: https://deinnovates.org/first-fund-program/ About Delaware Innovation Space: Delaware Innovation Space is a multi-dimensional, non-profit incubator & accelerator for start-ups leveraging the expertise, resources, and infrastructure of the world renown Experimental Station campus in Wilmington, Delaware. It is a public-private partnership between the State of Delaware, DuPont and the University of Delaware. Delaware Innovation Space is an ecosystem where scientists, business leaders, community members, investors, and service providers in the industrial biotech, advanced materials, chemical ingredients, renewable energy, nutrition and healthcare fields can build business concepts together and accelerate the path to commercialization. Images for Media usage: https://tinyurl.com/DIS-PR-Materials View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005459/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Medium-Sized Businesses Are Leading Digital Workplace, Says Aruba

Medium-sized businesses now account for over 60% of US jobs, and are investing fast in technology. However, with digital now a priority for businesses of all sizes, they must ensure they have the necessary skills and security management in place to handle the change, or risk falling behind competitors according to a new report from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. Developed to explore how medium-sized businesses across the globe are currently adopting workplace technology, and featuring responses from over 2,700 employees in management and non-management roles across medium-sized businesses, The Hidden Middle study uncovered a number of key trends: Medium-sized businesses are the most active users of workplace technology: Almost two-thirds (63%) of medium-sized business employees rated the "choice of technology, applications and IT support" at their company as either good or very good. That compared to 53% of those also surveyed from the largest companies. Medium-sized businesses are also ahead of the competition in their use of advanced audio-visual technologies (such as voice-activated and wireless communication tools), which are offered by an average of 27% of medium-sized businesses, compared to 16% of smaller and 22% of larger employers.

Almost two-thirds (63%) of medium-sized business employees rated the "choice of technology, applications and IT support" at their company as either good or very good. That compared to 53% of those also surveyed from the largest companies. Medium-sized businesses are also ahead of the competition in their use of advanced audio-visual technologies (such as voice-activated and wireless communication tools), which are offered by an average of 27% of medium-sized businesses, compared to 16% of smaller and 22% of larger employers. They are placing a heavy emphasis on the cloud: Around a quarter (24%) of medium-sized business employees said their company had invested in cloud storage software over the last 12 months, compared to 17% of large firms. Medium-sized businesses are also prioritizing cyber security software: 39% reported investments in this area in the last year, compared to 31% of large businesses.

Around a quarter (24%) of medium-sized business employees said their company had invested in cloud storage software over the last 12 months, compared to 17% of large firms. Medium-sized businesses are also prioritizing cyber security software: 39% reported investments in this area in the last year, compared to 31% of large businesses. And are offering a better working environment as a result: In light of their impressive commitment to new technology medium-sized business employees are significantly more likely (66%) to rate their "environment at work" as either good or very good in comparison to those at the largest companies (57%). Businesses of this size are also more agile when it comes to offering flexibility for employees to use personal devices for work - with 72% of medium-sized business employees allowed to do this, compared to only 53% of those who work for larger employers.

In light of their impressive commitment to new technology medium-sized business employees are significantly more likely (66%) to rate their "environment at work" as either good or very good in comparison to those at the largest companies (57%). Businesses of this size are also more agile when it comes to offering flexibility for employees to use personal devices for work - with 72% of medium-sized business employees allowed to do this, compared to only 53% of those who work for larger employers. But there is demand for better management of technology investments: Over three quarters (77%) of medium-sized business employees either agreed or strongly agreed that "if not managed correctly, the introduction of new technology could damage employee morale;" while 78% agreed that "my organization's management and control of the connected devices that are in use could be improved."



A risky road ahead With two thirds of employees at medium-sized businesses (66%) saying their organization was "at risk of falling behind competitors" by not implementing new technology, the pressure to keep pace is clear - but so too are the associated dangers.

Despite being conscious of their organizations' cybersecurity policies, nearly three quarters (74%) of medium-sized business employees said they had taken risks with company data in the past year. In addition, less than half (48%) said that security was the responsibility of "every employee" - compared to two thirds of those who work for the largest employers (66%). "As the adoption and integration of technology becomes a bigger priority across the corporate spectrum, medium-sized businesses have a distinct opportunity," said Patrick LaPorte, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Aruba. "Though often forgotten in the digital transformation conversation - with the focus instead on how large companies are struggling to adapt or smaller businesses are seizing the ability to scale - it is medium-sized businesses whose employees show the willingness and agility to make better use of technology and understanding of the opportunities it brings. The key is enabling them to do so. But with that comes a certain degree of security risk." "The success of the digital workplace depends on the practical implementation of technology - and that's as much about the user experience as it is the technical infrastructure. For medium-sized businesses to realize the full value of their investments and eliminate the risks, their leaders must ensure employees are given the training needed to be productive and IT the tools to ensure safe use." Link to The Hidden Middle study: https://www.arubanetworks.com/en-gb/cloud-solutions-for-business-class-networking/ About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is a leading provider of next-generation networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes worldwide. The company delivers IT solutions that empower organizations to serve the latest generation of mobile-savvy users who rely on cloud-based business apps for every aspect of their work and personal lives. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook, and for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products visit Airheads Social at http://community.arubanetworks.com/ View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005572/en/

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Dublin, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "3D Printing Market by Offering, Process, Application, Vertical, Technology, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The overall 3D printing market is expected to grow from USD 9.9 billion in 2018 to USD 34.8 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 23.25%.



Ease in development of customized products, reduction in manufacturing cost and process downtime, government investments in 3D printing projects, and development of new industrial-grade 3D printing materials are the key factors driving the growth of this market. However, limited availability and the high cost of materials, limitation of product size, and lack of standard process control are likely to limit the market growth.



Prototyping to hold the largest share of 3D printing market in 2018



Prototyping application accounts for the largest share of the 3D printing market. 3D printing helps produce prototypes and models from 3D computer-aided design (CAD). This helps several companies to reduce wastage during prototype transitions in traditional manufacturing and also helps them to bring down their operational costs. 3D printing also enables the quick production of cost-efficient prototypes based on the customers' requirements regarding the geometry of the structure, accuracy, and well-defined smoothness of the products used in any industry.



DMLS to hold the largest share of 3D printing market in 2018



Direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) technology accounts for the largest share of the 3D printing market. This technology enables the creation of high-quality metal parts as it facilitates the construction of complex geometrics of metals, which makes it ideal for the manufacturing vertical. The parts developed through the DMLS-enabled 3D printing are durable and resistant to heat as it uses materials such as Inconel, aluminum, stainless steel, and titanium.



North America to hold a significant share of 3D printing market by 2024



North America is expected to account for the largest share of the 3D printing market by 2024. In the US, 3D printing is used in the companies functional in the major industries, such as manufacturing, aerospace & defense, and healthcare, which is driving the 3D printing market in this region. The continuous technological advancements and financial support from the governments are also driving the market in North America.



Major Players Profiled

Stratasys (US)

3D Systems (US)

EOS GmbH (Germany)

GE Additive (US)

Materialise (Belgium)

SLM Solutions (Germany)

ExOne (US)

Voxeljet (Germany)

HP (US)

EnvisionTEC (Germany)

Topics Covered



1 Introduction

1.1 Study Objectives

1.2 Definition

1.3 Study Scope

1.3.1 Market Segmentation

1.3.2 Geographic Scope

1.4 Years Considered

1.5 Currency

1.6 Stakeholders



2 Research Methodology

2.1 Research Data

2.2 Market Size Estimation

2.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation

2.4 Assumptions for Study



3 Executive Summary



4 Premium Insights

4.1 Attractive Opportunities in 3D Printing Market

4.2 3D Printing Market, By Offering, 2018-2024

4.3 3D Printing Material Market, By Material (2018 vs 2024)

4.4 3D Printing Market in North America, By Offering and Country

4.5 3D Printing Market: Major Countries



5 Market Overview

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Market Dynamics

5.2.1 Drivers

5.2.1.1 Ease in Development of Customized Products

5.2.1.2 Reduction in Manufacturing Cost and Process Downtime

5.2.1.3 Government Investments in 3D Printing Projects

5.2.1.4 Development of New Industrial-Grade 3D Printing Materials

5.2.2 Restraints

5.2.2.1 Limited Availability and High Cost of Materials

5.2.2.2 Limitation of Product Size

5.2.2.3 Lack of Standard Process Control

5.2.3 Opportunities

5.2.3.1 Potential to Improve Manufacturing Processes and Enhance Supply Chain Management

5.2.3.2 Emerging Applications in Several Industries

5.2.3.2.1 Automotive

5.2.3.2.2 Printed Electronics

5.2.3.2.3 Education

5.2.3.2.4 Jewelry

5.2.4 Challenges

5.2.4.1 Ensuring Product Quality

5.2.4.2 Threat of Copyright Infringement

5.3 Industry Trends

5.4 Emerging Technologies in 3D Printing Market

5.5 Emerging Trends With Materials in 3D Printing Market

5.6 Value Chain Analysis



6 3D Printing Market, By Offering

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Printer

6.2.1 Desktop

6.2.1.1 Growing Use in Schools and Universities Likely to Increase Demand for Desktop Printers in Coming Years

6.2.2 Industrial

6.2.2.1 Industrial Printers are Used to Generate Concept Models, Precision and Functional Prototypes, Master Patterns and Molds for Tooling, and Real End-Use Parts

6.3 Material

6.3.1 3D Printing Material Market, By Type

6.3.1.1 Plastic

6.3.1.1.1 Thermoplastics

6.3.1.1.1.1 Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS)

6.3.1.1.1.1.1 ABS is Ideal for Prototyping and Functional Part Manufacturing Applications

6.3.1.1.1.2 Polylactic Acid (Pla)

6.3.1.1.1.2.1 Pla is the Most Eco-Friendly Material Used in 3D Plastic Printing Processes

6.3.1.1.1.3 Nylon

6.3.1.1.1.3.1 Nylon has Main Applications in Prototyping, Jigs and Fixtures, Tooling, and Short-Run Production of Components

6.3.1.1.1.4 Others

6.3.1.1.1.4.1 Other Thermoplastics Include Polypropylene, Polycarbonate, and Polyvinyl Alcohol

6.3.1.1.1.5 Polypropylene

6.3.1.1.1.5.1 Polypropylene has High Thermal Resistance, Making It Suitable for the 3D Plastic Printing Process

6.3.1.1.1.6 Polycarbonate

6.3.1.1.1.6.1 Features Such as Enhanced Strength and Exceptional Clarity Drives Polycarbonate Use in 3D Plastic Printing

6.3.1.1.1.7 Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA)

6.3.1.1.1.7.1 Polyvinyl Alcohol is Mostly Used as A Support Material to Build 3D Structures

6.3.1.1.2 Photopolymers

6.3.1.1.2.1 Photopolymers are Light-Sensitive Polymers That are Cured By Light Radiation

6.3.1.2 Metals

6.3.1.2.1 Steel

6.3.1.2.1.1 Stainless Steel is Used for Several Applications Supported By Its Ability to Provides A Significant Level of Strengthening to the 3D Printed Model

6.3.1.2.2 Aluminum

6.3.1.2.2.1 Alumide is Commonly Used to Build Complex Models, Small Series of Models, and Functional Models

6.3.1.2.3 Titanium

6.3.1.2.3.1 The Titanium Powder, is Sintered Together By A Laser to Produce End-Use Metal Parts That are as Good as Machined Models

6.3.1.2.4 Silver

6.3.1.2.4.1 Silver is Mainly Used in Jewelry and Ornamental Items Such as Rings, Earrings, and Bracelets

6.3.1.2.5 Gold

6.3.1.2.5.1 Wax 3D Printing and Lost Wax Casting are Used to Craft A Model With Gold as A Material

6.3.1.2.6 Other Metals

6.3.1.2.6.1 The Other Metals Used in 3D Printing Include Alloys, Brass, Copper, Bronze, and Few Other Materials

6.3.1.3 Ceramics

6.3.1.3.1 Glass

6.3.1.3.1.1 SLS and FDM are the Most Commonly Employed Methods of 3D Printing Objects From Glass Powders

6.3.1.3.2 Silica

6.3.1.3.2.1 in 3D Printing, Silica is Used in Polishing and Grinding of Glass and Stones

6.3.1.3.3 Quartz

6.3.1.3.3.1 Quartz is Used as A Raw Material to Manufacture Refractory Shapes for High-Temperature Thermal Methods

6.3.1.3.4 Others

6.3.1.3.4.1 The Other Materials Include Sand and Others

6.3.1.4 Other Materials

6.3.1.4.1 Wax

6.3.1.4.1.1 Wax is Generally Used in the SLS Technology

6.3.1.4.2 Laywood

6.3.1.4.2.1 Laywood is A Wood Filament That Prints Similar to Pla and Releases Wooden Smell When Printing

6.3.1.4.3 Paper

6.3.1.4.3.1 The Availability of Low-Cost Materials Such as Plastics and Papers Allows 3D Printers to Reach the Masses

6.3.1.4.4 Biocompatible Material

6.3.1.4.4.1 Biocompatible Material Can Be Used to Prototype Medical and Dental Products

6.3.2 3D Printing Material Market, By Form

6.3.2.1 Filament

6.3.2.1.1 General Plastics Used in 3D Printing Processes are Available in Filament Form

6.3.2.2 Powder

6.3.2.2.1 Metals and Alloys are Expensive Compared to Other Materials and are Used in Powder Forms

6.3.2.3 Liquid

6.3.2.3.1 3D Printing With Liquids is A Start of New Era in This Industry

6.4 Software

6.4.1 Design

6.4.1.1 in 3D Printing, Design Software is Used to Create Drawings of Parts and Assemblies

6.4.2 Inspection

6.4.2.1 Inspection Software are Developed to Inspect Prototypes to Ensure Their Compliance With Required Specifications

6.4.3 Printing

6.4.3.1 Printing Software Include Tools to Ensure Precision With Functioning of Printers

6.4.4 Scanning

6.4.4.1 Scanning Software Allow Users to Scan Physical Objects and Create Digital Model Or Design

6.5 Service

6.5.1 3D Printing Service Sector is Garnering Significant Traction Compared to Sales of Printers and Materials



7 3D Printing Market, By Process

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Binder Jetting

7.2.1 Binder Jetting Works With Materials That are Available in Powder Forms

7.3 Directed Energy Deposition

7.3.1 Directed Energy Deposition Process Can Be Used for Repair of Parts as It Allows High-Degree Control of Grain Structure

7.4 Material Extrusion

7.4.1 Simple Printing Technique Makes Material Extrusion Most Commonly Used 3D Printing

7.5 Material Jetting

7.5.1 Advantages of Material Jetting Include Reduced Wastage of Material and Ability to Use Multiple Materials and Colors

7.6 Powder Bed Fusion

7.6.1 Powder Bed Fusion is More Suitable With DMLS, EBM, SHS, SLM, and SLS Technologies

7.7 Sheet Lamination

7.7.1 Sheet Lamination 3D Printing Process is Mostly Used With Metal Or Paper as Printing Materials

7.8 Vat Photopolymerization

7.8.1 Superior Surface Finish and High Accuracy Mainly Drivers Adoption of Vat Photopolymerization Process



8 3D Printing Market, By Technology

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Stereolithography

8.2.1 High-Quality Surface Finish Provided By Sla Makes It Ideal for Concept Models, Form and Fit Studies, and Investment Casting Patterns

8.3 Fused Deposition Modelling

8.3.1 FDM is Clean, Simple-To-Use, and Office-Friendly 3D Printing Technology

8.4 Selective Laser Sintering

8.4.1 SLS Does Not Require Support for Materials-Powder Bed Itself Acts as Support

8.5 Direct Metal Laser Sintering

8.5.1 Use of Materials Such as Inconel, Aluminum, Stainless Steel, and Titanium Makes Parts Developed From DMLS Durable and Resistant to Heatdue To

8.6 Polyjet Printing/Multijet Printing

8.6.1 MJP is Used to Develop Highly Accurate Models With Intricate Details and Complex Geometries

8.7 Inkjet Printing

8.7.1 Inkjet Printing Enables Building of Multiple Different Parts on Single Print Bed

8.8 Electron Beam Melting

8.8.1 Printers Based on EBM Technology Produce High-Density Parts and Have Relatively Good Mechanical Properties

8.9 Laser Metal Deposition

8.9.1 Lmd Printers Help Reduce Material Wastage and Lower Tooling Costs

8.10 Digital Light Processing

8.10.1 Dlp-Based 3D Printers Produce Accurate Parts With Smooth Surface Finishing

8.11 Laminated Object Manufacturing

8.11.1 Lom is Ideal for Developing Prototypes, Models, and Molds

8.12 Others Technologies

8.12.1 Other Technologies Include Continuous Liquid Interface Production, Selective Heat Sintering, Nanoparticle Jetting, and Multiphase Jet Solidification



9 3D Printing Market, By Application

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Prototyping

9.2.1 Prototyping Helps Reduce Wastage During Prototype Transitions in Traditional Manufacturing

9.3 Tooling

9.3.1 3D Printing is Vital in Manufacturing Industry-It is Used in Prototyping and Tooling for Short-Run Production of End Parts

9.4 Functional Part Manufacturing

9.4.1 Technological Developments Extend Application of 3D Printing to Production of End Parts



10 3D Printing Market, By Vertical

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Automotive

10.2.1 Automotive Vertical is Among Earliest Adopters of 3D Printing for Prototyping and End Part Printing

10.3 Aerospace and Defense

10.3.1 Latest Advancements in Technologies and Materials Have Made Aerospace and Defense A Major Application Area for 3D Printing Market Players

10.4 Healthcare

10.4.1 Scope of 3D Printing in Healthcare Vertical Includes Medical Products and Dentistry

10.5 Architecture and Construction

10.5.1 Several Architects and Contractors Have Started Using 3D Printing to Build 3D Structures, Including Houses and Apartments

10.6 Consumer Products

10.6.1 Rise in Adoption of Desktop Or Personal Printers Contributes to Growth of Market for Consumer Products Vertical

10.7 Education

10.7.1 North American and European Education Vertical is Highly Attractive Markets for 3D Printing Players Worldwide

10.8 Industrial

10.8.1 Applications of Am Technologies in Industrial Sector Include Tooling, Special Machinery Manufacturing, and Robotics

10.9 Energy

10.9.1 Energy Players are Early Adopters of 3D Printing Technologies for Small-Scale Manufacturing and Repair Activities

10.10 Printed Electronics

10.10.1 Integration of Printed Electronics and 3D Printing Expands Application Areas to Printed Electronics Vertical, Replacing Printed Circuit Boards (Pcb)

10.11 Jewelry

10.11.1 3D Printing in Jewelry Vertical is Primarily Used for Designing

10.12 Food and Culinary

10.12.1 Advancement in Technology and Availability of Materials Complying Food Standards Boost Adoption of 3D Printing in Food Vertical

10.13 Others

10.13.1 Other Segments Mainly Include Space Exploration and Offshore Marine Industries



11 Geographic Analysis

11.1 Introduction

11.2 North America

11.2.1 US

11.2.1.1 Large Investments By Government Would Drive Growth of 3D Printing Market in US

11.2.2 Canada

11.2.2.1 3D Printing is Expected to Open New Avenues for Various Businesses in Canada

11.2.3 Mexico

11.2.3.1 Mexican Companies and Associations are Constantly Striving to Boost 3D Printing Market in Country

11.3 Europe

11.3.1 Germany

11.3.1.1 Germany is Expected to Witness Fastest Growth in Market in Europe

11.3.2 UK

11.3.2.1 Government, 3D Printing Associations, and Number of Firms in UK Promote Adoption of 3D Printing Technologies

11.3.3 France

11.3.3.1 Healthcare is One of the Fastest-Growing Segments for 3D Printing in France, With Major Applications in Implants and Prosthetics

11.3.4 Italy

11.3.4.1 Aerospace, Automotive, Healthcare, and Consumer Products are Key Growth Enablers of 3D Printing Market in Italy

11.3.5 Spain

11.3.5.1 Government Support and Investment From Private Companies Driving the 3D Printing Market in Spain

11.3.6 Rest of Europe

11.3.6.1 Growing Focus on Innovations and Rising Number of Start-Ups are Major Drivers of Demand for Industrial 3D Printing in Rest of Europe

11.4 Asia Pacific

11.4.1 Japan

11.4.1.1 Increasing Government Investments in 3D Printing Technologies is Among Major Factors Driving Market in Japan

11.4.2 China

11.4.2.1 China is Investing Heavily in R&D to Promote the 3D Printing Market

11.4.3 India

11.4.3.1 3D Printing in India is in Developing Stage and is Expected to Witness Rapid Growth in Near Future

11.4.4 South Korea

11.4.4.1 Strong Initiatives By the Government Contribute to Noticeable Growth of 3D Printing Market in South Korea

11.4.5 Rest of APAC

11.4.5.1 Governments in Rest of APAC Countries are Making Investments in Development of the 3D Printing Market

11.5 Rest of the World

11.5.1 Middle East and Africa

11.5.1.1 Recent Developments and Investment Plans By South African Public Sector Companies are Expected to Uplift 3D Printing Market Across This Region

11.5.2 South America

11.5.2.1 Market in South America is Likely to Grow at A Considerable Pace as It is One of the Largest Suppliers of Titanium Ore



12 Competitive Landscape

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Ranking of Key Players, 2017

12.3 Competitive Situations and Trends

12.3.1 Agreements/Partnerships/Collaborations

12.3.2 Product Launches/Developments

12.3.3 Expansions

12.3.4 Mergers/Acquisitions

12.4 Environmental and Other Regulatory Standards



13 Company Profiles

13.1 Key Players

13.1.1 Stratasys

13.1.2 3D Systems

13.1.3 Materialise

13.1.4 EOS GmbH

13.1.5 GE Additive

13.1.6 Exone

13.1.7 Voxeljet

13.1.8 HP

13.1.9 SLM Solutions

13.1.10 Envisiontec

13.1.11 Protolabs

13.1.12 Mcor Technologies

13.1.13 Optomec

13.1.14 Groupe Gorg

13.1.15 Ultimaker

13.1.16 Renishaw

13.1.17 Beijing Tiertime Technology

13.1.18 XYZprinting

13.1.19 ARC Group Worldwide

13.1.20 Hoganas

13.1.21 Royal DSM

13.2 Key Emerging Companies

13.2.1 Taulman3D

13.2.2 Nano Dimension

13.2.3 Cookson Precious Metals

13.2.4 Carbon3D

13.2.5 Markforged



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/f9hgh3/worldwide?w=12
[March 19, 2019]

DigiPlex Innovation and Sustainability Initiative Earn Shortlisting for Two 2019 CIR Business Continuity Awards

OSLO, Norway, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DigiPlex, the Nordic leader for innovative, sustainable and secure data centres, has been recognised by CIR (Continuity, Insurance & Risk) Magazine as a finalist in two categories of its annual business continuity awards: Initiative of the Year and Most Innovative Product of the Year.

The CIR Awards recognise excellence in the provision of services and solutions that ensure long-term business success, sustainability, security and resilience. As the most recognised Nordic data centre brand[i], DigiPlex has long maintained an active leadership role in its industry for providing its customers a long-term strategic and operational advantage through solutions underpinned by efficient and ethical business thinking.

"The CIR awards are in their 21st year, just a few years older than DigiPlex, and have a great legacy recognising some of the most exciting and creative solutions that ensure a resilient, sustainable future for business" says Gisle M. Eckhoff, CEO of DigiPlex. "We are pleased to be shortlisted by their expert panel of judges for our work to advance solutions that not only offer sustainable strategies but also allow companies to contribute to their communities as a positive force."

DigiPlex innovation was shortlisted in the Most Innovative Product of the Year for its development of its advanced Concert ControlTM system, a sophisticated closed-loop algorithm which further optimises cooling and power management of DigiPlex' advanced air-cooled centres in the Nordics.

For Initiative of the Year, DigiPlex has been shortlisted for its collaboration with Stockholm Exergi, to use the excess heat generated by its advanced data centre to supply heat to upwards of 10,000 homes in the community. The initiative marks both an engineering feat, comprising an intricate retrofit of DigiPlex's most advanced data centre, as well as an ethical leap forward which allows DigiPlex to offer customers a route to a more responsible business strategy.

This latest accolade follows a series of significant award milestones for DigiPlex over the last year. In 2018, DigiPlex was awarded for its " Renewable Energy Technology" at The Energy Awards, and, "Best Data Centre Energy Solution" at the Datacloud Europe awards where Fredrik Jansson also was named the first "Marketer of the Year". Additionally, DigiPlex' has recently been finalists for "Best Marketing Team" and "Best Marketing Campaign" by the Global Carrier awards, "Best In-House Marketing Team" at Computing's Tech Marketing & Innovation Awards, "B2B Brand Team of the Year" at the Drum marketing awards, "Best Integrated Campaign" & "In-House Client Team" at the Drum Social Media awards and "B2B Marketing Team of the Year" at B2B Marketing awards.

The CIR Magazine's 21st Annual Business Continuity Awards will be held in London on 6th June.

Connect with DigiPlex

[i] An IDG Connect survey of 300 senior decision makers across Sweden and Norway revealed DigiPlex as the most recognized brand in one of the world's most active and attractive markets for data center investment and development. Further information: https://www.digiplex.com/insights/articles/best-known-nordic-provider

CONTACT:

Elisabeth Lennhede

Head of Communications

+46703322705

[email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/digiplex/r/digiplex-innovation-and-sustainability-initiative-earn-shortlisting-for-two-2019-cir-business-contin,c2756614

The following files are available for download:









https://mb.cision.com/Main/7526/2756614/1009875.pdf DigiPlex Innovation and Sustainability Initiative Earn Shortlisting for Two 2019 CIR Business Continuity Awards https://news.cision.com/digiplex/i/gisle-m--eckhoff--ceo-digiplex,c2593670 Gisle M. Eckhoff, CEO DigiPlex


[March 19, 2019] Chubb's First Quarter Cyber InFocus Report Details Ransomware and Malware Trends

WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb's first quarter InFocus Report, "Cyber Criminals Increasingly Target Small Businesses," examines the emergence of new dominant strains of ransomware that are wreaking havoc on businesses, including small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). Ransomware attacks typically utilize malicious software to block a business' network until a ransom is paid. "Cyber criminals typically don't target specific small businesses, but they increasingly use tools that target their vulnerabilities," said Patrick Thielen Senior Vice President, Chubb Financial Lines. "Those vulnerabilities are at times technical, like unpatched software or poorly configured hardware. But even more common are those vulnerabilities involving employees who may use weak or compromised passwords, or may inadvertently click something they shouldn't have." "Cyber criminals know that SME leaders may mistakenly think that cyber security services are beyond their means, which makes SMEs more vulnerable to an attack," added Anthony Dolce, Vice President, Cyber Lead, Chubb North America Financial Lines Claims. "However, we are living in an age where cyber attacks are constantly evolving and threatening businesses of all sizes, but especially small to mid-size businesses. Therefore, it remains critical for companies to understand this present age and develop strong risk mitigation strategies to lessen the impact of cyber threats." This quarter's Cyber InFocus Report examines: Emotet : a type of malware leading to increased business interruption claims. Chubb has seen an increase in Emotet infections in recent months. It is sometimes observed as a precursor to other troublesome types of ransomware, including Ryuk.

: a type of malware leading to increased business interruption claims. Chubb has seen an increase in Emotet infections in recent months. It is sometimes observed as a precursor to other troublesome types of ransomware, including Ryuk. Ryuk : a new, sophisticated ransomware strain that is particularly virulent, hard to detect and characterized by very high ransom demands. While Chubb is seeing an increase in Ryuk claims, we are also seeing a precipitous decline in the number of SamSam ransomware attacs, which was outlined in the 1Q 2018 Chubb Cyber InFocus Report.

: a new, sophisticated ransomware strain that is particularly virulent, hard to detect and characterized by very high ransom demands. While Chubb is seeing an increase in Ryuk claims, we are also seeing a precipitous decline in the number of SamSam ransomware attacs, which was outlined in the 1Q 2018 Chubb Cyber InFocus Report. Credential Stuffing: a type of cyber attack used to gain unauthorized access to online user accounts. After purchasing email addresses and passwords on the dark web, an attacker uses botnets to programmatically target multiple online user accounts using the stolen information.



21% of Chubb cyber incidents reported last year by small businesses involved social attacks, such as phishing;

20% were due to error;

14% were due to hacking. Companies can help mitigate their risks by taking some recommended steps outlined in the report, including auditing their systems that are most susceptible to an attack, and making sure precautions are taken to prevent an incident before it occurs. Some of the easiest actions SMEs can take center on employee education, endpoint monitoring, detailed VPN logs, and the use of multi-factor authentication.

Chubb's Cyber InFocus report, first launched in early 2018, provides insights into the effects of cyber risks and trends on specific industries or business segments each quarter. Such insight is based on Chubb's use of third-party research as well as proprietary claims data from more than two decades of insuring organizations against evolving cyber threats. Visit www.chubb.com/cyber to read this quarter's Chubb Cyber InFocus Report, and reports from previous quarters, and get access to additional insight into risk mitigation practices, as well as real-time proprietary cyber claims data through the Chubb Cyber Index.SM Visit Chubb CyberInfocus to view a video on this quarter's topic. About Chubb Cyber

Chubb is a leader in insuring cyber risk. Combining industry-leading underwriting and expert third-party incident response services, Chubb offers policies that are tailored to the specific needs and risks of its clients to ensure they are ready with the tools and expertise necessary should a cyber incident occur. Moving swiftly to connect clients with the proper parties to minimize data loss is only part of what Chubb delivers. Keeping an eye on the ever-evolving cyber security landscape, Chubb looks for ways to do more for its clients by offering cutting-edge products and holistic services to each and every client. About Chubb:

Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries and territories, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London, Paris and other locations, and employs more than 30,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: chubb.com. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chubbs-first-quarter-cyber-infocus-report-details-ransomware-and-malware-trends-300814850.html SOURCE Chubb

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[March 19, 2019] Poly Doubles Down on Native Microsoft Teams Experience With New CCX Business Media Phones

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Plantronics, Inc. (NYSE: PLT) (Poly), a global communications company, today announced the Poly CCX Series, sleek business desk phones designed for the modern office that pair a native Microsoft Teams solution with premium voice quality.

Poly announces CCX 500 and CCX 700 Series business phones that pair with native Microsoft Teams solutions for premium voice quality.



Poly CCX 500 and CCX 700 phones extend Teams straight to your desktop phone so that your calls, calendar, and meetings are fully integrated and accessible through the phones screen display for more efficient meetings. Joining a conference call is now as easy as one-click on the calendar. Businesses that are migrating to or those who already rely on Teams will benefit from CCX Series ability to function as a true unified communications platform that delivers legendary voice quality. We constantly hear from our customers that they need tools and solutions to adapt to their needs, not the other way around, said Shantanu Sarkar, executive vice president, general manager, personal systems business at Poly. Working with Microsoft allows us to push the boundaries of what it means to collaborate with solutions that just work, no matter what. Ilya Bukshteyn, partner director, devices for Microsoft Teams at Microsoft said, Poly and their new CCX Series of Microsoft Teams phones, helps us focus on bringing a consistent Microsoft Teams experience to every workspace, from personal desks to shared spaces and meeting rooms. Having this consistent experience across the workplace helps our customers reduce training costs and accelerate deployment, as they continue to adopt Teams faster than any other business application in Microsoft history. CCX 500 and CCX 700 phones come with Polycom HD Voice and a color touch display screen. CCX 700 includes video calling right in the phone with its built-in camera. Both CCX 700 and CCX 500 phones will continue to support Skype for Business and will be available in CYQ3 in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zeland, and Japan. Additional countries to follow.



Polys latest portfolio offers a full suite of professional and support services  consulting, migration deployment, and tech support  including the following extension of Teams solutions: New RealConnect for Clariti for Teams and Skype for Business , Polys video interoperability service allows customers to connect their existing Polycom video infrastructure to Teams. Along with this new RealConnect Service, the cloud-based interoperability service, this on-premises based solution provides more options, especially for those with Internet bandwidth constraints and public-sector requirements, or ITP layout support. This new service will be available in early CYQ2 upon Microsofts global certification, where RealConnect for Teams is currently available.

, Polys video interoperability service allows customers to connect their existing Polycom video infrastructure to Teams. Along with this new RealConnect Service, the cloud-based interoperability service, this on-premises based solution provides more options, especially for those with Internet bandwidth constraints and public-sector requirements, or ITP layout support. This new service will be available in early CYQ2 upon Microsofts global certification, where RealConnect for Teams is currently available. New managed service offering in development, Managed Services for Microsoft Teams with direct routing, which is expected to be the single-source solution driving global adoption and interoperability of Teams. Intended to be powered with Tata Communications global network, the service encompasses endpoints, infrastructure, and SIP Managed Services for a global managed solution of Teams with direct routing. For global organizations, this new Managed Services for Teams would provide a one-stop shop experience to ease the move to Teams. Expected to be available globally in CYQ2.

with direct routing, which is expected to be the single-source solution driving global adoption and interoperability of Teams. Intended to be powered with Tata Communications global network, the service encompasses endpoints, infrastructure, and SIP Managed Services for a global managed solution of Teams with direct routing. For global organizations, this new Managed Services for Teams would provide a one-stop shop experience to ease the move to Teams. Expected to be available globally in CYQ2. Polycom Studio , a plug-and-play video soundbar for huddle rooms features Polycoms legendary HD audio and video quality in a portable USB device offering a native Microsoft Teams experience.

, a plug-and-play video soundbar for huddle rooms features Polycoms legendary HD audio and video quality in a portable USB device offering a native Microsoft Teams experience. Polycom Trio , the smartphone for the modern conference room, will run native Teams application for audio.

the smartphone for the modern conference room, will run native Teams application for audio. Plantronics Elara 60 Series , the mobile phone station designed for the increasingly mobile-first worker, provides users with a one-touch or voice-activated Microsoft Teams experience.

, the mobile phone station designed for the increasingly mobile-first worker, provides users with a one-touch or voice-activated Microsoft Teams experience. HP Elite Slice for meeting rooms G2 Skype Room System  Audio Ready , a native Microsoft Teams Room solution from HP, pairs with Polycom Trio 8500, EagleEye IV USB camera, and Polycom Studio (certification pending), to address the needs for high-quality native Teams solutions for various room sizes.

, a native Microsoft Teams Room solution from HP, pairs with Polycom Trio 8500, EagleEye IV USB camera, and Polycom Studio (certification pending), to address the needs for high-quality native Teams solutions for various room sizes. Polys Savi, Voyager, Blackwire, and Calisto range of headsets and portable USB speakerphones are Skype for Business certified and work with Teams. Polys CCX devices will also continue to support Skype for Business. Todays announcements are the latest in a collaboration between Microsoft and Poly that has spanned nearly 15 years.

About Poly Poly is a global communications company that powers meaningful human connection and collaboration. Poly combines legendary audio expertise and powerful video and conferencing capabilities to overcome the distractions, complexity and distance that make communication in and out of the workplace challenging. Poly believes in solutions that make life easier when they work together and with our partners services. Our headsets, software, desk phones, audio and video conferencing, analytics and services are used worldwide and are a leading choice for every kind of workspace. For more information, please visit www.poly.com. Poly and propeller design are trademarks of Plantronics, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Poly Media Contacts:

Shannon Shamoon

Poly

M: +1 (831) 201-9142

[email protected] Alexa Waltz

FleishmanHillard

O: +1 (415) 318-4110; M: +1 (415) 336-8457

[email protected] A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7898aff7-38e8-4b0e-8219-2a368d226c03

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[March 19, 2019] HP Pledges to Make Every Page Printed Forest Positive, Carbon Neutral and Part of a Circular Economy

Highlights The company reached its goal of 100% zero deforestation with its HP-branded paper two years ahead of schedule 1 , and is on track to achieve zero deforestation of its paper-based packaging by 2020  marking a major milestone in the companys journey toward a forest positive future.

, and is on track to achieve zero deforestation of its paper-based packaging by 2020  marking a major milestone in the companys journey toward a forest positive future. HPs vision is to deliver carbon neutral offerings; HP customers have reported a 33% annual reduction in carbon emissions, energy consumption, and cost per device with HPs Managed Print Services 2 .

. The companys line of printers supports closed-loop recycled plastics, specific products made with up to 30% closed-loop, post-consumer plastics 1 .

. HP announces new energy efficient EcoSmart LaserJet printer and EcoSmart black toner with lower melt temperatures that result in lower energy consumption 3 .

. HP supplies study reveals over 50% of todays US workforce expects employers to commit to sustainable practices and this impacts employee recruitment, retention and advocacy4. HOUSTON, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HP Reinvent: World Partner Forum  Today at HP Reinvent, the companys largest global partner event, HP Inc. announced its bold vision for print sustainability  pledging that every page printed with HP will support a forest positive future, carbon neutrality, and materials designed to reduce the impact to the planet. Built on HPs longstanding commitment to environmental innovation, this new vision supports HPs ongoing efforts to deliver the companys most environmentally sustainable product portfolio while transforming their business to a more efficient, circular, and sustainable model. We are redefining the power of print to create a positive, lasting change for the planet, its people and our communities. HPs commitment to sustainability guides how we do business and drives the way our printers are designed, made and used, explains Enrique Lores, President of HP Inc.'s Imaging & Printing business. Today at HP Reinvent, we took one step further by pledging to lead the industry in making every page you print sustainable. As HP looks to grow without increasing its consumption of raw materials and thrive in a resource-constrained future, the company is well-positioned to help customers do the same. Supporting a vision to build sustainable products, the company engineers Original HP supplies to help reduce risk for its customers, their reputation, and the planet. Forest Positive Future

With todays pledge, the company aims to make every page printed on an HP printer forest positive by extending beyond its consumer printers, which are forest positive, to its entire portfolio to include commercial printers. In 2016, HP achieved 100% zero deforestation associated with HP-branded paper, nearly two years ahead of schedule marking a milestone towards the companys vision for a forest positive future. Plus, the companys paper-based product packaging zero deforestatin goal is on track for 2020. In addition, 100% of HP branded paper sold in North America is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, ensuring transparency and responsible forest management.



Carbon Neutral

HP is taking an ambitious step today towards our vision of carbon neutral printing with the introduction of the new energy efficient EcoSmart LaserJet printer and EcoSmart black toner, which has a lower melt temperature, thereby reducing the energy consumption of HP printers. But even more valuable than individual products, is how HPs products work together through HPs Managed Print Services (MPS) offerings  helping customers achieve ambitious sustainability goals and better their bottom line. By partnering with HP, customers have reported a 33% annual reduction in carbon emissions, energy consumption and costs2.

Circular Economy

HP continues to support a circular economy with its consumer and business products, recently reinventing its printer suite to include closed-loop recycled plastics, with HP ENVY and Tango printers comprised of 30% closed-loop recycled plastics3. Since 2000, over 199 million pounds of recycled content plastic have been used in 3.9B HP Original ink and toner cartridges1. Two years ago, HP introduced the first HP Original ink cartridges made with plastic bottles sourced from Haiti. As of today, the company has sourced more than 550,000 pounds of ocean-bound plastic for use in our products  the equivalent of more than 12 million plastic bottles that might otherwise have washed into the ocean and waterways. Our R&D teams invest up to five years engineering each new generation of toner and ink cartridges to deliver quality printing and 100% of toner cartridges and 80% of ink cartridges contain recycled content1. Market Expectations

People expect brands to stand for more than the products they sell. A 2019 Edelman study on trust disclosed a staggering 67% of consumers self-identify as Belief-Driven Buyers and believe brands can be a force for social good5. In the workplace, initial findings of a global supplies study conducted by HP reveals a companys commitment to sustainability impacts employee recruitment, retention and advocacy with over 50% of todays US workforce expecting sustainable practices by employers 4. HP Original Supplies are engineered to provide the highest quality printing experience. For HP, this means prioritizing the safety of your printer and the planet by producing reliable ink and toner cartridges, while raising the awareness of the harmful impacts clone and imitation cartridges can have on the environment, print quality, and customer costs. Transform to Perform

HP has a bold vision for what the future of printing can look like, and it starts with challenging the printing industry to transform and continuously innovate. The companys pledge for print sustainability announced today aims to protect forests, reduce carbon emissions, and use more recycled materials. Circular economy models help decouple economic growth and natural resource consumption while driving greater competitiveness. Transforming print sustainability is not only good for the planet  its good for business. About HP

HP Inc. creates technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere. Through our product and service portfolio of personal systems, printers and 3D printing solutions, we engineer experiences that amaze. More information about HP Inc. is available at http://www.hp.com .

Lara MacKenzie, HP

[email protected]



www.hp.com/go/newsroom



1 Based on 2017 HP Sustainable Impact Report: http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c05968415.pdf 2 Estimated energy and paper savings based on analysis of select HP MPS customers imaging and printing operations using data gathered on devices and paper consumption and comparing with post-MPS actuals or projections. 3 HP calculations based on Energy Star normalized TEC data comparing the HP LaserJet 300/400 series and 500 series monochrome printers introduced in spring 2019. HP 58/59/76/77A/X compared to HP 26A/X, and HP 89A/X/Y compared to HP 87A/X. 4 Based on HP Internal Supplies Survey conducted by Edelman Intelligence, February 2019. 5 Based on 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report: https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2019-02/2019_Edelman_Trust_Barometer_Global_Report.pdf

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[March 19, 2019] Unite Private Networks Announces Expansion into Denton, Texas

DALLAS, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Unite Private Networks (UPN), a leading provider of high-capacity, fiber-based communication networks is pleased to announce a network expansion in the Dallas/Fort Worth metro. The expansion will bring over 60 miles of new fiber-optic infrastructure throughout Denton, Texas. Business customers will now have access to dark fiber or dedicated lit services that are scalable from 100 mbps to 100 gbps, as well as a suite of other products. Denton County is forecasted to experience the strongest economic growth in the U.S. over the next several years, at 4.1 percent, according to a study by Oxford Economics. "UPN has a significant presence in Dallas/Fort Worth, and Denton is a continuation of our commitment to serving the entire metro area," said Donnie Wood, Regional Sales Director at Unite Private Networks. "Our Metro Optical Ethernet (MOE) ring that serves Denton has two diverse routes, spanning both the east and west sides of Lake Lewisville and will connect back into our core network, giving business customers more advanced connectivity options. We're thrilled to extend our network infrastructure into Denton, and are looking foward to working with the business community."



"The Denton Economic Development Partnership is excited to have a new fiber service expand into the Denton market," said Adam Gawarecki, Vice President of the Denton Economic Development. "It will be a great benefit to have a new fiber infrastructure provider in Denton to address the needs and demands of current and new businesses looking to expand or relocate to the area. We look forward to working with the dedicated team at UPN." About Unite Private Networks: UPN provides high-bandwidth, fiber-based communications networks and services to schools, governments, carriers, data centers, hospitals, and enterprise business customers across a 21 state service area. Service offerings include dark and lit fiber, private line, metro-optical Ethernet, Internet access, data center services, and other customized solutions. Headquartered in Kansas City, MO, UPN has been providing customer focused communications solutions since 1998. For more information on UPN, please visit www.uniteprivatenetworks.com , or connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Brandi Tubb

816-903-9400

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unite-private-networks-announces-expansion-into-denton-texas-300814891.html SOURCE Unite Private Networks

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[March 19, 2019] Zettaset XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager and Data Encryption Solutions Achieve VMware Ready Status

Zettaset, a leading provider of software-defined encryption solutions, today announced that its XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager and Data Encryption Solutions have achieved VMware Ready status. This designation indicates that after a detailed validation process, Zettaset's XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager and Data Encryption Solutions have achieved VMware's highest level of endorsement and are supported on VMware vSphere 6.7 and vSAN 6.5 and 6.7 for production environments. "We are pleased that Zettaset XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager and Data Encryption Solutions qualify for the VMware Ready logo, signifying to customers that it has met specific VMware interoperability standards and works effectively with VMware cloud infrastructure. This signifies to customers that XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager and Data Encryption Solutions can be deployed in production environments with confidence and can speed time to value within customer environments," said Kristen Edwards, director, Technology Alliance Partner Program, VMware. "By using Zettaset's XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager and Data Encryption Solutions, organizations can seamlessly manage VMware native encryption keys and policies via a software-based solution that supports the full encryption lifecycle while delivering high levels of data security," said Jim Vogt, President and CEO, Zettaset. "Zettaset's KMIP-compatible key manager bolsters the ability of enterprises to automate policy management and control access to business-critical encryption keys so data is protected in even the most complexand agile environments."



The VMware Ready program is a co-branding benefit of the Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program that makes it easy for customers to identify partner products certified to work with VMware cloud infrastructure. Customers can use these products and solutions to lower project risks and realize cost savings over custom built solutions. With thousands of members worldwide, the VMware TAP program includes best-of-breed technology partners with the shared commitment to bring the best expertise and business solution for each unique customer need. Zettaset XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager and Data Encryption Solutions can be found within the online VMware Solution Exchange (VSX) at https://marketplace.vmware.com/vsx/solutions/xcrypt-virtual-enterprise-key-manager-8-4. The VMware Solution Exchange is an online marketplace where VMware partners and developers can publish rich marketing content and downloadable software for our customers.

About Zettaset

Zettaset is a software-defined encryption solution that can be transparently deployed across all physical and virtual enterprise environments. Unlike traditional solutions that are appliance-based, Zettaset is a cost-effective, software-only solution that is easy to deploy, does not impact performance, and scales with your business from on premise to the cloud. Learn more at zettaset.com. About XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager and Data Encryption Solutions

Zettaset's software-based encryption key management and data encryption solutions include XCrypt Full Disk that provides partition- and volume-level disk encryption, XCrypt Archive, providing secure archival and restore capabilities, XCrypt Object, an object-based encryption product for Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) S3, as well as a virtual key manager and virtual hardware security module. Zettaset's key manager and data encryption solutions enable organizations to secure data across physical, virtual, and cloud instances, without the complexity of many other available encryption systems. Zettaset, XCrypt Virtual Enterprise Key Manager, and XCrypt Virtual Hardware Security Module are registered trademarks or trademarks of Zettaset, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. VMware, vSphere 6.7 and vSAN 6.5 and 6.7 and VMware Ready are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005172/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Lieff Cabraser Announces Personal Injury Lawsuit Against 3M Company and Aearo Technologies for Debilitating Hearing Loss and Tinnitus from Use of Defective and Unreasonably Dangerous Combat Arms Earplugs

On March 18, 2019, Mark Chalos of the national plaintiffs' law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP announced that U.S. Army veteran George Dooley has filed a lawsuit in federal court in the Middle District of Tennessee against 3M (News - Alert) Company and Aearo Technologies for hearing loss and tinnitus caused by his use as an infantry officer, including in Iraq, of defective and unreasonably dangerous Dual-Ended Combat Arms Earplugs (Version 2 CAEv2). The complaint alleges that 3M and Aearo knew the Combat Arms Earplugs were defective prior to selling them, but falsified test results and misrepresented the earplugs' performance to qualify for a multi-million dollar contract with the United States military, leading to the hearing injuries sustained by George Dooley in training and on active military duty. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005689/en/ U.S. Infantry Officer George Dooley (ret'd). (Photo: Business Wire) "As a combat veteran and active duty soldier, I trusted 3M's Combat Arms Earplugs to protect my hearing in dangerous situations, including while I was deployed in Iraq," said Dooley. "They broke that trust with me and thousands of soldiers. My fellow soldiers and I deserved better." As stated in the Complaint, 3M sold its Combat Arms Earplugs to the U.S. military for more than a decade, and the Earplugs were standard issue in certain branches of the military (including Mr. Dooley's) between at least 2003 and at least 2015. However, 3M did not inform the military or Dooley that the Earplugs were defective, and failed to adequately warn the military or Dooley that the Earplugs did not in fact meet the military's sound attenuation requirements, despite 3M's promises otherwise. Mr. Dooley used 3M's dangerously defective Combat Arms Erplugs at gun ranges and in military vehicles for years, including while deployed in Iraq. Since then, he has been diagnosed with hearing loss and tinnitus, after never before suffering from hearing injuries. 3M's Combat Arms Earplugs have likely caused thousands, if not millions, of soldiers to suffer significant hearing loss, tinnitus, and additional related injuries, like those of Mr. Dooley as described in today's lawsuit.



"This is a breach of the public trust," noted Mark Chalos, a partner at Lieff Cabraser who is representing Mr. Dooley in his case. "George Dooley was deployed in the U.S. armed forces to defend our country. While protecting the U.S., Mr. Dooley was outfitted with allegedly defective combat earplugs, which led to irreparable hearing loss and debilitating, permanent ringing in his ears. These manufacturers did wrong by Mr. Dooley and our other brave soldiers." In July of 2018, 3M agreed to pay $9.1 million to resolve allegations that it knowingly sold the Dual-Ended Combat Arms Earplugs to the United States military without disclosing defects that hampered the effectiveness of the hearing protection device. The Earplugs are non-linear, or selective attenuation, earplugs designed to provide soldiers with two different options for hearing attenuation depending on how the plugs were worn. Both sides of the dual-sided Earplugs were purported to provide adequate protection for soldiers' ears when worn. If worn in the "closed" or "blocked" position, the Earplugs are intended to act as a traditional earplug and block as much sound as possible. If worn in the "open" or "unblocked" position, the Earplugs are intended to reduce loud impulse sounds, such as battlefield explosions and artillery fire, while allowing the user to hear quieter noises such as communication by fellow soldiers or enemy combatants.

When inserted according to Defendant's standard fitting instructions, the edge of the third flange of the non-inserted end of the Earplug presses against the wearer's ear canal and folds back, thereby loosening the seal in the ear canal and providing inadequate protection. Because the Earplugs are symmetrical, the standard fitting instructions will result in a loosening of the seal whether either side is inserted into the ear canal. The Earplugs were originally designed, tested, manufactured, and sold by a company called Aearo Technologies, which was acquired by 3M in 2008, including Aearo's liabilities (and leaving 3M liable for Aearo's conduct as alleged in the Complaint). Mr. Dooley was diagnosed with tinnitus when he retired from the military in 2008. Dooley also suffers from hearing loss. Hearing loss and tinnitus have had a significant effect on Mr. Dooley's enjoyment of life. The constant ringing in his ears interferes with his everyday conversations and affects his sleep. He has to constantly talk loudly, have the TV playing, or have other noise on so he can cope with his tinnitus. The lawsuit states causes of action for negligence, strict liability for defective design under the Tennessee Products Liability Act, T.C.A.  29-28-101, and strict liability for failure to warn under the Tennessee Products Liability Act, and seeks damages as well as a commitment by the Defendants to appropriate injunctive or equitable relief, including internal reforms aimed at (1) identifying the root causes of the multiple decisions that led Defendants to knowingly disregard the results of their internal testing, to falsely certify the Earplugs as safe and effective, to fail to provide adequate warnings or proper fitting instructions, and to conceal the risks associated with the Earplugs for over a decade; (2) identifying corrective actions and institutional culture changes to address those root causes; and (3) implementing and tracking those corrective actions to ensure these failures do not happen again. Mr. Dooley's counsel also includes Lieff Cabraser partners Wendy R. Fleishman and Fabrice N. Vincent. About Lieff Cabraser Recognized as "one of the nation's premier plaintiffs' firms" by The American Lawyer and as a "Plaintiffs' Powerhouse" by Law360, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP is a 90-plus attorney law firm with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Nashville. Our firm has successfully represented tens of thousands of injured individuals in complex and mass tort litigation, and thousands of patients across America in individual lawsuits over the injuries they suffered from defective medical devices and dangerous prescription drugs. Five times in the last eight years, U.S. News and Best Lawyers have named Lieff Cabraser as their "Law Firm of the Year" for representing plaintiffs in class actions and mass torts. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005689/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Visible Supply Chain Management CEO Jared Starling Named a 2019 Utah Business CEO of the Year

Visible Supply Chain Management (Visible) today announced that Jared Starling (News - Alert), the company's chief executive officer, has been honored as a Utah Business 2019 CEO of the Year. The award recognizes Utah CEOs who stand out above the rest-individuals who embrace innovation, adopt sound business strategies and have track records of proven success. "With Jared's strategic leadership, we were able to grow a $33 million a year, single warehouse organization in 2012 to a $357 million a year organization today," said Casey Adams, president of Visible. "He has revolutionized an industry with single-digit compound annual growth rates, achieving a 72% CAGR over the last five years. These accomplishments are a reflection of the capabilities of Jared and our leadership team. Jared has built the Visible culture with his example of unmatched teamwork and the belief that good management is a constant effort; there are no shortcuts." As CEO, Starling analyzes compelling data that shapes Visible's company strategy, methodology, innovations and offerings to save money and scale the busineses of its customers. "As a service-oriented business, we measure success by the success of our clients' businesses. Their growth is our growth. Their achievements are our achievements," said Starling.



Utah Business selected 17 of Utah's top CEOs for the list of 2019 CEO Of the Year Honorees-leaders who have not only put their companies first, but their people first. The honorees are professionals who bring teams together, support their employees and give back to their communities. Most importantly, they are someone who inspires others to believe in and live out the vision they have worked so hard to create. Starling was determined and competitive long before he began leading Visible to success. He played volleyball on the Nike Junior Olympic team as well as at Orange (News - Alert) Coast College, earning All-Conference Honors and leading the team in kills. He went on to graduate from the University of Utah - David Eccles School of Business in 2002. With more than 18 years in the fulfillment industry, Starling has advanced from an entry-level position at the beginning of his career to leading and managing a staff of 800+ employees at Visible today.

Details about The Utah Business 2019 CEO Of the Year Honorees are available at https://www.utahbusiness.com/2019-ceo-of-the-year-honorees/. About Visible Supply Chain Management (Visible) Since 1992, Visible Supply Chain Management has provided customized solutions for B2B and B2C organizations. With comprehensive services in e-commerce, direct sales, direct response and omnichannel, Visible can design effective strategies for clients that include transportation, logistics, brokerage, fulfillment and even custom packaging solutions. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005701/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Purely CRM Implements Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Solution for Dupuis Langen

In early 2018, Dupuis Langen contacted Purely CRM for a functional and technical assessment of a previously implemented Microsoft (News - Alert) Dynamics CRM on-premise solution. By conducting a 30-day Discovery engagement, Purely CRM assessed the extent to which Dupuis Langen's key business requirements and data capture needs were represented in the solution. The challenges reported with the existing CRM solution included issues such as poor shared User Experience, unreliable data, and technical limitations. Business development roadblocks and potential missed deadlines were difficult to identify in time to prevent them. For many reasons both technical and functional, Purely CRM recommended that the entire solution be re-implemented. Building upon the Discovery Engagement findings as the foundation for the functional and technical requirements and design, Purely CRM replaced the existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This included implementing a SharePoint integration which enables users to easily access related documents when outside the office and away from their desks. Purely CRM's expertise with Dynamics CRM and years of business analysis acumen ensured that Dupuis Langen can now efectively run their core business processes with powerful tracking and reporting capabilities. The President of Dupuis Langen, Diane Dupuis, quotes "we went live before our most intense business period, and our new CRM solution supported this whole process. This enabled us to focus our business on immediate time-sensitive concerns as well as long-term strategic pursuits. As the president, the visibility I now have into what is going on in all areas of the business is of tremendous value to me."



About Dupuis Langen For over 30 years, the Dupuis Langen Group has been providing top notch benefits and insurance services and solutions to thousands of corporate and private clients. The Dupuis Langen Group is a 'full service' agency, working with clients to gain a detailed understanding of their organization and their benefits and insurance needs before putting together and recommending solutions. Dupuis Langen also provides Account Management services to their clients throughout the term of coverage.

About Purely CRM Purely CRM is a privately held company that is 100% focused on Microsoft Dynamics 365 products with customers across the United States and Canada. As a team, they have been involved with Microsoft Dynamics CRM since version 1.0. Purely CRM has made the strategic decision to solely focus on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and brings industry expertise in such areas as mining, manufacturing, banking, and many more. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005133/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Global Smart Cities Market is Set to Grow at a CAGR of 21% Over the Forecast Period (2019 - 2027), Owing to Rising Emphasis on Sustainable Urban Development from Governments Across the World: Says Absolute Markets Insights

PUNE, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Governments around the world are striving to implement solutions in creation of sustainable cities. Various smart cities technologies and solutions are proving vital for improving the urban planning sustainability measures in cities. Sustainable development goals highlighted in the UN summit of 2015 enlisted sustainable cities and communities as a goal for the period (2015-2030). The recent Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development hosted by the United Nations in Quito, Ecuador, emphasized on the planning of cities for the future and the importance of cities for a sustainable future. Rapid urbanization across the world is creating challenges in delivery of public services and is one of the major factors for the adoption of smart cities concept. The smart cities solutions are focusing in the direction of basic services provided to citizens which include energy, security, transportation, economy and education amongst others. For instance, companies such as AT&T Intellectual Property and CURRENT, POWERED BY GE have collaborated to provide solutions for smart cities using Internet of Things. The primary applications for the collaborative effort include traffic monitoring and security amongst others. Also, this helps in planning for roads that can lead to minimal instances of accidents thereby, ensuring citizen safety. In terms of revenue, the global smart cities market stood at US$ 88,303.0 Mn in 2018 and is anticipated to reach US$ 506,580.1 Mn by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 21% during the forecast period. Request a Sample Copy of This [email protected] https://www.absolutemarketsinsights.com/request_sample.php?id=205 "Governments are actively investing in technology with an aim to improve the quality of living for their citizens. The inclusion of smart city solutions across the world are allowing the creation of sustainable cities for the future. This in turn is also creating opportunities for various players active in the smart cities market, providing various hardware, software and solutions needed to support smart cities architecture". The detailed research study provides qualitative and quantitative analysis of the global smart cities market. The market has been analyzed from demand as well as supply side. The geographical analysis done emphasizes on each of the major countries across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Inquiry Before Buying This [email protected] https://www.absolutemarketsinsights.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=205 Key Findings of the Report: In terms of application, the energy segment is holding the major share in the global smart cities market. The grwing emphasis on energy management with respect to urban planning is driving the growth for the market.

Asia Pacific is expected to be a major adopter of the smart cities offerings, growing at a CAGR of 22%. The rising initiatives from governing authorities in the region with respect to smart cities is helping the growth of the market.

is expected to be a major adopter of the smart cities offerings, growing at a CAGR of 22%. The rising initiatives from governing authorities in the region with respect to smart cities is helping the growth of the market. The software segment is expected to hold a significant share in the global smart cities market growing at a CAGR of 22.4%. Increasing technological capabilities which are integrated in software is propelling the growth of the market.

Key players operating in the global smart cities market are AT&T Intellectual Property, Cisco, Hitachi Vantara Corporation, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., IBM Corporation, and Intel Corporation amongst others



Request for Customized [email protected] https://www.absolutemarketsinsights.com/request_for_customization.php?id=205 Smart Cities Market:

By Application o Energy o Security o Transportation o Building and Infrastructure o Healthcare o Education o Governance o Utilities o Others (Smart Manufacturing, Smart Tourism, Etc.) By Components o Hardware o Software o Services o Consulting o Deployment and Integration o Others By Region o North America o U.S. o Canada o Mexico o Rest of North America o Europe o France o The UK o Spain o Germany o Italy o Nordic Countries o Denmark o Finland o Iceland o Sweden o Norway o Benelux Union o Belgium o The Netherlands o Luxembourg o Rest of Europe o Asia Pacific o China o Japan o India o New Zealand o Australia o South Korea o Southeast Asia o Indonesia o Thailand o Malaysia o Singapore o Rest of South Asia o Rest of Asia Pacific o Middle East and Africa o Saudi Arabia o UAE o Egypt o Kuwait o South Africa o Rest of Middle East & Africa o Latin America o Brazil o Argentina o Rest of Latin America About Us: Absolute Markets Insights assists in providing accurate and latest trends related to consumer demand, consumer behavior, sales, and growth opportunities, for the better understanding of the market, thus helping in product designing, featuring, and demanding forecasts. Our experts provide you the end-products that can provide transparency, actionable data, cross-channel deployment program, performance, accurate testing capabilities and the ability to promote ongoing optimization. From the in-depth analysis and segregation, we serve our clients to fulfill their immediate as well as ongoing research requirements. Minute analysis impact large decisions and thereby the source of business intelligence (BI) plays an important role, which keeps us upgraded with current and upcoming market scenarios. Contact Us: Company: Absolute Markets Insights Email id: [email protected] Phone: +91-740-024-2424 Contact Name: Shreyas Tanna The Work Lab, Model Colony, Shivajinagar, Pune, MH, 411016 Website: https://www.absolutemarketsinsights.com/ Follow Us on Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/AbsoluteMarketsInsights/ https://twitter.com/AbsoluteMI https://www.linkedin.com/company/absolute-markets-insights/ https://plus.google.com/117657938830005040584 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-smart-cities-market-is-set-to-grow-at-a-cagr-of-21-over-the-forecast-period-2019--2027-owing-to-rising-emphasis-on-sustainable-urban-development-from-governments-across-the-world-says-absolute-markets-insights-300815004.html SOURCE Absolute Markets Insights

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Icelandic English

Skeljungur hf.s Annual General Meeting will be held on Tuesday 26 March 2019 at 16:00 pm at Hotel Hilton Reykjavik Nordica, Suurlandsbraut 2, 108 Reykjavik, Iceland meeting room D.

Enclosed is the final agenda for the Annual General Meeting 2019 and proposals from the Board of Directors for the meeting. No changes have been made to the previously published agenda and proposals. Notice to submit proposals or matter to be considered by the meeting has passed.

All documents for the AGM can be found on the companys website: https://www.skeljungur.is/annualgeneralmeeting2019

For further information: Groa Bjorg Baldvinsdottir, Compliance Officer, compliance@skeljungur.is , tel: 444-3000 / 840-3040

Skeljungur is an energy company with operations in Iceland and in the Faroe Islands. Skeljungur sells fuel and oil to consumers and businesses in fisheries, agriculture, transportation, aviation and construction under the brands Skeljungur, Orkan and OrkanX. The company also sells fertilizer and other chemical products. In Iceland the Company runs 65 gas stations and 4 oil depots. Magn P/F, Skeljungurs subsidiary in the Faroe Islands, runs 11 retail and gas-stations and 2 oil depots. Magn also serves and sells oils for house heating to individuals and companies in the Faroe Islands. Skeljungurs goal is to serve the energy needs of consumers and businesses in an efficient and safe way and in harmony with the environment.

www.skeljungur.is

Please find us on Linkedin .









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[March 19, 2019] ExxonMobil Provides $300,000 to Support Relief Efforts in Mozambique Following Cyclone Idai

ExxonMobil said today that it is providing $300,000 to aid agencies to support disaster relief and recovery efforts in Mozambique following Cyclone Idai, which made landfall on March 14. Of this amount, $250,000 will be contributed to the American Red Cross for ongoing rescue efforts and for food, shelter and comfort for the storm's victims. ExxonMobil's affiliate ExxonMobil Mocambique Limitada will contribute another $50,000 to organizations operating in Mozambique that are assisting the government with disaster relief efforts. "We are deeply saddened by the impact of Cyclone Idai on Mozambique and surrounding countries," said Darren W. Woods, ExxonMobil chairman and chief executive officer. "The devastaton has been widespread, and this funding will help provide relief during a difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone affected."



ExxonMobil employees and contractors have been reported safe following the cyclone. In Mozambique, ExxonMobil holds an indirect 25 percent interest in Area 4 and will lead the construction and operation of onshore natural gas liquefaction plants. The company also holds 60 percent operating interest in the Angoche (A5-B) and Zambezi Delta (Z5-C and Z5-D) basins awarded during Mozambique's fifth licensing round.

About ExxonMobil ExxonMobil, the largest publicly traded international oil and gas company, uses technology and innovation to help meet the world's growing energy needs. ExxonMobil holds an industry-leading inventory of resources, is one of the largest refiners and marketers of petroleum products, and its chemical company is one of the largest in the world. For more information, visit www.exxonmobil.com or follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) at www.twitter.com/exxonmobil. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005773/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Preston Todd Advisors Represents Convenient Payments in Investment by The Beekman Group

BOSTON, March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Preston Todd Advisors Inc. is pleased to announce it has successfully advised Salt Lake City, UT based Convenient Payments on its investment from The Beekman Group, a New York City based private equity firm. Preston Todd Advisors served as exclusive advisor to Convenient Payments on the transaction. The terms of the investment were not disclosed. Convenient Payments provides best-of-breed payment technology to the market's highest value verticals, including government, education, medical, dental, and property management. "Convenient Payments is one of the most attractive assets we've brought to market in the last twelve months" said Managing Director Adam Hark. "The combination of robust software and payment integrations made Convenient Payments a top tier acquisition target among active strategics and private equity firms. We are excited for Convenient Payments to continue along its path of successful growth by joining forces with a group that has such deep experience in the payment technology sector. Bringing in a top notch partner like The Beekman Group will be a great enhancement for the company's already impressive growth." "We could not be more pleased to move forward with the support of The Beekman Group behind us," stated Casey Leloux, CEO of Convenient Payments. "With this investment we look forward to being able to expand our value proposition to both current and future merchants and integrated software partners. The Preston Todd Advisors team was an indispensable partner in this endeavor. Their unique position in the marketplace, with expertise in integrated payments and software, proved essential to this very exciting outcome." <>About The Beekman Group



The Beekman Group is a private equity firm dedicated to partnering with management teams to grow companies into market leading businesses. Beekman manages over $800 million in assets and has access to additional capital through strategic co-investment relationships. Beekman focuses on lower middle market investments in service-related sectors including healthcare services, consumer services, and business services. Beekman partners with management teams who desire to be significant owners and create meaningful value by accelerating organic and acquisition growth initiatives. Beekman employs a unique approach to implementing a value creation roadmap for each investment, as demonstrated by our proven track record of success, extensive experience, and 25-year reputation. About Convenient Payments

Convenient Payments, LLC is an advanced technology provider of end-to-end payment solutions, integration platforms and stored-value products for private and public sectors, in person  that is, face-to-face  and online. Convenient Payments offers the most complete payment processing solution for industries wanting to accept credit/debit card and ACH/ECheck transactions in person, over the phone, through the Internet or through an automated recurring payment module. About Preston Todd Advisors Preston Todd Advisors is a leading lower-middle-market M&A advisory firm serving the servicing the payment technology, software, and financial technology verticals. The firm designs and implements forward looking growth strategies for companies trying to navigate the ongoing paradigm shift in digital payments and software. With over a decade of transactional experience Preston Todd boasts a top tier clientele of best-in-class financial technology and software firms. Investment Banking | Exit Planning | M&A | Growth Strategy www.PrestonToddAdvisors.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/preston-todd-advisors-represents-convenient-payments-in-investment-by-the-beekman-group-300815074.html SOURCE Preston Todd Advisors Inc.

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[March 19, 2019] Inspur Industry-first AI Server Supports Eight NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs with NVSwitch Enabled in 4U Form Factor at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Inspur, a leading datacenter and AI full-stack solution provider, today released the NF5488M5, the industry's first AI server supporting eight NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs interconnected with ultra-high bandwidth NVSwitch in a 4U form factor. The Inspur NF5488M5 is designed to facilitate a variety of deep-learning and high-performance computing applications, including voice recognition, video analysis and intelligent customer service. The NF5488M5 is a single server whose key features include: Superb Performance Eight NVIDIA Tesla V100 Tensor Core 32GB GPUs with 5,120 Tensor Cores, providing up to 1 PFlops of AI computing performance

The option of two 28-core CPUs to provide top-level, general-purpose computing performance, and 6 TB of persistent memory for high-speed data access Flexible & Ergonomic A design that fits a broad range of data center power and a space-conserving environment, especially for power-constrained racks

Flexible GPU cluster expansion over PCIe fabric

Designed to operate on 54VDC, a more power-efficient voltage for GPUs

A multi-layer heat dissipation design and intelligent PID adjustment that provide industry-leading thermal management and control "Inspur has been committed to providing world-class AI compuing products and solutions to AI users worldwide through innovative design," said Jun Liu, Inspur general manager of AI and HPC. "The rapid development of AI keeps increasing the requirements for computing performance and flexibility of AI infrastructure. The NF5488M5 help users shorten AI model development cycles, and accelerate AI technology innovation and application development."



"NVIDIA's GPU-accelerated computing has transformed AI and HPC," said Paresh Kharya, director of Product Marketing at NVIDIA. "Inspur has efficiently innovated computing systems based on the latest NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs, and the new NF5488M5 will help AI and HPC users worldwide break through their computational bottlenecks." For more information about the NF5488M5, visit Inspur at Booth No. 1111 at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) .

About Inspur As the world's leading AI computing provider, Inspur is fully engaged in the development of AI infrastructures on four layers, including computing platform, management and performance suite, optimized deep-learning frameworks, and application acceleration to deliver end-to-end, agile, cost-efficient and optimized AI solutions for its industry customers. According to IDC's First Half 2018 China AI Infrastructure Market Survey Report, with 51% market share, Inspur ranks first in the AI server market. IDC and Gartner's worldwide server market tracker for 2018 ranked Inspur No. 3 in the worldwide x86 server market. Committed to offering state-of-the-art computing for global customers through innovative design, Inspur has become a business partner of many leading companies in the world. To learn more, visit www.inspursystems.com. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/inspur-industry-first-ai-server-supports-eight-nvidia-v100-tensor-core-gpus-with-nvswitch-enabled-in-4u-form-factor-at-nvidias-gpu-technology-conference-300814833.html SOURCE Inspur Electronic Information Industry Co., Ltd

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[March 19, 2019] Chesapeake Lodging Trust Sets Date of 2019 Annual Meeting of Shareholders

Chesapeake Lodging Trust (NYSE: CHSP) (the "Trust") announced today that its board of trustees has determined that the 2019 annual meeting of shareholders will be held on Wednesday, June 19, 2019 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Shareholders of record on April 24, 2019 will be notified of the meeting and will be eligible to vote. Further information about the annual meeting and the items then to be considered by the Trust's shareholders will be included in the Trust's proxy materials. ABOUT CHESAPEAKE LODGING TRUST Chesapeake Lodging Trust is a self-advsed lodging real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on investments primarily in upper-upscale hotels in major business and convention markets and, on a selective basis, premium select-service hotels in urban settings or unique locations in the United States. The Trust owns 20 hotels with an aggregate of 6,288 rooms in eight states and the District of Columbia. Additional information can be found on the Trust's website at www.chesapeakelodgingtrust.com.



View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005749/en/



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[March 19, 2019] Novra Group Announces Strong Broadcast Radio Orders, Including a New $2.7M Contract

WINNIPEG, March 19, 2019 /CNW/ - Novra Technologies Inc. ("Novra") (TSX-V: NVI) announced today that it has receivedthrough one of its Novra Group companiesa new order valued at more than $2.7M CAD from a major international radio broadcaster. This order is part of an ongoing network upgrade and is scheduled for delivery in Q3 and Q4 of 2019. Other recent orders, from both new and returning radio network customers, total more than $1.3M CAD. These orders are from commercial, national, and religious broadcasters around the globeranging from Canada, USA and Mexico to South America, Europe, the Middle East, and India. They include expansion and upgrade projects for existing networks, as well as completely new networks. These radio projects include, among others, a: New order from a previous longtime customer to upgrade their national network in Peru





New commercial network customer in Mexico





New order for radio network serving remote communities in northern Canada





Expansion of an existing national network in Asia





New network for a public broadcaster in Chile





Expansion of a health/hospital radio network in Peru





New network in Kyrgyzstan The Novra Group of companiesNovra Technologies, International Datacasting and Wegener Communications have long history in the professional audio broadcast space, with customers on every continent. These orders reflect the continuing confidence clients have in Novra Group products and support.



Harris Liontas, Novra President and CEO commented, "The broadcast radio businesswhich incidentally turns 100 next yearis built on long-term relationships. I'm proud of our team, including our global network of resellers. We're very pleased that radio industry leaders around the world continue to select us as a technology partner and trusted supplier, with these recent orders totaling more than $4.0M CAD. All of these recent orders collectively reflect the confidence customers have in our strength and stability as well as the innovative products and solutions the Novra Group offers to the broadcast radio community." The Novra Group companies will be unveiling next-generation products for radio as well as video, data, and digital signage markets at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters NAB show in Las Vegas, April 6-11. International Datacasting will host the group at its booth in South Hall, SU3621.

About Novra Technologies Inc.: Novra (TSX-V: NVI) is an international technology provider of products, systems and services for the distribution of multimedia broadband content. The Novra Group of companies includes Novra, International Datacasting Corporation, and Wegener Corporation. The companies in the group are known for a strong focus on applications including: broadcast video and radio, digital cinema, digital signage, and highly reliable data communications. For more information visit: www.novragroup.com Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws, concerning but not limited to: our profitability outlook, the pending acquisition of Wegener, and anticipated developments in our operations in future periods. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by words such as "expect", "anticipate", "believe", "intend", "estimate", "predict", "outlook", "potential", "targeted", "plans" "possible", "poised for", "scheduled", and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions or results "will", "may", "could" or "should" occur or be achieved. As such, forward-looking statements are not historical facts but reflect our current assumptions and expectations regarding future events. These are subject to a number of risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations and assumptions. For the above reasons, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Novra Technologies Inc.

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[March 19, 2019] Budget 2019 Funds New Way to Help Fight Climate Change in Cities

Low Carbon Cities Canada Welcomes Federal Government Investment OTTAWA, March 19, 2019 /CNW/ - The federal government is helping to fight climate change with a visionary $183 million investment in Low Carbon Cities Canada (LC3), announced in today's budget. LC3 is an initiative that will enable and accelerate urban carbon-reduction solutions, helping Canada meet 2030 and 2050 climate change targets. Climate impacts are being felt most acutely in cities, where half of Canada's carbon emissions originate, from sources such as buildings, transportation, industry and waste. LC3 is a partnership between seven local centres and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. LC3 will be self-sustaining, safeguarding and leveraging the federal investment announced today. Rather than spending down the capital, LC3 will invest it on a revolving basis, generating ongoing revenue for grants, projects, and operations. "The urgency for action on climate hange has never been greater, particularly in urban areas. We're grateful for this strategic investment in Low Carbon Cities Canada by our federal government. It will accelerate local carbon-reduction solutions and help Canada meet its climate change targets," said Julia Langer, CEO of The Atmospheric Fund, which is the LC3 partner for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.



Citizens, businesses and municipalities strive to be climate leaders, yet good ideas and one-off pilots often fail to reach mainstream, at-scale implementation for various reasons including risk aversion, challenges accessing capital and markets, and policy barriers. Modeled on The Atmospheric Fund, the LC3 approach provides the capacity, capital, and risk tolerance necessary to remove barriers to the adoption of new technologies, policies, and financial tools that can reduce urban carbon emissions.

The federal investment announced in Budget 2019 will help LC3 bridge this commercialization gap through incubation, demonstration and de-risking of low-carbon solutions. The LC3 centres are located in seven of Canada's largest urban areas: Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, Edmonton, Calgary, the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Area, Ottawa, Montreal Metropolitan Community, and the Halifax region. As the national partner, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities will support LC3 and connect with other cities across Canada. LC3 funding is part of a $350 million investment in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Green Municipal Fund. "Climate change affects every municipality in Canada, large or small, and all of them want to be part of the solution as direct partners. Powered by the federal government's investment in Low Carbon Cities Canada, FCM will help stimulate and share carbon-reduction solutions and best practices with cities and communities across the country," said Vicki-May Hamm, President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. To learn more, visit our website. SOURCE LC3

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[March 19, 2019] Nutrien Prices Offering of an Aggregate US$1.5 Billion, 10-Year and 30-Year Senior Notes

Nutrien Ltd. (Nutrien) today announced the pricing of US$750 million aggregate principal amount of 4.200 percent senior notes due April 1, 2029, and US$750 million aggregate principal amount of 5.000 percent senior notes due April 1, 2049 (together, the "senior notes"). The offering is expected to close on or about April 1, 2019, subject to customary closing conditions. The senior notes, registered under the multi-jurisdictional disclosure system in Canada and the United States, will not be offered in Canada or to any resident of Canada. Nutrien intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to repay US$500 million aggregate principal amount of 6.500 percent senior notes due 2019 upon their maturity on May 15, 2019, to reduce other indebtedness and for general corporate purposes. The senior notes will be unsecured and rank equally with Nutrien's existing unsecured debt. The joint book-running managers for the offering are Barclays Capital Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and RBC Capital Markets, LLC. The offering will be made by way of a prospectus supplement dated March 19, 2019, to Nutrien's short form base shelf prospectus dated March 12, 2018, filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities in each of the provinces of Canada, which forms a part of and is included in Nutrien's registration statement on Form F-10, filed in the United States with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC (News - Alert)") under the multi-jurisdictional disclosure system. A final prospectus supplement in respect of the offering of the senior notes will be filed with the same regulatory authorities in Canada and the SEC. About Nutrien Nutrien is the world's largest provider of crop inputs and services, playing a critical role in helping growers increase food production in a sustainable manner. We produce and distribute 27 million tonnes of potash, nitrogen and phosphate products world-wide. With this capability and our leading agriculture retail network, we are well positioned to supply the needs of our customers. We operate with a long-term view and are committed to working with our stakeholders as we address our economic, environmental and social priorities. The scale and diversity of our integrated portfolio provides a stable earnings base, multipe avenues for growth and the opportunity to return capital to shareholders.



Advisory The senior notes are being offered in the United States pursuant to an effective registration statement (including a base shelf prospectus) filed with the SEC. Nutrien has filed a preliminary prospectus supplement related to the offering of the senior notes. Before you invest, you should read the preliminary prospectus supplement, the accompanying base shelf prospectus and other documents that are incorporated by reference therein for more complete information about Nutrien and this offering.

The preliminary prospectus supplement and the accompanying base shelf prospectus are available for free on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Alternatively, the documents may be obtained by contacting Barclays Capital Inc. toll free at 1-888-603-5847, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Prospectus Department toll free at 1-866-471-2526 or by e-mailing [email protected], Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC toll free at 1-866-718-1649 or RBC Capital Markets, LLC toll-free at 1-866-375-6829. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the senior notes in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements and other information included in this press release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation or constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable U.S. securities legislation (together, "forward-looking statements"). All statements in this press release, other than those relating to historical information or current conditions, are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, forecasts and statements as to management's expectations with respect to, among other things, the intended use of proceeds of the offering and the timing of closing of the offering. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, as well as various assumptions and business sensitivities, including those risk factors referred to in the preliminary prospectus supplement referenced in this press release and those referred to under the heading "Risk Factors" in Nutrien's annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2018 and under the heading "Enterprise Risk Management" in management's discussion and analysis for the year ended December 31, 2018, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of Nutrien, which includes the offering being delayed or not completed, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Nutrien disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements in this press release as a result of new information or future events, except as may be required under applicable Canadian securities legislation or applicable U.S. federal securities law. These forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by us in light of our experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments as well as other factors we believe are appropriate in the circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements contained herein are qualified by these cautionary statements and by the assumptions that are stated or inherent in such forward-looking statements. Although we believe these assumptions are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these assumptions and such forward-looking statements. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005921/en/

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[March 19, 2019] Fluence Signs Second Large Contract in Egypt

Fluence Corporation Limited (ASX: FLC) is pleased to announce that a partnership formed between its Egyptian joint venture The International Co. for Water Services & Infrastructure (IWSI) and Hassan Allam EPC has been awarded an EPC contract of US$74 million to design and construct a 40,000 m3/day seawater desalination plant, with infrastructure designed and built for a future capacity expansion to 80,000 m3/day. In this custom engineered solution, through IWSI, Fluence will act as the technology provider, designing the process and supplying the pretreatment, reverse osmosis skids, post-treatment equipment and the start-up and commissioning of the plant for a total contract share of US$20 million. Hassan Allam EPC will provide the local works including the marine design and execution of the intake and outfall. Once completed, the plant will serve New Mansoura city, which is currently under construction along Egypt's northern coast on the Mediterranean Sea. New Mansourawill have a population of approximately 250,000 people when its first phase is inaugurated. Given the population growth of New Mansoura, it is expected that the plant will eventually be expanded to 80,000 m3/day capacity. The plant is expected to be operational in 18 months.



Henry Charrabe, Managing Director and CEO of Fluence, commented: "The New Mansoura plant will be among the larger desalination plant references for Fluence to date and, if expanded, one of the largest in all of Egypt. Together with the US $7.6 million NIROBOX Smart Packaged desalination plant order IWSI secured in Egypt in October 2018, this contract reinforces Fluence's growth strategy. As we continue to focus on Egypt as one of the most promising desalination markets in the world, we're deploying both Smart Packaged Solutions and custom engineered solutions to meet the growing water requirements. We are excited to work with our partner Hassan Allam on this important project for the people of New Mansoura." About Fluence Corporation Limited (ASX: FLC)

Fluence is a leader in the decentralized water, wastewater and reuse treatment markets, setting the industry pace with its Smart Products Solutions, including Aspiral, NIROBOX and SUBRE. Fluence offers an integrated range of services across the complete water cycle, from early stage evaluation, through design and delivery to ongoing support and optimization of water related assets, as well as Build Own Operate Transfer (BOOT) and other recurring revenue solutions. With established operations in North America, South America, the Middle East, Europe and China, Fluence has experience operating in over 70 countries worldwide and enables businesses and communities worldwide to maximize their water resources. Further information can be found at https://www.fluencecorp.com/. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190319005939/en/

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VICTORVILLE, Calif., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On the heels of the announcement of the Prologis, Inc. (NYSE: PLD) acquisition of DCT Industrial Trust Inc., Stirling Development today announces its joint venture with Prologis , who will take over as 50 percent capital partner for Stirling Capital Investments. Together, the two companies plan to continue the build-out of the Southern California Logistics Airport (SCLA) in Victorville, California. SCLA is an 8,500-acre multimodal freight transportation hub supported by air, ground and rail connections that includes a 2,500-acre commercial and industrial complex entitled for 60 million square feet of development. Stirling will be responsible for development management and asset management for the venture and is currently planning the next phase of SCLA.



We are excited to begin our relationship with Prologis and believe their involvement will further enhance our marketability at SCLA. Stirling and Prologis commitment to advance build-to-suit developments at the project by strategically customizing opportunities for Prologis existing clients as well as manufacturers and distributors will put SCLA ahead of the heightened demand for industrial warehouse space in the Inland Empire market, said Brian Parno , chief operating officer of Stirling Development.

Southern California is one of the most dynamic industrial real estate markets in the country given the growth of e-commerce and the limited number of large sites with logistics infrastructure, said Kim Snyder , president of west region at Prologis. We are confident that Stirlings development experience paired with our market presence will result in a flow of attractive institutional-quality logistics assets.

We are eager to open this new chapter at SCLA and are excited to partner with Prologis, said Dougall Agan , president and CEO of Stirling Development. Several of Prologis global customers already lease facilities at SCLA, and this partnership shows their confidence in the future growth of the project. The logistical advantages and low cost of occupancy make the High Desert one of the best distribution locations for major corporations in Southern California.

About Stirling Development

Stirling Development is a Foothill Ranch, California-based strategic, full-service, value-added development company specializing in master-planned communities and major land renovations. Stirling is led by partners Dougall Agan and Chris Downey, who have been responsible for more than $3 billion in development activity on large-scale land development projects in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. Stirlings joint venture partner for SCLA is Prologis, Inc. (NYSE: PLD). Prologis is a leading global industrial real estate company specializing in the acquisition, development, leasing and management of bulk distribution and light industrial properties located in high-volume distribution markets. For more information, visit www.stirlingdev.com .

About Prologis

Prologis, Inc. is the global leader in logistics real estate with a focus on high-barrier, high-growth markets. As of December 31, 2018, the company owned or had investments in, on a wholly owned basis or through co-investment ventures, properties and development projects expected to total approximately 768 million square feet (71 million square meters) in 19 countries. Prologis leases modern distribution facilities to a diverse base of approximately 5,100 customers across two major categories: business-to-business and retail/online fulfillment.
The Raspberry Pi is the single-board computer of choice for makers, but AI is not its strong suit. Nvidias new $99 Jetson Nano Developer Kit is designed to give everyone from hobbyists to programmers a chance to play with deep learning and neural networks for an affordable price.

Nvidia has been producing its Jetson line of AI computers for several years, but they are priced out of reach of most consumers and arent meant to be used in maker projects. Like the Raspberry Pi, the Jetson Nano fits a full suite of ports and 40 GPIO pins on a relatively small motherboard that you can juice with a standard 2.5-amp micro USB power adapter.

I had the chance to spend a couple of days playing with the Jetson Nano and running some AI demos on it. The platform clearly has the potential to be an interesting part of a makers toolkit for specialized use cases, but the lack of on-board Wi-Fi really holds it back. And, even if it had wireless connectivity, theres no way its going to compete directly with the Raspberry Pi.

Powerful Specs, But Wheres the Wireless?

Much more performant than a Raspberry Pi and designed specifically for AI applications, the Jetson Nano is powered by a 1.4-GHz quad-core ARM A57 CPU, 128-core Nvidia Maxwell GPU and 4 GB of RAM. It has four USB type-A ports, including one that is USB 3.0, both HDMI and DisplayPort out for video and a gigabit Ethernet connector. Theres an onboard camera slot, though you can also connect cameras via USB.

Jetson Nano Dev Kit Raspberry Pi 3B+ MSRP $99 $35 CPU 64-bit Quad-core ARM A57 (1.43 GHz) 1.4 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 GPU 128-Core Nvidia Maxwell Broadcom VideoCore IV RAM 4GB DDR4 1GB DDR2 Connectivity Ethernet 10/100/1000 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE 4.1, Ethernet (max 300 Mbps) Ports 3x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0,HDMI, DisplayPort, Camera Connector, M.2 4x USB 2.0, HDMI, 3.5mm audio, Camera Connector Pins 40-Pin GPIO 40-Pin GPIO

A micro USB port connects to power, but theres also a barrel connector you can use with an optional high-power supply that provides 4 amps of juice for more intensive tasks. The CPU comes with a heatsink on top of it, but you can attach an optional fan on top of the sink if youre going to be performing processor-intensive tasks that require more cooling.

As with Raspberry Pi, the operating system and software is stored on a removable microSD card. Also, like the Pi, the Jetson Nano has 40 GPIO (general input / output) pins which you can use to attach to lights, motors and sensors. Those pins are table stakes for the maker community because you really need them to build robots and other IoT devices.

Unfortunately, the Jetson Nano is missing something else which is now table stakes for most makers: onboard wireless connectivity. Every current-gen Raspberry Pi, except for the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, comes with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But to use the Jetson Nano, you have to live with one of three unpleasant connectivity options: be chained to an Ethernet connection, only write programs that work offline and require no Bluetooth or attach a third-party USB Wi-Fi / Bluetooth dongle.

Attaching a third-party Wi-Fi dongle isnt as easy as you might think. You can use either a USB dongle or an M.2 Wi-Fi card that lives in the M.2 slot thats buried beneath the CPU and GPU (more on that later). Either way, the version of Ubuntu 18.04 that the Jetson Nano uses does not come with built-in drivers for Wi-Fi adapters and, according to all the support documentation I read, the only way to get them is to compile your own.

In the office, we had a TP-Link Archer AC600 T2UH USB Wi-Fi adapter and I spent two to three hours hunting down instructions on how to compile its driver for Jetson and trying different methods before I gave up and decided to stick with Ethernet. There may be other dongles that are easy to find or compile drivers for -- Nvidia recommends the $10 Edimax-7811UN -- but you shouldnt have to go through this kind of hassle just to connect to the Internet, let alone pair with a Bluetooth keyboard. When the $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W has built-in Wi-Fi / Bluetooth that just work out of the box, its hard to justify Nvidias decision to leave it out of a computer that costs 10 times as much.

Computer on SODIMM Card

Though our review unit came put together, its easy to see that the CPU and GPU are actually on a separate board that plugs into a 260-pin SODIMM slot on the main PCB that houses the ports and connectors. Considering that Nvidia also makes a standalone Jetson Nano compute unit, which costs $129 and has 16GB of on-board storage but no ports, it makes sense that the developer kits processor would also be on an add-in board. By the way, if you want the $129 board, Nvidia says that youll need to order 1,000 or more units to get it at that price. So, unless youre building Jetson Nano into a mass-produced product, the developer kit is your only choice.

Size and Weight

The Jetson Nano Developer kit board is pretty small, but noticeably much larger than the largest Raspberry Pi, the Pi 3B+. Obviously, it needs the added space, particularly because of the heat sink and the SODIMM slot, but when youre planning your project, youll need to accommodate a board thats 3.8 x 3 inches (95.3 x 76.2 mm) and weighs 4.8 ounces (136 grams) while the Pi 3B+ is a mere 3.4 x 2.3 inches (87  58.5 mm) and weights just 1.8 ounces (49.7 grams)

Linux OS

The official operating system for the Jetson Nano and other Jetson boards is called Linux4Tegra, which is actually a version of Ubuntu 18.04 thats designed to run on Nvidias hardware. The look and feel of the desktop are the same as on standard Ubuntu Linux, and theres a huge ecosystem of Linux apps, from development software to games that are available from the bundled Software app, which is a kind of app store.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the AI software and demos that Nvidia recommends in its documentation arent in a store and need to be downloaded, compiled and invoked from the command line. Obviously, the whole process would be easier for beginners if the software was all preloaded on Linux4Tegra, but using the command line to download and install programs is a typical part of the Linux development experience.

AI Experience: Speedy But Sometimes Odd Results

Jetson Nanos real raison detre is its ability to perform AI workloads such as object identification, motion tracking and video smoothing. And, based on a deep vision demo / tutorial that Nvidia provided, it appears to work quickly, though the quality of the results depends more on the software than the hardware.

I first tried the imagenet-console program ,which takes image files and tries to identify the content within them. When I tried it with sample JPGs that Nvidia provided, the program worked really well, correctly identifying an orange and a black bear. However, when I fed it some images I shot, the results were unintentionally hilarious. A picture of my son holding a Lego robot was labeled as a syringe, a set of balloons was marked as Christmas stockings and a photo of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was marked as a suit, suit of clothes. The last one wasnt completely off the mark as he was wearing clothes in the photo, but I dont agree that a leather jacket is a suit.

The app fared a little better with some images, identifying a picture with an open cardboard box in the background as a carton and a picture of my son using the Kano Computer Kit, which is not a laptop but looks a bit like one, as a laptop computer. To be fair, this app used an offline library of 1,000 object types so a more extensive dataset might yield better results.

I also used the imagenet-camera, which is the same as imagenet-console, except that it uses a real-time feed of video from a webcam. With Logitech webcams attached -- I tested with both the C920 and C930e -- the identification results were even more inaccurate than with they had been with still images.

When I sat in front of the webcam, it identified me as a shower cap or bathing cap, presumably because of my bald head. A friend was variously mislabeled as either a punching bag, a cowboy hat or both and anyone with a button or logo on their shirt was labeled as a military uniform. However, when I held a photo of an orange (on a phone screen) in front of the camera, it identified the fruit correctly.

I was more impressed with the results I got from the VisionWorks Feature Tracking, Motion Estimation and Video Stabilization demos. The Feature Tracking demo processes a video of cars traveling over the Golden Gate Bridge and puts red and green marks over fine details like the license plates on the cars, presumably to show it can track those objects as they move.

The Motion Estimation demo uses a clip of people walking down a sidewalk and tracks them as they cross the field of view. And the Video Stabilization demo shows what a jumpy movie looks like before and after applying stabilization techniques.

Performance

As part of our press kit, Nvidia gave us a list of test results it achieved on various AI benchmarks when comparing the Jetson Nano to a Raspberry Pi 3 with an Intel Neural Compute Stick attached and to Googles Coral Board with Edge TPU. We did not have time to verify these numbers on the Jetson Nano nor did we have a Coral Board handy to do the necessary competitive testing. However, at least when comparing to a Raspberry Pi, its easy to believe that the Jetson Nano is much faster, particularly at AI tasks.

Benchmark Results: Image Courtesy of Nvidia

The Jetson Nano has a much more powerful processor than the Raspberry Pi and the Coral Board with Edge TPU, both of which have Arm Cortex A53-based CPUs, while the Nanos uses the more advanced Cortex A57 platform. The Nano also has 4GB of RAM as compared to just 1GB on its competitors. Even if youre not running AI applications and you just want to run Linux applications, youll get more oomph from the Nvidias computer.

Bottom Line

The Jetson Nano Developer Kit provides an affordable, yet powerful way to start developing AI applications and to deploying them to maker projects. In addition to its demos, Nvidia provides some very-detailed tutorials to help you create your own unique AI apps, which I look forward to trying in the future.

However, for most non-AI maker projects, the Raspberry Pi remains the best choice. At $99, the Jetson Nano costs nearly three times as much as the Raspberry Pi 3B+, its much larger and it lacks built-in Wi-Fi / Bluetooth. It will also be tough for Nvidia or its fans to match the enormous level of community support that Raspberry Pi has or to replicate the giant ecosystem of accessories, books and school lesson plans behind it.

But, for AI developers who are just getting started or hobbyists who want to make projects that rely on inference, the Jetson Nano is a nice step forward.
Great looks, good performance, features galore, and a low price make the MasterCase a great value, despite its single intake fan and no Type-C connector.

Great looks, good performance, features galore, and a low price make the MasterCase a great value, despite its single intake fan and no Type-C connector.

Features and Specifications

In the market for a sleek and stylish chassis that won't break the bank? Cooler Masters latest MasterCase NR600 offers great looks, good performance and features galore, all for only $70 (53). What's the catch? You might want to add a fan, and youll have to live without a USB 3.1 Type-C port. But, at this price, its hard to complain.

Specifications

Type Mid-Tower ATX Motherboard Support Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX Dimensions (HxWxD) 18.62 x 8.22 x 18.81 inches (473 x 209 x 478 mm) Space Above Motherboard 1.5 inches (38.1mm) Card Length 16.14 inches (410mm) CPU Cooler Height 6.54 inches (166mm) Power Supply Length 7.08 inches (180mm) Weight 14.48 lbs (6.57 kg) External Bays 1x 5.25" Internal Bays 4x 3.5" / 35x 2.5 Card Slots 7 Ports/Jacks 2x USB 3.0, 1x 4 pole headset jack Front Fans 1x 120mm (Up to 3x 120mm / 2x 140mm Max) Rear Fans 1x 120mm Top Fans  (Up to 2x 120mm/140mm Max) Bottom Fans  Side Fans  Damping  Warranty 2 Years

Exterior

The flush-mounted tempered-glass side, mesh front panel and minimalistic design give Cooler Master's MasterBox NR600 a sleek and stylish look that would be right at home in almost any environment.

The MasterBox NR600 mid-tower chassis is constructed of steel, plastic, and tempered-glass, weighing-in at just under 15lbs. At 473 x 209 x 478mm (HWD), it's also bit smaller than the average mid-tower ATX case, while still making room for a solid collection of components. This case retails for $70 (53), and comes with a two-year warranty.

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The majority of the top panel is covered by a magnetic metal-mesh filter. Directly under the filter is a perforated area that has mounting locations for two 120mm or 140mm fans. The right-hand edge of the top panel is home to two USB 3.0 ports, a headset-friendly 4 pole audio jack, as well as power and reset buttons.

The plastic front panel is covered entirely by a very fine mesh that also serves as a filter. Directly behind the front face, youll find mounting locations for three 120mm or two 140mm intake fans. Theres also a version of this chassis that comes with a single 5.25-inch optical drive bay. The added benefits of a mesh front panel are that it provides good airflow into the chassis, and it allows light to pass through should you chose to install RGB fans.

The tinted tempered-glass side panel covers roughly three quarters of the side of the chassis. Much like the MasterCase H500P and NZXT's H500i, the NR600 does not use rubber-coated locating pins and thumbscrews, opting instead for a tempered glass panel affixed to a thin metal frame. This assembly attaches to the frame via thumbscrews in the rear. The steel panel on the opposite side of the chassis is plain and is also secured with thumbscrews.

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In the rear of the chassis, you'll find an opening for a bottom-mounted PSU, seven standard expansion-card slots, and an exhaust-fan mounting location thats equipped with a 120mm fan. The exhaust-fan mounting location features slotted screw holes that let you adjust the position of the fan to fine-tune airflow or make room for system components.

The four low-profile rubber-coated feet keep the case approximately a half-inch off the floor.

The fan-filtration system on the NR600 is simple yet effective. A small, removable filter covers the opening for the power-supply fan. Servicing this filter requires turning your system on its side. The filter in the top of the case is attached with magnetic seals around its edge. As we mentioned earlier, the entire front panel is covered in a very fine mesh that also acts as a filter. Its best to simply remove the entire front panel for cleaning and maintenance.

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OVERLAND PARK, KS (CNN) -- Amid speculation about his political future, Mike Pompeo on Monday said he'd be in the secretary of state role until President Donald Trump "tweets (him) out." "I'm going to be there until he tweets me out of office," Pompeo said, making light of Trump's penchant for firing people over Twitter.
First introduced back in 1995, the Toyota Tacoma is currently in its third generation. With nearly a quarter century of history behind it, the Tacoma nameplate is well-established as one of the most unbreakably rugged and reliable vehicles on the planet, and now this mid-size pickup is headed for a refresh for the 2020 model year. The latest Tacoma is framed as the best-equipped ever, and in TRD guise, it looks to mate its traditional off-roading chops in the rough stuff with newfound comfort and tech appointment in the cabin. However, considering the latest third-generation made its debut back in 2015, as well as a major influx of competition throughout the segment, does the 2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD still manage to keep pace?

2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD Exterior Styling

Mid-size dimensions

Styling inspired by Toyotas off-road racing efforts

LED lighting throughout

16- and 17-inch wheels

Optional Army Green paintTwo body styles - Access Cab and Double Cab

In 2004, the Toyota Tacoma made the jump from compact to mid-size dimensions following its second-generation update, and the 2020 model year keeps the status quo in that respect.

However, Toyota was compelled to update the Tacomas styling for the 2020 model year, taking inspiration from the brands desert racing truck program.

That said, the 2020 Tacoma TRDs exterior upgrades are relatively modest when placed side-by-side with the outgoing model. Highlights include a fresh array of LED lighting throughout, a slightly revised grille, and a set of all-new wheel designs.

Lets start with the TRD Sport model, which comes equipped with new 17-inch rollers in the corners. Moving around to the rear, the TRD Sport also comes with chrome taillight graphics, while the fascia is brightened by LED fog lights. Further LED lighting is used for the daytime running lights and headlights as well.

Up next, we have the Tacoma TRD Off-Road, which also gets a new grille design, chrome taillight graphics, LED fog lights, and LED daytime running lights with LED headlight illumination.

Finally, theres the range-topping Tacoma TRD Pro grade, which gets the most updates with the latest 2020 model year refresh.

Up front, youll find sequential LEDs for the daytime running lights in the headlight housings, plus LED fog lights from Rigid Industries as standard.

Theres also black graphics for the taillights. Meanwhile, the corners are stuffed with new 16-inch wheels, which are a little over four pounds lighter than the previous TRD Pros wheels. While four pounds might not sound like a lot, its a pretty significant reduction when applied to the trucks unsprung running gear, and it should help the TRD Pro in terms of maneuverability both on and off the road.

Buyers interested in the 2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro will have the option to drape it in Army Green paint, which is exclusive to this particular model year and trim level.

The rest of the range will be offered in exterior colors like Super White, Midnight Black Metallic, and Magnetic Gray Metallic.

As before, Toyota will offer its range of Tacoma TRD trim levels with the option for two different body styles.

The first is the Access Cab, which comes with two doors, a 127.4-inch wheelbase, and a 73.7-inch (6.1-foot) long bed.

Alternatively, you can get the Double Cab style, which adds two rear doors for improved ingress and egress. Go for the Double Cab, and youll have the option for either a 127.4-inch wheelbase and a 60.5-inch (5-foot) bed, or a 140.6-inch wheelbase with a 73.7-inch (6.1-foot) bed. All bed options are 41.5 inches wide and 19.1 inches deep.

Its also worth noting that the Tacoma uses sheet-molded composite deck for the inner bed construction, which means the walls are 10-percent lighter than a steel-based alternative.

As for the competition, the new Ford Ranger is offered with either a two-door SuperCab configuration and 6-foot box, or a four-door SuperCrew configuration and 5-foot box. Meanwhile, the Jeep Gladiator is offered with four-doors and a 5-foot bed, while the Chevrolet Colorado can be had with a two-door Extended Cab Long Box (6.2-foot bed), four-door Crew Cab Short Box (5.1-foot bed), or four-door Crew Cab Long Box (6.2-foot bed).

2020 Toyota Tacoma Exterior Dimensions

Overall Height 70.6 inches Overall Width 74.4 inches Overall Length 212.3 inches (standard bed), 225.5 inches (long bed) Wheelbase 127.4 inches (standard bed), 140.6 inches (long bed) Bed Length 73.7 inches, 60.5 inches Bed Height 19.1 inches Bed Width 41.5 inches Front Track 63 inches Rear Track 63.2 inches Front Track (TRD Pro) 64 inches Rear Track (TRD Pro) 64 inches

2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD Interior Design

Seating for up to five passengers

10-way power adjusting seats

Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Amazon Alexa support

8.0-inch touschreen in the dash

Multi-Terrain Monitor from the Toyota Land Cruiser

Standard JBL audio higher in the range

Standard Toyota Safety Sense 2.0 tech suite

Optional LED bed lamp

Just like the outgoing model, the 2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD offers seating for five with the Double Cab configuration, and seating for four with the Access Cab configuration.

However, one criticism often thrown towards the nameplate is a lack of luxury and modern features.

However, the latest 2020 model year hopes to rectify that across the board thanks to a host of new multimedia technology and additional comfort and convenience equipment.

Headlining the list is new 10-way adjustable power seats, while onboard infotainment now includes Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Amazon Alexa support - all of which are crucial in a modern vehicle regardless of the segment. Running it all is an upgraded 8.0-inch touchscreen in the dash.

Looking down the lineup, the TRD Sport model now comes with a Passenger Smart Ket entry feature as standard to help ease ingress and egress. This trim level is also offered with a Panoramic View Monitor that provides a digital feed of whats immediately around the truck through to a series of exterior cameras. This feature is particularly useful for tight trails, or, if youre tackling the urban jungle, tight parking spaces.

Next up is the TRD Off-Road trim level, which also comes with a Passenger Smart Key feature. Meanwhile, the Panoramic View Monitor is replaced with the more comprehensive Multi-Terrain Monitor. This feature was plucked from the off-road friendly Land Cruiser, and includes a view of whats directly under the truck, as well as whats around it.

Finally, theres the TRD Pro model, which comes as standard with a power moonroof. Grab the automatic transmission on this model, and youll also get yourself a standard JBL Premium Audio system.

Per usual for a modern Toyota, the 2020 Tacoma TRD also comes with a number of safety-focused technology features, all thanks to the standard Toyota Safety Sense P (TSS-P) tech suite.

TSS-P can be found across the entirety of the Tacoma range, and comes with systems like Pre-Collision Braking with Pedestrian Detection, Lane Departure Alert with Sway Warning System, Automatic High Beams, and High-Speed Dynamic Radar Cruise Control. Interestingly, the Tacoma is the only entry in the segment with all these safety features as standard. However, its believed the upcoming Jeep Gladiator will likely change that, but for now, the Tacoma is the leader in safety tech for the mid-size pickup segment.

Finally, on the functionality front, the 2020 Tacoma also comes with an optional LED bed lamp to light up whatever youre hauling.

2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD Drivetrain And Performance

TRD Off-Road gets Bilstein shocks, locking diff, terrain control drive modes

TRD Pro gets lighter 16-inch wheels, 2.5-inch shocks, new springs

3.5-liter V-6

278 horsepower and 265 pound-feet of torque

Six-speed Electronically Controlled Automatic Transmission

Optional six-speed manual transmission

Standard with the Tow Package

Rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive

Towing up to 6,800 pounds

Max payload roughly 1,540 pounds.

As expected, the 2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD comes with a long list of equipment to bless it with prowess in the rough stuff.

Lets kick it off with the TRD Off-Road, which comes with TRD-tuned Bilstein shocks and a locking rear differential, as well as tech goodies like Hill Assist Control, Multi-Terrain Select, and Crawl Control.

Then theres the TRD Pro, which gets the lighter 16-inch wheels already mentioned, as well as new 2.5-linch internal bypass shocks from Fox mated with new springs for the front and the rear. Making it all grip is a set of Goodyear Wrangler All-Terrain Kevlar-reinforced tires.

Standard spec includes 4WDemand part-time four-wheel drive, which also utilizes an electronically controlled transfer case and an electronically controlled rear differential.

Its also worth mentioning that all Tacomas equipped with an automatic transmission come with those tech goodies listed above (Hill Start Assist Control, Multi-terrain Select, Crawl Control).

Under the hood, you can get the 2020 Toyota Tacoma with either a DOHC 2.7-liter four-cylinder making 159 horsepower and 180 pound-feet of torque, or you can upgrade to a 3.5-liter V-6 making 278 horsepower and 265 pound-feet of torque.

Both engines mate to a six-speed Electronically Controlled Automatic Transmission with intelligence. Grab the V-6 powerplant, and you can alternatively mate it with a six-speed manual transmission.

The TRD grades will most likely come exclusively with a V-6, as is fitting for a nameplate that stands for Toyota Racing Development. Both rear-wheel drive and all-wheel drive will be offered for TRD models.

The V-6 models will also come standard with the Tow Package, which adds in a Class IV receiver hitch, an automatic transmission fluid cooler, an engine oil cooler, a power steering cooler, a 130-amp alternator, a four and 7-pin connector with converter, and Trailer-Sway Control.

All told, the 2020 Toyota Tacoma can tow up to 6,800 pounds. Max payload should be rated at around 1,540 pounds.

Lets compare that with the competition - the Jeep Gladiator can tow 7,650 pounds and deliver a payload capacity up to 1,600 pounds, while the Ford Ranger can tow up to 7,500 pounds and deliver a payload capacity up to 2,128 pounds. Finally, the Chevy Colorado can tow 7,700 pounds and deliver payload capacity up to 1,576 pounds.

2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD Prices

The 2020 Toyota Tacoma was first introduced at the 2019 Chicago Auto Show. Buyers are offered over 30 different configurations and six grade levels, three of which come with a TRD badge - the TRD Sport, the TRD Off-Road, and the TRD Pro. These are the mid- to top-grade levels, with the SR and SR5 slotting in below the TRDs, and the Limited slotting between the TRD Off-Road and the TRD Pro.

An official on-sale date and pricing information is not yet available. However, considering the equipment included in the latest 2020 model year update, a small increase over the outgoing model year is more than likely. For reference, the 2019 Toyota Tacoma TRD Sport starts at $32,395, the 2019 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road starts at $33,650, and the 2019 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro starts at $42,810.

2020 Toyota Tacoma TRD Competition

The Blue Ovals combatant in this segment is the Ranger, which was recently resuscitated after it was pre-maturely axed back in 2011. Providing the Rangers go is Fords ever-present 2.3-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder, which is turbocharged to produce 270 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque. Routing the output is Ford latest 10-speed automatic transmission, with either rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive on tap for the traction duties. Go for the latter setup and youll also get a max of 8.9 inches of ground clearance. An electronically locking rear differential is equipped regardless of the drivetrain choice. Pricing starts at $25,395 for the base-model XL, while the range-topping Lariat starts at $32,210.

Read our full review on the 2019 Ford Ranger.

Jeep is certainly no stranger to the trails, and the Gladiator looks like it could put up a pretty good fight when the pavement runs out. Rocking an iconic fascia in front and an extended bed in the rear, the Gladiator is a mishmash of Jeep goodness in between. Inside, the Gladiator pulls its cues from the Jeep Wrangler, and comes with the latest Uconnect infotainment, including a central display up to 8.4 inches in diameter. A standard 3.6-liter Pentastar V-6 is mounted behind the Gladiators grille, producing upwards of 285 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque. A 3.0-liter EcoDiesel option will be added in 2020. Sport and Overland models come equipped with a Command-Trak 4x4 system and two-speed transfer case. Pricing will likely start at $40,000.

Read our full review on the 2020 Jeep Gladiator.

Chevy offers the Colorado in a multitude of configurations, but when it comes to off-road readiness, the top-trim ZR2 model is the one to get. Making the ZR2 go is a 3.6-liter V-6 producing upwards of 308 horsepower and 275 pound-feet of torque, while a driver-selectable full-locking differential both front and back are included as standard for the drivetrain. A 2.8-liter Duramax diesel powerplant is optional, while the entry-level Colorado gets a 2.5-liter inline four-cylinder engine. The ZR2 also gets a number of tech tricks to help it perform, including hill descent control, an integrated trailer brake controller, and a Tow/Haul mode. Pricing starts at $42,995 for the ZR2 and $21,195 for the base-model Colorado.

Read our full review on the Chevrolet Colorado.

Final Thoughts

The Toyota Tacoma is one of the best-selling pickup trucks in America, and has been for years and years. The 2020 model year update looks to be every bit as reliable and tough as in years past, but now it comes with a slew of modernized bits and pieces to keep it at the front of the pack.

Overall though, it looks as though Toyota is primarily banking on nameplate credibility for this one. The powertrain and drivetrain are both unaltered compared to the 2019 model year, and the truck is actually down on towing compared to the competition at this point. The Tacoma is also not quite as revolutionary as the competition, even with the extra tech added for this mid-cycle update.

Still, the Tacoma should prove to be extremely solid in terms of reliability, and theres something to be said of the if it aint broke dont fix it philosophy.

Love it Proven reliability and toughness Off-road prowess is undeniable Updated technology keeps it at the front of the pack

Leave it Specs not as impressive as the competition Customers might want something more revolutionary



Further Reading

Read our full review on the 2020 Toyota Tacoma.

2020 Toyota Tacoma Arrives At Chicago With New Features And Mild Visual Updates

Read our full review on the 2018 Toyota Tacoma.

Read our full review of the 2019 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro.
Dublin, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Middle East and Africa Online Payment Methods 2019" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



MENA E-Commerce sees cash on delivery challenged by cards and mobile wallets

Cash on delivery has been a top payment method used by online shoppers in countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia. However, recent surveys cited in the report show that consumers are now becoming more comfortable with paying online. In the UAE, more than two-thirds of shoppers who paid online at least once by a card or a digital wallet will consistently choose this method in the future.



The African continent shows diverse preferences of digital buyers when it comes to payment means. South Africa stands out with the majority of shoppers paying online by credit or debit card. In Egypt, digital wallets such as PayPal and CashU are popular; while in Uganda, more than one in two online shoppers choose to pay via mobile money services, according to data cited in the report.



Mobile payment adoption is gradually taking off, driven by mobile wallets in the MENA region and mobile money in Sub-Saharan African countries, as shown in the report. A number of mobile wallet solutions were rolled out over the past months, including Google Pay in the UAE and Apple Pay in Saudi Arabia. At the same time, mobile money services such as M-Pesa are helping drive financial inclusion in African countries, where card and bank account penetration rates are generally low double or even single digits.

Report Highlights

In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, cash is used by digital buyers

Online shoppers in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE use cash on delivery as their top payment method. Notwithstanding, consumers are adapting more and more to paying online, suggests a survey mentioned in the report.

African online shoppers' payment preferences vary

There is a great deal of diversity amidst digital buyers' preferences of payment means in Africa. South Africa is distinct, where most shoppers paying online use credit or debit cards. This is juxtaposed with Egypt, where digital wallets are popular, and then again with Uganda, where mobile money services take the top seat, quotes the report.

The ground work is laid for mobile payment growth in the Middle East and Africa

Adoption rates for mobile payment are increasing in the region, compelled by MENA's mobile wallet usage and Sub-Saharan Africa's mobile money popularity. The publication cites that mobile wallet solutions like Apple Pay and Google Pay are being rolled out in the region, with the latest developments in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Questions Answered in this Report

What are the major digital payment trends in the Middle East and Africa?

How do payment method preferences of online shoppers vary between countries?

How high is the share of digital buyers using cash on delivery in various countries of the Middle East and Africa?

Which barriers prevent consumers from using online payments?

What is the projected growth of mobile payments in the Middle East and Africa by 2022?

Companies Mentioned



Apple Inc

Beam Wallet Ltd

CashU Inc

Google LLC

Mastercard Inc

Paypal Inc

Samsung Co. Ltd

Visa Inc.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c9jrtg/middle_east_and?w=12

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.
Swiss-Belhotel International has appointed Paul Uglesic as the General Manager for Swiss-Belinn Muscat in Oman.



(TRAVPR.COM) UAE - March 19th, 2019 - Swiss-Belhotel International has appointed Paul Uglesic as the General Manager for Swiss-Belinn Muscat in Oman. Paul has ten years of outstanding experience in the hospitality industry working with some of the worlds leading brands.

Making the announcement, Laurent A. Voivenel, Senior Vice President, Operations and Development for the Middle East, Africa and India, Swiss-Belhotel International, said, We are delighted to welcome Paul Uglesic to lead the team at Swiss-Belinn Muscat in Oman. Paul has a decade of strong knowledge and understanding of the hospitality sector as well as excellent pre-opening expertise targeted at achieving operational excellence and guest satisfaction. We are confident under his leadership this superb property, that is in advanced stages of development, will provide outstanding facilities in the 3-star category.

Paul started his executive career in the industry at Radisson Blu Resort & Spa in Croatia in 2009. In 2015, Paul moved to Dubai taking up the role of Executive Assistant Manager at Radisson Blu Hotel Dubai Deira Creek and performed a task force role as the acting General Manager at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Dubai Downtown. His most recent posting was at the Park Inn by Radisson Dubai Motor City as the opening General Manager.

Upon joining the Swiss-Belinn Muscat Paul said, I am truly proud to take up the position at the fantastic Swiss-Belinn Muscat in Oman. It is an exciting adventure for me since Swiss-Belhotel International is a great brand to work for. Together with my team, I am looking forward to launching the hotel and positioning it as a preferred address for both regional and international travellers.

Paul holds a bachelors degree in economics from the University of Adelaide in Australia along with several certifications and professional diplomas in hospitality management, hotel revenue management, and general managers program from the acclaimed Cornell University.

Expected to open this year, Swiss-Belinn Muscat is a superb 3-star hotel enjoying an outstanding location in close proximity to Muscat International Airport. Equipped with 128 rooms and suites, the hotel is being developed to offer its guests a comprehensive range of facilities including an all-day-dining restaurant, meeting space, gym, Wi-Fi access and 24-hours room service. Given its fantastic location near the airport, the hotel will serve as the perfect abode for transit passengers looking for stop-overs and airline crews as well as corporate travellers on a short visit to Oman or those facing unexpected flight halts.

For media contact:

Hina Bakht

Managing Director

EVOPS Marketing & PR

Mob: 00971 50 6975146

Tel: 00971 4 566 7355

Hina.bakht@evops-pr.com

www.evops-pr.com

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The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.
70% of this potent pollutant comes from fossil fuels, not biomass burning.

Recent news that the Arctic may be locked in to 4 to 5 degrees of warming even if emissions cease tomorrow has renewed discussion about doubling down on cutting short-term climate forcing pollutants such as black carbon. But what exactly is black carbon and where does it come from?

Essentially a fancy term for "soot", black carbon only stays in the atmosphere for daysnot decadesbut because it then settles, it continues to absorb heat from the sun's raise and therefore continues to speed up warming at the Earth's surface, with increased subsequent melting of glaciers and snow that eventually leads to sea level rise.

Often, the discussion about what it is and where it comes from has put a lot of attention on biomass burningwood stoves, burning of agricultural waste etcbut Inside Climate News reports that new research led by Patrik Winiger of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam has found a full 70% of Arctic black carbon comes from fossil fuels. The researchwhich was conducted over five yearstraced the majority of black carbon emissions to fossil fuel burning, particularly in northern countries including Canada, Northern China, and the Northern United Statesessentially areas above 42 degrees latitude, or roughly where the Southern border of New York state, Michigan and Oregon lie.

So it's presumably good news, then, that Norwegian oil demand is down thanks to electric cars and buses. And it's great to hear that both Finland and Michigan's largest utility are phasing out coal.

Every single fossil fuel retirement and/or emissions reduction should be celebrated everywhere. But in northern regions, they appear to be doing double duty.
And yet it still plans to sell more oil...

It's already been established that I'm a stubborn optimist. In general, that optimism tends to extend itself to corporate greenwash effortsI'd rather have even the most polluting of polluters doing something to reduce their impact, as every little bit makes the required lift a little lighter for the rest of us.

That said, news from Business Green that Italian oil major Eni is aiming for 'net zero' emissions should be met with a significant dose of skepticism. No doubt, the basic commitment to reducing operations-based emissions such as methane leaks, investing more in renewables, and then pouring considerable resources into major reforestation projects that could be sequestering as much as 20Mt a year of carbon emissions by 2030 is certainly a substantive move compared to previous "corporate responsibility" efforts by oil companies. But the fact that this commitment is accompanied by a promise to deliver 2.5 billion barrels of new oil by 2022 certainly puts a major damper on things.

Given the increasingly urgent nature of the climate crisis, it seems hard to reconcile the short-term expansion of emissions through oil expansion with the slow motion mitigation that's delivered through reforestation efforts. Yes, of course we have to plant more treesbut we also have to keep oil in the ground.

Stilloptimism alertI do see announcements like this as one more sign that the conversation is shifting. Much like the inadequate responses to climate strikes from law makers, even minor concessions are still a sign of a shifting balance of power.

So plant away, oil majors. And do keep putting money into renewables. Meanwhile the rest of us will do what we can to make your core business model obsolete.
Horrified biologists say it's the most plastic they've ever seen in a whale.

This past weekend a young whale washed up on Mindanao Island in the Philippines, dead from plastic-induced 'gastric shock.' When a team of researchers from the DBone Collector Museum in Davao City performed an autopsy, they pulled out a shocking 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of plastic from the whale's stomach.

"It's the most plastic we have ever seen in a whale," the biologists said in a Facebook post. They removed "40 kilos of plastic bags, including 16 rice sacks, 4 banana plantation style bags and multiple shopping bags." They said they will post a full list of contents in coming days.

The accompanying pictures are horrifying  entire armfuls of bloody decomposing bags being removed from the stomach. It's a disturbing reminder of just how toxic our plastic addiction is, and how production and consumption habits have to change.

While this whale in the Philippines breaks the record for quantity of plastic ingested, it's sadly not unusual for plastic ingestion to be a cause of death (not to mention entanglement and suffocation). A whale died in Thailand last year after swallowing 18 pounds worth of plastic bags, and a sperm whale was found a few months ago in Indonesia with 115 plastic cups in its stomach and some flip-flops.

D'Bone Museum's owner and marine biologist, Darrell Blatchley, told the Guardian that "in the 10 years they have examined dead whales and dolphins, 57 of them were found to have died due to accumulated rubbish and plastic in their stomachs." In its Facebook post, the museum called on the government to do something:

"It's disgusting. Action must be taken by the government against those who continue to treat the waterways and ocean as dumpsters."



But as we've argued many times on TreeHugger, this problem isn't about littering. It's about production, and the fact that something as non-biodegradable and harmful as plastic continues to be churned out by factories and used as go-to packaging for almost everything we buy.

Consumers still have a responsibility to choose their packaging wisely and to ensure their waste doesn't get littered around, but this is less their fault than it is that of the manufacturers who could offer better packaging options, but choose not to (or don't bother).

Government action is desperately needed to incentivize circular production, reusable containers, refill stations, plastic-free packaging innovations, and so much more. Then, hopefully, fewer whales would die.
Company announcement No. 372, 2019

The Board of Directors of H+H International A/S hereby invites the companys shareholders to attend the annual general meeting of H+H International A/S, which will be held on

Thursday 11 April 2019 at 14.30 CEST

at Regus Business Centre, Strandvejen 60, 2900 Hellerup, Denmark.

Please see attached PDF for the full version of the agenda including the complete proposals for the items on the agenda.



H+H International A/S

The Board of Directors

Attachments
English Danish

Today, Per Aarsleff A/S has signed a contract with the consortium Lighthouse United for the construction of Lighthouse at Aarhus . At 142 metres, Lighthouse will become Denmarks tallest building.

The design & build contract comprises the construction of the 43-storey Tower, two 11-storey low-rise buildings  Promenadehuset and Kanalhuset  and an associated two-level underground parking garage.

Jesper Kristian Jacobsen, CEO of Aarsleff, says: We have been very satisfied with the cooperation in the planning phase with Rune Kilden, Stine Hindby, Domis Ejendomme, the architect 3XN A/S, the consulting engineer Rambll A/S and the landscape architect Schnherr Landskab. The preliminary design phase has been a good and open process making the construction phase more efficient, and we look forward to continuing the good cooperation and commencing the construction of this exciting building in Aarhus.

The design and planning phase has involved several departments and companies of the Aarsleff Group. All parties involved in the project have taken part in preparing and contributing to buildability, e.g. by performing comprehensive wind studies of a model of the high-rise building. Also, we have performed full-scale testing of the ground engineering conditions by installing two bored DN2000-millimetre piles to a depth of almost 70 metres.

The construction work will begin in April 2019 and be handed over in several phases. The first apartments will be ready at the beginning of 2022 and the last apartments in the middle of 2022.

The contract has a value of approx. DKK 1.2 billion.

The contract does not affect Aarsleff's earnings expectations for the financial year 2018/19.



Further information:

CEO Jesper Kristian Jacobsen, tel. +45 8744 2222.



Attachment
laxmi@tribune.com

New Delhi, March 18

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) today gave a conditional approval to Rs 42,000-crore resolution plan of ArcelorMittal for debt-ridden Essar Steel, saying it will be subject to its final order in the appeal filed by the promoters.

A two-member Bench headed by Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya said there is no stay on the Resolution Professional of Essar Steel to disburse the funds among financial and operational creditors of the company.

The resolution professional will be the chairperson of the monitoring committee and will act in accordance with law to ensure that the company is a going concern, the tribunal said.

The appellate tribunal also said it will also look into the issue of discriminatory distribution of the funds between financial and operational creditors.  PTI
Belmont, NC, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Belmont, NC (March 19, 2019)  Michael P. Warsaw, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EWTN, has been named the third recipient of the Benedict Leadership Award. The award, given by the Benedict Leadership Institute at Belmont Abbey College, will be presented in a public ceremony at Belmont Abbey College on March 29.

The Institute selected Warsaw above all for his leadership as Chairman and CEO of EWTN, the largest religious media network in the world, and for his commitment to bringing the truth of the faith across the mainstream media and into millions of homes throughout the world.

While your life displays numerous reasons for being worthy of the Benedict Leadership Award, the Committee wishes to honor and highlight your leadership as Chairman and CEO of EWTN, as Publisher of The National Catholic Register, and your personal witness as a man of faith, wrote Executive Director Conor Gallagher in his selection letter to Warsaw.

The Committee also wishes to highlight Warsaws vision for EWTN global outreach and its impact on Catholics in the heart of Africa.

The Benedict Leadership Institute was founded in 2016 to develop and inspire Catholic leaders to transform society in light of their faith. The Benedict Leadership Award is a key activity of the Institute.

The Institute confers the Award annually, recognizing outstanding men and women whose achievements reflect the heroic leadership of St. Benedict. Last years recipient was Mr. Leonard Leo, preceded by Mr. Carl Anderson.

Recipients deliver a public address in their area of leadership, and are presented with a $10,000 cash award. Warsaw graciously turned down the cash award, but asked that the money be donated to the work of EWTN.

Belmont Abbey College, home of the Benedict Leadership Institute, is a Catholic college located near Charlotte, NC. Founded in 1876 by Benedictine monks, it is recognized by the Cardinal Newman Society as one of Americas top Catholic colleges.

For more information on the Benedict Leadership Institute please visit: http://benedictleadershipinstitute.org.

For media inquiries regarding the Benedict Leadership Institute, please contact Katie DeMoss at katied@saintbenedictpress.com

For media inquiries regarding Belmont Abbey College, please contact Rolando N. Rivas at RolandoRivas@bac.edu or 704-461-6561.

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laxmi@tribune.com

New Delhi, March 18

A day before the expiry of Supreme Court-set deadline, Reliance Communications (RCom) today paid Rs 458.77 crore to Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson, clearing outstanding dues and fending-off a possible jail term for its billionaire chairman Anil Ambani.

Sources close to RCom said the payment was made to Ericsson Monday evening, a day before the four-week deadline set by the Supreme Court to clear dues expires.

An Ericsson spokesperson confirmed that the telecom gear maker had received the full payment from the Reliance Communications (Rs 458.7 crore) on Monday and Rs 118 crore previously. The amount paid by RCom also includes interest.

Source of funds for the payment was not immediately known and it was expected that RCom will come out with a statement on the issue soon.

The Supreme Court had last month held Ambani in contempt for not paying Ericsson's dues despite promising to do so. It had threatened to send the billionaire as well as Chhaya Virani and Satish Seth - chairmen of two RCom units, to jail if they fail to pay the dues in four weeks.

Ericsson had moved a bankruptcy court in 2017 alleging it had not been paid dues of around Rs 1,600 crore after signing a deal in 2013 to operate, maintain and manage the telco's nationwide network. It extracted a personal guarantee from Ambani to pay the dues.

But repeated failure by RCom to comply with the promise and Ambani's personal guarantee landed him in trouble last month when the Supreme Court held him in contempt.

Thereafter, it suffered another blow when National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) last week refused to free up Rs 260 crore tax refunds withheld by lenders, saying it did not have jurisdiction to do so. Banks had opposed release of the tax refunds.

The apex court on February 20 had held Ambani guilty of contempt of court and ordered the debt-laden company to clear the dues to Ericsson within four weeks or face a 3-month jail term. The last date of making the payment was March 19.  PTI

Deadline expires today
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Mohali, March 18

The local police today seized 29,100 Canadian dollars (nearly Rs 15 lakh) from a Canada-based NRI on his arrival at the Chandigarh international airport in Mohali.

The man has been identified as Harmohan Grewal, who reached here after catching a connecting flight from Delhi on arrival from Canada, HS Bal, DSP at the airport police station, said.

We received a tip-off that Grewal was carrying Canadian currency beyond the permissible limit. He had landed in Delhi on March 17 and today, he reached Chandigarh at 2.15 pm, Bal said.

On being questioned, he confessed that he was carrying the foreign currency without declaring it to the authorities. The cash has been handed over to the Income Tax Department and investigations are on in the case, Bal said. According to the rules, an individual cannot carry more than 10,000 dollars.
editorial@tribune.com

Shashi Pal Jain

Kharar, March 18

The police have cracked the Savita Devi murder case, whose body was found on March 14 near Gillco Valley, Kharar, with the arrest of three persons, including her husband.

Senior Superintendent of Police Harcharan Singh Bhullar said Kirpal Singh Bajwa of Gillco Valley informed the Kharar police that when he went to his plot number 115 on the morning of March 14, he found the body of a woman lying on the rear side of shops adjoining his plot. The victim was 33 years old and a mother of three  two boys and a girl.

The police had registered a case under Section 302 and 34 of the IPC.

Bhullar said he constituted a special investigation team to solve the case under the supervision of SP (Investigation) Mohali Varun Sharma. The team included Kharar DSP Deep Kamal, DSP (Investigation), Mohali, Gurdev Singh Dhariwal, CIA Mohali in-charge Inspector Satwant Singh Sidhu and SHO, Kharar City, Inspector Bhagwant Singh. During the investigation, the victim was identified as Savita Devi of Balongi. The team found that Savita Devi was murdered by her husband Pintu in connivance with his three brothers.

Bhullar said Savita had a dispute with her husband Pintu and was living separately. Pintu used to suspect that his wife had an extramarital affair due to which he murdered Savita with the help of his brothers Amit, Deepak and Ram Kumar.

The SSP said on March 13, Amit called up his sister-in-law Savita and told her that wanted to meet her. Amit took her to Gillco Valley in a three-wheeler. Around 8.40 pm, Amit, along with the other suspects, killed Savita with a hammer and escaped from the spot. In this hustle, the keys of Pintus shop fell at the spot. Deepak and Amit came back later on a scooter, but they did not find the keys. They hit Savitas head with stones to ensure that she was dead. The next day all of them escaped to Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh by a train.

Bhullar said the police had arrested Ram Kumar, Amit and Pintu of Samailpur village in Najibabad, Uttar Pradesh, and a search was on for the fourth suspect, Deepak.

The SSP said the three suspects had admitted to the crime.
Manoj Joshi

Manoj Joshi

Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

The steps and missteps of the Modi governments Pakistan policy are well known. Their general range has been from naivete to realism and petulance. The policy has been all tactics  surgical strikes, airstrikes, diplomatic moves and declarations. What we cant get a measure of is its grand strategy. What is the endpoint that the government is aiming for when it comes to Pakistan?

Does it want to: (a) Hammer Pakistan militarily to the point of surrender? (b) Use covert instruments to break up the country or economic instruments to make it bankrupt? (c) Make it an international pariah like South Africa (of apartheid infamy)? (d) Persist with the older policy of transforming Pakistan into a mirror image of India?

India and Pakistans higher strategy in relation to each other goes back to their troubled birth. So, both aimed at ways and means of making the other a copy of themselves  India sought a secular, democratic Pakistan, while the latter kept pushing policies that would make India into some version of an authoritarian Hindu nation.

The stalwarts of the freedom struggle  Gandhi, Nehru, Patel or, for that matter, Subhas Chandra Bose  envisaged a country where religious identity would be submerged by identification with the nation. They were, however, blindsided by the Pakistan Movement that convinced a section of Indian Muslims that they needed their own State; they would never get political equality in a Hindu-dominated India.

Pakistans strategy has worked along the need to create effective parity with India through heavy military expenditure, alliances with great powers, developing nuclear weapons, and using covert operations and terrorism to break up its larger neighbour. Its eventual goal was a smaller, more Hindu-oriented India, an entity it could manage, and one that would justify its own existence.

Indias primary goal has been the consolidation of an enormously diverse nation and effecting its economic transformation. Within this larger goal, India has wanted to get Pakistan off its back. It did not want to divert resources to a policy that would dismantle or degrade Pakistan, simply manage it to the lowest level of violence.

India and its leaders, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, believed that since India was much more powerful, it could adopt a strategy of strategic restraint. They believed this could eventually yield a Pakistan that was more like India  tolerant, democratic and liberal. So, New Delhi engaged the Pakistani State, even as it became a military dictatorship, threw tantrums over Kashmir and, after 1980, began to use terrorists and separatists to destabilise India behind a shield of nuclear weapons.

A high point of sorts was reached in the Vajpayee-Manmohan years. In January 2004, Islamabad hosted the SAARC summit; its great achievement was an agreement on creating a South Asian Free Trade Area. Through meetings on the sidelines, Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf came up with an agreement for a comprehensive dialogue between the two countries relating to a range of issues, including terrorism and Jammu and Kashmir.

Indias grand strategy was now clearer  embed Pakistan in a larger South Asian economic area, resolve issues large and small and gradually normalise its conduct through trade, commerce, tourism and educational exchanges. Over the next couple of years, violence began to come down and the two sides came close to resolving the Kashmir issue as well.

Alarmed, the Pakistani deep state unleashed the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008, an action that successfully poisoned relations between the two countries and prevented the Manmohan Singh government from putting its Pakistan policy back on an even keel. The Mumbai attacks succeeded in disrupting the unfolding Indian strategy in relation to Pakistan.

After a year and a half in power, Modi shifted away decisively from the strategy of normalising Pakistan. We have seen tactical manifestations of a new Modi doctrine, but are yet to get a measure of the strategy itself. Perhaps there is none since the shift may be occasioned only by electoral considerations.

What we do, alarmingly, notice is that Pakistans larger project of dividing the subcontinent into its Muslim and Hindu components has moved ahead several notches in the Modi years. It has been helped, ironically, by the BJP and Sangh Parivar scheme of marginalising domestic Muslims and demonising Pakistan.

The gau raksha movement has seen increased coercion and physical attacks on Indian Muslims. In Kashmir, political dialogue has been abandoned for a policy of relentless military pressure. The Citizenship Amendment Bill is seeking to facilitate the grant of Indian citizenship to religious communities from South Asia, but it pointedly excludes Muslims.

As for Pakistan, the Modi teams views are hazy, but there is a lot of tactical noise about defeating and degrading the country through a mix of military and diplomatic means. But there is nothing in the military balance to suggest that we can transform Pakistan into the South Asian equivalent of the Palestinian West Bank. Even if Pakistan is broken up and left with only the rump of Punjab, it would still be twice the size of North Korea.

India simply lacks the resources of the US, which has degraded adversaries in Iraq, and is now attempting it in Iran. There are other key differences too  in both instances, nuclear weapons are/were not in play and neither of them is a neighbour of the US.

There is a saying, attributed to Chinese master Sun Tzu, that strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory, while tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Just what victory and defeat could mean in the India-Pakistan contest of grand strategies remains up in the air.
shalender@tribune.com

The birth pangs of a new party, with a secular thread, herald a newness of thought and political inventiveness in J&K. Bureaucrat-turned-politician Shah Faesal has in his tent a motley crowd, representing Muslims, Kashmiri Pandits, Sikhs, women, youth, and other neglected communities in far-flung areas  avowing ab hawa badlegi. Deeply troubled for long decades, the state desperately needs sui generis ideas that actually benefit the people. It is refreshing when a politician talks of all, beyond the limiting confines of religion or region. In that, Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Movement (JKPM) has made an unmistakable positive start, talking of bridging the gap between Kashmir and Delhi and politics of humanism.

A pertinent message was sent out at the party launch. Our politics is incomplete without the dignified return of Kashmiri Pandits, asserted Faesal, the 2010-batch UPSC topper, condemning attempts to divide the state. An ideology is trying to pitch Muslims against Hindus and Muslims against Buddhists, Kashmir against Jammu and Jammu against Pir Panjal. (But only Quranic verses were recited at the launch.) The party has some big plans and has rightly identified the scourge. Now, for taking it head-on, the JKPM may have to provide an alternative political narrative. The NC-Congress romance has soured, with the NC refusing to cede any seat to the Congress; PDP has weakened its position with its ill-fated alliance with BJP; and BJPs possible gains are only in Jammu and Ladakh.

Student leader Shehla Rashid, too, has got a chance to show her ardour beyond campus politics. In the real, hardcore political world, reality is more prosaic. Politics of pragmatism often tilts the scales and weighs down idealism. That will loom as the second-most abiding challenge for the fledging party. The first being a toehold in the political quagmire of the state, and a place in the hearts of enervated Kashmiris. About 2,000 people were at the launch. A beginning has been made. The road is long and winding, but even if a single individual, in personal or political capacity, speaks of brotherhood, peace and inclusiveness, theres hope for the Valley, yet.
shalender@tribune.com

India may finally have an Ombudsman, someone charged with checking corruption and looking into complaints against public servants, including ministers, bureaucrats and even former prime ministers. The Lokpal Act, 2013, came about after a prolonged struggle, notably by social activist Anna Hazare. Lack of political will ensured delay in the implementation of the Act, and it took a nudge from the Supreme Court for the government to get going on selecting the Lokpal.

The Selection Committee itself was formed five years after the Act, that too after an NGO filed a contempt petition against the government in the Supreme Court. It is supposed to comprise the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the Leader of the Opposition, the Chief Justice of India and an eminent jurist. Once constituted, the committee had its issues. Mallikarjun Kharge, the Congress representative, did not attend the meetings. He was protesting the governments decision to call him a special invitee instead of Leader of the Opposition. Both sides stuck to their stand, leading to the delay.

The expected announcement of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose as the first Lokpal will, hopefully, set to rest all earlier controversies and delays. He and the members of his team will need proper infrastructure and full support of the government to perform. The experience in various states where the institution of Lokpal exists has shown that adequate support is seldom extended. The country has a crying need for an empowered Ombudsman. The new team has its task cut out. Even if it is hampered at some levels, it would realise the tremendous power of the public which is looking up to it to cleanse the Augean stables of public life. Fighting corruption is now a political battle cry; it is high time the institution created for this express purpose be empowered so that real change can come about in the country and its polity.
editorial@tribune.com

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, March 18

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday told the Special NIA Court that Pakistani national Rahila Wakeel, who approached the court on March 11 for allowing her and other Pakistani witnesses to depose in the Samjhauta blasts case, was not a witness.

Wakeel had earlier claimed that her father had died in the blasts. Two improvised explosive devices exploded in the Samjhauta Express near the Dewana railway station in Panipat on February 18, 2007, killing 68 and injuring 12. Most of the victims were Pakistani nationals.

We submitted in court that summons had thrice been issued to 13 Pakistani witnesses, which did not serve their purpose, said Rajan Malhotra, NIAs special public prosecutor. He said the witnesses were either travelling by that train or were related to the blast victims. He said the summons were first issued on March 20, 2017, for appearance on July 4, 5 and 6 that year.

He pointed out the response of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad, which read, The enclosures may be returned to the sending authorities in India with the observation to indicate basis of their request and to send the summons at least four months before the date of hearing to avoid any inconvenience.

He stated that the summons were issued again on July 4, 2017, for appearance on November 27, 28 and 29 that year, but the NIA did not get any response. He said the summons were issued for the third time on April 9, 2018, for appearance on August 3 and 4 last year, but there was no response. In the absence of any communication from the Pakistan government, we are not in a position to vouch for the authenticity or authorisation of the application submitted in court, added Malhotra.

This application is a part of delaying tactics with mala fide intention. Wakeel does not have any locus standi. How can she claim that other witnesses did not get summons? said Mukesh Garg, counsel for Aseemanand, an accused.

We told the court that this matter concerned India and Pakistan. I said these witnesses had relatives in India and they should be given an opportunity. Neither the Pakistan government nor the Indian High Commission helped them when summons were issued, said Momin Malik, counsel for Wakeel.

She was first told that her father Mohammed Wakeel had been killed in the blasts. When we approached the authorities for compensation, we were told that he was not among the deceased, he said.

She had also approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court though her application was pending in the Special NIA Court. Her petition in the High Court is not maintainable, Malhotra stated.

Wakeels maternal uncle Maroof, resident of Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, came to court on Monday for the resumed hearing. The court would decide on the application on Wednesday.
amansharma@tribunemail.com

New Delhi, March 19

In one of the rare occasions, President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday awarded Shaurya Chakra to 16-year-old Irfan Ramzan Sheikh for fighting militants who attacked his residence in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Shaurya Chakra is usually awarded to armed forces and para-military personnel for gallantry otherwise in the face of the enemy.

During the intervening night of October 16-17 of 2017, militants cordoned off the house of Sheikh. His father Mohammad Ramzan was an ex-sarpanch with affiliations to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

When Sheikh, the eldest son of Mohammad Ramzan, opened the door, he found three militants in the verandah of the house armed with rifles and grenades.

Sensing that the militants could harm his family, he exhibited highest degree of courage and faced the militants for sometime so as to avoid their entry inside the house. In meantime, his father came out and the militants pounced on him, resulting in scuffle, the citation for the award read.

Sheikh did not think for a moment for his own safety and pounced upon the militants for safeguarding the life of his father and other family members, it read.

The militants also resorted to indiscriminate firing, resulting in severe injury to Sheikhs father. He later succumbed.

However, Sheikh did not lose courage and continued to engage in scuffle with one of the militants, who resorted to indiscriminate firing resulting in severe injuries to the militant as well.

On seeing one of their associates injured, the militants tried to flee. However, Sheikh chased them and they left the body of their fellow militant behind.

Irfan Ramzan Sheikh exhibited the extraordinary show of bravery and maturity in such a small age, the citation read.

Currently, studying in Class X, Sheikh aspires to become an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer.  PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, March 18

A high-level meeting of the National Conferences parliamentary board decided on Monday that the party president Farooq Abdullah will contest the Lok Sabha election from Srinagar and senior leader Mohammad Akbar Lone will contest from Baramulla.

Sources in the party said the decision was taken after a lengthy meeting of the partys parliamentary board, which is headed by Farooq and was attended by several senior leaders of the party, including vice-president Omar Abdullah and general secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar. The meeting took place at the party headquarters in the city here and lasted for several hours.

Farooq, who had lost the 2014 parliamentary election from the Srinagar constituency and made a comeback win in the 2017 bypoll, has been named the partys candidate from the central Kashmir (Srinagar) constituency, the sources said. The sources said the board also decided that Akbar, who has been a legislator as well as former Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, would be the partys candidate for the north Kashmir constituency of Baramulla.

The sources said the decision to name the candidate for the south Kashmir constituency of Anantnag as well as for three other seats in Jammu and Ladakh regions had been postponed as talks about seat-sharing with the Congress were still on.

The party president was apprised of the meeting about the progress in talks with the Congress and we are expecting some breakthrough in a day or two, the sources said.

The Anantnag constituency, which includes four volatile districts of south Kashmir, is a fiercely contested constituency as three major political parties  National Conference, Congress and PDP  have significant electoral sway over their Assembly segments.

The National Conference and Congress had forged a pre-poll alliance in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and also shared seats between them. Despite this, they had lost from all six seats of the state.

No decision on other seats yet

Sources said the decision to name the candidate for the south Kashmir constituency of Anantnag as well as for three other seats in the Jammu and Ladakh regions had been postponed as talks about seat-sharing with the Congress were still on
editorial@tribune.com

Amit Khajuria

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 18

Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir refugee leader Rajiv Chuni has announced that he would contest the Lok Sabha elections from the Jammu-Poonch parliamentary seat so that he can take up the issues of refugees who feel let down by all political parties.

In an interview with The Tribune, Chuni claimed that there were nearly 5 lakh refugee voters in the Jammu region who could tilt the balance. He is confident that en bloc voting by the refugees would elect him to the Lok Sabha, where he would work to solve the problems of the people uprooted from their homes during the tribal invasion of J&K in 1947-48.

The refugees have come from Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The successive Central and state governments have not done much for them.

We have given a chance to every political party. Last time, the BJP had assured us that it would give us our due share and rehabilitate us on a permanent basis. It had also promised an all-time settlement amount to us, but nothing happened. We have been left high and dry. The BJP neither aired out grievances in Parliament nor made them known to the Prime Minister, Chuni said.

This time, the refugees insisted that I contest the election. We want to show our strength to all political parties, which have always played vote-bank politics with us, he said.

Chuni and his organisation, SOS International, along with West Pakistan refugees had campaigned for the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections for both Jammu-Poonch and Kathua-Udhampur seats.

The PM has to address thousands of issues, but it is the duty of the MP to convey our issues to him. Ironically, Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh, who was elected by us, remained silent on our issues, Chuni said.

We do not have much money and power to campaign in such a large constituency. But my organisation has done a lot for refugees. Our 30 years of social service will help me in my campaign, he said. He said he had all along been holding rallies and protests to seek relief for the refugees.

Chuni said the refugees had not decided to contest from the Kathua-Udhampur seat, but would campaign against the BJP and support the candidate who would talk in favour of the refugees.

There are 36,819 families of PoK refugees in the Jammu region. Of them 26,319 families had come in 1947 and 10,500 families had come in 1965 and 1971. They have been demanding a rehabilitation package for the past 70 years.

Even after the recommendations of the state Cabinet in October 2014 for Rs 9,096 crore, reservation for them in government, professional and technical college and 8,500 jobs, the Centre had announced only Rs 2,000 crore for them on November 7, 2015.

The PoK refugees are demanding Rs 25 lakh per family and benefits on the pattern of the Kashmiri Pandit migrants, eight seats for PoK refugees in the Legislative Assembly, permission to visit religious places in PoK and return of the cash deposited at Jammu and Kashmir Bank at Mirpur with interest.
Company making changes in key leadership positions in R&D, Marketing and Sales Finance functions

Milette named President of Nissan Canada

NASHVILLE, Tenn., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nissan is making several changes to its North American management team as it accelerates efforts to meet targets outlined in the companys midterm business plan, M.O.V.E. to 2022. All changes are effective April 1, 2019, unless otherwise noted.

Research & Development

Chris Reed, vice president, Platform and Technology Engineering, is promoted to the role of senior vice president, Research and Development, Nissan Technical Center North America (NTCNA). Reed replaces Takeshi Yamaguchi, who was recently named corporate vice president and Alliance global vice president, Customer Performance & Computer Aided Engineering / Test Engineering.

Masami Honma, general manager, Body Engineering, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. (NML), is joining NTCNA as vice president, Platform and Technology Engineering, replacing Reed.

Sales & Marketing

Allyson Witherspoon, general manager, Global Brand Engagement, NML, returns to North America and is promoted to vice president, Nissan Marketing Communications & Media. Witherspoon replaces Jeremy Tucker who has elected to leave Nissan to pursue other opportunities.

Nissan Motor Acceptance Corporation

Shishir Bhushan, managing director, Nissan Renault Financial Services India, is named vice president, Operations, Nissan Motor Acceptance Corporation.

Nissan Canada

Effective May 1, Steve Milette, currently regional vice president, Nissan Canada, Inc. (NCI) is promoted to president, NCI. He replaces Joni Paiva, who will become regional vice president, Marketing and Sales, for Nissans Africa, Middle East and India (AMI) region.

For more information on executive changes at Nissan Canada, please click here.

About Nissan North America

In North America, Nissan's operations include automotive styling, engineering, consumer and corporate financing, sales and marketing, distribution and manufacturing. Nissan is dedicated to improving the environment under the Nissan Green Program and has been recognized annually by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year since 2010. More information on Nissan in North America and the complete line of Nissan and INFINITI vehicles can be found online at www.nissanusa.com and www.infinitiusa.com, or visit the U.S. media sites nissannews.com and infinitinews.com.

For more information about our products, services and commitment to sustainable mobility, visit nissan-global.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and see all our latest videos on YouTube.

About Nissan Motor Co.

Nissan is a global full-line vehicle manufacturer that sells more than 60 models under the Nissan, INFINITI and Datsun brands. In fiscal year 2017, the company sold 5.77 million vehicles globally, generating revenue of 11.9 trillion yen. On April 1, 2017, the company embarked on Nissan M.O.V.E. to 2022, a six-year plan targeting a 30% increase in annualized revenues to 16.5 trillion yen by the end of fiscal 2022, along with cumulative free cash flow of 2.5 trillion yen. As part of Nissan M.O.V.E. to 2022, the company plans to extend its leadership in electric vehicles, symbolized by the world's best-selling all-electric vehicle in history, the Nissan LEAF. Nissans global headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, manages operations in six regions: Asia & Oceania; Africa, the Middle East & India; China; Europe; Latin America; and North America. Nissan has partnered with French manufacturer Renault since 1999 and acquired a 34% stake in Mitsubishi Motors in 2016. The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance sold 10.76 million vehicles combined in calendar year 2018.

For more information about our products, services and commitment to sustainable mobility, visit

nissan-global.com . You can also follow us on Facebook , Instagram , Twitter and LinkedIn and see all our latest videos on YouTube .

Media Contact:

Brian Brockman

Director, Corporate Communications

Office: 615-725-1447

Brian.Brockman@Nissan-USA.com

More information is available at the following link: https://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/releases/us-march-nissan-announces-senior-management-changes-in-north-america
shriaya.dutt@tribuneindia.com

Tribune Web Desk

Chandigarh, March 19

Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi, who hasnt been on the screen for quite some time will return to play the role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and veteran actor Manoj Joshi is essaying Amit Shah's character.

The release of the biography has been preponed by a week. PM Narendra Modi was earlier scheduled to hit the theatres on April 12. But, now the film is scheduled to release on April 5. Along with this the makers also released the second poster of the film.

"5th April 2019, PM Narendra Modi," Vivek wrote on Instagram.

In the poster, Vivek and some children are following the tricolour theme. The actor is seen dressed like Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a white kurta-pyjama. He is surrounded by children who are dressed in saffron and green ethnic attire.

"PM Narendra Modi" will showcase the journey of Modi from his humble beginning to his years as the Gujarat Chief Minister, to the landmark win in the 2014 general elections, and finally becoming the PM.

Sharing how Vivek has transformed himself into the role of Modi, Pandit said in a statement: "I observed Vivek very carefully during the shoot. He would be quiet on sets most of the time and the minute Omung would say, 'action'; it was as if Vivek would transform in front of the camera into this larger than life persona of the Prime Minister."

The first poster of the film was unveiled by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in 23 languages in January.

The biopic is being helmed by National Award-winner Omung Kumar B, and produced by Ssingh, Anand Pandit and Suresh Oberoi.
shriaya.dutt@tribuneindia.com

Dubai, March 19

In an Indiana Jones style promotional campaign for Dubai Tourism, its ambassador and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan is seen performing death defying stunts to unravel mysteries.

SRK features in a series of videos that are part of Dubai Tourism's #BeMyGuest campaign. It consists of a series of films across social media and online platforms, highlighting iconic locations and sites in the Middle Eastern city.

The third video launched on Monday starts off with the "Chennai Express" star reading a riddle: " In the jewel of the ocean, they fall from the sky." The subtitle quotes Shah Rukh saying: "I need to solve some clues." He then jets off on an exciting adventure, exploring and solving riddles till he reaches his destination La Perle, an acrobat show.

The video ends with Shah Rukh narrating to his friend the mystery he solved, which would lead to the next one.

Throughout the video, Shah Rukh reaches out to his fans across the world, seeking their help in solving the riddles, and inviting them to find what other fantastic experiences await them in Dubai.

Three coins, one old box and tons of clues to solve. Wonder what my next challenge will be? @visitdubai



Catch the action and find out more on https://t.co/nBpJTAVmit #BeMyGuest pic.twitter.com/Rs8FmQIMKO  Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) 18 March 2019

The 53-year-old star tweeted the minute-long video on his twitter handle: "Three coins, one old box and tons of clues to solve. Wonder what my next challenge will be?"  IANS
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Actress Madhuri Dixit Nene and her husband Shriram Nenes upcoming Marathi production 15 August is set to release on Netflix on March 29. Theres always been a part of me that wanted to create and back meaningful films, and there couldnt be a better starting point for me than 15 August, Madhuri said in a statement. She added: This is an endearing, relatable story.  IANS
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Panaji, March 18

BJPs Pramod Sawant will be the new Goa Chief Minister, party sources said here today, ending the suspense over who will succeed Manohar Parrikar, who died yesterday after battling pancreatic cancer. He was cremated this evening with state honours.

Sawant, who is the Goa Assembly Speaker, arrived at Raj Bhavan Monday late night to take oath. The two would-be Deputy CMs are Goa Forward Party chief Vijai Sardesai and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party MLA Sudin Dhavalikar.

As per the arrangement with the allies, an MLA each from the two small parties backing the BJP in the coastal state will be made Deputy CM. It was after a series of meetings that the BJP managed to break the deadlock, accepting the allies key demand. There was no such arrangement in place when Parrikar was the CM.

Earlier in the day, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said a consensus eluded the BJP and its allies on the next CM. The Goa Forward Party and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Partys three MLAs each, an equal number of Independents and BJP legislators were locked in discussions since late Sunday night to reach a consensus on Parrikars successor. Gadkari led the discussions.

The Congress is currently the single largest party in the state with 14 MLAs. The BJP has 12 legislators in the 40-member Assembly, whose strength now stands at 36 owing to the demise of BJP MLA Francis DSouza earlier this year and Parrikar on Sunday, and the resignation of Congress MLAs Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte last year.

The Congress MLAs met Governor Mridula Sinha and staked claim to form the government in the coastal state. Led by Leader of the Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar, they went to Raj Bhawan and handed over a letter to the Governor. We are saddened by the CMs demise, but before his final rites are performed, a new government has to be formed...The Governor acknowledged that the Congress is the single largest party and said she will get back to us, Kavlekar told the media.

In Delhi, the Congress accused the BJP of creating an artificial majority on the directions of the Centre. Senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said, The one who has a majority should form a government. It is not right for democracy if an artificial majority is created as per the directions of the Central government.

Meanwhile, PM Narendra Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah, Union ministers and CMs of BJP-ruled states attended Parrikars funeral at Miramar. Parrikars elder son Utpal lit the funeral pyre.

The mortal remains of the 63-year-old BJP leader were kept in a flower-bedecked hearse. The affection Parrikar enjoyed was on display as hundreds of common folks and his party workers lined up to pay tributes.  PTI

WHY 4 vacancies
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Itanagar, March 19

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday that his party would restore the special category status to Arunachal Pradesh and other states in the northeast if elected to power.

There are some states in the country which required special status because of their unique problems and difficulties such as connectivity, terrain and infrastructure, Gandhi said at an election rally here.

During the Congress rule at the Centre, he said, Arunachal Pradesh and other NE states used to enjoy special category status.

Arunachal had a special place in the heart of the Congress party and we would like to have a dil ka rishta with the people of the state, he said.

Gandhi said the Congress would not allow the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill to be passed in Rajya Sabha because the bill is detrimental to the people of the northeast.

We will not allow the suppression of the people of the northeast, Gandhi said.

The Congress will never attack the language, culture, customs and tradition of Arunachal Pradesh and other NE states, he said.

Election to the 60-member Arunachal Pradesh Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats will be held on April 11. PTI
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, March 18

Virtually refusing the seven seats offered by the Congress to the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, BSP national president Mayawati today claimed that the mahagathbandhan was capable of defeating the BJP on its own.

Responding to the Congress gesture, Mayawati said in a tweet that the UP Congress was free to independently contest all 80 seats in the state as the mahagadbandhan was capable of defeating the BJP on its own.

The Congress should not spread confusion by compulsorily leaving seven seats for the alliance in UP, said Mayawati.

Yesterday, UPCC president Raj Babbar had announced that as a reciprocal gesture, the party would not contest the seven seats for which top leaders of the alliance would contest.

The SP-BSP alliance had earlier announced not to field candidates from Rae Bareli and Amethi.

On March 12, Mayawati had categorically ruled out chances of any alliance with the Congress not only in UP, but anywhere in the country.

The very next day, AICC general secretaries Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Jyotiraditya Scindia had visited emerging Dalit leader Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar Azad at a private hospital in Meerut further angering Mayawati.

Analysts believe the BSP chief thinks the Congress is poaching away her Dalit vote bank by propping up Chandra Shekhar. After his meeting with Priyanka, Chandra Shekhar made known his intention of contesting against PM Narendra Modi from wherever he decided to contest.

Will defeat BJP

The Congress should not spread confusion by leaving seven seats for the alliance in UP The UP Congress is free to independently contest all 80 seats in the state as the mahagathbandhan is capable of defeating the BJP on its own.  Mayawati, BSP Supremo
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Panaji, March 19

Goa Governor Mridula Sinha has called a special session of Goa Assembly on Wednesday for the state government under new Chief Minister Pramod Sawant to prove it held majority in the House, an official said.

Sawant, previously Speaker of Goa Legislative Assembly, was picked on Monday as late chief minister Manohar Parrikars successor after talks with allies. Sawant, considered Parrikars protege, took oath a little before 2 am on Tuesdayhours after Parrikar, who died of pancreatic cancer on Sunday, was cremated.

BJPs quick move to appoint a successor was to prevent their rival Congress party from wresting power in the state.

Speaking to the press earlier in the day after he met Parrikars family at their their private residence at Dona Paula near here around noon, Sawant said his priority would be to reach out to every person, and carry forward the glorious legacy of good governance left behind by Parrikar.

Manohar Parrikar is a father-like figure for me. He was my inspiration...everything. I am here only because of him...I became MLA, then Speaker, and now CM only because of Parrikar, Sawant told reporters after meeting kin of the late chief minister.

When asked to list his priorities, Sawant said, As a chief minister, my aim would be to reach out to every person and complete his works.

Sawant also appealed that he not be greeted with bouquets for being the new CM, as the state is in mourning.

I have taken charge with great humility and gratitude towards my idol and mentor Manohar bhai (Parrikar). I seek your blessings and support to carry forward the glorious legacy of commitment towards good governance, he said.

In the wake of the fluid political situation in Goa and Congress repeated attempts to wrest power, the BJP leadership ensured that the new chief minister was in place quickly.

Sawant was sworn in by Governor Mridula Sinha at Raj Bhavan at 1.50 am.

Sinha also administered the oath of office to 11 other ministers, including those from the BJPs allies MGP and the GFP.

Parrikar died at his private residence on Sunday evening due to pancreatic cancer. He was cremated with full state and military honours on Monday evening. Agencies
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Gurugram, March 19

NSA Ajit Doval said on Tuesday that the leadership of the country is fully capable of dealing with any act of terror and against those who abet it.

Addressing the 80th raising day of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) here, Doval said India had not forgotten and would not forget the terror attack in Pulwama.

I can assure you that the countrys leadership is very capable to effectively respond to such acts of terrorism and those who aid it, he said.

Doval, a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is believed to be the person behind the planning of the air strike on the camp of Jaish-e-Mohammad in Balakot in Pakistan, carried out by the Indian Air Force in retaliation to the Pulwama terror attack.

What should we do? What should be our way, our aim and our response and time to respond? The countrys leadership is both capable and courageous to (do) that. The country will tackle all such challenges and we have the courage to do this, he said.

The national security advisor paid tributes to the 40 jawans killed in Pulwama, saying it was a very sad incident and the country would always be indebted to these personnel and their families.

Doval asked the CRPF not to look back or worry about the past but enhance its professionalism, credibility training and physical strength.

If your morale is high then countrys future is safe, he said.

Doval said world history is replete with examples of constitutional crises and government collapsing when the internal security of a nation is threatened.

The CRPF, he said, had to take a lead role in ensuring peace and law and order. As the lead internal security force of the country, the CRPF has an onerous task on its shoulders to render the duties.

The CRPF, a three-lakh-personnel force, was raised in 1939 as Crown Representatives Police during the British rule and was granted the Presidents Colour this day in 1950 by first home minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

It is the highest honour bestowed on a force in recognition of exceptional service rendered by it to the nation, both during war and peace. PTI
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Ahmedabad, March 19

The Central Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday told a special CBI court that the Gujarat government had declined sanction to prosecute retired police officers DG Vanzara and NK Amin in the alleged fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others.

After going through a letter submitted to the court of special CBI judge JK Pandya by CBI lawyer RC Kodekar, the court said the sanction to prosecute the former officers, who were accused in the case, under Section 197 of the CrPC, was declined by the state government.

The defence lawyers then sought permission to file an application to drop proceedings against the two former police officers.

The court granted the request and asked them to file an application on March 26.

The court had earlier rejected discharge applications of the two ex-officers and asked the CBI to clear its stand on whether it wanted to get sanction to prosecute them from the state government.

Accordingly, the CBI wrote to the state government requesting for the same.

Vanzara and Amin are two of the seven accused chargesheeted by the CBI in the case.

Vanzara is a former deputy inspector general of police, while Amin retired as superintendent of police.

Jahan, a 19-year-old woman from Mumbra near Mumbai, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an alleged fake encounter by police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

Gujarat Police had then claimed that the four had links with terrorists and had plotted to kill then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. PTI
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Sangrur, March 18

With the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) finalising former Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsas nomination for the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat, his father and Rajya Sabha MP Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, who quit the party posts six months ago, today asked him not to contest the polls. This could spell trouble for the SAD.

Dhindsa Senior had in January this year sought the resignation of Sukhbir Singh Badal as party president. My stand today is the same, he told mediapersons here. I have told my son not to enter the poll fray. A five-time MLA, he understands politics well, he said, hinting in case he disregarded his advice, he would not be canvassing for his son.

The familial differences could mar the chances of a SAD victory in Sangrur.

Dhindsa, who has shunned public events ever since he resigned from party posts, was here at a felicitation function on being awarded the Padma Bhushan. The rebel MP, sources said, held meetings with Taksali leaders last week.

Meanwhile, a day after calling off talks with AAP, the SAD (Taksali) was back negotiating a deal with Sukhpal Khaira's Punjabi Ekta Party on Monday.
Herndon, VA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced today that the Virginia Founders Fund has invested in Norfolk, Va.-based Ario Technologies Inc., a developer of augmented reality application solutions for the web and mobile that allow companies to save money, increase revenue, improve worker skills, and measure performance by allowing employees to both train and perform workplace duties illustrated on a mobile device. Ario plans to use this investment from CIT to support their current sales, expand their team with staff needed to accelerate product development, accommodate growth, and take advantage of market opportunities.





Over the next decade, it is estimated that the skills gap that exists in the manufacturing industry will leave 2.4 million jobs unfilled. This is due to a number of factors, including companies that lack the time or means to provide education or training, ultimately putting pressure on manufacturing and industrial firms to move their operations overseas. Ario is working to solve the skills gap in American industrial and manufacturing jobs by providing the industry with a cutting edge, easy to use means to train, educate and improve the existing workforce while maintaining continuous operations.





The information that drives the operations of industrial environments is constantly changing. Ario is helping organizations take their flat, 2D, paper-based procedures and turn them into incredibly useful spatial documentations, said Ario CEO, Joe Weaver. Our platform utilizes augmented reality to empower workers to make fewer errors and boost productivity by providing greater spatial context to complicated environments. We are grateful for the support of CIT and the Virginia Founders Fund, whos investment commitment very early on in this seed round proved catalytic and is playing a major role in shrinking the skills gap of this critical industry.





The Ario augmented reality system enables teams to create, share and view real-time spatial information, ultimately allowing users to go out into the real world and associate real-world data in its physical location. It is a two-way process, where a worker can add virtual notes for future reference for a different worker. Additionally, it allows for different roles in which, for example, an electrician would only see information about an electrical system whereas a plumber would have a completely different view in the same environment. Companies using Ario will save money by reducing turnover, increase revenue by boosting existing worker performance and safety, improve skills by delivering expert knowledge to more workers in more places, and measure performance by easily capturing worker data and refining processes.





CIT believes that any way to minimize the skill gap is crucial to keeping our technology-focused society moving forward. We see the potential for Ario to have a huge impact on furthering the education and confidence of present and future workers in industrial America, said Thomas Weithman, Managing Director of CIT GAP Funds and Chief Investment Officer at MACH37. It is very encouraging that Ario has already engaged with high profile projects, including their relationship with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacifics (SSC Pacific) Battle Space Exploitation of Mixed Reality (BEMR Lab) to form a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to conduct research on leveraging augmented reality for training and maintenance.





The Virginia Founders Fund, which launched in 2018, focuses on companies with a female, minority or veteran founder, or other entrepreneurs located in regions outside of Northern Virginia to complement investment resources and entrepreneurial support programs emerging in the regional innovation communities around the Commonwealth. CIT believes that these often-overlooked communities will play an increasingly critical role in Virginias technology future, and that the fund will enhance accessibility to the company growth resources available through CITs large and growing investor network.





For more information, please visit https://www.cit.org/.





About Ario

We believe that knowledge-sharing is a key component to closing the technical skills gap that exists in the workforce; and in 2016 we set out to redefine what it means to capture and share skills. We started this journey by building the Ario platform that enables knowledge-sharing by using augmented reality and we are excited to enable more people to do more things. Our team of infinitely curious, creative-technologists are working hard to provide industrial, manufacturing and energy companies with cutting-edge, easy-to-use, and efficient means to train, educate, and improve their workforce while maintaining continuous operations. For more information, please visit: https://ario.com/.





About CIT GAP Funds

CIT GAP Funds makes seed-stage equity investments in Virginia-based technology, clean tech and life science companies with a high potential for achieving rapid growth and generating significant economic return for entrepreneurs, co-investors and the Commonwealth of Virginia. CIT GAP Funds investments are overseen by the CIT GAP Funds Investment Advisory Board (IAB). This independent, third-party panel consists of leading regional entrepreneurs, angel and strategic investors, and venture capital firms such as New Enterprise Associates, Grotech Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Harbert Venture Partners HIG Ventures, Edison Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Intersouth Partners, SJF Ventures, Carilion Health Systems, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, and Alpha Natural Resources. For more information, please visit www.citgapfunds.org.

Attachments
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 19

The first meeting of the newly formed Haryana Congress coordination committee happened under the shadow of factionalism with senior MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi skipping the meeting.

AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad skirted the question of absence of Bishnoi from the meeting though state party chief Ashok Tanwar said Bishnoi may be busy.

The coordination committee decided to launch Haryana Congress campaign after Holi and also resolved to hold a meeting of party workers before the formal campaign launch.

The meeting was underway for an hour at AICC headquarters, under the chairmanship of former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

All committee has 15 members, including Tanwar, CLP leader Kiran Choudhry, Rajya Sabha MP Kumari Selja and MLA Randeep Surjewala among others.

Azad today also ruled out any alliance with the AAP in Haryana, and said theres no scope of any alliance in the state.

The coordination panel members will plan a bus travel across Haryana post Holi. Today was a preliminary meeting of the panel ahead of Lok Sabha polls.

Azad also said the party will win all the seats in the state.

Haryana has 10 LS seats.
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Male, March 18

The Maldives today reaffirmed its India-First Policy, saying it looks forward to working closely with India on all issues and will remain sensitive towards its security and strategic concerns as External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held talks with the countrys top leadership.

The Maldivian leaders also expressed commitment to support Indias efforts to combat terrorism, particularly cross-border terrorism, and crimes such as piracy, organised crime, narcotic drugs and human trafficking.

Swaraj arrived here on Sunday on a two-day visit, the first full-fledged bilateral trip to the strategically located Indian Ocean island nation after the government of President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih came to power in November last year. She held talks with President Solih, Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid, former President Mohamed Nasheed and other top leaders.

The External Affairs Minister and Solih took stock of the progress made in bilateral ties since his visit to India in December 2018.

Swaraj and her Maldivian counterpart Shahid during their meeting on Sunday discussed the entire gamut of bilateral relations and also noted the number of high- level exchanges between the two countries over the past three months. The bilateral talks between the Foreign Ministers was followed by a joint ministerial meeting in which Swaraj held discussions with Shahid, Defence Minister Mariya Ahmed Didi, Finance Minister Ibrahim Ameer and other ministers. She also met Maldivian Home Minister Imran Abdulla on Monday and discussed steps to continue the upward trajectory in bilateral relationship.

The two foreign ministers agreed on the importance of maintaining peace and security in the Indian Ocean Region and to strengthen coordination in enhancing regional maritime security. The Maldivian side expressed its support for Indias candidature for permanent membership of an expanded and reformed UNSC. The Maldivian side also reiterated support for Indias candidature for non-permanent seat for 2020-21.

Swaraj reiterated that India attaches the highest importance to its relationship with the Maldives, which is marked by trust, transparency, mutual understanding, and sensitivity. She said in line with Government of Indias Neighbourhood First policy, India stands ready to fully support the Government of Maldives in its socio-economic development.  PTI

Visa exemption among Three pacts signed

India and the Maldives signed three agreements  on exemption from visa requirement for holders of diplomatic and official passports, regarding Indian grant assistance for implementation of high-impact community development projects through local bodies and on collaboration in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energy
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Beijing, March 19

In a rare acknowledgment, China on Monday described the 2008 Mumbai attacks carried out by Pakistan-based LeT terror outfit as one of "the most notorious terrorist attacks".

In a white paper on its massive crackdown against militants in the restive Xianjiang province, China said the global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years had inflicted agony on humanity.

The paper described the Mumbai terror attacks as one of "the most notorious terrorist attacks", adding that the "global spread of terrorism and extremism over the years has inflicted agony on humanity".

The release of the paper titled "The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang", interestingly coincided with Pakistan Foreign Minister's Shah Mehmood Qureshi's visit to China.

Throughout the world, terrorism and extremism gravely threaten peace and development, and endanger the life and property of individuals, said the white paper released by China's State Council Information Office.

The paper came days after China for the fourth time blocked a bid in the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to designate Pakistan-based chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror group Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist" by putting a technical hold on the proposal, a move India termed as disappointing.

The JeM has claimed responsibility for the February 14 Pulwama attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead and escalated tensions between India and Pakistan.

"Striking aggressively at terrorism and furthering the de-radicalisation effort is the common responsibility of the international community and essential to the protection of human rights," it said.

China opposes all forms of terrorism and extremism, and opposes double standards on fighting terrorism, said the white paper, adding that Beijing opposes linking terrorism and extremism with specific countries, ethnic groups or religions.

China advocates comprehensive measures to address both the symptoms and the root causes, with the dual purposes of striking at terrorist activities and eliminating poverty, so that there will be no room for terrorism to breed, it said.

In one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country's history, 166 people, including Americans, were killed and over 300 injured as 10 heavily-armed terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) created mayhem in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.

Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after handed down death sentence by an Indian court.

Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan.

The US has offered a US$ 10 million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice. PTI
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Bhadohi (UP), March 19

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Tuesday said the ground reality was different than what the Uttar Pradesh government had been portraying and there is an expiry date to the rant that nothing was done in the past 70 years.

The Congress in charge of east Uttar Pradesh was responding to a question about the Adityanath government issuing its report card on completion of two years in office, in which it highlighted various achievements and welfare schemes.

They (BJP) need to come to the ground to see the reality. This report card and publicity looks good, but the reality is different...all sections are feeling harassed, she said at the Sitamarhi guest house in Uttar Pradeshs Bhadohi district, where she had a night halt.

There is a big difference between polls promises and fulfilling them. As far as the rant about (no development in) 70 years is concerned, it also has an expiry date. You (BJP) are in the government for the past five years, what have you done in five years, the Congress leader said.

The BJP often attacks the Congress by accusing it of not developing the country in the past 70 years.

The 47-year-old, who had embarked on a three-day boat journey on the Ganga to reach out to the electorate residing on the river banks, offered prayers at the Sitamarhi temple before starting for her next stop en route to Mirzapur.

Priyanka alleged that nothing had been done on the ground in the state during Adityanaths rule. Every day, Im meeting people from different sections of society and am getting to know that students, youngsters, shiksha mitras, anganwadi workers and Asha workers are feeling harassed. At some places, it was announced that they will get Rs 17,000 as salary, but till now they have got nothing. For the past two years, they are getting Rs 8,000.

Asked about BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma accusing her and Congress president Rahul Gandhi of coming for a picnic before elections and vanishing just after that, she said: Well, I havent been to Italy in the past three to four years. I should go in fact to see my grandmother. PTI
shriaya.dutt@tribuneindia.com

Our Correspondent

Jaipur, March 19

A real estate developer has gifted a flat to the family of a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper who died in a suicide attack in Pulwama on February 14.

CRPF trooper Rohitash Lamba belonged to Govinpura village in Amarsar in Rajasthans Jaipur district.

The 27-year-old trooper got married last year and had a two-month-old daughter, whom he didnt meet even once.

In a statement he made on Tuesday, BDI Group Managing Director Ssumit Berry said: Military and Paramilitary forces lay down their lives while serving the country. This is the least we could do to show our gratitude for the selfless service".

More than 40 paramilitary troopers were killed on February 14 when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Jammu and Kashmirs Pulwama district.
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Deepender Deswal

Tribune News Service

Hisar, March 18

Having served in Haryana for around three decades, the Tamil Nadu-born retired Indian Police Service officer V Kamaraja is keen on entering the political arena here.

Kamaraja, a 1987-batch Haryana-cadre officer who retired as Additional Director General of Police in 2015, has been aspiring for the BJP ticket from the Sirsa (reserved) constituency.

Justifying his decision to enter politics in a state where he is likely to face language barriers, he says: Ye dil ka aavaz hai (my heart says I should go ahead with this).

Kamaraja remained posted in Sirsa, Mahendergarh, Rewari and Rohtak during 28 years of service.

Hailing from Dindigul district in TN, he returned to his native place after superannuation and was engaged in agricultural activity and legal consultancy there. Having done LLB and LLM from Kurukshetra University, he is now pursuing his PhD.

His name has been doing the rounds in Haryana BJP circles for quite some time now. He was in Sirsa last week, trying to test waters for his political aspirations.

Though I was born and brought up in Tamil Nadu, I consider myself a Haryanvi at heart. Peoples love is pulling me back to Haryana and inspiring me to lead an active public life, he says. He might not be able to speak in chaste Haryanvi, but can surely understand and effectively communicate in that language, he adds.

If I get a chance, I will make the most of it. If somebody else gets the ticket, I will happily discharge any other role the party assigns. One thing is sure that I will remain active in Haryana now, he says.

A 62-year-old Sirsa-based doctor recalls the nine months of Kamaraja as SP, Traffic, in the town in 1990. He was able to win hearts of the people in a short span of time. Even the youngsters used to talk about his style of policing those days, he says.

Second after Agnivesh
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 19

Terming the killing of Sikhs during the 1984 riots as a crime against humanity, the CBI has likened it with mass extermination of Jews by Nazis, mass killing of Bangladeshis by Pakistan Army and killing of Armenians by Kurds and Turks.

As such, this case has to be viewed in the larger context of mass crimes and requires a different approach than a case of normal murder/rioting, CBI told the Supreme Court, opposing former Congress leader Sajjan Kumars bail plea.

Kumar has challenged a Delhi High Court order convicting and sentencing him to life imprisonment for killing of five Sikhs in Raj Nagar Part-I area in Palam Colony in South West Delhi on November 1 and 2, 1984, and burning down a Gurudwara in Raj Nagar Part-II during the riots.

Kumar,73, had surrendered before a Delhi court on December 31 to serve life imprisonment for the "remainder of his natural life".

Almost 3,000 people were killed, most of them in Delhi, in the anti-Sikh riots that broke out following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984.

The brutal murder of innocent Sikhs during the 1984 riots fall under the category of crimes against humanity on parity with well known genocides worldwide like large scale killing of Armenians by Kurds and Turks, mass extermination of Jews by Nazis, mass killing of Bangladeshi citizens by the sympathizess of Pakistani Army and mass killing during various ethnic riots within India also, CBI told the top court in its affidavit filed last week.

In this case, the minority community was targeted by the spearheaded attacks of dominant political actors like the applicant/convict and duly facilitated by law enforcement agencies, it said.

The agency opposed Kumars bail plea saying he was a leader with a large political clout and capable of influencing/terrorising witnesses. A fair trial in other 1984 riots cases pending against him would not be possible if he was released on bail, the agency submitted.

The Supreme Court is likely to take up the matter on March 25a month after Justice Sanjiv Khanna recused himself from the hearing.

The Supreme Court had on January 14 issued notice to the CBI on Kumar's petition challenging the Delhi High Court's verdict sentencing him to life imprisonment in a 1984 anti-sikh riots case. He has sought suspension of sentence and grant of bail pending final adjudication of his appeal.

Bringing to justice the first-ever senior Congress functionary for his role in the 1984 Sikh carnage, the Delhi High Court had on December 17 last convicted former MP Sajjan Kumar for criminal conspiracy to murder five people of the minority community and sentenced him to imprisonment for the rest of his natural life.

Reversing Sajjan Kumars April 30, 2013, acquittal order passed by Delhis Karkardooma Courts, a Delhi High Court Bench headed by Justice S Muralidhar had said the trial court failed to address the charges of criminal conspiracy against Kumar. Justice Muarlidhar too had termed it a crime against humanity.

The criminals escaped prosecution and punishment for over two decades. It took as many as 10 committees and commissions for the investigation into the role of some of them to be entrusted in 2005 to the CBI, 21 years after the occurrence, the high court had said.
editorial@tribune.com

Ravneet Singh

Tribune News Service

Patiala, March 18

Over 300 students of Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law (RGNUL) today boycotted their mid-semester tests in support of their demands, including revocation of the suspension of six students. They held a protest march on the university campus in the evening.

Students and the authorities remained at loggerheads as none of them relented. Students demand that the university should revoke the suspension of six students, formalise a students body on the campus and make changes in the hostel entry-exit rules. Officials from the district administration and the police also met university officials in order to convince them to find an amicable solution to the problem.

Meanwhile, the university conducted the mid-semester exams as scheduled on Monday.

Over 300 students of first to fourth-year batches boycotted the tests as announced earlier. However, fifth-year students, along with a few from other batches, appeared in the exam. None of the second-year students took the exam.

Talking to The Tribune, RGNUL Vice Chancellor Paramjit Singh Jaswal said, The university has taken cognisance of the protest carried out by students in the mess. Senior officials of the university had offered to consider all demands of the students if they ended their protest, but they did not relent. So, the exams were held as per schedule.

Those who did not appear in the exams will be marked absent. The exams will be held as per the announced schedule, he added.

Parents lash out at varsity

Protesting students of the university have got support from alumni and student organisations in national law schools across the country. The protesting students parents, to whom the university had sent e-mails requesting indulgence while explaining the whole scenario, lashed out at the university authorities. They criticised the university for using revocation of suspension orders as a bargaining tool.

The parents retorted that their children were being harassed by the administrative officer on the university campus. We have read the annexure and their (students) demands, which warrant this action and we stand by them as their guides because the university has failed to do the same, replied parents in their e-mails.

Hold talks with students, district admn tells VC

Officials of the District Administration and the police held a meeting with Vice Chancellor Paramjit Singh Jaswal. They suggested that the university authorities should resolve the matter through talks. They also showed concern over the police being called on the varsity campus while students were holding a peaceful protest.

Bone of contention

The university authorities suspended six students for creating ruckus in the mess on Friday. The hostellers resorted to protests and decided to boycott exams. Following this, the university took help from the police. Riot control vehicles were stationed outside the campus. Students have been camping on roads in the university ever since.

Demands of students

Students have demanded that the university should revoke suspension of six students, formalise a students body on the campus and make changes in hostel entry-exit rules. They demanded that the administrative officer, SP Singh, should be suspended over alleged vile behaviour. In response, the university authorities want students to end the strike first.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 18

Just 10 days after the state and its functionaries were directed to give seven days prior notice in case Paramraj Singh Umranangal was required for interrogation in cases related to mob violence and firing at Behbal Kalan and other incidents of sacrilege, the Punjab and Haryana High Court today issued notice to the senior police officer.

The notice by Justice Ramendra Jain came on an application moved by the state for recalling the order. As the matter came up for hearing, Additional Advocate-General Rameeza Hakeem claimed that the state was required to be heard in the matter.

Umranangal was arrested by the Punjab Police about a fortnight ago after his name figured in the sacrilege matter. Just about three years after the police fired at Sikhs peacefully protesting in Kotkapura against the incidents of sacrilege, the Justice Ranjit Singh Commission of inquiry had indicted Umranangal and other police officers. It ruled that the use of force at Kotkapura and Behbal Kalan was unwarranted, uncalled for and not needed at all.

The firing at Kotkapura took place between 6 am and 7 am on October 14, 2015. In its report to be tabled before the Vidhan Sabha, Justice Ranjit Singh asserted the responsibility of action at Kotkapura to forcefully evict the protestors sitting on peaceful dharna squarely lied with the police.

Justice Ranjit Singh said the incident of sacrilege was such that the public was bound to react in the manner it did. In any case, it was not unusual for the public to sit on a dharna to protest. The compulsion on the part of the police to act was due to pressure from the government.
amansharma@tribunemail.com

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Dera Baba Nanak, March 19

A marathon seven-hour technical meeting between Indian and Pakistani officials was held in No-Mans land, 50 metres from the wire fence, regarding issues pertaining to the Kartarpur Sahib corridor.

There was a veil of secrecy. Media personnel and devotees, who had come to view the shrine through binoculars installed by the BSF, were asked to deposit their cellphones with the cops.

Twenty officials from Pakistan arrived at 10 am at a makeshift tent. They came in six vehicles as more than 50 Rangers stood guard. The Indian Government had cleared the names of 14 officials from the Land Ports Authority of India, NHAI, BSF and the Punjab Government. Sources said among the issues discussed was the exact location of Zero Point at which roads from the Pakistan side and the Indian side will meet.

The construction of the ICP on the Indian side and alignment of gates were discussed too. Before the talks, two JCB machines were pressed into service to flatten the wheat fields0 to make way for the proposed ICP. Another round of talks will be held on April 2 on the Pakistani side.
New York, NY, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Publicis Health today announced the promotion of visionary health communications and media expert Andrea Palmer to the role of President at Publicis Health Media. Palmer most recently served as Chief Strategy Officer for Publicis Health Media and leader of PHMs Chicago office. During her 11-year tenure with Publicis, Palmer has consistently produced breakthrough results for clients and inspired teams to great success.

As Publicis Health Media continues to redefine the role of media in healthcare marketing, Im delighted to name Andrea to her new, well-deserved role, said Alexandra von Plato, CEO, Publicis Health. Andreas deep understanding of the pharmaceutical business environment and her keen ability to help clients navigate the complexities of health media have made her an indispensable partner to clients and agencies alike. Im excited to see what the future holds for her and PHM.

As CSO, Palmer played a pivotal role in determining how the agency leverages existing and new tools, and in ensuring strategy, resources and capabilities were consistent across all offices. Her expertise was critical in establishing PHM as one of the most specialized and valued pharmaceutical media agencies in the market. As PHMs leadership team continues to grow, Palmer has named several key appointments to her executive leadership team: Greg Reilly, Chief Client Officer; Ray Rosti, EVP of Platforms; Alison McConnell, Chief Marketing Officer; and Colan McGeehan, Chief Investment Officer.

Since PHMs inception, Ive had the good fortune to work alongside some of the most innovative professionals in our industry, said Palmer. As we embrace massive transformations in DTC patient education, the growth of multi-channel, digital marketing, and so much more, I look forward to our continued exploration of new technologies, capabilities, and perspectives that will enable us to deliver enhanced value for our clients.

Well-known in healthcare media circles and often called upon to share her expertise, Palmer has been a featured panelist and moderator for industry events at AdWeek, MM&M, mms Inc., Digital Pharma East, DTC Perspectives, and others. She was recently recognized as one of Chicagos 2018 Top Women in Healthcare Marketing by Digital Megaphone. In addition to her commitment to PHM and its clients, she also is engaged in numerous initiatives designed to promote and deepen ties between the healthcare community and those it serves, leading events such as the American Heart Association Heart Walk & Run as well as sitting on the board of Big Brothers, Big Sisters Chicago.

About Publicis Health

Publicis Health is the worlds premier health-oriented agency network. A division of Publicis Groupe, Publicis Health manages top-tier agencies specializing in promoting innovative solutions in advertising, digital, branding, message delivery, market access, and medical communications. Publicis Healths mission is to be the indispensable force for health and wellness business transformation through the alchemy of creativity and technologyfor good. With more than 4,000 employees around the world, Publicis Health manages 17 agency brands through 40 offices located in six countries. Publicis Health brands include Digitas Health, Discovery USA, Heartbeat, insync, Langland, Payer Sciences, PlowShare Group, Publicis Health Media, Publicis LifeBrands, Publicis Resolute, Razorfish Health, Real Science, Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, and Verilogue.

Web: www.publicishealth.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/publicishealth
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar/Chandigarh, March 19

Hours after a supposed-sting video involving Congress partys Jalandhar Member of Parliament Santokh Singh Chaudhary, the parliamentarian claimed it was a paid job meant to sully his reputation.

He said in a statement to the press: It is paid job by paid media house run by the propaganda machinery of BJPEverybody knows the background of the particular channel and how BJP funded it to take political mileage of it, especially during Lok Sabha election. People of my state know of me as well as of my honesty and I dont need any certification for my honesty from the BJP funded channel.

A 'sting video' by a TV channel allegedly showed the Jalandhar MP "making a deal for supporting some businessmen or contractors in lieu of arranging elections funds for him.

Rival Shiromani Akali Dal demanded investigations into the allegations that the Congress took money for political favours. Speaking a press conference on Tuesday, SAD president Sukhbir Badal asked for a criminal case to be registered.

He said in a statement: Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary has sought poll funds from anybody and everybody as investment for future, (to) assure (bribe givers) that the UPA is likely to come to power after the elections and the investors would be offered favours."

Such open offers not only encourage people having black money, but also shows how corruption could become rampant should the UPA come to power, he said, adding that such acts made people think they needed to pay for political favours.

He claimed the short two years of Congress rule in Punjab was already littered with scams. He was referring to a mining scam that cost former minister Gurjeet Singh Rana his ministry, and another minister, Bharat Bhushan Ashu, who has been facing accusations of hobnobbing with the land and builder mafia.
amansharma@tribunemail.com

Ravneet Singh

Tribune News Service

Patiala, March 19

The five-day protest at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law (RGNUL) was on Tuesday called off after prolonged deliberations between a committee constituted by the university chancellor and Chief Justice, Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Krishna Murari and student representatives.

The protesting students and committee members came to a consensus on all four demands of the students.

Earlier, Punjab Advocate General Atul Nanda met protesting students.

Nanda deliberated with the authorities even as exams to be held at 3 pm were rescheduled.

Their demands included revocation of suspension of six students, permanent removal of Administrative Officer SP Singh, formation of a student body on campus and changes in entry and exit timings for the students.

The students earlier said they do not have trust in the administration of the university, stating that they have earlier been lied to and misled.

The advocate general took an assurance from the students that they should not have any difference of opinion if the committee decides on unconditional revocation of suspension of the students. The students expressed that the administrative officer SP Singh had allegedly issued vile statements and demanded his removal. The AG said there should not be any gender discrimination. He said, The officer in question has rights. We will follow the procedure and take a decision.

On the students expression that they are targeted if they raise voice against the administration of the university, Nanda assured to them that there will not be any action against the students.

They questioned the procedure followed for suspension of the students to which the AG apologised and said, Before you bring the matter to me, I apologise for it.

The students decided on five representatives from amongst them to accompany the AG for the meeting.
editorial@tribune.com

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 18

A day after having called off talks with the AAP, the SAD (Taksali) is back negotiating a deal with Sukhpal Khairas Punjabi Ekta Party.

As part of the new deal being worked between the two sides, the Punjabi Ekta Party (PEP)-led Punjab Democratic Front could get the Khadoor Sahib seat, while leaving the Anandpur Sahib seat for the Taksalis. If the deal is okayed by the Bahujan Samaj Party (another important constituent of the PDA), the Taksalis could withdraw their candidate Gen JJ Singh (retd) from Khadoor Sahib in favour of Paramjit Kaur Khalra (contesting on PEP ticket).

In lieu of this, say sources, the Anandpur Sahib seat will be left for the Taksalis. Former Deputy Speaker of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha and senior vice-president of the SAD (Taksali) Bir Devinder Singh has thrown his hat in the ring. The PDA was earlier not relenting to give the Anandpur Sahib seat, as the BSP wanted to field its own candidate.

Sewa Singh Sekhwan from the SAD (Taksali) said the offer to withdraw the candidature of Gen JJ Singh (retd) was under consideration. Sukhpal Singh Khaira of the PEP, too, confirmed that he had appealed to the Taksalis that in the larger interest of Punjab they should throw their weight behind Paramjit Kaur Khalra, who stood a good chance of winning the polls.

Once the deal between the PEP and SAD (Taksali) is done, they will be meeting the top brass of the BSP later this week to formalise the seat-sharing, say sources. Yesterday, the talks between the AAP and Taksalis had been called off, with both sides unwilling to let go of the Anandpur Sahib seat. Narinder Singh Shergill is the AAP candidate pitted against Bir Devinder for the Anandpur Sahib constituency.

Talks positive
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune Reporters

Ludhiana, March 18

Tightening the noose around drug peddlers, the Khanna police have arrested a man with 80 kg of cannabis. They have claimed that it is one of the biggest recoveries of cannabis in the state.

Khanna SSP Dhruv Dahiya said, A police party was conducting the checking of vehicles and some persons near a mosque at Libra village. When the driver of a Kwid car bearing a UP number saw the police, he tried to flee but he was nabbed, said Dahiya.

During preliminary investigation, the person identified himself as Faiz Mohammad of Jalalpur district in UP. A total of 80 kg of cannabis (ganja) was found in his car. There were around 16 packets of the drug, each weighing 5 kg. A case under Sections 20, 61 and 85 of the NDPS Act was registered at the Sadar police station in Khanna. Dahiya said the investigation was underway. We are trying to get details about suppliers and buyers in Punjab, he said.

Sources said cannabis was available for approximately Rs 25,000 per kg in India and international prices could be higher.

In Sangrur, the Dhuri Sadar and Badrukhan police confiscated 2,500 habit-forming tablets and arrested two persons on Sunday night.

Last night, we arrested Ashok Kumar on the Benra-Pedhni Kalan road and seized 1,200 habit-forming tablets from his possession, said ASI Malkit Singh of the Dhuri Sadar police station.

The Badrukhan police post also arrested a person. On Monday night, we arrested Mithu Ram from near Bahadurpur and seized 1,300 habit-forming tablets from his possession. We have registered a case, said ASI Gurtej Singh.

In Fatehgarh Sahib, the district police claimed to have arrested nine persons and recovered 6 kg of opium, 11,000 boxes of liquor, 880 intoxicant tablets and injections.

Addressing mediapersons here on Monday, Amneet Kondal, SSP, said during a search near the Sirhind railway station on Sunday night, Balinder Sahni, a resident of Motihari district, was arrested with 6 kg opium. She said during checking at nakas, the police recovered 11,000 boxes of smuggled liquor of various brands and arrested five persons. They were booked under the Excise Act.

She said the Sirhind police and the Kheri Naudh Singh Police arrested three peddlers and recovered 880 intoxicant tablets and injections. They admitted that they used to supply it to rural areas.
shalender@tribune.com

THERE is no satisfactory reply at least in Sir William Vincents speech. The only statement which looks like a reply is that the Government have made a concession to public opinion on certain points. But to his statement the obvious reply is that the first and most important of the concession would have been involved in the very fact of proceeding by ordinance, for an ordinance is always temporary; secondly, if the Government had had to act on its own and undivided responsibility, it would have proceeded with a little more caution; and thirdly that there was nothing to prevent the Government from consulting non-official members and others informally and privately before passing the ordinance, and in deference to their views making the very concessions that it has made now.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Dhaka, March 19

Unidentified assailants gunned down a local leader of the ruling Awami League in front of his family in the southeastern Bangladesh on Tuesday, a day after seven election and security officials were shot dead while returning from a remote polling centre.

Suresh Kanti Tanchangya, Bilaichhari upazila president of the Awami League, was gunned down around 9.30 am in Alikhong area in Rangamati district, police said.

He, along with his family, was coming to Bilaichhari on boat in the morning, they said.

The miscreants intercepted a boat carrying Bilaichhari Upazila Awami League president Suresh Kanti Tanchangya and gunned him down, Rangamati hill districts police chief Alamgir Kabir told reporters.

He said the family members accompanying Tanchangya, a tribesman, escaped the attack but could not identify the assailants.

The attack comes a day after seven people, including a presiding officer, were shot dead by unidentified gunmen who opened fire on their two jeeps as they were returning with ballot boxes after the voting concluded at a remote polling centre.

Eight people, including some policemen, were injured in the attack in Rangamati district.

Army helicopters later carried 11 critically injured people to a military hospital in the neighbouring southeastern port city of Chittagong.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack which took place late on Monday.

Security has been tightened in the entire district and investigations have been launched to ascertain who are behind the attacks, police chief Kabir said.

The southeastern hill tracts in recent years witnessed re-emergence of violence attributed to factional feuds among the local tribal outfits after a landmark 1997 peace agreement drew an end to a two-decade-long insurgency demanding autonomy of ethnic minority groups. PTI
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

Harare/Maputo, March 18

Cyclone Idai killed at least 157 people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique as it tore across Southern Africa, officials said on Monday, and vast areas of land have been flooded, roads destroyed and communications disrupted.

The Mozambican port city of Beira has suffered massive damage, the Red Cross said. The storm has also pounded Malawi. The scale of devastation (in Beira) is enormous. It seems that 90 per cent of the area is completely destroyed, said Jamie LeSueur, leader of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) team.

In Zimbabwe, the Chimanimani district has been cut off from the rest of the country by torrential rains and winds of up to 170 km per hour that swept away roads, homes and bridges and knocked out power and communication lines.

Zimbabwean information ministry official Nick Mangwana said the number of confirmed deaths throughout the country was now 89, which was expected to rise.

The Mozambican state news agency put the toll in Beira at 68, although channel TVM reported that about 84 people had died across Mozambique.

Zimbabwean rescuers were struggling to reach people in Chimanimani, many of whom have been sleeping in the mountains since Friday, after their homes were flattened by rock falls and mudslides or washed away by torrential rains. Many families cannot bury the dead due to the floods.  Reuters
19.03.2019: Borregaard ASA ("Borregaard", OSE ticker: BRG)

Reference is made to the stock exchange notice of 1 March 2019 where Borregaard announced the intent to repurchase up to 300,000 of its outstanding common stock.

Borregaard has today purchased 10,000 own shares through broker at an average price of NOK 87.12 per share.

After this transaction Borregaard holds a total of 342,910 own shares, representing 0.34% of total shares outstanding.

Contact:

Lotte Kvinlaug, Investor Relations Officer, +47 922 86 909

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.
Watson Duke has been given three months to relinquish his position as president of the Public Services Association (PSA).

This is according to Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Chief Secretary Farley Augustine, who also said yesterday, for the first time in the history of the THA, the position Duke holds as Deputy Chief Secretary will be a titular one.
Everyone is born free and equal in dignity and rights. However, racism, discrimination and intolerance are still very present in all societies.

We in T&T must stand up for our rights, and the rights of others.

Equality, injustice and freedom empower us all, and prevent violence and sustain peace.
TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will be hosting a national webinar on March 25, 2019 for the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) on the federal carbon tax registration system. Under this system, inter-provincial carriers that operate into, out of, or through Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario or Saskatchewan (beginning April 1, 2019), and Nunavut or Yukon (beginning July 1, 2019) will need to register with the CRA.



In turn, carriers may also receive a rebate or be levied a surcharge depending on what fuel they buy and where it is burned. Carriers will be required to report on their fuel usage in quarterly reports sent to the CRA. This webinar will outline how the rebate and surcharge will work along with how carries can register and report. It will also be an excellent opportunity for carriers to directly engage with regulators and to ask any questions you may have about the new federal carbon tax.

It is highly recommended that all inter-provincial carriers have staff participate in this webinar. For webinar details, please click here.



Media Contact: Marco Beghetto, VP Communications & New Media

(416) 249-7401 x 238 Marco.Beghetto@Ontruck.org
Gorgeous self-proclaimed prophetess Monicah Nyambura is expecting her second baby after announcing she abstained from sex for 11 years.

The mother of one decided to stay 'pure' after her first marriage crumbled in 2007.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

READ ALSO: Mwanafunzi wa chuo kikuu cha Moi auwawa kwa kudungwa kisu na mwenzake

READ ALSO: Man searches for new lover after admitting the women he dates end up dead

In an Instagram post seen by TUKO.co.ke, Monicah revealed she and her second husband are expecting their first child together.

The beauty flaunted her grown baby bump as she thanked God for the fruit of the womb.

READ ALSO: Video of Otile Brown and Joey Muthengi getting cosy suggests pair is dating

"Thank you God for the fruit of the womb baby number two loading," she wrote.

She was beyond excited and completely breathtaking as she shared the news with her followers.

READ ALSO: Sweet Celebrity Couples From 80-90s We Are Totally In Love With

Monicah and her husband walked down the aisle in an invite only marriage in 2018 years after the prophetess walked away from her first marriage.

By the time she said 'I Do' for the second time, she was already a mother to another child.

Speaking to the Nairobian, the mother of one disclosed how she was naive during her first marriage and got hitched for the wrong reasons.

According to Monicah, she was struggling with family problems and the hardships of life thus prompting her to settle down.

She then revealed things did not work out and the prophetess had to leave her hubby while their kid was just one-year-old.

After that, Monicah avoided the touch of a man for 11 years before finally getting married to her second hubby, Samuel Gichuki Kariuki.

Do you have a life-changing story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Kenyans react - would you share a toothbrush with your spouse -

Source: Tuko
- Through Secretary General Ouma Oluga, the union demanded immediate termination of the training program in Cuba

- The medics claimed the government abandoned doctors after offering to sponsor them further studies in the Caribbean nation

- They accused the government of taking care of Cuban doctors while ignoring Kenyan health practitioners

- KMPDU recommended the training be offered by five local universities instead

Following the demise of a Kenyan doctor who was among the 50 medics sponsored by the government to further their studies in Cuba, the Kenya Medical and Dentist Practitioners Union (KMPDU) has called for immediate termination of the training program.

Ali Juma, a brother to Likoni MP Mishi Mboko, allegedly committed suicide in his hostel in Havana, Cuba where he was on a government sponsored program to study family medicine.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

READ ALSO: Likoni MP Mishi Mboko's brother commits suicide in Cuba

KMPDU Secretary General Ouma Oluga has asked government to bring back Kenyan doctors in Cuba following death of one them.Photo/Nation Source: UGC

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Nairobi lawyer who killed son in alleged gun accident hospitalised

According to a statement by KMPDU seen by TUKO.co.ke on Tuesday, March 19, the union said the program had left Kenyan doctors in Cuba vulnerable, frustrated and in deplorable condition after the government abandoned the agreement of catering for their expenses.

"Doctors have constantly expressed their concerns with the manner in which government has withheld or completely failed to pay their living expenses in the foreign country. Further, the Kenyan embassy exhibits high-handedness when concerns are raised," the doctors further said in the statement.

READ ALSO: Congolese rumba maestro Koffi Alomide jailed for raping 15-year-old dancer

The union further noted the deceased had raised serious concerns about the harsh conditions in Cuba and had gone further to request for termination of the program but the government did not bother to take any action.

The KMPDU expressed concerns over how Cuban doctors in the country were being given special treatment by the same government that had ignored its medics in the foreign country.

"It is ironical how Cuban doctors receive royal treatment with chauffeured transport, lavish living and triple the pay of Kenyan specialists funded by taxpayer money,"said the union

The doctors' union said the training program had lost meaning and was no longer helpful to the country calling for its immediate termination.

"KMPDU demands an immediate termination of the training programme in Cuba as it has proven not beneficial to the doctors. Instead, we recommend that the sponsorship be provided through the five Kenyan universities," added the medics.

Do you have a life-changing story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

The girl who plaaned her own funeral - on Tuko TV

Source: Tuko Breaking News Latest
- The National Resistance Movement (NRM) party had endorsed Musveni as its 2021 presidential candidate

- He accepted the endorsement arguing he was still strong and able to continue leading Uganda

- The ruling party had two years back amended the Constitution to remove the presidential age limit which was capped at 75

- With the age limit out of the way, Museveni would be able to vie for the presidency as many times as he would wish to

Uganda's strongman Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has finally confirmed he will not be exiting office in 2021 when Ugandans go back to the ballot to elect their next president.

The 74-year-old president whose reign spans over three decades indicated he would still be at the helm even after 2021.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

READ ALSO: Lawmakers from northern Uganda threaten to secede after Parliament passed Age Limit Bill

President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday, March 18, accepted endorsement from his NRM party which settled on him as 2021 the sole presidential candidate. Photo: Yoweri Museveni.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Museveni could become president for life as Uganda's Parliament votes to remove age limit

Reacting to his rather expected endorsement by the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, Museveni, an ex-military chief who ascended to power in 1986 after deposing Idi Amin and Milton Obote's regimes, said he was still strong and able to continue leading Uganda.

"I am humbled by your confidence in me. I am still very able and sure that together we shall in the coming years deliver an economy that can deliver jobs to our youth," he told members of the NRM party as quoted by Uganda's Daily Monitor on Tuesday, March 18.

READ ALSO: Drama as 6 Ugandan MPs are suspended amid debate on Bill seeking to extend Museveni's rule

The NRM endorsed the long serving president to vie for the top seat for the sixth time in 2021.

The party's Central Executive Committee (CEC) resolved there was need for Museveni to continue leading NRM and the country beyond 2021 to facilitate a smooth transition.

The CEC's decision will be scrutinised by the party's National Executive Council (NEC) and National Delegates Conference (NDC) ahead of a formal announcement of a flag-bearer for 2021.

If the other party organs clear him, Museveni will official become the party's 2021 presidential candidate.

READ ALSO: Ruto, Murkomen washambuliwa kwa kuzindua maabara na kompyuta za zamani Elgeyo Marakwet

The party's endorsement comes about two years after it successfully scraped the law capping presidential candidates' age at 75.

After weeks of drama and chaos that characterised the age limit debate in Uganda's Parliament, the ruling party had the final say.

The Ugandan Parliament on December 19, 2017, overwhelmingly endorsed the contentious Bill which sought to remove the presidential age limit through constitutional amendment, thanks to NRM's numerical strength in the chamber.

Museveni eventually signed the Bill into law despite strong opposition.

Do you have a life-changing story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

The Youngest Master's Degree Holder in Kenya - On Tuko TV

Source: Kenyan Breaking News
World Travels Awards (WTA) has nominated East Africa' largest international airport, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), for an award in the Africa's leading airports category.

It was nominated after Cairo International Airport in Egypt, Cape Town International Airport, South Africa and followed by Julius Nyerere International Airport in Tanzania among others.

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READ ALSO: Akothee touches hearts after initiating fund drive to help feed hungry Turkana residents

It was nominated after Cairo International Airport in Egypt, Cape Town International Airport, South Africa.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Form One boy kills mother's 65-year-old lover in Kericho after finding them making love

According to the WTA's website, it serves to acknowledge, reward and celebrate excellence across all sectors of the global travel and tourism industry.

"Good news as Jomo Kenyatta International Airport is nominated for the World Travel Awards under Africa's leading airport category alongside Cairo Intl Airport, Egypt and Capetown Intl Airport, South Africa," said Kenya Airports Authority

It revealed it will host its Africa and Indian Ocean Gala Ceremony in Mauritius on June 1, 2019 which will be it's first time to visit to the paradise island.

READ ALSO: Flying Squad discover safe containing KSh 2 billion fake currency at Nairobi Barclays Bank branch

"The red-carpet evening will take place at the opulent Sugar Beach  A Sun Resort, which enjoys an unrivalled location bordering the bay of Flic-en-Flac, one of the most picturesque beaches in Mauritius" said WTA.

The nomination came after thousands of passengers were left stranded at the international airport after a strike over the proposed change of JKIA's management plan.

The strike was, however, suspended after Transport and Infrastructure Cabinet Secretary James Macharia assured the workers that they will not lose their jobs after the proposed merger.

READ ALSO: Jomo Kenyatta International Airport nominated for global awards weeks after workers went on strike

Under the proposed changes at JKIA, Kenya Airways is set to merge with Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) as part of a plan to deepen the airlines recovery process.

The move, dubbed Project Simba also appears to be a reaction to the financial difficulties the carrier has continued to experience.

This is even after 2018's completion of a major re-structuring drive which caused concerns that it may not be able to withstand competition in the near future.

Do you have an inspirational story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Follow us on Telegram: Tuko news

The Kenyan Man With No Penis | TUKO TV

Source: Tuko
Danish English



Pursuant to Article 10 of the Articles of Association, notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of

Spar Nord Bank A/S

will be held on Wednesday, 10 April 2019 at 3:30 pm at the address Europahallen, Europa Plads 4, 9000 Aalborg, Denmark.

Agenda

1. Election of chair of the meeting.

The Board of Directors nominates Laurits Toft, Attorney.

2. The Board of Directors report on the activities of the company.

3. Presentation of the audited parent company financial statements for approval and the consolidated financial statements.

4. Resolution as to the distribution of profit or covering of loss, as the case may be, according to the approved financial statements

The Board of Directors recommends the distribution of a dividend of DKK 3.5 per share.

Presentation of the Companys remuneration policy for approval pursuant to the Danish Financial Business Act.

6. Approval of the Board of Directors remuneration for 2018 and the level of remuneration for 2019.

7. Authorisation to the Board of Directors to buy treasury shares

With reference to section 198 of the Danish Companies Act, the Board of Directors recommends that it be authorised to permit the Company, in the period until the next Annual General Meeting, to acquire treasury shares having a nominal value of up to 10% of the share capital at the market price prevailing at the time of acquisition, subject to a deviation of up to 10%.

8. Election of members to the Board of Directors; see Article 16(1) of the Banks Articles of Association.

The Board of Directors recommends the re-election of Per Nikolaj Bukh, Kaj Christiansen and John Srensen.

Reference is made to Spar Nord Banks Annual Report for 2018 regarding information about each of the incumbent board members.

9. Appointment of auditor.

The Board of Directors proposes the appointment of Deloitte Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab (CVR No. 33963556) at the recommendation of the Audit Committee. The Audit Committee has not been influenced by third parties nor has it been subject to any agreement with any third party that restricts the General Meeting's appointment of certain auditors or audit firms.

10. Proposals from the Board of Directors:

The Board of Directors proposes an amendment to Article 3 of the Articles of Association regarding authorisation to the Board of Directors increase the Companys share capital.

Article 3 subsequently has the following wording:

(1)

The Board of Directors shall be authorised to make a decision to increase the Companys share capital in the period ending on 30 April 2022 by a maximum of nominally DKK 246,005,052by way of one or more issues. The new shares, which shall be issued to named holders, shall rank pari passu with existing shares. The Companys share capital may be increased by cash contributions.

The increase of the Companys share capital shall be effected with pre-emptive rights for the Companys existing shareholders, and the new shares may be subscribed for at a discount to the market price.

(2)

The new shares subscribed for pursuant to the authorisation in Article 3(1) shall be negotiable instruments, shall be issued to named holders and shall rank for dividends and any other rights in the Company as from such time as is determined by the Board of Directors in its decision regarding the capital increase.

(3)

The Board of Directors shall be authorised to make a decision to increase the Companys share capital in the period ending on 30 April 2022 by a maximum of nominally DKK 246,005,052by way of one or more issues. The new shares, which shall be issued to named holders, shall rank pari passu with existing shares. The Companys share capital may be increased by cash contributions or in any other manner.

The increase of the Companys share capital shall be effected without pre-emptive rights for the Companys existing shareholders, and the capital increase must be carried out at market price.

(4)

The new shares subscribed for pursuant to the authorisation in Article 3(3) shall be negotiable instruments, shall be issued to named holders and shall rank for dividends and any other rights in the Company as from such time as is determined by the Board of Directors in its decision regarding the capital increase.

(5)

Pursuant to the authorisations granted under Article 3(1) and (3), the Board of Directors may increase the Companys share capital by a total maximum of nominally DKK 246,005,052.

The Board of Directors proposes an amendment to Article 7 of the Articles of Association on eligibility and deadlines for submitting proposals for candidates for Bank Committee.

Article 7 subsequently has the following wording:

Article 7

(1)

Eligible for the Bank Committee shall be personally registered shareholders of the Bank who are of age and have the right of managing their estate and are able to document that they have been registered prior to 1 December of the year prior to the Shareholders Meeting, or who have requested that their shares be registered as belonging to the shareholders region in question, and who still own shares in the Company registered in the relevant shareholder region as of the date when the pertinent Shareholders Meeting is convened.

The major shareholders mentioned in Article 9(1) and employees in the Company or its subsidiaries cannot be elected to the Bank Committee.

(2)

The shareholders in the region may nominate candidates to the Bank Committee. Proposals for nomination shall reach the Company by 1 December of the year preceding the Shareholders Meeting. The list of candidates will be published at the same time as the Shareholders' Meeting is convened.

(3)

A member of a Bank Committee whose shares are no longer registered in the appropriate region, or who is divested of the management of his estate, shall retire from the Bank Committee.

(4)

If a member of a Bank Committee retires during his term of office, a new member shall be elected at the next Shareholders Meeting.

The Board of Directors proposes to repeal the provision in Article 16(3) of the Articles of Association on the age limit for board members.



Article 16 subsequently has the following wording:

Article 16

(1)

The Board of Directors shall be composed of not less than four nor more than seven members elected by the shareholders at the General Meeting and members elected by the employees pursuant to the Danish Companies Act.

(2)

The members of the Board of Directors shall be elected for a term of two years at a time.

(3)

A member of the Board of Directors who is divested of the management of his estate or who no longer complies with the requirements of the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority regarding aptitude and integrity shall retire from the Board of Directors.

(4)

Any vacancy occurring in the Board of Directors may be filled by the election of a new member at the next General Meeting. A Director elected to fill a vacancy shall be elected for the unexpired term of his predecessor in office

11. Any other business.

The agenda and the complete proposals to be submitted at the General Meeting will from 5 April 2019 be available for inspection by the shareholders at the Companys offices and at www.sparnord.dk.

The record date is Wednesday, 3 April 2019.

Rights to attend and vote

Any shareholder who has been recorded as of the record date or has requested that his shares be registered in the Register of Shareholders and who has ordered an admission card by Friday, 5 April 2019, is entitled to attend the General Meeting.

The shareholder is entitled to invite an adviser to the General Meeting. If the shareholder wants to invite an adviser, the adviser must also request an admission card by Friday, 5 April 2019.

Admission cards are obtainable from the Companys address, Skelagervej 15, DK-9000 Aalborg, or can be ordered by telephone at +45 9634 4017 (the Management Secretariat).

A proxy form and a document for use when voting by post may be downloaded from www.sparnord.dk and sent to VP Investor Services A/S, Weidekampsgade 14, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, before the General Meeting.

Any proxy form must reach VP Investor Services A/S by Friday, 5 April 2019, and postal votes must reach VP Investor Services A/S by 9 April 2019 at noon.

The provisions of the Articles of Association regarding voting rights are as follows:

Article 9(1). A shareholder who owns at least 20,000 shares (a major shareholder) on the cut-off date one week before the General Meeting shall be entitled to exercise his voting rights at the General Meeting.

Article 10(4). The right of shareholders to exercise their voting rights at a General Meeting shall be exercised through the delegates. But this shall not apply to the shareholders referred to in Article 9 (1).

Article 15(1). Delegates who are also members of the Bank Committees represent the share capital that has been registered as belonging to the relevant shareholder region as of the cut-off date one week before the relevant General Meeting. Each delegate represents equal fractions of the share capital, calculated based on the number of delegates immediately prior to the General Meeting.

Article 15(2). A major shareholder, see Article 9(1), represents the share capital that has been registered as of the cut-off date one week before the General Meeting, or regarding which a request for registration has been made as of the same date

Article 15(3). In order to be entitled to vote at the General Meeting, a delegate or the major shareholder shall have requested an admission card no later than three days before a General Meeting.

Article 14(2). A resolution to amend the Articles of Association or to dissolve the Company is subject to the proposal being adopted by two-thirds of the votes cast as well as of the voting stock represented at the General Meeting.

Spar Nord Bank's share capital amounts to DKK 1,230,025,260, divided into shares of DKK 10 each.

Yours faithfully

Spar Nord Bank A/S

Kjeld Johannesen

Chairman of the Board of Directors

Attachment
ATLANTA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In the United States, more than 661,000 people suffer from kidney failure. Of these, 468,000 individuals are on dialysis, and roughly 193,000 live with a functioning kidney transplant. As the nations largest non-emergency medical transportation broker, LogistiCare annually provides millions of rides to and from kidney dialysis centers for many of these patients. As part of its March observance of National Kidney Month, the company hopes to be a catalyst for conversation that increases public awareness of the risk factors associated with kidney disease.



About one quarter of the people we transport have late stage kidney disease that requires dialysis, said Jeff Felton, LogistiCare CEO. We are honored to provide a critical service to so many in need, but we also have a stake in helping improve the care and outcomes of kidney disease patients. With 4,000 LogistiCare employees nationwide, many of our employees and their families are affected by kidney disease, so, between the impact on members and our staff, its personal.



As part of LogistiCares commitment to the communities it serves, the company has partnered with the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) for the past six years to raise money and awareness through kidney walks and sponsorships. The company is also engaged in various community efforts to educate people about various conditions that cause reduced kidney function.



In the past five years, LogistiCare has raised and donated nearly $700,000 to NKF from its corporate office and operations centers across the country through kidney walk fundraisers and sponsorship of the NKF.



Raising funds for the NKF couldnt be more personal for me, said Kimberly Vasquez, an administrative assistant in LogistiCares Phoenix operations center whose nephew Joey, was diagnosed at age one with Hydronephrosis, a condition that typically occurs in a kidney that swells when urine doesnt flow properly rom the kidney to the bladder. He spent most of his childhood in and out of hospitals, but when he was 13, he received a kidney transplant from his mother. NKF was there for him every step of the way. I am extremely proud to work for a company that gives back to those in need.



In addition to kidney walks, the company holds an annual Service Day celebration that includes speeches and testimonials from patients battling kidney disease as well as doctors and representatives from NKF. As part of its service day, members of LogistiCares staff pack and deliver gift bags which include blankets, water bottles, pill cases and other useful items to hundreds of dialysis patients.



The companys community service extends beyond its partnership with NKF. LogistiCare is an active participant in goBeyondProfit, an organization that encourages businesses to make significant contributions to improve communities in which they live, work and serve.



For more information about LogistiCares community involvement, visit www.logisticare.com/community-commitment/.

About LogistiCare l Circulation

LogistiCare, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Providence Service Corporation (Nasdaq: PRSC), is the nations largest manager of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) programs for state government agencies and managed care organizations. The Companys services include NEMT ride management, call center management, transportation provider network development and credentialing, and vendor administration. The Company is focused on providing access to convenient, cost-effective, safe and reliable transportation. Together with subsidiary Circulation, they deliver tech-enabled solutions that provide enhanced functionality, stronger network performance, streamlined workflow processes, and higher overall system efficiency. LogistiCare consistently maintains a 99 percent complaint-free service rate while annually managing over 65 million trips and more than 24 million eligible riders in 48 states. For more information about LogistiCare and Circulation visit, www.logisticare.com and www.circulation.com.
The following is a release by the Elections and Boundaries Commission on the recount request
Ukrainian Joint Forces servicemen have shot down another Russian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in Donbas, the JFO Headquarters press center has reported.

Despite the ceasefire agreements, the invaders continue to carry out provocative acts to accuse the units of the Joint Forces of violating the "spring truce". Thus, near Avdiivka (17km north of Donetsk), the enemy made a provocation using a UAV, which flew over the positions of our units in order to clarify the construction of the defense system and to expose the fire system of the JFO units, the report says.

As noted, thanks to the coordinated actions of the observers and calculations of other fire weapons, the provocation was stopped, and the enemys unmanned aerial vehicle was destroyed.
A total of 2,955 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed over the period of Russian aggression against Ukraine, President Petro Poroshenko has said.

The president stated this in his speech at a meeting of the Regional Development Council in Rivne region, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

A total of 2,955 Ukrainian soldiers (including one serviceman was killed last night) have given their lives so that we could build a free and independent state, Poroshenko said.

According to the president, there are Russian divisions along the Ukrainian-Russian border, and they are ready for the invasion. Shelling and provocations on the front line occur daily.

He stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not accept the fact that Ukraine had been consistently breaking all his plans for the last five years.

We have gone far on the European path and every step of Ukraine in this direction is Putins defeat, Poroshenko noted.

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Millwood, Virginia, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Project HOPE is on the ground in Mozambique assessing the immediate needs of thousands of women, children and men impacted by a deadly cyclone which hit the country late last week. Torrential rains, extreme winds and severe flooding have displaced hundreds of thousands of people and potentially destroyed large swaths of crops right before harvest.

This is likely the deadliest storm to hit Mozambique in 50 years and requires a strong, urgent international response, says Chris Skopec, vice president of Global Health at Project HOPE. The damage is so extensive that right now we dont even know how many people are in tents. With little access to clean water, we are very concerned about the spread of cholera. And potential fuel shortages threaten the ability to keep vaccines and essential medicines refrigerated.

According to government officials, some 1,000 people are feared dead, and an estimated 1.7 million women, children and men are severely impacted by catastrophic flooding and other effects of the deadly storm. Many affected communities continue to be completely inaccessible as heavy rainfall and winds have caused severe flooding and damaged roads and bridges. The storm comes right before harvest season and the destruction could further worsen food insecurity in parts of the country.

With its local partner KUKUMBI, Project HOPE will work in the hard-hit communities of Mocuba, Nicoadala and Namcurra, where shelters are already open. The global health organization anticipates meeting urgent health care needs through mobile and fixed health clinics. In addition, it is working quickly to provide access to clean drinking water, construct emergency latrines to stave the spread of disease and train communities on hygiene and sanitation.

Project HOPE has been on the ground in Mozambique since 1997 implementing critically needed health programs. The organization responded to heavy floods in 2000 by delivering more than $5 million in pharmaceuticals and medical supplies and helping establish a rapid response system in Zambezia. To support our response in Mozambique, visit projecthope.org/Mozambique.

About PROJECT HOPE

Founded in 1958, Project HOPE is a leader in global health and humanitarian relief programs. An international non-profit organization, we are committed to transforming lives and uplifting communities by empowering health care workers to teach and deliver innovative, lifesaving solutions, every day and in times of crisis. With programs in nearly 30 countries, we work at the epicenter of todays greatest health challenges including infectious and noncommunicable diseases; disasters and health crises; maternal, neonatal and child health; and the policies that impact how health care is delivered. Learn more at www.projecthope.org.
Canada has extended the Operation UNIFIER to train Ukrainian service members until the end of March 2022.

The Government of Canada is extending Operation UNIFIER, the Canadian Armed Forces military training mission in Ukraine, until the end of March 2022, reads the news release of the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.

As noted, Ukraines defence and security forces continue to make considerable progress, but ongoing insecurity in the region underscores the importance and relevance of Canadas military mission.

Through Operation UNIFIER, the Canadian Armed Forces will continue to provide military training and capacity building assistance to Ukraines defence and security forces. The training provided by the Canadian Armed Forces directly helps Ukraines defence and security forces to uphold domestic security and territorial integrity, contributing to regional and international stability, reads the statement.

As the Department notes, Operation UNIFIER supports Ukraines broader reform agenda and contributes to current Canadian efforts that invest in democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Ukraine.

As a reminder, Canada deploys approximately 200 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to Ukraine under Operation UNIFIER. Since the start of the training in September 2015, the Canadian Armed Forces has trained more than 10,800 Ukrainian service members.

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The Kremlin demonstrates the full readiness to engage in military intervention in order to change power in Ukraine because of the intensification of domestic political struggle ahead of elections.

The conclusion was made by the experts of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies" (CACDS).

In the first half of March, 2019, the CACDS experts recorded a significant deterioration of the security situation around Ukraine. First of all, this state of affairs is a consequence of the intensification of domestic political struggle in the country and the creation of conditions in neighboring Russia for use of such a situation, including power scenarios. It is important to note the full readiness of the Kremlin to engage in military intervention in order to change power in Ukraine and establish a Russian protectorate, reads the analytical report.

The greatest challenge of the time, the authors of the article believe, was the appearance and public discussion of the new military doctrine of Russia, which was presented by Chief of Staff of the Russian Federation Valery Gerasimov on March 2. Although the document is formally aimed at intimidating the West, mainly to change the rhetoric of Washington's communication with Moscow, it directly threatens Ukraine.

In fact, any destabilized course of election events, including those created artificially by, for example, a series of provocations or sabotage, may be used by the Kremlin to use a power scenario against Ukraine, the experts emphasize.

As noted, the presidential election campaign becomes a determining factor in the impact on the future scenario of state development. Powerful and influential moment in the election campaign was, in particular, the opposition of Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov, the report reads.

The confrontation between the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, the corruption scandal around the State Concern "Ukroboronprom", etc. are the factors, which significantly exacerbate already complicated political situation inside the country.

In addition, the experts point to the significant deterioration of the geopolitical situation, which has created an opportunity for Russia to implement extremely risky scenarios. So, in the occupied Crimea, Russian troops planned to conduct military exercises with the participation of 10 thousands of artillerymen and about three thousand units of missile artillery weapons (the report "Crimea Realities" referring to the Russian media), which could really threaten Ukraine. In particular, the negative rhetoric of the Moscow-Washington Dialogue can transform into a transformation of Ukraine into the area of settling disputes between the Russian Federation and the United States, the analysts note.

As noted, during the exercises it is planned to launch missile complexes "Iskander-M", "Bal", "Bastion", missile launchers and barrel artillery systems. The training will also be held at 20 landfills - in Astrakhan, Rostov, Volgograd regions, Krasnodar and Stavropol Territories, in the North Caucasus, as well as in the territories of Russian military bases in Abkhazia, Armenia, and South Ossetia.

This testifies to the real introduction into the life of the "doctrine of Gerasimov." In this context, it is worth mentioning the pace of training the troops. For example, on March 1, Russian missile launchers trained to launch missile attacks using Bastion and Ball in the occupied Crimea. In general, after the occupation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has been regularly conducting the military exercises on the peninsula, the authors of the article emphasize.

Analyzing the situation at the international level, the CACDS experts stress that more Western experts are inclined to believe that Ukraine needs more political support, and the United States and their closest European allies need to develop a Ukrainian version of the Marshall Plan. Under the current regime of the Kremlin there is no military solution. In particular, the National Interest in March of this year noted if Ukraine succeeds in creating a viable, comprehensive and well-functioning democratic state, Russia will cease to expand and is likely to collapse, as happened with the Soviet Union at 1991 year, the experts note.

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Ukraine's Deputy Foreign Minister Vasyl Bodnar received copies of credentials from newly appointed Ambassador of Bulgaria to Ukraine Kostadin Kodzhabashev.

The newly appointed ambassador of the People's Republic of Bulgaria to Ukraine, Mr. Kostadin Kodzhabashev, handed over copies of credentials today, Bodnar wrote on Facebook.

The deputy minister promised to work together with the newly appointed ambassador on strengthening of bilateral cooperation between Ukraine and Bulgaria.

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03/19/2019

Contacts for media: Christine Gillette, 978-934-2209 or Christine_Gillette@uml.edu and Nancy Cicco, 978-934-4944 or Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu

LOWELL, Mass.  Tyler Iorizzo, a Ph.D. candidate in physics at UMass Lowell, has won international recognition for his work to develop an imaging device that could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of certain skin cancers.

Iorizzo received an Educational Award from Edmund Optics, one of the worlds leading suppliers of high-precision optics for the optical industry.

Iorizzo is part of a team that developed a device called an optical polarization imager, or OPI, that could help doctors identify the margins of nonmelanoma skin cancer prior to surgery, allowing them to remove the malignant tumor with more precision and resulting in less complication and quicker recovery for the patient.

Im very honored to win this international award. Im glad to be able to help people. Imaging with the OPI is completely harmless and noninvasive. It doesnt use X-ray or high-intensity laser so its perfectly safe for the patient and the doctor, said Iorizzo, who conducts research at UMass Lowells Advanced Biophotonics Laboratory.

Currently, there is no comparable tool available in the market, said Anna Yaroslavsky, UMass Lowell associate professor of physics and the director and founder of the Advanced Biophotonics Laboratory and inventor of the OPI technology.

Surgeons basically look at the outline of a cancerous lesion visually and, based on their experience and training, decide where and how much tissue to cut. In many cases, errors can arise because they cant see the margins of the tumor very well, said Yaroslavsky, a North Andover resident.

OPIs rapid, easy-to-use technology produces images that are easy to interpret and dont require extensive processing to analyze, said Yaroslavsky, adding that operating the OPI does not disrupt clinical workflow. It offers a field of view several centimeters across and tens-of-micron resolution at unparalleled low cost.

Iorizzo added that imaging with the OPI is easier for patients to tolerate and the procedure produces better cosmetic outcome and repair of the incision site.

Nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most common form of cancer in the United States, with about 3 million to 5 million new lesions diagnosed every year, according to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Approximately 3,000 people die from the disease annually. Statistically, 1 in 4 fair-skinned people may develop NMSC  which includes basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma  and the cost of treatment is nearly $5 billion a year.

The most effective treatment for NMSC usually involves Mohs surgery, in which the cancerous tumor is removed by excising the tissue layer by layer, with each layer examined under a microscope to help map the diseased area. The goal is to completely remove the tumor while preserving as much of the surrounding healthy tissue as possible. While the procedure is effective, it is time-consuming, labor-intensive and costly.

Tumor boundaries associated with NMSC are difficult to detect based on visual assessment alone. This results in inefficient removal of the cancerous tissue, which can lead to recurrence of the tumor, said Iorizzo, who lives in Lowell.

The OPI uses a couple of special optical filters (called crossed linear polarizers), a high-resolution CCD camera and a ring-shaped illuminator for wide-field imaging of the skin at resolutions of up to 12 micrometers (millionths of a meter). It utilizes visible light at several wavelengths with polarization to take images of the skin at certain depths to emphasize structures such as collagen, blood vessels and any melanin (pigmented) patches that may be present.

Our optical imaging system can identify disruptions in the skins collagen structure caused by the tumor, allowing for precise in-vivo mapping of the skin cancer before surgery, said Iorizzo, whose award consists of $7,500 worth of Edmund Optics products that will be used in the Advanced Biophotonics Lab.

Yaroslavsky has several patents and others pending for the OPI. She and her team  which also includes physics Ph.D. students Peter Jermain, who earned his bachelors degree at UMass Lowell, and Androniki Mitrou  will be applying for industry and federal funding to continue and expand the clinical trials.

Our goal is to commercialize the technology by licensing it to an existing medical device manufacturer and setting up our own spinoff company. We are working on a prototype right now for a commercial version that will be much smaller and more compact, Yaroslavsky said.

The Advanced Biophotonics Lab is also conducting research on breast, brain and kidney cancers in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and UMass Medical School. The researchers work is supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery and the University of Massachusetts system.

UMass Lowell is a national research university located on a high-energy campus in the heart of a global community. The university offers its more than 18,000 students bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees in business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, humanities, sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality educational programs, vigorous hands-on learning and personal attention from leading faculty and staff, all of which prepare graduates to be leaders in their communities and around the globe. www.uml.edu
On 17 December 2018, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the Global Compact on Refugees, after two years of extensive consultations led by UNHCR with Member States, international organizations, refugees, civil society, the private sector, and experts.

The Global Compact on Refugees is a framework for more predictable and equitable responsibility-sharing, recognizing that a sustainable solution to refugee situations cannot be achieved without international cooperation.

It provides a blueprint for governments, international organizations, and other stakeholders to ensure that host communities get the support they need and that refugees can lead productive lives.

It constitutes a unique opportunity to transform the way the world responds to refugee situations, benefiting both refugees and the communities that host them.

Its four key objectives are to:

Ease the pressures on host countries;

Enhance refugee self-reliance;

Expand access to third-country solutions;

Support conditions in countries of origin for return in safety and dignity.

To support periodic review, UNHCR will draw upon three distinct but interconnected initiatives referenced in the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), namely, the Indicator Framework for the GCR , progress towards implementing pledges and initiatives announced at the Global Refugee Forum (GRF), and the exercise on measuring the impact of hosting, protecting and assisting refugees.

The role of the Global Compact on Refugees during the COVID-19 pandemic

The Global Compact on Refugees and the commitments made at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum support refugees and other people of concern as well as their host communities in their response to the coronavirus pandemic. Read more about it on this page, where you can also find a comprehensive list (marked as "Annex") of all relevant pledges made at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum that support people of concern during this crisis.

What does the Global Compact on Refugees include?

The Global Compact on Refugees has four parts:
The "salary spat" between Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and top managers of Naftogaz escalated to the governments refusal to renew the contract with CEO, Andriy Kobolyev. The latter stated that the Cabinet's actions were unlawful but did not specify his further moves. The whole situation is now in limbo. Experts suggest there is some pre-election fleur to it, but this will only play into the hands of Russia's Gazprom.

The election campaign in Ukraine is overwhelmed by scandals. One of the latest ones is related to Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev. This week, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman announced at a Cabinet meeting that the government would not renew Kobolyev's contract.

On March 22, the contract with the Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz expires. This means that we must make a decision in terms of the effectiveness of corporate governance. Today we decide to announce a competition on March 23 for the position of chairman of the board of Naftogaz, said Groysman. According to him, the Cabinet will discuss with the state company new terms of the contract. Most likely, they will affect salaries and bonus payments to top management.

It should be admitted that Groysman's act has been consistent all the way. Back in January, in response to the violent criticism of multi-million revenues of Naftogaz managers, which aggravated even further after Naftogaz bosses received bonuses for the company's spectacular win in Stockholm arbitration against Gazprom, he stressed he would not allow such sky-high payments anymore. Then, Groysman offered the Supervisory Board to review the contracts with the management to rule out "exorbitant" salaries and bonuses. In response, Kobolyev said that the Cabinet had no right to dictate its conditions under the law and called the very issue of his salary "political", having vowed all his money received in the company to charities.

Failing to take PM's wishes into account, the supervisory board decided to extend the contract with Kobolyev, setting his monthly salary at over UAH 2 million (almost US$75,000).

In response, Groysman made the statement about Kobolyev's contract. The latter chose not to remain silent: Both the preliminary decision of the government to terminate my contract and the current decision to announce the competition is contrary to Ukrainian law, moreover, the international community and organizations that sponsored corporate governance reforms and helped pass this law share this idea... This is contrary to the spirit of reform because the whole ideology was about the supervisory Board being the main governance tool for the company's major shareholder, the government," said Kobolyev. He added that the Cabinet of Ministers had no authority to make HR decisions, since the Supervisory Board had been created in Naftogaz to this end.

It remains to be seen what Kobolyev's next step will be  whether to challenge the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers, or take part in the competition.

Squabbles in public

The formal reason for all these mutual public hits is the corporate governance reform launched in 2015 according to the principles of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Thanks to the reform, management in state corporations is focused in the hands of supervisory boards appointed by government. It is designed to prevent corruption and eliminate manual management of state-owned companies. In 2016, the Naftogaz Supervisory Board was formed, and from that moment the confrontation between the government and the company began.

Groysmans decisions were in complete contradiction with those of the Naftogaz Supervisory Board, which supported Kobolyev in all matters. Then, a series of suits were filed with courts by both sides, on issues ranging from compensation for gas supplies to households to disputes over tariffs and the mechanism for paying subsidies. Groysman even accused the company of trying to influence gas prices. Besides, the prime minister urged Naftogaz to complete unbundling, while Kobolyev resisted, claiming this would not be a timely move considering how it could affect the ongoing litigation with Gazprom.

With his victories over the Russian gas monopoly in courts as well as brilliant financial reporting, Kobolyev further strengthened his positions. But that's when the scandal hit over bonus payments for the win over Gazprom. Kobolyev received his $8 million bonus, which he then wired to his mother, who is now in the U.S., "to keep the money safe.

Groysman found this bonus a great pretext for a public attack on Naftogaz. True, the question remained open: didn't the prime minister look at Kobolyev's contract when signing it? After all, these and future bonuses were all laid down in it...

The most recent high-profile row coincided with the expiration of Kobolyev's contract. Former Chief Commercial Officer of Naftogaz, and since November 2018, Executive Director of the Naftogaz Group, Yuriy Vitrenko, said corruption schemes were applied in the sales of gas from underground gas storages. He says these schemes confirm the conflict of interests of the newly appointed head of Naftogaz's gas department, Andriy Favorov, a protege of the Cabinet of Ministers. Vitrenko believes gas was sold at recuded prices to ERU Trading, the company previously led by Favorov.

Meanwhile, Kobolyev voiced other facts noting at signs of embezzlement. According to him, the information system developed by Ukrtransgaz to manage daily gas balancing in Ukraine's market recorded how gas distribution companies owned by oligarch Dmytro Firtash sold to industrial consumers certain volumes of gas initially set to be supplied to households.

This situation should be followed by a detailed investigation: why and how this happened. And the most important thing is how often this happened in the past, noted Kobolyev.

Perhaps this could the reason why the prime minister turned against the state corporation: rumors have it that people from the orbit of the runaway gas tycoon have recently increased their efforts to approach Groysman.

Whatever it is, market experts are unanimous in their opinion that the ongoing developments are connected with the election campaign, playing into the hands of Russia's Gazprom.

Gazprom applauds

President of the Center for Globalization Strategy XXI, Mykhailo Honchar, believes that today it is an extremely inappropriate moment to unfold the Naftogaz row as this will affect company stability and certainly be exploited by Moscow.

it's been a month since Groysman started expressing disagreement with high salaries of Naftogaz top managers and Kobolyev personally, although he should have been aware of contractual terms better than anyone. However, according to the current legislation, the contract is issued by the decision of the Supervisory Board comprised of independent directors. So they did give their approval to extend Kobolyev's contract. But Groysman decided in his own way. The situation is stupid, roughly speaking. You can't do it this way. The very decision of the Supervisory Board was not of a political nature, and, moreover, 2019 is a year when two election campaigns are being held, and therefore, in any case, it was necessary to keep Naftogaz leaders in place to calmly pass the period of political turbulence and possible change of top authorities. You also need to take into account the expiry of the gas contract with Gazprom from January 1, 2020, which is also a point of uncertainty. Therefore, it is simply necessary to ensure internal stability in the gas sphere. Meanwhile, Groysman's actions lead us in the opposite direction. Now Gazprom can only applaud this," the expert noted.

He added that in a recent interview with a Luxembourg-based news outlet, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke on relations between Gazprom and Naftogaz, in particular on future gas transit. He said that Russia was in favor of extending partnership if certain conditions were met. If not, the risk of "gas" instability remains. This scenario is simple: Russia is trying to prove to Europe that Ukraine is a risk zone, while pushing through its pipeline projects bypassing Ukraine. And now, thanks to the current scandal, this dramatic concept of our northern neighbors is being brought to life by Ukrainians.

Western partners supporting Kobolyevs position in the light of gas market reform will react, but not as quickly as they did over the Constitutional Court's move to abolish the norm punishing officials for illegal enrichment. They will need more time to recover from shock. And the question here is not even about how Western partners might support Kobolev (for his managerial or personal qualities), but about the brazen moves by Ukraine authorities, spitting in the face of corporate procedures introduced after the Revolution of Dignity and demonstrating the old school approach to managing state-owned companies (this approach has a name, and it's "milking").

Besides, in 2019, it is a no-go to mess up companies on which both economic and social stability in the country depend (Naftogaz, Energoatom, Ukrenergo), while the country's political leadership is engaged in campaigning fighting with each other instead of doing their job.

According to Honchar, the conflict situation is definitely connected with the elections. First there is a scandal with Ukroboronropom, now there's Naftogaz... There are many people out there seeking to manually manage finances of state-owned companies, especially Naftogaz. Moreover, it's not so much in the context of the presidential campaign, which is already nearing completion, but in view of the autumn parliamentary elections. The authorities need to get at their disposal some money for large-scale campaign efforts, so that's how all the fuss around Naftogaz began. The position of the government, which owns the administrative resource, is to appoint loyal people to commercially important companies and oust those they can't control. Scandals between the Cabinet and Naftogaz have been going on for a while. Now everything has only aggravated, and one of the reasons is that Groysman's prospects are not so bright. It is unlikely that he will remain prime minister even if Poroshenko retains his post as the president will definitely begin to show 'new approaches' and use this pretext to remove Groysman. Besides, the new parliament is unlikely to support today's prime minister either. Therefore, he has one way out  to return to parliamentary work as a deputy."

"So all of this is part of Groysman's own election campaign: to claim he is exposing rich fat managers who make millions. However, in fact, hes set to put his people on these positions to control financial flows," Honchar said.

There are two sides of the coin in this story, the expert believes. Naftogaz has ceased to be a burden for the budget, becoming a profitable efficient corporation, which, of course, is not the merit of Kobolyev alone, but of the whole gas market reform, which, however, would have never been possible without the will of Naftogaz CEO. But there is another side that makes Kobolyev politically vulnerable  one cannot disregard the negative public perception of not only the huge salaries and bonuses of the Naftogaz management but also extremely high gas tariffs. Although, again, the tariff issue is a question should rather be put before Groysman. But the majority of potential voters have no clue about such subtleties.

Honchar believes that it is difficult to predict how Kobolyev will act further. The decision of the Cabinet of Ministers leads the row into a corner of uncertainty. The outcome of the announced contest remains unclear. What will be the next contract with the head of Naftogaz is also unclear, that is, the chaos is only mounting. In fact, the technology of disorganizing the largest energy company to the joy of Gazprom has been applied, the expert emphasizes.

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of Energy Research Center, cites two reasons for the ongoing row: the first is that the government has not understood the essence of corporate governance reform, and the second is that Groysman is not ready to accept the fact that he will not be able to hand out commands to state-owned companies manually.

The fact that the Cabinet of Ministers announces a competition contrary to the decision of the Supervisory Board of Naftogaz is a violation of the law on corporate governance of state companies. In order to cut off the political and corruption influence on the state corporation, the Supervisory Board mechanism was introduced where politicians represented by the government appoint it, while the board then appoints executive bodies. The government cannot put up with this. And these circumstances give rise to conflict. And the hype around this is only due to the pre-election period. I don't know how much Poroshenko is involved in all of this, but Groysman cannot tolerate Kobolyev and so he decided to handle the issue ahead of the elections, thinking who knows, maybe it works out Everyone plays their own game now," says Kharchenko.

The expert doesn't dare to predict the outcome of the whole spat, while he doesn't rule out some sharp reaction on the part of our international partners because it was they who became the main drivers of gas reform (as well as other real reforms launched in Ukraine). Besides, they supported Kobolyev in everything, too.

"In the near future, everything should clear up. In the meantime, guys in Gazprom are drinking champagne. It is in their interests to see destabilization in Naftogaz, the company which poured so much salt on Gazprom's wound," the expert concluded.

While Gazprom is applauding and probably drafting more statements on Ukraine's "gas" instability, we are yet to see what the conflict will boil down to. But it is possible that it will only gain momentum. After all, ahead of the elections, someone is always happy to see conflicts escalate.

Nana Chornaya

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Amid the escalation of Russian aggression in the Black and Azov Seas, the United States is considering providing Ukraine with more lethal defensive weapons. UNIAN learned about the possible options of supplies and whether to expect a "response" on the part of the Kremlin.

The United States is ready to provide Ukraine with additional lethal weaponry, except for Javelin ATGMs. It's about naval and sniper systems, as well as ammunition, that's according to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Curtis Scaparrotti, who recently spoke at a meeting of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

If the relevant decision is taken, the purpose of providing new weapons to Ukraine is to deter Russian aggression against the background of the seizure of Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait zone. According to Scaparrotti, supported by the new arms, the Ukrainian Navy will be able to prevent new crises in the Black and Azov Seas.

Scaparrotti says the issue should still pass a stage of political discussions. A positive moment here is the fact that Ukrainians proved to be responsible users of the earlier provided Javelin anti-tank missile systems. The Ukrainians, in my view, have trained very well for the use of that, theyve been responsible in the security and the deployment of it and we watch that closely, Scaparrotti told the Committee.

David Hale, United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, during his recent Kyiv visit, also declared Washington's support for Ukraine in deterring Russian aggression. He assured that the U.S. would continue providing material and technical assistance to the Ukrainian defense ministry.

The first U.S. official who spoke up for the provision of lethal aid to Ukraine was U.S. Senator John McCain. Starting from 2015, he repeatedly said that the free world should give Ukraine whatever the country needs to defend itself from Putin's war.

Back then, the Kremlin immediately responded with blackmail  an escalation of the conflict in Donbas. Nevertheless, the same year, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a Defense Appropriations Act where, among other things, financing of lethal aid to Ukraine was laid down. However, the-then U.S. President Barack Obama vetoed the document. In December 2017, the U.S. Presidential Administration - already led by Donald Trump - approved supplies of defensive weapons to Ukraine. The aid included large-caliber sniper rifles, ammunition, and related technical support. At the same time, no permission was given to supply heavy weapons, including FGM-148 Javelin ATGMs.

After Vladimir Putin's statement of March 2018 where he claimed new Russian weapons, elusive and unpredictable missiles could reach any spot across the world, while the video simulation showed a model of a missile strike on Florida, the United States decided to provide Javelin to Ukraine. The volume of assistance amounted to US$47 million. These were 37 launchers, including ATGMs for spare parts, 210 missiles for them, training complexes, trainings on the use and maintenance of the anti-tank systems, as well as transportation services. Representatives of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, responsible for the contract, ensured the hand-over of weapons and training.

And now a new statement has come from Washington. UNIAN figured out what kind of weapons it implied, when they could be supplied, and how Russia could respond.

Lethal weapons as a deterrent

Experts believe that the promised deliveries of lethal weapons will be fulfilled in the near future, but much depends on the Ukrainian government and on political situation in the U.S. Meanwhile, no strong escalation should be expected from Russia. After all, they don't have much to respond with.

Mykola Sungurovsky, director of military programs at Razumkov Center, says that there is no actual news in the Scaparrotti statement. He only reiterated the assurances Washington had previously expressed of their support for Ukraine.

"Since the end of 2015, the issue of providing Ukraine with weapons in view of Russia's aggression has moved from a dead spot. The first step in lethal aid was about Javelins, which we received in 2018. Until then, Ukraine had received from Western powers non-lethal aid only. In principle, this issue is resolved on a bilateral basis. Ukrainian General Staff officials often visit the United States, where together with their American colleagues they discuss our Army's needs for armaments, depending on the situation in the occupied territory, plus taking into account internal political alignments in the U.S. The timing of the allocation of new weapons to our country depends on the latter aspects," the expert noted.

He adds that, when it comes to the internal situation in the United States, this implies that individual politicians are trying to lobby for the line claiming it's not a wise thing to tease Russia. However, supporters of this idea are now in the minority. Consequently, the influence of the Russian factor on how the issue will be resolved will be minimal. The only thing we can expect from Russia is just another round of tensions on the front line. But at the same time, deliveries of lethal aid to Ukraine minimize the likelihood of conflict escalation. Besides, it reduces the number of casualties among Ukrainian troops. In the absence of lethal weapons, it could have been much higher. Moscow has once again seen a confirmation that Ukraine is not alone in confronting Russia and that in case we need it, we will always het support, be it military or technical. And this is a factor in deterring Russian aggression," Sungurovsky said, commented on the situation.

A military expert Oleh Zhdanov believes that now the United States is extremely interested in increasing the combat capability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as their combat potential, to help Ukraine Army become a real deterrent to the Russian aggression, so that Ukraine could repel Russia on an equal footing and even with some advantage. At the same time, he emphasizes that certain actions by Ukrainian leadership are holding back American military aid.

Unfortunately, our leaders, in particular, the president, are doing everything to bring this issue to a halt. Poroshenko, by and large, sabotages military reform," the expert opines. "The fact that supplies of Javelins had been postponed wasn't a problem of the United States  the negotiations had been delayed by the Ukrainian side. Immediately after the "Kerch incident" we were offered two American frigates. Where are they? The Navy Commander declares: 'We are an urgent matter.' But the issue has sunk into oblivion. Where are the Island vessels, on which we've been negotiating for two years, and now we cannot transport them for another year? So how is the president's initiative working on boosting the country's defenses and national security? Zhdanov concluded.

He also noted that the equipment that the U.S. is offering is not new, but it is still in service with the U.S. Army, and is capable of deterring Russian aggressors.

"Of course, they take more modern equipment, but the equipment they're offering us in terms of technical features really outplays the old Soviet scrap that we have in service today. Meanwhile, the myth of the Russian army being the world's second strongest has been firmly engraved in people's minds, but it shouldn't have. In reality, it isn't. The capabilities of the equipment we're getting are much stronger than those of the Russian hardware. At the same time, the United States is very pleased with how our troops learn to use the weapons that have been transferred. Our units are being trained by their instructors. The training center operates non-stop at the Yavoriv training ground, and it has been a success," said the expert.

According to Zhdanov, now the issue of providing weapons concerns the Ukrainian Navy, but the country is ready for this, he suggests: We still do not have our Fleet; there is no political decision on whether or not it will be created. We have only our Naval Forces. No one can say clearly what that is supposed to mean and what is its shape. Any task begins with a goal being set, but it remains unclear for what Ukraine should strive and what are we ultimately building. In the fifth year of the war, there is no program for the creation of the Armed Forces, there is no military reform. And this is a question to ask the president," the expert claims.

Zhdanov also predicted that the procedure for the allocation of lethal aid will not take long. Today there is a common understanding and vision of the strategy toward Ukraine. The question rests only on us. Representatives of the Ukrainian General Staff must agree at the Pentagon on a list of weapons. This is a stumbling block. There is a list on the American side, while our list is always in question. The United States, realizing the level of corruption in our state, hasn't given 'live' money to Ukraine since 2015  they offer material and technical means for the allocated amounts, and starting 2018, they offer weapons. But we're just thinking for too long," said the expert.

According to him, Russia will have a neurasthenic reaction to the allocation of more lethal weapons for Ukraine. The General Staff of the Russian Federation is well aware that any growth in the potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine represents a real threat to them. There will be, of course, many statements, yelling and screaming. But I don't think that there will be any real steps to raise the level of confrontation. Firstly, in the political and economic sense, the influence of Russia on our country is much lower than it was before. Secondly, Putin is not ready to arrange a 'mini-war'. This requires strong effort, as well as considerable resources, which he doesn't have. In addition, now it's not the year of 2014, and the whole world understands who is fighting in Donbas. If Putin instigates another confrontation, he will receive another package of sanctions. By the way, in March, the U.S. Congress put to the vote a bill introducing sanctions for the use of chemical weapons, which Putin himself called "sanctions from hell." They were postponed for six months by Trump in October last year, and now they are becoming a reality. They will be surely voted in and signed off. Putin will have no time for the escalation of the conflict, he will only think about how to maintain stability in Russia, although he's got well prepared for such a scenario. Starting from 2016, he has been forming the National Guard (which plays in Ukraine's hands in terms of the escalation of hostilities), to suppress a possible internal conflict. The number of Guards has already reached 400,000  this is as many people as the Land Forces are allowed to have in their ranks. Moreover, Russians are already fed up with wars  the Russian Federation is simultaneously involved in five conflicts, regularly sending back the bodies of troops killed in action. Because of this, the autumn draft was disrupted in Russia. So Russia shouldn't be intimidating anyone, concluded the expert.

According to experts, the allocation of new lethal weapons to Ukraine, taking into account legislative processes in the United States, is a matter of one to two months. It could only be delayed in view of the latest corruption scandal in the Ukrainian defense industry, in particular, around Ukroboronprom. Now, the investigation is in full swing. And it is possible that everything will end in nothing, as is usually the case in Ukraine. But the American partners are unlikely to be satisfied with this, and the contract on the supply of lethal weapons, which Ukraine needs now, could be postponed indefinitely, at least until the end of the election campaign. And this would only play into the hands of the Kremlin, which would unacceptable.

Nana Chornaya

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The president also commented on Putin's statement claiming no prospects for any positive result in Kyiv-Moscow relations under the current leadership in Ukraine.

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko called the "illegal" visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the temporarily occupied Crimea "violation of Ukraine's sovereignty."

Speaking at a Freedom of Speech panel show on ICTV, Poroshenko noted that the President of the Russian Federation had visited Crimea illegally.

"Today, there has been a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty in connection with the Crimea visit by Russian President Putin," he said.

Read alsoPoroshenko: Ukraine's most important task to ensure restoration of territorial integrity

Poroshenko also commented on the Russian president's statement claiming that under the current leadership of Ukraine it will not be possible to achieve a "positive result" in relations between Kyiv and Moscow.

Todays Putins assertion that he is ready to cooperate with any candidate in the presidential elections in Ukraine, except Petro Poroshenko, is an absolutely clear position that before the presidential elections Putin will go around praying and asking that the choice of the Ukrainian people depend on Putin rather on the Ukrainian people itself. And my clear position is that you [Mr Putin] won't see this happen. Ukraine is already different and Ukrainians will themselves determine their fate, the head of state emphasized.

As UNIAN reported earlier, on March 18, Putin visited the occupied Crimea in connection with the fifth anniversary of the annexation of the peninsula.

While speaking in the occupied Crimea, Putin said that the current leadership of Ukraine would not be able to achieve a "positive result" in relations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation and that Russia would have to wait until a "wave of Russophobia" subsided.
Ukraine insists the visit violates its state sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has returned a note of protest sent by Ukraine's Foreign Ministry over President Vladimir Putin's visit to occupied Crimea, without considering it.

"As for the note of protest mentioned in a statement of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, sent to the Russian Foreign Ministry, we return such notes without considering them or reacting to them," the Russian ministry said on Tuesday, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

"We would like to emphasize that neither the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, nor anybody else was empowered to dictate to the Russian leadership when and how to organize the schedule of visits to the regions in their 'own' state," the ministry said.

Read alsoPutins Crimea visit "violation of Ukraines sovereignty": Poroshenko

As was reported earlier, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry on Monday, March 18, sent a note to the Russian Foreign Ministry in connection with Putin's visit to Crimea on the fifth anniversary of the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula by Russia.

"A note of protest was filed to the Russian Foreign Ministry in connection with Putin's visit to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol," the Ukrainian ministry said in a statement on its website.

The Ukrainian authorities insist the visit violates Ukraine's state sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The accused's final plea is scheduled for May 2.

Ukrainian prosecutors insist on 14-year imprisonment for Brazilian citizen Rafael Lusvarghi who fought alongside with terrorists of the "Donetsk People's Republic" against the Ukrainian army.

The court decided to remand Lusvarghi in custody until May 16, the press service of the Prosecutor's Office in the city of Kyiv said.

Dnipropetrovsk region's Pavlohradsky district court conducted judicial pleadings in the Lusvarghi case.

"During the pleadings, the prosecutor upheld the evidence presented in court and asked the court to impose a 14-year prison sentence on the accused with confiscation of property," it said.

The accused in turn pleaded guilty to participation in illegal armed groups but denied participation in terrorist organizations.

Read alsoSBU opens case against C14 nationalists for detention of Brazilian mercenary  lawyer

"Having heard the sides, the court extended the accused's detention until May 16 and appointed the date of the accused's final plea for May 2," the prosecutor's office added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Lusvarghi was detained in Ukraine in October 2016 for participation in illegal armed formations of the terrorist organization "Donetsk People's Republic" from September 2014 to May 2015. The SBU Security Service of Ukraine said that the convicted had fully recognized his guilt during the investigation. On January 25, 2017, Kyiv's Pechersky court sentenced him to 13 years in prison. His defense appealed the verdict, a court of appeals overturned it because of procedural mistakes and returned the case for retrial.

The Brazilian was supposed to participate in a December 2017 swap for Ukrainian prisoners of war, therefore a Ukrainian court had released him in exchange for his personal guarantees. Lusvarghi remained in Kyiv, living in a monastery, until early in May 2018, members of the nationalist organization C14 (Sich) detained the Brazilian mercenary near the embassy's building and brought him to the Kyiv office of the SBU Security Service of Ukraine. His lawyer Valentin Rybin claimed that Lusvarghi was unable to return to Brazil because "the Ukrainian authorities had not given the passport and travel documents back to the Brazilian."

Ukraine's Supreme Court selected Dnipropetrovsk region's Pavlohradsky city district court for retrial. The latter ruled on May 7, 2018, to remand the defendant in custody.

On October 30, 2018, Lusvarghi dismissed Rybin and asked for a public defender.
English French

OTTAWA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- From coast to coast to coast, Canadians are finding many ways to engage and inspire others about the natural world and their connections to it. Since 2014, the Canadian Museum of Nature has celebrated the achievements of these innovative individuals, businesses and organizations through its Nature Inspiration Awards, which is now receiving nominations for the 2019 edition.



Previous nominees of this annual program have included youth or adults who initiate change through community action, teaching, and advocacy; not-for-profits that inspire children and adults through hands-on experiences with nature and the environment; leaders who mobilize people and shine a light on nature through creative endeavours and programs; and businesses that promote sustainable practices and support community outreach.

Guidelines and application forms are available at nature.ca/awards. The submission deadline is May 13, 2019 and a jury will select the winners from a shortlist in each of six categories. Nominations should stress specific projects that show leadership and innovation, rather than just an overview of an organisations mandate or an individuals list of accomplishments. Each award includes $5,000, which recipients then pay it forward by donating the prize to another worthy cause or organization.

We continue to be inspired by the many nature-focussed projects led by Canadians that inspire others, share knowledge, and create awareness about sustainable approaches for our future, says Meg Beckel, President and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Nature. Through this years awards, we look forward to honouring the people and organizations that are making a difference.

There are six categories for the awards: youth (aged 17 and younger), adults (aged 18 and up), small-to-medium not-for-profit organizations; large not-for profits; small-to-medium businesses, and large businesses. A Lifetime Achievement Award recipient will be selected by the jury.



Nominations can come from a direct application by the individual or organization, or through a third party. Through brief essays and supporting documents (videos, photos, articles), applicants must demonstrate leadership, innovative practices and accomplishments for projects that encourage a positive and sustainable interaction with the natural world.

A gala to celebrate the finalists and announce the winners will be held November 13, 2019 at the Canadian Museum of Natures historic building in downtown Ottawa. The awards are supported by media partners The Walrus and the Globe and Mail, and category partner Ontario Power Generation (Not-for-Profits, small to medium).

For more information, email awards@mus-nature.ca.

Recipients of the 2018 Nature Inspiration Awards included:

teenager Isabella OBrien from Dundas, Ontario, for environmental advocacy and youth-science projects about ocean acidification;

scientist and community activist Dr. Max Liboiron for research, community engagement, and new methods to reduce ocean plastics;

FLAP Canada, for initiatives to reduce bird collisions with buildings;

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society for advocacy in nature conservation and the protection of public lands;

Iqaluit-based publishing house Inhabit Media for stories about the land, animals and peoples of Canadas North;

The Plastic Bank from Vancouver for reducing ocean-plastic waste internationally and promoting community sustainability;

CN Rail for focus on tree planting and community-greening initiatives across Canada;

the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to wildlife biologist Dr. Dave Mossop from Whitehorse for four decades of leadership in species discovery and conservation;

Videos about each of the winners can be viewed at nature.ca.

About the Canadian Museum of Nature

Saving the world through evidence, knowledge and inspiration: The Canadian Museum of Nature is Canada's national museum of natural history and natural sciences. The museum provides evidence-based insights, inspiring experiences and meaningful engagement with nature's past, present and future. It achieves this through scientific research, a 14.6-million specimen collection, education programs, signature and travelling exhibitions, and a dynamic web site, nature.ca.

Information for media:

Dan Smythe

Head, Media Relations, Canadian Museum of Nature

613.566.4781; 613.698.9253 (cell)

dsmythe@mus-nature.ca
According to intelligence reports, two enemy troops were eliminated and another two were wounded.

In the past 24 hours, Russia's hybrid military forces mounted three attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as killed in action.

"As a result of shelling, a Ukrainian soldier was killed. The Joint Forces properly responded to all enemy attacks, having eliminated two invaders and wounded another two," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation (JFO) said in an update on Facebook as of 07:00 Kyiv time on March 19, 2019.

Read alsoUkrainian military shoot down enemy drone in Donbas (Photo)

What is more, Ukrainian troops destroyed two enemy infantry fighting vehicles and two military transport vehicles.

Russian occupation forces opened aimed fire from 82mm and 120mm mortars, grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns, sniper, and small arms to attack Ukrainian defenders of the villages of Katerynivka and Khutir Vilniy.

"Since Tuesday midnight, Russian-led forces haven't attacked Ukrainian positions yet," the report said.
An SMM mini-UAV also spotted Russian jamming systems.

Members of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine have spotted about 30 different howitzers in Russia-occupied areas in Donbas, eastern Ukraine.

"In non-government-controlled areas, an SMM mini-UAV on March 14 spotted: 16 self-propelled howitzers (2S1 Gvozdika, 122mm), 14 towed howitzers (D-30 Lyagushka, 122mm) and three anti-tank guns (MT-12 Rapira, 100mm) in a training area near Buhaivka (37km south-west of Luhansk) and an anti-tank gun (MT-12) near Perevalsk (38km west of Luhansk)," the OSCE said in an update based on information received as of 19:30 Kyiv time on March 18, 2019.

On March 17, an SMM mini-UAV spotted six tanks (probable T-64) and a probable self-propelled howitzer (2S3 Akatsiya, 152mm) in Luhansk city.

Read alsoOSCE monitors spot casings of multiple launch rocket systems in Russia-occupied Donetsk

They were beyond withdrawal lines but outside of designated storage sites, the OSCE said.

What is more, OSCE observers spotted over 35 tanks in Russia-occupied Donbas.

In particular, an SMM mini-UAV on March 14 spotted 11 tanks (T-64), including one with its barrel missing, in a training area near Shymshynivka (27km south-west of Luhansk) and 25 tanks (T-64), including one with its barrel missing, nine towed mortars (2B11 Sani, 120mm) and four surface-to-air missile systems (9K35) in a training area near Buhaivka.

An SMM mini-UAV spotted an automatic jamming system (R-330Zh, Zhitel) on a KamAZ-4310 and a radio-electronic jamming complex (Tirada-2) near Yuzhna-Lomuvatka (60km west of Luhansk) in non-government-controlled areas.
These companies got their equipment delivered by vehicles under Russian diplomatic cover.

A Czech publication Respekt has just published a story which provides more detail on a recent successful intelligence operation carried out by countrys BIS counterintelligence service, an agency that has been criticized for incompetence by President Milos Zeman.

The weekly says that BIS shut down a group of Russian hackers, who were part of a wider international network, in early 2018, according to Radio Praha.

A few months ago, Czech President Milos Zeman attacked the Security Information Service (BIS), saying that the Czech counterintelligence was incompetent and had not revealed a single Russian or Chinese spy in six years. This caused a reaction not just from the media but from BIS itself.

Its chief, Michal Koudelka, said via the agencys website that BIS had stopped the activity of tens of Russian and Chinese intelligence officers, providing the destruction of a Russian intelligence network on Czech soil as an example.

Read alsoCzech counterintel says it paralyzed Russian spying network - media

The Czech weekly magazine Respekt claims to have some information about what took place, after conducting its own long-term investigation across the Czech Republic and Russia.

The author of the story, journalist Ondrej Kundra, who specializes in intelligence affairs, says that it seems the group operating in the Czech Republic was part of a wider international cell which coordinated its attacks.

This really was a kind of international network, with similar groups of Russian spies based in EU countries. We do not know on which specific operation they were working, however.

According to Respekt, the group operated under the cover of two private IT companies, conducting hacking operations from the companies computers. These, the magazines sources claim, were transported to the Czech Republic by vehicles under Russian diplomatic cover.

Mr. Kundra says that the Russian spy ring also included Russians who had acquired Czech citizenship.

Read alsoRussia poses danger to Czech Republic, EU: Czech Foreign Minister

Originally, all of them were Russian citizens who came to this country some years ago and got citizenship. As we can see now, this was a security threat, because they then spied, something that was probably easier for them as Czech citizens.

The Czech police cannot expel people who have been granted Czech citizenship until sufficient evidence against the alleged perpetrators is gathered.

The question of how Russian citizens gain Czech citizenship is set to be brought up at the next meeting of the Government Council for National Minorities.
Trumps latest insinuation of Russian innocence over the presidential election will likely further exasperate the U.S. intelligence community, the report says.

Donald Trumps suggestion that Britain invented Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election has been branded completely false by the UK government.

The U.S. president shared a tweet by William Craddick, the founder of right-wing conspiracy theory news outlet Disobedience Media, The Independent reported.

Russiagate was designed in part to help the UK counter Russian influence by baiting the United States into taking a hard line against them, Craddick wrote. Leaves us all with a more dangerous world as a consequence. Just another episode of the great game.

It is not clear what Russian influence in Britain Craddick was referring to, but great game is likely a reference to a long-running political and diplomatic confrontation between Russia and Britain in the 19th century.

Donald Trump regularly retweets messages  as he did here  that he agrees with.

A Foreign Office spokesperson told The Independent: This claim is completely false.

Trumps endorsement of the explosive claim Britain was involved in a conspiracy to create Russiagate  a term commonly understood to refer to Russias meddling in the presidential election  risks further undermining relations between the White House and the UK government.

Read alsoPentagon planning to test long-banned missiles after INF pullout: RFE/RL

Late last week, he launched an extraordinary attack against Theresa May over her Brexit negotiation strategy, claiming she didnt listen to his advice over the issue.

Sir Nicholas Soames, Conservative MP and privy councillor, told The Independent that Trumps peddling of the conspiracy theory was foolish and ludicrous.

The trouble is he allows himself to be subject to these great flights of fancy, which unfortunately there are too many people who take seriously, said Mr Soames, who is the grandson of Winston Churchill.

He added: He pretty much takes up every conspiracy theory there is, its just ludicrous. I dont think anyone who knows anything about it would take it seriously.

Trumps latest insinuation of Russian innocence over the presidential election will likely further exasperate the U.S. intelligence community, which has concluded the Kremlin interfered to help Trump and damage his rival Hillary Clintons candidacy.

The assessment led in part to special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russias role in the election and potential links between the Trump campaign and Moscow  a wide-ranging probe the president has long castigated as a witch hunt.
HOUSTON, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lawyers with the firm of Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas, LLP (SSEK Law Firm) are investigating claims involving William Neil Gallagher. Gallagher is a Texas based radio personality who is accused of investment fraud, money laundering, and operating a Ponzi scheme that targeted elderly investors, often preying on his clients Christian faith. Gallagher, through his AM radio show persona as the Money Doctor and his companies Gallagher Financial Group (GFC) and W. Neil Gallagher, PhD Agency, Inc., allegedly bilked over 60 senior investors of at least $19.6 million from 2014 through his capture earlier this year. Gallaghers affinity fraud investment scam coupled false promises of guaranteed, risk-free income with frequent religious references. According to the complaint filed by the SEC, instead of investing in Diversified Growth and Income Strategy Accounts as promised, Gallagher exhausted virtually all investor funds on spending unrelated to the accounts, including misappropriating significant portions for personal and company expenses and to make Ponzi payments to investors. Despite his claims to be a fully licensed investment advisor, Gallagher was neither an investment advisor nor broker when he allegedly defrauded elderly investors of their retirement savings, based on his FINRA BrokerCheck and SEC Investment Advisor reports.



Based on the complaint, Gallagher used at least $3.8 million of the investors' money to cover various personal expenses in addition to payroll, radio and website expenses, and legal costs. Authorities state that Gallagher issued false account statement with inaccurate account balance and financial information to clients to keep them from knowing the extent of their losses. The SEC is seeking to permanently bar Gallagher from the securities industry, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, and payment of civil penalties. The Dallas County District Attorneys Office has also filed charges against Gallagher for securities fraud and other criminal charges stemming from the scheme.

If you were a client of William Neil Gallagher or any of his financial entities, please contact the law firm of Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas, LLP today for a free, confidential evaluation of your account(s). We have a team of attorneys, consultants, and staff with over 100 years of combined experience in the securities industry and in securities law that are ready to assist you in recovering your investment losses today.

Contact Info: 800-259-9010

Sam Edwards: sedwards@sseklaw.com

Ryan Cook: rcook@sseklaw.com




English Danish

Company announcement no. 8/2019

Copenhagen, 19 March 2019





Course of Conferize A/S Annual General Meeting 2019

On 19 March 2019 at 16:00 the Annual General Meeting of Conferize A/S was held with the following agenda:

The Boards report on the Companys activities in the past financial year. Presentation and adoption of the audited annual report. Distribution of profit or covering of loss according to the adopted annual report. Election of the Board. Election of auditor. Proposals from the Board.

a. Authorization to the Board for capital increase by utilization of GEM facility.

b. Authorization to the Board to issue warrants to GEM.

c. Authorization to the Board to carry out capital increases. Authorization of the Chairperson of the General Meeting. Any other business.

re agenda item 1.

The General Meeting acknowledged the Boards report.

re agenda item 2.

The General Meeting adopted the 2018 annual report.

re agenda item 3.

The general Meeting approved the proposal, that the equity covers the loss of DKK 7,104,501 for 2018.

re agenda item 4.

The current Board Steen Tromholt, Christiane Vejl og Martin Ferro-Thomsen was re-elected.

re agenda item 5.

The General Meeting re-elected Deloitte Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab as the Company's auditor.

re agenda item 6a.

The General Meeting authorized the Board of Directors to utilize the GEM facility on one or more occasions by issuing a total of up to nominally DKK 1,000,000 shares in the period up to 31 March 2022.

re agenda item 6b.

The General Meeting authorized the Board to issue 480,000 warrants in connection with the fulfillment of the terms for the GEM facility (with the possibility of subsequent adjustments up to a total of 530,000 warrants) to GEM, on one or more occasions, and that these warrants entitle to subscription of up to nominally DKK 53,000 shares with a nominal value of DKK 0.10.

re agenda item 6c.

The General Meeting adopted the proposal, that the Board's existing (unused) authorization to carry out capital increases in the Articles of Association 4.2 and 4.3 are increased to nominally DKK 555,000 shares with a nominal value of DKK 0.10, so that the authorizations according to item 4.2 and 4.3 together can maximally be utilized for capital increases totaling nominally DKK 555,000, cf. Articles of Association 4.4.

re agenda item 7.

The General Meeting authorized the Chairperson of the General Meeting to file the resolutions passed by the General Meeting with the Danish Business Authority.





Immediately after the General Meeting, the Board elected Steen Tromholt as chairman. The Board decided on the basis of the authorization that was given under item. 6c, to explore the possibilities of holding a rights issue in April 2019.





On Conferize

Conferize is a digital platform for event organizers and attendees. Too many events and conferences are still planned and realized following a template from a time when the world was still analog. This means that the attendees benefit too little in terms of networking, knowledge sharing and participation, and organizers struggle with old-fashioned and incomplete products, ultimately resulting in a bad experience for the attendees.

Conferize solves this fundamental problem by offering a comprehensive solution that makes it easy for the organizer and creates greater value for the attendees  before, during and after the event. At the same time, Conferize connects users and content in a global network of events, providing an overview of an otherwise fragmented industry. Conferize has been used by thousands of events in more than 140 countries and has been official partner for TEDx since 2014.

Business registration no. 34472742 | invest.conferize.com





Certified Adviser

The Companys Certified Adviser is Baker Tilly Corporate Finance P/S (Business registration no. 40073310), Gert Mortensen, Poul Bundgaards Vej 1, 1., DK-2500 Valby, +45 30 73 06 67, gmm@bakertilly.dk.

Investor relations

Sren Dalsgaard Hansen, CFO Conferize A/S, +45 31 21 17 26, ir@conferize.com

Attachment
English Danish

Company announcement no 2019-04 19 March 2019

Annual general meeting

Today, William Demant Holding A/S held its annual general meeting at the Companys premises, Kongebakken 9, 2765 Smrum, Denmark. All proposals put forward by the Board were adopted by the general meeting, implying among others the following decisions:

The Companys Annual Report 2018 was approved, and the years profit, DKK 1,421 million, will be transferred to the Companys reserves.

The Boards remuneration for the 2019 financial year was approved.

Niels B. Christiansen, Peter Foss, Niels Jacobsen, Benedikte Leroy and Lars Rasmussen were re-elected members of the Board of Directors.

The Companys auditors, Deloitte Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab, were re-elected.

The Companys share capital will be reduced by nominally DKK 1,416,188, corresponding to the Companys holding of treasury shares at 18 February 2019. The Companys holding of treasury shares was acquired during 2018 and 2019. As a result of the capital reduction, article 4.1 of the articles of association will be amended no later than four weeks after expiry of the deadline for the filing of claims by creditors, which means that upon expiry of this deadline, it will appear from article 4.1 that the Companys share capital is DKK 49,057,407.

Until the next ordinary general meeting, the Board was authorised to let the Company buy back shares with a nominal value of up to 10% of the share capital.

The Companys name was changed to Demant A/S.

A revised version of the Companys remuneration policy was approved.

In his address, the Chairman of the Board, Niels B. Christiansen, gave an account of the Groups development in 2018. He said among other things:

2018 was another good and eventful year for the Group. All three business activities generated growth in 2018. We are  right now  in the process of introducing a range of new strong hearing aid families, and with this as our starting point, we also expect 2019 to be a good year with growth.

After the general meeting, Niels B. Christiansen added:

We are pleased to receive the shareholders endorsement of the name change to Demant. The new name and brand follow the Companys strategy to position Demant as the hearing aid industrys leading group whose purpose is to create life-changing differences through hearing health. Our story about life-changing hearing health, which goes all the way back to the founder and the Demant family, is incredibly strong and relevant and a strong platform for further growth.

After the general meeting, the Board of Directors elected Niels B. Christiansen Chairman and Niels Jacobsen Deputy Chairman of the Board.

We have held an election to find new staff-elected members of the Board. Thomas Duer and Jrgen Mller Nielsen were re-elected, and Casper Jensen was elected new member of the Board  all for a term of four years with start after the general meeting.

* * * * * * *

Further information:

Sren Nielsen, President & CEO

Phone +45 3917 7300

www.demant.com Other contacts:

Rene Schneider, CFO

Sren B. Andersson, VP IR

Mathias Holten Mller, IR Officer

Trine Kromann-Mikkelsen, VP Corporate Communication and Relations

Attachment
(@FahadShabbir)

President of the Republic of Senegal, Mackie Sal visited on Thursday Wahat Al Karama, Abu Dhabis national and cultural landmark designed to commemorate the sacrifices and heroic deeds of UAE martyrs to defend their homeland and protect its achievements

ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 14th Mar, 2019) - President of the Republic of Senegal, Mackie Sal visited on Thursday Wahat Al Karama, Abu Dhabis national and cultural landmark designed to commemorate the sacrifices and heroic deeds of UAE martyrs to defend their homeland and protect its achievements.

Upon his arrival, President Mackie Sal was welcomed by Sheikh Khalifa bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan, Executive Director of the Martyrs' Families' Affairs Office, at the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince's Court.

He attended the Guard of Honor ceremony, then laid a wreath at Martyrs' Monument, made up of 31 panels leaning on one another in a symbol of solidarity between the leadership, people and soldiers of the UAE.

Afterwards, he went on a tour across Wahat Al Karama and listened to a detailed explanation by Sheikh Khalifa bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan about the different sections in Wahat Al Karama, which embody the bravery and heroism of UAE heroes, as well as the nations noble values.

The tour was concluded by a word written by President Sal in the visitors log, expressing his utmost respect and appreciation for the brave martyrs of the UAE.
The European Space Agency, which comprises 22 member states, will join the Russian-US SIRIUS project, which models a flight to the Moon, and take part in the next stages of the experiment, Mark Belakovski, manager of the project, told reporters on Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th March, 2019) The European Space Agency, which comprises 22 member states, will join the Russian-US SIRIUS project, which models a flight to the Moon, and take part in the next stages of the experiment, Mark Belakovski, manager of the project, told reporters on Tuesday.

"Today we have received a letter from the European State Agency about its participation in the project. Their staffer will take part in the eight-month and year-long experiments," Belakovski said.

In 2016, the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian academy of Sciences and NASA signed a cooperation agreement to conduct a series of experiments dubbed SIRIUS.

The first stage of SIRIUS took place in November 2017 and lasted for 17 days.

A four-month experiment started in Moscow earlier in the day. It will reproduce the main stages of a real space flight to the Moon, including the flight itself, search for a landing site, landing, stay in the Moon's orbit, remote control of the lunar rover that will prepare the base and return to Earth.
Chile plans to obtain more than $400 million in foreign investment for its electric energy infrastructure creation and reconstruction in 2019, the Chilean government said

BUENOS AIRES (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th March, 2019) Chile plans to obtain more than $400 million in foreign investment for its electric energy infrastructure creation and reconstruction in 2019, the Chilean government said.

Chilean Energy Minister Susana Jimenez held an international roadshow on Monday, aimed at attracting new foreign investors to the country's electric energy sector, which she qualifies as a foundation of Chile's economic growth.

"Today it is a dynamic and competitive area, in which the private sector serves as the center of investment attraction," she said.

Chile will hold three types of tenders in 2019.

The first one will focus on eight projects on new electricity lines construction, with the referential investment amounting to $233 million. The second group of tenders will include 30 projects on reconstruction of existing lines, and the referential investment will make $88 million. Meanwhile, as part of the third group of tenders six groups of different projects are expected to be implemented, with the referential investment amounting to $87 million.

According to the plan of Chilean energy sector development, over 266 projects with a total cost of $3.1 billion are set to be implemented between 2020 and 2024.
DAMASCUS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th March, 2019) The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned on Monday Washington's plans to allocate $5 million to White Helmets non-governmental organization in Syria as "desperate" and called on the United States to stop funding terrorism.

Last week, the US State Department revealed plans to allocate $5 million to the White Helmets and the UN International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) that is investigating crimes in Syria. The motion is set to be endorsed by the US Congress.

"This desperate move of the United States ... proves that the United States still counts on supporting terrorism as a means to achieve its goals in Syria ... The Syrian Arab Republic strongly condemns Washington supporting terrorists, in particular White Helmets, and calls on the US administration to stop financing and delivering arms to Jabhat Nusra [terrorist organization banned in Russia] and terrorist groups affiliated with it," the ministry said.

The White Helmets non-governmental organization claims to be a group of volunteer rescue workers, who help to prepare Syrians for attacks and carry out rescue operations. However, the group has faced severe criticism on the part of both Syria itself and Russia, which accuse the organization of supporting terrorists and staging provocations involving chemical weapons, aimed at justifying potential foreign interventions in Syria.
CHARLOTTE, N.C., March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Smithfield Foods, Inc. and Food Lion joined forces to donate more than more than 42,000 pounds of protein to Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina . Smithfields contribution was part of the companys 2019 Helping Hungry Homes  donation tour. Helping Hungry Homes is Smithfields signature hunger-relief initiative focused on alleviating hunger and helping Americans become more food secure. The donation, equivalent to more than 169,000 servings, will help families fight hunger in the Metrolina region.



Smithfield has remained an incredible partner in hunger relief through its Helping Hungry Homes program, said Kay Carter, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina. Our efforts to promote food security with nutritious resources across the North and South Carolina counties we serve are made possible by partners like Smithfield and Food Lion, who have come together to make a collective impact in our communities.

Representatives from Smithfield Foods and Food Lion presented the donation to Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina at an event at the food bank this morning. Members of each organization discussed food insecurity in the local community and the significance of this donation that will provide protein throughout the food banks service area, which includes more than 527,000 individuals who face hunger in 19 counties across North and South Carolina.

Food Lion is about food. Thats why we are so passionate about helping to alleviate hunger and supporting community-minded partners who are working year-round toward ending hunger, said Benny Smith, manager of community relations for Food Lions Eastern market. We are proud to partake in this generous donation with Smithfield that will go to our neighbors in need across the communities we all call home.

This is the seventh large-scale protein donation made by Smithfield to food banks across the country during its 2019 Helping Hungry Homes tour. Since the programs inception in 2008, Smithfield has provided more than 120 million servings of protein to food banks, disaster relief efforts, and community outreach programs nationwide.

At Smithfield, we understand that hunger takes on many forms and affects those from all walks of life across the country, said Jonathan Toms, associate manager of charitable initiatives for Smithfield Foods. As a food company, we value our ability to step in and provide high-quality protein to alleviate hunger for those facing food-insecurity, especially here in North Carolina, a state we call home.

With more than 10,000 employees in the state of North Carolina, Smithfields donation to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina aligns with its commitment to contribute to the vitality of the communities where its employees live and work.

For more information about Smithfield Foods Helping Hungry Homes initiative and a list of upcoming donation events, visit helpinghungryhomes.com .

About Smithfield Foods

Smithfield Foods is a $15 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathans Famous, Farmland, Armour, Farmer John, Kretschmar, John Morrell, Cooks, Gwaltney, Carando, Margherita, Curlys, Healthy Ones, Morliny, Krakus, and Berlinki. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com , and connect with us on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , and Instagram .

About Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina

As part of Feeding America, Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina serves 19 counties in North and South Carolina. In FY2017- 2018, Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina distributed over 54 million pounds of food and household items to over 700 hunger feeding agencies including emergency pantries, soup kitchens, senior programs, shelters and low-income daycares.

SHFBM on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SHmetrolina/

SHFBM on Twitter: https://twitter.com/shmetrolina

SHFBM on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shmetrolina/

About Food Lion

Food Lion, based in Salisbury, N.C., since 1957, has more than 1,000 stores in 10 Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states and employs more than 63,000 associates. By leveraging its longstanding heritage of low prices and convenient locations, Food Lion is working to own the easiest full shop grocery experience in the Southeast, anchored by a strong commitment to affordability, freshness and the communities it serves. Through Food Lion Feeds, the company has committed to provide 500 million meals to individuals and families in need by the end of 2020. Food Lion is a company of Ahold Delhaize USA, the U.S. division of Zaandam-based Royal Ahold Delhaize Group. For more information, visit www.foodlion.com.

Media Contacts:

Dalton Agency for Smithfield

Jana Beasley

(904) 534-8568

jbeasley@daltonagency.com Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina

Donna Ragan

(704) 408-4527

dragan@secondharvest.org

Food Lion

Heather Halpape

(303) 888-6319

blsmith@foodlion.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1f6fc530-54b6-4250-be76-7b3e1e5bb3c6


(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The peaceful resolution of the conflict between Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) over Western Sahara would result in efforts being directed towards regional development, Ambassador Malainin Lakhal, adviser to the SADR's Foreign Ministry, told Sputnik on Monday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th March, 2019) The peaceful resolution of the conflict between Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) over Western Sahara would result in efforts being directed towards regional development, Ambassador Malainin Lakhal, adviser to the SADR's Foreign Ministry, told Sputnik on Monday.

The second roundtable under the aegis of the United Nations will be convened at the UN headquarters in Geneva. The meeting is expected to be attended by representatives of Morocco, the Polisario Front rebel movement of Western Sahara's Sahrawi people, Algeria and Mauritania.

"Resolving the conflict peacefully and in a lasting and fair way will allow the North African and Sahel countries to intensify their efforts, and coordinate appropriately, to find solutions to problems, including through intensive programs of economic and social investments in the border zones that lack development in addition to stronger coordination in terms of security," Lakhal said.

Lakhal stated that Western Sahara faces such issues as terrorism and drug-related crimes, whose resolution depends on reaching a peace agreement with Morocco.

"Western Sahara is located in a region that is affected by terrorism, cross-border crime, drug dealing and migration.

Failing to resolve the conflict peacefully and in respect of international law will likely plunge the North African region into turmoil," Lakhal said.

The previous two-day UN-led roundtable meeting between Morocco and the Polisario Front took place on December 5.

For decades, Morocco has been involved in a conflict with the Polisario Front movement over control of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that was transferred under control of Morocco and Mauritania in 1973. In 1976, the Polisario Front declared that it had established the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The partially-recognized state claims Western Sahara, but controls only a small part of it. Morocco has proposed a solution involving granting the restive region autonomy, while the United Nations has voiced support for a referendum on self-determination. SADR has gained wide recognition among African states and by several Latin American and Asian countries, while the Arab League back Morocco's territorial integrity. Numerous countries have withdrawn their recognition of SADR over the years.
The Russia-Ukraine relations can't become better under current Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th March, 2019) The Russia-Ukraine relations can't become better under current Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday.

"The president yesterday, while in Crimea, quite exhaustively described his attitude towards the prospects of building at least some kind of relationship with the current leadership of Ukraine...

As for who could be better for our bilateral relations, we can say unequivocally, that [the relations] cannot be better under the current [president of Ukraine]," Peskov said when asked if there was a person among the candidates for Ukraine's presidency, under whom bilateral relations would develop more fruitfully.

He said the Kremlin would prefer "a candidate with sober judgment" to win the Ukrainian presidential election, adding that Moscow would like the future leader of Ukraine to be the president of peace, not war.
US forces killed three members of the al-Shabab terror organization and possibly an unknown number of civilians in Somalia on Monday, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a press release on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th March, 2019) US forces killed three members of the al-Shabab terror organization and possibly an unknown number of civilians in Somalia on Monday, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a press release on Tuesday.

"In coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia's continued efforts to weaken al-Shabab, US forces conducted an airstrike in the vicinity of Awdheegle, Lower Shabelle Region, Somalia, on March 18, 2019," the release said. "At this time, it is assessed this airstrike killed three (3) terrorists."

AFRICOM is also investigating reports "alleging civilian casualties resulting from this airstrike," the release said.

Al-Shabab emerged in Somalia in 2006 and has claimed numerous terrorist attacks throughout the region. The group has sworn allegiance to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization (banned in Russia).
The United States expects the European Union to impose more sanctions on Russia over the current situation in Ukraine, US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker told reporters on Monday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th March, 2019) The United States expects the European Union to impose more sanctions on Russia over the current situation in Ukraine , US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker told reporters on Monday.

When asked whether Washington expects more sanctions from the European Union against Russia, Volker said, "Yes."

"Not only did the European Union do this on Friday, so did the United States and Canada. It was a concerted move by all of us to demonstrate that we are deeply concerned about Russia's continuing occupation and claimed annexation of Crimea, and also about the extension of that to include a claim to have unilateral control over the Kerch Strait and access to the Sea of Azov and ... the attack and arrest of the Ukrainian sailors," Volker said.

Volker said he expects the US and its allies to continue periodically imposing new sanctions if the situation does not change. He added that sanctions would be removed if Russia "restores" territory to Ukrainian control.

"But until then, I think you will see a continued push from the European Union, the United States and others to continue to ratchet up sanctions," he added.

On Friday, the United States, Canada and the European Union slapped new sanctions on Russia over the situation in Ukraine, particularly the Kerch Strait incident last November, during which Russia seized three Ukrainian vessels that illegally crossed the Russian maritime border and failed to heed a demand to stop.

The Crimean Peninsula was officially reintegrated into Russia on March 18, 2014 as a result of a referendum, in which the absolute majority of those who voted voiced their support for the move. While the international community refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the vote and has slammed the reunification as annexation, Moscow maintains that the referendum was held in accordance with international law and Crimea is now an integral part of Russia.

A number of Western countries, notably the United States, and the European Union have introduced sanctions against individuals involved in the so-called annexation of the peninsula and its governance, and whole sectors of the Russian economy. The sanctions include travel bans, asset freezes and restrictions on investment into the peninsula, among other things.
(@FahadShabbir)

TASHKENT (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th March, 2019) Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed on Tuesday a decree on granting pardon to 44 people ahead of Nowruz, one of the most important national holidays, local media reported.

Nowruz, also known as the Persian New Year, is celebrated in Uzbekistan on March 21.

The list of those pardoned includes 23 people, who were jailed over membership in organizations banned in Uzbekistan, the Uzbekistan 24 media outlet reported. Two of 44 people are aged over 60, while five more are women.

This is the fifth decree on pardon signed by Mirziyoyev since he came to power in 2016.
Barcelona, Spain (UroToday.com) In this session, Dr. Powles reviewed influential studies published in urothelial cancers in the past year. First, he touched on Keynote-045, comparing pembrolizumab to chemotherapy in patients with platinum-refractory urothelial cancer. In this study, pembrolizumab had an improvement in overall survival by approximately 3 months. SAUL, a prospective single arm study of atezolizumab for locally advanced or metastatic urothelial or non-urothelial cancers of the urinary tract, demonstrated a median overall survival of 10 months and a 1 year overall survival of 46% in the IMvigor211-like population'.Given these new results, the algorithm for first line systemic treatment for metastatic urothelial cancers has changed in the cisplatin-ineligible patients: immune therapy or gemcitabine/carboplatin for PD-L1 positive patients and gemcitabine/carboplatin for PD-L1 negative patients. Multiple first line phase III trials of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies as monotherapy or in combination are underway in urothelial cancer and we actively await their results as they will likely have practice changing guidelines as well (ie IMvigor130 CheckMate-901 ). DANUBE is a randomized phase III trial of durvalumab with or without tremelimumab versus chemotherapy as 1line treatment for metastatic urothelial cancer.Dr. Powles also discussed treatment in the neoadjuvant space in organ-confined disease. Neoadjuvant atezolizumab has demonstrated response for operable urothelial cancers, primary in patients PD-L1 positive. Furthermore, in the PURE-01 study, PD-L1 positivity with RB1 genomic alteration may be biomarkers for pathologic response with neoadjuvant pembrolizumab. Niagra, randomizing patients to neoadjuvant gemcitabine and cisplatin or gemcitabine and cisplatin with durvalumab (with 12 months durvalumab therapy), is currently ongoing and has the potential for promising results. An update on KEYNOTE-057 , a phase II trial of pembrolizumab for patients with high risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer unresponsive to BCG, has demonstrated a 40% complete response at 3 months, with no patients reported having progressed to T2 disease. Lastly, erdafitinib is being studied, which may show promise for the future in treating selected patients with urothelial cancers as an antibody-drug conjugate.In summary, the real world atezolizumab data is encouraging. Immune therapy in the front line cisplatin ineligible population is restricted to PD-L1 positive patients. Atezolizumab and pembrolizumab have impressive activity early in the disease with new targets holding promise for future treatments and investigations.Presented by: Professor Thomas Powles, MBBS, MRCP, MD Centre, Experimental Cancer Medicine Professor of Genitourinary Oncology, Lead for Solid Tumour Research at Barts Cancer Institute, Director of Barts Cancer CentreWritten by: David B. Cahn, DO, MBS@dbcahn Fox Chase Cancer Center at the 34th European Association of Urology (EAU 2019) #EAU19 conference in Barcelona, Spain, March 15-19, 2019.
Barcelona, Spain (UroToday.com) In this debate, Drs. Mulhall and Tombal debated the safety of testosterone replacement therapy in a prostate cancer patient. The index patient was a 58-year-old male with a pre-treatment PSA of 7.6 who, was 6 months status post radical prostatectomy for Gleason 4+3 prostate cancer with negative margins and an undetectable PSA, but symptomatic hypogonadism and erectile dysfunction despite tadalafil 5mg daily. It was noted that physicians concerns regarding testosterone replacement therapy are worldwide, stemming from the original Huggins and Hodges data that reduction of testosterone to castrate levels caused prostate cancer to regress whereas administration of exogenous testosterone caused prostate cancer to grow. However, more contemporary data shows no strong evidence on testosterone replacement therapy and prostate cancer and current EAU evidence-based guidelines is listed as weak.Dr. Mulhall argued in favor of administering testosterone replacement therapy in the post-prostatectomy patient. Risks of testosterone therapy include polycythemia, gynecomastia, and an absence of long term safety data in prostate cancer population. Benefits include reduction of cardiovascular events, improved glycemic control, bone density, and nerve recovery. Dr. Mulhall then explained the prostate cancer saturation model, where the receptors become saturated at a specific level and added testosterone does no harm. He explained in vitro and in vivo models which support this data. There is also data that supports testosterone as a neurogenic modulator and supports nerve recovery after prostatectomy. He reviewed a 2017 multivariate analysis demonstrating that patients treated with neoadjuvant ADT were 13 times more likely to have severe ED following prostatectomy. Dr. Mulhall also reviewed the newest MSKCC data which will be released at the upcoming 2019 AUA conference, in which 360 patients status post radical prostatectomy for pT2 Gl 6-7 prostate cancer and undetectable PSA were treated with TRT. Only one patient had a biochemical recurrence at a median follow up of 66 months. Dr. Mulhall concluded that a shared decision making is essential and treatment may be necessary depending upon the patient's specific signs and symptoms of testosterone deficiency.Dr. Tombal argued the contrary: that he would be reluctant to give this patient testosterone replacement. A 2017 multi-institutional study demonstrated that patients with pT2N0 Gl 7 prostate cancer have an approximately 15% and 20% recurrence and 5 and 10 years, respectively. This is also confirmed via MSKCC nomograms. Existing evidence supporting testosterone replacement therapy is very weak, consisting of small retrospective series with short follow up and most of the patients were Gl 6 disease. Furthermore, Dr. Tombal refuted Dr. Mulhalls analysis of the saturation model, due to the ignoring of the Coffey Paradox, and believe that prostate cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease. In summary, Dr. Tombal believes that testosterone replacement therapy may add fuel to the fire  proceed with caution.Presented by: John Mulhall, MDand Bertrand Tombal, MD, PhD1. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York2. Cliniques Universitaires Saint Luc, Brussels, BelgiumWritten by: David B. Cahn, DO, MBS @dbcahn Fox Chase Cancer Center at the 34th European Association of Urology (EAU 2019) #EAU19, conference in Barcelona, Spain from March 15-19, 2019.
Barcelona, Spain (UroToday.com) The use of multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) of the prostate combined with targeted fusion biopsies has become commonplace within the realm of prostate cancer in the last decade. As part of the plenary session on imaging in prostate cancer at the 2019 European Association of Urology (EAU) Annual Meeting, Dr. Harm van Melick from Nieuwegien, Netherlands was tasked with convincing the audience whether he thinks that the multiple devices that are marketed to assist with prostate fusion biopsies are a true improvement over older techniques, or if they are simply marketing.He began by showing that research attending regarding prostate fusion biopsy has almost exponentially increased since the first published articles in 2002. There were 8 fusion biopsy platforms in 2015, and this has increased to over 12 platforms in 2019. He acknowledged that given the data regarding the efficacy of fusion biopsies and the sheer number of prostate biopsies performed globally each year, there is ample money to be made by the technology companies who market these devices.He next showed the hype cycle a term branded by information firm Gartner which shows how a group regards a new technology (Figure 1). After a new technology is introduced, there is commonly an initial peak of inflated expectations about what the technology can offer. This is often followed by a period of disillusionment after it is realized that the technology cannot likely offer all that was initially hoped. As the technology matures, however, it reaches a plateau, which is somewhere in between the inflated expectations and any disillusionment. He applied this analogy to fusion biopsy devices, showing how technology has improved in the prostate biopsy, from initial digital-guided biopsies to transrectal ultrasound-guided (TRUS) biopsies, to improvements in technology for ultrasound-guided biopsies, to MRI-fusion biopsies.Figure 1  Hype CycleHe reviewed results of the PROMIS trial which showed that utilization of MRI-fusion biopsies can improve the diagnosis of clinically significant prostate cancer over standard TRUS biopsy and improve the negative predictive value of biopsy.Van Melick then discussed the three main types of MRI fusion biopsies: In-bore MRI fusion biopsy, MRI/US fusion biopsy, and cognitive fusion biopsy. Each modality has pros and cons to consider including cost, time required, learning curve, office-based versus hospital-based, and urologist-performed versus radiologist-performed. He then reviewed the data from the FUTURE trial comparing the three main types of fusion, which is admittedly limited, but shows that for clinically significant prostate cancer detection, none of the three methods appears to be superior. He discussed the limitations of the trial including the fact that it was underpowered, particularly for subgroup analyses. He reminded the audience that the brain is also a powerful fusion system and that cognitive fusion and MRI/US fusion may mutually benefit one another to increase accuracy.He concluded that image-guided biopsies improve prostate cancer detection but require a high-quality MRI and an experienced radiologic interpretation. He believes that the search for the best targeting technique is ongoing, but that each of the techniques has pros and cons. He again stressed that he believes that MRI/US fusion and cognitive fusion likely work to improve one another. While he didnt explicitly say so, it appears that he believes that the fusion biopsy devices are a true improvement, when used in the correct setting by an experienced operator.Presented by: Harm van Melick, MD, PhD, FEBU, Urologist at St. Antonius Hospital Utrecht Nieuwegein, Nieuwegien, NetherlandsWritten by: Brian Kadow, MD, Society of Urologic Oncology Fellow, Fox Chase Cancer Center at the 34th European Association of Urology (EAU 2019) #EAU19 conference in Barcelona, Spain, March 15-19, 2019.
Barcelona, Spain (UroToday.com) Theranostics is an emerging field of medicine which utilizes targeted cancer therapy based on specific molecular-targeted diagnostic tests. As part of the Imaging in Prostate Cancer plenary session at the 2019 European Association of Urology (EAU) annual meeting in Barcelona, Spain, Dr. Stefano Fanti, Director of Nuclear Medicine and Professor of diagnostic imaging at the the University of Bologna, discussed the potential uses of theranostics as it relates to the future of prostate cancer treatment.He began his discussion by explaining how theranostics works. A target cell (in this case a prostate cancer cell) has specific membrane receptors which can be bound to by binding molecules. These binding molecules can then be attached to a radionuclide through a linking molecule. The radionuclide can then deliver its energy to the cancer cell, thereby causing cell death. This treatment method has been employed for decades in the treatment of thyroid cancer, with radioactive iodide being used to target thyroid cells, however, it has been rarely employed in other malignancies until recently.Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is a transmembrane protein expressed in prostate cancer cells. It has been utilized recently as a target for imaging modalities such as a PSMA PET/CT. There has been emerging data that PSMA PET/CT is the most specific imaging modality to detect metastatic or nodal disease that may have been missed by a conventional bone scan or CT scan. Recently the use of PSMA PET/CT has been recommended by the EAU for men with a rising PSA after radical prostatectomy in order to determine if there is metastatic or nodal disease, as this may influence treatment decisions.Dr. Fanti discussed that while utilization of PSMA as a diagnostic imaging tool is fairly well established at this point, it has even more potential as a therapeutic treatment for advanced prostate cancer. In 2014 the first patient was treated with Lutetium linked to PSMA (Lu-PSMA-617) in a small case series of patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Patients showed a dramatic response in terms of decrease of visible lesions on PSMA scan, as well as a significant decrease in PSA values. More recent work out of Australia has confirmed the therapeutic efficacy ofLu-PSMA-617 in a separate cohort of men. Fanti acknowledges, however, that its use is still in its infancy, but results appear promising. This currently is being considered as a third line treatment in men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer who have already failed standard therapy, including docetaxel-based chemotherapy, and a second-generation antiandrogen.He concluded by discussing the future of theranostics. He believes that they can become even more efficacious if we are able to link alpha-emitting particles to cancer-specific molecules, as alpha-emitting particles are higher energy and travel shorter distances. In theory, this could lead to more effective cancer cell destruction and less residual side-effects to healthy tissue. Fanti believes that we will start hearing about theranostics much more commonly in the literature in the coming years, and he is excited to see emerging research in the field. He stressed that in order to advance this field, it is important for him and his nuclear medicine colleagues to collaborate with other clinicians such as urologic oncologists and medical oncologists in order to develop clinical trials in order to change the standards of care.Presented by: Stefano Fanti, MD, Professor Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine - DIMES at the University of Bologna. He is Director of Nuclear Medicine Division of the PET Unit at the Policlinico S. Orsola and Director of Speciality School of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Bologna.Written by: Brian Kadow, MD, Society of Urologic Oncology Fellow, Fox Chase Cancer Center at the 34th European Association of Urology (EAU 2019) #EAU19 conference in Barcelona, Spain, March 15-19, 2019.
PHILADELPHIA, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- From the first quarter Phoenix Management Lending Climate in America Survey, results show volatility and uncertainty for the U.S. economy with deteriorating confidence in the near term.



After a 37-percentage point GPA drop between Q3 2018 and Q4 2018, Lenders confidence on how they expect the U.S. economy to perform during the next six months continued to decrease in Q1 2019. The GPA for the U.S. economy in the near term decreased 19 percentage points to 2.52 from the Q4 2018 results of 2.71. However, the GPA for the U.S. economy beyond the next six months saw a significant increase of thirty percentage points to 2.30 from the previous quarters results of 2.00.

Furthermore, lenders were surveyed on their expectations for GDP growth in 2019. In 2018, U.S. GDP growth was nearly 3%, and the consensus of economic forecasts are for U.S. GDP growth of 2.3% in 2019. Of the lenders surveyed, 59%, agree with the forecasted, decreased GDP rate. On the contrary, 26% of lenders surveyed expect it will be greater, and 15% expect GDP growth to be lower than the forecasted in 2019.

Phoenixs Q1 2019 Lending Climate in America survey, asked lenders if they believe shaky outlooks abroad, and a long-lasting U.S. government shutdown will inhibit U.S. economic growth in 2019. The majority of lenders, 56%, believe that shaky outlooks abroad and domestically are concerning, and 2019 will be a year of economic volatility and uncertainty. Thirty-three percent of lenders believe the U.S. economy is still poised to grow and add jobs in 2019, while 11% believe shaky outlooks and government policy uncertainty will noticeably inhibit U.S. economic growth in 2019.

In addition, lenders were surveyed regarding the top three industries they expect to experience the greatest volatility over the next six months. Eighty-two percent of respondents believe that retail trade will experience the greatest volatility, while thirty-three percent of lenders surveyed believe construction will experience the greatest volatility over the next six months. Of the lenders surveyed, twenty-six expect manufacturing to experience the greatest volatility.

Lenders were also surveyed this quarter on how they expect the retail industry to react during the remainder of 2019. Nearly all lenders agreed that the brick-and-mortar retail industry would shift in 2019. The majority of lenders, 52%, expect an increase in bankruptcy for brick-and-mortar retailers due to the rise of e-commerce and evolving customer sentiment, while 44% expect fewer bankruptcies, but a reduction in footprint to invest in product, experience, and branding.



The results from the Q1 2019 survey indicate lenders are still pessimistic about the U.S. economy in the near term. This deteriorating confidence was further supported by a forecasted, decreased GDP rate, along with high expectations for 2019 to be year of economic volatility and uncertainty in the United States, says Michael Jacoby, Senior Managing Director and Shareholder of Phoenix.

To see the full results of Phoenixs Lending Climate in America Survey, please visit http://www.phoenixmanagement.com/survey/



About Phoenix:



For 30 years, Phoenix has provided smarter, operationally focused solutions for middle market companies in transition. Phoenix Management Services provides turnaround, crisis and interim management, specialized advisory for both distressed and growth-oriented companies. Phoenix Transaction Advisory Services provides quality of earnings, quality of operations, Quality of Enterprise, management/organizational reviews, business integration, sell-side business preparation and other transaction related support. Phoenix Capital Resources provides seamless investment banking solutions including M&A advisory, complex restructurings and capital placements. Phoenix Capital Resources is a U.S. registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. Proven. Results.

If you would like to learn more about Phoenix, please visit http://www.phoenixmanagement.com/ or http://www.phoenixcapitalresources.com/
English French

MONTREAL, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gildan Activewear Inc. (GIL: TSX and NYSE) announced today that Rhodri J. Harries, Executive Vice-President, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer will participate in an interactive discussion at each of the following institutional investor conferences:



Desjardins Industrials, TMT & Consumer Conference held in Montreal, Quebec, on Wednesday, March 20 th , 2019 at 3:00 PM ET. This session will not be webcast.



, 2019 at 3:00 PM ET. This session will not be webcast. The CIBC 22nd Annual Retail & Consumer Conference held in Toronto, Ontario, on Wednesday, March 27th, 2019 at 1:45 PM ET. The live audio webcast of the interactive discussion can be accessed at http://www.gildancorp.com/events and will be available for 30 days subsequent to the conference at the same link.

About Gildan

Gildan is a leading manufacturer of everyday basic apparel which markets its products in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, under a diversified portfolio of Company-owned brands, including Gildan, American Apparel, Comfort Colors, Gildan Hammer, Gold Toe, Anvil, Alstyle, Secret, Silks, Kushyfoot, Secret Silky, Therapy Plus, Peds and MediPeds, and under the Under Armour brand through a sock licensing agreement providing exclusive distribution rights in the United States and Canada. Our product offering includes activewear, underwear, socks, hosiery, and legwear products sold to a broad range of customers, including wholesale distributors, screenprinters or embellishers, as well as to retailers that sell to consumers through their physical stores and/or e-commerce platforms. In addition, we sell directly to consumers through our own direct-to-consumer platforms.

Gildan owns and operates vertically integrated, large-scale manufacturing facilities which are primarily located in Central America, the Caribbean Basin, North America, and Bangladesh. With over 50,000 employees worldwide Gildan operates with a strong commitment to industry-leading labour and environmental practices throughout its supply chain in accordance with its comprehensive Genuine Responsibility program embedded in the Company's long-term business strategy. More information about the Company and its corporate citizenship practices and initiatives can be found at www.gildancorp.com and www.genuineresponsibility.com, respectively.
Tampa, FL, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Baldwin Risk Partners (BRP), a Tampa-headquartered insurance distribution and consulting holding company, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dan Galbraith as Chief Operating Officer.

Galbraith joins BRP with more than 15 years proven experience in operational and sales success across multiple business lines. He comes to BRP from Stericycle where he served as Senior Vice President of Sales for their North America Compliance Services Businesses; his responsibilities included Shred-it, Healthcare Compliance Services, Environmental Waste Services and their Expert\Recall Business. Galbraith started his career at Cintas Corporation where he held progressing operations and sales leadership roles across their business lines.

Dans experience in building world-class sales organizations will be instrumental as we continue to build a national insurance brokerage and consulting platform, explains Trevor Baldwin, BRP President. At BRP our growth and success are driven by our Powered by People approach and stakeholder-first mindset. Dans enthusiasm for developing leaders and building teams is a natural fit for our culture and growth strategy.

As Chief Operating Officer, Galbraith will be responsible for operational excellence across BRP.

BRP is at a very exciting time in its history, said Galbraith. I feel incredibly honored to join the BRP family and the ranks of such talented colleagues who are fueling the industry innovation with their deep expertise and passion for delivering an exceptional client experience.

In 2017, BRP partnered with firms across Florida in Bradenton, DeLand, Destin and Orlando. In 2018, BRP continued to partner with firms across Florida and expanded its footprint across the southeast, including the Texas, Alabama and Georgia markets. BRP was recently ranked the 43rd largest Independent Insurance Broker in the United States by Insurance Journal and has been consistently ranked as a best place to work in the country for their thriving culture.

Dan Galbraith can be reached at dan.galbraith@baldwinriskpartners.com.

###

About Baldwin Risk Partners



BRP is an award-winning entrepreneur owned and inspired insurance distribution holding company delivering solutions that give our clients the peace of mind to pursue their purpose, passion and dreams. BRP supports our Partners, clients, colleagues, insurers, and communities through the deployment of best in class resources and capital to drive organic and partnership growth. Together with our partner firms, we are innovating the industry by taking a holistic and tailored approach to risk management, insurance, and employee benefits. Our growth path includes increased geographic representation across the U.S., expanded client value propositions and new lines of insurance to meet the needs of evolving lifestyles, business risks, and healthcare funding. This year, BRP was ranked the # 3 Fastest Growing Broker by Business Insurance. BRP is a destination employer supported by an award-winning culture, powered by exceptional people and fueled by industry-leading growth and innovation.

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Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc wants a plan in place to help local businesses drive the country to fulfil economic targets this year. - Photo VNA/VNS Thong Nhat

The PM has asked for the development and issuance of a Directive to resolve problems for local enterprises to facilitate the economy to achieve growth targets set for 2019.

It will involve the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Government Office and other agencies, PM Phuc said.

This year, the Ministry of Planning and Investment expects Viet Nams gross domestic product (GDP) growth to be 6.6-6.8 per cent, which is lower than the 2018 figure of 7.08 per cent.

Accordingly, growth rates projected for Q2, Q3 and Q4 this year are 6.55-6.77 per cent, 6.89-7.13 per cent, and 6.4-6.7 per cent respectively.

Lower growth forecasts are made because Vietnamese economy faces difficulties in both domestic and international markets.

Phuc urged ministries and sectors to stay sharp and perform better, improving the confidence of the people and business community has in the Government.

He said the first task is to reform the economic institute by resolving issues and improving co-operation.

He urged ministries and government agencies to cut irrelevant fees to help local businesses unload burdens that are currently affecting performance. In addition, all ministries must improve the business climate and national competitiveness.

Conferences should be organised in key economic zones to deal with existing challenges and ministers and provincial governments must speed up their efforts to disburse the public investment budget.

Stagnant procedures and lack of proactivity have had a negative impact on the socio-economic development. Ministers and peoples committee chairmen must fix this, especially in HCM City and key economic zones, PM said.

He said the business environment must be improved, barriers must be lifted and local authorities should take responsibility.

Credit growth must be assured to help local businesses, while stronger efforts must be made to fight African swine fever and bring the agricultural exports to the minimum US$43 billion eyed by the Government.

The PM urged the Ministry of Transport to deploy large-scale projects and commit specific schedules, including for the Trung Luong-My Thuan Expressway.

In addition, PM Phuc spoke highly of the media and communication as an instrument to raise the Governments creditability towards the Vietnamese people and prevent them from getting access to fake news that could hold back the development of the nation and business community.
The baby was plucked from debris inside a house where his mother and siblings were found dead. (Photo: AFP/Handout)

The five-month old was plucked on Sunday from debris inside a house where his mother and siblings were found dead in the hard-hit northeastern town of Sentani.

The tot has since been returned to his surviving father.

"We took the baby to the hospital and had him treated," Papua military spokesman Muhammad Aidi told AFP.

"He was in stable condition and has been released. The father was distressed but happy to be reunited with his baby."

The news came as Indonesia's disaster agency raised the official death toll from 58, with more than three dozen people still missing.

Scores have been injured in the disaster, triggered by torrential rain and landslides on Saturday.

"The death toll could still go up with 43 people unaccounted for," said national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.

Rescuers battled mud, rocks and fallen trees in the hunt for survivors, as medical personnel treated the wounded in makeshift tents.

The military said 5,700 people have been evacuated from the hard-hit area.

"We have over 1,000 personnel searching for more victims," Aidi said.

Indonesia has issued a 14-day state of emergency in response to the floods.

Papua shares a border with independent Papua New Guinea on an island just north of Australia.

Flooding is common in Indonesia, especially during the rainy season which runs from October to April.

In January, floods and landslides killed at least 70 people on Sulawesi island, while earlier this month hundreds in West Java province were forced to evacuate when torrential rains triggered severe flooding.

Meanwhile, three people were killed - including two Malaysian tourists - and some 182 were injured after an earthquake Sunday triggered a landslide on the Indonesian tourist island of Lombok, next to Bali.

The 5.5-magnitude quake is thought to have caused the landslide at the Tiu Kelep waterfall in the north of the island.

Lombok was rocked by several earthquakes last summer, killing more than 500 people and leaving over 150,000 homeless.

Last September, the country was hit by an earthquake and tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island which killed around 2,200 people.

The Southeast Asian archipelago of some 17,000 islands is one of the most disaster-prone nations on Earth, straddling the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates collide. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common.
157 people died in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines B737 Max 8, shedding further doubt on the safety of Boeing 737 Max aircraft, not long after 189 deceased in another crash in last October. The two crashed B737 Max aircraft and the global ban may lead to Boeing losing $600 billion worth of orders for more than 5,000 aircraft across the world.

According to newswire Bloomberg, Kenya Airways is considering to buy Airbus A320 aircraft instead of B737 Max.

Boeing's market value has dipped after the two tragedies

Russian airline Utair Aviation also asked for assurances from Boeing before receiving the first batch of goods, including 30 B737 Max aircraft.

Meanwhile, Indonesian airline Lion Air, which suffered the first crash, is considering to cancel its $22 billion standing order for B737 Max aircraft. Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) nearly $6 billion order is also teetering on the edge due to the crash.

Most recently, the representative of Vietnamese airline Vietjet, which ordered 200 B737 Max aircrafts, said, We are following the B737 Max case and will decide whether we will put the aircraft into commercial operation after receiving the cases official conclusion and guidance from global aviation authorities and the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam.

Boeings B737 aircraft family has been in operation since 1960 and is the most profitable product of the US-based aircraft maker. Its new version, the B737 Max, has received huge global interest, with orders for more than 5,000 machines worth $600 billion.

The US Department of Transport is investigating whether there were lapses in the Federal Aviation Administrations approval of Boeing aircraft involved in two recent fatal crashes.

However, similar things of two aircraft accidents related to B737 Max of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines have raised concern about the quality of the kind of aircraft  instead of just repeating that they are the same kind of aircraft, we could tell something about potential causes. Due to the crisis, Boeings stock last week lost 12 per cent of its value, losing the company $27 billion from its market valuation.

Despite the cause of the tragic crashes is still under investigation, there are opinions that the faulty automatic pilot could be the culprit. According to data published by Aviation Safety Reporting System under NASA, at least two US pilots reported that their aircrafts nosedived and lost altitude when using autopilot mode on the B737 Max 8 in the last few months.

Data shows that there were 11 reports about the Boeing 737 MAX 8 logged between April 2018 and December 2018, according to USA Today.
WATERLOO, Ontario, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- "Since taking office, the Doug Ford government has blazed a path of destruction. There is far too much at stake for communities right across Ontario to let Doug Ford damage and dismantle the best of what Ontario represents," says the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL).



Labour and community allies are at the forefront of the growing resistance and fightback against this government.

On Wednesday, March 20, the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Waterloo Regional Labour Council are hosting a Regional Activation Meeting in Kitchener. We are inviting all labour and community activists and leaders across the Waterloo Region, including Guelph and Stratford.

I encourage everyone to get active in protecting Ontario from the reckless cuts and privatization agenda this government is planning to ram down our throats, said OFL President Chris Buckley. Weve proven in the past that we know how to win, now we will ensure every Ontarian can access well-funded public services, education, and decent work.

We have fought and won before, said OFL Secretary-Treasurer Patty Coates. We are organizing to stop Fords irresponsible actions, and to take back Ontario.

What: Kitchener - Waterloo Regional Activation Meeting

When: March 20, 2019 at 5:30pm - 8:30pm

Where: ETFO Waterloo, 610 Wabanaki Dr, Kitchener, ON N2C 2K4

The Waterloo regional activation meeting will:

Lay out what is at stake for Ontario in the coming months and years.

Introduce the Power of Many campaign plan, designed to mobilize and activate union members and community allies.

Launch province-wide rapid response networks to coordinate local fightback efforts.

Build and set plans of resistance, including escalating actions with the support of concerned citizens and community allies.
Phillip Beriman

As a major foreign investor in Vietnam, what have you done to attract more high-end travellers to Vietnam as well as to place the country on the world luxury tourism map?

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) is a global organisation with a broad portfolio of 15 well-known hotel brands. The fast-growing luxury segment is a really exciting space and we have made excellent progress in ensuring we have a wider offering for guests.

Hot on the heels of adding Regent Hotels & Resorts last year, weve elevated Kimpton into the luxury space, opened our 200th InterContinental with Shanghai Wonderland - one of the most talked about hotels of 2018, and recently we were excited to welcome Six Senses - a leading operator of top-tier luxury hotels, resorts and spas with a truly world-renowned reputation for wellness and sustainability - to the IHG family.

Demand for our established brands is being boosted by impressive design and service enhancements, were growing newer ones at a rapid rate, and, as this announcement shows, were serious about taking advantage of exciting new opportunities too, especially in Vietnam.

What is your target market and do you have any campaigns in place to promote Vietnams tourism to become one of the most attractive destinations for high end tourists in the world market in 2019?

At IHG we believe international travel should always be alluring. We are dedicated to those who appreciate and enjoy The InterContinental Life  the glamour and exhilaration of fascinating places, mixed with our international know-how and local cultural wisdom.

As you may know, The National Tourism Year 2019 will take place in Nha Trang city, Khanh Hoa coastal province, under the theme 'Colour of the Sea. Thus, we keep associating with and supporting Khanh Hoa Tourism Board in these sea festival activities.

In order to promote and highlight Nha Trangs beautiful natural beaches with golden sand and emerald waters bathed in sunshine for over 300 days a year, in 2019 we are focusing on the mix of business and leisure travellers. We aim to be Your Next MICE Destination and the No.1 trusted luxury brand in the region. We have planned to organise media trips and fam trips to elevate the luxury positioning of the InterContinental brand as well as build up Nha Trang  Khanh Hoa as the most attractive destination for high end tourists.

How can you evaluate the importance of traditional inheritances and exploits in designing tourism products and tourism properties?

Traditional inheritances play an important role in a destinations attractiveness and they are one of the motivating and inspiring factors that impact a tourists decision, urging them to choose a certain destination where they believe they can have treasured memories and experience local charms during their visit. This is not only a positive site for local social and economic development but also for a destinations core products, niche services and qualified resources.

In The Know is our brand idea and InterContinental is the only hotel brand that goes out of its way to share its knowledge with our guests and our dedicated in the know concierge team will tailor an experience to each guests requirements. Our guests will discover more about the world as we share with them what makes the local culture were located within unique.

In Khanh Hoa  Nha Trang there are a number of well-known traditional inheritances, such as Ponaga Temple, Long Son Pagoda, Khanh Hoa Salangane Nest, Agarwood Craft Village, Dien Khanh Ancient Town and Hon Chong Promontory. Our concierge team are happy to share their knowledge and tailor tours to your requirements whilst hoping to incorporate a few secrets to make your time with us truly unique.

We also offer our interesting BedTime Stories about Vietnams folktales as well as Nha Trangs hidden charms to cater to our younger guests.

Which of your Vietnamese legacy architectural details and services should guests not miss at your hotel?

The hotel was designed around The Five Basic Elements (Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood) of the ancient art of Feng Shui to create an atmosphere of peace and tranquility as well as bring prosperity and good health. They are represented throughout the hotel. Typically, the yellow light represents FIRE, the color and texture of carpet presents EARTH, the metal table represents METAL, the reflection of the glass table to the ceiling represents WATER, and the wooden wall represents WOOD.

The hotel design concept is inspired by the idea of the old Nha Trang as a fishing village. The check-in counter is shaped as sailing boats and the reception backdrop is the motif of a fishing net. Furniture, artworks and decoration items that are displayed in the lobby are shaped as different types of traditional boats, such as basket boats or wooden boats amongst others, and floor to ceiling glass window offer stunning views of Nha Trang Bay.

The meeting rooms are named after the five old capital cities of the Cham Kingdom which Nha Trang used to be a part of. These are Kandapur, Simha, Vira, Indra and Bal Canar. These spacious meeting rooms are all flooded with natural light, ensuring that even the most seasoned planner will feel inspired.

We are the only ones in Nha Trang that provide Les Clefs d'Or experienced concierges whom have their own mystique, a combination of their expertise sources of inside information, intelligence and communication, recognised by the golden keys they display on the lapels of their uniforms.

Our guests can enjoy a spectacular ocean view from sunrise to sunset from all our restaurants and bars while tasting Nha Trangs seafood at Cookbook Cafe, sipping the unique flavour of Ca Phe Sua Da at the Lobby Lounge or drinking fresh tropical juices at Aqualine Pool Bar. If guests have the chance, they should visit Spa InterContinental for some must-try treatments such as Bamboo Oriental Massage, Vietnamese Massage or Luxury Nha Trang Mud Wrap for detoxification and rejuvenation.
Hanoi Peoples Court sentences three people to death and one to life imprisonment for drug trafficking by air (Source: VNA)

The death penalty was given to Vu Thi Thu Hoai, 47 years old, Vu Thi Hai Yen, 24 years old and Le Trung Thanh, 40 years old, all from the northern port city of Hai Phong.

42-year-old Pham Thi Hop, also from Hai Phong city, was sentenced to life imprisonment because she has a child, who is under 36 months old.

According to the indictment, at midnight on June 20, 2017, anti-drug police of the Ministry of Public Security and security centre of Noi Bai International Airport found methamphetamine hidden in a dozen green dragon fruits in Yens hand luggage.

Investigations showed that in the middle of June 2017, Hop agreed to transport crystal meth from Ho Chi Minh City to Hai Phong. As Hop was taking care of her baby, she asked Hoai to go. Hoai then asked Yen to go together. Hoai and Yen were arrested when carrying over 2.6 kg of drugs.

Meanwhile, Thanh was involved in another deal initiated by Hop as she promised to pay Thanh 20 million VND (860 USD) after carrying crystal meth from Cambodia to Vietnam in November 2017.
Vice Chairman of the HCM City Peoples Committee Le Thanh Liem (R) welcomes Minister of State for Public Procurement, Open Government and eGovernment of Ireland Patrick ODonovan on March 18 (Photo: VNA)

Receiving Patrick ODonovan, Minister of State for Public Procurement, Open Government and eGovernment of Ireland now on a working visit to the city, Liem stressed that the relations between the two countries are developing well, manifested through the exchanges of delegations.

He also expressed his belief that when the EU  Vietnam Free Trade Agreement comes into force in the near future, it will contribute further to the development of the relations between the city and Ireland, particularly in the fields of trade and investment which still remain modest compared to the two sides potential.

Irish enterprises and groups should push up trade promotion, search for investment and business chances in the city in health care and education, the official said, adding the city hopes to cooperate with and receive experiences from Ireland in building an e-administration and realizing the project on building a smart urban area.

For his part, the Irish official said his country is attentive and attaches importance to the cooperation with Vietnam, as well as takes the country as a gateway and a bridge for trade with other countries in Southeast Asia.

Expressing his impression on the vigorous and dynamic development of the city, he said that Ireland will open its trade office in Vietnams southern hub to strengthen its support to Irish enterprises investing in Ho Chi Minh City. Ireland will continue cooperating, supporting and sharing its experiences with the city in the time to come, the official stressed.

Last year, the trade value between the city and the country amounted to 51.4 million USD. Ireland currently has 10 investment projects in Ho Chi Minh City with a combined capital of nearly 4 million USD, ranking 50th out of the 102 countries and territories investing in the city.
The concert will gather young talented pianists from Japan and Vietnam. (Source: en.nhandan.org.vn)

The event, which forms part of the third Vietnam-Japan Piano Festival 2019, is co-held by the Japanese Embassy in Vietnam, the Vietnam-Japan Friendship Association and the Association for Liaison with Overseas Vietnamese.

The concert will be directed by Japanese pianist Ayuko Higuchi, who organised several concerts and performances in many cities in Vietnam from 2004 to 2016, such as Hanoi, Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh.

It will also feature the participation of artist Shion Ota, one of the most promising artists in Japan.

In addition, talented young Vietnamese pianists Nguyen Ba Tan and Quach Hoang Nhi will join the special concert.

At the event, artists will entertain the audiences with famous contemporary and folk songs of Vietnam, Japan and many other countries in the world.

The concert is expected to contribute to enhancing cultural exchanges between Vietnam and Japan as well as boosting mutual understanding between their people.
Civil society groups have urged Cambodians to use social media to promote good governance and social justice.

Speaking at a panel discussion organized by a group of NGOs on Sunday, Seoung Senkarona, spokesman for local rights group Adhoc, said officials should also be mindful of their use of social media.

If people can observe [what politicians are doing], they will know the role of authorities like village chiefs and so on, he said.

He added that a lack of knowledge of how to properly use social media platforms was still a challenge for Cambodians and this lack of understanding could lead to legal issues.

Online literacy is still an issue for Cambodians, and the government uses the law to take action against them, he said, So we should heed information online. If we are unsure about something, we should ask lawyers, human rights advocates, and so on.

Hok Narin of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media said Internet users should avoid sharing information online that could cause controversy to avoid risk.

We should only share information that is accurate. For instance, from professional institutions, she added. We must stay away from rumors. Rumors are dangerous, particularly incitement.

Social media platforms such as Facebook have become popular mediums for Cambodians to criticize authorities and protest against government policy. Sorn Chey of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability said social media is becoming an important avenue for policymaking in the country.

When security forces attacked protesters in Preah Sihanouk province earlier this year Cambodians took to Facebook to share the criticism of the crackdown.

Senkarona said that while social media should not be silenced, as injustice was not given much attention in the country, Cambodians should remain mindful of the potential consequences of using online platforms.
Children and babies are dying at increasingly rapid rates in or on their way to al-Hol camp in Syria, as the population balloons with more evacuees from the last patch of land held by Islamic State militants, according to the International Rescue Committee.

"Women and children are arriving at al-Hol camp in the gravest condition," Wendy Taeuber, the International Rescue Committee's Iraq and northeast Syria country director, said in a statement Monday. "Many of the latest arrivals have been badly wounded from the fighting in Baghuz."

More than 120 people coming from Baghuz have died in recent weeks. Most were children under 5 years old. Hundreds of children have also been hospitalized, and about 250 more have arrived at the camp without an adult to care for them, the IRC said.

"We are still seeing a disturbing number of babies and infants dying soon after arriving at the camp because they are so badly malnourished or dehydrated," Taeuber added.

As aid organizations struggle to manage the crisis, the camp's population has grown to 70,000 people, with thousands arriving in the past few days.

Tensions high

Umm Abdu is one of about 13,000 people living in crowded tents, hoping she and her two children will be moved to a safer, more comfortable single-family one. In the meantime, she said, tensions are high in the camp, which doesn't have enough food or medical care.

Families here are almost all related to IS members now either in jail, missing or dead. Camp residents are wary of the authorities that are leading the charge against IS in this part of Syria, as well as tasked with caring for displaced families.

"The alliance was bombing us," Umm Abdu said, trudging through the thick mud. "Many children were psychologically damaged."

Support for IS runs high in this part of the camp. Many women loudly declare their allegiance to anyone who will listen. Umm Abdu said she doesn't care who is in charge if she can be safe. There are almost no adult men.

About 100 meters away, children sell fruit and vegetables out of crates. They say they are still afraid of the Syrian and international forces. Even in Baghuz, while bombs pummeled the camp, Hamza, 10, thought he was protected by IS. "We were safer there," he said.

Battle continues

Internationally backed Syrian forces are continuing their assault in Baghuz, where militants still hold an old camp by the Euphrates River, originally built to house people fleeing IS.

"Several positions captured, and an ammunition storage has been blown up by our forces. [Syrian Democratic Forces] is now holding positions inside the camp," said SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali in a tweet early Monday.

The current phase of the battle for Baghuz began in early March, after a pause in the fighting while tens of thousands of people evacuated the last IS stronghold. The crowds were far more than anyone expected, and continue to grow.

Authorities say they will no longer officially estimate the amount of people remaining inside Baghuz, but evacuees have reported that there are still roughly 5,000 people inside.
Algeria's new Deputy Prime Minister Ramtane Lamamra says that President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika has vowed to hand over power to whoever is elected to succeed him, following a planned national dialogue conference under the auspices of former U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Lamamra said a new constitution and other changes to the current regime will be enacted, followed by elections, which have been postponed until next year.

Doctors and students protested Tuesday against the government of ailing incumbent President Bouteflika in the Algerian capital Algiers and a number of other cities and towns. Various labor groups, including medical professionals and students, are calling for the president to step down next month when his term officially ends.

Tens of thousands of protesters have gathered in the capital Algiers and other parts of Algeria for the past four Fridays to call for Bouteflika to step down and to enact fundamental political reform.

Deputy Prime Minister Lamamra during a visit to Moscow Tuesday told journalists that the current crisis in his country is a "family affair," and that the government is ready to make changes to the current regime within the framework of a "national dialogue conference."

Speaking at a press conference after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, he said that current political, social and economic conditions have pushed many people to demand serious change to the current system of government and the government has responded by asking opposing political forces to participate in a national dialogue conference which will create a new regime by consensus [of all parties]."

Lavrov for his part insisted that the "Algerian people must determine their own destiny, and that outside parties must not interfere in the political process." Lavrov went on to condemn the "Arab Spring" revolutions which took place in a number of countries, including Libya, Syria and Tunisia, blaming "outside intervention."

Algeria's new prime minister, Noureddin Badawi, has yet to name the members of his government, despite promises to do so early this week. Various political figures and trade union leaders have called on the government to step aside and for Bouteflika to step down. Neither appear ready to do so.

Algerian Army Chief of Staff Ahmed Qaid Salah, who is a main power-broker inside the regime, in a speech to military personnel Monday, insisted the army would not stand back and watch if the situation began to deteriorate.

He said that no matter how much the situation has deteriorated, there is no problem without a solution, and we fervently pray that everyone will behave responsibly in order to find that solution as quickly as possible.

Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV reported that former prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia called on the government to "respond to the demands of the people." He also called on his own political party and supporters to "try and convince the people of the sincerity of the government's response to popular demands."

Nurses and other professionals are calling for more protests Wednesday, while broader rallies are expected Friday.




Paris, Amsterdam, March 19, 2019

Press release

Unibail-Rodamco S.E.: dividend announcement for the financial year 2018

The stapled shares of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield ("URW") are composed of one share of Unibail-Rodamco S.E. ("UR SE") and one class A share of WFD Unibail-Rodamco N.V.

For the financial year 2018, URW proposes a cash dividend of 10.80 per stapled share. Subject to the approval of the UR SE Annual General Meeting ("AGM"), the dividend for 2018 will be paid by UR SE as follows:

An interim dividend of 5.40 per share on March 29, 2019 (ex-dividend date March 27, 2019); and

A final dividend of 5.40 per share, subject to approval of the UR SE AGM, on July 5, 2019 (ex-dividend date July 3, 2019).

The statutory 2018 result of UR SE (the parent company) was a profit of 1,457.5 Mn. The 2018 result of UR SE's SIIC sector amounted to 1,280.4 Mn. The SIIC dividend distribution obligation is 1,008.6 Mn. After payment of the proposed dividend, this obligation will have been met for 2018.

Assuming approval by the UR SE AGM to be held on May 17, 2019:

7.30 of the dividend will have been paid from UR SE's tax exempt real estate activities (the "SIIC dividend"). This dividend corresponds to the distribution obligation under the SIIC regime.

For French tax residents, the SIIC dividend will not be eligible for the tax exemption provided for under the parent-subsidiary regime when received by institutional shareholders that are subject to corporate income tax. A 12.8% flat tax, plus 17.2% of social charges, will be withheld for individual shareholders. Individual shareholders may elect to pay income tax at the standard progressive rate (without the benefit of the 40% rebate) instead of paying the flat tax at 12.8%.

For non-French tax residents, the SIIC dividend will bear French withholding tax (30% for institutional shareholders and 12.8% for individual shareholders) reduced by the provisions of applicable double tax treaties.

For French Undertakings for Collective Investments (UCI) and comparable non-French UCIs, a 15% withholding tax will be levied on the SIIC dividend.

The remaining 3.50 will have been paid from UR SE's non-tax exempt activities (the "non-SIIC dividend").

For French tax residents, the non-SIIC dividend will be eligible for the tax exemption provided for under the parent-subsidiary regime when received by institutional shareholders subject to French corporate income tax. The 12.8% flat tax, plus 17.2% of social charges, will be withheld for individual shareholders. Individual shareholders may elect to pay income tax at the standard progressive rate (with the benefit of the 40% rebate) instead of paying the flat tax at 12.8%.

For non-French tax residents, the non-SIIC dividend will bear applicable French withholding tax (30% for institutional shareholders and 12.8% for individual shareholders) reduced by the provisions of applicable double tax treaties. Non-French UCIs could be exempt from the withholding tax if certain conditions are met.

Shareholders and CHESS Depositary Interest holders should consult with their tax advisor regarding the local tax treatment of their dividend income.

For further information, please contact:

Investor Relations

Samuel Warwood

Maarten Otte

+33 1 76 77 58 02

Maarten.otte@urw.com

Media Relations

Tiphaine Bannelier-Suderie

+33 1 76 77 57 94

Tiphaine.Bannelier-Suderie@urw.com

About Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield is the premier global developer and operator of flagship shopping destinations, with a portfolio valued at 65.2 Bn as at December 31, 2018, of which 87% in retail, 6% in offices, 5% in convention & exhibition venues and 2% in services. Currently, the Group owns and operates 92 shopping centres, including 55 flagships in the most dynamic cities in Europe and the United States. Its centres welcome 1.2 billion visits per year. Present on 2 continents and in 12 countries, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield provides a unique platform for retailers and brand events, and offers an exceptional and constantly renewed experience for customers.

With the support of its 3,700 professionals and an unparalleled track-record and know-how, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield is ideally positioned to generate superior value and develop world-class projects. The Group has a development pipeline of 11.9 Bn.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield distinguishes itself by its Better Places 2030 agenda, that sets its ambition to create better places that respect the highest environmental standards and contribute to better cities.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield stapled shares are listed on Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Paris (Euronext ticker: URW), with a secondary listing in Australia through Chess Depositary Interests. The Group benefits from an A rating from Standard & Poor's and from an A2 rating from Moody's.

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The lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at risk after a cyclone ripped into central Mozambique and heavy rains continue to fall. Aid groups report people clinging to rooftops and trees as rivers burst their banks and waters rise. Authorities openly worry that the world has not grasped the severity of the crisis.

Here is a look at the disaster that has killed untold hundreds of people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Will the death toll rise?

Almost certainly. Emergency responders are struggling to reach parts of the three countries after some roads, bridges and communications networks were washed away or destroyed.

A massive storm surge when Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique over the weekend created what one World Food Program staffer calls inland oceans extending for miles and miles in all directions. The city of Beira with its some 500,000 residents is said to be 90 percent destroyed.

The European Union's global observation program, mapping the crisis, said some 394 square kilometers (152 square miles) of Mozambique had been flooded.

Further deaths could occur if people clinging to hope are swept away by the rising waters or are not reached in time with critical water, food and other aid.

And now authorities are warning of water-borne diseases after what infrastructure existed in the largely impoverished countries was stripped away.

Mozambique's president, after flying over the region, has warned as many as 1,000 people could die.

What is being done to help?

Mozambique and Malawi are two of the poorest countries in Africa, and the economy of once-prosperous Zimbabwe has collapsed in recent years.

Aid appeals for millions of dollars have begun as the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations rush to deliver food, water, fuel and medicines to the vast affected area. In Beira, a staging point for emergency responders, electricity could be out through the end of the month and a fuel shortage is reported. The Beira hospital is severely damaged.

The European Union and Britain have been among the first to pledge aid. The EU says its initial package to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi is worth about $3.9 million, while Britain says it will provide up to $7.9 million.

The U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe says it is mobilizing support for partners in the three countries, with no further details. Tanzania's military airlifted some 238 tons of emergency food and medicine to the three countries.

Zimbabwe's president has said a number of countries, including the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola, also were offering aid.

What happens next?

Aid organizations and authorities are rushing humanitarian aid to Beira and other areas by air and sea, while rescue efforts push on. The torrential rains are expected to continue in central Mozambique until Thursday.

As the water begins to recede throughout the region, the extent of the devastation will become clearer.

And thousands, perhaps scores of thousands, of families could be on the move, seeking new refuge after their homes were washed away.

I salvaged nothing except this baby, Chipo Dhliwayo told The Associated Press in eastern Zimbabwe, referring to her 6-month-old son.

Burials, which already have begun, will continue.
U.S. prosecutors are looking into the development of Boeing's 737 Max jets, a person briefed on the matter revealed Monday, the same day French aviation investigators concluded there were "clear similarities" in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Max 8 last week and a Lion Air jet in October.



The Justice Department probe will examine the way Boeing was regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the inquiry is not public.



A federal grand jury in Washington sent a subpoena to someone involved in the plane's development seeking emails, messages and other communications, the person told The Associated Press.



The Transportation Department's inspector general is also looking into the FAA's approval of the Boeing 737 Max, a U.S. official told AP. The official wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Wall Street Journal reported on the probe Sunday said the inspector general was looking into the plane's anti-stall system. It quotes unidentified people familiar with both cases.



The anti-stall system may have been involved in the Oct. 29 crash of a Lion Air jet off of Indonesia that killed 189 people. It's also under scrutiny in the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet that killed 157.



The Transportation Department's FAA regulates Chicago-based Boeing and is responsible for certifying that planes can fly safely.



The grand jury issued its subpoena on March 11, one day after the Ethiopian Airlines crash, according to the person who spoke to The Associated Press.



Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the inspector general said Monday they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any inquiries. The FAA would not comment.



"Boeing does not respond to or comment on questions concerning legal matters, whether internal, litigation, or governmental inquiries," Boeing spokesman Charles Bickers said in an email.



The company late Monday issued an open letter from its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, addressed to airlines, passengers and the aviation community. Muilenburg did not refer to the reports of the Justice Department probe, but stressed his company is taking actions to ensure its 737 Max jets are safe.



Those include an upcoming release of a software update and related pilot training for the 737 Max to "address concerns" that arose in the aftermath of October's Lion Air crash, Muilenburg said. The planes' new flight-control software is suspected of playing a role in the crashes.

The French civil aviation investigation bureau BEA said Monday that black box data from the Ethiopian Airlines flight showed the links with the Lion Air crash and will be used for further study.



Ethiopian authorities asked BEA for help in extracting and interpreting the crashed plane's black boxes because Ethiopia does not have the necessary expertise and technology.

The Ethiopian Accident Investigation Bureau intends to release a preliminary report within 30 days.

The United States and many other countries have grounded the Max 8s and larger Max 9s as Boeing faces the challenge of proving the jets are safe to fly amid suspicions that faulty sensors and software contributed to the two crashes in less than five months.



Both planes flew with erratic altitude changes that could indicate the pilots struggled to control the aircraft. Shortly after their takeoffs, both crews tried to return to the airports but crashed.



Boeing has said it has "full confidence" in the planes' safety. Engineers are making changes to the system designed to prevent an aerodynamic stall if sensors detect that the jet's nose is pointed too high and its speed is too slow.



Investigators looking into the Indonesian crash are examining whether the software automatically pushed the plane's nose down repeatedly, and whether the Lion Air pilots knew how to solve that problem. Ethiopian Airlines says its pilots received special training on the software.

Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot and a spokesman for their union, said Boeing held a discussion with airlines last Thursday but did not invite pilots at American or Southwest, the two U.S. carriers that use the same version of the Max that crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia.



Tajer said airline officials told the unions that Boeing intends to offer pilots about a 15-minute iPad course to train them on the new flight-control software on Max jets that is suspected of playing a role in the crashes. He called that amount of training unacceptable.



"Our sense is it's a rush to comply  'let's go, let's go, let's go,'" Tajer said. "I'm in a rush to protect my passengers."



A spokesman for the pilots' union at Southwest Airlines also said Boeing representatives told that union they expected the upgrade to be ready the end of January.



The spokesman, Mike Trevino, said Boeing never followed up to explain why that deadline passed without an upgrade. Boeing was expected to submit a proposed fix to the FAA in early January.
Former U.S. president George W. Bush on Monday called immigration a "blessing and a strength," as lawmakers tussled with Donald Trump over border wall funding.

The Republican, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight after leaving office in 2009, did not explicitly criticize Trump or the border wall policy.

Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 51 new American citizens at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, the nation's 43th president called for reform of "outdated and ineffective" immigration laws.

He also emphasized: "Borders are not arbitrary and they need to be respected."

"Amid all the complications of policy, may we never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength," Bush said in prepared remarks.

"I hope those responsible in Washington can dial down the rhetoric, put politics aside and modernize our immigration laws soon."

Bush's remarks came as Congress and the White House were gearing up for a court fight over Trump's declarations of an emergency to fund construction of a border wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Congress had refused to appropriate money for the project  a central promise of the Republican's 2016 election campaign.

In an embarrassing rebuke to Trump, some fellow Republicans joined Democrats in voting to terminate his declaration of an emergency. Trump vetoed the legislation Friday.

Opponents, who accuse Trump of executive overreach and hyping the problem on the border, could now fight the emergency measure in court.
Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Nebraska on Tuesday to take stock of the devastation unleashed across the U.S. Midwest by floods that have killed four people, left one missing and caused more than a billion dollars in damage to crops, livestock and roads.

The floodwaters have inundated a large swath of farm states Iowa and Nebraska along the Missouri River, North America's longest river, prompting half of Iowa's 99 counties to declare states of emergency.

"Touched down in Omaha, Nebraska to survey flood damage & thank volunteers & emergency personnel," Pence said on Twitter, in a post that included photos of him meeting with the governors of both states and lawmakers.

"The hearts of the American people are with those who have been impacted across the Midwest!" Pence said in the tweet.

Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin have all declared states of emergency in the floods, which stem from a powerful winter hurricane known as a "bomb cyclone" that slammed into the U.S. Farm Belt last week, killing untold numbers of livestock, destroying grains and soybeans in storage, and cutting off access to farms because of road and rail damage.

The latest confirmed death was identified by the sheriff in Fremont County, Iowa, as 55-year-old Aleido Rojas Galan, who was pulled from floodwaters along with another man on Friday and later succumbed to injuries.

A Nebraska man who has been missing since the collapse of the Spencer Dam last week on the Niobrara River was identified by the Omaha World-Herald newspaper as Kenny Angel.

Authorities said they had rescued nearly 300 people in Nebraska alone, with some rivers continuing to rise.

Rescuers could be seen in boats pulling pets from flooded homes. Some roadways crumbled to rubble, while sections of others were submerged. In Hamburg, Iowa, floodwaters covered buildings.

In Brownville, Nebraska, floodwaters lapped at the edge of the small town of 132 people, closing the main bridge across the Missouri River.

$1 Billion in Damage

"It's a lot worse than I've ever seen it," said Malina Wheeldon, who went ahead with the scheduled opening of her new Euphoric Soul Salon & Boutique business despite the floods. Her husband, Justin, who grew up in Brownville, agreed, saying he had lived through the floods of 1993, 2010 and 2011.

"About every five years now, we have a 100-year flood," he said.

The Missouri was expected to crest at 47.5 feet (14.5 m) on Tuesday, breaking its 2011 record by more than a foot (31 cm), the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said. The flooding was expected to continue through Thursday.

Nebraska officials estimated more than $1 billion in flood damage for the state's agricultural sector so far, according to Craig Head, vice president of issue management at the Nebraska Farm Bureau. Head said the number was expected to grow as floodwaters recede.

"It's really too early to know for sure how bad this is going to get. But one thing we do know: It's catastrophic for farmers," said Matt Perdue, government relations director for the National Farmers Union trade group. "We're hoping it's only $1 billion, but that's only a hope."

Nebraska officials estimate the floods have caused $553 million in damage to public infrastructure and other assets, as well as $89 million in privately owned assets, according to the state's Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday.

The water also covered about a third of Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, home to the U.S. Strategic Command, whose responsibilities include defending against and responding to nuclear attacks.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is distributing 400,000 sandbags to operators of 12 levees along the Missouri River in Missouri and Kansas that were in danger of being breached by floodwaters, the Army Corps said in a news release on Tuesday.

In Niobrara, Nebraska, south of the Missouri River near the border with South Dakota, Mayor Jody Stark said flooding that began on Thursday had devastated his community of 350 people, with businesses being the hardest hit.

"Our road system is shot pretty much in every direction coming into town," Stark said.

"It's one day at a time. We will do what we can to get back on our feet," Stark said. "It's just so heartbreaking. It's going to be tough, but hopefully we can all get through it."

The floodwaters were the result of snowmelt following heavy rains last week and warm weather, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center.

Roads leading to the Nebraska Public Power District's Cooper nuclear plant near Brownville were engulfed by floodwaters from the Missouri, but the facility was still operating safely at full power on Tuesday.

The plant operator was flying staff members and supplies to the plant with helicopters, said power district spokesman Mark Becker.
Chinese educators must respond to "false ideas and thoughts" when teaching political and ideological classes, President Xi Jinping said, in a sensitive year that marks the 30th anniversary of student-led protests around Tiananmen Square.

Beijing has campaigned against the spread of "Western values" in education, especially at universities, and the ruling Communist Party's anti-corruption watchdog has sent inspectors to monitor teachers for "improper" remarks in class.

Addressing a symposium for teachers of ideological and political theory in Beijing, Xi said the party must nurture generations of talent to support its leadership and China's socialist system, state media said late on Monday.

"It is essential to gradually open and upgrade ideological and political theory courses in primary, secondary and tertiary schools, which is an important guarantee for training future generations who are well-prepared to join the socialist cause," media paraphrased Xi as saying.

"Ideological and political courses should deliver the country's mainstream ideology and directly respond to false ideas and thoughts," Xi added. The report did not elaborate.

The government has previously admitted that political education for university students was outdated and unfashionable, though the education minister said last year this problem had been fixed.

Xi alluded to that in his comments.

"We are fully confident of and capable of running ideological and political theory courses better," he said.

"Thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era should be used to educate people and guide students to strengthen their confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics and to boost patriotism," Xi added.

Crackdowns on what academics and students can say and should think are nothing new in China.

Courses and speech at universities, in particular, are tightly controlled by the government, fearful of a repeat of pro-democracy protests in 1989 led by students and eventually bloodily crushed by the military.

In 2013, a liberal Chinese economist who had been an outspoken critic of the party was expelled from the elite Peking University.

A year later, the university, once a bastion of free speech in China, established a 24-hour system to monitor public opinion on the internet and take early measures to rein in negative speech, a party journal said at the time.

China aims to build world-class universities and some of its top schools fare well in global rankings, but critics argue curbs on academic freedom could inhibit those ambitions.
In every generation, young people have led movements for social change  from the black teenagers who staged lunch counter sit-ins in the 1960s to desegregate public spaces in the United States, to college protests in the 1980s that led to the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, to the pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989, and more.

Some were successful, others were not.

The latest student movement to make headlines began last year, as students skipped classes on Fridays to pressure world leaders to take action on climate. The global Youth Climate Strike, held on March 15 with nearly 1.5 million students in more than 100 countries, was the largest to date.

The younger generation speaks out

It is often the younger generations role to question the established ways, said Patricia Maulden, a researcher at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in Virginia.

When (todays adults) were youth, they advocated for certain things, and oftentimes, they got them. And they are entrenched in that system, in that way of being.

Maulden noted, "that way of being" changes.

Life moves on. Life has changed. Communication has changed. Livelihood strategies have changed. But they havent changed with it, and the youth are coming up and saying, 'Its not the same world.'

Standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Friday, Alyssa Weissman told the crowd, It is time for us to stop watching. It is time for us to strike back! We are the generation that will lead international action!

One protester, Kevin Crandall, observed, Since were the next ones going into the workforce, going into public office, things like that, its important for us and, as the chant is saying, it is our future.

Maulden said its not surprising that young people are passionate about climate issues.

It is something that young people understand better than adults do and grasp it, and overall are concerned about their future, anyway. But also with social media, it allows that connection between continents.

The young idealists take their movement seriously.

Thats our job, said Emma O'Driscoll. We want to prove that while we are young and we dont have as much experience, that doesnt mean we dont know these things."

Building on student-led activism

This climate protest movement was heavily inspired by the "March for Our Lives" protest in 2018, where protesters gathered in cities around the country demanding stricter guns laws in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 people dead.

Maulden said the Parkland students were incredibly articulate.

They organized in a way that was an example or a reminder, perhaps, of how this could work.

Will the movement stick in the U.S. as it has in other countries? Experts say thats hard to predict. But the students have some prominent supporters. Among them is freshman Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who thanked the crowd in Washington for "showing up for their future."

Other endorsements came from former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio.

The question now is whether the students, who for the most part cant even vote, will end up having a real impact on global politics.
The Trump administration's move to end five-year visitor visas for Cubans has left residents of the island angry and frustrated that it will be even harder to see their relatives, shop, or undertake cultural and academic exchanges in the United States.

The State Department on Friday said the measure, which became effective on Monday, was taken for reasons of reciprocity because Cuba currently issues only one-time temporary visas to visitors.

Tens of thousands of Cubans had used the five-year visitor visa to travel, often repeatedly, to the United States. They now can only get a visa that is valid for one trip during a three-month period.

Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban-American businessman and head of the Cuban Study Group, which advocates engagement with Cuba, said ending the visa program was mean and counterproductive.

"It will cause great harm to Cuban civil society, the very sector driving changes to the island's political and economic structures," he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to end the detente and engagement policy that was begun by the Obama administration in 2016 as part of its effort to end more than five decades of hostility between Washington and communist-run Cuba.

The U.S. embassy in Havana is operating with a skeleton crew because of an outbreak of mysterious health problems among its diplomats, and last year it shut down most councilor services, forcing Cubans to seek visas in third countries such as Mexico.

The Trump administration says the U.S. diplomats were the targets of "attacks." Cuba has denied any involvement or knowledge of what caused the illnesses, whose symptoms included tinnitus, hearing loss, vertigo, headaches and fatigue.

Cuba on Saturday blasted the reasoning behind the U.S. visa change, saying it issued visitor visas immediately in the United States, while Cubans had to spend large amounts of money and time to travel to third countries, and then often were rejected.

"My five-year visa runs out next year and I cannot afford to travel to Mexico every year just to try to get a one-time visa," said Marlen Calabaza, a retired telephone operator who visits Pennsylvania to help her daughter and five grandchildren.

"I feel worse for her than for me," she said.

Yosmany Moudeja, who runs a small business helping Cubans fill out forms near the U.S. embassy, said his only customers now were people seeking permanent residence in the United States.

"If before it was difficult, now it's impossible. If before people came to get visas to visit, now there is no one," he said.
Officials in Mali have put the death toll from Sunday's militant attack on an army camp in the village of Dioura at 23.



Suspected jihadists briefly seized the base in the central Mopti region, of which Mopti city is the capital.



Malian Defense Minister Tiemoko Sangare visited the camp Monday to encourage the soldiers.



"You are not alone. All peace-loving Malians support you. Do not listen to the siren songs whose sole purpose is to destabilize the country," he said.



Officials blamed Sunday's attack on deserter army colonel-turned-terrorist leader Ba Ag Moussa, who is said to be close to a Tuareg militant chief with ties to al-Qaida.



Islamic extremists took advantage of a brief military coup in the capital, Bamako, in 2012 to seize much of northern Mali.



French forces largely drove them out several months later, but a number of jihadists are still active and some violence continues despite the presence of U.N. peacekeepers.
At Damon Huangs family home in Shakou, a small town in southern China, its not uncommon to hear three varieties of Chinese spoken throughout the day.

Theres Hakka, the language of his ancestors; Cantonese, the dominant regional dialect of Guangdong Province; and Mandarin, the national variety that most foreigners recognize as Chinese. Each dialect serves a unique purpose in Huangs life, spoken either at home, in school, or at work

I will use Mandarin in some formal occasions. I will use Cantonese with my friends when we have fun and we go outside. I will use Hakka with some family members, Huang said over a long holiday weekend at home in Shakou.

Huang, 21, left his agricultural town in middle school to study in the county seat and is now a university student in Guangzhou, one of southern Chinas many megacities. While less educated, his parents have also moved onto better opportunities in the nearby industrial city of Foshan  like millions of other families from rural towns  taking his 3-year-old brother with them.

Speaking Hakka is a common activity that still unites Huang with his grandparents in Shakou and his parents in Foshan, but its also changing. When his little brother calls the family, everyone switches from Hakka to Mandarin.

My little brother, even though we live in Foshan we [try] to teach him Hakka, Huang said, But he is not learning Hakka, he is learning Mandarin, so until now he cannot speak Hakka.

The Huang family is just one example of how linguistic diversity is slowly dying in China, according to Arthur Thompson, a linguistics PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong. Thompson is studying Huangalong with his colleagues J. Joseph Perry and Jonathan Havenhill, both assistant professors at HKUs Department of Linguistics, as part of an ongoing project on Hakka in Shakou.

Hakka is spoken by 34 million people worldwide  including in Hong Kong, Taiwan and among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia  and claims some of Chinas most famous leaders including Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China and Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion.

Despite its historic significance, within mainland China, it is being pushed out in favor of Mandarin, the standard variety of Chinese originating from Beijing.

Much of this change has been driven by Chinas dramatic rural to urban migration, which has seen hundreds of millions of people like the Huang family move from the countryside to cities like Foshan and Guangzhou over the past thirty years. Many of these migrants end up dropping their hometown or county dialect for the local standard.

Thats why [Huang] has this sense that Hakka is dying because he can already see that its not really useful outside of his family. Thats even more triggered by the fact his brother, has never even grown up in Shakou at all and probably won't get any education at all in Shakou," said Thompson.

This is happening quite a lot across China. I think this model can be extrapolated, across many different Chinese languages and not specific to Hakka," he also said.

Southern China has been particularly hard hit as one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the country now turned economic and factory powerhouse. Nationwide, there are around ten major varieties of Han Chinese, according to the Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects, in addition to the many languages of Chinas 55 ethnic minority groups. Almost all of them are on the decline.

While Taiwan recently passed a law protecting minority languages like Hakka, China has not done the same beyond a limited amount of public programming on local television. It also does not recognize varieties of Chinese as official languages, although some like Cantonese  also known as Yue  are spoken by 91 million people worldwide. Many of these varieties are mutually unintelligible with standard Mandarin and often have a different number of tones and vocabulary.

With the loss of Hakka, southern China will slowly lose elements of its history. Hakka was spread through the migration of the Hakka people from the north hundreds of years ago and survived often violent confrontations with other ethnic groups to settle southern China and southeast Asia.

In the contemporary era, as well, Hakkas declining presence will have important political consequences that can already be seen in Huangs Mandarin-only speaking younger brother.

Thats the kind of kid the Chinese government wants: Damons little brother, who will grow up from three speaking Mandarin fluently and have no ties to his linguistic diversity at all  and that way he will be wiped from any regional identity. He will just see himself as southern Chinese, Thompson said.

He said that a binary distinction is easier for the government to manage: northern versus southern Chinese, rather than identify by varying village or linguistic group. This kind of dichotomy seems to broadly line up with a greater ongoing campaign in China to stress Chinese identity as both Han and Mandarin speaking under President Xi Jinping, particularly in regions that are home to large numbers of minorities like Tibet and Xinjiang.

Thompson said while Hakka could still be found in Guangdong, it was only a matter of time before younger Chinese stop speaking the languages of their parents if current trends continue.
Egypt's top media regulator on Tuesday put into effect tighter restrictions that allow the state to block websites and even social media accounts with over 5,000 followers if they are deemed a threat to national security.



The move is the latest step by the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to suppress dissent. In recent years, Egypt has launched an unprecedented crackdown on reporters and the media, imprisoning dozens and occasionally expelling some foreign journalists.



The new regulations, published in the official gazette late Monday, allow the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block websites and accounts for "fake news," and impose stiff penalties of up to 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,400), all without having to obtain a court order.

Basic press freedoms ignored



Prominent Egyptian journalists have called the measures unconstitutional, saying they grant far-reaching powers to authorities to censor the media, in violation of basic press freedoms.



Chief regulator Makram Mohammed Ahmed refused to comment.



Mohamed Abdel-Hafiz, a board member of the journalists' union, said the government is threatening journalists with "vaguely defined national security violations, as well as vaguely defined political, social or religious norms."

List of prohibited topics



The nine-page document gave a broad list of prohibited topics, including "anything inciting violating the law, public morals, racism, intolerance, violence, discrimination between citizens or hatred." Media outlets that continue to publish "offending material" will be fined up to five million Egyptian pounds (around $298,000). The new regulations laid out the same penalty for outlets that publish content without obtaining distribution rights, plus additional compensation.



Critics of the new measures said the rules were stricter than those approved by lawmakers last July, which they said gave the government almost total control over the media.



Journalists' union board member Gamal Abdel-Rahim explained: "Blocking websites is not included in the laws. The constitution itself states that websites and newspapers cannot be shut down without a court order."

He said the regulatory council had also ignored all of the union's notes and comments on the new measures.

500 websites blocked



Since late 2017, some 500 websites including news outlets and rights groups have been blocked, according to a recent report by an Egyptian watchdog group, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.



Authorities say the measures are necessary to prevent instability as Egypt struggles to revive its economy and combat an Islamic insurgency in northern Sinai. El-Sissi has frequently suggested political rights are less important than the right to food, housing and other necessities, and has rolled back many of the freedoms won by the 2011 uprising against longtime autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.



The government set up a unit last year for tracking alleged rumors, after el-Sissi claimed without elaborating that the government had identified some 21,000 rumors circulated over a three-month period in 2018.



Egypt remains among the world's worst jailers of journalists, behind China and Turkey, according to the press freedom group the Committee to Protect Journalists.




Dallas, TX, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- In the fast-changing global marketplace, Global Resource Energy, Inc. has made a corporate move towards penetrating an untapped portion of the food-and-beverage retail sector. The first acquisition is TVM, LLC, a Texas based ready-to-drink hemp infused cocktail company. Under the terms of this agreement, GBEN acquired the rights and title to TVM, LLCs proprietary formulas, methods, trade secrets related to the manufacturing of TVM's products containing hemp oil. This also includes tradename, domain name, and social media sites and other assets of TVM including but not limited to products on hand, current distribution contracts, mailing lists, marketing materials, bottling agreement and packaging.



TVM has been the front runner in the hemp infused alcohol world. They have jumped hurdles to get their product on shelves and have succeeded remarkably. But with over 500 current retail locations and the ability to sell online, the company is well positioned for dramatic growth. We at GBEN are excited about being a part of it, stated Garrett Vogel, CEO of GBEN. TVM Cocktails are available at retail outlets as well as their website www.tvmwine.com

About GBEN

Global Resource Energy, Inc. is a Nevada Corporation currently focused in the wellness product retailing industry. We seek to invest in well-positioned wellness companies with strategic improvement potential and partner with management teams to create value by driving revenue and earnings growth.

About TVM, LLC

TVM is a Texas based company currently producing four flavors of hemp infused ready-to-drink cocktails. TVM was the first to receive TTB approval for a hemp infused alcohol product.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations or beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions about future events. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements and the assumptions upon which they are based are reasonable, we can give no assurance or guarantee that such expectations and assumptions will prove to have been correct. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by the use of words like "may," "will," "should," "could," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "intend," or "project" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to numerous factors and uncertainties, including but not limited to: adverse economic conditions, competition, adverse federal, state and local government regulation, international governmental regulation, inadequate capital, inability to carry out research, development and commercialization plans, loss or retirement of key executives and other specific risks. To the extent that statements in this press release are not strictly historical, including statements as to revenue projections, business strategy, outlook, objectives, future milestones, plans, intentions, goals, future financial conditions, events conditioned on stockholder or other approval, or otherwise as to future events, such statements are forward-looking, and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. The company disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement. This press release shall not be deemed a general solicitation.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Monday that her department may have been founded to combat terrorism, but its mission is shifting to also confront emerging online threats.

China, Iran and other countries are mimicking the approach that Russia used to interfere in the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and continues to use in an attempt to influence campaigns on social media, she said. Under threat are Americans' devices and networks.

"It's not just U.S. troops and government agents on the front lines anymore," Nielsen said. "It's U.S. companies. It's our schools and gathering places. It's ordinary Americans."

Devices and networks are "mercilessly" targeted, she said. Those responsible are "compromising, co-opting, and controlling them."

Nielsen was speaking about the priorities of a sprawling department created after the Sept. 11 attacks. It handles counterterrorism, election security and cybersecurity, natural disaster responses and border security  President Donald Trump's signature domestic issue.

The president on Friday issued his first veto, to secure money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. Nielsen did not specifically mention that fight, but made clear that she sees a humanitarian and security crisis at the border because of an increasing number of Central American families crossing into the U.S. to seek asylum.

While the overall number of migrants coming into the U.S. is down from a high of 1.6 million in 2000, the number of families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has reached record highs. The system is at a breaking point, she said.

Nielsen said the department has introduced tougher screening systems at airports and is working with the State Department to notify other countries of stricter information-sharing requirements. She said the countries that work with the U.S. will make the world safer, and those that do not "will face consequences."
Investigators into the Boeing 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia have found striking similarities in a vital flight angle with an airplane that came down off Indonesia, a source said, piling pressure on the world's biggest planemaker.

The Ethiopian Airlines disaster eight days ago killed 157 people, led to the grounding of Boeing's marquee MAX fleet globally and sparked a high-stakes inquiry for the aviation industry.

Analysis of the cockpit recorder showed its "angle of attack" data was "very, very similar" to that of the Lion Air jet that went down off Jakarta in October, killing 189 people, a person familiar with the investigation said.

The angle of attack is a fundamental parameter of flight, measuring the degrees between the air flow and the wing. If it is too high, it can throw the plane into an aerodynamic stall.

"If that's the case, that does raise the possibility that there is a similar occurrence between the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents," said Clint Balog, a Montana-based professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Even then, it was too early to draw firm conclusions, he added.

A flight deck computer's response to an apparently faulty angle-of-attack sensor is at the heart of the ongoing probe into the Lion Air crash.

Ethiopia's Transport Ministry, France's BEA air accident authority and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have all pointed to similarities between the two disasters, but safety officials stress the investigation is at an early stage.

"Everything will be investigated," Ethiopian Transport Ministry spokesman Musie Yehyies told Reuters.

Both planes were 737 MAX 8s and crashed minutes after takeoff with pilots reporting flight control problems.

Under scrutiny is a new automated system in the 737 MAX model that guides the nose lower to avoid stalling, while Boeing has raised questions in the Lion Air case about whether crew used the correct procedures.

Lawmakers and safety experts are asking how thoroughly regulators vetted the system and how well pilots around the world were trained for it when their airlines bought new planes.

Boeing Plans New Software

Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg, facing the biggest crisis of his tenure, said on Monday the company understands that "lives depend on the work we do."

Muilenburg also said a software upgrade for its 737 MAX aircraft that the planemaker started in the aftermath of the Lion Air deadly plane crash was coming "soon."

The fix was developed when regulators suggested false sensor data could cause a system known as MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) to overreact and make the jet hard to control.

Canada is re-examining the validation it gave Boeing's 737 MAX jets, following reports of a U.S. probe into the aircraft's certification by the FAA, Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau said on Monday.

Acting FAA Administrator Dan Elwell said on Wednesday in a call with reporters that he was "absolutely" confident in the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX 8. The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Canada's action.

The FAA finds itself in the hot seat, especially over its decision to certify the 737 MAX without demanding additional training. FAA and Boeing will face congressional questions about why the software upgrade took so long to complete and whether Boeing had too great a role in the certification process.

With the prestige of one of the United States' biggest exporters at stake, Boeing has halted deliveries of its best-selling model that was intended to be the industry standard but is now under a shadow. Developed in response to the successful launch of the Airbus A320neo, some 370 MAX jets were in operation at the time of the Ethiopian crash, and nearly 5,000 more on order.

After a 10 percent drop last week that wiped nearly $25 billion off its market share, Boeing stock slid about 1.8 percent on Monday.

Weekend media reports intensified pressure on Boeing and its domestic U.S. regulator following a call last week by a U.S. flight attendants union for a "certification review."

The Seattle Times said the company's safety analysis of the MCAS system had crucial flaws, including understating power.

The Wall Street Journal reported that prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Transportation were scrutinizing the FAA's approval of the MAX series, while a jury had issued a subpoena to at least one person involved in its development.

Boeing and the FAA declined to comment on that.

Last week, sources told Reuters that investigators found a piece of a stabilizer in the Ethiopian wreckage set in an unusual position similar to that of the Lion Air plane.

Future Orders at Stake

Ethiopia is leading the probe, although the black boxes were sent to France and U.S. experts are also participating.

Investigators were expected to select a handful of the roughly 1,800 parameters of flight data in their initial review, including those thrown up by the Lion Air investigation, before analyzing the rest in coming weeks and months.

Norwegian Airlines has already said it will seek compensation after grounding its MAX aircraft, and various companies are reconsidering orders.

Boeing's main rival, Airbus, has seen its stock rise 5 percent since the crash, but cannot simply pick up the slack given the complicated logistics of plane-building.

For now, Boeing continues to build planes while keeping them parked.

Some airlines are revising financial forecasts, too, given the MAX had been factored in as providing around 15 percent maintenance and fuel savings.

WestJet Airlines Ltd. on Monday became the second Canadian carrier to suspend its 2019 financial projections, following Air Canada in light of the 737 MAX groundings.
Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, wanted in his home country in connection with Latin America's biggest graft scandal, was arrested in California on suspicion of public intoxication and spent the night in jail before he was released Monday morning, authorities said.

Alejandro Toledo, 72, was arrested Sunday night at a restaurant near the San Francisco Bay Area city of Menlo Park, said San Mateo County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Rosemerry Blankswade.

Toledo was released without charges Monday morning, which Blankswade said is routine for most public drunkenness arrests. Toledo was Peru's president from 2001 to 2006 and moved to Northern California shortly after leaving office to work and study at Stanford University in Palo Alto, according to a 2007 San Francisco Chronicle report.

Toledo earned a doctoral degree in education and two master's degrees from Stanford, where he delivered the commencement speech to the school's graduating class of 2003 while still in office. He has held a variety of fellowships and visiting scholar positions at Stanford until 2017, according to university announcements. In 2017, the same year Peruvian officials announced they were seeking to arrest Toledo, Stanford spokeswoman Brooke Donald told a Latin American media outlet that the college was severing its ties with Toledo, who she said was an unpaid "volunteer" who didn't teach.

Stanford officials didn't respond to email and phone inquiries Monday.

Toledo is wanted in Peru where authorities have offered a $30,000 reward for his capture. Peruvian prosecutors accuse him with of taking $20 million in bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht while he served as president. He has denied wrongdoing.

Peru is seeking Toledo's extradition from the U.S. In February 2017, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski asked President Donald Trump to deport the ex-Peruvian president.

Blankswade said the international police organization Interpol had issued a "warning" to law enforcement agencies around the world to notify it if and when Toledo was arrested. But Interpol officials told officials in the sheriff's office they had no immediate plans to extradite Toledo and he was released, she said.

"After reaching out to Peruvian officials and Interpol, we learned that the existence of charges in Peru alone does not authorize the subject's arrest in the United States," Blankswade said.

She did not disclose details about what led to officers being sent to the restaurant where Toledo was arrested, and did not name the restaurant.

Toledo brushed off questions about his arrest on suspicion of public drunkenness during a brief radio interview with Peru's RPP radio Monday afternoon.

"I'm at my home, writing my book," he said when a reporter reached him on the phone.

Asked if he could clarify whether he had been detained, he said, "I'm not falling into that trap."

It's not the first time Toledo's apparent love for booze has caught the public's attention.

During his mandate, Toledo's presidential aircraft became known as the "party plane" after a government official was caught on camera drunkenly singing a popular tune called "Pass me the Bottle" while aboard a flight to Europe.

After leaving power, incoming President Alan Garcia published a tally of Toledo's liquor purchases during his time in the presidential palace: a total of $164,000 in spirits, whisky, wine, beer and other alcoholic beverages.

Interpol officials did not immediately return phone messages left with the organization's U.S. office in Washington D.C. seeking comment

In a statement, Peru's foreign ministry said Toledo's detention "has no relation with the extradition process underway, which is being handled with the utmost zeal and in coordination with various institutions."

Odebrecht in 2016 admitted in a plea agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to paying some $800 million in bribes to politicians throughout Latin America including $29 million.

The scandal has hit a particularly rough note in Peru, where nearly every living president is suspected or under investigation for ties to Odebrecht.

Former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned last year after opposition lawmakers revealed that his private consulting firm had previously undisclosed ties to the construction giant.

Prosecutors are also investigating ex-President Alan Garcia after revelations that bribes were made during the construction of Lima's subway under his tenure. Former President Ollanta Humala was also briefly jailed in connection with the case.

All of Peru's former presidents have denied wrongdoing.

The public drunkenness arrest marks the latest chapter in what has been a stunning fall from grace for a man who rose out of poverty to become Peru's first president with indigenous roots.

Toledo grew up shining shoes and selling lottery tickets in northern Peru, one of 16 children, at least seven of which did not survive to adulthood. A happenstance meeting with a U.S. humanitarian worker couple set his life on an unexpected trajectory: With their help, he applied and won a scholarship to the University of San Francisco.

His jovial nature, ease with the masses and opposition to strongman Alberto Fujimori helped him clinch the presidency in 2001. He proudly called himself "El Cholo"  a term referring to his indigenous ancestry, which is sometimes considered derisive  and championed policies emphasizing the free market and attracting foreign investment.

The nation's economy boomed under his leadership, with gross domestic product rising from 0.2 percent to 6.8 percent.

But his reputation as a hard-partying president trailed him: One Lima newspaper said it obtained receipts showing Toledo's administration bought 1,753 bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label Scotch whisky during his tenure.

He dismissed the report when he unsuccessfully ran for president again in 2011.

"This is part of the dirty games of the election. I don't even drink whisky," he said in a TV interview, calling the receipts "manipulated."
A senior U.S. official says Washington is monitoring ships involved in clandestine transfers of Iranian oil and will hold anyone involved in such transfers responsible for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.

"We are closely tracking ship-to-ship transfers of [Iranian] oil to evade our oil sanctions," said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Counter Threat Finance and Sanctions David Peyman in an exclusive interview with VOA Persian recently at the State Department. "And we're working closely with foreign governments to ensure they are monitoring ship-to-ship transfers off their coasts."

One of the few companies monitoring global oil shipments, TankerTrackers.com, reported last week that it identified in February two cases of clandestine ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian oil with the transponders of the vessels involved being disabled. In an email sent Friday to VOA Persian, TankerTrackers.com co-founder Samir Madani said in both cases, a ship transferred Iranian oil to another ship before a third ship picked up the oil from the second ship and delivered it to a port.

"One transfer took around three months to complete, while the other happened during the span of a month or so," Madani said.

TankerTrackers.com has said Iranian crude oil tankers have been trying to hide their activities since August by switching off the Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders that reveal their position and other information.

President Donald Trump re-imposed U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports, Tehran's top revenue source, in November as part of his withdrawal from what he viewed as a flawed 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. The sanctions unilaterally barred Iran from exporting oil to all but eight governments who were given six months to reduce their Iranian oil purchases to zero.

Peyman said U.S. authorities will act against ship owners, managers, insurance providers and mortgagees linked to vessels involved in the clandestine transfers of Iranian oil at sea. "If you are engaged in evasive action, which is really the worst kind of violation when it comes to U.S. sanctions, we will hold you accountable," Peyman said.

Flying their flags

In another U.S. step aimed at cracking down on Iranian efforts to evade oil sanctions, Peyman said Washington has secured pledges from several nations to avoid putting their flags on Iranian oil tankers.

Last month, a State Department news site said Panama stripped 59 Iranian-linked ships of their right to fly the Panamanian flag, in a move aimed at supporting U.S. sanctions. It said Panama's purge of the tankers from its ship registry, one of the world's largest, will make it harder for Iran to deliver oil to ports around the world.

"Panama really led the way for other countries to follow suit by pulling their own flags and for other countries to commit to the U.S. that they will not reflag those ships that the Panamanians withdrew their flag from," Peyman said.

The State Department declined to provide examples to VOA Persian of countries that committed not to reflag Iranian vessels that have been de-flagged by Panama.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has said Tehran will not comply with what it considers to be "illegal" U.S. sanctions. Speaking on a Jan. 10 visit to Baghdad, Zanganeh also said Iran will not discuss the volume or destination of its oil exports while it remained under U.S. sanctions.

Bypassing sanctions

Peyman said Washington also will take action against any company that uses a new European financial mechanism to engage Iran in transactions that violate U.S. sanctions. Britain, France and Germany launched the Institute in Support of Trade Exchanges, or INSTEX, in January to enable European companies to conduct business with Iran using barter techniques that bypass the U.S. financial system.

INSTEX's EU sponsors initially intend for it to facilitate humanitarian trade with Iran, but its scope could be expanded to other types of business. U.S. sanctions on Iran contain exemptions for the provision of humanitarian aid, food and medicine to the Iranian people.

Iran has called on EU leaders to ensure that it continues to receive international trade benefits promised under the 2015 nuclear deal that EU nations have sought to uphold following the U.S. pullout. But Iranian officials in recent weeks have expressed disappointment with what they view as the EU's slow rollout of INSTEX.

Tehran has good reason to be disappointed, according to Peyman.

"I've been to several countries in Europe, I've spoken with very large industry groups and businesses in the private sector  and every indication that I'm receiving is that there is absolutely no interest to utilize a European financial mechanism to do business with Iran," he said.

Peyman, who was born in Iran, said no "responsible" European businesses want to trade with an Iranian government they perceive as responsible for killing Americans and sponsoring terrorism on European soil. He said European companies also make an independent business decision, based on a cost-benefit analysis, to do business with the United States and use the U.S. financial system rather than to maintain a relationship with Iran.

Tehran sees itself as a victim, rather than a perpetrator, of terrorism.

"To the extent that there is any appetite by [companies] to use [INSTEX], we'll be tracking it very, very closely," Peyman said. "Those companies' ties to the U.S. financial system will be looked at, their use of U.S. banks will be looked at, and their use of non-U.S. banks that have ties to U.S. banks will be looked at. And we will look at any potential violations, direct or indirect, knowing or unknowing, of U.S. sanctions laws and will vigorously enforce [them]."
Former President George W. Bush welcomed new U.S. citizens Monday during a naturalization ceremony in Dallas, saying that ``amid all the complications of policy, may we never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength.''



Bush and former first lady Laura Bush spoke to about 50 candidates for naturalization during the ceremony at his institute at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Those becoming citizens at the ceremony came from more than 20 countries around the world.



He told the group that he hopes ``those responsible in Washington can dial down the rhetoric, put politics aside and modernize our immigration laws soon.''

Participation encouraged



Noting public debate on immigration ``can get pretty sharp,'' he told them that they signed up with a ``boisterous democracy.'' He encouraged them to participate in it and vote.



``As president, I worked hard on comprehensive immigration reform, and I regret that our efforts came up short,'' Bush said. ``Today, emotions can cloud the issue. But here at the Bush center, we are clear-eyed about the need to enforce our borders and protect our homeland, and about the critical contributions immigrants make to our prosperity and to our way of life.''

Bush did not mention President Donald Trump by name, but his words stood in contrast to his fellow Republican's fiery rhetoric about immigrants. Last week, Trump used the first veto of his presidency to overturn a measure Congress passed that would have overturned his emergency declaration to build a wall along the southern border  a centerpiece of his successful presidential campaign.



It was not the first time Bush had given such a rebuke of the current administration's political tone. Bush said at a speech in New York in 2017, ``Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children.''



Last year at a speech in Abu Dhabi, Bush noted there are people willing to do jobs Americans don't want to do, adding, ``We ought to say thank you and welcome them.''



Immigration is a focus of the George W. Bush Institute, which says it advocates for ``smart, skills-based immigration reform.''

A plus for Texas



Laura Bush said Texas is a state that ``thrives due to the prosperity, ingenuity, transformation and generosity of immigrants.''



George Bush told the group: ``I'd like to point out that not only are you becoming an American, but as Laura mentioned, you're a Texan. And if you walk out of here with a little extra attitude in your step, it shows the culture is taking hold.''
EU member states should be empowered to scrutinize each other's democratic track record, Germany and Belgium said Tuesday, in an attempt to beef up the bloc's defenses against nationalist, populist governments flouting its key principles.

The proposal, made at a meeting of EU ministers, coincides with high-profile EU investigations against Poland and Hungary for undermining the independence of their courts and media, while Romania is accused of rolling back on anti-graft reforms.

Germany and Belgium say their proposal would create space for member states to flag rule-of-law concerns early on rather than wait  as at present  for problems to escalate enough in a given country to trigger the EU's existing mechanism  the complex and multi-stage Article 7.

The EU has invoked Article 7 to investigate concerns that Poland's nationalist government has undermined the rule of law.

The process could theoretically lead to Poland losing its voting rights in the EU, but it has now lain largely dormant for months.

EU states have been unable to agree since last autumn on how to proceed with a similar inquiry into Hungary.

Acknowledging the hurdles their proposal is likely to face, Germany and Belgium suggested the new screening procedure would only be voluntary and carry no sanction.

"The EU is a union of values. It is not only about the single market," Germany's EU minister Michael Roth said in presenting the plan for an annual peer review. "Everybody has to adhere to those values, they are not just nice-to-have."

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said he hoped the new mechanism would be fleshed out by the end of the year. It was swiftly backed by the Netherlands.

The health and resilience of EU democracies are in focus ahead of European Parliament elections in May, in which pro-EU parties face off against euroskeptics who promote nationalist and populist policies that at times go against the liberal democratic values of the bloc.

The EU's main center-right group, the European People's Party, is due to decide on Wednesday whether to expel the Fidesz party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over his anti-EU, anti-immigration campaigns.

Both Warsaw and Budapest have sometimes yielded to EU pressure, offering concessions in their push to centralize more powers. But the EU has been largely unsuccessful in preventing them from tightening controls on the judiciary, media and civil society groups.
In Thailand's election "war room," authorities scroll through thousands of social media posts, looking for violations of laws restricting political parties' campaigning on social media that activists say are among the most prohibitive in the world.

The monitors are on the look-out for posts that "spread lies, slander candidates, or use rude language," all violations of the new electoral law, said Sawang Boonmee, deputy secretary-general of the Election Commission, who gave a Reuters team an exclusive tour of the facility.

When they find an offending post, on, for example, Facebook, they print it out, date-stamp it, and file it in a clear plastic folder, to be handed over to the Election Commission and submitted to Facebook for removal.

"When we order content to be removed, we'll reach out to the platforms, and they are happy to cooperate with us and make these orders efficient," Sawang said.

Sawang said the tough electoral laws governing social media for the March 24 election, the first since a 2014 military coup, are a necessary innovation aimed at preventing manipulation that has plagued other countries' elections in recent years.

"Other countries don't do this. Thailand is ahead of the curve with regulating social media to ensure orderly campaigning and to protect candidates," he said.

A Facebook representative said it reviewed requests from governments on a case-by-case basis.

"We have a government request process, which is no different in Thailand than the rest of the world," the representative said.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

Democracy advocates, worry the social media restrictions laid out by the military government may be impeding parties from freely campaigning.

The rules require that candidates and parties register social media handles and submit a post to the commission, stating what platform it will appear on and for how long.

Parties and candidates are only allowed to discuss policies, and posts that are judged to be misleading voters or that portray others negatively could see the party disqualified, or a candidate jailed for up to 10 years and banned from politics for 20.

Pongsak Chan-on, coordinator of the Bangkok-based Asia Network for Free and Fair Election (ANFREL), said the rules go far beyond combating "fake news" and raise questions about how free and fair the election will be.

"The rules are stricter than in any recent elections anywhere. They're so detailed and strict that parties are obstructed," he told Reuters.

'Doesn't Bode Well for Democracy'

The monitoring center, with a signboard reading "E-War Room," has three rows of computers and stacks of printouts, with half a dozen workers spending eight hours a day searching for violations of the law.

Sawang said another intelligence center scanned for violations 24 hours a day but it was "off-limits" to media.

The election is broadly seen as a race between the military-backed prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, and parties that want the military out of politics.

But the stringent rules have left anti-junta parties fretting about how to campaign online, nervous that they could inadvertently break a rule that triggers disqualification.

Up to now, the new rules have not been used to disqualify any candidates though the very threat has had a dampening effect and encouraged self-censorship.

"They create complications for parties," said Pannika Wanich, spokeswoman for the new Future Forward Party, which has attracted support among young urban folk who have come of age on social media.

She said her party had to consult a legal team before making posts.

Some candidates have deactivated their Facebook pages while others have removed posts that might cause trouble.

Last month, Future Forward leader Thanathorn Juangroonruangkit faced disqualification over an allegation that he misled voters in his biography on the party's website. The commission dismissed the case last week.

In another petition, the commission was asked to ban the party's secretary-general for slandering the junta in a Facebook post.

"It's very restrictive and doesn't bode well for democracy," said Tom Villarin, a Philippine congressman and member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR). "Putting more restrictions on social media during a campaign season defeats the purpose of holding elections in the first place."

Fighting Fake News

About 74 percent of Thailand's population of 69 million are active social media users, putting Thais among the world's top 10 users, according to a 2018 survey by Hootsuite and We Are Social.

Thailand is Facebook's eighth biggest market with 51 million users, the survey showed.

Facebook said it has teams with Thai-language speakers to monitor posts and restricts electoral advertisements from outside the country.

"Combating false news is crucial to the integrity and safety of the Thailand elections," said Katie Harbath, Facebook's Global Politics and Government director, during a Bangkok visit in January.

Sawang said the election commission has also gained cooperation from Twitter and Japanese messaging app Line, used by 45 million Thais.

Line Thailand told Reuters it did not monitor chats for the election commission but helped limit fake news by showing only articles from "trusted publishers" on its news feature.
Unknown attackers shot dead a well-known Costa Rican activist who defended land for the Bribri indigenous people in the Central American country, the government said on Tuesday.

Sergio Rojas was at his home in the indigenous territory of Salitre, about 200 km (124 miles) south of the capital, San Jose, when the attack happened late on Monday, the office of President Carlos Alvarado said in a statement, calling the killing "regrettable."

Costa Rica has 24 indigenous territories inhabited by eight ethnic groups, with occupation and encroachment on their land by ranchers causing conflict since the 1960s.

Rojas had survived at least one previous assassination attempt. In 2015, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the government to provide Bribri and Teribe people with protection, arguing they were at risk because of actions taken to recover their lands.

"He made a lot of enemies over the years," said Sonia Suarez, a schoolteacher in Salitre.

In a statement, Costa Rica's ombudsman said Rojas had requested further police protection on Friday after he and other members of his organization said they were shot at in connection with their "recovery" of a farm on Bribri land.

Salitre has experienced land conflicts for generations, with Bribri activists trying to remove non-indigenous farmers from the land in recent years.

Costa Rica's 1977 Indigenous Law prohibits the sale of indigenous lands, but is not clear on what to do in cases where land within reserves was already farmed by outsiders.
An influential Iranian cleric says Iran might bring Shiite militias to the country from other parts of the Middle East to fight threats to the government.



Musa Ghazanfarabadi, head of the Tehran Islamic Revolution Courts, told religious students in Qom this month that his government could use foreign fighters to crack down on potential popular uprisings in Iran.



"If we don't support [our] revolution, the Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi, the Afghan Fatemiyoun [Brigade], the Pakistani Zainebiyoun and Yemeni Houthis will come and support the revolution," he said.



Ghazanfarabadi was referring to Shiite militias from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen that have been formed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).



These armed groups have played a major role in conflicts in Iraq and Syria, supporting the governments of both countries. In Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthis have been fighting Saudi-backed government forces for years.



Ghazanfarabadi's comments have triggered negative reactions inside Iran and abroad.

Seyyed Mostafa Tajzadeh, an Iranian reformist and a former minister, was among the first politicians to denounce the idea.



"What damage did you do to the Islamic Republic so you're asking help from other people to protect it, instead of seeking help from those who built it?" Tajzadeh said.



Reserve force?



Some analysts say the Iranian regime is considering the foreign fighters backed by Tehran as a potential reserve force for emergency use.



Saeed Bashirtash, a Belgium-based Iranian affairs analyst, believes that the presence of IRGC-controlled foreign militia could threaten any national movement seeking democratic change in Iran.



"These trained, brainwashed Shiite fighters can become a strong arm for the theocrats of Iran against anything intimidating them," he told VOA. "They could be used as a force to suppress and destroy any democratic movement in the future."



Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, a global affairs research group in Washington, believes Abadi's threat "is very far-fetched." She told VOA she "can only speculate that it was meant to show that there is solidarity behind the regime's ideology that extends to all these disparate groups."



Slavin doubts the concept will materialize.



"Many of the players are simply being opportunistic in accepting Iranian help and vice versa, that Iran grooms proxies to serve its regional interests," she said.



Precedent



Seeking help from non-Iranian groups is not unprecedented in Iran. In the protests during the 2009 presidential election, also known as the Green Revolution, Tehran reportedly brought foreign agents to persecute Iranian protesters in Tehran and elsewhere in the country.

Shahrooz Pezeshkpour, a London-based Iranian political activist, said he was "surrounded and beaten by two" non-Iranian agents during the 2009 protest movement.



"They called their associates on the radio speaking in [Lebanese] Arabic. Then, two other men appeared in anti-riot police uniforms, arrested me, and transferred me to a nearby detention center," Pezeshkpour told VOA.



Afghan fighters



Iran has sent thousands of Shiite Afghan refugees to Syria to fight alongside other Iranian-backed forces in support of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.



Iran's army recruits them with promises of citizenship and improved living standards for their families.



Analysts say Ghazanfarabadi's comments could be a hint at the possibility of returning those fighters to Iran once the conflict in Syria is over.



"That might apply to Afghans who fought in Syria in return for promises of legal residence in Iran," Slavin said. "I doubt it applies to the others."
Italy is expected to join Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, when Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives Thursday in Rome.

The United States has been critical of the trillion-dollar global infrastructure project and warned about the risks of "debt-trap diplomacy." Members of the European Union are worried the plan could add to fissures in an already strained coalition.

When Xi visits this week, analysts say Italy is expected to sign a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China. That agreement will pave the way for construction projects and financing from the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The MoU is mostly perceived as a way to secure more exports to China and more chances to access financing from the AIIB, said Alessia Amighini, co-head of Asia Center at ISPI, a Rome-based research group.

Rome expects to reduce its trade deficit with China and avoid some heavy expenses by attracting Chinese and AIIB investments in big infrastructure projects. The agreement also will give Chinese companies more access to the busy port of Trieste, and in turn, the Mediterranean.

Reports emanating from Italy suggest Rome also is looking at the possibility of inviting Chinese companies to expand or manage three other Italian seaports, which are Genoa, Palermo and Ravenna.

Italy is eager to attract investments to improve its competitive position compared to northern European routes and ports, Amighini said.

Clearly, China is exploiting business competition within the Eurozone and trying to wean away an important member by offering a set of attractive terms, analysts note.

The MoU signing will represent a major political achievement for China at a time of growing concerns and criticism of the plan. Italy is a founding member of the European Union and could help open up doors for Beijing to the Eurozone.

So far, the Belt and Road Initiative's biggest projects and controversies have been tied to countries with serious financial difficulties, such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives and Greece.

With Italy's decision to join, China is dealing with a country where there is less fear of slipping into a debt trap under the program.

But it is likely to challenge Europes connectivity strategy, a plan that was unveiled in September 2018 and aims to improve links within Europe and with Asia while promoting sustainability standards and rules-based practices.

Analysts are waiting to find out if Xi will offer a modified version of the program to Italy to meet European standards; but adopting those standards would take away Chinas ability to cut costs and reduce its competitive edge.

I dont expect China to show more flexibility. In any case; I dont see financing terms as a real issue in Europe, Amighini said.

European disunity

Teresa Coratella, program manager at the Rome office of the European Council on Foreign Affairs, said the Italian move has the potential of creating disunity in the European Union at a time when the coalition is working out a common approach toward Chinese investments.

Both the U.S. and France have expressed discomfort about Romes move, while German officials reportedly have been lobbying against the MOU signing. Italy, a member of the Group of Seven most industrialized countries, is the only G7 nation to join the BRI.

Italy is a major global economy and great investment destination. No need for Italian government to lend legitimacy to Chinas infrastructure vanity project, tweeted Garrett Marquis, spokesman for White Houses group of national security advisors.

French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed unease about Romes decision, and he has called for a coordinated approach covering all European Union members toward Chinese plans.

Its a good thing that China is taking part in the development of many countries, but I believe in the spirit of equality, reciprocity. The spirit of equality means respecting the sovereignty of nations, Macron said.

Lucrezia Poggetti, a research associate with Merics, the Berlin-based research institution, said Italy is the third-largest economy in the eurozone, and an Italian signature on the BRI has wide implications.

Italy's decision in itself is bad news for the EU and its largest members, who are currently trying to pursue a more unified European China strategy to address challenges with the economic and political weight of the EU bloc, she said.

Romes attraction toward the BRI is not new. Former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni was the only head of government among G-7 countries to attend the first meeting of the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017.

The current government would go much further by officially endorsing an initiative that has been criticized internationally for, among other things, creating debt traps, political dependencies and promoting exclusively the interests of Chinese companies through unfair practices that don't meet international standards and rules, said Poggetti.

Zhiqun Zhu, who chairs the Department of International Relations at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, said the United States is exaggerating the idea of a China threat in all issues, including the BRI plan.

Italy and other countries should make their own decisions instead of being forced to choose sides between the U.S. and China, Zhu said.